Hitting The Mark

Hitting The Mark is back from its hiatus with guest host Kara Ebel interviewing Fabian Geyrhalter. We wanted to do something special for episode 101, and here we go!You know Fabian Geyrhalter as the host of this show, but today we spin things around and have Fabian in the hot seat talking about his innovative hardware startup for audiophiles and music lovers. Trendhunter calls Toneoptic 'progressive,' Forbes 'revolutionary,' and the Financial Times 'clever.' Fabian shares the hurdles and fails, how he crafted the brand strategy and created bootstrapped journeys and experiences for his tribe, and he dives into all things branding, marketing, and entrepreneurship. An episode as unique as his company's product. Enjoy! 

This is episode 100 of Hitting The Mark and we worked for months to ensure we have the founder of an iconic brand for you. One most probably all of you know and many of you own a piece of the brand. To say we succeeded would be an understatement. Travis Rosbach founded the world's most used water bottle brand that took the nation, and the globe, by storm: Hydro Flask. From its iconic icon – pun intended – to its many colors and varied audience, let me take you on a ride from Travis' background as a pilot, Scuba diver, and marine captain to being presented a 99 designs logo by a pricey marketing agency to his 1-liter bottle launch that in fact held 40 ounces. It is a wild ride, it is an educational ride, it is the ride of HTM 100.

Tate Huffard launched Best Day Brewing last year, an alcohol-free range of craft beers for the fun-loving, hard-charging, adventure-seeking thirsty souls for whom good is just not good enough. Packed with relentless optimism, a distinctive brand design, and a powerful ethos, Best Day sees its beer as a comma and not a period in your journey through the day. Tate and I talk about the significance of the 'best day yet' philosophy turned tagline, the process of making great alcohol-free beer, the power of simplicity in design, and how coming from the outside into an industry poses a huge opportunity to do things differently from the get-go.

Nichole Montoya, together with a designer, co-founded Cheddar Up ten years ago. The platform helps over 100,000 groups and organizations collect payments and information to support and grow their communities.Nichole and I talk about how important design was to the success of the brand, how, as a product company, being highly aware of feature creep is a must to ensure the brand does not steer too far away from its positioning and how getting outside brand help can re-invigorate the product experience.

Matteo Grassi went from breakdancing in Italy to traveling with a circus across Australia, then overseeing 7 e-commerce brands and lately launching Popup, a no-code online store-building platform that provides flexibility in customers' journeys. All of this said, Matteo also holds a Masters in Psychology and worked as a brand strategist. What you get when you combine these life experiences and education is someone who has a no-bs approach to brand thinking and community building and on today's episode, this is exactly what we dive into head-first, while also learning about the strategy in which IKEA places mirrors in their stores and how cross-border online sales should really look like. And, skip the first 10 minutes if you are not interested in us talking about the future of music since Matteo, amongst all these other things, is also a producer.

Suze Dowling is the Co-Founder of Gin Lane, where she helped launch over 50 D2C challenger brands like Harry's, Hims, and Sweetgreen. She closed shop and the same founding team started Pattern Brands which now acquires and nourishes brands in the home goods space. Pattern's current portfolio of 7 brands includes Poketo, Onsen, and Letterfolk.So today we talk not only omni-channel, but omni-brand. We obviously touch on brand architecture, how not to lose authenticity when acquiring and marketing a multitude of brands and we discuss the biggest challenges and best tips when it comes to brand building.This is an important episode for any founder (especially if you are running a Shopify-enabled D2C business) as well as for any brand builder and marketer to indulge in since you are able to get the perspective of a founder, a brand-builder, and an investor all in one and the same person and in a very succinct way.

Charlie Weisman created a company that started by selling plungers, yes, the toilet ones, that are actually desirable. The brand is called Staff and it is quickly growing into a beloved suite of household essentials with bold colors, unique materials, and characters that are eager to help.At Hitting The Mark I pride myself on bringing you as much the well-known, as the unusual upcoming, brands that find a way to make their brands stand out and the founders - not marketers - who have those stories to tell. Staff nicely personifies the latter. Charlie and I talk about the 99% perfect brand name, how brand-thinking is at the core of his company, and how he was able to capture the imagination of his audience – and that of Drew Barrymore – all in an organic manner and why brand storytelling will be even more important in the future of this young company.

Steph Hon is the Founder and CEO of Cadence, the product innovation brand that brought you the modular collection of magnetic, sustainable, TSA-compliant, and leakproof Capsules that lets you store your must-have items from your medicine cabinet, jewelry box, and cosmetics bag so you can move through the world with ease and confidence. I am certain you have seen the distinct and beautiful products pop up in your social feeds or in the media. How the brand was created, and the brand DNA that holds it all together (well that, and magnets) is what Steph shares with us in a wonderful conversation that is parts empowering and motivating for founders and parts educational for anyone in the business of building brands. If you run or assist a hardware brand, you owe it to yourself to listen in. If you want to build a brand that desires to lead with empathy and a user-first mentality, then this episode is also made for you.

Larry Birnbaum is the Co-Founder and CEO of ShopWorn, the e-commerce platform for customers who want to be the first to own authentic, unused luxury products while doing good for the environment. This a fascinating proposition, one that challenges luxury brands as well as consumers to do something they used to be reluctant to do: Put trust in a discount reseller. It is also a two-sided marketplace which is always fascinating from a brand perspective as there are suddenly two stakeholders that the brand voice and image need to attract and engage. Needless to say, an episode well worth your time!

Tomo Delaney, despite coming from a family of advertising, decided very early on that he wanted to work for Vogue, which he subsequently did and he spent his entire career in the fashion world in London and NYC. Up until the point where he decided to become a stay-at-home dad. Now he is selling organic food paint for kids. This is a story that is being written as we speak about a brand that will have its big breakthrough – very likely, fingers crossed - in the next few months and talking to Tomo about how he strategically connected the dots and piggy-backed (pun intended as Noshi has a Peppa Pig collaboration) on brands mums already trusted in order to introduce his own. A fascinating interview, one not to miss!

Vladimir Vukicevic founded Meural and Rockethub, both companies that have been successfully acquired. Now with his third startup, he joined 2,000+ toothpaste brands in the marketplace. To an outsider, it may seem like an overly competitive area to jump into and perhaps a bit random given his software and hardware background, but there is a deeply personal story behind Better & Better and to him, all his previous work has led up to this brand.

Ariel Kaye founded Parachute in 2014 to disrupt the bedding space by creating a brand people actually remembered and loved. And that is exactly what Parachute has very quickly turned into: a beloved home lifestyle brand with 20+ retail locations.In this episode, we talk about how Ariel's brand and advertising background was fundamental to her ability to quickly connect with customers, the power of storytelling, and the lasting emotion that a brand experience can have on an audience.

Joe Spector wholeheartedly believes in the immense power of branding, if done right and from the get-go. And he would know as he co-founded Hims, the D2C prescription and over-the-counter drugs brand that started off by selling erectile dysfunction and hair loss treatments and has since exploded into a 1.6 Billion Dollar public company together with the Hers brand.Moving into pet telemedicine with his new brand Dutch actually does not seem too far-fetched. We talk about his new company, and all things branding, and Joe shares his story of being a refugee immigrant to ringing the New York Stock Exchange bell. An episode not to be missed!

Margaret and Ian Wishingrad come from the advertising industry and took a plunge into the food business. Three Wishes is their brand of better-for-you cereal that wants to be liked and purchased by literally everyone from young to old. How they set the brand up to be on its way of accomplishing that, what works and what hasn't, and why the proof is in the cereal is what we talk about in this insightful conversation with a keen focus on brand building and product marketing. 

Alex Matisse, who made it a strategic point not to name his brand after his famous last name (yes, he is the great-grandson of one of the most influential artists to ever live, Henri Matisse), co-founded East Fork, a pottery brand I cherish and study from the outside for a lot of reasons, all of which you will learn more about during this very sincere and insightful conversation. Alex and I talk about the soul of a brand and how to keep it intact, his dislike of the word authenticity, the constant – which he sees as positive – struggle that drives his artisanal 'made in the US' business, and how he and his two Co-Founders created a brand that those who know came to love and even obsess over.Yet another conversation that reminds me of why I love bringing this show to you – and why I love spreading these insights on the often intrinsic art of crafting brands people truly love.

Sahand Dilmaghani founded Terra Kaffe, an innovative at-home espresso-brewing machine that seeks to upend the environmentally disastrous use of 'pods.' Inspired by European coffee culture and the Bauhaus design movement the TK-01 machine is a beautiful piece of design simplicity and Sahand and I dive deep into the topic of sustainability, the perhaps misunderstood 'Made in China' brand, rituals associated with coffee, pinning down a target audience while offering a table stakes item like a coffee machine, and how to set off to build a lifestyle brand.An absolutely delightful conversation; so pour yourself a cup, and enjoy Sahand's insights into building a brand from scratch.

Josh Tetrick is the Co-Founder and CEO of the Eat JUST company, a 1.2 billion dollar food startup founded 10 years ago, which is, according to Forbes, "providing justice for animals while addressing food scarcity and the climate crisis."If you enjoy a tough branding challenge, if you appreciate an improbable success story, if care about the environment and animals, if you eat eggs or enjoy the taste of real meat, then listen to this episode.As of today, JUST Egg has sold the equivalent of 300 million chicken eggs and raised more than $800 million in funding from investors like Bill Gates, Marc Benioff, and Paul Allen. It took his team 4 or 5 years to have a plant-based product that scrambled like an egg. At that point, they spent 3-4 million dollars and the taste wasn't even there yet. It just behaved like an egg.Josh also runs GOOD Meat, which is not plant-based, instead, it is actual meat produced from a cell in a vessel. Needless to say, a lot to discuss about branding, story-telling, and naming, and Josh dives deep into all of it, while also discussing the intricacies of giving people something they did not know they needed in the first place. An all-around edutaining conversation.

Vianney Vaute is the Co-Founder and CCO of Paris-based BackMarket, a marketplace that fights against planned obsolescence.6 months ago the startup was evaluated at 5.7 billion and driven by their brand DNA of 'sabotage' the company keeps old tech devices around for longer hence positively impacting the environment. And yet they found a way to attract the large tech giants like Samsung to not fear but actually join their brand.From how to keep your brand DNA flag raised high during expansion to how to maintain your brand's tonality as you grow into new markets to how important a founder's instinct is to build a global brand, this conversation with Veenay is absolute brand gold and I am thrilled to be able to share it with you.

Jason Stoddard founded an improbable made-in-the-US product company in the HI-FI space that is putting out high-quality, inexpensive units while innovating on many fronts. Fueled by the name Schiit his company has become a beloved brand. Schiit is only 12 years old yet 7 years ago Jason already published a book detailing the eventful journey of the garage startup. Many of you know that I am now also running a Made-in-the-US product startup that plays in the audio world called Toneoptic, so after reading Jason's book about his  brand's incredible voyage I knew I had to have him on the show.This is a must-listen for any company that seeks to go against the grain, anyone who believes in producing products in their home country, or those who need to be reminded that one can create a seven-figure startup out of their garage with 10k of self-funding, and of course for anyone who loves Hi-Fi. If this is not you, still listen, because this is a great one!

Nathan Beckord founded Foundersuite, a brand that pretty much every founder heard of, used, or referenced. Nathan and I discuss if infusing brand into early-stage startup pitch decks is of importance, if a catchy or descriptive tagline suits a startup better, the power of community in brand building and we talk about Foundersuite's Teddy Talks which involves a ginormous teddy bear. Yep, a rather varied and fun conversation that any startup founder, VC, or those working with startups should listen to. 

David Coté and Julie Poitras-Saulnier run LOOP Mission which collaborates with major food industry actors to save perfectly good, but rejected products discarded before reaching grocery stores and transform them into products such as juices, smoothies, sodas, beer, gin, soaps, and dog treats.I have to be frank and I can cut this intro very short: I have a complete brand crush and to me, LOOP is inspirational on so many fronts that it would be silly to mention them and instead I will assume you will trust my opinion and dive right into this episode where Julie and David share the way they continue to build their ever-expanding brand upon purpose – with a twist of wit.

Nick Green is the Co-Founder & CEO of Thrive Market, a membership-based online platform that makes healthy living easy and accessible to all. Since launching in 2014, Thrive Market has grown to more than 1 million paying members and become a touchstone example of a mission-driven company at scale. In addition to offering great natural and organic products at affordable prices to its members, the company donates a free year of membership to a family in need for every paid membership. The business has also been recognized as a leader in regenerative agriculture, carbon-neutral shipping, and Zero Waste operations, and in 2020 became the nation's largest grocer to receive B Corp Certification, as well as a Certified Great Place to Work.Nick and his 3 Co-Founders set out to launch a 'Costco meets Whole Foods' concept, which is insanely ambitious and a remarkable story given where Thrive is today. Needless to say, this conversation delivered many insights into today's Zeitgeist, technology, and consumer expectations, and it was an immense pleasure being able to talk with Nick about the way in which his brand continues to grow with a strong guiding star and our planet's health top of mind.

Christina (Fagan) Pardy founded Shit That I Knit, a brand of sustainable high-quality knit-wear that one would say besides its name– although the contrary is true – has become known around the world. Christina was recently on the TODAY show and Shit That I Kit was the official Team USA brand partner for beanies and mittens this past Winter Olympics, which is rather spectacular.Here is an entrepreneur who started off with brand-thinking and learned the business side along the way. So obviously we talk about the name, how it was derived, how to say it on TV when you can't use the sh*t word, and how not to overdo the shit pun in her brand language. Christina discusses how authenticity and transparency played a big role in her brand's success. We chat about how to get your brand in front of influencers and celebrities, how she moved her production to Lima, Peru where she is now empowering over 200 women as part of her team and she shares her Give A Shit program with us.Another favorite episode of mine is now ready for your discerning ears!

Gardar Stefansson co-founded Good Good, a company from Iceland that makes waves around the globe with its no-sugar-added breakfast and brunch products.To me, startups like Good Good are extremely exciting since they have to embody all the components of great brand strategy: From starting with a niche product for a niche audience - while allowing the brand name and design to survive any pivots - to shared values, a great name, impactful design, all the way to creating a tribe that the big competitors can't steal away from you. And doing so from a nordic island.Gardar and I talk about all of that and it is a wonderful story of accidental - as well as planned - brand success with many insights marketers and founders alike can learn from.

Andy Hunter founded Bookshop.org with a mission to disrupt Amazon's book sales and put them back into the hands of bookstores. He sees his brand to be the MC and hands the mike over to the people who sell and love books. A mesmerizing uphill battle that you can witness him slowly winning by means of passion, dedication, and shared values between bookshop.org, physical bookstores, and last but not least book buyers that care about more than the lure of next-day shipping.As an author, it was wonderful to have Andy on the show, but also as a brand-builder since there is a lot to be learned from how he and his team have created a disruptive and beloved brand in just two years. 

Brice Partouche founded Satisfy, a performance fashion brand for runners to unlock the high. He wouldn't say it, but I can: Satisfy is quickly developing into a cult brand and we spent ample time talking about Zeitgeist, culture, and community. Brice and I discuss how NFTs can be used to create access to a brand, the link between running and creativity, and how every product line starts with a story at Satisfy. A fascinating conversation.

Adam Rich co-founded Thrillist by sending out an e-mail newsletter to 600 people about things to do in NYC. Well, as they say, the rest is history. I talk with Adam about how a newsletter turned into a trusted brand and a global multi-platform media monster hitting the eyeballs of more than 300 million people a month, how understanding and sticking to your brand's DNA is key to brand growth, how emotion and data demand to co-exist, and why thinking about your brand's legacy must inform your brand's every action.

Together with Seth Rogen, Evan Goldberg and Michael Mohr founded Houseplant, a lifestyle brand rooted in cannabis that creates and curates thoughtful, design-led original products.By unifying the words “house” and “plant,” the brand has created an entirely new cannabis experience through curated, one-of-a-kind expert insights from Rogen and Goldberg that marry perfectly with well-designed, premium Housegoods.In this episode with Evan and Michael, we dive into the similarities of crafting a movie versus a brand, why pricing is key to positioning, how to create a welcoming brand in a misunderstood and jaded business segment, and how you can perfectly plan something yet it can still misfire. And that is in a way the challenge, but also the beauty of entrepreneurship and brand building, and I can guarantee you that you will not only gain a lot of insights into brand strategy but you will also greatly enjoy the company of these fine gentlemen on today's show.

Doug Zell is the Founder of Intelligentsia Coffee, a beloved brand that established itself as a leader in what came to be known as third-wave coffee.Intelligentsia embodies a quest for superior quality and sophisticated design, but it is furthermore about the overall impeccable brand experience that those of us who have visited one of the 15 US locations have come to expect.Doug is a masterful brand builder and his insights from not only successfully building, but carefully expanding the Intelligentsia brand over the past 26 years is, just like the brand itself, rather illuminating.

Angela Jia Kim founded  Savor Beauty with a strong brand ethos inspired by a career as a concert pianist. What caught my eye about Angela's brand was how she checks off all the boxes a brand in her space should, and she does it seemingly with ease: farm-fresh small-batch organic products, cutting-edge technology, 100% non-toxic clean formulas, made locally, supporting various deserving communities, cruelty-free testing, minority-owned, et cetera, et cetera.And Angela understands that her brand ethos is the guiding light that makes all the difference in the why, the what, and the how of her brand. A wonderful episode, also because she shares with us how the person who sued her over her brand name gave her transformational business advice.

David Neeleman is the Founder of 5 airlines and changed the way people experienced surprise and delight by flying JetBlue. During the pandemic, he launched his latest airline brand, Breeze, and I sat down with David to talk about what branding means to him, what makes great company culture, how a book inspired the JetBlue brand, and his preferred airline naming process (in the case of JetBlue the name was derived the Friday before a Monday launch).Needless to say, an episode that is packed with insights from a truly amazing brand builder I believe all of us are thrilled to hear from on the subject of branding.

Chris Boyd is the Co-Founder of Monday, a Southern California distillery that crafts non-alcoholic spirits such as gin and whiskey. The brand is only a year old and its impeccable design caught my eye from day one. Chris and I talk about how community and authenticity are key to building his brand. And he is walking that talk as he has 1,366 shareholders to who he is reporting.And of course, we talk about the power of design and how the big question ‘why' should be fundamental to any entrepreneur's journey of building their brand. A spirited conversation all around.

Chris Meade, 28 years young, a Forbes 30 under 30 nominee, invented a new sport with his co-founders that mixes Four square with Volleyball.  Today you can catch Crossnet on ESPN and the product sells in over 3,000 locations in the US and around the world. Chris and I talk about naming not only a brand, but a sport, how to create not only momentum but a movement, the latest in digital marketing, and why communication, internally and externally is key to brand success and, as usual, we touch on a lot more. If you are an entrepreneur in the D2C space, listen in. If you are any kind of marketing professional, listen in. Much wisdom is to be gained from this conversation on how to get e-commerce traction in today's environment. 

Vicki von Holzhausen utilizes her background as a designer for Audi and Mercedes to innovate on materials that are truly sustainable through her eponymous vegan leather bags and accessory brand. Vicki and I discuss the weight of her brand promise, The Conscious Code, how she bootstrapped a luxury brand, how she showcases accountability by using her last name as the brand name and so much more.  

Kara Goldin is the Founder and CEO of Hint, Inc, the brand synonymous with the leading unsweetened flavored water in the US, loved by millions. Within minutes of listening to Kara, you will understand why she became as successful as she has and why she is such an influential voice in business. Kara shared an outpour of crucial lessons for both entrepreneurs and marketers alike, and her first book, Undaunted: Overcoming Doubts and Doubters, was released last October and is now a Wallstreet Journal Bestseller. Needless to say, an episode not to be missed. 

Natasha Case founded Coolhaus with her then-girlfriend – now-wife – in 2009. Inspired by her architectural background and a drive to create the best ice cream sandwich available, the couple bought "a piece of shit postal van masquerading as an ice cream truck' on Craigslist for $2,500 dollars and towed it to the Coachella Music Festival using AAA." The rest is history. Today Coolhaus is the top women-led ice cream company in the U.S. and can be found in over 6,000 grocery stores.  Despite its growth, Coolhaus remains true to the authentic origins of the brand: represent positive change, push the envelope for the future, and create high-quality ice cream and plant-based novelties for all to enjoy. Coolhaus, with its quirky visual and verbal brand language, inspires the next generation of diverse founders, entrepreneurs, and creators to live out their dreams; and on today's show, you will see just how they do it.

Fabian Geyrhalter:Welcome to the show, Jeremy.Jeremy Parker:So great to be here.Fabian Geyrhalter:Great to have you. So, the majority of my guests come on to the show because I reached out to them. I have read about their companies, and I wanted to have them share their story on my show. But I also get bombarded with inquiries of PR firms and I usually just delete them because I cannot reply to each and every one of them. Yet, every now and then an inquiry comes my way, and I immediately accept and that was the case with you, Jeremy. So, someone from your team reached out and it was an easy sell.I wrote a book titled Bigger Than This: How to Turn Any Venture Into an Admired Brand a few years ago, and I studied brands that were selling commodity products, yet people went crazy over them. And there was no big innovation on the product level, but there was extraordinary differentiation on the brand level. One of the case studies in the book is Poppin, who entered the very boring office product, Market. So, think staplers, mousepads, pens, right? And they did so with nothing but a great splash of color. So, they suddenly offered a color assortment, which was super cool because companies could have their colored pens and their color swag, right? And Swag.com has a lot of similarities. It's a boring market space that you disrupted with a fun and human-centered brand.Fast forward to last year where I wrote a blog post titled Why You Should Give Away Your Product And Why Swag is Dead, which talked about the only impact that bad swag has, which is really on the environment, right? So, rather than a marketing or HR ROI. So, okay, with that intro, with that being said, I was super excited when I got you guys's pitch and I'm like, "This is amazing." So, Jeremy, you are the founder of Swag.com, a top eCommerce platform for purchasing promo materials people actually want to keep. You had 2,000% growth over three years, made it onto number 218 on Inc's top 500 fastest growing companies list, and Swag.com has customers like TikTok, Netflix, Facebook, Amazon, Mercedes, oh whatever, Starbucks and everyone, everyone, right?So, after my long intro, I'd love to hand it over to you to tell us how Swag.com came about and how you are indeed doing things differently?Jeremy Parker:Awesome. I love the intro. Really appreciate it. Yeah, so we started the business in 2016. And a little bit about my background, I used to be a documentary filmmaker in college. That's what I thought I might want to do or I was interested in. And when I graduated college, I won this Vail Film Festival, a big film festival on top of the mountain and I remember asking myself two questions, because after we won the award, they go to this kind of like celebrity brunch. And I'm going into the celebrity brunch and half the room are these celebrities that we've all heard of and half the room are these more struggling artists. And I had to ask myself that question number one, "Am I good enough?” And number two, "Do I really love it?" And both answers were no.So, when I realized that I didn't truly love filmmaking, I didn't think frankly, I was that good. I should probably do something else. So, I started a company right after I graduated college, had no knowledge of business whatsoever. And I started a high-end T-shirt company. And I thought this would teach me what I was good at, what I was bad at, what I enjoyed. And really know from marketing to PR to how to build an eCommerce site, how to do manufacturing, fulfillment, et cetera. I launched this high-end T-shirt company in 2007. Now, take your listeners back to 2007. This was when the recession hit. This was Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, all these banks were going under.So, all these high-end stores that we were selling to went under as well. No one was looking to buy high-end T-shirts. And I had this idea at that time to tie the prices of our shirts to the prices of the Dow Jones. So, for every 100 points the Dow dropped, we would give customers a little discount on their T-shirt price. But it got picked up by a lot of different blogs from Ad Age to Mark Cuban's blog, Blog Maverick and people were calling it like a very innovative pricing strategy to handle the recession, et cetera. And ultimately, these articles got seen by the CEO of a very large promotional product company.So, I was 22 years old, and I ended up meeting this big CEO of this promotional product company. They have 900 plus employees. I had no experience in promotional products. I had no idea what a promotional product was. I never really thought about it. I never thought about like the details, the intricacies , the sales process, none of it. But when I became friends with this person, I started to go to trade shows with him and learn and kind of see what was the industry like. And I learned that the time the buyer was very old, a much older buyer. The system was very broken fragmented, so the actual purchasing of Swag at that time was heavily reliant on presentation decks or catalogs or phone calls to close sales. It didn't really appeal to me in the way. For me, I would love just go on the site and buy it myself.But at that time the buyer was an older buyer, and they didn't mind this fragment the nature of the purchasing. Fast forward 12 years, I've done a lot of different startups from starting a company with my brother and Jesse Itzler. We did product placement...Fabian Geyrhalter:Wow.Jeremy Parker:... YouTube videos where we basically partnered with major celebrities everyone's heard of and owned their Twitter and Facebook feeds. And we will get brands like State Farm and Colgate and Verizon into the YouTube videos. So, we did this and I learned a lot about branding and how to do partnerships and connection. But I was always so fascinated by this promotional industry and how fragmented it was when I was 22 years old, when I really started my career out of college. And what I realized over the course of those 10 years that the buyer has changed. The industry has remained broken, fragmented, and old, but the buyer has changed. The buyers now are these young millennial.So, how do we build a platform for them, that they're able to easily purchase Swag, and do it with when our current buyers, the millennial? They don't want to search through thousands of products. They don't want to talk to anyone on the phone. They want to buy it themselves. There's no real brand that appeals to them. So I said, "Let's just go all in on today's buyer." And that's where we got Swag.com. So, 2016, launched the first version, did about $350,000 in sales the first year. Really manual process, just going and knocking on doors, trying to learn what type of platform we should be building.2017, launched the first version of our eCommerce site, did about $1.1 million. 2018, the site was getting better, did about $3 million. 2019, about $7 million. And last year, we did over $15.5 million and this year, we're on track to do $30 million. So, really growing over 100% year over year. And really just trying to automate the experience and make the buying purchasing experience really seamless.Fabian Geyrhalter:Amazing, right? It's all about the experience. It's all about just putting yourself into the shoes of your customer. And that's pretty much all it took in the beginning, right? I mean, that was the big epiphany of like, "Well, why is it so difficult? Why does it suck so bad?"Jeremy Parker:You're right.Fabian Geyrhalter:And that's the one thing that most entrepreneurs just oversee. They focus so much on the product and on features, and they forget about the target audience where really, that's where everything starts. But let's go back to how you actually get these amazing clients, right? So, instead of working your way from small clients up, I read about you wanting your first clients to always be big brands, right? You basically said, "This is how we want to start. We want to have one big client from the very get-go." That strategy paid off.Your first client was Facebook, then you walked into WeWork. And they asked you who your other clients were. You didn't really have any other clients, but Facebook. But you just said Facebook, and that was all they needed, which is so awesome. But how did you get into Facebook? I mean, that's no easy task.Jeremy Parker:No, no. It wasn't and you're exactly right. So, our idea from the very beginning was we had this amazing brand, we have Swag.com. We didn't have a website. It was a landing page. We had nothing at this point. This was like month one of our business in 2016. But we wanted to get those blue-chip name companies. When people come to our site, ultimately, they would see that roll of logos that says, "Oh, they work with WeWork and Facebook and Google and all these companies. Clearly, they could work with me." That was one bucket of our thinking.And the second bucket of our thinking is we wanted to build the platform ultimately. Now, we didn't know what the platform was going to look like or how it was going to function because we wanted to learn from our customers. And our feeling is, "If we're going to go after customers, I want to have the best customers. Customers that we cannot just scale amongst our office managers, but we can build a product that could work with their marketing team and their sales team and their London offices and their New York offices. And all these different departments and locations and permissions things and approval flows."That was the idea from the very beginning, like really build a robust eCommerce experience for purchasing a Swag, but also an experience for managing the Swag and doing it for large corporations. So, our feeling from very beginning is we should get these customers on board, but really learn from them. So, with Facebook, I just literally went to all of my LinkedIn contacts, found who I knew at Facebook, made a meeting with him, and ultimately when I... and obviously, this person at Facebook, he was the salesperson. He didn't buy Swag. It wasn't his goal. But I figured if I could get into the building, then we could kind of network our way to get the first sale.Fabian Geyrhalter:And you're literally saying into the building. You've basically just wanted to get into the building and start networking within the building.Jeremy Parker:Yeah, yeah.Fabian Geyrhalter:Security, security.Jeremy Parker:Yeah, exactly. Our feeling really from the very beginning was we didn't have a platform. We had nothing to sell on the site, but if I could show up at the building and I could bring in like a bag of Swag. Literally, be a traveling salesman, if you will and show the quality of the products. It will be hard for them not to want to buy it if they were in the market to buy. So, that first day, I mean, we really went up and down hallways. And I asked my friend, he introduced me to one person and they said, "Oh, actually this person in this division actually buys"And we, ultimately, were like showing up at this person's desk saying, "Hey, my name is Jeremy. Nice to meet you. Are you looking for swag?” It was kind of funny, but it didn't matter. To us, it wasn't about how much we made, it wasn't about how big the order was, and frankly, we didn't care what they bought. It was just about getting that initial customer, so that we could use that to get the second customer, and then use those to get the third customer. And really, just build upon ourselves, but also learn what the process is.What did they like about the current process of buying? What did they hate? What kind of products were they looking for? What kind of use case did they need?" So, all these early conversations, it really was just for us to learn what the right product that we should ultimately be building is.Fabian Geyrhalter:And that learning kept going. I mean, you kept doing it over and over until today, right? And I do want my listeners to understand that you very much innovated along the way despite being in the Swag business where you would think you really can't... I mean, for those of you who don't understand Swag, it's literally, usually, it's like products like water bottles, and T-shirts, and you just slap a logo on it, and you sell it on mass, right? And that's pretty much it.But despite being in that business, tell us a bit about, the digital lockers, so to say that you have and the custom landing pages for employees where they can make their choices and the automated distribution. Because you have very smart initiatives. In all of them, you were thinking about, "Well, what does the customer... how can we make the customer's journey easier?" And just tell us a little bit about some of those innovations that you guys did over the years.Jeremy Parker:Yes. So, when we started, the first concept was let's just make the buying experience effortless. So, before having anything else, by the way, we had all these ideas for many years for over five years in our brain, writing down notes of detail of what we ultimately want. We ultimately always knew we want to do these Swag clauses, so I'll get into that in a second and how that all works. But from the very beginning, we can't build everything. We have very limited resources. So, our first goal was let's just build a great eCommerce experience that makes customers, gives the customers the ability to buy Swag in less than three minutes. That was our goal.Because every other site that we went to in the market, it took around 10 minutes if they even had an eCommerce component where many of these big players and promotional products are very manual, which you're not even able to checkout yourself, you have to speak to them on the phone. So, how do we remove all the friction? So, we just went over where everyone else did, and then kind of separated ourselves for a good year where we didn't look at any of our competitors, and just analyzed what our customers were asking for. So, we built this really great eCommerce experience where people could find what they want, a curated selection.So, we're not offering thousands of mugs, we offer the top 25 mugs and the top 25 water bottles and the top 25 T-shirts. Really giving a curated experience, so people don't get overwhelmed with too many choices. Once they find the product that they're looking for, they could easily upload their logo and mock up the product. Now, when they upload their logo, we built this technology that detects not only how many colors are in their logo, but the nearest Pantone match. So, obviously, if the customer is for Coca-Cola, Coca-Cola red is very important versus Staples red, right? They're completely different colors. So, really giving the customer the confidence that we're going to get their product perfect, and also their color perfect, so really removing friction, right?Historically, office managers want to buy Swag, but then they need to go to their designer to see what the Pantone colors and many designers don't even know what the Pantone color is, because they've never done printing. So, we take out all of that, kind of back and forth, headaches, so we just went one by one. And every issue that customers were having, we said, "Okay, let's figure out a solution to fix it." And kind of streamlined it and build it faster. In fact, now on their site, it's less than two minutes, where you could find what you're looking for, design it and buy it in a matter of seconds.In 2017, we started to talk to a lot. I mean, all along the way, we were never stopping. It wasn't like, "Let's talk to customers now. Let's build it and then forget about the customer." It's always been about learning from the customer and listening to the customer. And the customer doesn't always know what is exactly right or what we should be focusing on. But more times than not, they're going to give us a lot of ideas of what we should be building and we have a detailed list of, "Well, 15 customers asked for this exact same thing. Clearly, this is something that people want. A lot of customers." So, we have running tallies of features.I would say over 90% of the features that we've built, it's been based on the customer suggestion, which is really great and I like that. Obviously, we have 10% or 15% that were just coming up with ideas that customers never even thought about and I'll get into that in a while. And we're doing this feature right now that we're building called Collaboration mode. Now, no customers asked for this, but it's just an idea that we wanted since everyone's working remotely, we want customers to be able to work together on the same platform. So, let's say I have an account. I can invite Jennifer and Peter and Lawrence on my team. And they all could login in into my own account where they could all be purchasing and adding stuff to the cart. And then ultimately, Jennifer, the designer or the office manager can log in and she could buy the stuff.So, you can kind of share the same cart where people can be buying things and adding things and designing things and all gets lumped into one cart and gets purchased by whoever has the ability to purchase. That's an idea that no customers ask for, but I think as people are working so remotely, everyone's so disconnected. No one's huddled around their office. Because we saw that when people buy Swag, it's kind of a joint effort. People are huddling around the same computer and they're picking things, "Oh, I like the notebook or I like that pen." And their doing it together. So, if no one's in the same office, how do you allow people to do that same interaction remotely?So, we're coming with definitely innovative ideas like that. But at the same time, we're also listening to our customers. And in 2017, our customers told us about account-based marketing, that they wanted to be able to send Swag to remote addresses. So, we started to hear this a lot. Instead of just sending Swag in bulk, but that's the historical nature. You buy 1000 T-shirts, 1000 T-shirts are sent to one office. These new customers were saying, "I would love to send 1000 T-shirts to 1000 different addresses. I would love to engage with my best customers. I would love to engage with leads to help close sales."They weren't really thinking at this point so much so about work from home culture or remote employees, but it was more just about engaging with your best customers and leads. And we start to really build out our Swag distribution platform where people could buy 1000 T-shirts and on the shipping page, instead of putting their address in, they click a button, it notifies their system. We hold those 1000 T-shirts in our warehouse and then we give them the tools to distribute that Swag however they want it. One T-shirt here, 50 T-shirts there, 1000 T-shirts to a 1000 different addresses. If they don't have the recipient's address, they could create a landing page in a matter of seconds.Upload your logo, your colors. Blast out a link to all of their attendees or virtual event attendees nowadays or their remote employees or their best customers or leads where they could select what T-shirt size they are, what address they are. It speaks to our system we could distribute. If they're a marketing team, they could have the marketing closet, which only the people who have the marketing closet gets access to. And sales closet, completely different than the London office and the New York office. You could have it completely broken down by budget, by departments, by credit cards on file. Every single thing is saved to keep track of all of your tracking information and what's been sent and how much inventory we have at all times.Because right now if you buy Swag to your office, and you have 1000 T-shirts in your closet, you really have no idea what your inventory is. You get 800, you get 700, you could have no smalls. You're never going to know. I mean, just imagine boxes on top of boxes. Now, in this inventory closet that we have, you could keep track of everything in real time. And whenever you're running low in stock, we'll send smart notifications to restock. We started building this about two years ago and we launched the beta version in January of last year. So, the timing was insane.We didn't bet that a pandemic would hit. We didn't expect that everyone would frankly need this service. And the platform was built in such a way that it was really targeted towards account-based marketing, so to marketing teams or to sales teams. And what happened is when the pandemic hit, our sales went from 850,000 in February, which was one of our best months ever to 350,000 in March. 300,000 in April, the world completely fell apart.Fabian Geyrhalter:Sure. Yeah.Jeremy Parker:The whole industry was down over 44% in our industry, but we realized we had this platform that we've been building and thinking about. We have to reposition it, rebrand it, retell the story, create new ads, train the team, change the homepage to really tell the story of, "Well, now, that your team is all working remotely, how do you keep the company culture thriving even when no one's in the office? How do you engage with your best customers if you're not going to be going to those trade shows?" Right? It makes sense that the industry is down, right?There's no office managers buying Swag because no one's in the office. HR managers are not buying for onboarding new hires, because no one's being hired. There are no trade shows, so marketing teams aren't buying for trade shows. So, it's clear on the surface of why the industry would fall off a cliff, but we grew over 100%. And the reason is because we really adapted super early to really push this work from home narrative that to keep your company culture thriving, you need our service. And we had the best platform because we were building it for over two years at that point.Fabian Geyrhalter:Totally. Yeah. No. It's just super cool. And I mean, in the end, this is all continuously adjusting your brand's positioning, right? And showing empathy to your user because I bet you and you know that, I'm sure that 90% of the other like Swag providers out there, they just basically gave up. They're like, "Okay, shoot. We're kind of screwed right now. Let's lay low, right?" It's like, "Let's fire people. Let's kind of make it through this. Let's just go hustling and try to get a couple of orders in," but that's it, right?Whereas you were like, "Well, how do people feel today? How do people feel working at home? How does the office manager feel? How does the manager feel?" Right? And I mean, it's so huge. And that's what it takes to "pivot" is to really put yourself into their shoes and it's so easy to say, but it's so difficult to do. I mean, now you've got this entire WFH, Work From Home attire assortment, right? You've got a Virtual Happy Hour tap on your site where people can just buy stuff for virtual happy hours, right? You have a home school area, right? I mean, all of this stuff.And then you've got brands like North Face, Moleskine, YETI, brands you actually want, right? You would actually spend real money on. And when all of this comes together, it's the magic. How does that curation take place? How often do you actually exchange your products? Because in the way, you're a little more like a retail, shop where stuff always needs to be current. You need to understand the zeitgeist. You need to understand fashion. Right? How do you do that? Do you have a whole team that just constantly resorts everything?Jeremy Parker:Yes. So, it's a good question. In the very beginning, it was me, my co-founder, Josh, literally showing up at different stores, calling different stores, calling different suppliers and testing a lot of products. And we found and what made us even more excited is that 95% of products we tested were throw away. Stuff that you would never want to keep and our entire brand is about products that you actually want to keep. So, imagine you're buying Swag, if this stuff ends up in the trash, it not only cost your company money because no one's going to be using it, but it tarnishes your brand.Fabian Geyrhalter:Totally.Jeremy Parker:So, you have to really focus on quality stuff, and it doesn't have to be the flashy, the pop socket or this or that, it just has to be stuff that really people want to keep. So, really nice pair of socks, a backpack, a notebook, a water bottle, a mug that they're actually going to want to keep. And we've tested a lot and we've curated, constantly been curating it. Now, we have a team of product specialists, who are sourcing, just constant sourcing and testing things. If we ever had a bad feedback from a product that we offer, we just remove it from the site. And we're constantly adding new brands.And we have Brooklinen in our site, and Knomo London and Bellroy backpacks, and a lot of direct consumer brands that other promotional product companies are not featuring, they're not offering. And frankly, they're not able to, because historically, you think of the Swag industry as chotchke, a throwaway, right? And we're trying to change the brand and saying, "No, it's actually an amazing marketing channel for companies." If a company like Bellroy backpacks, you're really high-end in backpack, you're really premium, our customers want those backpacks because it differentiates them. It's really quality. Especially our buyers, they want to make sure that they're buying stuff that is actually being kept.But for the D2C brand, it's actually super powerful as well. It's a great marketing channel. Now, when Facebook buys 300 Bellroy backpacks, that's not only Bellroy making a lot of money in bulk as opposed to having to sell one at a time, I mean, 300 people at Facebook, who could fall in love with their brand and ultimately become lifelong customers.Fabian Geyrhalter:Totally.Jeremy Parker:It's a great marketing strategy. So, we're selling this, a concept to a lot of these D2C brands, a lot of really cool brands. And we're saying, "I understand why you wouldn't want your products featured on the other promotional product sites, because it doesn't necessarily feel cool, but come to us, we're going to elevate your brand, we're going to highlight your brands, we're going to feature your brand, and we're going to make it stand out." So, we're just constantly iterating, adding products, removing product, sourcing new products, and we want to be known as not only the best place to buy quality promotional products, but the best place to buy products that no one else can get anywhere else.Fabian Geyrhalter:And I mean, you hinted at this, right? But being able to make your brand synonymous with an industry term is really genius, right? Especially when it is a fun short word like Swag. But when you come in to disrupt the category that is seen as dodgy, as cheap, boring, did you ever think of it being a risk to use that jaded industry term? I mean, obviously, it worked out really, really well, right? But did you feel a little risk doing that?Jeremy Parker:No. I felt so confident in the name that we put first thing from the very get-go because number one, Swag.com is insanely memorable. Right when you hear it, you will never forget it, right? And that was the first thing. The second thing is, it's what today's buyer, the millennial buyer, the buyer I'm really going after, they call it. So, my whole concept, and it's been working, is I want people to be having offline conversations. Because, typically Swag is not just something... put it this way.When you're scrolling through Facebook and you're advertised the pair of shoes, right? You might buy it because you're like, "Oh, that looks really cool." It's like a spur of the moment type of purchase. Swag is not that, right? You're an office manager, a marketing team. It's a $2,000 purchase, it's not your own money, it's your company's money. You're typically buying it around a certain event or like a trade show is coming up or you want to engage with your best customers. There's planning that goes involved in it. So, it's not like an impulse buy, historically.So, when it's not an impulse buy, you have to be really on top of mind, because what's going to happen is you could be in front of somebody, a customer, whether it's a Facebook ad, a Google ad, a blog post, a market. Whatever it is, they see it and then they really don't even need to buy it right then and there. So three, four months, six months later, their boss is talking to them offline, saying, "Hey, we actually need Swag for this event." They need to think of you at that exact moment. Right?So, it's more important than ever to have such a short name that is so memorable. And really, when we said Swag.com, we want to turn these offline conversations into online purchasing. That was the idea. Get in front of them in January, but when they want to purchase in October, they think of Swag.com, because it triggers, "Oh, I want to buy Swag." Swag.com, type it directly into the browser, so we could convert customers without having to pay for them.Fabian Geyrhalter:And then, of course, when you wanted to buy Swag.com, it was a million dollars.Jeremy Parker:Yeah, in fact, it was more. It was like, they're asking at $1.2 million. Ultimately, it took us about almost nine months to negotiate.Fabian Geyrhalter:Tell us that story. I mean, as much as you feel confident talking about it, if anything is confidential. But I heard a little bit of that. And I love your strategy of how to actually end up paying, I don't know, 200k and kind of like making this contract work.Jeremy Parker:Yeah, so $200,000, obviously, a ton of money for a domain name, even though I thought that was-Fabian Geyrhalter:For a startup, yeah, for sure.Jeremy Parker:For a startup. I mean, that was literally, we didn't have that money, frankly. So, in the very beginning, we worked out a deal with the owner, where we would exclusively license the domain name for a two-year period with the option to buy it for $200,000. And for the exclusive license period, we would give them a little bit of the company. So, our feeling was this, we're these young startup guys. We didn't have tons of money to spend $200,000 on a domain name, before we even had a website, before we raised any money at all, is a big risk.So, our thing is, "Let's give a little bit of the company, something that we could definitely live with, and we could then use the Swag.com domain name from day one. We could feel. We could have this image of a brand and start building a brand value from day one." And that's what we did. About six months later, we said, "You know what? We don't want to wait to two years, we're just going to buy it right now."So, we're able to raise a little bit of money. We used some of the money we made in the first six months of sales and acquire the domain name in six months, so it just worked. It allowed us to get in the door. It allowed us to secure the names, knowing that nobody else would get it. And then, ultimately have this brand that's been building over the last five, five and a half years, where SEO is more than doubling every single year at this point.Fabian Geyrhalter:Back to the question, "What's in a name?" Right? That's what's in a name, and how much is the domain worth it, right? It just so depends on the industry that you're trying to disrupt. It's genius. I mean, a whip smart move and one that takes a lot of guts to actually pull off that early on to put all of your bets onto that name.Let's talk a little bit more about the naming convention. Now, you're doing something really cool called Swag Swap. It's a wonderfully crafted term. It says it all. But can you tell us a little bit about what it is and how it works? Because I personally think it's a super cool initiative.Jeremy Parker:Yes. And this is not even an idea we came up recently. This was an idea from the first day we were thinking of. Well, there's all this kind of we call throwaway Swag out in the marketplace, and everyone has a closet of stuff that they've gotten from a trade show that they just never wear. And our feeling is this. So, from day one, I'm going to ask you, you think about all these marketing channels, right? You have TV commercials, people are trained at this point to avoid ads and commercials or they marketed to at all costs, right?They're watching TV and they fast forward through commercials or they're reading a magazine and they flip through the ads to get to the content or they're online and they're browsing the internet and everyone has ad blockers or blocking ads. People hate ads. People are trying to avoid ads at all costs. But when you give somebody something really quality, what do they say? They say, "Thank you." It's like the only ad medium where if you give somebody something quality, they say, "Thank you," but if you give somebody something as throwaway, they'd probably say, "Thank you," but then they throw it away two seconds later and it doesn't really act whatsoever.And what we found is there's so many people, and there's so many companies in general that have closets full of just stuff that they'll never want. Whether it's an old logo, whether it's just poorly made, whether it's just sitting there. So, our feeling is we're wondering if we could get companies to donate all of their old Swag that might not be useful to them, but could be useful to a lot of people, homeless shelters, charities and we would give them a discount on their next purchase. So, we've been, promoting this since day one in 2016 and we've had a lot of companies donating a lot of their old Swag to people and really helping people and then we give them a discount on their new stuff with us. So, it's been a win-win for everybody.Fabian Geyrhalter:Totally awesome. Yeah. And I think that goes back to my introduction, right? When I wrote about how Swag is dead, right? Because it's just bad for the environment, that it doesn't really change the ROI. You guys knew that from the beginning and you knew how to actually improve the ROI and how to also improve the environmental impact of what you're giving, so that you don't give crap, but you give something great, right? That's a huge, huge difference.For a brand that is all about placing other brands logos onto your Swag, you decided not to have a colorful bold logo of sorts, instead, it is very minimalistic, black type in a black outline box. I assume, just like everything that you guys do, that this did not happen by accident, instead it must have been a calculated move to allow you Swag.com to stand out on your own website while letting your client's logos shine, right?Jeremy Parker:That is 100%, you got it. I mean, from the very beginning it was we had to get a great logo. Now, a lot of people in the early days when I was designing the logo with our designer, we're like, "Oh, you're going to put dot-com in the logo as well? That's weird. That doesn't seem right." Companies put the dot-com, but our feeling is if we had the name Swag out there, no one's going to now it's an eCommerce site at all. We have to make it very clear that's the destination, so I want it to be super bold and super clear.And by the way, every single T-shirt, not every T-shirt, but a lot of the T-shirts on our site are Swag.com branded. So, when Facebook buys 1000 T-shirts and they're giving out 1000 T-shirts to 1000 different addresses, every T-shirt says Swag.com in the inner label. And then our tagline is, "We made this." So, it's "We made this" is not only about Swag.com as the company made this T-shirt for your brand, but it also represents when you put on... if you work at Facebook and you put on that Facebook T-shirt, you want to feel... I mean, the whole point of Swag is to feel like you're part of something, right? You're part of a team.So, you want to feel like you made this, you made the company Facebook, right? If you work at Google and you wear a pair of Google socks, you want to feel like you made Google like you're part of it. So, we really want to get that essence with our logo and our branding, in general, of really putting our customers at the forefront. We're all about making your brand shine. Now, we have a really cool brand and it's slick and it's minimalistic and it's colorful, because we want to show off how fun Swag can be. But at the end of the day, it's all about our customers, all about getting them the product that will make their brand shine and their brand be connected to one another.Fabian Geyrhalter:So, while we're deep in that branding conversation, I mean, you started a lot of companies. You're still very young. You just totally hit it with this one perfectly. You have always been very brand forward, maybe subliminally so, but I think it must be a passion of yours personally. What does branding mean to you after going through all of this? What is branding to you?Jeremy Parker:Yeah. You hit it on the nail. I'm like one of these weird kids who was obsessed with branding in high school. Like, that's what... I always want to be a branding guy, always even in high school. And when I went to film school, I was at BU and I was going to be a marketing major in college. And I was at the BU, the com school. And I'm looking at the curriculum between marketing and film and I realized that film and marketing pretty much had the exact same curriculum, except for film would teach me how to make videos. And this was the early onset of YouTube.And I figured, I better learn how to tell stories through video as well. I guess, it has to be a very powerful medium. So went to film, where I was probably the only filmmaker in the film school who'd never wanted to be a filmmaker. Even though, I won this Vail Film Festival and I went down that path a little bit, it was never my true passion. I always love telling stories through video. And I think brand is just so important to tell the right story. There's so many companies out there. There's so many companies that do the exact same thing, especially in an industry like ours, like a commodity industry where you're selling other people's products.Now, in our mind, we never really, even though everyone calls us a commodity business, we never really felt like we were because the products that we're offering is number one, oftentimes not available anywhere else. So, it's like no one can even get some of the products that we offer on our site. And the products that they do get offered on our site, we've curated down to make the experience for customers to easily find it. So, curation is a differentiator. It doesn't seem like such, but it really is. And then making our platform really simple. We're allowing people to purchase stuff and hold stuff and inventory stuff and distribute stuff effortless. It's so much easier than really any other platform in our industry.So, the combination of all these elements and then telling a really, a very focused story. Our story is very focused. It's Swag.com, we help you buy quality Swag. And then if we're going to say that we have to make you both help you buy the Swag easy, and also help you buy quality stuff easy. So, it just really kind of dictated the mission of what our focus has been.Fabian Geyrhalter:I think that idea of focus is so important, right? So, I mean, what I do with my consultancy just like, we always call it, "We create brand clarity," right? Because it's all about clarity. Once you know exactly what your brand stands for and what you're focused on, everything else would kind of fall in place because you just have this focus, this razor sharp focus. So, I totally, I totally agree with you.If you would give brand advice, like this advice that's very focused on just the idea of branding. And branding, obviously not just being the logo and the name, but it's everything, right? How to create a brand that people love? What will be some advice for founders? Kind of like as an early takeaway for the episode.Jeremy Parker:Yeah, I think people just need to have a point of view, right? It's all point of view, especially in your early days, you don't really know what you are. And I would say, I was very lucky in Swag in many ways, because I had the experience in the promotional product industry from 12 years prior, so I knew what I was not. I knew that what I didn't want it to be a new with the old experiences. I know how broken the industry was. And then I was realizing who the current buyer is. So, how do I appeal to today's buyer? So, from the very beginning, I had a very distinct focused point of view.So, I think anytime you're starting a business you not know exactly and things could adapt it as you see tons of companies change their logos and their colors and their experience over time, and that's part of the business. I'm sure we'll change certain things over time as well, but I think from the get-go, just having a really strict point of view, that is adaptable. And that could change and that could grow as your customers grow and as you learn really who you are.Fabian Geyrhalter:Totally, I mean, you hit it on the head, totally. That's exactly it, right? Starting it off like that is crucial and most founders don't do that. And I think it's obviously, it's a struggle. It's a struggle thereafter and when I work with my clients and actually get them to that idea of like, "Yes, this is our brand. This is where we're heading. This is the focus."There's one exercise that I do at the very, very end that I'm going to totally put you on the spot here. But I think you can handle it, something tells me you can. Where I say, "Okay, now that we've done all of this work together, if you could describe your brand, in one word, what would that word be?” So, if you think about Coca-Cola, they want to be seeing this happiness, Everlane is transparency. Thinking about Swag.com, what is one word or two words, like a quick descriptor that can really describe the essence of the Swag.com brand?Jeremy Parker:Well, from the very beginning, I always thought of Swag.com as fun. That was what I was going for from the first day because I was thinking, "Well, Swag should be fun. It's fun." I mean, it brings people together. When you buy Swag, it's usually around an event. It's when you're walking down the street and you see somebody wearing the same T-shirt as you or the same company T-shirt, you feel instantly connected to that person if you've never met that person, right? It's one of these things that brings people together and that's just fun.And then the second thing, the second word, I always use to think about swag is just creative. And if you see it in our logo, we have the simple black logo, Swag.com, that you could change the colors, but it's very just bold. It's in your face, it's very clear. There's no kind of mistaking it. But if you look at our secondary logo, it's a checkered box. It's an empty checkered box, which is like a very weird logo. An empty checkered box is probably the simplest logo you could possibly think of. And our idea for that was always, I want when people see the checkered box to instantly think, "I need to fill that checkered box. I need to put my logo in it. I need to put my..." Our whole brand is about elevating our customers.It's all about elevating our customer's brand. If you're Facebook and you really care about your brand, well, we want to be the place that shows you that and shows you that we value your brand and we're going to help you elevate your brand, so that you shine. It's not really about us, it's about our customers. So, we want to be this empty kind of state of, "We're going to print whatever you want us to print. We're going to do what you want us to do, but we're going to do it in a really nice, elegant way."Fabian Geyrhalter:And you also do some crazy products. I mean, you do very customized products. I mean, people can just come to you and say, "Hey, here's this bike. Could you customize this bike?" I mean things like that, which is super cool. Hey, before I let you go, there's this fine line between branding and marketing, right? And the two of them always need to work hand-in-hand. You guys are nailing it with marketing.And I wanted to ask you, "What is the number one way," it doesn't need to be literal. But what is one of the big ways in which you on the one hand attract new clients as a brand and in the other hand, keep current clients engaged, right? So, what are some of these ways? Because there's so much stuff out there, right? I mean, digitally, how you can keep people engaged and how you can start finding new ones, and people spend tons of money and all kinds of different services. What works for you guys? I mean, what are some ways that you love operating, that you wouldn't mind sharing with my audience?Jeremy Parker:Sure. So, to keep customers engaged, I think that is always the biggest challenge in every business, trying to keep them happy, but for us, we put a very big focus on customer service. So, beyond, and by the way, customer service is not just the team that we have in place who's engaging with customers and giving them a great experience and always being there for them. It's often the product itself that we're building. It's the products itself that we're offering, right? We need to have the right products for customers to buy, we need to have products that they otherwise couldn't get.And we also need a great product as we'd like to say, our site, our user experience to make it really easy for them to buy. That's a big part of the customer experience. But also it's the team in the back end that's helping people when they have issues, helping people when they can't find something that they're looking for helping people to help them source something that will make them stand out and unique. So, customer service, I think is the best thing and we're putting all of our attention and focus on across the board for keeping customers happy.Now, to get customers in the door, our big differentiator is the fact that we are willing to try new things. I think that's in our industry that's so fragmented and broken. Everyone's doing the same stuff. They're doing the Google ads. They're doing the LinkedIn ads. They're doing all the classic stuff. But for us, it's really doubling and tripling down on our brand on, our brand voice, on SEO, on organic, on content. And just the nature of the business itself. Now, I’ll explain this to you. Every single T-shirt, most of our T shirt say Swag.com in inner label. Right? So, our customers are inherently marketing our product.Every time someone makes a distribution from the inventory platform, there's a shipping label that says powered by Swag.com. So when Amazon makes a distribution to 5000 of their best employees, every single one of those employees will get an Amazon mug or a T-shirt or whatever, and they open up the package and it says, "Powered by Swag.com." Now, these other divisions now are knowing about Swag.com, right? Every time Google does a giveaway on our site where they create a landing page to capture information from their virtual event attendees or their best, whoever, they want to reward. And they want to capture with T-shirt size they are, what mug color they want, what address they are because many people don't know the addresses of all these remote people.Every single link says it's powered by Swag.com, so we're building the platform itself that will do the viral marketing for us. And what we've seen is our customers are just marketing us without even necessarily knowing it. It doesn't affect them. It doesn't in any way deter them from wanting to send out links. Just small, "Powered by Swag," just, it's a service. We're taking a backseat, but we're also allowing all the recipients to now know, "Oh, clearly Google uses them. This is something that I could use as well."Fabian Geyrhalter:And you spend a lot of time and money creating a cool brand that they don't mind co-promoting.Jeremy Parker:Yeah. Exactly.Fabian Geyrhalter:And that's huge because they wouldn't mind that with a lot of other vendors. And back to the Swag.com and how important that was to become an instantaneous industry leader per se, right? Because you bought the kleenex.com basically, which is really cool of your industry.Fabian Geyrhalter:Awesome. Hey, this was amazing.How can people follow you personally or get in touch with you and obviously, we know where they can get Swag, that's easy.Jeremy Parker:Well, obviously check us out at Swag.com, S-W-A-G dot-com. You can reach out to me personally if you have any ideas or concepts or you want to work with us, Jeremy@Swag.com or you can follow me on LinkedIn as well. And yeah, we would love to work with everyone, really help you guys out.Fabian Geyrhalter:That's awesome. I so appreciate your time. This was fun, educative. And it was really, really great having you here. Thanks for the time.Jeremy Parker:Thanks so much for having me.

