#216 - Sofia Laurell & Carolyn Batyske, Tiny Organics: Building A Venture Scale Supply Chain

08/18/22 • 52 min

On this episode of DTC Pod, Sofia & Carolyn join Blaine & Ramon to talk about company building, product marketing, brand marketing, finding product market fit, guidelines for each funding round, syncing marketing & inventory, building a resilient supply chain, building community, & more.

9:46

Product Market Fit 🎯

It was a 90 degree day in Prospect park in Brooklyn. And we literally had a hundred plus parents come to pick up food from essentially complete strangers with unmarked coolers and unmarked cups. And we always laugh that that's when we knew that we had found a white space.

22:52

Community = Real Growth 🚀

I'll give you an anecdote but we started doing these tiny “supper clubs” we called them, these community events with 15 to 25 moms- and they started out in person. It was meant to be a regional event, but we're still seeing that those zip codes perform better than some other zip codes. They became virtual and now we're kind of rethinking that model, but I think this idea of how do you do community or organic acquisition at scale is really intriguing.

33:42

This Is How You Build Supply Chain 🔗

We try to keep a healthy amount of cover for ourselves, just in case something were to go wrong, which kind of brings us back to building for security. It's not a matter of if, but when something will go wrong, because it will. So to have as many backup solutions in our back pocket that we can, whether it's a quick ingredients switch, or a supplier switch, we've got an emergency solution just in case anything goes wrong.

39:10

Forecasting Demand In 2022 📈

Demand forecasting is definitely both art and science, but we use that subscription data and a lot of really detailed cohort analysis to identify which of these marketing moments is the most successful. And when we repeat it and make sure that we're planning for that appropriately. So we use both of those in conjunction to kind of build out our demand forecast models and then we plan production and inventory accordingly. But especially right now, and especially for early founders, you need to manage that with the cash that gets tied up in manufacturing inventory. So it's always a balance that you're trying to strike.

This episode is brought to you by OpenStore:

Visit https://open.store to get a free, no-obligation offer for your e-commerce business from OpenStore in 24 hours.

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Sofia Laurell - Co-Fonder & Co-CEO of Tiny Organics
Carolyn O'Hare Batyske - Co-Founder & President & COO of Tiny Organics
Ramon Berrios - CEO of Trend.io
Blaine Bolus - COO of OmniPanel

9:46

Product Market Fit 🎯

22:52

Community = Real Growth 🚀

33:42

This Is How You Build Supply Chain 🔗

39:10

Forecasting Demand In 2022 📈

This episode is brought to you by OpenStore:

Visit https://open.store to get a free, no-obligation offer for your e-commerce business from OpenStore in 24 hours.

Have any questions about the show or topics you'd like us to explore further?
Shoot us a DM; we'd love to hear from you.

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Previous Episode

#215 - Brian Sugar: Sugar Capital, POPSUGAR, & Novel - Building A DTC Empire

On this episode of DTC Pod, Brian joins Blaine & Ramon to talk about his career in digital commerce, media, and venture capital which has spanned 4 decades. Brian is a seasoned operator and investor, having led investments in companies including Everlane, Snif, Feastables, Caraway, Afterpay, Archive, Disco, & Tydo to name a few. This episode covers topics including the overlap of web3 and commerce, what makes businesses attractive to invest in, the evolution of digital media, learnings from the best brands, what the future of commerce looks like, and how brands can think about evolving loyalty and retention frameworks, social commerce, and more.

Wanna Sound Smart? Save This 😉

12:30

So as many people have spoken about, Web1 was about read only, WEB2 two was about read-write where you can post on social networks, and WEB3 is all about ownership. And to me, ownership from a brand really is about super fans and loyalty, right? Like what can you do with your super fans?

13:40

Where Brands Should Focus in 2022

Brands can't acquire customers efficiently through the paid channels like they used to in the past. Brands need to focus on increasing conversion rate, increasing average order, lowering abandonment, dealing with the traffic that they have now, like 97% of the people that come to your site, don't buy. There's like plenty of opportunities to do things there and I think Novel gives the tools to the brands to help enhance that.

32:17

The Real Reason Social-Commerce Hasn't Taken Off

I don't think shopping is social by human nature. Like I think people pride themselves on them finding and discovering things at good prices at great brands. Like they want to be the person that is wearing it out there first, and then their friends ask them. It's not like you want to go shopping with your friend, and like find the same thing.. and then what are you going to do? Both wear the same dress? I just think inherently shopping, maybe isn't social.

35:17

THIS is how much to spend on Marketing

So one question we ask is how much money, or what percentage of revenue do you spend on paid marketing? And if that number's like 20 or 25% or greater, it's just not for us. We want a scaled DTC brand to be 12% or less. Okay. If you're spending more than on paid marketing, you have a drug habit, you are addicted to the high of spending money to make money. And it just won't last because your tolerance will just increase and you'll never be able to go to rehab and get off that drug. So spend the money on content creators and content studios, and build like own the house that your audience is in, don't rent the house.

This episode is brought to you by OpenStore:

Visit https://open.store to get a free, no-obligation offer for your e-commerce business from OpenStore in 24 hours.

Have any questions about the show or topics you'd like us to explore further?
Shoot us a DM; we'd love to hear from you.

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Brian Sugar - Founder of Sugar Capital
Ramon Berrios - CEO of Trend.io
Blaine Bolus - COO of OmniPanel

Next Episode

#217 - Oriel Davis-Lyons: How Spotify’s Head of Creative Builds Lasting Brands

On this episode of DTC Pod, Oriel joins Blaine to discuss the role of creative direction in launching a new brand. They talk about brand formation and topics including coming up with a name, defining your brand's purpose, the power of copywriting, merchandise as a medium, language as a product, how to find your brand's voice, ways to minimize inventory costs, launching and testing new products quickly, the state of voice & podcasting, & much more.

7:31

Your Name Is Everything

I'm a big believer in naming an idea and the name being very important. And until you've got a name, you don't necessarily have an idea. That kind of came at a moment, it was kind of like a shower thought, that just popped into my head one day when I was thinking about athleisure. And I was like, well what's the opposite of athleisure? What do you wear when you're doing nothing but zoom calls? And “corpleisure” kind of brought that all together.

10:26

Starting A Business? Do This First

For me it really helps when you know your purpose. Right. I spend a lot of time in my day, whether I'm working on corpleisure or anything else, I'm thinking, okay, what is, what is the purpose of like this brand or this piece of communication? Um, and then what's the takeaway that I want people to take from it, you know?

17:34

Your Brand Starts Here.

If I was just going to tell someone in a conversation about this product, how would I do it? And the chances are like, if you're going to tell a friend over drinks or something, or telling someone at a barbecue like that's kind of your natural voice. And probably somewhere within that is your brand. Because when you speak naturally, especially about your own brands and about your own product, that's when you talk with passion, right? And if you could potentially maybe record yourself doing that, you'd probably hear those words that you use when you're excited about telling someone about this new product that you've got, um, and that's kind of your voice and that could be your brand.

This episode is brought to you by OpenStore:

Visit https://open.store to get a free, no-obligation offer for your e-commerce business from OpenStore in 24 hours.

Have any questions about the show or topics you'd like us to explore further?
Shoot us a DM; we'd love to hear from you.

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Oriel Davis-Lyons - Founder of Corpleisure
Ramon Berrios - CEO of Trend.io
Blaine Bolus - COO of OmniPanel