Honest Ecommerce

Erin Murray is the Chief Brand Officer at Mad Rabbit, a fast-growing tattoo skincare brand reshaping the way consumers and professional artists approach post-ink care. With deep expertise in brand storytelling, product development, and digital strategy, Erin has helped propel Mad Rabbit to quadruple sales year-over-year and expand from a direct-to-consumer model into major retail partnerships. Driven by the belief that brand growth stems from authentic community engagement, Erin has steered Mad Rabbit's shift from a purely consumer-first brand to one that deeply integrates pro artist voices. Under her leadership, the brand has launched ambassador programs, refined its identity, and executed a digital-first yet retail-savvy strategy that connects across multiple touchpoints. In This Conversation We Discuss: * [00:40] Intro * [00:56] Recognizing emerging consumer needs * [01:26] Scaling brands before the market exists * [03:15] Growing communities that drive revenue * [04:13] Bringing in fractional experts early * [05:44] Pivoting strategy with real consumer data * [08:56] Episode Sponsors: Electric Eye, Snowball, and Portless * [12:58] Testing channels before doubling down * [16:08] Driving foot traffic after landing retail * [18:16] Thinking beyond direct response marketing * [18:59] Scaling brands with a holistic mindset * [20:36] Expanding products to fit customer journeys * [22:05] Building brands without losing core buyers * [22:53] Refining brand identity for new markets Resources: * Subscribe [https://www.youtube.com/c/HonestEcommerce?sub_confirmation=1] to Honest Ecommerce on Youtube * Mad Rabbit is your easy tattoo care solution from soothing new ink to reviving & protecting current ones madrabbit.com/ [https://www.madrabbit.com/?srsltid=AfmBOoosxYHdth-PnB7Nwcc7M-hDhM5b7CapBmfkWxbzKSGegwWeMrAR] * Follow Erin Murray linkedin.com/in/airynn00 [https://www.linkedin.com/in/airynn00] * Schedule an intro call with one of our experts electriceye.io/connect [https://electriceye.io/connect] * Drive revenue through affiliates & referrals socialsnowball.io/honest [https://socialsnowball.io/honest] * Revolutionize your inventory and fulfillment process portless.com/ [https://www.portless.com/] If you’re enjoying the show, we’d love it if you left Honest Ecommerce a review on Apple Podcasts [http://getpodcast.reviews/id/1447700156]. It makes a huge impact on the success of the podcast, and we love reading every one of your reviews!

Paul Chambers is the Co-Founder of SubSummit, the world’s largest conference dedicated to subscription, membership, and recurring revenue models in the direct-to-consumer space. With over 20 years of experience in subscription commerce, including launching Gentleman's Box in the early 2000s, Paul brings a rare blend of operator insight and community-building expertise to the challenges of scaling retention-first brands. Driven by the belief that subscriptions are more than a billing model, Paul helped transform SubSummit from a small founder meetup into a global ecosystem, connecting thousands of brands each year. The event fuses tactical content with curated networking and is designed to help ecommerce teams grow beyond one-off purchases and into long-lasting customer relationships. Each year, Paul and his lean team develop a thematic roadmap for the event, guiding DTC operators through the shifting landscape of loyalty, retention, and membership. From Walmart+ to Amazon Prime to True Classic’s hybrid models, Paul studies the movements of top brands and distills them into actionable lessons for growing recurring revenue. In This Conversation We Discuss:  * [00:42] Intro * [00:54] Navigating business partner dynamics * [02:31] Connecting DTC brands through events * [03:08] Starting with a founder-first vision * [04:30] Learning big lessons from small niches * [06:05] Rebranding to reflect the vision * [06:59] Investing upfront in long-term value * [10:15] Improving how people connect * [12:42] Balancing virtual and in-person events * [14:17] Designing curated table conversations * [15:48] Making events affordable for founders Resources: * Subscribe [https://www.youtube.com/c/HonestEcommerce?sub_confirmation=1] to Honest Ecommerce on Youtube * Leading subscription commerce conference subsummit.com/ [https://subsummit.com/] * Follow Paul Chambers linkedin.com/in/paulcchambers [https://www.linkedin.com/in/paulcchambers] If you’re enjoying the show, we’d love it if you left Honest Ecommerce a review on Apple Podcasts [http://getpodcast.reviews/id/1447700156]. It makes a huge impact on the success of the podcast, and we love reading every one of your reviews!

