Dave Knox

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Dave Knox Keynote Speakers

03 Aug

Posted at 20:52h in Authentic, Dave Knox, entrepreneurship, human connection, Thought Leaders

The story of Blake Mycoskie starting TOMS Shoes is well known in entrepreneurial circles. While many would be content after building a half billion-dollar business, Blake is not one of them. After experiencing his own burnout after TOMS, Blake was inspired to start Madefor, a 10-month program where people learn a new habit or practice each month. We sat down to talk about the inspiration for Madefor and why this focus on well-being is more important than ever.

Dave Knox: With Madefor, you are in the middle of building your second business. What is the biggest lesson you took away from building TOMS that you are applying to Madefor?

Blake Mycoskie:  I think the biggest thing that I took away is really when you’re focused on building a business that has a big mission and specifically one that can serve so many people, it’s really easy to build incredible culture in your company and attract amazing talent as a result. At first, when I was trying to put together this kind of dream team of scientists on human behavior, I thought it was going to be really challenging to do because they are very busy and get a lot of requests for their time and attention. But when we told them that our mission was to eliminate some of the suffering that comes from modern living, and use the science that they have studied in their lab to help people sleep better, and eat better, and feel better, and be more connected and more grateful, every single one of them just signed on immediately. So many of these scientists dedicated their lives to something very specific. How do you optimize the perfect night’s sleep. How do you really declutter your life, both in your work life and in your personal life, in a way that frees your mind up to be more creative? Giving them the opportunity to get that science out of their labs and into the hands of people in a way that they can not only learn these habits, but more importantly, sustain them, everyone jumped on. I think I learned that because that was the same case with TOMS, when we said,” We’re going to sell shoes so that we can give shoes to children in need,” we had some of the top talent in the country join the company. I think having a big mission and especially one that hits home is an incredible way to build the necessary talent for a new startup.

Knox: Building a company is a roller coaster. What was the impetus that had you want to jump back on and build a second venture?

Mycoskie: After spending over a decade building TOMS to a half a billion- dollar business and giving 96 million children’s shoes, I felt pretty dang content with the entrepreneur business aspect of my life. I wasn’t really thinking that I was going to jump back into a startup or a business, at least until my kids went to college. But what happened was is I had a deeply profound, personal experience that radically changed my life, and my mental health, and my wellbeing, and my physical health, and so much so that my only response out of the gratitude from my experience was to share this with as many people as possible. In doing that, I developed this Madefor program, which is a 10- month program where people learn a new habit and practice, one a month for 10 months. And they are the exact habits and practices I learned from some of the top scientists in the world. I just felt like I had to share it, and that turned into a new business.

Knox: How did you go about finding those experts and the habits that inspired Madefor in the first place?

Mycoskie: I was on this journey to really learn from the best minds in science, around how people would really live their best life, who’s really flourishing and why, and most particularly why I wasn’t feeling that way. I had all the kind of markers of success, an incredible business, helped millions of kids around the world, a great family and friends. But in 2017, I found myself quite burned out and actually diagnosed with mild depression. As I looked deep into it, what I recognized was there were a lot of these basic things from a physical and mental and even purposeful level that I kind of put on the back burner when I was charging and working so hard in building TOMS. And at that same time, I met a gentleman who ultimately became my business partner, named Pat Dossett, and he was a Navy Seal for nine years and had a very specific focus on after his time on the teams of really human potential and flourishing. When I talked to him about some of my own struggles, he and I together, agreed to reach out to the scientific community. The first person we reached out to was a neuroscientist at Stanford named Andrew Huberman who really opened our eyes to this idea of a fixed mindset versus growth mindset, and how the neuroplasticity in your brain can allow you to learn and sustain new habits that will make a huge difference in your life, no matter how old you are. The other thing that Andrew really helped us do is identify the other top scientists studying really critical habits like human connection, gratitude, breath work, sleep, all around the country. We just went on this one-year-long research and experimentation phase where we not only tested these practices on ourselves, but really learned from these scientists. Ultimately, after doing extensive research for over a year, we found that there weren’t 12 things, there were only 10. So the Madefor program is only 10 months. And with those 10 things, we spend a lot of time testing on ourselves and with beta groups to really understand what is the proper order. And the order is really set to coincide with neuroplasticity and how you can not only learn but sustain these habits. Some people would say they sequentially get harder. I actually think that you are just priming your brain so that you can take on different ones in the order that they go. But ultimately, they end with helping all of our members answer this question that I believe all of us answer or want to answer at some point in our life, and that is what am I made for? And that’s where the name Madefor comes from.

