Xavier Armand
@x_armand
Followers
4K
Following
10K
Media
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Statuses
11K
CEO at Vaan: eCommerce design + tech | Webby Award Judge | Sold OrderBump (Shopify app) | Tweets about eCommerce, service biz, and the NBA. Father of 2.
New York
Joined February 2012
🥰.
@x_armand Something I really appreciate about you: you consistently talk about your work like doing a great job really matters to you.
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Shout out to all the entrepreneurs running profitable 7 figure businesses with no investors.
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Large brands trying to go DTC hire Deloitte for $350/hr, spend 2 years and $5-15M and it's a train wreck every time. They should be strategically acquiring independent eCommerce agencies.
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Very concerned that DTC Twitter is now mostly people who work together circularly congratulating each other for working together.
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Mini-SaaS is magical. Order Bump is now at 5 figure MRR. 85% retention. Shout out to all the indie app devs out there.
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Them: $250K??? People pay that for a website?. Me: Yes. And often a lot more actually. Them: Forreal?. Me: The website generates $200M per year in revenue. Spending 1/8 of a percent on it is rather reasonable. Them: 🤯🤯.
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I wish 75 year olds used Twitter so that I wasn't force to read life advice Threads from 30 and 40 somethings.
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New biz call today. 60% of current leads in pipeline come from Twitter 🤯. And I only have 2100 followers. Crazy.
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2nd daughter arrived yesterday morning. She's incredible. Mom is happy and glowing. Blessed. 🙏🏾.
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So many of these new DTC brands lack soul. Created by capitalists to try and exploit a business model. You can tell immediately. The brand: uninspired. The product: contracted out. The opportunity is still vast for the product obsessed.
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@realEstateTrent Why did you delete? You simply posted a statistic about the safety of the subway system in NYC. Let em hate. New Yorkers need to stand proud. SMB twitter has far too many haters and bigots.
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Own a scaling SaaS company. Microacquire other adjacent SaaS companies. Take out funding from Pipe against acquired company. Use to fund main SaaS venture, leverage clients, and sunset on Pipe payment terms. 🤔. cc @harryhurst.
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Twitter: agency biz model sucks. You can't sell an agency. Start a SaaS or ecomm. Me: new advisor sold his last service business for 14x ebitda to top 3 consulting firm. Loves investing in tech services companies. Don't listen to everything on bird app.
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DTC twitter doesn't understand the concept of brand marketing.
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Reminder: For every tweet from a thought leader about how to run your business, there's a business doing the opposite and thriving.
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My week:. 👶🏽 had a baby .💵 closed a celebrity brand to a 6 figure deal.📄 finalized 2 advisory board members.💸 closed on a small, strategic funding round to incentivize new advisors.💉 got my first vaccine shot. Attitude? Gratitude. 🙏🏾🙏🏾.
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SPICY! 🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️. The latest @TheVaanGroup web launch is for my aunt's brand: Mama Joyce Peppa Sauce. Grateful she let us push the design envelope. Stack: @webflow + @vercel + @Shopify .
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Dad died Feb 4th, 2016. Hard to believe it's been 7 years. The last years of his cancer took a lot out of him so I like to look at really old pictures where he is fully vibrant.
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Truthfully cannot wrap my head around how people manage to hate on @bryan_johnson . He's one of the greatest living experiments we have. We get to see what happens if relentless focus on biological health with the most cutting edge science truly extends life.
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@vanschneider @mymind I love how much respect they gave the user. Relying on technical terms, giving extra controls. Nowadays it would just be one button and digital select.
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Dennis acquired @OrderBump from us less than 6 months ago. Man is a beast. Grateful to be in his orbit.
I have some exciting personal news! @Orderbump has been acquired 🥂. it's gets even better! Now apart of the AppHub family, w/ $60m in fresh funding, we're collectively about to take the Shopify ecosystem by storm. More resources, more capital, more talent.
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We've launched an apertif vermouth product for $190K. This included. - rent for production facility rent.- $50K in 1000L tanks (1 fermenter 1 blending).- Pumps, tables, chemicals, equipment and beyond.- Ingredients.- a botched first batch of 1000 bottles.- legal and compliance.
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If you're an eCommerce leader and you see the writing on the wall. Reach out. 8 (and counting) Magento Migrations in the past 18 months.
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Would love to do a case study collab with @Shopify - we just migrated and launched a $250M DTC and multi-channel marketplace to Shopify Plus and are seeing truly crazy conversion rate increases. They have hard technical challenges from serialized inventory to queued pricing.
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We just got a lead (a $130M sunglass brand) from an organic google search link for an article we wrote.🥲.
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Every once in awhile, when I'm feeling anxious about the future, I think of my Dad. He passed at age 58. Life is short. Just do the thing.
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3 headless to Shopify Native migrations in the last 9 months:. Miaou .Veracity Selfcare.Cometeer. Currently building 2 large headless sites. TBA.
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Some of the young gunners on DTC Twitter really impress me. Smart, hungry, light years ahead of where I was at 25 and under.
