Latest / Imagine If with Doone Roisin | Health, Wealth & Wisdom for Women (formerly Female Startup Club Podcast) / Wholefoods came knockin’... Here’s why with Kosterina’s Founder Katina Mountanos

Transcript

Wholefoods came knockin’... Here’s why with Kosterina’s Founder Katina Mountanos · Imagine If with Doone Roisin | Health, Wealth & Wisdom for Women (formerly Female Startup Club Podcast)

• 0:00
  This is Katina Muntanas for Female Startup Club.
• 0:13
  Hey everyone, it's Dune here, your host and hype girl. Today I'm chatting to Katina Muntanos, the founder of Costa Rina Olive Oil. We're talking about the gap she saw in the market that also happened to be in her backyard, literally, why she thinks you shouldn't quit your day job, and some pointers when it comes to building the DTC side of the business that ships heavy glass products.
• 0:38
  Kostarina is the pioneering Greek extra virgin olive oil brand dedicated to delivering the highest possible quality extra virgin olive oil to the market. Kostarina's olive oil is created from single origin, early harvest Koroneki olives from founder Katina's native home of southern Greece.
• 0:58
  In addition to the olive oil, Costa Rina also offers flavored varieties, a line of balsamic vinegars, dark chocolate, and olive oil cakes. If you want to learn directly from women like Katina, please come and join us in our private network called Hype Club. You'll access what we're calling modern mentorship, business resources, and some really, really incredible women who are building the future CPG brands we are all going to know about.
• 1:29
  As always, if you loved this episode, please do shout about it to your friends or on social media. It helps me keep the lights on and it helps other ears find us. Oh, and by the way, to all the amazing humans who went and left me a review last week, I see you and I love that so much. You really brightened my day. Thank you so much. Let's get into this episode. This is Katina for Female Startup Club.
• 1:57
  Katina, hi, welcome to the Female Startup Club podcast. Hi, June. Thank you so much for having me. Excited to be here. I'm so excited to be learning from you today and hearing your brand story. For those who don't already know who you are, can you intro yourself and give us the elevator pitch for Costa Rina?
• 2:15
  Yes, absolutely. So I'm Katina Muntanos. I'm the founder and CEO of Costa Rina. And Costa Rina really is a wellness brand centered around high antioxidant extra virgin olive oil from Greece.
• 2:28
  And the reason that the company exists is really because my family comes from a small town in Southern Greece. We make really premium extra virgin olive oil that serves a few families. And, you know, I was essentially just horrified by the taste and the quality of the olive oil I was finding here on the supermarket shelves. We always imported it from our family farms and these large glass carafes. And I'd run out to the supermarket to buy more when we ran out of what we brought from Greece. And...
• 2:54
  You know, I would buy Greek extra virgin or Italian extra virgin, and it just tasted absolutely nothing like what my family made. And our town in Greece is actually called Koroni. And Koroneiki, which literally means from Koroni, is the most popular varietal of Greek extra virgin olive oil grown throughout all of Greece. So this seed and tree is actually from my hometown. So we're literally like the source of the most popular varietal of olive oil in all of Greece, which is amazing.
• 3:22
  I love how you were literally able to look into your backyard to start a business. Yes. You're like, what have I got under my belt that I can actually bring to market? Olive oil. Yeah. I always think about how in writing they say, write what you know. And so I think it's the same in business. Start what you know.
• 3:39
  Yeah, that's incredible. But you haven't just started this business. You've started another business before that. You've exited that business. You've had a crazy, impressive career. Could you give us kind of a bit of background info into what's led you to this point and kind of where you started getting that itch to start your own business? Yeah.
• 4:00
  Yeah, absolutely. So I started my career in investment banking. I worked in banking for the shipping industry for four years. So very, very different from the type of work I'm doing now. And I went back to business school. After business school, I moved into CPG and I knew that that's always what I loved and what I was most interested in, passionate about.
• 4:20
  And so I spent some time at L'Oreal developing beauty products, both in hair, cosmetics, skin care, before having my first startup experience. So I fell in love with startups at a company called Quidzy, were eventually acquired by Amazon and ran a number of different e-commerce sites.
