Zero to $250M in 10 Years?! The Incredible Growth Strategy of Simple Modern

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Zero to $250M in 10 Years?! The Incredible Growth Strategy of Simple Modern

Bryan is the co-founder and chief e-commerce officer at Simple Modern. Simple Modern is a digitally native brand, having sold 50 million bottles in less than 10 years and did $250M in 2024. Simple Modern has grown into a category leader in all 50 states and eight countries around the world, making products that are good everywhere.

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> Here’s a glimpse of what you would learn….

  • Overview of Simple Modern’s growth and success in the drinkware market.
  • Discussion of the company’s journey from inception in 2015 to achieving $250 million in gross revenue in 2024.
  • Importance of product quality and innovative design in driving brand success.
  • Strategic decisions made by Simple Modern, including focus on drinkware and partnerships with major retailers.
  • Challenges faced by the company, particularly in cash flow management and manufacturing defects.
  • The role of effective marketing strategies, including leveraging social media platforms like TikTok.
  • Insights on the significance of competition in the drinkware market and its impact on brand awareness.
  • The value of strong relationships with manufacturers and partners in navigating business challenges.
  • Emphasis on data-driven decision-making and quick feedback cycles in e-commerce.
  • Advice for entrepreneurs on resilience, adaptability, and maintaining a long-term focus in a competitive landscape.

In this episode of the Ecomm Breakthrough Podcast, host Josh Hadley interviews Bryan Porter, co-founder and Chief E-commerce Officer of Simple Modern. They discuss Simple Modern’s impressive journey from its inception in 2015 to achieving $250 million in gross revenue by 2024. Bryan shares insights into the strategic decisions that propelled the brand to success, including a focus on product quality, innovative design, and effective marketing. He emphasizes the importance of strong partnerships, cash flow management, and resilience in overcoming challenges. This episode offers valuable lessons for business owners aiming to scale their e-commerce ventures to new heights.

Here are the 3 action items that Josh identified from this episode:

  1. Master Cash Flow Early
    • Hire a strong CFO and explore flexible financing options—like delayed tax payments or supplier credit—to avoid growth bottlenecks.
  2. Double Down on Key Partnerships
    • Build deep, win-win relationships with select manufacturers to secure favorable terms and reduce inventory pressure.
  3. Always Be Amazon-Ready
    • Know the pros and cons of 1P vs. 3P selling and have a solid contingency plan to handle unexpected platform disruptions.

 


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Episode Sponsor

Sponsor for this episode…

This episode is brought to you by eComm Breakthrough Consulting where I help seven-figure e-commerce owners grow to eight figures.

I started Hadley Designs in 2015 and grew it to an eight-figure brand in seven years.

I made mistakes along the way that made the path to eight figures longer. At times I doubted whether our business could even survive and become a real brand. I wish I would have had a guide to help me grow faster and avoid the stumbling blocks.

If you’ve hit a plateau and want to know the next steps to take your business to the next level, then go to www.EcommBreakthrough.com (that’s Ecomm with two M’s) to learn more.

Transcript Area

Josh Hadley 00:00:00  Welcome to the Ecomm Breakthrough podcast. I’m your host, Josh Hadley, where I interview the top business leaders in e-commerce. Past guests include Kevin King, Aaron Cordovez and Michael E Gerber, author of the E-myth. Today I am speaking with Bryan Porter. Bryan is the co-founder and chief e-commerce officer at Simple Modern. Simple modern is a digitally native brand, having sold over 50 million bottles in less than ten years, and they did 250 million. You heard that right. $250 million in gross revenue in 2024. Simple. Modern has grown into a category leader in all 50 states and eight countries around the world, making products that are good for really everyone and everywhere. This episode is brought to you by Ecomm Breakthrough, where I specialize in investing and scaling seven figure e-commerce brands to eight figures and beyond. If you or someone you know is ready to scale, or looking for an investment partner or coach or consultant, reach out to me directly at Ecomm Breakthrough. Com. That’s e-comm with two M’s and let’s turn your dreams into reality.

 

Josh Hadley 00:00:51  But today I am super excited to introduce you all to Bryan Porter. Bryan oversees the digital sales including Amazon, DTC, TikTok shop, and international expansion. He has 16 years of experience in e-commerce, analytics and growing startup businesses. So with that introduction, welcome to the show, Bryan.

 

Bryan Porter 00:01:07  Thanks for having me on, Josh. Very excited to to be with you. It’s an honor.

 

Josh Hadley 00:01:10  Well, it’s it’s an honor for me to have you on the show. And my wife is still blown away that you’re on the show. She’s like, how in the world do you have simple modern, like, she’s a total fangirl of your guys’s products and loves what you guys have put together. And likewise, what you guys have put together is truly admirable. I met you at prosper when you gave the keynote speech to kick off prosper, and I was just all ears as you were presenting, kind of like your timeline and how you guys have grown. And I’m just super impressed with what you guys have built at simple, modern, and more importantly, like your guys’s mission, Bryan, to like, give back.

 

Josh Hadley 00:01:39  I just admire that. So again, thank you for your time and coming on the show.

 

Bryan Porter 00:01:43  So excited to be here. appreciate the support. love, love hearing that your wife loves the brand. I our core demographic is moms, or women, between the ages of 20 and 50. So I hear a lot that people’s wives are fans of the brand. I wish that maybe it was more men, but you know, we sell products for kids and, focus on fashion. So I do love hearing that it’s resonated with your wife.

 

Josh Hadley 00:02:11  Love it. Well, Bryan, $250 million in revenue in 2024 is nothing to shake a stick at. That’s that’s a quarter of $1 billion, which is incredibly impressive, especially you guys have been around for just ten years and with a long way to go in the future as well. So, Bryan, I’d love for you to walk walk everybody through. Kind of like what’s the timeline of events? What allowed you guys to scale from really 0 to 9 figures and 250,000,010 years later, knowing that you guys have primarily been bootstrapped the whole time, this was not a venture funded, you know, brand that came to be.

 

Josh Hadley 00:02:43  So, Bryan, if you wouldn’t mind walking us through that timeline.

