On this episode of Honest Ecommerce, we have Kelly Deen. Kelly is the Chief Commercial Officer/CMO at kencko, where she leads a world-class marketing team that is transforming the way people consume fruits and vegetables through smart, convenient, and sustainable products. We talk about embracing risks & landing major retail partnerships, stepping in during D2C challenges and growth, offering value-added services to engage customers, and so much more!
With over 10 years of experience in consumer marketing and digital transformation, Kelly Deen is passionate about creating and executing data-driven strategies that drive growth, loyalty, and innovation for fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) and entertainment brands.
As the Chief Commercial Officer/CMO at kencko, Kelly leads a world-class marketing team that is transforming the way people consume fruits and vegetables through smart, convenient, and sustainable products.
Since joining kencko in 2022, Kelly has been instrumental in expanding the company's presence into 16+ global markets, launching its first brand campaign, building a loyal and engaged customer base, and developing strategic partnerships with retailers and wholesalers.
Kelly has also leveraged my professional certifications in artificial intelligence (AI) and search engine optimization (SEO) to optimize our digital experience, marketing tech stack, and member experience team.
Kelly is motivated by kencko's mission to make healthy eating accessible and enjoyable for everyone, and proud to be part of a company that is making a positive impact on people's health and the environment.
In This Conversation We Discuss:
Resources:
If you’re enjoying the show, we’d love it if you left Honest Ecommerce a review on Apple PodcastsChase Clymer with Kelly Deen. It makes a huge impact on the success of the podcast, and we love reading every one of your reviews!
Kelly Deen
We didn't do everything right. We didn't do everything perfect. We're still not. It's a constant process of optimization and improvement.
Chase Clymer
Welcome to Honest Ecommerce, a podcast dedicated to cutting through the BS and finding actionable advice for online store owners. I'm your host, Chase Clymer. And I believe running a direct-to-consumer brand does not have to be complicated or a guessing game.
On this podcast, we interview founders and experts who are putting in the work and creating real results.
I also share my own insights from running our top Shopify consultancy, Electric Eye. We cut the fluff in favor of facts to help you grow your Ecommerce business.
Let's get on with the show.
Hey everybody, welcome back to another episode of Honest Ecommerce. I'm your host, Chase Clymer.
And today, I'm welcoming to the show Kelly Deen. She is the Chief Commercial Officer and CMO at kencko where she leads a world-class marketing team that is transforming the way people consume fruits and vegetables through smart, convenient and sustainable products.
Kelly, welcome to the show.
Kelly Deen
Thank you so much, Chase. Awesome to be here.
Chase Clymer
Alrighty. So what are the products you guys are selling over there at kencko if I don't know what that is?
Kelly Deen
Sure. Sure. Sure. Sure. And I loved the elaborate and very well-written description there. Let's see if I can do it justice.
In short, we're about helping people get more fruits and veggies into their diet and making that as easy and simple and convenient and affordable as possible.
We started doing that through instant smoothies. So all freeze dried technology. So we're not doing frozen things. We're not doing fresh produce. The way that we do fruits and veggies fast is through freeze drying technology in our products.
So the original product line was instant smoothies of which you get two and a half servings of fruits and vegetables in one single smoothing. And then we branched out from there.
So additional lines of smoothie extensions or other types of beverages like iced lattes that include a serving of fruit and veg into fruit snacks, and now a whole host of new products launching like instant oatmeal and other goodies.
Chase Clymer
Absolutely.
Now for the folks listening, these products are single serve. You open them up, they're powdered and I'm assuming you just pour them in water and shake and have a delicious... Most products are kind of that.
Kelly Deen
Pour, shake, go. That's how instant beverages work. Totally your preference if you're into mixing things with water or into some kind of milk or plant milk. That's a total personal preference situation. I definitely have my own.
But that's one of the fun parts about the product is you actually get a really different experience based on what you shake it with. But yes, that's part of the convenience factor that I was talking about.
