Stiletto Coffee
Brad Costanzo had already built and sold two digital businesses, and by 2016 he ran a marketing consulting practice. On a honeymoon with his wife, a coffee connoisseur from Brazil with an entrepreneurial streak, the two talked about launching a product together. Brad saw the category problem right away. Coffee is a commodity, and unless you are a giant brand, it is hard to get noticed.
The breakthrough was his wife's suggestion to sell coffee to women. Brad framed it using Eugene Schwartz's levels of market sophistication: when everyone sells features and mechanisms, the way forward is an emotional appeal. The brand became coffee for empowered, go-getter women. Brad was candid that the story was the differentiator, not the product. The beans were premium, but the pitch was the story. The brand launched in January 2016 as Stiletto Coffee, with a portion of proceeds going to programs supporting women, including micro loans for women-owned businesses.
Brad said he spent a lot of money testing ads and confirmed that a consumable product built on taste is hard to sell through a Facebook ad alone. His plan was to build story-selling videos and use influencer marketing to bring national attention to the brand. He described the long-term goal as a possible exit to a larger company with more distribution.
Supply issues, product retooling, and underestimated workload slowed the business. Brad said total sales had been under $20,000 across the whole effort, and he expected fourth quarter to be much larger. He framed the venture as a marketing laboratory. Even when a test fails, it produces a lesson, and he said he never really loses, he either wins or learns.
At the time of the interview, Stiletto Coffee was still early and had not yet shown proven repeatable revenue. Brad's consulting business was the larger earner, with the company reporting about $500,000 in 2015 revenue and a 2016 target of roughly $900,000.
- •Brad treated the coffee brand as a storytelling experiment, which turned a commodity product into a positioning play rather than a feature comparison.
- •The wife's idea to target women gave the brand a specific emotional identity, which is a more defensible position than competing on taste in a crowded category.
- •Brad's existing consulting and paid-media expertise meant he could diagnose quickly that Facebook ads alone would not sell a taste-based consumable.
- •Brad's willingness to reframe failed tests as learning kept the experiment going despite low early sales.
- 1.Pick a commoditized product and find an emotional angle that speaks to a specific customer identity rather than listing features.
- 2.Before scaling paid ads, test whether the product can sell through a short funnel, and treat ad spend as a diagnostic.
- 3.Pair paid acquisition with story-led video content and influencer marketing so the brand gets attention beyond ad clicks.
- 4.Set a clear exit or growth goal early, and track the experiment with data so each test produces a usable lesson.
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