goodwipes

0:00Sam Nebel:Welcome 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.

0:42Sam Nebel:And the best part is you could shop all the brands featured on the show. This podcast is brought to you by Hummingbirds. Hummingbirds is the go-to platform built for creator-powered retail activations. They're connecting everyday creators with CPG brands to generate shelf-level awareness, drive in-store momentum, and generate authentic content in markets that matter the most. Go to hummingbirds.com for all the details and let them know I sent you. 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.

1:35Sam Nebel: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.

2:06Sam Nebel:First look and Good Wipes came up in that conversation and it's just a really fun brand doing something that is a bit taboo also that people talk about. And so I'm so excited, Charlie, to have you on the podcast today and deep dive into the world of Good Wipes.

2:26Charlie Siciak:Really great. Live intro. That was impressive and unexpected. So yeah, thanks for that. And super excited and honored to jam with you a bit this afternoon.

2:38Sam Nebel:Awesome. So let's just dive into what is Good Wipes. Great.

2:43Charlie Siciak:Good Wipes are actually flushable wipes for adults. I guarantee you to deliver a cleaner clean than dry, scratchy toilet paper.

2:50Sam Nebel:Very cool. So I have to then start off with asking, how did this idea come to be?

2:58Charlie Siciak:Yeah, really, really important, really fun question. I have a co-founder, Sam Nebel. Him and I, we met our freshman year of college, and we both have kind of similar backstories, is the backstory that involves both of us growing up in households with packs of baby wipes on the backs of toilets. We both grew up as habitual baby wipe users, literally have never used toilet paper unless in public without wipes. And so our freshman year of college, we were both living in a big communal house together. We're walking in and out of this communal bathroom. I'm walking in, he's walking out, we bump shoulders, we look down, and we're both holding these huge bags of baby wipes.

3:41Charlie Siciak:And we look at each other and say, wait a second, somebody, somebody else has this at the time, what we thought was a very bizarre hygiene routine. And in that moment, we say we, we bonded over, we bonded over butt wipes. And the 30 days that followed looked a lot like us being evangelists for wiping wet and telling all of our friends. And within those 30 days, we had all 50 folks that we were living in that house with wiping and using baby wipes. But it was pretty quick on the onset there that we recognized that people didn't know where to shop for wipes. When they found wipes in market, they were convinced that they weren't for them.

4:20Charlie Siciak:They were just for babies. Because of that, they were oftentimes embarrassed to buy them. And then as we continued to press in, we learned that there's actually a lot of really harmful ingredients in baby wipes. And then a baby wipe is also, it's not a flushable wipe. It's made out of a long synthetic fiber. And so these products, they weren't good for you or the earth. So you fast forward a handful of years, we decided to do something about it. And we launched Good Wipes in 2013.

4:48Sam Nebel:So you've been around since 2013.

4:52Charlie Siciak:2013, filed LLC. And yeah, I think we went to market in 2014. And it's really fun, really fun, super challenging, a lot of years just kind of kicking rocks. And on the other side of 2020, things really started to get in real. And it's just been a blast.

5:10Sam Nebel:Incredible. So from that conversation at the college house that you were living in with your co founder, to then officially saying we're going to do this, which filed the LLC 2014. What What has been the overall strategy? Say, let's just start off in the beginning to just get people to pause and say, wait, do I need this product? What were some things that were really resonating with people, maybe from your messaging or how you were activating marketing, social in those really early days? Yeah.

5:48Charlie Siciak:Yeah. So I think it was when we were looking at a lot of the feedback we were getting early on, there was just a ton of white space in the category generally, right? People weren't thinking that this is a category that they would shop. It was just, it was a super commoditized category. So I think from a go-to-market perspective, we really took this idea of building a culture and a community around something that was once considered a commodity. And I think a lot of the kind of like culture building pillars and the community building pillars that we pull from, it's from like the beauty and the personal care categories.

6:23Charlie Siciak:And we believe that butt care is skincare. And we have kind of this internal rally crier mantra of bringing beauty to your booty. So all the brilliant codes in the beauty and personal care space that we know and love and that make it super shoppable and approachable and accessible, we're pulling over to the dry category of paper.

6:43Sam Nebel:That makes sense. And I noticed that through your messaging and your website, the verbiage around beauty and skincare, which also piqued my interest in how you were connecting those dots. So in the early years, was that resonating with people or was there a lot of education that you had to do to have people again, connect those dots?

