Why a 5 ROAS Target Held Back This DTC Brand: Vyper Industrial's Dayne Rusch

It's more than just like an online product, you know? It's a community that people want to be a part of. You lifted mobile conversions by 37 percent.

Desktop 67 percent with sessions basically flat.

How did you do this? If there's one thing with this direct consumer space that like drives me nuts is like, you can test till you're dead. What I really want to focus on going into a 2020 segment is like, what's getting the brand out there?

If you're doing an event to make money, you're probably doing it for the wrong reason. Like, people are going to listen, it's like, oh, this guy's not even wanted to make money. He doesn't care about profit when it's like, look, we threw an event because one. This episode is brought to you by Triple Whale, the AI operating system for e-commerce. Just a quick gut check for brand owners and media buyers.

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It's the DDC podcast. And I am here back with a podcast favorite Dane Rush co-founder of Viper. Welcome back to the DDC podcast, man. How you been? Thanks, bro.

No, we're been great. We've been great. No, I'm happy to be here. Yeah, thanks for bringing me back on, man. For those who haven't who haven't watched the first episode,

you could go back and watch it because we're going to do some catchup on it. But give people the thumbnail of what Viper is and catch me up quickly on it.

Because you guys are poised for some incredible growth.

“I think you were just talking about whether or not to expand into a much bigger footprint”

of a facility which I think you have now. But yeah, catch up the audience. Yeah, a lot has happened. I was looking at our past emails, bro. It's been, it's been, was like two and a half years, two years, two and a half.

Yeah, yeah, a lot has happened. Teams grow on a ton over the last, even two months. And honestly, like the team that we just brought on, we should have done like two years ago, especially being so heavy on the direct consumer side. So now we've got a killer CRL team.

We've got a great ad team performance team. We built a brand new facility. So built a brand new facility. Honestly, it was probably right around the time when you and I had the last conversation. 65,000 square feet.

Brand news did the art right off the one of the busiest highways in Wisconsin. So yeah, we're rocking a rolling super cool. So, and for people that aren't familiar, tell people what Viper is. Yeah, we've got that one. We manufacture shop chairs, shop cards, creepers.

Essentially, the replacement for your cheap $40. I don't want to call it any big brands, but your cheap $40 still. We all are a picture in the same thing.

So we always compare it to, like, we're the Yeti in the garage space.

Yeti is the high-end premier cooler and worthy high-end premier shop chair, shop cards, shop creepers, stuff like that. What's been in the time since we've talked, what's been the most effective brand exercise?

“I think you guys have built such an amazing brand.”

I think right from the beginning, you were not from the beginning, but last time we spoke, you were already selling into, you know, SpaceX or into some of the, you know, Tesla into these other crazy companies, and so that was a huge part of it. What's been the best for building the brand since we spoke? Yeah, brands, honestly, like, spend the biggest thing for us being, you know, the high price

from your product. It, it's been the culture behind what we do. You know, like, you can just feel it through our marketing of, like, who we are, what we sell, who we team up with, you know, Richard Rawlings, Adam LZ, you know, Grant Anderson, CJ Greaves, like, this racing automotive community, just a month and a half ago, we put on one of the most

epic events called Viperfest. You know, as over 5,000 people came, we had Adam LZ, Richard Rawlings,

you know, it's, it's a community that people want to be a part of. And, you know, we just like live and breathe what we sell, you know, like we, we are automotive enthusiast, like, that's who we are, whether we're working at Viper or, you know, it's the weekend and we're going to cars and coffee and, you know, car shows and events and stuff like that. One of the posts I caught up with on your LinkedIn there was a post that you made about your

website rebuild, you made this year, we lifted mobile conversions by 37% desktop 67% with sessions

basically flat. How did you do this? Yeah, one we just made a weight cleaner, you know, like we had,

man, like, even a product page is we just had so much stuff that we thought we needed on the product pages, the home pages. We were talking to the customer as if we thought we knew what they wanted to hear, where, you know, we actually like put ourselves into their shoes, red reviews, did forums, actually did like on-site questionnaires and let the consumer tell us, like, hey,

“what were, what were the holdbacks that you're having? What, almost prevented you from buying?”

