w/ Braxton Manley, Braxley.co
See it on YouTube: youtu.be/cQXHEJOPgfc
Ever wondered how an accidental idea can morph into a thriving business? To find out, we're thrilled to have Braxton Manley, the innovative founder of Braxley Bands, sharing his entrepreneurial journey with us today. Braxton unfolds his unique journey from repurposing socks into Apple watch bands to establishing a successful DTC brand. He delves into his evolving product design philosophy, his knack for enhancing perceived product value, his approach to brand collaborations, and his exciting future plans.
If you found Braxton's journey inspiring and enlightening, hit the subscribe button to never miss an episode of The Unofficial Shopify Podcast. Stay tuned, stay inspired!
The Unofficial Shopify Podcast
8/15/2023
Kurt Elster: Hello, my friends. Welcome back to The Unofficial Shopify Podcast, your source for all things eCom recon. I’m Kurt Elster, A.K.A:
Ezra Firestone Sound Board Clip: Tech Nasty!
Kurt Elster: Coming to you from Ethercycle HQ in Skokie, Illinois, and today we’re welcoming back a guest who is no stranger to this show, the mastermind behind Braxley Bands, the man who turned Apple Watch bands from a class project into a successful full-time venture, Braxton Manley. And back in 2022, January 2022, we had him on the show and we had a great chat about his journey, and we all left feeling inspired. But in 2022 that was like shooting fish in a barrel for eCommerce, and so, since then Braxton has been battling business dragons, dodging the pitfalls of bankruptcy, and navigating toward profitable shores. Not only that, he’s been redesigning his business and he took the wheel from agencies, crafting new customer acquisition strategy, doing everything in house now where possible, and he’s got some new business ventures going.
To me, that sounds like a thrilling entrepreneurial saga. I want to hear it. I want to know about it. Let’s dive back into the world of Braxley Bands and more. Welcome back to the show, Braxton. How you doing?
Braxton Manley: All right. I’m so happy to be here, Kurt, and exciting update. We’ve actually dropped the word bands from Braxley Bands. We have other stuff now. So, a lot of fun stuff to talk about, and thanks for having me on again. Would love to just provide value to everybody out there who’s navigating the same challenges, and battling those dragons, and having fun along the way, and hopefully finding that gold mine.
Kurt Elster: Well, I want to start with business updates. How have things at Braxley Bands, since our last chat in January 2022, how have things changed? That’s 18 months ago.
Braxton Manley: This spring, we launched our first non-Apple Watch band project. It’s something I’ve been working on really from the beginning of Braxley seven years ago, but we actually put it into production last year and released them this year, and so that product is a two-in-one. It’s a belt bag. So, it’s a belt that can be used on its own, a bag that can be used on its own, and together they make the world’s most stylish and functional fanny pack bag.
Kurt Elster: And so, the idea here… You had the experience with the watchbands, and the custom connectors it needs, and so you’re like, “All right, we’ve moved toward belt strap,” or yeah, the belt and the attachment for it. You build a bag, which is… That seems to be… That’s always tougher than it sounds and a lot of fun. I’ve known and talked to a lot of entrepreneurs who build bags. I own so many bags as a result. And I love them. But it sounds like it’s interchangeable? Like you do… It’s like the bag and then similar to the watch straps, all kinds of belts that you can swap in?
Braxton Manley: That’s right. It’s like it’s truly a unique product in that way, and it’s something that I was just passionate about for a few years, designing something quirky and actually sort of had this philosophy of function first, then style second, and lastly make it inspire somebody. It’s three-dimensional design. And I think we tried to do that with the watchbands in a lot of ways, like the third inspirational thing on the watchbands, for instance, we laser engraved live flexibly onto the adapters, and actually we are dropping a new tagline this year, which is gonna be just feeling good. Because our products are designed for comfort first, and so they all make the wearer feel good, and I think it’s a really cool external sort of outward facing expression, as well. It’s like, “I’m feeling good.” And so, we’re putting that on our new hats that we’re dropping, as well as hopefully every product we sell, just with kind of that inspirational feel good message.
