DIP 038: Size and scale and risk

Plus, bedtime snacks, size-inclusive bath towels, and cycling couture

👋 Hi. I’m writing this on my couch with a doubled-over weighted blanket across my lap, dog curled up against my thigh, Boygenius on the speakers. As this newsletter grew, I started to doubt whether the things I was thinking about were big enough. I got stuck in my head and I need to break out of that. Because small ideas, insignificant ideas, and not-fully-formed ideas are building blocks. And because I’m most energized when I’m creating, and writing is how I work through problems and make sense of things. So, here’s hoping for more consistent servings of Chips + Dips (you have permission to hold me accountable to this). As always, reply with questions, comments, or thoughts about anything you read here.

This issue features 21 brands. Sixty-two percent are white-led, 19 percent are Black-led, and 10 percent are led by non-Black people of color. You can find the complete Chips + Dips inclusion index here.

The Chips 🕰️

• New York-based gallery Deanna Evans Projects has become my new favorite source of affordable art. The $200 flat files!

• Post’s pre-bedtime Sweet Dreams Cereal joins Pepsico’s Driftwell in trying to make sleep snacks a thing.

• Enby sells acne treatments for people on HRT.

• Doze makes silk clothing (pajamas, really) inspired by the founders’ experiences undergoing cancer treatment.

• Medicinal Plant Index seeks to make plant-based medicine more accessible with a democratic, anti-appropriative stance.

• Contact Sports is a vibey sex shop.

• A Dozen Cousins, Golde, and Partake partnered on a gift box for new and expecting parents.

• Towel makes size-inclusive bath towels.

• Knows makes custom-fitted sunglasses.

• I’m keeping an eye on Less, a platform focused on experiences of grief.

• Supporting my theory that Allbirds is actually a materials company, it’s making the toolkit it used to produce its forthcoming net zero carbon M0.0NSHOT sneaker openly available.

• Jelenew is a women’s cycling brand designed by a former Chanel couturier.

• Gloria is a media company reframing midlife experiences.

• Util’s aluminum storage solutions are very nice.

• Lively, a partnership between Faultless Brands and Z BioScience, sells probiotic cleaning products.

• Swehl sells products for breastfeeding and facilitates support groups nursing parents.

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The Dip ⏳

I’ve been thinking about how businesses evolve as they scale for a few months now — specifically how scale changes a customer’s experience, a company’s attitude toward risk, and customers’ perceptions of the company.

Big swings 

At early-stage companies, finding product-market fit often requires doing things that don’t scale. It looks like going the extra mile to keep customers happy, investing in experiences that cost more but are more memorable, and inviting people to participate in the experience of building a company. Those things that don’t scale are often what attracts a company’s first customers, what keeps them there, and what leads them to become early advocates.

But as a company scales, its experience changes. The things that don’t scale are replaced by things that drive efficient conversion. Quality may decline as production volume increases, the customer experience becomes transactional, and growth becomes the primary focus. In doing so, the company leaves its early adopters behind. The things that once brought people in are no longer there to keep them around.

This leads me to the question I’ve been mulling over for months now: are creative risk and OKRs (a common goal-setting framework) incompatible?

Unless bold marketing is embedded in a company’s strategy from the start, I think the answer is yes. If a company is chasing after revenue goals, it’ll stick with what it knows drives revenue and will be less willing to invest in something unpredictable — to take a risk.

The more I think about it, the more I think a company’s receptivity to bold marketing as it scales takes the form of an hourglass:

Early-stage companies are at the top, where the funnel is wide. They’re doing the things that don’t scale and which catch people’s attention as a means of figuring out what works and keeping customers engaged.

As a company scales, it seeks to reduce its risk in order to grow in a way that’s (relatively) predictable. Creativity narrows as growth metrics become the priority.

Once a certain threshold has been achieved, the company may be more open to risk again. Or some companies may choose not to engage in creative risks in order to appeal to as large an audience as possible.

Juice from the squeeze 

I love constraints. Finding ways to do a lot with a little is where I thrive. I’m more proud of projects I’ve worked on that have cost virtually nothing than anything I’ve done with a six-figure price tag.

But there’s a difference between working with constrained resources and working with constrained outcomes.

If a company does make it to the other end of the hourglass and chooses to invite risk into its marketing, it tends to do so in a very calculated and costly way. Creative risks get outsourced to agencies — Goop’s luxury diaper and Equinox’s “We Don’t Speak January” campaign, for example — while business-as-usual work lives in-house.

What results is manufactured risk — risk that’s gone through multiple rounds of stakeholder approvals and has been pressure-tested to ensure that it generates the response that the agency predicts it will. It’s built for press hits and social chatter, and it’s often inauthentic.

A note on smallness 

Earlier this year, New York Magazine published an article by Emily Sundberg on how independent stores (“shoppy shops”) all seem to carry the same exact stuff — the blanding of retail, if you will. There were conversations about smallwashing and whether brands like Fishwife and Graza are deceiving customers into thinking they’re smaller than they really are. The discourse has long since died down, but it led me to think about the way ubiquity can be conflated with scale.

I had saved a screenshot of an Instagram Story from New Yorker food writer Helen Rosner, whose spot-on analysis of the article reads as follows: “Graza isn’t smallwashing — it’s ubiquitous, sure, and probably well-funded, but it’s still a small player. A giant olive oil co. like Colavita or California Olive Ranch spinning off a hip, design-driven brand to feel hip and relevant feels more like smallwashing to me.”

What is a small business, then? Revenue and funding (or lack thereof) play into it. But I think small is also a mindset. Small — staying small, even as a company grows — often means continuing to do the things that don’t scale because they make a difference. Small is about the relationship with the customer — speaking to them as humans with wants and needs and opinions, rather than vehicles of consumption, and trusting in their capacity to care.

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Real Dip ⏰

A riff on this Bon Appétit spinach-yogurt dip.

Start by blanching a few large handfuls of spinach. Put the blanched spinach in a bowl and stick the bowl in your freezer for a bit.

Slice and sauté an onion and two cloves of garlic. Cut the heat once the onion has softened and is starting to brown a bit. Let it cool.

Add the onion-garlic mixture to about 1 cup of whole-milk Greek yogurt. Take the spinach out of your freezer, pat it dry, chop it into small pieces, and mix it into the yogurt. Add some lemon juice and a lot of salt.

Put your sauté pan back on the stove, heat it over medium-high heat, drizzle in some olive oil, and add a heaping spoonful of dried mint (mint tea is your hack here). The mint should sizzle. Cut the heat and wait for the oil to cool before drizzling it over the yogurt dip.

Plays well with stuffed grape leaves, sliced cucumber, and roasted beets.

Thanks for snacking,

— Emily 💌