$6K to $25M With Zero Outside Capital
"Nobody wants to get rich slowly."
Nick Mertz started Pins and Aces with $6,000 and zero outside capital. Today, his golf lifestyle brand does $25 million a year, employs over 40 people, and ships every order from their own warehouse outside Denver. But with customer acquisition costs through the roof, Nick stopped fighting the ad auction and built an omnichannel machine instead. We break down how live selling on Whatnot and TikTok became a serious revenue channel ($400K in December alone on TikTok Shop), why licensing collabs with Coca-Cola and South Park actually boost brand legitimacy, and how wholesale is flipping from 10% to 40% of revenue. Plus: the grab bag strategy that went nuclear, and why Nick runs his family business like a sports team.
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The Unofficial Shopify Podcast is hosted by Kurt Elster and explores the stories behind successful Shopify stores. Get actionable insights, practical strategies, and proven tactics from entrepreneurs who've built thriving ecommerce businesses.
Kurt Elster • 00:00.001
This episode is brought to you in part by Swim. Here's the thing about wishlist apps. Most of them just sit there. A customer saves a product, and then nothing happens. Swim actually activates that data. When someone wish lists a product, you could trigger price drop or back-in-stock alerts and feed that intent directly into Clavio or your CRM. You're not guessing what people want because they've told you. Plus, customers can share wish lists for gifts and your team can view them to offer personalized service online or in store. And unlike card abandonment, wishlist data is permission-based. These are people raising their hands saying, hey, I want this. Just not right now. Swim's been around for over a decade. It powers 45,000 stores and installs in about five minutes. You can try it for free today at getswim. com slash Kurt. That's G-E-T-S-W-Y-M. com. Slash Kurt. Today in the unofficial Shopify podcast, we're doing a Where Are They Now episode. We're joined again by a serial entrepreneur and a friend of mine who's got a hundred million combined revenue across his many e-commerce ventures, because he runs a family business with his brother-in-law. They employ over forty people, and they still ship out of their own warehouse, which I respect. Nick Bertz is joining us. He is the co-founder of Pins and Aces, and he was on the show back in June 2023, and that became a fan favorite episode. People loved his candor and advice on what it took to grow what was then, you know, just the fun golf head cover company and is now so much more. They've gone, you know, expanded that product line, grown revenue, added a huge number of wholesale accounts and even acquired Adele Golf, a legit putter company. And so I want to break it down. I want to get that update. I want to hear what's working and what we broke along the way. Because Nick and I have done this together. We've I've worked on that online store, uh, and it's been an adventure, and so we're gonna talk about it. Nick, welcome to the show. Thanks for coming back.
Nick Mertz • 02:16.380
Yeah, thanks for having me again. Appreciate it.
Kurt Elster • 02:19.099
The okay. So yeah, high level, you know, it's been like eighteen months. What uh what give us the high level overview on what's new with pins and aces in that time?
Nick Mertz • 02:28.780
Yeah, a lot uh you know, a lot has changed. A lot also hasn't changed. I think businesses is pretty simple. Um you follow kind of a key playbook, which we do. Last time we talked, we're moving into a new building. Um I remember taking that podcast from uh you know, our old building, everything was moved out. It was kind of the last thing we did was uh I was taking that call. And you can see behind me is our warehouse. There was someone just putting a box up on that shelf. Um so we are, you know, proud to have all the distribution and operations out of one facility. Um so we do that here. Um and I think uh I was just talking to somebody the other day about that of do you go the 3PL route, do you not? If you follow us on social media, I I hate three PL, you know, and not a big fan of it. Why? Uh you know, I understand uh when I was talking to a guy, you know, if you have one product, one SKU, lower volume, it makes sense. You know, there's a a big cap X component to having your own facility, employing, you know, your operation staff. That can all be alleviated. But I think once you get to a certain uh kind of break-even point, it actually is more cost effective to bring it in-house. You know, there's a r a reason why these 3PL warehouses are hundreds of thousands of square feet, have tons of employees. because they are charging for it. Uh and and and it makes sense. There's a model where it makes sense. Um and so um I the I like it because it's a actually a a profit center, a revenue center for us and we can have a higher touch point with the consumer. I think as you you get into trying to differentiate and trying to win the customer uh controlling a lifetime value with CPAs and CAC through the roof. It's harder to acquire a customer. You really want to make sure that once you have a customer, uh they're being taken care of. And having that in-house and having the ability to have uh the to fulfill the orders, to have the operations, we can have a higher touch point and include a stock card or an extra item or a handwritten note to the customer. Um, that's all stuff that we can do do right here and um I think that's valuable. So there's a there's a lot of factors and I understand people who are starting up or just starting to get into that scale or growth mode. it's unfeasible. You know, a lot of these e commerce businesses and people who listen probably are starting out with a single product or a couple products and they're out of their garage or their home, like I was at one point. Um And that's it's really difficult to have a a a a facility to do that and so three PL makes sense, but um yeah for us it's it's always been um you know one of our core core components of of growth and scale is is having operations in-house.
Kurt Elster • 05:07.639
You know, and that the fulfillment you do is quick. I see the reports and I've ordered uh and it it's fast. You know, it's like if I place the order, it's like Amazon, man. I two days later it's in my mailbox, which I've always thought Yeah. Incredible.
Nick Mertz • 05:20.840
Yeah, and for us, I mean, we're in Colorado, so um we're based just outside of Denver, so pretty centrally located to get to you in Chicago or you know, someone on the west coast, e east coast. It's a good central location for us to fulfill. And you are competing with Amazon. You know, I think the direct consumer customer is now accustomed to that Amazon Prime delivery service where they're getting it in you know, next day, sometimes that night, you know, I've ordered stuff on Amazon and it's like, hey, it'll be there in three hours. Uh, you know, so you're competing against that and So it's really hard to obviously get next day or same day delivery, but if you're within that two to kind of four day time rate time frame and you can ship it out same day the order comes in, um that goes a long way with the customer
Kurt Elster • 06:06.740
Yeah, no, huge. The when am I gonna get my stuff? I think is like one of the big unspoken concerns people have on any website that's not Amazon, unfortunately. So last time that you were real candid about revenue and numbers. Are we can you give us the scoreboard? Are we willing to share revenue numbers this time?
