Cheers

Decided to go with the OLD SCHOOL Cheers logo today!!! In all honesty, I still can't believe that we were able to get the "CHEERS" trademark. Here is part of the story... 6 years ago we went on Shark Tank with the registered trademark "THRIVE+"... we rightfully owned the mark. About a year before the episode a larger company reached out to us threatening to sue us if we didn't sign a co-existence agreement with them to let them get their "THRIVE" mark registered as well. Evidently they had been trying to get the "THRIVE" mark for decades... and I, just a junior in college, had crafted the right argument with the USPTO to get "THRIVE _____" and "_____ THRIVE" marks approved. (I.e., the "THRIVE" is formative, and therefore could be combined with other words to make a unique mark, just like had been done for other common words with wide usage.) Yes, I was able to figure that out in college without lawyers. It helps to be a newcomer to any industry as you think anything is possible. Lawyers are still impressed to this day that I got this done. 🤣 So when I was able to get "THRIVE+" trademark granted, that company realized that I had beat the system, then needed to reach out to me as the gatekeeper so as to finally get their mark approved. Realizing this was above my college cleverness, I reached out to legal counsel to negotiate the co-existence agreement with them. They would get the mark for MLMs and general vitamins/supplements. I would get the mark for alcohol-related supplement usage. No court needed—which was important because I had like $3500 at the time. Shortly after our episode, we received a frivolous demand letter in the mail saying that in our Shark Tank episode we violated our co-existence agreement by saying: "Our product is somewhere between a multivitamin for people who drink and a hangover cure." How doesn't that count as alcohol-related supplement usage...? Beats me. I asked the lawyers if we'd win the case. They said: "Absolutely. But these people are highly litigious, do $400m/year, and have in-house lawyers. So unless you have about $2m and 3-4 years to spare... it may be easier and cheaper to rebrand." That was a rude awakening to the American legal system. Basically, whoever is willing to stick it out in court longer and lose more money wins. I.e., it's a war of attrition. Obviously, I was pretty bummed. The Shark Tank episode had given a ton of equity to our brand name. But... better to rebrand and live to fight another day. How we decided on the name "Cheers"... and better yet, how we actually got the trademark for the name Cheers... is all the story for another day! 🙂 But, the happy ending is that we successfully rebranded, avoided litigation, and through the use of good SEO and PR, were able to make sure no one was confused that the Thrive+ on Shark Tank is now called Cheers.

Cheers was proud to sponsor Dan Mack's "Modern Merchant Mindset" panel with key retail leaders in the industry. Here are some thought-provoking quotes that stood out: Jennifer Cowell (Sam's Club): "A problem all stated is a problem half solved. Know if you're creating a new item, if you're about to launch new innovation, what is the problem statement that you're trying to go after?" Michael Wolf, PharmD (Walgreens): "Pricing transparency has become even more evident in a more digital world, which is great." Hemant Agrahari (Walmart): "Having resilience at a higher cost is not going to serve us. So while we are being resilient, having the right cost or having the best cost for our customers becomes very, very important." Dwight Battles (Wegmans): "Innovation should be game changing. It should create consumer need. It should give the consumer something that they don't have at the moment." Zachary Dennett (CVS Health): "I place a big emphasis or place big value on the ratio of the number of words you use to the number of useful thoughts you have." And then, of course, the hosts themselves had some great quotes: Dan Mack: "The future of a senior sales process leader is more of a truly a general management thinker, which means we need to get better with sourcing knowledge." Wayne Bennett: "Supply chain wasn't really on the minds of the merchant. And interestingly enough today, it's become a very strategic point of differentiation for retailers in the industry at large." If you've been around awhile, then you know the power of Dan Mack and the connective role that he plays in our industry. I couldn't be more grateful that I connected with him at such an early age and so fresh in my career!

When people ask me: "What do you think your career will look like?" I say: "I hope it looks a lot like Craig Dubitsky's." He is a hero of mine... and I am VERY PROUD to say that I will be taking the stage with him for Founders' Innovation Day! He's a brand building veteran... I'm a brand building virgin... Craig is MANY brands into his career... whereas my first brand is just taking off. I'm excited to see where my journey takes me. I have no idea the future brands I will build one day after Cheers... but I hope to have built as many successful brands as he has one day. What an incredible portfolio he has built and life he has lived so far! I hope you come see us talk about what it takes to build a successful brand from the perspective of someone who has been doing it for decades vs someone else who is just getting started. FOUNDERS' INNOVATION DAY: Where: NYC When: December 4, 2024 | 8:30am - 4:30pm Why: Network with the best CPG founders + the best merchants Who: You're a supplier, a broker, a retailer, CPG investor, or someone in this industry. As a bonus, following Founders' Innovation Day is Mass Market Retailers' 25th Annual People Making a Difference event that evening... so you can make a FULL DAY out of a short NYC trip. If you have a passion for brands and/or retailing, then I believe this is going to be a can't miss day in NYC. Just check out the speaker lineup! (Myself not included... 🤣)

