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“You are not trying if you’re not getting sued.”

How did IQBAR go from a $90k Kickstarter to a nine-figure retail, DTC, and Amazon giant?

Will Nitze (Founder & CEO) and Jessica Greenwood (CMO) join Matt Bertulli (CEO, Pela Case & Lomi) and Mike Beckham (CEO, Simple Modern). This is the product launch strategy and CPG marketing playbook they wish existed when they started.

Will and Jessica detail their early tactics and walk through every funding round: from $625K at a $4M valuation to $5.5M at $50M. They doubled revenue every year for eight years, kept the team at 15 people, and never dropped below 50% ownership. Mike and Matt close on what killed dozens of competing bar brands in 2022 and why IQ BAR survived.

Should you open your own stores, or let the big retailers do the heavy lifting?

Curtis Matsko (CEO, Portland Leather Goods), Matt Bertulli (CEO, Pela Case & Lomi), and Mike Beckham (CEO, Simple Modern) go head to head on one of the biggest channel decisions a consumer brand will face.

Curtis went from a spite-signed lease to 16 owned stores, while Mike turned a $9 million Sam’s Club bet into 10,000 wholesale doors. This episode breaks down these two different paths and what each model actually costs you in competency, capital, and control, why the wrong channel for your product category is almost impossible to recover from, and what private equity is really looking for when they come knocking on an omnichannel brand.

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“Whoever can spend the most money is going to win.”

Sean Frank (CEO, Ridge), Matt Bertulli (CEO, Pela Case & Lomi), Jason Panzer (President, HexClad), and Mike Beckham (CEO, Simple Modern) audit the first half of 2026. The focus is a sound ecommerce growth strategy for Q3 and Q4. No guests, no fluff. Just what worked, what blew up, and where they’re placing their bets.

Amazon leads the conversation, with Sean up over 100% year over year on full assortment parity and Mike beating Liquid IV on a $4 blended CAC. Wholesale gets a harder look, with Sean holding a big-three PO and an 18-month runway to shelf. The group then pulls apart margin profile as a competitive weapon, why most consumable brands are quietly heading toward a reckoning, and what it takes to set a spending floor competitors cannot match.

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Postscript

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Operators Newsletter

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