Chapter 2: progress but not perfection, some mueslings on granola, a chocolate milk feeding frenzy

I was joking with my friend Mia the other day about creating a presentation that is some words combined with a string of Succession GIFs. And I thought to myself - challenge accepted. So…here. we. go.

😑 An update on the factory sample

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I received pictures of the factory sample from the contract manufacturer last week. I was excited to open the attachments in the email, but when when I saw the pictures my first thought was…oh yikes.

I’ve worked on many innovation projects over the course of my career and not a single project has gone according to schedule. There are almost always multiple issues at the prototyping phase. So I shouldn’t have been surprised to have some unexpected delays, but was nonetheless disappointed that this is pretty far from being right and that I wouldn’t have the sample before Christmas to test out over the holiday break.

There are some easily recognizable issues and some more minor errors that aren’t noticeable unless you’ve memorized the product specs:

• the first and most visible issue is that the backpack is too rigid, particularly the top flap. The design is meant to have softer edges.

• wrong color material - should be black instead of gray

• backpack straps appear to be different lengths

• interior pockets are not made from the specified mesh material

• missing the changing pad and three organizational pouches

• missing magnetic closures on the top flap

Now I wait while the manufacturer goes back and fixes the errors and adjusts the design based on the tech pack specs. In the meantime, I’ll be working on:

Color & Finishes

Despite the issues, one very useful takeaway I got from the factory sample pictures is that I need to spend more time thinking about the color palette. Up until now, I’ve been hyper focused on the design and making sure that the product is extremely functional and meets my original design brief. But now that I’ve seen the first full fledged sample, I realized that the product needs more life and more color. A single color with no accent tones feels too cold, almost corporate. I’m going to use the Huhu brand color palette (see below) as a starting point. I think there could be ways to incorporate hues of purple, cream and green to make the product feel more fun and lively. If you have thoughts on color, I would love to hear your feedback!

Waistpack prototype

I started working on a new product prototype two months ago. It’s a waistpack for parents who don’t want to carry a bulky backpack and for times when you only need to carry a few essentials. So far I’m very excited about it. I will share more details and pictures in my next post!

👨‍🍳 It was all an Instagram Fever Dream: Tom’s Perfect 10 Granola

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This is about Tom Bannister’s Granola business, but it all starts with Eva Chen. For those who don’t know Eva, she is a woman made from/for the internet age. She got her start as Editor-in-Chief of Lucky Magazine. (Remember Lucky? It was a print magazine purely about shopping.) She is one of the first fashion editors I can think of who actively posted content and built an audience on social media. She had a long-running series of IG posts featuring pictures of her designer shoes and bags with a piece of fruit that went viral. I personally liked her because it was exciting to see a young Asian person in a senior role in the fashion editorial world. After Lucky, she joined Instagram as the Director of Fashion Partnerships, had 3 kids, writes children’s books and has 2 million and counting followers on IG.

Eva Chen’s content feels relatable. It’s an absurd sentence to write given that her IG feed is mostly pictures of her in full hair and make-up wearing designer dresses attending events like the Met Gala. She talks about texting with Gigi Hadid. She interviewed Barack Obama. But she also talks about internet trolls, the tragedy that is pumping at work, dealing with kids who refuse to go to bed and wake at 5 in the morning. I love how messy her house looks - there are toys all over the floor and her kids are always in the background of her videos bouncing off the walls.

dramatic re-enactment of their child Tao at bedtime.

And then there’s her husband Tom. He is the centerpiece of the “Everyday Eva Chen” persona. He’s the Dan Humphrey to Eva Chen’s Serena van der Woodsen. In her IG Stories, he’s usually wearing baggy sweatpants and reading a thick hardcover book. He almost never attends red carpet events with Eva.

He generally seems befuddled and bemused by her internet fame. Whenever she asks Tom questions on her IG Stories, he speaks in short sentences with a solemn and deadpan voice. His facial expression often reads as “Please stop.”

Tom was also often seen eating a bowl of granola. At some point, enough of Eva’s followers asked about Tom’s granola preferences that she started posting a series of videos where he reviewed different brands of granola. She called them “Tom Talks”. And then he became a granola influencer. Brands sent him free samples and he would rate their taste and quality on a scale of 1 to 10. AND THEN, he started making his own granola! Over the course of a year or so, Eva’s followers watched Tom make batch after batch of granola. Testing different types of dried fruit, nuts, oats and other toppings and waxing poetic about the intricate details and ratios that go into making the perfect granola blend.

At some point, Eva Chen’s posts dropped off my algorithm and I forgot about Tom’s granola making hobby. And then recently I saw a post with her and Tom backstage at a morning show wearing cute matching H&B aprons promoting his granola business. I couldn’t believe it. Naturally the next thing I did was frantically google ‘Eva Chen Tom Granola’ and found his website. A few days later NYMag published an articled titled Oat Couture - Why were 17,000 People on a Waitlist for Chic Granola?

I asked people on IG whether anyone had tried Tom’s Granola. Reviews were mixed. 25% positive reviews and 75% negative reviews. (Based on a sample size of 4, so very far from being statistically significant.)

