Rocco co-founder Alyse Borkan on making mini-fridges a conversation piece

0:06Hello, everyone, and welcome to the Modern Retail Podcast. I'm your host, Cale Guthrie-Weissman. This week, we have Elise Borkin. She's the co-founder of Rocco, which makes a beverage fridge. It's newly launched. It's pretty cool. It's been, I'll admit, all over my Instagram feed, but that might be something to do with just who I follow. I'll probably be asking questions about this later on. But I always love to talk with newly launched brands. Rocco is really focused. I mean, it's a beverage fridge, but there's an aesthetic quality to it as well. It's there's a certain alignment that I want to talk about just with the branding.

0:41And I know that Elise has a vast history with other brands. A few that I found in her background that she's worked with include Billy and Casper, if I'm not mistaken. And so I want to go into the background, where Rocco's going, the launch plan, which is really fascinating, all of that stuff. But Elise, how are you doing? I'm good. Thank you. I'm so excited to be here. I'm excited to have you here. So let's start with you. I apologize if I butchered your background, but I was doing a little bit of LinkedIn stalking. Let's walk through how you ended up getting where you are, where you launched a beverage refrigerator.

1:14Well, I started my startup career about 10 years ago now. Prior to that, I was at ad agencies and I was working on big brands like Frito-Lay for the campaign Do Us a Flavor, where you basically submitted a chip flavor and they would then make it. And the crazier the chip, the better. So when I was working on it, the chip that won that year was like bacon, macaroni and cheese. Sounds good. It actually was good. And my friend had a startup at the time, an app. It was a competitor to TimeHop. It was called Memoir. And I was helping him on the side. And I remember we would just launch these small social media campaigns, but I was watching the app downloads tick up as we were launching them.

1:54And I realized the little things can have such a big impact on a new company. And I was working for a massive company, Frito-Lay. I had no idea even what the campaign was doing for their business at the time. And so I realized I thought it would be a much more rewarding experience to work for a startup. And so I looked around and I was thinking, who's doing something cool at the moment? And I found Casper. And I remember at the time, they were trying to get people to test their mattresses in New York City. And instead of launching a traditional showroom or partnering with Sleepy's, they partnered with Uber.

2:29And you could take a nap in the back of an Uber to test their mattress. And I was like, okay, they're onto something. They clearly appreciate brand. And so I made my resume in the form of a bedtime story and I cold emailed them. And I met with the team and sure enough, a month later I started and I was at Casper for three years. I did everything from social media to a lot of our brand building exercises. At the time, there was a mattress startup launching every week and it was pretty much a sea of sameness. It was three pieces of foam put together in different ways, pretty easy to make a mattress.

3:04And so the brand mattered a lot. And we had to kind of figure out how do we differentiate ourselves. And so we did everything from creating an insomnia chatbot that you can only talk to between 11am and 11pm and 5am. And if you tried to talk to it any other time of the day, it would say I'm busy working, you should be too. This was, you know, heyday of chatbots. And we launched something called Late Night Snap Hacks, which you could take a video of a stock video on a website and make it look like you were out on Snapchat when really you were in bed. And so everything we did was to help people sleep better beyond just the product, really trying to embody that brand mission in a bigger way.

3:42We did a ton of fun guerrilla stunts like that, a lot of brand building exercises. My favorite of which was we hung up these flyers around New York City that said, can't sleep call. And it listed a 1-800 number. Wasn't even branded. At the time, Casper had these crazy beautiful out-of-home campaigns that we were also simultaneously watching on the subway. And we just hung up these 1-800 flyers. And if you called the 1-800 number, you could listen to a grandma read you a bedtime story, or you could listen to somebody telling you the history of Vienna sausages. And it was just, you know, fun, quirky things that hopefully would entertain you while also trying to put you to sleep.

4:18And after three years of Casper, you know, Casper had grown a ton and they were focusing a lot on commercial efforts. And I really kind of wanted to get back to early stage. And so I actually did a brief stint at SoulCycle, but that's when I really realized I liked early stage because SoulCycle was about 10 years old at the time. And I went to Billy and I was one of the first employees there and helped build the brand there for three years. And we were really focused on championing women. And we were the first razor brand to ever show body hair prior to Billy. Women were just on razor commercial shaving their already smooth skin.

