When Beav Brodie was handed his wife's purple diaper bag to carry around town, he knew something had to change. As a tattooed, custom car-building dad, that bag just didn't fit. So he did what any problem-solver would do—he grabbed his sewing machine and made his own. That side project turned into Tactical Baby Gear, a thriving eCommerce brand that's become the go-to for dads who want gear that's as functional as it is badass. In this episode, Beav shares his journey from knowing absolutely nothing about eCommerce (including what a UPC code was) to building a product line that customers trust and keep coming back for. He also pulls back the curtain on navigating the chaos of 2025—from Meta auction issues to tariff headwinds—and why he's betting big on Amazon and YouTube as his growth channels for the year ahead.

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Sponsored by OMG Commerce - go to (https://www.omgcommerce.com/contact) and request your FREE strategy session today!

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Chapters:
(00:00) Opening & Introducing Beav Brodie

(04:45) 2025 Headwinds, Tariffs & Personal Life Challenges

(08:45) Becoming a Real Operator: Systems, SOPs & Founder Mindset Shifts

(12:00) Origin Story: From Custom Cars to Tactical Baby Gear

(17:00) Manufacturing Realities: COVID, Price Creep & Moving Abroad

(24:38) Recover hidden Amazon revenue with Threecolts

(25:33) Meta Constraints & The Founder Bottleneck in Content

(29:30) UGC, Influencers & Why Authenticity Beats “Pretty” Content

(36:25) Offers, Acquisition & The Realities of Low-Repeat Categories

(42:10) Brand vs Discounts: Community, Trust & True LTV

(47:00) Channel Expansion & Product Philosophy

(50:19) PostPilot: Direct mail that prints money.

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Relevant Links:

• Tactical Baby Gear: https://tacticalbabygear.com
• Sponsor Offer | Threecolts: http://threecolts.com
• Sponsor Offer | PostPilot: http://postpilot.com/

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Transcript:

Beav Brodie:

In terms of growing the business, it's just trying to identify what the constraints are, right? What's preventing us from growing and how do we fix that? How do we attack that? How do we problem solve for that?

Brett Curry:

Hey, thanks again for tuning into the E-Commerce Evolution podcast. I want to take just a minute and talk about my agency OMG Commerce. We've been helping e-commerce brands for 15 years, and that's like a hundred e-commerce years. And our specialty is finding opportunities for growth that other people miss and unlocking channels that you're not currently maximizing. For example, YouTube, most brands are sleeping on YouTube, and my belief is it's the biggest untapped opportunity for your brand. We're also good at adding up to eight figures in growth for Amazon brands. And so if you are looking for scale and growth profitably, that's what we do. We'd love to chat with you. We'd love to review your current marketing efforts, show you where there's missed opportunities and craft a specific plan for you. So visit us@omgcommerce.com, click the Let's Talk button, and we'd love to schedule a complimentary strategic review with you.

With that back to the show. Well, hello and welcome to another edition of the E-Commerce Evolution podcast. I'm your host, Brett Curry, CEO of OMG Commerce. And today my guest is the one the only be Brodie from Tactical Baby Gear. I love this brand, I love these products. I love the story of this brand. And so this is going to be a show that covers lots of different facets of running and growing an e-commerce business. I love opportunities to sit down and talk to somebody who's in the trenches from product development to brand building, to scaling, to figuring out what the heck's going on in the economy and how do we still grow through the madness. And he's also a podcast host, the Ultimate Dad podcast. So we'll talk a little bit of family stuff as well, which we have that in common, both family men. And so with that beef, how you doing, man? Welcome to the show and thanks for coming on. Thanks for taking the time.

Speaker 3:

Yeah,

Beav Brodie:

Yeah, I appreciate it. Thank you. Yeah, I'm doing really good. I'm doing really good. Yeah, you have a bunch of kids too. I got a bunch of kids, man. I got eight kids. It's wild times. Golly. I can't hold a candle to that and I'm not trying to catch up.

Brett Curry:

Yeah, that's what most people say. Like, Hey, I know this isn't a contest, but if it was weren't, I'm not trying to beat you. I'm not trying to win. And so that's kind of the way it goes. But dude, I got to just ask, you've got an amazing setup right now,

Speaker 3:

Your

Brett Curry:

Camera, it's a good look, dude, like the background, everything. Talk to us about what's your tech stack here for your podcast setup?

Beav Brodie:

Yeah. Alright, so those who are interested in the nerdy stuff I'm running. This is a ZVE one full frame camera, great sensor. It's a 24 mil 1.4, so that blurred out back. And then I got my

Brett Curry:

Podcast Focal Links and Aperture there for those that want to get nerd. Yeah, the great podcast, Mike. So that's awesome, man. Well, excited to dive into a lot here. You're one of the rare, I would say, male founders in the baby space in what you guys have achieved. You might think so. That is what I think. So correct me. Am I mistaken in that?

Beav Brodie:

Yeah. Well a lot of the guys I know in the baby space, particularly in the mobility space, strollers and wagons and that sort of thing, most of that side of the industry is run by a bunch of old white guys.

Brett Curry:

I mean, that is what I also heard. I know some people that are trying to rework, disrupt the undergarment space, like the female underwear, and they're like, yeah, most of the problem here is it's old white dudes that run this industry. And so Makes sense. Yeah. So you're trying to reshape that for sure. So I want to talk about several things. 2025 has been a weird year. We've kind of faced some headwinds with tariffs and auction issues on meta and government shutdown and all kinds of stuff. So we'll kind of talk through some headwinds. We want to talk about business growth and a variety of things. But first for people that don't know or haven't heard this story, what is tactical Baby gear and where did this idea come from and why launch a baby product company?

