Latest / Imagine If with Doone Roisin | Health, Wealth & Wisdom for Women (formerly Female Startup Club Podcast) / What is the role of Amazon when it comes to CPG brands? With Swoon Co-Founder Cristina Ros Blankfein

Transcript

What is the role of Amazon when it comes to CPG brands? With Swoon Co-Founder Cristina Ros Blankfein · Imagine If with Doone Roisin | Health, Wealth & Wisdom for Women (formerly Female Startup Club Podcast)

• 0:00
  This is Christina Ross Blankfine for Female Startup Club.
• 0:12
  Hey everyone, it's Dune here, your host and hype girl. Today I'm chatting to one of the women behind Swoon, Christina Ross Blankfein. If you're building a brand in the beverage space, this is an episode for you. This is a chat about the industry overall, the role that Amazon plays in a CPG brand, and how a rebrand led to the biggest step change in the business.
• 0:37
  Swoon is modernizing classic drinks starting with lemonade and iced tea that hits a sweet spot previously missing in the beverage aisle. Swoon's low-glycemic take on drinks offers a sweetness profile that sits between a seltzer and a fruit juice, so you can always have another one. The brand was founded by two friends with the same need, a type 1 diabetic and a mum of three, both looking for full-flavor, healthy beverage options.
• 1:03
  If you're interested in learning more from Christina and the women you're hearing from in the show, be sure to sign up to our wait list for our private digital network where you can access a community of women building CPG brands in the e-com space and what we're calling modern mentorship. You can go to femalestartupclub.com forward slash wait list to pop your name down.
• 1:27
  As always, I love it so much when you share on social media or pop into my DMs. And if you're feeling extra generous, reviews on the Apple Podcast app go a long way in helping us find new ears. As always, I'm so grateful that you're putting me in your ears each week. Thank you so much for being part of Female Startup Club. Let's get into this episode. This is Christina for Female Startup Club.
• 1:51
  Christina, hi, hello. Welcome to the Female Startup Club podcast. Thank you, June. I'm excited to be here. I'm so excited to be here with you on a Friday, lovely Friday afternoon. Exactly. And we get to be talking drinks. So a perfect Friday's like way. Yes, we should have done this with a drink. In fact, not too late, not too late. Can you start by telling us a little bit about what your business is and who you are?
• 2:18
  Absolutely. So Swoon is modernizing classic drinks. We have that lemonade that really hits that sweet spot. We feel like it was really missing from the beverage aisle. It's where all of our minds go to our childhood memories. And then also have a line of mixers and simple syrups. It's really Swoon's low glycemic take on drinks. We use monk fruit as our sweetener that helps us sit between that seltzer and that fruit juice so you can
• 2:47
  Basically, always go out and have another is what we like to say because it's good for you and it tastes good. Yum. It sounds delicious.
• 2:56
  Where did monk fruit come into the picture? I don't know if I've ever heard of that as the main kind of ingredient. I've heard of monk fruit in general-ish, but not frequently or commonly. Yeah. So monk fruit is kind of this magic product. So my partner is type 1 diabetic. So really for us, our roots are in this idea of, of course, Jen understands the daily struggle of living as a diabetic and wanting to have just like all of us do –
• 3:24
  great tasting things, but knowing just how bad sugar is for you. As a non-diabetic, working with Jen and really kind of honestly becoming friends with her first, I realized like, oh gosh, you know, I do this in some ways in my daily life, but I became so much more aware of the value of taking sugar out of our diets. And so we got to monk fruit with this idea though, that at the end of the day, no one's, none of us want to really
• 3:51
  be healthy if it comes to a lot of different sacrifices, right? Like anyone will do this health kick or a diet and do it for a small period of time and cut something out. But you can't keep that going and sustain that way long-term unless it's really something that you embrace and becomes a part of your life. And so at the end of the day, we really wanted it to taste good. So we needed a product that was not just good for you, but really tasted good because that would be the way for people to habituate
• 4:21
  to swoon and actually be excited about it and not just do it for a little bit because they know it's good for you and sort of the brain is telling you that, but the heart and soul are pulling you back in another direction. So we got to monk fruit from a lot of research and I will definitely say the product development side of things was very intense and something we spent a ton of time on with that goal in mind of really having it taste good.
• 4:45
  Monkfruit was one of the plant-based sweeteners. We knew we wanted it to be plant-based. We tried not sweetened at all. We tried lightly sweetened with things like honey. And at the end of the day, really felt like our true north was being a zero sugar product and being a really healthy ingredient plant-based. So that then went down to things like stevia. A lot of people...
