Our 100m+ tech and vendor stack

With no fucking affiliate links

Nov 13, 2022

Background-

These posts always go viral.
”5 apps that will get you to 50 MILLION IN SALES TOMORROW”.

Thats bullshit.
Three things grow revenue: Product, Marketing, Operations.
Everything else is a tool or a distraction.

If you want to grow revenue, make a product people like.
Find more people who would like it, and sell it to them.
Make sure they get the product and they enjoy it.

For some reason, people in ecom work incredibly hard but are convinced there is a magical button that will solve their problems.

It doesnt exist, just do the work.

But anyway-
To prove that your pop up doesnt matter, I decided to list every tool we use and give them a Sean Score.

You can use every one of these vendors and success isnt guaranteed.
Or- you could use none of them and do WAY more revenue than me.
The biggest store I know, 400m+, isnt on shopify.

Your success is your success.
Learn from those around you, but remember what really drives results.

Tech

Website- Shopify plus
- Sean score- 3/5
  - I have a love/hate relationship with shopify. Yes they are currently the best ecom platform, doesnt mean I like them. And I fucking hate the annoying amount of shopify love I see
  - THEY DIDNT MAKE YOUR BUSINESS YOU DID, they just taxed you along the way
  - But- they are still the best thing we have
Frontend- Mostly shogun
- Sean score- 3/5
  - Good, fast builder for non tech employees
  - But pretty buggy and requires a ton of testing
Landing pages- Builder.io and shogun
- Sean score- 3/5
  - Same as above
Returns- loop returns
- Sean score- 4/5
  - Best returns software right now
Email- Klayvio base, wunderkind automations
- Sean score- 3/5
  - Klayvio is good, but boy do they like charging you money
SMS- Wunderkind
- Sean score- 2/5
  - Buggy, hard to use, but its basically free for me
  - So dont use it
Customer metrics- Lifetimely
- Sean score- 5/5
  - Best app for customer metrics
ERP- fulfil.io
- Sean score- 4/5
  - What I love- cheaper than net suite
Customer Service- Kustomer
- Sean score- 3/5
  - What I love- cheaper than gorgious
BNPL- direct affirm deal
- Sean score- 2/5
  - What I love- not the fucking 5% ROBBERY that shopify charges
Sales tax- Avalara
- Sean score- 1/5
  - This is monopolistic bullshit
  - Contributes to my shopify hate
Attribution- Northbeam
- Sean score- 4/5
  - I have strong feelings on attribution
  - YOU DO NOT NEED ANY SOFTWARE UNDER 10M A YEAR
  - But if you need one, and are willing to put in work, this is a good option
  - But seriously you prob do not need this
Reviews- Okendo
- Sean score- 5/5
- Cheap and good
Package tracking- Wonderment
- Sean score- 5/5
- Cheap and good
Managing tags and Pixels- Elevar
- Sean score- 4/5
- Good
AB testing- Google optimize
- Sean score- 5/5
- Free and good
Reporting- Supermetircs
- Sean score- 5/5

Ops

US 3PL- Shipmonk
- Was at Ruby Has, but they merged
- 3 US nodes, more nodes, the faster and cheaper the shipping
- Sean score- 4/5
  - We are a big fish so we could get 4/5 service most places I think
CA and UK 3PL- Shipmonk still
- Same story, was at ruby
- One node each (UK very cheap and very fast shipping)
- Sean score- 4/5
EU- Shipbob
- Ships from Poland, Shipmonk just wasnt set up
- Sean score- 3/5
AU- Shipbob
- Same as above
- Sean score- 3/5
Returns
- Run it ourselves at HQ
- I dont think anyone should let their 3PL do their returns
- Hire a taskrabbit and just do it yourself
- Sean score- 5/5

Creative

Raindrop- Beautiful, brand videos
- There is a reason why they are the best
- Getting into short form, iteration style videos now
- Sean score- 5/5
  - Expensive, but so worth it
Vidgro or Advisory- Scrappier, long form videos
- Both are good shops. Vidgro shot our TV ads, Advisory shot our giveaway content.
- If you need great looking content, that isnt that script heavy, they are a good option
- Sean score- 5/5
  - Both deliver strong value for the price
Narrative- rapid, good, UGC
- Just expensive as its a % of ad spend
- But they do get it right fast
- Sean Score- 4/5
UGC- dozens of creators we build relationships with
- Agencies wont be able to get you good content fast enough at a reasonable cost
- We just hit up creators on tik tok and work with them directly
- This is a 5/5

In house team

We do most things in house at this point
Paid media, search, amazon- all done in house
Most creative is done in house now
- Raw footage can come from creators, influencers, agencies
- But then we edit it into the ads we want
Static ads and photography all happen in house
Same with renders

If you can afford it, and are willing to put in the work, this is the best path.
Own what makes you special.
For ecom, thats marketing and creative.

If I was getting started and couldnt afford my stack/team I would work with:

Do as much yourself as you can
You cant outsource stuff if you dont know what you are looking for

So often I hear bad reviews for a paid media agency and the review is like “they wasted my money!”

But… was your business even set up to make money?

Bad on the agency for taking your business, but no one was going to make your business work FOR YOU.

But here is the list-

tech stack stays the same:
- Shopify, shogun, builder- maybe webflow instead for front end stuff. Whatever you like more
- Loop returns still good
- Klayvio is good, but just go with postscript or some other sms servcie
  - Wunderkind is only for people spending millions a month
  - Wont do anything for you if you are under that
- You dont need an erp until you get to 20m
- You dont need a cx tool until you get to 5m
  - Maybe if its cheap get on whatever- kustomer works, zendesk still a thing? dont over think it. it doesnt matter
- sales tax is a headache, maybe tax jar works. avalara is expensive and FUCKING SUCKS
- until you get to 1m a month in spend you dont need an attribution tool, despite what triple whale tells you lol
  - Just use a post purchase survey
  - attribution only matters when you have 4-5 major spend channels, at least 5k a day each
Ops-
- @ChadCarleton runs the best 3pl. He is a great person and I would trust him with my business
- Aaron from ship hero if you NEED multiple nodes.
- Both of these people will care about your business on a personal level
- Dont do the international shit I am doing
  - You need to be at 100m a year to make it worthwhile
  - I had to grow into it, its a fucking headache
- And still do your own returns lol
Creative-
- Shoot your own UGC
- Dont jump out of the gate and spend 10,30,50k on a video
- This is just a math problem
  - If you spend 50k on a video, you need to spend at least 1m promoting that video
  - And no one will work harder shooting video concepts than you
Agencies or vendors-
I posted the above on twitter.
Agency name, previous clients, reputation DOES NOT MATTER.
What matters is that the person giving you advice or doing the work cares about your business.

Find vendors who care about you and your business.
Understand that this is a personal relationship.
Marketing and MAKING MONEY IN GENERAL is very fucking hard.
Find an advocate.

There is a list of people beside these five I would trust to care about ridge.
Taylor holiday, Andrew Faris, @heyitsalexP, Cherene, junior from not a company.

These are all people who think about marketing and ecom correctly.
They arent 2019 media buyers or tik tok hackers.
They have complete, deep, thoughts about the industry and I know they would care about my business.

All I am trying to say is:
There are dozens and dozens of very talented people who get marketing, creative, digital.

But you need to win them over to your business.
IDK about their agencies work, but at a personal level they are brilliant.
So win them over.

Also doesnt have to be the FAMOUS people I mentioned.
Find advocates who care offline or inside an org.

Thats how I would go about hiring agency help.

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