Why did you buy? And we essentially took what the customer told us and just like infiltrated that throughout the home page, product pages, all that stuff. And yeah, it worked good, but it's still funny because like, work in the process right now of redoing, you know, the product page, home page, collection, navigation, right before Black Friday, not completely revamping it, but just making it better. And yeah, honestly, you do that, like, the site's good, but you take a look at

what some of these other big brands are doing, I'm direct to consumer. It's like, you're always behind

this, like, you can do something better. But yeah, then I see other brands that are like, maybe not focusing on it as much as they should be, you know, so, yeah, it's always something that you're chasing, but the levers that you pulled in that attempt there have paid some dividends. Yeah, more certainly. And that was before we brought in a CROTM, so now we have, you know, senior e-commerce manager, web developer, and a full-time UI UX designer. And these guys are already

seeing, you know, a ton of improvements that we could be doing, even at top of what we just did, or thought we, you know, thought was good. So yeah, now we should move out rapid speed with the

“team that we got. Talk to me about your paid approach. I think when we last spoke, you were talking”

about investing more in real-world things in your, in your factory in a few other areas. And you were talking even about like, de-emphasizing digital a little bit. But I see that's bit like that,

that has kind of a come full circle now and you guys are all in. You've always been all in.

But yeah, I mean, that was at a point when we were like, man, we spent in too much on, you know, we're like, two reliant on paid ads. But honestly, we're at a point when we're now where, with how much overhead we have with the new facility, all this stuff, we're really focusing on what is that bottom dollar, new customer acquisition and new customer realized that we get hit even at scale. You know, like, we were always, man, I remember, you know, three, two, three years ago,

we were so focused on how do we get as much profit as we possibly can on the first customer. And don't get me wrong. Of course, making profit as a business is important. But you can suffocate growth so much. Like, I remember we're like, oh, we need to be at a five row as. And it's like, do that's stupid. Like, you're not going to grow and you're not making enough top line revenue to even, you know, overcome all your operating expenses. So, you know, now we're at a point where it's like,

we have dialed in new customer and cats for, you know, through Black Friday, we're checking it every single day. It's like, if we're low and you had to, I say, making too much profit, but it's like, if we can scale even more and grabs, you know, more market share at a discount during these holidays, let's go do it. You know, so ever since discovering that, I mean, that's got to be like a year and a half ago, we just been like, let's just keep investing.

Keep going, keep going, keep going, keep going. We know what ours, you know, we are first purchased profitable, but our, we don't have a long tail end, you know, like our customers, the other come back, but it's, you know, it's a high, it's a high price point product. We're in a lot of brands are like subscription based, we'll take a loss on first one because we'll know we'll re-tube it,

“you know, three, four months on their own. What does LT, what does the LTV equation look like?”

Our, our people making, I guess enterprises are making more than one purchases, but individuals are they buying one for life kind of thing? Are you interested, because I guess you guys have a lot of a lot of different products now? How does a customer life cycle look in terms of LTV once you acquire the customer? Yeah, for sure. So, it's a good point. We do have two parts of the business. You know, we have direct to consumer plus, we have B to B. I'm more talking just D to C here,

see is you'll get, you got this bucket of guys that will come to the site, they know about us,

they want, they know they need three or four of them, but what they're going to do with the price point is buy one. And then they're going to see if they like it, see the quality, like is this actually worth what Viper says it is. They'll get it, they love it, they'll come back and buy, you know, four. That's like our like ideal customer. Obviously, they're all not like that. Then you get your, you know, everyday garage guy, you'll come in, he'll buy a chair, and then see if you like it,

and then he'll buy an accessory, you know, two months, maybe three months down the road. So, we still do have a like flow of lifetime value throughout the customer's not just like one and one had done. We'll see it's like it continues to extend, you know, a couple hundred bucks, year over year of each customer versus like multiple $600 purchases, you know, from like one customer. And the thing with our accessories to is, you know, our accessories are a higher price point than

some people's full product, you know, like our an accessory right now is 200 bucks for us, you know,

we're like some people are like, hey, our AOV's 200, you know. So, it's not like these second

“purchases are small buckets, like it's still, you know, 200 bucks. I think in our last talk, you were”

just about to, or you had just launched OTT streaming. I'm curious, how did where does TV sit in your mix today? Yeah, we don't, we don't do any of it anymore. We're using mountain, and honestly, man, like, if there's one thing with this direct to consumer space that like drives me nuts is like, there, you can, you can test to your dad, you know, you can be like, okay, well, you know, the sinker mentality and MMM and all this stuff. And what, what I really want to focus on going into 2020,

