Behind the Brand®

[00:00:00] Jeff Adamson: Welcome to Behind the Brand presented by Neo. We take an inside look at the leaders behind today's most influential brands. I'm your host, Jeff Adamson. As co-founder of Neo Financial and SkipTheDishes, I'm fascinated by what it takes to build great companies. On this podcast, we'll learn from leaders that are reimagining, transforming, and innovating in the financial and retail industries across Canada.

I am excited to welcome Karen Danudjaja, Co-Founder & CEO of Blume. Beginning her career in commercial real estate, Karen found herself consuming way too much coffee, ultimately having a negative impact on her health.

In 2017, Karen took a leap of faith and co-founded Blume—a brand that would revolutionize the way we approach our daily beverages. With a clear vision in mind, Karen set out to empower health-conscious consumers with a delicious and nourishing beverage that could support their well-being.

Blume quickly became North America’s leading superfood brand, offering a range of locally made products with 100 percent natural and organic ingredients. Now available in over 1,500 stores nationwide, Blume continues to inspire individuals to lead healthy lifestyles without compromise, one sip at a time.

Welcome to the show, Karen!

[00:01:10] Jeff Adamson: When I was kind of leaving Skip the company that we founded in 2012, I actually called up one of my founders at Neo and said, “Hey, like what do guys in their late twenties, early thirties do when they sell a company?”, and he replied with me, he terrified me and shook me to the core. He said, “Jeff, most founders, after they sell their company, they just get into commercial real estate.”

I was like, I don't know if he did that on purpose, but it terrified me, this idea that I was gonna be selling commercial real estate for the rest of my life. But that's kind of where you were and then you had this idea to kind of, start Blume. Tell me about that story.

[00:01:42] Karen Danudjaja: So basically, you know, I have Asian parents and so, you know, it was very much like this path set out where you're going to school, you're gonna get, you know, get a real job, find a ladder to climb. And so, I didn't really know what I wanted to do, like so many people going into university. And I ended up going to moving out here, to Vancouver from Ontario, to go to business school and studied real estate finance and honestly, I'm so glad that I did that because I think so many of the things that have gone right with Blume, and you know what led me here wouldn't have happened unless I did it. But I basically hated the subject matter from day one at school [laughs].

That's so, and not that there's anything wrong with commercial real estate, it's just like I'm a creative person. I like to get my hands dirty. I like, you know, tapping into that creative part of my brain and I didn't feel like I had that opportunity the same way in commercial real estate. Like the way that that industry works is just so long term. Like if you're building communities, it's over decades, not over months. You know what I mean? And so coming out of school, I found a job, you know, licked the boots of the person who gives you your first job out of school. Like I was really grateful for it and really got into this cadence of monthly reporting.

It was just like every month you're kind of like working on these projects and reporting to landlords, and it just, for me, it never lit me up the way that I wanted to, but I didn't really know where to go with it. Like so many people. Like I wanted to do something entrepreneurial, but it didn't have that confidence in myself or that perfect idea, or I was looking for some, you know, light at the end of the tunnel, that was gonna be the thing that I jumped into.

But while I was in that industry, like it's so relationship-based, so I was going to a ton of coffee meetings and cafes and visiting all these different communities and so I think like the combination of me not feeling very purposeful about what I was doing, part of that is like, you're in this community that's not really like your people and then kind of starting my own wellness journey because of that.

So I was noticing that in the cafes we were going to, everything was super syrup-based, caffeine-based, and I just really didn't have things [that] I was excited to order. And it's super weird, you know, the way people are talking about non-alcoholics now, it's like weird to go to a bar and not order a beer. It was weird for me to go to a cafe and get a water, you know?

So, The first blend that we did was this turmeric latte, and it was really out of me trying to solve a need for myself. Like, I loved these community spaces, but there was nothing there. And so the first year of Blume was me doing that off the side of my desk. So I would do commercial, my commercial real estate property management during the day, like you know that nine to five. And then I would wake up really early and do deliveries and in the evening, I would like go to different stores and bring finished lattes. And it just got to the point where I was clearly so much more obsessed with one versus the other. Like what lit me up, I was so excited by Blume. And yeah, and then about a year after doing both at the same time, I transitioned to doing Blume full-time. And now here we are.