Knox: One of the most fascinating parts of the program is the fact that while everything in the world is going digital, you guys chose to go analog. What drove that choice?

Mycoskie: The answer is science. My business partner, Pat Dossett, is the most non- bullshit guy you’ll ever meat. He is just allergic to anything that feels like a fad, or a trend, or anything like that. While there are huge trends in using digital devices to tell us our heart rates and our sleep and all of these things, what the science showed was it is extremely difficult to learn and sustain a new habit if you’re constantly digitally distracted. We decided to make our program completely analog by sending you a kit once a month. And in that kit, you are going to learn one basic thing. Now, these are not crazy, bio-hacking, out-there stuff. This is stuff like, how can you absolutely know that you’re doing everything possible, in a very simple way, to optimize and get the perfect amount of sleep? The right amount of deep sleep and the right amount REM sleep where you are looking at how do you wake up feeling more refreshed than you’ve ever felt in your life? And why, scientifically is that so important for your longevity and your mental clarity, and your mood? The thing is, is we decided that it was going to be more expensive, and it was going to take more time, but ultimately we’re all about effectiveness. And the most effective way to help someone learn a new habit or practice and sustain it is to eliminate the digital distraction from the program. Once you sign up, there’s very little digital interaction beyond that, and everything that you need comes in the box each month. In that box, we have the curated science. We take literally decades of science and curate it to about a 25 minute read that has been written by an incredible writer, who really can distill complex science into a very easy to understand concepts. The second thing is either one or two tools that Madefor has designed specifically for helping you adopt and learn that habit. And then the third thing in the box is your challenge card and your accountability measures so that you can really stay on-track during the month, as you learn that new habit and practice.

Knox: As you launched the business, what do you find is the spark for somebody signing up for Madefor?

Mycoskie: I think at some point, just like my own journey, is you need some form of a pain point. I don’t think it necessarily needs to be a huge pain point like I was experiencing, mild depression and burnout, but it kind of is one of those things where you wake up one day and you’re like,” You know what? I really just don’t sleep as well as I did when I was in my twenties, and it’s getting worse as I get older. I don’t really know what to do about it.” Or,” I always am dependent on that double espresso shot in the afternoon to give me energy and something innately just doesn’t feel right on that. I feel like I’m running my adrenals and that’s going to catch up with me.” Or,” I’ve been working so hard as an entrepreneur, or a CEO, or an executive that I’ve really lost touch with some of my closest friends. I really want to understand how that human connection and what are some very simple but effective ways that don’t take a lot of time, but maybe will help me feel more connected, and that might help me feel better in my life?” It’s all these little things that lead. It’s usually not a big thing. We’re trying to get to people early. The thing is, if we can help people develop these strong baselines that will really make them feel great and help them mentally and physically, and connect them more, and help them sleep better, and help their bodies move better, and get rid of those aches and pains, if we can do that, then they’re less likely to go down this path of having what I would call a real mental health crisis.

Knox: With TOMS and now Madefor, your focus is on sparking positive change. What advice do you give to people on their companies authentically making a difference and not having it come off like a marketing play?

