When most DTC brands think about scaling, they focus on optimizing Facebook ads or expanding to new digital channels. But Jared Mehr helped build something different at Pura Vida—a wholesale empire that became 25% of their business and played a crucial role in their $135 million exit to Vera Bradley. In this episode, Jared breaks down the counterintuitive truth about wholesale: it's often more profitable than your direct-to-consumer sales, provides incredible diversification, and creates marketing lift that benefits all your channels.

Starting from cold calls and trade show hustle, Jared shares the exact playbook that took Pura Vida from selling friendship bracelets in a San Diego bedroom to building relationships with thousands of retailers nationwide. Whether you're tired of being at the mercy of Zuckerberg's algorithm changes or looking to build a more attractive business for potential acquirers, this episode reveals why wholesale might be your most overlooked growth opportunity.

Key Topics Covered:

• The "Make It Easy to Say Yes" Strategy - Why offering 50 SKUs kills deals and how Pura Vida's "starter pack" approach generated millions in wholesale revenue through simplified decision-making

• Margin Math That Actually Works - Breaking down the surprising economics of wholesale vs. DTC, including why selling at 50% off retail can be more profitable than your current online sales

• The Big Box Trap - Why going after Nordstrom or PacSun too early nearly destroyed their relationships and cash flow, plus the smart way to build toward major retailers

• Display Strategy and Merchandising - How a simple branded display became their secret weapon for cutting through retail noise and telling their story at point-of-sale

• When to DIY vs. Hire Reps - The critical timing for transitioning from founder-led sales to professional reps, and why they fired their first reps to take it back in-house

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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) Intro

(04:23) The Importance of Wholesale in Business

(13:42) The Pura Vida Success Story

(16:51) Practical Steps to Launching Wholesale

(21:44) Wayflyer: Fast, Flexible Funding Designed for You

(22:26) Making It Easy for Retailers to Say Yes

(27:21) How to Identify Your Target Retailers

(34:08) Common Mistakes in Wholesale Retail

(37:51) The Role of Sales Reps

(42:05) Understanding Retailer Terms

(45:30) Pricing Strategies for Wholesale

(51:15) Threecolts: Recover Hidden Revenue for Free

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Transcript:

Jared Mehr:

These retailers want to have a relationship and they want you to post about it. Hey, now featured in all Ron John stores. Go find a,

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 unlike 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 at 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 we've got Jared Mehr joining the pod. I had the privilege of speaking at the same event as Jared in Midtown Manhattan, and I got to hear hisT story of helping Pura Vida bracelets build out their wholesale retail program en route to 135 million exit to Vera Bradley. So we're going to unpack that story, talk about the whys of building a wholesale program, the hows and some fun stories along the way. And so with that, Jared, welcome to the show, man. And how's it going?

Jared Mehr:

Thank you, I appreciate it. It's going really well actually. Every day is a new experience for me. I left in March, I thought I was going to take some time off and ended up getting bored after a couple of weeks. So here I am building some wholesale programs and speaking at events. Man, it's really good to talk to you.

Brett Curry:

I love it, dude. And I hear that so much from my friend Moise Ali, who found the native had a great exit. It's like if you're used to building and you're used to just going all the time and you've got, you're bright and you're talented and all that stuff, it's kind of hard to take more than a couple weeks off without building the next thing. And so I was really pumped to hear you in the game again and speaking again. And I will say, Jared, I thought this was a bold move on your part and I want to applaud you for it here on the podcast. So we're speaking at this event, shout out to Johnny Hickey who put the event together is fabulous. Near Times Square in New York. Everybody's got a PowerPoint, right? I'm speaking, I'm talking YouTube. I got my PowerPoint stuff. Oh man, here's Jared walks to the stage. I got no PowerPoint, I got some notes. And by the way, this is my first time speaking at an event and then you proceed to crush it and tell amazing stories and break down. And so I was like, this was great one, it was a great pattern interrupt. It was just different from all the other speeches, and then it was incredibly valuable. So kudos to you on that bold move.

Jared Mehr:

Thank you, man. I thought I would be one of few without a PowerPoint presentation and I ended up being the only one and I was just like, alright, I guess I'm doing it. Let's go. It was 50 minutes of the crowd just staring at me directly and not anything behind me. But I'm glad it went well, and I'm glad everyone got a lot of value out of it. And I'm just so passionate about teaching people about wholesale and retail and why it's so important. I mean, I've been doing it for 15 years and I think it's cool that more and more people now are seeing the value of it, how profitable it is, how cool it is. And I mean, I know we'll get into that, but I was able to really speak from the heart and I think that's why it went well.

Brett Curry:

It resonated. It resonated for sure. And yeah, we have a mutual friend and Chris Lynch from Everyday California

Brett Curry:

In

Brett Curry:

La, JOA, California. Shout out to Chris Lynch. And so when I mentioned that we're going to do the pause, Jared's the real deal. So you got the Chris Lynch stamp of approval, which is also good. So awesome, man. Well, let's talk about a couple of things that I want to lay the foundation, set the stage a little bit, get people excited about this, and then we're going to talk story and examples and get into a lot of the meat of this. So you guys had that 135 million exit in 2019 to Vera Bradley, and I believe that about 25% of the business or so at that time was wholesale, the rest was D two C, is that correct? And we'd love to just get your perspective. How much did the wholesale part of the business play into that successful exit? Yeah,

Jared Mehr:

