 Welcome to Start Up The Storefront, presented by Ouroborah. All right, welcome to the podcast on today's show. We're talking to Tomo, founder of Nashi. Thanks for joining. For people who don't know, what does your company do? We make organic kids food. It was conceived out of my frustrations at having two children who weren't interested in mealtimes. I didn't have trouble feeding them broccoli or vegetables. They love vegetables. They just weren't interested in mealtimes. And I wanted to try and make mealtimes more exciting for them. And here we are, eight years later. That's pretty amazing. And obviously, you were on Shark Tank. We'll get to that a little bit later. But before we do that, what was like your first step in creating this concept? What were you trying to solve? And obviously, for people who don't know the product, it's kind of unique. It's an immersive thing. You can play with it. And so give people a window into what the product is and then the problem you were trying to solve. Well, the product we've been selling for the past few years is called Food Paint, which is a set of tubes of different coloured organic fruit puree. So you have three tubes in a set, strawberry, peach, blueberry, or the Crayola set is raspberry, mango and grape. And we also launched Ketchup last year in the same size tubes in the same format. I had become a stay-at-home dad. I worked in the fashion industry for 20 years. Became a stay-at-home dad when our second child was born. And this mealtime thing became obvious quite quickly. So I spent a lot of my free time wandering the aisles of grocery stores in downtown Manhattan looking for this product, which I was convinced must exist, but actually didn't, which was a product that you can give to kids to use themselves, something that you give them the responsibility, give them some autonomy, show them that you trust them, try and bring them into the process of creating a meal and give them something to look forward to, something that they can look forward to getting out to the table to do. And it didn't exist. And I found that rather strange. And still, to this day, there are very few food products designed specifically to be used by children. There's a lot of products designed to be eaten by children, but not many that actually give the kids any responsibility or any sense of trust. So at the same time as this was going on, I had volunteered to do friendly visiting with the elderly, and I'd been paired with a lovely old couple on the Upper West Side called Ben and Peggy. And we used to sit with each other every Friday morning for an hour or so and just discuss the world and our week. And I would talk about this ongoing project of mine, this ongoing search. And one evening Peggy emailed me and she said, I've got a business proposition for you. And I was due to see them the next morning and I went up there and she ironically had seen an episode of Shark Tank wherein two women had successfully pitched a product to the sharks that was multi-colored, neon-colored cookie dough, edible cookie dough. It was full of artificial colors and sugar and artificial flavors and Peggy had been very frustrated by that and she was trying to think of a healthier version of that and combined that thinking with me saying, why aren't there any products out there that kids can use at mealtimes? And that was the bones of the idea that became food paint. And as soon as she said it to me, I was like, that's a really good idea. And almost ran home because in the space of my hour meeting with her, we thought of what the colors would be, what the flavors would be, the fact that it would need to be in tubes. So all of that was all sort of there. I mean, it was done. That's amazing. Red is obviously strawberry, blue is obviously blueberry, blah, blah, blah, blah. And so I went home and sat down and I was completely inspired because I was looking for a new career. I didn't want to go back into the fashion industry. It was fun then, but it wasn't fun then. And so I sat down and I opened Google and I was like, what does one type if one wants to start a food company? I had no idea. I was literally typing how to start a kid's food company, how to launch it. And there's nothing there. I mean, to cut a long story short, it took me three months to speak to it. My first useful conversation happened three months later. And it wasn't for lack of trying either. That's unbelievable. I really love that. And so, I mean, first of all, good story. I love how that happened so naturally and organically. Like your product. And then why the name? What does the name mean? I think because of my background in fashion, I did a lot of, you know, a lot of the, it's a very creative industry. So that was my background. It was a lot of visuals and creativity. And when I was like, okay, this is quite an exciting project. I've got to come up with a kid's food product and I can do whatever I want because it's a crazy product with a crazy idea behind it. Packaging. Where do we start with packaging? Where do we start with names? And I started looking at Japanese food packaging. And I think Noshi came about through me looking at all of these images of this packaging. And it wasn't a word that I remember thinking this should be called Noshi or looking for Noshi or somebody suggesting Noshi. I think it was just born of me looking at all this packaging. There must have been a word on one of them that was either Noshi or Toshi or Boshi or something like that. But that's where Noshi came from. And of course, because of the connection with Noshi and then the Yiddish, you know, element of that and Peggy latching on to that as