Making $200 Million Per Year Selling Wallets 🤯.. And How to Start a Luxury Accessories Brand

If you’ve ever thought about making $200 million a year selling wallets (I mean, who hasn’t?), then this one’s for you.

Last week, we dropped a banger on the fastest growing apparel brands and how to get your own brand off the ground.. and today’s edition is even better.

This week, we’re taking it a step further and looking at a brand that started out selling wallets & accessories and has quickly grown to one of the fastest growing companies on the planet.

If you’re new here, this is the Up Next newsletter where we bring you the latest data, trends and storytelling to help you launch your own products that actually make money.

My name’s Ken, my ecom company has now done north of $45 million in sales and my team does research for some of the biggest brands on the planet.. then we take what we’ve learned and share it here with you!

First, a special thank you to you all of you that continue to answer our poll and let us know where we should be putting our focus.

It’s pretty clear you’re looking for more info on building real brands (not weird dropshipping sites that last 48 hours) and more breakdowns on how to design, manufacture and launch products.. that actually make money.

Vote below and let us know what industries you’d like to launch a brand/product in..

Today we’ll be looking at…

• A Wallet company doing $200 million per year and on pace to do much more by end of 2024

• Their unique advertising strategy to acquire thousands of customers daily

• How to launch and start your own high end accessories company 👇👇

The Wallet Company Surpassing $200 Million a Year In Sales

Ridge is a wallet and accessories company seeing hyper growth. Their philosophy hinges on a commitment to everyday carry technology and design principles that surpass any other wallet and accessories brand on the market.

The origin of Ridge Wallets dates back to 2013 when father and son duo Daniel and Paul Kane decided to launch their concept for a slim and efficient wallet through crowdfunding. They successfully initiated their venture with a Kickstarter campaign, and since then, they have turned it into a multi 9 figure company.

Daniel & Paul sought to create a wallet that is minimalist without being limited in functionality, allowing users to carry less while still having what they need. They’ve since expanded into rings, keychains, travel and everday carry accessories for men, carving out a unique approach to modern luxury while remaining minimalistic.

Let’s dig deeper into their marketing strategy that’s grown brand searches by 150% over the past 5 years 👇

Ridge uses a multi channel marketing strategy that has allowed them to both grow topline revenue and build huge brand awareness over the past few years.

We’ll break this down by each channel to see how they’ve achieved this impressive growth…

To start, Ridge uses content creators on Youtube and other platforms to create top of funnel brand awareness, with most of that going to content creators on Youtube (including one of the biggest creators in the planet, we’ll get to that in a minute)

Ridge’s strategy breaks down like this:

1. Ridge spends 10% to 20% of their revenue on youtube influencers - this is a massive amount which tells us they’re getting both brand awareness and a direct return on this investment. Most company’s use content for top of funnel hoping to see a return later, if you’re able to see a profitable return on these ads - keep spending and scale.
   

2. They send product to youtubers - drive top of funnel awareness and let the youtuber create an ad convincing customers to purchase.
   

3. They focus on youtubers with huge reach. Subscribers and followers are much less important versus the reach and engagement the creator has received in recent videos. There’s typically 2 types of ads they run.. a 15 to 45 second standard ad mid video, or an entire video dedicated to unboxing the product with reaction and feedback.
   

4. Each video follows a similar format (here’s a link for reference to a Ridge Review) The creator shows the product, must show the value proposition (sturdy/minimalist design/unbreakable), display the link on the screen or in description and clearly offer and mention a discount.
   
   The reviews often juxtapose the ridge with the standard “bulky” wallet.

In addition to the top of funnel campaigns, a quick look at their ad library shows Ridge is running over 900 creatives. If you’re unfamiliar with Meta Ads - that’s a mindblowing number. I mean, I’m not sure we’ve ever seen a company running that many creatives at once.

There’s a few reasons for this:

1. They’re a 9 figure company - and they can

2. The amount of skus, colorways and different designs for each product means endless creatives being poured out. Think rings, wallets, bags, coin trays and more - in every color

3. Father’s day is coming up and this is one of Ridge’s biggest months of the year. Ridge runs deals for the entire month leading up to Father’s day

The ads themselves focus Heavily on bottom of funnel conversions. Chances are most people have heard of Ridge or seen a creator/infleuncer speak about them. The ads are designed to drive sales with discounts (especialy during sales seasons like Father’s Day).

It’s a very similar strategy to what we saw ASRV use last week, however, Ridge is running it at another level with 950 creatives for dozens of skus in different countries. It’s a huge operation they’re crushing it with.

Partnering with Professional Sports Teams, Best Buy and One of the Biggest Youtubers On the Planet

Ridge has been incredibly strategic with how and who they decide to partner with.

They recently brought on MKBHD as a brand partner (probably with him getting some ownership and equity in the company). MKBHD is notably the biggest tech and product youtuber, with a massive loyal audience.

As Ridge expands into new product categories they now have a huge channel to push new merchandise through. What started out as a wallet company has now expanded into an entire line of products for men in the everyday carry space.

Think Yeti but for modern everyday products.

Ridge has also partnered with the NFL & MLB to brand licensed team logos on their products. It’s clear they’re pushing all in on the male demo in every way possible, with age ranges varying quite a bit..

Creating a Marketing Holiday

The last piece we’ll look at is how Ridge brilliantly created an entire marketing holiday around Father’s day to sell their products. Ridge had a huge customer base, expanding into new skus and were a Q4 heavy brand with more than half of their sales coming in between Black Friday / Cyber Monday and Christmas.