Nick Mertz • 06:27.160
Yeah, I think so. I think um, you know, this year last year we uh were just under 25 million in top line revenue. Um this year we're a little bit more conservative, trying to pace the growth a little bit. Um wanna be right around thirty million in revenue this year between our different brands. So pins and aces is the is the big one. That's the one you focus on, but as you're aware of you have we have other brands. We have Riptide, we have Adele, we just acquired Sweet Rolls Golf. uh which is a grip company, which I think is good to talk about too. We can get into that on acquisitions and inorganic growth opportunities uh like buying another a business um and how that can help grow. Um so yeah, we're shooting for 30 million this year. Obviously when um we've been working together what Ten plus years now. I think fifteen or sixteen we started working together.
Kurt Elster • 07:19.300
The original Pins and Aces site, I'm pretty sure you built yourself and then you're like, hey, can you clean this up? And that's how we got started working on it.
Nick Mertz • 07:26.259
Even before that, you know, with the Adams days, um I think you were you know instrumental in rebuilding that site and working together there. The Leno side um built that site Uh so we yeah, we've been working together a long time and yeah the pin site I built myself and the crazy thing was is at Adams Polishes in 15 we were on Mo Magento um and We were like, do we switch? What is it? Shopify was just kind of coming out. Um, it was new, and we were looking at, I can't remember if it was like WordPress or Uh Squarespace, I think it was, or Shopify. And yeah, and we're like, okay, so I think Shopify is the one. Um but Shopify makes it so easy. I mean, I was even having a conversation with like You know, at the end of the year, what are we looking at? How can we cut costs? What's our budget next year? You're always looking at those things as we scale from Building the site and pins and aces started with six thousand dollars. We've had no outside capital, no outside investment into the business and grown to this level Um you know, it made it really easy to build a site, obviously on Shopify. Now we do a lot more complex things like the bag personalize personalizer, which is the thorn in your side. Um Hey, it mostly works. It mostly works. Um You know, those things Shopify makes it really easy to do it, especially now with their AI tool. I'm like, hey, you know what? Let's look at Kurt. You know, we've worked with Kurt can The AI do everything, Kurt Canon. The answer's no. Um, it's still not quite there so far. But it can do a lot. You know, I was playing around with Black Friday doing the little ticker, the banner, and till and sidekick. build this. Um and I'm pretty savvy and and uh intuitive. Shopify is very intuitive for for me. Um so it's great. You know, it's a great platform to to grow and and scale on.
Kurt Elster • 09:14.620
Absolutely. Yeah, in that like Shopify sidekick and the various things it does. Really useful. I mean recently I dip there was a Shopify flow that I just set up for you And version one, I just described it really well and sidekick made it for me. Now it turned out it had there was a mistake in it and then I fixed it, but it's like, man, making that initial flow I would have really like torn my hair out trying to get to the result that like mostly worked just on my own. And so having it do it, like great, fabulous. You know, you get to the same result faster, um, I think with with adopting these AI tools. All right, so one of the things I love about you and working with Pins and Aces is your willingness to try new stuff, especially like new, you know, acquisition channels. And yeah, the big topic, the big fear for a lot of people is customer acquisition cost. You know, that keeps going up. And that's really like the bottleneck, the squeeze on a lot of these online-only businesses. Have you know have has this been your experience that you the thing to fight here is CAC?
Nick Mertz • 10:13.260
A hundred percent. Absolutely. Yeah.
Kurt Elster • 10:15.900
So you're you're feeling that squeeze too like everybody else, but you know, what have you done about it?
Nick Mertz • 10:20.339
Yeah. Um there's a couple things. I think it's really important. Um the guy from I was at a thing in uh e-commerce summit thing in in New York City uh last end of last year. And the guy from Ridge Wallet, I think his name's Sean. Sean Frank. Um he's very direct and blunt and he's a smart guy and you know they sell a product with Everyone likes to talk about lifetime value. I think the last couple of years people use CAC, a higher CAC or a growing CAC as, well, that's okay because we've got lifetime value. And I think what people see is you see a slow bleed, death by a thousand paper cuts, if you're focused on lifetime value. Obviously you you want to do that, but you can't justify um your ad spend and and hoping the customer is there for life. I mean, you know, that's like gotta be a bonus. Uh you have to be first order profitable um with CAC. So you could say, well my customer acquisition cost is 70 bucks uh if your average order value is 65, but don't worry because they're gonna come back and order. We're gonna look at this cohort and they're gonna come back and order and now The customer acquisition is really 35. Uh no, you don't know when that customer is coming back. You can have all the data in the world and everything. You don't know if and when they're coming back. And so if you don't have that, you just keep pushing out um, you know, your cash burn and all of a sudden it's like, well, where are our customers? They haven't come back, or not enough of them have come back. So being first order profitable is key and critical. And we have found having other channels um to go after uh is really important for our business. And Uh when we talked a few years ago, we were starting to get into wholesale and have more of an omnichannel approach, being in big box retailers, small mom and pop shops or a golf brand. Um so we get into green grass accounts like your local golf course or country club. Um, having wholesale accounts, diversifying that has been really impactful. Um, uh of having an omnichannel approach. But More importantly, just on the e-commerce side of things, uh new selling channels. So channels like Whatnot have been very impactful for us. district live selling market.
Kurt Elster • 12:28.840
HD you brought up whatnot. Someone else was just telling me about this too. Tell me about whatnot's like a live selling marketplace, right?
