Omnichannel Growth with Javvy Coffee and IQBAR

Mastering the Supply Chain

0:00You need to obsess on supply chain cogs, manufacturing, tolling, logistics, storage. If you do not obsess on that, you will not get your cogs to a point such that you can enter channels like club and succeed within channels like club. You find a category that's huge. You find one that has a lot of competition and you find one with the right margin profile to succeed, lightweight, etc., and easy to ship. You know, we were always big believers that if there's a lot of competition, there's a market there, and you just have to find your angle to compete in the market.

Introduction and Greetings

0:38They'll do a proper introduction. I promise. What's up, Nick? Hey, buddy. Good to see you. Yeah, you too. Good to see you. Well, we're you're in your woods. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.

Brand Building and Revenue Insights

0:49What brands are you guys building right now? I'll start with you. What are you building? So, right now I'm running Jobby Coffee. Okay. we're more or less a functional coffee brand. really trying to deliver like your quintessential Starbucks experience at home in a better for you format. And yeah, we we are trying to be everywhere right now. I you share with me in text. Are you comfortable sharing the what you did last year? Yeah. So last year like like revenue. Yeah. Yeah. Last year we're about nine figures. this year.

1:23Well, well past the the initial nine figures mark and we're about four years in. Okay. Same with Will. Can you please introduce yourself? Sure. Will Nitsa, founder and CEO at IQ Bar. We make protein bars. we also make hydration mixes and coffee. Although protein bars are our hero product line. very much omni channel. DDC is actually only 10% of our business. still sizable but are you comfortable sharing what you shared with me too? So actually quite similar. We're I think tracking to like one 125 130 net revenue but we were we did 59 million in revenue last year. So I think our our kagger is a cool stat I I pulled the other day.

2:06Our kag keer over the last seven years is north of 100%. So we we grow very that's crazy that that's first off thank you for sharing both these arms because not many people are comfortable doing this and the theme of this is all

Navigating Retail and Digital Channels

2:19channels or no channels we are on all channels including retail and I think as you continue to grow especially brands are in this like hey we know digital we're comfortable there when is it time to go into retail the difference is you're not fully in retail yet you are heavilier more heavy in retail but you're going in the digital side so I want to start with you starting more digital because you are a digital guy and then I want to go to like why is it taking you this long to get into the other channels. Yeah. No, that's that's a good question and I think the biggest thing that is when we started the company we started with a coffee concentrate and the coffee concentrate market was declining in retail and if you know anyone knows retail really well you have one shot to kind of knock it out of the park and otherwise it's going to be extremely difficult to get back in and be successful. So, I had a company before Javi, it was called Shine Armor,

3:07and we hit 15,000 retail doors our our first year in retail and and crushed it. And we what we learned from that was the doors that didn't move, we were never welcomed back in. And the ones that did move, we had just, you know, an overwhelming amount of support to keep growing those channels. So with Javi, we looked at it as we need to grow the channel and this coffee format first and like make sure that it has like an actual place to live. And once we've kind of built that out online, then you know now we see an opportunity to move it into retail. But I think like a big thing we look at is the brand keywords on Amazon just like a good indicator are bigger than the category itself. So like Javi cold brew or Javi coffee concentrate is bigger than coffee concentrate keyword itself. This is the benefit of being digital first. It is.

3:58But then the downside is like we want to go into a retail market that's established, right? We don't want to necessarily want to be the ones building the market. I mean we can but it's more costly. And so in more really over the last year or so, we've we've built up our protein coffee product and that we're starting to see the protein coffee category itself grow and we can kind of tap into it and not necessarily be the ones investing to grow the category.

