TikTok Shop Masterclass: Inside Ridge & HexClad Affiliate Programs

I guys doing it at Cody. You look a little you look a little light. You look you feel like you're like floating above the ground a little bit what's going on in your world Rested weight weight lifted

“Yeah, no how to how to big announcement the other day so you know excited”

Excited to you know be be down to to tee it up. I now it's on Twitter the other day. This will come out. You know later But uh decided to step down to CEO Jones Road Was was completely my choice and you know just this kind of was I'm really excited about it, but just really have been trying to think about what's best for the business as well as what's best for me

You know obviously it's family business so really I've always put that first but you know

I want to put myself first to and I think fortunately here. It's it's best for both so I just haven't been haven't been enjoying it as much You know kind of been you know missing missing a lot of the fun stuff and I really enjoying a lot of aspects of it which we can get into and you know So excited for me definitely will you know better sweet definitely will miss some things

But no, no, it's the right call and and I'll still be involved with you know family company I'm still still here in the office, but but definitely excited to Do something else and have some time chill. So I want to I want to ask you about like get kind of get deep into the How do you know you know kind of an open worry so it um before that though. I'm very curious because you

So you made the announcement a few days ago and I think you've officially now stepped down as CEO

So do you have like did you have you in the background for the last few months been working on finding a replacement or

“Is there just not someone in that seat right now and and that's what the next step is like what's that look like right now?”

We brought in an intern CEO so got in juice to somebody who kind of has has done this has been on boards and has stepped in I just I don't know when when I make decisions I make them and you know I just my heart wasn't anymore So I just needed to kind of do it, but also I think it's a good opportunity to kind of like step back and still be involved and and see what the business needs So we definitely are actively looking right now if anybody out there is listening But definitely actively looking how are the interim CEOs podcast chops?

I don't know that she's done done done podcasts. Yeah, I think I'll I'll go out of full-time podcast or now Okay, yeah, okay good good as long as as long as we've got somebody in that role I think that that's what counts you could make it a part of the hiring hopefully better, you know CEO than me and hopefully I'm a better podcast I didn't see yeah So how how long did it take you to find?

Okay, so you made like once you knew you knew you made the decision pretty quickly Like what's this like I'm trying to just like understand that yeah, so I went to the board We had a board meeting like maybe like a month ago or something like that and I had kind of like had some individual Conversation before and like our board is my mom my dad and like two family friends that are like Experience and similar type of business

But I was just like as I'm I'm done want to like talk about it and like they really tried hard to convince me out of it You know and I think one of them took it seriously, but they were like, you know, no, we can't you know We think you're doing a great job. We just we haven't gotten used to supporting you around like I haven't like

I never really built the proper structure like to do it so I was just so burned out

They knew I like wasn't sleeping, you know my kid with up so like they thought it was just like a temporary thing I get over it but I was like guys you're not hearing me like I'm done you know But so it was you know a little bit of a transition to like get them on board and especially Bobby like at her you know over it Because obviously it's like you know we we we built this together, you know was was so much of a part of it But like I also wanted to be

The person to say this I didn't

“Listen the last thing ever the worst thing ever what happened would be to get fired from from your parents company, you know”

So I I wanted to be like the person to do that before and be like hey like I think that this is what's best for the doesn't necessarily I recognize my own strengths You know everyone wants to see a title, you know on this having that but there's a lot that comes with it There's a lot of baggage that comes with it and like just being honest on like where my skill set is Where my passion is like I'm not I'm not passionate about beauty. You know it's family company. I love I love you know

D to see I love ads. I love doing stuff like that. I love AI now like I'd rather be doing that, you know then with with my time then you know dealing with New York state taxes and dealing with you know All the administrative stuff that that comes with it. So yeah, you know I'm I'm extremely proud like of what we accomplished like I'm happy like I feel like I'm going out on on top It's not like I don't want anyone to feel bad for me completely my decision

But I'm also still gonna be you know involved. It's you know it's family company. I have I have you know plenty of equity in it. So it's I care a lot about the company doing well and excited about the next phase for me Motion just dropped their 20 26 creative benchmarks report and it's been getting shared everywhere. Slack channels LinkedIn Twitter sharing it in our private group chats and it's great because everybody's been asking the same four

Questions forever. What is normal? How many ads should we actually be shipping? What is a healthy hit rate and which formats really win?

Ben to answer these exact questions and the report has some really interesting findings like the fact that only four to eight Percentive ads actually become winners in over half of ads actually lose in promotion customers This report is especially helpful. You can upload it into your motion dashboard with their run-eth AI chat and compare it directly against your vertical benchmarks hit the link in the show notes

I promise you won't regret it and as always go to motion app.com and tell the marketing operator sent you

Who is the type of person that's going to come in and succeed like is it someone that's been a CEO of when you first started

“Would what Jones Road was it from zero like what did you like were you around when the company?”

I know obviously was like Bobby Brown beauty and then Jones Road beauty was kind of like the what followed up from that at some point But like what what what what are those timelines? Can you just like fill us in on kind of what the like last four or five years of And Bobby launched Jones Road in 2020. You know her non-compete ended it was essentially What's supposed to make just be like a fun thing like that didn't really set out to be like a A monstrous business or anything was just like a fun thing. You know there was a GM at the time

There was there was I think on the marketing team there was one person besides myself and she was like a 20 year old intern And had you know a little bit of a growth marketing background

And you know, so there here was this you know 60 something year old woman launching a D to C brand like no one on the team knew anything about marketing

You know whatever so I was kind of like let me help out from the beginning you know So it's just like as there were that were kind of like getting ready to launch. I was you know involved and and you're like 25 at this point No, it was I mean, I was probably a little bit of it was it was five and a half years ago I'm 30 about to turn 34 so terrible at quick math maybe 27 something like that Yeah, so it was like we'll call it consulting from the beginning and I would make recommendations like I remember on day one

There was like there was no clavio flows up like you don't have an abandoned cart flow up You don't have a pop up and I like well Can you do it? We don't have anyone that can do it. So I just like you know again It just was successful and went well and like just just you know did it so start working full-time

