Peter: [00:00:00] Hey, Rob, thank you so much for joining us on the next CMO podcast. Really excited for this discussion to talk about D2C and the Cheribundi story. And maybe you can set the table a little bit by telling our listeners a little bit about yourself and a little bit about chair Bundy.

Rob: Peter. Thanks for having me. My name is Rob Willie. I am the chief marketing officer of chair Bundy and an operating partner at capital. I've spent. Pretty much my entire career in D2C startups beginning or most, one of the most notable D2C startups that there ever was method. And this whole company, I spent my time there working in eCommerce.

And as, at that point, which was the head of digital, which was in the internet was in its infancy. And on run marketing companies like TaskRabbit, and now most recently, Bundy is Portland. We've[00:01:00]

develop design, create to a lot of different degrees. The, this idea around the importance of. In particular in sports nutrition. So we are Ary juice is a proven scientific recovery agent that helps athletes, everyday athletes, professional athletes, and everything in between improve recovery specifically around anti-inflammation and sleep.

And so we work with over 400 sports teams, professional amateur teams. We are in 50,000 placements throughout the us. It's a large business that frankly. I've been hired to help everyone find out about it because there are so many people that just have never heard about tar charity juice, and we're here to bring it to the masses.

Peter: Excellent. And you'll get at least a couple of more people. You can educate during this podcast today, Rob. So I'm excited to, to dig in and talk about it a little bit. And one of the things I was gonna ask you about is, as you mentioned the brand's been around for a while, almost [00:02:00] 20 years, not quite maybe 18 or so.

And you came on board to relaunch revitalize. The brand. So tell me a little bit about how you approached that. What was it like before I guess PR pre Rob in post, which is also PR, so pre Rob and post Rob what what was the chair of Bundy brand all about and then, and how did it.

Rob: I think share like a lot of young startups, right? And it's first sort of chapter, it was bootstrapped together with small distribution, it was born out of Cornell university. So the science was proven yet like many other young companies, particularly in beverage. Which is, the land of Titans, right?

You have every large beverage band. And at that point in time, the world was built at retail. The early e-commerce story, just the internet economics didn't work for heavy products, filled with liquid to be shipped in the mail. And whether that was soap, which is where I learned it at method or tar Terry juice, [00:03:00] it was the same cost inefficiencies that no one, including Amazon really wanted to drop.

And so that business was built off. And that is a place that is very difficult to compete, right? With large brands like Pepsi Coca-Cola they own shelf space. They have budgets well beyond any young company has, and it's a monopoly to a large degree at your local grocery store. So the brand was really trying to fight those head.

Throughout its first sort of decade as it came to life and people found started to find out more and more about the power of tar cherry juice. I arrived, three plus years ago and to a large degree, the company was still maintaining that playbook. Right? Built offline, large retail footprint nationally.

Trying to fight the fight at Walmart and Costco and every other local grocery store. And then doing paid media deals with large, oftentimes sports properties like Ts, [00:04:00] but the playbook was really emulating exactly what Gatorade was doing or what Pepsi or body armor was doing. That is a hard place to compete.

And so we had to take a hard look at our, go to market strategy, our positioning, our packaging, and say, really, what do we need to think about doing differently? We know as a beverage brand, there are some category things that you need to do to support a retail business. But those things feel like the wrong answer.

And so that is where we started, which was a look, a hard look at ourselves. And what we began to realize is that we could not outspend, it's particularly in paid media, those large companies that were trying and already had large market share. So we said we're.

Peter: I had heard of the concept before. And, but I have not heard of this specific brand before we spoke.[00:05:00]

Rob: A hundred percent. I had exactly the same story. So I arrived to the company meal capital has asked me to move into an operating role as CMO of turban. And the first thing I said is who's that right? And that's how so many people need startups, right? It's we've never we, as consumers or as marketing executives are saying, what.

And you have to go Google it and you have to figure out who they are and you have to understand what they're all about. And I had the same journey that you're having right now, which is I had to learn about the power of charges I had to learn about Bundy and doing so what I quickly realized, which is the company's like secret weapon is not only is it the most efficacious or the most powerful plug share juice in the market.

