Podcast appearances and mentions of Dan McCarthy

Syndicated columnist Dan McCarthy of the Intercollegiate Studies Institute joins us to talk Marjorie Taylor Greene and MAGA, the annual Columbus Day lunacy, the truth about Epstein (and, separately, about Watergate), and plenty more. Sponsors: Monetary Metals CrowdHealth: Code: WOODS Persist SEO Guest's Podcast: Modern Age with Dan McCarthy Guest's Publication: Modern Age Guest's Twitter: @ToryAnarchist Show notes for Ep. 2700

Oil and gas operations rely on heavy machinery and equipment that perform critical tasks, yet most of this equipment remains disconnected from the digital landscape of cloud computing, analytics, and autonomy. This lack of connectivity leaves operators with higher costs, inefficient maintenance, and limited visibility into how their assets are really performing. The traditional approach to equipment design is no longer enough. Operators face pressure to improve efficiency, reduce emissions, and cut costs, but without better data and smarter tools, these goals remain out of reach. The industry cannot afford to keep treating its infrastructure as “dumb metal.” You might think that only big equipment suppliers can make smart metal, but IJACK, a Canadian equipment manufacturer, is proving otherwise. By embedding remote monitoring, cloud connectivity, and AI-driven analytics into its products, the company enables operators to troubleshoot issues without rolling a truck, optimize performance across entire fleets, and gain valuable insight from real-time data. In this episode, I speak with Dan McCarthy, President of IJACK, about how his team transformed compressors and pumps into intelligent assets, why the industry needs to embrace innovation, and how a small-town company from Saskatchewan is now serving customers around the world.

Tonight on The Brian Crombie Hour, Brian interviews Dan McCarthy and Murray Simser. Dan  and Murray highlight the alarming rise of youth unemployment in their article Generation At Risk: Youth Jobs And Canada's Economic Future. Statistics Canada reports this summer's job market for returning students is the 3rd worst since 1976, with unemployment for students reaching 18% and some youth groups nearing 25%. Only 1997 and the Covid year of 2020 were worse. Factors driving this crisis include a weak economy, Trump tariffs, manufacturing layoffs, competition from foreign workers, and the impact of AI on entry-level jobs. Murray stresses the government's response has been slow despite unprecedented levels of youth joblessness, while Dan notes programs like the Youth Employment Skills and Training Initiative fall far short of the scale required. With 920,000 young Canadians not engaged in education, training, or work, urgent action is needed. As Styx sang in Crystal Ball: “I wonder what tomorrow has in mind for me. Or am I even in its mind at all?” For today's youth, that question is more sobering than ever.

A CMO Confidential Interview with Dr. Dan McCarthy, Professor of Marketing at Maryland and leading practitioner of Customer Lifetime Value. Dan shares insights from his privacy research based on Apple's "App Tracking Transparency" (ATT) initiative commonly known as "Ask App Not to Track" which include a significant impact on business results, a degradation of CAC, and a disproportionate hit to small companies. Key topics include: how the elimination of a Facebook customer ID negatively impacted revenue, why averaging marketing results can be a profit killer, and why analytical time frames matter. Tune in to hear updates on Dan's other research including Peloton, loyalty programs and "How everyone is cheating their way through college." CMO Confidential: The Disparate Impact of Privacy Policy — with Dr. Dan McCarthy (UMD) on ATT, CLV & CACWhat happens to your revenue when attribution breaks? In this episode, 5x CMO Mike Linton sits down with Dr. Dan McCarthy (Professor of Marketing, University of Maryland; leading practitioner of Customer Lifetime Value) to unpack Apple's App Tracking Transparency (ATT) and its ripple effects on marketing performance. Dan shares new research showing how the loss of a Facebook customer ID degraded click-through, CAC, and revenue—with disproportionate pain for smaller, Facebook-heavy brands.We dig into why averages kill profit (stop using blended CAC/CLV!), how channel-specific, time-varying metrics drive smarter allocation, and the practical playbook for marketers in a post-IDFA world. Dan also updates us on his other research—Peloton, loyalty & subscription programs (DoorDash/Postmates), and the “everyone is cheating their way through college” debate and what it means for teaching and real-world readiness.What you'll learn • How ATT broke cross-site attribution and raised CAC while lowering revenue yield • Why small DTC brands took the biggest hit, and how (or if) they can recover • The danger of blended CAC/CLV vs. channel-specific, time-varying metrics • Subscription insights: novelty vs. maturity effects, and behavior after cancellation • Action items to protect growth when signal quality declinesAbout our guestDr. Dan McCarthy is a professor at the University of Maryland (formerly Emory) and one of the foremost experts on CLV and customer-based corporate valuation. His work spans privacy's impact on e-commerce, subscription economics, loyalty programs, and public-company customer metrics.Sponsor: TypefaceTypeface helps the world's biggest brands move from brief to fully personalized campaigns in hours, not months. With its agentic AI marketing platform, one campaign becomes thousands of on-brand experiences across ads, email, and video—with enterprise-grade security and seamless MarTech integrations. Learn more at typeface.ai/cmo.Subscribe for more C-suite-level conversations every Tuesday, and catch our Friday newsletter with the top insights.⸻00:00 – Intro & sponsor: Typeface AI01:35 – Meet Dr. Dan McCarthy & ATT explained05:00 – How ATT broke attribution and raised CAC09:15 – Why small brands took the biggest revenue hit13:30 – The danger of blended CAC & CLV averages17:20 – Practical advice: channel-specific, time-varying metrics21:00 – Updates on Peloton & subscription research25:00 – The “everyone is cheating in college” debate28:00 – Final advice: beware of irrational subscriptionsSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

A Saskatchewan business started as an idea for a university student, now it's grown into a success story aiming to improve the oil and gas industry. Dan McCarthy, founder and president of IJACK Technologies Inc., joins Evan to chat about how he started his company, what services it provides and what he sees for the future.

Is it time to finally admit that not all customers are created equal—and that treating them as if they are might be costing your business more than you realize? In this episode, I dig deep with Dan McCarthy, Associate Professor of Marketing at the University of Maryland and co-founder of Theta, to challenge one of the most hotly debated questions in customer experience: Should all customers be treated the same? Dan's expertise in customer lifetime value (CLV) exposes a stark reality—most companies are bleeding money on large swaths of their customer base and missing out on major growth opportunities by not prioritizing their highest value customers. The impact of understanding, modeling, and acting on CLV? Smarter resource allocation, optimized acquisition channels, and retention strategies that actually move the needle. Why should you listen to Dan? His work—frequently featured in The Wall Street Journal, Harvard Business Review, Fortune, and The Economist—sits at the intersection of advanced academic research and bottom-line business outcomes. Having sold a business to Nike and now a partner at Theta, Dan brings a rare combination of rigorous analytics and practical execution, helping both corporate leaders and investors see their customers (and their value) more clearly. If you want your business to thrive—not just survive—in a customer-driven market, this episode is essential listening. Here are three burning questions Dan answers during our conversation: How do you accurately calculate customer lifetime value, and why do so many businesses get it wrong? What are the most common missteps that leaders make when trying to identify and serve high-value customers? How can customer data be used to shift business strategy, improve profitability, and even recalibrate entire corporate valuations? Be sure to tune in and subscribe on your platform of choice: Listen & Subscribe on Apple Podcasts Listen & Subscribe on Spotify And remember, The Delighted Customers Podcast is available on all your favorite podcast platforms! Meet Dan McCarthy Dan McCarthy is an Associate Professor of Marketing at the University of Maryland's Robert H. Smith School of Business, and a co-founder of Theta, a leading business focused on customer lifetime value prediction and insights. Previously, Dan taught at Emory University's Goizueta Business School for seven years before moving to Maryland (my alma mater—Go Terps!). Dan's innovative research and commentary on customer lifetime value, corporate valuation, and unit economics have attracted national attention, appearing in media outlets such as Harvard Business Review, The Wall Street Journal, Fortune, Barron's, CBS, CNBC, and The Economist. He is also nationally recognized for his work partnering with Dr. Peter Fader, with whom he initially founded a business acquired by Nike before their current collaboration at Theta. Before his academic career, Dan earned both his undergraduate and PhD degrees from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. He spent several years on Wall Street at a hedge fund, bringing a financial and data-driven lens to marketing science. As a frequent speaker and consultant, Dan helps enterprise leaders, marketers, and investors leverage advanced modeling to answer high-stakes questions about profitability, resource allocation, and growth. To connect with Dan, reach out on LinkedIn. References and Show Notes Learn more about Theta Connect with Dan McCarthy: LinkedIn Past podcast guests mentioned: Fred Reichheld (on CX metrics), Dr. Peter Fader (Wharton School, on not treating all customers the same) Read Dan's and Peter Fader's research: Customer-Base Corporate Valuation Warby Parker (example discussed: CLV, growth, and valuation) Media coverage: Harvard Business Review, Wall Street Journal, Fortune, The Economist, USA Today, Barron's Delta Sky Club (loyalty programs and customer value example) Ready to rethink your approach to customers? Hit play and subscribe now!

Dan McCarthy -- syndicated columnist, editor of Modern Age, and vice president for publications at the Intercollegiate Studies Institute -- discusses what the Iran situation means and doesn't mean about the Trump White House. Sponsors: Federated Computer & Monetary Metals Guest's Podcast: Modern Age with Dan McCarthy History and the Israel-Iran Conflict (recent episode)   Guest's Publication: Modern Age   Guest's Twitter: @ToryAnarchist Show notes for Ep. 2660

Breda Lynch, who was aged in her 60s, sadly lost her life in a farm accident in Bonane, Kenmare, on Tuesday evening. Ms Lynch was a well-known shearer and won numerous All-Ireland titles over the years. Treasa spoke to Independent councillor Dan McCarthy.

Freddy Gray and Dan McCarthy discuss the LA riots, why they are different to the protests on Capitol Hill and how Trump will respond.

Dan McCarthy joins us to discuss this and other issues (like poor Mark Levin). Sponsors: Whether you're running a business, doing a side hustle, flipping real estate, or just sick of handing over half your paycheck to fund wars, debt, and nonsense, my friend Matthew Sercely can legally minimize your tax bill. If you joined me on the Tom Woods Cruise you remember how great his presentation was. Pick up a free copy of his Agorist Tax Toolkit at: AgoristTaxAdvice.com/woods CrowdHealth: Code: WOODS Guest's Website: Modern Age: https://ModernAgeJournal.com  Guest's Twitter: @ToryAnarchist Show notes for Ep. 2649

John Chernesky, the SVP of North American Sales at NCL, has spent more than three decades in travel, but only just celebrated his two-year anniversary with NCL. In this episode, Chernesky takes some time to talk to TMR's Dan McCarthy about raising twins, celebrating Prince, and grading NCL's partnership with the travel trade.

Today I'm joined by Dan McCarthy, Associate Professor of Marketing at the Robert H Smith School of Business, for a fascinating discussion on how customer-based corporate valuations can be used to predict the future.   Sponsored by https://www.b2bframeworks.com   Brought to you in partnership with https://awardsinternational.com

No matter how simple a metric's name makes it sound, the details are often downright devilish. What is a website visit? What is revenue? What is a customer? Go one level deeper with a metric like customer acquisition cost (CAC) or customer lifetime value (CLV or LTV, depending on how you acronym), and things can get messy in a hurry. In some cases, there are multiple "right" definitions, depending on how the metric is being used. In some cases, there are incentive structures to thumb the definitional scale one way or another. In some cases, a hastily made choice becomes a well-established, yet misguided, norm. In some cases, public companies simply throw their hands up and stop reporting a key metric! Dan McCarthy, Associate Professor of Marketing at the Robert H. Smith School of Business at the University of Maryland, spends a lot of time and thought culling through public filings and disclosures therein trying to make sense of metric definitions, so he was a great guest to have to dig into the topic! For complete show notes, including links to items mentioned in this episode and a transcript of the show, visit the show page.

Independent councillor Dan McCarthy has tabled a motion ahead of the monthly meeting of Kerry County Council. He’s calling for the council to consider putting together a fund from the dog licences fees to compensate sheep farmers who have lost sheep from dog attacks.

Dan McCarthy, Independent Councillor in Kerry and friend of Michael Gaine

Dan McCarthy joins us to discuss the recent trajectory of the Trump administration and what it portends for the future. Sponsors: Persist SEO & Woods Mastermind Guest's Website: Modern Age: https://ModernAgeJournal.com  Guest's Twitter: @ToryAnarchist Show notes for Ep. 2626

Today, we're talking with Dan McCarthy, VP of Product at Cyvl, an AI-powered mapping tool for transportation infrastructure. In this episode, Dan talks about: Using lessons from building digital products to improve the physical world around us Dan's repeatable playbook for launching into new industries—and the pitfalls to avoid. How a drop in data ingestion costs allowed Cyvl to open up a new, digitally enhanced way of looking at the world Why nailing the entire go-to-market strategy is just as critical as the product itself Links LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dan-mccarthy-24543436/ Cyvl: https://cyvl.com/ Resources Unlock revenue with the zone of benefit | Oji Udezue, CPO (Typeform, Twitter, Calendly): https://youtu.be/2WuAGcRwdv0 Build product like Linear | Nan Yu, Head of Product (Linear, Everlane, BOA): https://youtu.be/7ISWLoQtNOc Chapters 00:00 Intro 01:49 Understanding Digital Twin Architecture 02:40 Challenges and Opportunities in Infrastructure Management 04:27 The Role of AI and Machine Learning in Cyvl 08:24 Future Vision for Cyvl and Infrastructure Management 12:26 Navigating Vertical Markets and Go-to-Market Strategies 19:34 Learning from Industry Transitions 32:18 Outro Follow LaunchPod on YouTube We have a new YouTube page (https://www.youtube.com/@LaunchPod.byLogRocket)! Watch full episodes of our interviews with PM leaders and subscribe! What does LogRocket do? LogRocket combines frontend monitoring, product analytics, and session replay to help software teams deliver the ideal product experience. Try LogRocket for free today. (https://logrocket.com/signup/?pdr) Special Guest: Dan McCarthy.

