Most DTC brands have finance and marketing covered, but operations is the leg of the stool that tips the whole thing over.
In this episode of The Free to Grow CFO Podcast, Jon Blair sits down with Matt Gregory, co-founder and fractional COO at Long Light Operating Partners, to break down the operations side of two core growth strategies: launching new products and expanding sales channels. They get into the most common product launch mistakes, from unrealistic timelines to skipping validation, and how to de-risk a launch by sizing your first PO carefully, funding it with equity instead of short-term debt, and choosing a manufacturer whose MOQ fits your budget. Matt also explains why brick and mortar is so different from DTC, with opaque demand data, constant buyer turnover, and a cash conversion cycle that changes your working capital needs.
If you’re planning your next launch or eyeing retail, this one’s for you.
Episode Links
Jon Blair - https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonathon-albert-blair/
Free to Grow CFO - https://freetogrowcfo.com/
Matt Gregory - https://www.linkedin.com/in/mcgregory/
Key Takeaways
It takes the same work to launch a product that sells zero units as one that crushes it, so validate demand before you build.
Brick and mortar brings opaque demand data, high buyer turnover, and new working capital needs, which makes a strong broker and a cash plan essential.
Size your first PO to the risk and fund unproven launches with retained equity, not short-term debt.
Meet Matt Gregory
Matt Gregory is co-founder and Operating Partner at Longlight Operating Partners, an operations consulting firm working with consumer brands and growth-stage companies. He brings close to 20 years of operating and product leadership across food, beauty, and consumer health, with particular depth in outsourced, co-packed supply chains and multi-channel fulfillment.
Most recently, as VP of New Products at Nood, Matt was a core member of the leadership team. He launched five SKUs with a new skincare co-manufacturer, and sourced and onboarded a new strategic device supplier. As COO of Sensory Cloud, he oversaw day-to-day operations across global contract manufacturing and 3PLs, product development, financials, and hiring, and steered the company through a COVID-era pivot from a consumer electronics device to an upper-airway hygiene product.
Earlier, Matt was Director of Supply Chain Innovation and Director of Innovation at Plum Organics, where he launched more than 30 SKUs across six formats and helped shape long-term manufacturing strategy with Plum and Campbell Soup Company. As the first full-time employee at Two Degrees Food, he built the company's outsourced supply chain from scratch — suppliers, contract manufacturers, 3PLs, demand and production planning, and quality.
He currently leads operations on a fractional basis for a growing nutrition supplement brand. He is also the founder of Big Forest and co-hosts the Trail Map podcast. He lives in Brookline, Massachusetts with his wife and son.
Transcript
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00:45 Introduction to Operations in Brand Building
03:18 The Durable Goods Game: Challenges and Strategies
05:41 Cross-Functional Collaboration in Product Development
08:38 De-Risking New Product Launches
11:14 The Importance of Communication in Operations
13:44 Sales Channel Expansion: E-Commerce to Retail
15:57 Navigating the Risks of Retail Partnerships
18:36 Financial Considerations in New Product Launches
21:29 Final Thoughts on Product Launches and Sales Channels
Jon Blair (00:45)
All right, we're back. And I'm pumped because today I am joined by Matt Gregory. Matt is the co founder and also fractional COO at Long Light Operating Partners. But I actually met him working with one of Free to Grow CFO's first clients, Nood. And so I'm pumped to have you on the show, Matt. What's happening?
Matt Gregory (01:06)
Jon it's awesome to be here. Thank you so much for having me.
Jon Blair (01:10)
Yeah, so today we're gonna talk about Matt has a really deep background in in a lot of different areas of of building brands, but he's got a really keen focus, and expertise around how to build the operations function, you know, broadly. There's very different areas within operations depending on what kind of a brand you're building and what stage you're in. But Matt has a ton of experience and we're gonna talk about how key it is to have the right
kind of operations function supporting the growth of two of our favorite growth games. One, the durable goods game and two, the consumables or high L TV game. So before we dive in, Matt, can you give everyone just like kind of like a high level background of who you are and what you do?
