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What's up, DTC Pod. Today we're joined by Megan O'Brien, who's the founder and CEO of Arch Insight. So Megan, I'll let you kick us off. Why don't you tell us a little bit about Arch, how you got started and a little bit about your background as well.

Yeah, absolutely excited to be here. My name is Megan, I started Arch about a year ago and the goal with Arch is to provide startups and SMBs access to consumer insights and market research. Have worked with 22 different brands in the DTC space, both in products and services at this point, helping them with things like concept testing, brand tracking and just general consumer insights to answer some of their biggest questions before they start to invest in some of those kind of changes in their products and services. I started Arch, like I mentioned, about a year ago, which was kind of just a culmination of many of the steps I've taken in my career up to this point. I started out as a consultant, so kind of with the analytical background and looking at a variety of different markets and then went to Harry's Inc. And was on the team that launched Flamingo. And this is where I got kind of a deep view into consumer insights and really the value of consumer insights. Harry's as a brand really values consumer insights and has an awesome consumer insights team. So I learned a ton there on the Flamingo team and use consumer insights to make a lot of the decisions that we were making at launch and kind of in that early growth stage. Then went to HBS, spent some time in BC and did some freelance work while I was in school and Consumer Insights and just continued to see that there was just a gap in the market for consumer insights providers that startups could afford and were helpful for startups. So post graduation did jumped into Arch full time.

No, it sounds like a good match between having the background in consulting and DTC and CPG and then being able to launch a service like this yourself. So the one thing I'm curious about is why don't you tell us a little bit about Consumer Insights, right? Why does it matter? How should brands be thinking about it? Especially when you're taking a product to market, maybe before you fully invested an idea, found a manufacturer, anything like that, you're starting with a problem and you say, I want to come up with a product to solve this problem. So what's the role that Consumer Insights play in that whole process and how do people get them and how do people use them?

Yeah, so I work with a lot of companies that are kind of in that prelaunch stage or thinking about launching new product lines and Consumer Insights is a perfect place to plug in there. The reason being is, as I'm sure many of you who are in the DTC space are familiar, investing in products is super expensive. So making sure that there is a real need for that product before you invest all of that capital to invest in inventory in particular and or coding of your platform, it's really helpful to understand if there is a real need and a real pain point out there. I also am just a strong believer that if you give people a platform to give their opinion, you're going to learn a lot. And so there might be a pain point there that you are solving and you're kind of on to something. But listening to the consumer and hearing what they have to say about the pain point, there might be three or four new things that you learn that could really kind of take your product or service to the next level or increase your market size with just a couple of easy changes before you go into that development. So that's kind of the first step then once products are even in development, it can be really helpful to put the products or the product concept in front of potential purchasers of that project or of that product or service. And reason being is you might have amazing ingredients in your lotion, say, but if the consumer doesn't understand kind of what those products are used for, how they're helpful, or how do you really communicate the value of what you're making that's new and different to that consumer? And that's where some of that feedback, especially qualitative feedback in that case, can be really helpful when you think about the initial launch marketing materials, your website and things like that, and really bringing the company to life. So there are a lot of places where consumers can really plug in and make a difference in that pre launch stage. And even as you start to think about imagery and messaging for the brand, for the ads and things like that, getting that initial feedback prelaunch is super important before investing all of that money on that development.

I'm curious, do you have a framework for how those consumers make those decisions? And what are the things, the attributes that they go through to determine a purchasing decision? And what are the things that they value and not all of them value the same things as much as others might. Somebody might be really concerned about the ingredients, another person might be really concerned about other things. And so what is the decision making process for the typical consumer? Because we all know what ours is, but we do them on a subconscious level.

