#746 – TikTok Live, Shopify, & Reddit Playbook for Amazon Brands

In this episode, Bradley Sutton sits down with Jared Mortensen, founder of Real Men Apparel Company. Jared’s journey is anything but traditional. After growing up in a small town in Southern Utah, spending 20 years in aerospace, and later helping scale an e-commerce pet product company, he made an unexpected leap into men’s underwear. What started as a niche product idea became an eight-figure brand built around solving an underserved problem in men’s apparel: better fit, comfort, and size inclusivity.

Jared shares how he used research, Amazon reviews, and Helium 10 tools to identify a specific customer pain point and launch into a highly competitive category dominated by billion-dollar brands. Instead of immediately competing for broad keywords like “men’s underwear,” he focused on long-tail keywords, underserved customer segments, and highly specific product benefits. Real Men Apparel Company hit $1 million in sales within its first calendar year, eventually growing to $8.5 million in 2025 across Amazon, Shopify, and TikTok. Jared also explains how a 40% return customer rate, strong branded search, and memorable branding helped the company gain momentum in a crowded market.

A major focus of the episode is Jared’s unique TikTok Live, Shopify, and Reddit strategy. TikTok Live began as a necessity during a serious cash crunch in late 2023, but it quickly became one of the brand’s most powerful growth engines. Jared explains how going live with just an iPhone, ring lights, and a simple setup helped save the business, generate fast cash flow, and create a major halo effect on Amazon and Shopify. He also shares how the brand uses TikTok content across Meta, builds email and SMS lists, works with over 2,000 affiliates, and uses live streams to build a loyal community where customers interact directly with the founder and even influence future products.

Jared also breaks down how his Reddit strategy has become a long-term brand-building and AI search play. Rather than creating a subreddit focused solely on his own brand, he built a broader men’s underwear review community where customers, competitors, and shoppers can discuss products openly. He explains how this transparency builds credibility, drives high-intent traffic to Shopify, and helps position the brand in conversations that may influence future AI recommendations. The episode closes with Jared’s plans to grow from $11 million to $12 million in annual sales, expand Shopify, continue weekly limited-product drops, and deepen supplier relationships. For Amazon, TikTok Shop, and Shopify sellers, Jared’s story is a reminder that, even in a crowded category, the right niche, product, community, and content engine can create a brand customers keep coming back to.

In episode 746 of the Serious Sellers Podcast, Bradley and Jared discuss:

• 00:00 – Introduction
• 02:36 – Discovering Amazon Selling And The E-Commerce Opportunity
• 04:34 – Finding An Underserved Niche In A Competitive Apparel Category
• 07:29 – Using Keyword Research And Reviews To Validate Product Demand
• 09:18 – Hitting $1 Million In Sales And Learning From Early PPC Mistakes
• 10:50 – Why Long-Tail Keywords Helped The Brand Compete Against Big Players
• 13:16 – How Product Quality And Repeat Customers Drove Growth
• 15:09 – Sales Channel Breakdown Across Amazon, Shopify, And TikTok
• 18:01 – Building Shopify Through Branded Search, Meta Ads, Email, And SMS
• 20:24 – Using Reddit As A Community, Credibility, And AI Search Strategy
• 26:44 – How TikTok Live Became A Major Sales And Cash Flow Engine
• 34:13 – Practical TikTok Live Tips For E-Commerce Sellers
• 41:16 – Using Limited Product Drops To Drive Urgency, Margins, And Repeat Sales

Transcript

Bradley Sutton:

Today we talk to an eight-figure men’s underwear tycoon who gets almost all of his business on TikTok from TikTok Live and also he has an incredible Shopify and Reddit strategy. How cool is that? Pretty cool, I think. Hello everybody and welcome to another episode of the Serious Sellers Podcast by Helium 10. I am your host Bradley Sutton and this is a show that’s a completely BS-free, organic conversation about serious strategies for serious sellers of any level in the e-commerce world. And speaking of the e-commerce world, I am at the Ecom Mastery Conference here in Nashville, Tennessee. If you guys, maybe my sound is a little bit different or it looks a little bit different. I’m not in my studio normally, but I’m taking advantage of being here. We’ve got a lot of cool people here and one of them has been on the show before, Jared. Jared, welcome back to the show.

Jared:

Hey, I’m excited to hang out with you. So thanks for the time.

Bradley Sutton:

Awesome, awesome. Now, Jared, if you haven’t heard his story, we’re going to start from scratch because we have a new format here on the SSP and we have a lot of new listeners and maybe you don’t know his story. And Jared’s actually done some educational stuff for us on the TikTok side. We’re going to have some strategies too, but this is not our educational podcast anymore. That’s on the AM/PM podcast. We are here more about the journey and the story and what brought him to where he is today. So that’s what we’re going to be focusing on today. So Jared, for those who might not have heard your last episode, can you give us a quick download where you were born and raised, where you grew up, college, majors, stuff like that?

Jared:

Yeah. So I grew up in a small little town in Southern Utah called Parowan. It sounds like heroin, but with a P. And so, but super, super tiny and I lived there my whole life. Then went to Southern Utah University. I say it’s the prestigious university in Southwestern Utah, but it was there. And then I always loved airplanes. And so I wanted to go work for Boeing. So I put myself through college working for an aerospace company in Southern Utah and then ended up going to Kansas to work for Boeing. And so I spent 20 years in aerospace and absolutely loved it. It was super, super amazing. And then I had this random opportunity to go work at a pet toy company, which is like, I don’t even have a dog, right? As seven, seven boys, they pee on the carpet enough. I don’t need a dog. And so like I’ve catfish, but, and so I got recruited to work at this pet toy company where we help put five different businesses together. And one of them was the e-commerce business. So selling dog beds, cat scratchers, and that sort of stuff online. 

