Sometimes on the podcast I depart from interviewing company and share my very own experiences working Beardbrand, the D2C firm I based in 2012.
On this episode, I deal with my favourite ecommerce instruments in 2026, the platforms and apps important to our enterprise.
My total audio narration is embedded beneath. The transcript is edited for readability and size.
Web site
Shopify is an unbelievable platform for Beardbrand. It offers us the pliability to shortly check and implement main web site adjustments, resembling restructuring our product pages. For instance, we changed a number of perfume variants on a single product web page with particular person pages for every perfume, supported by a group web page.
We will now inform the story of every scent, showcase fragrance-specific evaluations, and suggest matching merchandise. The consequence? A sooner web site and improved conversions (about 4.6%). For efficiency, storytelling, and scalability, Shopify dominates.
Choose.me. One other foundational device is Choose.me, a buyer assessment widget. I’m now a model ambassador for that firm after utilizing it for years. The app is economical; we pay simply $15 per 30 days. We’ve custom-made it to mix into our web site, and it seems stunning.
Recharge. I’ve skilled ups and downs through the years with Recharge, the subscription administration platform. Generally I really feel it’s too costly, however recently the options have improved. I’ve acquired compliments from clients on how we run our subscriptions and the way simple the method is. Recharge has been a great associate. We have now no intentions or plans to look elsewhere.
Advertising and marketing
Klaviyo. We’ve lengthy used Klaivyo for all electronic mail and textual content campaigns and automatic flows. The choice to incorporate textual content messaging with Klaviyo was not simple. Postscript is the perfect in that class for us. However we needed to consolidate our knowledge. Klaviyo’s textual content platform is serviceable and a great choice. E mail is essential to Beardbrand’s success. Our subscriber database capabilities like a buyer administration platform.
PostPilot. We have now been using PostPilot for our bodily postcard campaigns. It’s a pleasant service, particularly to succeed in of us who’ve unsubscribed from electronic mail and textual content. They nonetheless purchase from us, nonetheless, and PostPilot is an effective way to remain in entrance of them.
Opensend helps us establish and attain nameless web site guests who present curiosity in buying our merchandise. The service has improved our conversions. We sync it with PostPilot flows and let it run mechanically.
Grapevine Surveys is an important post-purchase survey device for buyer insights. Grapevine is extra inexpensive than platforms resembling Triple Whale or Northbeam, each of that are nice, exact choices for bigger manufacturers. For us, Grapevine offers a easy three-question post-purchase survey: How lengthy is your beard? How did you discover us? Why did you select us?
Meta Adverts is our main channel for buyer acquisition. We create a ton of advertisements — some in-house and a few with an company.
Artistic
CapCut is an AI-driven video-editing software program. We don’t use it instantly, however our company does. CapCut streamlines and expedites the manufacturing course of and lessens the burden of our in-house video editor.
Grok Think about from X generates 6-second movies from prompts. For those who’re not utilizing AI video for a few of your advertisements, you’re lacking out. I really like Grok Think about. We will create an incredible variety of movies shortly. The most effective use for us is video clips primarily based on prompts of nonetheless photographs of actual individuals, as testimonials. We by no means use AI to generate pretend individuals and referrals, which is unlawful.
Arcads. Mike, our progress marketer, makes use of Arcads, which has similarities to Grok Think about however extra limiting. Generally he’ll have me generate movies in Grok Think about, with its velocity and capability, after which ship to him.
Google Nano Banana does an awesome job for our static photographs. Our product labels have quite a lot of textual content that’s difficult for AI to breed. Nano Banana is just not excellent, however its errors and hallucinations within the textual content on our bottles are noticeable provided that you cease and research it for a couple of seconds. General, Nono Banana is spectacular. For instance, I used it to generate a picture with black hardened lava subsequent to a knockout picture of our beard oil, to put on a bottle. It did an awesome job. In case you are not experimenting with AI picture and video era, get in there, be taught, and begin cranking out stuff.
Operations
Settle is an accounts payable and vendor administration platform. We signed up late final 12 months. It syncs with our newly adopted accrual accounting system (we had lengthy been on a money foundation) and helps us allocate assets and see the place our cash goes. Our bookkeeper enters all vendor invoices into Settle. I can confirm the accuracy of the invoices and the timing of our fee.
Mercury. We switched to Mercury, a bank-like platform, about six months in the past. It’s been a game-changer. It’s fully completely different from our earlier (conventional) financial institution. We’ve automated money transfers between our operational checking and financial savings accounts to take care of the minimal checking steadiness whereas stopping overdrafts. We additionally use Mercury for our worker bank cards. Mercury pays off the balances instantly as soon as they hit a threshold. It eliminates charges and saves a ton of time.
ShipStation and OpenBorder. We nonetheless use ShipStation’s software program for achievement and delivery, integrating with our third-party achievement supplier. We signed up with OpenBorder, one other software program platform, to expedite logistics into Europe. We haven’t formally returned to Europe, nevertheless it’s coming. OpenBorder’s help helps.
Slack. All people makes use of Slack. We as soon as used Asana, Trello, and Basecamp, amongst different collaboration platforms. We dropped all of them in favor of Slack, which can be our venture administration device. We’re saving cash for equal productiveness.
Google Docs. I’m not a fan of big firms resembling Google. They keep my knowledge, and I lose privateness. However nonetheless, Google Docs is an incredible device with Sheets and sharing with my colleagues. So, sure, from Nano Banana to Docs, Google is essential and helpful.
