Show cover of Minds of Ecommerce

Minds of Ecommerce

You often hear stories of ecommerce companies that have grown at record speed. What’s their secret? On the Minds of Ecommerce podcast find out what key strategy helped the most successful ecommerce stores scale beyond the million. Raphael Paulin-Daigle interviews the top ecommerce entrepreneurs and executives to get you straight-to-the-point, no-BS insights to learn from and apply right away. Listen to Minds of Ecommerce if you want to hear from the world's most impressive ecommerce entrepreneurs and executives and learn the secrets that brought success to their ecommerce brands. Minds of Ecommerce is FOR YOU if you are: An ECOMMERCE ENTREPRENEUR looking to find new or little known strategies to increase your average order value, conversions, and online sales.... (episode #7) An ECOMMERCE EXECUTIVE looking to improve margins and lifetime value of your customers with a smarter Facebook ad strategy. (episode #6) A DIGITAL MARKETER who wants to learn marketing strategies and tactics that are rarely talked about, but that have been used successfully to grow companies to 9 figures. (episode #5) Your host, Raphael Paulin-Daigle is the founder of SplitBase, a conversion rate optimization agency that helps fashion, lifestyle and luxury brands, such as Kiehl's, Mackage and DIFF Eyewear, increase conversions. Other podcasts take 60 minutes to get their points across, and you probably find yourself frustrated that it has to take so much of your time to learn a just few things. Raphael does the same thing in 20 mins or less on this podcast. Free of pointless conversations, this podcast is all about action. Inspired by Shopify, Magento, SalesForce, eCommerce Fuel, Ezra Firestone, Business of Fashion, Loose Threads, Luxury Ecommerce. Follow Raphael on Twitter: @Rpaulindaigle Learn more about SplitBase, and get your website reviewed at SplitBase.com

Tracks

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8/20/19 • 02:05

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

9/4/19 • 23:49

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

9/4/19 • 24:53

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

9/4/19 • 20:27

Nik Sharma was Director of DTC at Hint water, the fastest-growing non-alcoholic beverage brand. Within 1 year of Nik joining, Hint was named one of 'IAB's 250 Direct Brands To Watch for 2018', an award given to the fastest-growing DTC brands. Nik also led DTC ecommerce at VaynerMedia, and worked with brands to build audiences, such as Complex Media, Bustle Media Group, Refinery29, and others. In this episode, he shares step-by-step an online ad strategy that helped Hint Water become a $100M business, along with tips and tricks, mistakes to avoid, and examples that will help you apply this strategy to your ecommerce business too.

9/4/19 • 20:02

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

9/4/19 • 22:54

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

9/4/19 • 22:15

Cathryn Lavery is co-founder and CEO of BestSelf Co. Along with her co-founder Allan Brouwer, they took the ecommerce company from zero to 8-figures in less than two years. In this episode, Cathryn shares how they've utilized user-generated content on their product pages and marketing campaigns to disarm customer objections and increase website conversion rates, used challenges to drive engagement, and other tips and tricks that allowed BestSelf to be the only company to win both Shopify awards (Build a Business and Build a Bigger Business) consecutively.

9/4/19 • 23:51

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

9/4/19 • 18:50

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

9/11/19 • 22:20

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

9/27/19 • 25:41

Adam Trouncer is the CEO of Athletic Greens, an 8-figure, direct-to-consumer, subscription-focused, ecommerce brand that sells a daily supplement of the same name. In this episode, Adam shares how they've doubled the business by focusing on creating a better brand and product experience for customers, how to calculate the ROI of a better customer experience, strategies to communicate to your different customer personas, and so much more. You do not want to miss this one.

10/4/19 • 23:37

Tyler "Sully" Sullivan, is the founder of BombTech Golf, an ecommerce company selling Golf equipment, and he also runs eCom Growers, an email marketing agency. In this episode, Sully shares how he built BombTech Golf to over $7M in annual ecommerce sales, with only 2 employees, through highly engaging marketing campaigns. He dives deep into how he does email marketing to build relationships with his customers, validates new products, and achieves super successful product launches. We also talk about how he approaches paid ads and keeps all of his marketing strategies super simple, while still growing the business.

