About this episode:
In this episode I sit down with Kara Rosen who is the founder and CEO of Plenish. Plenish is a plant-based drinks brand she started in 2012 and turned into a multi-million turnover business which sells plant-based milks, cold pressed juices and shots and dairy free milk shakes.
Kara's story is both incredibly inspiring and full of learnings. In this episode she explains how she went from pressing juices for her friends at maternity yoga to selling those juices online and getting her first customers through a clever growth hack. She then breaks down how she used e-commerce to learn about her customers and convinced investors and UK’s biggest supermarkets to help her turn Plenish into one of London's current most exciting Food & Beverages startups.
More about Plenish:
Website: www.plenishdrinks.com
Instagram: www.instagram.com/plenishdrinks
Twitter: https://twitter.com/PlenishDrinks
Acknowledgements:
Editing by Gonçalo Abrantes
Music “Vera Cruz” by Relly and produced by Snakehips
Artwork by Audrey Hacq
About this episode:
In this episode I sit down with Kara Rosen who is the founder and CEO of Plenish. Plenish is a plant-based drinks brand she started in 2012 and turned into a multi-million turnover business which sells plant-based milks, cold pressed juices and shots and dairy free milk shakes.
Kara's story is both incredibly inspiring and full of learnings. In this episode she explains how she went from pressing juices for her friends at maternity yoga to selling those juices online and getting her first customers through a clever growth hack. She then breaks down how she used e-commerce to learn about her customers and convinced investors and UK’s biggest supermarkets to help her turn Plenish into one of London's current most exciting Food & Beverages startups.
More about Plenish:
Website: www.plenishdrinks.com
Instagram: www.instagram.com/plenishdrinks
Twitter: https://twitter.com/PlenishDrinks
Acknowledgements:
Editing by Gonçalo Abrantes
Music “Vera Cruz” by Relly and produced by Snakehips
Artwork by Audrey Hacq
[inaudible] .
Speaker 2:Welcome back to ECOMMERCE unbox . I'm your host [inaudible] and I'm happy to have you around for our secondF is e -commerce. S andbox is the podcast. I 'll let you in on conversations with the brightest minds in ecommerce. So every week I speak to successful you c ome as founders o r marketers and we break down the specific area of ecommerce to give you the tools, the tips, and the inspiration to now y our own online business s trategy.
Speaker 3:Uh ,
Speaker 2:in this episode I'm speaking to Kara Rosen , the founder and CEO of plentyoffish plenty. She's one of the most exciting food and beverage startup in London at the moment that sells plant meal detox juices and probiotic water. And I love Kara because she's really the definition of bias for action. And Her story is super inspiring.
Speaker 3:Yeah .
Speaker 2:In the next 40 minutes she will explain how she started plenty . She , when she was pregnant initially she was simply pressings juice these four friends at maternity yoga. And she will then take us through how she used e-commerce to learn about our customers, but also convince investors and some of the biggest UK supermarkets. So I hope you enjoy the conversation. I hope you learn and I'll see you on the other side for us to get started. Could you quickly introduce yourself and tell listeners about plentyoffish and how you started it ?
Speaker 4:Sure. Uh, my name's Kara raisins . I'm the founder of panache and I started the business , um , just over six and a half years ago, which is crazy. It's fun by, yeah. Um, punish is an organic, healthy drinks business and um, everything that we make is from plants , um, from a sustainable source and we try and create products that are not just healthy for you but also have a really low impact. Um, in terms of how we source and , and supply them. So are probably best known products are plant based milks. So almond milk, cashew milk, milk that we sell , um , on our website, but also mostly through bricks and mortar retail, some of Britain's most well known retailers, weight shows , Sainsbury's, Asda, Morrisons , whole foods . Yannick , I'm going to ask , um, essentially everywhere, but Tesco yet. So , um, and then we also have a range of cold pressed juices. Yeah. Which is really how the business started , um, which are fresh. So a mix of cold pressed , um, vegetable and fruit juices and some dairy milks in that dairy alternative milks in that range as well.
