How Bison Coolers Drives Explosive Ecommerce Growth With Limited Edition Products With Mike Lewis

Mike Lewis is the Vice President of Bison Coolers, a family-owned outdoor gear company based in Fort Worth, Texas. Since joining the company in 2022, he has spearheaded initiatives emphasizing American craftsmanship and innovation, including launching the Bison Trax Wheel System for enhanced cooler mobility. With a background in ecommerce and DTC strategies, Mike has been instrumental in driving the brand's growth and expanding its market presence. His leadership continues to shape Bison Coolers' commitment to quality and customer satisfaction.

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

• [1:58] Mike Lewis explains how Bison Coolers leverages seasonal releases and limited edition products
• [4:04] Challenges of forecasting demand and minimizing risks for new product launches
• [5:28] How to leverage limited edition products as a customer acquisition tool and tripwire
• [6:54] Testing designs, identifying winners, and iterating for seasonal success
• [13:31] Managing ad budgets between high-ticket items and limited edition products
• [16:50] Key steps and lessons when introducing limited edition strategies for a new brand

In this episode…

In the crowded and competitive world of ecommerce, how can brands stand out, keep customers engaged, and acquire new buyers without burning through massive ad budgets? Many businesses struggle to balance product innovation with operational risks, often hesitating to launch new products for fear they won’t sell. Learn the strategy that enabled a brand to test, adapt, and scale without jeopardizing core operations.

Mike Lewis, an expert in ecommerce growth and DTC strategy, shares how his team uses limited edition product drops and seasonal releases to drive customer acquisition and retention. Mike explains the importance of testing small product batches, using data and customer reactions to identify winners, and continuously iterating based on performance. He emphasizes the need to “fail fast,” leverage emotional buying triggers, align cross-functional teams, and stay nimble with ad budgets to maximize return and lifetime value.

In this episode of the Minds of Ecommerce podcast, Raphael Paulin-Daigle interviews Mike Lewis, Vice President of Bison Coolers, about using limited edition products to fuel growth. Mike shares insights on leveraging Facebook ads, managing inventory challenges, and educating leadership teams on marketing metrics. Tune in for insights on balancing corporate sales, navigating algorithm changes, and building long-term customer value.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

• Raphael Paulin-Daigle: LinkedIn | X

• SplitBase
• Mike Lewis on LinkedIn
• Bison Coolers
• Recycling, Retail, and Rapid Pivots: The RAREFORM Growth Playbook With Alec Avedissian on Minds of Ecommerce

Quotable Moments:

• "Creating limited edition products is like the McDonald's McRib — bring it back, take it away, and watch demand grow each year."
• "We let Google ads handle our big-ticket items and let Facebook win with smaller, limited edition pieces."
• "Fail fast: If an ad doesn’t work, kill it, adjust, and move on quickly to maintain momentum."
• "The biggest strategy at Bison is maximizing lifetime value, not just focusing on the initial sale."
• "In marketing, it's crucial to educate leadership on analytics to ensure they understand why investments matter."

Action Steps:

1. Prioritize lifetime customer value over first-sale profits: Focusing on long-term relationships, not just one-time conversions, builds a stronger and more profitable customer base. This mindset allows brands to justify initial break-even sales if it leads to higher future purchases.
2. Fail fast and pivot quickly with marketing campaigns: Killing underperforming ads or product lines early helps prevent wasted budget and unlocks better opportunities. Rapid adaptation ensures marketing efforts stay aligned with what resonates most with customers.
3. Educate leadership on marketing strategies and analytics: Sharing insights and metrics with executives builds internal trust and secures the necessary buy-in for bold initiatives. This alignment helps marketers get the resources they need while keeping the team focused on shared goals.
4. Balance emotional appeal with data-driven decisions: While creativity matters, letting customer data guide product designs, advertising, and launches leads to stronger market fit. This balance ensures the brand stays both innovative and responsive to real consumer behavior.
5. Prioritize lifetime customer value: Focus on strategies that increase the lifetime value of customers rather than just immediate conversion rates. By investing in customer relationships and retention, you secure more substantial long-term revenue growth.

Sponsor for this episode…

This episode is brought to you by SplitBase.

