"Do great work, make money for everyone and have fun. Those are my three rules." Pic's Peanut Butter CEO Aimee McCammon on building a 'most loved' brand.
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👉 Why listen?
Can a little peanut butter company from the bottom of the world really change it? Pic's Peanut Butter says yes.
In this episode, Aimee McCammon, CEO of Pic's and stepdaughter of founder Bruce 'Pic' Picot, tells the story of how a semi-retired, legally blind "enthusiast" blew up his kitchen blender making peanut butter, sold it for $10 a jar at the Nelson market, built a distribution network out of his old hippie mates, and grew a global brand from a small town in New Zealand.
From simple beginnings, Pic's is now the number one imported premium natural peanut butter in China, has the largest distribution in Australia, and is found in many more countries. Pic's is also a B Corp, gives to everything from guide dogs to children in need, and runs multiple environmental initiatives to do their best to do business better.
So what does it take to build a brand that is good, does good and makes good money?
The Pic's Playbook
🎯 One goal. Don't be the biggest, be the most loved. Everything falls out of that.
🧐 Keep it simple. Simple beats clever, but simple is not easy.
❤️ Understand what motivates. Purchase motivators and justifiers are not the same and emotion is what motivates purchase every time. The rational stuff just justifies it.
It's a masterclass in building a brand people love and an honest look at the dark nights of the soul when purpose meets cash flow. Aimee kept every community and environmental initiative running through the hardest years, because a brand that drops its soul to save its margins loses both.
🌏 We also talk about...
- The poem inside every Pic's label (and how to peel it off)
- Why B Corp is a "plug-and-play sustainability strategy" with a scorecard
- Doing good without demanding a short term sales uplift and the value of long-term brand vs short-term ROI
- Surviving COVID: a new factory, broken supply chains, and running $30m turnover on Excel
- Finding a mission-aligned family investor instead of private equity
- "Smoochy". How what started as a gimmick became Pic's number three product
- Aimee's three rules: work hard, make money, have fun
Learn more about Pic’s (or buy some)
Website: https://picspeanutbutter.com
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/picspeanutbutter/?hl=en
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/picspeanutbutter/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/picspeanutbutter/?originalSubdomain=nz
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@PicsPeanutButterNelson
Follow Aimee
https://www.linkedin.com/in/aimee-mccammon-9994b628/
We gave AI a listen. Here's what it had to say:
A jar of peanut butter probably shouldn’t be able to change the world, yet that’s exactly the claim behind Pic's Peanut Butter and it’s not just talk. We chat with CEO Amy McCammon about how a contrarian founder in Nelson, New Zealand tasted sugar-filled “peanut butter”, got outraged, and built a premium natural peanut butter brand on one stubborn idea: make it properly, keep it simple, and earn love the hard way.
We trace the real growth story from kitchen experiments and local markets to major supermarket shelves across Australia, then out into Southeast Asia, the US and a genuinely surprising foothold in China. Amy shares what worked, what was luck, and what changed when local partners found a completely different angle for their audience. If you care about brand strategy, FMCG marketing, and international distribution, there are sharp lessons here about clarity, trust, and letting go of control when you need expertise on the ground.
Then we get into the stuff most “purpose-led” case studies skip: the cost of doing good, the value of B Corp as a measurement framework, and what happens when COVID squeezes margins, supply chains break, and a new factory suddenly makes cash flow terrifying. Amy talks through the hard calls, the leadership reset, and why profit and purpose are more symbiotic than most slogans admit.
If you’re building a mission-driven brand, dreaming of a startup, or just want a better model for business, press play, share it with a mate, and leave a review so more people find it. What’s one brand you’d love to see become “the most loved” for the right reasons?
Watch on YouTube
Full Episode Transcript
A Big Claim And A Bold Brand
Singers0:00
I'm gonna change this world today. Make the gold world.
Ben0:05
And Peanut Butter change the world. Well, it can if you make it like PixDuck. Founded by Pic Picot in Nelson New Zealand, it's Peanut Butter is a little Peanut Butter company making a really good impact. Or my other favorite line from the website, Bitco the big brand's a middle finger, and the world of better peanut butter. Big to the big cop gives Google the product and money the good causes and is generally a perfect example of what I believe a business should be. CEO Amy McCammon is here to tell us all about it. Welcome, Amy.
Aimee McCammon0:33
So the correct answer to that question right at the beginning is like, yes. A little peanut butter company at the bottom of the world can make a difference. It's a great intro. We love that.
Ben0:42
Thank you. Well, you're making a big difference. And we'll get to that differently. So picks his name after the founder, pick pickup.
Aimee McCammon0:50
His real name's Bruce FYI, and I reckon Bruce's peanut butter just wouldn't have had the story.
Ben0:54
I don't think that would have quite been the same. It would make it feel muscular, might be.
Aimee McCammon0:59
It would. It might have done well in Aussie, though. It might have played well here.
Ben1:03
The story is told on the website, and it's actually masterclass storytelling. You're his stepdaughter. Yes. So I'm gonna take a punt you're as good at storytelling as he is.
How Pick Started In A Kitchen
Ben1:13
So I'd love you to tell us a story of just how did this begin? Give us like 20 years of history in a in a few sound bites.
