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DTC Podcast
Ep 570: Inside the Dragon's Den with Santevia and How they 2Xed Amazon Revenue by Taking Back Control
00:39:34
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- [00:00]
A
Brand is the most important thing you really have to build brand. So how do you spend profitably on Meta? It's creative diversity. It's less about creating an insane campaign structure, it's more about aggregation into a single campaign or ad set with a ton of creative in there. We really have a well defined creative strategy now that is turned on in a big way. So it's not just diverse, but there's scale there too. If you have a meta rep, ask for your creative diversity report. It shows you what Meta's algorithm thinks is different and what it thinks is the same. And that was really eye opening.
- [00:47]
B
Before we dive in, let's take a minute to talk about what happened this bfcm because the numbers were massive and they reveal a lot about the state of E commerce performance right now. Across the Triple Whale platform, brands process more than 26 million orders and over $2.9 billion in revenue in just one weekend. Brands also spent more than $600 million across the major ad platforms. And Triple Whale brands alone represented nearly 20% of all Shopify sales during BFCM, which is pretty incredible when you consider the scale. But here's the part that actually matters. The brands that performed best weren't reacting blindly. They had a clear understanding of what was driving results, which channels were truly profitable, how ROAS was trending throughout the weekend, how AOV shifted as promotions rolled out, and where they had the strongest opportunities to keep momentum high. That level of clarity comes from having all your data in one place, updating in real time. Triple Whale is the agent powered intelligence platform trusted by more than 50,000 brands like True, Classic Way and Olipop. It unifies data across every channel and tool, giving you a single source of truth and actionable AI insights so you can make confident decisions faster. If you want that level of visibility heading into 2026, you can create a free account and see the platform for yourself. Visit triplewhale.com dtc that's T R I P L E W h a l e.com dtc Matthew welcome back to the D2C podcast.
- [02:16]
C
One of my personal favorite brands. Santa Villa. We did. We did a podcast. We did a hot seat live on.
- [02:21]
B
Our Las Vegas stage.
- [02:23]
C
I have your glass system of water dispenser on my counter and I absolutely love it. Happy to have you back to catch up on the Santa Villa journey. How you doing?
- [02:34]
A
Thanks so much for having me. Yeah, yeah, it's been, it's been great. Wild Black Friday Cyber Monday just kind of coming out of that. We're still packing all the orders. Yeah. Thanks so much for having me. I'm excited to be here and glad you're getting to drink the Santevia water, Eric, because, you know, you're looking hydrated, you're looking handsome.
- [02:53]
C
Thank you.
- [02:53]
A
Thank you.
- [02:54]
C
Wow. Don't often start with great compliments like that, but I wanted to start with something that I don't. A story that I don't hear of a lot. Santa Villa is more or less a family business with maybe it was earlier this year or maybe late 2024, you actually bought the business from your parents. Can you talk a little bit about that process?
- [03:11]
A
Yeah. So my parents actually started the business in 2008, and I grew up around it. Me and my two sisters did. And, you know, we saw them build kind of something from nothing. They, they made the very first product, something called the Gravity Water System. Got it into over 500 retail stores Canada wide. And then I got into the business in 2018 and I obviously knew a bunch about it because, you know, I'd been working summers at Santevia forever. And, yeah, like, I could see that the growth in retail was sort of flattening out. You know, we weren't hitting huge numbers year on year, and I got a little bit more involved and saw that there was a massive opportunity online, specifically on Amazon, on D2C. So me and my, my business partner Michael, another friend of mine, who had joined the business around the same time, we thought, hey, you know what, Like, I think we can, we can buy this. Provide an exit pat for my parents who are now happily retired. You know, they just got back from New Zealand, went on like a 20 day bike trip with some helicopter rides. They were sending me some, like, some crazy videos of them crossing rivers in a helicopter. Insane. And yeah, we, we bought the business and have really been scaling through DTC on Amazon. And most recently, we're on Dragon's Den too.
- [04:32]
C
Yeah, I'm excited to dive into that. What were some of the first changes, I guess, that you made after kind of being fully in char? I know you were running the marketing for a long time, even when they.
- [04:41]
B
Were still in the picture, but what.
- [04:42]
C
Are there any big changes that you've made kind of since taking it over?
