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- [00:00]
A
The results were very clear. People wanted more from apparel. The fashion industry is clinging to things that don't service us in the way that we want to. You can never forget about brand. I'm in the business of building relationships, not about building transactions. If you end up falling in love with the product that we're selling, you like win win. That's awesome. If you walk away and you say, wow, I had a great experience in that store, that's also a win win for us. If the platform is creative led, we gotta obsess our creative and we gotta be test and we gotta be understanding. Not just well that worked and didn't but why? Why did that not work or why did that work?
- [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 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 perform 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 Clari only 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 Amy welcome to the DTC podcast on this beautiful Friday. How you feeling?
- [02:19]
A
Feeling great. Ready for the weekend holiday season, Lots.
- [02:23]
B
Of parties, Black Friday, Cyber Monday behind us. Yes, but let's, let's back up. Can you give me a little bit of your hero's journey with Wildfang?
- [02:32]
A
Yeah, absolutely. So I have been with wildfang for about 10 and a half years. We've been in brand for about 12 and a half. So good majority of our lifespan as a business. I joined our business actually as our store manager. We had one tiny, tiny little store. It actually was the front to our office at the time. And we saw just such an incredible response from our consumers about having a physical presence. Literally people changing flights to come and vacation into Portland, people making it so they had layovers here, like bringing their friends. And it became this hub for the community that was really interesting. And we started as a brand first, right? And so wildtime wanted to expand its retail presence. I got recruited actually by an old boss to come and join and be the store manager of the flagship that we were about to build. So I came in, built out that store, grew that store to insane success. Really, really profitable. If you know anything about physical retail and profitability is critical in that channel. But we were averaging between 30 and 35% profit margins. We wanted to grow our physical footprint. And so I did everything from mining where we wanted to be, what cities we wanted to be in and why, negotiating the leases, building out the store, designing the store, hiring the staff, like all the things. And it actually brought us to Covid. We obviously had closed our physical retail stores. Essentially. I was like, well, I don't really have a job anymore, guys. And so I was like, we have two choices to make. Either I'm out of a job, fine, totally get it. I ran our physical retail and it's not here no more. And we don't know what the history of it or where. Can you plug me that the business needs help? And at that time, we really needed support in finance and ops. And I was like, let me get my feet wet. Like, let's go. I have no finance background. I know operations because I know I know how to run a physical store. But. And had obviously a lot of overlap with our e commerce business throughout the years. I just dug in and I figured it out and I ended up turning that department around. We weren't closing books for three to four months. I got it to where we're closing books, and 10 to 15 days, I restructured our entire business model to prioritize efficiency. I found opportunity, and it actually continued to lead me into inserting myself into our e commerce business and being like, well, what's here? Like, how are we spending? I see us spending a lot in meta. What's happening there? How are we getting that roi? How can we be more productive? I started to understand a lot more about CAC and LTV and retention rates and. And it helped me actually build a financial model that our business started to adopt. I became our chief growth officer. And then flash forward, my CEO has a baby. I take over her functions that we're reporting to her, which at that time was finance and operations. And the business skyrocketed. And so my board was like, you need to be running more of the wider span of the business. And actually I went to my CEO and I said, you're not getting finance and ops back. I've really restructured our business to prioritize profitability, especially through an uncertain economic climate that we're having. And yeah. So that brings us today. So store manager to president and to and a half years. And it's been a wild journey, but.
- [05:37]
B
Really, really fun in under three minutes. That was one of the better hero's journey tellings I've had on the pod. But let's, let's back up to the, to the genesis and back up to, like, what Wildfang is and what need in the market you guys sort of have addressed. And, and we'll go from there.
- [05:52]
A
I love telling our brand story and, and how we got here. You know, Emma McElroy is our CEO and co founder, and she came up with the idea for Wildfang when she was out shopping one day and she was with our other co founder, Julia Parsley, and found herself in the men's department of every place they were going. They kind of started to have two kind of dialogues. One was about what they were searching for, right? So Julia was looking for an awesome blazer, Emma was looking for a cool graphic tee. And they had the conversation of, like, well, why do we keep having to go to the men's department to find this? Like, this is silly. Like, why aren't we being, we want to find these things and why can't we find them in the quote unquote, women's department? Right? And then, of course, when they find them in the men's department, the cuts are all wrong for them. Like, it doesn't fit, or the fabrics aren't right or the prints are what they wanted, so on and so forth, you know, and so that became a huge conversation of, like, are we the only people that feel this way? Like, do actually people want what I always put in air quotes, Menswear, but for women. Right. And then I think the other conversation came up of the psychological underlying norms that set behind that, which is, you know, Emma found a graphic tee with Kate Moss, like, half naked, flipping the bird, like, in the men's department, constantly find things that were provocative and sexy. And