Notice how female and LGBTQ-owned brands are part of the minority brands. Why? Because if you look at the system and how it’s set up, the support naturally goes to white, straight males. In this episode, Elliot Begoun welcomes Mark Feinberg, the CEO of the OTHRStore.

Mark shares with Elliot how he created the OTHRStore to provide access to these minority brands. Building ecosystems of support around minority brands is crucial for their success. If you’re underrepresented and need help to access resources, this episode is for you. You’re not alone because OTHRStore’s purpose is to help you succeed. Tune in!

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Helping Minority Brands Succeed With Mark Feinberg

I am here with my brother from another mother, Mark Feinberg. He’s somebody who I love, one of the great human beings in this industry and somebody who leads with compassion. Not only talks about things but does the shit that needs to go with those things he talks about. That’s what we’re going to be exploring a little bit.

Before I kick it over to Mark to introduce himself, there are two things I want to call out. One is I do a founder shout-out but I’m going to do it slightly differently. In an article in The Wall Street Journal, the reporter wrote about brands that are trying to bring immune-boosting elements to the consumers and they featured five brands. Out of those five brands, two of them were TIG brands. I thought that was cool. They talked about products that Good Crisp Company and RIFF are doing that are pro immune. It’s good to see us well-represented out there. It’s a reminder to everybody of the importance of being able to champion your own message and being willing to do that.

The second thing that I want to call out is this is an episode where we might touch on a few things that are sensitive, real and that’s an important thing. It’s important to be able to address subjects that may make us feel uncomfortable. Not that I’m saying Mark’s going to do that but Mark’s gone through some recent tragedy and I don’t want to hide that. It’s important that that also will be framed in the conversation around why we wake up every day wanting to make sure we meet it with gratitude and we’re thankful for the people in our lives that impact us in lots of ways. Life’s fragile. We were talking about that. I want to call it out in case it comes up in this conversation.

We’re going to be talking about how we support those founders that are underrepresented and how we put action behind the things that we’ve talked about when we’ve talked about JEDI and other initiatives. Mark Feinberg, take it away. Introduce yourself, a bit of your background. Let’s jump right into OTHRStore and dig into some other things.

Thanks for having me on, Elliot. Congratulations on The Wall Street Journal piece and TIG support of the brands on that list. It’s amazing. Many of you who are reading may know me already. For those who don’t, my background is I started in the tech world. I was part of a technology company early on. I was in the right place at the right time. We had a small exit, which allowed me to become an investor overnight. Invested early in my life, arranged different things and then landed in the food space in 2010 when I got involved with High Road ice cream, which is a brand some of you may know.

I ended up on the board of High Road, helping to run the company for a few years and fell in love with the industry as a whole. I’ve invested in a number of other brands and then we spun OTHRSource, which is an in-store merchandising company. We also created OTHRStore, which is the big focus of this conversation. It’s the platform to support underrepresented minority-owned, female-owned, LGBTQ-owned brands. Not only a platform for them to sell from but also support them and breaking down any barriers that might be intentionally or unintentionally there. That’s me. I looked forward to getting deeper into the conversation.

I think about things that we’ve been involved with when we were out trying to encourage people to participate in our democracy and vote. You stepped up to the plate to make sure every one of your employees had the day off to go do it. You’re a man who puts action to words and I respect that. It’s a reminder to all of us who talk a big game. Don’t forget to walk it as well. Let’s dig into OTHRStore. Explain in detail for those reading how it came to pass, what you’re hoping to accomplish with it and what it is because it’s an innovative approach.

When COVID initially broke out, I’m sure we all remember that we were all ready to go to Expo West. Was it going to happen? Was it not going to happen? There was a lot of fear, panic and uncertainty in the system. Expo West was finally postponed and the world froze there for a little while. Keep in mind that our core business was sending merchandisers into a store, doing restocking and shelf management. The truth is I didn’t know what that business was going to look like.

