Ollie

Use the FSA Store as a D2C acquisition channel for boring health products

Steph Smith points to fsastore.com — where millions of high-intent shoppers rush to spend expiring pre-tax FSA money — as an acquisition house for reinvented versions of boring health products like Welly Band-Aids.

“And so what I found interesting about this is there's all these other kind of product lanes that you can just like walk down and CVS or something like that and be like, oh, that's boring. That's boring. I haven't seen that reinvented. And actually one of, um, people have probably heard of Eric Ryan. He's the founder of Welly, but he's also done Ollie Gummies, which people are probably familiar with, and Method Soap. So he's basically doing this, but I think there's a lot more room for other people to do the exact same thing and use the FSA Store as almost this like really interesting acquisition house for your store.”

Steal thisPick a boring health-aisle category, build a beautiful D2C brand around it, and acquire customers through fsastore.com's expiring-money rush.

Sea of sameness: find the boring aisle where every product looks identical

Shaan relays Method/Welly/Ollie founder Eric Ryan's repeatable playbook: walk any retail aisle, spot the 'sea of sameness' where every bottle looks the same, then differentiate with a better shape, color, name, and pronounceable ingredients.

“And what he described is his method that he's used for Method Soap, for Ollie Gummies, and for Welly, which is he goes, walk down any aisle. What you're looking for is what I call a sea of sameness. And so he put up this photo of the soap aisle and it was just like all a bunch of green bottles.”

Steal thisPhotograph a retail aisle, find the sea of sameness, and ship a differently-shaped, differently-named version with benefits on the label instead of ingredients.

Eric Ryan: the serial chemical-free brand builder behind Method, Welly, Ollie

Sam celebrates Eric Ryan, who built Method Soap (chemical-free soap in Target), then Welly (cute Band-Aids), then Ollie (bullshit-free kids' vitamins) by repeatedly applying the clean-alternative playbook to old categories.

“this guy named Eric Ryan, he started Method Soap, which you've seen in Target. Maybe Target bought him actually, but you see him in Target all the time and it's basically soap without chemicals. I buy it, I love it. Then he started Welly and then he started Ollie.”