Many Thanks

0:00Nicole Krasnow Smith: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.

0:42Nicole Krasnow Smith: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.

1:35Nicole Krasnow Smith: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. Today I have one of my favorite people in CPG on the podcast. She is someone who I bring into my clients' brand strategies. I admire her work of picking out the coolest new emerging brands. She has helped over 350 emerging brands get into retail. Nicole Krasno-Smith is here. She is the founder of Many Thanks. And Nicole, I'm so happy to have you on the podcast.

2:29Thank you so much. That was such a nice intro, Callie. Thank you for having me on.

2:33Nicole Krasnow Smith:You're so welcome. And it really is true. I love talking shop with you. And I love, I really love your point of view and how you look at things from a retail positioning, from a consumer, from a retailer, looking at packaging, messaging, pack claims, like the way your brain works is so cool. And the way that you're able to like get that very instinctual hit on a brand is really impressive to say. Thank you. I appreciate that. I attribute that because I feel that I am the consumer a lot of the times. I have always tried to find the new healthy product for myself before even bringing it into retail or working with them.

3:23So there is a bit of like, would this speak to me? Of course, I'm not the consumer for everything. And it's something that I tell brands, like not everything is for everybody, but there is just a little bit of gut instinct to it, whether that's a science or not. Right. You know, either it resonates or it's connecting and I get it or it doesn't. And so, you know, I think where you and I work together is figuring out when that, when it doesn't connect, well, why? Right.

3:49Nicole Krasnow Smith:And we have a lot of conversations about that. Yeah, because at that point, it's not even about taste or whatever. I haven't tried the product. I'm literally just looking at it and I don't want to buy it. Why? Why? So solving that why is what's fun to me because I don't think there's the same answer for every brand. Correct. And that's what makes our work really interesting because every brand is so different. Totally. Okay. So before I nerd out with you too much on what you do, I would love if we could take a step back and talk about how you've built your career in CPG. Can you give us the overview of how you've come to this point now?

4:31Yeah. So out of college, I, like many 22 year olds, had no sense of anything or what I wanted to do. I saw an ad for a zero sugar beverage online and was like, oh, me being the consumer, I would buy that. Go to their website, see their hiring in New York. I just, I wanted to get to New York. I read the description and it was for sales and in New York city. And I felt like, yeah, I've never like officially sold anything, but I think I can be whatever I can do this. So I interviewed there, got the job and was at a startup beverage company for about a year and a half, like team of 10 really early days opened the New York market.

5:13So at the time that meant me taking these new cans into bodegas, into grocery stores, finding the buyer, finding the person, selling it on the shelf, but then supporting it. So demos and reorders and working with the marketing team. And it was such an influential and impactful experience for me. I had no concept of the CPG industry until this job. So like, I am forever grateful to Swoon. That was the brand. I am still in touch with many of my old coworkers. And it really gave me a glimpse that this is an industry and this is something you can do is work in food and beverage. I had no concept of it.

5:54Nicole Krasnow Smith:And what a great way to start by literally boots on the ground. Totally. Going in New York City. In New York. You went all in. Yeah, but it was like, that's how I am though. Right. I like to just do and figure it out. And, you know, so now, you know, I'll speak to where I am now, but working with brands who don't have a lot of money or are scrappy, I'm like, yeah, I get it. I know what it means to walk five miles a day selling your product into store. I get it. From there, I bounced around a little bit. I actually thought I wanted to go be a nutritionist. It took a semester at NYU, reminded myself I don't like being a student and sort of pivoted into the influencer marketing world a little bit.

6:39Was it totally for me, but learned a lot in terms of deliverables and communication style and organization. So while they weren't hard skills that I took into, you know, going back into CPG, I think it made me a better employee and a better worker in these types of things. And then almost four years ago, I joined Pop-Up Grocer. And I had, when I was at Swoon, we participated in the first ever Pop-Up Grocer. And of course, as a grocery food obsessed girl, I just remember thinking like, this is the coolest thing I've ever seen. I had friends visiting me in New York at a town. I brought them to the pop-up on Bleaker Street, or not Bleaker, down the Lower East Side, and was just obsessed with it.