• 5:07
  use allulose or even erythritol, but we really liked monk fruit. It has these really great, a great history in terms of being originally medicinal. And so it was this, you know, if you go to, we're in New York City, if you go to Chinatown, you can find it in markets as a tea, that really a herbal tea that you boil down.
• 5:27
  It honestly on its own and without doing some great product development work can be a bit jarring the taste because it's so, so, so sweet. So we just use very, very small amounts and really have created the right formulas to blend it out to create that sugar sweet smoothness. Gosh, that's so cool. How interesting. I love that.
• 5:49
  I jumped ahead of myself a little bit. So let's rewind. Let's go back to like the aha moment or when you decided you were going to start this business and how you decided that this was what you were going to start. Yeah. So the kernel of the aha moment was Jen came over for a dinner party. I love to host and I'm Cuban. And so I was making my common go-to of mojitos. And so when Jen's in my kitchen helping me out before everyone comes over and I have a pot of
• 6:18
  water boiling and I have my cup of white table sugar that I'm about to pour in and you're chatting with your diabetic friend, you kind of have this moment of, oh my God, I can't believe I'm about to serve this. Certainly to her, but honestly to everyone else too and for myself. So hard pause on my typical mojito making. We hopped in the car, drove down to Whole Foods feeling like, gosh, Whole Foods has to have, right? Whole Foods is the destination for...
• 6:44
  for great products and healthy products. So they must have a good answer for how do you make a great set of cocktails with clean ingredients? And the aisle was just zero when it came down to
• 6:59
  zero sugar or even low sugar. And so that was really the aha moment of, gosh, does this not exist because it can't be made? And if you make it, it doesn't taste good. Is there, you know, what are the reasons? And we were in business school at the time, which I have to say was a lucky time to have the time, frankly, and a lot of the resources around us to explore. So then we got to go do the more sort of
• 7:22
  heady market sizing and really understanding what it would take to create the product. And that's where we just started tinkering and tweaking and realized it could be made and that it just, you know, we were a bit ahead in terms of wanting to,
• 7:36
  drinking to be cleaned up. When we would tell people oftentimes the idea, they were like, well, I'm already drinking, so I don't care about health. And we're thinking, gosh, well, all the vodka sodas that we drink, well, we're not doing that for taste. We can all agree on that. So I think there definitely was a gap between consumer interest and what the industry was serving at the time. And we felt that was a good opportunity to jump in.
• 7:57
  Totally. What year are we talking here when this kind of starts coming into fruition? Yeah, we launched in 2015. So it's been around for a while. And you're right. It's very early to this, you know, now booming category where there are lots of options. Well, I'm not sure about the sweet sugar thing, but kind of better for you products.
• 8:17
  Totally. Totally. So. So in the beginning, then back in 2015, what were the actual key steps to getting started? If you were to think about like, you know, the blueprint of bringing a beverage into the industry.
• 8:30
  We really started with the product and I think that's still a focus that has stuck with us. Again, it really just has to taste good when you're in the CPG world. So we really focused a lot on can this be made and what does it take for it to be made and getting the formulations right. So at the time it involved like the very scrappy, like going to our favorite bars, taste testing all the drinks.
• 8:56
  Then asking the bartender, hey, could you make it without alcohol? And then under the table, literally into bottles that we'd bring, pouring it out, capping it, and then bringing it back to flavor scientists to be able to really help us understand how you take it from that product, that great tasting drink that you love at a bar and actually commercialize it on a line to be able to make it shelf stable and to create many of them.
• 9:25
  And how many iterations do you think you made? Okay, this is actually the hardest thing for us. So many is the short answer. But the longer answer, June, that's kind of wild for us is sometimes we'll start going after a flavor and we literally will get it right on the first try. And then you end up tweaking it because, again, as you start scaling it and as it gets
• 9:46
  you do larger batches and larger batches, you're always, and we're so maniacal about getting the formulation right that we're always, always tweaking in there. But some like just work. So one of our first products that we still have out that's still one of my favorites is a cucumber mint.
• 10:01
  mixer. I kid you not, on the first iteration, we got that one right. And again, we've done this and that and we've out certain ingredients that we were less excited and proud of, etc. But that was one that we got straight off. On the flip side, some of the other products that we've done have taken umpteen iterations. I can't even begin to count to get it right. So it's really a spectrum.