Bon Appetit’s review was more positive.

“Textural perfection. When I tore open a pocket and shoved a handful in my mouth, I immediately understood all the hype.”

A big part of Tom’s Perfect 10 Granola success, without a doubt, has been the exposure through Eva Chen’s IG account and her connections in the media and celebrity worlds. So, my takeaway is that if you want your business to take off like a rocket ship, marry Eva Chen. (Or as my husband Amar asked “if you have a million followers on Instagram, does it mean you have permission to do whatever the f*ck you want?”) But no really, his early success can’t be attributed solely to massive reach through her account. There are plenty of celebrity-driven brands that do not take off. Read: Addison Rae’s make-up line. Tom’s Granola clearly came from a place of genuine passion and curiosity. Eva’s followers picked up on his interest and became a part of his process.

Tom’s story also reminded me that a brand does not need to look perfectly polished and have the next ten steps figured out to resonate with consumers. It’s clear that Tom is not executing a 5 year business plan to become the next Crunchy Breakfast Foods King. He is using Substack as his email service provider. While it’s a great writing tool, it’s definitely not designed to be the ESP for an e-commerce business. His welcome email after you subscribe is the default template that Substack provides. Although on second thought - maybe that’s intentional. It’s very on brand with his ‘what is this internet thing, IDGAF’ vibe. His Instagram account is not filled with glossy flat lays and professionally edited images from a studio shoot. I’m pretty sure Tom wrote his own press release. This is the email address listed at the bottom of the press release. If I received an email from this address I would immediately report it as spam.

The concept of ‘Community’ is something that is much discussed and fretted over by Marketers. I can think of very few examples off the top of my head of brands that are doing a good job of cultivating community. Tom’s Perfect 10 Granola is a great case study of a product that is community driven: feedback informed the launch, customer feedback continues to be a cornerstone of product innovation, the content and communication is, as Bon Appetit put it, “interactive in a way that makes it seem like you’re creating the granola alongside Bannister, his family, and their community of die-hard granola stans.”

🍽️ True Life: I’m a volunteer school lunch lady

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I volunteer a couple of times a month as a Lunch Operations Associate at my daughter’s elementary school. My primary roles and responsibilities include: implementation of the optimal tablescape, fielding Q&As about the availability of chocolate milk, replenishment of fruit inventory, management of waste disposal. It is the most fun and most intense 90 minutes of my week. The joyful and manic energy after a kid has had two orange juices, the nervousness I feel when a kid is quietly staring at me while I try to pry the plastic film off of his hot lunch, but it seems to be attached with super glue, so I have to stab his meal with a spork.

My friend Sarah wrote an excellent post about the socioeconomic implications of school lunch and California’s recent legislation that funds free breakfast and lunch for all public school students. When Aliya started Kindergarten, I was happy to learn that free lunch was automatically provided for all students. No paperwork or special lunch meal tickets required. Based on my rough estimation, ~85% of her classmates eat school lunch. As Sarah notes in her post, it does feel like a great equalizer. There is no stigma of eating free food that school provides. Almost everyone eats the same thing; there’s no eyeing of each other’s lunch boxes or whispers about who is eating what. On a practical level I was thrilled to not have to wake up early to pack lunch. Also, have you truly experienced elementary school if you haven’t eaten lukewarm sloppy joes? The taste of my 90s era school cheese pizza will forever be seared into my brain.

On a recent a Thursday, I set up the meal for that day in neat rows. Channeling the philosophy of @kids.eat.in.color IG account, I arranged the food in a way to make it look fun and inviting:

• entrees: chicken parmesan with pasta, mac and cheese and veggie nuggets, veggie burger

• veggies: cherry tomatoes, cucumber slices, celery sticks, baby carrots

• fruit: pineapple chunks, oranges, sliced apples

• drinks: chocolate milk, 2% milk, orange juice

At 10:45 AM, the doors to the cafeteria open and the kids stream in. For the next 20 minutes it is moderately controlled chaos. Plastic wrappers flying in the air, noodles are flung on the floor, kids asking for more chocolate milk, me politely declining the requests for chocolate milk refills.

What I want to say when another kid asks me for more chocolate milk.

Some key observations after watching 80 Kindergarteners eat lunch for the past few months:

1. I know I’ve mentioned chocolate milk a couple of times already, but holy crap, kids really like chocolate milk.

2. Chocolate milk and orange juice are a lethal combination. If you like screaming and tantrums, then by all means, serve a choco-OJ mocktail.

3. A spork is the unsung hero of school lunch. It is functional and timeless.

And to end on a PSA: if you have kids in public school and they are looking for parent volunteers and you’ve got some extra time - do it. Schools are under-resourced, particularly right now.

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Happy Holidays! I hope you are able to celebrate, relax and spend time with family and friends, despite Omicron strutting in and trying to act like this:

I will be baking cookies for Santa, bingeing the new season of Emily in Paris and hopefully finally get around to reading the book I’ve been trying to start for the past six months.