DTC Podcast
Weekly conversations between disruptive direct-to-consumer ecommerce brands and the show's team about marketing, funnels, and scaling. The podcast covers practical tactics and insights for DTC growth. Listeners can also subscribe to the newsletter for highlights and step-by-step advice.
Episodes
DTC to Retail: How Flex Reached 30,000 Stores After Turning Down Target Twice
When should a DTC brand move into retail? Flex founder Lauren Schulte Wang said no to Target twice, and retail is now over 60% of revenue. She waited until her supply chain and her marketing engine could handle it, and she went because customers told her every month that they wanted to buy the product in a store.On the DTC Podcast, Lauren tells Eric Dyck how Flex got from a landing page with 200,0
AI Agents for Ad Creative: The Workflow Saving a Pilothouse Strategist 5.5 Hours a Week
How can AI agents speed up ad creative for a DTC brand? Braydon, a creative strategist at Pilothouse, has agents build his swipe file every Monday and Claude write his design tickets, which saved him five and a half hours last week.Braydon joins Eric Dyck on All Killer No Filler to walk through the full workflow. Grok Bot handles the research with a chief of staff agent that manages a team of sub-
The New Fundamentals of Brand Strategy (While Shipping Hundreds of Ads a Week), With Eugene Healey
Brand strategist Eugene Healey on DTC marketing at high creative volume: why creative is the new targeting, why brand books fail with creators, and how teams approve hundreds of ads a week.How do you keep a DTC brand coherent when you're shipping that much creative? Eugene says the fundamentals of brand still hold. The job around them has moved from controlling every campaign to orchestrating
Black Friday Discount Strategy for DTC Brands Hooked on 30% Off | AKNF
How do you run Black Friday when your DTC brand is already hooked on discounts? Split your customers into new and repeat, keep the coupon-trained cohorts on their deal, and use the Black Friday offer to bring in new customers who have never seen your 30% off.On the second DTC Rundown, Eric Dyck is joined by Jordan Gordon, who leads email and retention at Pilothouse, and Rafael Gi, who works on par
How to Test Connected TV for a DTC Brand: $20K a Month for 60 Days | Harness the Halo 4/6
Carve Designs gave connected TV 60 days at a $20K monthly minimum before deciding it worked, which is about as clean a test as a DTC brand runs on a new channel. The lift showed up first in direct traffic and search, and conversion rates rose across channels for customers who had seen the ads.Hannah Fleming runs performance marketing at Carve Designs, the coastal apparel brand that grew out of swi
How Terra Kaffe Pre-Sold 10,000 Espresso Machines With No Reviews
How do you grow a DTC brand without a big brand awareness budget? Terra Kaffe founder Sahand Dilmaghani pre-sold 10,000 espresso machines from a single page with no reviews, and word of mouth has been the top reason customers buy every month for five years.On the DTC Podcast, Sahand tells Eric Dyck how he left investment banking to bootstrap a super automatic espresso machine, what he cut to get i
Meta Partnership Ads Now Make Up 30 to 50% of the Ads on Our Biggest Accounts
What are Meta partnership ads, and how should a DTC brand test them before Q4? They run through a creator's handle with your brand tagged, so Meta combines both accounts' engagement signals, and Pilothouse typically sees lower CPMs on them than on ads from the brand handle alone.Jacob Geary runs Meta accounts at Pilothouse and joins Eric Dyck on All Killer No Filler to lay out how partners
Raising Prices in DTC: How Last Crumb Sells a $140 Cookie Box
How do you raise prices on a DTC brand without killing demand?Derek Jaeger founded Last Crumb in 2020, priced a box of cookies at $110, then moved it to $140. He says that is when the company took off. Eric Dyck gets the full DTC marketing story on the DTC Podcast: pricing as positioning, ecommerce growth without a repeat purchase, and why he killed the weekly drop model that made the brand famous
Google Ads Brand Keywords: Cut 80% of Brand Spend, Buy New Customers Instead
How much of your Google Ads budget goes to your own brand name? Most DTC marketing teams cannot answer that, and the brands defending an ambiguous brand term are paying for customer acquisition they already had. Wildflower Cases is spending the large majority of roughly $3,500 a month on the single term "wildflower," according to SEMrush.Pilothouse Senior Google Media Buyer Zav audits th
Under $50M: Half the Trade Budget Goes to Retail Media | Harness the Halo 3/6