7:25And so I had, you know, added my founder, the boss, on LinkedIn and kind of just had it in my periphery, I guess. And so when this job opening came up, it felt like such a match for me. And it was like, do you like finding new things? Can you do sales? Can you work with people? And I was like, yeah, that's me. So I worked really hard and trying to get that job and convincing them I was the right one for it. And I started there, I think, 22, May of 22. And I've been, yeah, I've been there almost four years. And so where I am currently the senior manager of brand partnerships, where I source and find every brand that comes on to our shelves.

8:11So that's around 80 new brands every quarter. I also manage larger partnerships, events, cafe integrations, some of the marketing, but I love it. It's been a dream job. It's a lot of fun. I get to see so many cool brands. And in the last few months, I felt a creative itch to work with brands a little bit more intimately on the side. I wanted to maintain my full-time job, but I felt that I had the capacity now not living in New York to spend some of my time. And so I created many things consulting where I can advise brands on specifics that I think people are not always the most honest about, or they learn a little bit too late.

8:58So this is specifically packaging, positioning, and partnership strategies. So I see a lot of bad packaging sometimes, and it's not my place to tell them. And so I wanted to create a place where you could tell somebody.

9:09Nicole Krasnow Smith:Well, and this is what I appreciate about you so much is that you have the experience, you see it from so many different perspectives. And now you're able to help those founders before they get further down the line and they're approaching the pop-up grocer, You know, the retailers that they dream of being in, but their packaging, their positioning and how they're building just doesn't align. And now you're helping them avoid that issue. you. Absolutely. And that was something I saw a lot of times was brands launching and a year in saying, we're doing a total brand refresh. And like, listen, that happens a lot of times and it's not a huge deal, but I know that for many finances are not, they don't have, they don't have so much funding.

10:06And so the more we can do to set them up for success early on, like there's always going to be tweaks in packaging. There might be some short, there's always tweaks, But like if you look at Poppy, they originally were in glass bottles as mother kombucha, had a total pivot into the cans and Poppy. It has pretty much stayed the same. You know, they've had small iterations and small. But when they launched with their cans, that look has been pretty consistent. And so not going into retail with the glass bottles. I actually don't know if they did or didn't. But like my point is making that pivot early into what stood out is why they sold for a billion dollars.

10:49Nicole Krasnow Smith:Right. A thousand percent. I think Poppy is a great example of doing things early on so that you can be in the right position for that growth, whatever that looks like for you. You can tweak and you can change colors and, you know, you do something similar. But when you put yourself out there and are starting to build awareness and consumers are saying, okay, this is what this looks like, to totally 180 it and say, actually, I know you are used to this, but now you look like this. you are so relying on customer loyalty and that people really love your product. And I think unless you are like a star brand that is just selling out and it doesn't really matter what you do, I think it can really hurt you to totally change the way you look.

11:38You know, if you are not the exception, you then have to reintroduce yourself in my opinion. A thousand percent.

11:46Nicole Krasnow Smith:And this is why I align with you so much. And also in the work that I do, why I've doubled down in working with brands pre-launch is 15 years plus working with founders, building consumer brands. There were so many roadblocks after the first couple of months or at launch a year after, five years later, because they didn't think through some really critical things early on. And this, again, why I love bringing you on to brand strategy client projects is that you're able to call things out so early on. So they have such a better foundation to build from. Yeah. And that's what I, you know, I've had such a fun time working with you because it is, you know, a lot of the suggestions I make or the edits I suggest are not necessarily so front of mind.

12:47They're little tweaks of like font doesn't make sense here or this is busy. And again, it's sort of a gut instinct thing. I am reviewing packaging all day long and I can see a packaging and I'm like, yep, looks great. And there's things I see where I'm like, nah, immediately, like I don't like how that looks. It's not going to work on shelf. and I am a champion and cheerleader as are you for these brands, whether I'm working with them or not. I want everyone to succeed. So whether you take the feedback or not, I feel that if you are coming to me and or you looking for this feedback, I want to give it in a direct but warm way that I see some things that can be tweaked and I think it will set you up for success a little bit later versus rushing into a D2C launch or retail when it's just not that good.

