NM Live: DTC Super Bowl, CFO-CMO Synergy & Scaling Apparel Brands

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Welcome to Nerd Marketing, an original podcast for eCommerce operators and marketers looking to level up. Drew Sanocki and Michael Epstein will bring you actionable strategies from their decades of running eight and nine figure brands, along with interviews and insights from the leaders of some of the most successful brands in the world.

Drew Sanocki

Hey everybody, welcome to the Nerd Marketing Podcast. My name is Drew Sanocki. Today, Mike and I talk about the Super Bowl and who from DTC would have played really well in the Super Bowl. We talk about how CMOs and CFOs have to just get along really well and how they can get along and just play nice together in the sandbox. And then we talk about why apparel in particular, is able to really scale up direct mail channels. Brands like Vuori and Buck Mason and Marine Layer. These are brands that just spend millions a year on direct mail and it all leads to customer acquisition. There are three secrets that they're all embracing and we dig into that. So I hope you enjoy today's podcast.

So Mike, how you doing?

Michael Epstein

Good Drew, you watched the game this weekend?

Drew Sanocki

I did watch the big game. Did you have a rooting interest?

Michael Epstein

Not really. I know you were protecting the Pats legacy, so, you know, had to go Eagles, right?

Drew Sanocki

Yeah, to preserve the Pats to preserve Brady's legacy, you got to root against Kansas City. That was my rooting interest. But, you know, it's an entertaining game if you weren't rooting for Kansas City. I mean, I enjoyed just seeing them get the snot beat out of them.

Michael Epstein

I enjoyed seeing HexClad's commercial.

Drew Sanocki

Wasn't Hims in there too?

Michael Epstein

Hims & Hers.

Drew Sanocki

Yeah, so it got me thinking, you know, two things on the Super Bowl. The first was, you follow Daniel McCarthy?He had some interesting analysis that high level most of the ads were to, he argues, existing customers of these brands. It's not new customer acquisition. So only 13 of the 57 advertisers were from brands launched within the past 10 years. So because of this, most advertisers were looking to reinforce their image with their existing base versus using the Super Bowl as an opportunity to gain exposure, which is weird because of the exposure, you know, because it's so big. He argues more for customer development, maintaining awareness with the base than forget them at the top of the acquisition funnel.

Michael Epstein

Interesting sort of consistent with our boy Byron Sharp how brands grow keeping that brand saliency high right?

Drew Sanocki

And I love that we call him our boy in this podcast. I mean, we never talked to this guy. He's over in Australia. Uh, so these are all, you know, the GoDaddies, the Salesforces, the Doritos, the Taco Bells, and what else we got in here? Netflix, Disney, you know, like these brands have all been around for a while. And I guess 13 advertisers that were launched more recently, there would be our boys at Hexclad, right? The Hims, companies like that. So, yeah, Poppi  had an ad, another sort of DTC brand, CPG. Liquid Death, big one, Hexclad, FanDuel, Instacart, OpenAI, Tubi, Fetch Rewards. You know, if you're do the Super Bowl ad, you do it for customer retention. I hope that was interesting. Good analysis from our boy, Daniel McCarthy.

Michael Epstein

Yeah, you know what else would be fun Drew is if we were to match a player from the game from the game to someone from the DTC Twitter universe. So who are you thinking for the MVP, Jalen Hurts?

Drew Sanocki

I had Sean Frank. I think you got to go, Sean Frank with Jalen Hertz, you know, because Sean built this nine-figure brand bootstrap. He's always harping on how it's, you know, it's profitable. He's got leadership. He's humble. I read Jalen Hertz lives in like a two thousand dollar a month apartment, he's a very humble guy. You know, he's just like out there. He's not too cocky. He's not like Dion Sanders kind of like Showtime.

Michael Epstein

I mean, no question he's one of the best shit posters there is on DTC Twitter, but in real life, really humble guy.

Drew Sanocki

Saquon Barkley running back. Who do you got for him?

Michael Epstein

I'm thinking Connor from HexClad and probably Cam and we'll say Connor's more active on DTC Twitter because Hecclad is like a freight train. They're just running over everybody. They're everywhere. They're in Costco. They're on the Super Bowl, they're all over Fox with the partnership with Gordon, and they're growing like crazy. I mean, they are just running people over. And I think that's good for Saquon.

Drew Sanocki 

The next guy I got up, A.J. Brown, who's like the star receiver for the Eagles, he's like 6'5, 250 pounds. And like, is who is that big? Who dominates the middle of the field like that? Cody Plofker.

