Helllo hellloooo Brew Crew!! Welcome to the inaugural, highly anticipated, very first edition of the Brissta Brew!
Now, you might be asking: what on earth is the Brissta Brew?
And to that I say, very fair question.
This is going to be our semi-regular (is it weekly? is it biweekly? honestly I am not sure!!) newsletter where we share updates on all things Brissta, things we’re thinking about, things we’re not thinking about, things we’re learning, and the trials & tribulations of building a CPG company (spoiler alert: there are many).
As two people coming from finance, consulting, and tech, marketing is incredibly foreign to us. We are very much learning one day at a time.
If you run DEEP with Brissta, then you know that this isn’t our first foray into ~substack and ~newsletter writing.
A few weeks ago, we did a 28-day challenge where we entered social media in a trial by fire, forcing ourselves to share an update every day. Little did we know that is actually a ton of updates. So many that you actually start overwhelming people with updates and giving a slight vibe of ~spam (doesn’t take a marketing genius to know, that isn’t good).
But what we also didn’t know was that the written word is an incredibly effective way to spread the word about Brissta. People we knew (and didn’t know) cared more than we expected about our journey, and new Brissta customers found the brand because of it.
SOOOO we recalibrate!
And thus Brissta Brew is born!! (cheers in the background for our next marketing experiment!)
What we’re thinking about this week: Solving a cold start on TikTok
These days, TikTok Shop is an amazing tool to grow your business (see? maybe we aren’t so bad at marketing after all!).
The goal is pretty simple: get Brissta in front of more people and leverage people who are, frankly, way better at making TikTok content than we are (though a self aware moment… that isn’t saying all that much).
The way it works is we send samples to creators who, in exchange, make a video about Brissta that people can shop from. Whenever someone purchases Brissta from the video, the creator gets a commission. Win win right?
The catch is that, to get TikTok Shop to really start working, you need a bank of content for the TikTok algo to learn what type of people would buy Brissta. Once the algo has that down, the creator’s videos are shown to the right audience, the viewer purchases Brissta, the creator gets their commission and they’ll want to keep making Brissta videos, and the snowball gets bigger and bigger and bigger (and hopefully a fourth “bigger” after that).
Operationally, that means we need to give out a lot of samples to creators without seeing much return for a bit.
Which, as you might imagine… ain’t easy! We don’t have a ton of units to give away because (1) we are small and (2) we experienced a wee bit of manufacturing issues that led to us having way less product than we thought we would from this first run. In a lot of ways, each sample we give away feels like a lottery ticket: a small bet that the video converts to purchases that can kickstart growth on TikTok (shoutout to my cousin for buying our first TikTok bag!!)
That emotional heartache aside, it has been so cool to see how other people make Brissta, how they drink it, what they say about it, what they like, and just generally see the product exist outside of the very small world of the two of us (check it out here, here, here, and here!!).
So for now, we will keep sending samples and crossing our fingers!! Safe to say this marketing experiment is still in the lab 🧪
Random musing: An unexpected challenge of making a physical product
Are you getting the structure of this newsletter yet? We’ll usually have one or two things we’re thinking about that week, and then a random musing on something that, well, I just wanted to add!
This week’s random musing is an offshoot of the obvious fact that taking on inventory is HARD.
First, it is hard for the obvious reason: you are spending money on something FAR before you monetize it. And that is simply uncomfortable (shocking, I know).
Second, inventory forces you to sit with customer feedback you agree with but are unable to act on. Think:
- We should have a decaf option (couldn’t agree more and that is the next thing we want to launch once we can!!)
- The Cafe Au Lait should come in sticks as well (trust me, we know and are working on it!!)
- I wish the Cafe Au Lait was a little stronger (so do I)
I could go on longer than I want to 😊
In all of my past jobs, when you got feedback you agreed with, you could do something about it immediately. In banking, you can change the deck. In software, you can change the product. Done and dusted.
In CPG, not so much.
When we receive feedback on tweaks to make to Brissta or new products to come out with, we honestly agree with it 75% of the time. Which on one hand is so awesome! We agree with our customers and want to build exactly what they want!!
On the other more painful hand: it is hard. Because while we agree with this feedback and will implement it as soon as we can, we can’t do anything until we sell through our first batch and begin producing our second batch.
This has become a way harder mental game than I had expected.
We have to stay really focused on and excited about the product we have today (which luckily, we absolutely are). BUT at the exact same time, we need to focus on perfecting batch 2 by listening to feedback, tweaking the recipe, and fixing the problems we saw the first time around.
SO that is the weird balance between being excited about what exists now and being excited about making things better.
Makes you almost miss banking, huh? Almost.
And with that!! Thank you for reading Volume 1.
If you’ve gotten this far, I cannot tell you how much we appreciate it. At the risk of asking a little too much, we would be so appreciative if you would forward this email to someone you think might be interested.
I’ll be back when I have more to say :)
Elizabeth
All comment (0)
(0)