Black Friday Gigastream with Shopify | Harley Finkelstein, Noel Mack, Sara Foster, Sean Frank, Kat Cole, Peter Rahal, Farhan Thawar, Torin Herndon, Kevin Harwood, Nish Samantray, Bené Eaton, Brian Keller

Summary

TBPN Podcast: Black Friday Gigastream with Shopify

Hosts: John Coogan & Jordi Hays
Date: November 28, 2025
Special Guest Host: Harley Finkelstein (Shopify President)
Guests: Noel Mack (Gymshark), Sara Foster (Favorite Daughter), Sean Frank (Ridge), Kat Cole (AG1), Peter Rahal (David Protein), Farhan Thawar (Shopify Engineering), Torin Herndon (Mod Retro), Kevin Harwood (Tocovas), Nish Samantray (Array), Bené Eaton (Figs), Brian Keller (Rora)

---

Episode Overview

This lively, info-packed Black Friday special brought together DTC founders, commerce leaders, and the Shopify team for a live-streamed “Commerce Corral” event. The show tracked live Shopify sales, spotlighted trends in tech-driven retail, and offered insiders’ takes on how real brands win during the year’s busiest shopping moment.

Shopify President Harley Finkelstein joined throughout with real-time platform stats, commerce commentary, and a parade of founders innovating in apparel, supplements, health, CPG, and tech hardware. The tone combined sharp industry analysis, playful banter, and tactical “master classes” on everything from agentic commerce and AI to modern multi-channel retail.

---

Key Themes and Discussion Points

1. The State of Commerce: Black Friday 2025 (00:00–11:40)

• Commerce is now digital-first: “Can we just drop the E at this point? Why do we keep calling it E-commerce?” — John (00:43)
• Physical Black Friday brawls are gone, but the intensity and creativity have moved online.
• Shopify’s Black Friday “glow globe” sales tracker and Sphere visualization in Vegas celebrated entrepreneurship’s global scale.
• Shopify processed over $5.1M/minute at peak (12:01 PM EST), with 40,000+ orders/minute and over 26 million unique shoppers by midday (07:53).
• “About every 26 seconds, a new entrepreneur is making their first sale on Shopify.” — Harley (11:59)
• The show’s guest list spanned breakout DNVBs, CPG disruptors, retail visionaries, and commerce tech leaders.

---

2. Harley Finkelstein (Shopify President) – State of the Platform

Key Insights

• The “culture war” is over: direct-to-consumer entrepreneurs are now as important as legacy retail brands.
• Black Friday’s history: Once traditional retail, now led by independent brands empowered by technology.
• Technology has enabled first-time entrepreneurs to “stand shoulder to shoulder” with major global players (09:15).
• The lines between online and offline retail have blurred: “Retail is happening agentically. The consumer journey starts on TikTok, winds up in a pop-up, finishes in Roblox” (14:06).

Notable Quotes:

• “It feels like the golden age of retail right now.” — Harley (15:20)
• “We measure consumer confidence at checkout—and people are buying.” — Harley (25:55)

Shopify Stats (End-of-Day Recap)

• $4.1M in sales per minute at 5pm EST
• 38,000 orders per minute
• 30 million unique shoppers during the day
• Trending categories: skincare, vitamins, supplements, activewear, makeup (195:32)

---

3. Platform & Tech Trends

Infrastructure:

• “We start planning for Black Friday a year in advance. We can shift regions instantly for failover, so buyers never notice.” — Farhan Thawar, Shopify Engineering (96:39)
• Shop Pay and Shop App drive faster, more trusted checkouts—now a key edge in mobile conversion (97:59).

Agentic Commerce & AI:

• Shopify is going all-in on modular agentic tools (catalogs, checkout kits) to ensure merchants are ready for the future where “shopping agents” do discovery and purchase for customers (28:23).
• “Agentic [AI] may invite non-traditional shoppers to buy online for the first time... It’s a massive leveler for small brands.” — Harley (29:59)
• AI is already transforming merchant experience from smarter inventory to auto-generated assets—brands using it in creative, operational, and support contexts.

---

4. Brand Operator Roundtable: Insights by Category

Fashion & Apparel

• Gymshark (Noel Mack, CBO): “We’re not any old sports brand—we’re a gym brand. We do gym, and we do it better than anybody else.” (37:27)

  • Opened new stores in Dubai and SoHo; retail is about authentic, offline experiences, not “just another DJ booth.”
  • On marketing: "It's relentlessness about our focus—if you want great gym stuff, come to Gymshark. We're not for everyone."

• Favorite Daughter (Sara Foster, co-founder):

  • $150M+ in projected retail sales (61:35), fully profitable, scaling due to authenticity—“We are the girl [our customer] is.”
  • Returns and AI try-on: balancing efficiency vs. authenticity (64:45).

• Tocovas (Kevin Harwood, CTO):

  • “We were DTC for 5–6 years. In just 3 years of retail, our store business is now larger than e-comm.” (128:25)

Health, Wellness & CPG

• David Protein (Peter Rahal):

  • From RXBar to $300M projected revenue at David in under 2 years (83:06).
  • “If you have the best product, everything else works. You can make mistakes, but the product bails you out.” (78:16)
  • No deep discounting for Black Friday—sales are only down 20% despite not participating in hype (84:54).

• Array (Nish Samantray):

  • Fast-growing, profitable, women’s supplement brand: “$2–3M revenue per employee” (148:43)
  • First half of 2025 was much easier; second half, CACs rose sharply and consumer demand plateaued.

• AG1 (Kat Cole):

  • Up 40% YoY for Black Friday, driven by product variety and bundling (168:39).
  • Strategic channel shift: from influencer/creator-focused to science-forward, heavy investment in clinical trials and out-of-home.
  • “We added TV to go broad—a brand campaign on the World Series.”

Modern Retail & Tech

• Mod Retro (Torin Herndon):

  • Chromatic handheld is a perfect holiday gift; M64 announced; best practices are about authenticity and physicality.
  • “When you have it in your hands, it creates a network effect... you can’t communicate that click online.” (110:43)

• Rora (Brian Keller):

  • Water filtration for health-conscious consumers. Key insight: the “modern” Black Friday is now about building and harvesting intent over weeks, not just a single day (159:38).

Platform & Commerce Operators

• Shopify Engineering (Farhan Thawar):
  • “By April or May, the scale of Black Friday becomes a ‘normal day’ for Shopify. Our merchants’ growth rate is that fast.” (96:39)
  • Don't sleep on the Shop App for product discovery.

---

5. Customer Acquisition, Media Mix, and Growth Tactics

Ad Spend Trends:

• Black Friday intent remains high. Best practice is to start campaigns 1–2 days early, stay consistent, and keep CPMs low (162:44).
• Meta spending sometimes lags; AppLovin and YouTube up as important growth engines (56:17, 191:15).
• TikTok Shop works for certain categories—female-focused, supplements, impulse—less for men’s luxury/DTC (180:22).

Short-form Content & Social Influence

• Short-form and vertical video are crucial. “Watch time is dominated by short video—every brand needs to be a clip factory.” — Sean Frank, Ridge (182:59)
• Organic, authentic content is more powerful than heavy programmatic spend: “micro-influencers massively outperform celebs for apparel.” — Sara Foster (71:17)

Street-Level Branding & Experiential Retail

• ToCovas and Gymshark’s strategic retail pushes: IRL, bar/social “hangout” aspects, event-driven engagement, custom boot branding.
• Physical retail not only unlocks new customers but lifts e-comm in multi-store markets (128:25).

---

6. Commerce Trends & Analysis: Macro to Micro

Post-Omnichannel World:

• “It's not just omnichannel—it's post-omnichannel. Sell on every surface area you can.” — Harley (20:53)
• All commerce is “just commerce”—the distinction between digital and traditional continues to blur.

Consumer Mindset Shifts:

• Black Friday has shifted from bargain-hunting for random big-box deals (TVs, appliances) to consumers “voting with their wallets” for brands they love.
• "People are willing to save up to buy from the brands and entrepreneurs they believe in—even if they're smaller." — Harley (27:15)

Tech Conduits:

• Agentic AI commerce will upend product discovery and reduce reliance on paid ad channels—"search becomes personal... the best product matters more." (29:59)
• Video, authenticity, and speed—via one-click checkout—win the day.

---

Notable Quotes and Moments (With Timestamps)

• “Every 26 seconds, a new entrepreneur makes their first sale on Shopify.” — Harley (11:59)
• “It feels like the golden age of retail right now.” — Harley (15:20)
• “People have this direct relationship with their favorite entrepreneurs. They save up to buy James Perse tees not just for the product, but because they want more James Perses in the world.” — Harley (27:15)
• “Returns are a daily topic for us. AI try-on is amazing, but authenticity matters. We don’t want to trick anyone with fake visuals.” — Sara Foster (64:45)
• “We've seen merchants go through the GFC, the pandemic, Liberation Day—Shopify's job is to be their resilient backbone.” — Harley (24:24)
• “We're in a post-omnichannel world—every surface should be a place to transact.” — Harley (20:53)
• “Our retail store became bigger than e-comm in just three years.” — Kevin Harwood, Tocovas (128:25)
• “Sampling still works; actual product is everything. Great product bails you out even if ops, ads, or the website are just okay.” — Peter Rahal, David (78:16)
• “Shop Pay itself is a huge conversion trust-builder even if not clicked.” — Farhan Thawar (98:31)
• “If your site goes down for 10 minutes, you could lose a million dollars. Owning your full commerce stack? I think that era is over.” — Harley (18:15)

---

Key Segments & Timestamps

• (07:53) – Shopify’s live Black Friday stats
• (12:01) – Peak sales numbers
• (20:53) – Post-omnichannel world
• (24:24) – Weathering global macro shocks (Liberation Day, tariffs)
• (28:23) – Agentic commerce and AI
• (29:59) – AI will level the field for small brands
• (61:35) – Favorite Daughter expected revenue
• (83:06) – David Protein’s 300M revenue benchmark
• (128:25) – ToCovas' retail surpasses digital
• (168:39) – AG1’s 40% YoY Black Friday growth
• (195:32) – End-of-day Shopify by-the-numbers and trending categories

---

Memorable Moments & Humor

• Harley and hosts imagining an app where customers box in real life for deeper Black Friday discounts to simulate “the old in-store brawl” (01:24, 186:24)
• Hosts marveling at Shopify merchants now selling $28 million yachts and $5 million watches (48:17)
• “If you catch a catfish, it’s got to be on brand.” — John, re: Tocovas CTO’s biggest fish (131:04)

---

Brand & Channel Highlights

| Brand | Highlight | |---------------------|--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| | Shopify | Massive scale, agentic commerce positioning, omnichannel leadership | | Gymshark | Gym-focused DNA, global brick-and-mortar, IRL events as marketing | | Favorite Daughter | Rapid scaling via authenticity, profitable, data-driven product expansion | | David Protein | Product > everything, no discounting, supply chain and retail rollouts | | AG1 | Channel expansion (Costco, TV ads), product line extensions, science-backed marketing | | Tocovas | Retail-over-e-comm, experiential “saloon”-style stores, rapid U.S. growth | | Mod Retro | Hardware-as-gift, authenticity in product feel, modernized retro gaming | | Ridge | DTC masterclass; creative, omnichannel, creator equity, new category domination | | Array | Women’s supplement rocketship, lean and profitable, TikTok shop as driver | | Figs | Healthcare focus, brand for professionals, emotional, gratitude-driven Black Friday | | Rora | “Dyson of water,” Black Friday as leg for long funnel build-up, health positioning |

---

Wrap-Up

This “gigastream” episode was a wide-ranging masterclass in modern commerce—blending live stats, operator realities, ad channel breakdowns, and the underlying emotional connection that makes big days like Black Friday possible. Guests illustrated that world-class execution now happens at the intersection of digital, retail, social, and community—powered by flexible tech, relentless focus, and real storytelling.

Harley’s sendoff (198:46):
“Thank you so much for shining a light on this little startup called Shopify... This was my favorite Black Friday yet. See you for Cyber Monday!”

---

For more: Subscribe to TBPN on all major platforms and newsletter at TBPN.com.

Transcript

[Jordy]

You're watching TVPN.

[John]

Today is Friday, November 28, 2025. We are live from the Commerce Corral.

[Jordy]

The Commerce Corral, you might be wondering. It's good to be back.

[John]

This show, of course, is sponsored by ramp Time is money save. Both easy to use. Corporate cards, bill payments, accounting, a whole lot more. But we're doing a crazy Black Friday stream with none other than Shopify.

[Jordy]

That's right.

[John]

That's right.

[Harley]

We're.

[John]

We're in the green suits. We got tons of guests who are.

[Jordy]

On Shopify and a guest host today.

[John]

Guest host Carly Finkelstein from Shopify. He's gonna be calling in throughout the show at multiple periods of time to let us know what's happening in the world of E commerce.

[Jordy]

In the world of commerce generally at this gas line.

[John]

Can we just drop the E at this point? Why do we keep calling it E commerce?

[Jordy]

It's just commerce.

[John]

It's just commerce. I don't care about any commerce other than E commerce. So we should just take it over. The rest should. Should be called T commerce, traditional commerce, T commerce and E commerce. We're just calling it commerce from now on. It's just commerce.

[Jordy]

It's over.

[John]

It's over. We won. Complete and total culture victory.

[Jordy]

We lost one thing.

[John]

What did we lose?

[Jordy]

You used to be able to meet up at your local retailer on a Friday.

[John]

Yes. On Black Friday.

[Jordy]

On Black Friday. And fight.

[John]

Still nursing the hangover from Thanksgiving.

[Jordy]

Getting a fist fight over consumer electronics.

[John]

Yes.

[Jordy]

Nobody has replicated that online yet.

[John]

You can't do that online.

[Harley]

That is a startup. Yeah.

[John]

Yeah. You can't do that online.

[Jordy]

Request for startup app that lets you.

[John]

Yeah.

[Jordy]

Fight strangers for consumer electronics deals. Nobody's done it yet. Very.

[John]

So you get on the waiting list, you'd be able to check out just. Normally it would just be a normal Shopify checkout, but then maybe there'd be a Shopify plug in and posting post purchase flow. A post. A post purchase flow. Post purchase flow. Would you like to get in a wrestling match for more. For a bigger distance?

[Jordy]

Yeah. Put the gloves on. It doesn't need to actually be violent.

[John]

Yeah. You've secured the product. You're good. But if you want to get in a fight, we can bring that experience of the traditional commerce experience. We're bringing the traditional commerce experience into the modern era. Into the e commerce era. Into the commerce era.

[Jordy]

That's right.

[John]

We're doing it here on Restream, of course. One livestream, 30 plus destinations. If you want a multi stream, go to restream.com Harley kicked it off with a video that's just hit the timeline. He says he's ringing the opening bell at Nasdaq this morning alongside Shopify merchants Brunt Workwear, Wild One Swim suites, Abode. There are a ton of companies that he's going to be taking us on a whirlwind tour of. We're very excited to have him calling in in just a few minutes. Toby Luttke also hit the timeline. He said it's officially Black Friday in the first time zones and we're live with this year's live glow globe now inside of a pinball machine.

[Jordy]

Pull up, pull up this video so we can see it.

[John]

Fun to play and live sales trigger surprises. The team went all out on this one. Give it a spin. Yes. Very, very fun. I feel like there's been this, like, you know, the Black Friday sales tracker has been, I don't know, a decade in the. In the works. Maybe two decades in the works almost. I mean, Shopify is coming up on the 20 year anniversary next year, I believe. I believe the first sale that they processed was in.

[Jordy]

Yeah, this one is wild.

[John]

19 years ago.

[Jordy]

Feels like being inside a video game.

[John]

Yes. And so every year it's become a race to create an arms race to create an even more extravagant and elaborate sales tracker. But it's a lot of fun. It's gotta be. This is like a Manhattan Project for front end devs.

[Jordy]

It really is.

[John]

It's like AGI for front end developers. Seriously, if you're a front end dev, like, this is your Super Bowl. This is your Super Bowl.

[Jordy]

It really is.

[John]

It is a lot of folks doing crazy stuff all over, all over the Internet today. It's a lot of fun.

[Jordy]

Well, I am excited. We should read through the guest lineup. We can pull that up again. But we have a pretty incredible lineup of guests. We have Harley joining, of course. We have Noel from gymshark. We have Sarah Foster, co founder of favorite daughter and podcaster. We have Peter Rahal from David Protein, former guest of the show. Excited to have him back on. He has just put on an absolute masterclass with David this year. It will be a Harvard Business School case study, if it's not already.

[John]

And we haven't had him on since the boiled cod thing, have we? Yeah, because we had him on. And then he did the boiled cod stunt where he had a whole bunch of billboards.

[Jordy]

He sold a lot of cod.

[John]

Did they actually.

[Jordy]

They actually were selling cod.

[John]

They actually sold it.

[Jordy]

They were actually selling.

[John]

That's A joke.

[Jordy]

I had to double check on it.

[John]

Okay, okay.

[Jordy]

It was a real sale.

[John]

Okay.

[Jordy]

But yeah, been on an absolute tear.

[John]

Yes.

[Jordy]

And who else we got? We have Farhan, VP of engineering over at Shopify. We have Torin from Mod Retro. He's got news today. We have Kevin from Tokovas. We of course are wearing to Covis today here in the corral of commerce. And we have my dear friend Nish from Array, one of the fastest growing supplement brands that I've ever been aware of. So very excited to talk with him. Benny from Figs and Brian of course, my co founder over at Rora and then and Kat from AG1. And then we'll wrap it up with Sean from the Ridge, repeat guest and dear friend of ours. So it'll be a fun, fun, fun show today. Trying to get really get a view into how brands are approaching.

[John]

The production team's fired up.

[Jordy]

They're fired up. We got a skeleton cre today.

[John]

A lot of people.

[Jordy]

We did, we did let most of the team just focus on, focus on commerce today and. But we have are here.

[John]

Of course this is not the biggest lineup yet in terms of total number of guests. It's close, but I believe Teal fellow episode was really huge. And then there's been a couple obviously where we've just gone through just one guest after the next, after the next, after the next. And we, we sort of lose track at that point because it's so many guests. Let me tell you about Gemini 3 Pro, Google's most intelligent model yet. State of the art reasoning, next level vibe coding and deep multimodal understanding.

[Jordy]

Well, we have Harley in the waiting room. Let's bring him in.

[John]

Let's bring in Harley the man shop himself. Bring him in. Harley, how are you doing? Oh, look at that. Oh, where's your tie?

[Jordy]

Let's go.

[John]

Casual Friday over there.

[Harley]

Wait a second.

[Jordy]

Throw them up, throw them up to Kovis. Let's go.

[John]

That's fantastic.

[Harley]

I don't, I don't know where you guys get these outfits, but I'm in.

[John]

They're fantastic. Yes, they're fantastic. Looking great. Some people say we look like the Riddler. I think it's very clear that I think we look.

[Harley]

I think we look great. I will tell you, I don't know how many suits you guys have, but I assume you have every color in your closet.

[Jordy]

Clothes.

[John]

Not green. Not green.

[Jordy]

No, I got a darker.

[John]

Oh, you have a dark green. Yes, you have a dark green. I went with brown.

[Jordy]

But nothing quite this green. Nothing quite this Green Shopify.

[Harley]

Kevin from Tokovas is coming on later on. I just got a text message from him. He sent me a photo of their store in Austin, which I think he's going to be calling in from. And apparently they have a fire marshal issue there because the store is so insanely packed. So he'll tell you the story of what they're doing there. But it looks really cool.

[Jordy]

Amazing. And what do you got going on behind you here?

[Harley]

Yeah, so I'm at the New York port, our office here in New York City, the other capital of capital, other than, of course, where you are right now. And I have the Shopify dashboard behind me. And we are doing $4.3 million per minute. We're doing 40,000. Per minute. Per minute.

[Jordy]

Yeah, yeah. What is this?

[Harley]

40,000 orders per minute. And since we started counting last night at around 7pm EST, about 26 million unique shoppers across Shopify. And then I just posted this just before I got on the show here. Let me tell you guys. You guys want this information?

[Jordy]

Of course we do.

[Harley]

1201Pm today, we hit a peak sale of $5.1 million per minute. 5.1 million.

[Jordy]

Hit the gong for that one, John.

[Harley]

Which is pretty good.

[Jordy]

Let's. We got to warm up the gong. I feel like we're going to be hitting it a lot today.

[Harley]

There's going to be a lot of that. Yes, good.

[Jordy]

A lot of that. Excellent, Excellent. Maybe I would love to kind of get your view. I think people have a good sense of the history of Black Friday as sort of like the super bowl of shopping for a long time now. But I'd love to get a sense of how you've experienced it across the years, specifically at Shopify and how it's evolved from your view.

[Harley]

Yeah, well, look, I think Black Friday initially, as the history of it was, Black Friday actually belonged to. To physical retailers and specifically big box stores. And then kind of Cyber Monday was kind of the time where the direct to consumer startups began to take hold of it. And something sort of flipped over the last, I guess, eight or nine years or so, where ultimately these direct to consumer independent brands, not necessarily small ones, large one, also began to kind of take over Black Friday. And so I think what we've ended up with is sort of Black Friday has become kind of the super bowl for entrepreneurs. What we've noticed is that they prepare all year for this weekend, and what we do is we spend the year building for them. You know, we think most people, you know, associate shopify with small Businesses, but we also power, you know, the likes of on running or Mattel or Birkenstock or you know, aloe yogurt viori. So what's interesting is that, and we'll see this across the show over the next couple of hours, that regardless of what size of merchant you're going to be talking to, they have one thing in common which is they identify as entrepreneurs. So whether you're the CEO of a publicly traded direct to consumer business like On Running or you started your business two years ago, you sort of, you are an entrepreneur. And this weekend and this sort of four days is kind of when we celebrate them. I think the cool part about it is that this year in particular, it does kind of feel like the first time these first time entrepreneurs are, are kind of standing shoulder to shoulder with much larger brands. I think part of the reason is that technology has just gotten so good so that, you know, the most viral videos that you're seeing from brands today are not these super produced ones. In fact, often it's like some person in their car with their phone on the way to like the gym and that video ends up getting a ton of virality. I think also, you know, we'll talk about like agent to commerce and social commerce. But I think some of these new areas where commerce is happening as opposed to sort of the big stores, physical stores allows for more of these small businesses to get seen a lot faster. And the end result of course is that, you know, things are just blowing up. But yeah, we have the live globe. It's my favorite thing we do every year. You guys pointed out that, you know, it's sort of like nerd heaven here. Anyone at home can watch BFCM shop and you know, it's, it's, as you can see, it's moving. We're at 4.5 million sales, excuse me, dollars per minute right now. And again we peaked at about 5.1. And it's, it's really cool. One of the other things I want to show you is we, you guys, I don't know if you can see it here, but we also took over the sphere in Vegas. Yeah, I don't know if you guys have a shot of that to pull.

[Jordy]

Up, but there we go.

[John]

It's amazing.

[Harley]

Yeah, so we took over the sphere in Vegas. We've done this the last two years or so. It is the world's largest LED screen. And the idea here is like, can we just put entrepreneurship on stage? And so this is a visualization of global sales happening in real time. Every arc you see is actually a live order. And what's really interesting is that every one of these confetti bursts is a merchant's first sale. So it's happening right now. About every 26 seconds, a new entrepreneur is making their first sale on Shopify.

[John]

That's amazing.

[Harley]

And this is. This is people's entrepreneurship journeys starting in real time. I love seeing this.

[John]

Yeah, I love the Sphere just as like a. Like a monument, but it's also just. I love it when you find, you know, a match for what fits on the screen. Like, the globe obviously works very well.

[Harley]

It works well. Yeah.

[John]

And there are lots of things that, you know, they do marketing campaigns on the. On the sphere, and you're kind of like, oh, well, like, that would have worked on a normal billboard. The Black Friday Cyber Monday sphere is, like, unique.

[Harley]

Yeah.

[Jordy]

We were in Vegas for F1, and they were just. They just had a bunch of different driver views on the sphere.

[John]

There were some cool ones where it was like the helmet and you could see Brad Pitt's face. That one was kind of cool. Obviously, if there's like a tennis ball or a basketball, like, that can work really well.