We'll call like director of ecommerce was was first roll. There really was never a CMO there was never you know prior to me. There was a GM so

Just kind of did more and more became CMO right eventually probably like a year after that you know We did 20 million first year kind of just like took off When I became CMO we did six to 60 million second year, you know Went you know went big on tiktok and and you know kind of led that It 100 million the next year

Probably we had a COO at one point. He was like he was like an old guy from like manufacturing so like didn't know anything about like did the same stuff And he kind of thought he was CEO and like didn't work so when he left it myself and one of the person kind of became like co CEO's GMs for a bit But kind of just like naturally I became CEO so

“Officially had been two years, but kind of had been you know a little bit longer than that, but um I think I was just the best person at the time and you know”

So much of our engine was you know was was D to C growth and that was like where I was able to add value But again, I don't know that that's like just our engine you know gone far, but yeah That was kind of it so just kind of took on more and and learn more I think I'm you know quick quick learner obsessive about studying and stuff. So kind of just just took on more, but you know Also just had to be honest about

Maybe that's not what I want to be doing for forever for us my life You said um D to C might not be the only engine moving forward. I'm curious like does does your perspective on where growth will come from? Influence whether you felt like you were the best fit for the role like well you guys look To bring in a full-time CEO that has like a big experience opening up a bunch of stores. Is that like part of the path or is that or those things disconnected? It's good question. I think so we don't want to do like wholesale like that would be obviously the biggest growth engine and like we really

Should we just don't want to like Bob we doesn't want to as well. I think like one of the things I thought about it's like even like before like when I was still happy SEO and like doing well was like I'm not even open it. It's not even that we should go into Sephora. It's the fact that I'm not even open to it. It's like almost why I shouldn't be if that makes sense It's like I just like wouldn't like I don't enjoy like like maybe I would enjoy You know I'm really into wellness if I was like CEO of like a supplement company like I had no problem putting that into target because like

I'm passionate about the product like not passionate about beauty so like I was passionate about like one aspect of it Which is like not good. You don't want to be like locked into you know one thing

“So I think somebody that can kind of obviously be more open to it, but no I think I think I think just from like a you know”

Leadership perspective like somebody who just like wants to be leading Setting the vision managing people like managing those like operational cadences like just not something, you know That uh that appealed to me so I was you know much more in the weeds and I just think For the next stage, you know, it's That's not what I want to be doing because I totally understand what you're saying

And if you're not like because you're gonna find that person who's like all this is a sweet opportunity

That person's got they're out there. It's only a matter of time until you find them and I think it's gonna be a great fit. Are you? Are you excited like if I were you? I'd be excited about the ability to kind of step back Into your advisor role and like kind of decide where and when you want to parachute into certain parts of of what you do Really like and what you are really good at the growth marketing stuff and like Build that up a little bit more whereas a CEO you probably weren't able to like you probably weren't able to go and sit down and like be like

All right, I'm gonna go dedicate the next three days to figuring out how to grow our Tik Tok shop affiliate flywheel Or whatever it was like is that kind of in the back of your mind on how you see yourself being involved with

“Jones Road moving forward. I think so it's again. It's like day three so it's you know”

I'm gonna try to like let it play out, but I think at first people when I announced it to the team

They were like like you're gone today and like especially the parts that I was you know really involved in of growth and e-commerce They were like oh man like you know what are we gonna do So I think I'm just trying to figure out obviously I'll be strategic board level and I think I'll actually be a better job there Like I think I have a good vision of like where I think the company needs to go just necessarily executing it and getting people to execute on it was not my strength But I think yeah, I just I just don't want to be I don't want to get harder for the team right like it's you know to

To be like all right cool who are we not like reporting to whatever, but yeah I think if they want me to be like involved and think it's helpful like I'd love to continue to do the a-i-c-r-o stuff and you know Being involved with you know growth things like again. I and this is what I've told the team like I haven't had time for that right Like I've been I've had to deal with you know Performance management and stuff like that so yeah, I would love to do that and I'm not gonna be daily

“But yeah, like that's what I get excited about that's what you know sounds fun to me”

So hopefully yeah All right, I got one more question here and this is the one that I think everyone's waiting for is in the new CEO of John's road beauty is that the is that the is that the um That the big reveal. Yeah, who's saying as you know now I'm I'm excited to announce I'm joining HQ That's my that's my not but no, but it was cool though so like I got it was it was it was really cool the

The response that we I wasn't expecting that like I knew how I wanted to kind of message it and stuff and just be honest

But like I got like over a thousand you know likes on Twitter on LinkedIn which I was never post got like

Thousands and like has been you know picked up by like I'm talking a Wall Street Journal later Like it was really cool and just to see the reaction have people are like reaching out Was what was it was a cool moment, but I'm ready for you know next things. I'm gonna take some time off Obviously still you know involved in the road transition out but definitely not kind of rushing to anything And kind of just explore explore opportunities

People are the most important part of your business and finding real a players is hard and incredibly time-consuming

“That's why I want to tell you about propel propel is honestly the best recruitment agency that I have personally work with”

They are marketing and operations specialist say source talent from U.S. Latam and beyond for top pcom brands Like Jones Road like many others that you know and love at Jones Road. We've hired over 12 people through them We've hired video editors graphic designers. We have multiple retention managers creative strategists from them What I love is not only they easy to work with their quick, but they work on performance So you only pay a one-offie only once you hire somebody you don't have to pay you know any retainer or no-one going fees

Plus every hire comes with a three-month guarantee So I highly recommend them they work really great for us We've a really great team that they've helped us source. I had to link in the show notes and submit the form to get 10% off your first hire You know who else is in a really interesting sort of like period of time for making longer term decisions Lebron James

Both you guys deciding where you're going to have the first time I've been compared to him Yeah, yeah dude, and I would I would drag this out this could be we could get a lot of podcast episodes out of oh, you know We should do Aaron or Dorf if you're listening whenever I decide what I'm doing we should do the decision Yeah, totally we get the hats the hats laid out Obviously, I immediately thought I'll have Ron spots to the hats

