Business owners, operators, marketers, really anyone who works at any company is always aiming to do one thing: sell products. So when Nick Guillen and Nick Ajluni, the co-founders of Truff, say their strategy isn’t solely focused around this, it makes you sit up and listen. At least, that’s what I did when I heard what they had to say.
On this episode of Up Next in Commerce, the two Nicks explained how they built their truffle-infused sauce brand by reverse engineering products specifically to live and resonate on social media, and then why they decided to lean into creating epic content without attaching CTAs. It’s an interesting idea, and one that has worked pretty well for them, actually. After all, Truff is the No. 1 hot sauce brand on Amazon and was included on Oprah’s favorite things list two years in a row. So how is Truff creating content that brings people in without being transactional, and what platforms are the Nicks most excited about in the future? Tune in to find out!co-founders of Truff
Main Takeaways:
- The CTAs are MIA: Social media should be viewed as a friend-to-friend communication platform and a place to build relationships, not just a space to add a discount code to a post or a picture and try to get people to click. By taking the transactional messaging away from social content, you become a brand that seems more like a friend putting out content you actually want to see, rather than an ad people scroll past.
- It’s Never Too Late: On a platform like Tik Tok, it is never a bad time to join. Because the platform rewards the content as opposed to the number of followers an account has, all you have to do is create one piece of content that hits just right to find success and go from nothing to selling out your products in seconds. But you have to be willing to experiment and try everything to find the right kind of content that will resonate.
- Don’t Rush Into Retail: In many cases, the best route for new brands is to start small and establish yourself and your consumer base before trying to move into the retail market. In retail there are numerous costs, fees,and sales expectations that all create a burden on the brand, not the retailer, so before committing to a retail path, ensure that you have a strong digital foundation you can build off of and then create an omnichannel experience from there that includes but is not dependent on retail.
For an in-depth look at this episode, check out the full transcript below. Quotes have been edited for clarity and length.
Key Quotes:
“Our thinking was we wanted to position the brand in a more upscale, lifestyle, top shelf way. We really emulated luxury alcohol brands. We always cite Ciroc as when we were in college, that was the cool, lifestyle vodka with the cool people behind it… we took a look at hot sauce in general and realized that there was an opportunity to basically make a Ciroc of hot sauce.” –Nick Ajluni
“The vision that we had in Truff, we saw an opportunity to create a very high-end, top-shelf product, but we also saw an opportunity in being an e-comm first business and really going all in on social media… So after we had this product made, we weren’t going to try and get it on the shelves in retail. We were going to push it out online through social, through all of our digital outlets.” –Nick Guillen
“The virality comes from it authentically being something people really, really love. And when we do new products and we look at different categories, if it doesn’t check that box of being just insanely good and absolutely amazing and worthy of staying viral like you’re mentioning, then we just wouldn’t release it in the first place. But I think the virality comes from how high quality and how much work we put into the actual product itself.” –Nick Ajluni
“Nick and I had essentially reverse engineered the product for social media. You look at our bottle. It has the really shiny, sexy, custom lid. It has Truff very clearly written down the front. You could easily understand what it is very quickly. Black truffle infused hot sauce. Truff, one clean bold message. And then along the way, we’ve always tried to lead with value across the board. That goes with the relationships that we’re building, the content that we’re putting out. We never try and create transactional relationships. Everything that we do is to satisfy a need that people have.” –Nick Guillen
“Tik Tok rewards the content, not necessarily how big the following is. So you could go on Tik Tok, you could have a brand called Stephanie’s Cookies and it has zero followers and you create a couple of videos. One of them just happens to hit, that could sell out all of your inventory overnight, even if you don’t even have an Instagram or anything. So there’s always an opportunity.” –Nick Guillen
“There’s never been a CTA at Truff. There is no CTA. The CTA is that there’s no CTA. Don’t buy our product. We’re not here to sell you our product. We’re here to make great products and present them in cool ways and if people want to try them and buy them, that’s the cherry on top.” –Nick Ajluni
“For us, the worst way to try to sell a product is to sell a product. We want to make the amazing product, present it in an amazing way, and if it’s not good people won’t buy it and let the authenticity just speak for itself.” –Nick Ajluni
“We understand the requirements of retail and it’s capital intensive and there’s slotting fees. And if you don’t do well, you’re gone and you probably won’t get a second chance. And so I think people jump to get on shelves early thinking, “Oh, we want to be on all these shelves.” But I think it makes a lot more sense to build your brand off shelf, start small, take on retailers as it makes sense.” –Nick Ajluni
Mentions:
Bio:
Nick Guillen and Nick Ajlunii launched their luxury hot sauce brand, Truff, in 2017 based off the success of their Instagram account (@sauce). Since launching, the brand has expanded from hot sauces to include products such as mayonnaise, oil, and pasta sauce. Truff can be found online and is sold in Whole Foods, Wegmans, Neiman Marcus, Barney’s and other outlets around the world. Both Guillen and Ajluni reside in Austin, Texas.
