Building a DTC Brand From the Ground Up | Tracey Wallace of Doris Sleep

Cara Hogan
The Empowered Marketer
2 min readJun 19, 2019

Launching a new brand from scratch is incredibly challenging.

No one knows who you are; no one knows the value of your products; and you have to acquire an entirely new audience of buyers. But it can be done, and done well.

We’ve all seen the digitally native vertical brands appear out of nowhere and dominate the market. But what does it look like when one of those brands is just getting started?

Tracey Wallace has been in the ecommerce world for nearly a decade, but she’s a first-time founder. She launched Doris Sleep, an ethically-made pillow company, just last year while still working at her previous role at Big Commerce. But she had years of experience working at Naturally Curly, an early content and commerce haircare company, as well as Shoptiques, a YCombinator fashion company.

Despite that, Doris Sleep was a whole new ballgame. However, Tracey explained that the business was really in her blood.

In this exclusive interview, Tracey shares:

  • Why it’s important to tell the story of a brand that is female-founded, made in the US, and third-generation family owned
  • Why Facebook advertising is overrated
  • Why she changed her product names based on customer feedback
  • …and much more.

Listen to the Episode

Enjoying this episode? Subscribe to The Empowered Marketer on your favorite platform:
iTunes | Spotify | Stitcher | SoundCloud

Want to learn more about Doris Sleep? Visit www.dorissleep.com.

--

--

Cara Hogan
The Empowered Marketer

Host of The Empowered Marketer and Marketing Unboxed. Content marketer @GetZaius. Grammar enthusiast, rock climber, and surfer.