Beav Brodie:

Yeah, so I'll give you the abbreviated version. I could go all day telling the story, but I started Tactical Baby Gear in 2013 when I found out we were having another girl. I had one daughter at the time, and I had the pleasure of carrying my wife's purple diaper bag. Hold on. I actually have

Brett Curry:

A here. Oh, you got it. You got this for those watch right here. Oh, look at that. Just said the is very purpley. Yeah, that's not going to give you a lot of street cred with other dads. I mean, girl dad, and I'm a girl dad as well. I've got six daughters, so I'm used to carrying stuff like this. So people give you the nod of approval, but that's not what you want to carry all the time. Look at me, look

Beav Brodie:

At me. Do I look like the kind of guy who must

Brett Curry:

Got it doesn't fit

Beav Brodie:

For me?

Brett Curry:

God, guns and diaper hat on? Come on man. A purple bag is not what you're wanting to

Beav Brodie:

Rock. Yeah, I mean it's fine. We all step up to the plate, we man up, we do it, and it's like whatever. But then you're walking through the store and you're like, man, I really hope one of my buddies doesn't see me carrying this thing Nice purse around. Yeah.

So anyways, we're doing ultrasounds and stuff with my second child. We find out it's another girl and I was like, God dang it. I'm so sick of carrying this bag. And at the time I was building custom cars. I've got a shop, we build custom cars, really high-end stuff. We've set world records, built stuff for celebrities, et cetera, et cetera. Featured in magazines and things like that. But one of the things we did was upholstery. So I've got sewing machines and things like that, and I couldn't find a bag. I had no interest in starting a baby brand. That wasn't part of my thing at all. I was trying to become Jesse James, you know what I mean? And so I was like, well, I'm just going to make a bag. I can't find anything close to what I would want to carry. And then all my buddies are like, yo, that's sick. Make me one too. And I was like, man, this could be a cool little side hustle, whatever. I got so much time for that. In between

Speaker 3:

Building

Beav Brodie:

Cars, build custom cars and one thing leads to another that leads to another. And then suddenly I've got this side hustle that's got more demand than I can keep up with and I'm trying to figure out how to manage all of it. I don't know anything about e-commerce, I don't know anything about sales. All I know how to do is make a cool car. That's it. And so I reached out to a buddy of mine I went to high school with who had developed a product and was selling it to Target and a bunch of big box retail stores. I was like, oh, that's the guy I should reach out to. So I called him and I was told him what I had going on. He starts asking me some really simple basic questions. I was like, dude, I don't know anything about this crap.

I don't even know what a UPC is. He's like a barcode. And I was like, oh yeah, right, sure, yeah, I guess if I want to sell stuff like this, that's probably a good idea. So anyways, those conversations lead into him becoming a partner and then we really hit the ground running. He's ended up selling his business. He really believed in what I had started with TBG and was able to help me really build it as a business. And he's an operations guy, he's like, he's that kind of guy. So helpful to have a product

Brett Curry:

Visionary, growth-minded guy with an ops person as well. It's really

Beav Brodie:

A necessary thing if you want to make big moves in my mind, it's hard to do it without it, but so that's kind of the origin story and how we got started and why we got started. And since I have that prop here, this is my everyday bag that I carry. But dude, this is what one of our current diaper bags looks like and it's got camo. You got the space for patches, you get the wipe in some kid stuff, insulated cooler pouch for bottles, things like that. It's got a ton of features. It's got changing mat, stroller, straps, everything you would expect in a diaper bag, but looks nothing like a diaper bag.

Brett Curry:

Looks nothing like a diaper bag. It's feature rich, right? Guys, we can geek out about the features. What do we want to do when we're hanging out with other dads? We want to show off our gear. So why this gear is better than your gear, right?

She went off your custom car in the garage or whatever. And so love this. And so started in 2013. I've been kind of following your journey for quite a while because Kurt Eler mutual friend, I know he runs kind of the dev side and the side of your brand, did a brilliant job there. And so I been watching that. I want to fast forward to this year just really briefly give some folks some kind actionable stuff and then we'll, like I said, talk about a variety of things we can bounce around. It's been a weird year. So we had tariffs, which has locked things up for a little while. We've had meta disruptions, yet the government shutdown, it's now coming to a close and things like that. How have you faced the headwinds of 2025 and then maybe more broadly, how do you approach problems in general? Because obviously 2026 is going to bring its own unique set of challenges. So how have you weathered the storm this year?

Beav Brodie:

Yeah, it's been extra weird for us too. Coming off the back of my, actually the daughter who inspired me to start the business, she had cancer. And so I spent the last two and a half years living in hospitals and taking care of her fighting cancer. And thankfully she's doing really, really good now. So amazing that she's been in full recovery. Love it. It was rough. So I'm coming off the back of that and being distracted with that and getting back into the business this year and really trying to refocus, try to, okay, I'm get my head back in the game. And then we face some of these other things and there's some things where I'm like, alright, are we struggling because I had my eye off the ball for a little while and things got a little messy or is it tough because of all these other things?