Yeah, definitely. And that's where it's really fun for me personally to see kind of across the different brands, people's hierarchy of wants and needs can shift based on the industry. So for some of the brands I work with, they're really focused on sustainability and bringing a sustainable product to market. And so in that case, often their consumer base or their initial consumer base is super eco focus. That's something that's higher up in their hierarchy of wants and needs versus for other brands. It's something that's a little bit more of a nice to have for people right now versus something that they're looking for, kind of going out and searching for themselves. So I would say it varies a lot from brand to brand in terms of how people think about their purchasing decision. And that's why it's really important to understand who your target consumer base is and then understand their specific hierarchy of needs and wants and what messaging resonates with them. Because if you target every single person in the United States, it could be really hard to get messages that resonate with everyone. And there are brands that have been able to do that. But especially for these startup brands, when you're kind of figuring out who's your wedge in, who is your initial group of promoters and what do they really care about and how do you get them excited about the brand, that's where it becomes super important to kind of get to know that consumer base and understand their wants and needs better. I would say there's not really kind of just a standard list up here are the things that are most important and I think price often is an important one for just kind of general population when you look at things more broadly. But it depends a lot by the product and service and who that target individual is that you're hoping to acquire.

And then, Megan, the next question or the one point that you made that I think is really important about the way people make purchasing decisions and the way businesses respond to those is the fact that as a brand, a lot of times you just need to get started. And then as you get started, you're going to be able to understand. You're going to hear your customers, you're going to hear what they're wanting, what they're saying, and then you're going to be able to think about purchasing product development in that lens. So obviously, sometimes before you even started, consumer insights are important because you're trying to understand what market to go after and what product to build, et cetera. But why don't you talk about it a little bit from the perspective of a brand that's already kind of established. Maybe they have their first a couple of products used in market and they're trying to make a decision on where to go next. How should they leverage broader consumer insights combined with maybe some snippets of customer feedback from what they know about the specific niche of customers that they're already serving? Well, how do you make decisions in that context as opposed to just getting started from the ground up?

Yeah, so I do a lot of work with my clients around that who are a little bit more established. And one way we do that is through quarterly customer surveys. So sending out a survey to your customer base on a semi regular basis to kind of keep a pulse check on the NPS of the brand. How are people feeling about the different products? It's also a good temperature check. If you're having any kind of issues with specific products that you're having. Getting some more verbatims around, why is this happening? What is this feedback from? And things like that. It's also a really good time to kind of start to test with your current customer base what they're interested in in terms of follow on products. So that's kind of one type of work that I do with those clients. For others I do segmentation type work and getting to understand some of the key personas that we're targeting. And the value in this is I think that there's a lot of value in understanding the person not only in the context of how they're purchasing that specific product, but who are they as a person beyond that? What's their ecosystem? What do they like to watch on Netflix? What do they like to purchase at the grocery store? Where are they shopping for their clothing? Because if you start to understand who this person is at a broader level, understand who they are, what's important to them, what drives them on a day to day basis, then you can continue to target your messaging towards those individuals in a way that resonates with them. And you can also gather information from them around pain points that they're having. I've always said my favorite product that we launched at Flamingo is the Ingrown Spot Treatment and it all came from just listening to the pain point of the consumer. And it's an awesome product and it really resonated with our consumer and I think it's one of my favorite products that I've been involved with. And it really all came down to giving people your own current customers the opportunity to voice their opinions and voice their pain points. And so I think it's super important to kind of not get caught up just in your growing business and really take the time to invest in keeping a pulse check on your customers.

That leads me into my next question, because I do believe customer led product development is a really cool opportunity and something that brands can really tap into. But like you were saying before, if you're just starting from the ground up, maybe you have an idea of a specific niche or a group of people that you want. But once you've already have customers, not only do you have a specific niche, like you were saying, you have different customer segments that are different, but they're all related to your brand. So how do you think about segmentation in the lens of an existing brand who has all different sorts of customers? How should they know which feedback to take, which they shouldn't listen to, and how to make a product, how to make product decisions based on who and where the feedback is coming from?

Yeah, so that's where you do a combination of both looking internally and looking externally. So if you really know your own consumer base, you can start to identify kind of key traits about these individuals that make up this meaningful percentage of your customer base and usually your highest value portion of your customer base. And then you can kind of go into the market and look for lookalikes and understand kind of what is the market size of those individuals more broadly, and then also think about where our follow on segments to that initial core segment that you might want to target. And then what can you do that keeps your core excited and keeps your core engaged in the brand, but also allows you to kind of expand from the core and bring in some of those other individuals as well? And so that's why I think it's really important to kind of look internally first, understand who you are today, who are your customers, why do your customers love you? And then understand how do you identify lookalikes or people who like, one step different, but could be really amazing high value customers for your company through kind of broader general population surveying and getting to know some of those individuals a bit better?