13:36And then you've sunk in thousands and thousands of dollars and hours. Like, I want you to succeed. I know how competitive it is. And you're going up against people with massive funding and resources. So help yourself while you can.

13:54Nicole Krasnow Smith:Yeah, not everyone has that. We all want that. Totally. And that's a great point. So I would love if you could break down your specialty and how you consult with brands. You mentioned positioning, packaging, partnerships. Yep. Can you break those down and just give people a good sense of what exactly that looks like and also how you work with founders? Yes. I'll start with packaging. I would say that this is really a full review of your packaging and notes and suggestions and reasoning on the specific edit. So if you are, you know, a bag of chips and you send me round one, I will come up, whether it's, you know, it needs edits or not, I'm going to provide a pretty thorough feedback and explanation for why or why not things should be changed.

14:46And this is coming from the retail perspective of how is it going to look on shelf? How is it going to communicate? Um, we can work with your graphic designer. I am not a graphic designer, so we can sit with them to speak through why I think these changes should be made, what I would love to see in different fonts, different colors. Sometimes it, all it takes is like a different font and things are much more digestible. Um, when it comes to positioning, it's who are you sitting next to? Why are you sitting next to them? What are your claims? What is different about you? Um, you know, I am not a parent, but I think a lot of parents see their kids quite blindly and love them so much.

15:25And I think that founders understandably sometimes have that as well of like, this is my baby. This is the thing as you should. However, I do think that you sometimes need to take a step back and look at your competition. Why are you competing with them? How are you competing with them? And so I come in to ask those questions and make sure you have the answers. And it kind of does go hand in hand with the packaging. So if you are, you know, setting yourself apart because you're vegan, that needs to be really clear that your differentiator is that you are animal free. And whatever your claim is, I think it's important kind of understanding what the right demographic is to speak to.

16:06We've had clients where we have leaned into certain call outs and ignored others. And it's just thinking about the category as a whole. So if there's a really popular dairy-free competitor, you don't need to be a dairy-free brand then. And so it's very dependent on what your type of product is. But I think it's helpful, in my opinion, to have some outside feedback on your positioning so that you can nail it when you go into retail and know where you should sit and know who you want to sit next to. And finally, partnership strategy is providing ideas and suggestions and introductions to get your product seen, which to me is sort of that marriage between marketing and sales.

16:51So whether that's, you know, a cafe collaboration, a menu, you know, getting on menu, whether that's partnering with other brands and events, just kind of, it's just, that's like probably the most fun part to me is thinking about amplifying a brand beyond the shelf. And so all of these are sessions where we kind of just talk through things and provide the ideas and provide the insights. And yeah, that's sort of the big picture of what I've been doing with brands.

17:21Nicole Krasnow Smith:Which, again, I could say from an inside point of view, it's been such a game changer to have your perspective on clients. It really has. And I could speak from now, I think we have like 10 shared clients plus now, like our roster is getting pretty good. And I actually have a meeting with you tomorrow on a new client that I'm going to be sharing with you and getting your feedback. But again, I see how you work and operate. And it's such a value add early on. So I know that so many founders who are in the early, early days are listening to this podcast. And that's why I really wanted you to break that down.

18:09Nicole Krasnow Smith:Because again, if you could get this foundation work done sooner than later, it's going to save you so much time, money, resources. And you get those yeses from retailers, your dream retailers, with so much more ease than try again next time. Totally. And I think that beyond us, any retailer is going to look at your packaging and think about how it sells. they're taking a risk on you and a risk in their shelf space. So nailing that aspect is so crucial to putting yourself out there. So yeah, I mean, even if it's like a one-off, I work with brands for just 30 minutes here and there. It doesn't mean you're signing a contract with me.

18:57It's just, hey, here's my packaging. What do you think? And I think 30 minutes, we can get a lot done.

