There’s no reason to hold back.

Today is the most important email we’ve ever sent.

🔥 Sean Frank unleashes 10 ways to not get cooked in 2025

📊 Connor MacDonald on how to test “what happens next”

🤖 David Segal reveals how to combine AI and your finances

Plus, this week’s biggest consumer headlines with links and executive summaries.

Connor MacDonald Ridge, CMO

What Happens Next? How to Make Each Customer Feel Special

When you have a lot of SKUs (like we do at Ridge), you can’t apply a “one size fits all” approach to what happens right after someone’s purchase.

To upsell effectively, you need to customize your offers for each and every buyer type. Then, you might run into the next problem … how do you know which ones to set up?

You may think you know exactly what your customers want, but it’s best to let them decide.

With Aftersell, you can customize as many post-purchase funnels as you want — to delight customers and drive more margin per order.

Sean Frank Ridge, CEO

DTC in 2025: How to NOT GET COOKED!!!!

Bob makes widgets in China.

Two decades of gov subsidies and USA overregulation, he CAN’T make widgets elsewhere.

It isn't him being cheap, it's that manufacturing for widgets only exists in a 10-mile radius of Fujian, China.

Bob sells his widgets on Shopify. Bob is really successful and he even has wholesalers.

Bob pays for some of his widgets with the money he makes selling them. He takes loans for the rest, sends the money to China, gets more widgets, puts those widgets on shelves, puts it on his site, and then runs ads to generate widget awareness.

That's been the state of every ecom brand, from Nike to Everlane, to Bob - for ten years.

It's been subsidized from China and borderline incentivized by the USA.

China is giving their factories no-interest loans. The USA is suing you if you use the wrong label on your bottles.

But over the past 5 years, cracks keep showing up in Bob's business model.

First, Covid. 2020. Making stuff in China got very hard, very fast. Factories were on lunar new year... and they didn't come back.

Overnight, Bob couldn't get widgets. That took months to work itself out. But the logistics are still felt today.

For awhile, Bob sold a shit ton more widgets. And thought it would stay like that. It didn't.

2021, the ads engine broke. iOS 14 killed thousands of brands.

First, brands couldn't get products. Then, they couldn't get customers.

2022, financing dried up. The DTC IPOs fall 70, 80, 90%.

Who wants to invest in a category with no path to exit? What you get is a credit crunch. Bob can't fund POs...

2023.

Inflation. All that lockdown, "good" times, zero-interest-rate cash works its way through the system.

Everything gets more expensive. Wholesalers have to pay people more. SAAS feels the credit crunch, raising prices. Everyone is fighting to stay alive.

To get profitable.

2024.

Everything is frozen. It's 2023, but add an election.

Solutions are performative. Rate cuts don't do anything. Everyone points to data telling you things are actually GOOD.

They don't feel all that good...

And now 2025. Tariffs? Trade war?

What the hell do you do? How do you not GET COOKED????

1. Accept that the days of rapid growth are GONE

People will buy things on the internet forever. The amount of people buying, and the share of their purchases that will happen online, will go up.

Stores aren't cooked, wholesale isn't cooked.

But the days of rapid growth are gone.

Without growth, you need to EARN your sales from the fixed pie.

Shopify is growing by adding stores... They aren't growing by same store sales.

Their growth is coming at the expense of WooCommerce, Salesforce, Magento.

YOU CAN STILL GROW! But you need to be better than everyone else to EARN THE SALES.

The math of ecom is brutally simple. It always has been.

- MSRP > COGS = Profit.

- Offer + Attention = Sales

But VCs and DTC dreamers fucked this up. You know why consumer brands fail? Because they get seduced by the growth fairy tale.

Look at what happened to all those "darling" DTC 1.0 and 2.0 brands. Casper had negative margins — selling $1 for 90 cents. Allbirds went from $4.1B to $345M. 75% of Pura Vida got bought in 2019 for $75m. Last week, it got divested for $1M.

Did their products suddenly suck? No. Did consumers stop buying mattresses or shoes or bracelets? No.

The growth story died.