To Subscribe to DTC Newsletter - https://dtcnews.link/signupA brand doing under $50 million a year is putting roughly half of its combined retail media, trade, and shopper marketing budget into retail media. At larger companies that share drops toward 30, 20, then 15 percent. Mike Chiasson works on Keen's models, which cover $45 billion in marketing investment, and his read on where that money
Bonus: Send Less, Earn More: What Brevo's Data Says About Email Volume and Conversion
To Subscribe to DTC Newsletter - https://dtcnews.link/signupMost ecommerce brands are paying for every contact in the database, including the tens of thousands they have not mailed in a year. Then they mail them anyway, because they are paying for them. Channing Ferrer argues both halves of that are costing you money, and he has his own company's data to back the second half.Brevo studied its
Ep 646: Neil Patel: Why Your Leads Are Down 40% and Your Revenue Is Up
https://directtoconsumer.typeform.com/DTC-Brand?utm_source=podcast-646&utm_medium=podcastTo Subscribe to DTC Newsletter - https://dtcnews.link/signupnpdigital.comEric told Neil Patel that Pilothouse is now getting about 30% of its inbound from ChatGPT, with higher close rates and bigger deals. Neil's response: "I guarantee your leads are down overall. Would you confirm or disagree wit
Ep 645: DTC Rundown: "Don't Run Ads Until $10M?," Evergreen vs Campaigns, and Sites Built for the Wrong Customer
https://directtoconsumer.typeform.com/DTC-Brand?utm_source=podcast-645&utm_medium=podcastTo Subscribe to DTC Newsletter - https://dtcnews.link/signuppilothouse.co"There is absolutely no reason you should touch paid ads until you're doing five to ten million in revenue."That was Codie Sanchez, and the post went wide enough that DTC marketers spent a week arguing about whether they
Ep 644: 77% of AI Shoppers Want a Recommendation: Phillip Jackson on the New Bottom of the Funnel
https://directtoconsumer.typeform.com/DTC-Brand?utm_source=podcast-644&utm_medium=podcastTo Subscribe to DTC Newsletter - https://dtcnews.link/signupPhillip Jackson has spent 22 years in ecommerce, first building the software, then running agency strategy, and now running Future Commerce (futurecommerce.com), where the operating thesis is that commerce is culture.If you are a founder, brand le
Ep 643: Amazon Fees Hit 40%: How to Claw Back Margin and Stop Wasting Ad Spend (Pilothouse)
https://directtoconsumer.typeform.com/DTC-Brand?utm_source=podcast-643&utm_medium=podcastTo Subscribe to DTC Newsletter - https://dtcnews.link/signuppilothouse.coIn 2020, Amazon's fees ran about 26% of your product cost. Today they run 34 to 40%, and once you add advertising most brands are at 50 to 60% before they reinvest a dollar. For the first time in years, the number of sellers on Am
How Once Upon a Farm's DTC Ads Grew Its Retail Business | Harness the Halo 2/6
To Subscribe to DTC Newsletter - https://dtcnews.link/signupOnce Upon a Farm did $85.4 million in Q2, up 42% year over year, and reached 6.2% of US households against 5.0% a year earlier. Some of that growth traces back to a campaign that was never supposed to produce it. They were running lower-funnel media to their own site, a clean shop-now call to action, the kind of campaign you judge by tomo
Ep 642: Kick or Keep These Trends with DÔEN's Ashley Kick: AI Creative, TikTok Shop, Amazon, and Branded Resale
https://directtoconsumer.typeform.com/DTC-Brand?utm_source=podcast-642&utm_medium=podcastTo Subscribe to DTC Newsletter - https://dtcnews.link/signupAshley Kick runs ecommerce at DÔEN (shopdoen.com), the Los Angeles apparel brand founded by sisters Margaret and Katherine Kleveland. Eric met her at the Whalies giving hot takes on stage, so this episode is a new format built for exactly that: Wo
Ep 641: Creator-Handle Ads Ran 70% More Efficient: Aves on Creative Coverage and Hyper Relevant Ads
https://directtoconsumer.typeform.com/DTC-Brand?utm_source=podcast-641&utm_medium=podcastTo Subscribe to DTC Newsletter - https://dtcnews.link/signuppilothouse.coDTC Twitter has spent the last few months arguing about volume versus strategy. Aves from Pilothouse thinks both camps are answering the wrong question. Eric brings her back for an all killer no filler on creative coverage: what it me
Bonus: $65M Exit, Zero Employees: How Olauto Automates Everything Except Customer Service
To Subscribe to DTC Newsletter - https://dtcnews.link/signupTyler Handley sold Inkbox to BIC for $65 million. His new company, Olauto, sells a $33 car air freshener, launched last September, is already profitable, and has zero employees. Four people, some contractors, and AI running the back office. The one thing they refuse to automate: when a customer emails, a human answers. Every time.The guy
Ep 640: 2x LTV From Loyalty Without Discounting: Carve Designs on Retention, Direct Mail, and CTV