I don’t think anybody knew anything about what their business is going to look like when the world stopped spinning. I looked at the fear in people’s eyes. Out of service, I said, “I want to give the brands that we support currently in-store another place to sell from. Let’s get them online and let’s market the heck out of it. Give them another place to generate, even if it’s a little bit of cash in the fear of it all. We had capital. Let’s get them on this platform and promote the heck out of it. Whatever additional incremental cash that we can bring to a brand is better than nothing.”

Category reviews were being canceled. There was so much uncertainty that it was like the least that we could do. I looked at our tech team and said, “I always wanted to have an eCommerce platform to be omnichannel.” It wasn’t on the roadmap until 2022. It was March 2019. I said, “Can we launch it in April 2019?” They all said, “You’re crazy.” I said, “I know but let’s do this.”

Long story short, a few weeks later, our first iteration OTHRStore was launched. It is what I said it was. We put a bunch of early brands on there. We promoted it, created content videos for brands and drove them to the site. We gave a lot of products away for free to the market that we paid for. The brands got paid. It was a little something extra for the brands.

Fast forward into 2020, the in-store part of our business ends up growing over 500%. Our services became increasingly more valuable in the in-store part of the business making sure the product was on the shelf. OTHRStore sat there. We didn’t do much with it because we’re a small team. I went through a program in Atlanta called Leadership Atlanta. Of all things, Bernice King, Martin Luther King’s daughter was in my class. It’s a program where 20 to 25 Atlanta Leaders get selected to go through this program that digs deep into some of the challenges, not only in Atlanta but the region.

I have Bernice King in my class. We go through Black Lives Matter. I had already been a freedom fighter, a social justice person and an equal justice fighter who supported fair fight. Any money that I might have extra, I would support the cause. I always wanted to do more and more. I raised my hand once. I directed the question to everybody in the room but Bernice stood up. The question was I do all of these things but I want to do more. I was asking for help. She gave it to me in a very interesting way. It was a very tough love type of way.

I wasn’t expecting it. I raised my hand and say, “I do this but I want to do more.” Bernice has a way of delivering a message. When she speaks, you listen and the words are very poignant. She said, “Mark, I know where your heart is but the truth is people who look like you are the ones who caused a lot of the issues and you’re looking into me to help solve them. That’s going to be something that you need to meditate on and sit with. I’m here to support you. I’m not going to be the one who answers the question for you.”

After I got over the initial ego, being in front of a room and getting my head handed to me by Martin Luther King’s daughter, I sat with that and meditated. For those who know me and those who don’t, I was raised Jewish but I’m a practicing Buddhist. I meditate a lot. Through meditation and a lot of thought about what Bernice said, I said, “There’s something we could do with OTHRstore. I don’t know what it is. It’s on the shelf at this point. It’s sitting there.”

Over time, it came to me that if you look at minority brands, female brands, LGBTQ-owned brands, the system and how it’s set up, so much of it is set up to support people who look like me, White male and straight. What I’ve learned over time is sometimes it’s a matter of people who weren’t as fortunate as I was being born White and male. Sometimes it’s a matter of knowing where to go for resources or having those resources.

An example is through a talk from the Herzberg Institute. A formerly incarcerated Black man reached out to me, which you helped me get involved with. He has a beautiful skincare product. He’s been banging his head against the wall to get funding, reach the right people and get on people’s radar screen. I made one phone call to somebody that I know at Estee Lauder. Before you know it, he’s having conversations about being part of their incubator program. Why did it take a White male to be able to make that call when he’s made that call twenty times? I do know answer to that.

I was on a panel at Expo East on this topic that we were talking about it. My comment is we can do everything that we’re talking about doing. We can lament the fact that the underrepresented are even more underrepresented in this industry than they are in general and all of those things. What they need more than anything is access.