So anybody can go to the grocery store and buy a whole bunch of awesome, beautiful, fresh produce and make themselves go get a blender that you then later have to clean, which was one of my least favorite parts, and make themselves a delicious, nutritious smoothie.
We're trying to make that a whole lot more simple and also reduce the chances that that bunch of bananas is going to go rotten in a week when you actually realize you didn't have time to make the smoothie. And instead, probably grab something less healthy in the meantime too because you didn't have time either. So convenience is a big, big part.
And you mentioned like the single serving sachets that have always been a key part of I think how we're a little bit different than others, not giant tubs either in terms of this. We want things to be portable. We want people to feel like they can just throw it in their gym bag or whatever they want and get the nutrition they need on the go.
Chase Clymer
Absolutely.
I mean, this is a perfect segue into... I know the founder's story, but I need you to tell it and share it for the listeners so they can understand what this is trying to solve globally.
Kelly Deen
Yeah, absolutely. So it definitely started as super personal: a guy solving a problem for himself. So Tomás Froes, who's our CEO and founder, actually lives in Portugal, but has always been a big entrepreneur too. So we'll get to that.
He’s a super healthy guy, super active guy, and a young guy. But like a lot of people, started having gastrointestinal issues, went to his doctor and was told, ‘Here's some prescription. Stomach medication. You're going to be on it for the rest of your life. Here you go,’ and that was not a solution that he wanted to hear.
He wanted to explore some other ways that maybe he could solve this acute gastritis, which is what he was dealing with. Did some research. He was really familiar with the China study, which is kind of like the ultimate study on nutrition. And basically from there, that's what prompted him to go explore a plant-based diet.
I'm going to side note here, I'm not a vegetarian and kencko is not just for vegetarians, but his story began with trying to introduce more fruits and vegetables into his diet, and more plant-based products into his diet to improve his acute gastritis. And it did. It did. It went away. Completely gone. No more medication needed. No magic pill, no magic supplement, we're just food. Eating better food.
So this is probably not super shocking to most people. When you take the time to really put the energy into thinking about what you eat. But that's the problem though, right? So I think when he started looking like, ‘Okay, this is a really good solution for me. Why doesn't everybody do this?’
Well, because it's not convenient. It's expensive. People are busy. There's a whole lot of reasons why it's actually really hard. We talk about this a lot. It's really hard to be healthy. And it's really annoying when companies try to shame you into thinking that you're not doing everything you should be doing to be healthy. It's hard to be healthy.
We're busy. Things are expensive. A lot of healthy foods are really, really pricey and take a lot of prep, a lot of work. The packaged food industry has done a great job of making sure that a lot of what's in our grocery stores is cheap and easy for you to make, not necessarily focused on your health. So that's the problem he started to look to solve. Nine out of 10 Americans are not getting their five servings of fruits and vegetables a day.
“I can see what this has done for my life. How can I translate this idea of doing instant, using freeze-dried technology, which retains all of the nutrition, retains all of the great things you need in fruits and veggies without them spoiling. How can I bring this to the rest of the world? They don't have to be dealing with acute gastritis, but everybody needs more fruits and veg, so how can I take this and translate that?” And that's where kencko was born.
And then I think because he had such an entrepreneurial mindset, he really knew the US was probably the place to start and try to build a business. We're really a US-focused company that is based in Portugal.
Chase Clymer
That's amazing.
Now, what year did the MVP launch here in the States?
Kelly Deen
Okay. So probably about five years ago or so. And I'm going to skip over probably the initial R&D parts where he was kind of kickstarting and bringing in groups of people to R&D and test various products.
So let's say about 5 years ago or so, which coupled nicely with a pandemic and people looking for more D2C types or direct-to-consumer types of solutions and more healthy solutions and things like that. So it was about that time.
And yeah, the company was purely D2C and really focused with these instant smoothies that I mentioned.
Chase Clymer
Absolutely. I can only...I know what problem this solves because making juicing and being healthy ruins my kitchen whenever I actually sit down to do it. So I think it's an exciting product.
