Bleume

0:00Welcome to the Emerging Brands podcast. Sharing the stories behind brands you'll want to shop next. I'm your host, Kelly Bennett. I am a New York City-based brand strategist for CPG Food and Beverage Brands. In each episode, I'll take you behind the scenes of founders that are building better-for-you products and bringing them to market. it. Also, I talk to brand builders, retailers, industry experts, and tastemakers who help bring those cool products to your shopping cart. You will hear stories of real-life founders, their launch strategies, and practical advice you could use to grow your own brand or simply discover what's next on shelf.

0:42And the best part is you could shop all the brands featured on the show. This podcast is brought to you by Glimpse. Glimpse is an AI powered deduction management tool that disputes and recovers invalid deductions, winning brands, thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours back to founders so that they can focus on what really matters most. If you're a brand selling in retail, go to tryglimpse.com backslash trial for 30 days free and let them know I sent you. Now let's dive into the new episode. Hi everyone. Welcome back to a new episode of Emerging Brands Podcast with Kelly Bennett. On this show, I always love to feature the brands that people will be shopping next.

1:32And I do feature a lot of food and beverage because that's the world that I live in. And I'm starting to add in more lifestyle products that I feel like consumers who are looking for better for you options are also keeping their eye on. And today is one of those cool lifestyle brands that I've been watching. I've seen them in pop up grocer. And I'm really excited to dive into a slightly new angle in CPG that we haven't had on the show yet. So Sam Newman, he is the founder of Bloom. And Sam, I'm so happy to have you on the show.

2:07Sam Niemann:Yeah, I'm so excited to be here. I'm a huge fan of the show. So I'm looking forward to it. Well, that means a lot. Thank you for listening. I when you record a podcast, you always hope that people are listening and enjoy it. So getting that feedback really, it means a lot. So thank you. I first want to dive into the world of Bloom that you're building and get a sense of the product, the white space that you saw on the market, and really the idea around it. So could you walk us through this behind the scenes of how Bloom came to be? Yeah. So Bloom is a, I always say a modern plant care brand. And what I mean by that is the gardening aisle hasn't been touched and hasn't changed in decades.

2:56Sam Niemann:And so I wanted to set out to create a product that makes gardening and specifically feeding your houseplants and fertilizing your plants a little bit more approachable. So our main product is a liquid plant food designed for houseplants. We put it in a pump bottle so you don't have to measure anything. So most fertilizers, you have to find a teaspoon or a tablespoon or you're trying to use the bottle cap and that process is messy and it doesn't work very well. So I wanted to make something that is easier and more approachable for people to use. And it's also gentle enough that you can use it every single time you water your houseplants.

3:32Sam Niemann:So you don't have to remember, hey, it's been six weeks since I fertilized, it's time to do it again. And so gardening is something that has brought me a ton of joy. And so I really wanted to help inspire other people to garden and give them the tools that they need to be more successful growing plants. Okay, this is a personal pain point of mine because I really am trying to I've gotten a lot better with house plants but I will say some did not make it this winter in New York City in my apartment and my girlfriend and I we're both the same we're trying to like really take care of house plants so I love that you're taking out the guesswork because that also can feel really overwhelming and you're already doing so much to then think about on your calendar about your plants two of every six weeks or if it's too much or too little.

4:22So I love that you're simplifying it.

4:25Sam Niemann:Right. That was really my goal. I have been guarding my entire life. I worked at a garden center for years and I realized that I was never fertilizing my own houseplants, even though I know what to do and how to do it. I just wasn't doing it. And that means that the people that are maybe a little bit less confident and don't know what they're doing, they're really not fertilizing their houseplants. No, I can say I'm truly not. Yeah. Yes, yes. But it makes such a difference and it's really not hard. It doesn't need to be complicated. So I really set out to make it a little bit more approachable.

5:00I think that's cool. So when you had this idea and knowing now a bit more of your background working in this space. What was some of those next steps that you started taking to create the product? Yeah.

5:17Sam Niemann:So I wanted to find a way to differentiate the brand. And fortunately, we have, there are a ton of really incredible fertilizers on the market. So I needed to find something that can differentiate it more so than just the formula. And the way that I did that was we really leaned heavily in packaging. And we took a lot of inspiration from the cosmetics industry and other areas of CPG. And we really used that as inspiration to guide us to create a product that feels elevated and intentional. If you walk down the gardening aisle at a big box retailer, almost every product on the shelf is yellow, green, or white and is designed for people that have big backyards and they come in really large quantities.