Mycoskie: I think so many companies and CEOs get this totally wrong, to be honest. You already kind of answered the question by using the word authentic. That word gets thrown around a lot, so I am sometimes hesitant to use it, but truly I haven’t found a better word that better describes how a company can integrate a cause or a mission into their business. It has to be authentic. Usually, the way it is most authentic is if it comes from a personal experience that the CEO or the founder had. So obviously TOMS, I saw many children who were suffering from not having shoes in South America, and that personal story is what led to the initial growth of TOMS, and so many people connecting to the brand and the one- for- one movement. Now, my experience with having some burnout and dealing with the challenges of modern living and looking to science to help me feel better, is how we can authentically share that our mission is taken from a personal experience that wants to be shared with the world. And so that’s the exact same type of situation. I really think that it’s so critical that there’s that personal story, that personal connection, from the leader of the organization, if you’re going to integrate a cause or a mission into your business.

*This article first appeared in Forbes on August 3, 2020

Dave Knox has been recognized throughout the industry as an innovator who bridges the world between brand marketing, digital and entrepreneurship. Invite him to speak at your next virtual or LIVE event!

29 May

Posted at 20:30h in Dave Knox

Many companies want to believe that innovation is a process that you can map out in a nice clean path. But Katlin Smith, Founder and CEO of Simple Mills, knows that more often, innovation comes about by mistake. I sat down with Katlin to talk about her journey building Simple Mills, how the company is leading the clean food movement, and why some of their best innovations have come by hiring people who share a passion for changing the food that we eat.

Dave Knox: Simple Mills was really an early entrant into the clean food space in 2013. What has changed over that time?

Katlin Smith: Well let us start with what Simple Mills does. We make baking mixes, crackers, and cookies out of very simple nutrient dense ingredients and do it in a way that delivers a really delicious product. If you think about a cheddar cracker or a cookie, instead of using a bunch of wheat, we things like almonds, sunflower seeds, or coconut sugar. We focus on the things that we want to be eating more of.  We operate in these center store categories of the grocery store. What we’ve found is that we are serving this need for retailers because as more and more consumers switch to cleaner eating and recognize the connection between what they eat and how they feel, those center store categories have been in decline. People have been leaving the center of the store to shop in the perimeter, shop the produce, and get much more nutrient density in their diet. So, what we have really been doing is bringing consumers back to those aisles and providing solutions in those categories. The other thing that we have really seen in the past seven years since we launched, is that there are more solutions for people to eat well in the grocery store. And that gets me really excited because it means that overall people are eating better.

Knox: Those center aisles have traditionally been dominated by big food conglomerates that have very strong retail relationships. What allowed you to get past the traditional gatekeepers in retail and open their eye to the value of new brands and new offerings?

Smith: There are a few different things. One of them is that the problem itself is that people recognize that the food that they were eating was having a negative impact on their bodies, which really had a negative impact on that trust relationship that these large brands have with their consumers. So, they said, Okay, these products are healthy for you. They’re better for you. And then as people realized, oh my gosh, these same foods are the ones that are not making me feel great, that are having a negative impact on my health. It really destroyed that trust that was built between those companies and the consumer. And so that really primed the market for entrants like Simple Mills to come in and talk to consumers in a way that is much more honest and authentic.

The second is we built our team out of people who are passionate about this, who really understand this connection, and want to help change our food industry. And as a result, the insights that we have as a team are different than if we are just paying some large agency or research firm to figure things out for us. We already know the answer because we are the ones personally experiencing it. And this enabled us to accelerate innovation and solve problems in a way that is much more helpful to help them eat better. And that also translates into really people who are passionate and have a fierce commitment to our mission, which does help us move faster and break through boundaries and walls and do things that might seemingly be impossible.

Knox:  How has innovation being at the heart of your culture helped you achieve this?

Smith: Culture is one of the very first places where it starts. It is about the people and the culture that you create within the four walls. By hiring people who were passionate about making this change in food, it enables us solve the problems quicker and to understand them with greater depth because we have those insights internalized. We do not have to learn them.

But it is also about continuously reinforcing this throughout the way you work as a company. For instance, for some time we tried to work with external food scientists. They would come back to us and say, “what you’ve asked for is not possible…you have to compromise on one of these things.” We decided to fill out innovation and R&D internally were the kind who think, “who says it is impossible. Let us figure it out.” Many of our greatest products came from our people moving without perfect information and leaning into that intuition.

