This is it.

Without exaggeration …

🤯 Sean Frank unloads 10 steps, stage-by-stage, on how to build a $100M brand

📊 Stuart Chaney reveals the latest (data-backed) state of ecommerce in 2025

🗞️ Top five headlines in consumer news with executive summaries and links

With bonuses on Prime Day + “DTC” 🐟

Stuart Chaney Founder & CEO, Rivo

2025’s State of the Merchant Report

The results are in!

Hundreds of brands — across industries, growth stages ($1M–$40M), and geographies — contributed to this deep dive into how they’re navigating the year ahead.

This isn’t another academic whitepaper.

It’s built for action.

Whether you’re focused on growth, margins, or operations, you’ll find insights you can put to work today.

You’ll get a data-backed look at …

• Key challenges
• Technology adoption
• Marketing strategies
• Leadership priorities
• Channel mix & budgets
• Biggest growth levers
• And tariff impacts

Sean Frank CEO, Ridge

“How Do You Build a $100M Brand?”

The nine figure moniker has become this weird badge of honor in DTC. We're probably responsible for popularizing it.

I would not recommend making $100 million your goal.

Knowledge and capital. Those are the only tools. If I had to start over, here is what I would do.

1. Don't Make Money Your Why
2. Pick the Right Category Cycle
3. Accept the Capital Requirements
4. Stop Overthinking, Sell More
5. Expand Your Products Ruthlessly
6. Use Agencies, Hire for Growth
7. Find Partners Who Complete You
8. Leverage Free > Paid Distribution
9. Think in Decades, Not in Years
10. Avoid Stupid Mistakes (c. 2015)

 Step 1  Don't Make Money Your Why

First question: Why are you doing this?

The obvious answer is money.
Remove that from the equation immediately.

This is going to be very challenging and very painful.

If I were young and just wanted money, I would learn Spanish and be a plumber - skip all the pain and consistently make a quarter of a million a year. Maybe more if you get a whole team set up.

You could dominate that field. Or become a locksmith, electrician, any of those skills.

The second path?

Try really hard to get a job at Meta, Google, or Apple. Learn digital marketing and become an account rep.

Meta is worth $2 trillion today and will probably be worth $8 trillion in 10 years. They're buying everything - any social network, sunglasses, they're going to dominate AI.

You'd probably make 400 grand a year there.

It is very hard to go to zero in either of those paths.

If you're going to build a consumer brand…

There are so many other types of businesses less complicated - with fewer moving parts than consumer goods.

 Step 2  Pick the Right Category Cycle

You want a category with strong macro tailwinds - maybe it's not a massive TAM yet, but it is obvious it will be.

Look for categories growing at 8-16% per year, with trends pointing up and to the right.

I'd focus on consumables with serious momentum:

• Take creatine - it exploded and probably has three to four more years of very solid growth
• Maybe 20% year-over-year
• The category will more than double

But I would not get into creatine now because it's already five years into this CAGR cycle.

Collagen is probably at the end of its cycle.
It is the biggest it is going to get and will start to shrink.

Colostrum? That's having a massive moment. It's only in year one or two of its hype cycle. In three years, you're going to hear about colostrum all the time. It will keep going up.

Sell something that goes on the skin or in the mouth.

If you go into durables, the modern version of Ridge would be…

• High AOV: Maybe jewelry
• Big TAM: For women (not men)
• Sold via subscription boxes
• In partnership with influencers

Otherwise, avoid fashion and anything heavy on personal identity. Pela Case, one of Matt's companies, is in that world.

It is a slog.

Sometimes you hit it, sometimes you don't. You're trying to look into a crystal ball.

Anything style based adds a level of difficulty I would want to avoid.

The world does not need more men's apparel brands. No matter how cool or good you think you're doing it.

You would need an incredible distribution advantage to get into men's basics at this point.

 Step 3  Accept the Capital Requirements

For a durables brand, you need about 300 grand realistically.

That covers:

• First order
• Marketing
• Ads
• Fulfillment

But you'll get dollars in the door while shipping out.

My 300K number comes from Ridge's Kickstarter.
That was the only capital that ever went into the business.

