Pinwheel CEO on Selling Kid-Safe Phones

In 2019 Dane Witbeck had a problem familiar to parents: What were his kids doing on their smartphones?

That problem became his motivation to launch Pinwheel, an Austin, Texas-based seller of Android phones with parental controls for apps, usage limits, monitoring, and more.

Fast forward to 2026, and Pinwheel is thriving and profitable. In our recent conversation, Dane shared his company’s production process, marketing tactics, economic model, and more.

Our entire audio is embedded below. The transcript is edited for clarity and length.

Eric Bandholz: Tell us what you do.

Dane Witbeck: I’m a founder of Pinwheel. We provide Android-based smartphones for kids with parental control software. There’s a lot we can do with Android that we can’t with Apple.

I’m a dad with four kids. I started Pinwheel about five years ago to help with the smartphone problem, which most parents are aware of.

Our customers buy the phone, the actual hardware, through us, even though Samsung, LG, or Motorola makes it. We embed software deep into those devices. It’s baked in from the get-go, and so the setup is on us, not our buyers.

The phone is safe and easy for kids to use. Parents can add to it over time as their kids mature, such as more apps, content, and permissions.

We buy phones wholesale in bulk from those manufacturers. They are our vendors. We’re the customer, but we take it on ourselves to set them up for kids, closing any loopholes.

For example, we’ll buy Samsung Galaxy A17 phones and prepare them using a process capable of generating thousands of units per month. We’ll repackage them a bit with instructions. Parents can access the phones and see what’s going on with them, including the apps.

Bandholz: How do you build relationships with a company like Samsung, LG, or Motorola?

Witbeck: It’s not that hard. They’re in the business of selling phones. I’ll say, “I want to buy a thousand phones.” Generally, they’ll send a new customer to a channel partner, such as a wholesaler. It doesn’t make much difference whether you work directly with them or with wholesalers. Both offer lines of credit with net-30 terms.

We cannot dictate what they put on the phone. We get what comes with the device. A small Chinese manufacturer might have a thousand variations of Android phones. We could certainly dictate software from those companies, but in our experience, there are all kinds of bugs with the hardware. Buying from Samsung, LG, or Motorola eliminates a whole bunch of problems.

Bandholz: What are Pinwheel’s economics?

Witbeck: We’re a hybrid ecommerce model. We have similarities with ecommerce companies in how we market and sell to customers, including checkout and retargeting. But we’re also a software company. Subscriptions drive the business. That’s what investors look for and how we build value.

Initially we sold the phones and the software subscriptions. Customers chose their cellular plans separately. We did that for a couple of years before adding cellular as an option.

So now, during checkout, customers can buy the phone with their own cellular plan or ours. Roughly half use ours. We’ll provide a single bill unified across cellular and software subscriptions.

Bandholz: How do parents manage the device?

Witbeck: We provide an app for Android phones, iPhones, or web browsers. Parents log in to any of those places and access tools such as selecting apps, permissible times of day, and usage limits. Parents can send chore lists directly to their kids’ phones, review their kids’ text messages, and even set up monitoring for words or phrases.

Bandholz: You’re getting into landlines for kids, a new product.

Witbeck: Yes. We call it Pinwheel Home, a modern take on a landline. We’re very excited. As parents, we’ve given cell phones and smartwatches to a generation of kids, essentially encouraging them to communicate over text messages rather than voice.

The result is that kids do not know how to have traditional voice conversations, which is healthy for humans. We need to talk to each other.

Yet we don’t want our kids talking on a phone at 1:30 a.m. when they need to be sleeping for their test tomorrow. With our new landline product, parents can place limits on the time of day, contacts, approved inbound numbers, and more.

We’re shipping those this month. There’s a competitor called Tin Can, a great company. We’re going to focus on features that are not on Tin Can. One is scaling across ages better. Plus, ours is a two-part system with a VoIP terminal and phones that plug in to it.

Bandholz: You mentioned investors. What is your thinking for raising external funds?

Witbeck: I try to let the market guide those decisions. There’s no need to be opinionated one way or the other regarding bootstrapping or tapping venture capital. Can you create more value with the capital? What kind of capital?

We raised some money at the beginning and stopped once we reached profitability. We’ve been profitable for two years. There’s a huge opportunity ahead of us that we cannot fully capture unless we raise more money. So we’re back to the capital markets for the first time in several years.

I’ve been on both sides of funding. I raised money, and I’ve funded about 25 startups as an angel investor. I’ve learned lessons along the way.

