Marketer Finds Joy in ‘Bigging’ Others

Aaron Orendorff is a chaplain turned writer turned digital marketer. He was the first editor-in-chief at Shopify Plus and then vice president of marketing at Common Thread Collective, an ecommerce agency.

He’s now head of marketing for Recart, an SMS platform. His passion is empowering colleagues and clients. He told me, “I find joy in bigging others up.”

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

Eric Bandholz: Tell us who you are.

Aaron Orendorff: I’m the head of marketing for Recart. We’re an SMS app for Shopify businesses. My claim to fame is coming up with Shopify Plus. I cut my teeth with Shopify early in ecommerce. I remember writing how-to guides and articles about why you should trust the cloud for ecommerce.

I then moved to the agency side at Common Thread Collective. Now I’m sending text messages.

I didn’t have any background in this industry, nor any clients, pedigree, or connections. My life radically changed a decade ago. I’ll celebrate 11 years of sobriety at the beginning of February.

At the time I was unemployed and unemployable in Klamath Falls, Oregon. I created a website and wrote 10 blog posts to make it look like something was happening. I bought a traffic course from Neil Patel. It said to purchase your first 5,000 followers on Twitter. So I did. I think it screwed me for quite a while, but it helped to look like I was a legit business.

Bandholz: You have a big Twitter following.

Orendorff: Yes. My production rate is so much lower than what I see happening in the world. I’m relentlessly enthusiastic. I find joy in bigging others up.

At my core, I’m a writer. I warn folks when I’m starting to work with them and say, “Listen, I’m going to light you up in this Google Doc more than you’ve ever been in your entire life. The fact that I do that is an act of love. I would not invest in this if I didn’t believe in you.”

Criticism is a gift. Criticism is love because it takes energy, and it takes emotional risk. It’s much easier to fix and ship a thing than tell somebody where they went wrong. You run the risk of them misunderstanding or thinking ill of you. And I care a lot about that.

Bandholz: There is a line between criticism and hate.

Orendorff: That’s a powerful point. I’m fascinated by how to get somebody; how do you get on their side and disagree with them? How do you rapidly build trust? What are the cues? What are the shortcuts to it? What are the heuristics? The rule of thumb?

Bandholz: It’s just authenticity, right? You have to be authentic. From there, you build trust. Where can people follow you?

Orendorff: @AaronOrendorff on Twitter or find me on LinkedIn. If you need help with text marketing, visit Recart.com.

Beardbrand Survives Its Hardest Year

Hosting “Ecommerce Conversations” is a welcome respite from my day job of running Beardbrand, the direct-to-consumer company I co-founded in 2012. I periodically post podcast updates on Beardbrand’s performance, hoping the transparency helps other entrepreneurs.

Here’s my recap of 2023.

It was a terrible year for me and Beardbrand. It was the first year we were in the red. We’ve always had around 15% margins, but not in 2023

I described the year in this week’s episode, embedded below. The transcript is condensed and edited for clarity.

Losses

Beardbrand generates revenue primarily through our website but also via wholesale accounts. Sales from our site were down 53% from the peak of 2021 — our best year. They decreased slightly in 2022, but profit increased because we lowered expenses. In 2023, profit and sales continued to decline significantly. A huge tax bill last April was the downside of being so profitable in 2022. We’ve always had tax bills, which we paid on time, but it was difficult this time with the other losses.

Then we got hit with a tax lien early last year. The state of Texas audited us for sales tax compliance. We had to pay additional taxes, penalties, and fees. They gave us 30 days. Fortunately, we run a very conservative business and have emergency savings. We paid the state and the IRS simultaneously, plus some hefty bills from the holiday season. Thus all our cash went out the door at the beginning of 2023.

Another loss at that time was a mistaken 100%-off discount code. I created it about eight years ago, and somehow, it was reachable on our website. It was leaked to a Facebook group or on TikTok. We had roughly $30,000 worth of products purchased with this code. None of us here caught it.

Target was a key wholesale account for about five years. We lost that business in 2023. The staff there simply stopped replying to our emails after we proposed 2023 plans. We emailed, “If you don’t reply, we’ll assume you won’t carry our products from now on. We’ll adjust our order projections.”