- [04:45]
A
Yeah, the biggest thing that, that I wanted to do was really pull back on how many resources we were putting into retail just because I, I saw it like, you know, there's obviously an, an opportunity to grow in retail, but I thought that the best use of our cash, like the, the highest incremental value of Every dollar was through D2C. So specifically turning on meta advertising in a big way, really owning Amazon was huge. We used to be a vendor central business, which is kind of like for everyone that knows there's seller central on Amazon and there's vendor central, vendor central. It's almost like it's a relationship that you would have with a store. Amazon is buying the inventory, they own it, they set prices, it's very much hands off. And for certain types of businesses that are not very E Com forward and don't really want to mess too much with Amazon, that's a great option. However, for us, like we wanted to control pricing, wanted to run our own advertising, we really wanted to, you know, change those PDPs and optimize them. So that was the first change we made is the transition from vendor central to seller central to really take back Amazon. And a part of that was even looking at who was selling Santa V on Amazon. We had some retailers who kind of opportunistically were, you know, selling on Amazon for probably very, very little margin. And we had been selling through a distribut to a sales rep, to a retailer who's then selling to Amazon, who's then selling to the end customer. And you know, there's so many levels in there and you know, maybe they weren't even really caring about the brand so much. So we took that back and we started to unwind that spaghetti's spaghetti mess. And that took a long time. That took a couple, a couple years actually, like from when we first had the idea to when every other seller was, was off and we had fully transitioned from vendor central to seller central. It was like almost like a 16, 17 month process of which for a lot of it we had reduced sales because of that. Because as you're transitioning from vendor, they have a lot of inventory and they have to sell through that inventory. And then we're transitioning to seller central where we're essentially consigning inventory to Amazon. So that was a tough process because revenue dipped during that. And so you're like, I was really second guessing my decision to move from vendor to seller because, you know, I'm taking a more leadership role. And one of the first things that I'm doing is like actually making revenue go down. So I kept really thinking to myself, like, oh my gosh, like, am I, do I know what I'm doing? You know, I had imposter syndrome, like, is this a good idea? But I kept going back to the original plan that we had drawn up and kept reminding myself, no, this makes sense. I have to trust the process. We scaled Amazon literally 2x through working with pilot House, so stoked about that relationship and we're like really off to the races on Amazon. So that was a big piece. DTC was a whole other picture, you know, like meta advertising, getting the creative going on, all that fun stuff too.
- [07:48]
C
Your experience with Amazon sounds a little like detox.
- [07:51]
A
Yeah, yeah, definitely. You know, we had to stop, stop drinking the vendor central Kool Aid. So really from, from before seller Central to after 2x. And you know what, it's way more scalable because we can actually decide how much advertising dollars we want. And it's conducive to building a brand, which for anybody in the DTC space, you know, brand is the most important thing. You really have to build brand. And so guarding your pricing, your map pricing and ensuring that Amazon's not competing with your direct to consumer store, your direct consumer store is not competing with your retailers. You have to really be careful about that. And the big part of that of course, is pricing. And if any partner doesn't respect your pricing, then probably they're not a very good partner to, to scale with over time.
- [08:38]
C
Okay, you were leading into the big meta shakeup and I love this story because I hear it echoed a lot of my podcast guests coming in talking about this. We're just on the heels of a huge Black Friday Cyber Monday. So tell me a little bit about your meta creative overhaul and how that set you up for this year's big holiday season.
