DTC POD: How The Best Brands Are Built

On this episode of DTC Pod, Megan joins Blaine and Ramon to talk about how brands can better leverage consumer insights to validate ideas, develop new products, build more powerful brands, increase revenue and purchases, build better wholistic customer experiences, mitigate risk, find exciting opportunities, build off flagship products, and much more. 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----- Have any questions about the show or topics you'd like us to explore further?Shoot us a DM; we'd love to hear from you. Want the weekly TL;DR of tips delivered to your mailbox?Check out our newsletter hereFollow us for content, clips, giveaways, & updates!DTCPod InstagramDTCPod TwitterDTCPod TikTokMegan O'Brien - Founder of Arch InsightsRamon Berrios - CEO of Trend.ioBlaine Bolus - Co-Founder of Seated

On this episode of DTC Pod, Adam joins Blaine to discuss building and formulating products from the ground up. They talk about identifying a problem, coming up with a unique formulation, what you need to take the product to market, navigating restrictions and FDA, positioning yourself to sell in other markets downstream, patents, ingredient licensing, launching Paris Hilton's line, the pros, and cons of working with celebrity talent, navigating managers and other involved parties, leveraging talent for retail distribution, and much more. 35:48 - The Formulation Behind Paris Hilton's Skincare LineLaunching a product line with a celebrity, it's just exciting because you can immediately get an interested consumer. There's instant, recognition of your brand because you're tying it to and someone like Paris, I think you said it earlier, she did a lot of things first. And being a celebrity that wanted her own skincare line yeah, she was one of the first. And the way she wanted to do it was different, I think, than most celebrities. She wanted to own it.40:30 - The Reality of Partnering With Celebrity TalentEspecially when you get into bigger influencers or bigger celebrities. And that's the challenge. Developing a working relationship and a business structure that satisfies everybody. You have to take into consideration maybe not a lot of celebrities understand the difference between royalties and owning a business. Maybe a business manager has never done a deal where there's equity in a company. Maybe they're only used to royalty checks.27:00 - Save These Q's For Your Next BrandYou have to decide your brand position in the market. Are you the cost leader? Are you prestige? How are you going to price it? what is your brand position? What's on the box? What colors are we going to use for not just the logo, but everything to develop the brand feel. Is this going to look clinical, or should we take it the other way and make it look super high end? Like you'd buy in a, blue Mercury or a Sephora? Where are we going to put this? Is it ultimately going to be in a drugstore? Or are we going to sell it in Nordstrom? 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----- Have any questions about the show or topics you'd like us to explore further?Shoot us a DM; we'd love to hear from you. Want the weekly TL;DR of tips delivered to your mailbox?Check out our newsletter hereFollow us for content, clips, giveaways, & updates!DTCPod InstagramDTCPod TwitterDTCPod TikTokAdam Xavier - President of XG FormulationsRamon Berrios - CEO of Trend.ioBlaine Bolus - Co-Founder of Seated

On this episode of DTC Pod, Jack joins Blaine to talk about how to build a brand in today's landscape. They talk about identifying a problem, bootstrapping, which channels to start on, how to think about capital, working with suppliers, building at the right pace for your business, speeding up cash conversion, subscription & retention from the customer's pov, the importance of unified data, the power of layering brand at the right time, and much more. More info on  the Duradry brand here. 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----- 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.Recharge- Visit https://rechargepayments.com/dtcpod to see how over 15,000 commerce brands power their subscriptionsPeel Insights- Visit https://peelinsights.com/dtcpod to uncover actionable data insights to drive your brand's growth Have any questions about the show or topics you'd like us to explore further?Shoot us a DM; we'd love to hear from you. Want the weekly TL;DR of tips delivered to your mailbox?Check out our newsletter hereFollow us for content, clips, giveaways, & updates!DTCPod InstagramDTCPod TwitterDTCPod TikTokJack Benzaquen - Founder & CEO of DuradryRamon Berrios - CEO of Trend.ioBlaine Bolus - Co-Founder of Seated

