Bees Knees Meyer Lemon Honey, just hit the shelves of Williams-Sonoma stores around the country and online.

But the journey from “Wouldn’t it be cool if Williams-Sonoma carried our stuff?” to “Williams-Sonoma carries our stuff!” was longer and pricklier than you might expect. Here’s how we did it and what we learned along the way.

Round 1: Taking our First Shot

On October 14, 2014, I received this email from a friend:

“TED! Your timing is EPIC! They have a meeting with their president this afternoon to present honey concepts. Is there any Bees Knees Spicy Honey in the Bay Area that you could have expressed over to the Williams-Sonoma office today for her meeting? The buyer's information is below. I'm going to put you two in touch via email now.”

She worked in marketing for Pottery Barn, a subsidiary of Williams-Sonoma and I had reached out on a lark to see if she knew a buyer I could talk to about Bees Knees Spicy Honey (way back when that was our only product). It turned out that not only did she know the right buyer, but that this buyer was just hours away from meeting with her team to discuss honey concepts for 2015. Talk about serendipitous timing!

I live just outside of San Francisco and my wife works in the city, so I immediately called her and begged her to drop everything, buy some bottles of Bees Knees from a local shop, hop in a cab, and hand deliver to Williams-Sonoma’s headquarters. (And the award for Best Wife in the World goes to…)

At this point I was riding pretty high. I had just joined Bushwick Kitchen, and this was going to be my first opportunity to impress them with my magical sales skills. And why shouldn’t I have been confident? After all, people around the globe love our honey so it would only be natural that Williams-Sonoma would too, right?

Not quite. A week later, I received this response from the buyer:

“Thank you again for sending the honey. We presented it to the Executive team last Thursday where we all tasted it together. Unfortunately, the honey was just too spicy for what we want to offer our customer base. The packaging however, is incredible and we all wanted to love it because the look was so great, but definitely too hot for the majority of us.

One call out was if you guys have a honey that is not spicy and so when/if the time comes that you develop another honey, we would love to take a look at it and consider it for an addition to our assortment.”

I’d be lying if I said we all weren’t dejected by their decision. But in sales, you need a very short-memory and a tough skin. So I quickly started looking at the positives:

1. They loved our packaging
2. The would be willing to taste other creations

I needed to keep my head up, play the long game, and continue chasing down this opportunity.

(In retrospect, we would have been in big trouble if they had loved it and placed an order: Just a few weeks after Williams-Sonoma’s decision, the Today Show featured Bees Knees Spicy Honey on air and we were racing the clock to get 9,500 bottles out the door in time for Christmas.)

Round 2: Switching up our Strategy

The good news is that we had a dialogue with the buyers and they threw us the opportunity to create something that would strike a chord with them and their customers.

Fast-forward to Spring 2015 and Bushwick Kitchen was a completely different company. I had joined full time, we had moved into a permanent kitchen space, and we had our second and third products looming on the horizon. In other words, we were in a much better position to pitch Williams-Sonoma.

Selling to a company as large as Williams-Sonoma requires the right balance of tenacity, tact, and patience. I kept in frequent contact with the buyers to keep them apprised of our progress and our product plans. This strategy paid off when Williams-Sonoma rolled out a new concept store in Ponce, Georgia and proactively reached out to us to include our product in the grand opening. This store was going to be more food-focused so they had the opportunity to take chances on brands and flavors that might be outside of their typical product mix. So within a matter of days, Bees Knees Spicy Honey and Trees Knees Spicy Syrup were being carried in their Ponce location.

After a few weeks of selling, we received this update:

“Currently, the honey and the syrup are our top 20 and 23 SKUs out of a 200+ assortment!”

It was only one location and one data point, but it gave us a foothold to work our way into their main stores and was a huge confidence booster.

Round 3: Pick a Flavor, any Flavor

A couple months after our products hit the shelf in Ponce, I was able to schedule a face-to-face with the buyers at their offices in San Francisco. We wanted to talk about a wide-variety of ideas we had and the timing felt right to push hard for inclusion in their stores nationally.

This meeting was held on October 27, 2015, over a year after that first scramble to get a sample to their offices. By this point I had floated some product ideas to them that Casey had tinkered in the kitchen. We received great feedback on the concepts and sent them samples of a few varieties, including Bees Knees Meyer Lemon Honey. It was a hit and we inched a little closer to our goal.

Round 4: Sealing the Deal

Even though we agreed on a particular flavor, it was now time to finalize an actual deal. Because they were going to be ordering bottles in the thousands, we knew that we would need to offer a fairly substantial break on our normal wholesale price. We weren’t, however, prepared for their margin goals, and what it would mean for our own margins.

In general, high-end retailers like Williams-Sonoma are trying to achieve 50-70% gross margins, which makes for very challenging economics on our end to land on a reasonable shelf price. Despite the very small per-bottle profit, we felt confident that working with Williams-Sonoma would pay off in the long run through:

Brand Awareness: Millions of people filter through the 300+ Williams-Sonoma stores scattered about the country each year. Many of those people have never heard of Bushwick Kitchen. That kind of foot traffic is invaluable for introducing your brand to people.

Additional Retailers: There is no doubt in my mind that landing a product in Williams-Sonoma can help bring other retailers to us. I don’t have any data to support this yet but will be tracking it closely and hopefully will have an update in the next couple quarters.

Product Validation: Just by having a product carried at Williams-Sonoma is a huge vote of confidence. However, this is our first product getting national distribution in a retailer as ubiquitous as Williams-Sonoma. It will be a huge test to see how our flavors and branding are received by a more mass-market consumer.

Cumulative Revenue: Although the per-bottle profit isn’t particularly high, this is still an opportunity to move a few thousand bottles into new kitchens. And even if only 25% of those customers buy another Bushwick Kitchen product, it will have been worth the thin margin on the initial bottles.

So that brings us to today. Roughly 534 days after we first started talking with Williams-Sonoma, they now carry a Bushwick Kitchen product. It’s a pretty cool milestone, but as always, the grind continues.

Leave a comment if you’re curious about any other aspects of this deal.

—Ted

In other words, we grew our retail footprint by 734% in one year, which resulted in $220,000 in gross revenue in 2015.

Not bad, right?

To be frank, it was a ton of work, replete with nerve-wracking trials and head-scratching errors. We cobbled together strategies learned from fellow food entrepreneurs, tactics borrowed from the world of growth hacking, and some good ol’ fashioned sales moxy. (Thanks Glengarry Glen Ross!)

In the end, we started to reap the rewards for our efforts. But what was most surprising was how straight-forward our process was.

While there is no silver bullet to building a wholesale business, if I were forced to boil our results down to a simple formula, it would look something like this:

               (Sound Strategy + Full Team Support) x Sustained Effort = Results

In plain English: If you develop a sound strategy and enlist the full support of your team, then execute against that strategy consistently and vigorously over an extended period of time, you will see results.

In early 2015, we mapped out a plan that encompassed each component of that equation by asking ourselves the following questions:

1. What’s our plan to rapidly acquire new retail partners? (Strategy!)
2. What internal resources do we need to fulfill this growth? (Support!)
3. Um, how do I do this without getting burned out? (Effort!)

Let me tell you a little bit more about each.

Strategy

If you recall, I wrote about how we launched our wholesale strategy in a post last April.

Boy have things changed since then.

In short, we’ve completely rewritten the script on how we 1) identify and 2) contact new retail partners. If you read both posts back-to-back, it might feel more like a tweak to our old process but a few small changes really did make all of the difference.

Identify

Previously, my advice was to spend copious amounts of time researching your current retail list, Googling/Yelping potential partners, and networking with other food makers. While this strategy sounds great on paper (and by all accounts led us to some great retailers), it just didn’t scale. I constantly felt as though I was struggling to find the right retailers for our products.

To use sales parlance, we needed to do a better job filling the top of our funnel or else we would never grow our wholesale business.

The solution was so painfully obvious that I was embarrassed when a fellow food entrepreneur pointed it out to me. His advice was:

It’s so simple I’m still shocked I hadn’t thought of it before.

This tactic was a game-changing piece of advice for a couple reasons:

• Better leads: It allowed us to source pre-vetted leads since the retailer already carries products that often share shelf space with Bushwick Kitchen products.
• Increased speed: There is no faster way to build a list of retailers. Some food makers have lists of hundreds of retail partners on their website, which saves you an immeasurable amount of time.

Simply put, this strategy can help you fill the top of your funnel, creating more opportunities and eventually more retailers carrying your products.

Contacting

(Note: This section could, and will be, a lengthy post unto itself. I’m going to give a brief overview here but will definitely do a deep dive on this in the future.)

Much of our original advice still stands here. We greatly prefer email to phone calls as we’ve found that it is much easier for initial contact. The phone is a great way to build rapport with partners but in order to contact large amounts of retailers, email is king.

A key change that we made was to double-down on personalizing each email to the individual we were attempting to contact. As you can see, we add 4 pieces of personalized information before the end of the very first sentence.

Based on our conversion rates (overall about 30%), we’re confident that this is a key differentiation for us. Shop owners and buyers receive hundreds of emails a week. You need to find unique ways to cut through the noise and get them to keep reading.

I will generally continue to contact a lead each week for about 4 or 5 weeks before putting them into a “contact later” folder in my inbox. I’ll reach back out once we have some new products or news to share that might entice them to engage.

Effort

As the equation shows, sustained effort to retailer outreach is the key multiplier. In order to grow, we knew we needed to increase the number of retailers we were contacting.

We set an absurd goal of trying to reach 100 new retailers each week. I’m happy to report that I failed miserably in this regard. To manage that level of email volume is wishful thinking to say the least. Just think about it: If you send an email to 100 new retailers each week, and plan to follow up with them for about 5 weeks, you end up with a massive number of emails to get through by the fifth week. This just illustrates how quickly email can get out of hand.

As you can see, sending 400 emails in an organized fashion can quickly become a challenge.

In the end, we reached out to roughly 500 retailers over the course of about 6 months and converted about 30% of them.

A not-so-scientific breakdown of how we acquired retailers looks something like this:

(Note: We have a saying internally that “retailers beget retailers.” What I mean by this is that there is a snowball effect to adding retailers. The food world is a very small community and you would be surprised at how many shop owners and buyers look to each other’s stores for inspiration. I would say that about 10% of our inbound leads start with something along the lines of “I was at this great little shop in San Diego and stumbled upon your products…”)

Support

I’ll keep this brief, but without the support of Casey and our production/fulfillment team, our equation falls apart and we never would have been able to grow at such a pace. His directive to me was essentially “if you can keep bringing in more retailers, we’ll get wholesale cases out the door no questions asked.”

The fact that we were able to ship 35,000 bottles of Bushwick Kitchen products in one year still boggles my mind.

I’ll goad Casey into breaking down how we’ve been able to manage production for a company growing at our pace soon soon. Stayed tuned.

Results

As I mentioned right off the bat, we grew our retail footprint by 734% and generated $220,000 in wholesale revenue in 2015. It’s just one small step in the direction of our ultimate goals, but it was a step nonetheless.

I didn’t do a great job tracking exactly how many retailers we acquired each month, or exactly how many retailers “churned” over time because they no longer wanted to carry our products for one reason or another. However, our revenue chart does a pretty good job showing how our wholesale business grew on a month-to-month basis in 2015:

This feels great for one simple reason: Bigger bars equal more retailers and more revenue! (Keep in mind that our products are incredibly giftable, and therefore are purchased by the armful during Q4.)

Looking Ahead

Specialty food is a competitive world, and we don’t have the luxury of resting on our laurels. Our wholesale goals for 2016 reflect our hunger to share our delicious products with the world. Here are just a few of them:

• 1,000 Retail Locations: We’d like to quadruple our retail footprint and see Bushwick Kitchen products on the shelves of 1,000 different retail locations.
• 3-5 Large Retailers: In order to make this leap, we know we need to start working with more national and regional retailers. We’d like to add 3-5 larger retailers (20 locations or more) to help expand into new markets faster.
• Measurement: While we kept our eyes on the larger metrics (e.g. new retailers & revenue) on a quarterly basis, we didn’t do a good job at quantifying our efforts on a more granular level. While these metrics are still being developed, we want to continue to learn from our efforts and continually get better.

Leave a comment if you have any suggestions for how we could improve our sales process.

—Ted

And by that I mean it feels like it's been six years. It also feels like it's been five months.

But it definitely doesn't feel like two years.

[And let's just get this out of the way: we've been terrible about blogging and that's going to change in 2016. But thank you to everyone who has been reading from the start!]

2015 was a massive year for us:

• We moved into our very own space in March
• We launched Trees Knees Spicy Syrup in May
• We introduced Weak Knees Gochujang Sriracha in September
• We surpassed half a million dollars in revenue
• Bottles have gone to every state and territory in the U.S. plus 31 countries on six continents (come on Antarctica!!)

And we've got our eyes set on big plans for 2016:

• Today we launched Trees Knees Mountain Maple and Trees Knees Cinnamon Maple
• We're introducing two new Bees Knees products next month
• We're finishing up two new Weak Knees products for May
• We're going national with Williams-Sonoma with a custom made line
• Ted's goal is to surpass 1,000 retail locations this year
• And my big project is to expand our website with lots of engaging content in the coming months

So with all of that success behind us and a monster of a year ahead, why choose now to change our name?

Why not?

A word Ted and I have using a lot lately is risk. And I think the theme for our third year will be about pushing ourselves to take a lot of risks.

Six new products: that's risky.

Running with Williams-Sonoma: super risky.

Throwing away our brand name and introducing a new one: stuuuupid risky.

But remember that MixedMade was never meant to be a company. What Morgen and I started two years ago was a fun, 30-day experiment between friends. What ended up happening was something entirely different. Although we took the endeavor deadly serious and built everything as if we were planning for years in advance, in actuality we were just thinking of the next few months. So as we've grown and started to shape what 2016 looks like and 2017 and 2018 and onwards, we realized that there were some fundamental problems with the name MixedMade:

• It doesn't say anything about us. Sure, it's cute, we're mixing and making, you get it. But I would often notice at trade shows or festivals, when people looked at our signage with MixedMade in big letters, it was almost always with a confused, blank look. The name doesn't entice or promise or allure.
• It isn’t memorable. And that's partially our fault because we spent all of our time pushing the names of Bees, Trees, and Weak Knees. It wasn't surprising that most people called our company Bees Knees or the spicy honey guys, instead of MixedMade. But when Ted and I got to the root of it, we admitted to each other that we just didn't like the name MixedMade. If we were reluctant to say it, how could we expect others to use it?
• We couldn't grow old with it. We have a pretty aggressive vision for the next few years and we wanted something that could really stand as a brand name above a wide variety of products on different grocery shelves. And a name that could stand alone as an online resource for recipes and ideas, separate from our products, too. We looked into the future and MixedMade wasn't our wo/man.

