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Brands are struggling to thrive in the new normal. Leveraging proven strategies that work in different markets can give you a huge edge over your competition. Helping retailers unlock potential opportunities unknown to other brands is the key to success

Within the market, there are certain sectors that we want to play for. So you would have retail on the shelf. It could collect dust if no one knows what it is, or it's not the right price.

When we are a price that's more expensive, so we've got to drive people into that aisle to go, oh, Mr. Lee, I know that, I'll pick it up because I know it from somewhere else. We also wanted to make sure that we were in the right places from retail perspective. So what you call natural and speciality stores, we would call health stores in the UK or independent health stores.

And people will know that it will be a bit more, it will be less price sensitive, more your consumer and you can do some sampling there as well. So we were doing sampling in stores and getting people to understand, having a chopping board with all of our freeze dried ingredients in there, which people didn't really know what freeze dried was. So you're educating the consumer as well as saying, hey, try it, it tastes really good.

And that's how we were building what we called our tribe. Consumer basis will go around anywhere in the world and buy our product, even when it be online.

Are you ready to learn about the other creative strategies that Charlie uses to build their brand? Let's start the show. Hello, and thank you for joining us today.

Welcome. I've been reaching out to a lot of different brands and asking them what are their most pressing bottlenecks? What are the problems that I can help you solve for the weekly webinar series?

The problem that people share with me most often is how do you survive during these uncertain times? What are some creative strategies to help you grow and thrive? Today's podcast episode is exactly that.

Today we're going to talk about strategies that work around the world that can help you as well. My guest Charlie shares a lot of great insights and a lot of great strategies that most brands overlook or don't think about. In a previous episode, we talked about the importance of leveraging food service to get your product discovered and in front of more shoppers, essentially getting paid sampling.

Well, Charlie has a strategy to take that to new heights, literally. Today's podcast complements the conversation I had with Charlie back in episode 214, so you definitely won't go back and listen to that. Thank you for listening.

This show is about you and it's for you. In appreciation for your time, there's a free downloadable guide for you at the end of every podcast episode. I always include one easy to download, quick to digest strategy that you can insulate up and make your own.

One that you can use to grow sustainable sales and compete more effectively with. This week's free guide is My Essential Promotion Blueprint. Details on how to get it instantly at the end of the podcast episode.

Remember that the goal here is to get your brand onto more store shelves and into the hands of more shoppers, including online. And don't forget to go back and listen to prior episodes where I might help solve some of your most pressing bottlenecks. If you liked this episode, please share it with a friend and subscribe so you can be the first to get new brand building content as soon as it becomes available.

Help me raise the bar in our industry. Now here's Charlie. This weekly series was started to help brands thrive, succeed, etc. in the era of COVID. And the reason I started this was that I realized that the best thing I can help you do is lean in and find experts like Charlie here to help answer your most pressing questions. So the reason we're here today.

Charlie and I had a great conversation a few days, a week or two, a couple of weeks ago. It's on the podcast. So you want to go back and check that out.

But the point being is that when we're looking at go-to-market strategies in the US, we tend to look at, we tend to do things the way that's always been done. And I want to challenge it. And the thing I found inspiring about what Charlie brings to this conversation is he's had an opportunity to do business, to launch a brand in a lot of different countries.

And as a result, he has strategies that he's learned that I think can help all of us. And the point being that if we can help our retail partners succeed with leveraging our brand, that's the win-win. Charlie, thank you for coming on today.

And like I said, we were talking a little bit before on a different podcast episode a couple of weeks ago, and you provided a lot of great insights about different go-to-market strategies that work in different countries. So can you start by talking a little bit about yourself and how you get to Mr. Lee's and some of the things that you've learned on your journey to that?

Yeah, no worries. Hi, everyone. And thanks, Dan.

Yeah, we had a great conversation, didn't we, last time. So Dan, are you a friend of Stephanie's?

Yes.

Yeah, great. So Stephanie is one of our strategic advisors for Alohi, and this is kind of how this came to fruition. But going back maybe, well, 10 years ago, maybe I'm 32 now.

So 10 years ago, fresh out of university over here in the UK, I was actually playing football, what you guys call soccer. And sadly, I had to finish that due to an injury, the classic. But I found myself getting into business quite early on, where my first role was a regional sales manager, which is a different title in the US.

It's actually quite a big, more bigger title in the US than it is here in the UK. With the tea giant, Twinings, who you have out in the US as well. It's a really big British brand in the UK.

It's what the Queen drinks, for example. So really high quality. I was there for two years.

Fell in love with FMCG. Fell in love with food and brands and distribution and how to kind of increase sales from a marketing and sales perspective. I always had this dream and ambition to start my own business.

So I found myself kind of, and I love sports. So I wanted to build up my knowledge of how to build brands, how to be successful in kind of a branded environment. But being a very sporty person, Adidas came knocking on the door.

So I ended up in sort of consumer retail, where I was selling football, soccer, boots, cleats, which is kind of the dream job for me, or so I thought. But actually, I'm probably not a corporate boss. And believe it or not, Adidas, from my perspective, was probably too corporate for me.

I like to wear t-shirts all day and have my own personality and think outside the box, I suppose. So a great, great reason for me to be involved in this conversation today, because that's what I like to do. So I was there for a year, just under a year, and I found myself wanting to get into startups.

So I ended up at a company called Oppo Ice Cream, which is a healthy ice cream company. They're like Halo Top in the US. And we started pretty much from the kitchen, trying out new products, etc.

