D2C Diaries

Paul Gedman has been in DTC longer than almost anyone we've had on the podcast - from joining The Hut Group in 2009 with 40 employees, and over nine years scaling it to £1 billion in revenue via ten acquisitions (including Look Fantastic), to now running eComplete, where he's building a model that competes directly with private equity for e-commerce acquisitions.

Paul breaks down why every DTC era is defined by a different arbitrage opportunity, what actually happens once a founder takes on investment (his "5-a-side to 11-a-side" analogy is a good one), and the brutal real odds of a successful DTC exit - he puts it at 1 in 1,600 founders who get out with more than 50% of the value. 

We also get into why 80% of exit processes fail, the prep work founders skip that kills deals months later, and how eComplete is trying to build a hybrid model that gives founders a better shot.

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D2C Diaries listeners get 20% off, free migration from their current setup, and onboarding support from their team.

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This podcast is proudly sponsored by Incard.

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Sign up for free and use the code SWU2K26 to unlock your cashback https://incard.co?fpr=soarwithus&fp_sid=pod 

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12 months ago AI animation wasn't really a thing. Now it's a fourth creative format sitting alongside static, UGC and high production and the brands that figure it out first are going to have a significant edge.

We got Alex Cooper back on D2C Diaries this week. And a lot has changed since he was last on. We got into everything. 

How we've built an AI videographer role into our production process and why you need a specialist not a generalist. 
Why winning ads right now are either hyper native or elite direct response and why everything in the middle is dying. 
How the pendulum has swung too far toward AI research and why the best strategists are going back to manual. 
Why iterations aren't dead post-Andromeda, they just need to mean something. 
And the brand that scaled from $1M to $45M off the back of one concept.

Check out Parker AI here: https://heyparker.ai/

🚨🚀 If you're a brand spending £100K/month, we'll run your ads. Apply for your growth roadmap:  https://eu1.hubs.ly/H0wjzrY0 

Follow Alex 
https://x.com/alexgoughcooper
https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexgoughcooper/
https://heyparker.ai/

00:00 Alex Cooper returns 
02:24 Our sponsor Incard
04:01 The biggest shifts in creative strategy in the last 12 months
05:54 How we built the AI videographer role 
13:25 AI animations are here to stay
16:02 Meta's persona level delivery
20:04 Gap analysis, learnings and data
26:55 Manual research vs AI automated research
30:07 Our sponsor Incard
31:45 Manual research vs AI automated research
33:39 Iterations post-Andromeda
38:26 Ugly vs high prod
48:37 Positive framing
51:22 Complexity bias in ads
55:20 How Alex is using AI
1:02:17 Parker AI

Follow Olly: https://linktr.ee/ollyhudson
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Follow Loukas: https://shorturl.at/TRI8B / https://x.com/LoukasHambi
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This podcast is proudly sponsored by Incard.

If you're spending serious money on daily business expenses and getting nothing back on it right now, this dedicated offer gets you 2% Cashback for year 1 on Ads, SaaS, Travel and other everyday business expenses. Uncapped.

Sign up for free and use the code SWU2K26 to unlock your cashback https://incard.co?fpr=soarwithus&fp_sid=pod

Meta performance has been rough since March and if you're feeling it, you're not alone. Olly and Loukas are back for a solo episode breaking down exactly what's gone wrong on the platform and, more importantly, what's actually working across the 40+ audits they ran in Q2.

They cover the five most common account errors they're seeing right now (most of which are quick fixes), why creative diversity has become the single biggest unlock for scaling spend, and how to run a proper gap analysis across persona, messaging, valence zones, emotional drivers, and vehicle type before you produce another asset.

Krishna Rao, CFO of Anthropic, on Invest Like the Best https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wEEZPpx8qow

Brian Chesky on Invest Like the Best - AI Founder mode https://youtu.be/eURcW5_uS60

Creative Forecasting resource: https://eu1.hubs.ly/H0wjPt20

00:00 Intro: news and what we've been watching

17:32 State of Meta: why Q2 has been tough across the board

20:18 5 common account errors (attribution, audiences, funnel coverage, concentration, landing pages)

28:09 What's working: The Hudson Method and creator flywheels

36:36 Creative volume, gap analysis and diversifying across personas, valence & vehicle

48:42 Hit rate case study: micro personas and psychological messaging in action

50:58 Iterations, borrowing frameworks from non-competing brands

55:24 Landing pages, quiz funnels and AOV engineering

🚨🚀 If you're a brand spending £100K/month, we'll run your ads. Apply for your growth roadmap:  https://eu1.hubs.ly/H0wjzrY0 

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D2C Diaries is proudly sponsored by Commercive.

If you're a ecommerce business owner doing a minimum of 10+ orders per day and looking for a smarter and cost-effective way to source and fulfill from china, go to https://www.commercive.co for a free quote and fulfillment audit today.

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Sunna van Kampen built 1.7M followers, generated half a billion views in 2025, and turned Tonic Health into one of the UK's fastest growing supplement brands. Without a single paid ad.

What started as a Covid panic, a Boots listing that fell through and no DTC experience, forced Sunna to figure out how to reach customers from scratch. So he walked into a supermarket with a phone and started exposing what was actually in the products people were buying every week.

That decision changed everything.

In this episode we get into the full story. How Sunna built an organic content engine that runs on two days of filming a month, why he talks about bread more than vitamins, and how a single viral video gave him the insight behind Tonic's best selling product.

We also get into the vitamin industry itself. Why the products on the shelves are underdosed by design, what Sunna found when he went into kids and baby nutrition, and why most supplement brands are built around margin rather than health.

Plus the content philosophy that underpins all of it. Why Sunna's board kept pushing him to sell more, why he kept saying no, and why that decision is the reason Tonic is where it is today.

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Chris joined Hambi Media as a creative strategist with no agency experience. One year later, he's been promoted to Senior Creative Strategist working across 7-9 figure DTC brands.

In this episode, the guys break down exactly what separates good creative strategists from great ones - the research process, micro personas, messaging psychology, and how Chris 8x'd hit rate in 30 days by changing just two things.

This episode is for you if:
- You're a founder trying to understand what great creative strategy actually looks like inside an agency
- You're a creative strategist who wants to know what top 1% performance really requires
- You're trying to break into creative strategy and want the most honest breakdown of what the role demands

What we cover:
- Why manual research is the highest leverage activity in creative strategy
- How micro personas unlock incremental reach without changing your frameworks
- The messaging psychology shift that 8x'd hit rate in 30 days
- Why AI creates the biggest opportunity in history to become a creative strategist
- The deep work principle behind every great insight
-  What creative strategy looks like in 2 years

Chris's Substack: https://substack.com/@christopherstavropoulos
Chris's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chrisstav1/

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Follow Olly: https://linktr.ee/ollyhudson
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