Nick Mertz • 12:35.160
Yeah. It's like eBay and Twitch combined. So you're live streaming and you're selling a product. So I'd be like, all right, you know We've got this uh Pins and Aces Yeti. We're gonna sell this, you know, okay, it's live and start bidding. And people are watching and they're bidding and bidding. 10 15 seconds. Alright, sold. Next item. We're gonna sell, you know, this phone case or whatever. You keep going. So for pins and aces, um We've used it, ironically, I'll tell the whatnot story because it's crazy. Some guy reaches out and he's like, hey, I want to open a wholesale account. And we're very strict with who is allowed to sell uh pens and ace products. We don't want to have a bunch of e-commerce retailers selling because now you're competing on the ad space and they're gonna advertise. We like to control the online channel. So This guy, hey do you have a shop? No, you know, answers the questionnaire, no, not a golf course, not a shop, you know, not not this. And his order was like twelve thousand dollars. And I'm like, why is this guy ordering all this stuff and he doesn't have a shop? And So I called him and um he was like I sell on whatnot. Ironically, Whatnot reached out to us on Instagram and I didn't know what it was. I you know, I I didn't know w anything about it and I'm like, whatnot? I just saw a DM from this company, whatnot. They want to set we want to sell on whatnot. So I started watching some videos. It was people selling Pokemon cards or baseball cards. Um, but it was really interesting. They had a little small golf segment. It was mostly people selling secondhand clubs, used stuff. Um And so I said, hey, let's try it out and see how we how we can do on whatnot. Um and the guy who is the wholesale guy, I'm like, hey, I'll hire you to come in and help us run a show And I'll pay you just a fee um to come in and kind of show us the ropes. And in our first show we did ten thousand dollars um on whatnot. Like two hours, hour and a half, two hours.
Kurt Elster • 14:31.740
Yeah, that works. That's like a great product launch.
Nick Mertz • 14:34.540
It was a great product launch, you know? And so um And then uh yeah, so we started kinda figuring that out and we're like, well, is it gonna hurt the brand? Are we selling discounted? It's not full retail? Um, I mean the opposite has been kind of true on that. We're we're selling some products for more than than retail value on whatnot. There's a a component to hey, we're gonna give away a bag or a set of clubs to anybody who purchases in this time frame. So we've leveraged it a little bit differently than maybe the traditional sellers were on whatnot and we actually brought our brand to whatnot. Um and from there, there's like a very loyal following, loyal customers that are now saw us on whatnot first. They got the product. They loved it. Now they're coming back to our e com drops and our launches and now they're in into the mix there. So it's been a great acquisition channel for us.
Kurt Elster • 15:26.820
All right, I like that one. You mentioned drops. Tell me what the is there like a consistent strategy you have or you know playbook for a product drop?
Nick Mertz • 15:38.620
Yeah, there's uh really two, I think, when we can think of drops. So um maybe three. Uh we have our kind of core collection that's spring, summer, fall Those are products that, hey, we're gonna drop a spring collection. It's gonna be available until the summer collection. Summer collection is gonna be available until fall. And it's kind of available year-round for your staples, your core polos, head covers, bags, hats. Um that that's gonna be available. Then we do uh limited edition drops. So we drop one over uh called the Augusta collection. We drop a Fourth of July collection, maybe a Cinco de Mayo, Black Friday. And those are intended to be limited and it's not a huge revenue generator for us. We don't want to you want it to have the cool factor, like hey, this is limited. It's only available until it sells out. And once it's gone, it's gone. Um and so we have those And those have been uh really good and you know, you pigs get fat, hogs get slaughtered. You look at it and say, Man, we could have sold a hundred more of those hats if we if we bought more of them, but it that's not the purpose. You want the the the people who are buying it to be like, I got something limited, it's cool, this brand. And we've done power hours, as you know, where we go live and we we drop this collection live and it's available exclusively to the people in that one hour before it launches the next day or two days later. So gets this really um, you know, demand built up of like, I gotta be here 'cause I don't wanna miss it when it drops two days later. Um and so we've done a lot of that and that's been really effective.
Kurt Elster • 17:16.280
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Nick Mertz • 18:17.360
Yeah. And we found a guy, uh a company called StreamAgency. They've been great to work with where we're streaming on our site. Um for that, but before that we were doing and we still do, uh we're live on everything. YouTube, TikTok, Twitch, Instagram, um, all those all those channels and we're Using I think it's like Stream Labs where you can stream simultaneously to all the different platforms. Um and even like Twitch, like no one's following Pins and Aces on Twitch. We got like ten viewers on Twitch, but You're building that. You know, it's ten new eyeballs that m otherwise weren't there before. So why not do it? You know, why not constantly engage on live? Uh the lives have been really impactful. whatnot uh has been great, but so is the TikTok shop. You know, we're selling live on TikTok, where we've got products in the TikTok shop. Any time is back to your original question of how could we reduce CAC or think about it differently is well It doesn't cost anything to go live. We've already got the employees here. Go live and and get be top of mind. Um And now we're getting about 15 to 20 million impressions a week on our live platforms. And so that means someone's not always watching it, but they open up TikTok, they open up Instagram, they see the spade, they see pins and aces live. They might not click on it But then now they get served an ad or they see something, they're like, oh, I've seen that. That's familiarizing to me. Like what what is that? Okay, I'm gonna click on it this time. So um yeah, they've been they've been really impactful.
Kurt Elster • 19:47.080
The yeah, no, uh I've seen the numbers. There I think live selling the it is intimidating for people who are not used to it to go face to camera. Like we're doing now. Like when you're new to it, the first time you do it, you're like especially you're like, hey, we're gonna talk to potentially hundreds of strangers. That's weird, right? But once you get over that, it unlocks a bunch of opportunities. And I think the one that is you know most missed. by uh online stores is live selling. So it sounds like you're you're a big proponent.
Nick Mertz • 20:17.899
Huge proponent of it, and it's again it's really a low cost effort and you know y I think the biggest thing is you have to commit to it. We were trying to go live on TikTok and we do it for a couple of days and then stop. Oh, there's only twenty people watching. There's thirty people You really have to commit to it and say, hey, we're going to commit every day. We're going to go live for the month. And we did that in the month of October to be like, hey, we're going to get the impressions. Ads are going to be heavy in November and December, let's get it. And now then it started to grow. Now three weeks in we were getting four or five hundred people in the live streams. Um and you get more comfortable at it, you get better at it. Um but nothing crazy equipment. Like, you know, whatnot's A k a killer channel and we're using an old iPhone to to do it with. You don't need any you no mics, just an iPhone, front facing camera Um, and I think, yeah, a lot of people um are probably nervous to go in front of camera. I get it. We were that way at first too, but nobody cares. You know what? You're gonna afraid of somebody seeing you who you know, who's gonna make fun of you or judge you, who cares? Like you y I don't give a shit about what anybody thinks of me. Um and you gotta have that mentality. You know, so many people are concerned uh about people they don't like w what they think of them.
