Zak (00:02.961)
Today on D2C Revenue Rocket, we're breaking down how a $25 pair of sunglasses built one of the most distinctive brands in e-commerce, from cult level community to sharp lifestyle marketing and a fast growing D2C engine. Gooder's managed to do something many brands struggle with, build real brand love while scaling revenue. To unpack how that happens behind the scenes, I'm joined by two people that help drive that engine every day. First, we have Ron Sinha, who leads e-commerce strategy at Gooder.

and it's built digital commerce programs across some incredible brands before joining the team. And we're also joined by Jared Grorock, who leads Lifecycle and Retention Marketing. I he's responsible for turning first time purchasers into lifelong fans. Ron, Jared, welcome to the show.

Jared | Goodr (00:49.205)
Thank you.

Zak (00:51.769)
Absolutely. Before we jump into the questions, could you guys give us a little bit of backstory on how you ended up in e-commerce and eventually at Gooder?

Jared | Goodr (01:03.593)
yeah, you want to go first? Sure.

Zak (01:08.497)
Could we actually, could you get a little closer to the, it's a little hard to hear you.

Jared | Goodr (01:15.273)
Yeah, for sure. How's that? Is that better? Okay, cool. Awesome.

Zak (01:19.03)
that's better. Now I can hear you.

Jared | Goodr (01:22.707)
Yeah, I've had a pretty diverse career. started off in finance and did some NGO work, ended up at Disney. So I just kind of bounced around a lot and ended up, I've always loved data and analysis. And so I just kind of ended up supporting the digital business at Disney during my last days there, last months there, and then went to business school. And during business school, I came across Nike and my role then and in my tenure at Nike was all mainly supporting digital. It's very data oriented.

very quantitative and we were getting more more signals so I just naturally got pulled into supporting digital businesses and the digital growth for Nike. Yeah and then one thing led to the next and I ended up leading Global Strategy for Nike for its digital expansion efforts and when I saw this whole pop-up of Gitter I was like I want to get after it here so hopped on over.

Zak (02:14.021)
That's awesome. must be fun for both of guys joining. Goodr is one of the most iconic brands of the last 10 years. So it must be really cool being on the team.

Jared | Goodr (02:24.373)
Yeah, mean, there are a lot. It's very cool. actually. Sometimes you sit there and you look back and I've been here for five years and seeing the growth and seeing the trajectory and having my fingerprints on some things is very cool, especially for a brand that people love and the community loves quite a bit. So that's always that's always a fun thing to recognize out in the wild per se.

Zak (02:44.209)
Yeah. And Jared, you want to give a little bit about your background before you're at Gooder?

Jared | Goodr (02:49.555)
Yeah, absolutely. So my journey into digital marketing, this is going to date myself, but it's fine. I started basically coding MySpace pages and having fun. And there was no digital marketing at that time. It was not an actual thing. from coding those MySpace pages at a radio station to doing some email marketing, again, it wasn't called email marketing at the time, to just full scale loving a customer journey. It's weird to say out loud, but that's kind of...

I love watching the touch points from social, from paid to all these things. And it's always evolved. And I've been in digital for a long time. And getting me here at Gooder was through a connection through a friend. And I had never actually, to be honest, heard of Gooder before I actually took the job. But five years later, here I am. And we're enjoying sunny Los Angeles. But that's kind of the very high level roadmap of how I got here.

Zak (03:42.161)
I love it. And I've heard that you guys sometimes get to name your own sunglasses. Is that true?

Jared | Goodr (03:48.349)
It's very true. have two pair that are out in the wild. Yeah, I two pair that are out in the wild that have been named. We basically submit a deck. they are our copy team shoots out a deck and it's like, Hey, we need help naming some of these sunglasses. And if you have the time, you can go in there and just slap a whole bunch of names and suggestions. And if it's funny enough, it typically gets picked.

Zak (04:10.401)
I love that, I love that. How are you guys thinking about AI inside a business today? Whether it's in marketing, in operations, customer experience. Ron, I'm sure you're loving it for data analysis. You guys just want to sort of talk, you know, maybe high level and some details on how you guys are using it at Gooder.

Jared | Goodr (04:30.098)
Yeah, I would say.

