We didn't do everything right. We didn't do everything perfect. We're still not. It's a constant process of optimization improvement. - Welcome to Honest Ecommerce, a podcast dedicated to cutting through the BS and finding actionable advice for online store owners. I'm your host, Chase Clymer, and I believe running a direct-to-consumer brand does not have to be complicated or a guessing game. On this podcast, we interview founders and experts who are putting in the work and creating real results. I also share my own insights from running our top Shopify consultancy, Electric Eye. We cut the fluff in favor of facts to help you grow your Ecommerce business. Let's get on with the show. Hey everybody, welcome back to another episode of Honest Ecommerce. I'm your host, Chase Clymer, and today I'm welcoming the show Kelly Dean. She is the Chief Commercial Officer and CMO at Kenco, where she leads a world-class marketing team that is transforming the way people consume fruits and vegetables through smart, convenient, and sustainable products. Kelly, welcome to the show. - Thank you so much, Chase. Awesome to be here. - All righty, so how, like what are the products you guys are selling over there at Kenco if I don't know what that is? - Sure, sure, sure, sure. And I loved the elaborate and very well-written description there, let's see if I can do it justice. In short, we're about helping people get more fruits and veggies into their diet, and making that as easy and simple and convenient and affordable as possible. We started doing that through instant smoothies, so all freeze-dried technology. So we're not doing frozen things, we're not doing fresh produce. The way that we do fruits and veggies fast is through freeze drying technology in our products. So the original product line was instant smoothies, of which you get two and a half servings of fruits and vegetables in one single smoothing. And then we kind of branched out from there. So additional lines of smoothie extensions or other types of beverages like iced lattes that include a serving of fruit and veg into fruit snacks, and now a whole host of new products launching like instant oatmeal and other goodies. - Absolutely, now for the folks listening, these products are like single serve, you open them up, they're powdered, and I'm assuming you just pour them in water and shake and have a delicious, that's the main, most of the products are kind of that. - Poor shake-o, that's poor shake-o, that's how the instant beverages work. Totally your preference, if you're into mixing things with water or into some kind of milk or plant milk, that's a total personal preference situation, I definitely have my own. But that's one of the fun parts about the product is you actually get a really different experience based on what you do shake it with, but yes, that's part of the convenience factor that I was talking about. So anybody can go to the grocery store and buy at the whole bunch of awesome, beautiful, fresh produce, and make themselves get a blender that you then later have to clean, which was one of my least favorite part, and make themselves a delicious, nutritious smoothie. We're trying to make that a whole lot more simple and also reduce the chances that that bunch of bananas is gonna go rotten in a week when you actually realize you didn't have time to make the smoothie. And instead, probably grab something less healthy in the meantime too, because you didn't have time either. So convenience is a big, big part. And you mentioned like the single serving sachets that has always been a key part of I think how we're a little bit different than others not giant tubs either in terms of things we want things to be portable, you know, people feel like they can just throw it in their gym bag or whatever they want and get their nutrition they need on the go. - Absolutely, I mean, this is a perfect segue into like, I know the founder's story, but I need you to tell it and share it for the listeners so they can understand what this, you know, is trying to solve it globally. - Yeah, absolutely. So it definitely started as a super, you know, personal, a guy problem solving for himself. So Tamash froze who's our CEO and founder. He's actually lives in Portugal, but always been a big entrepreneur too. So we'll get to that. But he, super healthy guy, super active guy, young guy, but like a lot of people started having gastrointestinal issues, went to his doctor and was told, here's some prescription, you know, stomach medication, you're gonna be on it for the rest of your life, here you go, right? And that was not a solution that he wanted to hear. He wanted to explore some other ways that maybe he could solve this acute gastritis, which is what he was dealing with. Did some research. He was really familiar with the China study, which is kind of like the ultimate study on nutrition and basically from there, that's what prompted him to go explore a plant-based diet. I'm gonna side note here, I'm not a vegetarian and Kenco is not just for vegetarians, but his story began with trying to introduce more fruits and vegetables into his diet, more plant-based products into his diet to improve his acute gastritis. And it did, it did, it went away, completely gone, no more medication needed. No magic pill, no magic supplement, we're just food, right, eating better food. So this is probably not super shocking to