64 Scaling Up to Give Back with Charlie Carlisle, Chief Operations Officer of Love Your Melon

Love Your Melon started as a university class project in Minnesota. Six years later, the brand is selling beanies, headgear, and apparel, and giving fifty percent of net profits to nonprofit charities in the fight against pediatric cancer. To date, they've given nearly $5 million dollars and over 156,000 hats to children battling cancer. Chief Operations Officer, Charlie Carlisle says the key to their growth is the mission behind their brand and the fostering key partnerships.

On this episode, Charlie talks about the rapid growth of the company (10:51) and vetting third-party collaborators early (11:50). He illuminates the three things he looks for in a good partner (12:05). Charlie talks about upcycling the billboards from their nationwide campaign (19:12) and making calculated decisions on their digital ad spend (20:27). He shares how Love Your Melon is balancing their for-profit business with philanthropy (22:02). Charlie explains how his team uses Zapier (28:50) and Google Sheets (32:39) to power their operations, and the decision to transition to an outside enterprise resource planning system (33:35). Finally, he shares what Love Your Melon is tinkering with for 2019 (37:25).

Links and images from this post are on the Lumi Blog.