Here till the bitter end of NACS!! And so worth it… I think we’re in the process of lining up the biggest c-store deal that could be made in our category. 🙏 Super grateful and proud of both the Cheers and Lil' Drug Store Products teams. We did some great work together this week in Las Vegas! With distribution to over 11,000 c-stores across 2 skus primarily on the HBC pegs, this year we focused all of retailer discussions on getting secondary placements near the alcohol. You can grow by going wider and/or deeper. We’re having no trouble getting wide distribution, so now we’re adding in the focus of going deeper with the distribution that we do have. Oh… and I don’t mean to brag… but after about 3 hours of playing Craps collectively across a few evenings… I’m leaving Las Vegas with exactly as much money as I came with. 😅 But, I am leaving rich in memories with friends. And that’s what matters the most! 🥰

#NACS2024 has officially kicked off, and we couldn’t be more excited about what we have in store! If you’re in the convenience channel, then you know about Core-Mark. They are a powerhouse in the industry, and we couldn’t be more thankful to call them partners. Last year, we were chosen to be a part of their ‘curated’ program which helps to place a highlight on emerging brands in the industry. The outcome has been phenomenal! Thanks to everyone from Core-Mark International & Lil' Drug Store Products for helping make this happen. & a special thanks to Shayla Boone for helping coordinate with us in this channel! Cheers to a great #NACS 🍻

The Super Bowl of the convenience industry—NACS 2024—starts tomorrow! Check out the merchandising solutions that we have for this channel… 🧠 I wish I could take credit for these. But the ease of all of these merchandising options are the creation of our AWESOME partners at Lil' Drug Store Products. They are the NAVY SEALs of the convenience/travel/hospitality industry and we couldn’t be more blessed to partnered with them. In fact, we get to spend the week with them in their booth! They saved us a ton of money/effort doing it this way ($30k to ship booth, set it up, etc.) and it just goes to show you how deep partnerships can create so much more value than just the transactions of buying and selling. While they’re our partners, their team is a role model for what I want the Cheers team to become. Great people, great results. Here’s to a successful NACS 2024 tomorrow! If you’re here… swing on by and say hi! 🥂🎉

Doctor Proof > Social Proof... here is how Cheers is using Frontrow Health to get to "1000+ clinicians recommend Cheers" in under a year. 2024 has been a big year for Cheers. We're now in over 16,000 brick & mortar retail locations, we grew from $8m to $16m in annual revenue, and we have added a LOT of scientific credibility to our brand! Most branding agencies will say: "Oh no, people don't like science, dumb it down." That's what they always told us. But one of our big unlocks this year has been leaning into the science in our marketing instead. Our best performing ads of 1H 2024 on Facebook/Instagram were just of me talking into a podcast microphone about the science behind our products for :89 seconds at 1.3x speed—and I already talk pretty fast. That's a LOT of info for social media! This caused us to realize that not only should we DOUBLE DOWN on the science marketing and product education... but we should TRIPLE DOWN on it. This led us to: 1) Bring on medical doctors as equity holding spokespersons for the company. 2) Mobilize independent clinicians to share our products with their patients—then tally that verified count in our marketing. 3) (SECRET—coming soon) 4) (SECRET—coming soon) We started working with Frontrow a few months ago, and as you can see through the Frontrow badges on our product pages, we already have ~250 verified clinicians sharing Cheers with their patients. Within a calendar year, this should be 1000+! Every day this number dynamically updates as more clinicians begin recommending Cheers to their patients. The best part is that shoppers can click on the verified Frontrow badges in our marketing to see the full list of every clinician sharing our product + a link to their personalized page for verification. We’re then able to easily leverage this independent data across landing pages, ads, emails, Amazon, and more. Working with Frontrow is super easy. It only took us a few hours to get set up on their platform, and their team was off to the races introducing Cheers to their massive clinician network. It would have taken us a lot more time and money to do this on our own, especially without having any easy way for clinicians to share our products in a way that can be digitally tracked and verified. If you’re a consumer health brand in 2024 that hasn’t leveraged independent doctor-backing to build trust with your customers... then you're leaving a huge conversion rate gap on the table. Imagine if your competitors did this instead of you! If interested, just comment here and/or LinkedIn message me your email address and my AMAZING executive assistant, Anjalie Rajapaksa, will intro you via email!