4:24Shout out Super Coffee. Thanks for the work your day market. Yeah. Well, the funny the the interesting thing is now because we're experiencing because we're so heavy in digital, the retailers are like awesome like we would love for you to continue to push us. You're not large on e relative to the size you're already at. You're still pushing heavier into the digital space. Is was that a thing

Challenges and Strategies in Retail

4:42where you just went pure retail first at the beginning? Why not digital? Well, we're actually digital first. we just so happen to be on a absolute heater in in retail over the last couple years. So, we were 55 45% digital to ecom to brick and mortar last year and then it'll flip for the first year this year. retail being a a predominantly revenue share. Why do you why do you think I just I say this a lot like with retail you could go do the onesie twzies 10 store chains and string it together and have a sales team of 10 people or a bunch of feet on the street or you can go narrow and extremely deep and we went narrow and extremely deep with a few retailers.

5:24and the clip at which you can scale within certain retailers is like astounding. At least it's been astounding to me. And there's I mean you can guess which ones they are, right? I buy your product in Costco. Yeah. Costco's Sorry, I get it. Prime prime example. Our our I mean our our Costco business when year one was 5 million, year two is 20 million, and this year will be 50 million. So it just scales so much faster than everything else. why why like how what like how did that become a thing? Oh man I mean if I could give you a glib answer everyone would do it but it's like well that's why you're it's a combination of like I would say price is the most underappreciated aspect of it. We all like people for whatever reason want to be premium and everyone wants to figure out how to charge more money for products. I spend all day trying to think about how to charge less money for my products. And so there just is a

6:23ceiling to the price point such that you can just get into the door at in club. We also sell on Sams and BJs, both great accounts. but there just is a ceiling for your category and if you can't make the unit economics work like you're just not it's not going to work.

Operational Excellence and Market Adaptation

6:42So this is another thing I mention a lot like you need to obsess on supply chain cogs manufacturing tolling logistics storage. If you do not obsess on that you will not get your cogs to a point such that you can enter channels like club and succeed within channels like club. Do you naturally default there or do you naturally def default towards marketing and growth? Oh no my wife my wife is way smarter than I am on on ecom. she runs her her ecom business is I don't know 50 million or something like that this year but so it's it's not a small business but but no I'm I'm more so on the retail side slash product slash whatever this is why you tweet and freak out when co co coco is too expensive and tariffs start to hit you oh dude it's not just cocoa it's cocoa I mean pre-tariff coffee was going nuts cocoa was going nuts I mean I've lived like these when you're buying, we buy all our own

7:42stuff. Like I buy millions of pounds of almonds. I buy millions of pounds of chocolate. I buy me like and so when these spa prices move, like I feel it. And also, you have to play macroeconomist because we actually contract on agricultural products. So we contracted on millions of pounds of almonds this year, right? You're making a bet that the price is going to go up and it's like you hold your breath and sometimes you get it right, sometimes you don't. But certainty is why you do that. You you know what your main input costs are going to be when you go I'll go I'll stick with you and I'll go back to Brand on this. D TOC helps with

Channel-Specific Product Strategies

8:21product launches or testing the market whether you could go into retail with. Is there a unique strategy that you and you use to test products before you go to the big box retailers go like yo this is moving on.com I think you should give it a go. Not really. I would say Jav is way more innovative than we are. We look at we only want to play in big fast growth. We actually have a long checklist of categories we're willing to play in. It has to be shelf stable. Has to be light.

8:49It has to be a favorable dimension to price point ratio. the category has to be growing at a good clip. actually we don't care how competitive it is. It's probably going to be very competitive. That's like irrelevant to us. Okay. we have to think we can come in at a value to market leaders and it has to work omni channel. There's other stuff too but those are the big ones. And then the last one which is argu arguably the most important is it has to be coherent across like the ethos of the brand. So we're a brain and body nutrition company. So it has to be relevant to brain and body right. So satiation, caffeination, hydration all relevant to brain and body. I would say we would have permission to go into sleep too, right? also super relevant for brain and body. we just haven't yet. And then you're also bumping up against the whole thing of like focus, focus, focus. And then a lot of people would be like, well, why the hell

9:41wouldn't you just keep scaling like do the AG1 model, have fewer SKUs, scale it to the moon. And I could do a whole bit on that, but it would take a while. But we chose to platformize and be omni channel with bars and digital only for the most part with hydration and coffee. so it's like focus light kind of. How do you think about that? Yeah. No, I I totally agree actually. Like we did it wrong. like so our for the last 11 plus years that I've been in this space, the model is very simple. It's you find a category that's huge. You find one that has a lot of competition and you find one with the right margin profile to succeed, lightweight, etc., and easy to ship.