No, like even if we don't pick you that's like that's like you know The smaller package That's good impression. Hey, that's that's good. That's good advertising for those guys right there But cool. I appreciate I appreciate it. Yeah, I appreciate you guys support and uh excited to be a full-time podcaster now

Amazing. Yeah, we're we're really excited for you good good on you for I know it's a hard decision

even more more hard when it's a family company. So you know good on you for trust in your gut and they can Remove excited to see what what's next for you and maybe even more excited than seeing what next what's next for you is just But the in between right like the hey, let's take a breath and and like kind of fill the cup up and I think you're gonna make I really good decision on whatever it is you do when I do next from that time off I hope I do I hope I make a decision

Sweet all right, well, let's get into it. We got a phone episode today. We're talking

TikTok shop. I've been having a lot of fun go do kind of deep diving on TikTok shop with various operators in the space I was hanging out with with Wyatt from Mary Ruth Organics a couple weeks ago in LA and super sharp growth marketer They they have a product that's really lens itself to TikTok shop and they have a massive massive

“Breath in terms of skews they have a price point that I think really works for TikTok shop”

I think I think it's in that like 40 to 60 dollar range He said that they are live streaming 24/7 on TikTok shop with de-list actors I need to meet with him to like talk about the operation there, but just it's it kind of blew my mind We've we've done like 40 or 50 live shopping Experience that hexclad now in the last six months and it's it's worked. I mean, it's probably accounted for like

On a quarter of our TikTok shop revenue not that we're doing a ton of TikTok shop revenue, but It's just there's a lot going on here and it's just like a fun new kind of white space in terms of growth marketing tactic too So kind of I wanted to kind of turn it over to you and ask you a bunch of questions because you tweeted The other day and I want to read that tweet before we Before we get into all the questions I have so let me let me read this tweet and then we can get into it. So

You tweeted on July 3rd

We're closing in on our first seven figure month on TikTok shop

But most of the value from our affiliate program will not come from the shop revenue itself Our main focus is to generate ad content that performs well across other channels and we're starting to see that happen Over the last 30 days about 15% of our meta ad spend was behind creative made by our affiliates Interestingly the softer metrics on our affiliate ad looks significantly different despite having comparable row as 15% lower CPM two X to click through rate

It also lands in vertical video placements at two X to rate and reaches a very different age demo than our non affiliate ads And then you have a little bit of a graph showing where all of your non affiliate content is serving in terms of age in gender versus your affiliate or maybe just age and then You're affiliate content. So what the graph shows is that you clearly are getting a much younger audience

Consuming the affiliate content on TikTok from TikTok shop compared to all your other all your other Content on meta. So let's let's start off with

“What do I want to start off with like the deal flow actually because I think like the the typical workflow most people are aware of is”

You set up a TikTok shop you start connecting and seating products with affiliates affiliate start posting content and selling content and and directly selling Products do your TikTok shop which they're getting paid a commission on and then you can take that content and you can run GMV max ads with it And drive revenue to your TikTok shop and then also the affiliate the affiliate gets paid out on that as well. So you're talking about bringing that content off of TikTok into meta So I want to just talk about that like what is what do those deals look like

Like is it flat rate percent of spend

What's the usage look like? Could you just like kind of fill us in on on that bit first?

Yeah, totally. So just for quick context. I pulled a little bit of data Kind of preparing to talk about TikTok shop today, but in terms of scale We're really just focused and I've said this in podcast in the past. I want to be like flooding the zone right now and I still feel like we're sort of in that phase We're in an extremely experimental portion of like TikTok shop growth trying to figure out what is going to work what's not going to work

So just in terms of like seeding and posting like we've really just gone for volume in the month of May

“We had about 7,000 videos posted so that is like and that's what's going to fuel a lot of the content that became ads”

Throughout June So I think it's a pretty good place to start 7,000 7,000 posts wow that's from probably Close to 1,000 creators like it's quite a few posts per creator But so 7,000 posts in May

What do the deals look like so we're obviously doing We're doing a ton of product seeding We've seeded thousands of creators we had hundreds of them posts that resulted in thousands of videos and we really intend to spice people in in three different ways Everybody gets affiliate commission and then you have different tiers between They get a higher commission on sales from organic views

Those videos feed the GMV Max campaign so whatever product they tag we are then promoting and Most listeners are probably familiar to some degree with GMV Max, but it's like the simplest most rudimentary ad system If I'm an affiliate and I post on TikTok shop and I tag the ridge wallet We just have a daily budget and a target for promoting that ridge wallet product and it can use any of the assets that were That have tagged that product and we've like made available within the GMV Max campaign. So you have a higher affiliate commission on organic sales

You have a lower affiliate commission on GMV Max. So we are paying to promote these products or these these pieces of content and then they're earning further commission on the GMV Max ads

So on top of affiliate commissions, we have incentives to be posting more videos while generating GMV with the idea being like

How are we how are we further incentivizing creators to create good content and a lot of content and GMV Max and like we've seen many

“Examples of this really benefits from volume of content. That's why we want to be posting thousands of videos per month”

That is obviously further driven by these content. So what that looks like is It changes every month and we do a number of different things but if someone posts 15 videos and generates a thousand dollars in GMV then they get a $500 reward something like that and then we have different tiers so that people want to be creating a ton of content as well as

Content that generates GMV because we want to like make sure those are aligned. We don't want to be incentivizing just

Pure volume and quality and trying to strike that balance. So those are the two ways that basically all affiliates are able to be rewarded

And then as they become more valuable affiliates to us we roll out different sorts of retainers. So if someone's really strong And we want to make sure that they are going to be delivering a few dozen videos per month We'll put them on a flat rate retainer and that is like the the the total cost here Before Q4 hits the smartest e-commerce operators aren't just asking how do we spend more they're asking how do we make every visitor more profitable that is where after self comes in after cell helps e-commerce brands increase revenue

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Adwrites to promote those videos so then another big part of the program is once we've got all this content they burn their affiliate commission Whether that be through organic sales or GMV Max

“We can take all that content we can move it across platforms and that's what my tweet was about was 15% of our ad spend in the 30 days prior actually came from”

Came from content from this program Wait, so can can you I want to go back just like 30 seconds so at what point are you getting the rights to that to the content that's only the folks that you put on retainer No, no, that's everybody who comes into the program everybody who participates in the contest everybody on retainer All that includes rights that we're able to promote elsewhere So anyone so like anyone want the moment they they drive a sale for rich. They're opting into usage on that context. Exactly

Oh interesting. Okay, and then how are you I imagine you're like maybe not I could be wrong if I'm wrong correct me But I imagine you're you're not taking the like Let's literally launch every single piece of content in our meta ads account Is that the approach or are you being more thoughtful and saying like hey we like this video that video and then what drives that is it like Hey these 10 videos drove the most sales this month so thus we're gonna port those over or is it a little bit more?