Jared:

And so I learned about selling, about selling on Amazon from these guys. I’m like, holy cow, this is, this is really cool. I think this is something that we could do always was entrepreneurial, but like it’s expensive and there’s things I worried about, but one of the tools that those guys were using was Helium 10. So they would use Helium 10.

And so that’s where I first got exposed to Helium 10 and, and what it could, what it could do. And so I started using the tool with that, with that company and seeing what it, what it could do and what the opportunity was on from an e-commerce standpoint. And so then when we ended up leaving or we’re getting ready to leave that business, it got sold to another private equity company. I told my wife, I’m like, we need to start an underwear company. She’s like, what are you talking about? Like aerospace and then dog toys and then a men’s underwear, a men’s underwear company. And so that’s kind of the, the, the journeys.

Bradley Sutton:

Awesome. Now, what year were you working for this other company? Like from when to when, and then what year are we talking about when you’re like, hey, let’s go ahead and start our own brand.

Jared:

2017 was when I started working the pet toy, pet toy company. And so it was about, you know, four, four years. And so, but I’d, I’d started designing the products, you know, while I was working there. And so nights and weekends, I was working on the designs for, for my stuff. And then and then it was 2021 was when I really started when I actually launched the company and then I didn’t start selling until 2022.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay. So talk about how, first of all, how did your wife come up with this idea? You know, was there any kind of like research done or just a top of her head? And then the, the niche you’re in underwear is, is very wide, but you came, you had this, you had this very specific idea. Talk about that. Talk about, you know, give everybody the brand name so they can start looking it up and we’ll show some screenshots. Here’s very interesting product here, but, but yeah, talk about how in the world you, you guys landed on this and then how you went from engineering planes to designing underwear. Cause that’s not exactly something that somebody would think that you could do both of.

Jared:

Make, make that type of a leap, right. From the, from, from aerospace. And so, yeah.

So my wife was, a lot of it was my, my designs. My wife is always very supportive of, of doing it, but she did exactly. Yeah. Your underwear should be like your relationships. They should be supporting you, but not, not smashing you and compressive. So, so that’s part of that. That’s one of our, our lines. Yeah. So the thing is like men’s apparel is not very size inclusive with women’s apparel. You’ll see a lot more size inclusivity where different body shapes and things like that. Men’s is like small, medium, large. It doesn’t matter if you’re, if you’re tall and wide, if you’re short and skinny. And so men’s underwear is designed like that. It’s designed as if guys were all the same size. And so like women’s, like women’s bras, they have different shapes and sizes. Women are different sizes. Men are also different sizes, but their underwear is not designed that way. And so we developed the ABCD pouch classification for, for men, because there’s two ways that guys can cool down. Either they can move up and down or they can sweat. So a lot of dudes are sweating all the time because they’re stuck in an abusive relationship with their underwear. Their underwear is like smashing them.

Jared:

And so they’re like, I need air conditioning in my pants. No, you don’t. You just actually need something that allows your body to sit the way that God designed your body.

So, so you, you can actually move up and down to regulate your temperature and then you just don’t sweat. And if you don’t sweat, then you’re not going to chafe. And, uh, and so that’s where we came up with the different, different pouch sizes, but it looks really weird and funny. And so like people are like, ah, that’s, that’s weird. That’s male lingerie or whatever. And so, so we have to do a lot of work to help educate people. Hey, this is why this thing looks, this, this thing looks weird. And, and, uh, but it’s cool. You know, we launched on Amazon and we had sales our first day. Real Men Apparel Company is the name of the, uh, the brand. It may sound corny, but it helps guys remember it. A lot of, a lot of guys buy stuff and they don’t remember the brand. They have to look at the waistband or whatever. What did I buy? And so, uh, or what did my spouse buy or my girlfriend, uh, purchase, uh, uh, from, or what, what brand did they, uh, they buy for me?

So yeah, Real Men Apparel Company. And, uh, we’ve got a Rhino logo. So if you see Rhino, you might see that Rhino underwear, RM underwear. Uh, and so you see a lot of people search for, for those brands. So if you just search for any of that stuff or search for us on Reddit, we’re huge on Reddit.

Bradley Sutton:

Awesome. All right. So that first year, I think it was like 2020, 21, I’m wearing a throwback Helium 10 jersey or shirt from, from kind of like those, those years before we changed our logo, uh, in honor of this, cause I knew he started a while back. Now, how did that first year go? Because that’s very daunting to get into such a competitive niche. And then it’s not a matter of, Oh, let me have a coffin shelf and maybe I’ll have a black one and a red one or something I’ll launch with. You’re talking, you know, different colors. You just mentioned different sizes and everything that’s involved in, in, in like, you know, how do you decide like how much to invest in, which colors, you know, what size is the union or do you just pay, let me just order 300 of every single size. So like, talk me through this whole ramp up. Uh, you know, these are all not decisions made overnight, you know, so I’m sure there was a long process to get you ramped up.

Jared:

Yeah. So we did as much research as we could. A lot of it started with Helium 10, as far as keyword research and then doing reviews and any sort of volume, um, information that we could, we could find with the, uh, the research tools available. But you know, when you’re attacking a billion dollar brand as a, as a nobody, like a complete startup, no experience in, in apparel, let alone men’s men’s underwear specifically. And okay, you’re going to go compete against Hanes or fruit of loom like these major brands. Like how do you go and do that? Right. So you have to pick a super, uh, you know, tight niche. And that’s, that’s the cool thing about Amazon selling online is you can, there’s, if you find a really underserved little, uh, area of the market, then you can go and attack that. Right. And so we started with our D size pouch. So that’s the larger, the largest pouch size, because that’s the most underserved area of the, of the market.

