As an eCommerce business, an online presence is one of the most important pieces of the puzzle that you have to focus on. Without this online presence, of course, your business is rendered invisible, so you have to take every opportunity to keep your company top of mind. Alex Hanifin is the VP of Marketing at The Good Crisp Company. Alex and Elliot Begoun talk about the massive importance of maintaining a strong online presence for an eCommerce business. Being that this is such a vital piece of the eCommerce puzzle, make sure you don’t get left behind. With Alex and Elliot’s help, you’ll create a much stronger online presence for your company in no time.

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Listen to the podcast here

A Strong Online Presence With Alex Hanifin

Thanks for joining us for this episode. We are joined by Alex Hanifin, the Vice President of The Good Crisp Company. Alex, tell everyone a little bit about yourself.

I’m in Boulder with a bunch of other great food brands. I’m the Vice President of Marketing for The Good Crisp Company. I’ve been in the industry for about ten years working with Justin’s, Rudi’s, Boulder brands, Hain Celestial, and some great other food brands. I have a strong love for the industry.

Alex, tell me what you’ve done since all of this madness started. How have you relooked at things through the lens of COVID-19?

Everyone can agree that we saw a pretty large spike in online presence. For us, that was an obvious thing that we had to jump on. Not only were we trying to shift our own strategies, but we saw a ton of traffic come our way. For us, that was a big eye-opening experience to say, “We need to make sure that this whole process is seamless, easy, and friendly.” That was the first step. After that we started thinking about, “How do we want this experience to be for our consumers?”

I have insight because I’m a board member for The Good Crisp Company. I’ve been around since day one. I’m bad luggage. They can’t get rid of me, but where were you prior to all of this, in terms of sales? You don’t have to give dollars but the idea of growth that’s happened.

For me, that was one of the crazier things I’ve seen in my career, in terms of growth. Before COVID, we launched our website in terms of offering eCommerce. It was something we were excited to grow and get into. We were under the $10,000 sale number. Amazon was in that similar eCommerce zone. As soon as grocery stores started closing and eCommerce became more of a primary shopping platform, we saw almost 4x in terms of sales in that first month. We’re still seeing that growth.

I can’t remember where I read this analyst report, but it was amazing. Somewhere between 4% and 6% of groceries were sold online before all this went down. This analyst in particular estimated that has grown to 40% and its peak during all of this, 40% of all groceries, that’s a mammoth number. When things settle down to whatever we’re calling the new normal, they still estimated that percentage will hover around 20% to 25%. To me, that’s a seed change. That means this channel that was once viewed as an ancillary channel are for smaller brands only is an important channel. Not only for dollars and revenue, but also discovery.

I believe that retail isn’t going to be the best place for discovery going forward. I don’t know that it was prior to this, but it’s expensive and difficult. You’re competing with thousands of brands. You don’t have that many arrows in your quiver to use to drive discovery or trial. That’s when you’re going to be exacerbated because at least for the foreseeable future, are going to be more prescriptive in their shopping. They’re going to go with a plan and they’re going to get in and out. That means eCommerce and other places become important discovery platforms. How are you guys thinking about eCommerce both now and looking forward for The Good Crisp Company?

To build on that, one of the other favorite discoveries that I’ve had is the customer service piece. We’re a small company and we only have a couple of people, we wear a lot of hats. I manage a lot of our customer service experience and with the amount of orders that we’re getting I talk to many more people. Even if it comes in as like, “My order was messed up. I didn’t mean to do this.” It comes in as a complaint. It’s amazing how having that interaction with somebody can turn around and be this positive storytelling.

At the end of the day, we’re human-to-human. It’s cool to say, “I’m sorry you had a bad experience. Let’s talk about what else is going on.” I’ve had some good conversations with random people who bought stuff off of our website. They’ve become loyal consumers because I’ve had that chance to have a one-on-one conversation with them, tell our story a little bit and talk about why our brand even started. Also, about who we are as a company and me, personally as Alex. Also, something that we forget we don’t get to have at retail is we don’t get to talk to people. They may follow you on Instagram and they may comment on a post or something, but I’m having one-on-one conversations with people who are buying our product. It’s fun to get to know them from that level.