First, for entrepreneurs seeking capital, make sure you know the weak spots in your pitch. Know the objections and have answers for those before sitting down with VC prospects.

And don’t take rejection personally. It could be that an investor doesn’t have the money, but he’s stating another reason for not participating. It could be the sector or a bad experience with a similar investment. So be ready for “no” 100 times until you get a “yes.”

Bandholz: Where can people buy your phones, support you, and reach out?

Witbeck: Our site is Pinwheel.com. We’re also on Instagram and Facebook. I’m on LinkedIn.

Engineer Quits, Launches Online Art School

Florence Morin is an artist-turned-engineer-turned-entrepreneur. She graduated from Canada’s Polytechnique Montréal in 2013, only to realize she disliked engineering work. She longed to earn a living from making art.

Fast forward to 2026, and Florence Art & Drawing is her online art school, launched in 2020, selling classes and instruction. Her 10-person team includes web developers, instructors, and support staff.

In our recent conversation, she shared her tactics for course content, customer acquisition, hiring, and more.

The audio of our entire interview is embedded below. The transcript is edited for clarity and length.

Bandholz: Tell us about yourself and your business.

Florence Morin: I’m a Montreal, Canada-based artist. I founded Florence Art & Drawing to teach folks how to draw.

Teaching art was not my initial career. I was an engineer, and I was hating life. I had to figure out how to earn a living while making art. And that turned out to be an art school selling digital instruction with a physical magazine that people receive at home to learn how to draw with paper, old-style.

Online courses are hugely popular, especially after Covid. We’re passion-focused for hobbyists. My audience is a bit older. They want to have fun and develop a skill, not become professionals. It’s important to value the effort and the time it takes to learn skills, especially in an AI world where everything is easy and spontaneous.

At first I was both the face of the business and the instructor. But it became too much work. So I built a team that’s now 10 people. We have tech guys who set up and manage our website, which runs on Shopify. Plus two teachers help with instruction, grading students’ drawings, and answering questions. We also have customer support agents.

I can now focus on creating courses and expanding the brand to be more like an art school and less about me.

Bandholz: Walk me through the product.

Morin: People sign up to our courses through our Facebook ads or our email newsletter. Advertising on Facebook has long been our top customer acquisition channel. Plus I’ve built a huge mailing list.

Early on, my preferred way to make sales was to go live on a webinar and actually do drawing exercises with attendees. I pitched our products at the end of the session.

At first we offered only digital courses. Attendees could pay via a link I provided. But getting the signups depended on my doing the live webinar. So that’s when I introduced the physical magazine that folks can buy from our site. I did’t need to be there. They subscribe to the magazine, which costs $29 per month.

When it arrives in their mailbox, they can open it, draw in it, and have some fun. It doesn’t require interaction. My team coordinates it all. The magazine is easy to mail and requires little inventory. I keep copies in my basement. Team members have access and ship directly from my home.

The online courses are more expensive, roughly $1,300 per year with live support, in-depth projects, and step-by-step instruction.

The physical magazine is 50% of the business. I periodically meet with my editorial team — our chief of operations, and contractors who write, review, and design the content. The pictures in the magazine are my real drawings.

Digital classes account for 30% of the business, and the other 20% varies.

Bandholz: You champion handmade products. Do you rely on AI for business operations?

Morin: Artists are often shocked and even offended to see a machine do in 10 seconds what it took them 10 years to learn. We never use AI for art. Transparency and authenticity are very important. We respect our customers.

Yet as a business owner, I’m not opposed to using AI for repetitive back-office tasks. Still, our focus is on human connection, valuing time to learn, and bringing communities together.

Bandholz: What’s your long-term vision for the company?

Morin: Launching the company was about freedom. I’ve learned so much on the way. My goal for the next few years is to make the business less dependent on me so I can work on new projects.

Some of my current duties, such as marketing, I can delegate. Although a good marketer is probably the hardest role to hire. The person must know the product and the business and be able to generate creative ideas. A lot of artists want to be involved, too.

I’m not considering selling the business. Florence Art & Drawing is 80% of my identity. Selling the company would be like giving that identity to someone else. A lot of folks I know who have sold a business feel very empty afterward. If an owner wants to sell, she has to be clear on what to do afterward.

If I remove my business, who else am I?

Bandholz: Where can people sign up for an art course, follow you, or reach out?

Morin: Our website is ArtetDessin.com/en. We’re on Instagram and Facebook, and I’m on LinkedIn.