We presold $300,000 worth of items, which paid for:

• The first order to ship to customers
• The second order to sell
• Some ad money for that second order

For a consumables brand like adult Uncrustables, it's a million dollars plus.

You're seeding influencers, maybe doing equity deals with top influencers, paying for distribution.

Your inventory outlay and margins will be really difficult. Retail distibution will eat you alive.

You're getting less money on every purchase than you're putting out. Eventually you catch up where repeat rate equals growth rate and become cashflow neutral.

But it takes at least a million dollars.

You can start with less but you'll go slower - you're trading capital for time.

 Step 4  Stop Overthinking; Sell. More.

I would not sweat the little stuff.

When you're doing a million dollars a year or $3 million a year and you send an email that looks ugly, nobody cares. Nobody will read it.

Over-indexing on brand importance early on is a sign that you're probably not gonna make it.

Build landing pages, run some cold traffic. Waste 10 grand upfront to make sure you're not wasting 100 or 200 on MOQs.

Your messaging cannot be "we're the same thing but 10% off."

Walk down any grocery store aisle - it's nothing but opportunity, shelf by shelf, slot by slot.

80-90% of a grocery store is packaged goods. Products in grocery stores are designed to be average.

You can go up or down to be better or different.

Sell everywhere. People ask, "Should I go on Amazon?" Amazon is over 50% of ecommerce. You should be there.

Do not get hung up on sexy partnerships:

• There was a guy selling an athletic item who had an offer from a big sports organization (I won't dox him)
• How much money are they gonna give you?
• "No, no, no. I have to give them money to be the official sponsor"

HARD PASS

If money isn't coming in, it is not worthwhile until you get to a hundred million dollars.

 Step 5  Be Ruthless With Product Expansion

I am more ruthless with product expansion than I think a lot of brands are.

More brands should make more products.

They're really worried about hurting brand. Here is the truth - your customers never f***ing thinks about you.

You are lucky if somebody is mad you launched something.

I always go to Bic as one of my favorite brands:

• They make lighters
• They make pens
• They make razors

We buy all of those products independently.
If you want a disposable razor or a cheap pen or a lighter, that's the only one.

They own those markets.

You know why? Because the guy had a plastic factory. Whatever takes plastic, we are going to make those things.

It doesn't violate anything in your brain. That is just the way it's always been.

At Ridge, we did $4 million in backpack sales the first year we sold them.

I canceled that program because I was too stupid to know it was a good amount of backpacks.

The wallet was doing $20 million.
How come we can't do $20 million in backpacks?

In retrospect, we've since relaunched backpacks. I was too stupid.

 Step 6  Use Agencies, Hire for Growth

When you start out, you don't have the skills to hire someone who is technically very good.

If I was asked to hire a cardiologist right now, I don't have the skills to do that well.

"Do you know about the heart?"
"Yes"
"Okay, well you've exceeded my knowledge"

Same in ecomm. So, find reputable agencies and freelancers and work with them:

• Probably until you're doing $5 million in revenue
• I probably wouldn't have any US full-time hires, maybe an ops role
• Something very simplistic

But a lot of it, you're gonna be doing yourself.

Ridge's first hire was CS, someone to answer tickets. No-brainer. Then inventory management. Make sure we don't run out of the stuff we're selling.

For specialized work - creative strategy, media buying - go agency or freelancer. That's a skill. Someone mastering that craft. Get good enough at Meta to call bulls***.

CMO? Almost never.

The title is the least defined in an organization. A true CMO thinks about brand and growth equally and ensures you show up consistently everywhere.

That's a $500 million company need.

What you really need? Head of growth, chief revenue officer, or chief growth officer.

Pay them a ton of money. That's the most important role because the NUMBER ONE determining factor of success is how much money you can spend on marketing.

For senior finance, you need at least a controller around $20 million. CPA-level.

You can do fractional before that, but you can't get a real loan without a controller on staff.

 Step 7  Find Partners Who Complete You

I would not do it alone. Co-founders are mandatory.

My partnership with Connor [MacDonald], Ridge’s CMO, has been one of the best in my life.

When we were at the Meta event, Connor Rolain from HexClad asked if we ever fight. We don't - we have been through too much.

I am from a very poor, bad area of Washington where kids die of fentanyl overdoses. When I moved to LA, I lived in a flop house - 14 guys in bunk beds.

