How Sam Moore Bought Back PYRA from Culture Kings and Built It His Way | #610

Sam Moore, founder of PYRA, has built one of Australia’s most exciting challenger brands by blending technical outdoor apparel with streetwear DNA. After early roles at General Pants and Culture Kings, and a first brand that didn’t quite go to plan, Sam launched PYRA with a clear vision: bridge the gap between performance gear and fashion. What followed was rapid growth inside Culture Kings, a complex buyback, and a full reset into a DTC-first global brand.

Today, we're discussing:

• Building PYRA inside Culture Kings and buying it back
• The shift from wholesale to a 90% DTC model 
• Why niche positioning beats broad appeal in ecommerce 
• Turning a brand into a UGC machine 
• Using entry products (like hats) to drive LTV Scaling globally through Meta and Shopify 
• Markets Product development in technical apparel 
• Managing supply chain, 3PL, and global logistics

Connect with Sam
Explore PYRA

Transcript

Introduction

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Kind of thought that there was going to be a lot more support from Culture Kings all the way through, and that kind of didn't happen as well. We're an outdoors brand, so everything has to be focused on that. Like you won't see us going doing cycling, you won't see us pushing gym stuff. And so that was kind of challenging where, you know, I kind of had to, in their words, eat some shit. I'm Sam Moore from Pyra, and in this episode of Add to Car, I talk about building a global brand, talk about building community and taking on the outdoors and the technical apparel space.

SPEAKER_00 0:36

Hey, it's Nathan Bush or Bushy joining you from the land of the terrible people here in Brisbane for another episode of Add to Car. Now, imagine scaling a brand to$7 million in revenue, then walking away, buying it back, and starting again. That's exactly what today's guest has done. Joining me today is Sam Moore, the founder of Pyra. Sam is the founder and the creative director of Pyra, and they are a technical performance apparel brand sitting somewhere between streetwear and outdoor. He originally launched the brand inside of Culture Kings, scaled it quickly, then later bought it back and rebuilt it after they sold it to aka brands. When he bought it back, he made a really conscious decision that he was going to scale back wholesaling and move D to C to the center. Today, Pyra is operating lean. They're running global meta campaigns, shipping internationally, and building demand beyond Australia without overbuilding infrastructure or blowing margin. In this conversation, we unpack how Sam has created a content engine without Pyra. It's a really structured playbook. He talks about how founder-led creative is outperforming published ads and how he's approaching international sales, especially with their upcoming move to 3PL out of China, to service the globe, and the simple meta experiment that he did to test what markets they should expand out to. If you're building a challenger brand or trying to scale one without losing control, this one is incredibly practical and very inspirational. So a big thank you as always to our partners Shopify and Clavio for always supporting Add Descartes and helping bring these conversations to the e-commerce community. Here's my conversation with Sam Moore, founder of Pyra. Sam, welcome to Ad Descartes. Hey Nathan, nice to be here. Awesome to have you here. You reached out to me and you said, look, I really want to talk about how my seven months as a graphic designer at Best and Less has set me up for success. Is that right? That's the cornerstone of everything you've done. At best and less?

unknown 2:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:46

Oh, definitely not. That was not a really enjoyable time. Um, I think I was only there for a couple of months, but I don't even know why that's probably on my LinkedIn to be honest. I was still gone deep.

SPEAKER_00 2:57

But it is incredible. You've had such an amazing career so far, which has led you to Pyra today. But you know, your work as a designer at General Pants through to brand director at Culture Kings, like honestly, one of the they might I'm really keen to hear more about that. It must have been the coolest job, but the hardest job because you've set that brand up as so unique in Australia and now the world. So a phenomenal job there. And now as founder of Pyra. Tell me, what made you branch out into starting Pyra for the first time instead of working for someone else? Creating your own brand.

SPEAKER_01 3:29

Yeah, well, there's kind of a bit of a story on that one. I, after General Pants, I kind of went out on my own and started another brand called Dead Studios that I ran for about five years. And we grew that brand fairly, fairly big. I'd say it was probably like three mil revenue at its peak, really heavily into wholesale. Online was okay, but it wasn't like the main driver of that. There was a few issues with that brand. We got took on a lot of bad capital and got in a lot of debt. And I actually ended up selling that brand basically, just the assets and whatever stock was left over to Simon Bed from Culture Kings. They were our biggest retailer at the time. And kind of I'd I kind of got to a position where I was wanting to start something that was creatively more aligned with what I am. You know, I grew up in New Zealand, used to be a semi-professional skier when I was younger, so I spent a lot of time in the mountains and, you know, really kind of understood what good quality technical apparel should be and really kind of felt like there was a gap in the market at that time from, you know, me being a streetwear designer for the last 10 plus years, but then bridging the gap between something like North Face Patagonia Archoterix and the likes of Stussy Supreme Palace, whatever. And that's kind of how Pyra came about. And, you know, with knowing what had happened to my old brand, I wanted to solve that from the get-go. I wanted to be able to have major distribution from the start. And so when I partnered with Simon at Culture Kings, Pyra was basically treated as like a vertical brand within the business. But we were able to go from like zero to seven mil in revenue really, really quickly. Just through, you know, obviously Culture King was on a massive rip through COVID and we rode that as well. It was a great time to really kind of test the brand of like one getting it to market, finding out who our customer was, but really kind of just getting mass product to market in Australia pretty quickly, which worked really, really well. You know, we got some good runs on the board, which was great. But I suppose because it was Culture Kings, it was pretty influenced by streetwear. And I kind of really wanted it to be more kind of technical apparel outdoor. And, you know, two years on from that exit from Culture Kings and aka brands, you know, the brand is now kind of really exactly where I wanted it to be from the start. So, you know, we have our kind of main three brand pillars that the brand's made up. We have lifestyle, we have outdoors, and then we have active sport, which includes, you know, our all-terrain trail running capsule and snow as well.

