Luke Montgomery-Smith - Reinventing Hydration (and Ditching the Bottles and Cans!)

On this episode, we’re joined by Luke Montgomery‑Smith, Co‑founder of Plink!, the effervescent hydration tablet brand that’s rethinking what it means to enjoy a drink without the waste of bottles or cans.

Before launching Plink!, Luke co‑founded Wild Fizz Kombucha, a multi‑award‑winning beverage that saw early success before the pandemic forced a shutdown. Now, as a second‑time founder, he’s bringing those hard‑won lessons into a new category.

Luke dives deep into how he’s building Plink! as a second-time founder, how they nailed a distinct packaging form factor, and how to stand out and win in a crowded market. We explore everything from designing for impulse purchases to the realities of working with retailers like GNC, plus how to scale a demo and sampling strategy.

Episode Highlights:

🚀 How second‑time founders approach growth differently
🎯 Standing out in a crowded category with unique positioning
📦 Designing a packaging form factor that drives trial
🎨 Visual identity that sparks curiosity and shelf appeal
🛒 Creating packaging for impulse purchases
🔑 “Trojan Horse” messaging that drives adoption
🛤️ Go‑to‑market strategy and early traction
🏬 Winning at GNC
📈 Retailer velocity expectations and what sets them apart
🥤 Demoing and sampling strategies that convert

Table of Contents:

00:52:57 – Plink origin story
03:59:07 – Launching Plink after shutting down Wild Fizz Kombucha
07:25:22 – Learning lessons as a second time founder
09:57:24 – Standing out in a crowded market
13:52:18 – Nailing down a unique packaging form factor
19:26:00 – Visual identity and packaging design
22:43:09 – Designing for the impulse purchase
25:17:01 – Messaging, positioning, “Trojan Horse”
28:19:14 – Go-to-market
31:32:00 – Launching in GNC
35:13:15 – Retailer differences, velocity expectations
37:51:05 – Demos and sampling at scale

Links:

Plink! – https://drinkplink.com
Follow Luke on LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/lukejms/
Follow Adam on LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/adam-martin-steinberg/
Need help with packaging & production design? – Check out https://www.kitprint.co/

Transcript

0:02

today we're speaking with Luke Montgomery Smith who is joining us from Burlington Vermont Luke is a co founder of plink a hydration focus brand focusing on creating joyful hydration via low sugar effervescent electrolyte tablets which is a cool form factor for this hydration category prior to Plank Luke built Wild Fiz Kombucha an award winning UK based kombucha brand that gotten to 300+ doors before having to shut down during the midst of Covid like many businesses unfortunately but yeah first off for the that's a small group of listeners that maybe aren't that familiar with Plank Luke just to kick us off just maybe just give us quick lay of the land in terms of origin story why behind the brand Wanna hear about the name some of the core products you guys offer and maybe just a few places that uh listeners can get their hands on them and then we'll go from there yeah awesome thank you Adam uh thank you for that lovely introduction I'm excited to chat with you today yeah so plink I can't actually take any of the credit for the for the sort of origins of plink that all goes to my brilliant co founder Max um who it's his birthday today so just gonna say happy birthday Max belatedly cause this is coming out whenever it comes out um so Max was working in um around the same time that I had founded Wild Fiz Kombucha I was getting into beverage and tasting creating delicious drinks Max was actually working in New York in a trends and insights working with 14

2: 1:25

50 companies helping them create innovation frameworks for the future and he was helping wasn't just in food and beverage he was working in sort of government and tech and all sorts of things but two of the massive macro trends that he was helping companies navigate was all to do with reducing people's reliance on single use packaging and reductions in carbon emissions and he'd always wanted to start a beverage brand and he'd actually been toying around with a Seltzer brand but it just flies in the face of those macro trends

