Abhishek Shah

DTC Experts

Chief Events Officer

Sharma Brands

Marketing

Psychology of Marketing

Started and scaled a media company to exit within a year.

Founder

beehiiv

Growth Marketing

Beni

Business Development

Running events for 8/9 figure DTC founders & executives.

The marketing newsletter that's based on science.

$200k in revenue in their first year. $9m in revenue in their second year. And ending year three, with $30M+ in revenue, 44,000+ paying subscribers, and profitability. All with only 4 employees. This is Wildgrain's story...

Ismail Salhi and his wife Johanna started working on the brand in 2019, when Johanna was pregnant with their son, Jack. They were looking for healthy carbs for her diet and noticed a gap. The products are either too expensive, only "sourdough-flavored," or, often, both!

So they started making their sourdough bread, pastries, and fresh pasta from scratch. And a week after their son was born and 40 variations of fresh pasta later, they launched Wildgrain: a monthly subscription box filled with fresh bakery-style goods. 

Beyond the product, though, how did they manage to scale so quickly and profitably with a team as lean as 4 employees? 

Ismail mentioned 3 levers in his last talk at our DTC Experts summit:

1/ Don't hire till it is really painful

Ismail heard this from his mentor Mike Salguero, the founder of ButcherBox - a $600M+ revenue business. Ismail and his wife would make the bread themselves, sitting in a commercial kitchen, until they hit a ceiling a few months after. 

2/ SOPs that help maintain quality

Quality is most crucial for Ismail and his wife. So every time they would (reluctantly) outsource a task, whether that be CX or production, they created extremely detailed guidelines to ensure that they were able to maintain their quality & relationships with customers despite the scale.

3/ Leveraging the Hub and Spoke model

During COVID, a lot of bakeries were struggling. So Ismail reached out to them, invested in their packaging system, taught them streamlined processes, and made their systems more efficient. 

As a result, the bakeries were better off, the customers were able to able to access artisanal quality products and support local bakeries, and the Wildgrain team had more direct access to their customers without the need for large delivery costs. 

These three levers may not necessarily work for your brand, but at the least, you can draw some inspiration. Ismail and his team are an innovative example of how you can run a profitable DTC business and scale it well into the 8-figures with prospects of hitting the 9-figures soon enough. 

George Tillotson, from Peak Support, did an amazing job moderating the discussion, but there was not enough time. Fortunately for us, Ismail is coming back out with us — now at our LA summit — to continue the conversation.

If you're a DTC brand or partner that wants to watch him, and other founders & executives like him, speak live, network with them, and build your business, you can consider our next summit in LA on April 25th. We are going to have more than 75 founders and executives from 8-9 figure brands like Wildgrain, Hexclad, and Vegamour. Apply to attend here: dtcexperts.co or shoot me a quick note and we can chat!

Running Events for 8/9 Figure DTC Founders & Execs.

At our February summit we had Ben Cogan speak about the macro landscape for DTC brands – a topic a lot of founders and executives in our community had expressed interest about. A short clip below!

For those of you who don’t know Ben (you’re missing out), he is the co-founder of Agora Brands, an e-commerce aggregator, and Hubble Contacts, a 9-figure VC-backed DTC contact lens company. 

Over the last 10 years, he has raised $120M from top-tier VCs, started 4 e-commerce businesses, acquired 8, and now generates more than $200M in annual revenue across his portfolio of brands. He's not necessarily too happy about all the venture funding he raised but now, with both Hubble & Agora being profitable, he's crushing once again. 

With all his experience investing in, acquiring, and scaling large DTC brands, he has a great perspective on the growth journey of 8/9 figure brands. And he was able to share a lot of it with us at the event. 

Having Nik Sharma out there moderating never hurts, thanks for asking some great questions! We'll be posting the whole video on YT soon so keep an eye out. 

We’re bringing more content and conversations like this, from some of the best in the space, at our next event in LA on the 25th of April. If you’re a brand or partner and want to get involved, you can find more info and apply here: https://www.dtcexperts.co/. Or shoot me a note!