Hey, we just have a gut feel that certain videos are going to work and those are the ones that we're gonna launch Yeah, totally it's some mix of the two right if something performs well in GMV Max that's a signal that we want we might want to promote it elsewhere I don't think that's the only signal so We also have people going through whether it's our external agency or internal team going through and finding videos that we may find Interesting to further sort of launch. I do want to err on the side of

Launching more videos can we put 7,000 ads in a in an ad campaign probably not We should be like you know we should be airing on the side of getting more ad content into the ad account

“So that's why we've like we've looked at you know if it's Yuka or Groey or some of these other tools like how can we streamline the process of”

Affiliate content being posted Getting into GMV Max as well as becoming available to be uploaded into the ad account got it and then who's It running this operation internally for you. I mean, it sounded as a lot going on. I imagine this is like someone's full-time job Yeah, we have a director of social commerce who kind of oversees it we have an external agency who does a lot of like the Operational work that outreach the seeding they help put together the contest. They're helping sift through all the content

And that's an agency. That's an external agency and then our performance creative team helps with like the briefing and the guidance in terms of like

Making sure that that's being made available to the affiliates one thing that that I think is interesting at least for my experience So far is like how are we responding to what's working across ads like our own D to C efforts or across other Affiliates and then how are we best guiding people towards Creating content that will generate GMV we went to this period of time and actually the month of May was an example of it We're probably over indexed our efforts on the wall up business. So over seven thousand videos

We had basically half of them promoting wallets then it was a pretty

Even split between things like power banks, nag safe wallets, which is technically different in tracker cards

“And then what we did was we looked at like how many videos went to each type of product and then where did our revenue come from?”

And where we over or under indexing so in the case of wallets we posted half of videos, but it barely generated 30% of revenue to me that says hey For every video that in affiliate posts actually not all that likely to be earning GMV or they're expected GMV per video is lower from wallets And it would be for tracker card and us articulating that information to affiliate in some of the creator calls that we do or just in the discord community when we're Talking with him on a day-to-day or week-to-week basis like let's be pushing people towards the content that's going to be most productive

So that's another thing that I found interesting is just like how do we At every single point how are we best aligning our commercial goals with like in affiliate stability to generate GMV and earn dollars? Yeah, because you're not I mean you're not incentive like if that happens where Yeah, 70% of your content's around the wall it but only 30% of your GMV revenue is well that now your affiliates are becoming less Overall probably less incentivized the post after they're realizing like oh what I'm promoting is not getting

First is them power banks it's like only 30% of our content was on power banks but that drove 50% of our revenues are you how often are you like

Reaccumating based on that That uh those ratios it's kind of slower moving so like this was made data we action this it it sort of dictates what products do we want to then be seated and then what We don't like prescribe what videos we want created but like If we want to spend more time promoting tracker cards or max if all it's or whatever else let's see more of those products And then let's make it clear these are the products it seem to be working right now

But that's that is a especially with the seeding can be like a multi-week process. So we're like beginning to by the end of June We had more tracker cards in the hands of people we could be creating more content that way and then we've sort of re-oriented ourselves there But it's probably at most like a monthly sort of rotation Got it I want to go back to and I want to drop a note on hex cloud here, too

“But I want to go back to I think maybe an episode that hasn't been released yet where you”

commented that like the I'm I'm blank what's the name of the product that that it's like the accessory product tracker card tracker card where you said hey our best product in TikTok shop is our tracker card Which is like a 30 or $40 product you were finding that people that didn't even own a bitch while it were buying this tracker card We have the same experience in our TikTok shop where I was also holding some notes together for this episode and It's just so interesting to look at the top products in our TikTok shop and then compare that to Shopify

It's so different and I think that's something that that you found is like the tracker card is the number one product in your TikTok shop Whereas it's obviously the wallets on your Shopify We saw the same thing and it's like deep saute pan our griddle a a huge stock pot a walk our double burner griddle These are like top five or six products in TikTok shop They're not unpopular products on Shopify, but if you look at Shopify

Outside of the sets it's all of the individual products that make up those sets as the 12 inch pan and lead the 10 inch pan and lead I don't know exactly why but people are more likely to buy these kind of one-off niche Products in TikTok shop and I just think like there's that's incrementality right there Right like if the products people are buying or different you're clearly reaching a different audience and I think What I'm learning with TikTok shop is

“You have to go and do it with an open mind you have to like lean into what people really want and I think you guys have done a great job of that”

where I think a lot of brands what it like kept trying to hammer the wallets and what works really well on Shopify for months and months and months and you guys like Kind of went with the water and and just listened to what was happening organically So I think that's like one huge takeaway is like you're probably gonna find a different product mix on TikTok shop versus Amazon versus Shopify and that's

Ultimately a good thing because you're reaching different people than if that's what's happening

100% and I've said that I think like people say you know we use this the term TikTok shop it's like mean a lot It's core what I think is most valuable and like a TikTok shop program is the massive activation of creators like the ability to get A thousand people to post seven thousand pieces of content about you that doesn't require TikTok shop TikTok shop makes that much easier but like people were doing that well before a TikTok shop Ever had a TikTok ever had a buy button

These B and C tier products from a D to C perspective are actually the best things for us to be seeding and

