From Crisis to $20M DTC: Dario Markovic’s E-Commerce Turnaround at Eric Javits

When COVID shut down retail, Eric Javits; a 35+ year luxury hat brand  faced an existential crisis. With 98% of revenue tied to wholesale partners like Nordstrom, the business was on the verge of collapse. Enter Dario Markovic, who quickly launched a Shopify store, pivoted the company into e-commerce, and within weeks generated millions in online sales. Fast forward five years, and EricJavits.com now drives over $20 million annually in DTC revenue.

In this episode, host Adam Callinan dives deep with Dario on:

• The pivot that saved a legacy brand during COVID.
• How he transformed Eric Javits from wholesale-dependent to a thriving DTC powerhouse.
• Why finance discipline + marketing obsession shaped his growth playbook.
• The 80/20 principle applied to ads, CRO, inventory, and product focus.
• Balancing global retail expansion (South Korea, Japan, Europe) with e-commerce scale.
• The tools, systems, and mindset shifts that drive sustainable growth.
• How being “obsessed with the details” separates successful operators from the rest.

Whether you’re a founder, e-commerce operator, or just fascinated by brand turnarounds, this conversation is packed with insights on resilience, growth strategy, and building a modern legacy brand.

👉 Explore Eric Javits: www.ericjavits.com

👉 Explore Pentane: www.pentane.com

👉 Explore the Growth Mavericks Podcast: www.growthmaverickspodcast.com

Creators and Guests

Host

Adam Callinan

Adam Callinan is the founder of Pentane, a financial and advertising command center that empowers brands to drive predictable revenue and intentional profit. Previously, Adam co-founded BottleKeeper, a bootstrapped consumer brand that scaled to $8M in sales within three years – without employees – and was later acquired in 2021 as an eight-figure business with a team of four, marking Adam's second successful exit.

What is Growth Mavericks?

This podcast dives deep into the tactical moves that drive business success, as well as the mental and physical resilience required to sustain it.

Hosted by Adam Callinan, a seasoned entrepreneur with multiple exits, an avid outdoorsman, and an family man with crystal-clear priorities, each episode unpacks real-world challenges, actionable insights, and the mental and physical disciplines that fuel long-term personal and professional growth.

Whether you’re scaling a startup or refining your mindset, disrupting your default is how business and life strike a balance.

Adam Callinan (00:55)
Our conversation today is with Dario Markovic. He is the CEO of EricJavits.com, which is a 35 plus year old hat brand that he did not start, but he did come into it at a really important time. And that was in early COVID 2020 when the business was entirely dependent on wholesale and retail revenue. They literally had no e-commerce business and they were... ⁓

on the verge of being upside down because of the fact that all of retail had effectively shut down. So their entire revenue model, basically came to a complete halt. He popped up a Shopify store and saved the company by turning what was millions of dollars in wholesale into an online business. mean, quite literally generated millions of dollars of revenue on this, on this brand in a really short period of time. Like

And that saved the company. He eventually became CEO of the business and a partner in the company. And now five years later, that business does over $20 million in just e-commerce sales, which is an insane expansion over the course of five years, a lot of which was obviously during COVID. Dario has a really significant and defined growth strategy that includes loads of optimization and focus. He is really obsessed with the details and the testing

and focusing on the 20 % that drives the 80 % to really move the needle, which includes all sorts of things outside of e-commerce like retail expansions and stores into South Korea and Japan and Europe and even in the US. it's a really interesting conversation with someone that has taken something from, you know, on the verge of disaster into a really incredible success story online. So really enjoy this conversation with Dario and I hope you do too.

Adam Callinan (02:32)
How did you find your way to ecommerce? You can go back as far as you want to go back.

