On today’s episode, Kunle is joined by Andrew D’Souza, Co-Founder and CEO of Clearbanc - a company that helps high growth eCommerce businesses raise money without diluting equity. Clearbanc is the biggest eCommerce investor in the world, having invested more than a billion dollars in almost 3000 businesses since being founded in 2015. We all know eCommerce is booming, and there are opportunities for explosive growth cropping up everywhere. But each business has its limitations. Capitalising on these opportunities usually involves spending more on marketing, growing your team and having bigger inventory. All of these are easier said than done. At the end of the day it comes down to the amount of capital you have on hand.  Raising funds is no mean feat either. On one hand you have the option of raising venture capital - where after investing a lot of time and resources you could just lose control of your company; on the other hand, you have debt financing - where you could lose everything you own if things don’t go well. Clearbanc’s mission is to solve this funding dilemma. Clearbanc has the system’s in place to analyse your business and give you an offer instantly. You can raise funds without the hassles and stress of VCs and banks. In today’s episode Kunle and Andrew discuss strategies for DTC businesses to raise funds and grow in the current eCommerce ecosystem. You will get to hear about future trends and opportunities, and how they all tie into being omnichannel. You certainly don’t want to miss this one!  ----------- SPONSORS: This episode is brought to you by: Klaviyo  This episode is brought to you by Klaviyo – a growth marketing platform that powers over 25,000 online businesses. Direct-to-Consumer brands like ColourPop, Huckberry, and Custom Ink rely on Klaviyo. Klaviyo helps you own customer experience and grow high-value customer relationships right from a shopper’s first impression through to each subsequent purchase, Klaviyo understands every single customer interaction and empowers brands to create more personalized marketing moments. Find out more on klaviyo.com/2x.   Rewind This episode is brought to you by Rewind. The #1 Backup and Recovery App for Shopify and BigCommerce stores that powers over 25,000 online businesses. Direct-to-Consumer brands like Gymshark and Movement Watches rely on Rewind. Cloud-based ecommerce platforms like Shopify and BigCommerce do not have automatic backup features. Rewind protects your store against human error, misbehaving apps, or collaborators gone bad with Automatic backups!   For a free 30-day trial, Go to Rewind.io, reach out to the Rewind team via chat or email and mention ‘2x ecommerce’ Famous This episode is brought to you by Famous. Famous enables brands on Shopify to easily build beautiful landing pages and product pages that include custom video, animations, and more. All pages built on famous are optimized for storytelling and selling on desktop and mobile.   Famous’ software allows you to build your pages in minutes without code, so you don’t need a developer. You just need to want to build a better experience for your customers. Famous has worked in the past with many leading online retailers including Honest, Justfab and more.   You can try it for free at famous.co/2x. ★ Support this podcast ★

This is the trailer for 2X eCommerce Hi 2Xers - welcome to the 2x Ecommerce Podcast Show! I am your host - Kunle Campbell…. And this is The eCommerce Podcast Show dedicated to rapid growth in the direct-to-consumer ecommerce space.  If you work in marketing at an ecommerce business or are a founder, I’m going to help you sell more direct-to-your-customers Each week on this podcast, I interview  an expert,  a founder of direct-consumer ecommerce business, or a representative from a best-in-class ecommerce SaaS product We are focused on helping you improve ecommerce growth metrics such as   - Conversions,  - Average Order Value,  - Repeat Customers - Your Audience Size and  - Ultimately Sales   Their remit is simple - help you sell more sustainably!   ★ Support this podcast ★

