Explorez tous les épisodes du podcast DTC POD: How The Best Brands Are Built
| Titre | Date | Durée | |
|---|---|---|---|
| #339 - The Zen of Branding and Growth: How Recess Became the Chill Generation’s Go-To Beverage | 05 Sep 2024 | 00:36:19 | |
Benjamin Witte is the founder and CEO of Recess, a beverage brand focused on creating products that promote relaxation and mental wellness. Inspired by the rise of functional ingredients like CBD, nootropics, and adaptogenic herbs, Benjamin saw an opportunity to pioneer a category of beverages that could help people unwind in a healthy way. In this episode of DTC POD, Benjamin shares his journey of launching Recess and the key strategies that have contributed to its success, including a focus on efficient brand impressions and an omnichannel approach to distribution. We discuss the significance of riding secular tailwinds, the advantages of having a broader mission when launching a brand, and the potential benefits and risks of a platform strategy. The conversation also touches the future of the functional beverage space and the role that Recess aims to play in shaping it. Interact with other DTC experts and access our monthly fireside chats with industry leaders on DTC Pod Slack. On this episode of DTC Pod, we cover: Timestamps Show notes powered by Castmagic Past guests & brands on DTC Pod include Gilt, PopSugar, Glossier, MadeIN, Prose, Bala, P.volve, Ritual, Bite, Oura, Levels, General Mills, Mid Day Squares, Prose, Arrae, Olipop, Ghia, Rosaluna, Form, Uncle Studios & many more. Additional episodes you might like: • #175 Ariel Vaisbort - How OLIPOP Runs Influencer, Community, & Affiliate Growth • #184 Jake Karls, Midday Squares - Turning Your Brand Into The Influencer With Content • #205 Kasey Stewart: Suckerz- - Powering Your Launch With 300 Million Organic Views • #219 JT Barnett: The TikTok Masterclass For Brands • #223 Lauren Kleinman: The PR & Affiliate Marketing Playbook • #243 Kian Golzari - Source & Develop Products Like The World's Best Brands ----- Want the weekly TL;DR of tips delivered to your mailbox? Projects the DTC Pod team is working on: Follow us for content, clips, giveaways, & updates! DTCPod Instagram Benjamin Witte - Founder and CEO of Recess | |||
| #338 - Growth Strategies from Co-founder of Unicorn Ro | 29 Aug 2024 | 00:50:37 | |
Rob Schutz is the co-founder of the unicorn Ro, a healthcare company that initially offered ED medications and later expanded into other products and services for sexual health, weight loss, fertility, hair, and skin. Prior to Ro, Rob was instrumental in the exponential growth of BARK/BarkBox, a now prominent subscription service for dog products. Currently, at Snagged.com, he is focused on helping businesses acquire premium domain names and digital assets. In this episode of the DTC POD, Rob shares valuable insights into the growth strategies that have contributed to the success of both BARK/BarkBox and Ro. He discusses the importance of focusing on core, consistent marketing channels such as paid search, paid social, and email, while also allocating a separate budget for testing and exploring new, experimental strategies and channels. Rob offers practical advice for founders and marketers, stressing the need to plan for scale, set and clearly communicate priorities, foster strong relationships between growth and marketing leaders, and structure teams effectively as the company experiences rapid growth. He also shares his expertise in domain brokerage, discussing strategies for acquiring and negotiating domain names to help build strong brand identities. Interact with other DTC experts and access our monthly fireside chats with industry leaders on DTC Pod Slack. On this episode of DTC Pod, we cover: Timestamps Show notes powered by Castmagic Past guests & brands on DTC Pod include Gilt, PopSugar, Glossier, MadeIN, Prose, Bala, P.volve, Ritual, Bite, Oura, Levels, General Mills, Mid Day Squares, Prose, Arrae, Olipop, Ghia, Rosaluna, Form, Uncle Studios & many more. Additional episodes you might like: • #175 Ariel Vaisbort - How OLIPOP Runs Influencer, Community, & Affiliate Growth • #184 Jake Karls, Midday Squares - Turning Your Brand Into The Influencer With Content • #205 Kasey Stewart: Suckerz- - Powering Your Launch With 300 Million Organic Views • #219 JT Barnett: The TikTok Masterclass For Brands • #223 Lauren Kleinman: The PR & Affiliate Marketing Playbook • #243 Kian Golzari - Source & Develop Products Like The World's Best Brands ----- Want the weekly TL;DR of tips delivered to your mailbox? Projects the DTC Pod team is working on: Follow us for content, clips, giveaways, & updates! DTCPod Instagram Rob Schutz - Co-Founder of Ro and Founder of Snagged.com | |||
| #329 - The Crystal Ball of Commerce: Predicting Trends with Next Big Shop’s Founders | 27 Jun 2024 | 00:50:26 | |
David Hoffman and Samir Rayani co-founded Next Big Shop, where they leverage their expertise to analyze and interpret publicly available but hard-to-access e-commerce data for insights into retail success and product trends. As partners, they collaborate on developing data products that inform and guide direct-to-consumer strategies for various brands and industries. In this episode of DTC Pod, David and Samir explore e-commerce trends, the significance of retail presence for certain product categories, and the intricacies of building and using data products to analyze market and sales data. They also cover the challenges faced when building data products, the role of data in measuring the success of brand strategies, and the need for precise data communication. Interact with other DTC experts and access our monthly fireside chats with industry leaders on DTC Pod Slack. On this episode of DTC Pod, we cover: Timestamps Show notes powered by Castmagic Past guests & brands on DTC Pod include Gilt, PopSugar, Glossier, MadeIN, Prose, Bala, P.volve, Ritual, Bite, Oura, Levels, General Mills, Mid Day Squares, Prose, Arrae, Olipop, Ghia, Rosaluna, Form, Uncle Studios & many more. Additional episodes you might like: • #175 Ariel Vaisbort - How OLIPOP Runs Influencer, Community, & Affiliate Growth • #184 Jake Karls, Midday Squares - Turning Your Brand Into The Influencer With Content • #205 Kasey Stewart: Suckerz- - Powering Your Launch With 300 Million Organic Views • #219 JT Barnett: The TikTok Masterclass For Brands • #223 Lauren Kleinman: The PR & Affiliate Marketing Playbook • #243 Kian Golzari - Source & Develop Products Like The World's Best Brands ----- Want the weekly TL;DR of tips delivered to your mailbox? Projects the DTC Pod team is working on: Follow us for content, clips, giveaways, & updates! DTCPod Instagram David Hoffman and Samir Rayani - Co-Founders of Next Big Shop | |||
| #239 - Carter Jensen, General Mills: How The CPG Titan Takes It’s Brands DTC | 08 Nov 2022 | 00:36:47 | |
On this episode of DTC Pod, Carter joins Blaine to discuss how General Mills is starting to compete in the DTC arena and launch DTC channels for their brand portfolio. They discuss the learnings about what performs well, which brands to prioritize, how they think about building tech stacks, how DTC plays into the bigger strategy, how to think about positioning yourself as a new brands, fighting for retail shelf space, finding scale, and much more.
This episode is brought to you by OpenStore: Visit https://open.store to get a free, no-obligation offer for your e-commerce business from OpenStore in 24 hours. Have any questions about the show or topics you'd like us to explore further?
Want the weekly TL;DR of tips delivered to your mailbox? Follow us for content, clips, giveaways, & updates! DTCPod Instagram Carter Jensen - Senior Manager of Global Commerce (DTC) at General Mills | |||
| #238 - Clayton Chambers - Sprezza.xyz: Menswear, Culture & The Future of Commerce | 03 Nov 2022 | 00:42:29 | |
On this episode of the pod, Clayton joins Blaine to discuss everything from starting a newsletter, building a community, getting into menswear, how big retailers approach buying merchandise, the intersection of retail and e-commerce, creator led brands, winning growth strategies in apparel, positioning in fashion, successful collabs & drops, branded community partnerships, and much more.
This episode is brought to you by OpenStore: Visit https://open.store to get a free, no-obligation offer for your e-commerce business from OpenStore in 24 hours. Have any questions about the show or topics you'd like us to explore further?
Want the weekly TL;DR of tips delivered to your mailbox? Follow us for content, clips, giveaways, & updates! DTCPod Instagram Clayton Chambers - Founder of Sprezza | |||
| #237 - Allegra Shaw & Shirin Soltani - Uncle Studios: Building A Creator Led Brand 101 | 01 Nov 2022 | 00:50:57 | |
On this episode of DTC Pod, Allegra and Shirin join Blaine & Ramon to talk about building one of the first creator led brands, before the recent wave of influencer led brands started to take over. They talk about getting started as a creator, building a community, starting in apparel from the ground up, working together as co-founders, identifying a market gap, tips for sourcing products, optimizing ops, building a brand greater than the individual creator, creative strategy, aesthetic development, and much more.
This episode is brought to you by OpenStore: Visit https://open.store to get a free, no-obligation offer for your e-commerce business from OpenStore in 24 hours. Have any questions about the show or topics you'd like us to explore further?
Want the weekly TL;DR of tips delivered to your mailbox? Follow us for content, clips, giveaways, & updates! DTCPod Instagram Allegra Shaw - Creator & CoFounder of Uncle Studios | |||
| #236 - Patrick Campbell, Profitwell: Bootstrapping Pricing SaaS to a $200M exit | 27 Oct 2022 | 01:02:03 | |
On this episode of DTC Pod, Patrick joins Blaine & Ramon to talk about frameworks for building successful businesses. We talk about his background, taking the leap to start, evaluating risk, bootstrapping SaaS, developing an MVP, taking a product to market, how customers think about pricing, willingness to pay, pricing strategies, scaling, navigating an exit, and much more.
His Lightbulb Moment To Become A Founder (5:00) And then all of a sudden just jumped in and was like, I'm gonna start a company. This was the hardest thing I realized I could always find a job. Like, I had so much insecurity about that, but then I was like, Wait a minute, this doesn't make sense. Worst case, like I'm living poor, I can go get a job as a barista. I can go get a job on a construction crew. Like I, I can find those skills. and that gave me the confidence to be like, Well, let's try this for nine months and see what happens.