Dario Markovic (02:38)
Sure. Well, obviously, you know, back in school back back in pre university or prior to university. You know, my kind of a teacher as well as the key you should you know, you should do marketing, it seems like you like it. It's it's something that

you you're excelling and perhaps you should look into, you know, giving classes, should come, you know, I think it was a university teacher teaching pre-university classes back in Europe. And I was like, yeah, cool. I like it. It's kind of a thing. I ended up going financial way, like, you know, into finance back in Switzerland. And

Not sure why like I can't explain it up to until today But I was always like I really loved marketing, you know, watch all the you know ads on TV even though I was like I was trying to skip them and and and And but still I went to this boring topic. I know, you know, it's kind of boring stuff not as a you know, I'd say sexy or exciting in a sense So

After I finished, kind of worked in that area and I was kind of drawn into digital marketing then. started to, obviously with Facebook and all the channels started to be a big thing. Google early on that we're talking about 2010, 2012 and yeah, it's where I kind of slowly obviously there's

You know, and the e-commerce wasn't involved at all back in Europe. ⁓ It's not even compared now, it's developed as in the US. ⁓ But I was always kind of looking over the ocean, we say that in Europe, ⁓ in what's going on in digital marketing space. And that kind of lead me through digital marketing and led me kind of through e-commerce. And ⁓ I was obviously doing certain... ⁓

Drop shipping kind of everyone really starts off where you don't have ideas. You don't want to do ⁓ and ⁓ then I kind of met my current wife. I am on a trip and as kind of going for a few months to South Africa and met her and ⁓ you know, I decided to move on to South America and ⁓ there's where we kind of started, you know, hey,

We started many things, but one of those was kind e-commerce. And generally focused on...

on our own brands, had a kind of a fashion academy, which is not directly e-commerce, but we sold digital services online, which was like having a Shopify store promoting those and getting those folks to sign up and then having classes. And that's kind of where we started. And then we had even more ⁓ started into offering or doing other e-commerce stores into jewelry, into other fields. And that's where I kind of started

e-commerce and my obviously my kind of strength and my kind of you know what I was drawn in wasn't obviously coding or designing it was more you know Facebook Google and yeah that's got I know it's a long separate path like you know spend a few minutes too much explaining the background but that's really where I came in it's and yeah ⁓

Adam Callinan (06:19)
No, that's great.

So you.

So you met someone did you was that fateful meeting you said in South Africa or South America?

Dario Markovic (06:35)
Yeah, no, so I met my wife in South Africa. ⁓ Yeah, obviously she was a lawyer. Like she she was like doing law and I was like doing finance. It's like nothing to do with e-commerce. Right. I was strong in it to start to do back in Switzerland. Start. You know, I was already doing some hustling. He would say I could trying things on my own. But but it

Adam Callinan (06:39)
South Africa, got it.

Perfect. Yeah, of course.

Dario Markovic (07:05)
You know, that's where I kind of moved to South America and that's where we kind of hate. You know, we have to do something. Let's do something to, you know, there's a lot of opportunities, obviously, over there as well. And that's how we kind of kicked off and, you know, in the world.

And it was obviously part of testing magenta. was like, all these kind of stores back then, ⁓ they weren't far as well as now, in my opinion, like Shopify's really kind of gone far away. was like, tried so many different platforms, Presto Shop, was like, back then there was so many platforms. ⁓ So yeah, it's kind of where I started.

Adam Callinan (07:47)
Yeah, we launched Bottle Keeper in 2013 on WordPress with WooCommerce. That was kind of like the before Shopify was really a thing yet. I mean, was clear it was a company, but it wasn't certainly what it was today. And when we migrated, it was a life altering experience.

Dario Markovic (07:53)
yeah.

Oh yeah, I managed many stores, lot of, you know, lot of, we run basically PR agency that we kind of had a lot of people that had this brand. was like, you know, he can't do all sorts of digital marketing, so just PR. And that's why a lot of brands back then, again, 2015, 2016, they had the WordPress WooCommerce.

And was such a headache. it was like, you know, don't you want to do a Shopify? It's not as in the US as easy. do a checkout. There's like, you don't have a checkout provider or you have, but you have to go through so many hurdles. So but yeah, if you look back, it's so much easier for someone to just, you know, get started and shop. They have no idea, you know, and if you throw in the eye and everything else, I mean.

Adam Callinan (08:50)
It is.

Dario Markovic (08:58)
today if you're starting, I mean, 24 hours you have an amazing store up and running compared to like 2012 or 2011.

Adam Callinan (09:07)
Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah, I mean, I think we we did that migration in like 2016. And it was it was right about the time I realized that you had to actually managing bandwidth when you were hosting your own like WordPress site. And, you know, we had some like huge upswing in sales and everything turned off and it's like, Oh, that's the thing I have to do. Okay, I gotta find a better solution to that. But how do you look at

I mean, you mentioned having a background in finance. What kind of finance were you doing? Was it like capital markets or investment advisory or what kind of finance stuff were you into?

