My Biggest Lessons

Happy Friday! It’s peak season over here and things have been going crazy for us over at CROSSNET. We’ve officially sold out of CROSSNET H2O for the second time this spring and we legit just can’t stay in stock. Inventory planning is an email for another time but I want to take the time this week to break down some of my biggest fuck ups over the last few months and how I hope you could improve.

Before we get into that, my new company Good Sport's website is officially live for early access. Take five seconds and drop your email & number, I promise it will be worth it. We're building the future of backyard games and my dream is for your kid's kids to grow up with our products.

So lets get into some brutal honesty & lessons learned!

Sales Forecasting:

Who should be in this meeting: Head of Sales, DTC, Finance, and Operations

Simple concept here: How many units will we sell at retail? How many on our website & Amazon? How much cash will this yield and what happens if we come up 25% short? What about 75%? Can we make this inventory fast enough to meet the demand and what happens to future purchases if we don't hit our demands but make the inventory?

• Regardless if you’re selling DTC or B2B you and your team should be meeting bare minimum once a month to review projections to ensure you have the proper inventory & cash on hand to turn these units

• This should be the most brutal and honest conversation you have. Numbers do not lie and the truth will be revealed eventually.

• Do not accept over projections as facts and challenge anything & everything you can

• If you’re expecting PO’s from stores and haven’t received them you need to go on the offense now and reach out to the buyer asking for updated forecasts

The Future Starts Now:

If you’re looking to get into retail, buyers are already starting to plan for 2023 & 2024. Just next week alone we will be pitching to these three different scenarios

1) 9000 store location that would stock up in the next 4 months for a 2023 rollout2) 1000+ store location that is planning for summer of 20243) 35+ store that is just trying to figure out what they will stock for this Fall & Black Friday

You need to be building plans to sell the now, the next 12 months, and the deep future.

Coming Up Short?

You’re not alone! Let’s face it you can’t run a sale on your website every single day. Your customers will grow tired of it and never buy anything at full price. However, when is the last time you went to a retailer or distributor and offered them a small discount as motivation to pre-order or stock up?

Respond back to this email and I’ll send over our Back to School Special for retailers that will give them up to 10% off their next order for a new special bundle. This allows us to get revenue on the books & for the forecasting team to get a gut check on inventory.

Product Innovation!

You may have an absolute banger on your hand but I will tell you there will be a time and place that you wish you thought about innovation sooner. That’s exactly what we’re going through with CROSSNET Pickleball. The industry is exploding and we should have launched our signature pickleball net six to twelve months ago! We’ve created a standard net that then has the functionality to turn into a CROSSNET version for skills training. Retailers are now starting to catch onto the pickleball craze and are trying to stock up immediately.

Here’s what I wish we would have done:

• One year ago had a product pipeline & review meeting with hard deadlines

• Deadlines to consider: Initial date of the first sample, product testing and revision period, final sample, pricing solidified, photoshoots, retail box & DTC listing design, retail sell sheets, order & launch date

There’s a fine balance between launching too many and too few products, but innovation is always eventually needed. We’re now working on games for the next 12-24 months with the above strategy. Just like forecasting these conversations are tough. You’re always going to want to do everything, but the best operators pick and chose wisely.

Prime Day

If you haven’t heard, Prime Day is officially July 12th & 13th!!!!

Here's how we are getting ready:

1) Loading up on inventory at both Amazon and our own warehouse. Inventory load-ins at Amazon are already several months behind. We've been trying to get 900 units checked in for over three weeks now and it's been an absolute nightmare. Now that this news is out those times are only going to get longer.

2) Have an organized plan on how to switch directly to FBM (fulfilled by merchant) the very second we sell out of our Prime inventory because we know we won't be able to keep up with the demand

3) Warehouse training program with our fulfillment team on how to properly fulfill Amazon orders and doing so on a timely basis so we do not lose or damage our selling status

4) Come up with a Prime Day offer that is compelling (at least 20% off) but also works with your ALL-IN MARGINS. You need to calculate everything and anything. There is nothing worse then CRUSHING a sale only to find out a few weeks later you actually lost money on every unit sold. Don't give into the pressure of having a sale if you can't afford it.

5) For the last month we have been splitting up 30% of our performance traffic (Meta & Tik Tok) and driving customers directly to Amazon. We have a very small LTV as only a few SKU company and we see conversions rate on Amazon compared to our website skyrocket. Follow the money and what works.

DTCX BABY!

If you haven't already registered stop reading and register for DTCX4 on June 22nd & 23rd. Actually, I don't care if you don't show up for the 23rd, but I'm speaking on the 22nd so you gotta be there. I'll be sharing the stage with my good friend Aaron Spivak, co-founder of Hush, who just sold his company for $50M!

Building and scaling a brand in 2022 is hard as fuck. Every day there is a new lesson, mistake, or thing we all wish we could do differently. We'll be taking the time to break down exactly what is and what isn't working, ripping through a ton of Q&A, and giving you best practices on how we both legit took our entire life savings to make our dreams into a reality.

It's 100% free and we're just doing our best to give back and help. Sign up here!

I hope you have a great weekend :) Heading back home to Miami where I've been away from my french bulldog and girl for way too long. Send me any Netflix or Hulu recommendations that I may have missed this month!

All the love in the world,

Chris