10:22and you know, we were always big believers that if there's a lot of competition, there's a market there and you just have to find your angle to compete in the market. True. however, with Javi, we thought, you know, after Shine Armor, for Shine Armor, for example, like we felt like we were too much of a meto brand. We felt like there's so many other just car wax companies and we're like, we want to be so innovative. And the issue with that is it cost a lot of money. you know, you can't go shopping around commands.

10:51like there's one co-man that makes our product and like we've invested in the machinery to make that a reality and early on you're like oh this this is our moat this is so much value but like the reality is like none of that matters if you're not making money and so it took us you know a couple years until we really started making meaningful profits and you know I look back on it and I say like we shouldn't have skipped the the original thesis that made us successful all the years which is you find a winning market and you find your your right to compete in that market.

11:25so I totally agree with that and I think though now we kind of got lucky in a way with protein coffee where we launched it definitely early compared to where I think a lot of the market was, but we just saw with like you know GLP1s and all the you know the writing was kind of on the wall that protein was going to be and continue to be a big product. So we're lucky and now that like the protein market is growing and we're just a player in it and it's not just drive Javi driving the market. So and you were at heavy bottles and then now you're going more towards the packets or like the larger powder sides.

11:57This is a real this is like the future of where you think you guys are going to go currently. Totally. Like I mean going back to just like logistics and and supply chain like shipping a glass bottle full of liquid is not cheap. I mean breakage and just components and just you know every part to bring this product to life is extremely difficult and again early on we're like oh this is such a great moat but the reality is it's like there's a reason why no one else wants to do it you know there okay there is there any channels that you're like I don't have any interest in running on this digitally and then is there any doors that you're like I don't think we belong there yeah I think like everything sounds attractive out the gate and you see as you start growing, you're like, there's so much opportunity. And then you're like, we only have so much bandwidth. So, for example, food service sounded really interesting for us. We're like, oh,

12:48offices and co-working spaces, like this is such a great opportunity to put our product, but you really need people and people's attention and focus and like goals oriented to bring, you know, oriented to these specific things to actually bring it to life and like make money. Like I'm sure we can get distribution in offices and I'm sure we can get distribution in I don't know other food service channels but like at the end of the day there's a lot that we there's a lot that we look at. So it goes deeper than that because for example we're looking at obviously someday down the line getting acquired right. Yeah. and acquirers want sticky revenue and the stickiest revenue is retail as I'm sure Will can attest to.

13:27DTOC, you know, would fall below that in terms of how sticky the revenue is and how valuable the revenue is. Food service is the lowest kind of on the chain. with COVID, for example, it wiped out a large portion of food service businesses. So for us, we said and this is what you're learning from them telling you like value. Okay. Exactly. So we're like we're backing into it, right? and we're learning like where is the best place to put the smartest people on our team to grow the business distribution wise. So from a digital standpoint, we're okay with being everywhere. We have a really solid team that can play in really any channel. but outside of the digital landscape, we're super specific about where we want to be. So we're launching Sprouts first to hit our natural checkbox and then Target end of summer to hit, you know, the bigger player. Okay. When you think about the channels or the the doors that you don't want to necessarily be in, we might

14:20think of it just because we like I want to spend on meta and I don't want to spend on Appleven or I want to spend on Appleven, I don't want to spend on meta. Other actual retailers and doors are like I just can't give you my product. Like you're not going to touch it. No, I would sell anywhere. I would sell anywhere. I would sell I would sell here. Yeah. No, we I think people discount Again, I'm a value player though, right? I'm not precious about our brand and I play in a category where you can have a reputable brand sell anywhere, right? Like I I would sell to I was just looking at Dollar Tree the other day and people might be really precious about that. Oh, the Dollar General. It's like no, hell yeah, I'd sell there. if the uni economics work and I actually think they would. Another thing is price pack architecture and changing your SKUs for specific channels and even specific retailers, right? So we this is another beautiful thing about

