Product Startup Podcast Episode 051: Launching a Turmeric-Based Coffee Alternative

00:00:00 Filip Valica: Hey, everyone. Welcome to the Product Startup Podcast, a podcast that helps bring your product idea to life by chatting with successful inventors, product designers, and other industry professionals. This podcast is run by Mako

00:00:11 Filip Valica: Design + Invent, and hosted by Filip Valica. Our goal here is to get to the bottom of what makes a product successful, from initial idea to putting your product on the shelf. We're taking you step by step to build a functional product and scale your product business. Now onto the show.

00:00:26 Filip Valica: The Product Startup, Episode 51. Samantha and Lane of Midas Cup talk about creating an all. natural alternative to coffee.

00:00:35 Filip Valica: Hi, everyone, and welcome to the product startup podcast, where we talk about turning ideas into successful products step by step. I'm Filip Valica, and thanks for listening to me today.

00:00:45 Filip Valica: In the last episode, we spoke with Tim Christian, and he talked about how he started O-O-O-R, a cycling brand that uses recycled materials to create fabric.

00:00:55 Filip Valica: So make sure to check out episode 50 if you want to hear more about how Tim launched his new brand, in a highly competitive space. Today, instead of my usual coffee, I'm drinking a turmeric latte.

00:01:07 Filip Valica: So turmeric can be pretty strong, and I wasn't sure how much I would like it. I'm also a caffeine junkie, and my wife is about five months pregnant with our second daughter, and she can't have any caffeine.

00:01:19 Filip Valica: So when the ladies at Midas Cup said that they would send over a sample, I said, sure, I'll just get my wife to try it out. But really, that was just an excuse for me to try something new. I always like testing and trying out new things.

00:01:30 Filip Valica: I made it with milk and it tastes so much better than a spice chai latte that you'd probably get here in the States. It just has that extra kick and you can definitely feel that it's healthy for you.

00:01:41 Filip Valica: It's, you know, it's got those antioxidants and other things that help reduce joint pain. So for those of us that are getting up in age, I swear the day I turned 30, my knee started hurting like that day. Anyway, I could definitely get used to drinking this.

00:01:54 Filip Valica: Maybe not as a complete substitute for coffee for me because I'm definitely a junkie. but as a way to bring myself down from maybe two cups to one. I definitely need that one cup after lunch more than any other part of the day.

00:02:07 Filip Valica: Anyway, let's get started with today's show. Hi, Samantha and Elaine, thanks for joining me on the show today. Hi, how are you? Hi, thanks for having us.

00:02:16 Filip Valica: Well, I'm really excited to have you on because we haven't had that many food-based products on the show.

00:02:22 Guests: Maybe you can talk a little bit about why you got into creating a turmeric-based super food business. So I guess I studied food technology and nutrition,

00:02:32 Guests: so I've always been really interested in health and wellness,

00:02:35 Guests: done a lot of yoga, done all fitness, the gym like that as well. And then earlier last year, Elaine and I were kind of leaving the gym together and we were just talking about the benefits of turmeric and Elaine was currently obsessed with tumouric.

00:02:48 Guests: Yeah, so I guess Sam introduced me to a golden latte at one of our local cafes and I guess knowing how.

00:02:58 Guests: good it was for you and as well as like how delicious it was and how it started to make me feel like I noticed the differences straight away I literally became obsessed so I was like running around town

00:03:10 Guests: like chasing the golden latte if you like so trying to find you know a really delicious blend at wherever I was I worked for myself as a stylist so it was visiting lots of different locations

00:03:24 Guests: and because it was a fairly new thing I found it really difficult to find so Sam was saying, why don't you make your own? So I started playing at home and she started giving me

00:03:36 Guests: some recipes too. We had a bit of a play and it turned out that ours was quite delicious and

00:03:40 Filip Valica: we thought quite better than some of the rest that were out there. So we decided to package it up and share it. Yeah, that's fascinating because looking at it just on the surface, you would

00:03:51 Filip Valica: think that's something that anybody can just do from home or that it's something that is really tough to market as a product. Why did you think that there were other people that would be interested in something

00:04:01 Guests: like this, that it would actually, it would be more than something than a blog post online about a recipe, for example? Well, I guess the health space is becoming so huge at the moment, and everyone's so fascinated in different things that can help them for different reasons.

00:04:15 Guests: Chimurics being really, really powerful for rheumatoid arthritis from years. The elderly have been using it for years and years and years to heal themselves with arthritis, and it's slowly becoming more of a prominent thing in the younger generations with things like sport recovery,

00:04:31 Guests: headaches, PMS, IBS,

00:04:33 Guests: just I guess general health and wellness for the younger generation. So kind of packaging in that are really easy to use form for people that don't have to think any further than that. They can literally just go to their cupboard, open the pack and use it in any way they want.

00:04:46 Guests: It's convenient, it's easy to use, it's great when you're time for. So the benefits, they're pretty,

00:04:55 Guests: I guess, diverse. I think, like, yeah, definitely the benefits of turmeric are really hard to ignore these days. And for me, I know that why I thought it was such a great idea, too,

00:05:10 Guests: when Sam sort of presented it, it was because, you know, I was the consumer. Like, I needed this product. Like, I didn't have the time to find it. because it wasn't so widespread when we started it.