Dario Markovic (09:43)
And pretty much kind

of, you know, starting straight from bookshamping to controlling, you know, back into it. it's very, very dry, I'd say. ⁓ I'll say my goal is always kind of, you know, into, you know, finance markets, banks, but

Adam Callinan (09:50)
cool.

Dario Markovic (10:04)
quickly I realized it's not what I kind of liked back then. And then I was leaning here after I wanna go back into marketing and then I was like, hey, back in doing a kind of focusing major in marketing wasn't like an option. It's like I hated school to its core.

I was always doing the minimum. I have to do five steps but one step I'm fine. I just did the one step. Once I was done, was never going back. There's nothing in the world that brings me back. It's really self-taught on everything digital. I have this background, obviously.

It helps me a lot today but yeah I haven't looked back since what you know many years ago or 15 plus years I haven't looked back into you know

Adam Callinan (11:00)
Yeah. ⁓

Dario Markovic (11:06)
doing and obviously I get the sense and I know the metrics, I know how to read very well, which is a great thing. Same with my wife, she finished law but she practiced it maybe for a year, year and a half and she's like, I hate it. I don't know why, she did a master as well.

Adam Callinan (11:08)
Of course.

You

Dario Markovic (11:32)
She went even deeper as I know, then she's like, realized, you know, I hate this, but, you know, but yeah.

Adam Callinan (11:36)
Yeah.

It's a unique way to get to e-commerce. Most founders in e-commerce and operators in e-commerce don't have a finance background, which obviously I have a very particular interest in. How does that, how has that, and you mentioned that that was helped. I have to imagine that that was a helpful thing. How do you, yeah, how do you apply, like how do you think of that, having that finance background as you're looking at like e-com data, you know, whether from the last companies or or Eric Javits today.

Dario Markovic (11:57)
yeah, huge.

You know, I think you have to add to this that, know, come from, at least I grew up in a country where, you know, the thoughts about like finance are a little bit different than, and I think I would say Europe in general, it's very more cautious. It's, it's, which I think it's, you know, it's, it's in a of cases, it can be as an advantage, but it's a lot of cases, there's disadvantage, but it's like,

you know, being very, very conservative with, with finance, like, you know, which, which takes risk away. And it obviously wasn't very helpful, like going into myself and my wife, were usually very, you know, structured, very healthy compared to competitors. ⁓ But at same time,

I mean, bottom line, it helps me lot. teaches you certain discipline about finance that I can see even today with other brands or business partners that you think totally different than someone who doesn't have the finance background. I think in the financial space, you think ahead, obviously, I guess we just have that.

⁓ different way of thinking. So I think it definitely helped you in a lot of ways. It helps you a lot of ways. ⁓ But I think in a way, and that's my opinion, personally, I think just because in Europe, everything is more ⁓ conservative and slower and you have to be careful. ⁓

again, can help you in certain areas, but it can hinder you not being as, as we say in the ice states, it's like, hey, let's just do it, whatever happens, we go into depth, here's like definitely, it's like, oh, we can't do that, so we can't, it's like, take it safer. Yeah, that's kind of, I think I would say my...

Adam Callinan (14:19)
Yeah.

Dario Markovic (14:23)
my experience and see my advantages I had.

Adam Callinan (14:27)
Yeah, I I think most people would probably get the risk profiles of a business between, you know, across the pond and in the US are entirely different. And that's a massively cultural thing as well. I mean, we also have the downside of that here in the grind culture of working 28 million hours a week and that being a positive thing. Because every company is going to dent the universe or, you know, do the Steve Jobs. It's like, well, now like 99.9 % of them are not.

Dario Markovic (14:47)
Yes, well, yes.

Adam Callinan (14:57)
And that's okay. I built one. I built a beer bottle company. We did $60 million in sales. I was not denting universes, but I also was not working 28 million hours a week. So big cultural differences.

Dario Markovic (15:08)
Yeah,

yeah, totally. do. I do personally just I got into this culture. So I'm kind of going back now. Yeah. You know, in Switzerland, I'm just like, I can't accept it kind of, you know, hey, was I like this? What was I, you know, just maybe I'm still kind of young. I'm not saying you can't mix both. There's ways.

But I do think there's certain, if you have that energy around you and you have that, it does help you to move faster forward. I do think so. I do believe that ⁓ in general. yeah.