Now, let's fast forward a little bit to when you actually joined the team. So that was a little bit later. I guess I maybe didn't clarify that too well to the audience. So you joined the team, I believe it was 2020?
Kelly Deen
A little bit later than that, actually. It was just about just a couple of years ago, just about two and a half years ago or so. And right at the, I'd say kind of like the height of the company's D2C efforts, but also the height of all the challenges that pure D2C companies were starting to face when their whole business is built off the back of performance marketing and meta, right?
And so right around that time is when I came on board and met Tomás and decided to dive into this venture.
Chase Clymer
Can you, as openly as you can, explain in a little bit more detail what the pitfalls of performance marketing as your main growth driver would be for a startup?
Kelly Deen
Oh well, first, it's incredibly expensive. There was a time when it was not. There was a time when it was really efficient. It was really...
Chase Clymer
Let's just stop there. That time does not exist anymore. It's gone. It's over. Back to you, Kelly.
Kelly Deen
Okay. Got it. So let's... We're here now in 2024. The pitfalls. The pitfalls are that you are extremely dependent on another service, another company to succeed because you’re…What are we talking about? I'm talking about Meta. Meta is who it is.
And when things change in their system, in their environment, they have outages, they have glitches, they have whatever, your business is impacted completely. You're completely exposed when it comes to that.
Now, we have a subscription business, subscription certainly helps. Especially if you've got a great product and you're building a loyal customer base and all of that, but you need to keep the growth engine going. And when you're 100% indexed or overly indexed in one platform as the source of your acquisition, that's a big risk.
Chase Clymer
Absolutely.
I know that by interviewing founders on this show, and I've probably done 200 plus unique interviews with founders. It's getting more common that they find another channel first before they explore performance marketing. Because just how cost-prohibited that channel is to really break in scale?
Kelly Deen
Completely. I don't think we're there yet, but I actually really like where TikTok is going, where content is going, where... I hate the word influencer marketing. Let's call it community-based engagement. Everybody thinks they're an influencer these days, which is awesome in a way, I love that. We love sending out products for people to be influencers.
But I mean, I like anything that's going to eventually mature and help broaden the advertising space a bit away from meta, not just for ourselves, but for everybody.
But yeah, I mean, it's extremely expensive, right? And I think some brands get really, really lucky and an influencer picks up on them right away and that's how they get born out of virality and awesomeness. Some people have celebrity investors that get involved and that becomes their kickoff point. Some people are super grassroots driven and start through craft fairs.
I was listening to some of your past podcasts. It was really, really...
Chase Clymer
Oh, that's like a guaranteed way to do it. If you just put in the work and just keep showing up where your customers are.
Kelly Deen
Yeah. And you have a great product, right? Absolutely.
So in a way, I think we're lucky. We're lucky that we got our start in D2C before the platform got insanely challenging and insanely expensive. Learned a lot about our products, learned a lot about what people want. And then we're able to then parlay that into an omnichannel approach.
Chase Clymer
Awesome.
Kelly Deen
It could be really hard to be starting off and trying to just grow off meta now.
Chase Clymer
Hey, Shopify store owners. Have you ever wondered if your store is leaving money on the table? Imagine increasing sales without spending more money on ads. Sounds too good to be true. Well, it's not.
I'd like to introduce you to StoreTester. StoreTester is a done-for-you conversion rate optimization service for Shopify merchants.
Could your store benefit from increased conversion rates, higher average order values, and improved revenue per visitor? StoreTester could be the perfect partner for you. From ideation to implementation, this full service A-B testing service takes all of the guesswork out of improving Shopify stores.
Stortester does all the work for you while offering month-to-month transparent fixed pricing. It gets even better. They believe in their service so much they're offering the first test for free for qualified merchants.
Let me repeat, the first test is free for qualified merchants. Curious to see if you qualify for a free test? Reach out today. Visit stortester.com to schedule an intro call.
