Subscribe to DTC Newsletter – https://dtcnews.link/signup Most list-growth advice assumes you have a website people visit. Cove Soda doesn’t. They sell zero sugar soda in roughly 7,000 retail doors with no real DTC store, which means no site traffic, no purchase pop-ups, and no easy email capture. Zoe Kahn runs marketing for Cove as interim…
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Building clean beauty before clean beauty was even a category — that’s the magic ✨
On The Kara Goldin Show, I sit down with Sasha Plavsic, Founder of ILIA Beauty — a brand that helped redefine what modern makeup could be.
We talk about how Sasha turned her own skin struggles into a category-shaping brand, why she set out to bridge the gap between natural and prestige beauty, and what it took to launch ILIA with just six lip tints in Vancouver. We also get into product discipline, the overuse of the term “clean beauty,” scaling without compromising standards, and staying creative after acquisition.
If you’re interested in learning what it takes to build before the market is ready, trust your instincts before the world catches up, or create a beauty brand that actually lasts — check out the interview on my podcast. You can find it here or anywhere you listen to podcasts 🎧
Are you interested in sponsoring and advertising on The Kara Goldin Show, which is now in the Top 1% of Entrepreneur podcasts in the world? Let me know by contacting me at karagoldin@gmail.com. You can also find me @KaraGoldin on all networks.
To learn more about Sasha Plavsic and ILIA Beauty:
https://www.iliabeauty.com/
https://www.instagram.com/iliabeauty/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/sasha-plavsic-0355b58/
Sponsored By:
LinkedIn Jobs – Head to LinkedIn.com/KaraGoldin to post your job for free.
Naturium – Give your skin the affordable, luxurious glow up it deserves. Go to Naturium.com/KARAGOLDIN for 10% off your first purchase today.
AT&T Business – Switch to AT&T Business at business.att.com
Odoo – Discover how Odoo can take your business to the next level by visiting Odoo.com
Upwork – Visit Upwork.com right now and post your job for free.
Check out our website to view this episode’s show notes: https://karagoldin.com/podcast/858
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Kresse Wesling CBE is the co-founder at Elvis and Kresse, the designers, manufacturers, and sellers of their range of sustainable and ethically produced luxury accessories and homewares. Founded in 2005 to rescue London’s decommissioned fire-hose, they now sell via their Shopify site and wholesale. They donate 50% of their profits to charity – and have…
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In the past two years, businesses have been trying to fit large language models (LLMs) into support, analytics, development, and internal automation like never before. Along with the increasing adoption of AI technology, another trend is gaining momentum — cybercriminals are taking advantage of the disconnect between assumptions about LLMs and their actual characteristics. In…
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Anthropic recently told its growth team to hire more product managers, not fewer. The reason, as reported in industry coverage, was that Claude Code had quietly turned its engineering org into a team that ships at roughly three times its actual headcount, and the bottleneck moved from the integrated development environment (IDE) to the people…
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Few areas of digital marketing have exploded in recent years as much as affiliate marketing. What’s more, it’s actually proving effective: eMarketer in September said that affiliate marketing would drive more than $210 billion in US e-commerce sales that year. By 2028, that figure is expected to hit over $287 billion.But with that growth comes…
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Long-horizon reasoning exposes a core weakness in AI agents: context windows fill up fast, and retrieval pipelines return noise instead of signal. To solve this, researchers at the National University of Singapore developed MRAgent, a framework that abandons the static “retrieve-then-reason” approach. Instead, it uses a mechanism that allows an agent to dynamically develop its…
Read MoreMost e-commerce agencies are focused on projects — but what if your business could thrive on a completely different model? Maier Bianchi, Founder of BEMEIR strategic consultancy agency for ecommerce, reveals how a focus on long-term value, community, and AI-driven innovation is transforming the agency landscape—and why this shift is crucial for merchants and service providers alike.
In this episode, Maier shares his inspiring journey from founding BEMEIR in 2014 to becoming a community-driven leader in the e-commerce space. He discusses how his agency helps clients unlock billions in value by prioritizing trust, transparency, and strategic guidance over quick wins. Maier and host Jason Nyhus dive into the power of community—highlighting the significance of industry events, human connection, and shared purpose in a digital world that often feels disconnected. His insights on how to choose the right platform based on real business needs rather than stereotypes challenge conventional thinking and provide clarity amid the platform chaos.
They cover the emerging concept of agentic commerce—where AI and automation layer seamlessly into customer experiences to create smarter, more personalized websites. Maier breaks down how AI not only revolutionizes development but also enhances site experiences, making them more flexible and user-focused. He shares practical approaches to platform evaluation, the importance of aligned goals, and how to avoid costly pitfalls that can derail long-term success. Whether you’re a merchant, agency owner, or developer, you’ll learn how to position yourself for future growth by embracing innovation, community, and trust.
This episode underscores why understanding your true business needs and valuing human connections are more critical than ever. As the digital landscape evolves rapidly—with AI, remote work, and new community dynamics shaping the industry—Maier offers a compelling vision of a more humanized, purpose-driven e-commerce world, and rethinking how you build and deliver digital experiences.
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An endpoint agent cannot report its own absence. The 2026 Axonius Actionability Report, conducted with the Ponemon Institute and surveying 662 IT and security professionals, put a number on a gap SOC teams have worked around for years. Across the Axonius customer base, 12.7% of devices in a 298,000-device median inventory are missing their expected…
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OpenAI is announcing a limited preview of its newest frontier AI model GPT-5.6 family, which comes in three variants: Sol, Terra, and Luna. Sol is for the hardest problems, such as complex coding and security research; Terra is for high-volume business tasks like customer support, internal tools and document analysis; and Luna is for faster,…
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