On this episode of DTC Pod, Victoria joins Blaine to talk about building marketplaces from the ground up. They explore topics like getting your first customers, how to build out the supply side of the marketplace, building early demand, challenges matching supply to demand, how to launch new markets, starting a marketplace in NYC, keeping the flywheel going, transformation through company growth, and much more. 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----- 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.Recharge- Visit https://rechargepayments.com/dtcpod to see how over 15,000 commerce brands power their subscriptionsPeel Insights- Visit https://peelinsights.com/dtcpod to uncover actionable data insights to drive your brand's growth Have any questions about the show or topics you'd like us to explore further?Shoot us a DM; we'd love to hear from you. Want the weekly TL;DR of tips delivered to your mailbox?Check out our newsletter hereFollow us for content, clips, giveaways, & updates!DTCPod InstagramDTCPod TwitterDTCPod TikTokVictoria Eisner - Co-founder of GlamsquadRamon Berrios - CEO of Trend.ioBlaine Bolus - Co-Founder of Seated

On this episode of DTC Pod, Roy joins Blaine & Ramon to talk about building one of the largest e-commerce platforms, closing down his services business and betting everything on the Magento opportunity, leveraging open source for early growth, building a community that lives & breathes your product, the ethos around building an amazing product, market timing, building developer first, startup vs. corporate culture, navigating an acquisition, looking back at Shopify vs. Magento, investing at R2, exciting technology trends, building companies again, and more. 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----- 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.Recharge- Visit https://rechargepayments.com/dtcpod to see how over 15,000 commerce brands power their subscriptionsPeel Insights- Visit https://peelinsights.com/dtcpod to uncover actionable data insights to drive your brand's growth Have any questions about the show or topics you'd like us to explore further?Shoot us a DM; we'd love to hear from you. Want the weekly TL;DR of tips delivered to your mailbox?Check out our newsletter hereFollow us for content, clips, giveaways, & updates!DTCPod InstagramDTCPod TwitterDTCPod TikTokRoy Rubin - Was the Co-founder and CEO of MagentoRamon Berrios - CEO of Trend.ioBlaine Bolus - Co-Founder of Seated

On this episode of DTC Pod, Dae joins Blaine & Ramon to talk about the process of launching a successful fashion label. They talk about the inspiration for Sundae School, leaning into taboos & counterculture, the importance of aligning narrative and motifs with brand, the power of creative, what makes creative pop, getting picked up as a staple by Hypebeast, featuring in New York Fashion Week, building challenges to grow community, building campaigns that have done 100M+ views, cross selling across categories, launching DTC channels after going wholesale, and much more. 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----- 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.Recharge- Visit https://rechargepayments.com/dtcpod to see how over 15,000 commerce brands power their subscriptionsPeel Insights- Visit https://peelinsights.com/dtcpod to uncover actionable data insights to drive your brand's growth Have any questions about the show or topics you'd like us to explore further?Shoot us a DM; we'd love to hear from you. Want the weekly TL;DR of tips delivered to your mailbox?Check out our newsletter hereFollow us for content, clips, giveaways, & updates!DTCPod InstagramDTCPod TwitterDTCPod TikTokDae Lim - Founder & Creative Director of Sundae SchoolRamon Berrios - CEO of Trend.ioBlaine Bolus - Co-Founder of Seated

