Ridge CEO Sean Frank on Black Friday economics, why TikTok shop fails for men's luxury goods, and a $700M hoodie brand no one has heard of

service. We have Sean Frank in the TVPN. He's been on the show multiple times. This is the first time him seeing him in person. How are you doing, Sean? He is the world's number one wallet salesman. Good to see you. How you doing?

And dominating every other category now.

Yes. Dominating. Dominating luggage. Dominating knives. Dominating

consumer electronics.

Consumer electronics. Batteries. Battery packs. Correct.

Yeah, man. It's game day, dude. Got the jersey on.

It's game [laughter] day. I love day.

Have you guys been on Shopify the entire time,

dude? Since 2012.

There was never like a You never You never blame. You never blame.

You never You never like Let's just set up Let's just set up another little landing page over here. Maybe let's just, you know, have a side side hustle page now.

Shopify till I die, man. Wow.

The best payment processing rates. All the perfect apps inside the app store. I'm a big Shopify fan.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Uh it's great to see you. Thank you for taking time out of your day today. Is this the most mellow Black Friday? I hopefully like you you've been building the company, building the team. You guys are so dialed in so many different ways now. I would hope that every year is slightly less stressful than the last. Yeah, this has been the chillst Black Friday by far. It's the biggest Black Friday ever, but team's bigger, processes are dialed in, and like the world's not on fire. So,

yeah. When something does go wrong on Black Friday, like how how did it manifest in years past? Because it's obviously not like, okay, the website is down because that you're on Shopify if it goes down. It's never gone down before.

It's never gone down. But, but there are there are things where it's like, okay, we got to be a little bit more dialed as a team today. What are you actually monitoring? Like, what is just like inbound requests?

What situations are you monitoring?

Yeah. situations have you monitored in the past or or do you need to monitor on?

The most common problems would be credit cards going down. Okay. Right. So,

what what does that mean?

Yeah.

So, uh

like payment processing or or like Visa network is

Yeah. Like hitting hitting limits on your credit card cuz like in a typical day a brand might spend 50 grand on Facebook ads and then you go to spend $500,000.

Oh, okay. Your So, so your corporate card is going.

So, just turn off and somebody's like not at their desk that moment and they they

Yeah. and and or your account gets frozen. Like so like your actual Meta account gets like locked up and they're taking the week off, right? I love Meta, love my reps, but like if you have a junior level of service, there's no way to escalate that and then your whole weekend's screwed if you can't spend money on Meta. So that's the most common thing. Um you know, inventory issues always, right? How do you make sure things are staying in stock? How do you make sure your warehouse is actually working?

Uh you know, warehouses are inerson businesses. So it's kind of like retail stores. We have to staff up for it. But today, our store will do 10x normal volume. How do you make sure those customers get their stuff when the whole 3we period is going to be huge? So,

what what percentage of uh of a brand's Black Friday should come from advertising versus just built up a bunch of email addresses, their customers are coming back, they return by default. So, yeah, if if Meta goes down, that's maybe 5% of Black Friday, but it sounds like it could be a lot more. What do you think?

It should be your biggest spend day by far. Okay. Um, but it should be one of your most efficient days of the year. So,

just because intent is so high,

intent is so high.

So, we'll spend,

you know, in a typical day, we might be at a 2xM. Half of our money going to marketing for digital channels, but a day like Black Friday could be like a 4x ME, but we're still going to spend multi-million dollars today, right? So, conversion rates shoot up, you can spend more money. CPMs are higher. Um, and it just it varies by brand, right? If you're Tokcoas, uh, you know, you might have a bigger spike because like, oh, the boots that everybody wants are actually on sale right now. But if you're AG1, they're not going to have any spike at all. Like, nobody's like rushing out to get their supplements today. And I think we heard that from the day with protein.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. He was saying he's actually down a little bit because it's like it's a January product and and that makes a ton of sense. Um, what uh uh on on the digital ads thing like what umh I'm I'm I'm trying to think of where where to actually dig in there. Um

take me through Tik Tok shop. You were saying that you made a seven figure day.

