eCommerce Podcast

A brand Cem Atik helped scale from $15m to $50m paid an outside firm $15,000 to be told what it was doing wrong. It already had 100,000 customers who would have said the same thing for nothing.Cem co-founded Harucon Ventures in Düsseldorf, in western Germany, and spends his days pulling apart the numbers behind ecommerce brands in the UK and the DACH region (Germany, Switzerland and Austria). He has been in the space for 13 years. He scaled his own first business to $7m, then burned more than $250,000 on a second one he started alongside it and went bankrupt in five or six months.That failure shapes most of what he says here. The two things holding brands back, he argues, are a loose grip on unit economics and the ego that arrives somewhere between $2m and $5m in revenue. He makes the case that ecommerce only really starts past $10m, that retention rather than paid marketing is where the profit is made, and that a rising customer acquisition cost is only a problem if the repurchase rate is low. He also walks through what happens inside a growth audit, including a packaging change that took 25% out of one client's costs before any extra ad spend.In this episode02:57 - Who Cem is and what Harucon Ventures does08:33 - The two mistakes he sees in almost every brand11:11 - Why pay 15k when you already have 100,000 customers13:45 - The $250,000 second business that went bankrupt in five months16:54 - Why a rising CAC is not automatically bad20:45 - What actually happens inside a growth audit24:18 - Cut the feelings and call your customers34:32 - How Cem uses AI to read data he has no time to read43:02 - The five numbers every ecommerce founder should knowThe Two Mistakes He Sees in Almost Every Brand (08:33)Asked for the single biggest mistake ecommerce businesses make, Cem named two.The first is having no control over unit economics. His opening question on a first call is what the brand's customer acquisition cost to lifetime value ratio is, and he asks it less for the number than to find out whether the founder knows it at all.The second is ego, and it tends to show up between $2m and $5m in annual revenue."The first call that I have with people is usually like roasting them for 30 minutes." - Cem AtikHe is not dismissive of that milestone. Getting a business to $2m or $5m is difficult and most people never do it. His argument is that the game changes afterwards."Ecommerce is actually, if you're just asking me, starting after you're passing the $10 million, because then you just really start to feel pressure, competition, and you also just need to play the game differently, or otherwise you die within like a 3-month period." - Cem AtikHe has paid for the lesson himself. His first business reached $7m in revenue, at which point he assumed everything he touched would turn to gold. He started a second business alongside it, spent over $250,000 and went bankrupt inside five or six months. Matt offered the same story back from his own history, copying the code behind Jersey Beauty Company to launch Jersey Gift Company, which died in about three weeks."People only learn with pain. You just need to feel this pain at least once or twice until you understand." - Cem AtikYour Customers Already Know What Is Wrong (11:11)A brand Harucon had helped take from $15m to $50m told Cem it had hired an outside firm for $15,000 to identify what it was doing wrong. Harucon has invested in that business, so Cem asked the founder why."Marcel, you have 100,000 customers to ask for what you are doing wrong. Why are you just hiring a company?" - Cem AtikThe founder's answer was that it felt like the next step."Who say you that this is the next step? You're just only increasing your OpEx cost for no reason." - Cem AtikThe objection Cem expected was credentials, so he dealt with it directly."These guys have like huge reference. And your customers has no reference. They buy, they bought your product. So what kind of reference you need more, right?" - Cem AtikThe catch is that free feedback still has to be accepted. Cem's view is that a sparring partner is only useful to a founder who can take criticism, provided the criticism comes with a reason and a fix rather than just a verdict. Matt tied that back to Jim Collins in Good to Great, and the idea that a great leader confronts the brutal facts while holding on to a belief that the future can be different.Retention Is Where the Profit Sits (16:54)A client complains that their customer acquisition cost is rising. Cem's first question is the