Ben Perkins’ Post

Emoji review of &Collar’s 2024 H1 P&L (all percentages are YoY): TLDR: Lots of big changes and decisions (new 3PL and new banking partner) have set us up for an awesome back half of the year as well as a strong 2025. Revenue growth isn’t great but much more efficient and profitable. Net Revenue: +7% 😐 Gross Margin: +7% 😐 Opex: -14% 👍 Ad Spend: -44% 😳 EBITDA: +243% 🔥 Interest Expense: -43% 😍 Net Income: +754% 🥶 Outstanding Debt: -36% 🥰 Action Items: Get Back To Customer Acquisition: Now that we’ve right sized unit economics and opex paired with our great LTV cohorts, can we get back to adding 2x new customers YoY through better/increased ad spend? Increase Gross Margin: Can we actually realize the forecasted savings from switching 3PLs, having customer-funded returns and exchanges, reduced units costs, increased shipping revenue, and sourcing from lower duty or duty free manufacturers? Bet on price testing and introduction of higher MSRP products. Double Down on Omnichannel: Amazon, wholesale, and Flight are the fast growers right now. Simply allocate enough inventory to them to be able to realize unrestrained results. *post format inspired by Jeremy Horowitz'

Summer intern shoutout: 5 great guys who are all going to school, starting school, finishing school, or just finished school. I would highly recommend hiring any one of these individuals because they are doing direct sales (POS sales at our office up 28% YoY), customer service, inventory management, operations, and so much more every single day at our office/storefront. (I’m biased, but the most generalist internship in the best of ways.) I’m betting $5 they one day talk about the &Collar Mafia in regard to this great group. @Michael Campbell - Construction management at BYU, will finish in a couple more semesters. @Braden Hacking - PR/Comms at Utah State. One more semester. @Tanner Swendsen - Finished his first year at BYU. Jake Jex - Just graduated from BYU, looking to get into tech sales. @Brady Swendsen - Graduated from high school, going on a 2-year service mission.

Bootstrapped vs raising money. Not my opinion (it’s not worth much), but our experience at &Collar. We raised $300k in a friends and family round in 2020 headlined by two angels we wanted on our board (literally and figuratively). We thought getting smart people who knew retail and consumer more than we ever could was the best thing for the business. 4 years later, I would say we were right. Michael Silverstein - Global Consumer Leader at Boston Consulting Group (BCG) and then the The Carlyle Group. Impact: Weekly meetings helping teach me how to think and operate. Gets very granular (including down to the ad campaign level) in terms of incremental lifts. Best Learning: Making money as a business [like ours] is a necessity, not a choice. Also, think in terms of microsegments. David Kornberg - former CEO at EXPRESS and maurices. Impact: Knows how to paint and march towards the big picture. Introduced us to one of our two primary manufacturers. Best Learning: Profit is made on the sell side (MSRP), not the buy side (COGS). Incredibly grateful for these two individuals as mentors, friends, and partners. And we are just getting started 🚀

Agency Shout-Out: For how much DTC brands rely on agencies and third parties, it’s awfully easy to never give any of them credit. If it’s working, you don’t notice, but as soon as something goes wrong, the agency is often the first to blame (even if it’s out of their control). Here are some of our favorites, both past and present. Paid Social: Wallaroo Media 🔥 Affordable, great partners, local, and willing to work around the business’ needs. Includes content creation and landing pages as well. CRO: Avex E-commerce 👩🔬 The most professionally organized team there is and gold partners of/with everyone. 3PL: iDrive Logistics 🚢 Transitioned over the last couple of months from the wonderful Momentum Shipping Company after four and a half years of partnership (so a reference in itself). Wanted one built around clothing. Really good so far. Amazon: Channel Supply Experts 📦 Launched us on Amazon and got us to $1M with 13% ACOS within 12 months. PR: Natalie Bleza 📰 Hits in CNN, Oprah, and Fox within 4 months. Content: Creatably 🍿 We give them tons of credit for helping us grow from $300k to $7M in two years with their long-form content. “Content isn’t expensive if it works.” FilmLaab 🎬 Potentially the most versatile content creators out there. A great option from big to small. Pierce Tews 🐕 An absolute dawg. Scrappy [and talented] in the best of ways. Dangerfield + Hawkes 😂 Some of the best script writers out there. Achieved legitimate virality with Flight thanks to them.

Redo appreciation post. Not paid, but legitimately too good of a thing to not share. --- TLDR: Redo saves brands tons of money and consolidates the tech stack under one platform. In other words, they are going to the moon. 🚀 --- We were worried about moving from Loop, who was hands down the best in the space, to an unproven provider like Redo. Highlights since moving: Close to 70% opt-in rate. That includes an extra $1.00 of shipping protection that we get to keep where before [with a then ~35% attachment rate] we used to split it. Return/exchange rate has stayed the same [we thought it might increase because opted-in customers felt obligated to get something out of their $1.98].  Overall, we’ve saved a couple hundred thousand dollars already [and scaling]  which is a game-changer for us. The product is getting better by the day - way better than it was when we joined - and the team is the best in the space. Keep your 👀 peeled for Redo.

