What does it really take to build a hormone-safe beauty brand that can survive the move from startup to scale? Paige Hope, CEO of Elan Pure, joins Jared Ward to pull back the curtain on the "no-fluff" operational reality of the skincare industry, including a crystallization crisis that cost the brand hundreds of units. We break down the raw economics of US manufacturing, how to negotiate 3PL labor fees, and why a lean team of contractors often outperforms a bloated payroll. 

Meet Paige Hope

Paige Hope is a seasoned entrepreneur who successfully transitioned from the tech world to the forefront of clean beauty. After co-founding the tech platform Current and overseeing its acquisition by Pattern, Paige used her experience advising nine-figure e-commerce brands to launch Elan Pure, a hormone-safe skincare line. Driven by a personal mission to eliminate endocrine disruptors following her sister’s autoimmune diagnosis, Paige spent two years and 16 formulation rounds perfecting a non-toxic, foam-and-lotion hybrid self-tanner. Known for her "gritty," self-funded approach, she favors lean operations and organic community growth, successfully scaling her brand through a massive affiliate network and a dominant presence on TikTok Shop.

Jared Ward and Billy Bush introduce powerful features focused on wholesale management and financial control for the October Product Update: the Wholesale CRM now includes a dedicated "Sales" tab, offering enhanced functionality like Credit Memo sync with QuickBooks and tagging of contacts to customize notification automations. You can now establish parent/child company structures for retail chains and set unique fulfillment priority overrides at the customer level ensuring key accounts receive the exact service they require. Plus, gain more control over costs by distributing duties and tariffs across PO shipments using product tags, and choose to push landed cost directly to Shopify for accurate margin reporting.

Meet Jared and Billy

Jared Ward, Founder and CEO of Luminous, is a former DTC founder and sourcing executive who built the platform to eliminate the operational drag caused by fragmented, manual supply chain workflows. Billy Bush, Head of Product Strategy, complements this vision with a decade of expertise in systems design, ensuring Luminous delivers practical, high-impact tools that bridge the gap between complexity and clarity, ultimately helping multi-warehouse, high-volume ecommerce brands scale efficiently.

In this September Product Update, Luminous introduces powerful features focused on financial and fulfillment control. We unveil customizable invoice templates and bi-directional Credit Memo sync with QuickBooks, streamlining wholesale AR management. Plus, learn how to set fulfillment priority preferences by customer, utilize the new Inventory Aging Report for better visibility, and manage all return orders directly within Luminous.

Meet Jared & Billy

Jared Ward, Founder and CEO of Luminous, is a former DTC founder and sourcing executive who built the platform to eliminate the operational drag caused by fragmented, manual supply chain workflows. Billy Bush, Head of Product Strategy, complements this vision with a decade of expertise in systems design, ensuring Luminous delivers practical, high-impact tools that bridge the gap between complexity and clarity, ultimately helping multi-warehouse, high-volume e-commerce brands scale efficiently.

What if your ERP is secretly costing you 4X the price? Jon Blair, Free to Grow CFO founder, reveals the true cost and operational drag of the "NetSuite Trap" plaguing $20M+ ecommerce brands. He details the blueprint for right-sizing to a specialized tech stack (IMS + QuickBooks) and a fractional finance engine to slash costs. In this episode, learn how separating your GL from your operations and using cash-led forecasting helps you scale efficiently and avoid Q4 working capital disaster.

Meet Jon Blair

Jon Blair is an ecommerce finance visionary who founded Free to Grow CFO to fill the massive gap between a bookkeeper and a full-time CFO. His firm provides fractional CFO/Controller services, asserting that lean e-commerce brands can achieve nine-figure revenue without a bloated in-house finance team. Jon specializes in solving "upstream" operational problems that cause "downstream" financial issues, focusing on cash-led forecasting and making smarter, risk-adjusted inventory bets.

Finally Solve Multi-Warehouse Chaos.

Jared and Billy reveal a mega-update giving high-volume brands absolute control over complex operations. See the new fulfillment order "command center" with wave management, allowing you to cap 3PL orders and manage pre-orders by estimated ship date. Plus, Luminous now automates ASN (future receipt) creation to external WMS systems, eliminating manual Google Sheet reconciliation and ensuring your entire supply chain is synced for seamless scaling.

Meet Jared Ward and Billy Bush

Jared Ward is the Founder and CEO of Luminous, driven by firsthand experience in DTC and sourcing to build a single, reliable system for e-commerce operators. His vision is to eliminate the operational drag caused by fragmented supply chain workflows, enabling brands to scale efficiently.