well, Noshi seemed like the best name for it. I still think it's a great name. You go home, you start working on this product. Are your kids your beta testers at the time? Are they the one sort of experimenting with it, trying this out? And what was the hard part? What was the hard part of getting it right? I went home and bought a quiz in art and then went to the grocery store, bought a pound of strawberries, a pound of peaches, a pound of blueberries. Because we were going to do savory flavors as well so bought a pound of carrots and a pound of peas, came home, cooked the carrots, cooked the peas, blended them all and put them in little jars and put them next to each other. I got a picture of it very early on our Instagram account and they looked amazing. And I was like, wow, this is brilliant. This is such a good idea. This is going to be a smash. But then of course, that first conversation I had three months in was with a woman who was working for a packaging company and I sort of connected with her because I was looking for a packaging supplier and she, in conversations with her, she also let slip that she advised food startups and I was like, ah, I need your help. And so we worked together for a while and she enlightened me to the fact that I need a food scientist. I was like, why do I need a food scientist? And she said, well, to make it food safe and to make it a product that can be mass produced and saleable and I was like, oh, okay. And of course, I found a food scientist eventually, my friend, my food scientist, like as with most of the connections that have driven this business forward over the last eight years, nearly all of them came by connections at my kid's school or in the local playground and Fred came about through one of the moms in the schoolyard and he obviously immediately enlightened me to the fact that you need to pasteurize fruit and vegetables and when you cook certain fruit and vegetables, those colors in those jars don't stay those colors in those jars. So he then went off and spent 18 months getting the product to be the best version of itself before we even started to think about production. And does color the most important part just from, I guess, the child's perspective? Yeah, I mean, I've always been fighting a slightly losing battle with the color because it's an organic product and it always had to be an organic product and I feel very strongly that it should be an organic product but it being organic, you can't add artificial colors and so trying to sell a product that's meant to be brightly colored and it sometimes not being as brightly colored as people want it to be or expect it to be, I find that very frustrating. I take it personally that we can't make it the same colors as those neon colored cookie dough what the Peggy was initially inspired by. I'd like it to be neon yellow and neon pink and neon blue and neon red but you just can't get it there so that's had to be, you know, you have to make peace with that, I think. Yeah, that makes sense. And so then what was your first step? What was the first store you guys were in or how did you officially launch? I've done this all backwards probably due to a complete lack of experience in the industry not knowing what a PO was until somebody asked me to send them a PO not knowing what COGS was until somebody explained what COGS was and so again, my wife has a friend who worked with Albertsons he helped, he worked at Goldman Sachs and he worked with Albertsons or worked with Albertsons and he had a really good relationship with their national head of sales a guy called Larry Hansen who he put me in touch with and Larry was lovely and always championed the product he's now retired, lucky Larry but he immediately loved the product and championed it and said I'm going to introduce you to all of my 31 regional sales managers on an email but you have to call them you have to call each of them individually and convince them to stock this product and I was like Jesus Christ that's absolutely terrifying okay and so I did I sat down I had all the phone numbers and I sat down I worked through them and by the end of it seven of them had agreed to carry the product and I then had to speak to Cahi and get hooked into Cahi because I didn't know anything about a distribution either and Cahi has staff that work inside Albertsons because Albertsons is such a big account and so Albertsons put me in touch with Cahi and then the Cahi onboarding process took about three months during which I was like okay this is happening now these stores are expecting this product by this date I don't have a co-packer which was something else I didn't know the existence I didn't know what co-packers were I didn't know what they were was enlightened to their existence by Fred again and then I started researching co-packers near New York and none of them had tube filling machines because nobody puts food in tubes in this country they do in the UK and Europe and Australia and pretty much everywhere else apart from the USA so I had to buy a tube filling machine a very old decrepit tube filling machine I'm going to diplomatically say it has a large personality as do most tube filling machines because they have a million and one moving parts and at any moment in time between one and a million of those parts can decide to stop working and so obviously to buy this very very old very very cheap tube filling machine I had to take on investment so I took on some friends and family investment and bought this $22,000 machine moved it into an organic incubator in New Jersey and would be going I was still a stay at home parent this time my wife was going to