Like what is value based pricing? Oh, it's like figuring out what your customer's willing to pay and then charging that rather than, like most eCommerce people do is they look at their costs and they're like, well the VC said I gotta get to 40% margin, let's just slap 40% margin on top of it, right? And it's like, yeah, but if your customer's only willing to pay like less than your cost, you're don't force it like you have a problem, you have a wrong customer, a wrong product, like something right or bad cost depending on what it is.
Basically started with a little app that you could send a survey to your target customers, your email list, your current customers. And we would say, Great for this group that you surveyed, your price should be a hundred dollars and here's kind of your curve. So if your price went up, like here's how many people you'd expect to lose if your price went down, here's how many people you'd expect to win or lose, and so on and so forth. And that was the mvp. And then we eventually put service on top of it.
This episode is brought to you by OpenStore: Visit https://open.store to get a free, no-obligation offer for your e-commerce business from OpenStore in 24 hours. Have any questions about the show or topics you'd like us to explore further?
Want the weekly TL;DR of tips delivered to your mailbox? Follow us for content, clips, giveaways, & updates! DTCPod Instagram Patrick Campbell - CEO of ProfitWell (now Paddle) | |||
| #235 - Alexandra Wilkis Wilson: Becoming a Business Titan (Gilt, GlamSquad, Allergan, Clerisy) | 25 Oct 2022 | 01:06:22 | |
On this episode of DTC Pod, Alexandra joins Blaine and Ramon to talk about company building. They cover the creation of Gilt, building early demand, sourcing supply, creating a marketplace, the evolving commerce landscape, team building, the overlap between commerce and services marketplaces, understanding your ICP and working backward, how she invests, why she loves Miami, and much more.
We were not a big company. We were just kind getting going and pulled this off. So I think startups, sometimes I hear founders be like, well, I don't really have budgets to do creative things. And you can be guerilla marketing, tactical, boots on the streets doing clever things with fewer dollars than one thinks they might need.
I smile because I'm like, yeah, I've been there. I I remember when I had migraines every day for six months in the early days of GILT because I was so stressed. Yes, I remember that. it's very, it's very real. And so I think founders appreciate that I've spent more time in my career on their side than the current side. But that also sometimes makes me tougher because I'm like, wait what do you mean you're going on vacation all the time? Or what do you mean you're turning your phone off or you're not hustling?
This episode is brought to you by OpenStore: Visit https://open.store to get a free, no-obligation offer for your e-commerce business from OpenStore in 24 hours. Have any questions about the show or topics you'd like us to explore further?
Want the weekly TL;DR of tips delivered to your mailbox? Follow us for content, clips, giveaways, & updates! DTCPod Instagram Alexandra Wilkis Wilson - Co-founder of the Gilt, GlamSquad, and Clerisy | |||
| #234 - Matt Czarnecki, Verb: Taking A CPG Energy Bar From Dorm To Scale | 20 Oct 2022 | 00:47:12 | |
On this episode of the pod, Matt joins Blaine & Ramon to talk about building a successful CPG brand from his dorm room, finding product market fit, discovering the companies ideal customer, using tech as part of the companies DNA, iterating with product feedback, raising capital, scaling up, and much more.
This episode is brought to you by OpenStore: Visit https://open.store to get a free, no-obligation offer for your e-commerce business from OpenStore in 24 hours. Have any questions about the show or topics you'd like us to explore further?
Want the weekly TL;DR of tips delivered to your mailbox? Follow us for content, clips, giveaways, & updates! DTCPod Instagram Matt Czarnecki - Co-Founder & CEO of Verb Energy | |||
| #233 - Lee Joselowitz, The Quality Edit: Affiliate & Performance Editorial For Brands | 18 Oct 2022 | 00:49:08 | |
On this episode of DTC Pod, Lee joins Blaine to talk about the crossover between growth marketing and performance editorial. They talk about how ritual grew to a 9 figure brand, the power of affiliate, the importance of search intent, new media models, audience targeting, first party data, team building, and much more.
3:00 Performance x Press 🚀 What ultimately changed the trajectory for Ritual was a few bespoke content partnerships with a handful of top-tier publishers. Like BuzzFeed was one of the standout ones, and we worked with them in ways that had never really been done before, leveraging their press and leveraging their editorial in paid acquisition, paid advertising in new and novel ways. It was, at the time, really groundbreaking and really, really changed the trajectory for ritual.
Google's really a strong place to be this really strong search intent. People are very specifically looking for, whether it's a prenatal vitamin or a multivitamin, or a postmenopause, or whatever it may be, people are searching for what they need. So it was almost like, crazy to not be showing up there, and it became very quickly a really big channel for Ritual. 8:15 Podcasts & Higher LTV 📈 As a subscription business, we had visibility into, where our best customers were coming from. And podcast customers were always at the top of that list. I think those are the customers that really, took the time to educate themselves, were really, not making impulse decisions on like seeing a cute Instagram ad. And, that more educated consumer really stuck around and became that really high LTV customer that we were trying to acquire. So then we kind of became obsessed, like, where else can we find, this type of customer?
This episode is brought to you by OpenStore: Visit https://open.store to get a free, no-obligation offer for your e-commerce business from OpenStore in 24 hours. Have any questions about the show or topics you'd like us to explore further?
Want the weekly TL;DR of tips delivered to your mailbox? Follow us for content, clips, giveaways, & updates! DTCPod Instagram Lee Joselowitz - Co-Founder of The Quality Edit | |||
| #232 - Ben Grynol, Levels: Using Experiments to Unlock Growth | 13 Oct 2022 | 01:00:23 | |
On this episode of DTC Pod, Ben joins Blaine & Ramon to talk about the importance of experimentation in growth for startups. They talk about demand gen, building a waitlist, content production, GTM strategy, marketing personas, educational marketing, UGC, in-house content programming, and much more.
8:10 Great Products Make A Statement 9:10 Fill Your Funnel First 🚰 11:00 Let Your Process Compound 💰 22:00 Every Partnership Needs THIS ✨
This episode is brought to you by OpenStore: Visit https://open.store to get a free, no-obligation offer for your e-commerce business from OpenStore in 24 hours. Have any questions about the show or topics you'd like us to explore further?
Want the weekly TL;DR of tips delivered to your mailbox? Follow us for content, clips, giveaways, & updates! DTCPod Instagram Ben Grynol - Head of Growth at Levels | |||
| #231 - Vasa Martinez: Product Positioning & Brand Building 101 | 11 Oct 2022 | 00:47:25 | |
On this episode of the pod, Vasa joins Blaine & Ramon to talk about how brand building and product positioning. They also cover topics including creative direction, the role of content in growth initiatives, how to nail a creative brief, how to design content for different parts of the marketing funnel, learnings from working with some of the top brands in CPG, and much more.
5:05 It started with content creation and the why behind content creation. I like to say, content within context, something along those lines. You can't just post pictures of your product. It's gotta balance information and entertainment and a bunch of other things. And there has to be a goal behind it. And it's not just like a shot in the dark, let's go viral type thing, which a lot of founders kind of think can happen, especially that don't have the, um, experience in CPG or in marketing in general.
But I think where people fail is in the creative creative brief process. So part of a creative brief is where is it going, the exhibition of it. But they don't really like chime into what problem are we solving, what's the goal? And most importantly, what part of the funnel are we in? So from a creative perspective, if you're running certain ads, top funnel, middle funnel and bottom funnel, you're saying different things. The top funnel might be a, this is why we exist, here's some cool things about our product, this is a problem we solve. You might be saying different things down further in the funnel.
I speak always in the lens of food and beverage and for me the foundational element of creativity is how do you set up your positioning statement To me that is the Rosetta Stone of any brand. And there is a positive correlation between brands that know that like the back of their hand and how well they do and the brands that are figuring it. Like everyone's figuring it out. I figured it out for a period of time for Perfy, but the faster you can get to that, there it is, the better chance of success that you have.
This episode is brought to you by OpenStore: Visit https://open.store to get a free, no-obligation offer for your e-commerce business from OpenStore in 24 hours. Have any questions about the show or topics you'd like us to explore further?
Want the weekly TL;DR of tips delivered to your mailbox? Follow us for content, clips, giveaways, & updates! DTCPod Instagram Vasa Martinez - Founder & CEO of Perfy | |||
| #230 - Nigel Thomas: ROAS is Dead, The Keys To Building Bottom Line Revenue | 06 Oct 2022 | 00:55:23 | |
On this episode of DTC Pod, Nigel joins Blaine to break down the foundational building blocks for brands that want to build profitable businesses. They cover topics like how to build solid unit economics, types of content that perform, optimizing customer journeys, understanding attribution, copywriting, landing pages, as well as benchmarks to hit to build a successful brand.
6:35 The first one, and we'll get back to this in a second, because it's the most important is unit economics by what are unit economics. The second thing is the content. Again, you can't turn water into wine. If we don't have good enough content to work with, we add need to get that content from the brands, or we need to go out there and use one of our content partners and just get really good content. The third one is the customer journey. At the end of the day, if you've got the best starts in the world, it doesn't matter if the customer journey CRO isn't in place and obviously the retention and it all connects congruently. The fourth area is attribution.
It doesn't matter how good your creative is. It doesn't matter how good your copy is. At the end of the day, if you've got the stronger economics in the backend, you'll always win. Now, add on top of that. Great copy, great customer journey, great creative. Then that's a house on fire.
So average order value must be above $50. And again, maybe we can work them to get it above $50 by changing the landing page, but $50, especially at scale, you need that these days, you really do need that. Then the other thing is the CPA to lifetime value ratio, needs to ideally be one to three. I'm saying, ideally within even a 60, 90 day period.