Yes.

[laughter]

$700.

What's actually going on? Because reading behind that tweet, I was I was thinking like, okay, he's extremely bearish on Tik Tok shop. Maybe Tik Tok broadly. Like how much should I read into that?

Okay. Uh

explain what happened.

Yeah. The general thesis on Tik Tok shop is it's really really good for a certain type of brand. If you're female focused, if you are a supplement, if you can make pretty, you know, bold claims, Tik Tok's going to print for you.

Bold claims that means people are like

you.

Restores all your hair for $5, something like that.

Because the brand doesn't make the claims, the affiliates make the claims. The affiliates are incentivized to say crazy stuff to try to get the affiliate commission. Yeah. So, if you're

This wallet will turn you into a millionaire.

You put $100 bill in here, it's going to change $200 out. You can get $200 out.

Yeah. And there's a whole cohort of like Gen Z brands that are doing nine figures in like 6 months off of Tik Tok shop. Like you guys,

what are the categories?

Uh, it's supplements for sure. Like get jacked, look hot.

Yeah. Yeah. Like testosterone gummies.

Testosterone gummies. [laughter] No way.

Gummy everything,

dude. The And gummies. the biggest brand no one's ever heard of is is Comfort. You guys should just go on Tik Tok shop and just check out what Comfort's doing publicly. So, it's hoodies. Uh, and it's like, you know, priced at 120, marked down to 35 bucks and they'll do

So, they're like eating into Mad Happy. They're like a Madappy clone is

or really like a fast fashion clone like a like a Teu

Sheen like Zara type clone. Um, but like really high quality anxiety reducing hoodies. Um, they'll do

anxiety. That's the claims, man. The claims. But they'll do over 700 million this year.

700 million.

Third year in business.

Third year in business.

Yeah. They're killing it. Wow.

So, Tik Tok Shop can totally work. Now, the joke there is that um for a men's like almost luxury good brand. It will not work at all. We did multi-million dollars yesterday and we did 700 bucks on Tik Tok. So, [laughter]

but I'm working, dude. I'm grinding now.

Bigger bolder claims.

Yeah. But yeah. So, do do you think there's just like there's no way for you to to get it to work? Like you've you've tested everything. You've like done a bunch of spe spe spe spe spe spe spe spe spe spe spe spe spe spe spe spe spe spe spe spe spe spe spe spe spe spe spe spe spe spe spe spe spe spe spe spe spe spe spe spe specific Tik Tok creative and hired people who have gotten it to work in other categories. Like at this point you know it's not you.

The shops pro program is way different than the ad program. I I'll spend 50 grand on Tik Tok today or sorry Tik Tok ads today. But that's driving my website.

Yeah.

To make Tik Tok shop work, it has to be an impulse purchase. But I haven't given it my all in January. We're giving it our all. Yeah. We're going to throw everything out. Is it is it your number one uh like big opportunity for 2026 or are you thinking like AI gentommerce?

Uh I would say that there's probably six things a brand should be focused on in 2026 and I'll see if I can rattle them off. So

yeah, six is a lot.

Yeah. Yeah. But I think social commerce is for sure one of them. But then that ties into point two, which is just getting way better short form organic video, right? you guys post clips. Like more brands need to be clipping and it's just because watch time on social media apps is continuing to be dominated by short form video. Nobody's scrolling feeds anymore and it's just going to continue to take over long form YouTube and Twitch streams and everything else. It's just all for the clips.

Yeah. No, it feels like the the Instagram feed is just a catalog now and you I don't even know if you should care about engagement as a brand. Well, dude, and also like the idea of a brand has also been like dis immediated because it's not about the brand page anymore. Like the best Tik Tok shop brands have 50 Tik Tok accounts because it's just volume. And uh if you pull up like the number one Tik Tok shop affiliates, there's people making a million dollars a year and they'll post 70 videos a day and and so many of those videos get 20 views, but then one will get 28 million and it will just print. Yeah. Yeah. Do do you think there's any uh do you think that takes you out of like building an enduring brand? Like like will the next Hermes really be doing that? You know, will will the next like iconic like the Louis Vuitton or the Ferrari be like slopping it up on the short form?

