“Where do you think I should put it?” 

I had an unexpected insight come from an experience this past week that I wanted to share. It’s a lesson in how a startup positions it’s product must be from the eyes of the right person. 

This pas week, we had our annual Tundra Angels investor social. I was at local Festival Foods picking up wine and beer for the event.

For context, one of our Tundra Angels portfolio companies is Lotza, founded by Laura Markewicz. Lotza is the “Soda Made to Party,” a better-for-you soda that pairs perfectly with your favorite spirit with mood boosting adaptogens and ingredients that help mitigate the effects of alcohol. 

Lotza just launched in 44 Festival Foods stores around Wisconsin. (From September 2nd-29th, Festival Foods has a promotion that if you buy a 4-pack of Lotza, you will get a free Screamin’ Sicilian pizza, courtesy of Palermo’s. Here is a graphic ) 

While I was at the store, I approached a woman named Debbie who was the store's spirits and wine manager.

I asked her, “Do you guys carry Lotza?” Debbie said they were hoping to get it in tomorrow. Then, I mentioned I run Tundra Angels, a group of investors in Green Bay that had invested in Lotza earlier this year. Her eyes lit up. "Oh, really? That's interesting."

Then she asked me a question I didn’t expect: 

"Where do you think I should put it?"

And as she said that, she started walking toward one particular set of shelves in the store and beckoned me to follow her. 

Debbie had a problem that she thought I had insight on, as I did invest in the company after all. The problem of, “Which shelf should the product go on in my store?”

As I was walking with Debbie, my mind started to race and to piece lots of thoughts together at one time. 

Ironically, I knew exactly where Lotza fits in - but on from an investor perspective, not from the perspective in the eyes of a customer entering a supermarket. 

I realized that I was useless to answer which shelf it should go on. 

See, I could have told Debbie the sound conviction on why Tundra Angels invested in Lotza. I could tell her why we believe that Founder and CEO Laura Markewicz is the perfect person for this company and for this moment. I could tell her the stellar advisors that are a part of the company, and why we believe that Lotza is creating a new category of beverage. 

But, walking with Debbie, I realized something - none of that would matter to her. She didn’t know Laura. She wouldn’t really care about competitive positioning. She wouldn’t really care about the advisors to the company. 

In fact, what mattered to Debbie was even more critical to the company’s success than what I even knew! 

Where Debbie decided to put the product influenced whether customers would find the product in the store and buy it, discover it accidentally, or never know it existed at all. 

“Which shelf does this product belong on?” 

In that moment, it was almost as if everything I knew about Lotza went out the window. Didn’t matter. It all came down to the aisles of the supermarket.

The success of the company all came down to what Debbie knew, and what Debbie believed about the product. 

Debbie showed me two options, the mocktails section and the mixers section. 

I realized the weight of the ask, and so I sidestepped the question and instead asked to take Debbie's business card so I can connect Laura to Debbie via email to answer the question. 

Soon after, I relayed the conversation that I had at Festival Foods to Laura Markowitz, the founder and CEO of Lotza. I told Laura, “I thought it should go into the mocktails section, but I wasn't totally sure.”

Laura didn’t hesitate with her answer, “It should go in the mixers section.” 

Oh wow. Me, an investor in this very company, assumed incorrectly. 

That bothered me. But something else bothered me about this interaction with Debbie. 

If I happened to not be there, in the store, at the time when they were receiving the product and I would have not connected her to Laura, where would they have placed it? 

Consider how the success of a brand comes down to which shelf in the supermarket it is placed on.

But that decision is made in isolation.

The market, your customers, and your prospects, are making decisions independent of you every single day.

Here is the thing that makes this real. 

Your product, your startup, exists in a supermarket - and so does every other single product. 

If there is a proverbial supermarket where your startup’s product is on the shelf, where does your product fit in the eyes of the customer that's walking through that store? 

But it’s not just the supermarket it’s in.

It’s which aisle, which shelf, and what position on the shelf.

Imagine that you and I walk through a supermarket, with several products on our shopping list. When we're looking for a product, we think in categories.

If we are looking for ketchup, there is no ketchup aisle. We look for the higher level category - the condiments aisle.

If we are looking for Tostitos, we look for the higher level category - the chip aisle. 

