The 25 Most Innovative Consumer And Retail Brands 08-05

The 25 Most Innovative Consumer And Retail Brands

Our objective in creating the CircleUp25 was to honor 25 companies that are starting to change the way we live our lives—companies that influence what we eat, what we wear, and what we use every day of our lives. They are companies that lead us to decide where and how we shop. They are the most innovative consumer and retail brands that exist.  In short, they are innovative businesses that go far beyond our local farmers’ markets—they are re-inventing industries. In an effort to avoid any appearance of partiality, as mentioned in our prior post announcing the CircleUp25, we have excluded from consideration any company that has worked with our equity crowd funding site in an official capacity.

So what did we do to select the top 25 most innovative consumer and retail companies?  We first spoke to experts in the field, including some of the best private equity firms in the world who focus on consumer and retail.  Then we talked with major strategics, polling internal innovation teams at the most successful public consumer and retail companies. We also talked with entrepreneurs, third-party data providers and industry participants. From our panel of experts we received over 200 nominations. Then we also wanted to hear from consumers.  We received almost two thousand nominations from consumers and fans through Facebook and Twitter (#CircleUp25).

Disclosure: Through Encore Consumer Capital, I am an investor in Zuke’s. Despite that, it is on this list because industry experts and fans nominated it independently.

Here are the honorees, in no particular order. Each company is innovative in its own way.

The 25 Most Creative Consumer And Retail Brands

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AP

The Top 25 Innovating Consumer And Retail Brands

Ryan Caldbeck and his team at CircleUp ranked hundreds of companies to come up with 25 of the most creative and innovative consumer retail companies; they're changing the way we live our lives while re-inventing their respective industries. Read the full rundown of these companies and the methodology, here.

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David’s Tea Inc., Montreal, Quebec

• Why? For reminding us why tea is the most popular prepared beverage in the world. And for making tradition even more popular, today.
• Who Did It? David Segal, a tea-loving entrepreneur, and his cousin Herschel Segal, a Canadian retail pioneer.
• What They Have Built:  The first David’s Tea retail store opened in 2008. David’s Tea opened its 100th store in 2012 and now sells more than 150 different teas.
• Big Backers: David’s Tea investors include The Highland Consumer Fund and Chip Wilson, the founder and former CEO of Lululemon Athletica.

The Experts Agree: David’s Tea won the 2012 Tea Blogger’s Choice Awards in the Herb Blend and Single Herb categories.

Tieks by Gavrieli, Los Angeles, CA

• Why? For reinventing the ballet flat with their high-quality portable and fashionable shoes.
• Who Did It? Kfir Gavrieli, Dikla Gavrieli, Elram Gavrieli and Dean Unatin.
• What They Have Built: Ballet flats that land as beautifully as they fly.
• Reinvented: Making a better ballet flat required reinventing the shoe-making process. Each pair of Tieks is handmade from carefully selected leather. In total, the process takes 3 days and over 150 steps.

Who Has Noticed? Tieks’ shoes have been featured on Oprah’s O! List. Travel & Leisure touts them as the leading travel shoe.

Warby Parker, New York, NY

• Why? For transforming the designer eyewear market.
• Who Did It? Wharton MBA classmates Neil Blumenthal, Andrew Hunt, David Gilboa, and Jeffrey Raider
• What They Have Built: In addition to a booming online business, Warby Parker opened six new showrooms in 2012.
• Online Optics: Before Warby Parker launched, it was estimated that less than 1% of eyeglasses were being sold online. Warby Parker, by allowing customers to try on glasses before purchasing them, brought the benefits of the in-store shopping experience onto the internet and into customers’ homes.

Phone a Friend: 50% of people who visit the company’s website heard about Warby Parker from a friend.  In consumer there are few better measures of success than referrals.

Back to the Roots, Berkeley, CA

• Why? For their revolutionary approach to sustainable, grow-at-home products.
• Who Did It? Alejandro Velez and Nikhil Arora during their last semester at UC Berkeley in 2009.
• What They Have Built: Back to the Roots mushroom kits are sold in 1,200+ retailers nationwide. In 2012 the company started offering The Aqua Farm, a self-cleaning fish tank that also grows plants.
• By The Numbers: In 2011, Back to the Roots helped consumers grow 250,000 lbs. of fresh mushrooms.