Kurt Elster • 21:33.360
It's like, who cares?
Nick Mertz • 21:34.960
You know?
Kurt Elster • 21:35.520
The I love the attitude. The th My version of that that I tell myself, and I saw this on Twitter, is I'd rather be cringe than broke. Right. If you're so worried about being cool, you're probably not gonna make money.
Nick Mertz • 21:46.540
Yeah, exactly. You know, and and who cares? You know, I see my buddy um From high school, he started posting. He's a roofer in Texas and he saw us going live and he's like, I think I'm gonna try this Instagram thing. And at first it was like pretty cringe and it was bad and you know, our friends group is like, oh look at him, he's you know, going live, you know, he's doing these dumb videos. Well now he's getting like brand deals. And now he's got tens of thousands of followers and he's into a zone and it's like, hey, he's hustling. He's trying something. Why not? You know? Um, why not try it? So I I'm all for it.
Kurt Elster • 22:20.440
A hundred percent. I wanna all right, so we got we're we're doing live selling, we're on whatnot with live selling marketplace. Um any I know you've had some success with TikTok. And it sounds like some of this was accidental. Um tell me about like TikTok did was pretty big for you, especially over the holidays, wasn't it?
Nick Mertz • 22:41.260
Yeah. I mean, m you saw the numbers. I think in December we did four hundred thousand on in TikTok on TikTok sales in December and previous. There you go. Previous uh 11 months was like two hundred thousand. So it really blew up in December, but we put in the work in October, November going live kind of figuring it out. And I still don't understand TikTok completely. I'm I'm still That makes sense. If there's a guy like you Kurt that knows Shopify backend and websites but knows the TikTok, I think that's a a great business to be in Uh 'cause I don't get it. We'll go live, people send us roses or cherry baskets or whatever. I don't even know what that is. I don't I don't know what it is. Um But TikTok shop is it people are buying stuff on TikTok and a lot of times, you know, I have uh I'm thirty Five thirty-six uh I'm 36. Um so I have employees that are 25, 26, and they are buying and searching using TikTok as like their Google. and looking for a product or looking for it and people are buying on TikTok. So it's a different generation, I think, m kind of back to like on the website when we're like, hey, our conversion rates low Kurt, what's going on? Like we look at things. Um We were so into well, this is how we see the site. It's easy for us to navigate. It's easy for us to to do this. But what is somebody who's never been to the site before? What do they see? And where are they struggles. It's the same thing with TikTok. It's like we're not buying on TikTok. I'm not doom scrolling TikTok. I don't do that, but people do. And there's a market there and you need to be there. So um yeah, TikTok's been impactful. Uh there's a great kind of affiliate network where you get all these creators to kind of post. Uh they're posting for free. You send them a sample, then they link your TikTok shop. And then people can buy from there. Um, so it's interesting. I'm still trying to figure it out and navigate it, but um, yeah, it's been an impactful channel for us for sure.
Kurt Elster • 24:33.060
So what's the the content that you're putting on TikTok? Is it like ads? Is it organic or is it, you know, these uh like what is it influencer whitelisting?
Nick Mertz • 24:42.019
Some of it it's a little different, you know, the influencer market uh in fifteen sixteen on Instagram was great, you know, I could pay someone with a bunch of followers to post and we'd get sales out of it. Those days are like gone. And then it went to pay a Instagram influencer, a big brand deal, pay 'em five grand a month, ten grand a month, two grand a post, five grand a post. That doesn't really work anymore either and you want to tie it to sales. So then it went to well here use code Kurt20 for 20% off pins and aces. Well then people know you're just selling stuff. TikTok's a little different. You're selling stuff, but these creators are kinda doing their own whitelisting videos, but it's to their audience how they would use it. So you get an influencer who You know, hey, I'm gonna send you a liquor stick or a beer sleeve or a head cover. How would you use it? They make content. Hey, if you like this head cover, you know, it's in Lincoln is in my TikTok shop. So it's kind of a less aggressive sales pitch, but people are using TikTok to shop. So um it's like going to Amazon and you're not Googling Google searching something on Amazon. If you're on Amazon you're looking to buy something. Okay. I need a Pet brush, I need a lint remover, whatever. The same thing on TikTok, you know, I want a golf head cover. Well, you search it, pins is gonna show up, click on a video, okay. That's a cool head cover, I'm gonna buy it. So I think it's a little bit of a a mix, but it's an interesting channel for sure. And still don't know it. I'm not the expert in TikTok. We're trying to still figure that out.
Kurt Elster • 26:08.640
Yeah. Well and I you know I think of the same type TikTok evolves. And even just recently with it, you know, going to US ownership, there's talk about like, okay, the algorithm's different, what's different. Um, and so you're always just trying to figure it out and what works. The uh Hmm. You know, the other thing I noticed that it probably doesn't hurt with a lot of the social content are your licensing deals. Like your original products I think are really cool. The original designs I always love. But then you get some fun uh collab stuff. Like didn't you have Taco Bell?