bold. And then you go to the women's department, it's like flowers and rainbows and unicorns and you're like, that's great, love that. But why can't we be more versatile than that? Right? And so Emma's background is in consumer insight. So she was like, let's go ask people, let's go figure it out. Like, do people, are we the only people that feel this way? Do more people want something more than what the fashion industry is offering them, particularly for women and non binary individuals? And the results were very clear. People, particularly again, women and non binary, wanted more from apparel. The fashion industry is clinging to things that don't service us in the way that we want to. Why do we get a blazer with fake pockets? Why do we get like, why do we get nothing with stretch? Why is our clothes, when you actually look at men's and women's clothing next to each other, men's clothing is significantly better made than like, I dare you to open your shirt and look at how it's made and I'll show you something that's from. I'm not going to name names of brands, but another women's apparel brand and they're going to be completely different. And so that became the foundation, but it became a heart. Right? We started as a brand like we were like, we're here to service something that is almost an act of rebellion, but in the most positive and bold way that we can do. And right out of the gate, 25,000 people signed up on our email list. And if you go, oh, you can go onto YouTube and watch our launch video, you would have no idea what we're going to sell you. We could have been a marketing agency, 100%. We told you nothing about what we were going to do. We just told you about who we are and what we cared about. And we were like, oh, okay, we got, we have got a business to run, right. And so we started actually assorting third party. So we, I would say more traditionally would buy from more men's focused brands. Ruka, Publish, Obey. We would buy different size runs for them, we would shoot them on women and non binary individuals. We would style them very differently and we'd put them onto the market and we saw a lot of success, so much success from that. And we did that for a while and then, you know, the business kicks in. Right. Which is hard to build a business off of third party margins. And also we're conforming to what's in the marketplace. Right. Like we're not actually holding true. We're holding true from a brand value perspective of how we're different and why the consumer needs us, but we're not actually delivering them something that they can't find somewhere, somewhere else. And so the same time, actually 2019, so tail end of 2019 is when we decided we were like, let's go vertical. Like, let's actually make our own product. And 2020 is when we did it. And while that might seem crazy, it actually was the best thing for us because everyone was canceling pos, everyone was pulling back from. From manufacturing, and it left this hole in the marketplace from factory's perspective, where we were like, well, hey, hold on. We actually want to make business with you. Let's go. And it allowed us the time where sales weren't, you know, the highest that they could have been. And it allowed us the time to, like, learn and kind of perfect and understand and build our team. Right? We had to bring in design and development and all the things. And yeah, it's been a wild journey, but, like, we found that the customer has stayed with us through that whole entire journey. And when we actually started giving them something that they were like, oh, I can't find this anywhere else. The results have reflected. Reflected that for us.
- [10:30]
B
Just wild. Why do you think women's clothes don't have real pockets? Is that big purse. Is that big purse industry so that you have to buy a purse, you can't have functional pockets?
- [10:39]
A
I mean, let's call a spade a spade. We live in a patriarchy. Like, this is a world built for men, and men actually are the majority of people that are making apparel for women. And it's why I struggle, actually, with so much of that, where I'm like you, and I don't actually don't fault men for that. A lot of times where I'm like, you actually just don't know what we want. You're. You're giving us something because it's cheap and easy and, like, whatever, and you're building a business. Like, I get it. Like, sure, totally. But it's. It's there to the big purse thing that you talked about. You don't give us pockets. So you're gonna sell us a purse, right? Like, here you get. You get more money out of us. And hey, I have lots of purses. I have lots of things that, you know, that don't have pockets too. But at the same time, why shouldn't we get that option? Why shouldn't we get something that actually, like, fits us and is comfortable and well made and has pockets and does what I need it to do. Like I put on my clothes in the morning to do two things. One, work with me how I'm gonna work that day. I need it to be comfortable that I can move in and I can, you know, it's breathable and. But I also want to look good and I want to also feel good about what I'm putting on my body. Both from a product perspective. It's soft, it's comfortable, it's not itchy, it fits me properly. But I also want to feel good about who I'm buying it from. And we have heard that time and time again from our customers and you hear it across the industry is people care about where they put their dollar for more than one reason. Right. They're like, I'm putting this in because I like the brand. They care about things that I care about. They give back to communities that I'm a part of or they, they care about sustainability because global warming is a thing. Right. Like all of those things are, are real and, and a part of what customers are looking for these days.
- [12:22]
B
So take me back to the, the retail days, but because I want to get, I want to dive into the verticalization of the business and the creation of the brand. But you were mentioning the 30% margins even just when you were at retail. Was that before you guys launched your own vertical lines?
- [12:34]
A
Sure was.
- [12:35]
B
And then what went into that? What do you, what do you, what do you credit as, as that really great margin in retail at the beginning? Was it the, I'm sure the die hard fandom when you guys just creating a space in the market that didn't really exist? I bet that was a part of it. But what else?
