Scaling Sentimental Value in Ecommerce: Vincero’s Personalization Playbook With Sean Agatep

Sean Agatep is the Co‑founder and Chief Operating Officer at Vincero Collective, a men’s accessories brand specializing in premium watches and jewelry that blend style with personalization. Drawing on an early experience in manufacturing and sourcing in China, Sean leads Vincero’s operations, including product development, logistics, and customer experience. Under his leadership, the company has emphasized personalized craftsmanship while building strong repeat-purchase loyalty and serving nearly 700,000 customers since 2014.

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

• [2:25] Sean Agatep shares Vincero Collective's journey from Kickstarter to serving 700,000 customers
• [3:21] The strategic shift to personalization and capturing sentiment in gifting
• [5:00] Using gift bag attachment rates to validate demand for product engraving
• [6:06] Building in-house engraving infrastructure to test personalization at scale
• [9:06] Challenges in scaling personalization with the right 3PL fulfillment partner
• [14:21] Creating sentimentality through packaging, note cards, and meaningful product design

In this episode…

Ecommerce brands face the challenge of adding personalization without compromising operational efficiency or brand integrity. While customization can increase emotional connection and repeat purchases, it often introduces logistical and cost challenges that are difficult to justify without a clear ROI. How can a brand offer personalization in a scalable, meaningful way without compromising product experience or profitability?

Sean Agatep, an expert in ecommerce operations and product development, shares how his team validated demand for engraving through attachment rates on gift add-ons before making significant investments. Sean emphasizes starting small and testing personalization in-house before scaling with the right third-party logistics partner to handle fulfillment complexity. He also highlights the importance of sentimentality in product design, citing examples like birthstone pendants for new dads and custom messaging to elevate the gifting experience. For Sean, successful personalization is rooted not in gimmicks, but in thoughtful customer signals, lean testing, and long-term brand alignment.

In this episode of the Minds of Ecommerce, Raphael Paulin-Daigle interviews Sean Agatep, Co-founder and COO at Vincero Collective, about building a scalable personalization strategy. Sean discusses validating demand with low-risk tests, building custom infrastructure for engraving, and designing meaningful gift experiences. He also touches on branding pitfalls, key logistics challenges, and how personalization impacts packaging and messaging.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

• Raphael Paulin-Daigle: LinkedIn | X
• SplitBase
• Sean Agatep on LinkedIn
• Vincero Collective
• “From Awareness to Consideration: How Onewheel Boosted Conversions by 65% With Eric del Valle” on Minds of Ecommerce

Quotable Moments:

• "If you're not creating that reason to purchase, at a certain point, I have enough watches."
• "The most memorable gifts are those that are personalized. I think of that person every single time."
• "We asked ourselves what would be the easiest way to set this up to where we could test."
• "Trying the biggest issue was finding the right distribution partner at scale."
• “We really asked ourselves, ‘How do we really attach ourselves to a community and truly provide value?’”

Action Steps:

1. Test personalization with low-cost prototypes: Starting small helps validate demand before committing to major infrastructure changes.
2. Use customer behavior signals to guide product features: Observing gifting patterns can reveal valuable personalization opportunities that align with customer intent.
3. Partner with scalable fulfillment providers: The right logistics partner ensures personalization doesn’t bottleneck operations as demand increases.
4. Integrate personalization into brand messaging: Aligning marketing with product sentimentality enhances emotional connection and drives repeat purchases.
5. Design products with personalization in mind: Planning engravable areas and packaging upfront ensures a seamless and scalable personalization experience.

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 Eric Del Valle, the director of ecommerce and advertising at Onewheel, who talked about how removing micro decisions from their funnel and in some cases, removing some personalization, increased conversions by 65%. Today, on episode number 52, get ready because Sean Agatep, who's the co-founder and COO at Vincero, and we'll actually be talking about personalization and how it's grown their business.

