The Startup CPG Podcast

Andy Kurtts
Think that the design and branding and marketing is the easy part. And they think they do know everything about it and they let a lot of subjectivity come into the decision making process. And so what that's part of our job too, is managing expectations and then taking some of that subjectivity out of it. There's no way to remove it all. But the way we do that is to build in goals and objectives that we've all agreed on. Like, what are these, like, pillars that we're gonna design against that we've all agreed on. And when we present ideas to you, we remind you of those objectives, those goals. A lot of them will imbue a lot of their personality and their personal preferences when they're not even the target customer.

00:57
Andy Kurtts
And so it's trying to get them to sort of put on their either buyer hat or target customer hat and then view the work through those lenses.

01:07
Daniel Scharff
Welcome, everyone, to the startup CPG podcast. Today we're talking about packaging your brand. So when you've got that beautiful vision in your head and you now need to get it into effective and standout packaging, there are a lot of things to think about, both from the technical side of is this going to work? Is it going to last on shelf as well as the design side. Is this going to look good? Is it going to stand out on shelf? Is it going to make sense to consumers who are looking at the competitive set? So today we have got two experts to walk us through it. It's Jamie Valenti Jordan of Catapult, who helps get brands to market, andy Kurtz of Buttermilk Creative. He's a designer who goes really deep on packaging design. All right, let's rip this package open and get started.

01:46
Daniel Scharff
Here we go. It's Jamie andy and Daniel. It's the Jamie andy Daniel Show. All right, welcome to the podcast, everybody. Today's episode is going to be a doozy. We are talking all about how can brands show up on shelf with packaging? How do you figure out that nebulous world of what do I put this thing in? What is it going to look like? How can I win? All of these really important questions we're going to cover today with two incredibly valuable perspectives that are complementary. Jamie, people know you as a frequent podcast contributor on here, but do you mind kicking us off with your intro?

02:26
Jamie Valenti-Jordan
Absolutely. Hey, everybody. Jamie Valenti- Jordan. I am the CEO of Catapult Commercialization Services, also the food brand program manager of the Food Finance Institute, and I am happy to have been in this industry for about 20 years working to help commercialize products from just about every walk of life here in the industry. So, yeah, I've worked on a couple thousand products at this point. A couple hundred brands put in a couple hundred million dollars worth of equipment out there. So, yeah, I know kind of how to scale things up and what the concerns that people have when they're looking to really try to push the commercialization envelope as quickly as possible.

03:02
Daniel Scharff
So, you know a thing or two about this topic. I'm very excited to have you here, having worked with you personally on a bunch of stuff. Also, I think it's really incredible for everyone to get to dig into that brain of deep experience with you. All right, Andy, tell us who you are and what you're going to talk to us about today.

03:18
Andy Kurtts
Hey, I'm Andy Kurtts. I run Buttermilk Creative. We're a design firm that focuses on getting brands retail ready through, you know, design and branding and packaging and just making sure they stand out on shelf.

03:32
Daniel Scharff
All right, cool. So, Jamie, let's start with you because, you know, I think a lot of brands, they'll have this idea for a product, and then they're like, okay, I need somebody to help me figure out how to get this into packaging. And they probably come to you pretty early on in a lot of instances. What is the state that they're usually in when they come and talk to you about packaging? Where are they in the journey? How do you kind of get them onto some training wheels and ease them into the process?

03:57
Jamie Valenti-Jordan
I love this question out there because I get to talk with a lot of packaging engineers who have to live this every day. Unfortunately, most brands, when they get to packaging, it's an afterthought. What they're mostly worried about is what their imagery looks like on package, and what the actual structure is really something that they've not put time and energy into developing. It turns out that when you really sit down and think about packaging, it serves a primary purpose of preserving your product and your product experience all the way to the point of the consumer. So what that means is you have to fight off these engineering or thermodynamic forces to keep the product intact all the way to the point of the consumer. This is where your shelf life discussion really starts, is how you've chosen your packaging.

04:43
Jamie Valenti-Jordan
Your primary concerns are going to be oxygen, moisture, and light. Those are going to cause breakdowns within your product through a variety of different means. In some cases, it can break it down to the point of being no longer food safe. If you do not have the proper packaging in place. So it is important to think about your structure along the lines here. Because while oxygen, moisture and light are your primary points of breakdown, the thing that a lot of direct consumer brands forget about is that shipping can damage your packaging. So your packaging has to not only preserve it needs to be robust enough to survive and continue preserving it, even if, let's say, somebody literally dropkicks it across the room.

05:26
Jamie Valenti-Jordan
Which, by the way, I'd love to tell you that one major retailer doesn't have exact examples of people doing this in order to load their trucks, but this is actually a thing that really happens out there. So when you talk about your master cases being robust and being able to survive a lot of damage, if all else fails, try drop kicking it across the room and seeing what happens.

05:47
Daniel Scharff
Very sophisticated, Jamie. And I've heard you give that advice in the slack before of like, yes, if you are not going to just test this through the system for a couple weeks, maybe just kick the crap out of it and just see what happens.

06:01
Jamie Valenti-Jordan
Absolutely. So at the end of the day, you know, what you want to do is make sure that these sorts of forces are not going to damage your product and make sure that your product survives to deliver that experience so that people will buy more of your product. That's the whole point in this, not to sell just one thing, one time. So, you know, there's lots of different solutions for lots of different products and lots of different elements here. Everything from pouches with different layers to protect against certain things versus, you know, corrugated, different thicknesses and layers and things like that, based on whether or not you need to preserve for thermal or just for impact stress or stacking stress.

06:37
Jamie Valenti-Jordan
So there's a lot of different scientific elements that go into this when you're selecting your primary package, whether that be a can or a bottle or a jar or something like that, there's a lot of different things that go into this, specifically around the sealing element. So make sure that you're always thinking about how it's going to be sealed when we start talking about your package design.