Matt Gregory (01:56)
Yeah, for sure. so I've spent the last 20 years working in the consumer space, primarily partnering up with founders, visionary people who have an idea of something they want to build, be it a food product. as Jon's referencing, I worked at Nood on the this hair removal space with beauty devices, really across the board, just just trying to partner with founders and CEOs that are trying to.
create something new to the world. and you know, now I've I've decided to partner up with a guy who's got a similar background to me in the Boston area, Ezra Gordon. And and so we've started Long Light in an attempt to support a a bigger group of of COOs or of of we've decided to start Long Light to support a larger group of companies with operations needs across the board.
Jon Blair (02:57)
Yeah, w so the reason I was really interested in bringing you on to the show is because I see time and time again as we work with brands, you know, we're working directly with founders because largely founder-led brands. We're holding it down on the finance side of the house. Oftentimes there's a person or agency or agencies or freelancers holding down the marketing side of the house, but we time and time again see this massive gap on broadly operations that can take the form of.
you know, supplier management, managing the supply chain, logistics, inventory planning, you know, fulfillment, some of the product development. and every brand needs some a different focus on one or more of those areas, but it's time and time again a huge gap. And what I see is you can have the finance shored up, you can have the marketing shored up, but if you don't have the right operations function, this three legged stool falls over.
Right. And so we're here to talk about the operations leg of that stool. And I want to start off with talking about what we call the durable goods game. And what that game is, is we've learned over the years that when you're if you're selling a durable good, there's no LTV inherently because you're selling a high quality product that people do not repeat purchase. You have to be first order profitable. And generally the game is that of launching new products thoughtfully.
to increase basket size and encourage some amount of repeat purchase, but it's also sales channel expansion. So I wanna I wanna first talk about product development, launching new products. You have a ton of background in innovation, new product launches. I wanna start on maybe like the the bad side. What do you think are the biggest mistakes that brands make when it comes to launching new products?
Matt Gregory (04:48)
Yeah, it's Launching new products is is really challenging because it's it's so multidisciplinary and cross-functional. There are so many different types of expertises that are needed to bring products to market. And the reality is with startups, they never have all of those expertises, especially not in-house. and I think one of my biggest responsibilities as a COO or an operations leader on the product side is helping.
commercial teams or founders understand like, hey, what are the pieces that I need here to actually get this product out on market? So I think, you know, understanding understanding those pieces is probably one of the one of the big things that I see with with founders either because they've gone ahead and launched something without having all those pieces in place. Maybe they didn't have the right contract in place with their command. They didn't have a realistic launch timeline. you know, th there was something that was kind of
not correct. There was some assumption that they had made that was not correct. And I think you know, where they haven't launched something before, like what, you know, Ezra and I really try to do with Long Light is to bring our years of expertise in operations to to bear to help, you know, build a a really comprehensive plan for getting something out there. I would say another big mistake that I see time and time again
With companies is lack of of validation of of ideas. the reality is that it's gonna take you the same amount of work to launch a product that sells zero units as a product that absolutely crushes it out of the gate. and so the the difference there is is, you know, what are you doing to validate your idea and and make sure that there's gonna be a market for it?
Jon Blair (06:14)
Mm.
Matt Gregory (06:35)
and I think there's really expensive ways of doing that kind of validation, like in-home use tests, you know, things of that nature. And then there's like really scrappy ways, like, can you build a prototype and give it to some friends and see kind of what they think? there's a famous example of the design studio IDO when they were designing a ear, nose, and throat surgical instrument where they were in a a meeting room and I think they literally taped together a whiteboard eraser and two two markers, and they were like,
the the ergonomics would be something like this, right? The device. And they ended up building a device that was like used and it may still be used. But I think that like the reality is building physical goods takes there's a lot of cost. and so the more you can do to validate and de-risk ideas, the better.
Jon Blair (07:25)
man, which direction do I want to go? Let's talk first about the cross-functional challenges of new product development and new product launches. I experienced this firsthand at Guardian Bikes when I was acting as COO. The problem is like you might have a usually have like a product leader, whatever their title is, right? But they cannot do their job without finance's collaboration and sign off. They also can't do it without marketing. But the problem is for marketing and finance.
