Creating A Category With Bonnie Sussman Strominger

 

Have you ever gone to a movie house only to spill your popcorn on the floor or G-d forbid onto someone else? Or did you ever react quick enough to that nasty bump on the road that would end up spilling your drink? If only you had a GoLidZ. In this episode, Ben Baker sits down with Bonnie Sussman Strominger, the Founder and CEO of GoLidZ—the product that revolutionized cup lids. Discover the a-ha moment that made Bonnie realize why she wanted to make all-in-one lids. Also, learn what it takes to create a brand-new category as an entrepreneur and how she inserted her business into the QSR industry.

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Listen to the podcast here:

Creating A Category With Bonnie Sussman Strominger

Thank you, my wonderful readers, for joining me yet again. Thank you for all your comments on LinkedIn. Thank you for getting in touch with me at [email protected]. I love hearing your comments and ideas. I’ve got a treat for you yet again. We are going to talk about creating a category with Bonnie Sussman Strominger. She is the CEO, the brains, brilliance, and the idea generator behind GoLidZ. Bonnie, welcome.

Thank you, Ben. What a pleasure to be here.

You and I have known each other for years. I have watched you grow, blossom and do incredible things. First of all, I love your videos. You do the most incredible viral videos. They’re so much fun. They’re basically in 10, 15 seconds or less and really tell your story. I’ve given you kudos for that right off the bat.

Thank you so much. We’ve delved in with video. It’s become our best, most effective storytelling tool that we’ve got. It’s interesting because LinkedIn didn’t have a video for such a long time. We had to tell our story through images and copy. None of it even remotely compares to the power of storytelling on a video.

We’re going to get into this. It’s such a visual product. You tell people what it is and they go, “Huh.” All of a sudden you give them an image, you give them a video, you demonstrate what it does. It’s one of those head-slappers. It’s like, “Why didn’t I think of this?” It makes so much sense. It’s logical and helpful. It’s going to be one of these things that eventually will go to the moon. Let’s start off a little bit about you, where you came from. What brought you to come up with GoLidZ? Explain a little bit about what GoLidZ is and then we’ll go from there.

The actual a-ha concept moments happened back in the ‘90s. I was in college in Arizona. I was on a bad date with a bad guy. He had no manners. We went to the concession stand. We got popcorn and hotdogs and sodas, and you name it, we had it. This goofball gave me everything to carry on my own. I had trays, soda, you name it. I couldn’t fathom why was I carrying it? Why didn’t I say anything? Bigger question. I’m on a date, young and stupid. We get into the theater, and long story short, we climb over people to get into the center of the aisle. What’s a classic story in a movie theater? Falling over. I tripped on this man’s giant knee and everything went over, popcorn, soda. The lids came off the soda. I soaked dozens of people that were calling me things that I cannot repeat on this show.

We’ll leave it to people’s imagination.

I’m sure people can imagine, you’re at a theater and trying to enjoy yourself, and here’s this 6-foot monster who dumped food all over you and ruined your evening. I walked out of there. First of all, I sat during the movie, and I did tear up and I was very upset. I was mopping that sticky, disgusting theater floor with my face. I hurt myself, I scuffed my elbow, it was a whole disaster. I kept thinking that that should not have happened and that the hotdogs and sodas somehow should have been connected. It was not a fleshed-out thought. It was just in my mind. I walked out of the theater. I named the product that I thought it should be called. That’s not GoLidZ today of course. That was it. I went home. I skipped it on a piece of paper. I went on to college. I graduated from school. I moved back to New York and I got into the corporate world.

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I never thought of pursuing it because I always say to entrepreneurs that contact me, that wanted advice, some guidance on how to get started, where do we begin this journey? I always say you have to figure out, “Is this nice to have or are you solving a problem?” If it’s nice to have, that’s great, you might not sell anything. If it’s solving a problem, then you have a chance at being successful and getting wide adoption with your product. To that end, I did think it was inconvenient what happened at the theater but there were no phones, no one had a cell phone back in the ‘90s. We were all living in archaic times. We weren’t down a hand. I wasn’t seeing people struggling. Fast forward to 2000, everyone gets a phone, a flip phone, you can text, you can phone call. It’s still not a smartphone, so you can put it away. Not everybody had it in their hands on their own.