2 Bootstrapped D2C Brands, 1 CEO

For four years Eric Steckling has run two direct-to-consumer brands. Brio, the company he founded in 2014, sells beard trimmers and related goods. In 2022, he acquired Ollie, then a seller of teeth-whitening strips and now expanded oral care items.

Eric first appeared on the podcast in 2023. In this our latest conversation, he addresses Brio’s challenges of selling long-lasting products, Ollie’s opportunity with consumables, and juggling the two.

The entire audio of our discussion is embedded below. The transcript is edited for clarity and length.

Eric Bandholz: Tell us what you do.

Eric Steckling: I’m the CEO of two direct-to-consumer brands: Brio, for men’s grooming, and Ollie, for oral care.

The problem with Brio is that our main product, a beard trimmer, lasts forever. It’s one of the reasons why I’ve focused on Ollie recently. Brio has a good initial order value. People love the product. It lasts a long time, so they don’t have to come back frequently. We also sell blades, dryers, and other tools, but we’ve learned our customers do not provide high long-term value. That’s been our challenge for the brand.

Ollie does not have those problems with its toothpaste, mouthwash, and whitening strips. All are replenishable products that folks use daily. That makes it easier to aim for a higher long-term value, which helps the marketing cycle.

Bandholz: How do you tell whether a slow-moving product missed the market versus needing better messaging?

Steckling: As long as we’re making changes and trying new approaches, we keep going. But if we get to a point where we don’t know what to change, maybe it’s time to stop.

Another challenge is whether to alter an existing product or launch a new one. For example, we rolled out a toothpaste with a new formula. It received more initial traction than we had planned, but many customers requested that we remove the fluoride.

I was on the fence, unsure of what to do. Ultimately, we did make the product fluoride-free because that is where the market was. Then the product took off.

So listening to customers is key because they’ll generally tell you what direction to go, although there are exceptions.

Bandholz: Ollie offers subscriptions. How do you minimize churn?

Steckling: It goes back to the product line. Ollie sells items that folks use multiple times per day, perfect for a fixed delivery cycle.

From there, we minimize churn by offering really good products. You’ve said Beardbrand doesn’t need many subscribers, so long as customers love the product and buy repeatedly. I’m on board with that approach, too. Minimize churn and elevate repeat sales with superior goods.

One of the challenges of being D2C is relying on our website and Amazon. At some point, to scale, we’ll probably go wholesale for the retail shelf exposure.

Bandholz: You and I both run bootstrapped businesses. We don’t have to deal with investors, but the trade-off might be passing up on a billion-dollar brand.

Steckling: It’s a good point. It mostly has to do with speed: how quickly do we get there? I’m not sure having investors would scale our D2C revenue any faster.

At Ollie, we’ve got a lot of room to grow with Meta, for example, as our primary customer acquisition channel. We have two other promising products: enzyme-based whitening strips and a mouthwash. And a priority is building an army of TikTok Shop affiliates.

All of those are better for us now than brick-and-mortar.

Bandholz: You bought Ollie from our mutual friend Aaron Marino. The company is different now from what you acquired.

Steckling: Yes, it is. Aaron’s business was whitening strips. At the time, Brio, our men’s grooming brand, sold Sonic toothbrushes alongside our beard trimmers. So I had a familiarity with the oral care space.

I initially tried to merge Ollie with Brio on the same website. Looking back, it makes no sense to combine those. Eventually I split them apart, with the whitening strip as Ollie’s core product.

Whitening is a big space. We’re not doing a good job of exploiting the opportunity, however. We have a unique, innovative product with enzyme-based whitening.

But I had no grand vision when we purchased the company. The more I learn about other entrepreneurs, the more I realize that few know what they’re doing at the start. You’re making decisions month-by-month and year-by-year of what seems right at the time.

I’ve never heard of anyone acquiring something like Ollie and 10 years later, still executing the same vision. It just doesn’t seem to work like that.

Bandholz: Where can people buy your products?

Steckling: For oral care, OllieSmile.com. For men’s grooming tools, Brio4life.com. I’m on LinkedIn.

Chord Commerce CEO on Pivoting to Data

When he and I last spoke, in 2021, Bryan Mahoney had co-founded Chord, an ecommerce platform that separated the public frontend from the nuts-and-bolts backend. It was a “headless” structure that enabled merchants to connect with their preferred external providers rather than a one-size-fits-all solution.