So for us, it was a little bit of both, I think. You know what I mean? So there's a lot of things that I've had to do to reestablish a foundation within the business, put a lot of SOP systems and processes and things like that in place that allow people to do their job more effectively, more efficiently, keep me from having to do certain things so that I can focus back on growing the business and not being in the weeds and being such an employee. So there was that side of it, which was probably the biggest thing for us is trying to get me back out of being an employee and being an owner, which is such a mind change. You know what I mean? Mindset change, which is really

Brett Curry:

Tough. I heard that phrase one time. It's going from being in the business to being above the business. So there's this thought of working on the business instead of in it. I really like that thinking above the business where what if I was an investor? What if I was just a financial interest? Would I move pieces or how would I architect this or engineer this? And so got to do a little bit of both obviously,

Beav Brodie:

But

Brett Curry:

Yeah, love that.

Beav Brodie:

Yeah, so that was one of the biggest things for us. And I went into, this year we hired some agencies to help with Facebook ads and things like that, that were taking up a lot of my time and trying to outsource Amazon, which became an epic failure. And we had to take that back over and that was a whole nother thing. But with the tariffs thing in particular, we had an unfortunate situation where we had a manufacturing partner that was just taking advantage of us through all the COVID stuff. And every time we would make a small change to our product, they would increase the price. Like ah, COVID more expensive.

And we were with them for 10 years, so we had a lot of trust with them. They's been really good to us for a long time. And then the quality product and all that, they started to take advantage of us on the price side and it was just continuously eroding our margins. Same with coming off of an election year with Facebook ads and political money thrown in the system. CPMs are up, everything's a mess. So our margins really got eroded through a lot of that stuff. And so we cut ties with our manufacturing partner, went with some new factories and stuff, which really cut our margins, got our margins back, and then tariffs hit and we're like, oh my God, like a break, man. Can't catch a break. But we have been super lucky and been very fortunate with Alex, my business partner, really keeping an eye on the climate of a lot of those things

And staying, I think probably more luck than good. And I think he would agree that we're always one step ahead of some of these major changes and it keeps us from being really screwed. Super important. Same thing happened with in 20 16, 20 17 when all the China tariffs hit the first time we had just moved all our manufacturing out of China to Vietnam, and then the China tariffs hit. We were like, whoa, we got lucky there too. So it's been an interesting ride, but we're very fortunate that we've been able to navigate a lot of that stuff and we're still in the game and not everyone can say that, which really sucks for a lot of people, but we look at those things as we, we'll figure it out mentality, we're just going to power through it. We'll figure it out. As entrepreneurs and business owners and product developers, you're just solving problems all the time. And some days' just a different set of problems

Brett Curry:

From one problem to the next. That's the game forever. We're solving problems, trying to anticipate the next problem, trying to have some first principles, mindset to handle problems as they pop up. And that's just the game. That's the game of being a founder and

Beav Brodie:

Being a business leader for sure, a hundred percent. So that's how we tend to think about those things. And in terms of growing the business, it's just trying to identify what the constraints are, what's preventing us from growing and how do we fix that? How do we attack that? How do we problem solve for that? Do we need to hire, do we need to outsource, do we need to, whatever that is. Is it a new sales channel, is a new marketing channel, is it right? Any of those things.

Brett Curry:

I love that. Let's actually pause for a minute and see if you have any more to add to that, because I love the approach of looking at what are the constraints in the business? This is what I'm trying to accomplish, this rate of growth at this EBITDA margin to reach this outcome at this given time. But what are the constraints? So what are the components going into that and making up that growth? And then what are my constraints? So any recent examples of where you've identified a constraint that's limiting growth and how you've kind of tackled it? And you can be as

Beav Brodie:

Specific or as general as you'd like. Yeah, I mean for us, I think there's two things we're up against presently. One of them is I think we are sort of maxing out what we can do in terms of ad spend on meta because we don't have the volume of content to throw at the platform. Because we all know right now that the game on meta ads is volumes of content. It needs to be good, but you need to have a lot of it.

Brett Curry:

And with the Andros we were talking about when we were hanging out in Denver, it's like it's not just amount of content, but there's got to be content diversity. So you've got to have enough very unique content aimed at different avatars and things like that. If you don't have that,

Beav Brodie:

You're going to be behind a little bit. So oftentimes I become the bottleneck, which is why I've been trying to remove myself from being an employee for so many different tasks. So that was a constraint, which is why we started outsourcing things. Get someone else to do Facebook ads, get someone else to manage Amazon, get someone else to, whatever the thing is, try to outsource the things and get someone to do it better than I can. That's one constraint. Another is I make all the content, a lot of it, or at least my face is in a lot of content, you're

Speaker 3:

In the content.

Beav Brodie:

So that creates another bottleneck, which truthfully needing diverse content and different looking people, male, female, black, white, Hispanic, whatever, different locations is almost frees me up. But now we have to manage finding other people to make the content and is it up to par and getting UGC stuff and that UGC content is a whole nother thing. And we can touch on that because I've learned a valuable lesson recently around UGC, but another, and we can come back to that. But yeah, definitely come back to that,

The constraints side of things. It's just a lot of it is hypothesis too, right? Okay, we're stuck here. I want to get here. What is holding us back? Well, I think we need to make more content or I think maybe we need to find a new marketing channel to use the existing content we have because we we've it out on other platforms. Can we use that same content on a different platform to acquire new customers there? What does that look like? And you start to hypothesize what you think the constraints are and then try to problem solve for it and then you confirm or deny that works. Totally, totally. So I think that's

Brett Curry:

Sort

Beav Brodie:

Of the workflow.