06:58
Daniel Scharff
So, Jamie, when you say that sometimes people think about packaging last and the engineering part, it sounds like you've probably talked to some brands who came in with a really specific idea of how they wanted to get their product to market, and they might have heard some bad news from you, like, okay, yeah, that will never work. Or like, you did not think about this. You cannot use that kind of a package. This thing will get way too much air Light, whatever. Have you had to just crush people's dreams that way? Are you a dream crusher? Sometimes.

07:27
Jamie Valenti-Jordan
I would love to tell you that I've only crushed the dreams of a entrepreneur, but I've actually crushed the dreams of marketers in large Fortune 500 companies as well. What it came down to in one case was specifically somebody asking, can we package soup in a paper bag? Because they wanted something that composted within, you know, two to four months that they could have to preserve soup for two years after running it through a pressure cooker. So you take the soup, you put it in a bag, you put it into a pressure cooker, and it still has to survive for two years after that. And then when you open it, throw it into a yard compost pile and then it breaks down in two to four months.

08:05
Jamie Valenti-Jordan
I simply just stared at them and asked, are you asking me to put soup in a paper bag? Because I feel like that's what you're asking me to do. Turns out we are still working on some really high tech solutions. They're not ready for mainstream, cost effective food consumption yet. There's a lot of cool stuff coming down. But I'm just going to tell you, for most brands, you do not want to spend 95% of your bill of materials on the packaging of the primary substrate.

08:34
Daniel Scharff
Okay, so no more paper bag soup for you. All right. You knew it was coming. All right, so Jamie, you're talking a lot about the actual packaging elements of the impact on the product and the shelf life and the quality, all of that kind of stuff. But also there's this really big factor which is the comands.

08:53
Jamie Valenti-Jordan
Right.

08:54
Daniel Scharff
Most of us probably will start and use a coman. You can also, you know, produce it yourself in a commercial kitchen for some people. But a lot of people are going to go that coman route if they're trying to scale fast. And comands typically are used to certain kinds of packaging.

09:08
Jamie Valenti-Jordan
Right.

09:08
Daniel Scharff
They run things a certain way. When I was running a beverage company, that would actually rule out a lot of comands. They're like, no, we only run 16 ounce standard cans. We cannot run 12 ounce sleep cans. We cannot run, you know, all these other kind of things that you want to try to do, like, oh, you want to get cute and make a custom can like, nope, that's not us. How much are you giving founders input of? Just kind of go with what's out there in most cases, most common stuff.

09:36
Jamie Valenti-Jordan
So I won't go into a diatribe on what it takes for a contract manufacturer to change over their systems to run a new packaging. Because I feel like I've covered that in the comand discussions before. But in essence it would take an extra three to four hours to set up and an extra three or four hours to tear down after every single run that you have with them in order for them to set up and reset their lines and in order to run different packaging. So instead of going down that path like I just did, instead I will say that, you know, you really want to try to reach out to commands that have the capabilities already in place.

10:12
Jamie Valenti-Jordan
And what that means is going with a common set of, let's say measurements or structures or physical designs because that's how you're going to find the most number of contract manufacturers to work with. If you design something incredibly unique, you are going to find a very short list of folks willing to work with a particularly unique product because of that necessary time investment of non production cutting over the line and then cutting it back. What that means is your cogs is going to go way up and they're concerned that you are not going to be able to sell your product for enough money to cover that extra labor.

10:49
Jamie Valenti-Jordan
So that's where all of that kind of discussion comes in and why we kind of generally say, hey, let's start with a common packaging format and if your product succeeds and things like that, we can drive additional uptake through package design.

11:04
Daniel Scharff
Okay, one more for you, Jamie, and then we're going to loop in handy here for the design elements. But you know, I don't know if it's as much a packaging reason, but there are some brands, like Midday Squares is one that have chosen to go with their own manufacturing because they just couldn't find out there what they wanted for their product format and quality and they built it up themselves. What are you telling brands when they're thinking about going that route of just building up their own manufacturing? If for example, they were thinking about it because there's some really unique packaging that they're trying to get done, what's that conversation with you going to look like?

11:37
Jamie Valenti-Jordan
Sure, absolutely. So it's going to be a question of whether or not the design that they have fits in the capability set of existing equipment out there. So if we're not talking about fitting within the existing equipment capabilities of the existing commands, then you're looking at necessarily is it within the capabilities of the equipment manufacturers out there. So if it's something completely new, where you have to design a completely new system, you need to make sure. That you've got an extra nine months in your timeline for the design and build and testing of that particular piece of equipment. Because it depending on the size that you're talking about, it can be incredibly technical in order in the process in which you have to approach building out a new system just to handle a type of packaging that's never been run before.

12:23
Jamie Valenti-Jordan
That said, there's a lot of capability out there. I'd be surprised if a good equipment engineer couldn't tell you a particular manufacturer off the top of their head that runs a particular style of packaging for you.

12:35
Daniel Scharff
So, yeah, I'm just interested. I'm just seeing a few posts and chatter on LinkedIn lately about brands in this environment. Saying like, that was really our competitive advantage, was figuring out how to manufacture this thing ourselves. It's the only way we had any margin. But it sounds like you don't hate that approach for early brands, probably if they have a capital and the timeline and it's not too complex where they're going to have to bring something brand new out there to the world with an equipment manufacturer where they maybe don't even have experience doing that.

13:03
Jamie Valenti-Jordan
Yeah. If you are a new brand looking at that, I would recommend the whole process of what it takes to bring this in and bring this to market whatnot for the packaging system itself, you're looking at about a million bucks. Just plan on that and you won't be mad at me later whether or not you can do it for three quarters of a million. Okay, great. But I would rather you have that extra money in hand before you get started. Just so you have that planned out. But, you know, at the end of the day, it's all about trying to preserve that product for the purposes of making sure that you are delivering on that brand promise that you're making to folks in the user experience that you're trying to get to.

13:38
Daniel Scharff
All right, Jamie, that is a heck of an overview, especially from a technical perspective. Now, I want to bring in Andy and I want to just call back that marketer who wants their bag soup vision executed. There are a lot of very passionate founders who just, they have this concept of something they want out there in the world and they may not know really what's going on. And often that's when they're going to get in touch with someone like Andy who really does understand packaging as well as branding and design. So early on, Andy, what do you want founders or CEOs to start thinking about when it comes to packaging and branding?