 

Bryan Porter 00:02:46  Sure. I’d be happy to. as you mentioned, this is our 10th year in business. We got started in 2015, and, whenever we started, we did not have some insight about Drinkware. myself and my other two co-founders, Mike Beckham and Mike Ames. we had worked together at our previous job, and we really saw the opportunity to sell on Amazon, and we figured, what? you know, who better to create a brain on Amazon than people who have been in the e-commerce game for six plus years to that point? So, the first three years of the business, we went from 0 to 25 million in retail sales. And, obviously that part was about figuring out what product we were going to sell. We tested many, I’d say many. It was five products. Drinkware was the category that, tested the best for us. And we did also believe it had the highest addressable market for us, the high ceiling.

 

Bryan Porter 00:03:42  So we decided to dive into Drinkware. And, our thesis was that drinkware is more about fashion and style than practicality. We compared a lot to a shoe brand or watch brand where you’re buying the product, you know, maybe even more so for how it looks and how it functions. The next three years, we went from 25 million to 100 million in retail sales. That period of the company was more about distribution, about us expanding our product, our product catalog to hit more Amazon keywords. So distributing more holistically across the Amazon, reaching more more search volume, and then also expanding into retail. We got into target, which was really big for us. We viewed the target customer very much as like the simple modern. As I mentioned, like a lot of moms are shopping for our products. We’ve also got a great partnership with Walmart. We’ve done business in club with Whole Foods, and then the most recent three years of the business, we went from 100 million in retail sales to 250 million.

 

Bryan Porter 00:04:45  And that period was more about marketing for us. And when I say that we built the business Mostly on organic distribution with lower margins. But in the last three years, we had tapped into a lot of impressions that we hadn’t been getting before. A lot of that was tied to when Stanley exploded. We saw that coming, and we were the first to launch a product that we designed to be better than Stanley’s product. The large tumbler with handle. And we really got to ride that wave with Stanley. And a lot of the marketing that we got was organic. The best kind of marketing, and tons of viral TikTok videos comparing our tumbler to Stanley’s and the ways that customers it resonated with customers and where they thought it was better. And we started to try to grow our muscle of how do we spend our own money to generate impressions and sales, which, to be honest, we’re still figuring that part out, but we have seen some success on that front. So that’s the tldr on how we’ve we’ve gotten to this point.

 

Josh Hadley 00:05:47  That’s amazing. Now, Bryan, I also know because I listened to your talk there at prosper, that licensing was a big play for you guys as well, right? Like, at what stage did licensing come into play for you guys and and why?

 

Bryan Porter 00:05:59  Yeah, so because our strategy was built around ornamentation in style. Our thought was that if you can put someone’s favorite team on a bottle or tumbler, like that’s a way to, you know, express yourself or like I identify with Oklahoma Sooners and I’ve got a bunch of OU products. it’s a natural fit for Drinkware. but even more than that, we thought the real long game is like, what if you could put Mickey Mouse on kids bottles? or, you know, any any kid’s property? Like, for kids, that matters, way more than anything else. the bottle could leak like crazy, which I don’t, but, you know, it could be a bad product, and a kid would want it anyway just because it has Minecraft or whatever they’re into.

 

Bryan Porter 00:06:40  So, early on, we had that that thought, and, my, my partner, Mike Beckham, he maybe his best sale to date was, getting a collegiate program in Sam’s Club. We were neither licensed with the colleges or we didn’t have a relationship with Sam’s Club. So Mike essentially took a bunch of samples we were licensed with. Oh, we had a local license. And, Mike proposed, let’s do this nationwide program. we have the ability to execute on this, where we have two bottles and the primary and secondary color of each college with a full color logo. and, you know, at a sharp price point, he’s able to convince the Sam’s Club buyer to say yes. And so, you know, it’s great. The problem is we don’t have the the licenses. So at that point, if you take, you know, this large pot from Sam’s Club to the CLC, the collegiate licensing committee, then that’s something pretty compelling. It’s like, hey, here’s a bunch of money, that we have in royalties for you if you give us your licenses.

 

Bryan Porter 00:07:40  So, Mike was was able to kind of leverage, use. Yeah, use some leverage in both situations, to be able to get that across the finish line. But the real key there is that we also got distribution for Amazon. Whenever we got licensed for the Sam’s Club order, and we were able to show other licensing bodies like, hey, look, we’re the best at selling license bottles and tumblers on Amazon and we’ll make you more money. which, you know, licensed licensing bodies, they don’t want to shift money from one licensor to the other. They want to see like what value can you add to that’s going to increase our revenue. And so that was our pitch to the NBA, NFL, NHL. And then once we had kind of that whole fan shop catalog, we took that to Disney. And they gave us a chance. And we’ve been able to, you know, walk the walk with all all of our partners and build really strong relationships. So, at this point, I think we’ve we’ve done over $25 million in licensing, with, with specific licensors.

 

Bryan Porter 00:08:41  So it’s it’s certainly a big part of our business and it’s really like we have a really strong kids business now. It’s possible we could even be a brand that sells more to kids and adults at some point. And it’s really licensing that has pushed us that direction.

 

Josh Hadley 00:08:54  Yeah, that’s that’s incredible. And what I love about that story though is, you know, Mike went out and it’s like, hey, I’ve got one license, right. You had oh you how do we go sell Sam’s Club? All right. Great. We got this. We got a national strategy. Now I got to go follow up and figure out how do I get the rest of the colleges or, you know, national NCAA licensing to roll out. So my question to you is this on that note, Bryan, because I know in the licensing world there’s only like the only a lot a certain number of people to be able to have the license for Drinkware, right, for Disney. So how did you convince them? And you said like, oh, we’ll make you more money.

 

Josh Hadley 00:09:26  Like, how is that? And especially when you’ve got a very established distributor or, or brand that’s already selling that licensed product, how are you able to convince them? How did that conversation go? And did they did they add an extra seat to that license, or was it like they kicked somebody else off the program to bring you guys in?

 

Bryan Porter 00:09:44  They added an additional drinkware partner whenever they took us on. And, really, the spot that we fill in the market is where the highest quality licensed option for. I would say almost every property that we sell with, a big part of that is that, early on, I think is about year three of the business we started developing and doing, creating our own design products. Before then, we’d been taking products off the shelf in China. We decided no more of that. Like, we can’t build a brand, if we’re not designing unique products that people will recognize. So we set out to create the best straw that we could make that has like a flip up nozzle.