A hundred percent. So yeah, my two buddies, Griff and Paul founded the brand back in 2010 on a surf trip to Costa Rica, found some guys selling string grace, it's on the beach, thought it would be cool to bring 'em back and sell 'em. And so they brought 'em home, started selling 'em in San Diego, and a few months later I jumped on, I was like, Hey, I'm doing commercial real estate sales. I hate it. I'm making a hundred cold calls a day. It sucks. Let me figure out how to sell these wholesale. So thankfully they let me on and we kind of took it from there and to answer, so

Brett Curry:

Wholesale was really part of

Jared Mehr:

It from the early days of Vida. Yeah, honestly, from month two or three,

Paul's sister, her name was Erin, she jumped on and I jumped on and we were just like, Hey, let's just do it. Let's sell wholesale, let's figure it out. And so happy to tell that story, but I think to answer your questions in the beginning, I mean for the first probably nine years, wholesale was like 10% eComm 90 wholesale then was like 15 eComm 85. And then I would say, yeah, when the deal happened in 2019, wholesale was about 25 to 30 ish percent eComm being the rest. And I think why it was so important is because what Vera Bradley liked about the company is that we had multiple legs to stand on. They really wanted an e-commerce brand, they wanted a young e-commerce brand, a hundred percent. But the fact that we had, I think at that point, 20 ish million, 25 million in revenue for wholesale, I mean, it was just a massively added benefit.

Brett Curry:

Yeah, it's so good. And we've seen this a lot, talked about this a lot with our clients channel diversification from a traffic standpoint. So that's one of the ways that OMG has really exploded lately is we understand YouTube and most of the DTC brands are really focused on meta. And so they want to diversify. They want to open up YouTube as a channel, but what we've seen from the best brands we work with is they're all multi-channel and a lot closer to omni-channel where if you've got distribution, diversification, and you're selling multiple places makes you stronger as a business more attractive to a buyer, which is super important. So I definitely want to back up and hear the story just a minute, but one more question to set the stage here,

Brett Curry:

Because

Brett Curry:

There may be people that dunno who Pura V is, and I love the story, I love the product. It's all really cool. Why is it so important to think about building a wholesale business? Give me some of the bullet list of this is why it's valuable, this is why you should do it before we dive in.

Jared Mehr:

Yeah, I think the first thing is for all the brands that are e-comm only or e-comm focused, you don't want your brand to grow and scale and be fully dependent on Mark Zuckerberg's mood that day.

Brett Curry:

Yep.

Jared Mehr:

If you are fully e-commerce and you're running meta ads and that's your whole business and anything happens, the iOS change in 2022, you're screwed and all of a sudden it's unprofitable or no one's buying or it's too saturated. So a diversification

Brett Curry:

B, and that vulnerability is a discount factor when you go to sell. Right? The buyers know that too. So they're like, Hey, I'm going to factor that into my valuation here.

Jared Mehr:

And especially now too, back in the 2010s to 2019, I had some other buddies that sold companies like Movement watches

Brett Curry:

Love that product.

Jared Mehr:

Yeah, great brand. My buddy owns Blenders Eyewear also sold, and yeah, I mean they were mainly e-commerce focused, but started building a little bit of wholesale and had that out there and that was just another reason why these strategic partners liked them.

Brett Curry:

Yes, totally makes sense.

Jared Mehr:

That's one. Number two is nowadays with, again on the meta topic, wholesale is more profitable, to be honest. Yeah.

Brett Curry:

Isn't that crazy? Isn't it awesome as well than Amazon too in most cases, and I love Amazon, but,

Jared Mehr:

And I think where people that aren't super familiar with wholesale kind of get tripped up is like, let's use a really easy example. So let's say you have a product that retails for 30 bucks, you're going to wholesale it for 15. And so I think what I've found is when talking to founders of e-commerce brands, they're like, oh, whoa, it's $15. I'm only getting 15. I could sell it for 30 online, but online you have a signup bonus, so that's a 10% off or 20% off, that knocks it down, then you're paying 20 for a customer maybe.

Brett Curry:

What's your cac? Yeah, yeah, your credit customer right at the top.

Jared Mehr:

So then out the door you're just like, oh wait, when I sell a product online, I'm only getting $2 out of it. I'd rather sell it for 15. And so I think it's just a mindset shift that once you have that you realize, okay, it is worth it. So profitability

Brett Curry:

Number two, it could be the most profitable channel that you have.

Jared Mehr:

Yeah, and I think number three and probably four is just getting your product out there. Getting your product in the market is huge. Some brands have products that people want to try on, they want to see it in person. I'm going to use bikinis in it as an example. For a lot of women, they buy bikinis, online return, half of 'em, they don't fit. That's something you want to try on. And I say that because I'm currently working with a really cool bikini brand and they're going to crush it at retail because customers are literally saying, Hey, where can I find this near me? I want to go try it on. And I think that goes for a lot of different types of brands.

Brett Curry:

Totally, totally.

Jared Mehr:

And I would say lastly, e-comm and wholesale don't compete. And I think that's also kind of an industry misnomer for all these years is if someone sees an ad online but they don't want to buy because they don't know much about your product, but then they go to a store on the weekend and they see it, they're like, oh, I got an ad for this. This thing's awesome, let me buy it. And vice versa. They go into a store, they buy the product, they're like, man, these sunglasses rock. I want another pair. They're buying online. It's a win-win,

Brett Curry:

Dude, I love that so much. It's a really good call on. I think a couple of things of note there on the competition piece, we've helped a lot of successful brands go from strictly D two C to opening up Amazon as an example. There's been a few brands, again, talking Moise from Native, he was like, man, I wish we'd gotten on Amazon sooner, but there's always going to be some cannibalization. You open up Amazon, there's going to be some cannibalization of people that not going to buy D two C, now they're going to buy on Amazon. I think there's definitely less of that When you open up retail, it's almost all upside in terms of who you're closing. And even if you're looking at existing customers, they're probably going to consume more and buy more

If you're in retail. I was talking to my buddy Jimmy Sandstone from the normal brand and the St. Louis Missouri brand, and I'm here in Missouri, but they've got, I dunno, 12 plus stores, maybe 15 stores now, something like that. But they found that when they open a normal brand store or when they're in a prominent retailer in a particular market, obviously retail sales go up big time, but D two C sales go up too because, and this is one of those things like going back to marketing 1 0 1, my marketing professor in college would be so proud, but you got the four Ps of marketing, product, price, place, promotion, but that place is important. Where is your product? And it's part of the marketing equation, having your product in physical source. And so yeah, that we can't overstate, I don't believe.

