A commencé avec un abonnement Shopify à $30, 1,6M d'abonnés YouTube

Video output on the Beardbrand YouTube channel ramped deliberately over time rather than launching at scale: roughly six videos in the first year, then weekly, then twice weekly, then four times a week once the team could produce more systematically.

“we had six videos that first year and then we upped it to one a week and then we upped it to two a week”

Eric attributes YouTube success to consistency and authenticity over production polish, echoing the story's own "authenticity beats production quality" lesson.

“regular content being authentic being real”

Eric posted long, transparent build-in-public write-ups on r/Entrepreneur through 2013 and 2014 and answered questions in the threads; a Shopify blog editor found Beardbrand via those posts, which led to press.

“Mark from Shopify (who is on this subreddit) found us through posts on here”

Eric credits Reddit directly for Beardbrand's growth and for feedback the team acted on.

“Reddit has been instrumental in our growth, so it's fun returning some value”

Paid acquisition ran through a friend's Spokane agency with a budget that grew from about $750 to $3,000 to $6,000 a month, using Facebook and AdWords to bring visitors and retargeting to stay in front of them.

“We went from $750 to $3000 to now $6000”

Eric reports growth tracking spend on online advertising, with cost per acquisition as the main metric.

“our growth has correlated with our investment in online advertising”