The Orita Podcast

In this episode of The Orita Podcast, Aaron Schwartz sits down with Chris Wichert, Founder at Commerce Catalyst. Chris spent ten years building Koio and came away convinced that focus, cash discipline, and the things that do not scale matter more than ever.• Koio visited more than 30 Italian factories before finding a family workshop producing for Chanel, then learned that extreme product quality mattered less to customers than expected.• Expanding too quickly across footwear, retail, and new categories tied up cash and diluted the premium dress-sneaker positioning.• Chris argues today’s consumer brands should build smaller, profitable businesses that compound over time and review cash flow alongside the P&L every week.• Koio built loyalty through offline events, collaborations, handwritten notes, and other deliberately unscalable customer experiences.• Founders should decide early whether they are building a unicorn, lifestyle business, or acquisition target—and choose capital that matches that goal.• AI can automate 60–70% of customer-service responses, but Chris says culture and experimentation matter more than replacing every partner with custom AI.👥 Meet the guestChris Wichert, Founder, Commerce Catalyst🎙 Hosted byAaron Schwartz, Co-Founder and Co-CEO at Orita.ai🎧 Chapters[00:00:00] How to Pronounce Wichert[00:02:37] Building Luxury for Millennials[00:04:42] Thirty Factories to One Partner[00:05:59] When Product Quality Goes Too Far[00:08:38] Expansion Diluted the Brand[00:14:03] Cash Creates Founder Optionality[00:16:54] Loyalty Through Things That Don’t Scale[00:22:31] The Hidden Weight of Operating[00:27:29] Why Unscalable Work Matters More[00:30:12] Build With the Exit in Mind[00:33:06] Why Venture Capital Conflicted With Luxury[00:38:23] Turning Operator Experience Into Consulting[00:42:22] Hard Decisions Founders Postpone[00:47:25] Where AI Actually Helps Brands🌐 Check out Orita.ai for more episodes of The Orita Podcast, where we sit down with the most interesting operators, marketers, and founders in e-commerce to talk about what’s working right now. Hosted by the Orita team. Orita uses machine learning to help brands send smarter, more profitable marketing, by figuring out who actually wants to hear from you and when.🚀 Get your free email audit from Orita, turn segments into superpowers: https://orita.ai🎧 Listen on Spotify & Apple📩 Subscribe for more founder‑grade retention intel

In this episode of The Orita Podcast, Aaron Schwartz sits down with Debbie Kemunto Pearce, Founder at CartStars. Debbie spent years selling software she had never actually used, then built an invitation-only network where vendors can't buy their way in.• How one honest conversation with peers during a software purchase exposed her blind spot and sparked the idea for CartStars• Why members called the first dinners "first dates," and what that taught Debbie about trust• The strict rules that keep CartStars honest: brand leaders contribute or leave, and vendors only enter by recommendation• Why operators across CartStars have shifted from vendor ROI claims to retention, contribution margin, and incremental lift• The traits Debbie sees in the most effective operators: constant learning, no ego, and caring you can't fake• Why building is meant to be hard, and how giving your team "the bones" means letting them fail👥 Meet the guestDebbie Kemunto Pearce, Founder at CartStars👥 Meet the guestAaron Schwartz, Co-Founder and Co-CEO at Orita.ai🎧 Chapters[00:00:00] A Dollar, No Jacket: Debbie's Origin Story[00:02:40] Not the Expert: Aaron's Founder Advantage[00:06:29] Street Canvassing Taught Her to Love No[00:12:09] Mutual Growth: Why Partnerships Felt Like Home[00:14:05] The Software Purchase That Sparked CartStars[00:17:17] Dinners vs Platforms: Trust Takes Time[00:20:37] Executives, Introverts, and the Contribution Rule[00:23:46] Retention, Margin, and the Incrementality Shift[00:30:10] Golden Cart Awards: Making Great Operators Visible[00:33:00] Too Many Rules? Why Trust Needs Guardrails[00:36:21] You Can't Fake Caring: Traits of Top Operators[00:41:57] Lean Team, Big Reach: Building Is Meant to Be Hard[00:49:11] Aaron on Sharing Problems and Letting Go[00:53:18] Give Your Team the Bones, Then Let Them Fail🌐 Check out Orita.ai for more episodes of The Orita Podcast, where we sit down with the most interesting operators, marketers, and founders in e-commerce to talk about what’s working right now. Hosted by the Orita team. Orita uses machine learning to help brands send smarter, more profitable marketing, by figuring out who actually wants to hear from you and when.🚀 Get your free email audit from Orita, turn segments into superpowers: https://orita.ai🎧 Listen on Spotify & Apple📩 Subscribe for more founder‑grade retention intel