00:05:24 Guests: Like literally I would have to go without if the cafe didn't supply a golden latte or and also to like, you know, do the mixing myself every morning. It's very time consuming. Everyone's really time for these days. Everyone wants, you know, a really quick and easy solution.

00:05:39 Filip Valica: And we just thought, um, we have a delicious one. Yeah, with that it would be something that other people were interested, particularly because it was something that we were so passionate about and incorporated into our daily life as well. Yeah, that's a good point.

00:05:53 Filip Valica: So when you realize that you were onto something with this particular recipe, this blend,

00:05:58 Guests: did you reach out to anybody else that you knew, maybe friends or family, or how did you target a subset of your audience to really test this? Or did you not test it and you just went straight to market with it?

00:06:10 Guests: In Melbourne, where we live, there's quite a huge movement towards the Golden Lattee in cafes. So it's becoming quite prominent and quite popular. So just knowing that was enough for us to kind of get in the market, essentially.

00:06:24 Guests: I guess in Melbourne, we are known for that whole cafe culture as well. So everyone's really quick to, you know, check out trends. And we were quite secretive, to be honest, with our secret blend.

00:06:37 Guests: But we did have a few people that we referred to as foodies or supertasters, if you like. And we kind of knew that if they liked it, that we would be, you know, we were on to

00:06:49 Guests: something. It was actually quite funny because Sam and I both love things quite spicy. So that was a bit of a challenge to make sure that not putting too much ginger in there, not to alienate half the

00:07:01 Filip Valica: world by putting too much spice in it. But I think we got there in the end. Like it is quite,

00:07:06 Guests: it is a spicy blend, but it's not, you know, so spicy that people that don't like hot things or spice won't enjoy it. Yeah. So talk about that process a little bit more as you started testing the

00:07:17 Guests: blends. You said you were looking to make it so it's a little bit, has a little bit broader appeal. We just wanted it to be different. Like we noticed that a lot of the things that were on the market were quite neutral in flavor. Yeah. They had, you know, some coconut sugar in there so that

00:07:31 Guests: it was a little bit more palatable or they had lots of cinnamon to kind of make it a little bit sweeter so that it was easier, easier going down. And we just kind of, we weren't really into that. Like we wanted to be drinking something that you went, wow, this is really interesting in taste.

00:07:45 Guests: And it's more rounded and earthy and well blended versus like, you know, having to worry about the sugar content that someone's put into, you know, their blend or…

00:07:57 Guests: Which is something you can add yourself, you know, if you do need that little bit of extra sweetness, add some honey, we don't need to add it for you because we just think that's too polarising

00:08:04 Filip Valica: and we're just ignoring half of the world if we put sugar in everything. And a lot of people that are into this product don't want sugar in their drinks too. So I think that was really important for us. to ensure that the product was clean and sugar-free.

00:08:18 Guests: Yeah, that's an interesting point is that the customer can customize the product a little bit.

00:08:23 Filip Valica: One of the previous guests that we've had on the show, Brad Summary, he created his own line of beef jerky. And here in the States, there's a bit of a following for cured meat products. I actually love beef jerky. It's a guilty pleasure.

00:08:38 Filip Valica: Yeah, and they carved out a niche in being some of the most flavorful and not just spicy

00:08:44 Guests: because they have some insane, like, ghost pepper blends, but they've also have some blends that you wouldn't find anywhere else that were inspired by recipes from around the world, but with a ton of flavor and they're basically unapologetically flavorful.

00:08:58 Guests: Yeah, I think that's sort of what we wanted to go for, to be honest. Like, you know, as Sam mentioned previously, like the ones out there, well, actually, I was obsessed with one at my local cafe, and when they actually changed their blend,

00:09:13 Guests: And it actually, like, ruined,

00:09:16 Guests: basically ruined my life. I was, had no idea what to do. I was like, what they've changed the blend. I don't know what to do. So that's when we, like, that's when we really started playing with recipes in the kitchen and getting something that, you know,

00:09:32 Guests: was well-rounded and was delicious and wasn't bland and wasn't too heavy in any one ingredient and wasn't. We wanted people to be able to cook with it as well, which I think is really important. not just to be able to mix it with milk and make it into a golden latte, which is the trend,

00:09:46 Guests: but to make something that was really easy to use in the kitchen. So you can literally add it to anything, and that's how you can get, you know, a teaspoon of turmeric a day or a teaspoon of mitest cup a day, which keeps information away. A little rhyme.

00:10:00 Guests: Yeah, I think everyone's looking for more ways to get tumouric into their life because the health benefits are so hard to ignore these days. So, you know, rather than, you know, just trying to get it in, with a golden latte every day.

00:10:13 Guests: Like, we do want to encourage people to sprinkle it on top of their porridge or oats or chuck it into a smoothie. Marinate fish and chicken. Dry rice. Yeah, that's great.