repurchase rate. At 40%, a rising CAC is not a problem. At 10% or 15%, it is."A raising cost number doesn't mean that something is going bad or good. It more shows you where your business is moving on." - Cem AtikCategory matters here. Beauty products tend to bring in new customers, supplements should bring the same customers back, and a supplements brand without a repurchase rate of 30% to 40% is leaving money on the table.His wider point is that paid marketing has a ceiling."You cannot stay always profitable with your marketing if you just reached 100, 150, 200 million. That is not working. Marketing is not made for that." - Cem AtikRetention, conversion rate on the shop and signup forms are the levers that turn unprofitable traffic into profit."Retention is the only channel that is generating your pure profitability." - Cem AtikScaling Usually Starts Before the Ad Spend (20:45)Harucon runs two due diligence workstreams before it touches anything, marketing with Cem's team and finance with his partner Tobias Münnich and his team. The scan covers rates, supply chain and process, and the fixes it surfaces are rarely about buying more traffic.One food and beverage client was producing in Poland and Bulgaria, shipping the product to Germany, unpacking it, repacking it, then selling it. Finishing the packaging at the point of production took roughly 25% off the packaging cost. A separate change to fulfilment on the same brand saved another 12%.The findings get delivered in what Cem calls the second roast meeting, where the brand hears exactly what is wrong, why it is wrong and how it gets fixed. He is firm that the last part is what makes the first two worth anything. Naming the problem is cheap. Handing over the method is the bit brands can act on, and it leaves them free to run the fix themselves or bring Harucon in to do it.Cut the Feelings and Follow the Data (24:18)"Your ecommerce brand is your baby. You just grow it up from the beginning and there is a lot of emotion into it. Cut it. It's hard to say, but cut it." - Cem AtikA 15% to 20% return rate does not need a dashboard or a consultant. It needs phone calls to the customers who sent the product back.The same instinct applies inside the data. One of Harucon's partner brands asked why repurchase rate fell away after the third order. The numbers showed no gifts, no welcome series and no contact of any kind after the first purchase."It takes us 5 minutes to fix something that you just thinking about like 2, 3 weeks." - Cem AtikFor founders with nobody to ask, his suggestion is LinkedIn. Message ten people who work in the area. If eight of them say the same thing, fix that. He answers his own messages, prompted by his team when one has been sitting there a day or two.The last piece is pace. One of the larger private equity operators Cem knows describes himself as not especially smart, but says he understands how pace and execution work together. He runs five things at once, cuts whatever is not working inside a month and rotates. He burns money doing it, roughly 5% or 6% of it, and that buys him the other 90%."If you are not able to sacrifice 5, 6 or even 10% to generate another 90% which are insanely profitable, you are leaving money on the table and you are just wasting your time." - Cem AtikThe Five Numbers He Names (43:02)Asked to close with the metrics every ecommerce founder should be able to state, Cem gave five.Customer acquisition costAverage order valueNew customer share, meaning the percentage of customers coming in who are newLifetime valueRepurchase rateHis closing advice was borrowed, heard on another podcast and repeated because he thinks it is true. Work so hard and so much that it makes it unreasonable not to succeed, and do not let pace and execution be the last thing you care about.Cem's Question for MattEvery guest leaves Matt with a question, and he answers it on social rather than on the show."If you compare your biggest success with your biggest failure, which one teaches you more? Failure, for sure, right? But are you sure about that?" - Cem AtikMatt's answer goes up on LinkedIn and Instagram.Today's GuestCem Atik (pronounced "Jem") is Co-Founder of Harucon Ventures GmbH, based in Düsseldorf, Germany. Harucon is a growth partner for ecommerce brands in the UK and the DACH region, which covers Germany, Switzerland and Austria. Cem runs it with his partner Tobias Münnich, who leads the finance side. The firm works on a performance-based model, caps itself at 15 brands at a time and takes equity positions...