15:13bars is it's super rearrangeable from a from a skew count from a skew standpoint but across count across variety pack versus single flavor like yada yada yada right so we can we have a Costco pack we have a separate BJ's and Sam's pack we have a separate pack that we sell online so on and so forth so the trade-off of course is operational complexity so this is why I say you have to be excellent operationally to make all of this work you have to have I mean our kidding operation kidding meaning taking units and putting it in boxes is like I don't know 70 million units a year like it's insanely big right so you have to be really really good at kidding and do it really cheaply to even be able to fulfill certain channels and certain retailers so again like prioritize properly get your house in order operationally such that you can even sell into Dollar Tree right most people, they might say, "Yeah, I would, but I literally can't." Like, it doesn't

16:13pencil out. Well, there's your first problem. Make it pencil out. But I guess longwinded way of saying no, I would sell everywhere. You had you had your products talk about some channels get some products, other channels don't. We tried something similar and we don't know if we executed it correctly because some SKs can be found on Amazon, some SKs can be found on Tik Tok, some SKs can be found on our.com. And now we're realizing like we probably should have innovation specific to channel development. Do you think about it on that level of I have these new products coming that's just DTOC I have these new products coming that's just club and D and then another thought process through that is that that granular and then talk me through it I'm coming to you with this after there there's multiple ways to think about it number one is like channel conflict right once you get omni channel you start running into a lot of problems retailer A is like why are you priced lower than retailer B right so

17:02you will actually make the operational tradeoff such that you have different packs so such you you circumvent that problem The second consideration is what the consumer wants. That is what really is really the only thing that matters at the end of the day, right? So, you need to do like an in-depth analysis on your channel, whether it's digital or brick and mortar of what is the price like what are for me, what is RX Bar selling out, what is Cliff Bar selling out, what is Kim Bar selling at, what's their pack count, is it a variety? If it is a variety, is it three flavors or two flavors? Like, you have to do all of that because that's working backwards for what the consumer actually wants.

17:38and the Costco consumer wants something different from the Arowan consumer, right? So, you'd be silly to sell some the same thing to both of them. that's how I think about it. Thoughts on this? Yeah. No, I I agree. Just like going back to like having your house in order like I mean just a like super easy example is if we don't kit properly and we don't get things into FBT, right? Like everyone's all about Tik Tok shop right now. And if we want to have FTP like fulfilled by Tik Tok and if if we want so for example like you know the the rorowaz that we're running at today we're like super excited about like it's great but if we find out that we've sold out on FBT and we're now running straight from you know our 3PL we're actually losing $3 an order just from not shipping out of FBT.

18:24having kitting and everything set up inhouse first before moving into other channels like you just don't understand you have leaky buckets unless you're set up you know from perfectly from the get-go. Is there anything in house that

In-House vs. Outsourcing: A Deep Dive

18:38you like I'm not outsourcing any of this from the marketing to the product development from the branding to any even just like food science do you guys keep any of this in house most of this in house we're we're we're 100% inhouse for absolutely everything that we run like performance market I think the big thing is our background like Justin my partner I you've met us for a long time we've started in internet marketing moved into Amazon had success on Amazon moved into Shopify and have just learned every aspect ect of the business and we find that we just have so much more control and we just find that at the end of the day like we will do it better even though it might be more time and more overhead that we can do it better if we have everything in house but I would say the one area more recently that we're that we're starting to let go of is R&D so like we're relying a lot on like our flavor houses and we work

19:38with people like pilot R&D out of San Francisco who are just like crazy mad scientists who understand things on such a different level that you know people who come from an internet marketing world just won't understand. True. This is why this is fun. We're the exact opposite in every single way. like literally the exact opposite. We