- [12:48]
A
I mean you can never forget about brand in an occasion. Right? Back in the early days, we had swings in our store. Like, I'm like, swings that you sit on and you swing. And we became, it was so interesting. We became the store with the swings. Like, and hey, I'll take it all day long. But it became a thing that wasn't just about coming into an environment and being sold to. That is the opposite of how I approach sales. I'm in the building. I'm in the business of building relationships, not about building transactions. And guess what? Building relationships actually does build transactions for a bit. From a business perspective, when you come into Wildfang with anybody on our team that's in the store, you're gonna get a, how you doing? Like, what's up with your Day. Like, oh my gosh, it looks like you just went to that restaurant. I love that restaurant. How did you like it? Like, oh, you don't live in Portland. Like, where are you from? Let's, let's build a relationship together because we care about you. And if you end up falling in love with the product that we're selling, you like, win, win. That's awesome. If you walk away and you say, wow, I had a great experience in that store, that's also a win win for us. And so making sure that your brand shows up in a really important way was critical to us. Like, we didn't want to just become another store and everyone told us not to go into physical retail. Mind you. Like, everyone was like, retail's dying, don't do it. It's exciting. Expensive. Like, it is, it's expensive and it's hard work. But when you can actually connect with a customer and have a two way conversation and build an identity beyond just a website that you're on, right? People remember that. And when we had the swings and people would come in, we had a carving wall. So we had a wall that you could take a knife to and you carved your name into it. Like, you're essentially vandalizing our store. And then you sit on the swings and you hang out and, you know, we'll give you a beer or a non alcoholic beverage. Like, we create an environment and a community that's fun to come to. You know, I'll tell you a small story. After the 2016 election, that was a tough day. The next day was tough for our community and for us. And we showed up and we said, did we get it wrong? Does the world actually not need a brand like ours? Because we felt we were the opposite of what had just been elected. Then all of a sudden we heard knock, knock, knock on our door of our store. And it's our customers and they come in and they're like, we didn't know where else to go. We just wanted to be with people that cared about things that we care about. And I don't know what to do. And that was the turning point for our business. It was the turning point of we're doing what we set out to do. We're doing it in building a place that people come to. I'm sorry, when have you ever gone to an apparel store and been like, I'm having a shitty day. And I didn't know where to go and I needed someone to talk to. Like, have you ever done that in your life? Like, it Is remarkable. Like, it was, it was insane. And it wasn't just one person. We had so many people show up to our stores and, and be like, I didn't know where to go. This is where I feel comfortable. This is where I feel safe. And I wanted to be with people that are like minded. And it was amazing. And our business skyrocketed from there. And again, we were still third. We were still primarily third party. We of course had our, you know, some button ups and graph tees. Like we were in the era we're very famous for our wild feminist tees. Right. And so those were a huge thing that came like, like skyrocketed for us in 2016, 2017 and beyond, which was amazing.
- [16:12]
B
It's like people needed it more, right? You were what, you were worrying if the world still needed it, but it's like the world needed it more in those four years. Probably in these four years, I imagine.
- [16:20]
A
Totally. Yeah, absolutely. And so, you know, back to your question, which is like, well, how are we building those, those net profit margins? It was about that. It was about like, how do we make sure we have the right staff? How do we make sure that that staff is excited and motivated and productive? Right. Like, of course, like sales are going to grow and help your overall margins. Right. And you have some fixed costs in there that can start to, you know, benefit with, with higher sales. But like when you're productive and you have a sales team that, you know, your store can have two of them, but they're doing the work of four. Like, wow. Like they're doing the work of salespeople in four because they're just that effective and they know how to run a store. Like, that was huge. Also, having the right space was really important. Like, cost per square foot is a real thing in physical retail. You have to make sure your space is the right match for what you're selling and how you're going to sell it. Getting scrappy. Like, we are a scrappy brand. We love to be scrappy. Like we physically build a lot of our own stuff and put it in the. You know what I mean? Like, we're not wasting money to just waste money. Like we're putting it into places that really matter to ensure that we are giving the best efficiency to our bottom line as we can.
- [17:32]
B
So when you decided to go vertical and create your own products, what were the, what were the first products that you made and what were the first ones that really broke through with your audience? Was it instantaneous?
- [17:41]
A
It wasn't instantaneous. Instantaneous. It was definitely a lot of learning and a lot of learning on both sides. One learning from that third party product, right? What, what was working there and why, like, not just being like, oh, let's. Of course we never want to make a carbon copy of anything because that's. Why would we do that? You're ripping off somebody else. But why did customers want that? And what could we be one step ahead of our customer to know that they might want the other piece is just try and test. Right? And so it meant us kind of building relationships. We would actually start with collabs. We would be like, hey, we would approach some of the third parties and be like, do you want to do an exclusive collab? Like, let's do something where it's just for us, but we have a little bit more control. But we're utilizing your supply chain and, you know, all of that. We don't have to work through that. And then it developed into, okay, can we white label with you? Which became interesting. And actually that was one of the first things that we did, which, which was our button up. Our button ups are our bread and butter today. They are the thing we sell the most units of. They're the thing that the customer comes back to for the most, the most often for. And we actually perfected that button up pretty early on in our business, which is kind of crazy. And I would say the majority of our button up business is based on one silhouette. Like, literally one silhouette does the hardest job for us, and we just turn it in new prints and new colorways and new fabrics all the time. And that's why it became so foundational. And so it was really interesting, really early on to see that. And I'll tell you back to the no pockets. We have solved what many people call chest gap in the world, which is if you have a chest, a lot of times what happens is when you wear a button up, you get this kind of gapping where you're like, you poke through. We have engineered and understood how to strategically place buttons and how to perfect the fit to eliminate that. And we have eliminated it. And we get that feedback all the time that, how do you do this? Like, how have you solved this? And so those kind of things really helped develop the DNA of our products. Right. And so you talk about, like, well, what styles did you get early on? And like, was it like, how have those kind of transcended and what, what picked up with the consumer? It was actually more value stuff. It was comfort, it was functionality, it was versatility. Like, I can wear this with a bunch of different things in my closet. Right. And classicness. We're not a fast fashion brand. We build product and we set out to build product when we went vertical. That would be long lasting but also stylistically work for a longer period of time. We're not trend based. Our customer does like to follow trends, but they're actually a little later to trends, which is kind of a benefit to us from a business perspective. But yeah, it was amazing to see the button up that transpired into. Well, how do we give them more of a head to toe suit? Let's find a great bottom. Let's do a suit. And we were also one of the early adopters in the way that it is now, of our coverall. We launched our coverall in 20. We actually, as a white label, we launched it in 2017 and then perfected it ourselves. Beyond that, when we went vertical and became the destination for those one piece dressing items, which was really, really fun.