• 10:23
  Gosh, yeah. Wow. On the first try, that's pretty damn good. That's impressive. Yeah, I know. We were like, wait, this is so good. And it has always tasted great. So wow, that one is not an easy answer. It really has depended for us.
• 10:38
  Totally. Totally. I always love to chat about the money side of things, especially in the beginning. As I mentioned, I'm also starting to develop a brand in the beverage industry. So it's super interesting to me to understand how the money side of things works when it comes to what do you need to start with for your first order, your sampling, your branding, all that kind of stuff. And how did you go about financing in the beginning?
• 11:01
  Yeah. So as I mentioned, we were in business school when we got started. And so we actually entered a competition and we got runner up. And so we got $25,000 of startup capital in those huge checks. It felt like such a pinch me moment. You're like, I can't believe I'm holding one of these giant, we still have it in our office. I mean, it's crazy, right? We have it. Of course. And so that was enough for us to pour it all into production.
• 11:26
  And so we're talking like really scrappy early on in terms of graphic design,
• 11:32
  you know, doing it online through pitching it out to different designers. So we were like very, very scrappy. We made our first production runs were in test kitchens that we would go in, rent out the test kitchen for a period of time and go in and label and cap everything. As I mentioned, we were in New York City. So we definitely did have a nice startup ecosystem there for that. We're really just scrappy about it. And some of the best advice we got at the time and I think
• 12:00
  we continue to very much use is as painful as it is to do smaller runs and test things out because you don't get economies of scale. So we're talking about buying glass for our first set of bottles when you're buying 50 units versus 50,000. Obviously, you're going to pay a ton more for that unit cost. But at the end of the day, your cash outlay is smaller and that allows us to have that
• 12:24
  you know, try and refine, try and refine in that iterative approach that we've really valued, both on the product side and on the packaging side of things.
• 12:32
  Yeah, that's a really good piece of advice, I think, especially if you're, you know, getting really excited and then you go and print 10,000 labels and you're missing something that's legally required on the front. Absolutely. Or you realize that the bottle doesn't fit in the shelf store or something like that. You know, it's really critical to do those tiny iterations and see where you get to.
• 12:55
  That brings me to branding. I saw on your Instagram, you've been through a bit of a journey with the brand, but now you have this really strong identity. It really pops when you see it on the shelves. What was the process in bringing the new version of your identity to life?
• 13:11
  You know, we got really sort of to that. I think one of the important things throughout this is to really make sure that you're questioning yourself and really understanding and hearing from the customer. And so we got to this place where with the mixer side of things, we kept hearing from our bartender partners, I'd love to have monk fruit syrup instead of a fully diluted drink. And so we were be mixed, which made a ton of sense for the mixer product.
• 13:40
  But as we started to really think about this sort of core component, right, simple syrup, I started out by talking about simple syrup and making it, which is one part water, one part sugar, is really the backbone to beverages. And so when we went to make that core ingredient with monk fruit instead of with sugar and
• 14:00
  and really get that right, it felt like an opportunity to rebrand. Because again, BeMixed we felt was too descriptive of the mixer category and we wanted- Was the name BeMixed? It was called BeMixed, yeah. Oh, okay, got it. So we wanted it to really go across the portfolio that we wanted to build, which again goes back to this idea of how do we create great tasting, zero sugar beverages. And so for us, that meant that we needed to look at a different name that would really encapsulate all the different places that we wanted to go.
• 14:29
  And so we ended up working with a brand agency. It was an agency with whom we had spoken actually at the very beginning of our journey would be mixed. And we had really connected with them. And at the time, honestly, we couldn't afford them. And so we just stayed in touch. And I think this is one of those moments of saying, like, just because...
• 14:48
  you want to do something and you want to take that leap. If it doesn't make sense for your business at the time, doesn't mean that you won't kind of come back to it. And we got to work together again to really work on the name and some of the
• 15:00
  core brand identity pieces. You know, color, I think, is extremely important when it comes to branding, identifiable name, color, and that logo, and just making sure those are things that you're really excited about and feel like you can own. And so when we came to that process, it also was wonderful because we had already had, we had been in market and we had real customer feedback. I had a really, a much more refined understanding of who our customer was.
