{"id":79325,"date":"2026-05-08T20:56:40","date_gmt":"2026-05-08T20:56:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dralysstore.com\/blog\/?p=79325"},"modified":"2026-05-08T20:56:40","modified_gmt":"2026-05-08T20:56:40","slug":"inside-beardbrands-expansion-plan-practical-ecommerce","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dralysstore.com\/blog\/inside-beardbrands-expansion-plan-practical-ecommerce\/","title":{"rendered":"Inside Beardbrand’s Expansion Plan – Practical Ecommerce"},"content":{"rendered":"
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We\u2019ve hit a plateau at Beardbrand, the direct-to-consumer business I launched 15 years ago. Our revenue is down from its peak. We\u2019ve made mistakes. The beard care space has dried up.<\/p>\n

We\u2019ve moved from a blue ocean<\/a> of growth and opportunity to a red one of fierce competition. If Beardbrand grows, a competitor loses, and vice versa.<\/p>\n

In this episode, I\u2019ll depart from my typical interview format and share our plans for moving Beardbrand forward. My goal is to help other merchants in similar circumstances.<\/p>\n

My entire audio narrative is embedded below. The transcript is edited for clarity and length.<\/p>\n

Growth Tactics<\/h3>\n

Our name, Beardbrand, might be a problem in a marketplace that isn\u2019t growing. Yet we offer non-beard products, such as colognes, deodorant, and bar soap. We have a shampoo and conditioner, which we call a wash and a softener. We have hair styling products.<\/p>\n

So we are a men\u2019s grooming company, much more than beard care.<\/p>\n

Focus. <\/strong>We\u2019ve done a lot of belt-tightening. We\u2019re focusing on what works and what doesn\u2019t. That\u2019s why we\u2019re leaning into Meta, our top customer acquisition channel. Meta is not a consistent home run, as ad performance is volatile and increasingly expensive.<\/p>\n

Still, within Meta there are opportunities. We can introduce more of our product categories and continue what we\u2019ve been doing, only better.<\/p>\n

We\u2019re evaluating partnerships with Meta content creators to reach new audiences. I hope to increase our Meta ad spend<\/a> by three times.<\/span><\/p>\n

Social media.<\/strong> We\u2019ve historically done well with organic social media, yet we\u2019re struggling with it now. Engaging other content creators, notably on YouTube and TikTok, will likely be far more effective. Plus, we hope to learn from those creators and implement their ideas into our ad strategy.<\/p>\n

For several weeks, we\u2019ve sent samples to many TikTok creators through the platform\u2019s affiliate network<\/a>, paying commissions when due. It\u2019s the early days, yet we\u2019re already seeing success, which we hope will snowball.<\/p>\n

YouTube\u2019s affiliate program is less robust, though we\u2019re much more experienced on YouTube than TikTok.<\/p>\n

We have a great collaboration with Jeremy Siers.<\/a> He\u2019s a content creator focused on male-oriented brands and products, such as guns, knives, barbecue, and whiskey. And he has a great beard.<\/p>\n

Product development. <\/strong>We\u2019re focusing on products that are doing well now rather than launching new ones. Yet we still see new product opportunities.<\/p>\n

One of those is a beard trimmer, a high-end, premium, $300 pass-this-on-to-your-grandkids kind of trimmer with a timeless style. The Apple of beard trimmers.<\/p>\n

We\u2019ve not produced mechanical products. A trimmer could cost upwards of $100,000 to develop and launch, not including marketing costs. Is there really a market for a $300 ultra-premium heirloom beard trimmer? Maybe.<\/p>\n

But at this point, we need to move past our struggles and focus on small, incremental wins.<\/p>\n

Packaging. <\/strong>Here\u2019s a mistake. We altered our packaging and manufacturing to satisfy Target before it committed to us. We now have a lot of 4-ounce aluminum containers, up from our traditional 1-ounce version, to occupy more Target shelf space. Plus we cut three popular fragrances.<\/p>\n

Then Target dropped us<\/a>.<\/p>\n

We\u2019re going to stay with the aluminum packaging, as it stands out in the marketplace. But the cost of aluminum is rising, mostly due to tariffs. An aluminum bottle costs four times as much as glass.<\/p>\n

We still offer the traditional glass-and-plastic option as our value option on Amazon.<\/p>\n

Cross-border selling. <\/strong>We launched on OpenBorder<\/a> a few weeks ago. It will help us get products into European countries with fewer regulatory requirements than if we did it ourselves. The growth will likely be incremental, perhaps another 10% to 20% of revenue.<\/p>\n

It could lead to our own Europe-based warehouse, but we\u2019re a long way from that. Nonetheless, OpenBorder enable us to reach new consumers.<\/p>\n

Amazon<\/strong> is super tough, super competitive. Fees are going up. Success is getting harder, but we\u2019re not giving up. We\u2019re going to lean into higher-priced ads to acquire more customers.<\/p>\n

We\u2019ve been on Amazon for roughly three years. As long as it makes money, we\u2019ll keep doing it. But, looking forward, a business where we trip over a dime to pick up a penny is not for me.<\/p>\n

What We\u2019re Avoiding<\/h3>\n

Barbershops.<\/strong> We have a barbershop here in Austin, Texas, that offers customers phenomenal experiences. Yet I have no desire to expand. It would be cool to have 50 barbershops across major metropolitan areas. It would also be capital-intensive.<\/p>\n

Wholesale.<\/strong> We work with retailers (especially brick-and-mortar) that want to sell our products. Mostly it\u2019s pharmacies, barber shops, and salons.<\/p>\n

Would I consider returning to Target or adding Walmart if they approached us? Potentially. But it would take a lot of work to ramp up for a mass retailer<\/a>. We\u2019ll stick with the smaller independents for now.<\/p>\n

Google Search ads.<\/strong> We\u2019ve not advertised on Google Search for two years now. We don\u2019t miss it.<\/p>\n

YouTube advertising.<\/strong> There\u2019s potential with YouTube ads<\/a>. We had success with advertising there years ago. But for now we\u2019re going to optimize our organic content to engage and convert prospects.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m a bit burned out on YouTube after posting videos there for 15 years. I\u2019ve said everything I want to say. Perhaps we can work with other creators, such as Isaac Medeiros<\/a> with Mini Katana. He could handle the strategy and editing. We would produce the raw content.<\/p>\n

Reach Out<\/h3>\n

See what we\u2019re up to at Beardbrand.com<\/a>. There\u2019s a great\u00a0 D2C community on X. My channel there is @bandholz<\/a>. Reach out with ideas, successes, failures. We\u2019ll grow together.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

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Published by Dralys Blog \u2013 Stories | Insights | Innovation<\/strong><\/p>\n

Discover more on DralysStore.com<\/a><\/p>\n

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We\u2019ve hit a plateau at Beardbrand, the direct-to-consumer business I launched 15 years ago. Our revenue is down from its peak. We\u2019ve made mistakes. The beard care space…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":79326,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[38,40],"tags":[78,45,10],"class_list":["post-79325","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-e-commerce-shopping","category-technology-innovation","tag-ai","tag-innovation","tag-technology"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/dralysstore.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/Eric-Bandholz-360-x-240-px.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dralysstore.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79325","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dralysstore.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dralysstore.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dralysstore.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dralysstore.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=79325"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dralysstore.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79325\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":79327,"href":"https:\/\/dralysstore.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79325\/revisions\/79327"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dralysstore.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/79326"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dralysstore.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=79325"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dralysstore.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=79325"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dralysstore.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=79325"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}