[00:04:50] Jeff: Where are we at right now with Blume? So if you were to say, give us a kind of status update on Blume today, you're five, six years into it at this point?

[00:04:59] Karen: Yeah, this fall will be six years. Blume can be found in, you know, 4,000 stores, kind of like across Canada and the US. We just launched with Canada's biggest grocery store, so Loblaws, Real Canadian Superstore, so that like 400 kind of like fresh stores. We've shipped over a hundred thousand orders online. We're a team of 13 now, so still lots of room to grow. Still lots of white space, but it's definitely changed a lot since we started.

[00:05:26] Jeff: When you think about your career in real estate and then your transition into Blume, when you look back at it, because a lot, I think a lot of people are in that, hey, they have a job, maybe they're not enjoying it as much as they'd like. They kind of feel like there's something out there for them, but they don't know what it is. It sounds like you were doing it. And then you kind of reached this point where you're like, I'm clearly more excited about, you know, doing my own thing. Do you wish you had done it sooner?

Like when you think back to that process, like what recommendations would you have to people who are in that position where they're like, “Hey, I've got a side hustle, but I'm afraid to commit on it. Or, you know, I'm not happy with my job”. What, how would you, what would you say to those people?

[00:06:01] Karen: Well, first I'll say that like every experience you have, you can draw on it. So even though commercial real estate for most people would be as far as I possibly could have gone like so different from turmeric and superfood lattes, like it taught me budgeting, it taught me relationship management. It taught me like, really understanding P&Ls, and these are things that maybe some founders don't have strong fundamentals in when they start their small businesses, right?

So like, even though it's so remote and far away from where, like the space that I'm working in now, I don't regret that experience at all. Like in terms of everything that I learned from it. Also that I have a lot, even on hard days with Blume, I have gratitude that I'm still working in something that lights me up. And if you have never had the opposite, I think you have like less gratitude for when you have it. Does that make sense?

[00:06:52] Jeff: Totally.

[00:06:53] Karen: The one thing that I would say that I wish I did differently or advice I would give is, I speak to a lot of people who feel similar about their work today, they're not let up, they're not passionate, they don't know what to do. And are looking for like the perfect solution. Like what is gonna like totally change my life. And I was too, like, I was like, I had lots of different concepts for different businesses and I never felt like the idea was right or perfect. But Blume, when it was originally founded was gonna be a turmeric supplement line.

So a bunch of different turmeric latte powders, turmeric capsules, call the business Golden Root and is what it is today, which is, you know, if you're not familiar with Blume, it's really like a recreation of cafe favorites. It's a totally different product line. And so I think sometimes we put too much emphasis on like, it has to be perfect out of the gate, whereas like, I fully expect that what Blume is today will look totally different five years from now, and as long as it's built on like strong core values and tenets that are consistent all the way through, I think you can have adaptability and flexibility for everything else.

So, if the reason you're not starting something is because you don't think it's perfect, I think starting and learning and getting that quick response from consumers is more powerful than trying to get it right on paper. 'Cause it's very, it's very hard to be perfect on paper without any customer feedback, right? The fastest way to get there is to have, to make some sales and see what people think.

[00:08:25] Jeff: Yeah. There's a quote that I love, and I can't remember who said it, but it was a, it was talking about the Tour de France and someone was asking him, you know, like, “Hey, what stage of the Tour de France is the hardest?” And like, “How much harder is this cycling that you're doing compared to like when you were just starting out?”

And his reply was, “It's just as hard today as it was then. It was just as hard then as it is today. The only difference is that I just go way faster.” It's like there's nothing, there really isn't any easy jobs, or at least there shouldn't be. It just comes down to like, what is your motivation for doing it and it does it light you up?

Like I remember back to a time when I was out of university and I got a job and I was just so grateful that like someone would employ me because I just felt like I knew so little and it was a, it was a job. It was a great job. I was doing field research in biotechnology and I think a lot of people would've looked at that, and there's lots of people who make great careers in that job, and I was so miserable. But because I was only like 23 or 22, I was like not mature enough to understand that it wasn't the company, it wasn't their fault. Like, this a great company.

[00:09:28] Karen: Yeah.