SPEAKER_00 6:05

Cool. So was it set up originally as a home brand within Culture Kings, or was it always designed to stand on its own two feet?

SPEAKER_01 6:14

It was designed to stand on its own two feet. However, it was a bit of a hybrid kind of mix because it had vertical margin for Simon in it for Culture Kings. So therefore it made sense for them to push it heavily through Culture Kings. The biggest challenge for the brand was yes, we had our own website. No one really knew that we were owned by Culture Kings, but then trying to allocate budget to grow the brand online, that was where you know the challenge was because we could just like allocate budget to culture kings and order gas through their stores instead. So when I brought the brand back from Culture Kings or AKA brands, that was like one of the biggest things is like, okay, well, this is how much product we've put to market. Now we're basically starting from scratch and building our online store up again. So it was it was a a good three years to launch the brand through there, but then it was almost like starting again, coming up the other side.

SPEAKER_00 7:04

Yeah. And so were you building Culture Kings brand at the same time you're developing Pyra from the ground up within Culture Kings?

SPEAKER_01 7:12

I was founder, head designer, brand directorate of Pyra the whole way through, but then I was spread across multiple other brands within the business during that time as well.

SPEAKER_00 7:21

That's pretty cool. And we won't dive too deep on it, but I'm interested in where you mentioned the buyback from aka brands. Obviously, that was a big moment in Culture Kings history. The buyout there, and was that part of the package? Did Pyra go over as part of the package and then you had to buy it back separately?

SPEAKER_01 7:38

Yeah, kind of not really. Like there was clearly no big exit for me, like Simon got out of that deal. So once they went on to, you know, traded publicly in New York Stock Exchange and they went public. Basically, AKA came to me and said, Hey, look, you owning part of a brand that's now publicly traded is really messy. We either needed buy you out or you buy the brand back. And that's what I did. I had to raise capital. I unfortunately didn't get the brand back for free, but it was a friendly buyout that allowed me to raise money to fund that next expansion and bring on some new partners to do that. So it's a journey to try and do it. And it wasn't an easy raise because yes, we had great revenue numbers, but there was no clear PL in the business because it wasn't kept as a separate brand. It was just like an in-house brand. So it was like every conversation is like, yeah, this top right revenue is great. Like that's awesome. You've done seven mil, but what was you either? And it's like, I'm not really sure because I couldn't tell them. I was never given that information. I could tell them my gross profit and how many units, my best sellers, and all of that sort of stuff. But there was a bit of an unknown there. So yeah, that was a bit of a challenge.

SPEAKER_00 8:42

And I can imagine it would be hard having those conversations too, as you're going, I need to raise money so that this brand can stand on its own two feet and not necessarily rely on Culture Kings footprint, buying power, everything else. There'd be a lot of unknowns at that point.

SPEAKER_01 8:57

100%. And, you know, in that buyback, kind of thought that there was going to be a lot more support from Culture Kings all the way through, and that kind of didn't happen as well. So that was kind of you don't know what you don't know at that stage. But you know, at the end of the day, it was still a friendly buyout, and I was able to take my ownership up to majority, which was a massive win for me. And yeah, just kind of reinvigorate the brand of where I really wanted it to be. It was like it was a good reset of like really kind of doubling down on what the brand positioning was, what the vision was, what the best seller's product and all of that stuff was. We did have to inherit quite a lot of C-grade stock as part of this friendly buyer. And so that was kind of challenging where you know I kind of had to, in their words, eat some shit to trade out of that. So the first kind of yeah was quite challenging.

SPEAKER_00 9:44

I can imagine, like when you're trying to go out with this brand new, like your version of the brand, and then you're like, actually, I've just got to do clearance for a little while.

Shifting Focus: From Wholesale to D2C

SPEAKER_01 9:52

Yeah, and you know, that's never good. You know, I'm such a strong believer of brands as earned in buckets and lost in drips, you know, and just being able to have to clear like heavily at a massive like lost of gross profit margin was kind of heartbreaking, but it was like it needed to be done. It needed to clear the balance sheet and start fresh. So yeah.

SPEAKER_00 10:11

And then once you got through that point, what was the the first big decisions you made when you go, actually, I'm in control now? Like I've got this baby, we're ready to go. What did you change immediately?

SPEAKER_01 10:22

Uh, it was 100% like D2C, our e-commerce strategy had to be front and foremost. You know, we went from 80% wholesale to 20% wholesale. And that's kind of our flip now. And we're almost at 90% D2C sales, 10% wholesale, if that at the moment. So that was probably the biggest challenge. You know, we weren't able to inherit any of those customer sales or emails from Culture Kings that we had for those three years because all those sales went through the Culture Kings platform, not under Pyra. So it really was like starting fresh again. But yeah, I suppose that's kind of what I'm most proud about in the last couple of years. You know, this brand has been strong, it's obviously got strong recognition, but building the e-commerce from scratch is like yeah, being one of the biggest wins and just controlling the customer experience, you know, through product drops and telling brand stories and you know, really dialing on who our exact customer is.

