Nathanael Ziegler
ABOUT THE TALK
From €30M in revenue to shut down: What building and losing "apfelband" taught me about shortcuts in ecommerce
I built apfelband from zero into one of Germany's best-known D2C brands for Apple accessories – €30M+ in revenue, 500,000+ customers, seven-figure months backtoback. In July 2024 we rebranded to WRISTR; by September 2024 the company had to shut down. Not because the product or the ads failed, but because of shortcuts you don't notice while growing and can't survive when growth slows: overstock instead of proper forecasting, revenue instead of contribution margin as the steering metric, cash planning by gut feeling. This talk is the honest story – the decisions that felt right, the numbers we should have seen, the moment it was too late – and the framework I now use as a growth consultant to help founders link purchasing, ad spend and liquidity so growth doesn't become a trap. No success pitch, no buzzwords. Real numbers, real mistakes, practical lessons.