Michael Epstein

Yeah, who is not 6'5 or 250 pounds, but I think the key is, embodies the 6'5, 250 pound guy.

Drew Sanocki

Sure plays like a 6'5, 250 pound guy. And you can't shut him down. It's really hard to just put like a cornerback on Plofker and have him shut down. You know, he's still he's still going to get open.

Michael Epstein

Totally. Exactly. Coaches, who do you got for Sirianni?

Drew Sanocki

Sirianni, we had Taylor Holiday, you know, because he's very analytical. Apparently really into customer lifetime value, you know, and he's just, he's like running the numbers, putting the right, the right players out there on the field that give him the edge just like Taylor Holiday. With Andy Reid, I got to go with myself. Largely because I can consume just an incredible amount of hamburgers or cheese steaks and you know in a short period of time as can any Reid.

Michael Epstein

Fumblerooski.

Drew Sanocki

Yeah. Plus it would be mildly insulting to say anybody else out in DTC Twitter reminds us of Andy Reid. So I'll take that one. And I got one for you. I'm going to go with Pat Mahomes as Michael Epstein. So, you know, because he totally balls out, you know, the guy's just like given 110 percent. He's awesome. No question as to his talent. And yet he might be, is he starting to get old? Like he didn't, he kind of screwed up a little bit in the Super Bowl though, did a couple of his, tried to do a couple of his home's throws and they didn't work. He missed the receiver. Maybe his body's starting to break down a little bit.

Michael Epstein

The reference to one of the greatest quarterbacks of all time. And he proved he can still throw that perfect bomb in that fourth quarter. But I think much like Mahomes, he's probably waking up the next day in a lot of pain. You know, like just physical pain.

‍Drew Sanocki

Yeah, like three years ago when you were CMO at AutoAnything, that was like peak Mahomes. You were just dishing them out, know, doing the sidearm passes to dudes. I think maybe now have you lost a spring in your step or just kind of get a little old and sore the next day?

Michael Epstein

I think it's more just the physical after all that balling out. I wake up with pain that you can't explain because that's just getting old. 

Drew Sanocki

I just said I'm Andy Reid. So I'm like the least athletic dude out there.

Michael Epstein

You know, we still gotta razzle-dazzle, you know, aches and pains in the morning, I think is the key thing for both of those.

Drew Sanocki

Actually you had two for Travis Kelce.

Michael Epstein

I split up Jason and Travis. Obviously Jason's not playing now, but I thought I was just thinking of players and who embodies it. I got Eli for Jason. So Eli Weiss, who's now at Yotpo, cause you know, Jason's a loyal guy, Yotpo, loyalty, but also culture guy, you know, really brought that culture and camaraderie to the Eagles. So I think of Eli when we think of that. And for Travis, I got Rabah, our buddy Rabah from, from FERMÁT. He's got, he's got the flair. Rabah's got the greatest shoe collection in DTC Twitter probably, but he's also got the skills to back it up. So that reminds me a lot of our friend Rabah.

Drew Sanocki

I don't know Rabbah's relationship status, but Kelce dating Taylor Swift. Do they have anything to influence on why you picked Rabbah?

Michael Epstein

I did it cross my mind, but I don't know his relationship status either so.

Drew Sanocki

Maybe subject for a future podcast. Those are good picks. think there are also rumors that Kelce was showing off his hair throughout the Super Bowl. Do you notice this? Yeah, rumors that he had gone to Turkey and got a hair transplant because it was like this thick mane or in the past never. Yeah. We'll have to ask Rabah about that. Right. Yeah, so that's who we got. DTC representing iin the Super Bowl. Great to see everybody out there. You know, these guys like Plofker and Connor just like given it they're all for the game. So, you know, we look forward to next season and congrats to all the winners. Congrats to everybody who played out there in DTC Twitter.

Hey Mike, one of the things we get asked a lot is how businesses change when you take private equity money. And I think given our backgrounds as working at these DTC brands that also are owned by P.E. I think one of the biggest differences is how the role of the CMO kind of changes. In many ways, these private equity brands are driven by the CFO. They all have a strong CFO. They've got financial oriented boards and the CMOs that win and sort of stay around are the ones who work really well with the CFO.