- [20:43]
B
Which side are the buttons on? Because I know. On your buttons. Because I know, I know for some reason they're in. Men and women have different, different sides of buttons.
- [20:52]
A
You know the, the old story of how that is, it's if you're in a car, traditionally the men are the drivers. I'm a really good driver. And women are in the passenger seat. And if you looked at each other, you could look down each other's shirt. That's how you can kind of tell which side it's on.
- [21:10]
B
Well, always wondered what the reason was for that.
- [21:12]
A
We actually play with both. We actually try to mix and match those things because trying to dismantle some of those, like, old rules that the fashion industry clings to that actually don't serve us anymore. So we do both.
- [21:25]
B
It's so funny when you find a new little thing about the patriarchy that you never knew. That's like, that's why you do this. But you had launched E Commerce before you launched. You fully went vertical. But talk to me about the impact that building your own products made on your E Commerce business.
- [21:41]
A
It was so dramatic. To anyone that is thinking about starting or shifting your business to a vertical brand, really immerse yourself in what that means. We didn't and actually we learned a lot. Like, and there were things we were unprepared for. So, you know, there's the obvious of like, oh, I'm changing my supply chain and I might need different, like, resources. Right. I talked about we had to hire a designer and a pattern maker and all the Things. Right. For sure. That's kind of an obvious thing. The things that I think we really didn't fully expect is actually how it would change our marketing, our marketing channels, our cadence, our stories. That was really interesting. And it dramatically changed it. I mean we went from an average order value of 90 bucks, 8590 bucks before we went vertical. Our AOV now is close to $200. So we upped the caliber of products that we were selling. Like we had such a wide range before, which is why the AOV was lower. We had candles and pens to a coverall. That's still what it is today. 178 bucks. Right. And we would sell a lot of the mix of things. Right. And was a great entry point for people. We still have great entry points for things, but it changed actually like literally how we talked about the things that we were selling. One, you have to actually create the affinity with your brand. When we were marketing Ruka, you know, Ruka, you know what to expect from their brand. You know what to expect for their product. Easier for us to sell because we're like, well, we're just drafting off of the success that they have built. Now we're selling you wild thing. You're like, I don't know what wild thing is. How do I trust you? I don't know what your quality is, I don't know what your fit is. So actually it changed truly how we had to storytell. It changed how often we would would flow product. It would change what channels we had to talk to our customer in. Right. We really started to invest a lot more into our paid media and really trying to like capture that customer. It slightly changed the customer. Like our, our vision of who our customer is and who we're going after has never changed and never will. But how we were approaching them and how we were selling to them was different. And it also meant it opened up a new customer base for us that was really interesting. It changed our financials, it changed our cash flow. You know, you get great terms with, with third party brands, right. And like it's from delivery. They drop it on your doorstep and you get a bunch of time to sell that product. Well, factories aren't always the easiest to negotiate with. Right. In terms of they have to protect their business too. And so it changed our cash flow and, and when we were paying for that product and how, how do we speed up our supply chain so we don't have to like pay before we sell? Right. Like it, it changed everything. Like everything, everything.
- [24:27]
B
I think one of the Other things that we mentioned from the pre interview that was interesting is I think when you were, when you were selling in the beginning, you were selling maybe in some cases men's sizes to women. So you were buying different kind of size profiles. Talk to me about how your extended sizing has played into your, your approach.
- [24:44]
A
Oh my gosh. I mean, talk about something that the, the fashion industry doesn't service as well as it should and talk about something else people told us not to do. We love to get advice and we love to. Again, like I said, I put myself in rooms where people are smarter than me. The business has taught me that. And the business does that in its own regard too. And we seek advice a lot when we're doing new things. And we were like one, we've gotten a lot of feedback from our consumer after we went vertical of love your stuff. I love what you stand for. You're not servicing me and my size. And that is, was always something we took to heart because we pride ourselves on being an inclusive brand. And when you have a subset of consumers that are like, well, I can't buy from you and I want to, but I can't buy from you, and that sucks, you know, we made it a mission to ensure that we can do that to the best of our abilities. And we're a small business, right? But we prioritized those initiatives and so we, we launched into extended sizing. So basically up until I think 2022, we had brought up to an XL and again, rightfully so. I understand why customers were like, you're not servicing me. We weren't servicing the customer. And so we made it a point. In that time we were like, let's go to a 3X. We did the work. We did. We brought in tons of experts from an apparel perspective, pattern making design, because you can't just make, you can't just take a thing and then just make it bigger. You actually have to reconstruct an item because of how people hold weight like it's a real thing. And it was so interesting to learn as someone who doesn't have an apparel background and a design background, it was so interesting to learn and we care a lot about the fit of our product. And so we basically spent about a year and a half developing those sizes that also translated to numeric bottoms as well. And we launched it and it was instantly a success. So clearly we had been leaving a customer on the table. Right. We started to get such positive feedback. We also got negative feedback and we took it and we perfected it. We said, okay, ooh, we didn't hit this right or we didn't get this thing perfect. And this is the feedback that they're getting. And we infused it right back into our patterns and into our designs and came back out. And flash forward to today, we expand it again so we go up to a 4x. We also offer talls in a variety of products. Not all products, but in products that we have heard the customer really wants the most. We get a lot of feedback actually that we want petites in the business. We don't have it on the roadmap right now, but it's something that is always in our hindsight deck. And we're like, okay, can we prioritize this from our resources that we do have? Again, we're a small business, so we have to pick and choose, but we do hear that and we see that and we know that it's a need and we definitely want to be able to service that. And our extended sizing drives 25% of our business. Everyone told us it wouldn't drive more than five and everyone told us not to do it because they were like, it's such a small market. Yeah, it's a small market when nobody services an extended size consumer. And when you do service them, you're like, well, here's a sweatsuit. You're like, excuse me, how exclusionary can you be in the fact that everybody wants to like feel good, look good in what they're doing? Everybody has to wear something. You know what I mean? Like, so of course we got told it's going to be a small business. It's because nobody's, nobody's servicing them.