Brett Curry:

It totally makes sense. And that's just to use a media buying analogy. We do a lot with YouTube ads and YouTube has kind of been one of the vehicles for our growth and why people are attracted to us and things like that. And there's several things we look at. You look at some of the early signs of is this ad or this campaign working? And you look at things like view rate and engagement rate and watch time per impression and click through rate and how are people engaging with this content? And that's good, but obviously what ultimately matters is are people buying. And so if the end goal is scale at a CAC goal or scale at a ROAS goal, what are the components that make that up? And so this is what we do all day long. It's looking at, okay, actually everything is working here except the conversion rate. And so then what is made up of conversion rate? Well, it's either the quality of the traffic, it's the quality of the offer or it's some component there. The message,

Beav Brodie:

Is it the website? Is there a hiccup? Is there

Brett Curry:

Problem? So you start breaking that down over and over and over again and then it's like, okay, well then these then are the three or six things we need to test and in this sequence. And then you get to the bottom of it and then you scale. So

Speaker 3:

Yeah,

Brett Curry:

Yeah. But I think the cool thing is you can take that mentality and apply it to essentially every area of business. So that's awesome. Talk about UGC. We obviously UGC is a winner across all socials, it's big on YouTube. What have you learned there?

Beav Brodie:

The interesting breakthrough moment I had mentally about UGC and you see a lot of UGC ads run, I cringe at them, I can't stand them. I get about 45 emails a day from agencies to connect you with UGC creators and blah, blah, blah. And we have a bunch of influencers that we work with that create content for us and these sorts of things, but they're in their own way, their own thing. And I recently was on a call with smart marketer about UGC stuff and blah, blah, blah. And when they broke down their workflow on dealing with UGC creators and everything that goes into it, it became very clear to me in that moment, there is a big difference between an influencer and a UGC creator. It's a completely different business. It is the influencer you're paying for access to their audience, which I would argue you're not even getting access to their audience anymore with the way the algorithms are.

And oftentimes they're so stuck in the content that they have made forever that built this audience over the last five, 10 years that the numbers aren't great anymore. Anyways for them, the UGC creators are like, Hey, hire me as a paid actor. And it's like, give me the product, let me know what you want me to say. I'll make you the content, I'll record it. I'll send you the assets, whatever stipulations you have, and pay me to make the content or record the thing for you. I'm not posting it to a platform with lots of followers, I'm might do any of that kind of stuff. And that was the big learning point. I was like, oh shit, influencers and UGC and your customer's reviews, those are separate. Too different. Totally different thing. But UGC creator is a very specific breed and hard to find and it takes a lot of management.

Brett Curry:

Yeah, yeah, it does. And one of the interesting things, and I know other people share your same sentiments where it's like, oh, I see a UGC ad and I just cringe, I hate it, don't want to watch it, things like that. I remember when I was fresh out of college, I was doing some TV and radio and stuff, and I remember talking to this creative guy about TV ads and he was like, Hey, customer testimonials and video ads, they don't work anymore. You see that, you know ad's not going to work. So that day is over, it's finished. I'm like, yeah, I don't actually think so this is like 20 some years ago. And UGC is more popular than ever. And here's the thing, it's always going to work if it's authentic, at least authentic feeling, if it's addressing a problem, if it's talking about a feature or benefit, if it's allowing a prospect to really connect with a product, it's always going to work, but it's a pain and bad UGC or inauthentic UGC, it does not work like it used to for sure. So I would argue that it probably never worked. Any tips or tricks or tactics that you're doing to get really good stuff in all those categories? Reviews, UGC, creator

Beav Brodie:

Content? Well, UGC we're struggling. I still can't get anything from anybody that I'm like, I get stuff and I'm like, what is this? What is this? So if anyone has tips for me, leave it in the comments. I'd love to read them because I'm on the struggle bus with the UGC. I also have a hard time being okay doing it because it feels so fabricated and whatever. And that goes back to some of my moral stuff. Such a brand guy. Totally get into that. Yeah,

Brett Curry:

I'll share something on the UGC side really quickly. I know Ezra, a Firestone Mutual friend of ours has some content around ambassador programs and things like that. You can get some content from that. What's interesting is because I was doing this long ago, back when I was doing TV and stuff, I actually put together this resource of, and this was back in the day when you were mostly filming things in person. And so I've actually got this guide for how to interview someone on camera. So you should do this for jewelry stores and other people. I'd be like the guide behind camera interviewing. And this was an art, art and a science to how you ask questions and how get someone talking and feeling comfortable. I'll share that with you. Maybe that's something I'll release to a wider group. But what we'd always do is we would just ask questions kind of leading, but just letting someone talk in their own voice.

You end up with 85% or 90% unusable garbage, boring ums and ahs and what did you just say? But then you'll get a couple of clips that are just amazing. I remember this one time we were early on with this jewelry store I was helping where this guy was like, Christmas isn't Christmas unless I have something under the tree with this jewelry store's name on the bag. And I'm like, oh, that's an awesome clip. So we use that for, so you pull a few of those things and now you're like, I've got some marketing gold here that I can use a long, long time. And so I think part of it is how do we guide someone in just being their authentic self? And then you got to find good editors who will just weed through the garbage to find the nuggets. And the cool thing is AI can really help with that now as well.

