How to turn a viral moment into a global brand with Vivien Wong, Little Moons

0:03We got a phone call from Tesco saying, guys, we've completely run out of stock of your product. Can we order some more immediately? Which was a complete surprise to us for the first 10 years. I would be in front of my laptop or in a factory. I didn't go out and network. I didn't have any fancy events. It was get up, scrape your hair back into a ponytail and get into the factory at 6am. Make sure that you don't mistake going viral as success because it gives you an opportunity. It gives you visibility, but not necessarily a business.

0:30Juliet:In early 2021, a shopper with no connection to Little Moons filmed themselves buying and eating one on a TikTok. The video sparked a viral trend generating more than 5 million views and sending sales soaring by 1 ,500%. The TikTok moment may have introduced Little Moons to millions, but the foundations were laid long before then. Vivian Wong co-founded Little Moons with her brother Howard in 2010, spending two years perfecting the recipe, building their own factory and introducing a product most people in the UK had never heard of. Little Moons is sold in 38 countries and valued at more than£100 million.

1:09Juliet:Today we're talking about everything that happened on either side of that viral moment, the years spent laying the foundations before it arrived, and the decisions that turned a sudden breakthrough into long-term growth. Welcome Vivian to How to Start Up. It's great to have you on. I'd love to ask you to introduce yourself and a bit about how you started Little Moons. Thank you for having me. I am Vivian. I'm co-founder of Little Moons, which I co-founded with my brother Howard back in 2010. So we've been running the business for almost 16 years now, so it's a lot longer than a lot of people expect.

1:41But for those of you who are uninitiated, Little Moons are little balls of ice cream wrapped in mochi dough, which is a Japanese sweet soft rice dough which is a little bit squishy so it's a bit unusual but we have many fans although it's not for everyone.

1:57Juliet:Growing up your parents bakery inspired you to build a food business and then while traveling in Japan you and Howard spotted this gap in the UK market for the mochi ice cream. What did you see that made you think this wasn't just a brilliant product but a huge business opportunity for you guys? I don't think we ever thought that the business was going going to be as big as it is. So we never planned to build such a big business, I guess. But what we did see was that the market for Japanese food had just absolutely exploded. So we both worked in Canary Wharf. There was an itsu on every corner.

2:27Yo Sushi was like the coolest restaurant to go to. Nobu was absolutely the top restaurant, Zuma and all of that. But we didn't feel like the Japanese restaurants offered a really good dessert. It was just matcha brownie or matcha muffin. And so when we thought about what can we offer, we think that we should do this mochi ice cream product because it's so delicious. It's authentically Japanese with the mochi. And so we would have been happy just supplying it to restaurants. And so for the first five years, that's what we did. We supplied mochi to restaurants, but not only in the UK, we exported to Europe and the Middle East as well.

3:01And then we started, obviously, we moved into the grocery stores, but early doors, we never set out to build a massive business.

3:08Juliet:That's so interesting because most people would assume you'd go after grocery in supermarkets before you then tap the likes of Nobu, but you did it the other way around. Why was that? I think getting into groceries is one thing. Getting your product off the shelf is another. And we didn't feel like there was a market for mochi. No one knew what it was, who was going to buy it. So we thought we should build the market, build a demand for the product. And we always thought through restaurants would be best because people go to restaurants to try new things, more so than going to the grocery store.

3:36Juliet:Yes, so true. So you go and you'll just see like maybe mochi on the dessert menu and you think, what's that? I'm going to try it. And you're in Nobu, you're like, it's going to be delicious. Let's give it a go. And so that's where we thought that the restaurant route would be a great way to go first. And it meant that we could save up some money to go and brand our product. There's this wonderful anecdote about someone digging through the trash at Yo Sushi to find out where the ice cream supplier was from. And that really is that kind of Chanel No. 5. We're going to spray the perfume before the person walks into the store.

4:08Juliet:They'll smell it. They'll ask what it is, but we won't tell them. It's kind of playing hard to get in a way. So at what point did you realise that it was such a success in restaurants that you would go after grocery? I mean, that anecdote you just told was one of the things that made us think, oh, people really like us and they're looking to buy us outside of the restaurants. And I think it was during that time, it was the rise of the food bloggers. And they were speaking to the chefs about this mochi product on the menu. I think we were on the menu for a lot of the ramen bars that were opening up back then.

