Oak & Eden Whiskey

8-Fig DTC

the brief
Overview
Oak & Eden was not built as a DTC experiment. It was built as a real business that happened to sell online in one of the most regulated categories in consumer. We started working together in 2017, well before spirits selling online was common or even clearly defined. The goal was simple. Build a brand with real identity and then design a compliant, scalable way to sell direct. By the time three tier compliant DTC became viable in 2022, the foundation was already built. Oak & Eden became one of the first Shopify powered, legally compliant spirits brands to scale direct to consumer at real volume. From zero to just under $10M in under 18 months, with DTC becoming the fastest growing and most profitable channel in the business.

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the challenge

The real problem

Whiskey is crowded, highly regulated, and dominated by legacy distribution models.

Retail margins were thin. Shelf competition was brutal. And most founders assumed DTC was either impossible or not worth the effort because of compliance.

The problem was not demand. The problem was building a system that respected the rules while still giving the brand leverage, data, and margin.

Most brands tried to win on placement. We focused on ownership.

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Key decisions

The strategic moves that unlocked growth.

01
DTC as the primary growth engine. We treated DTC as the core growth engine from day one. Not a test channel. Not a side project. The entire digital experience was designed to drive margin, data, and customer intimacy first.
02
Personalization as the differentiator. Instead of competing on price or shelf space, we built a custom online bottle builder that let customers create their own whiskey bottle. That experience became the brand.
03
Compliance built into the foundation. We invested early in a compliant Shopify stack. Shopify paired with Barcart gave us a scalable foundation that could support growth without cutting corners or creating risk.
04
Flywheels, not campaigns. Paid acquisition across Meta and Google fed directly into retention loops powered by Klaviyo, Attentive, loyalty programs, and limited product drops designed for repeat customers.

the results

The outcome

Oak & Eden scaled from zero to just under $10M in under 18 months.

Direct to consumer became the highest margin and fastest growing channel in the business, not just a marketing channel but a strategic asset.

The DTC engine reshaped how the brand approached retail, product innovation, and customer relationships. What started as a compliance challenge turned into a competitive advantage.

The framework we built went on to influence how other three tier compliant spirits brands approached Shopify and DTC.

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Pattern Recognition

The lesson

Most founders think regulation is the constraint.

It usually is not.

The real constraint is designing brand, technology, and compliance separately instead of together.

Oak & Eden worked because the brand came first, the system was built intentionally, and growth was treated as an outcome of good architecture, not aggressive tactics.

DTC is not about bypassing the system. It is about building inside it better than anyone else is willing to.

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