This landing page is built to do one thing. It's built to sell products. There's no light areas for them to click out into the homepage or anything else. All the friction was removed. And we're talking, one of the things that most people don't understand is copywriting. It's all about the headline. That's where most of the people are going to bounce off. It needs of course, beyond brand, but it also needs to hit real deep on the emotions and pain points. David Ogilvy says, they spend 80% of the time researching, 20% of the time writing.
This episode is brought to you by OpenStore: Visit https://open.store to get a free, no-obligation offer for your e-commerce business from OpenStore in 24 hours. Have any questions about the show or topics you'd like us to explore further?
Want the weekly TL;DR of tips delivered to your mailbox? Follow us for content, clips, giveaways, & updates! DTCPod Instagram Nigel Thomas - CEO of Alpha Inboud | |||
| #328 - The Mastermind Behind Seed’s Supply Chain & How to Design DTC Ops for Hypergrowth | 20 Jun 2024 | 00:39:24 | |
John Morgan is the founder of Pelagic, a unique agency of top tier operators that helps brands tackle supply chain, logistics & operations. Prior to starting Pelagic, he served as VP of Ops at Seed Health where he built the infrastructure behind one of the fastest growing modern health brands. Before getting into DTC he worked on the Falcon 9 rocket team at SpaceX. His expertise spans across optimizing supply chains for efficiency, sustainability, and growth, especially for early-stage companies. In this episode of DTC Pod, John talks about the iterative nature of supply chain management and the need for startups to continuously adapt and refine their processes. He highlights the use of technology to streamline operations, the significance of understanding the complexities of global supply chains, especially under the strain of events like the COVID-19 pandemic, and shares a framework for setting up supply chains with a strong foundation in operational details and supplier partnerships. Interact with other DTC experts and access our monthly fireside chats with industry leaders on DTC Pod Slack. On this episode of DTC Pod, we cover: Timestamps Show notes powered by Castmagic Past guests & brands on DTC Pod include Gilt, PopSugar, Glossier, MadeIN, Prose, Bala, P.volve, Ritual, Bite, Oura, Levels, General Mills, Mid Day Squares, Prose, Arrae, Olipop, Ghia, Rosaluna, Form, Uncle Studios & many more. Additional episodes you might like: • #175 Ariel Vaisbort - How OLIPOP Runs Influencer, Community, & Affiliate Growth • #184 Jake Karls, Midday Squares - Turning Your Brand Into The Influencer With Content • #205 Kasey Stewart: Suckerz- - Powering Your Launch With 300 Million Organic Views • #219 JT Barnett: The TikTok Masterclass For Brands • #223 Lauren Kleinman: The PR & Affiliate Marketing Playbook • #243 Kian Golzari - Source & Develop Products Like The World's Best Brands ----- Want the weekly TL;DR of tips delivered to your mailbox? Projects the DTC Pod team is working on: Follow us for content, clips, giveaways, & updates! DTCPod Instagram John Morgan - Founder of Pelagic | |||
| #229 - Rob Willey: The CMO's Guide To Business Transformation | 04 Oct 2022 | 00:55:38 | |
On this episode of DTC Pod, Rob joins Blaine to talk about how to operate a consumer brand and think like a seasoned executive. They talk about what channels to focus on to grow, how to tap into existing infrastructure, deciding what to prioritize, how to nail a rebrand, finding quick wins for your brand, ins and outs of the beverage and wellness space, bringing a new concept to market, the similarities between marketplace and DTC as a consumer executive, positioning TaskRabbit in a competitive landscape, taking a wholistic approach to marketing, solving issues at their root cause, and much more.
6:40 First, Stop Bad Spend 🚦 And so after kind of understanding the business and understanding the consumer, which I think any good executive needs to do, I don't care what department or what sort of team you lead you, then for me it was kinda like, okay, I, I actually start to try to diagnose what's wrong, you know? And because usually those are the places where you gotta stop spending first. And in my career, I'll be honest with you, people have brought me in because they need something fixed. And so that's usually the case with executives. Turnover happens, particularly at this CMO level because something's not going right.
Marketing is the tax you pay for being unremarkable. And as a marketer, right, early in my career, I found that sort of offensive, you know, one of the executives at Task Rabbits said that to me. And at first it kind of like, sort of hurt my feelings. I was like, Wow, is that really how marketing is, you know, perceived? But then as I started thinking about it, I, it's true. You know, the more, the, the less remarkable you are as a company, as a brand, as a product, the more expensive it is to convince people to use it.
Every good young startup does a couple things. Well, if they wanna be successful, paid social is one of them. Generally PR is one of the other ones, right? Search marketing is part of that. Uh, and then ultimately you have to drive email or retention. And if you can get those systems in place early on, usually at least have some revenue. You have some retention, you have some ltv, right? Your LTV c a ratio starts to like at least look a little healthy and you got something to go on.
This episode is brought to you by OpenStore: Visit https://open.store to get a free, no-obligation offer for your e-commerce business from OpenStore in 24 hours. Have any questions about the show or topics you'd like us to explore further?
Want the weekly TL;DR of tips delivered to your mailbox? Follow us for content, clips, giveaways, & updates! DTCPod Instagram Rob Willey - CMO of Cheribundi | |||
| #228 - Jesse Pujji: Kahani & The Future of Mobile Commerce | 29 Sep 2022 | 00:49:16 | |
On this episode of DTC Pod, Jesse joins Blaine to talk about the future of commerce. They discuss mobile commerce, moving from agency to brand owner, increasing conversion, bootstrapping, fundraising, testing out MVPs, getting customer buy in, developing product roadmaps, and much more.
1:17 The Future of Mobile Commerce So the best way to think about Kahani is ask the question if Shopify or Squarespace or any of the big Ecom, website builders were to build today, what would they use? Would they use a website? Our answer is no. We think that what they would use is something that looks a lot more like TikTok and Instagram. So that's what we're building with Kahani. The vision is in three or five years, you won't go to a URL where you'll start scrolling and tapping around. You'll land on a video or really a picture that sort of takes over your phone. And from there, you'll start to swipe, tap and use all the mobile features that we're used to using in apps. You'll use those on an ECom URL. So that's kind of the big vision.
4:00 Startups Are Like Video Games I will say entrepreneurship is like a video game. You know, you, you gotta beat the boss on level one before you get to level two. You know, I dunno if you're a big gamer, but when I was a kid, you'd put the cheat code in, you'd go to level five and you'd get crushed. Because even if you could cheat your way to level five, you didn't even know what to do at level five, because you had to have beaten level three and level four to, to figure it out. So I think the same is true for building businesses.
16:00 Save These Strategies for Day 1 I think affiliate and email are day one strategies because you get someone else to send you traffic for free, right? So even if you don't have product, of course they're not gonna like it, but I think affiliate you can treat it like they're early customers. If you're a brand, you call them, you build a relationship with them. Hey, this is Jesse, I'm trying to sell a new type of iPhone charger. Here's why I think it's a winner. I'd love for you to place it on there, but look, I'm early. It's funny how much people hide that in the early days. And in my experience in my career, even as an experienced entrepreneur, I've found that sharing that truth and that vulnerability people wanna take a bet on you. You know?
It's my number one piece of advice for, for DTC entrepreneurs or even CMOs at bigger companies is when you complain about your CPA relative to your CPM, all you're saying is that I'm not a very good marketer and you go, well, what do you mean by that? I was like, well, other people are somehow making their business work for a $20 CPM. It's your job as the marketer to figure out the click-through rate and conversion rate needed to be able to compete in the market because somebody else is willing to pay $20.
This episode is brought to you by OpenStore: Visit https://open.store to get a free, no-obligation offer for your e-commerce business from OpenStore in 24 hours. Have any questions about the show or topics you'd like us to explore further?
Want the weekly TL;DR of tips delivered to your mailbox? Follow us for content, clips, giveaways, & updates! DTCPod Instagram Jesse Pujji - Founder of Kahani & Ampush | |||
| #227 - Gretchen Hollingsworth: Ink + Alloy - Wholesale 101 For DTC Brands | 27 Sep 2022 | 00:43:40 | |
On this episode of DTC Pod, Gretchen joins Blaine to talk about wholesale as a massive competitive edge as a go-to-market strategy for consumer products. They talk about starting paddywax, scaling a business over a career, leveraging wholesale early on, merchandising strategy, selling into big retailers, the inspiration for Ink & Alloy, business building as a 2nd time founder, and much more.
This episode is brought to you by OpenStore: Visit https://open.store to get a free, no-obligation offer for your e-commerce business from OpenStore in 24 hours. Have any questions about the show or topics you'd like us to explore further?
Want the weekly TL;DR of tips delivered to your mailbox? Follow us for content, clips, giveaways, & updates! DTCPod Instagram Gretchen Hollingsworth - CEO & Funder of INK + ALLOY | |||
| #226 - Courtney Klein: Storq - Maternity & Apparel. Going Niche To Win Big | 22 Sep 2022 | 00:54:54 | |
On this episode of DTC Pod, Courtney joins Blaine & Ramon to talk about leveraging a niche audience to find scale in apparel. They cover topics including finding your market, your first production run, starting limited but focused, seasonal vs. season-less products, subtleties of niche markets, bootstrapping & growth, affiliates & influencer channels, influencer management tools, tiktok strategy, and more.
More children are being born to women over 30 than ever before in American history. When women give birth later and stay in the workforce longer, they have more money to spend because their incomes are usually higher. Also they have different needs when you're having a baby in your 30s you're established and you're in the workforce. When you're younger and in your 20s, those are totally different needs. So as we started digging into it, I realized there was a real market opportunity to address what we now call millennials
And so, unlike a lot of companies that are seasonal, we really strive to be season-less. And so, we put out into the market like, okay, here are the four things we're going to get really good at selling these four things. And that's what we did for the first three years of the business was just get really good at selling pregnant people, those four things. And then from there we expanded the product line once we got good at selling those things.
And with Tik TOK, what we found is most of the people we work with on TikTok, they don't even ever mention us. They're just creating like 10 pieces of content a day. And they happen to be wearing like our nursing bra in all 10 of those pieces. And in every TikTok, someone will say, where'd you get that? But they know it's not like “hi, I'm here to tell you about Storq”. It's off the cuff. It's just in the background and someone is subtly seeing this bra over and over and over again.
