The Agency Trap: Confessions from the Other Side of the Table
You’ve hit a wall.
Business is good—maybe even great—but the problems are getting bigger, weirder, and time is a hot commodity . The solutions that used to work aren't cutting it anymore, and you know you need outside help. So, you do the logical thing: you hire an agency.
I’ve been on both sides of that table. I’ve been the agency guy building the solutions, and I’ve been the e-commerce manager dealing with the aftermath. I’ve seen what a great partnership looks like, and I’ve lived through the mess when it goes wrong.
Hindsight is 20/20. Before I chose agencies in the past, I wished I’d known to ask myself: Is the agency a vendor or a partner?
A vendor sells you a thing—a new theme, a CRO package, a block of hours. A partner helps you solve a problem. The tragedy of our industry is that most agencies are structured to be vendors, even when they have the best intentions (and in my experience, they usually don’t). Their business model is built on a fundamental, unresolvable conflict: their success isn't tied to yours.
It’s a trap. Here’s how you spot it.
Two Stories of Mistakes I hope you can avoid
Cautionary Tale #1: The Golden Handcuffs
We needed a new look and better internal workflows, so we hired Agency A for a Shopify theme update. They delivered a proprietary theme that was beautiful and functional, and everyone was thrilled - at first.
The problem came a month later, when we needed a minor tweak. And then a bug fix. And then another update. We quickly realized we couldn't touch anything ourselves without their help. We were held hostage by our own website.
Their incentive wasn't to empower us. It was to sell the theme and then lock us into a never-ending service contract. It wasn't a partnership; it was a dependency.
Cautionary Tale #2: The Emperor Has No Code
This one hurt. We hired Agency B to improve our conversion rate. They came in with a flawless pitch deck, talked a big game about their deep technical expertise, and sold leadership on a set of incredible, tailored solutions. We were excited. We felt like we’d found the experts.
We got totally duped.
It started with "additional hours" for solutions that were conveniently outside our team's skillset. Fine. But then their experiments started breaking the site. Their code was so bloated it tanked our performance scores. And the worst part? None of it worked. Not a single experiment moved the needle.
The post-mortem revealed the real problem: we'd been sold a story by a team that was great at pitching, but incompetent at building. They had talked about their brilliant team with zero curiosity about ours, and we hadn't had the right questions to call their bluff.
They weren't just selling their time; they were selling a fantasy. It left our team demoralized, our budget torched, and our site in a bigger mess than when we started.
Vetting a technical partner requires a specific kind of dual fluency—the ability to see past a slick sales pitch and rigorously assess the actual quality of the work. If you don't have that expertise on your side of the table, you're flying blind.
The Fix Isn't a Better Agency; It's a Different Model.
This is exactly why I'm at Vail Creatives. We're not trying to be a "better" agency; we're built on a completely different model because we've been the ones left cleaning up the mess.
Our philosophy is simple: solve the actual problem. We embed with your team, figure out how to make the most of what you already have, and build your people's skills as we work. No retainers. No proprietary handcuffs. No BS.
Our only incentive is to leave your team so strong, confident, and capable that your success no longer depends on us. That’s a real partnership. Anything else is just a trap.
