Ecommerce Conversations

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...

Leave it to a customer to speak truth to an entrepreneur. That's what happened when Lelac Almagor, a Washington, D.C. school teacher, purchased an electric kid-hauler cargo bike from Bunch Bikes, a Texas-based direct-to-consumer manufacturer and seller. Supply-chain disruptions during the pandemic almost shut down Bunch Bikes. Then the founder, Aaron Powell, met Almagor at a bike event. &quot...

Patrick Campbell founded ProfitWell, an advisory platform for SaaS companies, in 2012 after stints at the U.S. Department of Defense and Google. He sold the business last year for $200 million. ProfitWell had no outside investors. Campbell paid himself a $74,000 annual salary. He had $20,000 in the bank when the deal closed. How does a founder, or anyone, adjust to $200 million from $20,000? Campb...

Harry Joiner launched his ecommerce recruiting firm in 2005. He's witnessed many market fluctuations since. Early 2008 was bad, he says. No companies were hiring. The onset of Covid was equally bad.  He calls the state of ecommerce jobs in 2023 "a zoo" with many more candidates than positions and likely permanent structural changes in the overall hiring market. Here's his persp...

Ecommerce Conversations host Eric Bandholz is the founder of Beardbrand, a leading direct-to-consumer seller of men's grooming products. 2023 has been challenging for the business — "a perfect storm of calamities" per Eric. This episode is admirably transparent with Eric sharing his view of good and bad decisions, supply chain hurdles, marketing missteps, and much more. It's a...

Elizabeth Mercer had her first child four years after launching Sleekform, an online seller of ergonomic office furniture. Returning to work after childbirth was a challenge.  "I thought I could just come back and be off to the races," she said. "I knew my body would take time to recover, but I did not expect the mental taxation of childbirth." She persevered. In this episode,...

Steve Chou is a merchant, blogger, podcaster, and trainer. He's now a book author with the release in May of "The Family First Entrepreneur," his HarperCollins title on business, freedom, and priorities. This is Chou's third appearance on the podcast. In 2020 he discussed Bumblebee Linens, his osCommerce store. In 2022 he described his preference for frugal living despite havin...

Brad Moss is a former Amazon product manager turned video game developer. He's now chief Amazon officer at Brandless, a direct-to-consumer seller of home, health, and beauty goods and an active acquirer of other companies. Brandless launched in 2017 and famously flamed out in early 2020 after raising close to $300 million in funding. A private equity firm purchased the assets, regrouped, and...

Athena Severi co-founded Titan Network, an Amazon-seller community, in 2019 with Dan Ashburn, a U.K.-based merchant. Before that, the pair launched China Magic for product sourcing. Titan Network hosts in-person events and offers workshops, mentoring, and collaboration.  In this conversation, Severi discusses Titan, selling on Amazon, the benefits of community, and more. For an edited and condense...

I recently joined a group of ecommerce owners on a hiking trip in Utah. It was 15 of us more or less, sharing our entrepreneurial journeys amid stunning scenery.  Late one night, four of us gathered around a table for this episode — three former guests of the podcast and me.  Mark Taylor is the founder of Warehouse Republic, a 3PL. Mike Tecku started Momentum, a nutritional supplements brand, afte...

Brandon Chicotsky is a professor of marketing at Texas Christian University. He states that his students have endured years of standardized, grade-level tests and are focused on the right answer or the best GPA.  But Chicotsky realizes businesses often face decisions with no right answer. And that has impacted his method of teaching. "I don't offer exams in my class," he said. &quot...

Josh Paulson acquired his grandfather's pet accessories company in 2015 when it was losing $25,000 per month. Three months later it broke even. The company, Quality Cage, manufactures products for pet owners and veterinarians. When Paulson arrived, the company had 2,000 SKUs across multiple pet verticals. Focusing on chinchillas provided the long-term turnaround. "We niched down into onl...