327. Up 40% After 2 Flat Years, and SEO Did Most of It - Greg Shugar, Beau Ties of Vermont

Beau Ties of Vermont grew over 40% year over year in the first half of 2026. The 2 years before that were flat. Literally flat: 1% growth one year, negative 1% the year before. When Greg Shugar went looking for what had changed, the answer was almost embarrassing in how ordinary it was.

Greg has been in direct-to-consumer since 2004. He founded The Tie Bar, sold it to private equity in 2013, and has built and invested in ecommerce businesses since. He now owns Beau Ties of Vermont, a men's neckwear brand that manufactures everything itself in a town of about 10,000 people. Fully vertical, made in America, in a category that has been shrinking since COVID.

The Growth Came From SEO

"It's so boring that we're having this conversation in 2026 and I'm saying, SEO," Greg said. But that is what happened. Beau Ties hired someone overseas, got more strategic about what went into their posts, and started ranking better on Google.

His reasoning for why it mattered so much is worth sitting with. Every business hits a ceiling on paid. There is only so much money you can spend on Google and Meta, and in a niche category there are only so many customers to reach. SEO was the more cost-effective route, and for Beau Ties it worked.

The Black Tie on Page 16

The other half of the story is merchandising, and it starts with customer emails asking whether Beau Ties sold a plain black tie.

They did. It was on page 16.

Greg's fix was to pin the 8 best-selling formal ties permanently to the top of the bow tie collection page. Not rotating. Not seasonal. The same 8 ties, every single day. New weekly releases sit directly underneath.

I pushed back on this during the episode. If you release new products every week, does locking 8 products to the top not undermine the work you are doing on the new ones? Greg's answer is a clean piece of segmentation.

Beau Ties has 2 kinds of shopper. There is the event buyer, who needs a black tie for a black tie affair or a wedding and wants to be finished. And there is the bow tie guy, who wears one daily and genuinely enjoys browsing. As Greg put it: "Remember that shopper is not the shopper who enjoys shopping. He needs to get his thing and to go home. The bowtie guy loves shopping. He loves browsing."

The fixed 8 serve the first shopper. More than 8 ties sit above the fold, and the homepage hero is always fashion rather than formal, so the second shopper still knows what the site is.

The Email That Kills Its Own Click-Through Rate

New designs drop every Tuesday, and the email shows every single product. No teasers, no "click to see what's new".

The click-through rate suffers, because subscribers already have everything they need to decide. Greg's team has discussed switching to a teaser format and running an A/B test on it. He is in no rush. "The ultimate goal is to increase sales, make customers happy, retention. So however you get there, that's all that matters to me. Sometimes the data doesn't tell the full story."

Why Offering Options Damages Your Competitors

Beau Ties leads with 3 competitive advantages: made in America (with the quality to back it, unlike the China-made ties at his first company), the largest selection of bow ties anywhere, and made to order.

That last one is the interesting one. Every design comes in 14 different configurations. Size, shape, pre-tied, self-tied. A customer who needs a clip-on because of Parkinson's. A heavier man who wants a bigger butterfly. A 5-year-old in a wedding party. One customer asked for a 70-inch necktie against a standard 58 inches, and Beau Ties made it.

When a shopper has your site open next to a competitor selling one-size-fits-all, that comparison does work for you. Greg agreed with the framing during the episode, and said he had never thought of it that way before.

The Part That Is Not Marketing

Beau Ties sends an automated email a week after purchase that sells nothing. It asks one question: did we screw up? Greg writes about 4 letters a year to customers with genuine self-deprecation in them. Every order ships with a card signed by the person who made the tie.

Word of mouth is up. Their own polling shows friend or family referrals climbing significantly. Marketing spend is down and revenue is up.