Jackie, BevNET Live, June 11th and 12th, New York City, right around the corner.
Only a few weeks away.
The networking there is going to be phenomenal.
The people that you want to meet will be in the room.
You're going to get all your hardest questions answered.
There's going to be fundraising partners, investors, emerging brands, brands that are just getting started, retailers.
Who will meet you one-to-one?
Yeah, exactly.
I mean, Whole Foods, Circle K, The Good Smart, they'll be there.
It's going to be awesome.
We've got Polar on stage, we've got Circle K.
Desois, Little Saints, Ghosts.
There's so many speakers on the lineup with more to come.
Go to bevnetlive.com to get your ticket.
Hello, and thank you for joining us.
I am Melissa Travers, Director of Community here at BevNET & NOSH, and I am so pleased to welcome you to The Nombase Podcast.
Don't forget to check out nombase.com, that's BevNET's platform that's built for the CPG community, and it's where you can find episodes of this podcast, as well as a partner directory, press release hub, and so much more.
Again, we would love to answer your questions today on the podcast.
You can put those questions right in the chat, and we would be happy to ask them.
Today on the Nombase Podcast, I'm so excited to welcome Natalie Wieder, Vice President of Category Management at Thrive Market.
She is joining the Nombase Podcast to share insights on partnering with the leading Better For You e-com retailer.
Drawing on her experience at Amazon, spanning Amazon Fresh, health and personal care, pharmacy and private brands, Natalie focuses on curation, quality and customer first strategies at Thrive Market.
She'll discuss how her background shapes her approach to brand success and updates on how brands can win with Thrive Market.
Natalie, it's so great to have you here.
Thank you for joining us on the Nombase Podcast.
Thank you for having me.
Well, we were just talking about how you grew up, I think a couple of towns over to the BevNET Headquarters in Newton over in Dedham.
And now you're based out of Oregon, right?
Yeah, I am in beautiful Bend, Oregon by way of Seattle, though I spent many years in Seattle after leaving Boston.
Well, I'm so excited to hear a little bit about what your history has been like.
You've been in e-comm for a number of years working with, who I think is synonymous with e-comm, certainly and so many other people do too, which is Amazon.
Can you talk about some of the key truths you learned about e-comm over at Amazon and sort of things that you'll take with you into Thrive?
Yeah, absolutely.
My time at Amazon, it actually spanned many different functions and businesses.
So I'll focus in, I'll hone in on the retail business.
I spent several years on Amazon Fresh, which is where I found my passion for the food industry.
And then I spent some time on our health and personal care business on amazon.com, and then pharmacy and our parent experience on Amazon, as well as private brands.
But honing in on the retail piece, I think one of the biggest learnings that I found and have taken with me, which I think has been incredibly important in some of the ways that we've coached brands here at Thrive is for brands to have a e-com specific strategy.
And if it's possible to have a team or a person dedicated to driving success in an e-commerce environment.
You know, I'd seen many brands, particularly in my Amazon Fresh Days, who had a, they had a very robust brick-and-mortar strategy, and then, you know, picked that up and tried to apply it to e-commerce.
And they're just two very different things.
And so really thinking through, like, how is e-commerce, having a team or a person that can think through, how is e-commerce different than the brick-and-mortar strategy and, you know, being able to drive a success there.
And I think a couple of things that come out of that is e-commerce requires different types of packaging for products, particularly in the food space.
We, I've seen this over and over again, taking a packaging that works great on the shelf in a store, and then putting it in a box and shipping it to a customer, and it arrives at the customer just totally exploded, and the packaging is incredibly important.
And in the e-commerce space, you know, you need a pretty package for a shelf.
It doesn't need necessarily be as pretty to sit in a box.
So it's one of the big things.
And then following from that, just having, you know, e-commerce-ready like assets, digital assets that sell your story and your brand on a website rather than on a package.
And then also the ability then to invest in marketing and advertising in a digital space.
Is there any kind of standard percentage that you think a brand should maybe dedicate towards e-com marketing?
Like I know, for example, for trade spend, sometimes people say, you know, 20%, which includes promotions and stuff like that.
Any guidelines on how brands should, how much brands should be spending?
You know, it's hard to give a very specific guideline because I think it totally depends on the stage of the business, how well known the brand is already.