Enter: Bushwick Kitchen.

I said it to Ted as an off-the-cuff, not-this-but-something-like-this example one evening. I didn't really return to it, but Ted was obsessed. Every time he brought it up, I could just hear the twinkle in his eyes. I thought let's take some time and think of other options, but as time went by and we came up with one dud after another, I realized I was stuck on it too.

We started talking about what a kitchen could be, what's in a kitchen, what you do in a kitchen, things that come from a kitchen; how our entire business started with Morgen and I sitting in my actual, real-life Bushwick Kitchen; what we could do online with a brand name like that. We checked the URL and social media—major flashback to this exact moment two years ago—and decided that was that.

We would now be Bushwick Kitchen.

So welcome to the new us! You'll notice the URL is different and those syrup bottles look shiny and new, but not much else has changed. We're still the same company with the same products. We're still mixing and making by hand from a (growing) kitchen in Brooklyn. We're still with our same upstate suppliers and fully committed to the highest-quality ingredients. And we're very excited to roll out six new products this year that we know you'll love.

Thanks for sticking with us and to an awesome 2016!

—Case

Warning: We’re about to talk trash.

In the spirit of transparency, which is the point of this startup journey blog, this post is going to cover (a select few of) our customers. We love our customers. We really do. But as anyone who has ever dealt with customer service knows, there are always the few who will drive you absolutely crazy. Admitting this goes against the golden rule of customer service: “The Customer is Always Right”. But we hope you’ll forgive our rudeness for just a moment while we expose one of the most important aspects of running a business.

Onward.

If you’re anything like us, your first months in business were smooth sailing customer service-wise. Initially, all our customers knew us, or loosely knew us through friends and family. They had endless tolerance for mistakes, delays, and slow responses. But then our community expanded, and along with it, our customer base.

About a year ago, we dealt with our first customer who seemed to be certifiably insane. It involved a long line of questioning about a foreign object in their honey, a fuzzy laptop selfie, and a long phone call assuring them it was just the pepper that’s in every bottle. A few weeks later, another customer reported us as a fraudulent charge to their credit card company even though their package had been sitting with their doorman for days.

Emails have flown in with personal insults and caps lock tirades, “WHAT’S WRONG WITH YOU?!?!?!” Someone even left a furious voicemail, upset that they had received spicy honey when they clearly ordered "the plain one". “I can’t eat spicy things!” screamed the person calling the phone number for Bees Knees Spicy Honey.

But here’s the thing: this was fantastic news! One of the earliest signs of growth is when you start getting the crazies. It means you’ve moved beyond your circle and into the real, wild, and unpredictable world where anything can happen.

Now we own our mistakes, and there have been plenty of them, but we'll privately admit that 10% of the time the issue at hand is not our fault. Our public policy, however, is that it is our fault 100% of the time. That was a hard pill to swallow at first, but once we started seeing upset customers quickly convert into repeat customers we knew it was the only way to operate.

Best practices for dealing with crazy customers:

1. Take a deep breath. Curse their ancestors and roll your eyes, sure. But when you’re ready to deal with the issue, start with a deep breath.
2. Understand the root of the problem. If you have the luxury of dealing with the issue over email, read it at least twice before you respond. If you’re faced with an irate customer over the phone, close your eyes and listen with patience.
3. Offer two things: a genuine apology and an actionable solution. The first words out of your mouth absolutely must be “I’m sorry”. There’s no getting around this rule.
4. The quickest way around a problem is fixing it. Offer a clear solution that requires no effort from the customer. If it seems like they want a refund, say it before they do. Tell them a replacement bottle is going in the mail before they think to ask for it. Get ahead of the issue with a resolution.
5. Every explanation is an excuse. Skip the why and the how of the problem. No one cares and now is not the time for pride.
6. People are softer on the phone. It’s easier, for customers and businesses alike, to hide behind a computer screen. But resolving an issue over the phone goes a long way towards showing you care. Whenever I get an especially nasty email, my first response is to call them. It’s a no-fail way of getting them back on your team.
7. Keep the communication door open. Just because the issue has been resolved today doesn’t mean you’ll never hear from them again. Encourage them to keep in touch (I know...but just do it) and welcome every new complaint.
8. Save all correspondence in a special place. If you’ve followed steps 1-7, you have every right to return to these emails later with your colleagues over beers.

And one last thing.

To the 99%, the generous, kind, patient customers: thank you. We save every sweet email, hang all your letters on the wall, and consistently refer to your praise as the guideposts of this business. Never underestimate how far a kind word can go.

_______________________________________________________________________________________________

Love this? Click to share It!

_______________________________________________________________________________________________

Haven't tried our Sticky Spicy Goodness Yet? Go ahead, order a bottle or two. We're so confident you'll love it that we'll give your money back if you're unhappy for any reason.

“I feel like you two are off running a tech startup and I’m here running a food manufacturing business all by myself.”

In a little over a year of working together, this comment from Casey during a catch-up phone call hit me hard. It was the closest we had come to a breaking point that wasn’t related to a flood of sales or overwhelming number of backorders.

That comment might not sound harsh on its own, but the implications certainly were. As far as Casey was concerned, the three of us might as well be working on entirely different companies. I gulped, knowing he was right. After all, this was the first time in three weeks we had talked in person (if you count the phone as in person). Having spent many years working remotely in the past, I knew we were letting the downsides of our “distributed” team get the best of us.

After a number of escalating emails went back and forth, I called Casey to figure out why we were so misaligned. I knew there were challenges with the three of us being spread out (Casey: Brooklyn, Morgen: Germany, Ted: Connecticut) but I didn’t realize how poorly we were managing our remote team. Here’s what we realized:

Our Communication Sucked

You know this one: the key to a healthy relationship is good communication. Well, that goes for business relationships too.

Since moving to Germany (for my wife’s job) I had been nearly off the radar. It sounds unbelievable given that this is 2015, and I’m embarrassed to admit it, but I had not been able to get dependable wifi or a reasonably priced international phone system in our apartment for the first three months! This meant that I was online only sporadically, not overlapping with US working hours much and almost never available on the phone.

• The three of us had no scheduled or regular contact
• We had no standard system for communicating, switching randomly from text to email to Skype to G-Chat
• None of us actually knew in detail what the other two were working on

Paradox of Three: many parts of our business are easier with three people. But it created an even bigger gap in communication at times because it was too easy to assume talking to one about a given project was as good as talking to the other. What I failed to realize was the number of other topics and needs that we frequently cover on any given call, in addition to the key items on the agenda. All of these second tier topics and needs were getting completely ignored.

I’m happy to say that within a few weeks of our breakdown we made some changes and were on our way to being a happy (well-communicating) team again. Here’s how we did it:

We tried using hipchat to stay connected. Ted and I used it for a few days while Casey never used it at all. Casey had enough to worry about with production and fulfillment and didn’t need another login and chat platform. Instead, we should have just said “We all use G-Chat. Period.” Or picked any of the other platforms all three of us already used as our default.

Each of us now chat on the phone at least once a week. We haven’t felt the need to schedule a standing call, but do make a point to check in if the week is coming to an end. Roughly half the time we cover high-priority issues like new product, pricing, or finances. However, the other half of the time is where the magic happens: “oh, I almost forgot to tell you…” turns into a valuable conversation with related action items nearly every time.

It’s no surprise that the three of us communicate quite differently. But it was surprising to realize that the differences contributed heavily to creating a divide. We’ve had success doing more of the following:

• Acknowledge what each other are saying / doing. Sometimes a quick “Got it, thanks for keeping me posted” goes a long way to letting each other know you’re being heard.
• Give the benefit of the doubt. It’s easy to think you know what’s going on from you seat, but there are always a number of factors happening around your partners you can’t possible predict.
• Be kind. It sounds trivial, but it works.
• Swap perspectives. Again, your perspective is correct from you chair, but it’s certainly not the only perspective. Before expressing your argument or desires, put yourself in your partners’ shoes.
  
  

During our less-than-fun phone call I had a realization. Not all the problems that were expressing themselves as the byproduct of poor communication needed better communication to be resolved. On any given day, one or more of us was simply lonely working alone for most of the day. No business calculation would have illustrated this. Sometimes, it’s just really nice to talk to someone for a while. And sometimes, when that person can empathize with your situation, it’s really really nice to talk to them for a while. 

_______________________________________________________________________________________________

Love this? Share it!

_______________________________________________________________________________________________

Haven't tried our Bees Knees Spicy Honey Yet? Go ahead, order a bottle or two. We're so confident you'll love it that we'll give your money back if you're unhappy for any reason.

Over the last 6 months, I’ve learned an incredible amount about selling a food product to retailers. So much so that I thought it would be valuable to share some of these learnings with other small makers that have big goals. Building a thriving wholesale business is tough work, but I’ve pulled apart the key things I wish I had known from the start.

Depending on the type of product you sell, there are potentially thousands of retailers that could successfully sell your product, from local mom & pop shops around the corner to national behemoths like Whole Foods that can be found in every major city.

In this post, I’m going to focus on how I find the right retailers to carry our products and how I connect with decision makers at these stores. In a future post, I’ll outline exactly how I sell to retailers once they are interested in learning more about our honey.

[Note: For the purpose of this post, I’ll be focusing on selling to smaller retailers. Contacting and selling to larger players like Whole Foods is a whole other story for a whole other post.]

How to Identify Key Retailers

Identifying which retailers will sell your product is the first step in building a wholesale business. It can be overwhelming, but the key to success at this phase is paring your target list of retailers down to a manageable number. As a small business, its unreasonable to try and sell to 10,000 retailers right out of the gate. 

With that in mind, you’ll want to cherry pick the retailers you think are most likely to carry--and successfully sell--your product. The better you get at finding the perfect retailers for your products, the more quickly your wholesale business will grow.

Here are a methods I employ to identify top-quality retailers:

1) Study your customers: Map out the type of person that is your typical customer (I call these “core customers”). Knowing who typically buys your products will guide you to the type of retailer that caters to those people.

At MixedMade, we know that our core customer loves unique food items, experiments in the kitchen, and pays attention to high-quality and local ingredients. This information helps me identify exactly which stores are likely to have customers with those characteristics.

2) Study your current retail partners: If you’re already working with a handful of retailers, see if you can spot some trends between them. Don’t hesitate to build simple profiles for each retailer that identify the types of products they sell, their geographic regions, and the type of customers they attract.

Early last quarter, I started to notice that we were attracting a variety of cheese shops around the country.  After reviewing it more thoroughly, I saw that about 40% of our inbound retail leads were shops with cheese sections. As a result of this finding, I started identifying and contacting the top 10-15 cheese shops in each of the largest cities in the U.S. Cheese shops are now some of our best-selling retail partners.

3) Google(!): The internet loves making lists (thanks, BuzzFeed), so you can almost always find a list of the best shops in certain categories. As I mentioned above, for almost every major city, I’ve been able to find a list of the top 10 cheese shops. If you sell artisanal chocolate, you can be certain that most specialty grocers, wine shops, and cheese shops will likely be a good target. Start building lists of the top 5 to 10 shops in each of those categories by city.

4) Network: As a maker, you likely have a growing network of people who also make similar products. We receive invaluable insights from other makers who are already working with certain retailer they think would love our product. Just last week I spoke with our friend Jimmy at The Truffleist and he was able to give me contact information for 10 great potential retailers in exchange for introductions to some of our best retailers.

By using those 4 tactics, you’ll be surprised how quickly you’ll have a couple hundred retailers to contact. 

How to Contact Key Retailers

After you’ve identified your target retailers, now it’s time to contact them so that you can pitch  your product. Although this is often the most challenging step for any first time maker, I can almost guarantee you’ll be getting a high percentage of responses if you follow this methodology. The process I go through for each potential retailer is:

1. Find a phone number and email address for the retailer
2. Send an introductory email
3. If no response, send follow up email
4. If no response, make a follow up call

We get an incredible number of conversations started with retailers following that simple formula. Now let’s look at each in a little more detail:

1) Find Phone Number & Email

Find an email address and phone number for the shop. Don’t worry if the email address is generic like "info@company.com” or “contact@company.com”. I’ll explain why in a minute.

People will often times tell you to start with a phone call. In my experience, this method does not work.

I’ve actually found cold-calling to be the least effective way to connect with someone that has the power to purchase your product. This is due to the fact a call to their general business number will often connect you with a cashier or associate who typically has no influence or involvement in product buying decisions.

Instead, focus on introducing yourself and the product in a simple email that I’ll outline below. The reason I love sending emails to generic “info” addresses like the ones I mentioned above is because they are typically managed by the owner of the shop. If your product piques their interest, they will quickly and happily respond for more information or to set up a call.

2) Introductory Email

Below you’ll find the exact email I send out to retail prospects.

Is it perfect? Of course not, but it gets the job done.

Believe it or not, this email, combined with the follow up you’ll see in the next section, gets a response over 50% of the time. In other words, if I sent out these two emails to 100 prospective retailers, over 50 of them will respond to them. This is an unheard of conversion rate in the industries I've previously worked in.

As you can see in the email below, I personalize it the best I can. This shows the recipient that you’re not just blast an email to thousands of people, but that you’ve taken the time to send them this specific email.

Some strategies I’m using here:

• In the very first paragraph, I link to our product page so the buyer can immediately see if this is a product they could envision on their shelves
• I call out a couple items that they carry that would pair well with our honey
• I describe our honey in a way that helps them understand the product (and gets their mouth watering)
• I make a very specific request. In this case, asking to talk with the buyer

Tips:

• Typically I send introductory emails on Tuesday around 10:00am as this is often the day and time when people seem least busy.
• If you use Gmail, enable “Canned Responses” in the Labs section of your email settings. This will allow you to automatically populate any text of your choosing quickly and easily. Don’t waste time copy and pasting from other emails or text files.
• There’s no magic formula or silver bullet to sending cold emails. My suggestion is to always test a couple different strategies and choose the ones that are working. Compounded over time this will lead to high converting emails.