https://directtoconsumer.typeform.com/DTC-Brand?utm_source=podcast-640&utm_medium=podcastTo Subscribe to DTC Newsletter - https://dtcnews.link/signupHannah Fleming runs performance marketing at Carve Designs (carvedesigns.com), the Northern California swim and apparel brand founded in 2003 and acquired by Komar Brands in December 2025. Before Carve she spent years at Amer Sports on the digital
Ep 639: "The Creative Is the Brief": Pilothouse on AI Storefronts and a 20-21% Conversion Rate Lift
https://directtoconsumer.typeform.com/DTC-Brand?utm_source=podcast-639&utm_medium=podcastTo Subscribe to DTC Newsletter - https://dtcnews.link/signupMedia owns the traffic. Brand owns the site. The page in between belongs to nobody, and it's been sitting in a Notion doc called landing page priorities Q3 since 2022.Eric brings Daniel from Pilothouse back for an all killer no filler on the p
What Brands Really Spend on Marketing: 15% at $10M, 2% at $1B | Harness the Halo 1/6
Subscribe to DTC Newsletter - https://dtcnews.link/signupA brand doing $10 to $15 million a year puts 15 to 20 percent of revenue back into marketing. At $100 to $500 million it drops to roughly 8 to 10 percent. Past a billion it is 2 to 3 percent. Justin Jefferson has a view across 450 brands and $45 billion in media investment, and those numbers are the opening for a harder conversation about wh
Ep 638: Life After the $260M Exit: Hiya's Adam Gillman on USANA, Target, and Going Global
https://directtoconsumer.typeform.com/DTC-Brand?utm_source=podcast-638&utm_medium=podcastSubscribe to DTC Newsletter - https://dtcnews.link/signupAdam Gillman co-founded Hiya Health (hiyahealth.com), the kids' vitamin brand that launched in March 2020, stayed bootstrapped, and sold to USANA at the end of 2024 at a reported $260M valuation. He and his co-founder Darren still run it, and 202
Ep 637: "Find Them Now, Sell Them in November": Pilothouse's 8-Week Black Friday Prep Playbook
https://directtoconsumer.typeform.com/DTC-Brand?utm_source=podcast-637&utm_medium=podcastSubscribe to DTC Newsletter - https://dtcnews.link/signuppilothouse.coEvery year around this time, Eric and Jacob record some version of this episode. This is their seventh Black Friday together, and the through-line hasn't changed: brands sprint through summer, look up at the end of October, and reali
Ep 636: Inside Kiyoko Beauty's Organic Content Machine: 15 Videos a Day, Sub-$1 CPMs, 8 Figures in Sales
https://directtoconsumer.typeform.com/DTC-Brand?utm_source=podcast-636&utm_medium=podcastSubscribe to DTC Newsletter - https://dtcnews.link/signupFifteen videos in a shoot day. A writer's room where creators cross-edit each other's scripts. Hair, makeup, and wardrobe walkthroughs before anyone hits record. This is what organic content looks like at Kiyoko Beauty (kiyoko.ca), the curate
Ep 635: "Sit With the Panic": Meta Volatility, Pausing Ads, and AI Cognitive Debt with Pilothouse (After Hours)
Subscribe to DTC Newsletter - https://dtcnews.link/signuppilothouse.coMeta has been up and down since the outage a few weeks back, and the timeline is full of advertisers feeling it. So Eric pulled three of Pilothouse's most senior people onto the after-hours couch: Abby and Aves from the creative and strategy side, and Taylor from the Meta side, for a live conversation about what to do when t
Ep 634: 10,000 Orders in 6 Months Selling Protein Couscous: Bar Bruhis on Launching Boostcous
Subscribe to DTC Newsletter - https://dtcnews.link/signupBar Bruhis spent ten years building SaaS for Shopify brands. He helped start one of the first email capture tools in 2015, then co-founded KnoCommerce, the post-purchase survey tool 6,500 brands use. In December he finally took his own leap: Boostcous (boostcous.com), the first protein couscous. Six months later he's about to cross 10,00
Ep 633: Why Your Winning Meta Ad Dies in 8 Days, and What to Test Instead
Subscribe to DTC Newsletter - https://dtcnews.link/signupLiam Robinson and Nate Vankoughnet were two of Pilothouse's first employees and spent years scaling some of its biggest accounts on Meta. Now they've spun out Marlbank Digital (website coming soon), a Meta-only agency built for the brands Pilothouse moved past as it went upmarket: pre-launch up to $100K/month.Want them in your ad acc
Ep 632: SheFit on TikTok Shop's Hidden Costs and Why Your New Customer Numbers Are Wrong
Subscribe to DTC Newsletter - https://dtcnews.link/signupMelissa Dusendang ran a summer contract at SheFit to "manage the chaos" for one marketing director. She never left. Years later she runs ecommerce and operations, and her actual job is stopping the company from lying to itself with its own data.If you own the P&L, the dashboard, or the customer experience, this one is for you.