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| #225 - Max Kislevitz: BALA - Disrupting Fitness Through Design | 20 Sep 2022 | 00:47:19 | |
On this episode of DTC Pod, Max joins Blaine to talk about starting the brand as a side project, getting early conviction, bootstrapping to launch, landing a major shark tank deal, product positioning, brand design, form factors & digital amplification, early retail strategies, fundraising, go to market point of entry, market disruption, and much more.
10:35 The Best Ideas Are Simple I think that, like, given this simplicity of the idea, it was hard to have a real conviction about it, right? Like when you think of something novel and new, it's like, God, that's the world's best idea. But when you think about reprising something sort of old and tired, like wrist and ankle weights- like it felt viable and there were like some good aspects of the idea going for it, but it was hard to sort of like bet the farm on this idea. Would people be interested? Would they fundamentally care? So there wasn't like a bravado at the outset about like, we're gonna change the world. I think we've had some of those revelations since in terms of disrupting this ultra serious industry. But at the time we were like, how do we both test the idea and raise the $40,000 we needed to fund the first production run. And Kickstarter was kind of the perfect solution for that.
And so I think we came in looking for 400 K investment and left with 900K. We've given up more of the company, but I will say that there's so many intangibles associated with that deal. Like Maria's been in photo shoots for us. Mark spoke with us at a South by Southwest panel earlier this year. Obviously there's incredible media value associated with the show. So it really sort of propelled us to the next level. So where in 2019, we did 2 million in sales in 2020, we did 16! So it was like kind of an 8X relative to the prior year.
Like let's invent new products, but let's also introduce meaningful improvements on existing products. And that was the paradigm shift from a single products company to we can be the Lululemon of fitness equipment and accessories, right? Like we can bring a Glossier sensibility to this super serious like CrossFit centric, fitness space. And we can do it through a beautiful product and a playful brand.
We didn't realize how massive the opportunity was kind of hiding in plain sight. We sort of tripped over it, but we really do think that, fitness, accessories, and equipment and the products you're actually working out with should be as beautiful and elevated as the environment or what you're wearing whilst doing those activities.
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| #224 - Haris Memon: Miracle Brand - 30M+ How to break through the 8 Figure Ceiling | 15 Sep 2022 | 00:58:35 | |
On this episode of DTC Pod, Haris joins Blaine & Ramon to talk about how he built Miracle Brand into a profitable 8 figure brand. They discuss best practices in performance marketing, breaking through the 5M revenue ceiling, the dos/don'ts of working with agencies, incentives of ad networks, a crash course in affiliate networks, why affiliate & retail networks are so effective at scale, how to build with a big exit in mind, how to capitalize (and not capitalize) your business, and much more.
20:10 2 to 3 years ago, it was probably 80% Facebook. these days it's a third because, Facebook for us and everyone in the world was definitely easier three years ago. And I don't mean that just because of iOS 14 and everything going on in the world, just in general, like traffic networks are always going to get more expensive as time passes. CPMs are always gonna rise. Inventory is decreasing and demand is increasing. So at the end of the day, the advertiser and the ad inventory available is always gonna get more expensive year over year.
Most CPG strategics, the reason they actually buy brands that are already scaling in brick and mortar retail is because that's showing them data at scale. That's proving that you can reach mass market America, that you can outpace the legacy players on the shelves. And that you've already proven a level of turnover at scale at the, and at the most important retailers in the country. So that's why most of the big exits you've seen a hundred, 300, 500 million plus are brands that have substantial retail distribution.
I can look at a brand and a product and understand whether or not Walmart target CVS into those guys will pick it up. A lot of times, it's it's price point, it's category, it's audience. like, look, you can go to Walmart and go on, a shelf of any category you wanna look at and you can look at their maximum price point. Walmart's not putting a $5 drink in their stores. They're not putting $300 comforters in their stores
Why Too Much $$ Can Be A Disaster I think one of the biggest challenges we face in this space is everybody raises too much money. and I don't mean that in a traditional tech way of like, oh, you've burned a hundred million. I just mean that more from like, look a lot of really, really great brands can be amazing 50 to a hundred million exits. but they've raised capital to the point where only a 250 million exit is of success. and you've kind of shot yourself in the foot because look D to C and CPG is not a category with a lot of billion dollar outcomes. It's also not a category with a lot of 500 million outcomes. It's a lot of hundred million outcomes. And if you've raised a 25 million series B, you're gonna have a really tough time getting your board to approve that $75 million acquisition offer.
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| #223 - Lauren Kleinman: The Performance PR & Affiliate Marketing Playbook | 13 Sep 2022 | 00:45:08 | |
On this episode of the pod, Lauren joins Blaine and Ramon to talk about her experience running marketing & affiliate at Ritual, how her performance-minded approach to marketing led her to Dreamday, lessons from the best-in-class brands, the affiliate marketing landscape, why affiliate is such an important channel, the tie between affiliate and PR, how to be competitive when securing press, the editorial landscape, inspiration for the quality edit, how to scale a content team, and much more.
16:00 What Is Performance PR? The Future. 🤩 I think what we aim to do as an agency is kind of hit the four KPIs around, we're going to get you the most, press pieces that we can per month. We're going to get you the highest quality press pieces that we can per month. We're going to drive increased traffic through the affiliate channel, and we're going to drive increase revenue through the affiliate channels month over month.
We specifically seek out brands that are, excellent at marketing and excellent at launching new campaigns, launching new collaborations, working with new celebrities or influencers, launching new products. And like, do you have something new for us to talk to on a fairly regular cadence? I would say like at least twice a year at a very bare minimum. Four times a year better, but we have a lot of clients that are like launching something new or doing a new collaboration every couple of weeks. And those are like our highest volume press clients.
Affiliate marketing is still like one of the most efficient channels. I think we had a client last year that they had analyzed like Facebook versus affiliate marketing, and affiliate as a channel was like 15 times more efficient and had 15 times higher ROAS, than paid social. So, I think it is an amazing channel.
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| #222 - Jasmine Garnsworthy: The Insider's Guide to Consumer PR & Editorial | 08 Sep 2022 | 00:46:54 | |
On this episode of DTC Pod, Jasmine joins Blaine to discuss the landscape of PR for consumer brands. They cover topics like incentive structure for editors, how the landscape of editorial has matured over the last decade, where things are headed, how to nail your pitch, how to build relationships with editors, the role of PR in building consumer trust, how positive PR impacts purchase behavior and brand recognition, lessons as a founder, community building, and the future of consumer, community, & commerce. Be sure to check out Female Founders World for more, as well as their recently launched platform Kizmet - a platform for consumer brand collaborations.
Want More Sales? Start Here 👇🏼 Maybe you did discover it on TikTok, but then you Google it and you want to establish that there's some credibility there and you see that they were mentioned in a Roundup of the best new beauty products. And so you're like, okay, back my mind. Interesting. And then you see it on your friend's Instagram story a few days later, and then maybe that's where you click through to buy. So I do think that even though the process has changed, you can't eliminate how important that press coverage is.
The PR Hack For Partnerships 🗞️ getting those like really big mastheads in the early days is really integral for lining up bigger brand partnerships down the track. And then also with retailers. So we know that buyers category managers, if you're looking for an omni-channel approach, like they are reading those roundups to try and discover new brands, they listening as well to podcasts like this one and like our podcast to discover new brands. And you really need to have that coverage if you want to be able to get those kinds of like industry ins as well.
Save This For Your Next PR Pitch 💰 As an editor, I'm still getting pictures because now I have my own media platform. I'm receiving hundreds of pitches every day, like hundreds of emails coming through the one I'll scan through. If I ever received an email that isn't personalized, doesn't have my name, doesn't have either a direct reference to something I've written, or doesn't have a direct reference to a content tentpole that I'm revisiting in my content all the time, I usually disregard it. The emails that I'm always going to read are from a someone that I know. And that's why having a publicist with a really great relationships with press is so important.
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Want the weekly TL;DR of tips delivered to your mailbox? Follow us for content, clips, giveaways, & updates! DTCPod Instagram Jasmine Garnsworthy - Founder of Female Founders World | |||
| #221 - Ronak Trivedi: Pietra - The Platform Powering Creator Led Commerce | 06 Sep 2022 | 01:01:15 | |
On this episode of DTC Pod, Ronak joins Blaine & Ramon to talk about evolving dynamics of the creator economy, how creator brands are typically launched, how Pietra solves for sourcing, fulfillment, and e-commerce, productizing a service for the most time-constrained customers, how their marketplace got started, how they raised their seed and series A from top VCs, brands that have launched on Pietra, what scale can look like in this niche, and much more.
The Fastest Way To Drop Your Own Line 🛍️ So you, as a business owner, went from having to master the supply chain and understand all these pointless things like warehousing and labor and importing and exporting and whatever. To, I have a website, I have a place to sell my product. I have access to the world's best factories. And now all I have to focus on is design and promotion. Everything else is taken care, taken care of for you, through the platform of PIETRA.
How To Outsource The Dirty Work 💸 Like you didn't have to go spend six months building a data center. Cause in a couple of clicks, Amazon just set up your data center for you. Right. You don't have to go figure out a commercial lease because in a couple of clicks, we worked gave you office space. And that discrepancy, I think, just like in the tech sector allowed all of these amazing developers to like make apps and start companies like Uber being one of them. there needed to be some sort of huge push on the other side of the spectrum. And that's where we really saw an opportunity. I'm like, it shouldn't be that hard for someone who has a cool idea to start their own sneaker line. Like they shouldn't have to spend three years of their life trying to do this.
Send This To A Creator 💎 Why do they need to care about labor and importing and warehousing and staffing and sourcing? Like they don't, they want to design candles. They want to show up in a warehouse and they want two day shipping everywhere in the US for a cheap price, but like everything else, take it off their plate, let them go on their vacations, let them be creative.