Billy Bush serves as the Head of Product at Luminous, focusing on bridging the gap between complexity and clarity. He leverages his expertise in product strategy and systems thinking to ensure Luminous delivers practical, high-impact tools that meet the evolving operations needs of multi-warehouse, high-volume brands.

"We’re removing the blind spots that cost brands time and money."

In this Luminous Product Update, Jared and Billy highlight how Luminous now auto-assembles products at receipt, values in-transit inventory with precision, and reconciles stock across every location in one report. Plus, they unpack new returns management tools that integrate directly with Shopify, and a smarter cost allocation engine for split shipments.

Meet Jared Ward and Billy Bush

Jared Ward, founder and CEO of Luminous, built the platform to give ecommerce operators a single, reliable system for scaling without the operational drag of manual processes. With a background in DTC and sourcing, Jared brings firsthand experience in solving fragmented supply chain workflows.

Billy Bush leads product strategy at Luminous, blending deep expertise in experience design with a decade of product-market fit and systems thinking. His work ensures Luminous delivers practical, high-impact tools that bridge the gap between supply chain complexity and operational clarity.

What if the data you rely on to ship, fulfill, and scale... is wrong? In this episode, Anthony Armstrong of Americanflat unpacks 15 years of experience in Amazon operations—from the early days of black hat tactics to building a modern multi-channel ecommerce engine. He shares what separates brands that stall at $1M from those that scale, why lean ops beats bloated systems, and how trusting the wrong 3PL data can quietly wreck your margins. If you're managing Vendor Central, coordinating across multiple 3PLs, or looking to simplify your ops, this one's essential.

Meet Anthony Armstrong

Anthony Armstrong is the Senior Operations Manager at Americanflat, a successful omnichannel brand. With over 15 years of experience in e-commerce, he considers himself an "OG" of the Amazon 3P model and has been instrumental in scaling previous companies from six to seven figures. At Americanflat, he's a key driver of their lean methodology, focused on finding and implementing "two-second improvements" to increase efficiency. His expertise lies in hands-on operations, validating processes, and building the right team to handle the complexities of a multi-3PL, multi-channel business.

"Now you can do everything in Luminous, at the top of your supply chain." Billy Bush joins Jared Ward to share a major upgrade: Bill Pay is live inside Luminous. Plus, auto-recon for AWD-FBA transfers, full HTML doc customization, and a smarter global search that cuts through chaos in milliseconds.

Meet Jared Ward

Jared Ward is the founder and CEO of Luminous, the supply chain operating system built for lean, fast-scaling ecommerce teams. A former DTC founder and sourcing executive, Jared built Luminous to fix the fragmented, spreadsheet-driven workflows slowing down modern operations.

Meet Billy Bush

Billy Bush is the lead product strategist at Luminous, bringing over a decade of experience in product-market fit, systems design, and customer-centric innovation. With a deep background in experience design and JTBD thinking, Billy helps shape tools that solve real supply chain problems, driving alignment between tech, ops, and outcomes.

“The next $100M brand will be built by 10 people and AI.” Jay Davis, the mind behind Pillow Cube and several lean ecommerce ventures, believes ecommerce’s future belongs to lean, creative teams powered by automation, content, and AI. In this episode, he breaks down why bloated brands are out, retail isn’t dead, and how fractional teams and content libraries are key to scaling faster with less. If you're building a brand in 2025, this is the playbook.

Meet Jay Davis

Jay Davis is the founder of many brands like Pillow Cube, Cold Case Ice Cream, StairSlide, and Creatably. With a background in both creative marketing and brand operations, he's building a new kind of ecommerce conglomerate—lean, profitable, and AI-ready.

"We got our first inbound lead from ChatGPT." AI isn’t theoretical anymore—it’s operational. In this episode, Jared Ward (Luminous), Fabricio Miranda (Flieber), and Blair Forrest (AMZ Prep) break down how AI is actively reshaping ecommerce—from automated outbound and SEO pods to robotic fulfillment and intelligent data mapping. If you're in ops, this is a glimpse into your not-so-distant future.

Meet Blair Forrest

At AMZ Prep, Blair Forrest is turning logistics into a tech game. With teams across India and the Philippines, he’s built a full-stack go-to-market engine—blending outbound automation, SEO, and warehouse robotics.

Meet Fabricio Miranda

CEO of Flieber, Fabricio Miranda is obsessed with solving inventory chaos. He’s building a platform that helps ecommerce brands make smarter purchase decisions—with fewer people and better data.