SPEAKER_00 11:16

I'm really keen to talk more about that because you do have a beautiful brand. Like, I spent ages on your Instagram going through that. And like when you're stuck in an office and you're looking at your Instagram, you're like, oh God, I should be spending my years outside. Tell me about how you approach that in terms of your customer, because as you said at the start, you are a mix of kind of streetwear and performance gear. You you're a unique blend. Does that sometimes cause confusion for new customers? How do you manage that? Because it's not like you're just a Patagonia or it's pretty straightforward who this is for. It's pretty unique.

Technical Performance Meets Streetwear

SPEAKER_01 11:50

Yeah, look, and I think we're just getting better and better at that. I think, you know, what we're really trying to do now is really focusing on us as a technical power performance brand. And, you know, this first category that we launched about six months ago, All Terrain, which is basically our active wear for men for performance outdoors. That's really our big focus, aligning that with our performance shell jackets. So the lifestyle component of the business will get smaller and smaller. Yes, we'll still have graphic T's in there because that's like part of our heritage and whatnot. But, you know, that's what we're getting massive wins now is, you know, the performance headwear, the performance shell jackets or the puffer jackets, and really kind of just doubling down on the technical ability because, you know, that's one thing that can set us apart is uh challenge a brand. You know, there's it's very easy for any of these new streetwear brands to find some blanks, print some logos, build a community. But once they get through, you know, that next stage of trying to build it, you know, more purposeful, then that's kind of a challenge. And, you know, luckily that's my background. You know, I've been manufacturing in China for 15 plus years. I have the best factories and the best contacts, know the best fabrics. So I'm so passionate about that and for product as well, coming as a product designer and where we're kind of leading the brand now is exactly kind of where I've always imagined it. We just probably didn't have the distribution at the start to really kind of capitalize on that. But now as we are so heavy on controlling our own customers through our online store, we're kind of at that point now, which is great.

SPEAKER_00 13:22

Very cool. From a doubling down on the technical performance side of the business, there's obviously a lot of brands out there that say they can do that. Do you see the same gap in the market as you did originally, or is it shifting towards a certain niche?

SPEAKER_01 13:36

I'm a big believer you sell to everyone, you sell to no one, right? So it's like let's concentrate and doubling down on who we are as a brand. We're an outdoors brand. So everything has to be focused on that. Like you won't see us going doing cycling, you won't see us pushing gym stuff. You know, I really want to just own, and I honestly feel like the brands that are winning at the moment are just doubling down and being niche in their market and creating massive noise of such a clear brand strategy. And that's kind of what's getting cut through. You know, for us going up against, you know, these old legacy brands like the North Face or Archeterics or Patagonias, you know, these brands are obviously, you know, 50 to 100 years old, they are super wide in terms of their category. You know, what we can do is we can be founder led, we can put a face to the brand, we can move really fast in terms of our replense. Like we're almost turning in, and I'm sure you know this, but like most D2C brands now are almost just content marketing companies. You know, the amount of content that we're having to pump out weekly to drive meta is crazy. You know, whether that's flat layers, reels, statics, e-comm, UGC, white labeling, like all of the sort of stuff that you're putting through the machine every week is at another level. And, you know, from comparing that to my old brand five years ago, it's like that was probably 1% of the day, and now it's like 90.

Content Creation Strategies for Engaging Audiences

SPEAKER_00 14:55

It's insane, isn't it? And I was having this conversation with a few people recently around the expectation and the need for retailers to be content studios, essentially. Like one time you could just buy products and or make products and sell them for a little bit more, but now it's this whole content production piece. And it's not like you can even just hire agencies to do it for you to outsource it. You actually need to take control of it, to your point, is that it's part of the brand. How have you set that up for Pyra to create that velocity of content that you need? Because it's beautiful content. Like you're not just slapping up studio images, from what I can see. This is well-produced content that's out and about in those real environments. How are you managing that? Because, like you said, you don't have the Patagonia or the North Face budgets as well.

SPEAKER_01 15:42

Yeah, I mean, it's an ongoing kind of thing. I suppose the way that like Meta's changed in the last 12 months has been interesting. You know, like before Andronoma update, you know, it really was like you could do five different versions of a flat light, change the hook, change the color, whatever. Like that's out the door now. Now it's about like, okay, well, let's just make sure we're doubling down on our customer personas, creating content that's different for all of those different ones, and making sure we're kind of covering that off, but just learning along the way. Like I'm in my ad account three times a day, I'm looking at what's working. And once you're kind of spending that amount of money, you know, you're looking at your CAC a couple of times a day, you're looking at what your sell-through rate is. And it's kind of a hard thing because you want to be precious on what sort of content you're putting in. But at the same time, I think, you know, as a premium brand, you still want to find those winners along the way and you don't want it to be super hacky. But something that's works really well for us is you know, having me in a lot of founder videos as kind of talking from a designer point of the reason why I've done this and why I've put this to market and trying to make it feel a little bit more premium. And that's something that you'll really never see those legacy brands do. So that's kind of like an unlock that we do, but then filter that through with really good UGC that you know, one of our content guys is actively sending, you know, 10 to 20 packages a week all over the world just so we can get that like amazing content. But then, you know, some of the lo-fi like reels could be just flat lay stuff with like product features. And I think it's you just need to layer it so many different ways per product. And that's you know, when you've got a of quite a wide category of best sellers, you know, our headwears, our shell jackets, our puffer jackets, our hike pants, our nylon shorts, each of those categories and products needs 10 plus pieces of content that is gassing each week and then refreshing it. So yeah, it's it's an ongoing kind of thing. But I think once you kind of figure out what works for the brand, you just need to keep doubling down on it. But I suppose always, you know, trying to test new things is important. But you know, there's some pretty good apps out there now that are kind of pretty helpful, you know, the likes of motion, the likes of foreplay, all of those kind of apps that you know you can lean into, and you know, their AI kind of systems will kind of plug into Meta and Shopify and kind of tell you exactly what's working.