At SplitBase, we design, test, and manage high-converting landing pages and on-site experiences for fashion, luxury, and lifestyle ecommerce brands. Our optimization program pinpoints exactly where your store is losing money most, and then we help you fix that.

The result? Increased conversions and profits for our clients.

With our team of conversion optimization specialists, performance marketers, and conversion-focused designers, we've got your back when it comes to testing and optimization.

Request a proposal on SplitBase.com today, and learn how we can help you get the most out of your marketing spend.

You can find us on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook. Don’t miss out on our exclusive podcasts at Minds of Ecommerce.

Episode Transcript

Intro: 00:06

Welcome to the Minds of Ecommerce podcast, where you'll learn one key strategy that made leading ecommerce companies grow exponentially. We cut the bullshit and keep the meat. In a 15-minute episode, founders and executives take us through a deep dive of a strategy so you get to learn and grow your online sales. In the last episode, you heard from Alec Avedissian, who's co-founder and CEO of RAREFORM, an eight-figure brand that makes one-of-a-kind bags from recycled billboards. Now, today on episode number 50, get ready because we're talking to Mike Lewis, who's the VP of Bison Coolers.

And we're going to be talking about how to leverage limited edition products and seasonal releases as a core lever of growth, especially in a very crowded space. I'm your host, Raphael Daigle, and I'm the founder of SplitBase. This is Minds of Ecommerce. Now this episode is brought to you by SplitBase. At SplitBase, we help leading eight and nine-figure brands, such as Dr Squatch, Hyperice, Amika, and Once Upon a Farm, go through customer-focused conversion optimization programs.

Our programs pinpoint exactly where your store is losing money most. And then, well, we help you fix it. So the result you get increased conversions, higher AOV, and of course more money, which in return allows you to scale advertising profitably. We've been at it for over a decade and can help you manage CRO from A to Z. And that's from customer research, conversion design strategy, and copywriting development.

We focus on growing your ecommerce sales while you get to focus on what you do best. So you can go to splitbase.com today to learn how we can help you get the most out of your marketing spend and get a free proposal. All right Mike, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for being here.

Mike Lewis: 01:58

Hey, thanks for having me.

Raphael Paulin-Daigle: 01:59

Yeah. So, as you know, this podcast is all about going deep in one strategy that's been core to your growth and dissecting it so our listeners can get as much value out of it right away. Now, you were telling me that at Bison Coolers, you guys are in a very competitive space, and you found seasonal releases in limited edition products as a way to kind of, you know, get people to come back, but also to acquire new customers and, you know, kind of make your space in a crowded space. So can you just tell us a bit more about that, the strategy. And then we're going to dive into the details.

Mike Lewis: 02:35

Sure. Yeah. So really to be able to get new customers in, in our door, so to speak, is, is to create this limited edition product, whether it's seasonal product like Halloween or Christmas Cups, or we do kind of spring and fall runs of different designs for a limited time. Sell them out. And really, honestly, it's the McDonald's McRib.

I, you know, idea of bringing back this thing and then taking it away and then bringing it back every single year. And we found that they will eat each year. We roll these back out. They sell better and better. So over time, it's a little bit of that scarcity idea of get this while, you know, while you can.

And then throughout the rest of the year, people keep coming back and saying, you know, what happened to this cup or that cup? And it's like, you have to wait till next year, and then we roll it back out.

Raphael Paulin-Daigle: 03:32

Now I always see those strategies as something that can also be a bit risky, right? In the sense that you have to forecast demand for something that may not be fully proven yet. You don't know how many limited edition products will actually sell, especially if it's something new. So how do you guys think through? Maybe we can start with launching new limited edition products.

How do you minimize risks, but also make sure that it's something that will indeed increase the brand sales?

Mike Lewis: 04:04

Yeah. So we're in a unique position that we own our own printing and manufacturing in Texas. So we have UV printers and we can almost do print on demand. Right. It's it's not it's not a fair thing to say.

It is print on demand. But we will do really low runs of certain things to test it out, see how it does and when something, you know, kind of catches fire and starts selling really well. Because all this honestly is driven by Facebook. Advertisement. So we use that in order to drive this kind of sales because it's hard on in full disclosure, it's hard to sell a $400 cooler through Facebook advertising, right?