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Transcript:
Stephanie Postles:
Hey everyone, and welcome back to Up Next in Commerce. I’m your host, Stephanie Postles, CEO at michigan.org. Today on the show, we are doing an awesome, spicy round table with two guests. We have the co-founders of Truff. First up, it’s two Nicks. It may be a little confusing. The first Nick is Nick Guillen. Nick, welcome.
Nick Guillen:
Thanks for having us.
Stephanie Postles:
Yeah, we’re excited to have you all. The second Nick is Nick Ajluni. Nick, hello. How are you?
Nick Ajluni:
I’m good. How are you?
Stephanie Postles:
Good. I feel like this is going to be tricky. I’m going to be trying to point questions and you won’t even know which Nick I’m talking about.
Nick Ajluni:
We’ll slide in and out seamlessly. We’re good.
Stephanie Postles:
I’m guessing y’all have done this before, huh?
Nick Guillen:
A couple of times, maybe.
Nick Ajluni:
A couple of times.
Stephanie Postles:
How much do you guys interrupt each other? I need to know this before we go.
Nick Guillen:
Not a lot.
Nick Ajluni:
Not much. We’ll see. I hope we don’t slip here, but we’re usually pretty good about it.
Stephanie Postles:
Cool. All right. Well, I want to start off with the background of the company because it seems very interesting. What I read was that you essentially started Truff, which started as like a truffle hot sauce, Now it’s turned into a truffle everything company, what it seems now. But you started it because you got the handle, ‘Sauce’ on Instagram. So you got this awesome handle and then you were like, “Oh, maybe we should do something with it”. Is that correct? And if so, fill in the details.
Nick Guillen:
That is correct. Yeah. Nick and I, we met in college. We were super into CPG and social media at the time. And in 2015 we had just acquired the handle, ‘Sauce’ organically on Instagram, and we decided we wanted to do something with it.
Stephanie Postles:
So why were you out looking for handles labeled ‘Sauce’?
Nick Guillen:
It was just a, I would say, a hobby. Something that interested us. And I don’t know if you remember, but back in the early domain days, everyone was trying to scoop up one word domains, very similar to social media, trying to find unique handles, valuable real estate in the digital world, I guess, is what you could look at it.
Stephanie Postles:
Yep. Very cool. So then what did that look like afterwards? You got this awesome handle and then how did you go about thinking what you even wanted to make?
Nick Guillen:
So we got the handle, ‘Sauce’. Instantly told Nick about it right away, and he was super interested in it as well. So we just started to grow this really cool Instagram account. We were putting together content that we thought was cool. We thought was saucy, things we thought would resonate well with the pop culture foodie. So high quality imagery, food porn, rappers with food, women with food, things that were visually stimulating, things that made people hungry. And we started to amass this following in a very short period of time. We had some celebrities that followed us. Some big, cool media outlets that were following us. And we decided we wanted to do something bigger than just be a food account on Instagram. We wanted this to be a platform where a brand would live, so that led us into the direction of product. Okay. What can we sell through this channel that we’re building? What kind of brand can we build behind the handle, ‘Sauce’ and the obvious one was sauce, hot sauce in particular.
Stephanie Postles:
So how did you go about formulating what kind of hot sauce you wanted? I don’t know of many other hot sauce brands that have truffle in them, if any, and do any of them? I haven’t seen that, but like how did you even come to that?
Nick Ajluni:
You do now. They do now. Our thinking was we wanted to position the brand in a more upscale, lifestyle, top shelf way. We really emulated luxury alcohol brands. We always cite Ciroc as when we were in college, that was the cool, lifestyle vodka with the cool people behind it and that kind of stuff. And so it was packaged in a way that we thought was cool and X, Y, and Z. So we took a look at hot sauce in general and realized that there was an opportunity to basically make a Ciroc of hot sauce in short. And so you can’t just do that though and put regular whatever in a bottle and say, “Hey, this is cool”. We really needed a formula and a product that was actually expensive and actually elevated.