But then there are products that introduce confusion and turn us around the proverbial supermarket: 

If we are looking for burgers, we think, “Do we want fresh meat, or do we want it frozen?” If we want it fresh, it will take us to one aisle. But if we want it frozen, it will take us to another aisle. 

It’s the same thing with the proverbial supermarket where your startup’s product is on the shelf. 

To arrive at the category, just like a supermarket, customers or prospects are forced to make a categorization decision.

Here is the key point

When positioning the product, it is not enough to get customers to the right aisle. In fact, stopping just at the aisle is worse - because it's at the level of the aisle that prospects learn about who else could be a solution too.

Founders need to get prospects to the right aisle, the right shelf, and the exact square on the floor looking at the product on the shelf.

Makes sense. But here is where all of this breaks down:  

You may know where your product fits, but the market may be completely clueless and they are forced to make assumptions - just as Debbie would have done were I not to walk through the doors that day. 

The aisle, shelf, and position are defined by the customer, not by you as a founder. You need to use their language, their mindset, not yours.

Founders need to categorize themselves in the eyes of the customer and market, not in how they view themselves relative to the market. 

Is your startup and product so clear that, independent of you or anybody else, the prospects know right where to go to find you - the aisle, the shelf, and the position on the shelf?

Here is one example from the last company Tundra Angels just invested in, Ours Privacy. On occasion, I have called it Ours Privacy a “healthcare marketing SaaS” company. (See Why Tundra Angels Invested in Ours Privacy)

At one point, I brought the company up to one healthcare investor that I knew. The investor heard the “healthcare marketing SaaS” and assumed that it was more of a lead generation play or a sort of lead optimization play. 

Uh oh. 

Ours Privacy is actually a compliance infrastructure underneath all marketing efforts of a health organization. It enables them to get full visibility into their marketing funnel while anonymizing patient data to ad platforms, keeping them in compliance. 

My definition of the market category, “healthcare marketing SaaS,” threw this investor off. Unknowingly, I put this person in a very different proverbial aisle. 

As I revealed in my example above, categories are convenient ways to get people to the aisle, but do not sell the product.

Customers do not buy a category. They buy a product. 

I’d argue that if the customer is brand aware, they tend to look for the brand.

If they are brand unaware, they tend look for the category, and then get to the brand.

I came in to Festival Foods asking for Lotza. Not a "better for me soda that I can pair with alcohol.”

If I look for Heinz catchup, I first locate the condiment aisle and then find the brand.

But both brand and category matter.

So don’t categorize. Instead, define.

Going back to the story of Lotza. The day that I picked up the Lotza, Debbie was not there. Instead, there was a worker named James. 

James pointed me to where the Lotza was, and it was still on the pallet, not yet on the shelf. 

Then he asked me a question that inferred store shelf location, "So is this alcoholic? The box doesn’t mention alcohol…” 

Today, I instead replied by defining what Lotza was. "No, it’s not alcoholic. Lotza is a better-for-you soda that is meant to pair with vodka, tequila, etc and replace Coca-Cola, Mountain Dew, and it also has ingredients that mitigate the effect of alcohol.”

The lightbulb went off for James and he responded with an elongated, “Ooohhhhhhh.” 

Today, I didn’t play into the question of category. I defined it, and they put it in the category that made sense in their head.  

Perhaps one of a startup’s biggest liabilities is to assume the market knows exactly how to look for them.

But Here's the thing: they're already looking. 

They're searching online. They're walking trade show floors. They're asking their peers. If your audience is problem-aware, they are actively looking for a solution right now — with or without your help, just like Debbie making a shelving decision independent of me or Laura.

The question isn't whether they'll find something. It's whether they'll find you.

So my question is, is your product so objectively clear that if a customer were to come look into the store, they would know exactly where to look to find you?

Or, if they're not looking for your brand, have you defined yourself in the category on how they would define you?

There may be prospects who are wandering around the supermarket, looking for you. But they are not categorizing you correctly. They keep looking in the wrong aisles. They talk to their peers around the supermarket. “I don’t think we carry that product.” 

But then there are prospects where the category they would define you in is not the category that you have defined yourself in.

But to reiterate, it’s not enough to get them to the right aisle, or shelf. You need to get them to the exact squre on the floor, looking at your product on the shelf.

Ultimately….

The question isn't whether your prospect will find something.

The question is whether they'll find you.

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