Michael Epstein

Yeah, I think you're right. A brand takes money from private equity and they're like, this is awesome. I'm going to buy a bunch of ads. I'm gonna go do this and that. But the private equity fund is, first thing they're usually saying is, all right, we gotta put a real CFO in place here. Because we need to have a strong understanding of the numbers. You need to have a strong understanding of the numbers.

And CEO - CMO, you need to be joined at the hip with your head of finance function, especially now that you've taken institutional capital.

Drew Sanocki

Those are the exact exact words that Kingswood told us. I think when we were in the first week of running AutoAnything was like here, you got to go get a CFO and you got to that guy's got to be in your hip pocket.

Michael Epstein

Yeah, and his office or her office needs to be right next to you guys. That's actually what we had. It was your office, CFO, my office all in like a row. 

Drew Sanocki

Yeah, it was like right between us. And so he could just basically keep us focused on the next board meeting and on the reporting and everything that had to happen. So, you know, it was a big learning for us. And one of the things people ask is like how the role of the CMO changes. And we came up with what four or five different things that a CMO needs to do to improve the working relationship with the CFO. 

Michael Epstein

Number one, speak the same language. So if you're the CMO and you're just talking reach and ROAS and impressions and have a totally different set of KPIs and then the CFO is saying, I want contribution margin. I want  first order profitability, I want CAC down to the penny and all that. Like you're setting yourself up for a lot of conflict and a lot of difficult conversations that are going to continue.

‍Drew Sanocki

I think like CMOs marketing has come a long way. If we look at versus when we started and you know, 20 years ago was all about all those other metrics, reach and traffic and conversions and that's about it. And I do see people talking now more about contribution margin and lifetime value and in CAC to LTV ratios. But those are like music to the CFOs ears because that's kind of what they use to drive the financials.

‍Michael Epstein

Totally, and get an understanding of the types of reports they're building and start to sort of map your models and your KPIs around what they're reporting and their financials and what they're reporting up to the board. And that's gonna help make these conversations go a lot smoother. But you also have to build that case to the CFO. You have to help get them to understand what the investment is that you're looking to make and why. And you might have different goals. You might have short-term goals, long-term goals. And you have to help educate that CFO as to what the plan is and how you're going to measure success.

Drew Sanocki 

Our second way that the CMO can play better with the CFO. And it's realized that, as the CMO, you want to take a lot of bets. You want to try different things. You want to go to shows or you want to try retail or, you know, you want to try direct mail and realize that the more you present all these ideas as investments. And it's like, Hey, here's what we're going to spend, here's what we expect to make on this investment. Here's the ROI on this investment. You're going to have a much easier time justifying those experiments, you know, and you've got to postmortem them after the fact, you know, get on the same page with the CFO. He or she is more likely to sign off on your budget if you present them with a strong argument that says, I think this is going to ROI in this amount of months. That's going to help you work really well with the CFO.

Michael Epstein

Yeah, and I think talking about that longer horizon for the return is really important, Drew, that you mentioned at the end there, because especially as you start to scale, and a ton of the brands that we work with are in this exact situation right now, to scale, you've got to really move beyond direct response, short-term ROI on every marketing investment you make. In some cases, you're not gonna be able to say, I'm gonna make this content. I'm gonna go to these different events and I expect to be able to quantify the return and show a profitable return within seven days of doing that thing. That doesn't scale, right? So helping, getting on the same page with your CFO on, okay, we're gonna make some of these longer term bets, especially on the brand equity side, especially on top of funnel. That's critical to growing your brand over time and scaling your brand.

Drew Sanocki

Yeah, we talk about Preston at Chubbies all the time. And this is kind of the conversation I envision him having with his CFO. It's just like, we've got to switch from direct response to more brand equity initiatives. And these are not things you're going to be able to measure in the next seven days. But over the next six months to a year, they're really going to drive down our CAC.

Michael Epstein

Exactly. So getting on the same page with what your thesis is around measuring success of those initiatives over time is what's critical. It's okay that you can't measure direct response ROI over a short horizon, as long as you both are on the same page. Yeah, we're going to look at CAC over time. We're going to look at branded search impression volume over time. We're going to look at some of these other things to evaluate. Are these marketing initiatives having the positive impact on the brand and helping us scale better?

