The Lampwork Operating Standard (LOS)
Our answer to the Danaher Business System: six disciplines, one cadence, installed into every brand we build or buy.
Read →
Insights
Notes from the
operating floor.
Research and working theses on consumer brands, M&A, and AI-native operations — written by the people doing the work, not a content agency.
Inside Canvas & Ivy: The Proving Ground
What a made-to-order brand run by four people taught us — and which lessons scale across a portfolio.
Read →
The Org Chart AI Eats First
Stanford payroll data, 180M postings, platform receipts — which ecommerce roles compress, transform, or appreciate.
Read →
$5M Per Employee: The New Scoreboard
Native did $100M with 8 people. Jolie ran 8 figures with 3. Why revenue per head now prices brands and teams.
Read →
The Roles That Survive
Accountability, taste, relationships, atoms — the four durability properties and the five seats we pay up for.
Read →
Anatomy of Ridge
$266K Kickstarter to ~$200M, profitably, with no investors — the agency absorption, the platform pivot, the AI compression.
Read →
Anatomy of Simple Modern
The quiet $250M Oklahoma machine that beat Yeti's price, outlasted Stanley's craze, and built a licensing moat.
Read →
Anatomy of Frost Buddy
Comment-section R&D, the TikTok-to-Meta pipeline, and SMS muscle — small-town Illinois to eight figures.
Read →
BREZ: A Rocket on Rented Ground
$0 to $28M in year two — then Congress closed the hemp loophole in a shutdown bill. The full arc.
Read →
Gray-Zone Commerce
Hemp THC, pouches, peptides — how we underwrite categories where the biggest competitor is a legislative calendar.
Read →
Founder Mode, Tested
Olipop, David, Outdoor Voices, Peloton — two years of evidence on what founder mode means in consumer.
Read →
The Operating Cadence
Amazon's WBR, input metrics vs output echoes, and why a real scorecard is worth basis points on your multiple.
Read →
Profit First, Scale Second: The Operating Thesis
Validate in the market, prove the margin, then scale incredibly fast — in that order, never reversed.
Read →
The Operator Stack: Eight Disciplines, One P&L
Growth, development, AI, finance, consumer behavior, sales — why owning every P&L discipline in-house is the whole advantage.
Read →
The Aggregator Era: A Complete History, 2018–2026
$15B raised, thousands of brands bought, one bankruptcy wave — the complete history and what survived.
Read →
The De Minimis Reset: Temu, Shein, and the New Import Math
The $800 loophole closed in 2025. What actually changed, with the data — and who really won.
Read →
The DTC IPO Class Report Card: 2021–2026
Allbirds fell 99%. Warby found profit. Hims passed $2B. Five years of public unit economics, graded.
Read →
The Post-Mortem Library: Four DTC Collapses, Three Repeating Mistakes
Thrasio, Casper, SmileDirectClub, Zulily — different funerals, same three mistakes.
Read →
What Your DTC Brand Is Actually Worth: The 2026 Multiples Guide
Real market multiples, what moves them, and a worked example with $400K of difference in it.
Read →
The State of DTC in 2026: Profit Is the New Growth
Retention benchmarks, AI-led discovery, and why the channel stopped being the strategy.
Read →
When the Chatbot Does the Shopping: Zero-Click Commerce
37% of Gen Z already shops through AI assistants. The answer-engine optimization playbook.
Read →
The $62 Billion Tollbooth: Retail Media and the Real Cost of a Customer
Three tolls on every transaction — and the only demand the tollbooth can't tax.
Read →
Subscription DTC After the Correction: The Churn Math That Separates Winners
At 10% monthly churn you have a treadmill. At 3% you have an asset. The benchmarks and the playbook.
Read →
What the Aggregators Got Wrong
Thrasio raised billions and bought 200 brands. The lesson is not "do not buy brands."
Read →
SDE vs. EBITDA: The Two Languages of Small-Business Valuation
The same P&L, two earnings numbers, a quarter-million-dollar spread. The translation guide.
Read →
Inside Our Diligence: The 40-Point Checklist We Run Before Buying
Our actual working checklist — interactive, with progress saved in your browser.
Read →
Retention Is the New Acquisition
Sixty percent of DTC revenue comes from returning customers. The math changed; most P&Ls have not.
Read →
Amazon vs. Your Own Store: The Real Margin Math, Line by Line
The same $60 product nets $17 or $28 depending on the channel. The full teardown.
Read →
Tariffs and the New Landed-Cost Math: An Operator's Playbook
Landed cost became the most volatile line on the P&L. Calculating it honestly and hedging it.
Read →
Owned Audience Economics: Why Email and SMS Still Out-Earn Everything
$36-40 back per dollar, and the rent never goes up. The full economics of the audience you own.
Read →
AI Is an Operating Model, Not a Feature
Adding a chatbot is not a strategy. Rebuilding the operating cost curve is.
Read →
Aggregator, Studio, Permanent Capital: Holding Company Models Compared
Five buyer species, five different clocks. The field guide every selling founder needs.
Read →
The First 90 Days After We Buy a Brand
Stabilize, instrument, then intervene — the deliberately boring playbook that protects value.
Read →
Cash, Earn-Outs, and Rollover: Deal Structures Explained
What the structure of an offer actually means for what you take home — with worked numbers.
Read →
Returns: The $890 Billion Problem Nobody Wants to Own
One in six items comes back, at 20-35% of price. The orphaned P&L line and how to own it.
Read →
What the 2030 DTC Winner Looks Like: A Forward Thesis
Every trend line extended honestly — a concrete spec sheet for the brand that wins 2030.
Read →
When to Sell Your Brand (and When to Wait)
An honest framework from people who sit on the buy side of the table.
Read →