- [28:08]
B
And now it's blue ocean when you do, right? Yeah, it's more blue ocean. Like if you, if you create a connection with a consumer who has nowhere else to buy things or a very limited maybe palette of where they can buy things and then they find a home with your line. It's going to create LTV and a long term customer relationship that's been really fun to see.
- [28:26]
A
More and more brands venture into size inclusivity. Like, you know, it's, we embrace it. I want more customer or competitors in this space. I want it. That means actually more people are serviced. And that is so fulfilling to us as a business. We talk to our competitors all the time. I want them to succeed. Absolutely. When they succeed, I'm also going to succeed too. The more the merrier.
- [28:50]
B
Talk to me about paid media now. Talk to me about your reset. Maybe I have a Note here about your four years of spray and pray. Talk to me about those. That's what ChatGPT summarized from our talk. Is that does that. I don't know if you said that that's what chatbots assume. Do you, do you resonate with that?
- [29:07]
A
Yeah. It's been so interesting. So we, we joined Pilot House a little over a year and a half ago or about a year and a half ago after basically for the entirety of our brand lifecycle have had it in house, which was a really big leap for us. We were like, like this is so different. And we also like control of how our brand shows up. But like we're also, we want more expertise here than what we had been having before. We were doing a lot of testing. Digital performance marketing has evolved so much. So, so, so, so, so much. And how you run it today is so different than how you were running it four, five, six plus years ago. You know what I mean? And we were in a space of growth. We were like let's go, let's test everything, let's try everything. Let's, it's okay if our CAC's a little higher because we're going to learn and we think we can turn that customer into a higher LTV customer anyway. So whatever. Like you know, it became this place. And then over that time one things started to change in the environment. Algorithms started to get tighter, audience targeting started to go away where we were like we have less control over that and we're giving more control to something like a meta and we started to learn what was actually working and also we started to prioritize some different things, that is profitability and some of that was internal of us being like, okay, well now we kind of know it's working but now how do we get it hyper efficient to better our business? But also the market changed, the market changed and we started to shift into a more down economy again and, and the growth wasn't there that we needed in how we were spending. And so that's what brought me to saying I think I need a resource paid a little bit differently at the big picture. And I would say the other thing that contributed to that was search. I felt one, we had never had a true expert in search. I actually think they're harder to come by than someone who's like a paid social expert. And we felt like we weren't actually utilizing it to the extent that we could and didn't have the expertise. And so that those two things were the things that drove me to outsource and go to an agency model. And I love referrals. So got referrals for Pilot House. It's been amazing. It's been amazing to really reshift and be like, okay, let's try to do less, but have it be more powerful and be more efficient. Right? And so efficiency absolutely has to drive how we're running this channel. But we have to keep learning, right? We have to keep strategizing about what kind of content if the platform, particularly speaking about meta, but like, if the platform is creative led, we gotta obsess our creative and we gotta be testing creative and we gotta be understanding not just well, that worked and didn't, but why. Why did that not work or why did that work and how do we extrapolate that and. And do more of that thing? And Pilot House has been an incredible partner in doing that. And it's just really, I mean, it's completely shifted our business. It's completely shifted our business with a newfound focus and different ways that we think about the channel and not just did a like spend money to make money perspective, because that just can't be what it is.
- [32:21]
B
It's something I talk about in the podcast every week these days. And it's about not just advertising to your demographic, but advertising to your understanding your avatar and many of your different avatars so that you can really tell a story that speaks to like, each of them. I know you've been working with Abby on the POD team. She's one of my favorite members. Talk a little bit about that process, maybe of. Of digging deeper to find really resonant ad concepts.
