Shane Vaughan

I'll say it plainly: most outdoor brands don't actually know who their best customer is. Not their most common customer. Not their loudest customer. Their best one — the one with the highest LTV, lowest acquisition cost, and highest referral rate. This should be a foundational question. Most brands can't answer it without a week of digging, if at all. Instead, marketing gets built around personas that were written three years ago, a pro athlete who "represents the brand," or whoever showed up loudest in last year's survey. That's not a customer profile. That's a vibe board. Here's what it costs you: → Paid targeting that's too broad to be efficient → Retail assortment conversations led by the wrong signal → Community activations in the wrong geography → Ambassador programs built around reach, not resonance I've sat with brand leadership teams that could tell me their hero SKU, their best retail account, and their social follower count — but couldn't tell me which customer segment repurchased, referred, and actually wore the product in the way it was designed for. That's not a data problem. It's a strategic priority problem. The brands that figure this out stop optimizing marketing and start building a demand engine around a real person. When's the last time you actually pressure-tested your customer definition — not the persona deck, the real data?

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13 Comments

AG1 just launched a nationwide rotation Costco Wholesale. If you were still clinging to the idea that true DTC brands don’t touch retail, this might be the final nail in that coffin. Here’s why this matters: 1️⃣ Omnichannel isn’t a trend. It’s the future. 
DTC gave brands distribution. Retail gives brands scale. The best-performing brands today aren’t asking “DTC or retail?”. They’re asking “how do we make the channels work together to build a more efficient, resilient business?” 2️⃣ Retail unlocks a massive, still unserved customer base 
AG1’s core buyer might be a podcast-listening, biohacking millennial. But you know who shops Costco? Everyone from suburban moms to retired athletes to budget-conscious wellness consumers. You don’t reach that audience on Meta. 3️⃣ Costco is uniquely aligned for AG1. Here’s why: ✅ High LTV play ✅ Subscription mentality baked into the shopper? ✅Trust in premium health & wellness products? 
 Costco isn’t just another retail door. It’s a brand validator and a volume machine, when the fit is right. This move isn’t AG1 selling out. It’s AG1 maturing and widening the moat. DTC isn’t dead. But DTC-only? That ship sailed. cc my man Jay Poppino for leading the retail ship over at AG1 📷 And big shout to the legend Fred Hart for the in-market photos!

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79 Comments

In more fun* beverage-industry news for Colorado businesses that use Shopify. Shopify's recently championed addition of SMS marketing to their core email functionality comes with a MAJOR asterisk. For context, Wine Dispensary is an aptly named wine, beer, and spirits retailer. Marketing of alcohol products is precluded by Shopify's current SMS policy. Given the state of the beverage industry's decline, we desperately need to increase the proportion of food products we sell. SMS is a great channel for that and we were approved by Shopify to send SMS messages earlier this year... but none of the messages we send actually go out?! I just got off the phone with Shopify Support. They won't let us send SMS messages simply because of our company name and industry classification. The content of our marketing messages doesn't matter. If we were a grocery store that sold alcohol? All good! Send SMS messages! If we were a pharmacy that sold alcohol? All good! Send SMS messages! Food retailer that sells alcohol? All good! This is such an incredibly poor policy implementation by Alexandra Clark, Harley Finkelstein, and Ian Goldin. Thanks Shopify!

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4 Comments

Running paid ads should not be your first growth lever. I had a call with a founder yesterday who was building spreadsheets & plans fo a new CPG company. I asked where they were in their process. They did not have a brand, messaging / positioning, website, product market fit yet; so lot of work ahead before ready to launch. I asked, "What do you view your path to scaling" They said, "Paid ads". They envisioned starting month 1 with a 10K a month ad budget & hitting 6-figs in revenue in short order. This could work; but I'd expect to burn some cash & make some mistakes. The big ad channels (Meta, Google, Reddit, LinkedIn, etc) require clear creative plans & can be complete duds. Beyond this; in highly regulated sectors; this is even more challenging due to creative limits. Beyond that; for a CPG company; you're likely going to lose money on first purchase; so if your retention game isn't tight & you can drive a 5:1 LTV:CAC ratio; ads will just be burning money into a hole. The majority of early wins should come from: - Product seeding & affiliates (can control this tightly) - SEO (Google Shopping, Category pages, location pages, etc) - Organic social (harder to do now than before) - Flexing network (friends, family, local pop-ups, etc) Offer reduced costs on initial order & focus on building a re-order rate that is viable. For example; offer a reduced cost sampler pack & then focus on getting a viable % to come back & repurchase. Ads can help test positioning angles & can add fuel to fire when you know something works; but it's a very difficult channel to nail out of the gate.

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16 Comments

Most DTC founders are stuck playing small. They don’t realize retail isn’t just a channel. It’s a multiplier. You can grind for months in DTC… Or land one retail buyer and 10x your output in a single PO. I’ve seen it firsthand. After launching 150+ products across 7 brands, here’s what I know: → DTC is your test lab. → Retail is how you scale. If you’re serious about building something durable Get shelf-ready. Build trust with buyers. And stop treating retail like it’s Shopify 2.0. Because in retail, you’re not just another brand. You’re a partner. And partners deliver. — Save this if you’re ready to stop playing small. DM me if you want help building your retail playbook.

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23 Comments

I've seen profitable businesses fail and make deadly mistakes because of cash flow. Sales is a vanity metric. Profit matters more. Most brand owners get that. But the *best* consumer brand owners obsess over optimizing cash flow. Running a consumer brand is one big continuous cycle that gets harder and harder to manage as you grow: Cash turns into inventory. Back into cash (hopefully more of it). Back into inventory. So on and so on until you're doing (fingers crossed) hundreds of millions of dollars in sales. Once you break past the ~$5M in sales threshold you really need to take a fine tooth comb to how you're managing cashflow. What are your supplier terms? Payment terms? How much cash should you have on hand at all times? Where are you getting that cash? And one critical thing to remember: don't let a short-term perceived need of cash force you to take out a loan you don't understand.

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4 Comments

$4.1M in revenue. $1.3M in deductions. That's 31 cents of every dollar gone before a single margin dollar hits the P&L. This is real data from a real brand we work with. Not an outlier. Not a bad year. Just what national distribution actually costs when nobody is watching the remittances. Here's where it went: 64.7% to retailer and distributor promos. Trade spend they said yes to, often without knowing the full downstream cost. 24.1% to invoice discrepancies and early pay. Finance deductions that compound quietly on every single check. 10.2% to spoilage and operations. Product they shipped that never got fully credited back. The brands that survive distribution aren't always the ones with the best product. They're the ones who understand the math. Most sub-$10M brands aren't tracking this number. Curious what yours looks like? Happy to take a look with you. #CPG #DeductionManagement #TradePromotion #FoodAndBeverage #CPGBrands

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3 Comments