On this episode of DTC Pod, Ben joins Blaine to give an overview of how to generate cash as a DTC brand. They talk about everything from first financial decisions as a founder, to inventory management, financing options, how to think about equity vs. debt financing options, raising a round, speeding up cash conversion, raising the right amount of capital for your business, going omni-channel, tools like revolvers, asset backed loans, factoring, what the macro environment means for DTC businesses, and more. 7:00 Speed This Metric UP!!The cash conversion cycle is literally you buy, inventory, you pay for your suppliers, you put money out, and then there's this period of time when it comes into you, and then you sell it. And then when you sell it, that's the end of the cash conversion cycle. And oftentimes people don't think through that well enough. And the problem is, you have ever increasing money going out before you can generate it yourself.9:50 - The Overlooked SECRET to AMAZON's SuccessWell, the all time hero of this is Amazon, right? Which was able to pull off a negative cash conversion cycle. And so what that means is that they were getting paid in advance of having to buy the inventory. And so when you think about, Amazon, I'm old enough to kind of remember when they sold books, that's all they sold. But, that was like, why they could drive the prices down so low. Because, in effect, they had this cash flywheel and they didn't have to worry about it.34:30 - MATCHING (finance not fashion)The key is matching. That's the thing that's often overlooked. Everybody wants to jump into interest rates and the cost of capital, but you really want to focus on the matching. So what matching means is like, the use of the capital that you're borrowing matches your ability to I said this wrong. The term in which you have to repay it matches your ability to use it. So the way to think about this is like, if you were to go get a bank term loan, and it's like a three year loan, right? You close it and then the next day they wire you that million dollars, and guess what? You start paying interest on it and sitting on your balance sheet.45:30 - Turn Your PO's into $$$And because it's Walmart credit, they're like, oh, well, it could be, like, $0.95 on the dollar or some really high rate on it, because they're basically just taking Walmart credit risk at that point. So factoring can be a terrific way, as you build your, omnichannel business, to find that growth, because everybody faces that problem, right? I got an order from Target. We're going to kill it. And it's like, Holy shit, I got to come up with, like, $2 million of inventory. Now what do I do? ---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----- 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.Recharge- Visit https://rechargepayments.com/dtcpod to see how over 15,000 commerce brands power their subscriptionsPeel Insights- Visit https://peelinsights.com/dtcpod to uncover actionable data insights to drive your brand's growth Have any questions about the show or topics you'd like us to explore further?Shoot us a DM; we'd love to hear from you. Want the weekly TL;DR of tips delivered to your mailbox?Check out our newsletter hereFollow us for content, clips, giveaways, & updates!DTCPod InstagramDTCPod TwitterDTCPod TikTokBen Tregoe - CEO and Co-Founder of Bainbridge GrowthRamon Berrios - CEO of Trend.ioBlaine Bolus - Co-Founder of Seated

Adii Pienaar is the Founder & CEO of Cogsy, the operations & inventory optimization platform for e-commerce. Prior to starting Cogsy, he was the Co-founder & CEO of WooCommerce - the e-commerce solution for WordPress, and CM Commerce, both of which resulted in multi-million dollar exits.On this episode of DTC Pod, Adii joins Blaine & Ramon to chat about getting your inventory and operations right from the get go, brands going multi-channel, optimizing across all your sales channels, the importance of data, how to match inventory to demand, automating manual processes away from spreadsheets, building the modern day ERP with ops in mind, major brands winning on Cogsy, the evolution of e-commerce tech, how WooCommerce took off during the WordPress era, founder experience from building several successful companies, thoughts about life, fatherhood, and fulfillment as an entrepreneur. 5:30 - Simple Solution = Big BusinessAnd they kept asking us, hey guys, how do I add a shopping cart to this? And at the time, it just wasn't, there were other plugins for WordPress available, but none of them could essentially meet our very high standards for what we would want to do on the design side of things. So we effectively kind of went, I think we went through three different projects to try and build this ourselves. outsource it multiple configurations before we ultimately, launched WooCommerce. 6:00 - On When Woo Took Off!So the context there is that we were already doing multiple millions in revenue by, the time WooCommerce launched. We were a significant business. I think we were about 15, 16, 17 people on the team at the time. And then WooCommerce became 90% of our revenue within a single year thereafter. So that's a longwinded answer, I hope what everyone hears here is oftentimes the idea or the project or the business that's really successful is not something that was perfectly planned to the end degree from the start. 14:00 - On Why Cogsy, Why Now?Anything from inventory to logistics, to kind of your accounting rate of things, like anything your back office wasn't as sexy. All the money went into email and SMS marketing and marketing attribution, et cetera. So I figured that ecommerce, I'm bullish on ecommerce, and just broadly digital commerce. So what's opportunity there and I figured this was blue ocean. 21:30 - On Over/Understocking As A Business KillerWe help you understand, hey, if shopify is your main warehouse attached to shopify, this is the cadence at which you need to replenish to Amazon to not sell out. The thesis there is that you are to optimally sell. You need to ensure that you've got inventory on both those locations. And again, you can't just like, no one has all the capital to make sure that you just stock millions of units in every single location. That's not it, right? So we try and help you figure out that optimal inventory level for every location already. 26:00 - On Surprising Retail TrendsOne of the most interesting learnings there, Blaine, is that, we're definitely seeing your brands trying to sell in multiple channels much sooner, including retail, right? That's probably one of the biggest surprises beyond that fragmented tech stack, I always thought you would need multiple millions of dollars to even think about selling into, even nationwide chains retail, not just independent retailers. So that's something happening sooner. 45:00 - On *LIFE* ProfitabilityBut the idea was, how can I structure my life so that it creates energy, it creates things like that I can reinvest into other things. So, the way I now talk about that is I think about a, life portfolio in the same way that you think about a stock portfolio, and in the same way that you balance investments in different stocks to get to whatever outcome you want, that's what you should be doing for life. For me, for example, my life portfolio definitely includes my work, but it also includes my family. It includes, my thirst for learning, which is kind of a soft skill. If I'm not learning enough, within any time period, I know I'm not happy. Right. it includes exercising. I know if I don't exercise mostly every day, like, I'm probably going to be grumpy. Right. it includes being able to kind of geek out about wine every now and again. 46:00 - On LifeThere's a quote from Henry Thoreau that says, the cost of anything we do in life is just life itself. And I think that's often what we kind of neglect when we think about our daily lives. And we maybe don't go through it with some kind of element of mindfulness, but anything we do in life has a cost, even if it's just an opportunity cost. ---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----- 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.Recharge- Visit https://rechargepayments.com/dtcpod to see how over 15,000 commerce brands power their subscriptionsPeel Insights- Visit https://peelinsights.com/dtcpod to uncover actionable data insights to drive your brand's growth Have any questions about the show or topics you'd like us to explore further?Shoot us a DM; we'd love to hear from you. Want the weekly TL;DR of tips delivered to your mailbox?Check out our newsletter hereFollow us for content, clips, giveaways, & updates!DTCPod InstagramDTCPod TwitterDTCPod TikTokAdii Pienaar - Founder & CEO of CogsyRamon Berrios - CEO of Trend.ioBlaine Bolus - Co-Founder of Seated

