Omsom’s Keys to Successful Brand Storytelling

0:00And so we decided to create a product that actually centered MSG as an ingredient. and that got tons of press. It was featured in Vice and Food Network. The most amazing part was Whole30 actually removed MSG from their banned ingredients list and cited Omsom as one of the reasons that they did that. Hello and welcome to Shopify Masters, your companion for starting and building a business. I'm Shuang Esther Shan. Family can be a key ingredient in a brand's story And that's certainly true for Omsom, a company that specializes in making seasoning packets to help home cooks to get proud and loud Asian flavors at home.

0:43Omsom was founded by two first-generation Vietnamese sisters, Vanessa and Kim Tham, in 2020. They were inspired to start the company after years of eating their mom's home cooking and wanting to make those dishes more accessible to others. Today, Omsom can be found in Whole Foods and Target nationwide, and the company attributes 90 % of its growth to organic traffic. Vanessa Pham is here to tell us about Omsom's journey from testing recipes to scaling the brand and how they were able to build a supportive community by sharing their stories. Vanessa, thanks for joining us. Shvank, thank you so much for having me.

1:22So excited to be here. Dream come true. Very excited to chat. And I want to start off on the meaning of Aum Song because I think it's such a beautiful tie-in of your relationship between your sister and also how you guys grew up. So tell us more behind the name Aum Song. So, am som is actually derived from the Vietnamese word, am som, which is actually a negative term. It's what our parents would say to us when they were scolding us, usually when we were being kind of obnoxious in the back of the car. And it means in Vietnamese, noisy, rowdy, rambunctious. Kim and I were so just inspired by that energy, especially, you know, having lived a lifetime of being like kind of constrained by this model minority myth.

2:13We felt like embodying this noisy, loud and proud energy was so true to us and is the way that we wanted to show up in the world through our company.

2:28And so really, AumSum is born out of a mission of honoring and celebrating Asian American culture and cuisine, educating on the multitudes within that and celebrating our voice and our perspective loudly and proudly. Totally agree. And I think a part of the branding is your family story. Your parents are Vietnamese refugees. How did their journey shape your upbringing and also the path of entrepreneurship? shift? Our parents were very progressive parents in that they, from day one, were so thoughtful about encouraging us to use our voice and to have a perspective in the world and really encouraging that independence.

3:15And so when I think about who we are today and what AMSAM stands for, It actually makes so much sense. My dad really encouraged our individuality and celebrated that. Growing up in a small town that was pretty homogenous, 98.5 % white, AMSOM in some sense, I think, was born out of a response to some of what we grew up around, where we felt silenced or othered in many parts of our childhood. And so stepping into our lives as adults and building the company that we kind of wish we saw and had existed in the world when we were younger and through to today. I think what else is beautiful about your journey with Kim is the fact that you both went to really reputable schools, had great careers, and your parents were actually really supportive of taking the plunge into entrepreneurship, which goes against sometimes of the stereotypical narrative.

4:14So tell us about the moment where you and Kim decided to launch a business and how your parents responded to your ideas. Oh my gosh. Yeah. So Kim and I were very different. I was very risk averse. She was risk loving. But after a couple of years at Bain as a management consultant, I felt called to take a leap and build something that was aligned with my personal values. and I truly could not imagine a better co-founder than Kim for that. So when I ended up broaching the subject with her, we were hiking in Bolivia and she literally was like, I've been waiting for this day, you know, for so long.

4:56And that's when we decided to start Onsdome together. So we started very much with our mission first and foremost. And then from there looked at the industry and the product that would really allow us to further that mission. But, you know, from day one, that's really what called us to take such a big leap and take on this huge risk personally was for something that actually mattered to us. And both Kim and yourself, you had experience in the consultancy world. Kim was active in the tech world. You both didn't necessarily have professional culinary or food experience, but you approached building Omsom in such an interesting way.