On today’s episode, Kunle reflects back on 2020 and shares his 5 biggest eCommerce lessons and 3 biggest life lessons. It has been a landmark year in many respects and the lessons learnt this year will surely endure in the near future.  2020 started off much like any other year: businesses were making plans and strategies to expand and diversify. But come March, the world came to a grinding halt. Nobody really knew where this would lead to and when things would be “normal” again. Uncertainty ruled the world! But as some of the dust began to settle, one thing was clear - the “business model” of our world is going to change. Stores and businesses pulled down their shutters (many of them for good). People were stuck at home. Human interactions, which we took for granted all along, suddenly disappeared from our lives.  In many ways it was chaos. But with chaos also comes opportunity. As most of our lives moved online, eCommerce got a real shot-in-the-arm. eCommerce growth fast-forwarded nearly 4-5 years. The businesses that could pivot and adjust to the new world have recorded their best year to date. We’ve seen a huge shake-up in the way we do business globally. This is going to fundamentally change both sales and marketing strategies going forward. In today’s episode I share some of my key learnings from a year full of learnings, and hope that these will help you and your business in 2021! ----------- SPONSORS: This episode is brought to you by: Klaviyo  This episode is brought to you by Klaviyo – a growth marketing platform that powers over 25,000 online businesses. Direct-to-Consumer brands like ColourPop, Huckberry, and Custom Ink rely on Klaviyo. Klaviyo helps you own customer experience and grow high-value customer relationships right from a shopper’s first impression through to each subsequent purchase, Klaviyo understands every single customer interaction and empowers brands to create more personalized marketing moments. Find out more on klaviyo.com/2x.   Rewind This episode is brought to you by Rewind. The #1 Backup and Recovery App for Shopify and BigCommerce stores that powers over 25,000 online businesses. Direct-to-Consumer brands like Gymshark and Movement Watches rely on Rewind. Cloud-based ecommerce platforms like Shopify and BigCommerce do not have automatic backup features. Rewind protects your store against human error, misbehaving apps, or collaborators gone bad with Automatic backups!   For a free 30-day trial, Go to Rewind.io, reach out to the Rewind team via chat or email and mention ‘2x ecommerce’ ★ Support this podcast ★

On today’s episode, Kunle is joined by Kristine Venta Diemoz, Senior Manager - go-to-market strategy and operations at eBay, which is the 3rd largest eCommerce website in the US and has a global user base that’s 183 million strong!  Product auctions, refurbished goods, difficult-to-find products - these are some of the things many of us immediately associate with eBay. And with good reason. There is no other marketplace quite like eBay. But how good or suitable is eBay for DTC brands? Most DTC brands tend to steer away from eBay for concerns of brand equity and perception. But there are ways to use the unique set up of eBay to your advantage. You have full control on many aspects and also an option to sell without paying fees. Users come to eBay looking for good deals and are not sticklers for brand new goods. This makes eBay ideal for repurposing returned items and offering stock clearances. In today’s episode Kunle and Kristen discuss the unique proposition of the eBay marketplace and why it might be too big to ignore for DTC and eCommerce brands! ----------- SPONSORS: This episode is brought to you by: Klaviyo  This episode is brought to you by Klaviyo – a growth marketing platform that powers over 25,000 online businesses. Direct-to-Consumer brands like ColourPop, Huckberry, and Custom Ink rely on Klaviyo. Klaviyo helps you own customer experience and grow high-value customer relationships right from a shopper’s first impression through to each subsequent purchase, Klaviyo understands every single customer interaction and empowers brands to create more personalized marketing moments. Find out more on klaviyo.com/2x.   Rewind This episode is brought to you by Rewind. The #1 Backup and Recovery App for Shopify and BigCommerce stores that powers over 25,000 online businesses. Direct-to-Consumer brands like Gymshark and Movement Watches rely on Rewind. Cloud-based ecommerce platforms like Shopify and BigCommerce do not have automatic backup features. Rewind protects your store against human error, misbehaving apps, or collaborators gone bad with Automatic backups!   For a free 30-day trial, Go to Rewind.io, reach out to the Rewind team via chat or email and mention ‘2x ecommerce’ ★ Support this podcast ★