Matt Gregory (07:27)
Yeah.
Jon Blair (07:53)
And maybe even whoever owns inventory planning, those could be four different people. And only the product person is like this launch like their accountability or like a those other functions, they've got their own accountabilities. Close yeah, it exactly. And so we actually we had a huge problem with this. And because we manufactured bikes where we were sourcing, we were building the build of material bill of materials and we were sourcing the parts.
Matt Gregory (07:56)
Mm-hmm.
Matt Gregory (08:07)
Right. It's borrowed time. Yeah. Yeah.
Jon Blair (08:22)
Although we paid one factory to actually purchase all of them, assemble them, we were the ones pulling all the strings. it and it was in China. So the turnaround times, it just took a long time to develop products because because we were not there on the ground, right? And it was something where I was like, we were not getting the movement we needed on the project. And I had to create what we called our, what did we call it? Our
NPI team or something like that. And be it was like the new product introduction team. And we actually had to have a weekly meeting with like someone who represented finance, some the the product leader, someone who represented inventory planning, and then someone who represented marketing. And it was basically a project management meeting to make sure all the right heads were in the room so that our product leader could get what they needed to go execute for the next seven days between between meetings. Are there do you have any like advice on
Getting the right people together and what needs to be covered or what frequency might make sense for brands.
Matt Gregory (09:24)
Yeah, I think it's a really good question. It's something I see all the time. because people are so I mean, typically, especially in startups, stretch so thin. So, you know, getting time from finance, getting time from marketing on a new product launch is it it takes work. I think the way of working is is changing so much with with AI. not to beat a dead horse there, but I think like, you know, just in terms of like for instance, I've found
incredible opportunity to leverage Claude, Claude Code to keep timelines up to date. and I think like a lot of times what would happen to me earlier in my career before like really having this leverage from AI was that I would be, you know, in vendor meetings, in internal cross-functional meetings for so much of the week and then not actually have time to keep the project management
tools up to date. and so I think there's massive leverage there that is is gonna help companies launch products more effectively. That being said, I think, you know, it's really critical to have touch points with people and but also to be very thoughtful about the use of time and to be, you know, really prepared going into those conversations. So I think, you know, it's I don't think there's a one size fits all
Jon Blair (10:33)
Mm-hmm.
Matt Gregory (10:52)
approach for every company. Every company has different operating rhythms. and part of what I try to do is kind of get a sense of, you know, is this a company that does a lot of work on Slack? Is this a company that does, you know, is it more of a meeting culture? Does this company have an in-person component? And I think depending on the answer to that, I I might have slightly different answers to your question. but it's it the communication is so key and it's such a big part of being a COO.
just to make sure that people are all on the same page. so that's something that I really try to be as good as possible at.
Jon Blair (11:27)
You know what, when I was the COO at Guardian and and although I was the CFO at the same time, but like as the business grew, it needed me more and more as a COO. It was kind of a it w I I really enjoyed it. Not everyone enjoys being the COO. It's a brutal role. Like you you don't get to have you don't get to just make up cool vision and walk away and make other people do it. You can still be a visionary in your own right, for sure, but like you
Matt Gregory (11:51)
Yeah.
Jon Blair (11:54)
oftentimes are carrying out other people's orders. And but you've got to motivate people to want like you can't force people to want to carry out those orders. They gotta want to, right? And I found myself communicating a communication being most of what I spent my time doing as the business group. And if at the at the beginning it was a little weird because I was like, man, I'm not actually doing anything. All these other people, and I mean like carrying out the tasks. I'm busy as hell, but I'm mostly busy just
Matt Gregory (12:20)
Yeah. Yeah.
Jon Blair (12:23)
keeping people on the same page. But in in many ways, that's a a big part of what what a brand needs in a COO, right? Is to keep people executing the right things at the right time and rowing in the same direction. And the more complicated a business becomes, the more that just the communication of keeping people going on the right things in the same direction becomes more and more valuable.
Matt Gregory (12:38)
Totally.