[Harley]

But, yeah, what's interesting actually on the sphere, when we first went to them two years ago, we told them we want it. We want to broadcast live. And actually at that particular point on the Sphere, it had to be a recording. You couldn't actually broadcast live. So now you can do it live. But basically that's the reaction to Shopify actually building it.

[John]

That's really cool.

[Harley]

And we start to show it.

[Jordy]

They have to have a pretty high level of trust with the company that is broadcasting live to the Sphere. They're certainly not going to make that open. Programmatic.

[Harley]

I think the cool thing about the Sphere also is, you know, the Sphere obviously is it's located in Las Vegas, but the vast majority of people that look at it are, you know, it's usually on social, not in Vegas as well. So it's kind of an interesting kind of thing to do because you're doing something physical in a particular geography. But the actual, like, the distribution of it is global in a totally different way. And I think, you know, having these new cool things. And they're building a second sphere.

[John]

Yeah. In London, I think. Oh, did the London one. I know there was a. There was proposals to build one in London. I think it hit snags with a permitting or something like that. But, I mean, Middle east makes a ton of sense. That would be a very logical place to have One.

[Jordy]

I mean the pressure and the pressure right now, right now it's a big investment to take over one sphere to take. Eventually it'll be like, oh well if you're going to do this fear, you.

[John]

Got to do them all.

[Harley]

Yeah, that's right. Yeah. I mean that's. But I do, I do love these really. I mean you guys, this is like exactly, you know, right in your wheelhouse. But like I like these really ambitious projects. These projects that like in the first meeting someone proposed it and someone else said like there's no way we're going to do this. And then of course they end up doing it. So I think more of this is good, but it lends itself really well. But in many ways, like I think back to sort of the original question. I think like BFCM is in many ways it is a celebration of entrepreneurship generally. Even if you're on a retail, it sort of does feel like we all kind of take a moment to kind of celebrate businesses of all sizes. It also feels like consumers are very much, I don't know, there is a different connection that consumers have to their brands they love. You know. And like you look at, to Covis for example. I know we're gonna, we'll see you Kevin, a little bit later. But you know, you can't really understand if the store is a retail operation or if it's a saloon. Cause a lot of people just go in there to hang out or have their boots shined and have like, and drink bourbon and that's like totally okay with them. And I think this idea that you know, there isn't this online versus offline kind of, you know, false dichotomy, but rather retail is happening agentically. It's happening like the consumer journey starts like a TikTok video and then eventually goes to an online store. And then maybe they don't buy anything but they walk into a pop up and then eventually they end up in Roblox and they actually complete the purchase in Roblox. Like that's kind of what we're seeing in BFCM 2025. And I don't know, it feels like a little bit, it feels like the golden age, a little bit of retail right now.

[Jordy]

What does the data look like from your guys side at a kind of global or macro level? Is there a specific moment in the day that is the most intense from a platform standpoint in terms of demand or is it kind of smoothed out more than let's say in a traditional retail world that whenever the store opens is like the sort of period of peak intensity.

[John]

There was somebody here on X saying it was 11am Eastern time is the peak, which is not what I would have expected. But is that it always is.

[Harley]

It always is, yeah. It's always between 11am and noon Eastern time. So you kind of think about like West coast, it's 9am West coast or so eight or nine Europe is sort of peak, you know, celebration mode. They've already had their pints and. But yeah, that usually when is something interesting is one of the stores that's on Shopify that I love is supreme, which you know is a legendary, you know, flash sale retailer. And they have every, every Thursday at 11:00am Eastern Standard Time. Supreme does this massive flash sale. One of the reasons that we wanted. One of the things, you guys have probably heard me say this, but one of the things we love about these millions of merchants on Shopify is that they push the boundaries of the platform. Whereas, you know, some companies would say like that's too big or that's too complicated, like, you know, you kind of fire customers. We do the opposite. We kind of embrace the most complicated merchants on the planet because we feel like they kind of stretch us in the right direction. Supreme very much does that. But what's interesting is that like on a regular basis, supreme has the largest flash sale that's ever happened. And then a week later they then break that record. And so supreme obviously has been doing a lot, they push it. We also have Universal Music does a lot of their drops of this, whether it's for Taylor Swift or it's for Bieber or some of those type of acts. So that pulls the platform as well. But generally, knock on wood, things have been going really well. We have an incredible team on the infrastructure side. Farhan, who leads engineering is going to be on later to tell you exactly what goes on behind the scenes on the infrastructure side.

[Jordy]

Yeah, what happens? Do you guys get a lot of inbound from bigger brands that are kind of running their own commerce stacks after, after this kind of four day stretch because like this broke me. Like, well, yeah, I'm ready. It's a time, it's probably a time to capitulate.

[Harley]

Well, especially if they had an issue. Right? Like every year I don't do this anymore because frankly I've. I realized that it pissed off a lot of people. But often what I would do is during Black Friday when I saw a very large big box retailer go down, I would literally just post something on X saying like, you know, like should have been on Shopify. And then sometimes they would call and it's very aggressive and it's very passive aggressive. And sometimes they would find that to be, you know, cute and other times it'd be like totally, you know, disrespectful.

[Jordy]

It's like, hey, our site was down.

[John]

So now I'm like just straight up aggressive.

[Jordy]

Yeah. I mean if your site goes down for. Your site goes down for 10 minutes and you could lose out on, I don't know, a million. Are you kidding?

[Harley]

If you are, if you are one of these large sort of electronic big box, like a Best Buy type retailer and you go down on Black Friday, which, you know has happened, it is a really big deal. There was kind of this era, to be honest, of, of enterprises believing that part of their real value was owning their own stack.

[Jordy]

We're a tech company.

[Harley]

That's our time. Yeah, that's a 100,000 sale milestone just happened there.

[John]

I love it.

[Harley]

So that's right. So some of these merchants, like, they want it to be, they believe they were tech companies. And I think that era is over. Which is at some point you read about, you know, ChatGPT embedding commerce and in a board meeting someone says, well, do we have that? And then someone else says, well, no, but you know, if we were on Shopify, we'd be in that launch. And that helps a little bit. The idea also it's like running your own servers or having your own data center at some point. It doesn't really make sense to do that. I think that era is over. And so one of the I, on the last earnings call I talked about Estee Lauder coming to Shopify. One of the reasons I'm talking a lot about the Estee Lauder's of the world and these much larger brands coming to Shopify is that I want to kind of begin to explain to the world that we also handle the most iconic, legendary brands. Mattel or Birkenstock or these brands or, you know, Hunter Douglas, these companies that historically wouldn't have come to Shopify are now coming and we love that.

[Jordy]

What, what are you seeing? What are some kind of key trends that you're seeing as far as like everything from like marketing strategy to discounting strategy? Like what, what are you seeing globally this year across, across the platform?

[Harley]

Discounting still is the case. Although I don't actually think that discounting is as, as, as important as people think. I actually think value matters a lot more. I was on CNBC this, I was on Squawk Box this morning and Steve Liesman was asking about consumer confidence and I, I told him sort of the way that we look at consumer confidence is we just measure at checkout because you can read all the reports and all the surveys you want, but ultimately what are people doing? And Steve kind of made a joke that often with is what people say they're going to do and what they actually do is totally different. They say they're not gonna spend as much and then when they see something they love, they just of course go and buy it immediately because humans are humans. So one of the things that I think actually is happening is consumers are kind of voting with their wallets to buy from brands that they love. So if they love viori or they love aloe, they're waiting for some sort of sale from those brands. And if those brands, if those, if the sale isn't what they thought it would be, they're still buying, but they're being a lot more intentional about how they purchase. The second thing is I think this era of like online and offline, I kind of mentioned this earlier, but this is like this is totally over. I think we have figs coming on. I think this CMO of figs is going to be on a little bit later on. One of the things I love about Figs is this was an online business, homegrown store on Shopify. Incredible growth. They went public and pretty much in every hospital, everyone who cares about how they look and how they feel is wearing figs. They started opening up physical locations around hospitals and what's effectively to make it really simple for healthcare workers on their lunch break or on their coffee break to come down and purchase stuff there. So if you were to ask figs, are they in online retail? They would say that idea of Omni Channel where it's a retailer, it feels like that is almost this whole like we're living in like a post omnichannel world, as silly as that sounds, where sell on every surface area. We have an integration with Roblox and in some cases most merchants, most of them don't use that integration. But we have some merchants who do like real business using the Shopify integration inside of Roadblocks. And so the idea from our perspective is like every surface area that exists should be a place where you're able to transact and merchants can choose whatever is most appropriate for them.

[John]

How is the POS side of the business growing? Is that growing faster than the overall business or the E commerce side? Because I.

[Jordy]

Or is it more like an add on where somebody starts With Shopify Online and they realize, hey, we should probably unify the back end. And then they have a POS system.

[Harley]

From a GMV perspective. Actually, point of sale, GMV is actually going faster, but it's on a much smaller base because most merchants on Shopify are using E commerce. Look, initially it was meant to be, if you're on Shopify for online, let us also serve you offline as well. Now what we're seeing is merchants are coming to us like pure play offline. Retailers are coming to us like brick and mortar. Retailers are coming first for offline and then expanding online as well. So it's an area. It's one of the most important areas for the business. It's getting really, really. Initially it was only, you know, for smaller, you know, a couple stores. Now you have massive brands like Aloe, you know, using it across all of their stores as well. We just announced that Aldo is going to be using it across 400 stores. The shoe, the large shoe company. So more and more it's becoming a big thing. But we look at these as like on ramps into Shopify. Like, tell us what channel is your predominant channel. We'll make that really easy and scalable. And then once you're using Shopify, we're going to introduce you to other channels where we think you can probably find real success.

[John]

Yep.

[Jordy]

How have brand. How have things on the macro kind of the tariff side settled? Thankfully, we haven't had a crazy. Anything crazy in the last two weeks or two months.

[Harley]

But is that your gauge of if it has like two weeks is. Is a sigh of relief?

[Jordy]

Yeah, pretty, pretty much. I mean, I mean, I would have been concerned, you know, if Liberation Day had happened like three months ago. It would have been potentially really Black Friday.

[Harley]

Yeah, that would have been bad.

[Jordy]

Yeah, no, it would have been highly disruptive because, I mean, a lot of. I mean, a lot of brands today will fully sell out of especially their hero products and be leaving a lot of revenue on the table. And so, like, having a successful Black Friday is. Comes down to a lot of just like high, you know, good demand planning. And earlier this year, you know, it was just really chaotic.

[Harley]

I mean, we have a good mutual friend in Ryan from Flexport. Ryan's an amazing guy. I think he was on the show yesterday or the day before that.

[John]

We were reposting clips, but he. Oh, that was okay. Yeah, yeah. That clip was from like a couple of weeks ago, but yeah.

[Harley]

Okay. So Ryan, I mean, flexible, is an incredible partner of us. So, you know, we talk, we Hear from Ryan quite a bit of what's happening. Supply. The supply side of just commerce.

[John]

Sure.

[Harley]

In terms of the tariff side, look, I mean we've seen merchants go through. Shopify is 20 years old. We've seen merchants go through the global financial crisis, through the pandemic, through a bunch of obviously through Liberation Day. The way that we sort of most of the merchants on Shopify seem to be incredibly resilient. Our job is sort of to make it really easy for them to navigate whatever comes their way. On the tariff side of things. We haven't really seen any change in behavior. Certainly we did Q3, we saw about 91 billion of GMB through the platform. That was I think just over 30% year on year growth. So we haven't seen that. We haven't seen any type of change in behavior. And then on the pricing side, I said this on the call also, we haven't seen merchants change their pricing all that much. And so I think that again, it's not that consumers don't care about it. I just think that they're being more selective, which I think leads to kind of what you'll see, what you'll hear a lot over the next couple of hours on the show today, which is that brands really matter. Like the relationship that like direct to consumer used to be this thing that effectively was a bit of a fad. Like, oh, this is that kind of business. And this is a different, this is a, you know, this is Sean at Ridge. He runs a direct to consumer wallet company. No one calls Ridge a direct to consumer. It's just a wallet company.

[Jordy]

Now.

[Harley]

I think the advantage to direct to consumer is because they have a direct relationship, they also have a direct connection and they're able to cultivate a different type of dynamic with their customer base. And you'll hear that from across the board, I think today. So generally, again, what I said to Steve and I'll say to you guys is we measure consumer confidence at checkout and people are buying.

[Jordy]

It's a great way to do it. Great way to do it. I was driving into the, to the gym this morning before we got to the studio and there was six people outside of a target. Really at 6am 6am Is that low or high? That felt extremely low.

[Harley]

That felt low.

[John]

Yeah.

[Harley]

Well, there's, there's probably 60, 60 people outside of a Tokovas right now in somewhere in America. So that does feel low. Remember those videos of like they opened the doors, everyone like rushes in to.

[John]

Get to the door.

[Jordy]

Yeah, no, I remember that's what I'm saying.

[John]

But I never participated in that, so I completely missed that. And I don't like, is it completely died off? It seems like it has.

[Harley]

I never understood why people, how many people needed that many TVs. Like, how many TVs.

[John]

This thing is crazy. Is crazy. I guess it's just like bigger purchases you make. And so if you can save a couple hundred bucks on it, it's like worth it or something. But yeah, it was a big. A big meme the last year.

[Jordy]

I just, I think what you're saying earlier is true. It's like people have brand everyone at this point. You don't even have to be like that. You don't even have to be like, into shopping or into different things. You have a handful of brands that you really love. They're probably independent. And when it comes time for Black Friday, you're like, okay, what are the brands that I like doing? And I'm gonna put my dollars there. And maybe I'm doing some Christmas shopping too.

[Harley]

It feels a little bit like we're all kind of voting with our wallets to have more of the brand that we love exists in the world. I wear a black T shirt almost every day. It's a James purse black T shirt. I've got to know James really well. Like, every time I buy a James purse T shirt, I buy cause I think he makes the best T shirts. But it's also a vote of like, I want more James Purses in the world. These like, kind of quirky guys, in his case out of California who is obsessed with making black T shirts. And I like, as someone that is an entrepreneur myself, been an entrepreneur my whole life, I just, I want more James Purses existing in the world across all different verticals. And so I'm willing to spend a little bit more money. And this is like, I've been buying James purse T shirts before I can even afford them when I was a student because instead of buying like five Gildan T shirts, which were kind of crappy, I would save my money and buy one James purse T shirt every six months. And it was because I liked the shirt. But I also, I like the story behind it and I think that that matters to consumers.

[Jordy]

What? Give us the update on agentic commerce and AI. We've obviously spent the last couple of weeks talking about the battle between ChatGPT and Gemini, but I'm curious what the update is.

[Harley]

You guys are definitely the ground zero for that battle, it seem.

[John]

Yes.

[Harley]

The amount of debate from each Every one of your guests is amazing.

[Jordy]

Everyone is perfectly conflicted.

[John]

That's right.

[Harley]

Look, we are not trying to guess exactly what permutation is going to win. What we're trying to do effectively is whatever is the way that Agentic is going to happen, we want to make sure Shopify is right there. We want to make sure, more importantly, that our merchants are there. So part of the reason that we built our Agentic tools in a way that is more modular, like we built catalogs, which is effectively every SKU on Shopify, and we built, you know, checkout kits so you can actually effectively customize the checkout inside of the app, the agent application. So it looks like it's natively integrated and it feels like it's part of the conversation. The reason we're building these sort of tools in that way is to effectively give these tools to every single application. And we've, we've partnered with ChatGPT, obviously that got a lot of attention where we partner with Perplexity, working with Microsoft as well. So our view is that, that in a similar way that, you know, when social commerce started to gain some steam, we didn't really know what platform was going to be the one that ended up being sort of the winner. Obviously, social commerce is a bit different now. It feels like it's more about discovery, less about the transaction. No one's really checking out on these.

[Jordy]

Well, the thing I'm learning a lot, the thing I'm super excited about and super Bullish on is ChatGPT had some news. I think it was last week around deep research, focused on shopping and feels like, it feels like that is the way that people like that is a better way to do product research. Discovery, which is just like, hey, fire off a prompt and then go do something else and then come back.

[Harley]

Especially because it has all your context, it knows what you've been searching for. If my particular chat application knows that I deeply care about on running, that's my favorite stuff. If I'm looking to get gear for a camping trip or a hiking trip, first it should show me on running boots because it knows that I have a proclivity or some sort of connection to that brand. I think actually the coolest part, so one is we think that it's going to change the way consumers shop. It may actually remember E commerce as a percentage of total retail is like sub 20% in the US still, it's like 25% in the UK, but it's still pretty small. So one thing that may happen is agentic may invite non traditional online shoppers into the online world, which we think is really good, but whatever, permutation ends up being the winner. We want to make sure that our merchants are best set up. And I also think it creates a little bit of a leveling of the playing field whereby now if I'm using a search engine to do my shopping, I'm going to be. The first thing I'm going to be served is going to be whoever pays the most for an ad. Whereas on Agentic, hopefully what I'm being served is the thing that's most relevant to me based on everything the chat application knows about my personal interest. So I think it actually may help a lot of smaller businesses get bigger.

[Jordy]

Totally. I'm curious by. At this point in the day, do you have a good sense of where the platform will land from a volume standpoint for Black. Black Friday in total? Like, are you.

[Harley]

No, not even close.

[John]

We really. You have. You have 10 years of data.

[Harley]

How can you. I have. Sorry, I should say I'm not ready to disclose that.

[John]

Yeah, I mean, I imagine that you have 10 years of data.

[Jordy]

Yeah. I'm not asking you to disclose. I'm just saying, like, do you.

[Harley]

We have some sense.

[Jordy]

Can you get it within like, five.

[Harley]

Bill, you know, like, our data team is legendary.

[John]

I'm sure, I'm sure.

[Harley]

Legendary.

[John]

There's no way you can predict that.

[Harley]

But I mean, so far things are going really well. We did nine point. So for the weekend, so for the four days, so Thursday night till, like, Friday. So Thursday night when sort of Thanksgiving starts until Monday night. I think we did 9.3 billion in 2023. We did 11.5 billion in 2024.

[John]

Whoa.

[Harley]

We'll see what happens this year.

[John]

We gotta take the over on this. Let's go.

[Harley]

I'm not participating, but I will say this. I didn't even talk about this. This guest list we have today is stacked.

[Jordy]

Yes.

[Harley]

And what's really cool is it's sort of a mixture of, like, some of the people on here I actually haven't met yet. They're Shopify merchants. I don't know them. And some of the people that I invited on, I don't think you guys have met yet, but it's fast. I mean, I don't know if, you know, like, Favorite Daughter's coming on Sarah Foster. I mean, Sarah Foster Favorite Daughter's amazing. What you may not know is she also has a hit Netflix show where everybody on the show wears Favorite Daughter. And she has a hit podcast called.

[Jordy]

Yeah, it's so funny. When we introduced her earlier, I said podcaster because both of our wives.

[Harley]

My wife too, but a lot of people know, you know, nobody wants this from Netflix and this like you talk about the future of retail and how it all fits together. Or Cat Cole, who. I think you're having Kat Cole on who's the CEO of AG1. Kat recently, you know, she said this publicly. Kat does like they sell something like $600 million is what Kat says with one single skew. I mean, that is unbelievable. You talk about this exciting new evolution of commerce and retail. Like, these are the people that are building it, and they're building it on Shopify, which we feel very honored. But these are the people on the show that are really leading, like, where this whole thing is going.

[Jordy]

Yeah, it's incredible. We're having Brian on, the CEO of Rora later, new Shopify merchant. Brian and I started Rora together a while back and this is Rora's first Black Friday ever. So I got the shots.

[Harley]

How's he feeling?

[Jordy]

Oh, he's feeling great. He's feeling great. No, it's been an awesome year.

[Harley]

And I just tell Brian to send me all of his feedback and product suggestions and anything else he has there.

[Jordy]

Of course.

[Harley]

That's really cool there.

[Jordy]

Of course.

[Harley]

Yes. You have Kat, you have Brian Nishant, you have on. Wow. I mean, this. Peter.

[Jordy]

Do you know Ray yet? Nish's brand?

[Harley]

No. I mean, I know the brand. I don't know.

[Jordy]

This is very, very under the radar because they raised one round like right at inception and then I won't dox their revenue. Cause I don't know how much is public, but one of the biggest companies that's joining the show today and hardly anyone, at least in the X world, is even aware of them. So excited for that one.

[John]

Incredible.

[Harley]

Incredible. Yeah, I'm just looking here. I mean. Okay, so Noel Mack, who leads with Ben France and they Gymshark, he's actually calling in from his new store in Dubai. Gymshark is the poster child for like online, you know, multi billion dollar company. And now he's congress from Dubai where he's opening a brand new store. So it'll be interesting to see, like, and if you've been to any of the gymshark stores, they only have a couple of them, but they're like gyms and like, you talk about experiential retail, they're like, they're the best at that stuff.

[Jordy]

Well, we're gonna have him. We're gonna have him Go for. We should have him do a 1 rep max on the shot. It's a good idea if they have the setup. Incredible. All right, well, you'll. You'll be back on. You'll be back on soon. Where are you headed out to? You're gonna be right.

[Harley]

I'm heading right now to. To Covis in Soho. They have a brand new store that just opened. So I'm gonna be calling in our next next round. I will be at the store in Soho, at their bar, and little over an hour.

[John]

He'll be back at 12:50.

[Jordy]

Incredible.

[Harley]

Thank you for letting me co host and thank you for sending me this amazing outfit. I feel like I'm one of the boys.

[John]

Thank you.

[Harley]

You are. I'm very grateful for you guys doing this with us.

[Jordy]

Yeah. So much fun.

[John]

It was a lot of fun.

[Jordy]

Awesome. We'll see you in a little bit.

[John]

Talk to you soon.

[Harley]

See you guys.

[John]

Have a good one.

[Harley]

Bye.

[John]

We are about to hop on with Noel from Gymshark. Before he does, let me tell you about Cognition. This is a great Christmas present.

[Jordy]

It really is.

[John]

Get someone cognition. Get them Devin.

[Jordy]

They want AI software engineer Devin under the Christmas tree.

[John]

Say, hey, mom, I want you to crush your backlog with personal AI engineering team. Here's $100,000 of cognition credit. Thank you so much to Cognition for supporting the show. Our next guest is Noel from Gymshark. Let's bring him in from the Restream waiting room. How are you doing? Good to see you.

[Jordy]

Welcome to the show.

[John]

Welcome to the show. Thanks for staying up late. Right. You're in Dubai, is that right?

[Harley]

I'm in Dubai, but I'm on British time zone, so this is fine for me. I'm good, man.

[John]

Don't worry about it.

[Jordy]

You're good. Awesome. How's the day been so far? Mellow.

[Harley]

We're just wrapping up here now. Right. So it's 22 midnight right now here in Dubai. And my plan was to do this with the store in the background, but there's still so many people in the store. T shirts of hangers, you wouldn't have heard a word I was saying. So, yeah, man, it's been wild.

[John]

That's crazy wild.

[Jordy]

When do you actually close this? The. The retail store?

[Harley]

This store closes in 20 minutes.

[Jordy]

Okay, okay. Okay. So did you do it 24 hours? Like, did you start. Did you open at midnight last night or when did you actually open?

[Harley]

No, it was. It opened. You know what? I should know that. Devil's in the details, but I don't know what time? It's still actually open this morning, but I only arrived. I only got into the bike like 10am, so I'm not sure. So that's gonna be my.

[Jordy]

Where did you. So do you start. Start the day back in the uk?

[Harley]

Yeah, started the day in the Earth, did the red eye last night from the UK and landed here. They call Black Friday over here, Dubai Super Sale. So they do it a little bit differently to the way we do at home. And it's wild. There's literally hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people walking around Dubai Mall outside right now, which is nuts.

[Jordy]

Wow.

[John]

What's the shape of the business these days? What categories do you. How do you segment out the business and sort of understand what you sell?