• 4:36
  And I remember my first day on the job there, I walked into my boss's office and said, I'm thinking of reaching out to these brands. And she said to me, why are you asking me? And that just clicked for me like, oh, this environment is totally different. And it was just something that I fell instantly in love with. And so had that experience. We were a startup company acquired by Amazon. I then left to start my first startup with my co-founder.
• 5:00
  Had an incredible journey there. We started a company called Manicube, which was eventually acquired by Elizabeth Arden, Red Door Spas. And then went to another startup started by the same founder as I had worked for the first time, a man named Mark Laurie, who started Jet.com. And then Jet.com was very quickly acquired by Walmart. And at Walmart, I was actually building brands that sold both on DTC, direct-to-consumer online, but also in Walmart stores, which was also an incredible experience before launching Coasterina.
• 5:30
  Holy moly. It's a lot. Yeah, a lot of cool stuff going on over there. Wow. When you were working through these D2C brands and kind of getting the toolkit under your belt, as you could say, what are the things that you saw that you knew were critical in building this business? And what are the things that you saw that were like, what leads to failure and like, what goes wrong that you need to be mindful of?
• 5:55
  Yeah, I think something very top of mind was the importance of being omni-channel, meaning going direct to consumer alone can be very tough and quite expensive. It's just very hard to get a customer to arrive at your website and make a purchase.
• 6:10
  Whereas if you are in brick and mortar stores, and of course, I learned this at Walmart, which has a huge presence in the US, that it really serves as a billboard for your brand and helps to raise awareness. And of course, there are other costs to selling in retail, but you know, that marketing is invaluable. And just being where the customer is when he or she is shopping is super important.
• 6:31
  Mm hmm. Yeah, I love that. And I think that's something that a lot of brands seem to be changing their strategy on in today's landscape, like brands like Away, which were completely DTC in the beginning and now have that retail presence. And that's the only one I can think of at the top of my head. But I've seen a lot of that happening. Yeah. And of course, the other way around, just with the pandemic, people who were brick and mortar focus going online as well to serve their customers during that time where most people were shopping online.
• 6:55
  Hmm. And what about the flip side of the coin when it comes to what are the things to avoid or the pitfalls that you saw and things that were failing, like in terms of strategy or in terms of product development or whatever it was? What were the things that you were like, mental note, I'm going to avoid that?
• 7:13
  Hmm. That's a tough one. I think that growing too fast can often be a detriment in whatever form that takes, either in product proliferation or skew proliferation, launching too many products too early before you're ready or before the customer has established what you are as a brand in their own mind.
• 7:30
  or expanding into too many retail outlets too quickly. And or, you know, if you're a service, expanding into too many markets too quickly and making sure that you've nailed that playbook and exactly how you're going to reach that customer in a cost-efficient way before, you know, doubling down on that expansion. Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
• 7:48
  Well, let's jump into it. I want to go to like that early development phase where you've decided to take the leap. You've decided to start your second business and go all ham again. How do you get started and what are the key kind of moments to bringing this brand to life? Yeah, I think my story is a bit unique because I really started Costa Rina as a passion project. I was working on it nights and weekends while I was still in my full-time role. And, you know, the reason that I started it was because I learned about the health benefits of early harvest extra virgin olive oil.
• 8:18
  I think all olive oil is healthy, but what I learned was that when you harvest an olive early and actually take it off the tree before it's ripe, while it's still green, you preserve these natural polyphenols or antioxidants that occur in that olive. And basically what that means is these antioxidants have been proven by essentially hundreds of studies. I would say it's undisputed to reduce the risk of chronic disease.
• 8:41
  So it reaches your risk of cancer, diabetes, Alzheimer's. It's really unbelievable and so, so powerful. And I thought that the US consumer didn't know it. And so I was really beginning my own wellness journey and I became so passionate about just telling people about the health benefits of this kind of olive oil.
• 8:56
  And so, yeah, really launched it as a passion project. I went through the entire Peloponnese, which is the southernmost region of Greece, meeting with all the high ends, small batch, early harvest, extra virgin olive oil producers. And I launched, you know, a small square space site that I put up on my own.
• 9:13
  And I sent an email to two or three hundred of my closest friends and told them, you know, I'm launching this brand. I would love to hear what you think if you have a chance to try it. And, you know, that first year, I think every single email address that came in for an order was someone I knew. And then slowly I began to see email addresses or names that I didn't recognize and noticed that the brand was truly growing organically.