Speaker 2:What was the drive for you to start your own company? Okay ,
Speaker 4:so I got really into plant based eating and juice thing just based on a health journey I had been on. Okay . About 15 years ago where I was unwell, I was living back in the states in New York. I'm working like a mania like many of us do here in the UK as well. I worked at Conde Nast , uh , in magazine publishing, so building brands for the likes of the node group and wired Conde Nast traveler. I was there for over 10 years. Just spent a bit of time , um , working on each different magazine and each group, which was great fun. Yeah . Um, traveled a lot. Uh , I was young living in New York City, having fun and burning the candle at both ends. Um, and yeah, I ended up getting unwell and after a couple of years of being on medications for , um, for recurring infections like strep throat and just feeling generally low , uh, I ended up going to see a nutritional therapist who really educated me on the benefits of a plant based Diet and how impactful , um, you know, juicing can be. It was essentially getting, you know, in a cup of juice over a kilo of, you know, are bad organic veggies into, into your body in , in a minute. Um, when you're, when you're time poor and you don't necessarily have the time and the wherewithal, particularly if you're on airplanes or on the road to get all those vege and um, fruits in a day, juicing became a really easy and convenient way. Um, and I also cut back on, on Dick drinking dairy, which was having just a , a negative health impact on me. So I just got really, really passionate. I was so in empowered and inspired about how much you know, impact we can all have on our health just by knowing more , um, and changing what we eat that , um, I started studying nutrition in my spare time and um, and really just adapted a , a plant based diet and got really, really passionate about it. Um, I was just a great customer of all these amazing businesses that were popping up in New York and la where I was spending a lot of time for work, but then foster forward to , uh , 2009, I moved over here to the UK and couldn't find any of the, you know , kind of really the organic and Clean Label , uh , plant based products that I had really grown to depend on and just started to get super frustrated. Um, and I was on maternity leave with my first daughter and , um, instead of going back to work, I just said, if I don't create a business that creates all the products that I really want someone else's gonna do it and royally fuck it up. And it was that that started to keep me up at my , yeah. And that was really how I started punish. Nice. Is the sort of typical founder having a problem and then, and then figuring out what solution for yourself first and then, and um, it, you know, kind of the, the, almost the precursor, I know we're going to talk about e-commerce today, but the precursor to going online , um, which can feel quite anonymous actually. The beauty of online is that you're selling direct to a consumer. Yeah . And I think that's probably the biggest gift that , um, I accidentally gave to the business was that we started selling directly to consumers. And it really started accidentally in the foc thought I was making juices and not milks and , and, and cleanses for myself and busy friends who are asking for them. Um, and I really got to know what people liked, what they didn't, how they were consuming them. And I took that knowledge of almost doing it. You know, what I call pro bono. I was doing it really for feedback on my products. Um, but I took all those learnings and you know, which were essentially informal focus groups , um, and , and then created a website which was a very simple website , uh, you know, back in 2012, which was based around , uh, five juices and one not milk. Um, but they were the ones that were kind of most popularly popularly requested , uh, if that's a word from, you know, from, from the kind of friends and family and friends of friends that I was started to just sell direct to
Speaker 5:what , what was the, a website powered by, what was the solution behind?
Speaker 4:So it built it originally on , on Magento. Straight from the star . Yeah . That yourself , that's funny. Now I hired a, a design business , um, called Katonah . Um, they were really designed, focused and I really wanted the , the whole brand was really inspired by, you know, lifestyle. I wasn't trying to create a brand that looked and felt like traditional food and drink here in the UK. Um, I wanted something, I felt this was a whole new category that we were creating and it was really about people's lifestyles. And I wanted it to fit into that. So I ended up leaning on some of my design and branding resources back from Conde Nast, from the kind of national magazine. How that helps you because yeah , I feel like
Speaker 5:even today, like the visuals that you have are incredible and there's this almost magazine aspect to it with really like bright colors. And so, so your , your pre carrier or what you did before definitely helped in that sense.