Nick Ajluni:
And so we looked at ingredients that could accomplish that and that could taste phenomenal. We looked at things like caviar and we looked at things like saffron and truffle really struck a chord with both of us. We like truffle, we like truffle fries, and we like the experience of truffle, shaving truffle on the things. And we spent a lot of time figuring out how to create an untraditional product because you’d be mixing spice and truffle together in an elegant and decadent way. It took a really long time, almost a couple of years, hundreds of renditions, just in the most untraditional way you could think of, of us just sourcing ingredients and putting together what we thought would taste good. We’re not chefs or anything like that, but we landed on something that we thought was impeccable and got validation from people who tried that. They said, “Wow, this is insane”. And we just went from there.
Stephanie Postles:
So were you literally just blending ingredients in your kitchen, trying it. You’re like, “Oh, that’s not good. That’s not good”, and that’s how you came to some of the first products that you have today?
Nick Ajluni:
Exactly that. Exactly that.
Stephanie Postles:
So, okay. Now you’ve got your products. What would it look like next? I mean, you’ve got this awesome Instagram account. You have people following you already. It’s probably easy to introduce your product to the world. What kind of hiccups did you run into along the way? Because I look at your packaging now and I look at your bottles and it looks literally perfect. I mean, when it showed up at the house, I did not even think it was hot sauce in there. I mean, there’s also pasta sauces and oils and all this, but the way it was presented was very, very high end. And I was like, “Are they even in retail? Because this seems too nice to be anywhere. Like it has to just come to me.” So I want to hear, how did you get here? What kind of hiccups have you run into to get to where you are today?
Nick Guillen:
So the first hiccup I would say is scaling a product from small cardboard dishes in a kitchen to a large sized run. We actually threw away the very first run of product that we made because the consistency, the color and the flavor profile wasn’t exactly how we had formulated it on the bench. But now after some refinement and tweaks and adjustments, we got it to where we wanted it to be ready to market. I think the vision that we had in Truff, like Nick mentioned, we saw an opportunity to create a very high end top shelf product, but we also saw an opportunity in being an e-comm first business and really going all in on social media. In college, Nick and I, we were studying social media and we each had brands of our own that were built online and that involved a certain aspect of e-commerce. So after we had this product made, we weren’t going to try and get it on the shelves in retail. We were going to push it out online through social, through all of our digital outlets.
Stephanie Postles:
Very cool. And how did you keep that virality going? Because you see a lot of brands take off and be successful and get in front of a lot of people. And then it’s like, “Oh, maybe that was just really good marketing behind it. Or is that one celebrity who was driving that?” It seems like you guys have had a lot of consistency around growth that you don’t normally see with brands who do what you did. Get in front of people in a very social worthy way to then also be able to stick around for a long time.
Nick Ajluni:
I think one of the things there is that the products are really good and it wasn’t like a one hit wonder. Like, “Oh, this tastes good”, and everyone gets over it. It’s a legitimate, here to stay, impeccable product. And the vitality comes from it authentically being something people really, really love. And when we do new products and we look at different categories, if it doesn’t check that box of being just insanely good and absolutely amazing and worthy of staying viral like you’re mentioning, then we just wouldn’t release it in the first place. But I think the virality comes from how high quality and how much work we put into the actual product itself. And on that note, we also always stay on the cutting edge and Nick, you can speak more on this, of content presentation, digital marketing and things like that. So we’re making sure we’re staying relevant by leading the pack of how to present food [TPG] on the internet.
Stephanie Postles:
Yep. I was just going to ask, what are some ways that you go about doing that? What channels are you betting big on right now? And how do you showcase that this is actually good.
Nick Guillen:
So I think our brand and our product, our first offering, Nick and I had essentially reverse engineered the product for social media. You look at our bottle. It has the really shiny, sexy, custom lid. It has Truff very clearly written down the front. You could easily understand what it is very quickly. Black truffle infused hot sauce. Truff, one clean bold message. And then along the way, we’ve always tried to lead with value across the board. That goes with the relationships that we’re building, the content that we’re putting out. We never try and create transactional relationships. Everything that we do is to either satisfy a need that people have. They’re hungry, they want to elevate the flavor profile of their food. They want to elevate the hot pocket that they’re eating at home or even the nice high-end plate of pasta. And they’re scrolling on social media.
