Levi Lindsay

Your DTC flash sale just destroyed your Target relationship. You ran a 40% off promo to hit your monthly number. It worked. You moved product. The team celebrated. Then your Target buyer called. Customers walked into their store, saw your product at full price, checked their phone, and bought it from you for 40% less. Target's not re-ordering next quarter. This is the cross-channel nightmare nobody talks about: 🔴 Amazon controls 40.9% of US ecommerce 🔴 Retail delivers the scale 🔴 DTC builds the loyalty And they're all cannibalizing each other. Brands are learning this the expensive way. You open a store, and ecommerce sales drop (the "J-Curve"). You discount DTC, and retail buyers pull back. You chase Amazon velocity, and your margins disappear. 65% of CPG leaders say they'll rely on a multi-channel mix by 2026. But most don't have a strategy. They have a hope that it all works out. It won't. Not without deciding what each channel is actually for. How are you managing channel conflict – strict pricing controls, different product mixes, or just hoping it doesn't blow up?

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11 Comments

Here are the 3 things I'd be focused on if I were running a $5-10M DTC brand right now. (I’m helping run growth for 17) 1. Free or cheap traffic is no longer optional. Years ago Gary Vee told us that Facebook ads were like Malibu oceanfront property in the 50’s: cheap now, but just wait. He was right, and the brands that took that seriously and built organic audiences while paid was still affordable are in a completely different position today. The window to build owned channels before you desperately need them is always closing. Organic content, LLM visibility, email list growth, whatever form it takes for your brand, start now. Don’t want to begin until CAC forces you to. 2. LTV is a product problem, not a marketing problem. This one is hard to hear but it's true. If you sell one thing and your customers only need to buy it once, the cake is already baked. No email flow or loyalty program is going to save you. Real LTV growth happens in the product roadmap: - What else does your ICP actually want? - What's the natural next purchase? - What problem do they have that you're uniquely positioned to solve? The hard work of marketing is done in product development, and you need to really embrace that if you want to stop playing defense on retention and start playing offense on expansion. 3. Get lean before you're forced to. Whether we’re talking about tariffs, rising ad costs, or rising labor costs, the pressure on margins is coming from every direction at once right now, and that’s not going away any time soon. The brands that are going to make it through the next three years are the ones who keep themselves as lean as possible. That means using AI to do more with less. It means auditing overhead honestly. It means equipping your current team to be more productive instead of adding headcount. Mean and lean is a mindset that you probably need in order to survive right now. I broke all of this down in detail on the latest episode of The Bottom Line with Chris H. of Ecom Cowboy, one of the sharpest, most honest conversations I've had about the current state of DTC and what it actually takes to build something that lasts. Chris has played every side of this game. His perspective on where the industry is heading is worth your time. Link in comments.

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7 Comments

Founders don’t lose sleep in Q4 over sales. They lose sleep over their ads shutting off. I’ve lived that nightmare: - Ad campaigns crushing it. - Customers converting. - And then — card declines. Ads stop. Momentum gone. If you’ve ever had to sit there refreshing Facebook Ads Manager at 2am during Black Friday, you know exactly what I mean. That’s why I’m so excited about what we've rolled out at Highbeam: - Cards that never decline, even as spend scales. - No limits to manage, no need to pay down cards mid-campaign. - Up to 2.3% cash back, with rewards going straight into your account. Founders shouldn’t have to play defense with their own bank. The best brands play offense — and their tools should too. This Q4, the only thing you should be worried about is selling more — not whether your card can keep up.

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What angers me most about DTC operators complaining they can't scale is they'll happily test up to 2500 ads per month while negating something just as, if not more important: Offers. These same brands will go wild testing creative but run the same weak "10% off when you sign up for our email list" popup they've had for years. This is lazy. Once they realize what testing offers, and not only creative, can get you their eyes usually open up. Let me give you a short cut: One of our clients had massive permutations in their product catalog and completely unpredictable cart behavior. Instead of another generic discount, we built threshold offers - spend $100, get their top-performing product free. We drove traffic to curated collection pages instead of trying to force specific product bundles that didn't match their customer behavior. The brand needed to be first-order profitable since they had low lifetime value, but they had decent margins to work with on their cost of goods. This approach worked because we matched the offer to their actual customer behavior instead of forcing a one-size-fits-all discount strategy. Testing offers like you test creative can completely unlock ad accounts that are stuck and dramatically improve conversion rates in a short time. Your offer is literally the first thing a customer evaluates when they land on your page. If it's not compelling, no amount of creative brilliance will save you. In the latest episode of The Bottom Line, Taylor and I break down exactly how to build offers that actually convert - whether you're high LTV or need day-one profitability. This episode will save you from making the same expensive mistake. I'll put the link to listen in the first comment.

