Wendy 00:09

Hello, I'm Wendy Liebmann, CEO and chief shopper at WSL Strategic Retail, and this is Future Shop. This is where I talk to innovators disruptors and iconoclasts, about the future of retail. Today, my guest is all three of those. My guest is Craig, you could ski. He is a noted serial entrepreneur, which people how that how people refer to him all the time. I myself just say he's a seriously crazy person who chooses to take on huge consumer categories, and reinvent them with his slightly crazy wonkery brilliance. So anyway, welcome to Future Shop, Craig.

Craig 00:52

Wow. That was a lovely, very kind intro. Thank you. Thank you for having me.

Wendy 00:57

I should say Welcome back. Because when we first started Future Shop, I think it was about three or four years ago, you're one of our first or one of my first guests. So I'm really delighted to have you back as you continue on your amazing journey of disrupting the world. So for those of you who actually don't know, Craig, you know, he really does take on these gigantic consumer businesses not in in a sort of aggressive way. But with his happy, bold and rather sly, innovative, I mean sly in a very positive way, sly, innovative approach to brand building at retail, and the secret to it all. It's about happiness. So officially, as of January this year, he co founded with Robert Downey, Jr. in all the press these days with all his awards, a new company called Happy Coffee. Before that he was the founder of Hello products, the oral care brand, when he whispered in my ear that his next new thing was coffee. I was like, Huh, interesting. So here we are. Here we are to talk about this happy coffee brand. And your mission to, as you say, elevate the every day with this seriously delicious coffee. Why coffee?

Craig 02:24

Yeah, well, I think this notion of elevating the everyday for most people every day tends to start with a cup of coffee. So I've been mentioning the mentioning this idea of elevating everyday for a very long time. And obviously world care a lot of people start in their day. With that. I'm obsessed with people. And I think the bar in a lot of categories is pretty low. So what I liked about coffee was so many people, you know, drink it, love it. In some cases need it, they feel it's fuel. Coffee is a great equalizer. And people rely on it and love it no matter what their economic status may be, or social status may be. So I wanted to focus on again, a big category, but one where there seems to be a lot of room to do things even just a little bit differently. I think the magic comes in as little nuance touches you can relate to things

Wendy 03:24

when you have mentioned coffee to me and happy coffee. You're absolutely right. One of my best moments of the day, sometimes the best moment of the day is getting up early, mostly doing a little exercise and making my coffee and sitting quietly in my red chair early in the morning and just drinking a wonderfully hot, fragrant cup of coffee, flavorful cup of coffee. And I do think about coming from Australia and you know, in a coffee culture surprising to some people, they probably think it's tea but you know, we have meetings in Australia, we say I'll meet you for a coffee. And that's my philosophy to life actually is. Let's have a coffee. So I got that. Inherently. You've created something quite unique in all of this. Yes, it's the product. Yes, the package and the price, but this, but there's another emotional quality. So tell me about the whole package or you know,