- [08:57]
A
Yeah, so three years ago we didn't really do meta in a big way, which is crazy to think about. So like when we were like everybody here, so you have to make creative, you have to make content. And so when we were thinking three years ago, like, oh, let's create a piece of content, we're like, okay, well let's make maybe like a long form video and publish it in the next two weeks, you know, and now it's like, hey, no, we're going to make like 60 pieces of creative and they're going to get published by Friday, you know, and they're going to be creatively diverse and we're going to use agency support and we're going to make some of them in house and we're going to use content creators and, and really focusing on Personas and you know, all over the place. So we really have a well defined creative strategy now that is turned on and in a big way. So it's not just diverse, but there's scale there too. Why is that important nowadays? Well, it's because Meta is content hungry and the king is spend, spend and roas, really. Right. Like, how much can you get spend on Facebook that is profitable? That takes a long time because you really have to look at a few different things. The first thing that we looked at was our margins. Some brands aren't like this. I know, like, you know, every SaaS story ever is like, oh, you know, they're scaling to the moon unprofitably and they're venture backed, whatever. We're not venture backed. We're bootstrapped. We don't have external money. So every single product that we sell has to be profitable. That's the first thing. So looking at the margin of our product and knowing specifically how much we can spend on Facebook, on Meta, to ensure that, that we don't overspend and essentially ship a product to a customer at a loss. So that was the first thing defining the math, the marginal unit economics of each sale. And that's cogs, the cost of goods sold. That is also how much does it cost to ship to someone that is, you know, the packaging cost, like, how much is it, the payment processor fees, everything all in. And then knowing, okay, well, all right, maybe for this product we can spend like $80 to acquire a customer. So how do we do that? Well, you need to ensure that you have a great campaign set up. You need to make sure that you have enough creative. And maybe you do have a great roas last week, but you were only able to spend like $5,000. Well, that's not scalable. I need to put in, I want to spend $100,000 a week, $150,000 a week. And the way to do that is a lot of creative and really setting out those guardrails, both with your digital team and your finance team, to ensure that everything's working together. Like one of the, like, operational hurdles that we run into and recently, you know, luckily avoided. But we're watching really closely after huge mistakes in the past is you'll be, it'll be like Thursday before Black Friday and then your credit card is maxed. It's like, oh, no. Right. So really thinking about all of the operational pieces that go alongside just, just launching ads on, on Meta, I want.
- [12:06]
C
To dive into the, the creative strategy piece. I just had a friend reach out to me to ask if I knew any creative strategists. Everyone's talking about hiring creative strategists and building that into the plan. Not just Spamming content, but doing it really strategically, but just to dig it. Was there anything you learned on the cogs side of things? I'm sure you learned a ton. But like when it came to actually the products, you lead with the products that you have the most, you know, focus on in your ads.
- [12:30]
B
What, what, what were some of the.
- [12:32]
C
Main learnings when you really dug margin of your, of your products?
- [12:37]
A
Sure, yeah. On the acquisition side, we have a product that's really hot. It's a Santevia bath filter. It's a 25 product. And you know, we would spend super hard on that until we realized that actually, you know what, it's hard for us to really raise a ton of brand awareness and acquire a customer profitably on a $25 purchase. In fact, it's almost impossible. So when you're thinking about building brand awareness and running meta campaigns at scale, or any campaign at scale, ensuring that your flagship or hero product is something that provides you a lot of advertising room, that's what we learned. So that's why we launched the Glass Water system. The Glass Water system is a $320 product, the one that you have. It's a fantastic product and we did a lot of product research on that and R and D to make a product that isn't only fantastic and people want, but is a little bit of a higher A so that we could spend on meta. So looking at cogs is super important because it, you know, you can have phenomenal unit margins but the gross profit on the sale is really small. And so it's hard to compete on Meta because you know, like you're never going to get CPMs that are like 10 cents. It just doesn't happen. Like a CPM is going to be $10. So no matter if your product is $20 or $200, the CPMs are still going to be somewhere around that. Like, you know, if you're lucky you're sub $10. But it could be as high as $20 depending on what field or, you know, niche you're in. So I think that's really important is making sure that it's not all margin. It's also gross profit.
- [14:19]
C
It's such a striking looking product, the Glass system too. Whereas like I'm sure the shower thing, the shower piece is going to be really popular. But what you, you've got that aov, you've got this really striking looking glass product and then you upsel retention on the other products because a lot of people don't even a lot of people know they should be drinking better water, but it's like this whole other thing that people are just learning that they should be showering in better water, probably. So it's such a good task to maybe allow your retention to do that after you acquire the customer on this higher AOB product.
- [14:48]
A
Totally. Yeah. No, I mean, like, so this was the bath filter. Okay. The bath filter was the bath filter we actually just launched yesterday, our shower filter, which I'm stoked about. The shower filter 150. It's refillable. The first and only refillable shower filter that's on the market. And you're right. Actually, you know what? You'll actually inhale just as much chlorine from a shower every day as you will from drinking eight glasses of water. I don't think most people know that. So, like, if you're trying to reduce how much chlorine exposure you have, sh. The shower is a huge vector for chlorine exposure. Um, so that's a huge one. Dry, dry hair. I know ladies who might be dying their hair. Chlorine really fades that color out a lot. So that's a big sales.
- [15:30]
C
Don't have that problem.
- [15:31]
A
Yeah.
