Ep. 1: Let's Talk eCommerce, Solo Stove, and Cool Sh*t
Welcome to BrandBusters with your hosts, James Schwyn and Sean Lee. They shoot it to you straight about the latest in CPG, eCommerce, and life - without the corporate jargon, buzzwords, and bullsh*t.
In Episode 1, James and Sean dive into:
1. Amazon Vendor Central rumors about them stopping the sale of low-selling price items and what it means for brands
2. They "BrandBust" the Solo Stove Snoop Dogg campaign
3. Chat fitness routines and how they stay sane for work and family demands
4. Talk about who they are and what to expect from the BrandBusters podcast
Show Transcript:
What's everyone up, everyone? Welcome to Brand Busters. You got your hosts here, James Schwyn and Sean Lee. Got a lot to unpack. And in episode 1, we'll be crossing, a couple topics here ranging from ecommerce, fitness, life, but, for this kind of origin story of sorts, a little background on me.
So James Schwyn, sales director at Quartile right now. We're an ecommerce advertising software platform, work with over 5,000 customers, one of the major providers in the space, helping scale, your ad dollars efficiently across channels and marketplaces. I have 10 years in sales and go to market experience across privately held, publicly traded in a PE backed environment. So I've known Sean for a long time and really excited to dig into this with him. Yeah.
It's great, James. Thanks for, thanks for cohosting with this with me and, excited to dive in. But, yeah, I'm Sean Lee, and my background's in CPG. I spent about a decade at Procter and Gamble and then have led an Amazon agency and now run my own company where we acquire, direct to consumer brands and offer some pretty kick ass 3PL and Amazon services. Company is called Cincy Brands, and James and I are here to talk, CPG and ecom and shoot it to you straight.
I think it's a great kind of background because my marketing's in in background or my my background's in finance and marketing. James comes from the sales side, so we like to push each other, and we've always always worked well together. So looking for some really engaging, fun, dynamic conversations here. So, James, one of the first things I was seeing this week, in the news, I've I've been seeing it on LinkedIn. I'm seeing people specifically in Europe talking about it that Amazon Vendor Central is starting to stop buying low selling price items.
So think, you know, a single old spice deodorant or some something under $10 from a lot of large vendors out there. What impact do you think that's gonna have on the marketplace, and do you think more people shift multi packs or selling directly themselves? What do you think happens? What? Every, what's a go to consulting answer?
It depends. I I think what Amazon has that designation of crap. Right? So cannot realize a profit. So, no surprise here that they're trying to shed this.
I think it will have some of impact here, in the US, but, again, what's the major implication here? I think if anything, everyone's trying to drive multi packs and, there's more margin there, and ultimately, possibly take more control and go to 3 p or try to straddle this hybrid model. So I don't know that's gonna have this massive effect that it's gonna have brands and the big conglomerates, like, running and chasing and trying to change their approach. I think they're aware that they're not making money themselves on those, individual units. They might be lost leaders already.
But I think it will probably push some to rethink their strategy, and their approach to the channel and other channels, frankly. Yeah. I think it's I think it's a good approach for for everybody involved because I think Amazon squeezes the vendors on these low dollar price items to where they're not making any money. We know Amazon's not making any money when they're selling a $5 item and shipping it to the consumer Prime. So I think it's the right move for the companies.
I'm a little bit more concerned about consumers because then Amazon starts to become more like a Sam's or Costco, and you're only pushing 2, 3, 4 packs. Like, what does that do to the volume? Maybe nothing. But does that start to become more problematic as consumers are stretched thin and, you know, have to shell out more dollars when buying from Amazon? Like, it actually might benefit your Walmarts, your Targets, and Krogers where people can go back and, you know, just buy a $1.5 item if they need it.
So fun fact, and and you alluded to this a little bit. So we actually worked together. I don't know if you know that. We did work together once upon a time. Did we?
Yeah. We did. I worked for I worked for you. Right? Yeah.
No. No. No. You bailed me out and covered my ass. But, one of the things that comes to mind here is for launches and for emerging brands, maybe less established, but one of the concepts you drove was, like, how can we get drive trial and acquisition?