14:12
Andy Kurtts
Sure. So we like Brand founders and whatever, CMOs and people like that to really have an understanding of who their competitors are, who's on shelf, what's on shelves, not only from a visual standpoint, but from a physical standpoint too. You know, like in the soup case, if everything's in a can, then to try and put it into a plastic bag is going to run counter to everything. You know, it's just going to make customers and buyers, you know, sort of like their heads are going to explode. So what you're trying to do is sort of have this delicate balance of like, let's stand out, let's be different. But also how do we plug into this existing customer experience, consumer experience, that's is so people aren't having to reinvent the wheel in their mind as they're shopping.

15:02
Daniel Scharff
I think that's a really good way to start. And in terms of like, how you do that competitive analysis, like, okay, I've done this to basically just like walk in the store and look what's out there and count the number of facings of each one. Is that a good way, do you think, to start it?

15:16
Andy Kurtts
That's a great way to start it. Yeah. Go to as many stores as you can. You know, as a founder, you probably have an idea of what your like Target dream retailer is, whether that's Whole Foods Sprouts or Target or whoever it is. And so that's the best place to start. But don't discount going to your local co ops and bodegas and all that kind of stuff and just seeing what's out there. And through that competitive research, not only are you going to see, okay, so this is sort of the shelf we're going to fit into, things like that, but you're also going to see stuff that you didn't even know about. And you know, it could inspire some design, but it also could inspire some format changes as well.

15:52
Daniel Scharff
And I think it's good to consider the sales perspective as well, because the buyers need to make sense of your product. And if you try to come with them with some custom format and be like, great, here's your bag soup. I don't know where to put this because I don't have a bag soup set and I just have the other stuff and I don't really know how this is going to sit next to a bunch of cans. So I do think it's valuable for people to also test that with some buyers and figure out like, where would you put this? Would you be open to something like this? Could it sit on shelf before going too far down that path.

16:22
Daniel Scharff
But, you know, I, like, I always think about that Graza example, Andy, where just, I mean, like, really, you know, so clever putting it into a format that chefs had used for a long time, but that wasn't available through retail. What do you think you would have said, Andy, to a Graza coming to you? Like, hey, we want to go this, like, really new route for olive oil packaging. Be honest.

16:44
Andy Kurtts
Yeah, no, I think that's a great example of they sort of hit this perfect storm of a familiar in a unfamiliar structure. So, you know, and olive oil is a great thing too, because these buyers are used to putting packet, you know, slender bottles, glass bottles on a shelf, and they just put a slender plastic bottle on a shelf, you know, and so it didn't take the buyer that long to, like, sort of put that. And then when they told the story around, you know, probably around food service and how the chefs use it, that then connected the dots for the buyers. But to be honest with you, by the time, from our perspective, by the time a founder comes to us and they're like, hey, here's the structure, here's the dieline. We have the template. We've got structural drawings, things like that.

17:34
Andy Kurtts
We're like, okay, we're going to start designing. We won't push back on that. Cause it's like, all right, you guys have done the due diligence. We're going to go ahead and assume it's ready to go. Like, so if Graza came to us, we would have been like, sweet, Give us the flat dieline, and we'll. We'll get to designing.

17:47
Daniel Scharff
So, Jamie, same question to you about Graza. Would you have been like, yeah, because from a technical perspective, that's okay, and there'll be a lot of people who can make that kind of stuff. Or do you think you would have had tons of questions and challenges or what?

17:59
Jamie Valenti-Jordan
Yeah, I mean, I think at the end of the day, the packaging itself, it's got a certain diameter, it's got a certain nozzle and things like that. While it is standout and it is impressive in the way that it shows up on shelf, from a packaging requirement perspective, when it comes to filling and things like that, it's not that challenging to execute. So, you know, had they come to us, then I think that there's certainly ways to work within that. The nozzle's a little different, but there are similar things out there in the hot sauce sector that could easily be analogs for the types of mechanical forces Necessary to get there. Yeah. And even the label dielines are pretty standard.

18:37
Daniel Scharff
Okay, cool. And Jamie and his team do coman searches by the way, which I have worked with them on. So if you, we'll drop the link in the show notes here if you want to chat with them about that. It's pretty affordable actually to find a comand that can work with your requirements. Okay, Andy, I want to ask you then let's say I've gone and done that due diligence, I've gone to the store, I've seen really what's most common. Hopefully one of those formats is going to work for me because it'll make my life much easier rather than trying to go that alternate packaging route, although that obviously can be very rewarding as well.

19:07
Daniel Scharff
And so let's say then I'm coming to you, I'm like, okay, I need to get into the packaging now and maybe I have some ideas for my logo or maybe I just have the name of the company and I'm coming to you, Andy, now to make my dreams come true. Where are we getting started now?

19:22
Andy Kurtts
Sure. So we talked a little bit about the competitive analysis because we want to sort of know what we're going into, you know, what are some of the cues that we're going to dial into from a visual perspective and then what are some of the rules we're going to break to try to stand out. And that's from like, you know, this is what is out there perspective. Now internally, hopefully the founder has done all the sort of marketing, foundation, brand foundation work to understand what their mission, vision, values, promise, target, customer, audience, all that kind of stuff. So we know when we're designing this is protein going to be a big call out? Do we need to factor that into how we design call outs or is it a low sugar or whatever the sort of claims are.

20:08
Andy Kurtts
They've sort of done that groundwork to sort of understand, to inform how we're going to design that packaging and what the hierarchy is going to be, what the prioritization of communication is going to be. We help them come up with that. And ideally they have too much and founders always do they want to say too much on their packaging. So we really help to whittle it down, use the lens of our perspective of what's out there, our experience, and then run the brand through those filters and then put it into a, you know, a box or a label or whatever. I like it.

20:39
Daniel Scharff
And I think that truly can be one of the most valuable things that partner can do for you is figure out how to cut out a lot of the extras noise. Like you know, everybody wants to make their product look like a NASCAR car with all the different things slapped all over it. But like no, it does this and it also does that and then it does nothing at the end. Right. One can see actually what the message is. I always come back to this but like I just love the branding of Justice Tea so much because it's so simple and you know what the product is and I think it's just flying, you know, because it's so easy to.