4:55We had heard that basically women had to get waxed before they went to razor shoots, that that's how smooth their skin had to be. They were never actually shaving hair. And we did a lot of fun things with Billy. Similarly, to bring the rest into life, we made a blue wine to fight the pink tax. It was called Blu-A instead of Rosé. It was priced 15 % less than the average price of a bottle of Rosé to kind of prove the point that women's products, razors especially um are charged more just because they're pink and so we made a blue wine that was cheaper and you know we did a lot of fun things there and then billy got acquired by edgewell at which time i was thinking okay what am i going to do next we got to the promised land time for me to figure out like what's next in my career and i started consulting and meeting different people and being introduced to different categories and industries and um i met my co-founder Sam because three different people had actually tried to intro me to him.

5:53And by the third person, I was like, okay, I think I have to meet this guy. And he basically had spent the past five years at Away managing their supply chain and product development. And while he was there, it took him to a lot of fridge factories because there are manufacturing similarities between suitcases and bridges, which I did not realize. Huh. I didn't know that either. They're both big hollow pieces of metal is the simplest way I can describe it. when I put it that way. And so while he was at these fridge factories, a lot of the factory managers were like, you know, there's been no innovation in the wine fridge space.

6:26And, you know, for decades, basically, these big appliance brands have been switching out a logo and a handle and not really doing anything else. And Sam is a big wine drinker. And he was like, you know, he had kind of experienced some of the shortcomings with the existing wine fridges in the market. And he was like, you know what, I can make something better than this. So he hired an industrial designer in Italy to rethink it from the ground up as a piece of furniture. And that's when I met him. And I was like, you know, there's just one problem here. Like, you're great. This product sounds brilliant.

6:54I think there's a lot of opportunity to build a brand in this category where basically there are no brands. But I don't drink alcohol. And so we rethought it together as an all-in-one drinks fridge, which is kind of what you see today. On, you know, one side of our racks, we perfectly hold wine. And that's how Sam has his fridge set up. And on the other side of the rack, we perfectly hold smaller cans and bottles, which is how I have my fridge set up. I have a lot of seltzer. I have a lot of guia, non-alcoholic drinks. And so that's kind of like where the idea for the fridge was first born together.

7:27Got it. Wow. What a trajectory. So how long, like when did you meet Sam and how long did it take? Because correct me if I'm wrong, but I think you launched this past November. Is that right? That is correct. And we met a little over two years ago. So and so was it pretty much like two years of product development and getting it or what was like what was the ramp up to getting to November of 2023? It was about three, even a little bit of four years of product development. Sam had been working on it for quite a few years before I joined him. And yeah, we we did a lot of fine tuning together, but he kind of had the base of of how it would look and feel.

8:05And he did an excellent job, as did our industrial designer in Italy. And I kind of came in and put on the final touches with him. So it sounds like given your background, your background is brand. And a lot of the things that you talked about were fun, very experiential moments, some of them more guerrilla-y. Is that part of the playbook that you want to do with Rocco? What was the rollout and are there any lessons or certain types of campaign ideas you have that lend themselves to these past experiences you've had? That's a great question. I also, I talk about the fun things because if I were to tell you all about Facebook ads, I don't know that you'd find it as interesting.

8:47I mean, you know, maybe, but you know. Which is about what I spent, you know, probably 50 % of my time doing. But yes, so when we were thinking about Rocco before the launch, obviously, you know, speaking to my past experience, having a mission was really important to me and building a brand beyond just the product. and when I looked at the rest of the category I very quickly realized appliance brands don't actually have a brand and when Sam and I had first met he was like what brand of fridge do you have because he can geek out about fridges for hours so he wanted to do that and I was like you know what I don't actually know the brand of my fridge and I had actually just renovated a home and I couldn't name the brand that I had chosen now I know it's Bishop Peichel and I'll never forget that.

