363 - Creating a Category Leader: The Absorption Company's Rise to Erewhon's #1 Functional Health Brand

Speaker A: Foreign.

Speaker B: This is D2C pod, where the worlds of creators, consumer goods and brands collide. We get behind the wheel to show you how today's biggest products and ideas are made, launched and scaled. If it's shaping the future of commerce and culture, you'll Hear it here first. Catch new episodes weekly on Spotify, Apple Podcasts or D2C pod.com Be sure to check out our newsletter for weekly breakdowns and recaps linked in the show notes. So before we, before we kick off today's recording, I've got one more for you. E Commerce costs are rising. USPS changes alone could push delivery costs, uh, up more than 25% this year. And to stay competitive, you need a supply chain partner built for scale. And that's what Stored is. A modern 3 PL that unites warehousing, fulfillment and transportation with cloud software for full visibility and control. In 2024 alone, Stord saved customers $130 million in parcel fees and powered nearly 1% of all U.S. black Friday and Cyber Monday sales. Now they're offering a free mystery shopping report. See how your ops and logistics stacks up against competitors with real actionable insights. Get yours at Stord Link Mystery and scale smarter with Stored. What is going on DTCpod today we are joined by the co founder and CEO of the Absorption company, Zeke Bronfman. Um, Zeke Z. Super excited. Been looking forward to this episode for a while. Um, you know obviously big into wellness and have seen you guys kind of popping up everywhere, all over social, um, starting to be in retail as well. Places like Erewhon, Sun Life, stuff like that. So you know, had been really looking forward to do the show. Um, but yeah, I would love to learn a little bit more. Why don't you just tell us? So uh, we've got a little bit, bit bit of background about yourself and you know, how you started running the absorption company. Absolutely.

Speaker A: Thanks for having me on. Really excited to be here. Um, and I can start just giving you a quick overview story of how my co founder Nate and I came to to be building the absorption company. Um, so it all sort of starts um, when the two of us met when we were in college and both of us were very passionate about the health and wellness space. My co founder Nate's a type 1 diabetic, so he's really been cautious about every single thing he put into his body since the day he was 4 years old and had a very quick feedback loop for every single thing he ingested. Um, and so was incredibly knowledgeable about the food you know, supplementation, wellness space, um, you know, far above anything I ever knew. And when we were in college, um, we actually founded our first business together as a better for you beverage brand that we scaled over several years, ultimately sold in 2022. And after selling that, we were thinking about we wanted to do next. And Nate had been taking, you know, 15, 20 supplements a day as long as I'd known him, and he'd gotten me on maybe five or six of the ones he recommended the most. I definitely was not taking his full regimen. And after a while, both of us started to feel pretty frustrated that, you know, we were taking all these pills every day. We were spending a huge amount of money every single month on all these supplements, but we weren't feeling any better, and we actually weren't feeling any different at all. And we really couldn't understand why. And so we started asking all these doctors, we started doing all this research, and pretty quickly what we learned was the reason we weren't feeling any better from these supplements we were taking was because the supplements themselves weren't designed for our body to absorb them. And so we actually weren't getting the nutrients into our systems. And we were wasting, you know, 84% of the active nutrients in these supplements that we were paying a hundred percent for. And no wonder we weren't feeling any better. And so as we started to learn a little bit more about this, what we realized is this wasn't just a problem that was affecting us. You know, just on average, 16% of most supplements actually absorb. And as a result, you know, 77% of Americans are taking a supplement every single day, but over 90% of us are still. Still deficient in key nutrients. And I think that's one of the craziest stats that really stuck out for me. Almost all of us are already taking supplements, and yet we are all still suffering from nutrient deficiencies. And so, as a result, what that means is the supplements don't work. And the reason those supplements don't work is the supplements don't absorb. And so we built the Absorption Company to solve that problem, um, and to create the most bioavailable, most absorbable supplements on the market. Um, and that is why every single thing that we do at the Absorption Company is focused on this idea of improving the bioavailability, the absorption of supplements for our consumers. Um, um. And we really believe that the next frontier in health and wellness is this idea of bioavailability and absorption. In five, ten years from now, nobody is going to be asking how many milligrams should I take? They'll be asking how many milligrams do I need to absorb of any given supplement or nutrient. And so that is the future that we are trying to usher in. Um, and we believe that we are the category defining brand in that space.

Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, I think it's super exciting. Uh, and I think to your point about just like general consumer awareness, like we with supplements, right, like people are always thinking about, oh, here's how much and which one has more ingredients, but it doesn't really matter if your body doesn't absorb it. And I, um, mean like what you just mentioned about the food matrix that you consume these things in is so important. Right? Because if, when you get a supplement, a lot of times it's just a powdered format of um, a high concentration of whatever it is you're getting, but that's not the natural, uh, food matrix that that supplement comes in. So to expect your body to absorb it the same way, um, it often doesn't happen. And there have been a ton of studies around absorption, uh, and the type of food matrix that specific ingredients need to be in to be absorbed. So I think you're right on the money. Um, and I think you guys set yourself up with a really cool platform for this because, um, you know, as we all know, the, the wellness space is booming, but it's also hyper competitive. Right. So I think, um, you know, being able to understand like where you're putting your flag in the sand, what your brand is all about is, is super important and it is market and um, it's really cool to have that understanding. So why don't you take me back to, um, you know, you guys have been around for a little bit now, still a relatively young brand. How did the brand come together once you kind of understood that, hey, you know, this is the company we want to build. You're the products that we want to develop. Take me back to what, um, you know, building the company, like what did it take, like pre launch, what went into it before you guys were available for sale?

Speaker A: Yeah, so couple different elements that sort of all had to come together and all sort of work in sync to build what ultimately became the Absorption company. The first element is that Nate and I met our other co founders, Ian and Nikki. Um, Ian and Nikki, um, have been actors for many years and they had been taking dozens of different supplements every day as recommended by their trainers and nutritionists, um, to keep them in tip top shape for the various shows and movies they were in. And after many years, they went to have their first kid and they got a bunch of blood work done, realized that the supplements they'd been taking not only weren't helping, but actually were causing a huge amount of harm because many of the nutrients weren't absorbing. And if you're only absorbing about 16% of the nutrients, well, that other 84% doesn't just disappear. It actually gets stuck in your body and causes toxicity and causes harm on your liver and your kidneys. And so they got these results back and realized that they had to build a better for you supplement business. And we met them, um, a couple of years later as we had started working on this, and they had had this vision as well. And so we all decided to partner together and build this together. Um, and so that was sort of the first element that to come together. The next is the actual technology and the product itself. And so we were lucky to partner with an amazing researcher who had developed this technology, um, had four different patents on the technology, um, to be able to have a proprietary tech that improves the absorption and the bioavailability of key nutrients. Um, we have since then also found dozens of other technologies that we work with. And so we are the absorption company. That means that we do everything to maximize bioavailability and absorption. And so for different nutrients, different, um, you know, nutrients absorb in different ways, we use different technologies to maximize their bioavailability and absorption. But a big part of this really started by finding that first technology that allowed us to have a real differentiator within the space. Um, the next piece, I would say, is sort of bringing the brand to life. Um, and so started building out a team, you know, started doing the branding work, built a website, built, um, our packaging, um, and then we started building a community. And I think that's sort of the most critical. All of it is that these brands only work if people care about them and if people actually want to share them with their friends. And so we needed to build that community, um, which we did by launching a private Instagram page, um, telling people we were working on something, they could follow us, um, kind of behind the scenes if they wanted to learn more, um, which meant that we had to literally manually go in one by one and accept all these followers. And we got over a hundred thousand people to follow this private Instagram page before we launched the brand. We did a pre sale just for this audience, um, before we ever launched. And it went pretty viral within this small gated community. We sold out within 12 hours or our entire Pre launch supply. Um, and that sort of gave us this little boost, um, of a really strong built in core consumer community, um, before we even launch the brand.

Speaker B: Okay, so lot to unpack there. Um, the first question I have, like, that's awesome. In terms of the community building side of things, I think so many people when they're thinking about launching, they're like, how do I bring this product to market? How do I grow a following? So what did that look like? I know, um, like you were saying, like Ian and Nikki, they do have sort of followings. But what did it look like to grow that account? How much of it was, um, you know, your partners kind of like driving traffic to it versus like the word of mouth from the community? How do you take a private account that's built around a concept from 0 to 100k? Because that is no, no small feat in of itself, right?