This Q4 playbook typically involves a preplanned schedule for Ads, Emails, SMS, Content Creation and sales campaigns to push as much new and returning customers as possible while they’re in “shopping mode”.

The problem is, it only lasts for 6 weeks of the year, which creates a lot of inventory and cash challenges when majority of your sales come in such a short time spand. Any miscalculation in orders or operations can be potentially fatal to a business.

Ridge then put a focus on making Father’s day their next target. Running the exact same playbook and 30% off deals, Ridge has turned Father’s day into their second biggest month of the year (yes, they run an entire month of sales campaigns).

Ridge now has a top of funnel awareness strategy with content creators, bottom of funnel with 900+ creatives, retail presence in Best Buy and other big box stores, and they own multiple months of the year to bring in returning customers.

This is the marketing strategy of a 9 figure per year brand versus the “just increase facebook budget” dropping shipping bro’s. Every part of the strategy is tied perfectly together with a bowtie.

A father’s day bowtie.

Bringing An Accessories Brand to Life:

Let’s do a deeper dive into how you can bring an accessories brand to life and how to start manufacturing

1. Designing a Unique Product and Commanding Higher Price
   Ridge started by designing an entirely different way to carry money and cards. A metal wallet, guaranteed for life must be designed for, well, life. This means changing materials, thinner design and including RFID technology to prevent card theft.
   
   Another company in the wallet space achieving this is Ekster Wallets. They redesigned the wallet with a simple switch to engage cards when needed in a conventient and easy to carry fashion.
   
   Both companies command a higher price point than a standrd wallet because of their unique design. A basic wallet on Amazon may sell for $10, and unless it’s L.V. or Gucci it’s hard to command a higher price for something with a basic design in a highly commoditized space.
   

2. Designing and Manufacturing - Do’s and Don’ts

   Here’s the playbook my companies use when designing and developing products from scratch:
   
   1. We use an industrial engineer from the U.S. - if you’re really strained on funds, a lot of Chinese manufacturers have their own in house engineers, however, they’re pretty limited in the scope of work they can do. They’re rarely free (it’s typically included in the sample fees), unless you’re placing big orders.
   
   2. From there the engineer will draft up a CAD of your product (simple explanation is it’s a digital design of your product that is sent to manufacturers).
   
   This next part is very important: it’s well known that overseas manufacturers will take ideas, undercut pricing and make them their own. You don’t want your hardwork and I.P. to just be taken.
   
   We protect ourselves by sending broken CAD’s out to manufacturers. It’s a simple test to see if they can create samples based off of the design but not fully complete, therefore they can’t actually steal the product unless they work through it themselves - they never do.
   
   3. After we’ve received confirmation from a factory that the design is achievable (this usually takes a few iterations), we’ll have a lawyer draft up paperwork that the design, CAD’s, samples and tooling are all owned by us. Your manufacturer should be happy to sign off on this and it’s another way of protecting yourself.
   
   We’ve found it beneficial to start manufacturing in China, Taiwan, Pakistan and a couple of other countries before bringing it Domestically to the U.S. or Canada..
   
   To get something off the ground overseas is MUCH cheaper than doing it in the U.S. and often you’ll get a better result. You can move manufacturing closer to you once you have proof of concept for sales because the minimum order quantities (MOQ’s) will be much higher.
   
   A low risk way to get a product off the ground

3. Start Selling!

   There are a few ways you can go about this and test your product to see if it has legs and you’re onto something.
   
   1. Presell with Facebook Ads

   We recently ran a presale with facebook ads before launching an actual product and it worked gangbusters. It proved we had a winning product that customers wanted and secondly, with about $40,000 in presale orders it covered our initial manufacturing costs, plus some. We were profitable and cashflowing right from the start!
   
   2. Launch a kickstarter campaign
   I’m admittedly not an expert on this, but I’ve seen it work well as referenced earlier with Ridge. Kickstarter is a great platform to raise money and achieve the same results as preselling - find product market fit and put the money in your pocket before ever shipping a product out.
   
   The most important factor with pre-selling is communication. Keep everyone up to date on the progress of the product and if there’s any hiccups or delays be open and honest up front.
   
   3. Take a Risk, Order the Products in a Low MOQ Fashion and See How They Sell
   If you speak with enough potential customers, friends, family before hand, you’ll find out quickly if you’re onto a winner. There’s a specific way in which you want to ask the questions, not “would you buy this?” (obviously your family will say yes, well, if they love you).
   
   But... you’ll want to probe more and ask about a problem they’re facing, and how to best resolve it. This is a process outlined in a book called The Mom Test - it’s quick read and I highly recommend it.
   
   If you follow any of these strategies, you significantly downsize your risk while still getting exposure to products that do 6 & 7 figures per year. Over time you’ll become more in tune with your customers and what they want and you’ll get better and better at building winning products.
   
   Manufacturing is hard! Don’t stress yourself out and if you make mistakes it’s fine. In the future, we may do a report, mini course or book on how to handle manufacturing and selling a product from A to Z (if it’s something you’re interested in just reply to the email and let me know).
   
   We’ve outlined some great steps to get started and launch your next sku! Hopefully you’ve learned something cool.

That’s it for this week’s report. If you have any questions just reply to this email, I’m happy to help. Grab a few ideas and run with’em. Someone will, why not you?

Later!

-Ken

P.S. I’m opening up 2 slots per month for 1 on 1 consultation calls for brand owners looking to launch new products and acquire customers.

We’ll send you a Google Docs sheet to fill out to get more information about your brand. From there, we’ll research your brand, market, and put together a plan for you; there are only a couple of spots, so if you’re interested, you can book it below..

—> Click Here to book a 1-to-1 call with me