2008 to fast forward the story, that is when suddenly everybody had a smartphone. You’re doing more business on your phone than you are from your laptop. That’s when I’m observing and noticing and looking around in my life and realizing that there’s an issue. People are coming in and out of places like Starbucks, Dunkin’ and all those places that you go to and people are struggling. They’ve got the phone in their hand that they don’t want to put down. They have strollers, they have children, laptops, all kinds of devices, packages in other locations.

I’m realizing, “What is the impact on that experience as a brand? What is the impact on their bottom line of people not accepting their upsell?” If you go to Starbucks, you’re going there for a drink. It’s not like, “Let’s go have lunch at Starbucks.” Starbucks wants to give you something to eat off their menu while you’re there. If it’s not convenient since convenience is driving purchasing decisions across every industry. It’s what’s making us all thrive is convenience. How much money do they lose?

 

If they can sell a combo to every single person that walks in that door, that’s a lot of money. That’s where we get away from being a commodity, which we’ll talk about later when we get more into the categorical difference between what we are and the standard cup lid. The biggest thing is that I was thriving in the corporate world. There was no particular reason for me to be leaving to pursue this. I started sketching, I started figuring out how would this work from an engineering standpoint but I was also employed. I spent twenty years in two industries, 10 years at fashion, 10 years in real estate. What was the reason to leave jobs where I was thriving? I was making a nice living. I didn’t have a problem supporting myself. I wasn’t engaged or married yet. It was a big leap to make, that’s a jump-off-the-cliff type of moment. Every entrepreneur will tell you it’s scary. It’s a massive risk. When you can’t pinpoint the reason because nothing’s wrong, I was unfulfilled. That’s the answer. I was unhappy, unfulfilled, and I didn’t think my destiny was to be in the industry working for another company. I sleep with a pad next to my bed.

Most entrepreneurs do.

That constant waking up at 4:00 in the morning, and that’s if I’m not awake already, jotting down notes. Potentially notes regarding GoLidZ, additional products we can add, and notes regarding brand-new products that have nothing to do with GoLidZ to add on more to our plates. We need that but that’s going to happen.

Let’s unpack all this because where you came from and where you are is a person’s segue to be like, “What happened next?” It’s understanding and being patient enough to realize that in the 1990s when you’re at that movie theater, and you came up with the idea, that it was a difference between a nice to have and a must-have. At that stage of the day, we both all have two hands. Now, none of us has two hands anymore. We always have a phone in our hand. We have a kid in our hand or we’re carrying a purse or we’re carrying something and we’re down a hand. We’re multitasking. What was easy to grab a tray and to be able to carry more stuff and be more stable, became unstable. All of a sudden there was a lot more wastage, a lot more spillage, a lot more accidents.

The fact that you’re sitting there going in the categories that you’re in, which is the quick convenience category, that people are looking for margin creators. You’re correct, we’re dealing with a situation where you can only make so much money off a cup of coffee or a drink. Those are high-margin items. However, if you could add a doughnut, hotdog, fries or something to it, all of a sudden, you’re making margin off dual products. What I wanted people to understand is what exactly the goal is. What’s the concept behind it in terms of a physical piece? How does it solve that problem in a way that’s that a-ha moment?

It’s replacing a standard beverage cup lid. It becomes the new lid on the cup. We have a lid embedded in the product, and that creates the sturdy, stable grip that it has. For anyone who’s watched our videos, we do some crash testing, we do some pretty funny things like bumping into cars. People outside are like, “What are you guys doing? Why would you do that? Why don’t you just bump into a pole on purpose?” It’s not to injure ourselves but to prove that the product is that sturdy and stable. That’s why videos become such a powerful medium for us but it replaces their lid. On one hand, you have a commodity lid, a standard lid. You can’t serve a beverage, unless you put a lid on it. Our lid is the lid that’s covering the cup but it adds food and is covering the food as well.

