Ecommerce Conversations

Aaron Orendorff is a chaplain turned writer turned digital marketer. He was the first editor-in-chief at Shopify Plus and then vice president of marketing at Common Thread Collective, an ecommerce agency. He's now head of marketing for Recart, an SMS platform, but his passion is empowering colleagues and clients. "I find joy in bigging others up," he says. In this episode, he shares...

Mike Carroll, a weightlifting buddy of host Eric Bandholz, lost his job last fall. He had been an insurance salesman for 25 years and is now contemplating a new career. Eric asked him, "Have you thought about ecommerce?" He had not. Launching an ecommerce company intrigued him, but he was unsure where to start. Knowing many would-be entrepreneurs with similar concerns, Eric invited him o...

Hosting "Ecommerce Conversations" is a welcome respite from my day job of running Beardbrand, the direct-to-consumer company I co-founded in 2012. I periodically post updates on Beardbrand's performance, hoping the transparency helps other entrepreneurs.  This episode is my recap of 2023.  It was a terrible year for me and Beardbrand — the first year we were in the red. We've a...

Mike Beckham sees the benefits of competitive markets. Simple Modern, a company he co-founded in 2015, sells insulated drinkware, competing against Yeti and other large providers. He says markets are competitive because many consumers value those products. "Capturing a small percentage of a competitive market can make you insanely successful," he stated. Beckham shares his ecommerce jour...

Joe Anhalt is a New York-based copywriter turned designer turned all-around marketer. He consults with direct-to-consumer ecommerce companies on growth strategies, including branding. He emphasizes storytelling and conveying a brand’s point of view. “You can bring shoppers into your world,” he said. “Brand-building is like world-building.” In this episode, he addresses multiple growth tactics, inc...

David Perell helps folks improve their writing skills. His company offers an online course, YouTube author interviews, and a weekly newsletter. But his broader goal is supporting excellence. He stated, "It's worth doing exceptional work with whatever you do. The modern world is polluted with mediocrity." In this episode, Perell addresses writing and speaking and their impact on entr...

Postscript is an SMS marketing provider for Shopify brands. The company launched in 2018 and has since raised a whopping $106.2 million across four funding rounds, per Crunchbase. Alex Beller is Postscript's president and one of three co-founders. Postscript's marketing platform is SMS-only and Shopify-only. To Beller, that translates to "best in class" performance. In this con...

In 2016 David Gaylord was a Shopify employee looking for a side hustle. Then he came up with a funky idea: skincare lotions for hair removal along bikini lines. The business name was even funkier: Bushbalm. Fast forward to 2023, and Bushbalm is booming, selling lotions and trimmers directly to thousands of consumers and wholesale to Ulta Beauty and 3,000 waxing salons. It spends a whopping $200,00...

Merchants often default to China for outsourced manufacturing. Yet competitive suppliers exist worldwide. For Palermo House, a direct-to-consumer provider of luxury furniture, Argentina is a natural source. Marco Ferro is the company’s California-based founder with Argentina roots. He was born there, as were his parents, co-owners of the business. In this episode, Ferro addresses importing goods f...

In 2014 Eric Steckling launched Brio, a Michigan-based direct-to-consumer seller of beard trimmers. In 2022 the company acquired Ollie, a subscription-based provider of teeth whiteners. The brands are seemingly complementary. Both sell grooming products. But merging them was challenging. Having been combined post-acquisition, they now function separately. In our recent conversation, Steckling addr...

Mark Wagner believes the best payment chargeback recovery systems are automated and data-driven. He founded Disputifier, an Austin, Texas-based chargeback software company, on that premise in 2021. He told me, "We've developed an intuitive system over the years. It combines data from the transaction with our testing and identifies an appropriate response." In this episode, Wagner di...

Ryan Hunter Masters is a Colorado-based musician who loves to dance. In 2015 he launched Show Her Off to teach swing dancing online. The business sells video courses — streaming and DVD — to booming success. Hunter Masters first appeared on the podcast in 2019. In this second conversation, he addressed the origins of Show Her Off, customer acquisition channels, and his internal litmus test for sta...

The last time host Eric Bandholz discussed his company in an episode was in July. Things were close to their worst. He had furloughed his team for a month. But now the team is back to full-time. His strategy is focusing on Facebook as an acquisition channel. He switched the company's Facebook marketing approach from multi-phase testing to bid caps. He made the change at the beginning of Octob...