 

Bryan Porter 00:10:25  Whenever it’s down, it’s leakproof, and you flip it up and you can drink from it. And over the course of 2 to 3 years, we developed like the highest rated straw lid, better than like Hydro Flask straw lid. And we did that by looking at Amazon reviews and fixing like, every small little complaint or issue about it. Well, that strongly we thought was for adults, but we. We realized that it’s even better for kids. so a combination of, like, having the highest quality lid, help us in fan shop, but also really helped us with kids. where we’ll color match the lid to like, the kids pattern and make a really cool aesthetic with it. so there’s a lot of products and licensing that like really the, the value of it is the property on the product, and the product usually is not very good. and that’s, that’s very much not the case for us starting out. We, we had a very compelling value proposition where like, our price even was, was near the lower quality brands.

 

Bryan Porter 00:11:24  but we had 4.8 stars and we’re able to show like that value proposition. And over time, we’ve been able to, not have to sell like at the lowest tier. But we’ve seen the customers are willing to pay more for ours because they recognize the value both in product quality and aesthetic that we offer. So, there are great brands that create like products across many categories and do well with that strategy. But like I said, it’s it’s a lot of times to the detriment of like the water bottle they sell. They just don’t have the focus like on that product like we do.

 

Josh Hadley 00:11:57  Yeah. No I love that focused on like the product quality goes a long way. And that that’s the compelling argument to why Disney would want to take you on I love that. I want to double down into, you know, kind of that expansion from 0 to 25 million. You initially said, like, hey, we tested five different products out. I think a big component of your guys’s success now is you guys have rode a massive wave of, you know, just adoption of Drinkware over the last five years, right? Of, you know, everybody knows Stanley went viral.

 

Josh Hadley 00:12:25  And then like just the how many drinks, you know, and mugs do women have now it seems like, you know, there’s so many funny TikTok videos just based on that. Right. And you guys but you chose that specifically. And I think that is the secret behind why you guys have been able to grow past nine figures. It’s because, like the Tam, the total addressable market was big enough. Right. And you guys also saw, you know, obviously it’s a big enough market. It’s growing rapidly. So tell me, like, maybe maybe even share some of those other products you tested. Why did you double down with Drinkware? How did you see those early signs that, like, this is going to be a big category for us to play in and maybe share? What are those things that other people like myself can I try to identify in my own markets to know, like, hey, maybe it’s time to leave this one alone, or maybe go for after some bigger total addressable markets?

 

Bryan Porter 00:13:10  well, I wish we could say that we knew that Drinkware would do what it has done in the last decade.

 

Bryan Porter 00:13:16  it looked to us in 2015 like it was a growing, thriving category. At the time, Yeti was having its breakthrough. they were the brand that was, kind of doing what Stanley and Ola are doing right now in terms of viral popularity. swell. Which has really, fallen off. But swell was really strong at that time. And then Hydro Flask was emerging as a brand. So we had really strong competitors in the category. And I think that that’s both like daunting but also helpful. it’s the strong brands that have helped propel the category forward. And it’s interesting, like if you look at all the most popular Drinkware brands over the last ten years and you you compare their Google trends to each other, you kind of have like every 2 to 3 years, like a brand will just surge and go crazy. And, they’ve not only grown like as a brand for that period, but they’ve grown the drinkware industry. so I think that, you know, there’s qualities of drinkware that have made it be true that it’s grown so much, but it’s also like we’ve had really great, brands to push us forward.

 

Bryan Porter 00:14:23  The,

 

Josh Hadley 00:14:25  I think on that on that note, though, what I have found and it’s also been similar for us as of late, is that having really good brands that you’re competing with, although you’d be like, oh, I wish I didn’t have any competition. Competition is actually good, I think. And Elon Musk I think, has a viral TikTok where he’s talking about how like why whenever you see like a Coke and Pepsi machine vending machine together is because like when you see them together, it’s not, oh, am I thirsty? Do I want to drink? The question is no. Do I want a Coke or do I want a Pepsi? Right? So likewise it’s actually good to have competitors and it’s good to have strong competitors because when they go viral, that’s what they’re going to do. They’re bringing more awareness to the entire drink market. Right. And and drinkware industry. And we’ve seen that same thing when we went viral on TikTok. It’s like, great. And then guess what? We had our competitors start copying us.

 

Josh Hadley 00:15:10  And I was like, dang it. But now, in hindsight, six months later, I’m like, actually, this has been really good because there’s been a massive amount of spillover onto Amazon and we’re scooping up a lot of those sales. Right? So I actually see it as a good thing. It’s like, okay, good. Like more more competition. As long as they’re raising awareness. Right? I think that the downside is if you’re playing only the Amazon game, where it’s like it’s already bottom of the funnel, there’s a limited number of search volume, and you’re just competing on that. Like that I see is a challenge. But if you’re trying to build a nine figure brand, then it is about like awareness and marketing and just growing the category itself. And so anyways, I just wanted to highlight that to our audience. That’s like sometimes it’s a really good thing to step in with. Maybe some of the big boys, like Yeti was a big company even back then. so anyways, I just think that’s an interesting fact that you talked about.

 

Bryan Porter 00:15:55  Yeah, no, that’s a great point. I haven’t fully thought about it in those terms, but yeah, it’s like Yeti has. I think really the demo at least they market to is like kind of outdoorsy hunter Fisher guy or at least the people who is, you know, like to think of themselves as that. Hydro Flask is more of like kind of the outdoorsman, hiker, Pacific Northwest type demographics. Well, was an urban woman. so yeah, I agree. I think that each brand is like, really kind of promoted the category in those different demographics. And I mean, there’s another component of, our brand where vacuum insulation just kind of like, feels like magic. I remember the first time that I tried, like, using vacuum insulation. it felt impossible. Like how hot my coffee still was. Three hours after I poured it into the bottle that I was using. And, you know, the outside, you can’t feel the temperature at all. so I think there’s like an inherent quality of the product that has sparked the growth of, of insulated drinkware.

 

Bryan Porter 00:16:55  The other products that we tried. I’m so glad you didn’t choose at this point, but we we sold a tea infuser. silicone baking mats, a French press, a lot of. And we had more products that we were sampling and going to buy whenever we decided, let’s just jump in and drinkware. But it’s really like kind of home and kitchen type products that you could heirship. and yeah, I if we had chosen any of those other categories just like simply the, the growth that we’ve had would not have been possible, no matter like how good of an operator you are. So that’s the best decision we’ve ever made by far.