Independent Councillor, Dan McCarthy is manager of Kenmare Co-operative and a close friend of Mike Gaine who was last seen in the town last Thursday.

Syndicated columnist and Modern Age editor Dan McCarthy joins us to discuss what the State of the Union said about Donald Trump, and about the Democrats. Sponsors: Factor: Coupon Code: woods50off & Persist SEO Guest's Website: Modern Age: ModernAgeJournal.com  Guest's Twitter: @ToryAnarchist Show notes for Ep. 2616

A CMO Confidential Interview with Dr. Dan McCarthy, Professor of Marketing at Maryland. Dan returns for the third time to share research on the food delivery business and how marketers can "bend the growth curve" by implementing a subscription model. He discusses the engineering behind various subscription models and why most marketers should "at least" consider these programs. Key topics include: the difference between "promiscuous" and "heavy" buyers; balancing the "give versus the get," and how AI may drive the implementation of more models. Tune in to hear why charging for membership is a good idea.Are subscription models the future of business growth?

Dan McCarthy of the Intercollegiate Studies Institute joins us to talk about what the next four years are likely to look like. Sponsors: Dave Loffredo lost 60 pounds and took eight inches off his waist thanks in large part to his fitness accountability group inside the Tom Woods School of Life. We're about much more than weight loss, of course. Give it a try at OneBuckTrial.com & Persist SEO Guest's Website: Modern Age: ModernAgeJournal.com  Guest's Twitter: @ToryAnarchist Show notes for Ep. 2596

Dan McCarthy joins us for a review of the philosophical and institutional changes that American conservatism has undergone just in the past 10 years. Sponsors: Bitcoin Mentor & CrowdHealth: Code: WOODS Guest's Website: Modern Age: ModernAgeJournal.com  Guest's Twitter: @ToryAnarchist Show notes for Ep. 2585

Dan McCarthy joins us to discuss the election and what the next 4 years might look like, as well as what happens to Liz Cheney now. Sponsors: : Code: WOODS & Guest's Website: Modern Age:   Guest's Twitter: @ToryAnarchist

Finding Purpose and Identity: A Conversation Between Brothers w/ Dan McCarthy:: Ep 216 MMTBPIn this episode, we talk to my brother, Dan McCarthy, who practices law and plays music.We talk about shared experiences and our divergent paths in life. Dan, reflects on his early musical aspirations, influenced by his piano instructor, and his admiration for artists like Bruce Hornsby and Jerry Lee Lewis. Dan also discusses his legal career, which was sparked by a landlord-tenant dispute and a real estate seminar by Alan M. Barry. Despite initial challenges, including being waitlisted for law school, Dan eventually pursued law, finding success and satisfaction in his career. The conversation delves into our family dynamics, the pressures of living up to expectations, and the importance of self-awareness and following one's passion.Highlights:Early Musical Influences and ChallengesChallenges with Music TeachersTransition to Law SchoolFamily Dynamics and Career Aspirations Find Dan:https://www.butzel.com/professionals-attorneys-daniel-mccarthy______________________________________________________________________****SUBSCRIBE/RATE/FOLLOW the Mostly Middle Tennessee Business Podcast:www.mmtbp.comwww.instagram.com/mostlymiddletnbusinespodcastwww.instagram.com/jimmccarthyvosTiktok: @jimmccarthyvos __________________________________________________________Shoutout to Matt Wilson for lending his voice to the new intro of MMTBPFollow him and his podcast from which I may have borrowed the *mostly* concept:https://linktr.ee/mamwmw___________________________________________________________If you like Jim's Boston Scallys, click here to shop and order yours!https://www.bostonscally.com/a/refer-a-friend/redeem/mqgpwi3u0zgm89vaxnv5crzvlolevo82rvcygsn5/1668 ___________________________________________________________***You hear Jim mention it on almost every episode, ME vs. WE and how 2023 will be 1943 all over again….order “PENDULUM:How Past Generations Shape Our Present and Predict Our Future”:https://a.co/d/7oKK7Ip_________________________________________________________________The co-author of Pendulum wrote a myriad of other books and started a non-profit 21st Century Non-Traditional Business School that you should really check out: Wizard Academy - www.wizardacademy.org______________________________________________________________________Curious about podcasting? This podcast (and many others) is produced by www.itsyourshow.co#billionaire #business #entrepreneurship #fashion #love #marketing #meme #middle #mindset #motivation #nashville #nashvilletennessee #nashvilletn #nature #podcast #podcasters #podcastersofinstagram #podcasting #podcastlife #podcasts #podcastshow #smallbusiness #tennessee #tennesseelife #law #lawyer #attorney #music

Following up major bump in the poles for Kamala Harris, Donald Trump has seen his own poll numbers rebound in recent weeks and he goes into election week with considerable momentum but still in a tight race. Dan McCarthy joins us to discuss. Sponsors: & Guest's Website: Guest's Twitter: @ToryAnarchist

Episode 239: What hidden insights can customer behavior data analysis reveal about how successful one food delivery app may be over another? Discover how analysis of externally sourced customer behavior data can fuel dramatic improvements in revenue forecasts and strategic decisions. See how competitor data analysis can help identify strengths and weaknesses that are otherwise hidden. In this episode of Customer Confidential, we're joined by Dan McCarthy, director and co-founder of Theta and Associate Professor of Marketing at the University of Maryland's Robert H. Smith School of Business. Dan shares findings from Theta and Bain & Company's jointly published consumer purchase data study, “Customer Lifetime Value across Food Delivery Competitors.” Together, Dan and Rob explore how they used a proprietary database of credit card transaction data from Pyxis to track customer behavior for subscription services over five years. They describe how accounting for corresponding economic factors like seasonality and the Covid-19 pandemic helped improve forecasts of transaction velocity, spending, and retention. Learn which food delivery app had the best customer loyalty, the most customers, and highest per-customer spending. Guest: Dan McCarthy, Director and Co-Founder of Theta, Associate Professor of Marketing at the University of Maryland, College Park Host: Rob Markey, Partner, Bain & Company Give Us Feedback: We'd love to hear from you. Help us enhance your podcast experience by providing feedback here in our listener survey. Want to get in touch? Send a note to host Rob Markey here. Time-Stamped List of Topics Covered: [02:00] Introduction to customer behavior analysis and business forecasting [05:15] How companies can use historical data to predict customer lifetime value [10:00] Insights from customer data and the role of subscription services [15:30] The impact of external factors like economic shifts and market changes on consumer behavior [20:00] How businesses can improve acquisition and retention strategies using data [25:00] Using customer lifetime value to forecast future revenue and business growth Time-Stamped Notable Quotes: [02:45] “The notion of having a consistent data set with multiple companies in it so you can compare … all these different food delivery companies [means] you can explicitly see them and you can see the same consumers buying across them.” [05:37] “It's primarily taking these different vintages of customers—where a vintage is defined by, ‘When did that customer make their very first purchase with your firm?'—and then within that vintage, what we want to explain is what these individual customers are going to do in the future.” [07:42] “[The data] is what allows us to say things like, is this company acquiring customers well? Are they retaining customers well? How frequently are they buying? And how does that compare across different companies?” Additional Resources: Customer Lifetime Value across Food Delivery Competitors Pyxis by Bain & Company

Jerry spoke to independent councillor Dan McCarthy about floods in Kenmare over the weekend.

Dan McCarthy, syndicated columnist with Creators Syndicate and a vice president at the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, joins us for a general political discussion that includes thinking the unthinkable. Sponsors: & Guest's Website: Guest's Twitter: @ToryAnarchist

A CMO Confidential Interview with Dr. Dan McCarthy, Professor of Marketing at Maryland. Dan uses a customer lifetime value (CLTV) analysis to show how Peloton's pursuit of growth after a very successful launch negatively impacted its financials and cratered its stock price, leaving its future uncertain. Key decision points include: misreading Covid trends as a permanent demand shift; price decreases which backfired; the importance of cohort analysis and churn rates; and the unintended consequences of chasing growth through rowers and treadmills. Tune in to learn why "Valuation is a painkiller" and "Everything can be good, but it comes at a price."Dive into the dramatic journey of Peloton in our latest episode of CMO Confidential, "Peloton's Rise & Fall: What Marketers Must Learn." Hosted by Mike Linton, former CMO of Best Buy and eBay, this episode features Dr. Dan McCarthy, a tenured professor at the University of Maryland and a pioneer in customer lifetime value (CLTV) analytics. Key topics include Peloton's strategic missteps, the impact of aggressive growth strategies, and the essential lessons marketers can draw from this cautionary tale. Tune in to hear Dr. McCarthy's expert analysis on how Peloton's quest for rapid expansion led to a significant downturn, and what this means for marketers navigating similar challenges. Learn how to balance growth with profitability and the importance of understanding your total addressable market. This insightful discussion also explores the role of customer acquisition costs and retention strategies in sustaining business success. Subscribe to CMO Confidential for more invaluable marketing insights and stay ahead in the ever-evolving marketing landscape!CHAPTERS:00:00 - Intro00:40 - Dan McCarthy02:00 - Customer Lifetime Value05:20 - Peloton Story10:40 - Data Sources12:14 - Peloton's Evolving Strategy17:34 - Profitability Analysis: Peloton's Price Cut Impact19:30 - Overhead Expenses and CLV Impact21:35 - Peloton's Growth Strategy Insights25:27 - Communicating Growth Challenges to Management29:55 - Valuation as a Business Strategy32:50 - Peloton's Strategic Decisions33:29 - Practical Audience Advice33:30 - ClosingSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

The Kamala phenomenon has been something to behold: she gained no traction in the 2020 primaries, has radical-left positions she's running away from, won't talk to the press, and isn't all that bright, and yet the numbers with the betting sites suddenly went crazy in her favor. Can she sustain it, and even win? What does Trump need to do? Dan McCarthy joins us. Sponsors: & Guest's Website: Guest's Twitter:

David Gornoski, host of A Neighbor's Choice, rejoins Bob to explain how mimetic theorist Rene Girard influence Trump's running mate, via Peter Thiel.Mentioned in the Episode and Other Links of Interest:The YouTube version of this interview.The Monetary Metals 12% silver opportunity.JD Vance's essay on his conversion.David Gornoski's A Neighbor's Choice.Dan McCarthy on the Tom Woods Show is happy with JD Vance.David Gornoski explains Girard on the BMS.Help support the Bob Murphy Show.

Syndicated columnist and Modern Age editor Dan McCarthy joins us to discuss the JD Vance VP nomination and what it means for the Republican Party. Sponsors: & Guest's Website: Modern Age:   Guest's Twitter: @ToryAnarchist

The question had been asked: what if Trump is convicted? Will he be irreparably damaged among independents? Is there a Plan B? Syndicated columnist and Modern Age editor Dan McCarthy joins us to discuss where Trump stands now, along with many other topics in this potpourri episode. Sponsors: & Guest's Website: Modern Age:   Guest's Twitter: @ToryAnarchist

Daniel McCarthy is Assistant Professor at Emory University Goizieta School of Business. In this interview, Dan unpacks several deep layers of understanding around measuring retention and customer lifetime value. He highlights a concern that businesses state improved performance against reduced churn rates. It is not that simple. He dives into differences of retention and churn measurement across subscription and non-subscription, across different industries and even the impact of a free trial in a subscription business. If you are in the industry of loyalty, you need to listen to Dan McCarthy's view on measuring churn, retention and customer lifetime value.Hosted by Amanda Cromhout Show notes:1) Daniel McCarthy 2) Emory University Goizieta School of Business3) #64: Customer-Based Corporate Valuation - Daniel McCarthy of Emory University4) #338: Covid's Aftermath, Customer Health, and Customer-Based Forecasting with Daniel McCarthy of Emory University

Donald Trump spoke at the Libertarian Party's convention last weekend (all three major candidates were invited). Jeff Deist and Dan McCarthy join me to discuss the meaning and significance of it all. Sponsors: & : This Father's Day don't get dad another pair of socks or a knick-knack that'll just clutter up the house. Get him steaks, with a gift package from Omaha Steaks. Get a special discount when you use code WOODS when shopping Father's Day gift packages at .