Adam Callinan (15:46)
Absolutely.

So if you lived, you went from Switzerland to South Africa to South America, how did you end up in the US?

Dario Markovic (15:57)
So that's a good question. So I met Eric Javits, company, MC, I'm a partner right now. And I met the partner in Chile. He's a Chilean, not by birth, but parents were Chileans. So he's kind of a celebrity in Chile. So he hired us. He hired us to, you know, pure TV shows, to events and, know, kind of

Adam Callinan (16:20)
Okay.

Dario Markovic (16:29)
to further expand his personal brand. And ⁓ he liked our work and we stayed in touch. And that's where I met Eric, ⁓ Javits personally as well. Back then we stayed in touch, just kind of, you know, like if I would meet you as a word, like, hey, know, all nice meeting you. Next time you come down to Chile, let's have a beer. And then COVID hit, I was like, I think March or April.

And I had no idea. was busy with other projects and they reached out to me saying, hey, Dari, we need some help here. I actually out to my wife and said, hey, we need some help with the brand. I knew about the brand. knew it was a known brand in the headspace.

celebrities and a lot of you know it's in the big stores and it's you know 35 years around so it's you know it has a certain name and I was like saying you know hey we have you know a lot of issues and we're like not unable to sell and we don't we might not have a lot of time can you help out and um this I kind of realized they didn't have a e-commerce store uh you know we were in 2020 it's like it's not like 20 years ago

Adam Callinan (17:52)
Yeah.

Dario Markovic (17:52)
And like if you don't have an e-commerce store, think, no, know, we're like most of our sales go, you know, I think Nordstrom by then was doing 70 % of the volume of the business. So they're pretty much owning the business in kind of in a different sense, right? If they would say, just say tomorrow we're not selling, like you don't have a business.

Adam Callinan (18:10)
Yeah.

Yeah, there's massive risk, risk

having that much of the revenue sitting in one spot. That's yeah.

Dario Markovic (18:17)
Exactly and

pretty much 98 % revenue was done by wholesale. what I kind got to say is ASAP Shopify store and set everything up and let's start to promote it. obviously I was kind of taking...

things as a cautious way to just kind of test because I was like the first few weeks of an e-commerce store. How do I know? There's no customer base. Like there's no pixel. Give just tell the pixel. There's nothing like zero. I was like, okay, you know, let's put some hundred, you know, a few hundred bucks. It just gets, let's get it started to see what's going on.

Adam Callinan (18:54)
Yeah, no history. Yeah

Dario Markovic (19:02)
And they were like looking at me and like, you know, I felt somebody said, and I didn't want to, they wouldn't do I say anything. And we started testing. I was like, great. think we spent it, you know, I don't remember what it was like, but not much. It was like, it 60 K or 70 K in sales for about two weeks, two and a half weeks.

And they're saying, you know, that they think it was like end of April, beginning of May, you know, I think, you know, we can't like, we can't do that long, I think a week or two out of business. It's like we need to sell like

millions to get it. Pretty much what happened is all their volume was cancelled by these big stores and they have consignment models. The consignment means they can ship the products back at any moment they want. If they haven't paid and that's beginning of the season, so they haven't paid, so they wouldn't pay those. You have all this upfront cost.

Adam Callinan (19:40)
Yeah, all the stores closed. Yeah.

Dario Markovic (20:00)
⁓ Inventory is beast and next time if I try to do business I have inventory. So if you have all that inventory and you have certain plans you have to finance that upfront.

And I think they haven't done anything kind of to let people go. Everything was still there. And I was like, OK, you know, I didn't know that. So we're doing it for a few weeks, certain initiatives. actually, we sold in about a month a few million of dollars. It kind of turned things around. And since then, kind of say, you want to join the team, you want to help us. know, obviously, I was like, hey, you know.

You know, still have a great business or businesses going on down there. And Chile is this much smaller market. I get it. it was a great thing. I was building for the past, I think, six years I was there.

There must be something, know, it's like they, okay, you you get this and that and come here and help us, you know, we can, we can get that to much bigger numbers as we're kind of joint. And ⁓ since then we're kind of, I don't know, growing with all its challenges, but yeah, that's the story.

Adam Callinan (21:21)
How did you go from no e-commerce to a few million dollars in revenue in a month or two? And maybe that made me my timeline is wrong, but that's incredible. Like what, tactically what happened?