Speaker 4:Yeah. I think coming from calming us where it was all about , um, photography was so important. Uh, whether you were working across a technology magazine when I worked at wired or Conde Nast traveler or vogue and fashion , um, the quality of the photography was, was really what was so tantalizing for the consumer. And I wanted to , you know, these products that we make, they are, you know, they are premium product, they are the best quality ingredients and organic veggies that are fresh, that are pressed in a really kind of slow batch and, and you know , you know our design way and then bottled and sent to you really fresh. It's, it's not your kind of run of the mill, you know, innocent smoothie or , or fruit juice. Yeah . Um , they are fresh chilled products. Um, you know, with a key low of , of organic Madge in each bottle. Yeah . So I wanted it, I want really wanted that to come alive. And uh, yeah, the, the kind of the website was really, I knew nothing about e-commerce . You know, I came from print for Heaven Sake. Um, but what I did want it to do was absolutely look gorgeous and not feel like, you know, an Amazon listing or just an ecommerce site. So yeah, that was really the brief. Um, and we did some early part, you know, I didn't have much of a marketing budget at the time. I was self funding the business in the early days and , um, we built it really all through through partnerships. So I did a , um, I'm a member of Soho House group and I called them up and said, hey, this is what I'm creating. Um, I really, you know, for obviously I put together a whole pitch of, of why , um , their type of consumer who were young, how high , you know, high traveled, hardworking kind of media and, and , um, you know, in creatives were the right type of audience for this type of product that they agreed to , um, to kind of do a little bit of a feature on, on punish and me. And then they sent a , an email blast out to their , um, to their whole database in the UK with a , an offer for a discounts . I think it was 15% off your first punish order. Um, and that was our , I got you off the, yeah, I mean we had the website ready and um , probably 45 minutes before the first email and last one out, you know, testing with one person, that would be me. Um, and uh, yeah. And, and you know, I still remember my , my first order from Jane Smith, which I kid you not, that was her name. [inaudible] how important was the ecommerce side of the business initially and how did you grow it? How did you go about, you know , having your first couple of orders through this and then you know, what happens next? Because she was everything at first. I mean it was our only revenue source. Um, and so juicy subscriptions or initially you could buy, so we didn't have a subscription model. I couldn't afford to build one at the beginning, so people were really buying cleanses. Um, that was the main product focus we did have, which wasn't super, you know, it wasn't really all that well merchandise, but you could find a way just to buy juices. Um, again, just the kind of the site map wasn't brilliant. Um, you know, which learnings, think things I learned down the line. But cleanses were the main focus and I think really of the moment too . Um, so that first partnership was, so house group was really impactful. Um, but as you say, I just started to tap into the other networks that I had at my fingertips. Okay . So , um, I had just had a baby and was doing , um, pregnancy yoga and then prenatal, postnatal yoga after my baby was born. And I started tapping into the yoga studios , um, and, and those kind of, you know, pregnancy, the prenatal and the postnatal classes who were moms like me who were, you know, on maternity leave and busy and sleep deprived and probably nutrient deprived cause they didn't have time to sit down and make themselves really nutritious meals looking after a baby. Um, and I started doing partnerships with , um, with the yoga studios. Uh, so it really all became , um, how can I tap into the networks that I have that are, you know, authentic to me. And I had a dialogue already , um, that people knew me that, you know, they believed in me and were willing to, you know, which is pretty low risk for them, send an email, blast out about a product to their consumers. Um, obviously I had to sample things and , and whoever was making that decision, so house group or at the Yoga Studios, I would send them a juice cleanse or a box of juices so they could experience what their customers were. And once they, once they believed in it and felt like , um, it's something that they wanted to share with their audience and they were willing to do more of it. And
Speaker 5:how were you producing the product and bringing in , how did you make sure
Speaker 4:you had a great product from the stock ? I'm products always been absolutely essential to everything that we do. And before launching the website that almost felt like the easy part. Um, cause it was building the storefront. The hardest part was actually what happened in the six months, six to 12 months before that, which was creating the range. So being an avid user myself, I kind of knew the core range of six juices and plant based milks that I wanted to create. Um, and a really great friend of mine is a brilliant dietician named Rumi Puppuccino who was also on maternity leave with her first baby. Um, and lived around the corner for me. It was in my, you know, pregnancy yoga class, which is where we met. And she, you know, very generously offered some time , um, and then eventually became a shareholder in the business. But to really work on the kind of the macro and micro nutrient composition. So I knew really strongly what I wanted them to taste like and mean ingredients, but I really wanted them each to have a function. So some of them were about giving you a boost or a kick or calming you or um, you know, a savoring moment at the end of the day. And I kind of gave her the brief of what I wanted each one to do and she really helped me get the ingredients , um, mix , right to make sure we had the right end , you know, kind of composition of vitamins and minerals and proteins to actually do what it said on the tin.