Outsourcing and Speed in Business

19:57outsource everything. We have eight people. we do R&D in house or we we have used third parties for R&D and now we're in-housing R&D like exact inverse of everything you just said is is us which is fun because both both models can work right but for us it's like we're all about speed you can hire and fire third parties way faster than you can hire and fire people if you can pay third parties a lot you can get insanely competent third parties they will never care as much about the brand as you do But like that's of course the trade-off, but you get all these other ancillary benefits. so we are very much a hub and spoke model, eight people and then 30 third parties around us. So I'll

Reflecting on Business Decisions

20:41ask one final question. I'll open up for anybody that has any questions from the audience. Is things that you probably would have done different recently? Like with all the things that are changing, tariffs, ad costs, is there anything that you like this is something that I just recently did. I'm really happy I did that. I probably should have done it sooner. I'm going to come to you right after that. Yeah. no, I think I mean I think I I've already kind of said it like I think if I was to restart everyone asked, you know, after Jobby, what are you going to do? Or like, and I'm not even thinking that far ahead because there's so much going on right now, but I would 100% do the model that I've always done throughout my entire career, which is you just find a winning space that touches on really everything that Will said, and you find your right to play in that space. So, what's your angle?

21:26what's your unique value proposition? How are you going to be different? And I think that's the best opportunity. And then leverage channels like Tik Tok shop and Amazon right now to get off the ground. Focus on those two channels first because the second you introduce D TOC, you're adding crazy amounts of overhead and a lot of complexity to the business. So yeah, that doesn't stop. It's just ads and pages and frustration. It's and I think that's why we have such a big in-house team is because DTOC is 70% plus of our business and we have multiple devs. we have multiple people running you know split testing we have software we developed in house so yeah I think the only thing I would do different granted we're good where we are now is go into a market that is already winning don't be afraid of competition and just find your right to win in it so before I wipe up said I will say anybody claiming that they do Javy's ads is full of anybody

22:19claiming that you can get it on a template is full of I will say something Nick though there's a retention guy in here who we work with. It was your connection. True. So, wherever he is, he's awesome. Brian, that's the only one. Yeah, that is the one that is validated. But I'll say these guys get plastered everywhere for the stuff that you do. And like I you've been a a good man in my life and I appreciate you sharing this and I'm super supportive of it. I have so much of your product still sitting that I have to drink. The concentrate. Don't drink it by itself. Please mix. It is concentrated. and the protein is delicious, too. So, I appreciate you.

Importance of Product Quality

22:50Thanks, Will. I wouldn't actually change much. I would just say product. Everyone talks about everything other than product, which I think is insane because product's the only thing that matters ultimately. so I think people nerd out on everything around product and they should nerd out way harder on product. but because every other metric improves when your product improves. If you if you have a choice between improving your product by 5% or doing 50 other things, you always choose the former. which I learned ultimately, but I just I I guess I wish I learned that sooner. I feel that. Any questions? Oh, you want to rip some questions at them? Let's go. Conor, coming to you.

23:32Coming to you next. Yep. Just talking to Oh, yeah. For you, Will. So, from like

Scaling and Retail Strategies

23:3759 million to like 125 million like predicting that as like the run rate. What were like the biggest changes this year? like was it just few massive retail contract scaling or something or kind of the what's like the the massive change that that's changed this year? Very little. like it was it was way harder to go from 12 to 27 million than it was from 27 to 59. because we playing really really really scalable channels. Amazon on the digital side. and then Walmart, Target, Costco, Sam's, BG's, etc. on the brick and mortar side, and they're just so scalable. And again, we we have so many third parties around us, and those third parties are so scalable. We don't hire new people. We we hired one net new person for every like 30 million in revenue. So, it it's just very scale.

24:32That's why I like the hub and spoke model. but no, it's like doing more of the same, which is not a very interesting answer. but what once you find the right channels and find product market fit within those, that really is all it takes to double, triple, quadruple your business is leaning in harder. more end caps, more TPRs, like more more of the same. But if you have a good product with good repeat rate and then time like and then patience over to the right.