Matt Gregory (12:48)
Yeah. And I think like people need to know what to focus on. Like people need help. Like what what is the key thing that you're looking out of looking for this, you know, from the CEO in a specific conversation? What do you need from your marketing lead? What do you need from your creative? and and yeah, and I think, you know, one of the really one of the reasons that I am very attracted to like new product introduction work is that it's new, it's sexy, it's it's it's exciting. Like and and so
you generally it's it it can be more it's it's more motivating to get the team together around you know launching something new than it is around SKU rationalization or you know something that's like a more brutal topic. And so but I think, you know, building relationships is key. I've I've said a lot of times like with with manufacturers, you know, manufacturers, co-manufacturers are an extension of your team, they need to be excited. They need to be bought in. They need to feel ownership.
Jon Blair (13:27)
Totally.
Matt Gregory (13:46)
and you know, you might be dealing with, you know, in the in the case of you know, products that are produced in China or or, you know, in other cultures, like you may have some cross cultural communication challenges too that you have to work through. and so I do think that's a big part of the COO job is like hiring really effectively, building building partnerships really effectively, trying to be a good judge of character.
and and clear communication. I think those are key key pieces of it for sure.
Jon Blair (14:19)
Okay, so I wanna talk about a couple specific things related to new product launches, but I wanna remind the audience really quick why why are we talking about this? We talk about these growth games all the time, these paths, these one of three games that your brand is probably playing. And we talk all the time about where new product launches fit into each game, but we don't get into the details of how do you launch new products, right? Because we're finance guys. We support, we s we know it needs to be done.
But and we support the analytics of doing so, right? and kind of making risk-adjusted bets, right? And thinking about the allocation of capital. But but Matt's a guy who can talk in detail about how you go about doing these things. So I want to talk about this second point that you brought up, which is de-risking new product launches. We actually on the CFO side talk a lot about the risk of launching new products. Like it's a it's a double-edged sword because we know on one side.
We do need to launch new products to protect, you know, to to protect margins, to protect and manage CAC, to hopefully drive LTV and to continue driving forward you know, penetration to into additional addressable market. But at the same time, we've seen brands balance sheets with just like a graveyard of terrible, super risky product launches. So in terms of de-risking,
Matt Gregory (15:43)
huh.
Jon Blair (15:47)
You talked about validation. Can you go into that a little bit more detail, like how a brand should be thinking about de-risking launching a new product?
Matt Gregory (15:55)
Yeah.
Yeah, I mean it's a whole area of you know, a discipline really in terms of like, you know, the the the validation that's required to to launch a product. I think about, you know, people that I've worked with. you know, Tiffany McNeil comes to mind, somebody I worked with at Plum Organics in the insight space. I think she's phenomenal at at at de-risking because cause, you know, when you think about risk, like the risk for a
a a product company that maybe has one product, you know, versus a, you know, multinational corporation that's, you know, $10 billion and has, you know, whole line of products like that, they're the risk the risk you know, appetite is going to be totally different in those environments. I think like I was saying, you know, I think they're really lean ways of of de-risking, you know, talking to your customers,
you know, inviting them into your office, you know, showing them prototypes, putting surveys out there to audiences that you think look like yours. and then like I was saying, there's also like much more robust you know, ways that you can you can hire firms that will come in and and you know, structure you know, surveys, you know, focus groups, all of that.
The reality, the reason that you de-risk is that, you know, product launches are very, very expensive for companies at any scale. you've got the the reality of the time of, you know, your team, which is, you know, there's massive cost inherent in in, you know, deploying your team towards building something. You've also got you know, you've got the the the you know capital required to actually go and build the product, tying up
Jon Blair (17:33)
Yeah.
Matt Gregory (17:54)
capital, as Jon can explain better than I can, is is very risky for the business. and and so it's you know it's and and then you've also potentially, you know, potentially you go down the path and and build the product and and then it doesn't resonate. And so it's you know there's there's like you said you can have you know some innovation is is you know it's a low per percentage, you know,
It's a very small percent of innovation initiatives actually work out. And I think you need to have clear-headedness around that going into it. I think I I do encounter a lot of founders and CEOs who like, as part of being founder and CEO, you need to believe at an almost unreasonable level about your intelligence, about the likely success of your brand, all of those things. That is part of being a founder and CEO. And if you don't
Jon Blair (18:29)
Yeah.
