Ridge becomes multichannel accessories brand

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Sean Frank, CEO of Ridge, on the state of ecommerce post-COVID

Interview
we just had a lot of growth in non-dot com, non-ecomm channels
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This shows Ridge stopped acting like a one channel internet brand and started acting like a real accessories brand. In practice, that meant adding wholesale doors, leaning into Amazon, and using international storefronts when U.S. demand softened. That matters because a wallet buyer often wants to touch the product in a store, and every sale that comes from retail shelves or marketplaces is one less sale that depends entirely on expensive Meta and Google ads.

  • Ridge now sells through its own sites, Amazon, wholesale partners, and localized international storefronts. Its company profile describes DTC as the primary channel, with the others as incremental demand layers, which is exactly how a maturing consumer brand spreads risk when one channel gets harder.
  • Wholesale became a real growth lever because the product is tactile. Ridge says it is now in over 1,000 U.S. stores, including Nordstrom, Scheels, and Buckle. For a premium metal wallet, seeing the finish, weight, and mechanism in person can do conversion work that a paid social ad cannot.
  • The tradeoff is margin pressure. Selling off site reduces dependence on Meta, but Amazon and retail partners take their cut. Sean Frank points to Amazon fee extraction, including the low inventory level fee introduced for FBA in April 2024, as evidence that non DTC channels add reach while also adding platform tolls.

Going forward, Ridge is likely to look more like Coach or Tumi in distribution, with DTC as the profit engine and retail, Amazon, and international as scale layers. As the catalog expands beyond wallets into rings, bags, and travel gear, those offline and marketplace channels should matter even more because they let Ridge get discovered where accessories are already shopped.