- [32:46]
A
Yeah, I mean, you know, I'll actually use an example from Black Friday of this year because that's such. You talked about the beginning of this. Black Friday is behind us in the review merits, which is nice, but it's a big time of year and it's also a competitive time of year to get the attention of the consumer. And I would say one of the things that has been really interesting and kind of understanding content is understanding when you think about testing, but you think about it in the reverse, like not testing, like I'm going to test to learn, but in testing, but also removing things. And what's the unintended consequence of the test? And what I came to with Black Friday is I looked back at previous years of Black Friday and I'm like, we're always actually taking risks in Black Friday. We're actually creating new concepts and things that have never been put in our account because we think that's actually going to be the thing that gets attention in this time because it's so hard to get the eyeballs right. It's so hard to get to the customer and get to the customer before someone else does from their wallet. Because we don't have endless money just sitting in our wallet to go and spend everywhere, right? And so, so it's, it's a game to that. And I was like, why are we always introducing risk here? And actually the unintended consequence of that is you think you're being smart about taking that risk because of all of those factors, but actually you're injecting something so new into the algorithm when we have less control over it. And the algorithm's like, well, who do I go after? This looks completely different than what you normally service. And so for us a lot of it is just defining what works. We went into Black Friday and said we're just going to look at the last six months of what has been winning in the algorithm and winning in meta and we're just going to do that. Like literally either take that ad and just put Black Friday on it or be like, I'm going to take the essence of what this is, I'm going to understand the architecture. So how is, how is the edit edited? Right? Like is it really, really fast? Is it really fast and then slow? Is it a lot of really great product shots? Is it integrating video and stills together? We've actually had a lot of success with that, which has been really interesting. How has copy plan into it, copy versus no copy, Copy in the ad as static through the whole thing or different layers of copy and we have a storytelling. How does that impact all those things? We take the architecture and then we just put it with new product and then we just put it out during Black Friday and guess what happened? We didn't have a rise in CPMs. I've never seen that in my history of running our business but also having tons of friends in the industry. We had literally zero increase in our CPMs. We had like over a 60% increase in our click through rates. Our cost per clicks were down, I think 45%. Like it clearly worked like it. Which doesn't seem revolutionary to be like take what works and just do it again, it's not revolutionary. And I actually think that's the easy thing to do with content is you overthink it rather than being like, let me figure out a model that works and then we just like figure out different ways to inject it so the algorithm doesn't get tired with it. Because that can be what's hard, especially with Andromeda, is it can get. It can fatigue it. You know what I mean? But if you're like, well, I'm going to take the structure of this video that's focused on one product, and then throughout that video, we call out different attributes of the product. So high rise fit, convertible cuff, soft stretch material, real pockets. Right? And. And you're doing all of that and you just recreate that, but with a new product every time, it's always going to win, and that's what's beautiful. And then what I do is I'm like, okay, I know 90% of what we're doing is more proven. 10%. Now I'm going to test in one new concept that I haven't ever done before, and I'm going to do it around the time when I know I have this bucket to preserve my sales of things that are very, very proven. So it's a constant game, but it's also a constant game of not overthinking it, to be totally honest. Like, you just. It's like, take it back to the basics. You know what I mean? Rather than being like, what's the new thing and what's the trend? And like, it doesn't need to be that.
- [36:52]
B
Totally. I just had Abes from our creative team on the podcast, and she was talking about taking your best creative and then just put like a black and white checkered border around the outside that says Black Friday. Right. Just don't, don't overthink it. Take. Take your winners and soup them up a bit.
- [37:06]
A
Is that not the learning for just marketing in general? Like, why, why we have to overthink everything and make something so complicated? Like, like people like, clear, concise communications. And when you say, if your sale talk about, you know, you talk about putting the border around. Like, when you're like, Black Friday sale 30 off everything or whatever your offer is, that's all you have to say to people. That's it. Like, you don't have to be like, I don't know, like, but. And again, I see so much beautiful creative in the world, and I'm like, oh, my gosh, that's so cool. And I, My, my photo album on my phone of screenshots of like, that's super cool. I love how they did that. I always take inspiration, but, like, it's always about what. What's the basics here? What am I actually trying to do and. And deliver.
- [37:51]
B
But then around promotions. I know, I know you Guys have launched some interesting promotions and some promotions, because I think when you, when you run a lot of promotions, there's the, there's the, there's the chance that it can be eroding to your brand, but the way that you've kind of done it is a way that is a more of a connecting moment for, for people. Talk to, talk to us about that.
- [38:08]
A
We strategically chose in our shift in to, like, focus on profitability and efficiency. We chose to be more full price focused as a business. That's an initiative for us, which is hard in this climate where everybody's on sale. And again, talk about unintended consequences of that. That does mean unintended. I mean, you're likely going to do a little bit less in sales. Like, but okay, but they're better sales, right? And they're better customers long term. But of course, we're still going to run promotions. We just got off Black Friday where it's our biggest promotion of the year. And for us, what we kind of had this, this moment of realization was, is because everybody's doing it, it actually gives you a unique opportunity. I go from not overthinking to thinking, but like, it gives you a unique opportunity to make sure that how you show up does represent you in the best way. Because the erosion is real. When you are just out there and you're like, flash sale, 50% off, 50% off, 25% off, 30% off, 30%. Like, people are like, well, okay, I'm just going to wait until you do that because I know you're going to do it. And also, okay, that's just what you are versus. Oh, when they show up when they're on sale. They ran a sale that was what gay people actually want to wear sale. And we did it during Pride, like, and it was all of our black and white product, which is our best selling product. And we chose, we were like. And you know, we, we have a really large part of our consumers in the LGBTQ community. Our founder is queer. Like, we, we connect with this, this consumer base and it was an amazing sale for us because people were like, I get who you are and I like who you are. And now I'm getting the benefit of buying something on 30% off or whatever the promotion was. And it makes it more fun. Like, it makes it a moment when you're showing up. And let's be honest, promotional content and paid converts better because it's an easier call to action. Always, always, always, always. If you, you can sell way more things on 20% off than you can. No. Percent off. Right. It's just a known fact. So why not when you're doing it and you're being strategic about when you're on promotion, to give something, give a taste of your brand to. To that customer, rather than it just being a transaction. Go back to my relationship building. Let's build a relationship where you understand more about us as a brand than just getting 30% off that thing that you bought. It's a win win.
