Marketing Won’t Save a Mediocre Product. Clean Ingredients Built This 20-Year Brand

Most founders try to fix slow sales with more marketing. Marise May built Cha’s Organics the other way around, by refusing to cut corners on a single ingredient. Marise is the co-founder of Cha’s Organics, the Montreal food brand she started 20 years ago with her husband Chanaka, with no savings and no financial backing. Today, their organic spices, coconut milk, heirloom rice, and coconut rolls are sourced from long-term partner farms in Sri Lanka and sold in health food stores across Canada, and their coconut milk is carried nationally at Costco Canada. In this episode, she explains: Clean means clean: why they leave out gums, fillers, anti-caking agents and preservatives, even in a staple like coconut milk, where the recipe is just coconut and water. The product line that didn’t sell: why their first Ayurvedic tea line was too hard to market, and the lesson that it’s better to bring the best than the most unusual. Premium in a price-sensitive aisle: why they waited years to launch heirloom rice, and the supply-chain gap during COVID that made it the right moment. What it takes to get into Costco: the right product at the right price, a supply chain you can guarantee, and an audit she says is harder than the fair trade one. Product before marketing: why no amount of social media can fix a product that doesn’t work, and the resilience it took to keep going for 20 years. Follow Cha’s Organics: Cha’s Organics on the web: https://chasorganics.com Cha’s Organics on Instagram:   / chasorganics   Sponsors: Omnisend- Email and SMS marketing built for ecommerce. Use code SANDY for 30% off your first three months: https://omnisend.com/sandy Metricool- Schedule all your content in one place. Use code RECTIFIED for a 30-day free trial of any tier: https://i.mtr.cool/RSBQOY Find me here: Instagram:   / sandydedeian   TikTok:   / sandydedeian   LinkedIn:   / sandydedeian   Chapters: 00:00 Intro 00:56 Why the ingredients come first 04:55 The first product line that didn’t sell 09:55 The farming traditions behind every ingredient 18:03 The story behind their heirloom rice 21:42 Selling a premium version of a basic staple 26:13 Expensive mistakes and the coconut milk win 28:20 How Cha’s got into Costco 31:48 Costco’s audit is harder than fair trade 35:59 Zero savings and 10 years to build a team 42:56 Advice for anyone starting a brand 45:35 Why design keeps her going