DTC Podcast

By

Weekly discussions between disruptive direct to consumer ecommerce brands and our amazing team about marketing, funnels, and everything scaling related. Subscribe to our newsletter for highlights and ... more

Download on the App Store

Download on the App Store

Get it on Google Play

FAQs about DTC Podcast:

How many episodes does DTC Podcast have?

The podcast currently has 137 episodes available.

DTC Podcast episodes:

June 17, 2026DTC Podcast | Bonus: Top of Funnel Collapse: How AI & AEO Are Changing Consumer Behavior & How Marketers Can Adapt
Subscribe to DTC Newsletter – https://dtcnews.link/signup
This episode, Kemberly Gong, VP of Marketing at Contentful, joins Eric to walk through what some marketing leaders are calling “The Great Content Collapse”, and what marketers can actually do about it.
The setup: 60% of Google searches now result in zero click-through, and replaced by GenAI models like AI overviews. LLMs already account for 5% of traffic and climbing. Marketing budgets are flat or shrinking. Companies are flooding consumers with AI slop to hit KPIs. And consumers can smell it. 50% lose trust in a brand when they think the content was written by AI.
Explore Contentful: https://www.contentful.com/?utm_source=dtc&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=fy27-q2-global-tl_awareness&utm_content=gcc
What you’ll learn:
What is the “great content collapse” and why traditional content strategy is breaking
AEO vs SEO: where they overlap and where they diverge
Why agentic agents prefer structured, query-aligned content with third-party validation
How buyer behavior is changing and what marketing teams can do to stay ahead
Where brands over-rely on AI and how to keep the human voice
The 30-day content audit for the agentic web
The Pets Deli case: 50% conversion lift from one personalization change
The Ruggable BFCM case: 7x CTR and 25% conversion lift from personalized hero banners + homepages
How Bossard scaled its content across 18 languages and 38 countries with AI workflows using personalization software
What On Running does to drive 40% of sales online
Plus: Kemberly Gong’s 30-day content audit checklist for the agentic web.
Timestamps:
00:00 The Great Content Collapse
05:38 AEO vs SEO Explained
10:08 Why Personalization Wins in 2026
13:27 Where AI Actually Helps Marketing Teams
22:23 Building Brand Trust Across Channels
Subscribe to DTC Newsletter – https://dtcnews.link/signup
Advertise on DTC – https://dtcnews.link/advertise
Work with Pilothouse – https://dtcnews.link/pilothouse
Follow us on Instagram & Twitter – @dtcnewsletter
Watch this interview on YouTube – https://dtcnews.link/video
...more
32min
June 15, 2026DTC Podcast | Ep 620: How Origin Runs E-Commerce With AI Agents, From Media Buying to Diagnosing Defects
Subscribe to DTC Newsletter – https://dtcnews.link/signup
Origin owns its entire supply chain. The thread, the brass, the leather, the denim, all of it made or sourced in America, in their own factories. That sounds like a constraint. Justin Parker explains why it is actually the brand’s biggest growth lever.
Justin runs e-commerce at Origin, the American-made apparel brand born in jiu-jitsu gear and now backed in part by Jocko Willink. He sits at the intersection of marketing, ops, and manufacturing, and that vantage point is exactly what makes the AI stack so powerful for him.
What you will learn:
How owning manufacturing let Origin pull a planned-for-June product into the line overnight when a hoodie went viral in January
Why Origin uploaded its 20-page production tech packs into Moby, and how that turned a marketing tool into something that diagnoses manufacturing defects
How they run 100% internal media buying through an agentic media buyer, and the one question Justin asks it: “what in your context made you decide to pause this ad?”
Why branded search spend got flagged as non-incremental, and how goal-setting changes what the AI does
How the e-commerce team stopped hiring internally while the rest of the business keeps net hiring
Where Justin thinks the role is going next: agent orchestration and one centralized goal pushed down to every business unit
Who this is for: DTC founders and operators, e-commerce and growth leads, anyone figuring out how to actually deploy AI agents inside a real business.
What to steal: Justin’s approach to context loading. The output you get from any AI tool is capped by the context you feed it. He spent an afternoon uploading product blueprints one PDF at a time, and it changed what the tool could do.
Timestamps:
0:00 Origin’s Unexpected Maduro Viral Moment