Just an underpinning philosophy we have here is everybody is encouraged to explore it, learn more about how it can impact their roles and their functions and the organization. And I think that that has given teams just like a ton of ideas for where it's useful and where it's not. And I think we're learning those things as we go is where can AI really help something? So for example, we have a forecast that's driven by a neural network projection. We are also using AI to automate a lot of workflows and to synthesize information, but where we're also

realizing it may not be that useful is in protecting that unique voice that we have as a brand and that feeling that we create for consumers out there. So we've done a lot of fun testing over time where we put something through AI and then we have our humans do it. And even in the latter phases of this work where AI has gotten really good, we still provide that unique value that gives humans validation that, okay, there are people behind this brand making this experience happen, making this feeling happen. And I think that that is something we can never lose.

So while we're embracing AI in ways that it can be helpful, I think we're also identifying where we don't want it to help and where we uniquely still provide value as we grow the brand.

Zak (05:42.577)
Yeah, I like that. know, it's something else I heard about you guys. You guys have copywriting courses that your copy team has created. And that's probably something, you know, you can use AI to get you started, but then you need to have someone who's gone through both of your copywriting courses to go in and give it the good or polish.

Jared | Goodr (05:58.805)
Yeah, absolutely. mean, I'm a graduate of our copy school, you know, with flying colors. But it's a really fun look at like, you know, we're really tasked with looking at some elements that might go on a channel A versus channel B. And then we are, we're challenged with writing copy that would resonate with that customer, not necessarily writing copy that fits the brand. And I think that's a big difference is we're not just writing brand copy, we're writing brand copy for a channel so that it resonates with that customer.

because of our, of our strong brand voice, we, we definitely want to lean into that. And, and that's, it's not a crux, but it's a, how would you, it's a foundation of what we do and everything. We kind of start there with the brand voice. So, you know, being a graduate and taking those courses is, is really cool for us.

Zak (06:48.337)
I'm sure it is. If you guys were launching Goodr today with all the AI tools available, would you do anything differently than the founders did when they started Goodr?

Jared | Goodr (07:01.632)
Such a good question. Yes and no. I think one of the things that our founders really did really, really well was started to build a community and especially in that run space. know, Steven CEO will tell the story of how he literally used to visit run clubs around LA and he would have a trunk full of good or sunglasses and he hit run clubs, marathons, know, five Ks, whatever that may be. And he would actually hand out those sunglasses. And that was such a brand

Touchpoint that customers still lean on to this day. I mean, we've noticed some of our retention rates are much higher during those, that customer cohort than it is relatively new. So creating that community was, was spot on. And I think the right thing to do. And, know, you can't really do that with, with AI. So, you know, creating that brand connection and that deeper brand connection. we see it still today, because if you take our post purchase survey right now.

Our number one answer of how did you hear about good are still friends and family. And that's 10 years later. So 11 years later after this weekend, friends and family is still driving our number one. So building that community, I think is the most key. But what I will say, think some of the AI tools that are available now would help accelerate some of the other, Tehran's point about like data, about ops and all the other intrinsic things that come along with creating a brand that you don't necessarily quote unquote, think about until it's on your roadmap.

I think AI absolutely would help accelerate that, but I personally don't believe there's much replacing like that community feel and that connection to a brand through that community building.

Zak (08:39.301)
Yeah, I agree. And something that not a lot of brands do super well is building that community. A lot of brands could have great retention strategies, great paid strategies, but that community is something that you can't have. Chatchity design that for you.

Jared | Goodr (08:58.548)
And it's real. mean, I think that's the other thing, you know, we, you know, it's authentic and that's one of our core values as a brand is to continue to be authentic. And that's, you know, we still live into that. We still do energy plays where we, you we'll go to, we did Chicago where we put 50, 50 foot sunglasses on Navy pier in Chicago, uh, cause of the Chicago marathon, you know, and that's just one of those, you know, it sounds silly. looks silly, but it's a lot of fun, but it's also a really deep brand connection that people won't forget. um, yeah, AI can't replicate that yet.

Not that would.

Zak (09:29.073)
You know, the energy plays that you guys do, how do you measure the success of those energy plays when you're deciding if you're going to go and do another one?

