in the many thousands, because launching new products is one of the most underrated tactics
for scaling e-commerce business, but a lot of people don't discuss how to do it. So we had McCoy murkly on the CMO of Portland leather goods to discuss our good market strategies, the thoughts behind launching new products, and how to get the most juice out of the squeeze. Stay till the end, because McCoy walks a step by step through one of their most fun product launches they've ever had. This is episode 136 of marketing operators. Let's get into it.
All right, we are back with another marketing operator's episode. We are Connor Role Lane List, so you've got me, Cody, and special guest McCoy from Portland leather goods. McCoy, thanks for coming on.
“Hey, thanks for having me. I think it was about a year ago. I think we were on here for the first time,”
so it's uh, we were due to catch up and hang out again. So glad to be here. It's super so to have you. You know, people call you Maverick. How did that nickname come about? Both a great story and also nothing like kind of a terrible story. So the first day I walked in, uh, like officially for work. So not actually my interview, but like the first day I walked in, uh, Curtis was like, what was your name again? Like he had hired me a couple days before or whatever, but I showed up.
He said, what was your name? Yeah, I was like McCoy Mirkley, and he said, that's a terrible name. Hello, everybody. This is Maverick McCoy Mirkley. He's a gunslinger from Tucson, and he's going to come help us do some marketing. And it, I don't, when he calls me McCoy now, like my, my, my government name, it's, it's odd in awkward. It's, it's weird. So I've been Maverick.
It's one of the differences. Bad. Yeah, exactly. It's funny. Like I'm never getting picked up at the airport.
When I went to Mexico, and there was like, uh, you know, a Mexican man there. And he's like, "Hello, Mr. Maverick. Hello, nice to meet you." And like I'd walk all around Mexico where a factory's at, and no, and actually knew me by my first name. It was just all as well. Maverick. So,
“I don't know if that's how, that's how it is. I almost wore a shirt that said Maverick on it,”
too. It just happens to be the brand in the shirt, but I figured that'd be a little too on the nose. We're super stoked to have you board here. Um, figured we'd get into a little bit of the lore. Um, what we're talking about today is launching new products, which, Portland, other goods probably better than anybody else at doing this. Um, I want to get into, sort of, how brands approach deciding to launch a product, and then also just like the logistics and
operations and internal workings of how those products are brought to market. But McCoy, this kind of got on my radar. You were talking about this publicly a couple of years ago. I'm curious where it lands today. But, um, I think Portland leather goods a couple years ago was launching like almost 100 new products a year, 2000 skews or variants. I don't know how you guys are thinking about it. So why don't you give us a sense of, at PLG right now? Like, what is the, uh, what's the volume of
new products coming out look like? Yeah. Yeah. This is something I'm like super excited to talk about. Product and like the product team is, it's not like I think super well discussed inside like the marketing circles and like the role it plays, um, like even complimenting the marketing org. So I'm super excited to talk this up. I think it's gonna be super valuable for people. Um, as you mentioned a couple of years ago, we were right around 100 new products. It was roughly 2000 new skews a year.
Um, we're still keeping pace with that. The actual number of products fluctuates a bit, but the skew count has gone up dramatically. So, um, I know in 2025 we released technically less overall products, but the skew count like more than doubled. And, uh, 2026, I think we're on pace to beat both of those numbers. So I think we'll surpass 100 new products by the end of this year. And I think we're going to be looking at something like 5000 new skews. So we can chop this up and
“this is so important for, and it's how I do my job better. So I think this is like a great topic”
to discuss like, you know, in the marketing context. Yeah. So can you tell us like, what do you, how do you guys define like, quote unquote new product? I have, and I'm happy to get into it. Because we have like a hierarchy in which we think about it at Ridge, but I'm curious to hear you guys, how you guys approach it. Yeah. Yeah. I think this, um, and I'm curious to pick your brain on this and, and Cody too, like, um, maybe, you know, more of the, the circa Jones Road,
um, the West Wings is coming up with a new product today and you want to announce it now. All right, just kidding. Um, in any case, um, we, so we identified this like really early on, where I was like, we have a very small number of products that we actually want to advertise, right? Like they are strategically generic and massive peel enough to where like we can put these on medit and we can
blast them out. I think we did 2 billion impressions or something last year. Like they're, we're
blasting the whole planet. And it takes a good product to be able to like kind of take that heat. But those products don't come around like super often. I'm maybe you share that same opinion. But that doesn't mean that we can't launch products, which have to launch them for like a different, cohort. So for the most part, when we talk about like 100 new products, what I want to be like clear right off the top, we're not talking about taking like 100 new major swings on like net new
categories or hero products to serve as like acquisition fuel. These are mostly limited editions, small runs, colorways, things like that that we're launching and aiming at returning customers.