- [40:25]
B
One of the last things I wanted to talk about was your partnership with Debbie Harry, which is really cool. How did that come about?
- [40:32]
A
So, funny story, actually. Debbie Harry has been a customer of ours for, like, 11 years, and she wears our suiting all the time. And kind of a dream come true for all of us. And for those listening that don't know Debbie Harry, you might know the band Blondie, and she is the lead singer of Blondie, and just an icon. An icon in both the music industry, but also the fashion industry. She was a very revolutionary woman. And how she showed up from. From a fashion perspective, and we've come to learn over the years of getting to know her, you know, she's an incredible stylist. She has an incredible gift for really understanding, like, what she likes, what she doesn't, how it works for her, her. How to. How her layer things. Like, it's. It's truly inspiring, like us coming in to a photo shoot with her and having, you know, things outside of what her collection is for her to style with, like, she brings her own stuff. Like, that is remarkable and something I aspire to be all the time. Right. But, yeah, it became this really organic conversation because we already knew that she loved our brand. We already knew that she bought our suiting, and it became this kind of organic conversation of, you love us, we love you, let's just do something together. And for someone as iconic in fashion, she has never made a fashion line for herself. And we were like, let's do that together. Let's build something together. Like, we are. You are a wild thing. And we are the essence of what Debbie Harry is too. And it came together so organically and was so amazing. And she had her hand on everything that we did, and it was a really actual collaboration of, like, let's design this product together. And it. It's a unique one from a business sense. It's unique because traditionally you have, like, endorsement deals and licensing deals, and they are very separate from each other. This was a unique deal in the fact that it was both licensing and Endorsement. So we. We got the right to use her nil in all of our channels. Right. But she also showed up and said, I'm going to come and talk about this. She did PR interviews. She obviously did a photo shoot where we took photos of her in photo and video of her in the product that she helps us create. Right. She was a part of the design process. She posted on social media. We got to whitelist with her, which was super successful. And it became so unique. And what was beautiful is it opened up the fact that our customer loved this connection. Right. And it wasn't just about Debbie Harry and Wildfang being so in sync with each other. It was the fact that they were like, this is real. In the span of influencer marketing and, like, slapping somebody on and being like, they're like, endorsing our product or whatever. This was a real partnership, and people loved that, and they felt like they got a piece of her in this, which is just. I mean, if you're like, I love Debbie Harry, you're like, I want something she makes. You know what I mean? Like, so it was really beautiful, and it was very successful. Our first collection sold out in eight weeks. We had planned that. Inventory was planned to sell for six months. So that was a huge, amazing. We got in on the front page of the style section of New York Times, both print and digital. It was just amazing. We. Our CACs dropped 50%. Our LTV is 25% greater than other customers that were brought in. They're really healthy, sticky customers, like, amazing metrics. And so instantly we were like, well, we got to do this again. We got to anniversary it. And that's what we did again this year. And sales were up 75% from the first collection. So we. And we did it without the New York Times this year. So we're building something that's really special. I can't give you give all the secrets away, but we. We have much more of these coming, which we're very excited about with different amazing, iconic individuals.
- [44:17]
B
And we're really excited with your partnerships. You know, there's. There's a whole range scale of. Of ways that you can integrate with ones that are as deep as you're going with with, say, Debbie Harry. Is. Is it like a one and done sort of fee, or is she really incentivized through either some level of ownership with that line or, like, can you tell me a little bit about the shape of that?
- [44:38]
A
Yeah, for sure. It's a royalty deal structured in the way that we have deliverables she has deliverables. Right. And we value those deliverables. And, you know, I. I'm a data nerd, so I've turned it into a little bit of a science, right? But, you know, it's based on who they are, their channels, how they're going to show up for us. What are they going to do, what are we going to do, right? How are we committing to utilizing their nil and promoting this product as well, you know, comes with minimum guarantees, right? Here's how much we will make sure we would deliver to you. And, you know, it's a contract, so if we don't actually sell that much to deliver that royalty, we got to pay it. So we're both equally incentivized to make it successful. She gets a nice percentage of all the sales under her name. And I will tell you, we have gotten awesome reaction when we've sent her royalty check from her and her team. And, you know, we're really. We're really proud of that. We're really proud that we're also able to build this with her and grateful that she trusted us to be the one to help create a fashion line for her.
- [45:42]
B
Where do you see the biggest growth coming for the brand in 2026?
- [45:46]
A
It's that. It's partnerships. It's a huge, huge area for us, and it's definitely something we're invested in. It's such a great way to reach whole new sets of audiences. Right. Like, she has a humongous fan base, you know, and it's the name of the game.
- [46:01]
B
And even if. Even if it's not her influence, you know, if you're running a partnership ad through her handle, maybe even outside of her audience, she has such recognition that it's gonna bring in new eyeballs.