and plink was it was just a lovely 2: 1:52

00am idea woke up in the middle of the night and it was just like it's plink it's a bath bomb you could do you can drink and it's sort of like that was the idea he texted a best friend he's like it's gonna be great sustainable you know scalable all these things and he just fell back to sleep and his best friend was just like that's got legs let's um look into that and he had been convinced trying to get him to do it for a few years and then as you said in your intro I used to have a kombucha brand in the UK and I had got it to a you know we were proud of where we got it to but it was still an early stage business and when Covid came along we had to take the difficult decision to to either take on a load of debt or shut the business and we shut the business and I was telling a friend of mine who was Max's friend and he was like I know you've just this has just happened to you but I've got a friend you've got to talk to him he's had this brilliant idea it's a bath bomb you could drink or plink and the friend had actually made a deck for him to like pitch it to me and to try and bring me on and um I just had a product that was short shelf life chill chain distribution glass bottles aluminium cans shipping it across the UK exporting it to Europe I just saw how crazy wasteful the beverage industry is and there was something really sticky about that idea there's sort of just tabletize drinks just add water bring it bringing that sort of joy of beverage to life without the waste so that was the sort of origin story of Plink awesome that's great super super helpful background you you you mentioned Wild Fiz that was gonna be one of my first questions I know before you built Plink you built that pretty successful brand or shutting it down during during Covid and a bit of a a similar story not to go on a Tangent but I co founded a business in the the regulated cannabis space in the California market had a lot of success No. 1 brand in our category for a few years in a row raised a bunch of money but we ultimately winded down the business as well and um I just wanted to spend a a just a minute or two touching on that second time founder post failure journey for others that that may just be in a similar boat and so it sounds like you got introduced to Max heard about the idea I'm curious did you know you wanted to start another company pretty quickly after shutting down wildfizz did it take some time ponder did you ponder jumping on board with another company when you met Max and heard about that idea were you initially apprehensive and yeah curious how that what that mindset look like in from from a journey perspective let's say yeah I mean for sure and props on the business that you built and like obviously any business is a success in bringing creating something and bringing it to market I think closing wildfires really hurt like was really took us to a really really dark place you know it was really really tough period very short tough period cause we had to like move quickly but you know we had put blood sweat and tears into building up we had a you know we had a brewery and we had set up our office and we had the little storeroom and we had where you know our young kids our babies suspended in between the doors where we clean it was like it was all of our tanks were named it was fully kombuchery and nicely hippily and we it was really really hard that my yeah my initial reaction I I love how in the the beginning intro I was like yeah jump straight back into it but no I mean my initial reaction was like hell no like I need a I just need to get a steady job and just chill for a bit get my head screwed back on give my wife who was my co founder in Wild Fiz Kombucha a break the opportunity to just enjoy parenthood recover from like the burnout of founder life but it was Covid so it's just this totally different time so it was sort of I was very fortunate I actually got a job but that I used to work in events experiential marketing which is all meeting people in real life in a festivals or all venues so it all closed down so we were sitting there at home stuck behind closed doors on laptop so I just had time on my hand and Max's idea was just in getting in there and infesting into me and it was just just like I'm probably the wrong person but I could do it okay what is it what is he trying to do and it was just I started googling you know this bath bomb you can drink what is a bath bomb okay a bath bomb is sodium bicarbonate and citric acid in the non food space as well as in the food space I was like OK it's OK so sodium bicarbonate citric acid food it came up like FMS and tablets was like the fifth search kind of thing and I was like OK oh yeah of course Brooker is a UK brand that I'd heard of I was like it already exists OK that's a good starting point this isn't a food tech challenge it's like potentially there is something here and so I just I had it wasn't like I didn't go like diving straight away but I was just chipping away a couple of hours a week to begin with and then like got a bit into it and then I realised I was like OK I'm not clearly interested in this now let's just work and let's and I told my wife and she was just like no you know she's she's like that's a really bad idea and I was like okay but I think I really wanna do this you know you know how fun it was when it was fun you know you can remember the feeling that we had this is what it is I've got these guys Max and his friends are like just lovely human beings they had some good connections to help us make get some introductions to some early investment I was like look babe we can do this differently I could pay myself a salary let's just try and try and build this a different way and I can't remember how long that period whether it was weeks or months so it took a bit of time to come to dive back in but um I I did heal some scars first or like a little bit and come in definitely with sort of like less fucks given and like less stress about the whole thing compared to Max who's a first time founder yeah totally you you mentioned a bit about and we're gonna we can approach this differently we have some investor connections we can pair ourselves and that was gonna be my next question in terms of once you decided yes I'm gonna do this what way did you did you approach building plank just differently versus Wild Fiz just in terms of being that second time founder and kind of some of those learning lessons that you brought to the table in in Round 2 let's say yeah I mean