Well, no. I think they're going to be sponsoring like, you know, DJ tables at like F1 stuff, but like the rest of us are going to be slopping it up. [laughter]

And then even

slop comes for us all.

Yeah. And I know you guys love luxury. Um the luxury space is super interesting because Richmond's actually the only brand dominating right now because they have Cardier, they have Van Clee, like jewelry is taking over everything and LVMH and really curing has been wrecked for like two years. So

the the world of luxury is going on undergoing a lot of changes right now as well.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean I'm sure they're still having a big Black Friday since people just go out and shop physically, but uh so much of that is is dependent on like the health of the economy.

So

what you got Jordy? Caring is up 41% year to date, but they've been struggling.

Well, look at the 5-year chart.

Okay, [laughter]

this is always the

zoom out. Zoom out. We're zooming out. It's down 50%.

Okay, down 50%. Rough.

Um uh what uh what's what's a white pill? Where is their opportunity? Uh uh Peter Peter protein earlier [laughter]

uh Peter Rahal was saying uh consumers will always want novelty. Yeah.

And so specifically in like supplements and CBG there's always going to be an incremental opportunity because people just want to

have even the same things delivered to them differently. But like where where are you seeing opportunity? [snorts]

Yeah, I think I think David Protein proved and he said that like there's white space in everything, right? Um, you know, nobody thought you could build a hoodie brand like Comfort and just dominate a new channel like Tik Tok Shop and affiliate and get to $700 million. I think it's the fastest growing apparel brand of all time, right?

Um, and yeah, David's protein two years in, $300 million. Grun two years in $300 million. [clears throat] So, I think the standards are way higher. You have to be really good at operating, right? You can't just have a good website. You can't just have a good product. You actually also have to understand the ecosystem. But our fastest growing channel this year is consumer electronics, right? Like doing phone cases. Everyone told me phone cases were a stupid business to get into, right? And like we bumbled along for four or five years doing it. And now it's an eight figureure business for us in

six months or whatever. So

that's amazing.

There's white space everywhere, man. As long as

my idea uh post purchase flow. We were working this out where uh you buy a product and then you have an opportunity to get uh to to box somebody for a discount. you match locally

kind of like

to recreate the original

recreate the original Black Friday

Black Friday experience.

So, do both people want a discount and only the winner gets in or you guys

No, no, no, no. I No. I think it's like it's like I I'm on uh Ridge.com. I check out with a bunch of stuff. Jordy's my next door neighbor. He checks out with a bunch of stuff. We're both happy. We're having the modern e-commerce Black Friday experience except there's one thing missing. We didn't get to fight each other. So then in the post purchase flow it says, "Hey, there's someone that's opted in to a fist fight in your area. Walk outside, meet at this address, you can scrap it out."

It sounds asset light. So I don't I don't have to as a brand I don't put up any boxers. You guys are fighting each other.

No, it's purely peerto-peer. [laughter]

You do have to give some of the margin back to the winner though. That's the only thing.

Oh. Oh. Oh. So the winner does get a little coupon or something. You get like a gift card or something.

And the rich customers, they're scary, man. They're tough guys. So

they're [laughter] tough guys. I feel like you can't shave the beard now. At least at least as while while CEO of Ridge.

No, I'm gonna keep throwing it out, dude.

Yeah. Wait, so how how did you actually win in phone cases? That feels like extremely difficult, the most competitive. Is it the strength of like the product development, the positioning, the marketing, the operations? Like how how did that possibly work? That feels impossible.

Yeah, it's creative destruction, right? So like the the number one name in phone cases is still Otterbox. They do a billion dollars a year in revenue. They they do more than Apple directly or like third party.

Yeah, I'm not taking down Apple, but [laughter] like yeah, Otterbox is sold into Verizon and Best Buy.

I do see them everywhere.

And they do a billion dollars a year in sales. They've been like owned by private equity for four or five years.

Let's give it up for private equity.

Yeah. Yeah.