Aimee McCammon1:20
Right. So Pick is a contrarian, actually, but not in a negative way. So if you boiled him down to a one-word equity, he's an enthusiast. Like he is just kind of excited about everything, but occasionally he's outraged. And he we've always had peanut butter. So he always liked peanut butter. And in the mid-2000s, what had happened to peanut butter is what happens to lots of food categories where they just cost out, right? Big corporates start costing out, they get commoditized, it's a race to the bottom. How do you cost out? You put crap in the food, right? You put sugar, salt, emulsifiers, fillers. You only need 90% peanuts to be called peanut butter. And Pick had got some peanut butter at home and could taste all the sugar, and he was really outraged. So he rang the manufacturer on the 0800 and said, What's going on with this sugar? And they said, But sir, our customers like it that way. And he was like, Well, that's rubbish. And then he thought about how his mum used to make it in the kitchen back in the day and his aunt, just by roasting peanuts and grinding your own. And if you remember back, there was sort of a spate in some of the supermarkets where they'd have grind your own peanut butter. Yeah. And it was like fun when you're a kid. The problem with that is if the nuts aren't fresh, it gives you a really rancid taste. Anyway, he's like, bugger this, I can do it. And I'm gonna make my own peanut butter. So he's always run his own companies, gift wear companies, he had a sailing school, he had a laundromat, like it just all these different things. And by this stage, he's semi-retired, actually losing his eyesight. So he's been legally blind since he's in his 50s. But he was just like, you know, he's a hippie guy with hippie taste, not huge material needs. And he's like, I just need enough money to have drinks down at the pub with my mates on the weekends. So he's like, how do I replace this laundromat money? It's like a few hundred bucks a week. So he's like, make this peanut butter. He's using really good quality nuts, high elaic peanuts, which means you don't even need to add oil, like nothing. You don't add anything, you just roast them up. He's doing it at home in the kitchen, blew up his blender, but kind of got it right and thought this is good, and literally started selling it at the local market for 10 bucks a jar. And everyone, including me at the time, who was on the start of my business career, and I'm like, oh, this sounds dodgy. I don't know. You know, like all good ideas. It's crazy. It's really clear in retrospect. But at the time I was like, Yeah, but is the sugar really bad? Or anyway, so it makes it, it just starts taking off. So he's because he's so clever, he did this thing where he got this network going of his old hippie mates who are all over New Zealand, and they all wanted pocket money. He's like, right, I'll sell you the jars for five bucks each, and you can sell them for whatever you can get at the markets. So he basically set up this incredible distribution network around the country and then started getting into supermarkets, and it just grew and grew and grew and grew and didn't stop. It was an absolutely amazing run.
Going Global From Small Town NZ
Ben4:25
That is an amazing, and it didn't stop there, right? Because you're now obviously you've crossed the ditch into Australia and Australia major taking over the our our peanut butter market here. Yeah. Um but you're also you're in Thailand, Malaysia, I think.
Aimee McCammon4:37
Yeah, all over Southeast Asia. We're in the US. Um, we had a big footprint in the UK for a while, uh, huge in China. We are the number one imported premium natural peanut butter brand in China. Crazy. We have like 70% of the share. We are everywhere.
Ben4:53
Is it is like I can understand, like, say, Singapore or somewhere like that, because you've got London, because of course Kiwi is a great traveler system.
Aimee McCammon5:00
We're in Singapore, Hong Kong, all that usual expat kind of market.
Ben5:03
So I can see them demanding it. That's how you get a foothold, but China?
Aimee McCammon5:07
China, we didn't build via expats, and every other market has been built via expats, basically. And in Aussie, you know, for years I had Kiwi friends here who'd, when they'd sit at the supermarket, like I'd get photos, they're just so excited to see a Kiwi brand, you know, in the big market here. And all of those things helped us build the brand globally. But in China, it's not an expat, it's not an expat country. I mean, it's not full of Kiwis or Aussies or, you know, all the usual kind of antipodeans, not even the South Africans. It's we hold a really interesting position in that market. And we started our original target market in China, where we really won, was small jars of unsalted smooth peanut butter that the mums feed to their babies really early, much earlier than we do down here, because of the oils for brain. So they're really good oils. And in China, all about investing in your kids, all about brain development. So it's just a completely different angle.
Ben6:08
Did you figure this out and strategize it?
Aimee McCammon6:11
Oh, I want to tell you we did, but no, it was honestly like kind of a bit of good luck. Um, we have an incredible business partner in China. They do our distribution, they control our marketing in China. Hard to give you marketing to someone else, you know, like we really had to let go and let them guide us. And they figured that out, and it just worked. And then the population really started changing. About eight years ago, you could really see the change, and you know, less kids in China, and suddenly we're like, this isn't working anymore. We've got to do something different. And now we're sort of multifaceted in our marketing, but we rarely get guided by our business partners there.
Ben6:50
It's an amazing like takeover of the world out of Nelson. Anyone who's been to Nelson, this is not this is not big town.
Aimee McCammon6:57
It's a very small town, beautiful town. But when you live in Nelson, you live in a bubble, right? You've got no idea. You don't even know what's going on in Auckland. I mean, it's such a beautiful little town. It's biking, hiking, there's skiing, there's you know, water sports, and people that don't live there for big careers. Everyone's on their mountain bike at 4:30. You know, it's a beautiful life, so you're not worrying about what's happening in the rest of the world.
Ben7:21
International distribution is not generally what people are thinking about.
Aimee McCammon7:24
Oh, and it's tricky out of mouth, let me tell you.
Ben7:27
Yeah, bad
Storytelling Over Traditional Marketing
Ben7:28
it is. You've talked about marketing. Yes. And look, one of the things one cannot help but notice is the way the story is told of the brand, on the brand, in various ways, the marketing is really good. You know, you've got this awesome product that you've described that people, clearly people have fallen in love with and gone, I want that wherever I go in the world. You know, it's all natural, it's five-star health rated. It's tasty as, it's really good. Um, but then you got these beautiful touches, like there's a poem inside every label. Now, you actually yourself began your career in marketing advertising. In fact, you once worked for Peter Jackson, who directed Lord of the Rings trilogy. There's a storyteller. So I'm I'm starting to see great product makes great marketing. What is your secret for great marketing generally, but specifically mission-driven products?