• 9:36
  And word of mouth was working. And the product, this olive oil truly is some of the best in the world. The thing that makes it so healthy also makes it taste amazing. So it's very inherently shareable with families and friends because it's often on the dinner table and people are talking about it. It also happens to be in a beautiful white bottle. And so, yeah, that early word of mouth is really sort of what got the brand going on.
• 9:58
  There are a few things that happened that made me decide to leave my full time role to focus on Costa Arena full time. And the first was that I ran an NPS survey. If you're not familiar with NPS, it stands for Net Promoter Score. And the NPS literally came back at 100.
• 10:14
  which means that literally everyone who answered the survey was a promoter and had said that they were very highly likely to recommend the product to a friend or family member. Of course, that was a small base, but I had done NPS surveys for all our brands and never saw anything, you know, even close to that level. And so...
• 10:32
  It really just for anyone listening to just quickly caveat that what it specifically is, is it's just one question. Right. And it says how likely you to refer this to a friend and you ask this in a survey or at the end of checkout or at some point. And it's just one question. Right. Yeah. It's just it's just an email. It's literally an email to everyone who's placed an order and they can answer it with one click. So they literally click one through ten.
• 10:56
  So yeah, super simple, but a very good indicator of how the quality of your product or service.
• 11:03
  Wow, 100, that's incredible. Yeah, so that MPS score definitely made me think that there was something there and that consumers were really like this. The second thing that happened was that Whole Foods Market reached out. They found us on Instagram. And when I was thinking about launching the brand or how to make it omnichannel, Whole Foods was really like the top choice retailer for us. They're the best in natural, organic products.
• 11:29
  And we thought it was just the right consumer. And so they reached out. It was very early. I still wasn't full time on the brand, but it was actually their invitation to come present to them at global headquarters in Austin, Texas, that made me realize I was going to focus on Costa Rina full time. Wow. How do you think they found you? Like, were you using hashtags in your content? Were you following the playbook of Instagram or somehow someone told them about you and they came across you that way?
• 11:57
  I think that they were looking for Greek extra virgin olive oils. I think that there weren't that many and they were probably searching. You know, we were using hashtags, but it was all me and my brother doing our social media content at that time. So we were definitely not experts. We were really posting like organic content that we thought was interesting to share about the brand and the Mediterranean diet and lifestyle. And yeah, I think they found us through a search on Instagram.
• 12:21
  Wow. And to paint the picture, what kind of revenue or what kind of numbers were you doing in that early, like first year when you were kind of thinking this is a passion project and Whole Foods rolls on up and is like, hey, we want to stalk you?
• 12:35
  Yeah, I mean, we were tiny. I mean, I think that first year we probably did less than $50,000 in revenue. Right. Wow. What a signal for like, what could this become? This is, you know, something that really is a gap in the market and is what stores and retailers are looking for. It's incredible. Yeah. So we were very, very lucky that they found us. Incredibly lucky. What kind of capital did you need to actually start the brand and how did you finance it in that beginning phase kind of leading up to the launch?
• 13:05
  I definitely self-funded the business for the first two years. And I really believe in just putting something out there, even if it's not perfect. So we've iterated on our bottle and our packaging. In the beginning, I think 10% of our orders actually bottles broke during shipment, 10%.
• 13:22
  Which people were having olive oil all over their front porches. And so that was a big problem. We eventually figured out how to create boxes. We worked with a packaging designer and created boxes and now our breakage rate is less than 0.5%. So very, very minuscule.
• 13:39
  But the way that we did it is I definitely offered equity for services when we needed branding work. I worked really closely with an agency who I loved, who I'd worked with in the past and offered a little bit of equity in exchange for very low pricing. You just...
• 13:54
  really have to be as scrappy as possible. And, you know, you're not spending thousands of dollars on Facebook ads. You're really just trying to work word of mouth and DM people who may be able to help you. And, you know, once you do raise venture capital, that's when you can sort of step on the gas and really try to grow the brand and get the word out there. Yeah, for sure. And at what point did you start that kind of process to raise venture capital or what was the signal that you were going to need to raise capital to actually keep the business going and to scale that growth?