But to sell a limited edition. You know, summer, you know, 4th of July Cup. It's we can sell that. And if we sell 100, that's fine. Or if we sell 1200, we can keep, you know, making it every week to kind of keep up with that.

Raphael Paulin-Daigle: 05:08

So what I'm getting out of this is not only is it a way to get people to come back, but it also looks like it's a bit like a tripwire, right? It's a way to get people to into the brand so they are eventually cheaper to acquire so they can eventually buy the coolers.

Mike Lewis: 05:28

Yeah. I mean, it's it's eye candy to someone because they're making, you know, I mean, no one needs a thousand tumblers. So. Right. But people will buy multiple tumblers that are cute.

And a lot of this is about acquiring female buyers. So we do a lot of like female-driven, you know, we'll make a cup that's got, you know, lemons and cherries on it. And it's the same cup from a year ago. It's just a different print and different look. And so that that decision to make that purchase is really an emotional decision that's driven by Facebook.

Advertisement. That's capturing someone. Right. At the time of the sale and getting them in our, you know, our ecosystem on our pixels, and now we can spend, you know, the next year reselling them, other things that we make besides, you know, the reason that they came into the brand.

Raphael Paulin-Daigle: 06:26

Yeah. How do you know what's going to work? And how many of those limited edition products will you release? You do have the advantage, like you said, to have some of your own printers. So that simplifies things.

But, you know, let's say, okay, well, we're we're getting close to fall. And then you want to do products that are limited to that time of the year. Is it one product? Is it multiple products. Is there some testing that happens beforehand to know a little bit more what is going to be required?

Mike Lewis: 06:54

Yeah, that's a good question. It's both. So we will we roll out the winners every single year. So okay. You know it's a lot like kissing frogs to find the prince.

We'll have five designs. Two of them sell really well. The other ones don't. We kill the ones that don't sell well. Bring forward the ones that do and keep adding to the line.

And keep adding new, new, new things. So, for example, if it's we had a really we had an Edgar Allan Poe cup that we did for Halloween and it just crushed. So we rolled out other Halloween cups around that cup during that season. And then whichever is the second-best seller or the third-best seller will say, hey, let's mark that for next year, bring that back, and then we'll create 2 or 3 new designs around it for the next launch. So we kind of always have some winners that we know will do well historically.

And then we will, you know, we'll we'll a B test new new designs to see how well they do. Because really I mean you're making this is all someone's opinion, you know. And it's the buyer's opinion. And they're making this emotional connection to this product and making that choice. And so when you kind of, you know, when you strike gold or hit lightning in a bottle, you just you just keep producing that and making it.

And we may roll it out in other vessel sizes, not just, you know, like we'll have a 22 ounce cup, but we may roll it out in 40 and other ones because we know that that design did, you know, did well. But we, we really just use our customer base to do the market research, and taste changed so fast. You you can't you can't really fall in love and get married to any of it. And even in our own internal discussions with our team, you know, someone has some really strong opinion about, oh, this cup's going to, you know, kill it. And then sometimes it's the worst-selling cup.

So we really have.

Raphael Paulin-Daigle: 08:49

To predict the future.

Mike Lewis: 08:51

We can't. And we have to unmarry ourselves from this concept of what we like and then just try to produce what's going to work for the customer.

Raphael Paulin-Daigle: 08:58

Yeah. Why do you feel like it's been the biggest challenges with operating a strategy like that? Has there been anything particularly difficult that you guys had to overcome or that maybe. Yeah, and I don't know for how long. For how long have you guys been doing this or has it always been part of the brand's strategy or is it more recent?

Mike Lewis: 09:21

Start with new. It's about two, two and a half years. I, I, I joined Bison about two and a half years ago from another, another brand, and I brought this concept in. So at the time Bison was not doing we were just doing colored drinkware. So we just had, you know, here's the red cup and here's the black car.

Got it. And so I brought in the customization kind of idea. We'd always done customization, but we hadn't sold SKUs that were had a design on it.

Raphael Paulin-Daigle: 09:52

Okay, so I guess that's great then. Good context. Back to my original question. In this case, this is something that's new ish. So what's been some of the challenges for a brand that didn't do that?

To start doing that all of a sudden.

