From Her Parents' Garage to Seven Figures Selling Chic Lunch Boxes: Ali Kaminetsky, Modern Picnic

0:00Hey, business besties. Welcome back to the Female Founder World Podcast. I'm Jasmine. I'm the host of the show and the creator of the Female Founder World universe. Today, I'm chatting with Ali Kamenetsky. She's the founder of Modern Picnic. Ali, welcome to Female Founder World. You are now entering Female Founder World with your host, Jasmine Garnsworthy. Thank you so much. I'm so excited to be here. For people that don't know Modern Picnic, what are you building? We are building the first to market insulated vegan leather lunchbox company catered towards women. Okay. So you're building basically very chic lunchboxes.

0:32Very chic lunchboxes. And if you're watching this on YouTube, you can actually see a couple of the products in the front of us here. I've got them on camera and also in the Apple podcast app. You can actually watch the video there because I feel like you need to see it to really understand what it is that you've created. Because when you say lunchbox, you don't think about these beautiful like vegan leather products. Childish, little kid, you know, jinky lunchboxes that we're used to. So you started business in 2016 you had just graduated college right how did the idea come about yeah so we launched in 2018 i graduated from college in 2016 and moved to new york city was working in the fashion industry i was working at macy's doing vine for them and from like the first vine buying i used to love vine no no not not vine i was doing buying for them and i was bringing my lunch to work every day just because especially as a recent graduate living in the city doing so so much faster cheaper and healthier plus all the girls in my office are doing this i was like okay i have to start doing this too but when i went online to buy myself a lunchbox i saw so many options for little kids so many options for men but none for women who wanted to look good or do good so given the options on the market from there the idea to start modern picnic was born but i was only 22 i graduated like a week prior and so it took me two years from like idea in my head to actually launching in May of 2018.

2:02Amazing. And I was working at the time so. And you launched, you were fully bootstrapped, you didn't have any investor funding, were you just putting in the money from that you were earning from Macy's into building the business? Exactly and we were able like there was not a lot of spend like the spend was really on product development and those kind of like first step legal formalities like getting formation and so was really scrappy and when we launched quote-unquote launched really just like made the Instagram public and kind of like took it from there. Incredible and like you said you started with zero dollar marketing spend so what was it that was kind of driving traction in the business because I feel like you immediately kind of like looked bigger than you were which I think is kind of the goal for a lot of us.

2:49And I think that's just like the name of the game. Even now people are like, oh, look, how big is the team? I'm like, oh, no, no, no. We are tiny, tiny, tiny. Fake it till you make it. But yeah, so our strategy in the beginning was press. Yeah. Reason for that was I was creating a new category. Before Modern Picnic, there was no chic lunchbox on the market. Lunchbox, it had kind of like a negative childish connotation. And so I knew if I was going to get my girl to carry a lunchbox, somebody was going to have to say it's cool it would have to you know she'd go to Vogue and Vogue would have to give it the stamp of approval we'd have to get that social validation elsewhere and at the time in 2018 that was through press now you know there's like influencers there's TikTok it was just a little different back then and so I went straight to like the media and what I did because we didn't have a PR firm or anything like that I just would google like any and all article like best lunch boxes for women best work bags for women best vegan leather products um female founded companies you should look out for etc etc and I'd find the editor find her Instagram handle and I just DM her and tell her like a little blurb about the story and then I would connect with her on email and then kind of go from there and so we got written up our first year of launching in Cosmo real simple Vogue um countless others I think we had like over 20 press hits our first year of launch we launched in May and to date we've been in the media over 400 times um so that's was definitely our strategy in the beginning and still is I'd love to hear from someone who um you know you're really scrappy and you did it all yourself in the beginning this is something that we chat about in the female founder world group chat all the time about how to DIY press because it's kind of uh it's one of those things where that it is really relationship driven but I think that if you have a good story and if your product is different then you're going to be able to cut through like it's just I think people who are like hitting that brick wall you need to either find someone who has the relationship who can kind of like get you in or maybe your product isn't differentiated enough or you're not explaining what's different about it like clearly enough you have to and this goes for like everything whoever you're pitching whether that's an investor or an editor or an advisor that you're trying to bring on, you need to make it easy for them and hand it to them.

