🤑 Connor MacDonald shares the number that matters more than CAC, CRO & AOV

🤩 Sean Frank reveals and rates the 47-tool tech stack that fuels his +$100M brand

🫠 Connor Rolain explains how he wastes millions in marketing spend but still wins

Plus, the top five headlines in DTC.

Connor MacDonald CMO, Ridge

The Problem With CAC, CRO & AOV

Most operators fight three battles separately.

• CAC
• CRO
• AOV

A media buyer might push cheap SKUs to lower CAC. A CRO team might add discounts to lift conversion. An upsell tool might add friction that increases AOV.

But those three levers move the same outcome …

That is the only question that matters. Profit is king. The sum of the parts matter more than the parts themselves.

And Aftersell by Rokt has had an incremental impact on our full-funnel profitability with its …

• Scaled testing
• Personalized cross-sells
• Checkout revenue widgets​
• Third-party offer monetization
• One-click post-purchase upsells

We use ‘em. HexClad uses ‘em. So does Jones Road. They help us make (and keep) more money.

Want to see if your funnel is as profitable as it should be?

Click below. Then enter your category, monthly order volume, and primary market to benchmark your post-purchase profit against 40k + $380M in post-purchase GMV.

Sean Frank CEO, Ridge

Editor’s Note: This is the fourth of five technology and agency stacks — one for each of the Operators’ brands.

Once complete, we’ll compile them into a single database.

No recommendation has paid for placement, and sponsors of the podcasts have been marked with 🤝 They’re grouped into “Sean Scores” and have recommended annual GMV.

Our +$100M Tech and Vendor Stack: With No Affiliate Links

Unlike the other guys, I am fine calling out 1-star partners.

Do not want to be called out? Do not suck.

And lots of vendors suck.

But this is our CURRENT tech stack.

It is a continuation of a list I did in 2024.

Any carryovers are people I still work with 24 months later. My CMO Connor helped compile the list.

 5-Star ☆☆☆☆☆ Partners 

Onsite Testing: Intelligems

Sean Score ★★★★★ (5/5)
Annual GMV: <$1M

Unlocked 7+ figures in profit via landing page and price testing. Connor made us the top 99th percentile for tests.

SMS: Postscript 🤝

Sean Score ★★★★★ (5/5)
Annual GMV: <$1M

The best SaaS product dev in all of ecom. Attentive is for jokers and babies. I am a serious big boy, so I use Postscript.

Connor really likes the AI stuff and says the lift in sales is incremental. Our SMS bot is always-on and making it rain.

Creative Ops & Design: Figma

Sean Score ★★★★★ (5/5)
Annual GMV: <$1M

IDK how we ever ran our business without Figma. Connor has a super crush on Figma.

Account Creation: Rivo

Sean Score ★★★★★ (5/5)
Annual GMV: <$1M

Still my SaaS crush. This was the future in 2024. Now it is table stakes.

Signed-in checkouts give us ad space for upsells and an SMS-like messenger, and still solve cookie + attribution issues. The big unlock this year is loyalty. We have moved cashback fully onto Rivo, cutting Fondue in the process.

Metafields: Accentuate

Sean Score ★★★★★ (5/5)
Annual GMV: $1M–$10M

Our entire site runs off of Accentuate Metafields!

Creative: VideGro

Sean Score ★★★★★ (5/5)
Annual GMV: $1M–$10M

VideGro shot our TV ads. If you need great-looking content that is not script-heavy, they are a good option.

Package Tracking: Wonderment

Sean Score ★★★★★ (5/5)
Annual GMV: $1M–$10M

Not surprised they got acquire by Loop. Great service, great customer experience, affordable. Rare.

 4-Star ☆☆☆☆ Partners 

Holdout Testing: Haus 🤝

Sean Score ★★★★☆ (4/5)
Annual GMV: $50M–$100M

Incrementality tool with a focus on geo holdouts. Would have 5 stars, but it is only for the big boys.

Company Wiki: Notion

Sean Score ★★★★☆ (4/5)
Annual GMV: <$1M

Notion is a love-hate relationship. It runs the entire company; task tracking and all of our assets are found there. But it is not easy to use. You need to embrace the overlord.

Attribution: Northbeam 🤝

Sean Score ★★★★☆ (4/5)
Annual GMV: $10M-$50M

I start every day with Northbeam — the coffee of ecom. It is a sponsor of the pod. So don’t trust me.