most people that like, you know, when you take the time to really put the energy into thinking about what you eat. But that's the problem though, right? So I think when he started looking like, okay, this is a really good solution for me. Why doesn't everybody do this? Well, because it's not convenient, it's expensive, people are busy, you know, there's a whole lot of reasons why it's actually really hard. We talk about this a lot, I can go. It's really hard to be healthy. And it's really annoying when companies try to shame you into thinking that you're not doing everything you should be doing to be healthy. It's hard to be healthy, we're busy. Things are expensive, a lot of healthy foods are really, really pricey. And take a lot of prep, a lot of work. You know, the packaged food industry has done a great job of making sure that a lot of what's in our grocery stores is cheap and easy for you to make, not necessarily focused on your health. So that's the problem he started to look to solve, you know, nine out of 10 Americans, not getting their five servings of fruits and vegetables a day. I can see what this has done for my life. How can I translate this idea, this idea of doing instant, you know, using freeze-dried technology, which retains all of the nutrition, retains all of the great things you need in fruits and veggies without them going, you know, spoiling. How can I bring this to the rest of the world? They don't have to be dealing with acute gastritis, but everybody needs more fruits and veg. So how can I take this and translate that? And that's where Kenco was born. And then I think because he was such an entrepreneurial mind said he really knew the US was probably the place to start and try to build a business. And so that's really a US-focused company that is based in Portugal. - That's amazing. Now what year did like the MVP launch here in the States? - Okay, so probably about five years ago or so, and I'm gonna skip over probably the initial R&D parts where he was, you know, kind of kick-starting and bringing on groups of people to R&D and test various products. So let's say about five years ago or so, which coupled nicely with a pandemic and people looking for, you know, more D2C types or you direct to consumer types of solutions and more healthy solutions and things like that. So it was about that time. And yeah, the company was purely D2C and really focused with these instant smoothies that I mentioned. - Absolutely. I can only, I know what problem this solves 'cause making like juicing and being healthy is ruins my kitchen whenever I actually sit down to do it. So, you know, I think it's an exciting product. Now let's fast forward a little bit to when you actually joined the team. So that was a little bit later. I guess I maybe didn't clarify that too well to the audience. So you joined the team, I believe it was 2020. - A little bit later than that actually. It was just about, just a couple of years ago, just about two and a half years ago or so. And right at the, I'd say kind of like the height of the company's D2C efforts, but also the height of all the challenges that pure D2C companies were starting to face when, you know, their whole business was built off the back of performance marketing and meta, right? And so right around that time is when I came on board and met Tamash and decided to dive into this venture. Can you, as openly as you can, explain in a little bit more detail what the pitfalls of performance marketing as your main growth driver would be for a startup? - Oh, I mean, well, first it's incredibly expensive. There was a time when it was not, right? There was a time when it was, it was really efficient. It was really... - Let's just stop there. That time does not exist anymore. It's gone, it's over. Back to you, Kelly. - Okay, got it. So let's, or we're here now in 2024. The pitfalls, the pitfalls is that you are extremely dependent on another service, another company to succeed because you're, you know, what, what are we talking about? I'm talking about meta, meta is who it is. And when things change in their system and their environment, they have outages, they have glitches, they have whatever, your business is impacted completely. You're completely exposed, you know, when it comes to that. Now, we have a subscription business. Subscription certainly helps, right? When especially if you have a great product and you're building a loyal customer pace and all of that, but you need to keep the growth engine going. And when you're 100% indexed or overly indexed in one platform as the source of your acquisition, you know, that's, it's a big risk. - Absolutely. I know that by interviewing founders on this show, and I've probably done 200 plus unique interviews with founders, it's getting more common that they find another channel first before they do explore performance marketing because just of how cost prohibited that channel is to really break and scale. Completely, I mean, I actually, I don't think we're there yet, but I actually really, I really like where TikTok is going, where content is going, where, you know, I hate the word influencer marketing, but we're, let's call it community-based, you know, engagement, everybody thinks they're an influencer these days, which is awesome. In a way, I love that. We love sending out product for people to be influencers. But I mean, I like anything that's going to eventually mature and help broaden the advertising space a bit away from Meta, not just for ourselves, but for everybody. But yeah, I mean, of course, it's extremely expensive, right? And I think you've, some brands get really, really lucky, right? And an influencer picks up on them right away. And then that's how they're, they get born out of virality and awesome. Some people have celebrity investors that get involved and that becomes their kickoff point. Some people are super grassroots driven, right? And, and start through craft fairs. I was listening to some of your past podcasts. It was really, really, - Oh, that's, that's like a guaranteed way to do it. If you just put in the work and just keep showing up where your customers are. - Yeah, you know, and you have great product, right? Absolutely. So in a way, I think, in a way, I think we're lucky. We're lucky that we got our start in D to C before the platform got insanely challenging. And insanely expensive. Learned a lot about our products, learned a lot about what people want. And then we're able to then parlay that into an omni-channel approach. - Awesome. - It could be really hard to be starting off and trying to just grow off meta now. - Hey Shopify store owners. Have you ever wondered if your store is leaving money on the table? Imagine increasing sales without spending more money on ads. Sounds too good to be true. Well, it's not. I'd like to introduce you to store tester. Store tester is a done for you conversion rate optimization service for Shopify merchants. Could your store benefit from increased conversion rates, higher average order values, and improved revenue per visitor? Store tester could be the perfect partner for you. From ideation to implementation, this full service AB testing service takes all of the guesswork out of improving Shopify stores. Store tester does all the work for you while offering month-to-month transparent fixed pricing. It gets even better. 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With over $100 million in incremental profit generated, they have over 1.5 billion transactions ran through their software. They have over 400 million shoppers that have gone through their test. Intelligence is not a tool, it's a game changer for your business. Are you ready to transform your Shopify stores profitability? Book a demo today at Intelegems.io. Empower your brand to reach new heights. Again, that's Intelegems giving superpowers to your customer acquisition, retention, and overall profitability. - It's very difficult. That's just the simple word. And then here's like a word of advice to anyone out there where the meta is their go-to-market strategy unless you yourself are a paid marketing genius, whoever is flirting with you to win that business, they better show you a case study where they have broken a brand before and I'm saying taking them from zero to a million or plus through paid ads, if they can't show you that case study, do not work with them. - And if they don't also tell you what that's gonna cost you to do that because let's be honest now, and this is very timely 'cause I've been talking about this today, where we're always thinking, even though we're in retail now, we're always thinking about how to bolster and grow our D2C business. And it's, yes, you need to be a performance marketing genius. You also need to be a creative just. - Machine. - Machine, machine, right? You've gotta have those tools in place to be generating not five or 10 or a few dozen iterations of creative a month, but a hundred, you know? If you really wanna give it a shot, right? And so I think if you, and you need to be realistic about what that's gonna cost. And if you don't, just like you said, if a partner is coming to you and can't show you how they're gonna do it through their performance skills and also through creative, then they're probably selling you snake oil. - Yeah, and I don't wanna flirt around the numbers here. It's expensive, and I would say, for a net new product, it really depends on your category and how viral you can go and influence it. It depends, it's always the answer, but I wouldn't be shocked if someone told you, it's gonna cost you half a million dollars to make a million dollars. - Oh, for sure, absolutely, absolutely. That's a given, for sure. And there's, you know, there's a, for most brands, right? There's a few, a lucky few out there, but for most of them, it's a build, right? It's a process, it's a build, it takes time. And even if the bulk of your sales are coming from one platform, you should never lose focus on trying to diversify and look for additional ways to be building that audience. - Absolutely, we went off on a very fun tangent there about meta being scary, but let's go back. All right, so you were hired at Kenco. What were you brought on? Or were there some of the projects or initiatives or problems that you kind of needed to solve or help own? - For sure, so I just thought this was gonna be the, and I was right, thankfully, a really incredible and exciting challenge for me at the point that I am in my career. So then I was brought on Cure D2C Company and doing well, right? I mean, even given the challenges of the environment, great retention, great AOV, great products, you know what I mean? Really, truly tried them myself, of course, before deciding to come on board. But what was missing? What was missing was brand awareness, thinking about what a marketing strategy should look like. And then for me, which I was not hired to do, by the way, but made a point of saying this is what I wanna do in my interview if we decide to work together, is I wanna be thinking about what's next, right? So like, yes, this D2C world, but omni-channel and what's next, how soon can we start dreaming and thinking and planning about how we're going to enter into retail, whatever that means, whatever that looks like. And so yes to all of those things, but I really wanted to fundamentally, I saw this as an opportunity in kind of a white space and wanted to immediately start talking about, you know, how we manage the business strategy. And that's a really exciting opportunity. And Tamash and I really just hit it off and got along really, really well. And I knew I was gonna adore working with him. And that is, I can't begin to state how important that is if you're going to take on a role in a challenge like that and try to see it through. - Absolutely. Now, I'm gonna spoil something. You guys got some great retail placements. Can you talk about kind of, you know, getting into these amazing stores, you know, what that challenge was like, how having a successful D2C brand helped you acquire some of that space? - A hundred percent, yeah. Let me start by saying it didn't happen at all the way that I thought it would or the way that we had planned it to. So how about that for my brilliant strategy skills? But I think that's also just the way things happen, right? I mean, it's in this world of you, you make a plan, you start working towards that plan and then things happen. Meetings happen, conversations start to happen. Tamash and I have always been really big believers in like take the call, take the meeting. It may seem ridiculous, it may seem like a waste of time, it may seem like some rando connection that is meaningless, take the call, do the meeting, make the connection, that made all the difference. So we schemed and dreamed of doing what a lot of companies would do in our place that are kind of organic-based and natural-based. We would start off in natural foods. Maybe then make our way over to conventional grocery, slowly over time and then maybe make our way into mass and convenience and all that good stuff. That is not at all how it happened. So we started to go down that road, we started to think down that road and strategize down that road. And then what happened was we took some calls and in the midst of taking some calls from people in interesting parts of the world, we had kind of peaked the interest of a very, very, very good, talented, emerging brand broker that solely worked on Walmart and had some meetings that probably could have turned into nothing at all and had some conversations about, could this work? Should we even pitch Walmart or why not, right? Like, just go for it. And because, like you mentioned, because of our track record, because of our story that we could tell about our success, our customer longevity, our AOV, that did intrigue retailers and it was the right place at the right time, certainly with Walmart, with the right connection. We were able to get introduced to some higher level executives that really liked what we were doing, that saw it as an opportunity for something that they were not doing already, with big CPG, and they gave us a shot. I mean, that's how it worked out. It could have not worked out at all. It could have gone hard. We had no retail packaging. We were producing at a nice scale. We had a large D to see business, but we had no 3PL, we shipping from Portugal and had a whole lot to figure out. So it was a big risk, but I think we asked the right questions. We asked for the right kind of partnership. We involved Walmart a lot in our conversations around what should our packaging look like and what should our price points be at the retail level and really designed a set of SKUs with a lot of guidance from a big retailer. I mean, I think we're very lucky. I don't expect many people's stories to be like ours, but that was our story. That is our story. And that has gone beautifully. We have even more exciting things on the horizon with Walmart coming soon. Really continuing to grow our brand there, but we've also grown into, we've grown into Target. And we're very much now trying to tackle into the natural space and the conventional space. And we're kind of doing things a little bit backwards, but we're super fortunate. And I have to say, Walmart's been an amazing partner for us and has really helped coach us along the way, but having a really good partner, a really, really good, I don't even hesitate to use the word broker 'cause it's kind of a dirty word in some cases, but we work off of relationships and we have a relationship with someone who helped get us in the door and who helped make our business successful. And that's super important. - That's amazing. Now, we are recording this on the cusp of the Q4 holiday sales season. So I have to ask, what is like next? Like what's on your to-do list? What's on the docket for the DTC brand? How are you guys tackling marketing and advertising in 2024? - 2024. So we've really kind of just started to put a whole lot more energy back into our DTC engine. It took a lot of resources and a lot of attention. We're not a ginormous company to get retail off the ground, which it is. So