Speaker 5:I think it's great how you kind of used your maternity leave too , you know, and some of the time you had to, you know, get cracking with it . What would be your advice to , um, yeah, woman who wants to start a business and, you know, have those things in mind. You know, what about pregnancy? What about family? How do I manage that? So a little bit apparently sister , what we're talking about, but I'm curious to get your, your thoughts.
Speaker 4:Yeah. I think there's this challenges to starting a business with a young family. Yeah . But then there's also some great benefits. I think from a, a challenging point of view, you know, once you start trading and actually have customers, they have to be a priority because you really only get one shot at customer service, especially in the early days when you're new. Yeah. Um, so I had to find some time. Um, w what I did in the early days as I only took orders, I only did deliveries twice a week, which was it , which was a function both of, I didn't have the enough orders to kind of rent a kitchen for five days a week to make the juice. Yeah . Or hire a courier for a full day. Um, but was also what I could afford to do from a time perspective to leave my baby with someone. Um, so I hired someone to help me , uh, two days a week. Um, when my daughter turned six months old. Okay . So everything until, until I had a trading website. Um, you know, you can do things when your baby's napping or around or at night around your schedule. Once you've got real live customers and you start trading, I'd say you probably have to prepare a bit more , um, to put your business first during business hours. And that's, that is a reality. Um , it's probably the hardest bit for young working mom, especially if, you know , you don't have the resources. Um, you know, I looked at investing in childcare is a business cost at the end , my business plan in the early days when, yeah . I mean I was, I funded it in the early days, so it's not something I had to explain to an investor. Yeah . I think that would be a harder sell. Um, but uh, yeah, I had , I invested in childcare two days a week and I took, those were the days that I took orders , um , and got back to customers and um, dealt with delivery issues and careers when things turned up late. Yeah .
Speaker 5:And just to make sure, were you producing?
Speaker 4:Yeah. In the early days , I did everything. So I rented a kitchen in FilAm in London for the , the two days a week I mentioned. And I would take the orders and it was very clear on the website that you could only get deliveries these days. Um, so I'd take all the orders, I would then go buy the produce , um, and then make the juicers and then hire a courier at the end of the day to go send them out. But it also helped from a cashflow point of view cause I didn't have a lot of money. I didn't have outside investment at the time. So from a cashflow point of view, you took the card payment , um , from that customer and then when I will go and get up off the produced and invested. So I didn't have a very long cash cycle. Um, I was really only ever operating between 15 and 30 days. Nice, super inspiring. Honestly, totally changes when you start to sell to retailers, you stretch that cash cycle, but it was a great way to start the business. Yeah. For anyone looking to start a business though they eventually want to get into retail. Sometimes getting up and proving that concept online. Can we help you with your negotiations with retailers as well?
Speaker 5:And you know all about the business because initially you are the business, you were doing all those parts . So about the customers, which is I think the most important bet . Yeah . 100% . So that's, that's probably my next question. How , um , did you use what you were getting from customers and customer communication to inform your next steps and learn about what you were doing?