On today’s episode, Kunle is joined by Michael Vadini, Founder & CEO of Glew.io - an eCommerce Analytics and Business Intelligence platform founded in 2014.  Glew makes it easy to analyse key data points and make decisions that positively impact your bottom line. Almost every interaction of an online business generates a data point. It is also possible to get your hands on all this data. You are looking at data from your products, traffic, ads, social media, cart, blogs and accounting apps to name a few. It is said that the average online business has no fewer than 26 sources of data. Even for a seasoned data analyst, getting actionable insights from such disparate data is no easy task. As a result, (too) many businesses don’t leverage the data they have to make more informed decisions. Almost every business owner or marketer knows of terms like Average Order Value (AOV), Lifetime Value (LTV) and Cost of Acquisition (CAC). These are the buzzwords that dictate business strategy and ultimately success or failure. Getting accurate reports on these metrics is easier said than done. This is where platforms like Glew come in. With over 95 integrations (and counting), you can harness the power of all your data and boost profitability of your business. In today’s episode Kunle and Michael discuss the evolution of Glew and how it helps businesses solve the riddle of their data. This is a great episode for businesses of all sizes! ----------- SPONSORS: This episode is brought to you by: Klaviyo  This episode is brought to you by Klaviyo – a growth marketing platform that powers over 25,000 online businesses. Direct-to-Consumer brands like ColourPop, Huckberry, and Custom Ink rely on Klaviyo. Klaviyo helps you own customer experience and grow high-value customer relationships right from a shopper’s first impression through to each subsequent purchase, Klaviyo understands every single customer interaction and empowers brands to create more personalized marketing moments. Find out more on klaviyo.com/2x.   Rewind This episode is brought to you by Rewind. The #1 Backup and Recovery App for Shopify and BigCommerce stores that powers over 25,000 online businesses. Direct-to-Consumer brands like Gymshark and Movement Watches rely on Rewind. Cloud-based ecommerce platforms like Shopify and BigCommerce do not have automatic backup features. Rewind protects your store against human error, misbehaving apps, or collaborators gone bad with Automatic backups!   For a free 30-day trial, Go to Rewind.io, reach out to the Rewind team via chat or email and mention ‘2x ecommerce’ ★ Support this podcast ★

On today’s episode, Kunle is joined by Taylor Lagace, Partner, Co-Founder of Kynship - an Influencer Marketing Agency. Taylor started out his marketing journey with an NFL Agency before building out the influencer marketing department at Common Thread Collective.  Too many growing DTC and eCommerce brands leave influencer marketing out of their marketing strategy. And you can’t really fault them for doing so. The influencer ecosystem is complex in many ways. There are many “wanna-be” influencers with fake/unengaged followers, the “bikini-clad” influencers that have only one type of followers, and others still who quote astronomical figures for one-off posts. Influencers have gotten a bad rep and it’s easy to see why. But at the same time you see brands that have cracked the code of influencer marketing and are using it to skyrocket their growth. How can brands with limited marketing spends leverage the potential of influencers? Our guest today lays out a simple process to get started with influencer marketing while getting your money’s worth. In today’s episode, Kunle and Taylor discuss the nitty-gritties of influencer marketing and bust more than a few myths along the way. If you have questions like: how do I find the right influencers? Or Which social platform works best? Or How do you build a funnel with influencer content? Or even which tools should you use for your campaigns?, then this episode is an absolute goldmine for you! ----------- SPONSORS: This episode is brought to you by: Klaviyo  This episode is brought to you by Klaviyo – a growth marketing platform that powers over 25,000 online businesses. Direct-to-Consumer brands like ColourPop, Huckberry, and Custom Ink rely on Klaviyo. Klaviyo helps you own customer experience and grow high-value customer relationships right from a shopper’s first impression through to each subsequent purchase, Klaviyo understands every single customer interaction and empowers brands to create more personalized marketing moments. Find out more on klaviyo.com/2x.   Rewind This episode is brought to you by Rewind. The #1 Backup and Recovery App for Shopify and BigCommerce stores that powers over 25,000 online businesses. Direct-to-Consumer brands like Gymshark and Movement Watches rely on Rewind. Cloud-based ecommerce platforms like Shopify and BigCommerce do not have automatic backup features. Rewind protects your store against human error, misbehaving apps, or collaborators gone bad with Automatic backups!   For a free 30-day trial, Go to Rewind.io, reach out to the Rewind team via chat or email and mention ‘2x ecommerce’ ★ Support this podcast ★