on the DTC side, we've completely revamped our store from a year ago. We've launched multiple new categories. We've changed the shop. I think we had a really restrictive subscription. We kind of really forced people into like a very set of products. We've really tried to open that up. We've tried to make it more customizable. We've increased our offerings for people. We've kept them affordable. And obviously continue to also offer value added services that we barely even talk about, but we do once we, once people are on board as customers, where we offer a lot of free nutrition counseling. We have registered dieticians and nutritionists on staff. We do a lot of programming in that realm. But raising brand awareness is still really top of mind for me. It's obviously for DTC reasons, but for omni-channel reasons. And we're launching our first brand campaign, large budget brand campaign coming up here in about a week or so, actually. I see that as being a big fuel accelerator for the DTC business, but for our business as a whole. Really, really excited about that. We talk a lot about rally cries and wanting to, what's that message that we repeat over and over? And what is that thing that people really latch onto? And I think that's what we're really, for the first time, trying to really make happen. For the brand, it won't be enough. It's a start, it's a start. - That's amazing, Kelly. Now, is there anything I didn't ask you about that you think would resonate with our audience today? - Trust your gut and be a little fearless. Go ahead and fail. Sometimes you have to make decisions. It's do or die, right? Or like you've got to go for that risk because if you don't, you could be costing yourself a whole business. And I think knowing when to make good decisions, when to take the right risks, all the things that people say to fail, but fail fast, stay nimble. I think one of the reasons that we've been successful in DTC, but also been a really good partner with our wholesale and retail side, is that we're much faster and much more nimble than larger companies and brands. And I'll give you a good example of this. So I told you that we created our first retail packaging and we did it pretty fast to launch at Walmart. Almost the second that it hit the shelves, I knew we needed to change it. (laughing) Like almost the second that it hit the shelves. We were already talking to them about, okay, we want to make it glossier. We want to improve this. We want to change that. And we moved, we did it. We just, we go, we go, we go, we go. We keep optimizing, we keep improving. We use data, but we also don't overthink. We trust our gut too. We trust what our customers are telling us. And so I think that's the other bit that I would mention. We didn't do everything right. We didn't do everything perfect. We're still not. It's a constant process of optimization improvement. - That's amazing, Kelly. Now, we've spent almost 30 minutes talking about these awesome products. If I'm listening to this and I want to check out what you guys are selling, where should I go? What should I do? - Please come visit us at Kenco.com first and foremost. We have an amazing array of products available to help you get your five a day, get those servings of fruits and vegetables. Don't everybody, anybody ever tell you that you're not doing enough or that you shouldn't eat the pizza or you don't feel like working out tonight, that's all okay. You can still get your fruits and veggies. Just do a little thing every now and then you're going to feel so, so much better. And also, that you don't need a whole bunch of crazy supplements. Real food are the original superfoods. The original bad diet was actually just fruits and veggies. So I think we really want people to understand that you don't have to spend a ton, that it can just do a little bit every day and you're going to feel a lot better and nobody should be shamed in the thinking that they can't be healthy. But of course, IBM is to not say, please also check us out at Walmart. We have an amazing block of branded products that are coming into shelves next week. A whole new set, a whole new bunch of categories coming in. So a great display going in at Walmart that will be in line there and target as well. Awesome, Kelly, thank you so much for coming on the show today. Thank you. We can't thank our guests enough for coming on the show and sharing their knowledge and journey with us. We've got a lot to think about and potentially add into our own businesses. You can find all the links in the show notes. You can subscribe to the newsletter at honestycomers.co to get each episode delivered right into your inbox. If you're enjoying this content, consider leaving a review on iTunes that really helps us out. Lastly, if you're a store owner looking for an amazing partner to help you get your Shopify store to the next level, reach out to electriceye@electriceye.io/connect. Until next time.
On this episode of Honest Ecommerce, we have Kelly Deen. Kelly is the Chief Commercial Officer/CMO at kencko, where she leads a world-class marketing team that is transforming the way people consume fruits and vegetables through smart, convenient, and sustainable products.
We talk about embracing risks & landing major retail partnerships, stepping in during D2C challenges and growth, offering value-added services to engage customers, and so much more!