So I'm your host, Raphael Paulin-Daigle, and I'm the founder of SplitBase This is Minds of Ecommerce. Now this episode is brought to you by SplitBase, and at SplitBase, we help leading eight and nine-figure brands such as Dr. Squatch, Hyperice, and Amika grow 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. The result you get is increased conversions, higher AOV, and of course well, more money, which in turn allows you to scale advertising profitably. We've been at it for over a decade, and we can help you manage CRO from A to Z. I'm talking about customer research, conversion design strategy, copywriting, and development. We really focus on growing your ecommerce sales while you get to focus on what you do best.

So you can go to Nbastore.com today to request your free proposal and learn how we can help you get the most out of your marketing spend. All right, Sean, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for being here.

Sean Agatep: 1:57

Great. Excited. Thanks for having me.

Raphael Paulin-Daigle: 01:58

Yeah. So as you know, this podcast is all about going deep and dissecting one key growth strategy so our listeners can get the most value right away. But just for people who might not be familiar with Vincero, I'd love to. I'd love for them to get maybe a bit of context. How big's the brand?

What are some of the what's some of the progress that you've done? And yeah, tell us a bit more just so we can get the conversation going for sure.

Sean Agatep: 02:25

Vincero is an accessories men's accessories brand. I started with my best friends from college in 2014. We actually started on Kickstarter, so we've been around for a while. We're low eight figures and we should be crossing about 700,000 customers here by the end of the year.

Raphael Paulin-Daigle: 2:39

Amazing. So now, you mentioned as we were getting ready for this call, that personalization has been a really important growth engine to you guys. And I think it's so interesting because as I said in the intro in the previous conversation with Onewheel, too much personalization can also create too many decisions for customers, and sometimes it's not needed. Now, in your case, it's a bit different because we're talking not about a scooter. We're talking about very personal products.

We're talking about jewelry. But so tell us a bit more. When did you you started wholesale. But then when did personalization. When did that become of key point of focus?

Sean Agatep: 03:21

It the shift to personalization and capturing the sentimentality in life's moments really started for us like 2 to 3 years ago, maybe a little bit more. We Ventura was a very giftable product. Most of our sales obviously happened in Q4. A great sentimental gift that you get is, you know, a watch from your dad or dads and grads is a very any milestone moment or anything else like that. So we really asked ourselves especially, you know, once we reach that maturity phase of the business, do how do we really attach ourselves to a community and truly provide value with the product that we're already offering?

So if you are a very gifted, giftable and sentimental product, how can we enhance that experience for the customer. And with that, the best way to do that is to really make it personal and unique and really attach yourself to those giftable and life's moments. And the best way to do that for us as a accessories brand is to be able to personalize our watches and jewelry with specific messaging to customers.

Raphael Paulin-Daigle: 04:21

There's a lot of verticals, right where I think personalization can be a great add on. Obviously something like accessories, like you guys, it's personal, it makes sense, but it's also something that I'm sure brands think of. And even if their vertical is a great fit, it comes at an additional cost and a brand. There might be a size where it doesn't make sense. So when did you how did you know that the right time was three years ago?

What was that process of deciding? You know what? Adding personalization is going to have an ROI that we expect is worth it, right?

Sean Agatep: 05:00

Well, it started with we started selling gift bags as add ons to customers. And once we saw the attachment rate with gift bags, we were like, oh, there's a huge opportunity here. Just the natural attachment rate without any optimization or anything else like that. You know, a majority of our purchases are gifting. So with that, how can we enhance that?

And so the idea with personalization engraving was like, what's the lowest cost way that we can test this out before being pot committed into building. You know the brand identity around this.

Raphael Paulin-Daigle: 5:30

When you're I love here how you actually use the customer signal. And I think that's a very smart thing to do looking at hey, you know, we have a lot of people buying gift bags. A lot of people are into gifting. So it wasn't just like, hey, it could be cool to add personalization. You really had a data point there.

What type of infrastructure change that I'm talking logistically speaking, even whether that's online, whether that's in terms of manufacturing the product, what type of change is kind of required for Brent to go from no personalization to doing personalization, right?

Sean Agatep: 06:06

So a lot of that comes from our expertise in product development and manufacturing. My partners and I lived out in China for five years doing product development, sourcing, and everything like that. So we had the real ins and outs of how watches were actually made. And so when we talked about personalization and the finishing touch on all of our watches is the case, back is engraved and it's run through a laser engraver at the factory level. Right.

