Our 2026 Ecommerce Audit: Wins, Mistakes, Lessons & What’s Next

21:09It's brand awareness. Like that's what every public company CEO talks about. What's their number one goal is to increase brand awareness. They're just, you just, you get such a lead if you're able to spend on brand awareness and then, and then maintain that position either through continually spending or just actually executing well on your business with good products, right? I think, I mean, Sean, I think it's brand awareness.

21:34Matt Bertulli:You heard it last week, guys. Like, Mike, I don't know if you picked this up at the event in Austin, but like all of the larger scale spenders, they're most concerned with CPM and CPMR. They're like, I'm just trying to get the most amount of high quality impressions. But they're talking about CPMR in their target audience, right? Not just generally, we want impressions, but they care. I think at some scale, it was like, it was just basically carpet bomb. Like, how do you just get every... Because a lot of the big... I mean, it's safe to say that the larger the brand, the more likely they are a mass market product, right?

22:11Matt Bertulli:And therefore, the CPMR thing is like, no, I just need to reach everybody with a mouth in the USA. That's kind of what I took away from it. So I think that that might be what Sean's getting at, is if you can just spend the money, Like if you have the business model allow you to do that, then it's a major mode, right? Because like other people can't.

22:32Sean Frank:Mike wanted to talk about it excluding the obvious customer benefit, but I do want to talk about the customer benefit. The more customers you have, the more word of mouth you have, the more products you have out in the world, right? It's like Mike probably sells 5 % of all bottles he's ever sold because somebody saw one of his bottles in the real world, right? So like there is, our businesses lack traditional network effects, but because they exist in the real world, there's some sort of network effect, right? It's like, you know, guys go to bars, they have their wallet on the table. Oh, that's a rich wallet.

23:04Sean Frank:I should buy that. Like that's helpful to my business. So the more customers you have, the more customers you're going to have. But also if you can set up your business to spend a 2X MER, you've just set a floor for the industry you're in at a 2X MER. It's like, how is someone going to take market share from you if they're not going to be able to have a 2X MER? And we're seeing that play out to the extreme where companies are trying to run it like a 1.4 MER, right? Because HIMSS loses$800 every time they acquire a customer, but you're going to take medicine forever. It's why insurance companies will lose so much on lead gen, right?

23:36Sean Frank:Or SaaS companies, our wonderful sponsors. It's kind of the reverse of the predatory pricing model. It's like one way that you can put pressure on your competitors is by making your price point so sharp. that it is hard for them to compete. But what you're saying is you can also invert that idea where you're just paying so much to acquire and you can run at such a low MER or ROAS that your competitors can't compete. And so you can kind of use your capital and you can kind of price people out of the market going the extreme other direction. The problem with that advice is it's very difficult to do and it's very rare business that can do it.

24:14I just want to like in the cookware space, there are, it's amazing. So many people have raised awareness, right? Spent hundreds of millions of dollars, but, um, most of them run at lower margins than us. And I, and I'm, and the health of those businesses are, is not great. You know, they're, they're not great. And they're, but there's, there's a strategy, like we're just going to spend, spend, spend. So, you know, the, you, you can run at a low MER at rich, right? but other businesses. So people do need to be really careful with this issue, with this, what we're talking about here.

24:48Sean Frank:Well, dude, it's hard because there's only one Uber. You know what I mean? If you're going to win a category, there's going to be a lot of dead bodies. And also, going back to Jason's point, you have to be able to do this and not lose money on acquisition, right? We were talking to a banker the other day and they were looking through our numbers and they were like, look, your guys' CACs are high, but you still generate profit per order. they're like they're like you guys are really good at this and it's like yeah because it's it's very it's very easy to scale revenue without scaling profit right but to be able to do both of things at the same time that is that is the magic and that's when it's unlocked can you scale revenue can you scale cac but then still generate a profit per order call me a nerd if you want but one of my

25:34Matt Bertulli:favorite things is when one of my existing software partners in this case north beam adds something that I would have had to have normally paid more and separately for. Incrementality was broken and Northbeam decided to fix it. Matt, you're not just a nerd, you're also cheap. Yeah, and one of the things my team and I are looking forward to with this is now having MTA and incrementality cleanly tied together. It's really nice having multiple views of a test totally integrated. From design to monitoring, we can just focus on the insights and not the logistics. So now your incrementality test results, they just feed right into your NorthBeam MTA dashboards that we're just used to looking at every day.

26:15Matt Bertulli:Yeah, I don't think any of us are going to say no to less work and making life easier for all of our teams. If this is interesting to you, go to northbeam.io and ask for a demo and feel free to tell them that the operator sent you.