25:06This question is for Will. actually two questions. getting into retail or for both of you getting into retail did you guys ever use manufacturers reps to speed up the process or did you just bang on the door to kind of get your way in? And then second question, with the digital first strategy, how much did that play into pricing when you got into the retailers to help drive traffic to the store? Did that help you get in there better and protect your price a little bit? Even though I know Will, you said you always try to go low as possible, but with the digital first strategy, being able to drive consumers to the retail store, did that help protect your price at all? Great questions, by the way. Thanks. We we don't really try to drive people to the store so much. I mean, we do a bit, but it's around the margins. I think this is like a misunderstood thing. Everyone's like, "Let me geoence ads around this region."

25:58It's like, "No, like that's like the ROI on that relative to instore activities is is bad." so,

Digital First Strategy and Retail

26:08but building a digital first brand is the most helpful thing to get retail. So, we had a sizable Amazon business and to a lesser extent DDC business to start and then Walmart hit us up, which we were shocked at at the time. We're like, whoa, like that happens. like the guy just emailed us and then the Costco LA regional buyer just emailed us and we're like, whoa, like that wasn't even on our radar that that was a thing that happened. Why? Because we ranked really well on Amazon.

26:42Brick and mortar lags did digital in terms of innovation. All these people need innovation to get promoted at their jobs, right? So they need to bring things in. Where do they look? They look digital because digital moves faster than brick and mortar. So if you do well in digital, you will just get inbound from from retailers. Like that's like a the unlock of unlocks, right? Because everyone else bangs their head against the wall trying to get into Walmart or whatever. so build digital first and you will get inbound and then it's a momentum game.

27:11Once you get into a good retailer you can turn well at, you will be able to use that data to get the next retailer. So on and so forth, just like Amazon's a momentum game, like brick and mortar is very much a momentum game. and then on the price point, I I don't actually think about protecting price. I look at it at the retailer level. What does the what will cause the consumer to buy this product? What is that price? Will that create a problem for me? Yes or no? If no, like all I'm care about is moving units and I only have so much power anyway in terms of pricing power. I play in a somewhat commoditized set of categories, right? That the price is the price that's going to convert the consumer. Can I do it or not? Like that's all that there is. Yeah. I would I would say I mean even with our last company like going digital first, we had people knocking at our door day one like Walmart, everyone's been asking us to to

28:02move in with them for Javi for years. and I think waiting now has been great because we have a lot of just negotiation power with slotting, free fill, etc. and it's super powerful at this point. Thanks. A little bit on the back of Wills. So, we did a total wine roll out and we were getting into more stores. That was like our first real launch into the big chains. We did do a really big digital f digital first promos just to start moving them off the shelves. Like the initial pull through was a big one. Our idea initial pull.

28:33No, it's it it works and it's it's a part of the playbook now and there's an ongoing that we have to do for us and I would say more so you you do a good job. You don't do a good job at this at all, but when it's coming when you're on when you're on LinkedIn or when you're on as the founder like as the founder building the product, you might actually do too much of this. you talk about what we're doing and we're building and as much as you can continue to share the amount of times Aaron hi Aaron our CEO and founder of Breeze when he's talking about products that we're launching the amount of times you'll get hit up from this guy in Nebraska saying like we're the largest liquor store we'd love to sell your product that narrative is super important to talk about the product just in general plus the industry so I do think it does help weirdly on LinkedIn there's no there was no right in the back yeah I think the question

29:19was answered it was more geared towards how are you guys blending your digital strategy to push retail, but it doesn't sound like that is a that doesn't sound like that's happening. Well, no, it definitely I mean Instacart is like growing like crazy. We do a ton of business on Instacart. We do a ton of business on target.com, Walmart.com, blah blah blah, Sams.com or like the number one bar on Sams.com. Like, and so much of this is pickup in store. It's not just shipping from like the the fulfillment center of the retailer. Like, a ton is pickup in store. I think we we looked at their Walmart stats and it was over 50% of the revenue dollars we drive at Walmart originate digitally which is like insane like a good number for that would be like 25%. Yeah. So they are September I'm getting I'm getting wiped up here September we're doing like a full digital to retail pullthrough because we want I want we need to see some sauce because I I do think you are

30:13getting a lot of pull through more than you want to maybe admit into retail from the digital push you guys do. Definitely along the lines of what I just said less so on like how do I run ads to like get people to go to Costco or whatever. Of course it and we maybe we it's also we support you enough we like we want that to be that's the narrative that I want it to be for you just because I'm such a digital dude. I was like, I think digital is going to get Well, there's also the flywheel, right? People see you in store. Your product on a shelf is a Facebook ad. It just doesn't cost you something. That's driving digital sales.