I then came on board as the head of sales there, got us into a number of retailers, including Whole Foods in the UK, Holland & Barrett, which is probably a lower end, but still fairly high end health store. There's a lot more stores there than there is in Whole Foods over here. Waitrose, Co-op, quite a few others.

And I loved it. And it was something that I understood more around cash flow and P&Ls, like true P&Ls, not just something you get in the corporate world. How to be really clever in your marketing side of[…]

So, you know, how do you get people to understand your brand with absolutely no marketing budget and being really clever with how you spend your money, where you put your product, why you put your product there, the consumer you want to go after, et cetera, et cetera. And they were really two smart founders as well. If they ever hear this, I just want to say thank you for the opportunity.

And then I went to Itsu Grocery. There is actually a chain of fast food sushi restaurants, but they sell into retail as well. They actually have one sushi restaurant out in New York.

They just started in the US. Really big company over here. There was about 100 stores over here.

And we were in various retailers across the country and breaking into Europe shortly after I left. But it was still kind of not a startup vibe that I wanted. So, funny enough, you won't know because it's the US or the UK.

But I was in London. I went to a seaside town university called Bournemouth. And that's where Mr. Lee is where I'm currently at now.

That's where our head office is. And I just linked in the power of LinkedIn that the founder, Damien Lee, got in touch with me on LinkedIn and said, hey, Charlie, know all about you, what you're up to. I was ready for a new challenge.

But I was kind of wanting to start my own business. And he said, well, hey, come to Mr. Lee's. We'll sell across the world.

You'll learn loads. We'll give you some shares and some equity within the company. And hey, you know, in X amount of years' time, we'll sell the company.

You'll make a bit of money, and you'll have all the experience, all the knowledge. And with our blessing, go and make your own business, make your own Mr. Lee's. So really, I've kind of gone from corporate to startup.

Try corporate again and back down to startup, because that's my calling. And I commend anyone that's watching this now that wants to start their own business. It's incredibly difficult, but also really, really rewarding as well.

And if you've done it without any experience, then absolutely hats off to you. Certainly something that I couldn't do. I'm looking forward to doing it myself one day.

But hopefully, some of the experiences that I'm going through now will help you to not make as many mistakes as you perhaps would do if you didn't listen to this. We've made some mistakes. It's cost us money.

We've learned from it and we've moved on and we've created more strategies and better strategies as we go along. So, yeah, Mr. Lee, specifically, I'm the Global Sales Director, very newly appointed Global Sales Director. I was head of sales, which means we actually were selling around the world anyway.

So Damian, he's half Australian. We actually won an airline contract out in Australia. And due to import-export duties, we weren't allowed to export our product from the UK out to Australia.

So we actually set up a business out there with manufacturing and everything. So we went out there, won a couple of retailers, won a couple of airlines, and it's his own fully-fledged company out there within the group, his own entity. We still do work in Europe, obviously.

That's where I reside. And we are with various retailers and wholesalers and airlines out this way. But the big game place for us and an industry and a market that was really interesting to us was the US market.

Purely population, but also the way that you guys enjoy new and innovative things. I think from looking at Europe and America, we have kind of different trends, which is really interesting because our product is not fairly... The product that we have, which is a healthy instant and premium noodle, there are other of those kinds in the UK, but there's not much in the US with all due respect to the people that are playing in that field.

And I'll tell you more about our product in a minute. But we just saw it as a brand new landscape to really kind of take hold of and trying to change the game in that category, which we've practiced in Australia, we do in Europe, and we're sort of really going for it in the US. We've won Whole Foods.

So we've got Whole Foods accounts across the whole of the country. We work with UNFI. We're setting up with brokers.

We've got another e-com business that we're just setting up with now. So, yeah, speaking to Dan in the podcast, it was really interesting to kind of give the lay of the land of how it works in Australia to how it works in Europe and what I'm learning about how it works in the US because I'm constantly learning along those side things. So a bit of a whirlwind 10-year career and one that I always laugh and say, well, I've done no years in America, so someone tell me.

And lots of people have given me lots of advice. And sometimes I can link that into what it's like in Europe. And sometimes I think that's completely different.

I just have to accept that it's very, very new. And we might have learned something in Europe that would help in the US, which is a really interesting thing for us, for Dan and I to have a conversation with on the podcast that we did a couple of weeks ago.

Thank you for sharing that. And let's go back a little bit. The fact that you've got your product and that you've had all this experience, this is one of the things that I really want to focus on.

In this industry, a lot of people that start a brand don't have the wherewithal, don't have all the experience, all the knowledge that they need. And that makes sense. I mean, you cannot be an expert in absolutely everything, but starting is the key to your success.

It's the first thing you need to do. The point being is that there are a lot of good quality resources out there, like the things that I'm putting out there, the things that we're sharing in this community, all these partners, et cetera, where you can come and learn about how to grow, thrive and succeed. Now, what's interesting about Charlie is that he didn't come to this country and start doing business with the same mindset that a lot of other brands have in this industry.

And let me explain what I mean by this. In this industry, unfortunately, we spend a lot of time telling people how to raise money and then how to raise more money and then how to raise more money and then effectively to hand the keys to someone else. And that's not a quality strategy.

That's not a sustainable strategy. And the reason this matters is because you need to be able to differentiate yourself between other brands. One, and then two, the retailers that you're selling into are looking for your help to grow sustainable cells.