On today’s episode, Kunle is joined by Jeremy Parker, Co-founder and CEO of Swag.com - B2B eCommerce marketplace for promotional products. Jeremy shares the company’s growth story since being bootstrapped in 2016 to becoming the fastest growing promotional product company in the US. After having started off doing door-to-door marketing, they have grown to having over 5000 B2B clients, many of which are enterprise-level companies. Leveraging their awesome brand recall they have built a robust platform that provides a retail eCommerce experience at a bulk B2B level. It is no surprise that Swag.com has achieved 2000% growth in a 3 year period, and are actually growing during the pandemic while competitors are struggling. In today’s episode, Kunle and Jeremy discuss what it takes to grow and scale a B2B eCommerce business. You get to hear about sales and marketing strategies, managing complex operations and getting your user experience right. This is a great episode you don’t want to miss!  ----------- SPONSORS: This episode is brought to you by: Klaviyo  This episode is brought to you by Klaviyo – a growth marketing platform that powers over 25,000 online businesses. Direct-to-Consumer brands like ColourPop, Huckberry, and Custom Ink rely on Klaviyo. Klaviyo helps you own customer experience and grow high-value customer relationships right from a shopper’s first impression through to each subsequent purchase, Klaviyo understands every single customer interaction and empowers brands to create more personalized marketing moments. Find out more on klaviyo.com/2x.   Rewind This episode is brought to you by Rewind. The #1 Backup and Recovery App for Shopify and BigCommerce stores that powers over 25,000 online businesses. Direct-to-Consumer brands like Gymshark and Movement Watches rely on Rewind. Cloud-based ecommerce platforms like Shopify and BigCommerce do not have automatic backup features. Rewind protects your store against human error, misbehaving apps, or collaborators gone bad with Automatic backups!   For a free 30-day trial, Go to Rewind.io, reach out to the Rewind team via chat or email and mention ‘2x ecommerce’ ★ Support this podcast ★

On today’s episode, Kunle is joined by Deividas Mikocionis, Co-founder and Head of Growth at  Sugatan.io - an eCommerce Growth Hacking Agency. Kris Sugatan, the company’s other Co-Founder is also a past guest on the show. The company has grown from having 7 to 70 employees in this period. After starting out as a facebook ad agency, the team at Sugatan quickly realised that each company has it’s unique requirements. Focusing purely on facebook ads can only take you so far. The company pivoted to an incubator model, where they closely partner with companies to achieve aggressive growth. They believe in being agile and adopting new channels to drive growth. They have successfully taken companies at different stages to $30M+ levels. Every company is seeking a formula or blueprint for rapid growth. Deividas and Sugatan have put together a formulaic system of growth that is based on some key principles. In today’s episode, Kunle and Deividas discuss the framework for hitting $30M. You will get to hear about key lever points to focus on, how to use product launches and much more.  ----------- SPONSORS: This episode is brought to you by: Klaviyo  This episode is brought to you by Klaviyo – a growth marketing platform that powers over 25,000 online businesses. Direct-to-Consumer brands like ColourPop, Huckberry, and Custom Ink rely on Klaviyo. Klaviyo helps you own customer experience and grow high-value customer relationships right from a shopper’s first impression through to each subsequent purchase, Klaviyo understands every single customer interaction and empowers brands to create more personalized marketing moments. Find out more on klaviyo.com/2x.   Rewind This episode is brought to you by Rewind. The #1 Backup and Recovery App for Shopify and BigCommerce stores that powers over 25,000 online businesses. Direct-to-Consumer brands like Gymshark and Movement Watches rely on Rewind. Cloud-based ecommerce platforms like Shopify and BigCommerce do not have automatic backup features. Rewind protects your store against human error, misbehaving apps, or collaborators gone bad with Automatic backups!   For a free 30-day trial, Go to Rewind.io, reach out to the Rewind team via chat or email and mention ‘2x ecommerce’ ★ Support this podcast ★