That's www.S-T-O-R-E-T-E-S-T-E-R.com. Schedule an intro call today to see if you qualify for a free test.
Hey everybody, today's podcast is brought to you by Intelligems, the ultimate profit optimization tool for Shopify merchants. I'm telling you this, obviously, you know I own an agency. We use Intelligems when we're running split testing and CRO stuff for all of our clients.
Are you looking to maximize your profits? IntelliGems offers data-driven solutions to optimize your content, prices, discounts, and shipping rates. Join over 500 happy clients who have seen significant improvements.
With Intelligems, you gain control over your Ecommerce economics, boosting your profit per visitor by an astonishing 36%.
But that's not all. Intelligems users report a 54.62% increase in revenue per visitor and a remarkable rise in conversion rates.
How does Intelligems do it? Through a suite of tools that allows you to A-B test everything on your Shopify store, from landing pages to product prices and shipping rates.
Imagine testing new layouts, offers, even a new Shopify theme with ease.
We're testing a new landing page for our client on a new theme versus an old landing page on their old theme right now.
Intelligems empowers you to find the perfect price point for your products and optimize your shipping strategy.
But there's more. Boost your average order value with customized campaign offers and discover if your customers prefer free shipping or a lower list price.
With over $100 million in incremental profit generated, billion transactions ran through their software. They have over 400 million shoppers that have gone through their tests.
Intelligems is not a tool. It's a game changer for your business.
Are you ready to transform your Shopify store's profitability? Book a demo today at intelligems.io. Empower your brand to reach new heights.
Again, that's intelligems.io. Intelligems, giving superpowers to your customer acquisition, retention, and overall profitability.
Chase Clymer
It's very difficult. That's just the simple word.
And then here's a word of advice to anyone out there where meta is their go-to-market strategy: unless you yourself are a paid marketing genius, whoever is flirting with you to win that business, they better show you a case study where they have broken a brand before. And I'm saying taking them from zero to a million or plus through paid ads. If they can't show you that case study, do not work with them.
Kelly Deen
And if they don't also tell you what it's going to cost you to do that because let's be honest now. This is very timely because I've been talking about this today. We're always thinking, even though we're in retail now, we're always thinking about how to bolster and grow our D2C business.
And yes, you need to be a performance marketing genius. You also need to be a creative…
Chase Clymer
Machine.
Kelly Deen
Machine. Machine, right? You've got to have those tools in place to be generating not five or ten or a few dozen iterations of creative a month, but 100. If you really want to give it a shot. And you need to be realistic about what that's going to cost.
And if you don't... Just like you said, if a partner is coming to you and can't show you how they're going to do it through their performance skills and also through creative, then they're probably selling you snake oil.
Chase Clymer
Yeah. And I don't want to flirt around the numbers here. It's expensive. And I would say for a net new product, it really depends on your category and how viral you can go and influence. It depends. It's always the answer.
But I wouldn't be shocked if someone told you it's going to cost you half a million dollars to make a million dollars.
Kelly Deen
Oh, for sure. Absolutely. That's a given for sure.
And for most brands, there's a lucky few out there but for most of them, it's a build, right? It's a process. It's a build. It takes time. And even if the bulk of your sales are coming from one platform, you should never lose focus on trying to diversify and look for additional ways to build that audience.
Chase Clymer
Absolutely. We went off on a very fun tangent there about meta being scary.
But let's go back. Alright. You were hired at kencko. What were you brought on? What were some of the projects or initiatives or problems that you needed to solve or help own?
Kelly Deen
For sure. So I just thought this was going to be the... And I was right, thankfully. A really incredible and exciting challenge for me at the point that I am in my career.
So then I was brought on by a pure D2C company. Doing well, right? Even given the challenges of the environment, great retention, great AOV, great products, you know what I mean? Really, truly tried them myself, of course, before deciding to come on board.
But what was missing? What was missing was brand awareness, thinking about what a marketing strategy should look like.