The problem, Bryan says in retrospect, was a complicated setup that required replatforming. What merchants wanted instead was the platform’s component that consolidated data from the external providers, providing a holistic view across channels, customers, and more.

So he pivoted. In 2023 Chord became an ecommerce-focused data management company, no longer requiring customers to use its frontend layer.

In our recent conversation, Bryan shared the transition details and the importance of data for today’s brands. Our full audio is embedded below. The transcript is edited for clarity and length.

Eric Bandholz: Tell our listeners what you do.

Bryan Mahoney: I’m the co-founder and CEO of Chord Commerce. We help brands leverage their first-party data and digital channels to grow their businesses.

I co-launched the company in 2021. Before that I was chief operating officer at Glossier, the cosmetics brand.

We launched Chord as a “headless” ecommerce platform, one that separated the frontend presentation layer from the backend management tools. The problem was that it required merchants to maintain a lot of infrastructure. It proved to be too complicated. So we pivoted the company to what it is now, more of a data platform.

Bandholz: Why pivot the company rather than close it?

Mahoney: I’m addicted to commerce. I’m addicted to brand. The saving grace for Chord was that we were never only a headless commerce company. We knew early on that a headless platform would create a mountain of data issues from merchants connecting to multiple external solutions. Data would live on each of those platforms.

So we were a headless commerce and a data platform at the same time. But the companies that we met with kept pointing to the data component and asked if they could use it. We initially said they had to fully replatform, which was crazy.

I got tired of hearing no. And so, around 2023, we shifted from being dogmatic about headless to being platform-agnostic. Our customers no longer had to use our frontend. Shopify, Magento, whatever your public-facing provider, we can help solve the data problems.

And that really opened up the opportunity for us to work with more brands. Their data lived in different places. We got lucky because that’s when genAI systems burst onto the scene. It’s more important than ever to have your data in one place and accessible. Our market penetration has accelerated.

Bandholz: How does consolidated data benefit ecommerce companies?

Mahoney: You need a single source of truth to achieve your goals, such as a successful customer-acquisition campaign or a product launch.

You might use Google Analytics, Shopify, and Klaviyo. Perhaps you use Recharge for your subscriptions. Data on each of those providers could impact your acquisition messaging or your new product features. You need a holistic view of all of them to make informed decisions.

Bandholz: How do you standardize that data, once consolidated?

Mahoney: We’ve been working on it for years. Ours is purpose-built for commerce, an important distinction. There’s an awful lot of very good general-purpose data warehouses that are not opinionated about commerce. They don’t understand an ecommerce business the way that we do.

Bandholz: We’re launching a product at Beardbrand this month. We discussed in our team meeting this morning the best day to roll it out. Should we launch it after Memorial Day or before? A weekday or a weekend? Chord could have helped us, rather than relying on gut feel.

Mahoney: Yes, the key is to be data-informed. In your case, what happened in May in previous years? Is it a trend, or was there something else going on in the world at that time that may have affected the outcome? How have customer acquisition costs trended over the last month?

You can ask all these questions, but ultimately you’ve got to make the decision.

You can probe the data, which may be inconclusive, and decide to launch on Thursday. You then put your resources around that decision and remember the questions. A year from now or five months from now, when you launch another product, you can bring up that process.

I don’t ever want to propose a platform that removes the gut instinct of operators who know their brand, products, and customers better than we ever will.

But yes, we can provide the data to be better informed.

Bandholz: Are you pulling in data from similar companies to enable comparisons, such as repeat order rate versus an industry average?

Mahoney: Yes, we’re absolutely pulling in that information. We’ve been accumulating it for five years. Our customers can opt in to our own anonymized data co-op. We accumulate that data and provide benchmarks and industry standards.

But we never share personal information, and all of our tenants are completely isolated.

Bandholz: You don’t publish prices on your site, which tells me they may be higher than my company would pay. What sort of business will get the most from Chord?

Mahoney: We don’t have a pricing page up yet, though we do want our rates to be transparent. We charge a platform access fee to use our data connectors, the unification layer, and our core AI. It normally starts around $2,000 a month.

Our ideal customer is a company selling products online, D2C or retail, likely across multiple channels. The company wants its data in one place and to harness it via AI to drive growth. That can range from businesses with $10 million in annual GMV to those with $1 billion or more.

 Our customers get an awful lot of infrastructure. It’s a great value for the money.

Bandholz: Where can people check out Chord and reach out?

Mahoney: Chord.co. I am on LinkedIn, and I host a podcast called “Brilliant Commerce.”