work every day I was taking the kids to school and immediately driving to New Jersey dropped the kids at school drive to New Jersey turned this machine on and one mother in the playground especially I would come her I would be back in the city by three o'clock to pick up the kids and she would say how many tubes did you fill today and I'd say one or how many tubes did you fill today none and I was meant to be filling 9,000 tubes a day and so like this went on for days and I think the biggest number I got up to was like 12 we filled 12 tubes today because the machine just didn't want to play ball and like meanwhile I'm seeing this deadline rapidly approaching down the road towards me and I'm like jeez and lo and behold well I do know how it happened because I was put in touch with a genius engineer called Donnie and Donnie effectively moved into the incubator with me and he just got the machine to run and he and I still worked together now seven years later and he's a genius and he got it to run and we got the product out to these 175 Albertson stores and I think 74 Safeway stores just in time we got it out to them and within two weeks of that happening Jewel Osco big country huge grocery chain I'd never heard of it they came on board and said we want to put it in all of our stores so that was another I think that was another 200 stores maybe it was 260 total so within a month of us getting this machine working we were suddenly in like 300 stores and I was like oh my god this is amazing nobody had told me about marketing nobody had told me even though I'd spent 20 years working in the fashion industry literally creating advertising campaigns for brands like Halden Klein and Louis Vuitton I hadn't really taken on board that I needed to create marketing for my company and that that would cost money and so I didn't have that money because I've always just been a one-man band and so it was tough oh man I don't think I've ever laughed so much on a podcast this is quite tremendous and I really appreciate your sort of your candor or honesty around how you really didn't know what you were doing and I think that's entrepreneurship in a nutshell and the goal of people listening to this podcast and sort of our whole platform is to inspire people being like oh you know I'm just like like I have no idea but I have a vision of this thing that should exist in the world and now I'm going to go create it and I'll figure the rest out there's a real beauty to that there's an honesty to that it's literally that cliché of the entrepreneur jumping off the cliff and building the plane on the way down but in my mind that I always pictured that as happening on a bright sunny day with no wind right in my journey that happened in the middle of the night during a raging storm with a blizzard it's raining it's snowing there's rocks flying through the air and I'm still trying to build an aeroplane on the way down that's actually a really good question we could pose that to any entrepreneur alright so entrepreneurship is you're off the cliff the plane you're building the plane while it's falling what's the weather it's a good question everybody would answer that differently is there a ground or is there an ocean how far away is the ground what's the weather are there trees under you what is the ground are you gonna survive if you don't build the plane is the ground made of are there cushions on the ground that's right in my head there's always an ocean but I hadn't considered the version of the weather I think it's an ocean that you definitely don't survive landing in yeah it's gonna hurt no matter what on this bright sunny day so at some point you probably return to Pagan you go alright it's my turn to go on Shark Tank how did that happen that again crazy so she put that idea in front of me in February 2015 by April 2015 I was like we need to do a Kickstarter because this is gonna cost a lot of money so we put a Kickstarter online and looking to raise $20,000 haha and it went live and two weeks later halfway through the Kickstarter and we were struggling to raise the money but two weeks into the Kickstarter I got an email from Shark Tank and they had seen it and they said this is amazing we want to put you on the show we're really late in the application process if you're interested let us know immediately and we'll send you the paperwork and I said yes please that would be amazing they sent me all the paperwork filled it all in sent it back they then scheduled a call with all of their production crew and it was an hour long call on a Monday evening they were all in LA Peggy was on her phone at home I was on mine at home and at the end of this call the producer said look I can't give you a definitive answer today because that's not how we do things but I'm very confident in saying you're going to be on next season Shark Tank and I was like wow that would be great this was in spring of 2015 meanwhile the first food scientist I'd been put in touch with just went rogue he just completely went completely off reservation I sent him tubs, tubes of fruit puree just 100% fruit puree and vegetable puree and I said make these food safe make these store ready and he came back and he said no I don't think you should do this you should do let's use concentrated orange juice and we could do jellies and let's do a chocolate and I was like no, no, no, no, no no, no just please do what I've asked you to do it's not complicated is it and he couldn't get his head around it and he started sending me samples that had coconut oil in them and it was like it was a really hot summer in New York by this point like it's summertime and he's sending