It’s an integrated clamshell that the cup goes underneath and it attaches to the bottom of the clamshell. Not only can you have access to your food but you can also put a straw in this thing, drink it with a lid closed so you’re keeping your food safe. You could also open up the clamshell when you’re ready to eat.

You could drink it with the lid open too. It goes to a separate chamber in the back. There’s no interaction between the straw, the liquid and the food. It’s completely encased. The beauty of it is you can open and close it, drink open, drink closed. With COVID, the value of the cover, you can’t put a price on it.

I’m not sneezing in somebody’s food anymore.

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Everything is sealed all the way around. Think of a stadium where you’re eating in your seat. Stadiums, theaters, they’re never going to serve anything wide open ever again. Everything is going to have a cover including a popcorn bucket. There will always be a way for you to open your food and enjoy it and quickly cover it up. If you don’t feel comfortable, I don’t think anyone should feel comfortable for quite some time. This is a brand-new hypersensitive mode on all of us. That level of insecurity when you’re around other people that even if you’re vaccinated, you’re still not 100% safe. It’s better but there’s no guarantee.

There’s the whole COVID germaphobe, the whole scenario of it. I love what that does for that. You’ve been talking about this for years. You and I have been talking about GoLidZ for years. What I want to talk about is that this is a new category. It’s taking a food container, it’s taking a drink lid, and it’s combining the two in such a way that what you’re doing is you’re allowing yourself to utilize your hands better. You’ve got seven patents now on this product?

Yes. We have a registered trademark on the name. We started back in ‘12. This August 2021, it’s going to be nine years. I cannot believe how much we’ve gone through in nine years. When you think about a new category, being an entrepreneur is hard enough as it is. Creating a product or service, whatever it is that you’re doing that’s entrepreneurial is so painful, incredibly hard process. No one skates through it, there are no overnight successes. I have yet to hear one of an overnight success. It’s a guaranteed fact that you need to fail to go forward. If I ever hear anyone telling me that they never failed and they’re wildly successful, I don’t even buy it. I don’t know anyone that hasn’t fail on their face. That’s a good thing. If you don’t fail, then you don’t learn.

You’re not pushing yourself hard enough.

You’re not taking enough risks along the way. Being an entrepreneur comes with risk-taking. If you’re not comfortable with risk, then you cannot be an entrepreneur. I don’t care who you are. That word is synonymous with being an entrepreneur because it’s all risk. What is the success rate of an entrepreneur? An entrepreneur creating a brand-new category is herculean. It’s the best word that I could use to describe this journey that we’ve been on, because not only are you bringing a new product to market but there’s a level of we’re replacing a standard lid. Where do standard lids come from? Packaging in cup lids, massive companies that have dominated the market and that space since the beginning of time. Here we are this company coming in boldly with this new lid that doesn’t exist in the world. We’re asking operators to change how they serve. It’s a huge ask. When you look at the QSR Stadium, a theme park anywhere.

 

QSR is Quick Serve Retail.

Quick Service Restaurants, it’s fast foods, drive-throughs, that’s all the QSR world. You’ve got fast-casual, which is more of like a TGIF, Fridays where you can go in and sit down. All these places, how they serve their operations, that is the lifeblood of what they do. It also is tied to speed. The faster they serve, the more money they make. The slower they go, not good. When you hear about all these competitions of who’s got the best drive-through in the country, it’s heavily based on customer experience, service, menu, category innovation, but a huge component of that is speed. They want to move you. I have an expression that I use which is, “Speed turns into greed.” I say that in the nicest of ways. The faster they can serve you, the quicker they can move you out the door and get to the next door.

Subway is looking at creating somewhere in the neighborhood of 3,000 drive-throughs where they’re realizing that is the next level of where people want to go in terms of the customer experience. Being able to not get out of their car, be able to grab the food on the go, drive away and eat where they want to eat.