Kurt Elster: Obviously, the watch strap is discontinued. You’ve updated that product line. Now, we’re laser engraving and you’ve got a bag line, customizable bag line that’s out now. You’ve got hats coming out. We’re really… And you dropped bands, so we’ve got this full, bigger, apparel/fashion/accessory brand going. If you’re already making watch straps, and really, like an Apple Watch strap is the same as any other but for it uses a proprietary connector to the watch. Have you ever thought about going into other watch straps? The existing thing with different hardware on the end gives you a universal watch strap for stuff that’s not proprietary, and like 99.9% of watches fit that, and you could do… Or you do other connectors for proprietary watches, which tend… A few oddballs like a Citizen Ecozilla, but everything else, a lot of smart watches have some proprietary stuff.
Braxton Manley: Totally. And I’ve even gone as far as to consider making watches, like being a Swatch competitor in a way, or a new version of… I love how Swatch did things, because they sell a collectible watch where you can get in at a relatively accessible price point, and they’re just bonkers with styles. They have really out there stuff and they do collaborations. Anyway, it seems like an obvious path to go with why don’t we just make a watch for all these other compatibilities, and I’m realizing that more lately that it really is a good idea. I think I was in a way stubborn because I was like, “Let’s just hyper focus on one thing.” And I think that was actually the right move was to just be like, “We only make Apple Watch bands.”
And there’s such a large total addressable market with that that it just felt like fun to stick with one thing. And then I started kind of loving the elastic component of the bands and I was like, “Let’s just expand on elastic products.” So, to answer your question, yes, I do actually want to put out watchbands for other watches, and we can totally do that. I think we’re gonna start the initial stages of that production now. And hopefully we’ll have something available, because it seems like it would be pretty easy to do. Hopefully we’ll have something available by the end of 2023.
But in the meantime, yeah, we got hats coming, and that’s kind of where most of my energy is going right now.
Kurt Elster: You know, I’m not a hat guy, but I own three times as many watch straps as I own watches, and so that immediately tickles my fancy.
Braxton Manley: Nice.
Kurt Elster: Were there any other significant milestones Braxley’s achieved in recent months?
Braxton Manley: Yeah. Well, we achieved some really cool internal accomplishments, one of those being profitability.
Kurt Elster: Oh, the P-word.
Braxton Manley: Yeah, and so what that required us to do was just radically redesign the way the company and our lifestyles are, and the company is very small. It’s me and my brother, Zach. We are the two running Braxley as executives and everything else that happens with the company is either done through kind of… I consider it a semi-in house team. We’re working with some friends that do… Say for instance content creation, and we’re working with an awesome woman and her partner, Eric and Chamomile, who run Magic Agency, and we’re like their first clients, and… Anyway, I wanted to give them a shoutout because I really love working with them since it’s like a semi-in house team. We don’t have to actually go through the challenges of paying someone in house. It’s essentially they’re a micro agency.
Kurt Elster: What makes it a semi-in house team? Is it the fact that it’s a partnership? It’s two people?
Braxton Manley: Yeah. And it’s just them. And we’re essentially… I feel like we almost have them full time. Because the total, I guess, the position is essentially email, SMS marketing, social media.
Kurt Elster: And so, it’s like having a fractional CMO, maybe?
Braxton Manley: Yeah. I think that’s a good word for it. And so, I think everybody can kind of find somebody like that out there. Us, as a strategy, we chose to do that over a large agency, and so far I really prefer it.
Kurt Elster: You know, yeah, the personalized attention you get, that experience together, I’m sure there’s pros and cons to it, but like when you find what works for you, that works the way you do, grab on and hold. Any major hurdles or challenges since we last talked?
Braxton Manley: Yeah. Well, one of the big challenges was running ads profitably and actually just figuring out new customers. Yeah, the hardest thing has truly been figuring out how to have someone to essentially manage traffic to the website, and how to get new customers. So, we hired a consultant. His name is Chris Hernandez. He’s on Twitter and stuff. He’s from an agency background but actually consults people on how to build their operations in house. So, he’s basically teaching us how, you know, they say teach a man how to fish and he can eat for a lifetime, and it’s like actually that with Facebook ads. Specifically, we’re starting with Meta ads. We’re scaling up to hopefully we’ll be doing six figures in ad spend monthly by the holidays. And we’re really ramping things back up to hopefully new highs, where we’re a brand who… Our biggest year was 2021 and most profitable was probably 2020, and then 2022, we actually… We were not profitable.
And so, we had to really get serious and figure out how to essentially stop losing money, and how to gain customers.
Kurt Elster: So, you were always able to acquire customers, but over time, it got less profitable? And increasing PPC costs was the culprit? What was the issue that needed to be solved?