And the most effective way they can do that is to differentiate their cells. So in other words, instead of following the same cookie cutter strategy that everyone else follows, we can learn from people like Charlie to get a sustainable competitive advantage. And the reason that matters is because as we're leveraging different strategies, different principles, different go to market ideas, et cetera, we don't need to follow into the same traps that a lot of other companies use.

And I've made this reference a lot. The same strategies that someone uses to sell motor oil is not going to differentiate your organic baby food. And that's really key.

And I think that's one of the biggest problems that we have, challenges that we create as an industry for new entrepreneurs. And that's why I wanted to dig into this. So thank you, Charlie, for sharing that.

So let's talk a little bit about when you said interesting about the US what were the things that you identified that in your mind are interesting? Was it what you shared in terms of the go to market strategy, the fact that we like, I mean, I'll let you speak. Go ahead.

So what was interesting for us as a brand coming out to the US do you mean?

Oh, yes, yes, yes.

Yeah. Okay, great. Yeah.

Well, really, I think there's just more to play for out in the US. There's more retailers to go for. There's it kind of it seems to catch like wildfire if it goes really well there.

So if I speak about and there's more there's more space. So you and I were talking about this two weeks ago, which is what I'm noticing is the well, the UK is densely populated. There's about 66 million and the UK is not as big as one of the states, you know, various states in the US.

So you can imagine that space is an absolute premium. And so for us to go from Europe to Australia, still a lot of space, space out there, and it's easier to get onto shelf in the US. It just seemed to work really well that there was a lot of retailers to go for.

And actually, it just so happened that the one that we wanted to go for was Whole Foods. That is the absolute, that was a golden goose for us. And if it didn't work out, we could have gone with another semi equivalent, and we'd work out who they are or we'd go to another one.

There'd be a lot to shoot for there. That's one thing, that there was a lot of opportunity. The second thing is that purely by population, there's going to be more people that will consume our products.

And thirdly, when we did the landscape of looking at, within the current category that we work in, which is an instant noodle category, we knew we were so different in every way. So we were so different from a product point of view. We were interesting because we were from the UK, because that is interesting.

Our packaging is slightly different to how we do packaging in the UK to the US. So we would stand out. And those three things, and with a really, really powerful story as well, our brand story, which I'll go into later on, those four things really just clicked in the line when we were speaking to people in the US.

It was the same thing in Australia as well. It's just they have about 25, I think, 30 million people out there. So we just saw it as a really smart and exciting way to continue to grow our brand.

I would say they're probably the main things. And really, I always say this, the market kind of defines you really because you can go into a market and it might not be right for you, and you can keep pushing and keep pushing. But sooner or later, the market will just say, it's too expensive or consumers don't want it, or it's exactly the same as what I've currently got as a MeToo product, or there's not enough people in that said market to actually make your company viable.

And I think because we hit those, we had those four key pillars to go into the US, that's why we're being so very successful now within that market.

Appreciate your sharing that. It's kind of interesting listening to people from outside or talk about how things work in this country. There are always a lot of stories about how brands became an overnight success after 20 years or something like that.

My point being is that this is a lot harder than a lot of people think it is. And again, if we can help give you more runway, if we can help fix that, make it easier for you to succeed, that's what this whole episode is about, this series, etc. podcasts and whatnot.

But you were talking about the market defines you. And this is one of the challenges I think every brand faces. And this is where I started in terms of helping brands out.

And it goes back to my free turnkey sales source strategies course. The point is, is that a lot of brands think about their market or their customer in a very generic sense. And you need to understand what's unique about your customer at a very granular level, like you would a friend.

So how does your idea customer use the product after they take it home and as they evangelize it with their friends, etc. And then in my opinion, Charlie, you need to be able to share that in your brand story and you need to be able to leverage that at shelf. Sadly, most retailers want volume, they want slotting, they want things like that in this country that don't do anything to help you grow sales.

I should say volume, I mean, in terms of slotting, the trade promotion, etc. But yet, it's the value of your unique consumer that gets your product that is going to be far more valuable to the retailer. So we were talking a little bit before about noodles.

I don't know of a single college student that hasn't lived off of noodles. And yet, I think that's a really great opportunity for you to leverage that relationship that you have with that type of consumer to help grow sales in this country. Can you talk about some of the strategies that you've used?

You mentioned BRAND STORIES being one of your pillars. Can you talk more about that? And then what did you find to be effective in this country?

Yeah, great. I might take a step back actually and tell you what it was like in Europe and what we were doing in Europe first. Because actually, when we launched with Whole Foods and we launched in America, it was in May this year when COVID was pretty much at its prime.

So I can tell you what we were going to do. And then I could probably tell you that we're pivoting every day and trying to develop some strategies every day to make sure that we're working. Because your go-to-market and your launch strategy with the retailer doesn't necessarily mean that it's going to be the same when you're six months in or a year in.

So I'll give you an understanding of what we did in Europe and how successful we were in Europe. And we actually then took that strategy and we used it in Australia and it's worked very well there. And this is what we were going to do in America before everything happened.

So we, as a brand, I mean, I've been at the company for three years. I think it was, I think, I know it was two years prior to that was kind of the concept phase to kind of final product that we wanted to then, we felt very proud to be able to send that out to market. So first and foremost is make sure your product is right for the market because it's very difficult to get a second chance with these customers.

