Kin Euphorics’ Post

Momma always said, don’t squat with your spurs on! Kin may have been fashionably late to the retail party as far as beverage brands are concerned, but for a team looking to break thru an otherwise dull and dingy category with style, intention, and a flair for the dramatic, it turns out we were right on time. Despite being born of the SaaS-turned-CPG VC era of yore, never have we subscribed to the “move fast, break sh*t” rhetoric of our tech-endowed brethren. Sip slow and break even is more our speed. We first launched DTC and stayed that way from 2018-21 doubling revenue YoY while gathering critical consumer insights during a time where changes in drinking behavior and the state of health as we knew it were changing rapidly- first among our core consumer and, finally, en masse. From these insights we assessed several key patterns that would soon come to define not only how our target customer would be shopping this category live, but more importantly, how the buyers themselves would eventually enter the space: 1. Functionality reigns supreme when it comes to driving repeat 2. Context is key for maintaining price (ie value for guest driven largely by adjacency to other premium labels and, in Kin's case, perception of benefits) 3. Even though trends are defined by LA & NYC adoption, off-coast brand awareness is critical to ensuring long-term success 4. Once on shelf, first purchase is still all about that label. Packaging has to pop off & storytell to really move the needle 5. We didn’t need data to inform this one: product must be aces to drive growth Still, staying five steps ahead meant pushing our process beyond its stated limits and refining our product offering while evolving strategy as the world watched in real time. It wasn’t perfect, it still isn’t, but that it’s informed by 1st party data and inspired by a future we wanted to see on shelf has made all the difference between commodity and community. (AKA: OUR MOAT) There’s much more to this retail saga than I’ll go into right now as I want to be able to do it justice. For now, this is simply a love note to the art of the pivot and the power of listening. After all, at its most fundamental level, "data" is merely one human behaving naturally and the other holding space for the actions of their counterpart to unfold, observing them, then accepting them fully. Breaking thru means being humble enough to not have all the answers, bold enough to hold on to a vision, and curious enough to bend as the wind blows. If you’re not making mistakes & applying learnings along the way, I reckon there won’t be a whole lot of growth in your future. So be bold enough to move slower than what feels comfortable in order to put forth something real and considered, especially in a cluttered marketplace. Humbled to be toasting Kin's expansion into another 1400+ Target stores for an exclusive Dry July Summer Sips sidecap today, reminding us all Listening really can = Love!! 🥂