Feel safe and protected, your family is in the car with you, your friends, whoever. You don’t need to get out. You don’t need to expose yourself. That drive-through is going to be 90% of their revenue. If you’re a brand and you don’t have a drive-through operation, I’m talking about a big brand. Shake Shack was in the news, they’re doing the same thing. They are going to build up a massive drive-through presence.

I’m thinking about your product. How many times have I stopped short because I’ve driven somewhere and all of a sudden somebody jumps out in front of me, or a red light or whatever? I’ve got fries everywhere. I’ve got a burger that’s lying in the passenger seat that is exposed all over the place because I haven’t been able to grab it fast enough before it goes for a fly.

It’s such a mess then. GoLidZ has done it correctly. In every scenario, speed them up big time. If you watch anyone get their food at a drive-through, nothing is ever handed out the window in one fell swoop. It’s, “Hello, sir. Thank you for coming to McDonald’s. Here are your drinks.” The guy takes the drinks, “Here are your bags, here is the bag of sauces.” That person puts their hand at the window at least two times, sometimes way more than that. Now, you’ve got this experience of you hand GoLidZ through the window, the top is transparent, there’s no checking the bag so that that slows them down too. No one wants to drive away from that drive-through and not make sure that the chicken sandwich and the fries that you ordered are in the bag.

It’s not a Quarter-pounder with fries.

They make mistakes because they’re human. Humans make mistakes. If you drive off that line, you either have to park your car and go in, which is the opposite of the convenience of the drive-through. You’ve got to get on that line and drive all the way around and wait again. You’re angry when you have to do that. People take their sweet time, every second of time is money being lost. How many seconds do they lose an hour? How many customers is that number? What is that metric? Trust me, they do look at these numbers.

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McDonald’s and all these types of things, they have efficiency experts that go in and sit there and say, “How many meals are we serving per hour? How many meals are we serving per minute? How long does it take from the second it’s running to the cash register to the minute that the person walks out the door?” All these things are being looked at through any of these types of restaurants because you’re dealing with a $3, $4 or $5 meal. There are pennies in profit. Those pennies are being eaten up every single time something is wrong, something takes a little longer, you’re being able to serve fewer people, all these types of things.

It is loss prevention, “How much are we losing today?”

Before we finish off on that, and that’s important, what I want to get into is what have been the challenges that you’ve faced in category creation because it’s not just, “Here’s a better mousetrap,” and everybody’s going to take it. “I’ve created something wonderful. Everybody’s going to think of this as obvious. Everybody’s going to buy it right away. There are not enough Brink’s trucks in the world for me to roll up and cash my checks.” We all know that’s not reality.

It is a delusion that a lot of entrepreneurs have in the beginning, and I can add us to that list. When you see something that blows your mind and you say, “This could be great for our business, this could be great for our customers and brand loyalty, sign us up.” It doesn’t work that way. They don’t want to just find a product. They want to find an organization. They want to understand what kind of culture you have, “What kind of values does this company have? Who are the people here? What do they stand for? What kind of leadership is this? Can we trust them? Are they going to be here next year? Is this a fly-by-night operation? Is this some goofy, hacky type product that they chucked together? How much R&D have they spent on this thing? Is it worth it? What iteration are they on?” The questions are endless. You’ve got to go through every phase of that and prove yourself on that journey before you’re going to get a brand that’s going to step in and say, “Let’s do it.”

Above beyond that, it’s also the fact that you’re disrupting their flow. By doing this, you are disrupting. They’ve built cases to hold all the cups, they’ve put location for all the bags and all that kind of stuff. They know where all the bags are. They know where the cups are, they know how they’re buying them, etc. They’re sitting there going, “This is a different size box. This is a different size footprint. Where are we going to store these things so that they can utilize this seamlessly within our organization?” There are many things and you’re sitting there going it doesn’t matter if it’s a better mousetrap. The question is, is it a better mousetrap that’s going to allow them to work as efficiently or better efficiently? How much is it going to disrupt their business flow while they’re getting everybody used to it?