Aimee McCammon8:12
I'm sort of in conflict with this word marketing. When on a great day, I call it in the words of the next archie guy called Mike Hutchison, and he calls marketing the highest calling, which I love to take into my board meetings and freak out the, you know, the kind of everyone else. The business people. Yeah, like it really gets gasps around the table. So then I delight in it. But I kind of, I don't know, there's this sort of reputation that I don't like. So Pick would be horrified if you said marketing. Like he bans that word. And when I first started helping him in the business, oh, late 2000s, you know, 2010 maybe. And then I came onto the advisory board 2011. So I was deep in an advertising career at that point. And we basically created a rule which was no advertising. That was our rule. And I used to write the marketing plan, and we just kept it really simple. That's ad training, right? Simplify everything, make it believable and real. I don't even want to use the word human because that's really overused at the moment. Everyone's like, I want it to be authentic and human.
Ben9:15
Authentic, so overused.
Aimee McCammon9:17
It's just simple, simple, simple. And simple is not easy. Simple is where you get to when you get through the clutter and you get to clarity, right? And there's so much work into getting something simple. But basically, what we decided then is we wanted to be the most loved peanut butter brand in the world, right? We don't want to be the biggest, we don't want to sell the most. We just wanted to be the most loved. And everything falls out of that. So that's how we used to start in the marketing plans. Just want to be the most loved.
Ben9:45
I've always preferred storytelling to marketing as a word. If you're not, I mean, that's a bit overused as well. But you know, there's that great quote, the storyteller is the most powerful person in the room, which is just another version of what you say marketing is the. How do you do that? You know, because everyone talks authenticity, but it's almost like they want to engineer authenticity, you know. So where do you begin that? Because the other thing I've always found in marketing is, oh my goodness me, you see these, you know, brand wheels that quite frankly, I've worked in this game for a very long time. So I still don't quite understand what half the things in a brand wheel are. And like you see go-to-market strategies that are so deep in detail that you're like, really, we're never executing all this. But then what you speak of is a much more real way where you go, okay, if we want to be the most loved, where does that take you next? You know what I mean? Because one, that's a great goal. I wouldn't be the, but what do you do after you've decided I want to be the most loved? I mean, do you go out and hand out free butter, peanut butter? That'll make you pretty loved, but you know, there's more to it than that.
Aimee McCammon10:37
Um, yeah, that works quite well, actually. We had this sort of um, we had this theory for a while that Pick could pretty much convert anybody. So the product was so good that actually basically once you got it in people's mouths, people who thought they didn't like peanut butter would actually go, oh, this is really good. And we actually were called that for a while. Pick's really good peanut butter was our brand name for a little while.
Ben10:57
For people who don't like peanut butter.
Aimee McCammon10:58
Yeah. Because they were used to eating the emulsified stuff, and it's a very different taste. And Pick, because he's such an enthusiast, would literally chase people down at food shows and not, you know, not take no for an answer. So that's part of that. I mean, you could call that a go-to-market strategy, right?
Singers11:14
It's totally a go-to-market strategy.
Aimee McCammon11:17
But he does it in a way, I think he just believes it, and you have to believe it. You can't just make that shit up, which is what happens often when you're in corporate and you're trying to find the way to strategize it and deliver it and monetize it and all of those things. And I'm it's not that those things aren't valid, but talk about it in a real way. So we never talked about go-to-market strategies. Um, occasionally I'd use a word like distribution, but PIC would always pull me up. He hates acronyms and you know, he doesn't want to hear any of my Procter and Gamble language. They were my client for a year. Um, you know, and they wrote the book on marketing, Procter and Gamble. And so I asked when I went to New York, I was like, I just want to work on Procter and Gamble because I want to see how they do it. I want to be party to that. And it taught me a lot because I'm a deeply emotional person and a deeply emotional storyteller and a really deeply emotional marketer. I'm a deeply emotional CEO. And you get criticized, you know, there's a whole gender thing that goes with that as well. And what PNG taught me is to do it without emotion, right? And I railed and hated it and gnashed my teeth. But it taught me really good skills, which was everything we did with PG, any product launch, any comms campaign, everything goes on one page at PNG. Everything, any plan, which is an incredible discipline. Although all my clients would turn into an 8. Right. But it's still on one page. And everything we did, you had to do risk mitigation. And you had to have three scenarios. So instead of, you know, I'm used to the hype, I'm the hype girl, right? So I'm like, we're gonna launch this and it's gonna be great, we're gonna achieve this and we're gonna do this, and people are gonna be into it because of that. So they're like, if it fails, we need three mitigations. What do we do? And I'm like, we don't think about failure. And they're like, yes, we do here. One, two, three, please. And it just taught me to, I would say I used to think it was self-control until I did a very expensive university course at Harvard and realized I didn't need more self-control. And the emotional thing is great, but I need self-regulation. And that's what that was starting to teach me self-regulation in the way I approach things. So you can still be excited, but you need to have a backup.
Ben13:35
Interesting. So I mean it's the head and the heart. I've always thought the head and the heart of magic combo. And look, anyone who's ever worked in, I started as an advertising creative, is like you've got to pull people in on emotion.
Aimee McCammon13:44
Totally. It's so 100%.
