Interview Replay: Kara on Marketing For The Now
Episode 780.75
On today’s show, Kara joins Gary Vaynerchuk for his video series “Marketing For The Now” to discuss trends for 2021 and beyond. Kara zeroes in on four key areas of focus: supply chain, health and wellness, brand trust, and direct-to-consumer businesses.
Kara also discusses formulating the best strategies going forward, with those vital business areas in mind. Were her predictions correct? Listen in to find out!
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To learn more about Marketing For The Now:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9FesfoXnXRw
https://www.garyvaynerchuk.com/
Transcript
Kara Goldin 0:00
I am unwilling to give up that I will start over from scratch as many times as it takes to get where I want to be. I want to be we just want to make sure you will get knocked down. But just make sure you don’t get knocked out, knocked out. So your only choice should be go focus on what you can control. Control, control. Hi everyone, and welcome to the Kara Goldin show. Join me each week for inspiring conversations with some of the world’s greatest leaders. We’ll talk with founders, entrepreneurs, CEOs and really, some of the most interesting people of our time. Can’t wait to get started. Let’s go. Let’s go to today’s episode is a bonus episode from when I went on Gary Vaynerchuk podcast marketing for the now. It was super fun and exciting, and definitely I think you’ll get a few things out of it. All right, our
Announcer 0:57
next guest is the incredible Kara Goldin. She is the CEO and founder of hint. And Kara is a super woman. She was named the EY Entrepreneur of the Year, and was one of, I love this in styles, badass 50 list. Check out her podcast, the Kara Goldin show, and get her book undaunted, overcoming doubts and doubters, welcome Kara. Hi.
Speaker 1 1:23
Great to see you. Great to see you. How you been good? How are you good?
Gary Vaynerchuk 1:27
Kara is built an amazing company. Most of you who are watching right now are very aware of hint. I got to meet Kara over a phone call very early in that journey, and was so impressed with the way they got distribution for that product. I remember being on a beach or something and here and talking to you about getting into Starbucks and things of that nature, and just it’s been really a joy to watch you build this company.
Kara Goldin 1:51
Thank you. I remember that call as well. So why don’t
Speaker 2 1:55
you tell why don’t you tell people really quickly? Because I’m sure it’ll be at least 5% that don’t know the brand. Let’s start there, and then we’ll go into what you’re seeing in the streets for the rest of 2021
Kara Goldin 2:05
so I have it here in case people are wondering what the effect is. So it’s an unsweetened flavored water that I started actually 16 years ago for so for people who are thinking that there’s overnight success stories, I mean, it takes time to build quality and great brands, and I’m really proud of what we’ve done. And, yeah, started 16 years ago. In addition to building a great product, we’ve built a different way of actually going to market. Over 50% of our business is direct to consumer. So when you look at, you know, the beverage industry as a whole, there are certainly companies, the big soda companies, that are selling on Amazon and box and others. But having a direct business and having that direct relationship with the customer is something that we’ve built for the last eight years, and it’s a solid, incredible subscription business that many, many people are using
Speaker 2 3:02
what stood out for you before we go into what’s happening in 2021 has been a lot of contextual covid conversations. Anything stand out from you? Anything catch you off guard? Was anything a pleasant surprise from a consumer behavior standpoint? Yeah.
Kara Goldin 3:16
So beginning of the pandemic actually right before the pandemic hit, I guess the end of 2020 we were really focused on automating a lot of our plants, and so most people in the beverage industry were like, Why are you doing that? By the way, I didn’t come from the beverage industry. I came from the tech industry, and my husband is our chief operating officer, and he also came from the tech industry, so we kept thinking about, well, what if somebody sneezes on the line right as we’re filling a bottle? We don’t have preservatives in the product, what happens? So we wanted to get the people out of the room. We’ve been working on this for four years, to get the people out of the room. By the end of 2019 we had everybody out of the room and automated and got those people away from where the actual fill was by the time the pandemic hit, we learned that, as an essential product in a pandemic, you have to be running your plants 24 hours a day. You have to do your best practices to best efforts to actually supply the store shelves. So people were hoarding toilet paper, but they were also hoarding water, bottled water, and products like hint. So being able to actually run our facility without any hiccups, because we had planned it out, was a tremendous, tremendous advantage. In addition to that, we do everything here in the US. So we’ve always believed that get things as local as possible. We blow our own bottles on the lines where everything was has been done in the US. So when the pandemic hit, we got a. Phone call from Costco, and they said, Hey, do you guys do everything local? Because we’re having a lot of problems with suppliers that are supposed to be getting cans from China, and they’re not coming. So can we put you guys nationwide with Costco? So in addition to going nationwide at the beginning of 2020, with Walmart and Sam’s Club and other huge retailers, we went nationwide in
Speaker 2 5:25
April with actual distribution because of the localization, yep.
