Karen Danudjaja’s life looked very different before she started her beverage company, Blume. She was working in commercial real estate and drinking five Americanos per day. But once the caffeine started affecting her health, she began exploring alternative ways to boost her energy by adding superfoods to her diet—and the idea for Blume was born. “The whole mission of the company is how do you incorporate these really nutrient-dense healthy ingredients into recipes you already love,” Karen says.
While Blume’s first product was a turmeric latte mix, the company’s product line has since expanded to include other drink mixes, like the SuperBelly line of probiotic water elixirs. “When I look back at our first product and compare it to what we have today, the transformation is remarkable,” Karen says. Her key to success is iterating over time. Ahead, learn how she embraces this as both a life and business philosophy.
Starting without the perfect product
Karen’s first sale was to a smoothie bar in Vancouver called Victoria’s Health. She was chatting with the owner when he mentioned that he was having trouble sourcing a turmeric latte mix locally—and realized she could make it herself. Within a short six-week period, she had formulated her first mix and Victoria’s Health became one of Blume’s first customers.
“Even though we still have the turmeric latte product, the formulation is different, the ingredients sourcing is different, how we package it is different,” Karen says. Still, it was an important lesson in getting started rather than waiting until you have the perfect product.
Prioritizing customer feedback
One of the most important parts of being a founder is to be open to changing direction—particularly when the direction is coming from customers. Karen says some of Blume’s most successful products were the direct result of customer feedback. “The more that happens, the more you understand how to build in systems to your innovation pipeline that really support what your customers actually want,” Karen says.
Now, her team at Blume conducts interviews, surveys, and focus groups to continue getting input from customers that helps hone their product development. Her biggest piece of advice is not to ask for feedback if you don’t plan to act on it, because it destroys trust with customers.
Staying up to date on new ecommerce tools and strategies
For Karen, iterating doesn’t stop at product development. “In marketing and ecommerce, it’s never just done,” Karen says. When she first started Blume, Karen taught herself the basics of online advertising and customer relationship management (CRM), skills she passed on to other employees who were then able to continue building on them.
Karen emphasizes it’s important to continue looking at analytics, improve user flows, and discover new tools. In fact, that was part of the impetus for replatforming Blume with Shopify. She switched to Shopify so her online store would be easier to adapt, especially with the ecosystem of apps.
Building confidence
It’s not easy for founders to be open to changing their products or strategy when they hold such strong convictions. “You can’t change the core values, the core mission of your company, but you can change the path to get there,” Karen says.
She recommends always coming back to the problem you’re trying to solve to tune out the noise. “I had to develop the confidence in myself to iterate, to listen, to adapt, and Blume is a product of that today,” she says.
To learn more about Karen’s philosophy on iteration, listen to the full interview on Shopify Masters.
