The Startup CPG Podcast

Juliet Choi
Our team has so much rigor in the type of testing that they're doing throughout the entire innovation process. I'm honestly just so impressed by all the steps that are taken by our team to ensure that our products are efficacious. It starts out at the R&D stage of the kind of research that they're doing even before they start using an ingredient to understand do we have research on if it's able to survive the kind of heat conditions it's in at the lab scale. Even before we go into pilot production, we're constantly sending samples out to various third party testing labs such as Eurofins to understand are the products actually testing out for the active ingredients. And then by the time that we take something to pilot production, we take those final samples, send it to a third party lab.

00:51
Juliet Choi
So a ton of rigor involved in it and it is also a pretty costly exercise. One of the most expensive line items that I have within the product piano is actually third party testing. So it comes with a cost, but I think it is a very necessary cost to ensure that you are delivering on what you're promising to the customer.

01:12
Hannah Dittman
Hey everyone, I'm Hannah Dittman, Finance and Operations host of the Startup CPG podcast and today I'm very excited to be joined by Juliet Choi from Gruns. It's no secret that Gruns was one of the biggest CPG success stories of the last few years, joining the history books as one of the fastest billion dollar acquisitions in CPG history. Today we're diving into the product philosophy and development that helped drive that success. Juliet is the VP of Product at Grunds and she joined the company as employee number nine in its earliest days, helping shape the product and eventually the broader product organization. As the company scaled, building a winning consumer product goes far beyond having a great idea. From R&D and formulation to consumer insights, clinical research, product development and team structure.

01:59
Hannah Diitman
This conversation breaks down what it takes to turn an initial product concept into something consumers love and how product leaders should think about evolving the portfolio as a brand scales. Juliet is a wealth of knowledge as she shares insights ranging from high level product philosophy to incredibly tactical guidance. You don't want to miss this one. Enjoy. Hey everybody. Welcome back to the Startup CPG podcast. This is Hannah and today I'm excited to be here for a special Operator Spotlight episode with Juliet Choi of Gruns. Juliet, welcome to the show.

02:36
Juliet Choi
Thank you so much for having me here today, Hannah. Really excited to chat with you.

02:40
Hannah Diitman
We're really excited to have you here. I love your Shirt Gruns green.

02:44
Juliet Choi
It is. It is a groom shirt. Yeah, there you go.

02:49
Hannah Diitman
I'd love to start off with getting some context of your background, the career path and the journey that ultimately led you to Gruns.

02:57
Juliet Choi
Yeah, sounds good. My journey to product is a little unconventional in the sense. I started my career in brand management at Johnson and Johnson in their consumer health division, leading brands like Neutrogena, Bandai, Tylenol. But it was more on the general management with Piano at Focus, with a focus on marketing as well. So a little bit further away from more of the product development, innovation side of things. And this was a great training ground in terms of like becoming jack of all trades, like becoming a decision maker at a young age. But ultimately what I was seeking was faster pace, wanting to feel the impact of my work more directly. So I was on the search for this when I started my MBA at Stanford.

03:37
Juliet Choi
And I was very fortunate to meet Chad Janis, the founder and CEO of Gruns, who had started the company Gruns while he was doing his mba. So upon graduating, I joined as a head of product, as employee number nine at the company and the first hire onto the product team. And that role quickly evolved into a much larger team that we're at today. But that's a little bit into how I fell into product.

04:00
Hannah Diitman
You've got a great wealth of experience and you wanted fast paced. Boy, did you get fast paced. So awesome that you got to get in right from the ground floor of an exciting journey, being schoolmates and kind of getting to see it from 0 to 1 and get to be part of that build process. I'm sure that was really thrilling and that you learned a lot from it. Obviously, I think everyone listening and probably knows about Gruns and know who you all are and what you do, but for anyone that randomly happens to be unfamiliar, could you also give us a quick overview of Gruns?

04:35
Juliet Choi
Definitely. So Gruns is a daily supplement. Gummy. And it's in the form of a fun convenience sachet.

04:41
Hannah Diitman
It's.

04:41
Juliet Choi
It's absolutely delicious. But it also is packed with 21 vitamins and minerals, has 6 grams of fiber in it, so allowing people to meet their daily nutrition needs. And Gruns as a company now, were started just about three years ago already, you know, scaled to 130 different employees and also recently acquired by Unilever.