But what I would say is for emerging brands that are trying to drive awareness, I think that percent of spend is going to be significantly higher because you want to drive awareness to your products, you want to drive trial of your products.
And in an e-commerce setting, there is the endless scroll of if you're just launching in a digital platform or digital marketplace, you might be at the very end of the search results.
And so investing heavily to make sure that shoppers, members, customers, whoever they may be, are seeing your product, then you're going to have to invest in the marketing and advertising necessary to drive that awareness.
And that is probably a very different number at the beginning stage of a product or a brand than it is for very mature, well-known brands.
So what I'm hearing you say is certainly investing in search, especially if you're maybe a new brand or if you're a brand with a new product, that's obviously something that is used.
I just think it must be difficult to figure out where brand, like if I'm an emerging brand and I don't have a person who knows how to do it, exactly where to put my dollars.
Yeah, I would say investing the dollars in awareness.
So yeah, it would be search, it would be trial.
So speaking specifically about Thrive Market, we have a program called Gift with Purchase.
And it's where brands can give our members a free gift, it's essentially free trial, to be included in their boxes.
And it drives trial of a product.
And we have had several brands that have had a massive amount of success investing in Gift with Purchase on Thrive, because it gets the product into our members' hands, they get to try it for free.
And then we've seen incredible conversion to purchase after that.
And we have a few brands who've essentially made their success on Thrive through heavy investment in Gift with Purchase.
Should I assume that that's probably not available to frozen brands?
Not right now.
It's a good question.
Not right now, but some maybe potentially in the future.
And then is there a number of quantity of samples that brands should expect to need to put towards something like that?
We do have a minimum.
And you know what, to be honest, I'm not exactly sure what that minimum is now.
We do have a minimum, because we want to be able to offer it to enough of our members for it to make sense.
You know, we send out a text message to members who've opted in to let them know about the daily gift with purchase.
It is, we also put it on our homepage.
So it is a frustrating member experience if you get that text message or you get, you see the homepage banner about our gift with purchase and they're out.
So there is a minimum.
And I can, if it's helpful, I can follow up on exactly what.
That's a major opportunity.
When you think about the cost of sending somebody into a store, doing a four-hour demo, I mean, that's such a great opportunity.
And I also think that for customers to be able to try it in their own homes, like, sure, they're not right next to the product and can't, actually, they are, they can enjoy it in their own homes and order it.
So it's perfect.
I would guess that this is the kind of information you would have on an exciting new development that you folks over at Thrive are working on, which is a vendor portal.
We have a bunch of sort of exciting things to talk about today.
Some of them are how Thrive is updating its programs and strategies for vendors.
Where do you want to start on some of the things that the vendor community out there is going to be seeing?
Yeah, we do have a lot of exciting updates.
Maybe I'll start with one that has already launched.
Actually, we have two that have already launched.
And then a third, the Vendor Portal, which is in work in progress right now.
So the first is our Brand Insights Dashboard.
I'm not sure if you've had a chance to look at it, Melissa, just from the outside.
But essentially, we are now offering all the brands that we work with access to a portal or dashboard that gives them all of their sales data, in-stock data, promotional performance data.
Because historically, brands have had to reach out to their category manager to get this data.
You can imagine it was very heavy and tedious process for us, really frustrating for brands.
And so we've launched this portal.
As of right now, brands that work with us can get access to it, so they have all of their data available to them.
And so we've gotten really great feedback from that, and we have a pretty robust roadmap in how that's going to continue to grow and evolve.
So I'm super excited about that.
The second piece is our retail media platform.
And then we might want to spend some more time talking about that, but we're partnering with Instacart and Carat Ads in order to, we now have retail media opportunities on our site.
So brands can invest in driving awareness to their products via more scalable way than our brand marketing.
And then the third thing, third kind of tool that is coming down the pike that will make brands lives so much easier working with us, is a vendor portal.
And so this is nowhere near done right now.
It is coming, expected in the next, I know, six months to a year.
But it'll be a portal where brands can share all of the information about their products, get updates, every kind of way in which we interact with our brands and send data back and forth between each other, we'll be able to do it via this portal.
So it'll drive a significant amount of scale and really kind of ease how we work with our brands today.
That's all huge stuff.
First, I want to talk a little bit about the dashboard.
I haven't seen it, but I would love to check it out.