5:12You don't want them to have to do any work for you. And so when I would be really intentional with my outreach and cater it towards and link to an article they had previously written about. And now, you know, there's like short lead, there's long lead, and we make sure I'm pitching to relevant stories and talking to the product in a way that they would want to hear about it. And slicing and dicing. I think the reason Modern Picnic has been successful in the press is there's a lot of ways to talk to it, whether that's the healthy eating component, the sustainability component, the kind of first of its kind component, fashion focus, function focus, female founded focus, like whatever it kind of is.

5:50There's a big, you know, new mom's market, health and fitness, etc. So there's a lot of ways to kind of talk to it in the media. But did you kind of like sit down in the beginning and think about like, okay, what are all of those, like what you just listed out? Was that something that you intentionally did in the beginning? Or were you just kind of like seeing what was hitting and then doubling down? Definitely not. Like in the beginning, like you, we have to understand I was 22. Like I'm so naive. I was walking to work every day and was like, I need this product for myself. It was very insular.

6:24It was like, I need this and I know my girlfriends need this. And so I'm going to do it. And I think there was this like naivete about being so young and that I was just kind of like going with it. And I really was like, I have nothing to lose and everything to gain. What's the worst that can happen? Me and my girlfriends need this. well that was very you know short-sighted small-minded that thinking just for me and my friends because once we launched and I started seeing you know people coming forward like wow I have an allergy and this is really great for me or I'm a vegan this is great I'm a new mom all of the different kind of markets I was like wow this is this is great this is bigger than I thought and there's really a lot of ways for us to talk to this you were shipping from your parents garage at the time which like relatable PTSD for my parents and for me but for my parents mostly what were some of the lessons that you had from that time as you were kind of trying to get all those pieces in place and kind of professionalize your process with working with your manufacturers and shipping and all of that like nitty-gritty stuff that you need to get nailed before you can properly scale oh my god I mean it was a crazy time but I don't regret it at all because I learned so much I was doing the pick pack shit I was a 3pl it's like kind of crazy some of these stories like we were doing over a million dollars at one point shipping out of my parents' garage at that point it didn't make sense at that point it was almost like this is poor business decision like you you have to move out we had totally outgrown the space to say the least and we were i mean there's so many stories underneath that of like how we kind of did that but in the beginning it made a lot of sense yeah three pls are incredibly expensive they are expensive and it's so important when you're start i mean starting and no matter what stage to really have an understanding of the product and pick pack and the process of just the whole supply chain process.

8:30And so I was able to get really in tune with that and learn and understand and understand like why were products coming back? Why were we were also able to have excellent customer service because of it. We still try to have excellent high touch customer service, but you know, there's, there's only so much you can do. But for instance, like if I would mess up an order the next order you know I'd send them something with a handwritten note from me and like it's not scalable but it was like these little high touch interactions that we had in the beginning that I think really paid dividends because you know they're lifelong customers.

9:06I think there's something really to be said for like you like you just mentioned being in it so much in the early days because when you go to a 3PL like if you've been shipping yourself up until a million in revenue or whatever maybe not quite that much but you understand exactly what's working in terms of your processes you know what questions to ask and like going to a 3PL you have to go in physically visit the space I think and ask all of the questions about their standard operating procedures how they handle returns and then compare it with what you know works otherwise like some of these 3PLs can truly make or break a business a hundred percent and I mean like we're kind of seeing this now like we're we've been with our 3pl for a couple of years now and like it might be time to move on and like yeah understanding your process is so key because otherwise like you said like how do you know what questions to ask i was able to train them on the process and then also learn from them of ways we can you know actually operationalize and streamline the process but um i think there's just so many learnings to be had with customer service pickpad the whole thing working with our suppliers um so it was crazy it was a crazy time but I don't regret it at all I know that you also had a really big lesson with the way that you worked with your factory tell me about what happened oh my god so in the beginning when I thought of the idea for Modern Picnic I immediately got to work like that day I like scurried home to my apartment with like a bunch of roommates and I thought of the name for Modern Picnic that day and I actually wanted an urban picnic but urban picnic was taken so I was like okay modern picnic will do which I'm so happy because it's a better name anyways and that day I got the domain and got all of our social handles there's no tiktok at the time but I got like pinterest instagram twitter and I bought our domain and I immediately kind of got to work and everything felt very tangible and within reach to learn except for manufacturing yeah felt literally and figuratively far off I have no design experience no manufacturing experience like I had no idea how to begin the process everything else like graphic design legal I was like I don't know this but like I know someone who's a lawyer or I can watch a graphic design video or I can kind of figure it out manufacturing not so much so I ended up going through a broker in the beginning which pros and cons um it ended up not being the right fit broker because it's just I'll go through kind of like the pros and cons of that the pro was like I had no relationship to any kind of factory even if I was able to find a factory we hadn't even launched yet we were two years out from launching so I don't know why they would take us seriously I didn't speak the language not just the actual language but also the manufacturing product development language and for those reasons I went through a um a broker the cons of that is I was working through someone and I wasn't his only client and all of a sudden I had zero to no visibility to our supply chain to our factory because they own those relationships they own the relationship why would he tell me so I it was kind of crazy for the first like two plus years of business.