Jared | Goodr (09:41.033)
That's such a fun question. think we're building that plane as we play it, right? We have set up ambitious goals for ourselves. We get after things. And at the same time, while we're...

behold into targets, we also want to create magic and keep that magic going. Right? So as we think about how to measure that magic, there are moments when it's tough, when we're like, how do we know whether a thing worked? I think that's where we're building frameworks and we're building a system in place to measure those things. But sometimes you just can't quantify it. Like I'll use the Savannah bananas as an example, where we put an AI prompt, you know, and we said, how do we bring the Savannah bananas in and do something fun? That's brand, right. AI gave us a ton of cool ideas, right? And we use that and kind of set

okay that's interesting but then we did it ourselves and we ended up just bringing them in we got a bunch of fruit we did this photo shoot they were just chopping up fruit and hitting fruit and it was just so human and so error prone in this way that is just authentic right and people were drawn to that

That is not something AI can replicate. And this is not something we can measure on the short term either. Right. And that's where you say as a brand, did we still hit the mark in that feeling we want to create? Are we feeling that curiosity that we invite? Are we feeling that community feel that we're inviting? And I think when it comes to very subjective things like that, as long as we can lean on those heuristics, I think we're good. Right. You can't always measure everything, nor should it be measured. think sometimes, even though I was a data guy, I understand the limitations of data and how many

hearings there can be if you try to place value on something that truly doesn't have a value.

Jared | Goodr (11:12.05)
that is quantifiable. And I think it's important to know when those things are to balance that with commercial execution is not to assign everything a number, but to know when you just trust your gut as a brand and you trust the people who are here to go forward with a thing. And that becomes a differentiator out there in a world of data, in a world of AI tools, in a world of all sorts of infrastructure you could use. You do have to lean in on your magic. And I think that's where you also have to pause on measuring.

One thing I'll add to that is just we sometimes go out there with intention of not being able to measure it. We go out with intention to not measure it. Like the Navy Pier thing, we didn't actually have any measurable tools. Did we go back in and look if there was a boost to orders from Chicago in the next following weeks? Absolutely.

But we didn't go out there setting, we want to raise orders from Chicago. We were like, this is a fun energy play. We want to be a brand. And we recognize those and kind of identify that going out the gate of like, we're okay with this energy play. We're okay with this added bonus that we might get instead of saying, we're going to Navy Pier with these XYZ KPIs and we have to come back and hit them. So that's one of the fun parts about this brand as well is we're willing to take a chance to learn.

And sometimes we've learned some hard lessons and sometimes we've learned a lot of great lessons.

Zak (12:36.219)
Yeah. I didn't know you guys did that with the Savannah Bananas. I have an 11 year old son who plays Little League Baseball. I gotta find it so I can show it to him.

Jared | Goodr (12:47.316)
We'll send it to you. We'll send it to you for sure.

Zak (12:49.819)
That's awesome. When you look at Goodr's growth and speaking specifically about e-commerce, what does the marketing mix look like across channels? Email, SMS, paid media, direct mail. What does that mix look like? And is there any one of those channels that when you started doing it, it just surprised you at how good it was?

Jared | Goodr (13:16.282)
Yes. can speak a little bit to the mix and I'll defer to Jared on the evolution that has taken over years since I just joined in July. Jared has seen good or through many evolutions, right? right now, yeah, we do email, SMS, we have paid media across meta, Google, Snap, YouTube, things like that. And we're always looking across the board at

Zak (13:20.081)
The problem question is in there.

Jared | Goodr (13:39.859)
What's working and not in the short term, long term? What kinds of customers are showing up in different places and via different avenues and for what purpose? And what are they looking for and what product can we put in front of them? So you start layering on all these questions as you start to optimize your media mix. And so we show up in a lot of spaces, but I think we're learning a lot as we go of where do you pump more effort in to generate a certain outcome? Where do you throttle your efforts? So you have that world.

We also sell via TikTok and Amazon. So we're bringing that into the fold as well in terms of how we look across all these channels from a digital standpoint. And then of course, like every major retailer, we want to go on an omnichannel data journey as well. So you only see a certain part there from a marketing channel standpoint digitally, but people experience your brand in so many other places. So then how do you assign value to those touch points so that you can make sense of what you see in digital? So to your question around media mix and the optimization there is we only

we can do so much with the data we have, but we also have to know that there's other stuff happening that's impacting the ecosystem that we don't know. And we're kind of building that structure as we fly and kind of connecting the dots where we can. But yeah, I think we've come a long way, but have a lot more to go. And I would love to hear from Jared, the evolutions that you've seen over time on what's worked and not. Yeah, mean, think absolutely we've seen a massive evolution. As a brand grows, you start

taking on new learnings. And ideally, a good brand will take those learnings and apply them and grow them and try to get even better on the previous performance, whether that's quarterly, yearly, weekly, whatever that looks like. For us, I don't think there's a channel that has really quote unquote surprised us. But what I will say is there have been some channels where we

didn't quite attack it the way we probably should have right out of the gate. And I think this is a symptom of a lot of brands. They see a new channel and they want to just dive in and whether they want to be the first or whether they just want to be a leader within that channel, sometimes they don't necessarily capture the due diligence that's needed to actually be successful on that channel. So one of those channels for us was TikTok Shop.

