What Made Arrae Blow Up? (ft Siff Haider)

0:00Hey, business besties. Welcome back to Female Founder World. It's Jasmine. I'm the host of the show. And today I'm chatting with Sue Pida, the co-founder of Array. Welcome. Thank you for having me. For people that don't know Array, what are you building over there? Our tagline and the easiest way to explain it is we build targeted supplements for life's unsexy problems. So the idea really is to create targeted supplements, which are really beautiful and have you feel really proud to deal with these issues that have historically been quite unsexy and taboo. Okay. What are some of those products?

0:33So we launched the brand with Bloat and Calm. We went viral for our bloat capsules. I feel like that's kind of the OG product. Outside of that, we have something for constipation. We have MB1, which is for metabolism. We launched Tone earlier this year, which is creatine gummies with body composition benefits as well. And then most recently we launched MB145 +, which is basically MB1, which was our metabolism product, but now it has additional benefits for women who are in perimenopause, menopause and beyond. This is the Pamela Anderson situation. Okay, we're going to talk about that. That was, I saw that come up and I was like, whoa, impressive.

1:09That's amazing. So you launched in 2018. That's when the concept kind of came together. 2018 was when we had like the idea. Yeah. And then we didn't launch the brand until 2020. So it was two years of working on it before I launched. Yeah. And what were you doing before that? I was a creator full time. Okay. A creator and podcast. Well, I launched my podcast in 2019. So yeah, creator full time at that time. And you launched it with your husband. Yes. Did you both go like full time into this at the beginning? No, not right away. And I think that a lot of people are like, oh yeah, like go all in 100 % right from the get go and burn the boats.

1:44Yeah. And that I don't think it needs to be that way. And the reason is actually like quite practical. Number one, we didn't raise any money. And so as we were growing and we were growing really fast, we were using our own money to do inventory buys and continue to fund the business, basically. So it was helpful to have income for that reason. And number two, we had a goal in mind where we would both go all in on Array when we hit that revenue goal. And that goal was a million dollars because that's when we knew, OK, like this is proper. And so once we hit that goal, we knew that we were both going to go full time.

2:21I went full time on it and stopped taking on brand deals and stuff a little bit before Nish. But we launched the brand officially in March 2020. And then we were both full time by November. So Nish quit his job in November. Your bootstrap. So like what kind of funding did it take to get this thing started? Like I feel like launching a consumer product is so expensive. Launching in the category that you guys are in, were you just pulling from your savings? Yes. So we had our, basically what we did was we put money from our wedding that we had saved up for our wedding. And that's what we put in to start the business.

2:56And it was the best decision for us. We think that, I mean, even now I'm like, this was the best decision we could have made because it strengthened us as a couple. And honestly, like excellent return on investment. And we, we love this, you know, it's not for everyone, but Nish and I live and breathe the business. and we have both been very ambitious people throughout our lives. So this felt like the most meaningful thing to do with our money. And it meant more to us than a wedding personally. Can I also just say it's harder to undo a business partnership than it is a marriage? A thousand percent, exactly.

3:32So like in terms of commitment, it's right up there with an actual wedding. Oh, 100%, if not even like, I mean, you're just in it, you know, and there's so much that rides on you. I feel like, you know, if if our business partnership goes down then everything is getting destroyed so it really does bring you guys bring two people together rather so you said that that million dollars was kind of that moment where you thought okay we can go we can go all in on this it is for real what were some of the things that you did right in the beginning to get that traction to be able to make that million dollars in sales because a lot of people listening will be working towards that first million now?

4:07So essentially our product is an ingestible. And so it's not like a fashion brand. It's not makeup. And so we knew that the most important thing was actually twofold. Number one was the credibility. And number two was how do we position the brand? And so right from the get go, we wanted to make Array a very cool brand because we knew that in order for us to have the differentiation. Of course, like I'm not even going to talk about the importance of an excellent product, which we can get into because that's where we've invested the most money is product development. But after having a good product, you have to have a good brand story.

4:47So that's where we invested outside of product and like in terms of time. And then the other thing was the credibility piece. So we gifted really heavily to doctors, nutritionists, health practitioners, just essentially experts, because we knew that those people would tell their clients. And that's kind of how it would build. And then outside of that, of course, we like also gifted to a lot of health and wellness influencers and how the brand really took off at the beginning was Melissa Wood, Melissa Wood House. She was one of the first influencers to ever talk about us. And that's kind of what propelled our brand into the mainstream.

5:26And we were lucky that she did this, you know within the first month and a half of us launching but she really she like I I owe her so much because I know we would have still been successful because I always believed in our product but she gave us the start that we so desperately needed I love it when I hear from people who think a little bit outside the box around influencer marketing like influencers aren't just people with followings online those nutritionists those health experts they are influential to your customer as well oh even if they don't have followings online A hundred percent. And I mean, I like to say that, you know, nowadays I think everyone's an influencer, which is why it's so important for brands to also treat their customers like influencers.