21:10
Jamie Valenti-Jordan
Understand and I'll just say, you know, every time you put ink on the label it's another promise that you're making to your consumer about what the product is like. So every time you put another stamp on there, that's another requirement and set of hurdles you have to deal with on the back end. But also a promise to the consumer themselves around what the product's going to be when they actually get around to consuming it. So sometimes those can be good promises, sometimes those are detrimental promises. We all know the case studies around vegan and using that on your label, right? You're promising something that doesn't taste as good, that can be, you know, for good or for ill, but you need to be tactical and decisive around what it is you're putting on your label and why.

21:52
Daniel Scharff
I totally agree with you and I see some brands using call outs like keto and plant based or I'm like, you did not have to do that. That makes me think this is not good or that it's low quality or that it's a substitute for something that I might actually like. So I really appreciate you saying that Andy. I like your comment around what founders should be prepared to give you for you guys to do your job effectively. And I'd love to talk about that a little bit more.

22:15
Daniel Scharff
So I think me, before getting into this industry I would have assumed like, oh, I'll just like have an idea for a product and then I'll hire an agency and they'll come and it'll be like a workshop and they will, we'll all, you know, sit in some beanbag chairs and we'll do throw some ideas up on sticky notes and it'll be a whole thing and the name will emerge like a shining star. But you know, I think first of all that kind of stuff is very expensive. But second of all I think you can actually do a lot of that kind of self serve, you know, if you just google some templates that are out there. But it sounds like really you can do a lot if founders really just take the time to actually just write out a lot of stuff for you.

22:52
Daniel Scharff
And, I mean, do the hard work, do the thinking, and, you know, try to put together a nice concise document. But it should say, like you mentioned, what is this product? What is its central promise? What are the claims? Maybe if they have any kind of inspiration that they're really fond of, obviously the format, research that they've done. Any other stuff that you really appreciate having in kind of a brief for you when you get started?

23:17
Andy Kurtts
Yeah, you're right. If we're just talking about sort of emerging startup brands, your resources and, you know, sort of the finite resources that you have should not be spent hiring a ginormous firm to help you with this stuff. Like, you're being scrappy. You can figure out this stuff on your own, and that's how it's going to be authentic at the beginning. Now, that doesn't mean five years from now, you don't go through and sort of refine things and narrow things and reposition and retarget that kind of stuff. But. Okay, so then, to answer your question, it's always nice to get some perspective on where the founder is visually. And so if they can provide some. Just visual cues of like, this is what I mean by I want my packaging to look retro. It's like, okay, show me what that means to you.

24:04
Andy Kurtts
Does it have this, like, fun character, like a Mickey Mouse, or does it. I want it to be bright and modern. It's like, okay, show me what brands are bright and modern to you. And then we also come up with mood boards. We'll put together different styles and present different styles to the founder. But if they have an idea in their mind of this is how I've always envisioned this, you know, obviously they just don't have the tools to physically bring it to life and design. That's what we do. But they can at least come to the table with some idea of what that they think it's going to look like.

24:34
Andy Kurtts
So, you know, in addition to those, like, words and, like, very conceptual things, if they have some, like, physical, like, aspirational brands or sort of, like, stylistic things that they can reference, that's always really helpful, too.

24:46
Daniel Scharff
All right, Andy, let me ask you a question. Because when people talk about choosing design partner, let's say, you know, someone like you, they're going to look at something, some of the work that you've done. And often people say, yeah, if you're thinking about working with like, let's say a specific designer or let's say like a, you know, emerging agency. They would say just, you know, look at what they do and you can see a kind of style there and think about like, will I be happy if they give that kind of a treatment to my vision?

25:12
Jamie Valenti-Jordan
Right.

25:12
Daniel Scharff
And you might love it and you might be like, okay, I don't know if they do exactly what we do. How do you think about that kind of comment? Do you think that's true? Do you think you have a certain stylist, so what is it? Or do you feel like you're a chameleon and you can execute any vision because you have all of the design.

25:27
Andy Kurtts
Tools to do it, all the above. So there are certain design studios just off the top of my head, there's one called Stranger and Stranger. They do premium spirits and they're out of the uk. I think they might have a New York office too, but they have a very unique look. And if you're looking for like branding for your spirits brand that's very premium and high end and not specialty, that's who you more than likely work with. In our case with Buttermilk Creative, we really try to lean on being more chameleon and it's really about our experience is less about like a particular style because you know, we shouldn't as a studio impose our style on a founder or brand. It should be what is their vision.

26:13
Andy Kurtts
And then we're us bringing it to life but hopefully making it ready to go on shelf and you know, hit all the checkboxes for the buyers. So we try to be chameleons and it's more about our experience working in house at a retailer and that kind of stuff that we bring to the table. But I mean, that's not to say that there's, you know, really hot studios out there that have a particular style that, you know, an emerging founder might want to sort of not copy but you know, co opt to make their product look sort of trendy as well.

26:47
Daniel Scharff
Okay, so if I look at your website, let's say I am taking this approach or I'm like trying to figure out what, you know, what they're good at. I'm looking across it, I'm like, okay, I think that Buttermilk Creative designs stuff that is very product centric. You're going to see a nice image of the product and it's going to look good. It's pretty simple design which I'm a big fan of also it's not cluttered. It just kind of clearly states that the brand shows the product in a nice way, has a couple key call outs and you know, kind of like classic. I think it just really focuses on the most important stuff and then has like a beautiful image or two that it's really featuring and it's not distracting in a lot of ways. What do you think? Is that fair?

27:27
Daniel Scharff
Am I accurately characterized some of the stuff at least that you've done?

27:31
Andy Kurtts
Absolutely.

27:32
Daniel Scharff
Yeah.