Nick Mertz • 26:39.640
No, we haven't had Taco Bell. So we do that's kind of the that that's kind of the third piece is like we have our main drops, then we do these limited edition drops, then we have collaborations that are either kind of mainstays like Yellowstone or Teenage Be Ninja Turtles, South Park. Um and then we have like capsule drops collaborations. Um again meant to be limited sellout. Last year we had uh a couple big ones with Hey Dude Um, Hey Dude did their first ever golf shoe uh through Pins and Aces, true collaboration. We worked on that with them together, uh dropped a golf shoe, dropped a line of products with them on our side. They did the shoe, it was amazing, fantastic. Um, and then we do like licensing. So we did a license with Coca-Cola um over November, December, which was really cool to do that. And uh we love doing those uh licensing collaborations. We always call them collabs. Um so some of them are true collaborative effort on both sides, some of them are licensing like Coca-Cola, but You're getting into this demographic Coke, for example, uh people who would never buy a golf product, but they want they collect Coca-Cola stuff, so they're gonna get the head cover or the bag or Whatever. So you're getting into this new audience, and what's helped for us is when we run ads on it, it legitimizes the brand. So Pins and Aces, while you've heard of it, maybe people listening have heard of it. In Golf, they've heard of it. Um, but still it's still a small brand. Not everyone in golf has heard of Pins and Aces. So if they see an ad or they see a product of Pins and Aces X Coca-Cola They're like, oh well they must be legitimate if they're working with Coca Cola and Coca Cola is approving them to be a license or do a collab with them Um, so it adds legitimacy to your content, your advertising. People go to the site, they see it. They may not want Coca-Cola or South Park. But it it it reaffirms that okay, they're a legit brand. They have an actual licensed product through this brand. They're legit. I'm gonna buy this other product because I trust 'em. So it's it's helped.
Kurt Elster • 28:41.840
Those collabs Yeah, sometimes people's fear may be like the collab devalues my brand. And what you're saying is, hey, the opposite is true. Yeah. A brand that you are willing to license, by definition, has you know more cachet than you do and a different audience. Man, out of all these collabs, do you have a favorite or is this like picking a favorite child?
Nick Mertz • 29:00.820
I like the Coca-Cola one. That was like one that I personally worked on. Um and that was a lot of fun to to be able to do that and Coke has been uh a part of golf in a l in it for a long time. Um, you know, they used to have staff bags in the fifties and sixties, guys they'd sponsors. They've been involved in golf for a while. They hadn't done a golf bag in a while, so to do a golf bag, one of our best-selling products now, a Coke version of that was really cool. Um, but they're all fun. I mean, I'm not a huge South Park guy. I don't I don't watch South Park. Um but that's probably one of our best selling collections is the South Park. And yeah, I've never heard anybody say it's de it would devalue their brand. I guess maybe if you're working on a weird One, I don't know. Um but yeah it's it's helpful for us. Yeah, it's helpful for us and and it's a different audience, especially on like uh true collaborations. We did another true collaboration with a company called Two Under and they make underwear um in in the golf space. Um and we're never making underwear. Like I don't want to get into that space. So partnering with them and doing a a a line of of underwear, well now we're overlapping their audience with ours and vice versa and you're getting new customers into your fold, talk about reducing the CAC. Well now you've got a whole new audience who may not have heard of PINS or huge fans of 200. They're going to come into our brand and now they're going to be fans and and customers of of ours.
Kurt Elster • 30:30.160
So one of the uh the other things, you know, we're talking about catalogs and merchandising and some of that product strategy. You've added golf bags. And what's interesting, what's difficult about the golf bag is it's very big. You know, it's a difficult thing to ship. But what's great about it is the price, right? Like you're typically you'd be selling a $70 polo or, you know, a $30, $40 head cover. A golf bag is $300 plus dollars. And brilliantly, you're able to offer personalization, which I think really, you know, it's a nice add-on and it ups the the perceived value of the product. But for sure selling a more expensive item is a tougher sell. So yeah, just talk to me yeah talk to me through some of your your thoughts on on selling golf bags and you know what's that done for the business.
Nick Mertz • 31:16.260
I think it's a crawl, walk, run, um, honestly, when you're coming out with a new product, um, like a golf bag. We actually, Pins and Aces had golf bags. four or five years ago and they weren't the greatest, just being honest. Like there's just some things that I wouldn't personally want in a bag. Um it was a little bit lower priced bag $150, $200, which is a good market for a bag, but Um and and they were like okay sellers, but then we had a lot of returns. Uh the lining came out of it, a leg would break, and so We stopped selling 'em for a couple of years and then I'm like, hey, we're gonna we need to get our average order value up. I think everyone looks at getting average order value up and so a high ticket item does that. Um and so I said we're gonna do golf bags again and everyone's like, no, please, no more golf bags. They take up a ton of space, they're expensive to ship, you know, they're expensive to buy, you gotta put a lot of money and capital into buying golf bags. Uh so a lot of problems with them. Um but I said oh we're gonna make it right, we're gonna do it right. So we did. We spent a lot of time, about a year, developing the bag, going back and forth, changing things. And again, the crawl walk run was, hey, we're going to bring in one container of bags. We're going to bring in 825 bags. We're going to commit to it and see how they sell. Um, and They sold well, you know. I it we found a market, we always look at kind of blue ocean, where's the competitive landscape in a product we want to come out with? Um the bags that we're competing against are about $100 more than our bag, uh the premium competitors. So we make the same bag uh but for $100 less. with some more features and it did really well. Then it gets organically placed, people start using it, seeing it, um, and there's a good market for golf bags. And so people are looking, they come in and see pins and Coca-Cola collab. They see South Park, okay, they're legitimate. This looks like a nice bag. You've got uh a good PDP explaining why this bag is good um and people give it a try. And now If you get someone to buy a a golf bag and that's your most expensive item, they're probably going to come back and buy other stuff. You know, they're like, okay, this is a great product. I know their other stuff's gonna be good.
Kurt Elster • 33:27.039
It's harder to say I mean just anecdotally, like looking through some of those orders. When you s when I see an order that's got a golf bag almost inevitably it's going to have, you know, like a couple head covers stuck with it too.
Nick Mertz • 33:38.320
Right. A hundred percent. A hundred percent. And and having an upsell, being able to put your name on the bag or your logo. We do that in-house. We have in-house embroidery. We're doing that here Um yeah, it gets people into the fold and those customers are a little bit more loyal. Let's look at Adams. You know, if we could sell you a car polisher. You know, if you're buying a polisher, you're gonna buy the detail spray, the polish, the towels, the the ceramic coating. You're you're in the mix.
Kurt Elster • 34:05.519
I need some buckets now.
Nick Mertz • 34:06.559
I got the towel.
Kurt Elster • 34:07.519
Yeah.