But I have been with Northbeam since the very beginning. Literally customer number one, back when attribution was a four-letter word.

It is as important as spreadsheets to our paid social team.

Creative Analytics: Motion 🤝

Sean Score ★★★★☆ (4/5)
Annual GMV: $1M–$10M

Great for bottoms-up reporting on ad performance.

AI Assistant: Viktor

Sean Score ★★★★☆ (4/5)
Annual GMV: <$1M

Surprisingly good in-Slack agent connected to all of our tools. Helps with answering questions and puts together meeting agendas.

Pixel Signal Health: Interface Division

Sean Score ★★★★☆ (4/5)
Annual GMV: <$1M

Dan is the man. Helps monitor and fix any pixel issues, and is a resource for the team whenever we have weird new signal engineering ideas.

Order Editing: Order Editing

Sean Score ★★★★☆ (4/5)
Annual GMV: <$1M

We built a “Double Dash” feature with them to drive up AOV/UPT over the first 2 hours of placing an order, easy integration with Rivo. Team is very responsive.

Customer Service: Richpanel 🤝

Sean Score ★★★★☆ (4/5)
Annual GMV: $1M–$10M

They have rebuilt the whole thing around AI — autonomous resolution of WISMO, returns, cancellations. This is what CX SaaS should be: cheap, easy to use, AI-first. They are delivering.

Reviews: Okendo

Sean Score ★★★★☆ (4/5)
Annual GMV: <$1M

Solid tool. Still holds up. They have built out a full suite beyond reviews (quizzes, surveys, referrals).

Checkout Email Signups: Shoptin

Sean Score ★★★★☆ (4/5)
Annual GMV: <$1M

Handles all the legal and regional compliance around email signup collection at checkout. Set and forget.

Upsells: Aftersell 🤝

Sean Score ★★★★☆ (4/5)
Annual GMV: $1M–$10M

Great comprehensive set of upsell and cross-sell tooling. Pretty easy to make a positive impact and saves dev time.

Tags & Pixels: Google Tag Manager

Sean Score ★★★★☆ (4/5)
Annual GMV: <$1M

Great tool + free. Please, Google, do not ruin it like you did Universal Analytics.

Identity Resolution: Tie

Sean Score ★★★★☆ (4/5)
Annual GMV: $1M–$10M

Identity resolution is still a developing part of the stack (Wunderkind, Retention.com, etc), and I think Tie might have the best product and implementation of it.

Tags & Pixels: Elevar

Sean Score ★★★★☆ (4/5)
Annual GMV: $1M–$10M

Great tool and does what we need. Four stars because we are set up, and it works without issue. Blotout, etc. probably similar.

Data Warehouse: Saras Analytics 🤝

Sean Score ★★★★☆ (4/5)
Annual GMV: $10M-$50M

Finally pulled the trigger and moved off Supermetrics. Running LLMs on top of clean, structured data has been the most impactful AI implementation we have had this year.

Saras is what made it possible. We were also been able to reduce our dependency on Lifetimely as a result.

AI Callaboration: HQ

Sean Score ★★★★☆ (4/5)
Annual GMV: $10M-$50M

Jacob Posel & Corey Epstein’s brainchild. HQ is a great way to build context for your AI work. And it lets you collaborate with teammates.

Import: Flexport International LLC

Sean Score ★★★★☆ (4/5)
Annual GMV: $1M–$10M

I like Flexport. They helped us import all our damn suitcases. Good partner and smart people with good data — that they share for free!

Industry Data: The DTC Index

Sean Score ★★★★☆ (4/5)
Annual GMV: $1M–$10M

Cheap, paid newsletter about ecomm data and trends. $200 to know what is going on with the industry as a whole.

Website: Shopify Plus

Sean Score ★★★★☆ (4/5)
Annual GMV: $10M-$50M

I love Shopify again. Used to be love-hate and 3/5. The score improved +1 because I am more mature now.

Returns & Warranty: Aftership

Sean Score ★★★★☆ (4/5)
Annual GMV: $10M-$50M

Shipment tracking, returns, delivery estimates … Has great software, helpful team + supports international markets

Fixture Design (Retail): Felbro

Sean Score ★★★★☆ (4/5)
Annual GMV: $10M-$50M

The agency that designs and manufactures our in-store fixtures. Very professional, high-quality work. Best Buy, Scheels, etc. need you to provide your own fixtures — so on a $100k PO, you will spend $20k on fixtures.