I mean, right there, that's such important information for brands to be able to get.
And they're sort of key retailers, like for example, Whole Foods shares their data on a daily basis.
It's such important data for a brand to get, especially at an early stage.
So it's amazing that they're going to be able to get that from Thrive.
Is that reported on like a, is it daily?
Is it weekly?
How often is it updated?
It's weekly or monthly.
And then, you know, as brands participate in promotions, that that's updated, you know, whatever, after the promotion, I believe it's weekly.
And so we'll see, we share sales, we share sales relative to the category.
So brands have an idea of how they're doing relative to the rest of their peers, order penetration, item ranking, promo performance, new to skew, new to brand performance, as well as our inventory position, in stock positions, forecasts for the products going forward.
So pretty significant amount of data that helps them manage their business with us.
You show comparative data that helps brands understand how they're doing in their category.
That's amazing.
Yeah, yeah.
And it's, we're not giving you exact numbers, so it's relative, you're doing better or worse than the category.
But yeah, it's super helpful to understand if the strategies they're employing on Thrive are working.
What's Thrive's distribution process?
We have three fulfillment centers, actually.
One in Reno, Nevada, one in Batesville, Indiana, and one in Hanover, Pennsylvania.
The other thing that you mentioned was retail media.
So for example, if I wanted to pay for my product to come up, you know, for a second or third in the search list at Thrive, is that something that I would be able to do there?
Absolutely.
Yep.
So we're working with Carrot Ads, which is part of Instacart.
And the reason we are working with them is we did a pretty extensive survey across all the brands that we work with, and that was by far the number one request.
So we're working with Instacart.
Yeah, and brands can currently, they can invest in sponsored products on search and buy it again for us.
And then we just launched or we're launching display ads.
So search will be kind of more targeted.
You know, a member has searched for something and a brand can invest in, you know, having their product show up in the top row of search essentially.
And that's a cost per click or cost per ad to cart cost.
But then display ads is really more about driving kind of broader awareness of the brand being on Thrive.
And that just launched recently, last month or two.
Okay, let me ask you a question.
So I'm launching a new product, I'm launching, you know, whether a new brand at Thrive or a new product, how would you combine the banner ad, the display ads with search?
Like do you do it?
Understanding the budget is probably an issue, like to make the most of your money, would you combine those or would you do?
Yeah, I would combine them, but it totally depend on the strategy.
So if you're a well-known brand and you're launching a new product, search might be best.
If you're a new brand and you're trying to communicate a brand story where having a display ad is going to be a lot more helpful to drive broader awareness, I'd invest there.
If you're maybe a known brand that's new to Thrive, you want to let our members know that you're on Thrive.
Display ads may be a great way to do that.
I'm just going to keep pumping you for information because your background in e-com is so amazing.
Is there a particular kind of content that you think works in display ads?
That's a good question.
I am not a marketer at all.
Understood.
You would have a much better answer to that question than I would.
What I would say though is the content needs to match the customer, the customer you're trying to target, and maybe the customer that is known to be shopping in a certain place.
So I'd say with Thrive, our members are shopping with us because they care about healthy and sustainable living, and purchasing healthy products for themselves and their families.
And so I think that is a storyline and that's kind of a message that resonates really, really well with our member base.
But then it can totally evolve from there based on what the product is.
That actually brings up a really great question, which is you just addressed it, but I wonder if there's any more color you could add to it.
Who is Thrive's customer?
So you just pointed out that they care about sustainability, that that's an issue to them.
What are some of the other key issues that Thrive customers share?
Yeah, and I should have mentioned this also in terms of content for ads, but Thrive has evolved over the course of our life, we're actually 10 years old last fall.
We started as a place where we offered a lot of these kind of dietary or value-based shopping.
That was really hard to find in maybe a typical grocery store.
And that was really our focus for a long time.
And then as we kind of really dove in to who are our members, we realized that as much as our members are focused on maybe dietary preferences or shopping by values, and that is still all very true, we've recently found that the vast majority of our new members are actually parents with kids in the household.
And so if you look at our babies and kids categories, snack pack categories, they are growing at almost double, triple the rate of the rest of our business.
And the rest of our business is growing pretty fast.
And so when you ask who our members are, huge majority of parents or caregivers with kids in the household.