Those are the questions that we had to learn along the way. We have to step back and say, “It’s not about us, it’s about them.” We should be putting ourselves in their situation saying, “What’s bothering them? What’s going to bother them? Get over the hole, this is the most innovative thing I’ve ever seen. This is amazing, this could do this and that.” That’s not good enough, and that’s what we need to learn over time. GoLidZ nest and they stack flat. You can stack 100 up on the counter. It’s things like that.

If it wasn’t nested, if they didn’t stack flat, where are they going to put these things? These are all the elements we had to work through, what is the operational flow? How do things work? What’s the process? The process of a QSR is going to be different than the process at a convenience store, when someone walks into the C-store because they have self-serve machines. This is not the kind of lid you’re going to leave out by self-serve machine. People drop stuff on the ground. With COVID, who knows what’s going on with self-serve, touching everything, all the touchpoints? I don’t even know if that’s fully been addressed or if it’s ever going to be addressed. All those elements, those are the barriers to entry. It’s truly figuring everything out so it’s a seamless process. That’s what makes it difficult.

 

Along with that, you’ve also figured out the standard sizing of cups. Therefore, it’s going to fit a McDonald’s cup, it’s going to fit a Starbucks cup, and it’s going to fit a 7-Eleven cup. You’ve found the standard size cups, and be able to create lids that are going to be able to work with different manufacturers. By doing that, you’re cutting into billion-dollar companies. You have companies like Solo and other major packaging manufacturers, behemoths out there that are tight with these QSRs. They’ve been selling to them for years. They sell billions of dollars of product to these people. How have you been able to overcome that? That to me is almost a bigger challenge than it is selling to the actual companies themselves. To realize that these large enormous companies are not going to roll over just because Bonnie and GoLidZ walked in the door. How are you able to sit there and say, “Here’s how we differentiate ourselves and here’s how we add value. Here’s how we’re able to either work for hand in glove with these people or be able to make this in such a way that there is a place for us in this ecosystem?”

Truthfully, that is a huge barrier to entry and a big question mark. We’ve been fortunate to test some big brands, and we’re fortunate to be testing with some big brands right now. I cannot disclose anything, nor am I allowed to, but I can say this, it is absolutely a dominated space by the incumbents that they will go to any lengths to protect. They don’t have this product. When we discuss with the interested brand, is it sticky on the other side? I’m never part of those conversations. I have to believe that it is because it’s the classic lousy example that people use on Shark Tank, “If we could get 1% of that industry.” It’s a terrible example and it’s something I never say when I’m on the phone with an investor or anything else because nobody likes that example, but in this case, forget using it as our purpose.

For their purposes, if we were to take a few points off their table, it’s a monstrosity of money for them. Cup business is a big business, so we don’t have the answer. When we’re speaking to a brand, we don’t know what’s going on the other side of that phone line. We don’t know if that brand is hesitating because there’s a relationship there with an incumbent that’s going to say, “You’re bringing something in that replaces our lid? No, you’re not. I don’t think so.” We don’t have the answer. I wish we knew but we don’t. It’s part of the reason which we’ll talk about that we are diving heart into eCommerce.

Let’s get into eCommerce because we only have a little time for this. Let’s focus on that because that would be a good ending question. If you can’t dominate the behemoth, if you can’t get a percentage of these people’s business, and I honestly think you will. What are the other opportunities for you?

They’re not inviting us in the swamp.

There we go. You have to make sure that you build your boat and be able to pilot your boat in the swamp. I get that.

I can tell you this, where they are not welcoming us into that swamp, they might even like the product, I bet that they do, but they probably also look at the product thinking, “This is what we do. That’s a new lid and that’s our domain.” To that end, during COVID, we’re in food service. With all the closures and stadiums and theme parks and theaters, and everywhere, our product belongs. Festivals, outdoor fairs, all the perfect places that GoLidZ is handheld, covered, sanitary, protected, perfection, and all that shutdown. QSRs are open but they are not in an innovation moment. They’re in a moment of survival, “What do we do? How do we do it?” Anything that disrupts how they do things, that’s the last thing that they want inside their location.

