Proposer

Submitted By:

Marty

Twitter:

m4rty_k

Discord:

m4rty_k

Team:

Marty (@m4rty_k)

• Project Lead: Production, Operations (e-Commerce, Marketing), Finance
• Co-founder of POPTEA, a sparkling tea brand
• Operated from 2017-2019
• Scaled the company from selling beverages out of kegs at Hester Street Fair (NYC) to distributing bottles to 40+ stores in the NYC metro

Adam (@art.dood):

• Project Designer: Branding, Packaging, Website, Social Media Content
• Doodles Artist in Residence

Intro

Name of Experiment:

Color Sparkling Water

Experiment Duration:

6 months: 1 month for formulation, 2 months to order all materials and schedule production run, 3 month sales experiment

Experiment Type:

Sale of Physical Goods (e.g. selling physical products online or in-person)

Experiment One-Liner:

🌈 TASTE COLOR🌈

Experiment Cost:

73530

Details

Experiment Description:

Color is a ready-to-drink (RTD) beverage brand inspired by Doodles. Our mission is to bring the joy and vibrancy of the Doodles experience through delicious, healthy, and one-of-a-kind beverages.

Our first line of products will be a set of flavored sparkling waters. They will be 0 sugar, 0 calorie drinks made with all natural ingredients. Our point of differentiation (and competitive advantage) will be our branding and Doodles-inspired flavors such as Rainbow Lemonade, Mello Mango, and Cotton Candy. Through these two points, we will create the Doodles experience in beverage-form and spread joy to tastebuds all across the United States.

We aim to provide value to the Doodles brand by:

• Providing a fun and unique product that will bring joy to not only OG Doodles, but to anyone that engages with the product
• Providing a supplemental marketing channel to engage with both Web3 and non-Web3 audiences of all ages and backgrounds, and
• Giving a portion of generated revenues back to the Doodles community (rev share)

BUSINESS PLAN: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1nhsvIOfFY5Kgd5nkvj12Nd1MiP5OmOi4jPLIbtRqTMo/edit?usp=sharing

Experiment Success:

Our main KPI will be the time-period required to sell out of the initial production run (~4,000 cases). We think that we can sell this first batch of product within the first 3 months of launch. We will also track: # of orders, # of units/cases sold, # of unique customers, $ revenue generated, social media followers gained.

Experiment Product:

Zero calorie, zero sugar, zero sweetener sparkling waters.

Our initial flavors will include:

• Rainbow Lemonade 🌈🍋
• Ingredients: Carbonated Water, Natural Flavors (Cherry, Lemon)
• Cotton Candy 🍬🍭
• Ingredients: Carbonated Water, Natural Flavors (Cotton Candy)
• Mello Mango 😻🥭
• Ingredients: Carbonated Water, Natural Flavors (Mango, Orange)

We will use a 12oz standard can, and package the cans into 12-pack cases. Logo and packaging design to be developed by Art.Dood.

Product Distribution:

Initially, the product will be sold online via the Color Website. If the experiment is successful, we would work to get our product into direct-store-distribution (DSD), so that they can be sold in grocery stores and convenience stores.

Logistics

OG Holder Participation:

Once we scale operations, we would love to introduce a revenue share opportunity for OG Doodles. We would love to collaborate with the Team on what is possible here, but some ideas we had were to: contribute revenues to Inkubator to fund more events and experiments, use revenues to purchase tokens to airdrop to OG Doodles, use revenues to give away free merch to OG Doodles.

We would also like to provide discounts on Color to OG Doodles who purchase through the website and connect through Tokenproof.

Dependencies:

Formulation - Parkside Beverage will develop our signature flavors, scale them to commercial-sized measurements, and ensure that our products are regulatory compliant.

Process Authority Letter - Obtaining a process authority letter (approval from FDA). Although obtaining a process authority letter is not difficult, the time to get our process reviewed may vary, and this will be a major dependency. Without this letter, we cannot produce.

Co-Packer - Production will be done on a contract manufacturing basis at Ninth Planet. Ninth Planet is beverage co-packer based in Saratoga Spring, NY. They have incubated a number of beverage brands, including several sparkling water brands. Ninth Planet will manufacture our beverages and also source most of the materials: can ends, packaging trays, plastic shrink wrap for trays. We will source cans ourselves through DWS Printing

Revenue:

For the purpose of this experiment, sales will be made direct-to-consumer (DTC) through our Shopify website. A 12-pack case will be sold for $19.99 ($1.67 per can). Shipping will cost the customer a $8 flat fee. At this time, no free shipping will be available. Believe it or not, shipping will be our biggest expense (liquid is heavy).

We project that our initial production run will yield $79,960.00 in product revenue and $16,000.00 in shipping revenue. We plan to sell 4,000 cases (48,000 units) within the first 3 months of launch. If we can capitalize on 0.05% of the Doodles 400k X following, we should be able to convert 2,000 orders (assuming 2 cases avg per order) within this timeframe.

