Arrae co-founder Nish Samantray reveals 9-figure revenue on a tiny team and eyes retail expansion after strong TikTok shop test

Think bigger, build faster. Figma helps design development teams build great products together. Um, our next guest is already in the reream waiting room. Uh, we have Nish, right?

My dear friend.

Your dear friend. I think we ran into each other. Did we run into each other in No, how you doing?

Yes.

Welcome to the stream.

What's up?

What's up, guys?

How you doing?

Good. Good.

How locked in are you? How locked in are you right now? The last 24 hours.

This is it, man. This is the Super Bowl, dude. So, like, you know, it's like no sleep. It really is.

Okay. You did Did you really not sleep last night? Did you get a couple hours?

I'm joking. Thankfully, we have a team that does this kind of stuff now, so it's not that bad.

Yeah. But I mean, some companies, it's like January 1st is their Super Bowl because it's like people are getting in shape. New year, new you. Other stuff heavily gift driven. So, Black Friday is really big, he discount driven. Like, where where do you sit on the

How much bigger is is Q1 than Q4 for you guys?

Yeah,

Q1 is always bigger than Q4, especially the health and wellness base. So, like they call Q1 really Q5. And so everyone is like, you know, ramping up towards Q1. January to March is your Super Bowl for sure. But this weekend is still going to be um a really really large weekend. And like these next four days, people are going to be like the buying intent is just so high. So everyone is just really excited to purchase regardless. But even even after this, December is usually a little bit of a lull in the health and wellness space, but you're still spending and building awareness. And then Q1 is just like, you know, that's where you're making as much money as possible.

Yeah. take us through the product set for those who don't know

before before g give an give an intro on yourself and the company I I uh we're we're close friends I don't [laughter] want to I don't want to skip over it for the for the audience um so yeah introduce yourself and the company

yeah guys my name is Nish uh I'm one of the co-founders of a company called Array I started a company with my wife and we're basically a um targeted supplements for unsexy problems so we started the company 5 years ago our hero product is bloat in the digestive health kind of category and since then we've expanded across multiple women's health uh problems. So, metabolic health, sports performance, digestive health and uh we we have very few SKUs, but we do you know nine figures of revenue um of um as a business and we have 5 years old.

Oh, well there we go. Microphone. [laughter]

Um and uh you guys have you raised one one round back in the day. Uh

yeah, we raised like a really small like couple million dollars uh super small seed round maybe four three years ago, something like that. Yeah, we've been profitable since.

Insane. Um what's been the what's been the strategy this year? I feel like other categories in in ecom have had like more volatility this year just like given the the trade war and all that stuff. But but how's it been so far?

No. Okay, so the first half of this year was completely different than the second half of the year. So the first half something about just buying sentiment was a lot better. And so the way you're able to grow these consumer businesses and just marketing in general was really efficient, really strong growth. Second half of the year has been really interesting. Something has changed in just like macro environment where people are not spending as much money just buying things online anymore. And so I'm noticing this across the board. If you look at like macro 10 data, look at even retail category data, just uh customer acquisition costs have really really gone up. Met acquisition costs have really gone up. uh brands are still growing, but it's just as harder than it was in the uh first part of the year. That's for sure, Jordy. Yeah.

And so to counteract that, you guys are launching new products. You launched Target. Walk us through that.

Yeah. So for us, you know, launching new products has always been a really big part of strategy. I think innovation is so important because without innovation, you just can't really build uh the company and you you kind of die. So we're always launching new products, but we try to launch very few products that have a really large TAM. And so this year we launched a u tone uh tone gummy which is basically uh creatine that was built in a form factor and has certain additional ingredients that it's like really geared towards women and so a lot of women are like so scared of taking creatine and so scared of bulking up and so let's make this more approachable for them. That was like a really strong product for us. We have um another clear protein product in the protein category. Protein's been like going crazy this year. Uh so that was like that was another really big launch. We have a clear clear protein with electrolytes in it. So that did really well and uh and then more recently it was a product line extension. We have a really strong MB1 metabolic health product and so we did that as well. But the biggest thing for us is we've been expanding heavily into retail just because that's where the next kind of phase of growth comes from. So we've went nationwide through Target, nationwide sprouts. Those two are really uh yeah big big launches. Uh no it's been it's been a crazy year man. Crazy year. Really good.