Jared Mehr:

I mean, it just lends incredible credibility to the brand, right? It does. What's crazy is what we found at Pura Vida, which I'm happy to say I was wrong. So we were selling to thousands of retail stores, mom and pop, surf shops, boutiques, that kind of thing. We started opening up our own Pura Vida stores. We had I think five of 'em, five or six. And one big thing that I was very against is I'm like, do not put Pura Vida stores near existing retail stores. Don't do it. It'll cannibalize. And here's what's even more

Brett Curry:

Insane. The retailers will get pissed and stuff like that. Don't upset them totally.

Jared Mehr:

But we put up a store in Myrtle Beach where we had three other retailers, peer reviewed retailers, one in the same shopping complex, a couple down the street. I was scared the retailers were pissed sales for all of it went up. And I think that what's behind that is that it just cements credibility of this brand that they're like, yeah, you can go to the peer Vida store, I can buy the product, but when I see it elsewhere, these guys are legit. This is a real deal brand. And I

Brett Curry:

Think credibility, awareness, awareness lists, which all of that, all that's really valuable. So yeah, what a cool call out. Well, awesome. So okay, now we tease and we're going to get into a lot of the how-tos and the story and stuff like that. But let's back up a little bit for those who are like, wait, peer reviewed bracelets, what's that? You talked about Griffin and Paul surf trip to Costa Rica. Sounds magical. They buy bracelets, they bring it back. Tell us what the bracelets are and what some of those early stages were that causes to be such a phenomenal success.

Jared Mehr:

So they bring these bracelets back. They're wax coated polyester bracelets. They literally look like friendship bracelets that we made in elementary school

Colored, they're colors, they're fun, they bring 'em home, they start selling 'em out of their bedroom in Pacific Beach in San Diego where we live, start going to San Diego State Library, giving people bracelets, having 'em follow us on Instagram and basically kind of just put up a, it wasn't Shopify back then, I don't remember what it was, but it was put up a little website and start selling online. Myself and Aaron come on. And we were just like, Hey, let's essentially knock on doors, let's make cold calls, let's email samples out. We go to a trade show, we rent out half a booth in someone else's booth, give out bracelets to everyone, and we just start growing the brand like this, right? Super organic. I think we were, I don't want to say one of the first on Facebook with Facebook ads, but very early when it was insanely profitable. So that was very helpful. It was like literally you put in a dollar, you get $5 back. And so the brand kept growing that way. And I think wholesale wise, we went from zero to a couple hundred K in our first year, a mil, three mil, seven mil, oh, we need some sales reps, 15 mil, 2030, et cetera, et cetera. And so the wholesale path kind of went up and at the same time the path went up and that was kind of the growth story. And so we went from one style of just string bracelets and colors to tons of different styles ranging anywhere from $5 retail to about 20

Came out with some rings because we were like, Hey, naturally we make bracelets, we're taking pictures of people's accessory. Let's get rings on it. So expanded into rings story behind the brand too is they're all handmade by artisans down in Costa Rica. So we employed over 600 artisans.

Brett Curry:

Wow.

Jared Mehr:

It's amazing that handmaking all the bracelets and everything. So it was a give back story. We partnered with over a hundred charities. We made bracelets for American Heart Association, so it'd be a red bracelet, JDRF, which is juvenile diabetes research, blue bracelet. And so it was a great story. People, we felt good about buying. We donated tons. We've donated 4 million now in total. So yeah, I mean it was a fun ride, a great product. I think a lot of people were just like, why would I spend $5 on a friendship bracelet in the beginning? And then thankfully it caught on

Brett Curry:

It, man, it was such a great vibe, fit the San Diego ethos, but then obviously when coast to coast and beyond and carried cost those Costa Rica vibes as well, which is just awesome. And so let's kind of break this down. So growing it to 15 million plus in wholesale business, most profitable portion of the business, what are the practical steps? So for like, okay, I want to launch wholesale. Where do I start? What do I do? What's kind of step one in that process?

Jared Mehr:

Yeah, step one is to figure out if you have the margins for it. So step one is going back to the example of a $30 retail product. Can you sell that for $15? It doesn't make sense. And not only that, could you sell it for 13? Because the more margin you give these retailers, the better. And you look like a hero if you could give these guys 55 or 60 margins. So can you do that? The answer is yes,

Brett Curry:

Because if you can't, you're just not going to get your foot in the door. If you're like, Hey, retail's for 30, but also two for 24, that's not going to work. Generally

Jared Mehr:

People are going to laugh at you, people are going to laugh at you. Unfortunately it sucks. But they have to pay their staff, they have to pay the bills, they have to pay their, you know what I mean? So they need the money to make up the margin. Last thing is can you pay a sales rep down the road 10%, right? Just something to factor in. It's not immediate by any means, but can you do it because that will come into play if you scale properly. So if you check all those boxes off, that's the big first step. You're good to go there. Second thing that I advise all these brands to do is think about your sales pitch. Think about the elevator pitch. What is so special about your brand, but not in the sense of, hey, we get the most, our ROAS is two x or we get the most clicks on our Google ads because store buyers don't care about that. They're old school. A lot of 'em don't even know what ROAS means, as funny as it is. So you need to have some sort of sales pitch that's a good story that they can relate to or your price point is amazing and it's going to bring customers in their store. Something that will make someone that has never heard of your brand want to take a chance on you and bring it in.