00:10:25 Guests: Vegetables. People have made coconut rice and donuts and pancakes. I had someone make a creme brule with it the other day. That's, yeah, that looks really wonderful, actually. Like, it's just fascinating in the different uses that people are finding for the product

00:10:38 Filip Valica: based on the fact that it is that really balanced measure. of spices and hasn't got, you know, too much cinnamon or sugar in there. Yeah, so you really can go sweet or savory. But yeah, it's super versatile. And we have lots of, I guess, inspiration on our

00:10:53 Guests: website too. In a way that sounds great because now the product is so versatile, but it must make marketing a really tough challenge because now you have to kind of pick a position and stick with it or at least pick multiple positions and now you have multiple audiences. How are you able to

00:11:08 Guests: manage that? Well, I mean, the main audience is the golden latte train. So it's that kind of, I guess, health-focused consumer who is interested in having a golden latte. They can make it at home, but also, I guess, the clincher is that it is multipurpose.

00:11:22 Guests: I think that the audiences aren't too dissimilar. I think that our core audience is someone that cares about their health, that cares about eating well,

00:11:32 Filip Valica: that cares about eating clean. Generally, they're probably early adopters to things. They're on the lookout for new things that will make their life better. Yeah, yeah.

00:11:43 Filip Valica: So you can be your better version of yourself.

00:11:47 Filip Valica: Me.

00:11:49 Filip Valica: As you went through the development of this product,

00:11:52 Guests: I imagine that you, you know, after you've kind of tested a little bit and made sure that you had the recipe, right? What kind of research that you do to make sure that it was something that you could put out on the market? Like in the U.S., for example, we have the FDA that controls a lot of food products.

00:12:06 Guests: How is it over in Australia with regards to controls of those types of ingredients?

00:12:12 Guests: So we get everything packaged pharmaceutically, which basically means that it goes straight from the farmer to the supplier to the packaging floor, which is a pharmaceutical facility here in Melbourne.

00:12:24 Guests: And they package everything, ensuring that it doesn't get contaminated with gluten, dairy, soy, nuts, caffeine, sugar, any of those contaminants. They're kind of the end point in that ensuring that the product is safe for consumption and all.

00:12:37 Guests: And that we've followed all rules and regulations. We have been told that obviously spices are more low risk than other food and yeah, spices are definitely a low risk product.

00:12:49 Guests: Yeah, so I guess, you know, obviously Sam studied food science nutrition. Yeah, so there was a lot of, I guess like a little bit of research, but beforehand,

00:12:59 Guests: but also like really looking to like the specialists in that were at the top of the fields that we were looking at to make sure that we had this premium product that we really

00:13:09 Guests: believed in. Basically, from there, we take everything ourselves and then we deal with all the distributing, basically.

00:13:18 Guests: In terms of supplying stock to consumers, we kind of started with our own network of people and that's how we got involved in some cafes and health food stores and some

00:13:28 Filip Valica: supermarkets initially. And then from kind of like a natural growth. It's, yeah, I guess our flow has

00:13:36 Filip Valica: been super organic and really just utilizing people within our own networks. So because of our jobs, our full-time jobs, it has allowed us to get up some friends for some papers too.

00:13:51 Filip Valica: Yeah. So that's interesting. And I want to touch on a couple of things that you said because we ran through manufacturing a bit quickly, but that seems to be a sticking point for a lot of people. They feel

00:14:01 Guests: like they don't have the right connections or that they can't negotiate the right type of deal with manufacturer in the states we've got what are called co-packers for food items where like you said

00:14:12 Guests: they're already approved to be handling this type of product they have all the certifications they need so in reality all you do is you contact them and give them a recipe and they they do the rest of

00:14:23 Guests: the work for you is that something similar that you have a pharmaceutical facility yeah absolutely

00:14:30 Filip Valica: we just wanted to make sure you know when you're dealing with people's you know lives and things that they're ingesting, like, you really want to make sure that you're doing everything right. So, yeah, they handle everything for us.

00:14:43 Guests: Yeah, we wanted to, like, you know, while we kind of did our research, we were, we did want to under 100% make sure that we like crossed our teas and dot at our eyes. So talk about that a little bit more.

00:14:55 Guests: I'm imagine you had a list of providers that you could have picked from. And I imagine it didn't all just come down to price because sometimes they're all going to be roughly in the same neighborhood. What were some of the differentiating factors that led you to pick one versus another?

00:15:09 Guests: There were supplies. There's supplies everywhere when it comes to spices. You can pretty much get them from anywhere. So it was a bit of that balancing out between, I guess, product and cost.

00:15:22 Guests: So we made sure we got samples from everybody sent. We just asked for 10 grams samples of all the products from pretty much anyone that we were talking to. And anyone that would give us a sample.

00:15:33 Guests: With the samples we got from everyone, we made up a weighted sample of our product and then we just kind of did a bit of a taste test at home so we kind of had because you know everything was done in our kitchen essentially for the

00:15:45 Guests: while we were going through this whole process you know many nights spent laid up with scales and milk frothers and all this kind of stuff but yeah we just kind of figure out the the perfect

00:15:54 Guests: blend of too much cardamine kick not enough cardamine kick or so once we had like I guess the blend that we wanted, we contacted all the suppliers, as I said, and used their product to

00:16:07 Guests: make up a sample of our blend and just decided who made the best blend or who's we liked of the taste of more. And then it was a bit of a balancing app, which from there and price, essentially.