So we asked ourselves what would be the easiest way to set this up to where we could test, where it would make sense if we built out a whole engraving infrastructure. So we bought a low cost rotary engraver. We threw it in the office. I felt bad for that side of the office because it sounded like one of those old school printers. But it worked.

We were at capacity pretty quick, and we could only do 30 to 40 engravings a day at our capacity here within the office. So it was more of a signal that, okay, this is working, how do we actually run this at scale?

Raphael Paulin-Daigle: 06:55

You know, I'm putting myself in the shoes of a brand. Who's thinking of doing that? I can imagine anyone working in marketing whose idea it might be to, to introduce or in product, right, to introduce that, they're going to have to convince someone unless you're a founder, that right? Well, there is going to be a clear ROI from this, right? In your case, how important is engraving at the end of the day?

How do you how did you did? Were you guys able to forecast the ROI? How did you make that decision that it was worth it?

Sean Agatep: 07:25

Yeah, it came down to really just a hunch and a gut check. So we put in the the rough cost of how much the engraver would cost, how much time we would spend and everything else like that, and then a certain assumption of an attach rate. And it was like, okay, once we hit to this many units engraved, then we're break even on this project. Does this make sense? Do we want to pursue this because we're also going to have to change the site.

We're going to have to change a lot of messaging. But is there a is there a low cost, low effort way that we can test this to validate that? It makes sense, because the actual investment in the infrastructure to do this at scale, I mean, a laser engraver is cost about $20.30 grand. You have to teach a team up on how to do it. You have to change up how your manufacturing product, you know, every watch has a slightly different case back.

So you have to factor that in. It gets complicated very quick. But if there's enough breadcrumbs and enough, there's enough path to success. The affinity towards the brand and the sentimental value. If there's breadcrumbs for success that that far outweighs the actual value you're providing the customers.

Raphael Paulin-Daigle: 08:28

Yeah. I always think, you know, sometimes the most memorable gifts are those that are personalized. And I remember there's one gift I got. It was an engraved knife from someone, which I use that knife every day. It has my name on it.

Right. But I think of that person every single time that I use it, right? So it does have an incredible power. Now, I'm curious, obviously, you've gone through this entire process now, and it is officially part of the business model and you're operating with it. But like, what are some of the biggest pitfalls that a brand looking to do personalization like this could fall into?

Sean Agatep: 09:06

Trying to do it too quickly. And the biggest issue that we had historically was finding the right distribution partner in terms of a three PL that could handle it at the product level, to be able to fulfill two customers at a scale, that would make sense because we try to do it in-house, internally, that's great, but I'm not going to hire a full time person to be in the office here to crank out 30 engravings a week, manually ship them out. Also. Then you have to have product here, right? The way to do it at scale is to have the logistical infrastructure to where the product is housed, getting it out to customers with if a customer orders an engravable product and a non engravable product, then all of a sudden your costs for shipping two different units like it gets the the details get complicated quick.

So understanding the ins and outs of that whole crawl walk run philosophy of like, okay, let's prove that people are actually want engraving. Now let's find a good partner that can run it at scale. And then if this is still working, how do we just further enhance our product development cycle to where what would make this necklace the best possible gift that's changed up. How we've changed our packaging. You know how we design our products to make sure there is a place to be able to engrave it like it's changed the mentality of how we approach the brand and providing value to our customers in general.

Raphael Paulin-Daigle: 10:18

Right now, if you were to like start that process all over again, what would you do differently?

Sean Agatep: 10:24

Well, it's very tough to change your supply chain when you're at a certain level. So understanding that I don't know, it's hindsight's 2020 right. So if now it makes so much more sense where it's like yes, of course we're a watch company. Gifts watches like watches are the perfect gift for men. There's already engraving out there like you want to be able to like engraving.

It just makes a whole lot of sense. Yeah, but to start that over again and have that foresight, you'd be building a giftable gifting brand, right? So the identity and how you're actually attaching value or providing value to customers is your actual value prop in the messaging that you provide to customers.

Raphael Paulin-Daigle: 11:04

So let's talk about that value prop. How much is engraving, you know, in your campaigns? How much space does it take in those campaigns? Do you see it as the primary value prop, or do you see it as a benefit to the primary value prop?