Why do some brands that are BIG on Amazon end up FAILING at brick & mortar retail... while others end up SUCCEEDING? I'll tell you what I believe is the best way to tell whether a brand is likely to work on shelf or not... BRANDED SEARCH. First of all... what is branded search? Branded search is how many people are searching for a brand on a platform by name—e.g., searching on Amazon/Google/etc. for "Cheers pills" as opposed to "DHM pills". "Cheers pills", "Cheers restore", etc. = branded search "DHM pills", "hangover cure", etc. = non-branded search Non-branded search represents people who already know a brand they want to buy and are specifically searching for that brand so they can make a purchase. I was just at an Amazon seller conference and one of the presenters showed a chart of how "Magic Moo" (a colostrum supplement going viral on TikTok) is getting more branded searches than the entirety of "colostrum"-related keyword searches on Amazon. In other words, more people want to buy the brand than the entire category combined! Who do you think is driving all the awareness for the category? Clearly Magic Moo! They are almost single-handedly building the colostrum supplement market. They are the rising tide lifting all boats. You see this in history with people calling all bandages, "bandaids"... or internet searches, "googling"... or all sodas, "coke". Eventually other brands get into the category—but it's clear to who made the category in the first place. Branded search is the most representative proxy metric for understanding the awareness/demand of a brand that exists in the consumer consciousness prior to walking into a store. So you may see demand for a category growing... but then as a merchant/investor/etc. you need to pick which brands in that category to partner with. I would argue that the MOST IMPORTANT metric to look at is branded search. Packaging, price, etc. all matters too... but in context of demand. Many merchants have seen brands with TONS of Amazon sales fail on retail shelves. Why is this? Well, it's because some brands have become EXCELLENT leaches on Amazon. They exist to steal share of a growing category pie... but do not do anything to grow the pie themselves. So they may have half the sales of another brand on Amazon, but drive 1/10the the branded search. Or... if it's a big category. They could be the BIGGEST brand on Amazon, but they could actually have LESS branded search on Amazon than smaller competitors. In other words, they so effectively steal demand generated by others that they have become the biggest brand without even having to drive demand themselves. Branded search represents OFF-AMAZON demand. It's the key to understanding why some brands that do on Amazon fail at brick & mortar and vice versa. If you're looking to build a category on your shelves. Or if you're looking for traffic drivers. Then you need to look at branded search of the brands in the categories that you're considering!

The Cheers team is growing! This week we added one more person to our social media marketing team. In total that puts us at ~25 employees/contractors that manage the business on a weekly basis! 🤠 10 people in the Houston HQ 📦 ~10 people in Houston fulfillment center (separate from HQ) 🇱🇰 2 people in Sri Lanka 🇦🇷 3 people in Argentina There is a "~" on the fulfillment center team because this is a flex staff. Some people are there all the time whereas others come in on a part time basis as needed—such as when a big project is underway. But it hovers around having 10 people there. (On a busy day though... there can be 20 people cranking away on a huge order!) In-person vs Remote: -Pre-COVID we were 100% in office all the time. No one worked from home. -During COVID we all started working from home for a time and then realized it was possible. -Once things started settling, we made the office flexible. Some of us come in 4-5 days a week and others come in 2-3 days a week. It just depends on the person/role. Then, once we got into trade shows in late 2022 and started spending 80 days/year on the road... we already had that muscle of being able to work remote. The beauty of this is that it also meant we had the infrastructure to begin building a global team that wasn't always tied down to Houston. Growth is hard. But growth is also fun. It's fulfilling to watch the team continue to grow as we scale this business! 💪

It's rare that a Princeton alum, former aspiring Baptist minister turned hangover tycoon, and Shark Tank vet are the same person. However that's precisely the case with Brooks Powell 🍻 Brooks is the Founder/CEO of Cheers, the leading alcohol-related health & wellness brand. In this episode of the BrandBusters CPG & eCommerce Podcast: -We dive into the science behind alcohol consumption and what consumers (and the medical community) have gotten wrong -Discuss how building in the open and a founder-led content strategy has unlocked retail distribution -Get a full chronicle of the Shark Tank experience Tune in this Thursday at 12p EST.