Avoid This Partnership At All Costs 😵💫 Exactly. Even worse. That's like the worst case, right. Where a creator has no control over their company. And so they're like, because you know how to set up a factory, I guess. And like you have some homeys in Switzerland that knows how to make watches. Like you're taking 75% of my business. we take that and say, you can start your business for 39 bucks a month.
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| #220 - Steven Izen: Elements & Lokai - Finding Scale With Partnerships, Purpose, & Balance | 01 Sep 2022 | 00:43:23 | |
On this episode of DTC Pod, Steven joins Blaine to talk about building one of the most popular jewelry brands from the ground up starting in 2010, before applying those learnings to developing products for Elements of Balance in a CPG adjacent space. They discuss identifying brand mission and purpose, building visual identity, organic product growth, turning customer advocates into major league partnerships, product licensing and royalties, launching a CPG product in a competitive landscape, amazon vs. retail, scaling out teams, and much more.
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25:30 Save This Formula For Success It starts with a product high quality product, great price point, something that everyone could afford. And then on the customer service side, being as incredible and supportive as we can be. Our goal is to make every single customer happy. So if you buy a Lokai and it breaks and you email us, we'll just send you another one, no questions asked. We try to really make every interaction we have with our customers as positive as possible.
The Secret To Building A $$$$$ Company We've been talking about how it's a marathon and how long it takes to really build an incredible company. And you need to have a founder CEO at the helm that understands that and is able to see the long-term kind of plan that needs to be built and is in it for the long run as well and is not emotional when the tough decisions need to be made. Every business goes through highs and lows, and it's about not being stubborn, not putting your ego first, and doing what's best for the business in the long run. And I believe you can figure it out on the way and build a great company if you do those things.
The Best Advice You'll Ever Get 🤓 I'm a huge believer in product, right? It doesn't matter how good your marketing and your sales are, your pitches, if the product isn't great customers won't keep coming back.
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| #327 - How Good Girl Snacks Captured Gen Z’s Heart (and Stomach) with Hot Girl Pickles | 13 Jun 2024 | 00:51:12 | |
Leah Marcus and Yasaman Bakhtiar are the co-founders of Good Girl Snacks, a company that has made a name for itself in the snack industry with a focus on creating modern, female-oriented branding, particularly with their product "Hot Girl Pickles." Leah and Yasaman launched their brand by leveraging social media, especially TikTok, identifying a gap in the pickle market for their niche audience. Despite their lack of experience in the food and beverage industry, they were able to carve out a unique space and build a dedicated community around their brand through their knowledge of social media marketing and content creation. In this episode of DTC Pod, Leah and Yasaman pull back the curtain on their content and marketing strategy. We gain insights into organic brand-building, how it contributes to maintaining authenticity and connection with an ad-averse Gen Z audience, and how they use it to get real-time engagement and feedback to refine and enhance their product line. We also learn the unique challenges and learning curves Leah and Yasaman faced in the CPG industry as they built Good Girl Snacks from the ground up. Interact with other DTC experts and access our monthly fireside chats with industry leaders on DTC Pod Slack. On this episode of DTC Pod, we cover: Timestamps Show notes powered by Castmagic Past guests & brands on DTC Pod include Gilt, PopSugar, Glossier, MadeIN, Prose, Bala, P.volve, Ritual, Bite, Oura, Levels, General Mills, Mid Day Squares, Prose, Arrae, Olipop, Ghia, Rosaluna, Form, Uncle Studios & many more. Additional episodes you might like: • #175 Ariel Vaisbort - How OLIPOP Runs Influencer, Community, & Affiliate Growth • #184 Jake Karls, Midday Squares - Turning Your Brand Into The Influencer With Content • #205 Kasey Stewart: Suckerz- - Powering Your Launch With 300 Million Organic Views • #219 JT Barnett: The TikTok Masterclass For Brands • #223 Lauren Kleinman: The PR & Affiliate Marketing Playbook • #243 Kian Golzari - Source & Develop Products Like The World's Best Brands ----- Want the weekly TL;DR of tips delivered to your mailbox? Projects the DTC Pod team is working on: Follow us for content, clips, giveaways, & updates! DTCPod Instagram Leah Marcus and Yasaman Bakhtiar - Co-Founders of Good Girl Snacks | |||
| #219 - JT Barnett: The TikTok Masterclass for Brands | 30 Aug 2022 | 01:03:28 | |
On this episode of DTC Pod, JT joins Blaine in the LA studio to talk about how brands can unlock massive growth by thinking like creators. They cover topics including building your tiktok strategy, the ins & outs of the tiktok and instagram algorithm, types of content that perform best, how to generate winning content, brands that have done tiktok organic the right way, finding inspiration for meaningful creative, the role of consistency in content performance, finding your brand voice across channels, how to build an organic audience, launching an SMS community, and much much more.
JT's TikTok Masterclass for Brands: https://www.thetiktokmasterclass.com/
9:32 Get Your Brand Voice Right On Every Channel Oh, a hundred percent that the companies right now are trying to get one person to speak Chinese English, German, French, all of them at the same time. And what I think they should do is go and find somebody that speaks that specific language that enjoys it, that is like native to that platform and bring them in for only that you'll go, you'll go deeper. It probably will be cost efficient when, because you can just hire them for just that on a project basis. and I think that you'll get way more out of it because the person that you're hiring now knows what they're doing and can go deep into that.
the way that it takes off the algorithm works is it is testing your content when you post it, it gets shown to a certain amount of people. I usually just call it. Let's just say it's shown to 10 people and it gets shown to 10 people. And it's testing to see out of those 10 people. Do they engage and interact with that? Th those the metrics that they're actually tracking or like, do they watch the whole thing? Did they share it? Do they favorite it? Do they like it? Do they comment on it? Those kinds of things. If they do, if a certain number of those people engage with it, it gets shown to a bigger set of people. And then that test because it recurs and recurs, so it happens, starts at 10, say a majority of them engage with it. Then it gets shown to a hundred, a majority of them that it goes to a thousand. So on and so forth to where it's on the main for you page, where it's like, what people consider viral.
22:40 Content & Advertising Basics So to get people, to actually engage with the content, you need to be doing something that is providing them value. Most people call it like educate, entertain or inspire, but like, you're trying to provide them with some sort of value or something that will get them emotionally engaged. When people talk about advertising, what they're really trying to get as a consumer to buy in with their emotions, because that's what you usually buy with. So what I think about in content is like, you need to be doing something that they will actually like want to watch and want to share with somebody or want to save to their phone and, or like favorite app.
23:15 How To Tell Your Story And, and the thing that works the best that we see is some sort of storytelling. That means that within the content that needs to have some sort of challenge in some sort of resolution. If you look at like a narrative arc, like, you know, everybody that went to English and then in high school, you learn about these narrative arcs. I was a terrible student, but now I'm going back. I'm like, I actually feel like I remember that you're talking about, you know, you have an intro to video and then you have some sort of a rise to it that sets it up. And then there's a challenge. And then there's a resolution. And I think in every single company's story, if you were to just literally like timeline, like the origin, the company to where you are now, everybody has so many of those little challenges, but they don't talk about them because we come from an Instagram culture that is don't show the flaws, just show the wins, just show the wins.
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Want the weekly TL;DR of tips delivered to your mailbox? Follow us for content, clips, giveaways, & updates! DTCPod Instagram JT Barnett - Founder of BarnettX | |||
| #218 - Mark Samuel, IWON Organics: Scaling Your CPG Brand to 5000+ Retailers | 25 Aug 2022 | 00:42:22 | |
Mark Samuel is the founder & CEO of IWON Organics, a plant-based food company that makes bold, flavor-infused snacks and cereal made from plant proteins like peas, beans and brown rice. IWON's healthy snacks can be found in over 5,000 stores nationwide, including Kroger's, Wegmans, Sprouts, Whole Foods, Vitamin Shoppe, Safeway, Ralphs, Brookshire’s, and online at iwonorganics.com, Amazon and Thrive Market.
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| #217 - Oriel Davis-Lyons: How Spotify’s Head of Creative Builds Lasting Brands | 23 Aug 2022 | 00:41:04 | |
On this episode of DTC Pod, Oriel joins Blaine to discuss the role of creative direction in launching a new brand. They talk about brand formation and topics including coming up with a name, defining your brand's purpose, the power of copywriting, merchandise as a medium, language as a product, how to find your brand's voice, ways to minimize inventory costs, launching and testing new products quickly, the state of voice & podcasting, & much more.
Your Name Is Everything I'm a big believer in naming an idea and the name being very important. And until you've got a name, you don't necessarily have an idea. That kind of came at a moment, it was kind of like a shower thought, that just popped into my head one day when I was thinking about athleisure. And I was like, well what's the opposite of athleisure? What do you wear when you're doing nothing but zoom calls? And “corpleisure” kind of brought that all together.
Starting A Business? Do This First For me it really helps when you know your purpose. Right. I spend a lot of time in my day, whether I'm working on corpleisure or anything else, I'm thinking, okay, what is, what is the purpose of like this brand or this piece of communication? Um, and then what's the takeaway that I want people to take from it, you know?
Your Brand Starts Here. If I was just going to tell someone in a conversation about this product, how would I do it? And the chances are like, if you're going to tell a friend over drinks or something, or telling someone at a barbecue like that's kind of your natural voice. And probably somewhere within that is your brand. Because when you speak naturally, especially about your own brands and about your own product, that's when you talk with passion, right? And if you could potentially maybe record yourself doing that, you'd probably hear those words that you use when you're excited about telling someone about this new product that you've got, um, and that's kind of your voice and that could be your brand.
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Want the weekly TL;DR of tips delivered to your mailbox? Follow us for content, clips, giveaways, & updates! DTCPod Instagram Oriel Davis-Lyons - Founder of Corpleisure | |||
| #216 - Sofia Laurell & Carolyn Batyske, Tiny Organics: Building A Venture Scale Supply Chain | 18 Aug 2022 | 00:52:19 | |
On this episode of DTC Pod, Sofia & Carolyn join Blaine & Ramon to talk about company building, product marketing, brand marketing, finding product market fit, guidelines for each funding round, syncing marketing & inventory, building a resilient supply chain, building community, & more.