[Harley]

Well, the key differentiator to understand about gymshark is there's lots of sports brands out there. Right. There's been a few brands in recent years. I think Lulu kicked the door down for the yoga brands and then a bunch of other brands came in after that. The really unique thing about us is we're not any of those things. We're a gym brand. Right. And in the same way Lulu said to people, hey, you shouldn't wear sports clothes to do yoga. You should wear specific yoga wear to do yoga. We try and introduce people to the idea that actually you should wear specific gym clothes to the gym. So our brand platform is WEDO Gym, and we think we do that better than anybody else out there.

[Jordy]

Yeah. What's the. What's it. What was your interview process like? Did you have to, like, show off your one rep max or anything? What was the process?

[Harley]

No, you know what, it's a common misconception that you have to be some huge lifting person to come and work at Gym Sharp, but you really don't. However, one thing I would say is a lot of people fall in love with it once they start a gym shark and then they find themselves doing all sorts of crazy marathons for charity and lifting events and bodybuilding and all this crazy stuff. So it's a great environment. Steel Sharp and Steel and all that.

[John]

What about the geographical distribution? I mean, obviously a global brand, but like, how global have you focused on any particular markets? Has Middle east been particularly important as a growth area? What's growing fastest? What's the most interesting thing happening geographically for Gymshark?

[Harley]

So we ship to like 130 countries, something like that, through several different Shopify stores. The UAE has been a real new thing for us. It's been going for about 18 months.

[Jordy]

You guys Went international super early. You also worked with like. Like you. From my understanding, thinking back like a decade ago, you guys, like did influencer marketing probably better than any other brand and did it at a scale that no one had really done it before. I'm assuming you were working with like 10,000 plus influencers at any given point. Like, it seemed like you guys were just everywhere. Did that force you guys to go international earlier than a lot of other brands?

[Harley]

Yeah. I had a really interesting moment once where I was sitting in the boardroom doing some work and an intern knocked on the door. I was on my own and she said, no, I can ask you a question. When did gymshark enter the US and it kind of stumped me for a second. I had to stand there and think about it. And I said, we never sort of entered the US that seems to be a thing that old school businesses did.

[John]

Sure.

[Harley]

We were. We shipped to wherever people wanted to buy it from, from day one of Gymshark. So we were technically global from the. From the rip. But you're right, we were very, very early to influence the marketing. A lot of people credit us as some of the real early pioneers of that. But actually where you were slightly wrong was the point on 10,000 influencers. That was kind of the opposite of what we did. While a lot of people got into influence marketing early and just spread, bet and hit as many people as they could, anybody with a few. We decided to handcraft this, like, select group of what we call Gymshark athletes who are like the biggest names in the fitness industry, the really, really revered ones. So what might have felt like a bit of a roadblock on social media to you was probably more depth as opposed to width, if that makes sense.

[Jordy]

Yeah. Just working with the biggest names in the category.

[John]

And in terms of 2025. Now take me through what's working on the marketing side, what strategy, what area has been the most exciting this year for gymshark as a whole?

[Harley]

To be honest, it's what I said a minute ago. It's. It's less about, you know, it's not. There's a particular channel that's ripping right now, or there's this. There's a new version, Influencer Martin, or it's Tick Tock Sharp or anything like that. It's finding our line and sticking to it. Right. And being relentless about the fact we make gym wear. That's what we do. And we're better than anybody else at it. Right. We noticed a little while ago everybody started to sort of spread really wide and start to try and hit a lot of different lifestyle and golf and surfing and all these different things. And, you know, there was a moment there where we were tempted to go that way as well. And then we sort of reminded ourselves who we were. We doubled down on the fact that we were the gym brand. We launched our brand platform. We do gym, and people have taken to it incredibly, incredibly well. There was an article I read on LinkedIn the other day that said the world doesn't need more bland brands. It need more brands that stand for something and are willing to have enemies. And I think that is exactly what we did. Not enemies per se, but we're willing to say, hey, if you don't rock with us, that's absolutely fine. There's a million other brands out there that are probably for you. But if you want great gym stuff, you should come to gymshark.

[Jordy]

How is gym culture evolving? I feel like the story of the last couple years was this, like, hybrid athlete movement. We don't do a lot of running. We probably should. We hit the gym as a team every single morning. We gotta get into doing some more cardio. But how has that kind of impacted the product strategy, if at all?

[Harley]

We've got about 500 people run club this Sunday in Dubai, so get me a green jacket. You boys are happy to host you down here, we'll all run together. Yeah, you're right. So the first thing I'd say is the culture of, like, resistance training and quote unquote, sort of traditional gym work has really, really grown in the past few years. So you talk to any of the big equipment providers, and they're telling you that they're going into some of the big gym chains in the U.S. they're removing steppers, they're removing cross trainers by the bowl for. And they're putting squat racks in.

[Jordy]

Right.

[Harley]

A little while ago, squat racks look like a medieval torture device to some people if they didn't know how to use it. And now people are really learning how useful real resistance training is. But you're absolutely right. The rise of the hybrid athlete is a. Is. It's a wild. It's like. It's a real step forward in people's understanding of fitness. So previously, you saw a big guy, you're like, he's a big guy. He lifts weights, but he can't run. You saw a guy who weighed, you know, 120 pounds, you're like, he can probably run, but I doubt he can lift weights. And now the two things are merging massively. I ran the London marathon last year, and I had guys coming past me at like £230 lean with a ton of muscle mass. And I was just like, man, that is so unfair. Yeah. And they're going past me as well, and they got £100 on me, which I thought was wildly unfair because. But, yeah, this hybrid thing, this, this, this, you can still carry muscle and you can be a runner and this and that and that, you know, I mean, like, it's a real new development, and we're leaning into that pretty heavily.

[John]

How are you thinking about competing with some of the older, more like legacy brands in the space, specifically in becoming like that household name breaking through across everything? Are you focused on just owning the next generation, or do you eventually want to go and. And get to such saturation that you become a household name even with the older folks? How are you thinking about the different demographics that you're going after?

[Harley]

I'll be honest. Saturation and household names aren't. Household name isn't something we put at the top of our Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Right. Becoming the best version of us is what we do. If what comes with that is household name status and market saturation, all that kind of stuff, amazing. If it doesn't, no problem. But we know we're going to be the best gym brand out there, so we're never going to beat some of the big players from your country or from Germany. You know who I'm talking about, being them. But what we can do is win it being us.

[John]

Yeah, that makes sense. What about 2026? Are there any upcoming marketing or growth strategies that you're excited about potentially exploring next year?

[Harley]

I personally, we don't have a huge plan for this yet. I love streamers. Right now, I'm like, streamers are doing a lot, and I think that's. That's. If that feels like influence marketing to me. In the early days when it was kind of untapped and we dominated early. I like seeing what streamers are doing. There's a. There's something that we are doing that we are very good at is these IRL experiences. Like, our last event in London had over 15,000 people come out to it. That was two days. There was. There was. There was stock for sale, but it was stuff they could buy on the website. There was a few exclusives. There was their favorite gymshark athletes, the group of people I talked to you about earlier on, they could hang out and lift together. We've done them in Miami again. The last Miami one, I think we had 13 and a half thousand people over two days. So those are just wild. And it's almost like a rock landing in a lake. The ripples that sends out across the fitness industry, across all of social media, across TikTok, everything is absolutely nuts. And that's not us, that's consumers coming along, creating their own TikToks, taking selfies with their own favorite influencers, athletes creating their own content and spreading out into the world. So, yeah, that works really, really well for us. We always say that gymshark's an online brand that was built offline.

[John]

Yeah, yeah. In the chat they're saying people yearn for IRL events and I couldn't agree more.

[Jordy]

How are you guys thinking about the intersection of AI and commerce? Are people discovering Gymshark in different LLMs yet? It feels like a really tough channel from a brand standpoint because right now you don't even have the ability to do that great of imagery and just showing off products in the way that you might want to on your personal site. But what does that look like today and how are you kind of forecasting out out?

[Harley]

Yeah, you're right. I think that like literally AI is such a buzzword. Absolutely everybody's using. And I tend, I tend to try and steer clear of talking about them when everybody else is talking about them. My thinking about stuff like this is a little bit Buffet esque. Be brave when others are scared and be scared when others are brave. But you're right, AI results, AI search is absolutely huge. We already do pretty well on that front because there is such an organic groundswell of information on Jim Shark, on TikTok, on Reddit, on, you know, a lot of places. It's scraping for information. Exactly. So we do quite well. But you're right, I'm not going to give away the secret sauce now, but we are. Well, it's not my department, but somebody else at gymshark is working really hard on making sure that we do even better on that front going forwards.

[Jordy]

Yep, makes sense. Well, thank you for taking the time out of a very, very busy day. Where are you? How long are you going to be in Dubai? You're doing an event and then you're going back to the uk or are you doing a world tour?

[Harley]

Yeah, we launched, we're launching our second Dubai store on Tuesday. So we've got a bunch of stuff leading up to it. Like I said, we have a really big run club in Jumeirah Go Golf Estates on Sunday morning. We have our conditioning club. We're doing a run club inside the Mall of Emirates, which is another mall because it's that big. You can do a 5k run inside the mall. That's real Dubai stuff.

[Jordy]

Stampede.

[Harley]

And we open our store on Tuesday and then I get out of here and I'm back to the uk.

[Jordy]

Nice. When you say experiential retail, is it running focused? You have full like squat racks in there. Like what does experiential mean in the context of gymshark?

[Harley]

It depends on the format of the store. Like we can scale it down and up. Like sometimes it's just we have a bunch of personal trainers come up. We're doing pull up competitions, we're doing run clubs, all that kind of stuff. Our latest store that we've just announced the date isn't out there yet, but our latest flagship store, our first ever US flagship store, is launching real soon in New York on Bond street opposite Kiff. And that has, I mean, I can't reveal it yet, but that has the whole two floors of experiential. So anyway, keep your eyes peeled and you'll see what I mean when I say we can scale it from small stuff to really, really big stuff.

[Jordy]

Amazing. Well, great, great meeting you. Thanks for coming on the show. Fantastic to hear your approach to all this. I love the focus and just the intensity makes a lot of sense.

[John]

Congratulations.

[Harley]

Appreciate it.

[Jordy]

Cheers.

[John]

We'll talk to you soon.

[Harley]

Thanks fellas.

[John]

Have a good one. Let me tell you about Adio, the AI native CRM that builds scales and grows your company to the next level. I asked ChatGPT. I put the shopping research mode to the test. I said find me the most expensive elite luxury goods hosted on Shopify sites specifically. Basically just one item per brand, but pull as many different products as possible. Taking on a full tour of top Shopify products. The best overall. A $28 million yacht. Motor yacht, the Mangusta 165. Is it actually, Is it on Shopify? It is. It is. I can, I can put it in the.

[Jordy]

They're selling yachts on Shopify.

[John]

They're selling yachts on Shopify. This is not a joke. I'm going to put this in the timeline so we can all pull this up. It's a $28 million yacht. It's 50ft, maybe 50 meters. They call it a super yacht. Few consumer products exceeded tens of millions of dollars, but this is a full 50 meter super yacht. It comes from a boutique broker using Shopify, not a big generic marketplace. Third party yachting. Press documented the yacht, noting the N1 was the first hull in the Mangusta 165 Rev Series, designed in collaboration with Overmarine and Labunov. It's listed at 28 million euros. This confirms it's not a speculative or unknown build. It's a real super yacht. You can buy it on Shopify. It's available in the Shop app. Also, we are, of course, sponsored by Bezel. GetBezel.com your Bezel Concierge is available now to source you any watch on the planet. But, God, as you say, there is somebody on Shopify selling a $5 million product. Correct. Patek Philippe Grandmaster Chime. And even though it's a competitor Bezel.

[Jordy]

Can you imagine that?

[John]

We got to talk about it.

[Jordy]

We got to talk about it. Can you imagine?

[John]

It's a $5 million. You got to see this watch.

[Jordy]

Can you imagine the credit card fees on that?

[John]

Oh, yeah. That is wild. Hopefully you've negotiated a fantastic rate with Shopify payments. You have the lowest possible payments. Maybe you're doing ach at that level. I'm pretty sure Shopify offers something like that. I'm sure there's something. Something that you can do, but this is a. This is a $5 million Patek Philippe Grand Complications. Grandmaster Chime. This is, of course, on Shopify, you save $208,000 when you buy it. This. This Black Friday.

[Jordy]

No way.

[John]

Yeah, yeah, Exactly. That is 208,000.

[Jordy]

That is so generous.

[John]

$208,000 savings if you go with the Grandmaster Chime. I think this is a fantastic, great.

[Jordy]

Opportunity if somebody out there really wants to stimulate the economy. Yes, this is a great option.

[John]

I have another. I have another. I have another one. Have you ever wanted a supercar? And if you thought I couldn't possibly get a supercar on Shopify, that's crazy. I couldn't get a Bugatti Chiron Super Sport on Shopify. Well, you can't, but you can get the front end because there's someone that's selling just the front end for $400,000.

[Jordy]

An LLM source this for you?

[John]

Yes.

[Jordy]

Okay. AGI not achieved internally. This is.

[John]

What do you mean? This is a $400,000 Bugatti front end. What more do you want?

[Jordy]

Yeah, I don't understand the problem. This would be cool to use to build out the set here. Yeah, you could use it as like a.

[John]

This is the front of a Bugatti Chiron table. And where else are you going to get a front end if you smash your Bugatti Chiron because you're tracking it and you dig it into the gravel, the kitty litter and you need a new front end. Where are you going to go? You're going to go to a Shopify store? Of course. Jordy. Of course you go to Shopify for this. The last one is there's a Richard mill. There's an RM at a different store on Shopify. $500,000 for the Richard Mille. Let's see which one this is. I actually did check to make sure that these sites are actually using Shopify and they are, which is crazy good. It's The Richard Mille RM7201 Black Ceramic Rose Gold Box and Paper 525,000 option on Shopify right there. You'll love to see it.

[Jordy]

I would encourage any venture funds out there. An RM would be a fantastic gift. End of year gift. Holiday gift for Port co founder.

[John]

I mean Only if the Mangusta 165 Rev motor yacht is out of stock. True, but. But yes, I would.

[Jordy]

But an RM that's engraved on the back.

[John]

Yes.

[Jordy]

Would be quite a nice holiday gift for like a Series A stage founder. You'd want to go maybe with the yacht for series B and beyond, but Series A perfect stage for holiday.

[John]

Or you can give them a Bugatti Chiron Super Sport. One piece at a time.

[Jordy]

Just a one job's not finished. Job's not finished. But maybe by the time it is you'll have a full Bugatti.

[John]

No, it's just like hey, keep delivering and you'll keep getting pieces of Bugatti shirt on until. Until you have a full car eventually.

[Jordy]

I wonder if you just buy up all the random pieces if it'll come in at lower. No, it goes way higher.

[John]

Just the front end was $400,000. That's not a. I know that feels like a $50 million car.

[Jordy]

I mean if it's. If it's. That feels like a more expensive part of the car. It's probably fully. It's probably fully carbon.

[Harley]

I don't know.

[John]

I feel like, I feel like. What about the motor? What about the. What about the drivetrain? What about the interior? There's so many expensive parts that'll cost you.

[Jordy]

Over on X saw a post here from Colin Slattery. He runs a digital agency. He's black pilling a little bit.

[John]

Okay. Well, before you read this post, let me tell you about Linear. Meet the system for modern software development. Linear is a purpose built tool for planning and building products. Continue.

[Jordy]

Colin Rock. Rock, strong name. Says super slow start in the us so far referencing his Black Friday. He's also managing the ad accounts for some TOC brands. Colin says we are seeing the same but the next post I have here from Jeremiah says looks like Black Friday Cyber Monday is perfectly tracking with the last two years expecting a peak around 11am Eastern. So again I don't think I'll be interested to see where today's volume actually nets out. Obviously I think Harley had some probably knows to within I feel like do you think they could get it within $100 million at this point?

[John]

100% like at their scale they at this point past the peak like it's we're, we're three hours past the peak time. Like there's no shot that they, that they don't know exactly what's going to happen just from fitting to the previous curves. I mean look at this, look at this chart. Like it's very clear that you know you can fit a curve to the next to like the previous trend and project out. I would be shocked but I mean yes there probably is some error bar and what was he saying? $11 billion. So within a few million is actually extremely precise.

[Jordy]

Yeah and I was saying within 100 million.

[John]

Within 100 million. That's like within 1%. Like yeah they probably can. Yeah but not within like single digit millions. Anyway we got, we got to get to the bottom of how TikTok is performing on on this Black Friday. Sean Frank is joking around here. He says he has a seven figure day because he made $711 on TikTok.

[Jordy]

Shop all because absolutely crushing it.

[John]

700 and there's a lot of other. There's a lot of other says buy.

[Jordy]

A ridge wallet to get my course.

[John]

Yeah there's something odd. I was hearing that TikTok shop was scaling like crazy. It sounds like it's pulled back. We'll have to, we'll have to ask more people about are they getting value out of TikTok shop or any of the other vertical video platforms short form what's actually working. I would also be interested to see just do are people actually timing up influencer marketing to Black Friday sales? Are they ramping on more programmatic platforms? I'm not.

[Jordy]

Zach Stuck who runs a number of different brands says officially Black Friday. Here's the media mix. So he's sharing a breakdown. He's spending $300,000 today, 220,000 on Meta, 30,000 on AppLovin, 25,000 on Google, 20,000 on YouTube and then a handful of other buckets. But yeah notable that Spending more money on Applovin than on Google or YouTube.

[John]

Wow.

[Jordy]

And then David Herman, who also runs an ad agency, he says, applovin too low. So he's bullish on that.

[John]

There's some people that are super bearish on Applovin, but every time I talk to somebody who's like, actually using it or buying ads on it, they're always like, yeah, it's real, it's fine. It feels like Applovit has a weird disconnect with either. Maybe it's like retail traders that are bearish or something. Or I've heard from, like, competitors being like, oh, it's.

[Jordy]

Well, it's kind of like. I think it's kind of in the Palantir bucket of, like, fundamentally, the business is working and scaling really quickly, but. But it's at a 103 PE ratio right now.

[John]

Okay, okay. So it's highly valued.

[Jordy]

So it's highly valued.

[John]

But yeah, it's also something where I think because the Applovin brand and logo doesn't show up everywhere, whereas like Google, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, these ad platforms do Applovin's like, behind the scenes, a little bit below the surface. That just confuses people. And they're like, yeah, how can you possibly make money behind the scenes?

[Jordy]

David Herman says, cut. Ad spend so far for Black Friday Cyber Monday for one client by 48% year over year. And we're only down 6% year over year, so.

[John]

Oh, interesting.

[Jordy]

Interesting strategy there to actually.

[John]

I mean, it is a big question about, like, on Black Friday, it is probably the highest intent shopping day of the year. Very much. You're every person on Black Friday, almost all of them. They're not just sitting there being like, oh, I'm bored. I'm gonna go shopping. It's more like, okay, I need gifts for this type of person. And let me work backwards. What brands do I know? What brands do I like? And so they're much more likely to react to brands that they've been seeing messaging from all year. Oh, yeah, I remember that brand. They had a funny super bowl ad, and then I saw what they did over the summer, and then I stopped by the store here and I wound up getting retargeted and put some stuff in my cart over here. But now is the time to go buy. And so I'm going back to my favorite brand. Yeah, it's not necessarily just the day where you're like, randomly scrolling Instagram, clicking on whatever is coming across your feed.

[Jordy]

High intent.

[John]

It's a high intent Day, I would assume.

[Jordy]

David Herman also says right now Applovin's pacing has been insanely good, essentially reflecting the ad spend change swimmingly. Meta's not so much. We're down 30 to 70% day over day on meta spend despite increasing things 4x. So we increased budget 4x but the actual spend that's happening is down. And so yeah, basically people are having some issues with ad pacing, as you can expect. This is like I would love to know how much is actually spent on meta ads on Black Friday. I don't know if they disclose it actually break that out by the day. I doubt it. Someone else says my Black Friday campaign spent 70% of the budget by 9am Eastern. So that can be a problem. And these things can get unpredictable.

[John]

Other fun fact I love about David, he's obsessed with police chases. Did you know this about him?

[Jordy]

Oh does he live posts them?

[John]

He live posts them. He's obsessed with watching them. It's like one of these funny fun facts about him. Anyway, before we bring in our next guest, let me tell you about fall build and deploy AI video and image models. They're trusted by millions to power generative media at scale. Our next guest is Sarah from Favorite Daughter. We might have to change hats. I have a favorite sun hat here.

[Jordy]

There she is.

[John]

Thank you for joining the stream. Thank you for sending these beautiful hats. How are you doing?

[Jordy]

Hi guys.

[Harley]

I gotta, I gotta tell you, a lot of tech bros.

[John]

Yes.

[Harley]

Text texting me up this morning being like this is so cool.

[Jordy]

Well our, our wives, our wives said the same thing. They're, they, they listen, they listen to the podcast. They're fans. So everybody's excited. Yeah, we're super, we're super excited to have you on.

[Harley]

I love it. Harley wrote me. He was like, like you know, he's the E comm king. So when he asks, we show up.

[Jordy]

You know what I mean?

[Harley]

We show up.

[John]

Yes.

[Harley]

Well my co founder is probably watching by the way my other known is my little sister.

[Jordy]

Little sister. She's moving so she's not joining moving on Black Friday.

[John]

Well for the tech people that don't know, can you introduce the brand? Can you introduce the. I don't know yourself? How do you actually think about yourself? Do you use the term slash?

[Harley]

I guess like we really give like a multi hyphenate a run for its money. We were speaking at a Bloomberg conference the other day and they're like how, how do you actually describe yourself? It's weird. You know we talk about our business as an ecosystem we have all these things that feed each other. The same girl or guy who's buying Favorite Daughter is listening to our podcast. She is probably following us on socials. She's listening to the pod. She, you know, Erin created, you know, a global phenomenon, and nobody wants this on Netflix. So we got that girl. Now it's. It all. It all feeds each other the flywheel.

[John]

And then. And then from a product perspective, specifically with Favorite Daughter, how are you thinking about the shape of the business today? Where do you want to take it over the next few years? How big are the ambitions?

[Harley]

I mean, look, we're growing fast. If you had a told me that we'd be where we are right now. I mean, I said it at Bloomberg. I can say it now. Now we're gonna do like 150 million in retail sales next year. We were profitable. We were.

[John]

Woo.

[Jordy]

Whoa.

[John]

Congratulations.

[Harley]

I don't know. Is that tacky to give numbers? Whatever. Why do you think we have a gong?

[Jordy]

Yeah, the people want numbers.

[John]

We have the gong. Four numbers.

[Jordy]

Yeah.

[Harley]

Okay, that's cool.

[Jordy]

Yeah. So basically you're saying you made $150 million last year in your bank account?

[Harley]

No, it's in my account right now as we speak. No, I could have never, you know, I could have never imagined. Of course, I didn't even think that there was a customer for my sister and I. We were like, we're not fashion girls who want clothes from us. I could have never fathomed that this is where we'd be sitting now. And it turns out the girl that's not the fashion girl, but that wants to feel chic and cool, is our customer. She's us. So I think that's why you've seen probably a lot of, you know, influencer celebrity brands. Maybe not scaling as fast as we have is because we are the girl. We're not wearing Dior out in the world, but then telling you to wear favorite Daughter. We're wearing favorite daughter out the world.

[Jordy]

Yeah. It's authentic. Talk about this year. We live in la. It's been, you know, it was obviously super wild, stressful start to the year. You guys have had a store, right? In the Palisades, is that correct?

[Harley]

Yeah.

[Jordy]

And then moving in a few months later, you're dealing with tariffs. I mean, it's been really stressful year. But how have you guys navigated it?

[Harley]

The tariff thing is. The tariff thing is interesting. I mean, when it hit out of the blue, we were like, I'm sorry. And we kind of knew it was coming, but you don't really think it's gonna actually happen, you know, and it really is us, the business, paying these tariffs, so we had to mitigate real fast. We're looking at, you know, India. We're looking at Turkey. We're looking to move from Mexico. But they. Then it's. It's. It's changing in real time.

[John]

Yeah.

[Jordy]

Yeah.

[Harley]

So it's been a real challenge, and I can't take credit for it. We have an unbelievable team. Jennifer Stender Hawkins, who is like our president, she does everything. She's like, the way that our team came together in that moment was. Was iconic. I mean, it was elite. It was elite the way that the team came together and did what they did. And our profit, you know, our EBITDA is looking a lot better today than it was was about four months ago.