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I've spoken with multiple $25M-$100M eComm brands that think they need headless. I tell them you absolutely do not. Shopify Online Store 2.0 is absurdly good. The amount of companies of that size that are moving to Shopify should be a good signal.
That said, if what you need is a HP, Collection Page, PDP, Cart and Checkout - you cannot beat Shopify OS 2.0. It's not really a debate. Even at massive scale.
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"Their website. Their website is beautiful and I want to buy HexClad right now because of their website.". Man it feels good when a friend sends you a clip of @thesamparr giving an incredible compliment of the @hexclad website.
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There are clients and then there are @JasonPanzer of @hexclad and @mikebeckhamsm and @jbryanporter of @simplemodernco . I'm shocked and grateful at how much they spread the love about Vaan. Heard Jason gave us a plug at the Sendlane conference. SM w/ consistent shout outs on.
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Just got word one of our DTC clients is being acquired. One of those female-owned, under the radar, non-twitter having clients. They're being acquired because of their data. Their data lives in a database and reporting tool that @TheVaanGroup built for them. Really proud. 🙏🏾.
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I really can't get enough of this. Here we have @fast and @hello_iamelliot introducing us to their team. Fast videos are high prod. value, work focused, and lead with pedigree (prev. at blah blah). Elliot videos are lower prod. value, NOT work focused, never focused on pedigree
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RIP Dad. She's 16 today. She's the most well rounded, mature, bright and delightful young woman you could imagine. She *avoids* social media. You'd be beyond proud of her. We're all doing really well. And your granddaughter said she saw your eyes in the clouds in Heaven. I miss
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F*CK, @OnRallyRd is truly one of the dopest new platforms I've found. I bought in on this jersey like 2 weeks ago!
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It's crazy but there's only one DTC eCommerce podcast (that I know of) by someone with skin in the game and that's @andrewjfaris . You should check it occasionally. Everything else is self congratulatory airtime for the established to reminisce.
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Biggest TAM opportunity in eComm is the Customer Data Platform. No one owns it. - Twilio/Segment + mParticle at the enterprise.- Ometria mid-market.- Klaviyo evolving into it.- Gorgias can evolve into it.- Upstarts in Shopify land (octaneai [quiz], inveterate).
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You visit a nice website: whoa. wow. this is beautiful. really easy to use. I like this company. I visit a nice website: anger. rage. appreciation. jealousy. who did this. why didn't we do this? disgust in my career.
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Marc D'Amelio loves the site. Heidi said she wanted to "live in it" lol. I'm really proud of our team here. We were given a logo and told to create. It's fast. It's functional. And it embodies Brand Conversion Design.
Introducing @dameliofootwear . The arch shape, derived from the "D" in the D'Amelio logo, serves as the central theme woven throughout our Brand Conversion Design-driven site. Committed to an inclusive approach to footwear, the full site launch is live:
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Someone I respect a ton DM'd with such kind words. I don't have many followers but I'm continually shocked at the people who do. And Twitter is currently in a battle for 2nd as our biggest sales channel.
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Blessed to get a BTS look at a giant of the DTC world. An incredible business run by incredible founders who are generous enough to share their learnings along the way. @jbryanporter post how they did it below
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Agencies posting screenshots of client numbers doesn't sit well with me. That's privileged information.
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Finished my smart mirror project last night. Built from scratch with a rasp Pi, wood, and old monitor. Open source software is amazing.
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Agency speak that agency folk don't realize is agency speak:. "We're the anti-agency" (what?)."We're partners not vendors" (except you're a vendor)."We're solution oriented" (as opposed to?). Explicitly state whatever it is that you do. Show the work you did and tell the results.
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If you're a VC-backed, spreadsheet born brand, be scared of Mr. Beast and creator commerce ventures. If your brand got soul? Grass has never been greener.
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Man that @harrydry x @david_perell copywriting pod has changed me. All copy I see, I ask if it's a fact, is it something I can visualize. The first 15 minutes are incredible.
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Crazy last few months:. - launched rhode by Hailey Bieber.- launched bleeding edge web3 for early majority.- launched HexClad used by Gordon Ramsay. plus impactful CRO/optimization work for brands like Nieman Marcus, Miaou, Lake. the creator marketplace I teased is coming soon.
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Me and wifey do this thing we call Champagne Fridays. Where we drink a different bottle of Champagne each Friday and celebrate life. We're now in our vintage era. This is 2014 Special Club - 70% Chardonnay the rest Pinot Noir. I'll write a thread on all we've tried soon
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@TimJDillon went on Rogan and then dropped his two best podcasts eps ever right after. Rant about corporate steakhouses had me weak. The boardroom line
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It all started with an unsolicited review of the D’Amelio Footwear web launch. It was the little things. Picking up on the design theme of the arch (derived from the D in D’Amelio). Recognizing how we integrated social content into the experience (and why). And describing the.