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Most DTC brands aren’t failing because they have bad products. They’re failing because they can’t cross the Profit Gap. Here’s how it usually goes:  You built something people actually want (great start)      ↳ You start selling it online.      ↳ You run ads, post content, maybe even hire an agency.      ↳ Revenue goes up—but so do your costs.      ↳ You’re “growing,” but your bank account doesn’t show it in profits. That’s what I call The Profit Gap. It’s the space between making sales and making money. And most founders don’t even realize they’re stuck in it until it’s too late. Here’s the truth: The Profit Gap isn’t just about margin. It’s about marketing systems that scale profitably. You don’t need more traffic. You need a system that aligns margin, media, and messaging, so every dollar works harder. If you’re a founder selling your own product line and you’re tired of the hustle not matching the payout, I built a tool for you. It shows exactly what marketing metrics need to shift to close the gap...and what kind of growth your business could actually sustain without burning cash. Want it? Drop a “profit” in the comments and I’ll shoot it right over.

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9 Comments

When branding is decentralized, costs multiply. When systems are centralized, efficiency follows. Many organizations don’t lose money on merchandise… they lose it on the lack of a system. Vendor sprawl. Rush orders. Inconsistent branding. Unused inventory. Administrative overload. A centralized company store and ordering system brings control, consistency, and efficiency across departments and locations. Branded merchandise should support your brand — not drain your budget. If your organization has experienced these challenges, you’re not alone. #BrandManagement #OperationalEfficiency #CompanyStores #UniformPrograms #HigherEducation #Healthcare #CorporateBranding

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This One Checkout Mistake Cost a Client $11K If your cart abandonment rate is over 60%, you’re probably making this exact mistake. A DTC brand came to us frustrated. Traffic looked good. Add-to-carts looked good. But every week… thousands in revenue just evaporating at checkout. We dug in. And the problem wasn’t the offer. Wasn’t the shipping. Wasn’t the price. 👉 It was the checkout UX. One tiny friction point: A mandatory account creation step buried between cart → checkout. Customers hit the wall and bounced. $11,000/month leaking because of one toggle. We removed the forced account step → enabled guest checkout → simplified the form fields. Result? Checkout completion jumped +18%, abandoned carts dropped -22%, and the $11K leak? Gone in under 7 days. Most brands don’t have a traffic problem. They have a friction problem. 💬 Want me to review your checkout? Comment “CHECKOUT” and I’ll tell you the 2 fixes I’d make.

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16 Comments

Your website was perfect at launch. So why does it look like chaos six months later? You know the pattern: Launch day arrives, and everything is pristine. Every button matches. Headers are consistent. Colors are on-brand. Everything is aligned and intentional. Then reality kicks in. Someone needs a section to "pop" a little more, so they add a gradient. Another page needs to stand out, so the headers get bumped up a size or two. That blue you've used everywhere? It's feeling overused, so a new green gets introduced. Border radiuses that were carefully specified? Now they're a mix of square, rounded, and perfectly circular. None of these changes are made with bad intentions. Each one makes sense in the moment. But slowly, imperceptibly, your website starts drifting away from the brand you worked so hard to establish. Here's the solution: Create a block library. It's simpler than it sounds. Take every design element that makes up your website—headers, image layouts, call-to-action sections, everything—and save them in one centralized place. When anyone on your team builds a new page, they don't start from scratch. They don't drag basic image blocks or generic paragraphs onto the page. Instead, they pull from the library, grabbing pre-formatted blocks that are already 100% on-brand, mobile-optimized, and consistent with everything else on the site. Your team's creative energy goes into crafting content, not reinventing design decisions that have already been made. Whether your website launched yesterday or two years ago, you can implement this today. The chaos stops. The consistency returns. And your brand stays intact.

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📍📍📍📍 Most DTC brands go into the new year chasing revenue goals… But they skip the first step: budgeting their merchandising calendar. I’m Steve Olvera, The DTC COO. As the former COO of BYLTbasics.com and Legends.com—two 8- and 9-figure apparel businesses—I learned early that your merchandising calendar is only as strong as the dollars behind it. Start with your annual revenue target. From there, work backwards to allocate spend across categories, launches, and seasons. Protect enough capital for inventory, marketing, and operations so your launches don’t stall mid-year. 👉 If you want to win in 2026, don’t just set revenue goals. 👉 Budget your product roadmap so you can hit them with confidence. — 💡 Want help building your merchandising calendar? Visit DTCCOO.com to book an intro call.

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