7 is like, what's getting the brand out there, you know, Peter with Chobby's with the, with the shorts, he talks about all the time is the 95 five rule is like 95% of the market that's seeing

your ad is not interested in buying that day, you know, only 5% of the people that are seeing your

ad at that given point are like, ready to make that purchase. So knowing that it's like, I just want

“to be the brand people remember and be less pushy on sales. You know, so, with, with that is like,”

the TV side, it's like, we just go, it's like, we're doing heavy national spends, like MLB last night, we're doing MLB spends, like, Monday night football, get in front of as many people as we possibly can at the lowest cost and all those people are just building the pool. It's like, none of those people are buying, not, not, not, but like, a good portion of those people are not buying that night, but they will come back six months down the road, seven months down the road, eight months down

the road, when they are actually ready and then make that purchase. So like, I'm going more on the, on the point of like, here's our bucket of spend we have for six months, let's go all gas, and yeah, we can do incremental testing and all this junk, but it's like, we know TV works, we know metal works, and we know email works. It's like, those are three big buckets, let's just go all in on those. You know, otherwise, we just like, I feel like if you try and

knew, let's put a hundred K towards this new app that everyone's, you know, craving about it. It's like, you could just blow a hundred K and it could get you nothing. You know, it's like, there are other other stuff that into TV and I know that is going to give me something back. I don't know. That's just my mindset. I'm on the, I'm on the point of just like, get the brand out there in front of as many people as you possibly can and just let the final work,

man. You have so much invested in your product as, you know, and you have such product market fit, and you're in this situation where probably most of your audience doesn't even know that there's like a premium option. You know, a lot of, a lot of, a lot of your audience that isn't aware of you, isn't even aware that there is this like more premium option. So it's like, it checks out for me, what's your communication strategy with TV then? How are you, what are your, what's your mindset

for how you're making your creative really, you know, stick and really, really get in people's heads for when they are ready? Yeah. So we did have a problem solution TV campaign running for the longest time, you know, which is like really focused on the older demographic guy falling off his chair, you know, like tired of falling off each stool, like really focusing on the problem that everybody who's watching, you know, TV at that time can relate to. And then here's the solution,

Viper Chair, you know, whatever, throw your other chair away. But what we're moving more towards is

“we have some collaborations down with Ford. We're both the drop one, I think I can say it,”

or, but the drop one was Chevy. We're about to drop one with, or we have, uh, hedgehog motor sports, we have real tree. So we're going to go way more focused on, you know,

because ultimately that builds the brand credibility. If everybody knows, everybody knows

Ford's logo, everybody knows who Ford is, everybody knows that Ford's not going to do a deal with like a small little company. So we want to use their brand credibility that they built over the last, whatever, you know, hundred years and put our name next to it. So that's kind of the strategy with TV. It's like, I want to get away from pushing sales and just pushing more of lifestyle, um, pushing more of like, I want the customer to see it and either laugh,

be like, I was funny, or to be like, I want to be a part of that brand, whatever it is. Like, that's really cool. And that's sort of, so Viper Fest is so interesting to me. I have a big background in events, uh, having put on a lot of them. What I'm curious, we just did a podcast with, uh,

“drew from Iris Financial, the CFO guy. And I'm wondering, like, what number do you have to show”

your CFO to get budget for Viper Fest? Yeah. Well, we don't have a CFO yet, so like, technically, yeah. So it's so, it's so, it's so, it's so, it's so pretty easy to get the budget by, uh, yeah, I'll be, look, you know, you've been in the events. Uh, if you're doing an event to make money, you're probably doing it for the wrong reason. Like, the whole, the whole reason, we want to do it. It sounds so stupid. Like, people are going to listen and it's like, oh, this guy's not

going to want it to make money. You know, he doesn't care about profit, but it's like, look, we, we threw an event because one, we wanted to establish like our, our brand in the local area, too, is people don't realize how good of a, how good of an employee search you become. A lot of people, you may have 2,000 people that come there that are like, I hate my job. And they come, they're like, what is this company? I want to work for this brand, you know? So, you how can you name out

there with how competitive, you know, the, the talent to list out there. And then, you know,

third or fourth is, we just, my brother and I, we just want to have fun too. You know, it's like,

stealthously that party was for us a little bit, too. You know, just have a good time and like, get this, get people like associated with this brand. You know, we sold a boatload of merch. We got to hang out with Adam LZ, you know, Richard Rawlings, like those guys are awesome. Um, and yeah, we just, there was a fun free event for everyone to come to. And whether you make money or not, it's like a crush on social. So, yeah, a great for brand equity. And why are we doing this if not

to have fun along the way? Yes, of course. If you can make money, I mean, of course, you know, do it. But what do they say? Like, the first event you throw, you lose a ton, second you break even, 30, make money. Well, we're on the second. So, hopefully the third we can make money. We can make money. I've, we'll see. Understanding with events, I actually haven't put on one this big, but you really only make money with events when you have the exhibitors haul.