SPEAKER_00 17:57

But which one of those do you lean into the most? Because I think that's the thing, like you start getting them served to you on Instagram, everyone who can help you with your content, and it's just overwhelming. What has actually worked for you?

SPEAKER_01 18:08

Yeah, look, I think motion's really good for looking at what's working in your own account. I'm still old school, like I'm a graphic designer at heart. I'm like screenshotting things out of my phone and pulling them into an illustrator board and then just like using them as like references of like, oh, I might try this one or whatever. But you know, we use Millermote as well, so like putting screen grabs in there with links so people can see the reels that are, you know, kind of effective. But yeah, I suppose yeah, you're right. There's so many different platforms out there and a lot of AI ones as well. We haven't gone super deep in them, have chatted to the guys at Cuttable, which I think could be a pretty interesting program. But yeah, it's hard to hard to know. Like I've made a fair few ads just myself and Nano Banana and Mid Journey specifically of our hats, and you know, they tend to work as well. So it's um just kind of layering on all these different ways to sell a hat or whatever.

SPEAKER_00 19:01

As a former graphic designer where you got your chops, does that excite you or does it depress you? No, it excites me for sure. And do you still go out and do your own shoots and things like that, or do you rely on content creators to be doing that? No, we sh almost shoot every week.

SPEAKER_01 19:16

That's super important, I suppose. Like, because we want to feel like a global brand, if you look at our Instagram, there's beautiful shots all over the world and quite often snowy. We live in the Gold Coast. It's like it's 35 degrees here right now, and trying to sell jackets is like pretty hard work.

SPEAKER_00 19:31

So you look like a bit of a dickhead if you uh just got all your pyro gear on and then hiked up Burley Hill or something. 100%.

SPEAKER_01 19:38

Yeah, but that's why we have to lean into those overseas creators to create some of that stuff for us. Or we in the past we've used, you know, proper content teams like photographers and video guys to go do an actual shoot for us on a capsule.

SPEAKER_00 19:51

Yeah. So if I can just get a summary of the way that you approach content, because I think so many people are struggling with this, and have I got it right in saying that you're thinking about different personas of your audience, and then you're thinking about it from a product perspective, and then for each product coming out and going, Well, I know I need different types of content that is refreshed constantly, whether that be founder content, whether that be in situ content, product content, the rest, and then constantly refreshing based on those products linked to what that persona-yeah, pretty much as well.

SPEAKER_01 20:23

And at the very top of that, we still will do campaign shoots because you know, our mission is to inspire people to get back outdoors in the elements at the core of what we do. So we'll pick these beautiful locations like in New Zealand or Tekopo or we've done Tasmania, we've done the States, we've done the UK, and those are still important as well because we can get so many different assets there. You know, we might get 150 stills. You know, static ads still work really well for us. And when you've got technical product with a lot of features and stuff, like you still kind of need that stuff as well to feel aspirational. AI is definitely gonna help with that to build out more assets based on a shoot, which I'm excited about leading into. But, you know, iPhone content works really well. So making sure, like if we've got doing a photo shoot and a proper campaign, yes, we've got the professional video guy there, but we've also I'm there on my iPhone getting every single look, every single angle. Because like some of our OG ads are like iPhone pant ads by a guy standing by a river that's been running for two years, and it's like our best top of funnel worldwide ad. It's like, you know, so you just really never know. But like if you're gonna plan a show, make sure you're capturing absolutely everything. Don't just go for the like the super premium reels because like you just don't know with the AI learning, like what's gonna gas and what's not, you know.

SPEAKER_00 21:42

I'm so stoked to hear that because I was chatting with a content strategist earlier this week and we're talking about different formats. And she was like, I just don't do stills at all on meta, they don't work for me. And I was like, Oh, like she obviously had the data for her brands, but I'm so so glad to hear from your side that they still play a role because I think that can be really powerful.

Reviving High-Performing Content

SPEAKER_01 22:02

For sure. And I think you've got to zoom out sometimes and not just look at the complete, like if we're just talking about one style, like a black shell jacket, there should be a lot of different content in there. There should be the reels, there should be the flat layers, there should be the features, there should be the static features. You know, there might be gifts and all of these different touch points. Yeah, maybe the reels the one that's gassing, getting the high ROS, but they've probably seen the other five before it got to that, you know? So you've kind of got to look at it like that as well, I believe.

SPEAKER_00 22:31

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And for that high performing content that you're like, actually two years on, this is still working. Have you had to kind of rest it and pause it in between? We had Jamie from Cookie Hair Care on. She was like, actually one of the biggest things I've learned is like let the content run, save the ones that are working really well, let it rest for a little while and then continually reintroduce it. Have you had to treat it like that?

SPEAKER_01 22:52

100%. Yeah. It's funny because you're kind of like, you know, look at a campaign you might zoom out of like last 365 days and you're like, oh what happened to this campaign? This was gassing it for like so long. And then you know like it obviously died. But then we've had some good wins recently and whether it's just like the update that Meta's done recently that it's like just puts it back at the top but yeah that has happened probably five times in the last like month. Wow. We've got like one campaign at the moment in a hat campaign and it's the exact same video that I've accidentally duplicated twice. It's the same video in the same campaign but it's splitting out like if you go to audience segments it's hitting different customers. And so I've got two of these hat campaigns that are my top ads at the moment of the exact same ad in the exact same campaign. It's weird. It's wild isn't it we live in wild times.