Owning the customer journey or a portion of the customer journey is important for a brand because you build those evangelical followers but you also learn a ton. You learn about what your brand is in their eyes. It’s a protracted focus group that’s less formal, more casual. One of the questions that came in was, “What percentage or how is your eCommerce business split between your own website, D2C and Amazon?”

Website is probably about 25% and then Amazon is about 75%.

What’s the strategy there? Are you purposefully trying to drive more people to your website, Amazon or are you being agnostic on platform and meeting them where they are?

We’ve gone back and forth with this, but for us, Amazon makes the most sense in terms of where we want to drive people. That being said, there are a lot of factors that come into that. There’s a whole ecosystem. With Amazon there’s Prime, so there’s the free shipping component. It’s easier. People are buying multiple things at one time. For that experience, that’s what makes the most sense for our brand but there’s also the component where with our website, we also capture all that data. We get to own that consumer when they purchase off of our website. I don’t think that we want to forget about our website and those sales, but from a strategy perspective, driving people to Amazon is what we’ve been thinking.

I’ll share my philosophy. I don’t know if there’s a right or wrong answer and it depends on your brand but I believe two things. One, we are for the most part, in brick-and-mortar. We almost have to be somewhat platform agnostic because we don’t want to force consumers to make a choice into where they buy. It’s much easier to meet that consumer where they’re already buying and be part of that journey. Many people will start on Amazon because they’re more comfortable making 1st or 2nd purchases there, but then they might go to your website to learn more and get engaged and when they get to talk to you on the phone, never leave and be there. Others like to go right to that. For any brand reading, knowing your consumer, their shopping behaviors and where they’re likely to go is important.

Also, recognizing two things. One is the waterfall cost. From the selling price down to what you net, which platform makes the most sense? Include in that what it costs to get people to convert on that platform. Amazon may look more expensive at the frontend, but when you spend all the money for the acquisition cost on your end, it may wash out. The second is trying to understand your consumer and meeting them where they are. That’s a big part of it. We got a question from Steve Sims, by the way, a great podcast, Next Level Podcast. Matt Parry was a guest of Steve’s at one point. He’s curious about any effects on the supply chain that has challenged or keeping up with everything.

That’s always a struggle. We got lucky in the sense that we have a fulfillment center that was already set up before all the COVID happened. That link in the supply chain was already there at least for our website. Amazon can fulfill as well, but one thing that we’re doing in terms of innovation with supply chain, we launched two variety packs and a multi pack. We launched that on our website first because we do have a little bit more control over quantities and how that works from a supply chain perspective. Something to think about is that websites are good to test stuff out. If you are going to be short on supply, then I would be careful about where you send it. Amazon will penalize you if you run out of inventory. If you are having some supply chain issues, think about where you want to send it first and if you want to test out some new products or quantities, also think about that first before you commit to an Amazon or a different dot-com. That way, you can make sure that’s going to be a seamless experience.

Consumers as a whole are a little bit more accepting and patient of out of stock and that’s a reality that people are facing but that’s good advice. We’d like to make this something that people can walk away and do shit with. There are a lot of webinars out there and they’re all awesome but to me it’s important that we keep these focused on things that are actionable and things people can take back to their companies and do. Especially now where every action is that much more important. You take smart moves, and so forth. Every one of us is learning and feeling our way through this but if you were going to suggest to the people reading this, some easy hacks are things that they should consider, do or be questioning or looking at, what would those be?

The first thing that I would suggest is looking at your data. The beautiful thing about eCommerce is you can get live data. Let that help drive your decisions. One of the things that I always suggest is, it’s okay to eliminate skews as much as that’s scary, you should look at what are people buying. What are the most frequently bought items? Have that be your focus. When it comes to ad spend or if you are spending money to promote products, make sure you’re promoting the ones that make the most sense. I would look at your data for the top-selling items. I would also look at what’s the difference between a return customer and your new customer acquisition, and understand what that number means. If you’re getting a high percentage of new customers, then that’s something to understand. Are there other things that you could be offering them?