Ep 631: Cracking Profitable, Incremental Scale on Applovin with Pilothouse
Subscribe to DTC Newsletter - https://dtcnews.link/signupAppLovin just opened to everyone, and most DTC operators still do not know how it actually works. Jacob runs Meta at Pilothouse, which has spent on AppLovin for nearly two years, back when it was invite only.He breaks down what he sees in real client accounts: the product price points that work, the creative volume it takes to scale, and the
Bonus: How One Brand Recovered $1.5M in Amazon Sales From Unauthorized Sellers
Subscribe to DTC Newsletter - https://dtcnews.link/signupMost brands treat unauthorized sellers and copycats as a cost of doing business. Mario Simonyan treats them as your biggest untapped revenue source.Mario is a former Amazon seller turned brand protection attorney. He started selling kitchenware and artificial turf doormats out of his driveway during law school, got ripped off, and discovered
Ep 630: "The Best Ads Say Nothing" | Ari Murray, Chief Digital Officer at Salt & Stone
Subscribe to DTC Newsletter - https://dtcnews.link/signupAri Murray runs DTC, Amazon and customer experience at Salt & Stone. She came from Sharma Brands, and before that worked on influencer and celebrity brands including a Kardashian line and Halsey's beauty brand. She started as a customer service agent.In this episode she breaks down why the old brand-versus-performance argument is col
Ep 629: 85% of Your Email Revenue Comes From One Segment (And You're Ignoring It)
Subscribe to DTC Newsletter - https://dtcnews.link/signupJordan Gordon runs CRO and retention at Pilothouse and hosts TWBERP, The World's Best Email and Retention Podcast. He has audited somewhere in the range of 400 to 500 brands and been inside more Klaviyo accounts than almost anyone in DTC.In this All Killer No Filler episode he breaks down why most email programs are structurally backward
Bonus: The CTV Blueprint for DTC Brands: Build in Summer, Convert in Q4 (Paramount Ads Manager)
Subscribe to DTC Newsletter - https://dtcnews.link/signupMost DTC brands put the bulk of their paid budget where attention is thinnest. Viewers spend about 99 minutes per session on Connected TV and 8 minutes per session on social, yet only 9% of standard marketing budgets go to CTV. This episode is about closing that gap on CTV with the same measurement & targeting you get on social (starting
Ep 628: How Unbound Merino Bootstrapped to Nine Figures Selling $90 T-Shirts
Subscribe to DTC Newsletter - https://dtcnews.link/signupDan bootstrapped Unbound Merino from a Reddit-fueled obsession with merino wool into a brand approaching nine figures in lifetime revenue, with a warehouse sale, a growing women's line, and zero outside funding.In his second appearance on the DTC Podcast, the Unbound co-founder gets specific about what actually moved the business over th
Ep 627: Why Nick Shackelford's Personal Brand Saved His Cash Flow | Agency Confidential Preview
Subscribe to DTC Newsletter - https://dtcnews.link/signupThis week on All Killer No Filler, we're giving you a preview of Agency Confidential, the new podcast from our co-founder Jeff, and this episode's is a truly killer.Jeff sits down with Nick Shackelford, who's everywhere in DTC. Three agencies (Structured, Konstant, Lucid), an events business, and a decade of showing up on every f
Ep 626: How Wolfe Sells Gifting to Everyone: Top of Funnel Testing, CTV, and AI
Subscribe to DTC Newsletter - https://dtcnews.link/signupGifting is one of the biggest reasons people buy online, and most brands never build for it on purpose.Matt Heckathorn runs digital marketing at Wolfe, the company behind Gift Card Granny, PerfectGift.com, and GiftYa. His ICP is close to everyone, which kills the usual narrow-audience playbook and forces a different approach to growth.What y
Ep 625: Brand Salience for DTC: Turning Creative Into Your Targeting Layer
Subscribe to DTC Newsletter - https://dtcnews.link/signupMeta used to let you pick your customer in the backend. Those days are over. Post-Andromeda, the creative itself carries the targeting signal, which means the old spray-and-pray playbook now works against you.Rafael Gi spent a decade in traditional creative agencies, then led marketing at a nine-figure apparel brand, and now runs strategic g
Ep 624: How Cove Soda Builds an Email and SMS List With No DTC, Trading Full Cans for Signups at Events
Subscribe to DTC Newsletter - https://dtcnews.link/signupMost list-growth advice assumes you have a website people visit. Cove Soda doesn't. They sell zero sugar soda in roughly 7,000 retail doors with no real DTC store, which means no site traffic, no purchase pop-ups, and no easy email capture.Zoe Kahn runs marketing for Cove as interim VP. In this episode she breaks down how a retail-first bran
Ep 623: Your Google Product Feed Is the Most Overlooked Lever in AI Shopping (with Pilothouse)