• 15:28
  And so in going through the brand process, we weren't sort of just dreaming something up. We were using real data and real customer information to be able to say yes to this, not no to that, and come up with something that was much more refined in terms of a brief and use that lens throughout. And I think it honestly also gave us the confidence to have real conviction over
• 15:54
  the brand because we had been in marketing and knew a bit more what worked and what didn't. Yeah. So that's how we started. And then we ended up bringing somebody in house to then really,
• 16:05
  take those kernels of brand identity and build them out into a real system, into packaging, into all the many, many, many, many touch points of brand. And I think it was really a decision for us early on to say brand really matters. And it's really important to create that connection.
• 16:26
  evocative customer connection through the brand and something people really want to be a part of and understand what they're a part of. So bringing that talent in-house allows it to be really part of our everyday decision-making and to make sure we keep that brand focus and brand integrity as we grow.
• 16:46
  Totally. And it gives you so much more flexibility and freedom to do things ad hoc on the spot when it's needed. Exactly. Based on what's incoming into your realm at the time. Yeah, absolutely. And I think it creates coherence also because you have the overtime as well as cross initiative work when it's somebody who's really a part of the team who's able to take that leadership on.
• 17:10
  Yep, absolutely. I want to go back and talk about the launch. Once you kind of had decided on your launch products, once you had placed that initial order, what was the launch like and how did you start getting the word out there? The launch and how do we get the word out there? You know, for this launch, we were living in COVID. So we were at a time where one of our absolute best marketing tools with a consumable product is having people taste the product and try the product.
• 17:40
  So I would say that would be our typical launch and kind of getting out of the gates is really get out there and get sampling. But because we couldn't do that
• 17:48
  at the time in the same way, we thought, how do we do this remotely? So we really kind of dug into all of our networks. So we created friends and family lists, industry contacts lists, influencer lists, just all internally, you know, everyone on the team was sort of firing away, just trying to figure out how do we get our tentacles kind of out there. And we ended up shipping product out and doing the sampling remote. So I think it works both in COVID times advice as well as in non-COVID times that I think when you have a...
• 18:14
  a new product and are really trying to bring people in, especially with a food or beverage product, you really just want to get people to try it. And that goes back to the focus that we have on product is if the product is great, then it does a lot of the marketing for itself. And so the most important part is just getting people to try it and then they become fans and then they have it around other people, they bring it to other people. And that really starts the flywheel. So as much as it feels like it might not scale, whether it be in a remote world or in a
• 18:44
  IRL world. I really do believe it does. And just getting the product out into people's hands is the most important way to launch and get started. And how many people are we talking here? Like when you combined all those lists, how many ship outs did you do? Yeah. You know, we ended up sending it out to, I think close to between like our first time was maybe 300 people and then up to 500 people. So it really was a pretty massive effort to get the product out there. But,
• 19:12
  But also maybe that, I don't know if that feels like a big number or a small number to people, but I think it both feels like a big number, but it's also honestly completely manageable. We did handwritten notes. We did full assembly line with our team in the warehouse. And, you know, it's just the value of getting it out there. How important are trade shows? Is that something that you guys have current strategy for? Obviously, well, not current because, you know, the world is the way that it is, but pre-COVID and post this world.
• 19:42
  Yes. You know, we found trade shows to be helpful and also expensive. So we've taken the strategy of it just being pretty selective in terms of which trade shows we go to with a booth and which ones we go to just walking around. I will say it might sound counterintuitive, but...
• 20:03
  At the very, very beginning, you walk around, you get your bearings, you go up to booths, you see who you can meet, and you sort of start to network and create a little bit of an end to the industry that way. But pretty early on, we did make the decision in our world, the natural food and beverage world, a trade show called Expo West that usually takes place in Anaheim as sort of the
• 20:28
  the Super Bowl of our industry trade shows. And pretty early on, we ended up getting a booth at Expo West. And I have to say, as much as it was a leap of faith in many ways, it was one that I really valued because in having a booth, we then just had kind of a place to put our flag and direct people to that we had met, again, sort of in the sort of roaming trade show style. But then we also just went up to friends
• 20:54
  that we'd made in the industry, other brands and ask them if the buyer from this location comes, please send them our way. If this distributor rep comes, please send them our way. And it was much easier actually to network having the booth, even though we were quite early than it was just to sort of walk around the show. So we did make that decision early on. And I can say I do recommend it. But I think, again, the trade-off is making sure that you're
• 21:19
  only doing those trade shows that really are attracting players that you're interested in being connected to. For example, Fancy Food Show in New York at the Javits Center is another trade show that we did early on and really worked for us in the mixer space. They were a lot more sort of specialty.