They need access to programs, funding, mentorship and opportunity. The other thing that goes with that is that their customers need access to those products. One of the things that’s also sometimes maddening is when they do get on the shelf, they get on the shelf not where their consumers shop because they don’t have access to those stores. Access is an important part of this conversation.

That’s what OTHRStore is all about. We’re not just an eCommerce platform. There’s a trend away from Amazon. From a business perspective, I’m sure there’s opportunity there but that’s not what we’re about. We exist because we want to provide access to these brands. Not only access to provide a platform for them to sell from but we’re building ecosystems of support around the brand.

When you become a brand at OTHRStore, it gets you access to people like Elliott and Keith Lebrasse. It gets you access to the right funding, spend time with me and Michael Movitzon working on capital advisory and preparing you to raise money. These are all things that we take for granted. We’re in the circle. We are the circle.

Many of these brands either don’t know we exist or don’t know how to get in. We’re a door. We’re going to promote the hell out of you on top of it. We’re already lining up some very big influential names. We already have a micro-influencer network that reaches over one million customers and growing. When you become part of the platform, you gain access to that.

We’re going to promote 30 to 50 seconds snippets of your brand throughout social media. We’re going to set up ads to promote your brands. It’s access to the best strategy consultants, design consultants, packaging consultants, legal professionals and if and when you’re ready to be on shelves, the best brokers and the mentorship. All of that is what you’re getting. Mentorship plays a big part in all of this.

A stat that I came across is crazy. Seventy-five percent of the consumers in the marketplace are females, minorities or in this underrepresented category. Yet only 5% of the brands out there are in those categories. The 75% of people that are in those categories shopping would love to shop and support brands that look like them and that are underrepresented. They don’t know where to go. We’re marrying all of that together. What I don’t want to be and what we won’t be is another platform where you put your stuff on there and then you fend for yourself. That’s cruel, mean and not the way for us to move things forward.

The old Home Depot story always rings a bell. Somebody tried to return a set of tires to Home Depot and they don’t sell tires. Bernie Marcus and Arthur Blank said, “We’ll take them back because we service our customer.” I’ve said to the team, “We’ve got packages that unlocked doors to different services but beyond that, I want us to have a concierge desk that if you’re part of OTHRStore and you need help, it doesn’t matter what it is. If you need to return tires, you call this number and we’ll figure it out with you.”

Let’s talk about the mechanics of OTHRStore. If I’m an entrepreneur who’s interested in OTHRStore, what do I do? How does fulfillment work? Let’s talk about some of that so that we clarify that to the folks. Walk us through the roadmap.

We’re partnering with RangeMe, which a lot of you know. If you go to the OTHRStore.com site, there’s a section that if you’re a brand and you’re interested in being on the platform, you fill out the information that’s powered by RangeMe. That goes to our team. Our team will reach out and gather some information on your products to make sure you’re a good fit.

We’re very focused on supporting these underrepresented communities. If you don’t fall into one of those, we’re not going to be the right place for you. From there, our team will onboard your products onto our site. We’ll work with you. We have centralized fulfillment. We have a warehouse. They work with you to get your product to the warehouse, which is huge because we’ve negotiated incredibly strong shipping rates.

Shipping is often something that makes it very difficult for smaller brands to scale because the shipping can sometimes cost more than the product itself. By us centralizing fulfillment, we’ve moved past that. Our team will work with you to get the product to the fulfillment center. Once you’re in the fulfillment center, we help promote your product through our influencer network, content network and digital advertising.

Also, we align you with all of the experts that we’ve aligned across a range of different areas, whether it’d be capital formation, strategy, sales, marketing, design, packaging, all the pieces that you want to learn more about but perhaps don’t know who to call. Generally, that’s how it works. In our early days, people are ordering from OTHRStore. They select however many products they want and then it ships out from the warehouse.