Jared | Goodr (15:42.803)
where we launched it and we just didn't get the full scope of what that could look like and should look like for us as a company. So we took a step back and we all said, are we doing this the best we can? Are there places we need to evolve this channel? And every single person said, yes. So we knew right from that question, it's like, okay, now what do we need to do to help kind of grow said channel within this media mix? And how then does that start playing across the board like an omnichannel experience? So then when we reevaluated all that stuff, we came to the table with TikTok Shop.

And we actually laid out a much better roadmap, a much better foundational plan. And we're reaping the success year over year, and we're only continuing to grow. But because of that first kind of iteration of like, are we doing the best we can with this channel? Which we ask a lot for a lot of our channels. You know, we're in the midst of doing it for email and SMS right now. Same thing. Like, are we doing the best we can right now? And if everyone on the team, and I mean, everyone on the team says no, then we have to reevaluate and go to, you know, go back to the quote unquote drawing board.

and up level it. We love doing things good here, but we also don't settle on just doing things good. We push quite a bit and we push hard to ensure what goes out the door is the best. yeah, nothing has really surprised us in terms of a revenue generator channel. The learnings have surprised some of us overall.

Zak (17:01.329)
I almost jumped in. You guys like doing things good, but it's better to do them gooder.

Jared | Goodr (17:07.316)
Yes, we typically try not to use it. That's a verb, right? can't No, I trust me. The more times if I had a dollar, I'll just say that.

Zak (17:12.593)
I couldn't resist.

Zak (17:20.145)
Yeah. Yeah. You know, it's nice hearing you guys talk about it though, you know, where you're you're able to say, hey, we have all these channels where we're we're we're going after going after people. And we know that they're working. But we also know that we're not going to know exactly how well they're working. And I think that that's important to know, you because when you talk about attribution in general, in e commerce, you are never going to get like 100 % perfect picture of what

is driving the sale. And most importantly, being able to understand that, like that it's not a perfect picture, and then know that there's different things that you're never going to be able to attribute to that sale is important to do. Sounds like you guys do that.

Jared | Goodr (18:06.706)
We, I mean, you hit the nail on the head. Like we try, you know, attributions telling us a, and then attribution channels telling us B, I think it's our job to really decipher and find what that customer journey story is, to, to lean on that channel for the next time for that attribution. So yeah, I mean, what, what, what's digital marketing without a little pivot on attribution, right?

Zak (18:27.823)
Yeah, absolutely.

Jared | Goodr (18:29.416)
I think it's also, I'll add one thing there. It's just.

It's any company's appetite for the level of data you have to inform decision-making. think that's incredibly important too, is nobody has attribution perfect, right? But different companies have different tolerance levels for how confident do you want your attribution to be, your logic to be, to make a decision? And I think that could be a competitive advantage or disadvantage, right? Is if you balance that against your other decision-making frameworks, you can do with a little bit less tolerance. So I think as every company tries to figure out, stitch together the journey, it's that

level as you make decisions and you make your strategic moves confidently.

Zak (19:08.101)
Yeah, I like that. Gooder has a strong personality as a brand. How do you guys translate that voice consistently across all these different marketing channels where you're reaching your customers?

Jared | Goodr (19:23.316)
an incredibly talented copy team. if I'm being totally honest, they are their foundation. And I think everything we do starts kind of at the brand voice and considering it, thinking about the brand voice or the brand personality as it goes out the door. we, we often talk about, the absurdity level. at one point we actually had absurdity meter on our pitch decks on like, absurd is this going to be, for maybe a product launch or a campaign or something like that. And we lean into it.

And it's fun, like, you know, like we get to say kind of going back to your measurability question, like if this is going to be as absurd as possible, are we okay with not capturing some of the KPIs we normally would? If it's in that middle ground, we definitely have a balance of like, we need it to be measurable plus a little bit absurd. And from the very bottom, then, you know, we kind of temper what that brand voice looks like as we reach out into our, our growth into retail spaces, our retail partners don't really.

need, want or love some of that absurdity. So we scale that back when we're communicating after our retail partners, you know, when we do a product launch, some of that absurdity is stripped out of it. Vice versa, when we go to our DTC customer, depending on the launch and the product, that is front and center. And that goes out the door as the prime, you know, brand personality is like, Hey, how absurd can we be for sunglasses that have fur on them? Which is something we've

absolutely created, know, glow in the dark sunglasses, which sounds counterintuitive, but you need to have those types of products to also lean into that brand absurdity and that brand personality. Because I don't, if you don't do those types of things, then you're just being absurd for the sake of being absurd. And customers recognize that and they don't align or believe in that authenticity of that brand. So, you know, it's kind of that walk the walk type thing, but that's how we start when we lead with our brand personality and voice.

