Founder Feature: Ehime Eigbe-Akindele of Sweet Kiwi
The Startup CPG Podcast
Startup CPG
4.9 • 642 Ratings
🗓️ 7 February 2025
⏱️ 35 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In this episode of The Startup CPG Podcast, Grace Kennedy chats with Ehime Eigbe-Akindele, founder of Sweet Kiwi, a frozen whipped Greek yogurt brand that combines functional nutrition with irresistible taste. Ehime shares her inspiring journey from working in bankruptcy litigation at Citigroup to creating a delicious and nutritious product. She talks about her leap into entrepreneurship, the pivotal moments that shaped Sweet Kiwi, and how she turned an idea from her home kitchen into a product featured in major retailers like Whole Foods.
Ehime dives into the challenges of scaling a frozen product, the importance of branding and customer connection, and the lessons learned from navigating retail negotiations. She also discusses the value of building strong retailer relationships, the impact of rebranding, and the innovative collaborations Sweet Kiwi is pursuing—like their upcoming Smurfs-inspired product launch.
Tune in to learn how Ehime is building a brand that's not only delicious but also impactful for communities!
Listen in as they share about:
- Background of Sweet Kiwi
- Early Journey and Challenges
- Retail Strategy and Lessons
- Scaling the Brand
- Rebranding and Customer Insights
- Team and Growth Management
- Vision for 2025 and Beyond
- Advice for Founders
Episode Links:
Website: https://www.sweetkiwi.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/theehime/
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- Episode music by Super Fantastics
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hey friends, inventory management can be a major pain, keeping track of all your ingredients, |
| 0:07.0 | your inventory across warehouses and comands, your retail and e-com orders, and tying all of that together. |
| 0:14.0 | When your Excel spreadsheet breaks, check out our friends at Syn7Core, our inventory management software partner. |
| 0:21.6 | You can track everything you make and sell, and as the leading tool for early CPG brands, |
| 0:27.6 | it integrates with all the major software like QuickBooks, Shopify, Amazon, and whatever your warehouse and commands are using. |
| 0:34.6 | Through startup CPG, you get a free month trial and then 50% off |
| 0:39.9 | the three months after that. To get started, check out sin7.com slash startup CPG. That's |
| 0:48.5 | sinc-in, like the first three letters in Cincinnati, and the number seven. So sin7.com slash startup CPG. The truth is the retailers and partners and it's helping them understand like, hey, we think this |
| 1:17.1 | rebranding would help us resonate better with our customers because we also have customers |
| 1:21.9 | who love the product, who would have it when we're doing catering, but on the shelf they're just |
| 1:26.5 | kind of disconnected because |
| 1:27.6 | it's just not speaking to them in the way that they would like. |
| 1:30.2 | So the biggest thing I've learned is brand awareness. |
| 1:33.0 | You know, how are people discovering the product? |
| 1:35.7 | Who's discovering the product? |
| 1:37.3 | How are people responding to the product? |
| 1:39.0 | And that's what I would say I spent 2024 working on. |
| 1:43.3 | How do we really, you know, get that consumer awareness? |
| 1:46.3 | So we started doing a lot of things. We're doing food service now. We're now in hospitals, |
| 1:51.7 | in universities, because we realize it's, you know, getting into retail is great and being on |
| 1:58.3 | the shelf is great, but how are you really driving brand awareness, |
| 2:02.6 | how people discovering your products in other ways so that when they go into retail, you know, |
... |
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