5:35You really highlighted chefs and tastemakers to build up a community. So tell us about how you first recipe tested and built this community. Absolutely. Well, first I'll explain what our product is. So our first product line to market is a line of cooking sauces that allow you to make your favorite Asian dishes in 15 minutes with, you know, any ingredients, proteins, veggies. And we, while you know we are so deeply passionate about Asian culture and Asian food we can't purport to be the experts on you know every Asian cuisine I'm Vietnamese I don't have tons of experience in Thai cuisine or Japanese Korean cuisine and so for that reason from day one we decided to partner with iconic Asian chefs who are of these backgrounds who built their careers in these respective cuisines to help us develop the products, help us be very thoughtful about how we marketed the products, how we educated consumers on them.

6:35So it's not just on flavors. It went all the way through to sourcing, to marketing, to launching the product. These chefs have been really thoughtful and helpful in that whole journey. I think a lot of challenges that home cooks face is sourcing ingredients to create these Asian dishes. Did you run into that problem when you were trying to source for production at such a large scale? Oh my gosh, absolutely. That was, I mean, one of the areas where we've really had to lean in, get extremely creative. Like, I mean, in the early days, we literally had my parents like translating for us on certain calls.

7:19Having people around the country running errands for us, because a lot of the partners that we initially had to work with were mom and pop Asian distributors that were bringing in the real good stuff from Asia. As we've grown, we've built and developed a lot of those relationships and had to kind of scale and bring them along with us, many of our suppliers. But over 90 % of our specialty ingredients are brought in from Asia, many of them from the country of the dish's origin, which is so important to us, again, to like reflect the flavors in a really thoughtful way. And logistics is one of the areas that gets refined and fine-tuned over time.

7:59What are some tips you have for founders who are trying to figure out logistics and find the right suppliers and what should they do to really streamline that process? Yeah, I mean, it was a total vertical learning curve for me when we started. I definitely would say there are real experts out there. I don't really advise founders, especially in a space that has a lot of like technical skills, like food operations, to try to reinvent the wheel here. One of the biggest skills that I feel like founders should lean into is enlisting experts and incredible people to support you and help you. And so early on, that could be an advisor, a operations consultant, or even investors to help you learn.

8:46And ultimately, that's kind of what we did at the early stages, was we got people involved in some capacity in Omsom's journey, many of them investors, and then we enlisted them to help us navigate and build our first supply chain. One of the things I think that sets Omsom apart is the fact that the sauces are not sold in jars, which is what you typically see in the sauces aisle. And they're actually sold in packets. How did you decide on how this packaging process was going to be? So in the very early days, we actually did a ton of consumer research. We interviewed 100 people, we surveyed 200, and we actually watched 50 people cook in their kitchens.

9:31And in watching them do that, we learned a lot. And what we learned is that consumers really wanted this solution around flavor. That's where they struggled. It was getting the hard to find sauces and spices and aromatics and then getting the flavors right was really challenging for first and second generation Asian Americans, as well as non-Asian folks. But a lot of the bottled and jarred sauces just weren't cutting it. They didn't have like a strong reputation or like consumer sentiment around them. And a lot of folks would use them once, lose them in the back of their fridge somewhere. And by the time they found it, it was like crusty around the edges and just like didn't feel fresh.

10:12And so AumSum was designed around like maximizing ease, convenience, and a punch of flavor. So one packet of AumSum dresses one pound of protein or meat or tofu, whatever you might be cooking with. And that simplicity of like not having to measure, having a fresh packet every time, I think was so critical to what set us apart and allowed us to really cut through the noise as a brand. I think from consumer or outsider perspective, glass is a lot heavier to ship. Having these in packets are also maybe economical and more environmentally friendly. So was logistics also a part of the decision factors as well?

