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What is up DTC pod? This week we have the pleasure of speaking with Nicholas Boprey, who is the co founder and CEO of Metaina, which is a hand yurvamate drink which is of particular relevance to us and the show because they have not only successfully scaled the brand over the last couple of years, but they've also partnered with a massive creator to do so, as you'll learn more from Nicholas in this episode. So anyway, before I end up spoiling it, Nicholas, I'm going to let you kick us off. Why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself, your background, and how you got the inspiration to start building Metaina.

Yeah. Hey, thanks for having me. To make long story short, I'm coming totally from a different field, but a little over seven years ago, I was in civil engineering field, so doing something completely different, but I was with my partner, which I started the business with led. And I've always have love for languages. I think it's an amazing skill in business, in travel, and when you're traveling. So I've decided to do this trip in South America. I wanted to do an immersion trip to go learn Spanish and become fully fluent. So back in 2016, yeah, I sent my CV to a bunch of ski resorts in South America and decided to go teach ski in South America.

So I left in June, which is the beginning of the winter down there, and fully immersed myself. It was a crazy experience, but on the first days over there, I got to experience my first mate. So a lot of Argentines working on the ski resorts that shared mate with me and really appreciated the effect. So I was not particularly someone who enjoys tea or natural products before. On the other side, I used to drink like five to six coffees per day in university, so really enjoyed the kick of mate. It also made me feel super different. I think this is something that people feel when you have your first mate, it doesn't feel like anything else. It almost feels like you're having your first coffee, for example.

So the component in the matte, they really give you a different energy boost. And at the beginning, I often say that as a joke. It made me feel like when you're having one beer and you don't speak your native language, you put the words together more easily. So it made me feel like that. And I got to say, teaching ski at the beginning in another language was a pretty big challenge. In southern Chile, absolutely nobody speaks French, which is my first language, and English neither. So it was pretty tough at the beginning, so I rapidly brought mate into my daily routine. I met with my partner, Elo, during this trip.

She was the first person I shared mate with. And we really felt a good connection with the effects, but also the culture, also like the ritual of brewing your own mate. So we became Materos, as we say for mate enthusiasts. And we brought this back with us in Canada. And a couple months after, with a couple kilos in my backpacks, I continued to drink mate on a daily basis. And I got so many questions. For sure, it looks different. I still drink it today with the metal straw.

So with the gourd and bombia, the traditional way of drinking it. And, yeah, you get a lot of questions and people are asking, what are you doing? Essentially. So just by talking about it, sharing what it is, I saw huge interest. I also saw that it was very hard to find here in North America. So a couple months after, and actually this is a story I don't often tell, but I saw an ad for Shopify. They were explaining how easy it is to set your own store. Always love design as well. So I started working on a store, not knowing exactly what I was going to sell, but I just got the idea, okay, I'm going to sell mate, which is a very hard to find item in Canada.

So launched the e commerce. At the beginning, we were selling the brands from South America. It's all spanish packaging. It's not a product that's adapt to north american crowd. So a couple of months after I decided, okay, it's working, I'm getting orders, and there's definitely a huge interest, but the product is not adapt to North America. So we decided to flew back in the motherland of Yorbamate, met with many suppliers down there, learned a lot about the agriculture side and how the plant grows. And on the second trip, we met with a farming family that we partnered with. They really believed in the project and they actually grew one of the best tasting mate on earth.

That's air dried, that's fair trade organic. So we found this perfect fit. We came back to Canada, got to work on different blends, we created the brand and really launched what Matina is today. And it really started slow, exclusively online. And a couple of months after, we jumped into retail, selling to different natural stores. And from there we just grew very steadily. And what really brought the business into something, I'd say, more and more interesting and scalable is the ready to drink wine. So while doing some sampling events with the Lucifer mate in the summer, I started to brew some batches of cold brew and adding some other ingredients, and we saw that people really enjoyed this cold version.

So we got the idea, okay, we absolutely need to make this into a ready to drink. So the R and D process started. Took almost like a year and a half to put that together. I really had a vision of something very different, non carbonated, that has over 100 milligrams of caffeine, very low sugar, and that tastes actually very good. So we got to launch this in late 2019, and it really brought the business onto a next level. People really enjoyed this cold version, and from there we just grew almost like 60% per year steadily. And, yeah, it was a crazy journey.