About 50%, I think that was the number, 50% of our members actually don't live within driving distance of a Whole Foods, which I think is a really interesting data point, because these are folks who are looking for the kind of healthy and sustainable products that we offer, and they just can't find them where they live.
So that's another key kind of data point about our member base.
Great information.
And is that like baby food and diapers, older kids?
How does that fit in?
In terms of the households with kids in them?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Although, to be honest, this is something that we're really digging into right now.
Our babies, when I say babies and kids, it really is like babies and like babies.
So you think about like your pouches and all that kind of younger kid foods.
But then also like our snack pack business, we really have put a focus in the last few years on the snack brands and snack products that have done really well for us, trying to translate those into snack packs that parents can buy for their kids, put them in their lunch.
And that business also is growing double, triple the rate of the rest of the company.
So really is, I would say it's probably more of a birth to 12-ish and I'm kind of just generally making that number up.
But then from there, we're really starting to think about like, okay, how do we serve those homes that have teenagers in them who are eating significantly more food than they might have been here to previously?
So that's going to be a new focus for us.
Great information.
One of the other things that's going to be changing is the category review process as well, right?
Yeah, this is one I'm really excited about.
We're working through exactly what it looks like now.
But historically, we've had, I think, it was about twice a year category reviews, where the category managers would look at how their categories are doing and figure out what are the new products that we want to add to our assortment.
And as an e-commerce retailer, we're not doing shelf resets, we're not building planograms.
Really, we're just thinking about how does this thing fit in our fulfillment center, which doesn't necessarily have to look as pretty as a shelf in a grocery store.
So with that, it's much easier for us to add products throughout the year instead of just waiting for specific points in time.
So we are getting rid of the traditional category review as it's been done previously.
Does not mean that we aren't staying connected to the category and how it's doing and what are the products we shouldn't be carrying.
That is a process that is just ongoing for us.
And what that means for brands is we're not waiting, you're not waiting until the six month mark or halfway through the year to figure out if we'll carry you.
Category managers will just be doing that on a much more regular basis.
And this may be something that's still in the works, but is there a formalized process around how brands should send samples, the materials they should send, that kind of thing?
Yeah, and that's a formalized process that we're actually building out now to make sure that brands have the ability to submit the products they want us to review, upload the necessary product information.
I filled out a bunch of questions for us, so we understand like, where does this product, does this product fit our quality standards?
Where does it fit kind of within our assortment?
And the whole point of this is that we have the ability to be really nimble and flexible to offer new products for members and be an innovation partner for our brands.
And so we just want to make sure that our onboarding processes can reflect that.
And I'm sure that'll be on the vendor portal, which is very exciting.
We're going to have this place for everything.
So you told us a little bit about Thrive Market's customers.
What are your buyers typically looking for when they're reviewing products to decide whether or not to carry them at Thrive?
We do have some of the, strictest might not be the best word, but like most poor thinking quality standards, and I think in the industry, we restrict about over 1,400 ingredients.
Restrict or ban over 1,400 ingredients.
And then we just kind of, we are broadly sourcing non-GMO.
We lean towards organic when possible.
We are not only organic, so plenty of non-organic products on site, but it is an attribute that resonates with our members.
So the first thing is really, does the product meet our quality standards?
Second is, depending on the size of the brand, we do offer one selection across the US.
And so each fulfillment center has to have the same, has to be able to carry that product.
So does the brand have the ability to send the necessary quantities?
All three of our fulfillment centers is another key piece of that.
And then obviously, ensuring that we can hit margin targets or have the right terms with the vendor is important as well.
And I understand the brand needs to be prepared to fulfill all three fulfillment centers.
Does that mean that every customer who shops at Thrive sees the same list of items for sale or does that differ a little bit?
It does, yeah.
We have the same assortment across the whole US.
And to be honest, this is kind of on our roadmap to rethink.
So I don't want to get too far ahead of us, but ourselves.
But it is on our roadmap to rethink, because as we haven't chatted about this, but we're going to start to move towards regional pricing.
And then as we're doing that, we have to start to think about, OK, how does selection and demand change in different parts of the US?
We do ship to the lower 48, so I don't know.
What would a customer in or a member in Florida may buy in March may be very different than what a member in Minnesota may buy.
It is something we're starting to think about, of how do we think about our selection more regionally.