Connor was one of them. For five years.

There was a time when we were running our agency where we did not have a thousand dollars. His dad gave him a car - a 1997 Honda Civic. Smelled, paint was peeling, windows didn't work.

We would park it behind buildings so people didn't see us get out of this junky car.

The relationships between Ridge's founders is even deeper - father, son, best friend. The dad was a special ed teacher, Daniel was going to be an accountant.

They would literally die for each other.

• You spend as much time with them
• Sometimes more in the early years
• It's financial in the same way
• Businesses blow up all the time

People always ask me how do I find a co-founder.

You should stop what you're doing. Understand life is really long. Go get a job someplace where a co-founder might work.

Unfortunately there's no dating apps, so you gotta go out there and try hard. Don't screw it up. Do diligence. Get aligned before getting into business together.

My life would be harder if I didn't have somebody completing what I'm bad at. I'm bad at a lot of s***.

 Step 8  Leverage Free > Paid Distribution

Meta is my biggest expense. $50 million last year. 10x my payroll. More than my COGS.

You have to understand paid. At least good enough to call bulls*** - most founders are natural marketers.

Here is my most controversial take:

There's still a free gift out there.
Organic reach on reels and YouTube and Twitter and TikTok and all of these platforms.

If you create good content and post across everything and make that your whole thing, you can get to $5 million organically.

The algorithm will reward you if you put the work in and have a good product.

If you're not the target customer, here's what works:

• Pick a narrow niche of content creators
• Figure out the top 50
• Get deals done with as many as possible
• You create an echo chamber where the brand seems everywhere to people in that lane

That's how algorithms work - you can create the perception that you're everywhere.

Attention is everything.

Cluey is crushing it on Twitter right now because they're throwing parties and manufacturing controvesy for distribution.

You have to get attention, so you'll pay for it one way or another.

 Step 9  Think in Decades, Not Years

A hundred million dollars should take you about a dozen years.

Ridge did it in 10.

Going from $100,000 in year one to $100 million in year 10 is a 100% CAGR - doubling every year on average.

More realistically:

• At $1 million: You're turning a profit, you've paid yourself if you got there
• At $5 million: The founders think this is the best thing that's ever happened - you are a middle-schooler that wants respect, but nobody will give it to you
• At $6 million things get really hard: You just got your driver's license - inventory and operations change, you get interest from bottom-tier funds, agencies, and SaaS
• At $10 million: You're 18 years old - independent, it's a real business with maybe 20 employees, own a building, have an office
• Between $20-50 million: It all falls apart, you have a midlife crisis - you can't just muscle it anymore, you're big enough that you can't do it all alone, but not big enough for proper management
• After $30-50 million: The category, product-market fit, and customers should be dragging you up
• Around $70 million a year, you can probably pay yourself a million bucks after taxes

I talk to people doing $5 million last year who think they'll do $15 million this year and $100 million next year.

That's not going to happen. I've seen the story a million times.

 Step 10  Avoid Stupid Mistakes (c. 2015)

I would not:

• Raise venture capital
• Go to a branding agency
• Go to a product dev agency
• Diversify off Meta sub-$50M
• Worry about brand <$100M
• Let your ego get bigger than your wallet or brain

If you can avoid it, do not launch a knife that opens in people's pockets (we're dealing with that fire right now).

3PLs won't take your business when you're starting:

• Ridge packed boxes and took them to USPS until for three years into the business
• Matt did Pela fulfillment from a 10x10 corner on the sixth floor of his software company's building
• They had engineers and designers in the office while people printed labels and stuck them on envelopes

Also, don’t give VP and C-suite titles to 28-year-olds who should be directors at best.

Other than that:

I would be totally okay making a ton of mistakes. I've lost millions of dollars in mistakes.

No one sets out to make mistakes.
They will not end you.

Be Nice to Yourself. Stay Alive.

Most brands doing over $100 million in our network are 10-20 years old.

The outliers like Grüns doing it in three years? That's Chad Janis with 20 years of experience.

David's Protein from Peter Rahal?
Another vet with years in the game.

It's like being surprised that Tiger Woods is good at mini golf.