10:52Yeah, definitely. The shipping weight was a huge part of it, especially because for like the first two years, we launched completely on direct to consumer. And so for the unit economics on D2C, that was huge. And then from there, now we're in retail and it helps us kind of stand out on the shelf. Amazing. So Omsum launched in 2020 and it was to great success. You sold out in 72 hours and so much of that love on your online store was actually organic traffic. Can you tell us how you were able to kind of create this magic and have people actually visit the store and try something that they never necessarily tasted before and trust in your brand.

11:36Yeah, truly this whole journey has been beyond anything we could have imagined. And I think what has been really powerful is the ability for our story and our product to cut through the noise. And I think we were able to do that through a really thoughtful brand story that pulled the thread all the way through to the product and kind of the use case of the product that resonated with consumers, with at first a smaller audience of first and second generation Asian Americans, but then beyond that, really at a national level as we launched and started to build our community.

12:16I think we did something really powerful in that we really centered the first and second generation Asian American community at a time where many brands were overlooking this audience. Even Asian food brands were kind of speaking directly to a non-Asian consumer saying things like, travel the world through our products, which was very much, you know, clearly not targeted towards Asian Americans. And so true to our mission and true to what Kim and I believe in this world is that an Asian food brand isn't doing right by their community if they're not speaking to them and centering them and educating Americans on that experience.

12:57And so through our content and through our product, we've continued to center that audience. And I think that really just helped us cut through the noise and, you know, stand apart from the rest of the companies in the space. And it's been a really powerful journey of standing up for our values and seeing that resonate on a national level. So we're really like humbled by that whole experience. Very excited to dig in deeper about branding, storytelling, and also customer education. I'm chatting with Vanessa Pham, co-founder of Omsom. I hope you're enjoying our conversation. And if you haven't already, follow or subscribe to Shopify Masters wherever you get your podcasts, and please leave us review or feedback for the show.

13:41Thanks. So I think what's beautiful about sharing stories is the fact that when you're telling stories from your childhood and also your upbringing, it also has a butterfly effect where a lot of news agencies and media outlets are picking up their story and sharing it. How were you able to leverage PR? In my experience, in terms of what I've observed in D2C, in CPG in general, is that PR sometimes can be more binary in ROI, right? Like you either get through to catch the attention of the media, and then it can be a total snowball effect. Or, you know, a kind of common scenario is that maybe you get pulled onto a couple of listicles of like 20 female led businesses you should support, but that it doesn't actually, you know, lead to much more than that or drive a lot of conversion.

14:34So that is just like a caveat with PR in general is I think sometimes it can be a little bit more binary in nature. In our experience, we've been really lucky to be able to have relevance on that level. A couple things I would maybe attribute that to. One is that in general, I think a lot of brands, knowing that they have ambitions to get to scale, launch and try to speak to everybody. So they kind of try to boil the ocean a bit in terms of their ability to have relevancy, which ends up really diluting their message and doesn't allow them to actually ever kind of catch on. And instead, I think what a much more powerful and effective approach is to focus on a very specific community and try to create an echo chamber within that community with your limited resources.

15:27So that can come true in terms of your messaging, in terms of like the influencers that you work with, in terms of the outlets that you try to initiate relationships with, all of that, having it be a little bit more initially focused on a specific audience to hit that degree of relevancy. And then from there, it's much more likely that you'll catch the attention of some of those national outlets where they'll be like, oh, wow, when I'm looking out across culture today, there's clearly a pocket over here that's responding to something meaningful. What's happening over there? Let me look into that.

16:05And then they may bring your story to a national level. And that was really the case with us. We were so clear on who we wanted to speak to initially, being that first and second generation Asian American audience. We're a part of that community. We know that community. We feel like that community has been overlooked. And so that was the starting point for OMSOM. So that's the first piece. And then the second thing I would say is that storytelling is so important. And if you're not dedicating time and energy to storytelling, then the media doesn't have a story to tell. And I think the bar is so much higher than it used to be.