A CMO Confidential Interview with Dr. Daniel McCarthy, Assistant Professor of Marketing at Emory's Goizueta Business School. Dan discusses how marketing has recently taken its knocks, why he created a CLTV class, how companies can start developing their own models, and how customer math can be used to increase marketing accountability. Key topics include: why it is challenging to agree on key modeling variables like acquisition cost; how CLTV can bridge the translation gap between marketers and finance; and why business schools are slow to evolve. Tune in to hear Warby Parker and Wayfair case studies. #customerlifetimevalue #marketing #marketingdata 00:00 Welcome to CMO Confidential: Inside the World of Chief Marketing Officers00:40 Introducing Dr. Dan McCarthy: The Genius Behind Customer Lifetime Value01:38 The Marketing Landscape: Challenges and Changes in the Digital Age03:46 Deep Dive into Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) with Dr. McCarthy06:20 The Practicalities of CLV: From Theory to Application12:20 The Journey of Creating a CLV Course: Inspiration and Impact14:10 The Slow Evolution of Business School Curriculums in the Digital Era18:45 CLV in Practice: Warby Parker Case Study24:56 The Importance of Language and Disclosure in Marketing27:44 Advice for Marketers: Embracing Financial Acumen30:22 Compensation and Accountability in Marketing Departments36:58 Dan McCarthy's Personal Anecdotes and Final ThoughtsLinkedin: CMOConfidentialSpotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1MzXYx0wRB3thgZitlfJoS?si=406b1b98eca6470fApple Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/cmo-confidential/id1668226567See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

We are thrilled to unveil the latest milestone in Modern Age's evolution: a new website! Join us this week as we engage in an insightful discussion with Dan McCarthy and Andrew Beck on the noteworthy updates to ISI's Modern Age Journal.Andrew Beck, esteemed co-founder of Beck & Stone, has collaborated closely with ISI to craft a visually stunning and seamlessly navigable platform, ensuring that accessing our esteemed publication is now more convenient than ever before.In this conversation, we delve into the meticulous design process, the strategic vision driving this transformation, and the profound impact it will have on our readership. Join us as we explore the intersection of tradition and modernity, and celebrate the dawn of a new era for Modern Age.Modern Age History:Founded in 1957 by Russell Kirk and Henry Regnery, Modern Age has been helping to shape the conservative mind and intelligent discourse in the United States (and abroad) for more than six decades. Under the leadership of acclaimed editor Dan McCarthy, Modern Age guides readers through these contentious, confusing times by applying the wisdom of “the permanent things” to the crises of our age and to what Kirk called “the great moral and social and political and economic and literary questions of the hour. Modern Age is now available in print and digital editions. Print subscribers also receive complimentary digital access.WebsiteSubscribe HereUse the code MODERNAGE1957 for discounted on a one-year print subscription!

Dan McCarthy, editor of the venerable Modern Age, runs us through the most likely VP picks for Donald Trump, the motivations behind each, who the best one is, and who are most likely. Sponsors: & : Hillsdale is offering 40+ free self-paced courses on topics of great importance. I recommend "CS Lewis on Christianity," where you'll examine some of Lewis' classic works, including Mere Christianity, The Screwtape Letters, The Abolition of Man, to see what Lewis had to say about Scripture, prayer, suffering, joy, heaven, and hell. Link:

