Good morning,
Here’s what you’ll find in today’s DTC:
1️⃣ Four creative ad formats that show off your product catalog
2️⃣ Megababe shares how they built a non-existent category and were profitable from Day 1.
You’re reading this newsletter along with new subscribers from: Essentrics, Tiny Tags, and Saltwinds Coffee Company. 👋
💍💎💠 Fun Ways to Show Off Multiple SKUs in Your Ads
Running ads that feature a single product is safe, but it's rarely the move that drives serious revenue.
The best-performing DTC brands know how to turn one ad into a showcase, pulling customers deeper into their catalog and making every impression count.
Whether you're in a promo period or building evergreen creative, here are four formats to help you do exactly that.
1️⃣ Layered Lifestyle Shot
This is a great way to showcase multiple products in a single lifestyle shot and the real star is the photography itself.
Layering SKUs into lifestyle images isn't just for jewelry brands.
Almost any brand selling a physical product can use this approach. If you're not sure how to pull it off or need content like this, the PH studio can help. Strategy lives in the nuance of creative execution.
How to make it work:
For lower AOV products, anchor ads like this in price to encourage multi-product purchases.
Make the bulk offer enticing, and pair copy about buying more with lifestyle photography that reinforces it.
The right combination can make a huge difference in performance, especially when you're looking to lower CAC and grow revenue.
For higher AOV products with longer consideration windows, lead with aspirational copy instead. If you're selling a full lineup of high-end kitchen gadgets, most customers won't buy everything at once, so you're really selling the lifestyle. Let your copy capture that aspiration.
2️⃣ Multi-Product 2 Panel
In highly subjective verticals, showing multiple options is always a smart move. The snake earrings highlighted here are cool but a customer who loves hoops might scroll past an ad featuring only snake earrings.
How to make it work:
Don't overwhelm customers with choices. Featuring best sellers makes sense here. It adds social proof and gives each product a reason to be in the frame together. The key is intentionality: the products you group should feel cohesive, not random.
Adding product names is also important. Remember that most top-of-funnel social audiences are cold.
Unless you're driving traffic to a landing page built specifically around these styles, give viewers the context they need to actually shop.
3️⃣ Sale Graphic w/ Multi Renders
This format works for any brand during a promo period. It's simple, eye-catching, easy to produce, and immediately communicates what's on sale.
How to make it work:
Unlike evergreen cross-selling, sale periods don't require the same level of curation — especially when you're targeting warmed-up audiences. Showing as many variants as possible alongside clean sale messaging is something every brand should test at least once.
Including your site name and product names in the graphic is a nice touch. Yes, it's visually busy, but in a positive way. Busy in this context screams "sale," and the variety signals something for everyone.
4️⃣ Moodboard Style Grid
Moodboards are always having a moment online, and they translate surprisingly well into ads, particularly if you sell complementary SKUs.
How to make it work:
Balance product-focused photography with lifestyle shots, and group items that naturally belong together. The goal is to curate something that feels intentional and elevated, not just a grid of your top-performing images stitched together.
Focus on the sum of the parts, not each individual image.
Think carefully about where you're sending this traffic. Don't drop people on your homepage and expect them to figure it out.
Link to a best sellers collection, a bundle builder, or a curated landing page that matches the energy of the ad.
The Bootstrap Beauty Brand Going Up Against BlackRock in Target
In this episode Katie Sturino, founder of Megababe, walks through how she built a category that didn’t exist.
Katie tapped into her online community to create a thigh chafe stick and a body positive brand. Eight years later, the brand is now in major retailers like Target, Walmart, and Anthropologie.
Learn the actual playbook behind one of the most under-discussed bootstrap stories in beauty.
We cover:
Did Everlane Sell Out To Shein?
Fast fashion giant Shein is acquiring Everlane in a deal valued at approximately $100 million.
Everlane launched in 2011, built around "radical transparency": sharing its supply chain, tracking carbon emissions, and disclosing where each item was produced. It attracted a loyal customer base by making ethical manufacturing visible and verifiable.
In recent years, sales dropped and debt accumulated to roughly $90 million. After failing to secure outside investors, majority owner L Catterton approved a sale to Shein. Common stockholders receive nothing.
The brand conflict is hard to ignore. Shein has faced repeated allegations of abusive labor practices, hazardous chemicals in its clothing, and copyright infringement, the exact practices Everlane built its identity around opposing. Customers took to social media to announce they are leaving. Some are panic-buying staples before the deal closes.
What Shein is actually doing here:
This is not a random portfolio acquisition. Shein has been pursuing a public listing for years, blocked from U.S. markets over labor and supply chain concerns, and now targeting Hong Kong. Buying recognizable Western brands with ethical positioning is a calculated attempt to reframe what Shein is to regulators, investors, and consumers. Everlane gives them credibility they cannot build organically.
What DTC operators should take from this:
Everlane had genuine differentiation and a loyal customer base. Neither was sufficient to service $90 million in debt when acquisition costs rose and conversion softened. Brand equity does not absorb debt.
If your customers are buying values alongside product, your exit options are constrained. An acquirer in conflict with those values triggers churn and reputational damage at the same time.
The $100 million sale price on a brand worth multiples of that five years ago reflects a thin market for mid-scale, values-led DTC businesses without platform-level infrastructure. The consolidators — Shein, Temu, Amazon — have the logistics and capital. Independent brands increasingly do not. Build your unit economics like that reality is permanent, because it is.
📊 Your dashboard revenue looks good, but is it showing your actual profit? Nummbas shows what your DTC brand actually keeps after ads, shipping, fees, expenses, and product costs. Try the live demo. *
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Too late, Elon. The jury rejects Musk’s lawsuits against OpenAI and CEO Sam Altman since he waited too long to file his lawsuit. Read more →
TikTok unleashes next-gen AI ad suite. TikTok drops new ad tools designed to maximize reach and scale branded buzz. Read more →
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DTC Newsletter is written by Rebecca Knight and Frances Du. Edited by Eric Dyck.
Please note that items in this newsletter marked with * contain sponsored content.
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