what's up, DTC pod? Today we're joined by Jessica Young, who is the founder and CEO at bubblegoods. So Jessica, I'll let you kick us off. Why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself, your background, and what you guys are building at bubble.

Thanks for having me. Bubblegoods is an online marketplace for emerging quality, healthy food brands to ship direct to consumer. Our mission is to be the number one channel for these brands online. So we come in where an emerging food brand is falling short with trying to sell on Amazon or within their own shopify store, especially in the post iOS 14 world. It's super expensive and difficult to acquire and find customers online if you're a solo brand. So we've brought that in house all under one roof and we're bringing customers to these brands that otherwise would not really be able to see success. So, yeah, my background is in the food space. It's my life's work and passion to be around delicious food, I think.

So I originally kind of started in the kitchen, so moved to New York City when I was 20 to go to culinary school for a semester at the time. That was my plan. Ended up not returning to college and just went full bore into all things food and culinary. So I worked in fine dining, did some private chefing on the side for supplemental income, lived in the Hamptons for a bit. That's a whole other story, pre Wishbone Kitchen TikTok, but that was like my life. So I go between cooking in restaurants and then Wishbone Kitchen life and then worked at Hugh Kitchen, which at the time was a fast casual concept that was opening up and got a taste of all things startup. They were getting a line of chocolate together, which I think Mondelez now owns or has a major stake in. So it was really exciting to be a part of that and then worked at a couple meal kit companies, part of that Blue Apron, HelloFresh Wave, some more niche meal kit companies that I learned a lot about, what not to do, I would say, at those companies in startup.

But it was a great entry way into learning that Series A is not a baseball term series this series that we're talking about raising capital and growing company. So it was a great foray into all things startups. And then I joined Daily Harvest as employee number one with Rachel, the founder, and that company was a rocket ship. So it was really exciting to be a part of Daily Harvest. Growth was responsible there for all things supply chain product innovation, co packers, figuring out things like dry ice contracts to ship direct to consumer, and then launched Bubble Goods after leading Daily Harvest. Shortly after, So consulted a bit in there, bootstrapped the business a bit at the beginning and then so it brought us to this point. So, yeah, it's my story.

I love it. We're really excited for the convo, especially because I think a lot of times when you're building businesses, it's not necessarily a linear path and you can kind of go from one thing, you can learn all these different skills and you can build really creative businesses. So before we get too far into bubble, I want to talk a little bit about Daily Harvest. I don't want to just blow over that because being able to manage the supply chain and operations for a food and a meal delivery sort of company is a massive challenge in of itself. So why don't you just tell us a little bit about Daily Harvest, what the business was, how you got it set up and what some of the challenges were that you guys were solving.

Yeah, I was really ground level. I was so ground level that the brand you see today with the amazing branding and packaging didn't even exist. Rachel was getting her first investors, was working out of a commissary kitchen, kind of was getting the beginnings of a fulfillment and kind of copacker set up, and that's when I jumped in. So she really focused on rebranding the company, getting our growth plan in place, working on investors. And then I handled really all things back end. So you're getting a company, it's like soup to nuts customer service, setting up things like Zendesk at the time, which for frozen and perishable kind of direct to consumer business is imperative because especially in the early days, anything and everything can go wrong. People are putting their product in their pantry instead of their freezer, and it's a frozen product and it's like melting. And they're writing in like, oh, sorry, my husband put our daily harvest cups in the pantry.

Can we get a refund? You're like, what is happening? So dealing with all of that fun stuff all the way to, I think, really exciting, mission driven programs like setting up lines with our buying and supply chain to work on things like transitional organic, which was like a big mission of the business to really shift the landscape of ingredients and what's in the food that we're eating. So I think now the company is doing a ton on that front, but it was great to, I think, get all the heavy lifting out of the way and then leave everything in really good hands when it was time for me to move on. So that I think all that higher level, mission driven stuff was able to be accomplished. But yeah, it was a wild ride. Working around the clock, getting the business going. At one point you have interns working on top of trash cans because you're outgrowing your off space and people are and more and more people are entering the picture. So it was great. I definitely lived in many fulfillment centers and warehouses.

I'm in a manufacturing plant today for this call. I'm always kind of finding myself in these spots.