So for a Tide, this is gonna have no impact. But for a mutable brand concept, like me as a consumer, I don't wanna buy a 5 pack of something if I just wanna try you out. I need to try a single unit, figure out if I like this, and then I will double down if I have a great experience with the product, and get multipacks from there. So I I think, if anything, the emerging brands have to really consider what impact does this have on new to brand customer acquisition, which is what everyone's focused on, because that's the start of the customer journey to ultimately impacting the LTV. Yeah.
I think that's super smart. I mean, worst case scenario is if Amazon just becomes a channel for your loyal customers, these brands are gonna need to get creative on what type of multipacks they use. Maybe they sell some 3 p that Amazon won't buy 1 p and just take a loss leader in selling that that single unit. But I think I think it'll be interesting. And, again, I haven't seen any news stories about this, but I've just seen people start to post about it on LinkedIn.
And, you know, I feel like it's coming and it makes sense based on the crap list. And for at Cinci Brands, we work with some large companies that that sell to Amazon Vendor Central, and we're hearing similar things. So curious to see how this plays out, but I hope all our listeners can start thinking about it and figure out what their strategy should be. Yeah. So kinda moving on to the next the next portion is this is our brand busting segment, which is why we created the show Brandbuster.
So we're gonna talk about a brand that's in the news or some something that we've seen that's cool or interesting. And it seems like Solo Stove and Solo brands are the talk of the town on Twitter and LinkedIn maybe talked about too much. So what do you think, James? Was it, fair for them to fire their CEO, and do we think that Snoop Dogg was a failure on this thing? Give us your take.
Well, frankly, this has me fired up. Pun intended. I I think it's too soon to call, a a dive or a success. You know, I I did some digging into this. I think a lot of people are willing to grab onto a headline and look at it at face value.
But, as we all know, the time horizon for any brand building or awareness play, it's not you're not gonna impact same quarter sales. You might, but you're talking you're talking 6, 12 month horizon, best case scenario. Plus, if what if there's a seasonality to your product, which maybe I'm off base here, but, if I'm thinking about, like, doing bonfires, I'm hosting them in my backyard. Sean and I are both in Cincinnati, Ohio for for everyone. So we get it we're in the midst of gray and cold and, freezing our asses off outside.
I don't wanna sit outside right now. But come summer, and fall, like, I would absolutely love to, you know, grab one of those products and have. I don't want to just sit when I'm gonna be, you know, inside with, my toddlers for the next couple of months. Going even deeper, though, looking at John John Maris, who I think really, you know, I think he got a little bit, I don't know any of the nuances behind the scenes here, but maybe a little bit unfair. So John came on a couple years ago.
So get get these numbers. 2018, 5 6 years ago now, Solo Stone was clearing 16,000,000. In 2020, that's 300,000,000. And in 2023, they're on pace to clear 500,000,000. So John Mayer is fine.
That sounds pretty that sounds pretty damn good to me, James. I would love I would love to have some numbers like that right now. I I would love to have those numbers, and I think so many companies would. So I I think I think the other the other kicker too is they're profitable. They're EBITDA positive, which a lot of primarily d two c brands are not.
Yeah. No. Absolutely. The amount of money that's just being lit on fire by these other d two c brands that can't even, you know, remotely touch that growth philosophy. So, again, I'm a little bit surprised if that was the call.
I don't know if there's any other dynamics at play there. But, you know, you and I both haven't been at the same kind of easy back company, and haven't been in a couple environments. Know, I think one of the analogies I look at, whether it be, a leader of the company or someone running in, you kinda fall into 1 of 2 buckets. So you have fire starters and so 0 to 1 and and fire stokers going from, like, 1 to n. And, love that this analogy really plays in well to Solo Stove.
But some people are just able to start something from scratch. They embrace the chaos. They're able to insert infrastructure, from their past experiences and really, like, rally and inspire people. And then others need to come into something that's already been built and then kinda help optimize and make sure it's stable stable and growing at a more consistent, pragmatic base. And very rarely do those 2, skill sets or, like, personas overlap.
I think the other thing that you can see here is going from, like, founder, founder to CEO. That's another type of asset business becomes more mature. Now John is not a founder. He came in after the fact. After they grew up, like, he absolutely, grew this thing.