6:09But our goal was really to treat everyone like an influencer, right? Like our customers, smaller people with followings who we were gifting to, even just like practitioners, because when you think about your purchasing habits as a consumer, yes, you obviously listen to someone online, but you make a really quick purchasing decision when it's your best friend, your sister, you know, you're, you're like health coach who's telling you to buy something. It's like immediate eyes closed to buy it. So that's kind of the thought process that we had. And so that's how we also wanted to get the word out about the brand.

6:43So you are more than, oh, you're about five years in now. Yeah. We're over five years. Yeah. And I want to know what are some milestones that you've hit since then to help people understand where the business is at now? So right now we are a nine figure brand. What else? What are our other milestones? Nine figure brand. Yeah. We have, I think, eight or nine products now in terms of just how many products we've released. What else? Oh, we just went in nationwide into Target, which is a very, very big milestone. Thank you. So that's honestly as of this Sunday. Wow. Yeah. So this is very, very brand new.

7:21What else? Yeah, I feel like those are probably some of the big milestones. pretty impressive stuff. And how many people are on your team now? 33 people, I want to say. Wow. Yeah. So it's still fairly lean. Yeah, that is very lean for like those revenue numbers. That's pretty crazy. Okay, let's talk about the stay back in the early days. And I want to talk about funding and fundraising. So you mentioned like your bootstrap, but you did take on a little bit of investment a couple of years in. Why did you decide to do that? And then why did you decide not to do it again? So we decided about a year and a half in that we wanted to raise money.

7:57And the reason was that we just wanted to grow a little bit faster. We were profitable. We were profitable from day one. We had to be because it was literally our own money and we didn't have very much of it. And so the reason we wanted to raise was because we wanted to grow a little bit faster. We had really good traction already. And we were like, let's just add some fuel to the fire. And so we raised a small round in mid 2021, basically is when we closed the round. And we decided that we didn't want to raise after that we wanted to, we wanted to maximize for equity and have be basically the owners and the bosses of our own business.

8:38And I have to say that our investors are absolutely incredible. I have only good things to say about them. And we were very, very lucky because we were extremely picky and we were just intentional about who we brought on board. But I think Nish and I both, our thing has been is that we want to build a strong, healthy business and continuously going on the cycle of fundraising. I don't necessarily think that number one, that's even possible anymore. I think for a long time, and I'm going to say the timeline was like between 2014 to 2021, I think brands were like CPG brands were raising like tech companies, and then this bubble burst.

9:20And now when you look at what strategics and investors are really interested in putting money into, it really is businesses with healthy finances, which means profitability, strong retention numbers, things like that versus just, oh, I'm going to raise at this valuation. And also, why would I want to dilute my equity so much when this is my whole life? Yeah. So that's kind of been our philosophy. And of course, everyone's different, but that's just how we chose to do things. If somebody came to you and they're kind of in the early stages of launching something in this space, what advice would you give them around looking at investors or not?

10:01So I would say don't, unless you really need to, and you have to, this is everyone's decision, obviously like if you feel like okay a little bit of money will really help me propel the business forward absolutely go for it but what I would say is that if you have proof of concept then when you go in for fundraising you go in in a more powerful position so you're able to ask for better valuation you're able to ask for better terms and also you're not reeking of desperation and I feel like if you have Despo energy, then people feel that, right? I think if you have a strong foundation that you're standing on yourself, then you go in there and you're coming from a place of power, knowing that this is actually an equitable relationship.

10:48You know, an investor getting you as a business is equally beneficial for them because you are the conduit to them making money. And they are hopefully both, you know, a check and guidance beyond that as well. so I think what I would say to founders who are thinking about this is ensure that you have if you can of course a proof of concept before you go in like I see CPG brands sometimes being like I'm going to raise on a concept sure if you have to and you don't have a dollar to your name I understand that but if you don't have to do that then maybe don't so just have a little bit of proof before you go and do that something else I want to talk about is all of these product launches that you've had.

11:30You actually don't have like a huge amount of SKUs, I feel, for the amount of revenue that you're doing and the amount of years that you've been in business. But I can see like, I'm just looking at your timeline and the intentionality between like the category and the product launches is really, really clear. So you had a sleep launch in 2022. You had a collaboration in 2023 with the Skinny Confidential. I want to understand how you're deciding when and what to launch when you're thinking about new products? So our philosophy has always been hero SKUs. So we don't like to launch like 10 products a year, each of them doing, you know, half a million dollars, because I think what it does is it tells less of a strong story.

