Starbucks? Shmarbucks!

Can you tell us about a failure that you actually came to cherish because it transformed you and made you even better in a positive way?

So one story that comes to mind... We got our product into Starbucks, so nationwide.

That's a big deal.

A huge deal! A huge spike on the on the success track of Hint and shortly about 18 months after we got it into Starbucks we got a phone call from the new buyer saying that even though we had surpassed what they had suggested was kind of the success rate, they wanted to put higher margin items into the case and food into the case, and so they would be removing us from the case. Which was not a good day for me overall. And I really felt like it was, you know, again another -- talking about diversify and don't put all your eggs in one basket. I mean this was really kind of a big deal for me. And so after kind of absorbing exactly the hit of being removed from the case. I realized that Starbucks had exposed us to all of these consumers all over the U.S. and places that we would have never been in. I mean in South Dakota and Chicago all of these places we had really been focused on the coast until Starbucks. And I thought, "I have to figure out a way to ultimately tell these consumers and Starbucks that they can find us in some other way."

So about a week later I received a phone call from Amazon, and Amazon said, "We're launching a grocery business and we'd really like you to be a part of it!" And you know you never know where business opportunities are going to come from. The guy that actually called me from Amazon had worked with me years ago at time in my first job and said, "Somebody, a mutual friend, was telling me that you had started this company and I buy your product all the time in Starbucks." And I remember thinking, "should I tell that were no longer in Starbucks? or should I just kind of let this conversation go on for a while?" And he said, "Well, we're starting this grocery business on Amazon and we'd love to have you be a part of it and can I purchase some of your Hint?" And I said, "We have a lot of an overrun of these blackberry Hints so we'd really love it if you would start with that product." Because I had a lot in my warehouse that Starbucks was no longer gonna take. And so I always think back on anytime that there's a failure or something bad happens it will get better and the best you can hope for is that it happens sooner rather than later.