05:01
Hannah Diitman
Crazy successful exit by Unilever. I think it holds the record for fastest exit or at least largest fastest exit in CPG history. Huge congrats to you all and the rest of the team. I can't even imagine what that roller coaster ride must have been like and how fun that must have been to go through all of that and the exciting things you're seeing now as your role continues to evolve. Obviously you started early days ground floor with Gruns and now you are part of a much bigger organization and the team has grown a lot. Could you also give us some context on how your role has evolved from day one at Gruns to now, where you sit and what your role looks like today?

05:42
Juliet Choi
Definitely. And to just give first intro of my role as VP of ProductNow, the things that I work on are product strategy, product innovation, I lead a team across R and D, product development and commercialization, and lastly, science and regulatory. When I first joined as a first hire onto the product team, it meant wearing a lot of different hats of whatever the company need to be at the given moment. So it was, you know, leading product roadmap, figuring out what our innovation process was going to be, but also wearing hats such as science and regulatory. When our marketing team had questions about certain types of claims. And at one point, because we didn't have a quality role until well within my first year at Gruns, I was a person who was tasting every single lot of Gruns that was ever produced.

06:26
Juliet Choi
So you can imagine the number of gummies that I was eating on a daily basis.

06:30
Hannah Diitman
You really got your vitamins in. Definitely.

06:34
Juliet Choi
But since then my role has become more focused on allowing our company to have expertise in various sub functions of products. So starting out with R and D, we brought R and D in house pretty rapidly and have a team of gummy formulators. We also brought science and regulatory in house because it was really important to us to have product efficacy really be at the forefront of how we're creating innovations and then leveraging our product development expertise to figure out how we're able to get validated launches out to market faster. So since then I would say that my role has evolved more to helping teams prioritize and ensure that we're resourcing against the type of big goals that we have for the future.

07:14
Hannah Diitman
A ton of different hats you've worn and I love how you explain each different function and the importance to the broader organization as well. Obviously, I'm sure your inbox is flooded frequently with questions, Juliet, about how you created such a winning product and a winning brand and what the big differentiation or the reasons why this had such a successful exit and growth journey that it's had. In your point of view, what do you think made the Grunds product a winner or continue to be a winner. And what do you think its big points of differentiation or the big consumer affinity driving the product was the reason.

07:57
Juliet Choi
That the Gruns product has been so successful. Is our founder Chad solved for the product adherence problem that the supplement category was having of? It's not that people don't feel the efficacy or the benefits of the many supplement products that are available, but it's that most people don't want to be taking this on a daily basis. So in creating a product in this delicious gummy format that people are actually really excited to be taking the first thing that they wake up or as a mid afternoon snacks. I think it was really that daily adherence of how do we get people to have an enjoyable delightful experience every single day that he was able to solve for.

08:31
Juliet Choi
And it's really translated into how we think about product innovation today as well of the way that we find our North Star is around that taste to retain is what we call it internally and it just translates do our customers like our product enough to want to take it on a daily basis? And that's what we're always measuring our consumer sensory results against what we're always challenging our R and D team to do so that we're able to really redefine supplements by creating products that are as enjoyable as snacks.

09:00
Hannah Diitman
I love the framing of retention as taste to retain. It's so true. I mean especially in sticky categories like VMs. That's the big differentiator oftentimes category wide is that the replenishment is really high and the retention is really high. And I do think the cute little logo and little bear had a little something to do with it though. Yeah, definitely.

09:21
Juliet Choi
That too of our brand team has done a phenomenal job of like the product is delicious but it's also really fun and you want to share it with your friends. You want to put it in your purse and take it around for a day, maybe the sachet and a group of friends and have them try a couple gummies as well.

09:35
Hannah Diitman
Yeah. And I think especially in a category like VMS where so many of them are functional and even the branded ones are very similar to I guess I would call maybe like the functionally branded ones where the format seems very straightforward and I think some of the branding innovation or whimsy you might find in the kids section but in the adult section I think it was missing some of that whimsy and the branded excitement that could be infused into a brand like that. So I'm sure Maybe not the biggest tip of the spear, but I'm sure it gave you a little bit of engine feel.

10:11
Juliet Choi
Yeah, yeah. Everyone deserves to have a little fun. Like even if it's in the form of supplements. Right? Like, who doesn't love a gummy bear? Who doesn't love a cute little bear logo on their product?