If you're starting in ecom, you better be thinking about profit from DAY ONE. Not some mythical LTV that'll save you in year three.

2. Build relationships with your suppliers

If you're still making products in China, you need to become best friends with your factory.

The era of "I'll take my PO elsewhere" is long over. Your factory needs to love you, and that means consistent orders, clear communication, and sometimes higher prices.

Every dollar you spend building that relationship is worth it.

When tariffs hit or another supply shock comes, guess who gets their stuff first? The brands that the factory owner will lose sleep over if they fuck up.

Don't be the brand that the factory drops when things get tight.

Manufacturing in China is changing dramatically. Since 2020, China's been steering money toward high-tech manufacturing. Their bank loans to manufacturing jumped 38.2% while real estate loans fell.

They're building their own moat, whether the rest of the world likes it or not. And you know who suffers when they decide to pour cash into one sector? Small DTC brands that aren't a priority.

If your factory sees you as replaceable, you are. Especially now.

At Ridge, our manufacturing relationships are everything. We don't treat factories like interchangeable vendors. We treat them like partners in our business, and that's saved our ass more times than I can count.

3. Focus on products, not ads

Creative isn't king. The product is.

When the pie isn't growing, the only way to win is to have a better product than your competitors.

And a better offer.

Stop obsessing over ad hooks and funnels and start obsessing over how to make your product 10% better at the same price.

Or 10% cheaper at the same quality.

People just want good shit that solves their problems. God-tier paid can't overcome a mediocre product.

I think about ecom constantly. You know what's at the bottom of it? The fucking product. Not your ads, not your creative, not your attribution.

Product has been, is, and always will be the foundation.

If your product isn't meaningfully better than your competitors, you're cooked.

There's a reason Ridge is still crushing it while other DTC brands are dying. We made a better wallet than what was out there. We solved a real problem. We treated your uncle Ed better than anyone else.

And when we expanded, we didn't launch random shit. We went into categories where we could actually make something with alpha. That's the game.

4. Make content, get organic attention

If I were starting an ecom brand today (which I wouldn't, because I'm not an idiot), the first thing I'd do is build an audience.

I'd spend a year just creating memes, making TikToks, and building long-form content. I'd get people to like me on the internet before I ever tried to sell them anything.

When paid acquisition gets insanely expensive, organic becomes your only viable growth channel.

The brands that are crushing it today all have one thing in common: they have audiences that actually give a shit about them.

That means creating content that people want to consume. Not ads. Not product shots. Not inch-deep influencer garbage that's clearly paid for.

Real shit that people actually want to watch, read, or listen to.

The problem is most DTC founders hate this advice. They want to sell NOW. They want the magic Facebook ads formula that'll make them rich by next quarter.

That doesn't exist anymore.

Build the audience. The sales will follow.

5. Fix your margins

Talked to a brand the other day. 100 million in sales last year. $500 million in lifetime sales.

The founder was DEAD broke. $2,000 in his bank account.

Too many brands got addicted to growth at any cost. They thought they'd fix margins later. Later is now.

You need at least 65 gross points to survive. If you don't have that, you're on borrowed time.

Renegotiate with suppliers, find better packaging, streamline your operations - do whatever it takes. Profit isn't optional. It's survival.

Consumer products and durable goods SHOULDN'T change the world. Riding trends work. Disrupting like a tech company doesn't.

The world's second-oldest business model is still alive: sell things for more than they cost to make.

Your Shopify store, your marketing stack- none of that matters if your unit economics are wrecked. And most DTC brands have unit economics that are absolutely wrecked.

6. Build a business that doesn't need growth to survive

The brands that will thrive in this environment are the ones that can be profitable at their current size.

That means cutting head count, reducing office space, and focusing on what actually makes money.

It feels harsh, but a lean business that makes money is better than a bloated one that's always 60 days from bankruptcy.

Build something that can survive without growth, and then growth becomes a bonus, not a necessity.

I'd run it like a farm, not a tech startup.

Consumer isn't meant to be explosive. There's no "winning" in farming. Crops take as long as they take to grow. They're seasonal and they know it.