Product Market Fit 🎯 It was a 90 degree day in Prospect park in Brooklyn. And we literally had a hundred plus parents come to pick up food from essentially complete strangers with unmarked coolers and unmarked cups. And we always laugh that that's when we knew that we had found a white space.
Community = Real Growth 🚀 I'll give you an anecdote but we started doing these tiny “supper clubs” we called them, these community events with 15 to 25 moms- and they started out in person. It was meant to be a regional event, but we're still seeing that those zip codes perform better than some other zip codes. They became virtual and now we're kind of rethinking that model, but I think this idea of how do you do community or organic acquisition at scale is really intriguing.
This Is How You Build Supply Chain 🔗 We try to keep a healthy amount of cover for ourselves, just in case something were to go wrong, which kind of brings us back to building for security. It's not a matter of if, but when something will go wrong, because it will. So to have as many backup solutions in our back pocket that we can, whether it's a quick ingredients switch, or a supplier switch, we've got an emergency solution just in case anything goes wrong.
Forecasting Demand In 2022 📈 Demand forecasting is definitely both art and science, but we use that subscription data and a lot of really detailed cohort analysis to identify which of these marketing moments is the most successful. And when we repeat it and make sure that we're planning for that appropriately. So we use both of those in conjunction to kind of build out our demand forecast models and then we plan production and inventory accordingly. But especially right now, and especially for early founders, you need to manage that with the cash that gets tied up in manufacturing inventory. So it's always a balance that you're trying to strike.
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| #215 - Brian Sugar: Sugar Capital, POPSUGAR, & Novel - Building A DTC Empire | 16 Aug 2022 | 00:50:05 | |
On this episode of DTC Pod, Brian joins Blaine & Ramon to talk about his career in digital commerce, media, and venture capital which has spanned 4 decades. Brian is a seasoned operator and investor, having led investments in companies including Everlane, Snif, Feastables, Caraway, Afterpay, Archive, Disco, & Tydo to name a few. This episode covers topics including the overlap of web3 and commerce, what makes businesses attractive to invest in, the evolution of digital media, learnings from the best brands, what the future of commerce looks like, and how brands can think about evolving loyalty and retention frameworks, social commerce, and more.
12:30 So as many people have spoken about, Web1 was about read only, WEB2 two was about read-write where you can post on social networks, and WEB3 is all about ownership. And to me, ownership from a brand really is about super fans and loyalty, right? Like what can you do with your super fans?
Where Brands Should Focus in 2022 Brands can't acquire customers efficiently through the paid channels like they used to in the past. Brands need to focus on increasing conversion rate, increasing average order, lowering abandonment, dealing with the traffic that they have now, like 97% of the people that come to your site, don't buy. There's like plenty of opportunities to do things there and I think Novel gives the tools to the brands to help enhance that.
The Real Reason Social-Commerce Hasn't Taken Off I don't think shopping is social by human nature. Like I think people pride themselves on them finding and discovering things at good prices at great brands. Like they want to be the person that is wearing it out there first, and then their friends ask them. It's not like you want to go shopping with your friend, and like find the same thing.. and then what are you going to do? Both wear the same dress? I just think inherently shopping, maybe isn't social.
THIS is how much to spend on Marketing So one question we ask is how much money, or what percentage of revenue do you spend on paid marketing? And if that number's like 20 or 25% or greater, it's just not for us. We want a scaled DTC brand to be 12% or less. Okay. If you're spending more than on paid marketing, you have a drug habit, you are addicted to the high of spending money to make money. And it just won't last because your tolerance will just increase and you'll never be able to go to rehab and get off that drug. So spend the money on content creators and content studios, and build like own the house that your audience is in, don't rent the house.
This episode is brought to you by OpenStore: Visit https://open.store to get a free, no-obligation offer for your e-commerce business from OpenStore in 24 hours. Have any questions about the show or topics you'd like us to explore further?
Want the weekly TL;DR of tips delivered to your mailbox? Follow us for content, clips, giveaways, & updates! DTCPod Instagram Brian Sugar - Founder of Sugar Capital | |||
| #214 - Sahand Dilmaghani: Terra Kaffe & Building Hardware In A Coffee Boom | 11 Aug 2022 | 00:57:21 | |
Sahand chats with Blaine and Ramon about the idea behind Terra Kaffe and building a hardware company. He also discusses decision making frameworks, leveraging market trends, how Terra Kaffe had to pivot from B2B sales to DTC, raising capital, his philosophy on leading and growing a team, and much more (listen in for a surprise!).
11:29 - 11:48 The Essential Trait Every Entrepreneur Needs... If there’s one thing I can impart on new founder it is equanimity. Equanimity through it all. Like you’re going to have highs and you’re going to have lows. And I think having that balance is incredibly important. It’s a little Scott Galowayian in a way.. I don't know if that's the right way to refer to that but nothing is ever as good or bad as it seems.
Why EQ Is So Valuable For Startups Competence is not thinking or infallible, it's knowing you're not and holding yourself in high regard. I think that's an insanely valuable headspace to live in for everybody that's going into a startup and it connects back to that equanimity. Hold your head up, communicate effectively, communicate early, communicate often, be self aware, have that IQ and have that EQ you really need to have that EQ when it comes to a start up. And I think you're gonna do your best work.
Knock On Doors I still remember you know getting the first two prototypes, and I just actually moved back to the US got to New York, and never lived in New York didn't know much about it, and was just told that cool stores are in Soho. So I had two prototypes, and I knocked on 100 doors inn Soho and said can I serve coffee to weekend crowds? And you knock on 100 doors and 5 people say yeah, and that's how it started and frankly I’m actually weirdly appreciative of that moment. I felt like I was living the pursuit of happiness in reverse, you know he starts off schlepping machines on the subway.
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Sahand Dilmaghani - Co-Founder & CEO of Terra Kaffe | |||
| #213 - FORM By Sami Clarke: Building A Digital Wellness Empire Through Content, Community & Commerce | 09 Aug 2022 | 00:56:00 | |
Sami Clarke is a certified health, wellness, & fitness trainer who built a large following for her workout videos and holistic approach to wellness. With millions of followers and hundreds of millions of views across Youtube, Instagram, & TikTok, Sami cultivated a strong community before deciding to start her own fitness & wellness platform, FORM. FORM not only offers digital fitness training and community access, but focuses on developing physical products that fit Sami's holistic approach to wellness.
39:56 Building Community? Save This. We love love love our community and talk with them all the time. So first and foremost starting the facebook group - literally before launch. Do people still use facebook? Do people still use facebook because I don't, BUT.. facebook is the only place where you can converse back and forth. And our biggest thing is this isn't about me communicating with them but it's more about them communicating together. Because that's going to grow then they're going to meet amazing people that are likeminded - so we're like we have to go to facebook.. AND IT WORKED!
46:45 - 47:20 For Brands: Why Scripts ≠ Storytelling There's a journey into what needs to happen before pressing, you know, complete purchase. And there have been so many different instances for influencer campaigns where all that matters is the ROI and I really encourage brands and founders to take a step back from that and lean into their storytelling through influencers and the way that influencers cannot read a script but really tell their own story on that brands behalf. I really think that brands that can do that well will convert so well.
Tell Your Story And have the brand tell their story. People LOVE to know how they got to where they're at, they love the process rather than "hey we made it" and "try our product".. I mean tik-tok get raw with it, share the story!
How TikTok Saved A Businesses CRISIS They were like "I'll take the crooked".. and i was like "you will?". Thousands of people liked it saying they'll take it. We were so upset we wasted all this money, everything was crooked, here comes tik tok "we LOVE the crooked" "give me the crooked".. so i made a tik tok wearing the crooked and i said "these are live right now, they are crooked, but go get em". We called them the tik tok special. I only put them on tik tok. They sold out in 5 minutes.
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Sami Clarke - Founder of FORM | |||
| #212 - Cherene Aubert: A Look Inside Bobbie’s Rocketship Growth | 04 Aug 2022 | 00:48:15 | |
Cherene Aubert is the Director of Growth at Bobbie, the first European style organic infant formula that meets FDA standards. Bobbie has raised over $50M to take the soon to be 100B+ formula market by storm. Cherene honed her craft and expertise in growth & ecommerce while working for agencies like Human Marketing and Common Thread Collective. In 2021 Cherene joined Bobbie as their key growth director and built Bobbie's growth playbook from the ground up.
13:49 - 14:41 It's the least impulsive purchase you can make is infant formula. You actually need to have an infant and you actually need to feed it formula. And there's only a short window of time in an infant's life where it consumes formula, it's the first 12 months. So for us, it's really, so much different than DTC acquisition in other industries, like so many purchases or impulse purchases, and there's ways that you can incentivize and motivate someone to purchase. So much of our purchasing journey revolves around research. I mean, it's a high AOV product, it's high stakes, you need to know what's in it. So when we think about growth, we think about educating people around why this option is the right option for them. An Overlooked Hack for Growth Marketers I will say like for the growth marketers out there, media is such a massive growth channel that you know, PR and media, I feel like it's a little bit underrated by growth marketers, but it you can get spikes in traffic that you will never see with paid advertising
it's the UGC that comes from real customers that always does the best. So when we turn back on again, it's I know exactly how we're going to turn the machine on. It's going to be taking that UGC and creating a production house to push it out and continue iterating on it.
