Ep 570: Inside the Dragon's Den with Santevia and How they 2Xed Amazon Revenue by Taking Back Control

Dec 22, 2025

Matthew Gohl, the founder of Santevia and a recent star on Dragon's Den, shares his journey of taking over the family business and transforming it from retail-focused to a DTC powerhouse. He reveals how switching to Amazon's Seller Central empowered them to control pricing and marketing. Gohl discusses crafting a compelling creative strategy that enabled them to amplify their Meta ads, turning a $25 product failure into success with their $320 glass water system. He also highlights the massive boost in sales post-Dragon's Den appearance, thanks to effective pitching and marketing strategies.

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ANECDOTE

Buying The Family Business

Matthew bought Santevia from his parents to shift focus from retail to DTC and Amazon growth.
He and his partner saw online channels as the highest-return use of cash and executed the buyout to scale digitally.

ADVICE

Take Back Amazon Control

Do move from Vendor Central to Seller Central if you need pricing and advertising control on Amazon.
Expect a long 16–17 month transition with temporary revenue dips while unwinding other sellers.

INSIGHT

Seller Central Enables Scalable Growth

Scaling Amazon via seller central made growth more controllable because Santevia can now decide ad spend.
Owning pricing and PDPs is essential to building long-term DTC brand economics.

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Matthew Gohl took over the family business, Santevia, and turned it into a DTC powerhouse. In this episode, he breaks down how they scaled Amazon 2X, rebuilt their Meta ads strategy from the ground up, and landed a killer deal on Dragon’s Den.

For DTC operators scaling beyond $5M and navigating Meta + Amazon growth channels:

Why switching from Vendor Central to Seller Central was worth the 16-month headache
How a $25 hero product failed on Meta, and why their $320 glass system now crushes
The role of creative strategy in hitting $100K+ weekly spend without tanking ROAS
How they prepped their brand for Dragon’s Den—and doubled baseline sales after
The case for launching refillable, eco-focused SKUs in 2026

Who this is for: DTC operators, marketers, and founders looking to scale with lean teams and high-margin SKUs.

What to steal:

Creative briefing process that reduces wasted ad spend
Why Meta sees "different creators" as "same ad" (and how to fix it)
How to make a high-ticket product actually work in cold acquisition

Timestamps:

00:00 Why creative diversity (not campaign complexity) is the real Meta unlock

03:05 Buying the family business and shifting from retail-first to DTC

06:48 Revenue dips, imposter syndrome, and trusting the long-term strategy

09:15 From 1 video every 2 weeks to 60 creatives by Friday (creative velocity shift)

13:02 Why hero products with higher AOV unlock profitable Meta spend

16:19 Meta’s Andromeda explained: aggregation + creative volume wins

30:34 Dragon’s Den moment: “I own that one” and why endorsements change everything

Hashtags:

#DTC #Ecommerce #MetaAds #CreativeStrategy #BrandBuilding #PerformanceMarketing #DirectToConsumer #PaidSocial #AdCreative #MarketingPodcast #EcommerceGrowth #ScalingBrands #FounderStory #Dragon’sDen #BFCM #RetailStrategy

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