[00:09:2(] Jeff: And I didn't understand how to be grateful for the opportunity that I had to learn. Ultimately, I just kind of like didn't take ownership over my own happiness. It wasn't until much later on that I had some experience under my belt that I was like, “Hey, actually, all those things were really part of that learning experience.”

I think that just, if you're so much more, if you're more aware of the, of what you're learning in the process and even if it's what you're learning is “I'm not cut out for this type of work”, that's still super valuable to figure out early in your career.

[00:09:55] Karen: Yeah. And I love what you said there about taking ownership of your own happiness and your own future. And I think we always wanna be at the destination. Like, I want, you know, whatever my goals are for Blume, like I wanna be there today. And if I'm not there today, then it's a failure. Like it takes time. And if you can get to a place where you're actually enjoying the route to that destination, or you even let go of this idea of there being an end destination, like how much happier will you be if you can like brace the day-to-day of the journey?

I'm not saying that I'm successful with that all the time, or I was successful with that all the time when I was in commercial real estate, but now in hindsight, I feel really grateful for that experience because, A) it's given me gratitude for what I love about my job today. But B) I did learn a lot of skills that are transferable. And if you're open, you can find that in any job, I think.

[00:10:49] Jeff: Totally.

[00:10:50] Karen: Like, you know, the nuggets that you wanna pull out and take to where you're going.

[00:10:53] Jeff: So when we think about Blume and kinda where you're at now, I feel like as you kind of go from like, Hey, I made this for myself. Hey, I made this for my friends. Hey, I'm actually like producing it at like, [a] very small scale and actually selling it now, but like kind of all outta my kitchen/garage. Then you maybe go to like [a] Farmer's market. Then there's probably like a bunch of other steps. You're kind of like multiple steps up now where you have like, pretty vast distribution in production, I imagine.

How did you go from those different stages? Did it follow that chronological order that I'm talking about? And forgive me if I'm missing like a thousand steps there, but is that kind of the path in CPG or what was it for you guys?

[00:11:33] Karen: It's a path. I think like the thing about CPG or like, food products, let's say. Is that, you know, everyone consumes food. Everyone has food preferences. Everyone can like cook to some level. So there's actually very low barriers to entry to starting in a lot of ways, which is why, you know, you see products like that where it's like, I made it for myself, make it for my friends. Maybe selling it at farmer's markets. It's not actually the path that I took, which I think is part of why Blume is kind of, is special and has the awareness that it has because I basically didn't have the classic CPG story.

Most CPG, like food product brands, like ultimately they're selling to natural grocery stores, like, you know, Whole Foods is the ‘get’. Sprouts is the ‘get’. You know, in Vancouver locally would be like, Choices. You know, Nature's Fare, Pomme, and then more like mass grocery stores. So like Loblaws, Save On Foods. And that's where the bulk of their business is, distributing to these big guys. And most like CPG companies that, you know, get the venture capital and are going that path, like they're trying to open those specific types of doors.

Because I didn't really come from CPG and I didn't have that experience, we actually started a little non-conventionally with more like specialty stores. And that's why we were able to bootstrap so far as well, because those distribution points, like a Loblaw store, are extremely expensive. Like they're expensive to get, like huge listing fees, huge trade dollars going into supporting them, extremely crowded shelves. And it's really hard to build a relationship with Loblaws. You know, it's really hard to get partnership with every, you know, Loblaws manager across the country.

So we started more in like these, lots of independents. And so the first, you know, 2000 doors that we had were actually all these independents across the country, which ended up being such an amazing way for us to test and learn because we had better relationships with those individual stores so we could get feedback faster. And we could, you know, iterate on flavors, iterate on, you know, what are customers asking for? What are they liking? What are they not liking? And we could have those relationships directly with our retailers in order to get that feedback. And then just like, not the same amount of, you know, distributors in between trade dollars that go into it. So they were much more profitable accounts for us. Smaller volumes, of course, but we were able to like use that capital to continue fueling growth.

So we ended up really working mostly with these small indies that ended up being our marketing channel. Think about if you have like a favourite cafe that you go to. It's like, you know the hub of your community. You trust the quality there. It's being made for you properly. So this ended up being such a great trial ground, and our kind of like avenue into the market, like our go-to-market strategy and not by some amazing strike of business plan genius, but more like they were the people who were interested in supporting a women entrepreneur, supporting local, were interested in trying something different.