27:32
Andy Kurtts
You definitely hit on all the things. You know, we're not the coolest studio, we're not the trendiest studio. You know, there's plenty of folks that have that and produce that type of work. But what we try to do is really make things that are going to be shelf ready. Especially when you think about the middle America, you know, like what's going to be able to go on shelf there and not be too alienating. So then a lot of our clients, their products sort of skewed that way. We're not working with adaptogenic mushrooms juices, you know, we're working with cookie mixes and frozen meals and cheese crackers and things like that.

28:12
Daniel Scharff
So yeah, it makes a lot of sense to me. And if you guys want to see what I'm talking about, just go to buttermilkcreative.com and you'll see there's like Piedmont pennies. They're mainly just two colors and like a lot of white on here. And then it really features the product. By the way, our team loves this product. Shout out Kiki. Kiki loves Piedmont pennies especially. I do too. My better batch. Another favorite of the team which just, yeah, just a couple colors and then really focusing the eye on a big image of the actual cookie. Blue zones kitchen, which again, just a lot of white in the background and then focusing the eye on a very delicious looking bowl of this product that makes it look like the, you know, really fresh and craft Noble burger as well.

28:53
Daniel Scharff
You know, just I would say very kind of simple, nice colors in the background, but just pointing towards that image of the product in the middle. So Andy, what do you think it takes to stand out on shelf? Like, you know, whether it's one of your designs or somebody else. What are you telling brands like, look, obviously it depends on the category, but overall, here's what I would say about, you know, what I think can help you win on shelf in this competitive world.

29:17
Andy Kurtts
Yeah, it's color. It sort of goes, boils down to design principles, you know, color scale, the type of visuals you're going to use. If you do have a way to play with format, you know, that's awesome. Like, for instance, for the Noble example, they are on shelf in Whole Foods next to actual veggies. The actual veggies box is probably two times as big as the no Bull, even though the patties are about the same size. And, you know, they use scale to stand out on shelf. And we're trying to use color. No Bull is to stand out on shelf. You know, it's like that iconic sort of like olive green as their billboard, whereas actual veggies just has this huge box and, you know, beautiful imagery and stuff. So that's what we told you.

30:05
Andy Kurtts
If you have that flexibility around format and Jamie says you can do it, then, you know, put yourself in a bigger package or some sort of different package that can help you stand out. But, yeah, like, from a perspective of design, its color, its font, its contrast, all those kind of things will help you stand out on shelf.

30:24
Daniel Scharff
I got it. So a very noble approach to packaging as well. I like it. Very consistent and I know people love that product as well.

30:32
Andy Kurtts
Oh, yeah.

30:32
Daniel Scharff
Jamie, what do you, as like a really deep ops person, think when we're having this kind of chat? Like, do you have opinions on this kind of stuff? Are you mainly more interested when a brand's talking to you just more about the technical aspects of it?

30:45
Jamie Valenti-Jordan
I mean, at the end of the day, the whole purpose of making an amazing product is to sell it. And if you can't get people to engage with it because your imagery is not there, then all of that work is for nothing. So absolutely love being in those sorts of conversations. While I may not have the world's greatest insights onto what colors should be used and what sorts of layouts, I do know that, you know, what the limitations are going to be associated with how we can put labels on products or how we have to incorporate that imagery in such a way that we're promising something that we can actually deliver against. Right. If we're trying to promise somebody, let's say, a very clean sort of product, we don't want to have a race car on there. Right.

31:26
Jamie Valenti-Jordan
Because all of a sudden you're cluttered. You're not conveying that promise to your consumer that says, hey, this is a clean product. If you want something that's simple ingredients and things like that, you need to have imagery that reflects that entire brand ethos all the way through. You're not going to have complicated swirls and things like that in the background when you're trying to deliver on something that has four ingredients because you don't need those extra frills, because you're not trying to communicate something that is indulgent and whatnot. You're trying to convey something that is fresh and clean and able to be consumed in a healthy and natural way. So it's those types of things where we want to make sure that all of that is aligned.

32:05
Jamie Valenti-Jordan
Because what we want to do is be able to establish what it is we're actually delivering from a product perspective. So from a sourcing of ingredients, whether that be from local farms or, you know, from major institutions, whether or not we're doing this in a batch, artisanal way, or if we're going to a contract manufacturer so that we can go for mass production in order to get our product in front of as many people as possible. Right? These are decisions that have to be made along the way. You don't have to make them all at once, but you can make them along the way that evolve your brand ethos and understanding in such a way that it reflects on label so that we can actually deliver against that. Right. At the end of the day, it's all about delivering on that promise.

32:49
Jamie Valenti-Jordan
Because we all know that food, because that's what I know most about food, is a low margin game in the grand scheme of things. There's not a ton of money to be made from an individual sale on a food product because it's delivering nutrition to humans. Right. So our play instead is on delivering on that promise so that they'll buy it again and again and it become a champion for our brand so that we don't have to spend as much on marketing and pushing our product out there. Right. So all of these things play together into really kind of a cascading business model discussion, more so than the technical and operational limitations which do drive those original kind of structures. But they don't do so in opposition to our brand goals. They do so in conjunction with. Right?

33:38
Jamie Valenti-Jordan
So all of these things come together to make us successful. That's the point in understanding all these different things.

33:42
Daniel Scharff
Yeah. And I imagine, I mean, where I would be consulting you pretty early on is actually in that instance of, let's say it's a multiple unit kind of package, Right. Like, I don't know if actual veggies and Noble have, I don't know, two patties or something in there, but that sort of gets pretty interesting, right? Because if you're thinking about, well, do I just go with two, do I go with three? But they're smaller. Probably you guys would agree with me that like, whatever you're going to do, the most important thing is to understand the cost of doing it and what you're going to sell it for.

34:11
Daniel Scharff
And can you be in the range of the category, like whatever it is, you don't want to have the price of your product start with, you know, a one and be four digits when everybody else is three digits. And just avoid, you know, crossing certain price thresholds, especially if you're not really an incredibly premium brand that's going to win that way. And that's your strategy, right? So like just okay, whatever it is, like go out there, figure it out, you know, reverse engineer it and make sure that you're going to be able to hit a competitive price point on shelf and be able to have whatever your low margin is, but at least be able to execute on that so you have the money left to do some marketing to help stand out on shelf. Does that anyone disagree with that?