• 21:35
  store retailers that went by to that show and food service vendors and retailers and distributors. And that made a ton of sense for our mixers and syrups. It makes less sense now for our RTD product. And so I think that'll be one that we won't be showing at this year, even though the expos we will be showing at. So I think that's the other piece of just being selective and mindful that
• 22:00
  It does take a lot to put those booths together and to have your team there and the registration fees. And what's the kind of cost? Like what's the overall investment for something like Expo West? Again, it totally rages. And it's like one of those first year.
• 22:16
  fallacies. I know the problem is the first year in a funny way, you end up spending more because you have to do the setup cost of having all of the booth materials. Or you like, again, don't invest in something that you can take to a bunch of shows. But I think that you, I'm not going to remember exactly different size booths or different amounts, but like you're talking like $15,000. Once you start doing flights and, you know, depending on number of team members that can add up to 20,000 to really get all the product there.
• 22:45
  have the booth build out the cost of the booth for the show and then all of the travel costs associated with it. So it definitely ends up being a hefty spend. Even if you, you try to cut corners and you're doing all the building. Like we always looked at everyone who has the booth and we're like, we want to be one day someone else is going to build the booth, but we're definitely in there with elbow grease building the booth. So again, I do think there's value. You just have to set yourself up to,
• 23:12
  to make it valuable. So have enough of those industry contacts that you're sending out ahead of the show. Here's my booth number. Here's where I am. Once you're in the show, doing that sort of internal to the show networking with other partner brands. And I guess a piece of advice that I do have that has worked well for us is really to really take care of your industry and to be thoughtful about the friendships and partners and relationships that you make because they are so valuable. So
• 23:38
  As much as there's so much focus on the customer, you really do have to be mindful of your industry and take the time and really spend the time to ask others within it. People in the food and beverage world have been so generous and friendly to us.
• 23:53
  and has made a huge difference. So our buyer contacts come from other sales reps at different, even sometimes competitor brands who are eager to grow the whole category and don't wanna be the only product on shelf at a certain price point, want others there too and feel like a rising tide kind of carries all ships. And so that's a real value also of the trade shows is that industry camaraderie.
• 24:18
  Yeah, I really love that approach because I think it's so true. It's like, lift the whole category, educate as a group, you know, your consumers like move together and lift everyone up and then everyone wins. Absolutely. I love that. For anyone who is an entrepreneur in the beverage industry, what do you think is one of the most difficult things that you didn't know about it before you got into it? What are the things to be mindful of?
• 24:45
  I think it's sort of two sides of the same coin in the beverage industry in particular. One of the most exciting parts of the beverage industry is how fast it is. So we really focus on velocity, which is just a metric in terms of how quickly once we place a case in a store, it moves off the shelf and out of that store. So that's a velocity metric or online, you know, you can think of it of repeat customers that time between purchases of the same customer. And so.
• 25:12
  one of the really fun and exciting things for the beverage industry is just how fast it is, right? Like if we all take a step back and you think of non-alc in your daily life, how many drinks you have a day, you know, it can be a lot. And so unlike other categories where it's a really considered purchase over time, either because it's expensive
• 25:30
  or it's something that you don't use that often. My, one of my best friends has an awesome furniture startup and, you know, it's fun to always compare notes. It's just such a different customer journey that we have. And it's also such a different price point. So again, there's a real excitement. The trial is easy to get somebody hooked, you know, to try it becomes a really, really fruitful customer. So that's the positive side of the beverage industry on the negative side of the beverage industry. It's so competitive, right? There's so few barriers to entry.
• 25:59
  And so it is definitely in a very competitive category. And at the same time, people do have habits. And so our value comes from becoming a habit for somebody. Because at the end of the day, when I'm selling $1.99 can, I'm
• 26:12
  margin can be healthy, but still the penny profit is quite small. And so I have to do that a lot of times to be able to compete then with my friend who has the furniture company to do customer acquisition on Facebook. Our price per purchase doesn't give us a ton of money on the first purchase to actually do many marketing things with. So I think that's one of the challenges. Yeah. You really have to look at lifetime value and really securing them.
• 26:39
  Totally. So it's all about that repeat retention velocity. Again, it's there's like a lot of excitement. It's fun, but it also ends up being quite slim when you start putting it together, unless you really take that longer term retention approach, which we obviously all have to. Yeah, gosh, that's so true. I love that. And I'll add another on another thing of beverage. It's related to what we're talking about. But the other thing, June, is it's just heavy. And so so much of our
• 27:07
  work is great. And so our distributors really matter and one and having good relationships with them and having them go places. But we end up, it ends up being so expensive to ship anything and to move our product around. So I think that's the other interesting dynamic of the beverage industry is just how regional and localized a lot of the products end up being because of the huge expensive rate.