Sean Agatep: 11:22

It's an extra incentive to buy. And it's something that will they'll crawl and improve over time because with our brand we really have like obviously holidays is a big push and then dads and grads is another natural push. But there's also birthdays. There's there's, you know, new dads, everything else like that that happens throughout the year. So finding that balance between like purely gifting and also creating a cool, unique brand with limited editions that like you don't make the brand stale by just becoming like a generic gifting brand, right?

You have to have the integrity and the the coolness factor of the brand as well to, to enhance the extra the fact that you can engrave it and gift it as like, oh, this makes this that much cooler of a product.

Raphael Paulin-Daigle: 12:05

Yeah. And you guys really nailed the brand part. I think, you know, like you look at the website and you're like, oh, this is a cool brand. It doesn't scream. We're a gifting brand.

Sean Agatep: 12:15

Right, right. Valentine's day is coming up like buy flowers.

Raphael Paulin-Daigle: 12:19

Exactly.

Sean Agatep: 12:20

It's. Yeah.

Raphael Paulin-Daigle: 12:22

And to some extent, I can think. I think there's a lot of jewelry brands that. And I'm sure you know this space even more than I do. Well, you definitely do. But there's a lot of jewelry brands that did fall into that trap, right?

Like, there are so many that just become, you know, this thing where they are the gifting brand. And I'm sure for them it's working. But there's a lot where you kind of lose the essence of the product and everything becomes about those events. Let's say we zoom out of personalization a little bit, and we talk about the brand as a whole. So you guys have had quite a bit of success over the past couple of years.

I always want to ask the same question, which is if you had to start the brand all over again, what would you do differently? Outside of personalization.

Sean Agatep: 13:02

I wouldn't make the product. I think when we started, watches was a hot category. It's cooled off quite a bit. Our ability to go wide with our product category and offering provides more balance, and it's almost like it's like assets in a portfolio. So from a watch standpoint, at our core, we're always going to be a watch company.

But the natural extension of that is jewelry and accessories. So those types of accessories so growing that up, providing complementary products that can still stand alone and are more durable as their own product is something to keep in mind because for a while, you know, when watches were hot, you could just whip up a new colorway and it's a direct response and it's like, oh yeah, no, this is a blue one. You like this one, so let's just buy it. But then when the tailwinds aren't there, what durability is that? Is that brand have that's where you really need to land on like the sentimentality and the reason to actually purchase that product.

Whatever you make, there needs to be like a natural reason to purchase the product other than like, hey, this is cool, you should buy it.

Raphael Paulin-Daigle: 14:00

I'm talking about sentimentality because you've been mentioning it a lot, and I know it's important with personalization and especially with a brand that, you know, sells products that are so personal, You're tapping into that aspect through engraving. Is there anything else you're doing from a marketing or messaging level? That is specifically aimed towards creating sentimentality?

Sean Agatep: 14:21

It's transformed everything from how you receive the gift. So the unboxing experience, so how we design our packaging and everything else like that, to being able to provide note cards and customized notes and everything else like that to how we think about expanding our product line. Right. Would this be a cool gift? Would I want to receive this as a cool gift?

Even how we design future products like we just launched this past week. We made birthstone pendants for new dads. Right. And that's a and a lot of that is because my partners and I were all relatively new dads were like, yeah, there's nothing like birthstones or charms. There's nothing masculine.

That's cool. Right. Right. Whereas if you're able to design something that does have that sentimentality of like, oh yeah, this is my son's birthstone, this is like his birthstone and his initial, there's that, that feeling of attachment to the actual gift. And I think also too with guys.

Guys are the most difficult to gift because we don't really care, right? I've got enough stuff, right? But if you can, if there's a there's a sentimentality attached to it. It's just that much more powerful than experience.

Raphael Paulin-Daigle: 15:20

The birthstone example is is is fantastic. It's it's a very logical brand extension in the sense. Right. Amazing. Now let's talk about tools.

I mean, you've scaled that brand. People love to talk about tools. Is there any tools in your tool set in your tech stack that you say, I would not be able to run the brand without these.