34:53
Jamie Valenti-Jordan
You're exactly right. You're pinched in the middle here between your cogs and what you can sell it for, right? That difference is your gross margin. That gross margin has to cover all your cost of sales and marketing and that's going to start out leaving you with a negative profit. That's okay so long as you have a pathway to a positive net profit and eventually a point at which you're going to pay yourself. Right? Let's not forget that you're donating all your time to this organization. You at some point need to get paid. If you can't put that down on a timeline and figure out where that is, that can be soul crushing. So make sure that you have that written down somewhere where you're going to get to that point so that you know that there is light at the end of the tunnel.

35:34
Jamie Valenti-Jordan
Otherwise we've all been there or known entrepreneurs that have been there on the floor crying at 1am not knowing how in the world they're going to make back the $100,000 that somebody else has given them already to get there. I get that. We've been there. We know those people. Right? You're not alone. Reach out, talk to people. There's a way to set this up that is successful.

35:54
Daniel Scharff
Call a friend. They're there for you. I actually definitely, really regret not having talked to Jamie more when I was getting into the packaging part because then a lot of stuff has gone wrong, actually when I didn't call and ask for more help than I probably felt like I needed to okay, so just getting back into the branding part a little bit and like the money you're going to spend on marketing. Andy, I wonder, how do you think, when you're actually designing a logo in the packaging for a product, about how that's actually going to translate into marketing, Specifically stuff like social media. You know, sometimes people are like, oh, that's a great name because it's going to work really well on SEO because it's so unique.

36:30
Daniel Scharff
Like, how do you already start thinking about how the brand can execute the marketing based off the logo and packaging that you're designing?

36:38
Andy Kurtts
Sure. And any good design studio or firm is going to think about that stuff in the early stages of the project. So when you present the various design concepts you're presenting, how it's going to come to life. Let's say there's three concepts you're going to present, how each of those concepts come to life through merch, through trade show, you know, subsample, just mock ups, through social media templates, things like that. So you're already starting to think about all that stuff at the beginning, so that when it does come time and as you create the path for the project, for the launch of the brand, you know, obviously packaging and all that kind of stuff happens months in advance of the launch. So all that stuff's done.

37:23
Andy Kurtts
You've sent it off to print, being manufactured, and now it's time to work on those other assets that are going to support the launch. Marketing materials, sell sheets, pitch decks, sales decks, all that kind of stuff is being created sort of, you know, in parallel with some of the packaging. But you should be thinking about that from the get. I mean, that's what gets designers really excited, is bringing it to life. It's like one thing to design a beautiful logo that's just sitting on a white PDF, you know, on a page. It's a whole other thing to see how it might come to life in a billboard or on the side of a bus or in a truck, wrap or whatever.

37:58
Andy Kurtts
You know, we can help the founder come up with some of these ideas and sort of based on our other clients who have either launched or, you know, done this kind of stuff. But it's really up to the founder and their creativity of, like, what have you put together, what kind of roadshow are you going to do that? Then we can create the materials to support it.

38:16
Daniel Scharff
Andy, let me ask you a very dumb question, but I think it will resonate with some people out there, which is, honestly, I'm not good at marketing. I'm not good at design. I could never talk to you about colors and what they mean. And for me, like, I'd come and have this idea and give it to you and you'd give me back something that was cool. I feel like it'd be hard for me to even know if I liked it and if it was actually the right thing. What would you say to a founder for like, how they should evaluate the stuff that you're giving back to them and figure out like, yes, do they like it and do they want to ask for changes? Are they good with this?

38:49
Daniel Scharff
Like, you know, for founders like me who would be just afraid even to make the decision on their own product.

38:55
Andy Kurtts
You know, I've wish more founders felt that way. I think a lot of founders think that the design and branding and marketing is the easy part and they think they do know everything about it and they let a lot of subjectivity come into the decision making process. And so that's part of our job too, is managing expectations and then taking some of that subjectivity out of it. There's no way to remove it all. But the way we do that is to build in goals and objectives that we've all agreed on. Like, what are these like pillars that we're going to design against that we've all agreed on. And when we present ideas to you, we remind you of those objectives, those goals. And so that when you're like, oh, I don't like that font, it's like, I just don't think it's cool.

39:47
Andy Kurtts
It's like, no, you said you wanted a bold font that stood out on shelf. And, and when we show it to you know, in a shelf mock up or against your competitors, and it's a bold font that stands out on shelf, you know, it's hard to have that argument. Like, in the end, it's really up to the founders. So sometimes they will be, okay, well, I still don't like it. It's like, okay, well let's see why you don't like it. Is it because it's just too brash or, you know, we need to find something more rounded or more soft, whatever. And also get the founders to think about it from their audience perspective. A lot of them will imbue a lot of their personality and their personal preferences when they're not even the target customer.

40:23
Andy Kurtts
And so it's trying to get them to sort of put on their either buyer hat or target customer hat and then view the work through those lenses.

40:31
Daniel Scharff
Okay, so, you know, if I'm going To flip flop that much, to even choose the design, which. And by the way, I think, like, you kind of know when it's right. When I get that thing and I'm like, whoa, like, wait, that's like too cool for us. We're not as cool as that. That's way even cooler than we are. That's sort of when I feel like, you know, it's right. Like, no, we can be that cool. We actually can be. Let's do it. Let's go for it. It feels too big. Let's grab it. But if I'm flip flopping through the initial process, for sure I'm going to flip flop even after we choose the initial packaging and design.

40:59
Daniel Scharff
So for both of you, what are you seeing most people changing then about the packaging even after launch and because you know things are going to change. What are you telling them about how they're launching and how they're ordering packaging and all of that stuff? Jamie, do you want to go first? Because I know you've seen a lot of changes in packaging in your time.

