Brilliant Commerce

When a premium olive oil brand discovers ChatGPT is driving thousands of dollars in monthly revenue with zero paid spend, it signals a fundamental shift in how consumer education creates both immediate sales and long-term category growth. Samuel Davel reveals how Kosterina's military-disciplined approach to growth measurement exposed agency manipulation while building a repeatable framework for om...

In this episode of Brilliant Commerce, I sit down with Jason Bertrand , VP of E-commerce at Purple , to unpack lessons from his journey scaling D2C operations from Under Armour's early $20M online business to Purple's $450M empire. Jason shares refreshingly honest takes on why chasing complex tech can derail growth, how to build premium positioning in discount-heavy categories, and his team's spec...

In this episode of Brilliant Commerce, Tina Gu , CFO & Head of Digital Growth at Sarah Creal Beauty , breaks down the strategic decisions behind building a beauty brand exclusively for women over 40. With M&A experience from Estee Lauder's major acquisition period (Le Labo, Frederic Malle, Glam Glow) and product marketing leadership at Meta, Tina discusses with Bryan why demographic focus...

Ben Grynol , Head of Growth at Levels , offers a counterintuitive approach to commerce: building an entire health category through education rather than conversion-focused marketing. In this episode of Brilliant Commerce, Ben walks Bryan through how Levels achieved remarkably low customer acquisition costs ($50-80) for a high-consideration, $400 health device by rejecting traditional performance m...

In an industry obsessed with paid media, GR0 co-founders Jon Zacharias , President, and Kevin Miller , CEO, identified a massive blind spot: iconic brands were spending millions on Meta ads without capturing the downstream organic searches they generated. As Jon points out, Theragun was spending $5 million in a month for half a million people to google “Is Theragun legit” or “percussive massage gu...

When your business model relies on cameras inside people's homes, trust isn't optional — it's everything. In this episode of Brilliant Commerce, Bryan speaks with Logan Dunn , Head of E-commerce at Wyze , about how the smart home disruptor is evolving beyond their initial "too good to be true" pricing strategy. After slashing camera prices from $200 to $20 and sparking a price war, Wyze now focuse...

Forget the idea that direct-to-consumer is dead — it's just getting started. In this debut episode of Brilliant Commerce, Bryan Mahoney , Co-founder & CEO of Chord Commerce , explores how Born Primitive transformed from a garage startup making padded "snatch shorts" into an iconic fitness brand generating $11 million in veteran medical debt relief through purpose-driven marketing.    Claire St...

The commerce landscape has fundamentally shifted from best-of-breed components to consolidated data platforms — evidenced by brands increasingly requesting systems that eliminate conflicting dashboards rather than adding more specialized tools. In this episode of Brilliant Commerce, Bryan explores how venture capital firm M13 evolved from backing iconic consumer brands like Bonobos, Daily Harvest,...

Welcome to Brilliant Commerce where we get real operators behind iconic brands around a table to discuss what actually makes these brands tick. As our host (and Founder/CEO) Bryan Mahoney puts it: "It's not magic. It's hard work." In this second episode, Bryan sits down with Ali Weiss (former CMO of Glossier) to explore the evolution of direct-to-consumer marketing from the early days of social me...

Welcome to Brilliant Commerce where we get real operators behind iconic brands around a table to discuss what actually makes these brands tick. As our host (and Founder/CEO) Bryan Mahoney puts it: "It's not magic. It's hard work." In this first episode, Bryan sits down with JP Beegley (Senior Manager of MarTech at Sonos) and Josh Maynard (Technology Leader at Ruggable) to discuss how they're evolv...