[Jordy]

What categories are you most excited about in the future? Started out with an apparel focus, but I imagine you guys can, in the fullness of time, do everything for your customer, or at least everything within reason.

[Harley]

Yeah. I mean, look, our customer wants it all from us. She does. And we're learning that, you know, we didn't know. Everything's been sort of. We didn't anticipate growing as fast as we did, and we didn't try to. We started sort of testing, like, would she want to spend over $1,000 for outwear? Would she? And we sort of dipped into it, and. And now we know she does. We just launched shoes a license with Kaleris, because our thing is, like, let's partner with the people who do it best. They do it best. Accessories is huge for us. Obviously, like, logo. It's a different girl. The girl buying the logo is not always buying the denim. And we always said the logo is going to pay for the women, for the ready to wear.

[Jordy]

Yeah. Yeah. Very cool.

[John]

How are you thinking about AI specifically in AI generated content? I feel like you're going to hear from fans directly if they are not cool with AI generated imagery and marketing materials at the same time. Sometimes people want to see how it looks on them, and so they might want to see an AI image. Do something.

[Jordy]

Yeah. Not all AI is created equally. I feel like consumers are going to have a massive aversion to AI generated ads, specifically of clothing. Because if you buy something and then it fits terribly and you're like, I've been, like, lied to. But then at the same time, AI try on has been really cool. Amazing.

[Harley]

I mean, look, the thing that we all talk about under the hood, all of us, is how to mitigate returns, how to help returns. That is something that we are talking about all day. So I will. We will embrace the right AI in certain. But, like, when it comes to E Comm models, I don't know. I mean, I think that's where it's going. Of course it is. We spend way too much money and too many days on E Comm because we're perfectionists and we want it to look great. But I'm not gonna lie, it's expensive and it's time consuming. And if all of a sudden they're introducing ways to change that. But I don't know, what do you guys think the customer is gonna. We're nervous about it.

[Jordy]

I think that customers will want to try on products and see how they look on themselves. I don't think customers are going to be thrilled to be like, oh, I'm looking. I'm considering buying this item. And.

[Harley]

And it's on a robot.

[Jordy]

And it's completely. Yeah, it's not. It's not real.

[John]

Yeah. At the same time, like, the line of AI is getting very, very blurry. There's a debate going on in the video game world right now because one of the biggest video game platforms, Steam, has a tag. Was this game made with AI. But the question is, like, what does that mean if one of the software developers in the game used AI to write a little bit of code? That's very different than being like, we went to the AI and said, like, make a video game. Or like the entire characters are AI generated. Like, there's this huge continuum. And I think there'll be something similar where it's like, yeah, if you're on a photo shoot and there's a light stand in the background and you want to remove it. Like you go into Photoshop today you do content aware fill. In the future you do generative fill, you technically used AI. Does the consumer care about that? There's going to be this, like, back and forth around trust. And as long as you're not abusing the material or abusing the trust of the individual, of the consumer, I think you'll be okay. But you have to be more open about it. And I think that's probably where you have an advantage because you have such a direct line with the consumer that you can wrestle with these publicly, essentially, and then set a very clear boundary as opposed to, like, some of the faceless corporations that will, you know, have to issue, like, PR releases when they make mistakes.

[Harley]

I know, listen, it's so tempting, right? Because at the end of the day. Your customers trust in you, your customers loyalty to you. It's all you have. So we've. We've. Before AI, we were like, should we start doing headless models? You know, because it speeds up that a lot of brands do it. Moda does it, and they do beautiful, you know, everything they do. I'm like, I want it. I want it. So we've wrestled with all the ways to, of course, spend a little bit less, but it's tough. I mean, product, obviously, number one, at the end of the day, none of this matters if the product is not good. So that is, like, first and foremost, that is our focus. How can we do better? How can we source better fabrics? How can we do better quality? How can we do better fit? But when it comes to your question about the AI, it's like our customer doesn't always even want to see the clothes on me. And that's the thing. Of course, when I post something or when I push something, it sells. But it sells just as well on girls that work in our office who are different shapes, different sizes, different ages. And that's what we've really leaned into in the video. I mean, videos cross refreshing for us.

[John]

Interesting.

[Jordy]

It is like video on the page, you're saying, like on the video on.

[Harley]

The page and in paid. Yeah, sure, yeah. All of it. I mean, video is crushing.

[John]

Is that the marketing strategy that you think worked best for you in 2025, or is there another sort of growth initiative that, as you look back on the year, you're really, really happy with how it panned out?

[Harley]

Yeah, I mean, I think it's a. It's a combination of so many things, but I do think that we hit this sort of this wide open white space for the working woman, you know, like the biggest compliment the most. The people that come up to me the most are career women. They're women who go, oh, my gosh, my whole law firm. All we wear is favorite daughter. Because we're offering you chic, elevated, tailored suiting, good quality. But that's not. Not, you know, fifteen hundred dollars. You don't have to spend fifteen hundred dollars on a blazer to look great, to show up to work feeling like you look fashionable, like you belong, like you feel good. You don't have to spend that.

[John]

Yeah.

[Jordy]

Yep. How. How do you think about working with influencers? I feel like you're probably extra sensitive to this, given that you guys are creators and personalities yourself. And you're probably like, you know that. That you guys represent the brand. So if you're working with another creator, they're representing the brand. And I feel like in apparel it can be way more sensitive than a supplement brand that just says like, hey, if you share our values at all, we'll work with you.

[Harley]

Yeah, I mean, we've really leaned into Shop My, which is a fantastic company, which I actually looked at as an investment, which I. Big mistake on my part, from my experience.

[Jordy]

Yeah. I was talking with my wife and she was telling me about Shop My, and I was like, I was like, I haven't heard of it. And we, we've interviewed a thousand companies this year and, and I looked it up and I was like, oh, this is interesting. And then the next week they announced like a, I think a billion dollar round. So it wasn't on. Wasn't on my radar, but they're ripping.

[Harley]

It's genius. And it's like it's made the whole process so much more seamless, to be honest with you. And it gives, you know, moms at home an opportunity to move process, to make a little cash, to build some sort of audience. I mean, the celebrities with millions and millions and millions of fans have or followers have not sold as much for us as like a Dallas mom who has like the micro influencer.

[Jordy]

Yeah.

[John]

Interesting.

[Jordy]

Very cool. How much are you, like, how much time are you spending on the investing side? And you guys have a fund that you run. What's kind of the focus of the fund and what kind of companies are you really looking for to meet?

[Harley]

Yeah, I mean, we're a consumer focused find. It's me, my sister Erin, and Phil Schwartz is our partner. It's kind of a different kind of model. He. Well, I could go into the weeds, but we probably don't have time. We're looking at companies that we are the customer for. That's it. It's very simple. That's the thesis. It's not only female founders or only, you know, female. That's not what it is. It's. Are we the customer? Can. Is our audience going to resonate with this product? And it's that simple.

[John]

Yeah.

[Jordy]

Taste smart.

[John]

Makes no sense.

[Jordy]

Very cool. Well, thank you so much for joining on such a busy day. Really, really fun to have you on. We'll have to have Aaron on sometime soon. And congrats to the whole team on all the progress. It's incredibly impressive.

[John]

We'll talk to you soon.

[Harley]

And congrats to you guys. Congrats. Everybody loves your show.

[John]

Having a lot of fun.

[Jordy]

Cheers.

[John]

Bye.

[Harley]

Bye.

[John]

Let me tell you about graphite.dev Code review for the Age of AI Graphite helps teams on GitHub ship higher quality software faster. And we're back in the cowboy hats and we got a cowboy in the studio. Peter Rahal from David. Protein, protein.

[Jordy]

Cowboy compass.

[John]

Cowboy. How you doing?

[Harley]

Good to see you.

[Jordy]

What's happening? It's great to have you back.

[John]

Good to have you back on the show.

[Jordy]

The cod king.

[John]

The cod King.

[Harley]

Yeah.

[John]

We haven't talked to you since you did the cod. I was talking to Jordy, but I thought. I didn't know it was real. It was real. You actually sold cod, is that correct?

[Harley]

Yep. And we still are selling it.

[John]

No way.

[Jordy]

Wait, so are people just cooking up what is cod Tacos at home?

[John]

Where does this go? Like, what if it's actually successful and then you just have to sell COD only?

[Jordy]

Yeah, I mean, hard to outsell David protein bars.

[Harley]

We don't have the same product. Market fit okay with frozen laser cod?

[John]

Yes.

[Jordy]

Amazing. How's it been since we last caught up? I know it sounds like the number one challenge for David is just keeping the product in stock. Is that true?

[Harley]

Yeah, I would say building foundation for. For a big, big 26. Getting the supply chain set up. Yeah. So mostly on the supply side. And you know, this business is a little seasonal, so.

[John]

Q seasonal.

[Harley]

Yeah. Q4 is pretty slow.

[John]

Pretty slow. New Year. New you. You go on a diet, Is that the idea?

[Harley]

Well, Q4, you're just really eating turkeys.

[John]

Yeah.

[Harley]

Drinking alcohol. And then. Yeah. January, all the shame comes and you just start.

[John]

Get on the ground.

[Harley]

Yeah. It's like, it's like 50% month over month from January or December to January.

[Jordy]

Wow.

[John]

Yeah. How. How is. Now that you're. How. How is it two years into David or around there?

[Harley]

One. One year and three months.

[John]

One year and three months. How is it different than the journey from our X bar? Like, like in the first year, it's obviously been the capital side, but what, what are the big learnings? Like, what's. What. What's the. What's the biggest difference?

[Harley]

So RXBar for the first two and a half, three years was finding product market fit. Like, sure. And then. Yeah, once we hit it, it's pretty similar actually. Once we hit it, it was in 2016. David was like right off the get go. So like year three of rxbar is like year one of David. And then I'm trying to think markets have changed, marketing tactics have changed, like influencer marketing.

[John]

Tell me more about the. What was the biggest tactic then and Then what was the biggest tactic of 2025 for you?

[Harley]

So Instagram and influencer marketing was sort of the arbitrage and it was more that the influencers weren't aware of their influence. So that was like a big mispriced opportunity.

[John]

So there were opportunities. Like if you just showed, if you just like shared. Someone, like sent them the product and they would just post about it for free almost. Or just small, little, little like checks here and there as opposed to now there's like whole companies that intermediate, you know, oh, this person has this many followers is going to cost this much. It's a whole machine now.

[Harley]

Yeah, totally. Like, this is pre stories, but like, if Kim Kardashian posted a story of our expert, we would see it right in our sales.

[John]

Yep.

[Harley]

Today I don't think you see it in your sales. So I think there's like fatigue.

[John]

Oh, interesting. Fatigue. So it's actually becoming less effective as well as back then it was potentially underpriced. Interesting. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That makes sense because there's like novelty of like, oh, these people, they, they, like. I haven't seen them promote products. So. So what is working on the growth side in 2025?

[Harley]

That's a good question. I mean, it's, it's. It's hard to attribute to like one thing. You know, I, I think the, if you're in the health and wellness space, the health and wellness podcast are great. Huberman, of course, is really powerful. Meta ads are working really well for us. And then like, I, I'm kind of old school. Like just trial, like sending product out, sampling, like, the business is really simple. We have a bar. It's really easy to sample it. And if you do that at scale, it really works.

[Jordy]

And so at scale, sampling means you have hundreds of people out in the real world that are going to retail stores and maybe fitness studios and just physically sampling. Or are you saying more like sending out sample bars to individual consumers or both?

[John]

Both.

[Harley]

Sending up. We don't have much retail, so sending out individual sample packs to consumers and influencers and people of influence and then events, doing good events and micro influencers. I heard your previous guest talk about that. That really powerful because they have credibility. But from a group, like, like tactically speaking, like, everything's working for us. And it's not to be arrogant. It's just that the product's just really differentiated. Like.

[Jordy]

No, that's the key. That's the key in cpg. I've, every time I've invested in a company where I try the product and I go, this product is 10 out of 10. It's the best in its category. The business just crushes and the founders can. You can still make a bunch of mistakes. You can, you can, you can not have the best ads, you can not have the best website, you can not even have the best team. But if you have the best product, product, it just works. People come back. And so if you have the best product and the best execution, you're pretty much unstoppable. And you just see this lift across the board.

[Harley]

Yeah. And so it's really hard to attribute what's working because it just kind of works everywhere. I know where it doesn't work and it's usually like a price thing because our product is expensive. Yeah.

[Jordy]

So what is the plan on the retail side side? Like I, I'm assuming as soon as you have the inventory, you'll flip a switch and try to be everywhere or is there a more specific rollout?

[Harley]

Yeah, yeah. So in January, rolling out in Target and Walmart. So that's a huge, huge lift. And then we'll be building the majority of, we'll get majority of the major distribution with great retail partners throughout 26. Yeah.

[Jordy]

And what about new product, like stuff on the new product side? You've talked before about being a house of brands and that being the way that you get to the multi billion dollar scale. Any rough timelines you're thinking about?

[Harley]

Yeah, we have a new product we're launching in January.

[John]

Is that fish based?

[Harley]

No, it's legit.

[John]

Is that another fish product?

[Harley]

Anybody?

[John]

It's boiled trout.

[Jordy]

Now that should be how you haze new employees, like how you ramp them up. It's like to earn it, to earn a spot on like the core David team, you have to be able to sell fish online.

[Harley]

Like frozen fish on TikTok Shop.

[Jordy]

Yeah, exactly. You got to hit a million dollars of sales on TikTok Shop. What? So this is a new product under David or it'll be in a new.

[Harley]

Burger brand under David. It's a new bar. I'll flash it right here.

[John]

Oh, Leaking Alpha right here. First time you've ever seen it. I was hoping you were going to pick it up with like two massive arms. Like it was a duraflame filled with like, like a cord of firewood. It's like, yes, this has enough protein for an entire year and you can slice off, slice off, off a chunk as you need.

[Harley]

Yeah. So no, no stunts. That's a real product. Let me put on do not disturb.

[John]

Chad Is asking if it's a collab with Nature's Valley Granola. You know the crumb one that like you eat it and the crumbs go everywhere. That one's so funny.

[Harley]

It's a funny. It's like a negative trait. Became a meme that actually benefit the brand.

[John]

Yeah, 100%. And you have to imagine that those bars are like 100% carbs. Basically.

[Harley]

Yeah. Energy bombs.

[John]

Yeah.

[Jordy]

But, you know, what are you seeing? I know you have a big CPG portfolio. What are you seeing on the portfolio side? What's working? Where are brands doing well? Where are they struggling? Not everybody can have a product that has as much product market fit as David. David. So it's not always.

[Harley]

I mean I don't, I, I don't spend any time on my portfolio and I don't. So I don't know. I quickly focused on David. So I actually have no idea. The one that is sticking out is this thc. Boom. The willies.

[Jordy]

Oh yeah.

[John]

What is that?

[Harley]

Yeah, they're crushing.

[Jordy]

That was the Kombucha. The Kombucha brand. They didn't. They expand.

[Harley]

Yeah. June shine and it's like a historic pivot because like the June Shine or the hard Kombucha Tam is like 200 million. Yeah, it pivoted this and it's like really, really strong numbers.

[John]

Interesting.

[Harley]

Yeah. And I think it's, you know, macro trend is known. People want to get high but they don't want alcohol and they're seeing all that demand.

[John]

That is crazy.

[Jordy]

What's the biggest fish you've ever caught?

[Harley]

A 33 inch lake trout.

[Jordy]

Lake trout.

[John]

Lake trout.

[Jordy]

We're gonna hit the gong for the lake trout. Last question. What's the. What's your prediction around 2026 revolution revenue. Are you sharing any of those numbers?

[Harley]

Yeah, I'll share it. Moving target. We should do north of 300 million.

[Jordy]

There we go. Wow.

[John]

Master class is crazy growth. That's a lot of bars. That's a lot of protein.

[Jordy]

That's a lot of protein.

[Harley]

A lot of protein. We have a great team sort of trying to striking on all cylinders.

[Jordy]

So how many, how many of gr. What will the team look like next year?

[Harley]

Well, next year, I mean we're. We shoot for 2 million per head, so I bet we'll be north of 150. Yeah, we're about 80. 80 right now. I try not to comp these things because I find they're really bad. But yeah, we have a great. We have a great team and super productive group.

[Jordy]

Two Million ahead. It's good.

[John]

It's a good, good benchmark.

[Jordy]

Keeps you honest.

[John]

Love it. Yeah.

[Jordy]

Amazing. Well, thank you. Thank you for joining. Always, always good to have you. And incredible to get the update on the business.

[Harley]

No Black Friday talk.

[John]

How's it going? Yeah, you mentioned that it's not the biggest day for you.

[Jordy]

Yeah. What's your strategy going into this and what's your philosophy even around discounting? We're hearing different things from different people today. I know brands that their max discount ever is 15% and they're super religious about that. They don't want to train their audience to. To kind of wait and buy a ton on a specific day because it hurts the rest of the year. But what's your approach?

[Harley]

Well, we did this at rx. We basically conditioned our customers to a quarterly clearance of some sort. So with David, we don't do discounts. And then. Yes, we don't do discounts. We just do a buy four, get the fifth free. And then.

[Jordy]

Nice.

[Harley]

Yeah. So I think it's important for us as a brand. I think it's a. I think it hurts the brand to be discounting. And then we just bring. We do bring a lot of value, like on a dollars per protein perspective. So. And then with Black Friday, it's just too competitive. And then. Yeah.

[Jordy]

So it's even worth it to ramp. Do you ramp ad budgets at all or do you just.

[John]

Let's. Because you're not a gift shift.

[Harley]

Yeah, we basically just run steady state and we basically kind of hibernate or November, December. Our sales today are only going to be down 20% from an average.

[Jordy]

Wait, so you're gonna have 20% less sales today, but less explained. So you're just like, you're turning off.

[John]

So.

[Harley]

So we're not, say, ads or ads are consistent at 15k. We're not. Like, you would think that all the consumer attention is going to Black Friday and our sales would be hurt pretty, pretty materially, but they're actually like, they're only down 20% to a normal.

[Jordy]

Yeah, got it, got it, got it.

[Harley]

Yeah. Which I think is interesting because, like, we're not participating. And it's actually not that I thought it'd be more impactful because people are.

[Jordy]

Taking all their dollars to somewhere where they can save 30% on their favorite apparel brand or something.

[John]

Yeah, but it makes sense. I mean, people need to order consumer staples on Fridays. Wow. And then they almost see it. They probably see it as like a different thing. It's like, yeah, I got to order Groceries, I got to order protein bars. I got to order whatever my health products are. And then I also got to get that new tv and then I also got to get the gift for grandma. But I'm not going to forget to get food for myself as well. So I show up and I get food, food, and then I go and get the TV and then I go and get the gift for grandma or whatever. That'd be my mental model.

[Harley]

I don't know.

[Jordy]

As you think about next year from a capacity, how do you think about just getting enough inventory to support that kind of revenue? And how far in advance are you kind of doing demand planning given that you're on a rocket ship? And I know that you guys have a unique, unique, unique supply chain and some unique advantages, but how are you thinking of scaling that up?

[Harley]

Yeah, so. So since August, we've been preparing more or less for 26. So we've, we've actually had a throttle back demand to build safety stock to prepare for, to prepare for 26. So I always think like in growth, like we don't have. You kind of want to oscillate between chaos and just like crazy growth. And we had to intentionally do that just to make sure we service and don't have service failures in 26.

[Jordy]

And service failures are like somebody's a subscriber on, on E Comm and you actually cannot deliver the product.

[Harley]

Yeah. And. And that's a failure. And then what? Then it's unacceptable. But it's more on retailers. Like if you open up retailers, it's a deal. And you cannot, you can't ship your PO if you can't fulfill pos. It's a huge problem. Yeah. And so there's just not a tolerance for that.

[John]

How are you thinking about the long term of the business? Like, you've sold our X bar. I'm sure you know all the potential buyers in the category already, they kind of know.

[Jordy]

They've already tried.

[John]

They know you're a known quantity. I'm sure they can dd this really quickly. But do you want to IPO the company? Do you want to own it privately forever? Do you see yourself working on this in 20, 30 years? Is this like your life's work? It seems like to pull back from all the investing stuff, like you're pretty into it. Like you, you're enjoying what you're doing. But do you think you'll, do you think that'll be the case forever?

[Harley]

Yeah. I mean, speaking personally. Yeah. I mean, this is basically a platform for me to create New businesses and brands. And if I were to sell it, it, I would just have to do another.

[Jordy]

Start another.

[John]

You're like, the ultimate, like, I know one thing guy.

[Jordy]

Mark Zuckerberg of bars.

[John]

Yeah, yeah. Mark Zuckerberg was like, if I sell Facebook, I'm just going to start another. Social networking.

[Harley]

Yeah, that's. And starting the hard part, like, yeah, starting is really hard. So never want to do that. And like, the asset. The asset becomes the organization, and that's the hard part. So, yeah, I mean, our vision is to create multiple brands to address different consumer needs and help remove a ton of excess calories from American Diet.

[John]

Yeah.

[Harley]

And I think. I think going public is something that's like a notch on the belt thing, but I would try to just be objective about it.

[John]

What about. What about, like, reference points throughout CPG or. Or consumer brand history? Are you like, I love the Red Bull model of, like, all this crazy marketing for a very narrow product. Do you like the Budweiser model where the Clydesdales come out every Super Bowl? Are there certain brands or founders that you look up to throughout history and draw inspiration from?

[Harley]

I look at Mars. Yeah, we're going for Mars.

[John]

Yeah, that's a fantastic one. There's that book, the Chocolate wars, right. About Mars versus Hershey. I'm blanking on the name, but it's fantastic. All about the development of the mm, how that was Mars and another company that was like, the Offspring, and they did some joint ventures. Crazy business.

[Harley]

Yeah. Yeah. I think we're trying to build, like, a house of brands, and that's cool. I think Mars is a great role model.

[John]

I love it.

[Jordy]

Do you think there's a finite amount of good consumer brand ideas? Do they come in, like, based on consumer preferences and then innovation on the ingredient side? Like, what are the. Because. Because David was coming into a category that people thought was noisy and had a number of winners. Everybody could name, like, a protein bar company. But clearly you came in, innovate, you know, innovative product, and have just, you know, very quickly dominated. So I'm assuming, like, whatever the next brand is, it has to fit. It kind of has to fit within that same criteria of, like, it doesn't matter if the category is noisy, but there needs to be something that is, like, durable and differentiated about. About the product.

[Harley]

Yeah. And I think the. The both good thing and bad thing about food, and it's similar to fashion. Like, there's always a need for novelty with humans. And both food and fashion, there's always going to be room for. For Something new. The, the ugly side of that is there's like product fatigue. And so you have. Staying relevant and innovating is the challenge. But there's always room and then there will be different sort of waves or opportunities that come. Whether it's a trend or a new ingredient or something like that, you have to spot. But in general my approach to something new, like we're planting a seed now, now for something to launch next year and I would say like the product has to be 30% better, like measurably better. Brand cannot be a differentiation. If I'm sitting here telling you how our brand is differentiated, this is so abstract and doesn't mean anything. So it has to be materially better than what's on the market. And personally I like categories that are sort of boring and what appear to be on the surface like really competitive.

[Jordy]

Yeah. Do you spend any time at all thinking about the kind of strength of the consumer? Obviously, David, customers are all strong because they're consuming a lot of protein. But more abstract. I think if you are a mars and the strength and consumers aren't doing well, you're going to see contraction just because you are basically are the tam. And so if the economy is, if demand is falling, you're just going to see lower sales. You guys are growing rapidly in a big category and so you're not necessarily going to notice the fluctuations but any, any like feelings around sentiment and overall strength.

[Harley]

Yeah. And I feel like in our life cycle, yeah, we're not, we're not feeling the pricing issue but you can tell by the retail, the retailers are, are constantly talking about it, which is a reflection. And then I always, I tell our team internally, like our product needs to get less expensive and crunchier. Like our portfolio needs to get less expensive and crunchier over time. And that is to address a larger group of customers because price really, really matters. Like the, the TAM for a bar will be really set on like on price. Like you need to get to the 10 for 10 promotion spot to get to a billion revenue. And, and it's that nature valley angle. Right. Like you're not going to be buying for your family $3 protein bars for everyone to eat. You're going to be buying this 49 cent snack bar.