Braxton Manley: I think it was retention. It was our whole website experience. And making the website less of a kind of wild art project, and making it more-
Kurt Elster: Oh, I love that site, though. But yeah, it’s a lot.
Braxton Manley: It can be both, though, so we haven’t… It hasn’t lost any character, but we’ve just done a lot to improve the customer journey on the website. And it’s been really fun, actually, talking to you about the website. I mean, from our last conversation, when I did your office hours, which I don’t know if that’s a secret, but everybody should sign up for Kurt’s office hours, because it really did change my entire perspective on our website experience. We’ve been making all those changes that you mentioned, and it’s been fantastic so far. I mean, we’ve actually been able to now run Facebook ads profitably. We’re getting customers and we’re having first order profitability. And we’ve been using landing pages for the first time. We’re running a bundle. And we are optimizing for average order value and checkout, making the whole experience more fun, and hopefully getting people so charmed.
I think this is the key, too. What we’ve always done is like we try to charm people so much that they are word of mouth marketers. It’s all about making the experience something that’s so memorable and so charming that they talk about it.
Kurt Elster: And I think that’s where that really in-your-face design aesthetic that the site’s always had helps, where it makes it very memorable. It has so much personality. You get a sense of the people behind it. And that lends itself to word of mouth because you can stay top of mind longer with people. You mentioned landing pages and any pro Facebook marketer will be like, “All right, number one mistake I see is people sending to anything that isn’t a landing page.” You want to send your traffic to a landing page. What’s the trick there? Why do you think that helped you so much, the landing pages?
Braxton Manley: Well, because we can run high AOV bundles really nicely on landing pages. And so, especially for top of funnel traffic, or middle of funnel traffic, when we’re just kind of introducing them to the brand, and also one of the biggest challenges with this new Facebook is that the customer acquisition costs have gone so up that a lower AOV brand, which we were… I mean, we were averaging in the $40 AOV, sometimes lower. It’s just too low of an AOV for I think Meta ads to actually work for people. And so, we got that number way up through running bundles, and that’s what the landing page really allows us to do is run that bundle to a very specific audience, but then our website doesn’t have to be centered around a three or four-band bundle.
It can be, “Hey, this is everything. This is who we are. We have belt bags too.”
Kurt Elster: Just ballpark it. What’s that threshold for AOV where you need to be? And obviously, it’s different for every business, but just a general… Anything below this AOV, you’re gonna struggle to be profitable with Facebook ads.
Braxton Manley: I would say it’s gotta be 50 bucks. But we’re trying to run bundles that are around the $100 mark because it seems to be the sweet spot for DTC product market fit, so to speak.
Kurt Elster: And do you do free shipping?
Braxton Manley: We offer free shipping over $50, so it’s really easy to hit free shipping, but it’s just a little incentive to get people to buy more than one band. Because our bands are $39.
Kurt Elster: So, yeah, I buy one, but then I’m paying for shipping. Oh, it becomes may as well pricing. I may as well get two to get the free shipping.
Braxton Manley: Yeah. And even our shipping, when we made people pay for it, we barely… We made it like $4. We subsidized it. Because it’s just not cool to be a brand that charges a lot for shipping. I don’t like it as a customer.
Kurt Elster: No one wants to pay for shipping because it just… Yeah. It doesn’t feel like you’re getting anything for that money, right? I give you money, you give me a good. Well, shipping is a service that is just the unfortunate reality of eCommerce. I want to minimize my experience with it as a customer.
Braxton Manley: Right. But it could also be used as a lever to get people to spend more.
Kurt Elster: Absolutely. It’s like, “Hey, you could avoid that pain by getting two watchbands.”
Braxton Manley: Yeah.
Kurt Elster: So, you’ve branched out beyond just Braxley. You’ve got other brands you’re building now.
Braxton Manley: Yeah, so my wonderful girlfriend, who’s in the other room working on her business right now. It’s called Peace. Love. Hormones., and it is an herbal supplement brand that she’s formulated herself, and it has amazing benefits. There’s one called Soothe that she launched with this year that is for women’s menstrual health, and it’s like… It’s really fun to be a part of it because it’s so different from Braxley, where we’re just like a kind of out there fashion brand and working on Peace Love Hormones has been fun because it’s very much more mission driven. Yeah, I’ve had a lot of fun basically being the backend business side of Peace. Love. Hormones., and so that’s been another one of my jobs.
