Feel Thankful: democratizing consumer products for content creators

Food for Thought

We increasingly don't trust individuals, we trust institutions. That's why I'm convinced that influencers will lead the next multi-million dollar consumer-facing brands. This will most likely be true across companies offering both products and services, but it is especially true in the Consumer Packaged Goods industry. Why? Because consumer products today are, in a sense, commoditized. I remember when I was growing up listening to the story of Coca-Cola's formula being stored safely in a top-secret location… Today, however, the landscape has evolved to a point where better-for-you consumer products have gone from a niche to a majority demand. Production-wise, this translates to using fewer ingredients in product formulations, which has driven a lot of successful brands to lead with a story, instead of a product.

It's not about the ingredients you choose, but rather why you chose those ingredients.

In this new attention economy, where storytelling and community building are competitive moats, content creators are best positioned to disrupt our food industry, which is essentially controlled by 10 companies.

New ‘CPG’ Era — ‘Community Packaged Goods’

The most compelling companies in this new CPG era will be the ones enabling the trend of influencer brands. In addition to the Shopify's and Stripe's, someone will have to provide the formulation, manufacturing, co-packing, warehousing, assembly, and fulfillment for creator products… and that's where Feel Thankful came in. With only a few clicks, creators where able to launch their own consumer products for free. At its core, two things made Feel Thankful unique:

Free to Launch. When Jeff Bezos was introducing AWS, he famously wrote that “even well-meaning gatekeepers slow innovation.” Unfortunately, the supply chain in CPG is filled with an endless number of well-meaning gatekeepers. Think ingredient and packaging suppliers, contract manufacturers, and co-packers, all with high MOQs and long lead times. When we decided to make launching products free for creators, our goal was to create a meritocracy. One where, if you are successful at building a niche, specialized community, you have a chance at being successful at launching your own consumer product.
Community-first products. One of the biggest challenges we faced in the early days was deciding which creators to partner with. To mitigate this risk, we required all interested creators to involve their fans in the pre-launch phase by conducting a poll that asked them to vote on which product they should launch — think a bath bomb vs. bath salts. To vote, fans had to provide their email and, in a sense, this process helped the community feel a sense of ownership with the product. This was a win-win, as we collected tens of thousands of email pre-launch and gave creators full ownership of their email list. Interetsing fact, did you know that most YouTubers do not have an email list of their fans? Talk about platform risk!

To launch our Feel Thankful platform, we were fortunate to work with Rose, a YouTuber and OF creator with a passionate community. Together, we launched her own Chill Gummies, which were an immediate success among her fans.