The only thing to be careful of is when you’re looking at how much you’re discounting, promos and stuff. It’s not a race to the bottom. There are a lot of brands that are heavily promoting to compete. That’s also something to watch out. At the end of the day, this is an investment and you want to see your business grow with the eCommerce, and making sure that you’re making money off of this. Being a little bit more cautious about how much you’re discounting products and how much promos you’re putting on. Look at the percentage of how many people are buying off of promo, or when you’re offering a discount compared to how many are buying when it’s normal cost. It’s all about understanding that data. I look at it a few times a day and compare all the purchasing behaviors. That will guide you in terms of where you want to put your money and effort.

Speaking of that data, we hear that all the time. The one advantage of directory to see through your own website is that you capture more of that data, and you get more information. As a whole, that data that you’re looking at every day, what are the key metrics that you’re looking at? What are the key elements of that data that you’re using to make your decisions, and what decisions are you making from that data?

It’s the loyalty piece and what they’re buying that’s the most important thing. We launched a variety pack because we launched a couple of new products. When you have eCommerce, you generally are selling in larger quantities. You don’t have single units like you would at retail. For a new consumer or even a returning consumer to buy a new product at a case is a little bit of a riskier purchase and you may not see that. Creating a variety pack for us is that way of breaking it up, offering something new, and getting that trial. I’m looking at that data and seeing our new products are going to start to pick up now that we’ve had this variety pack out when people used it as a trial. “What is that cannibalizing? Is it cannibalizing anything?” It’s mostly like that, purchasing and what are they buying?

You mentioned loyalty, what are you measuring there? You’re looking at repeat purchases, things along those lines. Is that the metric that you’re using for that?

Definitely the repeat, that’s the big one. There’s a whole ecosystem that comes off of that. If you email segmentation, which is another important piece of eCommerce. If you are getting a loyalty consumer who’s buying once a month or twice a month, send them an email that’s segmented to your loyal consumers. That’s the great thing about this. You can say, “Thank you, here’s more about us. We’ve noticed that you buy frequently.” I send emails all the time to people who’ve bought a handful of times saying, “Thank you so much. I want you to know that I’ve noticed that you buy from us a lot and here’s a little give back. Here’s something else that we’re offering.”

The same with new consumers. If it’s somebody who bought for the first time, you can also target that and send them a specific note too saying like, “I hope you enjoyed the product. Let us know what you think.” You can then plug in other ideas too. It’s like, “If you like that flavor, we have the same flavor but in a different size. Here’s some new product that we launched that you might be interested in.” That’s super important in terms of the whole communication around how frequently they’re buying and what they’re buying.

What I’m hearing clearly is yes, it’s the data, but it’s also what makes eCommerce in particular unique in D2C is that it is an opportunity to form a two-way relationship. Let’s be realistic, branding is emotional. People buy things emotionally. Their brands are often picked the same way they pick their friends as the people they want to hang out with and feel comfortable with. In this time, more than any other, that’s important. As a brand, the way you engage and be that friend who cares about your other friends and as somebody they want to hang out with. That’s cool. We get to be as a brand as virtual as we get to be as a friend so there’s no difference. That ties right into a question we got from a ringer. The question is, “How does your marketing to consumers evolve during this time?”

I’ll step away from The Good Crisp and talk about Alpine Start. I’ll start here because they did something that I thought was cool. They combined with other brands. This is something that I want to look into for The Good Crisp as well because it’s fun and we’ve lost the cross promos in retail, but that doesn’t mean that we can’t do that online. Alpine Start which is a coffee company, partnered with Bobo’s, which is a bar company, and cross-promoting on both websites. If you’re on Bobo’s website, you can buy Alpine Start and if you’re on Alpine Start’s website, you can buy Bobo’s. Combining with packages and putting kits together.

With online marketing, it’s fluid and you don’t need to get permission which is where we all get stuck on retail. We have to wait for five yeses before we can do something, but with online, you can throw it at the wall, see if it sticks and if people get excited about it. The other thing too that we’ve doing with The Good Crisp, which has been not necessarily product focused but important is we’ve been trying to be more of a resource to our community. We talked to moms, kids, and families. We’ve focused on moms in terms of offering some yoga classes every week that are free, and we’ve seen that grow. We’ve also been offering some more recipe cooking type focused things for kids. That’s also been starting to get some good traction. Step outside of your product and what you stand for as a brand and how you can be a resource and support your community during this time.