EP318 - Temu Deep Dive with Earnest Analytics  Episode Summary: In this episode, Jason "Retailgeek" Goldberg and Scot Wingo dive deep Temu, the online marketplace operated by the Chinese e-commerce company PDD Holdings, that has become the fastest growing retailer in history. Joining us on the episode is Michael Maloof is the Head of Marketing for Earnest Analytics. Earnest works with world-class data partners to acquires, anonymize, and productize insight about the entire U.S. Economy. They have posted numerous insights about Temu in the US this year: Feb 28: Temu's 2024 Super Bowl ad blitz failed to accelerate growth March 5: Temu is growing fastest among high income earners March 12: Almost half of Wish, AliExpress customers shop at Temu In this episode we cover who Temu is, how big they have become, who their customers are and what retailers they are likely impacting, their go to market strategy (and especially their marketing spend), the controversy around their use of the Global Postal Treaty, and some of their potential risks. We also explore where they could go next. If you're in the commerce space, you'll want to make sure you are up to speed on Temu. Don't forget to like our facebook page, and if you enjoyed this episode please write us a review on itunes. Episode 318 of the Jason & Scot show was recorded on Wednesday, March 13th, 2024. http://jasonandscot.com Join your hosts Jason "Retailgeek" Goldberg, Chief Commerce Strategy Officer at Publicis, and Scot Wingo, CEO of GetSpiffy and Co-Founder of ChannelAdvisor as they discuss the latest news and trends in the world of e-commerce and digital shopper marketing. Transcript Jason: [0:23] Welcome to the Jason and Scott show. This is episode 318 being recorded on Wednesday, March 13th, 2024. I'm your host, Jason “Retailgeek” Goldberg. And as usual, I'm here with your co-host, Scott Wingo. Scot: [0:39] Hey, Jason, and welcome back, Jason and Scott show listeners. Jason, one of the topics that is coming up a lot this year, we talked a lot at a lot in our recap and our preview is Temu. By many measures, people think they're one of the fastest growing e-commerce companies in history. If you watch the Super Bowl, I think they spent $8 trillion on ads there. So we want to do a deep dive into this and cover a number of topics. We want to talk about a little background around Temu. What's it mean for U.S. retailers? And, you know, it's a Chinese company. Does it even matter? If yes, why? Because Temu isn't public and they are a Chinese company, they don't really disclose any information. So we wanted to bring on a guest that is basically a Temu expert. So we looked around and we found Michael Maloof. He is the head of marketing at Ernest Analytics. Ernest works with world-class data partners to acquire, anonymize, and productize insights about the U.S. economy. They have posted lots of articles. This is how we found Michael. I think you know him as well from the trade show circuit. So he's going to help us do this deep dive into what's going on at Temu. Welcome to the show, Michael. Michael? Michael: [1:59] Yeah, thanks so much for having me on the show. Big fan of your annual predictions and the work you guys do. So I'm head of marketing at Earnest Analytics. We're the leading credit card retail pricing and healthcare claims data provider for investors and retailers. Before Earnest, I was actually a tech and telco analyst over at Goldman. The two credit card data sets we work with now, Orion and Vela, are probably the most pertinent to my conversations about the consumer economy and certainly this conversation today about TMU. They sourced respectively from a large account aggregator, like a budgeting app, and part of a POS system in the US. And Ernest essentially takes these massive and messy data sets, normalizes structures, and then puts them onto our platform so everyone from portfolio managers to marketers can see this third-party data. For example, you'd see market share, competitive benchmarking, customer behavior, revenue predictions, and macro trends for thousands of companies, including TMU. Scot: [3:03] Awesome. Thanks, Michael. And then, so which sector did you cover when you were an analyst at Goldman Sachs? Michael: [3:08] Tech and telco. So anything in the tech space, we had a few marketplaces in there, telecom companies. It's been a while though. Ernest has been my home now for seven years. Scot: [3:20] Okay. Was this in the Anthony Noto era you were there? Michael: [3:23] This was in the vera rossi era she was my my lead where we recovered uh latin american tech and telco. Scot: [3:30] Very cool awesome yeah they did goldman did the channelizer ipo so i get to know the team there pretty well awesome well before we jump into the data which we're excited to kind of hear what you have to share here jason i know this has become a very hot topic in your world you you You spoke on it at NRF. In your day job, you're getting tons of questions about this. I think you're booked out solid with Tmoo briefings. So those people pay big money for it, and our listeners don't pay. Give us the free version of your backgrounder on Tmoo. Jason: [4:05] Yeah, thanks, Scott. And I'm sure we'll spice in some other tidbits as we go, but I'll try to give a concise bullet. it. Temu is a subsidiary of a company that used to be called Pinduoduo in China. It's now called PDD Holdings, which is infinitely easier to spell, by the way. And PDD Holdings is one of the largest e-commerce companies in China. On a market cap basis, they keep flip-flopping with Alibaba. So they're super competitive. They're way north of like $400 billion in GMV in China and had a really interesting trajectory, but a couple of years ago, they launched Tmoo into first UK and then US, now 49 other markets as a new retail concept. And so a couple of things I'd want folks to know before we dive in with Michael, first of all, the name is a loose English acronym for team up price down. So I always pronounce Tmoo as in team. [5:08] There are multiple pronunciations out there, even from Tmoo employees. So I'm not sure there's an official pronunciation. In the United States, they launched in September of 2022. So they're about 18 months old now. And most folks were not familiar with them until, a surprise, three months after launching, they bought a Super Bowl ad. So they became familiar to millions of Americans with the Shop Like a Billionaire ad that ran in the Super Bowl in 2023. And then as Scott alluded to, they bought five ads in the Super Bowl this year. So they haven't disclosed what they paid. A normal 30-second spot in the Super Bowl costs about $7 million. They ran four ads during the Super Bowl and one during the postgame. So estimates are in the kind of $20 to $30 million that they spent just on that ad. There's a bunch of estimates for how big they are in the U.S. I'm eager to hear what Michael thinks, but his old rivals at Morgan Stanley have them at about $16 billion in GMV in the U.S. But more interesting, Morgan Stanley estimates they're going to be $32 billion by 2030. So you think about a retail company that launched in September of 2022, and then in the first year, business sold $16 billion worth of stuff. That's the fastest growing retailer of all times. We do know from other sources that they get more traffic every year than Target. [6:36] They've been the most downloaded shopping apps on the Android and Apple app stores since they were born. So they've kind of owned the top of that list. And a couple other little interesting things. They are a marketplace. They have invented a model they call next generation manufacturing. So they're a marketplace. It's all three-piece sellers that are selling goods on Temu. But unlike traditional Western-based marketplaces, Temu does a lot more of the work, of listing the products and fulfilling the products for the factory. So they may, if you're a factory, they say the only thing you need is a cellular internet connection, and they provide you all the infrastructure to become a successful seller on Temu. There's somewhere between 80 and 100,000 Chinese factories that are currently sellers on the marketplace. And then one big innovation is this week, they're turning on the ability for U.S. Marketplace sellers to sell and fulfill their goods from the U.S. as well. So one interesting question about a marketplace is, are they competing for sellers with Amazon and Walmart? And now they're bringing that fight to American soil. So that, I feel like, is enough to get us started. There's certainly an interesting company that's worth following. [7:52] The way I originally discovered Earnest is through this show. One of our most popular guests, Dan McCarthy, has been on a few times talking about his his CLV methodologies. And our listeners have really enjoyed his his commentary. He has partnered with Earnest Data several times to do some really interesting analytics. And you guys at Earnest have published a couple of those as thought leadership. And so that's how I first met you. And then, Michael, I noticed you published like three articles on Temu this year. Michael: [8:22] That's right. Right. Teamio has been one of the top client asked for themes. It's definitely something we're seeing a lot in the press. We work a lot with those thought leaders as well. And that's something that we're getting a lot of questions on from everyone from business to fashion to Dan McCarthy. So glad to answer any questions there. We are kind of in a unique spot, kind of have the dashboard on the consumer economy, if you will. Basically what's going on within the last few days we can see everything from customer acquisition they have to their gross market merchandise value. Scot: [8:56] Got it let's let's start at the basics and let's pretend you know so i see Temu and you know it looks like they've got and you know one of my theories is it feels a lot like wish.com so it's really kind of cheap stuff slower ship going to what i would call value-oriented and consumers, you know, in your data, what, what kind of customer are, is buying this and then how fast do you think they are really growing? Michael: [9:22] Yeah, let me answer the second one first. Timmy's growing very quickly. Like you said, from late 2022 onwards, our data is showing double digit month to month growth, which is just explosive, right as it became a household name. In the first three months, for context, it had roughly as many weekly active users in the US as the largest fast fashion brand, Shein, and within 10 months had surpassed Shein in sales. And it had taken Shein years to get to that point. So really, a much shorter timeline. For an idea of size, about 18% of US households have shopped at TeamView since its launch. And in terms of GMV, in February, we saw about 1% of Amazon's US GMV. If you look at that, if you just break that out over the whole year, I believe in 2023, their net sales were something like over $500 billion. You're looking at around $50 billion in gross merchandise value moving through the service. But nevertheless, it's kind of not made really meaningful inroads with the largest online brands. I mean, it's still 1% in a good month. And that's actually decelerated since 2023. In fact, February of 2023 had fewer sales than January, despite the really heavy advertising spend you mentioned. [10:47] So yeah, there's some signs that the growth is kind of changing there. Mainly that retention is increasing even while this like... [11:01] New customer acquisition-based sales growth model is slowing down. TeamU's average customer lifetime value tracks higher than Walmart. And we're seeing customers becoming much more loyal. So that's an interesting kind of plus for them while sales in total are kind of hitting a lull. But yeah, let's talk about who those customers are too. It's definitely been one of the more interesting finds from our data. Despite the really low price points and that kind of gamified discount system, TeamView's US customer base skews middle to high income, actually. Sales among customers earning that over $190K, which is obviously very high up there, they're the fastest growing income bracket. And that's from May to January, May of 23 to January 24. So those sales to customers earning under $55K, like less than the median U.S. household income, that's actually the slowest growing. So today, about 44% of TeamU sales come from earners making over $130K. Not only do high-income earners account for the largest share, they're outgrowing. We just think that TeamU resonates mostly with customers with more disposable income. income, people who can afford to take a gamble on an item that might not work out. [12:27] You buy a floor mat for $5, it doesn't work. A middle high income person might just say, hey, it was $5 wasted, but the poor people don't always look at that. They're looking for a little bit more bang for their buck, can't afford that type of gamble. Yeah, it's interesting. Scot: [12:46] Cool and then you've you know you mentioned that they're you know basically their ltv is going up do you have any insight into why are they getting better at like maybe predictive analytics or recommendation engine or you know they see jason bought some gadget and then they they know he's now a gadget geek and they kind of start targeting do you have any insight into what's driving that that bump in LTV? Michael: [13:09] That's a good question. So I don't really have much insight into that. I try not to get out over my skis in terms of the data that I have available to me. We're looking at retention. We're looking for what's called a smile. Dan McCarthy talks about it all the time, which is over time as a company starts to bring back more customers that stopped stopped spending with them. And that's been pretty rare to see in e-commerce history. That's something they've managed to do. How they're doing that, I'm not totally sure. So it's definitely going to be the key for them to continue growing as new customer growth slows down, though. Scot: [13:52] Yeah. Jason, do you know? Jason: [13:54] Yeah. Well, so I don't know. I just want to point out that while Michael is wisely trying to not get over his skis, I live over my skis. So I'll tumble down the ski slope once again. One of the things I maybe should have said up front or maybe apparent to a lot of people is T-Moves marketing spend isn't just that Super Bowl ad. They're spending a fortune on digital ads and almost certainly losing a lot of money on every sale. So there's a Wall Street Journal article that came out this week that said that Temu or PDD overall spent over $2 billion with Facebook and was Facebook's largest advertiser. They're also Google's largest advertiser in the U.S. And so they're buying a lot of customers. And the the Wall Street Journal estimates that they're losing $6 on every sale. They're spending so much on customer acquisition. And so in that first year, they're doing a ton of marketing. There's a ton of people that never heard of Temu. They're acquiring those customers. They're getting that first order. [14:54] And, you know, a mini version of this is what Wish did until they ran out of money. But though it doesn't seem like there was a lot of evidence that Wish ever got traction, right? Like they didn't get those repeat orders. And what I think we're seeing And what I've seen in some of the data that Michael shared with us is that Temu very much is growing that LTV, getting repeat orders, even as the flood of digital marketing they're spending is sort of losing some efficacy as the law of large numbers kick in. And then I would also say Pinduoduo in China and now Temu in the U.S. Is very well known for their gamification. So they have lots of clever gamification mechanics on their websites, group buying, contests, gifts, one-time deals that are all like very carefully crafted to entice you to make an incremental purchase and to make an unplanned purchase. So I think all of those things appear to be working and then they hit you on social media with, you know, a huge spend, you know, right when you're, you're doom scrolling and expressing some, some purchase intent through your clicks. Scot: [16:08] Very cool. How about you, Michael, you mentioned this, this, this slowdown, which is exactly opposite of what I would have thought given the Superbowl ads. What do you, does the data show you anything there? Is it? Normal or like what what's going on. Michael: [16:23] Yeah i mean i don't know i don't know what would be normal for this company that's still up hundreds of percent a year but when i'm looking at at month over month growth which is the kind of the best way i can think to to look at it it is pretty remarkable there was some sort of a step change in august of last year where it went from growing double double digits each month to growing just single digits or down. The holidays, December actually was smaller than November in terms of their sales. And January was smaller still, makes sense. But February, also very challenged in terms of sales. I'm wondering if they're in a sort of spiral in terms of the new customer's first time kind of buying frenzy is over, or if this is a shift towards very purposely trying to get people in the door and they're just actually tapping brakes a bit on advertising spending. I'm not totally sure what this signals just yet. Scot: [17:35] Got it. Okay. Jason: [17:36] Is it safe to say that there's no clear evidence that spending $30 million million dollars on the Super Bowl had a super observable impact on their sales. Michael: [17:46] Okay. Yeah. So the Super Bowl. Let's talk about that. The million dollar question or $30 million question, I guess. The answer is probably not. There are a lot of ways to measure advertising effectiveness, as you guys know better than most. Brand awareness and net promoter score. But yeah, for a young company like this facing slowing new customer growth, I'd imagine they're looking to move the needle with each of these like big marketing events and the data just suggests that their multiple ads on February 11th had no meaningful boost in sales actually TeamU saw a noticeable deceleration in sales growth following the event actually kind of, like sales were significantly slower in the next few days. So unless they're measuring this on a much longer timeline, I don't think this investment was worth it. I think they would be better just plowing dollars into digital, wherever that is. Jason: [18:42] Yeah, it's super interesting. You know, obviously for listeners that don't know, my salary gets paid by those Super Bowl ads. I work for a big ad agency for which I'm very grateful. But the lot of controversy around our water cooler the day after the show. That was a spin that you rarely see. And in one metric, it clearly had an impact. There was a lot more discussion about Temu than any other company on social media the day after the Super Bowl. So the Super Bowl ads triggered awareness and conversation. I think they were the second behind Verizon, which had Beyonce, right? And so there was a lot of talk on social media. It was not all positive. There was a lot of discussion on social media, but people that hated the team who had the first time they saw it because it was sort of by Super Bowl standards, not a very high production animated ad. I think they made it in-house and they, you know, ran it with much greater repetition than audiences are used to. So it generated a lot of conversation that didn't necessarily translate to sales, at least that we can measure in the short term. And so that that's going to be interesting long term case study about what what these kind of, you know, splashy big reach audiences can and can't can't do. Right. Michael: [20:00] You know, I don't, again, skis and getting over them. It just seems like the outcome for them at this point should be a little further down the funnel. And I don't see how advertising spend like that will marginally get someone, persuade someone to buy a team you that wasn't already going to. It seems, yeah, it was a lot and there was no really movement in our data, either in new signups or in sales. I think there's some other research out that downloads are trending downwards or slowing down as well. We don't have that data, but I was reading elsewhere. So I think, Scott, this is maybe more to your 2024 prediction that people are realizing this is wish and slowing. and becoming less enamored or falling out of it. Jason: [20:52] No, no, no, no. Scott's predictions cannot be right. Scot: [20:55] Wait, if I hear that, you're pre-anointing that