12:14And then you become a very like commodities brand. And that's not what we set out to build. Our goal was hero products only things that solve big problems, things that have a large TAM. And also that way we can, we are able to put more into each launch and make it more meaningful. We're able to do more product education. We're able to do more like newness, like new, I mean, things that haven't been done in the past. And so that was a thing right from the get go. I mean, we launched the brand in 2020 and we didn't, we launched the brand with bloat and comp, just two products. And we didn't launch anything else for two years.

12:50And that was because we wanted to gain credibility and just be known as a brand for one thing before we started to move on to other things. Our thing now is that we like to complete one category before moving on to the next. So, for example, we really wanted to do that health before moving on to another category than, you know, we did. right now we're doing like metabolism and performance essentially. So under that umbrella is like MB1. There's Tone. We did Clear Protein Plus. So we kind of like to go through categories because that way as well, I think it tells a complete story for a consumer.

13:29This is so interesting to me. What is your actual like launch strategy process? You've had quite a few now. You just had a big one with Pamela Anderson at the front of it. Compared to what you were doing in the beginning and what you're doing now, what is the process of getting something out into the world and making sure that it sells really well? There is one part of running a business that ChatGPT or Google just can't solve for me, and that is business finance. It is one of the most gatecapped areas of business, and yet it is what separates running a thriving company from really just having a very expensive hobby.

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15:12Well, I would say the heart of our business is product development. We have three meetings for product development each week. I would say we spend about 10 hours a week and that's just Nish and I going through product dev with our team. We have a very robust product development team. There's about five people on our product development team. We do everything in-house. We've always owned our formulations. We go through the data in-house. We go through everything in-house. So I think first and foremost is going through everything with the product dev team and understanding, okay, like what is the opportunity here?

15:50I would say my specialty is like trend forecasting. So that's where I sit in and bring my expertise. and, you know, then we have our team going through data as well and looking at all the different indicators of something being potentially strong. Sometimes the data isn't even there yet because if you are doing something truly innovative, the data is quite limited and we'll sometimes take bets on things like that and hopefully we succeed so far, knock on wood, we have. But the launch strategy is that it takes us a long time to actually land on the product. Then it's perfecting the formulation, doing testing, focus groups, et cetera, et cetera.

16:33When it comes to launching the product itself, we like to do everything very 360. So all the teams are talking to each other from email to performance marketing, to social media, to events, all of, all of everything. It's, it's a very well oiled machine where all the parts are working as one. So that's how I like to explain it. We don't do a lot of product launches in a year. We do three, maximum four. And so everyone just talks to each other and just we ensure that there is a very cohesive message across the board when it comes to the brand. When you talk about your role in those meetings as being a trend forecaster, I find that super interesting.

17:15And what you said about data as well. I had Baba from Ceremonia, who you know on the show ages ago and I remember her saying like sometimes like if you're if you're making decisions based on data you're already behind because it's already happened and so that that's what I thought of when you when you mentioned that before and I can see you as this person who can like kind of like intuitively like see the future and yes I want to know where that information is coming from and then obviously you're filtering it through like your life experiences and but like where are you where are you like getting that information honestly jasmine this is i i get asked this question i don't have a straightforward answer i suppose so like i wish you know of course i'm reading and i'm consuming things at a ridiculous you know um amount basically i am listening to every podcast that i can i am reading articles constantly i'm following people in the fringe when it comes to health and wellness too because typically before a trend happens and hits the mainstream, it really is the fringe who starts to talk about it.

18:24And sometimes it's things that are quite outlandish. And then two years later, it hits everyone, you know, and so you you kind of just have to monitor what's going on. And then okay, who's talking about what? Okay, like, which, which influencers, which doctors, etc, etc. So I feel like it's a lot of that. And then I think also, the zeitgeist in general informs trends. So it's not just like who's talking about what and which doctor is saying what and that's what I'm saying that there's no, there's no true method that I can give to people. I think you just have to understand the zeitgeist as a whole.

18:57Okay, like, you know, what is happening in the world? That's kind of leading to certain things. So as an example, during COVID, we blew up because we had two products, bloat and calm. Why? People were at home, they were panicked and doom scrolling, and they needed something to literally calm them down. And we had this product. That was not something we predicted, because obviously, we didn't know that the world was shutting down. But that's a really good example that I can give you where it's like, the zeitgeist was determining what people were consuming. Similarly, people were also at home. Again, because they were stressed, they were eating worse than they had been.

19:38Some people, of course, got really into health and wellness. And you know, they were cooking more at home. But other people, it was like a lot of takeout people were just, they didn't know what was going on. And so bloat really helped with that. So you kind of have to monitor holistically everything that is going on in the world. I also like to read a lot of books on history. And I think patterns repeat themselves. And so I think in order to be a good trend forecaster, you have to observe patterns if that makes sense. And again, I know that this sounds so intangible, but I feel like those are the little bits and bobs that help guide me.

