<\/p>\n
Occasionally on the podcast I depart from interviewing guests and share my own experiences running Beardbrand, the D2C company I founded in 2012.<\/p>\n
In this episode, I address my favorite ecommerce tools in 2026, the platforms and apps essential to our business.<\/p>\n
My entire audio narration is embedded below. The transcript is edited for clarity and length.<\/p>\n
Shopify<\/a><\/strong> is an incredible platform for Beardbrand. It gives us the flexibility to quickly test and implement major site changes, such as restructuring our product pages. For example, we replaced multiple fragrance variants on a single product page with individual pages for each fragrance, supported by a collection page.<\/p>\n We can now tell the story of each scent, showcase fragrance-specific reviews, and recommend matching products. The result? A faster site and improved conversions (about 4.6%). For performance, storytelling, and scalability, Shopify dominates<\/a>.<\/p>\n Judge.me<\/strong><\/a>. Another foundational tool is Judge.me, a customer review widget. I\u2019m now a brand ambassador for that company after using it for years. The app is economical; we pay just $15 per month. We\u2019ve customized it to blend into our website, and it looks beautiful.<\/p>\n Recharge<\/a>. <\/strong>I\u2019ve experienced ups and downs over the years with Recharge, the subscription management<\/a> platform. Sometimes I feel it\u2019s too expensive, but lately the features have improved. I\u2019ve received compliments from customers on how we run our subscriptions and how easy the process is. Recharge has been a good partner. We have no intentions or plans to look elsewhere.<\/p>\n Klaviyo<\/a>. <\/strong>We\u2019ve long used Klaivyo for all email and text campaigns and automated flows. The decision to include text messaging with Klaviyo was not easy. Postscript is the best in that category for us. But we wanted to consolidate our data<\/a>. Klaviyo\u2019s text platform is serviceable and a good option. Email is critical to Beardbrand\u2019s success. Our subscriber database functions like a customer management platform.<\/p>\n PostPilot<\/a>. <\/strong>We have been utilizing PostPilot for our physical postcard campaigns. It\u2019s a nice service, especially to reach folks who have unsubscribed from email and text. They still buy from us, however, and PostPilot<\/a> is a great way to stay in front of them.<\/p>\n Opensend<\/a><\/strong> helps us identify and reach anonymous site visitors who show interest in purchasing our products. The service has improved our conversions. We sync it with PostPilot flows and let it run automatically.<\/p>\n Grapevine Surveys<\/a><\/strong> is an essential post-purchase<\/a> survey tool for customer insights. Grapevine is more affordable than platforms such as Triple Whale<\/a> or Northbeam, both of which are great, precise options for larger brands. For us, Grapevine provides a simple three-question post-purchase survey: How long is your beard? How did you find us? Why did you choose us?<\/p>\n Meta Ads<\/a> <\/strong>is our primary channel for customer acquisition<\/a>. We create a ton of ads \u2014 some in-house and some with an agency.<\/p>\n CapCut<\/a><\/strong> is an AI-driven video-editing software. We don\u2019t use it directly, but our agency does. CapCut streamlines and expedites the production process and lessens the burden of our in-house video editor.<\/p>\n Grok Imagine<\/a><\/strong> from X generates 6-second videos from prompts. If you\u2019re not using AI video for some of your ads, you\u2019re missing out. I love Grok Imagine. We can create an amazing number of videos quickly. The best use for us is video clips based on prompts of still images of real people, as testimonials. We never use AI to generate fake people and referrals, which is illegal.<\/p>\n Arcads<\/a>.<\/strong> Mike, our growth marketer, uses Arcads, which is similar to Grok Imagine but more limiting. Sometimes he\u2019ll have me generate videos in Grok Imagine, with its speed and capacity, and then send to him.<\/p>\n Google Nano Banana<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong>does a great job for our static images. Our product labels have a lot of text that\u2019s challenging for AI to reproduce. Nano Banana is not perfect, but its errors and hallucinations in the text on our bottles are noticeable only if you stop and study it for a few seconds. Overall, Nono Banana is impressive. For example, I used it to generate an image with black hardened lava next to a knockout photo of our beard oil, to place on a bottle. It did a great job. If you are not experimenting with AI image and video generation, get in there, learn, and start cranking out stuff.<\/p>\n Settle<\/a><\/strong> is an accounts payable and vendor management platform. We signed up late last year. It syncs with our newly adopted accrual accounting system (we had long been on a cash basis) and helps us allocate resources and see where our money is going. Our bookkeeper enters all vendor invoices into Settle. I can verify the accuracy of the invoices and the timing of our payment.<\/p>\n Mercury<\/a>.<\/strong> We switched to Mercury, a bank-like platform, about six months ago. It\u2019s been a game-changer. It\u2019s entirely different from our previous (traditional) bank. We\u2019ve automated cash transfers between our operational checking and savings accounts to maintain the minimum checking balance while preventing overdrafts. We also use Mercury for our employee credit cards. Mercury pays off the balances immediately once they hit a threshold. It eliminates fees and saves a ton of time.<\/p>\n ShipStation<\/a><\/strong> and OpenBorder<\/strong><\/a>. We still use ShipStation\u2019s software for fulfillment and shipping, integrating with our third-party fulfillment provider. We signed up with OpenBorder, another software platform, to expedite logistics into Europe<\/a>. We haven\u2019t officially returned to Europe, but it\u2019s coming. OpenBorder\u2019s assistance is helping.<\/p>\nMarketing<\/h3>\n
Creative<\/h3>\n
Operations<\/h3>\n