3) Follow Up Email

I like to keep my follow up emails short and sweet. Below you’ll find the exact follow up email I send to retailers. There is nothing fancy here, just a reminder that I’d like to speak with a buyer.

As I mentioned above, I get a great response rate from my introductory and follow up emails, so at this point I’m not concerned with over-thinking this aspect of my outreach.

If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Right?

4) Follow Up Call

If you’re struggling to get a response to your email, now is the time to call and try to find a buyer. I use a basic script:

Hi, my name is Ted. I emailed earlier this week to see if [Store Name] would be interested in carrying my spicy honey. Could you connect me with the buyer on your team?

If connected to a buyer or the owner, be respectful of their time and ask if they would prefer to schedule a later time to talk before you dive right in. Remember, small business owners are very busy. Trying to sell them when they have 9 other things on their mind is a recipe for a swift rejection.

Summary & Key Takeaways

As I mentioned earlier, finding and connecting with retailers isn’t easy, but it’s also not rocket science. What works for me might not work for you, but it’s a great starting point.

1. Target the right retailers: Maximize your effort by targeting the right retailers. This will help you close business faster, increase your selling confidence and grow your wholesale channel quickly.
2. Start with email, follow up with phone calls: Many of our best retailer partners have come from cold emails sent to generic email addresses. Start there because you’ll be surprised how often you’ll receive a response from the right contact. (Just want until I tell you the story about Murray’s Cheese.)
3. Trust the process: I can’t stress this one enough. Sales can be hard and frustrating. But if you put together a solid plan and stay hungry you’ll start to succeed. Like anything in business, the goal is to continually improve and build on your process and strategy.

If you have any tips or tricks you’d like to share with us, leave a comment below! In a couple weeks, I’ll uncover strategies that help us close deals with retailers.

_______________________________________________________________________________________________

Love this? Share it!

_______________________________________________________________________________________________

Haven't tried our Bees Knees Spicy Honey Yet? Go ahead, order a bottle or two. We're so confident you'll love it that we'll give your money back if you're unhappy for any reason.

Every last roll of packing tape is out of my apartment. Not a box or bottle darkens my living room. My computer no longer leers at me from its ottoman perch. I have my apartment back and MixedMade has a beautiful new permanent home.

From the start, my home has been the office and shipping headquarters. But as we continued to grow, it became an increasingly unrealistic situation. We needed to stay lean on budget, but find a more workable solution: somewhere where product could be made, stored, and shipped, with room to grow new product ideas. 

I knew where I wanted to be. A former Pfizer factory in Williamsburg has become Brooklyn’s hub for food businesses (check out this great photo tour). It’s a wide-open and flexible space with freight elevators, loading docks, and pallet trucks! And a burgeoning community of makers all working under the same roof. My idea of heaven.

The only problem was construction costs. Most of the rooms in the building are raw spaces and left to the renter to convert, with wide ranges of construction needs. I saw some spaces that had drainage and ventilation, but no plumbing. Other spaces had plumbing and a great floor, but only two walls. We’re still fully self-funded, so we had a pretty strict budget. 

But after months of waiting for the right space, a miracle happened. My friends at Brooklyn Biltong were leaving a newly constructed space and they needed a tenant immediately. Hi. Here I am.

From there, it became a rush of getting the lease signed, ordering equipment, and filling for a license. As a maker of packaged food, we fall under the Department of Agriculture and Markets rather than the dreaded Department of Health, which oversees restaurants and food service establishments. But the kitchen standards are the same and the inspection is real. The only real difference is we aren’t assigned a letter grade and we don’t face the threat of being shut down. Agriculture is like the gentler, nicer 5^th grade teacher and Health is the strict teacher you stress about all summer. 

Still, nothing feels less natural than a woman with a clipboard asking you to walk her through your production. Here are some tips to ensure you’re ready when the inspector calls:

• I urge everyone, in New York and beyond, to take the Department of Health’s excellent Food Protection Course. It’ll teach you more than you ever needed or wanted to know about food, but it gets you thinking about processes and procedures that will save you a lot of time down the road.
• Take an extremely critical look at your space. Pull out a flashlight and check under every sink and surface. Look at the walls, ceiling, baseboards, and floor. Clean, clean, and clean again.
• Make sure your entire staff is updated on what to expect. Inspectors show up unannounced, so any combination of people could be working in the space. Safeguard them and your business by giving them the information they need.
• Be prepared to get specific about your ingredients. They’ll want to know the name and address of your suppliers. Have this information somewhere handy—invoice copies are great—so you’re not wracking your brain on the spot.
• Be equally prepared to get specific about your process. The inspector will want to know every step in detail. Say it out loud to yourself, write it out, know it by heart. After making infinite batches of spicy honey, I just do it. I zone out to music and go through the motions. Go back to the start and rediscover your process.
• Don’t approach it as a test. It’s a conversation between two informed people; it’s a dialogue in the pursuit of safety. Be open, ask questions, and fix mistakes.
• Over prepare. The actual inspection was one of the easiest things I’ve ever been through, but I know it felt that way because I had done my homework.
• Breathe. It’s not that serious.

I feel like a king in my new 608 square foot workspace. Instead of pulling overnight shifts in a communal kitchen, transporting bottles back to my apartment, and hauling bags of boxes to the post office, everything now happens in one room. Production issues are all resolved, I have a great part-time employee (she’ll be posting here soon), and my workflow is so much more efficient. But from a psychological perspective, having a space where work begins and ends has been so essential. Maybe it’s the start of spring, but I feel completely reinvigorated and ready to tackle more.

I just need to find a desk.

_______________________________________________________________________________________________

Love this? Share it! _______________________________________________________________________________________________

Haven't tried our Bees Knees Spicy Honey Yet? Go ahead, order a bottle or two. We're so confident you'll love it that we'll give your money back if you're unhappy for any reason.

One Startup. No Secrets. Start at the beginning.

Earlier this fall I received a call while meandering from Boston to Maine by train. It was Morgen, calling from London to update me on his life after IdeaPaint.

Before I go any further, I want to give you the inside scoop on Mojo*. He is the epitome of a can-do entrepreneur; a leader without a hint of ego and a teammate with unflappable determination. I saw this first-hand during our time together in college and as a spectator while he and his colleagues turned IdeaPaint into a must-have product in companies, schools and homes around the world.

In fact, I’ve always hoped (and had a sneaking suspicion) that he and I would be able to join forces some day.

Back to the train.

I sluggishly reached for the phone, still a bit groggy thanks to the red eye flight from the west coast the night before, but otherwise excited to chat. I knew he was already working on his next venture, a spicy honey - making company that was conceived and launched in 30 days. He got me up to speed on where the company was today, and where he and Casey hoped to take it in the future.

That’s when he gauged my interest in potentially joining.

A slew of thoughts darted around my head. You see, I had spent the previous 4 years building a career in San Francisco, immersing myself deeply at a software company, building partnerships and selling an analytics solution to mobile app developers. Was I really ready to leave the technological epicenter of the world? Was I prepared for the pressure and responsibility of joining a founding team?

And what the heck did I know about food?

When evaluating career opportunities, I generally stick to a simple formula based on 4 criteria:

1. Founders: Are the founders highly capable? What’s their entrepreneurial pedigree?
2. Vision: Does the team have a strong and succinct vision for the company?
3. Product: Does this product fill a need in the market? Will people pay for it?
4. Fit: Am I the right person to fill this role?

As you saw in our previous post, I felt comfortable jumping right in with Morgen and asking detailed questions about the venture (in addition to many conversations we had conducted over the phone). I wanted to better understand their thoughts on these 4 criteria so I could make an informed decision about whether this was the right opportunity for me.

Founders
As I gushed earlier, Morgen is a proven entrepreneur. He helped start IdeaPaint and has just the sort of mind and temperament that I work well alongside. I didn’t know Casey but felt comfortable that if he passed Morgen’s test, he would be A-OK in my book as well.

Vision
This is where things started to get real. Were Morgen & Casey really trying to build a sustainable company off of one $14 bottle of spicy honey? Or was there a deeper vision for the company?

Without spilling any secrets, it was clear after my conversation about vision that we are going to have a unique, long-term perspective within the food industry. Their goal from the beginning has been to bring unexpected flavors together to make your meal un-boring. This will go well beyond spicy honey. Based on what we’ve started to build behind the scenes, I can’t wait to bring these ideas and products to market.

Product
Product goes hand-in-hand with vision, as the world doesn’t need another energy drink or tortilla chip. Our challenge is to bring fresh ideas to liven things up in your kitchen and at your dinner party.

A traditional supermarket can have well over 100,000 SKUs on their shelves, so we need to stand out amongst the competition. Based on my early conversations with Morgen, it was clear they had a firm grasp on how to address these challenges. Additionally, talks with Casey about our product roadmap made it clear we weren’t going to approach product development in a traditional manner.

Fit
This is where the rubber meets the road. I believe if f the opportunity doesn’t fit my interests or my skill set, I likely won’t be successful. Fortunately, what Morgen and Casey were looking for in a partner was someone keen to roll up his or her sleeves, had experience with business development and sales, and wasn’t going to shy away from a challenging task.

When I sat back and took a look at my notes, the answer was simple.

I was in. Very in.

****12 Week Update****

So it’s been 612weeks since I started working with Morgen & Casey. We had originally hoped to publish this post before the holidays, but as many of you know, we got absolutely crushed with orders. Awesome, right?

Yes and no.

It was incredible to see people react so positively to Bees Knees. We think spicy honey is such a fun and unique product, and were ecstatic to be able to share it with so many people. But at the same time, we had to produce, fill, package, and ship nearly 8000 bottles. Eight-thooouuusssaaand bottles. All within a couple short weeks. How were we ever going to get all of that done?

Good question.

These are the dark times at a startup that are typically glorified in stories on TechCrunch or in movies like The Social Network. Tall tales of eating ramen 3 times a day, clicking away at a keyboard until 5am or sleeping on an oh-so tiny couch. What they often don’t talk about is the emotional toll of having the weight of the company and your customers on your shoulders. It’s crushing. It also tells you a lot about the people you’re working with (hint: Casey is an absolute honey-making machine).

Each of the 5 days leading up to the shipping cutoff for Christmas was a marathon. That’s really the only analogy I can come up with: we ran a marathon each day, only to collapse onto our beds knowing that we needed to run another one the next day. We called in favors from countless friends, who selflessly donated their down time during the holidays to help. We relied on the good nature of folks at the post office who snuck us in the back door so we wouldn’t have to carry more packages around to the front. It was a trying time but also an inspiring time (and a time I hope to never live again anytime soon).

On Christmas Eve, a few friends who saw firsthand how taxing the holiday rush was asked me whether I thought this was still the right opportunity. The only response I could muster was...

“I’m still in. Still very in.”

-Ted


*I just realized you probably didn’t know we nicknamed Morgen “Mojo” during his freshman year in college. We’ll save that story for another post...

_______________________________________________________________________________________________

Haven't tried our Bees Knees Spicy Honey Yet? Go ahead, order a bottle or two. We're so confident you'll love it that we'll give your money back if you're unhappy for any reason.

One Startup. No Secrets. Start at the beginning.

Our first year was full of surprises and achievements, both good and bad, that will be etched in our memories forever. Some of them I think Casey would rather forget (pulling multiple consecutive all-nighters, and driving 2 states away to pick up the last remaining out-of-season-peppers for sale in the Northeast). But many, like laughing with friends as they help us pull off a big day of shipments, or seeing the undeniable smile crack across skeptics’ faces after the first bite of Bees Knees drizzled pizza, are ones we’d rather never forget.

We could go on and on about our first year. The mistakes were aplenty, the success better than we could have hoped, and the future as uncertain, yet promising, as ever. But instead, we’ll let some of the numbers do the talking.

99  -  % Month over month average revenue growth

39  -  Roberta's pizzas eaten in the name of business

170,000  -  $ of revenue generated from sales of Bees Knees Spicy Honey

9,500  -  Bottles of Bees Knees sold in the year end holiday season

7.5  -  Gallons of honey spilled in our vehicles (1.5 - 5 gallon buckets)

100,000  -  $ of revenue generated during the holiday season

2,200  -  % growth the holiday month represented over previous monthly average

6,000  -  Bottles packed & shipped (by hand) in a 5 day period before Christmas

4  -  USPS employees who earned a bottle of Bees Knees for their continued help

20,000  -  $ estimated revenue we gave up by declining holiday orders from Dec 16^th

4  -  Times we ran out of bottles or key ingredients and disappointed customers

1,744  -  Most bottles sold on a single day (Thanks to Today Show coverage)

17 ­ -  Friends who helped fill bottles or pack boxes to keep us alive

1  -  New vehicle purchased by our beekeeper to deliver our growing honey requirements

27  -  Countries where Bees Knees has at least one happy customer

50  -  States where Bees Knees has at least one happy customer

We're excited for the year ahead, whatever it might bring :)

-Morgen & Team

____________________________________________________________________________

Haven't tried our Bees Knees Spicy Honey Yet? Go ahead, order a bottle or two. We're so confident you'll love it that we'll give your money back if you're unhappy for any reason.

One Startup. No Secrets. Start at the beginning.

You already know we bled, sweat, laughed, and cried in our attempt to meet holiday demand. You've heard from us in a few different ways (apologies, recounting stories, delays, etc.), but we thought it might be nice to let someone else do the talking for a change:

We’ve been lucky to have the support of our friends who were eager to pitch in and help during our emergency. We asked two of them to share their perspectives of the holiday madness. First up, Kelly, who is a good friend of mine and without question the best box packer I’ve ever seen. After an hour of working alongside her, Ted whispered in my ear, “She’s too fast. I can’t keep up.” I turned to Kelly and asked, “Can you come again tomorrow?”

*********

“Well, this is a good problem to have, right?!” I said ever so tentatively as I took off my coat and stepped over massive boxes of bottled honey ready to be packed for shipping. Aside from “Hi, I’m Kelly. Nice to meet you!” those were pretty much the first words out of my mouth to Jamie, Ted’s wife, when I entered Casey’s apartment on Wednesday--just one week before the Christmas holiday. Jamie let me know that Casey and Ted were on their way back from dropping a big batch of boxes off at the post office which gave me a few minutes to take in the scene.

