We’ve hit a plateau at Beardbrand, the direct-to-consumer business I launched 15 years ago. Our revenue is down from its peak. We’ve made mistakes.
The beard care space has dried up. We’ve moved from a blue ocean of growth and opportunity to a red one of fierce competition. If Beardbrand grows, a competitor loses, and vice versa.
In this episode, I’ll depart from my typical interview format and share our plans for moving Beardbrand forward. My goal is to help other merchants in similar circumstances.
My entire audio narrative is embedded below. The transcript is edited for clarity and length.
Growth Tactics
Our name, Beardbrand, might be a problem in a marketplace that isn’t growing. Yet we offer non-beard products, such as colognes, deodorant, and bar soap. We have a shampoo and conditioner, which we call a wash and a softener. We have hair styling products.
So we are a men’s grooming company, much more than beard care.
Focus. We’ve done a lot of belt-tightening. We’re focusing on what works and what doesn’t. That’s why we’re leaning into Meta, our top customer acquisition channel. Meta is not a consistent home run, as ad performance is volatile and increasingly expensive.
Still, within Meta there are opportunities. We can introduce more of our product categories and continue what we’ve been doing, only better.
We’re evaluating partnerships with Meta content creators to reach new audiences. I hope to increase our Meta ad spend by three times.
Social media. We’ve historically done well with organic social media, yet we’re struggling with it now. Engaging other content creators, notably on YouTube and TikTok, will likely be far more effective. Plus, we hope to learn from those creators and implement their ideas into our ad strategy.
For several weeks, we’ve sent samples to many TikTok creators through the platform’s affiliate network, paying commissions when due. It’s the early days, yet we’re already seeing success, which we hope will snowball.
YouTube’s affiliate program is less robust, though we’re much more experienced on YouTube than TikTok.
We have a great collaboration with Jeremy Siers. He’s a content creator focused on male-oriented brands and products, such as guns, knives, barbecue, and whiskey. And he has a great beard.
Product development. We’re focusing on products that are doing well now rather than launching new ones. Yet we still see new product opportunities.
One of those is a beard trimmer, a high-end, premium, $300 pass-this-on-to-your-grandkids kind of trimmer with a timeless style. The Apple of beard trimmers.
We’ve not produced mechanical products. A trimmer could cost upwards of $100,000 to develop and launch, not including marketing costs. Is there really a market for a $300 ultra-premium heirloom beard trimmer? Maybe.
But at this point, we need to move past our struggles and focus on small, incremental wins.
Packaging. Here’s a mistake. We altered our packaging and manufacturing to satisfy Target before it committed to us. We now have a lot of 4-ounce aluminum containers, up from our traditional 1-ounce version, to occupy more Target shelf space. Plus we cut three popular fragrances.
Then Target dropped us.
We’re going to stay with the aluminum packaging, as it stands out in the marketplace. But the cost of aluminum is rising, mostly due to tariffs. An aluminum bottle costs four times as much as glass.
We still offer the traditional glass-and-plastic option as our value option on Amazon.
Cross-border selling. We launched on OpenBorder a few weeks ago. It will help us get products into European countries with fewer regulatory requirements than if we did it ourselves. The growth will likely be incremental, perhaps another 10% to 20% of revenue.
It could lead to our own Europe-based warehouse, but we’re a long way from that. Nonetheless, OpenBorder enable us to reach new consumers.
Amazon is super tough, super competitive. Fees are going up. Success is getting harder, but we’re not giving up. We’re going to lean into higher-priced ads to acquire more customers.
We’ve been on Amazon for roughly three years. As long as it makes money, we’ll keep doing it. But, looking forward, a business where we trip over a dime to pick up a penny is not for me.
What We’re Avoiding
Barbershops. We have a barbershop here in Austin, Texas, that offers customers phenomenal experiences. Yet I have no desire to expand. It would be cool to have 50 barbershops across major metropolitan areas. It would also be capital-intensive.
Wholesale. We work with retailers (especially brick-and-mortar) that want to sell our products. Mostly it’s pharmacies, barber shops, and salons.
Would I consider returning to Target or adding Walmart if they approached us? Potentially. But it would take a lot of work to ramp up for a mass retailer. We’ll stick with the smaller independents for now.
Google Search ads. We’ve not advertised on Google Search for two years now. We don’t miss it.
YouTube advertising. There’s potential with YouTube ads. We had success with advertising there years ago. But for now we’re going to optimize our organic content to engage and convert prospects.
I’m a bit burned out on YouTube after posting videos there for 15 years. I’ve said everything I want to say. Perhaps we can work with other creators, such as Isaac Medeiros with Mini Katana. He could handle the strategy and editing. We would produce the raw content.
Reach Out
See what we’re up to at Beardbrand.com. There’s a great D2C community on X. My channel there is @bandholz. Reach out with ideas, successes, failures. We’ll grow together.
