Laura Modi: prediction

Transcript context

…Amazing. There's a bunch of questions I'm going to ask about how you grew Bobby, but you mentioned the COVID baby shortage crisis. And there's a couple stories I wanted to get into that was one of them. Can you just talk about what you went through in that period? Because I imagine it was both a blessing and a curse. Also, it reminds me, I have a friend who uses Bobbie and she just told me a story about how someone, she couldn't find any Bobbie during COVID, supply chain issues and all that, and an employee of Bobbie came to her house and brought her formula just to make sure she had enough. And obviously that created forever brand loyalty. And we'll talk a little bit about brand, but I'd love to hear about just that period of the journey and what you learned from it. There is nothing like a crisis that gives you more of an appreciation for what opportunity lies ahead. And I would thank my blessings every day that the only way to look at this positively was to be in a position of gratitude that I have an opportunity that most startups would wait a lifetime for. So what happened was I woke up one day and the President of the United States was talking about there being an infant formula shortage. And again, it's just being in the right place at the right time. A topic that never has really been brought up. Unfortunately, one of the large companies, one of the duopolies, had a recall and that recall basically left the nation without product and we were not able to feed babies in the US. Being one of the smallest companies here, we ended up seeing our customer count double the first week that that shortage happened. All of that would seem great, almost like a dream for any startup to be in, that you're going to see your product grow now because they're moving from one customer to another or from one product to another. But here's what happens. Infant formula is one of those products you can't run out of. It's not cool to be out of infant formula. It's not like a piece of furniture and you're at capacity for a certain amount of time. So our Head of Growth who, I mean this girl is just fabulous. She was watching our inventory levels very carefully and also watching how quickly we were growing. And I'll never forget that moment. I can visualize it, sitting in a meeting. And she pulls up her screen, she goes, "Here's the dilemma. We are depleting inventory far quicker than our ability to replenish. And the customers keep coming." You sit there and your first reaction is, "I mean, this is great. We're growing." And she's like, "It's not that great, actually, because here's what's going to happen. We are going to run out a product for the babies that are on Bobbie today. That's a problem." So in my absorption of everything that's happening, and again, being a company that had only been on the market 14 months, saying to her, "Well, Shireen, what do we do next?" And she's like, "We have about six days before we get to a place where we won't be able to serve those who've already made a commitment to Bobbie." She's like, "So we need to turn off our site and stop growing the business." That's a big decision to make when you're like, "Okay, so I'm going to turn to all of our investors and say we're turning off our site, we're closing down to ensure that we keep enough product." But honestly, in hindsight, it was a no-brainer. We were not going to run out of product on our current subscribers and we had no idea how long the crisis was going to last. So even though we didn't know how long we'd be off, I gave the thumbs up, sally forth, turn it off, and we went into hibernation mode. And in many ways we switched immediately into our customers come first. n though we didn't know how long we'd be off, I gave the thumbs up, sally forth, turn it off, and we went into hibernation mode. And in many ways we switched immediately into our customers come first. We now have 70,000 subscribers who are in a place of panic because they hear the news every day that there's formula running out and our job is to give them confidence and clarity that we have the products for them and we're never going to run out. And we did. For six months, six months, we kept our website off and we didn't grow the business last year and we continued to serve our current subscribers and in the end we became the only formula company that was able to reliably serve its current customers and never run out.…

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