Inside Beardbrand’s Expansion Plan

We’ve hit a plateau at Beardbrand, the direct-to-consumer business I launched 15 years ago. Our revenue is down from its peak. We’ve made mistakes. The beard care space has dried up.

We’ve moved from a blue ocean of growth and opportunity to a red one of fierce competition. If Beardbrand grows, a competitor loses, and vice versa.

In this episode, I’ll depart from my typical interview format and share our plans for moving Beardbrand forward. My goal is to help other merchants in similar circumstances.

My entire audio narrative is embedded below. The transcript is edited for clarity and length.

Growth Tactics

Our name, Beardbrand, might be a problem in a marketplace that isn’t growing. Yet we offer non-beard products, such as colognes, deodorant, and bar soap. We have a shampoo and conditioner, which we call a wash and a softener. We have hair styling products.

So we are a men’s grooming company, much more than beard care.

Focus. We’ve done a lot of belt-tightening. We’re focusing on what works and what doesn’t. That’s why we’re leaning into Meta, our top customer acquisition channel. Meta is not a consistent home run, as ad performance is volatile and increasingly expensive.

Still, within Meta there are opportunities. We can introduce more of our product categories and continue what we’ve been doing, only better.

We’re evaluating partnerships with Meta content creators to reach new audiences. I hope to increase our Meta ad spend by three times.

Social media. We’ve historically done well with organic social media, yet we’re struggling with it now. Engaging other content creators, notably on YouTube and TikTok, will likely be far more effective. Plus, we hope to learn from those creators and implement their ideas into our ad strategy.

For several weeks, we’ve sent samples to many TikTok creators through the platform’s affiliate network, paying commissions when due. It’s the early days, yet we’re already seeing success, which we hope will snowball.

YouTube’s affiliate program is less robust, though we’re much more experienced on YouTube than TikTok.

We have a great collaboration with Jeremy Siers. He’s a content creator focused on male-oriented brands and products, such as guns, knives, barbecue, and whiskey. And he has a great beard.

Product development. We’re focusing on products that are doing well now rather than launching new ones. Yet we still see new product opportunities.

One of those is a beard trimmer, a high-end, premium, $300 pass-this-on-to-your-grandkids kind of trimmer with a timeless style. The Apple of beard trimmers.

We’ve not produced mechanical products. A trimmer could cost upwards of $100,000 to develop and launch, not including marketing costs. Is there really a market for a $300 ultra-premium heirloom beard trimmer? Maybe.

But at this point, we need to move past our struggles and focus on small, incremental wins.

Packaging. Here’s a mistake. We altered our packaging and manufacturing to satisfy Target before it committed to us. We now have a lot of 4-ounce aluminum containers, up from our traditional 1-ounce version, to occupy more Target shelf space. Plus we cut three popular fragrances.

Then Target dropped us.

We’re going to stay with the aluminum packaging, as it stands out in the marketplace. But the cost of aluminum is rising, mostly due to tariffs. An aluminum bottle costs four times as much as glass.

We still offer the traditional glass-and-plastic option as our value option on Amazon.

Cross-border selling. We launched on OpenBorder a few weeks ago. It will help us get products into European countries with fewer regulatory requirements than if we did it ourselves. The growth will likely be incremental, perhaps another 10% to 20% of revenue.

It could lead to our own Europe-based warehouse, but we’re a long way from that. Nonetheless, OpenBorder enable us to reach new consumers.

Amazon is super tough, super competitive. Fees are going up. Success is getting harder, but we’re not giving up. We’re going to lean into higher-priced ads to acquire more customers.

We’ve been on Amazon for roughly three years. As long as it makes money, we’ll keep doing it. But, looking forward, a business where we trip over a dime to pick up a penny is not for me.

What We’re Avoiding

Barbershops. We have a barbershop here in Austin, Texas, that offers customers phenomenal experiences. Yet I have no desire to expand. It would be cool to have 50 barbershops across major metropolitan areas. It would also be capital-intensive.

Wholesale. We work with retailers (especially brick-and-mortar) that want to sell our products. Mostly it’s pharmacies, barber shops, and salons.

Would I consider returning to Target or adding Walmart if they approached us? Potentially. But it would take a lot of work to ramp up for a mass retailer. We’ll stick with the smaller independents for now.

Google Search ads. We’ve not advertised on Google Search for two years now. We don’t miss it.

YouTube advertising. There’s potential with YouTube ads. We had success with advertising there years ago. But for now we’re going to optimize our organic content to engage and convert prospects.