I'm right. Is that you're here in March, you're saying I was right with my prediction. Man, I'm good. Michael: [21:04] I didn't want to pick a side here, but I think people might be falling out of love with it, although it's not because it's not wish, it's because they're out wishing wish. We can talk to it a little bit. But I think people just realize Teamio is managing to disrupt Wish. And we can talk to the brands that it's disrupting. That's just one of many. It's got higher retention, bigger scale than Wish. But it does have the same limits as Wish and that this deep discount model doesn't have the big household brands that people want when they're making those everyday purchases that are slightly bigger, like the Tides and Cloroxes or the recognizable alternatives. There are just some things you don't want to replace and you don't want to gamble on. I don't think anyone wants to spend a dollar on detergent and see what happens. It's just going to be tough for them to scale at some point. I think the question we should be asking is if they've reached that point yet. I'm not sure. The sales growth slowing suggests they could have. But in the meantime, they are actually taking a wrecking ball to several other brands. So just because total sales is slowing doesn't mean the disruptive effect is slowing. Scot: [22:22] Yeah, let's go, Jason. Jason: [22:51] Because Temu is buying so many ads and driving the price on all those auctions up. So don't know if it's moving the needle on consumer impact or not, but it for sure is having an impact on their competitors, at least in that regard. Michael: [23:04] So you're saying maybe their goal is to just suck all the oxygen out of the room? Jason: [23:08] I'm saying that's potentially an unintended positive benefit. Mm-hmm. Scot: [23:15] Yeah, and you've teed us up there. Who is, is it retailers or is it more brands? Who's getting impacted by this? And kind of embedded in this question is, do you have an idea of the categories? Like if we looked at that pie of the 50 billion GMV, is it largely electronics? Is it apparel? Like what are the big wedges inside of there? Michael: [23:35] Yeah, well, so the great part about transaction data, it's really good at looking at brand disruption, or I should say retail disruption by brand. Not great at looking at the categories. You know, I don't see what an individual breakout of a credit card receipt is. I'm just seeing where people are spending. So I think that's the question I'm more equipped to answer. In terms of impact, some of the folks you think of when you think of mass market and discount retailers like Five Below and Walmart, the ones that you immediately want to ask if they're being disrupted, they seem like they'd have the most overlap. They've been pretty untouched, actually. Part of its overlap, only 19% of Walmart and Amazon's customers have even tried TeamU. And that's about the same as the total percent of US households that have tried it. substantially the whole country has made a purchase at Walmart and Amazon. So they're just not as at risk, maybe on the margins. But what we're seeing, I guess, next step up with some risk is the dollar stores. Dollar General, they share about a quarter of their customers with TeamU. And if you look at Dollar General's customers spending at TeamU, it's up over 800% year to year from January 23 to 24. Obviously, a super small base and flat. at Dollar General itself. [24:54] And then those TeamU customers who aren't, or those Dollar General customers who aren't TeamU customers, they're spending slightly up at Dollar General. It suggests that there's some impact. Again, not the biggest that we've seen. So I'd say like dollar stores kind of marginally. [25:10] This is not as supported by data, but just putting the data point together that the TeamU customers are spending less and TeamU customers are richer, you could come to the conclusion that Dollar General role is losing out on richer customers looking for deals a little bit. Maybe they're popping in for something they really don't want to spend a lot of money on, like a party, something like that. That's where the sales that they're losing is. Which actually kind of takes us to the last and biggest impact. Wish and AliExpress, as well as all those hobby lobby party supplies, like Oriental Trading. So I'll start with Wish. Their customers are just fleeing. I think there's no better way to say it. 50% less spend on Wish in January 2024 than January 2023, and over 680% increase at TeamU. That's just astounding. The Wish customer, once they try I, TeamU, they're done. It's game over. It's similar for AliExpress. And I think that what TeamU has really done early on, we need to think of them less as like an Amazon killer, and more as a brand that just came in to consolidate the existing demand for this deep discount online spending that these two, AliExpress and Wish kind of got off the ground in the US. [26:35] In terms of the hobby space, Oriental Trading, Hobby Lobby, Party City, they all experienced double-digit declines year-on-year in February among the customers who also shopped at TMU. And these brands, they're catering to occasional and discount merchandise. I think they're really going to struggle adapting to TMU. It's like I said, the person who doesn't mind throwing away $5, $10, $15 on party supplies if they don't work out. But it's a one-time thing anyway. way you know it's it's things that they're somewhat disposable items to these customers and very interchangeable got. Scot: [27:12] It i noticed you didn't mention amazon on that list is there is it there been an amazon impact or has it been. Michael: [27:18] That's great good catch pretty negligible just just like walmart they're just brands on those platforms at this point that you can't find at at these places i think when i say on the margins that's what i mean there could be hey, I need this small thing for my kitchen that I could get for $1 or get for $3. And that might be the sale they lose out on, but they're doing a better job of being one-stop shops. And I think with what we've seen, it doesn't seem like the business model is set to take on Amazon yet. Scot: [27:57] Got it. Yeah. Jason: [28:00] You know, a couple of things that come to mind. A, I think the dollar store thing is super interesting because historically dollar stores haven't sold very much online. Like, and, and, you know, usually their excuse is that, that super low price point discounted items don't work online. Right. And I, I think like in some ways I look at Temu and I say, they're actually the digital dollar store that did figure it out. Now. [28:25] It remains to be seen whether they can make money doing it in the long run. But it doesn't surprise me that those are some of the categories that are being disproportionately impacted. And I think you really hit something interesting on some of these everyday essential retailers that sell the brands that consumers are looking for and trust. [28:46] That, to me, feels like a different shopping occasion than the shopping occasion I think Timo is winning. Branding there's this whole new trend on all the social media platforms called dupes and you know people think of like knockoffs and forgeries where you you try to pretend you're a brand that you're not but dupes is a something different dupes is this is a very similar product to a name brand product but it it overtly is not the name brand product and it's a way better value and they're now these big cohorts of consumers that talk about their dupes and brag about their dupe finds and, you know, proudly make these, these dupe decisions. And it feels like those are the kind of things where, where Teemu's playing really well, where, you know, you're into, you know, crafting and you've, you know, there's some expensive machine, a cricket machine for cutting vinyl. And you say, oh man, I found a dupe on Teemu for 20 bucks, right? Like those Those feel like the kinds of occasions they're winning when you're willing to trade down for that no-name product and take a gamble versus when you know you want the Tide dishwasher soap. Michael: [29:58] I think that's a great point. They're taking advantage of the trading down phenomenon in general right now that a lot of brands are seeing, a lot of retailers are seeing. This is the perfect spot. I'll just go ahead and see if Temu has it. Maybe they will, maybe they won't. Scot: [30:15] Cool. One topic, and this is kind of a jump ball for you guys, is the, you know, I read a lot about this shipping model, and this was always Wish's kind of secret sauce is there's this, there's this like loophole in the postal code where if you send this something small, you know, it doesn't have any tariffs, number one. And then number two, there's like this really cheap postal rate, or I can't remember if China subsidizes it or it's free or we subsidize it, but there's some, there's kind of like double loopholes. There's a tariff one and a shipping one. And I've seen some noise lately about people wanting to kind of shut this down. Do you guys, either of you more expert on that than I am and have an opinion on if it's going to be sustainable or not? Jason: [30:57] I could certainly jump in there. So what you're talking about is there's this thing called the Global Postal Treaty. And it's a prearranged agreement between like 95 countries, 94 countries for how they'll deliver each other's mail. When you try to ship a letter from the U.S. to Germany, the U.S. Post Office is going to hand it to the German Post, and they need to know in advance how much the German Post is going to charge the U.S. Post Office to deliver that so that the U.S. Post Office can charge a rate in advance to you to deliver those things. So this global postal treaty is super valuable, and it makes it possible to cost effectively and, you know, with predictable rates, mail stuff all across the world. [31:41] Unfortunately, there's a couple of problems with it. There was the developed nations agreed that for less economically developed nations, they would have a preferred rate. So they would charge even less to deliver. The U.S. post office would charge less to deliver mail from a developing economy than they would from an established economy. And until recently, China was characterized as a developing economy, which is probably not accurate. And then the Postal Treaty specifies a dollar limit that it only is in effect for packages under a certain value. And so this is called the de minimis clause of the Postal Treaty. In the United States, the threshold is $800. So when Temu ships something to a consumer in the U.S. that costs under $800, they get a predetermined rate from the U.S. Post office, which is often cheaper than the rate to mail something from one part of the U.S. to the other. And Scott, per your point, there is no tariffs charged on that item and there is no import inspection on that item. So, you know, normally when we, you know, if a U.S. Retailer imports a container of goods from China, there's all kinds of inspections to make sure that the factory in China met labor standards and, you know, met environmental standards, and then they pay tariffs on all that. [33:08] The team who hands one package to the U.S. post office, they they get to bypass all that, which, you know, is, of course, controversial. No one wants to get rid of the Global Postal Treaty or even de minimis. But what they're saying is that the U.S.'s 800 hour threshold is probably way too high. Like China's threshold for reciprocation is something like forty dollars or something. So you could you could put a big dent in Temu if you just lowered the the threshold. And so there's There's, you know, noise in Congress about trying to change that limit. I would say that, you know, it is an unfair advantage in many ways, and U.S. Companies are certainly right to complain about that. [33:51] I would say that Temu is different than Wish. Wish took advantage of this cause. Temu takes advantage of it way more effectively, right? So Wish sold, you know, was a marketplace, and they had a factory sell something to an American consumer. And then it was up to the factory to get it to the American consumer. So the factory had to have their own postal account. And then they, you know, had to trigger this postal treaty. And there was no shipping confirmation. And often Wish products took a very long time to ship and a very long time to arrive. As part of this next-gen manufacturing model that Temu has, they do all that for the seller. And it uses Temu's postal account. And they expedite all of these things. Most of these goods get air freighted to the U.S. and put into the U.S. postal system. So while Wish items would have averaged three or four weeks delivery time. [34:46] Temu normally averages like five to seven days, and they almost always outperform their shipping promises. And in fact, they even have a guarantee. They give you $5 back if the package arrives late. So, you know, part of the reason that I don't think they're just purely Wish 2.0 is they actually do have a better, more reliable shipping experience than Wish. And they actually more effectively take advantage of this postal loophole than Wish ever did. Scot: [35:18] Yeah. And Wish took the proceeds of their IPO and built out some fulfillment centers. And they almost did their own version of that Amazon dragon boat or whatever that was called. Has T-Mood signaled they're going to do something like that where they have, you know, even more? Jason: [35:32] Yeah, they already have in some. So they're in 49 countries now. So they do have D.C. fulfillment centers in some of those countries. They've actually talked about opening a fulfillment center in Mexico for delivering goods in the western U.S. And so so they are talking about that. But then this other big thing is starting this week that a U.S. Seller could list their goods that, you know, the goods are already in a warehouse in the U.S. that US seller could list their goods on Temu and then deliver those goods from a US fulfillment center. So that's a potential way to get much faster delivery times for Temu. And we've already seen some badging. Temu has items with a rapid ship badge that are guaranteed for two-day delivery. So it does seem like Temu recognizes that over time, their fulfillment model is going to have to be more nuanced than just the the individual parcels uh coming one at a time but but you know that still seems like the the sort of biggest foundation of how they're delivering all these goods got. Michael: [36:36] It um the minimus though i can't imagine that much they would change would really have an impact we're seeing average ticket prices at 38 last month for for timmy like are they thinking thinking of reducing it by that much or. Jason: [36:52] So, I mean, a just talking about way over our skis, like my, my political acumen is very poor, but yeah, I don't think Congress is gonna do anything. I think like at most they'll have a, a hearing and try to look like tough guys talking about how unfair it is and how they're gonna try to protect the American businessman and the American consumer. And then when push comes to shove, they won't, they won't do anything, which is my, my cynical nature. But you're right. Right. Nobody's talking about dropping the de minimis low enough to to, you know, really trigger the bulk of these these Temu shipments. So it's it's more likely if they made a change, it would be a gesture, not like, you know, some some game changing thing. Now, you know, there's another big Chinese company out there, ByteDance, which is TikTok. And like there there is a bill going through Congress right now to ban TikTok. And so, you know, if something like that were to happen with, with a PDD or Temu, you know, that, that would of course, you know, be a, a big threat of a disruption. Scot: [37:54] Yep. And then on that example you gave, Jason, of a U.S. seller in a fulfillment center, is that Temu's fulfillment center or the seller's fulfillment center? Jason: [38:04] The seller's fulfillment center. So potentially what would be one of the ironies of this is, of course, as Amazon has expanded their fulfillment services, you could be an Amazon seller, be using FBA, and sell something on Temu and have Amazon fulfill it for you. Scot: [38:20] Yeah, Wish did something like this. What we found was the U.S. Seller struggled to get things in the price point that consumer wanted, right? It's like it's such this low quality stuff that almost has to be offshore for even to the manufacturer. Jason: [38:36] Yeah, I think you are 100 percent right there. I don't think they're going to like we don't know what the uptake is going to be on these U.S. Sellers. It's an interesting talking point, but it doesn't seem like there's going to be a bunch of U.S. Sellers that are going to likely participate in this like low price dupes demand that they have today. Now, what would be interesting, Pinduoduo, I mentioned, which is a huge, huge entity in China. Pinduoduo started with this same stuff. They started with really inexpensive marketplace goods. And as Pinduoduo got bigger and more established and won the hearts and minds of Chinese consumers, they moved up market. They started selling brand name stuff. They started selling higher quality stuff. And today they're a hybrid seller. PennDuoDuo in China sells their own goods in addition to marketplace items, which I've never seen before. Usually it always goes the other way. And so there's at least a premise that like maybe the U.S. sellers don't like add to the current assortment, but maybe the U.S. Sellers help Temu round out their assortment with some higher price point, you know, more recognizable goods for the U.S. consumer that helps them win more wallet share. Scot: [39:49] Interesting. Cool. We're running up against time. Do you guys have any other topics you want to hit before we call it a show? Michael: [39:58] No, I think it's fair. You know, I already mentioned one of your predictions. I should talk about the other one. Just to pick on Jason for a second. I don't think we'll make it to the 75% of target USC comm this year for Temu, Jason. Sorry. It's like a stretch. Scot: [40:17] Man. How do we get Michael on the show more? Like, I'm really enjoying this. This was a really good guess. Jason: [40:24] I feel like you're calling the winner of the Super Bowl in the first quarter, man. Come on. Michael: [40:27] Okay, well, I'll just put it this way. At 18% of the US households, three months into the year, it seems unlikely at their current growth that they get there. My view basically though, writing this, is that they've done a great job in the first year of attracting folks with a lot of disposable income to buy things that they likely wouldn't have bought anywhere else, like party supplies, household goods. It's maybe a different model than they they have in China. The challenge for them now, you guys both definitely identified this, that it's basically to convince people to switch everyday spending from Amazon and Walmart on those bigger items. And they don't have the assortment right now for that. And that's what you're mentioning. They need to either move up market or figure out what that assortment looks like. But that's going to be a bigger hurdle. They're reaching critical mass. They just have some decisions to make internally at this point. Jason: [41:17] Yeah. Well, in general, I feel like that is going to be a great place to leave it for this show because we have run out of our allotted time. But Michael, we really appreciated your insight. We'll certainly have you back. I know your view of the U.S. economy is useful for a whole bunch of topics that come up frequently on the show. But as always, if listeners enjoyed this episode, I hope you will jump on iTunes and leave us that five-star review. Scot: [41:46] Thanks, Michael. And this has been really good for Jason's ego. So I feel like you've knocked him down a couple of pegs. I appreciate that. And then if folks want to read more about your writing or connect with you, is LinkedIn the best place or are you more active on TikTok? Where can people find you? Yeah. Michael: [42:04] Michael Maloof on LinkedIn. I'm always posting a lot of Ernest data on there. And then also on our company blog, ErnestAnalytics.com. Go to the Insights blog and subscribe. Jason: [42:17] Yep. And I will put links to both the team new articles you guys published and your LinkedIn in the show notes. Michael: [42:23] Thank you. Jason: [42:24] Until next time, happy commercing!