Brett Curry:

What was the Pura Vida pitch? And that totally makes sense. By the way, you can't, I mean maybe you can highlight a few things online, but that's not the story. That's not going to make as much sense in the head of the retail buyer like it does for you. So what was the story you told for Pura Vida?

Jared Mehr:

So for Pura Vida, ours was the Costa Rica story. So all the bracelets are handmade down in Costa Rica. We provide jobs for over 500 artisans. Everything is wax coated, polyester waterproof, so you can surf, swim, shower, give them to friends, gift 'em, they last a long time. Colorful. We partner with a hundred charities and they retail for five bucks. So it's a really easy price point. And so I think these retailers were either like, oh my God, I love Costa Rica. I go there with my family once a year,

Brett Curry:

Love

Jared Mehr:

The charity aspect, my store gives back. Or even just like, Hey, I love the price point. I like that they're five bucks. That's really easy for me to sell. Let's do it. You know what I mean?

Brett Curry:

Yeah, it totally makes sense. And in some of these boutique shops, they want to be able to tell a little bit of a story. If somebody's browsing and like, oh, lemme tell you about these bracelets. There's a story here. And that's useful for merchants to be able to lean into. Got

Jared Mehr:

It. That's awesome. It helps you cut through the noise because let's say you are a candle brand or a bracelet brand or whatever, there's a lot of competition out there. And so if you just are, hey, we make water bottles or candles and it smells good, it's like, okay, but a lot of people do that. But if you have a charity aspect or a great founder story or can do custom labels or can just do something that will bring customers in and make it worth it, you'll get a lot more yeses than if you didn't. Got

Brett Curry:

It. And any tips on how are we translating that story into potential benefit for the retailer? I know obviously we want to lean into the story and the narrative, but we can also be too focused on us or our product. So any tips there on how to make that applicable to the retailer?

Jared Mehr:

Yeah, I think the story is important because they want to feel good about what they're selling and essentially know that people will come in and shop. I think in terms of benefit, you want to just be able to offer the retailer the fact that you are going to put them up on your store locator. You're going to bring customers in, you'll post on Instagram about 'em, you'll provide marketing Dropbox if they want window decals, that kind of thing. I think gone are the days in a sense of just like, Hey, I'm going to give you your product, you're going to sell it and I'll call you in a few months. It's like these retailers want to have a relationship and they want you to post about it. Hey, now featured in all Ron John stores. Go find 'em or link with them in the holidays and do a little gift with purchase and just have it be a partnership. I think that goes a long way to these guys.

Brett Curry:

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Brett Curry:

Right

Brett Curry:

Away? And then the second thing is what's the story? What's the pitch? How do we nail that down? What's next

Jared Mehr:

Is you want to figure out what do I want to offer? And it sounds kind of funny, but let's say you have 30 SKUs on your site or 50 SKUs too many. You need to go to market clear and concise strategy. You need to make it easy for these guys. I can almost guarantee that if you have 50 SKUs, they're not all 50 best sellers selling the exact same amount,

But let's take that 50 s skew line and narrow it to 20 and go to market with 10 or 20 and say, okay, out of everything we have, this is the line we want to go to market with. Narrow it down and go from there, build the line sheet, build the catalog, build the assortment, wholesale pricing, retail pricing, and boom, you're good. Now, if your product is small, if it's jewelry, if it's a key chain, if it's a magnet, if it's something you can kind of sit on the counter, I then suggest having a little bit of a point of purchase a display branded, something like that. If it's not, it's okay. If you're a clothing brand or something bigger, it's okay. But that's kind of the variable factor in terms of getting the line prepared to go to the retailer at the next step.

Brett Curry:

Nice. So yeah, if we got 50 skews, let's narrow that down to the top 10, maybe the top 20. You talked about this a little bit presenting in New York, but you talk about make it easy to say Yes, and part of that was what you just said, but can you unpack that a little bit? How are we making it easy to say yes? And it may seem obvious to some, but why is that important? Because I think sometimes this point may be missed.

Jared Mehr:

So retailers have a lot of things going on in their mind. They're managing a store, they're managing employees. If they're a buyer for a bigger company, they're buying for 50 stores. They have a hundred decisions to make every day. So you're cold emailing, you're cold calling and you go, Hey Brett, I'm Jared from Pura, Vida, bring in the line. And they go, okay, I like it. And I'm like, Hey, here's 30 different colors. Pick five of each that you like and then send me this too much. You probably won't get an answer.

Brett Curry:

Yeah, yeah.

Jared Mehr:

So what I recommend doing, and it doesn't, again, it's not universal, but it works for a lot of people and brands. It's like some sort of starter pack or some sort of opening where you're like, Hey, I put together the best sellers. I'm going to give you the best sellers. I'm going to give you a display for free. I'll have it shipped. All you have to do is say yes, and you'll have a box at your door next week.