30:45Vice versa. Like the flywheel thing is so overspoken about, but it's it is just true. And by and by the way, that brings all your customer acquisition costs down the faster the flywheel runs. If there's one thing I could add, it's just be profitable in each channel. Your Amazon should be profitable. Your like for example, don't run your DSC so that it's just profitable for Amazon. like you have the opportunity to be profitable in every channel and I see a lot of people that rely on the halo effect or spill over into retail. Like for us specifically, every single channel we've run, we are obsessed with attribution and we again going back to my last company because that's what we were heavy in retail in like we ran TV and everyone thinks that TV is just a halo effect or spillover form of advertising but we were profitable first order on TV direct to consumer. So we plan on doing that. we're launching TV again and like we won't run TV unless we're

31:35profitable D TOC and that halo effect is just you know end of retail is just the icing on the cake. I didn't get to ask either of you this, but it's something that's in my head now because I'm starting to deal with it. Is like I'm trying to grow our subscription business as high as humanly possible. But I'm also getting my retail team going like we need more support for promotions or talking or communication because a we have a new category that we're pushing and b we also know that sampling. They might grab one bar, one drink, one one bag off the shelf and then they might go do and go I actually want to subscribe to this. Do you think about the growth of subscription similar to how you're thinking about growth of potential retail or I know you guys are very digital first. Do you think about how to get retail less or more in in any relationship to subscription? No, I I just try to move more bars. Like I actually don't care

32:25how or where. It's just bars, right? Repeat is repeat, right? So like the analog to brick and mortar of subscription is just me going back and buying it again, right? So either way, I sold more bars. yeah, ideally obviously on a digital side, you want as many subscription subscribers as possible, but you're also going to have a ton of just like repeat buyers, right? So I I guess LTV being like the more important metric on the whole, but no, it's it's hard also on retail like you don't get the repeat not your data scarce in in in retail unfortunately. But that this was like back to like the original remember when everyone was like don't do Amazon. You don't get the customer data and d and that was like the worst strategy of all time in my opinion for most grocery item categories. because everyone shops for grocery item categories on Amazon.

33:17So you're just leaving All I care about is moving more units. I don't care if I get your data from it. Like irrelevant to me. Just sell bars. Yes. That is a bar. Go. yeah. Yeah, I think it's very cool how like both of you are at the same like in a way level but you offer a completely different question

International Expansion and Market Trends

33:34will be when it comes down to brands that you're looking up to right in your case promise comes to mind like right away like is there any brands internationally or you know from the US that you guys are thinking for you know 2026 and when it comes to growth this is a playbook that we want to replicate. Nice. I mean it I think the landscape changes so much that like for example like what acquirers are looking at or or how someone grew today is 10 times different than it was before. Like for example, I think if you look back to like Pure Vita bracelets and and movement watches like they came out and Gym Shark, they came out of this Instagram organic era, right? And then you saw like the huge Amazon era where Amazon was a great arbitrage. And I think now you see a lot of brands coming out of Tik Tok shop. So I think like the playbook is just changing so much that it's really tough to like find

34:36one that works. And I think it's more about just leaning into what your strong suits are and like your skill sets are. because I see like I mean today I see brands now who are popping up and doing really really well and starting with Tik Tok shop hopping into Amazon to pick up on the halo effect and now launching into Target and are having massive success. and two years ago this was non-existent right and I think those guys are going to have a lot of big acquisitions in the near future. So Sour Strip guys did the sour that was like their playbook. He went big started pushing it and he was he did fantastic.

