0:00 We had like Lil Yachty send us like videos of him like eating it and like G-Eazy. Can you make a rap song about our candy? I have a video from Lil Yachty I can show you and it's like he he's like eating it and he's asked his friend he's like "Do you think it's good?" He's like he's like "Yeah, I want to put it in a booty and eat it WITH A SPOON." AND WELCOME BACK to more information here on the camera guys. And make sure you subscribe and hit the bell even though you don't know what this video is about. Just do it for us. They don't watch them in order you don't think? No, we don't upload them in order so it's really not their fault. Why do you not do that? We play content roulette with our guests. You're going to see part three of the second half of the of the second guest. It's like it's like a prequel. Yeah. It's at random. So we start off like "Welcome back Max but this will come out first."
0:52 But we are here with Max today everybody. FOUNDER AND OWNER OF Sour Strips baby. Yeah, we just dived into an incredibly inspiring story of grit of a little bit of luck maybe of great COVID times and then also of just like uh really just the cool passion of being like I love I have really love candy. Wow. Smells good. Therefore, I'm going to make some candy for me but then that turned into a wonderful story and then eventually got into places like Target, Walmart Walmart. They do sell them. They do sell at Walmart and 7-Elevens. I don't know. Um but before we again get to the the Hershey buying you out type situation like to you what was like the first mini but major success where you're like we're going to this I could really do this.
1:42 I mean the when I launched the brand I was like okay, we have to sell out immediately at launch or it's going to be a flop. So that was the first taste of the glory, right? So it was we launched with like 20,000 units sold out in like an hour and I was like What? And this is all online so All online. And then we launched a month later with 20,000 units and sold out in 30 minutes. Then we launched 20,000 units a month later and then it started getting a little slower like 3 hours and then it was like 5 hours and it was like a day and so then then Where did you get the 20,000? Was that based off your clothing numbers or was 20,000 units and then broken down by like, okay, I'm going to sell them in three packs or four packs. So I knew I wanted to have like x amount of thousand of orders. So let's have I don't even know. It was like 3,000 orders or something. Like let's have enough for 3,000 orders. Um which I based on like, okay, when we do a crazy launch with the clothing, I have a couple thousand orders so that'd be like appropriate. Um but it was like unknown.
2:33 So the online success was the big was the first indicator. But then when we got it we started getting into like the random one gas station here and you know, cuz people would hit us up and be like, "Hey, I see your brand online. I own a gas station. I want to to Oh, dope. bring it in. And when with the power of social media is kind of like, "Hey guys, if you're in you know, if you're in California and you're near this location like go here go go go go." And um and and like the it'd be like, "Oh my god, like the first day we sold like all 100 bags we had in the store." So That's cool. But it was like the that was like the power of social but it needed to have that like consistent sales. Like that's cool you can sell out right there, but can it happen like 6 months later? So when we launched into HEB, Target, Walmart, which is like our first, you know, the behemoths and then you know, it's it's what a like how fortunate are you to go into like those as your first like major retailers. But like you know, as soon as
3:24 we launched in the Target I made this whole campaign about it and I was like, "All right guys, like it's us against the big guys. Like we got to do it." So Who who is the big guys to you at that time? I mean it was like the Hersheys and the all just all the main Warheads. brands. Yeah, and it's it's everyone. I mean as as a candy enthusiast, I'm like when you go into a candy aisle and you're like really like sour candy, you see the same brands every single time. When there's a new brand, you notice it because there's only it's not like you know, energy drinks and stuff like these days where every day there's like 50 new brands or with candy there isn't that there aren't these new players all the time. So when you see something new and it's usually by like one of the big boys just like an extension, you try it and then most of the time for me I'm like kind of disappointed. I was like I don't know what you're expecting but you're like ah you know it's it's okay. So I knew that people if they saw a new candy us being sour strips like I knew that they would try it if they're someone like me who just likes sour