And then the pandemic hit. So March 2020, basically 80% of our business closed and we didn't know for how long. So, you know, food service stores were impacted so hard in those first few months. And especially independent stores. And, and so what we ended up doing is really like, refocusing our attention on direct to consumer. So building out our own website.

Naturally because of the pandemic, people were home more. They were on their phones more. They were shopping more for comfort, for immune systems, for healthy eating. That shift just gave Blume, like its first big wave of growth like that first year of the pandemic we grew 300%.

[00:15:16] Jeff: How did you kind of catch that wave though? Because I feel like, you know, you weren't a massively established brand at that point. That wave can just kind of pass a lot of people by. It wasn't like you had this billion dollar B2C or D2C business. So then how, how did you, like, was there a marketing strategy or certain channels that you tapped into that allowed you to kinda capture that volume?

[00:15:37] Karen: It was pretty scrappy. I mean, we had a Shopify website that was like, there. I think it did like less than a hundred orders a month or something like that. Like that was kind of [the] volume.

But I took an online marketing course when the pandemic happened to launch D2C myself.

[00:15:52] Jeff: Yeah.

[00:15:53] Karen: Like at that point we had no employees in the business. We didn't really work with a lot of consultants. And so it was really like this rapid response, test and learn with minimum viable product. Did that website in April 2020, look anything like the one we have today? Like absolutely not. But it was enough for us to get those first proof points and then direct your energy towards what's working.

So really like Blume’s story has been one of just like trial and error, scrappy, like what can you, you know, I'm not a designer, but you know, I would design our first ads. I designed, you know, like our first product pages, I wrote the copy. Like the packaging was done like internally as well.

In terms of like what was the perfect plan. It kind of goes back to that point where we chose speed and scrappiness in over kind of like theoretical and then you can iterate much faster.

[00:16:44] Jeff: Well, you have an amazing brand. I'm curious though on like, on the marketing spend side, like I feel like so many of the digital channels have just gotten so expensive. So you can build a beautiful website, you can have a great product, but how did you get that awareness? Like how did you divert the traffic to your D2C to actually convert it?

You know, even if you're trying to use social media, like your organic reach is gonna be so small unless you're paying. But if you're paying, it's gonna be so expensive and you don't have the capital for it. So then how did you solve that challenge? Because I feel like a lot of people get stuck at that point.

[00:17:23] Karen: Yeah. And it has changed a lot. Even if you take a look at like what acquisition costs are today versus what they were two years ago. Like, it's true, a lot of brands have trouble making kind of like that efficiency metric work for them. Something that we did really differently that I think helped us stand out and helped with that efficiency is that, the supplement and wellness space is often so like ‘organic’, ‘botanical’, inaccessible almost.

And so our take on it was like bright colors. Funny, like how do you get people to like really engage and be something that you are proud to buy and proud to display and actually have fun with in the wellness category. And so when you look at things like, you know, watch times and click-through rates, all of those were like above industry benchmarks.

So I think there are still opportunities to stand out in those spaces and make those metrics work for you. But it can't just be by like replicating what's been done before and what's out there. Like us taking kind of like a unique voice, adding a different flare or however you wanna describe it, to an industry that's usually pretty, I don't know what the right way is to describe it, but a pretty bland even. Like, you know, you're buying it for a specific ingredient versus buying it because you love the brand and you find it funny and exciting. Like being able to add that element there really helped us scale that side of the business.

And then ultimately you need to have a product that people come back for. Like the way that you scale e-comm is through lifetime value and repeat purchase rate. It will never work if people are only buying it once, right? You're gonna be constantly in this cycle of trying to find new customers. Luckily we have like an incredible repeat purchase rate. People love the product, have a great experience with us, and that added a lot of fuel to the scale.

[00:19:13] Jeff: So you've just recently announced that you're in Loblaws now, but you also mentioned that that's kind of a difficult channel, it's expensive. And the context behind this question is really just around like, so growing up I worked at, my aunt and uncle owned a greenhouse and they would have to compete with like Walmart and Home Depot and Costco.

And then I would hear these stories about how like a Walmart would go to a grower, like a greenhouse and say, “Hey, we wanna buy like $10 million worth of this product.” And then, soon Walmart would become like 95% of that grower's business. And then the next year they would come back and say, “Hey, give us that same, you know, amount, but for 5% less.”