Nick Mertz • 34:09.440
Yeah, you gotta buy everything to support it, you know? So um it's the same similar process with with a golf bag.
Kurt Elster • 34:17.040
I don't think we talked about Black Friday. You know, like your larger success, excellent. Uh Black Friday 2025 How'd it go?
Nick Mertz • 34:25.980
Uh it went well. I mean we hit budget. I think our ad spend was crazy. Everyone's talking about like, you know, ad spend. Ad spend's always ridiculous in November and December and you're trying to scale and scale and scale and this one's working. Spend more money, spend more money. Um, which is good because you want to get all those customers in, but you want to do it cost effectively. That's why we're doing TikTok lives every day, whatnot, Instagram lives, all this content. is uh supporting it. So that was it but Black Friday was great. You know, we hit our hit our goal, hit our target, and we were more prepared than ever this year than we were in in previous years for Black Friday.
Kurt Elster • 35:02.339
The did you was it your best Black Friday?
Nick Mertz • 35:05.940
Uh yeah, I would say it probably was our best Black Friday. Um in terms of revenue. I mean I think you saw the numbers uh or best December ever. Um for sure. Uh I think it's hard to judge um sure, top line revenue, more customers, all of it's up and up and it was better than ever before. Um but the brand also grows. You know, I think a lot of people Look at Black Friday and say, This is my saving grace. I'm gonna make it to Black Friday. But you have to put the effort in in May and June and July to g to achieve the results that you want to achieve in Black Friday. So We're already we had a meeting earlier today about Black Friday twenty six. What are the products we're launching? What kind of campaigns are we gonna do? Um it doesn't just happen overnight. You gotta get the product here, you gotta plan, you gotta market, you gotta have everything in a in a row So when Black Friday comes, it's like, all right, it's here. Let's open open the hay barn. You gotta get the hay in the barn first.
Kurt Elster • 36:01.900
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Nick Mertz • 37:10.200
Exactly. Exactly.
Kurt Elster • 37:11.920
On you know, we talked about TikTok. We're on the topic of uh Black Friday. One of the things that you we discussed uh offline that was surprising was how well mystery boxes did on TikTok. Like I've always been a fan of you know, ever since the Adams days, like the mystery bucket they would do. You'd get a bucket full of stuff. And I just love the concept of mystery bucket. But you know, you did mystery boxes, a little more typical. Um but they did they seem to do unusually well on TikTok.
Nick Mertz • 37:40.220
There's two different things, and I honestly I don't know for certain, but I'm pretty sure when I was at Adams, we invented the mystery skew. I think we started doing it in like 2014. Now everyone kind of has their their play on a mystery box. Um but it did really well at Adams and we always did it at Adams. It's like, hey, it's great value, but it's kind of I I wouldn't say slow and dead stuff, but we you know, okay, we got a lot of these. Let's put these in a mystery bucket. Let's put these in a You know, and and whatever. And and so, um, to get rid of inventory. And it is a great way for businesses to have a mystery box and people like the thrill of not knowing what they're getting and a deal. Um So Pins and Aces does it a couple different ways. The mystery box that we do, that is a true we we we to have a different spin on it. That is truly It's never been released and it's never going to be released. So the only way to get these products is in the mystery box. And so your loyal diehards are getting something that they they can't just go and buy and we advertise it like that and those do really well because it's like, hey, you don't know what you're getting, but you know it's gonna be great value. We don't do them that often and it's all limited stuff that you're not gonna see anywhere else
Kurt Elster • 38:51.140
So anyone that doesn't think these are gonna be successful has never experienced blind boxes, you know, or like the entire culture around that. And there's just a cohort of people who love these. It's like, hey, I will pay for the surprise.
Nick Mertz • 39:05.540
Yeah, and it's great. And so we want to always up that experience. Like this year, the mystery box was a the big one. We did a couple over Black Friday, but the big one was a backpack and um a hoodie, two head covers, two ball markers, pack of tees. It was a really, really nice, thoughtful, great value product that we did. And then on TikTok we do these things called grab bags. So grab bags are like not completely slow and dead, but hey, we want to get rid of some of this inventory. It's a skew that's maybe a summer polo that we have some extras of. And when whenever we do this, we have a Or like if we drop a polo, we're going to do a thousand polos and we're going to do the size run small through three X. But we don't sell a thousand polos. We'll sell 950 because you might order and say, Oh, it's too big, it's too small, I need to exchange. So we need to kind of hold some of that. Well once that SKU is done, we still are left with fifty to eighty polos and so we need a way to get rid of those, but we don't want to put it back on the site and diminish the value or you know go with a huge sale. So we put it in a in a grab bag and the grab bag is different than the mystery box. And so the grab bag was on TikTok And that was a great way, kind of intro to the brand. Hey, you get a guaranteed piece of apparel, a polo, t-shirt, whatever it may be, a head cover, and some accessory. And You know, it's fifty percent off. Fifty bucks gets you a hundred plus. And yeah, that just went viral on TikTok. There was a couple people who made posts about it, again the affiliates, so like, hey, this is what I got. I wanted to try out pins and aces. It's a great way to do it. And a couple of those videos just went nuclear and good for us. And then, you know, bought from our our TikTok shop.
Kurt Elster • 40:43.820
You know, like, and that's the hard part with any, you know, dealing with any content that's distributed algorithmically is you really have no idea ultimately what will and won't succeed. Um And so like I'm sure you you knew you would get some sales with this. Were you surprised by what you did get?
Nick Mertz • 41:00.380
Yeah, it was cra we were like having Our sales team in our conference room building grab bags every day. We were getting three, four hundred orders a day for just the grab bag and having the sales team like help help the ops team prep them and build them. Because it did just pop off and you don't know what's going to pop off and how it's going to do. So yeah, definitely surprised at that skew.
Kurt Elster • 41:25.980
Now, the one thing that the one negative for a golf brand is that golf is is seasonal, you know, at least in most of the country and it is here in the Midwest, it's quite seasonal. Is yet, you know, Pentanase's sales really don't seem to be that particularly affected by seasonality How the heck did you manage that?