Fabian:Welcome to the show, Max.Max:Thanks for having me. So excited to be here.Fabian:Yeah, I'm thrilled to have you. Let's talk about your journey a little bit. Together with your mother, you were running a family jewelry business, I guess if we can still call it, named Awe Inspired. It's a brand focused on self-empowerment. Your goddess coin necklaces have been worn on red carpets and Netflix shows, on the front lines of protests, and the front page of People Magazine, and of course on stage at Coachella. So anyone from Madonna to Tyra Banks and Sarah Silverman, it seems like you hit the pulse across a huge spectrum of women. Celebrating diversity, intersectional feminism, and social justice are at the core of your brand. 20%, and let me say that again, 20% of all proceeds benefit charity partners working towards women overcoming adversity. Tell us a bit of the story behind the brand. Did you and your mother join forces early on with this venture? Did you come in later on? How did it all start? Take us on this journey.Max:Totally. Yeah, I had no intention of building a career in retail, in fashion. I actually studied politics and economics at university. And my first job out of college was actually on the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign. So I got a lackey role on the digital team at Hillary for America. I ended up doing some work with LGBT community engagement on the campaign. And while I was serving on the campaign, my mother Jill, who has built her career actually in jewelry on the wholesale side, so she has a gemology degree has been importing diamond and gold jewelry to the United States for 30 years. She was at the time recovering from breast cancer. She is a lifelong cancer survivor. She's had cancer three separate times in her life. And it was during this third fight of hers that it really dawned on me what a miraculous accomplishment it was to not only overcome such a debilitating and terrifying illness, but to do it with grace, and to continue running a business and running a family. I was so moved by it and I was so much more a part of her journey. The last time she had had cancer I was seven years old. And so it was so different to experience it as a young adult. I remember in this conversation with her, she's in the bed in the hospital recovering from these really invasive surgeries. All she was talking about were these other women she met who were also receiving treatment and how they didn't have a beautiful home to go back to, and a wonderful bed and loving family to take care of them, and how she wishes that she could do something for these other women who were in her position and didn't have the support or privilege or what have you. And that really struck me that in this time of need of her own, she was so conscious of the needs of others. And she had always talked about wanting to do something with jewelry that just felt a little more meaningful. And she had. She worked with Oprah Winfrey on a piece for the Fistula Foundation, which is a foundation based in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia to raise money for fistula procedures and awareness. She had worked with the Children's Cancer Research Fund in Minnesota on a jewelry project. So using jewelry as a vehicle for charitable giving had always been in her interest area and in her vernacular, but she lacked any understanding of like bringing a brand to market and selling product digitally and understanding that ecosystem which I was at the time very entrenched in on the campaign. I basically saw like the most robust digital organization in the world get stirred up in a matter of months at work speed and really that was like an accelerated learning environment for me.We were like, what would you give someone, what would you give these women who are overcoming such a tremendous adversity to honor their strength and do it via the vehicle of a beautiful jewelry product? Nothing on the market really felt like it was satisfying that need. The pink ribbon and all of its offshoots felt very just empty and trite at that time. And I think still that's the case very much. It's just that that vehicle for storytelling has been run through or whatever. We've seen it so many times at this point. A lot of that product intended for survivors was also made of cheap materials, rubber bracelets, or tin or brass, didn't feel worthy of someone like my mom, or like these other women that she was going through this experience with. And so we had this idea, let's use jewelry, which has always been a vehicle for gifting and for building connections between people to really serve this gifting occasion of honoring survivorship properly. It'll be this luxury product made of precious gemstones and fine metals and have really deep meaning. People will want to give it to the survivors in their life of any adversity, and we'll give back as much of it as we can to charity partners, so that people feel like they're making a difference, as well as making a statement. That's where we started. We built a deck. She and I, never done this before. I had no idea really what this was. Looked up templates online of like how do you build brand pitch deck.Fabian:Oh, so good.Max:After we got to this idea of the branded MVP, the first step we took was pitching it to a branding agency. I don't know why. If I could do this all over again, this is not the next step we would have taken. We were like, "Okay, we need packaging and we need a name and we need a logo." So novice at the idea of building a brand that like that was really the first place we went-Fabian:That's awesome. That's fantastic.Max:Sure. Sure. I was in New York at the time, and I started cold pitching a bunch of different agencies that I basically looked up online on Madison Avenue, because I'm like, "Okay, where do you find these people like Madison Avenue? They're the advertisers." Anyway, I probably looked foolish sending around this cold pitch. But eventually, this agency owner, who was a recent cancer survivor herself, she saw my pitch and it really resonated with her. And she helped us design what was the early brand, which actually had somewhat different name. The original name of the brand was a AWE, Alive We're Empowered. So it was A-W-E, the acronym. And it sounded like a nonprofit, it sounded very much like this cause-focused initiative and it really worked for us at the time. We were super thrilled with the name and how the branding all came out. And, yeah, that's the long and short of it, of how we got started.Fabian:I mean, first of all, what an amazing, heartfelt, deep story. To me, it is so fascinating how you look at some brands and you kind of like shrug them off. It's like, "Oh, here's another internet brand and here's... Oh, and they came up with a clever solution." And then you go deeper, and the meaning and the passion and the sweat that went into it. And just like just putting yourself bear out there saying, "Look, we have never done anything like that." But it seems like when you put A and B together, something bigger should come out of it. I love that story. The first thing that you said when I asked how it come about, you started talking about how you were part of the Hillary campaign and how you studied politics. And suddenly, all of these questions that I had about your brand, all basically were answered just by your first couple of sentences with your mom being the cancer survivor and how she wanted to empower other women. And all of this is the brand and it's amazing that now... How many years later are we now? How long ago was-Max:Four.Fabian:It's only four years. Wow. Okay, four years later, how everyone that gets in touch with your brand can feel that, right?Max:Mm-hmm (affirmative).Fabian:Can feel that emotion. I think it's extremely powerful. I love that the first thing you did is create a pitch deck for branding agencies. Sounds like, "Hey, we need a brand. You're a branding agency, so can we work in this together?" Happened a couple of times to me too, where entrepreneurs knocked on our door and they're like, "We really don't know where to start. Are you the person where we start?”Max:Yeah, exactly. I wish they had said, "No, we're not." But instead we signed like a crazy contract then.Fabian:Well, it depends on where you end up, but it's a good gut instinct. This is kind of how the idea came about and you hired the brand agency to help you put the brand together so that you can start going out there. Obviously your mother has been working on the jewelry and the idea. Did you launch with the goddess coin necklaces? How did you-Max:We didn't.Fabian:Okay.Max:No. Yeah. This is, I think the really interesting phase of this journey, were these first couple years of launch. What we ended up doing with this branding agency is designing this logo symbol that we used as the motif for all the products. So this logo of ours, it had these four teardrops in it, that we said represented the blood, sweat, and tears of sorrow and joy that every survivor goes on in her journey. And it was like really laden with deep sentiment, super symbolic. The logo itself, we thought was super wearable. We ended up putting it on all the product, which was without user testing it properly. Like laden with mistakes that whole strategy.Through this process of getting the brand together and getting the product together, we quickly realized, as you said, we didn't really know what we were doing and what the next steps were. And so we are like, "We need to bring on a leader to the team who knows really what they're doing and who can run a business and really stand us up." So we ended up bringing on a CEO from... I went to Stanford. I used some networking to find a Stanford Graduate School of Business grad who had a deep background in retail to come on as a CEO for this charitable brand launch.And yeah, I mean, suffice it to say, the initial brand was pretty much a flop. We had a ton of interest from different survivor communities to work with us, they really loved what we were doing. Our Instagram grew quickly, we had lots of different influencers in the survivor spaces. Mental health advocates and body positivity advocates and sexual assault awareness advocates, all really anchoring on this idea of celebrating survivorship. The problem was, is that no one wanted the product we had. There was no product market fit. Couldn't sell through the inventory. People just weren't resonating with this symbol that we had imbued with so much meaning and for others, it just looked very much like a logo that didn't carry the same weight.Similarly, I think this was a really interesting learning in the journey. Was that using digital marketing, it was really difficult for us to reach our customers because our customers weren't survivors themselves. It was actually the gift givers. It was the people looking to honor the survivors. And so there's all different ways you can use interest-based targeting or influencer marketing to find people who have survived cancer or who have overcome a mental illness, but it's very difficult to find their family members.Fabian:Right, because they're everywhere. They're anyone and everywhere. There's no targeting. Yeah.Max:Totally. Yeah, it affects everyone and now you're looking at a degree of separation. And it was just a really difficult marketing conundrum. And so this CEO we had, she was at a loss of how to deal with this. And after our first big holiday season, it was a complete flop. She left. She was like, "I don't think I can do this. I think I failed you." Yeah, she left and I was all but sure that the whole thing was folding at that time.Fabian:Yeah.Max:We were sitting on all this product no one wants. We just lost this CEO that was my only hope that this was going to work, but we didn't give up. I guess that's the moral of the story.Fabian:Which is the mantra of the whole brand. I mean, how could you possibly give up as three-time cancer survivor starting a brand? There's no way. You got to keep pushing. What was next?Max:Well, next was a little bit of a combination of me leaving myself and taking some time away and I actually went and got a new job. I went and started working for a telehealth company called Ro. They have a brand called Roman that is everywhere now, and a lot of men use Roman for a variety of different telehealth needs. But I went to Ro to learn myself a bit more about brand building and product development. I got a job as a product manager, like a real software product manager, and got to help build and launch different services with them. While simultaneously we were testing this concept of goddess, was very much something that we had hit on and was starting to take off.So throughout this weird, transitory period, I really took it upon myself to start getting on the phone with some of the people who had purchased the few sales that we had made with AWE or who had shown interest in it and just ask them upfront like, "What's the deal? What are we doing wrong? What would you want to see from a product like this? What's working here? What's not?" And all of those conversations and questions and landscape auditing led us to this concept of goddess. Essentially, we saw this trend in the jewelry space where there were all these coin necklaces, many of them celebrating male saints and male deities, but none, no collection, no one explicitly creating product featuring powerful women.And so we thought, well, our brand is about empowering incredible women, giving them a wearable symbol of strength. The hero product had always been a medallion necklace. And it felt just like this very graceful sidestep into what has turned to be just an enormous product, and essentially the backbone of the entire brand at this point. And so yeah, that was all happening simultaneously, as I was not really doing this full time anymore, and picking up this other full-time job. I mean, this was a multi-month transition process where I had to figure out how to even get a job as a product manager and you come up with this whole new product category.At some point, I took a trip out to Los Angeles. Every other jewelry brand I see succeeding in a space like this has incredible celebrity traction. Once again, like little dog eyed Max walking around with his little pitch deck or his suitcase full of product, I went door to door to the top agencies here in LA and tried to find someone who would help us make a connection with celebrities, which was another really key part of this equation. Was getting this particular product on the bodies of the most amazing women in Hollywood.Fabian:I'm going to go back. There was so much-Max:So much stuff. I'm so sorry-Fabian:No, no. I mean, so much good stuff. I mean, really, really exciting. But let me go back to one specific thing that you said, because I as a fact noted a lot of my listeners are intrigued by that. I keep telling everyone that I consult with that your focus group is... they're basically your social media followers or the people that are actually purchasing your product, even if it's just a few of them. I always say, call them up, talk to them, really figure it out. And then I get this big pushback of like, "Well, how do I break the ice? I mean, people are not just going to chat to me about a product."When you did this, when you were in this awkward position of, "Well, I mean, why don't I go to the source of the few people that actually bought our product and asked them flat out like can you help? What are your thoughts? What did you like? What do you not like? Who are you?" How did you do that? How did you break that ice?Max:Totally. I think people are a lot more generous and kinder than you would think. I think the positioning of our brand and that initial connection we had with people lent itself very well. I mean, a big part of these conversations was also hearing these people's journeys and having them tell me their story about survivorship, how they got to where they are and what that meant for them. And what it meant to wear a symbol of strength. And so much of that storytelling for these individuals was around like, "I don't want them were something that reminds me of this dark journey I went on. I want something to make me feel strong for the life I'm about to live." And so for all that reason, the previous product we had was wrong. But I think yeah, getting them to the table to have that conversation.I don't know. I think time and time again, I've just been amazed by how far a sincere and cold pitch goes. Sure, nine times out of 10 people don't respond, but it's that one out of 10 times that has led to every success that we've had. Has just been being really sincere about what we're doing, really upfront about what we want and how this person could help us, and getting that sincerity back. I don't think there's a special equation to it. I think it was just being genuine. Like you caught on to from the beginning, there's a very genuine thread going through this entire journey and I think a lot of people can see that. And so I tell anyone else nervous about reaching out to ask for help essentially. That shouldn't get in your way if you have a really genuine purpose.Fabian:I totally agree. I mean, the whole story of you can't read the label from inside the bottle is so true. So when you're a little bit stuck just to do this... Even I myself who is in the business of creating brands and creating the essence of a brand, when it comes to me actually rewriting the copy on our website or repositioning ourselves, I just have lunch or phone calls these days with some of our best clients over the last couple of years. And I just say, "What did we solve for you? What did we do for you? What do you see on the other side? Because I would never use their words.I very much believe in that power that you have. You ask your customers because they know best. And then repeat after them what they say to you. And talking about this whole idea of interaction, let's talk about the quiz. You had this rather simple interactive quiz feature on your site, and you still have it, that really made the biggest impact to date on your brand, I believe, once you started plugging this quiz in. Tell us a little bit about that, or set me straight if I was wrong with any of them?Max:No, I think that was a great summation. When we landed on this concept of goddess, we said we're going to make these goddess pendants and they're all going to look the same. We want to design the perfect necklace silhouette. They'll each obviously just have a different illustration, but that was similar to the problem we'd faced before. We designed all this product that looked the same, and people would come to our site and have no idea how to pick which product they wanted because all the photos looked the same. And those were literally at the time of the same motif. And now at least there was a little difference in the illustration, but we're like, "We have to design a way so people can choose the product that's right for them and feel this really deep connection with it."And so that's how we got to this idea of goddess quiz, like discovering your inner goddess, your inner warrior. Kind of took ideas from BuzzFeed, and all these different listicles that we are seeing online. Everything clicked together when we got to this concept of goddess. So I, like you said, wrote up this very rudimentary version of a quiz and used essentially just some random online quiz tool to build this onboarding flow that at the end of it would hyperlink you to the product that it corresponded to. And it was just like an instant hit. People love taking quizzes like that, first of all. And that was another thing that I learned somewhat simultaneously while I was working at this telehealth company. Was that people had a real endless appetite for talking about themselves.Fabian:And here we are. Look at us.Max:Here we are. Yeah, here I am on this podcast now. But yeah, I learned at this telehealth company, it didn't really matter if you asked people 10 questions or 30 questions about their health condition. People will always finish talking about themselves. They won't necessarily check out, but they will finish answering all the questions about themselves. So I built this quiz and it kept getting longer and more elaborate and more like heartfelt and deep. The more thoughtful and more profound the result page was, the better the conversion rate was. It felt like every time I went in and tweak this quiz, it just got more and more powerful. Part of what is so powerful of it was the lead generation. Obviously we require you to leave your email address in order to-Fabian:Of course.Max:... get your results. And it generates at this point thousands and thousands of emails for us a week of leads that we can then nurture and own and are way less reliant on Facebook for remarketing.Fabian:And they’re passive. I mean, these leads just keep coming in like day and night and you don't have to do anything. So that's-Max:Unbelievable.Fabian:... that's unbelievable. Yeah.Max:Yeah. And so at this point, we have a full development team focused solely on the quiz experience and building it out. It's a full year-long development roadmap with a big six-figure budget, and it's really what we think the bread and butter of our business is going to be in the future, which is personalizing product and experience for our customers based on their personality data. Understanding who you are and how we can tell you a story about a product that really resonates with you to the point that you purchase it.Fabian:So good. So smart. Let's talk about the other aspect of the brand, which isn't about data and about sales, but it is actually very much in parallel, which is diversity and inclusion, right?Max:Mm-hmm (affirmative).Fabian:So the political orientation Awe Inspired is no secret. The idea of exclude the many to attract the few seems to be the model which I always believe is the best way to build any brand. You have take a stance, and by having these shared values with the audience, you start formulating a much deeper connection that a lot of the big brands today just they can't do it. I mean, politically, they're just not in a space where they can do that. But how do you as a brand navigate taking a stance or not on any particular issue? And how has it helped you create an honest and transparent relationship with your... Boy, I don't know, 70,000 Instagram followers today. I don't know. I think something about that. How do you navigate that?Max:Yeah, it's a difficult question and it's the one thing I think that really eats at me. I'm obviously an extremely liberal position person, and our entire team definitely leans very visibly left.Fabian:Right.Max:And so from the very beginning, we said that this company and this organization was going to be an activist organization, and it was going to be advocating for the rights and for the visibility and for the pride of survivors and people who have overcome adversity. And as that positioning has really broadened to be we are advocating for women and for all women and for the rights of women, we very much maintain that activist stance. And so last year when George Floyd was murdered in my hometown of Minneapolis, it was very obvious that we had to take a stand and use our brand as a vehicle for change, however we could. And the way we were able to do that we have a Harriet Tubman necklace that we donate 100% plus a matching donation to the NAACP in Minneapolis.Fabian:Wow.Max:And being able to make that permanent commitment to that... I don't know. That was an easy one. That was an obvious like we have to do something to support the people in this community that we're a part of and don't really care how many people this offends. Every time we post about Harriet Tubman we lose followers, and that is just I couldn't care less.Fabian:Thank you. Yes, exactly.Max:Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s passing was another big moment for us there, where it was just obvious we would continue celebrating her heroism. I think where it got really challenging was in the 2020 election when we were deciding how the brand would play a part and how visible we wanted it to be. And obviously, every other brand on the planet had come out with some form of nonpartisan vote merchandise. That would have been a very safe path. And instead, we chose to celebrate the incredible achievement of Kamala Harris becoming the first woman to really break that glass ceiling finally, get a place in the White House. What a triumphant moment. That's when the backlash and ugly emails and hate mail really piled on. And it was a moment where we decided to dig our heels in and hold our ground. It absolutely paid off for us. I mean, we sold an unbelievable amount of product. We gained an incredible amount of visibility from all the celebrities who wore the piece.I think one particularly powerful moment was Miley Cyrus was wearing her Kamala necklace while doing an interview with Kamala Harris. And to see that moment taking place was pretty surreal and magnificent and kind of made everything feel right. But yeah, I mean, it is going to be something that we will continue to hold on to and keep having this conversation about like is there a moment we go too far? Is there a moment where this has too adverse have an impact on our brand? And I think in each of those conversations that the answer is like, do we care?Fabian:Exactly.Max:Like do we really care if by taking a stand that feels right to us that we lose business? We don't at this point. I think it's pretty obvious that if we were in this for the money, we would not have built a business with this kind of a double-bottom line, because it requires us to be extremely wise about our cost structures and always peering for ways to peel back costs. We have to be really conscious about our bottom line constantly, because 20% is donated.Fabian:That's huge.Max:We wouldn't be doing that if it didn't mean the world to us. And so, yeah, we've basically come to this conclusion that we're going to continue taking these stands. We're about to take pretty much the biggest one of our whole journey so far, which is for June this month, we're releasing our first ever celebrity-fronted campaign, where we've contracted celebrity talent to-Fabian:Oh, wow.Max:... represent the brand. And we are releasing our first ever trans goddess. So we're adding a trans woman to our goddess pantheon, which is a really important statement for us to make that trans women are goddesses that deserve to be celebrated as such, and I'm ready for-Fabian:A backlash.Max:... the response we’re gonna get for that.Fabian:Yeah. I mean, look, I think it's wonderful how you do it and that you do that. It was really interesting for me last year. I got a lot of racist emails about... People told me like, "Go back to your country." I'm from Vienna, Austria. It's like I'm a white kid. I'm not even used to that. There was so much and it came in moments where I was featuring a female Muslim on my podcast, God Forbid. I was celebrating what she was doing and how she was doing it. I received hate mail from people that subscribed to our email list, which I totally didn't understand. Because I mean, I'm very straightforward with my own values in my brand. And I told people, I'm like, "Oh my God, I'm getting this." And they're like, "Well, what have you been doing wrong so far? Why did it take you so long to receive hate mail? Because if you don't receive hate mail, you don't stand for anything. What have you been doing?"Max:Sure.Fabian:It's so true. I mean, look at the Kamala Harris necklace that you sold. I mean, there was a moment where you sold a necklace every 20 seconds, and you generated 50k in revenue over one weekend, and all of that 100% went to a nonprofit charity partner. And so, I mean, taking a stance creates ROI, because we all want to surround ourselves with brands and with people that we can align ourselves with. And like you said, well, every time you post something on Instagram, that takes a big stance. You're going to lose hundreds or thousands of followers. And yeah, fine, because you're going to get three times as many the next month. And those are the right ones. Those are your tribe. So that's really great.Let's talk about another important part of your brand, the actual box in which your jewelry comes in. I don't know if it's still the same box, but I saw it online on Instagram where the box opens up, obviously, exposing the jewelry naturally. But also, there's also a small mirror that states, "Hello goddess," above. So you can see yourself immediately with that piece. It's so genius from a psychological point of view and it's beautiful. After you introduce design focus changes like that one, do you see a spike in sales or in followers? Basically, I always get asked, how can you show ROI with branding and design? And it's a really tricky question. So I'd rather outsource the question to you-Max:Sure.Fabian:... because you are heavily data-focused. I mean, you have a very analytical mind to a certain extent because I mean, that's was a big success of your brand so far. But then there's this huge emotional part how you build your brand. When do you know something works?Max:Totally. I mean, the box is an interesting one that we really tested into it. You're right, it was a big step up for us in terms of like the quality, and frankly, the cost of the packaging. And so we initially were selling it as an add-on. At checkout, you could add on this Deluxe packaging and get this box and have this mirror box moment. And people love that box so much. They demanded that it came with every order, and we ended up revising our pricing structure so everyone can get the box. But I think it was really wise of us to instead of going for a price hike off the bat, with an untested new part of the experience, to really prove that it was something that everyone really wanted to pay for. So now it is included in every order.But yeah, it was a little bit of a gamble, but I think like we learned to do through that whole journey of finding goddess, was we audit the space. We bought product from all of our competitors and looked at their packaging and got a number of samples from our multiple different packaging providers and user tested different versions of the packaging. We really have built that muscle pretty much like out of failure. We were forced to build that muscle that I'd advise every other entrepreneur to build as quickly as you can, which is testing, testing, testing and iterating. And making sure that there's a test with a disprovable hypothesis for every decision you're trying to make in your business.Fabian:I love that. That's great. Absolutely. Well, I mean, you've been through a lot of brands building in the last four years. And coming from the Hillary campaign, too. What does branding mean to you now, compared to four years ago, where you walked in with a pitch deck to some brand agencies where you didn't quite really know what that all means? Now four years later, you having built a really amazing brand that keeps kicking butt, what does branding mean to you?Max:Branding in my mind, it's all storytelling, and it's storytelling from a singular voice. And I think understanding our voice and what Awe Inspired sounds like. Not what Max sounds like or my mom Jill sounds like or what we think one of our customers sounds like, but committing to what Awe sounds like is what the brand is. We have really at this point committed ourselves to regularly revising our brand voice guidelines, getting very particular about like what catchphrases does Awe use? What emojis does Awe use? And what emojis does Awe not use? Getting really particular about that voice and going into the brand guidelines like, what does an Awe button look like? And what does an Awe hover state look like? Just thinking about it as this singular being with a voice, with an opinion, with an aesthetic, is what I think branding is. It's a form of acting and it's coming up with this character. And the better the acting, the more authentic it feels as like this real being, as this real singular person.And so I think that is an exercise that we will constantly continue to work on because it's so easy. The latest fad comes and it's like, how does our brand maintain its voice on Tik Tok? Which is a much younger, fresher audience, but we need to maintain our sense of authenticity that has gotten us to the point we have. How do we translate this singular voice onto this new platform? Having a really strong set of codes and a really strong conviction in who that voice is, I think is what would lead to brand success or what I've learned at this point.Fabian:You’ve learned a lot at this point. Yeah, creating this character and being this actor, which doesn't mean that it's superficial, but kind of building the brand up as if it was a person. And then really understanding how would that person react to everything? For you, just four years later for you to talk about all the specifics in the brand guide, this is awesome. That was a quick learning curve.I always finish my show with that question. If there would be one word or two words that could describe your brand literally like 360, the entire brand, what the brand is about? I call it your brand DNA. What would it be? I mean, to me self-empowerment is high on the list, I'm sure. What is it for Awe Inspired in one or two words? What is the brand?Max:I think that's it. I mean, I think it's empowering. One of my favorite stats to wave around is that prior to the 21st century, men were the primary purchasers of jewelry. Men drove the jewelry market and you saw that in all of the advertising and in the product positioning. It was always you buy a piece of jewelry for the woman you love and it's kind of your way of keeping her happy, is by showering her in jewels. And in the 21st century, that market has shifted and women are the primary purchasers of jewelry now.A lot of companies, very successfully, can play into fashion and jewelry as this fashionable accessory that makes you look this certain way or perhaps even feel a certain way. But for so many women, jewelry is a vehicle for storytelling. And I'm sure almost any woman that you sit down with and ask her about the jewelry she's wearing, almost every piece will have a story. "My grandfather gave me this. My uncle gave me these earrings when I graduated college. I bought this piece for myself when I got my first paycheck." It's deeply sentimental, and I think what our brand is doing that I think is so special, is building in that storytelling into the product.Not only you know, does this journey of our pendants symbolize strength and resilience and female fierceness, but it speaks to characteristics that resonate with you as a person and we can draw parallels between your journey and Joan Arc's journey. What a beautiful story that is to tell and how empowering it is to see yourself in that figure and to wear her next year heart. It's just a very powerful moment. We have people writing to us all the time. Nurses who wear a Florence Nightingale pendant under their scrubs because it reminds them to keep pushing as they are battling on the front lines of this pandemic. Protestors wearing the Harriet Tubman medallion at the frontline of a Black Lives Matter protest. A little girl wearing a matching Kamala Harris pendant with her mom watching the inauguration and seeing a Black woman take the oath of office. That representation is really empowering. It's such a simple idea, but I really have come to learn that the simplest ideas can be the most powerful and the most impactful.Fabian:Awe inspiring, Max. Amazing, amazing. Absolutely amazing. I love everything about what you just said. Listen, thank you so much for spending time with us on this early, early morning here in Los Angeles for both of us. This was such a great pleasure. Where can people follow you personally? Where can they get to know Awe Inspired? Drop some of the URLs for us.Max:Totally. Definitely follow us on Instagram @aweinspired. Our website is aweinspired.com. You can reach out to me if you'd like, max@aweinspired.com. I'm not big on personal social media. I throw a lot of myself into my work and keep the rest of it to myself, but I would love to hear from you.Fabian:That's fantastic. Well, thanks again. This was really amazing.Max:Thank you so much, it was a pleasure. I appreciate your interest very much.Fabian:Absolutely.

Fabian Geyrhalter:Welcome to the show and Nick and Nick.Nick G:Thank you so much for having us.Nick A:Thanks for having us.Fabian Geyrhalter:I can say Nick and Nick over and over. It's like that should have been your brand name, Nick and Nick hot sauce.Nick G:It wouldn't fit on the bottle so we had to make it smaller.Fabian Geyrhalter:That's it. Exactly. So you guys are I mean it's just an insane story. So you made the 2020 Forbes 30 under 30 list. Adweek just named Truff the best brand born out of social media. Oprah, who's a big fan I heard, put your hot sauce on her favorite things list, which of course catapulted you into Amazon and you can find Truff in small grocery stores, Wright's Gourmet stores, you can find it in the large ones, Whole Foods and Irwin's of this world but also high-end department stores like Neiman Marcus which isn't your usual kind of place where you look for hot sauces. I would describe your brand, and this is how I like to start it where I tell you who you are, now I would like to describe your brand being kind of one part social media, one part beautiful, affordable luxury design and one ginormous part of gourmet truffle infused sauce.But what will make our listeners heads explode like it did with mine when I learned more about you guys, is that when I would tell them that you got the Instagram handle @sauce and after that you thought, "Well, now we better start selling sauce." That was kind of how it got started right? I mean tell us that story a little bit, of how this all came together.Nick G:For sure. So back in college, it's where Nick and I met, we were super immersed in everything that was going on in the social media world. We were both really geeking out on CPG at the time, Nick had a powdered beverage brand and I had a hat company and we were constantly just looking at these averaging brands and products that were blowing up on social media. And I happened to get the handle @sauce organically one day and I hit Nick up and I said, "Hey, let's do something with this."Fabian Geyrhalter:And that's it. And that's the founding story, period. And that's how CPG brands are started these days.Nick G:I guess so.Fabian Geyrhalter:And I mean, come on. It's completely nuts because you have an amazing name. I mean I noticed a lot of talk about @sauce, how you got that handle and that's pretty cool in itself because getting @sauce, even back in the day was not an easy task, I mean that is the kind of handle that every huge company wants to have. But I mean then you came up with the amazing name Truff, which of course is now jumping ahead in your story but I mean Truff would have been an awesome handle too. I mean we've got a five-letter name that perfectly describes your product but now you're stuck with sauce. So now what? Now imagine you would put out a mayonnaise for instance.Nick A:Well we have the Truff handle too.Fabian Geyrhalter:Okay so you have @Truff-Nick A:That's another story. But the name Truff came after the handle @sauce. It wasn't for a while until we realized we were going to end up making a truffle infused hot sauce and call it Truff. And so sauce very much played but even if we had Truff at the time which we didn't, we got it a little while after, we would have continued to use the @sauce account because of the virality that that accountant brings us just online and people tagged me in and people "We're @sauce." And so that's something we've always kind of engineered to be one of our growth hacks.Fabian Geyrhalter:And that's how everything started because you created, you had @sauce and you had absolutely no thought of actually starting a hot sauce or any kind of truffle sauce type of business. It was more it was a really cool Instagram handle that deserved some cool content and you guys were just building content around food and around cars and around all kinds of things that were kind of, that were sauce.Nick G:Yeah we kind of looked at this account as just a dope platform for us and we were putting out content that we thought was saucy. And we started to grow this following over a short period of time and some celebrity started following us it was kind of turning into the thing that's when, "Hey, let's do something bigger. Let's actually create a sauce for this platform we're building." And that's when we looked at the hot sauce category, it was a category that was absolutely on fire, it was very relevant in pop culture and we were both big hot sauce people. Hot sauce was cool.And we saw a lot of opportunity, we didn't see any top-shelf hot sauce brand that exists on the market, no one was really going premium. There weren't any brands going direct to consumer, everyone was building their brand in a retail setting and none of these brands really were doing anything crazy on social media. So we kind of saw those three lanes and decided to go all in on all of them.Fabian Geyrhalter:So at the time where you said, "Okay we've got a good amount of followers, let's actually do something. Let's actually create a sauce." how many followers did you have at that time, before you changed to becoming a retail brand?Nick G:I don't remember exactly. I think it was anywhere between 12,000 and 15,000, but it was over the course of just a couple months, it wasn't many years. It was very quick.Fabian Geyrhalter:And then I learned that then you actually went dark. I mean you basically said "Okay, we're going to change this now from being this curated portal to actually becoming a hot sauce brand." You actually went dark for a while before you slowly started teasing it out. Tell us a little bit about the strategy behind that, because you would think usually it's, "Well let's keep everyone entertained until we have the product" But you did the opposite.Nick A:I think the thinking was we didn't want to keep leading people down the path and keep digging ourselves a bigger hole when we knew we were going to essentially pivot into more of a brand-oriented account. So the thinking was we're not losing followers really, we're just not growing the account but we're also not leading people down this path of expecting what-Fabian Geyrhalter:Competitors.Nick A:Yeah and what this account is going to be in having it mature into more of a blog and then one day pulling the plug but I think moreso is also our time was being, I mean to grow the account, I know it sounds like "I'll just post pictures." but it was basically a job I mean I was spending maybe six, seven hours a day finding content and curating the account and so our time was then spent on actually building the brand that time. So it was there was only so many hours, and we didn't really see it as productive.Fabian Geyrhalter:Makes tons of sense. Absolutely. And you're the second major, and I call it major but not major CPG breakthrough startup that I heard of that started with an Instagram handle celebrating a category to then slowly taking over that handle with a product. The other one is Yes Way Rosé which is a totally opposite brand. It was all celebrating, I don't know if you're familiar with them but they were celebrating Rosé wines and the whole culture around it, which is all pink and all happy and all by the pool. And then they actually learned how to be winemakers and they started creating Yes Way Rosé which now is one of the best selling rosés in the US and it's pretty amazing and they too, they kind of started with just, just that they went down the line of, "Hey, here are some tote bags with Yes Way Rosé in it." and all of that but you said "Well, we're not going to do any merge, we're actually going straight into a product."Now my question is the following, when you take these months to get to know your tribe, which is an amazing competitive advantage to most traditional companies, how did you use that tribe? How did you use, and I mean use in a positive way, how did you use your followers for R&D. I mean I'm sure that at some point it must have come in handy that you suddenly have a ginormous focus group of tens of thousands of people to kind of test product or sentiments with.Nick G:So we actually did not tell anyone that we were even building this brand and this product. It came about maybe publicly, five days before the actual launch, when we started to tease it out for the first time. So all this work was going on behind the scenes. None of the followers on the account knew we're even building a product. Some of our closest friends didn't even know we were doing, we kept it very tight. And then once we started to tease it out, five days up into the launch we started getting a lot of chatter and then when we launched it just kind of went crazy.Fabian Geyrhalter:And so at this point when you come out with new products, which you are, do you use your audience? Do you find inspiration from them? Do you ask them questions what they like? Do you get any R&D out of that or basically you go with the same idea where you surprise them and you already know enough about what could or could not work?Nick A:I think with new products it's a big combination of different things. We always listen to the audience and see how they're using Truff. There's so many kind of data points just looking at people tagging us or posting this and their stories or things we see online or a VIP group on Facebook. It's pretty good a way to get a consensus of the vibes that are going on, on the Truff front (.…) And pasta, a lot of families were using Truff. And so it's kind of we do definitely see what our customers are using and liking and kind of take that into consideration, but that's just one of many data points.Fabian Geyrhalter:And it makes so much sense and I always tell founders and CMOs that their focus group is on social media. I mean everyone is there, I mean it's just data that you could just get right out of there. Who are these people? Who do they follow? Who else did they like? What do they fall into? And you're so right I mean with you expanding into mayonnaise and pasta sauces. Let's talk about this for a second because it's so logical, it's such a natural step but as long, so this is the interesting thing, as long as whatever you expand into has the name inspiration of Truff, so truffles in it, it's basically good to go. But having a name like Truff, which I think is awesome. It's a great choice to quickly have people understand that you're all about truffles but it also limits your expansion abilities a little bit.So you're basically stuck with two things, sauces and truffles, even though mayonnaise is not technically a sauce, it's a spread but it still works on the @sauce right but what I'm trying to figure out is was that something that you deliberately chose to do, to go with Truff and would you recommend the direction to a startup founder as there are definitely benefits but they're also shortfalls to that kind of descriptive naming strategy.Nick A:I think it depends on the brand you're trying to build. I mean I wouldn't say we're pigeon holed into sauces and truffles. I think we're definitely a truffle brand and so everything we put out would have a truffle element. I think though you can look at I mean, there's so many different examples, look at Red Bull, you can say all they are, can be is an energy drink. But energy drinks are very wide and broad and there's so many points of distribution and so many use cases of an energy drink.Nick A:I think a lot of brands try to come out and be all things for all people. You may make 10, 20 products overnight and they have this flavor, that flavor, this version, this, that and it's I think we're a little bit more (.…) focused and detailed on doing one thing and doing incredibly well before even thinking about another thing and so if our imaginations limit our brand just because we have to incorporate truffle into the product, not that it's not an honor to, I mean we want to incorporate truffle, it's such an incredible experience that that's the whole premise but I don't think there's really any limitation to what we can really create and incorporates truffle.Fabian Geyrhalter:I always think this is so fascinating because you start with a name and the name signifies one thing and it's even in the name Truff truffles, and then over time as you build your brand and as you start expanding into other products, which right now you're not, basically everything is still truffle at its heart, but if you would and seeing the speed that you're currently going I mean there might be something in the future that in the end you're going to stand, not for truffles but you're going to stand for affordable, luxury, high-end ingredients, great customer service, whatever you stand for as a brand but then which already kind of morph the way from well about truffles. So you can actually morph it into something as your brand progresses.Nick A:Totally.Fabian Geyrhalter:So let's talk about the design. I mean you're such a design-forward a brand. Has it been like that from day one? Because obviously you're, if you look at hot sauces, most of them just slap a different label on it and they're a commodity in my eyes, I mean there's so many. There are these hot sauce stores where you literally have 60 different hot sauces but then you look at someone like Cholula and they have their wooden top screw cap and it's really cool. And I just told my wife the other day I'm like, "It's kind of neat how that's their brand." And it's because it's rustic and it's wood. It feels like it was made in Mexico, it has a little bit of the traditional feel and that's it.And you have a similar concept with the cap, where the cap is inspired by the truffle roots and it's got this super cool geometric shape and you're taking the shape even on the flat tops now for, I don't know if that's a term, flat top, that sounds like a shoe but on the flat aluminum tops of your pasta sauces and it still has that geometric kind of design element. When did you introduce this design-forward language? Was it literally from day one and you just said, "You know what, we're going to spend a good amount of money on getting custom molds and custom dyes and doing the gold foil and all of that good stuff" Or did that come over time?Nick G:For us, out of the gate. We wanted to bring something to market that wasn't necessarily a minimum viable product. We wanted to bring to market something that was ready for the world to see. So for us in looking at the category, we saw a lot of the things that you just mentioned. There was a lot of these great sauce brands that had great product but they didn't necessarily have packaging that differentiated themselves from their counterparts on the shelf. So for us we wanted to not only have an amazing, great-tasting product and recipe but we also wanted to have a beautiful offering that was packaged in something that hadn't really been seen before.So we spent a lot of time before launch developing the branding, the packaging, the engineering of the cap. And even our bottle is custom. If you look at the bottom of Truff bottles it has Truff embossed into the glass.Fabian Geyrhalter:Mm-hmm (affirmative). And so were you funded at that point? Were you funded from the get-go or was it self-funded?Nick A:There's been a few different phases of Truff. I think the first maybe year and a half of Nick and I just kind of tried to turn this into something, it was just me and Nick and credit cards. Then after we decided this is going to be a legit product brand, we got a small little team together and we put a little bit of money in. It was a very small, negligible amount of money compared to what you'll read about in any other raise ever. But it was all been, we've been probably the scrappiest brand new kid emerging in CPG now, and the amount we've raised versus how well we've been able to grow is kind of wouldn't believe us, if we told you.Fabian Geyrhalter:That's awesome. And that's how any brand that starts with an Instagram handle should grow. I think that makes a lot of sense.Nick A:I think, I mean we see it all the time. There's a really common theme of raise, raise, raise, grow, grow, grow, valuation, X, Y, and Z and it's aid allows you to I mean aid is there's really no need if there's a true need or true white space it should grow itself. But when you're forced to think in a scrappy manner, you do things and you think in ways that money can't buy. It's you have to really build something brick by brick, it's you become resourceful and you think, I would say more creatively and more impactfully and I would encourage you to spend $20 on a book that can open their eyes to ways they should approach your market versus $200,000 on a marketing campaign.-Fabian Geyrhalter:And you're obviously hinting at my book here and I really appreciate it.Nick G:Exactly what I'm doing.Fabian Geyrhalter:You know, marketer in action.Nick A:Shameless plug.Fabian Geyrhalter:No but I totally agree. Some of the most mesmerizing founders that I have on this show, they all did it that way where they basically they were super resourceful, it was a passion project that turned into something that really didn't change. It just happens to be a passion project with 100,000 followers and consumers in tow. But that idea that you really, really care and I know that as a brand, you guys are really about authenticity and to me this is so interesting because when I first saw Truff, I'm like, "Wow, it's an internet brand. I see them everywhere. Oh my god, go away. Again." And then I'm like, "Well this looks really interesting and this is really cool design."And then when we hear your story and we hear often, it is authentic. But it's just the minute that you're on Instagram and you're an ad, you're already kind of like stamped as, "Well that's not authentic." And on that note and I think this is even more mind-blowing in the way that you actually created your brand, you never paid a single influencer? Is that correct or is that wrong?Nick G:So when we launched Truff, we were just very resourceful and we had a nice seating list of our existing partners that we had put together for launch. But after that, it was essentially Nick and I in the DMs just hitting people up asking them if they wanted to try our product. And we've always been very value first, we've never asked anybody of anything. We just wanted to give our product into as many people's hands as possible and if they liked the product, if they thought it was cool, if they enjoyed it, then they would post on social media. And that's always kind of been one of our guiding principles when working and developing these relationships with people of influence.Fabian Geyrhalter:I really like this. So you literally, it's basically the Costco sampling. Have some free product, if you like it, sure, you're going to buy it and you're going to buy it in bulk and you're going tell your friends about it. It's just that it's on social media and you obviously targeted the people that you feel could become part of your tribe and you have some shared viewpoints or values and of course they just happen to come with a boatload of followers. Really, really cool.I just talked with the founder of Saltverk, which is a really amazing salt brand in Iceland. And it took him quite some time until Noma in Stockholm, which I believe is either number one and number two restaurant in the world, until Noma actually finally approved and started serving his sea salt, but he literally went back every month and he's like, "Here's the new variation of the salt. Do you want it now?" And I love these stories and when did your sauce actually start gaining traction and endorsements in the industry? I know legends like chef Ludo are talking and quite frankly promoting your brand but I'm especially interested because there was a time where truffle oil, and I know this might be very different, but truffle oil was very frowned upon by many chefs and there was kind of this preconceived notion of, "Well, truffle oil is not good." And you, what you guys are doing is completely in the opposite where everyone is just going crazy over it being so gourmet.Nick A:So our truffle system is not just truffle and we actually have a real black winter truffle in every bottle and that's something-Fabian Geyrhalter:Big difference.Nick A:Absolutely and even if you do look at our truffle essence, it's actually made from real black truffle components and we understood the kind of gray area in the truffle space and we kind of learned a lot about it as we developed the product and first and foremost, we were not willing to not be as high quality, authentic as possible. So we put that first and the lengths we go to ensure quality is pretty incredible and so I think one of the reasons that we are able to not get looked down on or whatnot from these big names is because of that. And the other thing is if you just taste the product, it's pretty good. It's pretty incredible.Fabian Geyrhalter:So I heard-Nick A:And so it's not just an Instagram brand, I mean by any means-Fabian Geyrhalter:Usually I prep for this and I would have been having tons of Truff sauce but I just somehow totally spaced out because I was so busy and I never got to it but I will, right after this, I will definitely do it because I read so much about you guys now and everyone who tries it is just like this is unbelievable. (.…)Nick G:Absolutely.Nick A:I mean if you don't have the good, it's kind of like Conor McGregor in his early fighting days. It's like he was a lot of talk but he was sweeping people in five seconds. And so we've always kind of looked at that as a metaphor to we can't just have great marketing, we need to have absolutely insane products. And so we spend the vast majority of our time on that.Fabian Geyrhalter:That's great. Absolutely. And another thing that I wanted to talk about is your loyalty rewards. Obviously they're usually important to most B2C brands, at least a lot of them are doing it really right, but just looking at it on this side, I mean you took it up a notch by giving points for following you on social, for writing a review or just simply for having a birthday. It looks a lot like an airline, if we remember airlines, like in the airline rewards program where you compare the perks and the status levels and it goes from silver to platinum, what did you learn from starting that rewards experience? I also believe I heard you say earlier on on the show that you talked about your VIP group in Facebook, which might be linked to this or maybe not but do you have any tips for brands on the importance of of starting loyalty programs?Nick G:So in regards to loyalty and when you're looking at brand, I think for me brand means the relationship that a company has with their customer. And a lot of brands, I feel either do a really good job at making sure they've continued to build this community and nurture all their customers and make sure they're continuing to add value or they just kind of don't really look at that as something that's an important driver for their business. And for us we're always trying to find new ways of adding value to our customer and people that continue to come back and are loyal to the brand, we want to make sure that we're providing some value back to them.So that's this loyalty program that essentially we put together that rewards customers for repeat purchases and also puts them on various tiers and gives them the opportunity to refer their friends for points that they could then redeem for product.Fabian Geyrhalter:Makes all the sense in the world to me. When you look back, even though you had a 'competitive advantage' when you launched your first product because you had an audience, which is already amazing, but looking back when was that moment when the two of you sat together and you just stared at each other and you're like, "Holy smokes, we're actually moving from a startup to a real brand. This is the moment where we having our big breakthrough." And I mean, looking through your bio online of where you guys have been and what you accomplished in those few years, there are many of them but what was it for the two of you where you just sit together and you're like, "Wow, I think this is it. We're brand now."Nick A:I think there's been a few different pegs along the ladder I mean I think the first big kind of wow moment was, I think the Oprah list and there were a bunch of them, it's all relative. So the first one, it might be someone cool posting, which now probably happens 20 times a day but back then it was like oh my God. And so you kind of get used to that side and then I think the Oprah list is pretty incredible and then Good Morning America and The View were pretty crazy.And then it just kind of catapults and snowballs and you just kind of, I think now as we grow our team, we have an HR department and things like that, that's kind of a big moment in seeing that we're a pretty legit and big company. But I would say it's all relative because what something that seems crazy in your naivete mind becomes a little bit more normal as things go on, as time goes on.Fabian Geyrhalter:That's awesome. And on the flip side usually, not everyone wants to talk about this but it's not all roses. I mean there's also fails and especially with CPG brands, boy so much can go wrong. We're talking about foods, we're talking about containers, we're talking about shipping, we're talking about how does something actually work in the users hand, all of that stuff, was there some brand fail where figured you know what, oops, someone can learn from this. We just kind of screwed this one up. Was there anything like that where you feel like other founders listening can learn from it? Or was perfection through and through?Nick G:We're still failing to this day.Nick A:I don't think yet since we launched without fires everywhere. It doesn't exist, that doesn't exist. It's a fairy tale.Nick G:We actually threw away or we discarded our very first run of product because it wasn't right. We didn't, I guess, take into consideration all the sampling we were doing on a small scale and how that would translate into a larger scale run. So the finished product wasn't the actual product we thought it would be and we all just kind of looked at each other like wow, all right.Nick A:We missed.Fabian Geyrhalter:How big was that batch? I mean what kind of, because the first round could be fairly small. In comparison to now I'm sure it's tiny but-Nick A:It wasn't a truckload but it was a decent amount of product.Fabian Geyrhalter:All right. Wow.Nick A:It was, but I mean the barriers entry never gets but steep. I mean every single day, every single thing we do, there's a whole host of hurdles we have to jump through. I mean, it's standard (.…) It's just how it is, I mean the world landscape changes. I mean think about all the businesses that were relying on the Suez Canal last month and lost a couple of weeks, are behind, their supply chain is in different routes and factories I mean the snowball is just insane. And it travels worldwide.Fabian Geyrhalter:And that was actually a story that really caught most people off guard because they don't even know. I mean, we all don't no. It's there's this tiny little area and if anything happens we're all so co-dependent on it. I live in Long Beach here, which I know you're from-Nick A:I used to live Long Beach. I used to live right on Ocean and I would look at the port that you're probably going to talk about and I'd see one or two boats. And now there's 100 or 200 boats.Fabian Geyrhalter:You just told my story. This is not fun.Nick A:I know.Fabian Geyrhalter:Now I'm going to have to tell your guys’ story.Nick A:I apologize. We probably live in the same building.Fabian Geyrhalter:Yeah exactly. Well our office actually used to look over all of that and it is crazy. I mean you see these, I don't know, 40,50 boats and it's, and why they are there and how everything is interlinked then I think running a product company, that's when you really start opening your eyes to all of that, of how politics and economics and society and God pandemics and how everything works together and one ship that just seems to go sideways can completely ruin the entire economy for a couple days. Nuts, I mean this day and age. It's just completely nuts.All right let's, obviously you guys have, you were always interested in branding. It was always part of what you did, you both did your own gigs prior to starting Truff and now, I mean branding for Truff was, I would say it's one of the key ingredients of the sauce. I think that you can fight me because the ingredients are amazing that are in the sauce and like you said, this is first and foremost but I do believe that the brand itself is just so recognizable and you spent so much time and TLC to make it what it is today. What does branding mean to you now versus four years ago, five years ago, where branding might have been the logo but what does it mean to you now?Nick G:To me branding is the relationship that company has to the customer and the emotional connection and making sure that isn't something that never takes the backseat. Branding on the design side obviously you want to make sure that the product that you're creating, the story that you're telling is very easily communicated to the customer. And Nick and I, we wanted to essentially reverse-engineer the design and the brand and the visual for social media.Fabian Geyrhalter:Love that. Nick number two, any thoughts?Nick A:There I mean you could probably have 100 different conversations on what a brand is and what a brand means-Fabian Geyrhalter:It's exactly what I do actually.Nick A:Exactly. And I think it's ever evolving, I mean on the surface I'd like to think of a brand that's like a vibe. If you were to go to a strip, I mean if you're going to move to Fullerton and if you go downtown Fullerton you'll bar-hopping. I know you're not going to do that when you move to Fullerton but I'm just saying but you'll go to each different bar and each bar will have its own vibe. Different types of people, different types of energy, different drinks, different aesthetic, it's like you can kind of count on that vibe at that place and it's like with a brand and a lot of times, you can kind of count on a certain vibe and how they do things and what they stand for and how they present themselves to the world and the voice that they use and all these different things and it's, I would say a lot of times it's an extension of the people building the brand.Nick A:I think Truff is very much so the child of our team and everyone involved with it and all of how we are and we communicate in ways that we want to, based on our world outlook and how we want to present ourselves to the world and so I think that the landscapes can decide how a brand should be. I think about how often the new Tiktoks, the new app and the way to build your brand on Tiktok would be widely different than if you're going to build it on MySpace and so in that sense, you're probably going to, that brand is going to be different. And so I think brand is the people behind it but it's also the landscape that they're playing in. And so I think marrying the two is really, really important.Fabian Geyrhalter:I so agree with that and you said something really important. You said it's the vibe and I think that can be downplayed too often but it's so important. A couple of years ago I drove by a surf store in Venice Beach and the surf store was broken into, so you could see that the front door was a glass door, that it had wood over it and they spray-painted on the wood they said, "You can't steal our vibe." And I just think it's so awesome because I mean you can take our boards, it's okay. That's not the soul and that's not the vibe of who we are.And it's so much bigger than that. And so I really think that's important. It is a vibe and I do agree that a lot of it comes from the founders in some of the most authentic companies that I see around. Talking about authentic companies, and everything that you just said is taking that idea of brand and really thinking about what is that true north? What is that DNA? What is that if you would, and I love working with my clients on this, is taking everything, your culture, your product, your marketing, taking everything through a funnel and out basically comes one word or two words that are all encompassing the telling the story about the brand.And to put this in perspective, looking back at some other awesome consumer packaged goods brands that I had on Jeni of Jeni's Splendid Ice Cream for instance, she said that her brand in one word is flavor. Which is so simple but then you think about it. Well it signifies character. It's got flavor. And so it was actually pretty deep and then Mike from from Liquid Death, he said that his was mischief, which I thought was super interesting too. When you take the Truff brand and you distill it down, what could it be? What could one or two words be?Nick A:That a really good question. I think we met Mike a couple times a great deal. I think that's the perfect word for their brand. With Truff, I mean I had to think about that. I don't know if you have a word off the top of your head Nick?Nick G:I mean people and quality are two that I think really stand out. Building emerging brand in a traditional space, we've had to really focus on quality but also people. And we've gotten very deep on both I would say. Developing relationships organically and authentically with our customers in the hot sauce phase, it's a lot different than how these brands were built in the past. And in doing that, we have to back that relationship up with an amazing quality product. And it's not even just product too, it's all the content that we're putting out. Just everything.Fabian Geyrhalter:And would even... Go ahead Nick A.Nick A:No go ahead.Fabian Geyrhalter:Well I mean I would even add the idea of taste to it. Because I think in a way there's this luxurious part of having your product on the kitchen table. It feels elevated and so it kind of makes me feel like if I put that on my table, I've got taste. And then on the other hand everything is about taste because even understanding the world of truffle, it recommends, I mean it deserves some kind of person that has some sort of taste, and of course it's all about taste with food but sorry, Nick A I know you wanted to say something, especially to what I just said I'm sure.Nick A:I think the natural place to look is taste like with Jeni's and flavor and I think as being food product that you want to highlight taste and the experience of the flavor but I think that's a little bit more on the surface for us. One of the things that we've done every step of the way is basically break every rule. That's everything from mixing spice and truffle to making custom packaging to using Instagram account to do your primary source of marketing. I mean we've really done nothing that a previous CPG brand has done, at least in this kind of era and every step it's been a rule breaker. I can't do that, you shouldn't do that, I always do it this way, and basically what we stand for is kind of ignoring the consensus and thinking in our own way. If you can boil that down to one word, I'm sure there's words that describe that but I think what we do best is responsibly break the rules and doing in a way that it actually come out on the other side with the new rule.Fabian Geyrhalter:I love that. I love the responsibly breaking rules. I think that's really great. Very good. Do you have any thoughts for startup founders that are just starting out. Doesn't need to be in the CPG space, could be in any space, and they basically say branding isn't important or I'm not going to focus on that, I'm going to focus on features first and I'm going to maybe kind of put it on the side, is there any brand advice from your end where you say, "Hey, here are a couple of things that I would definitely make sure to get right right off the gate"?Nick A:I think it's a very broad question because if we're talking CPG specifically we can get a little more detail but there are a lot of businesses where they focus on features. I think Evernote is one of them where they spent zero on... Didn't you have Evernote on?Fabian Geyrhalter:Yeah.Nick A:Didn't they spend zero on marketing and everything into product?Fabian Geyrhalter:Well in the brand, in the actual icon to them was so important. So for them the visual icon became featured in the App Store because it was, well at least that's what they think, is that it was really iconic and that kind of... But I agree otherwise.Nick A:And so it's, I think it's all based on what industry you're in, what space you are going after. I'd say in CPG specifically, if you walk right the Fancy Food Show or Expo West and you look at all the booths and all the brands, I think a lot of times you'll notice that there wasn't really, or at least it seems like, a ton of thought put into what was created. Whether it's someone wanting to sell their cookies that are just like every other cookie or someone making whatever, a chocolate that's their own chocolate and they just put it in the regular package. There's really nothing unique about it and they just want people to buy it.I think a lot of times there wasn't too much kind of thought put in where it's how can we differentiate? Is there a need for my chocolate or cookies? Is what is being done in this category that is not so impressive? I think really thinking through, Nick and I would say sharpening the axe before you go to cut the tree. We spent years sharpening the axe, maybe five or six years before we launched this brand and so it's really taking a step back and in common culture it's move fast, minimum viable product, put it out, raise money, go, go, go go.I think a lot of times you only have one real shot to break through and for us, we're more on the patient, reserved and yes, it's a higher risk because you might not hit it off right out the gate but I think a lot of times a lot of these problems can be solved just with analyzing things and taking a step back and really thinking through what it is that you're doing.The second thing I would say is stop raising so much money. Stop raising. I don't know if you add to that Nick.Fabian Geyrhalter:Raising with an R-A-I and in R-A-C. Both because it's kind of one goes with the other.Nick A:It's crazy. It's crazy what people, how they approach brand building in terms of how much money can we raise. It's crazy.Fabian Geyrhalter:And Nick G did you want to add anything?Nick G:No, that was well said.Fabian Geyrhalter:Well, and I mean also thinking about how you guys got started with @sauce, you had to find a huge differentiator and you had to not be 1 of 5000. So I think that going through that entire exercise, you really learned how to differentiate on every single level, which must have been amazing for everything else that you do in the future with the brand.Nick G:Totally.Fabian Geyrhalter:So talking about the future of the brand as we slowly wrap this up, what's next for the brand? What are you excited about that you can actually share with us because most of it you most probably can but what are you really excited about in the next, let's say six months?Nick G:I'm excited about continuing to build out these new categories that we've gotten into. Mayo and Pasta really exciting, as well as getting our hot sauce into more people's hands.Nick A:I think we're at a phase where we're kind of, with Mayo and Pasta, these are skew that can be in probably a wider, a lot more just distribution based on the category and the price points. So really going a little bit wider with couple of our skews and then we're building out our team pretty heavily right now. We have some insanely amazing people like Michelle who we've been in contact with that have been helping us steer this ship and do a lot of things that we just simply don't have the skill set or resource to do ourselves and building out our team has been a blast and it's been we're learning so much from everyone. And kind of we talked about before, it's continuing to turn into a big company. It's very exciting and there's always a Rubik's cube in front of you and it's something that we enjoy and we feed off kind of the energy of it and the challenge of it.Fabian Geyrhalter:Well we're all excited to see the brands grow and we're going to start seeing the brand not only everywhere online but also in a lot of places offline. I think by now how many stores are you in?Nick A:We're in about a little under 10,000 I think. I don't have the exact number and depends on the skew and whatnot but I'd say between 7000 and 10,000. It's growing pretty rapidly.And it's all U.S. only at this point?Nick A:No. We're relatively international. We have a presence in Australia and New Zealand pretty well. We have a presence in South Korea, the Middle East, Canada and some places in Europe. It's been very cool to see... We're also making our way pretty heavily into the UAE, in Dubai right now. I wouldn't say international is a major focus and we're not trying to build a global brand overnight but when very cool opportunities arise with individuals that are able to take on a challenge of bringing Truff to their country, our team in Australia has worked really hard and has done a great job of moving quick. Same with our team in Kuwait and Korea and whatnot. So it's been pretty interesting to watch those markets develop.Fabian Geyrhalter:Amazing and so usually I ask my guests where they can find the brand online but with you it's pretty easy. So on Instagram it's @sauce and everywhere else I guess it's Truff. It's Truff.com and that's most probably where they can find all the products and where they can actually locate them.Nick A:Check your pantries, they might already be in there.Nick G:Hopefully.Fabian Geyrhalter:I love that. That's the mic drop moment. And with that we've finished the show. Thank you guys, this was awesome. Really appreciate your time and sharing your insights with my tribe.Nick G:Thank you so much for having us.Nick A:This was a fun interview.