• 14:24
  Yeah, it was really the size of the runs needed to get bigger because what was happening is I was doing really small runs of product. I would sell out of that and then it would take two to three months to get back in stock. So I would be out of stock for a quarter for three months at a time until I could get back in stock. And
• 14:39
  Because, you know, I needed that revenue in order to produce more product. And so knowing that, you know, we wanted to grow and I was going to leave to focus on it. So as soon as I did, that's when I went out to raise capital. I raised from a pre-seed fund here in New York who is run by someone who I know well. I had actually been advising for his fund on all his consumer investments leading up to that point.
• 14:59
  which of course made that first check, getting that first check much, much easier than, you know, for example, getting the first check. And when I started my first startup, which was, you know, we probably talked to 80 angel investors to get those first few checks. So, yeah, that helped a lot. And having the first round be institutional capital definitely helps set you up nicely for growth from there in future fundraising rounds.
• 15:20
  Was there any advice that you received personally before you started that part of the journey that you would share with other entrepreneurs who are listening, who kind of want to follow that same path of bootstrapping until a certain point and then looking for institutional funding or angel funding?
• 15:36
  Yeah, I think some advice that I got that I followed was, you know, don't quit your day job because product development for a new brand actually takes quite a long time. And, you know, you don't want to be waiting for your brand to launch for two, maybe three years until you get that product right.
• 15:54
  So that takes a lot of time. You know, you want your paycheck coming in. Of course, working full time is extremely demanding and it's very hard. But if you're willing to put in that work nights and weekends to try to make it happen, I definitely recommend it. It also takes the pressure off yourself a little bit because you may then rush to launch something too quickly before you're ready or you'll put out a product that's, you know,
• 16:14
  I still believe in rapid prototyping. It does not need to be perfect before you launch it. But, you know, I do think taking that pressure off yourself helps. And you can begin to talk to investors more casually before you like really need money, which helps a lot. And start to make those relationships before, get feedback from investors and just start networking the entrepreneur community. You know, I'm based in New York, and so I only know it here, but I think it's the same throughout the U.S. and places like Boulder and San Francisco and L.A., where, you know,
• 16:44
  entrepreneurs are really, really willing to help each other. And most entrepreneurs will take a meeting with another founder to share learnings, introduce you to angels that invested in them and sort of teach you about their own journey. So I think starting to have those conversations sooner rather than later always helps.
• 17:00
  For sure. We've just been having conversations on that kind of note. We're already starting to have conversations with people who are in the M&A space for our brand to understand like what that roadmap needs to look like and at what points they look to acquire brands. You know, are they looking at profit? Are they looking at growth? And like what we need to do in five years time, for example, to be prepared.
• 17:24
  versus waiting and then being like, oh, so now what do we need to do? So I think that's always something interesting for people to know is like start having conversations early, regardless of whether you need to or not, just build that network and get people sharing what they know and helping you with the learnings. So key. Yes, definitely. And it's great for them too, because they want to know what's going on and what new brands and new products are coming out. So it's a symbiotic relationship. For sure.
• 17:48
  Going back to, you know, you got into Whole Foods. What year are we talking here? When was this happening? We launched in Whole Foods just last year in 2020, in the summer of 2020. So since then, from 2020 to now, obviously there's been a pandemic. So things rapidly would have changed for you, I'm sure, when it came to your strategy and things like that. What have the tipping points been or those key moments of change and momentum since then that kind of propelled you forward? Yeah.
• 18:16
  Yeah, I think the big tipping points for us have all been press related. And so we had a few times where one where we were featured in The New York Times. And when we launched our chocolate, we make dark chocolate bars with extra virgin olive oil as well. And our chocolate was featured there. It brought a lot of eyeballs to our website and we had an incredible day of growth.
• 18:38
  A few months after that, we were featured on the Today Show, which was the really big one. And so the Today Show featured us on a segment called She Made It, which was also focused on female entrepreneurs. And, you know, that day was just insane. We sold out of literally every last unit of inventory that we had in 20 minutes. Yeah.
• 18:55
  And then the show continued to air across the U.S. in all four time zones. And we were completely sold out. Again, this was before we had raised a large round of funding. And so we did we weren't doing huge runs, but it was just incredible. Like we were just watching the traffic and the site. And so.