00:16:19 Guests: And also just to mention, I guess we were also looking at like suppliers that had

00:16:24 Filip Valica: all the right certification and really having that transparency in, you know, making sure that the product was organic and yeah we just wanted organic GMO free product essentially there was a

00:16:38 Guests: difference between raw spices as well so which is something that we were really passionate about too because obviously during that cooking process you do lose a lot of the nutritional values so we just

00:16:50 Guests: wanted to make sure everything was raw organic and GMO free as people move through that process and they've decided that okay we're going to go with this copac or this manufacturer to help us put everything together. Was there anything doing that process that you were surprised about or that

00:17:04 Guests: didn't quite work out the way that you expected that you thought, man, I wish we would have done this before we gotten into it? There's so many things, to be honest. I think as much as you

00:17:12 Guests: try to plan and schedule and, you know, have everything mapped out, I think that there are so many variables that you don't even think of and that you can't control. So, you know, as much as we

00:17:26 Guests: did try and did think that these things would not be an issue, like little things pop up that are just completely out of your control. I guess a good example for people listening.

00:17:38 Guests: We had a supplier that was located in Australia and we ordered off them a few times and so that they kept sending us the same product as you expect when you order the same product as last time

00:17:49 Guests: in your email. And one time they didn't send the same product as last time. I guess they just They just tried to pull the wool over our eyes and send a low-grade quality product. And that arrived at the packaging facility.

00:18:02 Guests: And because they'd been packaging everything that was the same for however many months, it just got packed. And it was only in the process where it went to a cafe that the cafe was like, this is a little bit different to last time. And I kind of had to go down there and had a look.

00:18:16 Guests: And I was like, oh, something weird's going on. And contacted the packaging facility. We ran some tests and figured out that the supplier had sent us a dodgy version of one of the spices. this time round. So I guess just maintaining that quality control on every, every point in the

00:18:31 Guests: process, like making sure that no matter what you're doing, who it's coming from, how well you know them or trust them. Everything gets tested and checked before you do anything with it. Yeah. As tedious as it is, it's just, it really did, I guess, bite us in the butts that time

00:18:45 Guests: because it was our biggest order that we, you know, we started to become a bit more confident and like started ordering bigger quantities because, you know, we wanted to make sure. that we had enough apply for the demand that was out there because we were…

00:18:58 Guests: And also, obviously, cost gets less the more you produce. So once we were feeling confident about everything, we were like, okay, we'll do a big order this time because it'll save us this much money. We're saving this much cost by packet, so we'll make a little bit more. It just makes sense, you know?

00:19:11 Guests: And then we kind of got bitten in the butt with that one. And we lost, like, that whole order was about 110 kilos of spices. Oh, no.

00:19:18 Filip Valica: So, yeah, that was a really huge learning curve for us, I guess. like no matter how much you trust someone or how low risk something is or just to get tested every time. Yeah, just to be, you know,

00:19:31 Filip Valica: you might feel like you're being a drainer, but you know, you really just have to do everything by the book, I guess, like, or in those processes because there's a reason why you do them. And I guess we did learn that the hard way.

00:19:45 Guests: And, you know, it was a little bit of a costly exercise, but we know not to do that again, I guess.

00:19:51 Guests: Now, as you've gone through this process, like you said, you've implemented some checks and balances and you've got some people that are helping you with equality control. Walk us through

00:20:00 Guests: the process of the steps that you took after that to get into the cafes. I know that you mentioned that you've got some friends in high places so you're able to pull in some favors. Did you start selling

00:20:12 Guests: to cafes first or were you selling to consumers directly first? The online store started as soon as the brand was launched, the online store was available, so consumers would start buying. We were really lucky early on. I think it was actually our first night.

00:20:27 Guests: We picked up our first, yeah, well, we had interest with one stockist on our very first night. And it was actually a friend from the industry, but she also worked in a health food store. So she was a model that I'd worked with previously.

00:20:42 Guests: I'm a stylist during the day. And, you know, she set up a meeting for, you know, two days later.

00:20:48 Guests: you know, that was our first stockist. So it was really well received from the get-go, I guess.

00:20:54 Guests: And then that initial health food store stockist was a bit of a, I guess,

00:21:00 Guests: talking point at cafes because it was really well on a health food store here in Melbourne. So then, you know, we start going into cafes that we didn't already know and just kind of give them samples of the product and explain that we're already stopped in this health food store that everyone knows about. And it's kind of like, oh, really? That's great.

00:21:14 Guests: And then that's kind of where the talking point was established from. And then we've had quite a lot of success building on from that, actually.

00:21:22 Guests: Yeah, I think for us, it's definitely, it's been easier to get it into their health food stores and supermarkets, yeah, and supermarkets than it has been in the cafes.

00:21:33 Guests: I think that with cafes, I think it's a little bit more labor intensive in terms of trying to, you know, convince the product. Is it a right fit for the milk that they have? You know, is it something that they can offer?

00:21:47 Guests: into the, are they into the chimerick trend? A lot of cafes.

00:21:52 Guests: Strictly coffee. Yeah, coffee.