If the grower couldn't kind of meet that price, they would just say, okay, we're gonna go find someone else. And then that grower would lose like 95% of their business. So it seems like kind of with the large, massive, massive distributors. It seems like a little bit more competitive and a little more cutthroat.

And like, how do you balance out that dependency on a huge channel like Loblaws with your D2C business? Is that something that is on your mind? Or are you just like, “Hey, let's grow the Loblaws business”? Just like even that thought process there.

[00:20:23] Karen: I think the heart of that question is omnichannel marketing – how do you do both? Like how do you support Loblaws while at the same time growing your direct business? And like, what's the right balance of each? I think it really depends what your end goals are for your business. So if you’ve got a business that you eventually wanna sell, distribution points are a huge part of the value creation that you're doing, the doors that you're in, the velocities that you have in those different doors.

So the way that I'm thinking about it at Blume is that ultimately, we wanna be an accessible wellness brand. We want it to be really easy for you to consume Blume, and it being only available online where you can just buy our products and only at a certain price point, and to hit free shipping, you have to buy three of them, is not actually that accessible. There's going to be certain customers that are never gonna buy $70 worth of one product, right? So, and that's kind of like what you need to get free shipping.

For us, the way we're thinking about Loblaws is that it's unlocking a new customer. So there's gonna be the loyalists, there's gonna be the people who are investing in their health at that level. The brand people who wanna try something different and shop that way. But then there are the people who only shop at their regular spots. So we think about Loblaws as augmenting, attracting new customers to our mix. And that's why they have actually like a different product entirely than what we sell online.

[00:21:45] Jeff: Oh, okay.

[00:21:46] Karen: Like we actually have like a smaller format, different call outs, very specific SKUs that we're selling to them. And it's something that we're still navigating, like with limited resources, limited team, how do you support both? And we're trying to find a way where Loblaws isn't 60% of our business for exactly the reason that you're talking about. Having that healthy mix, just like diversifies your risk and also helps you reach different types of customer.

[00:22:09] Jeff: Yeah, and even if we take Loblaws outta the equation, if you think about other, you know, health food founders, because I feel like that's the home run that a lot of founders and entrepreneurs are trying to get is they're like, “Oh, if I could just get into Costco, get into Walmart, all my problems will be taken care of.”

I feel like that's not the case because there's so many variables, like even if a large distributor said, “Hey, we wanna sell your product”, how do you make those partnerships successful without kind of giving away the farm?

[00:22:35] Karen: Yeah, I think you're right that a lot of people think that that's, you know, getting in is now we've unlocked like the next level of success and it's really like less than half the battle. Really, it's about staying on shelf, right? And if you ever get kicked off of one of these shelves, how hard is it ever to get back on? You know what I mean? It's not true that you just have one shot at something, but it is harder to get the second shot.

I think that the way that we're thinking about it is as we expand into kind of more traditional brick and mortar, that we really wanna be strategic about who the partners are. Like do they have the right customer coming through? Do we have the right price point for them? Will they put us in the right set? Are we gonna be positioned with, you know, similar priced items and, and making sure that, really that you're supporting with marketing in order to make sure that your existing customers know where to find you there as well as attract new customers.

For us, for instance, we don't think we're ready for like the Costcos and the Walmarts of the world. Like we think our products are, you know, still require a certain amount of education and the market to develop in a certain way before we're really ready for that mass customer. I think it's just encouraging founders to take that one look deeper. How you shop in a Walmart and who shops in a Walmart is really different than who shops at a Whole Foods. It's not that one is better or worse than the other. It's just that you need to have the right price, the right product architecture for those specific customers and often it's not the same product in all places, right? So I guess I would just encourage founders to take that extra step to think about if, not just if they're willing to take you, but if you're, if you're ready to support it.

[00:24:12] Jeff: Like you, you haven't even touched on operations yet. What's that operational readiness checklist that you had to go through to make sure that you were ready for that? Like how did you know, if this actually scales really quick, like how are you gonna keep up with production?

[00:24:24] Karen: That was like the last six months before we launched. It was like we needed new partners, like for fulfillment, new special pallets, special cases, different labeling and stickering requirements.