On this episode of DTC Pod, Dov joins Blaine & Ramon to talk about the early days at Yotpo, the feature that built Yotpo's growth flywheel, inspiration for Tolstoy, the power of video in conversion, the video infrastructure that needed to be served, the success of founder videos for DTC brands, building out video into web, sms, email, and multi-platform customer journeys, the analytics component for iteration, successful brand adoption, why not all video is created equal, and more.Want to try it for free? Check out how brands are converting more with Tolstoy here 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.Recharge- Visit https://rechargepayments.com/dtcpod to see how over 15,000 commerce brands power their subscriptionsPeel Insights- Visit https://peelinsights.com/dtcpod to uncover actionable data insights to drive your brand's growth Have any questions about the show or topics you'd like us to explore further?Shoot us a DM; we'd love to hear from you. Want the weekly TL;DR of tips delivered to your mailbox?Check out our newsletter hereFollow us for content, clips, giveaways, & updates!DTCPod InstagramDTCPod TwitterDTCPod TikTokDov Kaufmann - Co-founder & CEO of TolstoyRamon Berrios - CEO of Trend.ioBlaine Bolus - Co-Founder of Seated

On this episode of DTC Pod, Chelsea joins Blaine & Ramon for a crash course on growth. They talk about setting up your growth engine, working from a source of truth, picking the right channels for your brand, how to think about metrics, google ads & shopping, important updates coming to google analytics (GA4), keeping acquisition & retention in lock step, ad performance across channels, podcast advertising, generating content for organic growth & ad platforms, and more.Wanna try out Ettitude sheets?Use code: 'DTCPOD' for 15% your first order of $150+, now until end of the yearThis 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.Recharge- Visit https://rechargepayments.com/dtcpod to see how over 15,000 commerce brands power their subscriptionsPeel Insights- Visit https://peelinsights.com/dtcpod to uncover actionable data insights to drive your brand's growth Have any questions about the show or topics you'd like us to explore further?Shoot us a DM; we'd love to hear from you. Want the weekly TL;DR of tips delivered to your mailbox?Check out our newsletter hereFollow us for content, clips, giveaways, & updates!DTCPod InstagramDTCPod TwitterDTCPod TikTokChelsea Schulz - Director of Acquisition & Growth for EttitudeRamon Berrios - CEO of Trend.ioBlaine Bolus - Co-Founder of Seated