12:26I never emailed with our factory. Yeah. Okay. In the beginning, it worked. It was okay, because it gave us a chance to get started and learn about everything. But there was a certain point we started raising capital. And we started really scaling. And I was like, I, there's no way I can like do this and not have visibility. Yeah, huge risk. Totally. Oh, my God. I was like, so this isn't going to work. And at that point, we had enough leverage to be able to go straight to a factory and kind of establish our own relationships and start over in that regard. But it was definitely like the thing that kept me up at night the most those like first two years of business amongst other things.

13:05But just like the fact that I had no idea what was going on. Oh my goodness. Okay. That's such a good learning there. In 2019, you launched an ambassador program. Now there's like nearly a thousand women in there. First of all, what is your ambassador program? Like how is it structured? That's what I want to know. And then also how does that actually impact the bottom line? Like does it actually lead to sales? What's the goal there? And then how did you get it started? Lots of questions there. Yeah. So our ambassador program, I definitely credit Michelle Grant for this. Yes, who's the founder of Lively and Gorgie.

13:38Been on the show several times. We love her. Amazing, love her. So Lively had an incredible ambassador program at the time. I think they still do. And so I learned a lot from her. but in 2018 we launched this program really just because people were asking us for us these young women were asking if we had an ambassador program and so at the time there wasn't that many ambassador programs out there like it's kind of crazy like hbo had like a college ambassador program rent the runway had an ambassador program but there wasn't it wasn't the norm different time and so So our ambassador program is not, there's no ROI attached to the program.

14:16We put$0 into acquiring ambassadors. It's completely community driven. I think the real big lesson with the ambassador program is to have that steady flow of communication with them. It's not enough to just send out one email blast a month and just keep them engaged that way. So basically, I'll back up and explain how our ambassador program works. So you go online, you fill out a really brief application. once you're accepted. So before we used to do our ambassador programs, basically you're joined into the community. For us, that's a WhatsApp group and a Facebook group. Okay, you've got like an actual like closed online space.

14:53Yes. And so when you get accepted into our ambassador program, you get invited to events, activations. We just did a photo shoot like with our products and the women can come and they didn't even need to use Modern Picnic if they just wanted to get a headshot. That was totally cool. They find about new product launches first, they get early access And we just have these kind of like meetups and events. So it used to be they would also get a discount code. And the more they sold with their discount code, we give them these milestone prizes. And I think this is an important lesson of just listening to the community and evolving.

15:30A couple years ago, that model worked. Now, anybody, regardless of kind of size, is an influencer in some way, shape or form in their own right. and people want to earn money. And so we used to give these prizes and we'd work with brands. Like we had a partnership with Swell, for instance. And if they hit X number of sales, like they'd get like a branded Swell bottle and the prizes would get like larger the more they sold. Recently, I mean, a year and a half ago-ish, we switched the model to a commission structure. So now when they sell, they get a commission. So it's kind of like an affiliate ambassador.