Speaker A: Yeah, 100%. A big part of that was absolutely driven by um, Ian and Nikki and their large following. I mean big part of it was driven, um, by this idea of exclusivity. Um, if we had kept that as a public account, we would have had, you know, probably more page visits, but we would not have even close to the level of followers comments, engagement, um, and level of kind of like committed community. And I think that that was sort of the key insight is that um, you know, celebrities post stuff all the time. It doesn't get a lot of engagement or traction. And what allowed this to sort of catch on and connect with our audience is that we created this level of, um, exclusivity. And we created this club that you were a part of, um, which not only made you, you know, more want to stay a part of it, it also made you more want to share this with your friends because you had access to something that you could kind of bring them into as well. And so that really just started, um, snowballing from there, um, where people would share with their friends and bring other community members in. Um, and we only did this for maybe a month and a half, two months, uh, before we ultimately launched the brand, um, for a wider community and mid February. Um, but it was a really, really strong starting point. We've since seen that audience has really stuck with us. They're probably our highest lifetime value cohort of all of our consumers ever.

Speaker B: Yeah, it's super cool. Especially because, you know, you've got a bunch of different, uh, tailwinds going on. You've got, obviously a lot of brands are trying to grow really fast on social through organic and getting the algorithm to push them. But, like, also, you guys kind of bucked that trend a little bit and went the other way. But, you know, if you think about it, it's like if it's kind of smart because it's like if someone lands on the page and they want to see the content, well, they got to follow and then they're sticking around. Right? So it's just, it's just kind of interesting that you're flipping, um, that kind of mechanism on the head. Talk to me a little bit about, uh, what, you know, the MVP of the product look like. Like right now. I think one thing that you guys have done, obviously from a conceptual point, the absorption company, super recognizable, but also the branding, packaging, I think is super standout. Um, so talk to me a little bit about that. Was this MVP that you like, launched to the private community? Was it, um, you know, had you gone through all the branding? Was it in the final form that we're like, seeing today? Or was there an earlier MVP that eventually evolved into what we see today?

Speaker A: Yeah, it's evolved slightly. Um, we've made copy tweaks, we've kind of updated some of the, um, order of the front of pack. Um, but broadly speaking, it's pretty much stayed the same. I think that mosaic that is sort of very, um, foundational to our brand is an element that was, um, really core to us from the very beginning. And I think both brings to life the scientific nature of our brand. You know, those actually are the ingredients that are in each of our products, um, as well as sort of alluding to the periodic table, which we've gotten a lot of, and so feels scientific, feels legitimate, um, but then also creates a very branded moment. It doesn't feel just overly clinical, overly sciency. It actually feels brand lifestyle, um, forward, which gives something that people can relate to and feel a connection to in the brand. And that was really what our challenge was to the agency is how can you feel both scientific, trustworthy, incredible, while also being able to emotionally connect, um, and sort of stand out as a differentiating brand. And so that was what we were really going for. And I think that, um, one of the things we've gotten a lot of, um, positive compliments on is, is the packaging. Um, we are launching some innovation. And so it's been a really interesting experience seeing how does that packaging expand to innovation. And so we actually just came out, uh, this week with our magnesium glycinate, which is our, uh, first new product that we launched since our, our course used and the magnesium glycinate is capsules. It comes in a pill bottle. And so how did we extend the packaging from you know, these initial boxes to the pillow? Um, was a really fun experiment and I think it came together beautifully. And as we launched the rest of our uh, innovation lineup, um, they all fit together really well with the existing SKUs as well. So it's really exciting to see how that packaging evolves as we grow as a brand.

Speaker B: Awesome. And then talk to me a little bit about um, you know, sales and product form and all of this sort of stuff. So where do, where did you guys first, first do your sales? Was that direct? I know you guys are on Amazon, you guys are in retail like walk me through the mix and how you guys started to scale up from um, from a selling perspective.