SPEAKER_00 23:46

Cheek has always believed that style is how you show who you are without even saying a word. Which is why it's a problem when your email and SMS are saying different things on different platforms with different results. I mean we've all got that friend who's a bit chaotic we don't want it to be used for cheek email lived in Clavio SMS lived somewhere else and when it came to attribution nothing lined up one platform said one thing Google Analytics said another and making confident decisions just became guesswork. So they brought email and SMS together in Clavio's BRF. Once everything lived in one place the feature became much clearer. Attribution finally made sense investment decisions became obvious and SMS quickly proved its value especially during the sales market. The results are 113 times ROI on the Clavio platform, 20x from SMS alone and an 81% increase in SMS subscribers. Turns out when your messaging and your data are dressed for the same occasion, performance looks a whole lot better. If you want clearer attribution and more confident growth head to Clavio.com forward slash AU and see how brands like Chic are doing it well. With your shift to D2C, that's a pretty big change and obviously that's it's happened over years now from 80% wholesale to now you know 10 to 20%. How are you finding that customers are discovering Pyra for the first time what are you finding is the entry point or the message for people to set up and take notice online I think that we've just built a really robust customer acquisition channel through Meta.

SPEAKER_01 25:34

You know we have some of our OG ads they've either come across our hats or seen their mates wear it. They've come across it through major retailers because we've been in culture games we've been in JD Sports we've been in the iconic but I think you know we've got a pretty decent filling on Instagram now as well. So I think just showing up on all channels and you know once you start kind of spending the amount that we're spending you kind of hopefully think if you're in that niche who we're trying to target, you might have seen an ad from us.

SPEAKER_00 26:02

So it's about being very targeted towards the niche that you're after and knowing the entry point. Are your hats often the entry point for that first purchase because they're a little bit lower value, less probably sensitive to size adjustments and then do your customers build out from there?

Maximizing Customer Lifetime Value

SPEAKER_01 26:18

Yeah exactly and that's probably the the last three months we've really kind of noticed that like hats do about 25% of our revenue now. They are a high margin product which is good but people always bundle two for 100 which is key. So it doesn't really affect our AOV that much. I suppose that's the thing that I'm really kind of diving into at the moment is looking at our LTV curve and being like okay well if this person is buying for the first time a hat is like an entry to the brand and that you know and I'm like do this as well when I'm shopping and I really like a brand I'll quite often buy the hat first and then I'll be like oh I might buy the tea I might buy the jacket. But that's kind of something that we are kind of like really learning at the moment is like okay well how do we get our LTV out of these customers to get them to come back and buy the second and third time within six months because that's like going to be our big unlock in the next 12 months.

SPEAKER_00 27:08

Where do you think those big unlocks are like especially that second purchase if you bought a hat have you got any tips or thoughts on how you're going to get people because I I know as you're sinking so much money into Meta you're like that's great for the first purchase but if they're just buying two hearts and they're done is it's not really going to get us a return. What do you think is going to be the move the needle to getting that second purchase?

SPEAKER_01 27:28

For us, I think it's either new product launches. So making sure that we've got a cadence of new drops that are interesting to that customer. So if they've likely bought a hat, they tend to be into running andor the outdoors so dropping a shell jacket, new drop in a new colour I think like how I build out our range plans is we kind of base if you think of it like a pyramid we have 40% core 40% core variation and then 20% brand movers. And those 20% brand movers are new styles completely new that we'll order low units in just to kind of keep the brand moving forward. The core styles black shell jackets black hats camo hats etc core variations might be that core shell jacket but in a new colorway that season like an Arctic colour or a sea mist or something like that. So making sure that we're kind of always got these new things to talk about but then also like nurturing them through clavio flows making sure that they go through our flows really efficiently and if they're not if they have converted by about the fifth flow then there's an email that comes and plain text emails from me as the founder always works super well. And whether that's it feels personalized because it might say hey Nathan just wanted to touch base I'm the founder of Pyro this is the reason why I created the brand we've just launched a new all-terrain active campaign. We'd love for you to check it out. Here's a$50 off voucher for you to make your next purchase minimum purchase$150 so they still feel like they're getting a good buy but if that doesn't convert them then I mean that usually does is the last point. So but that's kind of summing up we've just got to get better of this year as well is like you're building out those flows more robustly I think.

SPEAKER_00 29:07

Yeah I don't think there's anyone who's like we've nailed our flows we never have to touch them again. Yeah. When you get that first purchase whether it's a heart or something else are you trying to segment them straight away so that they're they're getting a different flow or are they all going into the same flow?

SPEAKER_01 29:20

They kind of go into the same welcome flow but if they haven't purchased yet they go into a different flow and it's talking about our bestsellers, where we started the brand, all of that sort of stuff. But then yeah if they've only purchased once then it comes through into a bestsellers flow and then a kind of a founder story flow and then the bestsellers and then a trying to get a win back one eventually.

SPEAKER_00 29:43

Yeah. Okay. I really like that you brought up the reliance on constant product drops because I could imagine when you are talking about something very technical like yours, high quality, long lasting that you're not necessarily asking people to buy a black jacket every year and you don't want them to you got to continually surprise them and expand expand the range. You mentioned before that you've got really great relationships with manufacturers. Tell me what you look for in a manufacturer to make sure that especially with such a technical product that it is quality that it is cutting edge that it's not just the same as everyone else is getting how do you get that competitive advantage from a manufacturing perspective?