2:01 Building an American-Made Supply Chain
7:00 Pricing Premium Products in a Competitive Market
15:02 How Vertical Integration Creates a Growth Advantage
22:18 Inside Moby AI and Agentic Media Buying
Subscribe to DTC Newsletter – https://dtcnews.link/signup
Advertise on DTC – https://dtcnews.link/advertise
Work with Pilothouse – https://dtcnews.link/pilothouse
Follow us on Instagram & Twitter – @dtcnewsletter
Watch this interview on YouTube – https://dtcnews.link/video
...more
44min
June 12, 2026DTC Podcast | Ep 619: Stop Growth Hacking Your Brand to Death with Duncan From Pilothouse | AKNF
Subscribe to DTC Newsletter – https://dtcnews.link/signup
Most brands are quietly killing themselves with growth hacks. Swapping button colors, chasing this week’s ROI, discounting to hit the number.
Duncan, Strategy Lead at Pilothouse, makes the case that this is the worst creative strategy there is, and walks through what actually builds a brand that lasts.
Duncan runs strategy at Pilothouse, where brand and performance are treated as one system instead of warring departments. He explains why Meta’s Andromeda shift is quietly ending the era of high-volume AI slop creative, and what replaces it.
What you will learn:
Why the growth-hack mentality leads to a discount death spiral and erodes brand value
What Meta’s Andromeda infrastructure changed, and why it forces advertisers toward thoughtful creative over high-frequency iteration
How to integrate brand and performance instead of picking one
Why siloed agencies fight over attribution while the customer journey falls through the cracks
The one question to ask any agency before you hire them: “Where will growth come from this year?”
Who this is for: DTC founders, brand and growth leads, and anyone choosing between agencies or trying to make brand and performance work together.
What to steal: the agency-selection test. If a partner can only answer with optimizations, they are a vendor. If they can tell you where growth comes from this year, they are a strategist.
Timestamps:
00:00 Why Growth Hacking Is Breaking Brands
03:00 Meta Andromeda Changed Creative Strategy
06:00 The Problem With Optimizing Only for ROAS
12:00 Building Customer Journeys Beyond Attribution
20:00 Measuring Channels by Their Actual Job
Subscribe to DTC Newsletter – https://dtcnews.link/signup
Advertise on DTC – https://dtcnews.link/advertise
Work with Pilothouse – https://www.pilothouse.co/?utm_source=AKNF619
Follow us on Instagram & Twitter – @dtcnewsletter
Watch this interview on YouTube – https://dtcnews.link/video
...more
35min
June 10, 2026DTC Podcast | Bonus: How DÔEN, Origin & Universal Ads Actually Implement AI w/o Losing Their Brand | Whalies Panel
Subscribe to DTC Newsletter – https://dtcnews.link/signup
Recorded live at The Whalies.
Enterprise brands are past the prompt-and-generate phase of AI. The conversation has moved to connected data, agentic media buying, personalization, attribution, and the quiet operational wins that actually move the P&L.
Eric Dyck sits down with Justin Parker (Origin), Ashley Kick (DÔEN), and Martha Ann Pavoni (Universal Ads) to unpack how leading ecommerce brands are embedding AI across the commerce stack — without losing trust, measurement, or human judgment.
This episode is brought to you by Triple Whale. Much of the panel centers on Moby 2, Triple Whale’s agentic operator for insights and media buying — Justin Parker runs all but three of his Meta campaigns through it and has been in the beta since the start.
Learn more: Triple Whale
In this episode:
Why business context — not the model — is the missing ingredient in most AI implementations
How DÔEN rolls out AI one workflow at a time to measure real incremental lift
What happens when AI runs all but three of your Meta campaigns
Why connected TV and incrementality are eclipsing the click
The retargeting decision where AI flatly contradicted itself a week later
Where human oversight still matters most — and how to size it to risk
What to steal:
Build a trusted source of truth before you layer AI on top
Test AI one workflow at a time so you can actually attribute the lift
Point AI at analysis and reporting first; hand it bigger decisions later
Scale human-in-the-loop in proportion to dollars and customer exposure
For DTC operators managing multi-channel growth who need more output without adding headcount.
Timestamps:
0:00 AI Is Only As Good As The Data Behind It
2:03 How Enterprise Brands Roll Out AI Without Breaking Things
8:16 Why Some Brands Refuse To Use AI Creative
18:28 Inside Agentic Media Buying And AI-Powered Marketing Teams
30:03 The Biggest AI Opportunity Most Brands Are Missing