Kurt Elster: Supplements, there’s just inherent additional difficulties with it as far as regulations around it, manufacturing it, marketing it, how you can describe it. And just the supplement space, there’s more people that fight dirty, I feel. Have you had any experiences with that? Have you been like, “Wow, these supplement people are crazy?”
Braxton Manley: Yeah. A little bit. But yeah, and what’s cool is we’re able to with this one do a creator-led brand approach, so Maddie is content creator, @themaddiemiles, and she’s just putting out content every day and basically has built a massive audience that she can bring traffic to her website on a pretty regular basis all organically. We’ve spent zero dollars on ads.
Kurt Elster: Yeah. You mentioned spending zero dollars on ads, organic building, you talked about Facebook ads to acquire customers profitably was a big hurdle to get over, and a lot of this seemed to revolve around you hired a consultant and tried to transition away from traditional agencies. So, I want to dig deep on that a little bit. Why did you decide to go this route?
Braxton Manley: I think it’s because it’s more connected. There’s just a real disconnection between working with remote agencies I think for Braxley… I mean, we have a very distinct personality that we’re kind of… We use a lot of humor and the aesthetics, visually, are very eccentric.
Kurt Elster: I mean, they’re not that wild. It’s like we’re talking about it like you’ve got Frankenstein’s Monster of a Shopify theme and you really don’t. It’s coherent. It’s beautiful. It’s on trend. But it’s different. It’s definitely… It’s different. And you know, the vibe is like Lisa Frank Trapper Keeper.
Braxton Manley: We’ve toned it down. And some of our emails, that’s where we put a lot of attention to detail too is in the emails, so I felt like I was giving up so many parts of the brand. We really bootstrapped this thing as college students where the first three years, we were running everything. And I was sending every email. I was creating every email, every Instagram post, every… I started giving all those pieces away and I felt like kind of the soul of the business had left me.
Kurt Elster: Is it dreaded burnout?
Braxton Manley: It kind of felt that way. Bringing stuff in house and trying to do things from a more cohesive team strategy, the business can be a lot more fulfilling because you’re more connected to your team.
Kurt Elster: So, you want… You don’t necessarily want to have to do this stuff yourself. You want it off your plate. But you don’t want it to be so far removed from it that it is like this independent separate action occurring just totally outside your purview.
Braxton Manley: Nailed it.
Kurt Elster: And so, instead the solution is get smaller, more integrated teams.
Braxton Manley: Yeah.
Kurt Elster: And you can all work together in a Slack, use a Discord, a lot of Zoom calls? How’s it work?
Braxton Manley: Yeah. We definitely use Slack. That’s basically open on my second monitor all day just trying to be really communicative, as well as Instagram. I try to just have open communication channels on all the platforms that we should be dedicating energy to. So, even TikTok, and I try to get in person face time with everybody I can. I mean, my brother just moved back to Austin, where I live, and so we’re gonna be able to start collaborating a lot more in person together, which has already been just way more fun and way more impactful because we’re just actually in person, and I don’t think you can beat that.
And at the same time, I am fully remote. We’ve always built the company to be remote. And since we’re so small, I think it makes sense to stay that way for now. I love being remote. So, there’s just a sweet spot in the middle, I think.
Kurt Elster: And as you shifted to this in-house strategy, any key lessons there?
Braxton Manley: Yes. I think the biggest one is communication is key. And not just… Everybody knows, oh yeah, I should be a good communicator. But actually, learning communication techniques, even communicating over Notion. We have sort of Notion etiquette now where we used to just leave that thing super messy. We just had one of those boards that… Basically, like a Trello, but we were using it on Notion. I would just let that thing get so messy and then it’s like, “Okay, we gotta start cleaning everything up.” It felt like just really organizing. We’re still making compound habits on that, just staying more organized in house.
And through that, the vision and the kind of soul can get passed along more easily to another person, because we can’t, as founders, just do it all ourselves. We actually do have to delegate things.
Kurt Elster: I’ve learned this lesson myself. And part of it that really helped solidify it was using ChatGPT to help me write stuff, where it’s like I can now brain dump my thoughts and say, “Hey, I need this organized into an outline. Ask me questions to get this more refined. This is our goal. What am I missing?” And being able to have that as a writing partner that doesn’t make mistakes has been instrumental in being able to delegate without having things lost in communication, right? Because you’re able to produce. This is a very consistent, professional description of all these tasks, goals, projects that we’re trying to do. And having that has become a superpower for productivity but also really be able to increase our output. More importantly, the quality of that input by getting that consistency.
