Ian Dewar
Ian Dewar is the retention scientist who turns brand love into lifetime revenue. Architect of The North Face’s category-defining VIPeak program, Ian now advises ACV Consulting on the analytics, email, and paid-social layers of our Digital Growth Audits. His obsession: building predictive Customer Intelligence Engines that reward real-world passion instead of purchases—ensuring high-value customers don’t just stay, they spend more, year after year.
Strategic Advisor | Loyalty Ecosystems & Customer Intelligence
The High-Value Retention Architect
In the ACV ecosystem, Ian Dewar provides the scientific counterweight to emotional branding. As a recognized leader in the analytics space (named a Top 50 Analytics Leader by Drexel University), Ian specializes in a singular, high-stakes problem: converting "brand love" into recurring financial performance. While many analysts view loyalty as a transactional game of points and discounts, Ian views it as an ecosystem of "Access and Relevance." His methodology is rooted in the belief that high-ticket customers—whether in luxury retail or specialized services—are retained not by coupons, but by curated experiences and predictive personalization.
Heritage Brand Expertise
- The North Face: Working alongside Aaron Carpenter, Ian architected VIPeak, the brand’s revolutionary loyalty program. He shifted the paradigm from "buying gear" to "rewarding exploration," proving that a brand could capture data on customer behavior (hiking, climbing, running) to drive sales, rather than just tracking transactions.
- Anthropologie: In his current role leading Global Strategy, Ian masters the convergence of digital data and physical retail. He uses advanced analytics to turn customer feedback into foresight, allowing brands to predict trends rather than react to them—a critical capability for the "Retail Renaissance" client.
- Specialized & Trek: With deep roots in the cycling industry, Ian understands the psychology of the "enthusiast" consumer. He knows how to build communities around high-performance products, ensuring that the infrastructure supports not just a purchase, but a lifestyle.
A System That Works
For ACV clients, Ian does not just build "rewards programs." He builds Customer Intelligence Engines. He answers the question: "Now that we have their attention, how do we keep them for life?"
- Loyalty Architecture: moving beyond "points for purchase" to experience-based tiering.
- Predictive LTV Modeling: identifying which customers will drive profit in 24 months.
The "Clean Data" Mandate: restructuring client data pipelines (Snowflake, SQL) to ensure that personalization is actionable, not just theoretical.