Nick Guillen:
They don’t want to see get 20% off your next bottle and the captions. It’s a lot of relatable, friend to friend communication. Visually satisfying, stimulating things that you want to send to your friends. “Hey, check this out. This is cool.” So I think trying to live within all of those guidelines, it’s something that we’ve been very consistent with.
Stephanie Postles:
Yeah. So what channels are you betting on right now? I think I saw Nick, that you said, Nick G., that you said Tik Tok is where it’s at. You’re betting big on that right now. Is that one platform that you’re still really bullish on and what other ones are like that?
Nick Guillen:
Yeah, I think we bet big on everything and once something starts to work, we double down on it. If it doesn’t work, we’ll kind of pull off of it. We saw a lot of very early success with Instagram and Facebook. Instagram has been like the home base where Truff lives. It gives people a really good idea quickly what the brand’s about. Facebook is a channel that we’ve gone very deep with as well. We’ve built a closed private Facebook group called Truff VIP’s. That’s basically just a group of amazing people that all like Truff. That’s one thing they all have in common and people are sharing recipes with each other. They’re building new friendships. And it’s a really cool area where I think we see a lot of great engagement that’s very authentic and organic.
Nick Guillen:
Tik Tok, the wild, wild west. The new app that kind of came out of nowhere and anybody can go viral on Tik Tok. We tested the platform very early. We also got the handle, ‘Sauce’ on Tik Tok, which is pretty cool. So we have it on Tik Tok and Instagram. And it’s a channel that requires a little bit different of a content strategy than Instagram. There’s a different user base. The algorithm works a little bit differently and we’ve seen a lot of success developing relationships with up and coming amateur chefs, that are just either new to cooking or it’s a passion that they have on the side. So I would say Instagram and Tik Tok are two that we’re continuing to bet big on.
Nick Ajluni:
Snap as well, right, Nick? I mean, we do a lot on Snapchat.
Nick Guillen:
Yeah, on the paid side, Snapchat. We do well on.
Nick Ajluni:
One of the things we did good with on Tik Tok was actually getting on Tik Tok earlier. I think we’ve been on for probably two years now. And obviously a lot of people were on Tik Tok before the last year, but it felt like it really hit its mainstream stride a year ago. So we had that year of learnings and being able to kind of build up our account and try different things. And I don’t want to say we were a year ahead, but we definitely got on there before, I’d say the masses did.
Stephanie Postles:
Yeah. What does your posting frequency and content strategy look like on there to be able to stay relevant?
Nick Guillen:
On Tik Tok it’s a little less, I would say, organized as Instagram, we test things on Tik Tok, like just raw [UGC] at home amateur chef videos. We test visually stimulating loops. We test our own produced in-house iPhone content. We test high-end content. I think most recently the stuff that’s been working the best is content that’s created natively on the app or content that has been edited natively on the app. So for example, I’ll take my iPhone, I’ll shoot a video of a big pretzel being dumped in a bucket of hot sauce. And I’ll edit it on Tik Tok. Stuff like that will go viral a lot easier than just a nice food porn video that we made and then uploaded.
Stephanie Postles:
Do you think there’s still an opportunity on that platform right now for people who maybe haven’t joined it yet? Because I always look around when new brands are popping up, it’s like, “Oh, is it too late for them to start a company account on Tik Tok or Instagram? Is it too saturated now? Is there something new that they should be focusing on?”
Nick Guillen:
No. Tik Tok rewards the content, not necessarily how big the following is. So you could go on Tik Tok, you could have a brand called Stephanie’s Cookies and it has zero followers and you create a couple of videos. One of them just happens to hit, that could sell out all of your inventory overnight, even if you don’t even have an Instagram or anything. So there’s always an opportunity, I would say. And I highly encourage any brand to be on Tik Tok.
Stephanie Postles:
That’s great. So how do you handle that? Have you had times when all your inventory is sold out from videos and if so, how do you handle spikes like that?
Nick Guillen:
We’re at a point now where we’ve scaled to a size where we can handle any volume, but before we saw that happen on Instagram, where early on Nick and I are in the garage packing orders and our phones start blowing up. So and so posted, so-and-so posted and you know, we have our last 10 bottles before our next run. And next thing you know, there’s a thousand orders that come in and we’re sitting around laughing at each other.