So in the UK and in Europe specifically, we didn't have a great deal of marketing spend. So how do we get consumers to understand why our product is slightly more expensive, why it's more premium and why I should buy it more often. So the USPs that we have within our product, a lot of people are putting taking things out of the product, bad things out.

So in the UK, gluten is actually quite a big thing. It doesn't seem so big in America. I think it's getting bigger.

We've taken out MSG, so any chemicals within there, we're taking out. We've tried to lower salt, saturated fats, calorie counted, everything to make you think, great, this is a product that I know that inside me, when I put it inside my body, my body is going to be happy within that because there's no nasties in there. But that comes at a premium because it's expensive ingredients.

The way that we manufacture our products is more expensive. So how do we get people to realize that it's going to be 50p more than the most, the next most expensive instant noodle? Tough ask.

So what we understood was within the sales channel or within the market, there are certain sectors that we want to play for. So you would have retail on the shelf. It could collect dust if no one knows what it is or it's not the right price.

When we're a price that's more expensive, so we've got to drive people into that aisle to go, oh, Mr. Lee, I know that. I'll pick it up because I know it from somewhere else. So that's the top level.

And then how do you build up to that? A big market that we were looking at were airlines. So within the airline space, say, for example, we work with EasyJet, which is the second largest European air carrier.

And they service, if I remember rightly, it's 120 million consumers a year. Now, when you're in an airline, when you're in an aeroplane and there's 150, 200 people on a plane and they've got a brochure and there's only five, six meal options, it's great marketing. So all of a sudden, you've got 120 million people looking at your product and you have X amount of people actually trying it because they think, yeah, that looks all right.

I'll try that. And they can see the brand and they can taste it and it's almost, it's paid for marketing by people actually paying for the product. So we wouldn't make a great deal of money out of that.

And we're very open to admit that profit-wise, it won't make too much. As long as it's washing its face or even a little bit more, then fine. And I'm very open with our airlines to say, hey, your price is incredible because that's the most competitive market.

It really is. It's probably something that people wouldn't share normally. But I think it's important to be quite open to say, there are some markets where you make a bit more profit, but you don't because you've got to do a lot more marketing.

So your customer acquisition is so much higher in, say, online or in retail than it is doing in airlines. So it all kind of nets itself out at the end of the day. But that was a key one for us.

So we had four airlines that probably equated to around 200 to 220 million consumer points a year. So hopefully people will understand what our product is. We also wanted to make sure that we were in the right places from retail perspective.

So what you call natural and speciality stores, we would call health stores in the UK or independent health stores. And people will know that it would be less price sensitive, more your consumer, and you can do some sampling there as well. So we were doing sampling in stores and getting people to understand, having a chopping board with all of our freeze-dried ingredients in there, which people didn't really know what freeze-dried was.

So you're educating the consumer as well as saying, hey, try it. It tastes really good. And that's how we were building what we called our tribe, consumer-based that will go around anywhere in the world and buy our product, even when it be online.

So we would do that. Trains and planes are the two same things.

And then also something that's very separate to us is we have a vending machine as well. So we have a food technology side to our business where we dispense the hot and healthy noodle and we have other products coming out as well. So you press the button.

You can put sort of more chili oil in there or more sesame seed oil or whatever you want within our product. And it comes out and you stir it in a pot and away you go. So we were putting those around hospitals, universities, colleges, et cetera, et cetera, because actually, hey, they might not buy it, but it's a pretty kind of bright and colorful piece of kit and machine that's in your office and you walk past it every day.

So all these touch points that we were doing it from a sales perspective and then from a marketing perspective, Damien Lee, our founder, has a very powerful and he's an incredibly powerful story and incredibly inspiring person. And he basically has fought cancer. He's on his fifth bout of cancer now.

And, you know, it's it's really inspiring, but also quite emotional at the same time. If you know him, as I as I do, we travel around the world together and become very close. So I don't like talking about it too much, to be honest.

But from from a PR perspective, people love to hear that story. And they're all cheering him on and saying, you know, keep going. And, you know, you'll fight the battle and all that sort of stuff, which is lovely, lovely to hear.

And they can speak so passionately about his products and his brand that people will listen. So from a sort of a PR and a social media point of view, we have a real purpose, I think, which is really, really, really key to to us as the reason being a brand. We won't put anything nasty into our product.

Any company, any consumer that looks at our brand and has our brand logo on their logo on their will know that we've done all the due diligence that we possibly can to make that as real food, but as quick and as tasty as possible. So all those things put together has created a really good company in Europe. Exactly the same thing in Australia.

And that's kind of what we were doing in the US gearing up to the US launch. So we were in touch with various airline carriages. We had two airline deals that are pretty much there to be done.

We were looking at universities as well because we understand that the university market in the US is very strong. And then we actually originally we were looking at doing two areas and being very, very strategic and very laser focused on where we wanted to launch. So we were looking at East and West Coast because we did some consumer research that suggests our consumer are both in East and West.

That was the whole plan. And then as soon as we had COVID come in, Whole Foods were really, really keen to launch us nationally, globally their side. We were a little bit apprehensive, but with everything that went on in the end, we just said we're just going to have to go for this.

So that's what we've done. We've really worked hard with Whole Foods. They've been a fantastic partner for us.

We work with UNFI. This will be a conversation that I'm sure Daniel wants to eke out, which is the difference between the US and the UK right now that I was learning and I was explaining to you in the podcast, which is brokers aren't a thing in the UK. In fact, they're so irrelevant in the UK because you normally have a me who looks after just the UK and that's a big job, but it's an achievable thing for one person.