me these samples in a FedEx box that doesn't have cool packs in it and I open them up and they're like little tubs of salad dressing that looks like oil and vinegar that's separated and I'm like what the f**k is this what is that and I'm literally sitting here looking at these things going oh my god what the hell is that and my phone rang and it had an LA area code and I'm like oh my god it's chartank and I picked it up and it was Heather the producer she was amazing and I just went I'm really sorry we can't do this I'm so sorry we can't do it and she went I'm so glad you said that I was about to say the same thing to you you're not ready yet and I said good and I said but have we blown it I mean is this ever going to can we ever resurrect this and she said just let me know when you're in stores when you start when you start selling this stuff email me and we'll get back to the conversation fast forward two years and we get this stuff sent out you know the machine's working we send the product out it's about to hit the shelves in Albertsons and I emailed her and she's left her job and so the whole thing just sort of went by the wayside so that was annoying and then it wasn't and I was like okay well it's you know I'm very pragmatic I think you have to be when you're doing something like this you have to just like roll with the punches and so fast forward to last spring last April sitting at home and I'd always known this and I had always talked about this a lot at length with anybody who would listen which was the problem with food paint is that kids understand it immediately but their parents don't they don't understand what it is why they need to buy it whether their kids are going to play with it whether kids playing with food is a good thing or a bad thing are kids going to squirt it up the walls are they going to squirt it on their baby brother kids just you know kids respond to parents trusting them and so if you say to a kid this is for you this box of stuff is for you to use they can't believe they're like what really you trust me to do this and you're like yeah I do and they respond to that and they just sit down and they draw their smiley face on their food but I didn't know how to get that message across to parents and I always knew that it was either going to require the aforementioned bud marketing budget which I've never had or a national platform and so I was sitting there last April April 22 and I was like chart tank the reason we didn't do it last summer was we weren't in stores we're in Walmart now surely they're going to find that sexy so I went back through all of my old emails like Cherry picked all of the chart tank addresses out of my sent and received emails went on LinkedIn they obviously were new staff it being five, six years later worked out what their email addresses would be and I sent the same email to six different people all saying the same thing had the same subject line we were you know we were nearly on chart tank now we're in Walmart da da da da da da da da da da and I just sent them all off and I just did it to be proactive because it was a particularly tough time my wife was living in England with her parents because she was very very sick with long COVID and I wasn't able to look after her and the kids and run the company and I was like I've got to turn this around I've got to my wife may never work again I've got to do something and so I was just it was a day where I was like trying to keep everything together I've got to be proactive and so I'm just going to send these emails and I've sent them now and it's I've done it at least I've done it at least I've tried didn't expect anybody to reply to it and I think it took 22 minutes for one of them to reply and then the next thing I knew I was on the phone to them the next day and every phone call would end with whoever I was talking to saying okay brilliant I'm going to push this up to the next level it'll probably take them two or three weeks to come back to you just sit tight and then I would get an email two days later so every time I was told it was going to take two weeks or three weeks in days and so between April and early June I had a series of interviews with increasingly more and more senior people and then I was assigned two producers at the beginning of June last year and then I had an hour long zoom call with those two amazing producers every week between June and me filming my episode on September the 11th last year Wow was Mindy one of those people that you were resuming with? I mean Kelly Mindy's the casting director isn't she? Yeah we had Mindy on the pod too and so before you get on what are you like what is are you thinking your dream scenario are you targeting a certain shark do you think okay this is the shark that can transform the company based on the background what's the analysis going through your head of like how to execute Well first off I don't want Shark Tank because I find it absolutely terrifying I'm just so scared on behalf of this who's stressful so I had never watched it I had never never watched it I had to watch episodes last summer obviously to prepare myself and to train myself but I watched the bare minimum and of course they do also say don't watch the show obsessively because you don't want you do want to come into a fairly free form but I had very very little experience I knew who the sharks were I know who the sharks are but beyond that I didn't really have any experience I was standing backstage and and the floor manager's here the camera man's here that's going to walk backwards down the tunnel with me walking towards him onto the stage and I was more calm than