In this episode of The Orita Podcast, Aaron Schwartz sits down with Jeremy Whisnant, Senior Director Ecommerce and Growth at BYLT Basics. Jeremy got his first purchase order from Amazon as an email attachment in 2002, and he's been figuring out how channels actually work together ever since. At BYLT Basics he's doing something most apparel brands haven't tried: building a real brand instead of just running a better ad.• What Jeremy learned shutting down a $300M Sony DTC business and why that scale perspective still shapes how he thinks about channel decisions at BYLT today• Why BYLT ran almost entirely on Instagram ads until 2021 and never spent a dollar on Google, and what that origin story means for where growth has to go next• How BYLT uses differentiated UPCs and limited assortments to sell on Amazon without creating channel conflict against their own DTC site• The shift from measuring every ad unit by the hour to brand storytelling with reach and frequency, and why that pivot requires a different kind of patience from the whole team• Why Jeremy argues that if your brand is not actively controlling its Amazon presence, Debbie's desert shop from TJ Maxx is controlling it for you• How BYLT is expanding to 22 stores in premium malls while keeping wholesale deliberately narrow and building toward golf specialty and experiential retail👥 Meet the guestJeremy Whisnant, Senior Director Ecommerce and Growth at BYLT Basics🎙 Hosted byAaron Schwartz, Co-Founder and Co-CEO at Orita.ai🎧 Chapters[00:00:00] From Gateway to BYLT: 25 Years in Digital Commerce[00:02:39] Getting the First Amazon PO in 2002 Before Anyone Cared[00:04:06] Small Companies Teach What Big Ones Cannot[00:08:24] Experience Gives Perspective: The Sony Shutdown Story[00:16:12] Landing at BYLT and What Made the Opportunity Worth the Commute[00:17:57] Why Not Knowing Apparel Was Actually an Advantage[00:20:06] How to Win the Internal Argument Against Discounting[00:25:19] Amazon Is a System Not a Partner: How to Work It[00:29:03] Which Channels to Prioritize When You Start a New Brand[00:31:17] BYLT's Channel Map: DTC, 22 Stores, Wholesale, and Amazon[00:35:30] Preventing Channel Conflict With Differentiated SKUs[00:39:17] Short-Term Revenue vs Long-Term Brand: The Pivot BYLT Is Making[00:43:20] Brand Storytelling at Scale: Gronk, Surf Photography, and Earned Credibility[00:48:39] Going Robotic: The Grand Prairie Warehouse Move🌐 Check out Orita.ai for more episodes of The Orita Podcast, where we sit down with the most interesting operators, marketers, and founders in e-commerce to talk about what’s working right now. Hosted by the Orita team. Orita uses machine learning to help brands send smarter, more profitable marketing, by figuring out who actually wants to hear from you and when.🚀 Get your free email audit from Orita, turn segments into superpowers: https://orita.ai🎧 Listen on Spotify & Apple📩 Subscribe for more founder‑grade retention intel

