Happy Sunday!

I hope you had an incredible weekend and are opening this email without too much fear of the Sunday Scaries. I spent the week recovering from being terribly sick and binge watching the new Netflix three-part series on the Laci Peterson murder. Some people are damn sick and twisted in the head. If you’re like that dude Scott, please do me a favor and hit unsubscribe on this newsletter. If you have no idea what I’m talking about, do yourself a favor and go watch it.

Before we get into this week's newsletter, I can use your help.

1) I just hired a full time videographer so I’m going all in on growing my Instagram. Go follow me - @chrismeade

2) I’m in need of some type of life coach/advisor. Can anybody point me in the right direction? Somebody that comes in, looks at your assets and your personal goals and says you need to do this, that, and this to get you where you want to be in the next 3-4 years. Financial advisors are so one-dimensional. I’m looking for somebody who can provide advice across all businesses like stocks real estate, crypto, investments, etc. Like a CEO for Chris Meade. Is that a thing? It has to be. Help me.

Well lets get into it.

The Last Days of Rome

There’s an old saying in business: Rome wasn’t built by putting all of your eggs into one sales channel.

…Okay, I may have gotten that wrong, but the point still stands.

Growing a business doesn’t happen by accident. Once you’ve found your niche and built a strong foundation, you reach a point where you have to expand your strategy to different channels.

Today, I wanted to get into the 5 sales channels that propelled CROSSNET to over $35 million in sales, along with some hard-earned insights on how to maximize each one.

1) Retail - The Power of Presence

Ol’ faithful. Retail has always been a cornerstone of our growth at CROSSNET.

There are few things as satisfying as seeing your product on the shelves of major stores.

On top of being an ego boost, it increases your brand’s visibility but also builds trust with customers who prefer to see and feel products before they buy.

As great as it is to see your product on display in leading retailers around the world, that’s the easy part. The key is to move them off the shelves as quickly as possible.

One of our biggest early mistakes was trying to land the biggest accounts in the world right away. Start small, learn from your mistakes (there will be tons), and scale from there.

CROSSNET’s first account was a store called Scheels who only took us on for two locations. It took us nearly six months to find out a way to drive demand and then and only then, did we get to expand to 30+ more of their stores. Had we started nationwide, or with a bigger account we would have flopped and ruined the relationship for ever.

As you build up a rapport with your retail buyers, success requires a deep understanding of your partners, constant communication, and regular adjustments to your in-store strategy. In the early days, we made sure to visit stores, check product placements, and gather feedback from store managers to refine our approach.

Eventually, there became too many stores and there was no way to check in with each and every location as we could not afford hundreds of thousands to hire a fancy pants retail marketing service to do this for us.

Retail is also about relationships. Strong ties with your retail partners can lead to better product placements, more prominent displays, and even participation in their marketing campaigns. 

These opportunities can dramatically increase your sales, but you need to earn them by proving your value and always showing your working to get better.

2. Amazon - The Ecom Giant

If you’re not on Amazon, you’re missing out on a massive audience. Amazon is the go-to marketplace for millions of shoppers who spend enough money to let Bezos literally build a rocket and fly to space.

For CROSSNET, Amazon’s expansive reach has been a crucial part of our growth strategy. But with great reach comes great competition. If you want to play in the big leagues, you need to bring your A-game.

If you’re worried about knock offs you’re completely justified. If you have success they will come and that’s why its so damn important to have a strong brand and incredible product. What’s worse? Knockoffs or your customers searching for your product and them buying another because you’re not there?

Optimizing your Amazon presence is a constant battle. It’s not enough to simply list your products. You need to make sure they are:

• Discoverable

• Well-reviewed

• Competitively priced

We invested heavily in optimizing our product listings with high-quality images, detailed descriptions, and keyword-rich titles to boost our visibility in search results.

Advertising on Amazon is another critical component. We found that targeted ads could significantly boost our sales, but only when we closely monitored their performance and adjusted our strategy in real-time. Our goal is to constantly be hitting a 10 ROAS on our Amazon spend and have an offensive & defensive strategy implemented.