Dario Markovic (21:28)
So.

Yeah, so I

think obviously it helped that the brand had a brand history. I think they missed hugely on not having an e-commerce store obviously. I think just setting things up, you know...

Adam Callinan (21:39)
Sure, sure.

Dario Markovic (21:58)
I was dealing in Chile with brands that are super like I mean Chile is like a market maybe you can compare it with maybe you know I don't even know if you can compare it with

Louisiana or even small, I mean, much smaller. Forget it. I mean, it's like maybe a city, a Philadelphia, know, metropolitan area. That's like the whole country. I mean, the size of like, you know, economic activity. It's a, you know, $18 million, 18 million people, know, ⁓ person country, but it's a super small, you know, purchase in power.

Adam Callinan (22:15)
Yeah.

Dario Markovic (22:34)
And we had small brands, we brought them from zero to a million in 18 months in a super small country. So it's like, how do you guys with the biggest market and the biggest market in the world?

And able to get to the level, so I was always amazed. And obviously a lot of folks in the company that were against this approach, obviously they added their interest. It's like, yeah, this is not a good approach. You can't go wrong with this. You have this, and I think the US, I think now, even Mississippi, or don't know which state, is kind of the lowest GDP.

is bigger as the biggest country in Europe. So you have this amazing consumer market you can't go from. And ⁓ so we pretty much set up, we didn't do a lot because we didn't have an email, we don't have a ⁓ Klaviyo list. It's pretty much started from Zurich, Meta and Google. ⁓

Adam Callinan (23:41)
Yeah.

Dario Markovic (23:47)
And, you know, we, I think, you know, I did, I don't think I can talk about this now. You know, we, had some ways to get some ideas of some, you know, customers. can't unfortunately tell this how we did it. We used to be, you know, audiences to create local audiences back then was out there big. And, and then we, we kind of, you know, tried to get, you know, it was pretty, you know, things converted like, you know, it's flying, it's flying over.

Adam Callinan (24:06)
first.

Dario Markovic (24:18)
the conversions came, I think we had a conversion rate of about 4 to 5 percent. Ridiculously high for 250 to 270 AOV. So I was like, the hell is going on? So why did you guys not? Unfortunately, we don't have much inventory to kind of push through and go through the moon.

Adam Callinan (24:25)
Yeah, for an expensive hat, yeah.

the timing of that is, know, I think from an outsider looking into a successful business, it's really easy to just say you got lucky. And there's no question that in building and starting luck plays a role in that. But the one thing that I consistently look back at that I can say that was lucky revolves around timing.

Dario Markovic (24:56)
yeah.

Adam Callinan (25:08)
And that timing of coming in and launching an e-com with all that pent up demand during COVID, when people were sitting on their butts, on their couches, on their phones, buying things online, when half the fulfillment centers in the US got closed, which is bottle keeper, we crushed during COVID. Because our fulfillment center was in Texas, which never closed. Like that is an amazingly fortuitous time to be launching in there.

Dario Markovic (26:15)
I have heard that luck part so many times. Everyone just like, you're just lucky. Well, we're over five years in. don't know if luck is still with us, luck should have been over by now. But yeah, I've heard that so many times. I think it happened with you the same. You can be lucky maybe for a year in COVID.

but it can't be lucky. You think you have to, and I think that's something that, you know, some of what differentiates like those e-commerce, you know, I would say, you know, players that make it or they're like exceptional. It's like to continuously working on like optimizing and working on being better. like.

I'm really obsessed like every single day about every single thing like literally in the company like is it tracking is it it CRO is it maybe I shouldn't and I know it can't be good at all of those areas but if I just can't leave it it's like okay this is you know this is your area I

I might not have the capacity on an hour. I need to know what's going on. need to know the details of it. Of course, then I might not execute everything. just physically don't have the time. But if you're not obsessed, I don't think you can advance and keep growing.

Adam Callinan (27:48)
Yeah, there's no question. obviously luck, luck is a horrifically bad strategy to try to go and build. I think the big key is doing exactly what you're talking about doing, just getting going full blown nerd into understanding that thing. So if luck happens, you're in a position to take advantage of it, but it's, it's outside of that. It's all strategy and structure and just getting the reps, right? It's just putting in the time.