Third season launch! A new and improved TAC Right Now returns with a breakdown of the Super Tuesday primary results. Host Bradley Devlin walks Helen, Jude, and Sumantra through the exit polls, the surprises, and the presidential rematch ahead. Picks of the week: Helen: "DoxyPEP Is a Disaster in Waiting," Theodore Dalrymple Jude: "McConnell, Man of His Era," W. James Antle III Sumantra: "Ursula von der Leyen's Second Term," Adriel Kasonta Bradley: "Sunset for Mitch McConnell—and Joe Biden?" Dan McCarthy

In his second year shooting pro, and his first-ever ASA Pro Pressure Point Shootdown, PSE shooter Brady Myers of Pennsylvania won the Open Pro division at the 2024 Hoyt/Easton Pro/Am in Foley, Ala. Brady runs through what it was like winning the event, beating legends of the game Levi Morgan, Dan McCarthy and Jack Wallace in the process. He also talks about his competition career - how he got started, lessons he learned along the way, and more. Listen in and meet Brady Myers!

Welcome to a special episode where we bring you an insightful recording from the Heritage Foundation. Join us as President and CEO of ISI, Johnny Burtka, takes the stage to present a compelling lecture on his latest book, "Gateway to Statesmanship."In this thought-provoking episode, Johnny Burtka explores the key themes and insights from his book, providing a gateway to a deeper understanding of statesmanship. Delve into the principles and perspectives that shape effective leadership and governance.Following the lecture, we transition to a dynamic panel discussion featuring Johnny Burtka, Elbridge Colby, and Dan McCarthy. These distinguished voices engage in a nuanced dialogue, offering diverse viewpoints on statesmanship, its relevance in contemporary politics, and the broader implications for our nation.This Heritage Foundation event provides you with a front-row seat to an enlightening exploration of leadership, governance, and the timeless principles that guide our nation.

Episode 188: Welcome Dan McCarthy In this episode we bring in college coach, Las Vegas native, and current student of ministry Dan McCarthy. Coaching for over 5 years, Dan brings a wealth of knowledge and curiosity everywhere he goes. Inspired by his faith, he believes that everything you do is determined by your effort, attitude, … Episode 188: Welcome Dan McCarthy Read More »

A roundtable discussion with the Intercollegiate Studies Institute's Dan McCarthy and Townhall's Scott Morefield about Donald Trump's prospects and whether the GOP made a good choice. Sponsors: HelloFresh: Go to and use code WoodsFree to get a free breakfast item in every box for LIFE!

