Building a successful direct-to-consumer brand requires more than just a great product—it demands strategic thinking, disciplined growth, and genuine customer connection. Bobby DeMars, founder and CEO of Blind Barrels, scaled his whiskey subscription business using five key principles that any entrepreneur can apply to their venture.
Step 1: Identify an Underserved Consumer Gap
Before launching any DTC brand, entrepreneurs should ask themselves: Where is there a genuine need that isn’t being met? DeMars discovered his gap during COVID when he couldn’t find blind whiskey tastings anywhere, despite loving the unbiased discovery experience.
Founders should look for experiences or products that they personally want but can’t find. If they’re frustrated by this gap, chances are others are too. Smart entrepreneurs avoid oversaturated markets and instead find the white space where consumer needs aren’t being fulfilled.
Step 2: Create an Experience, Not Just a Product
Blind Barrels doesn’t just ship whiskey samples—they’ve built an entire discovery experience. Each shipment includes QR codes leading to detailed reveal pages, gamified tasting challenges, and direct access to purchase full bottles at distillery prices.
Successful brands think beyond their core product. They consider how to add layers of engagement, education, or entertainment that make their offering shareable and interactive. Their goal is creating anticipation for what comes next, not just satisfaction with what they’ve delivered.
Step 3: Plan a Financial Foundation
Many businesses fail because they don’t properly calculate their true costs or growth requirements. DeMars emphasizes understanding not just product costs, but overhead, packaging, fulfillment, and marketing expenses. Then determine what growth rate covers these costs while leaving room for reinvestment.
Entrepreneurs must create detailed financial projections that account for all their fixed and variable costs—not just product expenses, but overhead, packaging, fulfillment, and marketing. Once they understand their true costs, they should identify the minimum growth rate needed to sustain operations and the maximum rate their infrastructure can handle.
Step 4: Set Smart Growth Targets
Blind Barrels targets 15% quarterly growth, which it finds is enough to cover expenses and fuel expansion, but not so aggressive as to overwhelm its supply chain. The team has also set a 30% maximum growth ceiling to prevent operational breakdown.
Companies should establish both minimum and maximum growth targets from the start. Growing too fast can be as dangerous as growing too slowly. Supply chains, customer service, and quality control all need time to scale properly. Founders should set boundaries that protect their operational integrity.
Step 5: Build Community Through Personal Connection
The real secret to Blind Barrels’ low churn rate is genuine community building. DeMars personally handles customer service calls, conducts live tastings, and remains accessible to members, creating loyalty that transcends the product itself.
Business owners need to make themselves accessible to their customers. Whether through social media, live events, or direct customer service, personal connection builds the kind of loyalty that sustains long-term growth. They should treat their customers as community members, not transactions.
Successful DTC scaling requires businesses to identify real gaps, create engaging experiences, plan sustainable growth, and build authentic relationships. Following these five steps gives companies the foundation to build a loyal, growing customer base without relying on debt or outside funding.
5 Steps to Scale a Direct-to-Consumer Program Transcript
Bobby DeMars (0:01)
Hi, I’m Bobby DeMars. I am the founder and CEO of Blind Barrels, and I’m going to talk to you about how we’ve successfully scaled our small business. Anytime you’re starting a direct-to-consumer brand, the first thing to do is identify where the consumer gap is—where is that need? There are needs that are being fulfilled and are completely oversaturated. The way that we found our need was when I discovered blind tastings from my buddy during COVID, and I loved it. I had never done it with whiskey; I’d only done it with wine. I wanted to go have more of that experience, but when I went out trying to find it, I couldn’t. In my heart of hearts, I felt like I couldn’t be the only one who, now that I’ve experienced this, wants to experience it even more.