Zak (21:01.745)
you

Zak (21:15.617)
I that. I find that interesting that the retail channel, where you have to tone things down for the retail channels, whereas your guys' brand is absurd and just wild, but I find that interesting that they don't really understand that.

Jared | Goodr (21:26.1)
Mm-hmm.

Jared | Goodr (21:30.58)
It's not that they don't understand. know, when we're talking with shop owners and large key accounts, they just need, you know, more information. They need a little bit more education on the product, especially for dropping a brand new product, you know, an inline product that has a lot of new tech specs. They need that versus it's not that they don't want the absurdity, but they need this because then they're going to go turn around and try to sell that. And ideally what we've done is created that foundation of need, fulfilled that.

And then they can helpfully also latch onto that absurdity within their stores a little bit through some of our virtual merchandising or visual merchandising and so on and so forth. like the need is different and that's how our brand voice gets changed or brand personality gets changed is what do they need versus ultimately what do we want? So that's kind of how we approach that type of scale back in that communication. I think importantly, the customer.

from a D2C perspective is fundamentally different than a B2B customer. Like Jared said, when we're selling B2B, it's understanding a particular retailer and their store environment. How do they want our product to sit alongside everything else that they have in store, which is different than a D2C connection point. So.

I think thinking about customers in a very different way and the experience that we want that customer to have, whether it's a D2C individual or whether it's a mom and pop store is also very important. We understand that people at the end of the day will wear our sunnies, but the customer that we're selling to at these different touch points does differ and tailoring to that.

Zak (23:02.705)
That makes a lot of sense. Are there any marketing channels that used to be highly reliable, but have gotten a lot harder or more expensive over time? Like any that pops up your head as I say that.

Jared | Goodr (23:16.946)
I mean, from a paid media standpoint, purely, it's just the market's getting very competitive. We're monitoring CPMs all the time, and that's just very volatile. So I would say it's not that it was reliable and is less reliable. It's just much more dynamic now. So we just have an eagle eye on trends, on ROAS, moving dollars across channels as we see opportunities. so, yeah, I think it's just become an incredibly crowded and complex market. And you just have to move more quickly to optimize. Yeah, I'd say SMS.

It's not one where we, we just keep an eye on it. It's not necessarily like draining our resources or something. It's a great touch point for our customers. It's a very personalized channel. So we love it, but you know, with carrier costs, they adjust it whenever they want to adjust their carrier costs. And you know, we all have to absorb that. And then, you you're always looking at your audience and how big that is and what send and segmenting. So I think SMS is just one of those channels where

Internally, we just keep an eye on. We're still going to use it to its fullest capability, but we're just, you know, over our shoulder a little bit with that's a mess as we eye those costs.

Zak (24:26.201)
SMS is great, it can get expensive quickly.

Jared | Goodr (24:29.608)
Very quick. mean, the weird thing for me is always looking at like the MMS and images. We always thought like images would crush. You know, we thought like, we have to send an MMS and image because we're dropping a new product. And just the way that we've done that multiple times and tested it multiple times and our customer base just doesn't typically resonate with the images. But it feels like a...

Every time we do it, feels kind of like a quote unquote miss, but it's not, you know what mean? So it's just, it's an odd way people will interact with that channel.

Zak (25:03.311)
I love hearing you say that. we have tested that out countless times with our clients. And because clients are always pushing, you know, let's send them a message and we're always pushing back, you know, we can, but it's not gonna drive more revenue and it's gonna cost you a lot more money. We tested out 100 % of the time, it does not perform better.

Jared | Goodr (25:24.188)
We're almost there too. don't think we're a hundred. Yeah, we're, very high, you know, percentage wise, our customers just resonate with a singular text. so yeah, why, why are we, if we're evaluating costs, and they prove it over and over again, you know, I'm not saying that won't change, audience, obviously audiences change. And that is something we pride ourselves in is continuing to test and evaluate, but you know, we're not testing it week over week anymore or month over month where.

maybe once a quarter or when we think it's really, really advantageous that we have to have an image, that's when we try and test it again. But yeah, to your point, almost every time we're finding the single 140 characters, that's Twitter, whatever the character count is, everyone loves it.