So the. Scientifically proven its best in class. But beyond that, we have at that point over two 50 professional collegiate teams that actually pay and order the product from every month. And those are registered dietician on these [00:06:00] teams that are less interested in your marketing and more interested in actually is the product actually gonna help their athletes in results.

And so they are the proving ground. I was like, oh man, This must really work. Tell me more. And so as I started to figure that out in my learning curve in joining the company to answer your question, pre Rob post, Rob, what do we do? I was like, we gotta go talk to those people because they're the true experts.

We just need to put our products in these people's hands, whether they be registered dieticians or athletes, or frankly. Fitness experts, influencers people online that actually can just do education themselves simply by telling their stories. Cause they're already buying the product just no one knew about it.

And so I tried to find those things to then build a platform on versus just buy medium.

Peter: I love this story, Rob, because it [00:07:00] brings two really important concepts to light that are things that I often try. Advocate that marketing leaders pursue one is look at secular changes. What's going on in the world in that your brand participates in and in yours, there was this huge change when it came to eCommerce versus retail distribution.

And obviously during the pandemic, that's been further accelerated. And people are buying more and more brands online. And but as you said, you, there was this change where the economics didn't work to sell a product directly to consumers. And then all of a sudden it did. And so that's one, what's changing in the world.

And then the second thing is listen to your customers. And it's amazing when you. Dive into what customers are doing with your product and find the real success stories, how much value you can get out of that. And it's incredible. I think you said about 400 [00:08:00] teams now are using chair Bundy as.

As a regular thing. And like you said, they're buying it, it's not like these are people you're paying to say good things about it. So tell me about how you leaned into that. So how do you go promote and find and accelerate the adoption from that kind of a real amazing built in influencer community for your.

Rob: Yeah. It's, I think. Another way of saying Peter, what you're saying is, and I say this all the time, marketing is the tax you pay for being unremarkable. And that's weird for a marketing person to say that it's almost like a sad state of affairs, but it's truly what I believe. Like I didn't set out.

I will not set out as a, as an executive to make marketing all of us wanna skip marketing, frankly. Like whether it be on YouTube or on Instagram or any other place we spend our time, we're just trying to avoid. And [00:09:00] why would any one of us aspire to make things people don't wanna see? And so with that philosophy, we said, okay, we have this small, but powerful group of people who are true people of interest, true influencers, how can we amplify them?

And so the first thing we did was we created what we call the pick. Cute name, clever name is funny. Haha. But it's what it is a roster of influencers, athletes, experts that we started just one by one, building an all natural army is another way to save because our product is all natural is not from concentrate is really why our product, although it does have sugar is better than so many of the other products on the market in that ingredients matter.

It's a weird, also thing to say in this day and age that we have to restate that. But in our category called nutrition, it's a notable difference. So we said, oh, all [00:10:00] natural products. People who use them every day and these people are thought let's. Bring them all together, call them, badge them, create an, I like an actual identity around them, bring them together, online in community and just let them showcase how to use our products and tell everyone why it's important and actually the actual results.

So that's what we did. And it was honestly, it was, there was a lot of time and energy because we were really thoughtful about draft. Those people, it wasn't by accident. It wasn't by budget, frankly. It was like, we looked at profile after profile. We built a team internally that didn't, we didn't outsource influencer marketing to an agency to go just sample our products and pay people to post.

We actually casted them is how we talk about them. And one by one, we found these personnel to make, [00:11:00] give us a look in a feel and a voice. That I didn't have to manufacture and it's not the easiest route. In fact, it's why most big companies don't wanna do it. It's hard. It's high touch, and so as a young company, that would be one thing I would talk about is we do make this personal and I know people on the podcast can't see me, but like I have.

Half that says beast of habit. It's our chair, Bundy hat. Like we have the merch, we distribute our merch and our products all the time, because this is something we live and breathe. And three years later, we now have athlete investors like deal Samuel, like Lindsay Warren. Like we have a list investors that are big time athletes that chose to invest in the.