Speaker 4:So, I mean it's that customer data is everything and it's so important. Um, I think no matter whether you're small, medium, or large, yeah . Knowing what your customers want, where they are, who they are , um, can be a really powerful tool. So for example , um, you know, we created an original range of, of six juices and milks we knew quite quickly , um, based on repeat purchases and talking to customers, you know , what they liked, what they didn't , um , more able to really make tweaks to the range. Um, over that first year of, of, of business , um , based on consumer feedback. So to change the taste to their needs. Yeah, exactly. Um, figuring out, you know, what size bottles they wanted. We had a lot of feedback that on the cleanses people really liked the 500 mill juices because those were their meal replacements. But um, for the people who just wanted to buy a juice to drink in the morning, that actually 500 mil was too much. Um, which gave us the insight when we launched into retail , um , cause people weren't going into a whole foods or um, upon it organic to buy a cleanse, they were going into buy a refreshing, you know, green juice that we decided to use that insight in launch into retail in two 50 mail instead of our online 500 mil bottles , um , with our bestselling range. Right. And , um, I think really I had gone before I even started the ecommerce site . I had originally taken the range to a few retailers who just said, no, they didn't get it. Um, the shelf life was too short. The product was too expensive. It was green, you know, all the things that , um, worlds too . Yeah. It was , it was too early. Um, so when I went back to retail a year later after trading online, I was able to say, look, you know, look at your store and you know, in Kensington , um, I'm selling, you know, x amount of thousand pounds worth of this particular juice every single week. These are your customers that could be coming in here. Um , these are the, in Kensington, these are the best selling juices. Um, so yeah, so I think it gives you the amount of insight that retailers will then have a lot more confidence in putting your range in because you've got a proven track record,
Speaker 5:learn a lot by selling online. What retailers asking
Speaker 4:you for? What was the type of data they wanted to see or what were the main arguments to fo for you to , um, to get listed? So I think it was, I think there's a few pieces to that. Um, so when we first went into retail, our first listing was with Harvey Nichols and [inaudible] Hall. Um, and they, the fruit has quite different now. It's more restaurant focus for back in the day, about six years ago it was, you know, Harvey Nichols and Selfridges Food Hall and Selfridges still is like, this was really a place for new food brands, premium food brands to get discovered. And um, we went into Harvey Nichols with um, an idea to , they're obviously really tied to fashion. Um , a lot of our kind of early customers and clients came from the fashion industry and we had done a lot of our marketing around London fashion week. We did a lot of gorilla sampling. Um, so we really went to retailers in the early days with a very retailer specific approach. So for Harvey Nichols, we could kind of prove, we could prove that we had a track record in targeting fashion customers and the influencers in that space. And this was really before Instagram was so big, but influencer, how influencers have been influencers since the dawn of day before they were influencers on Instagram, they were influencers and you know, social circles and then PR. Yeah, exactly. So we had some, we had built up some great , uh , influential supporters and organic ambassadors in the fashion world and went to them, you know, saying, Hey, look, we're going to assemble at London fashion week with a tag that said, available at Harvey Nichols now , um, you know, we've got x amount of journalists lined up who said that they'll write about this and we're going to be here and behaving in this way. Um, which was synonymous with really how they targeted customers and , and that was how we kind of approached it for each. Um, you know, with places like whole foods and, and planet organic, obviously those customers really care about quality of product . Um, they really care about providence of ingredients and the process and why we, why our cold pressed , uh, method was different. So for those types of customers, it was really about showing them why we were best in class and why we were different from what they were already selling. And we had a really strong story, which all came back to the product, which was, you know, the best ingredients, more of them and processed and handled in, in kind of the most high integrity way. And then when you get to bigger retail , um, so we kind of established, you know, you start small with the food halls , um , and you go into a bit, you know , um, kind of the health food retailers , um , prove your story there and really build and do lots of sampling events. And I did lots of events as a founder there about cold press and plant base telling my story. Um , I wrote a book , um, which you know, was published through traditional channels about juicing and my journey. And um, that was the beginning of the, of clinic. Yeah . It was right at the beginning, right when we launched into kind of the whole foods and planet. And again, that helped , um , just build the profile of the brand and it helped me as a founder , um, just share my voice, which then I can , you know, do events in , in those types of shops which were valuable to them. Um, and then really building up your track record in some of , in your online shop , um, in places like Harvey Nichols and Selfridges and then building up, you know, your s your rate of sales story in the health food trade is what then gives you , um, I think an easier route, an easier sell into a bigger bricks and mortar retailer. Um, because you've got a track record and you've got followers and brand loyalists that all these big supermarkets are trying to get those shoppers that are willing to spend more on quality and really care about that into their shops too .
Speaker 5:How did this initial sort of year of trading online helps you with conversations with investors?