And how many subscribers does Thrive Market have at the moment?
We have over 1.6 million members.
Is there a way for a brand to understand what expected velocities might be?
Of course, it's always hard to know, but just for them to be able to know that they're going to need to fulfill a certain number of orders every month.
How do they figure that out?
Yeah, once we start working with brands, we'll provide them a forecast.
And if we're trying to figure out if a brand is the right fit for us, we could do that upfront to make sure we're not wasting anyone's time.
So yeah, we do partner very closely with our brands on, what do we think the demand looks like?
But what I will say is one way in which e-com differs from brick and mortar is, in brick and mortar, you're placed in a certain number of stores and have a certain number of shelf space.
And so you have to supply as much inventory as needed for that amount of space.
And so it might start out as a much larger first order, I would say, in a brick and mortar environment, whereas in e-commerce, we put you up on the site, and it's not like your sales go straight up on day one, except if there's some kind of maybe extenuating circumstance.
But it is maybe a bit more slower ramp in terms of orders to the supplier.
But once we ramp, can grow very quickly, and this comes back to what we're talking about at the beginning, where when you first start appear on the site, you might be at the very bottom of search, and so it's hard for a member to find you.
And this is in any e-commerce settings, it's not just a Thrive issue.
And we call it the cold start problem.
And so once you start driving awareness to the product, then it starts rising in search, and then growth kind of starts.
But we're not...
Day one is not filling a bunch of stores' shelves.
Day one is, okay, just get your spot in the Foothillman Center and get started.
I think that's really helpful to know.
And I think it's probably preferable, especially for brands more in the emerging side who don't necessarily have the funding to put into having more inventory than they know they need.
So that's really helpful.
Yeah.
And is there a way to calculate about how many brands or products that Thrive carries?
We currently have about 7,000 products, highly curated.
So that's one of the key parts of my team's job, about 7,000 products.
Great to know.
We have a question here from our audience.
Clara Torres wants to know, what's the best way an emerging brand can get in contact with a category manager or apply for a category review?
So we do work with RangeMe if folks are familiar with it.
It's a platform where folks can submit their products and our category managers go in and review it regularly.
So that would be the best way.
Excellent.
Thanks for the question, Clara.
I'm curious about who Thrive Market sees as its competition.
Is it a mix of brick-and-mortar and home delivery options from brick-and-mortar?
And I'm sure Amazon Fresh figures in there.
How do you see that landscape?
Yeah, it's a good question because it depends on kind of how you're thinking about it.
So given our selection and our quality standards, obviously, the natural grocer world is what we think about as our peers, Whole Foods, Sprouts.
But then we're obviously e-commerce only.
So then that brings in Amazon Fresh, Amazon, target.com, walmart.com.
So really, I would say our peers, they span across the entire grocery industry.
Excellent.
You talked a little bit about regionality.
I think you said that a good number of your consumers don't have a Whole Foods within 50 miles.
Is that what you said?
Driving distance.
And I'd have to go back and see how exactly you define it.
But it's essentially somebody who's not going to drive to a Whole Foods.
It's just too far.
How would that help a brand understand how having their product available through Thrive Market would set them up for more distribution in a particular region?
Yeah, excellent question.
Honestly, the way I think about it, it's an incrementally new customer.
You know, I think there's...
These are folks who are, you know, want to buy these types of products, want to buy your brand, but they can't find it anywhere else.
So when they buy it from Thrive, it's incrementally new.
You're not taking that sale from a Whole Foods or a Sprouts, or, you know, where it's other folks that may carry the same or similar type products.
And so I think this is a really exciting kind of point for brands because it is an incrementally new sale, but also these are...
Like, we're serving members that can't find these products.
They want to buy these types of products and they can't find it.
And so we truly are serving some unmet demand and needs for our member base.
Excellent.
And as far as pricing goes, I know that Thrive has a commitment to...
You guys meet other low prices, is that right?
Yeah, we will price match when members reach out and share prices that are lower.
So certainly, I think folks expect to see a lot of value at Thrive Market.
How do you help your vendors understand what their pricing strategy should be for Thrive?
Yes, exactly.
We do want to provide value to our members at the basket and product level where we can, for sure.
And so the way I think about this with brands is, I don't want our members to be able to go to other very relevant retailers and find a lower price.