26:30Matt Bertulli:How do you compete then? There's got to be ways that you can. like if hex clad is not spending the way that these other guys are and you're not willing to give up the margin which we know you aren't right you guys are very bottom line focused what do you think what do you think the reasons are that hex clad can actually make those choices it's like to not play the same game so like sean's arguing that somebody is setting a lower mer floor in your category and that's that the rules that you all have to play by and then you're sitting there saying like well no i don't but i want to like how right so like the people listening should know.

27:05To me, everything is simple. It's like you have a better product or a better value proposition for the customer, and then you don't have to lean in as far. Uber, this is a category definer, category creator. It's sort of a different animal. But in general, I think the message here is there's always a sweet spot, right? I'm always looking for the sweet spot.

27:28Sean Frank:What I was going to say is Jason just outlasted the capital in the industry. The industry is not attractive to venture capitals at scale. That's the reality. And the capital isn't there anymore. Like, let's there was a time in 2020 or 2018 or whatever, where five cookware companies raised collectively$300 million and they burned that money. And Jason was able to build a better business longer. And he's able to those people, those people weren't good enough at acquiring customers to do the strategy I'm talking about. And they just burned money and they couldn't they couldn't switch to acquiring customers at scale profitably.

28:02I think the key point that you said, Sean, is, listen, if you're listening to this podcast and you are in any kind of hard goods, you're insane if you're not first order profitable. Like, you've got to run first order profit, I think. And, like, I think a lot of, there's probably a lot of people running consumables that are, like, getting themselves into trouble, betting on the future. it's like you need to be able to see everybody we have talked to has been really everybody who's been really successful has been very disciplined about the LTV to CAC like payback ratio in consumable space so it's like if you're in hard goods you better pay it off in the first order Sean you generate a ton of contribution profit first order so you can just spend more which is awesome and I would also make the point Sean you're not competing against other wallet companies or other power bank companies or whatever you're competing against everybody and so that's the other reason this strategy is hard is that you're in an open auction against everybody in the world and there's just not that room for that many people to be successful at the strategy but if you're running consumables also like you should really veer towards hey i know i'm going to pay these customers back in you know the first three to six months because if you don't a very good chance you you don't actually ever pay them back and whoever can spend the most money is going to

29:20Sean Frank:win right like you need good products you need good creative but whoever's going to spend the most money will win. With that being said, we are going to watch about 95 % of consumable companies crash into a wall this Q4 and go out of business because everyone is building their model off of three-year CAC to contribution LTV, right? That is what Chad said on our podcast. That is what bankers talk about all the time. It is like the golden number. We are going to watch CACs inflate to a point as the category gets competitive, as Meta understands they can take more money out of the ad auction, that the math will not work and it won't work, but they won't realize that until they've already spent the money and then you're just going to get a bunch of zombie companies.

30:06Sean Frank:It's like every time there's a boom, there's a bust, right? And we're still waiting for the AI bust to happen. Maybe it keeps booming for a while, but supplements, gummies, everything we're in right now is for sure a boom. there's going to be a bus that's going to come down to people are taking capital, they're pumping it in and hoping customers come back. And the only certain thing in life is profit on first order. It's like, I don't have to wait for wallet customers to come back in three years or five years or whatever. I can make sure I can turn a profit right now. And I'm just worried that a lot of these cohorts are way weaker than people think.

30:39Matt Bertulli:Well, what's the playbook then, guys? So if you're listening to this and you are a supplement company or a consumable company, what what what advice would you give them right now the only way that i the only way that we made it work in in trevi is i'm like i have to find a way to affordably acquire as many customers as i can through paid and then i need some organic inflow so that my balanced cac is acceptable for me now if i told you guys my my balanced you know my my all-in cac on trevi was four dollars what would you say? You would say, that's pretty good. And that's an example of like, I used my particular skill set to do that.

31:21If you're going to do D to C on electrolytes, you probably need to be ready to pay 60 to a hundred dollars. How do you make that work? I don't know. I can't, I'm not smart enough. So like I took the one place that I could find to do it, but this is where I think if you're just in a straight up, if your only course of action is to say, I'm going to launch and I'm going to do paid acquisition. I don't know how you can make that a winnable model right now. I mean, I think IMA is interesting, but they have a unique asset with David Beckham. And I think there are some outlier examples, but you have to have some kind of alpha there.

31:57You know, using meta is not alpha. Having a thousand creatives is not alpha. And if you don't have a clear point of view of what that is, then you're probably not going to make any enterprise value. You're probably not going to make any money getting into supplements, consumables, any of this stuff. For me, I just had a clear idea that mine was I'm really good at Amazon and I can build around that.

32:15Sean Frank:Dude, thank you for grounding us back in the point of what's working this year, Mike. It's Amazon for me. We'll get to points two, three, and four, don't worry. But I want to answer Matt's question. Mike deserves to win in the electrolyte category because he has two very unique skills, which is he's amazing at Amazon and he can get real world distribution, right? What we're seeing, and I'm glad you brought up IMA, is because CACs are going up, people are launching luxury supplements, right? Like we're seeing AOVs go to 100, 150, 200 per month because that's how you can make the CACs work. So Mike said, if you're going to be electrolytes on D2C, you better spend 60 to 100.