Jayden Clark sold his first ecommerce business for £500,000 — and the decision came to him during a 90-minute massage.Two and a half years earlier he'd started it in the evenings around a job at Sky. It hit seven figures in year one and got both him and his wife out of corporate work. It also had nothing holding it up underneath. Jayden had built the demand engine and skipped the operations, and the gap between what the business sold and what it could actually support kept widening until he broke.In this episode he's unusually straight about what that cost him — he reckons another 18 months of operations work would have made it a seven-figure exit — and about what the fund that bought him taught him during a six-month earn-out he didn't want. He then walks through how he's building Camper Nation differently, including why a 0.3% conversion rate is deliberate, why he stopped selling his second best-selling brand, and the lead magnet sequence he'd run if he were starting tomorrow.In this episode04:20 — From ten years at Sky to seven figures in year one15:19 — Building the demand engine and skipping the operations17:36 — The massage that ended the business21:10 — The two non-negotiables in business number two25:37 — Why a 0.3% conversion rate is the plan33:33 — Why nobody turns up to the lead magnet workshop39:10 — Most conversion problems are traffic problems44:40 — How to build your first lead magnetThe Gap That Breaks Founders (15:19)Jayden's strength is demand — ads, SEO, everything up to conversion. So he pushed demand, and kept pushing, while the operational side went unbuilt."What I am not very good at and what I don't enjoy is what happens after the sale. And so you keep doing this, this, this with the demand, and the gap between what the business is doing and what the business can realistically sustain just gets bigger and bigger and bigger." — Jayden ClarkFinancial pressure made it worse. With two corporate salaries gone and roughly £10,000 a month needed out of the business, every profit increase became a choice between hiring help and banking the security. He kept banking it and working the extra hours.The 90-Minute Massage (17:36)Two years in, a spa day after his UK wedding ceremony. Ninety minutes, no distractions, and a head full of liabilities and bad hires."For me at this time that was like hell, because it was 90 minutes in silence with my own thoughts, thinking about all the liabilities that exist." — Jayden ClarkHe came out and said he needed to sell — not because the offer was right, but because he couldn't face the work required to make the business sustainable. The fund that bought it made him stay six months, because he'd built a business only he could run. That earn-out became the operations education he'd never had.Why 0.3% Conversion Is Deliberate (25:37)Camper Nation converts at 0.3–0.4% against a 1–2% benchmark, with an average order value around £2,000. At that price the scoreboard changes — Jayden runs the business on traffic-to-lead conversion, not traffic-to-purchase.The mechanic is concrete. A customer wants an awning but fears ordering the wrong one. So Camper Nation asks for the registration and vehicle type, returns a guaranteed-compatible list, and covers return shipping if it's still wrong."If they don't feel confident that awning is right for their vehicle, no matter how many times you bombard them with the product and more traditional remarketing, they are never going to get to the point where they're ready to purchase." — Jayden ClarkMost Conversion Problems Are Traffic Problems (39:10)When people bring Jayden a conversion problem, he says at least two times out of three the real issue is the intent of the traffic arriving. Someone searching for a sleep supplement with two specific active ingredients is a different buyer from someone searching for help sleeping better."You can optimise on-page and conversion rate and lead magnets as much as you want, you are always going to be running uphill if your traffic source is not intended correctly." — Jayden ClarkJayden's Lead Magnet Sequence (44:40)Pick one product — the one you'd sell if you could only sell one thing tomorrowDescribe the dream lead in five specificsReverse-engineer which searches and channels put that person on the pageWrite down what they don't know and what's blocking themBuild the lead magnet around the single biggest blocker, and give away enough that it feels uncomfortableServe the first leads manually, then automate what worksAlso mentionedGeorge Bryant on the APPLE framework — the nurture-sequence approach Jayden recommendsToday's GuestToday's guest: Jayden Clark Company: Camper Nation Website: campernation.co.uk LinkedIn: Connect with Jayden on LinkedIn Email: [email protected] YouTube: Jayden Clark Ecom Community: 1% Ecom Club (on Skool)Episode link: https://www.ecommerce-podcast.com/the-90-minute-massage-that-cost-him-half-a-million-with-jayden-clark