 

Josh Hadley 00:17:30  What were those? Yeah. So what were those early signs that allowed you to say like, yeah, screw the tea infuser. We’re all in on the drinkware space.

 

Bryan Porter 00:17:38  I mean, it was really a combination of the size of the search volume on Amazon with the growth rates. It felt daunting to choose Drinkware because of that. but it also was clear that, like, the baseline we were starting at, like, if we could if we could win the category, we’d have an awesome brand.

 

Bryan Porter 00:17:54  but we also saw the trajectory it was on at the time. And, I think the thing that has compounded that has been that Amazon has also, what doubled tripled their revenue since 2015 from, from their store. So, yeah, those those three factors, I would say really, made possible what has happened in the analogy that we use is that like we chose to raft in the stream that we’re in or the river that we’re in? We can’t control the river, really? we can just try and navigate around, like, the different obstacles in the river and put ourselves in the best position possible. But we’re thankful that we’re in, like, a really strong current right now.

 

Josh Hadley 00:18:32  Yeah. No, I, I, I can’t emphasize that enough. And I think any of us in that e-commerce space, I think initially you get into it trying to make a buck, right? And you’re like, oh, I can make some money online, right? And then when you really dive into it, I think it is exactly what you just described.

 

Josh Hadley 00:18:45  Or it’s like you got to select the right vehicle or in your analogy, the right river to raft in. Right. Because like those rivers are going to take you into very different places. Right. And so if you would have stuck in the silicone baking mats, as you mentioned, like we wouldn’t have been able to explode and see the growth that we’ve had today. So I think that’s an important takeaway for our listeners. Now, Bryan, all of this sounds sounds fantastic. You guys have had perpetual growth for the last decade. There’s been no issues. It’s just been sunshine and rainbows, right?

 

Bryan Porter 00:19:12  I wish.

 

Josh Hadley 00:19:13  So tell me, tell me what some of those challenges are, because I think those are some of the unsexy things that a lot of us, you know, that we don’t talk about a lot. But there are some real challenges, especially when you’re scaling to nine figures. there’s some real challenges. So why don’t you describe some of those challenges to our listeners? what you guys have gone through?

 

Bryan Porter 00:19:31  Well you’re right.

 

Bryan Porter 00:19:32  The last ten years, I think, from the outside, look a lot easier than what it’s actually been like. so the first challenge for us, was cash flow. We were able to, thankfully, figure out the sales part of our business. pretty well. We chose the right strategies, but to, finance that was was really hard. we were a bootstrapped business. we invested about $200,000 into the initial startup of the business, and we, I think, underestimated how demanding an inventory business is on cashflow, especially when you’re growing at a strong rate. So, thankfully, we hired a really great CFO, fairly early on who has helped protect us. If we didn’t have him, there’s a great chance we wouldn’t have made it through. kind of the the growth phases of the business. In fact, there was one tax season where we learned that you can have forgiveness on your taxes if you pay them late. one time. So, we did that and we, you know, said that we were sorry and, ended up, you know, making it right, and playing by the rules.

 

Bryan Porter 00:20:44  But, you know, there were some times where, like, half was that time where we couldn’t make, like, tax payments on time. one, and I would say, like, our CFO for sure bore the burden of that stress the most. but one lever that we pulled that was really helpful for us was just, financing with our manufacturer. We both were able to get really great payment terms with them, which I’ve understood. That’s something that you’ve worked on with, with your manufacturer. but also they were willing to hold product for us and finish goods to where we were able to, to pull inventory out of, out of China on more of a demand basis instead of trying to, you know, project with the manufacturing cycle in. And that allowed us to have smaller mo cuz so if we needed to only send in 100 units of food straight to FDA. We could do that without having to make 500 units to hit a mock. So there are different ways that we’re able to massage the cash flow issue, but that’s probably been the most stressful thing for us so far in the business.

 

Josh Hadley 00:21:40  So overall, what you’re saying is, like with cash flow becoming one of the biggest issues, and that is definitely what most people in the E-comm space deal with is cash flow issues. You’re saying one one solution was, all right, we were able to delay our tax payments. Now you get that maybe one time. Ask for forgiveness. Okay. Play by the rules that way. So that’s one strategy you can use. But what you’re saying I think is the key here is sounds like that relationship with your manufacturer being able to have, you know, extended payment terms. And they are basically the ones financing the growth of your business. Right. And it wasn’t you know, you didn’t say, hey, well, we had to tap into a bunch of short term loans. We had a bunch of cash advances from, you know, all the there’s eight fig and all those different guys. They’ll be like, oh, I see your Amazon payment coming. Let me front you that cash, which is in my opinion, it’s just like you’re in a slow death spiral as soon as you start taking that stuff out because like, the interest just starts eating into everything, all of your margins.

 

Josh Hadley 00:22:32  Is that correct, Bryan? Like, tell me about that relationship with your guys’s manufacturer and and how do you, like, at what point did you guys have feel like you had negotiating power to extend payment terms or for them to hold, you know, finished goods that you guys hadn’t paid for yet?

 

Bryan Porter 00:22:47  so for us, one, decision that we made was to stick with one manufacturer instead of diversifying across multiple. I’ve learned that there’s trade offs with, you know, either direction you go. The benefits for us of having one manufacturer, we first off, we thought they were excellent at what they did, and we saw that they were willing to lean in with us. And so our manufacturing team did an incredible job of communicating to our manufacturer. This is why we’re successful. our success is your success. So for us, we need high skew counts, which means complexity for you. But you saying yes to that complexity means that we’re going to be able to give you more and more orders. Also, if you’re able to help us with financing, we didn’t know what their finance financing was or, you know, their financial structure looked like.

 

Bryan Porter 00:23:38  But if you’re in a spot where you can help us to order more product now, where we’ll pay you later, that’s more fuel that we can add to the fire and grow both of our businesses together. And so they were able to see the vision that we casted for them. And it wasn’t really a negotiation. It was more of like, we want to like, grow together. Like we’re kind of getting married with the way that this thing is going. we’re becoming more and more dependent upon each other. And so we’ve been able to build up trust over time. They’ve seen that, like, the ways that they’ve helped us with financing and complexity have led to more sales for them. so that’s that’s kind of how it’s looked like. It’s been less adversarial and more like relational in how we’ve approached it.

