Top 10 Female-Founded Challenger Brands

by Editor | Mar 6, 2020

Top 10 Female-Founded Challenger Brands

In Celebration of International Women’s Day 2020

Introduction

In 2011, Jessica Alba founded the Honest Company with the aim of disrupting categories where modern-minded women haven’t been able to find clean, safe and trusted solutions for their families. Alba created the brand with the following belief: “You shouldn’t have to choose between what works and what’s good for you,” which empowered women to expect better products for themselves, without compromise. Today, the Honest Company is on a path to becoming a Billion-dollar global brand. Alba is still Chairwoman of the Board and reflects what the brand stands for in her personal lifestyle and values.

At the Seurat Group, we admire the founder’s journey and strive to support female founders, like Alba, who are challenging conventional consumer categories and leading a business revolution. For this International Women’s Day 2020, we are celebrating 10 female-founded brands delighting consumers with not just their products, but with what these brands ultimately stand for: female empowerment. Alongside the Honest Company, we would like to highlight 9 other female-founded brands showcasing disruptive mentalities, and inspirational success!

Purely Elizabeth

Elizabeth Stein was a nutritionist who wanted to recommend anti-inflammatory, gluten-free diets to her clients, yet felt hampered because she couldn’t point to any products she could endorse. From there, Stein turned to her kitchen, and Purely Elizabeth was born. Business boomed dramatically; she hoped for merely 20 orders upon launching the company. She got 10,000 in the first 3 hours! Today, Purely Elizabeth remains a healthier alternative to traditional granolas and bars. But, Stein says, “I’ve always envisioned Purely Elizabeth as a bigger lifestyle brand.” She has released a cookbook, expanded into categories from oatmeal to body scrubs, and continues to be an innovator in the healthy products community.

Beautycounter

When Gregg Renfrew launched Beautycounter in 2013, her single focus was to create transparency and safety in the personal care industry: “I wanted to create a safer and healthier place for my children, family, and ultimately everyone in the world.” The US remains dramatically behind the EU in banning harmful substances from the skincare industry (having only banned ~30 ingredients to date, compared to nearly 1,800 in the EU). Beautycounter has barred over 1,500 ingredients and educates consumers on the reasons for this standard. Beautycounter has also galvanized the safe product movement through community selling, uniquely connecting the brand story with Consultants selling on its behalf.

Talea Beer Co.

Talea Beer Company is named after its co-founders Tara Hankinson and LeAnn Darland, and their company’s target is someone who does not like beer. How do they do that? They don’t mimic the time-honored traditional brewers that dominate the mainstream landscape. Talea’s ‘flavored’ offers don’t feature a hint of (artificial) lime or berry; rather, they’ve reengineered the craft process to create delicious, boundary pushing offers with milk and fruit sugar. Their approach is grounded in meeting a need – over 70% of female craft-beer drinkers feel frustrated that brands view them as an afterthought, and Talea is reaching these women with their innovative approach.

Simple Mills

Kaitlin Smith of Simple Mills lives the tale of “you are what you eat.” Due to chronic joint pain, she turned to more natural foods and saw a gap in the market for natural and organic baked goods. The brand started from humble beginnings in 2013 when Smith was baking the product’s muffin mixes and taking samples to each Whole Foods store in Atlanta. Today, Simple Mills has an extensive product portfolio, and Smith has been named a Forbes 30 under 30. She attributes her success to disrupting a category in decline – the baking aisle. “If it’s easier and tastier, people will eat differently, and as a result will be able to do more with their lives.”

Fur

Laura Schubert and Lillian Tung are the co-founders of fur, the first for-women brand focused on body, hair and skin. Both have one goal in common: “We are on a mission to remaster how people feel about body hair and to remove the shame many people have around their bodies.” Their hero product “Fur Oil” is meant to clear pores and soften and reduce ingrown hair, resulting in healthier skin. Fur products have premium distribution in upscale boutiques like Free People and Kith, as well as spas and salons. The brand receives incredible love online due to celebrity endorsements from the likes of Emma Watson, as well as influencers and general beauty care users, who appreciate the overall feminist message and confident tone discussing a traditionally taboo topic.

Miyokos

Miyoko Schinner is the CEO and founder of Miyoko’s Kitchen. She is a chef, an author, and perhaps most importantly, a perspective changer – she is shifting how people think about vegan food and lifestyles. Miyoko has dedicated her life to convincing others there’s a different way to eat. Miyokos launched online in 2014 and has taken off, offering vegan dairy products (cheeses and butters), with the goal of “help(ing) people see the power of their plate in creating a more peaceful, compassionate planet.” Crafted in California wine country, the products aren’t just humane, they’re delicious. Award winning products are helping Miyoko take on the $120 B cheese industry one dairy product at a time.