Bobby DeMars (0:44)
So, the first thing was identifying that gap and then figuring out why it exists. In our case, it’s the three-tier system. The alcohol space is heavily restricted; we can’t just pour whiskey into a bottle and send it out to places. You need to have all sorts of partnerships. Ultimately, when we created this, it wasn’t so much that we just wanted to create a double-blind tasting. We wanted to give people access to small American craft distillers.
Bobby DeMars (1:07)
Step 2: Create a Unique Experience. In creating our direct-to-consumer brand, the one thing that we wanted to create wasn’t just something that was high-end. At the end of the day, we are creating an experience for our members. There’s a QR code that takes them to a reveal page that tells them everything about the brand: the age, the proof, the type of whiskey, the aromas, the tasting notes, and the finish. Then, it gives them the ability to buy that bottle for the same price as if they were at the distillery. Ultimately, that’s really what lowered our churn rate—people getting access to these brands. There’s a FOMO element to it. We’ve also added a game component that acts as another engagement tool. People can guess the age, the proof, and the whiskey type, and they’ll get a score that tells them how accurate their palate is. We always say great whiskey is meant to be shared. We got so many emails about how fun the game was and how they couldn’t wait to share it with people. At the end of the day, creating that engagement creates loyalty and a shareable component.
Bobby DeMars (2:02)
Step 3: Prepare for Scaling Challenges. One of the things for direct-to-consumer that’s difficult is actually scaling your brand. You have to do planning to figure out what fixed costs you need—not just for your product, but for overhead, internet, and employees. Ultimately, what is your targeted growth rate that is not only going to pay for that, but give you enough profit to continue to reinvest in the company and grow even more? You have to pay for packaging, bottles, caps, and all these other things. We run into distilleries all the time that have been around for 10 years, yet they only have 80 barrels because they never scaled properly. That’s probably because they didn’t start properly; they didn’t raise the amount of money they needed to actually build out a marketing plan. When you have a certain amount of success, you need to reinvest it. We figured out what that threshold was to determine what would get us to our initial goals and what would get us to our long-term goals.
Bobby DeMars (3:01)
Step 4: Set Smart Growth Targets. When you’re launching and starting your direct-to-consumer brand, you have to have a plan for setting growth targets. Our initial plan was to grow 15% each quarter. For us, that was sustainable; it covers our overhead and gives us money to play with to expand into other marketing opportunities. But there’s also a maximum growth rate that we set, which was 30%. Every time I would talk to somebody, I’d say, “Well, we don’t want to grow too fast,” and they’d reply, “But isn’t that a nice problem to have?” It can actually become a pretty big problem. What if you are growing at that rate and you haven’t spent the money on the supply chain? All of that takes time. Just like whiskey in a barrel takes time, supply chains take time, and throwing more money at it by taking on debt doesn’t necessarily solve that problem.
Bobby DeMars (3:44)
Step 5: Loyalty & Community. Once you’ve established your brand and you’re in the marketplace, at the end of the day, you have to cultivate loyalty and community. I’d love to say that it’s our high-end packaging and our curated lineup, but the secret sauce in our company is FOMO. People don’t want to miss out on what the next lineup is. If you’re a brand that has only one SKU out there, and you’re not reinventing anything or doing anything untraditional, you’re going to stagnate and you’re not going to grow. Because of that, we’ve built a community of whiskey lovers. We do live tastings with our members, and I am super accessible. If somebody contacts the customer service line, they get me. Not only does it put out fires faster, but it makes our members that much more loyal.
Bobby DeMars (4:29)
The brands that I’ve seen that people fall in love with—like Penelope or Corbin Cash—do this. They make themselves accessible to their members, their consumers, and really, their fans. That creates sustainability for your brand. At the end of the day, you have to create engagement and loyalty. A big part of our success—maybe the cornerstone of our success—is that we built a community. You can find us on all our handles at @BlindBarrels, whether it’s YouTube or Instagram. If you guys have questions, or if you’re a startup and you need help, I really love the entrepreneur community as well. Just like I’m accessible to our members, I’m happy to make myself accessible to you.
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