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California Woman Sentenced: $150M Counterfeit Postage Scheme - A California woman has been sentenced to 2½ years in federal prison for operating a counterfeit postage scheme for ecommerce brands. They shipped more than 34 million parcels and caused over $150 million in losses to the U.S. Postal Service. Her husband remains an international fugitive and their myriad of Southern California real estate properties will be confiscated.

Levi's Online Sales Jump 19% in Q2 - Levi Strauss reported Q2 revenue of $1.56 billion, with online sales rising 19% year over year. The company's direct-to-consumer business grew to $793.6 million this past quarter, accounting for 51% of total revenue. What in the GenZ is causing this incremental growth for such a legacy brand?

Quit With Jones Relaunches App (+100k Community) - Quit With Jones has relaunched its app and brand, introducing a rebuilt platform for its community of more than 100,000 nicotine quitters. Officially the only FDA-approved nicotine replacement product in custom color bottles—something they naively thought would be relatively straightforward when we first had the idea. It was not.

Colin McGuire (Founder & CEO, Glimmr) came on the show yesterday with news: eight SKUs going nearly nationwide at Target, and a $2.4 million raise closed in under 90 days.

The interesting part is where he's pointing it.

Bond serums. A multi-billion-dollar hair category locked up by two names, Olaplex and K18, built mostly through salons. McGuire's read is that the duopoly did him an enormous favor: they spent billions of dollars and years of marketing teaching everyday consumers what a bond serum even is. Those educated customers are exactly who he plans to take.

His model is Grüns, which didn't teach America what greens were. They let AG1 and others do that, then sold the proven thing in a friendlier format. McGuire sees the same setup here: K18 is Unilever-owned and, he argues, will move slowly on DTC. Olaplex went public and is going private again. Neither, in his words, has the direct-to-consumer chops his team does.

So Glimmr inverts the incumbents' playbook, mass retail and DTC first, salons last.

The product claim is his to prove: a triple-pathway repair he's confident beats his competitors, with a war chest, a Target partnership, and an investor whose distribution reaches tens of thousands of doors when they're ready.

Most founders think they need to create a category. Sometimes it’s cheaper to inherit one.

Category education is the most expensive thing in consumer.

Let incumbents buy it for you.

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See you live,
Ecomm Cowboy Team