Speaker A: So most of our business is a DDC subscription business. Um, that's where we see um, really the you know, highest lifetime value of our consumers. That's where we're really trying to scale the business as much as we can. Um, and see the, the bulk of our revenue today. Um, Amazon and TikTok shop are both really fast growing channels for us as well. Um, that we're spending a lot of time really scaling. And then um, our retail um, strategy is to really focus on what we call strategic retailers. And we've turned down um, some of the major national retailers. We're not interested in that kind of partnership at this time though eventually um, we will be an omnichannel brand. For today what we're really focused on is being in the right types of accounts where our consumers go every single day where they already trust that account and they're going to discover us in a state of need, not amongst the sea of a thousand other brands. And so we're in erewhon, we're the number one selling brand in our category. We're in Happier Grocery and Clean Market and Remedy Place and Earth Bar Equinox and Sun Life Organics and the uh, One Hotels and Luke's Local in San Francisco and a ton of these um, really great kind of high visibility accounts where we meet our consumers, where they are. Um, and that's really in our minds more of a marketing channel than it is a kind of revenue channel. Um, though it is a very, very um, high margin, um, great channel for us as well.

Speaker B: Yeah, talk to me a little bit about that because I think what you just said is, is super spot on. Right. As a brand grows like there is a time and place for everything and sometimes you know, brands get over their skis going in, trying to scale retail too fast and all of a sudden you know, you can wipe out uh, a brand that isn't ready for that sort of scale yet. Um, walk me through the, the thinking and like the logic behind what you just sort of mentioned about, you know, we'll have the time for like mega retail, but maybe that isn't right now.

Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. And it's something that as a founder it's really hard obviously to say no to a big national retailer trying to place a purchase order. Um, it goes against almost every instinct, um, to sort of turn that down and say, you know, we're going to stick to being direct to consumer. But I think that it's 100% the right choice and I think it's the right choice for a couple of reasons. First of all, um, the margins at retail, um, at scale are way worse than the margins direct to consumer. Um, and so as an early stage business, having that margin, um, to play with makes a huge difference. Being able to reinvest in marketing, support the business. Um, the second part to it is that the ability to support a brand at retail, um, especially if you're going to do a national launch, something like that, requires a huge, huge investment and you only get one shot. And so if you don't get best in class velocities right away and you're still figuring out exactly what your product is and you're launching new innovation, um, you can't make any mistakes. And so being direct to consumer, not that it allows you to make more mistakes but, but it allows you more of um, a buffer zone to sort of figure stuff out as you're scaling as a new business, figure out who your consumer is, figure out how to reach that consumer, um, and really start to grow profitably before you think about going into retail. Um, and the last thing I would say is that, you know, in most categories I probably wouldn't recommend launching as a direct to consumer only business. But I think the supplement category is a unique one and I think it's unique for a few reasons. First of all is it's a really high gross margin industry and it's a really high, um, kind of recurring revenue industry where there's a lot of subscription purchase. Um, and this trip actually makes sense. You're not forcing people into an unnatural subscription. Um, and then the third is it's really cheap to ship and so it's very easy to actually build as a DDC subscription business. Um, Amazon is the largest supplement retailer in the world. And so through Amazon and through Direct to Consumer, I think there is a huge opportunity to really build, um, scaled supplement businesses. And if we look at our competitive set, you know, we look around and see dozens of businesses that are doing, you know, north of $100 million a year profitably that have not even touched retail yet. Um, and so our philosophy is that, you know, you can't win on every channel all at once. And so we want to focus in on a couple, do them really, really, really well, um, and then move on to the next. And so we've started with DTC subscription, we've started with Amazon, um, we've layered in TikTok shop. Um, we're going to win on those channels. And then once we do, um, um, and once we have the right products, um, the right brand awareness nationally, um, we'll then go to real mass market retail and scale the business from there.

Speaker B: Awesome. Um, yeah, I think that's super spot on. And, and you know, I have so many questions, but, um, let's start with questions, uh, around some of the platforms you mentioned. So I know you're, you said DTC supplement selling online. So talk to me a little bit about your DTC motion. Um, you know our. Are you. Well first of all, what, what are you guys using for subscriptions? Like, do you guys have a, like what, what platform do you guys use for subscriptions? Oh, nice. And how's that been?

Speaker A: It's been great. We actually just uh, switched to them relatively recently. Um, Aiden, the founder is a good friend. Um, and they, they offer a really great service. We've been super happy with them. Um, I'm less sort of, you know, day to day, obviously managing the weeds of the, the account there. But they've been a great partner.