Fabian Geyrhalter:Welcome to the show, Eddie.Eddie Hartman:Thank you so much.Fabian Geyrhalter:Well, thrilled to have you here. I've been a customer of LegalZoom for, I don't know, I believe it must be 15 years or so by now, creating DBAs, and trademarks, and all of that good stuff one has to deal with as an entrepreneur. You created LegalZoom 20 years ago with two friends, as a digital tech company that helps its customers create legal documents without necessarily having to hire a lawyer. And you built it into the best known legal brand in the United States. Last year, one in four LLCs in California were started through LegalZoom. It might have been more by now. And you have over four million customers. More than half of all Americans know the brand. How did it start? Take us back 20 years ago, you and two friends, how did you come up with this quite revolutionary idea that point in time?Eddie Hartman:What a great question. And I have to say, when we began, we had no idea that we would be founding what I'm told is the oldest unicorn. Did you know that?Fabian Geyrhalter:Yes, I actually heard that. I heard that too. It's quite impressive.Eddie Hartman:Aileen Lee at Cowboy Ventures coined the term unicorn, at the time of course it didn't exist. But can you imagine? LegalZoom is now the oldest unicorn. When we began it, we thought it might top out at 16 million. That was our dream. You know maybe, maybe. My two friends were both lawyers and they had great jobs at great law firms. And Brian Lee, in particular, who went on to found the Honest Company with Jessica Alba and ShoeDazzle with Kim Kardashian, he said, "You know, I didn't leave my job at a very good law firm, Skadden Arps, to become an employee of a small company that I started. I love to become the founder of a large company. But for us, large was maybe 16 million at max. Brian used to show us with his hand, where he thought maybe one day, the stack of outgoing LLC packages might reach. Because this was the most important thing to us, and I think any entrepreneur can relate. The big sale, the big purchase, the biggest ticket item that we sold was a gold incorporation or LLC package.             And it went in a special FedEx box, a flattish box, not a big carton, but a box that maybe was an inch and a half, two inches high. And we would ship them out, they'd sit on the front desk, and we'd look at that stack of boxes, and it was the measure of our success. And Brian, once in the early days, put his hand on top of that box, and he said, "Eddie, someday, this stack is going to be up to here." And you know, by his chin. I want to let you know, we now have a separate dedicated facility-Eddie Hartman:Of course.Eddie Hartman:Just to handle those. It grew from a stack into sort of a back bay of the building, because we would have to have a truck come up and take all the packages. And finally, it outgrew that and we now own a separate facility just to handle all those packages. And it's been extraordinarily rewarding to see the growth, which really means the acceptance, how many people see value in what LegalZoom brings to their lives, how many people find that their opportunities are unlocked by what legalism gives them. We had a really great guy, Daniel Kent, came to work for us for a few years. He's now a Berkeley PhD. But at the time, he did a study and he found that LegalZoom had started more than one in six charities in the United States.Fabian Geyrhalter:Oh wow.Eddie Hartman:Yeah, you don't start a business thinking that, "Oh, we're also going to have an enormous charitable impact." But there we were looking at the numbers, one in six, more than one in six American charities were started. And my partner said to me, "You know, this is a great number. This is a really amazing thing. We should let people know this number." I said, "Yeah you know, that is great. But here's a bigger question that we'll never really be able to answer. How many of those charities never would have started if it weren't for an easy way to get a 501(c)(3), that is to say tax exempt designation?" How many charities are never started? Is maybe the better question. How many businesses are never started? How many families go unprotected, because the benefits the law are out of reach? And reach doesn't necessarily mean too expensive. It may simply be too complex or too time consuming.            We're in a democracy. The benefits of the law that's supposed to be our birthright, but if it's too cumbersome... Again, which might be inconvenient or complex, but it also might be too expensive, something we can't afford, inaccessible in one way or another. We are cheated in a way. We're cheated of our birthright. We're cheated of the basic promise that we're supposed to have as participants in a democracy, that we have equal protection, that we have equal access, that we have equal benefit. And so when I think about those charities that were never started, or those businesses that were never launched, or those families that are unprotected, I think this is a crisis. This is a plague. This is something that could be corrected. There needs to be more LegalZooms. LegalZoom is just one player. And even though we're very proud of what it's done, when you think about the latent legal market, the millions of unlaunched ships, that's honestly, what keeps me up at night.Fabian Geyrhalter:Well, a couple of questions about this. This was extremely interesting. On the LegalZoom site, the brand states, "We are not going to rest until everyone has access to legal care." And based on what you just said, it almost sounds like a not-for-profit organization's manifesto, right? Like a rallying cry. How does LegalZoom push how it's done? And do you also have a nonprofit arm as part of it? Or do you just organize in a way and run the business in a way where you feel like you want to empower as many as possible, and hence, there doesn't need to be a nonprofit part of it?Eddie Hartman:Well, I believe deeply, that the blood that pumps through a company's veins, is the profit that it generates. Without that, of course, you can't pay people. But more importantly, you can't innovate. You can't get the word out. I think, in fact, the mark of value... And in my new role, I'm now a partner at Simon-Kucher, and I'm very frankly honored and grateful for my role there. It's an amazing organization. But one of the things that we have as a mantra, if you think about it this way. If I asked you, "How do you measure value?" You might say, "Well, I think about what a thing is worth." Well, okay, sure. But how can you put a number on it? I would argue that the best way to measure value is to ask, "What would you pay for it?" And if you could stack up dollars or coins, whatever it might be, and measure that stack.             Just like Brian used to measure that stack of gold LLC packages. That's a measure of value right there. We don't have a yardstick, we can't measure it in gallons or something, miles. We need a different way to measure. And I would argue that the money that you exchange is a great proxy for value. So when we think about LegalZoom, it's a mission-driven company that makes a profit. It makes a profit because it delivers value. Without the profit, it would not be able to pursue its mission. That is how I see it. The test of LegalZoom as an organization, really any organization, is are you providing sufficient value that you can continue to provide value and expand the value you provide?Fabian Geyrhalter:Absolutely, absolutely. Love this. Listen, going back to the founder story, just for one more second there, because I'm sure everyone is asking themselves the same question. When you were eliminating the need for small businesses, in the very beginning, right? And I mean, continuously so. But in the beginning, to hire a lawyer, right? That was a tremendously disruptive thought. It was you literally fighting the good fight, so to speak. How was that uphill battle until you were legally ready to offer your services? And I'm almost sure that there must have been lawsuits by law firms or industry groups earlier on to try to stop you from what you were about to do, because it was obviously harming their trajectory.Eddie Hartman:I love this question. I wonder if you ever had a time of your life, probably in your mid 20s, when it felt like every weekend was taken up with a friend's wedding over the summer. It's the time of life when everyone's getting married all at once. And then when the weather's turning nice, you know, May, June, July, suddenly, every single weekend, you're going to a wedding. That was me for a period of time, except instead of weddings, I was going to depositions. [I was the most heavily deposed person. I've never encountered anyone that's been deposed as often as I have. And I think it stems from a misunderstanding. The misunderstanding is that LegalZoom somehow does not want people to speak to lawyers or hire lawyers, which is almost baffling to me at this point. LegalZoom has many lawyers, then it has as employees it works with. We work with a network of law firms.            We pass more... I would guess I don't know any numbers about this. But I would guess that we pass more people to consult with lawyers than any other single organization in the world. We love businesses hiring lawyers, and using lawyers appropriately. I think all we tried to do was say that there's some things where if you choose to, you don't need a lawyer. So when you form your LLC, you can use LegalZoom to get that done, if you choose, and a lawyer doesn't need to be involved, which may make it more affordable for you, or make it more in your control. Some people really like the feeling of power of control. I've done this for myself. However, I would say that LegalZoom really tries to make sure that anyone who starts a company or frankly, forms a will or anything else through Legal Zoom, then speaks with a lawyer. And in fact, we took advantage of something that was, I think, less well known, which is a prepaid legal plan. These were plans established in the 1970s by unions.             Unions wanted their members to have access to good legal counsel, but it's hard to afford. Especially, for a lot of people, very difficult to afford. So they created these special plans, which were approved by authorities in every state. And as a union member, you could buy into a prepaid plan and then have access to a lawyers counsel. LegalZoom followed in that model- So honestly, and the thing, I think, also you should know is that I am a lawyer, and I became a lawyer while at LegalZoom. I never went to law school though. I taught very briefly at Yale Law, and I taught briefly at Stanford Law. And I had to tell my class that it was my first time at a law school. I became a lawyer [inaudible 00:13:25] for the bar after doing an apprenticeship. So I never went to law school, but I did become a lawyer because I believe so deeply in the importance, and really the primacy of lawyers. I actually named my firstborn son, my sweet little boy, Darrow, after Clarence Darrow. The lawyer that famously gave up his high paying job for the railroads, and started fighting for the common man. I believe that lawyers are some of the most civic-minded, good hearted, and intelligent, and often brave people among us.            But unfortunately, I think the legal system that they find themselves employed by often betrays them. They have this idea that they're going to be able to fight for right and go to court and defend justice. And what they get instead is a mind numbing, soul crushing job, where they're required to, at the end of the day, measure up their worth in six minute increments. Because that's what a law firm lawyer does. They have to mark down their time in six minute increments and justify what they did. It's a [inaudible 00:14:39] system. So what did LegalZoom do in the early days? I think we stepped into a crazy imbalanced system, where most people felt that the benefits of the law were beyond their reach or too cumbersome, and hopefully, created an alternative where we still do try to connect people with lawyers, but perhaps in a healthier and more effective structure. I think that was the big change.Fabian Geyrhalter:I mean, it was extremely liberating. I mean, even for myself. Being an entrepreneur and having started my companies and going through LegalZoom, I mean, it's been... I don't know, how many interactions I had with LegalZoom over the years. And for me, I'm kind of the generation where I was born into it, right? When LegalZoom came out 20 years ago, that's about when I got really serious about doing the legal portion of my business. Before, I was just running a business. Let's talk a little bit more about lawyers. And what you just said about how lawyers are being seen and the reality of it. Influencer marketing is huge today, right? But it really has been for decades, just under different names. The idea of affiliating a brand with an influential person from within their segment has its benefits, and it has its risks, and you might know where I'm heading with this. It seems like you guys were living that story having celebrity lawyer, Robert Shapiro, as your co-founder, who...            For those of you who are not in LA, or maybe not even in the US. Robert Shapiro was infamous for successfully defending O.J. Simpson back in 1995. But he was a co-founder. How did this come about? And I think he already talked a little bit about a shift in how lawyers pursued their career. How did it come about and did it have the desired effect on the brand? And how did you guys all work together?Eddie Hartman:Well, I'll say two things; the first of which is anyone who... And I mean this in the best spirit. Anyone who has anything bad to say about Bob Shapiro is going to have to do a fist fight with me. I love that man. He is one of the most... I'd say in some ways, he's one of the kindest people in the world, and he's been through personal tragedy that people don't understand. And I won't belabor it, but his son, Brent, used to... He had, I should say, two sons. And his older son Brent was my employee, when he tragically died at age 23. And people, I think, they don't realize. Bob Shapiro has been through... In his long career, he has done so many things, so many things. Defend major, major lawsuits, major, major actions, huge clients, vast things settled, and yet... Of course, what he is best known for is a moment in the 90s.Fabian Geyrhalter:Yep.Eddie Hartman:Okay. I actually was off the grid when that was happening. I was living in Montana. I didn't catch the whole O.J. thing. Only I only heard about-Fabian Geyrhalter:Well timing.Eddie Hartman:I found out about it afterward. But I will say, of course, the notoriety of that case, and I think we can say notoriety here, made Bob famous. And his fame helped us in more than one way. Obviously, it brought attention to LegalZoom, which was great. I was once asked on a plane. You know, you're always asked on a plane, "What do you do?" And I explained, "Oh yes, I started this company." And she said, "Oh, what does the company do?" And I said, "Well, it helps you, you can use it to form a will or an incorporation or trademark or patent." And she said, "Oh. Wow, you must get a lot of competition from Robert Shapiro's company." [crosstalk 00:18:40] [inaudible 00:18:40]. She said, "Oh, no, I don't think so." Then I said, [crosstalk 00:18:48]. But the other thing that it brought us was, because of his fame... Bob had a lot of business experience that we lacked.             He had been involved with Wolfgang Puck, early in the day, who became so famous. The founder of Spago, and a chain of other restaurants. So Bob brought a lot of business acumen. And he had the business acumen because the O.J. Simpson case had propelled him to fame. That's definitely true, definitely true. But I would say the other thing about the relationship is that it brought us knowledge on so many different levels than just his just a celebrity. And I want to tell you one more fun fact. My dear partner, Brian Lee, was the one who brokered the introduction to Robert Shapiro. And at the time, he really was Robert Shapiro. He's this famous lawyer that we'd never met. His office is at the top of... If you liked the movie, Die Hard... Nakatomi Plaza, where the action takes place, his actual office was in that building where [inaudible 00:20:06]            And so we got to meet him, and it's very intimidating. A very huge office, beautiful. Barely looks up. We're doing our song and dance. He told us we had five minutes. We've taken much longer, and he's not really paying attention to us. And finally, he says, "You know, because of my fame, a lot of people come to me, and they've got this business idea and that business idea." And I'm thinking, "Okay, so the answer is no. Will this guy just hurry up and say no." But to my surprise, he doesn't say no, he says, "If this is such a good idea that I want to be part of this, I don't just want to be an investor. I don't just want to put my name on this. I want to be part of this." He literally meant something like chief of marketing. He wanted to be that involved. And I called my mom. I said, "Mom, you're never going to believe this. Robert Shapiro is joining LegalZoom." And she said, "My dentist?"Fabian Geyrhalter:That is hilarious.Eddie Hartman:Yeah. So [inaudible 00:21:18], people think about he's celebrity, celebrity, celebrity. And that's true, it was very helpful. But I think what was even more helpful was that we had this incredibly knowledgeable lawyer with great business skills, who was part of our team.Fabian Geyrhalter:That is a fantastic story. Thank you for sharing this. Absolutely, that's great. You're in the legal business, and in the business of trademarks. Well, not you, but LegalZoom. And this being a branding podcast, I have to ask this question.Eddie Hartman:Sure.Fabian Geyrhalter:LegalZoom, launched officially in 2001. So 10 years prior to Zoom. Does Zoom own their name to you to a certain degree? I know there was this time where that idea of Zoom was kind of an internet thing, but is it bizarre for you that 2020... Like all this time later, turned into a year where the word "Zoom" became the thing? And LegalZoom owned it first?Eddie Hartman:You know, it's such a funny question. So just a small question. The incorporation was created in 99.Fabian Geyrhalter:Yeah.Eddie Hartman:And we did a soft launch. We made our first sale in the last quarter of 2000. But yes, of course, our big launch to the public, 2001, very true. And for 10 years, if you said Zoom, you probably meant LegalZoom. A competitor of ours, to tweak us, had signs put up around his office that said, "We believe in legal grooming, not legal zooming." The word, Zoom, is a funny word. And for a long time, it was ours. And now, yes, you may have heard of this small company called Zoom. I do remember meeting them at a conference. Because lawyers were one of the early adopters of Zoom. And I walked up and I said... Hopefully they found it funny. I said, "I won't sue you." That they're Zoom, and we're LegalZoom.             But yeah, a friend recently posted to an entrepreneurial group that I'm part of, "Hey, can anyone connect me with Zoom?" And I was about to write back, "Sure," and then I realized [inaudible 00:23:41] blocked me.Fabian Geyrhalter:Yeah, I just thought it was interesting right? Because here, we're Zooming around all day, and I've been using Zoom for all the time. Listen, at some point, LegalZoom... And I just really realized this, prepping for our chat here. At some point, LegalZoom moved past business customers and started offering services really to anyone. So from wills and trusts to divorces, how does a brand known for entrepreneurship and business move its perception to become a bit more of a generalist? Or was a shift in brand story and marketing not even necessarily since he already had this huge amount of business customers who were just happy to start using your other services, hence spreading the word organically without even diluting your brand?Eddie Hartman:What a great question!Fabian Geyrhalter:It was a long one.Eddie Hartman:So the first product set that we launched was incorporations, LLCs, last will and testament, copyright... I want to say copyright and trademark were part of the first trough, but I'm actually not a 100% sure. We also considered restraining orders, but we understood after a while that that was a business that was better occupied by municipal and state authorities. We also had divorce early on, although we found that divorce is quite a difficult product to fulfill. However, that was the initial product set. So we-Fabian Geyrhalter:Interesting.Eddie Hartman:Yeah, we always had wills in there. Oh, you know, and trusts were in there as well, in the early... Oh, and living will. That's right, living will was there as part of the early batch. So for people who don't know, there's a medical power of attorney, living will, which is a document that, as the name implies, covers you when you're alive, but maybe incapacitated, versus a last will, which in the UK they will just refer to as a will and testament, which happens to cover you after you die. So two different documents. But I say this to say we found that there was so little crossover between product categories. A person who came to know us for an incorporation, would not have any inclination to use us for a will. A person who came to us for a will would not have a natural inclination to use us for a trademark, which is interesting if you got it.Fabian Geyrhalter:How interesting. Yeah. Eddie Hartman:We once did a program where we gave people $50, or later an opportunity to enter into a drawing to potentially go to a week long vacation to Hawaii, if they would refer us to a friend or family member. And we got very little uptake. And when I called around to some of these people to say, "Hey, you obviously love LegalZoom. You gave it incredibly high marks all around, but then you didn't refer us to anyone. Why is that?" I would get responses like this, "I don't know anyone else who is going through a divorce." "I don't know anyone else who's getting a trademark." And when you ask them, "Well, did you know that LegalZoom does all these other things?" They would respond, "Well, no, I really didn't." And so we will promote in the email itself, we would say, "Popular services from Legal Zoom." We created the idea of like, what are the top 10 services from LegalZoom? What are the most popular uses of LegalZoom? What are people using LegalZoom for?             And we would say, "Oh, you know..." Obviously, these were factual, but we would say, "Oh, number one is, setting up LLCs. And number two is..." let's say, "Registering a trademark." "And number three is filing for an uncontested divorce." Now, if people decided, upon seeing that list, "Hey, you know what? I have been thinking, I ought to divorce my wife. Now that I see [crosstalk 00:27:43] LegalZoom, let me go ahead and do it."Fabian Geyrhalter:What an impulse buy!Eddie Hartman:What an impulse buy, right? "Hey, I should get a patent." Hopefully, that didn't really motivate behavior, and yet it was a blockbuster move in terms of generating sales. So if you'd stopped to think about it, and said, "Why would you ever show people what the top products are?" If a person is going to get divorced, they're going to get divorced, if a person is going to declare bankruptcy or start a business or something. That's a big decision, they've already made it." Never underestimate the impact of assurance. The impact of, "Many people are also doing this." The impact of safety and numbers. And I think that leads you right to the brand question, because after all, what is brand? Brand is a promise. Brand is a question of reliability. A brand is almost always a promise about the future. In an unknown future, when you don't know what's coming next, the brand matters more.            If you're going to pop a pharmaceutical into your mouth, if you are going to take a pill, if you are going to sign up with an insurance company, if you are going to have someone do a legal service for you, you have no idea what the future reliability is going to be, and so the brand has to stand in. I mean, ask yourself, would you ever put a drug in your body from a source you've never heard of? Of course not. Certainly you wouldn't give it to your children. Why? Because brand matters so much. It's the future promise of something that you cannot guarantee today.Fabian Geyrhalter:Very, very well said. You and I both are mentors at The Founder Institute. Or you have been, and you're on and off. I found out because I read your bio and your Global 40 Mentor. And I'm a Global 100 Mentor, so I thought I was special until I met you. Now, I'm not anymore. Thank you for that. But when you talk to entrepreneurs about branding, what do you tell a startup? Like how important do you... So you're a partner at Simon-Kucher, which is a strategy and marketing consultancy. You have started and operated multiple companies with a total valuation in excess of, I don't know, $3 billion. Right? So you have seen it all when it comes to brands, but how do you advise startup founders and entrepreneurs? Like what do you tell them about the importance of branding to them at that point in time?Eddie Hartman:Well, for the more hard-nosed listener, I would point out that brand has a tangible value. Whether you're thinking about valuation, there's a concept goodwill, which is essentially brand equity, so it attributes to your enterprise value. Another way to look at it though, is we've run tests on buying the very same batch of Google keywords for a generic website that has a name, of course, and has a design scheme and everything. But with the brand no one's ever heard of, versus the LegalZoom brand... And I can tell you that the LegalZoom brand is much more effective in converting and generating revenue. So brand is very powerful and quantifiable, in terms of the impact that it gives you. You really need to take it quite seriously. But then, the next question is, what should your brand state? As I say, brand is a... I saw a great definition of brand when I was in business school at Wharton.             It said that, "Brand motivates irrational behavior." In other words, if a promise motivates rational behavior, then that's not brand. If I tell you that, "Well, this vehicle gets a certain number of miles per gallon, and that's why you should buy it." Or if I say, "This copper has a certain purity per kilo of weight." Those are statements, but they're not brand statements. That's literally a value statement that's merely attributable to an attribute of what's being sold. If I tell you on the other hand that, "Kids love Oreos." Okay, that's a promise that you can't tie to something rational. It's not a rational criteria. It's appealing to an irrational side. I mean, why do we love Oreos and hate Hydrox? Hydrox was first. You know that? Oreo was a copy of a Hydrox. I mean, okay, please don't sue me in saying so.             But certainly, if you look at them side by side in a store, you might be tempted to conclude, and I certainly would, that an Oreo is a copy of a Hydrox. But Oreo dominated the brand. They stand for something. They stand for comfort, they stand for snowy days with a glass of milk, and an Oreo cookie. And we all love them. But if you look at the list of ingredients, they're no different than a Hydrox.Fabian Geyrhalter:Interesting, yeah. They built the brand.Eddie Hartman:If you are buying from a rational basis, and the Hydrox were cheaper, you should surely reach for the Hydrox, but people don't. They read for the Oreo. And companies, not just in consumer, but in business-to-business, also understand that brand promise really means something. I think it's probably a bit more rational in a business context. There's the old saying, "No one ever got fired for going with IBM." [crosstalk 00:33:39]Fabian Geyrhalter:That changed.Eddie Hartman:Okay, this has changed. But what are we saying when we make statements like that? What we're saying is that the brand adds something to the value equation of a current purchase, because it makes a promise about the future, "This will be reliable. We are a organization that stands behind the offer that we're making." Brand should convey a penumbra, a halo effect, beyond the the specific product that you sell. It should augment and extend beyond. Selecting the words to use for brand, then becomes very important. And honestly, here's where you can use some fairly standard methodology. You can ask your customers or prospects, say Listen, "I want you to tell me of eight..." You come up with somewhere between eight and 12 attributes, and you say, "Listen, I want you to tell me of these eight to 12 attributes, which are the ones that are the most important to you? Rate them." And then say, "Okay, same set of attributes, how do we rate versus competitors?"            And then plot this on a grid and you'll see a pattern emerge. And the pattern will tell you, this is where your brand can reach and this is where your brand cannot reach. Where you are strong and the attribute matters, that's where your brand thrives. Where the attribute matters and you're not strong, those are areas that you have to avoid. And if you can find in that map a story, then that can be the through-line for your brand. Listen, LegalZoom is never going to be able to say something like, "We have lawyers that will grind themselves to the bone working around the clock, and our brand name is feared in courtrooms across America the way that a major law firm could." But what LegalZoom can say is, "Simplicity, ease of use, convenience." Right?Fabian Geyrhalter:You're going right into one of my final questions on every one of my shows. So now that we talk about brand boards, and what you just explained is really fantastic for anyone, not just entrepreneurs, right? I mean, even someone who's a CMO, to revisit their brand that it's basically a brand SWOT analysis, right? Like using emotions versus rational thinking. If you could take the LegalZoom brand, and I gave you no warning of this question so... Let's just see where this takes us. If you would take the LegalZoom brand, and you would put it through a funnel. And at the end, there's really one word or two words that you feel like your brand really captures and can own. When you think about Zappos, it's not D2C shoe sales, right? And it's not e-comm. It's customer service. It's delivering, "Wow." That's what they are about.             if you think about Everlane, its transparency. And I always love to, when I work with clients, at the end of my workshops, I like to say, "Everything we've just done for the last, God knows, four or eight hours, can we distill it into one word that everyone in the company can say, "This is what we stand for." I just assume that accessibility must be very near the top of the list for LegalZoom. But what comes to mind? Like that one word that you feel like LegalZoom could actually own?Eddie Hartman:What a fantastic question. And you'll also please permit me if I'd like to make a small detour after I've answered to sort of show you the power of this very question, frankly, in many walks of life. But with LegalZoom specifically, I think the phrase that really captured us was one that my dear friend and partner, Brian Liu... So you said it was three of us. It was me, Brian Lou and Brian Lee, came up with, which was, "Hassle-free." And studies have shown that was the issue that was stopping so many people from accessing the benefits for law was... It wasn't hassle-free. Yes, it was expensive. But it also seems so complex, so daunting, and Brian would say, "Hassle-free. Ah, yeah, that's what people want." They want a hassle-free legal experience. Absolutely. I will say though, we've gone through many phases, we said that LegalZoom's mission is to democratize the law. I believe in that. I really do.            But I think that may be a little too highfalutin for many people. It's reaching a bit too academic, I think. It's great when I am talking to my friends who are in sort of a academic setting about what's the importance of LegalZoom. We want to democratize the law? Sure. But I think for most people, the personal benefit was once hassle-free. But I'll tell you what I hope it becomes; empowerment. Hey, if you're in the sound of my voice, or if you live in America, anyway, or the UK, you are supposed to have the benefits of the law as part of your right to exist. And you don't have them. You don't. A wealthy person has a lawyer that they can turn to... She can turn to her lawyer, her lawyer will do onerous work on her behalf, or potentially a law firm will do onerous work. That's a tremendous amount of power that you don't have, but you ought to. You ought to have equal benefits under the law, and you don't.             Hopefully, what LegalZoom stands for in the future is empowerment. Connecting you back to the benefits that you have been, I would say, unfairly denied access to.Fabian Geyrhalter:Absolutely. I mean, there's so many Gen Z and millennial born-brands that are all about democratizing this, democratizing that. And there's like every [crosstalk 00:39:59]Eddie Hartman:[crosstalk 00:39:59] was democratizing juice.Fabian Geyrhalter:Exactly.Eddie Hartman:We don't need that.Fabian Geyrhalter:But coming from you, after these 20 years of having LegalZoom out in the wild, the word empowerment... And I'm sure my listeners can agree with that, the way that you said it and in the context of LegalZoom, how much more... Well, pun intended, how much more powerful that actually is to own for an organization like yours, than for an organization like many others that just want to empower the customers. But that being said, it is also wonderful, how many brands say that that's what they stand for. Because it shows the idea of customer first, and it shows the idea of, "We're with you." Right? And there is kind of this nice shift in brands and in brand thinking over the last 10, 15 years, which I really... I mean, that provides me so much joy that everything is becoming more purposeful. Right?Eddie Hartman:Absolutely. I had a client recently in the cybersecurity space, and I did this exact study, and I did the exact graphing technique that I just said hopefully your listeners will do themselves. And I said, "Well, the one thing that people don't care about is security." And he said, "You have really messed this up Mr. Hartman. We're talking about cybersecurity firm." Well, when we show them the comments though, it became immediately clear that people assume a cybersecurity company is secure. That's not what you're buying on.Fabian Geyrhalter:It's in the name. Exactly.Eddie Hartman:[crosstalk 00:41:38]. You're buying on the other attributes. Things like ease of use, simplicity. So for LegalZoom, you can imagine that people might say, "Oh, the brand should be that, 'What do you provide quality legal?' Quality legal." People assume that we have quality legal. If you listen closely to your customers, what are they really asking for? And that should be the underpinning of your brand. In LegalZoom's case, it was hassle-free. In the future? Hopefully, yes. It gives me the power I always should have had, but was wrongfully blocked from my grasp. That's what LegalZoom ought to be in the future, if you ask me.

Visit Bonjoro onlineSupport the show--Fabian Geyrhalter:Welcome to the show, Matt.Matthew Barnett:Hi, Fabian, great to be here.Fabian Geyrhalter:Absolutely. I'm so thrilled to have a B2B tech brand on the show at last, but Bonjoro is not the typical tech company. I mean, it has brand and culture at its heart, it is about creating customer love, and it's a weird brand, it's a fun brand, it's a brand that is not afraid to stand out. It's probably more afraid to blend in. You started as a designer, if I saw that correctly on your LinkedIn. How did you end up running Bonjoro? Take us on that journey. Take us on the journey of how the brand came about, the brand formation, how did you get into video and all that stuff?Matthew Barnett:Yeah, so I trained as an industrial designer back in the UK many years ago. Industrial design is a terrible word, it's basically product design, but that obviously stretches from the engineering side all the way to the creative side. So I was always going to go into product. I think I had a personal affinity for ... I don't even know if I knew it was brand, just being a bit weird, I guess. I've always worn kilts my whole life, I always go on stage. I like going out and making a lasting impression personally. I used to work in agency a lot and pitching was part of my DNA, I thrived on that.I moved to Australia many years ago and fell into the tech scene. I actually originally went on a date with a co-founder and we didn't hit it off, but we did start a company. That was the first company, and then 10 years later Bonjoro is now the company that I'm in, and started, and I guess I found that space. I think that brand side, that brand attention has always been something I'm passionate about. Initially it was personal brand, I guess, if you look back and brand within other peoples products, and then I guess this was a great time to experiment and see how far I could take a brand myself. Initially it's got a lot of me in it, I'll be honest, and then it's evolved from there.Fabian Geyrhalter:That's how it usually works, right? A founder has a personality and they use that personality to launch a brand, and to quote-unquote, sell people, on what they have to offer.How did you get into ... was it always video for Bonjoro? Did you start like that? How did you decide that there's a painpoint out there, and you can solve it in a very unique way.Matthew Barnett:Yes, well I actually run an agency, so we had an agency here dealing with clients overseas. So Australia, great place to live, not a great place to be if you want to do global business because the time zones ... in my time now it's 6:00 AM, but you got to do these early calls.Fabian Geyrhalter:I know, thank you, I appreciate it. 6:00 AM for you, we have to call it out, that's a true trooper.Matthew Barnett:That's pretty normal, and so when we had an agency here we'd have a lot of leads coming overseas. That agency had headquarters but an office in London as well. We would essentially have these leads coming over at night and one of the things we did in terms ... so sales, but with a very big brand slant is that we tried to get our personalities across, and that creativity across, which is how we sold these agencies and we decided to use video to do that.So obviously agencies do rely on the team and the individuals, they are a massive part of how you sell, we were very good at that, we were very creative, we were very out there and so we would collect any leads that came in over night from other countries, and rather than send them an email which we originally did, but again it just didn't get us across and our brand across, we started doing individual videos for every single inquiry that we had.I used to take a ferry to work here in Sydney, so I would go across the harbor and pass the Sydney Opera House, so I would wait until that moment and then I would plant my smart phone, do these views, and we'd see the account manager from Budweiser in London and Ogilvy would sign up, and I'd do a video talking about Budweiser and the projects that we'd worked on, while the wind was in my hair and there were seagulls flying around. We packaged this up and we sent it to them, and most of the time people would reply and they'd go, "I can't really understand what you're saying because it's too windy, but this is hilarious, absolutely come in and see us." So we ended up getting all these extra meetings just because we were being a bit more creative in our approach.Obviously, this feeds the brand because as that agency, our very comms, our very first interaction we ever did with the company was a creative approach, and it was a very personalized approach as well, which is how our brand was in that company. Ultimately, long story short, one of those clients asked if they could use this video messaging system that we built. We let them use it, they started sending them, some of their clients came in, etc. etc. Then this just started to snowball and build its own company. So it was never an intention but we were trying to embody what we had as our original brand, in our way that we communicated, and then that ultimately became its own company, and its own product of the back of that.Fabian Geyrhalter:You called it a matching system, how does that algorithm work, tell us a little bit about how the whole, quote-unquote, system works, if I'm a client and I sign up. What's going to go down if I'm part of Bonjoro?Matthew Barnett:It's all about personalization and scale. So we are a video tool, the reality is it's not actually the video that is the key, the video is an amazing way to communicate, it's actually about turning up and taking time with the customers. So what we do is the system will sit on top of any customer data source you use, so a HubSpot, a Salesforce, even a Shopify. Any tool at all. What happens is we basically suggest triggers as to when it makes sense to send a customer or a lead a personalized one-minute video. The most common use case, of course, is with leads. So when a lead comes in, and like we were doing in that first case, one of your team gets notified and then you're going to record a 30 second, 1 minute video to welcome this lead on board and say, "Hey, this is Fabian here, awesome to have you sign up. If you have any questions let us know." Etc. etc.What we do specifically though, is we also pull in data about who that customer is. So we'll tell you what their job title is, where they work, where in the world they are. We'll even tell you what they've done in your software, or on your lead forms, or in your products, so we can show you ... for instance, in our instance, if you were a software company we could show you that this lead in the last hour has done steps one to four of onboarding, but they haven't done steps five to six. So when you do a video you not only use their name, their job and where they're from, you can also say, "Hey, also I noticed you didn't do these three steps, here's a link to go and do them. They're really important, and if you need help let me know."So you're personalizing the content in terms of saying their name and the company, and that kind of thing, and then you're also personalizing the direction that you're driving each and every lead to obviously try and get them to a better success.Fabian Geyrhalter:Very cool, and the reason why video is obvious right? It makes it personal, people actually know who you are and when we started our little interview here this morning you had your camera on, I had my camera because I always have my camera off because of bandwidth. I just want to make sure, especially with Australia, and you're like, "No, let's keep that on, let's get to know each other a little bit." That makes it more personable, right?Obviously, there must be people in a company who are like, "Well, I don't feel like I should be on camera." Or, "I'm a little shy." But you are specifically catering to people who should not be shy, or whose job title is to ... either they're an educator, or they're in the sales force, but those are people who should be more outgoing and that's why this is a great match for them.Matthew Barnett:It depends, I think everyone in your company should be happy to stand up and face customers. I mean if you go to any business that's not online this was the normal. It's the online and the not getting on video which is weird. Actually getting a person. You go back generations, you go into your grocer, he would know what it is you're buying, he would have your produce ready for you. Your baker was the same, your butcher was the same, you had all these relationships with our suppliers on a daily basis and then we all went online, and got in a [hoey 00:08:42], and we started to lose those relationships. So really it's just reigniting that.So going into the whole video thing, the reason why I believe video is seen this way where some people are nervous to go on video is because for generations, over a long time, video was actually put on a pedestal because it was essentially the realm of film and TV only. So we now have this deep, ingrained, subconscious feeling that the video is the realm of TV and movie stars, and make up, and looking perfect, and film, whereas actually it is ultimately just a window. That's all it is. Its no different to, again, meeting your coffee barista in the morning in person, versus remotely. It's just a window and it just shows you who you are.Humans are built to communicate visually more than they are to communicate in terms of audio, or words. 70% of communication is visual. So it's actually just very natural, we just need to get over this little hump of where video came from, and that's a psychological change to make. Which for the last 18 months, as terrible as it's been, this is one thing it has helped, is it's got people just to get over that and say, "Okay, well fine, video is just a window."Fabian Geyrhalter:I was wondering, I love the idea of video is a window, I think that's really poetic even, but it tells the truth, that's just how it is. Covid-19, it impacted everyone's brand. Some brands it impacted positively, it's hard to say that, it's difficult to say that because obviously it's been a horrifying situation for mankind. But there have been brands that just had the right product and the right time. How has this entire idea of video becoming the main means of communicating with clients even, how did that change the trajectory of what you're doing over the last, I guess at this point, it's 12 months.Matthew Barnett:It does, with hindsight looking back the challenge here is you could never tell what would have happened otherwise. I actually believe that the world was going in this way anyway. So, we were seeing a trajectory into video and more importantly, again I said at the beginning, it's not all about video. It's the main trajectory into personalizing the customer experience. I think this is the more important point for us as a company, brands were starting to find that customers were wanting connection again. Those that were taking the time, and front-loading customer service and support, were getting much better results. Video is a great enabler for this. Now the last year, what we've had is a lot of people train on Zoom. So we no longer have that challenge of getting over the fear. But again, obviously where we work and where we tend to be used, which tends to be a bit more front line. So customer success, sales, those individuals were already getting into video, it was already happening in quite a large way anyway.So as a business we have accelerated this year, it's a great place to be, I don't think it's been incredibly different because I think for us, and where we play, this was actually already happening. So we already saw that trajectory kicking off before the world changed. I think off the front lines, so where you have teams communicating and maybe the more introverted, and the back of house teams, that's where Zoom has kicked off because now teams have to communicate. But frontline was already starting to get over this hump I feel anyway. That tidal wave was coming, it has just got bigger, obviously. Maybe it wouldn't have got as big, as fast, I couldn't tell you, but it's not like the world changed on a dime for the video space, I don't think.Fabian Geyrhalter:Well, and now everyone has the perfect lighting, and everyone has the perfect mic, it's definitely a beneficial thing. For you, and on the other hand, there is a company like Clubhouse coming around, where it's like, "We're so sick of video, let's just listen to people, and let's be passive." It's really interesting and yet with the whole Clubhouse thing I see so many startups that are saying, "Oh shoot, Clubhouse would be so cool with video. Let's build Clubhouse with video." So who knows where all of this is going to go. I think it's just interesting because when people have too much of one thing they're just going to get sick of it, and right now it's the idea of everyone is over Zoom, and I just don't want to be on camera all day anymore.But in hindsight, we're all ready for it and to send a client a quick ... or a potential client a quick video message, it just feels natural now, and to your point, that's what it should be because it's just that's how you say hi to the baker, or the butcher, you actually know their face, you know their personality.Matthew Barnett:I think with communication it's an interesting one because you can't unpack it more and more and what it really means to communicate. There are different ways to communicate for different scenarios. So with a Clubhouse ultimately if you want to you can choose to be more passive because it is a more passive form of communication. What I mean is, you don't need to have 100% attention, whereas with video, you need to look in someones eyes, you need to be there, you need to be engaged and if you're not people can tell. Audio you don't have to have quite that level, which is great because it allows you to potentially multitask at the same time.Obviously written communication is great because it can consumed on the recipients own time, how they like, they can jump out and jump back in again. There are different pieces of communication that work at different points for different reasons, so no one communication style is better than another, it's about matching it to the situation. In situations where trust are important and connections are important, and I think getting your team and brand across, because for me team is brand as well, that's obviously where video, or in person, tends to have the biggest impact.On that note, you stated somewhere, I don't know where I found this, but you said, "My love of building great product is only surpassed by that of building great culture." I literally wrote the same thing to switch products with brands, where I believe that you simply cannot build a strong brand on a weak culture. What are some company culture tips ... We're going to talk a little bit more about company culture, but are some company culture tips from your experience running a company with what looks from the outside in as having a pretty admirable culture? What does it take?Matthew Barnett:I think a good start with this is to work out truly what the culture that you enjoy is. I say enjoy, because with all things in business if you're not enjoying it then you're doing something wrong. This is a large part of life. So I think with culture, when you first start, you don't think about this, it happens, and you hire people who will help influence that culture in a big way. I think about it as a drop of dye in a glass of water, and when you're a small team you put one small drop into a small glass and all the water goes blue instantly. As that team grows, and grows, and grows, that color has a danger of fading away because you're only putting one drop in.So at the beginning its easy, you all make the color, or the culture, as you get bigger you actually start to need some drivers. There comes a point, and you probably notice this, where you need to take a bit of a switch. The first step is to really be very honest with what it is that makes your culture. You hear people talk about writing down the key company values within this. There is no hard or fast rule, I wouldn't worry too much about this. I think the key to getting this right is just to be honest, don't use big words, just write it down, whatever makes sense to you and your team, run it past everyone and be like, "Is this us?"Don't think your values are something that you want to use to make sure that people come and get jobs, write them for what they are. If one of your values as a company is that you need to be quite ruthless to succeed, honestly, if that worked for your company and the environment you're in, that's okay, you need to be very honest and you need to understand that's what happens because that's how you're going to hire. This is going to influence how you build the team. Whatever the value is, be honest about it, understand what it is that you know needs to make your business a success and then ultimately you go hire.So have those values in mind, write them out, your early team will check them, yes or no. Then, as you start to grow that company this is going to be your blueprint for the first stop before you hire. This is why it's really important to have this, because again, back to the first point with the glass of water, as your team expands and grows, the biggest issue you're going to hit is that your culture has potential to dilute, and there's a stage when you're not too small, not too big, where making wrong hires culturally can actually disrupt the whole thing and throw off kilter.Fabian Geyrhalter:It can disrupt your product even, right? Because if suddenly not all of your staff is aligned and has that same emotion, and conveys the same kind of feeling, then suddenly people think of the brand as a whole as a different kind of company than you thought it was.To me, talking about culture, is a perfect segue to talk about bears. Bonjoro's logo mark is a bear, a very friendly, happy, pretty bear. Your title is Papa Bear, which is awkward when I say it like this, but it is, and in context it's really great. I think you have some explaining to talk, let's talk about the bear. How did the bear become the logo, and it's a really cool logo, it's really amicable. How did everything become about bears when it comes to video, and CRM?Matthew Barnett:I think with this company there was some through on my behalf about what kind of brand we want to go and build. So it wasn't so much that we kind of fell into it, I guess this was partly pre-meditated, we kind of knew where we wanted to go. I think playing around in video, and what we were doing. We would try and encourage people to get on video and to open up to customers. Ideally to have quite a lot of fun while doing it, because what we understood innately was that the more open you are, the more you're having fun, the more you drop the barriers, actually the more trust you build with the customer. It's more authentic, this tends to work.So you look at that, and you go, as a brand and a company, and bear to mind we are B2B, so we're in the business space-Fabian Geyrhalter:Bear in mind, I see your hint, I bear in mind.Matthew Barnett:I don't actually think it these days, it just happens.Fabian Geyrhalter:Very subliminal.Matthew Barnett:I think what you have to do, I think the job of a brand, is to not just reflect your customers but actually to try and bring them on the journey with you. This is how I see brands. So where we're having a company who have a product saying to them, "Look, you need to let go a little bit more, you need to relax a bit more, you need to open up a bit more." We want our brand to go a little bit further that you're going to go, so that you come on this journey with us.So when we looked at it, we looked around brands, we looked at what was happening in the space. We kind of knew it had to have almost like a bit of a B2C slant, even though we're in a B2B place. We didn't want to go out corporate and serious. I think a great company who did this in the B2B space is someone like MailChimp, and they've changed and matured their brand over time, but they've actually held really well back to that core ethos and the stuff their doing now, it's kind of perfect in my eyes.We, I guess, took a similar approach. I thought characterization was a way to do this, I can't remember how we came to the bear, I think it was maybe over a few beers. But the bear, I think at first it was a bee. I think animals as a characterization was an obviously direction for us, because it's fun, it's playful, you can take it a long way. The bear happened and then it just started to come more and more to life. This was partly driven by us. It was actually a lot driven by customers as well, I think especially in those early days you get your innovators coming on board, and there's a lot of energy, a lot of excitement, and everyone's like, "This is great, let's go further."I remember one of the first things we ever did was we started sending bear suits to customers children when customers hit certain points on the funnel. I'm not going to lie, it was a stroke of genius, because basically we then had customers sending us back pictures of them and their kids in bear suits. I was like, "Look, they're literally wearing our brand." That's when the penny dropped. People think this is actually pretty fun, and then it starts to go beyond just being a company.I look into the value of any company that you build, and we talk about non-tangible assets, and the biggest one of these that you could possible build is the brand really, which does include the team. But I think in those old days by getting everyone into a brand, and getting everyone to talk about that brand, we got a lot more excitement, we got a lot more fun back. We generated case studies a lot easier. People who are that way inclined jumped on us because we were refreshing and different from the norm. I think the brand equity ended up become more valuable than probably the product, especially in those early days where the product's catching up.So that just compounded it and we took it as far as it had to go, the title naturally fell out. My title is Papa Bear. I don't think I came up with that, again I think a customer came up with that and then it just stuck, so there we are. And now anyone who joins the company, we have a team of grannies in the North of England that build custom bear onesies for us. It's great if you live in the Northern Hemisphere and you have winters, in Australia they're a little bit too warm so we don't get to wear them that much.It's the idea of being fun and playful, it helps for hiring and it really helps for culture. We want everyone to enjoy their job and have fun, if they're not having that fun its kind of, for us, what's the point of business? We also want customers to have fun, and it helps with everything. Frontline comes in more positive. If you have problems people talk to you, they don't go and leave reviews, it just helps in every single way. But ultimately, it's all for us. The core thing is it's all about having a bunch of fun, while we're doing what we love.Fabian Geyrhalter:Look, it was such a fun story about there were so many pieces of brand nuggets in what you just said. It's so important for everyone listening to really dive into that. This is about personality, this is about culture, but this is also about translating what your product does, where you should open up, and you should feel a certain way, into the brand.So, one of the questions, when I'm in your shoes and I'm being interviewed in podcast, or interviews, or Q and A's or whatever it is, one question that I'm being asked all the time, literally pretty much every single time I speak, and I'm going to let you answer it for this time, because I kind of think you already did. They all ask me, "Does branding for B2B companies even matter? You're talking about all these B2C companies, and I get it, they're consumers and they want something. It's the Nike's and the Apples, but B2B, really? Does it Matt?" I think you've got an answer.Matthew Barnett:I don't know why anyone would ask this question, there's a million examples out there in the world. Absolutely, of course it does. You're selling something. People aspire to values and companies they want to work with in any market you're in. Anyone at all, you will have competition. You might have a unique product that's a world first, you're going to get people coming after you, and if not, people always have alternatives. If you're a coffee company people can drink tea. There's always different things people can do. So when you're in that space one of the most effective ways you can compete is brand, and this is your attitude and how you treat customers, and the decisions you make on products. It influences everything you do, it influences how you build the company, how you go to market, the kind of people you work with.Very, very importantly, if you want the easiest bit to understand where brand makes sense in a business actually is probably around hiring. So why does somebody want to work for Google? Why does somebody want to work for Atlassian? Why does somebody want to work for X bank, or Y fund? They have choices they go to and they're going to pick ones because they aspire to those values. The same will be for your customers. Having a brand strategy, and working certain ways, will get you opportunities, will get you different types of opportunities and give you different ways to compete.It's hard to say because for me it's so black and white. Of course the brand matters.Fabian Geyrhalter:Yeah, well it's hilarious because you were shocked that I say that pretty much every time I speak people come up to me and ask me that question. To me, it's like, why? You're selling to people, and people are people and they want to have something that's personable, right? It doesn't matter if it's a B2B sale that they're making or if it's an actual retail store that they're going to, in the end it's still the same thing. They want to have that connection.It's kind of great that you were so shocked that that is something people actually question. It comes across really, really nicely in what your brand does. I think not only from an empathetic point of view, which we talked a lot about, the strategic point of view, but the design, the language, the UX perspective that you take as a brand, it's so important.For you guys, you're doing a really, really great job. That alone is a huge differentiator in a sea of sameness, because just to defend the ones that come up to me and ask me that question, there's a boat load of tech companies, and apps, and services out there that are all pretty much doing the exact same thing. They use the same kind of web template. You know what I mean? It's like, here are all our features, it's like, feature, feature, feature, and then they go to Bonjoro and it's like, brand, brand, brand, and by the way we've got features.But it's different, it's a very different kind of mindset. Sadly a lot of B2B marketers don't have it because they come from the IBM days of doing B2B marketing.Matthew Barnett:I wonder if the challenge is, to be honest, that people don't understand what we mean when we talk about brand. Obviously if they'd just seen you speak, different group, but a lot of people think brand is a logo. They think that's literally the all encompassing world of brand is the logo that you put on your site, and maybe the type font. That is not brand, that it is one of the smallest elements of your brand, it's probably the least important element of your brand.Your brand, it's a culture, it's a style, it's a feeling, it's what makes you, you. I mean, individually we all have brands. If you walk into a room and somebody can't see your face do they still know it's you because of the way you walk, because of the way you talk, because of what you're wearing, that's what it is. How recognizable are you in a sea of mundaneness? That does not come down to logos, it doesn't necessarily come down to the whole visual piece, like copywriting is absolutely key to this. The way that you communicate with customers, it's your operations. Do you decide to put customers first, or team first, how does that work? It's about every element of your company, how you treat your employers, how you operationalize. Are you going to have centers in each country, or work remotely?So many things come into this, and it's not just a logo. If you ask me, it's probably the element that touches every part of the business. There's two things that do, your brand does, and then obviously money touches every part. Everything in the business is driven by money, I think everything is also driven by brand. It is absolutely all encompassing. It's the glue that makes your company what it is. So when you say do B2B companies not have a brand, I don't know if you're just thinking about logo, maybe that's the problem there, because it's so much more than that.Fabian Geyrhalter:Well the problem is I already educated them, so that's post my education. I appreciate your benefit of a doubt. I just really believe that there's a lot of start up founders, and I know that because they come to me, and they're like, "Well, all the other founders in my incubator are whatever. They're all doing consumer centric stuff, so of course brand is important, but I feel left out because I'm doing B2B." So it's kind of like this stamp of if you're a founder in the B2B space, invest in feature, feature, feature, that's all. That's where you invest. You actually shouldn't invest in branding and marketing, because that comes much later, and it's much easier, it's a different funnel.Obviously, we know the golden path, and I'm glad that you shared that with my audience as well. And talking about golden paths, I'm talking about how branding touches everything. I love on your website the way that you funnel very different customer segments through your beautiful and smart online journey on your site, by saying, "Bonjoro for" in the nav, and then you can select what you would use it for. So it's like, "Bonjoro for online education." Or, "Bonjoro for customer success."This sounds like a simple and logical solution but I see many companies screw that up by creating sub products. It's a different target audience, or creating this maze of an experience. You guys nailed it by saying, we do one thing, we're all about this one thing, and we just happen to do it for many people. So if you're this person this is right for you. Has this been an ongoing conversation, and big strategic brand decision, or was this just kind of like it fell into place? I assume it didn't just fall into place.Matthew Barnett:I think this is part of the maturity for the company as well, I'll to B2B and B2C. You basically have, and you'll know this as you grow, you have ideal customer profiles. So you will have ISP's. You will have certain customers that will utilize, and connect, and stay with your company. You see these in research projects, we do user profiles, Jenny is a greengrocer from wherever, that kind of thing. The more data you have, the deeper you start to understand who it is that's using your product. You start to understand that there's not just one bucket of people. There are different people with different motivations. If you can help tailor parts of product, or parts of your messaging, to different people because again, different people have different motivations.If you're a bank, it's very different talking to a 20 year old starting an account versus a 70 year old retiree who's saving for the grandkids. Very different market, very different messaging. How do you work out, because you can't target everyone, who you target and it's probably three or four types of people only. Maybe a little bit more, but small numbers. How do you then really bucket those up, and one thing here as well is to focus on the customers that are the best for your company. You might have a million Joe Bloggs but they don't ever spend any money, whereas you have a thousand Susie's who spend 10 grand a year, focus on those obviously. So how to you cater, and then how do you work out who these are? How do you change your messaging to really hit the core value that each of these different type of users are going for.Again, to the bank idea, a 20 year old opening a savings account versus a retiree with a fund, they're using the exact same bank and possibly the exact same products, but they're using them for different ultimate goals and reasons. The better you can understand this, the better you can tailor your message to those individuals with the ultimate goal that the better you're going to be at converting and convincing people to come and work with your company.Fabian Geyrhalter:Totally, absolutely, I love that bank metaphor because it is, and most banks actually don't do that, right? They're like, "Hey, here are our services, here are our features." Again, back to that conversation. Also aligning a company or a product around the big picture thought. So for Bonjoro, I assume it's not about video, but it's actually about connection, right? Creating this personal connection you and someone else, and video is the means to get there.With that said, if you could distill your brand all the way down to one word, or two words, what would it be. I call it brand DNA, but you can call it anything. For Coca-Cola it used to be happiness, everyone thinks about that, or at least that's what they made us believe. It's a sugary drink and we don't really think that anymore, but that was the idea, the messaging. With Zappos, which I'm sure must be close to you guys, because it's all about the customer service, for them I think it now distilled into just simply, wow. So with Zappos, you think Zappos, you usually think, "Wow, that's amazing customer service."What is a word that can describe your brand at its heart? Now we're talking about everything, from culture, to product, to what is the brand in a word?Matthew Barnett:Delight, I think would be the word.Fabian Geyrhalter:Delight?Matthew Barnett:Yeah.Fabian Geyrhalter:I like that, just like the bears, it all goes back to it. Taking it lighthearted and giving value at the same time, I really like that.There's one more question that I wanted to ask about your brand, and I just never got around to it, because we started chatting about so many other things. Don't just say hello, say Bonjoro. Does that tagline pretty much encapsulate the story behind the name, was it from bonjoro, was that the idea?Matthew Barnett:Yeah, so when you're coming up with a name, and I do think this is important, to my point anyway it's not all about logo. I think my preferred way to start a company is to make up a word. I think that way you avoid other existing words out on the market so there's no confusion. Also you can get a domain name, and you can obviously get better SEO of the back of that. So there are tactical reasons too. But what you want to do with this word, you want to have connotations, and you want to inspire a subconscious thought towards what it is your ultimately looking to do as a company.So, Bonjoro obviously comes of influence from bonjour, or from buongiorno, which Italian and French for hello. Obviously the main reason we use with these videos is to turn up and say hello and welcome to customers. So, there's this subconscious feeling behind it of this welcoming open feeling to the company. And like I said, there was a domain name available so it was a win-win.Fabian Geyrhalter:In a past life you and I went to the same brand school. When we work on names for clients it's the exact same philosophy. It makes so much sense. It's a really smart move.All right, slowly we're coming to an end here. What it is a piece of brand advice, I know you already gave tons of advice, but what is a piece of brand advice that you might not have talked about that you think founders should just really keep at heart when they create their company, when their still young, they might have a couple of employees, maybe they're just two co-founders out on a pizza night figuring out what's our brand going to be. What is some advice from your end now that you've come through this multi times it sounds like?Matthew Barnett:I think a really good starting point is to find another company that aspires the value, that has the values, and the brand that you aspire to grow into. Very specifically do not just look in your industry. So with us, honestly, you mentioned Zappos and Zappos is one of the companies that we aspire to be. Zappos is not a tech company, they are a shoe and product company, but the way they approach customers, the way they put customers first, the whole delight and happiness, the whole leadership style, that to us is how a company should be built. We want to take some of that and it gives us a North star and a really good, I guess, baseline to check on and say are we getting there?Do this, it makes it a lot easier because there are going to be great leaders that are doing things that you want to do. Again, be that Zappos, be that [inaudible 00:39:04] bank, whatever it is you want to get to, have that North start and it just makes it easier as you grow to keep checking in and saying, "Are we on the right direction?"Fabian Geyrhalter:I love that and I also often advise founders to just stop looking at their industry, period. If you come in and you want change things, and you've got a mindset then everyone gets stuck with okay, let's put in a browser window with our six companies, and guess what? Your website's going to look the same like the other six people, because you are so focused at looking at your competitors. Oh, that's how they're structured, that's how their flow is, that's what they talk about themselves. And that's why everything is a sea of sameness. So yeah, look at the flower shop that disrupts the marketplace. Look at something totally different where you say they lead with empathy, or their trying to do something different in a space that is old and needs to be disrupted. Whatever it is, like you said, for you it was all about the customer first and so you gravitated to how it is at Zappos because they're really great in that space.It's unbelievable how many founders don't do that, and they're just so fixating on their industry, because it makes sense, right? Especially when they come from that industry, but I think that's super important.Matthew Barnett:As I say, it's definitely a wood for the trees situation. It's hard, if you're building something for the industry that you understand, you've been that for years, that's actually a good way to build a successful business because you understand what you're doing. The downsides are that you might have blinkers on when it comes to some strategy for sure.Fabian Geyrhalter:Yeah, totally. I made it my thing, and that was pre-Covid obviously, hopefully it's going to happen again soon. I only worked on our website copy, or strategic thoughts about it, I only used to work on it in airplanes, especially those gruesome trans-Atlantic, 12 hour, 9 hours flights where I did not pay for internet, and I was just basically there with a blank page. I worked on three sentences for like 8 hours. But that's it, it was so personal, and it was so deep, and it was just as clear as possible. Those are the lines that really stand out, and they always make it for a long time. In my eyes, that's how you create something when you already know what your brand DNA is, you know what your brand is all about. You just have to, I guess the idea of sitting on a rock, it's the same thing.Matthew Barnett:Exactly. 100%.Fabian Geyrhalter:What's next? What's next for the Bonjoro brand as we're slowly to coming to a close here? What are you excited about in the next six months? I mean, I think mankind is excited about things in the next six months after the last six months, but for your brand specifically are you brewing up something that you're excited about that you want to share?Matthew Barnett:I think this is the great thing about doing a start-up and taking that through growth is that your brand will change over time. It will hopefully refine and mature, is how I kind of think about it. So I think I see our brand doing this, I see us tailoring it down deeper and deeper to the kind of customers that we know are good for us, and that work with us, and the kind of people that we want to hire. We talked about the idea of personalization at scale.We have an ethos here which I think dictates a lot of our brand which is automate processes but never relationships. As it's interesting, when we look 12 months ahead about what we're going to go and build as a product company we start with that ethos first and then we start and going, well let's actually put together a mock up website and some mock up messaging and let's design the company the messaging that we want to be, and let's work back from that and build product afterwards. So we actually don't go product first, we tend to go almost brand messaging positioning first and then we go, what's it going to take to go and fulfill that dream?So we've just come out of that process, I'm not saying it's easy, but I think we've got a pretty cool North star for the end of the year, a lot to do in the next 12 months but it is going to be vision lead, and then products going to back fill in all the innovation that helps us get there.Fabian Geyrhalter:That's so awesome, I'm excited that you just went through this exercise, it's so liberating afterward just to say, "Okay, now let's open the floodgates, let's make it happen." I like the way that you guys work, it's just really cool. The great news is, and you know that, it's very easy for people to see it when they visit Bonjoro online that there is so much thought put into it, and it's very, very brand focused. Brand lead.With that being said, where can people find Bonjoro online? I guess everywhere because you own the word, right?Matthew Barnett:Yeah, if you type in B-O-N-J-O-R-O you will find something from us, so go have a play. If you want to test our video, try it out, it's free. You'll get a video from one of us somewhere in the world, so do say hello, reach out, we are human. If you want to chat to me in person, you can always go on LinkedIn, search of Papa Bear. That's the other benefit about having a title. I think there's three of us, and I'm the only guy in a bear suit. I don't know why the other guys aren't wearing bear suits, but there you go. So please do reach out.Fabian Geyrhalter:This is a call to action for the other Papa Bear's, this is competitive now.This is awesome. Hey, Matt, you did not come across as a 6:00 AM kind of, I just woke up and have my coffee interview. I really appreciate it, this was awesome. So much good stuff. Stay in touch, appreciate your time, and thanks for being on the show.Matthew Barnett:Thanks for having me.

