Few eComm and wholesale businesses reach the heights that VHC Brands has reached under the leadership of Ken Kline. You’ve maybe seen their home decor products in big retailers like Home Depot, Bed Bath and Beyond or online at Wayfair, Amazon and many more.
Also, few eComm businesses have faced the setbacks that Ken and team have faced. From a fire that completely destroyed their inventory in the mid 2000s to COVID wrecking their in-store retail plans in 2020 - they’ve faced some crazy times and come out stronger.
Here’s a look at what we cover.
Jared Mitchell has a unique perspective on the eCommerce industry. He and his wife, Alana, run two eCommerce sites - skincarebyalana.com and alanamitchell.com. He’s also the lead eCommerce consultant for Neil Patel and he runs an eCommerce training group at beefysites.com. This guy has forgotten more good eCommerce ideas than most will ever learn.
Jared is also a close friend and he’s my surfing mentor. We do take a very brief detour to talk surfing on this episode, but mostly we talk about overlooked growth ideas!
Here’s a look at what we explore on the podcast:
Cyber 5 Recap
While holiday shopping is still in full swing at the time of this writing, we do have some preliminary numbers for the Cyber 5 2020 (Thanksgiving Thursday–Cyber Monday) and an early look at how Holiday 2020 as a whole is shaping up. Here are five key observations, so far, for Holiday 2020.
Day | Total Sales | YoY Growth |
Thanksgiving (11/26/20) | $5.1B | 21.5% |
Black Friday (11/27/20) | $9.03B | 21.6% |
Small Business Saturday (11/28/20) | $4.68B | 30.19% |
Cyber Monday (11/30/20) | $10.84B | 15.1% |
Predictions for the remainder of the holiday shopping season. With more cities across the US seeing surges in new cases of COVID-19, it’s unlikely to see a material shift from online shopping back to in-store shopping. We should see this record breaking pace continue for the rest of the holiday season. The wildcard is shipaggedon. My prediction is that we’ll see a fair number of digital gift cards purchased and printed off, as well as pictures of gifts that are in transit, but won’t be under the Christmas tree. Online shopping likely won’t slow down too much. Fingers crossed that shipaggedon won’t be as bad as we’re expecting.
Colby Bauer has personality. He’s a half-pipe skating, snowboarding, former collegiate athlete who turned a simple idea into a thriving eComm business. He and his wife McKenzie started Thread Wallets with just a single product idea. Simple, functional, minimalist wallets with personality. That initial product took off and Thread quickly grew into a team of 22 that now boasts an expanding product line including lanyards, phone cases, and more.
While there’s a lot to be impressed about with Colby and McKenzie, and their team I really wanted to key in on Thread’s culture and the unique steps they took to grow. I think you’ll find a ton of good lessons here: