Ep. 19 Lindsay McCormick from Bite on Going Viral with Mission Driven Branding

06/01/22 • 28 min

Jason invited Lindsay McCormick onto the podcast to tell the story of founding Bite, a company she started to make personal care more environmentally friendly by getting toothpaste tubes out of the oceans. Lindsay had to lay the groundwork from manufacturing to supply chain to customer education ahead of any success and it paid off when Bite went viral on Facebook in 2018. Listen ahead for her wisdom on what a thriving, mission driven company looks like and how she continues to expand the company’s offerings and revenue.

On this week’s episode of Ecommerce Building Blocks, Jason sits down with Lindsay McCormick, founder and CEO of Bite (Because It’s The Earth) a sustainable personal care brand that started by taking toothpaste out of the tube and putting it into tiny capsules. The word sustainable can be a catchall, so Jason and Lindsay spend some time talking about what being a truly sustainable brand means at Bite, from the mission, product materials, operations, supply chain and education. Any mission driven brand needs to be able to take complex, nuanced information and to break it down in a way that customers will understand and relate to. Lindsay outlines the ways Bite tackles messaging on various platforms, and who the brand focuses their most energy on. She shares the challenges of designing carbon neutral and plastic free packaging and shipping in an environmentally friendly way. Bite isn’t the same price as a tube of toothpaste from the pharmacy shelf and Lindsay provides insights into successfully communicating the cost of being environmentally friendly so that her customers can make the choice to pay a premium for Bite’s products. This leads Lindsay and Jason to agree that understanding customers in terms of their priorities and reaching them at the level they are at is always the key to successful branding. Finally, Jason and Lindsay talk briefly about the attention economy and how the most successful companies can make pivots in spreading their message across all communication channels.

Episode links:

Bite: trybite.com

Lindsay’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/lindsaymc

Lindsay’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lindsay-mccormick-39188521/

Carbon Fund: https://carbonfund.org/

➡️ Building Blocks website: bbclass.co

🍍Jason’s twitter: https://twitter.com/EggrolI

Sign up for Jason's weekly newsletter: http://news.bbclass.co

This episode is sponsored by Varos. Get started for free by typing WONG into the referral field at https://www.varos.com/

Episode links:

Bite: trybite.com

Lindsay’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/lindsaymc

Lindsay’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lindsay-mccormick-39188521/

Carbon Fund: https://carbonfund.org/

➡️ Building Blocks website: bbclass.co

🍍Jason’s twitter: https://twitter.com/EggrolI

Sign up for Jason's weekly newsletter: http://news.bbclass.co

This episode is sponsored by Varos. Get started for free by typing WONG into the referral field at https://www.varos.com/

Previous Episode

Ep. 18 Ronak Shah on Obvi’s 0 to 30 million in 3 years

Ron Shah is the CEO of Obvi, a collagen supplement business he founded with 2 friends in 2019 and now with 30 million in sales across DTC and retail. Jason invited him onto the show to get underneath the idea of runaway success to find out about the incredible amounts of preparation that went into being ready to build a sustainable business in an already saturated market.

On this episode of Ecommerce Building Blocks Jason interviews Ron about what it was like to found Obvi. Ron and his other two co-founders set themselves up for success by doing a huge amount of research and preparation in their careers previous to venturing into entrepreneurship. Jason and Ron get into the details of what it is like to work with friends, and how to clearly define roles within the leadership structure of a company. For the bulk of the episode, Ron shares the step-by-step process he and his co-founders used to jump-started Obvi with their own money in the already extremely saturated supplements market. They were able to make their initial ad-spend work super efficiently by almost immediately developing a community of loyal customers and going back to them repeatedly to get feedback on exactly what products they wanted to use. This created a positive feedback loop of innovation and retention that is still going today. Once you hear the Obvi story you will realize 1.) Ron’s success isn’t by chance and 2.) it is possible to build your own business without funding if you prepare yourself and make a good plan.

Ron’s Twitter: https://mobile.twitter.com/obviceo

Ron’s linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ronak06

➡️ Building Blocks website: bbclass.co

🍍Jason’s twitter: https://twitter.com/EggrolI

Sign up for Jason's weekly newsletter: http://news.bbclass.co

This episode is sponsored by Air. Get started with using Air for free at Air.inc

https://air.inc?utm_medium=paid_podcast&utm_source=wonghaus_podcast&utm_campaign=may_25_2022

Next Episode

Ep. 20 Kenny Haisfield from Kenny Flowers on True Brand Authenticity

Jason invited Kenny Haisfield, founder of Kenny Flowers onto the show to delve deep into the philosophy of creating high quality apparel with an authentic story and coherent lifestyle focus. Together, they go behind Kenny’s founding story of recreating his father’s vintage Hawaiian shirt to what it means to grow a lifestyle business year over year, how to make room for emotional investment in the brand, and why quality allows businesses to level up alongside their customers to create a lifelong relationship.

In this episode of Ecommerce Building Blocks, Jason talks with Kenny Haisfield about not just the origin story of Kenny Flowers, but how his company has evolved over the last seven years. It started with one shirt, but what was the timeline from the initial idea to where the company is now, with multiple verticals. And what was the focus on each year of that journey? Kenny attributes much of his success to being very clear not just on what he wanted to make but the reason why he wanted to make this product. He believes that focusing on every aspect of a customer’s experience of a product is the definition of both quality and of what it truly means to make a lifestyle brand. If a customer feels that something was created with them in mind, they will have a genuine experience with the product. This leads Jason and Kenny to talk about the marketing approaches Kenny’s company has taken which are designed to create a specific mentality and feeling that a customer can take with them wherever they go. This aligns back to the quality that Kenny wants to educate his customers about so that they can see that this lifestyle is more than just aspirational marketing and is about enjoying time spent with his products.

Kenny’s business: kennyflowers.com

Kenny’s instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kennyhaisfield

➡️ Building Blocks website: bbclass.co

🍍Jason’s twitter: https://twitter.com/EggrolI

Sign up for Jason's weekly newsletter: http://news.bbclass.co

This episode is sponsored by Varos. Get started for free by typing WONG into the referral field at https://www.varos.com/