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The Jason & Scot Show.  Podcast about e-commerce and digital shopper marketing. Editor note: We're trying some fun new AI features for this episode. The following show notes were written by ChatGPT. We're also let AI remove all the "stop words" in our audio, and we've switched from Google to OpenAI for our audio transcription. Let us know your feedback. In this episode of the Jason and Scot show, our special guest is Sean D. Nelson, the CEO and founder of Lovesac. He shares his inspiring journey of starting the company as a beanbag business in his basement and growing it into a successful public company. Sean highlights the key moments of his entrepreneurial journey, including winning a million dollars on Richard Branson's reality TV show and navigating the ups and downs of the business. Sean has upcoming book and podcast, both entitled "Let Me Save You 25 Years: Mistakes, Miracles, and Lessons from the Lovesac Story." Sean emphasizes the importance of being a direct-to-consumer brand and how Lovesac has found sustained success by focusing on customer acquisition costs and offering a high-quality product. He discusses the concept of direct-to-consumer and shares his thoughts on its significance. Sean believes that having a differentiated product that provides value to customers is crucial, rather than simply relying on an online sales strategy. The conversation also touches on the topic of innovation and how Lovesac has been able to push the boundaries of what a furniture company can offer. Sean discusses their Stealth Tech innovation, which incorporates surround sound into their couches, as well as their commitment to creating products that are built to last and designed to evolve. Sean acknowledges the challenges of operating in physical retail and highlights the importance of their showrooms in reducing customer acquisition costs and providing a hands-on experience for customers. He also mentions their partnerships with Best Buy and Costco to expand their reach. The discussion expands to the future of retail and e-commerce, with Sean mentioning the transformative role of AI but cautioning that it takes time for movements to fully evolve. He emphasizes the importance of being patient and keeping an eye on developments in the industry. The conversation concludes with Sean expressing his long-term commitment to Lovesac and his desire to build something meaningful rather than focusing solely on personal gain. Listeners are invited to check out Sean's podcast and website, as well as his upcoming book, which will be released in January. Overall, this episode provides insights into the journey and philosophy behind Lovesac's success and offers valuable perspectives on entrepreneurship, innovation, and the future of retail. Chapters 0:00:46 Introduction and Welcome to the Show 0:08:36 The Journey of Love Sack: From Highs to Lows 0:12:05 Love Sack's Traditional IPO and Company Performance 0:15:49 The Importance of Having a Differentiated Product 0:19:49 The Value and Overhype of Market Movements 0:23:18 Sactionals: Built to Last, Designed to Evolve 0:25:56 Driving a Movement for Sustainable Consumerism 0:31:36 Innovation and the Evolution of Lovesac's Product Line 0:37:07 The Strength of Lovesac's Physical Showrooms in the DTC Landscape 0:40:03 Testing and Learning: Mobile Concierge and Shop and Shop 0:41:52 AI's transformative role in the future of technology 0:50:08 Long-Term Vision vs Quick Profit Episode 313 of the Jason & Scot show was recorded on Thursday, November 9th, 2023. Transcript Jason: [0:23] Welcome to the Jason and Scot show. This episode is being recorded on Thursday, November 9th, 2023. I'm your host, Jason "RetailGeek" Goldberg, and as usual, I'm here with your co-host, Scot Wingo. Scot: [0:37] Hey, Jason, and welcome back. Jason and Scot show listeners. Jason, we're very fortunate to have a entrepreneur on the show. I'm the entrepreneur side of our partnership. So I always really enjoy these. Introduction and Welcome to the Show [0:49] We have on the show, Sean D. Nelson. He is the CEO and founder of Lovesack. And a little birdie told me that he recently started a podcast himself. He started Love Sack as a beanbag company in his basement when he was around 18. And now it's a public company and doing relatively large revenues over 600 kind of run rate. If I look at the last quarter, I took a little glance at that. Sean, welcome to the show. Shawn : [1:13] Thank you. Thanks for having me. Great to be with you. Jason: [1:16] We are thrilled to have you, Sean. Listeners always like to kind of get the background. I'm imagining you don't have a deep background before you started Love Sack because you started it so young. But can you, like where were you in life when that brought you to start build your own product? Shawn : [1:34] Yeah, strangely, 25 years in and still running the same company I founded as my side hustle in college, which is exactly what Love Sack was. So 95, all the way back then, I made a giant not bean bag because I thought it would be funny. I literally, 10 days out of high school, got off the couch at my parents' house, having this dumb idea, like, how about a beanbag, like, me to the TV, like, the whole floor, like, huge. Drove down to the fabric store, bought some fabric, brought it home, cut it out, and then began sewing it up, broke my mom's sewing machine, neighbor finished it, took three or four weeks to try and stuff it, originally with beads, but couldn't possibly find enough, so looked around the house, I just found out my parents' camping mattresses chopped up yellow foam, you know, like those yellow slabs of foam you take camping, on a paper cutter in the basement. And eventually, I mean, foam, packing peanuts, old blankets, had this thing stuffed and started using it out and about through university, taking it camping, back of the truck, driving movies. Ended up putting it away for a couple years. And by the way, everywhere I took it, everybody wants one. Like everyone's always like, Oh my gosh, what is that thing? Where'd you get it? I was like, I'll never make another one. It was such a pain in the butt and put it away for a couple of years to go be a missionary for my church. [2:58] And came back to finish up university in 1998. And that's when I founded the company. Cause people kept bugging me to make them one. And it became my side hustle in college. And we tried to sell these things eventually beyond our friends and family and beer fest, May fest, October fest, car shows, boat shows, 10 by 10 booths, how we got started. Tried to sell them to furniture stores and they laughed at us and told us it was a dumb idea. [3:34] Eventually, at a trade show got discovered by the limited to this is like, you would not today as justice like in the malls, like little girls pink and purple fuzzy stuff for their bedrooms and, and clothing. Anyway, they ordered 12,000 little love sacks, not knowing it was me and a buddy and like a woodchipper shredding foam in the back of this furniture place. And, and that forced us to source over in Asia, which is, you know, where I had served my mission. So I speak Mandarin Chinese. There's a whole story there I won't get into it it was just kind of one thing led to another led to another week we built a factory to support that 12,000 sack order we then went out to the furniture stores who again laughed at us didn't want our $500,000. [4:19] Beanbags having completed that order wanting to keep the factory going so we finally opened our own store in a mall that didn't even want us there but finally capitulated let us in because they We had a space to fill for the holiday season, in Salt Lake City, Utah, and it just exploded. We did a good job, carpet paint, neon sign, made it look like a proper mall chain store selling giant beanbags, and it just took off. Like, it worked. People came in, flopped down, music bumpin', big screen TV, playin' movies, had a great time. There was a couch in the corner to look pretty, be part of the decor. People kept asking about the couch, And that led us to eventually, many stores later, many states later, invent Saxionals, which is our modular sofa solution, which now drives almost 90% of our sales today. So we're more a couch company by far today than we are a beanbag company. And there was a whole, listen, I'm skipping over decades of time really, but there was a whole transition where we... We went through after we invented the sectionals and solved all these problems people have with couches not only can you ship it to your house via FedEx which was hyper relevant you know for. [5:32] E-commerce and digital marketing obviously but it's watchable and changeable, and movable and it can be with you the rest of your life that that led us to a whole design philosophy that now. [5:42] Drives are innovation we think is a really cool secret sauce called design for life but. 10, 20, 50, 100, 250 locations now. We came public in 2018 on about 100 million in sales. Right around the time there was just tons of fervor in this direct consumer movement. We had farted around, we'll call it as a furniture store, selling rugs and lamps and bowls and baskets and all the obvious things along the way. And it was really when we purged all that stuff around 2015, seeing the Caspers of the world emerge and Warby Parker's and even Tesla with their showrooms. Could we adopt a more e-commerce-led model with showrooms for people to kick the tires, so to speak? And that transition is really what unlocked the lovesack that you see today and where most of our growth has come since about 2015, 16, when we made that pivot, took the company public, wrapped around that direct consumer story. So we're not a digitally native brand originally, we were actually a retailer that pivoted and became digitally led. And now we don't even operate stores in the traditional sense. We don't, we don't stock things there. You know, you don't walk out of there with your product. They're all really online sales and those showrooms are extremely powerful mechanisms for helping people make up their mind around a five or 10, $15,000. [7:06] Purchase where they want to see the thing and sit on it and, and, and see if it's everything it's cracked, it's cracked up to be online. And so we, we, we believe that we really, uh, through that arc. And then by the way, since coming public, I don't know, six, seven X, the company this year, you know, we'll, we'll be on a run rate to the analysts were a public company. So the analysts show us around, you know, it's called 700 plus in revenue and profitable, very profitable and cash generative. So we think, you know, the direct consumer game, in a lot of respects, Love Sack is one of the unlikely winners of that entire movement. Because I think at that scale, there are very, very few, what I call successful direct to consumer brands. And so we're really proud of that. And it's been a long saga, and we continue to grow and change and adapt and evolve. Jason: [8:01] It's an amazing story. And we definitely want to unpack it. But I want to go all the way back to the beginning for one second. Did that neighbor who helped finish sewing the first prototype get any equity? Shawn : [8:13] No, it was my ex-girlfriend's, mom, so about the time she exited, you know. No, it was just a friendly favor, but the truth is a lot of people helped out along the way, and a lot of people had equity or have equity in Love Sack from along the way, but look, we've been through every high, every low. Somewhere in the middle there, I skipped over it just because of brevity. Not only did I win a million dollars on TV with Richard Branson, The Journey of Love Sack: From Highs to Lows [8:38] his reality TV show on Fox Network back in 2005, if you can believe that, the rebel billionaire. But I also guided the company through a complete chapter 11 reorganization back in 2006, spearheaded by Venture Capital, which was painful and ugly and embarrassing and humiliating. So we've been through every kind of thing over these better than two decades. Scot: [9:01] Yeah, my deep dive question is, when you rented or bought the wood chipper, did you tell them you'd be throwing foam in there, or did they think you were clearing up a tree? Shawn : [9:09] Oh, that's so the original story. Yeah, the original woodchipper actually, you know, if you've ever used one in your backyard or, you know, you shove sticks into these things, that's basically what the original shredder was. And it was in the back room of this furniture factory already. They had used it back in the seventies to shred foam, but it had an electric motor, right? Instead of like, okay. Scot: [9:30] So it's okay to be inside here. Shawn : [9:32] Well, yeah, but I had to rehab it because it hadn't been used in like a decade or two because shredded foam had fallen out of favor in furniture. And then later to do that bigger order, we couldn't afford like a proper German, shredder, so we ended up driving out to farm country to find more of those same kind of shredders and actually found a hay grinder called a hay buster can shred 2000 pounds at a whack. Scot: [9:57] And that's a lot of power. Shawn : [9:59] Yeah, it's powered by a tractor. So we, you know, agricultural loan for tractor and hay grinder. I mean, crazy, crazy story in the beginning. Scot: [10:07] Yeah, as a family, you gotta figure out how to get it done, right? Whatever it takes. Shawn : [10:12] Whatever it takes. Scot: [10:13] I didn't know the Richard Branson thing, so that was interesting. Did he like, was he an active investor, or that's like one of those things where his people kind of take over and you never hear from him again? Shawn : [10:22] No, I mean, it was a weird situation. He had a reality TV show, 2004-5, The Rebel Billionaire, you know, whatever, 16 contestants. It was like The Apprentice, but not for apprentices, for entrepreneurs. So my runner-up on the show was Sarah Blakely of Spanx, gives you an idea. Scot: [10:38] Oh, okay, cool, neat. Shawn : [10:39] Yeah, yeah, so we became great friends, she and I, Richard and I. I ended up also being named President of Virgin Worldwide for a minute as part of the prize, believe it or not. So, worked with Richard, worked with all of his CEOs. Totally weird outcome. And, you know, but huge, huge blessing and a huge piece of story. And he was involved in sort of our VC round that ensued on the tail of that. Scot: [11:06] Okay, and then I think I saw that you guys were on Shark Tank, right? You were like one of those that you know, kind of one of the big success stories. Was that the OG Shark Tank or? Shawn : [11:16] No, we weren't on Shark Tank. A lot of people thought that. There was a Love Sack copycat that's on Shark Tank. Okay, and so they got... Scot: [11:23] I was confused because like Google says you were and then I was like, but then I couldn't find the episode. Jason: [11:28] There's a whole TikTok channel dedicated to Love Sack and Shark Tank and it's super weird. Shawn : [11:36] That's super, yeah, people get confused. Scot: [11:42] Yeah, yeah, super weird. Yeah. And then when you did your IPO, was it a traditional IPO or did you guys get caught up in the SPAC craziness? Shawn : [11:51] No, we did a traditional IPO back in 2018 and you know, our stock has been really volatile for lots of different reasons that, you know, COVID was crazy, but the company performance has been really solid. So we're just trucking. Love Sack's Traditional IPO and Company Performance Scot: [12:06] He, I think, was at Graham that said in the short-term it's an emotional machine, in the long-term it weighs your financials. So you got to, it's very hard, you know, I took a company public, not to the level you have. And yeah, it is, I was like, I'm not going to look at the stock, it's not going to influence me. And then suddenly everyone's like, are we making the quarter? And it's like, okay. And then suddenly it's very hard to get out of that, that short-term mindset. So congrats to you for sticking to it for so long. Shawn : [12:29] Yeah, look, I'm actually a big advocate of it, having lived inside of it now for almost six years. Scot: [12:36] Yeah, the transparency is good, you know, and I like that part of it, I think that's good for, you know, to kind of have to put out everything that you're doing, you know, it's a, the ultimate, yeah, it's like, yeah, transparency tends to be a good thing. Shawn : [12:48] I think it's the right way for companies to be governed and ran. Anyway, we could get into that if you want. Scot: [12:56] Yeah, I like the, you know, and you talked about all the other, we call them digitally native vertical brands, like the Warby's and Bonobos and all that. And yeah, a lot of them have not made it past kind of like that hundred million dollar level. And you guys have obviously, you know, six, seven X that, which is awesome. And then, you know, the big knock on Casper for a long time was as we've actually had this guy, Dan on the show, people were able to pick apart the CAC LTV and they found the average selling price was like, Jason will know these numbers, but it was like 350 and their cost to acquire a customer was 400. And they were like, you know, that obviously wasn't sustainable. So it's pretty neat that you guys have figured that out. Shawn : [13:36] Yeah. I mean, that's at the root of why obviously we've had some sustained success. And I think it's also at the root of why there are almost no other direct consumer brands making any money. End of story, full stop. And it's pretty fascinating to watch the whole thing unfold, because it really has been a movement for almost a decade. Scot: [14:01] Yeah, and I don't want to dig into the information you don't divulge publicly, so this is not a trap or anything but is it because the selection or your products, you've kind of cracked the code on Kakao TV, like what do you, and I don't want to know any methods or anything. and what do you attribute it to? Shawn : [14:18] Look, I think, let's start at the root. I think that many companies, product companies, let's start there, overlook the fact that you need a really good product. I think they pick a category and they say, oh, it could be a direct consumer brand. And the truth is, what does that even mean? Do you mean, because here's the funny thing. When I hear analysts and industry people talk about direct consumer, it has become synonymous over the last decade as it's unfolded today with e-comm. Oh, you mean you're an e-comm company and in many cases you do half of your sales through wholesale. So what does it even mean? I mean, if you want to talk about a direct consumer brand, LoveSack may be the most direct. We don't have any wholesale. I'm talking zero, and we only sell through our own channels, whether it's our website or our showrooms. And we have these partnerships, for instance, where we operate our own showrooms inside of a Best Buy or a Costco. [15:26] But you know, so this whole phrase even, direct-to-consumer, I think is really kind of silly. You mean you're a company that sells stuff online and maybe in showrooms and maybe in wholesale? So you're a company that sells stuff. So let's start with stuff. And you have to make, I think, if you want to be successful in the world, it's not a new concept. You have to have... A great product or or you have to have some other really. Hiller efficiency The Importance of Having a Differentiated Product [15:52] and i think what most have discovered it was a list again over this long decade of direction sumer evolution is that without a really differentiated product. You're just another company with a clever name lots of funding and if you throw lots of money at anything it's gonna grow. But you need to be differentiated. So Love Sack, you know, start with the giant beanbags. They were unique, especially in their day. There's tons of copycats out there now. [16:24] Sactionals are extremely unique. The problem is they photograph just like any other sectional sofa. Like if you took an image of Sactionals and an image of one of, you know, out of any competitor that sells couches, ours looks a lot like theirs. But the difference, the differences are myriad in terms of their washability, changeability, quality, and modularity, and many of those aspects, especially on the modular side, are patented at LoveSac. And so once you dig into it, you find that that's the number one driving factor, is we have a product that's truly differentiated, truly gives more value to the customer, and therefore, we can extract more from the market. It's really that simple, right? And that's at the root of why our CLV to CAC ratio it was so high and sustainable and cash-generative and profitable. And then we could go down all kinds of other paths. We could talk about our website, execution and stuff like that. And all of it needs to be there. Look, running a business is multifaceted and difficult. But at the root of it is that. Jason: [17:27] For sure. One of the things I sort of admire about your company is the original premise was not to have a particular go-to-market strategy. It was to have this great product that people wanted to have in their lives, right? And it feels to me like that, the whole quote unquote D to C movement, like this notion that before you solve any other problem, you're just gonna put a flag in the ground, like this is how you're gonna go to market, that just, it just seems silly because that may not be how the customer wants to acquire your product. Shawn : [18:00] Yeah, I think you're right. And I think that, so I think that whole movement that we're a part of, so I don't mean to like bag on the movement. I'm just an observer as well. Like I've been living in it, right? And we put, and I'm being really transparent, we put on those clothes very intentionally. [18:16] Because people that planted those flags were getting funded. People that planted those flags were being understood at the time. And these movements come. Right now, I could hold up a flag that said AI on it and go out there and raise a bunch of money and do something. And in the end, 99 out of 100 of those, flags are going to fall by the wayside after having tons of money thrown at them and Probably 1% of them will go on to you know be the next Googlers or who knows what right? But these movements come and go and and and I'm and this is what I'm saying You gotta be careful. I'm not bagging on the movement because these movements are useful these movements drive economic activity these movements drive innovation But they're often way overhyped, not as, I think, not as, so, you know, I mean, we could get into AI, you guys are, I'm sure, tracking it just like I am. What does that even mean? Oh, you mean like software? You mean like software that, that does stuff in an automated fashion? Like is that, is that, is it really that new? But it doesn't matter. It's a story that's being heard. It's a story that's being understood and it's where the momentum is. And so if you're able to wield, take advantage of these movements in the marketplace to your end, that's what, and that's exactly what LoveSack did. We put on those clothes, we took a concept that had been around for a long time, our concept. [19:42] And look, in the end, the thinking and the development and even like, let's say the web services and all the things available to that movement that The Value and Overhype of Market Movements [19:49] were spun up because of that movement, we benefited from. The money raising pricing aside, momentum, going public, whatever, all these things aside. So that's why I'm saying I think that there is value in these movements, but fundamentally, you still need to have a great business, a great product, something that's truly differentiated, because anyone with some funding can go out, buy a logo, buy a name, and look like they know what they're doing. Jason: [20:20] And yeah, for sure. And to your point, there's a, there's a funny data by going around in, in our industry this week that like over a hundred million dollars or I'm sorry, Amazon's GMV is, I'm sorry, a hundred billion dollars of Amazon's GMV is from AI. And you hear that and you're like, oh my God, that's huge. And then you find out it's product recommendation tiles that they launched in 1997. Shawn : [20:45] Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Jason: [20:47] Which, yeah. Yeah, so I do just want to like kind of wrap up this section, but put it in context. When you open that first store in a mall, like the mall competition for furniture stores was like Expressions Furniture, right? Which no one on this call would even remember probably. And then like by the time you really, after your IPO and really caught fire, you were competing directly against all these D to C companies that were expanding in malls. You were probably competing for leases. Shawn : [21:18] Yeah. Jason: [21:19] It's quite the, quite the journey. Now, Scot mentioned at the beginning of the show that you had recently started a podcast and I'm two part question. How the heck did you have time to start a podcast and tell us what the premise behind the podcast is and what you're talking about? Shawn : [21:36] Sure. Yeah. Just to comment first on what you pointed out, there is this whole strip in the malls now out there right now. But by the way, in these shopping malls that I was told were dead, you know, I could read the headlines of shopping malls are dead back in 2001 when I was opening my first shopping mall and I was forwarded those kind of emails by friends and family who were concerned. And here we are in 2023 and while these things change, they take decades to change. Meanwhile, they've evolved and you have all of these direct consumer players now and it It just cycles through, you know? What the players inside of these shopping centers happen to rotate, and I've watched it all evolve, and by the way, they're rotating again, because a lot of those players are not viable. Some of the best ones, biggest ones, you know? Like, concepts like Peloton, who I think is amazing as a concept, you know? They have their struggles, and so we watch these things evolve. In terms of, the podcast is relevant to this. Let me explain why. We had the chicken, I'm going to go, given the nature of what your podcast is, I'll give you a much broader picture than just, hey, why am I recording a podcast on my own and writing a book? [22:55] It works like this. We had the chicken before the egg. Sactionals being the chicken, we discovered, as we observed and had success with it, we believe are so successful because they are are built to last a lifetime and designed to evolve. Like those two attributes in our product are quite unique. And those two attributes underpin what we call our designed for life philosophy. Sactionals: Built to Last, Designed to Evolve [23:21] I did not found Love Sack to make products that are super sustainable, sustain hyphenable. In other words, things that actually sustain. Who's talking about that? I was just trying to survive. I made a big beanbag, people liked it. Made a couch because people were asking about couches. who has solved all these problems, observed the success, and that success was rooted in the fact that things were built to last, designed to evolve. Now that's led us to this whole philosophy that will inform our innovation on every product going forward, and it's why I'm so confident that we can continue to succeed, is because of this design philosophy that I'm sharing with you openly. Because it's one thing to say it, it's another thing to execute to it. That's the hard part. It's the execution that's the hard part, you know? Now, that said... [24:08] I'm trying to drive a movement. I believe that there are many people that are sort of aware now that we have been conned into buying too much crap. New season, new collection, the merchandising hamster wheel, new iPhone, now it's got a titanium band. Really? Everyone knows. No, it's not even hidden. It's not even like a secret. it. This whole hamster wheel called planned obsolescence that was not an accident, it's absolutely an economic strategy to lift us out of the Great Depression and onward. And it has roots all the way back to Louis XIV. What's my point? The world has just, I guess, accidentally, not so accidentally, fallen into all kinds of rhythms that are unhealthy, unsustainable, and not good for anyone, not good for the environment, not good for people, you know, we're frenetically chasing out. Now my jeans are too tight, now they're too loose, now they're too long, now they're short, now I got, now they got to show my ankles, now they got to drape over my, like, this is not an accident. This is a self-propelling machine that we have created. What's my point? I believe we can drive a movement amongst people to reject that. And I believe factionals is one of the embodiments of that. Things built to last a lifetime are designed to evolve. So that movement is actually my long-term strategy. [25:33] In the near term, I need to... One of the ways that we will reach people besides buying advertising and using it to drive a strong CLV to CAC ratio is through... I don't know, even podcasts like this is through people finding our brand, finding out about me, finding out about the company through... Whether it be me, whether it be through the goodwill of our customers, sharing this or that, the other. And so I wrote a book called Let Me Save You 25 Years. It's our clever story Driving a Movement for Sustainable Consumerism [25:59] at Love Sack. It's really great. I think it launches in January. I spun up a podcast called Let Me Save You 25 Years where I share my own entrepreneurial mistakes, miracles, and lessons of the Love Sack story. That's the subtitle of the book. That's the spirit of the podcast. I talk to successful people, some of the world's most successful entrepreneurs and successful people about these concepts. And it's not an interview podcast. We go really deep into some of these concepts. So my long-term goal ultimately, is to write another book that can help drive this consumer movement that I'm describing because I think if we can get a little bit of luck and get people thinking about these things and then eventually seeking out. Products that can do this, and just a lifestyle that is supported in the way that I'm describing. Buy better to buy less. Buy better stuff so you can buy less stuff. Well, obviously, LoveSack will benefit from that as a company that makes better stuff. And so, look, it's a long, long, long, long way around, but you asked the question, and I'm totally serious about that. Scot: [26:58] Yeah. So I'm gonna guess you're not a fan of fast fashion. Shawn : [27:03] No, I mean, that's obviously gonna be I made the topic of the book, you know? Scot: [27:06] And I'm not. Jason's a huge Xi'an fan, so you just really hurt his feelings. No, I'm just kidding. Jason: [27:11] Hey, I wore a Patagonia, a used Patagonia jacket in honor of tonight's show. What are you talking about? Shawn : [27:18] You are speaking my language, man. And look, it's not even about being a tree hugger. I think that people have a brain. And people, I think, are waking up to the idea after the iPhone 15, that holy crap, Apple probably should have been forced to innovate a long, long time ago. Biggest company on planet Earth because they sell us the same thing every year or two. Had we not allowed them to do that, they would have had to use their enormous treasure and enormous skill base to innovate into other categories and and change the world. Instead, we've allowed them to sell us the same thing every year. Scot: [28:06] That's an interesting ethos. Having built a company, about how many people are in your company at this point? Shawn : [28:12] Total about 1,500. It's about 400 at the headquarters and another 1,000 out in the field-ish. Scot: [28:19] Yeah, you're at that phase where there's people at the company that you've never really met before. And it's awkward because they always expect you to know their name and they all know your name. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So when you get a company to that scale, how do you keep innovating? And, you know, one of the ones that I really love that you guys have done is the Stealth Tech. I think that's genius because I love AV and like having a really immersive experience. And I'll let you explain what it is, but, you know, my wife hates the big black speakers that I try to put all over the house. So I think it kind of solves like six problems in one. So A, maybe let listeners know a little bit more about what we're talking about. And then be I'd love to hear like how do you guys you know it's really hard to kind of you know ideas are easy and execution is hard on execution. It's really hard to like you know nail what you're doing and you have a lot going on and then like keep innovating. How do you how do you like get the org functional that way? Shawn : [29:16] Yeah. I mean, I think number one is you have to, you have to really want it, you know, not, not just like, Hey, I want to, I want to get, I want to get more business. I want to sell more stuff. Obviously there's that. But this ethos that I just kind of unpacked for you that, that we tripped stumbled into does the design for life ethos animates this organization. Like, it is a lot of, it is very motivating to think about, holy cow, now that we know our purpose, and it's been identified, right? Inspiring humankind to buy better so they can buy, you know, everyone's like, it was purpose, purpose, purpose, and hire some consultant, you know what I mean? But for real, if you have something that's truly unique, and it's meaningful, it's not just like words on the wall, it really is motivating, it's exciting. Scot: [30:11] And you bake baked in the products have to get better too, right? Like you, that's not well, so you have to support it. Shawn : [30:17] That's exactly right. Like, yeah, like we have to make stuff that's built to last a lifetime and design to evolve, which is really hard because if it was easy, everyone would do that. And here I am telling you openly about it. Like that's what we're going to do. And I'm not afraid to tell you because most companies won't do it because it's just freaking hard. Like it's a lot easier. Like why doesn't love sack? You know, you brought up stealth tech. So Stealth Tech is full Harman Kardon surround sound, no quality sound loss audio. Perfect audio emanating from your couch through the phone through the next layer of fabric and through the decorative layer of fabric that's washable, changeable, removable, tuned down to the color of that fabric so that the audio is perfect rear, front, center, subwoofer, invisible, beautiful, because you don't see it, it looks just like a couch, and it has all that packed in there, it's radically successful. It's been, it's now a huge piece of our business. And nobody saw that coming, because what would they expect a couch company to do next? A couch beanbag company. An end table, a coffee table, a rug, a lamp, you know, decorative accessories, get into the bedroom, who knows, right? Like the obvious stuff. Scot: [31:32] Meatballs. Shawn : [31:32] And what, yeah, right? Why did we do that? We anyway, we saw the opportunity and we also invented it. So one is, Innovation and the Evolution of LoveSack's Product Line [31:40] to answer your question, a lot of play. We are constantly at our innovation lab playing. So it's not just consumer-led insights, which is a big piece of what we do, but it's also a lot of inventions. You gotta have teams to invent. You gotta have engineers. You gotta have, so you gotta support that. So there's a cost structure there. And that's why LoveSack is quite profitable, but not as profitable as it could be in the future, because we are investing in innovation. And there's a lot of heads. there's a lot of engineers, there's a lot of designers doing things. Now they're not just all running around playing, they also have a very disciplined approach to executing on innovation, like launching Stealth Tech a couple years ago, and bringing that to market, which is a heavy lift because it's our invention, it's our patents, and it was not easy for this beanbag company to get into home electronics in a real way. [32:29] We've done, I think, more than 100 million in home electronic sales and making us a pretty, a pretty big player in that space, believe it or not. Already, and I don't think most people even, you know, would think that. But we're, you know, totally serious about it. So, innovation, wrapped around an inspiring path to innovation, I think is the key. Do you have an inspiring path, or are you just trying to make more stuff? Because if I wanted all those things I mentioned, like I'm over here in Asia right now, I'm in Hong Kong. And if I wanted a whole line of living room furniture with our logo on it to make myself feel good, I could have it in four weeks. The suppliers will do it for me. They've been doing it for 30 years over here for all the biggest brands you can think of, you know? And we could give them some designs and give them some ideas and let our, I mean, it's so easy to just source stuff. I'm talking about, you know, product land. Now we're talking fashion, talking furniture, talk any category you want, the same is true. But to truly invent stuff's a lot harder. And that's why I think we've had success, that's why I think we will continue to have success. Jason: [33:35] Yeah, you know, so I am interested, I mean, obviously the product has to be the lead in solving that real problem for a customer. But I do think another helpful aspect to your business is that in order for those products to be successful, like, they have to be demonstrated somehow. Like, per your point, the catalog for the StealthTech sectional looks just like the catalog for a generic sectional. And so I'm thinking you having your own showrooms was a big advantage for being able to tell the story. And ironically, I'm not sure you opened that first showroom because you recognize that problem. It sounds like you opened that first showroom because you had no other way to get distribution. Shawn : [34:21] Oh yeah, yeah. And that's why I'm not taking any claim as some kind of marketing genius. We just kind of tried to survive in the beginning. And opening a showroom was actually a reaction to being rejected by the big furniture guys, because they didn't, you know, want our product, they didn't believe in us, whatever. They couldn't see it. And so thankfully, it went that way. And by the way, they weren't showrooms, they were stores. We were a furniture store for a decade and a half. And we did all the furniture store things. And we sold merchandise, and you pulled your car around and we loaded you up, believe it or not, or we shipped to you. And it took us a long, long time to, after copycatting all those furniture stores and hiring merchandisers and window dressers and all those kinds of things from our competition to do that stuff in our stores. [35:14] To make that pivot to the direct consumer model that we operate on today that obviously looks very prescient in today's model. Now, the reason I think we've been so successful at it is because we had those 15, 20 years to get really good at operating now 250 locations across every state, almost in the United States of America, where people are fighting and bickering and hiring and firing and touching each other, whatever it takes. The point is operating physical showrooms is not something you get good at in a day or a week or a year just because that seems like the next thing to do. We have a website, now people need to see our stuff, to your point. And that's the approach I think a lot of the direct consumer brands have taken. And I don't think that they realize how hard it is to be profitable at retail and how many pitfalls there are. Where if I want to get a little better at digital marketing, which I think we're pretty good at now, but I can hire that. I can agency that, I can platform that. And so I think that the physical side of things is really underestimated. And so thankfully, our very long haphazard history has played out in our favor in that realm. And I think it's a huge strength of ours, because by the way, now that the economy's pulling back and this and that, we're 250 locations ahead of most that are just really coming around to the marriage of physical with digital and not realizing that, You know, it's not something you can just turn on and be good at. Jason: [36:44] Yeah. And I think it's you, you rightly pointed out that like the whole landscape of DTC hasn't been particularly successful. There's not a lot of wins, but the, the people that are outperforming the average, even one thing they all have in common is they all have some kind of physical footprint to, to reduce CAC, right? So they're either have their own stores or they, they are white selling through wholesale, or they're, they're in front of customers in some way, The Strength of LoveSack's Physical Showrooms in the DTC Landscape [37:09] other than, than Facebook ads. Yeah, I, I did. I think there's a super interesting new evolution. I thought I read about though. So like Amen stores and showrooms are super complicated. People wildly underestimate how many mistakes you can, you can make owning and operating a retail store. And now, now that you seem to have that clicking, you guys are bringing the retail store to the customer's driveways. Is that true? Like talk to us about the mobile concierge. Shawn : [37:37] Yeah, so just like we're innovating in product, we're also always innovating go to market. So whether it's mobile concierge, which is a lovesack trucks, where you can, you know, from the comfort of your home, have us pull up in the driveway and show you our products, which we've which we've dabbled in, and have tested into. And we'll see, you know, where that goes. I think that that has its own just like retail has its own complications, but also more, I think, more. I guess scalable already is Shop and Shop. So our showrooms right now in shopping malls, they're only like 800 square feet. So obviously the metrics are great, right? We're selling very big ticket items out of very tiny footprints with a small staff. There's just good metrics. And I don't hide from that. That's been a big part of our success, right? So we chose a good category in that way. We chose a terrible category in the sense is that the home category has all kinds of other issues. Jason: [38:38] Not the easiest category to deliver the product. Shawn : [38:41] Yeah, I mean, there's delivery, but there's also just the cyclical nature. You couple that with the idea that, look, we are selling you something that we are intending you to have for decades. My sectionals in my home are 16 years old, some of them, made with brand new pieces, made with Stealth Tech. That's pretty cool. On the other hand, unless we give you Stealth Tech and other reasons to come back, like, you know, you've got your satchels and you've made your investment. And so look, we deal with cover. So we're innovating on product, we're innovating on go to market, shop and shop. So these thousand square foot showrooms have been very useful for us. We have 200 square foot showrooms inside of Best Buy's or Costco's, where our people are basically checking you out and allowing you to kick the tires on the product. And then look, whether you buy there or whether you go back and buy online, we don't care. We built an agnostic platform where we just want you to be in the family. So I think these are things that have evolved over time and you've got to test and learn, whether it's mobile concierge, as you described, whether it's shop and shops. And these tests and learn activities can take years to play out and really take to scale and stuff like that. And so I think in this day and age of, hey, I'm gonna go raise a ton of money and build my company to X revenue and exit for X multiple, which is I think Testing and Learning: Mobile Concierge and Shop and Shop [40:05] what drives a lot of entrepreneurial activity. [40:09] That kind of mentality just doesn't have the staying power necessary. And that's why you see so many of these brands reach a point where they have to be retooled, like some of them are going through now. And look, they've made someone rich. Sometimes these founders find ways to squeeze a bunch of money out of it, or private equity tosses the hot potato to the next guy and they make a ton of money out of it. But in the end, what's left? a brand that is at scale, doesn't make money, and can't go anywhere. So my point is you gotta have the stomach to grind it out, to spend the time, to really slow cook some of these things, and to be flexible when they don't work, and shut them down and move on to the next. And so constantly innovating on go-to-market, constantly innovating on product, and really putting in the time and energy it takes to refine concepts, you know. Scot: [41:03] I know we're running up against time, and you've obviously spent a lot of time thinking about this. I know your goal is to bring this ethos out, but if you think about retail and e-commerce, what do you think the next five years hold? You talked about AI. There's a lot of this stuff that's temporal, but anything you think that you believe is going to change the way we shop and buy, either in-store or online? Shawn : [41:29] Yeah, look, I think that it will just continue to evolve, and so I think AI is real. I think it will play a transformative role, and I think everyone's trying to figure out exactly what that is, and nobody really knows yet. I wish I could just give you a clever answer, but I think I've witnessed, AI's transformative role in the future of technology [41:53] you know, that's What's the benefit of having a 25-year perspective is it's like I was saying about shopping malls. The mall is dead, headline from 2001. TV is dead, headline from 2008. Here we are with both of them still intact. By the way, TV advertising is still a big piece of our marketing spend. I know that's kind of mind-blowing because it seems like everybody's cut the cord or gone to this extreme. And I'm just telling you, these movements take decades. And so while it's great to be ahead of a movement, you don't, unless you are trying to drive that movement, like unless you are trying to take advantage of that AI, boom, to go raise money and wave that flag or whatever. [42:40] I've found it's okay to be a laggard. It's not always beneficial to, unless you're trying to build your concept around that and take advantage of that movement itself, let the movements evolve. So I can't give you a great prediction of exactly what's going to happen. AI is important. But how, where the winners will actually be and what the effects will actually be, I think it's way too early to tell. But I do think it's important to keep your finger and keep watching and eventually, you know, to find the connection and lean into that to affect your business. You have to be a little bit patient, I think. Jason: [43:27] Yeah, well, certainly 25 years in, I think you've earned your patience creds, by the way. Shawn : [43:35] Maybe too much. Jason: [43:37] Yeah, I mean, there's pros and cons to both. Urgency can be useful in certain circumstances, but short time horizons come with a lot of problems, as you have rightly pointed out. That did lead me to one sort of thought question. And you, you referenced some of your, your CAC economics and side note, we've, we've one of the, our favorite guests on the show is this professor Dan McCarthy. Who's, who's a huge advocate for cohort analysis and customer lifetime value based businesses. And so he would be thrilled that you're on, because I know you guys disclose some of your cohort metrics in, in your financial statements, which he loves. And to me, you're in a really interesting category to do that because although your product has invented a reason for customers to come back and you've sort of turned a product into a system, it's not like a fast cycle, right? Like, and so like when you're thinking about like a time horizon for LTV, and you guys have a very good return on your CAC, but compared to most companies, your CAC still is really high, right? Like, you sell a lot of product to compensate for that. Shawn : [44:57] Yeah. Jason: [44:58] So how, like, you know, you're spending five or six hundred bucks to acquire a customer and then you're earning thousands of dollars on each of those customers. Like, was it difficult to sort of have the financial discipline to have a long enough time horizon to see those sorts of high CLVs come back for that initial customer acquisition? Shawn : [45:23] Yeah, I mean, you could call it discipline. In our case, again, it was just survival, being really transparent. You know, we were just trying to find a way to make this business work, and we weren't profitable right out of the gate. It took us many years to get better at retail, to get better at e-commerce, to have a shopping cart experience that was commensurate to the product, because that's really hard with our product. Our product is really weird and complicated. And so that's something that's overlooked with Lovesack. And I think a lot of our copycats and competitors are realizing that. You can't just use a Shopify checkout if you're going to sell something as dynamic as, let's say, factionals where, you know, you can buy a bunch of these and a bunch of those and combine them in a million different ways. How do you, how do you shopping cart that? How do you Amazon that, you know? And so, and so these are superpowers that we've developed over a long time and thankfully given it enough time to become profitable. So to answer your question about, you know, patience, I think part of it is just been our lot in life to, to be, to have patience forced on us. But secondly, real discipline around. [46:32] Our CLV and CAC metrics. So we are, we are, and have been for a long time, carefully monitoring them, tracking them, constantly innovating and refining on the marketing side, these things that I mentioned, whether TV, you know, over the top, linear, nonlinear, digital marketing with its 500 heads, you know, like I'm talking about species of digital marketing, it's such a big word, right? I have to be constantly and tirelessly refined and risk taken and stuff tried and stuff failed and all rolled it and it all rolls up into that CLV to CAC ratio that you can hope you can keep moving and then couple that with innovation so that people can come back and buy more. And so thankfully, look, we chose a category with a high ticket and that drives the lion's share. That first purchase drives the lion's share of that CLV to CAC relationship. But our long-term point of view now is not only to find other ways that we can do more of that, maybe even in other categories and adjacencies. [47:32] But also give like StealthTack, give people a reason to come back and add on. And then by the way, when they do come back, then they face the consequence of, well, what do I do with some of these things that I need to, let's say, I get StealthTack and I got to swap out two of my sides. Well, okay, the obvious answer is I don't want to throw those in the trash. We don't want them throwing them in the trash and they may not need another couch in another room. So it's leading us to services, trade in, trade up, recycle, you know, all kinds of things that will again, give us more reasons to reach out and touch that customer. And so I think that if you relentlessly pursue. [48:13] A good concept with good intentions being driven by good philosophy and purpose like I've described, it's been my experience that the universe kind of unfolds for you, but it doesn't do it overnight. And you can't just have a, at least in my experience, you can't just have a master plan and be like, we're gonna do this and then that and that. You have to iterate to it. You have to observe, you have to live some, like when we launched Stealth Tech, we just, you know, it's easy now to look back in hindsight and be like, well, of course people are gonna want to or trade in their sides or do whatever. But some of those things aren't always so apparent. And you need to plunge yourself into the pool, see what comes of it, and then react to that. And some of those reactions can take years to unfold. Like some of these services that I just described and whatnot, they'll take us years to manifest. [48:59] But the nice thing is, the core business can generate profits that will carry us to that and we'll invest some of those profits in that innovation that I'm describing. But it's like, it's just relentless, man. It's tiring. It's like you have to have the stomach to go the distance. And that's where the time horizon, look, I'm a big advocate of it. Culturally, you know, like when my whole organization knows, like the theme of our manager fest a month ago, this is where we all get together once a year, was 25 and 25 more. And I'm not kidding. Like my personal point of view, if I'm allowed to be here as a public company CEO, if I do good enough to stay in the seat, which is inherent, and that's why I love the structure. It forces you to be awesome, you know? [49:45] If I can do that, but the fact that my organization knows that I'm in for another 25, you know how grounding that is and stabilizing that is, as opposed to, man, when's Sean's gonna sell his stock and bail and go start his next company? That's what I'm supposed to do, isn't it? That's how I become a bazillionaire, isn't it? I'm not interested in that. I'm interested in building something. And I think that that, I don't know, desire is actually kind of rare these days. Long-Term Vision vs Quick Profit [50:14] I think everyone just wants to be a bazillionaire as fast as they can. Jason: [50:17] Oh, for sure. Yeah. Everybody's assuming you're going to cash out and invest in your first rocket. Shawn : [50:24] Yeah, whatever. And I think it's sad. Look, I'd love to make a ton of money, whatever. That's all great. But whatever happened to the ambition of let's build something awesome, no matter how long it takes. And that's where I'm at. Jason: [50:41] Yeah. Well, Sean, it's been an amazing run so far. This is going to be a great spot to leave it because we have used up our allotted time, but I know listeners are going to appreciate you saving them the first 25 years, and we're going to be super excited to watch what happens in the next 25. Shawn : [50:57] Thank you. Thank you. Scot: [50:59] We really appreciate it, Sean. I know you're in Hong Kong, you're in the middle of your day there, and we appreciate you coming on the show. If folks want to check out your podcast, where would you point them to? Shawn : [51:09] Yeah, wherever you love listening to podcasts, Let Me Save You 25 Years is the name. LetMeSaveYou25Years.com. You can find me on social media, Sean of Lovesack. I'm all over that and love to be connected, slide into my DMs. I mean, I love talking to customers, friends, peers, being very accessible and looking forward to building the movement. Of course, Lovesack.com. We're easy to find. Scot: [51:33] Trey Lockerbie 41 Yep. And the book's coming out in January and I assume it's going to be in all the usual places. Shawn : [51:37] Sean O'Toole 41 All the usual places. Yeah. Let Awesome. Jason: [51:45] Thanks again and until next time, happy commercing!  

Dan McCarthy, vice president for the Collegiate Network at the Intercollegiate Studies Institute and editor of Modern Age, joins us to discuss a wide array of issues: how the Middle East affects the dynamics within the Democratic and Republican parties, the likely outcome of the DeSantis/Newsom debate, the issues that are hurting Joe Biden the most, and plenty more.

Dan McCarthy joins us to discuss Trump's legal troubles, the state of the two major parties, the right and wrong way to look at the war in Ukraine, and more. Sponsor: If you're a listener of the Tom Woods Show, chances are you have some gold. But if you're just sitting on it, you're leaving money on the table. At Monetary Metals your gold earns interest that compounds over time. I've been using it for a while now, and the great Jeff Deist, formerly of the Mises Institute, just joined their team. Start your account at:

Syndicated columnist Dan McCarthy thinks so. We also discuss Ron DeSantis and what course of action makes the most sense for him.