Wow. Okay, so a lot to unpack there. This is awesome. So you went down to South America, you found this drink that you like. You realize that you're, you know, I know there's a lot of Shopify presence in Canada, so you wanted to spin up a Shopify site and start selling. When you first started to sell, are you saying you were basically importing product that was already packaged, ready to go, and you were just kind of being a store that, an online store that you could select different matte products? What were your first product offerings that weren't your own that you were kind of selling?

In the beginning, we were selling the Yerba mate brands from Argentina. Amazing.

And what was that process like? Was there anything you needed to do? How much quantity were you buying? What were you bringing in? What were you stocking? What did that look like in the early, we just.

We were just importing smaller quantities, like pallet size. But this literally happened over the course of, like, four to five months. It was really short because the brands from South America, and this is how they enjoy it, but they drink smoked variety of yerbamate, and, well, this tastes pretty good, and I don't hate smoke yerbamate, but this is a lot stronger. This is less versatile, I'd say, for the north american crowd. And as well, they saw that if you consume, some studies have shown that if you consume very large quantities of smoked yervomate, there's some cancer, concern for the throat. So it was not ideal. So we made, like, two orders from Argentina of these brands. And right after that, we saw like, okay, there's a huge opportunity.

It's working. We're getting orders, but we'll have to do a lot of education. We'll have to work like, it's going to be a tough ride, so we might as well do it with a product that we're proud to sell and to do it with our own brand, for sure.

And so I'm interested in who was the initial buyer of the first sort of yerba mate you were bringing into Canada. Was it people who already were familiar with Yerba mate? Was it new people? And how were you acquiring these customers? Were you just running ads or how did you kind of drum up that first little demand? And who was that ideal customer that was buying from you? In the early days?

I'd say that at the beginning, it was mainly word of mouth and people in coast community here in eastern Canada. So it was very small at the beginning. I'll just say that I was getting six orders per day and I was all excited. It was very small. But after that, we learned about the process. And we started to run some Google Ads and Facebook ads. But I'd say that most of the consumer base at the beginning was word of mouth. And customers that we met during sampling events, sports events, we've done over hundreds of these was a lot of work at the beginning.

But as soon as you're starting to get new customers, people, especially with something new and unique about your bamate, people are proud to share it with their community and surrounding. There's not a lot of things today that people don't know about. We're pretty informed on everything. So that's something very cool with mate. Like, people that learn about it are very excited to share it with their people.

And that's the next question I have was going to be about the education component because me, myself, and we'll get to this in a little bit. But the way I found out about yerba mate, probably like, I don't know, three or four years ago or whenever Andrew Huberman launched his podcast, I was listening in, he was talking about how he drinks mate because there's no jitters. And for me, I'm pretty sensitive to coffee and caffeine. So I instantly went out and I just went to Amazon and bought some random batches of leaves and started drinking. The long way of saying the education part is so important to a customer in terms of trying adopting a new product. So you said that word of mouth was a big factor for you guys starting on, but what type of messaging did you have? What was like the brand communication, whether it was to customers, what were the value props that you were selling and how did you put customers in a position to want to evangelize your product so early on?

So I think really explaining what it is and putting the information and letting people know that it's not a tea actually, that this is a completely different plant of its own. And explaining what's the alkaloid structure like, what are the stimulating properties of the plant? This is what really brought interest, actually, mate. It's the only plant on earth that combines caffeine that we all know, theobromine, that we can also find in cacao and theophili. And the combination of these three really creates the unique superbalance effect of yobarate. So just by explaining that it's a plant that grows exclusively in South America and really putting it differently than coffee, matcha and energy drinks, I think people really resonate with that. Caffeine is, I think, the number one consumed drug worldwide. So people are definitely looking for alternatives and we all went through this path of having too many coffees per day. So I think people naturally, especially with this timing, were ready to try an alternative like that, if that makes sense.

Yeah, absolutely. The next question I had was around initial financing for what you were doing. Did you guys source outside capital? Was it all totally bootstrap? How did you think about capital in the earliest of days?

Yeah, so for the first three years it was 100% bootstrap. After that, we got a private investor in that, helped us to manage the growth, but not too long after that. So the way our business model is built, so we're a brand, we don't own a facility. So we were seeing this point where we would need to raise more money. So we started to look around to partner with vcs and to find external funding. And at some point we connected with tiny. I don't know if we want to share this story just yet, but we got connected with tiny and they wanted to get involved in the Yerbamata industry specifically. So exactly when we were looking for it, we found the best partners for that.

