🥵 Sean Frank shares 10 tips on how to not get cooked in 2027

🤔 Connor Rolain reveals where and why to diversify after Meta

🤯 Bryan Bumgardner optimizes your ads with first-party data

Plus, if you faded us … I forgive you! The replays and resource from Friday’s event are coming.

Connor Rolain Head of Growth, HexClad

What Paid Channel Should Come After Meta?

When you’re trying to decide which paid channel to expand into next, the most important question to ask yourself is:

The channel should create conversions that wouldn’t have happened without it (not just take credit).

That’s incrementality.

At HexClad, one of our most incremental non-Meta paid channels is AppLovin. It’s mobile-game advertising, reaching over a billion daily active users.

We ran multiple hold-out tests, we looked at it through Northbeam, and the numbers speak for themselves:

• 90% new customers
• 36% higher ROAS
• 27% lower CAC

We started when the platform was still in Beta. But now it’s available to everyone. You can get set up in under an hour.

If you create an AppLovin account and launch your first campaign within 24 hours, the Operators-only code attached to that link will give you $1k in ad credits.

Then, when you spend $5k, you’ll get another $5k in credits … stackable, up to $6k in total.

Or if you want the shortcut to diversification this holiday season, click here to get the Operators channel expansion playbook + register for our next online event Sep 10th.

I’ll be there with HexClad’s Dir. of Paid Media (London), Ridge’s Connor MacDonald and Sean Frank, as well as AppLovin and Haus’ Olivia Kory!

Sean Frank CEO, Ridge

DTC in 2027: How to NOT GET COOKED!!!!

Bob makes widgets in China.

Two decades of gov subsidies and USA overregulation, he CAN’T make widgets elsewhere.

It isn’t him being cheap, it’s that manufacturing for widgets only exists in a 10-mile radius of Fujian, China.

Bob sells his widgets on Shopify. Bob is really successful and he even has wholesalers.

Bob pays for some of his widgets with the money he makes selling them. He takes loans for the rest, sends the money to China, gets more widgets, puts those widgets on shelves, puts it on his site, and then runs ads to generate widget awareness.

That’s been the state of every ecom brand, from Nike to Everlane, to Bob - for ten years. It’s been subsidized from China and borderline incentivized by the USA.

But cracks keep showing up in Bob’s business model.

2020, Covid. Making stuff in China got very hard, very fast. Factories were on lunar new year. Did not come back.

2021, the ads engine broke.
iOS 14 killed thousands of brands.

2022, financing dried up.
DTC IPOs fall 70, 80, 90%.

2023 - inflation. All that lockdown, “good” times, zero-interest-rate cash works its way through the system.

Who wants to invest in a category with no path to exit? What you get is a credit crunch. Bob can’t fund POs...

2024, Everything is frozen.
It is 2023, but add an election.

Solutions are performative. Rate cuts don’t do anything. Everyone points to data telling you things are actually GOOD.

They do not feel all that good...

2025. Tariffs. Trade war.
Six months of absolute chaos.

Some brands got obliterated by the whiplash. Cost structures blew up overnight.

The brands that made it through had margins. Had relationships. Had product that was worth paying more for.

And now 2026, heading into 2027. The tariff dust has settled but the new reality hasn’t.

What the hell do you do? How do you not GET COOKED????

1. Product x TAM

Creative isn’t king. The product is.

When the pie isn’t growing, the only way to win is to have a better product than your competitors.

And a better offer.

Sometimes I do calls with young people starting their journey. This kid jumps on and says he is selling tiny toy violins. Asks how he can get to 5k a day. I thought he was messing with me. I think globally this guy had 80% of the tiny toy violin market at $800 bucks a day. He couldn’t do 5k a day if he was an Ecom god.

Huge TAM is the first battle.

Sell water bottles,
not hamster water bottles.

Stop obsessing over ad hooks and funnels and start obsessing over how to make your product 10% better at the same price. Or 10% cheaper at the same quality.

People just want good things that solve their problems. God-tier paid can’t overcome a mediocre product.

You also need to sell the product in a new way or form. Gruns is AG1 but tastier. Comfrt is Gap but online commerce. Simple Modern is water bottles on Amazon and retail.

Have a clear advantage or path to stand out. Own a new channel, own a new way to do things. For Ridge, our wallet was different AND Facebook ads were new.