6:06Sam Niemann:And in my opinion, those are not the people that are growing houseplants these days. It's people like you and I that live in apartments in cities. And you don't need gallons and gallons of fertilizer. And we also wanted to create a product that is all purpose so you can use it on pretty much everything. So you don't have to buy a fertilizer for your fiddle leaf fig and a different one for your pothos. It is a fertilizer that is all purpose. You can use it really broadly. What was your background prior to starting the brand? I know that you were working in this industry, but what were you, what else were you doing when you had this idea?

6:44Sam Niemann:Yeah. So, well, to make a long story, maybe slightly less long. I'm sure that could be a whole other episode too. I have been gardening my entire life. And in middle school, I started to sneak out of the house to ride my bike to the garden center, which I'm sure every kid was sneaking out to go to the garden center, but that's what I was doing. And I ended up getting a job there and I worked there all through high school. And then when I went off to college, I went in a completely different direction and I actually got a degree in finance. And then I went down the corporate path and worked in corporate finance.

7:16Sam Niemann:And I did genuinely love that. But I always knew that I wanted to start a brand. I was just kind of waiting to see what inspired me. And then when I had the realization that I wasn't fertilizing my own houseplants, even though I knew how to do it and what to do, I still wasn't doing it. And so I realized that that's a pain point that a lot of people probably have. And so that's kind of what led me to starting Bloom and to this point. Very cool. So like you said, there's a lot of legacy brands, brands that have been around for many, many, many years. big box retailers who are kind of selling the same old same old what was part of your approach I know you touched on packaging but really the strategy around getting bloom into people's hands and building the buzz around it and again this is something that people aren't even realizing that they need to do but they should be doing I would love to hear how you approach that because this It's similar to, say, like a CPG food and beverage brand, too, of changing a consumer behavior, educating them on a new way of doing things.

8:28So I would love to hear your strategy.

8:30Sam Niemann:Well, exactly. So our biggest pain point is just simply educating the consumer that they should be fertilizing their houseplants. Right. So we ground everything that we do in that goal in just getting the message out there that, like, hey, you should be fertilizing your houseplants, and you will have a lot more success if you do. We naturally, we don't have a ton of budget to spend on this big fancy rollout. So we relied really heavily on influencer gifting. I found that just reaching out myself and being like, hey, my name is Sam. This is the brand that I started. This is why I believe in this.

9:07Sam Niemann:Like, can we send you something? And doing it with no strings attached, not expecting people to post about it, just saying like, hey, I'd love to send you this and get your thoughts. that worked really well for us because what we found is that the vast majority of people that we sent it to did end up posting about it which I feel incredibly grateful for yeah that's were you looking for people who create content about houseplants or was it a little bit of a broader stroke that people possibly that were just into say like better for you products like how are you approaching who to reach out to? Yeah, we started primarily with people that are creating content around houseplants, but then also broader lifestyle as a whole.

9:53Sam Niemann:I always like to make sure that we find influencers that are actually going to use the product because, you know, put the marketing piece of it aside, I want to share the product with people that are really, truly going to use it and love it. And so I always like to make sure that the people that we're sending it to are people that actually have houseplants and are going to get benefit out of it I really really really believe in the product and so I don't necessarily want people that are promoting the product just because I want people promoting the product because they really truly love it and what I found is that if we can get it in people's hands generally the response has been incredible and so like just getting it in people's hands has been like the majority of the battle Can you walk us through exactly how we use the product and what to expect?

10:42I'm asking for myself because I'm really, I was saying before we started recording, I'm moving to a new apartment. I really want to step up my plant game. So I would love to hear exactly how it works.

10:56Sam Niemann:Yeah. So we put it in a pump bottle. So the directions are really simple. All you have to do is add four pumps of the concentrate to a one liter. We have a beaker that goes with it and you can use the beaker, a watering can. Some people even use like an empty water bottle or something like that. So you add four pumps of the concentrate, you fill it up with water and then you just water your plants as normal. You don't have to give them, you don't have to do anything special. You don't even have to mix the product. If you add the concentrate first, just the act of adding the water to the watering can or the beaker is enough agitation to make sure that it's fully diluted.

11:31Sam Niemann:So it really is just as simple as adding four pumps to a watering can, filling it up with water and then watering your plants like you would normally. I love that. Okay, this sounds very simple and something I can wrap my head around. And it's cool because you're really growing too. Like people are catching on. I know that you were in Pop-Up Grocer last summer and fall. And you just have a, you just started a rollout with a pretty major retailer online. I would love if you can walk us through that launch that you're working on right now. Yeah. So we are launching this week, actually, with Terrain and Anthropologie Online, which this is our biggest retailer to date.

