This is a fascinating interview with Oliver Brocato from Tabs Chocolate. Just a ton of actionable advice.

In 18 months Tabs has sold $11 million worth of chocolate and has 40-45% net margins. It’s an impressive business.

Oliver was in his early 20’s and decided to look for a business that he knows could go viral. He noticed on Tik Tok that a video about a chocolate with supplements geared to increasing arousal had 8 million views from someone without a lot of followers. The product had poor packaging and didn’t even sell online. He had his product.

The next 11 months he spent getting the product ready. He searched google and called chocolate manufacturers with a focus on low minimum order quantity. This is a key factor when starting a product business and a mistake I once made in the past. Use a minimum order quantity as a constraint when you first start a product business. He sourced his supplement manufacturers and found a custom package manufacturer on Alibaba.

Oliver wanted it to be a luxury experience and not to look like a chocolate bar or a bin of chocolate squares. He designed the product to be understood visually in three seconds. It breaks into two pieces, one for you and your partner. It was initially priced at $19.99 for three squares. He thought that was a bit expensive. Then he split test different prices and was shocked to find that $29.99 actually had a higher conversion rate.

At first he tried to market the product through micro-influencers on Tik Tok with 50-200k followers. But he found this was not scalable and was a giant time suck, even with help from a virtual assistant. So he found a creator he liked (with no following) and paid him $2k a month to create a video a day. The videos he put up on his branded Tik Tok account and the result was $70-80k in sales in the next month. They were off.

A key to the marketing was not the initial video, but adding videos in the comments that had supporting info or a call to action. Apparently the Tik Tok algo resends these to the people who commented so it’s a great way to find the audience.

Key Takeaways

• Look for a product that is already getting noticed

• Use creators in your branded socials

• Split test a higher price

• Pick a luxury product

• Pay attention to the details (lowering his packaging weight by one ounce saves $300k/year)

• Use the new text app to market to abandoned shopping carts (it allows a one click purchase)

• Anyone can do this, you don’t need to be a genius or famous