But when you go to the US, obviously, it's so much bigger and you have so many more retailers and so much more to do and so many more forms to fill out that actually you do need a broker. But it's for me to get my head around that psychology, which is, yeah, no, look, I don't know everything. I'm from the UK.

This is an alien to me and I have to accept that. We don't have distributors when we speak to retailers, when we work directly with retailers in the UK. So why am I using that in the US?

Oh, yeah, because it's a huge country and it's probably best to start with a distributor. I talked to you about Ts and Cs in the US are completely different to the UK. So there's loads and loads of different things.

So when we talked before, strategy doesn't change too much, but there's nuances within each country that you need to be really mindful of.

Thank you for sharing that. The fact that you're on airlines, I think that that's pretty brilliant. One of the things that we talk about a lot on this podcast, this show, et cetera, is you've got to be available anywhere your customers shop.

And the reason Stephanie came on the webinar series before, go back and check it out, is we talked about the importance of food service and how leveraging food service provides you an opportunity to get free sampling. And that's effectively what you're doing with airlines, so that's brilliant. The point being is that anytime you can get your product discovered by someone else, build that brand awareness.

Don't think about it in terms of, I need to make a huge margin, a huge profit off of the airlines. Yet, if you think about it, if you give them, I don't know whatever kind of deal you'd give them, but give them a pretty sweet deal, and they help your brand get discovered, well, like you said, then consumers are going to be looking for it elsewhere. And the point is that if you throw that into kind of a marketing bucket, then that's going to help you grow and thrive even more.

And again, it's all about how do you get paid sampling. By the way, that's one of the questions that David sent him. He was asking about how do you develop trials?

So thank you, David, for doing that. If you've got other questions, please put them in the chat. But the point is that as you're trying to figure out your go-to-market strategy, this is a great way to go.

Now, I believe, and we talked about this before, Charlie, that your marketing strategy needs to be very complete, very thorough. It's got to be so robust, in my opinion, that anyone could step in and run your business on your behalf and in your absence. And that should include your go-to-market strategy, your sampling strategy, which retailer you're going to go to.

And that would also include where do you plan to be in a year, two years, three years, et cetera. The challenge in this industry is a lot of the brands are busy just kind of reacting to the business as opposed to being proactive. And when you can be proactive, it puts you in a position where you can confidently grow on scale, focus on what's important.

Whereas when you're reactive, you're always busy putting out fires. And it's really, really hard to not get distracted, not get pulled away from where it really matters. So thank you for sharing that.

One of the things that you mentioned, which I thought was interesting, is you're talking about the founder story and the authenticity and the transparency. One of the things that I think that we don't do well as an industry is celebrate the quality of the products that we put out there. Yes, they are more expensive, but a lot of reasons that they're more expensive is because of what I would call our broken supply system.

It costs a lot more money to put an organic product on the shelf than a mainstream product, because those organic companies or smaller companies have more barriers to entry, have more challenges, more bottlenecks in front of them than the big company. The point is, I think we need to leverage the quality of the ingredients in your packaging, the quality of the ingredients in your product in your story, and leverage at a shelf, which is what I was talking about a little bit ago. Charlie, as you're working with different brands in different countries, you're right that you do need help in this country because of the size, but the challenge is that a lot of brands, because they use brokers, and because brokers have to rely on cookie cutter strategies to be effective, you'll lose that essence of your story, that authenticity, that transparency, that unique touch point that makes your brand very different from all the other brands on the shelf.

Have you found that to be a problem? And if so, how have you combated that?

Yeah, I mean, we have the same problem all over the world when it comes down to the difference of our product and the ingredients that we use and why it's more expensive. Yes, we have that all over the world. Certain countries take to it better than others.

Sadly, I would say that our own country probably, at the moment, we're finding takes it the hardest. It's the hardest to convince people why it's such a better product than, say, America and Australia. But really, I think, like you said there, if you have a product, this is what our Whole Foods Market said about our product.

If you have a product that someone tries it first and buys it again, you'll do well. So as soon as you have that in your power, then the most powerful thing is for me to give someone our product and then they'll buy it again. And that's, I suppose, something that we would be looking to do in the US more so, is to get it into as many hands as possible.

Now, sampling, there's nothing more powerful than sampling, I don't believe. I think that if we were to explain exactly what's in our product and are as open as possible, for example, we have the chopping board. That's actually how I got our biggest airline in our company.

We had a chopping board with all the ingredients laid out, with the spices and everything, and the airline buyer just looked at it and said, is that a real bit of chicken? And I said, yes. And he wasn't listening to a word I was saying.

I was talking about the psychical packaging and the story and how it was handcrafted recipes. He didn't listen to a word. He said, is that a real chicken?

I said, yeah. He said, okay. He gave me his business card and said, speak to me next week.

And then three weeks later, we won the contract. So I think if we can be as authentic and transparent with what we've got in our product and why it's better, then consumers will hopefully buy it or get on board with it or they won't. You can't be everything to everyone.

And here at Mr. Lee's, we don't really think that we will be everything to everyone, but we do certainly think that we'll be giving people real food real quick.

Well, and thank you for going into that. When we're talking about one of the things you're talking about is, you know, how you've got the same struggle that a lot of brands have. And I think we need to change the conversation.

