• How to scale a niche product into a mainstream market while navigating being business and life partners

  • Jul 28 2023
  • Duración: 26 m
  • Podcast

How to scale a niche product into a mainstream market while navigating being business and life partners Por arte de portada

How to scale a niche product into a mainstream market while navigating being business and life partners

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  • A warm welcome to the 60 new subscribers who have joined since the last edition!If you haven’t subscribed yet, sign up below to join a network of 2,730 climate tech entrepreneurs and investors. The Green Techpreneur (GT) will provide you with the actionable insight and connections you need to make your mark on the planet with your business!In this Green Techpreneur episode, I spoke to the Co-founders of Gimme Seaweed to share how their journey of infusing passion, love, and a personal touch - connecting with customers as you would with friends and family - became keys to growing a household name brand that’s both delicious, nutritious and good for the planet.“I’ll never forget that feeling I had, in the early morning, it was 6 a.m., I was 35 and at the farmers market and feeling like I was in charge of my life and about to go on this very refreshing journey. And that became Annie Chun’s and the start of all that transpired. It was based on really wanting to be myself and sharing the love and experience that I have. Based on this, I always make sure to connect with myself, who I am, and what I have learned.”Annie Chun is the pioneer of an organic seaweed US snack brand, Gimme Seaweed, that has shifted what was a niche product into the mainstream market. She immigrated from Korea as a young woman in 1976 - but it was in selling homemade produce at a farmers market in 1991 that she found her North Star as a green techpreneur. At the time, she would never have imagined that her humble outdoor market beginnings would lead to building a household brand name.So how did she beat the odds to build an exceptional business from the ground up?“You're not really calculating, I'm going to put that into the US market, I did it truly as a friend, as a neighbour, one by one. And by doing so, I learnt a lot about what American culture is, how they connect, what they like. It just came to me naturally through that experience, and I think that's the base of our reach to our market and our buyers.”Along the way, she met her husband and co-founder, Steve Broad. They launched Gimme Seaweed in 2012, where Annie brings her Korean roots to the US with the introduction of seaweed as a snack. Together, they created the world’s first USDA Certified Organic, non-GMO Project Verified seaweed snacks.“I couldn't have built the business by myself,” says Chun. “It was almost like that was the path we had to walk together.”Seaweed is the underrated story of our time – it’s the ultimate regenerative crop – and along with shellfish, it’s one of the few farmed foods with a net positive environmental impact. In a world of water scarcity, it provides valuable nutrition without use of freshwater, and if farmed organically, it helps keep the oceans clean and fights climate change. Seaweed farms sequester carbon and improve water quality: one ton of seaweed can sequester over 1 ton of CO2 annually – a stark contrast to the heavy toll traditional agriculture takes on the environment. But it’s also a commercial success story: since 2018 the seaweed category has grown by 63% with strong double-digit growth YOY.Today, Gimme is on track to double its business sales since 2021 and deliver 40% year on year growth. It’s the #1 organic seaweed brand leading the way in online channel sales with a 60% category share on Amazon and can be found at major US and Canadian retailers including Wholefoods, Kroger, Publix, Target, Safeway, Sprouts and HEB. What sustainability practices does Gimme Seaweed employ?Annie: Our commitment to sustainability starts in the ocean, Gimme was the first US company to offer organic, non-GMO seaweed. We worked closely with seaweed farmers in South Korea and in close cooperation with the Korean National Federation of Fisheries Cooperatives to develop the standard for organic, non-GMO seaweed that is widely used today by the industry.It was a lot of work for us to coordinate between the Korean Control Union and the USDA and then to find a supplier – because organic wasn't in the vocabulary in Korea, nor non-GMO, and it took a lot of time. In recognition for helping transform the seaweed industry we received a Supplier of the Year Award for Organic Commitment from Whole Foods Market. We use 250 tons of dried seaweed a year which requires 2,500 tons of wet seaweed, this absorbs 4,265 tons of CO2 per year.How were you able to take a niche product and introduce it in a mainstream market?Steve: Understand what you have as a product and understand where the consumer is and what they're seeking and how you bring that together.* What helped us was starting at the farmers market and directly speaking to the consumer as opposed to just looking at a data story and then figuring out what needs to happen.* Then you create the brand with the values you embody to create that consumer love that's really where the magic happens. * We built a brand that was more mainstream than the seaweed market had ...
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