4:34And the chefs were quite open and said, well, this is not a dessert that we make in-house. We buy that in. And they were openly, you know, it's Little Moons. That's the brand. And so I was reading about it on their blogs, but I also had people emailing us to ask about it. And that's when we just thought, look, people are actually looking for the brand. They recognize the brand. They're asking if they can buy it directly. Maybe we're ready for it. So that's when we approached Whole Foods because I think Whole Foods attracts that sort of maven, like clientele who are looking for something new, who are really ahead of the curve.

5:03And so we thought maybe we might be the right fit for Whole Foods. So when we first emailed them about it, we didn't expect to hear back, but we heard back in 20 minutes. And the buyer said, you had me at Mochi.

5:13Juliet:I love Mochi. I've been looking for, I'd love to stalk you. That's probably the quickest reply rate anyone's ever had from Whole Foods, but also start at the top, right? You start with Whole Foods and then it all trickles through to the rest. And so after years of steadily building the business, you found yourself in the centre of a viral TikTok trend. And given that if you've been doing the business for 16 years, you've probably gone from using fax machines to the rise of Instagram to the rise of TikTok and social media. Can you take us back to that moment? And what was the first sign something unusual was happening?

5:45So this was in January 2021. We'd kind of had a year of lockdowns and we'd sent all of our stock over to Europe because Brexit had just happened and that happened on the 31st of December previous year. So come January, we had no stock in the warehouse, but January, February, March is when you start stocking up again as an ice cream brand. And our social media team came to us on our weekly meeting saying, oh, we've had some unusual views on our TikTok account, like a thousand, which was a lot back then because it was only I think our own team looking at our TikTok account back then just for some laughs.

6:18Then the next day it was like 10 ,000 and I remember Charlie said something weird happening here there's a lot of views on our account or our hashtag and that just continued to grow and grow and that's when we realized because going viral wasn't a usual thing back then no one had really heard of it it was a new term about going viral and so we didn't immediately say oh we're going viral on TikTok it was just like we're getting a lot of views So that's, I guess, when we first had an inkling that something was happening. And then we got a phone call from Tesco saying, guys, we've completely run out of stock of your product.

6:49Can we order some more immediately? Which was a complete surprise to us because you plan what you supply to Tesco. It's quite rigid.

6:56Juliet:Very good forecasting. Long time in advance. You've got a lead time. You've got production supplies all mapped into that lead time. All of that. So it was really unusual for them to call us up to say, can we have some more out of the blue? And that's when we realised, they said, there's a lot of people coming in to buy Little Moons. And then we were following all of the posts on TikTok. So it was exciting. And then I think panic set in and then a bit of chaos. And was it more exciting and lots of dread and fear that you won't be able to meet supply? How did you manage that flurry? My brother and I don't really celebrate success because we're always on to the next thing.

7:30For example, we got into Ocado. Great. Next, how do we supply? Like, how do we get the product to them? Or how do we market it? How does it next work?

7:37Juliet:You just know that with one thing, as much as it's a success, there will be 10 other ricochet effects that will impact that success. You can't ever take a breath. And a friend of mine recently called me out and she said, are you ever just going to stop? And I was like, why would I do that? And also the fear is, what if I never start again? But you know the impact. And someone said to me very early on, I think it was Steve Johnson in his episode, he said, don't plan for failure, plan for success. Is that going to be 10 day weeks or the fact that you won't be able to have a family because you're working so hard?

8:05Juliet:But it was like, don't plan for failure because more often than not, if you're betting on yourself, it will be a success. But for you, did you ever look at each other and pat each other on the back or did you just on to the next, on to the next? We definitely took a moment to congratulate ourselves in the evenings when we were sat there scrolling through hundreds and hundreds of posts of people buying Little Moons, talking about it, rating us 10 out of 10. And I think a particularly proud moment was when we took my mum down to Selfridges. There was a massive queue around the corner where we had a little pop up there.

8:34I think that was a little proud moment. I mean, I didn't go. My brother took my mom because I was busy in the factory trying to make it, but they sent me videos and it was just astounding to see cues literally round the block for your product.

8:47Juliet:Well, to manage that surge in demand, how did it impact your supply chain and what advice would you give to other founders on how to manage that kind of moment? I think to begin with, we sort of gather the team together and say, this is happening. It's going to be a huge strain, I think. You've got to rely on your team. And then you just jump into sort of practical solution mode. So how are we going to order some more flour? What else do we need? Let's anticipate how we're going to make all of this stuff. And so I think the team got busy doing that. And then as in our production team, but then the executive team, we sat back together and thought, right, how are we going to onboard this many people?