Speaker B: Awesome. And then talk to me a little bit about um, you know, what you mentioned about, you know, you can scale, uh, you've got higher LTV recurring purchases, all of that for subscription. What has your um, you know, what is driving traffic look like for uh, for your, for the D2C side of things? Are you guys running paid? Are you doing influencer and affiliate? Like what, what does that mix look like to drive performance?

Speaker A: Yeah, for us it's mostly paid. We don't do a huge amount of paid influencer. We have a lot of organic influencer which does drive a lot of traffic. Um, we also have um, the benefit, um, of our celebrity co founders Ian and Nikki going a lot of podcasts which drives a huge amount of organic traffic. Um, and then I would say we layer that in with the kind of organic influencer with paid, which mostly is meta, but we do spend on TikTok, we do spend on Google, we spend on YouTube. Um, and so that mix is always something that's evolving a little bit. Um, and that's really the bulk of our traffic. We don't overcomplicate things. Um, you know, know we obviously have organic marketing as well. So we do events and you know, we do campaigns and different things that definitely drive traffic. Um, but I would say we don't try to over complicate in terms of our paid budget. We really try to focus in on the things that work, scale those channels, get them to be really, really profitable. Once we are spending, you know, a few million dollars a day, we can start to think about having um, a huge diversification. Um, but for the time being, uh, we're more focused on just healthily acquiring as many customers as we can, um, making sure those customers stay with us for a really long time and are really happy with their experience.

Speaker B: Yeah, and I think that's, that's something that we hear time and time again for businesses that are like really successfully scaling. It's not like trying to, you know, burn the ocean with all these different channels and managing all these different things. It's like find a couple things that really work, find compounds, find channels that compound and ah, with each other. Right. Like that amplify each other. Um, and then you know, slowly add in once you unlock a great growth in, in those. So, um, the last question I have on the, on the growth side is you mentioned TikTok shop being like a successful channel for you guys. What's your experience been, um, with Tik Tok Shop? How have you guys found success there? You know, I've spoken to a lot of founders, some who have found tons of success, others who are like, oh my God, I did all this thing and they've, you know, and then like I did this one thing and now I'm kicked off or, or whatever like that. So what, what's your experience been on Tik Tok Shop and how have you gotten, um, to get it to work?

Speaker A: Yeah. What I would say about TikTok shop is it's not for the faint of heart and you have to really want to win on TikTok shop and you have truly dedicate resources to it. Um, you know, it's not meta where you're just going to sort of, you know, have an agency, do some paid ads, you can sort of scale some stuff. Um, that is not how it works on the TikTok shop side. TikTok Shop. The ads have not been super profitable for us. Um, the LTV is not great. The CAC is super high. Um, what has been super effective and this is, you know, something we're learning more and more about every single day. Um, is basically two things. It's affiliate and it's TikTok lives. And so doing regular TikTok lives, um, really, really drives. And then we do some like extra um, kind of big TikTok live moments where our co founder Ian will come on and do some stuff. Um, and those are our big moments as well. Um, and then affiliates is really how you scale the business. Um, and so getting more and more and more affiliates into the Discord channel and building those relationships and really scaling those affiliate channels is multiple much as we can is how we're going to win on Tik Tok Shop. Um, so it's something we're, we're very focused on and plan to do much more of in, in 2026.

Speaker B: Awesome. And now um, let's talk a little bit about you know, business and supply chain and what it takes to like do a business like this. So you know, you guys do have celebrity co founders but talk to me a little bit about um, you know, like what did it take to get this business off the ground? Like how much roughly like capital goes into something like this, right? Like you've got to make pos, you've got to, you've got to develop product, you've got to purchase packaging, you have like shipping, you're going into a launch. So like, um, if you could just like kind of walk us through what it takes to uh, you know, prepare to, to nail such a successful launch