And something that also allowed us to grow without, for quite a long time, without any funding, is the fact that the business always have been very strong on the d two c side. And as you may know, d to c orders, you get your money within three to five days. So it's a lot easier on the cash flow than working exclusively with retail partners that usually take like 45 days to pay you, and you'll often get like half of your check because they take so many deductions.

Yeah, absolutely. And that was one thing I was really interested when we were chatting offline was the fact that almost half your revenue comes from D to C for a beverage brand. That's wild. That's awesome that you guys have been able to grow that way. And I think even just for people who are listening, thinking about starting businesses and considering cash flow, it's such an important part. And a lot of times you don't recognize how valuable having that cash flow is, especially in the early days of the business where not only are you broke, you're financing your own inventory and you're waiting in some cases 45, 90 days for payment terms, whereas at least going D to C, you can get paid out quicker. So I think that's awesome. That's a great way to get set up and take things to market.

We are really excited to announce that DTCPod is officially part of the HubSpot podcast network. The HubSpot podcast Network is the audio destination for business professionals and we're really excited about being part of the network because we're going to be able to keep growing the show, bringing you guys amazing guests, and obviously helping you guys learn from the best founders, marketers, and builders of the most successful consumer brands. So, anyway, keep listening to DTC pod and more shows like us on the HubSpot podcast network at PodcastNetwork. Now, I want to move the conversation towards something that you said you spent a lot of time with, which was formulation and moving this product from kind of like a shop where you're curating different sort of goods to turning it into your own ready to drink product. So what was your process there? Who did you work with that could basically work with you to formulate and bottle your drink? What was that whole process like? How much investment did it require? What did your first batch look like? Just take us through that whole process.

Yes. So, like I said earlier, this took almost a year and a half to develop. So having a recipe that you make at home in a big jar is much different than brewing 10,000 liter batch. So essentially, I really learned by myself how to do it. And the reality is that no one is telling you how to do it. There is no footprint on how to create a beverage, especially something unique, like what we do, like a non carbonated, functional beverage. So I had to learn, and by meeting different suppliers, I was getting a little more information every week. So putting all that information together at the end, I managed to see how it would become possible.

At the end, I got very lucky and met a copacker that agreed to help us brewing the first batch in a smaller volume. So we didn't have to go bing right at the start, because you never know how it's going to turn out when you make this batch, like 100 times bigger than what you were doing in your kitchen. So, found the right copackers, and we've done a couple trial runs, we've done some mistakes for sure, and lost a couple of cans along the way. But I think it was a fairly smooth process. And once we figured out how to do it, I'd say that's our own business secret. So we now know how to do it. So right now, we're setting up new copackers, we're creating new recipes, and I've kind of created my own system, my own spreadsheets, where I can calculate everything and put everything together, so it's a lot simpler. But it was essentially a full year and a half of me looking around, asking questions, calling people, and just saying that you're curious and they give you an information and you figure out something else.

But literally, you just have to do it right.

You just have to start. You have to pick up the phone. No, I think that if you can obviously learn, but at the end of the day, every business is a little bit different. And figuring out the formulations, especially in innovative products, you're going to have to be the one driving the ship. So you just spoke briefly a little bit about your process. How do you think about innovating? What are the factors that you're pulling into making these decisions? When it comes to formulations, what are you thinking about when you come up with a new formulation or try to.

Find something that works? The original Matina recipe was literally like the beverage that I've created for myself, for my specific taste. I often found that those beverages on the market are way too sweet. They either taste very sweet because companies use a lot of sweeteners and they're overpowering, or they are just full of sugar. So at the beginning, I wanted to create something very different, like I said, balanced for my taste. And I think we got lucky and people really enjoyed this formula. But in terms of decision, always keeping something that's close enough to what the real thing is, to what mate is supposed to be. So we're not creating a completely different beverage that's using yerba mate as the main ingredient, but just creating a yerba mate that's adapted to the taste that people have today was the big goal. And like I said, the more I create new formulas, the better they are each time.

So it's getting easier and easier.

Yeah. And I guess what I mean by that is, what considerations are you making when you're making the formulation? Is it purely taste? Are you thinking about margin? Are you thinking about ingredients that go in there? What are kind of the different variables that you're trying to optimize for to come up with your desired formula?