Craig 04:26

just backing up a step because of who I imagine some folks in the audience may be and things they focus on and language they use. It's very typical, that we talk about targets and markets and, you know, consumers and I'm sort of allergic to a lot of those words not because I'm not subject to the dynamics of you know, individual tastes and market shifts and economics writ large. It's just I tried to simplify these things because we get caught up in the language a little too much. And one of the things that struck us was, coffee is a commodity. It's truly a commodity. I used to be a commodities trader, I've actually traded coffee futures before. So it's a commodity. And yet, a lot of the language in the category talks about how unique and how special the beans are. And I actually think it was kind of fun to play with his jujitsu and spend more time thinking about how unique and magical individuals are. The coffee's got to be great. And our coffee is really great. It is. And we can talk about the attributes of our particular blending and roasting process and all that we'll get into that if you want. So the coffee is great. But people are more interesting, and people are different, and people are unique. So we decided to focus more on people that on the beans, not at the expense of the beans and not at the expense of the experience. And you know, how we, how we treat growers and all that that's important. They're important, but really, it's more focused on on the people that are going to be drinking the stuff as opposed to consumers. So when we thought about it, like, okay, coffee makes people happy. How cool would it be, if happy made their coffee? And then what would make it special and magical? And think about all the touch points? So packaging? Absolutely. Because the you know, design is magical. And art is special. So we want to bring some artful and interesting and ergonomic and architectural and thoughtful into the design of the pack. And all of that. And also, and I'm holding one up, because somebody might be listening, I'm assuming instead of watching this, but from holding up a pack, but part of the idea is, how do we make something that's beautiful. So when you are three feet, five feet, 10 feet, on the shelf? In your store, you see it and you go whoa, what's that? Absolutely. But let's say you're not at a store, you're not surrounded by a gazillion other panics. How does this thing look in isolation? What is it look like on your shelf? Does this elevate your physical space? Does it make you smile? Just when you look at it? Do you want to touch it? When you do touch it? What does it feel like? Do you find that there's a natural place for your finger to go or fingernail to go to pry it open? Do they stack right? Do they nest properly like are there other functions actually use this to make something that was fully recyclable. So ground and whole bean coffee for us, we want to put it in these vessels that seal really nicely. So they just make the most noise, you know, you get a sense that they're pushing air out and locking some freshness. But they're fully recyclable, even a label. So you can take this whole pack and curbside recycling. Most coffee that comes in a pouch, those traditional pouches, those are all going in the landfill. So because some people are like, Oh, we're using more plastic and plastics bad, I'm like, no, because you can keep this thing I could pack my grandmother's button collection in here and hiding in the closet for 100 years. I hope one day my ashes are in here in another 100 year, so it'd be terrific. So my happy earth, my happy ashes.

Craig 08:12

So yeah, I'm creating something that could be hopefully not just sustainable. But all jokes aside about an urn, something eternal write something you'd want to keep. So all that went into the thinking and obviously where and how the coffee is sourced and roasted. That was big in our thinking as well. So it hasn't launched yet, but it will very soon. Ability to trace who planted your beans when and where and how they were roasted and packed. We have a full IBM built blockchain that will let that level of transparency come through for people that care. So that's pretty cool. And then I think the biggest thing for us, because yes, we love design. And yes, we love great product. And yes, Robert in particular is obsessed in the best sense with delicious coffee and had to be exceptional. And it is. But the other thing we were excited we were really like obsessed with you focused on was this notion of what we're calling emotional innovation. And it's understanding you know, like, what's really going on with people, people coffee, we got our we understand people better, you know. So I think thinking about the fact that we're called Happy and knowing that not everybody is there was a healthy tension I'll never forget when Robert and I were talking about this, like you know, like, not everybody's not everybody's happy. And this isn't a brand about unicorns and rainbows. That's not our intent. So we kept thinking about happy.

Craig 09:44

My wife is a PhD in Clinical Psychology and one day we were talking about happiness and and happiness as a an area that for many people is out of out of reach And, and I was asking her about who in her world has a PhD in clinical psychology was doing really important, practical work. Because I think practical is really key word. Given that so many people are not happy right now, the suicide rate in this country is the highest, I think of a large number of other countries combined, the US is still at a higher rate. Suicide is the number two killer of teens in America after hand guns are quite often, number one, and number two are linked. So we're not the most happy we've ever been. So my wife mentioned is this group to me called NAMI, National Alliance on Mental Illness. And they're the largest grassroots mental health organization in the country. And they're doing incredible things. They created 988, which is the 911 of mental health. Well, they also have some really interesting things going on. If you have an Apple product S-I-R-I and you say, “Hello, S-I-R-I, I feel depressed”, just watch what happens. No privacy issues here. It's just you know, NAMI will show up on your on your iPhone, it's incredible. So we wanted to do something special with NAMI, and we didn't want to do anything that was performative. We didn't want to do something where it was like, Oh, this is the cause of the month? No, we want to do something a little more realistic, and evergreen. And also thinking about it as entrepreneurs, what could we do that hadn't been done before, and that would be meaningful. So we decided to give NAMI a piece of the company. And part of the thinking there was, we're going to really integrate NAMI into what we're about as a company as a group of people focused on trying to make things better for more people. And we wanted to try our best to reinvent the relationship between entrepreneurship and philanthropy. And what better way to do that than to really get involved from day one. And really build that into the DNA of the company. We wanted to bake it in from the get go. So we're excited