It's gonna make us think differently about what product should we need to be developing in the future or When a nut when the next tracker card comes down the line whatever that may be like we have different tools that we can apply to it You know the difference between hitting your numbers and missing them clear signal on what's actually driving growth It can get really really noisy. There's so much noise. You got platform data. You got blended data MMM all the acronyms MTA experiments all of it all pointing in different directions. The more you're spending the faster you move

the more the bad

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Yeah, well, I'm I wonder how I mean, Instagram or like Facebook's obviously following meta on this right with a lot of the stuff that we talked about at the meta summit with the product tagging and all that like they're clearly Seeing the tailwind that is TikTok shop and starting to develop some of their own tooling like it but I don't know what you guys but like Instagram and TikTok we are totally taken care of in terms of content and impressions like we continue to see there

a lot now more through TikTok shop. I was looking at our our volume of content

through TikTok shop affiliate this year 16% of all of our content is from TikTok shop affiliate. Now, that's probably under reported or the total numbers probably under reported because that's not including untapped content with the social listening tool. But

“I mean, I think that speaks to how big of an impact TikTok shop has had on our product seeding and content flywheel program and 16% is”

There's a pretty large percent and we've relatively speaking have only been really thinking and investing in TikTok shop fried say Probably nine months and like actually being serious about it My question for you guys, do you think that like why is YouTube not not doing this yet? I just feel like there's a massive opportunity and I know personally if there's one Social channel that I feel like Kexclad does not have enough representation on its YouTube because it's just a lot more manual It's a lot more expensive. There are tools like a genteo that I think are awesome and they help streamline that process between brands and creators

But do you think it's only a matter of time until YouTube rolls out some form of YouTube shopping or whatever like the equivalent is I just find it hard to believe that they wouldn't want to be a part of the Zite guys, especially with how You know short form vertical video is becoming more and more prevalent on that channel. Like do you think it's only a matter of time or is there a strategic reason

“YouTube's not trying to become part of this like”

TikTok shopified ecosystem of buying behavior it's funny because they have they actually have it It's just not the thing but they have like YouTube affiliate. I don't know what they call it But essentially you can you know if you use like an impact it's a little bit more like a meadows like what they're kind of with Instagram So it's not like a like on like shopping You know like a like a shop on YouTube app

But it there's integrations affiliate tag videos under there But it's just not big like we did that like we might not enough to it's just crazy that it's not More robust I wonder if it's um I wonder if there's like I know for meta I know that there it's a big focus on their trying to roll us out I wonder if there's just a lot of innovators to let them out with both of them and they just have such a established ad businesses and

if you know Commerce you know kind of Threatens at her potentially threatens that versus like TikTok didn't really have that. They had like a very small ad business and so they really had nothing to lose I would also say um YouTube means so much right now like what we're saying I guess the best comp for a TikTok shop would be like YouTube shorts shopping integration

Which I theoretically they should be able to do But on the flip side like in stream is still where they're generating a ton of views and like half of those are coming on TV So it's like that's not even that's not a great shopping experience You see you see Amazon trying to do something like that with like Products recommended within a TV show or whatever else and it's like just not a great fit

So I'm sure kind of to your point innovators on them and they have they have so much going on across all their different placements and then trying to own

And really try to figure out yeah, I'd watch meta close to obviously they've announced it

“But I've been super slow. I watched meta pretty closely and I think the brands my prediction for that is the brands that are”

crushing on TikTok, you know They will then just be able to port those creators over to meta if that takes off obviously there'll be some you know some Differences of credit creators on the pools, but I right if you have a discord of you know tons of creators and you can just tell to bring them over to meta and Whatever, so so Connor I don't ask so like I'm not gonna say any numbers on here, but you know, obviously tiktok Numbers are tiktok shop numbers are public you guys are crushing it right now

I remember when we launched we were like doing pretty similar daily revenue to what you guys were doing like we launched in March and Last I know it's like Father's day and stuff so maybe it'll come down but like you guys have grown really significantly what are like the top two to three things that

You think are the biggest levers that have done it like is it competitions? Is it volume of seeding like what's the biggest ones that you think have led to this?

Well, I'll tell you Yeah, so so What have made the biggest differences in fashion starting to post tiktoks because I've seen yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We got we got Shawn in the discord group posts and videos The biggest thing for driving tiktok shop revenue has been Most of the things that I've mentioned like rolling you got a contest. You got a pair. Yeah, okay

One it's the merchandising point. It's identifying the products have worked best That's one far in a way like that is what it comes down to and then it is okay now that we've identified products have some juice for us to squeeze at a tiktok Then it is the like trying to find the right balance of incentives, but the reason I kind of laugh at that is

We are generating more revenue on tiktok than we have in the past we understand what it looks like to drive growth here

It's still extremely tbd as to how profitable This channel is and that's really the mode that we're in now again. I use this phrase like I'm flooding the zone. That's where we've been let's spend a ton of money on g and b max ads Let's do the aggressive contest. Let's do the aggressive seeding. Let's like get all the iron in the fire And then we can kind of reshape it to make sure it's best aligned with our business and that is why we're at the point now

where it's like okay, how valuable is the content coming out of our affiliate program for other channels We are able to spend 15% of our budget in you know, June roughly from this content. Okay, that's pretty good Like we still have like quantified like what is the value of that, but like the affiliate program is beginning to produce value Outside of the revenue generated by tiktok and then the other thing that maybe this is a good segue into Is identifying for every dollar we generate on tiktok is their revenue being generated elsewhere

And I think that's a really interesting component to this so the reason this has all been top of mind is we just wrapped up I think it was like a four week GMV max Geoliff study which is an interesting one because everybody talks about the spillover from tiktok onto other channels For some of these smaller businesses. I don't think they're measuring it. They're just seeing it. They're like hey when we When we post a bunch of content and spend a bunch money on GV max ads we become one of the best selling products on Amazon

“It's like okay, you don't need to be a rocket scientist to like figure out you should be doing more of that for a brand like rigid like it's a little bit harder to identify”

At hundreds of thousands of dollars on tiktok drop revenue. It's like Depending how much spillover there is it's like sometimes hard to notice so This is like when Connor was talking about how it's hard to run in chromatality because text cloud is so big I feel like this is just one of those humble brags that you're doing. No, no, no, not even a humble brag like It's just totally true. It's hard to see the halo because you guys are so big. I'm just messing with him

Yeah, but a bit a little bit true though, too. Like spike of of baseline. It's tough. Yeah I mean that yeah, yeah, we would have to spend so much on GMV max ads. We'd have to like blitz it so hard if our if our the way that we were measuring it was like eyeball it on Amazon you know what I mean So so we ran this four weeks geoliff study. We did a hold out I thought this was interesting. I will also say

We're gonna have to go we're gonna have to Experiment much further and run a number of geoliff tests over time This is about our powerbrinks in particular But what we found when I was pulling the data was that 88% of lift From our GMV max ads was coming outside of tiktok

Wild I mean I've heard the stats, but wild Like I've heard from others as I see like a two to one or whatever, but that's crazy right this was this was 88% so we saw The biggest lift on Amazon 49% of the lift came from Amazon 39% came from ridge.com 12% came from tiktok shop itself

“So that's like that's sort of that's how we begin painting the picture of like hey”

We're we're being so aggressive with all this product seeding with all this commission with all these Contests with all these retainers the tiktok shop platform itself GMV max ads on top of that

What is the value from the ad content that we can now spend additional dollars on with meta?

And what is the halo impact of some of that GMV max ads across other channels as well so now we're trying to think about it from like a You know three pronged perspective and we're still just in the mode of like beginning to get a sense of what we want the The program to look like more holistically Do you have a tiktok shop piano like is that something you guys

We put it together it looks terrible like yeah, yeah, you're standards for that and then how it's changing If you're like hey, we need to be profitable on that and then you're like No, we think we need a break even because we could do it and then if you're actually you think there's a world Will you'll run that at like a 20% loss because like this how we run again like we're behind you on tiktok shop

But like even our influencer program like well we take 15% of the content and that goes to ad creative and so we can now run at a point

75 instead and then we also know there is a there's a significant halo effect that we're not capturing from a you know Click-based so we've been like our cool like we can run that out of a small loss It's so I'm curious if you think like how you guys will underwrite that as a business or if it's too early to tell But like do you think there is a world where you would you would you would accept conservatively a break even on that channel You need you want to see a profit you're okay with

“Significant negative what what are your current feelings? I think”

With the current products that we have there's no scenario where the tiktok shop piano itself is profit Like I think it just with all the with all the cost that I just mentioned Yeah, the tiktok shop itself the tiktok shop revenue itself is not profitable or that piano I think that could totally change with the product that's like Even better for like on platform tiktok shop buying like the tracker cards pretty good that's driving a lot of revenue

We're finding wins across other parts of the catalog we're gonna focus on EDC newness like we've got all this again Sort of like either it we've got this iterative approach to like just try to best squeeze out what we can from our catalog There's totally a scenario where next year we come out something that can Absolutely crush on tiktok shop and I do hear about these other brands running at

3x4x like Their GMB Max campaigns are running at 3x4x and then they're just again they have a lot of content costs and creator costs associated with that But like they're probably getting pretty close to the channel itself being profitable So there's a scenario we get there in the future, but as it stands right now we're like not even close

“And I think it'll come down to us teasing out how much value are we creating elsewhere how are we best getting the affiliate content to become add content and then thinking of it as like”

an add engine and like a a resource that we have available that we're really extracting value from in multiple ways Quick gut check for the operators listening if you're spending on tv or ctv today Can you actually say what it's driving incrementally? This is exactly why we work and have worked with neon pixel and hex cloud for the last three years We've grown with them a lot over time in ctv has become one of our top growth channels

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It is a strategy that is built around incremental growth not just claimed attribution We look at incrementality as the true north star on measuring channels and they are really measurement that Ignostic they don't force us into their own black box dashboard they work inside the measurement systems

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Neonpixel.co and ask them to design a controlled ctv test on your numbers I know like Sean's tweeted about it. I've talked to like a bunch of people I mean many of the brands that seem like they're doing well right now like Even like d to see it's just because of this creator engine that they have you know Supplying they can't we've talked about that a lot so obviously they're said there the the other thing is um

Like we just have examples Our may contest for instance the way that we were rewarding creators probably overvalued the delivery of content and we and we created Some what of a misalignment between generating GMV for the brand creating value for the brand and us rewarding creators Which is like that's really the flywheel you want to build like I just said we had too many creators post about wallets It didn't generate that much revenue it didn't become

Successful GMV max ads at all that high ever rate it to some degree became decent had content but like we didn't properly Extract the rate at which we were extracting value from the effort of those creators relatively low And I think by building better contests doing better briefing Finding the right incentives to create quality over just quantity or like some balance of the two will result in us more efficiently Attracting value from the program and that's and we'll feel more confident

And running to touch up at a loss or something like that

High volume of content decent ad creative performance, but definitely not fully

“Aligning but I think that like we I think you even said it like you're willing to overpay in the beginning like same thing here”

I think it was a good learning I don't know a full break even on it, but definitely you know It's not a ton of money grants game things got a lot of content got a lot of learnings And then I think we'll figure out how to like orient it in the right way to get not not just reward volume a content The other thing I've been saying and I don't know if you guys agree with this or not, but like I said it when we were hiring for this director of social commerce role As I said

Ridge has the cloud cover of being like a big growing profitable D to C brand we're like expanding and retail we've got all these things and it's like

We don't need to have precision necessarily with our TikTok shop program like the reason this is somewhat exciting is because

We can go we can flood the zone we can go scorched earth you could use all these phrases like like let's figure this thing out quickly And take what might have been a year of iteration into like five months of iteration That totally requires overpaying at different points in time, but it allows us to learn quicker So anyway, yeah, that's like that's where I'm at right now where it's like let's kind of let's speed run the learning process here We don't need to value precision as much as a brand dependent on this channel might be and

Just get to you know our optimal end-state sooner Totally agree with that. Yeah, if you if you you know lose 25 grand from a competition or something like that It's for for for size of business. It's really like it's a good learning do you see So of the of the halo in to Shopify and Amazon from your gym Vmax ads are you also see maybe you maybe you haven't done this analysis But if you have are you seeing that those people are buying the same products you're seeing that are popular on TikTok shop or are

Those people kind of falling into the normal buying behavior of oh, we're I'm gonna buy a wallet on on Shopify

“And like that's why they're probably going to Shopify or is it?”