So here's what I'm going to recommend. I don't know if I shared this on the podcast. If I eat the generic bread, I'm hungry almost before I finish eating it.

If I eat the best mainstream bread, then I may be satiated for three or four hours. However, if I am what I eat and what I eat matters, and I eat the organic bread and the organic bread gives me the nutrients my body needs, then even though I'm spending more at shelf for that product, I'm consuming less of it. Therefore, it is cheaper in the long run.

And that's a story that I think we need to do a better job as an industry to communicate. I mean, think about all the things that you're talking about, real chicken, real spices, etc. If those products help satiate you longer, then you need less of them.

And so if you can provide, you made the comment about being happy or making your body happy because of the ingredients. That's a big part of it, obviously. But also you feel good about the fact that you're using sustainable packaging.

You can feel good about the fact that you're doing things like maybe supporting initiatives, mission based, etc. type strategies that other brands aren't. And you can leverage that in your go to market strategy.

The point is that if you can help the customer understand the value of the product that you have on the shelf and then leverage it with the retailer, that's a win. So my strategy that I would recommend to David and to you, Charlie, is that when you're talking about your go to market strategy, is that you want to build a committed community around your brand offline or should say online. So in other words, collect your email addresses and really network and nurture that community.

And the reason that matters is because if you can create loyal evangelists in your community, your tribe, as you mentioned, that's how you can grow sales across anybody's. That's how you future bridge your brand. So for example, if I'm a customer and I go to a store and I'm going to buy your product, it was on my list already, and you're promoting it and you give me a discount.

Well, that's good for me, but it's not effective for you in terms of a promotion strategy. But that's what we do in this country. So if you can invite me to become part of your loyal tribe, and you can nurture me and develop a relationship with me, same as you would a good friend, and you can reward me for being an evangelist, something different than I would get if I went to the store, that's a more effective way for you to leverage your trade spending.

More importantly, that customer, those committed customers, are what you can help leverage when you go to a retailer. So instead of saying, you know, I'm a nice guy, got a great whatever, great brand, great product, great story, you can also talk about the unique consumer that buys your product. More importantly, to go one step further, you can also talk about that customer journey.

So if I go into a store and I buy Mr. Lee's, what are the other products that I buy? And you can survey your community to ask these questions, understand. So why did they choose this product over another product?

What are the other things they purchase as they're buying your product? And then when you leverage that at retail, the story that you want to share is that my customer is more valuable to you, the retailer, because here's what they spend when they come to your store. And the fact that when they come to your store, we're giving them more value.

We're doing more to meet their needs. We're paying more attention to them. We're nurturing them more, etc.

Then that helps the retailer compete more effectively. I don't know if I shared with you in a recent podcast or earlier podcast episode, the director of Whole Foods came on and said that they spend $270 to reacquire a customer. That's ridiculous because we, the consumers, are paying for that reacquisition.

Wouldn't it make more sense if you could help convert that occasional customer into a loyal shopper? And the way you do that is very simple. You give them what they need.

You go out of your way to take care of them, to service them, to support them, to nurture them, etc. And that's what we're talking about here. So when you're going to market your strategy, consider the ways that one, especially in this country, where you can develop a committed community outside of traditional retail, outside of your online store.

Leverage that community to learn more about what do they want, how do they use the product, etc. Leverage that community to help support you as you innovate, come up with new products, etc. And make that part of that community a part of that story that you have.

Why is your product authentic? Reach out to other people. What successes have you had?

By the way, as a side note, one of the best defenses against cancer or any virus is a healthy diet. And I know several people that have adopted a completely organic diet, who have been able to defeat cancer or keep it at bay. And so I'm not saying that that is, you know, something that is going to work for everybody.

But I've heard of a lot of great stories around that. So leverage that in your communication. And then when you're talking to retail, I love the way that you talked about it as education.

Leverage each and every opportunity that you have to get in front of a customer and a retail partner to educate them about the value of your product and more importantly, the consumer that buys your product and why your consumer is a better consumer for them than the consumer buys the cheap stuff. Any thoughts?

Yeah, there's a lot there. So I thought I'd just start writing a few things down just so I don't forget them. There's very little I don't agree with there.

You mentioned there about the bread, good bread, bad bread, good bread keeps you fuller for longer. And I don't disagree with that at all. And I think that from our side as a brand, by having real ingredients in there, naturally will keep you fuller for longer.

And really, for me, that kind of really goes into what you said. So the first thing you said, the last thing you said kind of like tied in quite well, which is, you know, we're all a lot busier now as people, and we're all online quite a lot more now. And we just constantly do more.

If I look at kind of the older generation, and everyone says, if you could take one bit of advice, what would it be for, they just say to slow down, just slow down a little bit. You know, you're kind of stresses the silent killer and that's what everyone's doing right now. And so there's an element of that's the way that we are right.

That's our culture. Our culture is on the go all the time. And unfortunately, sometimes with that comes bad, a bad diet, therefore bad health.

So we really want to at least combat that in a smart and just eat in a smart way, which is, if you want to be on the go, please do try and eat still eat healthily. And these are an array of products that we have that will help you be hot and healthy kind of on the go. And so I definitely agree with you that, you know, how do we get consumers to understand the importance of their health?

And if we can create it, we can develop our tribe the way that we are, which is exactly what we do, to your point, you know, we do take email addresses. We actually even ask consumers, hey, if you want to try our new product first, click here to pre-order. We ask them what kind of products would you like to see?