Subscribe to DTC Newsletter – https://dtcnews.link/signup
Advertise on DTC – https://dtcnews.link/advertise
Work with Pilothouse – https://dtcnews.link/pilothouse
Follow us on Instagram & Twitter – @dtcnewsletter
Watch this interview on YouTube – https://dtcnews.link/video
...more
33min
June 08, 2026DTC Podcast | Ep 618: Inside Tumble – Scaling a Nine-Figure Rug Brand
Subscribe to DTC Newsletter – https://dtcnews.link/signup
Most founders want to be first in a category. Justin Soleimani and Zach Dannett did the opposite, and built Tumble into one of the standout washable rug brands without raising a dollar.
In this episode, the Tumble co-founders and Co-CEOs break down how they entered a category Ruggable created, fixed the product complaints they found buried in thousands of reviews, and validated the whole thing on Indiegogo before opening a Shopify store. Then they get into the part most founders never have to survive: moving their entire supply chain out of China in 30 days when tariffs went from 25% to 175%.
What’s covered:
Why they launched with 120 SKUs and used crowdfunding as a demand-forecasting tool, not just a fundraiser
The lot-number QC system that let them kill 90%+ of product defects within two years
How pre-orders and Shopify payouts gave them a negative cash conversion cycle while bootstrapping
Why they didn’t hire a single full-time employee until they were well past $20M in revenue
The China-to-Thailand pivot and accidental Canada launch during the tariff crisis
Their YouTube incrementality test that ran head-to-head against Meta, and tied
Justin’s contrarian take on vibe coding: automate manual tasks, don’t rip out your tech stack
Who this is for: Bootstrapped DTC founders, operators obsessed with margin and cash flow, and anyone building a physical-product brand in a competitive category.
What to steal: The crowdfunding-as-validation playbook, the lot-tracking QC system, and the asset-light structure that let them move a supply chain overnight.
Timestamps:
00:00 Why Great Competitors Make You Better
03:00 Launching 120 SKUs Through Crowdfunding
10:00 Product Feedback at Scale
18:00 Growing Past $20M With No Employees
23:00 Surviving Tariffs and Moving Manufacturing
Subscribe to DTC Newsletter – https://dtcnews.link/signup
Advertise on DTC – https://dtcnews.link/advertise
Work with Pilothouse – https://dtcnews.link/pilothouse
Follow us on Instagram & Twitter – @dtcnewsletter
Watch this interview on YouTube – https://dtcnews.link/video
...more
48min
June 05, 2026DTC Podcast | Ep 617: How to Fix a Pooched Email Account: 10 Steps to Recover DTC Deliverability [TWBERP Preview]
Subscribe to DTC Newsletter – https://dtcnews.link/signup
This Friday on AKNF we’re handing over the feed for a special preview of The World’s Best Email and Retention Podcast.
Your email account doesn’t break all at once. It rots. Open rates slide, a quarter of your sends quietly route to spam, your list keeps growing while the people who actually click disappear. Jordan Gordon calls that a pooched account, and in this episode he lays out the full ten-step recovery his team runs when a brand hands them one.
If you own a DTC brand or run its email and retention, this is the playbook for the moment results go sluggish and your first instinct is to send more, the exact move that dug the hole.
What’s inside:
How to tell whether you’re in spam or your audience has simply checked out
Why opens are the weakest predictor of a future visit, and what to segment on instead
The rewarm vs. soft rewarm decision, and how 5,000 addresses beat 150,000
Why two campaigns a week plus real flows beats 22 sends a month
The email-only promotion that rebuilds engagement and deliverability at once
Treating SMS like a paid channel with a real cost per click
The stale-repeat-buyer metric that tells you recovery is working
Who this is for: DTC founders, operators, and email marketers inheriting or rescuing an underperforming Klaviyo account.
What to steal: the open-rate floor, the two-campaigns-a-week cadence, and the stale-repeat-buyer segment you can build in Klaviyo this afternoon.
Liked the preview? Subscribe to The World’s Best Email and Retention Podcast.
Timestamps:
00:00 Fixing a Pooched Email Account
03:02 Set Realistic Expectations for Recovery
07:43 When to Rewarm Your Email List
11:47 Why Opens Are a Bad Metric
18:36 Email-Only Promotions to Boost Engagement
24:25 The Stale Repeat Buyer Metric
Subscribe to DTC Newsletter – https://dtcnews.link/signup
Advertise on DTC – https://dtcnews.link/advertise
Work with Pilothouse – https://www.pilothouse.co/?utm_source=AKNF617