The different product mix that you're seeing make up TikTok shop gets a good question So the way that we were looking at this data was power bank revenue across all these different channels You can like um you can observe Let's go whatever like ring revenue the key to do this within house where it's like okay like we're running this geolift hold out our Whatever they call primary revenue source or primary kpi is like power bank revenue

Let's call it you can layer in sort of observed revenue and say hey Are we observing a lift on rings when we promote power banks on TikTok shop so you can theoretically say that we really don't see much of that And then also you can't get all that much more granular than that either and even that is like all Olivia's gonna listen to this and like I think appreciate some of the caveats. I'm laying out here because like The way that they set up those geolift hold up and the way they build the the holdouts is based off of a very certain type of revenue

So all of a sudden if you start slicing that thinner or observing a completely different type of revenue metric I think you've sort of Compromise the scientific integrity of it So anyway to answer your question. We were looking at power bank revenue across these channels You can maybe see different stuff but like getting to granular is not it's a slippery slope

Are you seeing a different customer so I'm on you know and you could right now and just looking at some of your Estats seems like your audience it's like 50 50 male female I don't know if you're seeing that are you seeing

“Anything there different like does it does it seem like you're reaching a different audience with us?”

What I'm most excited about in terms of like reaching new audiences really just what we were seeing on meta Like I found that super compelling in terms of incrementality or just like an example of maybe us squeezing Revenue out of audiences and people that we weren't otherwise doing so and and Connor hit some of the points earlier But like really skewing much younger our ad account otherwise is hitting far and away our biggest Our biggest sort of cohort from an age perspective is 35 to 44. That's 33% of total spending this period

Whereas we skewed much younger our 18 to 24 was almost twice as high in terms of a percentage of total spend and then our biggest cohort was 25 to 34 and that was up

Looks like 35 36 percent something like that. So that's where I'm like, oh, yeah, this this feels pretty good that like

This program our TikTok shop efforts the content it's producing and we're getting across other channels is like very clearly built to reach different people and that's the age perspective the other one was like twice is likely to land in Instagram reels or Facebook stories that the short form vertical video placements on meta. I also found very compelling because That is obviously like that's the format that is native to this you know TikTok shop channel Yeah, I agree with that. It's like brands try so hard to like

Make creative to fit those formats and I feel like it's such a struggle because it's like it's really hard hard to take up big enough swing and like short form vertical algorithmic video is what it should be so it's just like outsourcing that completely is is the engine

Do you think that's just like 100% because that younger audience is less competitive in the ad auction and Because of that your being rewarded much better CPMs or is it something else it's probably all the things I mean younger audience Like the vertical video placements are typically cheaper than feed at least from our experience So like between placement between age so if we get to that lower CPM

All right, so Cody Cody when you were away had a had a fun little thought Experiment that we wanted to kind of end the this conversation on so Cody want to take us into that Yeah, so I'm not jumping into anything now, but I am thinking about what I want to do and just you know Pocketing some ideas one thing I did over the weekend so I've thought about it from D to C a lot of like how would you reverse engineer Great brand and what I did is I

I air and built this really cool operators portal so I had Claude and Codex go through that pull all the transcripts put into City and create like playbooks so I can chat with Claude and be like hey like what is Zach's duck's framework for launching a new brand Or like what is Chad's right and so I've thought about it a lot from a D to C brand like high margin growing trend And it's probably there's a lot of things that are the same but so my question is if you were to reverse engineer a new brand for TikTok shop

“Like we've talked about even building products right like I think you guys are starting to do that”

Clearly like shark ninja's building products for TikTok shop if you were to do a brand for TikTok shop like how would you think about that How would you reverse engineering what are like some of the principles that you think would be like really important Most brands treat customer support as a cost but with AI every support conversation is now a chance to increase retention Recover revenue and grow your LTD rich panel doesn't just use AI to answer tickets They allow operators to run revenue experiments inside your support. You can test different windback offers on refund requests

subscription save offers during cancellations and product recommendations that turn chats into sales plus they guarantee you're going to save money 50% of your support volume automated in 30 days or your money back. That's a pretty good offer if you ask me So at a rich panel.com/demo they'll build an AI support team live for your business and show you how it can drive incremental revenue for you I won late low AOV. I think that's like the starting point right like if you have a hundred dollar AOV

You're not not not to say you can't make TikTok shop work, but you're probably not a TikTok shop first brand

“So I think that's one right is like does the price point in that like”

30 to 60 dollar first order AOV. I think that's like to me the leading DNA of a product that can be TikTok shop led I'd start there. Um, it's not where I would low AOV's tough low AOV's tough if it's low AOV it has to be a highly relative product like you'd really I don't think um You know a lot of these like the supplements do so well on TikTok shop because they're able to drive a lot of spill over on the Amazon on the dot com There uh, you know, whatever benefits they're supposed to provide are like

Comparing enough that someone's going to take the product every day and buy multiple times. So like that's almost more important to me than low AOV highly relative product can have a low AOV But I think a lot of people make the mistake of

Prioritizing low AOV. They don't have the retention that they need. They can never get cack low enough to actually pay off on any sort of like reasonable time frame

So that would be one. Um, another one that I like is I think a I'd be experimental with like form factor Grounds did this with gummies Create did it with gummies. I did a great job with it. You look at people getting experimental with like The zin pouches which like I am not a fan of as a delivery mechanism, but like I'll list here I was thinking more about

Tabs chocolate the sex chocolate from like a couple years ago. Did really well on TikTok. I would just be thinking about like what are Interesting ways to deliver something that someone would otherwise be familiar with like sex supplements or like they've sold it They've been sold at gas stations forever, but like having a fun chocolate you can take with your partner is actually much cooler The other like related one is like if I'm thinking about TikTok shop is it's something visual like

“How can it naturally become content we I was gonna ask about that. I feel like that's a really important one that I pretty much knew you're gonna touch on like how do you demonstrate it?”