 

Josh Hadley 00:24:20  Yeah. Building an actual relationship with these guys, deciding to double down with them. Share your growth trajectory with them and have open and frank conversations with them. I love that I have heard this before.

 

Josh Hadley 00:24:31  but your payment terms with your supplier, if you can have favorable payment terms to where your cash flow conversion cycle is actually positive, right, in terms of like you’re getting paid before you’re actually having to pay for that inventory like that is the cheat code to e-commerce success. And if there is one, one big thing to focus on in the business, it is that because if you can create a relationship with your manufacturer that’s willing to say, like, yeah, let’s go, like you said, like it’s almost like you’re getting married to each other, but you’re like, you’re both relying upon each other for additional growth. And as you grow together, their order volume increases. Your sales increase as well. But as you do that, you’re able to grow faster because you can launch new products more quickly. You can expand your product catalog, you can launch new SKUs, new designs, new variations, and you can do that more quickly because you’re not having to put I got to pay 30% upfront, 70% when it ships.

 

Josh Hadley 00:25:22  Those are standard manufacturing payment terms. And you can see why some people say like I launched three products this year. Three products I don’t think are going to get you to $100 million valuation. Right. or $100 million in revenue, if that’s all you’re launching every year. So I think that’s so, so critical, Bryan, I’m sure there’s been some other challenges. I think one thing that I heard in your conversation at prosper is you talked about Amazon. You guys are now A1P relationship with Amazon. but I heard that you’ve had some issues with Amazon in the past that’s been challenging. So why don’t you share those details with us?

 

Bryan Porter 00:25:55  Well, transitioning to one P is, direct directly related to one of the events that was pretty significant for us in 2019. We had really, bought a ton of inventory for Black Friday and Cyber Monday. and, you know, you have to sell it in that period. There’s a very small window where a ton of sales happen. So there’s there’s a lot of pressure.

 

Bryan Porter 00:26:19  And, our Amazon seller account got shut down, I think, five days before Black Friday, which it wasn’t the first time that had gotten shut down. it was the week of Thanksgiving. And so I was in Colorado and various team members were also on vacation. We were kind of like, spread out. Not a great time to go through that. and first off, I’m like, okay, we’ve done this before. We’ll get it resolved. I’d submit a plan of action. It was like, you know, as usual, an issue that was like pretty bogus.

 

Josh Hadley 00:26:49  What, what what were some of those issues that you guys had had even in the past? And what was this one that was like trademark counterfeit goods?

 

Bryan Porter 00:26:56  Well, this one, this one was some arsons that we had, phased out and were totally discontinued and other sellers had like started using them to sell other products. And so Amazon flagged them and, took issue with that. So we have certainly done things with Amazon that were probably toeing the line of terms of service, as I’m sure most all sellers have.

 

Bryan Porter 00:27:21  but at that point, we were very much trying to abide by all the rules. Like we had a lot more to lose. And like, these discontinued ACS got our account shut down. So I submit the plan of action, like, you know, overnight, they say try again. go through a few rounds of that, and I think it’s on day three where we’re, like, knocking on the door of Black Friday, where I got like the third denial of of a plan of action. And I had a young kid at this point. so I was up in the middle of the night, like in Colorado on vacation to, help my son. And I make the mistake of looking at my email, and I get that, denial of of our application for reinstatement. And at two in the morning, I just remember, like, I just stared at the ceiling until the alarm went off, and it was the first time I thought, like, we could really, like, go out of business, like, this has to happen, or else, like, very quickly, we’re going to be insolvent.

 

Bryan Porter 00:28:16  so it was like a full on, triage situation at that point. And, like, Mike was, was starting to be able to get involved and, you know, do things that he could do. And some other team members were starting to chip in. We’re looking at our full product catalog, like whenever they respond, it was like kind of like a parent response to a kid like, you tell me what you did wrong.

 

Josh Hadley 00:28:35  Yes. Oh, yes, we’ve all been on the receiving end of this. You tell me what you did wrong, but we’re not going to give you any clues. Yeah.

 

Bryan Porter 00:28:42  And so, thankfully, to spare too much detail, we got it reinstated. kind of last minute before Black Friday, and we were able to get get our sales, going enough to where it ended up being fine, but we felt like Amazon, like, purposefully shut our account down. And we heard other accounts got shut down because they have so much leverage in that window. so anyway, we, a year later transitioned to Amazon one and along with several other reasons like being able to have an actual partnership with Amazon was the reason why we wanted to be a one tea vendor.

 

Bryan Porter 00:29:16  And not just like talking to some support person across the globe and our fate being in their hands.

 

Josh Hadley 00:29:21  Yeah, 100%. Overall, has one been a good transition? Like as you look at like the pros and cons like do you advise like our listeners that have had, you know, their wrist slap, so to speak and can relate to go one piece or, you know, what are the what’s your recommendation?

 

Bryan Porter 00:29:37  It’s highly contextual to your business. So I’ve decided I will never recommend a brand to go one or go three. for us, I believe it’s the best place for simple modern to be. I’ve learned that you have to have leverage with Amazon if you’re in one piece, in order to get attention from them. If you aren’t, ideally, you’re big and growing. That’s how you have leverage with them. if you aren’t both those things, or at least one of those things, then likely they’re just not going to help you in life is just way harder in one P vendor. Central is way, way, way worse than seller central.

 

Bryan Porter 00:30:14  You need help to make almost all your changes. but for us, like, we have seen a benefit of being able to have people at Amazon who are advocates for us and actively like working on our business. but yeah, it’s I can’t overstate how hard the transition was from £0.03 because as £0.03 sellers, we were so dependent on Amazon’s like FBA sending stuff straight from China that we had never touched. now we fulfill weekly POS to 1 p.m. where they buy week of cover every week, and it goes to like 70 different fulfillment centers. And we have to touch everything that we sell. So it forced us to to become way stronger than we were operationally and with our logistics. Super painful in the beginning, but it’s really like it was something that we had to go through to mature as a brand.