32:59Sean Frank:I have a brand doing that. It's above 100. It's very, very hard to acquire customers on Facebook ads, right? And we're really good at Facebook ads. So we've been able to scale a brand from nothing. We don't promote it. We don't want cross-promotion. We want to see what it looks like in a bubble. And we've been able to get it to basically$100 CAC in three months or whatever. And this is where people talk about, oh, you need a great product. Great product really shows up in churn data. Let me just say that, right? Like, so what we're, like, you either need to have an amazing product that nobody churns from, right?

33:37Sean Frank:I think Marsman's in this category, right? Or you have to have unique attributes like Mike has, being able to sell on Amazon, being able to sell on the wholesale, right? Or you have to have capital as a weapon. Be like, hey, I'm going to spend$200 to acquire customers because I have the backing to get that done. But what I'm saying is most, right now, everyone's trying to watch every sort of supplement on earth that people are putting creatine and gum, right? They're like, we're going to launch every single product category. And I just don't think it's going to work long term. We're going to see a lot of, and this isn't even a hot take.

34:06Sean Frank:It's just the facts that always play out. Like Thrasio raised billions of dollars to buy Amazon brands. And like, it was the hottest thing ever. And then Amazon brands became yucky. I'm telling you, Amazon's still really good, right? Like it just, the facts don't change like economically. What changes is like what gets hype. And right now it's just, there's too much hype on the category. Well, what's funny about the Thrasio thing is that some of the things they bought were real winners like i won't say the number but i have heard what the beckham hotel collection pillow does in basically ebitda and it is like mind melting and they just had a brand they sold for several hundred million if i remember right like actually thrasio didn't buy all crappy assets they just i mean part of it was they overpaid part of it was that they didn't run it well so like i think the thrasio story if your takeaway from the thrasio story is selling on Amazon is a bad idea.

34:54Like that's the wrong takeaway. It's that an asset bought at the wrong price is a bad purchase. You know, just like an acquisition at the wrong price is a bad acquisition.

35:02Matt Bertulli:I think actually, Mike, to me, the Thrasio thing isn't that they overpaid for assets. The reason they overpaid for assets, the underlying cause is they tried to go at a speed that is just unnatural. And they bought during a period where we were in Zerp and there was just there was helicopter money everywhere. You can't buy a company every three days, guys. I'm sorry. Like, just not possible. Well, listen, my brother, I've told this story. I think that I can share this publicly. Thrasio came to me when they were going through bankruptcy and they had quite a few things that were available. They didn't have the one thing I wanted, which was that pillow, but they had a bunch of things that were available.

35:36And I wasn't in the mood to buy it, but my brother's really good at Amazon. And he was, and he bought several brands and has crushed it with the things he bought from them, which just emphasizes that it's the same assets. It's just like, what's the price you paid for them? and how do you run them? And so like he took those exact same assets and it's been great for his family and so good for him, you know? But anyway, Amazon is still, it's the biggest retailer if you look at non-grocery and there's no reason to think that's going to get smaller. Like guys, the amount of Amazon boxes on my doorstep every day is just ridiculous.

36:10Matt Bertulli:Well, there's TikTok memes about that, Mike. You and your wife got to have a... For sure. After Black Friday, I took a picture one time where it was just like, you couldn't even get out of my door. It was like I was boxed in, you know? Anyway, so like betting on Amazon, Sean, I just want to go back to kind of like try and steer us back to where you were trying to take us because I think your questions are good ones. Like, listen, betting on Amazon is the easiest bet in the world. It's just like the surest thing. Betting on Amazon, betting on Walmart, like, listen, you know, like I've made the point before that like in 20 years, when I tell somebody the simple modern story, they're not going to be impressed because they're gonna be like, oh, you sold a bunch on Amazon.

36:49Makes sense. Yeah, you probably did well. Probably didn't take any skill. You were just on Amazon in the mid, you know, in 2015. And it's like, when you bet on these really big platforms, and this came up several times during our operators event, we've just seen more and more people gradually come around to, what we actually had in one of our Titans interviews specifically, somebody was like, I waited way too long to get on Amazon. What you basically said in this, Sean, is I waited way too long to put my full assortment on Amazon. You know? And so if you're listening to this, I think it's maybe the most practical takeaway for most D to C is that you're leaving money on the table if you're not really taking Amazon seriously.

37:30And I'll reiterate advice I've given before. Amazon is part organic discovery and it's part your second website. And that's why no matter what you do, you don't have to engage in the organic discovery part of Amazon. maybe your price points don't justify it, whatever. It doesn't matter. But like people are going to see your ads. They are going to hear about your product and they are going to go to Amazon. And if you're not there, some Chinese consonant soup brand will be that'll take that demand.

