No products in the cart.
For Natural Red, after having won Detroit Fulfillment Initiative’s recent “Pitch It” contest, the immediate goal is to go from selling 5 products a day, to selling 50 products a day. The ultimate goal? To see her products in a store like Target. Meeting with Natural Red’s founder, Karen Guilmette about her small business fulfillment needs meant asking the question: how can she get there?
Natural Red’s products, which have received strong praise, include lip balm, insect repellant, sunscreen, body butter, sugar and salt scrubs, deodorant, beard oil, hand sanitizer, foot cream, and even lice prevention spray.
Her insect repellant product, “Ticked Off,” gained popularity when she created a video about the product—she started an experiment by gathering ticks from a field near her children’s elementary school with a beach towel. Putting both ticks and tick repellant spray on a plate, she then found that the ticks would move to the center of the plate when the insect repellant spray lined the outside, and when the repellant was placed in the middle, the ticks moved to the outside of the plate. When she placed her hands (with “Ticked Off” applied) near the tick—it wouldn’t go anywhere near her skin. The video, showcasing the true all-natural elements of her product, gained 13,000 views, more than any other video posted to her Facebook page, and rave reviews followed a spike in sales.
The next step for Natural Red, after receiving $20,000 in services as the prize for winning the “Pitch it” event to support her business growth, is to navigate the landscape of distribution and fulfillment. Currently, she creates all of her products at home—in the kitchen—with some help from her 5 kids, which is certain to become tedious and eventually impossible to meet the ever-growing demands of her product. Guilmette remarked, “I am so thrilled to get to work with Evan’s Fulfillment Center! This will take time consuming tasks off my plate and allow me to focus on growing Natural Red.”
In anticipation of her upcoming expansion, DeFI partner Evans Distribution Systems will support Natural Red by providing a customized supply chain solution including of the packaging and shipping of the Natural Red products to consumers. The Evans team is looking forward to providing the flexible fulfillment services necessary to get Karen’s products to her expanding customer base.