But even with that, another tenant that we have is not compromising. If there is a product that we cannot launch without compromise, we are not going to launch it. There have been times in our history where the concept itself was a great one, but we had trouble meeting all our requirements. In those cases, we just said that we are not launching it instead of taking a shortcut that would compromise our values.

The strategy is usually the easiest part, it is the execution of that, that is really difficult. It is about not compromising on those tenants and making sure that the product does taste great. Figuring out how you satisfy all those things at one time is really the magic.

Knox: By hiring people who had a passion for the mission of clean food, has that led to any product ideas from their own kitchens?

Smith: All the time. Companies like to create this innovation process and say, “okay, you move from step A to step B, to step C, to step D and then magic at the end of the day, you have this product that consumers like.” But I don’t think that real innovation and creativity happens that way. It’s just sometimes a mistake. Take our new Veggie Pita crackers where vegetables are the number one ingredient. Those were inspired by the fact that our team was at home, trying to figure out how to fit more vegetables into their diet and asking where they can “hide” the vegetables in a pasta sauce or a smoothie. We asked the question, “how do you hide some vegetables in a cracker?” Then another one is our almond flour crackers. That one happened because I just took one of our baking mixes home one day and turned it into crackers for fun really. It wasn’t that we were trying to create a new product. It was just playing. And as a result, we developed our almond flour crackers. That play component is really important to innovation.

Knox: What advice do you give to entrepreneurs that are facing the journey that you started seven years ago?

Smith: Continue to learn and to be open to learning. When I first started out, I felt like I had to have all the answers, which is really just silly and naive. But that’s part of the reason why you have people around you to help you out. The more you can be honest about the things that you do not know, the better solutions you can create, the more you can learn, the faster you can learn.

Also as you build your team, there are always learning opportunities for leadership. Clearly communicate with the team, help them understand the path ahead, and understand the direction that things are going. There can be a lot of ambiguity and the ambiguity can create a lot of uncertainty as well as an inability to move for people.  As a leader, you have the opportunity to clear things up.

Finally, learn to be flexible. That is a muscle that we are continuously flexing and making stronger as an organization. It teaches people that you do not have to have a hundred percent of the information to figure things out and to come to a solution. Things that are going to change in business.  You have to quickly pivot and change. When people can do that, they feel a lot more powerful and that they can handle anything. It’s not the businesses that have never encountered difficult times or the people who have never encountered difficult times that are the strongest. It’s the opposite. It’s the ones who have encountered those things that grow stronger.

*This article first appeared in Forbes on May 20, 2020

Dave Knox has been recognized throughout the industry as an innovator who bridges the world between brand marketing, digital and entrepreneurship. Invite him to speak at your next virtual or LIVE event!

23 May

Posted at 00:24h in Dave Knox

For over 25 years, ECRM has been driving efficiencies into the buying and selling process between retailers and brands by hosting over 100 category-specific, face-to-face Programs per year. When the COVID-19 Pandemic shut down travel, the company quickly pivoted, launching not just one, but three new takes on their business model in just under two months. I sat down with Joseph Tarnowski, VP of Content for ECRM, to talk more about how the company’s culture and long-standing embrace of a Continuous Beta mindset helped them move quickly when time was of the essence.

Dave Knox: Let’s start with the background of ECRM and the integral role that you play with the retail and CPG industry?