Megan, my next question is more about, like, brand values, right? I think there's so many different like, there's so many brands popping up in today's landscape and everyone values all these different things, right? And sometimes brands really mean it as part of what they're doing, and other times they're just like, oh, this isn't a nice buzzword. Let's say we're sustainable, or let's say we're this or that, or we'll say we're that. So as a brand, how do you think about what really to focus on and how does this kind of idea of true brand values come into the idea of product development and customer insights?

Yeah, that is an awesome question. This is something that comes up all the time with my clients. The consumers are becoming a lot smarter. This next generation of consumers, particularly Gen Z, Millennials, they're not looking at just kind of the we're green. They're going one step deeper. They want to understand, okay, why are you green? What are you doing that is actually ecofriendly. They're becoming more aware of greenwashing and just messaging just to message versus actually staying true to your message. And so I've heard that in some of my talking with potential consumers and even just talking with kind of individuals in the space, they are saying it's more and more important that if you're going to say something like that, you need to stand behind that and you need to be able to show your consumer kind of how you're meeting those messages. And I think that's where focus groups in particular can be really helpful because if you say our brand stands for this and then you're not sure how to message, kind of like, here are the things that our customers are looking for to kind of help show that this is really an eco friendly or an inclusive brand. It can help you as a brand understand what you need to do to be better to meet those messages that you think that you are standing for. And so that type of feedback loop I think is incredibly important for brands in today's day and age where people are doing a lot more research.

Yeah. And I think that is really important. It's about like, you can only do so much as a brand. So if you're going to say you're doing something, you should actually do it, as opposed to just trying to like say, oh, we're this, we're that, we have all these great traits about us, but you don't actually do anything. And that could probably cause a little bit more damage than good. Right? So I think that's pretty insightful for brands to really be thinking about, okay, if we're going to make a claim, let's actually make it. And then understand from the consumer's perspective if that messaging actually drives the needle, there might be some sometimes brands might just say some things about themselves that consumers don't actually care about. They might say, and there might be a small vocal minority that says like, oh, we want brands to say they're this and we want brands to say they're that, but really using consumer to insights to be like, okay, how many customers care? Which are the customers that actually care? And if we go after this initiative, is it really going to move the needle or is it just like five people who are being louder saying you need to do this, and like a brand changing their whole identity for a small minority.

This is why creator brands are doing so well, because they have the true fans, because the brand stems from a lifestyle of that creator of things they actually do in their daily lives. And so it's very authentic in that form. And the creator led brands that flop are because they do the opposite. It's an inauthentic brand that doesn't really fit into the lifestyle. And so as a brand, that's a bit more challenging because there is no unique individual, the CEO is not publicly out there. And so this is where the community then comes into play and how you use that message to sort of educate your customers and highlight their daily life. So is there a way that you communicate directly to consumer insights with marketing to sort of do this education, to amplify whatever the findings are and portray that lifestyle of whatever the brand the customer segment is trying to go after?

Yeah, well, I love your use of the word authenticity, and I think authenticity and transparency has become so big and something consumers are really looking for. And so thinking through kind of we talked a little bit before about messaging hierarchy, and that's a lot of work that I've done with people in terms of how would you rank these different key traits about this business? And you can get a sense for kind of what percentage of the population is interested in those specific things. And I think choosing a couple of things to be really good at instead of trying to be everything to everyone is something that I generally recommend to the brands that I work with. And I think it's a combination of there's a quantitative piece of how would you rank these different messages and how would you rank these things that are important to you? But then there is a qualitative piece to it, like, what does this mean to you, what does transparency mean to you? What does being eco friendly mean to you? And just having that dialogue kind of helps to determine what can the brand do that feels authentic and feels relatable and meaningful to the people that they are marketing towards? And I think just always keeping that in mind is helpful for the brands.

