On this episode of DTC POD, we discuss the key factors that investors look for in a business, such as product excellence, differentiation and the ability to manage capital responsibly. We cover benchmarks for what it takes to be successful at each stage of raising capital for your brand. We discuss the best types of businesses to launch, what VCs look for in a crowded space, and the importance of retail margins and unit economics when launching a business. Timestamps [00:03:58] Networking and pa...
Feb 21, 2023•50 min•Ep 260•Transcript available on Metacast On this episode of DTC Pod, CMO Julia Perez chats with Blaine about everything related to OmniChannel growth. They talk about the importance of understanding the customer on a deeper level, the attention to detail of the Red Bull team, and the need for solid processes. They also cover topics like content marketing, retail strategy, unified brand messaging, field marketing, positioning, creator briefs, finding ad arbitrages, building new product lines, and more. [00:01:00] Plant-based nutrition c...
Feb 14, 2023•51 min•Ep 259•Transcript available on Metacast On this episode of DTC POD, Pontus joins Blaine to take an in-depth look at the world of ecommerce platforms and the players driving these marketplaces. We discuss the pros and cons of starting a brand, solving for inventory management, distributed sales and more. We also explore the potential of creating a platform-agnostic approach to creator led commerce, existing infrastructure, legacy solutions, opportunities for brands to leverage creator distribution, simplifying collaborations for creato...
Feb 07, 2023•45 min•Ep 258•Transcript available on Metacast On this episode of DTC Pod, Stefany joins us to dive deep into the world of commerce, content, regulation, and go to market as it pertains to the functional mushroom and psychedelic space. They cover the details of their formula which does not contain psilocybin, the patenting process, tailwinds around psychedelics, promising academic studies, the roadmap towards potential decriminalization, how things are unfolding globally, building infrastructure ahead of regulation, the overlap between the t...
Jan 31, 2023•38 min•Ep 257•Transcript available on Metacast On this episode of DTC Pod, Zawwar joins Blaine & Ramon to talk about the intersection of creators and commerce and how the most successful creator brands are built. We cover brand management at P&G, developing brand strategies, the three types of creator archetypes, how each creator type lends it self to brand creation, aligning products with a creator, how to create buzz around a product, different outlets for creators to monetize, creator owned brands versus endorsements, successful outcomes,...
Jan 24, 2023•51 min•Ep 256•Transcript available on Metacast On this episode of DTC Pod, Anders and Andy join Blaine & Ramon to discuss the next wave of creators and commerce. They talk about social commerce, creators as a performance channel, innovation happening in the space, what personalized storefronts mean, the opportunity for creators as key brand affiliates, the current funding landscape, when to bootstrap versus raise venture, and more. [00:01:37] Andy and Anders have co-founded companies previously, with experience in building in both the bootst...
Jan 18, 2023•51 min•Ep 255•Transcript available on Metacast On this episode of DTC Pod, Megan joins Blaine and Ramon to talk about how brands can better leverage consumer insights to validate ideas, develop new products, build more powerful brands, increase revenue and purchases, build better wholistic customer experiences, mitigate risk, find exciting opportunities, build off flagship products, and much more. Past guests & brands on DTC Pod include Gilt, PopSugar, Glossier, MadeIN, Prose, Bala, P.volve, Ritual, Bite, Oura, Levels, General Mills, Mid Day...
Jan 10, 2023•38 min•Ep 254•Transcript available on Metacast On this episode of DTC Pod, Adam joins Blaine to discuss building and formulating products from the ground up. They talk about identifying a problem, coming up with a unique formulation, what you need to take the product to market, navigating restrictions and FDA, positioning yourself to sell in other markets downstream, patents, ingredient licensing, launching Paris Hilton's line, the pros, and cons of working with celebrity talent, navigating managers and other involved parties, leveraging tal...
Jan 05, 2023•55 min•Ep 253•Transcript available on Metacast On this episode of DTC Pod, Jack joins Blaine to talk about how to build a brand in today's landscape. They talk about identifying a problem, bootstrapping, which channels to start on, how to think about capital, working with suppliers, building at the right pace for your business, speeding up cash conversion, subscription & retention from the customer's pov, the importance of unified data, the power of layering brand at the right time, and much more. More info on the Duradry brand here. Past gu...
Dec 29, 2022•49 min•Ep 252•Transcript available on Metacast On this episode of DTC Pod, Victoria joins Blaine to talk about building marketplaces from the ground up. They explore topics like getting your first customers, how to build out the supply side of the marketplace, building early demand, challenges matching supply to demand, how to launch new markets, starting a marketplace in NYC, keeping the flywheel going, transformation through company growth, and much more. Past guests & brands on DTC Pod include Gilt, PopSugar, Glossier, MadeIN, Prose, Bala...