12:11Sam Niemann:And so it's something that I'm really excited about. And it's really great. Yeah. Thank you. And in fact, when I was first working on Bloom, I spent two and a half or three years or so working on the brand and the formula and the packaging before we actually launched it. and one of the things that we had that I talked with our team about initially was kind of a like vision board of like where we were drawing inspiration from and where we wanted the brand to be and Anthropologie was one of the retailers on there in fact it was the biggest retailer on there and so the fact that now less than a year after launching we are launching with Terrain and Anthropologie I could not be more excited I'm thrilled.

12:53That's really cool and to the point we made earlier of thinking about a lifestyle, right? That the person that is shopping at Anthro wants better quality and cool, chic style is also starting to like create a home and wants really nice houseplants and whatever you're investing in to take better care of. So I like how you're connecting those dots.

13:17Sam Niemann:Thank you. And I really, I set out to create a brand that someone can not that you're necessarily going to leave it out on your shelf but something that you could leave out on your shelf that looks nice enough that you're not having you're not feeling the need to hide it in the garage or something like that because you know if you're like me you don't have that space to put it away and hide right um and so I think that ties in really well with anthropology and terrain and um like not only is it an exceptional fertilizer um but in my opinion And obviously, I'm a little biased, but I think it looks really pretty, too.

13:52It does. Where do you see the brand going? And how do you see it continuing to grow in the year ahead and many years ahead?

14:02Sam Niemann:Yeah. So at the end of the day, my goal is to inspire people to garden. And so I would eventually love to have a whole line of products that make it easy for people to do that, including we so we started with our houseplant fertilizer. but then eventually I would love to expand into outdoor fertilizers and things for your vegetable garden and your roses and things like that.

14:28Sam Niemann:Like I said, gardening is something that has brought me so much passion in life and I feel so incredibly grateful for that. And so I really just want to share that with other people. Very cool. Is there a piece of advice that you've learned along the way? Maybe it's a hard earned lesson or something that someone shared with you that you would pass on to someone who say is where you were a year ago, right? Starting to get the brand ready to launch, having big retailers on your vision board, not quite sure how it's going to happen. What piece of advice would you share with someone who's in those really early stages?

15:09Sam Niemann:Yeah. So my biggest piece of advice is that every dollar matters. Now, this is clearly my finance background coming out but dollars add up really fast and looking back there are things that i spent money on that candidly were a waste of money that i probably shouldn't have done now i don't regret any of those because like they got me to this position now and you know you live and you learn but in in my opinion as the founder of a small brand you should be ruthless about protecting the money that you have um because you know if you run out of money you're gonna go out of business and so that to me should be your your north star if you were just starting out and um like just getting ready to launch your brand were there some things that you invested in to get it off the ground that you think were absolutely worth it yeah um so the influencer gifting that's obviously not as expensive as some other marketing but you know there's still a cost associated with putting together packages and sending them out.

16:14Sam Niemann:That was wholeheartedly worth it. And looking back, if I could do double the amount of that that I did, I would do that. Okay. That's a good note. That's a really good note. And to bring me to my last question, before I let you go and get back to building the empire and the brand world of blue, where can people shop the product? Yeah. So we are in two dozen or so independent plant shops and retailers across the country. You can also shop Bloom on our website at growbloom.com and now starting this week online with Anthropologie and Terrain. Amazing. I will link that in my shop my and Sam congratulations.

16:55This has been such a treat hearing about what you're building and your passion. It really comes through and I'm genuinely excited to see where your brand goes from here.

17:07Sam Niemann:Thank you, Kelly. And thank you again for having me on. Like I said, I'm a huge fan of the show. And so it feels like very much like a treat to get to have this conversation with you. I love a full circle moment. So thank you so much. I really appreciate it. Everyone go check out Bloom. I'll link everything in the show notes and I'll see you all on the next episode. Bye. This episode was brought to you by Glimpse. As we know, building a brand is not as sexy and glamorous as it looks on social media at times. A lot of those unsexy problems come into play when brands start to scale in retail distribution.

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19:27Thank you again for listening to this episode of the Emerging Brands Podcast. It really means so much to me that you listen to this show, share it with your friends and support it. If you are a CPG food and beverage founder and you're ready to launch a brand, people want to shop, head to withkellybennett.com for the details. And as always, thank you so much for listening, shopping the brands featured on the show and following brands I'm working with. It means so much. See you on the next episode.