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Football, lacrosse, yoga. Joe Kudla was game for almost any sport and fitness regimen, but in 2008, after years of beating himself up playing contact sports, 40-year-old Kudla decided to take up yoga. But he soon discovered that he couldn’t find much to wear.

“I learned that out of the 17 million people doing yoga, more then six million of them were men. Yet there was not one single yoga brand targeting that market.” says Kudla

To put the numbers in perspective, surfing which is an activity enjoyed by roughly 17-20 million surfers world-wide are served by more then 90+ clothing brands. After Kudla did some quick napkin math, saved and borrowed roughly $300,000 from family, friends and the bank and, in 2014, he launched his startup Vuori (“mountain” in Finnish), to produce men’s yoga clothing.

“The original plan was to create clothes to move and sweat in, but styled for everyday life, like Lululemon and others had done for women. We...

In an era of Instagram stories, Snapchat filters, Facebook ads, email marketing may not be a shiny new thing. It’s more the steady thing that always works E-commerce businesses account for about a fifth of MailChimp's customers, but that won’t keep them from innovating for their customer base heading into the future.

After two years or countless meetings, MailChimp recently unveiled partnerships with Facebook, Instagram, and Google. These new partnerships will be available to use for their customers for free.

The way they'll work: If you're already sending out emails using MailChimp and you want to buy a Facebook ad or Google retargeting ad, now you can do so within your existing MailChimp software, using the contacts or images or text you've already uploaded for your email newsletter. You won't pay MailChimp anything more for the service. While it is still most of the time more beneficial to access each individuals marketing platform, we will see how Mailchimps...

What's the secret to Peak Designs unprecedented success? Peak Design founder Peter Dering disregarded every single rule that your professor taught you and that you have read in old school business books. 

You need to raise a few million dollars to start a fast-growing hardware company.

Peak Design raised $0 and the team retains 100% equity. They averaged 18 people during most of 2017 and ended with $23M in sales. That's $1.28M in sales per employee. For a quick reference, Google does $1.20M per employee.

Only serial entrepreneurs, product designers and MBA-types can start product design companies.

Peak Design's founder Dering is a civil engineer and Peak Design is his first startup. He's never started a company before this and he had no background in product design. None. 

Outsource everything you can except for your core competency.

Peter Dering launched Peak Design on Kickstarter and edited his first  video on Microsoft Movie Maker. He also designed his first...

Back in 2013 three friends, Steven Ford, Bruno Aschidamini, and Brandon Leibel were selling life insurance from a call center in San Diego. Not content with their post grad corporate gigs they decided to risk it all and start a beach towel company called Sand Cloud. In 2017 San Cloud is on pace to do $7 million in sales.

How did they do it?

Here is how patience, perseverance, and failure propelled them to the top.

Living in Southern California gave the guys an idea for a business: a towel that would help people take better naps on the beach. So the friends ordered a few dozen beach towels and travel pillows from a discount website and had a local seamstress sew the pillows to the towels. They called the company in the early stages Cloud Nine.

A couple weeks later they were selling their Cloud Nine beach towel pillows to family and other friends, but they were barely breaking even. The trio lacked the discipline and ultimately the know-how on how to correctly build a solid brand....

Here’s something you don’t hear every day: Being naive can help you in business.

Shaun Neff, founder and CEO of Neff Headwear, launched his lifestyle brand in college. This meant he had his own business before he ever had a full-time job. Starting out, he didn’t know a thing about finding manufacturers, setting up contracts with vendors, or doing deals with celebrities.

Today, he has mastered all three, turning his eponymous brand into a business that generates more than $100 million in sales.

“It’s crazy but this is the only job I’ve ever had. Since high school I had dreamed of starting a surf, skate, snow-inspired brand that reached out to youth. So when I was up at college in Utah, snowboarding every day, I thought, ‘Alright it’s go time,’ and just went for it.” - Shaun Neff

‘Yo, wanna rock a t-shirt?’

These are the words that started Neff on his trajectory from t-shirt peddling sophomore to the respected...

Let's face it: Instagram has become one of the most engaging social platforms. It isn't quite as popular as Facebook, but users are often more engaged and active due to the visual nature of Instagram.

If you're using Instagram to grow your ecommerce business, you might find it difficult to attract followers at first. That's okay. We're here to help with 25 tested tips to get more real followers on Instagram for free.

You see, entrepreneurs and small businesses often approach Instagram in the wrong way. They try to buy followers, post erratically, and give up out of frustration. We don't want that to happen to you.

Instagram creates a visual smorgasbord of dynamic content that can get shared hundreds, thousands, and even millions of times. Additionally, the lines between brands and individuals often get blurred. Consumers often engage with the brands they love because of the content those brands publish.

If you want to become one of those brands, follow these 25 tips to boost your...

The mahabis success story is interesting as an example of the speed at which technology and paid advertising allows an ecommerce business to be built. Three years ago, mahabis founder Ankur Shah would not have given slippers a thought. 

The slippers are certainly comfortable, but mahabis are still essentially an online marketing phenomenon. You see, mahabis spends millions a year with Facebook, Google, and several other display networks, which ensure they stay top-of-mind with future customers.

What's the result so far? In the first year exclusively using paid advertising Mahabis did $1.8 million in sales. Year two, the company did $13 million. Year three they sold $24 millions dollars worth of slippers.

At the start Shah started looking around at data for fun, to see what people were searching for and buying online. He wanted to create and sell something that would appeal to everyone but he wasn't sure what exactly that would be. Originally, he was thinking about...