When you are building a brand in a highly saturated market, you cannot win by simply outspending your competitors on Meta ads. You have to win on brand equity and community depth.
During our Connect LDN panel, Oliver Powe broke down the reality of scaling Acid Running.
Here is what is working right now:
Selling a ÂŁ100 pair of running shorts doesn't happen overnight. Consumers can take anywhere from 6 to 18 months to finally pull the trigger and purchase from a premium brand they admire.
As Oliver pointed out,
"I'd love to say there was some sort of magical DTC thing we did or lever we pulled, but I think the honest answer is time."
Instead of panicking and offering aggressive discounts to force a quick conversion, Acid Running focused on patience. They moved their audience down the consideration funnel by consistently communicating the same core message and refining their positioning year after year.
When launching, many brands play it safe and revert to the average to avoid offending anyone. Acid Running did the opposite.
"We tried to be more rebellious and more authentic to us as a brand," Oliver shared.
They leaned into a countercultural identity - even posting social content of runners having a pint and a cigarette after a run. While it drew criticism from some, it authentically represented the diverse, real-world behaviours of their actual audience.
You cannot please everyone, and trying to usually results in a brand that no one truly loves.
When you are a scaling startup with lower sales volume, it is incredibly easy to fall into the trap of looking for validation elsewhere. You start obsessing over Instagram follower growth, email list size, or website traffic.
While those numbers matter, Oliver warned against getting caught in a cycle of relying on them simply because early revenue is low:
"People fall into the trap of looking for adjacent metrics to validate things... you suddenly start chasing the adjacent metric rather than chasing the final metric that you need."
At the end of the day, there is only one number that actually proves product-market fit and sustains the business: Revenue.
Building brand heat isn't about launching an inauthentic IRL run club just because everyone else is doing it, or forcing founder-led TikToks if that isn't your strength. It is about understanding your premium buying cycle, standing firmly in your slightly rebellious brand identity, and obsessing over revenue rather than vanity metrics.
Watch the full session on YouTube.
We saw something this week that is definitely worth sharing. A challenger fitness brand just got ChatGPT to recommend them over Peloton and NordicTrack. It showed up in Google's AI Overviews inside 48 hours, and they didn't spend a single penny on ads or PR.
43.8% of ChatGPT product recommendations come directly from "Best [Category]" style lists. If you aren't on them, you are effectively invisible to AI engines.
To fix this,
This brand used a tool called Ampcast AI (by Ampifire).
It automatically turns your single list into 8 different formats (articles, video, podcast, infographic, reels, slides, social, and blog), then pushes it across 300+ sites that AI models already trust. You get the same message, everywhere it needs to be.
The Ampifire team has put together a brilliant guide breaking down this exact process, including the 5 citation signals you need, the 3 big sites that get cited most, and step-by-step implementation.
If you'd rather have someone walk you through how this works for your specific brand, the Ampifire team is doing free 30-minute strategy calls this month.
Book yours here.
4th June | London
We are hosting a FREE one-day strategy workshop for ambitious DTC brands.
What to expect:
Spaces are limited to 35, and these always fill up fast.
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