And because like some of the best brands is like that using the product is is interesting to watch I was just thinking I have Dr. Squatch so pure and And I was using it and like in their ads they must have this in the brief they get so They get the suds going in the ad. It's so visual using this open

It's like if you soap like a normal person you never get that

So like that's one What else was like yeah? Do you know like high smile you guys know high smile? They're like like they're like they're like they and they'll show like the 10 of the ping pong balls and stuff Like very good hooks. Yeah, very similar to Dr. Squatch. So yeah, the visual nature of it I think is important. I like this brand drink Volta which is like it's like a some sort of like liquid thing that you like can add to existing drinks

Isaac's brand from a couple years ago, which like they were just driving billions of views just like pre-tick-tucked shop But they were just engaging creators and it's so fun to watch people use katana swords that they're able to drive like as many views as Mr. Beast and it's like That's that's probably my number one priority would be like the the form that it was being delivered in and it being somewhat visual Well, and on the return to bet like if you can if you can Let's say it's a 50 dollar A of you consumable well then you can go in a forward to pay a

Massive commission on your on your on that first order to affiliate

So now your affiliates are super incentivized to produce a bunch of content around it. You're fine paying

“a high percent whatever it is because all right, they're gonna come back and buy five more times throughout the year and like that's where we get our margin on so I think that's”

That's that's a good point on the I should have added that in on like low a of e but it It's probably still got to be a consumable so you're getting that repeat business going Yeah, which is like I again for my D to C play book like it's got to be that's got to be subscription for D to say I think probably same thing here If you're if you're a TikTok shop sub like a subscription brand do you pay affiliate on just the first order you pay it on lifetime I believe you just paid on the first order and I've heard people doing like 80% commission or whatever like almost the entire and

I'm sure there's brands out there do it paying 120% commission or something So I think you get you could get clever with it. Yeah, that makes total sense. Yeah, I agree with all them and then I think one thing I don't think it's a must But like actually being like a TikTok creator brand I think like there's one brand. I'm I'm super bullish on so like for example Like there's POV beauty. That's like Makayla's brand. She's like a giant beauty creator like it's just you know It's so easy to recruit creators when you have a really large creator and you can or like ballerina farm as well right and you can like you can use

The nine financial stuff as well right you can do you know events and Webinars and stuff like that with that creator like that's such a draw like even up for us being able to use Bobby, you know There's one brand. I'm super bullish on that. I think it's kind of blow up Remedy skincare. I don't know the guy's name, but there's this you know really well-known dermat TikTok Like a TikTok term with like millions and millions and so it's you know

It's like a $15 million brand now. They just raise from El Caterton but like I think they're just kind of like absolutely blow up and they're like

Very TikTok shop forward and focus, but I just think it's like it's yes, there's a financial component and it's extremely important But there's also that like community component and to you know this this creator stuff and I think you can Activate them really well when you have somebody like that. So I don't think it's a must but I think it's a huge opportunity I think that's a that's a great one and You know in some of Hudson from comfort like his interviews he talks about that like you want some sort of like

You want a mission statement that people can get bought into because when you talk about being successful and ticked up You're you're talking about incentivizing hundreds and thousands of people and it's like Making it purely financial makes it harder like if they are bought in from a Mission vision value perspective It just becomes a little bit easier. So I like that one. Yeah, I mean they say like TikTok will tell you like

“Your your creators or your customers. I'm tech talk and like that's what you think about like that's what I would really really be thinking about”

It's like how do you get them motivated what's your like what's your like I don't must have like a brand deck for creators if I was starting something

You know, it's almost like what's our like value props for this community first?

Totally I've got one more. I think about this one all the time. This is a deep cut This is the founder of manscaped from a moizali podcast. It had to have been like 20-19 or something But he talked about one of the reasons they they they launched a number of brands Just they were trying to find something that they could scale and the reason they went with like the the body hair

Trimmer is because it was like incremental to everybody's bathroom that like everybody kind of needs to Everybody kind of needs to do it or you can convince a lot of people to do it large-term But nobody had like a dedicated trimmer for it. So they saw it as incremental and I just think I love that like approach to a product I would say the same thing about create where their opportunity was like

Not winning over existing creatine users but that creatine is incremental to what someone who cares about fitness is currently doing So that I think makes the sale a little bit easier and if you're stacking up a couple of these wins

“I think like that's what feels like a compelling product to me”

Yeah, but you're probably not going so far until like demand creation like there's got to be existing demand a little bit You can't because you can't take like a long funnel, you know, kind of compresses a funnel or you have to like convince somebody Why they need something like net new it has to be like like oh, I oh, I didn't know I need that it has to be like that Yeah, I could I could I mean I think that's true. I think that's true it totally depends on like the price point as well What this also reminds me of is that very popular it's some sort of like oil pole mouthwash thing

Do you know what I'm talking about? It's like Dr something also extremely popular on TikTok became like the most popular product in Amazon some sort of like absurd metric like

Most people are not doing any sort of like coconut oil pole mouthwash every day

But it's like you see a TikTok video and you're like, yeah, it seems like a good idea

“You can convince millions of people to buy your product that way. I think a lot of this actually like I was thinking about was like”

People in information ages like thought a lot about like what makes for a perfect information

You know product and a lot of these are probably true, right like demonstrable form factor

“easy to show problem solution. I think unique mechanism is important like obviously it has to create or component”

But yeah, I think a lot of that is like very true. It's just like in in commercial frameworks

You could become an infomercial guy Cody. Yeah, well the the the new infomercial is TikTok

“I think like persona scalability is also probably a big one like I think especially if you're a supplement like you look at”

Runes and all the funnels they have they have funnels around GLP one use they have funnels around gut issues they have funnels around Like fertility like they have all these different angles that they're reaching tons of different people on and I think like you're ability to activate with You know 10 different creators all serving a different angle slash niche is probably a big variable that would allow you to be more Six-out phone TikTok shop versus if you have

A single use case that your products used for like you just your your cap that a little bit on like the type of creator that you can scale with