I love the idea of a couple of things that you said. One of the coolest things about eCommerce and owning your own customer journey is that it democratizes the whole process. You get to try things and see if they work and be a little bit of a mad scientist, which is awesome. Also, I like using this word because it makes me sound smart, it disintermediates the whole process and that’s important as well. One of the things I wrote about that I’m a huge believer of, and I hope that everyone reading considers this and that is, in this industry, we celebrate out of the unicorn. That brand that has that hockey stick trajectory that we all talk about, that grows and sees huge growth indoors and it consumes capital to do that. That’s fine if you are that differentiator, revolutionary and if you have that appetite for risk and success, but there’s another path to market, success and I’m calling it the Tardigrade.

I did a little research, the tardigrades are these micro animals that are indestructible, awesome animal. That is by being experimental, trying things, leveraging eCommerce for discovery and doing that type of growth hacking mentality that is all around capital efficiency. The Good Crisp Company does both. Your growth in retail and the typical route to market, on paper, looks similar to many but having the insider’s view, you’ve always had a bent towards being capital efficient, nimble and thrifty, frankly. How are you looking at that now? How are you looking at marketing spend and how are you communicating as a team about where to invest and how to act more like a tardigrade?

Like most brands, we’ve started to pull budgets from other areas that are mute. That was the first thing. “What should we be spending on? What should we not be spending on?” Going back to Amazon, for us that feels like a good spot to go. We stopped spending in a lot of other areas. We’re gone to focus and honing in on as much as experimenting and all that is fun. You can still do that without spending a lot of money. Cross promoting with other brands or whatnot. For us, spending most of our budget on Amazon because it’s where consumers are going. It’s where they need to be. It’s offering all the experiences that they need. It’s important to not forget about social. Instagram specifically is also another important place. It’s where you offer your, not necessarily product stuff but brand experiences. Like the yoga classes or the cooking classes. We’re not forgetting about social but we’re trying to focus, which I would suggest is important, especially with how unknown the next future is going to be. As we know, “Cash is king.” Being careful about how much you’re spending.

Cash is king, shoutout to Andy Whitman, that’s his mantra. That’s his thing and it’s true. Honestly, for anyone reading, that capital efficiency is the new velocity. That’s what people and investors are going to be looking at and quite frankly, it’s what you should be looking at but it doesn’t mean you don’t invest and try things. You can do those things and do them more effectively but be mindful of the data. What you don’t want to do is do too many things and not quantify any of them. You want to do something, give it time and measure it. Another question for you is, “How do you balance price to the consumer on Amazon versus your website?”

Consumers are smart in terms of price and where they buy. There are the front facing prices, and then there’s your backend. You don’t want to have a race to the bottom. At the end of the day, you do need to have a good margin. It’s important to have those prices be similar. It depends if you’re offering shipping or not, that’s a big cost. If you’re a Prime on Amazon, you have to remember that they’re not paying the shipping. The cost that they get on Amazon is the cost that they get. If you match that same cost on your website but then they also have to pay shipping, you might lose them. One thing that we’ve learned is, free shipping is one of the top purchase confirmations. Free shipping makes a purchase happen.

I can’t tell you how many abandoned carts that I’ve seen as soon as you get to the shipping cost. I would say, “If you can include shipping in your website cost to mimic what Prime is doing, that has a big significant value.” Match what Amazon is doing but then at the same time, you still have to make sure that your margins are good. If you’d have to fudge a couple of dollars here or there, it’s okay, but a consumer will look at your website, compare it to Amazon and then make the choice of where they want to purchase based on the price.

I’ll follow up with a couple of things there. One is that you want to make sure that your margin works long-term. Two, somewhere around 62% or 63% of American households are Prime. The reality is that the expectation is when you order something online, that includes shipping. To me personally, it’s a nonstarter if you don’t offer free shipping. That may mean that your minimum order size or your pack configuration needs to grow to make the economics work and that’s fine. Don’t be afraid to do that but you’re shooting yourself in the ass if you’re going to require your consumers to pay for shipping. It’s not in their mindset any longer.

