Practical Tips from Fastest-Growing Ecom Brands

Hi Team!

Rain has kept me indoors most of the week and, while I'm fighting summer gloom, it's given me time to slow down and maybe eat a bit too much.

You've probably heard of Meta's Disruptor Program, which supports fast-growing, digitally native e-commerce brands. I spoke with a similar team at a very large SaaS company that works with the fastest-scaling e-commerce businesses. These brands are pulling $30–50m in year one or two, usually with super lean teams.

The team I spoke to helps these brands strategize across the whole business, including marketing, ops, product, finance, and leadership.

I asked what common thread ties these rocket-ship businesses together, and the answers were super interesting.

I'll share some of them in today's newsletter.

P.S. If you want to sponsor the newsie and get your message to 15,000 of the best ecom operators in the world, drop me a note. 

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They're Not Reinventing the Wheel

Here's the thing that surprised me most: most of these brands aren't creating entirely new categories. They're taking something that already exists and doing it better. Better means either cheaper, higher quality, or better customer experience.

• Mixtiles didn't invent photo printing. They made it easier, smarter, and built a way better experience than what Shutterfly was offering.

• FreshSends is basically a more modern, younger, fresher version of 1-800-Flowers.

• Create took the scary-looking creatine pills that make you feel like you're shopping at a supplement store in 2003 and made them transparent, culturally relevant, and fresh.

• Grüns did the same thing with multivitamins, making them friendlier, tastier, and way more appealing to younger customers than those chalky powders everyone was used to.

The brands that scale fastest aren't always the ones solving problems nobody knew they had. They're solving problems everyone knew they had, in ways that feel obvious once you see them.

One or Two SKUs Can Build Empires

This one goes against everything you hear about scaling. Yes, you can build a massive business with 50-100 SKUs. But unless you're dropshipping, that added complexity doesn't always equal more revenue. Most of the time, it equals more headaches.

AG1 built a $500 million business on one single SKU. They might be an anomaly, but there's a huge space between them and the brands trying to manage massive SKU sets. OLIPOP is doing upwards of $500 million with under 15 flavors. That's still a focused approach compared to brands trying to be everything to everyone.

The math makes sense when you think about it. Every new SKU is an inventory risk. It's more customer support questions. It's more content to create. It's more data to track. It's more complexity in your operations, your marketing, and your fulfillment.

The brands that scale fastest often start with one thing they can do really, really well. Then they expand from there. The focus lets them nail the basics before they add complexity.

None of Them Are Dropshippers with Trash Product

This is my favorite insight because it gets slept on constantly. I have nothing against dropshippers. I have everything against garbage product.

Most people think DTC growth is all about some cocky growth marketer who knows how to run Facebook ads with a sprinkle of Applovin. The reality is that great growth marketing only gets you the first order. And your email marketing doesn't matter if your product is trash.

You can have the best welcome flow in the world. You can segment like a data scientist. You can A/B test subject lines until your eyes bleed. None of it will get you a second order if customers hate what they bought.

The brands that scale to $30-50 million in year one or two all have one thing in common: their product actually delivers. Customers open the box and think, "this is better than I expected," not "this is exactly what I was afraid it would be."

Product quality is the foundation everything else builds on. Without it, you're just burning money on acquisition with no retention to show for it.

They All Have a Strategic Lever

This one is harder to recreate because it's often about timing and opportunity. But every single one of these brands has found a way around the traditional rising CAC problem.

Some are celebrity brands. Others hit it big on TikTok before everyone else figured out the platform. Some went viral on Instagram at the right moment. A few have unique distribution partnerships or supply chain advantages.

The point isn't that you need to be a celebrity or go viral. The point is that the brands scaling fastest have found their unique angle for customer acquisition. They're not just competing on the same Facebook ads as everyone else in their category.

Maybe it's a partnership. Maybe it's a content strategy. Maybe it's a distribution play. Maybe it's a pricing model. But they've all found something that gives them an edge in reaching customers without paying the same acquisition costs as their competitors.

They Understand Brand from Day One

The last insight hit me hardest. All of these brands have a deep understanding of the importance of brand, even early on.

I loved this snippet from Cherene, SVP of ecommerce at Ilia Beauty: "When you are starting up, you have to run the growth playbook, but you need to think about how you are building a brand. Performance marketing is not enough to build a business."

That video is a must-watch. Every second of it.

Too many brands think they can performance-market their way to success and worry about the brand later. The brands that scale fastest know that brand and performance marketing have to work together from the beginning.

Brand is what makes customers choose you over the cheaper option. It's what makes them talk about you to their friends. It's what makes them stick around when your Facebook ads start performing worse.

Performance marketing fills the funnel. Brand is what makes people want to stay in it.

The brands pulling $30-50 million in year one or two aren't just good at buying traffic. They're building something people actually want to be part of. They're creating experiences that feel bigger than the transaction.

What This Means for You

These insights aren't just interesting data points. They're a playbook for thinking about growth differently.

You don't need to invent a new category. You need to do something existing way better.

You don't need 100 SKUs to scale. You need to nail one or two things really well.

You don't need to be a marketing genius. You need a product that doesn't suck.

You don't need to outspend everyone on ads. You need to find your unique angle.

You don't need to choose between performance and brand. You need both from day one.

The brands that scale fastest aren't doing magic. They're doing the basics really, really well while finding their unique edge. That's it.

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. If you want to figure out how to get your brand to rank high in LLMs and show up in ChatGPT, Gemini, and more… check this out.