How were you able to fill the shoes of that role? Were you ever sort of imposter syndrome? Like, maybe this role is just too big. I have no experience here. I'm employee number one. And how did you just grow into the role? Basically.

Yeah, I totally did. There were points where I felt way in over my head and it was like, raise the flag, ask for help. So I remember talking to Rachel, the founder, and asking her, I feel like I could know more about what I'm doing here. Can I talk to someone? Should I be getting a mentor? I'm just running with what I think I know, but I also don't know what I don't know. So can I talk to someone? I remember she connected me to one of our original investors who was a big C suite guy, worked know, I think Virgin Mobile Lego was kind of CEO or C suite at Lego. So big corporate guy. And I remember talking to him about particularly scaling our customer support and the whole concept of tiering out issues. Know, at some point this won't hit all one system.

Maybe you'll get a BPO set up or different tiers would impact different levels of touch points and seniority. And that was a novel idea to me at the time. And I was like, oh, that makes so much sense. So I think there were points like that when we were really breaking our own system, that I raised a flag, asked for help. And I think that's important when you're building something and it's scaling super quickly when you're feeling, know, over your head to raise the flag. More people than not will take a minute out of their day to explain and just give you that perspective. So that was much needed in those years for me.

One of the questions I have, Jessica, is a lot of times people think about early stage business, but it's always cool to get the lens of after a business is scaled, to kind of go back to the really early days of, like you said, you were literally employee one. So for a business like this, which has crazy supply chain complexity, as well as perishable goods, as well as preparing a physical meal that people are putting in their body, what was like V 1.0? Like, literally day one when you ended up there, what was the scale they were at? How many meals were you guys delivering? Were you helping them plan and execute on what the meals were going to be or where were we?

Right out of a commissary kitchen. I kind of jumped in to the first copacker and fulfillment set up that we had maybe 20 orders a week, daily subscription service. And it was Rachel, the founder, friends and family, my friends and family, because I started working. So we got lots of feedback. Your friends and family will give you all the feedback that you never wanted to young know. Some of the first investors were buying the box and getting the subscription. Not cute. Branding.

I think it was pretty homegrown. I don't know if Rachel would ever listen to this. But not cute. I think she came up with it herself, but then that changed, right? We actually started testing advertising and she got to when I entered the rich, kind of get to work on all the stuff that she really brought to the table, which is all the marketing, branding. We got some capital into the business, but yeah, maybe like 20 orders a week, like super ground level.

Yeah, that's sweet. I just remember because I've had experience founding a marketplace. And I remember when we were in the restaurant space, we were doing the first day, we were doing like five reservations a day, so probably close to the same level. And you're like right there. You don't really have a system, but that's like the beginning of where there is traction. Then scaling looks completely different. And now it looks like Daily Harvest has been valued over a billion dollars. So being able to see it scale all the way up.

Why don't you walk us through the next portion of that scaling, right? When did you know that this was like, okay, this is really working, and this is really starting to scale, and we've got to catch up with our supply chain and our suppliers and our product to be able to meet demand. What did that look like?

Being totally honest, I think maybe this is part of a successful startup. You're running so quickly, it's a bit scary sometimes. And I don't know that I ever really felt like, okay, we've got it. We can chill. That was never part of the picture. It was run as fast as you can, build the best product that you can, make the most delicious product that you can, and keep going. It was really important that we launched additional product lines into the SKU mix, because being a subscription based business, having anything you're selling online, especially when you're packing it with like a ten pound block of dry ice as your minimum footprint, you need to hit average order values, order frequencies. And at the time, we were hitting the nail on the head with acquisition fees, but there is that nice little matrix of acquisition retention and to make that work by the numbers.

So it was important for that business model to keep introducing new products so that repeat frequency and that subscription value was there. And that was one of the things that set that business apart from some other ones that started to implode during those years, like Blue Apron. They had really high churn out rates after shipment one or two. It was a very novel type item or giftable. It wasn't a daily, weekly habit. And that's what we really built in at the time, the Daily Harvest. It was a daily habit, and people found value and they would keep subscribing, and it made it a super strong business. So different than other competitors out there.

Is this what drove you into bubble goods? Or was it just like a journey? Was it an AHA moment from this experience to build bubble goods? Or was it throughout time until you eventually said, I've had enough, I want to solve this problem? And what is bubblegoods?