I'd ever been in my life because I was like this is like M&M in in eight mile I have got one shot and I'm not going to fuck it up and so so I walked out and I was cold as ice and I knew I had the pitch I knew I could do the pitch when my eyes closed back to front in a storm falling off a cliff word perfect the only thing that did go wrong slightly is that just as I was just as they were about to say action and he was about to walk backwards and I was going to walk follow him down to the stage I suddenly realised I was desperate for a pee I was like what am I going to do there's literally hundreds of people about to they're all standing they're waiting for me and I need to pee I've got a pee I've got a pee I can't go out there and then be talking to the shot so I said I'm pretty sorry I need to pee and they're like cut everyone five minutes hold on hold on and I went had a pee came back there was somebody in the bathroom so I had to wait for them to come out before I could have a pee and this is in the studio in Sony it was like there were 200 people in there and they were all there for me and I was having a pee and so I came back walked out into the stage and they you know they do the stand still for a couple of minutes and so I stood still for a couple of minutes and then just towards the end of that two minutes something it was a technical fault so they're like okay everyone stand down and I had to stand there for another I had to stand there for another five minutes before they fight but again I was like I'm just here for one reason I'm not scared I'm not nervous just gonna do it so I just stood there they said action I did the pitch the questions came thick and fast as they do I really didn't think it was gonna be Mark because he speaks so little in the episodes here he does fewer deals than most of the other sharks but the others all dropped out in quite a quick succession yeah that that surprised me because when I was watching it I thought they're all parents I think all of them could help you out in my opinion it just seemed like they all have a platform that there's an angle here and it was surprising to me there was two things that were surprising one they all got it they got it right away it seems like they didn't like the margin okay you can fix that though and I didn't understand why they were so quick to be out it really surprised me to be honest because I'm like all of them should be in on this it seems like a no brainer it surprised me yeah I mean I went in there not knowing yeah because of course you know I'm way too close to the product overthink it overthink everything you know as an entrepreneur you always have periods of self doubt am I doing am I crazy am I doing the right thing or the wrong thing so I really didn't know how they were going to take it the only thing I do remember thinking is that after Damon went out because they went around in a circle it was Barbara then Kevin then Laurie then Damon when he started to explain his feelings and I was like he's going to say no fuck what am I going to do my life flashed before me I was like oh my god because I really didn't think Mark was going to do what he did and I was like what are we going to do family we are fucked we are in deep deep shit now what on earth am I going to do and then everybody looked at Mark and you know that that pause it felt like it lasted five years but of course it was Tuesday and it sounded like Barbara was like what are you doing Mark like no they edited that they edited that it was Kevin that was amazed Barbara didn't say that she said that that another you know Kevin that was initially surprised that Mark had done that I would like to think that he invested as much in me as in the product I cannot let this fail I will not let this fail I mean we food paint you know is an amazing product and I believe in it still but it is going to need a much bigger budget than the budget I have to do it properly and so what we're doing next is we're launching a range of savory condiments in much bigger tubes that are these are products that people already buy and it's still all about empowering children at the table but it's ketchup and mustard and branch dressing and you know Honey Mustard BBQ similar to Chick-fil-A Sauce you know we're launching those because these are products that people already buy that they already love that do have a higher margin so I took obviously took on board what Mark said in the studio because he's a very very clever man and so I took on board him saying you should be selling single tubes your margins are terrible I took all of that on board and came up with this and it was just you know it's this is the size of the tube oh wow yeah it's like a for people I guess listening it's a toothpaste size I guess well no it's much bigger than a toothpaste shampoo oh yeah okay alright it looks like sun block size yeah it's like a big tube a sun block it's ten ounces and so far they've had an amazing response from stores so I'm hopeful that next year is going to be very interesting how long did it take for when the show ended to finalize the deal they came back to me the week between Christmas and New Year of this year no last year so I taped it on September the 11th they went off and did due diligence and then came back a couple of days before New Year or maybe it was a couple of days after New Year and we finalized the deal about a week after that but you know as soon as we finalized the deal before we'd signed anything people on Mark's team who are amazing they are the loveliest smartest most brilliant people in the world and I speak to them every day and they are they are the best Mark