So we speak to our customers. We speak to our tribe. And that's really important.

And that's not just on email. That's also on social media as well. So we are quite engaging with our tribe.

And funny enough, we have lots out and they're all in the big pool, really, because we have some in Australia. We've got some in Europe. And now we've got some in the US as well.

So I agree with what you're saying. When you mentioned their sort of less trade spends, we had this discussion last time, which is I think it's a balance. I think you still have to play ball.

You still have to put on promotion, which is I call it permission to purchase price. If it's on promotion, you've got half a chance of someone buying it. And if they buy it and they like it, they'll buy it again.

And they'll buy it whether it's full price or a promoted price. If it's a promoted price, it's a bonus to them. If it's full price and they still buy it, well, you've got a good product right there.

So I see what you're saying. And I think in the US, it's probably a lot more money driven than it is to get onto shelf than it is in the UK. But also it's more competitive in the UK to get in on shelf.

So, you know, if you're not hitting the run rates, the velocity that you guys call it, you're out within six months. And so therefore, you do need to do promotions fairly regularly. You know, you can do a promotion half of the year.

Anything over that is price establishment. And therefore, you can take it legally and the price could be changed. So there's a whole number of ways to get that product onto the shelf.

And there's a whole number of ways to get that product off the shelf. I do think in the UK, trade marketing is important, as well as the promotional side of things. I'm learning how it works in the US.

I know that we don't pay for promotions, as in to the promotional fee, but we do pay for the triggers. So we do pay for the price to come down, but we don't pay for it to be actually on promotion. So there are a few differences within the UK and the US, and it's very interesting to learn about your market.

My advice to anyone that is looking to go into a different market, so if anyone that's on here wants to go to the UK or Australia, or if there's anyone in the UK who wants to go to the US, which is one of my friends who I'm helping with at the moment, would be just get a local expert in that market, because like you said at the very start, you can't be an expert in everything. So there's going to be an expert in airlines. There's going to be an expert in retail.

There's going to be an expert in natural foods. There's going to be an expert in Australia. From my experience as a person who's the sales director at companies, you can always learn and you can always get advice from other people.

The trade marketing thing is something that I've written down and taken away and thinking, right, do I need to learn a little bit more about that in the US? But yeah, I think as long as you've got people that want to buy the product and you're developing that tribe and speaking to them, like you said, as a friend, you've got a good chance with a good product.

Absolutely. And on that note, and I can help you with the trademark. We'll talk about that in a minute.

Let's back up a little bit. So we'll just pick our MSG. You were mentioning that.

That's something that kind of came and went in this country. You don't really see it as much, luckily. The MSG is something that brands would put in their product that would make you hungry.

In other words, you would not be satiated if you ate it. You would, I'm probably saying this wrong. I'm not a lawyer, et cetera.

Full disclosure. But the point is you would eat something with MSG and you wouldn't be filled up. You wouldn't be satiated.

So therefore you'd eat more of it. Kind of a clever marketing strategy. Kind of sneaky.

But bottom line is it's, I don't want to say it's unethical. My opinion it is to try to trick people or trick their stomachs into wanting or needing more and not being satiated. But it provided no real value to the customer.

And it didn't provide any neutrino value. And so the fact that we weeded that out, the way that was done is because consumers got behind it and said, we don't want that in our food once they figured out what it was. So you can leverage that and help consumers, for example, understand what is the difference between iodized salt or Himalayan salt versus some of the other products, some of the other ingredients you're putting in.

The point is that iodized salt is not good if you add it to soup. Chicken has salt in it naturally, so there's no way that you could have a sodium free product as a result. But if you also add Himalayan pink salt, that metabolizes in the body better.

Those subtle differences that we can help educate consumers about, those are things that we need to leverage, and that's where your community comes in. That's where your community can help you so much. And so when you're talking about the various ingredients, identify those, build a story around those, help leverage that in terms of educating the consumers.

Why is an organic product more effective or better for helping people ward off viruses and support ailments, cancers, et cetera? Help them understand that. I mean, you're not making a claim, hey, our product is going to cure you, but yet the fact is food is medicine.

And if we can leverage that in our conversation, our brand story, I think that's a huge win. Trade marketing is usually the largest single line item or in every brand's income statement. And if we can help you more effectively leverage your trade marketing and trade spend, that's going to give you more runway to grow in sales, grow in conflict, scale your brand.

The challenges, the strategies in this market are so archaic in the sense that it's all about, like you said, velocity and trade spend and stuff like that. We need to fix it. That's broken.

The reality is that if your customer is a better customer to the retailer than your contribution, how many profitable dollars do you give to that retailer? That's what they can take to the bank. How many profitable dollars does your brand contribute to their overall bottom line?

That's what you need to focus on. So you're not going to compete against some of the mainstream brands in this country. There's no way you could.

There's no way you should. But yet, in terms of contribution, you're doing more to drive sales. And there's another brand that I'm thinking about that plays in your space that's very cheap, 10 for $1.

And almost all the time, almost anywhere you go, you can buy them anywhere. And they're great if you're a college student or whatever, but they don't provide the nutrient value, they don't sustain you, etc. And they also pull a lot of dollars out of the category.

There's the private label as well. And so if you can leverage what you bring to the table, back to the bread story, that you're driving profitable dollars in the category, you're driving more contribution in the category, that's the one at the end of the day. Now, trade marketing is a tricky thing because there's so much to it.

