Welcome to 2026. And the dreams that come with it.

No matter how last year ended …

🐶 Sean Frank shares how to build your foundation for winning

💵 Matthew Bertulli asks seven questions to grow your revenue

📊 Cody Plofker gives you his playbook for fixing payback period

🛍️ Derek Lauermann reveals what he’s snacking on this “Q5”

Then, the five top headlines in consumer news + an invitation to join us for dinner.

Sean Frank CEO, Ridge

STOP. Read This RIGHT NOW If You Want to Win, Big Dog

Everyone is making plans.

New products.
New channels.
International.
Another 3PL.

Here is what happens next…

Your inventory is wrong. EDI does not work. OMS can not talk to your 3PL. You are paying for three different pieces of software and none of them sync.

NOT RIDGE. We run everything through Fulfil.

- Inventory
- Orders
- EDI for wholesale

The entire operation.
This is our case study.

It has a longer list than I remembered.

I am better looking now.

Ridge runs on Fulfil. BECAUSE WE ARE BIG DOGS. The other big dogs are there. Hex. Gruns. Cuts.

Buried in holiday orders?

Fulfil built a Claude skill that analyzes your backlog and tells you how to clear it.

Matthew Bertulli CEO, Pela Case & Lomi

7 Questions to Grow Your Revenue

The secret to winning is all about knowing where to spend, how much to spend, and when not to spend.

Let’s talk big “M” Marketing — 301 level.

Seven questions to ask right now …

1. Are You Investing in Non-Paid CAC?
2. Do You Monitor Paid vs. Organic?
3. Which Channels Drive Awareness?
4. Do You Know When to Hit the Gas?
5. Do You Use Tent-Pole Campaigns?
6. What’s Your Untapped Channel?
7. Do You Know the Marginal Frontier?

 1. Are You Investing in Non-Paid CAC? 

Ads are as easy as flipping a switch.

But if your entire growth plan depends on the almighty “dollar-in, dollar-out” playbook, your business is built on sand.

Even worse, it’s not your sand. Non-paid acquisition is the bedrock of sustainable growth. I’m talking about …

• Search
• Email
• Referrals
• Content
• Partnerships
• Social

These channels don’t just reduce your blended acquisition costs; they insulate your business from sudden downturns.

The Takeaway: Treat non-paid channels as investments. Great content requires time and money, but once it starts to work, the results can compound for years.

 2. Do You Monitor Paid vs. Organic? 

Paid channels are accelerants. They move fast and scale quickly.

But if you don’t have a documented system to keep paid in check relative to organic, you’ll scale spend without visibility.

Here are the metrics I watch to keep the balance honest:

Blended CAC Monitoring
Rising blended CAC usually means organic channels aren’t offsetting paid spend at the rate you’re scaling.

Channel Attribution Models
Invest in tools and systems that show how your paid efforts interact with organic, not just last-click conversions.

nCAC (New Customers)​
Rising nCAC often means you’re paying more money to reach people who were already aware of you.

I also keep a close watch on things like brand search, non-brand category search, and brand-adjacent search.

When we invest correctly in paid + organic brand-building, these numbers serve as early indicators of long-term demand.

The Takeaway: Paid should scale with organic. Watch blended CAC, nCAC, and brand search trends. When spend rises but these don’t improve — pause, diagnose, and rebalance.

 3. Which Channels Drive Awareness? 

Attribution is messy.

For example, when we invested in TV ads for Lomi, our search across platforms exploded. When we invested in influencer seeding for Pela Case, our Meta ads improved.

The mistake most teams make is judging channels in isolation.

They look for last-click performance and shut down anything that doesn’t “pay for itself” immediately.

Instead, ask better questions. Which channels ...

• Create demand signals?
• Lower costs elsewhere?
• Sow vs. reap demand?

You don’t need perfect attribution; just directional truth. Tools like Haus Analytics and Northbeam can help.

The Takeaway: Stop obsessing over last-click attribution. Start mapping how your channels work together, or you’ll keep underfunding the channels that make everything else work.

 4. Do You Know When to Hit the Gas? 

It’s wild to me how many businesses don’t consider seasonality.

Every business has its best (and worst) times of the year to go big on acquisition. Understanding your seasonality is crucial for maximizing ROI and minimizing waste.