Ben13:46
So have you managed to merge those two? Almost keep the prop to and gamble, which is very rational. It is, but keep that emotional approach. It feels like Pix is very emotionally driven. It's about the love of the founder. The founder story is strong, it's about the love of peanut butter, it's about simplification. Even just the recipe is simplification, right?
Aimee McCammon14:05
Yeah.
Ben14:06
Why have 12 ingredients when you can what have three or two kind of things?
Aimee McCammon14:10
And we try to keep it super simple. And we do, you have to love the peanut butter, but it's deeper than that. Like you have to love what you stand for. You know, I love what we do in the community. You have to love the people part, you have to genuinely really love it. And the the emotional thing, I mean, you know this if you've been a creative, 100% emotion drives purchases. And you tell people that, and I people still don't believe it. So the rational, even though you go, I'm at the supermarket shelf, do I buy the black rubbish bags or the brown rubbish bags? You think you're being, well, that one's got the tie. Those things play into it, but they are purchase justifiers, not purchase motivators. The purchase motivation is how you feel, and that is a combo of how do I feel about this brand? How do I feel about what it does? Yes, how do I feel about the price I'm paying and what that says about me and how I'm balancing up my life? It is emotionally driven. And if it wasn't, we'd all just drive tractors. The cars are not different.
Ben15:12
It's true too. The cars are a great example because actually I have a very rational purchase. I have an approach to cars where I hate paying for repairs. So I just look at what there's a million of on the road and buy one of them because I know that it's gonna break down less.
Aimee McCammon15:25
And your feeling is that's trusted, it's you're not gonna waste your family money on something you don't care about. You know, like there's a whole lot of emotion to unpack it.
Ben15:33
That's interesting, but there would be no Lamborghinis and things if emotion didn't drive these. Exactly.
Aimee McCammon15:39
Exactly. I mean, I'm driving a Tesla right because it just feels like that's what the head of picks is doing, you know. And dad's like, you should catch the bus, you know. Like he doesn't want anyone in a car. He's always about electrical brike and catch the bus. I'm like, I don't know if I'll go that far. But then I saw this lime green Lamborghini yesterday, and I was like, ooh, bit of a gut punch, you know. And I'm like, what is it I'm feeling for that car? Feeling a bit like I got a David Bowie gut punch, you know? And I'm like, yeah, maybe.
Ben16:08
Everyone's got their things they love. I know, I know. Um, great product, yes, excellent storytelling, because we're not allowed to use the word marketing.
Singers16:17
Thank you.
Ben16:17
Only just allowed to use the word storytelling. Um,
Doing Good Without Chasing Uplift
Ben16:20
but the third piece you've talked about, which is that good for people planet, the list is nuts. Like, uh, excuse the pun. Oh, with so many good nut punts.
Singers16:29
So many good nuts.
Ben16:30
I bet. As a company, you do an awful lot of kind of good for people, good for the world stuff. I list a couple of them. There's really good peanut butter for really good cause, which is essentially a charity donation version. You got you donate product to raffles, etc. You've got big brothers, big sisters, you spot blind, low vision New Zealand, which is obviously, you know, it's obvious interest, you know. I noticed you donate peanut butter that's not good for sale to rodent trapping, which I've never heard that one before.
Aimee McCammon16:58
More rodents love picks than any other peanut butter. So there's um there's a rumour in New Zealand. So we have um Department of Conservation Doc in New Zealand, which is huge, right? Because we try to protect the beautiful, incredible landscape that we have and the purity of it all. And um, there is a rumour, I have not been able to get my hands on it, but there's a rumour that in like the DOC handbook for the rangers that it actually specifies Picks peanut butter. Oh my goodness.
Ben17:24
No, there is some storytelling.
Aimee McCammon17:26
We donate a lot. So anything that we think doesn't meet our quality standards, there's amazing people in New Zealand who kind of coordinate with all the different groups. So it actually we try and get it to them and then they get it out to all their community groups. I mean, it's it's a huge undertaking of this, it's like this crazy underground network. Distribution once again.
Ben17:45
You guys are very good at distribution at some point. That's really cool. So all this stuff is I only got like, I didn't even get halfway down the list. What role does that play with that? Because I feel there's a holy trinity here. I think the great product has got to start there. I mean, obviously, the success has been pick running after people with going, taste my peanut butter, and they've gone, oh my goodness, right? So if you don't have the good product, forget it, you're not in the game. Yeah, you've then managed to tell the story of that world, but then you've actually done a lot of good for the world. You didn't have to do, you'd probably be a successful company even without that. Now, why do you do it? But also what role does it play in the success of the company, in your opinion?
Aimee McCammon18:20
I think we do it because it makes us feel good, right? Like it's the right thing to do, but you don't always do the right thing unless it really connects and makes you feel good. Like you think it's something that's going to make a difference for other people and thereby it makes a difference for you, right? It's like that thing of um, if you're not feeling good about your life, to actually go out and help other people because the feeling of helping other people, that's the gift. It's the actually a gift to yourself. So I think pack was the environmental stuff early on, being an old hippie, he loves to reuse and recycle, you know, and those are such buzzwords now, but we're packed into glass jars. That was quite revolutionary at the time. We run a recycling scheme. So if you're in Nelson, um we sell these 1kg glass jars that you bring back and you get $5 off, and we literally hand wash them in the factory, which drives everyone crazy. Like if the accountants were making the decisions, you would 100% not do that. But honestly, people in Nelson, they just love it. It makes them feel like it's we're still a market brand. So we still do we actually have a stall at the market where we started. It's still there. We don't need to we sell two cents through the market, you know. We're just so big in the supermarkets, but we love that Nelsonians are still coming down. Um the big brothers, big sisters thing, which is one of the ones that I really love. Pac actually started out doing some mentoring. Um tell me how it works before you it's essentially you do mentoring for kids. That's it. So you're a big brother or a big sister, and you apply, and then you get matched up with a kid. And it may be a kid who's got um, I don't know, they just they need some extra support in their lives. Like they might have a might be a as a male with a single mom who needs a positive male influence in his life. It also works through schools. So Pick did it and he got into it, sort of form this relationship with them, and we still support them all these years later, and we have a really deep relationship with them. So we support a few people internally to do mentoring. So we've got someone at the moment who does it through the school, and that's during work time. But I'm like, go, this is really important. We had someone who left recently, and when they resigned, I was like, just tell me you're gonna keep up your big brothers, big sisters, please. Like, is there anything we can do to support that? Because it's such a cool thing.