- [15:32]
C
But I want to dig in on your avatars a little bit because I think this, this was kind of an extension of the conversation we had at the hot seat in Las Vegas where I think we were looking at your website back then and we were sort of like, you know, talking to you a lot about selling, you know, what the product actually does versus all the technology that kind of goes into the product. Because people want a 2 inch drill hole, they don't want a 2 inch drill bit kind of idea. And, and you really have built that into your whole creative strategy with. With who you're advertising to and why Talk about that process. Did. Knowing you had to do it and then you actually hired a creative strategist, is that right?
- [16:05]
A
We did, yeah. Yeah. So, okay, you know your brand, you have your product, it has a good margin, high gross profit. Okay. So you know that you can spend profitably on it. So how do you spend profitably on Meta? Well, it's. It's creative diversity. That's. Andromeda is the new engine that that Meta is. Is powered by. And Andromeda is very much. It's. It's less about creating an insane campaign structure and it's more about aggregation into a single campaign or ad set with a ton of creative in there. So what type of creative do you put in there? Is the real question. And what are the KPIs or metrics that you want to give your team. So for us, the KPIs that we give our team is we want spend. We want these campaigns to spend. That's the first and foremost thing they have to spend within KPI. So one of those KPIs is to ensure that, you know, we have a ROAS, a return on ad spend or an amer so you can't spend unprofitably. Essentially, we set those guardrails up. Because these guardrails are set up, you need to be able to entice people to purchase your product. And how do you do that? Well, they're real customer journeys. And that's what I always want to pull this back to. It's not buttons on Meta. It's not just like funky colors. It's the communication of the value of your brand. So how do you communicate the value of your brand? Well, you need to define your customer journey and you need to be able to explain that through a set of creative. So for us, for Santevia, we need creative that's very high funnel that says, hey, you know what, you might have a health issue. Are you thinking about the most foundational piece of your health, which is what you drink? So we'll have a bunch of creative that's like that. And to make that creative diverse, we're going to have an old person saying that message, a young person saying that message, a doctor saying that message, you know, an athlete saying that message. And then once they know that, hey, you know what, I am interested in my health and water is a vector, then maybe we're going to talk about product features. So we're going to say, hey, Eric, the glass water system, it's made of glass, it has a bamboo lidden stand, it's super premium. It's going to look nice on your countertop. Now I'm going to say that through a couple different ways as well. Through the doctor's going to say that, you know, the young influencer is going to say that, the athlete's going to say that.
- [18:22]
C
And you might see an ad of Eric saying that one day because I submitted an actual ugc.
- [18:28]
A
So yeah, fun fact for the audience. Eric sent us a sick piece of ugc. I wasn't expecting that. I thought you were just going to send us a photo. But the video was awesome and it's in queue to be to be launched. Didn't even need any extra support. It's just like an awesome piece of creative. And then bottom of funnel right like, okay, well, now what do people want to hear? Hey, it's free shipping. It's got a lifetime warranty. Again, creative diversity. Right, Right. So we're really thinking about that stack and it's the marketing funnel, brand awareness consideration, and of course, conversion, and then creative diversity. All different types of people. So that's great for a single funnel. However, there's all these different ways into the brand. This was just our general health funnel, but we have different Personas. So we'll have about like, you know, five to 10 different active Personas, depending on the campaign that we're running. So an example of that is, like, we'll have one Persona that is acid reflux Adam. Acid reflux Adam. He is really interested in solving his acid reflux or GERD gastroesophageal reflux disease. Right. He's. He's in pain and he wants some relief from that pain. So again, we'll go from brand awareness. Hey, you know, acid reflux Adam, guess what? Drinking alkaline water is really good for reducing the symptoms of acid reflux. Then go down into consideration. Then go down into that conversion. Right. So it's interesting. We were just speaking with our Meta rep, and she produced this report, and the report's called if you have a meta rep, I do recommend you go and speak to them and ask for your creative diversity report. And what that report does is it shows you what Meta's algorithm thinks is different and what it thinks is the same. And that was really eye opening because for you to get spend for Meta to show your ad to people, it wants to know that it can try different things, different ways in. So if you make three videos that are all using the same influencer, Meta will actually say that those are not creatively diverse, likely. Right. And it will only show one of those ads. And if that one ad doesn't work, it won't even show the other two ads. If that ad does work, then it'll probably show the other two. Right. So that's really interesting because what we found is that it's much broader than that. We had different CGC creators speaking the same message with the same framing. So they're like standing in front of our glass water system saying, hey, Santa Via adds minerals, it filters contaminants, and it tastes great. And Meta said, hey, these are all the same piece of creative. Well, that sucks for us because, you know, if Meta doesn't feel like there's enough opportunity to spend on those creatives, we personally have spent hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of dollars with these CGC creators sending the product, writing up contracts, our people's time to produce these pieces of creative and meta will never spend on them because it's not creatively diverse. So you really have to think about Persona based advertising and ensuring that those Personas are wildly different. Different? Yeah.