We had purchased a lot of specialized inventory for Target that we could not sell elsewhere. We destroyed about $500,000 worth of unsalable products at the end of the year. Additionally, Target now claims we owe chargebacks for markdowns, which we strongly dispute. They have refused to pay about $170,000 of invoices over the disagreement.

We faced more challenges. My business partner had her third baby and decided to step back from the company. It’s been a challenge not having her in the day-to-day. We furloughed our entire team to half-time this past summer, and our organic YouTube content performed worse than ever. We tried TikTok Shops with the recommendation from Paul at BK Beauty, but it wasn’t effective for us. Lastly, we were sued for accessibility reasons despite the website’s excellent accessibility rating.

Wins

Our biggest win was having enough savings to cover our losses, tax bills, and unsalable products. Conserving cash over the years finally paid off.

We were fortunate not to have lost employees. Everyone we furloughed stuck through the hard times and returned to full-time in August.

Since June, we’ve been profitable, but not at the margins I’m comfortable with. We’ve plugged the holes in our boat. Now we’ve got to get the wind behind the sails.

Part of our sales drop was due to manufacturing glitches and launching products that did not meet customers’ expectations. We’ve resolved many product concerns by returning to our old-school formulations and finding manufacturers who align more with our production needs.

Another win was raising our prices in June. Our average order went from $48 to $60. We’re getting fewer orders, but our per-order fulfillment and shipping costs are a smaller percentage. That’s been nice. We pay less to our outsourced fulfillment vendor.

Another big win is increasing sales from product subscriptions. We went from about 1,100 product subscribers to about 3,000. I see that growth continuing into 2024.

For years we did not sell on Amazon. We launched there in 2023 and reached a $1 million annual run rate by year-end. Hopefully, Amazon will become a seven-figure channel in 2024 and beyond.

A final win was starting a new marketing strategy. After talking with the founders of Batch cannabis, we introduced an affiliate program. We’ve had good promotions and referrals from our affiliate partners, with excellent articles and other placements. We hope the program grows, not just in affiliate revenue but also in improved organic search traffic.

Looking Forward

Despite the challenges, I remain optimistic. Twelve years in, I’m as motivated as on day one to roll out new products and serve our customers. Tough times require perseverance to pull through.

We had many manufacturing problems in 2023. We’re excited to grow with a manufacturer that aligns with us. We will take it slow, one product at a time. We’ve learned the benefits of a tightly aligned partnership with one manufacturer versus diversifying with several.

We continue to focus on Meta for customer acquisition. We haven’t given up on our YouTube organic strategy. We plan on introducing a new video format. If that does not perform, we might shut down YouTube organic and focus on other avenues. We hope Amazon sales continue to grow and eventually replace what we lost on Target.

But our top priority is getting back to 15 to 20% profitability. That would help me sleep better at night.

I want to build Beardbrand. To me, the destination is the journey. Creating a business my kids can grow up around brings me joy and excitement. I’m aiming for a generational company that my kids and grandkids can run, allowing our family to live happy, healthy, functional lives. That’s why I show up every day.

Bushbalm Normalizes Bikini-line Skincare

In 2016 David Gaylord was a Shopify employee looking for a side hustle. Then he came up with a funky idea: skincare lotions for hair removal along bikini lines. The business name was funkier: Bushbalm.

Fast forward to 2023, and Bushbalm is booming, selling lotions and trimmers directly to thousands of consumers and wholesale to Ulta Beauty and 3,000 waxing salons. It spends a whopping $200,000 per month on Facebook ads.

In our recent conversation, I asked Gaylord about sales channels, marketing, and, yes, the name. The entire audio of our discussion is embedded below. The transcript is edited for clarity and length.

Eric Bandholz: Tell us what you do.

David Gaylord: I’m the co-founder and CEO of Bushbalm. We focus on bikini line skincare — below-the-belt products for ingrown hairs for razor burn. We also have a trimmer for down there. Our primary business is skincare, whether oils, exfoliants, or serums. We have a hydrogel mask called The Vajacial, which is quite popular.