10:20
Hannah Diitman
So true. And now that you're thinking about product development philosophy going forward, obviously the company has scaled. You've moved beyond just the original concept and you're expanding out into maybe a little bit of a broader platform. What's the product development philosophy behind Gruns today and what's been your take as the company has evolved of where you see product development key pillars or strategy going?

10:47
Juliet Choi
Definitely, yeah. So the way that we approach product, Dr. Greens, I think is a little bit unique compared to other companies on a few different sense. One is a product comes from directly from the product team rather than it being a marketing led exercise and then the product team executes. So by having people who are entrenched in category trends, the latest research, the latest type of technology, we're really able to be at the forefront of what is coming next. The other thing that I think is also really unique to Gruns is that we're pretty bold in stepping into different types of categories. We started out with the Gruns brand, but you may have seen with Nootropes, Simune and Juice, we have been taking steps forward in entering Nootropics so you know, pre anything type of category along with immune support.

11:34
Juliet Choi
And there's more coming out this year as well. So taking bolder steps rather than limiting yourself to the original category that your hero product launched under. Most brands focus on doing count sizes, doing different flavor line extensions, but we are looking more holistically as how can we take that playbook and philosophy that Gruns had and apply it into different categories that we're able to create a different winning brand and have a unique positioning.

12:02
Hannah Diitman
So exciting. And I can't even imagine how busy you all are. I have seen so much of the posting and the job hiring that you guys are doing and all the different directions that are going on. I'm sure this is a really exciting time for you too as you're really standing up a platform of quite a lot of different products now. What's consuming most of your mind share in leading product development through this phase of the company journey? What are you thinking about most often and what's really on your mind most frequently?

12:31
Juliet Choi
Yeah, yeah. It's such a good Question of one is that this is a year that we're really focused on processes and systems of how do we build systems that allow us to have growth faster? And when it comes to innovation, it's really buttoning down our process in terms of what are the types of validation that we have, but how do we ensure that we're still moving with agility as a startup? So finding the balance between the two has really been my big focus for the year. So building out our innovation process in a way that makes sense for the stage of company that we're at, how do we incorporate other functions at the right kind of time points? At what point do R and D and science and regulatory have the conversation so that we're able to land at the right formula?

13:14
Juliet Choi
So I would say really just strengthening our process so that we're building the system that allows us to have not just 10 product launches in a given year, but how does that scale to 50 in the next following year?

13:26
Hannah Diitman
That makes sense. Is there any backbone piece that you think is critically important as you're thinking about building out that structure or resiliency, I guess, within the organization?

13:37
Juliet Choi
So customer feedback is one that's been so core to Gruns from the beginning that we had built into our process. So it really goes down to the origin story of Gruns as well. When Tab was creating prototypes for Gruns, he had the entire Stanford class involved in it of he was giving out samples. I was one of the people in the seats tasting the sample. I remember writing down like, this tastes amazing. This sounds almost like a little too good to be true. But it turned out to be true. But ultimately what I took away from that experience was the way that he was able to iterate really quickly on prototypes and apply that type of feedback in order to make the next version even better by hitting on customer needs.

14:19
Juliet Choi
And that's something that's a really core part of the way that we're innovating when it comes to our development phase. We have our R and D team of formulators who are all in house, by the way. They're sending out samples on a weekly basis all around the country. Because we're a remote company and people are taking surveys, providing feedback on it. They continue to iterate through this process. And when we get to a sample that we are pretty confident in, it goes outside of Groom's employees as well.

14:46
Juliet Choi
If we start recruiting friends and family and get about 50 different friends and family to provide feedback on the samples as well, we continue iterating from there and by the time that we take our product to a pilot line trial at a manufacturer, we take those samples and then do a target consumer sampling with that as well of how are they finding the tastes, the texture, the aromas, the aftertaste, the benefits of the product. So really trying to get that holistic feedback from customers in order to have confidence that our product is landing correctly and going to have that taste to retain that I talked about.

15:20
Hannah Diitman
Yeah, and that's a really hard thing to do quickly. Also for people unfamiliar, like getting a submission feedback together and notes to your formulator or the formulation team, and then adjusting and then getting the new format and then tasting that. I mean, typically it's three or four weeks between submissions. Sometimes it can be a very slow, arduous process. I'm sure you guys are flying a lot faster than that.

