Lessons from $500m Brands

Hi Team,

This newsie comes to you from a quaint little coffee shop called p.o.c in the heart of Florentine, a neighborhood in South Tel Aviv. 

Great week so far. Some time with family, a few days in our TLV office, and far too much hummus. 

In the last few weeks, I’ve met a handful of brands that blew me away. Brands doing 500+ million dollars in revenue and still growing upwards of 50% YoY.

Yes, even in this crazy climate.

This week, I want to share some insights from these legendary brands in hopes that it can be helpful for some of you. 

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What the Best Are Still Doing Right

Over the past few weeks, I’ve sat with some brands doing serious numbers. $500M, $700M, even close to $1B in annual revenue, and still growing. Not holding flat. Not talking about "surviving the year." Actually growing. Some at 50+ percent YoY.

This isn’t a newsie about them being lucky or an anomaly. It’s about what they’re doing consistently well that others can learn from.

1. None of them are trying to be 100% DTC anymore

Not a single one of these brands relies exclusively on their own website. Every one of them has layered in other channels. That includes Amazon, traditional retail, and increasingly, TikTok Shop.

They’re not solely using these channels as a fallback or as a distribution dump. They’re using them as strategic growth engines. One brand told me they’ve built a flywheel where TikTok Shop creators make a silly amount of revenue, and they run almost no ads.

The wildest part is that the demand created by these affiliates has taken their CAC down to under $10 across their dot-com. It’s helping them drive demand that is powering their entire business.  

Another brand uses Amazon not to capture market share but to prevent leakage. They know people are going to price-compare and check Prime. So they control the listing, optimize the content, and use Amazon to protect brand perception.

If it is getting sold on Amazon anyway, it might as well be them controlling the whole spiel.

Retail is the same idea. For brands that are showing up on shelves, it’s less about volume and more about visibility. One team told me their best dot-com days often correlate with strong retail weeks, because the in-store exposure drives site curiosity. On top of that, they have a few unique SKUs only available on their online store. 

They’re not clinging to any ideal about owning every touchpoint. They’re choosing channels based on performance and contribution margin, not dogma.

2. They’ve all “cracked” AOV

Not temporarily. Not on one silly campaign. They’ve built systems around increasing AOV in a way that sticks. That’s true even for the CPG brands selling relatively low-cost products.

It’s happening through thoughtful bundling, intentional merchandising, and strong post-purchase journeys. One brand built a high-converting product quiz that doesn’t just lead to one hero SKU but encourages bundles with a clear “if this, then that” logic.

Customers feel like they’re customizing, but the backend is guiding them into high-value baskets.

Another brand rebuilt its cart experience around behavior instead of price thresholds. If a customer shows interest in certain categories, they offer specific upsells that convert at double the usual rate. The bundles aren’t cuckoo. They just make sense based on already existing behavior they see across the site.

I say this often, but it’s so much easier to push forward already existing behavior vs. trying to create net new ones.

3. Lean teams vs heavier ones

One of the brands I spent time with has fewer than 30 full-time employees. Another has 500+. They’re both growing. They’re both profitable. And they’re both incredibly efficient.

The smaller team runs a focused product line with minimal retail and no wholesale. Most of their fulfillment is outsourced. Their CX volume is manageable. They move fast, but they also know their limits.

The larger team has a much more complex setup. They’ve got retail ops, international fulfillment, SKUs across multiple categories, and a fairly wide customer base. The headcount is higher because the scope demands it. And it’s working. They’re not bloated. They’re just staffed correctly for the business they’re running.

What stood out was the lack of ego around size. No one was bragging about doing more with less. No one was justifying bloat. The teams were built to match the complexity, and they revisit it quarterly to make sure it still makes sense.

How many millions in revenue per employee was not a topic of discussion or pasted on their T-shirt. Sorry.

4. There’s no secret tool unlocking all the value

This one surprised me a bit. I came into these conversations expecting to hear about some newer tools or stack changes. That didn’t really happen.

The tools were familiar. Shopify, Yotpo, Gorgias, Kl*vi*o, Triple Whale, etc... The usual crew.

The thing that made it work was usage. Flows were actually live. Tags were actually used. Data was clean. No one was sitting on a dusty analytics dashboard they forgot to check.

The one newer tool that came up a few times was PrettyDamnQuick. For brands with complex fulfillment and warehousing needs or looking to optimize checkout and drive incremental revenue, PDQ seems to be getting traction. Beyond that, the stack was boring. And that’s probably a good thing.

Execution is still the differentiator. Not software.

5. They know who they are

Every single operator I spoke with had absolute clarity on the following:

• Who they serve

• What pain point they solve

• Why they are fundamentally different than others in the space

And they weren’t giving me the brand book version. They were giving me the real version. One brand said, “Our customer is the exhausted parent who wants something to just work. We don’t sell features. We sell peace of mind.”

That framing showed up in how they wrote emails, how they trained CX, how they handled complaints, and how they merchandised bundles.

Another team told me, “We’re not here to convert everyone. We’re for the hardcore users who know what they’re doing and want to feel seen.” That strategy showed up in every product launch, every loyalty campaign, and every word on their landing page.

There’s a lot of talk about “owning your brand narrative.” These teams already do. It’s not something they’re building. It’s something they’ve internalized and operationalized.

That certainty saves them time. It guides hiring. It drives product decisions. And it gives them a filter for what not to do.

That’s it for this week!

Any topics you'd like to see me cover in the future?

Just shoot me a DM or an email!

Cheers, 

Eli 💛

P.S. Looking for inspo on your next email/sms campaign? 

I know you will love this.