Obvi

📍Austin, we’re coming in hot! This Thursday, over 100 operators, founders, and builders are going back to school at the Finaloop Ecommerce Academy — learning directly from industry experts like Lioran Pinchevski, Taylor Holiday, Mehtab S. Bhogal, and more! 🚫 No keynotes from the same brands talking at every conference. 🚫 No fluff about unattainable growth tactics. Just pure, tactical lessons from the people who are actually in the trenches scaling brands every day. Even better? The Academy is already getting some press 👇
 https://lnkd.in/eUQTbZk5 Proud of the entire Chew On This for putting this together with Finaloop. If you’re in Austin, come say hi! We’ll be hosting, learning, and building the kind of community this space needs more of. Let’s make it count!

Last year our US business grew 13%, while our international markets grew 7X faster 🚀 That’s why we were able to hit $40M in annual revenue in 2024. But it almost never happened… A few months ago, I shared a $12M mistake I made at Obvi - waiting too long to expand beyond the US. I initially saw international as a "we'll get to it eventually" revenue stream, but the numbers don't lie—like I said, our international markets grew at nearly 7 times the rate of our domestic business. 🤯 Looking at Q4 alone: 🇨🇦 Canada: $2.45M in total sales, up 40% YoY 🇦🇺 Australia: $1.63M in total sales, up 69% YoY 🇬🇧 UK: $1.31M in total sales, up 45% YoY I recently sat down with Darwish Gani and the OpenBorder team, and they confirmed this isn't just an Obvi thing—most of the top brands they work with are seeing international markets outpace domestic ones. 📈 In fact, their data shows their top brands saw 5x the growth in markets outside of the US in Q4 of 2024. That’s why this year we're doubling down on international in ways we hadn't even considered before: ✅ Expanding into new channels – launching on Amazon and TikTok Shop in our top international markets  ✅ Onsite CRO for international shoppers – shipping price testing by region, delivery promises for fast shipping regions, and localized upsell flows to boost AOV  ✅ Better post-purchase experience – leveraging OpenBorder's upcoming Gorgias integration to streamline international customer support Our partnership with OpenBorder isn't just moving our products beyond our borders. They help us think strategically about global growth, market by market, channel by channel. So if you're still thinking international is a "someday" strategy, don't wait months and lose millions like I did. The opportunity isn't just theoretical.  It's showing up in our P&L RIGHT NOW and will take our brand to a new level in 2025.

One of the best strategies I’ve learned during my career is a simple but powerful one… I take every call, and reply to every LinkedIn message. It doesn’t matter if it’s an unfamiliar number, a small opportunity, or a connection that seems unrelated at first. I will ALWAYS pick up or respond. Why? Because relationships are the foundation of everything. I think I answer, on average, 45 spam calls a week! You wouldn’t believe how many “random” calls have turned into meaningful conversations, valuable partnerships, and game-changing opportunities. Three years ago, I got a cold call from a manufacturer. At first, I didn’t think much of it. Now, moving forward to today, they’re our #1 manufacturer, producing hundreds of thousands of units for us annually. All because I answered the phone. I know spam calls can make it easy to hit decline. But for me, every call is a chance to connect and grow. What about you? How do you approach networking?

One small change we made in Q4 just showed up in our metrics review. I say “small”, but the impact stopped our entire planning meeting. “That can’t be right, can it?” Like most DTC brands, we're constantly optimizing our tech stack. A few months ago, we decided to switch our onsite popup management to a new tool called Alia. We didn't have big expectations. I've seen dozens of popup tools and most of them do the same thing. But we implemented it at the end of the year to see if it could move the needle. Then I saw December's numbers → - 45,000+ popup views - 24.6% email signup rate (nearly 1 in 4 visitors) - Almost 10% conversion on those signups - $97k in directly attributed revenue Had to do a double-take. So here's the benefit of testing stuff and not being satisfied with the status quo. Sometimes you try something thinking it's just another A/B test, then months later the data shows you it was actually a pivotal decision. Quick backstory: I met the founder Shaan Arora at an event last year. We got talking about conversion optimization (you know how founders are - we can't help ourselves). He mentioned what they were building at Alia. Like every CEO, I get pitched tools constantly. A lot of them I reject, because they don’t fit or we don’t need them. But we try to test things that might move the needle. And I really liked what Shaan had to say about his vision for Alia. Glad he convinced me. This crushed our previous popup, so now we’re thinking of all sorts of ways to lean in and leverage it moving forward. This is what fascinates me about building - your biggest wins sometimes come from the places you least expect. While everyone's chasing the next big innovation, sometimes it's the small optimizations - those “why not, let’s try it” moments - that compound into real impact. One of those moments that reminds me why we're so obsessive about testing and measuring everything. Never assume you know where your next breakthrough will come from.