Brett Curry:

Dude, I love that. Yeah, because you're 100% right. Just think about it from the mindset of a consumer. We go to the toothpaste aisle, we don't want to know what we want to buy, and there's 500 choices, and then it's like, I don't know what to do. Same is true with your buyer. They don't know your product if you just say, this is our catalog, do you want a couple of this or a couple of that or what do you want? It's too much. Just say, this is what you need. Made it super easy. Just say yes. Yeah, man, I love that approach. And that also, and I think another benefit to that, just knowing that, hey, you built this into a program with multiple reps and you're kind of running the show, makes it easier for a rep as well. You train a rep on, Hey, here's our get started package. That makes it easy to say yes, clear training to level up your reps as well.

Jared Mehr:

Yeah, a hundred percent. And you can even categorize that by channel. If you sell to oh man, stores on the east coast and stores on the west coast and that stores on the east coast love the bright colors and stores on the west coast love the dark colors. It doesn't have just one thing for everyone. You could have two and every store you reach out to on the east coast, you're just like, Hey, I put together the best sellers. It's all the bright colors we know they kill it in New York and in Jersey. Just say, yes, here's the starter pack that we recommend. Love it. Boom. So for us, we had 80 of one, 20 of another and 20 of another. It was 120 bracelets and a display free of charge. A display was, we called it the starter pack, and we were just like, just say, yes, I'll have it at your door next week. And people were like, yep, let's do it. That was so easy. Heck yeah. And it just on repeat, on repeat,

Brett Curry:

On repeat, it's amazing, man. I love it so much. Walk us through this piece and we'll get back to the next steps, but just have this thought and want to double click on it. So a buddy of mine, I actually introduced 'em to you, but Jared Mitchell, ghost ammo, sunscreen for men shaped like a shotgun carer. Super cool. So he's talking about how am I going to go retail and stuff. I think one question that a lot of brands have in mind is, where should I go? Who should I approach first? What advice would you give there? Where did you start? It sounds like with Vida you started, you were just hustling, you were calling everybody, but how did you kind of build that short list? I'm guessing you weren't going to Bass Pro shops in the beginning or whatever. How did you build that initial target list of retailers?

Jared Mehr:

Yeah, I think you as a brand owner need to figure out where you want to be and you may say, oh, I want to be everywhere. I want to be everywhere. And I think you can't because you can't sell to high-end boutiques, but then sell the same product to cvs, it just won't work, right? The boutiques will say No cvs, whatever. So I think what you need to do is figure out, okay, where do we want to start? Do we want to be in boutiques? Do we want to be in gas stations? Do we want to be in surf shops? I think having some sort of clear focus channel is a great way to start. And from that point, you can use one of the many tools online of scraping leads, going to similar brands, websites, hopping on their store locator, stealing their list of stores and thanking them for the free leads. I guess it's not even stealing, but it's public. It's public, right? Yeah. Going on, there's a program called Fair. It's like a wholesale marketplace. A lot of brands hop on it to kind of just get some revenue coming in the door. I don't think it's super scalable, I will say that, but I do think if you're new and you're just like, I want to get a little bit of revenue, you can throw some products up there and see who bites and

Brett Curry:

See what retailers are graVidating towards your product.

Jared Mehr:

Exactly. And I think those two avenues are the perfect starting point. Where do you want to be sold and maybe hop on fair to prove a little concept and get some revenue going in the door. It's

Brett Curry:

Amazing. It's amazing. Talk a little bit about the display aspect. I know you talked about, hey, if it's something small, if it's on the countertop, you definitely want to display, if it's apparel, clothing and stuff, maybe not as much, but what advice do you have about displays and then how important is the merchandising piece of this, even though some of the merchandising is up to the retailer? Walk us through that a little bit.

Jared Mehr:

Display is really, really important to me in my world, and if you have a product that can go on a display, you should Twofold. First one is you call the buyers, you call the retailers, you're trying to get your product in there, they love it. What's the first thing they're going to ask you? Hey, I love this product. Where do I put it?

I don't know. Wherever you want. I dunno, you might've lost them. Second part is if you still have 'em and they're still down, they're going to put you on some display in the back of the store, they're going to put you on a random display that has things from China. No branding, it just is not a great look for you, and I don't think you're going to see the sales from it. Now, on the flip side, if you can offer a branded display, even if it's small, if it's big, if you have a product like towels and you could do a standing display, sunglasses, have a display, whatever it may be, your brand's on there, you can tell a story. You can have your colors, you can have a QR code where someone could scan it and go to your site and read about the product. You can have a one little blurb on there on our displays. It was a spinner and it said $4 million donated made by artisans all hand. And it's like you got to think people don't know what your brand is. It's their first time seeing it. If you can't tell the story, it's pretty hard to sell.

Brett Curry:

Totally, totally. It's really the ad that someone sees in the store, it positions the brand, it tells the story in a very brief and concise way, but without that it's just a friendship bracelet on a rack or on a shelf or something like that. So yeah, it's critical to get that piece if you can. Any good advice there on resources or what people should check out or who they should learn from or who does it? Well, just thinking some of people on the pod that the list of the pod, they're pros at Facebook ads or Google ads or whatever, but I dunno, never built a display. What am I putting there? What am I showing there? Any advice and or resources there?

Jared Mehr:

Yeah, so I think the thought of a display can sometimes be daunting if you don't have any experience it in it, but what I would recommend is just get something. If you don't need to go to a professional display manufacturer on day one and spend thousands of dollars on mockups and display, go on Etsy and find someone making a little wood piece. Have 'em make you 20 of 'em and put your brand on it. Go on Alibaba and get 20 of something. Just get something. Our first display was literally wood from the beach Beachwood. This guy would get it, cut it into one pole like this, and then one two poles across and it looked like a little tree and it said P beat in it. It looked like a kid made it in a junior high project. It didn't matter.

