How Kynship Took WildBird from Plateau to Profit

WildBird has been a prominent player in the baby space for a decade, initially focusing on baby carriers and gradually expanding into a broader range of baby products. WildBird was founded by husband and wife team Nate and Tayler Gunn during their first pregnancy as a side business. Later, they leaned into full-time efforts to scale the business.

Their original product, the Ring Sling baby carrier, was a unique entry in the market, quickly gaining popularity through Instagram and influencer marketing. This strong organic approach helped them achieve several million in sales within the first four years without spending on paid ads.

However, by year four, the company faced challenges in scaling further.

The Gunns recognized the need for products with broader appeal, leading to the development of a soft structured carrier. This product also burst onto the scene for Moms, building the brand’s momentum as it expanded its product range to include pajamas, sleep sacks, and other textiles. 

Despite this expansion, the company encountered difficulties in scaling their advertising efforts and maintaining profitability while managing a growing inventory. To overcome these challenges and continue their upward trajectory, WildBird sought expert guidance from Kynship.

When Nate first met with Cody (Kynship Co-Founder), WildBird was already benefiting from substantial customer-generated content (CGC) organically generated from Moms sharing their experiences online—a dream for any brand. However, WildBird struggled to effectively scale their advertising efforts across a vast inventory with numerous SKUs, leading to stagnant or inefficient ad spend. Kynship stepped in to optimize their ad strategy, focusing on precise forecasting and targeted spend to maximize profitability while scaling.

For most of 2024 WildBird’s goals have been to hit a 5 aMER, 30% Contribution Margin (CM)%, and 17.5% Profit%—Kynship has been within 1-5% of those goals all year so far.

Midway through the year, WildBird wanted to shift focus from these metrics to a singular focus on Profit %, with a goal of achieving 17.5% profit on a monthly basis. This change led to immediate improvements, with Kynship achieving this profit target within 1% in June, July, and pacing to repeat it again in August.

Forecasting

Kynship aligned closely with WildBird's financial goals, managing total ad spend across Meta, Google, and Amazon. This meticulous approach to forecasting was so effective that it caught the attention of GW Partners, a strategic consulting firm independently engaged by WildBird. GW Partners praised Kynship's forecasting as one of the best they had seen from a performance marketing agency, noting its critical role in maintaining WildBird’s consistent profitability while scaling revenue.

“Kynship has proven that it can operate with a high level of autonomy while adhering strictly to the targets that have been set. This is a huge benefit to WildBird because they can focus on managing the other aspects of the business without having to worry that the agency that is running their Meta strategy is going to go off script or underperform.” — Jason Somerville, Founding Partner, GW Partners 

Creative & Paid

Kynship introduced a cost control bid strategy, focusing ad spend on high-performing SKUs while reducing spend on less profitable ones. This strategy allowed WildBird to dynamically scale their efforts in sync with promotional activities, leading to improved overall performance.

Kynship utilized a mix of seeding content (roughly 50% of all ads), brand content (30%), and user-generated content (10%), with customer-generated content yet to be tested.

 Transitioning from polished branded content to authentic UGC was a challenge for Nate.

“I came from branding, high-quality content. But as social commerce evolves, the customer is just getting smarter. I believe we’re at a point now where it’s going to be difficult without having the most authentic experience in your marketing. If I had a stadium full of moms (our customer) and I could put anything on the billboards, what would I put? Would I put this super polished Mom, or would I throw on that unicorn review from a Mom that posted without a request from us? I saw myself choosing the authentic review over the high-quality content.”

The Aerial Carrier was the most profitable SKU. Even with a much higher price point, it turned out to be much more profitable to market these products primarily and to reduce spend across all other SKU’s. This was unknown to WildBird prior to working with Kynship.

Over the past year, WildBird achieved record-level ad spend and unprecedented DTC revenue growth, breaking through previous plateaus the brand had never surpassed.

‍This success is a testament to the undeniable growth of their advertising efforts, even as competition from channels like retail, Babylistings, and Amazon intensified. 

As for next steps, plans include expanding into consumer-generated content by incentivizing customers to share their experiences.

With consecutive months of profitability and growth, WildBird has its sights set on scaling more.

However, to meet increasing demand, they first need to make sure their suppliers can keep up with inventory needs.‍

A note from Nate:

If influencer or customer-generated content is any part of your ad buying strategy then Kynship is going to be your best option that I know of. I went through an extensive search to find the right agency that specializes in the strategy and by far they came out on top. Pricing was also very competitive. ‍Since onboarding, the biggest win has honestly been in just working with their team. Great group of people. No ego and ready and willing to work through any of our specific needs. Their team is honestly just a fresh breath of air in the agency space. They know how to look at the numbers with a benchmark perspective having seen so many brands.

I would just keep in mind they are more of a growth partner, not just a typical ad buyer working in the background. Be ready to dive into the spreadsheets and get into the numbers with them. For me, all things I was looking for. For us having the Kynship team onboard has really helped us guide specific targets across all channel partners.

Nate Gunn, Co-Founder WildBird