Though Casey and I have been friends for a couple years, I had never been to his apartment. And I certainly never imagined it looking like this. One quick visual sweep said it all: the press had paid off. Bees Knees Spicy Honey was in high demand and this apartment was shipping central. Stacks of unmade boxes were piled in every room. Already printed labels were wound in tight rolls, with a printer and laptop nearby to generate the next batches. Boxes already packed and ready for the post office were stacked a dozen high along a very long wall, while a makeshift workstation (ingeniously crafted out of boxes!) was set up to house the tape and packing paper. This area also provided just enough space necessary to make, pack, and label boxes. Systems were clearly in place and I couldn’t wait for Casey and Ted to return so I could roll up my sleeves and get to work.  

Quick backstory: I’ve already covered that I’ve known Casey for a couple years now. Introduced by a mutual friend, we hit it off over a dinner consisting of mac & cheese and a few beers. Before he quit his day job, Casey and I both worked in Lincoln Center where we would meet up for lunch on occasion and our friendship grew from there. When Casey shared with me that he and Morgen were starting a business in 30 days with spicy honey as the product to be sold, I was totally blown away. Truthfully, I was less blown away about the spicy honey and more blown away by the fact that I was friends with someone who had the creativity, inspiration, focus, determination, and skills to set a goal like that and go after it. So from the outset, I was constantly dropping the hint that I’d be willing to lend my hands in times of need. Not because I had any particular interest in learning about the honey business, but because when you meet people who are willing to lay it on the line to pursue something that they are passionate about with as much drive and spirit and integrity as I knew Casey to have, you want to be around those people.

When I finally got the call taking me up on my offer, it took me half a second to say when and where? I was in. Over the course of two days, I was thrilled to contribute about 9 hours of help to a stellar Brooklyn crew to get this honey boxed and shipped for holiday delivery. I know many others passed through Bees Knees headquarters during the final push days, but I had the great pleasure of working with the same group of people both days I was there. In addition to Casey and his boyfriend, Paul, who I already knew, I met Ted, MixedMade’s newest partner, and his wife, Jamie. I also met Jonathan--a customer who simply emailed Casey and Morgen to share his love of their product. Like me, he was inspired by their story and offered up help if ever needed! It was an incredible group. We settled into a packing rhythm, sharing laughs and swapping stories about jobs and travel and how we all were connected to MixedMade.  

Obviously, setting up a shipping center in a railroad-style Brooklyn apartment isn’t the easiest thing in terms of flow and space. We made the most of it, however, and in the end, I think our productivity picked up. I have no idea how many boxes we prepped, packed, labeled, and dragged off to the post office, but I feel pretty confident saying that if you received your shipment in those final days leading up to Christmas, it likely caused me to exclaim, “Guys! This one’s going to Montana! Is this your first order from Montana?!” or “Here’s one for Denver! I’m dying to go to Denver! Ted, have you been to Denver?” Whatever it took to keep the conversation going over the repetitive task of “check label/grab box/add bottles/stuff paper/tape shut/label/stack/repeat.”

The best moment for me was on the Sunday, the second day I was there. The goal was to finish but I don’t think anyone knew how long that would take. At one point, Jonathan and Casey were out dropping off a shipment to the post office and picking up lunch, leaving Paul, Jamie, Ted, and me back in the apartment. We were on a roll watching the number of bottles of honey get smaller and smaller and the number of boxes ready to ship growing in stacks against the wall. Ted was starting to count how many we had left to pack, realizing just how close we were to finishing. By the time Casey and Jonathan returned with lunch in hand, we had something like a final dozen boxes to go! Because the room with the makeshift workstation had grown a bit messy over the course of a few days, I wanted to do a final check to make sure no roll of labels had landed behind the Christmas tree, but when that checked out, Ted and I turned to each other, thrilled. WE WERE DONE! The look on Casey’s face when Ted told him was pretty incredible. Total disbelief that we’d hit the finish line. I think I may have even seen a tear in his eye. Probably from sheer exhaustion or maybe utter happiness--probably both! It truly did feel like we had just finished a miraculous feat and I was pretty psyched to be there to share in this moment.  

After sandwiches, we celebrated with pickleback shots. Hooray! MixedMade survived their first holiday rush! I hope it’s the first of many. And guys, don’t ever forget how awesome I was with that packing tape.  

*********

And now, Jonathan. As Kelly mentioned, Jonathan was just a casual customer. But he made the mistake of sending an enthusiastic email in mid-December and before he knew it he was swept into the middle of Hurricane Christmas.

*********

My name is Jonathan and I helped MixedMade fulfill orders for two days out of Casey’s apartment. I discovered MixedMade through Shopify, where they were one of the first referrals. That in turn led me to MixedMade’s blog which is, to this day, the best entrepreneurship blog I’ve ever read. I’d never read a business blog that was so no-holds-barred, for lack of a better phrase. In fact, it inspired me to officially launch Collar Cold Brew, a project I had been working on for some time.

And of course, in my excitement, I shared the blog with a number of people. Before I knew it, four different friends ordered a combined total of fifteen bottles on my recommendation of the blog. Not to mention the two bottles I had bought.

But then Christmas rolled around and the blog posts stopped. I noticed a couple delays in the fulfillment of my own purchase and realized with their appearance on the Today Show and the Christmas season in full swing that they must have been slammed. So, antsy to hear what was going on, I reached out asking to help. Casey responded to my email almost immediately and before I knew it I was headed to his apartment.

First impressions:

Fulfillment of orders had completely taken over Casey’s apartment. Boxes, packaging materials, and bottled spicy honey were everywhere. The team had set up two rooms for packaging and staging boxes to go out. The whole operation, crammed into Casey’s railroad style apartment and shipping out over 400 boxes a day, was one of the most inspiring things I’ve ever seen.

But besides taking over Casey’s living space, it had also taken over the teams’ lives. It only took a couple hours with the team to realize they had been at this non-stop for the past couple weeks. December had clearly taken its toll. Casey admitted he’d spent four of the past twenty four hours sleeping. Every other hour was dedicated to fulfilling orders.

Despite the lack of space, sleep, and labor, the process went very smoothly for the most part, until the second day I arrived to help out. After packing for an hour or so, Casey informed me that although it was Sunday, USPS was accepting drop-offs at a nearby location. So we loaded 400 packages ready to ship out into a U-Haul van and headed to the local post office. Halfway into unloading the boxes an employee told us there had been a mistake and they would not, in fact, be accepting boxes. We were devastated. Casey asked a second time if there was anyway we could drop off the packages. Again, a resolute “no.”

“What if you just ask him one more time?” I asked.

“I know what the answer is going to be…” Casey said.

“Yeah, but just one more time, why not?”

Casey approached the front desk one more time. We were told they would be calling a supervisor to see if they could make an exception. After a tense fifteen minutes awaiting our fate, we were loading the rest of the boxes into the post office. It was an incredible victory after a long day of packing.

Lessons learned:

1. Content Marketing Is King: I discovered MixedMade through Shopify, but connected with them through their blog. Not only do blogs boost your SEO they also make you human, relatable, and give you a platform to tell your story. In my case, I connected with that story and shared it with as many people as I could because it was so great! Which in turn converted to roughly $210 in sales.
2. No Man Is An Island: I’ve read many articles warning young entrepreneurs against going it solo, but I’ve never seen a more intense example than this. Two of MixedMade’s three founders were working around the clock just fulfilling orders, while the other was handling a rush of customer service needs remotely. That leaves no time for social media engagement, bookkeeping, material sourcing or any of the other fifty million things that need to be done. It takes at least two people to start and run a business but I would venture to guess MixedMade hit the nail on the head with three.
3. This Is Not A Day Job: A lot of times in school and work I find myself saying things like, “Yeah, that was a good days work, now I can probably take a break.” That kind of thinking can’t exist in entrepreneurship. Your customers dictate your hours. If you want to be competitive, you won’t stop until the last sales order gets processed.
4. It’s A Long Way To The Top: This seems to be a recurring theme in this blog and now I know why. Scaling your business with your own capital is hard. I would be ecstatic to learn that a business I had started was shipping out 400 boxes a day during Christmas. But the reality is that’s just the beginning of the sales necessary to take this business to the next level. In the coming months, MixedMade will likely need an actual workspace and salaries for partners as well as some part-time employees. Let’s say they find a space for $1,500 a month and all three founders take on $2,500 a month salaries ($30,000 a year). That’s an extra $9,000 a month in costs without blinking an eye (or the marginal profit of 1,800 bottles). Not to say it can’t be done, but MixedMade has their work cut out for them in 2015.
5. Don’t Take No For An Answer: If there’s one thing the USPS incident taught Casey and I, it was persistence. We could have easily left after the second no. At the end of the day, if you want to make it in the business world, you have to be prepared to annoy a couple people.

*********

These are just two of the dozen people who rolled up their sleeves and made the holidays happen. We’re eternally grateful to Kelly and Jonathan, as well as Jamie, Paul, Nicole, Caroline, Rachel, Joe, Ingrid, Rosie, Ariella, Jay, and the entire staff of the Wyckoff Station Post Office who somehow didn’t kill me when we dragged in 20 trash bags full of boxes at 4:58 every night.

Next week I’ll layout how I landed the press that got us in this mess. I’m no expert, but I’ve discovered a few key tips that are as close to foolproof as you can get.

-Case

____________________________________________________________________________

Haven't tried our Bees Knees Spicy Honey Yet? Go ahead, order a bottle or two. We're so confident you'll love it that we'll give your money back if you're unhappy for any reason.

One Startup. No Secrets. Start at the beginning.

It seems that most accidents don’t happen because of a single factor, but rather a chain of errors coming together to allow for a disastrous outcome. Well, our preparation for and execution of holiday sales was about as close as you can come to a disaster, without being an actual disaster (at least as perceived from the outside).

I can at least give us credit for thinking about being prepared and trying. I can’t, however, give us credit for getting it right. Casey’s research told us to be prepared for 3-4 x our normal order volume through the holidays. But since our order volume has never been consistent month-to-month (with regular growth) we were left with a tough prediction.

Would any of our customers place repeat orders for holiday gifts? Would we actually be included in any gift guides? Would these gift guides convince people to take a chance on purchasing a food product they'd never tried?

Casey, to his credit, wanted us to prepare with a stock of 6,000 bottles of Bees Knees Spicy Honey, ready to be dropped into boxes and get out the door as orders came in. But then Ted and I stepped in with some complicated mathematics:

6,000 bottles x $6.50/bottle = $39,000

Well, we didn’t have $39,000 cash then and we don’t have it now, so that seemed like a stretch. We decided to grease the bottleneck in our supply chain and placed our two biggest orders of bottles to date, convinced we’d never actually sell 6,000 bottles of spicy honey and this would leave us well prepared. Boy, were we wrong. 

Right after our bottle orders were placed, the disaster chain began:

• Our first order of bottles was short-shipped by 80% and our second order of bottles was backordered indefinitely. We had no backup supplier.
• Then all that press Casey had been working on started to hit, and it was hitting big. We had sold over 6,000 bottles with still two weeks to go before Christmas!
• Then we realized that chili peppers are out of season and nearly impossible to get in the quantity we needed.
• When a customer orders a product in December, they expect it before Christmas. So we were approaching a concrete deadline.
• Needless to say, there were many other problems and there were more than a few days when we thought we couldn’t pull it off.

So with a little hindsight, where did we really go wrong? 

1. Cash Restriction: I think this was a very real problem. However, we could have provided bigger personal loans to the company or asked friends / family for some small loans or investment money to help build a deeper stock leading up to the holidays.
2. No Backup Suppliers. Thank goodness our beekeeper had a deep stock and was unwavering in their support to help us pull this off. However, we weren’t so luck when it came to our bottle supplier and chili pepper supplier. We should have identified alternative sources and options ahead of time and prepped them of our anticipated needs. We were lucky to find last minute solutions for these key components
3. Communication. A business is just like a relationship in so many ways. And poor communication is at the heart of so many broken relationships and businesses. While Casey wanted 6,000 filled bottles in stock, Ted and I dismissed that forecast because we had no idea the caliber of press Casey had been targeting. For example, I only found out that Casey had pitched the Today Show the same day I found out Bees Knees would be featured on the Today Show, 3 days before it aired!
4. Communication (again): Many customers praised us for communication of our delays and updates on their orders. But in retrospect, we should have provided more frequent updates and better expectation setting. It would have put many customers at ease and likely would have reduced the thousands of emails and phone calls we fielded.
5. Overthinking It: In the first month, Casey and I didn’t grant ourselves the liberty of overthinking anything. As Ted pointed out this week, we might need to remember the lessons from the first 30 days. Maybe we didn’t need analysis of our supply chain and a detailed forecast before the holidays. Maybe we just needed to build as much stock as possible as far ahead of time as possible…

As I think Casey and Ted agree that our holiday season provided us with months worth of experience and learning, we’re going to share that experience and learning over the next few weeks. For example, you might be wondering how we generated press that led to sales over nearly $30k in a day at our peak…

Well, me too. Next up, Casey will share his plan and execution that led to our insane holiday season sales.

____________________________________________________________________________

Haven't tried our Bees Knees Spicy Honey Yet? Go ahead, order a bottle or two. We're so confident you'll love it that we'll give your money back if you're unhappy for any reason.

One Startup. No Secrets. Start at the beginning.

I’d love to tell you sales are erupting so fast that we had no choice but to hire another team member immediately. While that would be a good reason to hire, that’s not entirely the case here. The truth isn’t that far off, but it’s a bit less glamorous.

MixedMade is growing. And we’re growing at a faster rate than we had anticipated. Fortunately Casey boldly quit his job four months ago and we’ve been relying heavily on his sweat to survive – he’s regularly lugged hundreds of pounds of honey up and down 3 flights of stairs and produced 1200 pound batches by his lonesome – all with a smile. Without his relentless efforts over the past several months, we just couldn’t have made it.

**Update on life without a paycheck from Casey coming soon**

I do all I can part-time, but as I’m now working remotely from London, my hands are tied when it comes to lugging buckets or stirring the kettle. With Casey and I contributing as much as possible, we’re still not getting to some of our biggest opportunities:

• We’ve done a less than stellar job contacting potential retail partners
• We’ve had OK-at-best communication with our customers
• Our social media could be much more engaging
• We’re barely scratching the surface with our data and analytics

Enter Ted.