There's a free promotion ROI calculator on my website. Check it out. And there's a short video that shows you how to use it.

And the point behind is if you go to it, and you put in what you think you're spending, and then after, I mean, what you plan to spend, and then you put in the actuals afterwards, and you get to understand, compare A to B, to see what really worked. And as you become more effective in managing your trade spending, that's where you have an opportunity to differentiate yourself, get more runway, et cetera. And then you can invest those dollars into getting more distribution.

You can invest those dollars into marketing more effectively, et cetera. So any thoughts around, any questions around that?

No, not really. I don't think so. I think from our side, you know, we're very good at modeling deals in the UK.

So typically in terms of the commercial deal, we know what things cost and we know, we know what needs to be considered within the deal. And I think in the US, the things that were interesting to add into that commercial calculator that I have would be logistical costs are far greater than they are in the UK. The distributor's cost is also something that we're not really used to

A broker's cost is something that we're not really used to. The paying for promotions before you actually paid for the, before someone bought it off you is not something that, it does happen in the UK. I have to make that very clear, but only in certain situations.

If it was on the, you call it an NCAP, because it was an NCAP, we would sometimes have to pay for that. There's quite a few more layers to understand in the US. I think we do have that, and it's something that if people haven't traded in that space before, and they haven't raised a huge amount of capital, it could really sink them as a business.

I suppose that's the thing that, for me, is really interesting that you could build a brand, you could make a product, and you could put it into a couple of shops in the US. But by having to give a flossing fee or free sample, free case fill is something that we don't really do in the UK. There's a lot of extra layers of price to be put into in the US than there is in the UK.

But trade spend is trade spend from my perspective. If you want to do any marketing with them, if you want to do any sampling with them, if you want to do any promotions, I know that they will come into the fray. It just seems to be a lot more in the US than there is in the UK.

Well, and on that note, everything that you just talked about in my definition, by my definition, is trade spending. I mean, the reality is it's what it costs to put the product in the customer's hands, bottom line, anything that falls into that bucket. So when you're thinking about leveraging that, you want to make sure you're in a retailer that your customer shops.

You don't want to be in a retailer where healthy, conscious customers are not going to buy your product, are going to look at it as being too expensive. You talked about earlier that some retailers are less price sensitive, the customers that shop there. So that's one thing.

You talked about distributors, never, never, never, never, never pay for anything that doesn't have a promotion, that doesn't have some sort of accountability. And that's one of the things that I spend a lot of time talking about. You want to pay for what scans through the register, proof of performance.

If you're paying for a promotion and you have no idea where it's promoted, how deep it's promoted or whatever, that's just a waste of money. When you're talking about leveraging your broker, well, you don't want to rely on cookie cutter strategies. Give them a go to market plan and then hold them accountable.

And so these are all the things that can help you or any other brand be more successful. Charlie, we're coming up to the top of the hour. Any parting thoughts?

And then also, how can we get ahold of you? And then as a last thought, is there a bottleneck that I can help you solve?

Yeah, can you solve COVID for me? That would be quite useful. That's probably the biggest bottle that we have.

I mean, I think you've got my contact details in the chat, so anyone wanting to reach out, happily reach out. Sometimes it's really nice to speak to someone that's learning, although has experience in a different country, can bring that into different markets. So sometimes when I speak to buyers or I speak to experts in the field, they'll say something to me and go, oh, that's such and such in the UK.

So there's a lot of synergies and similarities between the two countries. But then there's things that I could say, oh, watch out for that, because I know that that will affect your such and such. So I'm sure there'll be loads of questions and some of the questions I may learn from them as well.

So please do reach out. I love to learn. Botanic-wise, I don't think so.

I think we sometimes, my sort of parting wisdom on this would be, we had lots of experts in the field and nine times out of ten, they give you good information. But you should, as the brand owner, if there are any brand owners or their sort of decision makers on the call, get all the information and then make your decision. Because I worked in ice cream, to be able to sample ice cream is incredibly difficult because it will melt by the time it gets somewhere else.

Whereas in an ambient product, no one is going to know that product better than you. And you're going to come across all these small bottlenecks as you go along throughout your brand cycle. So if I was just in frozen the whole time, I probably wouldn't even consider that you could do sampling in a different area.

So I would say you probably know quite a lot of the information. You'll have a lot of information to be able to help your own bottlenecks. But you might just want to just speak to a couple of experts like Dan or some Alohi consultants that we speak to, just to clarify and make sure that you're on the right track would be my advice.

Well said. Thank you so much for coming. Thank you, everyone, for being here.

I appreciate it. And next week, we're going to be talking about, you know what, I don't have it in front of me. Next week is going to be really good.

We are talking about strategies to help. Oh, that's you. Sorry.

Next week.

No, OK. So next week is proven strategies to help brands grow a 360 approach to ending hunger. So anyhow, you definitely want to be there.

There's a group called Startup CPG that has got a really innovative community. And it's kind of what we're talking about. And you can leverage them to gain wisdom, insight and help you grow on scale.

So thank you everyone for being here. Thank you, Charlie, so much for making time. And I look forward to seeing everyone next week.

Thanks.

I want to thank Charlie for coming on today and for sharing his insights. It's always so helpful to listen to what someone else does. What strategies are they using to help them succeed?

We can learn so much from other brands, and I hope you found this episode extremely helpful. I know I did. I'll be certain to put a link to Mr. Lee's Noodles on the web page so you can learn more about them.