4:14 candy cuz it's not every day there's something new and if there's something new and it looks like a legit brand not like a a gas station brand where it's like clear bag stapled you know little foldy bag which like those candies are good but again it's like I was like I'm trying to make it like a real candy brand. Um so I knew people would try it. I knew if they tried it I was like I'm betting that they'll like it. So and once you like it I know that they'll keep coming back because I know that you can't get something very similar to this in all these mainstream stores cuz I would know that it's there cuz I love candy and I look at every single store. So I kind of just used my like knowledge of sour candy to know like kind of how people would think. Um so when we launched in a Target it was just like off to the races from there and so we crushed it on there started being like a top selling candy and you know cuz we only launched with like I think we launched with like two or three flavors out of the gate but now we
5:05 have like by the end of this year we'll have like 12 flavors in Target. We're going to be like in different locations in the store. 12 different SKUs in Target? Yeah which is so and here's the the most interesting thing SKUs when you go from like so there's like there's like resets in in in like food. So every time you go down a aisle like maybe like once or twice a year depending on the category they'll have these like resets where they take out lower performing items and put in other performing items or add other like facings they'll call like more placements of the same candy if it's doing really well. So when we go from you know two items two flavors to even three or four those extra one or two flavors like someone else had to get removed for that to happen. Yeah. So you start like stealing shelf space from these bigger brands, so that's when the bigger companies really start like noticing because it's kind of like, "Hey, we're actually going to remove this flavor and this flavor from you guys." But then they go into the store
5:56 and they realize that it's replaced by, you know, this Sour Strips, and then it's kind of like, "Oh, who is this Sour Strips?" So that was the biggest kind of like cool factor to me as like a little guy who's been obsessed with candy his whole life that I'm like actually starting to impact these big brands that I've been eating for, you know, decades, but now I'm like doing better than them in the sales. Easy. Maybe not I'm definitely not as a as a whole company of like their distribution, but like hey, in Target cuz everyone gets the same kind of report um of this there's this uh like reporting data company called SPINS where like all these companies can like get the same data of what products are selling, what's selling the best, what flavors, and this is all across all categories. So every company gets the same data that they can see of who's selling what, how much. So when I get the report, it's like, "You know, Max, you're a top you know, top three candy in Target." And you see all the other ones. I was like, "Everyone's getting
6:46 that same report." And these bigger other companies are probably like, "Like who are the who is this Sour Strips? Like what is that?" So that was like the cool thing cuz I was like, "I'm actually like really starting to claw my way up in a small way." And then it's just scaling from there. Cool, man. What was the how much money was your first order to stock like the ████ 1,300 Targets or whatever? Shoot, man. Uh I mean a couple hundred thousand uh for sure. Was it a nationwide order or did they do it regionally first? So the original one was going to be like 300 kind of regionally, but 1,300 you're pretty much you're When they do the 1,300, they're putting you in like the 1,300 of their of the of their 2,000 like the 1,300 biggest stores of those 2,000. So maybe you're not going to go into, you know, I'm from like kind of near DC, and in DC they have
7:36 these like on like really small Targets that are in a shopping center type of thing. Like maybe you're not not to go into those smaller footprints. They're going to put you in the major stores to really see what the brand can do. pretty much nationwide then. Yeah, yeah, we were in like pretty much every state that, you know, had a Target. Like if if you're in a if you have a big Target at your in your city, like we're probably going to be in it cuz you know, we're in like 70% of the stores. So, it's a really good opportunity for me to kind of like, you know, foghorn to my my followers to like, "Hey, we're at Target. Like let's go crush this." And the sales started really strong, but then after that, it started like continuing to pick up and Yeah. you know, while I was getting great views at the time and still, you know, do well on social, like the numbers were selling of candy, you know, eclipsed like what I'm my following. So, it's I knew early on that I needed Sour Strips to like become bigger than me at like a crazy scale. Like I can't be the face of