For most ecommerce brands, Q4 is the time to go big. Black Friday, Cyber Monday, the holidays ...

But there will be others specific to your category.

• Fitness: New Year goals
• Home: Spring home projects
• Beauty: Increased sun exposure
• Outdoor: Pre-season demand

The Takeaway: Know your season. Allocate your budget accordingly. Going all-in during your off-season is like planting seeds in winter — expensive and pointless.

 5. Do You Create Tent-Pole Campaigns? 

Tent-poles, what some call “lightning strikes,” are big, bold, attention-grabbing promotions.

Done right, they:

• Spike traffic and branded search
• Create buzz and social proof
• Lift always-on channel performance

When we launched Lomi on Indiegogo, we concentrated press, spend, and storytelling into a short window and generated $7.5M in the first 45 days.

It was a huge lightning strike.

Ridge (and now HexClad) have done the same with their sweepstakes and giveaways. Jones Road has built a promotion that revolves around its anniversary. Caden Lane goes big for April Fool’s Day.

Your own could be a …

• Launch, drop, or limited release
• Named, promoted brand moment
• Campaign with a defined window

Don’t treat these as one-offs.

Use these campaigns to feed your other channels: collect emails, build retargeting audiences, and save user-generated content.

The Takeaway: Create 2-3 massive moments that become your events. The brands people remember are the ones that make noise and leave an impression.

 6. What’s Your Most Untapped Channel? 

Most teams default to the channels that are easiest to track and show the quickest returns.

Understandable.

Also, how opportunities get missed.

Every business has at least one acquisition channel it’s underinvesting in.

Experiment Broadly
Try channels you’ve dismissed or ignored. Think AppLovin if you haven’t yet, podcasts, Twitter (X), Reddit ads, or direct mail — yes, people still open physical mail.

Look at Your Audience
Where do they hang out that you’re not active? Both physical and digital. If your competitors are investing in a channel and you’re not, investigate.

Do Low-Risk Testing
Test small before you go big. Dedicate a fixed percentage of your budget, something around 5%, to validate if the channel works. Use that as your launchpad.

I speak with hundreds of founders and CEOs every year, and I rarely see the same channel mix twice. Even if I do, they rarely approach the channels the same from one company to another.

The Takeaway: Build a thesis for why you should be on an untapped channel. Then experiment for 90-180 days and learn about its place in your mix.

 7. Do You Know the Marginal Frontier? 

Every acquisition channel has a ceiling.

At some point, adding more spend stops producing profitable growth. That’s the marginal frontier, where efficiency breaks.

Analyze Marginal CAC
Break your CAC into incremental segments. What’s the cost per customer for the first $1,000 of ad spend vs. the next $1,000?

Identify Plateau Points
Most channels have thresholds where performance drops significantly. Learn to recognize those signals early.

Reinvest Wisely
Once you hit diminishing returns on one channel, reallocate those dollars to underperforming or underutilized channels.

The Takeaway: Know your marginal frontier — when your Meta ads (or whatever) hit the ceiling. Then stop pushing and reallocate to untapped channels.

Seven questions are a lot to process.

But you don’t need to ask + answer all of them at once.

Pick two where you’re most uncertain. Make them your focus for the next 90 days.

Thanks for taking the time to read.

Cody Plofker CEO, Jones Road Beauty

30-Day Playbook to Fix Your Payback Window

January is when every operator gets the same mandate.

Tighten the payback window before budgets scale.

The best starting place? Not new channels, but high-intent surfaces already in the funnel.

Here’s your 30-day playbook …

• Week 1: Turn on checkout and thank-you page monetization (pure CM)
• Week 2: Refresh your post-purchase funnel — think, sequence > discounts
• Week 3: Use finalized EOY reorder rates to update retention assumptions
• Week 4: Rebuild your payback model with first-party data, not guesswork

Want to see the math before you change anything? Check out the calculator from Aftersell by Rokt.

Plug in your order volume and margin, toggle checkout, post-purchase, and Rokt monetization.

It’ll spit out revenue and profit impact.

Adding Aftersell by Rokt to your Q1 stack is one of the fastest ways to improve payback — before ramping your spend.

Derek Lauermann Grüns, Dir. of Paid Media

Ad Snacks 🍬 New Year, New Ü

We’re right in the middle of Q5.

A time of high motivation and soft CPMs.