Subscribe to DTC Newsletter - https://dtcnews.link/signupGoogle search is changing under everyone's feet. AI overviews are eating the top of the funnel, exact match stopped being exact years ago, and shoppers now type full paragraphs instead of two keywords. Doug, who leads Google at Pilothouse, breaks down what actually came out of Google Marketing Live 2026 and what DTC operators should do a
Ep 622: How Outway Runs Canada and the US as Two Separate Businesses
Most brands expand into the US and treat it like the same business with a different shipping label. Outway learned it is not.Taylor Fraser is the Chief Growth Officer at Outway, the Canadian performance sock brand. In this episode he breaks down why Outway now runs Canada and the US as two distinct businesses, why he dropped retargeting on Meta entirely, and why a sub eight-figure brand cannot opt
Ep 621: Anything is possible now – The AI Creative Stack
Subscribe to DTC Newsletter - https://dtcnews.link/signupBraydon from Pilothouse joins for a fast AI check-in on what the team is actually shipping right now. Not theory. The exact tools, prompts, and workflows behind their current creative output.If you run growth or creative at a DTC brand or agency, this is a look at how one team is collapsing production time on landing pages, video ads, and fo
Bonus: Top of Funnel Collapse: How AI & AEO Are Changing Consumer Behavior & How Marketers Can Adapt
Subscribe to DTC Newsletter - https://dtcnews.link/signupThis episode, Kemberly Gong, VP of Marketing at Contentful, joins Eric to walk through what some marketing leaders are calling “The Great Content Collapse”, and what marketers can actually do about it.The setup: 60% of Google searches now result in zero click-through, and replaced by GenAI models like AI overviews. LLMs already account for 5
Ep 620: How Origin Runs E-Commerce With AI Agents, From Media Buying to Diagnosing Defects
Subscribe to DTC Newsletter - https://dtcnews.link/signupOrigin owns its entire supply chain. The thread, the brass, the leather, the denim, all of it made or sourced in America, in their own factories. That sounds like a constraint. Justin Parker explains why it is actually the brand's biggest growth lever.Justin runs e-commerce at Origin, the American-made apparel brand born in jiu-jitsu gea
Ep 619: Stop Growth Hacking Your Brand to Death with Duncan From Pilothouse | AKNF
Subscribe to DTC Newsletter - https://dtcnews.link/signupMost brands are quietly killing themselves with growth hacks. Swapping button colors, chasing this week's ROI, discounting to hit the number.Duncan, Strategy Lead at Pilothouse, makes the case that this is the worst creative strategy there is, and walks through what actually builds a brand that lasts.Duncan runs strategy at Pilothouse, w
Bonus: How DÔEN, Origin & Universal Ads Actually Implement AI w/o Losing Their Brand | Whalies Panel
Subscribe to DTC Newsletter - https://dtcnews.link/signupRecorded live at The Whalies.Enterprise brands are past the prompt-and-generate phase of AI. The conversation has moved to connected data, agentic media buying, personalization, attribution, and the quiet operational wins that actually move the P&L.Eric Dyck sits down with Justin Parker (Origin), Ashley Kick (DÔEN), and Martha Ann Pavoni
Ep 618: Inside Tumble – Scaling a Nine-Figure Rug Brand
Subscribe to DTC Newsletter - https://dtcnews.link/signupMost founders want to be first in a category. Justin Soleimani and Zach Dannett did the opposite, and built Tumble into one of the standout washable rug brands without raising a dollar.In this episode, the Tumble co-founders and Co-CEOs break down how they entered a category Ruggable created, fixed the product complaints they found buried in
![Ep 617: How to Fix a Pooched Email Account: 10 Steps to Recover DTC Deliverability [TWBERP Preview]](https://d3t3ozftmdmh3i.cloudfront.net/staging/podcast_uploaded_episode/5327968/5327968-1780617230851-dac94df6c1978.jpg)
Ep 617: How to Fix a Pooched Email Account: 10 Steps to Recover DTC Deliverability [TWBERP Preview]
Subscribe to DTC Newsletter - https://dtcnews.link/signupThis Friday on AKNF we're handing over the feed for a special preview of The World's Best Email and Retention Podcast.Your email account doesn't break all at once. It rots. Open rates slide, a quarter of your sends quietly route to spam, your list keeps growing while the people who actually click disappear. Jordan Gordon calls th
Bonus: 100% Agentic on Meta at a $1B Brand | True Classic's Ben Diamond & Triple Whale's Maxx Blank
Subscribe to DTC Newsletter - https://dtcnews.link/signupRecorded live at True Classic HQ in Calabasas the day before the Whalies, this episode brings together two of the leaders most aggressively reshaping how ecommerce gets built.Ben Diamond is the CEO and co-founder of True Classic, the apparel brand that went from zero to over a billion in revenue in seven years and now ships to 190 countries.
Ep 616: How Neuro Built a Nine-Figure Smart Gum Brand Before Expanding to Retail.