Zak (26:07.952)
Yeah.

It always surprises me too, especially for a brand like yours where it's such a visual brand. You would think, I I would put my money that it would perform better, but it just doesn't. It always surprises me.

Jared | Goodr (26:25.064)
Yeah, the same thought we did.

Zak (26:27.121)
If you guys were advising a five to $20 million e-commerce brand today, where would you tell them to focus their marketing energy?

Jared | Goodr (26:42.964)
I think there's often an immediate difference about channel strategy, think about these things, but I would just go back to the fundamentals.

What is the reason you are providing people to be there, especially in a day and age like this, where there's just, everyone's getting pummeled with so many things from so many angles, digitally and otherwise is make it a very clear, simple value proposition why you want somebody there with you. And then build that community, start from there. And then what is it that you're offering them, right? Product, brand, think that starting with those basics, especially right now, building authenticity. I think that is more than ever going to be a huge differentiator and separate brands that make

from those that just become a part of the noise. Yeah, agree. It's building community. I mean, I would start there, figure out what your community actually is. And then once you figure out what your community is, start building it and start, you because those are going to be your loyal, those are going to be your loyal fans, your brand evangelists, so to speak. So if you can start doing that, they will be the ones who help spread your marketing message and just a love of the product. Also make a good product. I mean, that's...

I think that goes without saying, but sometimes I think people overlook that. But those are my two things. So exactly what Ron said and just reiterating on that building of community.

Zak (27:57.903)
Yeah, I like that. And that's something you guys have done really well is building that community. And there's no way I mean, we're talking about digital marketing. But there's really nothing that is as good as community talking about how much they love a specific product.

Jared | Goodr (28:11.676)
Yeah, I mean, that's a big, big, massive marketing win, you know, and but it's also one of the hardest, I think, because I can't control that narrative every single time. We do the best we can to lay the foundation and get that message out there. But, you know, if they love the product, they're going to love the product, whether or not we send out a really good email on, know.

Saturday or Sunday, they're still going to love the product. And if they do that, then when they go to a local run club or they go to on their outdoor hikes or whatever it may be using the sunglasses for, they're going to be the ones who advocate for us more so than, you know, an email on the weekend. So building that is vital, I think.

Zak (28:48.273)
Yeah, 100%. What is your guys core e-commerce tech stack look like today?

Jared | Goodr (28:55.956)
It's messy. So mean, our store is on Shopify. And I think the way I would describe it is over the years, as we've wanted to amplify certain elements of the experience, we've layered in different tools.

There are so many tools within our infrastructure that we use for very specific things, broad things. And so right now we're going through a bit of an exercise of how do we really define what we need as we go ahead? Where do we consolidate efforts where it makes sense? And where do we keep diversification in terms of vendors that provide a certain solution and tools that do a certain thing? So our tech stack is very messy. There's probably like 20, 30, 40 different tools over time that have been embedded. And as we go through our code, it's very clear who's

been there, right? There's always a digital trail. So I think, you know, now as we kind of build a much more robust digital offense and we have a team of developers, right? We're starting to take a hard look at

What does good look like? Right? What are some things we can do in-house or that we should do in-house ahead? Right? And what are some things we should continue to rely on a tool for, or a vendor's services for? And that's a more recent exercise that we've been intentionally doing, but I think part of it stemmed from us now realizing we had a crazy tech stack. Things were firing at different times or preventing other things from happening because they were just dragging the speed down or the system down. And as we want to become bolder with the steps we take,

think we're realizing that a lot of that tech debt is catching up. And so we're trying to get ahead of it and just optimize where we can.

Jared | Goodr (30:35.104)
I would also, I just think one of the things there also is that no one tells you when you move from startup mode into big company mode. And that's kind of where our tech stack lies is that's the demarcation of the switch. We did so many things on a budget with small teams as we grew the company and those products may not, we may not need them anymore as we grow into a much more,

adult company, so to speak, we are reevaluating that tech stack because we might, we might need a bigger opportunity. We might need a bigger tool or a tool that goes cross-functionally instead of just looking at the digital marketing team and what tool they have. So I think there's, like I said, no one tells you when that step actually happens. It just kind of quietly sneaks up on you. And when you, when you been dealing with small teams and,

you know, kind of band-aiding some pieces together and all of a sudden you can't do that anymore. That's where we're at. So to Ron's point, absolutely. We are evaluating everything we do on a tech stack from like a fits our needs, fits our customer needs. And is this a roadblock to other teams, which I don't think a lot of internal teams ask. Are we actually roadblocking somebody else's work? So yeah, it's a, I would say a typical tech stack, but it's also a growing tech stack.