Stephanie Postles:
Oh my gosh. That’s awesome. Were you getting the dings on your phone when these orders are coming in? And you’re like, “Well, it’s all over now. We don’t have them.”
Nick Ajluni:
Back in the day we turned that feature off because it’s not good for your mental health once the dings stop happening. But yeah, back in the day it was fun hearing the little ching ching.
Stephanie Postles:
That’s cool. So now what are you guys betting big on? I love the idea that you’re willing to try anything, especially on Tik Tok. What are some new tests that you’re doing that you’re not really sure if they’re going to work out?
Nick Guillen:
I think from a testing perspective, we’re moving into an age where content is starting to drive everything. There are less ways to hack around. There’s a lot of early hacks, especially on Facebook and Instagram, that really don’t exist now. And along with this new iOS update, it’s making it a lot harder for advertisers to attribute where to put the majority of their resource into. So I think for us, it’s continuing to develop relationships with people that love the brand, develop relationships with people who haven’t heard of Truff yet, and put out content that is very value-driven. Very creative things that they wouldn’t necessarily think a truffle condiments business was putting out. Like some of the new content that I’m not sure if you’ve seen, but it’s some CGI stuff and visual effects stuff, always trying to be on the cutting edge, as Nick mentioned, of CPG and food.
Stephanie Postles:
So who even thought of this? I’m like, “I’m going to take this hot sauce and the truffle oil, and I’m going to turn into a person who’s going to have a full on fight with each other.” Who thought of this concept and how do you keep thinking of ideas like this that are a little out there, but I’m here for it? I love it.
Nick Guillen:
We just have a very creative team, people that really like to think outside of the box and aren’t scared to try new things.
Stephanie Postles:
That’s awesome. So what’s next on for those kinds of productions and what kind of response are you seeing from your community?
Nick Guillen:
So that’s series, for example, that’s called our food fight series and without giving too much away, the idea is we’re going to be creating battles within our own Skus. So that first episode was our OG hot sauce that was being approached by the new category, the truffle oil that we just launched. And then as the series progresses, you’ll see each Sku start to come into whoever’s environment that they’re in. So the next episode might be pasta versus hot sauce and then so on and so forth.
Stephanie Postles:
Okay. That’s awesome. So do you see your followers and new folks loving this kind of content? Because I’m thinking you hear from everyone that UGC is where it’s at, no production now. People just want raw, authentic content. And then when I look at that, I’m like, “That’s awesome.” Also because I’ve never seen that being done before, but what’s the response look like for content like that?
Nick Guillen:
Yeah, that, that piece was crazy. We also have other pieces that completely flopped. So I think it’s just trying to understand what people like, doubling down on what that actually is and then trying new things along the way. For example, we’re still doing a ton of UGC. We’re doing a ton of reels and we’ll test new things like these VFX pieces.
Stephanie Postles:
How do you think about the CTA at the end of stuff like that? Are you driving people to buy the new product or is it purely like, “This is just for fun. Go check out our brand.” It’s a brand play?
Nick Guillen:
Yeah. There’s no CTA. The CTA is, “Here’s a dope piece of content.”
Nick Ajluni:
There’s never been a CTA at Truff. There is no CTA. The CTA is that there’s no CTA. Don’t buy our product. We’re not here to sell you our product. We’re here to make great products and present them in cool ways and if people want to try them and buy them, that’s the cherry on top.
Stephanie Postles:
I love that. How do you think about for tracking purposes? I kind of think that way of thinking will make just more people buy. Like, “Don’t buy our product, just watch our fun stuff.”
Nick Ajluni:
I mean, we’re not saying don’t buy our product, but it’s more so for us, the worst way to try to sell a product is to sell a product. We want to make the amazing product present it in the amazing way, and if it’s not good people won’t buy it and let the authenticity just speak for itself. And like Nick said earlier, when we would look at all these brands in early social media days, and it was all about making a buck, making a buck. Like sales machines just selling whatever they could to make a buck. And it’s like, “We never wanted to be that one that would be that. We want to build a true here to stay, generational brand that our grandkids can purchase and support. And the way to do that, we don’t think, is to try and get people to buy it from content or anything like that.
Nick Guillen:
Don’t get it twisted. We have a best practice media buying plan behind the scenes, but everything on the front end is just cool and authentic.
