Creating founder-led content and increasing retention marketing with Anthony Ciavirella (Co-Founder of Manmade)

Anthony Ciavirella, Co-Founder of Manmade joins Retention Chronicles for episode 20 of season 4. Anthony and his three other co-founders started Manmade, a leading men’s essentials brand, after starting his career in banking. After a 10-month journey to designing the perfect boxer-brief, Manmade has over 120k orders with 400,000 boxers sold to 90k customers in 2 years.  For all our Shopify brands out there, do you have a sole-founder team or do you have a team of co-founders? Anthony details how their founding team of 4 is able to move at 4x speed with their collaboration.  Does exponential growth come from great product, great marketing, or both? Anthony shares his opinion on developing an incredible product alongside great marketing. With product development, it’s not so much about getting everything right the first time, because you most likely won’t, but it’s about listening to your customer feedback and iterating to make the best product you possibly can.  Content marketing is foundational to the Manmade team- Anthony and his team strive to bring customers along for the journey as they’re learning. The Manmade team believes that ecommerce shoppers like seeing the faces of founders, and they’ve fully embraced that marketing strategy. Also included in their marketing is a ton of attention to organic social growth. Meta is the driver of where Manmade gets new acquisitions, whether it’s through lots of PR and interviews, radio, newspaper articles, or social media. Gorilla marketing is their jam. Retention marketing is strong at Manmade, 35% come back in 3 months, 50% come back after 12 months. They credit that to their intentional site and post-purchase touchpoints. Listen today to hear more about the details! This podcast is sponsored by Malomo, a leading shipment and order tracking platform for Shopify and Shopify Plus ecommerce brands.  To see what your custom mockup of branded order tracking and transactional email/SMS would look like, fill out this form & we’ll send your custom design right to your inbox! Episode Timestamps: Ecommerce brand retention strategies with industry leaders: 0:04 Founding a men's essentials brand with four finance professionals turned entrepreneurs: 1:21 Entrepreneurship, business ideas, and competitive pricing strategies: 6:05 Product quality, marketing, and iteration in business: 11:16 Branding, packaging, and marketing strategies for a men's underwear line: 15:59 Customer acquisition costs, retention, and post-purchase education for a men's apparel brand: 22:18 DTC underwear brand's use of authenticity and transparency in marketing: 26:47 Pinterest marketing for gift-giving season: 34:18 Retention strategies for an underwear brand: 37:36 Building a direct-to-consumer brand with a focus on customer experience: 42:54Entrepreneurship, business growth, and overcoming challenges: 48:08