Drew Sanocki

Right. So the third thing we've got, which is really getting marketing involved in budgeting and forecasting. And this has always been sort of a challenge, I think, until we figured out a big unlock. you know, CFO has his or her own way to budget and to forecast. It's often very different from how the CMO does it. You know, in my experience as a CMO, it was, we're just going to take every channel from last year and we're going to increase it 20 % or 50 % or something like that. It was very like, let's start with the channel and do this sort of bottoms up. The CFO doesn't understand that there's no rationale behind it. You know, in many ways they're thinking about budgeting by department, you know, and not by marketing channel. So I think getting on the same page is critical. And one thing that you and I have really leaned into is sort of this customer driven forecast, right? Where we model out the number of customers acquired. I forgot where we got this. might've been Peter Fader, but you're like, the number of customers you're acquiring. And then we talk about those three revenue multipliers. So like the number of customers acquired, the total amount they spend, and then the amount that the frequency that they come back, you know, some sort of retention metric in there. And using those three multipliers and the total number of customers acquired, pushing that out over the next year has been a very helpful way to model the business because I find that CFOs can get on the same page then.

Michael Epstein

Totally. They can get on the same page and it gives the CMO a little more freedom and flexibility to execute and operate that way. Because CFO to your point, Drew, doesn't need to understand, know, I'm, I'm investing X dollars on SEO content to try and do, you know, and this is the KPI. It's more like this is a, we need to drive new customer acquisition. Here's one of the ways that we're going to invest to do that against our budget. If we see the customer numbers hitting our targets, we're do it, we're succeeding. If not, maybe you've pivoted three times to try and drive that number already and you don't have to get into the weeds on every tactical strategy that you're using for that. And there's one other trick that we did successfully when it came to budgeting and forecasting and that was we created high, medium, low, or sort of like base case, optimistic case, pessimistic case in our forecast. So that, again, you could sort of see how you were trending. It gave you a little more flexibility to look at how you're performing early in that quarter, early in that year and say, like, are we heading towards a base case? And have we already modeled out what that means to the business? We're hitting our optimistic targets, maybe there's a different staffing plan. If we're hitting our pessimistic targets that might be a very different staffing plan and investment plan. But having that thought out in advance, so you're not reacting all the time is really helpful. And in some cases, we've also even put line items for asymmetric bets. So things that have the potential to really move the needle, we're not gonna bake it into the forecast, but showing the board and your CFO, here are a couple things that we believe have the potential to be asymmetric bets, high upside, getting visibility on those things and showing how they play out over time gets people kind of excited.

Drew Sanocki

Yeah, direct mail comes to mind. Retail distribution comes to mind, things like that. But just like, this is a yeah, these things might explode to the upside. And the last one we had was be transparent. So CMOs really need to be open about successes, failures. It kind of goes without saying in order to build up trust with the CFO. I mean, the last thing I think you want is sort of this. The two positions are often in, you know, have this creative tension where there's some like the CMO is going to try to drive the top line of the business. The CFO is going to watch costs. And I think the more open they both are about what, what worked and what didn't, I think the more likely they are to work together well.

Michael Epstein

I think you're right. And as marketers, we tend to have sort of rose colored glasses on sometimes, and we want to present things in the most positive light, but just being transparent with the data, this is working, this isn't working. Here's what we learned and here's what we're doing about that. continues to foster trust and credibility so that the CFO isn't riding you on every detail because they feel like you've been open and transparent with them.

Drew Sanocki

Yeah. So those are three or four ways that a CFO and a CMO can work really well together. It's critical now. I mean, in this era where it's like, it's no longer growing at all costs, especially for DTC brands. Like you've got a cash flow. You've got, and that's how you're going to exit the business someday or pay a nice dividend out. You get a nice lifestyle business if you're generating cash. And I think the key to unlocking all that is the right CFO. And so it's really important for the CMO and the CFO to be on the same page. So I hope that helps. Email us with any more questions about this.

All right, Mike, an interesting audience question we got this week, which was how do you really scale direct mail for an apparel brand? So I was going through some of my catalogs that I get. I got to say easily 70 percent are apparel, right? Me and you just got, you know, Coolibar. This is probably like one month's worth of catalogs. Frank & Eileen. Marine Layer, Cuyana. Right. It clearly works for these brands. These are big brands. Vuori, J.Crew, right. And they're all doing a catalog. So like. What allows them to scale up the channel such that it moves the needle for them? So they're they're they're like all convinced that direct mail is working, that it's driving a significant percentage of their revenue.