So happy to share a few resources there because the cool thing is you should be able to get a lot of UGC because your product is so unique and because you're targeting dads, but with cool gear, baby gear that they want to wear. But it is difficult, no doubt about it. It's tough. This episode is brought to you by three cults. What do L'Oreal, Celsius, Samsung, and Quest Nutrition all have in common? They trust three colts to recover hidden revenue, unlocking two to 5% in extra cashflow. That's more budget for PPC channel expansion or pure profits to fight margin compression. Now three Colts is offering you the same advantage, completely free. They'll recover your first $1,000 at no charge. Go catch upfront costs, just a real $1,000 to show you why the world's leading brands choose three cults to recover cash cut shipping costs by 10 to 30%. Alternatively, three cults offers a complimentary month of multi-channel pro valued at $999 to facilitate the launch of your products across 30 plus e-commerce marketplaces. Either way, improve your margins, grow your online revenue with three cults. What about working with creators? Any tips or tactics there?

Beav Brodie:

No, nothing useful. I don't claim to be an expert in that field. I don't want to

Brett Curry:

Do it all good. I think one of the things underscore there is that stuff's not going away. And so figuring out how to solve it and do it in an authentic

Beav Brodie:

Way is key. Yeah, I mean the most valuable thing that I find with working with other creators and influencers or other internet personalities is I just create authentic relationships with these people. You know what I mean? We'll fly out to wherever they are. We spend weekends together, we do things, we go to dinner, whatever it is, you know what I mean? And I create a relationship with them that are authentic real relationships. It's not like I'm doing a fake relationship so that I can get whatever, but that just creates these lifelong ambassadors and long friends. And so that's how it's tough to do and it's slow in some, it can be slow moving in some capacity that when I haven't done it as much over the last few years, obviously with my daughter's situation, and we've seen the change of the quality of creators that we have in our world. It's just like a business relationship for them. They're like, send me the thing, I'll make you the video and then you never talk to 'em again,

Brett Curry:

Right?

Beav Brodie:

I don't like that.

Brett Curry:

And sometimes the old saying, sometimes to scale, you have to do things that don't scale. And sometimes that flight across the country, the dinner with the right key partner goes a long way. It doesn't scale, but it can enable you to scale. And so that's important. One of the big challenges every year, all the time for people, but especially this year is new customer acquisition. How are we attracting new customers, especially when meta it's being wonky or the things just conversion rates are low or whatever. Javi has been approaching new customer acquisition this year. And any learnings, insights, interesting things to share there.

Beav Brodie:

We've approached it a little bit differently. As much as I'm a brand guy and I prefer to be making a lot of content that's attracting customers versus us chasing people around the internet convincing them to buy, there's a time and a place for it. Totally. And as I outsource a lot of the Facebook ads and that sort of thing, and digging back into the data and the analytics and we have a pretty low repeat customer rate, but you buy a bag that's going to last forever, you don't need a second one. Generally they're not coming back for more diaper bags. They might come back for a patch or an accessory or a teddy bear or something like this, right?

Brett Curry:

Hey, look at that. Nice. That's awesome.

Beav Brodie:

And they come back and they spend 10 or 20 bucks or something. But outside of that, so our first customer, that purchase really has to matter. It's got to be profitable, it has to be to be. And some businesses that's not the case. They can lose a little bit of money because the repeat customer and the LTV is so high that it's like whatever. But so we've approached it a little bit differently. We're being a little bit more aggressive on the front end trying to do that and trying different options. Aggressive in terms of how you're targeting people or more aggressive in the offer or both? A little bit of both. We've tested a lot this year to try to find different things that we think we can use to scale without me having to create so much content because I'm trying to work on the business and less in the business, which is a struggle for me. But yeah, we're just being aggressive trying and testing different offers, different audiences, narrowing that down, really excluding existing customers from things more than we have before, which we actually saw an interesting dip in repeat customer rate when we stopped spending money on them.

Brett Curry:

Interesting.

Beav Brodie:

And I was like, so then I was like, well, maybe our repeat customer rate's not as bad. So there was some interesting stuff there. Then you're like, okay, well there's a problem to solve. Let's look into this data. Is this accurate? But we have a lot of gift giving going on and all these different things. So it's like it's tough got It's tough.

Brett Curry:

It's tough, man. And this is something that we look at all the time doing this with a number of clients right now that are kind of scaling. We're in the thick of holiday shopping right now as we record this. And so how are we getting net new customers? How are we driving incrementality? And several clients are running house analytics studies and things, which are really interesting. But yeah, we're constantly trying and we see this across different Google properties, whether it's p max demand gen on the YouTube side is yeah, how are we excluding of course past customers if it's an acquisition campaign or a true prospecting campaign, but also maybe getting even a little more restricted than that. Maybe we're excluding site visitors and some other things like that. Generally that's not always the best idea because you want to a little bit of remarketing in some of your campaigns really fuel them. Yeah, we're doing all kinds of stuff because what it seems like platforms are doing is really leaning into remarketing audiences more and more, even if you're trying to exclude and go broader. So

Beav Brodie:

Because these platforms are in the market of attribution. Totally, totally. And they're all trying to steal attribution. I say steal, I mean what mean? Take credit. Totally. Totally. Yeah. How can we get the

Brett Curry:

Conversion, take credit for the conversion. And so to optimize that, the algorithm's going to lean more into some remarketing almost regardless of what you do.

Beav Brodie:

Yeah, it's tough. So one of our big things this year was really focusing on that new customer row as more so than we had in the past.