I think about ecom constantly. You know what’s at the bottom of it? Not your ads, not your creative, not your attribution.

Product has been, is, and always will be the foundation.

Good product. Big TAM. That’s where you start.

2. Grow slower

People will buy things on the internet forever. The amount of people buying, and the share of their purchases that will happen online, will go up.

Stores aren’t cooked, wholesale isn’t cooked.

But the days of rapid growth are gone.

Without growth, you need to EARN your sales from the fixed pie.

Shopify is growing by adding stores... They aren’t growing by same store sales.

Their growth is coming at the expense of WooCommerce, Salesforce, Magento.

YOU CAN STILL GROW! But you need to be better than everyone else to EARN THE SALES.

The math of ecom is brutally simple. It always has been.

- MSRP > COGS = Profit.
- Offer + Attention = Sales

But you know why consumer brands fail? Because they get seduced by the growth fairy tale.

Look at what happened to all those “darling” DTC 1.0 and 2.0 brands. Casper had negative margins — selling $1 for 90 cents. Allbirds went from $4.1B to $345M. 75% of Pura Vida got bought in 2019 for $75M. It got divested for $1M.

Did their products suddenly suck? No. Did consumers stop buying mattresses or shoes or bracelets? No.

The growth story died.

You should not get there in 2 years. Or 3 years. It’s a 5+ year journey to get to $100M. Start now. You are only getting older.

3. Make friends with suppliers

If you’re still making products in China, you need to become best friends with your factory.

The era of “I’ll take my PO elsewhere” is long over. Your factory needs to love you, and that means consistent orders, clear communication, and sometimes higher prices.

Every dollar you spend building that relationship is worth it.

When another supply shock comes — and it will — guess who gets their stuff first? The brands that the factory owner will lose sleep over if they mess up.

Don’t be the brand that the factory drops when things get tight.

The tariff wars proved this. Factories had capacity constraints and allocation decisions to make overnight.

The ones who got prioritized treated their factory like a partner, not a vendor. They had been there in person. They paid on time. They didn’t nickel and dime on every PO.

If your factory sees you as replaceable, you are.

At Ridge, our manufacturing relationships are everything. We don’t treat factories like interchangeable vendors. We treat them like partners in our business, and that’s saved our ass more times than I can count.

I just got back from a world tour. Guess what country I spent the most time in and who I visited there

4. Build an audience

If you are starting an ecom brand today, build an audience first.

Create memes and build long-form content. Organic is your best friend. Hustle your ass to $1M in sales on TikTok.

When paid acquisition gets insanely expensive, organic becomes your alpha.

The brands that are crushing it today all have one thing in common: they have audiences that actually care about them. Not ads. Not product shots. Not inch-deep influencer garbage.

The problem is most DTC founders hate this advice. They want to sell NOW. They want the magic Facebook ads formula that’ll make them rich by next quarter.

That doesn’t exist anymore.

Build the audience. The sales will follow.

I am not saying Codie Sanchez is right. You should do paid ads before 5 or 10m. We are at Winks because…

5. Meta is still king

If you have a product people want, that is working on organic, scale it. Meta is everything. Get good, deploy cash, and scale.

The brands that are winning right now aren’t doing anything magical. They found a product that converts organically. They proved the economics. Then they poured gas on it with paid.

Everyone wants to overcomplicate this.

New attribution tools. New channels. New ad formats. But the playbook hasn’t changed: if organic works, Meta will work. And if Meta works, you have a business.

Don’t outsource it to someone who doesn’t understand your brand and won’t lose sleep when your ROAS drops. Learn enough to be dangerous.

Hire someone who can execute. Then get out of their way.

6. Fix your margins

Talked to a brand the other day. 100 million in sales last year. $500 million in lifetime sales.

The founder was DEAD broke. $2,000 in his bank account.

Too many brands got addicted to growth at any cost. They thought they’d fix margins later. Later is now.

You need at least 65 gross points to survive.

Renegotiate with suppliers, find better packaging, streamline your operations - do whatever it takes.

Consumer products and durable goods SHOULDN’T change the world. Riding trends works. Don’t try to be a disruptor.

The world’s second-oldest business model is still alive: sell things for more than they cost to make.

7. Get profitable (RIGHT NOW)

The brands that will thrive in this environment are the ones that can be profitable at their current size.

That means cutting headcount, reducing office space, and focusing on what makes money.