In 2021, Isaac Medeiros launched Mini Katana - a sword company that quickly grew to more than 8-figures in revenue. They couldn’t run ads for the swords but they had built a 100% organic revenue stream on the back of one playbook: short-form viral marketing.

Isaac and the team are probably one of the best in that business, but building a $100M+ company with their restrictions is still tough. So what did he do? He built a new brand in stealth, added more than a 1,000 doors to their retail roster in 2023 alone, and continued to crush with their organic marketing playbook, but this time with a product built for scale. 

Meet Kanpai Foods. Freeze Dried Candy manufacturer out of Los Angeles. 

- A trained group of creators producing 60+ quality shorts a month
- 3M+ views on TikTok & 400k on Youtube in the first 28 days
- Projecting double the number of retail outlets by the end of Q2

And they’re just getting started… 

Fortunately for us, Isaac’s going to be speaking at our summit in LA on the 25th of April. We hope to see him spill as much of this playbook as possible. If you’re a DTC brand interested in joining or a partner looking to add value, you can apply to attend https://www.dtcexperts.co/ or shoot me a quick note!

Another city, another summit. Now in LA :)

We're bringing together more than 75 founders and executives from the leading DTC brands on April 25th at the Andaz Hotel in West Hollywood. Couldn't think of a better venue for us, with both the ballroom and the sundeck. Excited to see everyone out there and enjoy the conversations (and the view).

If you're a brand that's at 8-figures or more in revenue and you'd like to join, shoot me a note on here or hit the "visit my website" button below my name. Hope to see you soon!

25th April. Andaz Hotel, West Hollywood.

Want to come check it out? Link in the bio

Excited to have Sarina Rubin from Vegamour speaking at our upcoming summit in LA! Vegamour is a vegan haircare company that launched in 2016. Today, it:

- Generates more than 9-figures in revenue
- Crushes in retail locations like Sephora
- Creates some of the best-performing ads (thanks to Sarina and her team!)

Let me know if you're still interested in joining our summit on April 25th in West Hollywood, we have only a few spots remaining. You can expect more than 75 brands and execs just like this.

Apply here: dtcexperts.co or shoot me a note!

Back in 2017, Ray Lee & Ray J (yes, the rapper) co-founded Raycon. Today, this brand generates $100M+ in revenue having focused on 1 strategy:

Dominating the Influencer Game.

In the first two years, they hit 1M customers on their direct site. Today they have 3M+ customers over multiple channels. You might have even seen their products in a YouTube video or podcast...

At one of our previous summits, Ray spoke about:

1. Direct response potential & long-term brand equity that influencers can build.
2. The subtle differences in channels, with attribution windows, for instance.
3. The system behind a 2-person team that manages 1,000+ influencers

You can find the entire video in the link below, drop your thoughts or any questions you might have in the comments. Would love to hear them! 

We’re bringing more content and conversations like this, from some of the biggest experts in the DTC space, at our next event in LA on the 25th of April. If you’re a brand or partner and want to get involved, you can find more info and apply here: https://www.dtcexperts.co/. Or shoot me a note!

Ray Lee, Co-Founder &. CEO of Raycon, closed out the DTC Experts NYC Fall 2023 Summit with a deep dive into the influencer strategy that has led to his brand reaching 3 million customers. He spoke about balancing direct response and long tail brand...

Open video: NYC Fall '23: Dominating the Influencer Game on youtube.com

NYC Fall '23: Dominating the Influencer Game

Always a pleasure working with Nostra, Arthur Root, and the team!

We’re excited to have Daren Limas and the Nostra team join us once again, this time at our DTC Experts LA Summit on April 25th, 2024. 

If you want to improve your site speed & conversions, they have you covered!

You can learn more at nostra.ai

And if you want to get involved at our event as a partner, email abhi@dtcexperts.co or shoot a note to Abhishek Shah.

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