Joseph Tarnowski: We serve the industry in two ways. One is through our Programs, which are category specific and revolve around private, prescheduled, face-to-face meetings. I use the word programs, not events, because we are not an event company, especially in a traditional sense of a conference or expo. The format and the process of what we do is different. We have around 100 programs across four divisions including food and beverage, general merchandise, health and beauty care, and pharmacy. The main goal is giving these retail buyers discover emerging brands and help them with their category planning. With suppliers, we’re giving them access to these buyers at scale. Anybody can have a meeting, any supplier can go and find a buyer and set up a meeting, but we’re giving them the ability to do this at scale in a condensed amount of time. This includes access to our high-touch Client Success team that works closely with our buyers and suppliers to curate a schedule of relevant appointments by matching buyer needs and objectives with suppliers’ products and capabilities Within two or three days, you’re having anywhere from 50 to 150 meetings depending on the category. The second aspect of the business is the RangeMe product discovery platform, which ECRM acquired 3 years ago. This is a marketplace format with several thousand retail buyers and more than 200,000 suppliers. RangeMe also serves as the inbound product submission platform for many of the largest retailers in the country. A brand uploads their product information, builds a profile on RangeMe and then it gets routed to the appropriate buyer at the retailer. These two parts of our business work in tandem to bring buyers and suppliers together in an efficient and effective way.

Knox: RangeMe is proving to be a very prescient acquisition in today’s environment. What drove ECRM to acquire the business at that time?

Tarnowski: We were looking towards the future and originally we were going to build our own digital offering to bring brands and retailers together because knew it would compliment our business. Obviously, everything is going digital and while we didn’t believe that face-to-face was going away, we did recognize that digital was going to be an important part of our business. Ultimately we decided it was easier and faster to acquire the best in class platform that was out there rather than build our own from scratch. RangeMe already had the reputation and they were very well known with our audience. They had a great platform so why duplicate the process?

Knox: COVID- 19 has greatly impacted the industry that you serve with retailers and brands unable to meet in person. How has ECRM and RangeMe responded?

Tarnowski: Once we started seeing the warning signs with major industry events being postponed and buyers having travel restrictions, we knew the industry was going to have major pain points. As a company, we stepped back, looked at our community, and we realized that because we already have our format and our process of working with these audiences, we could step in and help right away.

The first line of action was RangeMe, where they worked with retailers that have the RangeMe link on their site, and RangeMe handles their inbound product submissions. What they did in mid-March, just as quarantine was starting, was to work with eight major retailers to do what they referred to as sourcing campaigns. So for example, Fresh Thyme Farmers Market was one of them. They announced that all suppliers who couldn’t meet with buyers because of the trade shows closing, they could submit products to Fresh Thyme Farmers Market through RangeMe. Then at the end of the month, all their buyers are going to spend a good portion of a day dedicated to just reviewing those product submissions.

The second was on the ECRM side where we came up with what we called our Efficient Supplier Introductions (ESIs). They are a one-to-many virtual presentation where we have up to 20 category specific buyers and 10 suppliers. Over a two hour period, each supplier gave a 10- minute presentation to that panel of buyers. And we hit a nerve with that because within two weeks of launching it, we had more than 1,000 buyers sign up. For example, you had one buyer jump on the first ESI, then two days later, we had 30 buyers from that same retailer sign up across the categories. The word got around of this really efficient way to find products that they needed.

So the Efficient Supplier Introductions worked very well but we also had feedback that buyers wanted something a little more akin to our in-person experience with the one-on-one interaction directly with each supplier, rather than as a group. The suppliers were looking for that too. That is what led us to launch our Virtual Programs, which is basically the same format and process that we use in person, but with a customized, digital meeting platform layered on top of it.  Both the retailers and suppliers have still have a highly customized experience where they are assigned a client success manager who will have a consultation with them and learn their needs and objectives. That Client Success Manager curates an appointment schedule that is completely relevant and as perfectly matched as possible so no time is wasted.  Now that has been ported to the digital format, but everything else is the same as far as the underlying process, the format, and the very high touch customer service.

We were kind of unintentionally set up for this happening. With our process and format, all we had to do was just layer the technology on top of it. And the technology is a version of an app that the buyers and sellers use at the in-person meetings already. Now it’s just facilitating the virtual meeting component.

Knox: What is remarkable is that while others in the industry cancelled or postponed events, ECRM quickly pivoted with not just one, but really three different innovations in just two months. What is the culture of ECRM that allowed this mindset of Continuous Beta?