And, he he lasted 5 years. Average CEO, 10 years, four and a half years. So, by all intents and purposes, I think John did a great job. I think, people there calling this, a a mess, are a little bit premature in their take on that. Yeah.
I mean, I think one, I think the ad campaign was brilliant. I'm not sure what agency was involved in it, but I saw it everywhere. My wife and I saw it before they did the big unveil. Like, we were actually talking about it over dinner. We're like, here's Snoop Dogg's giving up giving up smoking pot, and she's like, no way.
We were, like, looking at it. So it was very cool. Like, I think the hook got a ton of people engaged. I think the reveal was, you know, it's kinda cheesy, but it played in with what Solo Stove does, which is a, you know, a smokeless fire pit. Right?
So it's the perfect dramatization of that benefit for the brand. And I think they got, like, 50 or 60,000 new followers on social media. Again, probably a little bit of the wrong timing, like you said, doing it around Christmas time. Maybe maybe it helped with gifting, but they didn't see see a huge sales bump. And from what I what I read in a news release, it looks like over the past year, their EBITDA drops to about 14% when they were expecting 18.
So I think the CEO was kind of a scapegoat for a a slowing economy, and, you know, they're blaming extra ad spend on diluting their EBITDA margin, which if they weren't a publicly traded company, I don't think anybody would care whether you went from 18 to 14 and 500,000,000 in sales. Right? Because you're investing and building for the future. But, I mean, we dealt with it when I was at Procter and Gamble. You you really have to think in kinda quarters and, like, 12 month periods in your investment.
And you get in these cycles where you may wanna ramp up and and beat a competitor by overspending an ad spend. You know, that may pay off 6, 12, 18 months in the future, but you often get caught in the cycle if you just can't do that because you gotta cut expenses to hit your Wall Street number or whatever. And you get you kinda get into the short term thinking loop, which I I suspect is what happened here. Because overall, I think the campaign was great. If you look at the overall outdoor space, I just saw that REI laid off a few people today, which is obviously terrible news, and they've had 4 quarters of of quarter on quarter declines.
So that tells me that the entire outdoor space is, you know, slowing down or probably in a a bit of a recession. So I don't think you can blame Snoop Dogg. I don't think you can blame the CEO for the broader macro trends. And, I mean, frankly, I bought a solar stove when we were all locked down during COVID. How many other people did the same thing?
So how many more solar stows can you sell to people that that didn't already do that? I think the the the jury's still out. I I wouldn't be shocked if come springtime, this campaign has a benefit from them, and and the next CEO gets to take credit for it. Yeah. Nope.
You see that play out, too often. And, the one thing I'll say is, you you actually have to take bets, especially when you've reached a certain business maturation. And I'm all for brands taking a bold bet, especially on an awareness, top of funnel stance, especially when you're talking about, I don't know what the addressable market is for, for Solo Stove, but I'd rather, a company rally behind a bold bet like that versus let's take on a new ERP system or some new software, which may or may not get adopted. It's gonna be boatload of money poured in from the consulting and the implementation to what really at the end of the day, is it really driving any any major benefits? So I like the the boldness, of their approach in it.
And, again, like I said, I think this will be interesting to see play out over the next 6 to 12 months. Yeah. No. Absolutely. So shifting gears here, we don't just wanna talk only brands and only ecommerce.
We wanna try keep it interesting and and share things tips and tricks, and things that James and I are doing in our lives that are interesting. So, James, what's your, what's your fitness routine right now? I know you can probably bench, like, £500 more than me, but, what are you working on? What's what's hot for you? What's hot for me?
Not not breaking down. So, early thirties, had shoulder surgery a couple years ago, and 2 kids. So Sean and I are both dads. We both have, you know, full lives and and families and sports and and demands of the jobs to keep up with. So, health and, exercise, I think are both, you know, cornerstones for us in keeping us sane and be able to bring, like, the attention and energy to our jobs and in our lives.
