Honest Ecommerce

Matt Raminick spent nearly two decades of his career on the brand side (Quiksilver, Volcom, Pacsun, Mophie) hiring and managing agencies before founding Sunnyside.

Working with dozens of agencies big and small led him to realize that in most cases they repeatedly optimized for vanity channel metrics instead of outcomes that impacted the bottom line, often having no line of sight beyond a siloed view of the channels they managed.

So in 2020, after getting laid off from a high-profile exec role and with no prior agency experience, he founded Sunnyside and built a framework called Profit360™.

This system connects finance, brand moments, products, creative strategy, and paid media to reliably produce sustainable, predictable, and profitable growth at the business level, not isolated channel wins.

Sunnyside's unfair advantage is that every client gets a team of former brand-side marketers who've sat in the client's seat and know what's actually at stake because they've been in their shoes.

To date, Sunnyside has successfully helped brands in the surf, action sports, outdoor, fashion apparel, and DTC space — including Brixton, Municipal, Goodr, Xcel Wetsuits, Beek, Nixon, Salt Optics, and Jetty — profitably increase new customers, e-commerce revenue, and overall business growth.

In This Conversation We Discuss:
[00:00] Introduction
[05:04] Red flags to watch for early in an agency pitch
[09:44] Sponsor: Klaviyo
[11:55] Matching case studies to your actual business
[13:55] Building traction for a brand with nothing yet
[17:43] Sponsor: Intelligems
[20:02] Why RFPs fail to find the right partner
[22:00] Sponsor: eFulfillment Service
[26:27] Green flags that signal a strong agency fit
[28:40] Callouts
[28:50] What a good first 90 days looks like
[30:34] When a brand shouldn't hire an agency yet
[34:22] What to disclose before signing with an agency
[35:42] Profit360 and how the brand operates

Resources:
Subscribe to Honest Ecommerce on Youtube
A Better Way to Grow sunnysidecalifornia.com/ 
Follow Matt Raminick linkedin.com/in/mattraminick 
Get your free demo klaviyo.com/honest
Book a demo today at intelligems.io/ 
Lower scale costs today eFulfillmentService.com/honest 

If you're enjoying the show, we'd love it if you left Honest Ecommerce a review on Apple Podcasts. It makes a huge impact on the success of the podcast, and we love reading every one of your reviews!

Michael Bervell is co-founder and CEO of TestParty, an AI-powered digital accessibility platform that automatically scans and fixes source code so websites meet WCAG and ADA standards, without slowing down engineering teams. Before TestParty, Michael worked in accessibility and product inclusion at Google and the United Nations, was a software engineer at Twitter, and held product and venture roles at Microsoft and M12. He holds a BA from Harvard and an MBA from Harvard Business School, is the author of Unlocking Unicorns, and was named to the Forbes Accessibility 100. TestParty raised a $4 million seed round led by Harlem Capital and the Urban Innovation Fund.

Jason Tan is co-founder and CTO of TestParty and the technical architect behind its automated remediation engine. He came to the problem firsthand: while at Twitch, the company was sued for digital accessibility violations, and in researching fixes he discovered that accessibility lawsuits had become an industry norm. He co-founded TestParty in 2023 to give engineers a "spellcheck for accessible code." 

In This Conversation We Discuss:
[00:00] Introduction
[02:37] Why ADA lawsuits target ecommerce sites
[04:36] Settling once doesn't protect you
[07:01] ADA's outdated, vague legal language
[11:16] Why "band-aid" solutions won’t work
[15:08] Callouts
[16:44] How the brand fixes sites at the source
[18:27] A former company’s accessibility lawsuit story
[21:31] Fixing sites fast after a demand letter
[23:01] Defense packets against troll claims
[24:24] Free tools to test site accessibility

Resources:
Subscribe to Honest Ecommerce on Youtube
Automated WCAG Compliance testparty.ai/ 
Follow Jason Tan linkedin.com/in/jason-tan-75ab38191 
Follow Michael Bervell linkedin.com/in/michaelbervell 

If you're enjoying the show, we'd love it if you left Honest Ecommerce a review on Apple Podcasts. It makes a huge impact on the success of the podcast, and we love reading every one of your reviews!

At 6 years old, Kevin Keller was already "stealing" his father's cologne — a habit generously tolerated by his dad — and discovering that scent could change the way you felt before you ever said a word.

That early fascination with transformation eventually became Fulton & Roark, the American fine fragrance house Keller co-founded in 2013 with $11,000 and a belief that perfumery could be both deeply personal and distinctly American.

Raised in Atlanta and educated at Georgia State University and Wake Forest University, Keller began his career in journalism before turning to music and culture, where he profiled brilliant emerging musicians and artists. What stayed with him was a fascination with culture, place, and tradition — and how those forces subtly shape the way we carry ourselves in the world.

Built without outside capital, Fulton & Roark has grown into a nationally distributed independent fragrance brand, available in nearly 500 retail locations including premier independent boutiques, select Ritz-Carlton and Omni properties, and Neiman Marcus stores and online. The brand has been featured in GQ, Vogue, and ELLE, among others, and its fragrance Roark's Cove was a finalist for the Universal Prestige category of the Fragrance of the Year Award from The Fragrance Foundation.

He lives in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, with his wife and two children, and mentors young founders at Wake Forest University.

