On this episode of Honest Ecommerce, we have Kevin Tighe. Kevin is the founder of Beachly and the COO of Retention Brands who acquires and operates subscription commerce businesses. Their portfolio includes Beachly, Birchbox, and Alltrue. We talk about testing market feedback before acquisition, learning and growing in new market opportunities, building repeatable processes across brands, and so much more!
Kevin Tighe is the Founder & CEO of San Diego based Beachly Brands (acquired) which is the leading subscription retailer of beach apparel and accessories. Under Kevin’s leadership, Beachly has been twice selected to the INC 500 – INC Magazine’s annual list of the fastest growing private companies in America.
Kevin recently joined Retention Brands where he serves as COO of the portfolio which includes Birchbox, Beachly and Alltrue. Kevin is a passionate entrepreneur, startup mentor and non-profit volunteer. Born in Washington DC, Kevin migrated to the West Coast to attend the University of Southern California.
While at USC, he started his first business and has been a serial entrepreneur ever since. He has over 20 years of experience in digital marketing, eCommerce, subscription commerce, and entrepreneurship.
Kevin is among the select few who qualify as both a visionary and integrator. This quality gives him the unique ability to dream big and then distill his vision into an actionable and achievable plan.
Kevin serves on the Board of Directors of Sustainable Surf, a non-profit focused on promoting and restoring ocean ecosystems. He also serves on the Board of Directors of San Diego Sports Innovators.
During his free time, you will likely find Kevin at the beach with his family or in the ocean; surfing, paddle boarding or racing outrigger canoes.
In This Conversation We Discuss:
Resources:
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Kevin Tighe
thinking about as you exit your company or start a new venture. Just how do you get out of your comfort zone so you can keep learning?
Chase Clymer
Welcome to Honest Ecommerce, a podcast dedicated to cutting through the BS and finding actionable advice for online store owners. I'm your host, Chase Clymer. And I believe running a direct-to-consumer brand does not have to be complicated or a guessing game.
On this podcast, we interview founders and experts who are putting in the work and creating real results.
I also share my own insights from running our top Shopify consultancy, Electric Eye. We cut the fluff in favor of facts to help you grow your Ecommerce business.
Let's get on with the show.
Hey everybody, welcome back to another episode of Honest Ecommerce.
Today, I'm welcoming to the show a gentleman with multiple titles, Kevin Tighe.
He is the co-founder of Beachly Brands, which was then acquired by Retention Brands, which he is now an advisor at. And now he is currently serving as the head of growth at BUBS Naturals.
Kevin, welcome to the show.
Kevin Tighe
Yeah, Chase. Thanks for having me. It's been a long time coming. We tried to do our first show at SubSummit and that got ruined by, I think, United Airlines. And then with the plane delays.
But now, glad we could circle up and get this done.
Chase Clymer
Absolutely. And I always like to shout out when I meet people at conferences on the show. I tell people, get out there and meet people in your environment and you just never know who you're going to bump into and how they're going to help you.
So SubSummit, I think I even told Chris George this the other day. I was like, ‘That's the most slept on show and that's out there. It's such a good one.’
Kevin Tighe
Yeah, it's fantastic. One of my favorites of the year.
Chase Clymer
Awesome. Awesome.
So let's just start at the beginning. Take me back in time to the inspiration and ideation of Beachly Brands. What was going on in your life? Where did this come from?
Kevin Tighe
Yeah. Great question. So to go way back, I guess I consider myself a serial entrepreneur. I launched my first venture while I was in college. And since then I've had a number of ventures, mostly failures, but a few successes along the way, Beachly being one of them.
Beachly, I launched that back in, started working on the idea in 2014, launched into a very small beta in 2015 and officially rolled it out in 2016. So I've been doing that a long time.
The idea for that was actually interesting. I had a startup before that and that one ended up going under. And during that time when the startup was... I was trying my hardest to save it and turn the corner. And I just had really burnt myself out. Working sun up to sun down, just trying to do everything from raising additional funds to continuing to push product market fit.
And it just didn't work out. And finally, throwing the towel. Came up for air and I was like, ‘Man, I need a break.’ I lived at the time in Manhattan Beach. So I lived by the ocean. I wasn't going to the ocean. I wasn't going to the beach. I'm big into health, fitness, surfing, and water sports. I wasn't doing any of that.
So it just was... I wasn't really in a good place, mentally or physically. And I decided to go and take a trip to Hawaii and unplug. And while I was there for about a week, I just reconnected with the things that really make me happy, which is the ocean, the beach culture, just being active, healthy, eating well, all that good stuff.
And I came back from that trip, actually reinvigorated, I decided, ‘You know what, I got another startup in me and I'm going to start looking for concepts that really align with my lifestyle and helping other people and their lifestyles as well.’
So for that, I wanted to start with building something around the beach culture and other active lifestyles.
I started testing and looking at… coming up with a bunch of different concepts and doing feasibility analysis and would come up with an idea, ‘Oh, this is the one.’ And then I just really run through the numbers and be like, ‘No, this doesn't make sense.’
I'd be really disciplined. I think about margins, think about market size, all that stuff.
Chase Clymer
Hold on. I got to stop you there.
Kevin Tighe
Yeah, yeah.
Chase Clymer
How did you run this feasibility test? High level. If someone out there is listening and they're looking or want to test an idea they have in their head, what were some of the things you were doing to make sure it was a good idea?
Kevin Tighe
Yeah. And this is actually so important when coming up with your idea. So the whole idea of the feasibility analysis, I mean, it's kind of obvious. But back in college, I went to USC for undergrad and I did the entrepreneurship program. And it was four classes all about entrepreneurship. And the second class was feasibility analysis.
So the first one, you come up with an idea and the second one, they made you do a number of things and your final is creating a 30, 40 page feasibility analysis and you got an A if you could find a customer.
So like having someone to sign some sort of LOI.
But yeah, so for me, going through market size was really important. Just that's something that as I was younger, you think 100 million is a big market or 50 million, like, that's tiny. You need tens of billions or more for market size.
So understanding the market size and being realistic. Of that market, what is your TAM, your total addressable market? Realistically, what does that look like?
Then going through unit economics was the biggest one. So essentially just seeing if there were competitors in the market, what does that look like? Understanding your costs and understanding your margins.
And for me, really trying to find a business that had solid realistic margins, really understanding the overhead and having the market to support it. Cause if you come up with a great idea, to make it work, you need people to pay whatever, a thousand dollars a month, that really limits your size versus something that's $50 a month or whatever it is.
So that was a really fun exercise and something that is extremely important in coming up with whatever venture you're going to work on.
Chase Clymer
Absolutely. Now back to the main conversation here. The inception of Beachly.
Kevin Tighe
Yeah. Yeah. So when I was assessing all these ideas, something came to mind. It was about a year or so earlier when I was trying to raise capital for that startup that went under. I was in a meeting in LA with this investor. We're sitting in the meeting and there's a back room. I just hear music blaring. I kept looking over my shoulder.
He was like, ‘Come check this out. This is a startup I just invested in,’ and he opens the door and there's just a giant room. And they had hired a bunch of task rabbits for the day and they were there packing boxes and they were subscription boxes.
The brand at the time was called Loot Crate, which was a subscription brand very early on in the subscription box game. And they were focused on the Comic-Con crowd. So they launched that brand, became very large, number one on the Inc 500 at its peak. And it did eventually actually end up going under eventually.
But that was my first exposure to the subscription box model. So I remember walking into the back room, seeing all that energy, all these people packing the boxes. I was like, ‘What is this model?’ So there's something that stuck with me.
And then I, when I was assessing ideas, I was like, ‘Oh, what about subscription boxes?’ I looked up that company, Loot Crate, and this is a couple of years later. At that time, I think it skyrocketed. I think they were over 600,000 subscribers.
And I was like, ‘Holy crap, this really works when you have a passionate, focused audience.’ So that was, at the time, my light bulb moment. And I started assessing that business model. No one had done that in the surf, beach lifestyle, or action sports space.
Surf industry is a good market size, but I knew I, you know, to really get there, would need to branch off and be able to see that there's a whole open gap in action sports. It gave me the confidence that, okay, I think this could make sense. Recurring revenue is something that is really sexy for business. So that part was really exciting.
And that was my… I started taking the plunge into the subscription box world. I've been in subscription commerce since then. And that's essentially my bread and butter and launched that and officially launched and began testing in 2015. As I said, I officially launched that in 2016.
Chase Clymer
Amazing.
Now in 2016, Facebook was a different monster back then.
But how did you go about getting customers to this new subscription box? How did you get in front of this market that you thought was so great?
Kevin Tighe
Yeah. We had a lot of pivots along the way in the journey, but initially I brought on an influential co-founder, a guy named Mark Healy, who's a well-known, highly respected professional action water sports athlete. Professional waterman I call him, but he's a big wave professional, big wave surfer, spear fisherman.
He's on Shark Week, Discovery Channel stuff all the time. He's in all the biggest contests. He's featured in the magazines, great reputation, awesome guy, good following. So I brought him on as a partner to really help me initially reach an audience and get some credibility, as well as help me with connections to the brands.
And then we started ads on Facebook, as he said, was the initial launch.
So using Facebook to just build up that email list, and then just testing and ramping up from there. We started really focusing on water, surf and other water sports gear, which Mark would help curate the subscription boxes.
Really liked the concept, but the margins were pretty poor and those items were polarizing. So then we noticed that everyone really loves the clothing. Clothing is obviously a much, much larger audience.
I found... I was doing market research. I found a stat that at the time it said there were roughly two million surfers, but over 50 million people that bought clothing from surf-inspired brands. So you can see the big difference there. So we pivoted to focus purely on a men's subscription, focus on beach apparel, so board shorts, t-shirts, flip-flops, sunglasses, hats, all that stuff. And when we launched, we were using Facebook, getting good numbers, ramping up.
We started getting demand from women right away, commenting on the ads being like, ‘Hey, we love beach apparel. We love subscription boxes. Like where's the one for us?’
And so immediately, I was like, ‘Okay, we got to get something going for women,’ but we weren't quite ready for it. So I continued to focus on men's but just really thought about, ‘Alright, what does a woman's product look like?’ I know what we were doing for men wasn't quite going to work for that audience.
We went through an accelerator called Blue Startups in Hawaii. I got to go live on Oahu for three months. And that was fantastic. And then right after that, we launched our women's subscription box.
So something that was really interesting with the women's side of things, we again, use Facebook, Facebook ads and the organic audience we built to launch that one. But at the women's market, we threw up a landing page. I was like, ‘Alright, let's throw 5-10k into an ad spend.’ And we got a hundred members, a couple hundred members in the first month.
There's probably something here. If our customer acquisition cost looks comparable to the men's, like, ‘Alright, we'll put more time into it.’ And the first week, we had 1,000 new subs. And we were seeing... On that, we launched the ads and on day two, we started seeing a... We had a $20 in platform CPA with a $105 AOV.
I was messaging with my team members and the guys at the agency I was working with. We were just texting. We were like, ‘Oh my God, we're just printing money right now. We're like, just go spend, spend, spend.’
We just ramped up the spend and really started off to the races from there. We pivoted where we still have our men's subscription, but all the money has gone to the women since then and really focused on building and growing that out.
The women's box took one month to eclipse while our men's box had for like two years.
Chase Clymer
That's so funny. But I kind of saw where it was going as you started to talk about it.
Kevin Tighe
Well, what we see on the women's, you run an ad and men's, barely any comments, you get likes and shares. The women, we'd have a comment, they'd comment and they'd take three friends and they'd be like, ‘OMG, we need this.’ And I would never tag, like, ‘Chase, hey buddy, we gotta get this.’ We don't interact like that. So you pay for one impression and now you just got three others in basically a referral on top of it. So that was where you got a lot more virality from that market, which was really interesting just to see that on Facebook.
Chase Clymer
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Chase Clymer
Absolutely. And we're going to skip a couple steps here because there's just so much ground I want to cover with your career.
So you guys… have a hit on your hand? Let's be real. It's working. Things are going good. When does the idea of an acquisition come into play?
Kevin Tighe
No, I think as an entrepreneur, it's in your mind from day one. But yeah, there's 2021. Right after 2020, everyone had a boom. We had a really good 2020. But we're actually fairly conservative. I consider we had real growth versus fake growth in that.
I was concerned about inventory and everything going on with what was happening overseas. So we had a really good year, but we didn't go crazy. So I felt we had sustainable growth at that time.
So in 2021, we were profitable. Things were looking really good. This was obviously pre-IOS 14. And so I hired an ex-investment banker to do a market check for me, not actually to go out and run a process, but just to go and test and see what the market looked like.
And I got some good feedback. The feedback was we weren't big enough. So I was like, alright, we need to lean in a little bit more. And we spent focused on growth for another year or two. And then we were considering, do we raise capital to push more growth, expand into new markets?
And while I was doing that, we encountered a group called Retention Brands and had some great conversations with them. They were looking to do acquisitions. So we did end up closing a deal where we sold to them in 2023.
Chase Clymer
Absolutely. And that's... We met earlier this year. Yep. But you were still over at Retention Brands.
So obviously, building a company and selling it and living that lifestyle is a lot of entrepreneurs' dreams. But you actually went over and continued working for Retention for a while. You tell me what you did. I don't want to tell your story.
Kevin Tighe
Oh, sure. Yeah. So, Retention acquired us and really liked the founders and the team. And so, I came on board as COO of the portfolio. So we had Beachly, we had Birchbox, and another subscription brand called Alltrue. And then they're working on a deal for another one right now.
But spent about a year and a half over there as COO, working on the operations. Just about three weeks ago, I actually decided to make a change. And I'm still an advisor over Retention Brands and work on Beachly quite a bit.
But I joined a new team called BUBS Naturals as Head of Growth. A great company here in North San Diego, based in Encinitas. That's a health food company that creates supplements built around helping people live better longer is essentially the tagline.
So the main product is collagen peptides. And we got a coffee creamer that's MCT oil and grass-fed, which is awesome. And really just aligns with the lifestyle of helping people feel better, helping people live longer, helping them get out and be active and be able to supply them with the fuel to do so.
Chase Clymer
Absolutely. And I definitely want to ask you a lot more questions about what you're doing now above natural.
But I do need to ask about your time at Retention. Going from focusing all your energy on one product for one market, now you have–especially in the subscription space–now you've got a portfolio of products with boxes for different markets. What were the shared learnings? And then what was unique about that?
Kevin Tighe
Yeah. I learned a ton. And it was a really unique experience because we had two of the brands that were distressed acquisitions and then one of them, Beachly, was not. So we had like a full team intact coming in from Beachly. Birchbox had no team. Alltrue had part of their team coming back. So that was a really interesting experience trying to mesh these teams and build an operating system that would work across the brands.
For this rollout model to work, we were really trying to figure out how to create efficiencies across the portfolio. And some of them were a lot easier to execute. Getting everyone into the same warehouse and under the same roof there was extremely efficient and beneficial.
Marketing was really interesting. Trying to build almost like an agency within the portfolio. We had a pretty small team, but I oversaw that. Building a team to where some people would execute across the brands like for CRM exam and for media buying. And then we would have people who are really brand focused, such as the social and the content creators.
So that was interesting. Yeah. It's like an agency within a company. That was fun, challenging as well.
And yeah, then trying to build an operating system behind the scenes to support the portfolio. So that, I mean, just the finances and HR, administrative, all that stuff, that's not that fun, but super important as well.
So one thing I learned is just you have to be really disciplined operators in that model, which is something I'm all about. So I love that piece of trying to build out repeatable processes. And then you have to... There's a lot of give and take, especially depending on how you build out the team.
So there's everything you want to do for all the different brands, but you actually have to really try to build a repeatable process or a model that you're just replicating across the brands. So that was something that was interesting.
But we made a lot of progress. Birchbox came, like I said, as a distressed acquisition, being able to rebuild that thing, rebuild all the processes and that's made a ton of progress along the way. And that was fun.
But also, again, challenging because instead of coming in and like Beachly where we were humming and running full speed, you're going back to like, ‘Okay, let's try to understand all these systems. Find developers who understand the tech stack that was built and try to unwind all of it.’
So it was definitely challenging, but it was a really good learning experience.
Chase Clymer
And then now you're on to your next challenge. What would you say is your 1-2-3 punch list coming in hot of what you're trying to accomplish at the new gig?