Yeah. So bubble goods are an online marketplace for a lot of products similar to Daily Harvest. Really, the AHA moment was we had closed our Series B at Daily Harvest. The company was popping. Lots of marketing was going on. I've been in the food space for a long time. I mentored at the time for Chobani's Incubator. Program.

I love startup companies when I can, I angel invest in the side into different food brands that I'm into. So the AHA moment was really I was getting approached by a ton of food brands trying to either hire me or ask me tons of advice with like, how are you guys doing this at Daily Harvest? You're avoiding retailers, you're building this amazing brand, having all the success I want to do that with my food brand. And I knew how we were doing it at Daily Harvest. I know the numbers that work and don't work and what made that brand really speak to an audience. And I knew that a lot of these solo brands had three or four SKUs. So even if they acquired customers, they weren't going to ever hit a certain basket size because they only had three or four SKUs. It would be really hard to get that repeat purchase. And at the same time they were just super small.

So it's like, how are you going to cut through the noise and reach customers? You don't have a big enough platform to scale that, so it's not going to make sense. And good luck with two or three years getting into Whole Foods and expanding and dealing with retailer kind of buybacks and shelf space and competing with these staple brands out there. And so I was like, all right, well, I know how to cut through the noise online. I know what makes a strong business. So I really did a lot of research that time into a Marketplace model. Would this work for the CPG space that I'm super passionate about? I know the customers are there. I know the numbers that will work to make the buy and transaction happen. But how will this work for brands and will they find value? So did a lot of homework.

Would a Marketplace model work? Would it be a subscription based model? What would be the model that would really solve this disconnect and fragmented situation that I saw happening? So the AHA moment was really talking to some of these brands. It was a really easy sell. I was like, all right, great. We have an amazing supply side if they would stick and have value. So fast forward to today, we have over 1000 food businesses on the bubble goods marketplace, 99% brand retention brands that listed thus stay and sell. And now we're pushing on the consumer side and driving a lot of growth into these brands. And now the brands are referring each other with zero dollar brand acquisition fees. And so we can 100% focus on the consumer relationship and driving sales into these brands.

And they're amazing products.

Yeah, I really love this because it seems like in CPG for any Marketplace, you need a fit for the supply as well as for the demand, right? And it seems like your supply in terms of the brands that you work with, like you're saying they need sales, right? It's hard enough to generate direct sales. It's hard enough to get awareness, customer acquisitions going up. So any sort of discovery is really beneficial on the brand side and then as well as on the consumer side. I feel like we're in this blitz of CPG products where every time you walk into a market, there's like another new drink on the shelf and there's just so much and you're like, what happened to the days when I could just walk in and see Coke Seven Up and maybe an Arizona Iced Tea? And now it's like there's a million different drinks. They all have different functionalities. Like, you go on the shelves, there are all these new brands that have amazing colors that are clearly new and innovative. And as a consumer, that can be overwhelming as well. Right? So having a place to see and.

There'S not enough information, you just see the bottle. That's it. You know, nothing else about the brand 100%.

I just see it sort of making sense. I'd love to kind of understand what it sort of looks like now, as you increase, what does the shopper look like who's buying stuff from young on the demand side, right? Like, what customers are shopping, how are they finding things? How are they interacting with your product? And on the brand side, what kind of feedback are you hearing as well?

Yeah, on the consumer customer side of the marketplace, we're going after the person who typically shops on Etsy. We get called the Etsy of Health food all the time, and we really use that as our North Star, and that speaks to our consumer. So we like to say that our customer typically shops on Etsy, loves handmade, kind of craft goods, likes things shipped to their home, and also knows what Aeron is, but doesn't have that Arowan in their backyard and really wants to access all these amazing brands and have that feeling of like, oh, my gosh, what is the new cool thing out there? And really drive that discovery and audience for these brands. So I think you hit something really well that if you have access to stores that have a bunch of cool emerging brands, you know nothing about them. So when brands launch on our platform, we have an entire launch guide that we really can give them best practices with how we think they can best sell their product. So get reviews up. I can't tell you how many brands don't even think about putting reviews on their own store, but when they are selling with us, we really stress that, and then they end up doing that on their own store. It's like, yeah, people want that validation.