SPEAKER_01 30:24

Yeah I think it like foremost has to be about the relationship with you have with the factory owner that kind of has to be first there has to be a lot of trust in there you know and that only comes with experience over time. There's a lot of manufacturers out there that'll claim that they do all these other brands out there, but they might have got one order and then they never got another second order. So for me quality is like the number one thing for the brand is like making sure that we're delivering world class product to our customers that's our flywheel if we're not producing good quality then it's like well where do we even sit in the market you know we're not at that price point where we're charging archetyx prices for gore Gore-Tex shell jackets but we want to offer that exact same quality at the premium price point where we're at. So yeah I think it just really comes down to trust, you know, building those relationships over time working with them closely understanding how they work what wins for them you know payment terms all of that kind of stuff like really kind of helps. And that's why I don't have a really wide supplier brace at our stage of the business because I kind of want to keep it tight and grow with the factory.

SPEAKER_00 31:29

And in terms of seeing new materials or new innovations come down the line from a technical perspective are you taking these to your manufacturers or are you expecting your manufacturers to bring them to you?

SPEAKER_01 31:41

No, we kind of lead that and there's a lot of great kind of outerware fabric brands out there. So Politech, Kajora, Pertex, Gore-Tex example so you can reach out to these suppliers and they'll send you the fabric books. So you can kind of build range plans off those fabrics and then you connect your factory to those that supplier and they order that fabric from that supplier. But some stuff where we're buying you know there's a lot of really amazing stock fabrics in China as well if you know where to look you know I try and go over there once a year as well just go through those markets because there's always some amazing fabrics out there that you can get that just don't have the brand's name on it that perform equally as well.

SPEAKER_00 32:23

Yeah. We've touched on enough is that you you've created this beautiful brand, beautiful outdoors styling you just want to get amongst it. How do you then shift that conversation to a benefits conversation or a features conversation when it comes to the technical side of it especially because it sounds like you know you're deep on technical specs, on what's in the fabrics, what it's made of, how it's put together how do you make your customer care and realize that it's different when you're talking about such technical things?

SPEAKER_01 32:51

Yeah it's a good point. I mean the customer that's buying this sort of product is pretty well educated. Like we get so many comments on our Instagram just asking us questions like whether it's PFAS or what's the water rating or any of that sort of stuff. So any if those customers have kind of done their research, we have those kind of top line specific specs on our product descriptions and being a kind of performance brand that's you know what we always talk about in our Instagram posts. It's always talking about the features of the product. So whether it's like a three-layer shell jacket breathable membrane YKK zips whatever it is I will always call that out and probably more so because I'm the one writing the copy and I just know it. So it's like it just comes naturally to me. But you know when I'm shopping for those sort of garments like that's what I'm looking at myself anyway. So I think you know if you're going to sell performance apparel you need to have that built into the brand.

SPEAKER_00 33:46

That's almost like part of the brand then isn't it it's because you're going after that that niche of people who are like serious about performance and performance wear it's like actually don't over explain what those terms are or dumb down those terms. Put it in plain language because then they resonate they go, oh yeah I understand this this is obviously for me because it hasn't been tried to be dummy down for everyone.

Global Expansion and Market Testing

SPEAKER_01 34:07

Yeah well because there's so many like women's activewear brands that are white labeling, you know and they're just buying stock blanks over there and then logo slapping. And it happens in menswear as well just calling out women's activewear but that's like a major thing. So for us if we are actually developing those fabrics with the supplier or using you know proper performance fabrics that's our kind of point of difference.

SPEAKER_00 34:30

Yeah that makes sense the market is shifting costs are climbing and the pressure to do more with less is very real. But when resources are tight you can rely on Shopify the platform that's consistently first with new capabilities. Shopify invests significantly in RD and drops more than 150 updates every year, evolving with you and absorbing complexity so that you can focus on what moves your business forward. From AI powered insights to the world's best converting checkout, Shopify is designed for the next year of commerce, helping you sell more, scale faster and future proof your brand. Build for what is next with Shopify. Visit Shopify for Enterprise to learn more. And tell me you moved your 3PL to China recently assuming that's that's a bit of a margin play there. How's that working out for you and and what have you really had to make some tough decisions on to make sure that that works?

SPEAKER_01 35:34

Yeah well we're actually moving in a couple of weeks so that hasn't yet happened but we've been 3PLing ever since we left Culture Kings and it's a massive line item within the business. You know there's either two ways that you can kind of do it you build your own head office and you have your own warehouse therefore you have really high fixed costs within the business until you kind of hit that threshold or you outsource it along the way which you know can be 20 to 25% of costs for that revenue. So for us I really wanted speed to market. We were always air freighting so much product in last year because we kept selling out quickly therefore we're paying high air freight into the country paying duty freight all of that sort of stuff and or waiting for a container to take five weeks week unpacking etc etc so for us we just basically did a full pricing analysis of it and you know where we're kind of at it'll save us you know roughly quarter a million bucks just off bottom line by moving that whole supply chain overseas we can then go from factory to three PL in four days. We're not then having to air freight anything in but for the bigger reason for it was it wasn't just a straight bottom line thing for Australia. It was you know international is now made up 30% of the business and that's getting higher and higher each month which is epic but the freight shipping from Australia was really high and we're still shipping it in from China into Australia storing it paying high storage costs shipping it all the way back out and playing really high DHL costs. So we're kind of cutting all of that out now. You know we'll as I said go from factory to China 3PL shipping all over the world. That's one spot but everywhere around the globe. Yeah and shipping back to Australia is the exact same price as shipping domestically and the only thing it is a couple of days slower. So from what we've been told it's three to four days from our port all the way through back to Australia. So yes there might be a couple of local customers that might not get it the next day but it's kind of a hunt we're willing to kind of take just to kind of get us to that next level of growth. How do you then handle returns? It's gonna be a great question. We'll get them shipped to our head office in Australia for all Australia based ones and then we have a super low return rate. I think it's close to two to three percent like very low mainly because we're a mainly men's brand and whether men just shop are lazy or just shop well I'm not not too sure. But it's it's a good thing to have compared to what I hear some of my friends' women's brands have is a lot higher than where we're at but you know the plan will be to consolidate them in our head office once a month we ship them back over there. You know if there's faulty returns or whatever then it just sits here for a year and we do one big warehouse sale a year and they kind of get allocated to that. That's kind of the plan at this stage.

