Why Snoop Dogg couldn't save Solo Stove

In 2023, Solo Stove got Snoop Dogg to announce he was "giving up smoke." The reveal: he was the "smokesman" for their smokeless fire pit. It hit 52 million viewers and got called the campaign of the year on every marketing podcast.

The only problem: It didn't sell fire pits.

The CFO told investors on the next earnings call that the campaign had gotten attention but "did not lead to the sales lift" they planned. The marketing spend had eaten into profit, and the CEO was gone within months. By spring 2025 Solo Brands had been delisted from the NYSE after posting a 180 million dollar loss for 2024 and warning investors it might not survive.

The Snoop campaign didn't kill Solo Stove, but it's the kind of bet that kills brands all the time.

The moonshot usually compensates for something

Solo Stove's real problem was straightforward. Fire pits were a COVID-era backyard category that had already peaked. Customers weren't stuck at home anymore, input costs were up, the product line was limited, and one product carried most of the revenue. Growth had slowed, and their unit economics were getting worse.

None of that gets fixed by a celebrity ad. A viral campaign can only amplify what's already there. If the core product is losing steam and the margin is shrinking, betting on more eyeballs will only make things worse.

They made a second moonshot bet, which also didn't save them. They bought up Chubbies, Oru Kayak, IcyBreeze, and Isle to stop depending on the fire pit. Chubbies held up, IcyBreeze got wound down, and Oru and Isle took big write-downs. None of it was enough to cover what Solo Stove was bleeding.

Play the odds

In pro tennis, the No. 1 player in the world wins about 55% of the points they play. That small edge produces a match win rate of around 90%.

A tiny advantage, applied at volume, produces an outcome that looks lopsided even though nothing dramatic happened.

That's what the boring path to success looks like in business or in life. You don't need a moonshot, you need to be slightly better on the decisions you make thousands of times a year. Individually, none of it would make a press release. Stacked across all of them, it beats the big bet every time.

That's the trade Solo Stove didn't make. They went after a moonshot instead of staying focused on the parts of the business that actually compound.

Why the moonshot feels so good

The moonshot gives you something to point at. The meeting where you announce the celebrity. The slide with the chart that bends up and to the right. The dinner party where you get to tell everyone how great things are going.

Playing the odds gets you none of that. It's grinding, unglamorous work. You get nothing to show for it in the short term. Over a long enough time horizon, though, the numbers look very different.

You don't have to swing for the fence. You just have to be right slightly more than 50% of the time.