16:43Brands used to just tell one brand story or one founder story, and that would be their whole thing. We believe storytelling is an everyday endeavor. It's stories around what's happening behind the scenes at OMSOM. It's stories around what is happening in the world and what does OMSOM think in response to that event. And that continuous storytelling oftentimes being intentional about making sure that parlays into broader national dialogues, that it leads to the effect like efficiency around PR is like, if you are talking about things that journalists are already thinking about and already care about, you're much more likely to kind of be a part of their next piece.

17:25So yeah, those are some of the tips that I would have. I think that's really great practical advice because it allows you to stay focused with your message and also your audience. And one of the examples that I really love is the fact that you had a campaign at OmSom dedicated to educate customers around the story of MSG and how it was demonized wrongly. Can you tell us how you approached that storytelling, both through content and also your products? Absolutely. Yeah. So MSG has been, you know, something that we feel very strongly has been unfairly demonized, you know, to your point. And it was very personal to us because, you know, even in our own household, our mother would cook with it in an unlabeled jar because she was ashamed that she would use it.

18:18And at the same time, it was a staple in our cuisine. And so growing up and witnessing that, and then later on reading the science and all the bad science around it, it became clear to us that we wanted to use our platform to make a difference and educate people.

18:38This was really risky because as a premium food brand, the quality of our ingredients is kind of what you live and die by. And we wanted to take that risk and tell that story because we believed that people could listen to us and would maybe learn something. And so what started off as a couple of educational Instagram posts kind of started to really take off and clearly had resonance and people were sharing it. People were changing their perspectives. Many, you know, DMs and emails came in of people being like, I had no idea. I just assumed my mom always told me it was so bad for me and that it causes headaches.

19:11But now I just ordered it on Amazon because of your post. And then we decided to take it a step further where we actually launched one of the first products of its kind to proudly feature MSG in it, where there's a ton of products out there that proudly state no MSG. And there's a ton of products out there like Doritos that sneakily put it in there, but don't call it out. And so we decided to create a product that actually centered, you know, MSG as an ingredient. And that got tons of press. It was featured in Vice and Food Network. The most amazing part was Whole30 actually removed MSG from their banned ingredients list and cited OMSOM as one of the reasons that they did that.

19:54So, you know, we're trying to make a difference, not only kind of culturally, but also institutionally, structurally. And we feel like that is an example of like, honestly, one of the achievements that I'm most proud of. I'm really glad to hear because I think growing up, we all remember seeing restaurants or menus that proudly label no MSG. And it's really cool to see how you were able to use the brand to change the narrative on a larger scale. I think looking at it, it's such a risky move initially because it's something that you didn't have to do as a brand, but you decided to take that risk.

20:33So it's really, really cool. Thank you. We mentioned that storytelling is an everyday dedicated activity that you do. You want to showcase stories of behind the scenes. So tell us how you discovered that sharing how you're building the business is actually helping the business to grow. Early on in building Omsom, it became very clear to us that one of the most important things that an Asian food brand that in some sense is representing cuisine and culture, it became very clear that who's behind the brand really matters to consumers. and Kim and I decided to be a part of our Omsom story in a very meaningful way because we wanted people to know that these were the faces behind the brand.

21:22These are the values we stand for and here's how we're trying to live them out every day as best we can, even when it's imperfect. And that was the start of a broader journey of us bringing folks along for the journey more and being candid and vulnerable with our community in many points of the journey, both in terms of, you know, celebrating the wins in a very real way and also saying, hey, we're going through something challenging and we'd love to bring you in on that. So it came very naturally from this idea of wanting to like loudly live our values and create credibility for the brand by showing who's behind it.

22:01And we know that matters to consumers now more than ever. Products are not just transactional, you know, food products are not just transactional. In many cases, they are an expression of values and an expression of what folks want to believe in and want to see in the world. And so Kim and I are those types of consumers to begin with. And so building that company, we wanted to, you know, meet the needs of those consumers and speak to them in a way that was like true to us. And to your point, the way that brands are built are very different. You know, early D2C days, you can share a lot of photos or reshare customer photos, and it will be that main part of your content creation.