SPEAKER_00 38:29

That's exciting I could imagine the potential in other markets especially colder climates is just phenomenal. So setting yourself up for that right now.

SPEAKER_01 38:38

Yeah exactly yeah and that's like where we're getting the biggest wins at the moment is UK Europe like the the Netherlands Germany all of these random countries that we never sold to a year ago and just because I kind of turned on worldwide ads it's like been a massive unlock. Did you just turn on worldwide ads just to give it a go just to see what happens? Pretty much yeah like we were doing Australia and then I was like oh I should probably test US that started working well and then I just created a worldwide campaign minus Australia, New Zealand, US and that kind of started working pretty well and then after 30 days of testing I just took the top 10 countries that have got sales deleted every other country and then we've just been running a worldwide campaign and I think like we'll eventually get to a point where we split out each of those ones but we're kind of running like a daily PNL within the business split out by country. So I can see okay yesterday US was profitable or not profitable. Okay add some gas to that campaign or split those ones out as well.

SPEAKER_00 39:38

Same with worldwide. And are you localizing the online experience for any countries or is it one experience for everyone?

Brand Partnerships and Marketing Strategies

SPEAKER_01 39:45

We're using Shopify Markets which makes it pretty easy for the US we have a 30% plus on our retail price over there. So um it positions us at a higher RRP over there also covers a bit of the tariffs because we do DDP as well and then yeah it's like you get like the CACs higher over there but the AOV's way higher as well. So and then you get the currency kickback as well. So like 100 USD is almost like what is that like 180 at the moment or something. Yeah it's working out well at the moment we're still learning though what that customer wants you know our hats work really well over here the hats don't work super well over there at the moment but it could be because of the shipping threshold right so once we move to this China 3PL that's going to be something that we're just gonna go deeper into and trying to work out all right well how does that kind of affect that market well why isn't this product working over here? Is it because it's the free shipping threshold is it because it's like the RRP's way too high in that country or yeah just kind of keep diving deep into it.

SPEAKER_00 40:46

That's fascinating. I love that you just put it out there and you're like actually let's just turn this on as a global campaign and see see what markets respond. And now we're out of China. I've got a bunch of questions here that we didn't get to but the one that I wanted to make sure we got to it's probably not the most important but it's very interesting for me is your Mountain Dew partnership. I came across that before we'd even met and I was like oh that's cool. How does a performance brand partner up with Mountain Dew as a soft drink to create your own range and campaign?

SPEAKER_01 41:18

Yeah it was a cold email that I almost didn't think was real about it would have been a year and a half ago now that that email came through and it was part through Vayner Media so Gary V's oh yeah has the global marketing agency for Pepsi and obviously Mountain Jew and then that kind of came through they partnered with Complex Mag and then Complex they were like we really want to partner with a good outdoors brand and I came to the conversation we had that chat and it was a good deal I you know had pretty good creative freedom. It wasn't like as easy as I thought it was quite challenging to work with a global team and you know when I'm the one making every decision in my business I'm all now all of a sudden getting a t-shirt print approved by 15 people on a call. So that was a little bit of a headache but it was good for brand awareness. They spent 300 grand on marketing on digital for that running reach ads which baned the shit out of me but you know I was like why can't it be a conversion campaign honestly they don't care about that they don't care about that it's all about eyeballs for that so we got some really good growth out of that they paid for the product up front so it was 100% gross profit for us. So it was a profitable kind of exercise and you know in terms of collabs we're always kind of building out at least one a year as like a conversational point for the brand so we've done the likes of Merrill before we've done G Shop watches we've done Saiichi we've done an eyewear one so each year we're kind of building out these kind of brand hero moments throughout the year so we've got something to talk about. So yeah that one works pretty well last year.

SPEAKER_00 42:52

Yeah it was cool it caught my eye do you even care about sales off the back of those brand campaigns or is it more about a brand marketing play?

SPEAKER_01 42:59

Yes I have to care about sales for it because I don't want to have to put it on sale because then it's like that's a detriment to the brand but for those sort of things you want them to sell out because they're like hype campaigns and you want to so we ordered like the minimum I think some of those styles only had 70 units just so they purposely sold out really quickly. And that kind of just helps create that hype within the brand as well all of those like the worst thing that could happen for a brand is doing a collab and then it doesn't sell and you put it on sale like that would be a disaster. So that's kind of like the start small get that demand happening sell it out move on.

SPEAKER_00 43:34

Totally yeah yeah exactly yeah for sure love it obviously we touched on 3PL in China but what are your big focuses for the next 12 months in growing pyro further?