Build something in a growing category that you're passionate about.

Find great partners.

Be patient enough to compound your way there over a decade or more.

I know as many world-class operators running $10-30 million companies as running $200-500 million.

The size doesn't actually matter.

I was a better operator when we were doing $50 million a year - less in the weeds, less tactical now. The job changes.

As you get bigger, you want to stop feeling like you're pushing the business and start feeling like it's pulling you.

Your choice is simply to rise to the occasion or not.

I still feel like I'm dragging Ridge along on a leash.

The business needs to feel bigger than you, and it doesn't feel that way yet.

This is a really hard thing to build.

But if you're gonna do it anyway? Now you know what you're signing up for.

Go build something great. Or go be a plumber.

Both are respectable choices.

THE FEED

​Building a $100M Brand. AGAIN.​

​How Marketers Should Actually Be Using AI, with the Boring Marketer​

The Trends

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

1. Ferrero Buys Cereal Icon for $3.1B: CNBC​

Ferrero, the world’s third-largest confectionery company, is shelling out $3.1B to acquire WK Kellogg, a cereal maker and the owner of iconic brands like Froot Loops, Frosted Flakes, and Rice Krispies. Cereal isn’t a particularly attractive category right now — dollar sales are flat and unit sales dipped 2% in 2024 — but WK Kellogg owns some powerful brands that Ferrero will be able to optimize and grow.

2. Sunnie Grabs $1M to Support Nationwide Expansion: Instagram​

Sunnie, a healthy snack brand co-founded by Katy Tucker & Lisette Howard in 2020, secured $1M in funding from Santatera Capital. Sunnie is best known for producing kid-friendly snack kits that retail at Target, Whole Foods, Raley’s, and other chains. Imagine Lunchables but with healthy, nutritious ingredients. Santatera has been super active lately. Recent investments include Sunnie, Mezcla, Refresh Gum, and Little Sesame.

3. Simply Good Foods Delivers Solid Q3 Results: GlobeNewswire​

Simply Good Foods (Nasdaq: SMPL), a nutritional products company and the owner of Quest Nutrition and OWYN, reported that Q3 net sales jumped nearly 14% to $381M. The growth was driven by OWYN and Quest Nutrition while Atkins dragged results. SMPL purchased OWYN in April of ‘24 for $280M and it was a prescient acquisition. The company expects OWYN net sales to double in the next 3-4 years.

4. Barry Connolly Scores Second Payday: Twitter​

Barry Connolly, the founder of Fulfil Nutrition, was bought out of his US joint venture with Hershey. Connolly launched Fulfil Nutrition in Ireland in 2016 and sold the business to Ferrero in 2022 for a reported €160M. The Irish entrepreneur cleverly held onto the US brand rights via a joint venture with Hershey, so this deal represents a second big payday for Connolly.

5. Spindrift Adds Athlete Investors: PR Newswire​

Sparkling water brand Spindrift partnered with Patricof Co to add a number of athlete investors to its cap table. New investors include Kevin Durant, DK Metcalf, Livvy Dunne, Sophie Cunningham, and Derrick White. Spindrift does around $300 million in annual sales and sold a majority stake to Gryphon Investors earlier this year.

 BONUS  Prime Day, By the Numbers

Despite early reports from Momentum Commerce of Amazon’s twice-annual event being down 41%, Prime Day 2025 (Jul. 8–11) clocked in record-breaking revenue.

2025 Prime Day (Reuters)

• 4 days
• $24.1B sales
• YoY +30.3% (2024)
• $6.0B per day

2024 Prime Day (Adobe)

• 2 days
• $14.2B sales
• YoY +11% (2023)
• $7.1B per day

Oh, And One More Bonus Extra

Thanks to David Protein — the ecommerce darling co-founded by Peter Rahal, fmr. RXBAR — you can finally buy your protein DTC … direct to cod.

Editor’s Note: That “DTC” joke performed so terribly on LinkedIn, I literally deleted the post earlier today.

But more seriously …

2.7k words from Sean Frank’s segment alone are a lot to digest.

With thanks and anticipation,
Aaron Orendorff 🤓 Executive Editor

PS (Disclaimer): Special thanks to Rivo for sponsoring today’s newsletter.

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