Brett Curry:

Yeah, love that for sure. And has that led to some new creative, I know you said you're trying to limit that and not be a content factory type of thing, but as it led to some new creative or has it more been on the audience and campaign testing

Beav Brodie:

Side? It's been more on the audience and campaign. I mean, we are always making new content, but it's like audience campaign offers. Those have been a lot of the testing this year.

Brett Curry:

Any interesting insights on the offer side of thing? I think that's seeing this with a very large skincare brand we're working with right now where just gone through a couple of different phases of different offers that are kind of seasonal and content's good, view rates are great, click-through rates good on all of it, but man, one launch is performing worse than a couple others. And it's all conversion rate driven. As we're digging in, we're like, I think it's just the offer. It's like the makeup of the, no pun intended, of the things you're offering here as a skincare brand. I think that's it. And so been tweaking and testing to see if that hypothesis is true. But what have you guys learned on the offer side of things

Beav Brodie:

That for us, and I say that because for us, because it's always different, it's still just a 20% off offer crushes it for us. We can try this or this dollar off or get this thing and get this thing for free and all kinds of different variations. 10% doesn't move the needle, 15% doesn't move the needle. 20% kills it. 25% really kills it.

Brett Curry:

Yeah, it kills your margins potentially too. And so that sweet spot where it's motivating gets people to move off center but still protects margins it seems like

Beav Brodie:

From all the things we've tested in the past year

Brett Curry:

Again. Yeah, yeah, totally. Totally makes sense. Anything new or interesting in the community building side of things or the brand building side of things? And it totally makes sense as I see your content and see what you've built. I'd forgotten about the custom car piece, but you build custom one of a kind cars, you're a craftsman. So quality design, look and feel aesthetic, it matters to you. And so I know you've guys have always been good at this, but any insights on community building, brand building or how that's shifted here in the recent past?

Beav Brodie:

Yeah, I mean brand building is really my strong. It's like brand building and product development is really where my heart is. We haven't done as much of the community and brand building stuff that I'd like to be doing in the last few years, again because of my daughter, but I'm desperate to get back to it, which is why I'm trying to lay such a foundation right now with the rest of the business so I can break away from some of that day to day and just get back to making content, doing podcasts, creating educational content for new parents and attracting, what I try to do is attract customers to us love it, versus chasing them around and trying to convince them with all these offers all the time. I feel like a used car salesman doing it and it's a necessary thing. There's a time and a place for it obviously, but when you talk about first purchase matters and it has to be profitable and cost to acquire a customer needs to be low and you want to get to LTV up as high as possible and there's no better way to do that than building a brand and a community of people who just are attracted to you and it takes a lot less convincing.

Yep. And one

Brett Curry:

Interesting thing for you too, biv, that you mentioned this and I think this is a way that maybe LTV is a little bit different for you than for others. Maybe someone's not buying two or three bags, but I think what you do have though, you talk about the gifting idea, you could create this passionate group of customers. So yeah, maybe they'll buy one or two things, but they're also very likely to refer and very likely to buy a gift for someone else. And so I think you could argue that that's a bit like LTV. So I attracted this one customer, now I've got community, I've got offers now. They love my brand and love what I'm about. They're going to be way more valuable as a customer now they're going to refer three or four or five people to me, they're

Beav Brodie:

Going to be

Brett Curry:

Buy something else as long as,

Beav Brodie:

As long as you build that brand. And when I say brand, it's like if you replace the word brand with trust big, it's like you're building trust, right? It's reput is ultimately. And so I'm really big on that. It's like, yeah, it's great if I get 'em to come by. It's even better if they become a fan of the brand because then you're right, they refer, which becomes difficult. No attribution on referrals, especially pretty hard. So it's you

Brett Curry:

Put surveys and a few things that piece it together, but ultimately it's pretty hard to track

Beav Brodie:

Can be difficult and especially in a day and age where you can track so many things and you want to be able to track those things, sometimes you just let go of it and let things work. It's kind of refreshing.

Brett Curry:

Let's actually talk about that for a second because it's so interesting. And I have always been a data guy. I love data. I think it tells a story. I think it's really valuable. I think I remember there was a time when I was like, oh, MTA is multitouch attribution tools. It's going to solve all our problems. Then you get in and you're like, nah, it actually doesn't really solve our problems at all. And so then it's like, all right, well you probably need some component or some combination of MTAs, MMS and incrementality tests. And even then it's not perfect. You get post-purchase surveys and things you kind of pulled together. And so I think you want to be directionally accurate and actionable, but trying to be super precise is probably a bit of an exercise in futility. But how do you look at measurement and attribution and how do you measure and understand is what I'm doing working?