Stephanie Postles:
Yep. Yep. I got that. The other thing that I thought was interesting is how many places you guys can be bought at. Of course Amazon, I think you’re number one in the hot sauce category, but then you’re also at places Whole Foods and then Neiman Marcus, which is very interesting, but that’s a perfect fit for that kind of audience. How did you get in all these places, especially retail? I mean, Amazon, to me, it’s a no brainer, you guys are great. Of course you’re number one, but how did you get into these retail locations and how did you think about even approaching that?
Nick Ajluni:
So Neiman for example that was one of our earlier accounts. One of our partners in the luxury fashion world, his name’s Jon Buscemi, I think they must’ve seen us through his social or something, but we reached kind of a point where they wanted to bring us on and it went great and their customers absolutely loved it. And there’s a couple of other luxury boutiques, there’s a store called Snacks in Luxembourg, which is iconic and a few other lifestyle clothing boutique stores around LA and New York and whatnot that we’ve been stocked in since early days. And when we launched, that’s kind of where we sat. We weren’t a grocery product by any means and we were there and we were in gourmet.
Nick Ajluni:
So Ma and Pa boutiques that would sell things like [all boil] and wine and cheese and unique products like the gourmet world and that commanded a higher … They could afford the cost to truck those environments. And from there as we scaled, we were able to bring our costs down a little bit and get a little bit wider with stores like Whole Foods and Wegmans and Central Market and places like that. It started here and then it slowly has gotten wider as we’ve grown as a brand.
Stephanie Postles:
So waht kind of lessons did you learn then? You’re getting into these retailers, I mean, I can imagine being like, “Oh, I’m not going to do it that way again,” or, “Oh, now we know how to approach Whole Foods or go to Central Market and ask for these terms.” How would you advise someone now if they’re just thinking about getting into retailers?
Nick Ajluni:
So we never wanted to start in retail. Nick mentioned our goal is always to build a digital brand, have our customers direct. Own those relationships, build true, authentic connection, treat them great and offer them great products. And then, for example, when we first rolled out one of our major grocery retailers, our initial response was, “Hey, we don’t work with grocery stores in general.” And I think we understand the requirements of retail and it’s capital intensive and there’s slotting fees. And if you don’t do well, you’re gone and you probably won’t get a second chance. And so I think people jump to get on shelves early thinking, “Oh, we want to be on all these shelves.” But I think it makes a lot more sense to build your brand off shelf, start small, take on retailers as it makes sense.
Nick Guillen:
Start small on those retailers. Whole foods we didn’t start with all their stores. We started with 10 in Southern California. Target, we’re in a couple of hundred doors right now and we’re starting small and making sure we’re doing things right. Understanding their audience, understanding how to present ourselves there, making sure the pricing is right and all those types of things. And so when people are impatient and they go really, really fast and they just want big growth overnight. I think that’s when you usually run into issues or make major mistakes. We’ve definitely made mistakes but we’ve tried to avoid having them be major ones. And any time something comes up that could be a make or break situation, we always try and consult with people that have done it or would know how to do things. I mean, setting up your pricing, now you’re bringing in distributors which gets a little bit more complicated. So it’s kind of like relying on experts in a lot of ways. And also just using common sense, but making sure the mistakes you make are as minimal as possible.
Stephanie Postles:
Are there any mistakes that you made in the early days around that that could have been big, but because you were doing this slower strategy and seeing what worked that you were like, “Ooh, avoided a really big blow up down the road because we caught this early on.” Or anything around that?
Nick Guillen:
I think one of the big ones was not rushing into retail in the first place. With that said, I think that something we did really good was figure out how to have this omni-channel business, where we sold online and sold in stores at price points that were fair enough on both channels.
Nick Guillen:
And then obviously there’s different levels of retail. So a Neiman Marcus and a Whole Foods or whatnot are going to have different customers and different margin requirements and things like that internally. So I think where we’re putting a lot of emphasis on for example, our white truffle, Sku, which is a lot more expensive than our black … I can’t sit everywhere. So we don’t try and sit here and just get it everywhere. We put it where it works and don’t force it where it doesn’t work. And even things like adding our hotter Skew to places that the black is working and making sure that we’re giving all the Skews and pasta. What if we just made hot sauce content and no pasta content? Things like that.
Stephanie Postles:
That’s very interesting. Kind of like crafting the products that go into certain places depending on price points and all that.