9:35But at the time, I couldn't remember. And I really saw an opportunity to do things differently than the rest of the category was doing. And so, you know, my hope for Rocco and our first product, the drinks fridge, is that people really kind of think about it as a little bar in their living room. And hopefully it makes hosting a lot easier for them. People can now help themselves to a drink in your drinks fridge versus you needing to serve them from your kitchen or having your friends go into your kitchen fridge and experience your smelly leftovers or wilted parsley and grab champagne next to the ketchup.

10:06And I hope that, you know, it inspires more people to invite people over and celebrate things that are smaller that they might not normally celebrate if, you know, they didn't have this in their home. And so our mission is really to create more quality time. And sometimes I say, you know, put the living back in the living room. We all kind of are used to sitting at home on our devices and not really, you know, keeping in touch with friends via real conversation, but rather, you know, DMing them or talking to them on Slack or Zoom. And I'm hoping that this kind of brings people together. And so some of the things we've done since we've launched are, well, one, our website is actually closed between 7 and 10 p.m.

10:45on Saturday nights. So if you try and shop, a message comes up and it says Saturday nights are for hanging out, not for shopping. And it has a playlist. And that playlist is kind of like, you know, funky tunes, disco playlist. And the idea is that hopefully it inspires more people to actually like get offline and spend time together. And we've actually had some people like pretty upset about it. They've written in and they've been like, I want to buy your product and I can't, this is ridiculous. And I'm like, it's three hours, you know, like three hours that I want you to spend offline. And then we have a set of coasters that doubles as cards.

11:18It comes with every fridge and it says on the deck, um, use these to play anything but solitaire. And the ideas that hopefully people will use them to play card games with each other and, you know, enjoy the fridge while they're doing that. But yeah, we have some other fun things planned in the works, but those are kind of the two ways that we brought the mission to life so far. Got it. And you also, correct me if I'm wrong, but you had a partnership with the non-alcoholic retailer Boisson. Am I right about that? Yes, you are correct. If you ordered a fridge in January, you got a sampler pack of non-alcoholic drinks, and we definitely have a lot more of that planned.

11:52Yeah. So like it strikes me and maybe I'm wrong, but like given that you're focusing both on non-alc and ALK, you're sort of paving the way for future brand partnerships. It seems like that's what you would want. Am I wrong about that? No, you are correct. And I say this a lot, but I think we really hit peak beverage. There was a tweet that I read. I don't even know if you can call it a tweet anymore. But there was a tweet that I read where somebody had said Whole Foods should be named Whole Beverage. Because if you go into Whole Foods now, especially in the New York City locations, I walk in and it's like, all you see are drinks.

12:25And there are so many, you know, new fun seltzer flavors and fun non-alcoholic drinks. And, you know, we're excited to just help people discover new drinks, help them create, you know, deeper relationships with the drink brands they love and really bring them to life in kind of fun ways, whether that's, you know, through a custom fridge that comes in the same color as your favorite drink or your fridge comes fully stocked with your favorite drink, things like that. Got it. So let's talk about the initial rollout. You mentioned those initial campaigns that you ran. One thing that I found really fascinating is that you do have, you're not DTC only, you do have one retailer, which is Nordstrom.

13:06So can you just talk a little bit about that? Because I think that's a very fascinating first retailer to have as essentially an appliance company. Yeah, that's a great question. Yes, so we launched in Nordstrom about two weeks after we went live, and we're in Nordstrom's across the country. And the reason for that was because we really think this is something that people are going to want to experience in real life before they purchase. They're going to want to see it and imagine it in their home and think about it in relation to the rest of their other furniture. So instead of being in an appliance store where we're surrounded by these big soulless boxes of steel that don't really look and feel like our fridge.

13:45We want it to be around things that people might have in their home next to the fridge. So, you know, we're in the furniture section at Nordstrom, and we hope that that kind of helps people think about their lifestyle and how the fridge fits into that. Obviously, in an appliance store, we would stand out a lot. And so, you know, we're not opposed to being in appliance stores eventually, but we wanted to start by actually being in a place where people can use the space that and the things that are surrounding the fridge in the store to think about how it would fit into their own space. All right, we're going to take a quick break right now.

14:18We'll be right back after this message from our sponsor.

