![]() “It’s definitely possible for a new entrant that’s small to start chipping away at some of the market share,” says Wang, who covers Bobbie competitor Abbott. Bobbie is not yet WIC-eligible, though Modi has said she wants to change that. They have the advantage of being able to accept food stamps, says Morningstar analyst Debbie Wang. Meanwhile, the three giant companies continue to tower above the competition. ByHeart, which was founded in 2016, acquired a new manufacturing plant for its formula in January. Helaina, founded by Forbes 30 Under 30 lister Laura Katz, announced earlier this month that it’s moved out of the R&D phase for its enhanced infant formula and into a commercialization phase. Two other startups are cranking up production capacity, too. and the continued threat of another formula shortage crisis. The young company faces a slowing birth rate in the U.S. And that’s what happened here.”īrand loyalty isn’t a panacea for Bobbie. “When the product meets the community, you earn brand loyalty. ![]() “Laura at her core is a community builder,” says Amy Griffin, founder and managing partner of G9 Ventures, a Bobbie investor. For six months last year, at the height of the shortage, Bobbie would only ship its product to existing subscribers. Modi declared herself a “Wartime CEO” and, facing a doubling of customers who could quickly gobble up her inventory, chose to close Bobbie’s website to new customers. “If something lights up in the moms community, it tends to light up really fast, because there’s a lot of new moms talking about similar things,” says Libby Rodney, a consumer trends and branding expert and the chief strategy officer at the Harris Poll.īobbie kept growing - until spring 2022, when Abbott’s recall triggered a national infant formula shortage and panic among the 62% of American parents who use formula in some capacity. As word of mouth spread, so too did Bobbie’s reach. Even those who’d moved their kids to solid foods, Modi says, shared the news of Bobbie’s debut with their networks. The roundtable participants eventually became Modi’s unofficial brand ambassadors when Bobbie came out with its first formula in January 2021. What were these parents looking for in a formula? What did they think about Bobbie’s marketing messages? What would make them feel secure in buying a product that, just ten years prior, had been tainted by food-safety issues at a manufacturing plant in China? Instead, the she embarked on a two-year research and development phase that included a brief flirtation with the idea of producing liquid formula (“You’re going to ship 15 liters of liquid to someone’s home every week?” Modi recalls an advisor asking at the time) and weekly Friday focus groups (“Bottle Service Sessions”) with moms she and COO Sarah Hardy recruited on social media to give unfiltered opinions. Modi officially launched Bobbie in 2018, naming the company after the way her daughter pronounced “bottle,” but she didn’t yet have a product. Bobbie cofounder and CEO Laura Modi with her three children.
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