00:21:55 Guests: Cafes are like purists in the sense that they only serve coffee. So I think that's been a real challenge for us to try and convince that, you know, they should serve chimerick. Like, to be honest with you, like my spiel is, you know, I was a coffee drinker and I love coffee. I

00:22:09 Guests: absolutely love it. But I just can't drink it. It makes me, it gives me, you know, too much anxiety. and I really, you know, I love the smell, I love the taste, but I just can't drink it.

00:22:19 Guests: So when I go, you know, to a coffee shop that doesn't serve anything else, it really, like, obviously limits me. And I want to drink and I want to spend my money with them, but, you know, I've got nothing for them.

00:22:29 Guests: So I guess that's a really good argument for a lot of the purists here in Melbourne that we face. Is it decaffeinated? Yes, it's decathinated. It's purely spices. So it's organic, turmeric, cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, cardamint, and black pepper.

00:22:43 Guests: The black pepper's in there because it basically activates the chimerick.

00:22:47 Filip Valica: It increases the bioavailability of chimerick by about 2,000 percent. So without the black pepper, chimerick is pretty much useless.

00:22:55 Guests: And that was another thing, actually. We were kind of flabbergasted. Like, I didn't study nutrition.

00:23:01 Guests: But even, like, even I noticed a lot of the blends out there didn't have black pepper in them. And I was like, what are you guys doing? Like, there's actually no point. It's like chimric 101. Yeah. So you also need fat, but, you know,

00:23:13 Guests: know everyone's got fat inside them so generally that's not a huge issue that's why it's really great with coconut milk which is what we recommend drinking it with um just because it obviously

00:23:23 Filip Valica: increases the bioavailability yeah yeah so you might have another market there for uh pregnant moms and moms to be yeah yeah absolutely i actually sent it to um a colleague who i'd worked

00:23:35 Guests: with at one of the channels here a reporter here and she's currently pregnant and she was just saying how well yeah she was just saying how amazing it was and that she found it before you know

00:23:48 Guests: the end of her pregnancy and that it's really helped and and a really great alternative to coffee as well because you know she was missing her coffee and and it was a really great substitute yeah

00:24:00 Guests: it sounds like you have a lot of good applications for your product as you're looking to expand now what are your plans on on getting into more stores or getting into

00:24:11 Guests: other cafes or are you just looking to increase your e-commerce presence and sell direct? Kind of a bit of both. I guess like the B2C is obviously really important and it's a little bit easier to access the customers directly.

00:24:25 Guests: B2B takes a bit more work and a bit more effort. We tend to do a lot more kind of on the ground, talking to other businesses, you know, cold calling essentially other businesses and just kind of really trying to explain the benefits of the product, hoping they know about Chimrek already because then that's one thing,

00:24:39 Guests: one less thing we have to explain and just trying to, I guess, yeah, push it into as many businesses as possible. Whereas the online is a little bit, it's a little bit easier to access

00:24:49 Guests: the consumers. We were nominated for this award here in Melbourne with one of the local

00:24:54 Filip Valica: papers called the Startup Stars in 2016 and we made top eight of 250 businesses. And as soon as that went out in the local paper, we were selling like a unit every half an hour for a few days. Like, it was just incredible.

00:25:08 Filip Valica: The spike was just so noticeable. Noticable. And it was such a great support, particularly in the early days. I think we'd only launched maybe a month before that.

00:25:17 Filip Valica: I was, I was going to say two weeks even before that happened. Before that even happened. So I think we'd, yeah, the consumers are definitely easier to, to notice the spike in there, easier to

00:25:30 Guests: access. I mean, it just takes an article in the paper or, you know, a magazine or they say something online and then you've got them buying yeah and one of the interesting things that i thought of while

00:25:41 Guests: you were talking was that in the u.s anyway the market for for coffee in rent to restaurants and to businesses is actually pretty big there's a lot of large companies that are involved in catering

00:25:54 Guests: you know the mass volume type coffee and even even the blends that you could be consider more artisan more crafted have adopted to selling coffee i don't want to say wholesale but in larger bowl

00:26:06 Guests: orders for some of these other companies. Have you found any success in any of that? We haven't actually found a distributor as yet. So until we get a distributor who will kind of

00:26:16 Guests: micromanage the large scale sales for us, then we haven't really expanded the product range or the sizes that the product is available in. At the moment, it's just 110 gram pack.

00:26:31 Guests: But as soon as we do have the distributor on board and we've got more access to greater number, of cafes and restaurants and things like that that's a more look at bigger size packaging so that

00:26:40 Guests: is you know the wholesale sizes essentially yeah i guess like it has been a real um juggling game for both of us like we both work essentially full-time so i'm a freelancer so i like i you know

00:26:53 Guests: have months where i'm you know super busy with my normal job and then other months where i'm like

00:26:57 Filip Valica: super not busy so i have a lot more time to pump into midas cup so i guess that's our biggest limiting factor in driving, you know, those bigger accounts and

00:27:11 Guests: those bigger scale operations is just time because those things do take time. So, yeah, again, as we mentioned, everything has been super organic. So, like, if it's someone that we've worked with or, like, past, like, if we're in that

00:27:24 Guests: area, I travel a lot for work. So I always, you know, if I'm in a new area, I'll always have a sample with me and always try to, you know, do a little elevator pitch before.