• 19:12
  You know, I think our story resonated with people in the U.S. where we explained where everything was coming from in Southern Greece, explained the health benefits. And, you know, it truly was a family business. And so, yeah, really, really excited. We got emails from people across the U.S. saying like, we can't find products like this in Wisconsin. Thank you so much for sharing. And we're so happy we found you. So that was a really key point of growth for us as well.
• 19:34
  What a nice moment to read those messages and have that kind of like moments of delight that give you the delight to keep you going and keep you feeling like, yeah, I'm onto something really great here. Did that make you think about like, obviously, you started with Whole Foods. What was your approach then to retail distribution and that omni-channel kind of approach? And how do you kind of scale that now?
• 20:00
  Yeah, so many thoughts here. I don't even know where to begin. But basically, we were probably not ready for Whole Foods when they reached out. As I mentioned, you know, I was officially just transitioning to focus on a full time. I remember, you know, we were invited down to the line review and they sort of give you this template deck to fill out to present your brand to them. And the first slide was, please list all your team members who are arriving for this meeting. And I was like, it's just me. Team's not here yet.
• 20:26
  And so we weren't ready. They wanted to launch us nationally. We didn't have the supply chain set up to be able to do that. So we actually ended up launching in three regions. We're excited to be expanding that next year. So we launched our olive oil in three regions. Our balsamic didn't have the same sort of supply chain constraints. And so that's actually in 350 stores.
• 20:46
  We launched in August of last year. Our marketing plan for Whole Foods was 100 percent centered around demos. Demos are where you actually like taste the food in store as people are walking around. Of course, that all completely got shut down during COVID. You know, our thoughts were this olive oil tastes amazing. As soon as someone tastes it on a piece of bread in a Whole Foods store, they're going to purchase it.
• 21:07
  And so then we had to get really, really creative around sampling. We created closed, single serving packet samples. We, of course, wanted to be sustainable. So we were looking for a paper supplier as opposed to a plastic supplier. So we sort of ran around looking to get that done. And we were able to distribute closed samples in store, which really helped drive our growth. But we did have to get creative. You know, educational demos are not the same as actually tasting the product right there. Yeah.
• 21:33
  And then we really doubled down on digital, tried to spread the word digitally. We partnered with a lot of Whole Foods brands on social and email for giveaways to really sort of have the customer associate us with other Whole Foods brands and both brands or three brands at a time with Whole Foods market itself. Wow. What is it like when Whole Foods places an order? Like how many units do they place if they're going to put you nationwide into all of their stores?
• 22:00
  Um, yeah, so it totally depends on your product category and how many regions you're in. So the way that it works is Whole Foods works with distributors. We actually work with two distributors and distributors. For those who may not be familiar with the industry are sort of the middlemen. It makes it so that you can ship all your products or have your product picked up by like one entity who then can distribute it to all the Whole Foods stores.
• 22:24
  Particularly if your product is cold or frozen, you have to work with a distributor. It's going to be very hard unless you have your own supply chain built out to bring like a refrigerated or frozen product out. Our products are not refrigerated or frozen. They're shelf stable. So it makes it a little bit simpler. But the way that it works is at least at Whole Foods, when you launch, you need to provide six or you need to provide a case free for every store that you're launching in.
• 22:47
  So that's a pretty significant cost if you're launching nationally, you know, with nearly 500 stores, you multiply that by your case size, whether it's six or 12 or 24. You know, that's a significant inventory investment that entrepreneurs should consider. And, you know, you may want to raise capital or at least have some cash in the bank from however you're funding the business before embarking on an endeavor like that.
• 23:10
  Wow. And so when all this was happening for you and you were saying, you know, you hadn't actually got a team yet, you hadn't had funding. Was it a scramble? Like, what did it actually look like? Like, how did you actually get it all together then? Yeah, it was a scramble. And, you know, we actually had plenty of time because these line review meetings happen like nine months before the reset actually happens. Yeah.
• 23:33
  So you have plenty of time, but the learnings are just so vast if you've never done it before. Like, what is a distributor? How do I price my product appropriately for a distributor? And for any entrepreneur who's thinking about going down that route, definitely like consult with some experts who can help on your pricing and make sure you build in enough margin for yourself in order to do promotions at shelf. There's actually some tricky math that goes on making sure your product is priced perfectly. So the distributors are definitely like a key piece. Yeah.