And so, uh, and those people are looking for something that works, works for them. And so we tacked attack there first now, you know, the sizes, you know, in case the majority of people like medium, uh, medium, large. And, and so we kind of built, uh, the distribution around that, but some of it is guessing of like, I don’t know how much am I going to sell on the small versus the, the large and so, or the extra large.

Jared:

And so, yeah, so it was somewhat, uh, you know, guessing when you first, when you first start, you know, we could see that there was a need in the market based off reviews and feedback that we’re getting. Like, as we look at Amazon reviews, we can see that, Hey, people don’t like this. Hey, I’m getting smashed or I’m sweating or I’m all these different, different, uh, you know, pieces of feedback that we could, we could get through our analysis. And so it’s like, we had confidence that there’s an opportunity there, but yeah, we just picked one style to, to start with a boxer brief. Cause that’s most guys are wearing, wearing boxer briefs and, and, uh, yeah, launched with that. But, um, yeah.

Bradley Sutton:

So in that first year of sales, that first calendar year, what kind of gross sales did you end up with and were you, how long did it take you to get profitable?

Jared:

So we did a million dollars in our first, uh, uh, well, the first calendar year. So it took us about, yeah, uh, 10 months, um, to get there. It was like actually on a New Year’s Eve, we hit that as far as our, our, our gross, our gross sales. And so, uh, but profitably we were probably like six, seven months before we actually got to where we were, were, were positive. I mean, I didn’t, Amazon didn’t even send me any money for like four months, right? Cause all the money is just like getting eaten up in, in PPC just so we could, uh, or in ads just so we could, so we could rank there. And so, um, yeah. So, I mean, we had sales right from, from day one, but we initially, we had started a little too broad with some of the campaigns. So we did, we did waste a lot of money from an advertising standpoint. Cause I’m like, Oh, I’m going to advertise on men’s underwear. Right. Or I’m going to try to drive. And it’s like, yeah, horribly inefficient. And so then, you know, we, we kind of dialed in those, those keywords where we were really actually, actually effective. And then that’s where we started to drive the profitability.

Bradley Sutton:

That was actually kind of like my, what I was going to ask next is because, you know, when you go after a niche where there’s billion dollar players in there, you know, Hey, I’m going to start a coffee brand. I’m going to start a collagen peptide brand. It’s not, it’s not impossible. I mean, it’s hard, but it’s not impossible. And so what are, you know, for anybody else out there, you know, who’s not like, Oh, I’m not going to go into super niche, like coffin shelves or wooden egg trays. Like what is the strategy that you learn trial by error? What were some of the things that you learn? What advice can you give to somebody else out there who is trying to break into something that, you know, a lot of established brands might have a strong, uh, like might have a foothold on.

Jared:

Well, we lived in long tail, right. And so from a, both from a design standpoint, and then from an ad standpoint, just really, really focusing on those low volume, uh, long tail keywords, and then, you know, building those listings around that. So we could really speak to the needs of those particular customers. I mean, our, our product was very broadly applicable, but you have to speak to those individual, those individual needs. And so we target those, those keywords.

Bradley Sutton:

So then you start for the long tail keywords, maybe a little bit less competition and ones that you actually probably convert better than the big players. And this is, this is before the years of search, create performance. You know, now you can actually see, uh, you know, how do you convert, you know, better, you know, compared to the, to the competition, but what was the process then? I would assume that now on some of your, your top selling SKUs, you are actually competing for the main keywords, like men’s underwear or something, uh, or, or at least some, some shorter tail, but what dictates when you can play with the big boys? Is it just like once you hit a number of or is it because you’ve been hitting so many long tail keywords that slowly the short tail high search volume are actually moving up due to those conversions. Talk about that process, or have you just completely stayed just focusing on all the long tail and still ignoring main keywords like men’s underwear?

Jared:

There are certain men’s, uh, like, uh, keywords, men’s underwear keywords that we compete really well with, but there’s others that we don’t. I mean, some of they just, the conversion rates are just so, I mean, there’s huge volumes because you’ll see some keywords and it’s like, Oh, there’s a massive search volume, but the conversions are just really for everybody. It’s super low. So, okay. Men’s underwear. Okay. Hanes is the top, you know, they’re doing the best, but they’re still only at the number one position. They’re only, they’re only converting, you know, five, 6%, like at the top position. And so, so it’s like, there’s some things you could pay to play in there, but there’s just, there’s just so many different brands. Cause from an underwear standpoint, everybody that has a shoe brand has an underwear brand, Adidas and Nike. Like, so there’s just hundreds and hundreds of brands that you’re actually competing with. And these are billion dollar brands. So, so it’s not like there’s $5 billion brands. You have just a lot of a billion dollar brands you’re, you’re dealing with. And so, but, but we do compete really well when, when people search for a Hanes boxer brief.

Jared:

So we, we advertise on, on a Hanes boxer brief. And so there’s certain, even, you know, branded type, type keywords that we’ll run, run ads on. And so, you know, again, a lot of that comes through, you know, auto campaigns and, and things like that. Now, the thing that really helped us as we, we kind of built is, you know, people just absolutely loved our product, right? So if you don’t have a good product, then, you know, you’re just, you can spend as much money as you want, but you’re just, it’s not going to work. And so we have a 40% return customer rate. So 40% of our, our daily sales or return customers coming back. And so that just helped us a ton where we, we had a sale and then very quickly, we, we were getting just return customers coming back and buying more and more and more and more. And so, so that really, you know, helped us from a, from a volume standpoint. And then, you know, as they search on those different keywords, and then we started having a branded search really, really quick. And so that helped, helped a ton as well. But, but part of that is trick, how do you start trying to create a brand where it’s not just some generic, like name we can be with a lot of like Chinese brands that just have these weird names that you can’t even pronounce and things like that. And so some of them have decent products, but it’s like, it’s hard to even remember what this kind of made up word even, even is. And so, because we have a weird name, but people remember it a lot easier than, than that really helped our return customer, right. And so like, like on my logo, originally it was just RM. And so I had have a ton of people like really quickly just starting to search for RM underwear. Again, they couldn’t remember the brand, but the logo on the waistband, they would search for RM  underwear.