• 27:33
  Does that shift your strategy to be like then more available on Amazon, say, versus your own e-com store? Does that affect the way you approach these things? We definitely think back and forth all the time about what is the role of Amazon, period, in our business, as well as what is the role of our own website, period, in our business. And then certainly what is the role of each of them and
• 27:57
  We just have different strategies in terms of what the point is of being on our own site versus on Amazon. A lot of our industry is moving in the direction of being Amazon only. And I think one of the reasons that we're hesitant to go there is because we started with kind of when we put our shingle up, we just opened a Shopify site. We do have these great customers that have been with us for years now. And the customer communication that we're able to have with them is so, so valuable to us. You know, we are,
• 28:27
  We pick up the phone and call our customers, whether they be lapsed customers or whether they be strong repeat customers, just to learn about them and having that real connection to our customers and having that ability to test out messaging and test out imagery through our own listserv and see not just what are open rates, but then what are the conversion rates off of it, we find to be a really
• 28:52
  high value. So we have maintained our DTC alongside Amazon, which we really look at as a convenience and as well as a place that we want to be since so many people use it as a search function. And then obviously the reviews on Amazon end up being also extremely helpful for us to learn from, as well as to share sort of an opportunity for us to share how customers are
• 29:22
  I always love to understand where the business is today. Like how big is your team? Can you share anything around your revenue? Are you able to share some really exciting things that are in the pipeline? What can you shout about? All that kind of stuff.
• 29:37
  Yeah, absolutely. So we currently are about 15 people. We have a lot of our team is based in the field is an awesome sales team, which we think is crucial, obviously, to to getting the word out there as valuable as all of our
• 29:54
  brand awareness campaigns can be and how much we can really enjoy the content creation side of things. There's kind of no substitute to getting the product out there and getting it, as I've spoken about previously, people to taste it, but even just to see it. So we definitely think there's a huge value to having a strong...
• 30:13
  in-field sales team. And then we have some of the other functions covered as well from operations, which I think are oft forgotten and so important to finance, to marketing, as I just spoke about. Totally. Quick one. Who was your first hire? You know, it's this woman who now doesn't feel at all like a first hire who really is a founding team member alongside my founder,
• 30:38
  my co-founder, Jen and I. Her name is Whitney. Hi, Whitney. Have you ever heard of Whitney? Exactly. She rocks. And she came from the brand side at Diageo. So she had been on the Spirits portfolio brand side of things, which it turns out when it comes to Spirits because of the three-tier distribution system is like kind of an everything role. And so she really has done that for our team. Yeah.
• 31:04
  Her project when she interviewed for our team was to go around hand selling from bodega to bodega in New York City. So she definitely had that sales chutzpah and grit to her from the beginning and now is currently heading our sales. But Inbetween has also done a lot of the marketing pieces, a lot of the field marketing pieces, is an awesome recruiter for our team in terms of a real kind of.
• 31:33
  culture, pole bearer, et cetera. So I would say the shortest answer to a first hire was somebody who was extremely passionate and was a natural salesperson. Yeah, I love that. When you say three-tier system, what is that?
• 31:52
  So it actually affects us a little bit less. It affects alcoholic products, but it has to do with the brand, then a distributor and then the retailer. So the brands themselves often aren't the salespeople. They can only do the marketing side of things. So the salespeople are the distributor reps.
• 32:12
  Oh, okay, cool. Thanks. Good to know. And what exciting things can you shout about? Tell us what's in the pipeline, what's coming up for you? Tell us all the things. We just launched a fabulous product that I was very excited for, which is a peach ice team.
• 32:28
  And it is like back to Snapple days to people who were peach Snapple lovers, maybe as teenagers or diet peach Snapple lovers when you realize how much sugar was in peach Snapple, but since have become aspartame nowhere folks. So sad to park our peach tea love.
• 32:46
  in the early aughts. So it is a really nostalgic and delicious flavor. It smells amazing. It is peach season now. And so it is a fresh, bright flavor that we are all very excited about and
• 33:02
  really wonderful because it was our first of our RTD line, our first launch that happened with sort of a full suite of opportunities to talk to and touch customers seeing as we had launched previously in August of 2020. So this time we have been able to do samplings and hand out product and get that immediate customer reaction. So we're really excited to get the peach tea everywhere.