On today’s episode, Kunle is joined by Vikas Bhambri, Senior VP Sales at Kustomer - a New York-based Omnichannel CRM platform. Kustomer delivers data from multiple sources through a single customer-view, allowing companies to deliver consistent and personalized customer service. Most eCommerce and DTC companies need repeat customers to be successful. Yet a majority of these companies fall into the trap of only targeting new customers. ECommerce adoption may be at all-time high, but that is also driving up the (dreaded!) cost of acquiring (CAC) new customers. An unsustainable cost of acquisition is one of the leading reasons why startups fail. Maximising the Lifetime Value (LTV) of existing customers is a real focus as eCommerce continues to boom. This is where customer experience (CX) comes in. Realising that CX is crucial is one thing, but getting it right is a different thing altogether. Growing adoption across all digital platforms is changing the ground rules and expectations of CX. There are multiple facets to an effective CX strategy. Getting it right is no longer a good-to-have, it can be the difference between success and failure. Kunle and Vikas discuss the pillars of every effective CX strategy, where to start and how to scale your CX strategy. Whether you are an established brand or a small business, there are great takeaways for you in this episode! ----------- SPONSORS: This episode is brought to you by: Klaviyo  This episode is brought to you by Klaviyo – a growth marketing platform that powers over 25,000 online businesses. Direct-to-Consumer brands like ColourPop, Huckberry, and Custom Ink rely on Klaviyo. Klaviyo helps you own customer experience and grow high-value customer relationships right from a shopper’s first impression through to each subsequent purchase, Klaviyo understands every single customer interaction and empowers brands to create more personalized marketing moments. Find out more on klaviyo.com/2x.   Rewind This episode is brought to you by Rewind. The #1 Backup and Recovery App for Shopify and BigCommerce stores that powers over 25,000 online businesses. Direct-to-Consumer brands like Gymshark and Movement Watches rely on Rewind. Cloud-based ecommerce platforms like Shopify and BigCommerce do not have automatic backup features. Rewind protects your store against human error, misbehaving apps, or collaborators gone bad with Automatic backups!   For a free 30-day trial, Go to Rewind.io, reach out to the Rewind team via chat or email and mention ‘2x ecommerce’ ★ Support this podcast ★

On today’s episode, Kunle is joined by Tyler Sullivan, Founder of BombTech Golf - an 8-year-old DTC Golf equipment manufacturer. He is also a partner at EcomGrowers - a marketing agency specialising in email marketing, which is also a platinum agency for Klaviyo. In previous episodes, we have had business owners who have spoken about building a self-sufficient team and bringing expertise in-house. On today’s episode, we’ll get the scoop on how to do the opposite - build a successful business with a super lean team. Tyler has built an 8-figure business, but still only has 2 employees. No, that’s not a typo error. Tyler shares his story about how passion, happenstance, smart decisions and (a lot of) hard work has let him build successful businesses that can now run without him.  Kunle and Tyler talk about how KPIs are more important than the number of employees you have, and how building a variable-cost business model boosts flexibility and scalability. Whether you’re a DTC manufacturer or someone working on an eCommerce side hustle, this show has value for you! ----------- SPONSORS: This episode is brought to you by: Klaviyo  This episode is brought to you by Klaviyo – a growth marketing platform that powers over 25,000 online businesses. Direct-to-Consumer brands like ColourPop, Huckberry, and Custom Ink rely on Klaviyo. Klaviyo helps you own customer experience and grow high-value customer relationships right from a shopper’s first impression through to each subsequent purchase, Klaviyo understands every single customer interaction and empowers brands to create more personalized marketing moments. Find out more on klaviyo.com/2x.   Rewind This episode is brought to you by Rewind. The #1 Backup and Recovery App for Shopify and BigCommerce stores that powers over 25,000 online businesses. Direct-to-Consumer brands like Gymshark and Movement Watches rely on Rewind. Cloud-based ecommerce platforms like Shopify and BigCommerce do not have automatic backup features. Rewind protects your store against human error, misbehaving apps, or collaborators gone bad with Automatic backups!   For a free 30-day trial, Go to Rewind.io, reach out to the Rewind team via chat or email and mention ‘2x ecommerce’ Bolt This episode is brought to you by Bolt. The fastest ecommerce checkout in the industry. Bolt loads 10x faster than native checkouts, with an average checkout duration of over 30 seconds. Bolt is mobile-native with no scroll on mobile screens. It offers a zero-fraud guarantee and has 42% fewer fields than native checkouts. Bolt supports Stripe, Apple pay, Paypal and several more payment gateways and providers. Bolt is offering a completely free checkout audit to 2x listeners. Head Over to Bolt.com/2x to get your free checkout audit now! ★ Support this podcast ★