I still have lessons to learn but I think the key thing was you know when I really looked at what went wrong with Wild Fiz outside of Covid you know it was to do with margins and it was to do with you know being able to realise actual cash contribution to be able to grow the business and I think from that's what excited me about plink from the get go I said okay this thing is which what the whole electrolyte category is is you know sugar and salt commodity products with taste and storytelling can be sold at a pretty good gross margin so I was excited by just from the get go having a product that could launch with viable gross margins and then the other thing was I'd just been a contra manufacturer by producing the kombucha and kombucha for other brands a lot of that was processes and cleaning and turning over pumps and changing lines and it was very production focused and there's not so much time for the sales and marketing side of the business and what I remember thinking is I've 80% production 20% sales and marketing it needs to be the other way around to really to grow this business and I saw an opportunity with blink to go about it in a different way originally you know created a base formula myself with the help of a an original uh a sort of guys during Covid that I found that helped me develop a formula but then took that to a contract manufacturer and knew that I was going to work in a way that was just like let's do this turnkey build a brand um I definitely have ambitions for vertical integration and I really want to get back to the Willy Wonka ness now that I've sort of had a little bit of time away from it but that was a definitely felt like a slightly sort of smarter head on those shoulders to try and get get those things from the get go yeah totally you touch on it a bit in terms of this hydration electrolytes space being you said like a salt you know electrolytes and salt are a bit of a commodity and I think this space seems to have gotten fairly competitive over the past two to three years or so and what was the thought process in in terms of how you and Max and the team were thinking about entering this market and how you were thinking about how you wanted to really differentiate plank in the market yeah so honestly we came about this we came about the electrolyte and hydration space secondarily to our original goals our original goals were really much more Willy Wonka like let's create a drink tablet so let's have all the joy of of a Coke or a Fanta or any drink but without the waste of cans and bottles so we were trying to really put fizz in a glass without without pressure that was the concept and so to create that fizz the carbon dioxide you can either force carbonate like all products do and just get carbon dioxide and pump it into the liquid at a low temperature and put it put a lid on it and it will stay carbonated or you can create carbonic acid in the liquid through a through a beautiful chemical reaction that's what effervescent tablets are so sodium bicarbonate and citric acid the byproduct of which is sodium citrate so positively charged sodium salts CO2 the effervescence and a little bit of excess H2O so it's a lovely bit of clean chemistry and that so we were focusing on that the middle by product the the CO2 but really that first one the the positively charged sodium salts is is where the space is so we actually when we first first create the initial base formula in Stoke in the north of England it was just like let's create the bubbles and then we Learned more that if you add in potassium it actually helps get the bubbles better speed up the reactive reaction and give a better performance and then we started playing and then you're like okay got a couple of electrolytes going on here and then when we we launched with this quite fuck you Coca Cola stop drinking canned bottled beverages and drink tablets instead brand platform that was like inspired by sort of punk IPA from Brew Dog and just sort of it was quite sort of British in its in its communication and it landed in so many ways but it also failed to meet the more American consumer mindset of like what's in it for me it wasn't quite product positive enough and as our customers but because of that because we were trying to focus on taste it was it was yummy it was delicious people like wow you've made you made my electrolyte taste good um but I still I'm drinking it for the electrolyte properties so once we Learned that with our earlier customers we went back to the drawing board and reformulated the products and we added magnesium into it and we got the balance of the sodium potassium and the magnesium right and we made sure that we were sort of focusing on a on a daily hydration moment but we still brought that sort of passion for taste and the beverage experience like I was part of the brief is about the sort of beginning middle and end flavour and the organoleptic experience and I don't know if you open a plink the smell is really lovely and I thought that was really important and also not having sediment in the bottom of your glass and having a really clean like you don't want it to be too viscous and you want a nice like clarity to the liquid so we've approached the space to answer the question of like how we're doing it differently we sort of coming about it from a totally different point of view our point of view is like let's make a drink yeah in in this form and that's why we didn't go for powders which lots of the other guys do we went for the tablets cause we were trying to create a fizzy a fizzy drink and then we've realised that the we're like wow OK we're stepping into a really busy space like you like you said it's sort of there's now a billion dollar juggernaut with Liquid IV and there's this incredible brands that have come in in sports with element and I hangovers with Water Boy and all over the place and I think where we where Plink feels that it's sort of uniqueness on is just is about just everyday enjoyment it's almost like the spindrift of hydration eventually we want to just have flavour palettes just for everyone in the family to really enjoy and feel something that you consume as many of our customers and I definitely do you know multiple plinks per day in a way that you you could with a Lacroix or a spin drift but without the guilt of that can going in your blue recycling bin yeah totally that's really helpful on that topic of of product development I think one thing that I read was it sounded like it was a bit of a challenge to to find a co packer that was willing