Soon we’re going to start bundling more things together to help promote your products even more in bundled solutions. The fulfillment piece is huge. In a lot of cases some of the smaller brands that we’re talking about that we’re supporting wouldn’t have access to these centralized fulfillment centers because the cases would be too small to meet their minimums. Because we’re centralizing multiple brands and we’re in essence the client, we’re able to provide the access to these smaller brands to have access to this centralized fulfillment. Ultimately, massively reduced shipping costs as well, which is amazing.

How does OTHRStore make its money?

It’s a hybrid very small monthly fee that starts at $87 a month. It works up from there. There’s $599 a month package that gets me as a CFO. It’s almost like having an investment bank without paying for an investment bank. For some groups, $599 is a lot but for some, $599 is not a lot. I will take groups through being capital ready and work with the Mike Movitz’s of the world and other folks to make sure you’re ready to raise capital.

I will become your outsourced CFO. That’s the highest package we have. We’ve got a $149 package, which opens up Nielsen data for free of all things within your category. That’s the monthly fee piece. Amazon might charge a 15% transaction fee. Ours starts at 10% and then scales down depending on what package you’re in. It could go as low as 6%. That’s how we make our money.

What do brands need to succeed on OTHRStore?

It’s their passion. We’re there to take care of the rest. If there’s a brand that falls into the category and is small, local or regional, our whole purpose is to be there to help you navigate growth and expansion. I know this is a food and beverage show. We have expanded into other categories like health and beauty.

I got a question from Ryan of Happy Moose. “OTHRStore looks great. Do you all have any plans to offer perishable products on the platform?”

We do. We want to make sure we have the right warehousing solution. By right, we’re negotiating on costs to make it reachable for everybody that’s involved. My favorite is because I come from the ice cream world is deep-frozen, which is the most fun part of the supply chain. There are many opportunities in there with local and regional frozen foods companies that are on the roadmap. We’re about 60 to 90 days away from having the perishable and deep-frozen solution.

It comes down to us wanting to negotiate the best rates so we can turn around and be in service to those groups. We’ve got one entrepreneur who has a diary that has a motivational quote at the top of each one. In the Black community, journaling is a bit of a stigma but it’s helped save his life. A lot of us might journal but in that community, it’s not necessarily accepted and yet he’s bringing that to the world. Interestingly enough, CeeLo Green, the musician, caught wind of that product. He was a journaler as a kid. He said, “It helped save my life and become the musician that I am.” He wants to speak out in support of Broderick and his diary.

It’s things like that and being able to promote. CeeLo is going to come out and speak out on Broderick. It’s going to not only support Broderick and his brand. We’re going to continue to line up influencers like that so we reach more and more people. That’s one of those things. He doesn’t have access to CeeLo Green but I do. These are the types of things that we’re going to do and continue to do.

Wes said he submitted a RangeMe. He’s with Snooze. Ryan followed up and said, “Should I wait the 60, 90 days until you’ve activated perishables or should I go ahead and submit on RangeMe?”

Go ahead and email me directly if you could. We’ll work together on that. Thanks, Ryan.

Ryan would be a great person to do that as a test program. Products are great.

I would want you to email me directly because part of this is as we see more and more interest from that category, I may personally move things quicker if I feel like the opportunity makes sense. Plus, I could show our fulfillment partners that there’s enough demand there for what we’re talking about. It helps me in my negotiation too.

I’m going to toss out two big words here because it’s important and both of them make me sound cool. One is that what you’re offering and what you’re doing in a lot of ways is so desperately needed and that is the democratization of the business. You’re putting products in front of consumers and letting them decide what fits and what works for them without the barriers or filters of category managers or other people’s opinions determining what or what won’t meet consumer demands.

The second interesting thing is this disintermediation in the business, cutting out intermediary distributors and creating that relationship directly between brand and consumer, especially in the underrepresented but in general, the smaller brands. There’s a big opportunity and plenty of folks trying to figure that out but not everyone trying to figure it out in a way that also wraps their arms around those entrepreneurs to coach, guide them and so forth.