It feels harsh, but a lean business that makes money is better than a bloated one that’s always 60 days from bankruptcy.

Build something that can survive without growth.

Be a farmer, not a tech startup.

Consumer isn’t meant to be explosive. There’s no “winning” in farming. Crops take as long as they take to grow. They’re seasonal.

Brands take as long as they take to build.

You can’t force it. You can’t hack it.

Too many founders got into ecom because it was hot, because it was cool, because they thought they’d be the next Warby Parker. But that train has left the station.

Enjoy the journey. Or at least make peace with it.

8. Sell EVERYWHERE

The future of Ridge is more retail. With new products built for retail. Paid for by my amazing ecom and Amazon business.

That’s the model. DTC is just one channel now.

The brands that survive will be everywhere their customers are - retail, marketplaces, social commerce, direct.

Each channel supports the others. They create a flywheel that makes the whole business stronger.

Single-channel brands are going extinct.

We haven’t shoved “digital transformation” down anyone’s throat in years. Because retail isn’t dead, and it isn’t dying.

The math of dtc has gotten brutal. Facebook CPMs are up, and consumers have a million options.

But you know what hasn’t changed? People still go to stores. People still discover products in real life. People still want to touch and feel things before they buy them.

Ridge is in 2,000 doors right now. Not because we gave up on ecom, but because we realized that an omnichannel strategy is more resilient than a single-channel one.

The direct-only dogma was always stupid. It was a convenient narrative for VCs who wanted to believe they were disintermediating retail, but the economics never made sense at scale.

9. Don’t overcomplicate it

The temptation is to try everything at once.

New products, new channels, new marketing strategies — throwing chef boyardee at the wall to see what sticks.

That’s dumb.

Shopify. Amazon. One wholesale account. Don’t do international yet. One warehouse, maybe two. Use a 3PL.

Ridge did too much. I was buying NPR display ads and Snapchat instead of leaning into Meta. I wasted years on complexity when the answer was staring at me.

Figure out the ONE THING your brand does better than anyone else, and DO THAT MORE.

Everyone is talking about building their own AI. Their own machine learning...

These are distractions for brands that don’t want to face the truth: business is hard, margins matter, and there are no shortcuts.

Don’t get caught chasing the shiny new thing while your core business burns.

Good product. Big TAM. Organic video. Paid ads on Meta. Keep it easy and simple. Know your numbers.

That’s the whole damn thing.

10. Stay in the game

I am proud of you for making it this far. If you’re still in the game, I respect the hell out of you and your grit.

You are just as smart as the rest of us. I have been unbelievably lucky. I dodged the falling knives at the last minute.

But it is luck - not skill.

I am a WORSE, dumber operator than most. I have seen people smarter than me go bust.

I don’t know what the future holds. But staying in the game is the only chance you have at WINNING the game.

Success in ecom is partly skill, but it’s mostly endurance.

We survived iOS 14. We survived COVID supply chain chaos. We survived the DTC funding collapse. We survived tariffs.

While we were surviving, thousands of our competitors weren’t.

Commit to the long game. That’s the only game that still has winners.

Remember, it’s an ecosystem.

When things get hard for Bob, he fires people. He fires agencies, he stops spending on creative, he stops spending with creators.

Less dollars float around, and the game goes zero sum FAST. I’ve complained that it gets more toxic online. Or that it is too quiet.

People do not feel like being open when they feel bad. Or they feel like someone is taking from them. Or they feel it is their fault.

It’s the natural response. Retreat, shut up, heads down.

If that is you - you aren’t as dumb as you feel.

I’ve watched GREAT brands face multi-year revenue declines. AWESOME agencies get canned. COOL people I know get let go. It isn’t you. It’s a 6-year macro beat down where every year has brought a new challenge.

So please, if you have had a hard year or hard half a decade... You are not alone. I respect you. I want you to win. I want to see you out there trying.

I wish you the best.

And I know you can do it.

Bryan Bumgardner Head of Growth, Northbeam

You Can Now Optimize Meta Ads With First-Party Data

Northbeam Apex is here.

Apex passes back your Northbeam performance data to Meta, which means you can optimize your ad delivery using first-party data, instead of relying on Meta’s default algorithms.

We tested it. This chart shows the aggregate improvements from A/B testing Apex campaigns against Meta’s default controls.

• +8% revenue lift
• +13% new orders
• +12% new ROAS
• -18% new CPO

All it takes is a few button presses to activate Apex. It’s also included at no additional cost for Northbeam customers.