I’m a bit burned out on YouTube after posting videos there for 15 years. I’ve said everything I want to say. Perhaps we can work with other creators, such as Isaac Medeiros with Mini Katana. He could handle the strategy and editing. We would produce the raw content.

Reach Out

See what we’re up to at Beardbrand.com. There’s a great  D2C community on X. My channel there is @bandholz. Reach out with ideas, successes, failures. We’ll grow together.

Surviving D2C’s Boom and Bust

Chris Wichert is an investment banker turned direct-to-consumer entrepreneur.

His luxury shoe brand, Koio, launched in 2015 and quickly scaled. Then the pandemic hit. By late 2022, he says, the D2C hype and funding had collapsed.

He slashed costs, stabilized cash flow, and successfully exited the company. In our recent conversation, he shared his story of boom, bust, and survival.

Our entire audio is embedded below. The transcript is edited for clarity and length.

Eric Bandholz: Give us the rundown.

Chris Wichert: I co-founded Koio, a luxury footwear brand, in 2015. We exited the brand six months ago, and I helped with the transition. I’m now advising other consumer brands on how to reach profitability and stay there.

I’m from Germany. I started my career in investment banking, then moved to the U.S. for my Wharton MBA, where I met my Koio co-founder.

I live in Brooklyn, New York.

Bandholz: Did Wharton help with the launch?

Wichert: Not directly, but the Wharton School connections were conversation starters for raising money. We moved to New York after graduating.

Our first financing round, about $1.5 million, came 12 months after our launch. The money got us started, but it also set us up for the wrong path. Building a luxury D2C brand with a high average order value requires patience. You have to keep investing to eventually see the compounding effect after five, six, seven years.

We ended up raising close to $20 million over a decade. It was a mix of venture capitalists, family offices like the Winklevosses, and other D2C entrepreneurs.

We used the money initially to fund inventory and build our team. Our first hire was for operations. Our second was for marketing.

We learned quickly that selling a $300 shoe requires a strong brand and credibility. It takes a lot of investment in media outreach, pop-up stores, and retail. Our sales increased when people saw our shoes in person, tried them on, and felt the leather. So we went into retail and digital early on as a dual strategy.

We experienced great growth for the first five years. Our biggest raise, $10 million, came in 2019. But the pandemic wiped out our retail business. We had five stores at the time. Plus, our use case was gone. Our shoes were dress sneakers for dates and nice occasions.

By late 2022, early 2023, the D2C hype and funding had collapsed. Valuations plummeted.

That forced us to make big changes. We were losing roughly $3 million per year with no growth. The company was way too complex and costly. Our SKUs had expanded from men’s dress sneakers into boots, loafers, and slip-ons, for men and women.

We interviewed around 100 customers. We learned that the product expansion was detrimental to the brand. Our messaging was unclear.

We went back to the core items. Then we cut 70% of our New York team, which was painful. We closed the office and transitioned to remote only. We also closed unprofitable dropship accounts and stores. Then we rehired certain remote roles internationally.

Over the ensuing 12-18 months, we reached break-even profitability.

By then, neither my co-founder nor I wanted to keep running the business. We had an obligation to our investors and remaining employees to end the company in the best possible way.

So, I reached out to many people in D2C, especially footwear and apparel brands, to explore an exit or merger. That process was cumbersome.

It took almost two years, but we got a competitive process underway and spoke with several interested parties. We found a trustworthy acquirer who owns several brands and closed the deal with him in August of last year.

The transition lasted just six months. My co-founder and I remain shareholders. We believe in the company and wanted to ensure operational and brand consistency.

We also wanted to integrate our employees into the workflow.

Bandholz: You’ve pivoted to an advisory role.

Wichert: I’ve built a great network of consumer-brand entrepreneurs over the years. I love the industry and want to share my knowledge and experience.

I’m now working with founders across different consumer categories, such as skincare, footwear, eyewear, watches, you name it.

Bandholz: How can people reach out?

Wichert: Learn more about our shoe company at Koio.co. I’m on LinkedIn and X.

EcomFuel Founder on 2026 Industry Trends

For years EcomFuel has surveyed its community of ecommerce merchants about their growth, margins, tactics, and more. The company released this year’s findings last week.

Founder Andrew Youderian recaps the report in this episode, addressing the state of ecommerce among 300 participating businesses.

Our entire audio is embedded below. The transcript is edited for length and clarity.

Eric Bandholz: Give us a rundown of what you do.