Every retailer has their own vendor guideline at this point, and none of them like at, they should all have a meeting and like sync these things up so that they're all the same, but they don't. The operational side of servicing a customer at like a Walmart or a Costco is enormous. And they don't, and they all have terms too. It's like the financial side of it. Like how do you, do you have the cash to support it? It really lengthens kind of like your cash cycle.

For us, we needed to make sure that basically you can hit a 99% fill. And so when you think about, it's like 400 stores with three SKUs, that you don't get a lot of lead time in terms of when these orders come in and how fast you need to service them. You need to build a lot of redundancy into your system, and that has been maybe the biggest exercise more than actually getting the listing is being prepared to fill it.

So that's like, that's a really great point and one that I think gets overlooked very often. Both the cash component, the trade support, like the dollars that it takes to stay on shelf. And then also like hitting that 99% fill rate when you know the port, like there's a strike at the port and your turmeric [is] sitting at the port. Like, what are you gonna do? Like, you really need to have so much redundancy built into your system.

[00:25:52] Jeff: Yeah, and I feel like just back to that point of, hey, you've got into the stores or you win that big deal and you finally think that the business is gonna get easy. I think that's probably one of the biggest, not surprises necessarily, but misconceptions about building a business is that at some point it's just gonna get easy. Sometimes it's just the beginning, like the win is just the beginning.

[00:26:14] Karen: I haven't reached that point. If it does get easy, I haven't reached it. I think it's just like fresh challenges. The thing that I'm trying to do or the opportunity for me is like to look at the challenges as part of the fun of it, right? Like you're playing, like ultimately you're playing a game, right? How do you overcome those challenges in a way that pushes the business forward?

Sometimes I can think about it that way, and other times I'm just like, God, like I miss commercial real estate so bad [laughing]. That kind of goes back to our earlier point about it being like everyone wanting to get to a destination, like an easy place and if you're looking for easy, I don't know if CPG is the place to go.

[00:26:51] Jeff: Yeah, it's a terribly tough business and I think it's super important that Canada has more CPG founders, more control over our food sources and supply chain. Like what do you think is preventing people from really getting into this?

I'm gonna rant for a second here just because I feel like Canada imports so many of our consumer brands and like even if you just think about like take the top five apps on your phone, you know, the top, major companies in Canada, like where do you spend your time? Like where is your attention? Most of the time it's on brands that have not much to do with Canada at all, usually they're from either the United States or or Europe.

And if you think about the, the cultural impact that consumer brands have on. The very kind of cultural fabric and DNA of Canada, I feel like we are kind of like more blending into the influences of what's around us rather than actually thinking about what's kind of uniquely Canadian and then building that into our brands.

That's why I'm so excited about what you guys are doing and what many other people are doing when they start up a consumer brand, because I think it actually just beyond just quality of the product, it's about the fact that the person who made this product actually grew up here, understands Canadians, the control of the business is here in Canada, and you're influencing Canadians.

So those are the few of the reasons why I think it's great, but specifically in CPG, like what is really stopping people from starting a CPG business and what do you think we can do to remove some of those barriers?

[00:28:21] Karen: I do think actually that Canada has a pretty amazing entrepreneurial community and there's a lot of incredible Canadian food brands. Whether or not they ever get to the scale that you're talking about, where it's like occupying the majority of the grocery store. Like really, I don't know exactly what the percentage is, but it's something like over 70% of the grocery store is owned by like those top five, like, you know, like the Pepsi, Mondelez's, et cetera of the world, right?

So I do think that Canada has like an incredible amount of natural food products and brands. But there's a lack of capital here. CPG is a very expensive game for all the reasons we've kind of already talked about, like what it takes to really build a brand identity, how expensive that is in terms of community sampling, listing fees, support, you know, building visibility in really crowded shelves.

And then, you know, if you take that brand to the US you've got 10 times the market opportunity, right? So, I think the brands that are really well capitalized often spend their dollars in other places where they're gonna get more bang for their buck and there's more distribution opportunity versus really focusing on their home market.

And then for the ones that are here focusing on the home market, the availability of the capital needed to really scale those brands is, there's just less of it. At least that's been my experience. So I think that there's kind of like a bit of a double-edged sword there. My philosophy on it, I think because I don't come from a CPG background, like, you know, none of that was immediately evident to me starting the brand, was that you kind of wanna win at home first.