They want to hear from other people, how does it taste? Right? Even when you're out with friends and someone eats a really delicious meal at a restaurant, if they're saying like, OOH and on, I love it, you're going to want to order that as well. This is just like Food 101. So we have an entire launch manual, best practices guide to really push and then I think it impacts brands on their own. So it also is a way, even with my own knowledge, I've been impacting literally now thousands of brands by themselves on the marketplace because we're all telling them the same thing. There is a method to the madness to a degree. We're going after the customer who definitely knows what Arowan and Se are. We are the convergence of the two and typically lives about 2 hours outside of a major secondary city, doesn't have access to a Whole Foods and again really cares about what's in their food products, who's behind them. We're going after their girl, typically skews female, 35 to 55.

I'm curious, I love that the Etsy for CPG, that should be the title of this episode. And then bubblegoods. I really love that. To me, on the brand side, I was seeing it sort of like and I'm curious on what the vetting process is for you to get brands. And I love you mentioned that you mentioned that you have the knowledge of the experience that you have. You care about the brand success just as much as a success for your platform. Their success is your success and you've been through the trenches. So on the brand side, I saw it more like a fair for consumer rather than wholesale.

So given that the no minimum inventories were discussed on our other calls, so we'd love to hear more about that. And what is the vetting process for brands to join the market?

Yeah, so what we're really proud of now is that we have a completely self serve platform. So it's as easy for a brand to list and sell best as it is to make an Airbnb listing or a Craigslist listing. So we have two different plans. Brands can either opt in, kind of sign up and access orders as they come in with our generated shipping labels. And we have a separate plan where we now have a shopify app. So about 75% now of brands that we work with have a Shopify store. They're just not selling anything on that shopify store. But we are able to push orders in.

So we have a Shopify app and we take a commission of sales so the orders drop into their feed. So they have fulfillment set up in a shopify store. It's really easy to plug in. Again, we just want their inventory. We want to push them more sales. So we really tried to make that as easy as possible.

So there is no requirement or vetting. So any brand could list on the bubble goods marketplace.

Yeah, so we're a vetting process. We actually have stricter standards than Arowan or Whole Foods or Thrive Market. We don't accept products that contain refined sugars, dyes, gums or preservatives to sell in the marketplace. And that really just comes from our passion and background in the food world and system that we want to promote and see today. In such a direct from maker and producer to customer world. These products aren't sitting on warehouse shelves for two years. They don't need a ton of preservatives to extend shelf life. It is going direct.

So we feel like we're taking food to kind of back where it should and has come from. So we have drawn a pretty deep line in the sand about that. I think even since Whole Foods was acquired by Amazon, you're seeing the shift of even their wellness products. You're now seeing Advil et cetera on the shelves. Companies like Boron that are staple wellness homeopathic brands are being stripped because of that acquisition. So we are giving a home to brands and products that are even being shifted through the Whole Foods impact with Amazon.

Yeah. I feel like one of the big things that's so important for any marketplace and this leads me into my next point, is the trend that we're seeing towards Curation is curation is important. And when people have so much to choose from, they need to be able to come to a place to know what it is that they're getting. So not only are you being able to play on the whole idea of Curation through, we have got a vetting process for our brands and what people are going to be putting in their body when they shop through. On bubble goods, you make it easy for the customers to identify what that is. And then on the brand side, like you're saying, you make it really easy so there's no lift on their end to integrate into the back end. And I think we'll probably be seeing more plays like this in commerce. And I think in terms of trends in commerce, I think this is a massive one.

Right. Like brands started by saying, oh, e commerce, I can sell things online. What does that mean? It means I have to build my own website. It means I have to set up all my own fulfillment and I can do it on shopify and that's where I go sell goods. Whereas now we see not only commerce becoming more omnichannel in the sense that, okay, I'm selling on my storefront as well as in retail and retail doors, but also into other sort of curated marketplaces and different places like this. Right. For me to have a brand and be able to list on somewhere like bubble goods, that doesn't impact anything that I'm doing on Direct and anything that I'm doing in retail, it just means that you are another source of curated distribution that I can tap into and as a brand, that becomes really important. So, yeah, I'd love to hear your sort of thoughts on where you see things going in terms of Curation and how that factors into strategy for both.