As well, as of course use our products, talk about it to people that hopefully care. And then we also have a roster of registered dieticians from these leading teams that are on our [00:12:00] recovery advisory council. And so we've built all of this scaffolding to help us now take this program and this product.

Peter: It's really incredible what you've done, Rob, in, in a relatively short period of time. And a couple of things that you mentioned are really interesting. I wanted to dig into a little bit more. One is the idea of what to outsource and what to insource. And I'm a big believer in this too, that.

Certain things when it comes to finding those people and I'd like that. Think of it as casting, those people who are true representatives of your brand, especially in this kind of a mode where it's such an important thing, they're they are literally the personification of your brand or you hope they are the.

I can't think of a more important kind of decision. And it's very easy to think about we'll have the agency do that and I love agencies and they're wonderful. And they're great for scale and great for new thinking and creative, [00:13:00] but some things you just have to do yourself and it's like content, a lot of people really outsource content.

And unless you really understand. What you're dealing with and you're really part of the brand it's very difficult to do and make that happen. And what an endorsement to have some of the people who are our customers to become investors. That's the ultimate obviously is to get people to, to come to that level.

I, I wanted to go back though for a minute and talk a little bit about distribution because. It's a really important thing to think about. Obviously there's huge value in retail when it comes to things like reach. So if you can. Turn on the retail channel. And I know you have a bunch of really premium retail channels where you sell the chair Bundy products.

How do you think about the relationship between those retail distributor distributors and your direct to consumer kind of business? Do they feed off each [00:14:00] other? Do they compete with each other? How do you think about that?

Rob: It's tricky. It's tricky. If you ask them, they tell you our online business probably competes with their offline business. Cause their job is to drive people in store and we want them to do that. And in mass we a hundred percent love our retailers support our retailers, right? This business was born retail.

So from that standpoint, we do believe this business must have a strong retail. That said, COVID, as you said, only, made the online sort of move faster. However, beyond that sort of escalation, I do think we are meeting new consumers who are more interested in trial online than ever before.

And so what we try to do is two things online. One is most specifically in beverage, the most popular products on Amazon. Are variety packs. And [00:15:00] you wonder why that is. You're like, I am not a huge variety pack consumer to my most loyal products. I know exactly the product that I like, that said, that tells me that signals brands like that oh, there is an opportunity for trial here that might not be otherwise.

People are interested in trying all of our products to see. Maybe one of them is their favorite first. So with that trial opportunity, We say, oh, maybe we need to meet our consumers via acquisition. And you look at paid social and, PR and the other sort of startup playbook of today that good startups utilizes to meet consumers in drive education and purchase intent.

And that's what we believe a lot of eCommerce and it's Amazon walmart.com really is for then on the other side of that spectrum is our most loyal consumer. The people that love buy, share our products all the time. And the truth is with tar cherry juice, you need to drink at least eight ounces a day to feel the benefits.

We have a huge group of everyday users, people that love and [00:16:00] are our most loyal consumers. Those are the people that we want to actually have direct relationships with that we can service better than say retail. Because we talk to them, we listen to them. We actually wanna make new products for them.

And so that is how we kind of function within the frame of retail is understanding that there are different need states use cases of our primary audience that both on and offline can functionally service, but their behaviors are slightly different. And so we just wanna meet them where they are a brand like us is big as big enough as we are.

We actually can't just do one thing, right? You can't just be offline. You can't just be online. We've seen a lot of good DTC brands in the history specifically in the past few years go offline. Whether that leads through their own, brick and mortar sort of flagship stores in, in major cities, or if they've actually decided to go in with a store in store or an actual retail position in [00:17:00] these larger stores, everyone has realized that yes, you need to be able to do both.

And I think good DSC brands show up in those venues, understanding why consumers are meeting them there versus just doing it all the same way. And so we've tried. Understand the nuance. For example, our larger format products are 32 ounce products have a huge online, offline business, huge our smaller products, which are more single served, have a huge online business.

When you divide those things, you start to realize, oh, these behaviors are different. And to your point, Peter, we're like we go to the consumer, we try to build backwards. And, for me being an outsider and not being here at the beginning, not founding this company, it gave me the opportunity to be skeptical, be curious, but really look hard at the business.

