Latest / Scaling Up with Fexingo: How Small Businesses Become Mid-Market Companies / How a Hammock Brand Scaled Past Amazon Dependency
Transcript
- Lucas: So you have probably seen those colorful parachute hammocks at every music festival and campsite over the past decade. One of the fastest-growing brands in that space is a company called Trail Hammock Co., based in Boulder, Colorado. Luna: I have definitely seen them. They are everywhere. But I did not know the story behind the company. Lucas: In 2021 they were doing about two million dollars in revenue, almost all of it through Amazon. By 2025 they had crossed ten million. And the way they got there? They systematically reduced their dependence on Amazon without losing their shirt. Luna: That is a scary move for any small business. Amazon is the biggest storefront in the world. Walking away from it feels like cutting off your oxygen. Lucas: Exactly. But the founders — a couple named Jen and Mike — realized they were trapped in a race to the bottom on price. Amazon takes a cut, competitors were undercutting, and they had zero customer data. So they didn't cut Amazon cold turkey. Lucas: They started a separate direct to consumer website and used a simple strategy: include a card in every Amazon shipment offering a warranty extension if the customer registered their purchase on the Trail Hammock website. That got them emails and purchase data. Luna: So they used Amazon's own delivery to build their own list. Pretty clever. What was the conversion rate on that? Lucas: About 8 percent initially, which was enough to start. Over two years, they built an email list of forty thousand people. Then they launched a subscription for replacement hammocks and accessories. Lucas: The average order value on their own site was 40 percent higher because they could bundle and upsell without Amazon's restrictions. By 2024, DTC was 60 percent of revenue. Luna: Forty percent higher AOV is massive. That is the real leverage. But I imagine Amazon still brought in the volume. How did they manage two channels without cannibalizing sales? Lucas: Good question. They kept different product lines on each channel. Amazon got the entry-level hammocks, while the DTC site featured premium fabrics and limited-edition prints. That way, customers who discovered them on Amazon had a reason to visit the site for something better. Luna: So the Amazon listing became a funnel. And the higher margin products funded the content they needed for SEO and social media. What kind of content worked? Lucas: They invested heavily in video — setup tutorials, camping hacks, even a series where they tested hammocks in extreme weather. That content built trust and drove organic search. Their blog posts on 'best hammock camping spots' started ranking for long-tail keywords. Lucas: One video comparing their hammock to a competitor's got over a million views on YouTube. That is free traffic that would have cost a fortune on Amazon ads. Luna: And the subscription model — that is recurring revenue. How many subscribers do they have now? Lucas: Around eight thousand active subscribers at an average of twenty dollars per order, reordering every three months. That alone is over six hundred thousand dollars in predictable annual revenue. It smooths out seasonal dips. Luna: That is smart. It reminds me of something we talked about in a previous episode about customer lifetime value. Trail Hammock basically fixed their CLV by owning the relationship. Lucas: Exactly. Speaking of which — if these conversations have helped you think about your own business in a new way, a couple of dollars a month is genuinely what keeps these episodes ad-free. You can support the show at buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. It makes a real difference. Luna: Yeah, even a small contribution helps us keep diving into these case studies. And it keeps the show independent. Lucas: So back to Trail Hammock — the shift didn't happen overnight. They still sell a lot on Amazon, but now it's a profitable channel instead of a necessary evil. Their profit margins went from about 10 percent on Amazon to 30 percent on their own site. Luna: That is a huge difference. And I bet the customer data allowed them to personalize marketing and reduce churn. Do you have a sense of their customer retention rate? Lucas: They track that carefully. On Amazon, repeat purchase rate was below 15 percent. On their DTC site, it's over 40 percent, largely because of the email campaigns and the subscription program. They send personalized recommendations based on purchase history. Luna: So the lesson is not to ditch Amazon, but to use it as a lead generator while building your own channel. That feels applicable to any small business selling on a marketplace. Lucas: Absolutely. And Trail Hammock's next step is opening pop-up retail stores in outdoor-focused cities. They want to test physical retail without committing to long leases. That is another low-risk way to scale. Luna: I love that they are applying the same principle: use Amazon as an existing traffic source, then build direct relationships. Now they are using pop-ups as another traffic source to feed the DTC engine. Lucas: Exactly. The pop-ups serve as physical billboards. Each one has a QR code that leads to a dedicated landing page with a discount for first-time buyers. They capture emails and measure foot traffic to online conversion. Luna: So it is a flywheel. Amazon feeds DTC, DTC feeds subscription, subscription feeds brand loyalty, and now physical retail feeds DTC. That is a smart multi-channel strategy built on data ownership. Lucas: And the numbers show it works. From two million on Amazon to ten million with diversified channels in under four years. Jen and Mike are now eyeing fifteen million by 2027. Luna: I think they will get there. The key is they never stopped optimizing their customer acquisition cost across all channels. That is the real secret. Lucas: Right. It is not about abandoning a platform. It is about using each platform for what it does best and building your own moat. For Trail Hammock, the moat is the subscriber list and the brand content. Luna: And the hammocks are pretty good too, I hear. Okay, so for our listeners who are thinking about reducing dependency on a single channel, what is the first step? Lucas: Start with something small: include a simple insert in your shipments with a unique offer for signing up. You do not need a full website overhaul. Test the conversion rate, then invest in content that drives organic traffic. And consider a subscription model if it fits your product. Luna: That is actionable. And it starts with just a piece of paper in a box. Lucas: Exactly. Trail Hammock proved that a low-cost tactic can snowball into a ten-figure company. Thanks for listening, and we will be back next week with another story of a small business cracking the mid-market code.