Visit Saltverk onlineSupport the showApply for the eResonaid Scholarship--Fabian Geyrhalter:Welcome to the show, Bjorn.Björn Steinar Jónsson:Thank you. Thanks for having me.Fabian Geyrhalter:Absolutely. It's such a pleasure having you. You're calling in from the beautiful country of Iceland, where I made some fond memories myself. I was up in Budir actually, which seems to be like half the way up to the Westfjords from Reykjavik, where I think you're located right now.Björn Steinar Jónsson:Yeah.Fabian Geyrhalter:It's such an unbelievably breathtaking place and I have some wonderful friends up there, but they are actually way up there in Akureyri, so I don't know if I said this right, but they're like way up north.Fabian Geyrhalter:I am really, really thrilled to have you on the show because I love what you're doing. You took it upon yourself to pick up where the Danish king left off when he established salt making in Iceland. That was in the 18th century using geothermal energy to produce salt. How did you get into this? Was it a fascination with salt, with food, with sustainability or a love for your country? Tell us a little bit about the story, because it is very unique for you to get into salt making.Björn Steinar Jónsson:Absolutely. I think a combination of the things that you mentioned. I lived in Copenhagen for 10 years, so got a little of perspective from the outside. I think for Iceland, maybe for citizens of many other countries, when they go abroad, they see their own country and their own place from another perspective. Every summer I came back to Iceland, I learned to appreciate the very same things that you mentioned, which is so beautiful about Iceland. It's the nature. It's going into the countryside. I'm from the capital, not from the remote location where we have our production, but this is something that I got fascinated to.In Copenhagen, when I started to live there, things were starting to happen around... I was starting engineering, and this was around 15, 17 years ago around 2004, 2005, and sustainability in manufacturing processes was something that came across me during my studies. But then also there was something happening with food in Copenhagen. In 2005, a restaurant called Noma starts with using Nordic ingredients and I saw them using ingredients from my home country, skyr, which is an Icelandic yogurt that's actually big now also in the United States.And there were things happening within coffee where you had the third wave coffee makers in Copenhagen Coffee Collective, someone like Blue Bottle in the US.Fabian Geyrhalter:Yeah.Björn Steinar Jónsson:Within microbreweries from Copenhagen, there are some pretty strong brands, Mikkeller, and these were things that fascinated me just as a foodie. I was a local at the Mikkeller brew pub, which is in my neighborhood, and the Coffee Collective coffee shop, where they were taking the transparency around where the sources are from the product that we're making and taking it back to the next level. I think from this, and also from the fact that... So in Iceland in 2008, there was a financial maelstrom in the Icelandic economy.Fabian Geyrhalter:That's right. Yeah.Björn Steinar Jónsson:So in the years after, and when I'm about to finish my studies in Copenhagen, then there weren't abundant opportunities to do something in Iceland, if you wanted to add that. So I think the idea is something that comes to me under these circumstances and these influences. I wanted to do something that originated in my home country.As an Icelander, I knew that geothermal energy is something that could be exploited here in Iceland, that could be used. Through that and through my interest in food, I initially over a cup of coffee discussing with a friend why isn't there salt made in Iceland. I mean, we're an island, we have these geothermal energy. Then I stumbled upon the story of the old salt production by the Danish king in the 18th century. I think that's a snowball that in the summer of 2011, got me to just try and see if this could be done. It was just a pet project, if you could say so. It's just something that I just wanted to do. I just spent my summer vacation away from school seeing if this could be done in a small scale.Took me a week to get the first 200 grams or 10 ounces of sea salt by using the geothermal energy. But also, the first five days, nothing was happening and I was probably almost giving up. Then salt started to form on this small little salt pan that I made. I took that back to Reykjavik and the very first thing that I did was to take it to Dill Restaurant, which is Iceland's only Michelin star restaurant today, where I was acquainted with the head chef. I just came into his kitchen and said, "Hey, this is a salt that I make. What do you think about it?" He was amazed and said, "Go back and make some more of that." That's sort of a snowball that starts rolling 10 years ago.Fabian Geyrhalter:That's really amazing. Let's talk about your process. So on your website, which I would invite every listener to go through to get a good sense of your brand's unique story, you state the following: You say, "During this whole process, we use 206 degree Fahrenheit or 93 degrees Celsius hot Geyser water from the hot springs of Reykjanes, where we use it in the preheating, boiling and drying process of our salt. Geothermal energy is the sole energy source used, which means that doing our whole process, we leave zero carbon footprint on the environment and no CO2 and CH4 emissions." This is unbelievable. You even use the geothermal energy to heat the building, right? I mean, everything is basically completely sustainable.Obviously, there's one thing to actually be able to get salt. It's another thing to actually create this infrastructure up there in a very remote area. I mean when my listeners go to your website, they're going to see some pictures, or in Instagram, they see how remote it really is. And looking it up on a map, I mean we're talking about remote that most people in Central Europe or in New York or San Francisco, couldn't even gas. How did you experiment to get this all right? Here in Silicon Valley, we experiment and create test pages and it's like, Oh, and does the project work? But with that, I mean, one thing you get salt, but then how do you actually create this quote unquote, little production area, facility. I don't want to call it a factory because it's far from it. How did you start creating this?You talked about the very beginning of the experiment, but how did that keep going? Was that information being handed down from generation to generation for you to pick it up? Or did you literally just have to learn everything from scratch?Björn Steinar Jónsson:I think mostly, I mean, we just had this idea that because it was done before and that this long time ago, we could reinitiate that process, and then we had the idea. I guess from my engineering perspective background, then had this idea that this production system, if you'd call it that, and all of these processes that we could do with the geothermal energy, which was abundant. That was what fascinated me in this so remote location that I came to. You just had the hot water coming from the ground, no one using it. It was something like this is a resource that should be used, and that becomes a driving factor. From that moment, everything is testing and trials on the scale one to one with all the failures that that includes.I guess as you probably know, in the Silicon Valley, a lot of your tests are going to fail and exactly the same applies here. It's about enjoying that ride which comes with all of the [inaudible 00:09:46] of... You know. We've learned a lot on how to do this. We just try and try again and we iterate and iterate until we succeed with what we want to do in each part of the step. Last week, I spent most of the week with my colleague where we were working on some improvements, and it's long days there, but then the beautiful nature and so rewarding when you finally succeed with the small step, but that always comes after a few steps or failures.Fabian Geyrhalter:Well, and the success wouldn't be as beautiful if there wouldn't be the failures. Right? I mean, imagine if there wouldn't be failures. I'd say we wouldn't even know what success was. Right?Björn Steinar Jónsson:Absolutely.Fabian Geyrhalter:On your Instagram page, I saw that you were... A long time ago, I think you were at the food show, Expo West in LA, which is obviously one of the biggest food shows in the world. And it's right down the street here from us in Long Beach. How important are US sales to your brand at this point? Is US a really big part of your consumer percentage at this point?Björn Steinar Jónsson:It's becoming a larger and larger part of our business. I would assume that this year, as the year starts off and as the last quarter of last year it was because of huge growth that we've had in online or E-commerce in the US, that it would probably be half of our business this year.Fabian Geyrhalter:Wow. That's amazing. So to play devil's advocate, sustainability is such a key ingredient of the Saltverk brand story, right? How do you balance that out with obviously, I mean, Iceland is an island, you're remote. You obviously have to ship product. There's absolutely no way around it. How do you feel about that carbon footprint that is being left because of that and how you actually produce your salt?Björn Steinar Jónsson:Absolutely. I mean, that's something that we do put consideration into. Since 2015, we have with a local organization here in Iceland offset the CO2 footprint that is generated off our business.Fabian Geyrhalter:Oh, wonderful.Björn Steinar Jónsson:So they do a calculation of that, where... I mean, essentially it's only the logistics, it's only the transportation, but then also it's about the choices that we make and how we transport our product. For example, we refuse to ship our products by air because they don't need to. It's not a fresh food. Salt has an infinite expiry date.Fabian Geyrhalter:True. Yeah, yeah.Björn Steinar Jónsson:So we ship it only by sea, which is a huge difference in the carbon footprint to do it by sea, with boats instead of by air. That's why we say no to a lot of opening up to a lot of market in UK. Our own web shop is only open for Europe and the US because in these places we have warehouses are able to ship by sea to the warehouses, and then it's distributed locally. We don't have open for any foreign markets, Asia, Australia, even though we get a lot of requests from these markets, as we just don't have the resources to be able to set that operation which we see that makes sense to us. Iceland is located, I mean, middle between Europe and North America. We have decided to focus on the markets of Northern Europe, so Scandinavia, where we are selling and then to the US. So it's the markets that are closest to where we are currently. And then we're doing the offsetting, as I said, initially. So this is something we put a thought into it, for sure and find it justifiable.Also, because if you look at in the product category we are making in, we have some plenty sea salt producers that are using natural gas or other resources that leave a huge carbon footprint. I mean, just to give a perspective, you need 20 liters, what's that two, I don't know how many gallons it is. You need to boil down 20 liters of seawater just for a small pack of our salt. So there's a lot of energy involved just in the process of evaporating the seawater. But we are just using a natural resource that's coming through when it comes into our system, and it goes out of the system. We're just working in harmony with the nature at source.Fabian Geyrhalter:I absolutely love this. Of course, you give this a lot of thought. I was wondering as a consumer coming to your website and reading the story, and then afterwards, okay, I'm going to shop, I'm going to buy one, right? And here I am in LA and there's something about this transaction that just feels... It goes a little bit against the brand story, but I love how you give this so much thought and how you ship it in containers, and you have your warehouses and everything is this... And then you offset that little bit of carbon footprint in the way. It's fantastic. I've been using your salt since December. Now I also use Himalayan and Mediterranean all for their own purposes, right?So I'm definitely one of the few salt connoisseurs amongst regular consumers who is absolutely willing to pay, I don't know, 20, 30 times more for Saltverk salt than the regular supermarket salt. Business Insider had a whole video about this price difference. But seeing how and knowing how your salt is being harvested by hand makes the $12 per jar not feel expensive in my eyes at all, because it just doesn't because you know the story behind it and the taste and the difference, and all of that. But a lot of brand strategy is about positioning and pricing. How did you go about pricing when you positioned your brand? What is too much? What is too little? How much do you simply have to charge to make Saltverk a sustainable business? There are a lot of questions like that. Like, how do you price salt?Björn Steinar Jónsson:Absolutely. I mean, initially, we probably did the mistake that many, many do that at least doing a physical product, we undervalued how difficult. We thought we could produce more at a lower cost, et cetera. So there was some steps in the beginning that we didn't really catch how much of an effort it would be. And then you have some reference points. What we haven't done is that... I often tell the story of when a retailer and we traditionally, we started out with selling to retailers, retail chains, high-end retail chains in Scandinavia locally, and in Denmark in all the markets. And then you have this bargaining. Your whole company is starting up, here comes the retailer, which has a hundred stores or 200 stores, and he wants to bargain with you.I talked to all of them, "Hey, before we start talking about the price, come. I'll buy your ticket. Come and I'll drive you to the Westfjords and I'll let you harvest some salt, and then we can talk about the pricing.Fabian Geyrhalter:Excellent.Björn Steinar Jónsson:I managed to get some of our customers this way, just to go to the Westfjords, see the remote location and understand the origin of the product and what effort is behind it, and then the understanding of what bargaining they want to do. This conversation becomes totally different, and it did also because how fascinated they were coming to the beautiful nature of the Westfjords and you could say it's partly a sales trick, but I mean, it just took that conversation to a totally different level of what is fair to pay for this product.What you're also paying for is the transparency and the trust that I mean, from day one... And I think I was looking at food manufacturing and there were some documentaries 10 years ago about how some different types of food was made, where people couldn't see. The first thing we did to the building were we were to construct them into or to change the door into a window so people could always see in. That was sort of telling the transparency of everyone can come here and see, and it's been like that from day one.Fabian Geyrhalter:That's really awesome. I mean, the story behind the brand is half of its success, right? I mean, obviously as a connoisseur and as a foodie and as a chef in a Michelin star restaurant, you can taste the difference and you can feel the difference. But as someone who is just buying salt for the restaurant chain, and they want to have something that's a little more higher end, they need to feel that story. They need to be a part of it. I saw that you had a lot of chefs up there too, and you do this regularly, and it's a really smart thing to do.Let's talk a little bit about the product. So you've got six products. One is the pure flaky sea salt, but then you also have birch smoked salt, lava salt, Arctic thyme, seaweed, and licorice salt. There must be a limited amount of salt that either you can produce or you're willing to produce. Or can you actually expand on various salt blends? How far will you or can you take your production given its location and reliance on natural resources?Björn Steinar Jónsson:Yeah. I mean, I think within the product range that we have right now, we are comfortable with that, and don't see... So, I mean these products, they either have a reference to where we are from, from Iceland. We have the seaweed. We have the Arctic thyme which only grows in Iceland, Greenland, and the Faroe Islands. So only in the Arctic region here. We have the birch smoked that's a tradition in Iceland that we used traditionally for land here. So we are smoking it in the same way. Yes. So we started to learn that from a farmer. Then we have our own smoke facility. Then we have the licorice that's a traditional thing in Scandinavia in candy and sweets. It's not something that comes from here, but it has a cultural reference for Scandinavians.So we wouldn't want to do something that... I don't see myself ever making, let's say, lemon sauce, or something that doesn't have any either cultural or natural reference to Iceland. That's also partly because also these ingredients we're working with, the Arctic thyme, we get it from a farmer and there's also limited resource available of that. Or the seaweed, which is harvested. It's wild seaweed harvested here in Iceland. So, it's definitely limited production in so many means, but also something we set ourselves some constraints about. We don't want to expand in any direction just for expanding.Fabian Geyrhalter:Yeah, yeah. That puts a whole different meaning to the overused phrase of farm to table. Right?Björn Steinar Jónsson:Yeah.Fabian Geyrhalter:I mean, it's really that's how it is with what you guys do. I saw you did an Instagram takeover with the restaurant Amass in Copenhagen, where I was fortunate to eat a few years ago. I understand studying in Copenhagen for you that you became a foodie. It's an amazing scene up there. You're also yourself, I believe, the co-owner of the Michelin Bib winning restaurant in Reykjavik. So it goes without saying that Saltverk is indirectly linked to some of the greatest restaurants in the world. How has the global pandemic affected Saltverk? Did you start pushing direct to consumer much more as a result during the pandemic?Björn Steinar Jónsson:Yeah. I mean, in the first wave of COVID last year, we basically, March, April, I mean we saw our sales... You know, those two restaurants that's been a big and important part of our business, basically, we suffered just like all our partners and we've both had that continuing but not to the same extent. In the second part of the year, it restarted in a way, and we've also been seeing... The thing about all the restaurants that we sell to, I know it just started with me visiting the kitchens and giving them samples and just ask them of their opinion, the chefs at the restaurants, Amass, Noma, et cetera.And then they become a user, and then a chef who comes there in the kitchen, he starts to work in another restaurant, and then he wants to order our product. So I guess on the restaurant side, we haven't been hit as much as restaurants in general have done because we just are seeing new customers coming in more, and more people wanting to use our salt instead of something else. Then organically, we started doing direct to consumer in 2017 through our workshop, but also on Amazon. That was something that we started to put as one of the channels.Initially, when starting the business, I always said that I didn't want any single customer. Then I was thinking about the retailers we were selling to. I didn't want any of them to represent more than 5% of our sales, just because I didn't want... If one doesn't want to, and it's especially important with the retailers, because if they become too big of a customer, then they have a leverage on you in terms of pricing. We couldn't do that because we simply can't with the remote location we're producing and with all the work that we put into our product.We started working on E-commerce in 2017, and in 2018, it was representing probably less than 1% of our revenues but growing at a fast pace, and that we had spent three years on that was, in hindsight, a really good decision once things happened last year with the pandemic. Because as I said, I mean in the US, our sales is mainly online and that's probably going to be half of our business this year.Fabian Geyrhalter:Yeah. Amazing, amazing. Well, just wait until this episode of the podcast airs. It's going to be up to 60, 70%.Björn Steinar Jónsson:Yeah. Exactly.Fabian Geyrhalter:Well, you already mentioned this, but I always like to ask founders on my show when they look back at how they had their idea, and then suddenly the idea actually turned into something more. When did they know that wow, you know, it's like, I think I've got a brand here. I don't think this is a startup anymore. This is actually turning into a brand. When was that moment for you? I mean, you talked about the first big moment, which was literally handing over the salt to the only Michelin star restaurant in Iceland and saying, what do you think? And he was like, this is amazing. I mean, that's obviously one of the big breakthroughs, but when did you feel like you were actually turning into a brand, into something where people would ask for it?Björn Steinar Jónsson:I think I mentioned a couple of things. We used, from day one, restaurants to get feedback and to improve on our product and in the first years that we were making our salt, and I mean our product has improved throughout the years just by using this feedback from chefs. And it took us a few years to get a restaurant which was on our target list, Noma in Copenhagen. In the very first years, they didn't want to use our salt. They said it was not consistent enough with some other parameters of how we were drying it, et cetera, and we wouldn't want to change it up. We improved on those things. And then I guess four or five years ago, they all of a sudden say, yes, now you nailed it. We want to use your salt.We just took the feedback and said just thanks for giving a feedback. We'll try to improve and use the feedback that we get from you. I would also say another thing. I mean, we did in Iceland locally farmer's market for six or seven years, just because on the retail side, when your product is on the shelf of a store, you don't get a customer feedback. Yes, you get something through social media but that's maybe biased. It's only your super fans, et cetera, that are there for these markets.And then once our direct to consumer business started to build up, then all the positive reviews that we get there, and which is funneling organic sales and all the messages that I give to the salt makers. Everyone at the company have a job title of being a salt maker, and I give it to the employees up in Westfjords. I sent them when we get feedback from customers. We get emails from customers where people are, again, saying this is the only salt that I want to use. It makes so much difference for me in my... So I guess these product feedbacks either it's from a professional or from the retail customers is both sort of gives this a turning moment for me, but also, it's also the most rewarding thing.Fabian Geyrhalter:Of course. Of course. Absolutely. I think it goes back to our conversation earlier about failure and success, right?Björn Steinar Jónsson:Oh, yeah.Fabian Geyrhalter:That the two go hand in hand. I think it is just so wonderful to hear that Noma said no in the beginning, because that's... I mean, literally it's in the name. Noma is supposed to say no in the beginning. It's so much their brand. Right?Björn Steinar Jónsson:Yeah, yeah.Fabian Geyrhalter:That idea that you started at farmer's markets, I hear that from food entrepreneurs here in the US all the time, and they say the same thing that you say where it is so important to stand eight hours, five hours at the farmer's market and get the feedback. You know, just sell like 30, 40, 50 jars, it doesn't matter. It's about that personal interaction where you can actually... That's your product... You know, that's Q and A. You know what I mean? That's product development really.Björn Steinar Jónsson:It's finding a product market fit, which is so important for every business. You don't do that otherwise. It was never about the revenue that the farmer's market gave to you, but it was always about the feedback that you could get and take both the negative and the positive.Fabian Geyrhalter:Absolutely, absolutely. If you could take the Saltverk brand and kind of distill it into one word... It's something that I always like to ask my founders, because it is so difficult. And I work with my clients on this to really say like, what is one word that could describe your brand inside out, right? The entire brand philosophy, the product. How could you distill it into one word? What could be one word that could describe Saltverk?Björn Steinar Jónsson:Not a sentence. A word you want.Fabian Geyrhalter:You can give me a sentence, too. You're my guest.Björn Steinar Jónsson:Yeah, yeah. I mean, I could say a few things. I guess either transparency or sustainability, or I often like to say what you see is what you get, and that sort of puts those things into the... It can sort of include both of them.Fabian Geyrhalter:Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I like that. I really like that. Your visual brand is very understated as it even demands to be perhaps, but still you're branding Saltverk through the stories you tell, the partnerships you keep, the press you generate, and the products you sell. What does branding mean to you? I want to add to this because some listeners might have overheard this before, but you said that you were actually an engineer or you studied engineering, which now makes so much sense of how the entire brand came together. Right? Because it takes an engineer to figure this out. But after going through this entire journey and now being where you're at with your brand and selling it to the best restaurants in the world and the connoisseurs around the US and in Europe, I would say, what does branding mean to you? It's such a strange word. It's so overused. It's very often also misused. What does it mean to you?Björn Steinar Jónsson:I think in today's world and I think to a much extent, in our conversation again and again, I think in today's world, it's so personal. People demand, customers demand that they get the personality of a brand through what are the values. As I said, our values about sustainability, the trust that the customers have and what you see is what you get. I think these things and things that are basically ingrained in your organization, you can't put a statement up in today's world, which looks nice on paper, but isn't the reality, I think. You have to live through your values in every way and show them.That's what I said. We have been from day one open to everyone. Any day, anyone can come and visit. We try to get the chefs. We try to get the buyers. Really just any customer comes and visit and can come and visit us and see the production. These things are something that we are trying to get through to people as they are buying our product on the website. They should see it through all that we do and in branding, I think. But then that's a task of every day to be able to communicate that and scale it.Fabian Geyrhalter:And scale it. Yeah, absolutely. It's obviously easier when a brand has been instinctively and organically built with that foundation at the heart of it which is sustainability, it's transparency. It's basically what you see is what you get. With that philosophy, it's very different instilling this into companies where they lost it. They still have it at the heart, but they lost it. I think it's really fascinating. You're absolutely right. That's what branding is in 2021. It is all about shared values. It's all about transparency. It's all about making it personable because we want to relate to a brand again. Totally agree.What's next for Saltverk? What are you excited about in the next six months? It's been a rough ride with the pandemic for everyone, but what are you excited about?Björn Steinar Jónsson:I guess for now, I'm most excited about being able to travel and visit some of our partners and restaurant partners that have had a much more harder time than we've had and try to see and support them in any way that we can, but also to continue and to improve on. I'm super excited about that, and I feel we're just starting about working with exactly these things that I have been mentioning, about telling the story of how transparent we are in our operation, about getting more visibility about making... We're working with a local agency of making content. We're going next week with the crew to take videos of our production to be able to show people so they can come on a virtual visit and see our salt production in a better way.We feel that we are just starting these things. And then there are so many things that we can do to improve on our operation in terms of sustainability even, and the world is changing a lot there also in terms of packaging, in terms of what is the best way to offset the footprint that you generate and so on. So we've got our hands full of things that we're excited about the future. I hope that we will see in the second part of this year, once vaccinations have been rolled out, people are starting to be able to travel to some extent again.Fabian Geyrhalter:Yeah, absolutely. I love what you said about telling the story even more so than you do. Right? I think that there's a huge opportunity, and customers just love to hear that. I'm just so happy that you're excited about what's next, right? Because it seems like there's like the sky is slowly opening up again and I think there's a lot of amazing things around the corner. Talking about social media and you telling your story, where can people find you? If not on location, which most of them can, where can they find you online?Björn Steinar Jónsson:They could find me on Instagram or Facebook or through our website, saltverk.com.Fabian Geyrhalter:Perfect.Björn Steinar Jónsson:Or anywhere under the brand Saltverk.Fabian Geyrhalter:And that's Saltverk with a V. Spelled with a V.Björn Steinar Jónsson:Yeah.Fabian Geyrhalter:And that's where everyone can find you. Well, thank you so much, Bjorn. This gave me a lot of personal joy and satisfaction having you on this show. It was wonderful hearing your stories and getting your insights about how you run your sustainable brand. Thank you so much for being on the show.Björn Steinar Jónsson:My pleasure. Really fun talking with you.

Visit Clare onlineSupport the show-------->Fabian Geyrhalter:        Welcome to the show, Nicole.Nicole Gibbons:            Thanks so much for having me.Fabian Geyrhalter:        Absolutely. No, it's so great having you here. You are the founder of Clare, where you saw a huge opportunity to paint the interior paint industry in new, specifically with designer-curated colors, mess-free peel and stick paint swatches, which are really cool, and premium zero VOC paint delivered to your customer stores. You set out to take the pain out of paint, which I read somewhere on your site. That's not me saying this. You're your modern brand that has pioneered an easier, faster, and more inspiring way to shop for paint. Your mission is to help people everywhere create a home they love.Clare is just a little over four years old and must've been born out of the interior design company you're also running, but your career started at Victoria Secret where you served as the global director of communications and events. Tell us a little bit about how did that idea of Clare, how was it born? How did it all begin?Nicole Gibbons:            Yeah. Well, I just want to correct one thing. We're actually only two and a half years old. Yeah. So we're a very young startup in our trajectory, but the idea was really born out of this desire to help people create beautiful spaces. I spent, like you've mentioned, a decade working in retail as a PR executive. While in that job, I started side hustling to explore my passion for interior design. So I did that sort of overlapping for about five years, more or less writing a blog every day and doing dabbling in small interior design projects on the side. Then finally at the beginning of 2013, took the leap to focus on building my design business and my personal brand full time. So after doing that for a few years, I started thinking about what would be the next extension of my personal brand.I never wanted to just be an interior designer. I loved the Martha Stewart approach in that she parlayed her career as a food and lifestyle expert into products that spanned multiple categories and just this massive career that enabled so many people to buy into the Martha Stewart aesthetic. So I started thinking about what I could do in the home space that was along those same lines and explored a number of business opportunities and kind of stumbled upon this white space that is paint.As a designer, I bought lots of paint. I shopped for lots of paint. I helped lots of people choose paint colors, whether it be my private clients, people that I would help doing television projects, or even just folks who would write in on my blog, or be a social media where I was just sort of offering unsolicited free advice when they had questions.I realized that shopping for paint is a really difficult process for the average person. If you're lucky enough or fortunate enough to be working with a designer, or an architect, or someone who can guide you, the process is quite easy. You have someone that you trust who makes the selections for you and you pretty much trust their judgment and sign off, versus the average person who's going at it alone, walks into a Big Box home improvement store, stares up at a wall of 3000 colors. If they want something as simple as white paint, they think it's going to be easy. And then they realize, Holy pal, there are 300 shades of white. How do I know which one is right? And then sort of thus begins this cycle of this painful experience, decision fatigue.Once I realized how the industry was structured, it's highly consolidated, there are really like two or three major players that dominate the whole entire paint market. It just felt like the perfect opportunity. The companies that dominate the paint industry are centuries old. So these are brands that are so giant. They really never felt the pressure to innovate or modernize.When I started Clare and really kind of came up with the idea, probably around four years ago or so, there were so many other industries where difficult shopping experience had been improved and modernized. Think about glasses with Warby Parker or mattresses or all these other categories where someone took a product that was really difficult to shop for and made it an easy, convenient experience. As someone who is incredibly passionate about home and about helping others create beautiful homes, this just seemed like the perfect opportunity and it was a massive market. I didn't want to just do a furniture line or something that would have been more expected and obvious for an interior designer to pursue. I really wanted to build something from the ground up, tackle a massive market, and create a sort of industry-changing business model and brand.Fabian Geyrhalter:        That's remarkable. Those peel and stick paint swatches, it sounds like nothing, but it's so huge, right? I mean, if anyone who went through that painstaking process that you just hinted at on how to come up with the perfect paint choice, you have to get all these tiny little cans, which by the way, is horrible for the environment, all these tiny little cans from paint stores. And then you have to paint on your house, most of the time on the exterior interior, depending on what you paint, and you keep going back and forth between the hardware store in your home. It's a mess, but those swatches, they seem kind of like post-its by nature. It's just so simple. You just put it on the ball.How did you guys around to matching the color on, because we're talking about print and "paper," versus paint, which is such a different medium. It must be so hard to match that identically. I think you guys pulled that off, right?Nicole Gibbons:            Yeah. I think we nailed it. I mean, the interesting thing about color that most people don't realize is that color is a science, and any color, really all forms of color has data associated with it and can be broken down into numerical data so that when you're in the color matching process, you can actually measure the accuracy of our paint swatches to the finished actual paint finish within the most minutiae of a Delta E.So it's actually quite a scientific process to ensure the color match. It's somewhat manual, somewhat scientific. You might have to go back and forth a few times until you get it right, but if we can kind of measure to make sure that you're within pretty much an exact match range and that's how you ensure color accuracy.So we have a pretty detailed process. I think a lot of like with traditional paint brands, when you have thousands and thousands of colors, and they're not offering peel and sticks watches in most cases. So there's the little tiny paint chips that you take off the wall at the hardware store. A lot of times people feel they don't match. I think when your pallet is to the point of being four or 5,000 colors deep, you sort of lose some of that quality control.It's very difficult to maintain 100% accuracy when you have that many colors and especially if you're not actually controlling your distribution channels, because a lot of people also don't realize when you buy paint from a Big Box store, they're carrying multiple brands. So they have to have a color it dispensers or sort of colorant in store that work across all the different brands that they carry. So with that, you almost lose a little bit of quality control as well, because you're working within a colorant system that maybe isn't proprietary and there's just more margin for error for the output in the store to look different than the swatch.Fabian Geyrhalter:        Clare is 100% D2C. It seems like having your paint salt at a hardware store would go against what you stand for as a brand, but would you toy with Clare experience stores or pop-up stores of any sorts?Nicole Gibbons:            Yeah. My belief and the whole reason I started Clare was that I felt that the paint shopping experience needed to be re-imagined. We started online because that's where our competitors were not, but I think that there's a huge opportunity to reimagine the future of what a paint store looks like, or what a paint aisle within a Big Box store might look like. So that prospect is super exciting and definitely something we think about, and it's really a matter of timing and opportunity, and those kinds of two things being aligned before we'll probably make it happen.Fabian Geyrhalter:        Which obviously is not during a pandemic. But other than that, it's an interesting opportunity. Absolutely. Let's talk about the evil side of paint, how to dispose of leftover paint. How do you navigate sustainability with Clare?Nicole Gibbons:            Yeah, I mean, I think for us, sustainability is a focus on kind of two major things. One is the product and how it impacts your home, and your health, and the air inside your home. And the other are just business practices. So things like our packaging and other efforts that we make to ensure that we're really minimizing our impact on the environment.So a lot of people don't realize that paint as an industry is one of the most dishonesty and misleading industries out there. It's a chemical product first and foremost. So no matter how you try to spin it, there is no such thing as a safe chemical paint. It's still a chemical product at the end of the day. Now you can certainly have a better formulation, but it's still a chemical product. It's not like the paint is made of grass and leaves or whatever.Fabian Geyrhalter:        Yeah, yeah.Nicole Gibbons:            So the paint industry has really been misleading with customers about what's in their paint. Even stemming back from like the 40s and 50s when paint was made with lead, which as we now know, is very toxic and harmful to humans and to the environment, but one of the biggest paint companies in the world knowingly continued to sell paint to their customers for decades, knowing that it was harmful to human health and didn't stop selling lead paint until it was banned by the federal government in the 1970s.So that's a very good example of how the paint industry has historically operated at profit over people, I think. Even in more recent times, every few years, in fact, one of the major paint companies is paying massive fines to the FTC for misleading marketing.Several years ago, when the government started regulating, or the EPA started regulating VOC contents and paint, and stands for Volatile Organic Compounds, it's essentially like carbon emissions and CO2 emissions that are emitted by a lot of paints, not Clare, but when the government started putting these thresholds, so they would say, canopy can't have more than X volume of VOC content, what brands ended up doing, and another important thing to understand is how paint is actually sold at the point of sale.So generally companies like a Big Box store or a hardware store will stock a base paint formula, which is essentially like a white paint. And then the colorant is dispensed at the point of sale. So brands would manufacture those base formulas to fit zero VOC thresholds, but then the colorants that were being used were not zero VOC.Fabian Geyrhalter:        Interesting.Nicole Gibbons:            So people thought that they were buying a product that was better for them, healthier for their homes, et cetera when in reality, as soon as you've chosen your color and they put the color in the can at the hardware store, you have a paint that's now back to being filled with chemicals. So even that type of misleading was happening in more recent times.So for us, transparency is super important as well. All our paint is zero VOC. It's GREENGUARD Gold certified. GREENGUARD is a green certification that applies to many products, but GREENGUARD Gold is the highest tier of GREENGUARD certification and for paint. What that means is, they actually put the paint in an environmental chamber that's meant to mimic the air inside a typical home environment, and it measures the off-gassing for two weeks to ensure that it stays below the zero VOC threshold during that entire time, because paint can continue to off-gas for years actually. So when you buy a paint that's not zero VOC, it will be emitting carbon compounds into your air potentially for years. A lot of people don't realize that. Especially nowadays, when we're spending all of our time inside in our homes, it's very important that we make better choices and there's just so much harmful stuff all around us. So we just wanted to minimize that as much as we possibly could.A lot of our packaging and products, like some of our paint supplies and things are made from recycled materials. So whenever possible, we really try to make the best possible choices and we are not doing everything perfectly admittedly. As a young company, there's still a lot of room for improvement. There are certain things that we want to make even more sustainable, but I think we're off to a really good start and we're as transparent as we can be with our customers. We hope that that gives them competence in our brand and in our product.Fabian Geyrhalter:        I love this. Just in my last episode, I talked about that same idea where even though you're trying really hard and you think like you're doing everything as well as possible, there are some things that you yourself know as a brand. You're not quite there yet. You talk about that too. I think that alone is such a huge difference when you think about the paint companies from the 40s and 50s, right. It is so nice as a consumer today to see brands talk about not only the things they do well but also the things that they know want to improve upon because that is just as important and that's how you feel like a brand is really transparent.Let's talk about transparency for a second here. Moving over to your brand language, which is really real. It's very down to earth, you had an instant post about wop remixed, which of course, stood for where there's paint. Your colors are named Headspace, Whipped, No Filter, and Dirty Martini. How did the brand language manifest itself? Did it start with a mantra that you set and then it organically built from there?Nicole Gibbons:            Honestly, so much of it is an extension of me and my personal brand voice, to be honest, but also like the customer that we're reaching and what I think resonates with them. Also just looking at the market and looking at traditional paint brands, I think paint brands are pretty boring. We wanted every element of our brand experience to feel memorable and to evoke emotion. So when it comes to things like the color names, we wanted to have fun with that and create names that made you feel something. Our brand voice on social media, we want to be relatable. We want to talk about what's happening in pop culture and relate our product back to that because that's what people can care about. That's what's top of mind.We don't want to just be this faceless corporate entity that no one actually cares about. We want to be a brand that people connect with and they follow us because we are approachable and, or entertaining, and inspiring. So that's super important. We try to have those core brand, voice pillars of being friendly and approachable, carry throughout every aspect of the brand from the website to our social and more. It's really just, I think, another way that we differentiate ourselves from the market.Fabian Geyrhalter:        I was just about to ask that, how do you set and keep those standards as it relates to the voice? You just answered that there are certain pillars around which you want to navigate as you talk to your customer. But talking about naming, how did the name come about? It's a very modern take on naming. We have many first-name brands floating around, but not Nicole, it's Clare.Nicole Gibbons:            Yeah.Fabian Geyrhalter:        Once you try to actually get some help finding a perfect color, you agree that with a message on your website that says, "Hi, I'm Clare. Think of me as your personal interior designer. I'm here to help you find the perfect color for your space." What's the story behind the name? Who is Clare?Nicole Gibbons:            So it's so funny. I wish I had a more profound name, but originally, when I was thinking of names or when Clare was just in the idea phase, I wanted to be able to talk to some people about what I was working on. So initially, my only intent was just to come up with a working title, just like a good enough name for now and then come up with something perfect later. So I probably spent like 20 minutes. I was looking on a baby naming website where you can reverse look at, like name meaning. So if you wanted your kid's name to mean happiness or whatever, you type in happiness, and it tells you all the names that relate back to that.So I literally typed in things that tied back to color. So I looked up adjectives like bright, and colorful, and vibrant, and whatever, and saw what names came out. Clare just sort of stood out. Clare comes from a Latin root word, clarus that means bright and brilliant. There's a lot of fun wordplay there, both brilliant and bright in terms of color, but also brilliant in terms of being innovative and forward thinking as a brand. I Googled it. There was no other brand that really had the name Clare. There was like an insurance kind of, I don't remember exactly what they sold. There was something, but in a completely non-competitive space.So it was a name that was available and it was a good working title. And then as I really started kind of moving forward with the brand and doing some conceptual branding work and things like that, it sort of just stuck and it fit. There was no other name that made sense. But I think originally, I knew I wanted a name that was personified so we could really build a personality around the brand. That's why I went to a baby-naming website. And I wanted it to be friendly and approachable. And I intentionally wanted a feminine name, because in the paint world, all of the brands that dominate are these hyper-masculine names, Sherwin Williams and Benjamin Moore.Fabian Geyrhalter:        So true. Yeah.Nicole Gibbons:            I think they are not appealing to who's really making the household decisions, which is usually the woman of the house. I felt like paint brands are overly masculine in their appeal.Fabian Geyrhalter:        Yeah.Nicole Gibbons:            I think part of the reason is because a lot of them are catering to professionals and a lot of pro painters are men. But at the same time, when you think about the DIY market, the people making the hustle decisions are women.Fabian Geyrhalter:        Yeah.Nicole Gibbons:            I think the big brands are kind of failing to really resonate in an authentic way. So that was something that was super important as a brand founded by a woman in an industry that is dominated by men to take a complete 180 approach to every aspect of our brand, including the choice of name.Fabian Geyrhalter:        So interesting. I never thought about how those paint names are just absolutely not reflecting today's do it yourself customer. Super interesting. Your selection is still narrow and it's highly curated, and that is by design, less is more. A recent customer review on your website stated, "The limited, but lovely colors totally saved me from having an existential crisis over the thousands of options from other brands. How do you control the number of options to give your customers once you introduce a new color? I know you just introduced a couple of new colors, how do you play this game of keeping things fresh, but yet having it very curated so that people don't freak out about the 4,000 options of white?Nicole Gibbons:            Yeah. Well, I mean, we launched with 55 colors and originally, we believed that those covered most of the use cases you would ever have in a home, right? There are certainly opportunities to expand the palette and mix in a few new things, but it's not hard to keep things curated relative to the traditional paint brands that are in the thousands.Fabian Geyrhalter:        Yeah.Nicole Gibbons:            Building on from that original 55, our approach has always been well. If we're going to introduce new colors, let's make sure they're colors we know our customers will love. So, so far every new color we've introduced has been crowdsourced or with some sort of crowdsource feedback from our customers. So they'd either voted on the colors, or with our most recent set of colors, we did a march madness style paint playoffs bracket. The predictions from the customers ultimately dictated which colors ended up in our palette. The two newest colors that we launched were actually a part of the original, like our paint playoffs from last year where we ended up introducing a blue and a green, but there was also a pink and a yellow, but that were super popular. So we introduced those after the new year, this year in 2021. That's always core to us is making sure that we include our customers in the process. And then another core part of our color differentiation is that we're designer curated. So even the colors that our customers helped choose were sort of pre-vetted by me through my interior designer lens. Our original 55 colors were curated by me.I think in the future, there might be some collaboration opportunities with other designers to kind of maintain that voice of authority of being interior designer-curated colors. But I think that having that expertise behind the color palette, as well as input from customers to ensure they'll love the colors really helps to take the guesswork out of the process, and again, give people less choice, but the best choice, right? So really just simplifying those decisions for the customer to help them get to faster decisions, because that's another terrible thing about the paint industry is because there's so much choice. People get paralyzed and it actually takes them a really long time to make a decision, and the buying journey can be really, really long.Fabian Geyrhalter:        Yeah, absolutely. Looking back, because I thought your company was founded 2017, but that's I think when you just started laying the groundwork, and really it's a very young brand.Nicole Gibbons:            Yeah.Fabian Geyrhalter:        What was that one big breakthrough moment where you felt like, "Okay, we are moving from startup into brand right now." What was that one moment? It could have been a seed funding or Series A, could have been a moment that you had with a customer where you felt like they totally get it, it could be sales figures, whatever. What was that moment where you set back and you're like, "Wow, this was a special moment."Nicole Gibbons:            Honestly, I think it was the Daily Launch because I had spent probably almost two years at that point, a whole year just thinking about the idea and then another year actually putting that idea into making that idea a reality, and raising capital, and then building behind the scenes all before we launched to the public.So on the day that we launched, we had a tremendous amount of press coverage and the media really got it and described our brand relative to the competitors in the market. I think really captured well how we stood out. And then immediately the customer feedback was super validating. And kind of like the quote that you read from the customer, we heard that kind of thing since day one. "This has been the best easiest paint shopping experience I've ever had. I'm never going back to the Big Box store again." That kind of thing, we heard from the very beginning.Again, are we doing everything perfectly? Probably not. Still a ton of room for improvement, but the basic premise and the basic problem that we set out to solve, I think immediately was validated that we were solving a real problem and creating a much better experience than what these brands who have been around for 200 years have not been able to create. I think we're super proud of that.We're still at what feels like in the beginning of our journey. So there's a lot more room we have in the works to continue improving upon the paint shopping experience, but I think we're off to a great start.Fabian Geyrhalter:        You might be surprised, but I never heard that answer. And I asked that question pretty much on every show, because I think it's so interesting, but usually it's not right when you launch, and usually it's when you launched it, you get some good customer feedback, but that the press was immediately so interested because they themselves knew here is a category that hasn't been disrupted yet, and that hasn't been done in the right way. I remember fast company said the Warby Parker of paint is here, right? So it very, very quickly happened that the press led this conversation, which is, I mean, that's the biggest success you can have if that happens immediately upon launch, because then you know everyone will see a need for this. So that's really great.Well, on the flip side, was there any brand fail that you went through where you felt like, "My God, we just did a huge [inaudible]," and maybe something that listeners can learn from?Nicole Gibbons:            Yeah. I don't know if it's so much of a brand fail as more of a business fail or a general marketing fail. We so far, thankfully, have not had any major snafus with our brand voice or anything like that, but we're going through this really painful experience right now in that when we launched, I didn't have a technical background. I'm a very non-technical founder. So I hired a super talented team of people who were great designers to build our website. But at the time, without knowing then what I know now, we built an overly complex custom website. We're a small team. We don't have any in-house developers. So it requires a lot of resources to maintain our website.Then on top of that, I think the architecture wasn't as clean as it could be and it has just created so many problems for us. So two and a half years in we're actually re-platforming our website fully onto Shopify, which is such a great e-commerce platform. Especially when we had zero customers, in general, with MVP, you kind of start small and grow from there, but we came out the gate with this super custom website that looked beautiful, but behind the scenes is just kind of really messy and complicated and it just creates a lot of backend pain points. So we're going through that process right now to re-platform. It's a big undertaking. Actually, I feel like it's more work to re-platform the site than it is to build a brand new site from scratch, because there's more that can go wrong.When we originally built our site, we didn't have any customers yet. Now we have hundreds of thousands of people that visit our website and we don't want to disrupt that experience or lose functionality that was there before. So there's just way more room for errors with this kind of next go around. Yeah, it's taking up a lot of time that we didn't intend to be spending.So I would say launch your brand on Shopify, because you're going to learn everything you need to learn. Maybe when you get to a certain scale, you can go custom, but that was a big lesson learned in what I would consider somewhat of a failed, because I just didn't know better and we just spent way too much developing and building the site that we have that doesn't actually function the way we need it to.Fabian Geyrhalter:        Well, and you come from an interior design background. So of course, the design is most important in the beginning, right? And so one thinks. Think about tens of thousands of people starting shopping on Clare.com immediately, but since you're successful, that happens next. So I think it's extremely important that you talk about something which some people might not think is important. It can be extremely disruptive to a business. I work with an agency that does a lot of Shopify websites. For them, it's the exact same customer that keeps coming back to them. They created it in a different environment, then everything was really clunky. And then it becomes ... I mean, we're talking about a lot of money being spent when you have to redo a site in Shopify.Nicole Gibbons:            Yeah.Fabian Geyrhalter:        This is important.Nicole Gibbons:            It's a young startup, so cash is king, so to make a costly mistake is really painful. This is definitely a very costly learning experience.Fabian Geyrhalter:        Yeah. No, totally. Like you said, it's not necessarily a brand fail, and it's not necessarily fail period, because it's just kind of like, it's that whole fail forwards ideas. It was a logical thing to do, to do a site that just looks good.Since this is a branding podcast, I love having my guests always answer this one question, and it's not an easy one, what is one word that can describe your brand? If you literally think about your brand inside out, the culture, what you stand for, your customer, your offering, if you would put it all through a funnel, and outcomes one or two words of like, this is what we stand for, what would it be for you?Nicole Gibbons:            I would say inspiring. That's a word that I think permeates every aspect of our brand experience and how we hope that our customers perceive us from the shopping experience. That is a world of difference from that cluttered aisle and a hardware store in full of inspiration to how the brand engages with us on social media. We want to be there to guide them and there to inspire them, to create a beautiful home that they'll love coming home to every day, and in our color assortment in just our overall brand voice. We want people to walk away feeling inspired by Clare. So that would be the one word that I'd say sums up-Fabian Geyrhalter:        I love it.Nicole Gibbons:            ... everything we're about.Fabian Geyrhalter:        Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. Now that we talk about branding, and I've warmed you up, what does branding mean to you? I mean, obviously you lived in the world of branding all your professional life in one shape way or the other. You were in Internet Kiehl's, then there was the Victoria Secret job, and then you're running your own service company really as interior design. So I think you've seen a lot of different facets. What does branding mean to you?Nicole Gibbons:            That's a good question. I think it can mean many things, but if I had to simplify it, it's creating an aesthetic that could be translated into a lifestyle. I think of Clare very much as a lifestyle brand, but also everything I did before in my career ultimately was around building a lifestyle. So I think in the world of e-comm consumer, you can't just be a nameless, faceless brand because right anyone can create a logo and a tagline, and come up with a name and call it branding. But I think it's truly branding when what you've set out to achieve is absorbed by your customers and that your customers actually relate to, and your customers can derive value from. So that's kind of a little bit of a long-winded answer, but that would be what I think of as branding and what I think creates a successful branding.Fabian Geyrhalter:        I absolutely agree with you. Yeah. It's like there's the foundation, which everyone needs a logo, and a name, and colors, and all of that good stuff, but that doesn't make a brand. That's important to have, but what makes a brand is really the soul of it. And that might start with the founder who injects it into the company, or it might be certain principles, or a greater purpose.Nicole Gibbons:            Yeah.Fabian Geyrhalter:        I'm glad that you said that. Absolutely.Nicole Gibbons:            It can't just be some abstract thing. It really has to resonate.Fabian Geyrhalter:        What's a piece of brand advice for founders? Maybe even commerce founders, as a takeaway from what you learned besides starting on Shopify, obviously, but from a brand perspective, is there anything that you can advise the next generation of founders on?Nicole Gibbons:            Yeah. I would say focus on experience, you know. I mean, even from the school of Jeff Bezos, but something that I can attest to within Clare is, if you can continuously deliver a delightful experience for your customer, that is what's going to propel your brand forward.Fabian Geyrhalter:        Absolutely. Absolutely. What's next for Clare besides potentially looking at the impersonal retail experience, which I kind of pulled out of you? I'm sorry if you didn't mean to talk about that, but what are you really excited about with Clare for the next, I don't know, six months, a year?Nicole Gibbons:            Yeah. I mean, six months, I think in the world of startups still is kind of forever, but just thinking about new products and how we can continue to deliver more for our customers. So we have some exciting things in the pipeline there. Obviously, I touched on this new website that we're in the process of building, which aesthetically will probably look quite similar to our current site, but hopefully, we'll deliver a better just overall experience. So I think that's like a top, top priority that's going to take us even through Q2 and have some cool partnerships in the works. So creating opportunities to reach more customers, but also without giving away too much. But yeah, just creating a cool opportunity for us to get in front of new audiences and things like that. So, yeah, I'd say in the short term, those are the key things that we're most excited about.Fabian Geyrhalter:        Very cool. Where can listeners learn about Clare and start painting the walls on you?Nicole Gibbons:            Yeah. Well, visit us at Clare.com, spelled CLARE. You can also follow us on social at Clare Paint, and we hope to see you soon.Fabian Geyrhalter:        Thank you so much for taking the time to be on hitting the marketing call. We really appreciate it.Nicole Gibbons:            Thanks so much. Thanks for having me.