Who Has Noticed?  In 2010, the founders were named among BusinessWeek’s Top 25 Social Entrepreneurs. In 2012 the company received the industry’s most coveted honor as a sofiTM Gold Winner. It was also voted a Top 10 Green Company by GreenDeals.

Beyond Meat, Inc., Manhattan Beach, CA

• Why? For developing the first plant protein that looks, feels, tastes and acts like meat.
• Who Did It? Founder Ethan Brown, inspired by his dad’s dairy farm, has focused on clean energy while collaborating extensively with food scientists to develop his products.
• What They Have Built: Founded in 2009, Beyond Meat’s first product, Chicken-Free Strips, was rolled out in Whole Foods Market in 2012. The company now offers a wide variety of products distributed nationally. They also recently entered into a partnership with the Tropical Smoothie Café.
• Thinking Big: With a high-quality product, Beyond Meat is positioned to expand beyond the vegetarian and health food markets in which fake meat products have traditionally appeared. The founders are pushing to have the products sold in butcher cases worldwide.

Making a Splash: Beyond Meat has been named one of CNN Tech’s 10 Startups to Watch, was a 2012 Finalist for the INDEX Design to Improve Life Award and was VegNews Magazine’s 2012 Rookie of the Year

Boa Technology Inc., Denver, CO

• Why? For creating the Boa Closure System.
• Who Did It? Founder Gary Hammerslag, after a Colorado winter exposed him to the shortcomings of traditional laces on snowboard boots and hockey skates.
• What They Have Built: There are an estimated 25 million Boa-powered products worldwide, spanning the sport, medical and work categories.
• Feet First: Boa expanded its applications beyond footwear in the late 2000s and is now featured in products like medical braces and high-performance gloves.
• The Athlete’s Foot: 70+ Tour de France riders have worn Boa products. Renowned endurance athlete Dean Karnazes completed 50 marathons in 50 days wearing only Boa. The Boa Snowboard Team features some of the sport’s youngest stars rocking the Boa Closure System.

Chobani, Inc., New Berlin, NY

• Why? For making great tasting, high-quality, natural yogurt.
• Who Did It? Cheesemaker Hamdi Ulukaya, following his instincts after stumbling upon an ad for a recently-closed yogurt plant.
• What They Have Built: In five years, Ulukaya turned a $1 million Small Business Association loan into a company with $1 billion in annual revenue.
• At the Top: Chobani is America’s #1 Greek Yogurt and controls 47% of the US Greek Yogurt market with more than twice the market share of the Number 2 brand.

Awards Abound: Chobani won the U.S. Small Business Administration’s National Entrepreneurial Success of the Year Award for 2012 and Rabobank’s, 2012 North America Innovation in Leadership award. Ulukaya was a 2009 Forbes 40 Under 40 Honoree and was recently named Ernst & Young’s 2013 World Entrepreneur of the Year.

Dollar Shave Club Inc.,Santa Monica, CA

• Why? For saving time and money with their subscription-based razors and bathroom products.
• Who Did It? Mark Levine and Michael Dubin, frustrated with the existing options.
• What They Have Built: A base of 200,000+ paying customers that should produce more than $10 million in sales, a year after launching.
• What is Next? Expansion into additional men’s grooming products. Aside from razors, Dollar Shave Club currently offers shave butter and moist wipes.

Audacious Advertisers: 12,000 people reportedly signed up for the service within 48 hours of the company’s release of “Our Blades Are F***ing Great” on YouTube. The video has been viewed over 10 million times and won Best Out-of-Nowhere Video Campaign at the 2012 AdAge Viral Video Awards.

KeVita® Inc., Ventura, CA

• Why? For providing health-seeking consumers with a delicious, vitalizing, probiotic drink.
• Who Did It? Bill Moses and Chakra Earthsong Levy
• What They Have Built: KeVita’s organic, non-GMO, gluten free, vegan sparkling probiotic drinks are available in more than 3,500 stores nationwide.
• Probiotic Punch: Each of the company’s ten flavors has more probiotics than kombucha or yogurt.
• Just The Beginning: At the end of 2012, KeVita’s was on track to grow its revenue 100% on a year over year basis including 35% year over year same store sales growth.