Mike Lewis: 10:06

It can be a little bit of trust. Just trusting that, hey, this is going to work, this new concept. And then just the seasonality can be a little bit challenged as far as inventory goes, because we may run out of a base color cup that makes a certain design, and we really have to kind of move around the priorities because we do so much customization for businesses. And, you know, companies put their logo on our products. So the challenge can be that we have found a hit.

At the same time, our sales are high on the corporate side, and so we have to do a lot of juggling because as you know, there just becomes this thing where it's like, if you're Facebook, if the algorithm is finding customers and you're landing sales through through your Facebook ad, you can't stop. You actually have to kind of pump it up a little bit. And so the challenge can be it's like, don't run out because you're going to hurt. You're going to hurt. What the algorithm is, is rewarding the brand for.

And so there's been a little of like hit and miss with that, with that type of thing where we will run out and it goes out of stock. And now you just now I gotta, I gotta pull, I gotta pull down the ads. And by the time you can roll them back up and get the ads going again, you've kind of lost what was working. So that's that's been our challenge is just, is just an ebb and flow of of knowing that making sure our, our, our manufacturing guys and our warehouse guys just, you know, everyone. We really have to be on the same page and understand what the what the goals are and that sometimes you got to move, maybe push the customization thing back a day or two so we can fulfill and make sure that we're, we're riding lightning when something's hitting well.

Raphael Paulin-Daigle: 11:55

Right. And I'm sure like it is that type of strategy where it's always harder when you first start doing it because you have no reference, you have no idea what to expect. But over time, you learn from each of those campaigns and things that you're doing, and it becomes a little easier to predict, right?

Mike Lewis: 12:14

Yeah. I mean, yes, for sure. You know, one of the challenges is that all the algorithms are constantly changing and constantly, you know, they're they keep moving the goalpost on us on what works and what doesn't work. So that's always a problem. And, you know, like what works this year that we did last year may not work this year.

And so that's a little bit of a challenge. The other thing is sometimes we're able just to hop on a hot topic or something that's like hitting out there in the world, or we've done even some, you know, like tornado disaster relief type stuff because it was it was poignant at the time. And yeah. So you really have to it's it's juggling a lot of different aspects to make it all work properly.

Raphael Paulin-Daigle: 13:05

Right. Well you talked a little bit about ads. So I'm wondering right, like when you have those limited edition runs and products happening, you know, here and there, how do you manage your ad budgets? Like do you have a set percentage that will remain to, you know, the classic Non-limited edition products? Do you all of a sudden shift all the budget to those limited edition ones or what's kind of the play here?

Mike Lewis: 13:31

Yeah, so I mean, Google ads for the most part, seem to land our larger, more expensive items, whether it be coolers and and and in soft coolers. So I just let Google be good at that. Yeah. And then Facebook seems to land all our smaller, less expensive limited edition item. And then I let Facebook be the winner of that.

And I move, you know, budget around for that. But really, I mean, we kind of have a saying around Bison to fail fast. So if something's not working and that ad is not working, then we don't wait around to see what it does next week. We kill it. We swap out, you know, the lifestyle, you know, image, or we'll change the artwork or we'll adjust it where like we have to hit, you know, I'm, I'm trying to hit 4X ROAS and that's and that's my number where I do.

Advertisement. Now there's reasons to not hit that. Maybe with like retargeting, you're not going to hit that. And but with Facebook ads, it's just a fail-fast kind of mode. And to switch quickly because we don't have time to you know, we have short windows so limited editions, you know, the window for sales is really small.

You really have to kill it in those first, you know, seven days or so. And if it's not working, you gotta you gotta let it die and move, move to the next one. And actually, sometimes I may have 2 or 3 ads running because I don't know which one's going to be the winner. And every time I have it figured out, they change the rules on me and something else works. And then sometimes, for the most part, I know you know why certain things are working so I can do it the next time or the next season run.

But then sometimes I have no idea why this thing worked, and I don't know that anyone knows so well.

Raphael Paulin-Daigle: 15:26

That's the rule of the game, right? It's that you never truly know the rules. They always change and you just gotta adapt and test and test and test.

Mike Lewis: 15:36

Yeah, you have to pay attention and you have to constantly. You cannot rely on what worked last year. It's like you have to constantly. I mean, I spend a good part of my job is experimenting and, and, you know, trying something new and trying this next thing and, and every article, you know, I read every article, listen to every podcast, I listen to everything that's going to give me a little bit of insight of what's working for other people. I don't rely on my own, on my own instincts, or my own knowledge.