Ben20:45
Yeah, it's awesome. So it's you're doing it because you believe in it. Totally. How does it relate to peanut butter? Not at all. No, it doesn't, you know. Obviously, you want to be the most loved brand. These things are not gonna hurt. But at the end of the day, you've got to sell some peanut butter if you want to support these things. If you were to look at, you know, if we were to make some weird spider chart of the three things of great product, great marketing, and great doing good for the world, yeah. Where do most customers sit? How do they relate? Do they come in on the story of, wow, look, that company supports cool initiatives or wow, that supports a good story, then they try it and go, I want to buy it, or they just get told it's great peanut butter. Like, is it different for different people? How do those three things interact with each other to fundamentally create sales?
Aimee McCammon21:23
I think it's all like super entwined. So when you talk about the spider graph, that's quite a tidy graph in the, you know, in the marketing business world. We do those tidy spider graphs, but the reality is it's like an interwoven web, right? That and that's why storytelling and human stuff is so fascinating because humans are organic, tricky little creatures. So, you know, if you're in the tech world, you want everything to be perfect and it scales and it does this and it works like a line chart. And and that's not the reality, like how much tech stuff has fallen over because there wasn't a human approach. I've just I've worked with so many tech people and they're just like, we've got this great tech. Product, but oh the consumers are just so tricky.
Ben22:02
They don't get it.
Aimee McCammon22:03
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. So it's not just even like a tidy triangle, it's really enmeshed. So I always try in my tidy PNG way to sort it into purchase motivators and purchase justifiers. So sometimes someone might make a decision, you know, we've done charity packs before where we're going to give money and we're going to do one this year for guide dog puppies because Pick just got a new guide dog and guide dogs cost a fortune to train and 50% of them fail. Like it's outrageous. And they call the New Zealand guy called her who said, We're the most expensive pet breeder in New Zealand.
Ben22:40
But we make really cute fluffy ones.
Aimee McCammon22:42
Yeah, that's right. So we're going to do an on-pack promo to help this year where we'll donate 50 grand over a month, both across Australia and New Zealand. And you know, the sales team or the accountants are like, oh, great. So what's the sales uplift? You know, because everyone's going to buy it because of that. And I'm like, I'd love to tell you that that's the case, but you don't just get a 20% uplift, right? Like a lot of people, if they don't really know the brands, they're making none of those decisions based on that. If everything else is equal, would they maybe be tempted to change if their other one was, you know, slightly higher price, or they didn't have the, you know, the salted crunchy that normally you might get some behavior change, but it's all part of weaving the brand story, right? This is a brand that is connected with these dogs. This is a brand that does good stuff. It's enmeshed as much as I want it to be tidy.
Ben23:34
Yeah, no, that's really interesting because it is hard. Look, you're the CEO, you get to make decisions, you know, and your family too. So you get to make even bigger decisions than most CEOs.
Aimee McCammon23:44
Some uncomfortable family decisions.
Ben23:47
But I imagine for people sitting there working in a business going, Well, I don't own my own company, I don't control it. I've got to justify bringing purpose or mission into my brand. It's really hard to put it into numbers, as you say. I mean, I've worked on those briefs where people have gone, we want to team up with a charity and we want a 4% sales offlip. I've literally seen that brief. And I've gone back and I said, There's a missing piece. Like, I'm not sure you'll get that for one, like you, but the other bit is where's the bit where we measure the good we did? Yeah. Impact. And they don't even have that metric on the brief. It's like you're literally trying to do good to increase sales. You you forgot the bit about measuring the good.
Aimee McCammon24:25
It's that constant long-term brand build versus short-term ROI, right? And the long-term ROI. It is so hard to prove out. And that's probably one of the magical things about marketing. You know what they used to say, half your money's wasted, but you don't know which half. That's why it's the highest calling, right? You're dealing with a lot of money and you're wavering between is it a cost center or is it an investment? Well, it is an investment, but you've got to justify it too. So it's really tricky territory.
Ben24:54
It is tricky territory. I mean, you need a bit of faith. Yeah.
Aimee McCammon24:56
To bring it up. You've got to have a lot of faith.
Ben24:58
But then, I mean, my personal point of view is when you look at brands like Pix, is as look, I've asked you the question which is more important. We cannot answer it. And that's kind of the point. What you can answer is is this company successful? Oh, yes.
Aimee McCammon25:10
Yeah.
Ben25:11
And therefore, what is the differentiator that sets it aside?
B Corp As A Practical Framework
Aimee McCammon25:14
And I think that's one of the beautiful things about B Corp. And for me, as a governance person and a leader, it gives you a framework for a lot of the really cool things that you're doing that you're not measuring necessarily. And it gives you a framework for measurement. And I love that it's not just sustainability or just community. It's like the five different areas that it covers. So it makes you really holistic. I remember doing my first B Corp application for a different company. The guys that were taking us through it were like, you'll be amazed at how much you're actually doing, but you just never really committed to paper. You're just doing it because you started small, your family, you're private, you can make those decisions. You go, yeah, you know, you've got a breast cancer fundraiser. Yeah, we'll send you two cartons of peanut butter. You know, did anyone write that down? Probably not. You know, like, but it gives you this framework for measuring things, which is pretty cool.
