Being at the right place, at the right time can be the key to a successful business. If you ask Kyle Widrick, founder of WIN Brands Group, he’ll admit that he’s found himself in that position a few times.
In 2013, as direct-to-consumer companies started taking off, Kyle founded Brand Value Accelerator (BVA), an agency that helped brands access the DTC market. You’ll know the names of the brands he helped make famous: Kylie Cosmetics, Mizzen+Main, and UNTUCKit. BVA created ecommerce strategies that scaled, often building out brands’ Shopify sites and running effective online advertising campaigns. After scaling BVA to more than 100 employees, Kyle sold the agency to take on another challenge.
It was time to move from agency work to owning and operating his own ecommerce brands. “We’re working with all these great brands, but we’re actually not seeing the full upside,” Kyle explains. “If we just own the brands, we know how to do it. Maybe we know how to do it better.” So Kyle launched , a multi-brand portfolio of direct-to-consumer companies, with the idea that a centralized team and an omnichannel approach could grow similar businesses substantially.
Again, timing proved to be key. The first acquisition WIN Brands Group made was Homesick, a company that makes candles and other scented products inspired by places. Lucky for WIN Brands Group, the home category took off during the COVID-19 pandemic—Homesick’s brand similarly took off, and revenue grew by 10 times.
Here is what Kyle has learned as an agency founder, acquirer, owner, and operator of Shopify-first companies, and how you can set yourself and your business up to be in the right time and place.
Diversify your strategy
In the past decade, the ecommerce landscape has evolved drastically. Costs associated with customer acquisition have risen, requiring brands to be more strategic. In many cases, that means diversifying revenue streams. “More people now are looking at wholesale because wholesale can actually be your best net contributing revenue channel,” Kyle says.
These changes in ecommerce, however, reinforced his belief in the value of a multi-brand portfolio. Brands can be more efficient with shared resources.
Diversification is also happening in advertising. Where brands once focused heavily on Facebook or Instagram ads, they’re now spreading spend across various platforms, including influencer marketing.
Maintain healthy margins
Profitability is the name of the game in ecommerce right now. That’s one of the main factors that Kyle looks for when he’s acquiring brands, especially with some of the challenges of competing with so many other companies online. “Once you start to lose momentum and steam, it takes an entirely different set of skills to rein that back in and get it going back in the right direction,” Kyle says.
He has embraced cost-cutting sourcing strategies to improve margins on the product and expanding the product line to keep interest high. “Continue to put out great products at a great price,” Kyle says, emphasizing affordability.
Sell sooner than you think
If you are building a business and considering selling it eventually, consider selling when you’re still on your growth trajectory. “If you want to sell, in my opinion, you should always sell when people are telling you it’s too early to sell,” Kyle says.
It’s impossible to time the market perfectly, but when people are telling you to sell, it’s usually too late. Acquirers won’t want to buy if you have a quarter with a decrease in revenue. Plus, there’s an opportunity cost for brilliant founders that hang on to an idea too long. Kyle explains, “Most entrepreneurs that I meet have another four ideas that they’re either working on or want to work on, so sell the business, get a great number, put the cash in your pocket and move on to the next.”
To learn more about Kyle Widrick’s ecommerce journey and insights on acquisitions, listen to the full interview on Shopify Masters.
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