We launched in 2016. Before, I worked in my family business in Canada selling hardwood flooring. When I was in university, my dad wanted to try ecommerce. I thought it was ridiculous. But I did what he said and looked at platforms such as BigCommerce and Magento. We chose Shopify because it was Canadian.

Four years later, I graduated from university and got a job at Shopify. From there, my partners and I started Bushbalm as a funky idea. It took us four years to gain traction. We didn’t quit our jobs until 2021. We were entirely bootstrapped and remain that way today.

During the four years, we spent very little on marketing. We did an Etsy show, which was good for talking to folks and learning what they wanted to say about us. When we spoke about “pubic oil,” they said, “That’s disgusting.” We tried “bush oil,” and they didn’t like that either. We got more into skincare and asked questions like, “Do you get waxed? You probably have irritation.” And they’d say, “Yeah, totally.” So that’s where we focused the business. In 2020 and 2021, we pushed hard on Facebook ads. In the last two years, we’ve leaned away from that. But we still spend at least $200,000 on Facebook monthly.

Bandholz: Do you get much friction with the name of Bushbalm?

Gaylord: We interviewed someone for a job here who said, ” I think you guys should change the name. And we were like, “You’re not hired.” A lot of folks we talk to appreciate that we’re blunt. The brand is kind of in your face with our TikTok channel. Sometimes, one in a hundred people will say, “That’s gross.” The other 99% say, “Why is it gross? Everybody has these concerns.” So, I think the name’s pretty powerful long-term.

Bandholz: You’re exploring brick and mortar, setting up your own salons.

Gaylord: We’re about 50% direct-to-consumer, and then 25% is wholesale from selling to about 3,000 waxing salons. We’re also in Ulta Beauty, the giant retailer, and Amazon.

We’re looking to double down in our own physical-store waxing salons. We’re not here to build 100 salons and be a huge chain. In a studio, we’ll learn more about the products and how people use them. We’ve been more eager on the content side. We don’t do much on YouTube. We do a lot of TikTok and Instagram, but having an in-store space is something we’re trying to figure out.

We have an excellent path to long-term wholesale growth. Ulta Beauty was the first domino to fall. They’re awesome. What’s good about Ulta is the shave section we’re in, which is basically the same style as CVS, Walgreens, Target, and Walmart. Five years ago, the taboo was so strong that no one would be around us because of the name. Now everyone’s like, yeah, that’s cool, you guys are funky. I think Manscaped, for male hygiene, paved the way for the taboo to go away.

Bandholz: Walk us through your content production.

Gaylord: We have a few folks on our team who connect with waxing salons and film content, or we’ll pay the salons for a photo and video shoot. Usually, 80% of the stuff doesn’t work, but 20% is excellent. We’re looking to scale. The need for content nowadays is insane. It’s the hardest part of Facebook ads.

We hired a part-time in-house aesthetician, a skincare pro. That has been a tremendous addition. She helps us with content. Otherwise, a lot of it’s sourced from content producers. The best thing we’ve done is ask photographers to subsidize photo shoots. They get photos, and we get photos. Everything works out. Obtaining videos that way is hard, but it works for photography.

We’ll buy content from folks. Communication style, personality, and entertainment are so important. It’s more intriguing to follow along a person’s journey instead of, for instance, the art of doing a leg wax. That type of video might be interesting, but building a character or persona to grow a brand does better.

The iOS and Facebook privacy changes were an easy hurdle for us. We’ve got 3,000 wholesale accounts, with one salesperson and one account manager. So it’s a super-efficient lead and very automated. Folks are eager to find something that works. There are no distributors for it either. So it’s very niche. The U.S. has 10 times more waxing and nail salons than Starbucks stores. I think it’s 330,000 salons, which is mind-blowing.

Direct-to-consumer was about 95% of the business three years ago; now it’s 50%. So we’re growing way more on this professional channel. And Ulta is doing well.

Bandholz: Do you worry about advertising attribution and tracking?

Gaylord: On the wholesale side, it’s hard because when we advertise on Facebook for our Ulta business, we don’t get sales data for a week — every Monday at 8:00 a.m. So we could run Facebook ads on a new launch at Ulta without knowing if they’re working.