When people are part 20, 20, 30, 40 grand. So, when you're the only brand, it's like that,

“it'll be, I think it might be tough to make money, but it's going to be great for, like you say,”

first, for social, for brand equity, for potentially creative throughout the year. So, you

are putting, you're putting it on again. Are you aiming to do it bigger? Or what's your, what you're thinking with the second event? Yeah, we're going to do it again for sure. So, I mean, do we have cars lined up like miles and miles down the road just to get there? So, we had a, we had a, a big parking lot and we had a shuttle running back and forth. There was like a 45 minute wait at that shuttle, just to get a shuttle. So, did you have a drone flying over that,

like showing? We lined up. Yeah, we did. Yeah, yeah, good. So, from like all different angles, like every road was packed. Yeah. So, it rained a little bit, which, you know, kind of kind of sucked, but the event still turned out really well. Even though we had, you know, some, some, you know, rain throughout the day. So, we're like, we're doing this again next year. And, you know, hopefully we can get a good day. So, then we can really get an understanding of like, how big could

this event actually be? You know, if you got like a good day. So, yeah, we'll see, we're planning like September next year again. We talked about this in the pre show. You have the best merch. You have some of the best, like, is the merch, is the merch a fun thing, a merch is obviously a fun thing. I love merch. Is it how, how do you think of it in terms of the business? You sold a lot at the event? It's a, it's almost, like, it could be streetwear. You know what I mean? Like, I'm curious

“how big of a line item the merch is to a business like yours. Yeah. Honestly, for us, it's not as”

big as it should be. You know, like, you know, friends with Brandon over at MKC, you know, you had him on, like, those guys crush merch. Like, they're, merch is a huge revenue line for them. Where it's not that big for us, you know, and, like, we're, we're trying to get there. So, I think the merch is a little bit more of, like, selfishly, a little passion project. We're, like, I want to wear this stuff, too. And, like, our pre-demandager and I have, like, the same feel for

high quality merch, like, even jackets and hoodies. Like, this isn't just your local print shop printing in on just hoodies that they have. They're, like, you know, we go through having them send us

wear as well. But yeah, merch isn't as, as huge as, you know, we would like, but it's, it helps

locally. Like, we get quite a bit of walk-ins that come in and buy some merch. And all you got to do is send me a hat and then you're going to get free of the Russians among them. Because I, I don't know if you need, you need, like, work from home stools or something for, like, for keyboard warriors, like us. Yeah. Well, man, we get you, if we get you some merch, we wear a stock up. That's right. We're going to sell it. So, uh, well, one of the things I'm, I'm going to ask you people about

right now is what they're, what they're, we know how they're using AI, specifically how they're

“using AI in the, in the growth side of things. What's your stay, I think you made a post recently”

like, I had a lot of, uh, a lot of activity on LinkedIn around AI creative. What's your, what's your philosophy with AI creative in, in, in, at buying? Yeah. Yeah, but I got hammered on that on that post a little bit. I'm like, geez, I mean, I didn't think it was too bad. No, I think. So, the thing with it is, is I do it. You got to use it. And if you don't, you're going to fall so far behind. And I, I stand on the side, like, I'm, I'm a big brand guy. So, like, I don't think

a company can be built. The brand can be built using AI. I think AI can help you, uh, automate a lot of tedious stuff that we used to have to do, you know, by hand, uh, our creative team uses it every single day, like, for, for collections. We have to, you know, duplicate the product images, the hero images, all this stuff, and do it's probably like a two or three hour task for one person to do it. Where now we have the cloud system set up, where we can literally just tell it what we need to do.