to package the tablets and and anything other than those what I think is what everyone would is kind of the default are those plastic tubes versus your individual sachets I'm I'm kind of curious I guess what first off just is what what are those sachet specs look like and I think it sounded like you had to play around with it a bit cause these tablets can be pretty sensitive from a moisture standpoint or shelf life I can't remember exactly what it was but what are those what are the specs of these sachets look like and what did that process kind of get to that packaging form factor that you knew it was gonna be stable let's say yeah so I suppose the dream pre product innovation was almost like a lush bath bomb yeah I don't know if you know the brand lush it's a it's like a eco friendly homeware brand that does soaps and dry shampoo and dry conditioner and it does these bath bombs that sit in these beautiful retail spaces with zero packaging piled up high that you can just come and grab one and put it in your paper bag and take it home and I think our dream originally was like packaging free um and it was definitely fully you know shoes off sustainability trying to do it you know touching feet in the ground and when we learnt about the realism of the volatility of effervescent tablets we learnt why they're in plastic tubes with desiccants in the lid and and the challenge that we're up again so when we called up during Covid all of these contract manufacturers were like we got this concept for an effervescent tablet without plastic fortunately some people gave us the time of day to go it's not possible you know sorry about that most people were just like most people obviously you can't get through to I'm sure and that's just fine and then certain people there was one team in Europe that actually were like yeah we're interested in this space and that's where we first started we were like OK we're gonna have to they didn't have a way of doing it but they had a ESG goals and they were not hitting them because they make everything in a plastic tube with a you know all of this with a plastic lid with a desk in and they were really excited by it but Covid just kept dragging and in Europe those plastic tubes are predominantly for selling vitamins and vitamin sales went through the roof and they're like like if we're gonna do something like this you need to pony up €500,000 because we it's an R&D project all of a sudden not not a production project so then so we're like deflated and like OK alright back to the drawing board start again and eventually we found someone in the US that wanted to explore it with us but still it's it's never been scaled in the packaging that we have so there are some challenges with it it's an aluminium foil is the barrier property but it does contain an LDP liner because it's an aluminium and it's a food safe in the same way that every Coke can aluminium has a plastic liner to it so it's sort of and that really for me there was a point where I was like am I gonna do this I don't know if I am it's putting a load more plastic into the world at a time when I fully understand that we ought not be doing that but I spoke with advisors and people in the sustainability field and I think you know they were right it's better it's we got the stats it's better to have you know one little tablets worth than a whole bottles worth and it's better to use aluminium foil than a plastic tube so we were boyed by that it's even within that so it so it we're pretty happy with with where we got to in terms of from a sustainability and a packaging Protection standpoint it's a it's an aluminium foil there are some challenges with it we've seen like if it were to go in a container ship across to Australia as it currently is like it would cook in the aluminium the heat it wouldn't be able to cope whereas in the plastic it wouldn't just keep generating more heat you might be able to it to be slightly stronger so yeah it's it's a it's a fun it's been a really fun challenge and at the moment it's all hand packed into the boxes and it's something that we're working on to try and improve that as we scale yeah so it sounds like this co pack you're working with they didn't have this capability to package these tablets in the in these sachets versus the the plastic tubes did they have to did you have to convince them or did they have to buy these new equipment to be able to work with this specific form factor are they also just packing the the tablets in the pouches by hand right now until it gets to the scale where investing in some automation makes sense no what's really interesting is in FFS and tablets almost all of the factories do actually do some version of this cause for samples to just send out single serve just on a smaller line so on the non automated lines what's amazing about FFS and tablet lines is they are predominantly 100% fully automated from going in the blender to being put in that sort of cardboard tube after it's been packed into the plastic tube so the cardboard box after the plastic tube is just 100% touch free which is obviously why everything is as it is it's fully automated in the plastic tubes which is yeah like it's just I was just what's amazing about FFS and tablets is the technology's been going for well over 100 years at this point right so they are this I sort of fully understand why every co man was going just put it in a tube dude just wrap the tube you know put your brand on the thing and I think we're I'm really glad that we held strong on that and we're now building a great relationship and hoping to show more brands that there are different ways to do it and bring bring joy to a category that has maybe got a little bit stale that has so many legs uh so much legs and I'm really excited about effervescent tablets as a platform in general yeah yeah I definitely think that's one way to really differentiate in a in a competitive space is actually having a different form factor packaging form factor combination of the two so I think super smart from that perspective too on that topic of the packaging stuff on the actual packaging design standpoint from a a visual identity standpoint what were some of those key variables that were top of mind for you guys and another way to maybe look at it what were the key things included in the brief with whoever you work with whether it's an agency or freelancer someone internally or what not yeah I think this is one of the areas where hindsight is wonderful and 20 twenty vision and we made a load of mistakes and I'm