How to Build Retail Demand Before You Have Distribution

3. Make It Hard To Buy On Purpose

Sourmilk’s first real product test was almost comically inconvenient. They called it the drug deal.

Their factory required an R&D production run. The yogurt came in unfinished packaging. They had 1,200 units and no retail network to absorb them. So they emailed the list.

Customers ordered through a custom Shopify build, but checkout required them to pick a time and a location where they would physically meet Kiki or her co-founder somewhere in New York. No delivery. No store around the corner. You bought a yogurt and met the founders on the street.

Over four weeks they sold roughly 8,000 that way.

It wasn’t scalable. That was the point. It bought them three things before any serious retail push:

• Customers who paid despite heavy friction
• Direct feedback on product and packaging
• A base of buyers who had personally met the founders

If people buy when it’s difficult, removing the friction later only makes the offer stronger.

For an ecommerce founder the equivalent isn’t hand delivery. It’s finding the smallest test where the customer still has to show real intent. Don’t optimize convenience so early that it hides weak demand.

4. Bring Retailers Customers, Not Just a Product

Once Sourmilk had demand, the pitch changed.

Kiki went to Happier Grocery (NYC) and could say: we have roughly 500 paying customers in New York buying this at $5 through a deliberately inconvenient process but we can drive them to you instead.

Happier Grocery became the first store. The opening order of six cases sold out in about 12 hours. The next order of 16 cases sold out in roughly two days.

That is a different conversation than a product pitch. Retailers don’t just want interesting products. They want products that move, and brands that bring people through the door.

This matters more as ecommerce brands go omnichannel. Your social audience, email list, creator network and customer database are not separate from retail strategy. They are the reason the buyer says yes.

A strong retail pitch isn’t look at our product. It’s look at the demand we bring with it.

5. The Content Didn’t Do It. The Backpack Did.

Kiki doesn’t think social media alone explains the traction. Her formula is closer to building in public plus extreme in-person execution.

They sold thousands of yogurts on the street. She visits offices personally, demos the product, carries stock around New York, shows up to launches. When Sourmilk launched the 24-ounce size they went back to the drug deal format and sold it first at an in-person drop in Washington Square Park. Around 120 people came through in a one-hour window.

Those offline moments become content. The content makes the next offline moment bigger.

The mechanism is that customers don’t just see the brand. They leave with a story about it. They met the founder. They showed up. They took the photo. They tell a friend. Kiki calls those people real-life influencers for the brand.

Look past impressions. Build experiences people want to retell, then use content to multiply them.

6. Go an Inch Wide and a Mile Deep Before Going National

Retail rewards scale, which makes national distribution tempting. Kiki is deliberately resisting it.

The plan is to burn hot and bright in New York City first, then move outward: Tri-State, Northeast, Mid-Atlantic, Midwest, then further.

There’s an operational reason. Shipping a refrigerated product across the country wrecks the economics.

There’s also a demand reason. Going national early spreads marketing, inventory and attention across markets where the brand isn’t dense enough to support the shelf space it just won.

This matters more in retail than in ecommerce. A failed ecommerce campaign gets switched off tomorrow. A failed retail launch damages a relationship with one of a small number of accounts that matter, and getting back on shelf takes a long time.

Expansion follows proof, not ambition.

Before taking the next region, know the supply chain can service it and the marketing can move product once it lands.

7. Treat Social Media Like a Performance Channel, Not a Founder Diary

Kiki had essentially no creator experience. Her first TikTok did roughly 35,000 views, which told her something was there.

What she did next is the lesson. She became a student of the game. Instead of consuming social media casually, she started asking why her thumb stopped. Was it the visual hook? The verbal hook? The story? What held her past the first few seconds?

Now she tracks performance closely: which videos pull views, which convert to followers, which drive engagement, which messages land.

That loop did more than grow an account. It taught her how to explain Sourmilk. Every post is a cheap messaging test. When one way of describing the product keeps earning attention, that tells you how customers actually understand the brand.

This is where building in public turns commercial. You’re not documenting the company. You’re getting thousands of reps at packaging its story.

8. Two People, No Employees, A Free Booth At Expo West

At the time of the conversation Sourmilk was two founders and no employees.

Kiki owns brand, social and demand generation. Her co-founder owns operations, product and supply chain. Both sell. Kiki reduces it to this: her co-founder makes the product for less, she sells it for more.

Bootstrapping forced discipline into both halves.

Expo West is the example. Rather than buying a booth, Sourmilk won one through a program for emerging founders. Their social presence had already earned them a Vistaprint partnership that came with marketing credits, and Vistaprint kitted out the booth. Their parents came to help staff it.

Kiki doesn’t romanticize staying small. She’d like to raise institutional money later. She wants more proof points first, and she’s wary that outside capital changes the relationship. Right now she wants the company pointed almost entirely at the customer: testing, learning, saying openly what failed, and building the following that comes from that.

Don’t use capital to skip the learning the business still needs.

9. You Don’t Need A Booth To Meet The Buyer

Kiki’s view is that you can meet buyers without paying for a large booth. Trade shows mostly accelerate conversations that should already be running.

Her takeaway from Expo West: most people who approached the booth weren’t the people she needed. She needed a handful. The dairy buyer. The right Whole Foods contact. The right Sprouts contact.

So the next version is simpler. Keep buyer relationships in a CRM. Book intentional one-on-ones around the show. Go to the events that matter. Skip most of the booth theater.

Do the relationship-building before the conference. Use the conference to move it forward.

That travels well beyond CPG. Any time an expensive event promises access, name the five people who could actually change the outcome before you spend the money.

The Playbook in 9 Steps

1. 01Start with the consumer and prove demand before chasing large retail accounts.
2. 02Build an owned audience so physical distribution isn’t your only way to reach customers.
3. 03Run a high-friction early test that proves people genuinely want the product.
4. 04Take demand to retailers, not just a product.
5. 05Combine online content with in-person moments people will retell.
6. 06Win one geography deeply before spreading inventory and attention nationally.
7. 07Study content performance and use it to sharpen how you sell the product.
8. 08Stay lean while learning instead of using capital to skip unproven stages.
9. 09Use trade shows to accelerate targeted relationships, not to build them from scratch.

Sourmilk’s playbook is less about building a personal brand than it first appears. It’s about manufacturing demand before manufacturing distribution. Kiki used content to create awareness, in-person selling to turn awareness into customers, and those customers to make retail expansion less speculative.

The shelf came after the customer.