Santiago Merea, Raised Real: The first 1,000 days
Santiago Merea, co-founder & CEO, Raised Real: We are really focused on the increasing evidence that the first 1,000 days for tiny humans are not just about what they eat, but how they eat (self-feeding, no pouches, more textures, finger foods, baby led weaning).
We often treat food during this stage as just as way to make sure that our babies and toddlers are getting the right nutrition, but we forget that it is about more than just that. Their relationship with food, for the rest of their lives, will be shaped by these very important first couple of years. The new USDA guidelines start to address these “how they eat” topics for the first time and Raised Real will continue to develop products and advocacy tools that help establish these behaviors from day one.
This is what makes Raised Real such a differentiated offering in the market and not just a 'better for you' platform but a 'best for you' one. This idea of flexible food + customized content is something that will be very big for us in 2021.
[When it comes to channel strategies] 2020 presented a unique opportunity for companies that were already well positioned to take advantage of an increased demand through online channels. As a DTC company, we benefited, and had months of ridiculous growth. At the same time, increased online spend from the presidential election, Black Friday, and Cyber Monday got compounded by new and legacy brands suddenly opening DTC channels and pouring more money into online ads. All this made CPMs jump and reinforced my belief that we are in an online advertising bubble.
One way to combat this, and what I am spending most of my time thinking about, is channel diversification. When everybody zigs, startups need to zag. What is that zag though? We are getting ready to open new distribution channels in 2021 and find new ways of getting in front of our audience.