Ted and I have known each other for 12 years since we lived together in Babson College's “Outdoor Tower”. I’ve always known Ted as intelligent, hard-working, really fun to be around (he knows how to quickly escalate things), and he has a knack for digging into the details until he fully grasps a given subject.

A few months ago Ted shared with me that he finally figured out the right way to direct all his entrepreneurial energy.

“I don’t necessarily want to start something, but I think I’d be the perfect #2 in a business I’m excited about”

A few weeks later, as I wondered aloud to my wife, “Who would be a great compliment to Casey and me?” the idea of enlisting Ted’s help became embarrassingly obvious. Aside from the reasons mentioned above, Ted is also a serious foodie and fan of Bees Knees Spicy Honey. 

After a few agreeable conversations with Casey, the courting began. The thing that made me even more confident in Ted’s fit was the list of questions he immediately had:

Company Structure

• How keen is Casey to bring on a new team member?
• What do you see as a reasonable breakdown of equity?

Financial Outlook

• What do revenues and margins look like today?
• What are you forecasting for growth?

Sales / Partnership Strategy

• What have you don’t to generate sales thus far?
• Who has been managing all the proactive outreach to partners?

Vision

• What is your vision for the company / brand?
• Where do you see MixedMade going from a product perspective?

In our subsequent conversations it was clear Ted was interested most in the vision Casey and I have for MixedMade, and he wasn't interested in a pet project - he wanted to be a part of something that could turn some heads and push some boundaries in the food industry.

My answers were apparently good enough, because within days Casey and Ted were firing emails back and forth, Ted understood our data and analytics to a better degree than we had, and he injected a newfound energy into the initiatives needing most attention. (Bonus: Ted's wife is really smart and has worked as a retail planner and buyer so we should be able to sneak some free consulting from her).

Our Offer

• Cash = $0.00
• Stability = NONE
• Shared Vision = YES
• Equity = Yes

Equity

As Casey and I had to sort out 9 months ago, equity is rarely an easy conversation or an obvious decision. There is no perfect formula. However, I firmly believe that if you have the right people, and they feel valued and appreciated with a sense of ownership, you can’t go wrong.

Ted coming on board will make Casey and my equity more valuable. So we’ve brought Ted in as an equal partner in the company. That is to say, I have given Ted half of my 2/3 stake in MixedMade. His ownership will vest over 4 years, so we’re not risking too much in case Ted decides he’d rather get a job with Huy Fong or Heinz in a few months.

While 1/3 may seem like a lot for someone who has yet to contribute months of sweat and value, it helps that Ted and I have a history and I know what to expect of him. Further, it seems like startup founders these days are all too eager to give majority ownership of their company to investors, rather than their team who will do all the hard work.

Welcome aboard Ted! You’ve got a lot of work to do!

____________________________________________________________________________

Haven't tried our Bees Knees Spicy Honey Yet? Go ahead, order a bottle or two. We're so confident you'll love it that we'll give your money back if you're unhappy for any reason.

One Startup. No Secrets. Start at the beginning. 

1. Raise money from investors
2. Use personal credit cards to buy 29 days of cash flow
3. Explore better efficiencies within current operations
4. Find a loan

1. Investor Funding - I am critical of investor money at this stage for a few reasons. Most obviously, I’d rather keep a higher percentage of ownership under control so we can give it to future employees rather than investors. Holding out longer will also allow us time to prove a few key metrics, which will result in a much higher valuation (Again, retaining more ownership). Also, raising money is rarely accomplished quickly or easily. It is almost always a more time intensive and painful process than anticipated – ask anyone who’s raised money. At this stage we need to focus all of our energy on growing a sustainable business; not pitching investors. Most importantly, raising money rarely solves problems. Rather it would enable us to fund solutions.

2. Credit Cards - Despite many stories citing entrepreneurs who maxed out credit cards to fund their now successful companies, this is a slippery slope. Maybe we let one month slide by without a payment because next month’s revenue will catch us up. But a 15-30% finance charge is nothing to laugh at, and accumulates quickly. And if MixedMade fails, that debt will stay with us personally.

3. Efficiencies - We analyzed our supply chain and realized the bottleneck was getting plain bottles ordered and screen-printed (which is heavily dependent on stock levels and screen-printing capacity). Once bottles are printed, we can have finished product ready to ship in a maximum of 3 days. After realizing this opportunity to make our process more efficient, we began stocking printed bottles in larger quantities, which means we can have those 2,000 bottles ready to ship in 3 days rather than 2-3 weeks. Better yet, an investment of less than $1,000 allows this efficiency at a fraction of the $13,000 to create a stock of finished bottles, but allows us to create finished product only 2-3 days slower. Win!We also decide to lean on our vendors a little more. It turns out our screen printer is happy to hold some of our stock of printed bottles for a limited time. This saves us the cost of more storage space and allows us to build a bigger stock of printed bottles. We’re also attempting to purchase more of our ingredients and components on terms rather than up front payment, again helping with cash flow. We have more leverage to make these requests now that our vendors (partners) have seen consistent month over month growth, and on-time payments, in the 9 months we’ve been working together.

4. Loan - While loans aren’t easy for small businesses to come by, there’s usually a way. Given our intimate knowledge of the business, we decided to personally give the business a $5,000 loan. While this feels a little bit like cheating, the truth is this is the cheapest and fastest capital we can access at the moment. And this is a moment when we want to focus on building the business rather than fundraising.

1. Cash is King: Understanding cash flow, and its effect on business operations is critical to building a sustainable business.
2. Know Your Supply Chain: Mapping out your entire supply chain will help uncover areas where you can increase efficiencies, thus improving cash flow.
3. Love Your Vendors: Talk with your vendors or partners to see if there is an opportunity for them to help improve your processes. Treat them like a valued partner from day one. Don’t wait until you need a favor.
4. Don’t Fund “Problems”: Money doesn’t solve problems. Solutions - well thought-out strategic solutions - solve problems. Sometimes solutions require money, but figure out your solution before throwing money around.

____________________________________________________________________________

Haven't tried our Bees Knees Spicy Honey yet? Go ahead, order a bottle or two. We're so confident you'll love it, we'll give your money back if you're unhappy for any reason.

One Startup. No Secrets. Start at the beginning.

“Hey, can you order another 912 bottles please?”

I was slightly annoyed. Just a week ago Casey and I talked about getting a grip on our inventory. Clearly he didn’t get the message because he had somehow lost track of at least half of our last 912 bottles, which arrived less than two weeks ago.

“Case, what happened to the bottles you just got!?”

“They’re all accounted for, we’re pacing to run out again next week.”

It turns out Casey wasn’t the one missing something. I was. In my efforts to keep up with the influx of orders, I didn’t realize how much product we’ve been selling.

In August we sold 165 bottles of spicy honey. In September that number grew over 500% to more than 840 bottles. So, what was the magic?

Simply, it was press. We received numerous press hits that were both good quality AND relevant. We knew from day 1 that selling spicy honey, a product and category most people had never heard of, would be a game of awareness. Since people don’t know about it, they aren’t searching for it, so surely they won’t buy it. And while press isn’t the only way to generate awareness, it certainly packs the best punch of low-cost + impact.

But to get press, the press needed to know about us. So we were back to the awareness problem. We knew we have a killer (and pretty) product and a great story – things important to getting product coverage – and agreed we needed to get that first piece of relevant press to jump-start awareness and get the snowball rolling. That’s where good ole fashioned networking and hard work came in. Casey began with his personal network, and kept following the leads:

• When a key food influencer commented on his friend’s Instagram post featuring Bees Knees, he immediately sent that person a sample and personal email through an intro from his Instafriend
• He heard from one of our retail partners that a food mag editor bought a bottle, so he painstakingly found a way to contact that editor
• He used a friend's friend's friend to get a handful of bottles into the office of a popular food blog in the hopes he could get them hooked on the product 

Once we had a relevant contact, we followed our simple press plan:

Press Plan

1.  Build a Relationship: we’re not asking for anything. Instead we’re trying to connect with people who might benefit from knowing about our story and our product. If nothing comes of our interaction, at least one more person is aware and could be a potential customer. This might begin with following them on Twitter, reading and sharing some of their work, and creating a genuine connection whenever possible.

2.  Help Them Do Their Job: Journalists are people too. They have busy lives, deadlines and too much work without enough time time. Instead of hoping they will come up with a great story featuring our Spicy Honey, we decided to offer up a number of ideas, including photos and copy, for a story that might intrigue their audience, whenever possible. (For example, to get in front of Huckberry’s audience we pitched four different stories, and they were interested in one, which resulted in this amazing piece . We supplied the photos and copy, making it their job easier.)

 
And then the fun began:

Grubstreet published a fantastic 800 word story pitting Bees Knees against Mike’s Hot Honey

Followed by

A feature on Uncrate's homepage

Followed by

A lovely writeup from the kitchn

Followed by

You get the point :)

Not only was the increase in awareness driving sales, it was also driving additional press opportunities – the plan was working!

Relevant Press

But this wasn’t our first major press. In fact, we received some of our highest traffic when Business Insider reposted an Inc.com article I authored recounting our 30-day launch and the lessons learned. But that Business Insider traffic resulted in JUST. TWO. ORDERS. It makes sense; the BI reader isn’t reading with the intent to discover a new product of buy something interesting.

The Uncrate reader, on the other hand, is looking for something interesting to buy. The Grubstreet reader is interested in discovering new and interesting food and restaurants. These outlets represent relevant press for MixedMade.

However, we’re attempting to remain open in considering which less-obvious outlets might also have relevant audiences. For example, in the successful launch of Soma Water Filter, Mike Del Ponte was surprised to learn that Good.is was their number one source of traffic, a site they had likely never heard of.

Predicting The Future

The boost in awareness, combined with Casey’s excellent outreach, has led to some significant press opportunities due to hit in the upcoming months. As we were barely able to keep up with the influx of orders in September, we’re left wondering how to prepare for a possibly massive number of orders in November and December. I’m sure we’ll come up with something. At least, I hope so.

____________________________________________________________________________

Haven't tried our Bees Knees Spicy Honey yet? Go ahead, order a bottle or two. We're so confident you'll love it, we'll give your money back if you're unhappy for any reason.

One Startup. No Secrets. Start at the beginning.

*This post was originally written for Inc.com*

Casey is incredibly talented, smart, and has a knack for figuring things out. That said, he has no prior entrepreneurial experience. He has no trust fund or family inheritance to fall back on. Having lived in the income-sucking city of New York for the past nine years, he doesn't exactly have a plush savings account either.

So imagine my surprise when I read an email from Casey a few weeks ago saying, "I've thought a lot about this, I can't keep sacrificing the thing that excites me for the thing that pays my bills. I'm giving my notice so I can focus full-time on MixedMade."

Here are the issues that Casey is up against, and the questions you need to ask yourself before taking the leap:

1. You can't afford to pay your salary

At current rates, we need to increase revenue 7X to generate enough profit to pay Casey a reasonable salary. Yes, you read that correctly, we would need 700 percent growth.

Of course, Casey feels this pressure, but the pressure on the business, and on me, is also much greater now that someone's livelihood is dependent.
Does that type of pressure excite you?

2. You don't have the resources to invest in necessary growth

We have almost no cash to invest in growth. On paper, we are profitable. But the numbers are small, so we'll have to get creative to see that significant lift in sales.

Our recent profits have allowed only the simplest growth investments: business cards for Casey, a Zipcar membership to pick up raw materials and deliver our product more quickly, and an entry for Shwick, our first paid event.

What resources will you have? What resources will you need?

3. Being your own boss isn't what it seems

Just because you don't have to answer to "the Man" anymore doesn't mean you answer to no one. Whether it's your board, investors, customers, vendors, or even your family, prepare to exchange your current boss for a set of new "bosses."

At this stage, Casey answers to our partners and our customers. Granted, his hours are more flexible, but it's a far cry from sitting in the corner office with his feet on the desk.

Who will your new "boss" be?

4. You're not following your passion

Passion does not breed mastery. Mastery breeds passion. As Scott Adams, creator of the cartoon Dilbert, explains, it is easy to be passionate about something that is going well. It is difficult to stay passionate about something that is tough and challenging or, worse yet, proving unsuccessful.

Yes, Casey is passionate about great food, the plight of the honeybee, and our community. But he will spend more than 75 percent of his time on things he's not passionate about: planning social media, cold-calling potential retail partners, standing at food markets, and the like.

What are the unsexy activities required to run your business?

5. This will not make you wealthy

Wealth? Probably not. Prepare to bootstrap your entire life. Though I do believe the worst-case scenario for many people isn't that bad, there's always the reality of having to pay your mortgage and feed your kids.

The chances of this being a wealth-generating event in Casey's life are statistically low, to put it nicely. Casey is at an age when he wants to save for a house and retirement. With wealth generation in mind, he could have left his job for a new position with a higher salary and better upward mobility.

What is your true risk profile?

If you read this and you're thinking, Yeah, but I'm sick of the safe option! and Sure, statistically it doesn't make sense, but I can use data, tools, process, and good ol' fashioned elbow grease to figure it out!then you're ready to schedule some time with your boss to discuss your departure.

For Casey, this was a decision not taken lightly. As he explained in an open letter this week, he might be scared and stressed, but he's incredibly happy and excited. And that makes two of us.

Of course, I support and encourage you to take the leap. Even if you're not ready to leap to your own startup, maybe you can leap to a smaller or more entrepreneurial company. Being part of creating something is incredibly rewarding and, at least for Casey and me, worth the stress, risk, and messes we'll deal with along the way.

Good luck!

Comment if you have anything to add or are willing to share your own story.

____________________________________________________________________________

Haven't tried our Bees Knees Spicy Honey Yet? Go ahead, order a bottle or two. We're so confident you'll love it that we'll give your money back if you're unhappy for any reason.

Today is my first day of unemployment. Or, more accurately, today is the day I’m finally a full-time employee of MixedMade.

I woke up and forced myself to take a shower, put on deodorant, brush my teeth, and pick out an outfit (I did allow one celebratory indulgence: a half-bottle of champagne). And now it’s time to get to work.

When we began this, I was in my ninth year with the same company, happy and comfortable with a great salary, amazing benefits, and a job I could do in my sleep. It was the perfect environment to start a side project.