As you’ve moved toward that, where it’s like all right, you’re getting better at systems and processes through a smaller team and actively prioritizing the importance of communication, and good communication between people, what impact did that have on the profitability of your business and your sanity?
Braxton Manley: Yeah. The sanity one was key because once you start being a more efficient operator it frees up some ability to do other ventures. So, the impact that had beyond just actually beginning to start spending on ads profitably again after we hit the hard reset button and had two months where we spent zero dollars only generating revenue off of email and word of mouth, and a little bit of a text list, you know?
Kurt Elster: And so, when you’d quit spending on Facebook ads entirely for 60 days, did this have anything to do with a looming bankruptcy? I know you did not declare bankruptcy, but it sounds like the subtext here is this was a genuine fear.
Braxton Manley: Yeah, because things were just trending in the wrong direction, and it was like, “Oh, we have to do something and we can’t pay ourselves right now,” and basically dealing with the hard, kind of wartime CEO stuff. And we hit the hard reset button on ads because it was like, “Let’s see how lean we can get. What does this business actually cost to run?” As long as we kind of hit that number, and this was actually… Shout out, Eric Bandholz of Beardbrand. This was something… I met with him over coffee, and he told me this, that really changed my perspective, and that was to… He calls it like a water bug metaphor. There’s a water bug or something like that that can live 100 years without water.
Kurt Elster: Yeah. It’s like this tiny little critter. It’s like microscopic level. That can survive basically anything. And it’s called a water bug, and they’re like… When you see them zoomed up 10,000 times they are terrifying.
Braxton Manley: Yeah, exactly, and so sometimes people have to do that with their business, and just be like, “All right, let’s basically cut. Let’s try and cut every unnecessary expense we possibly can and see what this business really runs on, and where we’re at, and build back up in a very much more controlled way,” and a way where I think we are just far better operators now than we’ve ever been because we had to go through that training process again.
Kurt Elster: For sure, when you start a business in a boom time, it makes you complacent on spending and things that you just weren’t aware of, and then when the reality of that business changes, I think a lot of people panic. And they just start pushing buttons and hoping for the best. And you took a much more strategic approach to it where you got real, real honest with yourselves and you went all the way lean. I love the phrase wartime CEO. All the way lean, including not paying yourself, and said, “All right, how far back can we strip this business and see how it performs and what it does and get a real sense of what that core, base business, what is the cornerstone of this? Of these operations? Of this cash flow generation?”
And then, “All right, let’s build on top of that knowing what we know now.” And that seems to have worked out very well for you as you avoided bankruptcy and you’re profitable, correct?
Braxton Manley: That’s right. So, we’re really gearing up for a strong Q4. I feel like that’s something we learn year after year is Q4 is really made in Q3, and so I feel so excited for the next 6 months of this year.
Kurt Elster: So, now we survive bankruptcy, we’re scaling the company back up. Tell me about what that looks like.
Braxton Manley: Yeah, so it’s… I am working with a lot of people to really generate a content machine. And so, I think what it really looks like for us right now is building a content machine where we’re getting awesome, awesome stuff. Not just cool shots, or UGC, but compelling content, and visuals, and material to use to display our brand on all these channels hopefully organically. Something I’ve done a lot of in the past is sort of make content, which I still love doing, but it does relieve some of the pressure where I can actually give this to people that are focused on photography, videography, all this good stuff full time. Frees me up to kind of make those more CEO-level things I have to do, looking towards that Q4 looming on the horizon.
The content machine is key. That’s the first component, I think, of scaling up, getting that to flow in. Then we have our ad setup. We have a consultant kind of teaching us how to do things in house, but pretty freaking easy to do in house. They’ve made things way easier than they used to be. So, I think everybody should really consider running ads in house if they have anybody that actually has the bandwidth to do it. It’s like… It’s been fun, actually. I’ve enjoyed it.
Kurt Elster: With this new experience, running it in house when you can do it successfully, that overhead, that administration cost goes away. You’re closer to it. You can move faster with it. And you have a much better understanding of this is the content that clicks. You’re doing a lot of content generation, running your own ads. What works right now? What are, broad strokes, channels, formats, themes, what’s clicking with people these days?