Brett Curry:

Yeah,

Jared Mehr:

It was just like get something out there. And I think the same can be with these if you don't know a display manufacturer, heck, I bought displays on Etsy recently for a trade show. It's great.

Brett Curry:

Yeah, you guys started this right out of the gate or month two or whatever it was. When should most brands consider this, right? Because not every brand is going to have you as their buddy. They can just do this and you're sick of your job, so you're ready for something new. When should someone strongly consider, Hey, I need to diversify. Let me explore wholesale retail. Any guidelines there?

Jared Mehr:

Yeah, I think there's not a hard number of like, oh, if you are doing X amount in sales, go to wholesale. But I will say, and a lot of the brands I've been speaking to and people in the industry is get a little bit of an e-commerce presence going, get your social media up, get sales going, get a proof of concept. It doesn't have to be $4 million. Prove your product market fit, prove that

Brett Curry:

People want this,

Jared Mehr:

Prove it. And then because if you just start and a brand and then on day one go call a bunch of stores and get your product in there, you don't even know if people want to buy the product. If it's priced and then stores are stuck with your product, it's a mess. You lost that credibility, and so I think there's no hard number, but if you can prove your concept by getting some e-comm sales rolling in at least for six months or maybe a year, you're in a much better position to succeed.

Brett Curry:

Totally makes sense. Yeah. Jared, what were some of the mistakes, either the mistakes you made at Pura Vida or just mistakes you see brands making when they're getting into wholesale retail?

Jared Mehr:

A really big one that I have been seeing lately and that we made is trying to go too big too early. I can fully understand why when you're starting out thinking about Nordstrom or the Buckle or something like that, handing you a $200,000 po, that sounds awesome, right? What could go wrong? This is amazing. The problem is you're not ready for it. They have shipping guidelines, they have chargebacks, they have EDI. They have crazy, crazy processes that if you ship one day late charge if you don't write the right thing on the box charge, and I've seen brands literally lose money on these orders because they weren't ready for it and because they got seen be chargebacks,

Brett Curry:

What

Jared Mehr:

Is E-D-I-E-D-I is when stores transfer their orders system to system where they're not calling you and saying, Hey, Jared, I want a hundred pieces. Send it. Their system sees that inventory is low, electronically delivered to your system to reorder it, and it takes set. It takes integrating with your warehouse. It costs money. You have to have this, and if you're not ready, brands won't work with you. And so that's the first part. The second part that's really scary is let's say, I'm going to use Nordstrom as an example again. Let's say they go, Brett love your product. We want it for 50 doors. And you go, okay, great. So you make all this product, you front load the cash 50 doors. Okay, well, they're not going to pay you for 60 or 90 days floating cash from when you started creating the product 60 days after they had it. That could put you out of business.

Brett Curry:

Totally. Totally. Yeah. Yeah. You got to make sure you've got that ability to float. And then I'm also assuming the terms are going to vary from retailer to retailer, so maybe you're getting the cash 60 to nine days later, but it's maybe not all the cash and every retailer is a little bit different. I know my buddy helps brands get into Walmart on physical shelves there and he talks about how I can be like the hug of death where there's so many good things happening, but if you're not ready, it's going to put you out of business

Jared Mehr:

A hundred percent. And what if someone tells you they want 50 doors worth of product? You make it all, and two days before you ship it, they go, Hey, actually we close down 20 of our doors so we only need 30 doors worth. And you're like, what do I do with, what do I do with this inventory? I'm screwed. Right? We made that mistake. We made that mistake with Pac Sun. We sold the PAC Sun way too early in the Pura Vida days. We had a terrible product assortment,

Brett Curry:

Which had to have felt awesome, right? You get P on massive retailer, it's got to feel like you're riding a high because you got PAX on to say yes. I

Jared Mehr:

Thought I was the man. I got invited to Pax Sun's warehouse. I went to corporate. I was posting photos on Instagram. I'm like, me at the Pac Sun warehouse, Pura Vida. I thought I was so cool. We get this order. I didn't know what assortment to make them, so the colors were so off. We were late on delivery. We got chargebacks, we tagged it wrong. They needed custom UPC codes. We tagged it wrong. They never order it again, still to this day, and we blew our shot. And so I just think the biggest thing that we did and that people do among others is just going for the big guy way too early. And I think the solution for that, the solution is don't ignore the mom and pops. Don't ignore the smaller chains.

Brett Curry:

You can move a lot of inventory that way, and you're going to be able to learn and grow and protect yourself financially that way. Love that. Other mistakes to avoid mistakes. You guys made anything else to call out there?

Jared Mehr:

Yeah, I think one thing we did was we hired reps and showrooms too early. I think the concept of you're new and some sales rep that lives in Florida reps three other brands, right? Sounds cool. You're like, oh, well he'll just rep my brand. He'll just plug me into the hundred stores that he already sells to on day one or it's a showroom. Oh, when a buyer's in the showroom for a meeting, they'll just sell him my brand too. And unfortunately that's not the case. You're just so low on the totem pole when you're brand new and when a rep or a showroom has to pioneer your brand, which means literally pave the path, it's extremely labor intensive, time intensive, and if a buyer comes into a showroom and they only have an hour and a rep sells five brands, and here you are at the bottom of the totem pole, they're going to show the buyer these three brands, because these three brands make 'em money.

Brett Curry:

They got to make that sale. They got to make that sale.