The reason I ask that is because I'm curious on the creative element of that. Just like the sustainability piece, a lot of people hear these words and then they just go model somebody that's already done it. Well, when oftentimes what comes out as authentic typically is something very creative and different. And so then sometimes brands might be like, oh, we just got to be different, but then they model off of someone else. And Blaine, it reminds me of that podcast we did recently with the kid from he was in South Korea or something. They're very different, that clothing company. Yeah, Sunday school. They are a cannabis brand, but their thinking is so different and it's been really authentic for them to build a true following. So I feel like creativity that's why I was asking then, how does marketing then go and implement that? Because it's likely the success is dependent on the creativity element of implementation.

Definitely. And I think that was something where I saw a lot of value and consumer insights. And I am super grateful for the creative team that we had at Flamingo because they taught me so much in terms of what can I ask in focus groups, what can I put into surveys to help to get to some of that helpful output that can help guide the creative team on kind of here are some guidelines of what's most important to the consumer and what they care about, et cetera, but also leaving that space for the people who are going to be creative and going to come up with these amazing ideas to be able to do that. And I think it's a fine balance between prescribing, here are the things that everyone cares about, and here's exactly what it should look like versus leaving space for creativity. And part of my goal in the insights that I give back to my clients is kind of leaving that room for creativity in that it's, here's what people are saying, here's what people are thinking. But let's take it one step further and add in imagery or messaging, testing and kind of understanding people like green over blue, but still giving the full flexibility of green or things like that, where you give the creative team still some space to be creative and come up with something that is awesome and unique and different. And yeah, that was one of my biggest learnings, coming from kind of a very business background and dabbling into the marketing and creative world. And so very grateful for them for teaching me that lesson.

Yeah, I know. I love that. And when you worked at Harry's, when you started working on Flamingo, was there any specific goal in terms of how do you guys strive towards to launch a specific product line? Is it to launch a product line that reaches X in revenue or was it launched three product lines? What was the original intention of setting off this consumer insights team and what were the initial goals?

Yeah, so the initial goal was really just to understand the female consumer at a deeper level and create products that work well for her. And I think I was not there for the initial R and D on the Flamingo team. I started right as we were going into launch, but the R and D team was incredibly thoughtful in the way that they developed the products. For example, the shaving cream is super thick, so it stays on in the shower. And the way that women and men use shaving cream is super different. And so the way that they went about it was just incredibly thoughtful. And I spent a lot of my first couple of months at Flamingo on the phone with women and understanding what the consumer journey was. How is she discovering brands, how is she interacting with brands? How is she making purchase decisions? What's it like when she gets products in the mail? How does she think about when she opens them? How does she feel? When does she start to use them? And then how does she start thinking about repurchase and what communications does she want from the brand and things like that? So really kind of putting yourself in the shoes of this consumer and understanding how she's using the products. And that means a lot of time. Sending surveys out to our current customer base and also just getting on the phone with them and asking them about the experience, asking them about what they did previously, asking about where they still feel like the needs aren't met. And so I probably spent hours when we first launched the brand on the phone. And I would also have people from the team come in and listen to and they just really valued the customer voice. And also I was a consultant coming in and working at a hard products company. And my background in consulting with some retail, some healthcare. But when you're a consultant, you're giving advice and you're doing analytics. It's not really like your product. And I was making all these decisions that I had never had to make before in terms of helping think through what the end cap looks like and helping think through what the packaging looks like for our next line of products and working with the supply chain team and just taking on all these roles for the first time. I helped with one of our acquisition channels and doing ads for the acquisition channels and I just was learning so much and I realized how much consumer insights helped me make all those decisions, especially on days where I felt a little bit like I was over my skis and wasn't sure how to make the decision for me. I was really rooted in the consumer insights and kind of following the lead of the consumer.

Megan, the other question I have about that is clearly the consumer insights are touching so many different parts of the brand, right? And all the customer touching points of the business. People in the business who are working on customer facing things should be thinking through the lens of customer insights and understanding, this sort of stuff. So beyond marketing, like, who are all the teams that this sort of stuff touches? Right. It's got to be product. It's got to be marketing. It's got to be copywriting. Like you were saying, even like the email campaigns or the packaging. It touches so many different parts of the product and the buying journey. Right.

