Shaan pitches a business idea: become the “go-to international partner” for US e-commerce brands. A local operator handles warehousing, customs, and last-mile delivery in their country, and pays the US brand a 10-15 cent royalty per dollar of sales. Zero risk for the US brand. Sam connects it to how media companies license international editions — Business Insider India, BuzzFeed France — and reflects that The Hustle got pirated in multiple countries when he should have licensed it instead.
Speakers: Shaan Puri (host), Sam Parr (host)
The International E-Commerce Opportunity [00:00:00]
Shaan: Here’s an idea I’ve been thinking about. There’s an underserved opportunity in international e-commerce. US DTC brands — Ridge Wallet, whatever — they’re huge here. They’ve figured out Facebook ads, their supply chain, their product. But internationally? Almost nothing.
The business: you become their international operator. You go to a Ridge Wallet or any mid-sized DTC brand and say: “I’ll handle everything outside the US. I’ll warehouse it in Germany, handle customs, do the local marketing, run the logistics. You don’t do anything. You just send me product at cost, and I’ll pay you a royalty — 10 to 15 cents per dollar I collect.”
For the US brand, that’s almost free money. They didn’t have that revenue before. They’re not managing any of the complexity. They just ship pallets and receive royalty checks.
Sam: That’s exactly how media works. Business Insider has a Business Insider India. BuzzFeed has international editions. They license the brand and the content — “you can use our name, our look, our archives” — and the local partner runs it and pays a royalty back.
Shaan: Exactly. And it works for physical products too. Jockey — the underwear company — they figured this out in India. They licensed to an Indian operator. That operator now runs what’s basically a billion-dollar underwear business in India, under the Jockey brand, with the US company essentially passive. The Indian operator gets the upside of building a massive business. Jockey gets royalties and brand expansion without lifting a finger.
Sam: Domino’s India is the same thing. Jubilant FoodWorks is the franchise operator — they own the India business. Domino’s itself is not running any of those stores. Jubilant built that into a massive company. They’re publicly traded in India.
Why US Brands Don’t Do This Themselves [00:10:00]
Shaan: Here’s the thing — US brands don’t do international well because international is actually hard. Customs. Duties. Local payment methods. Local delivery infrastructure. Local marketing platforms. It’s a whole different skill set.
A DTC brand that’s great at US Facebook ads is not automatically great at German logistics. So they just don’t bother. International stays at 0% of revenue forever, or they half-ass it and it stays at 2%.
But if you were a local operator — you’re German, you know German e-commerce, you know the local payment rails, you know how to warehouse in Munich and ship next-day — you could do what that brand can’t do. And they’d be happy to give you 85 cents of every dollar you bring in because it’s money they weren’t making at all.
Sam: The pitch is basically: “I want to be your Germany operator. I want to be your Japan operator.” And the US brand says yes because their alternative is zero.
Shaan: Right. The risk for the US brand is almost nothing. They’re not giving you exclusivity in perpetuity — you could structure it with performance thresholds. If you do $X in year one, you keep the contract. If you don’t, they can find someone else.
Sam’s Hustle Story [00:18:00]
Sam: This is making me think about something. When we ran The Hustle, we got pirated. People in Russia, Italy, and Mexico were literally translating our newsletter without permission and sending it to their audiences. Full content. Our writing, our brand.
At the time we treated it as a problem. We tried to get them to stop.
Shaan: But they were doing you a favor.
Sam: They were doing all the work. They were translating it, building an audience, distributing it — all for free. What we should have done is call them up and say: “Okay, you’re going to keep doing this anyway. Let’s make it official. You’re the Italian Hustle. You pay us a royalty. We’ll give you the content feed.”
We left that on the table. Those people were already proven operators in their markets. They’d already demonstrated demand. We could have had a network of international Hustle editions and never had to manage any of them.
Shaan: The piracy is actually a signal. If someone cared enough to translate your content and distribute it, that’s a customer you can convert into a partner.
The Opportunity Now [00:24:00]
Sam: So who’s doing this for physical products? Who’s the company that goes to 50 mid-tier US DTC brands and says “I’m your international operation”?
Shaan: That’s the business I’d want to build. The model is: you’re an operator in one country — say India. You have a warehouse. You have relationships with logistics companies. You have people who can run ads in Hindi. You have customer service set up.
You go to 20 US brands and you say: “I’ll carry your product in India. I’ll market it. I’ll sell it. I’ll handle returns. You get a royalty.” Now you have a portfolio of US brands running through your infrastructure. The infrastructure cost is shared across all of them. The brands are doing the hard work of product design and US marketing — you’re just the distribution layer in your market.
Sam: And if you’re good at it, brands will come to you. The hard part is proving you can do it with the first one. Once you’ve done $5 million in Indian revenue for some US DTC brand, other US DTC brands will call you.
Shaan: The other thing is: right now there’s nobody who occupies this position in most countries. There’s no company you can call up that’s the go-to US brand partner for Indian e-commerce. That’s a real gap.
The Media Company Playbook [00:30:00]
Shaan: The media model is actually a cleaner analog than franchising. Franchising is complex — you’re usually selling them a full system, training, quality controls, a lot of compliance overhead. Media licensing is simpler. You say: “Here’s the brand. Here’s the content. Here’s the style guide. Go build it in your market. Pay us a cut.”
For e-commerce, it’s somewhere in between. You’re not giving them a franchise system. You’re saying: “Here’s the product. Here’s the brand assets. You handle everything in your market. Pay us a royalty on what you sell.”
The upside for the US brand is basically free international expansion. The upside for the operator is they get to build a real business with a proven product — they don’t have to invent anything. They’re solving the distribution problem, not the product problem. And the product is already validated.
Sam: That’s a meaningful head start. Building a brand is the hard part. If someone gives you the brand and says “now go sell it in Germany,” you’ve skipped years of work.
Shaan: And you can pick the best brands. You’re not locked into one. You can be the international operator for the five best products in a category. You end up with a portfolio of winners.
Sam: I’d have done this. If someone came to me when I was running The Hustle and said “I want to run The Hustle Japan,” I would have been in immediately. I didn’t have the bandwidth to think about Japan. But if someone competent came to me with a deal where I got royalties and they did all the work? Easy yes.
Shaan: That’s the sell. For any US operator running a growing DTC brand, international is a distraction. They’re focused on US growth. The royalty model converts that distraction into passive income.
The person who can make this work just needs to pick a country, pick a category, go to five or ten US brands in that category, and close one deal. Get the first one, prove it works, and the rest follows.