glad we did in many ways but I also now no I would think about things slightly differently because we were coming at this as a beverage and we really wanted to distance ourselves from supplements and we were excited by different and we are excited by unique in a way that we maybe were already different and unique by having the single serve so when we actually launched originally in direct to consumer the brand platform was really all about joy and it wasn't about electrolytes or hydration at all so it was just colour and it was popping and we got really excited the the initial run they were on six sheets so they weren't single tabs they were six of them together and it was like this size of an envelope so we were like sort of excited by the sort of scales like software like you could send it in like an AOL postcard around the country and we had it in these boxes that fit through letter boxes and it was it was all about creating joy and having a having a nice beverage moment and it was less about messaging hierarchy and getting things right for retail and it was working with an incredible team that are part of the plink family and and have been part of us from the from the whole get go but we got the brief slightly wrong and then we so after we launched and we started learning from our customers you know you have you have created this delicious hydration moment that's what you are you're a hydration product we you know we went back and we started studying noon and Liquid IV and and the players that were in the space and but we still really really wanted so much more difference you know our box on the pack we was taking cues from beverage still at the time it was a tea dispenser and I had a tear open thing and you would take one from the bottom um and we were still it was all around joy and joyful hydration we were still not really shouting the the product packaging point of view but I think everything that we do at Plink is all of is is very emotionally driven and now it is we have much more data informing us making better packaging decisions but I think it I'm so all the things is almost like what did we wanna do you know we put the emboss on the on the pack cause makes people feel something when they pick it up and you know we had um we also had some UV spot varnish cause it makes people feel something when they when they hold the packaging and it was like really important getting like we did spend so much time on our PMS colours and making sure that they were the colours that we felt were right for us and trying to trying to get that right and we still make mistakes on that you know our yellow was slightly too light and yellow and white is like a cardinal sin and there's all these things that we're learning so much more about but um I think for us we're really excited about bringing joy into people's lives and that comes from both just a delicious hydration experience that helps people feel good and people do feel better when they blink but it's also just when they open the door in their pantry or they have it on the countertop cause it looks nice you know how our box is part of that bringing joy to our customers yeah you think you touch on it a bit or maybe you didn't the skew sizes as well seems like that's pretty optimized for impulse purchases at the register at is that something you had in mind from from the beginning as like you want this to be able to be this you know you know single serve lower price point impulse purchase buyer just kind of did that you guys come to that conclusion over time as you were developing this product or was that really the thought from the get go again it was predominantly because we were a drink right you don't you don't always wanna buy a multi pack you wanna be able to just pick one up but we also as a beverage brand we also knew that it was all about sips to lips it's a sips to lips game it's like how can you get the product in people's hands as cheaply as possible and if you can do break even marketing or even revenue generating marketing that's what these single serves are all about yeah so we as soon as we entered retail and saw that that was our sort of competitive advantage over a noon or something is that they're in a tube and we've got the single serve we really push that with the retailers and there's something quite money brick about hydration it's really compact it's easy and it is something that is an impulse purchase now by the cash registers and it's been a huge we've definitely as soon as we entered retail geared towards that we created a box which was our Bodega box which gave you a like a nice open top single serve so you can pick it up and our early retailers we had this incredible champion a guy called um Ian at Healthy Living in in Burlington Vermont who gave us a chance and he originally he was taking our lead cause he was like tell us your brand story where do you wanna be placed and we're like we're take changing the beverage game put us you know next to water and they'll pick us instead of so we were like next to like Tope Chico and seltzers and things and because we had a following people were picking us up in in the mom it's only a it's only a couple of stores but he was like why don't we try putting you by noon and buy the other products over there and and we moved and so he was no longer really the buyer for us cause it was moving us into a supplement space and he was the beverage buyer but he just helped us do that and then he gave us the positions on the cash register and helped us really find our feet and then as soon as we had that data that showed in essence when you put when you have the single serve out it converts to multi pack purchases and that's what the data showed us it said when you put us out in the cash registers sales grow really quickly and then people find the multi packs and then the sort of single serves die down as the multi packs grow and we use that tactic in City Market which was another Vermont based um awesome co op as well and got some incredible data from there um that that really help uh give us the wings to sort of spread out regionally yeah that makes a lot of sense from a a messaging positioning standpoint there's this concept that this Fred Hard is a well known designer in the CBG space may or may not have heard of him but he's I've heard him talk about this concept called Trojan horse positioning where it's basically like the theory is essentially brands should focus their messaging on what matters to consumers most even if it maybe is not what makes the brand unique so