[00:29:56] Jeff: Yeah.

[00:29:57] Karen: And so to have like a home base of supporters and community to help charge the brand wherever it's going in the future.

For us, our business right now is actually 85% Canadian sales, and that is a little bit strange, but it's because for the most part, we've been a bootstrapped brand, although we did raise our first round of capital last year. And in non-traditional marketing channels, right? Like in in cafes and specialty stores here in Canada where there's a huge emphasis on local. You know, it's almost like a lower barrier to get into these stores because they really wanna support Canadian products.

I think it's, you know, a mix of things. Like a lot of people are going south for the opportunity and where the money is flowing a little better. Although I don't think the money's flowing anywhere right now in terms of getting investment for brands.

Our philosophy has always been that we wanna be a Canadian leader first. Because we're a Canadian brand, we manufacture all the products here. Our whole team is sitting here and that's just something that's important to us from a values perspective.

[00:30:56] Jeff: You mentioned that capital is one of the obstacles. Research shows that there's a number of obstacles that female founders also experience in starting companies. What do you think we can be doing as a society, like specifically in Canada, to help remove some of those obstacles and to be more supportive of female entrepreneurs?

[00:31:16] Karen: You know, I've been asked this question before, and I think that it's really like how we see women in the workplace that needs to change and that's not like an overnight change.

That's something that is gonna take a long time to make adjustments for and how that shows up in funding is, for instance, when I did my fundraise, I was asked a lot of questions about downside risk. You know, questions about how are you managing X risk? Kind of like picking at the problems.

Whereas what you hear in the reverse is that, if men are pitching their businesses, it's often more about the opportunity. Where do you see this going? How big could this be? How big is the market?

[00:31:51] Jeff: The softball questions.

[00:31:52] Karen: You know? Well, it's just easier to get someone excited if those are the questions you're getting, right?

[00:31:57] Jeff: Totally.

[00:31:58] Karen: So, but those questions aren’t inherently bad. Like it's great to, like we should be looking at the risks of any business. But in a pitching environment, it doesn't set founders up for like to hit a home run.

[00:32:12] Jeff: Oh, it's completely unfair.

[00:32:13] Karen: And I think like the other piece too is that women are not necessarily, at least in my experience, like in my founder community. In pitching environments, you really need to be confident just because of the nature of what it is and women often present their businesses in a slightly different way. They're very aware of the risks themselves. So I think that that like these are like dynamics of men and women that are not necessarily like easy to understand in the context of pitching or are favorable to women in the context of pitching.

So when I was pitching my business, I was asked a lot of questions around like if I had kids or I have planned to have kids. In that setting, it's really strange to be asked those questions and I'm not sure that men would be asked the same ones. Those biases exist, like they're not made up, they exist and it's something that we all have to make a concerted effort to change in order to make it a more level playing field. And it's not something that I think happens overnight and is necessarily coming from a bad place. You know, it's more like gender norms that have become limiting in the context of pitching your business for financing.

[00:33:17] Jeff: You mentioned that you had a, kind of a founder circle. Is this something that you've kind of built on your own? Is this something that already exists? I guess, what benefits have you gotten from having that group of people to talk to?

[00:34:18] Karen: I'm so lucky with the founder community. The female founder community in Vancouver is amazing, super supportive and how it's formed really naturally over time. You know, I'm the kind of person that very much knows that I don't have all the answers, but I ask a lot of questions. And so early in my journey I set up a lot of, kind of like, coffee meetings with founders I admired.

And I very rarely was I, did someone not offer me time. And I think that, you know what I get out of it is a lot of validation on hard days. Like emotional support is the main thing. Like we're all in totally different industries, right? But we share network, like introductions. When I was fundraising, it was a lot of introductions from founder friends who'd been successful before. But it could also be network for, you know, contractors you work with or the right person at a bank or any of those things.

So I think that having a community, you know, people say that the entrepreneurial journey is very lonely. And I think it can be, but it can also be some of, like, if you create community within that, 'cause it's so much of your, like, value and purpose and time is tied up in your brand, in your entrepreneurial journey. So if you find people who understand that and are on the same journey, they can be absolutely like life-changing relationship.