If the experiment is proven successful, we plan to expand into direct-store-distribution (DSD) to get the product onto shelves in grocery stores, convenience stores, etc. Marty has relationships with large food/beverage distributors and retailers such as:

• Whole Foods - Chris Manca (Global Category Buyer)
• Baldor Distribution - Chris Wren (National Accounts Channel Manager)
• UNFI Distribution - Grace Lachona (Supplier Development Manager)

Please note that conversations with distributors and retailers will begin to happen as soon as the product launches!

Self-Sustainability:

The revenue generated from the first production run (4,000 cases / 48,000 units) will be enough to fund the second production run. This will repeat for future production runs.

The full financial plan of the experiment + unit economics of our product can be found in our BUSINESS PLAN: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1nhsvIOfFY5Kgd5nkvj12Nd1MiP5OmOi4jPLIbtRqTMo/edit?usp=sharing

Future Inkubation:

We want to use this experiment as a testing ground for product-market fit and see how our audience reacts to this type of product.

In order to truly scale this endeavor and bring this product to the masses, we would need to lower our MSRP - which will mean lowering our costs per unit. To do this, we would have to raise additional funding to grow the size of production and expand marketing efforts, and enter into relationships with distributors to wholesale the product through direct-store-distribution (DSD).

A hybrid DTC and DSD model that will allow us to reach customers online as well as in grocery/convenience stores and generate more revenue. In addition, we have a lot of ideas on additional flavors and products (i.e. think limited edition flavors, new functional lines, etc.) that can attract a wider audience-pool.

Detailed Budget:

Budget Requested: $73,530.16

Breakdown: Cost of Goods Sold: $37,530.16 [Production: $15,000.00 Ingredients: $2,200.00 Materials (Cans + Sleeves, Can Ends, Trays, Plastic): $20,330.16] Reserve for Shipping Costs: $20,000.00 Design (Branding, Packaging, Website): $2,500.00 Social Media (Content, Execution): $4,000.00 Marketing Materials (Presentation Boxes for Distributors): $1,000.00 Formulation: $3,000.00 Storage/Delivery: $3,000.00 Other Overhead/Costs(Travel, Regulatory Documents, Website Domain, Misc Shipping, LLC Setup): $2,500.00

Marketing

Marketing Plan:

Social Media

• We will leverage social media to gain a follower base, and market the product through the following channels: X, Instagram
• Our brand identity on social media will be consistent with the Doodles brand - this includes: tone of voice, color palette, typography, graphics, etc.
• We believe that with the support of the Doodles brand (re-tweets), Color can gain a strong community following that will be excited to buy the product at launch.
• We will post daily on X (starting from 2 months before launch), and every 2-3 days on Instagram. X will drive sales amongst the Web3 community and Instagram will drive sales amongst the non-Web3 community.
• We will engage with X “influencers” within the Doodles community who will help bring awareness to our brand. These influencers will be engaged after project initiation.
• Art.Dood will provide some of the social media content in the form of illustrations and animations. We will also engage other OG Doodles for social media content on an ad-hoc basis.

Paid Advertising

• For the purpose of this experiment, we will not use paid advertisements.

Promotional Discounts

• We will offer a 10% discount to OG Doodles that connect their wallet through Tokenproof

Public Relations

• Before launch, we will write to several publications to tee up press articles to create buzz about our launch. We plan to reach out to: BevNet, Forbes, Buzzfeed, NFTNow
• We also plan to send samples to BevNet for a review, which should generate buzz within the beverage industry and generate orders

Materials:

There are no additional products in the plan. However, the foundational elements of this business proposal can be leveraged to launch additional beverage products.

However, we will create Doodles-inspired illustrations and animations for marketing purposes. These will all be created by Art.Dood.

Extra

Insurance:

Third party insurance.

Third Party Insurance:

We would need a general product liability policy (TBD).

Extra Details:

Thank you so much for reviewing our proposal!

We expect this project to self-sufficient and profitable by our second production run. We tried to keep the operating costs of the experiments to a minimum. We also decided to work with a set of strategic partners (formulator, co-packer) that can help us scale if we do find the results of this experiment to be successful.

Art.Dood is ready to start with all of the design work once we get further down the funnel with this proposal.

Our detailed BUSINESS PLAN has been linked throughout the form and it is also listed below for your reference. Please let me know who needs access, as it is currently locked.

We hope you are as excited about Color as we are. If you have any additional questions, please let us know. We would love to collaborate with the Team to iterate on this idea!

Now, are you ready to 🌈TASTE COLOR🌈 ?

BUSINESS PLAN: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1nhsvIOfFY5Kgd5nkvj12Nd1MiP5OmOi4jPLIbtRqTMo/edit?usp=sharing