- [21:28]
C
Or the setting of them. Like if it's the same influencer and they go to a different setting, like if they're talking about a different thing in a different setting, do you think Meta will, will see them as separate or is it really like influencer specific?
- [21:40]
A
Yes, I think if, if you are in a different setting and you deliver the message differently. Yeah, it's going to deliver it. So like, you know, if you have the same influencer on a hike saying the message and then that same influencer in a kitchen and she's saying the message, that's, that's probably creatively diverse. I don't think anybody really understands the algorithm. So I definitely have to try test. But I mean I would run that for sure. I'd run that I think just because.
- [22:06]
C
I've had so many. Like just this text this morning, Nick Sharma was on the other day and he was just talking about the creative strategist is like the most important position in the ad stack in, in 2025 and beyond. So with this whole process that you've developed, did you hire someone to come in and build this with you, where you worked with them? Talk about the process of finding a good creative strategist, hiring them, and their actual role in overseeing this process.
- [22:31]
A
So when we were going to hire a creative strategist, we really wanted to find someone with experience, that was a big thing, who understood the marketing funnel. This process was developed before they were onboarded, actually. So I think if, you know, if you need help developing this, I would go to an agency, like I would go to Pilot House and say, hey, let's, let's develop this. Co develop this. Tell them kind of directional, show them this podcast, you know, say I want that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, you'll get, you'll get them there, right? So that's a, that would be the first right step. The creative strategist role for us is really about briefing and ensuring that we're adhering to this plan and the plan of attack. Because the briefing is the most important step. Like if we're briefing in the same ad over and over and the person whoever likes, like maybe it's not a trained creative strategist, it's just some, you know, a marketing coordinator who is just kind of learning. And they're briefing in the same ad and they don't realize it. Or maybe they're briefing in what they would want to see, which is something I find a lot of junior marketers do, is they, you know, they were advertising to themselves, not realizing that, hey, you know what? You're not the customer. You really need to put yourself into the mind of whatever Persona you're advertising to. That's super important because that brief kicks off so much work. That brief is like literally the piece that kicks off the contracts team to go and get a contract with an influencer, that influencer to go spend a bunch of time creating a piece of content. We're sending them a product, we're paying them. That goes to the digital team, who's then running that ad. All of this so that we can find out like maybe three weeks or a month later that that ad didn't perform well. Why didn't it perform well? The brief, all the way, four weeks ago was flawed. So the brief is everything, I think. And, you know, it's hook, it's offer, it's setting, it's Persona, the demographic. So making sure that that's nailed doesn't guarantee success, but it definitely increases your chance huge.
- [24:31]
C
That's awesome. That's exactly what I wanted to chat about. I want to get into Dragons Den, your experience there, because it sounded fantastic. But just give me a quick brief on how Black Friday cyber money was for you guys.
- [24:42]
A
Our biggest BFCM ever, which is awesome. We crushed targets. We were about nice 30, 38 above target, which is awesome. And those were on some really big, lofty targets. So I couldn't be more impressed with the performance. The Santa Via team, like, absolutely crushed it. Stoked about that. I think, like, we had definitely some strong wins that are back with the Dragons Denver episode that came out. And it was perfect timing because it dropped on November 13th. So we literally had like kind of two weeks preload into Black Friday. And I think, you know, I was a little bit nervous about Black Friday this year just because with everything that's happening with tariffs and the economy, you know, consumer sentiment's pretty low. But it seems like we pulled through like BFCM right across the board. Seems like it did pretty well for every. For everyone is it's bigger year on year, which is great.
- [25:36]
C
Those.
- [25:36]
B
Those prepared for it.