Dario Markovic (27:54)
Now you

Exactly, exactly. mean, when

I got this email introduced to you offer, I have to check this out. mean, if you are not like if this just flies off you and you're not interested, you don't want to get things on. If you don't want to really just hear, listen and see.

what might improve it for some, you know, I've tested so many different tools for so many different things, right? And, know, at the end you would say, okay, it's just sometimes it's a waste of time, you learn something, but I wouldn't otherwise, right? I wouldn't otherwise. So it's the same thing, know, but just, yeah, I guess testing it's like, if you don't test, I mean, there's...

There's nothing try things out at least, you know, learn about them. Be kind of knowledgeable that you understand what, you know, what the tool might bring or why this software is good. So I think that's key.

Adam Callinan (29:24)
Yeah, remaining curious, cautiously curious. Obviously you can't talk to everybody, but cautiously curious is important.

Dario Markovic (29:31)
percent.

Adam Callinan (29:33)
You know, I think of business and building a business, and I think this applies to every stage, but let's apply it to an earlier stage company. I think of it like a thousand piece puzzle. And we're constantly moving the pieces around trying to figure out the best configuration. But the reality is that the pieces aren't equally weighted. They're not the same size. It's sort of, I also think of it like a food pyramid. Like we have the really important stuff at the bottom. We have the kind of next important stuff. And at the very tip top, we're like,

nuance a arguing around like click through rates or bounce rates on one specific piece of ad content. How do you think about that? Are there things that you look at that are more important from a KPI or metric standpoint versus others that you really hone in on?

Dario Markovic (30:15)
It's a very,

very good example you just brought up. think, you know, was like thinking about this the last few months. I'm literally moving a lot of pieces and there are actually just a few.

You know, I read the book 2080 so many times, I like I just sometimes I guess I'm not applying it. You go always into and I think a lot of people are suffering with the same thing. You know, I don't know if it's the shiny new thing or just like, hey, this could, you know, or this, you're going crazy with moving those pieces together and trying to get that. But you mentioned perfect scenario.

But there are those 20 % actually that move 80 % of things. It might be an example, just Meta or Google is just still the ones that are pushing 80 or 90 % of your customers. And it's not unfortunately, Pinterest or TikTok or 20 other channels that are still out there. It sounds sexy and sounds like they are not. And the same in...

It's the same with any other thing, really. I kind of learned that, but it's still obviously, you know, trying to... I guess when you grow, you're like, you know, hey, everything is important, or this might be more important. But we tend to, unfortunately, lose time or tend to still do it, even though I have this, you know, kind of a back end, like, you know, spending more time on...

this little design or collector rate or something, then optimizing email with just like super high ROI and that should have more focus. So that's just something you're told. There's a few movers that...

You should just actually spend more time on and it could run 80 % or that are just running 80 % of your business. And it is just the way. And we also in our brand, have 20 % of the product to do 80 % of the sales. It's not because we want it. It's just the way it is. I think it's with 90 % of the businesses, it's very similar.

Adam Callinan (32:24)
Mm-hmm.

How do you, this is a problem that comes up constantly, again, particularly with earlier stage product companies, how do you think about managing skew count and not letting them get out of control? Because it's really easy for them to get out of control.

Dario Markovic (32:56)
yeah. I think technology comes in. It's hopefully, you know, it's getting, it's getting much better. think to, to get yourself data intelligence, to be able to, to make decisions or whatever that decision is of introducing or eliminating or, you know, going stronger in it. So.

I think today we're again, we kind of come back to what 2012, 2013, we have like much better tools to make decisions. I think, I honestly think so. And I get excited with technology a lot, but I do think if you know how to leverage.

tool software in the right way you have a much better advantage like you managing those inventory you know pieces what to do so whatnot

Adam Callinan (33:53)
Are there?

Are there any specific tools you're using today that help with that? I I get asked this question all the time, like what are inventory tools things are, companies are using right now?

Dario Markovic (34:09)
So we're just like going through a huge reshuffling on tools to be honest with you. We're going away from a certain ERP to a different ERP. The decision exactly for the reason to be able to

you know, have a tool that has an open API that could just plug it into other tools. So you can flow into data easier and to, you know, inventory tools or, you know, on.

I mean, you have a great amazing tool that will help you just save so much time on which we currently have this kind of issue or it takes too much time to go through data or get even just get them to a place where you can look at this. So I didn't think in today's world, it should be a problem. You should have tools that are ideally in where we're going.

