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In today’s newsletter,
Why most AI ad tools still miss the mark
The free Amazon feature most sellers miss
You're paying duties at retail price on every order from Asia. There's a fix.
How one team launched 30+ landing pages without developers
While You Were Building
1.Sol de Janeiro stalls after founder exit
2.TikTok Shop SMB sales jumped 66%
3.Nourish raises $100M on GLP-1 aftercare
AI Launch Codes: Your AI Doesn't Need More Skills. It Needs YOUR Skills.
This issue takes 2 minutes to read.
Check out our DTC tool stack here
Let’s dive into it👇
Winning, on-brand ads—without endless prompting
Most AI creative tools fall short for one simple reason. You can generate tons of ads, but they aren’t up to par.
Refining copy, adjusting layouts, or nudging a CTA into place shouldn’t require rewriting prompts over and over. It slows teams down and breaks the creative process.
With Hightouch Ad Studio, AI gets you 90% of the way there. For the final 10%, use a built-in editor to quickly refine copy and design, or export directly to Figma for seamless collaboration with your design team.
Move faster without losing control. Every ad, exactly how you want it.
Amazon
The free Amazon feature most sellers miss
Amazon hides a better version of your product page that most sellers never find.
It's called Premium A+ Content — full-width images, carousels, video, and a mobile-optimized layout.
That last part matters because 70% of Amazon shoppers are on their phone.
Brands pay up to $500K/year for this. Seller Central accounts get it free. You just have to turn it on.
Mindful Goods founder Daniela Boltzmann has seen it drive up to a 1,080% increase in orders.
How to unlock it
Amazon requires a Brand Story on your listing plus five approved A+ submissions. Quality doesn't matter yet — a blank placeholder image works fine.
Add a Brand Story to your listing (placeholder image is fine)
Submit that same image as an A+ content page
Once approved, duplicate and resubmit it — five times total
Wait one week, then return to A+ Content
You'll see a new option: Premium.
Credit: Steve Chou
Fulfillment Friday
You're paying duties at retail price on every order from Asia. There's a fix.
Tariffs on Chinese goods are sitting around 35% for most D2C categories. Every order shipped direct to a US customer clears at that rate on the full retail price. That adds up fast.
B2B2C is a different way to structure the same shipment. Instead of sending individual parcels direct from Asia, you consolidate into one bulk order to the US, clear customs at wholesale value, and deliver the last mile from there.
The tariff rate stays the same. The value you pay it on gets cut in half.
Retail price | $100 |
Wholesale price | $50 |
Effective tariff rate (most D2C goods) | ~35% |
DTC parcel — duty per unit | $100 x 35% = $35 |
B2B2C bulk — duty per unit | $50 x 35% = $17.50 |
Savings on duty alone | 50% |
That's before lower brokerage fees and fewer stockouts.
Delivery is faster too. Air freight from Hong Kong to a US cross-dock runs 5 to 10 days door to door. Direct ocean parcel is 30 to 40 days.
Won't work for every brand. You need volume and a real gap between what you sell it for and what you paid for it. But if you're in apparel, electronics, or home goods, the math is worth a look.
This guest post was written by Nick Bartlett | Co-Founder @ Wayfindr — Asia's leading 4PL for global ecom brands
Your ads ran overnight. Nobody was watching. Except Viktor.
One brand built 30+ landing pages through Viktor without a single developer.
Each page mapped to a specific ad group. All deployed within hours. Viktor wrote the code and shipped every one from a Slack message.
That same team has Viktor monitoring ad accounts across the portfolio and posting performance briefs before the day starts. One colleague. Always on. Across every account.
While You Were Building
1.Sol de Janeiro stalls after founder exit
Sales slowed and the founder left in the same window. The post-acquisition curve for hot body-care brands keeps bending the same direction once the founder voice is gone.
via Business of Fashion • Read more
2.TikTok Shop SMB sales jumped 66%
U.S. small-business sales on TikTok Shop grew 66% in 2025 even as enterprise brands swarmed the platform. The small-seller advantage held one more year.
via Modern Retail • Read more
3.Nourish raises $100M on GLP-1 aftercare
Menlo, Thrive, Index, and JPMorgan backed Nourish's bet on nutrition for GLP-1 patients. Capital is flowing to category-adjacent plays around the drug, not the drug itself.
via Business of Fashion • Read more
Your AI Doesn't Need More Skills. It Needs YOUR Skills.
Every AI agent essential has 3 Pillars.
Context - The files your agent reads every session so it knows who you are, what you sell, and who you sell to.
To solve the context problem, we taught you how to build Persistent Memory for your AI Agents. Files the agent reads every session so it knows your business cold.Tools - This is what lets your agent interact with the systems that run your business. Shopify. Meta. Klaviyo. Google Docs. Email. Tools let the AI take action, not just think.
We covered them here: Shopify and Meta Just Went Official on Claude.3. Skills - These are the SOPs. The instructions that let your agent take repeatable actions the same way every time.
We've shared over a 100 skills in this issue : Your Shopify Store Now Reports To You Automatically. The inventory analyst. The SEO auditor. The creative specialist.
If you have implemented this correctly, you are already ahead of 99% of the people.
But here is the problem, the skills i have shared are generic. They are not build for your business. They give you a head start, but they won’t take you to the finish line.
You need to make your own skills. And its easier than you think.
What a skill actually is
A skill is an SOP for your agent.
You already use SOPs in your business. The one you wrote for your VA on how to process a return. The Loom for your fulfillment partner. The Notion doc that walks a new hire through the daily morning checks.
A skill is the same thing, written for your AI instead.
It tells the agent what to do. In what order. With what data. And what to do with the output.
For example, a weekly Shopify revenue skill might say:
Go to Shopify.
Pull last 7 days of sales and compare to the previous 7 days.
Identify the top 5 SKUs by revenue.
Flag any SKU with declining order velocity.
Write a one-page memo with the headline number, the top movers, the at-risk SKUs, and one action to take this week.
That's it. Step by step. Repeatable. The same way every time.
A generic skill will still produce a decent output. But it wasn't built for your Shopify, your SKUs, or your KPIs.
A custom skill makes your agent a specialist. The steps are yours.
Build Your First Custom Skill in 30 Minutes
There are three ways to build a custom skill
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