DTC POD: How The Best Brands Are Built

On this episode of DTC Pod, Haris joins Blaine & Ramon to talk about how he built Miracle Brand into a profitable 8 figure brand. They discuss best practices in performance marketing, breaking through the 5M revenue ceiling, the dos/don'ts of working with agencies, incentives of ad networks, a crash course in affiliate networks, why affiliate & retail networks are so effective at scale, how to build with a big exit in mind, how to capitalize (and not capitalize) your business, and much more. 20:102 to 3 years ago, it was probably 80% Facebook. these days it's a third because, Facebook for us and everyone in the world was definitely easier three years ago. And I don't mean that just because of iOS 14 and everything going on in the world, just in general, like traffic networks are always going to get more expensive as time passes. CPMs are always gonna rise. Inventory is decreasing and demand is increasing. So at the end of the day, the advertiser and the ad inventory available is always gonna get more expensive year over year.23:00Most CPG strategics, the reason they actually buy brands that are already scaling in brick and mortar retail is because that's showing them data at scale. That's proving that you can reach mass market America, that you can outpace the legacy players on the shelves. And that you've already proven a level of turnover at scale at the, and at the most important retailers in the country. So that's why most of the big exits you've seen a hundred, 300, 500 million plus are brands that have substantial retail distribution.26:30I can look at a brand and a product and understand whether or not Walmart target CVS into those guys will pick it up. A lot of times, it's it's price point, it's category, it's audience. like, look, you can go to Walmart and go on, a shelf of any category you wanna look at and you can look at their maximum price point. Walmart's not putting a $5 drink in their stores. They're not putting $300 comforters in their stores55:00Why Too Much $$ Can Be A DisasterI think one of the biggest challenges we face in this space is everybody raises too much money. and I don't mean that in a traditional tech way of like, oh, you've burned a hundred million. I just mean that more from like, look a lot of really, really great brands can be amazing 50 to a hundred million exits. but they've raised capital to the point where only a 250 million exit is of success. and you've kind of shot yourself in the foot because look D to C and CPG is not a category with a lot of billion dollar outcomes. It's also not a category with a lot of 500 million outcomes. It's a lot of hundred million outcomes. And if you've raised a 25 million series B, you're gonna have a really tough time getting your board to approve that $75 million acquisition offer. 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. 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 TikTokHaris Memon - Founder of Nameless Ventures & Miracle BrandRamon Berrios - CEO of Trend.ioBlaine Bolus - COO of OmniPanel

On this episode of the pod, Lauren joins Blaine and Ramon to talk about her experience running marketing & affiliate at Ritual, how her performance-minded approach to marketing led her to Dreamday, lessons from the best-in-class brands, the affiliate marketing landscape, why affiliate is such an important channel, the tie between affiliate and PR, how to be competitive when securing press, the editorial landscape, inspiration for the quality edit, how to scale a content team, and much more. 16:00 What Is Performance PR? The Future. 🤩I think what we aim to do as an agency is kind of hit the four KPIs around, we're going to get you the most, press pieces that we can per month. We're going to get you the highest quality press pieces that we can per month. We're going to drive increased traffic through the affiliate channel, and we're going to drive increase revenue through the affiliate channels month over month.20:00 How The Best Brands Keep It FreshWe specifically seek out brands that are, excellent at marketing and excellent at launching new campaigns, launching new collaborations, working with new celebrities or influencers, launching new products. And like, do you have something new for us to talk to on a fairly regular cadence? I would say like at least twice a year at a very bare minimum. Four times a year better, but we have a lot of clients that are like launching something new or doing a new collaboration every couple of weeks. And those are like our highest volume press clients.31:20 The Next Big Marketing Trend 👀Affiliate marketing is still like one of the most efficient channels. I think we had a client last year that they had analyzed like Facebook versus affiliate marketing, and affiliate as a channel was like 15 times more efficient and had 15 times higher ROAS, than paid social. So, I think it is an amazing channel. 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. 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 TikTokLauren Kleinman - Founder of Dreamday Ramon Berrios - CEO of Trend.ioBlaine Bolus - COO of OmniPanel