Bradley Sutton:

So it’s interesting. I have to wait to get the microphone. There’s so many puns that have to do tighter campaign. Like I’ve had to hold myself. So I think the audience might be happy that I can just grab the mic and do my dad jokes and stuff. Cause there’s been a few times where he said like some word that has nothing to do. It’s not sketchy at all, but I’m like, Hmm. And the underwear kind of a format. Yeah, we can, we can take that off. So, so guys be thankful that we only have one microphone here. You can, you’re, you’re saved for my dad jokes. Fast forward to best year of sales. Was it 2025 or which year and across all platforms? What was the sales and, and what platforms are you on now?

Jared:

So we are, we’re still 50% Amazon. So last year, 2025, we did eight and a half million in sales. So about 50% on Amazon, 35% on Shopify on our website, and then 15% on, on TikTok. And so, so it was heavier Amazon than TikTok, but the Shopify has been, has been increasing quite a bit. And our plan is by, you know, by the end of the year, we definitely be higher on Shopify than we will on, on Amazon, but they all work together. And so that’s the thing that’s really helped us because some of it’s just shopping cart of choice, like where they choose to go and go and buy. A lot of people discover us on TikTok and then they’ll go Google us and then find our website or they’ll go search for us on Amazon. We’ve been live streaming on, on TikTok for two and a half years. And so when we first started live streaming on TikTok, we see this huge jump in our branded search on, on Amazon. You can only have direct attribution, but, but we were seeing so much halo effect from those live streams that I actually started raising price. Whenever I go live on Amazon, I go raise my price up $5 because I’m like, if they’re going to buy from me on Amazon, I’m going to, I’m going to make the money because TikTok  incentives were like super crazy two and a half years ago. And so it but but yeah, so it was like crazy as Mount the amount of halo effect that we had coming over on, on Amazon. 

Jared:

But yeah, so that’s, that’s the mix right now. But, but the Shopify is growing the, the fastest and a lot of that’s on the back of our new product launches. So we’re launching new product every, every Thursday, but so that’s a lot of email and SMS. We’re just, we’re just putting that, that stuff out there as well as on Reddit, right? So we yeah, we, we have a pretty strong sub, we created a men’s underwear review sub on Amazon or on Reddit. So it’s the largest men’s underwear like reviews sub on on Reddit. It’s a top 50 fashion sub there. And so when we launch a new product, we’ll go and just post there say, Hey, we just launched this new product, you can come in and purchase it. And so we see a pretty good search from that onto Shopify from Reddit.

Bradley Sutton:

Talk about that a little bit because two things. Number one, not a lot of Amazon and Tik Tok shop sellers are on Shopify. So how have you grown that so much? You know, some specific things like how much is Facebook ads, you know, Google ads, you know, Reddit, and then that Reddit that’s interesting, because I think some people when they think about community for their brand, they’re thinking about starting something just for their brand. And like, wait a minute, if this is a men’s underwear review, doesn’t that mean that all my competitors or others are going to be in there? And I’m almost like, providing a forum to send traffic like me from a Helium 10 standpoint, like, I don’t want to have a, you know, Amazon software tool Reddit per se. And then all of a sudden, everybody’s, you know, talking about these other competitors or whatever, like, how does that even make sense? But obviously, it makes sense for you. So talk about the these things about the breakdown of, of how you drive traffic to Shopify, and a little bit more about this Reddit strategy.

Jared:

Yeah, so on the Shopify side, we were just when we’re live on tik tok, we’re having people going and just googling us, they’re searching, you know, for the brand when they would see us there. So they would go and search. And so we’re just missing on branded branded search. So maybe the Amazon or Amazon listing would show up in in Google. And so people would would find us via via that route. But we had a lot of competitors that they’re just going to show up on on on Google for those those searches. So originally, when we set it up, it was just solely to capture that branded search coming off Google, and then existing customers that just wanted to purchase from us direct. So our website was not not like great. I mean, we’re using Shopify templates are easy to go and deploy. And and so so it wasn’t like, I mean, it converted really well, but it was it was mostly like warm traffic that’s coming to us. And so it was really easy. And then over a period of like 18 months, we really refined it. So it took us probably about a year before we were really comfortable sending cold traffic where I’m going to like go and run a bunch of paid ads to run it there, because I’m just not going to convert as as well. But But now we are doing it’s been about a year we’ve been running cold traffic from meta and working to scale that. And so that’s going really well.

Jared:

So we’ll we’ll post on TikTok. So we take our TikTok posts, our branded branded posts, and then we cross post those same videos to Instagram and to Facebook and YouTube shorts. And then anything that has a certain level of interaction on meta has over 100 interactions, organic interactions, then we’ll go and put ad money behind that. And some of that is, you know, just capturing emails or SMS to sign up for our list, we give people a 40% off coupon if they sign up for email or SMS, or it’s driving them to the to the website as far as maybe it’s a deal or a sale or something like that. And then we collect try to collect the information as far as their get them sign up on the list. And so then we can remarket to them. And so so we have like a 50,000 like warm emails that we have. And then we have another 50,000 that we’ve we’ve gathered through their they made the purchase from us on Amazon or some other way purchase from us from Amazon. And anyways, so we’ve got the emails on the play. And then I have about 13,000 our SMS, our SMS way outperforms our email there from a sales standpoint on the on the website. Now on the Reddit side, we were trying to go and like share and ask answer questions across Reddit about our brand. And I kept getting like, pinged by overactive moderators on Reddit.