Zak (31:54.607)
Yeah. All right. There's a couple more questions here. When so look a couple of life cycle questions. When someone buys from good or their first pair of on the website, what is the life cycle journey look like after that? Like what are the what are the touch points that they're going to be getting?

Jared | Goodr (32:14.61)
I mean, I think we do a great foundational life cycle touch points. know, the, the, wind backs, the not the wind backs, the, you know, the post purchase survey, the post purchase welcome flow. you a first time customer? But what I really want to say is it really depends. And as we've grown as a company, we are identifying people come in from a lot of different journey points. Now it used to be just straight up DTC or mostly DTC. We now know our retail footprints growing. We now know our emerging channels are growing Amazon, tick-tock.

you know, all these other channels are starting to grow. So what are those life cycle journeys look like? And we've begun to start identifying better ways for that life cycle journey to speak to that customer where they came from versus just kind of, you know, one size fits all. You know, if you were to come to Los Angeles and you visit our cabana, our brick and mortar store, that customer journey starts way differently. Are you a tourist? Are you going home? Can you find our product at home? So

What we need to do is help identify that customer and then customize a life cycle journey at scale. It's not like everyone gets their own individual one. But at scale, we want to customize those life cycle journeys so that we are reaching them at the right time with the right product to help encourage that retention and that repurchase with us. And also, I would add on is as we learn more about when and how our customers show up is knowing when to throttle.

or when it might just be a connection moment that doesn't involve product, right? Maybe people enter the brand that way and that's fine. I think obviously we believe that we have something for everybody and that's true, but it may not be the case that every touch point we have with a customer must require some transactional purchase. And so I think knowing that and understanding that,

at different segment levels with different cohorts and kind of playing it up or down depending on what we think someone is feeling with us or what they want from us is also important is we obviously have our goals and our aspirations, but so do consumers and better understanding that better understanding when they want something versus when they don't will help us more too. So I think just being mindful of that and life cycle strategy, including non transactional moments and just other surprise and delights is also equally as important in terms of just

Jared | Goodr (34:34.198)
long range retention and really building a relationship with a customer where you show you care about them and not just building retention strategy, right? The very nuanced things, but, and we use what the data shows us, but I think this is where there's a gray area. And I think level setting with the business on what good looks like is a continuous exercise.

Zak (34:53.393)
That's great. I love that you said this a couple of times. I love that you guys do your post purchase surveys. You always do that when someone makes purchase online, they always get the post purchase survey.

Jared | Goodr (35:03.54)
Yeah, we have two set up right now. We have a new and existing. So if you come in at a new purchaser, we ask a couple different questions versus if you're returning. And we re-evaluate those questions kind of on a quarterly basis because we want to make sure we're benchmarking some of the data to see what changes. And it's really interesting. We've made

some adjustments to our overall marketing and our business objectives. And it was actually really reflected in our post-purchase survey. So it's rewarding. It's also challenging because you can see a piece of what you think internally, but your customer is actually telling you something completely different. So that's always a fun learning and how do we kind of apply that back out the door? So I think that's a really, really great touch point and keeping it short and simple is the best way for your customer just to tell you.

how they feel at a current moment. To Ron's point, the feeling helps us kind of with that retention journey, with that life cycle journey, the feeling.

Zak (36:00.049)
I think that's great advice for brands. They're sort of going back to the question that I asked before about the five $20 million brands. I think that right there is a really good piece of advice.

Jared | Goodr (36:11.122)
I would agree with that. mean, whenever your customers can tell you something almost directly, I feel like you should listen pretty intently. And especially at scale. Like if it's a lot of people telling you the same thing over and over again, maybe there's some evaluation y'all need to do. you know, that is a great, direct customer input.

Zak (36:33.313)
All right, so closing question, looking ahead at the next three to five years of e-commerce, what are the brands that win going to do differently than everyone else?