8:27 it. I don't want my face on the packaging. I don't want me as the promotion. I don't want to put founded by Max Tuning in the bio. Like I needed to be its own like entity. So, so then it's like month over month we started like we kept holding this top spot. And you know, we're four three four year four years into Target and we're still uh like top three candy like in in this in the entire like sugar category. So, once it took off from being be like beyond your fan base, like did you do anything for marketing or anything else or it was just all organic from people coming in and I like this product and then they just keep buying it at Target? So, we leveraged social media like better than I think any other candy brand at the time did. It was I mean, it's kind of like I just leveraged like the influencer thing and one of the strategies I had strategies I had early on was like,
9:18 "Okay, we just need to almost give this product we just need to saturate the world with Sour Strips, right? Like if I can afford to just almost like give it away for free, whether it be giveaways, promotions, influencers, like let's do it at such a scale because well, it's not pennies to make the candy. It's not, you know, a $8 t-shirt I'm making, right? So, I can afford to spend on marketing by just giving the product away cuz I look at it as the more people that see the bag, taste it, like the more people they're going to fall in love with it, and you never know like who those people know because it's like these buyers for stores also like they're just kind of random people, right? So, you never know who's aunt's friend is the candy buyer at 7-Eleven or something, right? You you have no idea. So, we we started into this day we started sending out these little promo influencer boxes, and
10:09 we sent out probably like we would do like 10 to 12 new influencers every single day for years. Like so, just a dramatic amount because I look at it as I'm like anyone who anyone who's anyone who has a following of any sort, it doesn't matter what you could be a beauty guru, a fitness, a golf person, it didn't matter to me. Like a you know, mommy vlogger, like all these different audience like let's just give the candy away. Like just give it because then then as we continue to scale into stores, people who follow these random bloggers, fitness influencers, whatever are going to be like, "Oh, that's the thing I saw in their store. That's the see the stuff I see blowing up on TikTok." So, we just leveraged like social media like at a big scale because the other companies they don't really, you know, they they'll do the commercial here and there or they'll do these billboards, but like they don't really need like everyone knows what Coca-Cola is, right? Like they don't like they do
10:59 marketing, they don't really need to do marketing. Everyone knows what it is. So, we had this opportunity where like no one was really like really going heavy on social. Like yes, all these brands have social platforms, but they're not like following the trends and doing the memes and like leaning into stuff. They can't if if they want to hop on a trend right after, they're probably worried with like legal is like, "Well, we technically can't use that sound because our legal department says that we're you know, we we we would need the rights to that or we can't do this. That's a little like too not PC enough." But I was just like, "F███ it. Like let let let's just do anything and everything. If it's goofy, if it's out of left field, just like, you know, trends like hop on it like immediately cuz I was like I knew that there was a small window that I needed to capture because it was only a matter of time before, you know, copycats started coming out of like, oh, this guy with not a big following started this like, oh, me too, I can do this because when I
11:51 started you know, without knowing like nowadays a lot of big influencers you see come out with products. A lot of them are food, a lot of them are drinks, a lot of them are products of some sort. But like when I started it like there wasn't that many people doing it. So I kind of got just like with YouTube, like I kind of got in at the early enough time that I was able to like create a name for myself before it kind of got oversaturated. I wasn't the first probably influencer to start a CPG by by far, maybe in the candy space, but like but I was early enough that gave me enough of a like a head start that you know, it it allowed me to kind of fuel the brand. So if anyone maybe was trying to copy us or kind of get after us, they're trying to chase us right three steps behind. Yeah, like we're we're at the forefront and as someone who bootstrapped it and started himself and did all the work, you know, himself with