- [25:38]
C
I think they're like looking in the pilothouse channels and stuff. There were some clients that just were, for whatever reasons internally, just not in it to win it as much this year. For their own reasons. But I think everyone who was, like, prepared to win did really well. And you're. You're just also on the. There are all the sentiments you mentioned, but there's also this, like, crest of awareness that people have about, you know, the quality of their water, for instance. Right. And I think anytime you're dealing with. With broad trends in the economy, there's positive trends that are helping products like yours especially. And so many of the. Of the products in this space are like a rethought version of something people have done for years. So there's always that progressive trend that's combating, you know, other things in the economy for the right products, for sure.
- [26:19]
A
I mean, like, if you're in. In a. An industry or you're a brand that's in health and wellness, health and wellness is trending upwards, you know, and I think that continues for literally decades. Who's. I mean, who's not interested in living. Living long, living. I think everybody is. So I think that's a huge trend. I'd be super scared if I were, like, you know, in some super niche brand that, like, you know, you're just. Yeah. Is shrinking year on year. Has smokes.
- [26:45]
C
I'm selling cigarettes.
- [26:46]
A
You like selling cigarettes? Yeah.
- [26:47]
C
In a vape school. Yeah. You don't even alcohol.
- [26:50]
A
I feel less and less alcohol. Right. Like, I feel like it's a bad spot to be in. Doesn't mean that you can't crush it in an industry that's drinking, like, leg. I think you can. Even in an economy that's not doing super well. I always tell our team, like, hey, you know what? We're a salmon in a river. The river might flow a little bit faster, but we're a strong salmon. Like, we can still get up river. That's what it's all about. It definitely makes it harder, for sure, but it's not impossible.
- [27:16]
C
A beautiful west coast metaphor. I. I absolutely love it.
- [27:18]
A
Yeah.
- [27:19]
B
Okay.
- [27:19]
C
But talk to me more about Dragon's Den. So you guys have been kind of court. I feel like courting Dragon's Den for a while. You've had opportunities earlier on. Talk about how it came about and what it was like.
- [27:28]
A
Take. Yeah. Yeah. So Michael and I, we pitched last year and we didn't get it. And we were super bummed about that. We went and did a pitch. Dragon's Den. Obviously, you know, everybody knows Dragon's Den. In Canada, it's equivalent to Shark Tank in the US what they do is they have these auditions right across the country. So they'll have one like in Toronto, like on the east coast, in the Maritimes, in Calgary, and they have one in Vancouver. So we went to the to do our audition in Vancouver and I thought we crushed it. You know, I came out of it feeling really good and we didn't get a call back. And classic. They were like, you know, if you don't get a call back, don't contact us. This is like, we call you situation. So just crickets. And we were super bummed. And so, you know, I sent an email to them just asking like, hey, like, I thought we did really well. Like, can you give us some feedback? Nothing. So whatever. We left it. I kind of thought maybe we were a little bit too big for Dragons Den because there's a lot of small, kind of really scrappy startup businesses on there and we've been around for a little bit. And so anyways, next year, like this, this year, I get a call on my phone. I like all the spam callers. I almost never pick up an unknown number. I picked it up, it's Molly, who's the senior producer for Dragons Den, and she's like, hey, I really liked your audition last year. I want you guys to come down and do it again. And I was like, oh, no way, that's crazy. So I asked her, I was like, why didn't we get it last year? What can we do this year to make sure that it's a success? And she's like, okay, I'm going to level with you. Water filtration is a bit boring. So we want you to make it fun. Like cbc, we're making a TV show. The investors that are on the show, like, they are there for deals. But we, as the TV show, as the production company, like, we are, we want views. So we, we basically went to this audition a second time with our lab coats with like a science experiment prepped. And yeah, we got it. So then we actually went to the show and we filmed, you know, a few months ago and it aired November 13, and it was super fun, to be honest. I've watched Dragons in my entire life and it couldn't have gone better, honestly. Like, we're season 20, episode eight. We're the very last spot. So if you want to go check it out, you can, can, you can watch it on cbc, jam it, like, literally read like an advertisement, which was awesome. Right before Black Friday.
- [29:54]
C
And what was its impact? How do you quantify its impact?