Braxton Manley: Something that I’m really excited to start really diving into is TikTok Shops, I guess the TikTok Shop, and it’s brand new to me, actually. So, we got it set up this week. I’ve only hopped on this because I’ve heard the greatest things about it so far, like some brands are seeing crazy success and calling it Facebook in the early days.
Kurt Elster: What is it?
Braxton Manley: Well, it’s a TikTok shoppable experience. So, you can go on there and actually just checkout in app. You don’t have to leave the app.
Kurt Elster: Oh, I’m sure they’re thrilled with this if it’s successful.
Braxton Manley: That’s the key is not leaving the app. If somebody’s on TikTok, let them just buy on TikTok. Nobody wants to leave TikTok. TikTok is great. So, I’m excited to see how it develops because I know it’s probably gonna also become placed on these other apps, such as X dot com.
Kurt Elster: X dot com. Much like this year’s Willis Tower will always be the Sears Tower in my head, I think X dot com would always be Twitter.
Braxton Manley: It’ll be fun to see what happens there because I hope it becomes an actual destination for small business owners to market their product.
Kurt Elster: More placements, more surfaces, more impressions, I will always take what I can get and experiment with it. It sounds like TikTok Shops, though, exciting stuff. I’m curious to hear how that goes. As you’re scaling Braxley back up in this new and improved version of it, it sounds like your role has changed. Compare and contrast. What’s Braxton’s day to day look like now versus two years ago, three years ago?
Braxton Manley: I mean, in a lot of ways it doesn’t look all that different on a high level. It really doesn’t. I think it’s more just being more efficient with my time and with being a better communicator with the teams that I… Like I said, these sort of semi-in house people that I feel like… that are very accessible, that we can be very collaborative. I think that’s the word. I’m more collaborative with everybody. And I enjoy it. Because Braxley, when I first started it, this was just an expression of my own, as if I’m a fashion designer. And I was turning Apple Watch bands, which at the time, the first ones were made out of socks, I was just getting cool patterned socks and making the dopest Apple Watch bands with those around campus.
And that’s always kind of been the thing I’ve always wanted to do. That’s the dream, is just make awesome stuff and have fun with it.
Kurt Elster: So, you’ve got this, there’s obviously a product design philosophy that lives in your head, and at the start of the show it sounded like form follows function. This thing, it’s gotta work. But once it’s achieved that, then you can layer on aesthetic appeal, and that’s a requirement too. How do you think… After three years of product development, how do you think that your product design philosophy has evolved?
Braxton Manley: So, for instance, I’m holding this hat here, which is a prototype. The latest prototype, but we’re gonna have a few more tweaks to it once it’s actually to market. I think my product philosophy, especially lately, has been around finding things that add perceived value to the product but don’t actually add cost to you. Because it’s optimizing on both ends. So, we had a really hard time with the launch of the belt bags, because honestly, they have a really high cost, and so we were able to get the MSRP where we want it to be, and we’re still gonna be able to generate profit on those. They don’t have as good of a margin as the watch bands do.
And so, thinking about it as an operator, okay, we want to be able to sell this thing profitably. We want to make it have a really high perceived value but we’re not using all these expensive pieces that aren’t necessary. We’re only spending money where it counts. And you know, on the flip side of that is the artist, which is like, “All right, I want to make this thing look like my favorite hat ever and something that is just very unique.” So, yeah, finding that point in the middle.
Kurt Elster: Knowing what you know now, if you went back three years ago, what advice would you give yourself?
Braxton Manley: I would tell myself not to sign up for Yotpo. I don’t know why that popped in my head.
Kurt Elster: Ouch.
Braxton Manley: I’m just kidding. I’ve actually never used Yotpo, but I know it’s kind of sometimes a punchline.
Kurt Elster: Yeah. DTC Twitter likes to punch down on Yotpo. Or punch up on Yotpo, I suppose?
Braxton Manley: I’m sure they’re great people. We actually are using… We switched to Sendlane, so heck, that’s actually one of the things I probably would tell myself, was to not spend so much on excessive email and SMS spending. We gave ourselves a crazy high budget for that, and you know, I guess really three years ago Sendlane wasn’t what it is now, but we’ve been really happy switching from Klaviyo Postscript to Sendlane, and there wasn’t anything necessarily wrong. We were happy with Klaviyo and Postscript. But I really liked the team at Sendlane being more connected. It’s the same thing. Actually, I have a Slack channel with the Sendlane team, and I just actually switched because I enjoy being more hands on and collaborative with the entire system, yet I don’t have to have the overwhelming burden of having to manage it all myself, which I was pretty much doing three years ago.