is amazing his team is amazing I speak to Mark by email every two or three weeks I speak to people on his team literally more than once a day that's awesome I'm on your website now and it looks like everything is sold out and so that seems like a good sign yeah it is it's definitely I mean I've got a budget and it's it's it's not huge and so I have to focus right now on getting these things out into the wild because you know this is a business and it's all very well me having a creative background and coming up with a product which like I say I still believe in food paint a hundred percent but I've got a company to run I've got a company to build I need to increase profits year on year you know I need to increase margins year on year is not going to help me do that so I have to get these other things out into the wild which I think will help me do that at a fairly serious fairly decent you know rates of nuts I think I do think that this is going to happen differently and then I want to come back to food paint it needs to be done properly you know I think if I've learned one thing is that that product needs to be a certain way and I I think it's going to be the way it needs to be today but I will be able to next year and the year after and the year after what I love about your story in some ways like you talk about the marketing a lot but it's also getting on a national platform to be able to sort of educate the world on what your product is it's like the ultimate hack and it worked I would imagine what happened after Shark Tank grocery wise retail wise you know I assume it's obviously a bump I do think that it is a niche product you know I thought that it could be you know an equivalent to maple syrup I thought it could be a product that like every household would not weekly but might buy every month and I think that was optimistic of me I think it is a product that people now do understand and appreciate it for what it is and kids obviously love it but it's never going to be a product that is bought in millions of units on a weekly basis it just isn't and so I've got to grow my company and I've got to increase my profits and I've got to launch and grow products that are going to help me do that faster than slower yep that makes a lot of sense and are you raising more capital now or where is the business now yeah they're not a huge amount and don't need to raise a huge amount but yeah I'm certainly looking to raise between half a million and a million dollars at the moment you're saying this year maybe next year they will be released into the wild next spring based on conversations I've been having that's exciting any name for them can you give us a tease they're just called they were going to be called SketchUp and Crayonaze and MustART with a T on the end but one of the retailers we spoke to he said that's really cute he said but don't you think that you want to just make sure customers understand this product immediately and put it in their grocery and based obviously based on my experience with FoodPan I was like yes absolutely I want them to understand it immediately and put it in their grocery cart immediately I don't want them to sit there going what is this which is you know was the problem I've been dealing with for the previous five, six years I want them to go oh it's catch up slam in the grocery it was like who doesn't like the James Bond or whatever but they were our friends and it was just fun and then somebody says to us do you think anyone Googles your friends name when they're trying to buy a bow tie and I was like what do you mean and they're like you need to say blue and white polka dot bow tie and that's the name and I was like oh yeah and then all of a sudden it was early days of SEO but we would I think if you were to Google anywhere in the world and so it was just where the naming should just be descriptive and people shouldn't have to do calculus or know me personally to be like I want that tie because that's Diego's friend that is in business school with him it's like yeah these things seem silly at the time you want to break them old you want to be creative you want to do something different you want this product to jump off the shelf in the grocery store but people don't have time to stop and think oh that's creative they're rushing around the grocery store doing the shopping before they got to get home and do this and this and then get the kids from school you've got to make life easy for shoppers and you know we all entrepreneurs all talk about you know pivoting and learning from past mistakes and working out what worked from there taking the good bits and leaving the bad bits and that's you know I'm just going through that evolution at the moment I love it well look this has been one of the most interesting things that I've heard from people and our listeners where can people find you where can they purchase the product what stores I know you're on Amazon online where else have a big food paint it's still on Amazon and that's there's Crayola food paint in about 500 Walmart stores still so that's sort of our only distribution at the moment actually happens and I'm quietly confident that it is I love it I'm going to buy some for my nephews who I think will love this product so look at Tomo thank you for your time this has been amazing I appreciate it take it easy nice to me thanks so much for having me thank you so much for the support and making it to the end of the episode if you haven't already please leave a review and share the episode with your friends if you never want to miss a beat on all things entrepreneurship thanks for watching see you next time bye