Michael Epstein

Yeah, and these are large brands and they got that way by diversifying their channels and starting to build more customer acquisition channels outside of just Meta and catalogs a true way for apparel brands to do it. So one way I think is being able to personalize the sense. So really time this out based on specific cohorts, specific audiences of existing customers and automate those sends so that you've just constantly got these evergreen campaigns going out in the background to existing customers based on what you know about them, what they bought recently, how much they spent and things even about them as individuals, how much they make, whether they have kids in the house, what kind of beer they drink, whatever it might be, being able to have those on triggered based on behavior and constantly running in the background is one way that these brands are scaling. They're not doing it. It's just one and done, where they're just batch blasting to a bunch of people at once. They're waiting three months to figure out what happened and then they're doing it. They're starting that whole process again. They've got these things always on and they're constantly layering on more touch points and more segments based on what they learned from these campaigns. What do you think, Drew?

‍Drew Sanocki

When we look at these brands and these apparel brands and how they've been able to scale the channel, you and I have come up with three things they're all doing. Ok, the first thing I think is they embrace automation and personalization. So they don't think of this as like we've got to drop a one off catalog. They all think of this like Klaviyo or something similar where if you think you could build flows in Klaviyo until the cows come home, each one sort of iterating on the last one. And you could build that into a more and more complicated, automated CRM, which really represents some intelligence on your business. And I think they do the same thing with direct mail. So these brands know the product category you bought from in the past. Who's in your house? You know, what do they like? Do they like the dresses or the sweaters? And so the biggest apparel brands we see doing a lot of personalization. If I buy from, you know, the men's section at J.Crew, I'm to get the men's catalog later on, you know, they do a lot of automation. So, you know, a first time buyer gets this piece of direct mail. A 20-time buyer gets this other piece of direct mail, just like email. You can automate this. And the big benefit is, unlike email, you don't have to be opted in or subscribed to receive the piece of direct mail. So all these brands, I think, start with a couple core sequences. If I had to guess some sort of new customer sequence, a win back sequence, you know, in there, automating those catalogs and once they're catalogs and pieces of direct mail and as they work, they're probably iterating and building more and more and more, getting more granular with the targeting. But every time, like the overall number of sends just keeps going up, which they're happy with as long as it's got a positive ROI.

The second way that these apparel brands are able to scale direct mail is to embrace multi-channel integration. So what do we mean by that, Mike?

Michael Epstein

Yeah, it's a little bit of a one and one equals three scenario here where a lot of brands, especially smaller, are really focused on de-conflicting channels where they don't ever want to be sending an SMS or sending a postcard to somebody who they talked to and emailed two months ago. What the big brands are doing is they're learning how to make, orchestrate all of those channels and make them all work together so that they actually get greater scale and greater overall incremental revenue by these channels in multiple touch points. And so you might have, you know, your Facebook, your meta ads running. That doesn't mean that you don't want to hit that person with a catalog or direct mail piece. You want to create a cohesive strategy that ensures that you're creating memorable, consistent touch points with your best customers and prospects, particularly when they're not taking the action you expected them to take through your digital marketing efforts. And these brands at scale, again, like Viori still sending the emails and I'm still getting their catalogs. When you combine those two things, I am still buying more frequently from Vuori than I would if I only was getting their email or if I only was getting their catalog.

Drew Sanocki

Yeah. And when I think of multi-channel integration too, I think of like the J.Crew catalog with Demi Moore on the cover, the most recent one, that creative was reflected on the site in a unique landing page that you hit when you scan the QR code that was in the catalog, right? It was reflected in their Facebook ads. And so there's just sort of like, they're stacking the deck in their favor with the same catalog, the same brand experience that you get whether you get it in your inbox or your mailbox, you know, and you end up on the site. And I think there's something about that where one plus one really does equal three. And you're going to see higher lifetime values, higher conversion rates from your customers if you do that.

Michael Epstein

Yeah, the J.Crew example is a really interesting one and we can go down that rabbit hole for a second because they, you years ago, the J.Crew catalog was iconic, right? Everybody had it. People were folding over the pages, circling the items they wanted. It was just an iconic thing that people looked forward to and it was trend setting. And then they made the decision to sort of go all in on digital marketing and J.Crew ultimately, I think declared bankruptcy. And now they've actually turned the business around and part of that turnaround, I won't say it's all due to them restarting the catalog. But they certainly recognized as part of this reinvigoration of the brand and turning that brand around that the catalog served a hugely important purpose for them. Not only did it keep the brand top of mind, but it was helping fuel the top of the funnel. It helps keep new customers coming in. And they realized that when they stripped that all out, they could only remarket to the same existing customer so many times. And if they weren't fueling the top of the funnel with this inspirational editorialized content that was getting people aware of the brand and inspiring them to ultimately buy from them over time, the efficiency might have gone up significantly when they cut the catalog, except they went to zero..