Ben26:09
Torturous, but cool. Yeah, I was uh I ran a B Cop for 17 years old. The revalidation, you fear it. Yeah. Because it gets harder every time, too.
Aimee McCammon26:19
I had to do the revalidation for picks and I was petrified. I was like, I'm gonna lose this points and I'm gonna let down the team that you know did it the first time and I couldn't find all the info. You know, it was buried in 50 million files, and I was like, what was the logic behind this?
Ben26:34
But that's interesting because it does in knowing that you're gonna do it again four years later, it does um make you start to document. Yeah, and think about decisions. I think it's great. It's almost like a plug-and-play sustainability strategy, really. Yeah, which comes with a scorecard because most strategies, the trouble is they said the strategy and there's no scorecard, it's sort of all in one. And a beautiful accreditation that I must note has really become well known in the years I've been watching.
Aimee McCammon27:00
We play a lot with other B Corp companies. So in a B2B thing, it's been amazing for B2B Corp. But you meet other people and they're like, oh, you're a B Corp, we're a B Corp. And we do these awesome product swaps with all these other B Corps, and we swap for like there's juice and wine, and there's great chocolates, and obviously we peanut butter, and there's some clothing companies, and we do all these major product swaps, and then we do things internally with our staff where we're like nominate someone who's done cool, you know, B Corp things in this past year, and then we give everyone goodie bags, it's great fun.
Ben27:35
I bet it is. Yeah, the B Corp bag. Yeah, B Corp show. Yeah, I mean it's almost tribal.
Aimee McCammon27:40
It's very tribal.
Ben27:42
Yeah, business who believes what you believe. Let's hang out together.
Culture That Keeps Great People
Ben27:46
How does you mention employees? Because we've talked about getting customers, you know, which is one bit of business, but I always think there's a holy trinity for success in business. Yep. It's customers, employees, and investors if you have them. Yep. And if you can keep all those three happy, well, if you can keep all three happy, you're probably gonna win, right? Yeah. How much does this um make employees kind of want to work there?
Aimee McCammon28:06
You know, like no one comes to work just for the money. Like, the money is not enough. It's a huge consideration for everyone because you've got to support your family and support yourself. But it's the things that you do or the things the company does that people believe in that really holds them there, you know, and we all everyone's got vision, mission, values stuff these days. But like, what are the things that make people feel good about working for you? And even though B Corp, it's actually quite complex for people to understand how it really works, but they do know if they work for you that it helps do good things. And that's why we do this month where we celebrate. Was it a community thing you did? Did you catch something in the factory that wasn't as good as it should have been? And then we do other stuff because we're small, you know, we're under 50 staff, you know, everyone's name, and all of those things add up. You know, we got, oh, we're always swapping product, you know. So the the warehouse guy's a genius at getting us beer and cider. I don't even know where they're getting it all from. But you know, we swap peanut butter for bread, you know, so it's just you're kind of really interconnected with all these other companies and there's great perks. And when people come to us, I catch up with everyone. I meet everyone before they come in one-on-one for a coffee. And then I try and catch up with them after a few months. And I'm like, how does it feel for you? And what's great and what's not? Where could we do better? But people are like just such a great team, like such nice people. Everyone cares. And that's I hope that's the family thing that comes through. It can come through in a corporate, it should be able to, but you can really do it when it's small. You can make the right decisions.
Ben29:38
Yeah, I've run one myself and I've felt that myself too. Is if you create something, I always felt honored someone would want to work for me, quite frankly. Yeah, and then, like, how do I make this awesome for you so that you go away with a good experience? Yeah. I mean, I've got I have never written on the wall, but next company I make is going to have written on the wall, get shit done and have some fun. And that's kind of the philosophy I try to work to because you've got to work hard to make things successful, but you want to enjoy it, right?
Aimee McCammon30:06
I am big on the having fun at work thing, which has been really interesting for me as a leader and someone who was in a leadership role quite young. I was only 34 when I was running my first company, and it was staff of 80 in an industry I hadn't worked in before. So I was pretty naive. And it was hard. And when you're sort of young and blonde and inexperienced and female, and you're working down the country, and that it's different in the regions. People see you joking around at work, they're like, What is this a real CEO? You know, I've had this in nearly every job. Still, even now at 54, I'm like, Are you a real CEO? I've had that. And I just, what am I not allowed to have fun? I'm not gonna not have fun. Like it's hard work. Being a leader is such hard work. It's so hard. People are so tricky. People are the hardest part. I love them, they're the best part, but it is the hardest part of your job. And if I'm not able to have some fun, I think you should be able to do great work. You should be able to make money for everyone, and you should have fun. Those are my three rules.
Ben31:09
I I would take that as a huge compliment. Are you real, a real CEO? I'd be like, that's a compliment because it means you're doing differently to most of the time differently, yeah.
Aimee McCammon31:18
And also everyone now is like, you're gonna turn up as your authentic self to work. And I'm just like, I could not work somewhere where I had to be somewhere different. Like it just doesn't work for me. It's not even a philosophy, it's just it would make me unhappy. I've had jobs where I've been unhappy and it's you lose your soul a little bit. Yeah, it really hurts my soul. And in every job, even the jobs I love, you have to do things that you question your soul and what you're doing, right? You have to make compromised decisions, and it's horrible. That stuff is really hard to do. So you've got to be having fun while you do it. It's got to be good because the hard stuff is so hard, you know. Hard stuff is very hard.