15:42
Juliet Choi
Yeah, we probably try to turn it around within the week of like they make the sample, ship it out, it's generally two days shipping and then people try to turn around within like the first 24 hours of receiving it. But really that shaving off like three to four weeks down to one week is what allows us to operate so quickly and get innovations out the door much faster than other companies.

16:03
Hannah Diitman
Yeah, I'm sure having some of these functions in house help a lot with that too, because you're not like waiting, you're not like one of many customers, although I'm sure grins would get preferential treatment. But you're not one of many customers with a co man who's in the waiting line of the queue trying to get your submission to the top. How many iterations typically do you guys go through before you feel really confident that you're ready to launch a product? Like, how many different submissions and revisions are you making?

16:30
Juliet Choi
Yeah, yeah. This is such a kind of tough question to answer in the sense that if it's a flavor iteration that we're doing, there's times when our very talented gummy formulators have gotten it right on the first or second try. I think, for example, one of our limited time launches that we had over the summer, they were able to get it, I think on the first or second iteration, which is much faster than what we have budgeted time for. When it comes to innovation. There are so many different factors that we are trying to solve for in that tastes is one of them. But it's also technical feasibility of will the ingredient be able to survive in the gummy format. Is it testing out correctly? Are we going to be able to scale this to a larger manufacturing line.

17:11
Juliet Choi
And we're also solving for our confidence in the marketing claims of it as well. Like, we might have a formula that tastes like great, but if we're not able to unlock the messaging that allows marketing to win with customers, it's not going to be a great product at launch. So with the number of iterations that it takes, I would say like any order from 30 to 40 different iterations for a more complicated formulation is what it takes.

17:34
Hannah Diitman
Wow, that's a ton. And I think that's a lot of rigor and effort that you guys are putting behind the products and makes sense why they are performing as well as they are. And for a startup emerging brand, that's a lot of iterations to go through. I mean, that takes a lot of time and energy and resources and capital too.

17:52
Hannah Diitman
Thinking through the efficacy as you're mentioning in the gummy format and getting through the development process as you alluded to earlier in this conversation as well, I'm sure that's a huge portion of what's important to you all in the development and R and D phase is making sure that given that you are VMs, that your claims are holding and that you're delivering on the nutritional functions that you say you are, do you approach the kind of efficacy evaluation or standards, do you think any differently than the rest of the industry? Or how do you guys think about protecting that portion of a product and making sure the formulation stays true to those claims?

18:30
Juliet Choi
Our team has so much rigor in the type of testing that they're doing throughout the entire innovation process. I'm honestly just so impressed by all the steps that are taken by our team to ensure that our products are efficacious. It starts out at the R and D stage of the kind of research that they're doing. Even before they start using an ingredient to understand do we have research on if it's able to survive the kind of heat conditions it's in at the lab scale?

18:53
Juliet Choi
Even before we go into pilot production, we're constantly sending samples out to various third party testing labs such as Eurofins to understand are the products actually testing out for the active ingredients and then by the time that we take something to pilot production, we take those final samples, send it to a third party lab, ensure that the product is testing out, but not just at time period 0, but for the shelf life that we are promising the customer to understand longer term, how is the gummy active ingredient interacting together? Are we ensuring that the ingredients are stable all the way to the end of shelf life? So a ton of rigor involved in it and it is also a pretty costly exercise of one of the most expensive line items that I have within the product. P and L is actually third party testing.

19:40
Juliet Choi
So it comes with a cost. But I think it is a very necessary cost to ensure that you are delivering on what you're promising to the customer.

19:47
Hannah Diitman
Yeah, I think without that you're candy, right? Yes. It's so important and that makes a lot of sense that you guys are putting so much emphasis on that function and I would expect nothing less because I think there's a lot of veto votes that happen with supplements because it's not an immediate benefit that you typically feel from these products. So if you don't like the taste or if you can't keep up with the routine, or if you don't feel like long term you're getting any of the benefits or you don't trust that you're getting the efficacy that they are promising, what's the point in buying as a consumer and continuing to take it? So I love how rigorous you guys are being about that and thinking about it. Juliet, you've had such an interesting career and I've seen so many different things.

20:28
Hannah Diitman
You've got deep CPG experience and you've gotten trial by fire in a high growth startup. You're now part of a bigger massive player in the space. You started out in a bigger player in the space as well. Do you have any best practices or lessons learned, pieces of advice from building this brand and from the rest of your career that you think other operators would find useful, helpful or be able to learn from?