Here's the Google Drive folder, pull these images and make and, like, fill it in exactly what we have. Now it takes, you know, 15 minutes for it. And, you know, we're not sacrificing quality. We're not sacrificing brand. They're just doing a tedious background task that would have taken a dude two or three hours to do. So, what we're also doing to is on the creative side, our team Austin's got a dialed where we use it a lot for inspiration. So, like, even just to get an idea,

you know, like any any creative listeners that you have will, you know, relate to this is like, when you're designing a home page or a landing page or whatever it is, you can get creative fatigue. You know, it's like, oh, man, it's just like, I'm like, stuck. Where do I start? And it's a great tool to use. It's just like, hey, here's, you know, here's some, here's some, you know, screenshots of examples of what I'm thinking. Here's where I want to be,

like, just dump me a bunch of examples, you know, just to get, get the wheels turning a little bit. And then our, our designers will take it and, you know, move on from there. But that's how we use it. And, and look, that's our business. You know, we're, we're a premier product, where I know a lot of supplement brands, like they can pump out creative with it. Great to, like, use it. Where I look at it is like, our product could we use it for creative. We shouldn't

like, can we do, we do to a sense, but like, we don't rely on it. Because, I don't know, what I'm afraid of is, especially like, using it too much in your voice and the style and the look and feel of your brand. What I, what I can see happening is like, no matter how much you try to,

like, tweak, clawed to, like, be you or be your, be your brand. It'll always use AI strategies in the end,

where you can point it out. It's like, yeah, I can tell, like, you kind of start seeing these AI trends and

“designs. So, I think you use it, but with caution, brothers, you're like, if you want to be an authentic”

brand, I think now is the, like, in the LinkedIn post is like, now is the best time to be authentic. And like, make your brand, I wanted to wear like a customer reads one of our emails and feels refreshed because it's like, wow, this feels like a human. Like, it feels real. It just doesn't feel like words. You know, and that's why, you know, even in copy, like, we don't use it at all. We'll use it to get the ball again. Get the ideas, get the ball rolling, and then we'll take that and then, you know,

type it in human form. And, you know, one last thing on this is like, we tried some AI stuff on, like, text message responses to abandoned carts and stuff. And yeah, you know, honestly, like, we tried a free trial and it wasn't, it wasn't great. You know, so we just hired a full-time person in house to make abandoned cart calls and abandoned cart texts. A human, you know, it's like, yeah, it's overhead, but it's like, we're getting that personalized touch when that customer gets

a phone call from Viper and they realize it's a human, like, a real dude. That person's not going

to spread the word. You know, he's going to go tell his buddy, he's like, yeah, I always use an AI,

“but I call it Viper, it's a human. You know, it's like, that's, that's what we want to be. So,”

that's how we look at it. You know, I know a lot of, like, let's say if you're bootstrapping a company and like, you need call to help build on a website, but I'll use it, you know, 100% go for it. I just think if, like, you want to build the authenticity, just be super careful. Yeah, like, as of as a non-technical founder, it gives me the ability to create

but it just, just to get my ideas across as a non-technical person, non-designer,

found it extremely valuable for that. For sure. Like, look, dude, cloud code is insane. Insane, you know, so it's like, I'm, I'm like huge advocate of, like, using it for sure. A lot of potential is going so fast. And yeah, it just, like, if you don't do it, you will fall behind quickens. You can be tough to, like, catch up. All I'm saying is just, like, make sure, no matter what you do, that you just, like, keep the human aspect in there somewhere, you know,

like, it's got to feel like your brand and, and you, you know, otherwise you're just going to fall in line with, like, everybody else who's using it for copy and, and design and, like, all something my brand's going to look the same. You know, they're all just going to be clean, same design, same style, same language, same everything. It's like, what's the difference between all of you guys? You know, it's like, yeah, what we use day eye and it took, it, it,

it went really fast. It's like, yeah, but how you know, different than someone brand, x, y and z, next to you, you know? So, that's, yeah, that's just kind of my, my take on it. What do you, how much of you guys invested in organic? I think, obviously, with your, uh, with your events, and I, like, it just makes me think of Montana and I've co, and they're, like, as an organic, they can't even buy ads on their knives, generally, um, because they're knives,

and so they've had to live on this, like, release frequency and this drop model. I'm curious with it, with, you know, you obviously, your brand is going to have a lot of really loyal people.