Kevin Tighe
Yeah. So for me, I guess focus is number one. So taking all the pieces and just really focusing on what's going to move the needle for us and making sure we're doing the most important things, right? So, I'm focused on ops here, but generally more focused on the growth side.
So, the same, you know, looking at all of our channels that we have and just really narrowing it down and saying, ‘Hey, if these three channels aren't working, I don't want to touch anything else until these two and making sure we're spending the right amount of money in those channels.’ So, that's number one. Just pour those channels as content.
I think that's the name of the game right now. Digital marketing is really developing the ability to create content in-house and have the right partners to spin off content for you. So I think that's a big opportunity for improvement here. So we've been working on that heavily the last couple of weeks since I joined.
And number 3 is vision. So being able to work closely with the founder, Sean Lake, who has an awesome vision for the product and bring my, I guess, know-how to scale brands and combine our minds and say, ‘hey, how do we get to…’ ‘How do we double, triple, quadruple revenue in the next 3 to 5 years and be very strategic about how we're going to get there?’ And then put it in the operating framework to be able to support that.
Chase Clymer
We talked a lot about your amazing career you had so far. And we skipped around a little bit.
Now, is there anything I didn't ask you about that you think would resonate with our audience today?
Kevin Tighe
I guess one thing going back to… Probably, I guess, why I decided to transition from a company like Retention Brands over to a new opportunity with BUBS Naturals.
For me and for founders that potentially sell their companies or have been there for a long time, you do get that 7-year itch a little bit. I loved everything. We were doing it beastly and at Retention Brands and I saw a huge opportunity.
For me, it's going back to that feasibility analysis and you always have the itch to build and rebuild. So I was looking at: What's that? What are the next opportunities and where can I learn about a new market?
I've been into subscription boxes for so long that I can check that box. I wanted to take what I learned from subscription because again, recurring revenue is extremely powerful and can be applied across a lot of industries nowadays. So how can I bring that over?
But I'm really excited to learn about a new market. The supplements market is entering really high margins. It's a consumable. Consumables are great for subscription. And then something that just helps people feel good and live better.
So exciting to just enter new markets and keep pushing and like: How do you keep putting yourself out of your comfort zone because I'm very comfortable in the subscription box? So how do I get out of that? Push myself, learn new markets, learn this… Amazon's new to me. So rolling my sleeves and getting into Amazon is something that's exciting. Because subscription boxes don't work great for Amazon.
So just again, thinking about as you exit your company or start a new venture, just like how do you get out of your comfort zone so you can keep learning?
Chase Clymer
Well, I think it's just insanely self-aware and it goes to the power of you as an operator is just knowing where necessarily... Not necessarily... I wouldn't call it a weakness, but just where it doesn't excite you.
And you're excited about the building aspect. And you recognize there are probably people that are better operators that are going to maintain something that's already at a certain level. And you want to get back down into the trenches. And that is such self-awareness and such a great know-how to have of like: This is where I could shine the best instead of wasting my talents elsewhere.
Kevin Tighe
Yeah. And I think all entrepreneurs have a lot of itch to constantly build. And not that we're building a lot of great things at Retention Brands, just in a different way. So being able to build in a new market, I think was a great opportunity just to learn and continue to grow my skill set.
Chase Clymer
Absolutely, Kevin. Awesome.
Now, quickly, the new place, BUBS Naturals, if I'm curious to check out the products over there, you mentioned a lot about them a little bit ago.
Where should I go? What should I do?
Kevin Tighe
Yeah. Go to bubsnaturals.com and check out The Collagen. The Coffee Cramer is fantastic. And starting November 1, we're gonna have a really good slate of holiday deals coming your way. So also keep an eye out for that. For some good gift of purchases and other little discounts and offers coming out.
Chase Clymer
Awesome, Kevin. Thank you so much for coming on the show today.
Kevin Tighe
Yeah. Thanks for having me, Chase. And I'll see you at SubSummit again next year.
Chase Clymer
We can't thank our guests enough for coming on the show and sharing their knowledge and journey with us. We've got a lot to think about and potentially add into our own business. You can find all the links in the show notes.
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