Tarnowski: You nailed it by saying culture. The underlying ECRM culture is really what separates us apart from any other organization I’ve worked with in my life. The culture is a true team, where if something happens, everybody drops everything and pitches in, straight up to the CEO. I’ve seen Greg Farrar, our CEO, helping carry boxes and moving stuff in our sessions countless times. It starts from the top and resonates throughout the whole company.

There are so many instances where the company is able to adapt and turn quick. We foster that kind of action within the company. If you think it works, give it a shot. If it doesn’t work, or if something doesn’t work, we iterate. Get the feedback from the market, apply it. And even in our process at our sessions, during every single session we have what is called an exit interview. Our staff will meet with every buyer and every supplier participating, and have a 20-minute discussion with them to just to get feedback. All of that feedback is entered and then at the end of each session, we have a meeting called correction of errors, where we take all that feedback and we put action items against it to apply to future sessions. As a result, the whole company has that culture of constantly taking feedback, applying it to the business, and then growing at each step along the way. That culture is what enabled us to really move quickly.

Knox: Everyone is hypothesizing on what’s going to be the new normal. In your industry, what do you think the role of virtual programs is going to be going forward?

Tarnowski: That’s actually been a big discussion point with the team and we believe that virtual is here to stay. It is not going anywhere and will be part of the new normal. There are a few different ways to look at it.

Several of our in-person programs have become known as the place where everybody in a category gathers and it’s a highlight of the year for the industry. Those will always be in-person. But there are other sessions that might be smaller, which will more than likely stay virtual.  Retailers have told us that they are going to be traveling a lot less going forward and will need to pick their spots. That will also help us determine which ones will be virtual vs in-person. So we are planning for a mix that includes in-person, virtual sessions, and ESI’s that we schedule around the times when the buyers are doing their category planning or midyear review. For instance, the ESI’s might become a tool for the midyear review when they are looking at a refresh of just adding a few new products.

We are really going to let the market determine which way different programs go. If they really are fine doing it virtual, we’ll do it virtual. It’s easier for everybody. There are so many less moving parts in terms of getting there and coming home and digging out from that. It will vary from category to category because each category has a different personality. Some are more about the face to face and the social part that goes with it. Some of them are a little more about just the meetings. Once we do get past this and it is okay to travel, some are going to stay virtual and some are going to be in person. By extending our services to include virtual meetings along with the in-person meetings and RangeMe, we’re now able to serve our customers whenever, wherever and however will best fulfill their needs.

Knox: With that in mind, ECRM isn’t an event company but you do have a great expertise for in-person. What happens on the other side of this for the entire event industry ranging from mega events like CES to more niche gatherings?

Tarnowski: I think at least minimum until we get a vaccine, any place where you have those massive get togethers of 50,000+ people, it’s not going to be the same. There are still way too many unanswered questions. The event still might happen but there is going to be social distancing, whether it’s by regulation or just by people wanting to maintain social distance. There is an intimacy at that is just not going to be there and it is going to change the way people interact at events. A lot of major industry trade shows follow the same format with an expo format that has a thousand booths and massive audiences sitting close together. Those are going to have to completely rethink their formats.

We were able to make this pivot because by nature, our programs, our sessions are smaller. We’re only bringing the relevant buyers and suppliers for the category. As a result, the total audience is maybe 600 people at a session.  That is why we’ll have 100 of these during the year, but our total audience at each one is small. So even in person, we would be able to manage that with those social distancing requirements. But how do you do that with an 80,000 person event? That’s going to be very tough. And then it is the sponsors of those events and the participants who are paying to go there. What are they going to think? Will the value be there for that cost? They may just opt for something virtual instead because they’re not going to get what they got from in-person for a while.

*This article first appeared in Forbes on May 20, 2020

Dave Knox has been recognized throughout the industry as an innovator who bridges the world between brand marketing, digital and entrepreneurship. Invite him to speak at your next virtual or LIVE event!