Drew Sanocki

Yeah, didn't have enough people going in the funnel in the first place. I would love to get someone from J. Crew on who lived through that bankruptcy experience because my hunch is like we see a lot of brands, you know, they're encountering some financial hardship there. They're like expanded to quote you whatever they did. Maybe there's a new private equity owner. They immediately want to cut costs. They look at the P &L, there's like this big fat lie down for catalog and they cut it, you know, and they're like, okay, we're cutting our marketing spend or getting more efficient with it. And instead they're just, they're looking at a snapshot and not a video of what actually happens when you acquire that customer from the catalog. And then we've seen this nine times out of 10 that people acquired through direct mail, spend more often and have higher lifetime values. And so what essentially J. Crew did was they cut off that whale segment. And not surprisingly, they go bankrupt, you know, months, six months later. And so it was really interesting to see them bring it back. And, you know, we wish them the best and hopefully it just certainly sounds like the catalog's doing well. I mean, they've been out of stock of it. You know, it's like they're giving it away in the showrooms also. And people love it. So hopefully it's driving more customer acquisition for them.

Michael Epstein 

They are doing it smarter this time. Like they're not blasting it with as much frequency as they were in the early days to all the same people. They're being more targeted with the sense, but that makes sense. That's how you get efficient without sacrificing the channel.

Drew Sanocki

Yep. And so the third thing we see all these apparel brands doing to really scale their direct mail channel is they all lean into acquisition with direct mail. And so we talk about retention all the time because we started a postcard marketing, a postcard retention platform, which now does everything. But like we started with retention. Retention almost always works right. If you set up your wind back correctly, it's always going to work. But you know, everybody wants acquisition, right? It's sort of like one of those iceberg things where you'd see, like if you were to look at the spend of any one of these brands, they probably the tip of the iceberg is on their their postcard retargeting and everything under the surface is on acquisition. And that's probably like what you need to do to keep the brand big and relevant and keep driving people into the stores.

Michael Epstein

Totally. Building audiences based on data, we have thousands of attributes on hundreds of millions of consumers. We've built like the most powerful data set for that specific purpose. So you can run acquisition campaigns using catalog or other piece of direct mail, more like you would run a Meta campaign. Who looks like my best buyer and who's likely to be in the market for my products at any given time. But also, they are just sending to these people who look like their best customers at regular intervals, even if they're not always getting a massive direct response ROI on every catalog that goes out to every person. Like, again, can't emphasize it enough because these brands have gotten big by understanding that not everything is gonna be immediate direct response ROI, but how do you create meaningful, memorable touch points that still have positive ROI, especially over time, as you continue to roll these out with consistency and start to see results continue to improve over time, just like when you start with Meta. That's how they're getting to this level of scale.

Drew Sanocki

Yeah, and one of the things we see when we look at the brands across various product categories and price points is that when they do acquisition, like the higher AOV products tend to do better. And so we're talking about scaling apparel today and apparel is one of those categories, you know, like furniture and a couple others where there are higher AOV. So it's great for acquisition, you know, in a catalog like this, a six by nine, you know, you could feature 30, 40 of your SKUs really well. And it's not that expensive to get out there. And maybe the AOV for any one of these brands is over $100. I think it's perfect for acquisition. You create something that's sort of like a work of art. If I get it cold, I don't think I've ever bought from this brand before. It goes on the coffee table, you know, goes in the bathroom. You kind of flip through it, especially catalog and it really appeals to me like the Buck Mason one I flipped through throughout the whole season and you're going to see acquisition come eventually. Maybe it's not immediately, maybe it's like in a week or in three weeks after the catalogs dropped, but that's kind of what's compelling and unique about a direct mail acquisition campaign.

Michael Epstein

Yep, and it's now cheaper than a Facebook click to get a whole catalog out into someone's hands.

Drew Sanocki

Sure. It's like you rarely take the time when you're on Facebook to kind of flip through someone's entire product, you know, product catalog. Right. I don't even know how to do that. So, yeah. Direct mail for apparel. You can scale it, and it can get big. These are just three of the things we've seen. The brands that have scaled it successfully really do. They lean into automation. They go multi-channel and then they really embrace acquisition.

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