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Cherene Aubert- Director of Growth of Bobbie | |||
| #211 - Paul Michaux: Prose - Building to $100M ARR With Customized Hair Care | 02 Aug 2022 | 00:47:19 | |
Paul Michaux is the co-founder & head of product at Prose, the DTC customized hair care brand. Michaux founded Prose in 2017 but he built up his expertise and knowledge of product, branding, & consumer goods working at P&G, Christian Dior, and L’Oréal. Prose has achieved immense success and is a leader in hyper-personalization consumer goods. They’re backed by the some of the biggest names in VC like Insight Partners, Forerunner Ventures, and Lerer Hippeau Ventures. The Unique Strategy That Fueled Prose’s Growth The 2 Things Every Entrepreneur Needs To Know
26:45 - 27:03 To Building Businesses That Last
This episode is brought to you by OpenStore: Visit https://open.store to get a free, no-obligation offer for your e-commerce business from OpenStore in 24 hours. Want the weekly TL;DR of tips delivered to your mailbox? Have any questions about the show or topics you'd like us to explore further? DTCPod Instagram
Paul Michaux - Co-Founder & Product Prose | |||
| #210 - Alex Plugaru: Gorgias CTO - Building & Learning from serving 10,000+ Merchants | 28 Jul 2022 | 00:49:09 | |
Alex Plugaru is the CTO & cofounder of Gorgias, the customer service tool born from Techstars NYC program. Gorgias now has 9K+ customers (including some of the most well-known brands), $25M ARR, a global team of 230+ people, and $75M in fundraising. Before starting Gorgias in 2015, Alex worked as a web developer at various companies. This episode is brought to you by OpenStore: Visit https://open.store to get a free, no-obligation offer for your e-commerce business from OpenStore in 24 hours. Have any questions about the show or topics you'd like us to explore further? DTCPod Instagram
Alex Plugaru - Co-Founder & CTO Gorgias Ramon Berrios - CEO of Trend.io | |||
| #326 - Disruptive Sips: Building Iconic Beverage Brands from Scratch with Christopher Hunter | 06 Jun 2024 | 00:36:52 | |
Christopher Hunter is a seasoned entrepreneur best known for creating Four Loko, a caffeinated alcoholic beverage that caused a stir across college campuses and beyond. Currently, he serves as the CEO of Koia, a leading plant-based protein drink company that has achieved over $100 million in annual retail sales nationwide. In this episode of DTC Pod, we uncover tactics for rapid growth in the CPG space. Christopher highlights the importance of adapting to market shifts and consumer demands, which steered his brand from a costly initial direct-to-consumer model to a more sustainable retail focus, eventually re-introducing multi-packs for platforms like Instacart and launching shelf-stable products on Amazon. With Koia now available in approximately 30,000 retail locations—including a recent nationwide partnership with Starbucks—Christopher reflects on the brand’s product development and scale-up process. Shop Koia on Amazon. Interact with other DTC experts and access our monthly fireside chats with industry leaders on DTC Pod Slack. On this episode of DTC Pod, we cover: Timestamps Show notes powered by Castmagic Past guests & brands on DTC Pod include Gilt, PopSugar, Glossier, MadeIN, Prose, Bala, P.volve, Ritual, Bite, Oura, Levels, General Mills, Mid Day Squares, Prose, Arrae, Olipop, Ghia, Rosaluna, Form, Uncle Studios & many more. Additional episodes you might like: • #175 Ariel Vaisbort - How OLIPOP Runs Influencer, Community, & Affiliate Growth • #184 Jake Karls, Midday Squares - Turning Your Brand Into The Influencer With Content • #205 Kasey Stewart: Suckerz- - Powering Your Launch With 300 Million Organic Views • #219 JT Barnett: The TikTok Masterclass For Brands • #223 Lauren Kleinman: The PR & Affiliate Marketing Playbook • #243 Kian Golzari - Source & Develop Products Like The World's Best Brands ----- Want the weekly TL;DR of tips delivered to your mailbox? Projects the DTC Pod team is working on: Follow us for content, clips, giveaways, & updates! DTCPod Instagram Christopher Hunter - Co-Founder of Phusion Projects and Koia | |||
| #209 - Jeff Nobbs: Zero Acre - $37 MILLION to Reinvent Cooking Oil | 28 Jul 2022 | 00:47:52 | |
Jeff Nobbs is the co-founder & CEO of Zero Acre Farm, an environmentally-focused food company. Nobbs has been an entrepreneur from day 1. As a teenager in 2006, he cofounded cashback shopping website Extrabux. It was acquired by ebates in 2014. In 2015, Nobbs jumped into the food scene and started a healthy, fast-casual restaurant Kitava — which he still owns today. When COVID hit, he co-founded HelpKitchen to combat food insecurity. HelpKitchen has since served millions of free meals to people in need. And in 2020 he decided it was time enter the oil business. At the same time, he cofounded Zero Acre Farms to remove destructive vegetable oils from the food system.
This episode is brought to you by OpenStore: Visit https://open.store to get a free, no-obligation offer for your e-commerce business from OpenStore in 24 hours. Have any questions about the show or topics you'd like us to explore further? Follow us for content, clips, giveaways, & updates! Jeff Nobbs - Co- Founder & CEO of Zero Acre Farms Ramon Berrios - CEO of Trend.io | |||
| #208 - Oren Aks: Marketing Fyre Festival, The Viral Campaign Of The Decade | 21 Jul 2022 | 01:10:31 | |
In this episode of DTC Pod, Oren has a candid conversation with Blaine and Ramon about the social strategy behind the FYRE Festival, why he’s tired of talking about the festival, and how he’s reinvented himself since then. As an expert in branding & social media, Oren also gives us some tips on how to create a solid social strategy and also shares his personal opinion on the state of social media.
This episode is brought to you by OpenStore: Visit https://open.store to get a free, no-obligation offer for your e-commerce business from OpenStore in 24 hours. Have any questions about the show or topics you'd like us to explore further? Follow us for content, clips, giveaways, & updates!
Oren Aks - Founder of Atomic Milk Media Ramon Berrios - CEO of Trend.io Blaine Bolus - COO of OmniPanel | |||
| #207 - Darian Khosravi: Kosmos Q - From Broke to $50M | 19 Jul 2022 | 00:48:17 | |
In this episode of DTC Pod, we cover a lot like the best way to cook a steak, why serving up ads to customers is pointless, the idea of finding a calling, and more. For the students tuning in, Khosravi also talks about his personal experience and why you should never let grades or your past define you. This is an episode you don’t want to miss.
This episode is brought to you by OpenStore: Visit https://open.store to get a free, no-obligation offer for your e-commerce business from OpenStore in 24 hours. Have any questions about the show or topics you'd like us to explore further? Follow us for content, clips, giveaways, & updates!
Darian Khosravi - Founder & CEO of Kosmo’s Q Ramon Berrios - CEO of Trend.io Blaine Bolus - COO of OmniPanel | |||
| #206 - Thomas Shea: Adgile - OOH & The Ad Arbitrage Big DTC Brands Love | 14 Jul 2022 | 00:53:57 | |
In this episode of DTC Pod, Tom discusses the evolution of advertising and why OOH advertising is ripe for disruption. We also dive into how he came up with the idea for Adgile, the revolutionary technology supporting this truck-side advertising, and why DTC & challenger brands are gravitating towards Adgile. Tom also gives us an inside look into how he thinks about sales and why trust is the foundation of any successful relationship.
This episode is brought to you by OpenStore: Visit https://open.store to get a free, no-obligation offer for your e-commerce business from OpenStore in 24 hours. Have any questions about the show or topics you'd like us to explore further? Follow us for content, clips, giveaways, & updates!
Thomas Shea - Founder & CEO of Adgile Ramon Berrios - CEO of Trend.io Blaine Bolus - COO of OmniPanel | |||
| #205 - Kasey Stewart: Suckerz - How This Brand Powered Launch With 300 Million Organic Views | 12 Jul 2022 | 00:53:16 | |
In this episode of DTC Pod, Kasey discusses the art of storytelling on social media platforms, specifically TikTok. We talk about what makes a great TikTok video, a great TikTok hook, and why voiceovers are more important than visuals. Kasey also explains how he’s used TikTok to create brand awareness, attract Shark Tank casting directors, and create retail opportunities - without spending a penny.
This Brand Got 300M Views, Without Spending A Dollar The Framework for Building Viral Organic Content
This episode is brought to you by OpenStore: Visit https://open.store to get a free, no-obligation offer for your e-commerce business from OpenStore in 24 hours. Have any questions about the show or topics you'd like us to explore further? Follow us for content, clips, giveaways, & updates!
Kasey Stewart - Founder & CEO of Suckerz Ramon Berrios - CEO of Trend.io Blaine Bolus - COO of OmniPanel | |||
| #204 - Nicklaus Hasselberg: Every Man Jack - How The Largest US Mens Grooming Brand Runs Omnichannel Growth | 06 Jul 2022 | 00:52:16 | |
Nick joins Blaine & Ramon on DTC Pod to give the audience an inside look into the world of Growth Marketing & eCommerce. Nick talks about he created Every Man Jack’s digital marketing program, the strategy and logistics behind omnichannel commerce, attracting consumers to Every Man Jack’s DTC channel, how he approaches advertising, and the different advertising channels he is excited to experiment with.
How to differentiate your DTC channel
This episode is brought to you by OpenStore: Visit https://open.store to get a free, no-obligation offer for your e-commerce business from OpenStore in 24 hours. Have any questions about the show or topics you'd like us to explore further? Follow us for content, clips, giveaways, & updates!
Nick Hasselberg - VP of Growth Marketing & eCommerce at Every Man Jack Ramon Berrios - CEO of Trend.io Blaine Bolus - COO of OmniPanel | |||
| #203 - Brendan Brosnan & Chris Heckman: Yogaste - Building & Selling to OpenStore in 24 Months | 30 Jun 2022 | 01:05:41 | |
On this episode of DTC Pod, Brosnan and Heckman join Blaine & Ramon to discuss the process of creating, scaling, and selling an e-commerce business. They cover topics including how to start an online store, how to validate before investing in inventory, getting started with print on demand options, tapping into sourcing agent networks, what makes a viable partnership with a manufacturer, options for acquisition, how to sell the business, how OpenStore’s credibility and ethos made them the right buyer, what payout and transition looks like, and what opportunities look exciting next. 11:27 - 12:15 24:56 - 25:37 1:01:30 - 1:02:12 This episode is brought to you by OpenStore: Visit https://open.store to get a free, no-obligation offer for your e-commerce business from OpenStore in 24 hours. Have any questions about the show or topics you'd like us to explore further? Follow us for content, clips, giveaways, & updates!