Jared:

And so I’m like, I’m sick of this, right? I’m just gonna go create my own sub. But you know, if I really want the traction that I need, I have to make it a lot more like broad, more general. And so so other people are going to come and and share so we could get some scale versus people that are just looking for my brand. Now, what gave us the confidence to go and do this is something a lot more broad is the fact that we love our product. We think our products absolutely amazing. And so now if you’re going to be on Reddit, you got to have like, be willing to do hand to hand combat, like it can be pretty brutal as far as like people and everybody, a lot of people are anonymous, and they’ll just like attack you. And so you have to be willing to, to go and do that. That’s something a smaller brand can do. If you’re a bigger brand, like you’re just probably going to lose on on Reddit, because you can’t get things through legal to like combat all the comments and questions and all that stuff that that comes through. But we’ve actually for our sub, we actually have competitors that I’ve invited the founders to be moderators. So we have moderators that are from other other brands, because we want it to be a place where guys can come and actually find out legitimate information, not just marketing stuff, they can get legitimate information about about products based off their individual unique, you know, shape and size and their body needs and so and their style needs or whatever it is they’re looking for.

Jared:

And so so we wanted to create a forum that’s that’s like that, but also because of our background and our, you know, the way that we want to go to market, we don’t show things on model or on humans, we don’t show guys wearing the stuff, which some people have a hard time with that. But we want our product to be more approachable. And we want, like over 50% of men’s underwear is purchased by women, right.

And so we wanted to create a forum that allowed women or others to come and find an answer, ask and, you know, get answers to questions if they’re buying for someone else, and not get reported to HR, they’re going to go and like, search for this at work, and or they’re going to have something popped up pop up when they’re sitting on the couch, they don’t want somebody to see this, you know, it’s inappropriate. And so everything is suitable for work as far as the, the content that we that we put on there.

And so people can just come and talk about the product and under men’s underwear in a non sexual non crass type, type way. And so and really get answers. And so share and ask questions and, you know, have that sort of stuff answered.

Jared:

So we have people that will go on there that will criticize us. And so then I respond back to them. And so there’s a lot of credibility that comes with that versus I mean, I could go and just like kick that review off, I could say, Oh, we’re just not going to allow that review, or I’ll just I’ll just, like remove it. But instead of doing that, we try to respond to that. And so so that helps build credibility with with individuals that maybe your haters or and or potential, you know, customers where we’re willing to be transparent and just like, just, yeah, if there’s an issue with this, or there’s a concern about that, we go and go and address it there. And so there’s credibility that comes along with that. Now, the thing is, with Reddit, that is being sucked into all the LLMs. And so part of this is a long strategy for us as far as like being able to sell to the AI tools. And so in putting just a ton of content out there, that’s going to be fed and that’s viewed as authentic, you know, that’s, that’s going to go into those into those tools. So we’re the actually the most mentioned underwear brand, men’s underwear brand on Reddit by like double.

So I’m a Jockey, Calvin Klein, like Hanes, like, it’s it’s not even close as far as the comments in the posts that we have on Reddit. So so much so that people just think we have a bunch of bots, you know, on there, like responding, but we have, we just have a ton of customers that are super, super, like, they love our brand. And so and they’re willing to share a lot.

Bradley Sutton:

Talking about the AI, I think, you know, people have been talking about Reddit, you know, feeding AI for years. And so I would assume that you’re one of the most, you know, recommended now also on AI. But have you seen so far any noticeable benefits of that? Like, like, once the AI started happening, like, like, do you see more, more traffic that you didn’t pay for going to Shopify? Or Or is it just more like, hey, maybe there’s a halo effect, because you’re getting recommended, and then maybe people are going to Amazon? Can you attribute anything to being recommended in AI thanks to this Reddit strategy? Or is it more just like, hey, I’m just trying to get my real estate now, maybe it’s not doing something for me, but it could in the future, it’s a longer term investment.

Jared:

So there’s some things where we can directly attribute it. So like, if I go and do a new product drop, and I go on and do a post, we’ll do a review post on the on the subreddit. And we will have 60,000 views on that on that post, which are high intent reviews, or high intent views, you know, on that on that subreddit, because it’s a men’s underwear, like, like sub. And so now we don’t have direct, we’re not getting really good direct attribution on that we see a lot of it just through branded search, or just people are just coming direct to the website. And seeing that now, from an AI standpoint, we’re not seeing, I mean, we’re seeing a growth of, of traffic there, but it’s still not like huge, but we expect it to continue to grow. But the thing is, you have to make those investments way in advance. And so it’s like, are you willing to look a little more long term, you’re trying to build a brand, or you’re just trying to get, you know, a quick, you know, attributed sale. And so, so it’s a lot more long term strategy to really, you know, build that out. And, and so since we’re, you know, that’s a P one for the AI tools, you know, we’re being recommended more, but we still don’t have the history where somebody like a Haynes or something like that has reviews that, I mean, it’s go back just decades, and in all these different trade publication magazine, you know, and there’s just a lot more name recognition. And so we have to, we have to make up for that with our more, you know, near term, you know, content.

Bradley Sutton:

Going back to TikTok, which is, I think, what you’re most known for in the Helium 10 community and outside is you probably more than any TikTok shop seller I know, have the biggest percentage of sales that are coming from TikTok live than literally anybody else I know. How did you get onto live? Like, talk about the evolution of your strategy, and like what it actually does mean for your revenue. And just, yeah, just go into it, because guys, the stuff he’s doing will blow your mind. And we’ll show you maybe some B roll video for those watching on YouTube for some of his lives. Very unique, I’m sure, depending on what he talks about here, we’ll try and show some video, but he’s got some unique strategies to say the least.