What about what about online channels? Uh how's how are things on on Tik Tok shop? I know uh we were we were in the Alps in uh uh December January and you you you said it was like insane at that point. Has it has it kept up? I know I know that I know that they kind of uh subsidized demand on Tik Tok shop or that's that's been my understanding of it. Has that continued? How are you thinking about it as part of this acquisition that's going on? All that stuff.

Tik Tok is actually pretty insane. So Tik Tok shop is this crazy platform where you can go from doing nothing to doing, you know, multi-million dollars a month in like three months. And so that's what's that's what h happened to us when we were in the Albi like we were just ramping up. By March we were doing seven figures per month per month just on Tik Tok shop. Wow. And so that was like a it was really really cool really fun. But what's crazy about it is the amount of investment that you need to get that going is just a lot. So, Tik Tok is interesting because you get this virality, you get this insane amount of impression share and you're really banking on the halo effect it has on other channels. So, when Tik Tok goes viral, you're not really making any money in Tik Tok, but you're making money on Amazon, in retail, um, and even the spillover effect on DTC, and that's where you're seeing the results. So, the thing about that is you do it, you know, you're not going to make a lot of money, but you got to like staff up and get really complex on like incrementality and just your overall marketing strategy and just uh getting really good at measurement so you know where you're making money. But, Tik Tok Shop is really interesting because it's actually changed Black Friday behavior quite a bit. It's in a is in a position where it's uh a constant deal seeking like throughout the 12 months of the year because they have so [clears throat] many sales and so many pro promos happening all the time. And so consumers on Tik Tok shop are like, "Okay, I'm just going to go look for the best deal, and I'm just going to go look for whatever creators are telling me are the best product, but also have the best value." And so it's like really changed things because, you know, you really don't want to be on sale all the time, but you kind of have to be if uh you want to play competitively on that platform. But it's still really interesting because you can you can have certain products that are like really meant for Tik Tok shop, other products that you're kind of on your D2C and you're cross-selling, upselling, but uh it's a it's a strong platform. Like once it gets going, there's no denying the halo effect it has on everything else.

Uh makes a lot of sense. How are you navigating uh growth and and profitability? I know you've been uh generally profitable for a while now, but you still have your foot on the gas from a from a growth standpoint. Uh what's

I I think like right now we've been profitability first more than more than growth. And so we've just been like, okay, um no matter what um even on the BFCM, even we're doing like these large sales and whatnot, like we're not going to go above a number if you're going to become unprofitable. Now obviously that profitability takes into account a lot of like LTV and the mechanics on okay um we don't mind losing money as long as we're sure that we'll make money back within whatever you know one two three month payback period so we'll have that type of mass and give the best possible kind of value to the consumer so we've still been very healthy like LTV on that note but it's interesting I mean we've been expanding so much in retail and all that kind of stuff you just need money to grow that machine and you just need to market a lot more so there's a world where regardless how profitable you are just the pure dollars needed to you know market retail target you just really need money for that. So we're we're considering okay um you know how much do we need to increase that marketing budget by um maybe reducing profitability even more and just like spending more because it's what you need to get successful. There's a flywheel effect that will kick in later. Uh so I'm sure there's money to be made later on that but uh right now we're profitability first but I think we'll maybe be more lenient on that even going into next year just because you want to grow the business more especially with the channel increasing. Do you do you track revenue revenue per employee? We had we had David uh not David, we had Peter [laughter] Peter uh Peter Dave Peter protein

Peter Peter protein on from David. He he was saying, you know, he looks to keep like uh couple million of revenue per employee. Is that something that you think about at all or just kind of a vanity metric?

Yeah, we do actually. We do. We're probably like one of the leanest. I think we're sitting anywhere at like uh somewhere in the 2 to3 million range on revenue per employee. So, like that's pretty Yeah, it's been it's been really good. Maybe a bit Julian, though. But yeah, [laughter]

uh it's incredible. Uh I've I've had a front row seat to to watching CIF and Nish Bel and and uh just absolute absolute monsters. Uh some someday you'll go on like a nice podcast tour victory lap when when it's all when it's all over. But uh

once the company

Yeah. Um awesome, dude. Well, thank you. Thank you for taking the time out of the day. Say hi to CIF and the whole team and I will I'll see you soon.

Thanks guys. See you soon or Gavin going.

Cheers.

Our next guest is already in the room waiting room. What you got for me?

I was just going to say uh Nish is just the the epitome of golden retriever matching. He's [laughter] he's an absolute animal. [snorts]

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