It's like literally, you know, mouse click and get at least to be able to read or to be able to. ⁓ So this is where we're going. Again, we're going through reshuffling. There's so many tools we use, to be honest. ⁓ So many tools we tested. On the inventory side, we look at, you know, I think three or four options from, you know, Auburn to Predico to there's a few inventory prediction.

tools that we're currently looking, but we're kind of just waiting because we're going through that ERP change. ⁓ We're changing to fulfill that IO and ⁓ yeah, kind of why it's take those tools, we just connect them to the ERP. ⁓

Adam Callinan (36:07)
Yeah, the opening API thing is absolutely critical in today's world. Cause like you can go on cursor and tell it to write that API connection for you. I mean, you can do wild things. I mean, I'm doing that right now. I've done three of them this morning for building an internal tool that replicates this thing that we're paying a thousand bucks a month for. It's crazy. ⁓

Dario Markovic (36:27)
Exactly, exactly.

So that's a very exciting time. mean, we get excited, but even when I'm not, I feel like always thinking and I'm getting like, just like, yeah.

Adam Callinan (36:31)
Yeah.

Yeah, it's

amazing. So how do you shifting gears a little bit? One of the things that we generally was spent some time talking about is how you what have you done or put in place in your life over the years of of being an entrepreneur and operating in e-commerce and everything to be able to sort of be be or get comfortable being uncomfortable because we have these like big wild swings, particularly in the earlier stages of business and

I deeply believe that if we can help people get more comfortable being in that discomfort, they can be in the business long enough to have that lucky thing happen, to have that like unintended inflection point that you couldn't see coming that comes out of nowhere and changes the company.

Dario Markovic (37:25)
It's a very good question, very tough to answer. Many times I talk to my wife and she obviously, you know, she thinks I have an issue. She calls this an issue to punish myself. And I always thought I wouldn't be married to you if I would. So joking with her, you know, it's like I'm looking always for like.

I might be little bit uncomfortable and I'm looking for like, know, where do I get myself into? I'm not saying trouble, but where do I get, you know, just too busy that I can't handle it? ⁓ You know, looking into 10 other things or working on 10 other things. ⁓ I don't know if, you know...

I was obviously diagnosed with AHDH, know how you call it, this deficit. I don't think that's a problem because I'm constantly looking for something to not be comfortable or to punish myself to just not be.

How do you create that? I honestly think that has to do with hunger. ⁓ If you have a certain goal, if it's having a certain lifestyle or helping your parents or being ⁓ independent on time and location or... ⁓

you know, whatever it is, if this is, you know, carrying you to do those things, then, you know, so be it. But I think, think, you know, personally, you know, I really came from a very comfortable environment. I'm not that guy who was like growing up and not having much. And, you know, I had it pretty comfortable. I can't complain. Like I'm very...

very, I would say, very good country to live in, to still live in, like, know, safe and, you know, high living, high standard of living, like, you know, can afford nice, you know, to travel to a nice place. I think there's definitely something different, like, perhaps, you know, I don't know what I wanted, I guess, I just want to, you know, to do things that are different. I think if someone is, you know, I think has a certain goal, it's just being recognized.

Sometimes people like, know, hey, I wanna be recognized being the best, you know, ⁓ designer in shoes or whatever it is. I think that goal should drive you to be able to be uncomfortable. if you are not, like if there's no, like I think if you're not, if you feel things are not, if you can't, I always said that.

If I feel I can control everything, I'm not doing things. I'm not doing enough. So, and Erica always tells me, we're not controlling things. You know, everything. Yeah, we're doing things. And once we control, we should be starting to worry. hey, this is something we're not doing. I So I think this is always like, you're just not moving fast enough if you feel everything is out of control. My personal opinion.

Adam Callinan (40:19)
All right.

And I think that's a really good way to put it because the reality of entrepreneurship is it is inherently chaotic. And if it is not chaotic that there's probably a problem, there's probably something wrong.

Dario Markovic (40:58)
I think so. guess, you know, kudos to those that I can have a here's Instagram force that can have an amazing lifestyle and just do nothing and money rolls in. I don't see it for me happening. Hopefully someday. But I don't think it's just so many things you're always constantly doing. ⁓ And I don't think people see that in the back end. Right. You have to.