Jared:

Yeah, so we jumped on TikTok really early 2023, I think September is when we set up our shop. But we weren’t getting really any sales, right? So I posted, we put our products on there, there was a few posts, not very much. But, you know, I go to China fairly frequently. And so I have a friend in Guangzhou that sells on Douyin. And so I went to one of his live streams, where he’s selling women’s apparel, and he was doing $60,000, $70,000, $80,000 an hour. Like they started rolling, and they do a four hour live stream every day. And they started rolling, and it was just like the cash registers just like, holy cow. And so that’s really where I saw the vision of where live selling was was going. And it’s just China’s four to five years ahead of where we are in the in the US. And so I’m like, like 80% of women’s apparel that’s purchased online is online is done via a live stream. And so it’s just like huge numbers. I’m like, okay, well, this is this is where selling is going, I need to learn how to do this. And at the same time, I brought in a ton of inventory for the fourth quarter. And, and Amazon starts to slow pay because they’re holding money back for reserves. And I ended up in a like a super major cash crunch. We’re profitable, right? But you know, with selling online, smaller business cash is king, right?

Jared:

So there’s a lot of people, a lot of thing people don’t understand, like how much, like just managing your cash, your inventory is so important, especially with so many SKUs that we have. And so we were in a super major cash crunch so much so that I’m like, I don’t know if I’m going to be able to pay my mortgage. Like I’ve never been in a position like this in my life, where I’m like, I don’t know if I can pay my mortgage in January, because I just don’t have enough money. I needed like $100,000, like really, really quick. And so like, I’m literally like praying, I’m like asking God, I’m like, like, how, how am I going to like, like, where are we going to come with this cash? We’re going to come up with this cash. And like, literally, the stink dancer was like, you need to live stream. I’m like, that sucks. Like, I don’t want to live stream. Like, that’s like, that’s not my personality. That’s not what I do. Like, I can’t do that. Like, I design stuff. I’m more of a like a engineer minded, like design type person, introvert. And like, I can’t, I can’t do that. And so like, but it’s like, I needed the money really bad. So sometimes when you’re desperate, like, like you have to do desperate, you have to do desperate things. And so that’s where I ended up just setting up my iPhone and a couple ring lights, and I started going live.

So it’s like a week before Black Friday, 2023. And the traffic was just like, it just blew up. I mean, at the time, there was like very few people live streaming, like for for shop.

And, and so it literally like, Amazon or TikTok was paying really quick, it literally saved our business. So like, it wasn’t just like, hey, this was a nice thing that like helped us grow, like it like saved. I mean, we would have kept fighting and things like that, but like to power through, but it, it saved the saved the business.

Jared:

And so and then just put us on a totally different trajectory, because we, you know, we had the TikTok sales, cash flow was amazing. But then, and then there was this huge halo effect, you know, bleeding over to, to, to Amazon with with the sales, but, you know, but having a weird product that just totally looks weird. And we own it, like I know our product like looks weird. TikTok give us an opportunity to actually on the live streaming to be able to like describe and tell people like, hey, this is why our underwear looks different. This is why you need to wear something that looks totally, totally weird. You’re able to play, play, like in like, be, be funny. So you’re able to go and describe like why this looks the way it does, right? And be humorous with it, right? So all of our mannequins have their own names and their own personas, things like that.

We’ve actually done naming giveaways where like all of our mannequins are named by the audience that interact and we have been able to build a community, like through our lives, we have people who come in, just hang out on the lives. And they’ve got to meet each other through the live streams. And just, I don’t know how many moderators, we have over 100 moderators, guys, it was just come on and just watch live.

I have one moderator that just absolutely loves the brand so much. He lives in Minneapolis. And on his long weekends, he will drive down to Kansas and he will hang out with us in the studio just to moderate live.

Jared:

And because he wants to just hang out with the with the crew, moderating for the live stream. And so he’ll spend the weekend doing that. So we’ve been able to make a connection that you just can’t make with people on Amazon. I mean, you get comments or questions and things like that and reviews, but the interaction, that’s an Amazon customer, not necessarily your customer. Whereas on TikTok, they’re our customer. And then when I’m live streaming, I mean, people are like interacting with the designer. So we get feedback on the live stream about colors, about styles. And so we’ve designed new products and new colors and things based upon feedback that we’ve had from people on the live stream. And then of course, people that we had never been, we never even would have thought about connecting with, we are able to connect with on TikTok. So the algorithm is just absolutely amazing. It’s like, okay, this person would be good for your product or whatever. And so it’s like, okay, I never designed products for a double amputee, but we had people that found us on TikTok. There were double amputees. They’re like, your product saved my life because of my prosthetics. My prosthetic legs were rubbing on things and your underwear just changed my way of life.

And so people came to us through TikTok and were able to reach out. And of course, she didn’t share those stories and things like that. It’s just been really, really amazing to help kind of build a community around that through TikTok.

Jared:

Well, when we first started going live on TikTok, it was 95% of our revenue was just live stream. It was all live stream. That’s all we did was live stream when we first started on TikTok. We were posting videos, but still, I mean, the sales on the live stream, it was just the majority. And then slowly we started posting more, but it was all branded. A lot of people like affiliate, affiliate, affiliate. We were all branded. It was all branded live stream. And then we started doing branded posts.And so maybe somebody would see us on a live stream and then they would go and get a day later or two days later, they would go and TikTok would serve them a post and then they would convert on the post and then product card. And so that’s shifted now where we’re more like a third, a third, a third. So we’re about a third live stream, a third product card and a third post, but still pretty heavy on the branded side. But the affiliate is growing as well. So we have over 2000 affiliates that are posting content for us. A lot of our affiliates are, we have them in two groups. We call them our mercenaries and our missionaries. And so we have some people that like reach out to us. They see that the product’s going viral.