Subscribe to DTC Newsletter - https://dtcnews.link/signupNeuro didn't fight for checkout shelf space first. They built a nine-figure online business through TikTok Shop, creator marketing, Amazon, and DTC, then used that momentum to walk into Walmart, Costco, CVS, and 7-Eleven with demand already proven.In this episode of the DTC Podcast, Eric talks with Brian Evangelista, Chief Commercial Off
Ep 615: Prepare Your Brand for Agentic Commerce (How LLMs Are Collapsing the Consideration Phase)
Subscribe to DTC Newsletter - https://dtcnews.link/signupThe consideration phase is collapsing thanks to LLM shopping.Awareness still happens on Meta. Conversion still happens on a PDP. But the comparison and research middle, the part brands have spent a decade optimizing, is increasingly happening inside an LLM the customer already trusts.20% of holiday shoppers used an LLM in their purchase path
Ep 614: Creative Is the New Conversion, Not Just Targeting -- Charlie Cole, Thuma
Subscribe to DTC Newsletter - https://dtcnews.link/signupCharlie Cole watched FTD go from a $1.8 billion publicly traded company to a $60 million bankruptcy auction in eight months. His first day as CEO was March 23, 2020, the first day of national lockdown.Before that he ran digital at Tumi, Samsonite, Lucky Brand, and Shift Nutrition. Today he's interim Chief Digital Officer at Thuma.This ep
Ep 613: AI Is a Stack of Two-by-Fours. What Are You Building With It? (Plus Meet Gary and Blanche)
Subscribe to DTC Newsletter - https://dtcnews.link/signupBraydon's back on AKNF with the most tactical AI-for-agencies episode we've recorded.Eric opens with a Jeff Shannon line worth the whole listen: AI right now is a giant stack of two-by-fours that everyone got handed for free. By itself, it's not a chair, it's not a house, it's not a sofa. The value shows up when someone a
Ep 612: The Bootstrap Beauty Brand Going Up Against BlackRock in Target – Megababe
Subscribe to DTC Newsletter - https://dtcnews.link/signupKatie Sturino built Megababe with 60,000 followers, two co-founders who'd never had chafe, and an MOQ of 20,000 units stacked in her parents' garage. Eight years later it's profitable, in Target, Walmart, CVS, Nordstrom, Anthropologie, and on Amazon. Never raised a dollar. Never grew less than 33% year over year.In this episode K
Ep 611: Velocity Isn't Strategy – Pilothouse on the Andromeda Creative Trap
Subscribe to DTC Newsletter - https://dtcnews.link/signupAbby and Taylor from Pilothouse settle the loudest debate in media buying right now: does velocity equal strategy?Short answer: no. Long answer: this whole episode.Inside, Abby (art) and Taylor (science) break down what a real creative system looks like under Andromeda, how to spot AI slop in an ad library at a glance, and why the squint tes
Ep 610: How Full Glass Built a $200M Wine Rollup by Fixing DTC Unit Economics
Subscribe to DTC Newsletter - https://dtcnews.link/signupGet your tickets to The Whalies: triplewhale.com/whalies?i=dtc&utm_source=dtc-newsletter&utm_medium=inf&utm_campaign=mkt-whaliesdtc-affiliate-426&utm_content=dtc Full Glass Wine Co.Neha Kumar joins the podcast to break down how Full Glass Wine Co. acquired 7 DTC wine companies, integrated them under one operating system, and
Ep 609: The New Rules for Meta Attribution (and the setting you need to test NOW)
Subscribe to DTC Newsletter - https://dtcnews.link/signupGet your tickets to The Whalies: triplewhale.com/whalies?i=dtc&utm_source=dtc-newsletter&utm_medium=inf&utm_campaign=mkt-whaliesdtc-affiliate-426&utm_content=dtc Meta attribution has changed, and most brands are still reading performance the same way they were a year ago.Jacob, Head of Socials at Pilothouse, walks through wha
Bonus: Revenue Is Lying to You: Planning, Execution and What Actually Drives Growth with Three Ships and Keen's Brand Study
Subscribe to DTC Newsletter - https://dtcnews.link/signupWe surveyed 540+ DTC operators on how they plan and forecast. This episode, we break down the data and see why most brands are stuck reacting. We’re joined by Laura Thompson, co-founder of Three Ships Beauty, one of the few who's figured out how to run a tight, fast, 8-figure brand without drifting into chaos, and Mike Chiasson, Senior S
Ep 608: She Hit 100K Customers Without Running a Single Ad | Roo & You
Subscribe to DTC Newsletter - https://dtcnews.link/signupGet your tickets to The Whalies: triplewhale.com/whalies?i=dtc&utm_source=dtc-newsletter&utm_medium=inf&utm_campaign=mkt-whaliesdtc-affiliate-426&utm_content=dtc Helen Smith built Roo & You from hand-sewn mask lanyards in 2020 into a 100,000+ customer brand, and didn't touch paid ads for the first 3.5 years. In this e
Ep 607: Rufus Reads Your Images – Why 40% of Amazon Searches Are Already AI-Driven
Subscribe to DTC Newsletter - https://dtcnews.link/signupGet your tickets to The Whalies: triplewhale.com/whalies?i=dtc&utm_source=dtc-newsletter&utm_medium=inf&utm_campaign=mkt-whaliesdtc-affiliate-426&utm_content=dtc Amazon’s AI assistant Rufus is already in ~40% of shopping sessions, and according to Amazon CEO Andy Jassy, customers who use it are 60–100% more likely to purchase