22:42And now it's a heavier investment in storytelling and video creation. So can you share a bit about your process to make sure that storytelling habit is in your day-to-day? And it also leads to like great opportunities of you being discovered by retail partnerships and partnerships with other brands? Yeah, so I really can't take too much credit for this. My sister and my co founder, Kim, is really the creative mastermind at Omsom. That's how we kind of split the business. She does creative content, community, brand marketing, and the rest of the business kind of reports into me. And I used to run it before we even had a team.

23:26What that looks like is she almost runs her part of the business as if it's like a media arm. The way that she plans content creation, the way that she measures success is not, you know, just conversion and sales, because that would be very limiting. And ultimately, I think that's what leads a lot of brands to just push very one dimensional transactional content out into the world. But we actually, you know, really look at engagement and sharing and impressions and for different forms of content have different measures of success. Amazing. And I think a beautiful way of how that translates to real life results is the journey of getting into Whole Foods and also establishing that partnership.

24:10So tell us about how that happened. Yeah. Oh my gosh. We are so grateful for our partnership with Whole Foods. They've been such an incredible first retailer to work with. As you know, we were a DTC only brand for over two years. But as a food brand, we knew that retail would be kind of in our future, Omnichannel would be in our future. And we were really lucky in that we had initially an investor make an introduction to Whole Foods because they asked him, you know, who is an example of an Asian brand that could really, you know, make a difference. And he had done the same thing, but for Mexican American cuisine.

24:50And so he facilitated the initial introduction. But then from there, it was a lot of hustle to like stay on their radar and get through to a national launch. Actually, one of the major pivotal moments, we did a video on a series that we did on our social around the time we launched at Whole Foods called URL to IRL. And in the video, we tell the story of how I actually flew to Austin where Whole Foods headquarters is. Didn't have a meeting locked in, but emailed the buyer and said, hey, I'm in Austin. I would love to meet with you. Can you make time?

25:29Got a local sous chef to come work with me and cook all of our products. And day of, she agreed to get dinner with me. And I brought, you know, a tote bag full of samples to that restaurant. And ultimately that led to our national launch. So there was a lot of grit and hustle that got us that national placement.

25:54It also feels like this exciting cereal content that I want to subscribe to because I want to know what's going to happen next. Now that you do have partnerships with Whole Foods, Target, and you're maintaining your own D2C online store. How are you managing your marketing efforts to make sure brand story is consistent through all the touch points? It's definitely a challenge. It's new territory for us been a learning curve for sure. We continuously return to our core brand story and product story and use that as a jumping off point for everything that we do, but also try to be pretty empathetic to the consumer on each channel, the state of mind they're in, how much attention span they're able to dedicate, you know, walking down the aisle versus being online.

26:46I think it's a very different journey and consumer journey. And so we're definitely very thoughtful about that. In general with retail, we've had to really rely on the packaging to do a lot of the storytelling for us, which is far more limited than, you know, a website with however many pages and a blog and all of that. and like exposure to our social media presence. Sometimes that isn't possible in store. So we've had to be really thoughtful about it. But honestly, it's something we're still figuring out. We're still testing and iterating on to this day. I also love Omsom's approach to merchandise beyond your sauces.

27:21You're also super fun with how you create your merchandise. You know, it's not just t-shirts, but you have these knife earrings, you have rice paddles. So yeah, tell us about how you approached creating these fun items. Yeah, all of them have their own story. The earrings one in particular is very interesting. My sister just had her own knife earrings that she bought from a woman owned business in Austin. She was wearing it in a lot of our content, like cooking videos and interviews. And so many comments poured in of people being like, we want those, we want those. So then we just approached that woman-led brand and said, hey, do you want to partner with us?