It’s doing really, really well. And so they reach out to us for samples. A lot of our best affiliates are actually customers of ours that just want to help like preach and share about the product. And so some of them are already set up as affiliates, others, we’ve helped them get their affiliate account set up so they could go out there and share about the product. And so now we have a discord now that we interact with our affiliates and so we can share and grow. So we can grow more on the affiliate side.

Bradley Sutton:

Jared has a couple modules in our Freedom Ticket course, our TikTok training part of the Freedom Ticket course that goes a lot deeper into live streaming and kind of the tips for people live streaming. Like what are just some quick tips for having successful live streams on TikTok shop? Because I would say 99% of our audience, regardless of how long they’ve been on Amazon or TikTok, have not gone live. They were kind of like in your shoes a few years ago.

Jared:

So a lot of people are just afraid to be live, right? Because it’s like, Oh, I don’t know what to say. I’m going to look stupid. But I mean, the thing is, if you look stupid on camera, like, and there’s 10 people in Indiana that are watching you, like there’s only 10 people watching you. And so there’s like not a lot of people you’re getting embarrassed in front and you’ll never, you’ll probably never see him again. And so it’s just like, just do it. And so I mean, it was super, like I was nauseous, like when I was thinking about going live the first time, because I’m like, okay, this is like going to be super, super scary. But if you’re not doing well, nobody’s seeing you. But if people are, if you’re getting views, it means you’re actually doing well. And so that’s, that’s the feedback mechanism is like, hey, if you’re getting views, you’re actually doing something that people are actually engaging with. Now, TikTok is an entertainment platform at the end of the day. Right. And so people want to be entertained. I mean, I’ve, I’ve watched lives where it’s just a guy in a food truck cutting cucumbers. And there’s like 3000 people, people watching this dude cutting cucumbers.

Jared:

And there’s something mesmerizing about like, Hey, you just stop. And you’re just sitting there watching the queue. And so, um, you know, it’s entertainment. And so when we’re thinking about it, like, as you’re thinking about selling on TikTok, it’s like, Hey, how am I going to entertain people? How am I going to engage people? Because the first thing you got to do is be able to get people to stop the scroll. Right. So they’ve got to, there’s got to be something interesting going on there. So not having just a blank, whatever, either, maybe you’re in your warehouse, maybe you’re in your studio or whatever.

So there’s something a little interesting going on from a background standpoint. All you need is an iPhone ring light, you know, a little, a decent light, good mic. I mean, you need decent, uh, like camera, but like iPhone quality cameras, you know, good enough.

And a good mic, just a USB mic off TikTok, you know, as good enough to get, get started. You don’t need a $10,000 set set up. You have some of these like beautiful sets, like really expensive sets. Uh, and then you watch the live stream and they’re doing like, they’ve got like 15 viewers, like they’re not doing very. And then you have this other guy that’s sitting on it in his dirty garage on a mattress topper. And he’s got like 4,000 people watching and he’s just like crushing it.

Jared:

Right. And so, um, you, you gotta have something that’s going to actually engage people. Um, now if you, you guys got your listings from, from Amazon, you just talk your bullet points. And the thing is like your average viewer is like 20 to 30 seconds. And so now from a host standpoint, it can feel like groundhog’s day. You can want to go off on tangents and this and that, but you just talk down your bullet points. And so you just, it’s kind of the same thing, uh, over and over and over a thousand times. And so you don’t need to be just like, Hey, I have this five hour script or this hour long script. If I’m going to go live for an hour, how am I going to fill an hour? It’s, it’s just really one minute loop and you just go over it. So if you’re not comfortable, I just get a white board, you put it up there, you have your bullet points, and then you just kind of, you just run down that. No, you’re going to focus on your, your benefits, your product, um, versus just features.

You don’t want to just list all your features and make it boring. It’s got to be engaging. Right. And so that’s where for us, it’s like, we’ve got the mannequins, we’ve got different, different things that are, that are going on that. We try to make it a lot more, you know, engaging. We have trolls that will jump into our live stream and don’t be afraid of the trolls, right?

Jared:

Because with, with TikTok, they, the algorithm loves comments, right? And so you want to do things to help drive comments. So even when there’s a troll, the trolls can actually benefit be beneficial, especially if you have like people that really love your products, because then you have a troll jump in and say something that’s like controversial or insulting you. And then you’ll have one of your, your, your backers like jump in and then they’re like having a comment war and a, an algorithm loves that because Hey, there’s engagement, there’s something going on there. So comments, um, shares, um, and then purchases. Those are the things that algorithm likes, uh, likes not so much, right.

You can spam like things and, and it really doesn’t, uh, pay attention to that or, and, uh, uh, watch duration, right? So you, you need people watching longer. So you might want to do something that’s like, okay, if I get 10,000 likes, you want me to do this giveaway or something like that. You don’t do that because, uh, the algorithm likes, likes, you do that because you want to increase the duration of the watch, the watch time. And so, uh, so the thing is you just gotta be, you gotta be entertaining, but, uh, it’s just really starting. And so a lot of people are just afraid to start and it’s going to stink the first several times you’re going to be nervous.

Jared:

You’re going to like, it’s going to be horrible, but you just got to start and just overcome those nerves. A lot of us like sellers, like Amazon sellers, when we’re comfortable sitting behind the computer, doing listings, designing products, and being in front of a camera, we’re not content creators. That’s not our thing. Um, but the thing is like people just love that authentic connection with the, especially if you’re a designer, if you design the product, if you created the brand, like there’s, there’s a connection there that, that other brands are not willing to do, or just can’t do. And so there’s just a lot of authenticity from being willing to be in front of a camera and be vulnerable. And a lot of people like give you grace for, for going in and doing that.