The problem was that it was safe.

I felt frustrated that my involvement with MixedMade could only be reactionary because I had a commitment during business hours, Monday to Friday. I felt like I was treading water (with increasing difficulty), but I would never be able to swim forward.

For me, the decision was obvious. I want to explore all the possibilities of this company, I want a bottle of Bees Knees sitting in every major city, I want to see our story in print. I want to swim forward, maybe get tossed around by some dangerous waters, but feel like something was driving me towards the horizon. I hadn’t felt scared in a long time; I couldn’t keep sacrificing the thing that excites me for the thing that was paying my bills.

So today is my first day as a free man. Morgen and I have so many exciting plans for the next few months and finally I’m in a place to see them all come to life. If everything goes horribly wrong, I’ll figure it out later. But for now, I’m excited and I’m scared and I’m very, very happy.

If you've left, or are considering leaving, your job to focus on your startup, share your story:

____________________________________________________________________________

Haven't tried our Bees Knees Spicy Honey Yet? Go ahead, order a bottle or two. We're so confident you'll love it that we'll give your money back if you're unhappy for any reason.

It was 9PM on Friday and I was heading to the bar to meet my wife and friends for drinks. It was going to be a fun night, especially since we had just completed an amazing week. Fueled by Casey’s email, the last few days and weeks had been an energizing roller coaster ride that went mostly up: Instagram posts about Bees Knees Spicy Honey from true influencers, positive feedback from raving customers, our favorite restaurants testing our product, requests for high-res product images from glossy-paged food magazines…  In fact, here are the actual results of Casey’s email:

• Drove over 500 unique visitors to our site in less than a week
• Sales in the 10 days following the email bested our cumulative sales from the previous 2 months (~$1300)
• 3 boutique gourmet retailers and 2 well-known restaurants requested samples
• Generated social media activity from influential people like:

And this video from http://instagram.com/tarasgroi

So, back to Friday night. I’m all smiles, and then it happened. And it felt like I was pushed right off the top of the roller coaster. I knew I shouldn’t be checking my email that late on a Friday, since I try to separate my personal and work lives, and I paid the price since my night was instantly ruined.

I felt instantly defeated, yet also childish – we had received 24 reviews so far and all were 5 Stars and extremely positive. So how could this one review tear me apart so easily?

“Surely, the customer was wrong.”
“They probably didn’t try it with food and that’s why they think it’s too spicy.”
“It’s called spicy honey, of course it is spicy!”
“There must be a mistake, its impossible that someone doesn’t like it!”

A handful of beers later and I was able to enjoy the night's great company, but I did fall asleep later that night and wake up the next morning with my mind racing about that single point of feedback, my blood mildly boiling.

In an effort to confront my irrational feelings about our first negative review, I decided to dive in and understand what sort of feedback and response we had received, and the results exceeded my expectations:

• 24% of our online customers have written a review for our spicy honey
• 39 of those 41 reviews are 5-Star reviews (today's #'s)
• Multiple people have claimed to dislike honey, or dislike spice, yet love BKSH
• We have received many overwhelmingly positive testimonials

This got me thinking about feedback. What purpose does it serve? Why do I care about it so much if it can equally make me happy or ruin my night?

I think feedback serves 2 purposes (internally) as far as the entrepreneur is concerned.

1. Ego – entrepreneurs are often rightfully accused of having their work wound too tightly with their ego. I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about this, and I think that the ego is often serving to offset the frequent periods of desperation and loneliness. Those times when all else has failed and options seem to have run dry. I am not condoning an excess of ego, but perhaps that ego is a reserve for the tough times. And so maybe positive feedback, and thus validation, is a way to fill that ego tank…
2. Learning – if we receive positive (or negative) feedback and take nothing away from it, then it is just a waste of everyone’s time. Instead, feedback can be excellent data for learning, which can lead to adjustments in our offering. Feedback is customers telling us exactly what they are willing to share publicly (we can then focus on spreading this message if it’s positive) and also what they want us to do better. As discussed in The Lean Startup, the Build-Measure-Learn feedback loop is a process the entrepreneur should be continually evaluating. In our case, when we actually measured the feedback it became clear that we were heading in the right direction. That even one or two pieces of negative feedback didn't warrant any major adjustments.

• “I love it, but I don’t know how to use it”
  • At first a surprise, we then realized people won’t spend all day thinking about how to use spicy honey, so we need to help them
  • This led to V1 of our pairings page, which we’ll improve in the future
• “It’s good, but I turn to Sriracha because it’s easier to pour more, more quickly”
  • It never occurred to us that a slow pour would cause less frequent use and lead some customers to opt for alternative products
  • When we reach a volume when we can control our packaging, we will source better-pouring bottle tops (we’ve tried with no luck so far)
• “I use it all the time and I’m nearly out, can you make bigger bottles?”
  • This was great news. But not wanting to offer more than one product at this time, we decided to do nothing
  • However, since offering free shipping for 2+ bottles, most orders have increased to 2+ bottles and this point of feedback has diminished
• “I used mine with…”
  • We’ve been amazed at all the pairings our customers continue to invent and share 
  • As we get better at sharing and promoting these, the first feedback point (“I’m unsure how to use it”) will become less relevant
• “My honey was too spicy” or “My honey wasn’t spicy enough”
  • We realized quickly that we will never please everyone, especially with a product that is naturally subjective
  • We chose to keep making the product based on the testing and feedback we did in our first month, which seems to be an overall crowd-pleaser

We are lucky to be a part of some really loyal and supportive communities, who have been willing to encourage us, purchase our product AND share their experiences with us (and the world).

Have you been crushed by customer feedback? We'd love to hear your stories!

____________________________________________________________________________

Haven't tried our Bees Knees Spicy Honey Yet? Go ahead, order a bottle or two. We're so confident you'll love it that we'll give your money back if you're unhappy for any reason.

Momentum is a funny thing. When it's rolling, you don't notice it. But when it halts, it's hard to get it going again. We had hit cruise control with our business, moving along at a serviceable pace, but needing a big kick to get things rolling. I knew what I needed to do to get the next push, but I also knew that timing was everything.

One of the reasons Morgen approached me to be his partner in this is because I have a great community of friends, colleagues, and collaborators who lead interesting lives and are enthusiastic about new ideas. It was my responsibility to engage this group in our story, and after our initial launch Morgen would bring up my outreach efforts every few days. I would push it off, promising to produce something soon, but intrinsically it didn't feel like the right time.

I felt very proud of what we had accomplished so far, but I saw value in waiting until we were just a little bit further, our story was a little more complete, our systems were a little more polished. When we took the big leap of moving production out of my apartment and into our commercial kitchen space, I knew the time was right to strike. Our story was plenty engaging, but now we had a new weight of legitimacy.

I sent out an email to 400 friends and the response was deafening. Outpourings of love and support flew in, ideas for retail partners, contacts at publications, tweets, instagrams. I stayed up all night forwarding emails and text messages to Morgen, so glad to feel a community building up around us. And it's that community that gave us our second push of momentum, which is still carrying us through this second phase. Ideas can't come in a vacuum and so much of our success so far is directly attributed to the contributions of our incredible friends.

Looking back, I don't regret waiting and I think Morgen would agree. We both value transparency far above perfection, but the old cliche is true: you only have one chance to make a first impression. Make it count. Be honest about where you are in your process and have pride in what you've accomplished. But make sure your message and brand are in a place where people will be excited and inspired to engage. It's a delicate line between too soon and too late, but trust your instincts. When the time is right, you'll come out swinging.

I've included my email below for anyone who is agonizing over hitting send.

Did you have a great outreach to your community? Comment and let us know what you did.

____________________________________________________________________________

Haven't tried our Bees Knees Spicy Honey Yet? Go ahead, order a bottle or two. We're so confident you'll love it that we'll give your money back if you're unhappy for any reason.

I finally ran the numbers and called Casey, as promised, to report the actual cost of a bottle of our Bees Knees Spicy Honey. Sometimes the truth sucks – and this is one of those times. Despite having made our biggest batch yet, each bottle of finished product cost a whopping $9.01. Since we are selling at $14 a bottle the profit margin isn’t terrible, but our dreams of testing wholesale pricing for retail sales, free shipping and a scalable business seemed crushed.

But within days, and after a discussion over a few cans of Rolling Rock, we began to offer free shipping and selling wholesale. And now, a few weeks later, our business is growing substantially.

This counter-intuitive approach began with a hunch. Maybe we could ignore our margin and burn a little cash in exchange for higher volume, which in turn could drop our costs and then BOOM! - improve our profit margin and ability to grow. (I'd like to note that my wife mentioned how this strategy is at least partly discussed in lengthy detail in Marks' Financing Growth, but I cannot confirm as I have not read it, mostly due to its size).

Free Shipping
Everyone loves free shipping. I am an Amazon Prime member and my Amazon purchases are almost exclusively items with Prime shipping. In e-commerce, the free shipping offer is almost a necessity, but it can also kill margins. We needed to test the potential.

We received 48 orders prior to offering free shipping. 10 of those, or 21%, were orders for 2 or more bottles with an average of order size of 1.3 bottles per order. Our average shipping cost per order is $5.80, so it might seem foolish that we would test an offer for free shipping on orders of 2 or more bottles. Essentially, we would loose money on that second bottle which would eat into the first bottle’s already thin profit.

$14 Price - $9.01 Cost = $4.99 Profit 
$4.99 Profit - $5.75 Shipping = -$0.76 Loss

However, if the majority of customers could be persuaded by free shipping to order 2 or more bottles our volume would increase significantly.

So, we made a few changes to our shipping settings and changed a few pieces of copy on the site.

And it worked! Of the 50+ orders we have received since offering free shipping, 77% of those customers have ordered at least 2 bottles with an average of 2.1 bottles per order. The result is that our volume has increased proportionally more than 60% from our web orders alone.

Wholesale
Around the same time we decided to test free shipping Casey and I had a number of serendipitous encounters with strangers who seemed to desire our product, despite knowing little about it. This made us think a bit harder about getting into a few retailers sooner. So, we paid a few visits to a representation of different retailers:

• Marlow & Daughters: hip, premium farm to table grocer and butcher in Brooklyn
• Hudson Valley Bee Supply: friendly, Hudson-Valley beekeeping supply store
• HoneyBrook Farms: one of our honey suppliers, focus on farmers markets

We guessed that these retailers would want at least a 30% profit margin. If they were going to sell Bees Knees for no less than $14 a bottle, we would need to offer a wholesale price of no more than $10 per bottle to provide that 30% profit (not to mention that the retailer has every right to charge a higher price).

You don’t have to be a math genius to see that we make almost zero profit on our wholesale sales at this time, less than $1 per bottle to be exact. But again, we are testing ways to boost our volume. And guess what happened? In just two weeks of selling to these three retailers we have:

• Sold over 50 bottles wholesale
• Exposed our brand, product and category to hundreds of prospective customers we otherwise never would reach
• Yes, boosted our sales volume

Cash
Of course, our strategy to boost volume has a downside, or two. For one, we have less profit per sale to reinvest, which means our cash burns quicker.  Second, the cash we do have is being invested into larger batches of inventory in order to drive a lower finished product cost.  Ideally, we will soon produce at a low enough cost to begin earning back strong profits and replenish our cash.

A big factor in our ability to scale and produce large batches is having the right equipment and space. After considering a few options, learning about NY State regulations and deciding Casey needed his kitchen back, we landed at the Organic Food Incubator in Long Island City.

On the positive side, we’ve gained access to large-scale space and equipment that makes large batches way easier to produce in less time. We also have access to a lot of other food entrepreneurs and veterans through the OFI.  On the negative side, we’ve had to spend cash.  OFI requires that we put on our big boy pants and:

• File a Food Processing License with the state = $400
• Get an official scheduled process from a Process Authority (we used Cornell) = $100
• Obtain liability insurance = $253 initially, $950 annually
• Provide a security deposit = $1500

While the benefits outweigh the cash, and we do get $1500 back when / if we leave OFI, this still represents a huge cash outlay for us. Especially considering we would have otherwise waited a while before buying insurance and filing a food processor license.

Additionally, as we gear up for another batch we have bought hundreds of pounds of honey, crates of chilies and rent kitchen time. We’ve come to refer to our raw small-batch honey as liquid gold, which is to say our cash is running thin at the moment.

But here’s the great part: our volume increase has lead to better purchasing power and more cost efficient production time, so we are going to produce our biggest batch to date next week. And we estimate our cost per bottle will drop to around $7.00, which will boost profits on retail sales and wholesale sales. And, even that pesky 2^nd bottle in orders with free shipping will now be profitable!

Despite seeing our profit margins looking bleak and our bank account scraping dangerously close to the bottom, we feel really good about our chosen strategy and progress.

The reason we felt so willing to test free shipping, wholesale sales to retailers and turn our cash into honey is that every part of this is just a test. If any part doesn’t work we can stop doing it. We could stop selling to retailers, stop offering free shipping, and move back into Casey’s kitchen.  But, I have a pretty good feeling that won’t be happening anytime soon :)

Think we’re wrong in sacrificing our margin and cash? Would you have taken a different path? We’d love to hear!

____________________________________________________________________________

Haven't tried our Bees Knees Spicy Honey Yet? Go ahead, order a bottle or two. We're so confident you'll love it that we'll give your money back if you're unhappy for any reason.

So far we’ve made a mass of critical mistakes:

• We made poor assumptions on our COGS / product cost and barely made a profit on our first 60 LBS
• It turns our we made our first 60 LBS worth illegally (but safely :)
• We are substantially overpaying on the cost of our packaging
• Our first large-batch production run was a mess, literally
• We forgot to order bottle caps in time for our large-batch production

Profit, now that’s an important one. We accurately estimated the costs for our honey, chilies, and packaging. We used the correct math to estimate how many bottles would yield from our first 5 gallons / 60 lbs of honey. However, we failed to account for how much honey would remain stuck to the chilies after filtering. We entirely miscalculated our yield. Given the quality of our honey (read: expensive), this mistake added over 30% to our per bottle cost, which is a big chunk of our profit.

Could we have avoided a few of these mistakes with better planning or organization? Sure! 

If we planned and organized for months, could we be sitting here with no mistakes? No Way! 