16:08It's an affiliate program with a bit more love behind it. Very cool. Do you use a certain platform or something to manage all of this? For people who are like, oh, I'm going to do this. Yeah, we use Buzzbassador. Buzzbassador. Yeah, and I met them at a conference. And their platform is just easy to use, was affordable for the brand side. And yeah, it's been good so far. It's still fairly new that we've switched over. But I think the girls are happy. Okay, love it. And then let's move forward. 2020, so you're a couple of years into business. talk me through what was happening that year so it was in 2020 that I knew we were getting like the garage just wasn't working anymore you need to get out of mom and dad's house I had to get out of mom and dad's house like immediately and I was like okay and I really just needed to like operationalize like yeah even like just on the back end ops like I was paying contractors via like Venmo like I need to get on Gusto like it was time for me to kind of like level up a little like it wasn't working anymore and so I was like okay I need to like money to move to 3PL and like I think it's time for me to raise my first round of capital and so for me I was like what does that mean and you've done like a million in revenue by this point yeah we had like we were doubling and tripling every year like we were like it was time for us to like get serious yeah so I was like by other people ally you have to go raise capital i was like okay great like how do i do that what does that mean like i know i didn't even know like the definitions yeah i didn't know like angel investor vc what's the safe what's the convertible i really i had no idea so what i did was and this is just like and i told actually i at uh michelle's event that we were both at i saw rebecca minkoff and i told her i was like your program literally changed my life so in 2020 Rebecca Minkoff in partnership and Allie Wyatt in partnership with UBS launched this accelerator program called Project Entrepreneur.

18:10Yep. Oh my gosh I remember being part of like I wasn't in the program but I was like part of the community and got all the emails and what happened to that? They stopped doing it. I was just so sad but for the listeners Project Entrepreneur was an accelerator program catered towards female founders ready to raise and scale And I was like, that's me. I was like, perfect. That's me. So I applied for the program. And in the program, it was just amazing because you learned the foundation of raising capital, the etiquette of raising capital, the definitions, the process. Like, I didn't know anything.

18:48And so it was such a great program, not just from, like, the community and networking aspect, but also just, like, the education that I needed. Like, I really needed to be educated on everything. so it was also during COVID and so it's like really nice to have like you know something to look forward to like that so when I graduated from the program I was like okay I know how to do this now I need to actually go out and do it and so we ended up raising it at that point it was now turning into 2021 ended up raising kind of like a pre-seed and it was a very much of a hodgepodge round because it was our first time raising capital so we had friends and family in the round we had high profile angel investors in the round like michelle and then we also had one bc so it was just kind of like a hodgepodge yeah but we're able to raise a little bit of capital and that allowed us to move to 3pl and really like operationalize yeah and also allowed us to triple the business um which was great so i was like okay now we're moving and grooving where are you at now in terms of revenue can you say or is that a secret triple of revenue like in my head I'm doing the math of, okay, you're at a million.

19:53Like we're a seven figure brand. Amazing. Yeah. Okay, cool. Yeah. And I'm very curious about when you quit that Macy's job. In the back of my head, I'm like, okay, when did that? When did you decide that this was your full time thing? Yeah. So I got really lucky in that Macy's. Maybe I shouldn't say that. Say it. It's been enough time. um macy's put you through a an incredible training program yeah and we would like go to class the first couple months and like it would be like four o 'clock and the class would be over and like we didn't have a desk we didn't have a team at the time so they'd be like okay you guys could like go now bye and so i'd be like okay so i was able to like you had time i had time yeah and then even once I got placed at my desk, like we were so bottom of the totem pole, like assistant, we didn't even have a laptop or to take home, we didn't have a phone to take home.