• 24:02
  Yeah. And I think like for me, it was understanding like how you actually got all these things together as a one woman show without all the funding and like what you needed to do. But you've answered it. There's a long lead time. So you're able to work with consultants to figure it out. Yeah. And I was able to hire a few people on the team before then as well. Got it.
• 24:22
  The other thing I wanted to know, and I mentioned this to you before we jumped on the recording, because I'm developing this non-alc wine company, which obviously looks to be a similar kind of shape to the bottle that you have in terms of it's big, it's glass and it's heavy.
• 24:36
  What do entrepreneurs who are shipping something that is heavier and breakable, what do you need to know? I know that you've said, you know, you design specific packaging, but I imagine this, you know, it changes the price of things. It changes the costing. You need to be smart about how you run your D2C business so that you're not kind of losing money. What is the approach for bottles that are heavy when it comes to shipping and things like that?
• 25:00
  Yes. So obviously shipping cost is going to be much higher. Shipping cost is a pretty significant part of getting to your gross margin on the D to C channel. So you'll definitely want to build out your unit economics very carefully. And when I say unit economics, you want to look at, okay, what does it look like when someone orders one bottle? What does it look like when someone orders three bottles? What does it look like when someone orders the case? Yeah.
• 25:22
  Because your shipping actually doesn't increase by that much when you add additional bottles. So from one to two, it's very negligible. So you have sort of more margin to spread over one shipping cost when multiple bottles are purchased. So you can create rules for your customers, like maybe you don't actually sell one bottle at a time. Maybe you only sell them in packs of three or packs of six.
• 25:42
  which of course can affect your conversion. So it's always a balancing act. Then you have to think about your, whether you're gonna offer free shipping and if so, at what rate, how much you're gonna charge customers for shipping, whether you'll charge them exactly what it costs to ship them to their house or whether there'll be a flat fee across. And so that's really like, that happens on a spreadsheet once you have a sense for what your costs look like and just be ready to make changes and edit and iterate on your policies as you learn more and more.
• 26:10
  Yeah, it's so interesting. And I think like the bringing in strategies around bundling and the certain Shopify apps that you can plug in to help you work all that stuff out is something that can be actually overlooked, especially when you're kind of just getting started and you haven't done this before. So it's so interesting to go from products that are light and can be shipped like, you know, a silk scarf or a piece of jewelry to bottles that are weighing a kilo or potentially more. Yeah.
• 26:37
  Gosh. The other thing to think about for non-alcoholic wine is subscription. You know, if you've got a product that people love, they'll want it on a recurring basis. And so we use an app that's very commonly used in the DDC world called Recharge, which powers all our subscriptions. So that's something for you to make note of for sure. Oh, wow. Yeah, for sure. Subscriptions. Is there anything else you want to share on subscriptions on that topic, like the to-dos and the to-do-nots? Yeah.
• 27:05
  Well, your subscriptions, your subscribers are really your brand ambassadors. They're the ones who are true loyalists. They're receiving your product either monthly, bimonthly, quarterly. And, you know, they're often gifting it. And so we try really hard to improve this experience of our subscribers in any way we can. We offer them early access to new products that we're launching, free gifts, additional content that we create. We create a lot of branded content.
• 27:31
  And so I think, you know, treating those subscribers as your true brand ambassadors is definitely something to focus on. Yeah, I love that. And I love the idea of branded content and treating them a little bit more VIP. Yes, absolutely. Earlier, you were talking about when the Whole Foods thing happened, you're able to add people into your team. And obviously now I'm sure you've grown having gone through some funding and all that kind of thing. What does your team look like today and where is the business today? Yeah.
• 28:00
  Yeah, so we've got three, soon to be four, full-time employees on the team. And we work with a lot of consultants and agencies who support us in a number of different initiatives. Our first hires were really on the operations side. Our business can be pretty complex. It seems simple, putting olive oil in a bottle.
• 28:18
  But there's actually a lot that goes into it. We also sit across a number of different categories. We have olive oil, vinegar, dark chocolate, and we actually produce an olive oil cake, a fresh olive oil cake that we ship nationally. Yum. Yeah, it's honestly amazing. It's like the best cake. It's low sugar. It's delicious with like morning coffee or afternoon coffee. It's my favorite.
