Contact
  • HOME
  • / MEDIA /
  • Twrl Milk Tea Co-Founder & CMO Olivia Chen Shares Essential Lessons On Setting Foot In Famed Retailer Costco

Uncategorized

September 23, 2022

SHARE:

Two mom-friends and milk tea lovers Olivia Chen and Pauline Ang have capitalized on the early success of their milk tea company by sending samples to the head office in Costco which lead to launching their product with the retail giant in just three and a half months.

“We are still pinching ourselves that our Twrl’s Taiwan-Style Black Milk Tea is now in Southern California Costco!” Olivia says, “We’re starting with 3 locations: Irvine, Monterey Park, and Tustin (2700 Park Avenue).” 

Pauline (left) and Olivia (right)

They overcame it without calling in a broker to help them. It wasn’t easy at all, however, this exemplifies the importance of hard work and perseverance of the duo to learn every step of the way for their small business to set foot in one of the world’s largest retail stores.

Olivia enthusiastically shares with Asian Hustle Network the timeline of how their plant-based Twrl Milk Tea made it into Costco to help entrepreneurs navigate the highly competitive food and beverage space. 

Roadshow Or Small Rotation

We met our buyer at Expo West (Think Super Bowl for the Food & Beverage industry where retailers and manufacturers meet up. Super worth doing if you are in CPG. We even landed our 1st TV interview).

After Expo West, we sent more samples to the office and began negotiations for placement. We were offered two ways of being at Costco:

Roadshow

  • 4 days of selling on consignment. We could control costs by using our own people and decide the volume of product we wanted to bring in.
  • Typically, this is how small brands enter Costco. If it does well, you are offered a rotation. If you don’t do well, then it’s really hard to get into the regular set.

Small Rotation

  • We started with a number of stores and the item is part of the regular set.
  • This is harder to secure because Costco is paying for the inventory and the buyer has to believe in your product.

In both situations, it is critical that Twrl Milk Tea sells well and ideally sells out. Why is this important?

It proves to the Costco Buyer that there is a market for our better-for-you plant-based milk teas. More importantly, companies owned by Asian American small business owners like ours are proven to be great partners worth investing time in and onboarding.

Reasons For Opting for Small Rotation

After a few weeks of due diligence on our end, we decided to go with a small rotation. Our reasons were simple:

  • Our manufacturer could produce the volumes needed and in the time we needed. Not always the case in this crazy supply chain. We are made in the USA so it makes a huge difference in our speed for delivery.
  • We could handle the financial obligations to fund the inventory. It’s a lot of money upfront so it’s not a light decision for a smaller company like ours. And, there is still a chance you can be sitting on inventory if it does not sell through.
  • We are committed to Costco and wanted to be part of the regular set and did not want to take the chance that with Roadshow which is only 4 days could be a bust due to so many variables that we may not be able to control.
  • We love Costco ourselves and shop there regularly so we saw our consumers there! Did you know the typical Costco shopper is 35-44 years old, an Asian female making $125,000 and the average trip is $114?!

Roadshow which is only 4 days could be a bust due to so many variables that we may not be able to control.

-Olivia Chen

Decisions, Decisions, Decisions

What flavor to sell?

Out of our 3 flavors, we selected Taiwan-Style Black Milk Tea to launch because it’s one of our best sellers and our Taiwan-Style Black Milk Tea flavor is really unique. Our single-origin loose-leaf black tea is a one-of-a-kind varietal, sourced from a small multi-generational family farm on a misty slope, fed by sweet mountain spring water.

Our tea flavor, aroma, and health benefits are un-parallel to anything on the market. We use pea milk and lightly sweetened our teas with organic agave so our tea flavors really come through. Only 45 calories & 6g of sugar per can.

What would the packaging look like?

Packaging design and sourcing begin for Costco. Luckily for us, Pauline Ang is a seasoned graphic design guru (with 15+ years in the food and beverage packaging for Fortune 500 companies) and designs all our packaging in-house so we could save costs and time here!

How to onboard?

Mountains of paperwork for our two-person team begin. We didn’t use a broker and did everything ourselves. Yes, a broker would have been so incredibly helpful to answer all the questions that we didn’t know the answers to and definitely would have saved us some headaches.

Big Takeaways

  • Don’t be afraid to chase the account you want to be in. Don’t be shy about sharing your vision of where you see the company. Special thanks to Ryan Sung of Honolulu Cookie Company and Vincent Kitirattragarn of Dang Foods for talking to us about their journey with Costco and encouraging us to go for it.
  • It can be done without a broker but not without headaches and some huge learning curves and we did make some mistakes along the way.
  • Have an advocate. We have been super lucky that our buyer has been so incredible to work with and it’s important to have such an advocate in the company. Cannot over-emphasize this enough!
  • Your team matters. Grateful to share this journey with Pauline Ang who is such an amazing friend and business partner. We are two moms that love Milk Tea and simply wanted to make milk tea —a quintessential Asian drink that we love—even better.

Don’t be shy about sharing your vision of where you see the company.

-Olivia chen

Connect with Olivia and Pauline

Your support would mean the world to our small business and the small family farms that use sustainable practices for a tea that’s better for you, and better for the planet. Follow our journey: Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, Twitter

Twrl Warehouse

Related Articles

Image Source: Mila Supinskaya Glashchenko / Shutterstock

News

Indian-American’s Thriving Community Create A Positive Impact In North Texas

The rising population of Indian-Americans in North Texas is proving to be a strong force. Indian-Americans like Singh have permanently shaped North Texas’ cultural landscape in a variety of fields, including technology, education, and politics.