And then for me, which I was not hired to do, by the way, but made a point of saying, “This is what I want to do in my interview if we decide to work together. I want to be thinking about what's next. Yes, this DTC world but omni-channel and what's next? How soon can we start dreaming and thinking and planning about how we're going to enter into retail, whatever that means, whatever that looks like?
So yes to all of those things but I really wanted to fundamentally, I saw this as an opportunity and kind of a white space and wanted to immediately start talking about how we manage the business strategy and that's a really exciting opportunity.
And Tomás and I really just hit it off and got along really, really well and I knew I was gonna adore working with him. And that is, I can't begin to state how important that is if you're going to take on a role in a challenge like that and try to see it through.
Chase Clymer
Absolutely.
Now I'm gonna spoil something. You guys got some great retail placements. Can you talk about getting into these amazing stores? What was that challenge like? How having a successful DTC brand helped you acquire some of that space?
Kelly Deen
100%. Yeah. Let me start by saying it didn't happen at all the way that I thought it would or the way that we had planned it to. So how about that for my brilliant strategy skills?
But I think that's also just the way things happen, right? I mean, it's in this world of you, you make a plan, you start working towards that plan and then things happen. Meetings happen, conversations start to happen.
Tamash and I have always been really big believers in ‘take the call, take the meeting’. It may seem ridiculous. It may seem like a waste of time. It may seem like some random connection that is meaningless, ‘take the call, do the meeting, make the connection,’ that made all the difference.
So we schemed and dreamed of doing what a lot of companies would do in our place that are kind of organic based and natural based. We would start off in natural foods, maybe then make our way over to conventional grocery, slowly over time, and then maybe make our way into mass and convenience and all that good stuff.
That is not at all how it happened. So we started to go down that road. We started to think down that road and strategize down that road. And then what happened was we took some calls. And in the midst of taking some calls from people in interesting parts of the world, we had kind of piqued the interest of a very, very, very talented emerging brand broker that solely worked on Walmart and had some meetings that probably could have turned into nothing at all.
And had some conversations about, “Could this work? Should we even pitch Walmart? Why not, right?” Like, just go for it. And because like you mentioned, because of our track record, because of our story that we could tell about our success, our customer longevity, our AOV, that did intrigue retailers.
And it was the right place at the right time, certainly with Walmart, with the right connection. We were able to get introduced to some higher level executives that really liked what we were doing, who saw it as an opportunity for something that they were not doing already with big CPG. And they gave us a shot.
I mean, that's how it worked out. It could have not worked out at all. It could have gone horribly. We had no retail packaging. We were producing at a nice scale. We had a large DTC business, but we had no 3PL. We were shipping from Portugal and had a whole lot to figure out.
So it was a big risk, but I think we asked the right questions. We asked for the right kind of partnership. We involved Walmart a lot in our conversations around what our packaging should look like and what our price points would be at the retail level, and really designed a set of SKUs with a lot of guidance from a big retailer.
I mean, I think we're very lucky. I don't expect many people's stories to be like ours, but that was our story. That is our story. And that has gone beautifully.
We have even more exciting things on the horizon with Walmart coming soon, really continuing to grow our brand there. But we've also grown into Target and we're very much now trying to tackle the natural space and the conventional space. And we're kind of doing things a little bit backwards, but we're super fortunate.
And I have to say, Walmart's been an amazing partner for us. It has really helped coach us along the way.
But having a really good partner, a really, really good... I even hesitate to use the word broker because it's kind of a dirty word in some cases. But we work off of relationships. And we have a relationship with someone who helped get us in the door and who helped make our business successful. And that's super important.
Chase Clymer
That's amazing.
Now, we are recording this on the cusp of the Q4 holiday sales season. So I have to ask, what is next? What's on your to-do list? What's on the docket for the DTC brand? How are you guys tackling marketing and advertising in 2024?
Kelly Deen
2024. So we've really just started to put a whole lot more energy back into our DTC engine. It took a lot of resources and a lot of attention. We're not a ginormous company to get retail off the ground, which it is.