• 28:40
  So yeah, we sit across a number of different categories. So operationally, we're quite complex for an early stage business. So we definitely overinvest in operational resources. We do have a head of marketing and technology who is a very good friend of mine who I worked with in the past at Jet.com and Walmart, who's amazing, as well as two newer team members who, again, are super passionate about our brand and our mission, passionate about the Mediterranean diet and lifestyle. And so
• 29:07
  Yeah, we're building a dream team. It's been a lot of fun. Gosh, is there anything exciting you want to shout about that's coming up for you? Partnerships or products or development or any of that? Yeah, we're really excited about some new products that we have launching. So by the time the podcast airs, we will have launched.
• 29:25
  our everyday extra virgin olive oil. And this is super exciting for us. So Costa Rina is a really premium product. Our original extra virgin olive oil is a $30 bottle of olive oil. And, you know, those health benefits that I talked about are the reason why it tastes amazing. But we hear from our customers all the time, like, I love Costa Rina so much, I save it for special occasions.
• 29:45
  And we're like, no, no, don't save it for special occasions. Like you should be using this every day. These polyphenols are amazing. But of course that can be price prohibitive or cost prohibitive for some people. And so we're launching the Costa Rina organic everyday extra virgin olive oil, which is really built with cooks in mind, home cooks.
• 30:02
  And this product is meant to be used for cooking, baking, roasting, grilling, anything that requires heat. And we recommend our original white extra virgin olive oil for finishing. So salads, bread dipping, anything that's not heated. And so we're just super excited to be able to provide this because we think we'll be able to reach a larger number of customers. The price point for the blue bottle will be under $20, so much more accessible for a bottle of olive oil that size.
• 30:30
  Wow, congratulations. That's so exciting. And I love that it's blue. I imagine those, you know, on a table or on a shelf or on the bench, they would look so beautiful versus what you can buy kind of at the classic supermarket olive oil vibes. Yeah, we definitely aim to be, you know, out on the pantry on the dinner table. That was very key to launching the brand in the first place.
• 30:55
  For sure. What is your key piece of advice for women who are on the entrepreneurial journey, but a little earlier on than yourself?
• 31:05
  I think I said it earlier, so I don't mean to repeat myself, but I think don't quit your day job. If you're in product development and you're trying to work it out, try to see if you can do it without putting that pressure on yourself. And then constantly putting something out into the market, even though it's not perfect, put something out into the market, get feedback, get consumer insights, see what friends and family think, get it in people's hands so that you can then iterate on the product to improve it and really get it to an optimal place.
• 31:30
  Amazing. Thank you so much for that. At the end of every episode, I ask a series of six quick questions, some of which we might have covered, some of which we might not have, but I ask them all the same. So question number one is, what's your why? Why are you doing what you're doing?
• 31:47
  Definitely to help change people's nutrition and lifestyle for the better. I think the people of the Mediterranean have been living a certain way for thousands of years and we can learn a little something from them in their plant forward eating, their use of extra virgin olive oil, clean living, low stress, sitting down to family dinner every night. I'm very inspired by the blue zones, which are areas of the world where people happen to live
• 32:11
  a long time, a higher than average population of people who live to be over 100. And so really just spreading that message and seeing if we can convert people to eating a bit healthier and eventually they'll end up in a happier place as well. Oh, I love that. Question number two is what's been the number one marketing moment that made the business pop?
• 32:32
  Yeah, I think it was the Today Show. Our Today Show appearance was a really big one. And then more recently, there's a famous doctor named Peter Atiyah, who organically became a customer of ours, a repeat customer. And he offered our products to his subscriber base. And that was actually a really big moment for us as well. I think having his endorsement as a very well-regarded doctor and wellness expert and biohacker really helped us grow our customer base. And that happened pretty recently, just last month.
• 33:03
  Wow. Yeah, that's a good one. Having someone that's got that kind of like medical background. Yes. Very trusted, very credible, giving it to an audience. That's amazing. Congratulations. Thank you. Question number three is where do you hang out to get smarter? What are you reading or listening to or subscribing to that we should all know about?
• 33:23
  Yeah, I'm a huge student of podcast university. I listen to, you know, probably three to four podcasts every day. I listen to them at 1.5 times so I can get as much content in as possible. You have some really amazing content. I listened to Margaret Wishingrad this morning from Three Wishes.