About a year ago I posted a video about a website I found and loved — a particularly striking design for the D’Amelio sisters new footwear brand. From there I got to know @x_armand , the founder of the firm that designed it, and watched as his team at @TheVaanGroup knocked
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@oneunderscore__ James Altucher - a hedge fund manager - declaring the city is dead is proof positive the city is about to be better than ever.
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The only NBA take I treat seriously.
Knicks. Potential Starting unit:. A+.🔵Towns (scorpio).🔵Anunoby (cancer).🔵Hart (pisces).🔵Bridges (virgo).🔵Brunson (virgo). Duo of Towns & Brunson is going to be very strong.
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A staggering number of stealth DTC brands scaling to 8 figures in less than a year with organic social focus. Love meeting them and helping them think about how their website can go to the next level.
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Uh oh. I think we've unlocked THE workflow for creating design-heavy, highly performant landing pages, fast. webflow > vercel > shopify checkout.
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Closing '22 feeling like we're on track with the mission: being the best agency in the world. 85% YoY top line. 240% growth in profit. 22 teammates. 40% avg client spend.Multiple celebrity launches.Design awards.Record Q4 revenue.Highest client satisfaction.
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Gen Z doesn't know it yet but if they stop drinking alcohol they also won't have any good restaurants to go to.
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Very excited to be working on the branding (logo, type, packaging, messaging) for a $100M DTC brand under the BRND studio. Still looking for a GM/Lead to go to market with on the studio. One reason I love branding as a service is that it's timeless. While the ways a brand.
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Headless regret is the theme of 2023.
Another meeting with @ShopifyPlus brand who struggles with Headless on @vercel, they are on @nextjs suffering >7min build times where clothing dropes matter. They have no custom features, they use new accounts for account management. Everytime they want create or add new.
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Damn I just realized I do a terrible job marketing myself. I've:. - won a grant for scientific software (photoshop for scientists).- created and sold a Shopify app.- built tons of custom software for big clients. Yet no one asks me to consult on software on here.
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Most agencies are at Shoptalk. Eating, drinking and carrying on. We're in the warehouse with our clients picking, packing and shipping.
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Find someone at a similar stage in their career with shared goals and interests. Then build your way up, together.
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2024 Twitter Social Recap. We closed 8 deals.Worth $1,073,550. 6 deals in progress worth ~$750K.
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I'll just come out and say it. We deliver the best experiences for the top celeb led brands. Massive launch for the team today. Expect many more tweets about it.
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@CharlesMBlow Why can't he win? I don't get this from the dem sjde. Did we learn nothing in 2015. Donald Trump is our president.
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Being named Connor might be a critical factor to success leading DTC growth.
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Haven't had a good Shopify app idea in years (since OrderBump). Pleasure to announce I'm back baby.
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My children (2.5 and 9mths) were perfect and slept the entire red eye to Barcelona and NOT one person commented about how fantastic they were. They don't understand how big of an achievement this is. Absolutely legendary.
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We just signed another $800M category leader to a design contract. Vaan's wedge is design. Specifically Brand Conversion Design. We believe brands that over invest in it create the most enterprise value. This idea is what separates us from the "We do Shopify" system integrators.
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The next wave of breakout eComm brands will own customer data.
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Going into night 5 of solo Dad of 2 (3 and 1.5). Something has shifted in me. This amount of intense kid time has rewired my connection with them. I already loved my children but the synchronized rhythms bring a different energy. Life is beautiful.
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Sad that Eddie Bauer did this. Their cursive logo was their greatest bit of brand equity.
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One of my clients is an entrepreneur from Utah. She runs a $6M subscription eComm biz with absurd margins. And an influencer page with 500K likes recommending Amazon products printing 5-6 figures per month. A Twitter handle, she has not.
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Many agency owners on here don't realize how their twitter is negatively affecting their business. Express yourself. Be helpful. Try to share knowledge. Avoid calling out others. Avoid cynicism. Never under any circumstance "complain" about clients. or random brands.
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@Austen This thread is 100% true but so uniquely tied to the mission/business of Lambda School. You've built an amazing thing, an education business, necessitating and worthy of capital. To equate what you do to a social listening tool, or chat app, or 95% of other SaaS undermines Lambda.
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First it was page builders for Shopify. Now it's productized website themes. One thing I always notice is that these startups have young founders. Makes sense because no one with significant client services experience would start a business they know won't scale. So for now,.
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DTC Twitter - would you pay for a report that analyzed all of your product reviews - both online store and Amazon - for sentiment, key words, takeaways, and to understand voice of your customer?.
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I can finally make this major announcement! @OrderBump is now live in the Shopify app store AND includes in-checkout and post-purchase upsells. We also rolled out a ton of major improvements 👇🏾👇🏾👇🏾
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@MichelFalcon It's weird cause growing up my Dad taught me a business, by definition, makes more money than it spends. Somewhere along the way, that got obscured.
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WE ARE NOMINATED FOR A FREAKING WEBBY!!!. If ya care to pls vote ⬇️⬇️.
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We're pitching a DTC company with an incredible mission that's doing over >$40M a year online and NO ONE in DTC twitter has ever mentioned it. no lists, not nothing.
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