And say, how do we [00:18:00] need to outmaneuver maybe our competition in a way that does have some strategic thought and some decisions that we can make and be flexible with. And that's my typical point of view, but it's also how we've been able to divide and conquer our retail footprint.

Peter: So it's interesting, Rob, that it's a little counterintuitive what you were saying about which format of products they're buying in each channel. I would've thought it would've been opposite. So I think what you said is that people are buying the large format. Products offline more and the single serve products online.

Did I get that right?

Rob: That's correct.

Peter: So I would've assumed that it was the other thing, unless it's more expensive to ship the big, the bigger thing I would've thought, Hey, if there's some big, heavy thing, why am I gonna carry it home in my shopping bag? Why don't I have someone. Send me, 6 30, 2 ounce jugs in the mail.

So I don't have to take it all the way from where I park my car, if I'm in an apartment or something like that. So [00:19:00] what do you think that's what's driving that behavior? The way that consumers are purchasing your products in store versus online.

Rob: I think some of it is, driven by the way retail offline retail works, right? There's a lot of really large format retail products. There's a lot of big jugs and things that retail, right? Whether it be milk or 32 ounce bottles of juice or just shell spaces at such a premium. That they want the largest, oftentimes more efficient way to sell your product so they can carve out margin, but also sell something that bit higher of.

So that is, I historically what's built into, the retail. There's a little bit of just history that I think retailers have continued to leverage. And that makes for an environment where you do have to have a product of a certain size. You have to [00:20:00] utilize shelf space, to the largest say front of pack that you can get because you have to then compete with other large products that take, that have a ton of shelf space.

And so those sort of competitive dynamics make for a business that is driven by larger. A lot of the smaller products, particularly in stores today are in the colder set, right? They're grab and go products. Excuse me, they're grab and go products that you want to drink right away. Those products actually have higher price points.

It's a very premium part of the store. And so if you're a tar cherry juice competing with say other very high ring products, frankly, retailers don't have space for you there. And so those dynamics actually prevent smaller products in beverage space from taking shelf space. And so none of that is driven by [00:21:00] consumers.

Peter: It's the, I totally get it. It's the merchandising of the product that gets it out there. I was gonna ask you quickly, if you use merchandisers of some kind, either your own team or a third party team to try to manage your display in store, or is that completely left up to the retailers to decide what they're displaying, which product in which.

Rob: So we have we have, in house we have a sales team, right? That does manage retailer relationships directly. Most oftentimes that's another part of this business that was built from the beginning was direct relationships with a lot of our retailers, which is pretty unique. Many because the emergence of distributors has become pretty status.

In the or retail space, that's said we also have sales brokers that are boots on the ground in these markets. Oftentimes next two are in these actual retailers, corporate offices that do help us manage those relationships on the day to day. So the is it is, when you have. [00:22:00] 50,000 placements on 20,000 retailers nationwide, that's a really large footprint to manage on a day to day basis.

And so yes, there is we have the infrastructure to help us manage that business. The interesting thing is doing that online is a completely different landscape. And you actually brought up this point, which I think is really interesting, which is this idea of what do you build and what do you.

There be a network of brokers or creative agencies. What do you want in house and what do you want outta house? And I think good startups, good CMOs decide what their competitive advantages are and build those teams. For example, we know our sports teams are a massive competitive advantage. We know our pit crew is one of our biggest assets.

Those are programs we're gonna. We want those people to live and breathe our products. We want them in [00:23:00] house that said, we also have paid social media and we have PR and we have all the other sort of things that agencies do much better than build overnight. We buy those services and how we stitch those two things together is what a markers.

Responsibility is to a largest degree because that's how you're gonna go to market. That's how you're gonna hopefully win. And we've identified those things early on as places which we were going build online sales is the same thing. We manage Amazon operations in house. We have what we call a center of excellence around eCommerce, because we think that is also a place where we need to go faster than.

The category of giants we compete against. And to do that, we have to know our products. We have to know our assortment. We have to know our sales. We have to have those relationships to every [00:24:00] degree that we possibly can in the building. But we outsource a lot of paid media because we believe that, paid media is something that a lot of different services or agencies can do better than we could.