Bradley Sutton:

How long have you guys been using Helium 10 again? Like what were some of your favorite tools for your team, um, throughout the years? And I think were like part of the Helium 10 Elite program. So have you benefited from that? All right, finally, what’s, uh, what’s the future hold? Like, are you building this, uh, brand up to, to exit one day?

Is it a legacy for your, your, your kids that you’re going to pass down? They’re going to be, you know, second generation underwear tycoons, or, or what, what’s the future hold, uh, for you and your brand?

Jared:

Uh, Helium 10 was super, super key as we, as we got going, as far as just understanding keywords and, you know, Cerebro and just a lot of, uh, research digging into, uh, you know, keywords and then competitors one, when we were designing our product and then design our listings and, and all that, of course, you know, daily alerts and those types of things were like super, super helpful follow-up. I mean, I go through the whole list of, of tools, number of different tools that we use. It would have been very, uh, you know, very helpful portals like as far as QR codes, as far as getting warranties.

And that was the beginning of our email list, you know, as it was getting, uh, that on our packaging and, uh, and Helium the, the Elite, right. The thing is, and that’s part of the reason coming to this conference, uh, here as well. Like, and, and with the Elite, the calls that we do on the Elite should be able to, to connect with people that have already been, you know, been through everything. Since I was starting from scratch, I had no background from an e-commerce standpoint to be able to be on a call with, with people that are doing seven, eight figures and they could just, you know, be really open and be willing to share and answer questions and, and brainstorm around, around ideas. And was just like super, you know, it’s been super, super, um, helpful as we’ve, as we’ve, uh, as we started and as we, as we grew, of course, our freedom ticket, that was, that was like incredibly helpful as well. So like Lily, I think two years before I started the brand, you know, some of the original, uh, versions of that were super helpful to just really get us up and going.

Jared:

So the, the, uh, um, you know, uh, you know, a bunch of those things together. Uh, now as far as where we’re, where we’re going in the, in the future, I mean, um, we we’re on track to do in between 11 and $12 million, uh, this year. And, uh, now, I mean, we have year over year growth on, on Amazon, but the, the biggest growth driver there is really on, uh, on Shopify and then just expanding, uh, you know, ads that are really going to drive to, to shop. We’re not doing any Google ads right now. We’re not doing any YouTube, not doing any snaps. So those are some things that we’re going to look at, um, uh, opening up this year, as well as like making our email list a lot, lot more effective, but, uh, and then the drops, I mean, that’s really, really big on, on, uh, our, our website, Shopify, and then as well as on, on TikTok as well. Cause the thing is when we’re doing those drops, um, we’re doing those at full price, there’s no discounting on them. And so it’s, it’s a limited quantity that we’re dropping. And so there’s a FOMO related with, with that product tape. Uh, it’s just a one and done. We’re going to do it here. So if you don’t get it, um, now it’s, it’s not going to be there. And so the margins are really good and the cashflow is really, really good on those, uh, those weekly drops. And so we have customers that they would just buy more if we just, uh, provide more, but they just don’t want the same colors. They want new colors, new prints.

Jared:

Um, you know, in some cases like, uh, different, different styles. And so we do a lot of like exploration, some things like, Hey, I don’t know if this is going to work. And so we’ll just do a limited drop. I actually dropped a men’s thong, right? So it’s this modal men’s men’s thong. It’s like, Hey, what is this? How’s this going to do? And it was actually our best launch ever of like, okay. It was like, uh, with this color set, I had, I had no idea.

And so we do do a lot of testing where it’s just different colors, slightly different styles. And so we can, uh, we can iterate on that. So our suppliers have been really good.

We built strong relationships with those, with our factories. Like I go to China every two months. Um, and so I’m sitting down with them. We’re working on this stuff together. And so we have really strong relationships there. It’s not just something I’m trying to negotiate with people over, over chat. And so since we’ve invested in that, they’ve been willing to, to work with us or MLQs have come, come down our prices. We’re cutting a third because we are, we built that direct connection with them.

Bradley Sutton:

I never thought about that guy. I don’t think anybody has ever talked about that on this 700 whatever episodes we’ve had about drops, you know, historically you think of like viral brand, you know, Supreme, Oh, Supreme is a drop. People line up and it’s, you know, sells out or, or like this hat is a drop from new era cap. And then this is Doraemon, a, a, a Japanese animation character. I was waiting for this hat forever. I even timed one of my trips to Japan to get an $80 hat because I’m so into it. And then I’ve got Gucci shoes. I don’t have many Gucci shoes, but I got Gucci shoes because of this like character. And I used to wait in line on apps to get like grail, uh, you know, like sneakers and stuff like that. And you think about those things. Everybody knows about that culture, but you think about big brands, how many of you actually can build up your brand and Amazon brand, TikTok brand, where you can say, Hey, you’ve got people waiting for these limited edition men’s thong drops or something. Probably four years ago, if future Jared told him he would be doing that, he’d be like, you’re crazy.

But think about that guy. How many of you out there have a brand that could act, you know, with a rabid following that could do that, something to think about. And I think that’s, that’s pretty cool, uh, kind of goal for us to have.

Bradley Sutton:

Well, Jared, thank you so much for coming on here. We’re definitely going to have you on for like an AM/PM podcast training, uh, about all the new stuff, you know, about TikTok, because I’m sure it’s changed in the, I don’t know how long it’s been since we did those other videos, but a year or so, uh, your wealth of knowledge that this podcast has gone way over time, but it feels like so fast because you’re so good to talk to. Jared, thanks a lot. And, uh, good luck to all your endeavors.

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