00:27:35 Guests: you know, my other jobs. So it has been super organic. And I think finding the time has been the greatest challenge for us into increasing scale. I imagine that one of your strategies

00:27:46 Guests: has been to pick up PR through maybe non-traditional means like being on podcasts, such as this one. Do you have any advice or have you had any success with working with mini print media or any other

00:27:58 Guests: type of? It's been pretty good. Like it's been quite organic. We had L in the UK contact us. They just found us and they contacted us for some advertising with them in one of their health editions.

00:28:10 Guests: And then I guess, you know, how we got on to you essentially through a source bottle. And there was another, there's another couple of online mediums that I use that basically journalists just contact every day and they just write a list of what they want or what they need

00:28:22 Guests: or what they're looking for. And these different companies or businesses send you an email once a day or in the morning and the afternoon with who's looking for what. And you just kind of go through the list. And obviously we go straight to business.

00:28:34 Guests: or healthcare and usually there's different lists of what people are looking for so like looking for health experts to talk about information I'm like bang perfect I'll contact them

00:28:44 Guests: so I guess that's kind of one of my jobs that I do um I actually studied PR many many moons ago at university or college um I guess you guys call that I also tend to work with a lot of the

00:28:59 Guests: magazines here as well so styling wise so I've kind of just been hustling it in where I can, not in an aggressive way, like more super casual in the sense, like,

00:29:10 Guests: here is Midas Cup, I hope you love it, like it's super versatile, and then, you know, letting them come to their own conclusions as I don't want to like, be like,

00:29:20 Guests: hey, here's a media release, like, please run something for me. So it's been super, I guess,

00:29:26 Filip Valica: super understated as well in like my approach with these publications that I work with on a regular basis because I don't want to seem to over-sally in that department as well.

00:29:37 Filip Valica: But yeah, I have hit up a lot of the sort of editors that I work with on a regular basis. And if they do like the product, then send through some information about the product and the media release and all the facts with the health benefits, that kind of thing.

00:29:51 Filip Valica: But it has been, again, it has been really, I guess, organic and reactive versus super proactive

00:29:59 Guests: with any massive mailouts but with that said we it is something that we are looking to do but again um you know we have like these grand ideas of what we want to do for these mailouts

00:30:11 Guests: but then again we're really limited by you know cash flow right no and that makes sense too especially here in the states because you can carpet bomb for lack of a better term the whole city

00:30:23 Guests: with leaflets and you might not be reaching your appropriate audience and i'm not sure if, you know, what the, what the numbers look like for you, but you probably want to be really

00:30:34 Guests: targeted with who you're sending some of this stuff to. I wonder if there's some partnerships that you could make with gyms or other health-related places where you could have some samples

00:30:46 Guests: or maybe some in-jim cafes and things like that where you could put some samples. We actually do have some partnerships with gyms already. So, you know, we're both quite into our

00:30:57 Guests: fitness. So obviously, like the places that we go to, we've, um, hit them up. We've, we've provided

00:31:04 Filip Valica: samples for lots of different events in the health space. We get samples made and we send a lot of samples out to different, um, you know, fashion and events like that that Elaine works with. And we've got

00:31:15 Guests: samples going to, um, the fitness challenge that's happening at the local kind of F-45. I don't know if you know F-45, but it's kind of like a cross-fit. Is it quite trusting in the States? I thought it was global. It's not quite yet. Yeah, it's kind of like the new version of

00:31:29 Guests: cross feet, not quite as intense as crossfit, it's a little bit more back-targeted to females movement. But yeah, so we do have quite a few yoga studios that stock our product, which is obviously a great fit. I think that I do think that there's a direct

00:31:43 Guests: correlation, but between the people that drink turmeric and go to yoga.

00:31:49 Guests: So I think that's a really, yeah, like a very clear sort of brand and market, yeah, market for us. That's great that you know that, so you're able to really focus your efforts on that, especially with funds being so tight.

00:32:02 Guests: As you're expanding your sales net for work, have you thought about it all about going into Amazon or some of these other online marketplaces? So Amazon's definitely high in our list of things that we want to get involved in.

00:32:13 Guests: I actually met someone the other day at the hairdresser who kind of has a little Amazon store that she runs and she was kind of telling me about all the products that she sells and they're kind of quite diverse and really interesting stuff. But, yeah, Amazon's definitely, definitely high on the list.

00:32:28 Guests: What you need for Amazon is you need your inner packaging and you're out of package in, and then you need everything to be boxed up into, you know, exterior packaging, and then these things need to be shipped to the States, which is quite far from Australia.

00:32:41 Guests: And it needs to go to one of the main warehouses and then split up across all of Amazon warehouses across the US. So it's quite a big job. It's not a job that we're quite ready for yet.

00:32:53 Guests: I think we need to expand our local kind of footprint and even branch out into New Zealand

00:32:59 Filip Valica: before we can afford the funds to worry about, you know, hitting up Amazon, but it's definitely something we'd like to be at by the end of the year. Yeah, I think it's that whole, you know, walking before you can run as well.

00:33:13 Guests: Like we don't want to expand so quickly that we aren't able to cope with orders.