Health-Ade Kombucha

Daina Trout and Vanessa Dew started selling Trout’s first batches of kombucha at Brentwood Farmers Market in 2012. The kombucha sold out. In 2013, when kombucha was still a nascent category, they got distribution in 8 Gelson’s stores as a trial. This unlocked partnerships with distributors like Nature’s Best, propelling Health-Ade to West Coast and eventual nationwide distribution. Health-Ade’s built its brand as the “champion of the happiest and healthiest you.” From humble beginnings at a farmer’s market, Health-Ade is now found in more than 26,000 stores around the nation.

Coolhaus

Natasha Case and Freya Estrella started baking cookies, making ice cream, and combining them into ‘cool houses’ in Los Angeles in 2008. They shared their products with the people of Los Angeles by buying a postal van, and making the trek to debut these ice cream sandwiches at Coachella Music Festival. Coolhaus touts its certified women-owned status, citing that it’s “such an important cause and a challenge our World faces. To change you have to lead by example.” And lead they have. Coolhaus has achieved incredible success in over 7,500 grocery stores across the US, with over 30 offers. Yet, the brand has remained true to its roots: Coolhaus continues its founding tradition with 10 mobile ice cream trucks and carts in LA, NYC, and Dallas.

LOLI Beauty

Tina Hedges of LOLI Beauty is a veteran in building startups. She launched a celebrity haircare brand and a hangover prevention beverage before LOLI. In 2017, Hedges created the idea of “Living Organic Loving Ingredients,” the inspiration behind LOLI. LOLI Beauty is the world’s first zero-waste, organic, and customizable beauty brand. All products are waterless, food-grade, and made with up-cycled, sustainably grown, superfood ingredients. Designed with the sustainability-conscious consumer in mind, even the packaging is compostable. Recently, the Global Cosmetic Industry featured LOLI Beauty as one of the top 30 disruptive beauty brands to watch for in 2020.

Conclusion

We hope you enjoyed learning about these 10 female-founded brands. Please look forward to Part II of this series, where we will highlight the journey of being a female founder in CPG and lessons to be learned. As always, we want to hear from you! If you’d like more information on any of our challenger brand studies, or want to share a brand of your own, please reach out at info@seuratgroup.com. Happy International Women’s Day!

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Sources

5 Ways to Drive Big Brands in the Challenger Age

MyClickstream: Connecting The Dots in Your Omnichannel World

Challenger Brand Study 2015

Challenger Brand Study 2016

Bridging the Omnichannel Divide

Amazon Whole Foods Acquisition

Developing a Winning Growth Strategy

Delivering Idea Leadership

2018 Top Ten Revenue Growth Ideas

Challenger Brand Study 2017

Revenue Growth through Relevancy

by Editor | Jan 17, 2020

Revenue Growth through Relevancy

Introduction

With overabundant options and shifting consumer preferences, achieving revenue growth—especially profitably—is the core challenge that companies will face in the new year and decade. A brand’s ability to grow remains rooted in the indelible principles of winning consumer jobs, carving out distinctive spaces, and engaging with consumers in highly relevant, authentic ways.

We believe that building relevance is an under-leveraged pathway to accelerate growth. As Millennials and Gen Z account for the greatest transfer of wealth and consumer spending power on record, brands must use a forward-looking approach to identify what is most relevant for this next generation.

We’ve distilled a forward-looking view on what next generation relevance means into five pillars: relevance to my values, culture, lifestyle, budget, and places I purchase. This paper explores each relevance pillar and offers ideas for how to unlock revenue growth through each by highlighting brands that are doing it well.

5 Pillars of Relevance

Pillar #1: Relevance to my values

Next generation consumers want to spend their money on more than a product; they use their beliefs to direct purchasing. Winning brands position themselves as relevant to contemporary values and empower consumers to use their purchasing power to support a greater purpose.

Brands aligned to consumer values (e.g., ways of eating, environmental stewardship, donation of proceeds to various causes) also command a price premium as consumers are willing to pay more for the enhanced benefits delivered by a values-based brand. We see this justified premium as a growth unlock across categories.

Unlock: Use forward-looking insights to identify emerging values that drive purchase decisions

Prioritize leading-edge consumers (those creating change in the market) and identify what they value most when selecting products. These consumers portend where purchase decisions are trending, and brands that deeply understand these values-based decisions can better delight this group and remain ahead of broader market trends.

A few examples include:

Love the Wild, a frozen seafood entrées kit, with sustainable aquaculture benefits for consumers and the environment.