Dec 22, 2022•59 min•Ep 251•Transcript available on Metacast On this episode of DTC Pod, Roy joins Blaine & Ramon to talk about building one of the largest e-commerce platforms, closing down his services business and betting everything on the Magento opportunity, leveraging open source for early growth, building a community that lives & breathes your product, the ethos around building an amazing product, market timing, building developer first, startup vs. corporate culture, navigating an acquisition, looking back at Shopify vs. Magento, investing at R2, ...
Dec 20, 2022•48 min•Ep 250•Transcript available on Metacast On this episode of DTC Pod, Dae joins Blaine & Ramon to talk about the process of launching a successful fashion label. They talk about the inspiration for Sundae School, leaning into taboos & counterculture, the importance of aligning narrative and motifs with brand, the power of creative, what makes creative pop, getting picked up as a staple by Hypebeast, featuring in New York Fashion Week, building challenges to grow community, building campaigns that have done 100M+ views, cross selling acr...
Dec 15, 2022•53 min•Ep 249•Transcript available on Metacast On this episode of DTC Pod, Ben joins Blaine to give an overview of how to generate cash as a DTC brand. They talk about everything from first financial decisions as a founder, to inventory management, financing options, how to think about equity vs. debt financing options, raising a round, speeding up cash conversion, raising the right amount of capital for your business, going omni-channel, tools like revolvers, asset backed loans, factoring, what the macro environment means for DTC businesses...
Dec 13, 2022•1 hr 2 min•Ep 248•Transcript available on Metacast Adii Pienaar is the Founder & CEO of Cogsy, the operations & inventory optimization platform for e-commerce. Prior to starting Cogsy, he was the Co-founder & CEO of WooCommerce - the e-commerce solution for WordPress, and CM Commerce, both of which resulted in multi-million dollar exits. On this episode of DTC Pod, Adii joins Blaine & Ramon to chat about getting your inventory and operations right from the get go, brands going multi-channel, optimizing across all your sales channels, the importa...
Dec 08, 2022•51 min•Ep 247•Transcript available on Metacast On this episode of DTC Pod, Dov joins Blaine & Ramon to talk about the early days at Yotpo, the feature that built Yotpo's growth flywheel, inspiration for Tolstoy , the power of video in conversion, the video infrastructure that needed to be served, the success of founder videos for DTC brands, building out video into web, sms, email, and multi-platform customer journeys, the analytics component for iteration, successful brand adoption, why not all video is created equal, and more. Want to try ...
Dec 06, 2022•30 min•Ep 246•Transcript available on Metacast On this episode of DTC Pod, Chelsea joins Blaine & Ramon for a crash course on growth. They talk about setting up your growth engine, working from a source of truth, picking the right channels for your brand, how to think about metrics, google ads & shopping, important updates coming to google analytics (GA4), keeping acquisition & retention in lock step, ad performance across channels, podcast advertising, generating content for organic growth & ad platforms, and more. Wanna try out Ettitude sh...
Dec 01, 2022•1 hr 7 min•Ep 245•Transcript available on Metacast On this episode of DTC Pod, Benjamin joins Blaine and Ramon to talk about the future of commerce, how brands can build better customer experiences, why removing friction is key, the challenges of selling online versus in retail, thinking in terms of LTV, brands thriving on TryNow, raising capital, founder perspectives, the technical challenges of building the platform, solving for fraud, financing, complex corner cases, and what's next for Try Now. 16:00 - Brands That Do This Win The challenging...
Nov 29, 2022•46 min•Ep 244•Transcript available on Metacast On this episode of DTC Pod, Kian joins Blaine & Ramon to discuss the playbook for working with manufacturers to bring products to life. They cover identifying manufacturing partners, how to vet a factories quality, how to establish buying credibility, getting product samples, building your spec sheet, negotiating price and volume, building relationships with your manufacturing partner, pre-shipment samples, tips for your manufacturing agreement, sharing costs, production cadence, avoiding shippi...
Nov 22, 2022•1 hr 2 min•Ep 243•Transcript available on Metacast On this episode of DTC Pod, Julie joins Blaine to talk about building one of the fastest growing fitness brands. They talk about starting P.volve in the early days, her background in the entertainment industry and how that experience translated to content development for p.volve, why content is the north star of their brand, building a new market around functional fitness, the first product they took to market (the p.ball), launching products that complement their content, how physical studios p...
Nov 17, 2022•54 min•Ep 242•Transcript available on Metacast On this episode of DTC Pod, Oren joins Ramon to discuss what it takes to build a product and take it to market. They cover topics including product development, pros and cons of dropshipping, getting started as an entrepreneur, building around niche audiences, testing market demand for products, pre-sale, validating through Tik Tok and IG organic, building vs. buying your business, dealing with manufacturers, nailing unit-economics, and much more. 5:31 - The fastest way to get started in E-Comme...