Brands take as long as they take to build.

You can't force it. You can't hack it. You can't growth-hack your way to meaningful scale.

Too many founders got into ecom because it was hot, because it was cool, because they thought they'd be the next Warby Parker. But that train has left the station.

7. Go omnichannel or die

The future of Ridge is more retail. With new products built for retail. Paid for by my amazing ecom and Amazon business.

That's the model. DTC is just one channel now.

The brands that survive will be everywhere their customers are - retail, marketplaces, social commerce, direct.

Each channel supports the others. They create a flywheel that makes the whole business stronger.

Single-channel brands are going extinct.

You'll notice we haven't actually shoved "digital transformation" down anyone's throat in years. Because retail isn't dead, and it isn't dying.

The math of direct-to-consumer has gotten brutal. Facebook CPMs are up, and consumers have a million options.

But you know what hasn't changed? People still go to stores. People still discover products in real life. People still want to touch and feel things before they buy them.

Ridge is in 2,000 doors right now. Not because we gave up on DTC, but because we realized that an omnichannel strategy is more resilient than a single-channel one.

The direct-only dogma was always stupid. It was a convenient narrative for VCs who wanted to believe they were disintermediating retail, but the economics never really made sense at scale.

8. Find free leverage points

Now is not the time for expensive gambles. It's the time for smart leverage.

Every business has hidden opportunities that cost almost nothing.

For Ridge, it was adding rings and travel - whole new categories we could sell to existing customers.

For you maybe it's wholesale. Or international. Or a collab that gets you in front of a totally new audience.

The magic is finding the thing that costs you almost nothing but unlocks a whole new growth curve.

Most brands are too busy running expensive ads to see the free money sitting right in front of them.

We're constantly looking for leverage. But the best leverage isn't a tool - it's a strategic move that opens up new markets.

When we launched rings, it unlocked a 7-figure monthly business within a year. We found a category with high margins, high AOV, and a natural fit with our existing customer base.

That's leverage.

When you're small, you've got to find these asymmetric bets. They almost never come from spending more on Facebook or hiring more people.

They come from taking your existing assets - your brand, your customers, your product expertise - and applying them in new ways that don't require massive new investment.

9. Focus on what you do best and cut the bullshit

I know the temptation is to try everything at once.

New products, new channels, new marketing strategies - throwing chef boyardee at the wall to see what sticks.

That's how you end up with no focus and no excellence anywhere.

Figure out the ONE THING your brand does better than anyone else, and DO THAT MORE.

For some, it's product innovation. For others, it's community. For others, it's service.

Everyone is talking about trying to make their own AI, their own machine learning...

These are distractions for brands that don't want to face the hard truth: business is hard, margins matter, and there are no shortcuts.

Don't get caught chasing the shiny new thing while your core business burns.

If there's one lesson that stands out from our experience at Ridge, it's that focus beats complexity every single time.

The hard work is making a great product, figuring out how to sell it efficiently, and building processes that scale.

Everything else is a distraction.

10. Stay in the game

I am proud of you for making it this far. If you're still in the game, I respect the hell out of you and your grit.

You are just as smart as the rest of us. I have been unbelievably lucky every year. I dodge the falling knives at the last minute.

But it is luck - not skill.

I am a WORSE, dumber operator than most. I have seen people smarter than me go bust. I don't know if 2025 will get better, or if 2026 will turn these 5 years around.

But, you need to buy a lotto ticket to win. Staying in the game is the only chance you have at WINNING the game.

In an industry full of bullshit, here's the realest truth I can offer: success in ecom is partly skill, but it's mostly endurance.

We survived iOS 14. We survived COVID supply chain chaos. We survived the DTC funding collapse.

While we were surviving, thousands of our competitors weren't.

The only viable path is sticking it out. If your shit doesn't work today, maybe it'll work tomorrow.

Commit to the long game. That's the only game that still has winners.

And remember, it's an ecosystem.

When things get hard for Bob, he fires people. He fires agencies, he stops spending on creative, he stops spending with creators.

Less dollars float around, and the game goes zero sum FAST. I've complained that it gets more toxic online. Or that it is too quiet.