20:50So when I'd leave at like five, it was I'd have the whole day. And so I was really lucky in that I had like that before work, the after work weekends to really work on modern picnic, like a lot of different career, different careers like that are more, you know, demanding, at least in the beginning, like I wouldn't have had the luxury to be able to work on modern picnic day in day out like I did so I was working on modern picnic oh sorry I was working on Macy's for two years while I was working at uh so you're getting close to that million in revenue mark oh no before we launched oh 2016 to 2018 sorry yeah so and it was it was crazy like I would like during my lunch week like run to like go look at like um like materials that like for samples and things like that because we were kind in the garment district and then like one month before two months before launching so in like february i uh quit my job reason being was with macy's you were not allowed in your contract to be a chief officer of any other company yeah and even though my company hadn't launched yet i was technically by the formation docs the chief officer my mom's a lawyer i was like I didn't want to get in trouble with Macy's and so I was like let me just you know I have nothing to lose everything to gain let me just give this a go and it was really scary because I'd worked really hard to get that job I'd gotten the internship that led to the job offer Macy's is an incredible company there was a really clear growth trajectory that if you work hard there was a steady kind of path to rise up and I liked it but I like Modern Picnic more yeah I was like I'm going to just give this a go nothing to lose everything to gain like what's the worst that can happen I'll get another job yeah if this doesn't work yeah good for you now I know that wholesale is kind of a bigger part of your focus when did that start becoming part of the business yeah so we started as a d2c brand in an effort to prove the concept yeah build our brand equity first and also tighten up our supply chain back to the garage like even if we had the opportunity to go into retail wholesale like we wouldn't have been able to operationally execute we don't have edi in the garage so anyways um also for people that don't know what's edi oh electronic uh what does edi say wait a second it's basically how orders uh transmit from like uh the retailer to the oh my god that's horrible i'm like wait what does edi stand for i don't know what it stands for but it means it basically means it's like the communication system basically yeah like when you're trying to do wholesale yes you need it you need um so anyways yeah we wanted to do some things before you know we needed to build the brand equity we needed to tighten up and so then in 2023 really last year i was like okay it's like time let me start like focusing on this and actually you know start going to trade shows which is a whole other conversation start really outreaching and start focusing on wholesale expansion and so last year we launched with Saks, Saks Off Fifth, the Container Store.

23:57We got up on like a handful of boutiques around the country. And we're launching with Bloomingdale's in the next couple of weeks. We actually, the holdup is some last minute EDI integration, but we're ready to launch with them. So it's been really, yeah. That's so exciting. Did you, so you're doing a mix of like those mass retailers and the like independent boutiques as well. I always find that really interesting. How did you, so you said trade shows before is that the main way that the bigger guys found you the smaller guys found you like how did how what was your outreach and what was your inbound like our trade shows so our trade shows were mostly for like boutiques yeah i'm actually going to chicago next week for the first time to the inspired home show uh-huh um so giving it a go the trade shows are i feel stressful as because they're really expensive yeah and there's no way to guarantee Guarantee.

24:51Nothing in life is guaranteed. But with like, you know, marketing, you can you have data behind it and you have case studies and you know that this is a calculated risk. Whereas a trade show, you can't control who's going to come and who's going to come by your booth. But anyways, doing so mindfully because they're very expensive. But it's been a mix of outbound and inbound. um yeah I would say it's like a half and half mix of us reaching out and then also them reaching out are there any specific trade shows that have worked really well that you want to call out or is that they all have they all kind of been a mix all the mix yeah okay it's like we did coterie yeah they're like gonna be like you're never allowed back after I say this we did coterie but it's so expensive people need to know like what's working what's not working one thing I will say though is they ask the show for like say I'm an emerging brand if you're an emerging brand yeah coterie we got like an emerging brand booth yeah and it was a tenth of the price right chicago again i probably shouldn't be saying this but i want everyone to know the chicks i got a free booth right it's not a full booth it's kind of like a stand but i was like i'll take it yeah i'll be there yeah and get to chicago really inexpensively it's like done so ask the show i will say atlanta we did the atlanta show last january and that we properly paid for a booth and I would say like we weren't ready that was a miss it was too expensive and I wouldn't probably do that again until like you know we were in a better spot to make that kind of like financial commitment so I'd just be really mindful to traders trade show industry has changed it's like different now um because you can just get to anybody via dm email linkedin like the barrier to entry totally the gatekeeping has like ended totally uh the last thing I want to ask you about is crowdfunding.

26:43You, you know, you raised a little bit of money earlier on, but then you went the crowdfunding route in 2022. Why did you do that? What platforms did you use? Like what are the learnings for someone who's thinking, okay, I think that crowdfunding might be right for me. And was it equity crowdfunding? It was like Kickstarter, right? It was equity crowdfunding. Yeah. So all these people in your community have a piece of the business now. Yeah. Which you just said it like, it's amazing. Like we were this community driven brand. I thought like, how cool to kind of like flip the script and rewrite the rules on what it means to raise capital as a female founder, which we know the staggering stats against, but also to flip the script on what it means to invest in a brand you love.