We’re fortunate that some brands reached out to us. They’re the bold brands that want to be first and then they’re the ones that only do things when they see someone else do it. The competitive edge people, competitive brands, they want to jump out in front and they don’t care about data. They want to create that data and then you get everybody else that goes off data. I wish I could give you some examples but I can’t, but it is an interesting mindset.

During this whole time, we started thinking, “Who were the ultimate decision-makers when it comes down to products?” Consumers and users, it’s not the brands. It’s their decision if they want to carry it, but it’s ultimately consumers who dominate us. They’re the bosses of everybody. That famous quote from Jack Welch, “At the end of the day, we work for consumers. If they don’t like us, if they don’t like our product, if they don’t approve of an innovation, they’re not going to use it, they’re not going to celebrate it and they’re not going to support it.” In that mindset, we’re thinking, “Let’s go straight to consumers.” That’s what we are going to do. We are launching different packages on Amazon and Walmart. There are going to be pre-packs of GoLidZ in different size categories that are universal across 50 brands. That 32-ounce lid is compatible with not only 50 but thousands of those cups, and that’s part of our technology. Even some of it is not in our patents because it’s a trade secret of what we did to come to that conclusion on how to size them.

We’re going to have another package category that is compatible with Solo, party cups, brand-new life party cups. Here’s this cup that’s been around dominating the market forever. Now you have this vehicle like GoLidZ to clip on top and suddenly it becomes a handheld on-the-go, covered, convenient, safe vehicle for your whole family. Tailgating, boating, the pool, home, birthday parties with children, it’s a great way to give new life to a product that’s been around forever.

 

We started realizing if we go straight to them, they’re the decision-makers. Consumers will let us in that door. Consumers love innovation. They love new things. That’s what Amazon’s business is about. They’re thriving. People are on there all day, all night, especially Prime members. You see something that’s $10.99, $14.99, $19.99, $29, “No big deal, sure I’ll try it.” That’s what we’re doing. An effort to get some data on our own to see if we were barking up the right tree or this is not a good idea, we went on TikTok with our video strategy. We’ve been on there since August 2020. Since that time, we’ve amassed about 19 million views. We’ve gone viral a dozen or more times already.

It’s mind-blowing. It was eye-opening for me because when I thought TikTok before we got on there, I thought of teenyboppers dancing around like crazy people to dances and showing themselves off. Little did we know, that is not at all what TikTok is about. That’s how it started. Every brand is on them. It is an amazing tool to be seen and to demonstrate what you do and how you do it. That’s exactly what we’ve been doing. We’ve taken that short-form video strategy, quick and snappy, get-to-the-point videos, nothing too long, get to it. The response has been tremendous, and what’s even more tremendous are the comments which are, “Where do I get it? I have to have that. That’s the greatest thing since sliced bread, innovation, etc. I cannot wait, when is it launching?” There are hundreds and hundreds of comments. That fueled it for me, for all of us, because now we can at least look around and say we have some data. We’ve got a metric to go off of. We’ve got a way to say, “This is something they want.” Whether or not that brand is going to bring it in and offer it to them, is not the number one question. Because they can get their hands on the innovation without that coffee brand saying, “We now offer GoLidZ.”

Hopefully, it helps to get those brands to see that their consumers want it, support it and buy it. They can feed into the combo strategy to drive revenue and blow their customer experience out of the water. One that these people will never forget. If they can do that, and if that’s maybe what they want, then maybe a lot of these brands are what they want to see. They want to see the adoption from consumers, they want that data to say, “Okay.” It becomes mainstream where consumers go somewhere and start talking about the product to the brands, “You guys should be carrying this product. We’re going to do a host of things on TikTok. Show us what you put in the lid.” All these different competitions and contests around using the vehicle. GoLidZ is such a social media friendly vehicle. That’s another angle that brands are all focused on organic content. No one wants to be sold by that old-school Coca-Cola commercial anymore. They want to see something in the street. They want to see real people that they recognize, not corporate spokespeople and models. A lot of that doesn’t work anymore.