37:57Sean Frank:What's up, operators? Welcome to the RichPanel ad read. RichPanel has been a sponsor for over 12 months. I've been a paying customer for over 12 months. And guess what? I just renewed to pay again for another year. We have cut our SaaS bill in half and automation dropped our cost per ticket by 70%. Our CSAT has also improved from 88%, which is still really good, to 96%, best in class, all powered by RichPanel. I told them last year, hey, you guys need to do the same thing with returns. And now RichPanel has a returns portal. It's built to cut down your tickets and convert more refunds into exchanges.

38:29Sean Frank:They do the heavy lifting, data imports, self-service, retention flows, team training, all of it, and they'll be live in two weeks. If you want to save 30 % guaranteed on helpdesk and now returns, book a demo. Well said. Okay. That was my tactic that worked better than I expected. Number one, Amazon. Now, something that blew up in my face this year, I'm going to say wholesale. So you guys want to talk about wholesale. We just talked about how amazing Amazon is. It's a trillion dollar market. You can go in there, you can muscle your way in to win. There's skill that matters. You kind of control your destiny over on Amazon.

39:07Sean Frank:Wholesale, I find it would be the exact opposite. One, how big is actually the opportunity? I'm in Shields, I'm in Best Buy, I love those retailers. Thank you for letting me sell products in your store. We have a PO from one of the big three, so Target, Costco, Walmart, like where I think people want to be playing. But it's just so slow. It's like I got this PO and they're like, yeah, so Q4 2027, don't worry, we'll have you in all the stores. And I'm like, it's Q2 2026. It's like, I gotta wait 18 months? This is crazy. And not only that, Sean, it'll be on shelves until Q2, 2028. You're like literally planning years out when you do wholesale.

39:47It's crazy.

39:48Sean Frank:Yeah. And I'll get paid some point in 2030 is what it sounds like. I want to just talk about like, I've talked a lot on wholesale, but it's like really how big is the opportunity? And we know Isaac, he runs Content Forge now. when he was running Campi, he told me that like the average candy sells two pieces per store per week. And that if he could hit four, he'd be like the best selling candy of all time. And then I'm like, okay, well, there's like 2 ,000 targets. So if you're in every single one of them and you're crushing it, let's say you're selling 6 ,000 to 8 ,000 bags of candy a week. I'm like, that's a lot of candy.

40:23Sean Frank:It's not that much money, dude. Candy is like$2 a bag. I'm like, you could be the best selling candy in a Target and still only do like, you know, mid eight figures. And I'm like, oh man, maybe I've overestimated the opportunity in wholesale. So anyway, it's something we continue to dump money into. We continue to try. But my Amazon is up literally over 100 % year over year. My wholesale might be up 30 % this year, right? Like that's like the world we're dealing with. And it's a way smaller number. So any sympathy for me, guys? sympathy for you no you're having a great year like absolutely not uh it is interesting that you i mean we've been seeing this for a couple years now right when cacs got higher when cpms got higher everyone wanted to go into retail um and look i think ultimately you want to be where the customer is and be omni-channel to a degree and i think being there um you know doing wholesale or being in retail, there's a halo effect, you know, that hits on all your other channels.

41:31But yeah, this is old school. You know, this is hard. You know, you talked about how long it takes, you know. It'll literally take you a year to get into one of the big three, like from the time you start talking to them, right? It's just, it's hard. It's a lot of times it's six months from starting to talking to them to they're serious about making a buy. And then it's like, hey, our timing for our reset is in three months. You can come to our line review and then you're setting in nine months from then. And so it's like it's it's the thing I would say about wholesale is that you can't be greedy for growth and wholesale is kind of like my advice.

42:06Like every time we've screwed up wholesale, it's because we've been greedy for growth. It's more like a structural growth layer where when you take things that are already working and you know they'll be working in three years and you can put them into physical retail. it adds this like kind of recurring revenue to your income statement. It's predictable. It's predictable. And it really stabilizes your P &L. Like we had a crappy year last year with Simple Modern, but it could never get that crappy because so much of our revenue is now structural in nature. It's like either coming from branded search online or it's coming from, you know, physical retail distribution, which I appreciated last year.

42:48So it works both ways, right? If you're like, hey, wholesale is how we're going to drive massive growth, it's like, I don't know, man. I think it's more like a thing that you just kind of can gradually layer in, but it's also the same other way, which is you're not going to experience the big drops in your business that are possible with the fluctuations of meta because you now have a stable level of recurring revenue that's spread across thousands of stores.