• 33:26
  We also have been in conversations with some of the larger natural food and specialty chains. So starting to go into those, not all of them are totally signed, sealed, delivered yet. But I think, again, back to the distribution point, I'm excited for your listenership to start seeing us in their neighborhood grocery store over the next 12 months or so.
• 33:50
  Yum. Sounds delicious. And I love how Justin Bieber released his Peaches song this year, right? It's like the perfect theme song. We have a peach Spotify list for any peach lovers as well. I think there's just, peach just feels good. And the product is that it's sort of this like very enveloping. It's appealing to look at. It tastes good. It has nice associations to it. So we are definitely a peach forward at the moment with all of our songs and visuals
• 34:19
  Oh, sounds peachy. I love it. That's so cool. What advice do you have for women who are on the entrepreneurial journey, but a little bit, a few steps behind where you are? I would say just surround yourself with excellent people and surround yourself with people who are very honest. We always say this to customers, to any advisors that we have is, you know, a tepid yes is the...
• 34:44
  It can be the death of you because, you know, when somebody says like, oh, yeah, no, that's a great idea. Or, oh, yeah, I like it. But inside has all of these sort of what about this or have you thought about that or this is what I, you know, doesn't click for me. Those are very unhelpful advisors to have around. So to really surround yourself with people who are very honest and are willing to really kind of tear things down and tear things apart.
• 35:06
  with you. We also have really benefited by finding industry experts. I think that my advice is to reach out. People are much more willing to share advice freely and to speak. Of course, you're going to run into somebody who's very close to the vest and is not in that sharing mentality, but those are very few and far between, and you should not be discouraged by those. Keep cold email, cold LinkedIn people. We've done it. It's been done to us. And I think
• 35:35
  people would be surprised by how generous people who are in it, in the industry and in those entrepreneurial moments are with their time and their advice and their connections. And those have definitely been some of the best ways for us to short circuit sort of growth and to be able to say, all right, let's really kind of skip a lot of the common pitfalls because people who've done it before or are doing it currently just a few steps ahead have been very generous to us.
• 36:03
  Yeah, that's so key. I love that advice also about the tepid yes pointer there. So key. At the end of every episode, I ask a series of six quick questions and some of it we might have covered already, but I asked them all the same. So question number one is what's your why? Why do you do what you do?
• 36:23
  We really believe that making healthy choices should feel like a celebration. And so we have this conviction that if you just cut added sugar out, we'd all be meaningfully healthier. So for us, the why is it's just a very small ask to say, let's take out added sugar from beverages and it would have an immediate effect.
• 36:45
  significant impact on people. So that is our why. We really do want to make people healthier and happier and really believe that our products do that. Amazing. Question number two is, what do you think has been the number one marketing moment that made the business pop? I really think investing in the brand. As I think we spoke a little bit about earlier, we had a rebrand. It happened. We hit sort of shelves and switched it over on our website in
• 37:15
  It was amazing to see the immediate impact on sales, both in store and online. Of course, March 2020 was this wild, unknown time. And even in that moment, we saw a real sort of pop in sales across the board of people really responding to and believing in the new, more considered, more kind of customer centric, brighter, happier, more beautiful brand. So I would say really investing in brand.
• 37:45
  Hmm. So cool. Question number three is where do you hang out to get smarter? What are you reading or listening to, or is there something that you subscribe to? The subway is a fantastic place to just interact with a kajillion different people and
• 38:03
  to see what is being advertised, what cool out of home is both sanctioned and unsanctioned happening. How are people trying to get other people's attention? I am a total gawker at people's cell phones while on the subway to see what they're looking at, what they're caring about, what are they wearing, what books are they reading, all of the above. It is just this sort of people on top of people on top of people moment to really understand what's going on.
• 38:30
  What are people usually doing on their phones? Street easy. Sorry? Oh, this is such a New Yorker comment. Street easy, which is a Zillow or a, I guess, what other platforms people use to look at real estate.
• 38:46
  So, oh, New York real estate is notoriously crummy and notoriously expensive. And so every single person in New York has this conviction inside, like this can't be the best I can afford right now. So everybody is on StreetEasy constantly seeing if there's a better place to live. Oh, my God. That's so interesting. Wow. Wow.