So we need to invest in pricing to at least match or be lower.
The other piece too that is really important to our member base and has been, key part of our offering to members is our promotional schedule.
So we do have some big tent pole promotional events and then many interspersed in between those that drive a ton of engagement with our member base.
And it's important that brands participate in those as well.
So it is a combo of investing in low competitive prices as well as promotional activity.
And I know this is sort of a hard question to answer, but what kinds of brands really thrive at Thrive Market?
I sort of assumed that you would need to be at a certain level of growth to be successful with Thrive, but you mentioned that emerging, I mean, everyone has to be at a certain level of growth, but you mentioned that there are some brands that you have who are very emerging who are on Thrive Market.
Yeah.
And emerging brand, we love emerging brands.
So I think one of the reasons our members have liked shopping with us is they can find new innovative left of trend products that they might not be able to find in other places.
And it's a key part of our DNA since day one that we all want to ensure we continue to keep.
But the question was around what types of brands, what are the attributes that do well?
Yeah.
If I'm looking at my brand and thinking, I don't know, is this the kind of thing that they're in?
Maybe let's assume it's not baby food and it's not something that fits so clearly within your core demographic.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, first of all, there's brands across the spectrum that are emerging and doing really well.
So it doesn't have to be just baby food or just babies and kids, or foods targeted at families with kids in the household.
I'll give you one example.
There's a pasta brand Kaizen.
One of the folks on my team was just telling me about this, this the other day.
It's a low carb keto friendly pasta brand that is doing incredibly well.
I think they've been growing 100% year over year on our platform.
So not necessarily babies and kids focused, or family focused.
But they've really leaned into marketing and promotional levers in order to drive success.
I think the attributes that would make a brand successful on Thrive is really like, you meet our quality standards, have kind of a focus on health, wellness, and that can be many different things in terms of this pasta brand.
You know, they're focused on higher protein and lower carbs in the pasta.
But, you know, have a health or wellness focus or sustainability focus as well.
And really just have the desire to want to be successful on Thrive.
We have another brand, you know, not necessarily an emerging brand, but one I think has been a really great story for us is Aloha Bars.
A couple years ago, they decided that they want to be number one in the bars category on Thrive.
And that was their goal.
And I think it was sometime during COVID.
They made that their goal.
And they are now today.
They leaned into Gift with Purchase.
They got a lot of trial across our member base.
They leaned into our Temple promotional events, leaned into marketing across our site.
And so, they are now the number one.
And that was really because they decided like, okay, this is a place where we want to be successful and they put resources towards it.
Such a great product, such a great brand.
That's great to hear that they are so successful.
I actually have a question here from the audience.
This is Kimberly Lau from Bake Me Healthy.
Hi, Kimberly.
She wants to know, are goals and benchmarks set up front for new brands?
How often is performance evaluated?
And then, and we have another question, but I'll start with those two.
So are goals and benchmarks set up at the beginning for new brands and how often is performance evaluated?
Yeah, so for a new brand and product, we do have some forecasting.
Well, we forecast what we think the brand is going to do, and we do have some sales goals.
We tend to, we try to give a brand about six months to really make sure that they're getting up the curve.
And I wouldn't say that six months is necessarily like a no, no-go at that point.
It's more of a like, okay, are we moving in the right direction?
Is the brand investing in the right things to drive growth?
Does on the back end, like do our minimum order quantities, are they appropriate for our sales levels?
Like there's a whole bunch of different data points that we would look at.
But yes, we are setting goals, and that's oftentimes in conjunction with the brands, and then assessing performance as we go.
Great.
And then the second half of that question was, how much guidance do buyers provide brands in improving performance?
A good amount.
I would say, maybe larger brands or brands that maybe were connected with more regularly, probably are getting more guidance.
But we do have conversations with brands before, if we were to decide to cut a brand from our assortment, or product from our assortment, we would have a conversation.
And it really is a partnership in that we truly want everything to be successful and to give everyone the opportunity to be successful.
So it is a conversation around, okay, well, this isn't performing the way we want it to.
We've got to make some changes here.
You can invest in marketing.
We can change our order quantities, whatever it may be.
Certainly, when a brand wins at Thrive, Thrive wins as well.
Yes, exactly.
Kimberly, thank you so much for the question.
And I would love to hear as well, you mentioned that Kaizen is a low-carb, high-protein product.