Speaker A: like you guys did. Yeah, absolutely. Um, the short answer is it's expensive and there's a lot and there are ways to do it for cheaper depending, um, on how, you know, sort of scrappy and resource light you want to be. I think we felt pretty confident going into this that we had the opportunity to really, um, be a category defining brand here and sort of disrupt the supplement category and build um, the next generation supplement brand around this idea of absorption and bioavailability. And so we didn't want to miss that moment. And so um, we did want to sort of go big. And that meant we did hire a branding agency, um, which is, you know, some resources we had to put into that versus sort of just kind of pulling it together ourselves and making something work until we got big enough and then you kind of Do a rebrand. So we spent some money out front at a branding agency. Um, and then you know, you do have to spend money as you said, on that initial production, um, run, um, and we launched four SKUs, which means that you have to, you know, run a minimum order quantity across four different, um, different products which also adds up. So it gets pretty expensive and it's hard to do for you know, under at least $100,000. Um, all in to really get a brand off the ground. And it's expensive. Um, there are ways to do it for cheaper. Um, again you don't have to go with a branding agency. You can do much smaller production runs for, you know, just one skew, see how it sells, start to gain some traction and go from there. Um, but you know, we did want to do a kind of bigger launch and make some noise and so we wanted to invest up front a bit in that. Um, and at this point, you know, we continue to scale pretty quickly from there. Um, and it still requires um, a huge amount of capital at every point. Um, you know, we project to be profitable by the end of next year, but we are not yet and so have a lot of work to do together.

Speaker B: No, that's awesome. And, but I think it, it's just interesting to see because like, like you said, there's many different ways to get there. You can go the bootstrapped route, you can go the capital route. I think one thing that definitely like stands out is, you know, not only ah, like a founder and operator, but also just like a consumer and a shopper is like, I think, you know, it does make a difference. Right? Like you guys, I did do think do it. Your brand does make a splash. It's something that like you see on the shelf, it is recognizable. So like, you know, like you're saying, oh, we work with a branding agency, all of that stuff, like it does come through to the customer and um, you know, that's not something that, that goes unnoticed. So like again, multiple ways to do it. But um, you know, clearly from the branding side and the packaging and product side, you guys have that, uh, have that unlock. Okay, so now I want you to talk to me a little bit about the uh, the supply chain side of things. Right? Like what does that look like for you guys? What are the, you know, what did it take for you guys to be able to build a supply chain? Because when you're doing D2C, when you're doing Amazon, Tick tock shop all you're selling on different channels, right? You're dealing with three pl, you're dealing with, um, suppliers, co packers, all of that sort of stuff. So like, what does it look like to build a resilient supply chain that can support the ambitious scale that you're looking for, uh, to, to unlock?

Speaker A: So I would say the first thing is that I'm very lucky to have a co founder, uh, made who loves geeking out on this sort of stuff and you know, spends his spare time working on these sorts of problems. Um, and we have an amazing VP of operations named Daniel, um, who really is, is in the weeds every single day making sure that all this goes down smoothly for us. But obviously at day one we didn't have any of that. And so, you know, I think the first thing is that keeping things simple is really critical. Um, it's easy to overcomplicate stuff and try to source a million different ingredients from a million different places and have all these different, you know, really unique niche packaging forms that only one possible manufacturer can make because it looks so cool on shelf. But at the end of the day when you add those levels of complexity, it becomes infinitely more complex and really hard to actually meet timelines and get things done. Um, and as a small startup, I think what we have learned is minimize complexity, do it as simply as possible while making sure that we're delivering the highest possible quality product to our consumer, um, but not trying to do anything overly complex to, you know, get us spinning out of control. And I think that that's sort of the number one key. Learning all of our supply chain is incredibly simple. Um, we actually do all of our ingredient sourcing ourselves. We don't rely on a co packer to do any of that, which a lot of other brands do. Um, so we own our entire supply chain. We source every ingredient ourselves. Um, we have it all sent in to our co packer. Um, the process from there is extremely simple. Um, you know, we mostly are a powder business. We are doing some capsule work, um, both of those formats. There are dozens of co backers across the US that can do. We found really great partners, um, for both that um, have been amazingly supportive to us over the last year and a half, two years. So we're super grateful for them, um, and we are able to continue to scale with them because they have huge, huge capacity. Um, and you know, we are a drop in the bucket for, for most of these businesses at this point. So we're just focused on scaling, getting bigger, um, and continuing to be good partners.

Speaker B: And tell me a little bit about, um, you Know the fulfillment side of things. Right. Like, uh, so this is something that brands kind of wrestle with as they're scaling up. Do you guys handle your fulfillment in house? Do you work with a 3 PL? Are you in, like, uh, you have inventory in multiple locations. Like, how does, how does that work? Because, like, a lot of times, like, if you're starting out and like you said, you know, you guys, your team's kind of split between L A and, and New York. But like, there's some teams that might be on one coast and then if you want to ship product to the other side, like one order and it's at least five days to get there. So what is that? What is the fulfillment picture look like for you guys and how do you think about it?