41:18
Jamie Valenti-Jordan
Sure. There's a lot of things that. Well, I've seen a lot of groups that have, let's say, not gotten their labels inspected before they went to print. That's a big no. No, don't do that. Have somebody who knows that several hundred page document from the FDA on how to make compliant labels. It's way faster just to pay somebody for an hour or two to look at it than it is to have to read and understand that entire document yourself. So that's number one. Number two is a lot of folks will not test their substrates to know whether or not they actually work. So, for example, we've all had those labels on, let's say Coke bottles or things like that. The glue doesn't really hold and the label falls off before you ever purchase it. Right.

42:00
Jamie Valenti-Jordan
That's a challenge because you put all that time and energy into making that label. You want to make sure that label stays attached. Now you do want it to come off when it's time to recycle the bottle and everything like that. So there's a fine line to be walked there. But what I've seen from a lot of founders is not understanding the process that goes on into putting a label on the container. And so it doesn't get dialed in correctly. And so the labels end up askew or they fall off or they're. Especially in shrink wrap cans, there's that top cut on the shrink wrap. If it's not done right. It ends up hitting the drinker's lip. Right? We all know this experience. It's not fun.

42:35
Jamie Valenti-Jordan
So these are the types of things where you do actually have to go through some quality control to make sure that your product is actually working structurally and functionally in such a way that you are not going to have major issues. But, you know, at the end of the day, my advice to folks is you can sit here and analyze the label, and you can sit here and analyze the branding and everything like that. For years, I've seen it. I've seen it in large Fortune 500 companies where they will analyze something until it fails a test and then they will kill the project. It's like, well, we spent seven years developing it. Okay, sure.

43:07
Jamie Valenti-Jordan
My recommendation is get it to where it is close enough compliant, not going to force you to get off the shelf, get it out there and go ahead and schedule your next label update. Only order as much packaging from that print run as you need for you to develop the next wave of label updates. Right. So we can schedule our intended change. We need to change ahead of time. We can plan for chaos. Right. It seems weird, but we can actually plan for it and make adjustments so that even if somebody hits you with a lawsuit that says you can't say that on label, great, We've already scheduled a label change, in which case we will pull that off the label.

43:45
Jamie Valenti-Jordan
And turns out you are still allowed to run through your remaining packaging in most cases, so long as it's not a safety issue. Right. So that's the reality of the situation out there, is that nobody gets it perfect. That's fine, then don't make it perfect. Get it out there and then make adjustments based on real life experience.

44:02
Daniel Scharff
All right, Andy, same back to you then. So how quickly do people usually come back to you for packaging design requests to change things that they've realized have gone wrong? Maybe because for compliance reasons or maybe because they just got some feedback from a buyer or they just overthunk it.

44:18
Andy Kurtts
Yeah, no, it's usually within that first year or so. And every great trait of a great founder is that they're always learning. And that extends to brands, too, you know, and so to think that first design that you launch with is perfect and is speaking to who you want to speak to and is doing all the right things is just crazy. And I know that it feels like you're Atlas pushing the boulder up the hill just getting this one label launched, you know, this one product and, you know, just feels very overwhelming. But. But as soon as that goes out the door, you're going to start working on the next iteration of it because you're going to be learning. Hopefully you're hearing from your customers who are giving you feedback through your website. You're hearing from buyers. So that Jamie's spot on.

45:08
Andy Kurtts
Like, just order enough and then start thinking about, I'm doing this right now with two brands. We're doing slight adjustments. We're not reinventing the wheel because one hand you're brand building, on the other hand you're tweaking to better resonate with your customer and you're reacting to trends. So like what, a couple years ago, a buzzword that you added to your packaging as a call out isn't popular anymore. You want to be able to react to that too. And so, you know, you're always learning from all the different perspectives. And then you need to be flexible too. Like none of it's set in stone.

45:41
Daniel Scharff
I like it. So that's talking a lot about maybe quantity that you're ordering. But also, let's talk a little bit about quality because, you know, for me, one of the things that really is a pet peeve of mine is exactly what Jamie was just talking about is those shrink sleeves. There are only like one or two cans out there that I see that I think are actually looking good in shrink sleeves. Usually they are not applied properly and they don't go above the shoulder of the can. They look crappy. It just like shows up badly. You know, we've talked about this, about brands that like go into pouches and they just use a kind off the rack pouch and try to throw a label on it that just looks like it was home made, not in a good way.

46:19
Daniel Scharff
So, you know, I think for me, I'll just shout out a couple of our partners because there are a lot of people you can work with out there. But I really appreciate a couple of these companies. So, like can works that we work with on digital printing. Digital printing used to be, I would say like 2021, when I was launching a beverage company, we got early samples of digital printed cans and they looked like trash. Like this? No, this is terrible. Like in this format, they couldn't do it. It didn't look good. But then by 2024, it had come along so far that it was just crushing sleeves and it's like the same price. So I now almost anytime I get a product sent to me for shelfies or anything, it's on a sleeve.

46:55
Daniel Scharff
I'm just like, why is this on a Sleeve, it's the same. You can get it digitally printed. And so, you know, I think if I look at like the At Leisure, for example, which you know, is now nationally rolled out, Whole Foods looking amazing in the early days were on sleeves and then switched to digital print and then now went full lithoprint or whatever it is when you go and get those massive minimum order like 200,000 minimum cans, but it brings your price way down, you know, looks great also. What do you think about Andy, let's say for the quality that you're okay with people starting with again, knowing things are going to change and not wanting to order too much of something which can sometimes inhibit what you can actually get.

47:33
Andy Kurtts
Yeah. Before I answer that, can I add a little insight into the Leisure, please?

47:38
Daniel Scharff
Yeah.

47:39
Andy Kurtts
So you're exactly right. They launched with sleeves, digitally printed. Their original designer created beautiful illustrations, full color, just as many colors as you can imagine. Now when they went from the digitally printed to the direct print, they had to cut millions of colors down to seven or eight, I think six or seven because we help them make that transition. We took that artwork that was amazing, but a lot of colors. We were able to simplify it but retain the cool quality of the illustration, all that kind of stuff. So that's something just as a anecdote of something to think about. It's like not that you can anticipate. Like eventually we're going to do direct to print. So we really need to design these labels in 8 colors or 7 colors. Now go ahead and design for the format that's you've chosen.