• 33:41
  Isn't she great? Yeah, she's wonderful. Thank you. Yeah, and really, I just like to learn from people's journeys. I think entrepreneurs on how I built this and other podcasts like What You're Building and everything else out there. I'm also a member of two women's networks that are extremely educational and helpful in building this brand. One is Chief.
• 34:03
  which is a women's network for, you know, senior women. It was actually co-founded by a friend of mine named Carolyn Childers, and they have a clubhouse in New York where women can congregate and you can kind of work from there and meet other people. And that's been incredibly useful. And then finally, the Female Founders Fund has a really incredible network of female founders led by a friend of mine named Anu Dugal, and she's amazing.
• 34:23
  And so, yeah, I think that's where I hang out to get smarter for sure. She is so amazing. I think she's in the pipeline to come on the show soon. And I'm very excited and super looking forward to hearing all of her recent success with the new fund raise that she did. Yeah. Love her. Wow. Thanks for sharing about the chief. I hadn't heard of that one before. That's really interesting.
• 34:45
  Question number four is how do you win the day? What are your AM and PM rituals that keep you feeling happy and successful and motivated?
• 34:55
  Yeah, I think I consider my day a win when I can get a workout in. I have three little kids. I have three children under five, but they're all pretty young. And so my mornings can be hectic. My evenings can be hectic. So I think when I can get some movement in, that's a win for me. And I feel great. Head is clear. Just super, super healthy. I was recently wearing a continuous glucose monitor and noticed that my glucose spikes were significantly lower on days where I worked out. So now I'm aiming to prioritize that, you know, more often than not.
• 35:24
  Oh, I didn't even know you could do that. What's the glucose monitor? Is it like a band or something? This is a whole other podcast, but you should definitely look into it. So a continuous glucose monitor, or CGM as it's called, is typically in the past has been used for people who have diabetes.
• 35:40
  But there are a few companies out there making them a little bit more available to people without diabetes to really understand what your spikes in your glucose look like. The one that I used was called Levels. And I just thought it was like an incredibly informative experience in your own sort of health metric tracking and...
• 35:57
  helped me realize like what I was eating that was spiking my blood sugar that I may not have even known. And then also I was able to test out things like our olive oil cake and our chocolate bars, which kept me level. And I was super excited about that. So I'm like, okay, good. I can keep eating those.
• 36:10
  Oh, my God, I'm so excited to try this. I'm the kind of person that goes through those feelings of just all of a sudden, like instantly, I'll be like, oh, my God, I'm so hungry. I feel like I'm going to faint. I get really shaky and it comes on so quickly that sometimes I should be more aware of it. But then it just hits and I'm like, damn, I don't know what's going on here, but I feel so bad. I definitely recommend it. I will send you that link for sure. Yes, please do. I would love to try that.
• 36:36
  Question number five is if you were given a thousand dollars of no strings attached grant money, how would you spend that in the business? I think I would put it back into product or like straight into cogs, like any improvement that we can make to the product, I think really drives that customer loyalty, word of mouth. You know that if you put it into Facebook or Instagram, you might get one more customer. But if you put it into product, I think that's where you'll have long term success.
• 37:03
  Amazing. And question number six, last question is how do you deal with failure? What's your mindset and approach when things don't go to plan?
• 37:12
  Yeah, I think the way I think about failure is that there's no one in the world besides me that's thinking about me every single day. And people have their own lives and their own children and husbands and wives and jobs and careers. And like no one cares. So when you fail, just kind of pick yourself back up and get back on and think of it as a learning experience. And really don't dwell on what others are thinking of you in that moment, which is where I think a lot of people get bogged down with failure. Like, what are people going to think?
• 37:40
  Yeah, it's like ego driven, right? Versus just being like, okay, how do we move forward? Exactly. So true.
• 37:46
  Katina, this was so cool. Thank you so much for coming on the show and sharing your story. I am so excited for the day that I can try your products and see you all in the shelves of London. Amazing. Yeah, I hope so soon. I would love to send you some if I can get it across the pond and hear what you think. For sure. Thank you so much for everything that you're doing. Your podcast is really wonderful. And I'm happy that you're inspiring other women to start their own ventures. Oh, thank you so much. Thank you.
• 38:18
  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.
• 38:42
  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.
• 39:05
  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.
• 39:22
  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.
• 39:46
  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.
• 40:09
  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.