Follow us on Instagram & Twitter – @dtcnewsletter
Watch this interview on YouTube – https://dtcnews.link/video
...more
28min
June 03, 2026 DTC Podcast | Bonus: 100% Agentic on Meta at a $1B Brand | True Classic’s Ben Diamond & Triple Whale’s Maxx Blank
Subscribe to DTC Newsletter – https://dtcnews.link/signup
Recorded live at True Classic HQ in Calabasas the day before the Whalies, this episode brings together two of the leaders most aggressively reshaping how ecommerce gets built.
Ben Diamond is the CEO and co-founder of True Classic, the apparel brand that went from zero to over a billion in revenue in seven years and now ships to 190 countries. Maxx Blank is the co-founder and COO of Triple Whale, the AI operating system for ecommerce that he started with co-founder AJ Orbach, now running parts of media buying, creative, and conversion testing for over 60,000 brands.
The conversation gets into the move that’s reshaping the category: True Classic now runs 100 percent of its Meta spend through an autonomous media buyer, Moby 2, with AI agents acting as a CMO and creative strategist, reallocating budget daily based on whether the brand needs profit, inventory clearance, or launch defense.
Maxx walks through what changed between Moby 1 and Moby 2, why the SaaS apocalypse doesn’t touch infrastructure businesses, and the bigger industry shift from Software as a Service to Results as a Service. Ben talks about cutting millions in production costs by replacing in-office product photography with AI, the cultural mandate at True Classic to embrace AI, and where human judgment still belongs.
If you’re an operator wondering how far to push agentic into your business, or a founder wondering what the next decade of ecommerce actually looks like, this is the conversation for you.
Find more about Triple Whale: https://www.triplewhale.com/?utm_source=dtc-newsletter&utm_medium=inf&utm_campaign=mkt-whaliesdtc-affiliate-426&utm_content=dtc
Timestamps:
00:00 AI Is Transforming Ecommerce Faster Than Ever
02:14 What Moby 2 Actually Does for Brands
11:20 Why True Classic Went All-In on AI
16:10 Cutting Millions in Creative Production Costs
24:38 The Future of One-to-One Marketing at Scale
43:20 Predictions for the Future of Ecommerce and AI
Subscribe to DTC Newsletter – https://dtcnews.link/signup
Advertise on DTC – https://dtcnews.link/advertise
Work with Pilothouse – https://dtcnews.link/pilothouse
Follow us on Instagram & Twitter – @dtcnewsletter
Watch this interview on YouTube – https://dtcnews.link/video
...more
49min
June 01, 2026DTC Podcast | Ep 616: How Neuro Built a Nine-Figure Smart Gum Brand Before Expanding to Retail.
Subscribe to DTC Newsletter – https://dtcnews.link/signup
Neuro didn’t fight for checkout shelf space first. They built a nine-figure online business through TikTok Shop, creator marketing, Amazon, and DTC, then used that momentum to walk into Walmart, Costco, CVS, and 7-Eleven with demand already proven.
In this episode of the DTC Podcast, Eric talks with Brian Evangelista, Chief Commercial Officer at Neuro, about creating a category that didn’t exist, running an affiliate program with tens of thousands of creators, and what actually changes when a digitally native brand wakes up as a real retail business.
Built for DTC founders scaling from $5M–$100M who are trying to turn ecom momentum into retail distribution.
We also get into:
Why TikTok Shop worked so well early on, and what changed when it got pay-to-play
How creator incentives shifted once GMV Max rolled out
The retail launch strategy behind Walmart, Costco, CVS, and 7-Eleven
Why retail completely reshapes your P&L, ops, and marketing stack
The hidden operational tax of moving from DTC into omnichannel
How Neuro frames category creation vs stealing share
The strategy behind the “Your Gum Is Dumb” sloth campaign
Why brand marketing started making sense only after retail expansion
Who this episode is for: DTC founders, retail operators, consumer brand marketers, TikTok Shop teams, and brands considering omnichannel expansion.
What to steal:
Build demand digitally before asking retail to believe in your category
Use creator momentum as proof for retail buyers
Treat retail launches like media moments, not inventory placement
Subscribe to DTC Newsletter – https://dtcnews.link/signup
Advertise on DTC – https://dtcnews.link/advertise
Work with Pilothouse – https://dtcnews.link/pilothouse
Follow us on Instagram & Twitter – @dtcnewsletter
Watch this interview on YouTube – https://dtcnews.link/video
...more
43min
May 29, 2026DTC Podcast | Ep 615: Prepare Your Brand for Agentic Commerce (How LLMs Are Collapsing the Consideration Phase)