Yeah. So at the beginning, like, the first line of product that we launched, I wanted them to be 130 milligrams of caffeine per can, a maximum of 8 grams of sugar, and non carbonated, like I said. So these were my things to respect, and we managed to do that. So when I create a new recipe, I always know what I want it to be. It's either a different amount of caffeine or, for example, we developed in the past months a zero sugar flavor. So before starting the RND process, you already know what it needs to be, what the final product needs to be along the way. You might figure out, like, okay, this is not going to work that way. It's impossible that this will taste good at the end.

So you change some things and you find a new ingredient, but you just have to do some trials and error, and at some point you just find the right balance of everything and it tastes good.

Yeah, I love that. That's how you simplify. You kind of pick your goalposts and you make sure it tastes good.

And just to complete that, I think.

Today.

You can't use certain ingredients. You can if you want to create a very basic beverage. But we've always stayed away from conservatives and artificial ingredients. So for us, it's always, we work with lemon juice, for example. For acidity, we work with natural sweeteners. So we have Sweden varieties, so we use organic cane sugar or not Sweden. At the beginning, we knew that we were either going to use, like, stevia or monk fruit. Something natural and aspartame always have been out of the equation because, yeah, today, especially for something natural that you're looking to sell eventually into a whole foods or like a natural grocery chain, they don't allow these ingredients in your.

No, that's awesome. And that just goes to show, like, when you're coming up with a formulation, you need to have an idea and you need to be the one driving the ship here. So my next question around the brand and the product development side of things. Right, right now, you guys have a bunch of different products available. You have several different flavors, you've got some different bundles. So moving on, from once you had the first one set up, how did you think about segmenting your different product? Skus, how much inventory were you needing to stack of each? How did you think about breaking everything down because you had a hero product that was working. How did you decide what else needed to be built and then what other supplementary products would kind of complement your hero product stack?

So everything is starting from the raw ingredient, the raw yerbamate. So this is how the business was created with the loose Leaf organic Yerbamate. So still today, this is one of our top selling product, and this is a fairly simple product to manufacture and to import. But aside from that, the ready to drink is a completely different operation. So like you said, on the inventory side, it's a much bigger challenge, and we have to stack a very large inventory of raw material before even transforming it. So dealing with, like, if you speak with anyone in the beverage industry that uses cans, this is probably the biggest challenge because these take so much space, they take so much time. To receive, and the minimum order quantity is massive. Where I was going with that, it's just another game.

I'd say that always, like, 75% of our inventory is represented by the ready to drink line. It's taking a lot more space. It's a lot tougher on the cash flow. But the way that Matina was created and the way I envisioned the brand is that we're not a ready to drink brand, we're not a tea brand. We're really a yerba mate, and we want to offer a full product line. So different ways to enjoy the benefits of this plant. So we're definitely working on new products in the future to make it available in different forms. And knowing that it's very hard to deal with cans, it's either on the inventory side, the weight, the space it takes, and the shipping cost.

We're definitely leaning towards lighter products, products that are easier to deal with. So definitely that answers your question.

Are you guys doing anything more on the loose leaf side of thing, or are you just really focused on the ready to drink side for now?

I would say that before, and very, very surprised with the launch in the US, because on the canadian side, the loose leave was representing probably like 25% of ourselves. So it was a smaller chunk of the business. But in the US, I'm very surprised that it's almost like 40% to 50%. So people really seem to be looking for clean source of yobamate. So it's very interesting to see.

It's interesting, right? I'm even thinking, when I heard Huberman talking about it, he'd be talking about it's the leaf or whatever. Maybe that was just an idea in my head, but I remember when I first saw, the first thing I purchased was like, the loose leaf version. And I made it at home and I liked it. It was great. And then I saw the cans and I was kind of like. I almost thought of the loose leaf first. But anyway, I just think, like you're saying, that's kind of interesting how different markets perceive products in different ways. And maybe people in the US like, sure, you've got the ready to drink crowd that it's going to sell well in retail, but maybe people who want to just buy it quickly and get into their own routine, they like having the option for the loose leaf as well.

I think these are different demographics at the beginning, what we've seen so far, it's either one or the other. So people that will want the raw version and nothing else added to it, and they'll enjoy the loose leaf and they'll appreciate the bitterness and the green taste of it because you've tried it, it's like loose leaf. You're bomati, you're not drinking it necessarily because it tastes super good. It can be hard for some people the first time. So we either see the purists that really enjoy this version, they'll get a gourd and the bombia and they'll drink it traditionally, or it's either the other side, like, okay, I want the quick, cold, easy to drink version. I want a little sweetness to it. And I think there's an in between of people that they'll use the ready to drink as a gateway into the yerbamati world. And at some point, and I think this is something very cool, like there's different levels.