Adam Robinson is a former Lehman Brothers financier who in 2012 founded and later sold an email marketing company. Among the company's features was "identity resolution" — the ability to locate folks' email addresses.  That identity technology is the basis of Retention.com, which he launched in 2019. The firm can link anonymous website visitors to their email addresses. The web...

Paul Jauregui had much to celebrate when he first appeared on this podcast in 2020. BK Beauty, the cosmetics company he co-founded with his wife, Lisa, had reached $1 million in sales in its first year. He returned in early 2022 with more good news: The company had launched a thriving affiliate marketing program and bypassed the Facebook ad meltdown from iOS 14.5. He's back, having surpassed...

John Ruggiero is co-founder with his wife, Michelle, of Manly Bands, a Utah-based direct-to-consumer seller of men's rings. The company launched in 2016 after John couldn't find a suitable wedding band. This is Ruggiero's second appearance on the podcast. In April 2021, we discussed the company's founding, unique ring materials, and more.  Since then, Manly Bands has acquired i...

Consumers are discovering the medicinal benefits of cannabis plants. Three college grads in Wisconsin saw the opportunity in 2018 when they launched Batch, a direct-to-consumer seller and custom manufacturer of products from CBD, the non-impairing marijuana and hemp extract. Fast forward to 2023, and Milwaukee-based Batch produces CBD oils, gummies, and other products for itself and external brand...

In 2013 David Lindahl opened a sort-of public service Twitter account. Its purpose was to alert folks in his native Washington State when Mt. Rainier was visible, unobscured by clouds. He called the account Rainier Watch, as in keeping watch on that dominant landmark. Fast forward to 2023, and Rainier Watch is a community, a website, and a manufacturer of mountain-themed apparel. The business is a...

Jimmy Kim founded Sendlane, an email, SMS, and reviews platform, in 2013. He believes the key to selling SaaS software is humanizing it. And for Kim that's one-on-one engagement, often at in-person events. "I always set a goal in an event of shaking everyone's hand and saying hello. I'm not immediately after their business. I want them to think about me." In-person events...

Accessibility is important to host Eric Bandholz's company, Beardbrand. The business respects consumers with disabilities and tries to serve them. Still, it was recently sued for alleged violations of the Americans with Disabilities Act. Stunned, he turned to a fellow entrepreneur whose company has dealt with frivolous lawsuits. He first interviewed Joel Runyon for this podcast in May 2022 wh...

Andrew Faris is the former CEO of 4x400, an ecommerce aggregator. He left that job in 2021 and now consults with merchants and manages their advertising campaigns, mostly on Meta. I asked him for his keys to successful Meta ads, having spent nine years on that platform. "The best ad managers are writers," he told me. And "there's no reason a brand under $50 million in revenue n...

An entire business focused on pet frogs may be the ultimate long-tail venture. Josh Williard's company, JoshsFrogs.com, breeds and sells frogs and the products that support them. Founded in 2007, Josh's Frogs has scaled to 90 employees across two Michigan-based facilities. "We've been growing by leaps and bounds," he said, seemingly in frog-speak. Selling frogs, while uniq...

Ten years ago Rasmus Cort needed a vocation. He was in his 20s and living in Denmark, his home. That's when his stepfather introduced him to a tattoo artist. Fast forward to 2023, and Cort is co-owner of five tattoo shops — four in Denmark and one in Los Angeles — and a direct-to-consumer provider of tattoo skincare products. He's found his vocation. I first interviewed Cort in 2020 when...

In 2009 Rasmus Albrechtsen began offering men's hairstyling tutorials on YouTube. He called his channel "Slikhaar TV," as in "slick hair." The channel scaled to over 2 million subscribers. Then came YouTube's artificial intelligence-driven browse feature, showing viewers the videos that likely interest them. Suddenly, Albrechtsen's 2 million subscribers seemed le...

Chad Rubin is an ecommerce pioneer and serial entrepreneur. Profasee, an Amazon repricing tool, is his fourth company, having founded Crucial (a seller of vacuum and coffee filters), Prosper Show (an Amazon conference), and Skubana (an order management platform).  He's hired a lot of employees, in other words. He's also fired a lot — over 100, he says. His employee screening process now...