Scaling consumer products brands in the US: DTC lessons from Bodewell’s P&G exit and other businesses

1: Be clear with asking “why?” - and make sure the customer is at the centre of the why

Scaling consumer products brands in the US: DTC lessons from Bodewell’s P&G exit and other businesses - Jamie Duff

Jamie Duff (a Kiwi, now living in the US) was the co-founder of Stolen Rum; his second venture, DTC medicated skincare company, Bodewell, was sold to P&G in 2021/2022. Jamie also had a stint at Jack Abraham’s VC fund, Atomic, and has consulted to PE, VC and corporates for growth strategies across marketing, brand and product innovation. Today we are going to share some of his insights and lessons for both early-stage founders & teams, and executives, tackling high growth in the challenging landscape of consumer products.

1. Strategy:

Be clear with asking “why?” - and make sure the customer is at the centre of the why

I’ve too often seen business strategy plans that are either over-complicated, unfit for the stage of the business (e.g. based on traditional big business strategic principles), or that lack salient market and customer insights. For everything you do tactically that costs money & time, you could ask:

What problem are you solving? It might be rational, or emotional
Where are your customers? Not who you think they should be (“personas”), but who they are in reality (data is essential here to answer this)
How will you reach those people?

What message will you tell them?
How does all this fit into an overall plan?

You’ll need to create feedback loops for flexibility on your plan - and be prepared to be wrong with your hypotheses. Be obsessed with data.

You might be learning, and scaling in parallel

Depending on the stage of the business, you might need to be both testing, and scaling in parallel. This is important to understand, especially insofar as financial KPIs are concerned. You might need to bifurcate test $, and growth $.