Yeah, curation for us came from two spots, kind of like what I was speaking to earlier, a line in the sand around what we expect from the food brands that we want to push sales to, we want to push into quality. And then two prong, that's what consumers today want. They want a trusted source. They want to be able to shop somewhere that's like, oh yeah, everything here is good. It's not, I think, the curation of cute and cool packaging. I think there's enough of that out there and it can still be misleading. Just because Diet Coke rebrands doesn't mean we need more distribution points for Diet Coke or more people drinking Diet Coke. So we find it more interesting.

And also our customer finds it more interesting of what's the latest brand, who's the maker behind this product that I can support the whole kind of shop small movement. So we really try to bring that forward. And curation for us is all around quality and that's what we get behind. That's what our customer gets behind.

I think that reminds me, like, for example, this marketplace blowing up. I don't know how you pronounce it. Is it temu or yeah. So, like, for example, the quality of that customer is not the same level of quality of a customer from a marketplace like Bubblegoods, which is curated, aligned with your values and purposely seeking for companies that are aligned with their values. The LTV and the curation of that customer is likely to be way higher than something as transactional as a customer on Timu looking for the cheapest product possible, zero care for brand, compassion for values, et cetera.

By category. So I think speaking to our target customer and knowing what that person's really into, we could see our customer on Timu buying some fake bags because she doesn't or he doesn't really want to invest a lot in a seasonal Gucci bag, but really cares a lot about what they eat, what they ingest. And so they'll probably buy some fake Gucci loafers, but then they're going to spend their money on gluten free sourdough and fly by jing through bubble goods. But yeah, we're pretty night and day in terms of the marketplace spectrum, tibu and bubble goods, but complementary, I think, at the same time, in a weird.

Way.

Yeah, I'm definitely cheap in other areas and not cheap in other areas.

So I totally see that, especially in grocery. I think I am of the school of thought, which is a very realistic one, that very rarely in the grocery spectrum are you 100% of someone's purchase. We're not able to compete with Costco. We want to be supplementary to Costco and as big of a supplement as possible because the grocery landscape is so diverse and again, very complementary to each other. So go stock up on your. Paper towels or whatever from Costco. Save some money there. But then again, invest in some sourdough or non ALK beer that you're finding in bubble goods.

Let's talk about some of the brands on the marketplace. So, for example, Fly by Genius, one we had on the podcast very early in their days. They keep growing. I love their brand. Their dumplings are unbelievably good. So I would love to hear more about the brands, the more key brands that you guys work with that you've had a lot of success with and have probably seen grown grow with you guys.

Yeah, and you would probably be shocked. I'm always on the fence of what we share with some brands that you've never heard of that do crazy well with us. So, yeah, we have marquee brands like Fly by Jing. We have emerging really exciting non alcohol companies like Groovy out of Colorado. So they have non ALK IPAs. They have a Prosecco, very up and coming non alcoholic company. We have a larger brand called Talia Dinopoli. They actually make all of their pizzas.

They're new on the site Pizzas in Naples, Italy. Flash freeze them, ship them here, and then they distribute. They come in like container ships of pizza over, and then they're distributed here. Really amazing stuff. We actually currently today have a video going viral on TikTok about their pizza. So we're selling a ton of pizza today on the marketplace. And I think that's the beauty of the eagle eye view of being in the space so long that I now see is just what's happening in the space, what clicks, what doesn't, and all the different levers to kind of get there. We also recently have had a couple brands that were featured on Shark Tank go viral on TikTok.

Their episodes re aired, and so they're selling a ton on our site, often above their Amazon purchases, because that consumer is looking for the products that we're selling. And we have really great SEO just being a pure health and wellness marketplace. And so we're driving a ton of success. So a great company.

So it's your TikTok.

What about.

Pizza? And so how do they find them through your marketplace? If it's the pizza's TikTok, is it your space?

I'm sorry.

Bubblegoods TikTok posted about the pizza.

Yeah, okay.

Got it. I think this is a really important point because you guys are nonstop working like you actually are about it in terms of finding the distribution for these brands. A lot of marketplaces might position themselves out there. They make you go through all the hoops and loops, and then once you get listed, they're like, well, now you got to bring all your people. You got to tell everyone about it. But you guys seriously invested in SEO. You're pushing for your brands on TikTok. And that is where distribution is everything, and you guys are actually where sales.

Are our sales and success. And we're full stop on pushing these brands and products. Like, everything that comes through our vetting process, we get behind. It tastes amazing. It has food, safety information and great founders, like all the things. So, yeah, we fully get behind the brands that are on the marketplace. It's not, I think, a volume. We're more quantity over sorry, quality over quantity.