9:22We don't have the processes in place of employing, I don't know, 50 people a week for the next five weeks or something. We didn't have the systems in place to train them. Like what was the process of training that many people in? But most importantly, how do we do all of this without impacting the quality of our product and impacting our culture, which was super important to us at Little Moons. We always wanted it to be a brilliant place to work. And so I think it was just weighing that up and trying to pull together as a team to work out the best sort of path forward.

9:53Juliet:Yeah. And I think that's it. Everyone's like, oh, wow, it's a huge success. We're like, it's actually more stressful. but do you think that one TikTok moment has game changed your business from there on in or is it just a blip and you go back to kind of business as usual? No, it's changed our business like forever. It's changed everything about us, the way that we market. I think it's so synonymous with Little Moons now. Do you know the TikTok offices in London have a room called Mochi? Because we're so sort of like I think embedded in that sort of what's the word like urban legend that something like this can happen to a brand and I think that it's like testament to the quality of our product that we did go viral on TikTok, but we managed to sustain those sales and customers.

10:32So we weren't up and down, like we've completely managed to sustain that growth in that customer base, but also continue to grow it.

10:39Juliet:So how did you keep that momentum going? Because it's one thing to get it, but then to harness it is another. So I think that the people that tried us for the first time, some didn't buy us again, but then the people that did discover us, we became part of their daily life ritual as such. They loved us and so continue to buy us and tell their friends about them. And I think that's about the whole community of word of mouth, seeing people that you trust on TikTok talking about a product that they want to try and then they try it together. And it just brings people together. And I think also having a really good quality product helps because it's not something you just try.

11:10I don't know, like it's a particularly sour product or it's a different sort of drink that isn't particularly nice to consume, but you want to say that you've tried it. But people tried Little Moons. They loved it. It was delicious. They wanted to have it again and again. And so that was why keeping the quality of our product was so important to us.

11:28Juliet:So you scaled at a pace without compromising the product, because if you had compromised, then it wouldn't have worked anyway. So would your advice be for founders to kind of push yourself as far as you can go, but don't compromise too much? Totally. I think it's really hard to build up that trust with your consumer and then you can break it. You could almost can't bring it back. So if they have one, which was delicious, and then I think consumers will always know if you're using a cheaper product or anything like that, your true fans are going to know that you have, I don't know, chosen worse quality ingredients.

11:59I don't know, like our passion fruit isn't quite as tasty or we've reduced the amount of mango we put in there. I think your consumers will know. And so that's why we've absolutely not compromised on our product as we've scaled.

12:09Juliet:That's amazing, because I think you're right, especially in the kind of not niche market anymore. but when you launched Mochi was quite unusual in the UK to get people's buy-in and then that loyalty as we all know recruiting a customer is one thing but keeping them is very hard sometimes with the whole rise of social media how has that fed into a marketing strategy from a more broader PR sense did you then take it back to the long lead media did you look at it or you completely drill down on social when we first went viral on TikTok it was Gen Z's that were watching us, requesting to buy us, asking their parents to buy us.

12:43But I thought that our core consumer when we first launched the product was maybe a bit of an older crowd, maybe 30s to 40s. And now those people have then grown off even further with us. And so they're having kids. And so I think they're buying the product to share with their kids as well. But initially, we wanted to let our core audience know that we had gone viral on TikTok. So then we ceded that news to the national press and onto Instagram and other social media platforms that maybe our core consumers would have seen. And I think that caused some buzz as well. And they heard what was going on in different generations discovering our products.

13:14So that was the way that we moved it off social media onto sort of more traditional media. And then we did put out a TV ad, our first ad. But after that, I have to say we have focused predominantly on social media. We are social media native. And that's absolutely where our focus is. That's where I think our superpower is. And it's the most direct route to your consumers. So I think it's something that we take a lot of pride in, we'd spend a lot of time on. And it's a lot of fun, actually. I just recorded three TikToks with my team this morning and it's genuinely super fun.