KIND LLC, New York, NY

• Why? For their all-natural, whole nut and fruit bars made from ingredients you can seeand pronounce.
• Who Did It? Social entrepreneur Daniel Lubetzky, who was one of TIME Magazine’s 2009 25 Responsibility Pioneers and has been named one of BusinessWeek’s Most Promising Social Entrepreneurs.
• What They Have Built: Kind’s retail distribution has grown from 1,000 doors in 2004 to 80,000 doors in 2013.
• Perfecting Packaging: Kind’s clear packaging, exposing whole, natural ingredients helped it disrupt the industry when it first appeared on shelves in 2004.

Awarded: KIND has won numerous prestigious awards from experts in health, food and social responsibility.

Krave Pure Foods, Inc., Sonoma, CA

• Why? For making beef jerky good. Finally.  Really good.
• Who Did it? Jonathan Sebastiani, one of a long line of wine makers, while training for a marathon.
• What They Have Built: Krave started as a business plan for one of Sebastiani’s MBA classes. Today, Krave is sold in more than 6,000 retail outlets nationwide.

What is Next? In 2012, Sebastiani predicted that 2013 sales would top $10 million. He also reported that the company is experimenting with other products.

Philz Coffee Inc., San Francisco, CA

• Why? For being the original one-cup-at-a-time brewer. 
• Who Did It? Phil Jaber experimented with coffee blends for 25 years before offering single-serving coffee in his  corner grocery store.
• What They Have Built: Following the success of its original location (Phil stopped selling groceries to focus on coffee), Philz’s quickly expanded and now operates 13 stores in the San Francisco Bay Area.
•  What Is next? Philz’s recently secured an eight-figure investment from Summit Partners to fuel expansion outside of the Bay Area.
• On Not Seeking Space: Phil’s son Jacob, the company’s CEO, reports never having approached landlords when seeking space for retail outlets. They all come to him.
• Friended By Facebook: In 2011, Philz was invited to open an outlet on Facebook’s corporate campus. Philz’s beans are featured in Whole Foods and distributed to Google’s cafeterias.

Quinn Foods, LLC, Woburn, MA

• Why? For cleaning up microwavable popcorn, inside and out. 
• Who Did It? Coulter and Kristy Lewis, looking for a better alternative for their son, Quinn.
• What They Have Built: Quinn’s started from the outside by creating a bag that was grease-proof, compostable and free of chemical coatings. Then they filled them with better-for-you, better-tasting microwavable popcorn.
• Who Has Noticed? Prevention Magazine just listed Quinn in their 100 Cleanest Packaged Foods Awards, and the popcorn was one of Natural Food Merchandiser’s 2012 Favorite Food and Beverage Products.

Popping Up Everywhere: Quinn popcorn offers 7 flavors and is sold in hundreds of stores nationwide.

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Planning to launch a startup? Launch your kindergarten startup first 08-05

Planning to launch a startup? Launch your kindergarten startup first

BY WILLIAM CHANNER 

Somebody out of the blue contacts me, and at breakneck speed explains “the next Facebook idea.” Okay, so they don’t exactly say that, but that’s what they want me to think. I can almost picture their desktop wallpaper — some oversized image of Jack Dorsey in his black Prada suit, looking unnecessarily astute. Normally, I’d wish them well. But because on one occasion, it was somebody really close to me, I stopped everything. I felt that I had to snap them out of their trance. I wanted to tell them that I was also delusional once. Here, in essence, is what I told him.

I’ve learned a lot from interviewing those in tech that I admire, from Jason Fried to Steve Blank, David Karp, Chris Wanstrath, Jim Mckelvey, and Mike Maples. I would say it comes down to this: be suspicious of popular successes. I’ve come to appreciate that a lot goes on behind the scenes that is not recorded in the history books, and which never makes it on to Wikipedia.

The past offers few examples of the heroic founder with the insight to decipher — or even design — the future first time around. That person does not exist and never will. Instead, the most successful entrepreneurs started early, launching small, insignificant ventures while they were still young. This is an important point, but it’s often overlooked. It’s a young man’s and woman’s game.

Everybody wants to be the next Tony Hsieh and build an amazing company culture like Zappos, but nobody wants to sell cold slices of pizza like he did in college. Most never find out that he did.

For the rest of us, if we get the entrepreneurial bug later in life, we think it’s fine to skip what I call the the Kindergarten Startup. That’s something you pursue because it interests you. It’s not even a startup. It’s a hack, an evening project, driven by an inquisitiveness and curiosity similar to that of a kindergartener. It gives you an opportunity to play – and play is good.