So on the DTC side, we've completely revamped our store from a year ago. We've launched multiple new categories. We've changed the shopping. I think we had a really restrictive subscription. We kind of really forced people into a very set of products. We've really tried to open that up. We've tried to make it more customizable. We've increased our offerings for people. We've kept them affordable.
And obviously, continue to also offer value added services that we barely even talk about what we do once people are on board as customers, where we offer a lot of free nutrition counseling, we have registered dieticians and nutritionists on staff, we do a lot of programming in that realm.
But raising brand awareness is still really top of mind for me, it's obviously for DTC reasons, but for omni-channel reasons.
And we're launching our first brand campaign, a large budget brand campaign coming up here in about a week or so actually. I see that as being a big fuel accelerator for the DTC business, but for our business as a whole, really, really excited about that.
We talk a lot about rally cries and wanting to, what's that message that we repeat over and over and what is that thing that people really latch on to. And I think that's what we're really, for the first time, trying to really make happen for the brand. It won't be enough. It's a start. It's a start.
Chase Clymer
That's amazing, Kelly.
Now, is there anything I didn't ask you about that you think would resonate with our audience today?
Kelly Deen
Trust your gut and be a little fearless. Go ahead and fail. Sometimes you have to make decisions. It's do or die, right? You got to go for that risk because if you don't, you could be costing yourself the whole business.
And I think like knowing when to make good decisions, when to take the right risks, all the things that people say to fail but fail fast, stay nimble.
I think one of the reasons that we've been successful in D2C, but also been a really good partner with our wholesale and retail side, is that we're much faster and much more nimble than larger companies and brands. And I'll give you a good example of this.
So I told you that we created our first retail packaging and we did it pretty fast to launch at Walmart. Almost the second that it hit the shelves, I knew we needed to change it. Like almost the second that it hit the shelves, we were already talking to them about, “Okay, we wanna make it glossier, we wanna improve this, we wanna change that.”
And we moved. We did it. We just go. We go. We go. We go. We keep optimizing. We keep improving. We use data, but we also don't overthink. We trust our gut too. We trust what our customers are telling us.
And so I think that's the other bit that I would mention. We didn't do everything right. We didn't do everything perfectly. We're still not. It's a constant process of optimization and improvement.
Chase Clymer
That's amazing, Kelly.
Now, we've spent almost 30 minutes talking about these awesome products. If I'm listening to this and I want to check out what you guys are selling, where should I go? What should I do?
Kelly Deen
Please come visit us at kencko.com first and foremost. We have an amazing array of products available to help you get your five a day.
Get those servings of fruits and vegetables. Don't ever anybody ever tell you that you're not doing enough or that you shouldn't eat the pizza or you don't feel like working out tonight. That's all okay. You can still get your fruits and veggies. Just do a little thing every now and then and you're going to feel so, so much better.
And also that you don't need a whole bunch of crazy supplements. Real food are the original superfoods, the original fad diet was actually just fruits and veggies. So I think we really want people to understand that you don't have to spend a ton, that it can just do a little bit every day and you're going to feel a lot better and nobody should be shamed into thinking that they can't be healthy.
But of course, I'd be honest to not say please also check us out at Walmart. We have an amazing block of branded products that are coming into shelves next week. A whole new set, a whole new bunch of categories coming in.
So great displays are going in at Walmart that will be in line there and Target as well.
Chase Clymer
Awesome. Kelly, thank you so much for coming on the show today.
Kelly Deen
Thank you.
Chase Clymer
We can't thank our guests enough for coming on the show and sharing their knowledge and journey with us. We've got a lot to think about and potentially add into our own business. You can find all the links in the show notes.
You can subscribe to the newsletter at honestecommerce.co to get each episode delivered right to your inbox.
If you're enjoying this content, consider leaving a review on iTunes, that really helps us out.
Lastly, if you're a store owner looking for an amazing partner to help get your Shopify store to the next level, reach out to Electric Eye at electriceye.io/connect.
Until next time!