43:13Matt Bertulli:Jason also hit on a point that I want to highlight because Sean, my second, my, my, the same answer as you, like retail for Pila has always been a struggle but it's because of what jason said like i sell a design first product to like 20 to 28 30 year old women the biggest channels in mobile in case are carriers if you've ever stood out front of any carrier of verizon t-mobile and at &t there are no 25 year old girls going in those stores zero like they are not interested in going into a telephone carrier retail shop they're going into lulu and aloe so like those channels for us have never actually been that big nor will they although i know like man if you sell like a black big chunky case that's like meant for a dude who's going to go hunting that there's an at &t he's that he's crushing uh so i think the like be where your customer is jason is great advice but like don't assume that just because Walmart has as many doors as they do or Target does that your customer is there.

44:17Matt Bertulli:They might not be.

44:19Sean Frank:You know, I like this idea of not being greedy for growth because I almost think it should just not be, if you're a fast growing DTC brand and you're like, I'm just going to bolt on wholesale. It's like, you should just hire somebody and let them cook on it slowly over two years because that's, that's what the bolt on looks like. It's the fastest retail I've worked with his Best Buy, they'll give you a PO, but they expect you to be in store next month. And that could be a bolt-on of revenue. But then you will get zero pre-books. Mike, you probably operate on a world where you know what Target needs six months from now, and they've given you a pre-book of what they're going to buy and what they're going to purchase from you.

44:58Sean Frank:Best Buy gives you forecasts. And then the month after, they're like, yeah, actually, I want twice as much as that forecast. So go ahead and ship it right now. That's what a fast wholesaler will look like. And maybe your business isn't set up for that. Well, and especially usually what happens to companies, Sean, is that the retailer gets overexcited and they're like, hey, we need X. And then, you know, a month later, they're like, we bought too much. We don't need any more for six months, you know. And like, so anytime you're going in with new products, you're going into a new retailer, there's a ton of risk of like finding product channel fit.

45:32But somebody said this at the event last week. I keep referencing because there's a lot of good stuff said. But they mentioned that they went out and paid for a real professional. And it had been the best thing that they had done. It was Huckberry, I think, that the best thing they'd done is just go in and getting somebody with like 20 years of wholesale experience. I do think this is one of those where it's like you can figure it out. But, man, pay for a good broker. you know, pay for a professional that's been in the industry and then learn with them. But this is not a place to cheap out. If you're going to do wholesale, you better go in eyes wide open and knowing what you're doing.

46:09Matt Bertulli:Yeah. They were talking about store selection, Mike, like for retail locations. Remember that? They were like, that was their big thing. They're like, when we choose locations, it is literally crapshoots. It's like there are people out there that know this so well and have been doing it so long. They can literally say like, it's this address and this address and just be patient until you get one. Don't actually try to force growth through that channel by opening up like a mediocre location. Just wait six years until you, if you have to, to get the best one. It's like, and only a pro can tell you that.

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47:21Sean Frank:All right, guys, we'll move on to my third thing, which is what am I doing differently in the second half? So what's my focus for the second half of the year? Like, what is the winning play? And our big focus is going to be throughput. I've tweeted about this a couple different times, this concept that, you know, a lot of what we do is increasing surface area. So, like, if you make a new color or a new style or a new license or whatever they're going to do, you're increasing the surface area of who could be your customer, right? Which is good. It's a good way to capture sales in the moment. But the real way to double or three extra business is to get more people to buy more of the thing you're already doing.

48:02Sean Frank:I think Mike's talked about this. The easiest way to make more money is to do the thing you're currently doing at a higher scale. And this is throughput. Like, how do I get, if I'm selling one black wallet a day right now, how do I sell 10 black wallets a day, right? so we've nailed down new launches we did chains with this this year and they super crushed we have like a whole tech lineup that's crushing we have travel products so like we have totally figured out going wider and now it's just getting us more depth i think it's actually the next three years what i'm focused on um i think we could 3x the business in three years just by selling three times as much stuff that we are currently have so that is more channels more ads and just getting deeper telling that story to more people so that's that's my focus right now you guys got to focus I am just so excited to launch a new product.

48:49Matt Bertulli:It's not that hard. Just add more stuff. That's really it. We're a few years back from where you are today, Sean. We have to expand categories. That's obvious. My big thing here is like finding ways to expand horizontally in places that the market is telling you it wants you to expand. So like I was talking to somebody about this yesterday. I think that there's this dance between you and the market where you're saying kind of like, here's where I think I want to go. Here's what I think I want to do. But the market's your dance partner and you've got to listen to it because ultimately the market pays you to serve it in the ways it wants you to serve it.

49:29And so like bad entrepreneurs are like, I'm going to go this way. And their partner isn't dancing with them. And so like, yeah, you're going to end in failure. So I always kind of like have my ideas about how I think the company should grow or develop. But like I'm listening to the market, my dance partner and letting it tell me if it's going to follow my lead. And so where we've had the most success and what I think we're going to continue to be focused on is like we want to expand our offerings in areas where the market is really telling us it just can't get enough of our stuff. And right now for us, that's kids.