SPEAKER_01 43:45

Because we're majority online we really want to keep creating these in person experiences for the brands and so we've done a couple in the past 12 months is doing retail pop-ups but then activating them for one to two days Run clubs tying that whole loop in as a kind of a community event. So we've got one coming up in the Gold Coast at the start of March. Then we'll be doing another one in Sydney and another one in Melbourne as well. These are you know really good kind of brand moments for the brand. They look good on socials. We spend the money to make it look like it's an amazing event. We partner with other brands, whether it's like drinks brands, coffee brands, run clubs, etc. to create that full brand higher moment. And look, we want to go into our own retail as well eventually, whether that's a this year thing or next year. That's kind of the plan. But you know, we aren't a brand that I want to have 50 stores in Australia. It's like do one really good experiential store within each major city, would be kind of where my head's at, and kind of create full brand immersion kind of stores where they can touch, feel the brand, become experience it, might have a coffee shop in it, or you know, just really kind of double down on creating an amazing experience.

SPEAKER_00 44:58

I can imagine too, with your niche and your outdoor focus, that you almost got licensed to stay away from main streets and big rental locations and be in some really unique spots where your audience are.

SPEAKER_01 45:11

For sure. I mean, those Westfield rents are pretty scary. But you're right. Like I'm finding a really good like corner high street store would be like a sweet spot for us where we can really create a community. You know, that would be where my head is at if we when we do it is trying to find a store like that.

SPEAKER_00 45:30

Beautiful. How do you measure community? Because I did notice that on your Insta that you know, all the run clubs and everything starting up. How do you measure the success of that? Because I was speaking to Mike from scratch and he was like, they did dog parks, pop-up dog parks, and he was saying that you know it was really great, fun activity over two days. But really, the beauty of it was in the first 15 minutes when they captured all the content and then dispersed it through social, they could have probably stopped it after half an hour. How do you measure the success of your activations?

SPEAKER_01 45:59

I don't think there's a direct ROI metric for it. I just look at them as long-tailed brand movers and making sure that we have something to kind of prick people's ears up at least once a quarter. And you know, that building these events like we started off doing hike clubs almost every couple of months in the Gold Coast, and those work really well, but they're quite small niche events because you're really only getting you know 10 to 20 people met there. We did a one with a really good hike brand called MACA last year in Melbourne, where we got a decent we kind of tapped into their own existing community. And I think for us that might be a better way to do those high club ones, but yeah, like the brand kind of activations and moments is just kind of an always-on strategy. And I think, yeah, as I kind of said there's not like a really a direct RR eye on them, trying to make sure that they're all break-even kind of if we're selling something, is a break-even kind of play, is the kind of you know, how I kind of measure it. Yeah, but you know, you just gotta kind of keep looking at you know what was our growth year on year, to what worked, what didn't work, and just keep looking at those learnings each time.

SPEAKER_00 47:06

Sam, it's absolutely incredible. We've come a long way from talking about best and less through to what you've created today. Such an amazing story, especially, you know, the birth of Pyra through through Culture Kings and how you took back control of it and have made it your own, and not just made it your own, but set your ambitions on a global scale. And I think it's really exciting what you're setting up for here. Especially love that you're focused on your niche, you know, where you play in market and uh unapologetically going after that. So thank you for everything that you've shared today. Really incredible story, folks.

Bushy's Takeaways

SPEAKER_01 47:38

Nice one, great to chat with you.

SPEAKER_00 47:42

Amazing, hey. That story around building Pyra within Culture Kings and then selling it to AKA and then buying it back is pretty wild. I loved it. I really wanted to know more details. But that was a true highlight for me. I have three lessons coming out of this episode that I think most e-commerce operators will resonate with. Number one, clarity beats depth. Sam talked a lot around not trying to be everything to everyone in outdoor or streetwear. Pyrrh sits in a tight technical niche for people who know technical gear and are doing technical adventures. And that clarity shows up in product, content, and community. What is really interesting is that by being focused on this niche, he didn't feel like he had to overexplain or dumb down any of his communications to appeal to a broader audience. He knows who he's after, and that makes his communications a lot clearer and a lot simpler. Number two, content is infrastructure now in retail and e-commerce. Whether you like it or not, Meta in 2026 isn't about a handful of good ads, and you probably can't run a business without advertising through Meta. But it's about having consistent output and more importantly, a hierarchy of how you structure this content so you're not just creating content for content's sake. Sam talking about being really clear on what his key moments are throughout the year, knowing the segments or the niches that he's focusing on, knowing what products he needs to provide content for, and then the types of content for each product and how that shows up was really important in that flywheel that he's creating. If you don't have a system like that and that you're just creating content as it comes to mind, you're gonna send yourself a bit loopy with all the possibilities. Lastly, testing global demand. I really, really like this story. Sam tested global demand before building global infrastructure or even having the global tech and localization set up. He didn't open warehouses everywhere, he didn't overhire, he didn't even set up their own Shopify site. He turned on a global campaign in Meta, he fulfilled the best way he could, he watched the data and then let demand prove itself first. As you heard from Sam himself, he's gonna focus on the top 10 territories now and then build it out from there. It's a great way to test. There's no reason we can't get in and test global markets almost instantaneously now. Now, if this episode sparked some ideas, whether that be around your 3PL setup, whether that be about your brand and your communication, or some of those tips around Meta, make sure you come and join the Ad to Cart community. It is a free community hosted over at adtocart.com.au. We have over 600 e-commerce professionals in there every day, sharing tips, sharing questions, making connections. Come and join us. We would love to see you in there. That's it for this week. Thank you for spending your time with me today. I'll see you again next week on Add to Cart.