From Ayoh's reformulation playbook to HiNote's community-first launch, plus Hiya x Marvel, 4AM Skin lands Target, and a distribution sprint worth studying.
Hey DTC Fam,
Welcome to a new week with lots to get into.
Shoppers are not just reaching for cheaper products anymore. They are switching stores entirely. Carrie Underwood just launched a full wellness brand with a CPG product, an app, and a community baked in from day one. And Ayoh just went through a reformulation that should be required reading for any operator navigating the real cost of going cleaner.
Let’s dive in.
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This edition is presented by Okendo and NOBULL.
This Thursday, May 14th at 11:00 AM ET — block your calendar.
Okendo is sitting down with Paul Koziol, Director of Digital Product at NOBULL, for a live webinar you don’t want to miss. Grab a coffee. This one’s worth it.
NOBULL built a Loyalty program that turned one-time buyers into a community that keeps coming back — and the numbers prove it:
117% more likely to make a repeat purchase
9% higher AOV — $130 vs. $119 per order
No heavy discounting. Just a program people actually want to be part of. Paul will break down exactly how they did it:
How leading brands drive loyalty without relying on discounts
How to make loyalty your biggest revenue driver
What a program that genuinely keeps customers coming back looks like
45 minutes. Real insights. Live Q&A included.
Plus, join them live for a chance to score a pair of NOBULL shoes. 🔥
Can’t make it Thursday? Register anyway — Okendo will send you the recording.
The No-BS Loyalty Playbook: Inside NOBULL’s Community-Driven Growth Strategy
Hiya just expanded its universe.
The brand teamed up with Marvel’s Avengers for a limited-edition version of its Kids Daily Multivitamin. It’s the same clean, nutrient-rich, sugar-free chewable that Hiya is known for, but reimagined for little Super Heroes.
The Marvel’s Avengers welcome kit includes a special-edition bottle, stickers of iconic heroes such as Thor, Captain America, Hulk, Iron Man and Spider-Man, and Marvel-branded activities.
For parents already buying Hiya, this is a nice bonus. For parents who have been on the fence, a Marvel collab has a way of moving things along.
Kids notice it, they ask for it, and the purchase gets a lot easier to make. The formula stays exactly the same. The entry point just got a whole lot more fun.
Shoppers are not just trading down on products. They are trading down on stores entirely.
A new consumer report from Alvarez and Marsal found a growing share of grocery shoppers plan to switch to lower-priced retailers over the next six months, not just swap brands within the stores they already shop.
That is a different kind of pressure than a private label shift. For brands with strong distribution at premium or mid-tier grocers, the question is no longer just about price point.
It is about whether your retail footprint is aligned with where your customer is actually headed.
Carrie Underwood launched HiNote, and it is more built out than most celebrity wellness plays.
The first product is a daily nutrition drink mix with 20g of protein, 5g of fiber, 13 fruits and vegetables, and no added sugar or caffeine.
But what makes this worth paying attention to is not the product alone.
Her fit52 fitness app, which already has over 500,000 members, is evolving into HiNote Life to serve as the community and content backbone of the brand.
Underwood already built CALIA and held an equity stake in BODYARMOR. This is not a celebrity attaching her name to a product. This is someone who has been building the infrastructure for years and is now putting a CPG product on top of it.
The seed oil conversation has been loud for a while. Ayoh just gave us one of the first real, public looks at what it actually costs to do something about it.
The brand was built around a better mayo. But the original formula included seed oils, and as consumer awareness around that ingredient accelerated, it became a harder story to tell. This month, the brand completed a full reformulation across its mayo line, replacing seed oils with avocado oil.
The product got better. The margin got tighter. Avocado oil is significantly more expensive than seed oils, and mayo is an ingredient-heavy product where input costs are felt immediately. Getting from the old formula to the new one required renegotiating supplier relationships, rethinking pricing, and making a clear bet that their customer would follow them through the change.
Most brands in better-for-you food are going to face some version of this conversation. Consumer expectations around ingredient quality are moving in one direction. The cost of meeting those expectations is real. And most brands either delay the decision or make it quietly without talking about how they got there.
Ayoh talked about it. For operators thinking through reformulation of their own, whether it is seed oils, artificial dyes, or anything else sitting on the wrong side of the cultural moment right now, the framework is worth studying. Understand your customer’s ceiling on price. Lock in supplier relationships before the pressure forces your hand. And position the reformulation as a brand moment, not just a line item change.
4AM Skin raised $4M in seed funding and is landing its Clean Sheets facial wipes in 1,745 Target stores.
This one has been on our radar for a while. The brand grew entirely on TikTok before ever touching retail, and the audience it built there is real. The $4M seed and the Target rollout landing at the same time tells you everything about how the brand approached this. They did not go to retail asking for a shot. They showed up with proof. Worth keeping an eye on as they make the DTC-to-shelf transition.
POPWTR and Pricklee are two functional water brands we have been watching and they are starting to get more mainstream attention.
POPWTR leads with clean formulation, Pricklee with prickly pear cactus as a natural hydration source. Two different ingredient stories but the same underlying idea: there is a consumer out there who has graduated past basic electrolytes and wants something with a clearer point of view. Both brands are carving out real positioning in a category that still has a lot of white space.
NAD4ME just launched a caffeine-free cellular energy drink built around NAD+.
We had not seen anyone bring NAD+ into a daily RTD format before this. The molecule has mostly lived in supplement capsules and IV wellness clinics, so putting it in a can is a genuinely different bet. The founder has close to two decades in the beverage industry and launched with three products right out of the gate. The longevity and cellular health conversation is only getting louder. Curious to see how this one develops.
Cadence just hit 6,000 retail doors in under six months and is on track for 8,000 by end of year.
We saw the Target announcement earlier this year and have been watching the rollout since. Target, Walmart, CVS, GNC, The Vitamin Shoppe, all in one year. For anyone building toward retail distribution, this is a case study worth digging into. A footprint that expands this fast does not happen without a supply chain that was ready for it and retail relationships that were already in place before the big orders came in.
RSVP - Smarterships Victoria Launch Party - 5/14 (BC)
RSVP - Post-Connect Happy Hour with Orita & PostPilot - 5/14 (Culver City)
RSVP - How Smart Brands Win In A Crowded Isle - 5/20 (NYC)
RSVP - The Wellness Lounge - 5/20 (NYC)
RSVP - DTC Dinner Club - 5/20 (NYC)
RSVP - Sheinnovates NYC - 5/28 (NYC)
RSVP - Word of Mouth Podcast Launch Party - 6/4 (TBA, Los Angeles)
That is Signals for Issue 011.
What is the story from the last few weeks that you think deserved more attention than it got? Hit reply.
See you Thursday.
— Zach and the 1800Hotline Team
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