Speaker 4:The , the beauty about ecommerce is going to , I was talking about that cash cycle. So I was really able to fund the growth of ecommerce through selling more product. Um, and really when I wanted to go into retail , um, was the stage that I felt I needed investment cause that cash cycle was going to get a lot longer. You know, retailers are synonymous with, you know, having between 60 and 90 day payment cycles and with the cost, high cost of our ingredients, you know, we were essentially procuring all the raw material, paying for the , the making of the product, the tea and the transporting him the product way before, you know, whole month or two months before we were then paid for that product. So that was when I , um, saw external investment was to really be able to, you know, create enough product to sell into bigger retailers and then also be able to, to market and support the brand , um, on a kind of larger, more national scale to be able to drive people, you know, offline.
Speaker 3:Yeah , yeah , yeah .
Speaker 5:We talked about the beginning , um , how you , uh , got the ade started using e-commerce to get initial traction. I'd like now to understand how you sort of operate on the ecommerce front , um , nowadays. Um, so we talked a little bit about it before it recording, but how do you integrate e-commerce into what the company does, I guess is my question.
Speaker 4:Yeah. It's, it's a lot more challenging now and , and the real answer is, I don't know what the perfect answer is yet. Okay . So the past three years ago, we launched , um, plant based milks in different format, in a tetra pack format. And these were designed to go into the bigger retailers. And this is when we started launching into the big supermarkets. Yup . Um, that business has absolutely flown and taken off. Um, and because of that taken huge part of our , uh , human resource to focus on growing and sustaining that business. Um, we really have a very strong infrastructure for that now. And that's what I've spent a lot of my time building over the past 18 months is the infrastructure to not just maintain the business, but we have today, but grow tenfold over the next three years. Um, which is production . When you mean infrastructure , is that production is , it's everything. It's , it's operations, it's finance, it's sales, it's marketing. Um, it's product innovation. Um, so, you know, we've gone from a team of five to 15 in the past 20 months. Um, so it's really been very, very fast growth for us. Um, but what, that's now the downside of that was we probably took our eye off the ball, a bit of, of e-commerce. Um, but now we're at the stage where we're back on because it's so key to what we're doing. Um , and have, you know, it's in the DNA of everything that we do is selling to customers , um, directly to customers, which when you sell to the supermarkets, you don't have that direct link. So for us right now, ecommerce is about , um, really making sure that that link direct to customer not just stays ticking but is growing and we're learning. Um, so for example, you know, we, we've got a role open at the moment, which probably two years ago or I would have just filled with a, you know, kind of ecommerce manager. But actually what we're looking for at the moment is , is a data scientist , um, to take us to that next level and to make sure that we are learning from customer, customer behavior even when we don't get to speak to them on the phone. And we've really found , um, over the past few years that our call volume has decreased. Um, which I think is both a factor of our online content is better and people have less questions when they're ordering. Um , but also just the way that everybody's, you know, we're all moving, we're much more digitally savvy and , um, people get , feel more confident to check out online. So what that now causes is, is us speaking to customers on the phone a lot less. Um , and we want to make sure, yeah, getting, getting less kind of direct feedback, which we still want to be able to do. Um, and for us ecommerce right now is, you know , a great way for us to learn from customers to make sure that we are taking those learnings and creating products and services and servicing them in, in what they want to buy. And in what they want, know what they need in there , whatever that need state in their life is. Um, and that our kind of online experiences is meeting those needs. Um, so yeah, and it's , it's also a tool for us to test innovation. So I mentioned back in the early day before we brought anything to retail, we had a year of trading and kind of tweaking the range cause I was so close to the customer, like me personally, he was answering the phones and you know , finding out how, how they enjoyed their juices or their cleanses. Um, so we want to be able to kind of continue keeping that