48:30
Andy Kurtts
But just know that if you grow and scale, that's going to eventually be, you know, something you'll have to solve for. Just like the Alex and Steve did.

48:39
Daniel Scharff
Yeah, that sounds right. So then another partner will call out Belmark, who is all over our Slack channel. They're kind of a go to when it comes to pouches especially, like they'll help you out with a small order. Right. I think it just looks so bad. I see brands at a trade show and they have one of those kind of beige pouches and then like a label, maybe it's off center or something. It doesn't look like. I would never buy this. I wouldn't even show this to a buyer. I would run, not walk to try to at least get this leveled up a little bit. What do you think, Andy?

49:09
Andy Kurtts
Oh, absolutely. I mean, there's just so many resources out there and like you said, like digital printing has come so far and whether you're printing Pouches or cans or prototype boxes or whatever it is. There shouldn't be any reason why you're.

49:24
Jamie Valenti-Jordan
Yeah.

49:24
Andy Kurtts
Unless it's part of your aesthetic, why you're buying stock bags to then apply a label to. But, yeah, this is your first impression, and you only get one of those. And so try to make it with the resources that you have as good as possible. There's plenty of resources out there.

49:40
Daniel Scharff
Yeah, I like that because you only get one first impression. I really like the idea of, hey, like, if you need to keep your day job, save enough money up, and then buy some more expensive packaging, like, you want to get onto the racetrack with a better car in a lot of instances. So that's awesome. And I think you guys did a great job with the leisure packaging. It just looks, you know, more and more beautiful every time I see it. Jamie, what do you think? Do you want to weigh in on any of this?

50:02
Jamie Valenti-Jordan
Yeah. Yeah. So I'll point out here that in addition to this, while we say it may be more expensive packaging and my co man really likes running shrink sleeve on their cans. No, they don't. Nobody likes running that shrink sleever. Not anybody. So while it may be slightly more expensive, it may actually save you not just on materials, but on labor as well. In your comand tolling charge. The only reason to do that, sort of what they call late stage differentiation, where you put the label on after you got the container filled, is to reduce the amount of inventory of raw packaging. So those labels lay very flat. You can stack up thousands, hundreds of thousands of impressions on a pallet. Right.

50:43
Jamie Valenti-Jordan
What that means is you have your labels for tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of containers, which may be made up of, like, let's say eight different SKUs, in which case you only have, let's say, two or three pallets worth of empty cans. If you have eight different flavors, that's eight different pallets of empty cans that your con man may have to hold on to. That's the trade off there. That said, it's not much of a trade off, honestly. That shrink sleever is so temperamental, and you end up burning through so many shrink sleeves and having to rework and all this other stuff, all the labor. Nobody wants to run that thing. Even if they've got it on the line and they've been running it for 20 years, they still don't like running it.

51:19
Daniel Scharff
That's a really good point, and that's some insight I had not thought about. So thank you, Jamie. So, and speaking of. Yeah. For the digital Print. If anybody wants to talk to canworks, I'll drop the link here in the show notes as well. They will send you a sample of your can, which will be a good way to see if you actually like it much better than sleeves. So I guess the next question is, okay, I'm on shelf. How do I know if it's going right? How do I know if I'm good with where my packaging is or if maybe I need to think about changing something? Andy, what do you think?

51:48
Andy Kurtts
Is it selling? You know, like, how are your sales? I mean, that would be the biggest metric for success. And then it's anecdotal feedback. You know, are you getting some noise on social media? Are people emailing you and giving you feedback via your website? Are you asking for feedback? That's where I would go to understand maybe from a aesthetic standpoint, are we working? You know, because there's just the cold hard facts of sales. And your buyer will let you know about that, you know, whether you're going to stay on shelf or not. But then from an aesthetic standpoint, like what's resonating with them? And you have to ask for that feedback and you have to be open to it and you have to create that community with your brand.

52:26
Andy Kurtts
That's a whole other thing that we didn't talk about, but we've been talking about physical stuff. But there's a digital community part of it, a brand building as well that you can use to mine that information and support, you know, those insights.

52:40
Daniel Scharff
Yeah. And I also really like the feedback that you get when you're demoing your own product in person as well. Just showing it to people and like, yeah. See what they say about it. Yeah, their feedback. But also show it to people who don't know what it is and say, what do you think this is? And what do you notice about it? You know, kind of real raw feedback from them. It'll give you. I wouldn't go and change your packaging because one person or one buyer said something, but if you hear it a lot, then you do have something to think about and, you know, maybe make a decision on. All right, well, guys, I think that just about wraps up this packaging podcast. Thank you. Thank you. But I'll got to end one of those.

53:15
Daniel Scharff
Okay, so I will close this out and just say thank you guys, really, for both of your perspectives on this. I think this was just a really cool combination of expertise to have on here from the technical perspective and design. But obviously you guys are curious people who think a lot more about things even outside of your own lane. So I think this has been a the total package basically for brands to learn all about this topic. I can just keep going, guys. Really?

53:42
Andy Kurtts
Yeah, careful.

53:45
Jamie Valenti-Jordan
We'll get into a case study.

53:48
Daniel Scharff
I love it.

53:49
Jamie Valenti-Jordan
Love it.

53:50
Daniel Scharff
All right, so hey, thanks so much to both of you. Really excited to have you back on the podcast in the future.

53:56
Andy Kurtts
All right, thanks, Daniel.

53:58
Daniel Scharff
Thank you. Bye, everyone.

53:59
Jamie Valenti-Jordan
Peace.

54:02
Daniel Scharff
All right, everybody, thank you so much for listening to our podcast. If you loved it, I would so appreciate it if you could leave us a review. You could do it right now. If you're an Apple podcast, you can scroll to the bottom of our Startup CPG Podcast page and click on Write a review. Leave your company name in there. I will try to read it out. If you're in Spotify, you can click on about and then the star rating icon. If you are a service provider that would like to appear on the Startup CPG podcast, you can email us at partnershipsartupcpg.com lastly, if you found yourself grooving along to the music it is My Band, you can visit our website and listen to more. It is super fantastic. Thank you everybody. See you next time.