I think one example he talked about was cheddies for example they originally were focusing on talking about regenerative cheese and then they shifted to more like an appetite division an appetite driven approach I know you guys have had a pretty big focus on sustainability but it seems like you lead with flavor so I'm curious how does this concept resonate with you do you guys take a a similar approach yeah uh yes I'd say we do and I I know Fred I've met him a couple times think he's great dude we and that we struggled with that to be honest originally cause we were so focused on sustainability as our sort of it was so it was like we had three brand pillars it was like easy sustainability um or two and one and the other one was so like joyful wellness like accessible wellness and I think we were really pushing sustainability in so many more ways from like on our socials and in our messaging because it felt like important to us and when we realised it that was almost like it's not even it's kind of post purchase now in many ways it is still side of pack but it's come it's the sort of smug glow that you get when you receive the email afterwards going oh yeah by the way it's 1% for the planet and we got our sustainability things and you've helped you know keep plastics out the ocean but really that I think it's about learning what the customer wants right and it was daily hydration and great tasting hydration is what they keep telling us they come back back for and we're continually getting better at that I think I think I don't think we're definitely it doesn't feel like we've yet mastered that but I think that we're growing into that space and I I really like the sort of at the Beverage Forum the chair the Coca Cola chairman said you know have the confidence to sell consumers what they want and I think that that's really so many sustainable or impact driven founders that want to make the world a better place are really driven by the impact that their business can have but at the at the heart a customer wants to buy something and it's not because of the brand in general it's because of the product attributes and it's because of the feeling and it's because of the whatever the active ingredient is or whatever it is it's because of the experience that they'll have and I think that's the that really hit home to me and it's something that we've since then been like really clear on with all of our ads and bits and pieces and it's starting to it it's converting well to just being like this what our customers say this is what it is you know and yeah just keep it simple totally yeah I mean it typically takes you don't have the right message right away it typically takes a while to hone it in and iterate over time sounded like you focus on DDC for longer than you may have of liked resisting the urge expanding to retail quickly which it seemed like that benefited in the long run in what way did it feel like waiting help create a bit of an on ramp for success at retail whether it's having more data to use when you're pitching retailers or maybe something beyond that oh yeah no kind of kind of the flip of that actually so what happened is we launched Etsy in 2022 and we because we didn't get that quite value proposition quite right and we knew that we didn't want to do all that testing with paid ads and we couldn't and we wanted to do it organically but we also wanted to like find growth so we actually went to we almost did like a Geo fenced we're like we're both in Burlington Vermont we're just gonna not leave the month for 12 months and we're gonna test tweak iterate learn grow as well so we actually did our sort of initial testing IRL in retail and it was in those two stores Healthy Living in City Market really 4 4 stores small chains and a number of other stores across across the state but we we went through like four or five packaging iterations pricing changes it LED to a formula change it was we did all of that learning in that in that sort of 12 month period and we Learned you know we got some really phenomenal cash register data that showed that we could outsell Liquid IV and outsell noon and we got some really incredible consumer data that LED us to to reformulate the product and get it and bring a better product to the market and sort of improve our pricing higher structure but what it also was it was it was informant and we just Vermont's a beautiful incredible home state but it's it's it wasn't really giving us the growth outside of Burlington so it was almost so we actually then took that date and we're like we gotta we gotta bust out this beautiful green green mountain and and go and spread the word so we actually were almost like retail first in many ways even though we had launched Etsy I definitely say that we had a retail first strategy and it's only been in the last sort of six months really that we've really started spending any money online to acquire customers and and really hone in on that experience and that's been in many ways just like so different to when we did it at launch cause we've we got so much data behind us we have customers with real loyalty we have people that have just been subscribing now for over two years and consume blink on the daily who have given us so much information about you know why why they're doing that and why they love it so we're now just sort of reigniting I sort of we're very broadly omni channel Amazon and our direct to consumer experience and and retail so it's it was maybe backwards actually many brands go all DTC first and then find their way into retail maybe with Morris or maybe not with Morris I think the interesting thing is that there's no there is no right path I think it is yeah talking to a founder couple of days ago survive and advance was his phrase you know that's what it's all about yep I hundred percent agree with that totally following along on that that retail track I know you had a fun journey getting into G&C I know you broke this journey down in a fair amount of detail on the I think is on the start of CPG pause so we don't have to dive into too much detail and reshuffle that whole thing but I am curious in terms of it sounds like as as part of that program at least what I read you can correct me if I'm wrong but they offered a lot of really helpful training and insights in terms of how you should do forecasting correctly even like really nitty gritty stuff like pallet specs and other like important logistics variables so I'm just curious for other early stage founders that are listening that are a little