- [46:12]
A
Yeah. Oh, yeah. Whitelisting. If you aren't whitelisting, whitelist. And I'm happy we can. That's another podcast. But I've all the. All the fun kind of data squares that they sit in, but yeah, no, it's amazing. I mean, it's partnerships and partnerships in a lot of different ways. Like, you know, last year we did a partnership with Taco Bell, and it was. Was crazy. It was amazing. We had more traffic on our website in one hour than we did in all of Black Friday. So it was amazing. I mean, one in three people are on the Taco Bell, like, rewards program. Like, it's wild. The reach is insane. And it was so fun. We made a coverall, and all the pockets shapes were inspired by different menu Items. And it was so fun and it was so awesome. And it's a way for us to do really cool things, do also unexpected things. We love the unexpected mashup and it's in our name. Wild and Fang, it's a German word. And they mean different things and they're actually the opposites of each other. And we love that kind of cool tension and interesting dichotomy. But truly from a business sense, it's a way for us to reach a whole new set of customers that us independently trying to do would probably be a lot more expensive to get there and much harder to do from an effort perspective. So that is absolutely where the growth is going to come from from a marketing perspective for us next year.
- [47:25]
B
Debbie Harry makes perfect sense to me because of her being a fashion icon. I can see her in suiting in just in my, in my head from her album covers and stuff like that. But where did you uncover that Taco Bell had this huge crossover with your audience?
- [47:36]
A
Taco Bell actually came to us, which was really cool. You know, if you know anything about Taco Bell, they're from a brand perspective. So diverse. I mean they did Taco Bell Hotel in Palm Springs and it sold out. I'm not even going to try to quote the actual time, but it was super fast, right? And I tried to get it, couldn't get it, sold out too fast. But they have all these ways that they kind of inject their brand into the consumer's life, which is super cool. And they do regular drops. So they do regular exclusive drops. And they always sell out super fast, like super, super quick, like 60 second sellouts kind of thing, right. They wanted to do. We knew some people over there, so there was already that connection, right? So we knew some people there, but they wanted to do something in a higher price point than what they had done before. And our coveralls are 188 bucks, right. So they wanted to see if they could replicate that with something higher price point. And it worked. Super cool. And you know, it's, it was just an interesting thing like where we were like, I mean when you have that massive of an audience, like you're gonna get your customers, you're gonna get a lot of. Not your customers too. You know what I mean? Like that's always a point when something's so, so massive. But we're gonna hit the customer. But it became this like we love a Taco Bell and wild thing. Like what? But also like I kind of like it. And that kind of makes sense. Like, that's what we're. That's, like, what we love. To your point about, it's the balance, right? You can't do all of those. And people will be like, well, I don't know who you are in this, but when you're like, oh, I know why you. You collaborated with Debbie Harry, because I can see her style and I can see how it connects to Wild Thing, I could get it done, right? That's the model. And then you inject it with these, like, ooh, these are super cool. True Heat intended to, like, I mean, we got so much press in that. Like, it was just, like, it was great for both of our brands and, and it was just fun. Like, it's just fun. And we don't take ourselves too seriously. And. And honestly, no brand should because it's. We. We got one life to live and it's a short life, and let's just have fun while we're doing it. You know what I mean?
- [49:34]
B
Last question. What's one thing you're most proud of building that no spreadsheet can measure?
- [49:39]
A
You know, I'm going to take that to a personal one, I think, rather than a business one, which is, I think, my personal professional growth over the last ten and a half years at Wild Thing. And, you know, I come from physical retail, so had obviously long tail jobs before that, too. But what I've learned, both good and bad and through failure, failure is the best learning tool I think anyone can have. And I encourage everyone to fail and to fail hard because I've learned more from the things that I failed at that I have from my successes. And those are hard pills to swallow. No one actually wants to fail. Right. But it's important to do so. And I wish I could do a lot of things over again because of things that I was like, oh, I didn't do that the right way, or I wish I could have done that, or, you know, whatever it would have been. But a spreadsheet can't measure, actually, all of the things that I've done over the last ten and a half years with Wildspan and the impact that I've driven. And not again, not just from a business perspective, but, like, how I look at the business and how I see the business and how I show up every day, how I also translate these things to my personal life. I think that it's definitely the thing I'm the most proud of, for sure. And honestly, something I used to kind of be ashamed of being. Like, I used to be our store Manager now our president. You're like, you want to come with this legitimacy of. I've done it before, but actually, the more I talk about it, I'm like, actually, that's pretty powerful. And you know I have a little imposter syndrome, right? So you're like. It's just like. You're like, wow, I actually did that. And I've learned so much. And I've learned things that I again, that I would do differently now if they. If I challenged or, like, faced those things today. And I also know it's not done that I have a lot more to learn, and I have a lot more to do, and I have a lot more failure ahead of me, too, that I actually look forward to seeing.
- [51:26]
B
So it's the hero's journey. It's a beautiful thing. So if people want to follow a bit more about your entrepreneurial journey, connect over apparel or anything else, would you Recommend maybe your LinkedIn?
- [51:35]
A
I would love that. Yeah, absolutely.
- [51:37]
B
Cool. Well, if you're in the audience, you should connect with Amy. Thanks for taking the time. Amy, this was really awesome.
- [51:42]
A
Thank you so much. Appreciate your time. And I'm glad we did this. This was great.
- [51:46]
B
We can go deep on partnership ads next time, and once you've rolled out a few of your big partnerships, we can jump on and chat about those.
- [51:53]
A
Keep your eyes peeled for next year. It's going to be a fun year.
- [52:03]
B
Thanks so much for listening to today's episode. If you're not a subscriber to our newsletter, you can do that right now @directtoconsumeralloneword.co. i'm Eric Dick, and this has been the DTC podcast. We'll see you next time.