 

Josh Hadley 00:31:05  Yeah. Going back to your £0.03 example where you got your account suspended, you you magically get it back up right before Black Friday. what was it? Was it a relationship? was it, you know, other contacts that pointed you in the right direction to help you understand what the issue potentially was? What was it that kind of freed you up? Because we hear this time and time again where people get suspended, they can’t get unblocked because, like, they’re not hitting the right magic words.

 

Josh Hadley 00:31:30  is there any advice you could share with the listeners to be like, this is, you know, kind of what helped us get out of that bad situation?

 

Bryan Porter 00:31:38  I wish I could tell you it was this one thing. so Amazon kind of gave us a little bit more color on, like, what they were upset about and essentially told us, like, all of your actions need to be like, compliant, whether they’re discontinued or selling. And so we had thousands of Asians. Our team pretty much pulled an all nighter, like going through our Amazon catalog to try and fix any small issue that could be there. and our account, like, kind of randomly just came back. I what I think happened is somebody, In some other country. Just, like, decided to turn it on. I wish, I wish there was more like, we did this thing and it it got it back, but, there were also some, like, we escalated it with our, account rep, and, like, we were really trying to push it up the chain.

 

Bryan Porter 00:32:28  It could be that, like, doing that helped. But the timing of it, it really just felt like some, employee who doesn’t really know anything about our business just push the button. And it came back on, which is kind of frustrating, but.

 

Josh Hadley 00:32:41  I know.

 

Bryan Porter 00:32:41  That it happened.

 

Josh Hadley 00:32:42  I’ve heard that time and time again. Okay. let’s talk about, a product defect here that you guys had that you felt was like a really significant setback for your guys’s business as well. And how did you handle this?

 

Bryan Porter 00:32:56  so we in general have have really avoided a lot of, like, catastrophes. And I’m naming most of them right now. so we, the lady that I was talking about earlier that we had developed and was our best water bottle lid. Our manufacturer made a slight change to the air gasket, and they thought that they were making an improvement on it to make it more leak resistant. But the change they made, made it to where air couldn’t go in the bottle when you were drinking from it.

 

Bryan Porter 00:33:24  And when that’s true, you have a paperweight because you cannot draw any water out of it unless air is going into the bottle. so a million units got made with defective gaskets on it. It’s a little piece of silicone that goes in a little hole on the top. we realized it after, like, most of that inventory had been shipped. So, we decided to have a rework process where we hired it was in the summertime. We hired a bunch of students to, and our office staff went to this facility that we rented out, had as much inventory routed there and pulled from warehouses as possible. essentially got toothpicks and popped out the little silicone gasket. And then, our manufacturer shipped ones that were the old mold that worked properly and just, replaced it and repackaged it and put it in a pile of good inventory. And I’ll say that it was it was really, really hard, to go through that process. It wasn’t fun. We got a bunch of bad reviews, unfortunately, from it, but we mitigated that by doing the rework.

 

Bryan Porter 00:34:29  If we didn’t do the rework, then, I think that our business, we would have lost a ton of customers just from having unusable products get sent out. so it was a good thing for us in the sense that we got to see what, like around a million like, water bottles looks like physically and not on a spreadsheet? to give us an appreciation for, like, how much we’re selling, like what our manufacturer is doing for us, what our three is doing for us. I think we started to take it for granted at that point. and it really was like kind of a unifying process for the team where we got to, like, do something together, and sweat together. If you can imagine a warehouse in Oklahoma without air conditioning. Like, it’s not. It’s not fun.

 

Josh Hadley 00:35:11  Not good.

 

Bryan Porter 00:35:11  But it’s something that we can point back on to. The people who were a part of that is like a defining moment for us. And thankfully, we were able to mitigate, like what would have been just a major issue for our brand.

 

Josh Hadley 00:35:23  Yeah, Bryan, I love that through all of these, you know, fairly significant challenges, right? Like cash flow, not being able to pay your taxes, Amazon account being shut down, million units being defective. Right. You’ve been able to overcome all of these obstacles and yet you guys have still been able to grow. And I think that’s like an important lesson for people to take away. Like in the e-commerce space, like because you’re in the e-commerce space and in technology and innovation is just rapidly changing and increasing things at warp speed, like things are just going to always be changing, and you have to be able to overcome these hurdles and, and have that persistence to move forward. Like you’re going to have these hard days. Now the good thing is like, can you change your mindset that when the hard things happen that you can say, good, right? Because you know that nobody else will follow. And I think that is like, that’s the environment that we find ourselves in today.

 

Josh Hadley 00:36:11  As we record this, we are in the midst of big terror, terror of blow ups going on right now. And I know for you guys like this is a massive impact for you guys. So I think this is super timely. By the time this thing airs, whether it be a week or two from now, the tariff thing is already going to have shifted. but talk to us about where you’re at in this moment right now, Bryan. How do you see this as an opportunity, or how do you see this as like how do you navigate around it knowing that your manufacturer, your one manufacturer, you’ve created, this, marriage type relationship with is located in China. So walk us through what your thought process is, Bryan, and maybe your recommendations for other sellers that are in the same boat.

 

Bryan Porter 00:36:50  Well, as we record today on April 14th, that’s what we know it could be by the time that listeners are tuning in. But the issues are a lot better or a lot worse. I guess we’ll find out.

 

Bryan Porter 00:37:01  But as of today, the tariffs are 150% more. Our products cost 150% more than they did at the start of the year. And everything that we sell, as I believe with probably every other brand, is now unprofitable. So, for us, we there are a few things that are true, and we want to be principled. one of the principles is that we want to lean into our partnerships during this time. There’s a temptation to want to, try and protect yourself to the detriment of a partner, especially a manufacturer in China. so we’re we’re trying to work together with them through this. we know that this is more challenging for them even than for us. So, like, how can we work together with them to figure this out? Is one question. another question is how can we not react to a short term problem and make long term decisions in the most unstable environment? We wanted to react quickly by changing prices, but we’ve realized that for us, it’s strategic to see how all other brands change their prices and see how we can fit in and maybe position ourselves better than how we were at the start of the year.