Kara Goldin 5:30
And also just because we were, you know, automated as well. And so one of my, one of my predictions, really, for remainder of 2021, and going forward, is supply chain. It matters automation, localization and pretend that there’s another pandemic coming, because the more that you can rely on, or, I should say, the more you can rely less on people being in the room that is where you protect yourself and your company.
Speaker 2 6:03
What about from a marketing or just what consumers are doing with products, or consumption of media or marketing? What do you? What are you seeing? What do you? What do you kind of predicting over the rest of this year, maybe into 2022 Yeah.
Kara Goldin 6:16
So for, as you know, for years, I’ve been telling people drink water, not sugar, and get the sweeteners out of your life. And health is really important. And lots of people listen, but there were some people where it went in one ear and out the other, and they just did whatever they wanted today. I think if anything great came out of the pandemic, it’s that people want to stay healthy. Nobody wants this virus. If they got the virus, they don’t want it again, and they want to protect themselves in any way that they can. And so health and wellness as a category is accelerated, but it’s here to stay, and it’s just going to get bigger. And what I’m most excited about is watching companies that are going to be developed out of, how do we help people stay healthier? Obviously, we’ve seen companies like hint and peloton, and, you know, lots of other segments of of that, but I think it’s just going to increase. And I think consumers want are listening now, and they want it, and I think it’s so important. And I think also the direct consumer, with the direct relationship with the consumer. So I think e commerce is here to stay. And I think we’re going to see companies that have not really embraced it, because they think, Well, you know, there’s still these relationships with stores. We’ve got them. We’ve got lots of space. But another pandemic comes, you start to, you know, shut down fast food restaurants, universities, you start to see that, wow. What can I do to protect myself? Having that direct relationship with the consumer has become more and more important.
Speaker 2 7:57
I mean, even pre pandemic, just having the actual data. When you’re a big brand and you’re selling your product through Albertsons or Kroger’s or ebjs or Costco or Walmart, you don’t actually know who’s buying it totally.
Kara Goldin 8:11
And that’s the thing too. I mean, the other thing that we’ve seen Gary is that the consumer that is going online and buying hint from us or from Amazon, they’ll also walk through a Costco store. And they may not go there every week, but they may go there every month, and they see, you know, a variety pack that they can’t buy from us online, and they’re going to pick it up, right? And so our sales, our direct to consumer business, tripled in the last 17 months. Our overall business grew by over 50% 50% so it’s, it’s crazy, what’s going on. But I think it also speaks to another trend that I think is really, really important, which is that the consumer is really looking for authentic brands to guide them. And so, you know, I know you love talking about storytelling. I’m a huge believer in that as well, but it’s also about how to lead consumers. So for example, we started our company with hint water, and few years ago, I had a scare with skin cancer, and I came out with sunscreen the number of brands, or the number of soda brands that were saying, what is that tech executive doing? You know, she’s coming out with the sunscreen brand. That was never my purpose. My purpose was to service the customer and help customers understand that here’s a great product. We never even stuck it on the beaches anywhere to sample it. We just said, Hey, you like hint water? Come and try this hint sunscreen. We had like, an 80% return on, you know, just an email that went out to these consumers, because they trust the brand they believe in the I’m
Speaker 2 9:59
a big fan of. Horizontal expansion for brands. I think a lot of brands have a lot of permission to go into other categories and haven’t gone there. That’s a little bit of a prediction for the next decade continued success. Great to see you.
Kara Goldin 10:11
Thank you. Thanks again for listening to the Kara Goldin show. If you would please give us a review and feel free to share this podcast with others who would benefit, and of course, feel free to subscribe so you don’t miss a single episode of our podcast, just a reminder that I can be found on all platforms. At Kara Goldin, I would love to hear from you too. So feel free to DM me, and if you want to hear more about my journey, I hope you will have a listen or pick up a copy of my Wall Street Journal, best selling book undaunted, where I share more about my journey, including founding and building. Hint, we are here every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Thanks for listening and goodbye for now.
