Tactical & Practical Starting a Brand From Zero
Jan 20, 2026
A founder walks through launching a brand from zero, choosing a single simple product and designing for a specific customer identity. He explains organic pre-launch content, measurable sales spikes from consistent posting, and tradeoffs of a niche side-hustle. Creative ad and copy experiments get dissected, including an identity-driven product ad that outperformed others.
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Same Tactics At Different Scales
- The day-to-day tactics for growing tiny and huge e‑commerce brands are very similar despite scale differences.
- Bigger brands only change velocity and volume of tests, not the core marketing playbook.
Hobby Brand Launched From Personal Taste
- Nate Lagos started Shooting Doubles as a side-hustle hat brand targeted at whiskey drinkers and built it because he wanted to, not because it was the optimal business.
- He launched simple: six-seven hat designs, kept SKU complexity low, and positioned it as brand-agnostic whiskey apparel.
Build Organic Followers Pre-Launch
- Build organic social before launch and treat every impression as valuable when starting from zero.
- Nate posted for six months pre-launch to reach ~3k followers and improve perceived legitimacy on launch day.