Again, the opposite of teaming, I would say. But, yeah, we get behind big time. The brands.

I love that for Marketplaces, too. And that was something that we did at Seated as well. Ramon we would have the restaurants that wanted to sign up with us, and the ones that signed up with, we promoted the hell out of. We had our diners, they would go, and we could send them a whole bunch of volume. And I think that's the benefit, because there's endless brands, right? And the brands that choose to align with bubble goods, like Jessica and the team are going to be out pumping, promoting, creating TikToks, sending email blasts, like, doing all of this stuff, and then those brands are able to benefit. Actually, it's funny right now, I was just texting my friend, she runs a Greek Honey brand. They're like, one of the biggest sellers in Erwan. And I just texted her, Bubblegoods.

I was like, hey, there we go, Joy. I was like, I'm on with Jessica right now. Would you list? And she's like, this is super cool. Yeah, get me on. So clearly, the value prop for the brands, I can definitely see, but for your side as well, it's great because that's the value you're able to find. Right? A lot of brand operators are working so, so hard to get into doors to find distribution. And it's so hard, like, okay, I have to meet with the buyer. I have to lock down Airwan.

Okay, I have to drive all the way up to the Hamptons and meet this cool market and meet the buyer there and send them the product. So I think being able to it's so old school, and having a system where you can just plug in digitally and be able to do that is really cool.

Make amazing products. We're going to drive sales, and in the future, if we want to add some fulfillment services or Copacking, we just want to support in all ways. But it really kind of, for us is the magic is in the mix of everyone bringing their own kind of unique spin. But, yeah, I mean, we're not messing around. Everyone at Bubble on this founding team is the best at what they do. So our CTO was CTO, actually at Daily Harvest and came over. We both kind of have built systems and backends for again, we did it for one massive company. Now we're doing it for thousands on this platform and bringing those sales and even speaking to TikTok, we wanted to have a pretty solid strategy.

We're like, all right, content is king right now. Queen content is queen. And how can we be the best at our content? To drive sales is the goal, not necessarily educate. We want to drive sales. So we found amazing young talent named Megan who is all over our channels now. And she had her own gaming company and built her following to over a quarter million followers, sold a ton of her own game, wanted to work for another company. So we poached her right up and now she's driving sales. Like the pizza example going viral today and now we're selling a bunch of pizza.

So we really seek out for our team the best of the best so that we can provide that service to everyone on the platform.

So Jessica, I have a question just following up here because now we can talk about your vetting process. We can talk about a brand that we know really well. So if you Google right now, riza Honey R-I-Z-A Honey, I want you to go through and be like, okay, is this a brand that we could add to our site and how does it fit in? Just walk me through live right now what a vetting process would look like.

So right away when I google breeza, honey, R-I-Z-A-I don't see any shopping banner. So this person is not in Google merchant center. So great. We put products right away in our Google Merchant Center feed for shopping. So they upon listing would pop right in there. So I'm going to her site or his site or their site, providing small scale farmers and artisans. Oh, these are beautiful Honey products. This would be perfect.

Just going to see that they're on Shopify, which they are. Great. So page source. Yeah, they would plug into our Shopify app and they would be up and selling within a week as soon as they're approved in our process, we have a really fast turnaround process. We get together once a week in office and we taste test all the new brands hitting the site and then they go through kind of more formal we get food safety information on file and all the more formal documentation and then again, they can be up and selling within the week. So this would be a perfect fit.

Well, I'll tell Joy right now and we'll get them right on bubble. So that's really fun. I guess my next question was going to be on the growth and the content and all the stuff that you do. Because like we had said before, it's really important that obviously you're bringing on brands and then you're working as hard as you can. You get all the supply and then you're working on scaling demand, right? And you've got a lot of tools to work with, you've got a lot of content, you've got a lot of stories to tell. So in terms of demand, gen, what does it look like what does growth look like on your end? How do you guys think about it and how do you grow the shopping?

Yeah, good question. Well, top of mind is what's great is when we drive people in our basket sizes, we have about average five units per purchase. So when we're driving customers, they're not just buying one thing, they're buying a full basket of different products that they like. Typically on their first purchase products, two, four sips kind of every other purchase people are stocking up. So we have a very discover and stock up cadence with our customers. Subsequent orders after that first purchase are actually close to triple A first purchase with us. So we love our repeat customers. Our repeat customers are very dedicated.

