Milan van essen

Tonight we eat steaks and lobsters

Anybody that knows a wise rep? Please reach out to @duanthytjon

A 58-year-old plumber pulls a hairball the length of his forearm out of a bathtub drain. 11M+ views. That video sells a $24 drain tool. He retired from plumbing 4 years ago. The tool now does $1.9M a year. Ad spend is under $3K a month, mostly boosting his own videos. 2 videos a week, shot on his phone. No script. No editor. Just him, a broken drain, and an explanation of why it broke. I met him at a Shopify meetup in Phoenix and asked who runs his marketing. "30 years of fixing drains. That's the marketing." Can't beat that. He knows his customers better than their mothers.

US women age 45-65 are the backbone of the e-com space

Dog harness brands are killing it. A friend of mine raised his price by 51% and lost 9% of his conversions. But his profit nearly 3x. Before: $39 price. $8 to make and ship. $22 to acquire a customer. $9 left per order. After: $59 price. $8 to make and ship. $24 to acquire, since conversion dipped. $27 left per order. $410K a year in profit became $1.1M. He didn't touch the harness. He rewrote the page: chew-tested stitching, a 2-year guarantee, photos of the harness after 18 months of daily walks. Most founders try to fix margins by squeezing suppliers. You need to hear these stories to know when you're wasting time. The fastest lever in ecom is the number on the product page.

You should never bet the farm on a single channel.

220 million people market. A $10.5B ecom market in 2026, growing 14.6% a year toward $23B by 2032. Close to 0 proper DTC supplement funnels. That's Nigeria. No one in American ecom is paying attention. I met a guy in Houston selling men's vitality supplements (he does $220K a month on Facebook). The unit economics: $4 to get a customer, $3 to make the product, $1.50 to deliver it, $18 AOV. The logistics: 2 to 3 day delivery across major cities. 55% cash on delivery, Paystack for cards. Returns under 2%, because unhappy customers simply stop reordering. What actually took work was the creative. Authority and social proof hit harder in Nigeria than in any market he's seen. Doctor endorsements. Customer counts. Before and afters. Etc. The competition is non-existent. If you're Nigerian-American or West African, the first-mover window is open right now.

Few people understand how competent you become in the process of learning how to run a profitable e-com brand. Running laps around MBAs.

Shopify dashboard. Last 30 days: €1.4M. 24 years old kid from Prague. 1 product: premium anti-aging skincare for women 40+. Bootstrapped 4 years ago from €25K in savings. I asked how big the team was. 4 people. Creative lead in Prague, ops manager in Madrid, 3 customer service VAs in Mexico City for Spain and LATAM hours. His sister on email retention.

The Spanish speaking market is a goldmine. Most founders make the mistake of launching in English and adding Spanish on later. I know a guy that runs every ad in Spanish from the start, tests in Spain, makes small regional copy tweaks, and the same hooks carry across 600M Spanish speakers, 60M+ of them in the US. By his count, that's 20x their addressable market from launch day. €42 blended CAC across Spain, Portugal, Mexico, Colombia and the US Hispanic market. €74 AOV. 34% on subscription. 3.8% refunds. He takes home about €170K a month after tax. Lives in a 2-bedroom in Maderia. 0 podcast appearances. Sleeps 9 hours/night. Like a baby.

I'm looking for a partner to help launch one of our brands in China. What I'm looking for: • Proven track record launching Western fashion brands in China • Hands-on experience with Tmall (Global), Douyin and Xiaohongshu • Able to advise on the right setup (cross-border vs. local entity) and trademark protection • Transparent about fees and results If that's you, or you know someone who's done this well, drop a comment or send me a DM with relevant case studies. #China #Tmall #Douyin #Xiaohongshu #Fashion #Streetwear #Ecommerce

Looking for a creative agency, with proven track record in the fashion and lifestyle niche. Hit me up 🤝

Here are some of the biggest winners I ever saw in e-com: A $49 single bottle rebuilt into buy 3, buy 6, subscribe and save. AOV went from around $50 to over $120, and CAC barely moved. A dry eye supplement repriced from $50 to $130. Conversion went up 50%. Everyday Dose points 871 ads at 1 deal: a $169 system for $29. Both pulled the same trick: put a $20 product in front of 2 brands. 1 builds a $30 order, the other a $90 order, and the $90 brand can outbid the first in every auction it enters. You must focus on the offer. Make the offer better. The offer is the business.

Nobody believes your product is better. That's what a 39-year-old ex-Google engineer told me in Miami last month. I agree, trust is hard earned online. He sat at $340K/month for 7 straight months running lab reports, contaminant charts, and certification badges. He sells countertop water filters. Then he filmed a 45-year-old guy with a hacksaw. The ad: a pitcher filter, a white plate, a kitchen counter. Dad saws it open. "Changed this 8 weeks ago. Box says 2 months. My kids drink through this." Black sludge on the plate. Product at second 55. $9K/day in 2 weeks. $1.6M/month 13 months later. The guy is killing it.

Your Meta audience segments won't exclude past buyers unless one setting is switched on. Build the list from 3 sources: - Pixel purchasers. Purchase event, 730-day window. - Shopify customers with 1+ orders. Export them, format to Meta's template with AI, and re-upload monthly. - The Klaviyo segment "Placed order at least once over all time," synced through the Meta integration. Add all 3 to existing customers, then turn on "acquire new customers" at ad set level.

Same $20 product. 2 brands. Brand A: $30 AOV. Brand B: $90 AOV. Say it costs $25 to get a customer. Brand A has $5 left to make, pack and ship the order. Brand B has $65. Now Brand B raises its bids. It wins the auctions Brand A can't afford. It keeps scaling while Brand A sits at its profit ceiling wondering why the "winning product" stopped winning. Most founders keep hunting for the next untapped product. 0 focus on economics of the whole thing. The best ecom brands fight over the gap between front-end price and AOV instead. Economics beats product.

Airport lounge in Denver, last month. 36-year-old founder waiting on the same (elayed) flight. Doing $940K/month on insoles for people who stand all day. Asked him what moved him from $180K/month to $940K/month in 12 months. "I stopped filming the product. I started filming the end of the shift." His old ads were clean studio shots: foam layers, arch diagrams, a podiatrist quote. Flat at $180K/month for 9 months. Then he tested a 74-second ad of a 47-year-old ER nurse in a hospital locker room at 7pm, peeling off her socks. "On my feet since 6:40 this morning. I bought the $400 orthotics. I bought every gel thing in the pharmacy. This is what 12 hours does." It hit $8K/day in 10 days. Film the moment pain peaks.

By far the best event I’ve ever visited. Room full of killers in the Ecom space. Thanks @RomanEcom and crew for bringing Ecom events to the next level. #shenzhen #ecommerce

An ad lives or dies in its first line. This is how we write ours. Every hook passes 4 checks: ideal customer, curiosity, large TAM, something different. Then the AI system: Level 1: basic prompt Level 2: add a swipe file Level 3: paste in an emotion wheel, tell it to get the customer upset, then offer the fix "Write me 10 more like this." Polish in a Google Doc. Never ever ship the first output.

Our full creative stack (in the exact order a concept moves through it): - Perplexity: research - TikTok: find concepts - Trendtrack: competitor ads with data - Sandcastles: outlier scripts and hooks - Poppy AI: analyze videos without downloading - Gemini: creative analysis - Higgsfield: AI hooks and statics - Claude Code + Meta API: creative reports - Notion: organize everything - Claude: put it all to work 10 tools.