Andrew Youderian: I run a company and community called eComFuel. My background is in starting and operating ecommerce businesses. We have an online message board, online forum, events, reviews, and research.

Our “2026 Ecommerce Trends Report” is based on responses from 300 store owners — mostly seven, eight, and nine-figure brands — who answered 50 questions.

We ask about traffic, margins, Amazon, warehousing, AI, business models, tariffs, and more. We don’t track the number of merchants who have exited the industry. People join and leave our community every month for various reasons. When asked, some say they’re closing their business. It peaked 12 to 18 months ago. I’m a little more optimistic about ecommerce for the next couple of years.

Going forward, successful brands will likely be smaller with loyal customers. They will make interesting products. They won’t grow as fast, but they’ll be much stickier and more durable in the long term.

The number of respondents in our report who manufacture products increased by 50% over the past three years. All other models were either flat or down. Respondents who resell products are largely unchanged. Private label sellers were down significantly. Drop shipping was down 50%. Merchants are adjusting to a new reality.

In 2017, about 20% of respondents’ total revenue came from Amazon. It subsequently spiked to about 28%. It’s now back to 20%, despite 63% selling on that marketplace.

I respect how Amazon built out its infrastructure for the long term. They’re not going anywhere, but the types of products they sell will likely be either very low-end or very high-end. They’ve lost the middle tier.

Bandholz: Have you tracked AI’s financial impact?

Youderian: For the trends report, we asked, “Have you meaningfully incorporated AI into your business?” Seventy-two percent of respondents said yes. The top four use cases were, in order, copywriting, images, analytics, and coding.

Certainly some merchants have dialed in AI and are seeing strong benefits. But most are still in the investment stage.

For example, EcomFuel has heavily invested in AI over the last year. We’ve built proprietary AI tools. But we’ve not seen great ROI from those efforts. That seems to be what’s happening for most ecommerce companies.

One of the most surprising findings in this year’s survey was the ages of AI adopters. Roughly 90% of respondents under 30 are using AI. But folks in their 30s are investing less than those in the 40- to 54-year-old cohort. Anecdotally, we’re seeing merchants build impressive in-house operational tools, and most are 40 or older.

Bandholz: Where can people join your community or reach out?

Youderian: Our site is eCommerceFuel.com. I’m on LinkedIn and X. I also host “The eComFuel Podcast.”

My Ideal Second Business

Molson Hart is the founder of Viahart, a D2C toy brand, and Edison, a legal technology company. He says every entrepreneur should own two businesses, where one offers more opportunities to scale, is more profitable, or diversifies risk.

I’m all in on Beardbrand, my own D2C brand launched in 2014. Molson is a two-time guest on the podcast. His comment got me thinking about an attractive second company, one that would enhance my life without creating stress and headaches.

So in this episode I’ll depart from my typical guest interviews and, instead, describe my ideal business.

My entire audio narrative is embedded below. The transcript is edited for length and clarity.

My optimal business is an ecommerce brand that sells easy-to-ship products. The items are likely small and, importantly, consumable. Once acquired, a customer would buy two or three times. The products would emphasize both value and prestige, with gross margins that at least cover acquisition ads on Meta.

Lastly, the products appeal to a large enough market to differentiate, niche down, and target the right audience.

So what are those?

Sean Frank is CEO of Ridge, the D2C wallet provider, and a veteran of this podcast. One could argue Ridge’s wallets are consumable: Release new versions, and they become fashion items, enticing repeat buyers.

Yet to me, consumables are what go in or on my body, what I eat or apply every day, such as food, supplements, and personal care goods. For ideas, I would walk into a grocery store, a Walmart, or a Target and just look around. What are folks buying? Which brands are old and stuffy, ripe for disruption?

Examples

Native has moved beyond deodorant, its original product. Moiz Ali, a former guest on this show, launched the deodorant-only brand in 2015 and reached $100 million in annual revenue within a couple of years. Native now sells multiple consumables: skincare, hand soap, toothpaste, and hair products.

Harry’s launched in 2012 as a D2C shaving goods provider, an affordable alternative to dominant players such as Gillette and Schick. The company was wildly successful.

Native and Harry’s focused on staples that consumers use daily.

Seven Sundays launched in 2011 at a Minneapolis farmers’ market. The founders, having realized that most cereal manufacturers used glyphosate-treated wheat and high-fructose corn syrup, offered a cleaner, healthier granola at a higher price point. It’s now a Certified B, ecommerce powerhouse.