00:33:19 Filip Valica: orders. The beauty of where we get things packed, though, is that we have from the start had things packed properly at this facility. So when things do get to larger scale

00:33:29 Filip Valica: quantities, it's very easy to flip the switch on that. Yeah. And they're quite used to doing

00:33:34 Guests: really large quantities as well. And there's actually a contact there who's been, you know, going over and beyond to, you know, help. He's already stated that he, you know, would love to help

00:33:45 Filip Valica: us grow into that, that bigger role as well. So, you know, we do have. have, I guess, the support. It's just about, you know, growing it to that point.

00:33:55 Filip Valica: Yeah, it's interesting that you mentioned that you're not quite ready for Amazon yet. And I kind of did the inverse where my product, I launched directly into Amazon without going into any local stores for the same reason

00:34:07 Filip Valica: because I didn't think I was big enough to go local. Yeah. Interesting. How did you find that way in comparison? Like, you know, should we be doing that? I think you should. That's why I asked. I think

00:34:18 Guests: you, I think you absolutely should, at least local to Australia, right? You've got some fulfillment centers in Australia that deal with Amazon Prime, at least specific to Australia, I imagine.

00:34:29 Filip Valica: Yeah, and the Amazon launching in Australia soon, so I hear on the inside of

00:34:34 Guests: knowledge grapevine. Maybe you shouldn't be on the podcast.

00:34:41 Guests: No, I've heard of it, and I know that it's coming in the U.S. anyway, it's a pretty well-known secret that FBA or for sale by Amazon is coming to Australia.

00:34:50 Guests: I'm launching in March, actually, March or April. I would take a look at that because what it does is mainly because it's going to free up some time for you while adding a bunch of sales. You know, the advantage of selling on Amazon is obviously they have a lot of traffic

00:35:05 Guests: and you don't have to drive a lot of that traffic yourself. Products that I have on Amazon end up with 20 or 30% on page conversion instead of a 2% conversion for a regular e-commerce website. Regular e-com.

00:35:18 Guests: I know that 2% is such a lot of you like, look at it sometimes like oh yeah so overwhelming but it can it can get you down on some days have

00:35:29 Guests: you guys seen that on your own e-commerce store is that about the the right percent and you know two to five percent i guess it depends on the day our um our traffic to our web really really is changes daily it really does it depends on um all the articles that have gone out like obviously elaine was saying

00:35:44 Guests: before that we have quite a big presence in some of the um articles some of the like publications

00:35:49 Filip Valica: that go out here, just because of the people she knows and stuff. So when those things happen, we definitely see a huge influx to the web, and that's my conversions are obviously higher. I also work with a lot of influences daily, and I guess am friends with a lot of them too.

00:36:02 Filip Valica: So I'm always, like, trying to get them loving the product

00:36:07 Guests: so that they do posts organically. Like, so we haven't paid for posts at all. So every post that's gone out has been, you know, them just loving the product, which, yeah, so I think it's just like,

00:36:19 Guests: trying to drive it that way versus traditional ad sales and online presence in general. Just, you know, the more it's in someone's face, the more someone thinks of it and then they're going to go to the website. Yeah.

00:36:31 Guests: Just to keep it top of mind, like, oh, I'm out of my Midas Cup. I need to order some more. I think, obviously,

00:36:38 Guests: while we don't want to admit that it probably has spikes due to seasonality, like I think that it actually does. So, you know, there's also that to consider.

00:36:47 Guests: Well, and it's interesting that you said, too, that you're using influencers because a lot of the people that we've had on the show do the same thing, and they've had the best success

00:36:56 Guests: with the low and middle tier of influencers, and once they start getting into the celebrity tiers, they feel like it's not as worth it. Would you agree with that?

00:37:07 Filip Valica: 100%. Like, people know, consumers know that these influences are paid to do these promotions. One of the businesses that I work with on my Monday to Friday, 9 to 5, they stopped using influence.

00:37:17 Guests: is almost entirely just based on the fact that it's just not getting their return that it used to at all. Yeah, I think there's definitely been a shift in terms of how they're viewed, which is a good and a bad thing, to be honest, because… Bad if you're the influencer. Yeah,

00:37:35 Guests: gone are the days where products had like huge successes because they had like a really strong Instagram strategy. So, yeah, I guess it's, you know, sad for us now that, you know, we have

00:37:47 Guests: entered the market at a time where people are more savvy and less trusting of influences. But I think it definitely that, um, not lower tier, but I guess like those

00:37:57 Guests: influences with, you know, that are not, 10k that are not super, uh, that we, you know, aren't being paid for posts. I think that, um, word of mouth, like that word of mouth is really strong. So really valuable. No, that's great. Any other marketing tips that

00:38:12 Guests: you can share that would help a product startup kind of get their, uh, feed on the ground for relatively cheap. I guess at the moment, everything's so visual. So just as many photos and photo

00:38:22 Guests: shoots and things like that as you can get, you know, that's, for me, I would say word of, like, networking. Like, just tell as many people as you can. Like, even if you think that it's not relevant,

00:38:34 Guests: you just have no idea who that person is, who that person knows. Literally just got to talk to every

