Geometry of Growth, Issue #83

Hey y’all,

Once again, coming at ya live from the Big Apple, after spending the week at CommerceNEXT’s Growth Show. If you haven’t been before, I highly recommend attending next year. It’s a fantastic show - great content, great attendees, and great vibes!

I’ve got two new delightful bits of content I’m excited to share with you guys this week.

This week, Rishabh (FERMÀT’s Founder/CEO) launched a new podcast — The Intelligent Marketer — with Mike Duboe (partner at Greylock Partners). This pod is all about how AI is fundamentally reshaping marketing and commerce. Each episode features builders creating new systems and the practitioners actually using them to help marketers navigate what’s working, what’s changing, and where things are headed.

The first episode features Eric Seufert, Founder of Mobile Dev Memo & General Partner at Heracles Capital. In the pod, Rishabh, Mike, and Eric jam on everything from the privacy shuffle and measurement mistakes to new AI-native ad formats. A pretty impressive inaugural episode, if ya ask me. You can listen to the pod & learn more here.

Next up — the Tariff Survival Guide has dropped! Developed by Social Snowball, FERMÀT, Triple Whale, PostPilot, and other industry-leading partners, this guide provides a playbook for tariff-proofing your profits and protecting your margins.

Inside, you’ll find highly tactical strategies for controlling CAC in performance acquisition, driving more revenue from the customers you already have, and using heatmaps to improve the customer journey.

Admittedly, I’m a little biased, but I think our chapter on running profit-saving experiments is worth the download alone. 😉 Get the guide for free here.

Okie dokie. Onto this week’s newsie, featuring: Mixology's cart-boosting apparel store, founder-led marketing's decline, Liquid Death's $1B comedy-forward brand strategy, and more.

Wishing you a lovely weekend! ☀

Cheers,
Lex 💚

It is very rare that I feature an apparel brand as a Store of the Week. No fault to y’all in the apparel space — many of you have lovely sites, but they’re typically all quite similar. I came across Mixology this week and was impressed by how they’ve mixed things up (no pun intended).

Mixology is a family-owned, boutique women’s clothing apparel company. They carry high-end designer lines in addition to more affordable pieces, and help pair those items together so consumers can build looks that are cutting-edge and trendy without breaking the bank. Pretty cool concept.

Some of the things I love about their store:

Mixology has really nailed offering a seasonally relevant, visually rich shopping experience. Apparel is a difficult space; with so many SKUs, stores can get overwhelming, leading to decision fatigue (and abandoned carts). This store has a ton of really smart elements that combat friction while simultaneously driving up cart value.

Very well done! (& shoutout to the Sharma Brands team, I believe they’ve worked with this brand as well).

👗 Check out Mixology’s frictionless, fashion-forward store here.

Mosquito season is in full swing, which means it’s the perfect time to share Wondercide’s Outdoor Mosquito Spray with y’all!

This product is ideal for anyone who enjoys spending time in the yard with their family and/or hosting outdoor gatherings. Wondercide’s mosquito spray is DEET-free and plant-powered; it’s a natural alternative that actually works without turning your yard into a chemical wasteland.

The spray kills and repels mosquitoes, ticks, ants, fleas, and pretty much every other buzzing nuisance that ruins outdoor fun. It’s made with steam-distilled essential oils instead of harsh chemicals, covers up to 5,000 square feet, and is lab-tested to meet the same effectiveness standards as conventional sprays. There’s also no dry time needed, so you can spray and immediately begin enjoying the benefits.

In addition to being safe for kids and pets, it’s safe for beneficial insects like bees and butterflies, so you're not accidentally nuking the pollinators your garden actually needs.

TLDR, your backyard gatherings just got a whole lot more pleasant.

🦟 Reclaim your outdoor space with Wondercide here.

For years, DTC marketers have been talking about building founder-led brands and producing founder-focused content. And for a while, it was massively impactful. But it seems the tides are changing, especially in the beauty and skincare space.

According to The State of Fashion: Beauty Volume 2, a report co-published by Business of Fashion and McKinsey & Company, only 13% of consumers cite the brand founder as a key reason for purchasing products from their most frequently bought brand. Instead, product performance and price are driving 39% and 24% of purchase decisions, respectively.