[Jordy]

Yeah.

[Harley]

And so for sure we think about it and it's become, becomes as our, as we go down our, our adventure and in our life cycle it becomes more and more and more important for sure.

[John]

Well, thanks for taking the time to chat with us. Jason Freed says hello by the way. To You.

[Harley]

Oh, nice.

[John]

He says, hey, Peter.

[Jordy]

Hey, Jason. Legend.

[John]

Have a great rest of your day.

[Jordy]

Yeah, great to catch you up. Congrats on all the projects.

[John]

Thanks so much for coming on and give us the update.

[Jordy]

We'll talk to you next.

[John]

Fantastic. We'll talk to you soon. Goodbye. Let me tell you about FIN AI. It's AI that handles your customer support. It's the number one AI agent for customer service from Intercom.

[Jordy]

Up next, we have Farhan Farhant from.

[John]

Shopify in the restream waiting room now at TVP and Ultradome. How you doing? Congrats.

[Harley]

I'm good. I'm trying.

[John]

If you're here, who's keeping the servers online?

[Harley]

Oh, thank God we stayed.

[John]

I thought you had to personally fan the gpu.

[Jordy]

Wait, is this Chopify's advantage is the infra team is in Canada, so it's just a regular.

[John]

It's cold so the servers don't go on fire.

[Jordy]

You guys don't do normal. You don't do like American Thanksgiving, right?

[Harley]

Oh yeah. It's true that we are not on vacation today. I mean we would not be on. I mean a lot of our American employees are not on vacation today either.

[John]

But this is probably why they won because they're in Canada. It's cold up there.

[Jordy]

So the servers don't match during the Super Bowl.

[John]

The servers don't match.

[Jordy]

They're locked in.

[Harley]

Yes. And I'm trying to match you guys with my green sweatshirt.

[John]

I don't have those. You look fantastic. Thanks for taking the time out of a busy day to come talk to you.

[Harley]

No worries.

[John]

What are the biggest learnings, changes to how Shopify is doing Black Friday or just infrastructure or technology this year? Has it been the diffusion of AI or other stuff? What are the big macro trends in your world?

[Harley]

Yeah, so a couple amazing things. One is we don't just roll into Black Friday, right. It's an all year round thing. We start planning. Like tomorrow we'll start thinking about or I mean after the weekend we'll start thinking about Black Friday 2020 and what's crazy about how Shopify's growth is and really it's all about our merchants. It all comes from the fact that they're doing such an amazing job for by creating great products for all of their buyers. And so what happens is there's Black Friday. It's crazy. You see our sphere, you see the globe, we're showing you all the crazy sales. And then by April, May next year, it's just going to be a regular day. At Shopify because that's how fast our brands are growing. And yeah, the way we handle it is we do lots and lots of scale tests, man. Like, it's crazy. We can. We build up our infrastructure so that if an entire region goes down, we can just shift it to a completely new region and have no impact to buyers. Emergence.

[Jordy]

That's amazing. Yeah. I guess talk more specifically about what part of the business at Shopify is getting less attention than it should right now. Obviously people are focused on big headline numbers. They're focused on sphere and some visuals. But how much of a role is the Shop at app? And just like Shop Pay playing this Black Friday as a product that's now been in the. Been in the wild for a while now. I think everybody listening to this will have used it probably multiple times at this point. But how big of a role is that or kind of other parts of the business playing?

[Harley]

Yeah, I would not sleep on the Shop app. It's amazing. Started off as just package tracking and now I know lots and lots of folks, including myself, where I just start at Shop App to search for something from an amazing brand that is building something specifically for you. I mean, one of my favorite brands right now is this weights company called Motivate M O T V8, number eight. And it's got these adjustable dumbbells from like five to 80 pounds. Beautiful matches. My gym doesn't roll away and I found it on shop. I would not have found these adjustable dumbbells any other way. And so, yeah, you should look it up right now.

[John]

I want to see. So we hunted around and we found a yacht for sale on a Shopify store. A 28 million euro super yacht, mega yacht. Somebody set up a Shopify site and to sell this yacht on. I love it on Shopify and I want to see if the Shop app has it. We're going to dig in there. We're going to.

[Harley]

Yeah, we should check. And then, I mean, you mentioned shop pay. You mentioned Shop pay, right? I mean, shopay is, you know, the fastest way to check out. And we see, for example, if you just have the Shop Pay logo, even if you don't click it. Yes, conversion goes up because people trust the merchant is.

[John]

Does that give me some buy now, pay later opportunities? Potentially you can.

[Harley]

Yeah. I mean, obviously, as you know, we have lots of buyers who want to do a buy now pay later. We have Shop pay installments, which allows.

[John]

You to do that pay 1 million euros a month for 28 months to pay for my 28 million euro yacht. That would be fantastic. This is the future. I love it.

[Jordy]

Yeah. Shop pay. I still notice, even though I've been using it for years at this point, like the multiple times probably a month that I'll. I'm willing to actually just buy something on my phone because I know it's going to be so fast when historically I'm like, if a store is not on shopify, I'm just not going to buy. I'm not pulling out my credit card to buy your thing. Also don't want to do it anymore.

[John]

Yeah, it's just, it's made really, really anything that speeds up that, you know, there's always those famous studies about, like, you know, if you cut down the time it takes to do something on the Internet, you'll see massive conversion. We look at it in very, like, abstract, kind of quantitative 3% gains for one 1 millisecond over here or whatever.

[Jordy]

Yeah.

[John]

But just the pain of actually having to, you know, go and find your credit card and stuff, it's. It just breaks. Brings actual delight to the entire process. And you have an entrepreneur who's focused on, like, building a cool brand, promoting it with cool people, and, like, the customer's feeling cool, cool, cool, cool, cool, and then miserable. And so if you can pull that out, like, it's a. It's a huge, huge advantage.

[Harley]

Yeah. And we see. And we see, for example, especially on your phone, right. It's like over three quarters of those checkouts happen on the phone, and you just want to be able to quickly check out. It's a trust builder. And by the way, imagine buying from a site that's not in your region, Right. You're buying from Europe, you're in Europe, buying from the U.S. you want to make sure that's a seamless experience. And Shop Pay will do that for you. It'll show you your shipping rates. You can feel like it's trustworthy. You can see the delivery times. You click, you get the package tracking right away, you get the order confirmation, you get the little Cha Ching in the shop app, and everybody's feeling good.

[John]

Well, thank you so much for coming on the show, giving us the update. Cha Ching, congratulations.

[Jordy]

Yeah, thanks for keeping everybody online.

[John]

We appreciate it.

[Jordy]

Keeping the orders coming, coming in.

[John]

It's not easy what you do, and we appreciate you.

[Jordy]

Unsung hero.

[Harley]

Well, thanks for having me on. And back. Back to the war room.

[John]

Back to the war room.

[Jordy]

Love it.

[John]

We'll talk to you soon. How you doing? Let me tell you about profound. Get your brand mentioned in Chat GPT reach millions of consumers who use AI to discover new products and brands. No better day than today to check out Profound. Up next we have Torin from Mod Retro, of course, the, the makers of the Chromatic.

[Jordy]

Welcome to the show.

[John]

We've we good to have you.

[Jordy]

First time, first time, first time on the show.

[John]

Thanks so much for taking the time. How is Black Friday for you? You're obviously focused on the Chromatic this year. Are there other ways that you're merchandising the product? How are you?

[Jordy]

Is this the best Christmas present ever? This must be like, is this like. It feels like, it feels like you kind of made the perfect Christmas present present.

[Harley]

It's, it's this thing that we, you know, we, on our checkout flow, we have the post checkout survey and I think the, the biggest thing that we've been learning on this Black Friday is.

[Jordy]

That it's just, it's such a unique.

[Harley]

And perfect gift, no matter if it's for a child or for somebody who is much, much, much older. Because everybody can just appreciate that, that I have one right here. That simple idea of just turn it, turn it on. No, you're in the game.

[John]

I was experiencing this. I mean there's so many tech products today and we talked to Palmer about this where just going from unwrapping it to setting it up to logging in with your creating account, add two factor, upload your DNA and all this other stuff and it's like, can we just turn it on and have fun with it? And it's like, you can. We know we have the technology, but we've forgotten how to do it. And fortunately we can make things that just turn on and are fun in this country.

[Jordy]

Powerful stuff.

[John]

So, yeah. How is it going? Is it surpassing your expectations just financially? Are you happy with how things are going today?

[Jordy]

Yeah, it's been amazing.

[Harley]

I don't know if you guys have been keeping up with this, but we also just unveiled the design of the M64.

[John]

That's right.

[Harley]

Today.

[John]

Yeah.

[Harley]

And so we've seen a pretty massive spike in traffic and inevitably people coming to look at the design of M64 are the exact same types of people who want to play a Chromatic.

[John]

Yep. Yeah. Give me, give me the rundown the best practices for M64. I want it on day one. What do I have to do? And then my, I, I, I, obviously I, I want one as soon as I can get one. How do I do that? And then also. So should I be digging through old crates of N64 cartridges and making sure that I have those ready to go on day one.

[Jordy]

Yes, you definitely should be doing that.

[Harley]

But we will also be announcing our biggest launch lineup of games that are.

[Jordy]

Going to be published in house.

[Harley]

And again, just like with Chromatic, we release classic games, we remaster classic games, and we also make brand new games that are made by indie devs and things like that.

[John]

That's fantastic. And then what is the value prop? Why M64? Why not just go on ebay, get something, get a bunch of adapters. How are you positioning? I've talked to Palmer about the mod retrochromatic many times and he talks about the materials and the screen is all one sapphire glass. I don't understand how it works, but it seems very impressive and I certainly enjoy it when I look at it. But what, what are you most excited about with regard to the M64?

[Harley]

M64 is it's just like the Chromatic. Like with the Chromatic, it is.

[Jordy]

It is the only way to play.

[Harley]

One of these games, the exact way.

[Jordy]

That the game artist intended for it.

[Harley]

To be seen and for it to be played. That's because as you said, it has the only, only pixel perfect resolution display that's ever been made for a Game Boy clone. Whether that's software emulation or hardware devices. It's the only one in the world that has a pixel accurate display. But it's a confluence of different factors that make it feel like this very authentically nostalgic experience. It's the exact same way with the M64. It's from the translucent colorways and the.

[Jordy]

Way that the design is, is made.

[Harley]

For the actual physical console itself, but also for the video output. We're doing a few things that add to the authenticity of the actual video out and what the game artists intend for you to see in those games that won't exist in any other piece of hardware.

[Jordy]

Is that because when the N64 was created we were using much different televisions and now everybody has flat screens. And so you need to actually like, the video out needs to have a better understanding of like the final kind of like screen form factor.

[Harley]

That's exactly right. The funny thing is that upscaling the video out to 4K, which the M64.

[Jordy]

Will do, is actually the really easy problem.

[Harley]

The hard problem is how are you.

[Jordy]

Going to have a modern N64 console.

[Harley]

Video out to a CRT and to see the game exactly in the way that you used to see it. And that's something that the M64 is going to accomplish with a Lagless analog video out as well?

[John]

Yeah. When we talk to Palmer, he talks a lot about the Pixel Perfect jumps that Speedrunners do. It's a niche consumer, at least it feels like it is. But it gives me a lot of confidence in the quality of the product. If it's good enough for the Speedrunner, I. I can't speedrun Mario 64 but if it's good enough for them, it's probably good enough for me. It's probably going to be a good experience. Do you think that there's actually a benchmark where you would like to see the M64 in circulation at something like Games Done Quick, GDC, these different speedrunning competitions. Is that sort of your internal benchmark? If it's actually good enough for the Speedrunners, then it's good enough for. For everyone.

[Harley]

The only benchmark is that it is at feature parody in terms of video out and lag and things like that with original consoles. That's the only benchmark that makes any sense to compare against. And so that's what we compare against. Palmer talked about that Pixel Perfect jump and we have slow motion cameras that Capture the Chromatic vs. The Game Boy color and make sure that that is frame by frame, accurate.

[Jordy]

Accurate.

[Harley]

It's the exact same thing with M64. In fact, we will be at Gamestone quick with chromatics and M64.

[John]

Amazing. Yeah. So it's already in process.

[Jordy]

Chat wants to know any plans to do a clear case. Chromatic, is that you keeping that in the chamber?

[Harley]

Yeah, we get a lot of requests for it. That's what I'll say.

[John]

What about reaction to more modern hardware? Valve just released the Steam box, the Steam frame. What was your initial reaction? Are you chomping at the bit? 25 years you're going to be making one. Or are there any other kind of takes or opinions or thoughts that you can share about what that maybe means for the gaming ecosystem broadly?

[Harley]

I'm a huge fan. I'm honestly a fan of all gaming harbor and I think Palmer would say the same thing.

[John]

Yeah.

[Harley]

For mod Retro specifically, what we try to do is kind of dig into the past for these threads that are still relevant today. So like in the case of Chromatic, it's this idea that you can pick up a game and play it and the game doesn't ask anything of you after you're playing it. Most modern games, they're constantly trying to get you to pay more money after you've already bought the game. For a example, this, it, you know, this. It's the same reason that you can pick up a Game Boy game that was left in your parents closet today, stick it into a Chromatic and have the exact same experience that. That is the thread that we wanted to pull on for Chromatic. So I think with Mod Retro, a lot of the hardware that we're going to make is have these, these elements of the past that are still valuable today that have just been kind of steamrolled by, by, by, by modern times. It's not to say that the devices aren't modern in their technology stack, it's just that it gives you an experience that isn't common in, in modern hardware ecosystems.

[Jordy]

And so yeah, you know, all the.

[Harley]

Stuff by Valve, I'm, I'm obsessed with it, I love it, I'm a customer of it. But the types of experiences that Mod Retro creates live alongside that for somebody who is interested in gaming. Yeah. And they're also better for people who actually just don't consider themselves to be a hardcore gamer but.

[John]

Still want to.

[Harley]

Play around with Tetris on an airplane or something like that.

[John]

Yeah, obviously with Palmer, he can draw a ton of attention to the company, to the category. But what else is working on the growth side in 2025? Have you gotten into performance marketing? Doing, doing paid partnerships with other influencers? Like what, what does the growth engine at the company look like these days?

[Harley]

Yeah, we're, we're just starting to scratch the surface of that stuff because the product with no growth engine behind it at all does pretty well. And what we find is that the biggest thing for Chromatic, for example, is to get it into somebody's hands. And when you have it in your hands, it creates a network effect of other people buying it, especially just. Yeah, you can't fully communicate that feel, that click of the cartridge.

[John]

And it's also a forgotten, it's like a forgotten feel. Like I think that people remember abstractly liking the game Boy, liking physical handheld gaming, but they don't quite remember what it actually felt like to feel it.

[Jordy]

It's too good. Good. Last question. Anything you can share around the time Horizon for the M64 preorder?

[John]

People want to know when they can pre order. Chad is going crazy.

[Harley]

I know, I'm sorry. But not right at this moment, but very, very soon.

[John]

But there is something that you can do today, which is drop your email and you'll be the first to know if you're on that email list. Correct.

[Harley]

Drop your email on the wait list, which is on modern.comm 64. You will be prioritized in terms of shipping timelines and, and you'll know the second that the, that the pre order is ready. Okay. It, you know, we're, we're in the early stages of production on M64. It's just that we, we don't like to jump the gun too much with taking your money ahead of being able to ship the product.

[John]

And so I mean, Palmer lived that with the first Oculus. I, you know, he, he delayed. He was probably the most successful Kickstarter campaign in history and still months of delays. Of course it's hard, it's heart wrenching going through that.

[Harley]

And yeah, yeah, I think a lot.

[Jordy]

A lot of other companies would have launched the pre order today and it's very mature to say we'll take.

[John]

They wouldn't even call it a pre order. Yeah, it's going to ship next week. Who knows? But subject to delays.

[Harley]

Yeah, yeah, we, we don't have the need to take your money ahead of time.

[Jordy]

We can shoulder the bureau burden of the development and be confident that you're.

[Harley]

Going to love the M64.

[John]

Well, thank you so much for joining the stream. Congratulations on all the progress.

[Jordy]

Yeah, great to have you on, finally.

[John]

Have a good one, Tor.

[Jordy]

Congrats, guys. Cheers.

[John]

Goodbye. Let me tell you about Turbo Puffer. Serverless vector in full text search. Built from first principles on object storage. Fast 10x cheaper and extremely scalable. You're right. Built by Shopify alum. And we have a current Shopify, not an alum. We have Harley back with Kevin from TOAS in the Restream waiting room now. They're here in the TVPN Ultra dome.

[Jordy]

Sorry. Don't mind if I Don't mind if I kick my boots up on the table.

[John]

Don't mind if I do partner.

[Harley]

I don't know if I can reach that high.

[John]

This is actually the second pair of toas. I have somebody, a very nice enterprising young man who now works for us, came all the way to Los Angeles to interview me and I think he'd interviewed you or someone from Tocovas because he brought me a pair of Tocovas and I was like, are you guys sponsored by TO Covas? He's like, no, I just like giving them as gifts to people. And it made a really big impression. I wore them at a wedding in Mexico. It was fantastic.

[Jordy]

And we gave some to Covas to a guest and friend of the show recently. Dylan Patel, a friend of ours is one of the Top analysts in the semiconductor space. So he's always going around, always going around to different data centers, spreading the word in the back of pickup trucks. And so we said you should be wearing to covas when you're out on.

[Harley]

The road, Kevin, your work is done here. You should just. You should just log off now at this point. That's great.

[John]

No, I just actually love it. But yes. How. How is the day going? Give us the update on your side. What's the latest?

[Jordy]

And you guys are in the Austin store, is that correct?

[John]

1:00Pm Pacific, 4:00pm p.m. eastern.

[Harley]

Yeah, I'm here in Austin South Congress, which is one of our flagship stores, Harley's actually in New York in our soho store. So the soho store right now is packed. It's insane. Kevin, you'd be so impressed. It's amazing here. I was actually looking around going, I don't know if we can do a live interview in here with how crowded it actually is. So hopefully it sounds okay. But yeah, we've been doing great. We've actually got a line of about 50 people still outside the door. We've had that since we've opened this morning. Mornings, so just a constant stream of traffic. And things have been going just fantastic for us. We're having great sales online, great selling all of our stores. It's a. It's a great Black Friday so far. You'll be happy to know that Chanel is right across the street and your line here at Jacobus and soho is longer than the Chanel line across the street. I don't know what that means.

[John]

I don't know how complimentary. And Harley.

[Jordy]

But I just like.

[Harley]

Just to say, like, Chanel is not on Shopify.

[John]

I knew you were going to say this.

[Harley]

Correlation causation, guys.

[John]

Ridiculous.

[Jordy]

Well, Kevin. Kevin, it's great. How did you guys did. How did you guys first meet? You guys were born on Shopify? Or did Harley bang down your door.

[John]

And shame you publicly into getting on? So it's been.

[Harley]

I've been on Shopify for almost 10 years now and have definitely, I guess, grown up, grown up on Shopify. But actually the first time that Harley and I did something together, but he basically said that he wanted me to do a little fireside chat with him in front of a top 100 Shopify employees on a retreat they were having. And he wanted me to tell them how Shopify sucks.

[John]

I told Harley, like, I'm in.

[Harley]

Do I only get an hour? I don't know, four or five years ago. And so it was a great opportunity to get closer with all the product leaders at Shopify and really talk about some things that we have on the outside and just was an awesome experience to get more embedded with that too. You know, I'm sure you guys have this also. I'm sure there's some, like, advertiser partners that you guys have that they're constantly just giving you great feedback. That's Kevin for Shopify. Kevin will text me at like Saturday night at 11 o' clock and say, I have an idea about subscriptions. It may have nothing to do with to Covis, but there's constantly this, like, incredible, you know, feedback loop. The one thing I will say that Kevin's quite modest, so I'm going to say it for him. You guys remember that era of, like, retail where for some reason every store for a while while had like a cafe and then eventually had like a DJ booth?

[John]

Yeah.

[Harley]

Like every store had it. And you kind of went in there and you're like, this doesn't feel right. It feels inauthentic to Kobus is kind of the opposite of that for some reason. And I think, like, they're very intentional about it. Like, I'm sitting at the bar right now where there's like, literally bourbon beer being served to all these people to get them drunk so they buy more boots and cowboy hats. It feels so authentic here. There is this like, je ne sais quoi about the brand. Brand that makes. Makes them. The way that they handle themselves, the way that they build their stores. There's a certain thing that they do that I think is exceptional, actually. I think, like, and we're joking about Chanel, but, like, I think Chanel, like, lost a little bit of that. I think, you know, a lot of the luxury retailers wanted to, you know, try to expand that.

[John]

Be careful how hard you go on Chanel, because they're going to come on Shopify and next year you're going to be here being like, Chanel is. Is back. They. They never met. How to miss made a misstep in their life.

[Harley]

And just to piggyback, that's a mindset we have here called radical hospitality.

[John]

And we are always looking for ways.

[Harley]

To kind of better serve our customers. We do have open bars in all of our retail stores. I'm also sitting here at the Austin bar.

[John]

That's great.

[Harley]

Drinking a glass of whiskey. We do branding and customizations. There's actually. We have branding irons.

[John]

Branding irons in the store with flow torches. Yeah.

[Harley]

And we will heat those branding irons up and kind of Stamp the boots right there. We've got a boot shine station as well. And so really trying to create moments where people to come into the store even if they're not looking to buy and just hang out and just create kind of an awesome experience.

[Jordy]

Thing I'm most curious about is like how, like, how do you, how do you view your role as CTO of a retail brand when you're powered by infrastructure like Shopify? We were talking with Harley earlier. I think a lot of, lot of CTOs of some legacy brands would say like, no, I'm going to own the full stack. That's my job. I don't want to let it go.

[Harley]

Kevin, how much? I mean this is Kevin's favorite topic. Let's go.

[Jordy]

Yeah, I figured because there's so much more that you can do as a technical leader that's not just like the core like commerce engine. There's so much more that sits on top of that many things that you can optimize, marketing, et cetera.

[John]

So.

[Jordy]

But I'm curious how you view it.

[Harley]

Yeah, there's no reason at this point so we need to have a completely custom, from the ground up built tech stack. I'm almost looking at it as I'm like the conductor of a symphony or an orchestra, you know, trying to bring together a bunch of different puzzle pieces and you know, operate at a higher level. You know, we have obviously Shopify as our commerce platform. We have RFID deployed into all of our stores. We have email and text messaging and advertising and data feeds and AI now that we need to plug into different parts of the organization. Our retail business is absolutely taking off. And so there's a bunch of interesting kind of retail physical technology challenges that are out there to solve. So I'm certainly thinking bigger picture. I don't want to be standing at my own commerce stack and Farhan handle all of those problems and I stand on top of his shoulders on days like today. Today and make sure that we're operating at, you know, the best efficiency possible here.

[Jordy]

How much? How much?

[John]

Oh yeah.

[Harley]

So I was gonna say, can you tell us how today's going for you? Yeah, it's going great. We have set multiple records in terms of orders per hour. I think we're on our six straight hours breaking that record there.

[Jordy]

Six straight hours?

[Harley]

Yeah. Which is fantastic. Obviously Black Friday is always our biggest day of the year and we're seeing some fantastic improved year over year and everything's running great. Farhan did a great job on his side.

[Jordy]

You don't keep the notifications on the push notifications on the Shopify app anymore. When did you go?

[John]

I mean, I had to turn those.

[Harley]

Off like nine and a half years ago. It's been a long time since I had the little. The bell on my phone going off there.

[Jordy]

Where are you getting leverage from AI on the engineering side? Are you using to spin up landing pages faster? Like, where's the. Where are you getting an edge there?