10/17/19 • 29:21

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

11/1/19 • 27:04

Brad Pedersen is a serial entrepreneur who's built companies with revenues ranging from 7 to 9 figures, and with up to 130 employees. Recently, he co-founded a direct-to-consumer ecommerce company called Pela Case, which has been growing 4000% since its inception 2 years ago. They've also ranked #20, amongst the Growth 500 in Canada. Brad is an all-star at hiring and operations, and in this episode he'll share actionable strategies on how to hire the right team members for your team, starting with how to format the job posting to maximize success, all the way to the structure of the job interviews. His hiring process is one of the key aspects of Pela's astronomical growth, and you'll learn it all in this episode.

11/8/19 • 26:16

Andrew Youderian built and sold numerous eCommerce stores. He now runs eCommerceFuel, a highly curated community of 7-figure+ eCommerce merchants. Over the years, he’s seen what works, and what doesn’t in terms of growth strategies, and what opportunities lie ahead for merchants in the coming year. He's also recently released his State of the Merchant Report, and he'll share with us the top insights. In this episode, you'll learn who should sell on Amazon (and why you may not want to), the top marketing opportunities for the coming year, and much more.

11/22/19 • 22:58

Andreas Palm, is the co-founder of CDLP, a DTC premium men's underwear brand who's been featured in major publications such as Vogue and GQ, and got into Mr Porter, SSENSE, Barney's and Selfridges right from the start! In this episode, the first of the podcast's 2nd season - Andreas explains why they chose to get into department stores early, HOW they did it, and how they've built a brand that's emotionally charged. You don't want to miss this one.

3/17/20 • 29:28

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

3/27/20 • 24:10

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

4/17/20 • 24:20

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

5/20/20 • 26:32

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

3/9/22 • 20:55

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

3/16/22 • 20:14

Chris Meade is the co-founder and CMO of CROSSNET, the world's first four-way volleyball game. The brand has had solid growth over the years, and they've also worked really to deploy their capital in the most efficient ways possible as they scale. One way they're doing that is by primarily hiring freelancers instead of full-time employees. How can any DTC brand replicate the success they've had with freelancers? What mistakes are brands doing when hiring them? And how do you keep freelancers as accountable as full-time staff? The answers, and more, will be found in this episode.

3/23/22 • 21:12

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

4/6/22 • 19:20

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

4/27/22 • 24:05

Ashvin Melwani is the co-founder and CMO of supplement company Obvi. Like most DTC brands, the recent changes with Facebook ads have hit them hard, but they managed to emerge from those challenges with quite a bit of success, mostly by focusing on A/B testing and landing pages. In this episode, we discuss how Obvi reduced their Cost Per Acquisition (CPA) by 57% through landing pages and on-site testing, how long it took them to get results from optimization, and Ash's top tips for brands looking to boost ad performance through CRO and landing pages.

8/25/22 • 25:07

Stephen Pinto is Director of Product Management at Dr. Squatch, one of the fastest-growing brands in the DTC space. In this episode, Stephen shares how they've scaled Dr. Squatch beyond American borders, starting with Canada, and then Europe, while keeping operations lean and efficient.

11/30/22 • 21:44

Suzie Cyrenne is the Co-founder of Zumalka, a company that delivers natural and homeopathic pet supplements for holistic pet wellness. For over a decade, Suzie has nurtured and cared for pets in over 70 countries through Zumalka’s natural alternatives and the company’s dedication to pet well-being.  A certified homeopath who co-founded her first business in 2013, Suzie's roots are deeply entrenched in entrepreneurship. She is also the Co-founder and COO of Buster Fetcher™, an automated tracking system that helps businesses cut shipping costs and boost profit margins. In addition, Suzie hosts the Women Powering Ecommerce Podcast, inspiring others with valuable business lessons for exceptional leadership. In this episode… Generating relevant and productive traffic to a website is a primary goal for online businesses. However, many online brands are still determining the most effective approaches for getting leads. How do you generate leads that, in turn, grow your ecommerce business significantly? Founder and seasoned entrepreneur Suzie Cyrenne navigates business with the mindset that content is critical to realizing ecommerce growth. Creating relevant content and in-depth guides has been fundamental to her entrepreneurial success, seeing a skyrocket in traffic and sales on her ecommerce website. According to Suzie, SEO and content marketing have numerous advantages over traditional advertising methods and paid ads. With content marketing, businesses can gain customers’ trust by delivering messages that resonate with them. Content provides long-term value when combined with strategic outreach, SEO optimization, and CRO audits.  In this episode of the Minds of Ecommerce Podcast, Raphael Paulin-Daigle sits down with Suzie Cyrenne, Co-founder of Zumalka and Buster Fetcher™, as she unpacks her SEO strategies for increased visibility, traffic, and sales. Suzie highlights the benefits of SEO over paid ads and provides tips on how to make the most of your content marketing efforts. You will also learn how to scale your business with freelancers and conversion optimization tactics for increased ROI.