Goodles sells a product every parent can appreciate: healthy macaroni and cheese for kids. The brand launched in 2020 with nutritious selections in bright, colorful packaging and fun product names, such as Shella Good and Twist My Parm. It’s another upstart challenging a dominant brand (Kraft) in a big market.

Opportunities

So the opportunities for me lie in creating new products in sizeable markets dominated by stale, out-of-touch providers.

I would differentiate those products in one of three ways.

First is better quality — superior ingredients or components. Parents who prioritize nutrition are unlikely to buy Kraft Mac and Cheese, but they would consider Goodles, even at a higher price. That’s one way to distinguish.

Another way is innovative packaging. Many entrepreneurs overlook this opportunity. Go again to Walmart, Target, and even trade shows. How are products presented and packaged? I’ve seen incredible packaging designs over the years. I once saw packaging for a cosmetic cream where users twisted a bottle cap and pumped the cream into a built-in bowl at the top, to then mix it before applying to their face.

The third way is branding. It’s often easier to launch a brand named after the products it sells or the audience it targets. But doing that can restrict the company later, when the market shifts. Vacation.inc avoids that trap. Founded in 2021, the brand sells sunscreen but can easily pivot to other products and services should the market evolve.

Cool Products

It rarely makes sense to exactly replicate what another entrepreneur has started. Don’t listen to a successful owner on a podcast like this and think, “That guest is killing it. I’m going to do the exact same thing.”

Often the owner has not proven the business over the long term, and regardless, copying her merely carves up that audience. Instead, learn from successful brands such as Vacation, Inc., and apply their tactics to an entirely different market.

Have some fun. Make your own cool products.

How Vessi Sells Waterproof Shoes

Ray Hua is the director of ecommerce at Vessi, a Canada-based direct-to-consumer seller of waterproof sneakers. The brand launched in 2017 after its founders developed and patented breathable fabric that repels water. Ray joined the company in 2021.

In our recent conversation, he shared the challenges of targeting the right audience, cross-border selling, diversifying, and more.

Our entire audio is embedded below. The transcript is edited for length and clarity.

Eric Bandholz: Give us a quick rundown of who you are and what you do.

Ray Hua: I’m the director of ecommerce at Vessi, a direct-to-consumer waterproof sneaker brand. I oversee strategies for site experiences, performance, merchandising, and lifecycle marketing. It’s been with the company for about five years.

Vessie launched nine years ago. Our founders developed and patented a lightweight, waterproof, and breathable fabric called Dyma-tex. People assume waterproof means it is not breathable. But our product is comfortable and looks like a regular sneaker.

During the pandemic, we gifted our product to healthcare workers. We received a lot of positive feedback from other communities, so we collaborated with niche networks to offer our products at a discount.

We’ve hired a lot of paid influencers in categories where folks are on their feet all day. We have tiers of influencers. Some have dedicated landing pages; others are for getting our name out.

We invest heavily in Meta for customer acquisition. We’re looking to diversify into Google and TikTok Shop. We’ve advertised on TikTok and even Reddit. Both drove a lot of traffic, but the quality was not very high. We couldn’t easily attribute revenue coming from those channels.

Bandholz: Vessi now sells apparel.

Hua: It’s more of an experiment in response to feedback in our customer surveys. Many mentioned expanding into apparel, socks, and accessories. They like our technology and want items that are fashionable and functional.

So we’re testing those categories for additional revenue. It hasn’t been smooth. We developed apparel that performed poorly and diverted resources from our footwear line.

Still, it was a good experiment and demonstrated the steep learning curve for a category we are not familiar with.

Bandholz: Vessi has warehouses in Canada and the U.S. Do you market differently to consumers in those countries?

Hua: Yes, we use different ads for each market. People in Canada know our brand. Our messaging to them is typically announcements about dropping new colors or limited editions.

We’re not as prominent in the U.S. Our ads there introduce the brand and explain the product’s benefits. Seattle is probably our best region in the U.S. It’s close to Vancouver and gets a lot of rain. We’re also strong in Florida, however, which is both sunny and rainy.

Bandholz: Does AI influence your marketing efforts?

Hua: We’re using AI tools mostly for operations. For example, we use AI to identify influencers aligned with our interests.

We’ve dabbled in AI to produce ad copy. We haven’t gone into AI-generated images or videos, mainly because we have strict brand guidelines.

Bandholz: Where can people find you, support you, buy your products?

Hua: Check out our products at Vessi.com. I’m on LinkedIn.