In this episode of The Orita Podcast, Aaron Schwartz sits down with Hansen Liang, Founder Stealth Startup. Hansen spent seven years inside Klaviyo building new products like a startup founder, reporting straight to the CPO, pitching the founders like investors, and earning headcount by traction. Now he's left to do it for real, building AI agents in stealth.• How Klaviyo structured its New Products team as a startup inside a startup with Andrew and Ed acting as the board• Why you can't subsidize your way out of bad product-market fit, no matter how strong your sales org is• The two battles every internal founder fights and why the internal one is often harder than finding PMF• Why product leaders should have more customer exposure than anyone in the org, salespeople included• How Hansen ships 1,000 PRs a month with two AI models adversarially reviewing each other's code• His spicy take on Google and Meta and why the biggest ad platforms may be brands' biggest problem👥 Meet the guestHansen Liang, Founder Stealth Startup; previously New Products, Klaviyo🎙 Hosted byAaron Schwartz, Co-Founder and Co-CEO at Orita.ai🎧 Chapters[00:00:00] Meet Hansen: Seven Years Building Klaviyo's New Products[00:02:04] A Kid in China Dreaming About the iPhone[00:04:00] The Co-op Binder That Changed Everything[00:07:23] You Have to Just Care: What Great Product Takes[00:09:26] Klaviyo's Accidental First Growth PM[00:14:13] A Startup Inside a Startup: How New Products Ran[00:19:32] Two Battles: External PMF vs Internal Buy-In[00:22:32] You Can't Subsidize Bad Product-Market Fit[00:25:39] Where the Buck Stops: Customer Exposure[00:27:37] The Launch Is a Milestone, Not the Endpoint[00:31:25] What's Next: AI Agents for Creator Marketing[00:37:41] 1,000 PRs a Month: The Two-Model Workflow[00:44:06] The Spicy Take: Google, Meta, and What Breaks[00:46:47] After Party: Aaron on Authenticity and AI Humility🌐 Check out Orita.ai for more episodes of The Orita Podcast, where we sit down with the most interesting operators, marketers, and founders in e-commerce to talk about what’s working right now. Hosted by the Orita team. Orita uses machine learning to help brands send smarter, more profitable marketing, by figuring out who actually wants to hear from you and when.🚀 Get your free email audit from Orita, turn segments into superpowers: https://orita.ai🎧 Listen on Spotify & Apple📩 Subscribe for more founder‑grade retention intel

In this episode of The Orita Podcast, Aaron Schwartz sits down with Paul Voge, Co-Founder & Former CEO at Aura Bora. Paul started Aura Bora because he drank 10 to 12 cans of sparkling water a day and thought lavender cucumber sounded good. Six and a half years later he sold the company, hiked a lot, and relearned how to read fiction.• How Paul went store by store across the country in a rental car, calling buyers on his cell phone, to get into 4,000 independent natural stores before ever touching a major chain• Why sparkling water is about as bad a DTC product as you could design in a lab, and the one reason Aura Bora built a Shopify store anyway• What actually happened to consumer CPG fundraising after 2021, why the goalpost moved so fast, and what that meant for brands at 10 to 50 million in sales• The honest account of what a 90-day acquisition process looks like when your board decides it is time to sell and the market has already shifted under you• Why Paul spent five months doing almost nothing after the exit, and what that taught him about what he had been sacrificing without realizing it• His one word to the wise for every founder running hard right now: find one day a week where you do nothing for work, and do not let AI just become another tool to help you output more👥 Meet the guestPaul Voge, Co-Founder & Former CEO at Aura Bora🎙 Hosted byAaron Schwartz, Co-Founder and Co-CEO at Orita.ai🎧 Chapters[00:00:00] Before Sparkling Water: Buying Boring Businesses in Colorado[00:01:33] The Kitchen Experiment That Became a National Brand[00:03:44] What the Sparkling Water Market Actually Looks Like[00:05:17] Craft Sparkling Water: The Differentiation Thesis[00:07:42] Pricing at 2x the Competition and Why It Worked[00:09:26] What Aura Bora Nailed Early and What Did Not Translate[00:11:29] 4000 Independent Stores: The Smiling and Dialing Playbook[00:14:04] Why Long-Term Relationships Run CPG Whether You Like It or Not[00:16:35] Selling Sparkling Water Online Is a Terrible Idea (With One Exception)[00:20:47] Raising 23 Million Dollars and What the Capital Markets Look Like Now[00:24:37] Where Founders Actually Get Money for Consumer Products Today[00:27:50] The Series B That Became an Acquisition and Why the Timing Was Not the Plan[00:32:50] What Happens After You Hand Over the Keys[00:36:15] What Paul Does Now and Why He Loves Game Shows[00:39:25] The Four Burners Problem: What Paul Would Do Differently🌐 Check out Orita.ai for more episodes of The Orita Podcast, where we sit down with the most interesting operators, marketers, and founders in e-commerce to talk about what’s working right now. Hosted by the Orita team. Orita uses machine learning to help brands send smarter, more profitable marketing, by figuring out who actually wants to hear from you and when.🚀 Get your free email audit from Orita, turn segments into superpowers: https://orita.ai🎧 Listen on Spotify & Apple📩 Subscribe for more founder‑grade retention intel