Wendy 12:07

Certain things you've just said there, which are so compelling, because all our How America Shops® research, which you know, well, you know, we have been studying and looking at the number of people who put their hands up and say they either struggle with anxiety and depression, or they're taking care of somebody that does our numbers are like four out of 10 are experiencing anxiety and depression for themselves or others. And that number goes out up to six out of 10 of the youngest that we track, which is jealousy. So those numbers by themselves are just overwhelming, devastating. All the things you said and I never take for granted that, but it's also and you've always had this view, I think in the years that I've known you. And certainly similarly with Hello was the power of product, and brand and community engagement around everyday retail, everyday categories that actually do have the power to inform transform guide support all of the above. So when you told me a little bit about this on the Qt in the beginning, and then as always revealed, it became not only very meaningful, but a way to really think about how do you build true engagement with people with a product as the as the lever or the connector? And so that I found particularly interesting, it seemed like it was the continuing journey that you've been on for some time. So so the power of that, and then, as you have given a share, to NAMI of the company, How involved are you? And Robert, in that conversation about how that gets used? Or how you're supporting the communities? How does the How does happy coffee fit into all of that?

Craig 14:07

Well, it's early days yet. So we're still working through a lot of the mechanics, but one of the things we're doing and after spending time with NAMI, and learning more about what they do and how they do it, we asked them, well, what could we do that would be helpful beyond this notion of, you know, an economic stake in the company and are being called Happy and talking about NAMI. And they said, after, again, a lot of conversation, the number one thing that they would hear from people was, “oh, my, if only I had known about you sooner.” What NAMI does, is really truly incredible. And people would say, I just didn't know I didn't know that there were chapters all over the place. And that so many people again, regardless of education level, economic level, So this is this is a, it's a big deal, right? Your numbers bear this out. And I think if it were an airborne contagion, mental health, or anxiety, this would be well beyond pandemic level. Yeah. So what we learned was, this was to use marketing portlets. They were having an awareness issue. People just didn't know what what amazing facilities and, and programs that were available through NAMI. So we said, well, what if we were to put information about NAMI in every pack we have? And they were, I think, very surprised, like you would do that? We said, of course, we would do that. So on every pack, there's information very prominent, it's hard to miss. It's there with its own dedicated, you know, panel, at least on the product I'm holding. And on everything we have, it's pretty clear, and there's a QR code so you can get right to NAMI. There's toll free number. So it's very easy to to get in touch. And hopefully we're we're not just making it easy. The hope is we're going to help destigmatize, you know, just even talking about mental health. But then in terms of, like, beat on the street, hands on sort of stuff. There's a lot more coming down the pike, and they have a lot of events. And we're going to be we're going to be at these events and talking a lot more about this, because it's really important to what we do. And then we're doing our best to manifest it because some of the stuff Robert I talked about is we're actually we're building a company. And when he and I first met, you know, we started talking a lot. And I said, I want to meet your wife. He was like, Do you want to be my wife? I said, Yeah, I want you to be my wife. Why is that? And I said, because when you start a company, you get this really interesting set of opportunities that you don't always get in other parts of your life. So in life, you can choose your friends, but you can't choose your family necessarily. But when you start a company, it's like being able to choose your family. We thought we can we can bring some magic to people's lives again, on a daily basis. And the other thing we're trying to do is make all this affordable.

Wendy 17:09

I was going to ask you the whole point about this isn't that this is some I was gonna say, couture, I must be in Spring Fashion mode or something. This is not that it's some premium priced coffee that

Craig 17:23

it's a premium grade. Like, because we brought onboard an incredible group of people in terms of like coffee savant, and real experts in in growing, selecting, grating, roasting, packing coffee. The idea was how do we make commercially available beans taste like specialty beans and price it right so that the most number of people could have something that's delicious. And that's what we did. But I can tell you, we have independent curators, who are like the sommeliers of coffee. And the product is rated on a taste level extremely high. And I will tell you that Robert, in particular, we would have launched probably nine months earlier, but Robert was like, No, doesn't taste just the way it should. And I mean, to tell you his he is discerning, he would try things blind, blind tasting. And he could tell you that like one coffee was from a higher elevation than another Mike, how do you know that?