Jon Blair (18:44)
Yeah.
Matt Gregory (18:53)
You're probably it's probably not gonna be the right path for you. It's just like it's part of that role. And I think, you know, I I talk a lot about like the the sort of natural tensions that emerge between different functions in an organization. There's a natural tension that emerges between the COO and the founder because the CEO is like, hey, you know, that's a cool idea that you have, but like, let me tell you about all these risks that I see, you know, and and those risks could be.
Jon Blair (19:18)
For sure.
Matt Gregory (19:21)
financial, they could be regulatory, they could be, you know, any number of different, they could be like product market fit type risks. and I think like, you know, as a COO, I feel like part of my responsibility is to help, you know, think about like how do we how do we look at those risks and then try to mitigate them. And one thing that I learned from when I was at Plum Organics
I and I I attribute this to Neil Grimmer, who was the guy that that led Plum. he was always like, I want you in the sort of ops and product function, I really want you to lead with yes. in terms of like, I say, hey, can you launch this product in two months? And the answer is yes. But here are all the sort of risks and kin considerations that I want you to be aware of. Here's what it's gonna cost. and so I think, you know, that's really the the way that I try to.
lead from an ops perspective is like, yeah, what what you're saying is possible, but here's here's all the different things that we need to consider as part of that. and I think that's that's part of just you know, operational leadership.
Jon Blair (20:34)
Yeah, I love that. I love that. I'm gonna start making my team do that at free to go CFO. Give me a yes, but tell me all the all the things that could go wrong in the business case. Well, but here's the thing. there is this thing, I'll I'll get slightly off topic and then I'll bring us back on topic. Like, the one example that comes to mind, if anyone out there has ever read Robert Kiwasaki's Rich Dad, Poor Dad, his rich dad, one of the things he taught him, and he says this again and again and again, is like instead of saying I can't afford that.
Matt Gregory (20:40)
Yeah.
Jon Blair (21:03)
Ask, how could I afford that? Right. And so there's this thing of like, if you there's another saying out there that like, if you don't think you can do something, you most certainly can't. And if you think you can do something, then you can probably figure it out, right? And but it doesn't mean you should, right? Or that you should in any form and fashion, right? And and and that's really the essence of what you're getting at. But I want to come back to some of the financial risks inherent in
Matt Gregory (21:14)
Right. Right. Right.
Jon Blair (21:29)
doing this well or not doing this so well. One one area to focus on is really focus on what are the unit economics that you're engineering into the product. And make sure there's some validation around the cost assumptions and the revenue assumptions that like those are reasonable. Because if they turn out not to be
Matt Gregory (21:38)
Mm-hmm.
Jon Blair (21:50)
you can be in big trouble. Another thing that I've learned over the years is make sure you consult with your finance and your marketing team that there's enough margin dollars in those unit economics to cover your CAC. And like also what you expect your how your CAC could potentially change over time as you launch the the product or or increase ad spend, things of that nature. And then the other big place where I see, you know, financial risks like either make or break a an a new product launch is
How big of a purchase order do you place on that first PO when you have no historical data? And a very close r relative of that is are you financing it all with debt or equity? Because if you go and you place a huge PO with no validated demand or historical demand and you use short-term debt for all of that, if you're wrong, you're in a pinch. If you're using a little bit of equity capital that you've retained in the business.
Matt Gregory (22:33)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Jon Blair (22:49)
And you set that aside and you say, I'm willing to lose a hundred K, but I don't owe this back to anybody, and we're gonna take this swing. Those are that's a different kind of a bet. So I like to think of it as placing a bet, because that's what you're doing, right? And we we we have imperfect information, we assess the risks. That the higher the perceived risk, then probably the lower, the smaller bet you place the first time, but you place the bet to get more information to hopefully.
mitigate or like reduce risk on the next bet that you place. And there's a lot of nuance in that, but that's a framework I like to think about.
Matt Gregory (23:21)
Totally.