Visit behno onlineSupport the show-------->Fabian Geyrhalter:Welcome to the show, Shivam.Shivam Punjya:Thanks so much. Thanks for having me.Fabian Geyrhalter:Absolutely. Your background leans heavily on marketing. You earned a Master's at Duke University in global health, social entrepreneurship and international development, so it really isn't far-fetched that you're now running a brand that has equality, sustainability and philanthropy woven into its brand DNA. But what may come as a surprise is that you're running a luxury fashion label specialized in women's handbags. How did this come about? Tell us a little bit about your journey and the brand's journey.Shivam Punjya:Yeah. It was definitely very unexpected, that's for sure. I was actually in grad school studying women's reproductive health in the field in India doing my thesis research and I came across a lot of study participants that were textile weavers. At the time, I didn't really make much of it. I was more focused on gathering my data to write my thesis. But when I came back to Duke to actually sit down and write, the Rana Plaza collapsed in Bangladesh and that was a very emotional moment for me. So many of the women that were murdered in the atrocity were very similar to the folks to the folks that I was working with in the field.I was emotionally very unnerved. I was talking to my family. I have a very large family - two moms, two dads. My mom's younger sister married my dad's younger brother and we live together and do everything together. And I was talking to my two dads and they essentially told me, "Either you make peace with what has happened or shut up and do something about it." As a family, we decided to jump into the space to build a factory to topple traditional manufacturing in the fashion space and do it in a different way. And how do we infuse ethics and sustainability at a very core part of the brand DNA?That's how I got into the space, so very unexpected. I was actually going to go into healthcare consulting. That's been a dream of mine since I was in university days. And it was a little bit of a moment with my mothers. They were so appalled with the idea of me jumping into an industry that I had no idea about. But here we are and it's been six years.Fabian Geyrhalter:That is amazing. First of all, it's a very unusual way to start a company. But then again, it isn't because it's all about passion and you were very passionate about this. But what is unusual is ... "So we started a factory." That is not something that you usually immediately do. Usually, you start outsourcing to other factories. But I believe in your case you just basically had to build a factory based on your ethical standards because you couldn't see it done that way anywhere else.Shivam Punjya:Exactly. And I think that you hit the point exactly. And I think what happened was for us, we didn't ever really see ourselves in the beginning having our own fashion brand. We thought that we would manufacture for other fashion brands.Fabian Geyrhalter:Interesting.Shivam Punjya:But what we started to realize is that when we talk to people about Made in India, people were skeptical of working with us. What we started to realize is that we needed to set the gold standard for what could come out of our factory, which is why we created Behno. And we wanted to showcase a luxury product that was really tailored that was not made in a sweat shop and not hippy dippy in aesthetic. We put some of the presumptions that people have against products coming from India, especially in the fashion space, and that's how Behno was born.Then we also started to realize that there was immense potential to actually create a brand manufactured in India that would sit in the global marketplace, so that's kind of how the brand started. Yeah, we initially wanted to manufacture for other people and now we have changed our business strategy a little bit so we've pivoted away from that factory to make Behno products exclusively, but that's the initial stepping point.Fabian Geyrhalter:And you started with women's fashion and then you moved more specifically into handbags. Is that correct?Shivam Punjya:Yeah. We made the pivot about two years ago. We launched with women's ready to wear. Full collection, knitwear, wovens. And we realized that our social impact on the backend was directly related to how financially well-backed our business was. And women's wear, it was a tough space to be in and was not necessarily something that we were getting a lot of traction on. And we started having a lot of buyers comment on handbags that we were designing and styling in our look books and we decided to make that pivot then. And I think that was one of the biggest breakthrough moments for us.One of my mentors, Denise Seegal, was helping me navigate these paths and she serves as our acting CEO and she founded DKNY with Donna. She used to be the president and CEO of a lot of Americana brands like Calvin Klein, Nautica, [inaudible 00:05:11][crosstalk 00:05:11]-Fabian Geyrhalter:Her name rings a bell, even for those not in the fashion industry. Yeah.Shivam Punjya:Yeah. She helped me make that pivot and I think that was single-handedly probably a moment where we started to realize where Behno really could be in the fashion space and we felt that the buyers were interested in it, there was room to play with other factories and make significant partnerships there while converting MSA Ethos, the factory that we built, to have a slightly different purpose.There's been a lot of pivots but I think, yeah, to answer your question, we started off with women's wear, now we focus on leather goods.Fabian Geyrhalter:And let's talk a little bit more about that ethos. What does it entail? How do you run your business differently than, let's say, the typical luxury fashion house?Shivam Punjya:I think one of the biggest things is understanding that when we manufacture a product, we are working with communities that are very different than ours. And I think this comes especially ... to become a point for brands that manufacture in developing spaces but our headquartered in the west. And I think that as a brand we spend a lot of time in the field. Myself, pre-pandemic, I was going to India nine to 10 times a year. My design team was going five to six times a year working with the factories, working with the artisans, working with the garment workers on the floor at the factory.And I think this single-handedly might be one of the more important elements of our brand's ethos and our brand identity, also, because I think ... I'm not a garment worker. I'm not an artisan. I do not know what it takes to be a garment worker or be an artisan. And I think that it required us to interact and have relationships with the people at the grassroots when we're trying to impact change in that same space. Top, down policy. Very colonial. India's a colonized country so I think they had a history with that. And what does it really mean to build capacity with people at a grassroots?I think this is one element that's very important to me personally but also to the brand where we include the folks that we're working with and the communities that we're working with at the center of our narrative.Fabian Geyrhalter:And did you see any changes in the industry since you launched roughly six years ago? Is your concept of your standards, the Behno Standard ... Do you see other fashion companies slowly starting to adapt to that new way of thinking?Shivam Punjya:I think six years ago it was very difficult for me to get an ear to talk about ethics and sustainability. Fashion always has known that we have had issues in how we manufacture and the product life cycle and the trendiness of it all. But six years ago, not everyone was open to talking about it. It was still one of those subjects that people didn't know how to interact with. Now, every publication is talking about sustainability on a day-to-day basis.Fabian Geyrhalter:Yeah.Shivam Punjya:Since six years ago, there's been tremendous changes. Also, when we created the Behno Standard six years ago, it was very much a grassroots standard created with me having spent time on the grassroots with communities in academia coming up with the Behno Standard ranging from six different categories addressing healthcare to women's rights to family planning to eco-consciousness. And now, so many folks have come up with their own standards. There has also been, to that extent, some green-washing where people don't necessarily know as a consumer what's really making an impact and what's being done for brands to play now in that space where if you aren't sustainable, they're a little bit worried about how that might impact their top line business.Fabian Geyrhalter:That's really interesting. The idea of green-washing and now it's like ethos-washing or whatever you would call it. I agree. Now it is the thing to do and now everyone is doing this. Really, from a consumer point of view to understand which brand is actually walking their talk and which is not is extremely difficult. With the Behno brand, how do you showcase what you're doing? How do you make sure that people don't think, "Oh, here's yet another one that's doing it this way."Shivam Punjya:Yeah. I think it's very much about talking about the process and inviting people into the process and letting our consumer have a stake in that process. Ultimately, when we look at our business model our consumers are probably one of the largest stakeholders. They allow us to progress and make the social impact that we're trying to have. For us, we have a section on our website which talks about the sense of Behno and what that makes ... what does that do for the brand? And how does the brand contribute to it? And I think it's about peeling away the curtains and inviting someone into that space.That's one very aggressive way that we try to be a resource for our consumers. But what we require our consumers is to ask their favorite brands, "What are you doing?" And I think that's the space we try to use to answer that question.Fabian Geyrhalter:Fantastic. Yeah. Absolutely. And then on the flip side, you talked in the beginning of our conversation about how there was a certain perceived connotation about the Made in India brand. Like the idea of Made in India and what it means to the western consumers based on their, again, preconceived notions. How is that being seen now by your customer? And are you ... Do you feel like you're actually making an impact and you're changing that? And do you see that maybe people start thinking about the Made in India label as something different today?Shivam Punjya:We've been very lucky to get significant press around our ... over our mission.Fabian Geyrhalter:Yes, you have. That's why we're here.Shivam Punjya:Yeah.Fabian Geyrhalter:I have read about you in a lot of places. Absolutely.Shivam Punjya:Yeah. I think that the perception is changing. What we are learning is when we were doing ready to wear ... I'll give you a very frank example. We had a buyer from a very reputable store come in and she loved the collection and she asked where the products were manufactured and we did mention that they were made in India. She didn't proceed with the order. And I think that speaks to some of the strong presumptions. But now we're working with the same store and they see the product and they see the design aesthetic and they see the quality of the product and they completely have changed their perception.And I think that's something that we love to see. I think that's very important. And I think that India has always been a space where a lot of luxury brands go for all of the hand embroidery and hand embellishment work. You have some of the largest houses doing this work in India and I think the supply chain uses developing spaces so aggressively but seldom do developing countries get the recognition for that supply chain.Fabian Geyrhalter:It's really cool. It's really, really interesting. Can you share the meaning behind the brand name with my listeners? Because Behno doesn't mean too much to them but I know it actually has a really deep meaning for the brand.Shivam Punjya:Yeah. Behno means sisters in Hindi. And the reason why we went with sisters, Behno, was a few reasons. In our garment factories, a lot of the female colleagues are referred to each other by their first name followed by the suffix of Behn, which means sister. So, if I had a garment worker colleague named Nene I would call her Nene Behn. And the plural of Behn is Behno. It's talk to an idea of a community of sisterhood that exists in these spaces. And then I also have a lot of sisters in my own life. My mother's a sister and I have a sister of my own, so it just felt very apropos to use Behno.Fabian Geyrhalter:And I believe now when you're prompted ... On your website when you're prompted to join the email list you're actually asked to join the sisterhood, right? So it becomes woven into the brand language, as well.Shivam Punjya:Yeah. I think that when you support a Behno product or when you support Behno, you ultimately are becoming a part of a very curated, eco-conscious, sustainable, ethical consumer. And I think that that's something that we should wear very proudly. And I think that these sort of communities are important to build because that's how movements start. That's how change happens.Fabian Geyrhalter:Absolutely. 100%. Let's move over to talk about Instagram because I know you're extremely active ... or maybe you're not even that active on Instagram but you're very popular on Instagram. You've got a lot of followers yourself, personally, as well as your brand. I personally always go to a brand's Instagram feed first to truly get an idea of what they're doing right now and who they are in ... their most authentic selves. You really get a good idea of what a brand is about. And I felt the same when I went to Behno's Instagram feed, so I wonder for you ... do you feel that Instagram is more important to your brand than even your website, which I know is something that we wouldn't have said five, 10 years ago. But do you feel Instagram has that kind of importance at this point in the marketplace, especially when it comes to fashion?Shivam Punjya:I think that for the industry at large, social media, Instagram specifically, has been very important. I think for our own business model, I think the website still serves as the primary source of information and discovery. I think that Instagram is more complementary to a consumer's experience. And this is purely from the data that we have; how many people are coming onto our website or shopping with us through Instagram. I think these are some of the numbers that we have, so I think it is more supplementary for sure.But I think that Instagram ... if you're not there it does take away some engagement that's very valuable for us as a brand both on a product level but also on an ethos level, especially when I'm hearing about big companies like Bottega that are stepping away from Instagram. And I think that's very interesting to me because what does that speak to the industry at large? But I do know that as an emerging brand we do rely on it quite a bit.Fabian Geyrhalter:That is really interesting and that's the first time that I hear that. Why do you think they're doing that? Why do you think they step away?Shivam Punjya:I think Daniel Lee is tremendously brilliant. I think that his team ... I'm sure there's some sort of strategy behind it. It's not just ... They're not just switching their switch one day and saying, "Let's be off of it."Fabian Geyrhalter:Sure. Yeah.Shivam Punjya:I think there's definitely something very meticulously planned behind that decision. However, I do think that it's an overload where I'm constantly on my phone. I feel like that I'm communicating with a lot of our editors through Instagram and I think that maybe people just need a breather. And I think people need to just experience life outside of our screens a little bit more, especially in today's world where the pandemic encourages us ... really, forces us to stay at home and work from home and limit our outside exposure.But it's a different time. I'm always on my phone and I would love to not always be on my phone. I think that might be another adding factor to brands maybe reassessing the role of social media.Fabian Geyrhalter:I wish you would be right. I have a feeling that brands still are not that empathetic about their customers now. I think it is something that most probably most of us feel the pressure and the burden that we are constantly on our phone because of everything that you just said.Shivam Punjya:Yeah.Fabian Geyrhalter:And changing that, I think, is ... It's important for all of us, for our health and for our sanity to go out and to experience other things. And like you said, now this is really ... it is different. But I do wonder if that is a brand's perspective, unless you're that empathetic, which sadly most large brands, especially fashion brands, I don't see them as being, which is different from Behno.Shivam Punjya:Right.Fabian Geyrhalter:You really lead with empathy. And talking about which ... And still on the topic of Instagram, on June 6th of last year, 2020, so four days after the hashtag #BlackoutTuesday took over social media, you guys did something different. And I'm going to read the post that you guys posted back then. It said, "PSA: As an emerging label, we want to do our part to make space. For every order that comes in, we're committing to return 40% of your order back to you. Please redistribute these funds to support a Black-owned business. It's an honor system. Can we count on you? Click the link in the bio to text us for a list of resources."I thought that was really clever, as you put the decision power back into your customer's hands. It talks about transparency. It talks about empowering others. And you empower your customers to then make a choice on their own. And I'm wondering, like so many of these quick, instantaneous ideas that ... which is the power of Instagram, right? You have an idea, you put it out there, you see if it works. Did it work? Or was it too complex for your audience to grasp how detailed this goes? You have to text and then select something and then you have to give money back. How did it work?Shivam Punjya:Logistically, it was relatively a simple process. I think the consumer was well aware that they would pay full price and then we just refunded back 40% of all the orders that did come through. Did it work? It was not maybe as greatly a success as maybe we thought it would be. But then again, we didn't intend this to be a sales campaign.Fabian Geyrhalter:Yeah.Shivam Punjya:This was not something that we intended to make up for a sales promotion that we would do at key holiday period during the year.Fabian Geyrhalter:Right.Shivam Punjya:That was not our intention. So, for us to compare ... I don't know what I would be measuring against if it worked, but what did come through is conversation.Fabian Geyrhalter:Right.Shivam Punjya:And I think that a lot of people were very shocked that we would do this.Fabian Geyrhalter:Yeah.Shivam Punjya:And a lot of people were curious why we wouldn't just donate to a reputable nonprofit doing work in the space directly. For me, I think, like you said, we need to empower ourselves. It's our responsibility to do the work on our end, as well. I think that as a brand we could have easily donated to a nonprofit but that takes accountability out of our own hands. And I think that as consumers we have a responsibility to play in discovering, supporting, being allies and, really, being in solidarity with the Black community. I think we wanted to make very clear that it wasn't just our responsibility as a brand but it also was our consumer's responsibility.Fabian Geyrhalter:Yeah. I absolutely love it. And it really was a statement more so than a sales campaign, like you mentioned. Absolutely. Because that would have absolutely backfired, too. That's not what it was about. But I really like the thinking behind this and not jumping right onto the bandwagon on #BlackoutTuesday but taking a couple of days and thinking about, "How can we really do something that is in line with our brand?"You keep using text messaging as your main source of contact for your audience. On Instagram you say, "Click on our link and text us 'Hello' and we'll be in touch." And the same thing happened with that campaign. Do you see text being a new means of customer communications? Or does it work well for you?Shivam Punjya:It works tremendously well for us. I wish more brands that I love had those sort of services. I think that building a relationship with a customer service representative at a brand is so important. I think that when I hear feedback from what we hear from our customers is very real feedback. What they don't like about the product, what they ... maybe could be done differently. I think it helped product development. But on the flip side, it also encourages us to talk to our customers about the product and the raw materials and the supply chain. And I think that is something that we also really take a lot of pride in.But lastly, a lot of our customers like the product but don't necessarily know what might be good for their lifestyle, so it allowed our team to help them find the right bag or them. And I think this level of communicating is very different than an email because you can also email a client servicing email address but I think that this is quicker, it's instantaneous. There's a level of intimacy that we get over these text messages and their conversations rather than email communication.Fabian Geyrhalter:That's really wonderful and refreshing to hear. I talked about a year ago, maybe a little over a year ago ... I talked with Michael Lastoria, who's the CEO and founder of &Pizza and what they do is they actually have ... They don't have Slack internally. They don't have any of these systems. They don't even use email. The entire communication for the entire company is via text message. It was amazing to me to hear that. And he said very much what you said now, just that he uses it internally, that people want to communicate on their terms and that's how people communicate these days during the day. You text everyone, right? You text your friends, you text your family, so why not be part of this infrastructure that they already enjoy? And everything becomes more amicable and more personal because of it.Shivam Punjya:And not only that ... Just to quickly add on.Fabian Geyrhalter:Yeah, yeah, yeah.Shivam Punjya:I think as a luxury ... a contemporary luxury brand, how do we bring white glove service, which is very big in the furniture world, into a handbag company? And I think that's also very important to us is how do we create a luxury experience at a price point that's a quarter of a luxury bag's cost? And I think that's something that's very important, too. And I think people ... I, as a consumer, love to be taken care of and love to be looked after. And I think that we want our consumers to feel the same way where there is a team of people that are looking after them and there for them if they have any questions at all.Fabian Geyrhalter:Absolutely. Yeah. Absolutely. Looking back at your journey, or rather the Behno's journey, what was one big breakthrough moment where you felt like, "You know what? It was a startup but now we're actually ... we're turning into a real brand. People know us, people talk about us."? I know ... and you mentioned that you got tons of press for what you're doing and for your product. What was the one particular moment or one particular article or something where you felt like, "Okay, this is it. We're moving up."?Shivam Punjya:I think one big moment was when my mentor Denise Seegal decided to join on as acting CEO. I think that was a breakthrough moment for the company. And the day that we decided to pivot into handbags. I think that single-handedly impacted the way that we positioned ourselves in the space.Fabian Geyrhalter:Yeah.Shivam Punjya:Because now we were playing, again, a lot more of a competitive market because handbags ... There's only so much utility and function and design changes that we can really make. But it became a moment were we were forced to put on our creative and branding hats again and change everything. And then, of course, that change allowed a lot more marketing opportunity, as well, where we were able to redevelop in a more obvious way what our branding standard would look like.Fabian Geyrhalter:And I suppose it was more niched out, right? You had a better overview of what's going on in that particular niche of the industry.Shivam Punjya:Absolutely. And I think that a handbag is quite possibly the last thing someone puts on to finish up their look, even probably after they put on their shoes. So, I think it's not necessarily the first product people buy but I think that it definitely is the last product people think about. I think that that, in itself, is very important. How do we allow us to communicate with our customers that this is the product that will finish your look?Fabian Geyrhalter:Very interesting. Yeah. Come think of it, that actually comes out nicely in some of the posts on Instagram, too, where it is about finishing the look, which psychologically it's fantastic that you went through the journey to understand when does your customer actually think about your product and then you replicate that.Somewhere I read the following ... It must have been on your website or Instagram or maybe in one of the articles about your brand. It said, "Our founder envisioned manufacturing to be radically different where garment workers in factories weren't just a part of the supply chain, but instead an intimate part of a brand's core DNA." And brand DNA is so crucial for any company to really think about and to really understand. And the best brands can state their DNA in one or two words.If you look at Everlane, it's radical transparency. If we look at Zappos, it's customer service. I guess now they just call it Wow. That's their brand DNA. What is one word, two words that can describe your brand on that ultimate DNA level?Shivam Punjya:Our tagline is, "The world's finest consciously-made handbag." But I think the one word to describe us would be investment. For us, that word had a multifold meaning. Investment not only in the communities that we work in; the garment workers, the artisans. You're investing in a product that we encourage you to have in your wardrobe for many, many years. And I think that a lot of people assume investment handbags to be those in 1000s of dollars, like the Armez, Birkins; an investment piece. How do we define investment in handbags?You can look at spending $400 on a handbag as an investment if you intend to keep it in your wardrobe, love it the way you would love a bag perhaps someone would spend $1000s of dollars on. But then, also, you're investing in yourself and you're investing in how to finish the look. And I think that investment, for us, has multiple different [inaudible 00:28:32][crosstalk 00:28:32]-Fabian Geyrhalter:I would have thought of so many words and investment would have never occurred, top of mind, right?Shivam Punjya:Right.Fabian Geyrhalter:It is such a great word because of this multifunction that you just described. Great. Absolutely fantastic. You come from the marketing background and then you really studied science and humanity and now you've been running a brand. You've been pivoting along the way, you learned a lot. What does branding mean to you today?Shivam Punjya:Branding is everything. It means that we have to look at every aspect of our brand from the same set of lenses and making sure that we're completely aligned internally as a team and as a company but we're also aligned externally with our consumers. And I think that is probably very tough because as a small brand, emerging brand, we're constantly changing. And we have to be nimble and we have to pivot. But through this journey we need to make sure that there's a consistent tone of voice and, for me, that's branding.Fabian Geyrhalter:Yeah. Really, really well said. If an entrepreneur is listening to this and he or she is manufacturing products right now, which a lot of them are and a lot of entrepreneurs are listening to my show. Or they're planning to produce something in the future and they're inspired by how you set your ethical standards. What are some tips for them to follow into your footsteps? To move from exploiting cheap labor like everyone else is to creating a nurturing environment? You also have a little bit of a legs up because you have your family ties with India and it probably was not easy, but easier for you to create this intrinsic community and really, really work hands-on.What are some steps that you think entrepreneurs should take when they say, "You know what? I'm going to raise my hand. I do want to have my product produced in an ethical way."?Shivam Punjya:I think something that's very important is to not be scared to ask questions to the manufacturing partners that you may bring on and work with. I think that's very important. There's no shame in asking questions and challenging the manufacturers that you may work with. That's one thing.Secondly, I also think that change has to happen at many different levels. And there is this notion in the industry where you only work with people who do things from the very beginning a certain way; that are already very ethical. But my goal has also been ... and I think I have some peers in this space ... is how do we work with people who are maybe not doing things the right way but help them change their business practices? I think there's also that level of engagement and capacity building that can be done.As a small brand, you can work with a factory that maybe doesn't hold to the standard you may have for manufacturing but slowly encourage them to change their practices. Invest time in helping them change those practices. And I think that it can become a collective effort.Obviously, the easiest thing would be to find a factory that adheres to your ethical standard, sustainability standard. A more challenging approach would be to partner with someone who's not doing that and then work with them to change.Fabian Geyrhalter:And that's how you create real change. That's just really, really wonderful. I love that. I just talked about this the other day. I used a product ... and I think it was something really random. I think it was something like peas. Like split peas for a soup. And I looked at the package and on the very bottom it said that this packaging is not recyclable. And then it said below, "But we are working really hard to find a solution to make it recyclable." And to me, that was so great.You see a lot of packaging that is not recyclable and you're just like, "Well, does this really work with the brand that I'm buying?" It's kind of weird. But saying that we're actively working on changing that, that we're aware of the waste that we create or a problem that we now put into your hands and we know that it is not in line with what you came to expect with our brand, I think is wonderful.I got a wine shipment. I think it was a case of wine. And it was packaged in those styrofoam containers and the brand is totally the opposite of that. It's all about organic farming and sustainability.Shivam Punjya:Right.Fabian Geyrhalter:I got that wine and the first thing that I saw was a little note that was printed on the top saying, "Shame on us, but we have to do this right now because we ran out of stuff." But it was great because they knew that customers think about these things.Shivam Punjya:Yeah. And I also think that as a young brand you have to take ownership for the negative push of your business, too. I think that just talking about the positives doesn't do anyone justice because I think that part of growth and change is addressing the negative. And I think that the ownership aspect, like you were mentioning people talk about on the packaging, is extremely important. It's always growth.Fabian Geyrhalter:I totally agree. But only if they actually really, honestly feel that way. Because a lot of brands really don't care and then they shouldn't state anything because they don't even want to change anything. So, I think that idea that it needs to be ... If you're a young brand and you care about these things but you're not doing them right now, you know that you will do them in the future. Talk about this. I think it's super important for customers to actually understand.We're coming to an end of this, but listeners who fell in love with Behno, where can they get their hands on your handbags? No pun. And how can they learn more about how you run your brand?Shivam Punjya:Of course, we invite all the listeners to come to Behno.com. B-E-H-N-O .com to learn more about the sense of Behno and what makes us us. But if you also are interested in product, it can be found on Behno.com. But we also sell to Nordstrom's and then we have all of the international distributors as well. That's kind of an easy way to learn about the brand.Fabian Geyrhalter:Fantastic. Awesome. Thank you, Shivam, for having made the time to be on the show. Really appreciate all of your insights and the story that you shared with us.Shivam Punjya:Thanks for having me. It was such a nice time talking to you.

Visit Pampa on InstagramSupport the show-------->Fabian Geyrhalter:Welcome to the show, Emmanuelle.Emmanuelle Magnan:Hello, thank you for having me.Fabian Geyrhalter:Absolutely. It's a great pleasure. You are calling in from Paris, and almost guaranteed, most of my listeners will not be familiar with your brand, Pampa, and that is because you are a boutique floral arranging and delivery service in Paris. So, not US-based or international, but your Instagram is exploding, and the New York Times has even found you, and now so have I.I even believe that this is your first solo audio interview in English, which flatters me. This is really cool. I read somewhere that you or your partner, one of the two of you, said, "We are always trying to twist the flower world. That has been old school for a while." Tell us a bit about how Pampa started in 2016, what the inspiration was, and why you and your co-founder thought Paris needed yet another flower store.Emmanuelle Magnan:Yes. Well, I should start by presenting Pampa and telling you a bit what it is exactly, because precisely, I think we're more than another flower store. We are a new kind of flower brand, englobing a flower shop and a creative studio that is dedicated to companies and brands. We started out in 2016, as you mentioned. We started a small, online flower shop.And really quickly, we started working with the coolest and most prestigious brands, artists, et cetera. And I'd say we have a new approach to flowers and the flower industry, more modern, more colorful, more eco-friendly, also, as much as we have the possibility to be.Concretely, what do we do? We are a B2C and B2B company. On the B2C side, we are a flower shop. We sell fresh flowers on weekly arrangements we have ... Sorry. We have weekly arrangements available in three sizes, that's it, and we also deliver dried flowers. And on the B2B side, we are a studio, as I said, and we have three types of services, which are design, gifting, and even workshop animation.Basically, when we started out, what we wanted to do first was disrupting the online market. At that time, it was dominated by three major competitors that had been there for ages, and that were, in our opinion, not really in phase with the needs and tastes of our generation. They had been on the market for ... Some of them 20 years. They were one of the oldest companies on the internet, maybe one of the first companies, e-commerce companies.When we were developing the business and benchmarking, we had four main observations. One, there was no clear differentiation from a competitor to another, like they were ... If you went from one competitor to another, they had the same website, same kind of products, same level of services. Secondly, their product offering were always on the ... built, sorry, on the same model.Fabian Geyrhalter:Mm-hmm (affirmative).Emmanuelle Magnan:They all had dozens of different arrangements in different shapes, colors, with various types of flowers. Some were exotic, some were red roses. You didn't ... It was kind of slow and tedious customer experience. You would arrive on the website, and you would be like, "Oh my god, there are so many different kind of arrangements. I don't know what to choose." And we figured out that there was another problem with that, that was stock management issues and high waste potential.Fabian Geyrhalter:Right.Emmanuelle Magnan:Right. So then, the third observation that we had is that there was a big lack of transparency. You didn't really know who makes the arrangements, how are they delivered, who is behind those big platforms, et cetera. And finally, we figured that there were actually no strong brands. Yes, there was Interflora, that is one of the oldest ... It's the oldest service. It was there before the internet, by phone and so on.It's a brand, because everyone knows it, but there was no ... For us, it was missing this modern thing about it that we, the young generation, wanted to identify with. You know?Fabian Geyrhalter:Yeah. Oh, yeah.Emmanuelle Magnan:So, we thought, "Okay, competition is strong in this market. There are already hundreds of florists on the streets. Our value proposition should be, first of all, one weekly arrangement, available in three sizes, delivered by bicycle." Actually, nobody did that at that time, it was really bold to go on the market that way, because ... Well, we didn't want to repeat the same mistakes.For us, it was a kind of mistake to propose on the internet so many different arrangements, right? So, we thought we could do as new ... In restaurants, the new kind of chief, what they do is that they go to the market, and they see what is available at the market, and they come back to the restaurant and they just design one single menu. You know?Fabian Geyrhalter:Farm-to-table. Yeah. Exactly.Emmanuelle Magnan:You know what I mean?Fabian Geyrhalter:Yeah.Emmanuelle Magnan:And so we thought we could do the same with flowers, so that's what we wanted to ... the spirit of what we wanted to design. And secondly, we thought, "Okay, let's do a mobile-friendly website on which you can order your arrangement in three minutes." Thirdly, we wanted to have a more humanized and less product-centric approach, be it on the communication or customer support level. Those brands were ... Well, those platforms were a little bit on Instagram, they were starting to be, but everything was so product-centric, you would see the arrangement, that's all, on a table in a vase.And what we wanted to bring was people in the way we would communicate around the product. It's not just about flowers, it's about people who make them, people who consume them. Consume is maybe not the right word, but people who buy them, et cetera.Fabian Geyrhalter:Mm-hmm (affirmative).Emmanuelle Magnan:And also, we wanted to be really close to our customer, and be at their service. At the beginning, we did ... I mean, we still do that, actually, we do everything we can to deliver an arrangement, because it's so important. When you want to offer flowers, you're putting your heart into it, right? So, we will do everything in our power to make this delivery possible.Lastly, what we wanted to do was an emphasis on branding, with our brand codes coming from other disciplines, like fashion, for instance. That's what we ... I mean, that was the basic concept. And that's how we launched. I don't know if it's clear.Fabian Geyrhalter:It is very clear. You just checked off all of the boxes that new companies and startups need to check off when they launch a business, so this is really, really great. And I mean, it's music to my ears. When I said, "Why did you think Paris needed yet another flower store?" Right? Because it is so well known, the Parisian flower markets, and it just ... It goes hand-in-hand with it, but everyone is doing the same, and you just really looked at every aspect of the business and said, "How should this be done in 2021? What would people really need today, and how can we work on sustainability? And how can we bring up a different style?"Talking about your style, your actual brand style, that's how I found you. I literally think I was just scrolling through Instagram and I found one of your arrangements, and then I saw the logo and I saw the colors and I'm like, "Wow, that's wild. That's different." And that's how I literally reached out to you, without knowing too much about the brand. Then, the more I read, the more excited I got to have you on.Your style, the brand style, and the style of the bouquets, it is super eccentric. It's loud, it's graphic, and the New York Times had this article where it said ... I don't know exactly what the article was, but it basically talked about, "Here are 10 cities," and the best, most different flower shops in each one of the cities. And Pampa is part of it, and when you literally scroll through that article, yours is the only brand that stands out.I mean, you scroll through it, and suddenly it's like, "Whoa!" Because it is, it is so loud. Right? You can't mistake your bouquets for anyone else's because they're so distinct. So, I'm wondering, since you are also ... You're a co-founder and you're a creative director at Pampa. Tell us how this unique style came about. I mean, it is very specific. It's very distinct.Emmanuelle Magnan:Right. Well, first of all, thank you for saying all this. You can't really see it, but I have a big smile on my face because it's such ... It's all my work and all my heart are into this, and we worked so hard to develop this brand, and this new kind of product, and to innovate and to be singular and one of a kind. I mean, we work a lot on it, but it's also so natural. I think our team is made of people from various horizons, and they have been working in different disciplines before. They come from architecture, interior design, circus, so it's ... My co-founder, she comes from the events ... How can I say that?Fabian Geyrhalter:Event coordinating? Emmanuelle Magnan:... for big events and yeah, event organizations, right? So we are all very creative, and I think it's also thanks to that team and this mix of profiles that we are able to create such powerful brand. But where it came from, I think ... Well, so I'm the creative director, right? And I co-founded the company with Noélie, and when we started working on the project I had already so many mood boards, and I had been thinking about this project for so many years, because I was a flower lover, and I was also very ...Well, I wanted to create a brand, that was my passion, also. Anyway, I'm color obsessed and very sensitive to color schemes and harmonies, so there's a big work on color associations. Everything we do is a research in colors, there's a big work on color associations. Everything we do is like a research in colors, and another big characteristics of our style is that in every arrangement we do, we mix a dozen of different flower varieties. It gives these wide, large spirits, and I think it's a real, and that's what we wanted to create, it's a real experience to look at our arrangement, because you have so many things to look at.I think what we're looking for is what we say in French, [French 00:13:48], this extra-special something that will twist an arrangement. Sometimes, we put disco balls or feathers, glitter. We are playing with flowers as ... And thank you for saying that, I think it didn't ... It hasn't been done before, I think. We are exploring creativity in flowers, we are-Fabian Geyrhalter:It's your canvas. The flowers are your canvas, right? And then, you just start-Emmanuelle Magnan:Yes, it's ...Fabian Geyrhalter:Yeah.Emmanuelle Magnan:Exactly. It's colors and flowers, and I'd like to say that you can actually think of our arrangement a little bit like an outfit. It's a set of colors that go together. Imagine if the stripes of your shirt was matching your shoelace, and your hat was matching your belt, et cetera. We like to create ... Yeah, a color scheme and the flowers are a big inspiration. We are trying to find the most singular and always with small details, that maybe we are the only one to see, but we are trying to ...There are thousands of different flowers, and we are trying to show the variety of it, and we are trying not to use what every florist use, actually, and has been using for so many years. We are trying to show the beauty of flowers with our arrangements.Fabian Geyrhalter:I saw one interview with you in a French publication, I believe it was, where you talked about how one of your bouquets was inspired by a Nike Air Max. And I'm wondering [crosstalk 00:15:51]. So your inspiration, really, comes from anywhere. And like you said, it's very close to fashion, and you talked about you have an architect on the team, and it's really...It's kind of like this multi-art-inspired endeavor when you start working on your arrangements. Are those moments of inspiration, like a Nike Air Max, are those being shared with your audience? Do they actually weave into your storytelling, or is that more something that happens behind the scenes?Emmanuelle Magnan:I think it's both. Sorry. I think it depends. About the Nike shoe, actually, it's because Nike launched a shoe that was designed by women, for women, and they contacted us to ...Fabian Geyrhalter:Oh, how cool.Emmanuelle Magnan:... to launch for the ... Yeah, we were so proud.Fabian Geyrhalter:That is awesome. Emmanuelle Magnan:Yeah. In terms of branding, it's like Nike is the ...Fabian Geyrhalter:That's it, that's the Holy Grail. It can't get bigger than this. Yeah, yeah, yeah, so you literally did an actual project for Nike to create arrangements.Emmanuelle Magnan:Yeah. We worked in one of their Parisian store. We made a flower installation, and we were also there to ... for giveaways. If you would buy this pair of shoe, of Nike shoe, this precise pair of shoe, you would get a Pampa gift, a Pampa flower gift. So, there was this activation. And also, they partnered with a fashion Instagram magazine. Well, fashion magazine that is based on Instagram, and they asked for artists to create a piece inspired from the shoe.I was one of the selected artists, and it was so fun to make. And so, everything can be an inspiration because I think it's, again, this work on color and texture, and we are also very ... We come from, as I said, Noélie come from the music industry, the events' industry, and I used to work also in that industry when I was in agencies, and we love music. We love party, we love celebration, and all this kind of ... We take inspiration in so many different things, actually.And yeah, we share that with our community, to answer your question. On Instagram, we share a lot of things. We show a lot of behind the scenes, and at some point ... We don't do it that much anymore, but I think I should do that again at some point. Each time we would do a new weekly arrangement, each week we would associate it with a music that we like.So in our newsletter, it will have the song of the week, and stuff. And yeah, and sometimes I can be inspired, sometimes ... I don't know, we did a '90s-inspired arrangement with psychedelic colors and ... So yeah, I think it's a mix of pop culture and arts, visual arts, and flowers-Fabian Geyrhalter:And I think knowing that story behind the bouquet it's just so exciting, and it's so much fun to know that there's actual thought being put into it. Right? Which is the exact opposite of those Interflora, huge floral shops, because there is no ... I mean, yes, they work together and they're all nice, but there's no huge inspiration behind it. There's no story behind it, and I think that's what ... That's what creates brands, period. Right? When there is a story behind it, so I think that that's really exciting.I love how you started talking a little bit about your background, because you come from the agency background. You worked at TBWA, which is actually where my wife also worked, but she worked in the LA office, and you worked at all kinds of fantastic agencies. And that career, actually, being organized, overseeing projects in the creative field, I'm sure that shaped the ability for you to create, but also to run Pampa, right?Emmanuelle Magnan:Right, for sure. Exactly. I started working in agencies as a project manager after I graduated from business school. During that time, I worked with such talented creative directors, communicators, brand strategists. It really allowed me to build myself a brand culture, also have a keen eye on aesthetics, actually, and a sense of style in all direction.I was working with people who have such an incredible taste, and educated me in that way. That's when I started doing mood boards, and that's also where I learned how to code CSS, how to use InDesign, Photoshop and so on. I learned by myself, because I was ... Actually, I was just dreaming to be on their side. I wanted to be the art director or the creative director, but I was a project manager.And actually, it was such a good training. I mean, being a project manager gave me this ability of anticipating everything and every problem.Fabian Geyrhalter:Totally.Emmanuelle Magnan:Yeah, and it gave me the skills of prioritizing, organizing, working with methodology and excellence, because you always, when you work in an agency, you have to be very exigent so that your client is satisfied, and you have to be very ... rigorous? I don't know if-Fabian Geyrhalter:Yeah, yeah, yeah. Rigorous, yeah.Emmanuelle Magnan:And yeah, and it helps me every day in my job, in management, and also in creative direction. I'm so glad I did that in my previous professional life, and yeah, when I was in ... I think it was before I went to TBWA? Yeah, I started thinking about this flower project. I was passionate about flowers, I used to offer a lot of flowers to my friends, my mom who was not in Paris. She was in another city, so I experienced a lot those websites we were talking about before.Fabian Geyrhalter:Yeah.Emmanuelle Magnan:One of the first agencies I worked at, I met Noélie, my co-founder. We were together working on a music festival, and we actually run into each other few years later, and we started talking and we figured we both wanted to launch a product in the flower industry, a project, sorry, in the flower industry. And that's when I decided to stop my ... Well, I found this job.I had this job at TBWA, so I went there, because I thought I could learn ... still learn so much, and ... Sorry. I got a little bit lost. I took this job at TBWA because I thought I could still learn and have some money, save some money so I could start my business.Fabian Geyrhalter:Right.Emmanuelle Magnan:And then, I decided to quit and to launch Pampa, because we had this idea and we believed in it so much that I told myself, "Okay, we only live once. You have this idea, just go for it, and go express your creativity," because yeah, being a project manager was great, but at some point I just wanted to be on the creative side and express myself.Fabian Geyrhalter:Well, and being a project manager, it's stressful, but you don't see the rewards as much, right? Now, it is stressful, but you actually see the rewards. Right? You create your own journey, which is just amazing, and that's the beauty of entrepreneurship. Right? I think it's really interesting that you actually quit your job before you really started the project.I mean, you always thought about it, but to me, this is so important. I did things like that in my life, where I basically had to completely quit something and have this risk, this huge risk of like, "Well, what if it doesn't work out? What if the next thing ... "But because you have that, that fire behind you of, "Okay, I only have that many months to go," financially, "This really needs to work out. I'm putting money in, I put all my energy in." I think you have so much more of a drive than if you do two things at the same time. You still have your day job, you start working on it at night, like it's a very, very different thing, so it's cool to hear that.Let's move over to social media, because that's a huge part of ... In my eyes, I believe, but I'm not sure, I believe that that's a huge part of the success of Pampa. You have over 73,000 followers on Instagram, which is huge. I mean, for any US-based consumer brand, but for a small brand from Paris that is working very regionally, this is really, really remarkable.Obviously, as you said, you launched digital-first, but how did it get there? How did it explode that much? And what did you learn from it? What are some secrets you can share of how you guys actually pulled off your Instagram following?Emmanuelle Magnan:Well, it's one of the things we are so proud about, is that we gained each of these followers organically.Fabian Geyrhalter:Yeah.Emmanuelle Magnan:We never acquired any follower base, or never used any bots. I'm so glad we did that. One third of our audience is from Paris, the rest is from diverse cities in France, because actually, we deliver outside of Paris. We deliver our dry flowers outside of Paris.Fabian Geyrhalter:That's a really long bicycle ride.Emmanuelle Magnan:Right. More on that later.Fabian Geyrhalter:Okay, okay.Emmanuelle Magnan:No, but I will explain that to you when we get into that subject, but yeah, we don't deliver in bicycle-Fabian Geyrhalter:Yes, I had a feeling.Emmanuelle Magnan:... outside of Paris. But yeah, one third of our audience is from Paris, the rest is from other cities in France. And actually, 25% is from abroad, and 4.5% is from the US, actually. When I was-Fabian Geyrhalter:There you go, I'm one of the 4.5.Emmanuelle Magnan:Actually, I saw that while I was preparing the new podcast, and I ... Yeah, actually, you are 4.5, from the US, so I think it's [crosstalk 00:28:15]. Maybe if there's anyone listening that already knows us, hi. How did we get there? I think there have been a few levers that I'm going to list, but I think the quality of the content that we are producing, posting, is key. We always put a lot of efforts in using our own content, and we created something that is very eye catching and it hooks people.So many people tells me about our Instagram grid, actually. And actually, so many [inaudible 00:28:55] repost our contents. Anthropologie in the US once regrammed one of our posts, which is totally crazy-Fabian Geyrhalter:Oh, that's cool.Emmanuelle Magnan:You're a small brand from France, from Paris, Anthropologie is so big. Anyway, there's also tons of people telling us that we put color in their feed and in their everyday lives, so I think they just enjoy getting shots of nature and color and that's also why they follow us. They don't necessarily buy from us every week or every month, but they just are so glad to receive this positiveness into their everyday life.That's one part. And in terms of actions that helped us grow our community, we did work with influencers, but for free, though. They loved our brand and product so much that even big influencers that are ... The maximum that we did, she had like one million followers, and they were happy to collaborate for free, actually, because they ... Yeah, they love the product and the concept, so that, I think, that for sure helps us grow the community.We also did some sponsored campaigns on Facebook and Instagram that were product focused, but I think it naturally generated following, because even though it was product focused, it also worked on awareness, so we gained a little bit of them like this. But mostly, it was organical, real organical word of mouth. And also, we have had a lot of amazing PR opportunities that came to us also organically, if I can say.Fabian Geyrhalter:Mm-hmm (affirmative).Emmanuelle Magnan:If I can say it like that. We had the 8:00 PM TV news broadcast in France, that generated a lot of awareness, and a lot of following. You mentioned New York Times. We have been twice in Teen Magazine of the New York Times, which is crazy for us, and very soon, when we started the brand, very quickly we were in Architectural Digest, and other French TV shows, so I think it really helped us grow the community.But we never really ... It came to us, really, because we were so focused on operating the company and just ... How can I say that? Sorry. Responding to the demand, we didn't ... We never really invest that much in communication. We developed our content, and we shoot everything in-house, so that's a kind of investment, but actually the communication itself-Fabian Geyrhalter:That's amazing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. PR just came to you [crosstalk 00:32:19]. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, you didn't have a PR agency at that point, right? It just all came to you. It was all ... And a lot of that was, most probably, through you being out there, on social media. Right? Then, it just started spreading, and then you started getting into TV and all of that, that's just ... One thing leads to another.Emmanuelle Magnan:Exactly. At the beginning, the first thing was word of mouth. As Noélie and I came from other networks of ... We used to work in agencies, we ... other companies, et cetera, so we knew people from other past experiences, right?Fabian Geyrhalter:Yeah.Emmanuelle Magnan:So I think at first the word spread in Paris, and each time someone needed flowers, they would say, "Oh, you should go to Noélie and Emma's project and you will see, Pampa, it's really cool, it's new, it's fresh," whatever, and it started like that. And yeah, and then I can remember the first influencer who talked about us on Instagram. We had like 800 followers, we had launched one month ago, and suddenly, it was 10:00 PM and I remember I was going to the market that night and had to wake up at 3:00 AM. And I was watching our following base grow and grow, like, "New follower, new follower, new follower."Fabian Geyrhalter:Oh, wow.Emmanuelle Magnan:She had just done one [inaudible 00:33:58]. Out of the blue, because a friend of hers who knew us talked about us on his Facebook page, and she reposted it on Instagram, and we gained 1,200 followers in one day. That was amazing for us at the time. And it's still quite amazing, because today things changed, and it's really difficult to gain a lot of followers in one shot.Fabian Geyrhalter:Yeah, yeah/Emmanuelle Magnan:Things evolving on the Instagram game, and I think it's not really the case ... It's not really as it was four years ago. But yes, so it's that mix of things that ... And we have now this incredible community, and we want to take time to share more with them. We want to do more. Actually, we do a lot of content that is purely visual, that you look at and, okay, it's nice to watch.But we want to make more tutorials, we want to make more things that are interactive, so I hope this year we will have some time and some ... Yeah, some time, actually, to put that into place.Fabian Geyrhalter:To get the community more involved [crosstalk 00:35:24]. Yeah, yeah, yeah.Emmanuelle Magnan:...and to grow it even more. Yeah.Fabian Geyrhalter:Before we talked for a second about the delivery method, because you pride yourself in the bicycle delivery, but on the other hand, you also scaled, you're now in different cities within France. I do know that sustainability is important to the brand, right? You're trying to leave a very small environmental footprint, you're composting green waste, even though you're trying not to have much of it, because your whole company, the way that you have that one bouquet, basically, a week, it's already all made for that. And then, of course, the deliveries with the bicycle.How do you push sustainability? And talking about scalability, how scalable is that as you expand?Emmanuelle Magnan:Well, your question on scalability is actually super relevant, and I'm going to explain why. But first, I'd like to just introduce ... make an introduction on what is sustainability in the flower business. There is A, a notion of origin of supply, right? Well, if you do work with local growers or not. B, there's a notion of green waste management.Like you said, we compost our waste. What is waste in the flower industry? It's of course the flowers you cannot sell, but it's also everything you ... When you receive flowers, you have to prepare them, you have to cut them, and there is all the parts ... There are all the parts that don't go into your bouquet of flowers that don't pass the ... Sorry. There are other parts that don't go in your bouquets, or don't pass the quality test that go into a bin.And in Paris, actually, there is no green waste management for free, so we work with a special company who comes every week and take our-Fabian Geyrhalter:Oh, wow.Emmanuelle Magnan:... waste and compost it. C, in sustainability in the flower industry, there is a notion of delivery process. Right?Fabian Geyrhalter:Mm-hmm (affirmative).Emmanuelle Magnan:Do you deliver by truck, by scooter, by bicycle? There is a notion of durability. Fresh flowers are so ephemeral. How do you cope with that? And there's also a notion, I think, of wellbeing of your team, and create safe and ... a pleasing space to work in.As far as origin of supply is concerned, [inaudible 00:38:05] small, and at that time 90% of our supplies were super local. We worked with producers around Paris, when the season allowed it. Otherwise, it came from European countries, but mostly from end of winter until middle of autumn, at the beginning we were working with French growers.But during the first two years, each quarter of our business grew by 20 ... Sorry, each quarter of our business grew by 25%-Fabian Geyrhalter:Oh, nice.Emmanuelle Magnan:So, sometimes we had so much work, so many orders, that logistics couldn't keep up. Going to the flower market at 3:00 AM, three times a week was not in this instance sustainable, no?Fabian Geyrhalter:Right. Emmanuelle Magnan:Business-wise, but also on a personal scale. I mean, it was-Fabian Geyrhalter:Oh, it's killing you. Yes.Emmanuelle Magnan:I was so tired.Fabian Geyrhalter:Yeah, of course.Emmanuelle Magnan:And it's also less time to manage your company, and to create other things than the arrangements. And deliveries from the flower market here are really uncertain, they are expensive, and they are often late, and we work on a very tight schedule. Every morning, at 9:00 AM, we have dozens of orders leaving our studio, and at the time we were doing a lot of events when ... Well, before COVID.Fabian Geyrhalter:Yeah.Emmanuelle Magnan:We had sometimes 10 different projects for 10 different brands in 10 different venues in one day.Fabian Geyrhalter:Wow.Emmanuelle Magnan:It was madness, so at some point there was no way we could remain profitable and healthy without working on a proper supply chain. And we wanted to work with our local growers, but unfortunately, we didn't manage to create a system where we could be ... we could have supply on a regular basis, because we are so ... We look so much into quality, we want to deliver the freshest flowers as possible to our customers. It's so important for us, that we need the flowers to come, but come in our workshop every two days, maximum; because we don't want to deliver flowers that have been in our workshop for five days and they will last three days at our customers'.It's no question. So we figured we had to start working with most organized people in the market, and that is Holland. They are really good and they are specialists of flowers for ... It's been like that for centuries. And so, we have been working with them for two years and a half now, and we have flowers that come from France, Holland, and Italy. We have buyers in Holland that connects us with very good producers from those countries.And we try to be as local as possible, as close to our studio as possible. We would love to have our flowers coming from France only, but it's actually impossible. The scalability you were talking about, at some point you have to make choices. Actually, we opened a physical shop a few months ago ... In December, so actually one month ago, and in that shop we will be more flexible and we will have less time constraints, so we are aiming at a super local supply, with flowers being grown by a new generation of growers who know our constraints and can adapt easily.But as far as our website is concerned, we need to have something that is very organized. It's always, you have to make choices so that you are ... You do the maximum bet. And beyond flower supply, because flower supply is one thing, but ... It's important, of course, but it's not everything. So, we are developing an eco-friendlier system as a whole, so we sell this one fresh arrangement online to reduce waste.When we launched Pampa, we directly started working with Olvo, who's a bicycle delivery cooperative. They are specialists of urban, eco-friendly logistics. And all their courier are actually wage-earning employees, so they are not like freelance who struggle and ... It's very important for us that everyone is well ... [French 00:43:26]. Well paid for their work-Fabian Geyrhalter:Well taken care of. Yeah.Emmanuelle Magnan:Yeah. And so, in Paris 95% of our deliveries are made through them. And in the rest of France, there's no way for us to do that, unfortunately, so when we'll find delivery partners who can guarantee a delivery with electric vehicles, we will for sure start working with them, but we're just being patient and wait for the rest of the chain and industry to evolve, so we ... For sure, I mean, the deliveries we do outside of Paris are made in a traditional way-Fabian Geyrhalter:Right.Emmanuelle Magnan:We finance the compost of our green waste, and also another way of reducing carbon footprint is to work with durable flowers, right? We work with fresh flowers, but also we work with dried flowers, and silk flowers that are seen as very old fashioned, but that for us can be amazing, aesthetically speaking. But also, because we can do rental and amortize their carbon footprint, and use them maybe like 20 times. So it's really interesting. We're trying to innovate in that sense, also.Fabian Geyrhalter:Mm-hmm (affirmative).Emmanuelle Magnan:And then, we created 10 sustainable jobs, and we try to give a correct lifestyle to our employees by paying them a notch above the rest of the market, and we provide them with pleasing work conditions and good hours. They don't have to go to the market during the night. Yeah, we are trying to be conscious on every side of the company. You know?Fabian Geyrhalter:Yeah.Emmanuelle Magnan:Sorry, that was a very long answer.Fabian Geyrhalter:No, no, no. It went into all aspects of keeping a brand sustainable and building a business in a certain way, which is fantastic for everyone to hear. We talked about Pampa for a good 40 minutes or so. If you would take the entire brand idea and entire brand story and what it evokes, and you would have to put it into one word, right? Like big brands, usually you're able to define a brand in one word. For Cola-Cola, they want to be seen as happiness, for Everlane it's transparency. What could it be for Pampa, in one word?Emmanuelle Magnan:I think that would be colorful, without any doubt. Because yeah, colorful is ... Sorry. Concretely speaking, yeah, it's the use of color, but for me, it conveys so many things beyond the actual ... this actual meaning. It's a spirit which conveys joy, emotion, celebration, and-Fabian Geyrhalter:Optimism.Emmanuelle Magnan:Optimism, positivity, and positivism. I think it's so important right now in the context we are in. It's our mission. Our mission at Pampa is to really change someone's day by bringing joy and color to their everyday life. That's our mission statement. So, by all means, we are aiming at surprising people, and I think the color helps changing their day, and helps them ... It's like a therapy, you know?Fabian Geyrhalter:It totally is.Emmanuelle Magnan:It's a therapy through color.Fabian Geyrhalter:I think it's funny [crosstalk 00:47:33]. It's so funny that you say that, right? Because, really, when I think about how I got in touch with your brand, is because I saw one of your bouquets on Instagram, and I just stopped in my tracks. And it was because it was so colorful, right?And then I went to the site, and it is so overly colorful and joyful and different and fun, and that's ... It's so great that that is your brand's DNA. It's your mission, it's your vision, that's what you want to provide people with. I think it's fantastic.I think this is interesting because you come from the world of brands, right? Working in ad agencies, and your co-founder with event coordinating and all of that. This is all very intrinsically about branding, but now that you've been running your own gig for a couple of years now, what does branding mean to you now, now that you've actually done it? What does it mean? How would you describe branding?Emmanuelle Magnan:I would say that I think it's absolutely central, especially in B2C. For me, it's partly how you will hook your audience, and create a community around your product and service, because you can have your product and service, right? They can have all the features, all the technical features they need to have to be attractive, but with a brand, it's how you'll create emotions. It's how you will create self-identification. It's like, "I want to be part of the gang." You know?Fabian Geyrhalter:Yeah.Emmanuelle Magnan:For us, and for me, it's a guidebook for everything we do. Everything we create, everything we communicate, I'm like ... Every time, I'm like, "Is that Pampa? Are we creating enough?" Sorry ... I can't find my word in English. "Are we game-changing?"Fabian Geyrhalter:Yeah.Emmanuelle Magnan:"Are we game-changing enough?" And at the end of the day, I think it's also very, practically speaking, it's a way to exist on a highly-competitive environment flower market is, and flower industry. So, when we started, it was very competitive, but now so many projects arrived on the market since we arrived on the market.Fabian Geyrhalter:Mm-hmm (affirmative).Emmanuelle Magnan:You need to stand out. And for me, branding is ... Yeah, it's about creating something higher than just a product. It's more than something commercial. It's a belonging, I don't know if it makes sense-Fabian Geyrhalter:No, totally. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I always say it's infusing soul into what otherwise is just a product, right? Then, I think people feel that, that it has heart and soul, versus your competitors who might just ... Yeah, those are nice products, those are good products. There's nothing wrong with them, but would you follow them on Instagram? Would you engage with them? Would you be excited about the product?It's a different kind of aura that you put around yourself that attracts people, which I think is wonderful, and that's why I love being in the business of branding, because I think it's actually very meaningful. It's not at all something that is just fake. It's actually the opposite of fake for the ones that make it as a brand, like you and your partner, so ... Great, well-Emmanuelle Magnan:...and it's so interesting to explore how you can create a brand and make it ... always make it evolve, and yeah. Fabian Geyrhalter:No, exactly, and it has to be ... You have to be repetitive so that people know this is truly your brand, but you constantly have to innovate, right? And how do you do those two? And I totally agree, it's super fascinating. All right. We have to come to an end here, we could talk for a long time, but listeners who fell in love with your brand just now, how can they get Pampa if they're in Europe? Do they only get it in France, or do they get it in other places in Europe? And for those of us in the United States, and other places around the globe, where can they follow you on social media?Emmanuelle Magnan:Actually, we just launched the deliveries in Europe, so-Fabian Geyrhalter:Oh, great timing.Emmanuelle Magnan:... get our dried flowers, they can go to pampa.co, on our website and order. And to follow us, so there's Instagram, of course, Facebook, Pinterest, and you can also subscribe to our mailing lists, because this is a good way to get information and new products and stuff like that.Fabian Geyrhalter:Perfect, perfect. And for those of you who heard us talk about Pampa, I just want to mention it is actually spelled P-A-M-P-A, so Pampa for you guys, just so you know who to follow. Thank you, Emmanuelle for having been on the show. I know it was not easy for you to go through this in perfect English. You did so amazing, we're so appreciative of you doing this interview in English as a second language. It's really amazing, and thank you for all of your insights and for your time.Emmanuelle Magnan:Thank you for having me, and giving me this opportunity to speak about Pampa.