00:38:40 Filip Valica: single person. Yeah. Like the amount of times, I mean, I was talking to, bumped into my friend's dad on the street yesterday and I was talking to him and he was like, I love turmeric. I've obsessed with tumourine. Send me the link. Oh, by some for sure. I'll tell my

00:38:52 Filip Valica: Pilates instructor about it. She's a naturopath. She works at the two biggest naturopathy health

00:38:57 Guests: school is like, I'm like, oh, win, you know, you just tell everyone. Yeah, like I, like I, um, pretty much every photo shoot that I do every day I'll have samples that I, you know, give out to the

00:39:07 Guests: models and the, um, the creatives that I work with and the clients and like literally just try to

00:39:16 Guests: the stylist or are you the tumouric lady now? I'm like, how do you? of both. Yeah,

00:39:22 Filip Valica: so I think that's the most important thing. Like, even if you don't think that, like, just talk about your product, be passionate about it when you talk about it.

00:39:31 Guests: You know, tell everyone, you just never know what that might lead. Like, you might not know how that person can help you. But even just putting it out into the universe, I'm a huge believer in, you know,

00:39:43 Guests: putting it out there because it will come back. No, that's great advice. And along the same lines, if you had to do anything over again that you've done in the past,

00:39:55 Guests: restructuring something that you've done a different way to hopefully save yourself some grief or time or money? Yeah, I think it's just that checks and balances thing we were talking about earlier,

00:40:04 Filip Valica: just making sure that every step of the way things are checked and things that, yeah, the QA is there. You've just got to check everything. And if you have, like, got feelings about stuff, maybe listen to them too.

00:40:17 Filip Valica: you know there was like a few little things that didn't seem right and it turned out that it wasn't right so i think um you know really listening like tapping into that intuition as well

00:40:29 Filip Valica: no that makes sense thanks a lot for sharing your wisdom with us now that people have listened to a full show about having a Midas Cup working they go and find it and buy it um so you can head

00:40:42 Filip Valica: online to midascup.com.com.A.U and yeah it'll be right there for for you, or if you're in Melbourne, there's a few health food stores,

00:40:50 Filip Valica: Peran Health, I Revive, Grand Convenience, Pran grocer,

00:40:57 Filip Valica: a lot of friends. We've got the Ferran.

00:41:00 Filip Valica: There's the food repository online as well,

00:41:04 Filip Valica: and there's also the lighter door online as well, for it's stock Midas Cup. But definitely go straight to the website, www.w.com.com.

00:41:17 Filip Valica: are you. Thanks again, ladies, for joining me on the show. Really appreciate you being so transparent with the audience and myself. We definitely learned a lot about turmeric today.

00:41:28 Filip Valica: We'll have to send you some. Thanks again to Sam and Elaine for sharing their wisdom with us. Here are my three takeaways for this week. Number one, align your marketing to your product. Samantha and

00:41:41 Filip Valica: Elaine have done a great job in matching the bold, vibrant flavor of their turmeric blend to their marketing. They even brought a lot of energy into the interview through their personalities on the show. How are you aligning your branding with the experience that your customers get from

00:41:56 Filip Valica: using your product?

00:41:58 Filip Valica: Number two, recognize the correlations within your audience. Sam and Lane noticed a strong connection between not just health conscious people, but people who practice

00:42:07 Filip Valica: yoga and their likelihood of them buying turmeric products. So what are some of the common interest in your customers that you can use in your marketing strategy.

00:42:17 Filip Valica: At number three,

00:42:18 Filip Valica: take advantage of your connections. You never know how people you already have met in your network can help you. Talk to them about the product that you're working on, not in terms of a sales pitch, but why you are excited to work on it and what you're trying to achieve.

00:42:32 Filip Valica: People who know you best are also in the best position to send help or business your way. If you'd like to get these takeaways in your inbox every week, just go to the product startup.com, scroll to the footer of any page, and sign up to the weekly

00:42:47 Filip Valica: wrap-up. At the end of the week, you'll get my three takeaways for each guest, along with interesting articles, free tools, or inspiring innovations to help you with your own product

00:42:57 Filip Valica: startup. And join me next time as I speak with Alice Orozco about selling made-to-order draperies online via her business, Pret-a-Portiere. Lastly, don't forget to check out the product startup workshop, which is a Facebook group that I created for.

00:43:12 Filip Valica: for you to meet and get help from other product founders like yourself. Just go to the product startup.com slash group or search for the product startup workshop on Facebook.

00:43:24 Filip Valica: Thanks again for joining me today, everybody. I hope that you're taking action on developing your products and I'll see you next week.

00:43:39 Filip Valica: Thanks for tuning into this episode of the Product Startup podcast, the show that teaches you what it really takes to bring your product to market and turn it into a big success.

00:43:48 Filip Valica: This podcast series is brought to you by Mako Design + Invent, the first firm in North America to provide global caliber end-to-end physical consumer product development to startups, inventors, and small product businesses.

00:44:00 Filip Valica: If you're looking for product development help on your invention, head over to Mako-design.com. That's M-A-K-O-Dign.com for a free consultation from one of Mako-Design for design studios from coast to coast. Thanks for listening, and see you next time.