Brendan Brosnan and Chris Heckman- Co-founders of Yogaste Ramon Berrios - CEO of Trend.io Blaine Bolus - COO of OmniPanel | |||
| #202 - Nishant Samantray: Building Arrae Into an 8 Figure Brand, FAST | 28 Jun 2022 | 00:49:42 | |
On this episode of DTC Pod, Nish joins Blaine to talk about how he started Arrae with his wife, Siffat Haider. They discuss how to build a DTC brand with a product lens, what it took to get to the first 17K orders, personal touches to drive early sales, how they transitioned into scaling, how they got Hailey Beiber as a mega fan of Arrae, the tech stack that powers their growth, how they think about subscription experience, timing their retail strategy, and how they got into 13 Erewhon locations.
23:01 -23:58 12:36 - 13:04 27:10 - 28:00
This episode is brought to you by OpenStore: Visit https://open.store to get a free, no-obligation offer for your e-commerce business from OpenStore in 24 hours. Have any questions about the show or topics you'd like us to explore further? Follow us for content, clips, giveaways, & updates!
Nishant Samantray- Co-founder of Arrae Ramon Berrios - CEO of Trend.io Blaine Bolus - COO of OmniPanel | |||
| #201 - Jonah Reider, Founder PZAZ: Shaking Up The Energy Industry | 21 Jun 2022 | 00:59:51 | |
Jonah Reider is an NYC based chef, entrepreneur, and writer for Food & Wine. Prior to starting Pzaz, Jonah made a name for himself cooking meals in his dorm room at Columbia which turned into famed supper club and boutique condiments brand, Pith. Jonah hosts the bi-monthly column “Supper Club” at Food & Wine magazine, and has contributed to GQ, Vice, the Food Network, and more around the food & hospitality space. He’s also collaborated with several major brands like Gucci, Hermes, Land Rover, and The New Yorker to create unique dining experiences. Now Jonah is entering the CPG startup world and building an energy empire called Pzaz. Jonah joins DTC Pod to talk about his launch, developing product and form factor, brand positioning, local retail distribution strategy, and how to make a big impression in a crowded CPG landscape. Highlights: 32:04 - 32:28 35:54 - 36:51 44:03 - 44:55 50:21 - 50:54 56:34 - 57:31
This episode is brought to you by OpenStore: Visit https://open.store to get a free, no-obligation offer for your e-commerce business from OpenStore in 24 hours. Have any questions about the show or topics you'd like us to explore further? Follow us for content, clips, giveaways, & updates!
Jonah Reider- CEO of Pzaz.com Ramon Berrios - CEO of Trend.io Blaine Bolus - COO of OmniPanel | |||
| #200 - Episode 200! Blaine Bolus & Ramon Berrios on Consumer, Creator, & Commerce | 15 Jun 2022 | 01:05:05 | |
Follow Along on Social Don’t hesitate to reach out to us on socials or directly to Blaine & Ramon if you have a guest you’d like to recommend, or specific topics you’d like to learn more about in the consumer, creator, and commerce landscape which we can explore with future guests.How did the pod start and where are we going?
How has the DTC landscape changed since?
Previous episodes and learnings from DTC Pod guests:
Product finds & whats next:
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| #325 - The Art of Modern Retail: Kellen Roland on Strategy, AI, and Mentorship | 30 May 2024 | 00:55:42 | |
Kellen Roland served as first CEO of JOOPITER alongside Pharrel Williams and VP of Sales of Herschel Supply Co, and brings 18+ years of expertise in the luxury and consumer sectors. He has a triple role as a founder, investor, and strategic advisor. He fosters business growth through insightful leadership and AI integration, invests in promising businesses like TRUFF, and offers strategic advice to brands such as Slowtide. With an acute sense of cultural trends and storytelling skills, he establishes authentic links between brands and audiences. Notably, he worked at Agenda Trade Show, Herschel Supply Co., and iamOTHER, founded The NTWRK Agency, and eventually built JOOPITER alongside Pharrell Williams. At present, he shares this extensive learning at his own consulting business, KRMC. In this DTC Pod episode, Kellen Roland gives insights on building strong retailer relationships. He emphasizes the importance of delivering unique value to create lasting partnerships in retail. He also discusses negotiating techniques and the need to maintain a healthy balance of markups and margins, appealing to vendors while preserving brand profitability. Kellen encourages brands to be agile; taking customer feedback seriously and quickly adapting to changing preferences is key for success in the fast-changing DTC landscape. Through his strategic insights, Kellen cements the framework for a successful retail strategy that is as much about captivating storytelling as it is about shrewd business deliberations. Join 15k founders and marketers & get our pod highlights delivered directly to your inbox with the DTC Pod Newsletter! On this episode of DTC Pod, we cover: Timestamps Show notes powered by Castmagic Past guests & brands on DTC Pod include Gilt, PopSugar, Glossier, MadeIN, Prose, Bala, P.volve, Ritual, Bite, Oura, Levels, General Mills, Mid Day Squares, Prose, Arrae, Olipop, Ghia, Rosaluna, Form, Uncle Studios & many more. Additional episodes you might like: • #175 Ariel Vaisbort - How OLIPOP Runs Influencer, Community, & Affiliate Growth • #184 Jake Karls, Midday Squares - Turning Your Brand Into The Influencer With Content • #205 Kasey Stewart: Suckerz- - Powering Your Launch With 300 Million Organic Views • #219 JT Barnett: The TikTok Masterclass For Brands • #223 Lauren Kleinman: The PR & Affiliate Marketing Playbook • #243 Kian Golzari - Source & Develop Products Like The World's Best Brands ----- Want the weekly TL;DR of tips delivered to your mailbox? Projects the DTC Pod team is working on: Follow us for content, clips, giveaways, & updates! DTCPod Instagram Kellen Roland - Founder of KRMC | |||
| #199 - Mélanie Masarin, CEO Ghia: Glossier & Dig Inn Creative Exec Builds Hottest Booze-Free Bev Brand | 09 Jun 2022 | 00:41:53 | |
Mélanie chats with Blaine & Ramon about building Ghia. Some topics include how to create a new beverage category, production considerations for a new beverage type, early-stage funding advice and key supporters along the way, customer-led product iteration, building a culinary first brand, design and branding insight, leveraging restaurants and retail as a distribution strategy, Ghia’s focus on retail channels, and much more. 2:35 - 7:11 Melanie’s career before Ghia 9:39 - 11:56 Selling the idea of Ghia 12:57 - 14:09 Adapting to COVID 18:12 - 21:42 Formulating Ghia 22:52 - 24:35 Fundraising 27:04 - 32:47 Creating the branding 35:23 - 37:47 Developing new products 38:15 - 40:44 Fostering relationships while scaling
Visit https://open.store to get a free, no-obligation offer for your e-commerce business from OpenStore in 24 hours. Have any questions about the show or topics you'd like us to explore further? Follow us for content, clips, giveaways, & updates!
Mélanie Masarin- CEO & Co-founder of Ghia Ramon Berrios - CEO of Trend.io Blaine Bolus - COO of OmniPanel | |||
| #198 - DJ Willingham, DNA SHOW: Getting 30M views on Youtube, Flipping Kicks, & Building Revenue Streams | 31 May 2022 | 00:59:50 | |
Growing up, Darrin Willingham dreamed of playing in the NFL. But then he discovered his love for creating content. Darrin discusses how he found himself in the world of YouTube, making videos, monetizing his passion for sneakers, and coming full circle by working with pro-athletes off the field. Darrin also gives some tips on building a strong social media foundation and personal brand.
8:30 - 10:18 Getting banned from YouTube 10:39 - 11:57 Building a solid YouTube foundation for brand partnerships 14:03 - 22:57 Monetizing your passion 24:27 - 26:01 Importance of branding yourself 29:57 - 32:46 Creating your own luck & seeking opportunities 34:07 -39:44 Diversifying your income stream 42:11 - 45:28 Creating authentic content 52:18 - 54:00 Goals for the future
This episode is brought to you by OpenStore: Visit https://open.store to get a free, no-obligation offer for your e-commerce business from OpenStore in 24 hours. Have any questions about the show or topics you'd like us to explore further? Follow us for content, clips, giveaways, & updates!
Darrin Willingham - Creator & Host of DNA SHOW Ramon Berrios - CEO of Trend.io Blaine Bolus - COO of OmniPanel | |||
| #197 - Kevin Wong, Lunar: Breaking into Big Box Retailers With hard Seltzer CPG | 24 May 2022 | 00:55:18 | |
Blaine & Ramon are thrilled to have Kevin Wong as a guest on DTC Pod and dive into building the first Asian American craft hard seltzer alcohol brand - Lunar. Kevin talks about the early days of home brewing, perfecting the formula, and learning from failed batches and supply chain. He also gets into the business side and talks about selling to restaurants and becoming one of the most in-demand items at Trader Joe's.
2:14 - 5:42 Life before Lunar 9:56 - 13:52 Creating Lunar 14:56 - 17:57 Early days of Lunar 18:21 - 20:22 Navigating regulation in the alcohol industry 20:48 - 30:06 Learning to make hard seltzer 30:57 - 32:37 The first failed batch 34:42 - 42:00 Got to market strategy 47:36 - 50:01 Getting into Trader Joe’s
This episode is brought to you by OpenStore: Visit https://open.store to get a free, no-obligation offer for your e-commerce business from OpenStore in 24 hours. Have any questions about the show or topics you'd like us to explore further? Follow us for content, clips, giveaways, & updates!
Kevin Wong - Co-Founder of Lunar Ramon Berrios - CEO of Trend.io Blaine Bolus - COO of OmniPanel | |||