11 May

Posted at 00:18h in Dave Knox, entrepreneurship, innovation, marketing

John Tabis, CEO of The Bouqs Co, believes that the consumer brands that are going to win are the ones that are where customers want them to be. That is why he thinks of Bouqs as much more than just an e-commerce company, with plans to be in retail and anywhere else a customer might want them to be. I sat down with John to talk more about the journey of Bouqs, his viewpoint on business models, and how launching a brand has changed in the last decade.

Dave Knox: Let’s start with the origin story of Bouqs. How did the company come to be?

John Tabis: This whole thing started with my good friend, Juan Pablo Montufar, at the University of Notre Dame. Born and raised in Ecuador, his family was in the floral business. Even as a teenager, he had a passion for floral and he had always planned to move back to Ecuador and run a flower farm at some point in his life. He and I started talking about the pain that he was having as a farmer in the industry and I identified a lot of pain points on the consumer side. I learned about his business and where he was struggling, and I thought more and more about the category and the lack of a true large aspirational brand in the space. We put our heads together and said, “Hey, let’s try to build a solution here that actually fixes it for the farmer and for the customer”. And that’s how we got started.

Knox: When you think about the business today, are you an e- commerce company, a technology company, a consumer brand, or a mixture of the three?

Tabis: I think people perceive us as an e-commerce company. The real foundation of the company is the technology and the data, because what we’re really doing is we’re taking a perishable supply chain and streamlining it. In floral, there are five or six layers typically between the farm and the consumer. We have shrunken that down to one layer, which is the Bouqs supply chain logistics system. That technology platform and the data are really the basis of the business.

But that is only part of it because what it enables is a just in time, real time supply chain and logistics network that moves those flowers around the country and eventually around the world in a way that’s just much more efficient than anyone else, at scale. I think of us as a supply chain logistics company as well. If I was gave us percentages, I’d say we’re 50% a data and technology company, 25% a supply chain logistics company and 25% an e- commerce company But long term, ultimately what we will be is just a really big floral brand, and all the rest is as a means to that end.

Knox: Diving into that supply chain side, the flower industry, in the very seasonal with peaks around the big holidays of Valentine’s Day and Mother’s Day, etc. What unique opportunity did you guys see when you thought about approaching the industry different to avoid those peaks and valleys around?

Tabis: The way we think about it is the relationship with our customers shouldn’t be once or twice a year. If that’s the case, then we’re not doing a great job because there’s many other reasons to buy flowers. What we want to be is a brand that is there for people year round. But the reality is if you can’t handle a really big spike at a Mother’s Day or Valentine’s Day, then you can’t be there for your customers when they really need you as well. It’s building a brand and a relationship with a customer where they say, “Hey, I want to use them year round. I want to make them a partner,” and we’ve actually made that sort of the linchpin of what we do. We have invested pretty heavily in the past six months in our subscription service and we introduced it to every customer as 30% off plus free delivery if you sign up. We give them flexibility to skip it and send it to one person one month, themselves the next month, or somebody else the next month. They can use it in that way to really be a tool to help them just gift in a better and more efficient way. And that’s great for the customer and that’s great for us.

Our ultimate goal for the company though is not to be a gifting floral e-commerce company. Flowers play this massive important part in our lives. We are born and our parents get flowers, we achieve something and we get flowers, we go to prom, we either get or give flowers, we get engaged, flowers, we get married, flowers, we have babies of our own, we get flowers and we die and there are flowers there. This product is really genuinely a part of our lives the entire way. And as a brand today, we play in some of those places, but we don’t play in all of them. And we really want to be that brand that people think about across any of their needs, whether they’re getting married, whether they have a business and they need flowers for the front waiting room, or within the office. But ultimately we want to be that brand that people think about and go to for all of those occasions. We want this supply chain and logistics platform that we’ve built, which is super powerful, to serve customers in a much broader way.

Knox: What impact has the current environment had on Bouqs?