Opportunities for him.

Yeah. They're making a killing, but then they're in the value extraction mode. They're just like they're not they're never going to pay for marketing. They're going to fight tooth and nail a Best Buy of Verizon of the world. Right. And then it creates a market because Verizon's like, "Hey, I hate working with these new owners over here. Will you come in and take some of their shelf space? They want competition in their store and it's incremental sales for me. Like it's their lunch that I'm eating." So I'm like, "Yeah, I'd gladly go in there. I'll take lower margin. I'll I'll work it out." So

wow. Okay.

You could shop Ridge phone cases at your local Verizon stores, T-Mobile, Best Buy.

Did you have a deals with any of them beforehand?

No.

So is there a world where it acts as like a lever that opens a door to getting other products into these places? I don't know if a Ridge wallet would make sense in a Verizon store, but probably.

No, no, we we have wallets. They're not. And actually, the I did lie. The first thing we did was uh wallets in Best Buy and it's like

Yeah. Yeah. You told me about that.

We were the only people ever selling wallets in a Best Buy. And it's like if we can make that work, then we can make anything work and then we started just putting the rest of the catalog in there. You can buy our luggage in a Best Buy right now. So,

best practices for uh big influencer partnerships in 2026. What you got? [snorts] Um, I I think more and more the brands need to be somewhat creatorled and I think it's way easier to do that internally, right? You guys had, you know, uh, a couple creator brands on today, right? You could say Mod Retro is a creator brand because Palmer, it is crazy how many views Palmer gets, you know, even though he's not an influencer just by going around onto Rogan, onto other shows. He pulls it. Yeah.

Yeah.

He pulls the audience.

Yeah. So, I think there's free impressions to be had. And the most expensive part of my P&L is impressions. Impressions, right? So, if you can go out there and tell a story and be good, like you'll get a ton of impressions. We we just an hour ago had an MKBHD video go live and it'll probably get 3 million views, sell a ton of stuff, and it just needs to be a tighter feedback loop there.

MKBHD on Black Friday, I'm assuming that's only possible because you guys have had like a very long-term relationship with MKBHD. And if if like Samsung came to him and he didn't have that relationship, he'd be like, "I'll take $5 million or something."

Uh I'm I'm sure it'd be Yeah, it would take a ton of money. Um you know, he's a equity partner in Rich, so he's one of our co-owners, so he's on the board. We hang out and um as part of our relationship, we get like 20 spots a year and he wants to maximize our revenue, too. So, Black Friday is a great spot to give to us.

That's awesome. Very, very cool. Uh, anything interesting on the on the channel side on like uh what's Connor up to today? He just got like like eight monitors set up just like fully locked into the vortex.

Yeah, dude. Unfortunately, there's not a camera showing your guys' production studio, but that's basically what Conor's doing.

I love it.

We could be running a brand.

Yeah, you could have a ton of ads going right now, guys. Yeah. I mean, Connor's behind the screen. Uh, we have a great team now. So, there's there's 70 or 80 people that are rich just grinding out today. Um, but the most exciting channel is is probably YouTube. They kind of

Yeah, they kind of [ __ ] around for a long time and didn't have good performance.

Was that was that was that the targeting or the actual like uh

Yeah, it mean nobody nobody could get it was extraordinarily difficult to get programmatic ads on YouTube to work at all. Right.

But what about them was wrong? Just like the targeting on like who the person was

well

that you're reaching.

Yeah. I mean the their number one business is AdWords and they want everything to work like AdWords and that ad space doesn't work like AdWords, right? and they weren't willing to make the changes to make YouTube an actual functioning ad platform. But now that it looks like, you know, the Google Ads business could be threatened or might be threatened. They're like, let's start actually finding all the dollars in the couch cushions and that is YouTube ads. Uh I mean, pull up their K1 is the fastest growing part of their business, right? Growing 50% year-over-year. Um and it's working. So YouTube has been like the second biggest channel for it this year.