20:52
Juliet Choi
Yeah, and maybe it's starting to sound a little like a parrot, but I think it really just comes down to customer feedback again of like, we can have many different hypotheses, but it's only as good as getting the actual feedback from the customer. So the more that you're able to involve customers or your target consumers into your process as much as possible, you know, it's like going out into the neighborhood and having people test it or using your loyal subscribers and asking them to give feedback on a new idea that you have for a product. So just trying to build customer feedback into your process as possible is what allows us to be more successful in our product launches.

21:28
Hannah Diitman
That is so well said. I think in consumer, I mean it's in the name.

21:31
Juliet Choi
Right.

21:32
Hannah Diitman
I feel like consumer packaged goods, if you don't have your consumers front of mind, you are just not doing what you need to be doing as a CPGR products company. So I love the commitment to that. Obviously things go wrong in product development and manufacturing and R and D all the time. There's a ton of high risk involved in all of those departments and things that you've got going on. Are there any watch outs or best practices or things you would either mistakes you've made that you've learned from or things that you make sure go right within your own team that you would share with the audience to double check on or maybe help someone else avoid a pitfall here and there?

22:12
Juliet Choi
Yeah, this is such a good question and it's things that I wish that I knew starting day one at Kroons as well. But the more that you're able to bring technical expertise in house and own those processes rather than relying on third party vendors to be executing on those for you. So a couple of different examples that I have are we made the decision pretty early on to bring R and D in house. Initially were working with our comance innovators and labs to launch innovation but this was kind of the first unlock in terms of product innovation for Gruns of how quickly were able to move in terms of pacing, had control over products. But I think the other thing that people might underestimate when it comes to R and D is how important it is for quality control as well.

22:56
Juliet Choi
When you own the SOPs and all of your formulas in house, it really does make a difference in the type of things that you can hold third party stakeholders accountable to as well. So R and D has been a huge unlock in terms of our quality continuing to improve as a company along those lines. I would also say the other technical expertise that's been really important to bring in house is science and regulatory. And we've done this because we care a lot about product efficacy along with ensuring that we're abiding by regulations set by the fda. I really think about science and regulatory as a skill that helps you unlock growth rather than slowing down by putting regulations on yourself. So just being able to rely more on in house expertise rather than rely on external factors.

23:37
Hannah Diitman
Is there anything with gummies in specifically as a format that you think is particularly challenging or has hurdles that you need to overcome to make sure you get it right in the manufacturing, development or R D process?

23:50
Juliet Choi
Yeah, gummies are tough, incredibly fun and rewarding, but it's also really challenging to work with in terms of I think texture is a really interesting one where if it's too soft you're going to have a tough time getting the gummies to actually come out of their mold, they're not going to hold up their shape very well. Once you're sending them out to your customers, you might see stickiness happening with the product. But on the other hand, if you go a little bit too far over cure the gummies, you're going to have customers experiencing too much of the chewy toughness type of texture that isn't the ideal type of Haribo gummy, like texture that they're expecting. So it's a little bit of a Goldilocks exercise in gummy of like getting it just right is what I found.

24:32
Juliet Choi
But having a ton of discipline is one of my takeaways when it comes to things like the product specs that you are holding your commands accountable to. Having as much documentation and quality processes written down is how you're able to protect yourself. And I'm sure that translates to more than just gummy category of like, the more that you are being proactive with documentation, the more you can allow for consistency as well.

24:56
Hannah Diitman
Very well said. Yeah, I'm sure even the sometimes there's coding on the outside of gummies and choosing the right one for that, whether it's going to be a wax or something else to protect it in packs, they don't all clump together. I mean, I'm sure there's so. And temp control as you're shipping out and warehousing. I'm sure there's so many different things that you are all thinking of that make it quite the challenge that you don't realize maybe on the surface when you're thinking of product extensions now, and obviously you guys are exploring so many different things. How do you evaluate which product ideas are worth pursuing and which ones you decide to kind of leave behind? What makes you all get conviction in the pursuit of a new product line extension or category entirely?

25:36
Juliet Choi
Yeah, this is such a fun one too. Like, it's one of my favorite parts of the job of being able to choose a new category and positioning. But ultimately the biggest question that we ask ourselves is do we have a unique differentiation within this category? Do we have a right to win here? And some of the factors that we're looking for are aspects such as, you know, it not only is a category seeing growth and consumers are engaging, but is there unmet need that the consumer has that we could be capturing? Is there a space for gummies to be playing in that allows people for more convenience and daily adherence and enjoyment with the products? So it just all comes down to whether we believe that we have unique positioning within the category or not.