[Harley]

Yeah, we're actually doing exactly that. My entire engineering team also is using Cursor and Claude and a few different tools to be more efficient on that front. We also just deployed a tool here in retail called Invent AI and it's designed to optimize all of our retail inventory for all of our weekly transfer orders and replenishments that we need to do to all of our retail stores. So it's doing a bunch of things for us that used to take three or four people, people a couple of days to bring together in spreadsheets now at our scale. And we've completely optimized that now with an AI system that we've been seeing some great leverage on here as we went up the holidays.

[John]

What about customer service? What about customer service? Because I feel like there's the natural progression of you have some knowledge base, then you have a whole bunch of back and forth and emails, like smart email responses. What are you doing there?

[Harley]

Yeah, our CX team has been working hard on our AI assistant agent on the website. Our ticket volume that actually is making to humans is down significantly year over year. Our CX team and our Black Friday channel is actually, hey, things are going.

[John]

Really smooth this year.

[Harley]

And part of that's because we've been able to offload a bunch of those requests directly to that agent. And so that's been super valuable for that team to be lean and efficient during our biggest time of year here.

[John]

Yeah, that makes sense.

[Jordy]

What's your. If you can share this, what's your biggest store by vault volume.

[Harley]

I'm sitting in it here. Austin Congress is definitely our biggest store. Nashville will give it a run for its money depending on the day, depending on the country music concert that might be going on. But our flagship here in Austin is our largest.

[Jordy]

Is it like twice as much from a gross revenue standpoint as say, like a Manhattan, or is it closer than that?

[Harley]

That's a good question. Yeah, so SoHo, we don't even open for about three months now in SoHo. So that's still a relatively new market for us as we're growing and investing kind of up into the northeast tier of the country. And we're super excited about that soho store. It's an incredible. And honestly I think it's probably our best story ever built. And we've got taken. It's beautiful in here. Like the deep detail, the floorboards for example. Lee. Like it is really spectacular. Can you actually talk about what your issue with opening these stores and like the free bar issue? Because I think, I think the boys would love to hear like that issue.

[John]

Issue.

[Harley]

Yeah, I can't actually say that we have alcohol in every store and there are some menus that are slightly curated in certain markets because we actually run into issues with certain city councils and kind of legalities in that area where they don't really have like a license for a retail store to offer hospitality, liquor and a shopping experience without food also being served. So we've had to get creative in some cases. We've had to actually spend some time with different city councils in other cases. And it's just.

[Jordy]

Let me explain how we do things around this retail store.

[Harley]

Well, it's just the reason I love that story is because the genius of Tokovis and business models like this is that the traditional kind of city councils, they can't put them into any box. They don't know what to call them. The traditional, it's a store or it's a place to hang or it's a saloon or it's a place to come and just, just like, you know, get, get your, get your boot shine. Like they can figure out what they are. And I think that's, I think business models that are difficult to explain in that way. Usually the ones that are most interesting. Yep.

[Jordy]

What's, what's been your guys policy around using AI on the, on the content side? Any, any strong opinions or kind of guidelines that you've been following? We've been asking some other, other founders.

[Harley]

Yeah, that's a good question. We, we have not gotten to the point where we have deployed any AI produced content into any of our ads to create. We certainly used it to help brainstorm and come up with ideas of how things could look or you know, get some, some storyboards or things like that. We haven't gone all the way off like the Coca Cola rails here and created like a weird AI ad. That's not something that we want to get to right now. We think the ads that we have right now are fantastic. We've actually got an ad that's probably airing right now in the Georgia, Georgia Tech game. We've got an Ad tonight in a Texas Tech event in games. And those ads like to have storytelling elements to them. They're super gritty. They fit real naturally into like Landman and Yellowstone and some of the other big commercial brands that we're sponsoring and being a part of. And we, we are. We couldn't be more happier with what we're doing right now.

[Jordy]

From a creative perspective, I'm curious how. How much is counterfeiting an issue for you guys? Because we are now dealing with counterfeiting. We just saw this morning somebody included a TVPN merchant merch in a gift guide that they were doing. That's not. We don't. We haven't sold. We haven't sold any merch ourselves. But people are making counterfeit goods. I'm sure you guys have. Have a bunch of issues with that, but I wonder what the approach is.

[Harley]

I mean, I feel like I need a knock on wood right now. It's not a huge problem we're dealing with physically. We do see it more digitally with like ripoff sites and scam sites that.

[Jordy]

Kind of pop up around the web.

[Harley]

And even the dark web. Yeah, yeah. And so we've got a partner named Bolster who helps monitor those kind of site developments in real time. They also help issue takedown notices and bring those things down as fast as possible. And really since we. We probably started using that tool now three years ago and it's something that I don't really even have to think about too much now because it's just up and running and serving as our frontline defense.

[Jordy]

That's great. We probably need to sign up for that.

[John]

Yeah, we need.

[Harley]

Can you talk a little bit about sort of this the like you guys are. How many stores you have now? 45. Yeah. The pace. The pace. I mean, that's unbelievable. The pace you guys are opening right now is kind of unbelievable. Can you talk a bit about how the relationship you have? Like, I think it'd be valuable for. For those listening and watching just how you think about like channels and ch. Like, you know, traditionally you think of channel conflict. Online's hurting offline with cowboy boots, you kind of want to go into the store first to try it on, but subsequent purchases maybe can be done line. You have a very, I think a really great way to kind of think about that and how you think about expansion. Can you talk about how when you sit around and you think about where to go, how to expand, what channels are producing, how you guys look at all that? Yeah, totally. So, you know, we started only as D2C. So we're website only for five or six years. And we got into retail, I think like it was December before COVID which is a terrible time to start retail business and basically open eight stores and immediately close them. But we kind of survived. We survived obviously that year and it came back super, super strong from that. You mentioned cowboy boots. It's a very unique first time purchase for someone who has never purchased a cowboy boot before and can even be slightly intimidating. And so having a brick and mortar retail store to come in and get that experience, get that footing, kind of understand how that boot is supposed to feel when you're wearing it, is a massive unlock for us as a brand. Today our retail business is larger than our E Comm business. Both are super healthy, but retail is actually scaling even faster, faster. So we're seeing fantastic results there. We actually see when we open a new retail store in a new market, we may actually see E Comm dip just slightly when that store opens because there's so many customers who want to go to the store because they've been waiting so long to actually that experience in real life, which is I think a unique attribute of ours. Obviously the whole market lifts over time, which is great. And then we've also just recently started parting partnering with specific wholesalers. So we see a great opportunity to go outside just of our direct channels and meet the customer where they're at. Cowboy boots have been around for 150 years and there's lots of great independent western dealers out there that we're excited to get our product into. And we certainly don't look at it as channel conflict. If we can get someone in a cowboy boot, we don't care what channel it comes from. And we know over time we're gonna lift the whole market. So are you taking market share from anyone? Are you taking market share from a different company or is it like non consumption you're competing with? Yeah, I mean, I don't want to talk bad about anybody, Harley, but there's only one line here today on South Congress. But there are multiple boot shops here on the street. Shockingly, in SoHo, there's not that many boot shops. Our store is the most crowded.

[Jordy]

What about, what about international? Are you guys thinking about like what country do you think will buy more or could. Could come close to buying cowboy boots at the level that America.

[Harley]

Yeah, that's. That's a good question. We still have not tapped international at all. So we are still United States only and still think we have a very large greenfield Internationally. If you look at markets like Canada and Australia and Brazil and Mexico and Spain, there's Germany even has a pretty big tam there. So we think there's a great opportunity for us to continue to expand internationally. But we also want to do it in a thoughtful way. We want to do. Do it in a profitable way and make sure that, you know, it's the right decision for us to go that direction when we need to.

[Jordy]

Makes a lot of sense. Got anything else?

[John]

Thank you so much for taking the time.

[Jordy]

Thank you for taking the time. You, you seem like you're just cruising through.

[Harley]

Yeah, like he's Steady Eddie. He just throw the boots. Getting things crazy. But throw the boots on the desk.

[Jordy]

And just enjoy the rest of the day.

[John]

Cto, who's on Shopify? Like, it's not going down.

[Harley]

It's. This is my Harley. This is my 10th black Friday on Shopify.

[Jordy]

Amazing.

[Harley]

It's, you know, we've come a long way and things are going really well. That's awesome. This is my 16th black Friday. Almost half my life. This is great. Honestly. I'm not just saying this, Kevin, because you're on the call, but like, you'd be so proud. The store, the staff here are doing amazing. You can feel the energy. People are just hanging out in the front. There are people that are having, you know, they're shoes, their boots personalized. You got a lineup of people drinking bourbon here. Like, as from one entrepreneur to another man, like, you should be really proud of this.

[Jordy]

We got one more question for you. We gotta ask, what's the biggest fish you've ever caught? Kevin.

[Harley]

You know, I, I heard the last question you asked that. I mean, I think I probably caught maybe like a five pound catfish.

[Jordy]

Okay, okay. Catfish. Nothing wrong with that's on brand catfish. We actually.

[John]

Did you eat the catfish fish? I feel like if you catch it.

[Harley]

It was a catch and release situation.

[Jordy]

Okay, there you go. First cast fish.

[John]

We need to start putting them up on the wall when we have different catch. Well, thank you so much for taking the time to come chat with us on such a busy day. Happy Black Friday.

[Harley]

Yeah, I appreciate that.

[John]

Thank you for these wonderful boots.

[Jordy]

Cheers.

[John]

See you soon.

[Harley]

Cheers.

[John]

Look at that dragger.

[Jordy]

Oh, we have a new record.

[John]

$4.2 million in sales every minute. Right? Isn't that it?

[Jordy]

It's every minute.

[John]

Millions per minute. Wow, that is a fantastic amount. Well, let me tell you about public.com investing. For those who take it seriously, they got multi asset investing and they're trusted by millions. Apparently someone Found a company that might be slightly worse at naming than Open and AI. I believe this is Samsung. Have you seen this? So they have a Q5 Max Plus Q5 Pro Plus Q5 Pro, Q7 Max Max Plus Max Pro Ultra. Have you seen these? I think these are different phones. It really makes you appreciate how, how hard Apple works to create like a logical flow between all of the different phones. Like, like, it really shows you that when you're like a massive company, it's so easy for it to get away from you because you're like, oh yeah, there'd be like massive demand for like a mini Pro version. And you're like, okay, yeah, let's do it, whatever, let's greenlight it. And then you wake up and you realize you have 75 different permutations. And that's what's, that's what people. This Hermes versus Gap.com, i thought it was somewhat relevant to Black Friday. Hermes is pulling 25 million visits, I guess per month or I guess from August to October. So for that quarter quarter, 25 million, gap 200 million. So gap 10 times the viewership basically, or the visits than Hermes. And of course people are. This is in reaction to the difference between Claude and Perplexity in the App store. Claude has 33,000 five star reviews. Perplexity has 370,000 five star reviews, is number 14 in productivity. Pretty, pretty remarkable results from Perplexity. I think a lot of this has to do with the pricing strategy. I think there's much, there's a lot more to the free tier of Perplexity. Whereas I was even just trying to randomly pull up Claude just to run a quick test and immediately before it hit me with a sign in page, before you could even fire off a single prompt.

[Jordy]

A lot of people use Perplexity.

[John]

A lot of people use Perplexity. And there's a lot of channel partners partnerships.

[Jordy]

Credit to Perplexity. As much as ChatGPT, as much as ChatGPT is AI. Most people out there, there's a lot of people where Perplexity is AI to them.

[John]

Totally, totally. They've done a really good job.

[Jordy]

Yeah, we'll see how they can continue to hold on and scale that user base over time.

[John]

Well, before we move on, let me tell you about numeral.com, let numeral worry about sales tax and VAT. Complex compliance is handled so you can focus on growth. I wanted to share a potential gift for the AI lover in your life. The Welch Labs illustrated guide to AI. If you pre order on or before December 15th, it'll ship.

[Jordy]

Lot of graphs in here.

[John]

A lot of graphs. I thought this was interesting. I've seen this person on YouTube and just seems like a fun, interesting book. I like these types of books. It's almost a technical book, but a lot of interesting graphs just documenting some of the AI things. Also, I mean if you need books, Stripe press, I mean you really can't go wrong. There's so many beautiful books there, so many interesting books about technology.

[Jordy]

Put some striped press under the Christmas tree.

[John]

I would agree. I think that's the way to do it.

[Jordy]

What else?

[John]

What else?

[Jordy]

This was crazy. We covered Giant Slalom, the FBI operation to find Ryan wedding. They were able to capture his Mercedes 2002 Mercedes CLK GTR.

[John]

And I put this in here because I thought it was a good gift idea.

[Jordy]

I know. Are they going to auction this off?

[John]

Just get a 2002?

[Jordy]

The trouble is, if you're one of the world's most wanted men, it's kind of hard to be whipping around around a Mercedes CLK gtr.

[John]

It's going to turn some heads.

[Jordy]

You could make your own track wound.

[John]

Up turning lease heads. It is a massive, massive car. The back of this car is just remarkably long. Just what an exquisite vehicle. I love it. This feels like an under discussed. The Carrera GT gets a lot of love. Love the F40 LaFerrari Enzo. Like those get a lot. This is, it blends in almost like too much. But I mean obviously there are some people that. It has a ton of fans but very, very, very cool. Well, if you, you know, if you're not living a life of crime, you got to automate compliance and security on Vanta. It's the leading AI trust management platform. Look at that Stinger for Vanta, that Stinger.

[Jordy]

New Vanta Stinger.

[John]

Kath Korvac says when my husband asks how many Amazon packages are still on the way, it's a clip from Meme from Ilia.

[Jordy]

There were so many good moments in this.

[John]

The answer to that question will reveal itself. I think there will be lots of possible answers. You know, people were kind of dunking on Ilia for, for having this like vague response to Dwarkesh asking him how will SSI make money? And I was just like, this is the most. Like this is, this is not a bad answer. This is the perfect answer. Because he literally did this. He went to OpenAI for 10 years. They just worked on research and then wound up with a massive consumer business. They wound up with a consumer tech company that that makes $20 billion a year in revenue.

[Jordy]

Did you, did you. His answers, though, is he. They will likely release a product before.

[John]

People were saying that? I don't know. No, I don't think so. I think he's actually just going to do the open AI thing again. He did it in open air. People are like, how could he possibly be so vague that, like, you know, he's these vague posting, vague podcasting, thinking that, like, the answer will reveal itself. It's like, well, that's exactly what happened the last time he was in this. In this role. He was in the role of, hey, go research. You have basically an unlimited budget, more or less, because there's just nonprofit dollars coming in. You can pay the bills, you're going to keep scaling up, doing experiments, do whatever. And then it's at the last possible second. Once he'd done a lot of good AI research, someone came in and said, hey, why don't we wrap a chat box around that and put it on the Internet? And then boom, $20 billion business. And so for him to be saying, yeah, we're going to run it back, it seems very logical to me. It seems like, yeah, that's a great plan. Although $36 billion valuation. I'm sure that there are some reasons why people are like, oh, this is capital incineration, blah, blah, blah. But I don't think it's that crazy given that he literally just did this.

[Jordy]

If you need a place to park. $3 billion.

[John]

Yes.

[Jordy]

In AI, I think it's a. I think it's a. As part of a basket.

[John]

Yeah.

[Jordy]

I don't know companies. I think it's a. I mean, it's.

[John]

Certainly like a venture style risk. Like, it's like, it's could be a zero, but just like if anyone else was giving that pitch of like the, oh, we don't know how we'll make money, blah, blah, blah, I'd be like, red flag. But like, not with Ilya. Like, Ilya is the one person who's extremely qualified to say, we do a bunch of research and then we figure out how to monetize it later. And it actually works because it worked the last time.

[Jordy]

Yeah. Well, did you know about this movie, Battle Royale from Japan? Tim Sweeney's posting about it.

[John]

Yes. I haven't seen it, but I'm familiar.

[Jordy]

Battle Royale movie from Japan.

[John]

Yes.

[Jordy]

It inspired movies like Hunger Games and games like Pubg and Fort.

[John]

I've played Pubg. I've played a little bit of Fortnite. Night Player unknown. Yeah. Battle Royale and then it was adapted into the Hunger Games, of course. But I like that Quentin Tarantino. This post from Variety says, Quentin Tarantino starts to reveal his 20 best movies of the 21st century. This is how you reveal a list. This is what they should do with the Midas list. Should be like, they're starting to reveal it. He didn't tell the top 20. He just said, here's 11 through 20. You'll have to tune in next time to my next Variety article.

[Jordy]

I like it.

[John]

It's a really good bait because now I'm like, well, what's his number one? I got to know. And he'll be like, okay, number 10. Number nine. It's a great way of keeping somebody on the hook. Anyway, let me tell you about figma. Think bigger, build faster. Figma helps design development teams build great products together. Our next guest is already in the restream waiting room. We have niche, right?

[Jordy]

My dear friend.

[John]

Your dear friend. I think we ran into each other, didn't we ran into each other in Nobu. How you doing?

[Jordy]

Yes.

[John]

Welcome to the stream. What's up?

[Harley]

What's up, guys?

[Jordy]

How you doing?

[Harley]

Good, good.

[Jordy]

How locked in are you? How locked in are you right now? The last 24 hours.

[Harley]

This is it, man. This is the super bowl, dude. So, like, you know, like, no sleep. It really is okay.

[Jordy]

You did. Did you really not sleep last night? Did you get a couple hours at least?

[Harley]

Thankfully we have a team that does this kind of stuff now, so it's not that bad.

[John]

Yeah, but I mean, some companies, it's like January 1st is their super bowl because it's like people are getting in shape. New Year, new you. Other stuff, heavily gift driven. So Black Friday is really big, heavy, discount driven. Like, where do you sit on the.

[Jordy]

How much bigger is Q1 than Q4 for you guys?

[Harley]

Yeah, Q1 is always bigger than Q4, especially the health and wellness base. So like they call Q1 really Q4 5. And so everyone, you know, ramping up towards Q1 January to easier super bowl for sure. But this weekend is still going to be a really, really large weekend. And like these next four days, people are going to be like, the buying intent is just so high, so everyone is just really excited to purchase regardless. But even, even after this, December is usually a little bit of a lull in the health and wellness space, but you're still spending and building awareness. And then Q1 is just like, you know, that's where you're making as much money as possible.

[John]

Yeah. Take us through the product Set for.

[Harley]

Those who don't know.

[Jordy]

Before. Before. Give an intro on yourself. We're close friends.

[Harley]

I don't want to, I don't want.

[Jordy]

To skip over it for the audience. So yeah, introduce yourself and the company.

[Harley]

Yeah. Hey guys. My name is Nish. I'm one of the co founders of a company called Array. I started the company with my wife and we're basically a targeted supplements for unsexy problems. So we started the company five years ago. Our hero product, product is Bloat in the digestive health kind of category. And since then we've expanded across multiple women's health problems. So metabolic health, sports performance, digestive health. And we have very few SKUs, but we do, you know, nine figures of revenue as a business and we're five years old.

[Jordy]

Oh, well, there we go. And you guys, have you raised one round back in the day?

[Harley]

Yeah, we raised like a really small, like couple million dollars, super small seed round maybe three years ago, something like that. Yeah, we've been profitable since.

[Jordy]

Insane. What's been the strategy this year? I feel like other categories in E Comm have had like more volatility this year, just like given the trade war and all that stuff. But has it been so far?

[Harley]

No. Okay, so the first half of this year was completely different than the second half of the year. So the first half, something about just buying sentiment was a lot better. And so the way you're able to grow these consumer businesses and just marketing in general was really efficient, really strong growth. Second half of the year has been really interesting. Something has changed in just like macro environment where people are not spending as much money just buying things online anymore. And so I'm noticing this across the board. If you look at like macro 10 data, look at even retail category data, just customer acquisition costs have really, really gone up. Met acquisition costs have really gone up. Brands are still growing, but it's just harder than it was in the first part of the year, that's for sure. Jordy.

[Jordy]

Yeah. And so to counteract that, you guys are launching new products. You launch Target. Walk us through that.

[Harley]

Yeah. So for us, you know, launching new products has always been a really big part of the strategy. I think innovation is so important because without innovation you just can't really build. Build the company and you kind of die. So we're always launching new products, but we try to launch very few products that have a really large tam. And so this year we launched a tone Tone Gummy, which is basically creatine that was built in a form factor and has certain additional ingredients that is really geared towards women. And so a lot of women so scared of taking creatine and so scared of bulking up. And so let's make this more approachable for them. That was like a really strong product for us. We have another clear protein product in the protein category. Protein's been going crazy this year. So that was like. That was another really big launch. We have a clear, clear protein with electrolytes in it. So that did really well. And. And then more recently it was a product line extension. We have a really strong MB1 metabolic health product. And so we did that as well. But the biggest thing for us is we've been expanding heavily into retail just because that's where the next kind of phase of growth comes from. So we have went nationwide through Target, nationwide as spread routes. Those two are really big, big launches. No, it's been a crazy year, man. Crazy year. Really good.

[Jordy]

What about online channels? How are things on TikTok shop? I know we were in the Alps in December, January, and you said it was insane at that point. Has it kept up? I know that they kind of subsidized Demand brand on TikTok shop or. That's. That's been my understanding of it. Has that continued? How are you thinking about it as part of this acquisition that's going on, all that stuff?

[Harley]

TikTok is actually pretty insane. So TikTok shop is this crazy platform where you can go from doing nothing to doing, you know, multi million dollars a month in like three months. And so that's what, that's what happened to us when we were in the Alps, Jordy. Like, we were just ramping up. By March, we were doing seven figures per month, per month, just on TikTok shop. And, and so that was like a. It was really, really cool, really fun. But what's crazy about it is the amount of investment that you need to get that going is just a lot. So TikTok is interesting because you get this virality, you get this insane amount of impression share and you're really banking on the halo effect it has on other channels. So when TikTok goes viral, you're not really making any money in TikTok, but you're making money on Amazon, in retail and even a spillover effect on dtc. And that's where you're seeing the results, results. So the thing about that is you do it, you know, you're not going to make a lot of money, but you got to like staff up and get really complex on like Incrementality and just your overall marketing strategy and just getting really good at measurement so you know where you're making money. But TikTok shop is really interesting because it's actually changed Black Friday behavior quite a bit. It's in a, it's in a position where it's a constant deal seeking like throughout the 12 months of the year because they have so many sales and so many problems promos happening all the time. And so consumers on TikTok shop are like, okay, okay, I'm just going to go look for the best deal and I'm just going to go for whatever creators are telling me are the best product but also the best value. And so it's like really change things because you know, you really don't want to be on sale all the time, but you kind of have to be if you want to play competitively on that platform. But it's still really interesting because you can, you can have certain products that are like really meant for TikTok Shop, other products that you're kind of on your D2C and you're cross selling up, selling, selling. But it's a strong platform. Once it gets going. There's no denying the halo effect it has on everything else.

[Jordy]

Makes a lot of sense. How are you navigating growth and profitability? I know you've been generally profitable for a while now, but you still have your foot on the gas from a growth standpoint.

[Harley]

I think right now we've been profitability first, more than growth. And so, so we've just been like, okay, no matter what, even on the bfcm even we're doing like these large sales and whatnot. Like we're not going to go above a number if you're going to become unprofitable. Now obviously the profitability takes into account a lot of like LTV and just like mechanics on. Okay, we don't mind losing money as long as you're sure that we'll make money back within whatever, you know, one, two, three month payback period. So we'll have that type of math and give the best possible kind of value to the consumer, consumer. So we've still been very healthy like LTV on that note. But it's interesting, I mean we've been expanding so much in retail and all that kind of stuff. You just need money to grow that machine and you just need to market a lot more. So there's a world where regardless of how profitable you are, there's the pure dollars needed to, you know, market scale in retail. You Just really money for that. So we're considering. Okay, you know, how much do we increase that marketing budget by. By maybe reducing profitability even more and just like spending more because it's what you need to get successful. There's a flyable effect that will take in later. So I'm sure there's money to be made later on that. But right now we have profitability first. But I think we'll maybe be more lenient on that even going into next year. Just because you want to grow the business more, especially with the channel increasing.

[Jordy]

Do you track revenue per employee? We had David. Not David, Peter. Peter, Peter. David, Peter.

[Harley]

Protein.

[Jordy]

From David.

[Harley]

He.