Tabis: We’re seeing a surge in interest in the category. And I think that’s for a few reasons. First, people were very used to traveling places to visit people. Those are just not options anymore. So people are looking for a way to be there without being there, and sending a gift is often what people think about. Second is that people just want to be connected. And in times of crisis where we are all struggling – personally, professionally, economically, or other ways – people want to be connected and kindness always comes out. We always say internally, “kindness always.” But I feel like in this time, at the end of the day people revert to kindness.

We’ve seen a pretty nice increase in our business at a time where a lot of businesses are struggling, which I talk about with my team is a very strange place to be. We’re thrilled to be there for our customers and that people want to send kindness and they want to use flowers to do it. That’s an amazing thing. But it’s also really weird to have a business doing as well or better at a time when so many businesses are struggling. It’s a weird cognitive dissonance. As a company we are just trying to do our best to help people feel connected and to honor one another and to honor their personal connections at a time when it’s harder to do that than ever.

Knox: In the early days, you pitched on Shark Tank. How do you think the landscape has changed since then when it comes to launching consumer brands?

Tabis: It’s certainly a very different world. When we came out with this business, Shopify didn’t exist. The amount of investment, development, and building of tools for launching consumer brands has proliferated so much since we launched. There are dramatically more brands, not just in our category but across all categories because the barrier to entry has just gotten smaller and smaller. When we launched Bouqs we had to hire a developer, build all the tech from scratch. Today you can get somebody who can sort of point and click with a mouse for a mobile app through a company or go through Shopify or a myriad of other number of tools. It just makes it easier.

The barriers to getting something up and running are lower but the barriers to scale remain there, and they’re significant. This is what I say to anyone who wants to start a consumer brand. If you can’t get to a million dollars revenue, you have no right to be in the game whatsoever. Getting to a million bucks a year should be super easy if you have any kind of chops. But going from a million to a hundred million is a heck of a challenge, because of all the things that come with it. How do you acquire customers at scale? How do you service customers at scale? How do you handle technology and order routing and customer service and data management. All these things are really hard and there aren’t off the shelf easy tools for that. That does not exist. You have to build, you have to raise money or be able to create enough revenue to build those things yourself. And it’s why you don’t see a lot of companies that grow to 100, 500, 1000 employees in consumer, because the game is just really hard. But for those that can get there, the world is our oyster because there’s no one else that’s gotten there. So there’s a lot of opportunity if you can get through what I call like the teenage years for any given company.

Knox: On that note of scale, how do you think about the choice of staying true to the business model of e-commerce or moving omnichannel with physical retail?

Tabis: The consumer brands that are going to win are the ones that are where customers want them to be. If they only want them to be online, then being a direct consumer only brand makes sense. But a lot of customers don’t only shop online, they don’t only exist online.  You have to know what the customer wants and you have to serve those needs. I think a lot of brands came into this game saying, the future is only online because this next generation is only going to want to shop online, and that just isn’t true. Millennials and post-Millennials, they go to stores and they shop. They like the social nature of shopping. They like touching and feeling things. So you’ve seen a bunch of different approaches to it. You’ve seen own stores, you’ve seen Bonobos launch guide shops, which are sort of smaller footprint stores. You’ve seen Harry go into Target, you’ve seen expansion of digital brands and third party retailers. You’ve seen brands go into Amazon, and ultimately have to find out where your customers are and what they want. In our business, we talked announced our own plans for going into retail and its not just because we just think it’s what’s next. It’s because when you look at what the customer is looking for and the services they want, like consultative services for a wedding, customers have demands for these things and we want to be able to be there for our customers every time they need flowers. So that means we have to be in those places. Now we announced that and then a global pandemic hit that sort of essentially killed all retail, because we all have to stay home. So the timing of that may shift, but that’s certainly what we see as the future is. If you have customer needs that can be better satisfied by being in all those places, you should be.  As Amazon went from being digital only to now having stores and Walmart sort of went the other way, you’re going to see that same trend happen at businesses big and small, and those that don’t get to where their customers need them to be just aren’t going to win.

*This article first appeared in Forbes on May 8, 2020

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