Matt Gregory (23:26)
Yeah, I I love that. And I think like the other piece of this equation that you're that you're describing is who your manufacturing partner is, right? You want to find a manufacturing partner that is a comfortable fit. And if you have a manufacturing partner that's got an MOQ that you can barely afford, like you probably should be looking at another partner. and so I think that that's that's part of
You know, your ex thinking about your extended team, thinking about your manufacturing and how it how it will support what you're trying to do with your launch.
Jon Blair (24:02)
So new product launch. this is the first strategy for like that we recommend brands deploy in some fashion as they're scaling either a consumables brand or a new customer dominant brand or sometimes we call that durable goods. I want to talk next about expanding sales channels. Expanding sales channels can be used in all of the all three of the games.
Matt Gregory (24:20)
Mm-hmm.
Matt Gregory (24:26)
Mm-hmm.
Jon Blair (24:27)
The sequencing we've learned of like how soon really you need to get into B2B wholesale, physical retail. You kind of need to, we've learned that you need to get there faster generally if you're selling a a a product that has no repeat purchase. And that's because the TAM is more limited on e-com. You can sell into the same TAM over and over again if you have a consumable, right? So if you have your sites on building a hundred million dollar brand, a nine figure brand, and you have no LTV, you generally have to expand sales channels sooner than most.
But but I think of expanding sales channels in two buckets. There's multi-channel e-commerce, right? Let's call it Amazon plus Shopify, maybe marketplaces. And then there's what I call true omnichannel, where you're bringing in significant B2B wholesale physical retail. So let's start with multi-channel e-com. When you think about just operating best practices, maybe potential pitfalls of multi-channel e-com, brands going from just Shopify to Shopify plus multiple e-commerce channels.
Matt Gregory (25:12)
Mm-hmm.
Jon Blair (25:24)
Where does your mind go in terms of how a brand needs to can think about evolving from an operation standpoint?
Matt Gregory (25:32)
Yeah, it's a good question. I think the the biggest the biggest thing that I think about when you talk about those different paths is the you know the different sort of subject matter expertise that's needed internally to to drive them. You know, I think like the performance marketing that supports you know, your your own Shopify channel is a different different skill set potentially than, you know.
you know, managing a Amazon account effectively. and so, you know, the where I've seen this done and and this is also I I just should mention, like this is definitely a changing and evolving world. Like, you know, when I look back at my early days in the consumer space, it was all, you know, brick and mortar retail. and sort of, you know, so I I built my expertise in that space. and honestly, like my DTC and
and you know third party e-com experiences is newer. and I think also just the space has really just shifted and exploded so much. so, you know, I think it's really about having the right, the right expertise on the on the commercial side to to drive those markets. And then on the, you know, on the operations side, you know, I definitely have seen the same thing.
as you have, where like you you want to have these products that enable LTV and having them available in, you know, where people shop, whether that's Amazon or or in brick and mortar is is definitely a a good thing. I think just from a a financial viability perspective, like you want to make sure you have all your costs of serving those markets reflected in your in your projections. you know, I think that
if you're crushing it in in direct to consumer and you want to make the jump to, you know, to to brick and mortar, like it's a it's a very different margin structure. it's a very different you know, sales dynamic. Like, you know, your shelf placement matters a ton. you're you're gonna need a strong probably need a strong broker team. and you need to make sure make sure you can pay for all those things. So, you know, that's I I don't know if that's
Jon Blair (27:34)
Totally.
Matt Gregory (27:51)
sort of what you were what you were looking for. But I would say that those are the piece the puzzle pieces that I think you need to put together. There's also a logistics question too, right? Like how are you going to get the whatever to where you're where you're selling it? and, you know, managing inventory in multiple locations, especially if you're dealing with inventory that has some sort of lot coding or expiration date, like, it can be a real challenge. you know, what I would say generally too,
Jon Blair (28:00)
Totally.
Matt Gregory (28:20)
And like kudos to the companies that are operating in today's, you know, macro financial environment. Like I think there's a lot and and it's also probably, you know, Jon, like thanks to like CFOs like you too, like I think there's way more focus on profitability than there was when I started out in my career, when there was a lot of sort of venture dollars going towards, you know, like trying to reinvent CPG.