My big thing right now is really focusing on strength building. So, Jason's Jason Statham has his, workout approach where he does, 10 sets of 5, for his, kind of primary, lifts. So if it's a dead lift, if it's a, chin up, if it's a bench. So rather than doing 6 to 7 different exercises of 3 sets of 10, I'm really focused on kind of pushing that strength and more rest period. So I'm actually incorporating that right now, and I've seen a a nice little uptick.
I think I put on at least 6 or 7 6 or 7 lbs, in the in the last, month or 2. So some of that's made holiday food oriented. I'd say that's probably that's probably all my cookies. Right? I I I make some damn good sugar cookies, let me tell you.
And Girl Scout cookie season's coming up right now, which trifoils all the way. I'm I'm the plain Jane guy, but, damn, I will I will crush some trifoils, if I'm even saying that right. I don't even know if I'm saying that right, honestly, but all the way. Yeah. And for me, I I've kind of been all over the place.
I've I've probably taken every rabbit hole and extreme. Like, in college, I used to lift a ton, did protein shakes, weight gainer, all that. Early in my career, I got really into distance running and cycling, did marathons, 100 mile bike races through Death Valley. I I've kinda taken every extreme possible. I think I overdid it on the running and got a little too lean, and and some injuries brought me back to lifting.
So now I'm I think it's all about balance and efficiency. Like you said, I think your your program of focus on the core lifts that are gonna get touch most of your muscles is probably the best way to do it versus spending too much time doing everything else. I'm kind of right in the middle. I do a 4 day split. I do a a a Tuesday Saturday push and a Thursday Sunday pool and about, you know, 5 exercises within each day.
And then because I'm kinda putting a ton of demand on my body lifting, I don't do as much running. So I'll walk, you know, a few times a week at a 12% incline at 3 3 miles an hour just to try to get my cardio going. So really get good zone 2 cardio. And then in the springtime, when I can be outside, I'll try to do one day of sprinting where, you know, I'll all out sprint for 30 seconds to a minute, rest for 2 minutes, and then repeat again for 8 to 10. So that's kinda where I'm at.
And I think my goal is the same as you is I would go freaking insane if I didn't have my my health and fitness base. If I don't work out, like, my I'm worse than my family and worse at work. So I I gotta do it. I gotta try to eat healthy. Both those two things keep me sharp and keep me, good at home and keep me good at work.
So, yeah. Curious to see. Hopefully, the audience can, learn something from that and, would be curious since we're live, if people wanna share in the comments what, what works for you guys because we're always trying to improve there. Yeah. So Yeah.
Yeah. Go ahead. You go ahead. I'm gonna run all over. Go.
No. You're good. I was just gonna say, why don't we we wanna keep this thing short. We don't wanna do an hour long or 3 hour long podcast. I don't think anybody has time for that.
So quick hitting. What's next, James? Like, what what should people expect as we do this on a weekly basis? Yeah. I I I think there's a couple things.
1, we're hopefully, you're you're catching on that we're we're not so buttoned up and prescribed and academic about things. It's just 2 dudes, that have known each other for probably 12, 13 years, worked together, been in a variety of environments. So, these are our takes. We're not gonna give a dissertation, on anything, on any given brand or topic in life. So we're here to have fun.
We're here to cover, what's the latest in ecommerce and CVG and marketing, but also share a little bit behind the curtain in terms of what we're doing, in our home lives, with our families, with our fitness, and just kinda what are we facing at any given time. So I want us to be relatable, approachable, and, you know, if you can glean anything or get a laugh, that's a win for us. Yeah. No. I think it's great.
We're super excited about doing this, and thanks for listening if you've already listened. And if you liked it, tell your friends about it. But like anything, we're also trying to do this to, raise awareness for our companies. So like I said, I own a company called Cinci Brands. We acquire small, better for you brands in the personal care space, doing 10 to 10 10 2 to 10,000,000 in revenue.
So if you're looking to sell your brand and it's profitable, go to our website, cincibrands.com, and reach out to me. Yeah. I had to I want to point to you, but I pointed the wrong way. So sell to sell to this guy. He knows what he's doing.
He'll be in great hands. Perfect. Well, that should conclude our episode today. Thank you, and tune in next week for the Brandbusters episode 2. Woo.
Ready for it. Let's go.