14:23And can you talk about the initial, like, how did you get Nordstrom's attention? Was that a difficult pitch to make? Because I imagine they don't sell too many refrigerators. Maybe I'm wrong, but. They don't sell any, actually. They told us that we were the first large appliance that they've carried, which technically even though we're a smaller beverage fridge, it still counts as a large appliance. And they were just really excited by the idea. I think they, from the very beginning, kind of were able to identify the fact that this really is a very differentiated product and the first product that's come out in the large appliance space that looks and feels like this one does.

14:56And they were just really excited by the design. One of the things that I think, like, you know, if you go to your website, if you like look at the ads, you know, you look very much like what people associate with, you know, know, a digitally native brand, but you off the bat, you have a wholesale partnership. And it seems like that is definitely part of the strategy going forward, say a year from now, two years from now, what are you hoping the distribution of revenue would be? Like, are you still focused on building out that DTC presence? How, like, how are you working on that? Or is your hope that, you know, as things slowly ramp up, you will be in more retailers, and that will be the predominant leader of your revenue?

15:34Yeah, so we launched, as you mentioned, in November, And we sold out of our first batch of inventory in two weeks. And we've been essentially playing catch up. And so if you order a fridge today, it doesn't ship until April. And it's been that way for quite some time. So we haven't been able to scale partnerships as quickly as we would like, because truthfully, we just don't have as many fridges as we would need in order to do that. But as soon as we're back in stock, hopefully later this spring, we do plan on expanding where you can find Rocco and experience Rocco in person. And we're having some conversations with big retailers and small boutique shops that carry like-minded brands to just get Rocco in as many places as possible, whether it's, you know, the really chic co-working space that you go to or the place where you're buying plants.

16:22We want to really, you know, kind of have Rocco everywhere. And so that's kind of the goal. And so I think, you know, the retail distribution would show that. All right. Right. I want to go into that a little bit further, the selling out, because that's, I mean, like, that's both a dream and a nightmare for a brand, I imagine, where, you know, you sell out, that's great. You can put that on your website. But then, I don't know, I think about other brands that I won't name, but they're mostly in the furniture space where they would just get bottlenecked and you couldn't order a big piece of furniture and it would get delivered in five months.

16:55And like that, that is something that isn't great. How are you trying to toe that line? And like, if you are sold out now and you're playing catch up, what are you thinking about in terms of supply chain and manufacturing? Is that already shifting gears? Yes. So we've just started to double production, which is great. So we're hoping that end of April will be the last time that we have to message a ships in X amount of weeks timeline, and that will actually be able to ship right away. And to your point, yeah, it's both a blessing and a curse. I think, you know, we've missed some people's birthdays and people ordered holiday gifts that didn't arrive in time.

17:33and you know that's always a bit of a disappointment and we try and accommodate people as much as we can and you know prioritize orders as they're coming in for special occasions but in general I think you know people are really excited about this product and they've ordered it and want it right away and at first I was like you know at least it's on a mattress like when I was a Casper and people were ordering a mattress and we were back ordered or it didn't ship right away people didn't have a place to sleep so we were shipping them air mattresses at the time so they at least had something to sleep on.

18:00And I was like, it's a drinks fridge. People have lived without it for a while. They'll be okay for another two months, but people are excited. And so they're disappointed when it doesn't arrive right away. And so we are looking forward to being in stock in the spring and hope that that won't happen again. As a founder and with a, I imagine, a relatively small company, how do you handle that potential disappointment? Because I imagine that's something that you don't want to deal with and you can be kind of pithy, but you don't want to be too pithy. Do you have any tips for that? Oh, I'm like the opposite of pithy.

18:30I'm like overly apologetic. I'm like putting everything as fast as humanly possible to make more fridges. And I swear as soon as it hits the warehouse, it's going to go straight to your house. And I'll personally call you when it hits your local delivery station. And I've sent out a lot of packages of free drinks so that people can at least enjoy something while they wait. All right. Yeah, that's good. I feel like people would love some free drinks. Yes. Let's talk about marketing. So I mentioned, like, it was funny, you know, I've noticed the fridge in my feed for a little bit now. And so it sounds like maybe I'm wrong.