Nick Mertz • 41:46.900
Well, I think again, going on an omnichannel approach, um January was great, uh surprising our our MER was uh marketing efficiency ratio what we look at was a little lower than what I'd want in January. I think ad spend was high again going back to Gotta kinda control those those costs. Um But uh yeah, so I think we look at it as um having an omnichannel approach. Right now we were at the PGA show in January, which is a big buying summit for all the golf courses. It's their Black Friday right now, uh February and March, January, February, March, gearing up for that and then getting the orders out to the wholesale accounts to be in their shop by March, April. springtime um is big, you know, having that uh in there. I also think the weather is like, I mean, it's seventy degrees in Colorado right now. It's nice. And it's February. Um, there hasn't been a ton of snow over in our area, which has been maybe for this year specifically, but um to To t to your point of like how do you ach uh uh you know adapt to seasonality in a business is you gotta make it fun and interesting and tell people, well, like, hey, here's a good time to buy your gearing up for spring. It's always spring's right around the corner, gear up for it. Or having an omnichannel approach where it's some months e-commerce is is big in in summer, but the greengrass accounts And wholesale have already kind of bought for the summer, so it's slower in wholesale. So having kind of a diversified sales channel for those different months has been uh helpful for us.
Kurt Elster • 43:19.220
I want to talk about wholesale. You know, when we talked uh two years ago, I don't wholesale I don't think was really part of the plan. It is now what changed? Like what was the thing we're gonna like, let's get into wholesale.
Nick Mertz • 43:29.140
I think um so we had it, but it was never really it wasn't like a huge um you know channel for us. It's always been like 90 ten. e-com to wholesale. This year it's going to be like 60-40, uh, 40% wholesale. And I think there's going to be a world where um e-com will actually not be the the lead horse anymore. Our greengrass and wholesale accounts will be. uh and it'll be fifty fifty and then price sixty forty wholesale to e-com in terms of revenue. And both channels are still growing, but There's a lot of opportunity with with uh with wholesale brick and mortar. And you see brands like the Honest Company and Traeger, they're abandoning e-commerce. Uh they're not they don't have e-commerce anymore. You go to their sites like, hey, you can go buy at our wholesale partners Um and I think that's because the customer acquisition cost is is through the roof and the barriers to entry in e-commerce is relatively low. If you anyone listening wanted to go start a golf company, you could have a golf company up and running in a month. Go get some hats, get some polos, put a logo on it, start selling. Now, it's not that easy, obviously. There's a lot that goes into it, but the barriers to entry are a little bit lower. So thinking outside of the box um with e com is really important going back to these live channels and being top of mind. But yeah, we saw with wholesale big opportunity to support e-commerce and vice versa. So we had a big following. A lot of people uh follow Pins and Aces, they like the content, they know the brand. Then they'd go ask for it in their Pro Shop and the Pro Shop would be like, hey can we you guys Can we carry your product? And so the e-commerce is supporting wholesale in that sense, but now if we're in these brick and mortar, if we're in a SHIELS or a uh Dick Sporting Goods or a Pro Shop, someone sees the brand there, maybe they haven't heard of it, they like it, then they see the tag or the brand, and then they go and look at us online. Now they start following us, they see one of our drops, now they're buying from us on e-comm. So it's an ecosystem that is uh supporting both both sides, if that makes sense.
Kurt Elster • 45:33.440
No, absolutely. Yeah, having like that retail presence, yeah, you're selling that product, but now that's just even more eyeballs. It is more surface area, more impressions. You know, you're getting people into the marketing flywheel, even if they don't necessarily buy in retail, you know, and I know just supporting local retailers, also kind of fun and a little satisfying.
Nick Mertz • 45:54.500
Yeah. So absolutely.
Kurt Elster • 45:55.859
I mean this whole thing, like we've done 45 minutes on all of your brilliant decisions.
Nick Mertz • 46:04.160
Um there's a long list of things that that that that don't necessarily work. And I I I don't think you can you uh can be afraid to try something that doesn't work. Um for the most part, again, with the crawl, walk, run, if we're coming out with a new product, I'm not just gonna go all in and say I need 10,000 of these and I'm stuck with inventory. I think a lot of businesses or entrepreneurs make that mistake, um, especially with a new product. We always talk about having a uh a a a technical success. We want the product to work, um, but you need to have a commercial success. You might have the best idea, the best product in the world. But does it solve a problem? Do people actually want that? And then you don't have a commercial success. And that's when you get left with a ton of inventory that people don't want to buy. Um that that can be a challenge. So For us, we've had those challenges in the past where we've bought in a bunch of XYZ product and it doesn't move or a design. Um, I think for us last year is trying a bunch of different high funnel marketing campaigns because we're like the CAC is through the roof, meta-ads, Google ads, let's do something different. Let's do podcast ads, let's do this, let's do that, and um not really having a track and kind of wasting money on some of that stuff um is a problem. You know, just different campaigns or different Um, and we're gonna do a sports illustrated article. I I don't know. Uh some of those is it's kind of broad and vague, but um Trying different marketing avenues that really didn't pencil um what was a big uh you know, pain in the ass for us last year
Kurt Elster • 47:42.340
Yeah, I imagine. But I mean that is also what has been a big part of your success is the willingness to just try things and see if it works But of course with that is when it doesn't work or it's not obvious if it works, being willing to just, you know, walk away from it.