50:04Like it's kind of funny. It's like we're more focused on adults, which is a much harder business to run, I think. And almost sometimes like even if we neglect kids, it just grows 50 percent year over year. You know, it's just crazy. It's like - And it's the same buyer, Mike. I think that's the interesting part. It is interesting, yeah. So it's like, sometimes we'll lose that buyer, an adult, but they'll keep buying kids. They'll pound kids. And so like, I still haven't like kind of figured out those dynamics, but it's crazy. You know, like if you go on Amazon and you look, our backpack is like twice what the other backpacks are on Amazon and we're outselling them at twice the price point.

50:42So like our kids thing is super interesting too, because in adult, it's much more price sensitive And in kids, like our buyers have shown to be price insensitive. So it's almost like we've got two different businesses. But we had a couple. We went into toddler stuff in Target and Walmart just destroyed Forecast. We launched a new bento box. I mean, the graph just looks like a 45-degree angle. You know, it's just like every week. Bing, bing, bing, bing, bing. And so I'm really – that's what I'm enforcing my team is like, yes, we need to launch more stuff. But the way that we launch it and what we launch into is the entire game.

51:20That's the judgment piece. And that's where the money's found. So same thing, Sean. Like, as opposed to you, I think we've got really good throughput on a bunch of our stuff. And then probably, like, adjacent to that is back to school is the one time when we can really be a D2C company. And I want us to really be a D2C company during back to school. I want us to be not unexclusively, but I want us to be awesome at scaling up our ad spend and doing that well. and I think we've got a real opportunity over these next two months to just blow it out. I got three things here to address because these are Sean's questions and I actually prepared to discuss them today.

51:58So the first is like, what do we botch? I want to hit what we botched. I want to hit what we did well and I want to hit like the future. We actually made a major mistake on Amazon this year. So it's so funny to see how Sean is just windmill dunking on Amazon right now. And we've been crushing on Amazon for so long. I mean, we're the number one cookware set on Amazon, BFCM 2025, right? Number one cookware set in Prime Day. Like we absolutely destroyed Amazon for years. And then we somehow sold too much and went out of stock on a product on Amazon. And I didn't know this, you know. you know, we're a pretty big company and we have like really great people, you know?

52:48And so when like three of the best people at the company make a mistake, right? It's like, whoa. And this is like a, you know, this is painful, you know? And like, it's painful because mistakes are always going to happen. But like to make one of these, it's like so fundamental. It's like, how do we not know like how screwed you are? if you botch this. So we spent like three months fixing this. So just because you're selling a lot on Amazon or you think you're really good at Amazon, like don't, you really need to understand like where the mistakes can happen. And, you know, it's like, it doesn't matter that we're number one.

53:37Like if we botch something, we're no longer number one. And it's like, whoa, we're playing major catch up there. So that was a great lesson learned for us.

53:48Sean Frank:I just want to let the audience know that Amazon is a momentum platform. So if you're number one in 2024, the odds you're number one in 2025 are very, very high. And the only thing that screws up your momentum is running out of stuff because then you drop all the way down the rank back to zero and you have to spend the next two years building that momentum up again. So I'm sorry that happened to you. Yeah, insane. What did we do well? We've been launching new international markets for a while. And some of them have done well. Some of them have not done so well. And in general, our international business is great.

54:28We launched the UAE during a war. They were literally getting bombed when we launched the UAE. It was like, you know, the ship has sailed on this. The train's leaving the station and we just, you know, the product is there. You know, we were like, well, do we hold off? Like, is this just wrong? Is it wrong? Like, should we not do it? Should we wait? We're just like, product's there. You know, it is what it is. Like, we're going to launch. And we blew through, like, every single projection that we possibly could have had. I'm like, how could we have kind of screwed up like what we thought the demand was going to be there?

55:11But yeah, so, you know, war, no war. We launched it and it was like it was a huge win for us. If you're scaling an e-commerce brand today, ads alone aren't enough. After Sell focuses on the one moment that every brand already owns after checkout and turns the post-purchase moment into more profit. Monetize every order with post-purchase offers and thank you page experiences without disrupting checkout or hurting conversion. Enterprise-grade tech used by Gap, Ticketmaster, Macy's, and Target now driving results for brands like True Classic, Hexclad, Ridge, and Jones Road. I would know. This is the reason I ended up buying three pans from Hexclad instead of two.

55:51Aftersell has already generated over$1 billion in additional revenue for e-commerce brands, revenue that doesn't require more traffic or higher CAC. so check out after sell and tell them that the operator sent you and then what's the back half of your year look like like what are you most focused on you know this is something it's amazing like how long it takes to do stuff everything when I was an M &A lawyer I always used to say everything takes three times as long as you think and I think it I thought it was just in deals but it really applies everywhere so all of you guys going to sell your company realize that everything takes three times longer than you think and act accordingly but we did a big supplier visit to China last year in March and we were like, you know, we really need to ramp new products.