Our mantra for 2024 is get more and better for less. One of the first categories we looked at was our tech stack (we had let lots of bloat creep in and still probably have more). In total, we’ve slashed 24% in SaaS fees YTD and I feel like we’ve got a pretty strong group remaining. Here is what it looks like today with an emoji describing our experience so far with it. Website: Shopify ❤️ Duh. Email/SMS: Attentive 👍 Sad to leave Klaviyo and Postscript. Wanted a CSM, compliance and deliverability team, and consolidation all for less. Returns/Exchanges: Redo 🔥💰 Single-handedly increased gross margin by 1.5-2.0%. Shipping Protection: Redo 💵 Increased attachment rate by 282% on top of now 100% “rev share”. CX: Gorgias 🐐 Nothing else to say. Order Tracking: Wonderment 👍 Does the job, some overlap with other partners. Customer Accounts: Status 🍲 I like what they’re cooking (better than Shopify accounts). Analytics: Northbeam 👍 Still trying to get full use out of it. Influencers: Aspire 🆗 Does the job, don’t know if better or worse than GRIN. Personalization: Rebuy Engine 😅 Proud early customer and amazing what they’ve built, but very expensive. Potentially looking at AfterSell by Rokt. Shipping Testing: PrettyDamnQuick 🙂 Awesome team, some overlap with other products. Shipping revenue up 19% YoY. Chargebacks: Chargeflow 👌Automate and only pay when they win. Count me in. Tax: Avalara 🫤 Debating switching to Numeral. Direct Mail: PostPilot 🚀 I’m a believer. Want to become a case study for them. Reviews/Post-Purchase Survey: Okendo 🫤 Expensive, but best on-site experience for reviews, imo. Hoping to consolidate with someone in this list. Finance: Finaloop ❓Still too early, but great customer support. Testing: Dynamic Yield by Mastercard 😬 The most expensive thing here^ good team, but probably going to churn to Shoplift. Also, looking at Intelligems. Considering (please share opinions if you’ve got experience with this group): Digital Wallet/Loyalty: Toki - Loyalty, Memberships, Cashback, Rise.ai, Loot, Inveterate, Inc. Digital wallet seems like it could be a game changer for commerce. 💳 Surveys: Seems like a commodity at this point, but love the Bestie AI guys. 🤷♂️ Analytics: Is Triple Whale actually better? 🐳BeProfit is interesting for daily reports but seems like that data is housed in other platforms? List Growth: Retention.com. We were a customer before but were scared off about deliverability. Wanting to come back. 🙈 Supply Chain: Luminous Love the team - does a simple operation like ours need it? Same for GoodDay Software [idolize the Chubbies guys!] 🤷 Testing: Intelligems and ShopLift 🤞 (see above)

The two most slept on marketers in e-commerce: Brian Nielson - I’ve never seen creative and data married the way that Brian approaches marketing. Legitimately only a wizard or unicorn could do what he does. Pre-Northbeam, Triple Whale… he built his own daily spend tracker and model that was the most sophisticated thing I’ve ever seen. The most common question he’ll ask is why. “Why did you spend $25k on that shoot? What was its purpose? Why did you focus on that particular feature?” Or “Why are you wanting to spend more on Meta?” The hard questions that lead to massive results. I don’t know Tate Stock, but I do know Brian and it feels like there was only going to be success with/for/at Chirp with Brian at the wheel. George Davis - I don’t know if anyone sees the big picture as well as George. With that said, he somehow is able to compose this ideal big picture made up of tons of tiny little pieces and parts and then execute. That’s special. Not to discredit all of the hard work and effort he has put into learning his craft, but in sports or art, some people just come across as pure talent [never been used to describe me, so I wouldn’t know]. That’s how George feels with marketing. Cozy Earth will be worth 10 figures in large part thanks to George.

The best event we’ve participated in, the worst basketball we’ve played. The jerseys including our new fabrics were decent. I should have known that Corso was going to bring the heat with their event at the Delta Center. Three of the best people I know work there. (Logan Cottle, Emerson Hammer, Russell Steed)

There’s a time and a place for everything. Since we launched &Collar in 2017, we have used almost every financing option under the sun outside of a proper fundraising round. Here is what we did in chronological order with my takes on each one along with our cost (with the hopes it's helpful to someone! I tried my best, but am admittedly a novice with finances, so please excuse any mistakes). Shopify Capital: Shopify Capital was the easiest capital in the sense you just constantly get underwritten based on sales. (Shoutout Shomas Mah). We did a $50k advance to begin and grew up to a $1M advance. Enabled much of our early growth.  Pros: Easy, no real underwriting, enabled early and fast growth. Can accept the offer at any time within your Shopify portal. Cons: Expensive at high growth. The hamster wheel Jeremy Horowitz' has talked about.  Cost (for us at our growth): 30%+ (APR equivalent. Don't attack me, not a finance guy!)   To Clearco/PayPal: We used them before at similar time frames as Wayflyer and Shopify. We paid higher rates for these two. Pros: Easy, stacked on top of each other (risky, I know). Cons: Expensive at high growth. The hamster wheel. No relationship with anyone there. Cost: 35%+ To Wayflyer: I am all about Wayflyer. We had their founding members participate in that underwriting call (shoutout and “thanks a mill” as well to Anna Conlon). Of all the options we have used, particularly of MCAs, they seem to “get” e-commerce the most (just see their amazing case studies/track record). Clearly it works and they have the most amazing case study in $0-100M+ with True Classic! Pros: The best team out there, fast, flexible, willing to experiment and talk with you about your needs. Cons: Expensive at high growth. Cost: 30%+ To Ampla: When looking to transition away from MCAs, Judah Blumenthal reached out to us and we are so grateful he did. We moved from 30%+ annualized rates [at our growth] to 17%. They grew with us and took a bet on us when we needed them to. Also, helped slash our paid interest by half last year! Planning on growing with them to infinity and beyond. Pros: Gave us our largest line, easy to hop on a phone call/strategize the year with, much lower interest rates, expanding product suite, world-class team (Kunal Kohli, Anthony Santomo) Cons: Still expensive compared to traditional banking/Libor, sometimes have to fight to maintain or grow line. Cost: 17% Grateful for and to each of these partners for being with us along this journey at different legs.