26:16
Juliet Choi
And that comes in the form of, you know, not just the product team, but we need to get marketing input. And I find that whether the marketing team is excited by the positioning or not is one of the most important factors of whether the rest of us should be excited by it or not. And our founders, Chad tends to be really involved innovation and always has really unique perspectives on the positionings that we can be taking. So I would say like being doubling down on your positioning and being really clear on it. So one of the things that I've learned with Gruns is that not every bet that you take ends up flourishing into a product launch.

26:47
Juliet Choi
So ensuring that you're diversifying in terms of the number of R and D projects that you have in mind versus a number of product launch slots that you have in a given year, that way we're able to launch the best sum of products that come into fruition versus just betting on the idea and hoping that it will turn into a great product.

27:05
Hannah Diitman
Yeah, and I'm sure it's interesting the position you all are in where world's your oyster and you guys could probably make anything under the sun you wanted to. I mean, you're well capitalized, you've got a ton of reach, you've got the team you need behind you've got a lot of support. I think the journey for you all probably becomes a lot more about what not to make, almost more than what to make sometimes. I'm sure there's no shortage of ideas of where you could extend your brand and the different flavors or innovations or different formats or different things that you could do. And I think there's probably a lot of conversations being had about what makes strategic sense for you all long term and where you want to continue to grow this brand.

27:42
Hannah Diitman
But I'm sure those are really fun chats to be thinking about. I feel like everyone who works in consumer loves the product ideation like new product journey, Building something new and thinking about the new ideas and how to figure it out is so exciting. If you were to restart Gruns or go work at a different company now, what would you prioritize? If building a consumer product company from scratch today, if you were going to start all over or give a brand new founder a piece of advice, what would be thinking about or prioritizing?

28:14
Juliet Choi
It would be two factors and the first one is more important getting product market fit as much as possible. And I think Chad went about it exactly in the right way of having the idea. But Prototyping, getting feedback of that's what I would spend most of my upfront time on is getting the product right of ensuring that it really is meeting unmet consumer need. And is it going to be something that has the potential to have a strong customer lifetime value because people keep coming back to purchase it again? The second factor is a little bit less sexy than product innovation.

28:48
Juliet Choi
But the more that you're able to have processes and documentation upfront and make that a priority as your company, you know, scales into becoming a hundred million dollar, a billion dollar company, the processes that you have in place upfront really protect you and scale you for the future as well. So thinking about documentation, processes, SOPs, the kind of contracts that you have with co manufacturers and partners like that being priority more upfront.

29:14
Hannah Diitman
Very well said and great pieces of advice. I'd love to double click on processes and documentation. I know we've touched on that a couple of times. If I'm less familiar with ops or maybe I haven't done it before. What specifically are kind of the broad categories of documentation or things that I should be having top of mind that I want to make sure are being written down or that the process is being documented or going the right way?

29:38
Juliet Choi
Yeah, yeah, great question. And. And I think about it in two big buckets of formula and packaging and there are much big quality consideration. Quality is such a difficult job to have. I think about it in those two types of world as it comes to formula it's a couple different factors of like one is formula ownership of do you own the proprietary information as it relates to your formula? And we own all of our formulations in house soccer rooms and that gives us a ton of protection of ensuring that competitors can't come in and make a similar product or ask one of the manufacturers who make something really similar. So formula ownership but also ensuring that you are have tight documentation of how to make the formula consistent every single time as well.

30:22
Juliet Choi
Or and that comes in the form of product specs in the kind of SOPs that you might have manufacturing records that you hold with your co manufacturer but really buttoning those things down. And with that also comes formula version control too of ensuring that you know exactly at what point you transition from a V1 to V2 formula that you're able to look back on those records even two years backdating. And I think this is something that we have a really great handle on occurrence but it also took time for us to build out these documentation and processes as well. And then as it relates to packaging Product is interesting in the sense that people might think that it's more so on the marketing side where there's risk exposure for the company.

31:01
Juliet Choi
I think it's actually more on the product side because packaging tends to be more permanent than just being able to like take out down an Instagram ad that you might have out there. So being really buttoned down in terms of the claims that you're making on packaging, ensuring that there is 100% accuracy in what you're putting down there. And similarly, version control across packaging, having that documentation process like set up from the beginning so you know exactly one version went into the world and then second one transition, being able to look back on that data.

