1. What’s the quick origin story of your brand, and what makes your product or positioning genuinely different from other options in your niche?

Vansh Sobti: Cloud Nine is a sensory clothing brand that started as a school project in 2021. I used stress balls but using them in public made everything worse because it signals to everyone that I am anxious. Cloud Nine bridges that gap. It’s a hoodie with stress balls hidden in the cuffs. You can squeeze them discreetly and nobody knows.

What makes it different is this: we’re the world’s first sensory-first clothing brand. We didn’t add wellness features to a fashion product. We started with how the body actually feels and built outward from there. Everything else in this space looks like a medical catalog or something made for kids. Ours is desirable first, functional always. Recommended by 30+ licensed therapists.

2. Since launch, what have been the 1-2 real turning points for your brand-specific decisions, pivots, or experiments that noticeably changed your growth or profitability-and what did you learn from them?

Vansh Sobti: Two real turning points:

The first was leaning fully into UGC and organic social instead of just running paid ads. We built a content creator program where we gifted hoodies to creators in exchange for authentic videos. That content started going viral on TikTok. When we had real customers showing the stress balls working, sharing their anxiety stories, the conversion rate jumped. People trust other people more than they trust brands. Once I understood that, we learnt that people relate to others more than just seeing a product.

3. Which 2-3 channels drive most of your revenue right now (for example SEO, paid social, email, marketplaces, influencers), and what have you learned about making those channels work in your category?

Vansh Sobti: The three channels that drive most of our revenue are paid social Meta and email.

Paid social is our biggest driver. For us specifically, UGC-style creative is what works. Polished brand ads flop. When a real person holds the hoodie, squeezes the stress balls, and talks about their anxiety, it converts.

Once someone’s on the list, email is where we re-engage and launch new products. The biggest lesson overall: in a category this personal is that mental health is sensitive. Customers need to feel understood before they’ll buy.

4. How are you thinking about search in 2026 – Google, AI assistants like ChatGPT, and other discovery platforms? What, if anything, have you changed in your content or site to stay visible as AI search grows?

Vansh Sobti: We’re paying more attention to it now than we were a year ago. The reality is most of our discovery still happens through TikTok and paid social, so AI search isn’t yet a primary driver for us. But we’re not ignoring it either.

The thing I’ve noticed is that when someone asks ChatGPT or Perplexity about anxiety clothing or sensory hoodies, the answers pull from content that clearly explains what the product does and why. So we’ve been more intentional about our site copy and product descriptions, making sure they actually answer real questions people have rather than just sounding like ad copy. Things like “what is a sensory hoodie,” “does squeezing help with anxiety,” “clothing for ADHD” type content.

We also have science-backed claims on our site (stress balls, tactile stimulation, and anxiety research) with clear sourcing, and 30+ licensed therapists have recommended the product. That kind of credible, specific information seems to be what AI tools surface.

5. What do you do to turn first‑time buyers into repeat customers and advocates? Are there specific experiences, content, or community touches that work especially well for you?

Vansh Sobti: The product itself does a lot of the work here. When something actually helps someone with anxiety or ADHD, they talk about it. Our reviews consistently say things like “I wish I’d found this sooner” and “my kid wears it every single day to school.” That kind of emotional connection makes people want to tell someone.

Beyond the product, a few things that work well for us:

Email sequences post-purchase that aren’t just upsells. We check in, and make people feel like they’re part of something. We mention the community, the mission, the therapists who recommend it. It reinforces that buying wasn’t just a purchase, it was a decision that made sense.

We also have a private community for customers and a creator program that lets people who love the brand actually participate in building it. When someone goes from customer to creator, their loyalty goes up dramatically.

6. If you had to write a short playbook for an ecommerce founder one stage behind you, what would you double down on over the next 12 months – and what would you stop doing entirely?

Vansh Sobti: Double down on: creator content. If you’re in a niche where people have real pain, UGC from real people who have that pain is the most powerful thing you can run. Not influencers with 2 million followers who barely know the product. Real customers and micro-creators who genuinely use it. The authenticity shows and it converts.

Also double down on email. It’s boring but it’s Getting a second purchase from an existing customer is a fraction of the cost of acquiring a new one.

Stop doing: trying to make everything perfect before you ship it. I wasted time early on wanting everything to look polished. The market doesn’t reward polish, it rewards speed and real. Ship the thing, learn from real customers, iterate. The 200+ versions of our silicone sensory patch didn’t come from a lab, they came from seeing the problems, and fixing them. That process applies to everything, not just product.