56:38We were very lucky for a long time because it was like, we just do the next cookware piece that we didn't have yet in our line, right? We were a young company. You know, there were a lot of pieces. You know, we did knives, we did pepper mill and these have all done really, really well for us. But like eventually, how many stove top pieces are you going to sell? And so, like I said, we were just like very fortunate for a few years. Like we just go to our factories, hey, here's a new piece, get samples and go. We realized that, you know, once that well starts to dry up, you need to actually be professional at product development.

57:12And it's funny because Sean and I had lunch a couple, a month ago maybe, and we were talking about this issue. And I was, I've been sort of, frustrated with the pace of launches here. But then when I did the math, I looked at the numbers, like we're really actually are launching a lot of stuff. It's just kind of small. But the good news is that we have this massive, massive pipeline of products that really move the needle over the next two years. So it's kind of like one of those things where we're waiting, we're waiting, we're waiting, but I'm so excited. Like we're doing bakeware this year, right?

57:53And HexCloud has not sold bakeware. And it's actually, when you look at our category, like there's cookware and bakeware. Bakeware is a category and we're not even in it. So, and we're doing it properly because we actually created a great product, which is why we haven't done it like until now, because we wouldn't do it unless the product was great and performed great. So, you know, we're launching bakeware this year and we're just loading the F up on Bakeware. And then we have a bunch of things that are even bigger and transformational for the business to come in the next 24 months. So yeah, so I'm just super stoked about that and it's just executing on that and spending time on that right now.

58:37Sean Frank:One of my big focuses is throughput and I think nobody does throughput better than Hexclad. like the fact that you guys have you know eight piece sets or 10 piece sets or 12 piece sets whatever they are and you can just move those units consistently you have no colors you have no variations you're just you're you're the throughput king so i'm probably more like

58:58Matt Bertulli:when i grow up yeah i think it's patience too jason i think the thing i admire most about you guys is like you're you don't rush into anything like even your retail expansion you know like how How many years has all of those big retailers been begging you guys for product? And you've just been like, why? Why? Like every year, why? Yeah, Tony, we have that conversation a lot. You know, the conversations are around, you know, do we do retail? The conversations are around, you know, premium versus good, better, best strategy.

59:35And there's like, there's blessings and curses in all of our businesses, right? Like we have the blessing of, yeah, we don't have colors. We don't have like different product levels, but we're blessing that or we have a very, very specifically identifiable look to our product and that's great. But then, you know, at certain points, like things just need to change and you need to react. And that's actually the fun part, right? I mean, what's really fun is just like selling tons and tons of product and being like, wow, this is sick, right? But then, you know, that actually can get a little boring, right?

1:00:13And then all of a sudden, I mean, you can just kind of kick back and like let it happen. But when you have to start really thinking like strategically about, okay, what are the next levels here? You know, I think that's where the rubber meets the road and you get to really shine.

1:00:31Sean Frank:All right. Well, hey, I have some lessons that I want to go through. I hope everybody brought a lesson that you learned this year to share with everybody and i'll i'll start with mine um you know jason just said sometimes your business gets boring and really what i want people to do is just not get stuck in their ways i want you to continue to try different things to change your business and that is new product launches which is an obvious one it is new ad ideas and concepts we're doing that every single day but also it's new channels it's new pricing strategies it's it's whatever it takes. We launched a new product this year, Chains.

1:01:06Sean Frank:Dude, I think it'll do$60 million next year. And those$60 million we weren't projecting for, but the demand is just there that people want our product. So I'm like, great, that's what we're going to do. That decision was made on a whim maybe eight months ago that we were going to get into this category. So the line I'm going to tell everybody is, we're all fishing. You just got to keep casting and casting until you get a bite, right? You want to stay flexible and in motion because the worst thing you want to do is just be rigid and be like, this is the way it's always been. Our products are$20.99 and that's what works on Amazon.

1:01:39Sean Frank:I think there's ways to move up in price, down in price. There's different channels you should try and no one has it figured out. You have to continue to try everything. That's my lesson from this year. I learned it every single year. Sean, I want to just tack on to that because we've seen you do this. You're not precious about what you're going to do. You're just like, we're going to try it. We're going to try this. We're going to try that. We're going to pivot. And, you know, there's, you've got products that you didn't think would be that big and, and, and, and have been like an awesome, awesome success.

1:02:10And like, this is what every, you know, everyone has a plan until they're punched in the mouth and everyone wants to be like super strategic. But like at the end of the day, you need to be able to just try stuff and, and, and see what happens. And then, you know, being precious about it, about price point, about market, are we premium or are we not, or with this or with that? It's like, we at the mastermind, we had some really great conversations about a lot of that, you know, and one of the things came up was cannibalization. And, you know, are you worried about cannibalizing your business, et cetera?

