PHOTOGRAPHCOURTESY^ OF^ FEALSCBD’s Hidden Problem
Feals didn’t want to be just another CBD company. So rather than just pushing a product, it sought out its users’
biggest pain point. by JONATHAN SMALLI
n an industry as crowded
as CBD, how can any
startup stand out? It’s a
question everyone in the
space must answer, as a
tsunami of CBD-infused
products flood onto store
shelves nationwide. So when
the cofounders of Feals entered
this space, they cooked up a plan
to make themselves different.
They’d do some customer
acquisition research and then
create the product people said
they wanted.
For the Feals cofounders—
Alex Iwanchuk, Eric Scheibling,
and Drew Todd—this was a
natural way of thinking. They’d
previously built and sold an
ad tech company, and they
were big believers in data. So
their team researched the CBD
market and, for a year, tested a
variety of products with more
than 5,000 customers. By the
end, they concluded that the big
opportunity was in hemp-based
CBD tinctures.
But when they dug deeper,
they discovered a problem:
People had no idea what dosage
to take.
This, they realized, was a
true white space in the industry.
The opportunity wasn’t just in
product—it was in making sense
of the product. “CBD is super
personalized. It’s unique to the
individual,” says Todd. “I com-
pare it to a cup of coffee. One
person can drink a single cup of
coffee to get through their day,
but another person needs 12,
depending on how their system
processes caffeine.” And if a cus-
tomer didn’t know what worked
for them personally, they’d bereluctant to buy anything at all.
What to do? The Feals team
decided to look outside their
industry for inspiration. They
thought about Warby Parker,
the online prescription eyeglass
and sunglass retail store, which
famously popularized the idea
of at-home trials. (The company
will mail five frames to a poten-
tial customer to try on at home
and select the one they like.)
Maybe there was a way to do
that with CBD.
The Feals cofounders devel-
oped a product they called a
“flight”—three perfume-bottle-
like vials. Each delivers a spe-
cific dose, 40 milligrams, 80
milligrams, or 160 milligrams,
of CBD oil. They’d charge $20
for the flight, including ship-
ping, and it would arrive withclear instructions for use. (Only
one dose a day; let it sit under
the tongue for 30 seconds.)
Customers would be encour-
aged to start low and go slow.
Feals launched in March
2019 with the flights and saw
almost immediate results. First,
people’s buying habits shifted
toward the most potent prod-
ucts. “People typically need
to use more CBD than they
initially believed to get their
desired effects,” says Todd. Feals
originally anticipated that its
most potent bottle would con-
stitute 2 to 5 percent of sales;
now it’s close to 20 percent.
But even more intriguingly,
Feals noticed that its customer
service department was han-
dling a large number of calls
that averaged 12 minutes. Itwasn’t because people were
calling to complain. Rather,
first-time CBD users were
using Feals as an informational
hotline; they were calling to
learn more about CBD before
trying it for the first time. So
Feals leaned into its new role:
The company developed
“conversational commerce”—
sending a personalized text
message once a flight reaches
a new customer’s home, so the
company can keep the conver-
sation going.
“That’s what gets us really
excited,” Todd says—because
it means that Feals is now cre-
ating new customers, rather
than just fighting for existing
users. In a hot market like
CBD, that’s the kind of differ-
ence that matters.Cannabis Challenge
54 / ENTREPRENEUR.COM / September 2019