TeaSquares launched in Whole Foods and failed. Two months after launching the company we had an opportunity to pitch to Whole Foods and got accepted. We expanded in 12 stores before realizing that our product was selling poorly. The reason? 

No one ever heard of a “tea infused energy snack” before and educating them through demos was incredibly expensive. We had a meeting with Peter Rehal (founder of RX Bar) who told us, “Go to where your product hunts the best”, which meant, truly understand our core customers and where they want to buy our products. 

TeaSquares were designed to help provide mental energy and focus, so were a perfect snack for the work day. We stopped selling to Whole Foods and shifted our strategy to focus on selling to corporate offices. We landed accounts including LinkedIn, Cisco, and Grubhub. Our sales skyrocketed 🚀 and gained thousands of new customers. 

Why didn’t Whole Foods work? It didn’t align with where our customers wanted to buy our product, and was a misalignment.

Building a business is like putting together a jigsaw puzzle. You’ll have thousands of decisions to make, and each of those will complete the larger picture. 

In order to complete the image, you need to have a clear picture for the vision of your business. This is like looking at the puzzle box and knowing what you’re building. Without this image, you’ll end up trying to force pieces together that aren’t a good fit. 

Selling TeaSquares in grocery stores wasn’t a fit for our puzzle, because the product wasn’t designed to succeed there. You know the puzzle pieces aren’t fitting together with the rest of your business if you’re experiencing strong friction in a part of your business.