Wendy 18:30

I know you've been working on this for a year or so. But this one more, but this officially launched last month, right?

Craig 18:37

Yes, literally 20, 27 days ago, but who's counting? Yeah, yeah.

Wendy 18:43

So and launched? I mean, is it right? That you are at Target? Is that where you are?

Craig 18:48

We're in? We're in a majority of Targets. Yeah, with ground coffee, and what we call pods, which are, you know, Keurig machine, K-cup, compatible pods. And a handful of stores have our instant coffee, which is really, really, like people are blown away that it's actually instant coffee, and we're in Sprouts and all doors. And we are live on Amazon. And I'm very excited because we have amazon.com backslash happy (amazon.com/happy), which is a pretty cool URL. So we're very excited about that.

Wendy 19:24

In so much of your innovation work, you've partnered with Target or you've gone to Target. I remember I think you advised on Method or EOS and of course Hello and

Craig 19:37

Boots, where you and I met. Yes,

Wendy 19:38

exactly. Exactly. So that's right. Yes. I remember that moment. You see that happy moments. And we said hello. And there you go out inaccurate and accurate of life and friendship. But was that is that something about target as a brand that that as a retailer that fits with so much of the entrepreneurial work that you do.

Craig 20:04

It seems like it, but believe it or not, there are some other retailers we spoke with prior to Target’s actually Target’s credit, they move very, very quickly. But you will see happy and some other retailers because one of the things we found is no one has sold dominion over good taste anymore. Yeah. And a lot has changed. And so, you know, the idea that there's a tastemaker retailer. You know, maybe that was true. I remember when Colette in Paris was, I know, right? I know. Let's have a moment of silence for Colette. I remember when Colette was Colette and it was the first place you could see the iPhone at one point. Apple Watch the only place you could see it was there. There were a lot of firsts for Colette and I remember we had a hello breath spray. And, and Colette in Paris was the first place that had it before anybody that was you know, super Bellwether funky, amazing. And I think a lot of things have changed. Certainly, the worldwide interwebs have helped create accessible experiences for folks around product and brand and the way they learn and share is very different. So you will see I don't want to I don't want to have you spoilers out there. But you will see happy in many, many more doors very, very soon.

Wendy 21:28

I do think that'd be great. This ability, the multifaceted approach all the elements that go into this, make it feel in its own way, in some ways, even more than Hello, a very modern story, a very modern brand, the very modern story, the accessibility of a category that so many people engage in an

Craig 21:55

emotion and taking emotion and making emotion really part of the headline, that's it like how you feel so other people talk about geography, you know, our beings only come from this place. Well, you know, it's mountain grown quality, all coffee only grows. And

Wendy 22:09

I think that's the other piece of this, this feels very contemporary, very accessible and very inviting in which I think is the is the other part particularly with that mental health component to it, and the embracing everybody who might who might need you know, when you think about you talked about the, you know, we're always talking about the future of retail and our end of the world and the sort of cluttered coffee, I can see this I feel like it's a bit like Apple, it's the rounded corners, you know, you want when you think about that on the shelf, and I do recall you saying this about Hello, this ability to stand out and talk to me as a consumer as a shopper on the shelf, I'm assuming that was part of the kind of