Kurt Elster: I don’t think you’re alone in some of these transitions, at least not what I’ve seen on DTC Twitter. Lots of folks making similar moves this year. What does the future hold for Braxley? What’s coming down the pipe?
Braxton Manley: We’re gonna have a fall collection, which is gonna consist of some awesome new hats, which I’ve been… We had the idea for hats like five years ago and then really started making real forward progress on the production this year, and so I’m really excited because I’ve been taking my time with making it awesome and there’s a couple DTC hat brand that are doing really well, and I think this space is fun, and so we have that. We have a collection of watchbands coming out. And I think it’s also to be determined. We’re trying to be able to be in a place where we can really move fast on things, as well.
And so, the Braxley that exists in Q4 is probably not gonna be… Well, it definitely won’t be what Braxley is today, because we’re making radical steps forward with still every aspect, just optimizing the brand anywhere we possibly can, and getting on more channels for more distribution. We just launched on Amazon and crushed it on Prime Day. So, I feel excited for Amazon, and we’re just like… yeah. I think working hard and looking to find ways to optimize and to genuinely enjoy the work.
Kurt Elster: And finally, you gave yourself advice. You know, you’ve got a vision for where you’re going. You know where you’ve been. What’s your advice for listeners?
Braxton Manley: My advice for listeners is to really find ways to enjoy what you do, I think. And make sure you have that balance in your life where you can work on a passion project, or spend a day outside, like I really try to balance my computer time with my outside time. And I think it just does wonders, because once you’re operating and once you’re kind of dreaming from a place of just feeling really healthy, then you can just do so much more. And so, it all starts there, I think, with optimizing health as a foundation, and then you’re gonna make great things.
Kurt Elster: Braxton Manley, where can I get one of these sweet watch straps?
Braxton Manley: That would be at Braxley dot CO. Sweet new domain name just dropped.
Kurt Elster: I’ll include a link in the show notes. And what about the other projects you’re working on? Give me some. Plug it there so we can get some backlinks.
Braxton Manley: Yeah, so I am launching my second brand that I’ve been working on beyond Braxley and Peace. Love. Hormones., and that is Chisel Gum, which is… The brand is actually gonna be Modern Primal Provisions, and Chisel Gum is our first product, so we’re bootstrapping it, and this has been a passion project for me, my brother, and my best friend, Joe, who is Modern Primal on Instagram, and so we’re kind of trying a fun creator-led brand approach where my brother and I, who are the kind of operators of Braxley, and we’re learning so much with Braxley, and using it almost as our guinea pig. That allows us to play that second time founder role and also we know exactly all the moves to make to essentially build this up. There’s tons of economies of scale to launching this alongside Braxley. And then, yeah, Peace. Love. Hormones., growing that brand, as well. PeaceLoveHormones dot com. And highly recommend checking out what Maddie Miles is doing over there because it’s gonna I think really impact a lot of people. So, yeah, I think that’s all I got. Check me out on Twitter @BraxtonManley. I’m trying to Tweet more. Or I should say X more.
Kurt Elster: It’s never gonna happen. It’s Tweeting. It’s X’ing. Oh, I re-Xed it. Come on, Elon. Let’s be serious here. And on that note, I hope you enjoyed our deep dive into Braxley Bands with Braxton Manley, who seems unstoppable in his determination. Really, this man embodies the spirit of entrepreneurship, I think. And we also see the journey to success, not a straight line, and so these real life experiences and these challenges, they’re not necessarily fun at the time, but you can view it as like this is enriching, this is great, and so Braxton, I want to thank you for sharing your story with us and giving us a glimpse into the reality of things. Not sugarcoating everything, which I think is often a problem on social media, us just only sharing the highlight reels of our lives.
And to our listeners, we’re here to support you, as well. Please join our Facebook group, Unofficial Shopify Podcast Insiders. Happy to hear from you and I share some other tips in there, as well. And again, this is Kurt Elster.
Ezra Firestone Sound Board Clip: Tech Nasty!
Kurt Elster: Signing off. And keep selling.