Bandholz: Where can people support you?

Gaylord: Our website is Bushbalm.com. We’re on Amazon and Ulta. I’m on LinkedIn.

Argentina Suppliers Fuel Palermo House

Merchants often default to China for outsourced manufacturing. Yet competitive suppliers exist worldwide. For Palermo House, a direct-to-consumer provider of luxury furniture, Argentina is a natural source.

Marco Ferro is the company’s California-based founder with Argentina roots. He was born there, as were his parents, co-owners of the business.

In our recent conversation, I asked Ferro about importing goods from South America, shipping to customers, bootstrapping challenges, and more. The entire audio of our conversation is embedded below. The transcript is edited for clarity and length.

Eric Bandholz: Give our listeners a quick rundown of what you do.

Marco Ferro: I am the founder and CEO of Palermo House. We are a direct-to-consumer home goods furniture brand launched in 2020. We’re known for our Dune Lounger, a mix of a beanbag and a vintage chair. It comes in vegan leather, velvet, and some outdoor options. It’s stylish and comfortable, and people love it. Architectural Digest featured us. That’s been our hero product, although we have a vision to expand into other products.

My dad, my co-founder, designed the chair a few years ago. He comes from a family of architects. He created the lounger chair with a mid-century modern look. It fits well with that vibe and is minimalistic, functional, and comfortable. It’s not super rigid and yet stays in one shape. It molds to your body and changes when you sit on it.

Bandholz: Your suppliers are in Argentina versus China, like everyone else. What are the logistics hurdles in dealing with South America?

Ferro: I was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and so were my parents. My dad has many connections to Argentina and feels comfortable working there. It’s not the easiest country to transact with, with challenges around payments and political instability. But the situation is generally favorable. The exchange rates have been reasonable, so we’ve stayed for two-plus years.

As we scaled, we didn’t want to go to China or other countries that may require huge purchase orders. We wanted to scale comfortably. The good thing is that we have a lean and agile supply chain. We can acquire the lounger covers almost just in time, avoiding excess inventory. The filling that takes up more space is made here in California. The covers are made in Argentina, and we recently brought on a supplier in Columbia. But that’s not to say we haven’t ruled out going to China, India, or some other place where we can potentially find more cost efficiencies.

We ship customer orders unassembled in two boxes because large dimensions incur ridiculous oversized fees.

Bandholz: How do you acquire customers?

Ferro: We invest in paid marketing. Our primary channel is Meta — Facebook and Instagram. We also use paid search on Google. Our average order value is over $1,000. That gives us more room to cover acquisition costs.

We do organic Instagram, email, and SMS. We believe our products drive strong word-of-mouth referrals. We don’t have much data to validate that, but furniture, especially a product like ours, stands out in a home. When inviting friends over, it’s pretty visible, a mini showroom for future customers.

Bandholz: You’ve gone beyond the chair, offering home accessories, rugs, and throws.

Ferro: It’s been hard to sell anything that’s not the lounger. We haven’t found the right supplier for those products from a quality and price point. The rugs, for example, are 100% wool and hand-woven, made by artisans in the north of Argentina. I have a rug in my home. It’s thick and beautiful. But making these takes a long time, which is not great for business. They require some investment upfront as well.

Bandholz: Your product photography is fantastic.

Ferro: We shoot most photos ourselves. My dad plays a significant role as an architect. He has an eye for houses, and we will do some location scouting ourselves. It’s a collaborative effort, and we’ll choose the house. It’s mainly been here in Southern California. We use Peerspace — Airbnb is mainly for staying the night. We only need a couple of hours during the day. Peerspace is tailored for that use case for a premium price.

You have to get a lot done in the shoots in a limited time. We have big products. So it’s renting a U-Haul, going to the location, and moving big products around. At least they’re super light. We use male and female models as well as kids and pets. We try to show our products are for the whole family.

Bandholz: You’re bootstrapped?

Ferro: Yes. My dad, mom, and I are the owners. We haven’t raised any outside funding, so entirely bootstrapped. We’ve tripled annual revenue every year since our 2020 launch. That’s created funding challenges. We are starting to talk to potential investors. We like the idea of a partner in the space that can add value, capital, and talent.