Legal: Stobbs (IP) Ltd

Sean Score ★★★★☆ (4/5)
Annual GMV: $10M-$50M

International trademark and IP filing. Does the US too, but just trademark. No nonsense UK-based law firm. Cheaper and easier to work with than the big US guys.

Recruiting: The Dentz Group

Sean Score ★★★★☆ (4/5)
Annual GMV: $10M-$50M

Placed my VP of Wholesale and COO. Good recruiters, but you should be remote to use them. And they are expensive: 20-30% of salary or comp.

AI Consultant: EnabledAI

Sean Score ★★★★☆ (4/5)
Annual GMV: $10M-$50M

Smart young agency that is good with AI. You pay them to come audit workflows and train team members on new AI tools.

ERP: Fulfil 🤝

Sean Score ★★★★☆ (4/5)
Annual GMV: $10M-$50M

Nobody likes their ERP. I have read lots of complaints about Fulfil from $10M a year merchants.

Yeah, good luck going to Netsuite lol.

An ERP is a root canal; at least Fulfil gives you laughing gas. Netsuite does the root canal on the wrong tooth, makes you come back, does it again, and charges you five times.

 3-Star ☆☆☆ Partners 

Pop-Ups: Recart

Sean Score ★★★☆☆ (3/5)
Annual GMV: <$1M

Good for pop ups.

Fills the Amped hole without making you get into bed with Mailchimp. Gets the same inflated signup numbers Amped was known for, with a team that actually picks up the phone.

3PL (Hong Kong): Seko

Sean Score ★★★☆☆ (3/5)
Annual GMV: <$1M

Added for our global store. Good, but very low volume. We are just in the HK warehouse.

Email (ESP): Klaviyo

Sean Score ★★★☆☆ (3/5)
Annual GMV: <$1M

Klaviyo is good. But boy, do they like charging you money!

Onsite Search: Boost AI

Sean Score ★★★☆☆ (3/5)
Annual GMV: $1M–$10M

Got our search off the ground, and lots of ways to customize. Necessary since we are working on a pretty old theme.

Post-Purchase Survey: KNO

Sean Score ★★★☆☆ (3/5)
Annual GMV: $1M–$10M

It is fine. Does pretty much exactly what it did two years ago. Post-purchase surveys have not evolved much as a category, and neither has KNO.

Catalog Optimization: Marpipe

Sean Score ★★★☆☆ (3/5)
Annual GMV: $1M–$10M

Expensive but easy value add for catalog ads.

Creative: TubeScience

Sean Score ★★★☆☆ (3/5)
Annual GMV: $10M-$50M

Great at content, great experience, understand our headwinds from a creative perspective. Meaningful performance is TBD.

Wholesale (In-Store): ActionLink Services LLC

Sean Score ★★★☆☆ (3/5)
Annual GMV: $10M-$50M

Dirty world of wholesale, big-box stores do not have the staff to fix their own inventory. You pay ActionLink to set your displays. It is the way of the world. They are fine.

Creative: Narrative

Sean Score ★★★☆☆ (3/5)
Annual GMV: $10M-$50M

Rapid, good, UGC. Just expensive as it is a % of ad spend. But they do get it right fast.

Creative: Brand(.)co

Sean Score ★★★☆☆ (3/5)
Annual GMV: $10M-$50M

Also DR. Great service, thoughtful team.

3PL (Europe & Australia): Shipbob

Sean Score ★★★☆☆ (3/5)
Annual GMV: $10M-$50M

Fine, average, the same as it has been.

Lawyers: KL Gates

Sean Score ★★★☆☆ (3/5)
Annual GMV: $50M–$100M

Goodie, the ecomm partner over there, is a very good lawyer. But it is a big, expensive, $1k-an-hour firm. So be careful engaging. If you need to sell, they are experts.

 2-Star ☆☆ Partners 

Frontend: Shogun

Sean Score ★★☆☆☆ (2/5)
Annual GMV: <$1M

Fast builder for non-tech employees. But pretty buggy and requires a ton of testing. We have pulled back on Shogun and are rebuilding our theme from the ground up.

BNPL: Affirm

Sean Score ★★☆☆☆ (2/5)
Annual GMV: $1M–$10M

Still fine, but the hype is gone. No one cares about BNPL.

 1-Star ☆ Partners 

EDI: Spring Systems, Inc.

