In 9 years, we've sold $500 million in drinkware at Simple Modern.

These principles have been critical to scaling the business:

1. Hire missionaries, not mercenaries. Employees passionate about your company's mission. 2. Customer trust is earned in drops, and lost in buckets.

3. Bootstrapped businesses handle cash better. When cash is precious, it’s invested well.

4. Transparency is the #1 quality desired in leaders. Be transparent, and people will follow.

We've increased website average order value from $10 to $60 in 4 years.

It's a DTC game changer. (A favorite chart of mine)

These changes made the difference:🧵👇 We started Simple Modern on Amazon. Our margins are low, making DTC tough.

Multiple unit orders explode margins. We pay $12 to ship 1 bottle and just $15 to ship 4.

AOV is key to drive up margins and invest in our website.

Here's how we increased AOV:

We toured an Amazon fulfillment center yesterday. It’s unbelievable.
 
Their inventory storage is counterintuitive. It’s organized randomness.
 
• Inventory is stored on moving shelves. Robots take shelves to the pick stations.
• Inventory is randomly placed on shelves, tracked by cameras.
• A SKU’s inventory is spread out across bins to always be close to a pick station.
• Shelves move over QR codes. Amazon always knows where everything is.
• Inventory counts are automated with cameras.
 
The computing that goes into the operation is incredible. Not sure it’d be possible without AWS. The moving shelves take inventory to human pickers. Pickers remove the item in the order and place them in a bin.

Bin travel down miles of track to boxing stations.

Tracks either take the order to single unit boxing or multiple unit boxing.

Inventory is almost always moving.

We started Simple Modern with $200k.

In 8 years, we've sold half a billion dollars of insulated drinkware through Target, Amazon & DTC.

We're licensed with Disney, NFL & more.

Our best threads about how we did it: Our biggest operational learnings from scaling the brand:

https://twitter.com/jbryanporter/status/1621517572624744451

Parenting toddlers is exhausting.

They're called the “Terrible-Twos” and “Threenagers” for a reason.

7 essential investments for parenting these emotional years: I'm the father of 3 boys: 7, 5 and 3 years old. My last time to parent a toddler with my youngest.

It's hard, thankless work met with tantrums and defiance.

But Investing in your toddler builds a foundation for growth.

Here are 7 investments I make daily:

We've sold over $300 million on Amazon in 7 years.

The most interesting part?

We started Simple Modern as a marketplace seller (3p) and scaled it as a retail vendor (1p).

The ultimate comparison of Amazon Marketplace vs Retail: What is the Difference?

Marketplace - 3rd party (3P)
Brands sell on Amazon, often paying Amazon to ship to customers (FBA). Amazon makes commission.

Vendor – 1st Party (1P)
Similar to traditional retail, like Target and Walmart. Amazon buys and owns inventory sold to customers.

DTC is TOUGH for retail focused brands.

This was our first $1+ million DTC revenue week.

Here's our website strategy that's working: Mass retail is Simple Modern's strength.

Low margins help us dominate on Amazon and Target.

Demand capture is our specialty but DTC requires demand creation.

Creating demand often takes a huge ad budget, something we just don't have.

Our website must add unique value.

Today, Simple Modern sells more drinkware than Yeti, Hydro Flask & Stanley on Amazon.

We started in 2015, bootstrapped.

21 unexpected learnings:

1. Privately-owned brands with no intent to sell are set best up to win long term. 2. Hire missionaries, not mercenaries. Employees passionate about your company's mission.

3. Bootstrapped businesses handle cash better. When cash is precious, it’s invested well.

4. Optimize for the second purchase. Lasting brands are built on loyal and repeat customers.

Hyper growth on Amazon requires new products.

𝟑𝟎% of our revenue is from SKUs under a year old.

5 ways we fuel growth with new SKUs: Amazon limits the market share listings can have.

They don't want one brand to have a monopoly.

We've experienced it.

Our goal is to maximize a product's market share within 2 years.

Keep launching products or stop growing.

Here's how:

Simple Modern started on Amazon with $200k.

In 7 years, we sold $400,000,000 in Target, Walmart and Amazon.

We're now licensed with Disney, NFL, NBA, etc.

Our best threads about how we did it: Quitting Amazon Advertising:

https://twitter.com/jbryanporter/status/1507500277175361538

Our biggest mistake selling on Amazon in 2022:

Raising prices too aggressively.

