We’ve done it before. Can we do it again?

Four ecommerce titans have built $100M+ brands. And now, along with a new founder, you get to see …

🤯 Matt Bertulli reveals we’re launching a new brand + building it in public

💰 Cody Plofker shares 8 easy ways to make more money from your upsells

🚀 Alex Beller invites you to grab a front-row, non-Sean-Frank-leaked seat

Plus the five top headlines in consumer.

Cody Plofker Advisor, Jones Road

8 Easy Ways to Make More Money From Your Upsells

I was recently scrolling DTC Twitter and stumbled across Aaron’s post. Aftersell sent him cookies.

Why?

To promote its new Revenue Leak Report.

I didn’t get any cookies. But I did check out the report.

They analyzed 17M sessions from 50k brands to find the most common leaks across carts, checkouts, post-purchases, and thank-you pages.

The results are fascinating. For example, did you know rate of acceptance increases with every consecutive upsell in a funnel?

Or that brands using Rokt Thanks cross-sell double their revenue from the same post-purchase traffic?

Those are just a few interesting things I discovered. Here are 8 quick wins I put together based on the report:

1️⃣ Upsell before “Complete Order”

2️⃣ Turn on Rokt Thanks cross-sells

3️⃣ Add downsells after upsells

4️⃣ Stack multiple cart modules

5️⃣ Test full-price post-purchase offers

6️⃣ Add more (not less) funnel steps

7️⃣ Use single-product upsells

8️⃣ Segment your offers by intent

Where should you start?

You can download the whole thing as a Skill, drop it into your preferred LLM, and audit your store against the benchmarks.

Then ask it …

• Where are we behind?
• What should we test next?
• What’s our quickest ROI?

Matt Bertulli CEO, Pela + Lomi

We Are Launching a New Brand + Building in Public

Do the Operators still have what it takes?

We’re about to find out.

Five of us have co-founded a company together. Sean, Mike, Cody, myself, and the fifth is Curtis Christopherson. He has 23 years in health and wellness, and the original idea was his.

We funded it ourselves. The product is made, sitting at a 3PL, and ready to ship. Nobody has a title. Zero employees.

We’re calling the show Operators Build, and you’re going to have a front row seat to the entire thing.

Ten episodes in season one …

1. How to start a brand
2. Choosing the product
3. Formulating supplements
4. Product and packaging
5. From idea to purpose order
6. Subscription infrastructure
7. Going AI-first for 1% OpEx
8. Our go-to-market strategy
9. Offer, pricing & promotion
10. THE ACTUAL LAUNCH

Our first episode drops one week from today on the 24th. Here’s a sneak peek of what’s coming up.

 What’s The Brand? 

I don’t wanna give too much away before our big reveal next week. But I’ll give you a few hints.

It’s Competitive

We chose a category that’s wide open and brutally hard at the same time.

Big TAM means it’s one of the hottest categories in consumer right now. A lot of very good operators are running in this space.

We’re stepping into the octagon.

It’s Consumable

This is a lesson we’re all taking from our own companies.

• Wallets, rings, and luggage
• Water bottles and bags
• Phone cases and compost

Durables mean you get paid one time for a transaction. Best-in-class durables get maybe 20-30% of people to return.

We wanted the opposite. Something you consume, that runs out, that you have to buy again.

We chose the perfect DTC product. It’s light, doesn’t spoil, cheap to ship, and the margins are strong.

We Are Investing $500k

$100,000 of it is already spent. That went into creating and testing the product. One year of Curtis’ work … formulation, iteration, delays we didn’t plan for.

We’ll break it all down during the show.

The other $400,000 is ahead, and we want as much of it as possible going into marketing.

To be clear, you could do this for a lot less. We’re not spending $500k because it takes $500k.

We’re spending it because all of us manage 9-figure businesses and our time is limited. Most importantly, it’s what we’re willing to lose to give this a real shot.

If we exhaust the $500k, we will sit down and decide if we put in more. However, our answer to every problem will not be to throw more money at it.

We understand most people can’t do that. We want you to learn from this whether you’re launching with $20k or $1M.

 Our Scoreboard 

Two metrics will be our guiding light. The economics of a single user (CAC) + OpEx costs.

$100 CAC

We want to see our customers coming back after 30 days, 60 days, 180 days.

So we’re gunning for $100 CAC. At $200, I still think we win. If we’re paying $1k per customer, churn will never pencil out.

We are mercenaries on this, not martyrs. There are founders who’d sell their product at zero margin forever because they believe in it. That’s not us.

If the math doesn’t work, we pivot hard.

1% OpEx

Our goal is to have OpEx at 1% of revenue. That’s aggressive. I don’t know if we’ll hit it.

Three things drive the P&L …

• People
• Product
• Marketing

We want to squeeze the first two so the third can stay big and there’s still margin underneath.

Cody built every email we’ll need as well as the ads and landing pages. I’ve got my own ad builder going into his code base. Five people, no employees, no plans to hire for a while.

You could not have done this three years ago.

 Five Cooks, One Kitchen 

Nobody has a title. But we do have areas of accountability.

Mike has finance, modeling and Amazon. Curtis has product, key creator relationships, and he’s the face of the brand. I own copywriting. Cody is building the systems.