 

Bryan Porter 00:38:17  This is kind of like a, they get out of jail free card. So we’re like, you can kind of set whatever pricing structure you want. Now you don’t have to be what you were. and that’s true in a lot of ways. you can change a lot with your business right now, for better or worse. So but we want more data. We want to know, like, what are our long term costs? What are our competitors doing? And through this time, we’re trying to squeeze value out of the rest of the supply chain and, like our marketing budgets and things like that, even retail partnerships to to try and position ourselves with customers and being like the everyday low price option. Right now, we’re not running any deals. we’ve pretty much turned off Amazon ads, but we want to stay in stock and we want to be still a great value for customers, kind of during a hard time for them to, Into And so we think that, like as I mentioned early on, we’ve grown for ten years.

 

Bryan Porter 00:39:06  we think this is going to be our first year that we’re down, and we think we’re probably gonna be down pretty big. the tree core category has been up the last ten years. It’s down 20% so far. and that was before the impact of the tariffs started to hit. So it could be that Drinkware is down 50% this year. I think that’s very possible. but I think it’s also possible we could grow our market share a ton compared to our competitors, depending on how we handle this. So, I would just encourage the, the listeners to, through this, this time period, this really hard that the strategies that you take, matter a lot. This is probably going to be a period that we get through. the way that you treat people through it matters a lot like those relationships are going to exist after this crisis is over. And I think you can reposition yourself in your market in a better way. depending on how you handle it.

 

Josh Hadley 00:39:59  I think those are words of wisdom. And I think part of that, Bryan, none of it was, hey, so yeah, one of the things that we’re doing is we’re having our manufacturer itemize everything out.

 

Josh Hadley 00:40:07  We’re starting to, like, parse out, like, here’s the actual cost of this component and this component, that component for sale doctrine, etc.. We’re not doing DDP like none of those like things that you talked about, which are kind of like spreading throughout LinkedIn and Facebook groups right now. Like, those are the short term strategies that a lot of people are like thinking about my my perspective as well on this. This is like it’s one thing to to play in the gray area on Amazon knowing that, like, okay, you can try to work through that. It’s another thing to play in the gray area with the US government, where there’s a imprisonment and substantial fines that can, like literally shut down your business overnight with no recourse. Right.

 

Bryan Porter 00:40:45  It’s a nonstarter for us to try and show any lower value of like imported costs. Like, to your point, like if you look at risk reward, that is just not the right game to be playing.

 

Josh Hadley 00:40:55  So and for you guys like your bite, you’re biting your time.

 

Josh Hadley 00:40:59  But also like before we hit the record button, you also mentioned like you’re still placing POS, right? And you’re still accepting those POS knowing that. Yeah, like it turned unprofitable overnight for us. But the brands that don’t move forward and just sit on their hands that go out of stock, maybe it becomes like it was for you guys in Covid where Stanley went out of stock and you guys were the next man up and actually captured a ton of market share. Is that kind of the strategy that you’re banking on here?

 

Bryan Porter 00:41:24  we believe that there’s going to be a significant shortage of goods that’s coming our way that could even, be larger than the pandemic, where you have empty shelves, shipping containers, three x in cost and three x in time it takes to get here. because no one, no one’s importing anything right now. And then, you know, whenever there’s a signal from the government that this is our long term cost, there’s going to be a flood of, companies booking ships. And, you know, what’s going to happen whenever there’s more demand than supply of of ships and containers.

 

Bryan Porter 00:41:58  It’s going to be. We think it’s going to be bad. So this is one of the ways that we’re trying to be strategic and counter to a lot of conventional wisdom is, we want to have products here. We believe that, one of the ways you go out of business is you just don’t have anything that you can sell. thankfully, we don’t have much debt. but we need to keep products on shelves. And, we’re working with our manufacturer on costs that work for both of us because we need our manufacturer to continue to, be able to build stuff and pay their employees. We need them to to try and be as healthy as they can be through this process, because we’re dependent on them still. So we think it’s in both of our best interests at kind of like new costs that we’ve agreed to that factor in, like the tariffs that we’re paying. And there is a risk for the tariff to go up for us, like taking all this inventory, that we there could be a point this year where having like enough supply is like puts us in the driver’s seat.

 

Bryan Porter 00:42:57  for for being able to do the best we can this year and maybe, you know, gain a lot of customers this year that we wouldn’t have otherwise.

 

Josh Hadley 00:43:03  Yeah, I love it. I love that strategy. It’s a game of poker right now. Right. Who’s going to fold earlier? I love hearing your guys’s strategy. Love what you guys have built. Bryan, as we leave our listeners today as we wrap up this episode, I’d love to leave the audience with three actionable takeaways. Here are the actionable takeaways that I noted. You let me know if I’m missing something. Number one, as it relates to product selection, we talked about this earlier, but you guys tested a bunch of different products to begin with, and you went in with a product that you felt had a large total addressable market. There were there was a lot of search volume, but it was also a very competitive market. Right. And so I think that if for those that have aspirations to have a nine figure brand, you also have to be willing to, you know, jump into those shark infested waters and actually build something great, which then leads into kind of like action item number two, part of the reason why you guys have had success and not even part.

 

Josh Hadley 00:43:53  But probably the biggest component of your guys’s success is like product differentiation, right? You guys created a solid product, right? That was leakproof that was better than Stanley, so that when the viral TikTok video showing your product for Stanley were going viral, like, you guys were able to capture that. You guys were able to create licensing deals with big players like Disney, because you had a differentiated product that was better than the existing Drinkware that, as you talked about, was like the Drinkware was actually secondary to them. It was just a bunch of different products. What else could we put a license on? And so you guys went the unconventional route, so to speak, and you actually dialed in what would be more beneficial for the customer? And then my third and final action item for our listeners is simply to never give up. I think that there were multiple times here, Bryan, and your guys’s story and journey, that like, it would have been easy to throw in the towel, right? It’s like, oh man, like, do we really want to be in this space if we can’t even pay taxes? Right? Do we even want to be in the space if, like Amazon, our primary breadwinner, doesn’t want to play nice to us? Or it could go dark overnight, right? Manufacturing defects.

 

Josh Hadley 00:44:51  And I think like it’s just having that resilience and. Expecting the bad things to come right. And being grateful for the days when there isn’t anything that we’re dealing with, such as tariffs or manufacturing defects or cash flow issues. And it’s those three things that compound upon each other day after day after day. And that’s why, over the course of a decade, you can look back and have a $250 million brand. But again, you’re an overnight success story. Just took you ten years to get there. so, Bryan, is there anything else that you feel like, we didn’t touch on that? You feel like our audience should know?