1:02:44And one of the guys there is like, you know, listen, if you're worried about cannibalizing, like you just, your business probably is going to suck at some point, right? You just have to do it. And I found that to be really releasing to me, to the kind of things that you're talking about, is to say, don't just kind of get boxed into where you are and think that it just has to be that way. There's so much randomness to it and what's going to hit and what's not going to hit. But if you just sort of stay, like look at Lululemon, If you just sort of stay in your lens and your lane, you are going to get out-competed at some point.

1:03:29Your competitive advantage is going to erode at some point. So what are you going to do to maintain that competitive advantage? You just need to keep taking swings. That's it.

1:03:40Matt Bertulli:For me this year, Sean, I would say it's like an extension of what you're saying. I have leaned way more into, because I'm with Mike where I got my hands in a lot of things, I've had to relearn this lesson of I'm probably best to just spend my time on things that I'm exceptional at and nothing else, and stop going really wide, stop dabbling in that I am not uniquely suited to do. So I'm a hammer and I'm in search of nails, and I'm just going to keep doing that. And I'm just going to find more and more places where I can have leverage. And for some reason, I need to relearn that lesson this year.

1:04:19Matt Bertulli:I think the first like two months, three months of the year, I was just in too much that I was really not great at. And now I'm much more focused. So things are going far better for me. I'm going to get super meta here for a second. Your life will be better if you set constraints. And this is counterintuitive because we think that a lack of constraints means freedom, but it really means being imprisoned to the endless set of options and possibilities. And that actually, so this is one of the reasons, by the way, where you think, I want a ton of money. If I had a ton of money, I could do anything.

1:04:57And then people that get tons and tons of money aren't as happy as we think they are, because having constraints actually helps to frame things and helps you to make decisions. So you need constraints in your life. and there's a lot of different ways that I have found that you can take this principle and apply it. But I'll give two really practical ones. One is, if you're listening to this show, you are likely you wear the kind of shareholder cap and probably the majority shareholder hat cap and also like a CEO C-suite hat simultaneously. And I think over the years, I've probably not, I think my CEO hat has been on a lot more than my shareholder hat.

1:05:40And now I'm starting to wear the shareholder hat probably about as much. And I think that's healthy and good. And I wish I'd done it earlier. And one of the ways I'm thinking about this as the kind of shareholder hat, more kind of like chairman of the board, is that I need to create an environment where the people who work for me have freedom and autonomy or I won't get the best people. But I have expectations, I should have expectations about what I'm paying them to do and the results that I expect to get. And so the way that I do this is I think about it like I'm a coach. And it's like, hey, we're going to go play soccer, whatever.

1:06:17And before practice, I am going to get out the little paint gun and I'm going to paint the sidelines on the field and I'm going to review the rules for practice. And then I'm going to roll the balls out. I'm going to be like, do whatever you want. If you're within the sidelines and you're within the rules, you can do whatever you want. You have absolute freedom. These are just my constraints. So I've gotten a lot better at that as a shareholder where with my executive leaders, hey, here's what I want to see. Here's the kind of distributions I want the business to be able to produce. Here are the things I want to be true culturally.

1:06:48Here are my expectations in a couple of other areas of the business. And then outside of that, you have total freedom and knock yourselves out. Do lead however you see fit. Another kind of corollary of this is challenge the people that you lead. Challenge them. Like I've got a son, he's 14. And one of my favorite parts of my life right now is he is at that point where I'm really raising the bar for him and he is rising to meet it. And I've been doing this a lot with the people that I work with, where I want to be really high support and really high challenge where I'm just like, hey, you know, here are the constraints I'm giving you.

1:07:33And I think you're capable of being way up here, but you're not. You're down here right now. This is your gap. And I need you to make up that gap. But also I'm going to help you to make up that gap because I've really found that when instead of calling people out, you call people up, that they rise to the occasion. So those are the two things I'm kind of applying is like I'm setting better, clearer constraints. And so it's me spending more time thinking about, hey, really, what are the non-negotiables for me in the business? What has to be true? What do the incentives have to be? And then trying to challenge people and have really direct conversations that are not always comfortable where I'm calling them up.

1:08:11And as a result, I'm really enjoying this phase of running the businesses.

1:08:15Sean Frank:Well, hell yeah, guys. That is a great episode. What we talked about for recap for everybody, maybe this is going to be part of the trailer, who knows? We talked about four good things we learned this year. What's winning, what blew up in our faces, what we're focused on in the back half of the year, and then a lesson for everybody. And I want to thank Jason for being here, Mike for being here, Matt for being here. This is an OG app, guys.