Amazon is shrinking product titles to 75 characters from 200, enforced 27 July 2026, and Carolyn Lowe explains exactly what to fix first.SummaryCarolyn Lowe spent years at Dell — including running the consumer side of Dell.com — before leaving corporate life to build ROI Swift, an Austin agency that helps consumer brands grow profitably on Amazon. In this episode she and Matt dig into the single mistake she sees most often, which is founders throwing more money at ads when the real problem sits somewhere else entirely — a weak product page, a poor main image, or a listing the algorithm can't read.She shares the numbers behind her thinking, from the 18–20% of ad spend most brands are quietly wasting to the 25% packaging saving she found for one client, and the clean rule she keeps coming back to, which is that the main image drives traffic while the content drives conversion. There's also a hard deadline every Amazon seller needs to act on, plus why she prefers affiliates over influencers and why Amazon Business is worth a look.00:00 — Welcome and two ecommerce "dinosaurs" meet06:13 — Why more ad spend usually burns money13:12 — Agencies that think like owners23:48 — Grading a listing A to F and the 75-character title cut26:20 — Main image drives traffic, content drives conversion32:00 — Why Amazon is shrinking product titles34:55 — Launching her own brand with Vine and TikTok affiliates40:05 — Where AI actually helps on Amazon45:20 — Saving the best till last, SKU analysis to Amazon Business(Chapter markers aligned to the episode video.)Why Throwing More Money at Ads Usually Backfires (06:13)Carolyn's view is that most brands reach for the ad budget when sales dip, when the fundamentals are what actually need fixing. If a website isn't converting at 2–3% with an average order value under $100, or an Amazon listing isn't converting at 15–20% or higher, more spend simply pours good money after a bad page."If your website isn't converting at 2 to 3% and your AOV is less than $100, go back and fix your product pages." — Carolyn LoweShe points to the 18–20% of ad spend she routinely sees wasted. On a £30,000-a-month budget, that's roughly $6,000 a month set on fire. One example she gives is a women's fertility product whose automated software kept spending on "dog, cat, horse, pet" keywords, which is why ROI Swift uses AI to analyse the data but keeps a human in the loop to make the call.The Amazon Title Change Every Seller Needs to Action Before 27 July (23:48)The most time-sensitive point in the episode is Amazon's move to shorten product titles. Titles are dropping to 75 characters (including spaces), down from 200, with enforcement from 27 July 2026. The change applies to all categories except media, and it's largely driven by mobile, which now accounts for the majority of Amazon traffic.What sellers need to know:Over-length titles get auto-rewritten by Amazon's AI if they aren't fixedOnly brand-registered sellers get a 14-day review window to adjustAmazon has added a new Item Highlights field (around 125 searchable characters), so total indexable space stays close to 200Carolyn's advice is to go back in now, rewrite titles to be compliant and intentional, and get the most important product details in first — before Amazon does it for you.Why Your Main Image Drives Traffic and Your Content Drives Conversion (26:20)This is the cleanest framing in the episode. The main image is what earns the click in a crowded search result, so it's a traffic lever. The content further down the page is what turns that click into a sale, so it's a conversion lever."Your main image is going to get you more traffic. Your content is going to get you more conversion." — Carolyn LoweCarolyn shares a worked example. Changing a main image from a pair of shorts on their own to the same shorts worn on a person — so buyers could see whether they were 5, 7 or 9-inch — lifted conversion by around 30%. A follow-up change to the content added roughly 12% more, with no extra ad spend. Her category-by-category tips include putting the product next to its box to signal a legitimate brand over cheap knock-offs, and showing the fruit a flavour is based on so shoppers can imagine the taste.What It Means to Hire an Agency That Thinks Like an Owner (13:12)Carolyn's differentiator is that ROI Swift thinks like owners rather than vendors, looking at the whole business instead of just the ad account. That's how they spotted a packaging change that saved one brand 25%, switching floss picks from a bag to a box and taking $1 off every unit across 200,000 units a month.It shows up in how they charge, too — a retainer to keep five specialists working on each account, plus a share of the brand's growth, so incentives are aligned. Their four core values run through the whole approach.Care about what you doMake it betterAlways be learningGlass-half-full mindset"We sort of are in the business of making other people millionaires and billionaires." — Carolyn LoweBefore they wrap up, Carolyn's parting tips are to start with a SKU-level benchmark of where a brand is today, and not to sleep on two growth channels — TikTok Shop and affiliates (she backs paying on sale over paying influencers for visibility), and Amazon Business, where 96 of the top 100 Fortune brands hold accounts and over $30 billion is transacted.Today's GuestCarolyn Lowe is the CEO and Co-Founder of ROI Swift, an Austin-based agency that helps consumer brands scale profitably on Amazon. ROI Swift has worked with 150+ brands and generated more than $100M on Amazon. Before founding the