11/8/23 • 23:25

Alexandra Zatarain is the Co-founder and Vice President of Brand and Marketing at Eight Sleep, a sleep fitness company specializing in smart mattresses and mattress covers that heat and cool to regulate body temperature. Before launching the San Francisco-based startup, Alexandra worked in public relations in New York City. At Eight Sleep, she leads the company’s brand marketing strategies and partnerships with health-conscious technologists and elite athletes such as Lewis Hamilton and Justin Medeiros.  In 2017, Alexandra was included in the Forbes 30 Under 30 in Consumer Technology list, and in 2020, Inc. recognized her as one of the Top 100 Female Founders. Alexandra is also an angel investor in female-founded companies as a scout for Cleo Capital and an Advisor at The NORTH by Female Founder Collective. She is passionate about end-to-end funnel management including paid acquisition on digital and offline channels, CRM, affiliate and partnerships, and ecommerce optimization.  In this episode… According to the Association of National Advertisers, 75% of businesses use influencer marketing as part of their online strategy. However, only 36% of marketers are satisfied with the ROI on brand partnerships, while 19% find it unprofitable — an underwhelming success rate. How can brands build effective influencer marketing campaigns?  Effective brand partnership entails more than understanding the demographics of your target audience or getting brand mentions. Having spearheaded some of the most notable influencer partnerships in online mattress sales, marketing expert Alexandra Zatarain advocates authenticity, relationship building, and respect for the audience as crucial aspects of brand partnership. The foundation of an impactful brand awareness project entails melding genuineness, transparency, and relatability in brand storytelling. This foundation cultivates relationships with prospects and converts them into buyers. Alexandra reveals the relationship-building strategies that scaled her company’s revenue to an over $500 million valuation.  In this episode of the Minds of Ecommerce Podcast, join Raphael Paulin-Daigle as he chats with the Co-founder and VP of Brand and Marketing at Eight Sleep, Alexandra Zatarain. They delve into the nuances of effective influencer marketing through authentic storytelling and relationship building. Alexandra shares the inspiration and technology behind Eight Sleep’s Pod and how the company scales its revenue by collaborating with high performers and influencers in various fields.   

11/15/23 • 25:21

Jordan Nathan is the Founder and CEO of Caraway, a fast-growing direct-to-consumer cookware brand. Launched in 2019, Caraway is on a mission to create well-designed, non-toxic, ceramic-coated home goods. Before founding his own company, Jordan was the CEO of Vremi, a kitchen and home goods company owned by the Mohawk Group. His strategic vision and leadership have been instrumental in Caraway's exponential growth and partnerships with notable wholesalers, including Amazon, Nordstrom, Zola, and West Elm. A graduate of consumer psychology from Colby College, Jordan was a Forbes 30 Under 30 honoree in the retail and ecommerce category in 2018. In this episode… Growing a new D2C brand is a challenging endeavor fraught with potential pitfalls, including a competitive market, high customer acquisition costs, and the demand for personalized customer experiences. How do you create a hyper-successful product development blueprint that can be scaled to meet the needs of a growing customer base? Jordan Nathan, who runs a rapidly growing D2C brand, is an expert on this topic. When he launched Caraway, the brand only offered its core product — a cookware set. Jordan pivoted to fill a gap in the homeware bundling space, offering curated sets based on targeted market research and customer surveys. This new strategy worked out well, and the brand has since expanded to retailers and Amazon, with sets and bundles playing a vital role in the brand’s growth. He emphasizes the importance of being intentional in product development to ensure you deliver value to your customers.  In this episode of Minds of Ecommerce Podcast, host Raphael Paulin-Daigle interviews Jordan Nathan, Founder and CEO of Caraway, to discuss Caraway's breakout product bundling and merchandising strategy. Jordan unpacks the details behind his company's highly successful product development blueprint and provides valuable insights on scaling a D2C ecommerce brand.

11/22/23 • 21:52