In This Conversation We Discuss:
[00:00] Introduction
[01:08] Solid fragrances vs extrait de parfum
[02:08] How the founder’s love of fragrance began
[03:16] Founding a niche brand with $11,000
[05:26] Going to market without a DTC plan
[07:39] Sponsor: IntelliGems
[09:19] The GQ feature that forced them online
[11:37] Building first websites on Squarespace
[12:37] Sponsor: Klaviyo
[14:47] Building the marketing flywheel
[18:04] Sponsor: eFulfillment Service
[19:40] Getting customers to pay for samples
[22:37] Callouts
[25:26] Why founders overrate daily metrics
[27:30] Learning to delegate as a founder
[27:54] Where to find Fulton & Roark
[29:02] Final thoughts

Resources:
Subscribe to Honest Ecommerce on Youtube
American Fine Fragrance fultonandroark.com/ 
Follow Kevin Keller linkedin.com/in/kevinwilliamkeller 
Book a demo today at intelligems.io/ 
Migrate and grow more klaviyo.com/honest 
Lower scale costs today FulfillmentService.com/honest 

If you're enjoying the show, we'd love it if you left Honest Ecommerce a review on Apple Podcasts. It makes a huge impact on the success of the podcast, and we love reading every one of your reviews!

Alexander Morabbi Wulsch is a Danish entrepreneur and business leader. Previously, he has held leadership roles in several companies across sectors including design (URU Design) and digital marketing/social media (Nordic Social).

Alexander's background also includes earlier ventures, after a stint in banking he launched an e-commerce business selling socks online, before eventually co-founding Nordic Social which was sold to PE in 2023. Today, he is the CMO of OMHU, one of Europe's fast growing D2C brands.

In This Conversation We Discuss:
[00:00] Introduction
[01:56] Starting young in Ecommerce 
[02:55] Joining brands as an early as employee
[03:44] Lessons from a failed first business
[04:52] AOV then versus now
[05:23] Unit economics simply explained
[06:51] Sponsor: Klaviyo
[09:00] Bundling and upselling on big-ticket items
[10:18] Leaning and maximizing social first strategy
[11:47] Why doubling down beats spreading thin
[13:08] Building influencer teams in today’s market
[14:04] Sponsor: Intelligems
[15:59] Remembering the zero discount policy
[17:26] Training customers to anticipate sales
[18:50] Sponsor: eFulfillment Service
[20:25] Discovering the long customer journey
[22:32] Learning curves of a European brand in the US
[24:49] Callouts
[26:05] Navigating culture and politics in business
[28:22] Difference of Brand and product led growth

Resources:
Subscribe to Honest Ecommerce on Youtube
Home of the TEDDY Sofa omhucph.com/ 
Follow Alexander Morabbi Wulsch alexander-morabbi-wulsch-4486b3113
Get your free demo klaviyo.com/honest 
Book a demo today at intelligems.io/ 
Lower scale costs today eFulfillmentService.com/honest 

If you're enjoying the show, we'd love it if you left Honest Ecommerce a review on Apple Podcasts. It makes a huge impact on the success of the podcast, and we love reading every one of your reviews!

Andrea Faulkner Williams is the head mama and co-founder of Tubby Todd Bath Co., which she launched with her husband, Brian Todd, as a solution to her own family’s sensitive skin in 2014. For years her family struggled with dryness and eczema, and smooth skin always seemed impossibly out of reach. It was frustrating spending money on one product after another that wasn’t helpful, clean, or safe for their little ones. 

Out of those discouragements came a drive and passion to create clean bath and skincare staples and they spent years developing products and testing them in their own home. Since then, Tubby Todd has grown into an entire line of body care basics. She lives in San Diego with her husband and four little ones.

In This Conversation We Discuss:
00:00 Introduction
01:58 The entrepreneurial dream that started it all
04:06 Launching with zero money and no retail shelf
04:39 How her husband got the idea from his job
06:42 Skipping retail to build direct on Shopify
08:30 Sponsor: IntelliGems
10:22 What "community-based brands" really means
12:22 Why small goals matter more than big ones
12:53 Landing as the #1 baby skincare brand
14:49 Sponsor: Klaviyo
17:24 Balancing family while building a business
18:57 Biggest hiring mistakes and lessons learned
19:41 Why you should fire people faster
20:55 Sponsor: eFulfillment Service
21:45 The hardest part of entrepreneurship: building a team
23:26 Staying humble and not letting ego run the team
24:34 Callouts
24:44 Why employment tenure makes you a better founder
27:21 Not needing a radical idea, just a better one
28:05 Selling 70% of the company to private equity
30:01 Starting something new always feels uncomfortable
32:35 Breaking down the best-selling three-step bundle
33:17 How to connect and where to find Tubby Todd

Resources:
Subscribe to Honest Ecommerce on Youtube
Gentle Baby Skincare for Sensitive Skin tubbytodd.com/
Follow Andrea Faulkner linkedin.com/in/andreafaulknerwilliams  
Book a demo today at intelligems.io/
Get your free demo klaviyo.com/honest
Lower scale costs today eFulfillmentService.com/honest  

If you’re enjoying the show, we’d love it if you left Honest Ecommerce a review on Apple Podcasts. It makes a huge impact on the success of the podcast, and we love reading every one of your reviews!