 

Bryan Porter 00:45:22  well, I would say that to the point you made. We’re we’re analysts at heart. We want to get data and make decisions based on data. The faster we can get it, the better we can make decisions. And you know what better ways to to operate in e-commerce where you get like very quick feedback cycles much quicker than selling in stores. so really like kind of paying attention to our numbers and trying to even position ourselves to get data as quickly as possible as an been important for us throughout the years.

 

Bryan Porter 00:45:52  And then I think, like really every adversity that we face is also an opportunity, whether it’s an opportunity for our team to grow closer together or it could be an opportunity for us to outmaneuver our competition and maybe break through some some market share ceilings that we were feeling. there’s there’s always ways to, view the situation you’re in. And I think that a lot of times we, we try to view, situations as like, you know, failure isn’t really like a thing for us. Like we’re in it to try and learn to try and like, you know, grow together. And if it doesn’t go well, guess what? We learned that the way that we approach the situation wasn’t good in the next time we come into a situation like that will do better. as opposed to like if you’re in a hard situation and, there’s finger pointing like, well, Johnny made this one decision that really, like took us down hill. It was his fault. Like, you can really turn on each other if you don’t have like, kind of that, mindset that we’re going to do the best we can and live with the results, and we’re going to get better for it either way.

 

Bryan Porter 00:46:51  So that’s been a helpful mentality for us.

 

Josh Hadley 00:46:54  It’s all in the mindset. I can say it better. All right Bryan, final three questions. What’s been the most influential book that you’ve read and why?

 

Bryan Porter 00:47:02  I’ve been, racking my brain for all the different options. on this, I will have to say that it’s a book called Practicing the Way by John Mark Comber. If you happen to. Have you heard of that book before?

 

Josh Hadley 00:47:13  I have not heard of that book first. First recommendation for that book on the podcast.

 

Bryan Porter 00:47:16  Yeah. Well, it’s fairly new. It’s not like specifically a business book, but, it’s a book about disciplines. It’s taken from the Bible and spiritual disciplines. But, my, my belief is that they, they apply to all of us. And the way that we’re created an example is like generosity is a practice that’s discussed in the book, and it’s a practice that’s needed by by everyone. And it’s not the person that receives the generosity that’s impacted the most. It’s it’s me, that’s impacted the most by being generous, because it turns my heart from greed to being others focused.

 

Bryan Porter 00:47:53  And it takes me from thinking that going from, you know, whatever a $250 million business to $1 billion business is going to satisfy me. because it’s not, we think that like, simple moderns, like we’re pursuing purpose and meaning with simple modern, not like happiness from whatever profits are generated and, you know, whatever consumption can be found from, from our success. So anyway, this, this book outlines like generosity, solitude, many, many different things that, I think are important to us, that I think are undervalued in our culture and even countercultural in a lot of ways. So I recommend everyone listening to give it a shot and see, see what John Martin has to say.

 

Josh Hadley 00:48:34  You’ve piqued my interest. I’m interested. Love it. All right. Bryan. what’s your favorite AI tool or ChatGPT prompt that you’ve been using?

 

Bryan Porter 00:48:42  we use a tool called Siena. I believe that the URL is Seina AI. But it’s a customer support AI tool that we’ve used for a year and a half now.

 

Bryan Porter 00:48:53  And when we started, you know, AI’s progressing in a crazy rate. When we started, it was like, you know, this is going to be a thing. we should start getting in front of it and seeing the his both. When we started, they were ahead of the time and they’ve, they’ve kind of stayed ahead with how they’ve developed. But I’ve been incredibly thankful for that tool both in like the quality of responses it gives to customers. You think like you know, chatbot when you hear AI for customer support. But this is like responses that are above and beyond what, like our human reps are able to do. they’re very high quality. And Siena ranks how well it can respond to a customer for every ticket. And so if, if the score it gives itself is like below and nine out of ten, then it just won’t respond and it’ll kick it to our our support team. If it thinks it can respond well, it’ll go ahead and do it. Customers get immediate help.

 

Bryan Porter 00:49:43  even, you know, the two in the morning on Sunday morning. Like, they can get help with their issue. So it’s better in a lot of ways. And I’ve just been super impressed with their founders and their team. I highly recommend them.

 

Josh Hadley 00:49:54  Love it. So I’ve been looking this up. So Siena. Does that sound right?

 

Bryan Porter 00:49:58  That sounds right. Hopefully I’m getting the right URL.

 

Josh Hadley 00:50:00  Yeah. S I e n a Siena. Very cool. Love that. It says it’s the number one empathetic AI customer service agent. Very cool. Love it. All right. Final question for you here, Bryan. Who is somebody that you admire or respect the most in the e-commerce space that other people should be following and why?

 

Bryan Porter 00:50:17  Okay. Well, I’m going to go ahead and give a shout out to one of my best friends, Mike Beckham, who I get to do this with. he has a podcast called The Operators. I would highly recommend, any listeners here to to also tune in to the operators.

 

Bryan Porter 00:50:32  follow Mike on LinkedIn. Twitter. I would say Mike is just one of the highest character people, highest integrity people I know. Whenever you’re putting thoughts out online, it’s like, you know, who knows what that person’s really like. But I can vouch that Mike, is a, He is the person online who he is. you know, whenever he’s, with his kids or hanging out with his friends. I love Mike and just think he has a lot of great thoughts. He he lives life, like, six months in the future. which is great because I’m very much like, a present day thinker. but he’s able to share some, some really interesting things online because of that love.

 

Josh Hadley 00:51:09  It is a great person to follow and excellent podcast. I’m already a follower and subscriber as well. So Bryan, thank you so much for your time today. If people want to follow you, they want to learn more about Simple Modern by some of your products. Where’s the best place people can follow you and reach out?

 

Bryan Porter 00:51:22  Sure, yeah, I share things on Twitter and LinkedIn.

 

Bryan Porter 00:51:27  J Bryan Porter is my handle on both. And then, yeah, simple modern.com searches on Amazon. appreciate any any support, that we get.

 

Josh Hadley 00:51:37  Awesome. Well, Bryan, thanks for your time coming on the show today.

 

Bryan Porter 00:51:40  Thank you. Josh, it was a blast.