13:45Juliet:I find it fascinating because when you're looking at the paid, owned, earned strategy, so paid being advertising, owned being your owned channels that you can control, and earned being PR, editorial magazines, or influencers posting. Owned, you can control to an inch of its life. Paid to a certain point because you're paying for it and you can control the environment but earned is so hard but if you're doing owned media that then becomes earned media you've nailed it and you're obviously speaking to the right audience and I think so we train founders how to do their own pr and podcast production and it's one of these things like know your audience and narrow in on that and less is more don't try and email 3 000 journalists that are completely irrelevant but for you if you've found what works and you found your audience and you're talking to them directly you've obviously and very clearly with your numbers completely smashed it.

14:34Juliet:So five years after Little Moons went viral, you're now investing two million pounds in a campaign that brings together TikTok creators, podcasts, out of home advertising to build the brand in a much more deliberate way. So this is obviously significant investment for no longer, I say, a startup brand, you're a very well-established brand. How much of this campaign has been shaped by what you learned from that viral moment in 2021? one. We're taking a quick 30 second break from this episode to ask, are you thinking of starting your own podcast? If so, this is great news because we run a course that will train you how to produce your own podcast yourself.

15:12Juliet:This course is for people who do not want to outsource and pay someone else to do it. You want to learn how to do it yourself. We teach you everything that you need to get up and running with your own podcast show and so much more. Just DM us at hello at Fallowfield Mason to book your spot. I think it incorporates everything that we've learned. We're all about community, hence we are all about social media, all about podcasts. We've chosen trusted podcasters that have a great, engaged, trusted following. You always have to learn what you've done correctly and continue to do that. And I think our new campaign reflects that.

15:47Juliet:And at what point did you go, right, we're going to actually put significant investment into this paid campaign? Has it been in the works for quite a while or is it like right now we're ready? You would think that we would have chosen to do that immediately after going viral on TikTok. It sounds like you were quite busy at that time. We were quite busy and then we were quite distracted with the build of a new factory two years after that trying to meet demand and then I think more recently we've definitely focused back in on where our superpower is which is like not necessarily building factories but marketing new product development and so now we've definitely reviewed and honed our strategy i think we were planning on doing some tv a couple of years ago but now we know that doesn't work for us the amount of budgets that we have we are still a relatively small business i think we are too small to really be effective with tv advertising it's so expensive but i'm really interested to see in the next few years how that will shift for buying tv versus social because the power of social and also the trackability of social is so much more rewarding.

16:49Juliet:The data you get from social advertising is so much grittier and stickier than TVCs, for example. And I am so guilty of this and it's a horrible thing to do, but I'm always double screening. Whoever watches adverts anymore, you're watching your phone and I sometimes I'm even watching my program that I'm choosing to watch and I'm double screening on my phone a little bit. So I definitely think it is a much more direct route through social. Yeah. And with this campaign, investing 2 million, which obviously for any business is a considered decision, what would success look like to you with this campaign?

17:19I think for us to be at the forefront of everyone's minds when they feel like they want a sweet treat would be success for me. I think it's a very competitive, very crowded market. There's lots of people, lots of products in people's minds when they're trying to think of what to eat. Is it chocolate? Is it a piece of cake? And we just want people to remember Little Moons again, because I think that's another thing. There's been so many product launches, trends move, people loved little moons at one point, maybe during lockdown, and then they moved on to something else. And like, we just want to remind them again, because I do speak to people, I don't know, in my dog park, for example, and they asked me what I do.

17:53They say, oh, little moons. I go, oh my God, I love that. And I'm like, what do you mean loved? What? Do you not still love it? And they say, no, I do. I don't know why it's fallen off my repertoire. And then they buy it again. And I think that is what a good marketing campaign does. It just nudges people to remember, again, to buy you, to put you in their basket when they're shopping. And so I think that would be a really good marker of success for us.

18:13Juliet:I love also the fact that you're touching many different platforms and through podcasts, through socials, and you've got to get people, I think, is it between five and eight times before a conscious actually absorbs the message? So nudge here, add there, PR, this paid, owned and earned, you're absolutely covering all bases. And for any new founder that's listening, if they were to wake up tomorrow and their brand has gone viral, what would be the first thing that they should do with that moment? I think I would make sure that you don't mistake going viral as success because it gives you an opportunity it gives you visibility but not necessarily a business so I would stop and ask themselves like how do I turn this moment of attention into a brand that people come back to in five years time and so you just don't jump in and be like I've made it or just worry about just the supply chain I think you need to get your team onto the supply chain but as the leader of the business I do think you need to take a step back and make sure that you're stopping and taking a look and seeing what exactly it was that resonated with the consumer that made you go viral?