I, you know, I have a base of knowledge and a base, you know, for my instincts. But I'm also, hey, where are other people like I listening to, you know, the marketing world and what's working. And I pay attention to the changes because all that stuff is going to drive or fail my sales.

Raphael Paulin-Daigle: 16:22

Love it. Agreed. I'm curious now, like let's say, you know, you be new to a brand, kind of like you were two and a half years ago at Bison, right? And you're approaching this strategy with a brand that's never done this before. Like, where do you start?

What's the first step? Because I understand right now. Like you have multiple products, you test a lot. You kind of have like a flow. But how do you go from 0 to 1.

Mike Lewis: 16:50

So I think you just got to it. It's kind of like lose some battles, win the war kind of thing. So for the most part it's pick. I pick sure things and say my test case is the sure thing that I know works. And here's all the settings I'm going to use.

And here's the process. And, and I really strong arm and manage that first project like that. And then from then on out, you you can bring a lot of learning to everyone. The other thing is I way over teach our leadership team like I mean every marketer has to get a CFO on your side because CFOs hate marketing and they think it's money. So I do a lot of learning, teaching.

I any kind of new insight that I get, I overshare to our leadership team because I want them to be educated. They don't have to be professionals, but they have to understand why I'm asking for this money, why I'm asking for this photo shoot, why I need this, why I need that, and the only way to do that is to just really do a good job of sharing the analytics. Because as they start to understand the, you know, the analytics which can be very boring to some people. But if you start showing the strategy of why you're trying to do this, what you're trying to get, and that the biggest, the biggest strategy that I have in Bison total as a as with our DTC is lifetime value. So I really try to show it's fine to fail or to break even on the first one because I'm building lifetime value like that first.

That first sale matters a little bit less. It's going to be our job to sell someone down the road. And let me take this person who came in at 29.99 and look, they spent $4,000 over the lifetime value of their yeah, interaction with our brand.

Raphael Paulin-Daigle: 18:42

I love I really love how you're saying that. Well, two things. One, lifetime value. I think it's it sounds obvious to probably a lot of people listening, but it's I'm, you know, I talk with people in ecommerce every day, and I'm still stunned by how many people only look at the, you know, to like today's conversion rate, when really it's only a portion of the story. And sometimes if you optimize for like the conversion rate of the day of, you're killing your lifetime value.

If you don't know your metrics really well, right. And then the second thing, executive support. Right. Like marketers, I think sometimes we like to live in our own world. We think things are obvious and we get really, really excited.

But so many times I've seen incredible initiatives get shut down at one point when it had to, like when it was on the chopping block. Just because there's just a lack of understanding around why it works and why it's important, and it's something that's hard to convince people when it's too late. You really have to kind of bring them in early on. So love, you mentioned that Mike. This was phenomenal.

Incredibly actionable. You're a fantastic guest. Now if people want to learn more about you, about Bison Coolers, about what you do, where should they go? Where should they follow you?

Mike Lewis: 19:53

I mean, I don't follow me, but go but check out Bison Coolers and see and see the work we're doing. I'm also on LinkedIn, but for the most part it's it's you know, people just are mainly just trying to sell you stuff on LinkedIn. But yeah, but yeah, it yeah I mean bisoncoolers.com is kind of where our whole world lives for us and the work we're doing.

Raphael Paulin-Daigle: 20:16

Fantastic. Mike thank you so much.

Outro: 20:22

All right. Well, that's it for today's episode. And thank you so much for tuning in. Now, if you like what you've heard, and you don't want to miss any of the new episodes that are about to come out, make sure you subscribe to the podcast and well, bonus points if you also leave a review in the iTunes store or wherever you're listening to this. Now, if you're working on an ecommerce store that does over $1 million in revenue and you need help with conversion optimization or landing pages, well, I've got some good news because there's a pretty good chance we can help with that.

Go to splitbased.com to learn more, or even to request a proposal. If you have any guest requests, questions or comments, tweet me at @Rpaulindaigle and I'll be super happy to hear from you. And again, thanks again for listening. This is Minds of Ecommerce.

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