It touches almost every part of the business. And I feel so lucky that I got to work in Consumer Insights in kind of a bigger business setting before starting my own company and getting involved with all these other brands because I can really help them think through how these Consumer Insights can be used across a variety of different places in the business. I think one place where it's super helpful is from a retail selling perspective, getting kind of some of those bigger stats around how many people are interested in my product? Where are they shopping today? Things like that can be so valuable and so compelling in those types of decks. It's really helpful from an imaging and messaging perspective which can be applicable to growth marketing. It can be applicable to kind of marketing more broadly to the creative team. This provides something that's kind of like a central group of insights about this customer. And then of course with product development which then brings in kind of the product team and supply chain and even kind of the finance team. As you think about forecasting how big these products can be and what the market size will be, there's just so much that comes back to Consumer Insights in terms of helping you guide those decisions. And that's really what I think the awesome value of Consumer Insights is and why I get excited about doing the work I do and watching my clients have find some of the success based on Consumer Insights. Whether it's if they're raising or trying to sell in to different retailers or repackaging or developing new products, it's really cool just to be able to be a part of that journey with them and help them kind of think through where these insights can be valuable to them and where they can kind of use them to their full potential.

So the next question I have is maybe we try to make this a little bit more actionable. So let's for example, imagine we're launching either a skincare brand or a supplements brand or an apparel brand, anything. You can kind of take your pick. And what would the first things you do as it pertains to Consumer Insights be? Right? Like if we're starting at the ground floor, how do you think about starting approaching Consumer Insights? What are the insights you're kind of looking for to help you build conviction about whatever product it is you want to take to market?

Yeah, definitely. So I think kind of from first initial thought, I think first just comes friends and family and kind of looking around and saying does the group of people that I'm in or kind of even tangentially related to the group of people that I spend time in, is it something that is a pain point across multiple people, not just me? And I think before you even kind of take the leap of getting deeper into consumer insights, it's a little bit of being willing to ask other people around you what they think of the idea and kind of starting to create a little bit of a roadmap for yourself of what this differentiated product or service could be that's addressing this pain point. The reason I say that is you could just do a survey of kind of do people have this pain point but I think it's a better use of capital to not only see is there a. Pain point that exists but also at the same time kind of ask directionally this new concept we're coming up with, is this solving the pain point or would you be interested in purchasing this product or service to help solve the pain point and kind of do multiple things at one time? That's one of the goals that I have with insights, particularly working with startups and SMBs. I've sat in the chair of a startup before and you don't have a ton of money to spend, so anytime we can kind of condense and answer multiple questions in one place, I try and do that for my clients. From there you get some initial insights on the pinpoint and some initial kind of insight on to this concept that you're developing from there. It's often kind of taking it internally if there is a market size for this and it is interesting to people and developing it a bit more internally and then coming back and doing additional consumer insights at that point, depending on how built out the product is or not. Generally I like to do qualitative research because I like people to get research from even if it's a fewer number of people to get actual feedback and voices around this product or service. And I just think there's so many ways that people add value in focus groups and one on one calls looking at the product and service, and you're so in it as the founder that you don't realize sometimes there are these really little tweaks that you can make that would provide tremendous value for those individuals, and then they go back and kind of continue building and continuing to develop this product. And then sometimes we'll run another survey if they want to understand kind of more broad market size of this specific solution that they've come up with. But then kind of like once it's in development, they generally start working on branding and imagery and messaging. So I've helped a lot of clients with that in terms of just testing different images and people are so funny. Like a certain word can really throw people off or make people really excited and the way that someone stands in an image matters. So helping them think through some of those things and get feedback on some of those things. And then once the product is a little bit more finalized in terms of physical product, if we're talking about, like, supplements or skincare or apparel, it's getting out in front of people, whether that's, like, with a concept or in their hands physically. And then some marketing materials around the specific products. And again, it's helping consumers understand the value in these products and services. And most people don't start a company if they don't really think that they're doing something that's kind of new and different and providing incremental value out in the world. And so the question is kind of how do you communicate that to people in a way that they can understand and then they also want to purchase your product and service. And so I help people kind of think about that product messaging. And that's where a lot of the copywriting comes in, where they might have, like, an initial take of copywriting and then people give feedback on it and they kind of do their final round after that. And then the products launch and sometimes help with feedback on the website and things like that just to make sure that people can navigate it easily and are understanding kind of all the different offerings. And then it comes to new prize development, what's next, what's the next line of things? How do you keep that customer group engaged? And then once it's a bit bigger, thinking about some more segmentation and understanding that base a bit more.