On this episode of DTC Pod, Jasmine joins Blaine to discuss the landscape of PR for consumer brands. They cover topics like incentive structure for editors, how the landscape of editorial has matured over the last decade, where things are headed, how to nail your pitch, how to build relationships with editors, the role of PR in building consumer trust, how positive PR impacts purchase behavior and brand recognition, lessons as a founder, community building, and the future of consumer, community, & commerce.Be sure to check out Female Founders World for more, as well as their recently launched platform Kizmet - a platform for consumer brand collaborations.12:16Want More Sales? Start Here 👇🏼Maybe you did discover it on TikTok, but then you Google it and you want to establish that there's some credibility there and you see that they were mentioned in a Roundup of the best new beauty products. And so you're like, okay, back my mind. Interesting. And then you see it on your friend's Instagram story a few days later, and then maybe that's where you click through to buy. So I do think that even though the process has changed, you can't eliminate how important that press coverage is.13:00The PR Hack For Partnerships 🗞️getting those like really big mastheads in the early days is really integral for lining up bigger brand partnerships down the track. And then also with retailers. So we know that buyers category managers, if you're looking for an omni-channel approach, like they are reading those roundups to try and discover new brands, they listening as well to podcasts like this one and like our podcast to discover new brands. And you really need to have that coverage if you want to be able to get those kinds of like industry ins as well.16:28Save This For Your Next PR Pitch 💰As an editor, I'm still getting pictures because now I have my own media platform. I'm receiving hundreds of pitches every day, like hundreds of emails coming through the one I'll scan through. If I ever received an email that isn't personalized, doesn't have my name, doesn't have either a direct reference to something I've written, or doesn't have a direct reference to a content tentpole that I'm revisiting in my content all the time, I usually disregard it. The emails that I'm always going to read are from a someone that I know. And that's why having a publicist with a really great relationships with press is so important. 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. 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 TikTokJasmine Garnsworthy -  Founder of Female Founders WorldRamon Berrios - CEO of Trend.ioBlaine Bolus - COO of OmniPanel

On this episode of DTC Pod, Ronak joins Blaine & Ramon to talk about evolving dynamics of the creator economy, how creator brands are typically launched, how Pietra solves for sourcing, fulfillment, and e-commerce, productizing a service for the most time-constrained customers, how their marketplace got started, how they raised their seed and series A from top VCs, brands that have launched on Pietra, what scale can look like in this niche, and much more.6:10The Fastest Way To Drop Your Own Line 🛍️So you, as a business owner, went from having to master the supply chain and understand all these pointless things like warehousing and labor and importing and exporting and whatever. To, I have a website, I have a place to sell my product. I have access to the world's best factories. And now all I have to focus on is design and promotion. Everything else is taken care, taken care of for you, through the platform of PIETRA.9:50How To Outsource The Dirty Work 💸Like you didn't have to go spend six months building a data center. Cause in a couple of clicks, Amazon just set up your data center for you. Right. You don't have to go figure out a commercial lease because in a couple of clicks, we worked gave you office space. And that discrepancy, I think, just like in the tech sector allowed all of these amazing developers to like make apps and start companies like Uber being one of them. there needed to be some sort of huge push on the other side of the spectrum. And that's where we really saw an opportunity. I'm like, it shouldn't be that hard for someone who has a cool idea to start their own sneaker line. Like they shouldn't have to spend three years of their life trying to do this.17:40Send This To A Creator 💎Why do they need to care about labor and importing and warehousing and staffing and sourcing? Like they don't, they want to design candles. They want to show up in a warehouse and they want two day shipping everywhere in the US for a cheap price, but like everything else, take it off their plate, let them go on their vacations, let them be creative.36:51Avoid This Partnership At All Costs 😵‍💫Exactly. Even worse. That's like the worst case, right. Where a creator has no control over their company. And so they're like, because you know how to set up a factory, I guess. And like you have some homeys in Switzerland that knows how to make watches. Like you're taking 75% of my business. we take that and say, you can start your business for 39 bucks a month. 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. 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 TikTokRonak Trivedi - Founder & CEO of PietraRamon Berrios - CEO of Trend.ioBlaine Bolus - COO of OmniPanel

