Pinned Tweet
Bali → China → Dubai → back in Spain.
A few years ago, this brand existed only in my head. Now I’m standing in a warehouse with thousands of pieces in stock and every seconds orders to fulfil.
I go to bed excited to wake up.
And all I can think about is how much bigger we can build this.
We’re just getting started.
🚨❌Shopify gives out millions in capital to merchants all over the world. But a 2 year old luxury brand with 31% returning rate and zero fraud? apparently that’s a risk.
Hopefully get some help from my connections 🙌🏽
Today Shopify put a hold on our payouts 10% of every sale locked for 120 days because of “increased chargeback risk”.
6 weeks before Black Friday, the moment we worked the whole year for.
We didn’t even hit the threshold.
2 years ago i started this brand with nothing but an idea. today we’re a luxury fashion brand selling worldwide, with $10M in sales on Shopify.
31% of our customers come back to buy again, and our return rate is 3% in fashion, where most brands see 20 to 30%.
We never had a single hold.
And we run this tighter than almost anyone on their platform. our customers are international, they travel and live abroad, so billing in one country, shipping in another and an IP from a third is normal for us. that’s why every medium and high risk order is reviewed by hand. this month 29 orders were flagged, all 29 were checked, and not one was fraud.
Every flagged order goes on automatic hold and nothing ships before it’s reviewed. our team checks held orders every business day, and if a customer can’t be verified the order is cancelled and refunded. you can only buy what’s physically in our warehouse, with stock updated daily. if there’s a delay we contact the customer first with a confirmed ship date, if we can’t restock within 14 days they get a full refund, and every chargeback is answered with full evidence.
We sent all of this to their team and still a system that never really looked at us decided to punish us. We pay for Shopify Plus and not one human can explain it or take it back.
This isn’t risk management. This is destroying the brands that do everything right instead of no shippers or blackhats.
@tobi @harleyf @Shopify you say Shopify is built for founders. Prove it. Get someone to look at this today and lift the hold before Black Friday please.
Ecom twitter, if this ever happened to you, say it under this post. i need your help to get this seen. a repost means everything right now 🤝
everybody talks about revenue, nobody talks about how it feels to build something unreal 🎟️
felt every word of this one @samposthuma (and branding on point @javizavalaa)
Hey @finkd @Meta
We were genuinely honored to be invited to test Meta’s new $550/month Meta One subscription.
But what followed has been an absolute disaster.
We’ve built an 8-figure fashion brand, with over 200,000 followers. Our account had been verified for TWO YEARS without a single issue.
Then we switched to your new subscription.
Our blue badge disappeared because of what appears to be a bug in Meta’s own subscription backend. Four weeks later, it’s still gone.
We’ve spoken to more than 15 support agents. Nobody can fix it. Nobody takes ownership.
Even your own AI support gives completely contradictory answers. One minute our subscription is active, the next our verification is rejected, then pending, then waitlisted.
Meanwhile, we’re paying $550/month for supposedly premium support.
This isn’t an eligibility issue. We were already verified for two years. The problem started when we followed Meta’s invitation to switch subscriptions.
All we’re asking is for someone with actual technical access to investigate the backend, correct our subscription status, and restore the verification we already had.
Maybe it’s time to spend a little less energy pushing AI and a little more fixing the infrastructure your businesses depend on.
Premium pricing means nothing without premium service.
Quince did over $1B and never discounts. The unit economics are near-flawless.
But every product page prices them against a brand people actually want.
That’s not pricing power it’s arbitrage, and arbitrage caps your margin at whatever the gap allows.
You can raise a price.
You can’t raise a comparison.
You’re confusing brand existence with brand dominance.
A brand isn’t defined by how many people recognize your name.
It’s defined by what people associate with you, what they say about you when you’re not in the room, and why they choose you over everyone else.
Revenue can be bought through ads. Attention can be rented. But genuine loyalty and reputation have to be earned.
Marketing is what you say about yourself. Branding is what the market believes about you.
Rolex didn’t become a brand when the world recognized it. It became a globally recognized brand because of what it built.
Recognition is the result of building a brand. Not the definition of one.
See too many people justifying their lack of success by saying "I have a real brand though"
First off, you don't. None of us do
Secondly, how do you define a real brand?
Is it through repeat purchase rate? If so, the DR demon supp brands have you beat
Is it LTV? Again, DR demons have you beat
Revenue? DR demons again
Is it pretty images on a website? Everyone can have that with a few clicks
In my mind having a real brand is simply that you are associated with something and that association sits deep in the collective conscious of the consumer market
Again, none of us on here have this. I don't care how cool your brand guide is
Mcdonalds has this, Coca Cola has this, Rolex has this
The people I see coping about 'brand' are almost always just bad at ads and funnels and they need some way to make themselves feel better instead of just facing reality
Skill issue
🚨 DUBAI BUSINESS OWNERS, BE CAREFUL.
We just lost $5,000 to what appears to be a sophisticated Dubai trade licence renewal scam.
We received what looked like an official invoice from Meydan Free Zone.
We paid. We even received a payment confirmation.
Everything looked legitimate.
Only afterward did we discover that our $5,000 had been sent to a UK bank account, not Dubai.
The invoice. The emails. The confirmation. Everything was designed to look real.
If you’re renewing your UAE business licence, NEVER trust an invoice or payment confirmation alone. Verify everything directly with your free zone.
Sharing this so other founders don’t make the same mistake.
$5,000 lost. Lesson learned.
Please repost to warn others.
Uniqlo is cheap and never feels cheap.
Quince is cheap and won’t stop reminding you it’s cheaper.
One earns the repeat purchase on identity.
The other earns it on price until a cheaper comparison chart runs on them.
Retention tells you which brand you actually built.
Always think about the long-term building.
In 2018, Banksy stunned the art world when his famous Girl With Balloon sold for $1.4 million at a Sotheby’s auction. Just seconds after the winning bid was announced, a shredder secretly built into the painting’s frame suddenly activated, slicing the artwork into strips as shocked bidders watched in disbelief. The partially destroyed piece was later renamed Love Is in the Bin, turning an already valuable painting into one of the most unforgettable moments in modern art history. But the story didn’t end there. In 2021, the shredded masterpiece returned to auction and sold for an incredible $25.4 million, proving that Banksy’s audacious stunt had transformed the artwork into something even more valuable.