Learn more about Two Blind BrothersSupport the show-------->Fabian Geyrhalter:Welcome to the show, Brad.Brad Manning:Thank you very much, I'm glad to be here.Fabian Geyrhalter:Yeah, absolutely. I would have love to truly have the two blind brothers on the podcast, but Brian had just an emergency this morning, so I will pick only your brain today Brad, and that's just all right.Brad Manning:Well, to be honest, he usually ruins it with all the less intelligent things he says, it's usually insults directed at me, so this will actually be maybe the most productive interview we will ever have.Fabian Geyrhalter:Look, I staged everything but now you totally ruined it. We didn't really want him on the show. We figured this out a long time ago you and I. I'm super thrilled, I'm super thrilled to have you in the show. I can't believe that you went on the Ellen Degeneres Show before you end on mine, but I forgive you guys, because my show wasn't around in 2017, and that's why, so you're all good, you're clean.Brad Manning:Well, yeah, we just missed your email. I promise that was it, yeah. We told her to hold off but she was begging, begging to have us on, so we had to do it.Fabian Geyrhalter:I heard about that. It's a little bit embarrassing for her, but you got to do what you got to do. Really, really excited to have you. You guys went from selling your first shirt to your physics teacher back at school to being one of the fastest growing cause-driven companies in the US and all of that happened within one year. Your success and your story and your brand name, they're all very interlinked. Would you mind getting a quick introduction to the listeners who are not familiar with your brand, The Two Blind Brothers?Brad Manning:Sure. My brother and I have a rare eye condition called Stargardt disease. What that is, is it's a juvenile form of macular degeneration. A lot of people's parents or grandparents have macular degeneration. It's about 11 million people in the US who have a retinal eye disease, most of them is that adult macular degeneration and it's something that we grew up with. Our version of it was very rare. We really had no interest in starting a brand or a business around it. We both went to the University of Virginia. I ended up working in finance, Brian worked in sales for a data company. We just had this moment of serendipity where we were shopping in a store, and if you are blind or visually impaired sometimes shopping can be a big pain. You can't see the sizes, the labels, the prices. The way that we would always do it is just grab something beside it. We love the way it felt, and then we do all the other work to figure out if we wanted to buy it.On this particular day, we ended up buying the exact same shirt after having lost each other in the store. We were also, at that time, really fascinated with our recent medical, huge almost a miracle that they had reversed a very rare eye disease in children and we just decided, what if this could be our way to give back to a cause that we had always been close to, the foundation, Fighting Blindness, funding these early researchers, and make the softest clothing that we possibly could, and that's when we came up with the idea for our clothing brand, Two Blind Brothers.Fabian Geyrhalter:That's amazing. You are really on an end-to-end mission. Each shirt has a braille tag on its sleeve, your for production moved to an organization for the blind who are now manufacturing all of your clothes. You give a hundred percent of your proceeds to help find a cure, which, as you just mentioned, it might not be quite out of reach. There's a lot of clinical trials going on right now. Here is a very optimistic, hopeful thought. What is they find a cure? Do you have your brand roadmap all laid out on how the mission will pivot, perhaps to ensure everyone gets a treatment or to expand to other related causes? What is that end goal if you reach that first end goal?Brad Manning:Well, I'll tell you this, and this has just been a huge truth about, I'm sure anybody who runs a small business or a small brand can relate to this. The objectives seem to change every 3 to 6 months, in terms of where is this going, what are we doing. The mission is always going to be the same, keep funding the research. The truth of the matter is, it's not like a ... there isn't, at least not in a foreseeable future vision pond, but there isn't a one-size-fits-all solution. The truth of the matter is, we are going to be in this fight for a long time. The positive news is that it's really just that. It is just a matter of time.A lot of the science has been proven out. There are some of these rare single gene conditions, for example, that are actually being checked off the list. The one example I give, LCA called lebers congenital amaurosis, the therapy is called [inaudible 00:05:42], but there's many like it that are coming down. The mission is always going to be the same. The truth is the real spirit of the project beyond the donations of the research is really about empowering this community. That's actually been the thing that's been the most fun and the most exciting for us. We didn't really, maybe naively, didn't anticipate the role that the community would play in this. For us, it's almost like going back in time to our younger selves when we were maybe struggling with different aspects of the visual challenges or talking to or our mother. We hear from a lot of parents that are trying to get advice on how to raise kids who have a visual challenge, and that's been one of the most rewarding parts of the experience.Fabian Geyrhalter:You started by making a super soft shirt, which is such a huge part of the founding story, that's where even the idea came from, by being able to differentiate a product by touch. Now you make sunglasses, all very much relate back to what is at the heart of your brand. Offerings keep growing into socks and into backpacks, etc. Does it really matter? It's a mission-based brand, right? Does it really matter at this point what you sell, since the cause is at the root? As long as they are well-made products at a decent price point, are you at that point where you could literally start selling pretty much anything that is a lifestyle product and that is just a good product?Brad Manning:Yeah. People who are very smart on branding and marketing, which is actually not Brian and I. We learned this all along the way. There are some brands, guardrails, obviously that attentions to things that are soft, sunglasses that protects the eyesight. Really, and then more, we'll probably get into this with some of the other questions, but the truth of the matter is it's all about authenticity and what makes sense and what you actually believe in. That's been one of the fundamental aspect of this project, is when Brian and I decided it was going to be a brand called Two Blind Brothers. That's a general term that refers to him and I as individuals. In a way, it's forced us to be extra critical about the decisions that we're making for the customers in the business, because it ultimately reflects on us personally. My aunt Marilyn isn't happy with the socks that she's getting. I hear about it like it was my fault for getting her order late. It's very personal, but authenticity drives all of those decisions.Fabian Geyrhalter:You said a lot of the really important things here. First off you said, "Look, Fabian, we're not the great brand marketers and we had to learn this." I think you're giving yourself not enough credit, because the idea of how you branded yourself, Two Blind Brothers, the entire philosophy and how it's injected into the product and how it's so seamless, and yeah, maybe you guys don't have the brand knowledge, but you sure intrinsically have it in you, and that to me is ... and that goes back to authenticity. You just want to do what's what's right, and you put basically "your name out in the door", and you allow people in. When brands do that, it just ups the ante a little bit of what is being expected by themselves off of their own product. But really, you guys-Brad Manning:You know what it is. The way I think about it is it was purely bottoms up instead of top down. No one in their right mind would think of how much money they're going to make or or how much breadth or scale they're going to get. If they are creating a nuanced mission around blindness with premium priced clothing brand, but there's a few businesses that are probably more competitive than it, restaurants maybe. This is not ... this started from a place of, what are we 100% in love with doing, and if it were to fail on those merits, then now it's going to be just fine with us because we were so excited about it. From the branding perspective, I think something about that works because it allowed us to ... we started with what was 100% true and real and exciting and passionate for us. Then, we went out and found people who shared that feeling. I guess what I mean is it didn't start from that top-down perspective where you think about your ideal customer, your ideal market, product market fit and those types of important questions.Fabian Geyrhalter:Totally, totally, absolutely, totally get it. But I look at you now as a brand, and I look through your Instagram feed, which usually is where you look at how brands are really behaving these days, because it's already so authentic, Instagram versus the website and everything else. You guys are just creating one great brand campaign after [inaudible 00:11:35]. I hate calling it campaign, but just stories that you put out there for the sunglasses launch. For instance, you stated if you lose a pair of sunglasses, we send you a replacement for life. Again, very heartfelt since it is something that happens to everyone, but super close to the cause as well as visually impaired are obviously sadly losing glasses all the time like you stated in the video, you're like, "This happens to me daily. It ought to be it happens monthly, like this is just my life.Then you had the hashtag, #blindreturnchallenge, where you urged people to send back one of those many, many Amazon packages. I guess, especially now during the pandemic, those tens of Amazon packages that pileup in front of people's doorsteps every day, and instead of those, return those and instead, help your cause. This past Thanksgiving, which was just a couple weeks ago, now you ask people to shop blind. I thought that was amazing. On the website it reads, "Would you buy something that you can't see? We promise you'll get something you'll love. If you don't think it's perfect, you can return it, no questions asked. Trust us, 100% of the product that donated to the foundation fighting blindness to help find a cure for blindness. After November 30, all of these items disappear." What you're doing is really genius. It goes so deep into your brand. It talks about trust, which is everything that anyone who is visually impaired is exposed to. This is their lifeline, you trust everyone around you to help you, to guide you, to be faithful.Then in the end, it's scarcity. "Hey, this is only for a couple days." The idea of the whole point is trust, give it a shop, you'll love it. This whole conversation is really amazing, and with all of these creative campaigns, what I wonder, because I only stumbled upon the last three, four, which one of these, and it might've been the last one, was the most successful? Which one do you feel totally tanked? We love hearing that too.Brad Manning:Yeah. Shop blind, the Shop Blind Challenge totally transformed our business.Fabian Geyrhalter:Wow!Brad Manning:It accounts for 90% of our sales. What we do with it now is every three weeks or four weeks, however long the particular period is, we change the product. If you are a repeat customer, you're not going to get the same thing. Those products get rotated out and then we have the new challenge with the new products, slightly different price points, but the Shop Blind Challenge is by far the most successful. The way we think about it is, as a small brand, we got addicted to Facebook and Instagram ads early on in that we saw that if we put a dollar into these ads we were getting some gross margin, some net margin back. We were also get, in terms of sale, we were also getting all the brand awareness around the folks that maybe decided not to purchase from seeing that ad.We started leaning really hard into that. The question that we, and I'm sure there's better marketing jargon to put it in, but the question that we are always asking is how do we compete with the 10,000 other clothing brands or blindness related charities that are trying to get people's attention? It starts from the premise of, we need to say something, explain something, create something that is so difficult to ignore and the most interesting thing that maybe somebody has heard that day. What we realized is the bar, to rise above the noise, is just a little bit higher than most people think it is.We thought we had a great story to begin with, good enough for it to get featured in some of the great publicity we got. But once we realize that we actually, you got it, we had to push that envelope and think about what was the most creative thing that we could come up with, and then the best ideas are the ones that only you could do.Fabian Geyrhalter:Uh huh (affirmative).Brad Manning:It doesn't makes sense for another brand to do. They could come up with maybe a version of it, but they wouldn't be Shop Blind. It might be their mystery box or something. The thing that only your brand could really make sense to stand for, that's where the best ideas are going to come. That's, at least, the principle that we operate on.Fabian Geyrhalter:Absolute truth. Then you do it in a bold manner too, and I think that's important, because even if you have an idea like that, Shop Blind, then to pull it off and to hundred percent go with that idea that people do have no idea what they're going to receive and you don't even have teasers, there's none of that. Either you go 100% or you don't even get into those waters. I think a lot of brands, they tiptoe around those things. It's like, "Well, but we got to give people something." Then it's, again, it's decisions by committee and its larger companies and they just can't pull it off, because quite frankly, they just don't have the guts to do it.Brad Manning:Well, to the point you just made, and if people don't understand the Shop Blind, they could watch it on YouTube or they could Google it. Essentially, you described it with that description, but we're just challenging people to pick a price point without any info on the product, no image, no nothing, and just basically trust us, in the same way that trust has actually lifted up my brother and I in a lot of circumstances. If we can't see a menu in a restaurant, yes, we can get a magnifier, yes, we can ask for the braille, a braille version of the menu, or we can use text-to-speech on our phones, sometimes the easiest thing we can do is ask the person at the table next to us or ask the waiter for their recommendation. These little acts of trust lift us up and so we thought we could challenge people to trust.Here's something very interesting about the analytics on Shop Blind. We do have a full clothing brand, so we have T-shirts and hoodies and things of that nature. To send somebody something while shopping blind you have to have them their gender and their size. Although there are some items, let's say a beanie or a scarf or a blanket, for example, that's single [skew 00:18:36] where you don't have to ask somebody gender and size. When we ask people that one extra step to say, are you shopping for a man or a woman? Or, what size are you shopping for? We actually lose a lot of conversion rates. People actually liked ... they like the purity of the experience and when we start interjecting what they would think of is their normal shopping behaviors, it doesn't connect as well.Fabian Geyrhalter:Interesting, very interesting. It does make sense come to think of it, because this is not been buying a shirt, this is them getting into an experience, and it should be uninterrupted until they receive it. Super interesting, and thanks for sharing that. I think there's a lot to think about with that. You talked about this, like trust is everything for when you're blind and hence you translated that into your brand through the campaign we just talked about, and only you can basically run that campaign really in that sense. But on the flip side, trust is also the holy grail for all brands, for every brand. Gaining and sustaining trust with your audience is what all marketers and founders strive for. How do you feel trust is being earned for brands these days?Brad Manning:To be honest, I don't know. I think it is so hard to differentiate. I think the first place I just witnessed it as a consumer was actually in media, where all of a sudden there's this great decentralization because anybody with an iPhone and a YouTube channel can offer to entertain or inform people. Somebody might speak exactly to the points and topics that you care about, and then I feel like I saw a little bit of it with the major retailers, where they used to be all on convenience, but now there's just so many nuanced brand that are taking 1% or a quarter of a percent of those customers, and it hurts those brands that have super strong trust, strong brand or the ability to differentiate. All I know is I don't know how you can run an ad or a marketing campaign and just say, "Hey, we make a great quality product for a great price." It's just there's too much noise in regards to that.Fabian Geyrhalter:Yeah.Brad Manning:it's really tough. We've had flexibility to ... this is all for the mission and for the community at the end of the day. We have maybe some ... we aren't forced to guide to the same metrics that may be a similar business might need to look at, which can do more for the customer.Fabian Geyrhalter:Yeah, yeah. I think one of the holy grails to trust is actually authenticity and you guys just so embody it that you don't think about it a lot, but I think a lot of brands today, that's how I see them gaining trust, because they're just extremely transparent and authentic and truthful and that is that next wave of startups that can do it, because they're small. They don't even know what else to do. Quite frankly, it is fascinating doing this pandemic where a lot of smaller businesses suddenly have to lay everything out in front of the customers, of like who they really are and that they're struggling for instance, and suddenly people actually react to that. They want to give, they want to know the story behind the business and what's really going on inside of the sausage factory, so to speak.I think that there's a really interesting trend that's happening right now for better for marketing but for worse, of course, the reason why this is happening currently. Switching over to the visual aspects for a second here, branding is obviously often seen as a very visual thing, which of course is just one component, there's much more to a brand. Mainly, it's heart and soul and it's storytelling, which are both huge reasons your brand is doing so well. Both you and your brother are also gifted speakers. What lessons have you learned in creating a brand that leads with heart and soul and gut instinct and empathy? Perhaps any advice for founders out there on how to craft their stories? Your story is, it's one thing to live that story, it's another thing to be able to voice that story.Brad Manning:Yeah. A few things come to mind. There's a couple of quotes and examples that I really like. One is the more personal, the more universal. We thought we were alienating people when we first started by being so focused on this particular retinal eye disease mission. The fact of the matter is when you can expose something that's very true and very personal to you, it actually connects other people because we all have those things that we care about. The second is there is method to being a great storyteller. You have to be able to paint that vision for people and walk them through why you are so excited about this, because you are must be, fundamentally must be the biggest cheerleader for what you're doing. How you feel about it ... and by the way, Brian and I learned this when we would get teased about our eyesight when we were little.When a bully would come up to us or somebody new would come up and say, "You can't see that. What's wrong with you?" When we would be shy and cower and try to qualify ourselves, it only made it worse. When you could look at that person and just say, "Oh, I got crappy eyesight," and then next question and move on, you saw that the way that you frame something is the way that people interpret it. It's very important to know to be able to frame those things. Then the other thing I'll just add because this really blew me away, the first time we launched the Shop Blind campaign, it was Brian and I doing a video, explaining what we already explained here about why we're doing and would you trust us, would you Shop Blind, a second grade teacher bought the Shop Blind experience for her class, explained the concept to them, and her teaching is just in the back video there.The kid, when she says, "I don't know what's in the box. I don't know what I got. It's all about trust," the kids lose their minds, and even though it was just socks, when I was in second grade, I didn't care about that, but maybe they just like the surprise, but she sent us that video and we worked through the permissions and we had to make sure no kid;s faces were in it, but we ran that clip as our ad, and in it killed everything else we were doing. It was amazing. That didn't take a fancy camera or brand guardrails that we express to her before she recorded that. Authenticity punches above its weight right now. When people can tell that there is no BS that the message is being filtered through, it draws people in really hard, and sometimes the most underproduced thing actually will be the thing that outperforms the most.Fabian Geyrhalter:Absolutely. I saw that video that you're talking about, which obviously ... you have to see that video if you just searched for two blind brothers. Like you said, it was so well-performing it pops up immediately. I was wondering, was that, not produced or staged, but was this something that was done by someone purposefully that afterwards it will be posted? But it just doesn't feel like it, and that's what makes it. Back to you guys, I'm a keynote speaker myself and I'm super interested in this topic, but something like a random question, I have to ask you this. We keynote speakers, and the audience knows that, we love having our confidence moan at monitors. As they call them in the industry, it's basically our cheap monitors that are on the stage that the audience can't really see and we can catch our thoughts. Knowing that you're not hundred percent blind, are you able to see them or do you have your speeches a hundred percent memorized and you don't have a fallback plan at all given your condition?Brad Manning:I absolutely love that you've asked. We've never been asked this.Fabian Geyrhalter:I assume so.Brad Manning:I'll tell you exactly.First of all, Brian, we have a blast with the speak, for whatever reason, I don't know because it is just fun to tell your story, it's fun to connect with folks in person. We've really enjoyed the speaking. Frankly, we probably should've talked to people who have done it more to get better at it. We really don't have great vision for reading prints. We can read really large print. We don't have any monitors but I'll tell you this, we are one advantage, and it is just that there's two of us on stage. The fact is, we practice, we 100% memorize it. We don't try to script it per se, so we have major points that we walk through. But the fact that there's two of us there actually helps a ton and in fact, when one of us forget something or screws up, it almost is more fun.Fabian Geyrhalter:Yeah, yeah.Brad Manning:That, I think, gives us a lot of ... it actually gives us a certain type help.Fabian Geyrhalter:Confidence, yeah.Brad Manning:We have that backup.Fabian Geyrhalter:That's amazing, because guys like me get a confidence monitor, you get a confidence brother. I listen to a couple of your speeches and they are so great and I really want everyone to check out the speeches because you actually learn more about the brand too. But the way that, it's like playing ping-pong, like the way that you guys finish your thoughts and, obviously, you're brothers and you've been going through this challenge together, and now you're business partners together, so you literally can finish each other's sentence. But you can also make fun of each other and you can poke each other, and as we know from the beginning of the show today. I think that there is ... I could totally see that, but I never would've thought that that's your confidence monitor, basically. Super interesting. I'm glad I asked that random question.Brad Manning:Yeah.Fabian Geyrhalter:We talked about the audience, we talked about ... in the beginning, you talked about community and how important that was for you, and you weren't really, really sure about that. How important was community in the end to the success of your brand? How do you now foster your community? Because you talk a lot about people doing repeat purchases and it's like once they're in your universe, they really want to be part of it, and they want to feel like they're part of this small community.Brad Manning:It's everything. The fact of the matter is the only way we get any traction is when somebody you empathizes and with the mission, frankly, we hope and we aim that when someone buys something from us they're like, "Oh! I didn't realize how great this stuff is. I just thought the story was cool." Our aim is to always have them as a customer for the product, but the truth of the matter is, most people initially find us or come to us because they connect with the story and it's been everything. But from Brian and I's perspective, it really shook us up because ... If you've watched any of those longer talks you may have heard some of these stories.There was a kid who reached out to us who was 19 years old, who said he was a college student and he had been sleeping a lot, and that he was just diagnosed with retinitis pigmentosa, which is a disease that can cause total blindness over a 15-year period. It closes in around your peripheral vision, then your center vision. He wrote in our customer service line, he wrote this sentence that just crushed us. He said, "I've been sleeping a lot because I'd rather be asleep dreaming in 20/20 vision than awake knowing that I'm going blind."Fabian Geyrhalter:Wow.Brad Manning:He followed it up with some encouraging words. He said, "I just saw what you guys are doing, I connected with some folks and I'm social and I'm just feeling a little bit better than I have in a while and just wanted to thank you." When we started this project, it was about having fun and doing something nice for the foundation fighting blindness. As soon as we started getting messages like that, it called on a sense of responsibility that we never anticipated. That type of attitude that we may have been victim to when we were five and seven years old, that's not acceptable. Er view that as unacceptable and we want to do what we can to get out there and for any single person that may find themselves in a situation where they've been challenged and now they feel like they are less them, that really hits home for us. That's where the community is what inspires us to do this every day actually.Fabian Geyrhalter:Absolutely, yeah. That's a big story and that's how community is being built instantaneously, if someone asks for help or you feel that, and then obviously, this is how one thing leads to another. Well, talking about community and assistance, being on Ellen was a game changer for you as a brand, but it was the result of you telling your story to literally anyone and everyone who wanted to listen until the Ellen producer saw a piece you had, I think, on Now This!Brad Manning:Right.Fabian Geyrhalter:I'm such a firm believer in this idea that most interview in podcast, TV, radio, etc, opportunities are good ones because you just never know who is listening. This is really, really fun for me today because I did a course for a company called Mental Box up in San Francisco five years ago, didn't think much about it I just did it. Just today, in fact in the morning, I closed a really nice big branding project because someone in Kuwait who found me through that course that I recorded in San Francisco has been following me ever since and today we signed a contract for a nice branding project. You just never know where this moment starts where someone gets in touch with your brand, with your, I call it your brand atmosphere.Brad Manning:Uh huh (affirmative).Fabian Geyrhalter:When they poke through that atmosphere to find you. Here's the Two Blind Brothers, you don't know when they first find you, but it could be any of these random things, and with Ellen, that was the exact same thing when they just found you on a different interview. What are your thoughts on spreading your word? How important to a young brand do you see traditional PR and media in times like these, in times of social media?Brad Manning:It's tough. To be honest, somebody else other than me to make the case for PR and media. All of our any sort of earned media publicity opportunities have come from people seeing our ads on Facebook, Instagram, and now TikTok, as we just do our thing advertising to customers. We haven't ... and it's because it's so easy. Back in the day, you needed that intermediary because you didn't have the contacts or the way to get in touch with people. But it's a good truth teller. When you go and reach out to all these companies, you do get a lot of crickets because the truth of the matter is this person who you want to feature you is still capable of finding exactly the type of story they want to feature.Fabian Geyrhalter:Yeah.Brad Manning:It doesn't mean it's not worth the test or worth the exercise, but it is a difficult situation. Everything we've gotten has come in through our customer. Even if we do a speech or a corporate order or something, it all comes from the social ads. But there is a refinement period. Brian and I's first interview was a Fox spot. We just started the business, we have sold all maybe 30 shirts, and it was Fox spot local news segment, and those segments started forcing us to learn how to express our story. That was really critical that it's almost like if you've given us ... like giving a speech, the first time you do it, it's the worst experience ever. By the time that you're forced to do it 50 times, it's like drinking water, it's so natural.Fabian Geyrhalter:Yeah.Brad Manning:That's how we view it. Yeah, it's hard to measure the value of it. I just know that it is valuable, and we enjoy it, and like you said, it all snowballs on each other, one thing leads to the next.Fabian Geyrhalter:Yeah, absolutely. It's all interlinking. Now that you've successfully grown your mission-based brand for a little while. What does branding mean to you?Brad Manning:A big part of it is reputation. It's not coming from a marketing background. Originally, we thought about it as almost like our reputation. What's your first impression? What do your lifelong friends, What do they say about you? We view it as like, we are in it for the long term, and so we want to make sure that the people that we're connecting through the business will always think a few things about what we're doing. One, that we're a hundred percent committed to the cause of blindness, both on the research side and the community side.Two, we're trying to make the softest products in the world that we possibly can. Three, we're going to be authentic. We're going to say how we feel and what's going on in that moment and just see how it goes. That's where we come from. There's an element of it that is critical that was not a strength for us. All the copy and the colors and the visuals, we were lucky to have people help us with that. That element, that's a big skill set and that part of it, it's critical as well for at least getting people in your front door.Fabian Geyrhalter:Yeah. You guys are the visionaries, the two of you, which is wonderful to say of two visually-impaired founders trying to change the world really, but that's it. You have your team around you that can assist with other elements like the visual brand. What is one or what are two words that can describe your brand? If you literally take everything we talked about for the last 40 or so minutes and you'll put it through a funnel, and in the end you have to say, "Two blind brothers equals what?" Like for instance, Everlane, which I'm sure you're familiar with, for them it's all about radical transparency or Zappos, which sadly has been in the news with the passing of Tony Hsieh. They were all about service. What Two Blind Brothers in one word or two words?Brad Manning:That's tough. I would say a couple. I would say what we try to communicate at the end of all of our speeches are is friction equals growth. Friction equals growth. You get hit with challenges in life and it's about embracing them and moving toward. That's what unlocks all of your resourcefulness, assertiveness, creativity. It's not about the visual challenge, it's about how you respond to it. Those are the characteristics that actually matter. The reason that it's really around that is because that is the message that we find is most valuable to the community that needs it the most. We love all of our customers and we hope they love the product and the message that the person that were out there fighting the hardest for is that kid who got diagnosed with blindness who doesn't think that he's going to have a normal life and doesn't think that he can compete in a real world. Our message to him or her is that friction, a challenge equals growth and your greatest challenges can be your greatest gifts.Fabian Geyrhalter:It's beautiful and it's such a universal message too. For everyone in their life, friction equals growth. It's really fantastic.Brad Manning:Yeah, I was trying to put it in three words because I was trying to hit the two words. There's a quote that there is no growth without friction.Fabian Geyrhalter:YeahBrad Manning:That's the simple way to say it, there is no growth without friction.Fabian Geyrhalter:Yeah, yeah. But I actually like friction equals growth, because the minute you arrive at a point of friction, which you do in life on a daily basis, some are minor and some are major, that you know this is not friction it's actually, it means growth. Like this is your sign that now it's time to grow, and I think it's really, it's inspirational but not at an inspirational quote type of cheesy way. It's actually really applicable.Brad Manning:Yeah.Fabian Geyrhalter:Listen, people listening to you for the last 40 minutes who fell in love with what you do, what would you like for them to be doing right this minute to support and also benefit from your brand?Brad Manning:I would say two things. I would say, if they want to learn more about us, they can Google "two blind brothers" or go to twoblindbrothers.com. For the folks that are interested in branding or running their own business, Brian and I feel very lucky that we decided to experiment with this passion of ours, and it's led us on this incredibly fun and rewarding adventure. I would encourage anyone out there who's got something that they've got a unique passion for, just keep running at it because you'll be surprised how easy it is to connect with the people that resonate with what you're doing. We live in the digital and social age. Fifteen years ago, there is no practical way to start a clothing brand or any project to target to a nuanced audience, now it's completely different. Just words of encouragement to all those.Fabian Geyrhalter:Brad, you are such an inspiration to all of us listening right in the field of branding and marketing, but most important to those who are impaired in whatever way, and because of your amazing success now feel that they can turn their impairment into their superpower. I want to thank you for what you're doing, for how you're doing it, that you're doing it, and of course, that you took the time to be on hitting the mark. Thank you so much, and please give my best to Brian as well.Brad Manning:Absolutely. Thank you. The way that folks hear about us is because of folks like you and your listeners lifting us up. We were incredibly grateful to be able to share the story with you.Fabian Geyrhalter:Absolutely my pleasure.

Learn more about Rotten TomatoesConnect with PatrickSupport the show-------->Fabian Geyrhalter:Welcome to the show, Patrick.Patrick Lee:Hi, thanks for having me, Fabian.Fabian Geyrhalter:Absolutely. So you and I met when we were mentoring a cohort of the Founder Institute. I'm not sure which cohort it was. They all blend together, but re-reading into where you come from and your journey outside of Rotten Tomatoes, I actually realized that we both started off in print design. And then we moved on to web design before we both learned how to focus on one thing and by doing so, it created clarity and with clarity, as it usually does come success. You said that in an interview, and it literally is part of my brand strategy holy grails. You said that companies are trying to out feature themselves instead of having research sharp focus. And that really is the story behind Rotten Tomatoes, which launched 20 years ago, which is crazy to think about. And despite lots of handovers over the years, it is still the trusted resource for movie fans. How did that journey begin for you? Take us back to the time you were an undergrad at UC Berkeley.Patrick Lee:Right. So when I was at UC Berkeley, I felt like I wanted to do a startup. I didn't know what, but I wanted to do something with friends and I just felt when people graduate, they just go all over the country and find jobs. And I wanted to keep everyone together. So that was actually my reasoning for doing something. I started originally at a hardware, we were selling computer system components. It was my first company. It didn't really go anywhere, but I convinced three other friends to drop out of school. From there we did that for a few years. I ended up doing my second company, which led to Rotten Tomatoes. My second company was a design firm and we were doing... Originally, we were doing all kinds of things. We're doing print design, 3D design, web design for any kind of client. But we eventually focused where we only did web design for the entertainment industry.            And there, we started doing stuff for Disney Channel, ABC, Warner Brothers, Horizon, MTV, VH1. We made the online flash game for Who Wants to be a Millionaire. And the Rotten Tomatoes startup was actually created by our Creative Director, Senh Duong. He was a huge Jackie Chan fan and he wanted to know when the movie Rush Hour was coming out, what all the critics were saying about the movie. And so he went out to the library and started gathering reviews because back then a lot of reviews were not online. So he would go and find the magazines, find newspapers, read the review and write down a quote and then go back home. And he started working on the site and his idea was when you open up a newspaper, you would see an ad for a movie, and it would look like a movie poster filled with quotes.            But the thing is those quotes would always be good, even if the movie was not. So if the movie was actually good, they'd be from professional movie critics like Roger Ebert. If the movie was not good, they would be from a radio station DJ or something like that.Fabian Geyrhalter:Yeah, yeah. Patrick Lee:And people who are not professional critics. So Senh's idea was what if I include all the quotes good and bad, but only from professional critics. And so that's what he did. He attached a score to it and launched. So it was interesting is from when he had the idea to actually putting it out live, it only took him two weeks because he built everything in Static HTML. He actually couldn't code at the time, built his Static HTML and he only covered the wide release movies coming out that week. So that's how he was able to do it as basically one person.            And so we hosted the site for him over the course of a year, and it started getting more and more noticed and getting featured on like Netscape and Yahoo. Roger Ebert wrote an article where he pointed out his favorite movie websites and he includes Rotten Tomatoes. And I remember specifically the day Pixar released A Bug's Life. We saw a spike in traffic on Rotten Tomatoes and it turned out it was coming from Pixar. So over the course of that first year of hosting for him, we're like, "Maybe this could be at the company." And so we talked to him and decided to join forces where I went out, raised a million in funding for the company. And we transferred our whole team of 20 some folks from our design firm, all to focus on Rotten Tomatoes.Fabian Geyrhalter:Wow. That was the end of your design firm. And that was the beginning of Rotten Tomatoes as a company?Patrick Lee:Yeah. It took a little while for us to transfer a design firm off to another group to takeover because we cannot just automatically just hand over the clients, but we were transitioning our design firm off at the same time we were ramping everyone over Rotten Tomatoes. And then it was kind of crazy because we essentially closed funding in January, 2000. And then two months later, the internet stock bubble burst.Fabian Geyrhalter:That would've been one of my questions. Right. Because you were smacking midst of that because I remember that time clearly. How did you guys manage to get through this?Patrick Lee:It was tough. We actually had to let go of a lot of folks. We went from 25 to 21 to 17, to 14, to 11 to seven over the course of a year. We essentially... and even at seven, everyone took at least a 30% pay cut myself and our marketing person, Paul went to zero. So even at seven, we were going to four or something or three. And we basically told people, we cannot survive with this head count. And we told folks that start looking for a job. There's a few that were like, "Can you please stay? We would really like you to be able to stay." And then everyone else, we asked if they can find something and we essentially kept them hired until they found something and we accelerated some of their vesting and everything because we didn't want to let them go.            But it's just... It would have been impossible during that time, because once the market crashed, it was impossible to raise more money, but also most internet companies were generating revenue through advertising. And when the market crashed, most of that advertising money was coming from other internet companies. And so when that market crashed, all the revenue also dried up. So it was like, you can't respond and you can't generate almost any revenue. And so tons of companies, ground business, and for us, we knew, we just had to like massively tighten our belts to just weather the storm.Fabian Geyrhalter:And did you have to pivot in any ways or were you just basically tighten the belt and say, we've got to get through this because you were still dependent on advertisers and that's just how it was?Patrick Lee:We didn't pivot because Rotten Tomatoes was... It was working. The main thing we had to try and do was tighten the belt and then slowly start trying to actually generate revenue because when Senh was doing it by himself, it wasn't bringing any revenue in. And so we actually started trying to sell advertising, but what worked for us is because the market had crashed. We were already selling advertising in that new world and figuring out as everyone else was trying to figure out. We were also trying to start putting in affiliate deals to help sell things like movie posters and DVDs and CDs. So those kinds of things and sell movie tickets, those kinds of things help to bring in revenue. So a lot of it was figuring out how to monetize the site as well as how to continue growing the traffic and growing the brand.Fabian Geyrhalter:And this is a question which I believe you already hinted at the answer, but I asked my listeners, to submit some questions and Ash Barber, one of my listeners here he's admitted this one. And I thought it was really good, when you launched Rotten Tomatoes, what set you apart from the competitors? And so now, I guess, or was there even any competition at the time? I mean, were there any reviews online at that point, movie reviews?Patrick Lee:At the time, the closest thing probably would have been actually Roger Ebert had a TV show called Siskel and Ebert.Fabian Geyrhalter:Remember that.Patrick Lee:Where they had two folks and they would do thumbs up thumbs down, but it was essentially just two people. There were some movie sites that had movie news and gossip. There were lots of different reviewers who were gradually coming online, but they're all solo reviewers. What Rotten Tomatoes did, was we basically aggregated all the reviews into one place and then give you a score. So that was something that no one was doing at the time, outside of Roger Ebert, but that was two people and we were doing probably about 50 to start with and then gradually other companies started mimicking what we were trying to do. But when we came out, we were original.Fabian Geyrhalter:I always saw Rotten Tomatoes as an anti-brand, and maybe that's because of the name right the name and everything, and it always seemed very... the brand seemed to be a little bit grassroots, low and the glitz and glitter of a shiny brand design. Was that something that you did on purpose or was it just organic the way that it was built by one guy and then slowly you guys continue to it. But even today you look at Rotten Tomatoes, the actual website, right the.com and it still feels very, very grassroots and very minimalistic.Patrick Lee:Actually, I think when it first launched, when Senh designed it, it was much more artsy looking, had a lot more personality to it. I mean, that's a name, but if you looked at the logo, if you looked at the way the tomatoes were, they actually looked rotten. The logo, I think there was worms and stuff on some of the tomatoes and everything. If you can go to... I think it's the way back [crosstalk 00:09:55] to late 1998, you can see the early version of Rotten Tomatoes. It looked very different. It gradually with all the different owners and stuff, they kind of, I would say took a lot of the personality out. They made it a lot cleaner, almost more Facebook like, and then the last owners Fandango, they actually rebranded it where they change the logo, change the color scheme and everything,Fabian Geyrhalter:Interesting, because I was wondering about the Tomatometer, right? Your Rotten Tomatoes rating system, it's the opposite of common visual language where red means no. And green means go. Red is bad or stop. And green is great or go, and with Rotten Tomatoes, it is and I believe it always been, but maybe it hasn't that the red tomato means great. And the green splash means rotten. Has this been around always like that?Patrick Lee:Yeah. So pretty much from the beginning, that's what Senh was doing. We cleaned it up after we raised funding and we put our whole team on it. We did clean things up. So we use a lot of the same color schemes to try to maintain the same personality, but made it a bit cleaner, more friendly looking. Right now the funny thing is, yeah, we've always been sort of reversed where the green is bad and the red is good. It was [inaudible 00:11:18] with the funding or rebrand. They actually changed the Rotten Tomatoes logo from green to red, which I think it looks fine but it's actually confusing because red is supposed to be fresh for us. So Rotten Tomatoes, technically it should be green because green look rotten. Yeah, so that's a little bit confusing.Fabian Geyrhalter:Yeah. I thought something was off there with the color scheme. So that's really interesting. And I mean for obvious reasons, you're one of the few brands that lead with a negative, right? So you let the name rotten, right. Instead of anything positive for celebratory, I know the answer, but I'm asking for a friend here. Well, a few thousand friends who are listening at this point, how did you guys come up with the name?Patrick Lee:Right. So, Senh's idea was back in the day, if it was like Shakespeare times, if people were up there performing some play and it was terrible, people would take rotten fruits and vegetables and throw them at the actors. So that's how he came up with Rotten TomatoesFabian Geyrhalter:It's amazing how one thing leads to everything, right? I mean, what we just discussed about the tomatoes and the colors and it's really just one name can drive everything in the brand, very often made it be a good thing or a bad thing for you guys. It definitely worked out.Patrick Lee:Yeah. I think one thing that was quite good about the name was it's hard to forget when you hear it. It's so strange that it sticks in your head. I do remember when we first started going out and try to talk to studios about the site, they would just laugh when they heard the name, because it was so weird, but it's memorable. And that was good. And I think as far as it being a negative, it actually worked out well for us because it basically saying that we're not afraid to tell you when a movie is bad. And so we're not paid off by the studios or something like that, so that you can trust the scores. And I think that was very important for us.Fabian Geyrhalter:Too strategically, that's very sound right. I mean, that that's the brand story. I mean, it's not just what's on the movie poster, it's actually, everyone's voices. Everyone who's professional and actually makes a lot of sense. What are your tips for naming? I know you have many because we'd be in a session together where you give tips to startups to basically not screw it up. And naming is so important, right? It's so difficult to go back once you actually set a name and once you start having some success. The worst thing is when suddenly you realize that it means something horrifying in a different language or in a region that you want to expand to, or if suddenly there's a trademark issue. What are some of your tips that you give startups?Patrick Lee:I would say looking back for what we do with Rotten Tomatoes, there are two things that I think worked for us, was one, we did pick up a memorable name. I think that helps. It was something that pretty much was not out there at all. So there was no real danger of us accidentally having the same name as someone else, obviously try and get one where you can get the URL and these days are the social media handles. And then the big, big thing for us was I think is important in general is like business focus, really focusing on what your company does, but I think it also applies to a brand and marketing is what does your company do? Because if it's really clear, really focused, it makes it easier for people to understand what you do. And when they understand what you do, they can actually tell other people about it. And so then the brand can actually spread.            So with Rotten Tomatoes, we were movie reviews. Like, that's all that we were. And so it made it really easy to tell the people and when we were running it, 30% of our traffic actually came from just word of mouth. And I believe it's been like that forever. Yeah, you might've come up across it through a search engine, looking up a movie, an actor, a director, but also very likely someone else told you, "Hey, go check out Rotten Tomatoes."Fabian Geyrhalter:And so you think, because the name is so memorable, it just sticks in people's minds?Patrick Lee:Yeah. So that's one thing, but also because it's so focused around movie reviews, then when people are like, "Hey, I'm trying to figure out what to see." Other folks will be like, "Hey, go check out Rotten Tomatoes. It will tell you what is worth seeing."Fabian Geyrhalter:Right. Right. The name isn't focused as much as the brand itself. Right, exactly. So it immediately contours up movie reviews. That's all it does. I mean, that's the one single focus of the site and of the brand to you?Patrick Lee:Right. Right.Fabian Geyrhalter:Yeah. Absolutely. You're a serial brand builder, besides Rotten Tomatoes you also started six startups, I believe across three countries, the US, China and Hong Kong. And currently you in Taiwan, I think, you're an international entrepreneur. You targeted... With five of your companies, you targeted consumers with four of them, tech and entertainment. You raised outset funding with four of them, two of them exited, having gone through all of this, what does branding mean to you? I mean, all of these startups branding was to some of them was probably a crucial component. And to some of them, it was an important component, but not the most important if it's not a consumer brand, but what does branding mean to you?Patrick Lee:I think it's what I was saying before. It's specifically around focus. That was a one lesson I learned the hard way where of the six companies I did, the second and the third are designed from the Rotten Tomatoes were very focused where we're doing web design for the entertainment industry or Rotten Tomatoes, where we're just doing movie reviews. The three I did after Rotten Tomatoes, weren't focused, we were trying to do too many things. And it ended up becoming too much work. We couldn't focus our resources to actually build something that really people wanted. And from a branding perspective, it was hard for people to know what it is we were doing, who we are et cetera. And so I think the most important thing for any business to do is to be focused.            And I believe focus also carries over to branding and marketing as well. I mean, one good example is, I believe this is true across any kind of company across any kind of industry, not the startups. Look at fast food franchises. Every one of them is pretty much known for one thing. Like if I say the name you'll immediately know, like Panda Express, KFC, Pizza Hut, Domino's, McDonald's, In N Out Taco Bell, Krispy Kreme, Dunkin' Donuts, right? Each one of them you're immediately like, "Oh yeah, that's hamburger. Oh yeah, that's chicken, et cetera." Right? You look at Krispy Kreme, I mean, it's literally a single donut. Like when I think of Krispy Kreme, I thinking of that one classic donut, that's it. And the folks... You don't see folks out there who are like, "We are going to be hamburgers and Chinese food and donuts."            I mean, I'm sure some restaurant like that exists, but not a successful one, not one that has really blown up. And so I think it's important for business to be super focused, but being super focused will actually help with the brand and make it much easier to market.Fabian Geyrhalter:I totally agree. Focus creates clarity and I 100% agree with that. Obviously you went through many, many, successes with all of these startups outside of Rotten Tomatoes and I'm sure there were a lot of fields. It's enormous brand field, meaning like, was this something related to branding that happened with one of your companies where afterwards you felt, "Oh my God, what just happened here?" And it actually goes back to maybe the naming or maybe the brand design or maybe it was messaging that you have to completely switch over after you realized that it just did not stick to the customer. Was there anything like that in the journey that comes to mind?Patrick Lee:Not really. Just because I feel like the times it failed, it wasn't necessarily because of the name. It was because we just weren't focused enough that we were trying to do too many things. And so nothing stuck to the name, but I believe in all the cases where the companies didn't work or the projects didn't work, it was more... Had we been more focused we could've kept the same name and I think it still could have worked because I mean you'll see names attached to any kind of project, right. Look at Yahoo, look at Google. I mean, those weren't... I mean, Google, I guess technically is a word, but like a lot of times Yahoo is a word as well, but they weren't anything associated with search, right. So you can almost put anything in my opinion, but it has to be focused so that when people hear the name, they will immediately think about what it is. Like the best of case examples would be something like Xerox or Kleenex where it's like, literally it becomes the thing in that whole category.Fabian Geyrhalter:Yeah. Yeah. And you see a lot of these example when companies have to pivot because of that, right. Because they lose focus. They suddenly do two or three things, and then suddenly the name doesn't work for them anymore because they lost that focus, instead of staying in one certain segment or one specific offering, they just start expanding and it happens over and over and over again. And that's also when brands start being like map brands, right. You can't really put them... You can't put your finger at it. Like, what are they now really doing?Patrick Lee:Right. Right. I mean, when the company starts growing, it will be a big issue for them because they're going to add more and more features and product lines and stuff. And then the question is, do we try to have the same name, but then for new product line, or do we actually just have a completely new brand? And so you'll see that where Google goes and gets Google video. But then it just couldn't work against YouTube. And there's probably a lot of business reasons for it. But also I think from a branding perspective, it just was easier for people to think about like YouTube where it's a new thing and so it can attach to that, what it does more easily than something like Google video. It happens over and over again like Facebook with Instagram or Amazon with Zappos.Fabian Geyrhalter:Yeah, yeah. Bringing up Zappos is a tough one, [inaudible 00:22:37] because it's timely, but I want to take you back for a second when you were running your design shop. And just before you got your first really big, massive entertainment clients, I think you told this story on a podcast on a different show that I listened to. Do you have a night to prep for this? And you talked about how you got to work with Disney as a company, despite having no prior portfolio pieces in the entertainment industry at all. Which of course, now we know that was a big thing for you doing film sites and being an entertainment industry. How did you get to work with Disney because I love that story?Patrick Lee:Yeah. It was pretty cool. We were originally doing a lot of work for the tech industry. So we had connections to motherboard manufacturers, like ASUS and folks like that. And so we're doing a lot of that, but it wasn't really something that we were super excited about as a design firm.Fabian Geyrhalter:Bread and butter, yeah.Patrick Lee:One of the people we were working with at the time his daughter was at Disney and he was going to be at, I think it was COMDEX in Las Vegas. And he was like, "Hey, come over. You're not going to make intros to other tech companies, but you should also meet my daughter because she's also at Disney channel and a producer there on the website." And so I was like, "Oh, that's amazing." So we went over, we met her and she was like, "Oh, your stuff looks pretty good. Do you have anything that's like entertainment related, that I can go and show my team and my boss?" And we didn't.            And so when we got back to the Bay area, after the trip to Vegas, I went out and I essentially called a bunch of folks because our team at the time was very small, a bunch of different friends who could either code or do graphics or things like that, that weren't part of the company. And I just basically brought them all together. We did like a pizza party. We went on to Disney Channel site and looked up their schedule and we found movies that were coming up that they didn't actually have a website for. And one of them was Mighty Ducks 2. It was like a hockey movie, kids hockey movie. And so we went to Blockbuster rented the video.            We all had pizza, watched the movie. And then we essentially split everyone. I think it was like more than a dozen people. We split everyone into teams to essentially build different parts of the site. So we built a site, we had two fully working games in shockwave. We built icons, wallpapers, bios of the characters, everything. It was a fully featured site.Fabian Geyrhalter:Amazing.Patrick Lee:We tried to mimic the Disney Channel look as best as we could, but we didn't really know all the rules. And then we did that all over, like one weekend and then come Monday morning, I send it over to her. And I was like, "We don't have anything on portfolio that really matches Disney Channel, but we made this." And when she saw it and she was like, "Oh my God, there's no way that we would have known in advance to build something like this."            And it wasn't exactly Disney Channel style. So they couldn't use it as it was, but they actually really liked the two flash games we made. And so they ended up buying those. And at the time we were just out of college, we were charging $500, $1000 for really simple websites, things like that. They bought the two games for I think it was 12,500 total. So it was like an order of magnitude more than what we were making up to that point. And we did have to go and clean it up. And then that's how we first started with them. And then they slowly would give us requests for proposals, for new projects. And we were always super aggressive coming in faster, cheaper, better, across everything we were better. And got to the point where we were actually for a while, the lead developer for Disney Channel.            One of the guys who was basically the main person in charge, he switched over to ABC because they were like sister companies. And he even brought us into ABC. So he had us do the online flash game for Who Wants to be a Millionaire back when the show was at its peak. So it was really cool and we really enjoyed it. And it was an example of just being super, super aggressive.Fabian Geyrhalter:Yeah. Well, I am the price, right in hustling. It's like, "Hey, we have nothing. We have no chance. We only have a weekend. What are we going to do?" You know, be miserable that we just don't get that gig because we have no examples of just build something from scratch, which sounds like a completely crazy idea. And the reason why I wanted you to share this particular journey is because we have a lot of creatives listening to this show. And a lot of them want to move more towards brand strategy and how like creatives are, they move around different areas. And so for them, that's a fantastic story, but for any other entrepreneur, I mean that hustle that you guys show it's amazing. And then it was your biggest client for a long time, right? I mean, that was your main client.Patrick Lee:Yeah. Yep. It was. But the thing that was really good for us was because we were working with them in Disney. I think within that space in general, folks move around a lot. So a lot of times when we got new jobs, it was because someone moved to MTV or VH1 or other places, Warner Brothers, and they bring us with them because they knew we did a really good job. And essentially our job was to make the producers look good for choosing to hire us that they didn't make a mistake. And because we did a really good job of doing that, they brought us everywhere.Fabian Geyrhalter:Right, right. That is something that I see in design, branding, advertising over and over. Right especially with larger companies, CMOs are constantly on the move. I mean, they stick around for a year or two and then they move on. And if you just have a handful of them where you've made great impressions, you're constantly busy because they come in and they want to see change. And then they want to make things happen. And if you're a trusted partner, that's absolutely what happened. But all of that changed for you once Rotten Tomatoes came to fruition. And I know the way that you explained it is you basically slowly had to let people go. You basically advised them to look for a new job. And at the same time you had some amazing clients that a lot of your competitor web design firms would have most probably drooled over. Did you just send an email to your clients and saying like, Hey, here's what's going on, let's be in touch. But here are five companies that I think would do a good job." How did you move clients somewhere else?Patrick Lee:We didn't actually move clients. We basically, there was a company that we were passing our overflow clients to, when it just didn't fit, it was either not entertainment or it was like too small or something like that. Generally if it was not entertainment related, we would pass it to this group rather than just purely say no. And they were doing a good job with the companies we were passing over. And we basically we're like, went to them and said, "Hey, do you want to just take over our company?" So they actually took over our company design [inaudible 00:30:06] and so when we transitioned, it was more about like transitioning our internal producers and team, but to the companies like the media companies working with us, we were still design director.Fabian Geyrhalter:All eggs in the basket with Rotten Tomatoes.Patrick Lee:Yeah, exactly. We had a huge discussion at the time about, should we try to do both? And we were very worried that we wouldn't have been able to properly split the two. And with design companies is like, every time the client wants something, it's like, they want it yesterday. And they always have these last minute changes. And we were very nervous that it would continue to happen. And every time it happened, we'd have to pull folks from Rotten Tomatoes over to help out on stuff. And so that's why we were like, "No, I think if we tried to do both, neither one's going to work." But looking back, had we known that we would have had to let go of so many people, if we could have just taken the people we had to let go put them all on design reactor, and then really, really strictly cut it off where the two and not help each other. I think that could have worked.Fabian Geyrhalter:Interesting. Well, if all goes to plan, this episode will literally kick off 2021. It should post on the 1st of January, which I think mankind can't wait for that day, even though I don't think we're going to switch everything on the first day of suddenly life is going to be great again, but let's just hope for 2021. But so this is going to go live on the first. What is your... What are your thoughts about branding like moving on? What is your vision for brands this coming year? It doesn't necessarily have to do with branding, just brands overall. Do you have any thoughts of what may change, what may flourish, what may feel, what are some thoughts for the new year, as far as start ups go and brands go? Where are things heading in Patrick Lee's crystal ball?Patrick Lee:That's an interesting question. I wouldn't say I'm like an expert on branding or anything. I still think the biggest thing would be just focus in general across all companies, all brands, especially startups, especially new creatives is to not try to do too much, to not try to have your brand represent everything and everyone, because then it represents no one, I think that's super important. And then just for 2021 in general hopefully it's a fresh start. I don't think it could be worse than 2020 across anything just on so many levels. It's just been just such a crazy year. So I think moving forward for brands in 2021, I think maybe just having more positivity, more hope would be just good. And I think also just to have people and brands and everything, to be more focused on helping each other out, supporting each other, how we can work together, support one another and not be so divided across everything.            I think with COVID and all these other things it's been just a really tough time for a lot of people. And I think now more than ever, we need the country, the world to just support each other more. And I think if brands could sort of capture some of that spirit, I think it would be good.Fabian Geyrhalter:Yeah, absolutely. And I do believe that a lot of brands, especially to smaller brands not necessarily mom and pop shops, but anything from, from third level to mid size, they had to be more authentic this year. They had to be more transparent about what's really going on. And so I think that something happened there with that transparency on the authenticity where they started to connect more with the customer, and they didn't even know, they don't have to have this big brand, divider between them and the customer. I think that's going to keep going in 2021. I think people, brands, well, people and brands that both actually the same brand is just a bunch of people. It's like they will... I think that they will really start celebrating that because everyone will have a big sigh of relief I hope once the vaccines come around and I think that we're humbled enough throughout this year, where a lot of them had to literally survive, the entire brand had to survive and a lot of them had to pivot and just a lot of stuff was going on in business.            That they just going to sigh with relief, and they're just going to be with open arms towards the customers, whoever is willing to start paying money again for their services. I do hope, and I do believe, and I think that what you said is a prelude to that thought. I think that everything will become a little happier and more transparent and more authentic in the new year. I really hope so.Patrick Lee:Yeah. I hope so too.Fabian Geyrhalter:What's next for you? I mean, six startups that you have under your belt. I know you've been doing a huge amount of mentoring. We've done some of it together in one session, but I know you mentored in an incubator accelerator in Hawaii for a couple of months lately. What are your goals in 2021? What is going to go on in your professional life?Patrick Lee:That's a good question. I've been trying to figure it out. So I came to Taiwan. I just got here about a week ago. I'm still in quarantine and trying to figure out what the next step is for me. I don't know if I have the energy to do another startup. They take so much out of you. Past few years I have been doing a lot of advising and mentoring, and I do realize I really like working with startups. I really like helping startups. I also really liked the intersection of tech and entertainment. So one thing I'm exploring the idea around, I don't know for sure if I will do it was a possibility of maybe doing a fund that invests specifically at the intersection of tech and entertainment and probably to invest pretty early, like pre-seed seed stage. So that's something I'm looking into, but I don't know for sure that that's what I will end up doing, but that's currently what I'm researching.Fabian Geyrhalter:Well, I mean, if you put all of these different areas of backgrounds together, and you have some circles and then smack in the center is the funds. It does make a lot of sense to me, right? All of the experience, all of the mentoring, your own journey, all of your connections and into passion for startups and for tech and entertainment and there it is. And once again, there are so many funds out there, but actually creating one that is so highly hyper-focused once again, it's about focus could be really amazing. Well, I hope you check back with us. I would love to hear once you're there and on this podcast, I only feature founders and investors. So who knows, maybe you're going to be back in a year as in with your investor head on, I'm talking about your brands.Patrick Lee:Sure, sure. I would love to come back to this. Feel free to reach out anytime .Fabian Geyrhalter:Listeners who appreciated your advice and they want to follow along on your journey whatever's next, where can they find you online best, where can they connect?Patrick Lee:I would say the best is LinkedIn, Instagram, and basically rotten doubt everywhere, like Rotten Tomatoes doubt, like no doubt. So rotten doubt.Fabian Geyrhalter:That's awesome. That's really good. Well, listen, Patrick, thank you for calling in from Taiwan, doing your quarantine and just having settled in. Super appreciated. Thanks for your time and be in touch.