Speaker A: Yeah, so we do 3PL. Um, we have a great partner for 3PL. They're called stored. Um, they work a bunch of brands. Um, we have two nodes. One that is sort of on the west coast, close to our manufacturing facility, and then one that's on the east coast, um, to be able to kind of meet pretty much all of our orders within a, you know, very quick delivery time frame at a reasonable cost. Um, and so we spent a lot of time, um, as we went from a single node when we launched to a dual node a couple of months ago, doing the analysis of sort of where are the bulk of our orders coming from and where should that second node be to minimize the shipping cost and shipping time to get our products to our consumers as quickly as humanly possible. Um, and so by doing that analysis, we're able to identify where's the optimal location. Um, and now we have two facilities. Um, it's cut our shipping time down, um, by about 16%, um, which has been great. It's reduced our costs pretty significantly as well.

Speaker B: That's awesome. Yes. George is. They're actually one of our POD sponsors. So great team over there. And now they get a double sponsorship.

Speaker A: Um, yeah, double sponsorship.

Speaker B: Um, okay. So, um, one of the other things I just wanted to circle back on is, like you guys mentioned, um, you know, partnering with these strategic retailers, kind of like a market marketing growth lever for you guys. And you guys have been strategic about who you work with. You want to make sure, you know, your ideal customer is there, and then later you guys can get into retail. But if you're going to kick off a partnership motion like this, and if you're a brand that wants to do this sort of thing, what does it take to, to break into those sort of like boutique retailers? You can call it. What do those partnerships look like? Um, you know, how do you handle like the inventory and the shipments and like, how do they handle everything? What does that look like? If you're thinking about that as a marketing.

Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. So the selling in part, I would say is just there's. It's more of a art than it is a science. It's a lot of just reaching out, trying to find who the right person is. I love to send Instagram DMs for my personal Instagram to whoever I can find that's, you know, an owner or works at, um, one of these accounts that we want to be in. Um, and we're small enough and you know, we're not trying to be in enough accounts right now that we can sort of do it on that one off basis. We don't work with the distributor, we go direct all the accounts we're in. Um, and so it's super simple. Um, we either do the deliveries ourselves or we ship them from our three pl to, um, these accounts, depending on the account and the location. Um, and we work really hard on trying to like, partner with these accounts rather than just seeing them as a sales channel. We see it as like a marketing partnership, um, and someone we can really build together with. And I think that's how we've also been able to open up a lot of these stores is rather than going in as a traditional sales call with a price sheet and sort of, um, trying to position it in that way, we go in seeking a partnership and talking about what we can add value to them, um, through our social channels and through our community. Um, and then we can also talk about how we can partner together to do something really special. And that's been a much more successful track for us.

Speaker B: Love that. Yeah. And I think you guys are showing up in all the right places. So, um, so great stuff on that. And then, um. Um, you know, the last thing I kind of want to talk about is you guys have scaled really quickly. You're continuing to grow, launching new products, doing all these things. What would you say are some of the biggest learnings that you've had, um, thus far building the absorption company? Like, what have you learned? Uh, you know, what are some of maybe the not huge pitfalls because you guys are doing great, but like, what are some of the, you know, maybe slight missteps that, you know, you've learned from that you're excited to, you know, take those learnings and, and implement and grow from?

Speaker A: Yeah, it's a really good Question. And um, there are so many specific to kind of the E commerce business itself because you know my previous business was a retail heavy business. This is an E commerce heavy business. And so we made so many missteps over the first kind of six months of the business um, based on just things we didn't know about the E commerce world. And so I'll give you a few examples is you know we didn't turn subscription on from you know, February when we launched until September. Um, when we turned it on in September we did not default to subscription for another like two, three months. And so we went from having you know a 5, 10% subscription take rate, you know today where you know we're exponentially higher than that, um, and seeing it continue to climb every single day. Um, and so that was a really, really core learning for us is just lean into subscription as much as you can. We see about for about a four times increased lifetime value for our subscribers versus our one time purchasers. And so we were doing everything we can um, to increase that subscription take rate. And then I would also say you know, we've learned a huge amount about how to drive traffic, um, and sort of the right way to do that efficiently and so you know, how to leverage a celebrity, how to do things organically. Um, that has been a massive, massive focus for us and something that we're still getting better at every day because there's no magic answer and you know, something that we're going to continue to have to innovate and figure out how to do better tomorrow than we did today. Um, those would be, I'd say the biggest thing and then the last I would say which is really important is um, personally being a better leader and learning how to work with the team better and how to set goals and how to hold accountability, um, both for myself and for my co founder and for our entire team. That's something that I've learned um, so much about over the last year and a half and so much credit goes to m someone named Ben Garnero who's really taught me a huge amount about that and um, is a great leader. Um, and that's a really great example.