The third piece for me is it’s mean to have a brand land somewhere whether it’d be in a store on a shelf or on an eCommerce platform. Let them fend for themselves. I go to be careful because I’m friends with certain people. The agency model where you charge $10,000 a month to promote brands to digital influencers and create content that they charge $7,500 to create a brand video is mean and cruel.

Everything that we’re looking to do is around looking for other ways. We spent a year building out our proprietary digital influencer network. We’re not going to charge you for it. It’s in the monthly fee. You gain access to it but agencies out there will charge thousands of dollars for access to their influencer network or to create an influencer network. It’s not going to do that.

We’re going to be creating short and long-form video and promoting those throughout social media and in other channels, through YouTube ads. We’re absorbing those costs. By absorbing those costs, we’re helping these other brands succeed because we know you’re cash-strapped. We’ve been there. We get it. Not only that, you’re in the underrepresented category. Even furthermore, we know access is hard. We’re not going to sit here and charge you $10,000 for a brand video. That’s not right.

All of the things of why we get up every day, I like to think that all of the support that we’re giving will be threefold, fourfold, fivefold in a year because we’re not going to stop. Elliot, you and I have had this conversation. I have this vision where brands bolt onto something. They continue to bring the passion, the love of the brand and their story. The machines or the humans behind the machines, let them drive the business part of this crazy industry that we’re in because it will eat you alive. If you don’t have the support and then you layer on systemic barriers on top of that, it becomes absolute cruelty.

That is my vision. That is why I get up every day. I look down the road. I’ll know we’ve done something when we’ve got thousands of brands who have their platforms on and they’re growing. It will always be stressful but we take a significant portion of the stress off their plate. I know that’s impossible to take all of it off because that’s part of it but that’s what we’re going to keep working towards.

I’ll say it for all the entrepreneurs out there, to be doing this, to be taking action, it’s a good business model and it should be. It needs to be if it’s going to be sustainable and grow. It’s a business model that interplays with your compassion and desire to help the entrepreneur as an entrepreneur yourself. How do people learn more? What’s the next step? We’ve got to give folks the ability to take action. If they want to learn more about OTHRSource and OTHRStore, what are the ways to do that?

OTHRStore.com, OTHR stands for On The High Road. OTHRSource spun out of High Road Ice Cream. OTHR is our brand architecture so everything will be OTHR. Go shop there. If you’re a brand and you want to be on the platform, look for the brand that wants to sell on OTHRStore and fill out your information there.

I’d be remiss and granted that we’re investing heavily in promoting. The more people know about OTHRStore, we’ll win. The more people who are buying product in OTHRstore, the more we’re supporting the community, these brands and their brand owners. Shop there. Share with your friends. We’re doing our part but never enough eyeballs and sales. It’s all about supporting the brands. Those are the two main takeaways.

We have an amazing team going through category review, which is a rolling category review for the time being. At some point, we may institute more date-specific category reviews but it’s open. If you submit, don’t be surprised if you don’t hear something extremely quickly. I know we have an amazing number of brands that have applied across a range of categories and we’re so grateful.

Submit to become a brand. We’d love to see you there and support you. Share as much as you can with the communities that you operate in, knowing that you’re supporting these amazing entrepreneurs and their families and hopefully, changing the trajectory of multi-generations of their families. That’s what this is all about.

Thank you for being here, for taking the time and for doing what you do. It’s good to see you. The charity we’ll make that happen. Let’s all go there and support.

You can share my email too. I’d love to hear from brands who wanted to connect directly to me or anybody for that matter. Feel free to share my email address.

Thanks for joining. We’ll see you in another episode. Mark, thank you.

Thank you.

Important Links

• Mark Feinberg – LinkedIn

• The Wall Street Journal – Why So Many Products on Grocery Store Shelves Claim They Help Your Immune System article

• OTHRStore

• High Road

• OTHRSource

• Leadership Atlanta

• RangeMe

• Section – Join OTHRStore

• Mark@OTHRSource.com

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