And it's because people don't feel like being open when they feel bad. Or they feel like someone is taking from them. Or they feel it is their fault.

It's the natural response. Retreat, shut up, heads down.

If that is you- Just know, you aren't as dumb as you feel.

It's been 5 years of rollercoaster bullshit.

GREAT brands I know are facing multi-year revenue declines, AWESOME agencies I know are getting canned. COOL people I know are getting let go. It isn't you. It's a 5-year macro beat down where every year brings a new challenge.

So please, if you have had a hard year or hard half a decade... You are not alone. I respect you. I want you to win. And I want to see you out there trying.

I wish you the best. And I know you can do it.

David Segal President, Highbeam

Automate your finance team. Real-time insights, cash flow planning & reconciliation — powered by AI.

Finance at consumer brands is uniquely hard.

Cash flow shifts daily, inventory ties up capital, and you’re juggling platforms to stay on top of it all.

That’s why Ridge and brands like Avocado, State Bags, and Branch Furniture use Highbeam Intelligence — the first Agentic Finance Platform built for consumer brands.

Highbeam connects to your Shopify, QuickBooks, and banks, then spins up AI agents like an Analyst, Bookkeeper, and Treasury Manager.

These agents generate live reports, move money, and automate the finance tasks that normally eat up your week.

 Operators-Only Offer  🎁 Get 3 free months of Highbeam Intelligence. Connect your data — it only takes 5 minutes — and start using the AI Analyst immediately.

THE FEED

​Operators Assemble: Exits, Markets, and Private Equity​

​How We Set KPIs, Structure Reporting, and Run Meetings to Drive Results​

​Market Meltdown: It’s a Bloodbath Out There​

 BONUS  AI, Consumer Finance & Branch Furniture (Guest): Highbeam x Operators​

The Trends

Curated by the editor of CPG Wire, this week’s five biggest headlines in consumer news.

1. Sunday Secures $25M: PR Newswire​

Boulder-based purveyor of eco-friendly lawn care products Sunday raised $25M in funding from S2G Investments. The company uses topography and local climate data to create custom plans for its customers, then sells them products via subscription. Sunday was founded by brothers Coulter & Trent Lewis in 2019. Prior to launching Sunday, Coulter Lewis co-founded fast-growing snack brand Quinn Snacks.

2. Bobo’s Hires Investment Bank, Explores Sale: Twitter​

Better-for-you snack maker Bobo’s has hired William Blair as it explores a possible sale. The company, which was founded in 2003, expects to generate more than $110M in revenue this year with an EBITDA margin around 10%.

Bobo’s would be a good strategic fit for Mars, General Mills, and Flowers Foods — particularly the latter two — but the brand will also draw interest from various private equity firms.

3. Falfurrias Raises $1.35B for Fund VI: FinSMEs​

Charlotte-based private equity firm Falfurrias Capital Partners secured $1.35B for its sixth fund. The firm is coming off a major win in January as it sold Sauer Brands to Advent International for $1.5B. It acquired Sauer Brands, the owner of Duke’s Mayo and Mateo’s Gourmet Salsa, for $300M in 2019.

4. Lucky Energy Raises Another $14M: FinSMEs​

Lucky Energy, an Austin-based energy drink brand, raised just over $14M in fresh funding, bringing its total funding to a staggering $40M. The company was founded in 2023 by Richard Laver, the co-founder of Kate Farms. Lucky Energy is currently distributed at over 10,000 retail stores and expects to exceed 15,000 doors by end of year.

5. Foot Traffic Falls at Target Yet Again: Retail Brew​

Foot traffic at Target continues to fall due to a boycott related to the retailer scuttling its DEI policies. I imagine some of the dip could be attributed to consumer confidence hitting a 12-year low, too. Either way, Target vendors are beginning to feel the pain as its shoppers turn to other retailers like Costco and Walmart.

With thanks and anticipation,
Aaron Orendorff 🤓 Executive Editor

Disclaimer: Special thanks to AfterSell​ & Highbeam for sponsoring today’s newsletter.

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