Subscribe to DTC Newsletter – https://dtcnews.link/signup
The consideration phase is collapsing thanks to LLM shopping.
Awareness still happens on Meta. Conversion still happens on a PDP. But the comparison and research middle, the part brands have spent a decade optimizing, is increasingly happening inside an LLM the customer already trusts.
20% of holiday shoppers used an LLM in their purchase path last Q4. Google I/O just demoed one-tap concert tickets from a photo. Amazon folded Rufus into Alexa for Shopping. The behavior is moving fast enough that operators need to start preparing for Q4 now.
Eric sits down with Aves and Daniel from Pilothouse to unpack what’s actually happening and the work brands can start this quarter.
Inside the episode:
Why customers trust their LLM more than your ad
Daniel on why he stopped going to Amazon to compare vitamins
The persona mismatch that hurts brands more than it used to
Why reviews and earned media matter more than your landing page
What changes for abandon cart and retargeting
Two operator-tested audits to see if your brand shows up in ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini
For founders and operators who want to be recommended when the customer asks.
What to Steal:
Three things you can do this week.
Run the prompt audit. Take your top five Google queries, run them through ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini. Track who gets recommended, who gets cited, and whether you show up at all. Daniel uses this as his baseline before any other AI-visibility work.
Pick one brand truth and repeat it everywhere. Scattershot positioning loses to consistent positioning. If every ad pitches a different angle to a different persona, an LLM has nothing coherent to summarize about you.
Add dates to your blog posts and PR pages. Recency factors into LLM citation. Old content gets de-prioritized even when it’s accurate.
Subscribe to DTC Newsletter – https://dtcnews.link/signup
Advertise on DTC – https://dtcnews.link/advertise
Work with Pilothouse – https://www.pilothouse.co/?utm_source=AKNF615
Follow us on Instagram & Twitter – @dtcnewsletter
Watch this interview on YouTube – https://dtcnews.link/video
...more
37min
May 25, 2026DTC Podcast | Ep 614: Creative Is the New Conversion, Not Just Targeting — Charlie Cole, Thuma
Subscribe to DTC Newsletter – https://dtcnews.link/signup
Charlie Cole watched FTD go from a $1.8 billion publicly traded company to a $60 million bankruptcy auction in eight months. His first day as CEO was March 23, 2020, the first day of national lockdown.
Before that he ran digital at Tumi, Samsonite, Lucky Brand, and Shift Nutrition. Today he’s interim Chief Digital Officer at Thuma.
This episode is a tactical sit-down on what actually drives growth right now in a Meta + AI world.
In this episode:
Why “creative is the new targeting” is only half the answer
The exact death spiral most DTC brands follow on the way to margin collapse (no sale, semi-annual sale, sale page, sitewide 20%, Amazon, done)
How Charlie engineered personas at FTD across customer, consumer, and event
The florist’s choice insight: highest NPS in the category, by 20-40%
The 2011 Dr. Oz campaign that nailed funnel congruency before anyone called it that
Why personalization was a misnomer until about two years ago
The three “swimsuit for vacation” shoppers who should never see the same page
Why YouTube is still massively underutilized, and why most brands run it wrong
The product question that decides whether any of this matters
Who it’s for: DTC founders and operators scaling from $10M to $250M who want to grow without turning their brand into a discount machine.
What to steal:
Build acquisition around your highest-LTV segments, not your lowest CAC
Treat creative and landing pages as one system, not two teams
Stop letting platforms grade their own homework on attribution
Audit where you sit on the discount death spiral before it owns you
Timestamps:
0:00 Career Journey Into Ecommerce
2:48 Inside the FTD Turnaround
14:20 How Customer Behavior Changed During COVID
23:18 Creative Is The New Targeting
36:05 AI’s Biggest Ecommerce Unlock
43:02 Why Most Brands Test Creative Wrong
Subscribe to DTC Newsletter – https://dtcnews.link/signup
Advertise on DTC – https://dtcnews.link/advertise
Work with Pilothouse – https://dtcnews.link/pilothouse
Follow us on Instagram & Twitter – @dtcnewsletter
Watch this interview on YouTube – https://dtcnews.link/video
...more
50min

FAQs about DTC Podcast:

How many episodes does DTC Podcast have?

The podcast currently has 137 episodes available.