COVID Pressure And Finding An Investor
Ben31:57
So we've talked about having fun there, but uh, we had a little chat beforehand and we talked about people often say, you know, profit fuels purpose, i.e., focus on the money, then you can do the good bit. And I've always wondered, really, or do you this purpose fuel profit? If you really nail your position and do this well and believe, then the money will come. Is the money the goal or the scoreboard? And you actually took over picks when it wasn't necessarily doing as well as it could have been financially. How do you deal with that? I can imagine, especially if you've got investors and you know, business advisors are going, cut all these initiatives that you're spending money in, focus on getting rid of some people. They're the classic things companies do in those situations. What's your feeling on that relationship between those two things and how you make difficult decisions when they do come around?
Aimee McCammon32:41
I want to give you the um, this is maybe the wimpy answer, which is like it's symbiotic. Um you're gonna sit on the fence.
Ben32:47
Is that what you're saying?
Aimee McCammon32:48
Yeah, that's probably about let's see which way you push me. I'm really idealistic, and that comes from being emotionally driven, right? And when I came into this job, because I've been advisory board for ages and we'd had such an incredible run, like incredible. And if you go back to the PG textbook, why did we have such a great run? Well, we had a great product, we had a great story, we had a massive first mover advantage. We were the first, we disrupted the category. You get a huge foothold. It is quite hard to tip the first player. I mean, it happens all the time, but it's hard because we had the traction. We were first in New Zealand, we were first in Australia. So we had quite an advantage. And I'd been through all of this growth, right? And it was just such a great story. It was the easiest board I was on for a long time. You know, it was advisory. Pick was the only director, he had all that legal responsibility. We'd turn up, we'd be like, what do we do? Oh, we did this and we sponsored this thing here, and we gave some money to these guys. And what did we learn? Well, I don't know, I don't know, no one's written it down, but shit, the sales are through the roof, and we'd be like, great, see you in six months. Like, honestly, the run just kept going. And probably about 10 years in, and I remember saying at the board table, oh guys, we have to really think about like it's gonna slow. And we have to think about that. And everyone was just like, oh, you don't know what you're talking about. And I was like, maybe I don't. I mean, I didn't start the company, I am not running my own business, I'm just advising other people. And we could see when COVID happened, and it was a come, it come to Jesus for a lot of companies, right?
Ben34:21
Especially if you got overseas supply chains.
Aimee McCammon34:23
Yeah, and it just all happened at once. So we just purpose built a beautiful factory, our fourth factory. But the first time we'd borrowed a lot of money, a lot of strain on cash, we'd factored in the kind of growth that we'd been used to. And COVID, March 2020, the margins were starting to tighten up. And then it's like the million-sided whammy. So we're paying for the factory, the shipping went haywire. You know, you just couldn't get boats through, no peanuts, you're not making peanut butter. Peanut supply went crazy. So we used to get our nuts out of Australia. They couldn't supply us anymore, so we had to find somewhere else to get nuts. The commodity nut pricing went through the roof as well. The business was really expensive to run, so the overheads were running, you know, the factory's like five times the size. The power bills were huge. Um, you're still, we'd never done a price rise in the market. I don't know how we missed that. We just hadn't done a price rise. It would be like 15 years. We'd never increase the price because we had good margins, right? So we're all being generous. It's very easy to be generous, giving Watson money away to the community. It's all good. And then it just all of a sudden started tightening up. And at the board level, we had a CEO who was getting ready to retire. And at the board level, we're going, right, it's time. We have to do something different. But what happened in those two years is it just it was a clusterfuck of proportions, you know, and you can say that now. I think we didn't even realize how bad it was. You're just trying to survive, and the cash flow was a nightmare, and the team were doing the right thing. We've always been a good cost control company. So they were pulling in, which is a real temptation, right? So, me as the storyteller, I'm like, oh, no, no, no, no. You never pull in, you expand. This is our time, right? So I went in idealistically and I just started digging, and we were running the finance over 30 mil turnover, running the finances on Excel sheets. No finance person in the business, no accountant in the business. It's amazing. It's amazing, right? But when it goes wrong, it's so wrong. So I reckon I ran that company for a year. I went to the board and I said, I'm not believing any of these numbers that I'm seeing. They just don't feel right, and I can't put my finger on why they're not right, and we just don't have the skills. No one was doing anything dodgy, which is affair. You're like, holy, have we missed something? Everyone was doing a great job with the tools that we had. It just the tools weren't right for where we were at. It took a year to unpick that, and we just had to run it on, I had to run it on a gut instinct. Um, I'm really comfortable working on gut, but when you're in a delicate financial position, that's quite scary. And Pick had sort of gone, oh, Amy's here and I don't have to worry now. And then things had to go backwards before they went forward. I didn't have the right leadership team. There have been an amazing team that have built the business. None of them from FMCG, perfect at the time we broke all the rules. Suddenly, when you're massive, the number one player, but no one knows how it works, you're in trouble. I didn't know how it worked. I didn't run FMCG factories before. So we had to bring in a new team, and I was like, oh, we still got to do good stuff. And then I looked at the numbers and I was like, if we don't get on top of this, we're not gonna be doing good stuff for anyone because none of this 50 people are gonna have a job if we don't get on top of this, let alone supporting all the great stuff we do in Nelson. So I had to really focus on driving profit. I actually focused on driving the top line up first because that's what I knew how to do. We've grown the top line significantly every year I've been there, but it took two years to get it to the bottom line, and that was really scary. And I wanted to expand everything and do new things, and I'd put in money. Pick had been putting in money since the beginning, and I was like, this is this is gonna be too big probably for us. And I talked to Pick and he was like, Oh, please, no more. And I was like, I reckon we're gonna have to look for an investor because I can't, you know. We discussed, should we make it smaller? So Pick being contrary, he's like, Why do we keep growing? You know, why do we do that market economy thing? Why? Why? Why don't we just do New Zealand? Why don't we pull out of export? And it's a really interesting idea, right? Like just feed your own people. Like, what if what if there's a zombie apocalypse? You know, feed your own people.