Demi Marchese is the Founder and Head of Brand at 12th Tribe, a fast-growing fashion brand blending curated style with operational excellence to empower the next generation of confident women. With expertise in merchandising, marketing, and brand-tech integration, Demi turns creative vision into scalable systems that drive real growth. Bootstrapped from scratch, 12th Tribe reflects Demi’s hands-on leadership across every function, from designing product drops to building workflows that streamline team execution. She’s driven by a mission to not only create beautiful apparel, but to curate a lifestyle rooted in confidence, freedom, and community. Demi is also a systems thinker, embracing AI and automation to scale brand voice, streamline content, and optimize customer journeys. She’s trained ChatGPT to mirror her own copy style, implemented AI-driven SMS segmentation, and continues to experiment with tools that bring brand and tech closer together. In This Conversation We Discuss: * [00:40] Intro * [01:00] Building a site before Shopify blew up * [03:34] Testing demand without inventory risk * [05:06] Leveraging organic social growth * [07:09] Responding quickly to market shifts * [08:57] Episode Sponsors: Intelligems & Electric Eye * [12:01] Refocusing on your core customer * [14:10] Scaling brand voice using AI Want more insights from top Ecommerce leaders? Our episode guest was a featured speaker at eTail Palm Springs 2025, sharing insights with top Ecommerce minds. If you want to be part of the next big discussions, join eTail Boston in August 2025 and/or eTail Palm Springs in February 2026! Learn more at eTail’s official sites: etaileast.wbresearch.com/ [https://etaileast.wbresearch.com/] etailwest.wbresearch.com/ [https://etailwest.wbresearch.com/] Resources: * Subscribe [https://www.youtube.com/c/HonestEcommerce?sub_confirmation=1] to Honest Ecommerce on Youtube * Your online vibe director + stylist 12thtribe.com/ [https://www.12thtribe.com/] * Follow Demi Marchese linkedin.com/in/demimarchese [https://www.linkedin.com/in/demimarchese] * Book a demo today at intelligems.io/ [https://www.intelligems.io/] * Schedule an intro call with one of our experts electriceye.io/ [https://electriceye.io/] If you’re enjoying the show, we’d love it if you  left Honest Ecommerce a review on Apple Podcasts [http://getpodcast.reviews/id/1447700156] . It makes a huge impact on the success of the podcast, and we love reading every one of your reviews!