In the meantime, we’ll continue running the business as bootstrapped. We’re working on our gross margin and specifically on our product cost. But we never compromise quality and feeling.

Bandholz: Where can people buy your stuff or reach out?

Ferro: Check out our website — Palermo.house. I’m on LinkedIn.

Beard-care Founder on Juggling Brands

In 2014 Eric Steckling launched Brio, a Michigan-based direct-to-consumer seller of beard trimmers. In 2022 the company acquired Ollie, a subscription-based provider of teeth whiteners.

The brands are seemingly complementary. Both sell grooming products. But merging them was challenging. Having been combined post-acquisition, they now function separately.

In our recent conversation, Steckling addressed launching Brio, acquiring Ollie, and lessons learned along the way. 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 run two direct-to-consumer businesses. Our core brand is called Brio. We make grooming tools for men, namely a beard trimmer. Ollie is an oral care company that started as a subscription-based teeth whitening strip. We acquired that brand in 2022 and then rolled all of our toothbrush stuff into it. Since then, we’ve developed our own toothpaste and related products.

Initially after the acquisition we ran both brands from Brio’s site. But we realized it made sense to separate them, with the oral-care content on one site and the trimming and grooming items on another.

Ollie was on its own when we bought it. I made some missteps in integrating it with our business. We switched subscription platforms twice and lost many subscribers. We merged it with Brio, but now it’s on its own.

On the Brio side, we can acquire customers profitably from the first sale, but beard trimmers last for years. We have to acquire new customers constantly.

Ollie is the opposite. Getting folks to buy an electric toothbrush is tough. But they come back and purchase brush heads for years.

Bandholz: You’re in a competitive space. How do you stand out?

Steckling: My perspective has changed after 10 years. We can stand out because the big brands have made terrible products in the last 15 years, not necessarily on the high-end, but the $30 versions. The $20 to $50 trimmers from major brands are not very good. That leaves the door open for us. Plus, our customer service is superior. If a customer has a problem with his trimmer, I will help immediately. He would never get that with a major company.

I did a deep dive into Andis, a legacy U.S. trimmer brand. It’s a fascinating story. The company started in Racine, Wisconsin, about 100 years ago as an electric motor supplier. They were good at making motors. But they eventually shifted into a big-box retail business, making $20 items.

It’s an example of big companies leaving gaps in the market that ecommerce brands like us can fill.

Bandholz: You sell on your own sites and on Amazon.

Steckling: All of our Amazon sales are from our own marketing, more or less. In 2014 our revenue was 100% on Amazon. It’s shifted over the years. It’s now mostly on our websites.

We’re not getting any free sales on Amazon. Everyone that buys there looks for us. Our listings are not showing up when folks search for beard products. Still, if we’re not there, we’ll lose the sale for branded searches.

So we’re leaving money on the table if we’re not on Amazon. But it’s a huge pain. There’s a ton I hate about Amazon. We’ve had so much trouble. They lose inventory, deactivate listings, hackers take over our listings, change the photos. You name it, and it’s gone wrong. String and tape hold the system together. It was built 20 years ago and has so many unfixable legacy problems. Although this year, Amazon has been much better.

Bandholz: You have a good system for finding influencers.

Steckling: It helps to have relationship managers coordinating affiliates, influencers, and content.

The most important thing when finding the right influencers is the niche. What is their expertise relative to your products? That, to me, has been the most significant differentiator for conversions. We almost ignore the number of followers because expertise and persuasiveness are much more critical. We’ve had videos with millions of views that didn’t sell anything and others with thousands of views that sold a lot.

With Brio, the best influencers focus on men’s grooming. We’ve tried fitness, automotive, and other male audiences. They don’t work as well. For Ollie we’ve had dentists address niche topics and include our product. The video might get just a few thousand views, but conversion is massive.

Bandholz: Where can people buy your trimmers and teeth whiteners?

Steckling: For the trimmers, go to Brio4life.com. To buy our whiteners and Sonic toothbrushes,  OllieSmile.com is the place. Find me on LinkedIn.