at the heart of everything that we do and bringing out innovation that we, you know, introduced first online and only taking it to retail once we really believe that the customer thinks this is the best product. Okay. And how, how is your team structure, do you have an ecommerce team or do you have, say in your marketing team someone would look more after ecommerce ? Yeah. ECOMMERCE really lies between, I mean, it kind of touches all areas of the business, but it's managed within marketing and um, and the operations team because the customer service experience, which is, you know, more of an operational role is still just as important as the marketing piece, which is what it looks like and sounds like. And um, and it's also across innovation. Um, so our innovation team feeds into , uh, you know, what products are people asking for and trying. And you mentioned that you are recruiting a data scientist. So anyone listening saying
Speaker 3:me a job at strengths talk, talk,
Speaker 4:what are the other online channels that you sell a on? So it's website direct to consumer with the punish drinks website and then Acardo as another really important channel for us. Yeah , we've been telling with them for a long time. It was their first, you know , big online retailer. Okay . So cado um , Amazon. Yep . And then , um, we obviously sold through the grocer, the brick and mortar growth grocers that were in the big four. Um , we tend to overtrade on their online channels as well. Okay. Do you do, you know , um, do they share sort of data around what they do in stores and online? So you have that kind of visibility internally? Not a ton. Um , which is why I think it's important to have your own channel because there is always a bit of a , you know, it's proprietary information. It's their shopper, not our shopper. Yep . And you can buy certain data, but it's expensive and you , you know, you can't get everything the way you can on your own website. Yeah . So direct to consumer is also a way to get that, as you say, keep contact with the direct contact with the customer and get some of the data. Great. Um, I want to talk a little bit about Amazon, which is becoming , uh, a key player online for grocery. Uh , I think 2017
Speaker 5:the acquired wolf food . What are the benefits of the channel for you, apart from the cells ?
Speaker 4:Uh , I think it's a great channel for exposure. Um, you know, I challenge you to find anyone in your social network that doesn't shop on Amazon. Yup . Especially if you're a prime member. You know, why wouldn't you start to buy things , um , where you don't incur delivery for you additional delivery fees. Yup . Um, so I think there's, there's great visibility from , uh , a great benefit from a visibility point of view and accessibility. So no matter where you are in the country, you know , you can have the product you want delivered super fast the next day if you're willing to pay for it.
Speaker 5:And , um, so you , um, moved from a marketplace sort of model, so you know, using seller central to now a buyer relationships or using vendor central, what sort of motivated the move from one model to another?
Speaker 4:A few key factors. Um, first it, we found it really difficult to make any money out of the, the seller central model. Yeah. Um, we didn't have the resource in house that really had the Amazon, you know, management knowledge. Yeah. Nor did we have a size of business that would, you know, makes sense for us to invest in someone with that knowledge to do that exclusively. So , um, we were using a third party agency to help us manage that account. Yeah . Um, I think as a small business they were selling directly. There were all sorts of administrative challenges. I'd like to say it was something sexier, but it , you know, they would stop our accounts for weeks at a time because, you know, they all of a sudden decided that they needed a specific piece of paperwork , um, about, you know, whatever. It was different every time. And rather than just send you an email and you send it back, you know, your account was put on hold. Yeah . Um , you had to wait a week to actually get clarification on what piece of information that they needed from you and when you sent it in, it took another couple of weeks to get your hold taken off. So we missed, you know, entire months of trading. We missed black Friday, we missed December. Yeah . Which would keep periods when particularly when you're investing in a third party to help you manage that. Yeah . Um , it starts to just, you know, become lost making very quickly. Yup .
Speaker 5:Quick sort of final question on Amazon. How do you see the Amazon evolving grocery? Again, they're , they're making quite big moves, wolf food, they're planning to roll out. I think Amazon go stores in the UK. Where do you kind of see the company going in that space?