19:02Nicole Krasnow Smith:Oh, I've seen it. I've seen you in 30 minutes get it done. I also try to be accessible in terms of my costs because I do very much understand that there are costs everywhere. And I want to be accessible to emerging brands who don't have a lot to spend. And so I try to be as accessible and low cost as possible. No, you're definitely nailing that. and something that you mentioned about retailers from a retail point of view, that they are taking a risk on you. They're taking a risk on your shelf. What piece of advice, I'm sure you have a lot of advice and I've heard a lot of your advice now, but to help founders, again, not have those common mistakes happen early on, Is there anything that you really want to emphasize and reiterate to founders in these really early days when getting ready to approach a retailer?

20:05I think that feedback from people you don't know is the most important. And so, you know, your friends and family love you. So they're going to tell you that it looks great. It tastes great. You're going to nail it. I hope that you do, but sometimes you do need some outside feedback. And that doesn't mean you need to pay one of us, set up a sampling or join a community event and demo. I think that getting early feedback on taste and packaging are probably number one and two. If you nail the packaging and they try it and it doesn't taste good, you've probably lost them as a customer and are going to have a really hard time convincing them to try again.

20:49um so taste is totally subjective but my suggestion would be really to to sample and get out there before you enter retail um know that people like it know that people are interested in it um and and show up in your community with with your product to make sure that people will want to buy it once it's available i think that there are many brands i'm going to shout out sour milk and Cotto who have done such an incredible job getting out there and getting their product into people's hands before retail. I know Sour Milk is now in retail. I know Cotto will be, but they both showed up with their product and allowed people to taste it, allowed their brands to get out there, are building in public.

21:36And so by the time that they launch into retail, they're selling out. Sour Milk is selling out daily because they drove such demand through their events and their sampling and their social that once available, it flew. And so, you know, I have not tried their product yet. I bet that it's great. It is good. I'm sure that it is. Had they just launched and never gotten any feedback, it could have been the same reaction, but they really secure their customers. And then we're able to go into retail and say, we know these people are going to come by it. And they did. I think Kendall with Cata will have a very similar experience when she launches into retail, she has people showing up for her product.

22:17They have tasted it. If she's needed to make any changes, she did. I don't think she does because that product's delicious. So good. But, but that's, I know this is sort of a long winded answer, but that's sort of my general advice. It's like, get yourself out there, get your product out there, have people tasting it. Are they coming back for more?

22:34Nicole Krasnow Smith:Right. If they're not, don't go sell it into retail because that same person isn't going to come back for more. That's such a good point. And shout out to Sour Milk. Kiki has been on the podcast. I think she's doing an incredible job. And Kato, Kendall is a client of mine. She is so great. And I've brought you on to that for feedback too. And I could just say behind the scenes of just seeing her and how she's approaching her brand and how she's building in public. She is absolutely honing in on what makes her brand different. and unique in driving traffic. Like she has been doing a great job. She is.

23:16And I can't wait for her to launch into retail. It's going to go around.

23:19Nicole Krasnow Smith:Like I feel very confident in her success. I agree. When someone is, again, in these early days, when is a good time to reach out to you, to work with you? Yeah. If you are working on your packaging right now or have questions on packaging, I can definitely help you there. I would say if you are in retail and have launched and would like to work together on some partnerships ideas, that would be another place. I, like Kelly, work pretty exclusively with emerging brands. So I think pre-launch is probably the best bet so that we can work together on packaging and positioning before you've launched.

23:55But if you want to work together and you've launched and to come up with some ideas of amplifying the brand, we can certainly work together.

24:03Nicole Krasnow Smith:Amazing. And thank you again for all your work with clients. And I just love the fact that now I can bring you into client brand strategies. And I love the way you work. And I highly recommend any emerging brand to work with Nicole. She is incredible and so knowledgeable. And just thank you again for sharing all of your insights. I really appreciate it. Absolutely. Thank you. You're welcome. Thank you, everyone, for listening. I will connect you with Nicole in the show notes. Thank you so much. And I'll see you on the next episode. Bye. This podcast is brought to you by Hummingbirds. Hummingbirds is the go-to platform built for creator-powered retail activations.

24:52Nicole Krasnow Smith:They are 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 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. Founders are always incredibly excited to see their products on shelves at major retail chains, but they don't realize all the hard work that starts to begin.