Learn more about EIDUCatch Bernd's TEDx TalkSupport the show-------->Fabian Geyrhalter:Welcome to the show Bernd.Bernd Roggendorf:Thank you very much for inviting me.Fabian Geyrhalter:Well, it's really, really good to have you here. It's funny how you actually ended up on hitting the mark. Just to give my listeners a bit of background. I was invited to speak at Harvard Business School back in March of this year, which was really exciting and I very much looked forward to it. And this was just when COVID started to emerge in the Western world and I remember I was the only one at my gate at LAX Airport actually wearing a mask and people were just staring at me and they were laughing at me.And so during the flight over to Boston, I get a message from the CEO of your organization, Arne, who was also supposed to speak at the same event. And we decided we should meet up the next day, but that never happened since the event got rightfully canceled that very night because of COVID fears. So in a way, the one thing I get out of Harvard was this episode with you Bernd. So here you are. It all happened for a reason after all.So you co-founded Ableton, the tremendously popular and important software that helps millions of musicians, especially electronic music producers, unleash their creative potential. One of your other co-founders is Robert Henke of Monolake, who did a fantastic Depeche Mode remix a couple of years back. I feel required to mention this because a lot of my listeners know that I'm a total music nut and I'm a Depeche Mode vinyl collector who also toys in music as a hobby.So I would love to talk about the Ableton for the next half hour, but as hard as it is to believe you have been off to do more important things, which we will focus on today. You're you still changing the world of software, but now in a much different and tremendously meaningful way. Five years ago, you founded the education social enterprise, EIDU to improve education standards for 800 million children who live in $2 or less per day. How did this come about? How did you leave Ableton? Give us a little bit of that backstory.Bernd Roggendorf:Well, that's a funny story. It all started in 2010 I think, if I remember correctly or '09. Several things came together; one of global things were the financial crisis which somehow got me thinking a lot about the world but more personally, I was diagnosed with having a tumor in my spine. It all went well, but I was confronted with death and thought about that.And then on the other side, Ableton was already developing super well and it was so well set up. And I said it's my baby and in some point those babies you're at the position where you think that work it needs to grow on its own, and it needs to walk on its own. And I had the feeling with Ableton it's so well set up, I would be able to leave without destroying it.And so all these things together got me thinking was, I noticed there's something in me that I couldn't fulfill within Ableton or something else. And I'm not this guy that can do a lot of things together at the same time. So like if I do one thing, then I need to let go all the others. And so I had to say goodbye to Ableton which was super hard. I was crying, thinking about that. But at some point I realized that I have to do it because there was something I wanted to... I had this very naive idea of like the word is so unequal and so unfair, and I wanted to use my time and my money and my skills to help to get rid of these extreme inequalities.Fabian Geyrhalter:And so then you went on a pretty extreme trip yourself to witness how world is on the other side, right?Bernd Roggendorf:Mm-hmm (affirmative)Fabian Geyrhalter:Can you tell us a little bit about that? And you took your entire family with you, which must've been a crazy experience.Bernd Roggendorf:Absolutely. Well, it was like this. I was reading a lot after quitting Ableton, I didn't have any idea of what to do exactly. I felt like a teenager. I was very naively, "I want to help the world," but had no idea how. And so I read a lot of books and talked to a lot of smart people. But at some point I felt like this is all way too theoretical and way too second hand, I wanted to understand how poor people are really thinking and living and what do they need? And do they need any help from us? And if so, what kind of help do they need? And I will experience that firsthand.And so I talked to my wife and she fell in love directly, more than me even. I just sat there and was like, "Should we go?" "Yes, we need to go. Let's do that." "Okay. So let's do it." And then our children at that time was three and five. And we said, "Okay. Let's take this trip and let's take them on the trip. It will be like the greatest experience they will ever have in their life." And so we did and traveled around the world for eight months and tried to live as close as possible to very poor people.It started already with the most extreme part of the whole trip because for three months we went to Kibera, which is one of the biggest slams in Africa, in Nairobi. And we went there with a small organization called Manager Without Borders, it's a German organization. Very tiny, and they try to find companies around the world in low-income countries that need support. Companies here when they go to Ernst & Young or any other [inaudible 00:06:42] company, but tiny companies and of course, with no money at all. And they try to find on the other side managers, who are willing to support those companies.Fabian Geyrhalter:Amazing.Bernd Roggendorf:-organization and went for two months. We actually at the end stayed three months to help in a project in Kibera. It's funny because they thought, I'm coming from the music field so it was a company that focused on theater and dance and so on and stuff. Well, probably a band can help them. I'm a programmer. And I did my best. And I'm not sure if I really helped them. I probably didn't hurt them. When it comes to developing aid, you need to be careful to not even hurt because it's so tricky. And so I hope I didn't do that. I'm not sure if I really helped them and that's so unfair.I did it because I really wanted to help, but probably I learned and I gained much, much more than anybody I tried to help as well because I learned so much about how life is in the poor areas of the world and really their thinking and what is going wrong and all these things. And it was totally amazing experience for me and for my wife as well and for my kids. Of course, it's probably like completely changing. It was funny because at the beginning when we saw them, you couldn't see any difference. You couldn't see that they were actually in any way thinking, "Okay. This is crazy what we are doing here." It all looks the same. It's all people around the world. And yes, it's a lot more crowded and it's a bit more dirty and they all are black, but who cares, right?Fabian Geyrhalter:Yeah.Bernd Roggendorf:That's the funniest thing. For them, it was totally easy. And it was like an amazing experience. I learned so much.Fabian Geyrhalter:And so when did that idea of EIDU come about? Did that happen during the trip or did it happen at a much later stage?Bernd Roggendorf:Pretty much when I returned. So I returned from the trip and with all this experience. And mostly I was thinking, "It's just way too complicated." I was like naively thinking, "Okay. I want to help the world, fix the world." And then I realized it's so amazingly complicated to help something. Typically, what you experience, you try to do something at one corner of the problem space and then the next problem comes up and this, and this and this. It gets so complicated and you never find a good way of really entering this problem space, because it's so complicated.So I was thinking, "Okay. I need to start smaller." And I was thinking about, "Okay. I do something in Berlin, helping the people here that's what I know more." What I thought is, if I want to help really the poor, I need to live there. And that was just not an option from our family point of view, was that we wanted to go back to Berlin, not stay forever. And so it was pretty clear I cannot do this.And then my daughter came to school, she was then six. And pretty much from the first day she was using learning software and I watched over her shoulder because well, first I'm her father and second, I'm a software developer so I want to understand software and how it's working. So it was super interesting to see that and how she can interact with the software.And what I realized it was like the software's typically done, it's a lot of repetition and practicing of exercises or of principles you have learned already in the school. Was like, so you learnt how to addition and subtract two numbers and then you do that at home and practice that. Which is good and it's definitely helping, but this is not enough for countries in Africa. Because typically, the teachers are not able to provide this basic knowledge of how numbers work and like very basic things.But what I saw sometimes it was Lara, my daughter, she was able to grasp a new concept just by interacting with the software. Almost never it worked, but sometimes it worked. And when I saw that I thought, "Well, when it's sometimes working why shouldn't it work always." It's pretty much a question of good software, of great software. She was like, it's probably a super tricky problem but it's a solvable problem. And if that's the only thing that hinders us from educating the whole world, well then we should try it.And then the other part that brought me thinking, and that was experienced from my trip around the world, that pretty much everywhere we were; we were like at the most rural areas of the world and most isolated islands and still, if you took out your smartphone and hold it in the air you had a great signal. It's so extreme. It's like you go to the poorest areas and the people are constantly thinking about how do they get enough money to pay for the food for the next day but they all have a mobile phone in their pocket. Not yet a smartphone, but a mobile phone. It was pretty clear. And that's what all the numbers are showing. It's like smartphones will be everywhere, it's just a question of time. The prices are so low now and all the forecasts are saying it will grow within the next 10 years to almost every corner of the world.Fabian Geyrhalter:You basically bring learning to smartphones for schools around the world?Bernd Roggendorf:Exactly.Fabian Geyrhalter:And who creates the content?Bernd Roggendorf:Well, that was a long journey. So we started on our own. That's when I thought, "Okay, let's try it." I couldn't find a good software that worked out of the box, so I thought "Well, then we need to create this content ourselves." And we started with it and it worked quite okay. And it's just at some point I realized, to teach all the different subjects to all the different grades and then with the local specifics and with the few languages. The space of content that is required is so gigantic. I realized okay, I will never do that. I was like, "I need to get partners on board and need to do that together with others." And it's not so long ago.Pretty much just this year, we actually invested heavily in that to get partners on board. And now it's like we are constantly integrating big content providers who actually build most... We have some that are especially designed for African contexts. But we also work, for example, [Anton 00:15:08] is the leading software in Germany and we are just incorporating that content. We would talk to all big companies around the world that create these type of content and ask them to allow us to use their content. It's rather easy to sell because basically what we say is this market doesn't exist.Fabian Geyrhalter:Of course, yeah.Bernd Roggendorf:You have no way of reaching them and you have the content, it's ready. You don't have to do anything, just give it to us and we will help hundreds of millions of children. That's rather easy to-Fabian Geyrhalter:And so for them it's hopefully I assume not about monetizing but instead it is about basically giving back, right? For them it's a great part of the brand.Bernd Roggendorf:Absolutely. And that's how the whole company is built. It's like we do all this for helping the world, perhaps at some point we might be able to make a business out of that mostly to make it sustainable. Not even to think about making profit, but to make it so that we don't need to rely on external funding. And at some point, we might also create a business model or more money than that and we might also be able to pay back a bit to the content providers. But that's very, very far away and that's not part of why we are doing it.Fabian Geyrhalter:So you're running like a nonprofit but you legally are not a nonprofit entity, right?Bernd Roggendorf:Yes.Fabian Geyrhalter:Okay.Bernd Roggendorf:And I like to see us as a for-profit, not because I want to make profit. Honestly, I earned enough money with Abelton and I don't need any more. Currently, we are even changing the company to rather go be a nonprofit like Abelton itself. I'm not in the thing for money but there are so many people around in the ecosystem, being it funding people or employees who all need to make money somehow. And thinking about having this business mindset thinking, how can you create value that people actually would be willing to pay for it? It's so good that they are willing to pay. And even asking the poorest of, would you be willing to give us a dollar per child per year? Which pretty much everybody in the world could do. But if you do that for hundreds of millions of children, it's a lot of money. And you can create great products with that. I would never say we are nonprofit, I want to stick to it as well.Fabian Geyrhalter:Well, I like that. Some of the listeners heard the episode with Scott Harrison of Charity: Water, and he's got a very, very smart way of how to divide those two. Here's a nonprofit part and here's actually how we need to make money, because we need to feed our own people too, right?Bernd Roggendorf:Yeah.Fabian Geyrhalter:So I would encourage anyone who finds this conversation interesting to also go back to that episode. But let's talk about the big pivot that happened this year to becoming this platform that's a little bit like the Apple store, where everyone can kind of like plug in. Did that have to do with COVID? Was your company affected by all of that school closures, et cetera? I assume it was.Bernd Roggendorf:It was dramatically. Actually, the change came beforehand because what we did is last year we thought, "Well, can we actually ask the schools to pay for the service?" And we did that and we saw it's like we actually get 20% of the market to pay for it. In this amount, I think on average they paid €1.5. So roughly $1.70 per child per year, which would already finance quite a bit of what we are doing if you scale it up. But what we saw is that we only get 20% of the market to do that. And at least at that point what we were offering we couldn't convince bigger parts of the market basically, of the schools that were existing and we were inviting. And the funny thing is, just because we were getting to just the small part of the market, our costs went crazy because it was pretty much to acquire... If you anyway invite 100% of the schools to your meetings and show what they do and give them devices and explain them how we do it and all this, then pretty much your costs are already gone.Fabian Geyrhalter:Yeah, huge.Bernd Roggendorf:And so we said, "Okay." We calculated it through and we saw it doesn't work, which is not very rare because pretty much nobody finds a way of a business model with the very poor. It's really, really hard to do that. It was tried all over the world. I would say there are two main examples who made that work, and that's Coca-Cola. You can get Coca-Cola everywhere around the world. But that's almost the only brand that you really see around the world all over the place. And then what you see is all over the place is mobile. Every place in the world has mobile in there, you can buy phones and smartphones and mobile services.Fabian Geyrhalter:And are there any lessons you can take from those two companies and apply it to your company?Bernd Roggendorf:For sure we tried a lot, but what we saw is we cannot get it to... At least at that point I was always thinking, at some point we probably might have enough product value it provides so much value for the users that they need to continue and that they are willing to even give us a bit of money. But at that point we were just there.But on the other side, I was always thinking... And that's also a tricky thing of like, if you try to make it with a business then you typically have the business mechanics at work. Which means, you usually easier get the ones who have more money. When it comes to education, that's definitely it's the wrong thing. Who needs the biggest support? The poorest. The danger was way too big from my point of view that we will at the end would end up with something that we just cater for. Still within those poor, more the [inaudible 00:22:55] ones and more the better-educated ones. And so I thought, there will be enough companies and there will be enough tries in this direction but I want to try to find something that really can reach the very, very poor.And that's why I thought because what we also did in this testing, at some point we did give out phones for free. To explain that a bit, so what we have in mind is in the long run everybody will have a smartphone, that's our assumptions. So at the end, we only need to provide software which is free and we could scale that up for the whole world pretty much for no money. So the devices is the tricky part in the game.But right now they don't smart phones, so what we do we provide the teacher with just one smartphone. So we simulate what will happen in 10 years from now, basically. And once we do that we say, "Okay. We put our platform on it and then use it in your classrooms like you think makes sense." We give them some training what makes sense, but we saw different ways of using that that's why we... It's pretty much the teacher is in control in the classroom. They are the masters and you cannot do it besides them. If you do something besides the teacher, you typically end up dying very hard in terms of usage because the teachers are the ones who constantly push for. Well, it's like we are here to learn and to get the kids all over. And that's why I also I didn't want to think about a parent app, for example, that focus on parents which is also very common. Again, you will not reach the poor, the people in total need. So we said, "Okay. We bring one phone to the teacher, explain them shortly how to use that and then they are starting it right away."When we do that for free, then we have activation rates higher than 95%, so pretty much everybody. We get all the schools to participate. And through that we can reach so many children, even the poorest ones. And the funny thing is, as we just take one device and share that in the... So the app works like this; on the one side there's teacher content for the teacher to be a better teacher, so giving them teaching materials and explain them how to do better lessons and prepare for them better. And on the other side there's self-learning on it so for the children, for the students.You don't need to do anything, because at the beginning you just take photos of all the children which is basically setting up all the accounts for the children. And then we only show the picture of the first child, the teacher gives it to this child and then the child clicks on his picture and does exercises typically for 10 minutes. And then the picture of the next child appears and then this child gives the phone to the next child. And we teach that to three-year-olds and they learn it, after three days they know it by heart.So we have a system where the teacher can introduce this platform without doing anything basically, besides charging the phone in the night. They don't have to do anything. It's so easy for them to get into the system. I would say that's our main point is, we make it so easy to get started so that they actually try it. And then after some time they see, "Okay. This is actually helping my children." They actually learn those concepts better and they get more attentive. And actually what the schools are reporting, kids are coming earlier to school and leave the school later and parents are bringing their kids to our schools and things like that because it's very attractive for the children and the teachers see the value as well.Fabian Geyrhalter:It's amazing. I mean, I hope that some executives of T-Mobile are listening to this because what a great way for them that would be, to have a partnership to give away phones with your software on it. That seems like the next iteration of the TOMS model of a one-for-one model. If I actually spent $800 or some insanely silly amount of money on a new iPhone, that I would know that one phone ends up in a school in Nairobi that actually touches 40 kids. I'm sure you already went down that aisle, but it seems like a very obvious direction to go, right?Bernd Roggendorf:Yeah, and it's like we are always playing around with this idea. Should we ask for charity? Should we get the world to finance that? Perhaps at some point we will do it. I'm hoping that we can fund it through other channels because we see that we can grow this so fast. We have now the ability.What we do is we go to slums. And typically, that's an important thing which many people don't know. It's estimated that more than 50% of the poorest third in the world, the vast majority go to school but the majority of those schools are not public but private. And then you say, private school for the very poor, what is that? We have millions and millions of extremely low cost schools around the world. For many, many decades were not known at all, but in those statistics they were shown and all this. It's a recent trend that we get data about those schools.For example in Lagos, a city of Nigeria. We will start operating very soon in a couple of weeks and they have I think 1,200 public schools or so, something like this, and 18,000 private schools. So the vast, vast majority in the city is going to private school. These low cost schools it's really funny how they work, because they typically get fees from the parents around €5 to €10 per child, per month. So it's tiny amounts.If you think about it's like, if you have a class of 30 people with €5, well, it's €150. You need to make school with €150 euros per month, including everything; including the classroom, including the tables and the chairs and everything, books. So it ends up you don't have anything, besides chairs you don't have much in your classroom. Of course, you need to pay the teacher. So what can you pay with this amount of money? Pretty much teachers who are not educated themselves, who have very little pedagogical education themselves.And so the funny thing as it is that even they are... And they have much less money than the public schools but as they are so near to the customer. Because if they don't do well, the parents send their kids to the next school which is 100 meters from your school. So it's like extreme competition there. And so it's amazing how well they function.There's pretty good research, especially in India where we have the same situation, there are hundreds of millions who are really still very, very poor. Although we also see how the development of India but there's still a huge part of the population is very, very poor. And in those poor areas, it's like there's many, many, many private schools.We have pretty good data about their learning outcomes. They are not better, but they are pretty much the same as the public schools and they do that with like a 10th of the budget. It's very interesting to see these two markets. Because when you go to the public schools they all say, "Well, talk to the government." And then you talk to the government and they say, "Well, that sound's interesting. Let's do a pilot next year." And so it takes forever and forever. Which we will do.We said, let's start with the private schools because it's so much easier to talk to them. We can just invite 100 directors of those schools into a meeting, tell them what we do and if they like it they will start on the next day. And that's actually what we do exactly that. We go to the slums, we invite these privates school owners and tell them what we do and offer them, "Well, you get your first smartphone right away. Send us the teacher of the early grades and we will give them a short training and then you get your first phone. If you use that to heavy extent like we say, we want to see at least 10 hours per week of usage." The thing is, it's every day, you need to do it for several hours to do that, to get to that amount. And that's what we get, it's like we get 95% of those schools right away, but in the first week they have more than 10 hours of usage.Fabian Geyrhalter:So currently, so you must have a lot of "boots on the ground," in Nairobi and all over the place, who actually are working for your company to get the word out?Bernd Roggendorf:Mm-hmm (affirmative). Well, it's like we started heavily on the ground in Nairobi because that was our learning lab, to learn how to do all these things. And then came Corona, it's like we have to do it very differently. In the beginning of the year, we were right at the point where we tried everything out and we were preparing everything to massive scale and then from one day to the other everything was shut down. All the schools in Africa were closed. All our schools were from one day to the other, not existing anymore because it's private schools. We saw pictures now from our schools where in classrooms have chicken farms and stuff like that, but they have to make money somehow.Fabian Geyrhalter:Yeah.Bernd Roggendorf:So all our schools were gone, basically. And in Kenya, it's still like they will start beginning of next year, that's what they said so far. So once they open up, we will go back and start extending in Kenya as well. But thankfully it's like there's one country in Sub-Saharan Africa that had not closed the schools and that's Ivory Coast.And In Ivory Coast we just started because we found out very late in the process because it's French and we didn't have the software in French so we excluded those countries from [inaudible 00:36:31]. But at some point we said, "Okay. Let's look at all the countries, perhaps we find something where we can actually operate now during Corona." And then we found Ivory Coast and then within three weeks we translated everything into French.And then last week, we did the first test meetings. Well, we invited I think they were like 35 or so schools there. And they are all starting to use the app now. We just heard last week that Nigeria is opening up, I think in two weeks from now, so we will start doing sales meetings in Lagos very soon.And we do that and that's the funny thing is, we have learned a lot how to do these meetings and how to do them effectively and fast and all these things. But as we couldn't travel we said, "Okay. How can we do that? How can we do that remotely?" Actually what we did is, we hired people remotely, just through video calls and discuss the things. Then we did the training remotely of those things. Then we did tests town halls remotely. And now we are up to do pretty much everything completely remotely.The great thing is, as all this is digital we can monitor everything. Every click of every child, we know. We see on our data. And typically, although we don't rely on an internet connection, we provide internet connection to collect the data and to update the software. I think it's something like 80% of the data we get within the first 10 minutes. So we are almost real time, but we are not relying on real time.Fabian Geyrhalter:It's amazing, really amazing. What COVID took, COVID gave back from a business perspective, right, for you?Bernd Roggendorf:Yeah.Fabian Geyrhalter:I mean, there's a lot of pivots that happened then a lot of streamlining operations, et cetera, et cetera. Pre-COVID, how many schools has EIDU been in or how many kids has it affected?Bernd Roggendorf:It was all testing, we were testing.Fabian Geyrhalter:Okay.Bernd Roggendorf:I think we had 400 schools with roughly, what is that, roughly times 200.Fabian Geyrhalter:Okay.Bernd Roggendorf:60,000 or something like that. I'd say 80,000 children.Fabian Geyrhalter:Yeah. It's a good amount.Bernd Roggendorf:And it's not like that all these kids were active at the same time. But what we know is we can reach those kids because they are in the school. So when we start with just a phone, we just provide the first class and then if they use it heavily, then we provide the second phone and the third phone and over time we reach all those kids over time.Fabian Geyrhalter:Right. Let's shift the conversation a little bit over to the EIDU brand. I mean, obviously Ableton is very much a brand, it's a brand experience, musicians light up when you mention even the word because it just stands for so much in their lives. So when you think of a mission-driven organization like EIDU which almost classifies as a nonprofit brand usually gets all but forgotten about, yet it's super crucial because there are so many stakeholders. I mean, we talked about it. The content providers, teachers, the kids and then there are many different languages. I mean, there's just a lot of people involved that are exposed to the brand and then on top of it many different languages, like you just got French on board over the last couple of weeks. Many who will just judge the branding by its look alone because they don't speak the language, how did you go about branding with EIDU? Did you see it as an important factor from day one?Bernd Roggendorf:To be honest, not really. Well, it's like I know from Abelton experience how important it is, but probably my helping heart was just thinking, "Well, I just need to provide the right thing then it's working." We talked to some branding people and thought about these things. The tricky thing is, typically when you think about these branding aspects you directly think for yourself and people here and your future employees and funding people and all these things, what is the right branding?Besides we need to find funding and we need to find employees, our customers are thinking very, very differently and looking at the world very, very differently. So we always thought well, let's first see how we can really solve the problems. But that says, I think branding is super important for us. I think we are still very early in terms of really using what we think the brand is and how it's positioned to use that for all kinds of things in terms of marketing and how we talk to the world. But it's still early, but I'm sure it will be very important.Fabian Geyrhalter:Right. And it seems to, when I get the message from Anna, your CEO and I quickly checked out the company to see if they're legit, like who is EIDU? And I looked at the site which I think right now when we record this is down but it should be back up when this is airing, I was super impressed because it was very brand forward. I mean, the logo feels extremely likable, it's very colorful. It feels like there was thought being put into it and to me that was very surprising because 99.9% of mission-driven nonprofits don't care about branding, for exactly the same reasons that you just mentioned, right?Bernd Roggendorf:Yeah.Fabian Geyrhalter:But I do believe that it can actually be extremely important to convey a message and to get people to actually like the product and to associate themselves with it. I mean, just the two colors in the logo, they're so vibrant and it feels like there's something going on between color one and two. There is meaning in it. At some point when you actually went through that exercise, you did it in a meaningful way, I assume.Bernd Roggendorf:Yeah. And we got support from branding people and the design people. I think that, that's what I learned at Abelton was how important are these things, that you really should take the time. Not from this or it's too far from the aesthetic point of view. But I actually like beautiful things and we want to see beautiful things. It's nice to see beautiful things and make things look nice but the more important thing from my point of view is more the consistency with your thinking, why do you do all this? And what do you want to achieve with that? And all these things. If you do that consistently with the branding, then it helps to spread your message. Even if it's subconscious, you feel all these things, people notice them and it's important.Fabian Geyrhalter:Absolutely. The name EIDU, it is so close to edu which obviously stands for education and is synonymous with it's .edu the main extension for organizational entities around the world. What does the name stand for?Bernd Roggendorf:It's not an abbreviation, what everybody asks us for.Fabian Geyrhalter:Yeah, I thought so too.Bernd Roggendorf:No, it's actually like it's a synthetic word which we came up, because it has exactly this what you said. It has the education in it and on the other side when you speak it typically, it depends on where you are. But many people say EIDU and how we found ourselves. So and if you say, "I do," it's I do something.And that's pretty much what we think in terms of what we want to get the children to do. They need to get active because that's the biggest problem in low-income education is that kids are just passive, they are just like this old picture. It's like their head is open and stuff is pushed in there and they need to remember it and then it's closed. And they need to get active, they need to do it on their own. They need to learn the things on their own. They need to experience it and try the things out and take a very active role in their learning. And that's why EIDU makes us so much sense to us.Fabian Geyrhalter:That is such a fantastic story. I would have never in a million years guessed this and I'm a naming guy and that's hilarious. But the idea that EIDU actually is one of the first things that they would learn, right?Bernd Roggendorf:Mm-hmm (affirmative)Fabian Geyrhalter:It's the action that you want them to take, et cetera, et cetera. And did you test the word before in different languages to see if it's easy for them to say or did you just know that based on your travels?Bernd Roggendorf:No, not really. We tested it. And it's not super easy because especially the E-I is pronounced differently in different areas even in English speaking countries. It's not totally clear if it's EIDU or AIDU and so this wasn't perfect for us. There are other awkward names in the word. We thought the ones who are using us, are using us so heavily we can easily train them in pronouncing it correctly. So we were very sure the name will stick and the people will understand that's EIDU and will understand that and will use it. And in general, I think it's easy to pronounce in all kinds of languages. So it's working quite okay.Fabian Geyrhalter:And brand purpose became such a big buzz word, one that I myself am actually using quite a bit. But looking at Ableton and EIDU, both are actually very purpose driven companies. And I wonder, isn't any company purposeful in a way. If there's no purpose, what do you give to the world? I mean, even if it's just a simple product or enhancement. So to me, purpose and mission are quite different. How do you see the difference from what you did with Ableton, to what you're now doing with EIDU as it relates to brand purpose?Bernd Roggendorf:Well, it's two fold. The difference is first of all I think we started not like... I think Gerhard and me founded Ableton, right from the very beginning we wanted to create the best product in the world. So we were driven by great products. But I would say the difference in EIDU it was very clearly we need to help people, we need to help and we need to support them that was more, more focused on. I think Ableton was from the beginning at least more product-driven and I think we are a bit more user-driven, which is definitely not true anymore. Ableton is super user-driven and thinking about the customers, it's definitely. And the users, it's totally in central. But it was a bit different.Fabian Geyrhalter:What is one word that can describe your brand? I call it your brand DNA. So for Everlane for instance, it would be transparency for Harley-Davidson it would be freedom. What would be one word that sums up EIDU?Bernd Roggendorf:That's a tricky one.Fabian Geyrhalter:I know. I like putting people on the spot with that. Obviously-Bernd Roggendorf:I have one. It's potential.Fabian Geyrhalter:That's great.Bernd Roggendorf:And it's two-fold. It's the potential of every single child, which we need to unleash. And it's so huge, the potential, in every single child. There's so many possibilities that this kid could grow into, but on the other side it's also like it's such a huge potential when you look at the world. It can change everything, if we educate the poor.Fabian Geyrhalter:Absolutely. As we come to a close, I would encourage everyone to listen to Bernd's Ted talk, I will add the link to the podcast notes. Where else would you like people to go? How can they follow you? How can they get involved? What can they do to help your noble and really amazing mission?Bernd Roggendorf:Well, go to the website and contact us first, like writing us an email or send us any message. But go to the website, you will find the ways to contact us. But get in contact, please.Fabian Geyrhalter:Perfect, very good. Well, Bernd, I really appreciate your time. This was a really, really great conversation, I'm sure everyone enjoyed it. Thank you for spending the whole hour with us.Bernd Roggendorf:It was great. It was so much fun. Thank you very much.

Learn more about Outer AisleSupport the show-------->Fabian Geyrhalter:Welcome to the show, Jeanne and Vasa.Jeanne David:Thanks for having us, looking forward to chatting with you.Fabian Geyrhalter:Oh, absolutely. It's such a pleasure to have both of you here. So Jeanne first, congratulations, Outer Aisle ranked 63, I think on the overall Inc 5000 list. And it is the second fastest-growing privately held foods company in all of America with a two-year revenue growth of I don't know, like close to 2,000%. So amazing success. Congrats on that, love having you here because of that, but let's hit rewind here for a second, because you have a fascinating story. You quit your position as an executive director of the Arthritis Foundation, when you were around 50. Not to put an age on anyone but that was about the year. And you wanted to do something both impactful and meaningful after the tenure.And now fast forward to 2020 and I see an article in Inc Magazine with the fantastic headline, The Matriarch, hovering above a large portrait of you. So you successfully employed your entire family at this point from your husband to all four of your sons with a brand that creates cauliflower bread. How did this come out? Give us a quick history here before we jump in.Jeanne David:Yeah, it really is interesting. So not that I wasn't, obviously before 50, not that I wasn't doing anything meaningful. So I mean my tenure at the Arthritis Foundation was very meaningful. I was helping people and changing lives through what we do and really impactful. It's just that all of my life before that my career had been taking a job and keeping a job because I had to raise four kids and put them through college. So I had to be contributing in that manner. So I had never had the luxury of sitting down and figuring out what I wanted to do. So I just knew after Arthritis Foundation, it was time for something new. I had been there six years. I had done what they hired me to do. It was a part of a whole change in Southern California and region and I was part of that team. And it was very powerful what we did in those six years.So I hit 50 and I just was like, what do I want my next career to look like? And I was given the extreme luxury by my husband by saying, "You know what? I really want you to take your time. Our boys were all in their 20s." And I didn't need to be so busy earning a salary for the first time, because everybody was out of college and we weren't actively funding them at that point. So it was very much of a gift. And he is like really take your time and just figure out what the best fit is for you. So I was working with a headhunter who looked at me one day and said, "If you could have any job you wanted in the whole world, what would it be?" And I could not believe how paralyzed that was for me, like, "Oh, my gosh, I said, I have no idea." And he goes, "Well, I'm not going to work with you until you answer that question."And he said, it's a really important question and it was very interesting. It really kind of just started me on really thinking about those things. So I was really trying to take a job that or I actually was, I'm a natural born entrepreneur, but I was really looking at the kind of, I had hung that hat a few years ago and said, it's okay, working for a company is great. So anyway, I really just was looking at what gifts do I have uniquely that I only, that kind of from the premise of we're all created very uniquely. And we each have gifts and talents that we bring to the world and when we focus on what those unique gifts and talents are, we're the best the people around us are the best and the world is a better place. Because we're bringing what I believe we were all uniquely created to do and bring to this world.So that's really the journey that began and then it came out of our own journey of transforming our health by taking out basically all of the empty processed carbs and sugar out of our diet which totally transformed our health and being committed to that lifestyle. So it's a bit of a long journey, and I don't want to get bogged down in that, but that's how I then Cauliflower Pizza Crust is being seen on Pinterest to give you the idea of where we were. Facebook and Instagram were not the big thing. Pinterest was that moment. And cauliflower pizza crust was there. So we had taken bread out of our diets. Certainly we're not eating pizza, no pasta, none of the empty, high carb foods. So we had really shifted to veggies to substitute for those high carb foods. So I saw a cauliflower pizza crust, I was like, "Wow, if I could get this, that would be amazing. But if I could get it at [inaudible 00:05:39] form, that would be even more impactful, because it's quite cumbersome to eat, to a little bit of protein and vegetables, and we were eating a little bit of fruit not much at all.So our day consisted of I mean vegetables and protein. So that was a bit cumbersome. So it was really out of our own need, and what we believed would be the wave of the future because of diabetes and everything else that was becoming very preeminent and inflammation based diseases. And again, it kind of gets, I can get very deep on all of those things. So I don't want to get into the weeds right now but it was our own journey that basically created the product line. Then I naturally thought, within a week, I had the whole product line in my head and I couldn't turn it off. And our youngest son said, "Come on, let's bring this to market." I was like, "No, no, no, I'm not bringing a product to market.-- No, I'm not going to do it."And at the end of the week, I kind of relented and because I believe that it was such a great product that had the ability to transform health and create this shift out there, which I believe is pretty basic to our health and to the diet that we find ourselves in today as American. So anyway, we decided to do it and make it a family project. I often talk about it, the file is still called family project on my computer.Fabian Geyrhalter:It's a bigger family now.Jeanne David:Yeah, we felt like it was a great thing to bring our kids who are now in their 20s while they watched me do different businesses when they were small. At this age, they could see what it took to bring a product from concept to market. And we felt that that was a valuable education for them to all be involved in. So we set up Thursday conference calls every Thursday, and we'd all weigh in. So anyway, that's the family part of it, we gave them each a little bit of interest in it and the youngest joined us in operations. Once we got our first region of wholefoods, he was in his career path, all of them were in their career path. So we'd never intended for them to come work for the company full time. We really were big into independent, and then being independent and finding their own way in their 20s, which I think is pretty critical.So it's just now that they found their own way a few of them have wanted to join in, which is then they all play a role. Two of them actually worked for the company, a third one does all of our commercial insurance and he's been involved in our insurance from day one as a risk manager and now he actually underwrites it all and oversees it all and that's huge. So he doesn't actually work for the company but that's the component he handles. And then we have another son who's an M&A and he just helps advisors, and is actively involved on the finance component.Fabian Geyrhalter:That's so great. That's so wonderful. So you're growing a brand based on six family members, how do you hire? How do you create a company culture that others feel invited to? This must be quite challenging, right, especially for the first couple of hires when you did those. I mean, I ask this because I feel brand and culture are always so very related and they really go hand in hand.Jeanne David:Yeah, I would say and Vasa will have some input on this because he's known us from the beginning. So we're a family and so that kind of lends itself to a culture right? Because your employees, really we do love family and we do encourage family. We constantly see that it's... I talk with our employees every day, we do gratitudes every day. I pop in their office and we really do see it very much as a family. It has that feel. So Vasa, can you... So I would say that's very much part of our DNA and then it also lends itself to the brand and the love and the kindness and building upon that. Vasa, I'd love your input here as well, because as someone coming into that.Fabian Geyrhalter:Vasa, can confirm or deny this.Vasa Martinez:Yes, as it pertains to hiring and culture, the family thing is more of a positive than a negative. It's more inclusive than exclusive. There's no sort of like rites of passage or any sort of things, I'm the youngest of eight, and when I came in, there's a clear warmth. And it was much different as we've seen the growth over the past two and a half years, that warmth has remained. It's not as though, when you grow the culture is one of the things that's probably the first kind of dissipate. It's not one of the things with Outer Aisle. And that's why I think that family is a huge component of the branding the hiring process. I mean, when you're hired, you're kind of like, it feels as though like when we were all children, we went over to our friend's houses, after school, it kind of feels like that, but with a very intentional way of going about business. Everyone's there for a reason to play their part, to do the best they can, to be the best they can be as an individual. And for a team and for me, that's one of the biggest things that has strengthened and been the backbone of our aisle is that the family is it is the heart, it's everything.Fabian Geyrhalter:I think that's super interesting because it could go both ways. And this is it makes so much sense that if a brand is grown that way, that that will be one of the big pillars behind the brand, culture makes a lot of sense. So your brand is grown and made in Santa Barbara. I know that that's where you reside, but that adds a tremendous layer not only of authenticity and of beauty to your brand story, but it's also a layer of complexity. Is that sustainable as you grow?Jeanne David:Yeah, we've fought hard to stay here and remain here. I mean, when it came time to build our facility we looked elsewhere. And for a lot of the reasons people do and then we said, we love Santa Barbara, this is where we live, why would we choose to leave where we love to live, to go work? So we said, "No, we're going to do what it takes to spend the expensive it is," because that's what it is, it just cost more to do business here. And that, that was worth it, as opposed to moving to Nevada, let's say because of the employee pool, the real estate there, the amount of big buildings you can find there. So we've been very fortunate, we found a great manufacturing facility in Ventura. So our first facility was in Galena, right outside of Santa Barbara, North and then we went south this time, because Santa Barbara certainly doesn't have the kind of space we need. So we're just 20 minutes outside [crosstalk 00:13:34] way.Fabian Geyrhalter:I mean, for those of us like myself who know the area very well, it is definitely, it is the green zone. I mean, this is really where farming happens and it's just a little bit south from Santa Barbara. And as a consumer if I see Santa Barbara or if I see even Ventura on the packaging, it rings true. It feels very authentic, rather than...Jeanne David:Right. It evokes a certain and Barbara especially, it evokes a certain [crosstalk 00:14:03].Fabian Geyrhalter:Yeah. Absolutely.Jeanne David:So yeah, definitelyFabian Geyrhalter:How did the name Outer Aisle come about? I'm super intrigued by that.Jeanne David:Yeah, so the name Outer Aisle is a really unique thing. We kept trying to, my husband's an attorney so he was definitely set on making sure that whatever the name we chose for this company was trademarkable. So we had all kinds of names. Everything in the food space is really taken. We're not a tech company and we can call ourselves Zulu or Hulu or something like that.Fabian Geyrhalter:Right.Jeanne David:So you really have to be kind of conscious and meaningful in the space. So we were at deadline. We had set a hard deadline for a final confirmation on our names. Most everything we chose had been already trademarked and this one popped in at deadline that day. We ran it through the USPTO and it had not been trademarked. We were able to grab it. And as many people know, at that time, it was just beginning to be out there that if you're shopping healthy, shop the Outer Aisle of the grocery store.So it was becoming known but it we had to explain it a lot in the beginning of our name, but that was the evolvement or the evokements that we wanted to have with the name. We wanted it to evoke a healthy thought in your mind. So the Outer Aisle when you shop, the Outer Aisle of the grocery store, you're shopping the healthy product. So for us that's what it was.Fabian Geyrhalter:Yeah, it sets you up for world domination too, because you can basically take the entire Outer Aisle of the grocery store in the future. This is all you.Jeanne David:Exactly. That's critical. That's a critical thing. We knew that we were going to be more than cauliflower. And remember, now when we started, cauliflower was not cool. So we started a veggie sandwich since because the cauliflower craze had not hit yet. So we were the first to market with cauliflower but we knew that we did not want to limit ourselves to one kind of vegetable.So then our competitors came out and we were criticized for that early on, very interesting and then applauded for it two years later.Fabian Geyrhalter:That's how it works. That's how it works.Jeanne David:Yeah, exactly.Fabian Geyrhalter:I always advise my startup clients to not pigeonhole themselves, because either they will pivot, meaning they had a bad idea and it's going to change but they're still running with the company name, or they will expand into different categories and they just don't know. So if you have a super descriptive name, it's just not made for growth. And you don't want to exclude that.Jeanne David:Yeah, and for us, we knew we were going to expand beyond cauliflower. So when our competitors hit market and were branding themselves, specifically cauliflower [inaudible 00:17:28] to cauliflower. So we were criticised by a broker that was like, wow, you didn't name yours, like people don't know immediately by your name and then go forward two more years, you're like, wow, you were right, [inaudible 00:17:42]. So it was kind of funny. But we knew all along what our long play is.Fabian Geyrhalter:And your positioning currently is very much to revolutionize the bread industry. How did this idea come to fruition in store talking about Outer Aisle, right? I mean, can you find your product next to fresh loaves of baguette say, is it in a very different area?Jeanne David:Well, it's interesting. So what we're seeing out there in the market, and what was happening when we came in for these brands, it's all about disrupting the old distribution channel that has our product roll. It's so much chemicals and crap that we really want to revolutionize food and you're watching that. So what's happening as we look at bread, the bread aisle is shrinking and the ambient bread aisle is shrinking. And what we're seeing is a refrigerated set that is beginning to come into play. So there's a gluten-free like if you walk into Sprouts today, there's a gluten-free bread set that's a coffer that has just refrigerated breads in it. In whole Foods there's a whole case that is the gluten-free breads or the better for you bread.So that's the trend we began to ushering in because we were the first to market, we were first in our category. So I was working with the whole foods forger to talk about where you're going to go and we really wanted to be in the Outer Aisle, we did not want to be in the bread aisle ever. We would never have an Ambien product. We wanted to be refrigerated on the outside of the perimeter of the store. So yeah, so that's that and that's what they were beginning to do and that we began seeing that happen.Fabian Geyrhalter:Yeah, no makes a lot of sense. And I just talked recently, to Cole of Alpha Foods in an episode and he told me about the growth of his company, during this pandemic, since people are now growing old of eating the same old food at home day in, day out, and they're looking for fast, easy, and hopefully at this point also healthy alternatives. Did your brand experience the same upswing during the last couple of months?Jeanne David:Yeah, I would say, he did, he already had a huge online component and Vasa can probably speak to this, because this is the way he manages that. That's his wheelhouse. So Vasa you want to take this?Vasa Martinez:Yeah, for sure. So early on, during the pandemic, we saw definitely a huge upswing both on Amazon and Dotcom. And as this progressed, you see more and more people preparing for e-commerce, a lot of folks who were more retail driven have pivoted and started building out their internal teams are working externally, with agencies or consultants to build out that platform. So it has gotten more competitive over the past few months, but there was an upswing early on, and we've been able to sustain that and work on our retention efforts to keep things going smoothly. But there sure was an uptick early on, particularly for I'm sure the shelf stable pantry items. But for us, we definitely saw one as well being a perishable, refrigerated and frozen item.Fabian Geyrhalter:And while I, this is going to be a good conversation for both Jeanne and Vasa. When did you start to actively invest in branding? Since packaging is key for a product like yours. I mean, first its packaging, people must fall in love with the package. And then later on, it goes into Instagram, social, e-commerce, all of that. But for brands like yours, the package is so important. Did you go through a lot of iterations in the beginning? Was it literally, was it just created by the family? How did you start off? How did it evolve?Jeanne David:In the beginning, it really, I look back and I cringe at what we had on the shelf before Vasa came on. We did hire a graphic designer early on, and thought it was good at the time. And obviously, we thought it was good because we went to market with it. But right around that time, five years ago, I would say was the beginning five, yeah, about five years ago was really this explosion in food and brands. And you began to see really a lot of morphed in branding. So we went through when Vasa joined us, I would say that was kind of the beginning of our branding and we did a hard rebrand, launched that. He joined us in April of 2018. That year, we did, we began a brand, a new branding, and then launched [inaudible 00:23:12] app store by March of 2019. But I would say all of the end of 2018 was when we were working on it-Fabian Geyrhalter:So very recently.Jeanne David:... creating it.Fabian Geyrhalter:Yeah. And copy is also extremely important for branding, your copy is wonderfully crafted. Just to give my listeners a quick taste, no pun, but we're officially over bread, but we're definitely not over pizza, sandwiches, hamburgers and tacos. We're Outer Aisle, we're going beyond the grain who's coming with us? So when and how did you define the brand personality and the tone of voice? Obviously, I know when now because that was just a few years ago. But how did you actually define that personality in the tone of voice as you started going into the different social channels, social being extremely important to a brand right now, especially you give me your Instagram following. How was that determined? Is that something that when Vasa came in, he was like, this is our brand personality? And it was a team exercise, or was it more intrinsic?Jeanne David:I think I'll answer a little bit and then I'll hand it off to Vasa to finish my sentences. But I would say part of it is who we are, who we want to be. We want to be family. We want to be approachable. We wanted to be fun. So you go through all of those exercises, but it very much was our values, our authenticity. So it was very much in line with our values. We wanted to always be transparent. Our ingredient list is clean. It's very transparent. So we wanted to be a little tongue in cheek, approachable, never elite or proud or, Vasa you can speak a little bit better to that. And it was a process we went through, but it was very much organically developed.Vasa Martinez:Yeah. So the back half of 2018, we had engaged with a couple resources to basically bring the new visual and voice elements to the brand. During that time, I was still mainly focused on organic and paid social. But from a very high level, we wanted to make sure that things were very authentic and relatable. The North Star for Outer Aisles, as long as it feels as though, Jeanne would say it. For me, at least, it makes sense and going back a little bit deeper on this. For me branding isn't necessarily what's on the package. Prior to the rebrand or refresh, the package was nothing to write home about, but it still did its job. Because for me what branding is, is really reputation and what that means is the integrity, the ethics, the transparency, the relatability. All of these things add up to that, and the brand, the packaging is just more like a business card, at least in my opinion.And with all of those things that we addressed early on with organic social and how we treated customers, every time they reached out that one to one relationship, every single time they asked a question where they could buy, how do I get this crispy? Whether it's email or comments on organic or paid anything like that. I think that's what really defined it and that reputation has sustained us along the way. The package has improved, and it will continue to evolve. But for the most part, it's the personality and the heart of the brand, which is that family element, to me that really is the branding.Fabian Geyrhalter:Makes a lot of sense and what does branding mean to you, Jeanne, I mean, you've been through a lot with this brand. Now that you've done all of this, what is the essence of a brand to you? What does branding mean to you?Jeanne David:Yeah, I mean to me it's truly the essence of who we are. So our packaging just displays what we stand for, like we're beginning to now be able to truly differentiate ourselves as a lot of brands come out. And while they have cauliflower in their ingredient list, it's dried cauliflower. So from the beginning, our brand would always be fresh vegetables. We would never do dehydrated that ground into a flower kind of vegetables, to just make it feel like you were getting vegetables, [inaudible 00:27:59] and it was a very specific thing we were doing. And that was so key to get across to our customers that they knew they were actually getting a product made with fresh vegetables, which has a whole different impact in your system and in your body. So always from the beginning of that knowing, wow, you're getting a really great quality, clean label product, that you would be happy to feed your families that you would be so proud to be eating.I mean, we wanted this product because we wanted to buy it ourselves and there was nothing on the market, any anything like it on the market. And we knew like we don't want words you can't pronounce in our products. We eat very clean and it's really usually just one ingredient. And if we eat something that's already made, then we want to be able to know what every single ingredient in that product is and not have anything else in it. So we just felt like that was the revolution we really wanted to be a part of and so that was the brand represents that. It represents that authenticity and that transparency. Yeah, and it's fun and it's lively. We're a lively bunch. Vasa can attest to that. I think it really, we just really continued to stay true to who we are and make sure that the brand was truly representative of who we are.Fabian Geyrhalter:Yeah. Authenticity [crosstalk 00:29:48].Jeanne David:Vasa, do you have any other?Vasa Martinez:No, I think both of those really address it.Fabian Geyrhalter:And looking back, when was that moment where you felt like your product could turn into a brand. Like where in the beginning, obviously you launch the product and you were just hoping for the best. But what was that moment? And that might be linked to sales figures? Maybe not. But when was that moment where you just came home and you said, "You know what? I think we're turning into a brand. I think this is it. We just made it to that point."Jeanne David:Yeah, I would say, as Vasa joined us, and really began... April of 2018, a lot of things began to really change. I describe it as it was, like gasoline on a fire. In 2018, we grew 25% month over month. So that means the product began, our velocities at shelf were really, really high. So that meant that the consumer was really loving what we were doing. So I would say Vasa, that to me, that's when we're like, "Okay, we've got market acceptance. We've got concept acceptance" Because again, we were the first one to market, so nobody was eating cauliflower bread, and it was even too offensive to call it cauliflower bread in the beginning. So to really know that the wave was, and the trend that we were really hoping to set with that, and then I would say the branding along with that was really the moment. Vasa, would you agree?Vasa Martinez:Yeah. So I came on board the end of April, early May we started doing our first posting, and it's not very often you immediately see traction. And during that time, yeah, IG was a little bit different, Facebook was a bit different. There's certain conditions that were maybe more favorable than the now, but either way, the traction was something where I was like, whoa, there's something here. Aside from the product solving a huge problem, I believe that there's a correlation between the how big the problem solves, and when you solve a bread problem and make it low carbon actually tastes good and have good texture. It made sense to me when we started seeing people with product that the sentiment was nearly 100% positive. So everything was tracking in the right direction, and I would say, as a few months progressed summer 2018 hit. I would say that's pretty accurate as when I realized all right, there's really something here and we started gearing up for it.Fabian Geyrhalter:That's fantastic. And I always like to come from the high notes to feels like especially with packaged goods like that. I mean, so much can go wrong. I mean, from the manufacturing from the plant all the way to the market, the packaging, how the copy was there [inaudible 00:33:22] enormous brand fail that you look back to and you're like, Oh, my God, I wish that they would have never happened. Which is something happened with your branding, where you felt like, "Okay, this is something that we will never do again."Jeanne David:Vasa, I'll let you speak to that.Fabian Geyrhalter:That's the easy way out Jeanne.Jeanne David:You have better insight than I.Vasa Martinez:Man, I'm really on the spot here.Fabian Geyrhalter:If there's nothing there's nothing, I-t's totally fine.Vasa Martinez:Yeah, I'm probably going to take the fifth on this one.Fabian Geyrhalter:Yeah, no worries. Usually with packaging, there are all of these horror stories about that one, I talked to Stacy of Stacy's Pita Chips. And she had like, okay, how long do you have? Because there's so many things that can always go wrong. So I always like to highlight something like that. But if there's nothing on top of your mind, then it's totally fine.Vasa Martinez:No, I don't think there's anything on top of my mind [crosstalk 00:34:29].Fabian Geyrhalter:Okay, cool.Vasa Martinez:Normal growing things, but definitely taking the fifth.Fabian Geyrhalter:Okay, perfect. Something that I always like to do with my clients. At the end of our brands workshops, we really like to define the brand in one word or two words, really kind of like crystallizing. If you would describe what that brand stands for, and I call it the brand DNA. Like what would that be just in one word, what would Outer Aisle be? Do you have any thoughts on that? If it's one or two words that basically describe the essence of your brand?Vasa Martinez:Jeanne, do want to go first on this one?Jeanne David:Yeah, the essence of our brand, I would say pure, clean. Yeah, those are the two words that come to me, but those aren't [inaudible 00:35:27]... I think more of the product quality in that probably not as much on the brand. Vasa, what would you say?Vasa Martinez:If I just choose one word, for Outer Aisle, I'm going to stick with a running theme that I've gone with, and that's family. I think that's the one that's the common thread throughout all from the inner weavings of how the organs set up and the departments and how people are treated so great and the love and respect. And even on the packaging below the allergens, it says, love and kindness added. I think for me, when I look at Outer Aisle, when I read about the brand story, when I observe how Outer Aisle operates when I'm looking from the inside and outside, objectively, family is that word.Fabian Geyrhalter:Family and health most probably right? Yeah, a combination of the two. Jeanne, do you have a piece of brand advice for founders as a takeaway, now that you went through, starting a company in your 50s, which it's not easy to actually start doing a consumer product from scratch. But definitely, at this point in your life, just to push for this and to say, this is really what I want to do, which is so inspirational. How did you like, are there any things you learned where you say, you know what this is something that I would like to share with other founders, as a takeaway?Jeanne David:I would say, I discounted how important the whole branding piece was. And I would say it was huge, and I probably should have paid attention to it sooner. But we were kind of bootstrapping it, you don't have money to spend on marketing much less the kind of money experts really charge for that. But I would say we decided to just, to do it and it was the best thing we ever did. The other thing is we had a group which I liked. We had someone who was kind of best in class on voice and they were the ones that really helped us with the voice how do we translate who we are and what is that voice. And so we had someone work on voice, someone work on design, Vasa was working on social media and integrating that component. So it was a group effort and it was a very focused effort for about six months and that was probably the most important thing we did for the company and the brand.Fabian Geyrhalter:Surrounding yourself with a couple of experts in the niche and then and then working together on creating something great as a brand that's fantastic. I think that's super super important. And I guess not just one person instead of hiring just one person but actually finding the best guy in voice, the best guy with this and it was an agency. So Vasa Would you say that was true that that was an important time for us?Vasa Martinez:Yeah, definitely. Voice is definitely important, got to be consistent with it after it's identified. That was definitely a strong investment and always is a strong investment is to invest in that visual branding and voice branding as much as it is any other part.Fabian Geyrhalter:And it immediately stood out to me that's why I quoted the website copied because it comes through really, really naturally and organically no pun intended. But as we slowly need to wrap up, listeners who fell in love with your brand just now, where can you get a slice of your non bread? Is it all over the US? Is it only in California? Where can people pick it up?Jeanne David:Vasa, would we say Store Locator is the best way to go but it is national we're in, should be in every whole food. We've just gone through a little bit of a hiccup there but should be back on shelf. We had a UPC switch that caused quite some issues out there. But I think we're pretty much back on shelf there at every wholefoods in the country. So hopefully this is our big national account. But we've got a store locator that should get you to, lots of independent natural stores. So yeah.Fabian Geyrhalter:Fantastic.Vasa Martinez:You can find us-Jeanne David:And online.Vasa Martinez:... online at outeraislegourmet.com. If you click Find a store, anywhere that's scanning Outer Aisle, you can filter by product, whatever you're interested in. You can also find this on Amazon by searching Outer Aisle or Outer Aisle Gourmet. And then if you're in Canada, we actually serve as DTC orders or e-commerce orders in Canada through Sweet & Sprouted, our Canadian partner there. So Google Sweet & Sprouted or find at Sweet & Sprouted on Instagram, and you can order our product and they'll deliver to you anywhere in Canada.Fabian Geyrhalter:Fantastic. Very, very good. Well, thank you both for having been on the show. We really appreciate your time and your insights. This is really great.Jeanne David:Thank you, Fabian, enjoyed being on the show.Vasa Martinez:Thanks so much.