On this episode of DTC Pod, Steven joins Blaine to talk about building one of the most popular jewelry brands from the ground up starting in 2010, before applying those learnings to developing products for Elements of Balance in a CPG adjacent space. They discuss identifying brand mission and purpose, building visual identity, organic product growth, turning customer advocates into major league partnerships, product licensing and royalties, launching a CPG product in a competitive landscape, amazon vs. retail, scaling out teams, and much more.Want to try out Lokai or Elements?Use the Code "Podcast15" at check out for 15% off 25:30Save This Formula For SuccessIt starts with a product high quality product, great price point, something that everyone could afford. And then on the customer service side, being as incredible and supportive as we can be. Our goal is to make every single customer happy. So if you buy a Lokai and it breaks and you email us, we'll just send you another one, no questions asked. We try to really make every interaction we have with our customers as positive as possible.33:52The Secret To Building A $$$$$ CompanyWe've been talking about how it's a marathon and how long it takes to really build an incredible company. And you need to have a founder CEO at the helm that understands that and is able to see the long-term kind of plan that needs to be built and is in it for the long run as well and is not emotional when the tough decisions need to be made. Every business goes through highs and lows, and it's about not being stubborn, not putting your ego first, and doing what's best for the business in the long run. And I believe you can figure it out on the way and build a great company if you do those things.34:48The Best Advice You'll Ever Get 🤓I'm a huge believer in product, right? It doesn't matter how good your marketing and your sales are, your pitches, if the product isn't great customers won't keep coming back. 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. 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 TikTokSteven Izen - Founder of Lokai and Elements Ramon Berrios - CEO of Trend.ioBlaine Bolus - COO of OmniPanel

On this episode of DTC Pod, JT joins Blaine in the LA studio to talk about how brands can unlock massive growth by thinking like creators. They cover topics including building your tiktok strategy, the ins & outs of the tiktok and instagram algorithm, types of content that perform best, how to generate winning content, brands that have done tiktok organic the right way, finding inspiration for meaningful creative, the role of consistency in content performance, finding your brand voice across channels, how to build an organic audience, launching an SMS community, and much much more.Learn more about JT here:https://www.barnettx.com/JT's TikTok Masterclass for Brands:https://www.thetiktokmasterclass.com/ 9:32 Get Your Brand Voice Right On Every ChannelOh, a hundred percent that the companies right now are trying to get one person to speak Chinese English, German, French, all of them at the same time. And what I think they should do is go and find somebody that speaks that specific language that enjoys it, that is like native to that platform and bring them in for only that you'll go, you'll go deeper. It probably will be cost efficient when, because you can just hire them for just that on a project basis. and I think that you'll get way more out of it because the person that you're hiring now knows what they're doing and can go deep into that. 21:50 How Organic Algos Workthe way that it takes off the algorithm works is it is testing your content when you post it, it gets shown to a certain amount of people. I usually just call it. Let's just say it's shown to 10 people and it gets shown to 10 people. And it's testing to see out of those 10 people. Do they engage and interact with that? Th those the metrics that they're actually tracking or like, do they watch the whole thing? Did they share it? Do they favorite it? Do they like it? Do they comment on it? Those kinds of things. If they do, if a certain number of those people engage with it, it gets shown to a bigger set of people. And then that test because it recurs and recurs, so it happens, starts at 10, say a majority of them engage with it. Then it gets shown to a hundred, a majority of them that it goes to a thousand. So on and so forth to where it's on the main for you page, where it's like, what people consider viral. 22:40 Content & Advertising BasicsSo to get people, to actually engage with the content, you need to be doing something that is providing them value. Most people call it like educate, entertain or inspire, but like, you're trying to provide them with some sort of value or something that will get them emotionally engaged. When people talk about advertising, what they're really trying to get as a consumer to buy in with their emotions, because that's what you usually buy with. So what I think about in content is like, you need to be doing something that they will actually like want to watch and want to share with somebody or want to save to their phone and, or like favorite app.  23:15 How To Tell Your StoryAnd, and the thing that works the best that we see is some sort of storytelling. That means that within the content that needs to have some sort of challenge in some sort of resolution. If you look at like a narrative arc, like, you know, everybody that went to English and then in high school, you learn about these narrative arcs. I was a terrible student, but now I'm going back. I'm like, I actually feel like I remember that you're talking about, you know, you have an intro to video and then you have some sort of a rise to it that sets it up. And then there's a challenge. And then there's a resolution. And I think in every single company's story, if you were to just literally like timeline, like the origin, the company to where you are now, everybody has so many of those little challenges, but they don't talk about them because we come from an Instagram culture that is don't show the flaws, just show the wins, just show the wins.  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. 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 TikTokJT Barnett - Founder of BarnettXRamon Berrios - CEO of Trend.ioBlaine Bolus - COO of OmniPanel