Credo Mobile, a virtual network operator, can charge similar rates to Verizon because it invites its members to designate a charity each month to receive a portion of Credo’s profits.

Pillar #2: Cultural relevance

Brands often struggle to appeal to next generation consumers in today’s ultra-competitive landscape. Successfully creating stickiness in consumers’ minds requires talking to consumers through mediums and situations that are relevant to their culture. Connecting to the next generation’s culture in an authentic way while remaining true to the brand’s heritage will allow the brand to build relevance with a spectrum of consumers.

Unlock: Link your brand to contemporary culture As consumers see advertising everywhere, from subway ads to Snapchat stories, it has become more difficult for brands to capture mindshare. One way to stand out authentically is to leverage borrowed interest from pop culture, making smart, relevant connections to your brand and what it stands for.

A few examples include:

Bud Light’s Game of Thrones campaign targeted Millennials with its creative focus on high-quality ingredients and fostered cultural appeal through its humor and homage to the widely popular show.

Sir Kensington’s co-branded food trucks borrowed badge value from beloved TV show Bob’s Burgers and appealed to foodie culture.

Pillar #3: Lifestyle relevance

As the next generation builds careers, families, and homes, they seek solutions that fit meals, snacks, and personal care and household occasions into busy schedules, spurring a resurgence across categories from home cleaning to frozen meals to dairy and pasta. Brands can win by updating old standbys for evolving needs as consumers seek better ‘job’ solutions.

Unlock: Connect with trending values as a ‘way in’ to today’s lifestyle

For the next generation, food values are about more than just nourishment; they are integrated into consumers’ sense of self and wellbeing. Brands whose products better fulfill evolving consumer ‘jobs’ associated with changing lifestyles will earn greater market share.

A few examples include:

Califia identified plant-based eating as an emerging food value and innovated within this platform to fulfill a myriad of consumer “jobs”, such as energy, digestive health, and satiety.

Banza’s chickpea pastas were inspired by the idea that consumers buying better-for-you products want the best of both worlds: delicious meals for the whole family to gather around, while overdelivering on nutrition density.

Pillar #4: Budget relevance

With college tuition increasing 500% since the 1980s and cost of living more than tripling, the next generation of consumers is accustomed to living on a budget. In the consumer goods space, they are seeking an even greater value equation. Low prices alone are not the answer. It is more important than ever to identify and deliver on the aspects of the value equation that matter most to them.

Unlock: Over-deliver on the value equation

Offering exceptional value through the right benefits at the right price requires a deep understanding of where value lies for your consumer. By offering exactly what consumers value most and not investing in what they don’t, brands can be highly relevant while saving on areas that expand profit margin.

A few examples include:

This is L became a high-growth feminine care brand through a highly relevant value equation for modern women, including organic ingredients, stand-out packaging and competitive pricing vs. conventional leaders.

One Bar focuses its packaging on communicating its nutritional point of difference—20g of protein, just 1g sugar—and delicious exploratory flavors.

Pillar #5: Relevant availability

Today’s consumers expect brands to be seamlessly available for purchase in their flow of life outside traditional retail channels, whether offline or online. However, brands must still stand out in the traditional brick and mortar retail environment while expanding omnichannel through availability online, in foodservice, and/or in unexpected UDS (up-and-down-the-street) channels such as apartment buildings, workplaces, and gyms.

Unlock: Develop breakthrough availability

As social networks expand in-app purchasing capabilities, brands can capitalize, reaching younger consumers where they already browse and removing the friction to purchase online. In real life, brands can break through by ensuring their in-store presence is unforgettable (or better yet, Instagrammable) and by increasing distribution in grab-and-go locations that accommodate the next generation’s on-the-go lifestyle expectations.

A few examples include:

Sumo Citrus’ seasonal in-store execution aligns with retailers’ desire – and emerging KPI – of creating Instagrammable displays. Shoppers associate these oranges with an eye-catching showstopper on the store perimeter, leading to higher likelihood to purchase.

Smalls cat food sidestepped category incumbents by expanding point of sale to Instagram, where browsers receive a discount to encourage trial and can shop directly from the link.

Q Mixers is sold at retail, but next-generation consumers might also spot their “Spectacular Serve” bottles when ordering drinks at leading restaurants and bars around the country.

Summary

To unlock growth this decade, commit to a forward-looking insight approach to build relevance with the next generation of consumers. Include the 5 Pillars of Relevance framework within your annual planning and ensure new growth ideas integrate into your marketing plans. We wish you success in the new year and hope these revenue growth ideas provide inspiration on new ways to engage consumers.

As always, we welcome your thoughts and feedback. Please reach out to info@seuratgroup.com.

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5 Ways to Drive Big Brands in the Challenger Age