Speaker B: No, that's awesome. Uh, one question that I have for there and then we're going to wrap things up. But um, you mentioned celebrity and figuring out how to unlock it. Right. I think one thing that we see today in consumer brands, everyone thinks oh you know I've, I've got this influencer, let's partner on a brand and like the next Thing, you know, it's a flop. You hear about it one day, and then it's gone the next. What you guys are doing is, you know, you guys are mission first, you're trying to build the brand for absorption, and you do have, um, you know, celebrity power in the mix. How do you. How do you find. What are the best ways that you found that you guys have actually unlocked it, and how do you turn it into a real company as opposed to just like, oh, there's this cool promotion that we're running, and then the next day everyone forgets about it?

Speaker A: Yeah, totally. So I would say there's two things. One is you have to build a brand first and foremost. Um, and it can't be about the celebrity. It has to be about the brand. The mission, we are about absorption and the celebrity, um, is there to amplify that message and to bring it to new audiences and to kind of articulate it and bring it to life. Um, but not to be about the celebrity. I think that's really critical because there's a thousand celebrity brands out there that maybe somebody will buy once as a novelty product, but if it's not a real product that is solving a problem for them, they're never going to buy it again. So that's not a real business. And so that's. The first thing is you got to build a brand. You can't just be a celebrity product. That's a funny novelty niche. The second thing is how you actually deploy them. And I think what we learned very quickly is, like, no matter how big the celebrity is, their audience gets tapped out very fast. And so even if you have Kim Kardashian posting about your product all the time, there's only so much that her followers are actually going to continue to purchase and buy what they want, what she wants them to buy. Maybe they'll buy when there's a big discount or when there's a sale or something, but they're not going to be consistent regular consumers. And so how do you leverage talent to actually get you consistent sales? And what we've learned is it's about not going after their audience over and over again, but leveraging them to open up new audiences. And a few great examples of that are them going on podcasts, where those podcasts get hundreds of thousands, if not millions of downloads of people who maybe have never heard of them. And that opens up an entire new audience for us. Um, having, you know, TikToks go viral opens up an entire new audience for us, because it's not just being fed to the people that already follow them, but it's being fed to an entirely new audience. Um, and that opens up a whole new world for us. Another example is the retail partners. We're in, you know, leveraging our talent partners to open up doors with Erewhon and with some of these other great partners, um, is another way that we're able to meet our consumer where they are and get front and center in their minds. And so there's a lot of different ways to leverage it. Um, and at the same time, it's important to focus on building organic traffic outside of that channel and figuring out how to build a real brand that stands at its own two legs.

Speaker B: No, I love that last, um, question for you guys. Uh, is tell me about what do you have in store coming up? Like, what are your biggest focuses for the business? Um, you know, for the rest of this year, gearing up for a really strong 2026. What's top of mind? Where is Absorption Company headed?

Speaker A: Yeah, all I will say is innovation, innovation, innovation. We have some really exciting products launching in January. We have some more, even more exciting products launching, um, in the spring. And so we have a huge amount of work to do to get all those things ready. Um, we are super excited for the consumer adoption. I think it's really going to step change business next year. So our goal is a minimum of tripling our business next year. We think we're going to beat that. Um, and let's definitely chat again in, in January and we can do an update episode with all of our new products out in the market.

Speaker B: Let's do it. Um, all right. Well, Zeke, thank you so much for coming on. This has been an awesome episode. Um, for anyone who's tuning in, where can they follow and learn more about you and the Absorption Company?

Speaker A: Yeah, check us out@insorbmore.com um, you can follow us on Instagram or TikTok.

Speaker B: Doc.

Speaker A: Absorb one.

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