19:00Maybe it's just that I'm the target consumer, but is Instagram one of your primary channels? How are you thinking about it? What are you working with? I also noticed, and this is like, I don't know if this is also just my weird algorithm, but it's never your account. It's like Dwell or it's some other brand partner that I'm seeing, like it's an advertisement sent to me. And so is that specific or am I just in some weird category? You're not in a weird category. So when we launched, we knew that having other people speak on behalf of the brand and review the fridge and talk about their own experience with it would be really important because it's a product that's an investment and it's not a facial spray that you're buying.

19:45You're buying something that you hope to keep in your home forever. And so we wanted different people to speak to the product and their experience with it. And that's kind of those partnerships that you're seeing, those third-party reviews. And we gifted a lot of fridges that launch a lot. I mean, skincare brands launch and facial sprays launch and they gift 400 people. We obviously can't do that. But we did give some fridges to people in the home decor space and the hospitality space and the food and bed space, people who were really excited to put in their living room and talk about it. And so that's probably what you're seeing too.

20:21And press was really important to us. So we went out of the gates with a really strong press strategy and wanted to make sure that we were getting it in the hands of editors to review. And so that's been really helpful for us. Domino reviewed it and took some photos of the fridge in their home and food and wine and Arc Digest. And so we're continuing with that as well, just because we know this is something that people are going to want to hear about more than once, probably before they purchase. It's not, you know, like a quick decision for them. Although our salesman, our salesman, I told you otherwise, I'm like, that's what I thought.

20:50And then we sold out in two weeks, but that's still my hypothesis. Yeah. I mean, I guess, yeah, I can see it going both ways where it's both a thoughtful decision, but also like, screw it. I'm just going to do it right now. Like, like. Yes. Well, what I found is that a lot of people had gotten it in their head that they needed a mini fridge or a wine fridge. And they started looking for this product and they couldn't find anything that fit their aesthetic. And they were like, I don't really want to put an ugly mini fridge or ugly wide fridge in my home. So I'm just going to wait. I'm just going to like hold off on this purchase.

21:20And then as soon as we launched, they were like, oh my gosh, I've been looking for this. And they'd already kind of like tucked away in their brain that they needed this thing. And so it didn't take a lot to push them over the edge. They were like, this is exactly what I've been looking for. And they pulled the trigger. But in general, I'm trying to be a little bit thoughtful with making sure that we have a lot of reviews about the products so people can read about the experience of actually having it in your home. This might be a dumb question, but it seems like it's not category creation, like you're a refrigerator, but also it is slightly different and it like presents differently.

21:48And so are you wanting to show up in the reviews of the best refrigerator for the wire cutter, for example, or are you hoping that an editor will write, and I tried this beautiful fridge and here's why I like it? Exactly. I think, you know, to some extent, I do say like there really hasn't been a drinks fridge that has existed. There's been many fridges that people have used for drinks. And then there's been wine fridges where people have stored things other than wine in them and often get frustrated because they're not actually built for seltzer and soda. And they don't get cold enough for seltzer and soda.

22:21And the racks aren't designed for seltzer and soda. So this is the first time the interior of the fridge is really designed specifically for drinks and has the versatility that you would want with a drinks fridge. So for example, we have isolated temperatures on. So you can keep wine at one temperature and soda at another temperature, which would be much colder. And so I do think to some extent, we are creating a little bit of a category, but granted, you know, you could compare it to a mini fridge or a wine fridge. Yeah. And I'll say like, I have a, I have a wine fridge in my place because it was gifted to me and I like it and it's good, but my issue, and I don't, maybe you can answer this because you know more about it.

22:56When it gets really hot out, it is unable to get below a certain temperature. And I think it's just a piece of crap that was gifted to me. I hope my friend isn't listening to this, but like, but like, I guess my question then for you is what are the tiers of technology for refrigeration? And is that like a common problem? Yes. My co-founder Sam would truly talk to you for like 20 minutes about this. You'd have to actually like pull the cord on the recording. So yes, there, there's different levels of compression technology and the quality of the compressor can vary so greatly. And we picked the same compressor brand that Sub-Zero uses.