The company
HexClad makes hybrid cookware — pots and pans that combine a stainless-steel cooking surface with a laser-etched nonstick hexagon pattern and a lifetime warranty, a rare guarantee in the category. Founded in 2016, the brand spent its first five years selling almost entirely direct-to-consumer and through live roadshow demonstrations, without a registered presence on Amazon.
Where they started
By 2021, HexClad had a proven DTC product and brand story but no Amazon storefront of its own — third-party sellers and unauthorized listings, not HexClad, controlled how the brand showed up in Amazon search. The company's goal in enrolling as a registered brand wasn't just "start selling on Amazon" — it was to reclaim control of the brand's presence there and use Amazon's buyer volume to scale faster than DTC and roadshows alone could.
What they did
HexClad enrolled in Brand Registry in June 2021, which unlocked the tools the rest of this story runs on:
- A+ Content and a branded Storefront — professional photography, video, comparison charts, and Gordon Ramsay's chef partnership worked into the product pages, replacing generic reseller listings with pages that looked like the brand's own site.
- Amazon Brand Analytics (ABA) — HexClad used Market Basket Analysis (which products buyers purchase together) to build virtual bundles matched to real buying patterns rather than guessed-at ones; those bundles grew to represent roughly 30% of the brand's Amazon sales.
- Amazon Vine — for new product launches, HexClad seeded early reviews through Vine; a ten-quart stockpot launch collected 30 Vine reviews and then, per Amazon's account, sold through 200 units quickly on the strength of that early review base.
- Posts (Amazon's Instagram-style, image-first product feed) — an early-adopter move that Amazon reports drove around 40,000 daily impressions for the brand in its early stages.
- Brand Referral Bonus (BRB) — HexClad ran off-Amazon traffic (Google, Meta, Pinterest, SMS) into Amazon listings during Prime Day, which Amazon's case study credits with $296,000 in directly attributed product sales and roughly $27,000 in BRB credit back to HexClad for driving that external traffic itself.
The numbers
Amazon's case study reports HexClad did $36 million in Amazon sales in 2022 (its first full year as a registered brand) and was on track for more than $85 million in 2023 — a reported 136% year-over-year increase — with HexClad's president projecting a $300 million opportunity within a few years of that trajectory continuing.
Source: Amazon's HexClad case study — a reported 136% year-over-year increase.
Why this worked
Three things compound here rather than acting independently. Brand Registry didn't just add a badge — it unlocked the specific tools (A+ Content, Posts, Brand Analytics) that let HexClad use its own purchase data to decide what to bundle, rather than bundling on guesswork. And the Brand Referral Bonus program meant HexClad's existing off-Amazon marketing muscle (it already ran Google/Meta/Pinterest ads for its DTC business) could be pointed at Amazon and get a partial fee rebate for doing so, rather than that traffic-driving skill being wasted once the brand also sold on Amazon.
What to take from this if you're earlier in this path
You don't need five years of DTC history to enroll in Brand Registry — most brands can register as soon as they have a trademark — but HexClad's sequencing (prove the product and brand off-Amazon first, then bring an already-working brand story onto Amazon with A+ Content ready on day one) is a reasonable template if you're choosing when to launch there. See Amazon Brand Registry Programs, Explained for eligibility, and Understanding Product Identifiers if you haven't listed on Amazon at all yet.
FAQ
Is $85M in Amazon sales realistic for a smaller brand to expect from these same tools? No — HexClad had a differentiated, patent-protected product, a celebrity chef partnership, and five years of brand-building before it touched Amazon. The tools (A+ Content, Vine, virtual bundles, BRB) are available to any registered brand, but the scale of result here reflects a specific, well-funded brand, not a guaranteed outcome of enrolling in Brand Registry.