Learn more about Alpha FoodsSupport the show-------->Fabian Geyrhalter:Welcome to the show Cole.Cole Orobetz:Hi Fabian, great to be here.Fabian Geyrhalter:Absolutely, good to have you. So earlier this year you completed a 28 million dollar funding round. Your plant-based frozen meals are hard to miss in the US where you are in over 9000 stores I believe, but now it might even be more. How has this bizarre year of people hoarding food, and supply chain issues across the industries. How has this treated Alpha Foods? How are you guys hanging in there?Cole Orobetz:Yeah well we did, timing was really fortuitous for us to have closed that round basically January, February right before COVID really changed the landscape of everything. And so we had raised the money to execute on a 2020 business plan, and when things started to shut down in March we took a bit of a step back to just survey the landscape. And really what we saw was a huge surge in people purchasing the products, loading their freezers. There was some scarcity mentality, obviously people didn't want to be left with no food products to feed their families. So we definitely saw a huge spike in sales for the first few weeks.Cole Orobetz:And we were very fortunate as well to have a rock solid supply chain, and great manufacturing partners so didn't have a supply disruption to speak of. But one of the interesting things that we saw occurring was the consumer being home bound for more meal occasions, and we had just more opportunity to reach out to them, connect with them just in a different way that we have before. So really that was a big game changer for us, and we did evolve our marketing messaging, our content creation to be a lot more interactive. And we saw a really great response from our consumers who were engaging with us digitally, and so far to this point I guess we're coming into September things are still going really well for us.Cole Orobetz:And I think the awareness that plant protein meal solutions, and options are a great viable alternative to the meat counter part. I think that, that has resonated with more, and more consumers over the last few months than perhaps it had previously.Fabian Geyrhalter:Which makes so much sense, and first of all I'm happy to hear that. I assumed that things would be going pretty well for you during this strange situation that we're all in jointly. But it is really fascinating to think about how people are actually interacting with your brand more now. And the reason why I say fascinating, because I recorded a lot of founders over the last half year, and none of them actually mentioned that. But it makes a lot of sense because people are at home, they actually spend more time with products just because they are stuck, and they start falling in love with some products, and they start to actually get to know new product, and then engage with them. So this is mainly via various social channels I assume right?Cole Orobetz:Yeah that's right. Instagram would be number one but we've also seen an uptake in Pinterest as well as Facebook groups for sure. And I think that would be pretty common across most if not all brands in the consumer space.Fabian Geyrhalter:Sure. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And I did hear that, and I don't know where I heard that but that you either a plant, or that you actually did expand into Asia, and I believe that Hong Kong was one of the places. That obviously must have changed, or did it, or how did that go?Cole Orobetz:Yeah, so we launched there last year in food service and retail, and it's been slowly building in Hong Kong as well as five other countries in Asia. Really the only thing that slowed down was the food service side just because people were not really going out to restaurants, and other places quick serve. But generally speaking we've been very strong in Asia starting with Hong Kong down to Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand, and mainland China. And one of the exciting things for us was the partnership with KFC in Hong Kong with our Alpha Chicken Nugget.Fabian Geyrhalter:Oh that's fantastic.Cole Orobetz:Yeah that was really exciting. And so that did still take place, and launch successfully even though COVID had obviously changed the landscape, and it clearly had hit in Asia first before North America but that didn't, it may have delayed it by a month or two. I'm not sure of the exact time delay effect, but it did launch at the very end of June, and is still ongoing.Fabian Geyrhalter:That is quite a compliment for your plant based chicken right? Because they take their fried chicken pretty seriously over there.Cole Orobetz:Yeah, yeah you're right. They definitely do, and we were thrilled to hear that they had selected our nugget for the test, and we know that it's been selling very well. So we're hoping that, that's just the beginning with KFC, and are looking at other products, and other regions right now specifically around the chicken platform [inaudible 00:05:42].Fabian Geyrhalter:Which is pretty new for you right?Cole Orobetz:Yeah, the nuggets launched about a year and a half ago at retail in the US. And so it's still early for the nugget here in the US, but it has clearly become our hero product of the entire line. We've got 28 retail product but that one by far is receiving the most fanfare, and we think that it's got the biggest potential out of all the products in our product lineup right now.Fabian Geyrhalter:Well and just to talk about being fairly new, the entire company is only five years old. So congratulations that's an amazing lineup of skews after such a short time.Cole Orobetz:Yeah, thank you, we're going to be coming up to our fifth birthday at sometime at the end of this year. So it's been, we've definitely covered a lot of ground in a short period of time that's for sure.Fabian Geyrhalter:So this is maybe the anniversary of podcast episode because this will air at the end of the year. So I'm a little ahead of time right now when we record this in August.Cole Orobetz:Okay, sure.Fabian Geyrhalter:But let's talk about Asia for one more second because I think it's fascinating from a design, and branding, packaging perspective. Since you're also on the shelves there how did the brand have to adjust for that completely different consumer mindset, or did it?Cole Orobetz:That's a great question, and obviously there are language, and cultural barriers, and considerations that me personally, I don't have, I can't add a lot of credibility to what may or may not resonate in the language that I don't speak, or in a country that I don't live in. But we have partners on the ground there that were able to take our base brand product, and package, and include it in a standard retail array of all I guess USA spec packaging. So we didn't actually change the look and face of the package for the initial launch of any of the products, but what we can see is when we get updates on the marketing side on what our partners are doing there at retail and food services it clearly has evolved to be a message that resonates with those that speak Mandarin, and live in the regions.Cole Orobetz:And one final thing I will say on that as well is that we are going to be doing a China specific package probably launching towards the end of 2020, or early Q1 with a name that's been developed that resonates with a Chinese consumer in mind. Because there is no direct translation of when you put our brand name with the product name, they don't always fit, and go together, or make sense.Fabian Geyrhalter:Yeah.Cole Orobetz:So I think there's been a number of companies that have learned that the hard way over time that you probably just can't do a direct translation to every language you want to put on your package. And so we've been very thoughtful about how we approach the launch in a package that is not USA spec. But they do sell all English label USA spec packaging of our products, and others right now in [inaudible 00:09:05] retail shelves, but clearly there is an opportunity to probably connect with consumers who want a local language packaging-Fabian Geyrhalter:Interesting.Cole Orobetz:On the shelf, or in their freezer.Fabian Geyrhalter:Yeah, that's really interesting. Going all the way back, on your website there is an our story section but it is really not as much of the heartfelt founding story than a mission, or a purpose statement which in itself is very important. But I did hear that the actually founding story is quite interesting as well, I think it involves a blizzard, and a plant based bagel dog? How did Alpha Feed start, and what is your personal background, professional background coming into this?Cole Orobetz:Sure, no you got the two points, the blizzard, the bagel dog bang on. Yeah, so a bit of a background on myself. Born and raised in Canada, and mostly grew up in Calgary Alberta which is like the Texas of Canada. And really grew up eating animal products every day of my life without question. That's just what was put on my plate. That's just what we ate. And so that's the background of how I grew up and in relation to food.And I ended up going through with the professional accounting program [inaudible 00:10:30], and landing in a venture capital role in 2010, and that's where I got my start in food and beverage. We invested in food and agriculture technology, and during that time period we saw a ton of different brands, and companies grow, and flourish, and also make mistakes along the way. So that was a really valuable learning experience for many reasons, and to also see that the great success stories as well, and there were a number of those along the way.But one of the entrepreneurs that I had met during that time Loren Wallace was the founder, and CEO of Good Karma Foods. And we were in discussions for a funding round from our fund to Good Karma, and didn't end up completely the transaction together. There was a just a better deal on the table, but we stayed in touch professionally, and as friends. And the blizzard and bagel dog story is he reached out to me in 2015. He said, "Hey man, I've got a product concept for you. It's plant based." And he's a lifelong, or nearly lifelong vegan. And I said, "Okay, send it up." I thought to myself it would taste like sadness. It's made from plants. There's no way that I will like this.So anyways the FedEx arrived. I threw these things in the freezer, and yes they were a vegan bagel dogs which is a vegan hotdog wrapped in a bagel. Yeah so in the freezer it went, and I went traveling for a couple weeks I think, and came back. And did come back to the first part of winter, and this nasty blizzard hit Calgary, and it was dinner time. I had nothing to eat in my house except for frozen berries, and I didn't want those. It was cold, and so I said, "Well if I can't get out of the house I need to eat something so I'm going to try this bagel dog." And I tossed it in the oven, and loaded it up with whatever I could find in my fridge, and I absolutely loved it. I just devoured this thing. It was so good.Fabian Geyrhalter:It didn't taste like sadness after all.Cole Orobetz:No, that was not the main ingredient. That's right. It was actually quite delightful. And the light bulb went off me which was if me as a meat eater, and at that point I had been starting to reduce my meat consumption considerably just for some personal health reasons. But it was still tough to find something I could get excited about, and so that a-ha moment was, "Well if I can enjoy this product, and love it, and crave it then there's got to be hundreds of millions of other people out there that will have the same experience."And so that was really the genesis of how Alpha came to be. And a few months later Loren and I had started the journey of Alpha. I think it was February 2016 when we got going. And really our vision was to build a globally relevant plant protein company that could bring delicious products to the plates of meat eaters who are looking for a delicious plant based option but perhaps weren't excited, or perhaps they didn't know what they didn't know about plant based eating. And so the first wave of products that we had created and launched were to be convenient, and it had to be delicious, and they had to be made out of plants, and that was the three North Stars of our first line up of burritos that launched at Walmart in 2017.Fabian Geyrhalter:Not a bad place to launch.Cole Orobetz:Mm-hmm (affirmative), yeah.Fabian Geyrhalter:I talked with Chris Kerr the day of the Beyond Meat went public, and he was a key investor from day one with the company, and that brand went into the same direction by being able to actually place their patties in the meat isle of markets, of the frozen food aisle. Right? Which was a huge win for them, but I'm sure also for the meatless community as a whole because I feel that catering to basically meat eaters is really, really difficult because everyone comes in with your attitude. Right? Where you would only eat it if you're stuck in a blizzard. How do you convince people? Is it just tons of samples at stores, or is sampling the way the go? What was the journey like to convince people?Cole Orobetz:No, it is really the million dollar question. Of the entire consumer population that is open to eating something there that meat, I think it's about 90%. I'm sure the numbers have changed. How do you get their attention, and how do you convince them that it's safe to try, and that they won't be disappointed. And I know that every plant based company out there is asking the same question, and they have their own take on it.But to address your question, absolutely tasting is believing, and getting product samples in front of people, ensuring they're prepared properly is really the first stop. And also they have to be open to the idea that it could be delicious, and not be made of what they think it's typically made out of. And funny enough some of our earliest investors are the biggest carnivores that I have ever but they came in to the opportunity after having tried some of the early product samples. And they were on their own journey of, the doctors told them that they had to reduce their meat consumption for various reasons.So that is really the first step for, in my opinion is the awareness. Okay I need to eat less meat. I think I can eat plant based protein, but I don't know what's out there. It's a whole new world, and that's where I was a number of years ago. And so I think that where Alpha sits is we're that transitional brand by making plants easy to consume, to prepare, and enjoyable it takes the edge off of that extreme lifestyle shift that some may think that you have to make to go [inaudible 00:17:06] to move and evolve into a more plant centric diet.Fabian Geyrhalter:Well and I'm almost certain that one of the best marketing tricks to happen to the plant based industry was the virus, and the quarantine. Quite frankly if you have to eat three meals a day, which those of us who are lucky in the western world, at some point you just run out of options, and you don't want to see meat anymore. Right? Even if you're a 100% meat eater, at some point being at home you're just, and you don't want to cook anymore either. So at some point just finding a product like yours is most probably pretty logical that that would happen.Cole Orobetz:Yeah, you're right absolutely. And another factor too is that there were empty refrigerated coolers that used to have chicken, and beef, and pork-Fabian Geyrhalter:Right.Cole Orobetz:And turkey, and all the meat that people would be used to seeing. And so I think it was a combination of yes being home bound, cooking all your meals from morning to night in your house, but also going to the grocery store for that potentially nerve-racking grocery run during a pandemic when there's a risk of being sick, or whatever, and going to your usual meat cooler and not finding the steak, or the burgers that you used to buy. And so with the awareness that the virus had actually had a really big impact in the meat packing plants, there started to be a number of sources of information, or these proof points that something is going on with meat. I can't buy it. These people are getting-Fabian Geyrhalter:Right.Cole Orobetz:Sick that are working in the plants.Fabian Geyrhalter:Yeah.Cole Orobetz:And maybe I should be aware of something different. And I think that, that also had a big impact on the consumer awareness, and appetite for plant based protein as an alternative source. And you're right, eating three meals a day with all the same animal proteins cooked in the same kitchen can probably get a little monotonous. And I think in our, especially Alpha's broad lineup of both prepared meals, solutions, and ingredients it became a great brand to connect with for some of those consumers that were just looking for something different.Fabian Geyrhalter:Because it's easy, it's not only easy it's also very approachable. Right? Because you have the burrito, you have the pizza. You have staples that people understand.Cole Orobetz:Yeah.Fabian Geyrhalter:So it's not like they go into a garden patty that's called Garden Patty.Cole Orobetz:Right.Fabian Geyrhalter:It's like, "No, here's your crispy chicken patty." It just isn't chicken.Cole Orobetz:Yeah, yeah. And that is really again the essence of the Alpha brand and DNA is those familiar products, familiar formats, familiar flavors that people had probably tried, or see on a daily basis in restaurants, and other places they go. So it just happens to be made out of plants. And so that takes the scariness factor out of trying plant based if they've never tried it before.Fabian Geyrhalter:Yeah.Cole Orobetz:And everyone's eaten a, well not everybody, but many people have eaten burritos. I think everyone knows what a pizza is. So you're absolutely right, and chicken nuggets as well. Those are staples I would say most people are pretty familiar with.Fabian Geyrhalter:I think the idea of the brand DNA potentially, or the DNA of the company being around familiarity is really, really interesting because I tried to put my finger on it because the way that you named the product it's really in your face right? The Alpha burrito, the Alpha chicken wing, but also the packaging. It's black. It basically fits into the typical freezer product. There's something about the familiarity which I always wondered how much does it pop out, how much does it stand out, but that is all strategic to actually make it feel more familiar. It's really interesting.How did the name come about Alpha? Alpha has a lot of connotations right? An alpha person, alpha in religious settings. There's plenty of connotations, but how did it come about?Cole Orobetz:Yeah, another story I guess with some roots that were prior to us actually starting the company. And it really stemmed from the actual vegan hotdog inside that bagel dog which was the vision was that would be the best plant based hotdog out there, and Alpha is another name for the best, or the top. And we happened to have a hotdog at that time, and so the Alpha dog gave rise to Alpha Foods, and that's really how we view the products and the brand is best in class, and a leader for taste, texture, eating experience, and just enjoyment factor of the food product.Fabian Geyrhalter:Well and it says a lot about you as a brand too subliminally, because the alpha kid always gets the food.Cole Orobetz:That sounds right.Fabian Geyrhalter:Yeah, you're the one who's just rising to the top.Cole Orobetz:That's right, you got it.Fabian Geyrhalter:Let's talk about the importance of branding for a little while here. The Alpha logo type plays a very central point in your identity even on the packaging. Alpha leads the product as I already talked about. Right? The Alpha nugget, the Alpha burger, and not only are you the co-founder, president, and CFO, and maybe a lot of other things too of a fast growing CPG company but you're also a founding member of the Angel Group which is an angel investing group that you and I talked offline a little bit about before the podcast for early stage CPG brands that invest in brands that are already on the shelves. So branding for you must play a crucial role in your professional life. What does branding mean to you being in the CPG space? What does it mean to you?Cole Orobetz:Well I think to me it's how I relate to the products and [inaudible 00:23:29] with the company, the products, and I guess values at a deeper level, or I guess how I might think about a company, or a product when I'm not potentially using it. And it has that kind of stickiness factor in mind. For Alpha we wanted to create a really inviting brand, and message to our consumers that plant based was approachable, and not scary, and that they didn't have to make extreme lifestyle shifts to enjoy the product. And I think that's really how we're in a position for success as a bit of a disruptive brand making plant based easy, and enjoyable for people to substitute, and ditch their meat products.Fabian Geyrhalter:How important was data to you in the beginning? Were you a very data oriented company, or did you even sometimes go against early customer data, and you launched something that you weren't sure people would actually resonate with?Cole Orobetz:Yeah, I wish we wouldn't have had more time, and resources in our early days to focus on data, and that's the honest answer is consumer data is very expensive.Fabian Geyrhalter:Yeah.Cole Orobetz:And it's time consuming to capture. So there was, no there's definitely enough data out there to give us direction on consumer preferences, on where the market is going in the plant based sector. It's heating up at a fairly high level, and we triangulate a number of pieces of data from the market as well as some consumer feedback on early products to really refine our product mix in our early platform of products.And then there is some element of just a gut feel for certain opportunities, and products to develop that we had to have absolute conviction that you're not always going to have 100% the data you need to make perfect decisions based on those kinds of facts. I wish we could, and still don't. It's everything is moving, and especially during COVID there's a whole slew of data sets, and consumer preferences that have changed, and probably permanently. So in our early days we definitely used some directional intelligence data, but we didn't have a perfect data set to it to make those exhaustive decisions with.Fabian Geyrhalter:Which is fascinating because data is so important to [inaudible 00:26:10], and you coming from that background, and now having made it through the first five years of running a start up yourself, and seeing the growth, and seeing the hurdles, and the typical start up fails I'm sure that go along with it because it ain't easy. And regardless if you already have a product, and you've got the perfect experience it's still not easy. Has that experience changed the way that you invest in companies now?Cole Orobetz:I think a little bit, and I would say for early stage investing, angel stage before you get to the growth stage of a company, and looking at investing and past proof of concept, I guess for me it was boiled down to a few things which is the management team, the product itself, and the sector. And if you have directional intelligence that the sector itself is doing well, well there's an opportunity there. If the product seems to have a fit, or address a consumer need state without extensive data that's great because it pays great if we're talking about a food or beverage product, and then the team. Is the team capable?So I think those three factors would get me through I guess an angel, or early stage investment decision more so than data because in the early stages there's a time factor, and an execution factor, and that really is mostly driven by the team. And if they have a product in the right sector you have to give those three factors an opportunity to get to the point where they are uncovering data, or potentially paying for it, or obtaining it to further refine the next phase, or next stage of the company because you're right data becomes more, and more important as companies grow up. It drives a lot of the decision making resource allocation where companies will, and will not invest, and also to refine product mix, or products on the shelf that may be doing better, or worse than a benchmark. So it becomes much more, and more important in I would say that growth stage, but in early stage it's really tough to make decisions based solely on data.Fabian Geyrhalter:Right, right, I can see that absolutely. Looking back at Alpha Food, I know you mentioned that you got into Walmart pretty early on, but what was that one big breakthrough moment where you felt like now you're changing from being a start up, and you're actually turning into a brand? When did you feel that? This may, or may not be directly to sales figures right, but when was that moment where you just looked at your business partner, and you're high fiving, and you're like, "I think we just made it to that step."Cole Orobetz:Yeah, well I guess looking back I don't think there was any single moment in time because there have been so many. There's so many wins and great moments on a daily, weekly, monthly basis. And we've really been building this brad brick by brick, and consumer by consumer. So definitely getting three straight years of distribution expansion, looking back at the end of each year and it's been one of those proud moments. But I would say the overseas expansion, and the KFC partnership was really monumental, and validating for us. We had clearly started in the United States, and didn't really have any ambitions to be global, or international until we had really ironed things out in the US, and done a great job.And it just so happened that the opportunity to sell into Asia with a partner on the ground, Green Monday came along, and we pursued that, and a number of months later we had landed in a KFC. And that was really cool to see the press, and the images, and the excitement factor of a product that had been developed here quite some time ago. So yeah I would say that was definitely one of those highlight moments for us.Fabian Geyrhalter:And I love how you started this with there's a highlight every day, every week, every month. That's the founder spirit. That's the only way to get through it because there's going to be tons of fails along the way as well. And I always love to at least talk about this a little bit because I think it's inspirational for other founders to hear about the road not always being perfectly smooth. I know I talked to Stacy of Stacy's Pita Chips about this, and she had so many answers to this question, and I'd love to keep this question definitely for my CPG founders that I interview. Was there a ginormous brand fail that you went through? Because I know with packaging a lot can go wrong right? With translations, with how things get cropped, or even having a food product so much can go wrong. Was there anything in the brand level where you felt like, "Oh that was a big faux pas, and maybe I should bring this up because others can learn from it." Not to put you on the spot but definitely putting you on the spot.Cole Orobetz:Yeah, yeah. Well I would say not one gigantic brand fail, just dozens, probably hundreds of small ones because the consumers obviously only see the finished product but what came before, what appears on a package can be very challenging. And before we got to our first logo, and look and feel of the first package we went through four agencies, and must have seen over 100 different versions of our logo-Fabian Geyrhalter:Oh wow.Cole Orobetz:Concepts, and there was at one point it looked like we were going to be a space company sending things into space. And it was really, there was a time factor for us, there's pressure on us to put this brand together. We wanted to go out and sell it, but we just couldn't find an agency, or the creative spark to get us to that place where we were really happy with a design that could be on a website, or a consumer placing package.So the initial logo and design was challenging, and I think one of the other moments that sticks out was when we printed our first commercial run of the burritos that were going to Walmart we had the word vegan on the front of the package. And it's true we are a vegan food company. We typically use the term plant based instead of vegan, but it is a vegan product. And we were so proud of the burritos that came off the line, and they were going into Walmart our first customer, and consumers were going to buy it, and love it. And I think it was not even a week after we got those out the door did we see a study come out, I think it was John Hopkins University that said, "Don't use the word vegan it means poor taste, and it means that it's less healthy to consumers." According to this survey.Fabian Geyrhalter:Yeah.Cole Orobetz:So we thought, "Ah, damn." So now we have to go back and spend more money on redesign, and change the plates, and garbage the packaging, and just be okay with those products that are in the marketplace. So I can't recall what we swapped it for, but it got yanked, and got put on the back. And we are certified vegan now, but it's just not something that apparently according to studies, and surveys, and things that's just not something you want on the front panels. So that was more of a funny little road bump, speed bump along the way, and we evolved in that pretty quickly.Fabian Geyrhalter:Well in talking about the power of branding right? The word vegan has been branded, and mislabeled for such a long time that it now stands for something right? And if I read vegan even in 2020, I am still a little bit more held back than if I read plant based. And I think that too is because of branding. Right? Because plant based that's Beyond Meat, that's Impossible, that's a lot of other brands that started celebrating that word. It is amazing what a word can do.Cole Orobetz:Yeah, that's a great point. And I think that the word vegan can unfortunately bring up I guess extreme lifestyle change, or choice for certain consumers who may think it's just a bad word, and may not really understand what it means. So the term plant based is really the, it's made it safe for people to explore and enjoy food products that are the same thing as vegan but just a different word.Fabian Geyrhalter:Well and anyone had vegan food even as a meat eater, and that's why it took you a blizzard for you to try it again because it has changed a lot in the last five, 10 years.Cole Orobetz:That's right.Fabian Geyrhalter:And there's one thing that I would like to add to what you have said before about going rounds, and rounds, and hundreds of designs with agencies until you actually found finally that right design. I think one important step is to really in the beginning look at the brand strategy, to really refine what is the brand, what does it stand for, what is the mission, what is the vision, what is the positioning in the marketplace, what is all of that together with the agency so they can actually then derive something. And I think that happens a lot in start ups that, that is either not being taken seriously on the agency's side, or it's just there is no time from the founder's side because you just need to get design, and you need it now.And I think that is a step that for founders in my eyes is extremely important as I work with founders on creating the brand. Because at that point they can't say, "I like this." Or, "I don't like this." But it's like, "Does this go back to our plan? Is this great for our customer? Would they love it?" Right? There's this fictitious third person that can look at the design during the process, and that's usually the customer right? And that's what we need to focus on. So I wanted to put this in there.Is there any piece of brand advice from your end for founders as a take away as we're slowly coming to an end here. Anything that you learned over the years where you would say, "Look this is something that I know about branding." Maybe specifically for CPG product, or else wise?Cole Orobetz:Yeah, branded wise I think definitely what you just touched on about the brand strategy, the vision, the mission, all of those items. Having those front and center before getting to a pretty design. 100% agree because it really narrows the scope, and the array of options that you will be presented with when coming to that first wave of designs which is exciting, but I think what you just touched on is something that I wish we'd probably would have spent more time on in the beginning to get to our brand that became the face of the company, and the face of the products, and so on. So spending more time up front I think, and unfortunately it can be expensive but I think it's one of those investments that just has to be done the sooner the better.And also I think that there's definitely an interesting shift that's happened through COVID with the retailers where they may not want to bring on brands that appear to be too risky because of potential supply chain disruptions and things. But I think also for founders, and those developing a food brand there's a bit of a fake it until you make it mindset that you need to put something innovative and cool, and fresh in front of a retailer, and really act like a grown up company to get that shelf placement because they do need to offer new products, and innovation for their consumers. And so I think that, that's something that brands and founders shouldn't be scared of is really swing for the fences, and bring the best foot forward even though the company might be small, and still getting on its feet.Fabian Geyrhalter:Great, great, great take away. Listeners who'd like to get a taste for your plant based meals where can we find Alpha Foods? I guess 9000 plus stores so there's a pretty good chance they will find it.Cole Orobetz:Yeah, I'd say that's a pretty big number of places to buy physically. You can go onto our website. There's a store locator on eatalphafoods.com so type ina zip code, and there's definitely stores that will pop up, and we're also actually going to be selling online through our website as well. That will be a great way to get products directly to the door that may not be all available at the same location. Because that's one of the pieces of feedback we get is not all products are available at every store, but many of them. So being able to purchase online where many consumers are going now is important. So we invested in our direct to consumer business.Fabian Geyrhalter:Great, great, good move, good move. Well, I invite everyone to check that out. And thank you Cole for having been on the show. It was a real pleasure to have you on.Cole Orobetz:Yeah, likewise thanks, Fabian. I appreciate you having us. 

Learn more about Unbound MerinoSupport the show-------->Fabian Geyrhalter:Welcome to the show, Dan.Dan Demsky:Hey, how are you?Fabian Geyrhalter:Very good. Very good. Good to have you here. I love your backstory. I listened to another podcast interview, mainly because it actually resembles my story a little bit as I grew my design agency organically to a point of, under parenthesis, great success, at least to the outside world, but I myself just felt really stuck. So I flipped the switch and I started over, and it seems like you were doing something very similar with a video production company. Tell us a little bit about your journey and then your big epiphany to switch from the service industry to the product industry, which is always a very smart move.Dan Demsky:Yeah. Well, I had a really, really good experience and a good journey doing what I was doing, but I never originally intended to start a company. I was doing freelance video production with my best friend and business partner. And we started getting really busy, and before we knew it, we had a company. It wasn't like we thought, "Let's start a company," we were just doing little projects. But being so busy, we started having to hire people to help, and then our client roster grew. And then we had a small downtown studio in downtown Toronto, and then a big office. And then we had 20 employees, and we're like, "How did this happen?" It just happened. And it felt really good. It was really cool. And we were in our early 20s, we felt we were so smart and so savvy.We were dumb and young, but we felt smart and savvy at the time. And it went on for years, but somewhere along the way, the business just, it didn't call me like at once did, it didn't excite me like it once did. And a lot of the realities of having a company and then the journey of entrepreneurship really blew up in my face. I love the journey, I love the ups, I love the downs. I love it all. But I felt at one point I'm just in the wrong place. And just for years, I was trying to think, "Well, is this what I'm going to do for the rest of my life or am I going to figure out something else?" And what I realized is the people around me who had e-commerce product businesses, they had a different level of scalability to their companies. They had a different level of freedom.There's something different about what they were doing in their business model that just drew me. So I knew I need to create a product business and that product is going to be sold online. But that's as far as I was really able to wrap my head around where I wanted to go. So that's not a lot of information to give yourself of what you want to do. It's not an idea, that's just like, "I think I want to have a business that has this business model at a high level."Fabian Geyrhalter:Which is really unusual, Dan. Because usually, people on my show, they're like, "I was sitting around and suddenly I'm like, 'I need to fix this,' and that's how the... Or I had this huge passion, and out of this passion suddenly grew a business," like with your first business. And so it's very unusual, but it also makes it a lot of sense. I can 100% relate to that, where at some point, you just look at the lifestyle of other people around you and they're not working their butt off like you are, and they don't have payroll like you do. They didn't do like production work which started with cool design and strategy, and suddenly it ends up just churning hours in payroll.But really, just thinking about, "Okay, how am I going to flip this around and what am I going to do next?" So you must've gone through months or years of just thinking about what could that be.Dan Demsky:Yeah. And first of all, there's nothing wrong with a service business, but what matters in a service business is that, I think, you have to be passionate about what the service is. Because when I was really into the video production, when we were into what we were doing, every day, the challenge, all the work we were putting in was exciting and fun, but once I lost the passion for it and it was no longer calling me, that's when I figured out I needed to get out. So yeah, on a simple level, I was just thinking of the business model, but what I started doing was we started ticking on a chalkboard or a whiteboard or on a piece of paper.Every couple of weeks we'd meet up and we would think, what is a potential business idea that could be a product? And we would just throw ideas at the wall. And so many of them were terrible. They were just bad ideas. But what we did that was right was we just were thinking, I was framing my head around, "We can do this. We can create a new business that's going to be a product business." And that opened up the lens for me to look at the world and, even on an unconscious level, try to think, "Well, what is that thing going to be?" And you do need that moment. Like you just said before, a lot of entrepreneurs, they say, "Oh, I need to solve this problem, or I have this thing I'm obsessed with," and then that idea comes into fruition and they go and they chase after it and they make it happen.I didn't have that, but what I did have was the hunger to find that. And if you're not looking, you're not going to find it. So it wasn't until I had that moment where I have identified a problem, I identified the moment where I'm like, "I could create this product that I wish existed." Then it was like, click, boom, there it is. I'm going to go do it now. But it took years. You said, did it take weeks, months, years? It took years. We were tinkering with ideas for probably two to three years before we laid the groundwork to start moving forward on a specific idea.Some of them we ideated with a little bit more, moved a little bit down road, thought, "This is a good idea, but maybe in not good timing. This one is a bad idea." We'd just go through them. But it took, I'd say two to three years until we move forward saying, "This is the idea that we want to go out on."Fabian Geyrhalter:And so when you say, we, was it you and your significant other, or you and a potential business partner? Who was it?Dan Demsky:My two best friends.Fabian Geyrhalter:Oh, that's great.Dan Demsky:Yeah. We didn't have a business idea and I found some strategic partners, so it was me hanging out with my buddies. So we'd go, we'd sit at a lunch, like on the lunch break or on a Friday night and we'd have some beers and we'd just throw some ideas at the wall. So it was kind of a social experience, we were just having fun. But the intent was like, "Let's figure out a product business because that's what we want. That's the life that we want to live. We want to start a new business, but we want one that has the scalability of a product business. Let's just figure it out, and let's have beers and that fun while we're doing it."Fabian Geyrhalter:Yeah. And it's really interesting because suddenly it's two other people that need to be excited about the same idea, which is double as hard, three times as hard suddenly, to actually find that idea where all three say, "You know what? This could be it. This is it. We all feel like this could be a great product."Dan Demsky:Well, this is the way I always look at it. I feel like you can have friends who are just there for you, to support you emotionally, whatever. And then you can have friends that have utility and function in your life that they have skills that you could work with. And I don't look at that as a negative or a sour way of looking at what a friendship could be, I think utility is a good thing. I can go out for beers on a Friday night with any group of friends, but why not go out with the ones who have that zest for wanting to do things with you, to create things with you. There's that old adage, "You're the average of the five people closest to you." That to me is the most important way to live your life.If there are people that are close to you and they're not ambitious and they don't care to take more out of life, that doesn't mean they're bad people. They could be great people, but may you can have people a little closer to you that do have that, because if they do have that zest to want to do more in life, to build things, to create things, and those are the people that you spend your most of the time with, that becomes the bar in which you want to live your life. And that's just the people I surround myself with. Now, having said that, I'm very lucky because these are the people I grew up with, these are my lifelong best friends. We just happened to be this way.And maybe sometimes we all push each other. Maybe I'm the most ambitious one day, and that makes them want to roll up their sleeves a little bit more, but in times when I'm not my most productive and I'm not my most ambitious, one of my business partners, Andrew, for example, or Dima, they're firing on all cylinders, and I feel, "Ah, man, I got to work harder. I want to do better." So I work really hard to make sure that I'm surrounding myself with great people. And I'm lucky to have great people in my life. And once you have that, going out for beers on a Friday night is more than just telling inside jokes and taking a whiskey shots and drinking beers. It becomes like a pen and paper on the table and you start to think of bigger ideas and you start to create together.It's still just going out for beers at the end of the day, but the results of it are a lot more palpable.Fabian Geyrhalter:Couldn't agree more. Couldn't agree more. And the actual idea was born, Dan, I believe, on your honeymoon, right? Or when you were traveling with your wife?Dan Demsky:That's correct. You want me to tell the story of that? I discovered Merino wool as a way to solve the problem for my previous trip with her, which was when we had way too much luggage, all of which was hers, none of it which was actually needed or worn, and I had to haul stuff up hills for her and it was very frustrating. And on our honeymoon, we decided to travel with just a carry on. And the way to do that, I was Googling, "How do you travel overseas with just to carry on?" And I discovered Merino wool on a Reddit post where this guy said, "I pack Merino wool t-shirts because they're antimicrobial, antibacterial, odor resistant." Now, if you wear these multiple days in a row, even if you sweat through them, they'll never smell and they'll be just as fresh as the first day you put it on."I thought, "Perfect, I got to find this Merino wool." And I went out looking for Merino wool stuff, but everything I found looked like active wear, as it was. Now, Merino wool, we didn't invent this material, it was already being used in stuff for outdoors, stuff you can do a trip with, stuff you can run a triathlon with, stuff like that. And because it was made for this purpose, it really had that aesthetic. So I bought some Merino wool stuff and it performed as promised, it performed brilliantly. But when I look back at the pictures from the honeymoon, I'd be at a cocktail bar and I'd be wearing this t-shirt that had a reflective logo on it, and a cut that seemed a little bit more athletic wear.I look at a place, and I remember feeling out of place. And I thought, "Why can't I find more simple, stylish, timeless, classic type of?" I'm talking about a plain black v-neck t-shirt or crew neck t-shirt, but something that fits a little bit nicer, that doesn't have those reflective embellishments, doesn't look like I'm supposed to be going out for a run, maybe something that I can put on a nice pair of pants on and a watch and go out to a cocktail bar and I feel like I was in the right place. And it was very hard to find. So after years of searching, I was like, "Aha, I want that product for me, and I can't find it. So maybe I should go create it."So I went to these two guys and I said, "This is the idea. This is what I think." We were all looking for something. And I pitched them why it made sense. Andrew was the first person who went and he got some Merino wool clothing, he was like, "Wow, this is the best stuff ever." But he felt the same way about what was available. We had to figure out how to manufacture clothing, and let's do a crowdfunding campaign to see if the market actually is interested in this angle for Merino clothing that we haven't seen out there. But that was our start.Fabian Geyrhalter:That's really great. And so what you actually did is you then took the story and you changed it around a little bit for your website where it talks about the three co-founders traveling together to see live bands, that's how the idea was born, but you did that spin on the story ever so slightly, because you started to understand your target audience at that point, right?Dan Demsky:No, no. This is who we are. I've been going to see this band, Fish, with my two business partners since we were in high school. We have traveled all over the world. We don't come from money, we were just hobbling together little ventures in order to be able to pay for all these adventures that would go on together. And that's just who we are. The idea was born out of the aha moment I had when traveling on the honeymoon. But when I brought it to them, we were just thinking about how well this fits into like the way we live. And we're not really fashion people, it's is not about clothing, it's about living simply. This thinking translates far beyond the clothing, it's about having less things in your life, but better things. Living simply.That's why it was so easy to get the enthusiasm in them. I came up with this idea for my own traveling without them, but I came to them and it's like, "It fits perfectly. This fits perfectly to who we are." And that's what makes it so easy for the marketing side of things, because this idea is so authentically us that all of the talking points about the product and the brand, it just falls into place naturally, because this is us. If this brand existed before we created it, we would just be customers.Fabian Geyrhalter:Yeah. Because the target audience is you. I mean, it's your pain point, it's how you like to travel. And quite frankly, my life was very different 15 years ago when I didn't travel just with a carry on, and now all I do... I mean, Europe for three weeks, carry on, it doesn't matter. Like even skiing vacation, it doesn't matter, it's all carry on. But it takes a lot to actually get to that epiphany, and then it takes really good product to take with you. So that it's very versatile.Dan Demsky:That takes preparation and thinking, and then we just make a little part of that a little simpler, and that was our whole thinking. We said, "What products could we make that would reduce the largest amount of load in someone's backpack or carry on suitcase?" So that was when we started with just t-shirts, underwear and socks, because we were thinking those are things that you need to bring lots and lots of. So what if you could bring less, how much packing is reduced?Fabian Geyrhalter:In your Indiegogo video, you talked about wearing a single one of your shirts for, I don't know, like a month in a row or something outrageous.Dan Demsky:46 days.Fabian Geyrhalter:Yeah. Yeah. And my first thought is, "Wow, that's disgusting." No stink is great, but no washing is just gross. So to me, that falls into that just because you can do it doesn't mean you should category, but the underlying idea must've resonated with your presumably 20 to 40-year-old meal traveler type audience. I see people on Instagram talking about how they're wearing your shirt traveling through Thailand for 18 days straight without washing it. So that was the proof point. The idea that, "Listen, that's how you can... " That doesn't mean you're going to actually wear it for 18 days like the guy in Thailand.Dan Demsky:Here's the thing, do you want to wear it 46 days in a row? Probably not. Can you? Yes. And the whole thing that we were doing there, and we were making this campaign thinking people are going to say that's disgusting. But the truth is this, it's just a sensational claim, that's true. We can, and I actually did it. I actually put this to the test. And if you watch our video in our original Indiegogo video, you'll see, I worked out in this thing, I saunas I would make it sweaty as it could possibly be, and then I would just air it out. Now, when you put on a pair of jeans, if you walk out on a hot summer day, even if you sweat a little bit, you're not washing the jeans after everywhere.People wash their jeans for two reasons, one, they get them actually dirty, like they spill something on their jeans or they get a muddy or something, or two, they just feel it's about type, like, "I haven't watched these jeans in a while. I'm going to wash them." Or maybe they've gotten a little baggy, they want to tighten them up a little bit, so they fit a little more fitted or whatever. But people don't think it's gross to wear jeans multiple days in a row because the material is in the same way that Merino wool is, it's not going to smell and it's not going to carry the bacteria.In fact, jeans carry no more bacteria after multiple wears than they do when they're brand new, so people are used to this and they're comfortable. But the paradigm shift of having that to your t-shirt is a lot for people to grasp, because they go, "You have sweaty armpits." [crosstalk 00:18:07] and they're just conditioned to it. At one point, you get conditioned to realizing that you just wash your shirts whenever you want. So the real thing is this, as you go on a trip with these shirts, and if you are staying in an Airbnb that has a laundry machine and you want to wash it, you've only worn it once or maybe worn it three times or four times, you wash it. Why not? You just totally wash it.But if you can't wash it, it's not going to smell, and it's not unsanitary. It's completely, completely, okay to wear. So we were sensationalizing by doing the whole thing for 46 days in a row because that's what made us stand out. So that was a complete marketing thing.Fabian Geyrhalter:Totally. Totally. And that's why I bring it in.Dan Demsky:But practically it's true.Fabian Geyrhalter:Yeah, and that's why I bring it up too, because you got around $400,000 of crowdfunding with your campaign. And so if you do the math, that's like close to 2,000 people, I guess, buying $200 worth of clothes from an unknown, unproven company, no reviews, no actual products at the time. That's amazing. And that's how you did it. You just knew that there's a very small target audience, that is actually really large, but it seems like a micro target audience of guys in their 20s, 30s, that like to travel, like to travel really lightly. And they're okay wearing a t-shirt or two for a good number of days, and this is their solution.Dan Demsky:Right. And let me tell you something. When we were creating this campaign, I had a few friends that have created crowdfunding campaigns before successfully, and then I contacted people who I didn't know who had done it. I did a lot of research to learn, how do I do this? I really want this thing to work. It was very important to me, because I told you I was unhappy with my other business. And a lot of the advice I'd get is, "Don't position this as a travel product because you're narrowing yourself so much, it could be so much bigger." But for whatever reason, we decided to focus on that niche. And I'm really, really happy we did because when you look at crowdfunding campaigns, what a lot of them really do is they're a very, very direct problem-solving product.It solves a specific product and the campaigns almost feel like infomercials in which they beat you over the head with, what is it that this product is doing that is a benefit to you. So for us, we narrowed our niche by making it a travel product so that we could specify all of the messaging around solving a problem for travel. We didn't really focus as much, or did talk about how it doesn't smell, but really if you watch the campaign, you look through what we're talking about the most, it's about all of the ways in which traveling gets better when you have a product like this. You'll breeze through the airport, you won't have to wait at the luggage carousel, you don't have any risk of your things getting lost.You're not going to look like a big tourist schlepping a huge heavy suitcase through a tourist area to be a target to scammers or people who are trying to sell you things. You just blend in and you can focus on the experience, and your vacations are better. So all of a sudden, anyone who's traveling, they can now have an idea of this solution that can help them travel better. And that could be because they just care to have more of an experience-based travel style, or they could be older and it's a pain to have to carry all those heavy luggage, so it solves that problem. But we really, really focused on the travel thing specifically to narrow our messaging down so that all of our marketing and everything could be all about one thing and not trying to blanket everything and appeal to nobody.Fabian Geyrhalter:It is so smart on so many levels. That is something that anyone can learn from that is launching any company, because, A, first you start narrow so you know exactly who to talk to and what to say to them. And then you can always broaden up over time, which you have. I mean, now you go into women's clothes, now you go into underwear, socks.Dan Demsky:Well, I'll tell you one thing that's changed for us that we weren't expecting.Fabian Geyrhalter:What's that?Dan Demsky:We never expected that the entire planet would stop traveling at once.Fabian Geyrhalter:Yeah. Let's talk about that a little bitDan Demsky:So our travel messaging, which worked really well for us, and we were fine with Facebook ads or messaging over the course of about three years where we would A-B-C test ads so we would know that this word in capital letters would work better than if it wasn't. So refined for traveling, and all of a sudden, none of it mattered anymore, so we had to go basically take all of our best performing ads, our Holy Grails of ads went garbage, complete garbage. And we had to change everything from our website, it was no longer about travel. And we thought, "You know what, one day we wanted to get to this point where we broadened outside of travel. Well, now we've got a chance, we have no choice." So we slowly changed everything and we broadened out. Now, travel is a point of our messaging, but it's not the entire messaging anymore.And we can sit on the backs of tens of thousands of customers who love our product, who come back for more. We've always known this, the people who want to refine their traveling in the way that we were positioning it, they're very conscious about how they're traveling. They tend to be intelligent people who are trying to get something different out of traveling, it's not just about photography and outfits, not that there's anything wrong with that, but they're looking more for the experience and tracking their travel to being more optimized.And we knew that when these people buy our product for travel, they were going to see the benefits that this clothing could have outside of travel. It can reduce the amount of stuff they have in general, the amount of closet space they need. Then it could be more environmental because they don't need to run their laundry machine as much. There's a million reasons why this has beneficial outside of travel. Now, we have the use cases for them and customers are adapting to that, and we could focus a little bit more of our energy on how there is a broader appeal.But I always felt very, very grateful that we decided early to focus just on travel, and I think there is a good lesson, as you said on that, that it's easier to focus on one narrow thing and one narrow demographic of people because then you can really, really hone in on your messaging and really, really speak specifically to a certain group of people. And from there, you just start to expand. The expansion becomes very natural.Fabian Geyrhalter:Well, I was giving a speech last year when they were still speeches in an actual conference room. It was actually a Vegas speech, which was really exciting, and one of the people afterwards in the Q&A said, "Hey, if you niche so much into an audience, don't you run out of things to say? Don't you run out of content?" And I was like, "No, it's exactly the opposite." If you know your audience, you can go so deep into it because teachers keep giving you content. They just keep telling you what they want, how they feel, what they like. And you just keep going and going, and going and go deeper, and deeper, and deeper. So it's actually the opposite. The more you niche-Dan Demsky:Exactly for something like travel. There's a million ways of traveling, a million places to travel, a million styles of travel, travelers have so many interests. And even in the marketing, it's not just about the messaging and the content, it could also be just about refining how you say the same thing, like I told you. Sometimes it's just about, do you want to yell things? Do you want to write things in capital letters, like this word? That could be the difference, but if you're focusing narrowly, you can tinker with the smallest things and see what works better. And it's just a much, much better approach because you can go endlessly deep.Fabian Geyrhalter:Well, and another thing that you said prior that you're doing with your approach is something that a lot of people, especially when they go with crowdfunding campaigns, they forget about this, is the idea that it's not about the products, it's about the experience. And very often, what you do with a product on Indiegogo, you just go into the details because guess what, the product doesn't exist in that shape, so all you want to do is talk about the product. But what you do is you talk about the experience with the product, which is really what people buy into, because they want to be you, in your shoes, and you just happen to wear this product that gets you to this enhanced experience.And that's something that... You made it sound very easy like that's just how it is, but it's not, it takes a lot of thinking to actually end up there.Dan Demsky:It does. It takes a lot of thinking, but I'll tell you what the most important thing, and I don't think it gets talked about as much as it should. It really has to do with timing. We did all the work, so let's just go under the assumption that if you're going to launch a new product, you do all the work, you can't be lazy. I read everything I could find on how to launch a crowdfunding campaign. I worked really, really hard to make sure that the pro... We went through so many different iterations of the prototypes to make sure the shirt fit the way we wanted and the quality was the way we wanted, and it drapes the way we wanted.We worked on our messaging, our photography, all of that stuff. So just assume that you did a great job and you left no stone left unturned on that. If I were to release this product today, it probably wouldn't work because the reason why I really think it did work is because I had that aha moment where like, no one's doing it this way. And people, when they think of Merino, when they think of wool, they think, "Oh, is that going to be like a scarf?Fabian Geyrhalter:Or scratchy.Dan Demsky:It could be scratchy and bulky, it can't be a comfortable t-shirt. So for people who are involved in this world of active wear and outdoors wear that know Merino well, they already know and love it, but we're not going to speak to those people. They already have Merino Wolford there, use case. We're going to speak to new people, people like me that just discovered that Merino wool could be a super fine material that's a comfortable t-shirt and we're going to speak to the urban traveler, it's not for the people who are with the canoe, it's for the people with the cocktail that are maybe doing a business meeting, and they don't know this thing exists.There was the whole timing element because I felt like no one is doing this the way I wanted, that was the single crux of why I thought this thing could work. It's like, we're not just another fish in a sea of companies doing this, we're going to do this our way, and we're going to speak about this our way, and no one's doing it this way. That was the exciting part to me.Fabian Geyrhalter:Well, and it's interesting because in a way you are a little bit of anti-brand. It's super basic stuff, and you're trying to have people actually buy less clothing in their lifetime. So you actually want people to own les, of course, you want them to own your stuff, but on the flip side, your product could be seen as a commodity. We noticed there's tons of t-shirts using the same fabric, it's basics made out of a very specific material, which is not the honorable. So in the way, brand in the end of the story is really everything for you. I mean, from the get-go, that is it.Dan Demsky:Everything. Brand is everything and our customers. For our customers... And you know what it is? If we're going to talk about... Brand is so much more than just how cool your website looks and your logo looks. Brand is everything that the customer feels when interacting with you, and just boils down to trust. I'm not scared that we are in a red ocean industry of t-shirts. It doesn't scare me because we have... As soon we're going to have 100,000 customers that the large majority of them, they just trust us, they know the way that our shirt fits, they know that we're very, very radically focused on quality of the product and the experience that they have.If there's any issues, we'll deal with them, we make sure to ship as fast as we possibly can. They know the product quality they're getting, they don't need to look elsewhere. So other players would come in and they could undercut us, but if we take care of the problem, giving you the t-shirt that works for you, that fits the way you want it, that it's performed as promised, we deliver it on time, our customer service is good, you can trust the experience, they don't need to go elsewhere.And these are people that are looking for simplicity, they're not looking at, 'Well, I'm going to go and find a way to save five bucks on the shirt. I'm going to go and find... " I don't need to solve that problem. I'll give you an example. Right now, we use Zendesk is how we handle our customer service inquiries for our business. And there's this other company that keeps contacting us saying you should switch off Zendesk. They're very persistent, but I tried to tell them as clearly as possible, I'm like, "Look, I admire your hustle and your sales efforts, but you have zero chance. You have zero chance of us switching on Zendesk because Zendesk is working as promised. And the hassle of changing for me is not worth whatever it is that you're pitching."It's cheaper, has a little bit more fun... I don't need any more functionality. This part of my business is working well. So Zendesk as a brand owns me right now. And that's the way our customers are, we solve that problem for them. If they want the best black t-shirt, our black t-shirt is the one that they buy. They don't need to go to Gap or H&M or find some other Merino wool company that's springing up. But you know what, a lot of companies have sprung up after that have pretty much copied or what our messaging is. It doesn't bother me at all, I feel flattered.And it's ultimately all we need to focus on is make sure that we care so much about our product care, so much about our brand experience, and care so much about our marketing. That's the brand because that's the way that people find out about us for the first time and then the way that they interact with us throughout the whole experience. And then ultimately, what matters the most is product. And if that's what a brand is, the brand is, what do we make? Do they trust us? And how do we make the customer feel when they interact with us? And we focus all our energy on there, and that's the most important thing we have.Fabian Geyrhalter:And that most probably also safety over the last couple of months, because we've travel being gone suddenly as you already said, it must've been a huge shock to the system. First, you have to change the entire messaging, you have to really rethink that, but this is at a point where you already have, I guess, you said up to 100,000 customers at this point, these people are repeat customers and they make referrals. And then suddenly, it's a machine just keeps on working even though travel is down, but it must've still impacted you, right?Dan Demsky:Yeah, it did. It did, but it forced us to become more mature of a company to be honest, because we grew fast and to be perfectly blunt, it made us a little lazy, and that was a big life lesson for us. We were growing without trying at one point, and maybe after 10 years of entrepreneurship and going through ups and downs, I think I needed a breather. So I wasn't working as hard leading up to COVID, and that wasn't something that I consciously did, I just in hindsight noticed. I let myself get a little bit more tired and lazy, and I had a great growth business and things are good, but then we got scared, man.When COVID came around and the travel industry was grinded completely to a halt, our sales, they declined drastically in that first month. And we were used to 100% growth month over month. So any month compared to the year before, at least 100% growth. And then in the first month, our sales were down 50%. We've never even just stayed the same let alone down. So we thought, "Oh my God, this is really, really bad." We almost went into like the war room to figure out what are all the things we can be doing to get our revenue back up.And everything we did, there were things that we could have been doing all along, but we weren't. And I think that the world changed, a little bit of normalcy has crept back in since then. So I think organically, things have gone back up, but we have done a lot more to get our business back to growth, back into growth mode, and what's where we are again. And the lesson I got from that was never, and this is not just about the fact that a pandemic can come in and dismantle everything you've worked so hard for, that's an extreme.But what happened was the little bit of success we had, bred a little bit of laziness, and all that laziness, this is the lesson, all that laziness did to me was stop me from achieving what my own greatness was, "Now, do I need to make more money?" It's not about money, it's not about I need this company to grow, but why would I not want to continue to challenge myself to do the best I can, to grow in the best way as I can? And the laziness I had, and I'm not that lazy, I'm a productive person, but by my own standards, compared to who I've been when I started this company or when I started my first business or when I'm in my optimal hustle modes, it's like, that's me challenging myself to be the greatest version of myself and to take the most from life in this short period of time in which I'm so lucky to be alive.So it felt like the little bits of laziest I had, was denying myself of being what my potential is. And that's the lesson at the core of what I learned, it's like, it took a pandemic to scare me a little bit, but it's like never, ever get comfortable, because when you get comfortable, you get lazy. And if you get lazy, you just become mediocre. And I think I had a tiptoe towards thatFabian Geyrhalter:And I think on that note, it's also important that one doesn't have to go in 110% all the time, too. Consistent laziness is one thing but I think that the pandemic teaches a lot of entrepreneurs that actually suddenly taking time out for a week or two and not being on 110%, it's actually quite healthy, but I know exactly what you're talking about. And I think it happens with a lot of us, when business is going really, really, really well, even though we have to work hard, we work hard in processes we're used to, everything is going swimmingly, but then once things are one things slow down, we freak out.So instead of using the time when things are great to keep R&D, to keep innovating, to keep thinking about processes and looking at new client options and strategic positioning changes, whatever. So I think it's a really, really good lesson to learn. Looking back, what was one big brand fail, where you felt like you launched this product, or you were doing the Indiegogo campaign, and then the product was there, was there some point where you felt like, "Holy smokes, we totally went into the wrong direction," with either the messaging or like a video or something that you do with the production, or was this something where you just felt, "Oh my God, we totally screwed that up." Something that people can learn from?Dan Demsky:Honestly, the failures feel, some of them feel glaring to me all the time, but they might be... Sometimes I look at our packaging or our product page and think, "Oh my God, this is such trash." And then I read every day a review coming in and saying, "This is the best packaging ever." I'm always harsh on myself, so I don't even know where to begin.Fabian Geyrhalter:But there wasn't one big thing where you were like, you know you totally-Dan Demsky:I hate to bring up the exact same thing we just talked about, but the big failure that I had was not continuing, and it's something that I'll continue to try to drill deep on, but to get lazy is the failure, because there were so many opportunities. We could have grown a lot more and you have to constantly....Always, always live with thinking about this, you're lucky to be where you're at and it could all end soon, and fight against the tide. And I agreed, not at the expense of your health or the relationships you have with your loved ones or anything like that.That could be a real big detriment, but that I think was the failure because I think we could have been so much further along, and it's all just the little moments of laziness we had, which we're not there anymore right now, which is great.Fabian Geyrhalter:No, absolutely. Last big question. If you would take the entire Unbound brand and you would distill it into one word, maybe the experience or a feeling, if you think about the Everlane, you think about transparency. If you think about Coke, they want you to believe happiness. What could be one word, I call it your brand DNA, what could be one word that you could put to describe Unbound, unless it's unbound, which of course, it shouldn't be.Dan Demsky:We have three words, but the first one is the one that I think encapsulates the most of who we are, and that's simplicity. It's simplicity in the design, it's simplicity in the market we choose to tackle, it's simplicity in the life in which it help with travel. It's about reducing the brand ethos. Our number one core value that we live by in our company is less, but better. And that's the way that we think about how to run our company strategically, it's how we think to live our lives, it's how we think of about our product line.That's why we don't follow any trends, this is what clothing that's in style. We only focus on stuff that's timeless and classic, something that you could have worn... If you saw a picture of yourself wearing our t-shirt 15 years ago, that's going to look completely normal and good. And it looks good today, and it's going to look good in 15 years. We don't have seasonality, we don't have spring, summer or fall, winter lines, we just have our core products. And that's who we are, from the inside-out, we're all about simplicityFabian Geyrhalter:And simplicity is what everyone aches for, and simplicity is also the toughest thing to accomplish as a company, as we see with all Fortune 100 and 500 struggling as to innovate how it's simplicity. Someone who knows simplicity quite well is your pug who's been lying next to you, snoring away during the entire interview. And I think we heard him or her, so you got to at least give a little introduction.Dan Demsky:Yeah. This is my pug, Walter, he's laying right next to me. I'll be honest, sometimes I'll do a podcast interview or I'm on an important meeting, and he knows that he could get under my skin, so he'll jump on the ground and start barking and just ruining everything. Although you hear him snoring, this is-Fabian Geyrhalter:He is good.Dan Demsky:Yeah. He's not distracting and barking, the reason he does that is because he knows that what I'll do is I'll stuff a little thing with peanut butter and he can eat it. And he's been conditioned to know the more... I'm getting better at, and this sounds weird, but there's a tone in my voice when I get serious about something that he's able to identify, so I've tried to-Fabian Geyrhalter:Oh, I'm sure. Yeah.Dan Demsky:So he's constrained me to be more natural to who I am and not be so serious, because if I'm serious, this is a serious podcast or a serious phone call or whatever, he's going to clue in and ruin it all.Fabian Geyrhalter:Walter, the mascot of simplicity.Dan Demsky:Yeah. It's the snoring, we should be lucky, that's all we got.Fabian Geyrhalter:We are. We are. Listen, as we come to a close here, where can people learn more about Unbound? Where should they be heading?Dan Demsky:You just type in Unbound Merino. Unbound, U-N-B-O-U-N-D, Merino is M-E-R-I-N-O. We're on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, if you Google us, whatever, that's where you'll find us.Fabian Geyrhalter:Awesome.Dan Demsky:And the website, of course, unboundmerino.com.Fabian Geyrhalter:Of course. Of course. Thank you, Dan, for having been on the show, really appreciate it, great insights. Good luck with the next couple of months and years of your company. And I can't wait to try out some of those shirts myself, hopefully, for a future international travel at some point in my life. Until then, I guess, I'll take it camping.Dan Demsky:Yes. Thank you so much. It was great to be on your show.Fabian Geyrhalter:Absolutely. My pleasure.