I think the reality is you you do really do need to do your projections well to look at like, Hey, am I gonna, you know, s in selling in these different venues, am I gonna be able to maintain the margin that I need? yeah.
Jon Blair (28:59)
Totally. Yeah. Well, so there's a couple things that I'll kind of draw out from what you said to to summarize for the audience. The first one is you can't copy and paste your strategy from one channel to another, right? Like you mentioned bringing in the right subject matter experts. I mean it's and it's not just the marketing side. Like I'll I'll give a simple marketing example that comes up a lot. You were Shopify native, you know, brand to start, you move to Amazon.
Amazon is lower funnel, not top of funnel. And there there's other brands listings advertised on your page. That's just inherently a different situation than driving top of funnel traffic to a page that you own. So you cannot copy and paste the, you know, even the like on page like conversion strategy. It's different. And Amazon people know how Amazon works, right? And the DTC people know how like
your on your website CRO works. and then the other thing is like you mentioned the logistics aren't even the same. You know, fulfilling from a 3PL for your dot com store, but having to ship to FBA to manage, you know, your your Amazon business. And you throw in there brick and mortar and then you start going like, well shoot, I've got brick and mortar
Maybe there's a couple retailers involved in that brick and mortar channel and Shopify drawing off of this one 3PL's inventory. And then I've got this other, you know, Amazon's fulfilling FBA. And then shoot, I find out I cause I've dealt with this at Guardian Bikes. I find out that you know, the 3PL we use for DTC is terrible at shipping to physical retail because they don't know how to do the barcoding right. And we get all these chargebacks and like so there's just there's a different skill set. You don't have to like
wipe out your whole team and get rid of everybody and start all over. But you do have to bring the right people in who know the new channel that you're expanding to. I think generally I find that you can start with a freelancer or an agency to get you started. But if you get real traction, you need a full time person and maybe at some point a department that runs that channel. But I do want to touch on something that I think is important for everyone to hear, which is the forecast, the sales forecasting.
Matt Gregory (31:08)
Yeah. Yeah.
Jon Blair (31:16)
When you get into brick and mortar, because you got these e com guys forecasting like the data, the demand data is at your fingertips. You just log into Amazon, log into Shopify, you can see your demand. It's not the same thing when you're working with a buyer at a bri can you explain like how different it is to our audience? Cause it it's a challenge.
Matt Gregory (31:28)
No.
Matt Gregory (31:34)
Yeah. It I feel like I've seen, you know, you know, DTC, you know, career DTC people like trying to wrap their head around brick and mortar, you know, sales dynamics and just like being like, my God, this is so crazy. Cause it's it's it's incredibly opaque. like meaning your relationship as a brand, you have very little transparency in most cases.
Jon Blair (31:36)
Ha ha.
Jon Blair (31:52)
Ha ha ha.
Matt Gregory (32:04)
to what is going on with you know your your retail partner. the buy buyer turnover, you know, buyer the buyer role is massively volatile. And so you can you can end up with, you know, you can build a good relationship with somebody and then they disappear. I I think I think it's really pretty critical to to have a broker
Jon Blair (32:19)
Dude, so brutal.
Matt Gregory (32:33)
you know, if if you're if you're going into, you know, a a a new channel, like let's say you're launching at Target, like you want to have a great broker. You want to have a broker that has represented products that are similar to yours. a lot of times they can pull strings, they can talk, you know, at a higher level with, you know, you know, more, you know, senior people within the retailer. and I think they can be a massive key to success.
Jon Blair (33:02)
Totally.
Matt Gregory (33:02)
But I almost think, Jon, like similar to like launching a new product, I think launching a retail channel, like is is, you know, is it also carries a lot of risk. and you know, from a from a P&L perspective, like I think you need to be prepared to not be as profitable as you hope to be one day. You want the path to profitability, but you you think you need to recognize there's gonna be some operational
Jon Blair (33:13)
Totally.
Matt Gregory (33:31)
And and commercial, you know, challenges to to overcome. so yeah.