- [29:57]
A
So we have had, ever since Dragon's Den, our sales have doubled just Baseline sales double every single day, which is huge. And I think the reason for that is just the brand awareness and also the endorsement, because so on the show, if you go and watch it, Michelle Romanoff, she's like, like, you know, one of the Dragons that's been on their longest. I think everybody knows her. She literally. We. We walked out onto the stage. We were super nervous. We did our, like, kind of spiel about, like, hey, you know, we're Santa Villa. We're asking for this much money for this much percent of the company. And Michelle stops us and she says, I own that one. I did all the research and I decided that it was the best one. She literally said that verbatim, and I was, like, floored. It's like, oh, my gosh. Like, please clip that. Like, that is a meta ad. Let's go. So that was just phenomenal. Honestly, I was so stoked that she said that. That she had it. Arlene, she, like, literally double confirmed with Michelle. Are you sure? Like, you have that one? She's like, yeah, for sure. Like, I. I own that. It's in my kitchen right now. So, yeah, really happy about that. A big takeaway or learning that I had from this is endorsements, because we actually haven't done endorsements before. Like, we haven't gone and approach a really large influencer and. And had them endorse our product. And we for sure will be searching for the right endorsement in 2026. We had people who knew us and never pulled the trigger on Santevia, just because I think they didn't have that belief in the brand. But then when they heard Dragons had our product and that they saw that we were on the cbc, they were like, this is the real deal. We'll try it. It. So I think that's a huge unlock for us and is something that we're going to pursue.
- [31:41]
B
That's so.
- [31:41]
C
Because you think of ads being able to reach everyone, right? You think of, you know, with your ads, you. You, oh, I've reached a million people or whatever. But it's like there's like a whole other level of awareness that can be generated from something like an institution like that. Like, it's on cbc. It's on the Dragon's Den, right? Like, the amount of authority that you generate from things like that, you can't really build with ads necessarily.
- [32:04]
A
No way. No way. I mean, like, an ad is. It's an ad, right? But people love to watch Dragon's Den. They love the entrepreneurial spirit. They know the cbc. They know Dragon's Den. So, yeah, I mean, like, if you can associate your brand with an even bigger, more powerful brand like that and you, you can get alignment, like it's a good episode, which ours was. Sometimes people go on Dragon's Den and they get wrecked and like, I feel super. Yeah, yeah. I mean, we all see that. You know, some entrepreneurs, they don't know their numbers or something and they crash and burn. But yeah, ours was just fantastic. So it's really been a boon for us and it's even at a really opportune time just because we have a couple new products that we're really redefining the brand with, the glass water system with our shower filter that's just dropped. So I think, yeah, it's an awesome time.
- [32:52]
B
And what did that deal look like.
- [32:53]
C
That you actually secured from the Dragons?
- [32:56]
A
Yeah, so we got a deal from three Dragons. We had Arlene, Manjeet and Michelle. So a three way deal and we had gone in asking for a million dollars and we sold a million for right around 8% of the business. So basically like a 12 and a half million dollar valuation right around there, there. We're on due diligence right now. So basically once you get the deal in Dragons Den, everybody asks like, is it scripted? What happened? So it's not scripted. We were in there for one hour and they cut the show down to about six or seven minutes. So they're superb business people. Right? Like, they are basically like asking us all these different questions about our margins, about our plans to use, like, what are we going to use the capital for? And, and they cut most of that out, to be honest, just because it's not really TV worthy and they, they grab some of the, the best, spiciest moments. And yeah, so now we're in due diligence and how that goes is we're talking to all three teams. They all have teams on their side, they're lawyers, they're accountants, just trying to find, you know, a deal that will work for them and will work for us.
- [34:09]
C
But you've already reaped so much benefit from it. From. Do you get the show to cut into your own clips as well and use it in ads?
- [34:17]
A
Yeah, we do. Yeah. So, like, you can't use the Dragon's Den logo, but you can definitely use clips for sure and just kind of like roll it into ads. I don't know, I'm half expecting us to get like a cease and desist. Like, we're definitely. I may be pushing the envelope a little bit, but I actually think this EBC likes it because we're raising so much awareness of, like, Dragon's Den in the show, too. It's funny how many people have said, oh, my gosh, I didn't know you were on Dragons Den. I was like, oh, sweet. Did you see the episode? And they're like, no, I didn't see the episode. I saw the clip on Facebook. And I was like, ok, so you saw our ad?
- [34:50]
C
Yeah.
- [34:50]
A
So, you know, we're definitely advertising Dragons Den just as much as we're advertising our own product.