Interesting. Um, do you uh uh are you seeing strong results on basically vertical video like repurposing Tik Tok assets into vertical video ads in the shorts feed on YouTube or are you creating bespoke content for YouTube? Are you at the point where you notice that an edit that works on an ad that works on you YouTube won't work on Tik Tok and vice versa?

Well, I'll say that putting MKBHD in YouTube ads really works

works everywhere. I'm sure cuz it's totally thumb

stopping.

Yeah. But what what you brought up is the beauty of you should be a creator brand, right? Like the real like alpha and leverage there is that a short form video is the same everywhere. So you can run it on Tik Tok, you can run it on YouTube shorts, reels, apploving, you can put it on Twitter. Like Twitter ads are crushing, right? You put it everywhere.

Twitter ads are crushing.

Yeah. Yeah. Interesting. No way, dude. I mean, the guy that had that hired that new guy and he's like running. Yeah. He's crushing it, dude.

He's crushing it. No way. That's amazing.

You're the first person that's really called that out. That's

why so so why did it never work historically? Why was it purely to brand channel where you'd have like Uber? It's like we're going to we'll give some of our budget to X.

Well, it's it's the same thing as like why why did Apploving go from like a $20 billion company to a $200 billion company? It's like they built a really good ad engine, right? Like dollars will flow to whoever has the best ad engine. I think a lot of the space is the same, right? They're like, "Oh, no, an ex user is

is more valuable because it's in tech or no, it's bad because all these bots." At the end of day, there's purchasers everywhere and you just need a really good ad engine. And Met has had a 20-year head start building the world's greatest ad engine, right? Um, and now

the same people who built that are going to places like Twitter, going to places like Applov and rebuilding better adgin you could put it on Reddit ads, you could put it on cro horrible ads and as you have a really good ad engine, it will find purchasers. That's what I think they did over at uh at X and it's been it's been working.

Yeah. And video specifically, too. you you've been running video ads there because you were saying you could bring your Tik Tok YouTube ads, your MKBHD video ads all over. Uh has that been successful on X yet or is it more link based?

We we throw all the stuff in there, but like but everything has a link to link ad and purchase on our website.

Yeah. Okay. Well, we got to close out with Harley. Thank you so much for hang back. We'll talk to you soon. Uh we got Harley back in the [laughter] in the studio. Uh closing out. Uh

where did Sean go? Oh.

Oh, Sean, hang up. You want to hang out?

Dude, [laughter]

what do you You look like his uh

He ran away. I guess Sean won't have If he sits here,

he's a pretty face.

You look like his uh his boss. He's got it. He's got it. He'll

Oh, yeah. Okay. We have We have audience for him. Uh how are you doing? Close this out. Give us an update on the stats. What else is What's the latest?

All right, let's start with the stats, of course. Sean, can you hear me?

Oh, I can hear you, bud. How are you?

How you doing?

Congratulations. We pressed him. We said, "Has he ever flinched and thought about even for a second using a different e-commerce platform?" He said, "Never in the entire history of Bridge." Never. [laughter]

You know, actually, in in in truth, Sean's one of those guys that uh he gives you tough love when you deserve it, but he gives you praise only when you deserve it also. And so that makes him a real one. I appreciate that. He

is a real one.

Okay, so let's check it out as we close this out. How we doing? So, $4.1 million right now sales per minute. 38,000 orders per minute. 30 million unique shoppers today across all do it for us. Give it to us.

Let's go.

Clean hit with the setup.

With the prancing setup.

Wow. Okay. So, I also have a few other things for you.

Yes. Yes.

Okay. So, I'm going to wrap up some trending categories for the day now that we're getting to 5:00 p.m. EST. skincare, vitamins, supplements, t-shirts, activew wear, makeup did really well. This is really interesting. At 5:00 a.m. when I was on CNN, I I looked at uh trending products. At 5:00 a.m., it was Aloe Yoga with their crew neck pullover. It was Cozy Earth with her bamboo sheet set and Merit Beauty with their flesh bomb.

When I look at it now, it's totally switched up. You have Victoria Beckham's eyeliner. You have uh earplugs from a company called Loop Loop.

Interesting.

