Minds of Ecommerce

Ashvin Melwani is the co-founder and CMO of supplement company Obvi. Like most DTC brands, the recent changes with Facebook ads have hit them hard, but they managed to emerge from those challenges with quite a bit of success, mostly by focusing on A/B testing and landing pages. In this episode, we discuss how Obvi reduced their Cost Per Acquisition (CPA) by 57% through landing pages and on-site te...

Ben Sehl is the Senior Product Lead of Hydrogen, Shopify's new framework for building next-generation custom storefronts; as well as the Co-founder of Kotn, a sustainable lifestyle brand; and Margin, a new men's grooming brand. In this episode, Ben shares how his company Kotn is using Brick and Mortar stores as a growth strategy. He shares the do's and don'ts, how to calculate ROI on physical stor...

Ben Smith is the founder of Disco, a DTC skincare brand for men. They've grown significantly over the past years, and Ben credits much of this growth to customer research. By carefully listening to their customers, Disco has been able to use those insights to improve their performance marketing, their website, and overall marketing strategy. In this episode, Ben shares how they do customer researc...

Chris Meade is the co-founder and CMO of CROSSNET, the world's first four-way volleyball game. The brand has had solid growth over the years, and they've also worked really to deploy their capital in the most efficient ways possible as they scale. One way they're doing that is by primarily hiring freelancers instead of full-time employees. How can any DTC brand replicate the success they've had wi...

Jason Wong is the Founder of Wonghaus Ventures and Doe Lashes, a DTC brand that he managed to scale to millions in just one year. He credits a lot of that growth to their referral program, and that's exactly what we'll talk about in this super actionable episode. Get ready to learn why he thinks most referral programs are a waste, what most brands are doing wrong, and what they've done differently...

Josh Snow, is the founder and CEO of $100M+ DTC oral care brand, Snow.   In this episode, we talk about the best ways for ecommerce brands to use SMS to grow their customer base, extend LTV, and scale profitably. Josh shares how they're doing it at Snow, and his top advice for brands looking to get serious with SMS. You don't want to miss this one.

Ricky Joshi is co-founder of Saatva, one of the first and biggest direct-to-consumer mattress brands to emerge. In an industry where competition is tight, they've managed to grow exponentially over the years, now generating over $250M in annual revenue. In this episode, we talk about how to differentiate in a crowded industry and how to shape your brand's messaging to be able to compete against ot...

Dan Demsky is co-founder of DTC apparel brand Unbound Merino. They've successfully used crowdfunding to get the brand started, and still use it to this day as a growth strategy. In this episode we talk about storytelling in marketing, dive deep into Dan's strategy for launching through crowdfunding, some actionable tricks for a successful campaign, and how million-dollar brands can still use crowd...

Wilson Hung is director of growth at Kettle and Fire, the fastest growing bone broth brand. He was employee #2 at the company, and in only 2 years grew revenues from 5 to 8 figures.  In this episode we talk about when's the right time for a DTC Food & Beverage company to start selling in physical retail stores, Wilson's top tips and tricks for a successful product launch in Whole Foods and other g...

Andreas Palm, is the co-founder of CDLP, a DTC premium men's underwear brand who's been featured in major publications such as Vogue and GQ, and got into Mr Porter, SSENSE, Barney's and Selfridges right from the start! In this episode, the first of the podcast's 2nd season - Andreas explains why they chose to get into department stores early, HOW they did it, and how they've built a brand that's e...

Andrew Youderian built and sold numerous eCommerce stores. He now runs eCommerceFuel, a highly curated community of 7-figure+ eCommerce merchants. Over the years, he's seen what works, and what doesn't in terms of growth strategies, and what opportunities lie ahead for merchants in the coming year. He's also recently released his State of the Merchant Report, and he'll share with us the top insigh...

Brad Pedersen is a serial entrepreneur who's built companies with revenues ranging from 7 to 9 figures, and with up to 130 employees. Recently, he co-founded a direct-to-consumer ecommerce company called Pela Case, which has been growing 4000% since its inception 2 years ago. They've also ranked #20, amongst the Growth 500 in Canada. Brad is an all-star at hiring and operations, and in this episod...