[Jordy]

He was saying, you know, he looks to keep like a couple million of revenue per employee. Is that something that you think about at all or just kind of a vanity metric?

[Harley]

Yeah, we do actually. We do. We're probably like one of the leanest I think we're sitting anywhere at like somewhere in the 2 to 3 million dollar range on revenue. So like that's really. Yeah, it's been, it's been really good. Maybe a bit too lean though. But yeah.

[Jordy]

It'S incredible. I've. I've had a front row seat to watching Sif and Nish bell the ray and just absolute, absolute monsters. Someday you'll go on like a nice podcast tour. Victory lap when it's all over. But once the company. Yeah. Awesome, dude. Well, thank you, thank you for taking the time out of the day. Say hi to Sif and the whole team and I will. I'll see you soon.

[Harley]

Thanks, guys. You soon. Have a good one.

[John]

Have a good one.

[Jordy]

Cheers.

[John]

Our next guest is already in the weed stream waiting room. What you got for me?

[Jordy]

I was just going to say Nish is just the epitome of golden retriever matching. He's an absolute animal.

[John]

Before we bring in our next guest, let me tell you about Julius AI, the AI data analyst that works for you. Join millions who use Julius to connect their data, ask questions and get insights in seconds. We will take it over to Figs. I believe we are in inside of a store.

[Jordy]

There we go.

[John]

Is this a virtual backdrop or are you actually in the store right now? I'm so confused.

[Harley]

I am actually in the store.

[John]

Okay. Amazing.

[Jordy]

Yes.

[Harley]

You're at our brand new store on Upper east side here in New York City and we just opened.

[John]

Congratulations.

[Jordy]

Amazing. Good timing. Hit the gong for the store. There we go. What, what is like, what is Black Friday like in your category? I'm assuming a lot of your. A lot of your Consumers are like, it's a normal work day. Is that true? How do you guys approach the holiday?

[Harley]

Yeah, that's exactly right. At Figs, you know, we are building a brand exclusively for healthcare professionals. And many healthcare professionals, they're working the holidays. They were working all day yesterday through Thanksgiving, and they're working nights and weekends all the way through the New year. And so for us, Black Friday, Cyber Monday, it's really a moment for us to show up for them. These are the people that are showing up for all of us. And so we really approach this moment as a moment of gratitude and a moment to give back to our community.

[John]

How are you positioning gifting the product? I can see, you know, it is a professional outfit, but it's also a product that people love. And so if your family member gives it to you, they're kind of giving you more work, but also it's a very nice thing to give. So how are you positioning the marketing around who should be participating in Black Friday? The gift giver or just the person who's shopping for themselves?

[Harley]

Well, it's all of the above. I think everyone wants to thank all of the incredible healthcare professionals in their life for, you know, people that are being treated and cared for by healthcare professionals. And so it goes both ways. I think, you know, healthcare professionals are able to use this as a moment to stock up on their essentials and the uniforms that they need to wear every single day. But at the same time, Biggs is a really premium brand. We've completely revolutionized the way healthcare professionals get dressed for work in the uniforms that they're wearing. And so it also is a really nice gift for, you know, someone to gift another healthcare professional or, you know, to gift the healthcare professional loved ones in your life. And so it really is all of the above. And I think it ties back to this feeling of gratitude, giving thanks to, you know, the most incredible people on this earth that are saving lives and curing diseases. And so we position it both ways, both as a moment to stock up for yourself, but also as a moment to give that.

[John]

What's the biggest. What was the biggest unlock this year from a marketing perspective? What was one campaign or strategy that you feel like as you look back on 2025, you feel like it went particularly well.

[Harley]

Oh, my gosh, we've had an epic year. It's been so awesome. And I think one of the things that I was reflecting on it with a moment like today, Black Friday, Cyber Monday, for us, it's not just about these moments. It's about how we show up up 24, 7365 for our healthcare community, who we call awesome humans. This year we launched a year long campaign called where do youo Wear Figs? And it talks about all of the places that healthcare professionals wear figs, which is literally everywhere. It's before their shifts, after their shift, it's to work every day. And so we've had a series of chapters throughout the year celebrating Women's months, celebrating Nurses Week, most recently celebrating the holidays. And we've really shown the insides of what it's like to, you know, work within this industry, in the space and all the different places where our brand shows up. And so I think what's so important on a moment like Black Friday, Cyber Monday is that, you know, you're building this brand equity and you're building this connection with your community throughout the year and then that pays off in these, in these big moments. And so show showing up for them, listening to them, telling their stories throughout the year, which we've done with our where do youo Work? Campaign has been really incredible for us and this is just another moment to celebrate that.

[John]

Well, congratulations on all the progress on the epic year and thank you so much for taking the time to.

[Jordy]

Yeah, thanks for bringing us, bringing us into your new space.

[John]

It looks amazing.

[Jordy]

Quite busy in there.

[Harley]

Yes, it's packed. We have hot cocoa and it's been a really fun day.

[John]

Very cool, very cool. Well, good to meet you. Thank you so much for taking the time to talk to us. We'll talk to you soon.

[Harley]

Thanks for having me.

[John]

Have a good rest of your day. Let me tell you about Privy. Privy makes it easy to build on crypto rails, securely spin up white label wallets, sign transactions and integrate on chain infrastructure all through one simple API. And. And let's go back to the timeline. The folks over at Deal were having some fun. Have you seen this? This is an interesting trend, Aaron Resource.

[Jordy]

HR seemingly executing on this strategy very well, they say. I noticed one employee wearing noise canceling headphones. Not earbuds, the big cushioned over ear kind that create a tiny personal universe. I asked if everything was all right. He said yes. He's just trying to focus. Focus. You do this in the morning, I do your big earbuds. I told him we value focus, but isolation can misread as resistance to collaboration. He said he's literally sitting at his desk doing his job. I told him we track human presence, not just output. He asked how presence is measured. I said imperfectly. Which is why it's so important. Then I logged quote, avoiding spontaneous culture building opportunities. In his engagement profile.

[John]

10, 10 million views, 50,000 likes and it's an ad for deal. And it's so interesting because it feels like it's part of this new trend. Like there's that the European, there's a European VC guy who's really funny who I believe is owned or partnered with like a SOC2 compliance competitor or company out there that does that like avanta competition. And it's just a very funny positioning of owning these accounts. We also saw, I think Polymarket bought RAW's alert for $500,000 that was leaked on the timeline today. And so there's a whole bunch of interesting ways that companies are engaging with different accounts, whether they're buying ones that are already existing or they're spinning up new ones. It feels like like it's like part of the go direct story, but not entirely. You have to do it all on the founder's profile. But it's definitely blurring this line between like what's in house and outside and outsourced media. How are they getting attention? What's marketing? I have a friend who has a, is an ad agency where he just buys, you know, ads for companies and he set up an AI based profile like years ago. Like as soon as, as soon as the AI dropped, like it was not particularly good. Just has like an anonymous picture, like an AI generated image. And he posts just like here are the greatest ads in history every day. And so it's just like great ads and people will just, they go viral all the time because they're just interesting ads, funny ads. And then it's just a funnel to be top of funnel to just do lead gen on. And so there's all these different ways that companies are like plugging into like you know, social media these days. Very fascinating.

[Jordy]

Yeah.

[John]

Well, another way to advertise is of course with Adquick.com out of home advertising made easy and measurable Plan, buy and measure out of home with precision. Our next guest is Brian from Rora, your co founder. No way. Brian, how you doing? Welcome to the show.

[Harley]

I'm doing great. How are you guys?

[John]

We're doing fantastically.

[Jordy]

So great to have you. So great to see you. Do you get any sleep last night? Yeah, got a little bit.

[John]

This is, this is a big thing for Roar, right? Introduce the product, introduce the, the progress and then take us through what some of the expectations are for Black Friday.

[Harley]

Yeah.

[Jordy]

So Rora is a premium water filtration brand primarily trying to Build products that, you know, will extend people's lives and help people get access to cleaner, cleaner water. So we're effectively trying to build like the Dyson of water, water filtration. So an entire ecosystem of products that helps, you know, people get access to clean water wherever they are. And first Black Friday. But not, not, not your first Black Friday went through a ton of them. Maybe it'd be kind of interesting to hear like, how, how, how Black Friday has changed. Even while you've been an E commerce operator, you had a company, love your melon, that did many, many millions of dollars of revenue and scaled profitably over close to a decade. I believe. So, yeah. I'd love to get a sense of how this day and these kind of four days have changed and then we can talk about Rora. Yeah, definitely. I think it's definitely changed quite a bit. I think this is my 12th black Friday. But it used to be that Cyber Monday was really the day and you build everything up to that and, and you could set budgets at 10x and.

[Harley]

Things like that on Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and you could just rip a ton of sales.

[Jordy]

Yeah. But in today's day and age, you really have to build up the learning on those ads and you have to.

[Harley]

Build a lot of that forward momentum.

[Jordy]

Really to maximize the potential of it. So I think now in today's day.

[Harley]

And age, it's really about obviously capturing the momentum.

[Jordy]

And so, so we did a couple.

[Harley]

Of key things like having a product.

[Jordy]

Release about two weeks ago and really.

[Harley]

Using that as an opportunity to build a lot of lead gen and a lot of interest around that leading up to this.

[Jordy]

So we did a lot of things focused on the top of the funnel leading into this.

[Harley]

It was our first Black Friday, but.

[Jordy]

It'S a lot cheaper, obviously, to get.

[Harley]

Eyeballs on your product when you know.

[Jordy]

It'S a month before. So we did a lot to fill the funnel. And then, you know, this, and this is also not a product that it's, it's less of like an impulse buy, I feel like. Is that correct? Like if you're, if you're buying a product to, that you're going to rely on for clean water for your family, like you might just see an ad and immediately click through and buy, but you also might want to learn about it over time. And I think top of funnel is like really important because of that. Yeah.

[Harley]

So, you know, we allow people to.

[Jordy]

Find out what's in their water. They can go to our website, they.

[Harley]

Can find out what's in their water.

[Jordy]

Then they go through a whole series of, you know, emails and informational aspects.

[Harley]

Then to learn more about the aspects about our product.

[Jordy]

And so we pushed a lot of that leading up to this. But we also know that a lot.

[Harley]

Of people have been looking at our products for quite a long time.

[Jordy]

And so we felt that it was important to do, you know, a discount for Black Friday, just to allow more.

[Harley]

People to have access to cleaner water.

[Jordy]

And so that was ultimately the biggest decision behind it.

[Harley]

And we've seen a lot of great response from our customers and driven quite a bit of sales from it.

[Jordy]

What tactically on Meta, what are kind of the risks? We were talking earlier about how brands are setting budgets and then blowing through them either way faster than they intended or, or not as fast as they wanted to. What's been your approach there and how are you kind of where are you finding success? Yeah, I think for us being as.

[Harley]

Young of a brand as we are, we launched about a year ago.

[Jordy]

It was really focusing on just top.

[Harley]

Of the funnel and so really keeping a lot of that budget on prospecting and continuing to funnel in your best ads into to the prospecting side of it, but also making sure that we can come out of this and keep.

[Jordy]

Consistent, you know, consistent sales for the brand. And so really building up the learning.

[Harley]

Earlier than we typically would instead of saving all of our best assets and pushing it out, you know, waiting for.

[Jordy]

Black Friday or right when we start the sale. So I think we've done that fairly effectively so far. What, what are you seeing other brands do in terms of just approaching this four days from Black Friday through Cyber Monday. Is it all just one continuous sale now or does it make sense to be launching different sales at different points? What's best practices that you're seeing? Yeah, I think consistency definitely is best practice.

[Harley]

I've done it so many different ways.

[Jordy]

Over the past, whether it's free gifts with purchase, whether you've got different products.

[Harley]

Releasing, whether you've got a better deal on Cyber Monday. And I think a lot of those things worked well in the past, but I think in today's day and age, it's better to stay consistent with one sale. I think starting that a little bit.

[Jordy]

Before, you know, a couple days before Black Friday so that you can build up the momentum with those ads tactically.

[Harley]

And then you don't have to decrease that spend because you don't have a big dip in overall volume. So you can kind of just consistently then scale that, that up throughout Black Friday into Cyber Monday and Then also you get the lower CPMs starting that a couple days before Black Friday, then trying to start it on Black Friday and experiencing those high CPMs out of the gate.

[Jordy]

And then what about from a. This is the first real holiday season for RORA and then the first kind of new year cycle that a lot of health brands go through where the business is like starting to, you know, be at a pretty meaningful scale. How do you like, do you think this is kind of like a lot of brands get the benefit of like they're either a gifting brand and or like it feels like you.

[John]

You health brand.

[Jordy]

Yeah. Feels like it's like everyone's been split.

[John]

As we've talked to all the entrepreneurs.

[Jordy]

Yeah. If you're doing supplements, it's like people might buy this week.

[John]

This isn't going to be the biggest.

[Jordy]

Thing for you, but January will be a lot bigger. Whereas I feel like I expect January to be. Be significantly bigger for Aurora but really just because the business is scaling so quickly. But it should be a big gifting product. Yeah. I think, you know, we saw yesterday.

[Harley]

Like a large amount of organic sales of being Thanksgiving and I think people go, you know, wherever they go for Thanksgiving and a lot of people tried.

[Jordy]

Out, you know, Aurora system at somebody else's house. I think we'll see something similar around Christmas and the holidays. But I think going into January there's.

[Harley]

Going to be an entirely new demographic that kind of comes into the funnel.

[Jordy]

That'S focusing on their health again.

[Harley]

And I think it'll be a big opportunity for us to capture that demand. We've also got some big partnerships that we're going to be launching right at the beginning of the year around that as well.

[Jordy]

So.

[Harley]

So I think it'll all tie together but I think there's an opportunity for both from a gifting perspective and the health and wellness for us leading into January.

[John]

Well close us out with a big number which can you share.

[Jordy]

This Black Friday this Monday we should go over 20,000 systems sold for the year. There we go. We'll let people at home.

[John]

That's a lot of systems. Thank you so much for taking the time to come hang out on a busy day.

[Jordy]

But yeah, watching you put on you and Charlie put on just an absolute execution master class this year has been been an honor and yeah, excited, excited to see how the rest of today nets out.

[Harley]

Well we've got a great team, a lot of people around us. Thanks so much for having me on.

[Jordy]

Great.

[John]

Have a good18sleep.com Exceptional sleep without exception. Fall asleep faster. Sleep deeper. Wake up energized. I got an 81. Quality was not quite right.

[Jordy]

How'd I do Thanksgiving?

[John]

I feel like I did okay, but 83. Oh, are you back in the house?

[Jordy]

I'm back.

[John]

You're back. Okay. I wasn't sure how long the renovation was gonna happen.

[Jordy]

Congratulations.

[John]

I'm glad it's over. Wait, What'd you get? 83.

[Jordy]

83.

[Harley]

Oh, wow.

[John]

Came back with some authority. With some authority. Well, we have. We have Kat from AG1 in the restroom.

[Harley]

Former guest.

[John]

Welcome. Former guest. She's back. Thank you so much for taking the time to talk to us. It's such a busy day right after Thanksgiving. Welcome to the show.

[Harley]

Thanks for having me. Great to see you.

[John]

Since we last talked, what's new in your world? We've been sort of bucketing brands. Okay. Someone's more of a, you know, this is Black Friday. It's the most giftable Game Boy possible. It's going to be under the Christmas tree. And then David Protein. You know, sales are down 20% today, gearing up for January, New Year.

[Jordy]

New Black Friday's not a huge focus.

[John]

How are you?

[Jordy]

Yeah.

[John]

How are you thinking about making the most out of today, Monday, the rest of the year, generally at AG1?

[Harley]

You know, I think of today twofold. One is today is a day to capture demand we've been building throughout the year. When I was hanging out with you guys, I think it was in June. Yeah, we had just launched in Costco. Yeah, we had not even launched our new flavors.

[John]

That was the number one tip we learned from you. If you're in consumer packaged goods, just launch in Costco. Winning Costco, and then you're good. That's the tip.

[Harley]

It's been incredible. But after that, we launched flavors for AG1 and we launched our first ever truly second brand and product with AGZ. So we went to from one product to this. And so today is about capturing the demand we've been building throughout the year with these product launches, investments in upgrading the formula, multiple human clinical trials, really bridging into retail and having multiple products. So as we market, as we invest, as people flood into market for what are typically offers, but still to shop, to make purchases, it is absolutely a demand capture moment. That being said, much like some of the other premium brands you've spoken to, it's also a day just to be in front of people and build future demand for when more are in market at the end of December and in January. But we are. We're up almost 40% Black Friday to Black Friday.

[Jordy]

Yes.

[Harley]

And I think a big part of that is bring on the gong. You know what, I, I shared this on X a little earlier that this is a brave new world for us, having multiple products so we can create bundles. We don't discount per se, but we can add value with multiple products allowing people to bundle. And that is absolutely what's driving that year over year growth on Black Friday. People are adding AGZ to their AG1 orders, they're adding a flavor sampler to their order, they're bundling our Omegas and D3K2 just we didn't have that portfolio a year ago.

[Jordy]

You guys were playing on expert mode, just single skew.

[John]

So, so up 40% year over year. Black Friday to Black Friday. Obviously that's driven by products, new products, expansion. But if there's one marketing or growth strategy that really stuck out over 2025 as particularly effective, what can you share about a strategy or a channel that you think you executed particularly well on this year?

[Harley]

I'll share one strategy and one channel that stood out for us this year. One strategy was shifting the market marketing focus from as influencer and creator forward to more science forward. You know, we invested over 10 million in four double blind randomized placebo controlled human trials and it makes a lot of sense to try to get credit for that and help to stand out in the crowd. So for the first half of the year, we pulled back marketing investment 40% to focus on executing product launches, executing channel launches and building the story around the real work of quality science and research. So that strategy, that approach which colored everything we did from the actual marketing where we put up huge billboards, we invested millions in out of home advertising that said something like please enjoy your, your randomized double blind placebo controlled daily health drink.

[John]

You know, advertising, we love advertising.

[Jordy]

I don't know, you know, I would say maybe like literally like 0.01% of supplement companies actually do like studies on their products and they're just like, hey, this study happened over here with this one ingredient and so we're just going to apply that over here.

[Harley]

Yeah, it's, you know, and that strategy even colored our partnership approach. We instead of, of partnering with athletes this fall did nil deals with nutrition students, college students. So we just, and we had them put on the hat, the jersey, everything and sign up. So the science strategy pulled through the year. The channel strategy that we are really starting to see the value of is actually tv linear and ctv. We were on game seven of the World Series series with our Good Morning Moon campaign narrated by the ever epic and a longtime AG1 drinker, Rick Rubin. And it was much more brand top of funnel emotional like who are our people and what do they do when they get up early in the morning? And then we created 15 and 30 subcuts of that for parents, for runners, for athletes. And so that's pulling through to the high season as well. We get into December and January and we're starting to see again it's tougher to track those types of things, but there's incredible AI and technology out there to help with that. We're starting to see that channel contribute meaningfully and especially now that we're in retail and we're in Costco today. We'll launch additional national retailers next year, thoughtfully going direct to national and so as many others have said today, today when you have multiple channels, you make those top of funnel marketing investments. They have more places to contribute.

[Jordy]

Yeah. So we can expect to see a Super bowl ad.

[John]

Let's do it.

[Jordy]

One day.

[Harley]

One day you can expect to see more human clinical trials. I got another 20 million going into research.

[Jordy]

Amazing. How do you rate the overall health of the consumer? And just kind of the macro of the last we had a friend of ours, Nish from Rayon, he said the first six months of this year felt wildly different from a macro standpoint than the last five or so months. But what's been your view?

[Harley]

Certainly if you look at the economic data it says there's a tale of two cities in the world of consumer with people who have higher income propping up spending versus those who don't. For us and our business because about, you know, into the first quarter but halfway through the calendar year we had so many back to back launches of products, channels and innovation. It masked what might have otherwise been bumpiness with a more mature model. And it gave some variety again, some value creation for that consumer. What hasn't changed? And I've heard a few others on with you today. Reference this is how deeply considered these premium purchases are. And so the investments we made a year ago in top of funnel marketing, six months ago in clinical trials, two months ago in launching agz, leaning in still to our podcast partners and the creator economy where we were early movers and it's still a key part of our strategy today, but nowhere near the largest channel from a marketing perspective. All of that brings people to for us what on average is 8 to 10 touch points before they purchase. I mean it is a long consideration journey and we're seeing it play out in multiple markets. In our partnership with Shopify, we launched Australia, we launched Japan, we are launching more of these products in our European business now and we see very similar behaviors. So we are premium price point. But it's also an incredible value because we consolidate an otherwise very expensive supplement stack in both AG1 and AGZ.

[Jordy]

Yep. Got anything else?

[John]

I.

[Jordy]

We'd love to have you back on in January when we kick off the new year. That's. That will be a massive, massive period for, for you guys but wish we had more time but.

[John]

And just to clarify, there's, there's a question in the chat about agz. Uh, it's for sleep, correct?

[Harley]

Yeah. Agz. Where's my little agz?

[John]

Agz. I have it here.

[Harley]

So it's a melatonin free nighttime rest and restore products. So we just like we did for AG1, we consolidated a multivitamin, a probiotic and greens. For AGZ, we consolidated what most people are making their sleepy girl sleepy boy mocktails with ashwagandha and magnesium. Two types of magnesium and incredible research back herbal blend. So AG1 for the morning, AGZ for the night to calm and develop a restoration.

[Jordy]

24 7.

[John]

Fantastic.

[Harley]

24 7.

[John]

Well, thank you so much for taking the time to come chat with us.

[Jordy]

Great to get that.

[John]

Have a great rest of your day.

[Jordy]

Congrats on you.

[Harley]

Thanks for having me.

[John]

Talk to you soon.

[Harley]

Happy Black Friday. Happy Black Friday.

[John]

Before we bring in our first in person guest of the stream, let me tell you about wander.com, book a wander with inspiring hotel grade amenities, dreamy beds, top tier cleaning and 247 concierge service. We have Sean Frank in the TVPN also. He's been on the show multiple times. This is the first time him seeing him in person. How are you doing, Sean? He is the world's number one wallet salesman. Good to see you. How you doing?

[Jordy]

And dominating every other category now.

[John]

Yes, dominating. Dominating luggage, dominating knives, dominating consumer electronics. Consumer electronics. Electronics batteries, battery packs. Correct.

[Harley]

Yeah man. It's game day, dude.

[John]

Got the jersey on game day. I love it. Have you guys been on Shopify the entire time?

[Harley]

Dude, since 2012.

[John]

There was never like you never blame you, never blame you, never you never like let's just set up, let's just set up another little landing page over here maybe let's just you know have a side side hustle page.

[Harley]

Shopify till I die, man. Wow. The best payment processing. Right?

[John]

Okay.

[Harley]

All the perfect apps inside.

[John]

How the app store.

[Harley]

I'm a Big Shopify fan. Yeah.

[John]

Yeah.

[Jordy]

It's great to see you. Thank you for taking time out of your day today. Is this the most mellow Black Friday? Hopefully. Like you've been building the company, building the team. You guys are so dialed in so many different ways now. I would hope that every year is slightly less stressful than the last.

[Harley]

Yeah. This has been the chillest Black Friday by far. It's the biggest Black Friday ever.

[John]

But teams bigger processor dialed in and.

[Harley]

Like the world's not on fire.

[John]

Yeah. When something does go wrong on Black Friday, like how, how did it manifest in years past? Because it's obviously not like, okay, the website is down because that you're on Shopify.

[Harley]

It's never gone down before.

[John]

It's never gone down.

[Jordy]

But.

[John]

But there are, there are things where it's like, okay, we got to be a little bit more dialed as a team today. What are you actually monitoring? Like, what is just like inbound request?

[Jordy]

What situations are you monitoring?

[John]

Yeah, what situations have you monitored in the past or do you need to monitor?

[Harley]

The most common problems would be credit cards going down.

[John]

Okay, right.

[Jordy]

So what does that mean? So like payment processing or like Visa Network.

[Harley]

Yeah, like hitting limits on your credit card because like in a typical day, a brand might spend 50 grand on Facebook ads and then you go to spend $500,000.

[John]

Oh, okay. You're. So your corporate card's going, yeah, just turn off.