Even more telling? When people discuss superstar Selena Gomez’s Rare Beauty on social media, her name is only mentioned 8% of the time.

Also interesting - the data shows that very few best-selling beauty brands are less than 20 years old. Only 14% of brands generating $250+ million annually were founded after 2005. That drops to just 9% for brands making over $650 million. Translation: explosive founder-led launches are one thing, but scaling to serious revenue is another game entirely.

For ecommerce teams currently working on building brand awareness, and especially those considering founder-led marketing campaigns or celebrity endorsements, this article is an excellent, data-rich read.

💄 Read the full breakdown on founder-led brands from BoF here.

Many of y’all have heard me rave about Liquid Death’s brand and creative teams. I genuinely think they’re stacked with some of the most brilliant, creative people in the world. It’s absolutely unbelievable that Liquid Death - a canned water brand - has scaled its annual revenue nearly 700% in roughly 4 years. Just over a year ago, they were valued at $1.4 billion.

Needless to say, any time Liquid Death marketing leaders give a talk or record a podcast, I’m there to hear it.

In this episode of Shopify Masters, Andy Pearson (VP of Creative at Liquid Death) breaks down how they turned one of the most boring products on earth into comedy gold.

I love Andy's take — most brands are afraid of using humor because they’re worried about offending consumers or releasing content that conflicts with their brand values. Andy's philosophy is simple but powerful: "Comedy is based on two people looking at the same thing and agreeing that that's true." When someone laughs at your content, they're not just entertained — they're acknowledging they see the world the same way you do. That's a way stronger connection than any feature-benefit pitch.

If you're tired of playing it safe with forgettable campaigns, this episode will give you the blueprint for making humor work without falling flat.

👂Listen to Andy reveal Liquid Death's comedy-driven brand strategy here.

If you've ever had a campaign pulled for compliance issues or cringed at off-brand content that somehow made it live, this tool might be a good fit for your team!

Mark OS is an AI-powered content review platform that instantly scans your digital ads, product pages, and videos to ensure they're on-brand, compliant, and optimized for performance. Instead of manually reviewing every piece of content across teams and markets, Mark OS flags issues before they become costly problems.

The platform enforces brand guidelines globally, checking everything from logos and colors to consistency in messaging. They’ve also built in a competitive benchmarking feature so that Mark can score your content against competitors & platform best practices.

For brands managing content across multiple channels, teams, and regions, Mark OS provides that bird's-eye view you need to maintain quality standards without slowing down your creative output.

🔍 Level up your content quality control with Mark OS here.

July 15 // Los Angeles, CA

FERMÀT is stoked to sponsor Talent Commerce Summit - the first annual celebrity brand conference for the best minds in talent commerce. This event is all about the intersection of culture & commerce. Speakers include senior leaders from the industry’s top talent-backed brands, such as Rare Beauty, De Soi, Dr. Squatch, General Mills, Ouai, and more.

July 21 // New York, NY

Catch FERMÀT at this summer’s Amplify event in NYC! Learn from top founders, Shark Tank alumni, & industry leaders. Get quick-hit, actionable insights from seasoned pros like Sean Riley (Founder & CEO of Dude Wipes), Aaron Kraus (Founder of Scrub Daddy), Iskra Lawrence (Founder of Saltair), Brooks Powell (Co-Founder of Cheers), and more.

July 23 // New York, NY

Join Retail Brew, FERMÀT, Google Cloud & other partners for a day of expert content all about staying ahead of the curve. Faced with ad fatigue, rising acquisition costs, and heightened customer expectations, turning clicks into conversions and winning loyal customers can feel like a constant uphill battle. This comprehensive event is designed to equip retailers with the knowledge of strategies needed to thrive in the digital marketplace. Speakers include Aanan Contractor (VP Storefront & Loyalty, Wayfair), Katherine Brodie (CMO, Frances Valentine), Kim Gallagher (Exec Director of Marketing & CS, Nuuly), Sharon Price John (CEO, Build-A-Bear Workshop), and more.