Unlikely.
That’s how I would describe our success after 10 years of being in business. When we first launched, we barely had any visitors to our website. We created our products in a small commercial kitchen in Berkeley, and we only had enough money for production and insurance. I had no marketing experience, and the word “brand” meant nothing more than having a logo. I decided that I would try to get our products on retail shelves by going door to door. The Whole Foods Northern California regional buyer wasn’t responding to my emails, so I started dropping off samples at local Whole Foods stores. A few months later, sometime in 2015, our products were on three Whole Foods stores’ shelves.
When we first got these stores’ “purchase orders”, not only was I shocked at how little each store was buying (only 2-4 units per product), but I quickly learned that if no one knows about you, customers are STILL not going to buy your products even if you’re at a huge retailer like Whole Foods.
So for the first year, I did several demos per week. I would set up a small table, tablecloth, and product testers, and pitch Whole Foods shoppers. I’m an introvert, so you can imagine how uncomfortable I was. In 2015 and 2016, I probably did over 500 hours of demos. I learned how to be courageous, to brush off rejection, and as an aside, I became a bit of a Whole Foods guide for the shopper who sometimes cared more about asking me where the ground beef or paper towels were than learning about cocokind. Each demo, I would sell anywhere from five single units to 13 (what a high!). Most days, right after a demo, I’d go right back to our commercial kitchen to make more products.
I tell you this story of how we started because it tells you a lot about the company we are today. We have grown since then…boy have we grown. Today, we are sold at every Whole Foods store and nationally at Ulta and Target, with a social community over a half million strong. I don’t do as many demos these days (although I did one recently at our first Whole Foods store), and I don’t make our products myself anymore (although I will be making a small batch of our OG mymatcha for you this month). However, as a company, we still pour everything we have into our products and you, our community. We care about you as if we’re talking to you one on one at Whole Foods. We still feel that high when one customer decides to buy our product. We still feel starstruck that you know who we are.
We care deeply about your product experience. When our product works for you, our team experiences no greater joy and achievement. When a product doesn’t work for you, we turn our disappointment into action to make it right. From the early days to today, we’ve always been committed to putting our investment into our product so our customers benefit from high quality products at more affordable prices. And no matter how great our marketing is, it could never do justice to how much energy, investment, and care we truly put into our products.
And this also extends to our brand experience. Today, I know that our brand is more than our logo. It’s how you feel when you land on our social pages, it's the confidence you have knowing you’re paying for an excellent product (no fluff, no fancy marketing), and it’s the comfortability you have being you and no one else after you interact with our brand. You feeling enough here is the anchoring value of the cocokind community. Your experience with cocokind is what I think about all day, every day, as if I’m about to pitch you in real life.
10 years in, and we are not tired, we are not jaded, and we are not weaker in our values system. Of course we have gone through challenging days, heartache, and failures, but we have SO MUCH (!!!) energy when we think about the next 10 years. If you’ve been here for years, as most of you have been, you mean the world to us. Your loyalty is so rare in this beauty category. And if you’ve been here for days, I promise you - we are going to work so hard to keep you here for months and years to come.
Happy 10 years to us, team! I’m immeasurably proud of us.
Love,
Priscilla (P)
Founder and CEO
Priscilla (P)
Founder and CEO
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