agency, Carolyn spent years at Dell, running a large division and the consumer side of Dell.com. She is also the author of Business Growth Do's and Absolute Don'ts and a licensed pilot.Website — roiswift.comLinkedIn — Carolyn LoweBook — Business Growth Do's and Absolute Don'tsCarolyn has also offered a free one-page listing audit for any listener doing $5,000 or more on a single Amazon product page.About the eCommerce PodcastThe eCommerce Podcast helps you deliver ecommerce WOW with real talk about building online stores. Matt Edmundson talks to experts and founders who've built the stores and learned the hard way, so you don't have to.Subscribe at ecommerce-podcast.com for a new episode every Thursday.Episode link: https://www.ecommerce-podcast.com/is-amazon-cutting-your-product-titles-to-just-75-characters-with-carolyn-lowe

Selena Knight has spent 20 years in retail and knows exactly why most e-commerce businesses are undercharging. One of her favourite examples? An Australian party supplies company that charges $6 for $3 paper plates — and their customers keep coming back.In this conversation, we get into price anchoring, why the businesses that survived 2025 were the ones charging more, not less, the three questions that close every in-store sale, and what she learned from Gary V's organisational psychologist about hiring people who actually think for themselves.If you're competing on price, this one might change your mind.Subscribe to the newsletter at ecommercepodcast.netKey Point Timestamps:06:45 - The Three Questions That Close Every Sale11:52 - What a £12,000 Cocktail Teaches About Pricing15:34 - Why Premium Brands Won 202525:22 - Hiring for Culture Over SkillsThe Three Questions That Close Every Sale (06:45)In her eco baby product stores, Salena developed a framework built on one principle: if you give someone more than three choices, they probably won't buy anything.When a customer walked in looking for a gift, the team asked three questions: What type of person are they? What pain point do you want to solve? What's the budget? From there, they'd present three options — high, mid, and low. "And inevitably, I tend to find that they buy the high price thing, which is great."The e-commerce application is straightforward. Most online stores dump customers onto a category page with dozens of options. But you control the canonical structure of that page. You choose what appears first, second, and third — and you can guide decisions just as deliberately as a knowledgeable shop assistant would.What a £12,000 Cocktail Teaches About Pricing (11:52)Price anchoring is behaviourally proven — our brains benchmark against the first number we see. At the Savoy, a £16 gin and tonic feels outrageous until you see cocktails for £300–400. Then a £12,000 flagship cocktail makes the £300 ones look almost sensible.Salena applies this directly to e-commerce category pages. Most stores sort products lowest-to-highest. Her advice: "When somebody comes to a category section, I will always have at least two really high-priced products. And then I'll have the product that you really want to sell."If your sweet spot is £200 jeans, put the £300 pair first. Some people will bounce, but as Salena notes, "They probably weren't gonna buy anyway." Everyone else now sees £200 as a bargain.Why Premium Brands Won 2025 (15:34)In a year where consumer spending tightened noticeably, Salena shares what she saw across her client base: the businesses that did well were charging above the average, not below it."Where I saw the people who did well were brands that I would call premium. Not luxury, not your Louis Vuittons, but they're charging above the average."Premium brands had already built their point of difference. They weren't competing on price, so price pressure didn't destroy them. Meanwhile, the discount-driven businesses were stuck in a brutal race to the bottom. The Party People could charge $6 for $3 plates because convenience was worth paying for. Premium doesn't mean expensive for the sake of it — it means giving people a reason to pay more and making that reason obvious.Hiring for Culture Over Skills (25:22)Premium pricing only works if the team understands the vision. Salena distinguishes between "donkeys" (reliable doers) and "unicorns" (thinkers who solve problems independently). Both are essential, but growing beyond a certain point requires people smarter than the founder."You can't be as smart as me. You have to be smarter than me. Because if this whole business is only as smart as me, we're screwed."Working with Gary Vaynerchuk's organisational psychologist, Salena learned a simple hiring exercise: write down everything that annoys you. The insight? "When you ask people what they want, they can't usually tell you. But they can tell you what they don't want." From that list, she identifies which frustrations are genuine business needs — and which are just personal irritations she needs to make peace with.Today's GuestToday's guest: Salena KnightCompany: Salena Knight — Retail Growth StrategistWebsite: salenaknight.comLinkedIn: Connect with Salena on LinkedInInstagram: @thesalenaknightEpisode link: https://www.ecommerce-podcast.com/how-to-charge-double-for-paper-plates-and-have-customers-thank-you