Trend Surface Area
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Sean Frank shares insights on e-commerce strategy, focusing on how to navigate trends and build sustainable businesses.
Key e-commerce mistakes to avoid
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You can't outmuscle a TAM (Total Addressable Market)
- Even amazing operators waste time with horrible opportunities
- The market size fundamentally limits your potential
- Example: Being the #1 garlic press seller is worse than being the 12th best creatine gummy seller
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You're not better than the trend
- Trends have natural lifecycles that businesses can't control
- Example: Bone broth companies exploded to $80M in revenue, then crashed when the trend died
- Same happened with keto products
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LTV (Lifetime Value) isn't real
- "Lifetime value only works if you're alive"
- Most brands die waiting for LTV to materialize
- Need to be profitable on first purchase, not banking on future purchases
Trend Surface Area concept
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Originated from Will at IQ Bar
- Similar to "luck surface area" but for product trends
- Create products with maximum trend flexibility
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Implementation strategy:
- Design products that can easily adapt to whatever trend is hot
- If keto's hot, be keto
- If gluten-free's hot, be gluten-free
- Change packaging to always stay on top of trends
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Growth advantage in trending markets
- "You can be average in a growing market and grow very fast"
- Sean: "I was an average operator when Facebook ads were growing and that's why my business grew"
Pivoting strategy for trend-based businesses
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Constantly evolve your product line to follow new trends
- Example: If in bone broth business, pivot to "protein-focused bone broths"
- Then to "bone bars" with fitness marketing
- Then to "bone supplements"
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Sean's long-term business strategy
- Build Ridge Wallet to exit (targeting $100M net)
- Start a portfolio of brands and services
- Launch "weird little ecommerce brands that are trend relevant"
- Hire service providers to run the businesses