You have to be on like 50 calls. have to get things done. there better ways sometimes? Sure. But I think you have to live it through. If you don't, there's no way.

Adam Callinan (41:40)
Yeah

and I'm not sure I would buy all the things that you see on Instagram. I think most of that stuff's exactly what you think it is but the other piece in there that I think is really important to bring back up and validate is that sense of purpose that you're talking about. That is critically important to be able to withstand all of that having an important big

Dario Markovic (41:48)
yeah.

Yeah. yeah.

Adam Callinan (42:04)
Whatever that is for you, sense of purpose and why you're doing the thing that you're doing is really, really important.

Dario Markovic (42:12)
totally. think without that, it's difficult to make it because you're competing against the world today. It's not just local. I guess there's some local businesses, but if you're selling nation, what you want to sell, then eventually you're selling.

you're selling against a European or Australian company that sells the same swimsuit that you want to sell in Europe. So they might ship it and today you can do it. So yeah, you better, if you don't have that purpose, it's going be difficult to compete against that one who's like, just dreaming about this 24-7.

Adam Callinan (42:54)
Yeah, totally true. So what's next for Eric Javits? Are you just post ERP change, just product expansion? Are you market expanding? you retail expanding?

Dario Markovic (43:09)
Very, very good question. So we are changing our piece. We're redesigning our brand. It's kind of not fully, obviously, was 40 years, three, you know, keeping a lot of important pillars. But, you know, we're refreshing a lot of things. So new website coming as well.

where I think the retail side is we did expand into Korea a years ago, South Korea. So we have physical stores in South Korea, which is growing. So we're thinking the same with other markets, this is Japan, which is very similar and I know a lot of customers that love the product.

and also on lot of different smaller stores. ⁓ So what we saw this year, the bigger stores that are kind of reducing, they're reducing size, closing stores. ⁓ And then we have those kind of a few hundred small stores that are, ⁓ if you can expand that to certain level, even if on a yearly basis you lose some, the drop is not as heavy. ⁓

So we're adding kind of that smaller store, we call it small stores or independent retailers. That's a strategy in obviously e-commerce and to kind of, how do we get to, not from 20 to 30 to 40, 50 million a year.

So I think we're bad or we should cross the 20 million this year or be close at least on e-commerce only. So that would, ⁓ I think we have to make things different. have to at least, hey, how can we elevate things to ⁓ get more customers in?

So a lot of things actually we're again doing a lot of things talking about building like sales reps like hey how many more boutiques you know hey we know we have all of these you know four season or red chart and boutiques that are buying from us but we're only in 50 and there are like you know 500 or thousands of them in the US how do we get to those?

or get at least to know hundreds or 200 deals that means you know a million dollars extra. So those are kind of things that we're working on right now on growing the brand. Whatever we can control, fortunately you can't control you know the buyer, the buyer.

Nordstrom, can't control. Neiman is going or Saks going through financial problems. You just can't control that. You can't tell the buyer, hey, buy from us. And the company is like, no, we're not going to pay you in 12 months or we're going to chapter 11 or whatever. It's not. So whatever you can control, think that's what we're doing now.

Adam Callinan (46:15)
Yeah, that makes perfect sense. We dealt with a lot of the same buyers in Nordstroms and Bloomingdale's and all these kinds of fancy stores. And that was pre-COVID, COVID turned all that stuff off. as you got to experience. Awesome. Where do you want people, where can people find you?

Dario Markovic (46:36)
website ericjates.com that's you know our e-commerce store we are obviously in 100 and currently 181 independent stores boutiques across the US from really Hawaii till down to Florida up to New York and

And we are in 90 Nordstrom stores and about 18 Blue Media stores across the nation. And we're even in Europe. If you're watching from Europe, we're in Bournemouth Shea, we're in Corté and Glace in Spain. We're in a lot of different independent retailers in Europe and Asia as well. So there's a lot of places we're in. Obviously not enough, but I would say go to our e-com store, eggjades.com.

Adam Callinan (47:29)
Yeah, we'll make sure we have links to everything in the show notes. Awesome. Well, thank you a ton for coming in and congrats on taking an e-comm from zero to 20 million in five years. That's amazing. Really, really cool to hear about. Yeah, thanks for coming.

Dario Markovic (47:43)
Thanks, Anne. Thanks for having me.

Thank you.