12:41 his team of, you know, I'm installing the racks with my team. I'm like touring the warehouses. Like I'm figuring out the logistics of it. So I knew the work and the capital and the money that took even to be to be able to get to our scale. So I was like if anyone wants to copy us like they're in a world of hurt to like think that this is like an overnight type of thing cuz I know how much you know, like literal blood, sweat, and tears like goes into a business like this and even just the cost. I was like, if you don't unless you're going to put in a ton of money or have that crazy growth online out of the gate like we did for the first year, you're going to need investors, you're going to start diluting your brand. Um, so I just like put out the noise and just like laser focused on growth. That's cool. That's freaking incredible. So a lot of candy. Like I remember um when I visited you in Houston, you were telling me like the care package person there's ship shipping out
13:32 to 10 new people a day and they would keep spreadsheets so there's no redundancy. So by the time it's 30 days that's already 300 unique people. So by the end of the year that's 365 times That's so many influencers. We would like we would what we learned is like if you because if as an influencer like if you get hit up by a a random product, right? Like generally you know you're like okay like oh I'd love to promote this maybe like here's my rate here's all these things. But I asked myself I was like you know like when like an ice cream company hits me up and they're like we'd love to send you some I'm like heck yeah send it to me and I'll like promote it for free cuz I'm like it's food. And I was like I feel like with candy like people aren't going to ask for money for this. It's just going to be like it's cool I like candy. So what we did is we would just I would have I did it for like a while then I hired this girl Callie who's now the head of marketing. I was like hey just DM people all day like all day and the first line is like
14:23 hey like like sour candy. And I was like I knew people would like be interested enough it comes from a sour strips account hey like sour candy. I was like influencers are probably open this. And then it's like we'd love to send you a thing a box. And it's like hey we're not asking for anything just enjoy it. Like we weren't like if you like it tag us. It was just like enjoy it. And I was like I bet that they'll just post this regardless, right? And what my what the strategy ended up being is we'd reach out send it for free not ask for anything at all. And one of two things would happen. They would either tag us and that'd be great we'd get more and then other influencers would start you know hey I saw you on this I'd love some candy. But then a lot of times they would hit us back up and be like hey I loved it like can you send me some more? And that's when we'd be like we'd love to like would you mind if like would you mind just tagging us on your story and we do like a little like like little emoji kind of thing like like little crying eyes. And it's like
15:13 would you would you mind like just tagging us on a story and nine times out of 10 it's like yep. And even if we reached out to like hey would you like some candy and they're like here's my rate and we're like you know hey actually at this time we're not doing any rates. 100% of the time they'll go, I'll do it for free. Like just send it to me. Yeah. So they would ask for it again. That's when we would ask for like a tag on a story. Super simple. Nine times out of 10 they actually did it. And then if they hit us up like again, one more time, we'd go, hey, if you'd like we can actually put you on this reoccurring like monthly we'll send it to every month and you can just tag us in in your story one time like one time a month and we'll send you candy every single month. So we started building up this list of like 300 people a month that were on reoccurring that would just tag us all the time and we're still sending out to like 10 plus people a day. And then Cali would have spreadsheets of, oh let's hit up all of these, you know, sports. Here's every football team. Let's go through every
16:03 player of every team and here's and then we started going down just left field. I was like I wish more more companies knew that like when you're when you're a creator, you just have a flood of people just trying to give you free product. So when they want to like send you free product but they also want to like have a whole list of deliverables of like, please do this and then tag it's like Yeah, we'd love to send you a 12 pack of our drinks but if you could just make a reel about it it's like, what? So I kind of like knew how, you know, Yeah, as a creator that's happening to you. I knew how a self-centered like, you know, influencers who think we should get, you know, $100,000 to tag on our story or something. But like I was like I kind of know how people think so I was like if you just I was like I think if it's food they won't ask for anything and they'll just cuz I do this.