I also will tell you that because of the way eCommerce works and it’s usually some type of multiple, there isn’t that same compare ability in the mind that you would have at retail. If you go into retail and you see $3.99 on the shelf and you go somewhere else, it’s $4.99. We have that ability mentally to make that comparison but in eCommerce, people aren’t going to do the mental math as quickly or spend the time and they’re not going to do the comparison. Build it right first and then learn. If you’re wrong, your sales will reflect the fact that you’re wrong. You can ask yourself the question but understand the complete waterfall of cost from the selling price you put on your website, to what you’re going to net at the bottom. Make sure that there’s a positive number on the bottom you can live with.

One of the things is important too, and you were starting to get to it, Alex, in your explanation of the way you evolved your marketing is if everyone can visualize a Venn diagram or concentric circles. As a brand, the key is to try to find as many overlaps to your consumers as possible. Where they live, work, shop, play, and get their information. All of those are potential influencers. We talk a lot about traditional influencer marketing in the eCommerce digital world which is bloggers and influencers but their physical influencer locations too. You mentioned the online yoga classes but if you’re a wellness product, it could be physical yoga studios and communities around key retailers you want to be around. You want to think about how you can overlap with your consumers. A question from Sydney, “Do you find consumers who are willing to purchase at a higher volume on your site, for example, Amazon is a three-pack and our site is a six-pack with free shipping, that type of thing?”

Offering more quantity can be a good thing. It depends on what it is and how long that lasts. There’s also a value-add as well. Price per unit, if you’re a frequent purchaser and buying a six-pack of your website is a better deal, then that’s great. If you’re a new consumer that hasn’t ever tried your product before, buying a six-pack might be a little harder to convince. That’s a little harder to answer without knowing a little bit more about what your product is. Having exclusive items on your website is also a good test platform. You might compare how many six packs people are buying versus three packs. If there are a lot more six packs that are being purchased then maybe offer a six-pack on Amazon. If there’s a lot more three packs, offer three packs on your website. It’s a comparison to frequency and go back to your repeat data and see how many people are repeat purchasing. Let that be your driver.

It also depends on discovery. If you have other discovery or trial mechanisms around then you can go up size but one of the key things that you have to do is have some type of trial mechanism or discovery mechanism. If you make that leap from never trying the product, to buying the product too large, people will be fearful of doing that. If it’s too expensive of a commitment for something they’re not sure is going to be something they love or enjoy, they’ll not do it. It’s good to think about that discovery mechanism. One of the things that I will encourage, and Alex, I don’t know if you are doing this, I’m curious to hear your feedback on this. One of the things that I would encourage too is you build out your D2C. Make sure you have a B2B capability as well.

Even for brands that still have that bimodal mindset, or even omnichannel mindset, where they’re going to use eCommerce and then retail and maybe they’re in food service. There are opportunities to be focused and effective by having a path that influencer locations can get your product easily that would never go through distribution. If you’re in health and wellness product that may be a yoga studio that has an influential audience that goes into the stores in the particular area that you’re trying to grow around a retailer. It could be naturopathic physicians. It also could be other types of outlets. Having that ability to transact and also some social engagement other than that is a great opportunity. Are you doing anything along those lines yet, Alex, B2B?

I’m not. It sparked another idea. It’s not necessarily the B2B that you’re referring to but there are other dot-coms. Like Walmart.com for instance, you don’t have to be in Walmart in order to sell on Walmart.com. That’s a discovery piece. We don’t necessarily control the consumer when we sell on Walmart.com, but we are potentially getting volume and discovery there. That is one other idea too. If you did want to find other outlets besides Amazon and your website, there are a lot of other dot-coms, fresh directs, or other third parties like that that will resell your product. They are also good to get that discovery and some volume.

From Allan Collin, “How important are social media influencers in your opinion to drive sales? Is it something worth investing in?”

The answer’s yes but it’s a relationship that you built. It’s a hit or miss. You could say yes to every single person that reaches out to be an influencer but you need to trust them a little bit. We’ve seen such an explosion of influencers that it’s hard to know what the return is going to be or what the expectations are when you don’t know who they are yet. For me, the biggest lesson is building a relationship with them first and understanding who their followers are. What are they talking about? What do they like to do and what are the expectations?  