Yeah, Loop earplugs. Uh, the ones that's trending is called the Loop Switch 2.

Okay?

And you have Lola blankets, the antique ivory blanket. Here's what's really interesting. If you go back to this time last year, last year was all about getting outside. You saw ski equipment, adventure stuff, outdoorsy stuff.

That's over. We're going on. We're going

We're going cozy. So things like bakeear sets, blankets, wooden toys, and coloring books are all up 100% year-over-year.

Interesting. Uh, Goose Creek Candle Christmas tree through three candles is killing it. And Carowway cookware set is also killing it. Um, so those are the trends. It's been uh I mean the the cozy era is is definitely here.

We're in the cozy era. I love

cozy era.

Dude, all those are great brands. If you guys don't know Loop, like they're they

I don't know Loop.

Oh, something like really old like them with like earplugs. They made them really cool.

Is it for sleeping?

No, it's for like going to concerts.

Concerts and stuff. Okay. Yeah. the website. Super Gen Z. Cozy Earth has a bunch of stores in LA. Like all those

Cozy Earth is really cool. Yeah.

Loop Earplugs. Yeah, this is amazing.

Yeah.

Wow.

And obviously Alo Aloe is Aloe, right?

Yeah, we know Alo. They're serious. They're And actually they're in LA also. An amazing company, but I I just want to say, you know, a couple things just I know you guys have to wrap in a minute, but um Jordy John, I just want to say thank you so much for this.

Of course, this was fantastic. This has been really fun. It was a fun It was a fun tour talking to folks who today is the biggest day of the year for them to other folks who you know this is just another day or they're you know they're

it was cool to hear the position between like you know even Cat had said like Cat Cole versus you know the David's guy David was like no no no it's January and Cat's like no no no this is like this is where you're able it was so the juxosition between two similar products but I just want to say thank you to you guys this is my 16th Black Friday at Shopify my favorite one yet um huge thank you to Noel Sarah, Peter, Torren, Kevin, Niche, Ben, Brian, Cat, and of course Sean and Jordan, John. You guys are amazing. Um, sorry we stole your day off. Um, please apologize to your wives and your families.

No days off.

No days off when capitalism is on the line, when Congress is on the line. It's the biggest day. It's the best. And we're still full of energy, but hopefully uh you agree it was worth it. And

100%.

I'll see you guys in Q1 for our next earnings call. I guess we will. We can't wait. Can't wait for 17.

Yeah,

dude. Cyber Monday. Run it back.

Cyber Monday. We're joining stream with the green suit.

Join join join join Cyber Monday.

Yeah, I would love to. You'll have me. I'd love to join Cyber Monday.

Of course,

you can find maybe Sean and I come on together. We do a whole like backtoback DJ thing.

Let's do it. Sales hour by hour. I'm going to report in.

Yes. I want to know.

I love it. I love it.

Amazing. Well, congrats to the whole Shopify team for another uh massive

blowout blowout day. Can't wait to see the final numbers.

I want to know the final numbers. We got to we got to figure that out.

I'll come back Monday. We can chat.

Fantastic. Thank you so much.

See you. Talk soon.

Have a good rest of your day.

See you, Sean.

Goodbye. Later, Harley.

Uh wonderful, wonderful show. Thank you to everybody uh who has hung out with us today.

Celebrated commerce, celebrated entrepreneurship,

celebrated the American,

the commerce corral

and the Canadian consumer. Commerce corral

we I wish we were podcasting tomorrow. We won't be. tomorrow, Saturday.

Uh but we will be back in full force on Monday.

Back in full force

and uh yeah, it'll be a busy weekend,

dude. [snorts]

It's going to be great. Thanks for doing this. Shining some light on a a small little company called Shopify.

Yeah. [laughter]

Fledgling

startup.

20 years 20 years uh next year.

20-y year old company.

Fantastic. Well, thank you so much for tuning in. Thanks for listening. Wonderful. Give us five stars on Apple podcast.

Sign up for the newsletter tbn.com and we will see you on Monday.

Cheers.

Bye.

Goodbye.

Thank you.