31:30
Hannah Diitman
So well said, Julia. And you're singing music to my ears. Unless you're in it or have done it, you might not realize how quickly and crazily this all gets messy, especially when you're doing 50 plus submissions, when you've got a lot of different variables that you're tracking for product feedback across all of those. And then you've got a lot of consumer feedback and market research coming in at the same time. The changes can be really slight and sometimes they go in the wrong way between submission and the next submission. Or you had a retain that you were trying to match one attribute and then you're trying to compare it again and you're like, wait, which submission number was that? What version was that? Was the viscosity, right? Compared to that one. What was the RPMs we did actually? No, the heat was up.

32:12
Hannah Diitman
There's so many things. It's like cooking a recipe, right? And if you didn't have your recipe written down and then you're trying to recreate the dish and improve it, even that's really hard. Or it's two years later going back to remake that dish or make a slight change to that dish. If you didn't have the exact recipe written down as. As clearly as possibly maybe even with a video of what you did. And same thing on packaging, sometimes even color compare, I'm sure. You know, like comparing between a pantone shade might be so slight, or the one place you move to claim, or the font size or the small little error that you fixed or something like that.

32:48
Hannah Diitman
So I think there's so much detail orientation that happens on the product development and manufacturing side, ops is all about fixing problems before they happen and knowing what's going on. So tons of respect for all that you're juggling and how quickly that you're doing it and how on top of it.

33:06
Juliet Choi
You are.

33:07
Hannah Diitman
It sounds like you are running a very tight ship over there. Is there a product decision that you've made in your career that you think had an outsized impact relative to how small it was? Maybe you made a small decision that ended up having a huge impact that you didn't expect it to or something like that you can share.

33:26
Juliet Choi
Yeah, definitely. It comes down to bringing R and D in house, which I had talked about briefly before, but the founder's decision and my decision to bring R and D in house. We were focused more on the innovation front of wanting to scale innovation faster. But I think this was really what kickstarted, showing the need to have technical expertise be in house and the outsized impact that it has when it comes to things like quality and having IP ownership, various aspects like that. So it really showed for us the small investment that you can make upfront, how it pays really dividends by being able to have control over how you are scaling the business and having consistency within your product Org.

34:09
Hannah Diitman
Yeah, I think so much more control you probably have in moving at lightning speed. I'm sure day one of Gruns versus day whatever you're at now where you're on the show are completely different experiences as you're walking through that job and how much more support and agency you probably have now with so much function internal to the company. We've spent a lot of time reflecting on the past and the journey of your career and your time with Gruns, but I'd love to pick your brain about what you're most excited about in the future of consumer product development in general Gruns or consumer behavior shifts or the future of the industry at large.

34:45
Juliet Choi
So many setting trends. I think one that people don't talk about quite enough is AI and how it relates to product and CPG as well. I am excited for how much AI can jumpstart in terms of people will need fewer resources in order to build out a company, to test out an idea and how much more we can try to incorporate AI in terms of how we are running product and running our processes as well. It's still, you know, baby steps that we're taking, but very much a focus for us, for myself and for the company in terms of AI being the focus.

35:17
Hannah Diitman
Yeah, get that whisper flow going for all that PD documentation. Save someone a lot of time. No, I'm sure as you're talking about system processes, documentation, formulation, there's so many ways that AI can probably be leveraged to audit quality or keep better track of everything. Find opportunities that maybe you're missing amongst amalgamating a lot of different consumer feedback. I think that is really exciting and it'll be interesting to see what the unlocks become in the PD space. Well, I could ask you a lot of my own questions that I still have. I love chatting with you Juliet, but I do want to get to a Slack case study question. As you know, startup CPG has the largest Slack community in the industry with now over 40,000 members.

36:03
Hannah Diitman
I'd love to pull a question directly from our channel and have you answer it as a case study for any founder that might have a similar question. Today's question is how do you know when is the right time to make a change to your product?

36:14
Juliet Choi
It's such a important question and like one that I've struggled with throughout my career as well. But to me it comes down to pattern of customer feedback and being close enough to customer feedback to recognize when there is a pattern of when a new product launches. I am in our review system on a daily basis, just like reading new reviews that come from our customers and oftentimes that data comes first before you even have retention metrics to measure against. So being able to like pick up on customer feedback by being close to it, but at the first opportunity that you notice a pattern, then it should be the question of does this make sense to be implementing? Will this have a positive impact in customer retention? Will it have a positive impact and when it comes to customer lifetime value.

