Well Made
Charlie Carlisle, Love Your Melon: Scaling Up to Give Back – Well Made E64
December 19, 2018 · RSS · Apple Podcasts
Love Your Melon started as a university class project in Minnesota. Six years later, the brand is selling cozy beanies, headgear, and apparel, and giving fifty percent of net profits to nonprofit charities in the fight against pediatric cancer. To date, they've given nearly $5 million dollars and over 156,000 hats to children battling cancer.
Chief Operations Officer, Charlie Carlisle is overseeing the big picture of Love Your Melon, managing how they’re selling knitwear at scale. Through strategic partnerships, they’ve expanded their product line and they’re tapping into wholesale and international markets, all in the effort to support their giving mission. The company is scaling quickly, and for Love Your Melon, it's with driven purpose and key partners along the way.
On this episode, Charlie talks about the rapid growth of the company (10:51) and vetting third-party collaborators early (11:50). He illuminates the three things he looks for in a good partner (12:05). Charlie talks about upcycling the billboards from their nationwide campaign (19:12) and making calculated decisions on their digital ad spend (20:27). He shares how Love Your Melon is balancing their for-profit business with philanthropy (22:02). Charlie explains how his team uses Zapier (28:50) and Google Sheets (32:39) to power their operations, and the decision to transition to an outside enterprise resource planning system (33:35). Finally, he shares what Love Your Melon is tinkering with for 2019 (37:25).
Also mentioned on the show:
- "Clouds" by Zach Sobiech
- Quiet Logistics
- Adidas Parley
- Melon Madness
- Best Made Company
- How the Love Your Melon Team Uses Automation in the Fight Against Pediatric Cancer
- BBC Children in Need
Header image via Love Your Melon.
You can find this and all future episodes on iTunes, Google Play, and here on the Lumi blog. This episode was edited by Evan Goodchild.
