💰 Kody Lukens shares how he avoided bankruptcy + set new record months

🤖 Connor MacDonald reveals Ridge’s AI customer support (70% lower cost)

🙌 Cody Plofker explains how Jones Road saved $1M building a bigger team

Plus, a sneak peek at our next mastermind.

Connor MacDonald CMO, Ridge

Ridge Lowered Support Cost by 70% and Increased Satisfaction to 96%

As a brand scales, so does …

• Ticket volume
• Support costs
• Expectations

At Ridge, we needed a fast, affordable system to serve customers without cheapening the experience.

That’s why we signed up for Richpanel.

Its AI agent answers product and order questions, recommends items, and processes exchanges or store credit. It routes complex or sensitive issues to our team.

Customers get fast, accurate help, and our team focuses on the conversations where a human needs to be involved.

Our results speak for themselves:

• 70% lower cost per ticket
• 96% customer satisfaction
• $500k in annual savings

Not to mention, Richpanel’s AI agent has helped us recover revenue from refunds and capture more by answering questions quickly during high-intent buying moments.

The best part?

They guarantee 50% of your support volume automated in 30 days or your money back.

Kody Lukens Founder + CEO, Stimara

I Nearly Bankrupted My Brand With MCA Debt, Then Dug My Way Out

In 2025 my 7-figure brand was stalling after two years of fast, profitable growth.

I was out of cash, nearly bankrupt, and remitting over 45% of daily sales to two stacked MCAs.

In case you’re lucky enough not to know, an MCA (or “merchant cash advance”) is a loan that you repay by remitting a fixed percentage of every sale you make.

This is how I got into that hole … and then dug my way out.

Business in 2023 Was Too Good

We’re a bootstrapped fidget tool DTC brand.

In 2023, we couldn’t keep product on the shelves.

We’d restock, sell out of colors almost immediately, and pour every dollar back into inventory. The constant starts and stops made it impossible to keep momentum.

At <$1M in revenue and under a year in business, we didn’t fit anyone’s lending box (despite our quick profitable growth).

So we took out our first MCA.

They were practically begging to give us money and offered three times our monthly revenue for only a 9% cost of borrowing and 16% of daily sales until paid off.

That cost of borrowing gets baked in from day one. Borrow $100,000 and you owe a fixed $109,000.

I didn’t know then what I know now. But for our revenue levels, 16% daily meant a 4-5 month payback period. And because the remittances start on day one, you only hold half the advance on average over the lifetime of the loan.

If you do the math, a 9% borrower’s fee on half the money for a third of a year works out to roughly 50% effective APR. That is on the low end of MCA debt which can range all the way up to 150% effective APR.

We funded our next inventory batch, and it worked well.

However, between losing 16% of every sale to the and eating the fees, we didn’t have the cash needed for our next inventory order (which had to be 50% bigger to keep pace with demand).

So we borrowed more.

Revenue grew from $75k/month to $575k/month. Meanwhile our daily remittance climbed to 45%, the repeated top-up fees compressed our margins, and the only way out seemed to be to grow bigger and faster.

That works fine until you hit a rough patch, which we did at the start of 2025.

We were out of cash, on the verge of bankruptcy.

 How I Escaped MCA Hell 

I used four levers to escape our MCA death spiral, stabilize cash flow, and return to record setting months.

If I had known about these back in 2023 I never would have drawn on MCAs in the first place:

1. 12-month 0% APR CCs
2. Local banks
3. Vendor payments
4. Supplier terms

1. 12-month 0% APR Credit Cards

You can take out multiple of these cards and get hundreds of thousands in float for free for 12 months.

When they start coming due, the interest rate is 16-28% which is expensive, but still cheaper than effective MCA interest rates. The best part is that there’s no remittances choking cash and forcing you to re-up.

Here are my favorite 12 month 0% APR credit cards:

• Chase Ink Preferred / Unlimited / Cash
• Amex Business Blue / Cash
• BofA Business Advantage CCR

There are many more but these are the easiest to get.

Unless things are really critical, take them out with a few months in between to mitigate impact on your credit score and stagger the end of each 0% APR period.

It’s also a good idea to open several cards and establish substantial credit limits all at once. Then max them out quickly before lenders can reduce your limits.

Look ahead to large payments, such as Q4 orders, and pay in advance. Even for things you usually can’t use a credit card for (like inventory or payroll), you can send ACH payments through services like Plastiq using most credit cards for a 3% fee.

This can buy you 12 months to get out of your MCA stack, or prevent it entirely by using these credit cards to finance growth or survive a rough patch.

2. Local Banks

Large multinational banks won’t talk to you until you’re doing seven figures in EBITDA … but local banks will.

They’re more relationship-driven than larger institutional banks, and some will take a chance on you even if you have somewhat rocky financials.

You just gotta tell a good story.

Oftentimes smaller loans (<$25k) are just a credit check so they don’t even need to review your financials. The lines aren’t as high as what MCAs or other expensive debt will offer you, but $25k at prime +2% is hard to turn down.

Plus, it starts a relationship that can grow into much larger lines as your business expands and you make payments on time.

3. Delaying Vendor Payments

If you’re struggling with a payment but know you’ll have more cash soon, send the vendor a message about your current situation.

You’d be shocked how many extend net 30 terms, discounts, or waive payments entirely.

I got thousands worth of free software months last year that I otherwise would have had to cancel, and fantastic payment terms on lots of others.

4. Supplier Terms

This February we had a smash month with a 30% net margin, but you wouldn’t know it looking at our bank account because we were in the final stages of our 45% remittance MCA stack.

One of the biggest ways we improved our cash flow was by negotiating our supplier terms.