ways behind you guys what were just say two to three things you Learned that I feel like have had the biggest impact on the business yeah I mean of the GNC experience yeah I mean really surprisingly positive with the GNC team and surprisingly because they're a big business you wouldn't expect them to give you the time of the day and I think it came down to how well the deal was broken with startup CPG I'm not sure but yeah I think we were all early stage some of us slightly earlier than plink some of us a little bit further down the road and they it was like a definitely not a boot camp but just a real lovely on boarding process where um I think you know they opened our eyes to the mistakes that can be made and the things that you can be tripped up on and I'm really grateful for them you know we we chose to and we weren't forced to but like strongly advised to to on board with SBS so that we can like grow up some of our back end capabilities and the ordering and invoicing processes could be done more seamlessly and yeah we just it was definitely a a good growth and learning opportunity every day right is going back to school and back to college and it was probably like a six or eight week process once we got got the listing before we started shipping out to their distribution centers and because they're self distributed as well it's obviously the nuance is very much solely for GNC say like the two the two bits advice that was sort of most helpful I suppose was one I suppose it sort of humanized the buyer of a big retailer in a way that I hadn't before and now I feel more comfortable reaching out those guys and asking a question they're sort of no question is too silly and if they're not busy they if they're too busy they won't respond but if they're not too busy they'll respond and get get you an answer straight away and just sort of like leveling the playing field of small brand and big business they're actually all after the same thing which is great experience for the consumer so that's sort of one thing that was great and then the other thing was just I suppose just always shoot your shot because we weren't really you've gotta go for that GMC probably wasn't like necessarily exactly where we thought it would come in from a timing perspective but it was a pitch competition hey guys guys shoot your shot you came from a came from a pitch competition that we weren't necessarily going for and just we went for it and we got it and we landed an opportunity and it's definitely helped grease the wheels with other retailers it definitely helped with investors it helps with just some of the various doors that you've got to get through in this game yeah what I think I also read had some pretty specific velocity benchmarks that they wanted to see you hit I'm curious what what did those look like in terms of the key metrics that they were they were looking for yeah it was so it was interesting in the startup CPG set they didn't really have them which was one of the reasons that but then when we got it which was an interesting sort of missing element but then when we sort of graduated into the main set it was like the main reason to to be moved into the hydration set out the setup CPG set is that they then did have the benchmarks and they did have the other brands that they needed to meet um and I think that that's one of the challenges in general not just in GNC with lots of stores when they try innovation sets is that the innovation set is cross category multi categories and they don't really there isn't like a middle benchmark that they can work towards yeah but uh yeah it's interesting the benchmarking I was talking to another founder yesterday about this I think every every buyer wants the benchmarks to be greater than what their average sales are so it's a kind of interesting thing where they're like trying to bring like fresh juice to the category and you know we're still a small brand without a huge marketing budget they all on the benchmarks right they wanna make money right of course for um for the founders of fast growing up and coming brands they're just starting to get on shelf what what would you say what have you Learned as now you're I think you're in the shelf in CVS and I'm sure a bunch of other retailers and what what have you found are the key differences in terms of selling and and sell through at Supplement Focus stores whether it's GNC or Vitamin Shop versus yeah your your CVS's or Walmart's or Target's or what not yeah it's a but I'd say the thing that is that any founder ought to do is like come in with your eyes wide open that there is that is a those things that you mentioned is a broad church and they all have wildly different velocities yeah over 10 to 20 times different velocity expectations across whether it's be drug to the mass and grocery and natural and I think the most important thing is to know who you are and what you are and what you'll be benchmarked against and when we first launched we were benchmark fucking ourselves against beverages the turns in beverage are rapid and the turns in supplement are less so because yeah you're buying a multi pack firstly you know generally more than a week's worth in that multi pack so it's it was actually quite disheartening for us at the beginning cause we were weird we weren't benchmarking ourselves appropriately and we were and when we got some data that sort of made it made us feel that we were closer to beverage benchmarks we were like really caught like hooked onto that data and was really excited by it as opposed to really delving into why that was happening and why that was in a specific short window and what our sort of more nationally average benchmarks would be in that space so I think the key is like if you know if you effectively benchmark yourself then you can do a much better job and I think it is easier and easier and easier now that more and more data is is sort of getting readily available for that but I would um but every channel every channel has its upside and its downside in that sense that the the ones with the great velocities they have expectations for promos and and paying for end caps and paying for just advertising space you know internally so yeah I think there's there's no there's no one channel that's better than the others in the supplement space yeah for sure totally and one thing I know in retail whether it's the supplement space or any other retail environment definitely seems like demos and and sampling are are a pretty big important piece of of a moving product off the shelf