Jared | Goodr (36:44.936)
man. I mean, it's funny, like a little context here. I found Gooder B2B wise. I was never a digital buyer at Gooder.

the physical feeling of the brand and how it showed up was really what stuck with me. And now both Jared and I work in the digital space here, right? So we're trying to create, establish that magic in other ways and touch points. And I think right now with AI flooding the market, continuing to flood everyone's inboxes and feeds with content products, there's a lot of meaning that gets lost, you know, and everything kind of fades into this gray area. so with everything getting blurrier and blurrier that way, think especially over the next three, five years, probably maybe even sooner,

the brands that will stick out are the ones that just continue to mean something genuine to people and maintain that authenticity. What is that authenticity? think that's what each brand has to define for itself, but that authenticity is something people feel and people can see through now. People can see through if something feels a little manufactured, if it feels MacGyvered, if it feels like the company took some cookie cutter method to get there. People are getting smarter and will know that. so staying ahead of that and

understanding what does it mean to cultivate a good relationship in an authentic way in this day and age knowing that is all out there. think that's what's really gonna separate brands that make it over the next three, five years, probably sooner.

Zak (38:10.629)
Yeah, authentic relationships. I think that is spot on. It is something that a lot of people miss a lot. brands being able to be authentic, authentically themselves and build authentic relationships with their customers. I think that's going to be a big differentiator.

Jared | Goodr (38:26.708)
It's hard. brands that are trying to beat something that people would also move faster. So it's this very, very careful line in the middle that you've got to straddle. Yeah. You almost have to sacrifice something. You have to sacrifice one another. Do you want to be faster? You want to be authentic? And I think, you know, rare unicorns get to do both. But for building a brand, you kind of have to figure out which one do you want to do the most of. And I'm not saying either one of them is wrong. It's just, I think there's a real choice to be made about

we're going to be slow, we're going to take some time and we're going to be authentic or we're going to be fast, we're going to be out the gate. We're going to grow at maybe a faster pace, but maybe we won't see that return customer as much. Maybe we won't see that brand loyalty as much. So I think just asking yourself as a brand, do you want to do? What's your roadmap really look like? And how do you differentiate yourself in a world where it is faster and quicker?

Jared | Goodr (39:25.084)
Yeah, I just think being able to delineate there and connect with that customer at an authentic level, no matter who's doing it, no matter where, that authenticity actually is the thing that reigns supreme overall.

Zak (39:38.447)
Yeah, I love it. Well, awesome. Anything, anything else you guys wanna want me to ask you about or or talk about before before we we sign off?

Jared | Goodr (39:53.204)
nothing. mean, do we want.

Zak (39:57.123)
Any new, any new sunglass styles that you're coming out with that you're really excited about?

Jared | Goodr (40:05.158)
Yes, actually. are a couple. Yeah. Can we talk about it? Can we release it? I mean, let's share it. Then we can edit it later. We have a pair coming out.

Zak (40:07.066)
Alright!

Zak (40:18.993)
I won't tell anybody.

Jared | Goodr (40:25.182)
We have a typical model where we basically say, you know, the G comes at the end of all of our names as they stand for gooder. We have what's called the Sonic G coming out very shortly. And this is the follow-up to our very successful Bolt G, which our runners absolutely loved. We actually went down through the LA Marathon and so many people were wearing the new Bolt G, which released last year. The new Sonic G is coming out and it is a little bit more curved, it's a little bit more rounded. It's not as strong on the angles.

So we're really hoping to reach the female audience here. But as everybody knows with good sunglasses, they are unisex. And if you love them, wear them no matter what the style is, if they fit better, if they look better. We advocate for that actually. Just, you know, we give you permission to be unabashedly yourself. So that is piece that that's coming out of the pipe very soon. And we're really excited about the Sonic G and then.

even more quietly, we are releasing a small and large OG. So OG is our claim to fame. we got some customer feedback and so we're going to dive in and have offer a small and large and a medium, which is the OG you know, and love. So you can have it fit your face a little bit better if you love the OG style. So those are two of our biggest ones that are coming and then some late, late year ones. I definitely can't talk about, but those are, those are the two big ones that are coming up very, very quickly.

Zak (41:50.181)
Those are exciting. Thanks for sharing that. I'm excited to see when those products drop.

Jared | Goodr (41:56.688)
We'll make sure to send you a direct link and we'll see if we can take care of you.

Zak (42:01.585)
Awesome, awesome, that sounds great. Awesome guys, this was great. Thanks for joining. It was great meeting you guys, great talking to you. And I hope we get to meet up at Shop Talk.

Jared | Goodr (42:15.656)
Yes. Yes. Las Vegas, right? Here we go. Yeah. We will see you in Vegas.

Zak (42:18.117)
Las Vegas, yep. We'll send you some pictures,

Jared | Goodr (42:25.244)
I'll send you some from whatever winery in that. okay.

Zak (42:30.577)
Awesome guys. Yeah, thank you. See you later.

Jared | Goodr (42:35.409)
Awesome. Thank you so much, Zach. Great chat. Later.