16:53 100% hit up like I use ice cream as an example. When I get a a dry ice full of thing of a bunch of little pints of ice cream like I'll tag it every time, no problem cuz I'm like ah, it's food. But if I get hit up by like a toothbrush company I'll be like, yep, here's here's my rate, you know, I'll throw your thing. Like why would I promote it, man? Candy's so easy to integrate. Like candy doesn't make you look like you're doing a thing. And I made sure to like post send it all from like the Sour Strips account. I was like, "Don't send it from me even though I have a bigger following cuz I was like, I feel like if influencers know it's coming from an influencer, they're going to be like, "Oh, this guy like I'm not going to like Changes the dynamic. If they see a face, yeah. So, we started sending these big names like out of the gate and we've sent it to celebrities, athletes, like rapper We had like Lil Yachty send us like videos of him like eating it and like G-Eazy and uh That's cool. Yeah, and there's like all these people and it's and then it just started from
17:43 there and it just snowballed. make a rap song about our candy? Radio friendly words though. Our legal team wouldn't like that. I'm not doing rates at this time. I have a video from Lil Yachty I can show you and it's like he he's like eating it and he's asked his friend he's like, "Do you think it's good?" He's like he's like, "Yeah, I want to put it in a b████'s booty and eat it with a spoon." And then he's like Like literally his friend's eating eating that while he's while he's eating it. ████ tight. Smells went through the roof. Yeah, and Lil Yachty just sends it to us. That's hilarious. But, last thing I'll say is a lot of times is like a lot of times like you think that you'd pay someone and you'd have these like crazy conversions, you know, we would get tagged on Instagram by these big with millions of followers, like really relevant celebrities or influencers and you would think be like, "Oh, let's go check the Shopify. I'm sure it like spiked." Like our our Instagram barely moved, no
18:34 spike in sales. So, it goes to show like and if imagine if you paid someone The turnover rate's crazy, yeah. For sure. Yeah, you never know and that's then I'm like, I wonder if brands have made a bunch of money from me or just been like, "Man, this Max Twinkie guy didn't give us any sales, man, at all." I actually think brands don't care about conversion. Well, depends on their strategy. Yeah, and then the quality cuz they want to just show off. The marketing department wants to be like, "Look at how ████ sick this video is." Or whatever. But, I've noticed the same thing too with micro influencers. They're actually the best because not only are they excited cuz they feel like, "Oh ████ I'm recognized. I'm actually getting to this place where people want to sponsor me. But I think their following is way more die hard. Yeah. Cuz like they want them to to keep going up to Exactly. It's like 8,000 followers, but they're there for them, right? Where
19:24 it's like it could be 2 million followers, but that's diluted by a lot of people casually following cuz they're already popular. When you reach out to these 2 million followers, they're like, "Yep, here's the email to my agent. My agent will have to talk to you." and all these things. But no, we would our big our biggest success is probably in DMing influencers between like 10 and like 50,000 followers on like Instagram. And that was like we just hammered cuz like you can find all day you can find people with these followings. And I was like, "All right, you know, Cali just check the following if they have this many, but then go to like one of the recent posts. Make sure they have at least like, you know, 15 comments that aren't just like "Slay, fire emoji, fire emoji." like, you know, it was like make sure they get I I had like these random thresholds. I was like, "Okay, if they have like 10,000 followers, they need to at least be getting like 400 likes." And like look at their comments, make sure they're real people. And then you need to get at least like 15 comments. Like there was these little thresholds where like that they were kind of like legit
20:15 or not. Um Yeah. And we I mean even to this day it's been like our strategy and I'm I'm now I openly say this cuz I'm like this is what people need to be doing if if you are in a space where you can afford cuz if you give it away for free at scale, people will eventually then the people that got it are going to see it in targets, see the flavors that you have, start buying it, and uh it's like a snowball effect. That's yeah, cuz I had a social media manager and he was just doing nothing but only fans girls and I was like, "That's not going to work, bro." Like It makes sense for you though. Yeah, it makes sense for you. For our products, matcha? Oh, I I thought it was just the Joji account. Yeah, your product though, man. It's the fact that it's good. I love how we stretch this out because of how interesting this story actually is and we still haven't gotten to Hershey yet, but That's the next episode. which is going to get uploaded first. Yeah, I feel like so we've learned your whole story. Hit the like button and
21:06 then maybe we'll tell you on the ninth video. If you're lucky.
// end of tape