and really driving velocity and from curious what is what's your guys'experience been on this demo sampling side of things and what's kind of been your strategy there and assuming it has been part of the strategy as as you guys continue to scale and get into a lot more doors and what's your thought process determines how you're able to gonna be able to to scale that demo let's just say you're in a few hundred doors now let's just say you're getting to 20,000 doors what does that look like in trying to be able to scale that demo strategy let's say yeah I think demoing is the single most important thing that you can do in your business is getting people to try the product if you if you back your product you want more people to try if they try it they'll love it so we try to do what is as unscalable as possible which is that Max and I try and fly out to every single store that we small chain that we do we can't do all the independents but in as many areas as we can and do demo tours and just go out there and meet customers in the store it means that we can confidently drag people over from all over the place in a way that a demo staff wouldn't necessarily be able to do and sort of question someone's decisions on this shelf cause we're you know knowledgeable on the space and really help educate customers and we try and do that as much as possible so just physically put the founders in front of the customers in the store and have those conversations obviously that is totally unscalable and doesn't really work already we're like at the edge of of what works with there and so so we're just trying to find the right partners now in in in different regions to help with the sampling and just launched um a sort of quite broadly distribution in in in United Supermarkets in Texas and in Bristol Farms in uh Southern California and I'm gonna be doing tours in both of those spaces but also trying to find farmers for those regions to to help us move products and then the other thing at the sort of the next stage of the scale is you can't do physical sampling at that scale you have to you have to do things digitally so we we're gonna find sampling crew to help us in the regions but that the next stage of that when you're going from hundreds of stores into thousands of stores which we've already just done into CVS right 12 stores just under it's like it's impossible to put people in those stores so we have to look at digital solutions for sampling so whether that is working with someone like we stock or someone like aisle and we're working with we stock at the moment and doing some some couponing and rebates to get people into the stores but we're also looking at other non traditional ways of like Hello Fresh doing a sampling campaign with them or other areas and other events and partnerships that we can do to get products into more people's hands and then obviously on a digital world there's affiliates and influencer marketing and getting products in as many people's hands as possible and referrals and discount codes and I think that's our biggest challenge is like how do you give out as many products as cheaply as possible at scale I think I love Red Bull as the sort of gold standard for this driving around in their cars with the giant can on the back the Red Bull wings at all the university students just like when I used to work in experiential marketing and we did stuff for Red Bull and we did stuff for innocent in the UK it was always like how cheaply can you give away and how quickly can you give away X amount of samples in a high footfall area where we have good distribution so it's like you can't do it until you have the distribution but once you have the distribution it's just like put it out there guys trust that you'll attract your customers by sharing it with them it's a hard thing to scale but it seems to always be worth the investment pretty much but I think it is yeah and but also it is is why these things are hard to scale right that's why CPG takes a generation cause you've got to build capacity and you've got to build the budget and you've got to be able to give away 20% of that production run to sampling and you've got to find the the margin elsewhere in the business to be able to sample effectively yep last question for you fun question if you had to put your say you had to put your your life savings on the line what's one prediction you might make about the CPG space overall over the next few years I think I if it was a quick turnaround I put all my life savings on a quick win is that people are still gonna be consuming protein um I think that's definitely yeah I don't know I feel that um I think and I I would hope that we are really waking up to that not all of CPG historically has been about creating food and drink products it's about maximizing profits and this is definitely not putting my life savings but my hope is that this sort of the change with these getting petroleum products out of kids products and things is just the hope is that food and drink come back the solution is not in food science the solution is in our soils it's in food it's in community and sharing and in the short term that's not what's winning and I would bet all my money that it's not about to win in the short term but in the long term more and more founders are admitting to it more and more people are admitting to it I just like we've just gotta wake up and we are we are gardeners of this earth we just gotta plant there you go I love that totally on that totally on the same page there okay yeah nice awesome really appreciate the time a lot of great insights thanks so much um where's the best place to to follow along with you and then also where's the best place to to follow along with Plink as well yeah and I sort of on top of that is like the best place to buy plink if you would like to give it a try is we're available nationwide on a drink plink.com I think there might be um a lovely free shipping discount for a little period at the moment and we're also available nationwide on Amazon and we're in a select CVS and GNC stores as we've discussed and in natural stores across the country I'd love it if you wanna chat anything electrolytes just hit me up on LinkedIn it's Luke Montgomery Smith give us a follow on drink plink on Instagram Facebook TikTok um and I'd love to connect with any of you guys perfect awesome that's the pod peace Adam form factor you have in terms of the single serving from a go to market standpoint so the second they just like shoot putting all my life savings onto one thing