Eric Bandholz, is the founder of Beardbrand, a men's grooming ecommerce company that achieved 1.3 million YouTube subscribers so far, and credits most of it's 7-figure growth to their content strategy. In this episode, Eric shares their content marketing strategy, and more specifically, their YouTube strategy, and how it has evolved over the years. He explains how they find topics for their conten...

Tyler "Sully" Sullivan, is the founder of BombTech Golf, an ecommerce company selling Golf equipment, and he also runs eCom Growers, an email marketing agency. In this episode, Sully shares how he built BombTech Golf to over $7M in annual ecommerce sales, with only 2 employees, through highly engaging marketing campaigns. He dives deep into how he does email marketing to build relationships with h...

Adam Trouncer is the CEO of Athletic Greens, an 8-figure, direct-to-consumer, subscription-focused, ecommerce brand that sells a daily supplement of the same name. In this episode, Adam shares how they've doubled the business by focusing on creating a better brand and product experience for customers, how to calculate the ROI of a better customer experience, strategies to communicate to your diffe...

Abby Walker is the founder & CEO of Vivian Lou, Goldie Lou Footwear and TAOG. Not only does she run a 7 figure business, but even with 2 kids and 3 pets, she runs her companies with no employees. In this episode, Abby shares how she manages agencies, make decisions and builds her companies without employees.

Jeff Cayley is the founder & CEO of Worldwide Cyclery, an 8-figure ecommerce site in the bike industry, with 3 retail locations. In this episode, Jeff shares how he created a customer service strategy that is the backbone of their growth to nearly 15 million a year in sales. He also shares how they go above and beyond for customers, to keep them loyal to the brand while creating a word-of-mouth ma...

Jack Haldrup is the founder & CEO of Dr. Squatch, an ecommerce company who's currently one of the largest sellers of men's soap online.  In this episode, Jack will share how he grew Dr. Squatch to over 100,000 orders per year, how they created a viral video that achieved over 40+ million views, and how they created a brand that customers relate to so much they keep coming back, and convert at high...

Phil Kyprianou is the founder of an ecommerce brand called GothRider. In this episode, he shares how he's been using quizzes as a traffic acquisition and conversion strategy that has been adding millions of dollars to his company's bottom-line while lowering his costs of customer acquisition and achieving super-profitable ad campaigns.

Gareth Everard co-founded and led multiple ecommerce brands such as Rockwell Razors, Mr. Gladstone Solid Cologne, and most recently Keyto, the world's first ketogenic diet breathalyzer. He also raised over $2M through Kickstarter and Indiegogo campaigns, and in this episode, he will share how he calculates and utilizes the lifetime value of his customers to make paid ads ultra-profitable and a key...

Nik Sharma was Director of DTC at Hint water, the fastest-growing non-alcoholic beverage brand. Within 1 year of Nik joining, Hint was named one of 'IAB's 250 Direct Brands To Watch for 2018', an award given to the fastest-growing DTC brands. Nik also led DTC ecommerce at VaynerMedia, and worked with brands to build audiences, such as Complex Media, Bustle Media Group, Refinery29, and others. In t...

Ahmed Zedan, co-founder of an ecommerce company called Haute Hijab, shares how they managed to scale fast using data to make better web design decisions, how they use customer insights to drive their A/B testing program, and how they've built a culture of experimentation within the company.

Audrey Castonguay, founder and CEO of Wholesome Culture, has grown her ecommerce company to over 200,000 customers and inspired an online community of over 850,000 followers - and counting - in just 2 years. In this episode, she shares how she tests new products, double sales with existing ones, and uses her "rule of 1" to keep growing past a million dollar in sales per month.

Cathryn Lavery is co-founder and CEO of BestSelf Co. Along with her co-founder Allan Brouwer, they took the ecommerce company from zero to 8-figures in less than two years. In this episode, Cathryn shares how they've utilized user-generated content on their product pages and marketing campaigns to disarm customer objections and increase website conversion rates, used challenges to drive engagement...

Gary Nealon scaled an ecommerce business to $40+ million/year in one of the toughest niches possible, and successfully exited it over a year ago. In this episode, we talk about how he used strategic social media assets as a key traffic acquisition strategy, how to achieve low customer acquisition costs for expensive products, and how to convert customers online when selling large and complicated p...