20:14I want to know what you think is coming next from like a help without making you tell me what your product development pipeline looks like, but like what areas, what categories, what trends are you seeing in this health wellness space? I'm going to, you're literally going to have to give away a product development pipeline, but try not to. Okay. I'm not going to talk about the biggest thing that I think is coming because we're working in that space right now, but I can't wait to see what that is. But I think, I think the next, like if I can identify like a smaller sub trend, I feel like liver health will continue to be a larger conversation because it's really a filtration system for our entire body.

20:52So I feel like people will just get more serious about liver health. Interesting. Okay. Talk me through the Pamela Anderson collaboration partnership, what's going on there and how did that happen? So when we started to work on MB 145 plus, we, I knew we needed someone big to align with for that because, you know, perimenopause, menopause, these are things that every woman goes through and yet the resources are sparse and nothing that I feel like I could align myself with. It just looks tired and old. And, you know, every woman is going to go through this or is going through it. And perimenopause can start in your like early 40s and late 30s.

21:36Yes, exactly. And, you know, these are, I'm going to be approaching that in six, seven years. There's nothing out there that speaks to me at all. And women deserve better. And so we knew that in order to make this something that people would really resonate with. Not only did the branding and everything, messaging have to be really beautiful, but we really wanted to align with someone that felt like a true embodiment of the product. And Pamela Anderson is absolutely beautiful. She is someone who is so comfortable in her own skin. She has kind of evolved with every season of her life and she's embraced it.

22:12She is vibrant and energetic and really is the true embodiment of the product. And so, and of course she's Canadian and we're Canadian. So it felt like she was the right person. You know, we got in touch with her. We got on a call with her. She was really excited about the brand. She tested the product for a few months, loved it. And that's kind of how the partnership came to be. And she's been phenomenal, so easy to work with. And we love her. When you are launching something with a celebrity like Pamela Anderson, and obviously she's had this like massive revival and resurgence in the last like year or so.

22:46how do you make sure I'm sure it's like a really big investment to work with someone like that. And so I want to understand how you make sure that you are maximizing the impact of that launch. Like what were some of the things that you did to make sure that it was like super successful? Well, I think every, every launch needs to have a 360 strategy again. And what we like to do is for every launch, we, we like to think like, what is the big moment? So of course, every launch will have a stellar email strategy. It'll have a stellar performance marketing strategy, social media, all of that will exist, but every launch has a big moment.

23:23So what I mean by that as an example is when we launched Clear Protein Plus, we did a partnership with Surf Lodge in the Hamptons. That was the big moment for that launch. For this launch, that big moment was taking over Prince Street Subway Station in New York. It just, you get a ton of impressions and we wanted to make the most of the fact that we had Pamela. Yeah, we wanted as many people to get their eyes on that as possible. Now, what I will caution brands is I think that there is a right time to do this. And we are, you know, in the nine figure category, with out of home, you want to be at a revenue number where you know, people have heard a few, you know, it can't be net new, because people won't clock it then you with out of home, I feel like they need to maybe have seen it in your in their periphery if they don't already know it.

24:12And then that kind of solidifies in their mind. Oh, that's like, that's, that's, oh, that's that brand. You know what I mean? Versus if you're in year one and you've done sub million in revenue, it's not like out of home is going to be the thing that's going to propel your brand into in front of millions of people because they're not going to retain that information. And I say the same thing about events, by the way. And I've, I say this because I've learned from this, you know, when we were, I think year 1.5, So 2021, we did a big event. And while it was great, I think looking back on it, we did not need to invest what we did because it was like we were trying to wear pants that were too big for us.

24:55So I think really evaluate what is appropriate for the stage of brand that you're in. And it's not that you throw money at marketing and that's how you grow. You really do have to create a strong foundation and build your community. And almost what you're spending on marketing should be increasing with the scale of brand. That's such good insight. Let's talk about Target. Why was now the right time to launch in Target? I'm sure you could have launched in a big retailer earlier if you wanted to. Why now? So our goal was we really wanted to be intentional about retail because, you know, I think a lot of companies rush into it thinking, oh yeah I'm going to get in and it's going to make my business again it's not going to if you don't already have the traction if no one knows your brand you may get in there your inventory will not move and it's going to be a disaster I have heard so many like no one comes on the podcast and like talks about their experience with this but like once the mics go off the stories I hear about people it's just like completely destroyed business and you do not get a second chance to launch at Target or Sephora?

26:02So for us, we didn't want to go to Target. We wanted them to come to us. We were like, whatever big retailer we partner with, we know they're going to come to us. And we're just going to make sure we are quietly building the brand because as a brand gets bigger, retailers want you. It's literally their job to bring on the coolest, most innovative brands that have traction because that's what keeps their business healthy. And so for us, we now felt like it was the right time because we've climbed up to this. We've taken a stepladder approach with retail. We started with like little boutiques, mom and pop shops.