Mark Samuel is the founder & CEO of IWON Organics, a plant-based food company that makes bold, flavor-infused snacks and cereal made from plant proteins like peas, beans and brown rice. IWON's healthy snacks can be found in over 5,000 stores nationwide, including Kroger's, Wegmans, Sprouts, Whole Foods, Vitamin Shoppe, Safeway, Ralphs, Brookshire’s, and online at iwonorganics.com, Amazon and Thrive Market. 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. 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 TikTokMark Samuel - IWON OrganicsRamon Berrios - CEO of Trend.ioBlaine Bolus - COO of OmniPanel

On this episode of DTC Pod, Oriel joins Blaine to discuss the role of creative direction in launching a new brand. They talk about brand formation and topics including coming up with a name, defining your brand's purpose, the power of copywriting, merchandise as a medium, language as a product, how to find your brand's voice, ways to minimize inventory costs, launching and testing new products quickly, the state of voice & podcasting, & much more.7:31Your Name Is EverythingI'm a big believer in naming an idea and the name being very important. And until you've got a name, you don't necessarily have an idea. That kind of came at a moment, it was kind of like a shower thought, that just popped into my head one day when I was thinking about athleisure. And I was like, well what's the opposite of athleisure? What do you wear when you're doing nothing but zoom calls? And “corpleisure” kind of brought that all together.10:26Starting A Business? Do This FirstFor me it really helps when you know your purpose. Right. I spend a lot of time in my day, whether I'm working on corpleisure or anything else, I'm thinking, okay, what is, what is the purpose of like this brand or this piece of communication? Um, and then what's the takeaway that I want people to take from it, you know?17:34Your Brand Starts Here.If I was just going to tell someone in a conversation about this product, how would I do it? And the chances are like, if you're going to tell a friend over drinks or something, or telling someone at a barbecue like that's kind of your natural voice. And probably somewhere within that is your brand. Because when you speak naturally, especially about your own brands and about your own product, that's when you talk with passion, right? And if you could potentially maybe record yourself doing that, you'd probably hear those words that you use when you're excited about telling someone about this new product that you've got, um, and that's kind of your voice and that could be your brand. 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. 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 TikTokOriel Davis-Lyons - Founder of CorpleisureRamon Berrios - CEO of Trend.ioBlaine Bolus - COO of OmniPanel