Beav Brodie:

Yeah, I mean we look at a lot of that stuff obviously on a platform platform, individual platform level through the native platforms tools or through triple whale for example, which is super common practice, great one. So we look at some of those things. A lot of times it's just looking at different assets within that to what's the benchmark within the platform? This one's performing better than this one, et cetera, et cetera. But a lot of it is just looking at blended numbers and some of it you're taking a wild stab in the dark and you're hoping you're like, I think this is working. The data YouTube ads is so hard, so hard. Hard. It's hard. It's one the hard one. Yeah,

And you just get, sometimes your gut will tell you, and that's a tough one. And other times you just attribute or set aside a small budget for testing. I don't know what's going to happen with this, but I'm just testing. So yeah, I mean it's a lot of roas, a lot of blended stuff for us that we're like, we're trying lots of things. We're testing things. Some of it is very analytical, and I also believe that you can optimize things to a point where you go backwards. Yeah, that's true. Especially with conversion rate optimization or something. You look at a heat map, you're like, well, no one's clicking on this thing. Take it off the site. You take it off the site and then suddenly you've got negative actions of taking from that, and then you're just like, what I don't understand or whatever. Or you start to add, you definitely be ROAS

Brett Curry:

Rich, but growth poor if you're really optimizing roas, which can be a bit misleading. And so I love the blended look to balance that. So looking at mer, looking at total ROAS or total ACOs depending on where you're looking and things like that because you've got to balance it. And it's one of those things where I think it's not necessarily always helpful to look at this data is wrong or this ROAS lies or whatever. But sometimes it does. And sometimes it's like it's just telling you it's measuring in a certain way and there are limitations to that measurement. That's what it's right. And so understand those limitations and then make decisions accordingly. What about channel expansion for you guys? And I'm thinking more on the distribution side of things. So you guys are on Amazon, are you thinking retail? Is that a big opportunity for you? Are you looking at more marketplaces and how do you view channel expansion?

Beav Brodie:

We're not really looking at retail right now with my business partners background in big box retail stuff. It's just, we said early on that it's just not a road we want to go down. Got it. And we did a little bit, we had some very strategic retail partners at one point in time, the exchange, which is the Army, it's like the military's target. It's on every military base. We had to deal with them for a while and it was a lot to manage. It wasn't that fruitful, truthfully got it through COVID that sort of fizzled out and we just kind of let it be. It was kind a pain in the butt and we didn't pursue it anymore on our end. But yeah, so we've got Shopify and Amazon. I don't think we're looking at any more sales channels right now in the near future, at least probably not in the next two years, but definitely going harder on different marketing channels, I think.

Brett Curry:

Yeah,

Beav Brodie:

And I think one thing about your

Brett Curry:

Product is it may not do great as a standalone in a retail store without some explanation because it's different and because it's very feature rich and it's very well built, you almost need some explanation. You need to see a demo of it in that target or something. And so that's where the online advertising really helps with that. I think it could help you convert some of the people that you educate online, get them to buy more, but totally makes sense, man, it is capital intensive. It doesn't always work out. The terms are terrible. Like, oh, okay, A buddy of mine helps people get into Walmart and he talks about the Walmart hug of death where it's like, it can be great. It can also literally put you out of business. And so yeah, it's a tricky game for sure. What about then marketing channel expansion? What's your philosophy there? What are you guys looking at thinking about there?

Beav Brodie:

Yeah, I mean we're going to dive heavier into Amazon ads. As I briefly mentioned, we tried to outsource that to an agency to just manage the Amazon store because Amazon's a whole nother beast, and that was a really bad experience. And so we kind of took the reins back and we never turned the ads back on and it's continuing to perform as it was. So really it was a lot of sort of, you're converting from your Facebook traffic basically, of course. But a lot of the ads we're running were brand search, things like that they were going to convert anyways. Totally. It was the demand generation from Facebook ads that converted on Amazon. So trying to go more top of funnel, new customer acquisition on Amazon, and that's where sponsor brand video really

Brett Curry:

Comes into play, or used to be called video and search. It kind of creates a nice picture. But yeah, someone's searching for a product on Amazon. You got the category level, the sponsor brand video. Which one of your videos that I'm picturing my mind and I know that you shared in Denver, just brilliant for that. I think you want a little bit shorter. Amazon needs to be more product demo focused, but that is a huge way to get non-brand traffic on Amazon. My favorite way is responsible video for most products and for you guys, I think that's where someone can see it and when they see it, they're like, oh yeah, we have so much video

Beav Brodie:

Content that really the next big play for us. Love that. As well as YouTube. We run YouTube ads, but I was talking to you in Denver, it's like, we have some really awesome content. We got a great product getting this in. It's always when you get it in front of the right people and they're like, holy shit, this is amazing. Take my money. Know what I mean? Exactly. So that's the game we need to play. I'm sort of lost at where and how to grow and scale that particular piece of the puzzle on the YouTube side, because I'm like, I don't know if this is working and I don't want to throw money at it more than I'm already

Brett Curry:

Want to get clarity. And it is one of those things where you definitely have to triangulate with YouTube, obviously talk about that a lot. But yeah, again, kind of getting post-purchase surveys and search list studies, and of course direct conversions, but also engaged view conversions and looking at your MTA eventually looking at a house studies is something with that really comes I think once a brand is mid to high, eight figures probably. And so yeah, YouTube is a challenge, but what's interesting there is that's the platform people are spending more and more time on. And I hear this, I was actually talking to a guy who's kind of in his fifties and he is like, I just find myself spending more time on YouTube. I'm watching golf content and I'm watching this content, that content. And then when you kind of blend YouTube and YouTube tv, you're like, man, I'm spending a lot of time on these two platforms.