Like you can go from the can to brewing a french press and then trying the gourd later on. So there's so many ways to drink this, plant, this infusion. So I think this is very interesting, but so far, like I said, it's one or the other.

I just think it's a really interesting lesson for different sort of D to CPG, whatever founders is the fact that sometimes form factors and meeting your audience where they are is like a big thing, because then you can always educate upsell, cross sell as the brand kind of develops and persists. But ultimately, if a new shopper has an idea of like, I'm buying Yerba mate and I'm buying a loose leaf yerba mate, for example, in their head, and they already have that in their head, and they land on your site and then they see the option to buy it, they're going to be like, okay, sweet, I'm going to get that. And then maybe when they see you're ready to drink in the store, they're familiar with the brand and they can make that jump over, I just think it's a really interesting sort of conundrum to solve for for founders with maybe limited resources who are starting to scale a business just understanding the strategy behind form factor of their products, which I think is really cool. And you guys have clearly done a great job of that as you think about navigating new markets. So Nicholas, the next thing I wanted to talk about is the really exciting partnership that you guys are just kicking off with Andrew Huberman. You guys, like you said, you've scaled to millions of dollars in revenue already by yourself, organically built up the business over time, found your true fans really leaned on word of mouth and organic to grow and now you're able to layer in some real jet fuel into the growth of the business. So why don't you tell us a little bit about how you came across Andrew in the first place, how you guys found the synergy and then how the deal started to come together.

Yeah, so like I said, I was looking to partner with potential VCs and got this amazing email from someone at Tiny that said that they wanted to get involved in the space. So opened the conversation with them and not too long after I learned that Andrew Uberman was involved in this deal. I've been a big fan of the podcast for the past like two years. So really I was super open to this partnership. It was very interesting right at the start. And I think also the fact that tiny, I think they're not most vcs that are just looking at growth, I think they're looking at genuine companies. And profitability is also something important as well. They understand the D to C space and this is something truly that aligns with the vision that we had for the brand since day one.

And as well, Andrew being longtime mate drinker and actually being someone that can talk about it and help us educate. So a big part of our mission since day one is to educate people about yerbamate, to make it highly accessible. So for sharing, having someone like Andrew on the team was just a no brainer for. So it happened very fast. I'd say like in five months, a little less than five months, the deal was completed. And yeah, a couple meetings after we were ready to go and actually not ready to go, but ready to start working on this US launch. And something like the vision that Andrew and Tiny had for Matina was to have the business up and running as soon as possible in the US, shipping from uS fulfillment centers. And they also had a special request to have a sugar free drink.

It was not on our short term plans to launch a sugar free, but we got to work. It was probably a little harder than the other flavors, but we got to launch like a very nice, and I'd say innovative beverage with zero sugar. And Andrew is a big fan of it. I think he's having like three to four cans a day, so good feedback from them. And actually we collaborated on the R and D of this flavor. So we had a couple sampling, meeting and sampling meeting and brainstorm on the ingredients that we would use for that new formulation.

Yeah, I think that's so cool. And this is why a lot of times, if you're a brand and you're working with a creator you want to find that alignment. So the fact that on your side you were able to find the capital and the distribution, that really lined up with what you were trying to do in the longer term. And then at the same time, you found the creator partner whose interests and genuine interests that just align perfectly with your product. So what you can bring to the table, it's like you've got the infrastructure to build and to formulate and to bring this product to market, and they've got the capital and distribution for the awareness. So it's a really awesome partnership to come together. And how does that change the business and what you guys are doing? I know before you were mostly focused on Canada. Now you're opening up into the, like, how do you even set up or plan for projections in terms, know the amount of inventory you're going to need to deliver on the places that you're going to like from the strategy side of things.

How are things starting to play out now that you've locked down the partnership, you formulated the product, and you're ready to kind of bring this product to market for the first time with Andrew in the US.

So when we sealed the deal this summer, when I say we got to work because we needed to, literally, it felt like starting the business from like nothing that we have done in Canada was almost nothing that we have done in Canada was useful for the US. So these are new regulations. Working with FDA, it's another big project. So we got to work on this and find the right partners. Also, we didn't launch all of our flavors in the US because it's a huge commitment for inventory and we wanted to make sure that we had enough inventory for a very successful launch. So we didn't know exactly, and this was a very tricky part. We didn't know exactly how much we would need at the beginning. So we've produced a little more than what we thought just to have a buffer and actually was pretty accurate.