So the next question I have is this is going to be a fun one. This kind of takes the other side, right? Because as a founder, you want to obviously listen to customers, but sometimes you can't listen to everything that everyone says because if you please 100% of the people 100% of the time, you're not going to get anywhere. Right? So how, as a founder, do you have a lens and understand what feedback is valuable, what you should respect, but maybe not actually put into action? How do you think through those decisions and have a lens as a founder to build the right product?

Yeah, definitely. I think in particular, when it comes to confusion around messaging of the product, that's where you should really listen to the consumer. Because if the consumer is confused about what the product is or what the value prop is of the company, then no matter how amazing your product or service is, if no one understands it before they can purchase it, it's really hard to sell that product. And so I really encourage people to focus on that. However, for things like developing the product, I can give them the feedback that the consumer is giving. Maybe they just don't like this specific food or this specific product. And generally my question then back to the founder is just, are you sure that this is your right target market? And is there someone out there that this is really valuable for that we haven't found yet? Or is there like a messaging discrepancy on what the value is of this product? People have amazing products that they're developing. They have this exact thought in their mind. And for me, I'm trying to help them figure out how they message that product and how they find that right group of people that's really passionate about that product. In terms of not taking everybody's feedback, there's always going to be some people in the room whose feedback is a little bit of an outlier or they have a strong opinion that feels like pretty individual. And generally I'm pretty good with helping the brands pass through. Here are the top things that came up over and over again and here are the things that came up here and there. Maybe listen to them, maybe don't take it with a grain of salt. And with all of these, for a lot of the startups, it's a smaller end of people. It's less expensive to get 15 people versus 10,000 people to give you feedback on this product and service. And so that's where I think Arch is a little bit different than some of the other places out there is. It's directional feedback, it's quick, it's to the point, it's actionable. And how much you choose to take of it versus not, that's up to you. As the founder, if you feel really passionate about the specific ingredient being in your product, and that's the game changer, and all the people in the focus group don't like that product, the question is, if you feel really passionate about it. Let's work together to figure out how do we message the value of this ingredient or this thing in your product that you feel really passionate about, that everyone else is a little put off by or doesn't like. And so it really comes down to a little bit the founder kind of deciding, this is the thing that I feel really passionate about, and then me helping them think through, okay, clearly it didn't land in focus group. What are we going to do to help change perception of this moving forward?

And Megan, as we kind of wrap up here for people who are thinking about getting more involved with customer insights and making it more a part of their business, where can they connect with you? Learn more about Arch. Are you guys on social or? Yeah. Why don't you give us just a shout out to where listeners can learn a little bit more?

Yeah, definitely. So we have website archinsights co, archinsights co and also my emails on there. Just Megan at archinsights co. Feel free to reach out, tell me you listen to the podcast and would love to jump on a call and talk more about insights. I love chatting insights, so always happy to make that time sweet.

Well, congrats on the progress so far. We're super excited to see where this goes because I know customer insights, it's not the easiest things for brands to scale. They're all looking for them. And especially as there's more and more brands, it becomes really important to make all the right decisions. So, best of luck to you guys this year and we can't wait to check in and see how you guys grow in 2023.

Awesome and thanks for having me. It's great to chat.

Thank you, megan.

Thanks for tuning in.

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You enjoyed this episode of Dtcpod. If you enjoyed the show, we'd love your support. A rating and review would go a long way as we continue to host the best builders in DTC and beyond. Follow and subscribe to the show and.

Make sure to check out our Show.

Notes where you can find our socials and weekly newsletter. Visit us on Dtcpod.com to join our founder community and access resources from every episode. We'll see you on the next pod.