It can get expensive and you can spend a lot of precious dollars or product going down that path, but at the same time that word of mouth is still one of the best marketing efforts. We’ve been talking a lot about trial or discovery and that’s such a good way for consumers to find your product, especially if it’s from somebody that they trust, which could be the influencer. Put a little bit more effort into influencer programs. Don’t say yes to every single person that comes by and even jumping on the phone or Zoom with them. It’s wild how much you’ll quickly learn about what you’re signing up for.

The other thing I would throw out there too, is talk to fellow founders. Ask other people in this space, who they’ve worked with from an influencer perspective that’s worked well. Other brands that you feel whose voice or the way they portray themselves in the market is aligned with the way you want to portray yourself in the market. It doesn’t hurt to get feedback from people. You’ll find everyone generous in that feedback. A question form Joana Terry, “How many flavors do you have in your variety pack and how did you make that decision?”

We have four flavors in our variety pack and it was the default. That’s what skews we have. I would suggest selling two-top selling skews and then maybe have some new ones in there. For us, we launched an aged white cheddar and then we also redid our barbecue flavor. That was a cool thing to include because if you tried our old barbecue and maybe didn’t like it, you have a chance to try our new one and hopefully you’ll like it. The aged white cheddar is brand new, so you start to get that discovery, but then you get an original, the sour cream and onion, which are two-top selling. It’s that happy balance of two discoveries, maybe one is a rediscovery and then two that you know are favorites.

You can switch it up too. That’s the fun thing about products, consumers, and variety packs. With our Amazon team that we work with, variety packs are the top-selling skew no matter what. That’s an important thing to remember. Not only is it the discovery piece, it’s less risky to buy a variety pack than it is one flavor, in a case that you’ve never had before. It’s also fun. When you get to try multiple flavors, share with your family or whatnot, it’s a more fun thing. You can switch it up and do seasonal flavors, depending on what your products are. Back to school stuff or themed things. We also did a multipack, too, which have little cans and we put them in a cute box that we designed. You should check it out on our website. It’s one of my favorite things that we’ve done. Getting that at my door, even though I helped design it, when I walked through my door and it was sitting there with a little koala on it, it was fun to get that box versus a brown box. You can think about it that way too, what’s arriving and fun.

All of that and getting back to the data and using the data to help shape it, adjust and not being afraid to go, “Shit, wrong. I need to make a change.” Variety packs work well, not only for discovery, but the other reason variety packs work is it gives you an excuse to upsize your packaging. Especially for households where there are multiple people. It gives the opportunity to appease multiple people. It’s rare that you find everyone in the house whose favorite flavor is the same, having that gives you the permission to go bigger in your pack size and that helps the economics.

It will also help your inventory too if you need to either delay selling out of one skew or you need to increase your volume of another skew too. Combining them together helps.

We’ve got a question from Geny and she asks, “How do you get the word out about your new sizes and variety packs?”

Influencers that’s always a good one. Influencers love to be the first in the know especially if you have a good relationship with some of them already. That’s always a good way. Partner with other brands, like I was saying with Bobo’s. That’s super fun. We’re doing a little Mother’s Day kit. Right there was fun utilizing their network and vice versa. Doing giveaways is another big one. People, especially on Instagram, that’s an easy way to get a nice jump in followers or discovery. There’s also ad spend. That’s something where you need to be careful about spending your dollars, but if you’re launching something new, that’s a good place to invest in a little bit. Also, email marketing. That is still such an effective way. As much as I was saying, be careful about promos. Offering, “First 100 people. First look, you get 10%, 20% off.” There are incentives that you can also do to your network to announce it.

One of the things you brought up that’s important is the fact that email marketing is still incredibly effective. You can’t be too promotional or too in your face with it but you can be relational with it. You can develop and cultivate a relationship with it. How big of a strategic lever is your email marketing for you? For the group reading, share how you utilize it and how it works.

One of the first things after we launched our website was, I wanted to grow our email base. There are a handful of other email chains that you can be a part of. Moms are a big one for us. We partnered with this other newsletter company that has a massive database of moms promoting deals that were going on in local areas with parks, museums and stuff. We put an ad on their newsletter. It was a little bit of a discount. It was a pack size, so you could try our product.