We didn't run out of products yet, but we're already producing more and refilling the warehouses. But it was something like we were very excited to launch and start to cumulate data because we didn't have anything before. We didn't know where most of the orders would be coming from. So since the launch on January 25, we're just collecting data and sort of building the plan for the future of where we're going to store the product, where it's going to ship from and where the new copacking facilities are going to be located and where we should. We're still learning about.

Still learning, yeah, absolutely. The next question I had to follow up on that was going to be based on the launch with Andrew. Right. I think when people think about working with creators, the one question is there could be someone with a massive, massive following, but maybe they don't really promote your product. Right. They have so many different things that they're working on. I know Andrew, he's spending all of his time on creating content. He's spending his time know.

I know we had Jeff Byers on the podcast recently from momentous. He's partnered with them as well. So like, you and your business operator, like, this is your, like, you're working on it. So when it comes to working with a creator like Andrew who's going to come in and kind of take a part of the business to start to promote it, what is the actual promotion that he's doing? Looks like when it comes to he, you know, shouting you guys out in his podcast, are you in his show notes? Are you on some of his website? Like, what is the scope of the promotion look like on his end for there to be successful traffic and conversion driven to Mataina?

I think it is, and it will be mostly educational. And I think this is perfect that way. Like I said, we want to educate people on Yobamate, and I think this is something that we really took into consideration when evaluating this deal. We're not just having someone with a massive following talking about a product and say like, hey, I drink this. Andrew is actually explaining why people should add Yurvamate to their routines and they know what they're talking about. And Andrew is obviously researching a lot and reading a lot. So I think he brings a lot of value to the table for the educational side. And this is what has the most value.

Like today, people are informed and they don't base their decisions on, oh, this looks cool, and apparently this stays good, or this person is doing that. So he's explaining the reason for it. And I think this is the very important part and this is how it's going to unfold over the next couple of months.

Yeah, I think that's really interesting in terms of saying it's not about just hawking Mateina everywhere you post. It's more about like, he's going to be the one who's focused on the education. And then if the listener is learning about yerbamate through Andrew, they're likely going to either find somewhere in his resources or through the Internet or through the stuff that you've been doing that this is the one that he's associated with. So I think letting the creator focus on the education, and then if he's the one educating them, people are going to have that trust for him, for the product that he worked on, he developed, et cetera. Really cool.

Our goal since day one was to put clean and genuine products like the cleanest way and the most enjoyable way of drinking yerbamate. I think naturally people can, and specifically this crowd that's well informed on what they put in their body, they will naturally understand that Matina is the cleanest and one of the cleanest way to consume it.

And I think the other thing that's really interesting, that goes back to kind of some of your founding principles that you were talking about. You guys learned from a very early stage that education and word of mouth was key to selling your product, even when you were doing six orders. So the fact that now you can almost parlay that and do a bigger scale with Andrew, where now all the people that Andrew is educating, like I myself am someone who learned about yerbamate through Andrew, right? So now all of those people, not only are they very well informed, but that super sciency techie people, they're going to go out in the world and they can start telling all of their friends about everything they learned about yerbamate and its specific neurological sort of pathways and all of that stuff, and then inherently can become like brand advocates of your product. As we wrap up here, Nicholas, I'd love to know about what 2024 looks like for you. You've got the partnership with Tiny, with Huberman. You're launching in the US. What are some of the biggest things that you're focused on in 2024? I know you've got a lot of work and you've got a lot of work behind you and you've got a lot of work to do. So what are you thinking about?

I think keep innovating. Like I said, we're just seeing a small portion of the product portfolio that we want to put out there with Matina. So we're still working on a lot of new products live. And actually, like I said, we're going to still learn about this new market, and we're also still evaluating some options for the retail. And like you said, it happened very quickly, but the biggest piece is ahead of us for sure.

Sweet. And for our listeners who might want to connect with you, where can we find you? Are you on Twitter? LinkedIn? Why don't you shout out your socials and where we can find out more about yourself. And Matena.

I think the most efficient way would be to go find Mattina's account on Instagram or X and from there you can easily find my account. We do a lot of storytelling and we show what's happening behind the scenes of the brand, so this is probably the best place to reach out and go learn more.

Sweet. Well, Nicholas, want to thank you for coming on the show and best of luck to you guys and the Matina team in 2024.

Thanks for having me, was a great chat. Bye.