Top of mind is getting people in the door and we know they shop. We have pretty high conversion, it's great. But getting people in, we do a lot to make it as cheap as possible to get people in the door. So what's nice about having a marketplace with thousands of SKU listings is that those are all yellow brick roads into the oz of bubble. So all of our SKU pages are SEO optimized. We have a lot of stuff hidden in there. We are going hard with everything working for that kind of co op common goal and driving in. So all the products that list for us are working for us.

We have no product that's kind of dead weight floating on our boat. So we have all those pages working for us and kind of coded, which is nice. Like I mentioned earlier, all products that hit the platform pop into Google Merchant Center. They're on our Instagram, we're on all social media platforms for product feeds driving in and then we do a lot with the brands themselves and their audiences. So again, we just leverage everything that's going on and everyone's communities and just like how can we get the most bang for our buck each time? A product or brand is part of our ecosystem and it drives a ton of really what's nice is like cheap and low cost demand and then we're able again to have more budget for dedicated campaigns and ads that we're running behind what we do.

You're also investing in it looks. I was just looking through the website and I'm curious, do you invest into the content of some of these brands? Like if you want your content to be uniform on bubble goods and the brand might not have the content that meets the quality bar. Are you shooting content for the brands or do the brands have to submit their? Own content under certain they generally have.

To submit under criteria and that's part of our photo approval process with their we do require, for example, a product on a white background because we do a good amount of a B testing with like lifestyle versus product on a white background with different things that we're running. So we like the optionality we do have guides and then we have Canva templates. We have a ton in the system so that when brands launch with us, we have a co branded Canva template that they can pop their logo and product into and post to social media right away when they go live. Same thing with product photography. So we've set it up to be really easy for people to use third party tools and abide by our standards and again, that really nice system that we see success with. As brands come into the flow, I will say things that are in our gift SKUs we have photographed in house that's the one area that I think falls the most short is like our gifting. But that's it. Yeah.

One question that I have is, do you see a future in which because I think one point that you made was anytime a customer makes a purchase, now they're like a customer of bubble goods and they can expand. So you can land and kind of expand and then they can make their next purchase and find more different snacks and everything that they love. But my question would be, knowing that are you able to, in the future now, run campaigns with brands where maybe they could say, we'll front the cost of whatever of that first purchase, and through that, you're able to list them in different parts of the marketplace. And then you create this synergistic flywheel where brands are really able to promote and get their product in front of people in a more meaningful yeah.

That's, I think, a natural evolution. We get that question all the time. Currently our only source of revenue is commission on sales as a marketplace. So when a brand makes a sale, we make a sale as we build a more systematic approach to acquisition and also if a brand were to opt into something like that, we really want to make sure that they're going to see success or like a certain rate of return when opting into something like that. And again, we take the brand relationships really seriously. So honestly, their inventory and relationship up with us is more valuable than currently like a campaign they'd run with us. And also most brands are super emerging. They don't have a big budget to opt into some programming like that.

As we scale though, we definitely plan to have some options for native advertising, sponsored placement, sponsored search, once we have a bit more of a system, I think that's asked for a lot. We also have a lot of brands asking for data and insights because we are a pretty go to launch platform for a lot of these emerging brands. They want those data and insights and they want to be able to take that to a Whole Foods buyer or an Arowan buyer. We have a lot of brands that start with us before they're even going to an arrow on meeting. So data and insight packages like being able to kind of pay for that on a monthly basis. Fulfillment services are definitely the top three most requested additional services other than sales that we get from brands.

That makes total sense. So I ran a UGC content marketplace and my friends would ask me for discounts, and I'm like, it's a marketplace. I cannot give you a discount. And because you're my friend, it should be the opposite. I need the margin. If our creators aren't selling content, we're not making money. So marketplaces are tough when it comes to liquidity, and liquidity is the bloodline of marketplaces.

But the good news is you don't have to carry the inventory, which is also nice.

That's true, yes.