- [34:55]
C
And you worked in a strategic spit take, was that. That was part of the plan?
- [35:00]
A
That was part of the plan. So the way that it goes is that we go out on stage and Michael says, hey, we're Santa Villa. We're selling so and so percent of our company for $1 million. And as soon as he said that, I had water in my mouth and I spat it at. And then he looked at me shocked, and all the Dragons looked at me shocked, and Manjit was like, oh, what did he say? The wrong number. And then we looked at each other and I was like, no, that was tap water. And then I go into the spiel about Santa Villa and how it's way better than tap water. So it was a little bit of a misdirection. And when we went to pitch the dragons, what I wanted to do is our goal was like, hey, I want to make the season premiere. I want to be on the trailer. And the way that we can do that is be really exciting. That's why we worked in that spit take. I think it worked really well, for sure. Yeah.
- [35:52]
C
And you got on the trailer, right?
- [35:53]
A
We were in the trailer, yeah.
- [35:54]
C
Extra promo. That's sweet. And then what do you. What did you tell them and what are your intentions for what you want to use that money for?
- [36:02]
A
So the intentions for the money are really expanding. It's like kind of a full circle because, like, you know, when we took over the business, we really turned down retail and went into dse. And the purpose of this money is to turn back on retail. So we want to pursue retail in a big way, both in the US as well as in the uk. So, yeah, we're basically going to a bunch of shows in the us, in the uk in the. In the coming year with the idea of getting and securing a few big retail partners. I like retail. I think it's like.
- [36:34]
C
And those dragons will be hugely helpful that you. That you got too. Right? They're like retail icons usually.
- [36:39]
A
Yeah, yeah. I mean, like, like all. Arlene, Manjeet and Michelle are all in like Costco in Canadian Tire. Yeah, I mean, they know everybody.
- [36:48]
C
So 2026 is the year of again, crazy growth, but. And reinvestment in retail. Anything else on your, on your to do list for 2026, the shower filter.
- [36:57]
A
Was a big one. So we've just launched this shower filter. It's refillable. So that's really the cool thing that we're doing right now is we're moving to some refillable products with the shower filter being the first of those. I think this is cool because, you know, we're a Vancouver based company. Anybody from, from Vancouver knows this already. But for everybody else, like, I think we're more environmentally focused. We really care about the environment. We live in probably one of the most beautiful places on planet Earth, and we're excited to preserve that. And so what we're trying to do with these refillable products is to reduce our, our environmental footprint. Print. And so every time you have a, you use your water filter, like your Brita water filter or a competing shower filter, you take this big fat cartridge full of media and you throw it in the garbage. So what we're doing is, hey, let's flip the script. Let's allow you to open that shower filter and refill the media. You're going to reuse that cartridge forever and the media you can put into your garbage. So that's basically reducing the impact of these products massively. So shower filter first. But you'll see some other really cool refillable products come out from us in 2026. So we're well on, on the way for R D for those and super excited just to do something that I think is awesome for the planet and doesn't compromise on water filtration at all.
- [38:18]
C
How often do we need, do I need to change my filter in my glass filtration system? I can ask directly to the Perot. Every two months.
- [38:24]
A
You should change it every two months.
- [38:25]
C
Every two months.
- [38:26]
A
Yeah, you should. You'll notice the change in taste because there's a mineral components. Right. We filter and then we add minerals. Minerals. After two months, you'll notice that we're not adding as many minerals and you'll start to taste the change.
- [38:37]
C
All right, I'm gonna go check that right now. Thank you for coming back on the DTC podcast. I can't wait. I'm gonna check back in with you in about six to eight months and hear about your retail glory. If you're in the audience and you are drinking tap water, you should spit it out directly, get a video of it, and go to santavia.com and get the glass water filtration system. You will never look back. It's been a great addition to my life. And people, every time they come to, people are just like, oh, my God, that's so cool. So keep up the good.
- [39:07]
A
It's definitely eye candy. It's kitchen eye candy.
- [39:09]
B
It is. All right.
- [39:10]
C
Thanks, brother.
- [39:11]
A
Thanks, Eric.
- [39:18]
B
Thanks so much for listening to today's episode.
- [39:20]
C
If you're not a subscriber to our.
- [39:22]
B
Newsletter, you can do that right now at directtoconsumeralloneword co. I'm Eric Dick, and this has been the DTC podcast. We'll see you next time.