Nov 15, 2022•48 min•Ep 241•Transcript available on Metacast On this episode of DTC Pod, Sanya joins Blaine to talk about what it means to be an effective brand marketer. They discuss frameworks for building ironclad brand, how brand marketing evolves with scale, how to tell an effective brand story, brand purpose, figuring out what you stand for, layering performance on top of brand, building a cohesive funnel, increasing points of connection, content programming & initiatives, partnerships, collabing with Gucci, and much more. 5:15 I think it's just rea...
Nov 10, 2022•46 min•Ep 240•Transcript available on Metacast On this episode of DTC Pod, Carter joins Blaine to discuss how General Mills is starting to compete in the DTC arena and launch DTC channels for their brand portfolio. They discuss the learnings about what performs well, which brands to prioritize, how they think about building tech stacks, how DTC plays into the bigger strategy, how to think about positioning yourself as a new brands, fighting for retail shelf space, finding scale, and much more. This episode is brought to you by OpenStore: Vis...
Nov 08, 2022•37 min•Ep 239•Transcript available on Metacast On this episode of the pod, Clayton joins Blaine to discuss everything from starting a newsletter, building a community, getting into menswear, how big retailers approach buying merchandise, the intersection of retail and e-commerce, creator led brands, winning growth strategies in apparel, positioning in fashion, successful collabs & drops, branded community partnerships, and much more. This episode is brought to you by OpenStore: Visit https://open.store to get a free, no-obligation offer for ...
Nov 03, 2022•42 min•Ep 238•Transcript available on Metacast On this episode of DTC Pod, Allegra and Shirin join Blaine & Ramon to talk about building one of the first creator led brands, before the recent wave of influencer led brands started to take over. They talk about getting started as a creator, building a community, starting in apparel from the ground up, working together as co-founders, identifying a market gap, tips for sourcing products, optimizing ops, building a brand greater than the individual creator, creative strategy, aesthetic developme...
Nov 01, 2022•51 min•Ep 237•Transcript available on Metacast On this episode of DTC Pod, Patrick joins Blaine & Ramon to talk about frameworks for building successful businesses. We talk about his background, taking the leap to start, evaluating risk, bootstrapping SaaS, developing an MVP, taking a product to market, how customers think about pricing, willingness to pay, pricing strategies, scaling, navigating an exit, and much more. His Lightbulb Moment To Become A Founder (5:00) And then all of a sudden just jumped in and was like, I'm gonna start a com...
Oct 27, 2022•1 hr 2 min•Ep 236•Transcript available on Metacast On this episode of DTC Pod, Alexandra joins Blaine and Ramon to talk about company building. They cover the creation of Gilt, building early demand, sourcing supply, creating a marketplace, the evolving commerce landscape, team building, the overlap between commerce and services marketplaces, understanding your ICP and working backward, how she invests, why she loves Miami, and much more. 49:00 We were not a big company. We were just kind getting going and pulled this off. So I think startups, s...
Oct 25, 2022•1 hr 6 min•Ep 235•Transcript available on Metacast On this episode of the pod, Matt joins Blaine & Ramon to talk about building a successful CPG brand from his dorm room, finding product market fit, discovering the companies ideal customer, using tech as part of the companies DNA, iterating with product feedback, raising capital, scaling up, and much more. This episode is brought to you by OpenStore: Visit https://open.store to get a free, no-obligation offer for your e-commerce business from OpenStore in 24 hours. Have any questions about the s...
Oct 20, 2022•47 min•Ep 234•Transcript available on Metacast On this episode of DTC Pod, Lee joins Blaine to talk about the crossover between growth marketing and performance editorial. They talk about how ritual grew to a 9 figure brand, the power of affiliate, the importance of search intent, new media models, audience targeting, first party data, team building, and much more. 3:00 Performance x Press What ultimately changed the trajectory for Ritual was a few bespoke content partnerships with a handful of top-tier publishers. Like BuzzFeed was one of t...
Oct 18, 2022•49 min•Ep 233•Transcript available on Metacast On this episode of DTC Pod, Ben joins Blaine & Ramon to talk about the importance of experimentation in growth for startups. They talk about demand gen, building a waitlist, content production, GTM strategy, marketing personas, educational marketing, UGC, in-house content programming, and much more. 8:10 Great Products Make A Statement We call it levels in the wild. Someone sees the patch on someone else and you give the like head nod, you're like, Hey, you're one of us, right? Because you feel ...
Oct 13, 2022•1 hr•Ep 232•Transcript available on Metacast On this episode of the pod, Vasa joins Blaine & Ramon to talk about how brand building and product positioning. They also cover topics including creative direction, the role of content in growth initiatives, how to nail a creative brief, how to design content for different parts of the marketing funnel, learnings from working with some of the top brands in CPG, and much more. 5:05 It started with content creation and the why behind content creation. I like to say, content within context, somethi...
Oct 11, 2022•47 min•Ep 231•Transcript available on Metacast 