Robert Cardiff is the co-founder and COO of Laundry Sauce, an 8-figure DTC brand reinventing the way consumers experience laundry. With a background in venture building and performance marketing, Robert helps Ecommerce brands unlock growth by identifying white space, building high-affinity products, and scaling through bold creative bets. Before launching Laundry Sauce, Robert founded multiple consumer businesses and now leads Give Ventures, a nonprofit teaching entrepreneurship to underserved youth in Central and South America. His work spans brand development, manufacturing operations, investor storytelling, and go-to-market execution—giving him rare end-to-end insight into what it takes to launch premium products in commoditized categories. In 2021, Robert and his co-founders made a $40,000 investment in a single anchor video—before making a single sale. That video helped legitimize their vision and raise millions in capital, setting the stage for their early DTC success. By skipping Amazon, obsessing over product-market fit, and treating customer feedback as gospel, Robert and his team built a brand people actually love in a category no one cared about. In This Conversation We Discuss:  * [00:39] Intro * [01:22] Positioning beyond generic options * [02:18] Differentiating in legacy categories * [04:05] Asking why they’d buy your product * [07:04] Iterating through multiple brands * [08:45] Episode Sponsors: StoreTester and Intelligems * [11:57] Partnering with top creatives * [13:18] Launching with paid media first * [15:33] Hiring experts for each channel * [17:21] Growing with mostly organic traffic * [18:10] Getting DTC focus right first * [20:05] Surveying customers to guide R&D Want more insights from top Ecommerce leaders? Our episode guest was a featured speaker at eTail Palm Springs 2025, sharing insights with top Ecommerce minds. If you want to be part of the next big discussions, join eTail Boston in August 2025 and/or eTail Palm Springs in February 2026! Learn more at eTail’s official sites: etaileast.wbresearch.com/ [https://etaileast.wbresearch.com/] etailwest.wbresearch.com/ [https://etailwest.wbresearch.com/] Resources: * Subscribe to Honest Ecommerce on Youtube https://www.youtube.com/c/HonestEcommerce?sub_confirmation=1 [https://www.youtube.com/c/HonestEcommerce?sub_confirmation=1] * The World’s Best Smelling Detergent https://laundrysauce.com/ [https://laundrysauce.com/?srsltid=AfmBOoqYrEibjuvx9np3izIHJYB__8hJlBYecwqqhYnQ-Ab7n7uNUeKL] * Follow Robert Cardiff https://www.linkedin.com/in/robertcardiff [https://www.linkedin.com/in/robertcardiff] * Book a demo today at https://www.intelligems.io/ [https://www.intelligems.io/] * Done-for-you conversion rate optimization service https://storetester.com/ [https://storetester.com/] If you’re enjoying the show, we’d love it if you left Honest Ecommerce a review on Apple Podcasts. It makes a huge impact on the success of the podcast, and we love reading every one of your reviews! Review Link: http://getpodcast.reviews/id/1447700156 [http://getpodcast.reviews/id/1447700156] Honest Ecommerce is a weekly podcast, community & educational resource providing online store owners with honest, actionable advice to increase their sales and grow their business. Visit http://honestecommerce.co/ [http://honestecommerce.co/] for more information. Or get all our content sent directly to your inbox by subscribing to our newsletter:  https://honestecommerce.co/pages/subscribe [https://honestecommerce.co/pages/subscribe]

Sia Karamalegos is a freelance web developer and web performance engineer helping ecommerce brands turn faster load times into real revenue. As a Google Developer Expert in Web Technologies and a former engineer on Shopify’s performance team, Sia brings a unique blend of hands-on experience and deep technical insight to the challenge of building faster, more performant online stores. With a passion for developer education and community building, Sia organizes the Eleventy Meetup, Durham Social Hack Night, and a new global web performance meetup, connecting engineers around the world to share real-world tactics and tools. She’s also a frequent international speaker and writer, known for making complex topics like Core Web Vitals and JavaScript performance approachable and actionable. In 2024, Sia launched ThemeVitals, a tool that benchmarks Shopify themes using real user data—not lab simulations to uncover which themes actually perform well across the devices your customers use. It’s a mission rooted in impact: helping merchants and theme developers make smarter, faster decisions that drive conversion and long-term growth. Through her work, Sia is redefining how ecommerce teams think about performance, showing that real user data, smart defaults, and community-driven tooling can transform the way we build the web. In This Conversation We Discuss:  * [00:40] Intro * [01:00] Focusing on real-world site speed fixes * [02:39] Improving performance metrics for merchants * [04:22] Translating Google metrics for merchants * [04:56] Understanding how Core Web Vitals work * [07:34] Balancing traffic vs technical optimization * [10:36] Shifting focus from speed to sales * [13:16] Balancing performance with product experience * [15:26] Highlighting global device performance gaps * [16:54] Uploading giant images the wrong way * [21:04] Auditing your tech stack regularly * [21:53] Comparing Shopify themes with real data * [24:11] Balancing features vs speed in theme choice * [26:00] Avoiding minimalist themes that lack function * [28:08] Encouraging feedback for future improvements Resources: * Subscribe [https://www.youtube.com/c/HonestEcommerce?sub_confirmation=1] to Honest Ecommerce on Youtube * Explore real-world Core Web Vitals performance data for popular Shopify themes themevitals.com/ [https://themevitals.com/] * Web Developer & Performance Engineer sia.codes/ [https://sia.codes/] * Follow Sia Karamalegos linkedin.com/in/karamalegos [https://www.linkedin.com/in/karamalegos] If you’re enjoying the show, we’d love it if you left Honest Ecommerce a review on Apple Podcasts [http://getpodcast.reviews/id/1447700156]. It makes a huge impact on the success of the podcast, and we love reading every one of your reviews!