Louis Leidenfrost
@LeidenfrostL
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It is Finished • Curating Carte Blanche // 3PL • learn how to build a brand below 👇🏼
Atlanta, GA
Joined January 2016
Want to learn exactly how we did all of this while building Carte Blanche? Click below to sign up .
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What I learned from building my brand $0-$1mil in 100 days (50 days without FB ads). A thread
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First time turning the notifications on drop day. Surreal moment.
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Lol where it all started. Sold my first instagram page in 2013 for $1350 and built a computer lol
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DO THINGS THAT DON’T SCALE AT THE START. Last Carte Blanche drop was over 2x the size of the previous one. Repeat customer rate was 22% still. - After every drop I spend hours going through each and every order and texting or dm’ing thank you’s to people I know or names I’ve
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1. This may piss a lot of people off but product > greater than marketing (for rapid growth). Find a product that can easily be made Into a meme or text post on girly themed pages. A great product is one that involves couples.
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DO THINGS THAT DON’T SCALE AT THE START WHEN BUILDING A BRAND. Carte Blanche continues to grow and our repeat customer % stays crazy high. Why? . - After every drop I spend hours going through each and every order and texting or dm’ing thank you’s to people I know or names I’ve
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Happy 1 year to Carte Blanche. Have always had and always will have 1000% blind faith in this brand.
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Bonus stuff. Run all expenses possible through AMEX. I won’t be paying for a flight this decade. Go on Twitter and stay in the loop. You never know what little tip from someone in the same space as you may make a HUGE impact.
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I hope this was helpful to at least one person. I’ve never done anything like before but enjoyed putting it together a lot.
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5 continued. We run: Google, Snap, Tik tok, email, SMS and have over 55k followers on IG. I heard a podcast once that said don’t plan “what if we get banned from FB what do we do” plan like “how can I add another 100-200 orders a week outside of FB” so you’re okay if.
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4. Create an extremely detailed daily P&L and always update it the following morning. Knowing exactly where your books stand is very important for rapid scale and cash flow. When I was younger I sucked at this and always winged it. Guess what every company eventually failed.
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🫡 Carte Blanche powered by Shopify.
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6. Detach your emotions from sales. Turn off your Shopify notifications on your phone after a few consistent 10k days. How efficiently you work shouldn’t be based on good vs bad sales days. It should always be consistent and checking sales every 5 min is a HUGE waste of time.
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2. Build out a fast replying customer support team as fast as possible. Fast replies and good service = repeat customers. Also CHARGEBACKS KILL! (35,000+ orders and less than 50 total chargebacks).
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3. Make a sheet assigning every task there is between you and your business partner within the first 15 days. We can go a week without talking and the company will still run smoothly because we know what we’re responsible for. Once you have your tasks delicate them to your hires.
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1 continued. Ex: a boyfriend can buy this gift for his girlfriend or a girlfriend can buy this for her boyfriend. I have always had great success with companies like this.
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I’ve been in this game so long they called me a scammer because instagram marketing wasn’t a thing yet and couldn’t be explained.
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2900+ on site. 5 minute sell out. The snow ball effect is kicking in. Thank you to all who supported !
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Keep going, keep going, keep going. Year one book is closed. Now to set the new standard
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7. Payout 60% of profits each month and leave 40% in the business. I don’t know all the correct tax ways to do this but I do know getting a nice check every month keeps adding gas to the fire and I’m more calculated and less emotional knowing there is $$ in the bank and I’m safe.
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Cbum in Blanche again. If you make a good product and get it in the right hands the game is 100x easier. We will never pay for influncers to wear.
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Getting hype for Black Friday again. It’s almost that time of the year
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My dad gave my sister and I $100 each summer of 2013. I built a 10 page 3 million followers network on Instagram and Kickstarter meme marketing making my app #1 paid app in the world. She bedazzled some jeans. I was 14. I’ve always been this way.
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5 things I wish I knew when starting Carte Blanche. 1) IF YOU HAVE 100 CUSTOMERS SELL 90 UNITS NOT 100.Supply and demand! The people that want your product and can’t get it because it’s sold out will do all the marketing for you! This is the Ferrari model and many other
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Hired 3 new warehouse associates over the last 2 weeks. 182 Indeed applications .20 candidates called .17 interviews setup.10 showed up .3 hired. Now 14 strong 💪🏼 . All fit the environment perfectly. We have built a fun hard working environment at the 3PL/UV printing company.
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Carte Blanche Look book for top customers Christmas gift.
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CASHFLOW CRASH-COURSE:. 4 Business.9 amex gold accounts.1 Amex Plum card .2 Chase Visa’s .13 person Payroll .18k sq feet warehouse . All bootstrapped. Feels like Wack-a-mole 24:7. Love it.
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20 minutes. This is 25% of the inventory and bigger than our first 4 exhibits combined. Grateful to see the growth.
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First cut & sew hat complete for 009 drop. Time to up the quality.
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24 hours until our best and largest drop yet. 800 hats just showed up that we’re stuck in customs. I will still personally QC and count every item before the site goes live. No corners cut at the start, no corners cut now. The key is to never get comfortable
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Tomorrow marks 1 years since 001 drop. I spent some time looking back through each drop to see the progression in 365 days. If you’re only going to have 8 drops a year you have to drastically get better each exhibit. You can see the feed evolve throughout 001, 003, 006, 008
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Hired a guy to make tik tok clips for us off our content. Definitely was a missing piece.