On this episode of DTC Pod, Sofia & Carolyn join Blaine & Ramon to talk about company building, product marketing, brand marketing, finding product market fit, guidelines for each funding round, syncing marketing & inventory, building a resilient supply chain, building community, & more.9:46Product Market Fit 🎯It was a 90 degree day in Prospect park in Brooklyn. And we literally had a hundred plus parents come to pick up food from essentially complete strangers with unmarked coolers and unmarked cups. And we always laugh that that's when we knew that we had found a white space.22:52Community = Real Growth 🚀I'll give you an anecdote but we started doing these tiny “supper clubs” we called them, these community events with 15 to 25 moms- and they started out in person. It was meant to be a regional event, but we're still seeing that those zip codes perform better than some other zip codes. They became virtual and now we're kind of rethinking that model, but I think this idea of how do you do community or organic acquisition at scale is really intriguing.33:42This Is How You Build Supply Chain 🔗We try to keep a healthy amount of cover for ourselves, just in case something were to go wrong, which kind of brings us back to building for security. It's not a matter of if, but when something will go wrong, because it will. So to have as many backup solutions in our back pocket that we can, whether it's a quick ingredients switch, or a supplier switch, we've got an emergency solution just in case anything goes wrong.39:10Forecasting Demand In 2022 📈Demand forecasting is definitely both art and science, but we use that subscription data and a lot of really detailed cohort analysis to identify which of these marketing moments is the most successful. And when we repeat it and make sure that we're planning for that appropriately. So we use both of those in conjunction to kind of build out our demand forecast models and then we plan production and inventory accordingly. But especially right now, and especially for early founders, you need to manage that with the cash that gets tied up in manufacturing inventory. So it's always a balance that you're trying to strike. 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. 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 TikTokSofia Laurell - Co-Fonder & Co-CEO of Tiny OrganicsCarolyn O'Hare Batyske - Co-Founder & President & COO of Tiny OrganicsRamon Berrios - CEO of Trend.ioBlaine Bolus - COO of OmniPanel

On this episode of DTC Pod, Brian joins Blaine & Ramon to talk about his career in digital commerce, media, and venture capital which has spanned 4 decades. Brian is a seasoned operator and investor, having led investments in companies including Everlane, Snif, Feastables, Caraway, Afterpay, Archive, Disco, & Tydo to name a few. This episode covers topics including the overlap of web3 and commerce, what makes businesses attractive to invest in, the evolution of digital media, learnings from the best brands, what the future of commerce looks like, and how brands can think about evolving loyalty and retention frameworks, social commerce, and more.Wanna Sound Smart? Save This 😉12:30So as many people have spoken about, Web1 was about read only, WEB2 two was about read-write where you can post on social networks, and WEB3 is all about ownership. And to me, ownership from a brand really is about super fans and loyalty, right? Like what can you do with your super fans?13:40Where Brands Should Focus in 2022Brands can't acquire customers efficiently through the paid channels like they used to in the past. Brands need to focus on increasing conversion rate, increasing average order, lowering abandonment, dealing with the traffic that they have now, like 97% of the people that come to your site, don't buy. There's like plenty of opportunities to do things there and I think Novel gives the tools to the brands to help enhance that.32:17The Real Reason Social-Commerce Hasn't Taken OffI don't think shopping is social by human nature. Like I think people pride themselves on them finding and discovering things at good prices at great brands. Like they want to be the person that is wearing it out there first, and then their friends ask them. It's not like you want to go shopping with your friend, and like find the same thing.. and then what are you going to do? Both wear the same dress? I just think inherently shopping, maybe isn't social.35:17THIS is how much to spend on MarketingSo one question we ask is how much money, or what percentage of revenue do you spend on paid marketing? And if that number's like 20 or 25% or greater, it's just not for us. We want a scaled DTC brand to be 12% or less. Okay. If you're spending more than on paid marketing, you have a drug habit, you are addicted to the high of spending money to make money. And it just won't last because your tolerance will just increase and you'll never be able to go to rehab and get off that drug. So spend the money on content creators and content studios, and build like own the house that your audience is  in, don't rent the house. 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. 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 TikTokBrian Sugar - Founder of Sugar Capital Ramon Berrios - CEO of Trend.ioBlaine Bolus - COO of OmniPanel