Ecommerce Conversations

Kat McKinnon's agency, CopySmiths, produces hundreds of blog posts per month for, mainly, ecommerce clients. She's developed a formula of sorts for getting those posts ranked in Google's search results. "You need between 1,000 and 1,500 words for a blog article," she told me. "Definitely not 600. Avoid 800, unless you're literally just answering a short question....

Dennis Hegstad believes the best way to recover abandoned carts is via text messages. But his messages are not automated or bot-driven. Hegstad's company, LiveRecover, sends one-to-one texts from a real person to folks who have left an ecommerce checkout process without completing a purchase."It's peer-to-peer texting," he told me. "We'll send messages from a real per...

Jordan West launched Little & Lively, a direct-to-consumer children's apparel company, with his wife, Carmen, six years ago in Canada. The business has grown to mid-seven-figures in revenue selling through its website, mostly. He's a master at creating demand for his products before they are available for purchase.

Despite reaching a whopping $100 million in revenue in just two years, Moiz Ali, the founder of Native deodorant, says the initial version was less than stellar. "We had a pretty mediocre product," Ali told me. "We understood that people were looking for [aluminum-free deodorant] and were willing to pay a higher price point for it. But our first attempt wasn't that good."

Jon Shanahan wants men to wear makeup. He's a co-founder of Stryx, a direct-to-consumer manufacturer of concealer and tinted moisturizer for males. The company launched in 2017. Shanahan joined shortly afterward, having created his male grooming channel on YouTube.

In 2007 Steve Chou's wife, Jennifer, wanted to spend more time with their growing family. So she quit her job. Fast forward to 2020, and Bumblebee Linens, the Chou's ecommerce company, is prospering. Steve is now an ecommerce celebrity, having launched the "My Wife Quit Her Job" blog, podcast, and YouTube channel.

The YouTube-to-ecommerce business model may be the best way to build an audience of customers. It worked for Lisa and Paul Jauregui. Lisa’s passion for cosmetics led to her YouTube channel, which educated consumers on the use and selection of those products. And that audience generated customers for BK Beauty, a direct-to-consumer cosmetics brand that the Jauregui’s launched in August 2019.

American businesspeople tend to view Europe as a single market with like-minded consumers and cultures. But Rasmus Cort knows better. His company, Sorry Mom, sells tattoo ointments and lotions throughout the continent. I asked him how a U.S.-based company can succeed there.

By 2017, nine years after launching his t-shirt company, Ugmonk, Jeff Sheldon had expanded into posters and workspace products. Gather, Ugmonk's modular desk organizer, had just completed a successful Kickstarter campaign with two shipping containers of custom manufactured organizers en route, to send to customers. "There's no way my parents were going to let two shipping containers...

Patrick Coddou launched Supply.co with his wife, Jennifer, back in 2015. The company, which sells razors and shaving supplies, is bootstrapped — no outside investors. He has little patience with the concept of lifetime customer value or paying more to acquire a customer than he can recoup on the first purchase. That approach has produced, in five years, a profitable, mid-seven-figure-revenue busin...

The progression for most direct-to-consumer entrepreneurs is to conceive a product idea and then locate a manufacturer to produce it. But Jaime Schmidt took the opposite approach when she launched Schmidt's natural deodorant in 2010. "I started in our kitchen with batch sizes of maybe 20 deodorants on the stove. The product turned into a business idea. So I kept the manufacturing in-hous...

Ecommerce entrepreneurs understand the need for multiple revenue channels.  Relying exclusively on, say, Facebook or Amazon or Google can lead to disruptions. And that's what happened to Allen Walton's company, SpyGuy, which relies on Google Ads for most of its traffic and revenue.

Having founded and sold multiple ecommerce companies, and having worked for numerous ecommerce startups, Web Smith believes broad economic trends determine entrepreneurial success as much as tactical execution. Successful entrepreneurs, Smith asserts, must be polymaths — possessing extensive knowledge across multiple subjects — to understand opportunities. And that's the purpose of 2PM, his l...

I asked Sam Parr, the founder of The Hustle, an email newsletter with curated business and technology news, how he has grown his list to over 1 million subscribers. “It’s fricking hard,” he said.

Entrepreneurs tend to become emotionally entwined with their businesses. "It's my baby," an entrepreneur might say when describing his company. But not Rohan Gilkes. "There's no emotion," he told me. "I have no babies. I build businesses for the cash flow."

Aaron Marino says he hates to read. He's bad at grammar and writing, he claims. But he's really good at making videos. "I had a fitness center that didn't work out," he told me. "I started making YouTube videos in 2008 with no idea that I could ever make a buck on that platform." Fast forward to 2020. Alpha M, Marino's YouTube portal, which focuses on male g...

What's the most competitive product on Amazon? Smartphone cases. What does Matt Atschul's company, Smartish, sell? Smartphone cases. And it thrives.

Kurt Elster's "The Unofficial Shopify Podcast" has been downloaded more than 1 million times. His agency, Ethercycle, helps Shopify merchants drive revenue and profit. And his newsletter at KurtElster.com contains tips and strategies to scale a Shopify store. "I eat, sleep, and breathe Shopify. I even have a Shopify license plate," Elster stated.

Taylor Holiday runs three successful ecommerce businesses and a thriving, ecommerce-focused ad agency. He's developed definitive views on acquiring customers and advertising performance, among other insights. We recently spoke with Holiday about his ventures, the state of ecommerce, and advertising dos and don'ts.

In March 2015 Ryan Michler owned a successful financial planning company. His clients were medical professionals. He earned a comfortable living. "I was making great money, but I felt like something was missing. I thought there were opportunities to help men. And that's when I started." What he started was Order of Man, a website, podcast, Facebook group, and paid membership to help...

Five years ago Greg Mercer was traveling the world, making a living by purchasing white-label goods from China and selling them on Amazon. "I realized that some of my products were doing better than others," he said. "I developed spreadsheets to estimate how well all products on Amazon were selling. I thought it would be cool if I could put this into a Chrome extension. I launched i...

Conventional ecommerce wisdom is that merchants should sell across multiple channels, manufacture or control their products, and scale. Don't tell that to Brian Goulet, president of The Goulet Pen Company, which sells high-end fountain pens and writing accessories. "I wanted to be a craftsman," Goulet told me. "That approach shapes our whole business. We have a craftsmanship me...

The global coronavirus pandemic is forcing many companies to adjust to a remote, home-based workforce. TaxJar, a sales-tax management platform, has been entirely remote since its founding seven years ago. All 160 employees work remotely, mainly from their homes. Mark Faggiano is founder and CEO of TaxJar. I recently spoke with him about managing a large, distant team.

In 2008 Robert Patton was coming off his second deployment in Iraq with the U.S. Army. “I was going to do 20 years in the Army,” he said, “But I'd already been on two deployments and was scheduled to go back for a third. I had a family. I didn’t want to spend half of my time in Iraq. So I had this idea.”That idea was a unique type of men's underwear. Fast forward to 2020 and his company,...

Ronnie Teja immigrated to Vancouver, Canada in 2008. He was 22. Fast-forward to 2020 and he owns and operates a thriving ecommerce company that sells men's watches and related accessories across 15 websites, including Branzio.com. His team consists of 30 employees in a dozen countries. We spoke with him about launching his company, acquiring websites, and the challenges of managing it remotel...