As Meta continues to take away targeting, your levers for improving your campaigns are disappearing.

Apex can help you find that competitive edge again.

THE FEED

​How to Create a Product From Prototype to Launch: Operators Build (E2)​

​Shinesty’s Co-Founders on Selling Humor & 14M Pairs of Underwear​

​“Leadership Is Leverage”: Motion’s CEO on the Future of Marketing​

​10 Best AI Use Cases for Ecommerce in 2026: Ranked by CEOs​

The Trends

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

1. Mondelēz Brings Grenade to the US: Food Dive​

Mondelēz International is launching Grenade, the UK’s number-one protein bar brand, in the United States. The debut features four flavors, including an Oreo collaboration, each with 20 grams of protein and one gram of sugar.

Grenade launches initially at Amazon, GNC, The Vitamin Shoppe, and Bodybuilding.com, with broader retail distribution planned for later this year. Mondelēz acquired a majority interest in the brand in 2021. Protein bars are currently the fastest-growing segment of the US snack market, growing at four times the rate of total protein snacks.

2. David Protein + Liquid Death Face Allulose Lawsuits: BevNET​

Two of DTC’s most closely watched brands, David Protein and Liquid Death, were hit with proposed class action lawsuits this week challenging their “zero sugar” claims due to their use of allulose. The suits follow a July 27 federal appeals court ruling that classified allulose as a sugar under governing FDA regulation.

David’s bars and Liquid Death’s energy drinks both list allulose prominently in their ingredient panels. The cases put a broad swath of better-for-you brands using the sweetener on notice.

3. TowerBrook Partners With Rael: Business Wire​

TowerBrook Capital Partners announced a strategic partnership with Rael, a fast-growing women’s wellness brand. Founded in 2017 by CEO Yanghee Paik and two other Korean American women, Rael offers a wide variety of products across period care, skincare, and hormonal wellness.

The company's products are available in 40k retail doors across the US and Korea. Previous investors in Rael include Unilever Ventures, BAM Ventures, Softbank Ventures Asia, and others.

4. TikTok Shop Surpasses Major Retailers in US Ecommerce: Consumer Edge​

According to Consumer Edge credit and debit card transaction data, TikTok Shop accounted for roughly 2% of total U.S. online retail spending in July 2026, up from 1.2% a year earlier and effectively zero three years ago.

That puts TikTok Shop’s US online sales ahead of Target, Costco, and Home Depot individually. The platform remains well behind Amazon (roughly 35% share) and Walmart (roughly 7%), but the trajectory is notable. Every income tier grew TikTok Shop spend +60% YoY in Q2; shoppers over 35 are now the fastest-growing demographic by spending on the platform.

5. :INCLUDED Releases 2026 CPG Impact Report: Yahoo Finance​

:INCLUDED, the nation’s largest collective of founders and CEOs of color across food, beverage, wellness, and beauty, released its 2026 Annual Impact Report this month.

The report documents how a growing cohort of culturally relevant CPG brands are scaling revenue with disciplined execution and less capital, a counterpoint to the funding-round-heavy narrative that dominates CPG headlines. The data points to a pipeline of distribution-ready, investment-ready brands that have largely flown under the radar.

 Did You Miss Our Black Friday? 

I get it. You’re not alone …

• It’s summer time
• You’re on vacation
• Drinking lemonade
• Back-to-school shopping
• Attending weddings
• Away from work

So you missed our once-in-a-lifetime, 3-hour, get-the-f***-ready-for-Q4 gauntlet with 25 DTC titans.

The value was incredible.

Cherene Aubert: Q4 growth traps
​McCoy Merkley: 9-fig holiday calendar
​Marcus Hatcher: Easy way to 2x AOV
​Alex Schinasi: Evergreen ads FTW
​Prudence Millsap: +97% subscribers
​Ejay O’Donnell: “What if we win?”
​Connor Rolain: Spend and budget
​Dimos Karpouzis: Whitelist accounts
​Matt Bertulli: Selling out > leftovers

And a bunch more!

The entire thing was recorded, transcribed, and is being compiled as we speak. Just sign up I’ll deliver the goods once they’re ready.

If you faded us, I forgive you.

With thanks and anticipation,
Aaron Orendorff
🤓 Chief Executive Officer

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

​Read online | Unsubscribe​