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A year ago I started this brand. Got kicked off Facebook after 30 days for no reason, still no answers to this day. It now will be the smallest of 3 brands but was the first store I ever took to $1mil Rev. A lot can happen in a year. Keep going, forever grateful.
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No discount Black Friday. AOV increase. Build the brand
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What we went with. I like
BUILDING IN PUBLIC: .Working on coming up with some cool phrases for ad Taglines. Here are some I’m playing with on canva then I’ll send to designer to make font and colors look good. Thoughts & Ideas?
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Legendary WeWork photo of @Adam_Wilbanks and I in 2017. Never ran a P&L. Ran off a debit card, theme page marketing and cold brew. Life was good
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It works.
DO THINGS THAT DON’T SCALE AT THE START. Last Carte Blanche drop was over 2x the size of the previous one. Repeat customer rate was 22% still. - After every drop I spend hours going through each and every order and texting or dm’ing thank you’s to people I know or names I’ve
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Just ran the numbers. We’ll do $4mil rev in 2021 between our brands. Here are a few things I’ve learned.-wake up early .-partying isn’t that great .-working on the weekend puts you ahead .-nothing is too serious .-there’s always a solution to every problem. -perfect your backend.
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5. Do not reply on one leg of your marketing efforts. For example we got kicked off FB for no reason after 50 days and still managed to keep expanding. In fact we profit more per day at lower Rev than we did with FB. Build out your marketing ecosystem.
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We’ve spent a year working for this. We used to be on page 6 because it’s a dictionary term but now it’s the dictionary then us.
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When Adam and I first met in 2016. No swag. No plan. Just a kid from Georgia and Arkansas who knew we could build something together. Failed plenty of times, move back home plenty of times went in debt plenty of times. Still not even 5% of the way there but at least we can say
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Carte Blanche didn’t blow up “overnight” because of cool designs, nice fabric or cool content. But because Adam and I put a decade in before hand and applied everything we learned into a physical brand. I’ve seen a ton of brands pop up that look just like CB but haven’t seen any.
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I always make these for our drops. They never pop off but I’m making sure to document the entire process for 10 years from now. Long term worth it
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January was our first $1M rev month for one of our personal brands. Fulfillment is wild but very doable. Still taking on 3PL pick & pack clients this Q1. Dm
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Watching back old videos from drops. Documenting the process from day 1 is something I wish we did more of. If you’re just starting out PLEASE document you won’t regret it.
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Uv printed 1000 Apple Watch bands for AT&T this week. Doing large b2b orders for Belts, Dog Collars and Apple Watch bands.
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Sold out and (almost) shipped out. Thank you to everyone who supported 002. I want to do this forever.
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Carte Blanche Exhibit 009 shoot was today. ~ Greatest Hits
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A year ago today 002 dropped. Old Warhouse. Knew nothing. Just know a little bit more now but still nothing.
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Got this memory from 3 years ago today. Thank god I don’t run an agency anymore. “Bud” disrespect
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Dropped Tuesday. Shipped out Wednesday. People receiving their orders Thursday-Saturday. Taking things to the next level at CB
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The reason why I’ve had success in my life is because I genuinely have 0 concern for how things are going to workout. -Went $100k in debt at 16 .-Skipped out on college at a time with 0 running businesses. -moved back home at 19.If I ran out of money tomo, no worries.
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1 year ago today - after months of searching, I stumbled across the phrase “Carte Blanche” and knew it was the name for the brand. Been a wild year
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One year anniversary tee for Carte Blanche. Listed all the exhibits until now.
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Spent the last 10 years learning and building business so we can take Carte Blanche to the top fast. Not taking 1$ out of the biz. Not worried about profit. Going to do it right and obsess over every detail. Couldn’t do it like this if it was our first time. Cutting no corners.
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First attempt at clothing in 2015. Mallard Manor. This was always the goal
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Officially been one whole year of running our largest brand. $2.88M rev. Time to sell and move onto what we’re going to build for the next decades.
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Check it out!.
@LeidenfrostL (Founder, Carte Blanche) shares how he blew up the brand, getting influencers to wear it, and future plans for Carte Blanche. Watch Now:
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BUILDING IN PUBLIC: .Working on coming up with some cool phrases for ad Taglines. Here are some I’m playing with on canva then I’ll send to designer to make font and colors look good. Thoughts & Ideas?
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Team building Friday lunch. The team is getting bigger and it’s been so fun to build.
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You’re most likely to succeed when you’re uncomfortable and have no choice but to succeed. Don’t be afraid to make things tight on yourself. Complacency kills.
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Last month in 29 days we shipped over 65k orders between only 4 of our clients. Swyft prints is growing fast.
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Just realized if I made $100k a year I couldn’t even pay the bills. Goal is to live on 5-10% so goal is $2mil this year. $166k/m. People don’t realize the guys flexing 20-30k/m on here aren’t really making any money. Real money comes from investing after expenses.
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It’s coming. October 4th - Exhibit 002 ‘Athletic Club’
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4 years ago. 22 and 19 year olds. Didn’t know anything yet 😂 .cc: @Adam_Wilbanks .(Fun fact- That small WeWork office cost us double what our warehouse space costs us now.)
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Josh Richards on BFF pod wearing Carte blanche hat that drops on Aug 29th 🤠
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Hiring is tough out there. I had a kid interview last week who showed up high as a kite and afterwords he texted me “yo I’ll take the job” 2023 for ya.
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