36:59
Juliet Choi
So just always like asking yourself that question. But first of all looking for the sense of like, of any pattern that you're seeing in the what you're hearing from your customers.

37:07
Hannah Diitman
When you think about making a change like that, let's say you're getting customer feedback that the texture isn't as soft as it used to be or something like that and you come to the decision point, okay, we need to change texture. How do you go about making a change when you already have the product in market?

37:23
Juliet Choi
Yeah, so we've actually had a similar scenario to this where we launched a product, the flavor wasn't quite in the direction that customers wanted. So we iterate really quickly on it of looking at the entire formula. Again, what are causing some of the flavor notes that customers might not be excited about and what are changes that we need to be making. So from the time that we realized there was customer feedback, which was within a month of the launch, we launched our new product within six months. And it wasn't just a simple flavor change, we actually changed the entire formulation around it so that it would be a more favorable experience for the customer. So just identifying it quickly but also aligning as a cross functional team that it is a priority.

38:04
Juliet Choi
We received so much help from our operations team, from our go to market team in making this change. So it wasn't a product alone type of exercise, but the entire organization knew it was a priority which is why were able to make it happen in six months.

38:16
Hannah Diitman
Yeah, I think the devotion you all have to meeting consumer needs and consumer feedback echoes across your company and clearly is a big driver of your success as well. I think everything down from like a B testing, marketing messages you're going to use in your ads and things like that to clearly product feedback which anyone who's made a product knows that's no easy feat to be managing the existing inventory, making a change within six months, essentially relaunching a product and coordinating all of that like that is hard to do. But the commitment to making sure that you're delivering what your consumers want I think is very clear. Your north stars of consumer feedback and diligence in operations ring true through this whole conversation and it's no surprise why you've been such the successful operator that you've been.

39:03
Hannah Diitman
Julia, this has been such a fun chat. Thank you so much for being generous with your time and insight. I'm sure you have an encyclopedia of knowledge that we could keep diving into. For any listeners that want to continue to follow along on your journey, glean your words of wisdom or potentially reach out to you. What's the best way for them to do so? And second part of my question, do you have any advice for anyone interested in building a career in product development or potentially joining Gruns?

39:30
Juliet Choi
Yeah, I'm pretty active on LinkedIn. You can find me Juliet Choi is what you can find me under and quite a lot of Gruns people are active on LinkedIn, so I encourage you to also follow our founder chat. Janice he posts a ton of really interesting content and if you are interested in a career in product development, I would say like taking the initiative to share your idea even before you see a job posting as a way to stand out of product development is such a competitive industry in the sense that I just see so many strong candidates on a daily basis. But what really helps someone stand out is if they are like reaching out about a product idea that they might have. Whether it's innovation or new flavor, different approach that we can be taking you.

40:11
Juliet Choi
Providing your thought process first allows you to stand out in a sea of really talented candidates.

40:16
Hannah Diitman
And do you have any openings? Gruns are with your team now?

40:19
Juliet Choi
Yeah, we do have a couple openings that are going to be going out shortly. We have a couple of openings on the R and D team that should being posted shortly and then in a few months there will be some more openings on the science and regulatory team as well.

40:32
Hannah Diitman
Amazing opportunity to work with the great Juliet Choi and hopefully learn from her under her tutelage and I'm sure a really exciting time to be part of Gruns. Well, Juliet, thank you so much again for your time and your generosity with your insights. Really appreciate it and a pleasure having you here today.

40:51
Juliet Choi
Thank you so much for having me. I had so much fun chatting with you. Appreciate it.

40:56
Hannah Diitman
Well friends, we've now arrived together at the end of another episode of the Startup CPG Podcast, the top globally ranked podcast in cpg. And if you love this podcast, you'll love our Slack community even more. Here at Startup cpg, we're a community of brands and experts and you should join. Sign up @startupcpg.com you'll then get an invite to our online Slack community of over 35,000 All Star CPG members, hear about amazing events near you and all our special opportunities to get you in front of buyers, investors, brands and more. It's a free community. So what are you waiting for? I'll catch you on the next episode and I'll see you on the Slack.