[Jordy]

And somebody's like not at their desk that moment and they.

[John]

Yeah, or your account gets frozen.

[Harley]

So like your actual meta account gets locked up and they're taking the week off. Right. I love Meta, love my reps. But like, if you have a junior level of service, there's no way to escalate that.

[John]

And then your whole weekend screwed. If you can't spend money on Meta.

[Harley]

So that's the most common thing. You know, inventory issues always. Right. How do you make sure things are staying in stock? How do you make sure your warehouse is actually working? Warehouses are in person businesses, so.

[John]

So it's kind of like retail stores.

[Harley]

Where you have to staff up for it. But today our store will do 10x normal volume.

[John]

How do you make sure those customers get their stuff when the whole three.

[Harley]

Week period is going to be huge?

[John]

What percentage of a brand's Black Friday should come from advertising versus just built.

[Jordy]

Up a lot of demand.

[John]

They built up a bunch of email addresses. Their customers are coming back with a return by default. So yeah, if Meta goes down, that's maybe 5% of Black Friday. But it sounds like, it could be a lot more.

[Harley]

What are you thinking?

[John]

It should be your biggest spend day by far, but it should be one.

[Harley]

Of your most efficient days of the year.

[Jordy]

Just because the 10 is so high.

[Harley]

Intent is so high. So we'll spend. In a typical day, we might be at a 2xmer, half of our money going to marketing for digital channels. But a day like Black Friday could be like a 4xmer. But we're still going to spend multimillion dollars today. Right. So conversion rates shoot up, you can spend more money. CPMs are higher and it just, it varies by brand. Right. If you're to Covas, you know, you might have a bigger spike because like, oh, the boots that everybody wants are actually on sale right now, but if you're AG1, they're not gonna have any spike at all. Like nobody's like rushing out to get their supplements.

[John]

Yeah.

[Harley]

And I think we heard that from the David's Protein.

[John]

Yeah, he was saying he was actually down a little bit because it's like it's a January product and that makes a ton of sense. What on, on the digital ads thing. Like what I'm trying to think of where, where to actually dig in there. Yeah, take me through TikTok shop. You were saying that you made a seven figure day.

[Jordy]

Yeah, $700.

[John]

What's actually going on? Because reading behind that tweet, I was, I was thinking like, okay, he's extremely bearish on TikTok shop. Maybe TikTok broadly. Like, how much should I read into that? Okay, explain what happened.

[Harley]

Yeah, the general thesis on TikTok Shop.

[John]

Is it's really, really good for a.

[Harley]

Certain type of brand. If you're female focused, if you are a supplement, if you can make pretty, you know, bold claims, TikTok Shop's going to print for you.

[Jordy]

Bold claims. That means people are like.

[John]

Restores all your hair for $5, something like that.

[Harley]

Because the brand doesn't make the claims.

[John]

The affiliates make the claims.

[Harley]

The affiliates are incentives devised to say crazy stuff to try to get the affiliate commission.

[Jordy]

So if your wallet will turn you into a millionaire, you put a hundred.

[John]

Dollar bill in here, it's gonna get 200 out. You can get 200.

[Jordy]

Yeah.

[Harley]

And there's a whole cohort of like.

[John]

Gen Z brands that are doing nine.

[Harley]

Figures in like six months off of Tick Tock Shop.

[John]

Yeah. Like you guys, what are the categories?

[Harley]

It's supplements for sure.

[John]

For sure. Like get jacked, look hot.

[Harley]

Yeah, yeah. Like testosterone.

[John]

Testosterone, guys. Gummies, gummied everything, dude. The best Gummies.

[Harley]

The biggest brand no one's ever heard of is Comfort.

[John]

Okay.

[Harley]

You guys should just go on Tik Tok Shop and just check out what Comfort's doing publicly.

[John]

So it's hoodies, okay.

[Harley]

And it's like, you know, price at 120 marked down to 35 bucks and they'll do.

[Jordy]

So they're like eating into mad happy. They're like mad happy clone or really.

[Harley]

Like a fast fashion clone, like a Temu Shein, like Zara type clone, but like really high quality anxiety reducing hoodies. They'll do anxiety reducing. That's the claims, man. The claims. But they'll do over 700 million this year.

[John]

700 million.

[Harley]

Third year in business.

[John]

Third year in business.

[Harley]

Yeah. They're killing it. Wow. So TikTok shop can totally work now. The joke there is that for a.

[John]

Men'S like almost luxury good brand, it will not work at all.

[Harley]

We did multi million dollars yesterday and.

[John]

We did 700 bucks on TikTok.

[Harley]

But I'm working, dude.

[John]

I'm grinding now.

[Jordy]

Bigger bolder claims.

[John]

Yeah, but yeah, so do you think there's just like there's no way for you to get it to work? Like you've tested everything, you've like done a bunch of specific TikTok creative and hired people who have gotten into work in other categories at this point, you know, it's not you. The shops program is way different than the ad program. Okay, spend 50 grand on TikTok shop.

[Harley]

Today or sorry, TikTok ads today. But that's driving my website. To make TikTok shop work, it has to be an impulse purchase. But I haven't given it my all in January.

[John]

We're giving it our all.

[Harley]

Yeah, we're going to throw everything at it.

[John]

Is it your number one big opportunity for 2026 or are you thinking like AI agentic commerce?

[Harley]

I would say that there's probably six things a brand should be focused on.

[John]

In 2026 and I'll see if I.

[Harley]

Can rattle them off.

[Jordy]

Yeah, six is a lot.

[Harley]

Yeah, yeah. But I think social commerce is for sure one of them. But then that ties into point two.

[John]

Which is just getting way better.

[Harley]

Short form organic video. Right. You guys post clips like more brands need to be clipping and it's just because watch time on social media apps is continuing to be dominated by short form video. Nobody's scrolling feeds anymore and it's just going to continue to take over long form YouTube and Twitch streams and everything else.

[John]

It's just all for the clips.

[Jordy]

I know it Feels like the Instagram feed is just a catalog now. And I don't even know if you should care about engagement as a brand.

[Harley]

Well, dude, and also the idea of a brand has also been dis mediated because it's not about the brand page anymore. The best TikTok shop brands have 50 TikTok accounts because it's just volume. And if you pull up the number one TikTok Shopify affiliates, there's people making a million dollars a year and they'll post 70 videos a day and so.

[John]

Many of Those videos get 20 views.

[Harley]

But then one will get 28 million and it will just prick for him.

[John]

Do you think there's any. Do you think that takes you out of like building an enduring brand? Like, will the next Hermes really be doing that? Will the next iconic, the Louis Vuitton or the Ferrari be like slopping it up on the short form?

[Harley]

Well, no, I think they're going to be sponsoring like, you know, DJ tables at like F1 stuff, but like the.

[John]

Rest of us are going to be slopping it up. Even slop comes for us all.

[Harley]

Yeah. And I know you guys love luxury. The luxury space is super interesting because Richmond's actually the only brand dominating right now because they have Cartier, they have Van Cleef, like jewelry is taking over everything and LVMH and really curing has been really wrecked for like two years.

[John]

So the world of luxury is going.

[Harley]

On undergoing a lot of changes right now as well.

[John]

Yeah, yeah. I mean, I'm sure they're still having a big Black Friday since people just go out and shop physically. But so much of that is dependent on like the health of the economy.

[Jordy]

So what you got? Jordy kering is up 41% year to date, but they've been struggling.

[Harley]

Well, look at the five year chart.

[Jordy]

Okay.

[Harley]

This is always the zoom out, zoom out.

[Jordy]

We're zooming out at. It's down 50%, 50% rough. What's a white pill? Where is there opportunity? Peter Protein. Earlier, Peter Rahal was saying consumers will always want novelty. And so specifically in supplements and cbg, there's always going to be an incremental opportunity because people just want to have even the same things delivered to them differently. But where are you seeing opportunity?

[Harley]

Yeah, I think David Protein proved and he said that there's white space in everything. Right. Nobody thought you could build a hoodie brand like Comfort and just dominate a new channel like TikTok, shop and affiliate and get to $700 million. I think it's the Fastest growing apparel brand of all time. Right. And yeah, David's protein. Two years in $300 million. Groomed two years in $300 million. So I think the standards are way higher. You have to be really good at operating right. You can't just have a good website, you can't just have a good product. You actually also have to understand the ecosystem. But our fastest growing channel this year is consumer electronics. Right. Like doing phone cases.

[John]

Everyone told me phone cases were a.

[Harley]

Stupid business to get into, right. And like we bumbled along for four or five years doing it and now it's an eight figure business for us in six months or whatever. That's amazing. There's white space everywhere, man.

[Jordy]

As long as you think about my idea. Post purchase flow, we were working this out where you buy a product and then you have an opportunity to get to, to box somebody for a discount you match locally.

[John]

Kind of like to recreate the original physical Black Friday experience. So do both people want a discount and only the winner gets it or you guys?

[Harley]

No, no, no, no. I.

[John]

No, I think it's like, it's like I. I'm on ridge.com. i check out with a bunch of stuff. Jordy's my next door neighbor. He checks out with a bunch of stuff. We're both happy we're having the modern e commerce Black Friday experience. Except there's one thing missing. We didn't get to fight each other. So then in the post purchase flow, it says, hey, there's someone that's opted in to a fistfight in your area. In your area. Walk outside, meet at this address. You can scrap it out.

[Harley]

It sounds asset light. So I don't, I don't have to. As a brand, I don't put up any boxers.

[John]

You guys are fighting each other. No, it's purely peer to peer amongst you.

[Jordy]

You do have to give some of the margin back to the winner though. That's the only thing.

[John]

Oh, so the winner does get a. Yeah, a little coupon or something.

[Jordy]

You get like a gift card or something.

[Harley]

Dude.

[John]

And the rich customers, they're scary, man.

[Harley]

They're tough guys.

[Jordy]

I feel like you can't shave the beard now. At least. At least as well. While CEO Ridge.

[John]

No, I'm gonna keep throwing it out. Dude. Yeah. Wait, so how did you actually win in phone cases? That feels like extremely difficult. The most competitive. Is it the strength of like the product development, the positioning, the marketing, the operations? Like how. How did that possibly work? That feels impossible.

[Harley]

Yeah, it's creative destruction. Right. So like the number one name in phone cases is still Otterbox. They do a billion dollars a year in revenue.

[John]

They do more than Apple directly or like third party.

[Harley]

Yeah, I'm not taking down Apple.

[John]

Otterbox is sold into Verizon and Best Buy. And yeah, I do see them everywhere.

[Harley]

And they do a billion dollars a year in sales. They've been like owned by private equity for four or five years.

[Jordy]

Give it up for private equity.

[Harley]

Yeah, yeah.

[John]

Opportunities for him.

[Harley]

Yeah. Making a killing. But then they're in the value extraction mode. They're just like, they're never going to pay for marketing. They're going to fight tooth and nail. A best buyer, Verizon of the world. Right. And then it creates a market because.

[John]

Verizon's like, hey, I hate working with these new owners over here. Will you come in and take some.

[Harley]

Of their shelf space? They want competition in their store and it's incremental sales for me. Like it's their lunch that I'm eating. So I'm like, yeah, I'd gladly go in there. I'll take lower margin. I'll work it out.

[John]

So you could shop Ridge phone cases at your local Verizon stores.

[Harley]

T mobiles, Best Buys.

[John]

Did you have a deals with any of them beforehand?

[Harley]

No.

[John]

So is there a world where it acts as like a lever that opens a door to getting other products into these places? I don't know if a Ridge wallet would make sense in a Verizon storm, but probably, yeah, we have wallets there. Yeah, why not?

[Harley]

And actually I did lie. The first thing we had was wallets in Best Buy.

[John]

And it's like, yeah, yeah, you told me about that.

[Harley]

We were the only people ever selling.

[John]

Wallets in a Best Buy.

[Harley]

And he's like, if we can make that work, then we can make anything work. And then we started just filling the rest of the catalog in there. You can buy our luggage in a Best Buy right now.

[John]

Best practices for big influencer partnerships in 2026. What you got?

[Harley]

I think more and more the brands need to be somewhat creator led and I think it's way easier to do that internally. Right. You guys had, you know, a couple creator brands on today, right. You could say Mod Retro is a.

[John]

Creator brand because Palmer. It is crazy how many views Palmer gets. You know, even though he's not an influencer, just by going around onto Rogan, onto other shows and plug it, he pulls it. Yeah, yeah, he pulls the audience.

[Harley]

Yeah. So I think there's free impressions to be had. And the most expensive part of My P and L is impressions.

[John]

Impressions, right.

[Harley]

So if you can go out there and tell a story and be good, like you'll get a ton of impressions. We just an hour ago had an MKBHD video go live and It'll probably get 3 million views, sell a ton of stuff and it just needs to.

[John]

Be a tighter feedback loop there.

[Jordy]

MKBHD on Black Friday. I'm assuming that's only possible because you guys have had like a very long term relationship with mkbhd and if, if like Samsung came to him and they didn't have that relationship relationship, he'd be like, I'll take $5 million or something.

[John]

I'm sure it'd be.

[Harley]

Yeah, it would take a ton of money. You know, he's an equity partner in Rich, so he's one of our co owners, so he's on the board, we hang out and as part of our relationship we get like 20 spots a year and he wants to maximize our revenue too. So Black Friday is a great spot to give to us.

[Jordy]

That's awesome. Very, very cool. Anything interesting on the channel? Sat? Like, what's Connor up to today? He just got like eight monitors set up just like fully locked into the vortex.

[John]

Yeah, dude.

[Harley]

Unfortunately there's not a camera showing your guys production studio, but that's basically what Connor's doing.

[John]

Love it. We could be running a brand.

[Harley]

Yeah, you could have a ton of.

[John]

Ads going right now, guys.

[Harley]

Yeah, I mean Connor's behind the screen. We have a great team now. So there's 70 or 80 people at Ridge just grinding out today. But the most exciting channel is probably YouTube. They kind of. Yeah, they kind of fucked around for a long time and didn't have good performance.

[John]

Was that the targeting or the actual, like.

[Harley]

Yeah, it'd be.

[Jordy]

Nobody, nobody could get. It was extraordinarily difficult to get programmatic ads on YouTube to work at all. Right.

[John]

Yes, but what about them was wrong? Just like the targeting on like who the person was? Well, yeah, I mean their number One business is AdWords and they want everything.

[Harley]

To work like AdWords.

[John]

Sure.

[Harley]

And that ad space doesn't work like AdWords and they weren't willing to make the changes to make YouTube an actual functioning ad platform. But now that it looks like the Google Ads business could be threatened or might be threatened, they're like, let's start actually finding all the dollars in the couch cushions.

[John]

And that is YouTube ads.

[Harley]

I mean, pull up their K1. It's the fastest growing part of their business. Right. Growing 50% year over year. And it's working.

[John]

So YouTube has been like the second.

[Harley]

Biggest channel for it this year.

[John]

Interesting. Are you seeing strong results on basically vertical video, like repurposing TikTok assets into vertical video ads in the shorts feed on YouTube or are you creating bespoke content for YouTube? Are you at the point where you notice that an edit that works on an ad that works on YouTube won't work on TikTok and vice versa?

[Harley]

Well, I'll say that Putting MKBHD in.

[John]

YouTube ads really works. I'm sure. Totally thumb stopping.

[Harley]

Yeah. But what you brought up is the beauty of you should be a creator brand. Right? Like the real like alpha and leverage there is that a short form video is the same everywhere. So you can run it on TikTok, you can run it on YouTube, shorts, reels, applovin, you can put it on Twitter. Like Twitter ads are crushing, right? You put it everywhere.

[John]

Twitter ads are crushing.

[Harley]

Yeah, yeah.

[Jordy]

No way, dude.

[Harley]

I mean the guy they had that hired that new guy and he's like running. Yeah, he's crushing it, dude.

[John]

He's crushing it.

[Jordy]

Yeah.

[John]

No way. That's amazing. So like person that's really called that out.

[Jordy]

Why? So, so why did it never work historically? Why was it purely a brand channel where you'd have like Uber that's like, we're going to. We'll give some of our budget to X.

[Harley]

Well, it's. Dude, it's the same thing as like why, why did Applovin go from like a $20 billion company to a $200 billion company? It's like they built a really good ad engine, right. Like dollars will flow to whoever has the best ad engine.

[John]

I think a lot of the space.

[Harley]

Is the same, right. They're like, oh no. And an X user is more valuable because it's into tech or. No, it's bad because all these bots, at the end of the day there's purchasers everywhere and you just need a really good ad engine. And meta's had a 20 year head start building the world's greatest ad engine. Right. And now the same people who built that are going to places like Twitter, going to places like Applovin and rebuilding better ad engines. And as long as they, you could put it on Reddit ads, you could.

[John]

Put it on Critio horrible ads.

[Harley]

And as you have a really good.

[John]

Ad engine, it will find purchasers interesting.

[Harley]

That's what I think they did over at X and it's been working.

[John]

Yeah. And video specifically too. You've been running video ads There you were saying you could bring your TikTok YouTube ads, your MKBHD video ads all over. Has that been successful on X yet or is it more link based? We throw all the stuff in there.

[Harley]

But everything has a link to link, ad, and purchase on our website.

[Jordy]

Yeah.

[John]

Okay, well, we got to close out with Harley. Thank you so much for.

[Jordy]

Hang out for a second.

[John]

Hang out. Hang out back. We'll talk to you. We got Harley back in the. In the studio. Closing out.

[Harley]

Where did Sean go?

[Jordy]

You want to hang out, dude?

[Harley]

What do you.

[John]

You look like his.

[Harley]

He, like, ran away, I guess Sean.

[John]

Won'T have if he sits here.

[Jordy]

He's a pretty face.

[John]

You look like his. His boss.

[Jordy]

Got it. He's got it.

[Harley]

Oh. Oh, yeah.

[John]

Okay, we have. How are you doing? Close us out. Give us an update on the stats. What else is. What's the latest?

[Harley]

All right, let's start with the stats, of course. Sean, can you hear me? Oh, I can hear you, bud. How are you? You can. How you doing? Congratulations.

[John]

We pressed and said. Has he ever flinched and thought about even for a second using a different e commerce platform? He said, never in the entire history bridge. Really? Never.

[Jordy]

Never even thought about that, actually.

[Harley]

In truth, Sean's one of those guys that he gives you tough love when you deserve it, but he gives you praise only when you deserve it also. And so that makes him a real one.

[John]

He is a real one.

[Harley]

Okay, so let's check it out as we close this out. How we doing? So $4.1 million right now. Sales per minute. 38,000 orders per minute. 30 million unique shoppers today across all of shoppers.

[Jordy]

Let Sean hit the.

[Harley]

Gone, Sean. Gone.

[John]

Gone.

[Jordy]

Do it for us. Give it to us.

[Harley]

Let's go.

[Jordy]

Clean hit with the. With the prancing setup.

[Harley]

Wow. Okay, so I also have a few other things for you.

[John]

Yes. Yes.

[Harley]

Okay, so I'm gonna wrap up some trending categories for the day now that we're getting to 5pm EST. Skincare, vitamins, supplements, T shirts, activewear. Makeup did really well. This is really interesting. At 5am when I was on CNN, I looked at trending products. At 5am it was aloe yoga with the crew neck pull over. It was cozy earth with her bamboo sheet set and merit beauty with their flesh bomb. When I look at it now, it's totally switched up. You have Victoria Beckham's eyeliner. You have earplugs from a company called Loop Loops.

[John]

Interesting.

[Harley]

Yeah, Loop earplugs, the ones that's treading is called the Loop switch two. And you have Lola blankets, the antique ivory blanket. Here's what's really interesting if you go back to this time last year. Last year was all about getting outside. You saw ski equipment, adventure stuff, outdoors stuff that's over.

[Jordy]

We're going on. We're going. We're going terminally on Axie.

[Harley]

We're going cozy. So things like bakeware sets, blankets, wooden toys and coloring books are all up 100% year over year.

[John]

Interesting.

[Harley]

Goose Creek candle, Christmas tree, three wick candles. Killing it. And caraway cookware set is also killing it. So those are the trends it's been. I mean, the cozy era is definitely here.

[John]

We're in the cozier cozy era era.

[Harley]

Dude. All those are great brands. If you guys don't know Loop, like, they're. They don't know Loop. Oh, something like really old, like the one with my earplugs. And they made it really cool.

[Jordy]

Is it for sleeping?

[Harley]

No, it's for, like, going to concerts.

[John]

Concerts and stuff. Okay. Yeah. The website Super Gen Z Cozy Earth.

[Harley]

Has a bunch of stores in la. Like, all those. Cozy Earth is really cool. Yeah.

[John]

Loop earplugs. Yeah. This is amazing.

[Harley]

Yeah.

[Jordy]

Wow.

[Harley]

And obviously aloe is aloe, right? Yeah, yeah, we know they're serious, and actually they're an Alpha la, also an amazing company, but I just want to say, you know, a couple things just. I know you guys have to wrap in a minute, but. Jordy, John, I just want to say thank you so much for this.

[John]

Of course. This was fantastic.

[Jordy]

We love. There's nothing we love more than celebrating.

[John]

It was a fun tour. Talking to folks who today is the biggest day of the year for them. To other folks who, you know, this is just another day or they're, you know, they're.

[Harley]

It was cool to hear the juxtaposition between, like, even Cat had said, like, Cat Cole versus. Versus the David's guy. David's like, no, no, no, it's January. And Kat's like, no, no, no. This is, like, this is where you're able. It was so the juxtaposition between two similar products. But I just want to say thank you to you guys. This is my 16th black Friday at Shopify. My favorite one yet. Huge thank you to Noel, Sarah, Peter, Torrin, Kevin, Niche, Ben A. Brian, Kat, and of course, Sean and Jordan. You guys are amazing. Sorry we stole your day off. Please apologize to your wives and families.

[Jordy]

We have no days off.

[John]

No days off. When capitalism is on the line, it's the biggest.

[Harley]

It's the Best. We're still full of energy. But hopefully you agree was worth it. Oh, 100%.

[Jordy]

100%.

[Harley]

I'll see you guys in Q1 for our next earnings call.

[John]

I guess we will. We can't wait.

[Jordy]

Can't wait for 17.

[John]

Yeah, dude. Cyber Monday.

[Harley]

Run it back.

[John]

Cyber Monday. We're doing with the green.

[Jordy]

Join, join, join Cyber Monday.

[Harley]

You'll have me. I'd love to join Cyber Monday. Of course you can. Maybe Sean and I come on together. We do a whole like back to back DJ thing.

[John]

Let's do it.

[Harley]

Sales hour by hour. I'm gonna report in.

[John]

Yes. I want to know.

[Jordy]

I love it. I love it.

[Harley]

Amazing.

[Jordy]

Congrats to the whole Shopify team for another massive blowout day.

[Harley]

Thank you very much.

[Jordy]

Can't wait to see the final numbers.

[John]

Yeah, I want to know the final numbers. We gotta, we gotta figure that out.

[Harley]

I'll come back Monday. We can chat.

[John]

Fantastic. Thank you so much.

[Jordy]

Talk soon.

[John]

Have a good rest of your day.

[Harley]

See you, Sean.

[John]

Goodbye.

[Jordy]

Wonderful, wonderful show. Thank you to everybody who has hung out with us today. Celebrated commerce, celebrated entrepreneurship, celebrated the American the Commerce Corral and the Canadian Consumer Commerce Corral. We. I wish we were podcasting tomorrow. We won't be.

[John]

Tomorrow's Saturday.

[Jordy]

But we will be back in full force on Monday.

[John]

Back in full force.

[Jordy]

And yeah, it'll be a busy weekend.

[Harley]

Dude, it's going to be great. Thanks for doing this. Shining some light on a small little company called Shopify.

[John]

Yeah.

[Jordy]

Fledgling startup.

[John]

20 years. 20 years next year. 20 year old company. Fantastic. Well, thank you so much for tuning in. Thanks for listening.

[Jordy]

Wonderful restarts on Apple podcasts all day weekend end.

[John]

Sign up for the newsletter tbpn. Com and we will see you on Monday.

[Jordy]

Cheers.

[John]

Bye. Goodbye. Thank you.