Could we have generated meaningful sales, tons of customer feedback and a plethora of learning in less than 8 weeks if we were planning and organizing instead of selling and executing? Probably not!

We know we are going to make mistakes, so we are OK with them as long as they help us learn and make progress. In fact, we love them because they help us learn and progress faster. In general, we have a few questions/rules we apply to our mistakes:

1. State our mistake or issue.
2. What caused this to happen? (The 5 Why’s is a great tool for this)
3. What can we do to avoid this next time?
4. Discuss what we could have done better and what we learned.
5. Standardize a process to minimize this type of mistake in the future.
6. “Never miss the same way twice”.

So, when we recently produced a large batch in a commercial kitchen we went in with more realistic expectations of our yield, a few ideas of how we might be able to improve our yield, and more conservative expectations of our resulting profit and cash flow.

We believe that the quicker we execute, the quicker we will learn if our assumptions: are right, just need some tweaking or are fatally wrong.  In the planning phase it is impossible to know what will actually happen, so we try to get out of the planning phase ASAP. Fortunately we have made a lot of mistakes and have had to make a lot of tweaks, but haven’t often been fatally wrong.

We want to hear if what great mistakes you've made on your journey - post to comments!

____________________________________________________________________________

Haven't tried our Bees Knees Spicy Honey Yet? Go ahead, order a bottle or two. We're so confident you'll love it that we'll give your money back if you're unhappy for any reason.

By the end of day 30, we have—with very little effort—a full batch of orders ready to be filled and shipped out. Which means it’s time to stop testing and time to start making the recipe in bulk. Easier said than done.

Translating a recipe from small batches to large is always a delicate process because ingredients don’t necessarily increase in tandem. I decided to play it safe and used a little less chili than I thought I would need; it’s always easier to add heat, it’s almost impossible to subtract.

Streaming the honey out of the bucket and into my pot was one of the most joyful moments so far. It was so dark and viscous and the sweet smell invigorated me. I chopped up the peppers, gave the pot a stir, and got it going on a low heat. Our honey is infused low and slow, never over 100° F, to protect the natural properties inherent in raw honey.

Much has been said about honey’s health benefits, but I’ll say it again: honey is a miracle food. A healthy energy booster, an immunity builder, and a natural way to treat everything from a sore throat to seasonal allergies to dandruff. The water molecules in raw honey are almost entirely connected to the sugar content, which makes it virtually impossible for microorganisms to grow in the honey and added to that, the high acidity (usually somewhere between 3.2 and 4.5) makes it inhospitable to bacteria. Nutritionally, it contains glucose and fructose and a range of minerals including magnesium, calcium, potassium, iron, and phosphate and can be a source of B and C vitamins. It is a potent phenomenon and deserves to be handled with care.

But back to my pot of stress: the first batch didn’t work. In playing it safe, I ended up with a product that was bland and unexceptional. I tasted a hundred times, but I knew that the honey just wasn’t where I needed it to be. Still, it was better to work my way up with the heat rather than end up with a ton of unusable product. An added load of chilies and a few more hours of stress and I was back in business. With the new balance of spice, it was complex and steady and hit all the areas of the mouth. Exactly the effect we were hoping for with this combination of peppers.

I strained the honey into the bucket and let it sit overnight. Honey will naturally push foreign objects like chili seeds, wax, and even oxygen bubbles to the surface, so it’s always best to let it sit and skim the top in the morning.

Bottling was a faster and easier process than I expected. During our immersive education in the Hudson Valley, Jorik supplied us with a bucket and spigot (honey gate) specifically for bottling. It’s amazing how gravity and the viscosity of the honey can be manipulated to make a fine stream or a wild glug. I was slow at first, but gained momentum. Sitting in the early sunlight, flowing the fragrant honey into the bottles, was so peaceful and calming. Honey is a good way to start the day.

So later that morning, after I printed the shipping labels and assembled the boxes, I placed our first honey bottle on a bed of tissue paper and sent it out. I sent Morgen a picture and we agreed it was an exciting and proud moment. From concept to launch in 30 days and here we were. We did it. But really, we've just begun.

We'd love to hear what you think of our journey thus far, comment to let us know.

We continually kick ourselves in the ass for committing to a 30-day launch timeline.  Nothing has felt as ready as it should, it seems like we are miles away from shipping a product we’ve committed to ship this week, we have a miles long To-Do list and I accidentally planned a ski trip during our first week of production and shipping product – whoops!

Despite the frustrations, we’ve made progress. In 30 days:

• 1 Idea turned into a marketable product
• 1 Company established: MixedMade LLC
• 3 Domains registered
• 1 Website set up on Shopify
• 9 revisions for website to look “good enough” and reflect better SEO (images below) 
• 6 Systems implemented: payments, accounting, inventory, email (Google Docs), email marketing and shipment
• 18 recipe variants that led to the most kick-ass (in our humble opinion) spicy honey recipe
• 60 Pounds of honey purchased from an off-the-grid natural beekeeper in the Hudson Valley
• 11 Branding options considered to reach our final design
• $1100 spent on key items including LLC filing, ingredients, packaging, and supplies
• $525 in pre-order revenue
• 21 pre-orders received with very little outreach or marketing
• 27 Bottles of Bees Knees Spicy Honey sold
• 9 Blog posts written (admittedly adding 3 more since day 30 as we’ve been posting with a 2-7 day lag)
• 560 unique visitors to www.mixedmade.com

Website Progression

So, was it worth it? We haven’t created an overnight success.  But, we do feel that we are in a great position to create awareness and growth. 

We certainly had some moments of stress elevated by our timeline:

“The product images show a chili in the bottle, but I don’t think we can find one that will fit in the bottle without going out of control on the spice.”
“We’re three days behind our projected date for sourcing our honey!”
“Shit, we are supposed to ship product next week and I just realized I will be in Montana the entire week”
“Orders ship next week and I still don’t have a final recipe. Or honey.”
“We can’t get screen-printed bottles fast enough, so we need to make and print labels in two days. But it is Thursday evening, so really one day”

Despite the stress, it was an overwhelmingly positive learning experience. AND, we found the right chili for the bottle.

Morgen: I feel like the impending timeline actually worked to our advantage – forcing us to take action, make decisions with imperfect information, avoid wasting time when not driving towards immediate goals and giving little excuse for excuses.  In fact, without the 30-day timeline, I think it would have taken us two or three months to make the same progress we have made as of today.

Further, If I was to do it again I might make the timeline even tighter now that I know what systems and tools I would rely on and implement.

Casey: It’s very easy to talk about starting a company, to say we’ll do it in the spring or once summer is over or when my tax return comes in. It’s another thing to look at a calendar on your first night and immediately set dates for domain registration, final brand design, and product shipment. Standing here, on Day 30, we’re equally ahead of and behind where I thought we’d be. I’m proud of the company, brand, and product we’re presenting today, and I’m proud of the commitment we’re made to meeting our goal. But I understand now that Day 30 was never an end game. We built a great foundation and now the real work begins are we grow and develop Bees Knees and the MixedMade brand. To the next 30!

We believe today more than ever that MixedMade and Bees Knees Spicy Honey appeal to a lot of people – hot sauce lovers, honey lovers, food lovers, and people interested in interesting things.  With that belief, our next efforts will be to grow awareness and outreach, generate press, refine our content and processes and ultimately grow sales. We’re excited to have you along for the continuing journey!

Action: Comment if you have any questions about our process, decisions we made so far, or information you’re curious to know. 

Source: iCharts

I cheered as soon as I saw the first order hit. I then felt ashamed. How could I be THIS excited from a $40 order, when at IdeaPaint I would get single orders in the hundreds of thousands? To hell with shame. I quickly messaged Casey knowing he would share in the elation. At least he gave me an exclamation point!

Seriously, I can't articulate how excited we get every time an order registers. Granted we're hardly making Huy Fong Foods Inc shake in their boots, but still the feeling is electrifying.

As the first orders rolled in it occurred to me that we need to account for them financially. I also realize we should account for our costs and figure out actual margins. But I really dislike accounting work and data entry.

We need to ship these orders to our customers who willingly exchanged money for a product that still doesn't exist. But our local post office is a nightmare. You can rely on a 20 person line, no stock of boxes or supplies and a message in ballpoint pen scrawled into the metal counter offers the best chance of help or service. It's enough to make any entrepreneur go postal.

 

Photo Source

Then genius struck - If there's an app for that, there must be an app or tool for all this. Reader's Digest list:

1. Xero for accounting

2. shippingeasy for shipping

3. Stitch Labs for inventory / management

4. MailChimp for customer email / lists

5. Hemingway App for editing (This one is especially cool!)

Accounting: For me the choice boils down to QuickBooks Online vs. Xero. After consulting reviews and friends, I concluded that both have all the bells and whistles, similar pricing, and are familiar to accountants. Beyond the basics I value ease of use and a great interface. Additionally, Xero feels like more of a startup compared to Intuit's QuickBooks Online. I like startups, so Xero is the winner.  

Shipping: Fortunately I won't be visiting the local post office much anymore. I decided to use shippingeasy for our shipments. After hitting a few buttons shipping labels for all orders spit out of the printer and customers receive tracking info.  I chose shippingeasy over ShipStation which also might be a good option.  The latter seems more robust while ShipEasy has an intuitive interface and took just minutes to understand and synch with Shopify. 

Inventory: Stitch Labs manages our inventory and integrates with Shopify and Xero. (Soon it will integrate with shippingeasy, I am told.)

The point is, while there might not be an app for articulating my aforementioned order-induced excitement, we live in an age where there really is an app for almost anything. (Even one to help you hook up on a flight...seriously, it's called wingman). So, a practical business app or tool of your choice certainly exists, you just have to find it.

While I feel some service and app fatigue right now, I consider all my research and setup time an investment for the future. At little cost these tools will allow us to spend our time and effort on the parts of the business that excite us most as we grow. Plus, as soon as we get some killer PR that leads to thousands of orders a day, we won't have to waste time on our systems...

Action: Share your favorite automation and operational tools, apps and tricks - we want them all!

Source: iCharts

Aside from some reading and brief online research, we know next to nothing about our key ingredient, honey. Naturally, the next stop on our blizzard-covered honey hunt was to say hi to the founders of Hudson Valley Bee Supply who were our invaluable connection to several beekeepers in the area.

One of the biggest lessons Morgen and I have learned in launching this brand is that you have to take the help that others can offer. We have passion and drive and smarts, but there are others who can step in with real expertise in areas where we falter. We’ve been extremely lucky to be surrounded with people who are excited by our project and have offered a hand exactly when we needed them.

Megan and Jorik, long-time beekeepers and founders of Hudson Valley Bee Supply, are connected to the beekeeping community in a major way. They opened Hudson Valley Bee Supply just over a year ago as a central place for beekeeping supplies, resources, support, and classes. Almost overnight, their business exploded and as Megan said, “We’ve been white knuckled every day trying to keep up. I come home at the end of the day, and there are just no words left except ‘sit’ and ‘wine’.”

What was intended to be a quick hello and thank you turned into nearly 90 minutes of conversation and a crash-course education. Within minutes of meeting, Jorik asked me if I had thought about bottling. I had not given it much thought beyond a strainer and a funnel, so Jorik whisked me off to their backroom to show me buckets with a variety of spigots. Suddenly, I had a million questions that I hadn’t considered before and he was extremely patient as my brain started to acclimate to the mysterious world of honey.

We’re using pure honey that is raw, unfiltered, and untreated, which means it has some particularities not typical of store bought honey. A lot of comb, wax, and air are trapped in the weight of the honey, so buckets of poured honey need to sit in a warm place to allow the bubbles and debris to rise to the top. The buckets he gave us have spigots at the bottom so that I’m only drawing the cleanest and purest of the honey from the bottom. He also taught me how to gradate the release and use the viscosity of the honey for everything from a glugging pour to a fine stream. With a little practice, I’ll be able to bottle the honey into a small bottle top without a funnel. And since we’re buying our honey in large quantities, he gave me a crash course in reconstituting crystallized honey so that our last bottle is as consistent and pourable as the first bottle.

Something Megan and Jorik kept mentioning was how small the honey community is, but that the people in it are extremely passionate about their product and compassionate towards their peers. They’ve seen such an incredible shift in the awareness of honey bees and honey production as information becomes more available on the plight of the honeybee.

Not wanting to be late, we said our goodbyes and promised to send thank you bottles of our finished product their way next week. Twisting through the snowy back roads, we finally found the small sign for Honeybrook Farms and pulled up in front of a small garage. Todd’s wife, Wenche, came down from the house to meet us and show us their supply room. Wenche is a beautiful Scandinavian woman by way of Bay Ridge, with the remnants of a Brooklyn accent to prove it.

Photo Source: Examiner

She let us sample a couple varieties of their honey and she and I discussed the merits of the fall harvest versus spring harvest. Completely different in color, taste, and texture, the spring is by far my preference. Lucky for us, Todd and Wenche’s rotation seems to be on the opposite schedule of Larry’s so we can source our spring variety year round. If Bees Knees takes off enough that we’ll need several hundred pounds of honey a month, we’ll eventually buy out an entire hive for the season and keep the spring honey in stock.  

Right before we left, Wenche dropped a piece of advice that never would have occurred to me: “Never wash your buckets with soap. Honey is extremely porous. If you use soap, your honey will taste like soap.” Whew! Since honey is antiseptic and doesn’t spoil, a rinse with hot water is all a bucket needs before it’s ready for the next five gallons.

On the drive up, we worried that we were underutilizing our day by only meeting with two beekeepers and one supply store. As it turned out those three meetings not only fulfilled all our needs, but were all we could fit in a day. The pace of business in the Hudson Valley is entirely different than in the city; an hour or two of conversation precedes the transaction and even that can get derailed by another twenty minutes of chat.

What struck me the most about everyone we met yesterday was the palpable energy each person projected when they spoke about honey. These people care about their work, they care about their environment, and they care about educating outsiders. Building a brand has been enormously exciting, but becoming part of this community outstrips it all.

Source: iCharts

"I don't trust anyone who isn't a person. Including the government."

That's when we fell in love with our honey supplier, a Hudson Valley beekeeper who lives completely off the grid, only deals in cash, and doesn't pay taxes.

Morgen and I left the city this morning with a few appointments lined up with possible honey suppliers. I've been recipe testing like crazy, but I've been eager to get our honey supply secured. As I've discussed in an earlier product development post, each honey variety has distinct properties and I wanted to find something light and sweet to balance the spicy combination of chilies. And something we could get in abundance.