Speaker 4:I mean , I think from a, from where we say at which is in the, you know, the health and wellness space. Yeah. It's brilliant. It makes it wildly more accessible to more people. Um, and hopefully with Amazon they can keep costs sensible. Yeah . So, you know, whole foods is a really good place. Um, but at the moment it's a destiny , you know, before the Amazon , uh, acquisition. Yeah . It's , it was a destination, right. You had to go to one of their several shops , um, which, great, if you live in the area, but if you don't , um, you know, you had to make a special trip. Yeah . Um, now opening up, they're amazing, you know, catalog of products , uh , which are truly unique to anybody in anyone with an Amazon account is, you know, it's game changing. Yeah . Is there anything else that you wanted to talk about? Anything that we haven't mentioned that you want to, you know , um, no, I guess the main question I get from people starting businesses, particularly around digital is around influencer marketing and you know that there's this whole kind of mystery around how to break in. How much do you need to pay people? And you know, I'm, I'm a lot of the food and drink founders that I meet are , you know, in their twenties and just starting out. You know, I've , I've been doing marketing for 20 years and what I want to just say to people is that influencer marketing has been around since the dawn of day. And actually it's not, the only thing that's changed is the medium, which is Instagram. You know, putting your products in people's hands that have, you know, a great network of people around them that they're happy to talk about and share. It's word of mouth, it's word of mouth marketing. And at the end of it, it's about having a great product that people really love and finding the people that love your products because just because they're an influencer and they have, I don't know , 5 million followers, if they don't genuinely love your product, then they're not going to be an impactful, you know, marketing resource for you, nor will you know, 5 million of people who are like minded to them be a great potential customer for you. So it's finding the people , um, on or offline that have great networks, whether that's a yoga studio where, whether that's , um, you know, it depends, it works across all industries, right? Because your influencer, whether you are a tech startup, whether you are creating rain boots or whether you're, you know, creating a health food or food and drink product , um , you will have people that are, you know, influential in that space. Um, and it's finding those people and making sure that you find the people that are actually willing to do it for free because they are happy to do it for one of your products. Um, you know, I think when you start to get into the pain people, it gets into that, you know, the authenticity piece, which when it's not there and it's not genuine, it's usually quite obvious. Yeah.
Speaker 5:And that's kind of one of the issue with Instagram, right? Because a lot of this is happening and I think there are some changes in the low in time of what you need to disclose and so on. But yeah, I think he's really interesting thinking about it from this perspective. Influencers are not one knee on Instagram.
Speaker 4:Yeah. Find , find some offline and online influencers as part of your strategy. And I think you'll automatically start things start to make sense on his right and his not.
Speaker 5:Yeah. And also thing maybe in term of sort of community or tribes because it really feels to me that you've , um, you've been able to create a community of people around [inaudible] who are passionate about not only the products, but the lifestyle of what you stand for. You know, the books that you've written. So I don't know if you have any advisors .
Speaker 4:Well , I guess my, my, my favorite line in marketing is people will only care about your product or service if it's relevant to them. And you have, no matter how wonderful and amazing or groundbreaking your product is, no matter what it is. Yeah. If it doesn't improve that person's life in one way or the other , um, it doesn't matter to them. And they're probably not going to be a customer, right. People don't need to buy more shit. Um, people want to buy things that they love, that make them happy or make their life easier. Yeah. Um, or better in some way. So just really ask yourself, when you're creating your product or service, you know, why are the people that are , why is this, why is what I'm creating relevant to the people I'm trying to talk to? And if it's not, find people it is relevant to , and you'll know you're being in the right place. Yeah .
Speaker 5:Great. I think, I think that's, that , that's a great conclusion to, to our chat. Thanks again for your time. Is there , um, what are the places where people can find you and , and punish .
Speaker 4:So he can find us on punish drinks.com. Um , or really any of the main , uh , grocers pretty much. Yeah. So cado wait shows , Asda , Morrison's , uh , Sainsbury's marks and Spencer Whole Foods Planet Organic
Speaker 3:[inaudible] .
Speaker 2:All right , that's it. We're wrapping up another episode of ECOMMERCE sandboxed . I hope you enjoyed, I hope you learned and I hope you got inspired from this conversation with Kara . As always, if you like the show and you like what we're doing, please feel free to share it. You can also leave us a review on Spotify or apple podcasts so other people can discover the show. And its next week's episode, I'll be sitting down with Anthony McGuire , who is the founder of frontier oryx and he's a former Facebook employee. And we'll talk about everything related to Facebook, how you can use it as a promotion platform, how you can use it to learn about your market and your customers, honestly is a conversation I've thoroughly enjoyed having. So hopefully you enjoy it as well. But in the meantime, keep doing what makes your heart happy and I'll see you soon.
Speaker 3:[inaudible] .