Our costs increased and we assumed customers would understand inflation.

We thought our improving brand awareness would help us to be able to charge more.

Where we went wrong was… Our listings that depend on generic Amazon keyword volume drove less total profit after the price increases.

Customers searching generic terms are very price sensitive. Our brand strength doesn’t help us much there.

We dropped prices back down on these listings for Q4.

8 tweets from 2022 that I've bookmarked and have used a resource.

Here they are. Go ahead and follow the authors, you won't regret it: 1. Great thread by @TrungTPhan explaining how Apple's product strategy is to capture the essence of what customers want.

As a consumer brand operator, these are powerful thoughts. Focus on what customer truly want in a product.

https://twitter.com/TrungTPhan/status/1545413798588141569?s=20&t=ylXaFXpbKyGJM24vPf4a5g

At the end of the year, tax write-offs are top of mind.

Every business owner should consider giving away their precious equity.

Here’s why⤵️ For business owners, selling shares can be next to impossible.

You need a buyer with deep pockets to agree on valuation. Furthermore, they must be a worthy business partner.

What if you could sell a small amount for 40% of fair market value and maintain control of the equity?

Simple Modern has sold $250 million on Amazon.

The interesting part?

Half was in the marketplace, half as a Retail Vendor.

Here’s a behind the scenes look at Amazon Retail (1P): In 2015, we launched in the Amazon marketplace and grew to be the top drinkware brand.

Just before the pandemic in 2020, we became a Retail vendor.

The transition to Retail was painful, but it propelled us into the next phase of growth.

What we learned about Amazon Retail:

2nd time founders are more successful. Why?

Starting a company provides priceless experience and knowledge.

We bootstrapped the brand Simple Modern 7 years ago. Today it’s worth 9 figures.

Here's 20 things we learned: 1. Bootstrapped businesses handle cash better. When cash is precious, it’s invested well.

2. Privately owned brands with no intent to sell have an unfair advantage. They can truly build to win long-term.

As Amazon's #1 drinkware supplier, we'll sell millions of units this year.

We’ve spent $10 million on Amazon ads since 2016.

However, in March 2022, we dropped our budget to $0.

We just finished a $1m test to check assumptions.

Here's what happened plus our new strategy: Amazon Ads were a part of Simple Modern winning in the drinkware category.

Our ad spend was 8% of sales, and ROAS was over 300%.

All seemed good, right?

We decided to walk away from ads. Here is why:

Kids have narrow perspective.

Their experience is limited.

8 critical perspectives for kids to start living with purpose: I've been married 12 years and have 3 boys: 6, 4 & 2 years old.

My kids base their perspectives on what makes them happy the fastest.

The funny thing is that I do the same as well.

8 perspectives I teach my kids and myself daily:

I give every new hire at Simple Modern our Amazon & DTC strategy.

How we went from 0 to 15 million units in 7 years.

This is what I tell them: eCommerce Foundation:

Our digital sales expertise came from working together for 6 years.

We ran a variety of ecommerce platforms.

Quibids.com was the most notable, it had an epic run.

We learned how to grow LTVs, write algorithms, run e-mail, etc.

Parenting toddlers is exhausting.

“Terrible-Twos” and “Threenagers” are rightfully earned names.

7 essential priorities for parenting this emotional age: I'm the father of 3 boys: 6, 3 and 1 years old.

It's hard, thankless work met with tantrums and defiance.

But Investing in your toddlers builds a foundation for growth.

Here are 7 priorities I focus on daily:

Don’t depend on advertising, sales or gimmicks.

Build a strong brand.

7 strategic ways we’ve built the Simple Modern brand: We've sold 20 million units in 6 years, but we are most encouraged by customer retention.

Our net promoter score is over 90.

"Simple Modern" has been a top 5k searched term on Amazon.

After 180 days we don't see website customer attrition.

Here's how we do it:

More SKUs on a product page is better… right??

It turns out some SKUs can hurt the overall listing.

How to tell if a SKU could be harmful: Conversion rate is vital to online advertising and placement with retailers like Amazon.

Decision fatigue is real.

Too many options prevents customers from finding what they will buy.

Each page view that doesn't convert, customers are closer to bouncing.