• 39:09
  Okay. Question number four is how do you win the day? What are your AM or PM rituals that keep you feeling happy and successful and motivated? Oh gosh. Okay. As you started the question, I thought it was a business question, but as a personal question, I have three little adorable, phenomenal little kids. And I have to say becoming a mom for me has, I think,
• 39:32
  not only been extraordinary in so many ways and fulfilling, but it's also made me a better leader and a better team member because I think it just puts everything in perspective. And so when you spend a significant chunk of your day seeing the world through a baby or a child's lens, you realize that everything feels so make or break in startup land.
• 39:55
  And in some ways it is, but to have the perspective that they have where they're so maniacally in the moment and so present and aren't looking in the future and aren't looking in the past, I think has really helped me to contextualize a lot of the challenges or breakthroughs that we have. And to kind of take a deep breath and keep going because they have this relentless curiosity and joy that is very contagious.
• 40:22
  Oh, how beautiful. Gosh, I'm looking forward to it now. Just kidding. I've always looked forward to it. Question number five is if you were given a thousand dollars of no strings attached grant money, how would you spend it in the business? Sampling. Yeah, absolutely. You know, I think we talked about this in so many ways, but I really think that one of our advisors always tells us that the best marketing you can do is to have a great product.
• 40:51
  And so I really, we've really invested a lot and taken a lot of care on the product side of things such that, you know, we very much believe that if we just got the product out there and got people tasting it, they'd go back and buy it. Yep. I love that. So true. And last question is, how do you deal with failure? What's your mindset and approach when things just don't go to plan? Yeah.
• 41:19
  You know, I'm really looking for other people's advice on this versus my own. I have to say, I think being in a startup is such a roller coaster. And I still have as much as I gave such an impassioned speech of how much my children help me cope with things. I will say I feel all the burns and I feel all the wins and they're just as exciting and just as painful as they were from day one. I think there's definitely a masochistic part of anybody who's in an
• 41:46
  entrepreneurial world. So how do I deal with failure? I really do try to say, to really focus on things that matter. And so there's very few failures that are game ending. And so in fact, I think a lot of failures are, you know, to use a creative mindset, an edit to the brief, you're basically have taken as information, take it as a learning. And how does that edit your brief of what you're actually trying to accomplish or trying to create
• 42:11
  knowing that that door has closed to you. And so there's my husband, to his chagrin of being my husband always says that I don't hear no's as anything other than just try again differently. And so I think that's how I deal with failure is to just think of it as take a step back and think, all right, now we got to figure out how to chop wood a different way. Yeah, I love that. That's so true.
• 42:36
  Christina, thank you so much for taking the time to be on Female Startup Club and share all of your valuable lessons and insights and learnings. I've absolutely loved chatting with you and I'm so excited to see what's next for you guys.
• 42:49
  Thank you so much, Jenna. It's been a pleasure to meet you. And I'm excited for everyone who's here to become a customer or a user of all of the wonderful things that you are creating. And in the meantime, please use FSC5 for $5 off your next Swoon purchase on our website at tasteswoon.com. And that'll also be linked in the show notes below for anyone who wants to jump on that amazing offer. Thank you.
• 43:19
  Thanks so much, June. Hey, it's June here. Thanks for listening to this amazing episode of the Female Startup Club podcast. If you're a fan of the show and want even more of the good stuff, I'd recommend checking out femalestartupclub.com where you can subscribe to our free newsletter. We send it out weekly covering female founder business news, insights and learnings in D2C, and interesting business resources.
• 43:48
  And if you're a founder building an e-commerce brand, you can join our private network of entrepreneurs called Hype Club at femalestartupclub.com forward slash Hype Club. We have guests from the show joining us for intimate Ask Me Anythings, expert workshops, and a group of totally amazing, like-minded women building the future of D2C brands.
• 44:11
  As always, please do subscribe, rate and review the show and post your favorite episodes to Instagram stories. I am beyond grateful when you do that. Thank you.
• 44:27
  Hey, it's June here. Thanks for listening to this amazing episode of the Female Startup Club podcast. If you're a fan of the show and want even more of the good stuff, I'd recommend checking out femalestartupclub.com where you can subscribe to our free newsletter. We send it out weekly covering female founder business news, insights and learnings in D2C, and interesting business resources.
• 44:52
  And if you're a founder building an e-commerce brand, you can join our private network of entrepreneurs called Hype Club at femalestartupclub.com forward slash Hype Club. We have guests from the show joining us for intimate Ask Me Anythings, expert workshops, and a group of totally amazing, like-minded women building the future of D2C brands.
• 45:14
  As always, please do subscribe, rate and review the show and post your favorite episodes to Instagram stories. I am beyond grateful when you do that.