So what was my last question going to be? I think it was going to be around. Oh, yeah. I was just going to say on the promotional side of things, as you guys build up that shopper side of things, it really is invaluable to a brand to be able to be like if you guys are sending out the email marketing blast and you're like, hey, go check out this brand, that is a whole bunch of impressions to a really valuable audience. That there are certain brands might be like, oh, I don't want to do this. It's another marketplace. It's something that I have to worry about. But when it comes to promotion, that kind of stuff to the right buyer at the right time is really invaluable and really moves the needle. And as that marketplace flywheel, grows, we've done this.

Ramon and I sell software now, and we launched our software on a marketplace that is basically the equivalent of bubble goods, but for SaaS, and we generated hundreds of thousands of dollars in months just because they sent a couple of emails and push it out to their community. So as these things build on top of itself, they really become massive demand jet engines.

And I'm actually curious on that, jessica, in order to build the liquidity for a brand to that extent, you really need to earn the trust from the people that are buying from you in your newsletter, et cetera. That's everything, right? The moment that trust is lost, doesn't matter if there's a million people on the email list, if they don't convert. So what is bubblegoods doing? Or what is the recipe for you to continue to earn the trust? I guess this is the consumer police here asking this question. I was just curious, what makes the bubble goods consumer love bubble goods?

Yeah, I think our high level of standards and maintaining those standards. So as we scale and grow, not accepting anything less at any time. I remember being in some investor pitches and they were like, oh, wouldn't it be cool, oh, young, sell a bunch of healthy food. Wouldn't it be cool if you sold the healthy product and then also the not healthy product. So like the healthy non Coke and then Coca Cola. I'm like, yeah, no, customers don't want that. There's again enough places to buy Coca Cola, gopuff instacart any bodega or like, convenience store on any corner. Not a lot of places to buy this product that our consumers want.

So I think having and upholding really high standards anytime and always is really important for us and then just like backing that up over time. So really, I think promoting communicating our brand values and what's going on behind the scenes, we found that to be really important, not only on a content front that does well, that we see consumers like and post and shares like. If we show what we're doing with our team and all the standards and more of that behind the scenes to bring some of that transparency forward. And then I think just working with amazing brand partners over time. So we want to be working with the best of the best, sell the best of the best. So doing our homework around who's selling with us and sharing their stories, I think build a lot of that trust and communication with customers within the greater kind of bubble goods ecosystem.

Yeah, I think you have a really cool marketplace. I think especially the stories of the brands that you work with are very interesting and have so much depth each brand does within the marketplace. And so you have a lot of content to work with and just relaying those stories. It's very ripe for TikTok, I think, about content because I've built there for so long. So it must be a fun job for you to just be proud of the stories of your own brands and share that story.

Yeah, it's something we're looking to do more of. We find that customers are actually first and we're most interested in what products these things can do for them. So shopping by function, their lifestyle. So am I vegan? Do I want some stress AIDS? I'm going to search for products that have adaptogens in them. And then after lifestyle and function actually comes brand story. But it's not actually first what we found, but it is important of that, again, full story and full picture to bring color. And I think that ultimate conversion in for that sale of a brand. So we are investing over the next six months pretty heavily in that brand story element.

But again, keeping function and lifestyle as a primary value for, again, driving sales because that's what brands need most. They don't need necessarily better branding, they don't always need better fulfillment options. They need sales. They can figure out fulfillment, they can always upgrade their branding and packaging. But yeah, we're investing pretty heavily in our brand, landing pages and having brands collaborate with each other a bit more and fun stuff like that.

Awesome. Well, we're excited to see you guys keep growing. I think it's definitely something that's super needed, especially in the landscape I described, of going into the shopping market and being like, whoa, what are all these brand new products? And I feel like there's more and more every day. So really excited with what you guys are building. And as we wrap up here, Jessica, where can our listeners connect with you personally and where can they find out more about Bubblegoods?

Yep, you can find Bubblegoods at Bubblegoods on different social media platforms. Definitely on LinkedIn, we have a great brand and seller community, so if you're on the kind of B, two B side of things, find us on LinkedIn and Bubblegoods.com. And then if you're interested in making an account and selling with us, you can visit sell Bubblegoods.com to create an account and get moving. You can find me personally. I'm at Jess Young Food on social media platforms, also LinkedIn, and my email is jessica@bubblegoods.com so ban me.

All right, well, thanks so much for coming on today, and we look forward to seeing you guys continue to grow.

Thank you, Jessica.

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