So, some of my founder friends today are, you know, my best friends because they understand my experience so intimately because they're having it too. So, I definitely encourage anyone who's feeling lonely on their journey to literally just reach out on LinkedIn, through email. And everyone, almost everyone that I've ever reached out to has been very happy to give me time and advice.

[00:36:01] Jeff: I always love hearing some of the kind of more, the war stories. What are some of the oh shit moments that you've had in building Blume? Like, what were some of the moments where you're just like, I don't know how we're gonna figure this out, or, what are we gonna do? What really comes to mind?

[00:36:14] Karen: One thing that happened actually very like, last summer, you know, and this was something where I was like, it's over. There's just like no way that we can move forward from this. We had just done like a run of product and, some of our products contained coconut milk and we had basically like extreme heat waves in Vancouver and like in a bunch of like areas where our warehouses are located.

And just because of like the positioning of where the product was, it was right by a window at the top of a warehouse during a heatwave, so much product went sour.

[00:36:48] Jeff: Oh no!

[00:36:49] Karen: Like sour tasting. In that moment you're just like, how can you possibly recover from it? You know, and ultimately, like we couldn't sell any of it. We had to cut our losses to make sure that people are having a great experience.

We were able to recover from it through like a variety of different ways. Like we had a big PO basically supposed to go out, but we were able to move them to another product, get an extension of time, work with our insurance to get some, some of it back. You know, all sorts of different things. And you just work through it.

[00:37:18] Jeff: Yeah.

[00:37:19] Karen: Like there's no other, and the thing is, is like if it had been two degrees less, it probably wouldn't have happened. Like, that's the level of sensitivity. And we didn't know that! You know, we were five years into the business and we didn't understand that piece of it.

So, but now we can use only like heat-controlled warehouses. We can adapt storage instructions, we can, you know, adapt our insurance to cover based on like what, you know what I mean?

[00:37:43] Jeff: Yeah.

[00:37:44] Karen: You can like, while there, you just like learn from it and move forward. But I know when I first got that news I was just, it's over. You know what I mean? [laughing] And like you just think you can never recover from it.

[00:37:55] Jeff: A lot of people don't understand just like how many life and death moments there are in building a company. Like you probably had like three of those in your first year, but you've had a hundred since then that you don't even remember the first three that occurred and...

[00:38:07] Karen: Yeah.

[00:38:08] Jeff: And like, honestly, like they just keep happening and part of I think getting to your level of success, Karen, is really like, would you say sometimes it's just like, perseverance and just continue to carry on.

[00:38:19] Karen: Like the more I'm in this and the more I talk to other founders, the more I think it's basically like a game of resiliency. It's like who's left standing at the end?

And that's not a very satisfying answer to anyone, I don't think. Like nobody wants that to be the truth, but I really think if it was easy, everybody would do it. And the success of it, it, you know, it can be life changing, like, you know, if you really get through to the other side of like building your brand successfully.

I'm trying to find a way to enjoy the journey to learn from the downs, and all you can do is like take those learnings and improve your process next time. I don't think it's like a super satisfying answer to be like, yeah, it's just about survival and like making it through to the end, but, it's like continuous improvement would be like another way to look at it being kind of like the name of the game.

[00:39:07] Jeff: Well Karen, I'm extremely grateful for you taking the time to come and chat. What message do you wanna get out to our listeners?

[00:39:14] Karen: You know, the message that I usually wanna leave with people is just starting is better than the theoretical, that I think like you learn faster by doing. And even with Blume, what it is today is totally different than what it was when we started.

So if you're thinking about starting a project of your own, starting your own brand, just start. Just do anything. And I think that first step is the hardest. And focus more on being iterative, being like actively listening, doing something with the information you collect. Because that'll get you way further than perfectionism.

[00:39:47] Jeff: That's great, yeah. Thank you again. Big fan, loyal customer, and really looking forward to where you guys go.

[00:39:52] Karen: Thanks, Jeff, for having me.

[00:40:00] Jeff: Thank you for tuning into Behind the Brand. If you enjoyed today's show, please subscribe and leave a review on your preferred podcast platform. If you’re interested in learning more about Neo Financial, visit us at neofinancial.com.

Behind the Brand is a production of Neo Financial and MediaLab YYC. Hosted by Jeff Adamson. Strategy, research, and production by Keegan Sharp, Alana Tefledzuk, and Kyle Marshall.