27:24Investments is kind of like this gatekeeping wall that you can't get access to. An angel investor, by definition, is a high net worth individual so right then and there your everyday you know your woman like woman might not have access to deal flow and so i wanted to kind of flip the script and it was really cool with republic you could invest in modern picnic for as little as 150 that's the platform republic oh yes you use republic but there's tons of them now and i can actually go into i would do it differently i'd use a different platform if we were doing it again again another one that's gonna be like okay Modern Picnic's out never again.

28:05But yes it was really cool you can invest in Modern Picnic for as little as$150 regardless of age, income, demographic, any other barrier. And what's really cool for us is all of a sudden we have a hundred plus now brand ambassadors that are rooting for us and want us to win and are going to think of us as their next gift and are just going to be these you know it's so powerful it's so powerful it's cool we rate i mean like we raised about like 120 000 so it wasn't a million dollars it was something yeah it was it was something and but i think more importantly aside from the money was just like this really cool thing that we did and i yeah it's it's really cool and we use republic but there's we funder there's um why wouldn't you use republic like what was the thing that was missing or have you there's better ones now so just like investments this whole investor world has changed i think that's also trickled down to the equity crowdfunding and back in the day you know equity crowdfunding and still now has this kind of like poo poo to you know it's kind of um it's not as kosher and like the vcs look down on it but that's a change everything's just changed and back then because it's kind of equity crowdfunding was kind of looked down upon republic was kind of like the gold standard of equity crowdfunding like if you were going to do this like you'd go to republic it's kind of like the gold star yeah it's not the same anymore that's not the case republic takes more equity than the other platforms republic charges so they take a piece basically that's part of the model they take a piece yeah and i thought okay well let me go to the one that's like the most respected yeah the most well known but it's just that's just not the case yeah i would also say if anybody was going to do um crowdfunding plan for taking whatever they tell you how long it takes at least on republic plan for it to take 2x that yeah we were on top of it we were handing things in there's an insane amount of due diligence with sec uh regulations that comes with equity crowdfunding um so you really kind of have to have your ducks in a row to do it but it i think it's so worth it if you're willing to put in the time and effort and make sure you're you're marketing it correctly because like for our ambassadors and for just your your everyday consumer like you have to really there's education involved it's different than going to an angel or a vc or an angel who understands what it means totally you know you had so there was that education involved which like I think we we really realized from the beginning okay amazing I said that was the last thing but I have one more quick thing because you were on Shark Tank and now you're profitable and I just need to understand what happened in this year because it's like the beginning of the year that we're talking and two big things have happened talk me through like a buzzy year well we filmed in September okay so you filmed last year yeah yeah I also applied before got rejected so if anyone's listening and is like feeling like intimidated or if they by applying or unsure just apply yeah we applied and if you get rejected do it again yeah we applied 2022 got pretty far along didn't get it i was like oh shoot okay they told me reapply reapplied and i got it this time applied in jan of 2023 filmed in september of 23 aired in feb of 24 so the whole process is like a year and um yeah it was crazy so february it's now we're in the beginning of March and filmed like aired a month ago so February was definitely like a buzzy fun month it was just kind of like crazy in terms of not just sales but just like the PR that came from it and just like the social that came from it and um we're just trying to kind of like stretch it out as far as we can now amazing that is so cool um well congratulations on everything you're building I'm just so impressed same to you I'm so impressed like oh thank you I mean it's been yeah again I I need to do some more episodes about like how we're growing.

32:10Leave us with a resource. What's something that's been helping you as you've been building the business that you can recommend that other people check out? A book? A habit that you have? I don't know. I'm trying to think outside of the box. Shopify app. Yeah. I think to kind of shift your mindset and you don't have to do things. You get to do things. Especially in the early days, like you're in the weeds. Yeah. always going to be in the weeds and like there's going to be things you don't like things you do like but just like try to remember you don't this is such a incredible opportunity yes get to do thing you don't have to do things you get to do things i've that's exactly especially since having a baby i'm like no no no i get to be doing this right this is i've i've 100 percent been trying to um change that mindset because it does make a difference does um well thank you so much for coming on the show, Ali.

33:02This has been awesome. It's just been so fun. Quick shout out to all of our business bestie subscribers. If you are loving this show and you are building a consumer CPG or e-commerce business, or you're about to build one, this membership will give you access to the people experiences and the tools that you really need to build your dream business. Head to female founder world.com forward slash subscriber for more.