Marketing will be a mix of me, Cody, and Sean.

What Do We Do When We Disagree?

All of us are used to having the final say.

Our goal is to build a data-driven culture so that deference is cheap. Saying “let’s go with your call” costs nothing if you both know you’ll check the numbers in the end.

We don’t care who’s right; only what’s right.

Do We Have a Business Plan?

Nope!

A business plan is a theory about a market, and when you’re entering a market your theory is almost always wrong.

Assume 90% changes after you launch. What we’ve been working from is a to-do list.

• Business license
• Formula
• LLC (paperwork)
• Domain
• COGS math

Cody reduced the whole thing to two questions. I think this pretty much sums up our “business plan.”

• Is there existing demand?
• Are the margins viable?

 Probably Our First Mistake 

We spent a year on this product before selling a single unit.

Sean pointed out he’d have rather launched whatever white-label version was closest to the shelf, found demand, and built toward the product from there.

He’s not wrong.

We bought inventory before testing price, message, or offer.

That might be our first mistake.

Yes, we have advantages you may not have. We know each other, we have a network, decades of experience, and money we can afford to lose.

But there’s plenty we haven’t figured out.

You’ll watch us make these decisions in real time.

• Product
• Packaging
• Go-to-market
• Channel strategy
• Sourcing creative

All of it.

Do we still have what it takes?

We are about to find out … together.

Alex Beller CEO, Postscript

This is Ecom’s Worst Kept Secret

Tuesday, I’m cruising Twitter with my coffee. Gonna be a totally normal day. Then I see Sean Frank in a photo with our unreleased email product sitting on the screen behind him.

I zoomed in. What the heck!

The comments figured it out fast.

I texted him. He asked me for a better rate.

But in his defense, he said “my bad.”

In Sean-speak, that means “I’m sorry.” So I forgive him.

The truth is, it was bound to come out. And this was a pretty fun (if not chaotic) way for it to happen.

My mentions detonated. Operators I’ve known for years were zooming in, arguing about whether it’s real, demanding to see more. It got us a fair amount of publicity.

Yes, we’re building email. Yes, there’s a date. And yes, you’re going to want to see what’s live along with what’s coming.

Sean did our announcement for us. Least we can do is finish it.

Join us on September 23 for the full reveal.

THE FEED

​Haus CMO Reveals the Incrementality Index Behind Smarter ROAS Decisions​

​William Hicks (Magic Mind) Explains Why Product-Market Fit Cannot Be Forced​

​Employee Number Four to a $1.2B Unilever Exit: Katie Cirulli’s Story​

​Ecommerce Consumer Behavior and the Psychology of Buying Online​

The Trends

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

1. OLIPOP Adds Beverage Veteran as CEO: Food Dive​

Modern soda brand OLIPOP just appointed former Electrolit chief Christian Patiño Webb as CEO. Webb joined Electrolit in 2022 and scaled it into one of the fastest-growing hydration brands in the United States, culminating in a strategic partnership with KDP and a $400M manufacturing facility in Waco, TX.

Ben Goodwin, OLIPOP’s co-founder and CEO since 2018, will step into the roles of Executive Chairman & Head of Innovation.

2. Alix Earle Backs Cymbiotika: PR Newswire​

Influencer and entrepreneur Alix Earle expanded her consumer portfolio by investing in Cymbiotika, the 9-figure liposomal wellness brand. Earle was an early investor in Poppi and backed several other brands, including SipMARGS and GORGIE.

Founded by Durana Elmi, Shahab Elmi, and Chervin Jafarieh, Cymbiotika combines liposomal delivery with clean, innovative ingredients. The company secured $25M from several strategic angel investors in January.

3. Samsonite Acquires Stake in BÉIS: Inc. Magazine​

Global luggage giant Samsonite acquired an 85% stake in BÉIS for $178.5M. Founded by Shay Mitchell and incubated by Beach House Group, BÉIS is a digitally native luggage brand that delivered $210M in 2025 sales with “attractive margins.”

Beach House Group was founded by serial entrepreneur Shaun Neff and co-created a number of talent-led brands, including Moon, Pattern, NOYZ, and Florence by Mills.

4. Once Upon a Farm Delivers in Q2: OFRM​

Once Upon a Farm (NYSE: OFRM) had a strong Q2 as net sales jumped 42% to over $85 million while the company’s net loss narrowed to $5M. The children’s nutrition specialist also revised its FY net sales outlook to over $327M, representing 36% year-over-year growth.

The net sales increase resulted from a 40% rise in volume growth, reflecting incremental distribution of existing products and new product launches.

5. AG1 Expands into Gummies: Athletech News​

In a rather surprising turn of events, AG1 moved into another new category with the launch of its Essentials Gummies range. The berry-shaped Daily Nutritional Gummies deliver over 50 different vitamins & minerals, including B Vitamins, Vitamin D, Choline, Magnesium, and many others.

This is latest example of category expansion under Kat Cole who took the helm as AG1’s CEO in 2024. AG1's other new products include AGZ, AG Omega3, and AG1 Pro.

With thanks and anticipation,
Aaron Orendorff
🤓 Chief Executive Officer

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

Oh, and did you know we’re hosting the only online Black Friday event for operators, by operators on Aug 28th? We are!

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