Jon Blair (33:36)
Well, you know, and I'll say what I I was thinking of something as you were talking, which is that it's not just the P&L the cash conversion cycle changes, right? Because you go from you now have receivables. You may be get you may get orders. Like I've had this happen before. You get such a large PO, you're like, dude, I don't even have enough cash to buy this PO. There's ways to finance it. You can go get PO financing, right? And then factor the receivable afterwards. But it's different credit products. The lenders who lend a DTC shops.
Matt Gregory (33:43)
Yeah. Yeah.
Jon Blair (34:05)
They are not the same lenders that finance big B2B you know, invoices and POs and things of that nature. So there is a different skill set. It's totally doable, but it's it's a different way to think about your your balance sheet really changes. Your working capital requirements really change and you've gotta know how to manage those. And the other thing is
I think honestly, man, if I were to sum up where I see brands make the biggest mistakes with sales channel expansion, I'll talk specifically in the context of brick and mortar, and then also in new product launches, is that they wait too long to get started and it becomes a necessity that that next product is a success or the existence of the business is at risk. And same thing, it we gotta get into brick and mortar or we may not make it. And so I always encourage brands.
To get started doing their homework sooner than later. You don't have to like start spending dollars on it to start learning, right? And if if and if you think you got you're gonna need to get into brick and mortar retail at some point, you should start learning over a long period of time before you need that channel to stay alive. Same thing with launching new products.
Matt Gregory (35:19)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's really well said. and I think it speaks to the importance of getting out of the day-to-day firefighting a bit in running your business. and you know, I think, Jon, this is something that, you know, I know I know when we were working together at Nood, you were a a proponent of kind of the EOS.
framework. so, you know, whether it's EOS or or some other operational cadence, I think getting getting out of the day to day and talking more strategically about where a company is, you know, planning to go is a really, really healthy thing. and, you know, for instance, if you, if you went away and you did a you did a two day leadership summit with your leadership team and you're like, hey guys, like,
Jon Blair (35:59)
Totally.
Matt Gregory (36:17)
You know, I think some of the dynamics in direct to consumer are bit more challenging. We need, you know, we think like brick and mortar could be a good path for us. There might be paths to more unlocking more L TV that pat that way. like you can then assign somebody, you know, a project to kind of look start looking into that. but if you don't create the space away from like the the day to day grind, it's very difficult to
to to to resource stuff like that.
Jon Blair (36:48)
Totally, totally. And they have long project and time horizons and like there's just not something you want to be you know, doing hastily by any means. so man, we could go continue this conversation forever, but unfortunately we do have to come to an end. What are your final thoughts, Matt, on this topic of launching new products and expanding sales channels? If there's one thing you want our listeners to come away with, what is that?
Matt Gregory (36:58)
Yeah. Yeah. Totally.
Matt Gregory (37:18)
I think the thing that's like top of mind for me is acknowledging risk. and you know, acknowledging, measuring, and then taking risk. And I think like I want to work in an industry where founders are putting amazing new things out there. Like that's what where I get my energy. That's like what I what I want to be working on. Like that's the most fun. But I think you know, taking the time to build a
a cohort of people, you know, on your team that you can, you know, really articulate and measure the risk inherent in a launch and then and then go for it is is really what I would encourage.
Jon Blair (38:00)
I love it, man. Well, we're if people want to find more information about you or long light operating partners, where where can they find you?
Matt Gregory (38:07)
Yeah, so LinkedIn is probably the best place for now. we're working on getting our our brand all set up. but yeah, if you look up Matt Gregory on on LinkedIn, we do have long light partners.com too. That site is will be in development soon. So in any case, I would love to connect with you. I'd love to introduce you to to Ezra as well, who's doing a lot of cool stuff. he's a
a certified Claude architect, as well as being a longtime COO. so he's got a lot of great expertise to draw. and yeah, looking forward to connecting with anyone who wants to chat.
Jon Blair (38:48)
Well, this is an awesome conversation, Matt. I appreciate you coming on. I look forward to having you on in the future. And yeah, man, thanks for joining the show.
Matt Gregory (38:55)
Thank you, Jon. Really, really good to be here with you today.