So there's opportunities there, but it's not unfortunately for Google and YouTube and for us as Advertis I, oh, I guess maybe this is Help me out. I'm not sure. It's not as easy as meta, and I'm not saying the meta is easy, but Meta's algorithm, and I heard my buddy Cody Ker from Jones View talk about this. There's never been a better mid funnel engine like meta where meta knows what you're in the market for, what you're about to buy. I just bought an SUV for my wife, and I don't know if I thought or searched for all weather floor mats, floor mats. I'm seeing I'm about to drop 300 bucks on floor mats. And so I'm like, Meta's just scary. Good at that. Google's good at a lot of things, but they're also not as good as tying the loop back for YouTube. So they make a challenge for YouTube in particular because YouTube in particular, you don't tend to

Beav Brodie:

Click

Brett Curry:

From a YouTube, right? Yep, exactly. And that's one of the biggest issues there. Yeah, for sure. So love that. And I know we're going to be chatting about that, which is super exciting for me. What about then on the product side? So are you more of the philosophy of, Hey, this is our flagship product, you buy it once you have it for life, it's amazing. We're just going to stick with that. Are you constantly looking at innovations and tweaks and changes in new launches? How do you look at product development?

Beav Brodie:

A little bit of both. I mean, when we develop a product, we want to make it the last one you buy. You know what I mean? Love that. Some people come back a few years later and buy another one because every year or two, we continue to make improvements on our existing products. We're like, we could really make this a little better. So if you look back at version one versus version four, it's quite a bit different. And you're like, wow, version four is really refined. I want the new one. So that's one thing. I also try not to add to the noise if I don't think it's something that I can innovate and make wildly better than someone else. I just don't touch it. It's great. It's great. Generally speaking, if I think it's something that really, maybe that trust factor,

Brett Curry:

Your customers begin to know that this isn't going to be released unless it's going to be the best in its category or at least to something new and different.

Beav Brodie:

Yeah, yeah, for sure. For sure. So that's how I really approach it. And then I obsess over making it as the best I can. And then I try not to get that too much into that, where it's like at some point I have to release the product for timing purposes. We got to get this out. So this has to just be good enough and knowing that next year we'll iterate and we'll make improvements to it. So I think a lot of people get held up in that like, oh, I've been sitting on this thing for four years and it's almost there. It's like, dude, you'll learn faster about how to make it better if people are using it, release it. Iterate. Yeah, that's one of my favorite Steve Jobs

Brett Curry:

Quotes is real creatives ship, right? Meaning you think you're a product designer or developer or creative, then ship something, right? Don't just sit on it forever, ship it and then make it better as you go. I think that's brilliant. So that's awesome, man. Well, anything else? We'll wrap in a minute by sending people two tactical baby gear. Buy some gear, whether you're listening to this right before the holidays, right after you need this in your life. If you know a young family, a dad that you need to deck out, then do the right thing and buy some technical baby gear. But before we do that, anything that you want to talk about what's next? What's next for technical baby gear that we haven't already talked about?

Beav Brodie:

Yeah, I mean that's kind of where my mind is right now is really just like Amazon. Amazon, YouTube is these new marketing channels. Amazon is just rebooting, but really taking them far more seriously than just testing a little bit here and there and seeing what sticks. It's really attacking some of these things head on and creating with Meta and Andromeda and these full funnel campaigns you can do now, a lot of the things we're doing is we have quite a few different product lines. So it's creating full funnel content for each individual product line versus just sort of top middle, bottom of funnel of a little bit of everything. We've got stroller as kind of a newer product for us that's been sort of like a cherry on top. And now we want to try to make that a core product that we're selling and really attack that market. Love that, which will take us to a whole nother level. And there's a lot of really amazing benefits to that stroller, which again, I'm not going to come out with something unless we can kind of disrupt things a little bit. So we're excited about that one. That's a

Brett Curry:

Great natural addition to what you're doing. It's also high a OV. You buy one, you maybe have that thing for a long, long time. Although I will say as we kept having more kids, we would always upgrade strollers. So maybe there's a little bit of upgrade upgradeability there for some folks. Well, they

Beav Brodie:

Tend to

Brett Curry:

Get pretty gross

Beav Brodie:

What mean? Yeah, pretty quickly. And you're like, I mean it's just time for a new one. I mean, it's like your car, right? Your car is expensive. You don't keep it forever. It's like

Brett Curry:

Every three years you're like, yeah, four or five

Beav Brodie:

Years

Brett Curry:

Ready to get something else. And so beat has been awesome, man. It has been super, super fun. Where can people go? Where can they buy some tactical baby gear? Because folks need some.

Beav Brodie:

Yeah. Tactical baby gear.com and then you can follow me personally, I try to make some brand type content time to time. And that's be Brodie on Instagram and YouTube. Yep. BEAV. Be Brodie, check him out.

Brett Curry:

Awesome. Follow awesome products. Keep with the good work, dude. So great chat with you as always. I could keep going for a long, long time, but we're out of time, so it's been fantastic. B, enjoyed it. Thanks man, and hope you crush what's left of this year and into next.

Beav Brodie:

Thanks, man. I appreciate you.

Brett Curry:

Awesome. And as always, thank you for tuning in. We'd love to hear from you. Would you like to hear more of on the show? Leave us that review if you've not done. And with that, until next time, thank you for listening. Today's episode is sponsored by post pilot. It's the secret weapon behind some of your favorite e-commerce brands, and they're using it to print money on the regular. So if you're already crushing it with Klaviyo with meta, then imagine taking that same segmentation and automation and sending it straight to your customers mailboxes. That's right. We're talking physical mail, personalized postcards that drive serious trackable revenue. And right now, post pod's giving E-Commerce Evolution Podcast listeners 1000 free postcard credits just to test it out. But this is for new users only. Just go to post pilot.com and tell them that we sent you to claim your credits break through that digital noise and beat rising ad costs. That's direct mail done right post pilot.com.

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