Stephanie Postles:
So how do you think about Amazon then? Because you guys are so high and I view Amazon a lot of times, you’ve just got to get on there and get what you need, not really think too much on it. But then you became number one in hot sauce. Which to me, I would think of the lower brands being number one on there, just go on there and get the typical stuff that just sits in your fridge that you don’t even think about. So how did you optimize to hit that number one spot and stay there?
Nick Guillen:
So back in 2018, which was our first full year of business, we were approached by the Oprah team …
Stephanie Postles:
No big deal.
Nick Guillen:
And we ended up being on Oprah’s favorite things and that was launched on Amazon. So for a while we were thinking, “Hey, let’s not even put Truff on Amazon. Let’s just keep it directly through truff.com.” So from very, very early on, we had the flywheel of Amazon spinning very quickly, and along the way, we’ve just continued to optimize that channel. It’s a behemoth. We look at it as a retailer. It is technically e-comm, but there might be customers that purchase from us on .com and then each additional purchase may be on Amazon. There’s some people that only shop on Amazon, like [inaudible] he only purchases things on Amazon. If it’s not on Amazon, it doesn’t get bought.
Nick Guillen:
And like Nick mentioned, we bring on people that know a lot more than us in certain areas. So from early on, we brought on a person that is just an Amazon expert, and he’s taught us the best practices and the best ways of navigating that monster.
Stephanie Postles:
Yeah, that’s great. And you don’t feel like it’s competing with your other channels. Is there any point when you’re like, “I really wish people would go strictly to our website or to be able to see our content. Instead, everyone just keeps going to Amazon. They’re missing all our good stuff that we have everywhere else”.
Nick Guillen:
I think if they’re on Amazon looking for Truff it’s because they saw it somewhere else. They saw it on social. They might’ve been served an ad on Facebook, went to our website, checked Amazon to see if Amazon has it, they can get it in a day. So I think if people are on Amazon looking for Truff, they’ve already seen it somewhere, but we also have strategies that acquire the new customer. We are running the same really cool content on Amazon. I think we were one of the very first brands that were doing video ads on Amazon. So trying to remain on the cutting edge, like we’ve mentioned, across the board.
Stephanie Postles:
That’s great. Earlier you mentioned you were on Oprah’s favorite thing list, I think for two years in a row. You’ve also been on the Today Show and Good Morning America. How many of these and a bunch of others that I didn’t name, but how many of these places that you’re showing up are because your team is actually going out there and hustling to get featured on these places versus them finding you on their own and just being like, “Come on the show. Come on Food Network or the Rachael Ray Show.” How much are you all doing to do that, to get that?
Nick Ajluni:
So the TV things are often inbound. So I think that Oprah has brought a ton of demand, and when you’re on Oprah they do all these kinds of cool pressings around that Q4 moment and cool products when [inaudible] whatnot. A lot of things you see with Truff are organic and through our relationships or networks, the hype, the quality of the product, and then other things are things that we’ve gone out and got. But in our earliest days we did not have that capability. It was just all organic up until probably about a year and a half of our existence was organic.
Stephanie Postles:
Wow. That’s amazing. So where do you all want to be in three years or three to five years? What’s your vision for where the company’s headed? You already have a ton of awesome products, very diverse. It seems like you’ve launched a lot since you’ve started. Where do you want to be over the next couple of years?
Nick Ajluni:
I think there’s a lot, as far as we’ve gotten, there’s always more to do. There’s a lot of stories we’re not in, there’s a lot of people who haven’t tried Truff and we never wanted to make tens of products. That’s not us necessarily, but more so make a few and make them incredibly well and have a lot of people love them. And so, just continuing to get Truff into people’s mouths and in part of the staple of people’s culinary experiences is pretty high on our list.
Stephanie Postles:
Yep. Yep. That’s great. All right. Well, let’s move over to the lightning round. The lightning round is brought to you by Salesforce Commerce Cloud. This is where I ask a question and you have a minute or less to answer, and I’ll try and direct it to each of you. Are you ready? Nicks squared?
Nick Guillen:
Let’s do it.
Stephanie Postles:
Okay. First up, what’s your favorite Truff product? Nick G, you first.
Nick Guillen:
I would say the white truffle hot sauce.
Stephanie Postles:
Okay, okay.
Nick Ajluni:
White shot/truffle oil.