Here’s what I’m snacking on as I reset for the New Year 👇

 🍬 Absorption Company Packs 

What it is: Electrolytes and functional support for energy, calm, and sleep.

Why I’m snacking: Simple formats that fit my real-life protocol. Race, recover, repeat!

 🍬 Garmin Fēnix 8 Pro 

What it is: A performance-grade GPS watch built for training, recovery, and long-term health tracking.

Why I’m snacking: Upgrading from my Fēnix 6. Better data, better decisions as I level up training in 2026.

 🍬 Eight Sleep Mattress 

What it is: A bed that optimizes sleep and recovery.

Why I’m snacking: Sleep is still the highest ROI upgrade, period.

 🍬 Nike Strength (Home Gym Gear) 

What it is: Durable gear for training at home.

Why I’m snacking: As life gets busier, winning back time from commuting can help me achieve my other 2026 goals.

 🍬 Jüced (Pre-Workout) 

What it is: Delicious pre-anything energy gummies.

Why I’m snacking: A peachy pick me up delivering 95mg of caffeine (why not?!)

 🍬 The Snack TL;DR 

This is one of the most efficient moments of the year:

• Cheap CPMs
• High intent
• Active consumers

“New year, new me” energy is here.

Brands that show up now get attention at a discount and turn Q5 into Q1 leverage.

THE FEED

​From Grand Slams to Flatlines: Inside the Operator Playbook for Surviving Stalled Growth​

​+$100M Path Nobody Wants: DUDE Wipes’ Sean Riley​

​The Influencer Marketing Playbook With Lily Comba, Founder & CEO of Superbloom​

The Trends

Curated by the editor of CPG Wire, the five top stories in commerce and DTC.

1. Sauz Secures Investment From Bulletpitch: Traded VC​

Fast-growing pasta sauce brand Sauz partnered with Bulletpitch to add a slew of creators and influencers to its cap table. By partnering with Bulletpitch, Sauz added 22 top content creators as investors, collectively representing over 40M followers.

Founded in 2023 by Troy Bonde and Winston Alfieri, Sauz now retails at over 8,000 doors across the US. In June of last year, Sauz raised $12M led by CAVU Consumer Partners.

2. DropOut Officially Launches Bronco: PR Newswire​

DropOut Companies, the consumer brand incubator that’s reimagining childhood classics for today’s consumers, just launched its second brand — Bronco. Bronco is a better-for-you breakfast sandwich that’s made with wholesome ingredients and without seed oils.

The brand debuted by launching two products nationwide at Target. In December, DropOut Companies added Poppi co-founder Stephen Ellsworth as an Operating Partner.

3. Cobram Acquires California Olive Ranch: Olive Oil Times​

Cobram Estate, the largest olive oil company in Australia, has acquired California Olive Ranch for $173.5M.

The acquisition serves two purposes for Cobram Estate. It more than doubles its California olive-growing footprint to nearly 3,300 hectares and offers a foothold in the US premium olive oil category. The union will create the largest domestic olive oil producer and seller by revenue.

4. BareBells Doubles Down on Beverages: Trend Hunter​

Barebells, the global protein bar brand owned by Stockholm-based Vitamin Well Group, is doubling down on protein beverages in the U.S. with its new Milk Drink line. Each can delivers 24g of protein and only 2g of sugar.

Vitamin Well Group is majority-owned by Cinven and generates north of €650M in revenue. Barebells also launched a Protein Soda range in the US in October.

5. Anastasia Beverly Hills Completes Recap: GCI​

Anastasia Soare, the founder and CEO of beauty brand Anastasia Beverly Hills, injected $225 million of her own money into the business.

The recapitalization comes on the heels of yet another credit downgrade, and TPG largely exited its stake in Anastasia Beverly Hills at a massive loss. Soare will remain the CEO and majority owner of the company while she attempts to right the ship.

 Want to Have Dinner With Us? 

January 21st, 6pm, LA ... the ultimate DTC dinner.

Sean Frank & Jason Panzer are bringing together a small group of senior leaders from some of the most respected brands in Los Angeles and beyond for an intimate get-together.

If you want to be in the room, you can apply to attend here.

With thanks and anticipation,
Aaron Orendorff 🤓 Executive Editor

PS (Disclaimer): Special thanks to Fulfil and Aftersell for sponsoring today’s newsletter.

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