What happens is that we sometimes correlate our age with the type of venture we should pursue. A guy reaching his 30s, believing that Venture Capitalists may no longer be seduced by his sweet tender age, might attempt to build the next Facebook. A new mom might start a business selling products like nursing covers, changing pads, and plastic-free baby bottles to new moms. To our detriment, however, these old/new entrepreneurs forget that the founders we are trying to emulate all went through a Kindergarten Startup. In many cases, they went through several. Facebook was Mark Zuckerberg’s seventh or eighth project.

Business depends on acquired methodologies, which is why incremental learning is so important. In the “get rich quick” startup milieu, we often disregard the idea of natural progression, instead blindly following hubris and ambition. We attempt huge leaps before we’ve learned to walk.

Failure is not only an option in an entrepreneur’s first few businesses. It may be a necessity. Because out of failure rises success.

Entrepreneurship is the only occupation that applauds this type of preposterous thinking.

Paul Graham promotes the view that it’s a bad idea to begin with big ambitions, because the bigger they are, the longer they are going to take to realize, and the longer you are projecting into the future, then the more likely you are going to be wrong. “The way to do really big things,” he says, “is to do really small things, and grow them bigger.” 

What would we say to the pilot in training who seeks to fly passengers across the Atlantic in a Boeing 777 or the junior medical doctor insisting he’s ready to perform heart surgery? Yet many first-time entrepreneurs think nothing of starting out with the idea of building a billion-dollar company. The ease of raising money in Silicon Valley and the amount of cash, both public and private that is sloshing around entrepreneurs at the moment, doesn’t help.

Turning a profit is a skill that must be earned. Expecting to generate $1 million before your first $10 is crazy talk. Make that first $10 then work from there. Do it right, over and over, and eventually you’ll make it to $1 million.

Image: Library of Congress

Why start-ups rarely change the world 08-05

Why start-ups rarely change the world

BY FRANCISCO DAO 

I’m sure nobody wants to hear this and I’ll be viciously attacked for suggesting it, but despite the constant refrain from entrepreneurs that they’re trying to change the world, startups rarely do anything significantly world-changing. It’s not really their fault, changing the world almost always requires massive amounts of money, groundbreaking technology, and a lot of time — three things most startups don’t have.

Really big paradigm shifting developments are so costly and require such a long term outlook that they essentially have to be disconnected from the profit requirement. As such, the only people who can afford to do this kind of work are the research labs of big companies (think Bell Labs in the old days and Google today) and the government. Even startups that raise massive VC rounds don’t have resources anywhere close to what Google or the government can provide.

For those of you sharpening your anti-government pitchforks, where do you think the Internet came from? The government funded this experiment for decades without any expectation of profit and gave it to private industry for the rest of us to make money with it. Without those years of government development, we wouldn’t even have the internet. Everything we’ve done since then, from Amazon to underwear delivery, stands on the shoulders of profitless government funded research. Creating the Internet was the fundamental development that changed the world, not mailing crap in a box.

Some of you are probably thinking, “but Google was a startup once and they’re changing the world.” Yes, but when Google was a startup, all they did was make a better search algorithm. I’m not dismissing that as inconsequential, but it’s not a foundational world-changing technology on the same scale as the creation of the Internet itself.

Furthermore, I would argue that some of the projects Google is working on today, as a large company with near limitless resources, are far more important than the work they did during their startup phase. Google’s self-driving car has the potential to eliminate traffic, reshape our cities, and bring mobility to the blind and elderly. No startup has the resources to fund the development of a self-driving car over the course of 10 or 20 years, but Google can, because they can afford to be disconnected from profits for a long period of time. When the self-driving car ultimately becomes a reality, it will have a much greater impact on our lives than anything Google did in their startup days.

What about Elon Musk? Isn’t he changing the world? Yes, but I think everyone can agree Elon is a rare exception, and even still, SpaceX and Tesla both received massive government financing. Additionally, in the case of SpaceX, the foundational work was done by NASA in the 60s, 70s, and 80s. NASA did the research that changed the world, Elon is only making it cheaper and more efficient. I don’t mean to belittle Elon’s work, I’m a big fan, but let’s give credit where credit is due. Elon didn’t invent space travel. The world-changing research was done by the government decades ago in an environment disconnected from the profit requirement. Unless every VC on Sand Hill Road pooled their money into one giant Hail Mary investment, no startup could ever afford to engage in an undertaking as massive as the Space Race.