“How do you think about organic in your, in your growth mix? Yeah, a ton, and that's what we want to”

push heavy in this in 2027. Um, you had to, um, MC, like, honestly, vibrant MC, these are a couple of the brands, too. Honestly, I, I feel like R2 brands are the brands that are actually brands. Bruns built in a great, great brand as well. Um, and it's, it's because it's just authentic, and there's people behind the brand and the, you know, the face and the name of it, but organic is huge for us. You know, we got some really cool stuff lined up with garage beer. It's like,

you know, it costs us a lot of time, a lot of money, um, to do these prototyping or stuff, but it's like, it's cool, and it's fun, and it's like, it gets people engaged. We're going to do a really cool garage beer drop in November, super limited quantity, and, you know, it's like, will we make a ton of money in it? No, but it gets the name out there. You know, people would be like, wait, is that a keg on a chair? You know, it's like, well, remember selling it? Yeah, but it's like,

yeah, so organic's huge for us, huge, huge, huge, and something that I think we do a good job on, but actually, we want to put like a really big budget towards, are you on the tribe train, tribe the, the UGC network? Are you using, I've just, I've been talking to a lot of operators lately,

“and they've been telling me that their ad mixes are getting taken over by tribe creators. Are you familiar?”

No, I'm not. Okay, so I'll let's be, you know, let's live on the rock or sell that art. So tribe is

like a UGC network where basically you're paying for performance, and you're basically

paying the creator out of G, there's like a GMV component, so that the, you know, they're actually tracking the UGC that ends up getting, so it's, so it creates this network effect where it's really only the best creators are getting paid. They're getting paid a ton, and when you scale it up really high, it has, it has can have problems under P&L, but that generally, if all the other aspects of your business are working well, tribe can be an accelerant, is what my read on it is.

Got it. No, I haven't heard of that, but take some, take a look into it. It's kind of like refuttle. Not familiar. I'll check it out. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Is UGC a big part of your mix? Like is creators content a big part of your mix? Yeah, but yeah, and it's, it's even going to grow from here, so we just brought on an influencer manager, and yeah, she's fully just responsible of, we call it product seeding, you know, so it's like, how do we get the product out there,

where even if it's in the background of a video, or, you know, somebody's just using it and not even promoting it. Our product's great, because like, the people that are using it are, obviously, typically sitting on it, where some products are maybe in your pocket, or, you know,

underneath your, like a T-shirt, or, you know, you wear it in your shoes, and they're never

being shown. So like, we have a good product where even if it's not being pushed, like, yeah, you got to, you got to buy a Viper chair, they're at least using it, and you can see, like, oh, what is that chair? Yeah, we get all the time. We're like, we can't see your product without, you know, watching, like, whatever, whatever mechanic video or automotive or whatever garage show, like, you guys are always in it, and like, that's the goal. It's like creating familiarity,

if a customer, everything's of a shop chair, like, or shop cart, or anything of the garage, they come to us. In generations to come, they won't even call them workers. They'll just call them

“Viper. Yeah, that's a goal. Like, that's right. He just, just blown it. That's what Tony,”

Tony from Vesi told me one time, it was his goal with the marketing at Vesi was to own the rain. That's like, that is the, that is, that's pretty badass. I was like, if it rains, you should be

thinking about Viper. Dude, hot of a set. That's a goal. That's a goal. We're close, honestly, like,

“household name brand, and yeah, we'll, we'll get there. What are you most excited about for”

this Black Friday, Cyber Monday? We, we turned it up a notch on branding. So what we like to do is do a different brand style for every sale. You know, so Veterans Day has a different sale. Black Friday, early bird has a different sale. Black Friday, Cyber Monday is everyone to extend it. They all have a different feeling. So whether you're looking at our brand from an email in ad or the website, like, let's say it's Cyber Monday, you're going to see that brand consistent

from the ad email website, like our buttons on the website are going to change like everything's

going to flip over. So creative team crushed it on this. Also, I'm fired up for, we have a more strategic

sales season. So last year we just kind of ran the same discount, where now we actually have it different sales for different blocks. And we're kind of going to risky here. We're trying to different, different, different methods on discounting. So we'll see how it works. And then the last thing is strategic product drops. So Black Friday, we do return to legends. So we'll bring back, like you said, Montana, and I've done the limitations. We do limit additions all year too. We'll bring

back our top sellers just for Black Friday. We're usually we won't bring back limitations. But we'll bring back them on was a Thursday night at midnight for Black Friday, obviously. So a lot of cool product launches on, you know, big buyer, big buyer days. Yeah, we got some some monster monster