Nick Mertz • 47:56.059
Yeah. Yeah. I think you have to do that. And I think um, you know, especially in terms of uh staffing. If people listening to this are uh entrepreneurs or they they're starting to have employees or maybe you have some employees, um look I think we have I have employees that have been with me for 15 plus years in multiple different businesses. I have new employees who are phenomenal. Um, but I think you have to understand what got you here isn't necessarily going to get you there. Um, and so we had, you know, a guy running our wholesale program. He was great, he got us, you know, here, but he's not gonna get us there. You know, the next step was taking wholesale from two million dollars to ten million dollars is he the guy who's gonna take us from two to ten um and I think if you want to scale you can't be the nice guy and you mentioned at the beginning we're a family business Um, we are. My brother-in-law is my partner in the business, my other brother-in-law runs our marketing, my father-in-law is on our board. We've got a lot of friends and family in the business, but we are not a family business. I I I I say that to our employees of I'm not a family business. We are a sports team. Think of it as a sports team. We're a professional team. You know, you might be the starting quarterback this year, but next year you may not be. And so, uh but Matt Butcher, who's at um Adams, who you've worked with, he ran track at University of Oregon, uh very fast sprinter, Division I athlete And he got there. He's the highest recruited sprinter in the country. He could go anywhere. He gets to Oregon. He's the big dog. You know, he's the fastest guy. And the coach said My job every day is to replace you. Your job every day is to not get replaced. And so that's kind of how we look at it is like, hey, just because you've been here We don't do raises based on longevity. You've got to add something. What else are you doing in the business? It's not just you've been here for five years and you get a raise. Um, we want you impacting the business in a different way. So Um, you've had to make tough decisions. We don't like really firing anybody uh in the business, but your role may change and you know you might have someone who, yeah, you're running this role, but We're bringing in someone above you. We don't think you can get to the level you're not getting fired. You're not your position's not changing necessarily, but there's a n you're you have a new guy who's above you and you didn't get that position. So um I think you have to be tough about that is It's it's really tough because you know you work with these people every single day. Um, but if you know you want to keep your business lights on and you want to continue to grow and scale, sometimes you have to look at it and say, what got us here isn't gonna get us there. And that's always tough.
Kurt Elster • 50:32.819
Yeah. No, there's there's hard decisions, but you know, by the time you're at the point where like you're thinking about it and you you're dreading the decision, you probably already know what the right answer is.
Nick Mertz • 50:43.500
For sure. I think so. And I I think it's always and you know, for the most part, we haven't really had to fire too many people. They are self-selected out in a sense of I d I don't think when sh sure, uh you know, it's always tough and tough to talk about like I gotta fire an employee. Um a firing should never come as a surprise to an employee, and if it does, you've done them a disservice because you're not working on with them to say Hey, you're a B player. We want to make you an A player. Here's how. And you put them on a path to either become an A player, or if they don't, they're really going to self-select out. They're seeing the writing on the wall. I got a new guy in here. He's doing better than me. you know, I'm I'm I'm gonna self select out. But if they they do have no yeah, having to terminate 'em, it's never been a surprise for me. I've never fired somebody and they were surprised, like, whoa, I didn't see that coming. And if it is, you've probably d done them a disservice.
Kurt Elster • 51:35.660
That's a good point and good advice. For someone who's got it you've now been there. So for someone who's like trying to scale, you know, one to five, five to ten, what's your advice for them? Like what would you possibly have done differently?
Nick Mertz • 51:49.580
Yeah, it's a good question. You know, we think about it a lot. And I think most importantly. You you've gotta do you you gotta take care of you know the foundation of the business. I think you've gotta continue to execute daily and you know, doing things that maybe you don't wanna do, you don't like doing, but you know you have to get them done Sure, doing the fun stuff and playing a bunch of amazing golf courses and going on golf trips, that's that's all fun and that that's part of it. But you gotta take care of the foundation. And I think sometimes when you're in scale, it's really easy, I think, to go from Zero to a million, a million to five, five to ten. Um, I think that's relatively straightforward. If you know you've got someone who wants to buy your product, you're starting to sell it. Um, it's pretty easy to keep that going. Don't lose focus on, you know, the quality, the core, the pricing, whatever got you to that first sale. Well, what did that? Okay, we've got good organic content. We're high touch point with the customer. Don't lose that. Um and trying to do too much too quickly. You know, we've looked at a lot of different things like opening our own brick and mortar retail stores. I think that's part of the plan. But looking into that last year, really at the beginning of the year, we looked at it as like, hey, there's probably nine or ten other things we should do before we move to that phase. And so if you're trying to bite off more than you can chew or something you don't really know, um and it's kind of a guess without you know calculated risk, I think that's when people really struggle and they end up going backwards or could lose the business. So I think it's all about organically scaling with where you're at. If you've got, hey, an opportunity to go from one to two million, great, focus on that, then go to five. Don't go one to five. Um, and I think too many people want to scale too fast. And I look back at pins in twenty, twenty-one, twenty-two, I'm like, man, this was stress free. This was fun. You know, didn't have a ton of revenue. Not, you know, not forty employees, three or four people. It was great. It was fun. Um and and you just kind of slowly build upon that. I think nobody um You know, I especially in the TikTok uh world. This kind of applies to this and the influencer craze. Um I think Jeff Bezos asked Warren Buffett once, you know W you have a great portfolio, people can follow you what you want to do. Why don't more people follow your investing strategy? And he said, nobody wants to get rich slowly. And that's true. Nobody does. Everybody wants to get rich quick or they want, you know, the the quick growth, quick scale, do all this. I need the fancy camera. I need the new building. I need the expensive lease. You don't need any of that stuff. You need your iPhone. Start with that until you really, okay, I can't I can't work any. I need a better camera or I need, you know, this. And so. Nobody wants to do it organically and slowly. They just want to do it immediately. And I think when that happens and you try and cut corners or do something out of your wheelhouse or you're comfortable with, that can cause a problem.
Kurt Elster • 54:51.080
Man, that that's great advice. I think we end it there. If someone wanted to learn more about you and Pins and Aces, where do they go?
Nick Mertz • 54:57.880
Uh you can follow us on all the socials at Pins and Aces. Um I did make my uh personal Instagram public. I never like that. I don't post too much, but you can follow me at NVmerts. Um And then uh yeah, check us out, pinsandaces. com if you want to grab some golf gear or follow us on socials. We're always on there on it on every platform. Um, and it's pretty fun to watch.
Kurt Elster • 55:21.900
The and definitely check out uh the power hour and their live selling.
Nick Mertz • 55:25.420
Yeah, definitely. Thank you so much. Thanks, Kurt. Appreciate it.
Kurt Elster • 55:30.900
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Kurt Elster • 56:07.319
Promo PartyPro's the app. Give it a shot. It's got a free trial. Thanks