Our drive started in rainy weather, which morphed into a blustery snowstorm as we drove further upstate. Morgen managed to crawl his trusty (rusty) old Subaru to the little cafe where we had an appointment to meet Larry (not his real name), our off-the-grid beekeeper.

Setting up this meeting took a bit of maneuvering since Larry has neither computer nor phone. We were connected to him through a local beekeeping expert who urged him to contact Morgen, and the thing about Larry is you just have to wait for him to find a way to find you.

We entered the cafe and the sizing up process began. "I thought you guys would be older," Larry said. "You guys live in Brooklyn, huh?" But I pulled out a jar of our spicy honey, he pulled out a jar from his hive, and conversation started flowing as we dipped wooden coffee stirrers and discussed the intricacies of hive breeding, seasonal flavor shifts, and the zen of beekeeping. Luckily Morgen is an avid climber, so his knowledge of the area also went a long way in convincing Larry we were people.

As he started to trust us, he opened up about his own journey. Larry was not always a beekeeper, but this took a sudden change when his father-in-law unexpectedly passed away. Larry suddenly inherited one of the oldest and well-regarded group of hives and, while still processing the death, had to immediately tend to the harvest. "While he was alive, I couldn't question him on anything because he was the master. I'd wonder why do it that way when this way seems easier. Now that he's gone, I wish I had asked more questions."

So Morgen and I are embarking on a new business at the same time Larry is coming up on his first spring alone with the bees. The convergence was unexpected and exciting. Once the weather is nice, we're going to spend a day getting our hands dirty alongside Larry and a twelve pack of Coors Light. ("It's a working beer," he told us. "You can drink it all day and still work.") At the end of our meeting, before any of our other appointments, we bought a five gallon bucket of Larry's honey.

It's true, we are taking orders for a product that doesn’t actually exist. Yet.

Despite the narrowing 30 day timeline, or maybe because of it, we are incredible proud of what we have built in just three weeks. Pride in hand, we are now sharing MixedMade with our community and are accepting pre-orders.

To begin accepting pre-orders, we believe we need two key items to convey our offering:

1. Photos of the product
2. A price, based on actual costs

But instead we’ve settled on:

1. Digital renderings of what we think the product will look like
2. A price, based on estimated costs

That is to say, we have no finished product. We have no finished packaging. We haven’t even sourced our honey yet. Thus, we can’t show photos of our actual product or know the actual cost. We are skipping ahead a few steps to figure out the detail that truly matters – will people buy our product? 

If we were strictly following The Lean Startup method, we should have began pre-sales more than a week ago in case no one wants to buy spicy honey. Accepting pre-sales last week would have been possible, but we feel less risk given just a week more of progress. We now have a recipe, packaging options identified, beekeepers in contact and confidence that we can pull this off, so we are gladly accepting pre-orders.

With help from crowd-funding sites like Kickstarter and indiegogo, customers are familiar with the idea of buying a product before it is completely developed. In fact, I think some consumers prefer being early adopters and sharing some risk in a new product or new technology.

Pricing

We will reveal full financial details in the future, but in short, it will cost roughly $8 in raw materials and labor to make an 8 FL OZ bottle of Bees Knees.  Given that Bees Knees is unlikely to sell in high volumes, we need to sell each bottle for at least $10-12 to justify our time and effort. 

Based on prices of premium hot sauce and similar products, we believe the high end most people will pay for a bottle of Bees Knees is around $15.  As consumers, we have a hunch that a $14 price is substantially easier to swallow than $15 and have decided to test our luck at $14 per bottle.  “Maybe $14 feels like a $10 bill and some change, instead of nearly a $20 bill?”

Source: Curtis William Readel

Based on our cost of $8, this will result in a gross profit of $6, or a profit margin of 43%, which I feel pretty good about.  If we can scale and produce / sell more bottles, our costs should decline and our margin will increase.  However, if we sell to retailers, we will have to sell at a lower price and take a reduced margin. 

Eventually we should become more sophisticated about our pricing and test if we would, for example, sell 300% more bottles sold at $12.  Until then, we will sell at $14 unless overwhelming feedback suggests a price adjustment.

And already, the first order is in for a total of $40 (2 Bottles + Shipping) - celebratory backflips off the deck are in order!

Action: We’d love to hear if you have any objections to accepting pre-orders for a product that isn’t 100% complete yet.  Comment to share.

Source: iCharts.net

Last night, Morgen and I met in his apartment to test samples. He hadn't tried any of the spicy honey yet and I was excited for him to get a taste.

Raz, our heroic designer, and his fiancé, Caro, live in the apartment below so they came up with beer and cheese in hand, ready to join in on the judging.

The first sample was red pepper flake infused, which I felt was the most broadly appealing. Delicious, but nothing daring. The others enjoyed it and without debate we agreed it would be a great product.

Next was fresno pepper. I use fresno in a different hot sauce I've been making for a couple years, but I wasn't sure how the pepper would translate to a spicy honey. In my opinion, it doesn't work at all. All I can taste up front is the distinct bitter flavor of a pepper, which overshadows the sweetness of the honey. The spice also sits in a very forward part of the mouth and I was looking for an overall effect. Raz, on the other hand, loved it. Each time he tried some, his eyes would light up with an enthusiastic, "Wow!" Caro enjoyed it too, but agreed with me about the pepper flavor being too distinct. Morgen agreed we could probably rule that one out.

We then popped open the Thai chili honey. Thai chilies are small peppers, so their spice is powerful. This one started off strong right away and lingered on the tongue for a while. It was another easy one for me to rule out, and the others agreed.

Next up was the jalapeño. I loved this one as a flavored honey, especially mixed with lime juice, but a jalapeño is a jalapeño is a jalapeño. We want our spicy honey to have some mystery and a lot of versatility.
Chile de árbol was quickly ruled out for its simplistic and discreet spice. It just tasted like plain honey.

Finally, we got to my favorite: the habanero. What I liked about this pepper above the others was the progression of flavor. The immediate impact was a sweet burst of honey and then slowly and gently the heat crept in and hit all areas of the mouth. It was like slowly turning the volume up on a stereo. When I first sampled the chilies, this was my clear favorite, but I know habanero is a risky choice. To my enormous satisfaction, the other three agreed that there was something really special here.

Ultimately, all four of us had divided opinions on our favorite chili. We went back and took many repeat samples, debated the merits of this and that and the other, and ultimately landed on a combination of three peppers. Now it’s back to the kitchen to test the balance and find a perfect final recipe.

Action: Let us know if we missed your favorite pepper!

Source: iCharts.net

Maybe our branding isn't actually free if you count the pizza and beer that we used to lure our neighbor into this unpaid extracurricular project.  

Morgen and I are lucky to have a group of friends who are not only enthusiastic about our adventure, but eager to offer their talents. Raz is one of those friends and lucky for us the man is a design genius. After years in advertising, Raz left to join the team that launched qwiki. A very valuable guy to have on our side! Lacking a super-talented neighbor with design skills? There are a few affordable and quick crowd-sourced options like 99designs and crowdSPRING. 

At our first meeting, Morgen and I talked about branding and agreed that MixedMade and Bees Knees should have a rusticity to it, but a clean and simple design was paramount. We referenced a couple of online shops like Best Made, some tumblrs, and compared how other honey and hot sauce companies package their products. We need to be different from every farm-born gourmet branded honey, but also stand apart from the tattoo-inspired designs of most hot sauce.

We also agreed that a squeeze bottle was the best option (an early idea was a neon painted honey bear bottle) because Bees Knees should be on the table at every meal and allow for an easy application. Just imagine the process of a spooning honey from a glass jar for every few bites! Beyond that direction, we put our trust in Raz. And to speak in the Upworthy vernacular, what happened next brought tears to our eyes.

Here is the first round of options Raz sent us:

And here is how we reacted:

Up until that moment, even though my kitchen counter and beard had been covered in honey for days, this whole project still felt abstract. But seeing an image of the bottle made us realize that this is really happening. One day very soon we’re going to be holding a finished product in our hands and shipping it to lucky customers.

We met with Raz that night to refine his designs into a single direction. It was great having all three of us in one room to bounce around ideas and debate merits of this and that. We innately had the same ideals at heart, but the minutiae made for a more dynamic product. Primarily, we wanted to make sure that MixedMade remain the prominent brand, with Bees Knees owning position as the name of the product. We need to retain a consistency in our brand so we could easily introduce additional (non-honey) products in the future without having to rebrand our company.

Raz came back the next morning with another round, reducing the Bees Knees prominence and paying homage to the MixedMade brand:

I had a momentary panic because I realized we didn’t a factor a nutrition panel into the design, which was such a bummer after seeing such a beautiful and spare set of labels. But luckily Morgen found the FDA’s Small Business Nutrition Labeling Exemption, so we can dodge that ugly thing for quite a while still.

Based on our final choice, Raz sent one more look at our pick:

We agree the chili pepper is a gorgeous touch, but my task in the next few days is to figure out how we can get one in the bottle without losing control of the spiciness. Back to the kitchen!

We are in love with our branding, which Raz pulled off in just a few evenings after work. I think if we had micro-managed the process and wasted time trying to tightly define the outcome, we might have killed the simplicity and beauty behind Raz' final designs. Sometimes, I think, the best results come from letting go and going along for the ride.

Action: Comment to let us know what you think of our various branding options.  Would you have picked a different winner?

Source: iCharts

My beard is filled with honey, spicy honey. But to understand why, we'll have to take a step back. 

Some of my earliest memories are in the kitchen of my childhood home. While my mom cooked dinner I would fill a drinking glass with water and raid the spice rack, sniffing and pouring the dried herbs into the cup. Sometimes I would loudly narrate my process to no one in particular, completely fascinated by the smells mingling together. My mom would only break my trance when she needed something from the garden we kept in the backyard. I would bound through the screen door on hot summer nights to pick green beans or cut chives and run back inside with the bounty, standing on tiptoes to watch the separate ingredients become a cohesive meal. Now as an adult, the kitchen remains an enormous place of comfort for me. Cooking brings a deep sense of satisfaction, and I love nothing more than sharing a meal with the people I love.

That boring story is to say, I couldn’t wait to get to the recipe testing.

I decided to use the clover as my standard honey and orange blossom as the more adventurous honey. The buckwheat was too strong in taste and the wildflower was too thick in texture.

Next, I went to the grocery store to pick out a variety of peppers to test. I wanted a range of heat and flavors, with expected and unexpected options. For a little bit of complexity, I also picked some herbs, citrus, and spices to play with.

For the next two days, my kitchen turned into a sticky mess. After the first night of making samples, it was obvious to me that the orange blossom was the best honey for the job. By itself it was just this side of overly sweet, but when paired with the heat of the chilies it created an exciting balance of sweet battling spicy. We still need to find our local honey supplier, and I highly doubt they’ll have orange blossom this far north, but now I know the qualities we’ll be looking for in our final honey.

I infused smaller batches of honey with the herb, citrus, and spice flavors and then spooned them into small bowls with the spicy honey samples. I really enjoyed some of the flavors - lime and jalapeño, turmeric and habanero, rosemary and fresno - but I knew that any gain in curiosity was a loss in versatility; simplicity is a beautiful thing.

In all, I made 12 chili infusions and 11 flavor infusions. By the end of the second night, I had two clear favorites: one bold choice and one broadly appealing choice. At 1am, my boyfriend and I packed a few jars in our coat pockets and ran over to the local bar where we ordered grilled cheese, a fried egg sandwich, and a huge bowl of french fries and started slathering the spicy honey on the food. It was incredible! The taste changed so much when it was paired with food, more subdued than sampling it alone, but the effect remained.

I emailed Morgen the next day: “I think we have a killer product.”

Action: Comment to share any zany story of your earliest or oddest prototypes? We'd love to hear!

Source: iCharts

Website / E-Commerce

I admit it, I just wasted a ton of time - do not sign up for a website and immediately fill all the pages with unplanned content!

Let me take a step back.  We need a quick, cheap and easy website / e-commerce solution to fit our crunched timeline, minuscule budget and the fact that neither of us have ANY programming experience. Thankfully, we are not alone. It turns out there are plenty of simple website and online shop builders, including these which have been referred the most from friends: Shopify, Tictail, Store Envy and Squarespace. Searching the magical Google for some help on selecting our perfect webshop builder led me to Website Builder Expert, which offers objective comparisons and information that make it easy to decide on the best service.  

In truth, all four of the services we considered offer plenty of features and certainly cover our basic needs. Although Website Builder Expert recommends Squarespace as the best fit for our single product website and e-commerce shop, we have decided to move forward with Shopify based largely on the fact that a number of my friends use or have used Shopify to run their online businesses. In a crunch, I can most easily ask for help if we are on a platform that is more familiar to my network. We chose their $29/month plan, which includes a 14 day free trial, and will certainly cover our needs for the time being.

My website setup crash course includes:

• Linking our www.mixedmade.com domain - this was simple and quick with the instructions provided
• Choosing our theme, or the layout and structure of our site - we only considered the free themes offered in the Shopify Theme Store and selected the "Kickstand" theme because it seems best suited for a single-product website that will be fairly simple and transactional.  Also, it apparently looks great when viewed on a mobile device, which is important these days
• Customizing the theme and content - it took me a few hours to get the hang of customizing the pages and content. After messing with the layout and entering content I realize I will probably need to repeat much of the process a). for best SEO and b). when we finalize our branding 

SEO

Unfortunately my overexcitement got the best of me when setting up our Shopify site and filling initial content, as I just started typing whatever came to my head for every page title, meta description and general copy without knowing the purpose. However, after some vital learning, I had to duplicate my efforts and adjust most of the copy throughout the site. A few hours wasted, but a lot learned!

SEO really intimidates me. It seems like there is SO MUCH information, both strategic and tactical, that I am supposed to learn and apply. Since I know very little on the topic I have been found solace in a number of resources, the first being Beginners Guide to SEO from Moz, an analytics service. In addition, I found that Shopify offers a lot of great advice and SEO information intended to help provide our shop with the best SEO performance. Those quick reads resulted in some changes to my fancy wordsmith'ing like going from

TO

Action: Comment to let us know what about starting a business intimidates you most. 

Chart Source: iCharts