“goals. And then obviously we have a ton of website revamps, honestly dropping within the next”

like 15 days. So we'll be, it'll look like a whole different brand if you go on and like, you know, a month. Are you using any tools for your AB testing on the on the website side? We use intelligence. Yeah, which we found was was the best. I know Evan's got a whole boat load of other stuff that he wants to want to test. But yeah, right now we haven't intelligence connected. If we were to give you 100, this is a new stock question we're testing out for all podcasts. For for Q4, if we were to give you

$100,000, $100,000, I know you said you're not big on like, little tests here and there. But where would you pour that gas if it was just like a free $100,000 to go into your like November ad budget? 100, okay. I would pour probably more on TV to be honest. Because right now we're we're like pre-spending, you know, we're last year we've found some kind of like inefficient spending days where we didn't have to spend to get that purchase. So like I'll probably take it right now and do

something for these MLB games and dump it on that before Black Friday. Yeah, I'll let's say throw it on TV or take it and David up with the team or spend it all on trying to get Tim Allen on board. I feel like Tim Allen and Richard's friend, the original home improvement duo, would it be like, is there a better workshop chair? I don't think so, Tim. Tim Allen's a legend. Yeah, finish. He's real name is Tim Dick, by the way, just like me. So that's Tim Allen and I go way

back. Anyways, that's my free consulting idea for you there. Thanks. One of our other stock

“questions is, what's the worst thing about selling your product? It's definitely a high consideration”

product. So you know, like I was saying before, you have other alternatives, way cheaper alternatives at a fraction of the quality and everything that we sell. So the dollar we spent today, we don't see right away. And I think that's where I can become challenging because it's like, is what we're doing today working? And you know, you almost, you have to have this faith where it's like, we feel like what we're doing, the marketing we're putting out, you know, the advertising, the messaging

is good and will pay off, you know, six months to on the road. So I think that's like the biggest challenge with our product is, yeah, it's a high consideration. It takes somebody that sees it today isn't buying today. Some do, but usually people sit on it for a while. No pun intended. Pretty good. With all of the brand spend, we just finished the six parts series with keen. It was like a decision system company. And that was called harness the halo. And it was about how to

measure upper funnel brand swings, like brand growth swings. And I'm curious, like with all of the attention, you're going to put into into upper funnel and brand growth in 2027. I'm curious about

your thinking on how to measure it. Yeah, TV is like this great box and I feel like it always has

meant. So if you know someone that has a good calculation of like, you know, how to truly determine the impact of the love of intro. Yeah, honestly, a few of things with us is you can obviously

Obviously, we have like post purchase survey, but not everybody, you know, is truthful on where

“they where they say they first saw us. So those are the few things. It's like, honestly, are we getting”

a lot of branded search on Google? Is our new customer cost for acquisition going down? And yeah, we're just getting a lot of direct traffic. That's that's purchasing. How did the price raise go? You went from around 400 to north of 600. How talk about that process? How did that was was there any pushback or did people not even blink? Yeah, that was a lot ago. Well, it took a while. So like, we originally, right when we first started the product was like 450, but it has like

a fraction of the features it has now. Like, didn't have a back rust, didn't have the cylinder that it has now. So like, it wasn't comparing apples to apples. We like advanced the product and then as we advanced it, we increased the price at at each one. So where it's been is 625. We have a raise the price in probably like two or three years. You do offer a 105% money back guarantee.

Never seen that before. Yeah, so we got the idea from it was first form. So what we were doing,

we switched it back. It's 100% now. We switched it back and what it was was 105% money back guarantee. We would give you 100% back plus pay for pay for your shipping as well. So, you know, it came on to be around 105% of your money, of your money back. And you're running your company with your brother. You said you don't have a CFO, but you do have a brother. Is there anything that you guys, you guys will butt heads about? Yeah, I mean, there's always things, right? Like,

even if you and your brother weren't running a business, you butt heads. No, it's like, it's a cool dynamic. He's on the engineering side, the operation side, you know, like the back end, dude, that's making sure everything's running. And then my role is more on front end. Do we have

are we getting sales? Is our marketing dial? Is our business a business sales strategy dial? Do

we have the right people? You know, how's the brand looking? Really like forward focused? You need both in a company, you know? If we had two of me or two of him, we wouldn't be what we are right now. But yeah, we, yeah, it is two brothers, but we know that we're in it together. And we don't hold anything against each other. It's like if, if we get frustrated, it's almost like a good sign because we both care. You know, we're like, if both of us just like, yeah, whatever, it's like

“then none of us even care. So, yeah, it's a good dynamic. I think, well, we talked a lot about”

you guys being a fully American-made product. And it was pretty, it was well before all of this tariff stuff came in. I'm curious how, how, how you've been, like, how important being an all-American-made and source brand has been to the company. Yes, been great. So, the big thing for us is that's who we're selling to. Like, we're selling to the guys and girls that love quality, love American-made products, love to support, you know, American manufacturing and American jobs.