Are there any interesting trends or diets that you've noticed?
I know that Thrive has some unique filters that do allow a consumer to filter by diet and filter by what they're looking for.
What are you seeing people asking for, but also maybe not asking for so much anymore?
Yeah, it's a good question.
And you know what, there are a few that came up recently that I'll be honest, I was like, oh, I've never even heard of that.
So we do have this member base that is like a definitely ahead of trends.
And I'd actually have to follow up on exactly what that was because there was even a word.
I was like, I've never even heard that word.
So I'd have to follow up on that one exactly.
But what I will say, and I mean, this might sound like a broken record.
But the thing that has just like, maybe it shouldn't have surprised us, but like the snack packs, the snack packs and like kids focused products is just, and kids like, we weren't surprised to show by babies or younger kids, toddlers, but like just the, you know, a bit older, maybe elementary to middle school age products is really on fire for us right now.
And to the point where we have brands who are, you know, as an example, some bar brands, they have adult focused bars.
I mean, kids can eat them, but they really just are marketed towards adults.
They're just making them smaller and making it so like, it is a bit more kid friendly.
So that has really been on fire for us.
I would also say kind of the functional, functional foods or functional beverages has, has been doing really well, which probably is not surprising to anybody because it really is across the board.
But those are the two.
Are there any particular ingredients you're seeing in beverages?
So over here, I feel like I see L-theanine, magnesium, ashwagandha.
All of the above, yes.
Yeah.
The adaptogens.
Yeah.
And to that point, like our, our NA, our non-alcoholic business is, is growing pretty significantly to the point where, this is one where, you know, I personally, my team is going to lean in big here.
Not only because of the NA, the non-alcoholic kind of trend, the way really America is moving, but, but also there's just so many creative products in that space now.
So we really want to be, you know, one of the premier destinations for NA beverages.
And are you thinking mainly RTD or maybe non-alcoholic spirits as well as canned ready-to-drink non-alcoholic?
Yeah, all of the above.
You know, there's obviously some legal regulation that we need to work our way through, but for sure RTD.
Well, great stuff.
I hope everyone out there is listening and taking notes because I feel like you just gave us the recipe for success at Thrive Market.
It also sounds like there are some really exciting updates coming along the pike.
And then, my one last question is, where should vendors keep an ear to the ground to understand when the vendor portal is going to be up, when you're switching over systems, what's the best way to have them stay in touch with what's going on?
Stay in touch with your Category Manager.
And then the other way to stay up to date is we do have two times per year virtual vendor summits.
One's virtual, actually, and one's in person.
And so in, I believe it's in August, we have a virtual summit for our vendor base, where we bring them up to date on all the, all the new, the new things happening at Thrive.
And then we have a vendor breakfast at Thrive, at Expo West every year.
So that's in, in March.
And we share a lot of the updates there as well.
And we are working on other ways that we can stay regularly connected to our vendor base.
So there should be many more opportunities coming soon.
Excellent.
Is there a way for brands to figure out how to sign up for the summit?
So we will send an invite to all brands that we work with.
Yep, gotcha.
We will send an invite to the August virtual summit.
And then we send an invite to all of our brands for the Expo West.
I have a question from Lyra who wants to know, do variety packs work well?
Yes, variety packs, snack pack, yes, all of the above.
Excellent.
And then my second question is from Savannah Bailey from Kindra.
She wants to know, does Thrive often attend trade shows to meet new brands?
And which are your most attended?
I know you just mentioned Expo West.
Yeah, we do attend trade shows to meet new brands, learn about new trends, meet with our current brands.
It's a great way to get some face-to-face interaction.
And honestly, we attend most of the top trade shows.
So Expo West, Newtopia, Fancy Food.
There's one coming up, Snacks and Sweets and...
Yes, yeah.
We'll be there.
I think there's like one a month.
So we've got a pretty robust schedule there.
Well, you guys are certainly out there.
I can't thank you enough for coming on the Nombase Podcast.
You gave such great information.
It was so helpful.
Natalie Wieder, Vice President of Category Management at Thrive Market.
Thank you so much for joining us today.
For everybody else, it was so great to have you here.
Go to nombase.com to hear a recording of this and all other podcasts.
And we'll see you next time.
Thank you, Melissa.
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