Ep 606: How Coyuchi Tested True Meta Incrementality (6-Week Blackout Results)
Subscribe to DTC Newsletter - https://dtcnews.link/signuphttp://coyuchi.comCoyuchi is a premium bedding brand with a long purchase cycle and high AOV. That changes how you approach growth, attribution, and retention.Vicki Williams-Grahan (Brand President) explains how they tested Meta’s impact by turning it off, how they think about LTV in a low-frequency category, and why product selection inside
Ep 605: Meta Attribution Change – Why ROAS Dropped 40%
Subscribe to DTC Newsletter - https://dtcnews.link/signupMeta changed attribution in March — and suddenly every brand’s ROAS looks worse.Chris Richards from Pilothouse breaks down what actually happened, why performance appears to have dropped 30–45%, and how brands should respond without damaging long-term growth.For DTC founders and operators scaling from $5M–$50M who rely on Meta as a core chan
Bonus: How DTC Brands Scale Affiliate Marketing Without Fraud or Bad Attribution
Subscribe to DTC Newsletter - https://dtcnews.link/signupAffiliate is getting a lot more attention in DTC right now, and for good reason. In this episode, Yash Chavan, Founder and CEO of SATHI & SARAL, breaks down why the channel looks so attractive on paper, where it falls apart in practice, and what brands can do to make it perform like a real growth engine.Claim your free trial and 20% acro
Ep 604: How Lexington Bakes Cut CAC From $180 to $25 With a Better First-Order Offer
Subscribe to DTC Newsletter - https://dtcnews.link/signuphttps://lexingtonbakes.com/Lex Evan built Lexington Bakes after years of baking for friends who kept telling him the same thing: they didn’t usually like desserts like this, but they loved his. That turned into a bootstrapped brand built on better ingredients, frozen and refrigerated distribution, and a refusal to follow the usual packaged d
Ep 603: Why Most DTC Brands Fail on YouTube (And How to Fix It in 60 Days)
Subscribe to DTC Newsletter - https://dtcnews.link/signupMost brands test YouTube, don’t see conversions, and shut it off.The problem isn’t the channel. It’s how they’re measuring it.Dougie from Pilothouse breaks down how YouTube actually drives growth for DTC brands, and why cost per brand search is one of the most useful signals to track early.For DTC founders and growth marketers spending $50K+
Bonus: How to Scale Amazon in 2026 – 3 Data Plays DTC Brands Are Still Missing
Subscribe to DTC Newsletter - https://dtcnews.link/signupBradley Sutton from Helium 10 joins the pod to break down how serious brands should be thinking about Amazon now: not as a backup channel, but as a core retail growth engine. We get into where Amazon fits in an omni-channel stack, how PPC has gotten way more complex, why Walmart and TikTok Shop matter more than most brands admit, and where s
Ep 602: How Bobbie Won 91% of the Conversation With 4% Market Share | Building the Brand
Subscribe to DTC Newsletter - https://dtcnews.link/signupKim Chappell is Chief Brand Officer at Bobbie, the mom-founded infant formula brand that’s crossed $100M in revenue and is trying to change how formula gets talked about in America. In this episode, she breaks down how Bobbie built a brand parents are proud to buy in a category that used to be driven by guilt, and why trust beats sheer creat
Ep 601: 25% of Your List Drives 75% of Revenue. The Dangers of AI Email Segmentation
Subscribe to DTC Newsletter - https://dtcnews.link/signupJordan Gordon from Pilothouse comes back to the DTC Podcast with a sharp warning for brands buying into AI-powered customer segmentation.The promise sounds good: send to the “best” people, cut waste, let the machine find hidden revenue. The problem is what happens after that.Jordan breaks down why over-segmentation can shrink your active lis
Ep 600: How Acid Buddy Got 1,000+ Orders in Its First 6 Weeks, Creating a New Category Behind the Bar
Subscribe to DTC Newsletter - https://dtcnews.link/signuphttp://cocktailbuddies.comTao, founder of Acid Buddy, joined the show to talk about a product that feels early, unusual, and potentially huge: flavored acids.After years working in bars and consulting, he kept running into the same issue. Citrus was inconsistent, messy, expensive, and limiting. So instead of treating acid like a background i
Ep 599: 3 Claude AI Workflows DTC Marketers Can Use to Save Hours Every Week
To Subscribe to DTC Newsletter - https://dtcnews.link/signupBraydon Germain from Pilot House is back on AKNF to break down how AI is changing the actual day-to-day of marketing work. This episode isn’t about shiny demos or abstract AI hype. It’s about using Claude like a real coworker: building skills, breaking work into micro-tasks, automating repeatable steps, and keeping human taste where it ma