7:05Charlie Siciak:It's fine. It's interesting. Yeah. I think in 2014, you know, especially you have two male founders. It was never a male focused endeavor, but you have two male founders, kind of boots on the ground, leading the charge early on. People, when guys were taking care of themselves back in 2014, it was called metrosexual, right? And it was kind of this like little nook that people would talk about, oh, guys care about their hygiene or they take care of themselves. We always had this mantra that we pulled into things that just like look good, feel good, play good. And we think how you invest in yourself through personal care is the same way.

7:46Charlie Siciak:Yeah, in that time, it wasn't well received or talked about much. Definitely super taboo for a guy to take care of themselves. But over the years, we see men's grooming evolve and just all these taboo topics really becoming destigmatized. So I think, you know, when you think about changing the way that people think about hygiene and transforming restroom routines, a lot of what we had to pull from the beauty and the personal care category was this idea to think to shop, right? When you're shopping personal care or beauty, you're going in there to solve a problem. When you're walking into the toilet paper aisle, it's already kind of habitual.

8:23Charlie Siciak:You're not thinking about it. You're not thinking that there's a better way to do it. So proving that, you know, that there's a way to wipe smarter, not harder, that wet is better than dry and that there's a better tool for the job than you've been using. And so that's that was kind of like the biggest barrier of making people think that not in a fear mongering way, that they have a problem and there's a way to be cleaner than you currently are today. Got it.

8:49Sam Nebel:From the retail perspective, when you were getting into your first retail stores, how was that pitch going? Because were you being put next to toilet paper or were you in the personal care section? How did that start off in retail?

9:10Charlie Siciak:great the brand we built the brand to its first few million dollars if through the person through the feminine hygiene space um and it was you know we all we had we bifurcated our line in the beginning we had like four guys and four gals and we started doing really well on amazon and we had the number one selling female wipe in the in the on the digital shelf of amazon so we kind of took that case study to i think with walmart at the time and said hey like we're competing on digital shelf with all the people that you have on your physical shelf and we're winning we have better reviews we're selling more than anyone else and we believe we can do the same thing with you and we took that to walmart we took that to target and the reason that was never our intent that was just kind of a response to what we believe the consumer democracy that we're in was demanding of us.

10:02Charlie Siciak:I think a lot of that was the toilet paper category is historically led by a very old guard hedge of leaders from a retail perspective and isn't talked about a ton. And then from a feminine hygiene space, it was much more progressive, much more interesting. You had younger buyers at the seats and they were interested in trying new things and bringing bright, poppy and vibrant opportunities to the category. And so as the retailers were betting on us and our consumers and shoppers were also giving us the thumbs up, we really leaned in there. And then we landed our first MTT or Flushable account.

10:41Charlie Siciak:It was HEB down in Texas, and it went really well. And so similar to the case study that we pulled from Amazon and the Femhi space over to Walmart and Target, it, we took our HEB case study and how we were performing in the set, which is the paper aisle, MTT set over in the paper aisle, and the new shoppers that we were bringing, how we were serving a younger, more diverse audience and shopper. And we took that to larger retailers, and they slowly give you some test stores, and they'll give you a few test markets, and then slowly but surely, you can get that higher ACV and full chain penetration.

11:17Sam Nebel:Thank you for breaking that down, because that was super helpful. A lot of founders who listen to this podcast are in the really early days. And most of them are in the better for you space and they're doing something different and innovative and things that aren't necessarily a full-blown category yet. So I appreciate you breaking that down because that is a really great way of looking at where can you win early on and then how can you leverage that case study to then approach retailers and showing that proof of concept that consumers are shopping this product and they're shopping it a lot, which always helps tell that story.

12:03Yeah.

12:03Charlie Siciak:I think you got to, you know, you got to find the way to put your back to it whenever you can. And I think we did that on Amazon and then in the Fem High space. And, you know, when storytelling is such an important part of this in your relationship with the buyers or if they if they will if they buy in and trust you they're much more likely to take a bet and to take a risk and you know we always we always kind of came to our storytelling approach through a lens of three different opportunities I think brands have the opportunity to tell a founder story to tell a traction story or an undeniable competitive advantage story and to most people probably maybe there's a mix most people probably don't have an undeniable competitive advantage.

12:46Charlie Siciak:A founder story, I think I would give an example. If you just had a newborn child and they had eczema and none of the products were working, but you were convinced and dedicated to finding a solution and you found and you created an ointment, that's like an awesome founder story. That's really sticky, has an an emotional basis. And then the traction stories, you know, always everyone has an opportunity to deliver a traction story if they build the brand appropriately. And so I think anchoring in either traction story or founder story or undeniable competitive advantage and knowing your lane helps keep the story clean and strong from the onset.