Tony Singh grew up with a father in the Indian Navy and moved every couple of years. Today, he’s settled in Little Elm, and even elected as councilman to serve his new neighborhood. Singh established initiatives to benefit Little Elm residents, while actively and regularly volunteering himself.

Most Indian-American employees work in only three industries: computer science and mathematics, management, and health care. Among all immigrants, Indian-Americans are the highest earners in the state. For this reason, Dinesh Hooda came to Texas in 2011 in search of employment.

Dinesh Hooda’s family had trouble adjusting until he attended India Association of North Texas’ Indian Independence Day. Through this, they established friends with Indian-Americans in North Texas who share similar experiences and struggles. Hooda is currently Uber’s senior technical program manager.

The fastest-growing ethnic group in the state is Asian, with Indian-Americans making up the majority of the group. Texas has the second-largest population of Indian Americans in the nation overall. This group will expand even more in the upcoming years, which could have a significant impact in the area. 

And while there are many struggles and difficulties to face as immigrants in the state, there are also lots of groups and communities willing to reach out to help one another and make each other feel welcome and at home.

  • 2 min read
Image Souce: olliecantos.com

News

Blind Filipino-American Civil Rights Attorney Gets Elected As West Covina City Council Member

Filipino-American Ollie Cantos, who was born with a visual impairment, is now taking his experience and knowledge to West Covina City Hall.

In 1997, he graduated from Loyola Law School in Los Angeles with a law degree. He served as a staff attorney at the Disability Rights Legal Center after graduating. He also held various roles as a civil rights attorney in the Washington, D.C. government before the coronavirus emerged.

Now, he is a sworn-in member of the West Covina city council and is looking forward to contributing back to his community, where he was raised by his Filipino immigrant parents.

“My excitement level is off the charts because this represents the culmination of a lot of hard work of countless people that got us here and when we look at the opportunities that are ahead of us to unite, and to be supportive of making the city better, this day is also historic,” Cantos said in an interview.

Cantos will collaborate with a fellow Filipino on the current city council, as Letty Lopez-Viado, the first Filipino-Mexican mayor of the city, was also elected unopposed in November. She was first elected to the city council in 2018 and served as mayor of the city from 2020 to 2021.

“Though he can’t see with his eyes, he sees with his heart,” Lopez-Viado said of Cantos as she got sworn in. “He’s a very intelligent, well-spoken gentleman, and I’m very excited to work with him.”

  • 2 min read
Image Source: Considered Objects

Stories

Japanese-American Designer Sara Sakanaka Revamps Vintage Kimonos Into Modern Clothing

Each of us has a unique way of imparting the memories, stories, and mementos we want to pass on to our future generations. As for 39-year-old Japanese-American designer Sara Sakanaka, the way is by incorporating ancient tales into modern clothing.

In her studio in Brooklyn, Sara preserves a little drawstring bag that her grandmother sewed for her decades ago. One of Sakanaka’s oldest mementos, this heirloom represents a long-standing ideology and was made from leftover fabric.

You will also find in her studio, folded stacks of rescued textiles waiting for her to stitch them into something new, exactly like her grandmother used to do as a hobby.

After her grandmother passed away, Sara began studying the kimonos she had inherited from her. She realized that giving these garments a second chance through reconstruction was a means of healing and re-establishing her identity and cultural roots.

Her initial creation was a classic, collared, button-down shirt. She embroidered a tiered patchwork flower fashioned from leftover silk scraps inside each garment she produced.

“There’s this whole idea that objects have lives,” she says in a Vogue interview. “I like to see every piece as a truly considered object in that way,” thus, naming her label as Considered Objects.

Considered Objects offers tapered silk slacks, oversized coats, two-toned vests, draped dresses, and hand-sewn accessories. Each item is made of recyclable materials, and within each garment is a silk scrap flower and a tag. Each shirt comes with a drawstring bag, a keepsake designed to be handed on like the one she inherited from her grandma.

  • 2 min read
Image Source: Business Insider / Linkedin

Stories

These Two South Asian Millenials Are Breaking Cultural Barriers To Empower Women’s Financial Freedom and Literacy

“Our culture has countless strict gender roles, one of which is that men manage money and women don’t,” Aashka Piprottar, the founder of Boss Betis, told Wealthy Wolfe’s Parween Mander over email. “So while men get to discuss money openly and proudly, women, if they ever discuss it, do so in hushed, quick voices.”

Those gender roles convinced Aashka from a young age “that I was just destined to be ‘bad with money’ and I would just have to rely on my father — and then in the future, probably my husband — to manage the money for me,” she adds. 

Boss Betis is a community-based platform to destigmatize the conversation around money, specifically the unique challenges faced by desi women. The platform wants to instill that financial freedom and literacy are essential to women’s empowerment. 

While Wealthy Wolfe is a digital financial coaching & education platform for women of color from immigrant upbringings specifically.

Aashka also told Parween that she’s unlearned the harmful money narratives of her childhood through working in the wealth management and financial wellness space.

By 27, Parween had a $150,000 net worth, so she could support herself and her parents without feeling burdened. She advised that we must put on our financial oxygen masks first, as well as to start a  “Parent fund” account to save money for our families in case they need it, “This is a way to set a financial boundary so that you don’t feel resentful or sabotaged if they require funds from you.” Parween wrote on Business Insider.

Understanding the complexity of the South Asian culture, Parween has helped one of her clients to set up strategic savings accounts to separate her money, while still contributing funds when her client’s parents asked for it.

Parween affirms that cultural expectations and narratives play a huge role in their ability as South Asian women to make different decisions, especially when it comes to their money and building wealth. 

  • 2 min read