As a group, startups can contribute small incremental changes that together add up to a big difference in the way we live our everyday lives, but their work is rarely foundational. Even with generous venture funding, their relatively limited access to resources, along with their near term profitability requirements, just don’t allow them to pursue truly grand ambitions. Only people who can afford to think and spend on the timescale of decades with little or no concern for ROI have the resources to create world changing, paradigm shifting new technology. And the only people who have those kinds of resources are Larry, Sergey, and the government.

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Simplify your future 08-03

Simplify Your Future from Bruce Kasanoff

The 2013 Forbes Fictional 15 08-01

The 2013 Forbes Fictional 15

You’re not imagining it: The rich do keep getting richer. Even the fictionally rich.

Each year Forbes calculates the net worth of the wealthiest characters from novels, movies, television and games, constructing portfolios based on those stories, and valuing them using real-world commodity and share prices. This time around, the aggregate net worth of the Fictional 15 climbed 3% to $215.8 billion. That’s more than the gross domestic product of Ireland.

Fictional 15: 2013

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Alamy

1. Scrooge McDuck

You know him from... 'Uncle Scrooge'

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On the top of the list this year: Scrooge McDuck, the billionaire bird who keeps most of his $65.4 billion fortune in gold coins, piled high inside a Duckburg money bin. The world’s richest duck started out in business when he was “just a wee nipper,” polishing boots on the streets of his native Glasgow; today he owns some of the world’s largest mining concerns. Famously penny-pinching, Scrooge still has the first dime he ever earned.

Other rich list perennials include the billionaire playboy Tony Stark. 

An engineering genius who earned two master’s degrees by age 19, Stark’s remarkable inventions (including the “Iron Man” combat armor) are often outshined by his ability to create controversy. His latest foible: publicly threatening the terrorist known as The Mandarin, who responded by destroying Stark’s Malibu mansion. Still, the billionaire playboy’s net worth is actually up year over year to $12.4 billion, thanks in large part to the stewardship of Stark 

Industries CEO (and subject of a recent Forbes cover story) Pepper Potts.Fiction’s second richest character, the reclusive red-gold dragon Smaug, spent eons holed up in his Lonely Mountain lair on top of a horde of valuables worth $54.1 billion. But “Smaug the Tremendous” has been pushed into the limelight of late, after agreeing to appear in Peter Jackson’s trilogy of Hobbit films; now he spends his days in Hollywood’s exclusive Chateau Marmont.

Full Coverage: 2013 Forbes Fictional 15

Several new faces appear on this year’s list, including Christian Grey, with an estimated net worth of $2.5 billion. The enfant terrible of the business world attributes his success to hard-work, lack of personal distractions and extensive use of binding employment contracts: “I like to tie down my best employees.” A demanding task-master, he’s known for buying under-performing companies and whipping them into shape.

High tech hotshot Walden Schmidt also makes his first appearance, with an estimated net worth of $1.3 billion. Schmidt flipped a startup into a billion-dollar check from Microsoft , nearly lost everything after a break-up with his high-school sweetheart turned wife, and then disappeared from the Silicon Valley scene. Now reportedly living in a Malibu mansion with persnickety best friend and his teenage son; attempting comeback with new business selling power-grid management software.

And a few familiar faces return to the list after falling from its ranks in previous years. “Tomb Raider” Lara Croft, the Countess of Abbingdon, inherited her $1.3 billion fortune from staid British ancestors, but gentle birth didn’t make her mild mannered: After earning a degree in archaeology, Croft made a name for herself discovering the long lost kingdom of Yamatai on an island off the coast of Japan. Celebrated New York party host Jay Gatsby also makes a return appearance: Long Island’s most eligible bachelor is renowned for hosting wild, all-night “flapper” soirees fueled by caviar, champagne and the Charleston.

To qualify for the Fictional 15, we require that candidates be an authored fictional creation, a rule which excludes mythological and folkloric characters. They must star in a specific narrative work or series of works. And they must be known, both within their fictional universe and by their audience, for being rich.

Net worth estimates are based on an analysis of the fictional character’s source material, and where possible, valued against known real-world commodity and share price movements. In the case of privately held fictional concerns, we seek to identify comparable fictional public companies. All figures are as of market close, April 1, 2012.

Final valuations are calculated with a grain of salt, and a willingness to break our own rules.

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