If they clicked on it, then they’d go to our website and they would get a free sample. In order to get the free sample, they had to give us their email. With that promotion, I was able to grow our email list to a couple of thousand overnight. The cost of that was to get a free sample, but then we also got a trial into the household. For us, it was this little ecosystem. Long story short, we built our email base and with our email base now, when I send emails out, I see a huge spike in our sales. Every single time, whether it’s promoting the product or announcing that we have a free yoga class, I always see people directly go right back to our website and make some purchases.

That’s a huge takeaway for everybody. One initiative you can be doing and should be doing is working to build your email list. It’s an effective tool. You have to be able to email with the voice of your brand and you have to engage your consumers the way they would expect to be engaged from their friend, you the brand. It’s powerful and it is a form of permission marketing. I would encourage anyone reading to take some time to build that. With all of this that’s been going on, what changes do you see that you think are going to stick that excite you?

The purchasing behavior of online is going to stick. It may not be to this volume but I’m excited about that. For us being able to be in direct contact with our consumers is something that I get excited about. I want to continue to offer more and more things that build our brand and shows who we are from an authentic lens that enhances their experience.

I have to ask the antithesis to that, the converse, and that is, what has changed that you think makes things harder for The Good Crisp Company? As a team, what are you guys talking about?

Supply chain and inventory. It’s hit or miss with like, “How much should we send?” You don’t want to sit on too much inventory because you could sell it somewhere else. That’s the biggest challenge that we are facing is allocating where we should send inventory that’s precious. We don’t know how long this train is going to go and what’s going to change month over month or even week over week. Inventory is a big challenge.

A question from Geny, “Where did you say that you posted for the free sample that helped you increase your email list?”

It’s called CertifiKID.

If you could tell yourself six months ago what you’ve learned now, what advice would you have given yourself?

Have everything easy and put the lens on as a consumer when you’re looking at your website and your Amazon page. Also, thinking outside the box a little bit. We all are funnel-focused sometimes that we forget to have a little bit of fun with this. The advice that I would say, “Don’t take all this super seriously and have fun with it.” At the end of the day, as founders and in marketing, it’s fun to sell food. Remember that a little bit and with social media and stuff, it’s okay to joke around or bring a little bit more light to the situation that’s going on and consumers will be appreciative of it.

One of the things I will say is, “Be who your brand is in the world now more than ever.” If you’re serious educationally bent brand, be that serious educationally bent brand now. Be even more so. If you’re that happy go lucky, free spirit, warm, friendly brand, be that even more. What I would not do is be something that you have not been with all of the uncertainty that’s in the world. We are looking as consumers for the people we’re around and the brands we’re surrounded by, for consistency, clarity and normalcy. It doesn’t all have to be about Coronavirus. It needs to be about life and what we’re all experiencing in this shared universal experience. In a way that is on message with your brand. If you’ve never been a soft, squishy brand, don’t start sending out little heart pictures. It’s going to ring as complete bullshit. Be consistent. Alex, if anyone wants to reach you, how do they do it?

My email or LinkedIn is the best way. I check that a lot and we are always posting some fun ideas and whatever’s going on with our brand too. That’s a fun way to follow.

Make sure you check out the website for The Good Crisp Company and their social pages because it’s good learnings and also, who knows that could be an opportunity to collaborate as you go forward.

We do love to collaborate. That’s for sure.

One last thing here from us, and that is, we’re offering a program on how to build that tardigrade brand I mentioned. We’re going to take brands for an eight-week online program aimed at helping brands build in a way that’s nimble, capital efficient, resilient but still positions into scale. If you’re interested in learning more, you can go to our website, www.TIGBrands.com, or come to me directly, [email protected]. I’m happy to share more. Alex, you’re the best. Thanks. Thanks, everyone for reading. We’ll have this available through New Hope, as well as on YouTube. That’s it.

Important Links

• The Good Crisp Company

• Next Level Podcast

• Alpine Start

• Bobo’s

• Walmart.com

• CertifiKID

• LinkedIn – Alex Hanifin

• Social pages – The Good Crisp Company on Instagram

• [email protected]

• New Hope

• YouTube – TIG YouTube channel

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