How do you market a DTC brand to older adults? Johannes Sauer, CEO and co-founder of Cadense, sells an adaptive sneaker to a customer base that skews 60 and up. His answer has been physical therapist referrals, linear TV and a call center, with Meta still doing the heavy lifting online.
Cadense makes a sneaker with nylon pads on the sole that let the foot slide over a snag instead of catching, built for people who trip after a stroke, with multiple sclerosis or Parkinson's, or simply with age. It looks like a regular athletic shoe on purpose. Johannes says Cadense passed ten million dollars in lifetime sales within 28 months of launching on pre-order from its own site. He walks through the clinician program that replaced a failed affiliate pitch, an eight-question checkout survey that 75% of buyers finish, and the channels that come next: senior living, retail and Medicare Advantage.
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WHAT YOU WILL SOLVE
- You want to test demand before committing to a production run. Cadense opened pre-orders on its own Shopify product page in September 2023 and had sold two-thirds of its first container by the time it shipped the following March. Pre-orders cash-flowed new colors and sizes for the first year and a half.
- You're about to send launch traffic to Kickstarter. Johannes has run three Kickstarters and skipped it this time, so Cadense kept the analytics and a direct relationship with every early buyer.
- Your ads can't promise what the product does. Cadense is a class one medical device, so early ads showed walking patterns like shuffling and let people recognize themselves. A recent retrospective study of 705 customers found an 87% drop in self-reported monthly falls, and Cadense always presents it that way.
- Your affiliate offer gets turned down. Eleven of the first twelve physical therapists Johannes pitched said they'd happily recommend the shoe but wouldn't take a commission. Cadense sent them a sample pair and a postcard with a tracked QR code and discount code instead. More than 750 PTs in the US now recommend it.
- Nobody finishes your post-purchase survey. Johannes opens with gender and an age bracket before asking anything that takes thought, and 75% of buyers complete all eight questions. The last one asks people to describe what bothers them about their walking, and the answers become ad copy.
- Your customers aren't reachable online. Cadense runs 60 and 120-second spots on remnant linear TV that send viewers to an outsourced call center. One in five of those callers has no email address.
- You assume the adult kids are the buyers. Johannes expected a 50/50 split between customers and caregivers. It's closer to 70/30 in favor of people buying for themselves.
- Your audience isn't on Instagram. Facebook takes around 80% of Cadense's Meta spend.
- Nobody searches for your product. Cadense spends on Meta top of funnel to create its own Google demand. AppLovin matches Meta on ROAS at a small slice of the budget but hasn't scaled past that.
- DTC alone won't get you to a billion. Cadense is moving into senior living, specialty retail and Medicare Advantage, using its DTC track record as the proof point. The pitch to insurers: Johannes puts the cost of a fall to a health plan at $20,000, against a $200 shoe.
ABOUT THE GUEST
Johannes Sauer is CEO and co-founder of Cadense, which he built with Dr. Tyler Susko, whose gait research at MIT led to the shoe. https://cadense.com
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TIMESTAMPS
02:00 How Cadense created its innovative footwear
06:00 Launching a DTC brand with pre-orders
13:00 Building a referral network of 750+ physical therapists
19:00 Increasing post-purchase survey completion rates
25:00 Reaching older consumers through TV advertising
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