Jared Mehr:

So we did it, we did that. Then we ended up taking it back in house because we can tell the story the best we can lay the foundation. We're working nine hours a day selling it. So then we went back out, we did it ourselves, and then when it was the right time, then good reps came to us and good reps wanted to spend time on us. So that was a big, big learning for us too.

Brett Curry:

Yeah, that's really great. Any rules of thumb there or thoughts on, okay, when do I do this myself versus when do I bring on a rep versus when do I partner with somebody, like a third party rep or whatever?

Jared Mehr:

Yeah, I mean, I think you should lay the groundwork yourself for a little bit at least. Yeah, totally agree. It's beneficial because no one tells the story as good as you. No one has all the time in the day of selling your brand as good as you, and whether that's you or you bring someone on in-house or you hire an intern. When I say you, I mean just something you can in in-house. I think you

Brett Curry:

Just, it's also important too. Just a quick side note there, Jared is just almost like you guys had the benefit, and I talked to Preston Rutherford from Chubby. They did the same thing where they were selling chubby in parks in San Francisco. You guys were at the San Diego State Library selling Pura Vida. There's something powerful about looking your customer in the eye, selling it, getting that immediate feedback, seeing what they think, what the conversations are like. And in the wholesale world, you got two customers really, right? You've got the end buyer, which you probably already know by now, then you got the retailer. And so being able to understand what they care about, what they want, what they don't want, it's pretty valuable. And then you get that feedback the best from engaging in those conversations. I think just another reason why doing it in-house or doing it yourself to begin with makes a lot of sense.

Jared Mehr:

Nailed it a hundred percent. You establish a relationship, right?

And to piggyback on that, you start going to trade shows, which probably is another chapter in this journey of what we're talking about. You want to be at the trade show, you want to be telling the story. Griffin Paul, we're at the first couple years of trade shows. Oh, hey, this is the founder. This is the story. We're telling the story. We handed the reins too early. And someone would come up and say something like, Hey, what were the names of the two guys in Costa Rica that you met first and the reps didn't know and you lost your chance?

So I think that's why it's very important and truly, truly, truly, if you have a baseline of stores, let's say again, I'm going after someone, I want to rep in Florida because I'm too busy. We're at a certain point. If we have no stores to give this guy to manage, on top of him getting his own, we're probably not going to get the best reps. Now, if I go to him and I say, Hey, we have 40 retailers in Florida, they're awesome. We want to give those to you to grow them, but then also have you bring on a hundred more, the best of the best reps are going to be the ones that say, heck yeah, I'm in.

Brett Curry:

Yeah. Yeah. Very clear objective for them. It's a clear structure for you. Clear path to ROI. Everybody's aligned. Makes a ton of sense. Jared, you've talked about this a little bit, but walk me through or walk us through what are some of the terms we could and should expect, and what are some of the terms that are negotiable versus probably not. I mean, I know everything's negotiable to a certain degree, but what kind of terms should we expect going into these deals

Jared Mehr:

Out in the retailer front? Like if Retailer? Yes. Okay.

Brett Curry:

Yep, yep, exactly.

Jared Mehr:

The majority of the time, product dependent, but the majority of the time the mom and pops, the smaller chains are going to pay you with a credit card upfront. So they'll give you their credit card when they place the order,

Brett Curry:

Pay the full

Jared Mehr:

Amount of the PO at the time of order, full amount of the po, no, at the time of shipping. Shipping. Got it. So let's say they place an order, it's a thousand bucks, it ships next Friday, I'm going to get their card right before I ship it. I run the card in full, I ship the product.

Brett Curry:

Got it.

Jared Mehr:

It's amazing because the money's in my hand. We have the cashflow, we have the money, great. They have the product done. So I would say that is how the majority of the smaller chains and the mom and pops work now, as you get bigger, 10 doors, 20 doors, maybe 50, whatever it may be, you start working with net terms. So net most common is 30. So they will pay you 30 days from when they receive the product. Not usually from, it's sometimes when you ship it, you can say 30 days, we try to do that, but sometimes they'll say, Hey, we didn't get it for seven days after it's kind of a little bit of a gray area. You could say 30 days from invoicing, they're probably going to be a day or two late. But in general, net 30, next common is net 45, 45 days net 60, and then net 90 brands hate net 90 retailers love it. It's just kind of like, I want to say a clout thing. I guess retailers that are really, really good pump, really good volume, big names, the Nordstroms of the world, the, I dunno, maybe Bass Pro shops, I'm not sure, but those are the ones that can say net 60 or net 90, because you don't have a choice. You say no, they say no,

Brett Curry:

It's massive distribution. How else are you going to get in the door?

Jared Mehr:

Yeah. So that's kind of that world, and that's why again, getting this mom and pop baseline going, you're going to have money coming in, right? You have,

Brett Curry:

Yeah, that's going to cash flow. Going to create float for the bigger retailers with more.

Jared Mehr:

Yeah. So you got the cashflow going, you have all that, and then when you go out to the big guys, you can handle it better. Now, in of the big guys, for people who are a little bit afraid of floating money for 30, 60, 90 days, there's third parties out there called Factors. And what that is is basically you hire this factor on, you say, Hey, I'm going to ship to Bass Pro shops, the order's a hundred thousand dollars, the terms are 60 days. They will say, okay, we approve this because we know they have a good track record. They will then collect the money for you guarantee some sort amount of money in that. And then they take take a cut when BassPro pays. So we've used a bunch. It's very helpful for brands that you don't want to float that yourself.