13:26Sam Nebel:I love how you just broke that down. That was also very tangible for a founder who's listening and taking notes of seeing how they can break that down and apply it to their own brand. I really love how you just broke that down. I was just on a call with a client. I'm going to send this interview to her because we were just talking about that. So this is like all very perfect timing. So cut to, I should say, 2025. You've been building since 2014. what has really shifted in maybe your marketing or how you've been building the brand or growing in retail or still online? I would love to hear what today looks like.

14:09Sure.

14:11Charlie Siciak:I'm going to give you things that we're excited about, but also kind of how we, how we got here.

14:16Sam Nebel:Yeah, please.

14:17Charlie Siciak:Right. So I think, because I think what we're excited about is, is, is can still be distracting and is distracting for companies no matter their size. You're going to see much larger cultural participation and cultural events from us next year. Kind of like fewer, deeper, bolder and everything that we do. A lot more top of funnel to drive brand fame and awareness. Many more partnerships and collabs to give folks something to talk about things that are interesting. So These are brand collabs where we're borrowing flavor profiles and audiences to kind of bring in and share brand equity, to bring in and share trust, and to bring in and share distribution.

15:03Charlie Siciak:So a lot of that is on the horizon for us. And we try to do that with brands that are equally yoked or a little bit larger than us. And I think because our category is new and growing and we're leading the charge from a growth perspective, we're also able to bring, if we partner with a company larger than us, we get to really kind of tap into their brand equity and reach. But because of who we are in our category, we get to bring some placement and distribution opportunity with that. And so that's something that we're super excited about. I think the more and more we, the further we go and the more we build, the more fascinated I am on just kind of banging on the basics.

15:43Charlie Siciak:And, you know, not, neither Sam or I are classically CPG trained or classically trained marketers. and but you know you hear early on about the four p's of marketing and i think as from an on as an entrepreneur for me and for sam you know a lot of it was more how do we just how do we cut through the clutter how do we how are we do we become interesting to give some somebody something to think about but there's so many building blocks that are more important and part of marketing that I don't think you consider as part of marketing from the beginning, right? I think if you're new to this, when you think marketing, you're thinking design and you're thinking advertising.

16:27Charlie Siciak:You're not thinking, right, product. You're not thinking price points. You're not thinking distribution. And then finally, kind of this fame, promotion, advertising pillar. And when I think about our success, we bootstrapped for the first five years. And so you can imagine... first five years yeah we had we were obviously we had a bunch of credit card dad right right yeah and so in the in that you know you're not it's it's boots on the ground it's it's word of mouth and it's a lot of IRL and activation events and right um but you know we always looked at packaging as our, our number one means of marketing.

17:12Charlie Siciak:And I think we were able to do that and win with a limited budget early because we focus on product. Sam has IBS, I have sensitive skin. We were, you know, we were solving for this white space that we saw in the category, but we also knew and believed that there was a lot to be desired on the product that we were using on our bodies. And so when we look at our retention rate, when we look at loyalty, when we look at our growth in the category, we're leading those KPIs in most retailers that we're playing in. And those are the kind of the lead indicators that prove to us that we have a product that people appreciate.

17:50Charlie Siciak:And so since we have a product that people appreciate, we know we can make an effort to get it placed in more places and we can put money behind it to get it in new households. And then I think oftentimes early on, people stumble around price and you need to make sure that you have a price point that the market will respond well to, but also a price point that helps fund the economics of the business. And I think early on, people are afraid to charge the right price and they're convinced that they'll find an economy is a scale in their manufacturing. And I think, I don't know if there's a statistic around this, But a lot of these things fail because people lose runway because they can't continue to raise money.

18:36Charlie Siciak:But they need to raise money because they don't have the economics from a margin perspective to keep it running. So I think it's going back to the basics, right? You got to nail the product so that when you're trading dollars for trial, that trial then leads into retention and loyalty, right? You have to have a price point that people are willing to continue to pay and is worth the value that you're bringing through the product. And you have to get a place in the right places. You have to get a place where people are actually shopping your category. We didn't know. We didn't have access to any syndicated data when we started.

19:09Charlie Siciak:We just thought any outlet was a good outlet. And then we started really looking at the data and looking at shopper frequency for different channels. And that's what kind of helped us focus on our distribution or sharpen our distribution strategy. And then you finally get to really, really smart promotion and trade programming. And yeah, a lot of that for us is, I think it starts off as an extension of the founding team. And Sam and I, we try not to take ourselves too seriously. We like to be approachable. We like to be cheeky. We like to be honest and funny and ultimately just make people feel good and put a smile on their face.