Pete & Pedro Update: On The Road To 8 Figures [Nearly $10M/Year]

Aaron Marino

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Published: August 9th, 2023

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Aaron Marino

Founder, Pete & Pedro

$600K

revenue/mo

Founders

Employees

Pete & Pedro

peteandpedro.com

from Marietta, GA, USA

started January 2013

$600,000

revenue/mo

Founders

Employees

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Want more updates on Pete & Pedro? Check out these stories:

1. How I Started Pete & Pedro: A $6M/Year Men's Grooming Brand Featured On Shark Tank Twice (2021) ➜

2. Pete & Pedro Update: On Diversifying Our Marketing Channels And Growing 40% [$7.2M/Year] (2022) ➜

This is a follow up story for Pete & Pedro. If you're interested in reading how they got started, published over 3 years ago, check it out here.

Hello again! Remind us who you are and what business you started.

Hi - I'm Aaron Marino, the founder of Pete & Pedro - a premium men's grooming brand focused on high-quality grooming products that help men to look and feel their best. I have one of the biggest men's lifestyles channels on YouTube with 6M+ fans and have a few other businesses as well including Tiege Hanley and The Menfluential Advertising Agency.

Pete & Pedro is a Shark Tank featured brand. I've been on Shark Tank two times... one of the few! Our focus is the men's grooming market and our core products are our hairstyling, hair care, and body care products led by Putty, Salt, Fresh Natural Deodorant, and more!

Read more on how I started Pete & Pedro here!

We also just launched some amazing new products like our Hairstyling Texture Powder, Clarifying & Exfoliating Revive Shampoo, our Fresh Natural Body Bar, and the Smooth Leave-In Hair Conditioner that our fans have been loving!

We stay in our lane when it comes to spending, focus on our core products, and most importantly, maximize the use of free or low-cost platforms.

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Tell us about what you’ve been up to. Has the business been growing?

The past few years have been great for business. We have officially flipped the switch over to Amazon FBA (fulfilled by Amazon) and have seen tremendous growth, up nearly 100% in a short period of time! This is all while maintaining steady traffic to our site, which was a major concern moving into the FBA space, that I am extremely proud of.

I’ve also realized that, whether we like it or not, we are living in an ever-increasing mobile world where people spend more time on their phones than ever. With that in mind, Pete & Pedro decided to partner with TapCart to create an incredible mobile app that gives our fans the same user-friendly grooming experience they’ve come to expect from our site, but now, right at their fingertips!

Keeping in mind that distribution is king, we’ve also expanded the business into other marketplaces with the addition of our Walmart store. Not to mention added new interactive features like the Grooming Quiz to our site to not only move the needle but also help our guys find which of our amazing products are right for them quickly and easily.

Lastly, we’ve been focusing heavily on user-generated content, getting real videos and testimonials from our real customers about their experience with our brand and products, to generate authentic content to share on our social platforms.

As well as increasing focus on our Bueno Club subscription service (much like Amazon Subscribe & Save) which has not only helped grow the brand but has also improved the consistency of our revenue stream.

What have been your biggest challenges in the last year?

One of the biggest challenges I’ve encountered, and I think I can speak for all entrepreneurs here, is simply the increasing cost of getting our message out into the world. Online marketing is getting a lot tougher. The costs of advertising on social media, Google, YouTube, SMS Text, Email, etc. have gone up dramatically.

Not to mention that while costs have risen, views, clicks, and expected ROI have trended in the other direction, meaning while the cost is going up, the conversions are going down. Furthermore, we noticed our organic traffic trending downward as search engine juggernauts like Google have become much more focused on advertising-based content.

I’ve witnessed this first hand with Pete & Pedro as well as on my social channels where views this past year or so (or at least the men’s lifestyle space in general) have gone down. So, the question then became, how do we effectively spend our marketing budget to maximize the potential of every dollar we spend?

The short and sweet answer: stay in our lane when it comes to spending, focus on our core products, and most importantly, maximize the use of free or low-cost platforms.

Another challenge we’ve faced this last year was the decrease in successful influencer marketing. Now I know a thing or two about the power of influencer marketing, it’s how I got my start! But we were seeing a trend of companies paying influencers a lot of money (in many cases overpaying) to showcase products or increase brand awareness.

Unfortunately, this has led to many influencers having certain expectations when it comes to payment, even though their conversions for the brands have shown a steep decline. It’s hard to justify paying a guy $5,000 to create a video when we know he’s unfortunately just not going to move the needle.

Thankfully we’ve dipped into what we feel is an untapped space in the industry, our fans! Don’t underestimate the power of asking your customers to make content. Nobody loves the brand more and is more knowledgeable about the products than an actual customer. And more times than not, we see that passion and love for the brand in the content they create.

Lastly is our customer shopping frequency and AOV (average order value). We took an extremely deep dive into our numbers and noticed that even our best customers were only shopping with us on average 4 times per year and that our AOV could be higher if we improved our shopping experience and further educate our customers on our products.

