Operators

Sean Frank (CEO, Ridge), Matt Bertulli (CEO, Pela Case & Lomi), Jason Panzer (President, HexClad), and Mike Beckham (CEO, Simple Modern) rank the ten highest impact ways ecommerce brands are using AI in 2026. The four disagree loudly before landing on a group ranking none of them expected going in. 
Sean says AI chatbots now handle nearly every routine support ticket. Mike takes it further with a model that predicts each customer’s next purchase and updates hourly.The pattern repeats in content, where generative AI now handles static images at Ridge and Pela for a fraction of the old cost. 
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“We’ve done it before. Can we do it again?” 
Five executives put half a million dollars on the line to start a new ecommerce brand. Operators Build follows every step, in public. You get the math, the disagreements, and the cost of launching an online business in 2026. 
This is not dropshipping. We bought inventory, formed an LLC, and registered our domain name: https://getwinks.com The plan? Shopify and paid social (Meta) with online marketplaces like Amazon and new channels like TikTok added as the numbers earn it. 
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Curtis covers the category and the year they spent on the product + inventory management (sourcing, co-manufacturer, 3PL). Sean frames subscriptions and the CAC goal. Cody runs email and social-media marketing with AI to keep OpEx low. Mike pushes for constraints while Matt argues for high conviction, one big bet.

Help an Operator Out (HAOO) is a series where real business owners join the podcast with live questions. In this episode, Christopher Francis (Founder & CEO, Home Plunge) brings the hardest problem in year one: growing without doing every job himself. He turned a personal need into a $1.4 million business in a year and a half. 
The conversation covers pricing and offer strategy. It also gets into Amazon, TikTok Shop affiliates, and AI support. Sean pushes for a sale structure built for a high-consideration purchase. Mike frames the manual support work as margin compression Christopher isn’t tracking. It’s the same problems most seven-figure founders eventually face. 
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“Everyone who said I was too early, they got on my investor updates.” 
Can product market fit be created, or can you only position yourself to catch it? 
William Hicks (Co-Founder & CEO, Magic Mind) joins Mike Beckham (CEO, Simple Modern) and Matt Bertulli (CEO, Pela Case & Lomi) to unpack how a Silicon Valley spreadsheet of nootropics became a national retail brand. This episode gets into the real mechanics of product market fit at scale. 
Raising a seed round took dozens of rejections. Hicks kept those investor relationships warm for years afterward. From there, DTC gave way to national retail distribution. Merchandising discipline mattered more than ad spend. Subscription retention gets a breakdown too, along with the honest math behind CAC payback and lifetime value. 
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“People buy things to fill gaps in their life.” 
Sean Frank (CEO, Ridge) and Matt Bertulli (CEO, Pela Case & Lomi) unpack consumer behavior in ecommerce. They cover the emotional triggers behind buying, the offers that convert, and the buying journeys online shopping takes today. The real driver of your marketing strategies is the offer itself, not the checkout experience. 
People buy out of convenience, fear of loss, identity, and scarcity … long before logic enters the picture. Ridge’s expansion from wallets into rings shows how one brand layered new customer angles onto a single product. Influencer partnerships, social media, user-generated content (UGC), and paid ads each serve a different role in building trust. 
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