Craig 22:55

tremendous part as a, as a student of yours been fan of people and observing them all over at retail in particular. When I looked at a lot of the brands, a lot of the brands seemed very masculine. And use the word that I love, which is contemporary, I've been using a word modern a lot. And I think both words are a proxy for feminine for a lot of people who are uncomfortable with that word, and I'm really comfortable with that word. And I think there's a lot of sort of trophy visual cues, whether it's the colors, the language, you know, it's bold, and stark is rich, like these are all you know, it's brown and gold and green, like, they're, you know, so and there's certain brands have broke away from that. And that became a big thing, right? Oh, we're orange or purple and orange. That's great. That's great. But I will say we looked around the category we saw a lot of things that seemed very aggressive and maybe in some ways overly masculine and they seemed like they were fueled by anger and testosterone and a need for more and more and more caffeine and energy but coming up with something that was a little bit more feminine, a little bit more modern, a little bit softer. In a world where it was like you're gonna get kicked in the head by livestock. You're gonna get shot and you're gonna shoot somebody else there's devils everywhere and skulls and crossbones and death this death that it's like I don't want any death star right like me personally. Like I'm I'm happy to stay away from death in all its forms. All earn jokes, you know from earlier in the conversation. Yeah, yeah, I don't want to be around that stuff. And I think for everybody.

Wendy 24:52

Yeah. I also actually feel it's when I when I look at it, it feels very inclusive. To me there aren't in this highly emotional You know, occasion, however one uses it, whether it's European standing up at the, you know, the bar having the expresso so quickly at the beginning or end of the day, or it's the latte or it's an you know, it's just there's so many things that I, you know, respond to in this conversation, whether it's you or anybody else talking about the role of coffee. It has so much greater value to it. So that's why I was intrigued with the work you and Robert are doing. I mean, the logic of the question I should should ask, of course, is why, Robert, how did you two meet? And?

Craig 25:33

No, it's a great story. It's funny, because when I was first introduced, it was on a no names basis. So the first bit was, there's someone I know, and they're very well known. And they're really serious about starting a coffee company. And I know you've been thinking about this. Will you talk to them? Why would I ever say no, and I don't say really know too much. When it comes to this kind of stuff, and I was like, I'm just happy someone thought of me, right? Like, wow, you thought of me? So sure. And it turned out it was Robert and we had this was wild conversation. And it it really was mine, because I was sort of expecting, you know, so it's, you know, someone in Hollywood, they're probably not really going to be like, you know, are they going to be serious? They're, they're busy being, you know, in, quote, unquote, you know, show business aren't gonna want to be in this business. Well, Robert, Is he is he brilliant. He's really, really funny. He's so nice. And my favorite Robert interaction to date was when we were on. We're FaceTiming. And he hears voices in the background. He's like, who's there? Like, oh, it's my daughter and her best friend. He's a preemie over there Britain pretty laptop over there. And I was like, seriously. And meanwhile, like, no one knows, we're talking. We've been talking at this point for like a year plus. So I walk over this other port warehouse, where my daughter is there with her bestie. And they're there. He's like, hey, what do you guys do? And they're shocked, right? Like, like, no one's expecting, they're gonna be on a FaceTime with Robert Downey Jr. on a Saturday afternoon. And they're shell shocked and like, we're picking out prom dresses. And he doesn't miss a beat. And he's like, does veer away make progress? In fact, she's doing some incredible things with wedding dresses, like what is she? What are the colors this year and long story short, they spend like a disproportionate amount of time showing Robert turning their laptop around all the different prom dress, you know, potential outfits. He's a doll. He's a very special, very generous, good guy. So anyway, we, you know, we hit it off. And like I said before, you know, if you have the chance to create your family and build something, really get to know people and create something where people don't want to be transactional. They want to join you. That's magic

Wendy 28:10

cast you this two years ago, when when you did the podcast about three years ago. You know, when you think about the things to think about? I mean, you talked about people. Always, you know, that seems to be the essence of where you begin everything. But there are other things secrets to your success. Wow.

Craig 28:32

Well, to the people thing is big, and paying close attention. And I have a feeling that's you know, that's why a lot of people pay close attention to you because you also have this ability to really focus in and pay attention to what people are sometimes telling you and sometimes not telling you. So keeping a really watchful eye on what seems to get people either excited or agitated, nervous, happy to use a word. I just tried to keep antenna up all the time. And and listen as much as I'm yakking right now. So that's the other thing and it is it it's always people. And the other big thing for me is I don't read as much people are like, did you read this? Did you read this? Did you read this? I'm like, nope, nope, nope. Before this, you and I were comparing books. And our books are mostly about things that have nothing to do with anything about business. Art is everything. And art is one of the things that separates people from plants and animals. But I like to think that plants and animals are a type of art to music, design, paint, play, doodle, play, play, play, play, play, people do not play enough. You know playing is doodling, doodle like play,