It’s a balancing act of staying competitive while maintaining profitability.

If you want to work with the best Amazon agency in the world email my good friend Neema who runs Arvanza - [email protected]. He doesn’t know I’m sending this, but they are super affordable, unbelievably good, and the only agency I haven’t fired in 3+ years.

3. Shopify - Direct-to-Consumer Done Right

Our Shopify store has always been the heart of our direct-to-consumer efforts.

It’s where we have complete control over the customer experience, from the first click to the final purchase.

We focused on building a strong brand presence on our Shopify store, with a clean, intuitive design and a focus on storytelling.

We also leveraged Shopify’s integrations to create a personalized shopping experience, using tools like email marketing, abandoned cart recovery, and upsell features to increase our average order value. We also have products that are ONLY available on our Shopify to force customers to shop on our site where we get the best margins.

These days we nearly do 5:1 on Amazon compared to Shopify, but every Shopify sale is a bit more profitable as we’re not paying Amazon’s 15% referral fee and then their fulfillment fee. Its a balancing act as customers (including myself) so much prefer shopping on Amazon than creating an account on our website, however, we need them to shop on our site to obtain the best margin.

One of the biggest lessons we learned was the importance of data. By closely monitoring our Shopify analytics, we could identify trends, spot issues early, and optimize our marketing efforts to ensure we were getting the most out of every visitor.

4. TV Ads - The Old-School Channel That Still Works

You hear all the time that the digital world has killed TV ads, but they’ve been a surprisingly effective tool for us at CROSSNET.

TV advertising allowed us to reach a broad audience and build brand recognition on a massive scale. It’s a channel that can create a big splash — if you use it wisely.

The key to success with TV ads is understanding your audience and crafting a message that resonates. For us we found that day time news programing was a great way to target mothers who were planning their week and looking for things to do with their family.

Here’s a pro tip: think about what your audience will be doing when they come across your ads.

If they’re on Amazon, they’re there to shop, so hitting them with a direct call to action makes sense.

When they’re kicked back and watching Hell’s Kitchen reruns, ; that’s not when most people think, “you know what sounds great? Playing Four-Square-Volleyball on a beach.”

That means we have to cater our TV strategy away from directly motivating a purchase and lean into making impactful, memorable ads that stick with the audience.

For us, TV ads weren’t about driving immediate sales; they were about building brand awareness and trust. The impact of a well-placed TV ad can be felt across all your other channels, amplifying your efforts and creating a “halo effect” that boosts your overall brand visibility.

5. Catalogs - The Unexpected Win

One of our most unexpected successes came from the physical education and gifting catalog channel. Just last week we received a $90K purchase order on August 13th, completely out of the blue. There’s zero ad spend on this, so roughly $50k of pure profit.

Here’s the real kicker: We hadn’t spent a dime on marketing for that channel — it was simply about being present in the right places.

This is proof that being present matters. Even if a channel doesn’t seem like a big moneymaker at first, you never know when it might deliver a significant return.

It’s a reminder that diversifying your sales channels is essential, as it ensures you’re capturing every potential customer, no matter where they’re shopping.

Making Data-Driven Decisions with Triple Whale

With all these channels in play, managing and optimizing our efforts could have easily turned into a logistical nightmare. That’s where Triple Whale comes in.

We’ve been using them for years now and they are legit the first tool that I open every morning when I get to my desk. In glance, I can check how profitable the previous day was and how clicks, sales, and conversions were across all of our sales channels

They recently launched Moby, which is a sick AI-powered marketing mastermind that can give you expert-level analysis on all the important metrics for your business.

Want to forecast your revenue for the next six months based on the past 24 months of data? Want to know if you are overspending on Facebook and should lean more into organic marketing this month?

Moby has you covered!

Triple Whale has helped us to prioritize the channels that were delivering the best results and cut the fat on the channels that weren’t. They are a key player in CROSSNET getting back to profitably month over month and without them we’d honestly be screwed.

The Triple Whale team has been good friends of the newsletter for a long time and are giving 15% off your first 6 months of their Premium or Premium+ plans!

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