35:09Yeah. And that's crazy, right? Because what 20 million of revenue or or whatever it was. And he just built a good business. It was a highly profitable business. He had a lot of distribution. It was re heavily retail distribution, which again is super sticky and high high multiple revenue. So cool. Yeah, I think it's ever changing. The other cool thing just to in on on the sour stir song which is I love it as a case study because it's so counter to what everyone talks about like all natural organic this. It's like no artificial flavors and big letters written and like no one gives a and Hershey's bought it for whatever 75 million. So it's like you got to keep reminding yourself we live in a bubble total bubble. And this is the same thing with like oh I'm going to go on on Whole Foods and like I'll do Walmart in like 10 years. It's like, no, no, you live in a bubble and everyone shops at Walmart and so you're just

36:05leaving money on the table if you aren't it's it's the same thing at the product level, which I think Sour Strips was a great case study of. Yeah. I keep talking about our last company, but it was just further along than where we are now in in a lot of ways, but like we were doing, you know, like $50,000 to $100,000 a day in Germany. so we right now are in obviously Canada is an easy one. but EU, Australia, no, we ha we have in the past. we like Brazil with pics, you know? So it's all about like I'm sure it sounds like you know a little bit about this, but you have to get like their native processing, right? You need to have all the best like Germany has like 10 different like processors like on top of like PayPal, right? so translating pages, the whole thing needs to be set up. And, I think it's a good opportunity though. It's harder to go

36:58like international just because how big the US market is. So, like thinking about that. Yeah. Right away. You're like, we still just have more. Maybe we just speak to the Spanish people in America. We got a ton of them, you know? Might as well keep selling to those guys. Dude, our best converting Tik Tok content is Spanish speaking. what I don't speak Spanish, by the way. But yeah. Do you translate pages or you just still just like Spanish ads? We just worked with ail Spanish speaking affiliates who like all their content in Spanish and it just absolutely crushes.

37:32That's kind of that's pretty that's pretty saucy in in the American market, right? Yeah, we are too. Mexico. Yep. Japanese to your point that it's a it's not just translating the pages. It's like a It's understanding how it operates over there. Yeah. Skill King America. Yeah. I mean, go to daily virals.com and like look at the all the top videos and you'll see like it's just covered with Spanish speaking to us market. I got one final question right here. Yeah,

Branding and Product Positioning

38:04definitely. Hey, Will, you were talking about being putting a lot of money and effort into product improvement and putting it all on that way. My question is more around especially with retail, how much of that goes into like branding and you know does does branding change between the different channels and is that fall into the same category and I guess you know if it ain't broke don't fix it is that the mindset or do you constantly want to improve that as well because I've just seen brands over the years they update their their look and feel. I mean think times change every two years right so does that at some point become a a factor in your thought process of having a different brand all these channels like how do you how do you how do you think about that how does that come you don't want to have a different brand in different channels but you definitely want to have nuanced positioning and packaging and callouts and call out hierarchy and by the way this isn't even

38:55necessarily channel relevant it might be time relevant so like our first big step change in growth was keto And then a bunch of people named put keto on their trademark and they all died, right? And we grew a ton because of keto and then keto died. But we kept growing through it because we positioned like we had what what I call a big trend surface area. So yes, we were keto but we're also high protein, we're also low sugar and we're also clean label and blah blah blah blah blah. So we would change we fundamentally change our callouts and call out hierarchy. And that does in a nuance way it's subtly different from retailer to rate retailer. It's more than subtly different from brickandmortar to digital. but more broadly like no one knows who your brand is. I think we all get very precious about our brand. No one knows who you are and they won't know who you are in five years either.

39:44So you need to win with a consumer who has no freaking clue who your brand is. I I say often too like protein is a bigger brand than like Chomps for example. Blanch Champs is a big brand, but protein is a bigger brand, right? The the value prop, the call out, the benefit to the consumer is actually bigger than the brand itself. So, you need to figure out how to win based on your product attributes and and value props at retailer. At retail, price point is another one, by the way. When that person has no idea who you are and still get them to put it in the cart, will Brandon, gentlemen, thank you very much.