Wendy 29:53

Maryann, who's behind the scenes here, people, producing this was just telling me earlier that she was creating for our new symposium around Beyond wellness, we're calling it, that Craig is going to attend June 6^th, as we think about the future of health and healthy life and all of those things that we want, Maryann was saying she was just sort of doodling with pencils… we were part of this big conference in Miami a couple of weeks ago called Cosmoprof, and Allie, Alexandra Chilicki, who does our retail innovation, was so thrilled because some of the senior beauty executives who were on a panel discussion talked about, you cannot innovate at your desk, you have to be away from your desk, you have to immerse yourself in the culture, the art the all the things you're saying. And some of the smartest marketers brand builders retailers. I know. Do that.

Craig 30:50

Yeah. So I think that's part of the secret sauce is getting getting out. And doing things have absolutely nothing to do with what you are supposedly being compensated to do. And bringing those outside influences in to what you do. Because you can learn so much. I mean, so much and bring a different perspective. So what you do, and that's the whole point, bring a different perspective. So yeah, so

Wendy 31:16

and I do think you you didn't say this word, but I think the curiosity you have, and the willingness to say yes, that's very

Craig 31:25

comfortable. Yes, it'd be very comfortable with not knowing what the outcome was going to be. Yeah, that is really key. And while still knowing that, in the case of of happies example, it's yes, it's a business where we're employing people. We are taking care of people, we do things like and we didn't, I didn't get to really mention this about how we're manifesting some of these things or our mental health. As a company not just participating with NAMI. We're bringing things back to what we do. We have Meetless Monday, we don't mean on Mondays, we're recording on Monday, we can do that. Because we don't have any meetings on Monday. It's not that we don't work. It's like, well, what if Sunday night weren't dreadful, because you're not saying, Oh, my God, it's 10 o'clock Sunday night, I have to get ready for work on Monday morning, we got rid of that. And now Sunday night is awesome. And Monday is a day where you can still do work when you need work to be done. But you know, if you need to go get your car fixed, you can get your car fixed, if you need to go drop your kids and drop your kids. You know, so anyway, I'm walking the walk and talking the talk is really important. And and I think it's hard to do that if you're not also able to play a little bit and stretch a little bit and take in some outside influences a little bit. And that's how you create something different. You know, if you don't change the inputs, how do you expect the outputs to be any different?

Wendy 32:47

Well, well, we'll hear that's actually one of the topics we're going to discuss on June 6, about you know, healthy communities healthy companies playful, you know, how do we how do we think about designing for those? Because how else will we manage and navigate this slightly dark world someday? So not to go there on a day of happy coffee? I think you've given us a very clear map of where modern contemporary business the way it is, and plainness is done in the future. And I love that. I love that thought. So. Thank you, sir. Crazy cereal, serious, seriously, mad coffee, oral care person. Thank you. It's wonderful to have you. As always, we look forward to seeing you in the future on June 6,

Craig 33:40

in very kind, thank you so much for having me. And if anyone ever wants to call it right, hit me up. LinkedIn. 917-392-1000. Say hello. And let's get happy together.

Wendy 33:54

It's hard to recap what Craig says because he's so clear. You know, it is about not about a product. It's not about toothpaste. It's not about coffee. Yeah, of course it is. But actually, it's about people. And it's about being curious. And it's about looking at the way people live their lives, and what they need, and how you can deliver that to them in meaningful ways. So for those of us or anybody listening, and watching this, think about that, as you think about where is the newness? Where are the whitespace? Is how do you tell your stories, you know, as WSL troops, at my end always know when I say is the shopper in the room. That's exactly what I mean. Are we paying attention? Are we paying attention to what people need where they need it, not in just a commodity style category for execution, but emotionally. And I think that's the piece that Craig has done so successfully over many years and Happy coffee sounds like a very happy spot for me. So stay tuned for more on that one. Stay tuned for June 6. We'll tell you more about that as we go and our happy symposium. And in the meantime, we'll see you in the future. Cheers for now.