Ep 598: 5 Content Pipes That Scale DTC Growth Beyond Meta Ads | Cherene Aubert
Subscribe to DTC Newsletter - https://dtcnews.link/signupCherene Aubert, founder of growthcapital.co and former growth leader at ILIA and Bobbie, breaks down why so many DTC brands hit a wall after early traction. The problem usually is not media buying. It’s weak creative systems, lazy offer strategy, and too much faith in Meta to do the marketing for you.For DTC founders and growth leads moving
Ep 597: How Jon Bond Built a $90M Agency with 27% Margins (and the “Tip of the Spear” Playbook)
Subscribe to DTC Newsletter - https://dtcnews.link/signupJoinAgency.coJon Bond has been in the agency game since the 1980s. He co-built Kirshenbaum Bond + Partners (K/B/B) from “two guys in New York” into one of the most talked-about independent agencies in the U.S., with peak scale hitting $90M revenue and 27% margins, and over $1B in billings (per the episode). In this conversation, Jon breaks d
Ep 596: 3 Shopify Hot-Fixes for AI Shopping: Kurt Elster on UCP, ChatGPT Referrals, and TikTok Shop
Subscribe to DTC Newsletter - https://dtcnews.link/signupKurt Elster is back to talk about what Shopify brands should actually be doing right now as AI starts influencing search, product discovery, and ecommerce workflows.For Shopify operators, DTC founders, and ecommerce marketers trying to stay ahead of rising CAC and AI-driven product discovery.This episode covers the stuff that’s easy to ignor
Ep 595: Where Will Your Growth Come From This Year? The 5-Message Creative System for Scaling DTC Strategically
Subscribe to DTC Newsletter - https://dtcnews.link/signupDuncan Ferguson, Strategy Lead at Pilothouse, breaks down why so many DTC brands are stuck in the tactical spin cycle, always testing, tweaking, and “optimizing” without a clear answer for where growth will actually come from. This episode gets into the difference between platform-centric marketing and a real growth system built around the c
Ep 594: How Odd Pieces Hit $500K on Kickstarter by Reinventing the Puzzle Category
Subscribe to DTC Newsletter - https://dtcnews.link/signupGinny Lo is the co-founder of Odd Pieces, a story-driven puzzle brand that took a tired category and made it feel fresh again. Instead of selling just another image-in-a-box, Odd Pieces built puzzles with narrative, hidden clues, comic-style storytelling, and reveal mechanics that make customers want the next one as soon as they finish the f
Ep 593: 3 Rules for Culturally Relevant DTC Ads That Still Convert on Meta
Subscribe to DTC Newsletter - https://dtcnews.link/signupAves and Daniel Sendecki get into a problem a lot of brands still haven’t solved: how do you make ads feel culturally relevant without making them cringe, tone deaf, or useless in performance channels? This episode breaks down why “brand voice” alone no longer carries paid social, how algorithmic feeds reward relevance over cleverness, and w
Bonus: 26% of Brands Reply in Real Time: The Conversational SMS Playbook That Wins More Orders
Subscribe to DTC Newsletter - https://dtcnews.link/signupWe co-authored The Conversational Report with Postscript to understand one simple question: when shoppers text brands back, what happens next? The punchline is uncomfortable. Customers treat texting like a real conversation, but most brands treat replies like a support inbox, or ignore them entirely. That gap is where a lot of abandoned cart
Ep 592: $250K Kickstarter to West Elm: How Bearaby Built a Weighted Blanket Category (Without Early Meta Spend)
Subscribe to DTC Newsletter - https://dtcnews.link/signupDr. Kathrin Hamm (PhD Economics) didn’t set out to be a founder. She just wanted to sleep. One ugly “medical” weighted blanket fixed her insomnia… then made her realize the whole category was stuck in 30-year-old design, plastic beads, and overheating. So she rebuilt it from scratch with a chunky-knit, breathable form factor that looks like
Ep 591: Meta Andromeda: 3 New Tools (CASC, AI Assistant, Creative Testing) to Improve DTC Performance
Subscribe to DTC Newsletter - https://dtcnews.link/signupJacob (Head of Meta at Pilothouse) joins Eric to break down what Meta’s actually rolling out right now, what’s hype, and what’s worth testing. They get into CASC (combined awareness + sales), Meta’s new AI “business assistant,” and a super practical creative testing feature that can even help you split-test landing pages without nuking socia
Bonus: How Street Interviews Became a Performance Creative Pillar (15,000 Ads Later)
Subscribe to DTC Newsletter - https://dtcnews.link/signupOn this episode of the DTC Podcast, Eric sits down with Josh Suggs, founder of StreetTalk, and they break down how “Conversation Creative” is helping consumer brands appeal to today's audience preferences for raw, unscripted authenticity in their social feeds, while combatting headwinds brought on by Meta's Andromeda update. We talk
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