And we feel that it's been a huge selling point for us because like, that's one of the reasons about it we came in the industry is it was so just like clogged by this overseas, you know, China-made products. And that's our clean-up, man. It's like, we want to keep this American-made, make sure that when you're spending, you know, five, six, seven hundred bucks with us, that you are getting the best product on the market. You know, like, this isn't, this isn't something

we're like, the bolts don't go on or the, the in-sebbly instructions aren't actually what the product is. It's like, when you get this, you get a full Lego set of assembly guide. It is beautifully laid out with 3D renders. You have videos for every single product getting put together. Then nuts and bolts go together like butter, you know, it's part of code and not painted, like, everything goes in. It's a small little details that we pay the closest attention to.

That a lot of brands just like, oh, we'll just cut it because like, you know, we got to hit profit. You know, we got hit margins. We got to be the lowest on the, on the market where when you go, like, hey, let's, let's just make the best products solve all the problems, and, you know, we'll price it there. Last question, I noticed on your website, you're currently doing a giveaway. Reminds, I don't know if you worked with my friend, Van, who is like,

hey, it runs a giveaway agency in Utah. But I'm curious about the economics of this giveaway. Are you psyched about the results from it? Yes, Ben, good. So we tried, usually from the giveaway is we'll do, we'll do a car or a truck. And I mean, do you're talking, you know, six

“figures for the vehicle. And when you do a giveaway, you have to own it all right. So, you know,”

you can't have a loan on it, you, whatever. So you have to upfront cash pay for, you know, whatever you're giving away. And what we realize is like, when we gave away the last two

or high price car or vehicle, or could we get the same results with a, you know,

“20,000 dollar UTV. So that's what we tested out this time. And it's going really well. So”

we're doing it where it's free entry also. You know, you can just do email sign up to get entered. And, you know, obviously the goal with that is get as many as you can before a black Friday.

You know, hexclad, I see they're running a similar similar model right now with a trip to

Italy or something with Gordon Ramsay. Yeah, it's a great play. Get, you know, get attention eyes on the brand. Our class is 20 grand plus the mad spend behind it. And yeah, we're collecting, you know, thousands of emails that possibly could purchase and, and fly Friday. Love that.

“I just had another great idea for you. I think you need to get your most souped up stool”

and get use AI to put it on the Tesla roadster ramp. Where it's. Yeah, and then it's using rockets going down. Yeah. It's just, I think it's just about as feasible. I think putting all that power rockets in a car. Just about as feasible as putting it in a stool. I loved just my

quick takeout. Everyone's like a gong at this amazing stunts. And it wasn't amazing stunts.

“But I do really think that that this technology is going to impact the future of transportation”

in a way like we're not blasting nitrous rockets from our cars. Are we? Yeah. And we, we might be, we didn't think we'd be driving battery vehicles, you know, and now they're all. Yeah. Who knows, man? I mean, you got to start somewhere, right? Like it's better than a propeller on a car. You got it. Or on a stool. I'll tell you, put it. Yeah. But this is an AI video machine to make me the Tesla, the Tesla roadster video with my product and watch it. Yeah, and roll in.

And the Viper chair got along it. All right. Well, thanks for the catchup, man. This was awesome. If you want to, have a better workshop chair, you got to go to Viper industrial.com. You also got to follow Dane on LinkedIn. I'll make sure to include it on the show notes. You've got, you got the occasional hot take on there, which people love. Thanks, man. This was a lot of fun. Yeah, thanks for having me. Have a great weekend. And I'll reach out about the hat so we can get some some D to see dollars coming

your way. Let's go, bro. We'll get you honey to you. Thanks so much for listening to today's episode. If you're not a subscriber to our newsletter, you can do that right now at direct to consumeralloneword.co. I'm Eric Dick and this has been the D to see podcast. We'll see you next time.