Sean Agatep: 15:43

From a marketing standpoint. Realistically, knowing, I would say probably attribution understanding where customers are actually coming from, understanding that actual customer journey, also being able to split, test and test different messaging because you're gifting not only men buying gifts for themselves, but wives buying gifts for their husbands that, that, that messaging and everything needs to be different. The other thing we've learned as well is that our watch customers are not necessarily our sunglass customers. So I have to speak to them different. I have to test different angles.

The way we present our products are all completely different, so we need to be able to present ourselves in a diverse way that that attaches itself to each of these product verticals.

Raphael Paulin-Daigle: 16:27

Can I ask a question about that personalization? Obviously, as you just said, very natural, but how much do you guys actually do personalization and how is it applied throughout the funnel? I'm sure on an ad level, on the targeting level, there's going to be a messaging there. How much does it carry over to the website and what's the strategy around that?

Sean Agatep: 16:50

So we are I mean, you're talking with us while we're mid-shift to going full bore into personalization. So everything from top of the funnel to how we're presenting our products to new product launches, we're shifting. I mean, if you look at the website a year ago towards now, it looks drastically different, right? We're we're pushing heavy into that personalization, which can only really happen over time. As we just improve, every every product that we sell has to justify itself from a gifting presentation standpoint.

Yeah. So that's we're mid shift now. So it will become more and more. We'll do limited edition drops, cool collabs and then cool gifts.

Raphael Paulin-Daigle: 17:30

What tools are you using for that?

Sean Agatep: 17:32

For which part?

Raphael Paulin-Daigle: 17:34

For personalization in general. Is there anything you've talked about AB testing and testing different messages? Do you have any tools that you love?

Sean Agatep: 17:42

We have been satisfied so far with the intelligence and being able to split test and everything else like that. And then from the personalization, everything, that's all custom dev that's built off of, you know, there are apps and tools and everything else like that, but the actual value that a lot of those, we need to be able to create a custom solution. Because the way my watch looks, if you're going to showcase engraving, is going to be fundamentally different than the way like this pendant necklace looks, right? So you need to be able to have more control over the actual showcase and presentation on site.

Raphael Paulin-Daigle: 18:14

Amazing. So I've got a lot of great takeaways from this conversation. I think the number one keyword out of all of this is personalization. But across the board, you guys are not just saying you're doing personalization, but you're truly doing it from a product standpoint with product engraving. But you're also doing it from a messaging standpoint and from a whole bigger brand and marketing standpoint as well.

One of the things that I noted that I think was very important is you guys didn't jump into personalization or product engraving just because you thought it would be cool. There was an actual logic to it, which was technically just understanding the behaviors of the customers, understanding that, you know, oh, we do have a lot of people that are buying gifts. How can we extend the value of gift buying and therefore bring more value to the customer, but also get more value in return as a brand? And I think this is a key lesson, because a lot of brands actually go and build things for the sake of being cool, but what they don't always realize is the smart brands are doing it not just because it's cool, but because they've identified singles. That justifies that. Right.

Sean Agatep: 19:22

And there's also a certain point where, like, if you're not creating that reason to purchase at a certain point, I have enough watches. I don't need another watch. Right. So why else would I purchase like you're bringing you're providing value by letting them, by bringing back customers for a reason. You know, if you got a cool gift, you're likely to give that that same experience.

And you love that experience. And, you know, our customer service team does a great job of making sure that that experience comes through to customers because we're it's that word of mouth effect. It's that community-building effect that we really rely on.

Raphael Paulin-Daigle: 19:51

Totally. Now we've been talking to Sean Agatep from Vincero and now, Sean, if people want to learn more about you, about the brand, where should they go?

Sean Agatep: 20:01

Vincerocollective.com is our website. That's the best way to go. The best way to find out about the brand. And yeah.

Raphael Paulin-Daigle: 20:09

Awesome. Sean, thank you so much for being here.Paulin-Daigle

Sean Agatep: 20:11

For sure. Thanks, Rob.

Outro: 20:16

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 splitbase.com to learn more or even to request a proposal. If you have any guest requests, questions, or comments, tweet me @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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