Thanks in part to the new additions like the Pete & Pedro App, and getting under the hood of our site pop-ups, interactive displays, and email flows, we’ve seen a substantial increase in these areas.

The old 80/20 adage is so true, pound your hero SKUs, and that will trickle down into guys buying other items.

What have been your biggest lessons learned in the last year?

Sales are good, but profit is king. I’d rather grow slowly profitably, than fast in the red. I don’t care about sales if it doesn’t lead to profit. I’m obsessed with profit and profit margin only. I could care less about more sales if I’m not seeing success on the bottom line. I think more and more companies and investors are finally coming to this realization. You would think this would be obvious, but it isn’t.

Also, the inventory you start to realize is so critical – it’s your cash that is sitting on a shelf doing nothing. Over the past few years, we’ve put a focus on really controlling our inventory costs by being super disciplined with counts and models, and more. Inventory means a lack of cash flow and money tied up on the shelves. Early on that wasn’t a big deal, but as we’ve grown it has become more important.

Next is to focus on your bread and butter. Having a large selection is great, and no one loves designing a new product more than me. But at the end of the day, your business is going to have (hopefully!) 4-5 best-selling, homerun products.

Double down on your strengths so you don’t spread yourself too thin. Funneling your energy into your core products, then allowing them to do the heavy lifting on promoting your other items has led us to more success than I would have ever imagined. The old 80/20 adage is so true, pound your hero SKUs, and that will trickle down into guys buying other items.

Lastly is to go where your audience goes. I talked about this before with the addition of the Pete & Pedro app but you need to make your brand easily accessible. Customers are looking to get in and get out faster than ever which is why you need to make sure you can offer that experience. And never pass up on trends!

New platforms are emerging every single day, many of which are free opportunities to get your brand in front of an entirely new set of eyes. The newest example I can think of is Instagram’s addition of their new Twitter competitor Threads. Don’t sleep on these free opportunities. You never know which platform could be the next TikTok that takes the world by storm!

What’s in the plans for the upcoming year, and the next 5 years?

We’ve had some major launches in the past year including our Balls & Body Powder, Fresh Natural Deodorant, and Natural Bar Soap which have been quickly becoming fan favorites. So, we’re taking our advice and doubling down on these home run products with the addition of new scents to give our fans the same great products they love, with a little variety in style.

I’m also extremely excited to start the process of crafting our newest addition to our fragrance lineup. As well as expand the hair market with an incredible new styling aid, inspired by our already best-selling Hair Putty, which I feel is going to be a total hairstyling game-changer!

This next year is also focused on what we’re calling our fine-tuning stage. It was a long process of putting all the pieces of the puzzle in place (setting up our Walmart storefront, our Amazon storefront, increasing our wholesale accounts with marketplaces like Faire, etc.) And now that the heavy lifting is done, the really important work can begin, by getting super granular and maximizing the effectiveness of all of these incredible channels.

Things like improving our email and pop-ups, taking advantage of site features like Amazon Posts, and increasing our AOV (average order value) on all channels will no doubt take some time, but I believe is crucial to the success of any business.

Lastly, and I’ve said this before, distribution is key. In the next few years, we’ll be aggressively pursuing new sales channels and outlets to get our products in front of as many sets of eyes as possible. Adding sales channels like Target, CVS, and other such platforms is essential to growing. Not to mention increasing our international availability to take Pete & Pedro truly worldwide!

Advice for other entrepreneurs who might be struggling to grow their business?

I think a lot of this I mentioned above and prior but here you go with my quick tips:

1) Don’t underestimate the power of reviews. If you don’t have them, get them. Do whatever it takes! We focus heavily on getting our products above 100+ reviews as soon as possible, and for good reason. Heavily reviewed, 5-star products move, and more importantly, move steadily.

2) Stay focused on your hero products. Less is more. Hone down on the 4-5 products that you know are home runs, and hammer that message. Once those home run products give you a safety blanket where you know you’re going to consistently be in the black, then venture out to find your next hero.

3) Reach out to your customers. There is nobody more knowledgeable and passionate about your brand than a consistent customer. So, use that to your advantage! Ask them questions. What do they like? What do they want to see you carry? Ask them if they're interested in creating content. So many times, I see companies spending boatloads of money on information agencies and searching for creators when all they had to do was ask the people that already love the brand.

4) Don’t sleep on new platforms. As mentioned above, take advantage of any new social platform. Number one, most of the time it’s free! And, even if you’re unsure where it will lead, you could be building an audience early on what is possibly the hottest platform around down the road. Gaining followers and getting viewers get increasingly harder as a platform grows more successful. So, get in early and build your base while you can.

5) Build A Network. The old adage “it’s all about who you know” reigns true. Building a network of like-minded individuals to have in your circle can be incredibly beneficial. You’ll be surprised how many times opportunity will knock when you have the right people by your side.