Sean Score ★☆☆☆☆ (1/5)
Annual GMV: $10M-$50M

F*** EDI. Necessary evil.

Operators always ask me …

I would work by myself. I would create an audience.

I would post memes, make TikToks, do long-form video. I would spend a year trying to get people on the internet to like me.

I would use the bare bones basics. Meta, Shopify, and Klayvio. Nothing else. I would find a product my audience wants with a big enough TAM. And I would not spend a dollar on ads or any other SaaS until I got to $5M a year organically.

Connor Rolain Head of Growth, HexClad

The Fastest Way To Grow? Learn From Your Ls

We have wasted millions of marketing dollars at HexClad — paid media, influencer, bad offers, retention, etc.

I have a lot of losses in all of those channels. We take big swings. Inevitably many of those swings lose money.

But we learn from our mistakes. Because of that, I can share with you many more wins in those same channels.

The faster you can learn what doesn’t work, the sooner you can deploy what does.

How do you speed this process up?

Don’t just learn from your own mistakes. That takes forever. Learn from other people’s mistakes. Mine. Cody’s. Sean’s. Matt’s. The amazing operators behind brands like …

• Caden Lane
• Mars Men
• Portland Leather
• Bobbie
• Cuts Clothing
• JAXXON
• HexClad
• Grüns

Later this week, you can! We’re hosting an online event Thursday about the new DTC playbook.

Three-hours, 25+ operators representing billions in annual sales, plenty of time for Q&A.

At some point, each of these brands was where you are at right now. The fastest way to grow is to learn from their mistakes.

Plus, it’s free. So in this case, the only mistake you can’t learn from … is not attending.

THE FEED

​How Whisker Turned a Litter Box Into $1.5B With CEO Jacob Zuppke​

​How Ridge’s Annual Revenue Grew 90% by Launching New Products​

​The DTC Content Creation Process That Wins on Paid Social​

The Trends

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

1. Tara Bosch Launches Snackish: PR Newswire​

After selling SmartSweets for $360M in 2020, Tara Bosch is back with Snackish, a better-for-you salty snack brand. With Snackish, Bosch assembled an all-female leadership team to reimagine potato chips with cleaner ingredients and better macros.

Each serving of Snackish contains 8g of protein and 3g of fiber, and four flavors are available nationwide at Target. Bosch is self-funding Snackish which is vertically integrated via its 65,000-square-foot manufacturing facility.

2. Gleezy Secures Funding: Instagram​

Gleezy, a North Carolina-based purveyor of premium hot dogs and condiments, closed a $2M seed round led by Old Tom Capital. The company was founded three years ago by Bryce Rech and offers double-smoked beef brisket hot dogs at retailers like Target, Harris Teeter, and Food City.

Gleezy also has a growing presence in the foodservice channel with 350 venues across 45 states.

3. Dropout Taps Veteran CEO: Twitter (X)​

The parent company of Jams & Bronco, two fast-growing challenger brands, just hired LesserEvil Snacks co-founder Andrew Strife as CEO.

Strife spent nearly 15 years as CFO & COO of LesserEvil Snacks, scaling the business to over $100M in annual revenue and achieving a $750 million acquisition by Hershey last April. Strife will lead Dropout’s next phase of growth as Jams and Bronco challenge legacy brands like Jimmy Dean and Uncrustables.

4. Snack Buddies Officially Launches: TrendHunter​

The co-founders of Yasso, Amanda Klane and Drew Harrington, just launched Snack Buddies, a family-friendly and functional snack brand.

Snack Buddies debuted with a line of mini muffins that contain 5g of protein, sneaky veggies, and half the sugar and twice the fiber of the leading mini muffin brand. Klane and Harrington launched Yasso in 2011 and sold it to Unilever in 2023. Yasso was set to surpass $300M in sales at that time.

5. Good Culture Opens Production Facility: Dairy Processing​

Fast-growing cottage cheese brand Good Culture partnered with the Michigan Milk Producers Assocation (MMPA) to open a dedicated production facility in Remus, Michigan.

L Catterton acquired a majority stake in Good Culture after the company grew nearly 4x over the past three years. The new facility will enable Good Culture to significantly increase capacity and meet the rabid demand for its products.

​Can’t wait to see you on Thursday!

With thanks and anticipation,
Aaron Orendorff
🤓 Chief Executive Officer

P.S. (Disclaimer): Special thanks to Rokt Aftersell for sponsoring today’s newsletter.

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