And frankly, we need the scale that they have. So there is. There's not one solve for any one of these sales or marketing sort of problems or situations, but we've tried to be really thoughtful at every stage of growth. When we have a new opportunity, when we go to a new channel, when we invite another e-commerce partner board, like where do we go?

And how do we service them? We've tried to take a minute and say, what's the right solution for us around staffing. Cause at the end of the day, people will be one of our biggest reasons to. and we need the right people managing those right channels strategically in order to believe that we can at the end of the day, have a chance.

Peter: Great. Thanks Rob. I think a couple other quick questions that I wanted to ask, and I know we're running short on time, so we're gonna have to wrap up quickly. [00:25:00] One is, if I look at what you are building. In your business. It's really interesting because it, it feels like you are almost like a SAS business more than a a beverage business.

So it's about building the technology, building the eCommerce infrastructure, building all this stuff, and then ultimately creating some loyalty with your customers to try to get these repeat purchases and subscriptions and things like that. So it's. I find it really fascinating how many consumer oriented products in consumer oriented companies operate more and more like their technology companies and almost like subscription software companies the way things work.

So do you see that? Cause I know you've got a lot of experience in that area.

Rob: It's a good question, Peter, the question around and at the end of the day, at the end of the rainbow, the pot of gold is all about retention. Whether you're in a SaaS business or you're in a D to C [00:26:00] business, you have to retain and monetize to people, the consumers to partners by of which you at one point acquired, you, there is no. Act LTV ratio that works unless LTV works. So lifetime value is one of the largest, biggest, most important metrics that any good investor and or startup executive starts to really get close to. So yes, we look at building called community. We look at, retention loyalty as a huge leading indicator for the health of our.

Knowing that every other sort of metric and investment, frankly, cost of acquisition falls out of LTB, right? The economics of growth don't work long term, if you have a leaky bucket. So we have really tried to build that bottom established product market, knowing that [00:27:00] part ferry, juices and share Bundy is bitch today.

It's we are on the path, building a monopoly in sports recovery. That's where we are because of our team credentials. We're already there and the professional and collegiate athletics. Now we need to take that mainstream in order to do that mainstream, we need retention from concealers. Again, the growth economics don't work specifically, as you invest in media.

Yes, I think the mechanics of a SaaS business or a D TOC business from a standpoint of looking at retention and loyalty are very much the same. You need to establish product market fit, understand your power user, grow that base to the point which there's diminishing returns and then figure out to keep them because they will fund the future investment of bigger, different audiences.

Peter: [00:28:00] Great. Thanks so much, Rob, and believe it or not, we're actually at the end of our time. I have one more question that I always like to ask though. And that question is what advice would you give to current or aspiring CMOs?

Rob: Trust your intuition. I believe that the people that build the best brands innovate the new most interesting products. Really do have specifically at the executive level, great intuition about how to win. And I don't care if you work for CocaCola or you work for, or you work for the next startup that no one's ever heard of.

I think there has to be some amount of real understanding that you won't be able to find in data, because if you're looking for the answer in data, if you're trying to find white. In a category that's filled with large companies, they're already there. They already have that data. They have more [00:29:00] competitive information than you can possibly read.

So you have to have intuition and some amount of strategic thinking to get ahead. And if you do that on that, because I think that is far more interesting than trying to find the answer instead.

Peter: Rob I think that's fantastic advice. And some may find it a little counterintuitive because I think the idea that the answer's always in the data is the easy one in a lot of cases, but you're right. If you are an upstart, you do not have the data advantage. So you really need to have that strategic vision and understanding in alignment to figure out what the right answer is.

And sometimes you need to find a way to lean back and figure out how to connect the dots. I really appreciate your time. Your advice. Your comments today, Rob really fantastic interview. And I wanna thank you for being on the show. Thank you all for listening. If you have other ideas for guests that you'd like to hear on [00:30:00] the next CMO send us a note at thenextcmo@plannuh.com or follow us on social media and appreciate you for listening and have a great day.