Stephanie Postles:
Nick A, what’s the nicest thing anyone’s ever done for you?
Nick Guillen:
Whoa. I don’t know. I have to think about it. In a minute? I don’t know. It’s such a hard maybe Nick calling me and say, “Hey, I got that sauce.”
Stephanie Postles:
That’s a good one. All right, Nick A, you’re up then. What’s the nicest thing anyone’s done for you?
Nick Ajluni:
Supported our brand.
Stephanie Postles:
Yeah, I like it. All right. What’s one thing that you’re secretly curious about? Nick G.
Nick Guillen:
Aliens.
Stephanie Postles:
I just watched a documentary on Netflix. What was it?
Nick Guillen:
Phenomenon?
Stephanie Postles:
That. I did start [inaudible] something on the Seventh or Fifth Encounter, something like that. They have had like the Third Encounter, Fourth Encounter, Fifth Encounter. So you’re really on alien level with them when you’re at the fifth one.
Nick Guillen:
I got to watch that one.
Nick Ajluni:
I was going to say UFO’s, also.
Stephanie Postles:
Oh, wow. [crosstalk] So that should be your next piece of content then. Aliens doing truffle everything.
Nick Guillen:
That’s not a bad idea. An alien coming down and putting its light down, taking a bottle of Truff and leaving.
Stephanie Postles:
What’s up next on your reading list or podcast list? Nick A, you’re up.
Nick Ajluni:
I have a stack of books over there. I’m trying to look at which ones would be the top of the list. There’s one and it says To Sell is Human by Daniel Pink, which looks good. There’s also one, Why We Sleep.
Stephanie Postles:
I like that. All right. Nick G?
Nick Guillen:
I’m looking at my reading list. I just finished Living with a Seal by Jesse Itzler, I think is how you pronounce his last name. That was a good one.
Nick Ajluni:
Itzler, yeah.
Stephanie Postles:
What was that about? Because I have not actually heard that. Usually with common books I hear, I’m like, “Yep. Yep.” I’ve not heard of Living With a Seal.
Nick Guillen:
So he met this Navy Seal by the name of David Goggins, who I’m a big follower of. I love the content he puts out. It’s very extreme, but there’s a lot of good that can be pulled from it. He basically hired this Navy Seal to live with them for 30 days. And he basically just said, “I’m yours for 30 days. Kick my shit in. Any time during the day we could get up and just get after it, and I just want you to put me through it.” So it’s the Navy Seal living with this high-functioning CEO that’s trying to run his business and his family. And it’s just a really, really cool book. And then Contagious, which is one that I’m 90% done with. But it basically talks about why things catch on. Like why things cross the chasm, how to build virality early on and create products and brands and messages that are really sticky. So that’s a good one.
Stephanie Postles:
Awesome. I will have to check out those or Living With a Seal. I know the other one.
Stephanie Postles:
All right, last one. And you guys have to collaborate on this one. If you were to have a podcast, what would it be about and what kind of content would you have on it?
Nick Guillen:
So I had a podcast …
Stephanie Postles:
What was it about?
Nick Ajluni:
In my pack and it was called the [Nick Six] Podcast.
Stephanie Postles:
I was going to say was this a Nick A show?
Nick Ajluni:
No it wasn’t that. It was an Nick Six podcast, which was a powdered beverage. I had this powdered beverage brand [inaudible] and mine was called Nick Six. And after I made a podcast, but had [inaudible] the brand. I only did three or four episodes. And this is when we were starting Truff so after a while I was like, “I don’t have time for this.” But I think the first one was about nutrition. The second was about fear and anxiety with … I had cool guests about them on each one. I think the first one is actually this nonprofit near me who helped kids through skateboarding.
Stephanie Postles:
Awesome. Well, Nick, Nick, thank you guys for joining the show today. It was awesome having you on. Where can people find out more about you all and Truff?
Nick Guillen:
IG of N-I-C-K-G, NickG is my handle. And then @sauce on Instagram.
Stephanie Postles:
Cool. Okay, do you have any …
Nick Ajluni:
My handles. Yeah, Instagram. My handle is just my last name. A-J-L-U-N-I
Stephanie Postles:
Awesome. Thank you guys for joining. It was a blast.
Nick Guillen:
Thank you so much for having us.
Nick Ajluni:
Thanks for having us.
Stephanie Postles:
Thanks guys.