I’ll summarize this up. Looking at the strategy and sitting there going, “Let’s go consumer first, let’s get the early adopters, let’s get the test market,” then all of a sudden, the smaller QSR might take a leap at this thing because they’re looking at small innovative. When the small ones get adoption on this, then all of a sudden, the larger ones start taking a look at it. It’s building up the brand organically. I love the fact that you’re driving this through your video strategy. What you’re doing is you’re building up the self-interest, you’re building up people to sit there and say, “We need to be talking about something that nobody was talking about before.” That’s the brilliance.

We have plenty of proof of concept on the ground already. From the stadium to QSR, our product is out there. I’m grateful we have a nice roster of customers, but we want more and we want bigger. Who doesn’t want to grow and get bigger? Thankfully, we have a good amount of data in our hands already, from the food service, B2B world. If we didn’t have that, I don’t think we could go down on this road without it.

Coming on nine years, if we didn’t have anything, we’d have a much bigger problem than just launching eCommerce. Another angle we’re taking with eCommerce, and this is something I’m excited about. For the entire time up until now, you cannot buy GoLidZ from us unless you purchase pallets. There’s an amazing amount of inquiries coming through during the pandemic and pre-pandemic, “We would like to try your innovation. We have 3, 5, 10, maybe even 20 locations, but we don’t want to buy pallets. We don’t want to invest a massive amount of money. We would like to test it.” Our answer, we want to say yes to those people, but the reality is that’s not what we did. We don’t ship cases, we don’t do pick and pack two cases at a time. I realized we’re not serving their needs. I noticed that even more during the pandemic because we had even more inquiries come through.

Speed turns into greed. The faster they can serve you, the quicker they can move you out the door. Share on X

Can they wrap their head around a couple of hundred dollars to try a brand-new product? Absolutely. Can they wrap their head around thousands? Not necessarily, not in this economic moment. We are adding eCommerce small businesses to our website. They’re going to be able to go on and buy 1 case, 2 cases or 4 cases right away through eCommerce. We’re making it over Shopify. We have 3PL that’s going to pick and pack, and ship all over the US and Canada. For any company that wants to try our innovation, all they have to do is say yes to two cases for a couple of hundred dollars and not a pallet for $3,500.

I love it because what you’re doing is you’re making an easy entry. Let’s leave it there. What I want to do is we’ll make sure that everybody knows how to get in touch with you. It’s GoLidZ.com. When you leave a meeting and you get in your car and you drive away, what’s the one thing you want people to think about you or GoLidZ when you’re not in the room?

I would say the most important for me and GoLidZ would be that they understand that we truly care about their business. We’re not just there to force a product on them. I say that because sales are sales. Everyone is selling something. I don’t care who you are. If you’re a person and you’re selling potentially your consultant service, you’re selling a product, you’re selling something, everybody’s selling something at the end of the day, or you’re selling yourself. I always want to make it clear that we’re not just about that. We’re here because we care about our customers. We want to leave an impression that we care about their businesses, we’ve done our homework, we know what their needs are, we understand their intentions, and we also clearly understand their concerns and their boundaries. All of that comes under care, which is I’m not just here to chuck something in your face and leave and hope I get an order. We’re here to understand everything you stand for and what’s important to you.

Bonnie, it’s been a brilliant conversation. Thank you for being here. I hope my audience gained as much as I did out of this. I hope that you sell these things, not only by the 53-foot container but also around the world. May this be a success beyond your even dreams.

To the moon, Alice.

Important Links:

• GoLidZ
• [email protected]
• TikTok – GoLidZ
• LinkedIn – Bonnie Sussman Strominger
• YouTube – GoLidZ

About Bonnie Sussman Strominger