Brett Curry:

Got it. So you're taking a discount, you're taking a hit, but you're solving your cashflow issues, which for growing brands, sometimes the cashflow is more important than just protecting EBITDA as an example. And so makes a ton of sense. Jared, this is an amazing man. This is super good. I'm excited to go wholesale here. Any other mistakes that are worth calling out? Mistakes that we should avoid? I know there's probably a lot, but in any noteworthy

Jared Mehr:

One. Yeah, no, this is good. I think a big one, I don't want to say mistake, but I think it's something that you really have to keep in mind is if you have an e-commerce store and your entire model or a big model for you is discounting, you are always on sale. You're always offering 50 off. Every other holiday is 40 off, and that works for you, that's fine. But I want you to know you may have a hard time getting into wholesale because you cannot be constantly competing with your retailers. They will see it, they will find it, they will subscribe to your email list just to be in the know and you're going to beef with them. And I think not even just beefing with existing retailers, if you're going after these guys and you're cold calling your emailing and they hop on your site, they want to learn more and you're running 50 off every other day, it is just like you're not going to get these guys to see

Brett Curry:

You. That becomes your price, right? There needs to be clear map pricing or clear MSRP or something.

Brett Curry:

If

Brett Curry:

You don't have pricing integrity, a retailer is going to sniff that out. And while that might may be the first thing you think of, that's probably one of the very first things that a retail thinks about, right?

Jared Mehr:

Yep. Especially in this day and age where e-comm is such a big deal. It's a big thing they look for. And so I think you don't have to tone your entire pricing strategy down on day one when you have zero wholesale orders. I fully get that you want to test the channel, but I think you have to be open to saying, okay, if wholesale works, let's tone down the discounts on e-com and be open to that. And I think if you are, you will be successful. I'm want to say hardheaded about it. If you're just like, no, our brand model is we go 40 off two weeks a month, and that's it. You may be spinning your wheels a little bit in the wholesale world.

Brett Curry:

Totally makes sense, man. Jared, this is awesome. Thank you for dropping so much knowledge. I'm excited about this ton of value. For the listeners, those that are listening, well, first of all, any final comments before we talk about how people can get in touch with you?

Jared Mehr:

Yeah, I mean, not really. I think this whole thing is super exciting. Wholesale and retail was such a big thing for me growing up. I think probably for a lot of our listeners growing up of like, you wanted a t-shirt, you went to the store and bought it, you want a skateboard, you go buy it. eCom became such a big thing 2010 and on. And I think now we're seeing such a shift back into retail and wholesale, especially with how hard it is online and how expensive

That I think it's exciting, and I know I'm biased because it's what I do, but I really hope more people catch on and just see the benefit. And trust me, that first time you walk into a store and you see your product in a store, it feels so freaking good, man. And to one up that the first time you're chilling and you have a buddy send you a screenshot and go, oh my God, I'm in Hawaii at my resort. Look, I see your products here. This is epic. It feels so good. So not only is life just an amazing feeling.

Brett Curry:

Yeah, I love that. And one final thought that I've got to share, I think it's really important is we're talking a lot about it in marketing right now, incrementality. And so we do a lot with YouTube, but also met on other channels. And so we're always looking at, Hey, what's providing net new sales, net new lift that we would not have gotten otherwise? What's really cool, and they actually just talked about this on the operators podcast,

Jared Mehr:

Nice.

Brett Curry:

So Sean Frank and Mike Beckham and the guys, and then also Marketing Operators podcast, Cody Ker and the Collins and stuff is, Hey, when you are in retail, your incrementality factor goes up. So as an example, I'm running connected tv, I'm running YouTube, something like that. So it's a little more upper funnel, maybe not click-based as much, but it's driving awareness is driving demand. Your incrementality factor or the incremental impact of those ads goes up pretty dramatically when you're in retail stores. And so it makes everything better. It can change the economics of your ad campaigns, creates an awareness as you were talking about with the pure Vida stores or the normal brand stores. There's just so many benefits here that it's worth exploring and then anything worth doing the right way. And so as people are listening and they're like, man, I got to talk to Jared, first of all, it sounds like you're getting covered up, so maybe people are going to need to take a number wait in line type of thing. But how can people connect with you? What are the best ways to reach out?

Jared Mehr:

Yeah, definitely. Shoot me an email, Jared meer@gmail.com. Message me on LinkedIn. I don't have MEHR, right? So

Brett Curry:

Jared,

Jared Mehr:

MEHR, sorry, J-A-R-E-D-M-E-H r@gmail.com. I'm a little embarrassed to say I don't have a website yet. I'm working on it. It's just,

Brett Curry:

Just out there doing it, man. You're out there doing, it's totally cool.

Jared Mehr:

I'm too busy. No, I'm trying to have a meaningful name and everything is taken. And so it's all happened really fast of helping brands and kind of putting myself out there. So I will have that. But in the meantime, email is great. LinkedIn is great. Yeah, I would say that's the best.

Brett Curry:

Awesome. Jared Mehr, ladies and gentlemen, Jared, this is awesome. And thanks again for the time, man. And we'll have to do it again soon. And next time I'm in San Diego, let's hang out. I'll be there.

Jared Mehr:

Hundred percent, a hundred percent, man. Can't wait to see you. Thanks for having me on. I really appreciate it.

Brett Curry:

Absolutely. And as always, thank you for tuning in. We'd love to hear your feedback. What would you like to hear more of on the pod? Leave us that review if you haven't done it. And hey, if you know somebody that is talking 'em this episode, I'm sure they'll thank you for it. And with that, until next time, thank you for listening. This episode is brought to you by three cults. What do L'Oreals, Celsius, Samsung, and Quest nutritional 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, no 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 Colts offers a complimentary month of Multichannel 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 Cols.

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