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How Jennifer Aniston’s LolaVie brand grew sales 40% with CTV ads
The DTC beauty category is crowded. To break through, Jennifer Aniston’s brand LolaVie, worked with Roku Ads Manager to easily set up, test, and optimize CTV ad creatives. The campaign helped drive a big lift in sales and customer growth, helping LolaVie break through in the crowded beauty category.
This past Thursday, New Edition co-hosted a private dinner in New York City with League of Originals for 45+ brand founders and operators.
Before dinner, I moderated a panel on "Hidden Drivers of Growth" — with three operators who work in the trenches of eCommerce every day.
I spoke with Rory Garton-Smith (Checkmate), Neema Frazier (Brandon Blackwood NY) and Matthew Habib (ShipVelocity) about the levers most brands are leaving untouched.
The TLDR: growth is hiding in the stuff you've normalized.
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TAKEAWAY 1
Most Brands Are Advertising Into the Void — And Don't Know It
Rory Garton-Smith: "IDFA blocking, third-party cookie deprecation, shrinking tracking windows — those are the real drivers that have prevented the growth of new eCommerce over the last 10 years."
The Internet's identity layer has quietly eroded. You're spending on Meta, someone visits your store, bounces — and you have no way to reach them again.
Most brands have accepted this as normal. It isn't.
Why this matters: Top-of-funnel isn't just about spending more. It's about owning the identity layer — knowing who came to your store and having the infrastructure to reach them everywhere else.
👇 HOW DOES A FREE AD CREATIVE SOUND?👇
TAKEAWAY 2
Your Packaging Is Probably Costing You More Than It Should
Neema Frazier: "It's the art of the pivot. Systems are meant to be broken so you can optimize and evolve."
Brandon Blackwood ships over 1,000 SKUs. Every unit used to ship in a dust bag, inside a gift box, inside a shipping carton. Neema found their vendor had created a custom box size for each SKU — over 100 different sizes in the warehouse.
Her fix: four universal sizes. Then she went further — redesigned the gift box to be the shipping carton. All-black, branded, still luxurious on the unboxing. More units per pallet, no double-boxing.
Why this matters: Every brand has a version of this problem. Something that made sense at 50 SKUs doesn't at 500. The question is whether you're auditing it — or accepting it as the cost of doing business.
TAKEAWAY 3
If You're Not Running Post-Purchase Upsells, You're Leaving Margin on the Table
Matthew Habib: "There are brands doing real volume that still have zero post-purchase upsell in place. That's just margin walking out the door."
You've already paid to acquire the customer. You're already shipping to them. A post-purchase offer — something small in the same box — is pure profit.
Matthew's Shopify recommendation: Cleverific (no affiliation). A few hours to set up. No excuse not to have it running.
Why this matters: CPAs are only going up. Post-purchase is one of the only places left to generate margin without spending more on acquisition.
TAKEAWAY 4
Warehouse Costs Are Not Fixed. Treat Them Like a Variable.
One mistake Neema sees consistently: brands treating their warehouse bill as a given.
It's not. Outbound ops, storage, inbound, VAs, QC labor — all negotiable and re-engineerable.
Redesigning how units are packed and shipped led to real freight savings at Brandon Blackwood. The same exercise is available to almost every brand.
Why this matters: Your warehouse bill is probably your biggest operational expense. If you haven't audited it recently, you're likely overpaying.
TAKEAWAY 5
Do the Things That Don't Scale
Matthew's brand built a Zapier flow that triggered two days after delivery. A VA would call and check in — how's the fit, did everything arrive okay?
The response was almost always: "I've never gotten a call from a brand before."
That's the hidden driver. Not a new ad format. A phone call.
Don't want to call? Text. Don't want to text? Add a printed founder note to every order. That’s what we did when we were building For Others, too.
None of it scales forever — that's the point. Loyalty gets built before you automate everything away.
Why this matters: Touchpoints create loyalists. A slip in the box, an SMS after delivery, a founder note — those turn a one-time buyer into someone who tells their friends.
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IN SUMMARY
The gap between brands that are growing and brands that are plateauing usually isn't the product or the ads. It's the stuff nobody's looking at — the packaging bill, the missed upsell, the shopper who bounced and never came back.
None of these are complicated. But, a lot of times, they’re underutilized
Which takeaway hit hardest? Respond to this email or email me directly at [email protected] and let me know!
Until next week ✌️