I’ve brought our supplier terms from:

• 30% upon PO
• 70% before shipping

To (over the past year):

• 50% when production starts
• 50% within 30 days of delivery

On top of that, the balance payments on all of our Aug–Dec POs aren’t due until January (for just an extra 10% per unit).

As a result we’re getting more inventory for Q4, and will have more cash available in that period for marketing.

In January our supplier will make more as our order volume will be double what it otherwise would’ve been without those terms.

Your supplier is the cheapest bank you can find, and they’re uniquely incentivized to help you succeed.

If you’re growing quickly, propose payment terms in exchange for higher unit costs and show them how they win if you win.

 MCA Debt Ain’t Worth It 

MCAs solved an immediate problem for my brand, but created a much bigger one.

Every dollar of growth made our cash position worse. It nearly bankrupted my business.

Getting out required replacing expensive, automatic remittances with cheaper capital and more flexible payment timing.

The good news is, now you don’t have to make my mistake.

Kody Lukens is the founder and CEO of Stimara, a company that makes magnetic fidget tools for adults. Connect with him on LinkedIn or Twitter (X).

Cody Plofker Advisor, Jones Road

How Jones Road Saved $1M Annually by Building a Team in LATAM

Hiring is one of the hardest parts of growing a brand. It’s expensive, slow, and risky.

At Jones Road, creative was our biggest bottleneck.

We were bootstrapped, so every hire had to earn its keep. A US-based creative team at the scale we needed just wasn’t in the cards.

So we partnered with Proppel and hired 12+ people in LATAM:

• 5 Graphic Designers
• 3 Video Editors
• 2 Retention Managers
• 1 Creative Strategist
• 1 Executive Assistant

To say I was impressed with the quality of the talent would be an understatement. Their English was great, they worked our time zones, and many even had experience working for top DTC brands and agencies.

Within weeks, we had the bandwidth to test more and take bigger creative swings across every channel.

We saved $800,000 a year, and finally built a team for our next phase of growth.

I’m not the only operator saying nice things …

Beyond LATAM, Proppel can also help you hire in the US.

They work on a performance basis, so you only pay if they find the right candidate for you. All their hires are backed by a 3-month guarantee.

I highly recommend them.

THE FEED

​Dippin’ Daisy’s Founder on Swimwear Margins & Seasonal Inventory​

​Jones Road Beauty & HexClad on Why Meta Traffic Quality Is Falling​

The Trends

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

1. Smash Foods Secures $18M: LinkedIn​

Smash Foods secured an $18M growth investment led by L Catterton. Existing investors Éclair Partners and The Family Fund also participated. Founded in 2019 by Anna Peck and Steve Ford, Smash Foods specializes in reimagining pantry staples with better-for-you ingredients and nutritious superfoods.

The company’s revenue grew 3x in 2025 and its jams and snacks retail at 10,000 doors across the country.

2. Vita Coco Acquires Copra: Food Dive​

The Vita Coco Company (NASDAQ: COCO) has acquired Copra, a Thailand-based manufacturer of super-premium cold-chain coconut water. The acquisition enables Vita Coco to compete with companies like Harmless Harvest in an attractive, fast-growing segment of the category.

Vita Coco will pay $175M upfront in addition to performance-based earnout capped at $100M. Vita Coco is currently worth nearly $4B; its share price is up 430% over the past five years.

3. Curie Refreshes Branding: Beauty Packaging​

8-figure personal care brand Curie unveiled a sleek brand refresh. Curie’s new look is bolder, more modern, more expressive, and built around movement.

Now positioned as a performance-driven personal care brand instead of a clean deodorant brand, the refresh builds on Curie’s strong retail momentum. At Walmart, Curie has achieved the highest repeat-purchase rate in its category. Former VC Sarah Moret launched Curie in 2018.

4. Bain Capital Buys Vitabiotics: Twitter​

Bain Capital has acquired Vitabiotics, the UK’s #1 vitamin & supplement brand, in a deal worth around $1.2B. Founded in 1971 by Professor Kartar Lalvani OBE, Vitabiotics owns several category leading brands including Wellman, Wellwoman, Pregnacare, Perfectil, and Osteocare.

In addition to its market leading presence in the UK, Vitabiotics is also active in several global markets like India, China, and Egypt. Unilever acquired Grüns for $1.2B earlier this year and L Catterton is currently shopping Thorne for around $4B.

5. Organic Traditions Raises $10.5M to Support Growth: PR Newswire​

Canadian wellness brand Organic Traditions raised $10.5M from several strategic angel investors, including execs from Shopify, Frito-Lay, and Colgate-Palmolive.

Founded more than 25 years ago by Jerry Zeifman and now led by his daughter, Ally Mamalider, Organic Traditions specializes in functional drink mixes like mushroom coffees, daily greens, fiber smoothies, and other superfood staples. Under Mamalider’s leadership, Organic Traditions has experienced 70% revenue growth over the past three years.

 Our Next Mastermind, THIS YEAR 

Chances are, you missed out on our first ever mastermind.

Honeylove’s CEO Igor Lebovic described it as “the ultimate anti conference.” Portland Leather Goods’ CMO MacCoy Merkley was even more blunt: “Get here now!’

30 operators pumping $4B GMV per year spent a full day

• Telling the truth
• Sharing tactics
• Solving problems
• Making friends
• And bull riding
• In cowboy hats
• At a lakehouse

Want to come to the next one?

I have a handful of invites for two more we’re doing this year (NYC + LA). Reply and tell me why you deserve one of those “golden tickets” — I’ll add you to the waitlist.

With thanks and anticipation,
Aaron Orendorff
🤓 Chief Executive Officer

P.S. (Disclaimer): Special thanks to Richpanel and Proppel for sponsoring today’s newsletter.

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