Ben38:56
Can we all need peanut butter?
Aimee McCammon38:58
Can we grow peanuts in New Zealand? We we started trials to go, what if the world gets cut off again? Which we saw that in COVID. So how do we create a way to feed our people? Anyway, I'm not an accountant, but like even I could run the numbers on that factory. I'm like, this factory is could feed more than just New Zealand. We can't afford to run it without a bigger market. And there's something cool about you know, Kiwis, we're so small and we're always still a little unsure, you know. And when we we take products overseas, like just nothing makes us prouder. Like people go, Oh, do you sell overseas? And we're like, Yeah, we're 40% export.
Ben39:33
And they're like, Oh, that's so cool. We've made it Kiwi Pride.
Aimee McCammon39:36
Yeah, yeah, totally. It's like deep patriotism. So, you know, we had to drive profit. We had to drive profit. Um, you know, and we had to go and find an investor, and that was a really big call. You're bringing in people that are outside the family. That's not what we thought. I was like, they're gonna be intergenerational, it's gonna be a hundred years, you know.
Ben39:59
So, did you keep all the environmental social initiatives going through that time?
Aimee McCammon40:02
Yes, yes, we did. Yeah, but it was hard. And I asked myself a lot of questions about it because there's big cost to a lot of it. Big cost.
Ben40:14
But it kept your soul.
Aimee McCammon40:15
Yeah, it did. But but there were some dark nights of the soul.
Ben40:18
I bet there were. There's a lot of leap of faith in that. Yeah. And and when you looked for an investor, I imagine you need someone who's pretty mission-aligned on that. Because again, an investor or private equity could come in and go, yeah, we'll get rid of all that cost.
Aimee McCammon40:30
100%, right? And so whoever wants strategic money, basically. We went out to have a look, and I've been involved in a couple of cap raises in other companies. So I wasn't unfamiliar with the process. And we went to the big food companies because you go, you need strategic. There's a lot of power in the supermarkets across Australia and New Zealand, you know, it's a well-documented story. And so we're like, who would give us more firepower? You know, do you go with someone like Goodman Fielder, who they own a stable of food brands? So when they go to the negotiations, you know, they're like, well, they've got power too. Yeah, we're we're in every aisle, you know, PG, Unilever. So we talk to those guys, we talk to PE. I think what made me nervous is the PE teams, they say all the right stuff, but I'm like, I know how it goes in the background, you know, they'll turn on you if they need to because they're driven by the numbers. And the food companies, you meet some really cool people in them, but are they there in two years, right? So you might deal with someone who shepherds the investment through and they they believe in it and they love your brand, and they're like, this brand's great because they do B Corp or this brand's great because you know they're growing trees. But in two years, if that person's gone, is that still there? So we'd actually talked to, we put a company on the list who were a company we'd met when we were um chasing boats around the world, and I was suddenly like, we are not supply chain people. We need to concentrate on making peanut butter. So we went out to get someone who would handle all of that for us, basically nut brokers. And um, we met a company, they're an Aussie and New Zealand company, and um they do stuff we don't do, right? So supply chain, they're pretty cool. They're family-owned, which I think is it's a factor they play out, and you go, that's nice, that's a good tick the box. Um, and we did meet, we met the family and we put them on the investor list, and we went out to them and they went, nah, we're just not ready. You know, we're we're doing other stuff at the moment, it's not what we're doing. We're like, oh yeah, okay, that's cool. And then we kept going through it, uh, me and my uh CFO at the time, and we were chatting, and we're like, no, we can see it. We reckon this is right for their business, and we reckon the family thing is really what holds us in because they they don't buy and sell stuff, you know, they're very the family is deeply involved, all the siblings, um, their MD is my age and the son of the founder. And we went back to them and we said, you know, how you guys have said no, but we actually reckon, we reckon you should do it. And this is why we reckon you should do it. And we did it with them, which was really cool.
Ben43:08
So that's not just mission aligned, it's actually vertical integration in economics terms.
Aimee McCammon43:12
Exactly.
Ben43:13
In a textbook terms, it's actually between the two of you, you actually own a supply chain, which also is huge risk reduction, right? When you've got especially when, as you said, like COVID, your raw materials are at risk if you can't get them in the country. I know another um really successful up until COVID food brand that went um broke in that time. And they were great, they did really well, but they went bust because they just couldn't get ingredients. So you've actually you've mission-aligned, you've vertically integrated, and you've actually reduced risk. It's very strategic. And you've got enough money to keep you know feeding the whole of New Zealand's rear factory.
Aimee McCammon43:45
There's a beautiful textbook case in it, but I think the the family thing really clinched it. And that's that sort of being driven by, you know, what feels good and in the emotion again. And trust me, we are a very quirky family company, very quirky. Quirky family company, which I love. Like I delight in that unexpected weird shit that we do. These guys are a really quirky family company, but I tell you, that our quirks are completely different.
Ben44:11
Different quirks.
Aimee McCammon44:12
Completely different.
Ben44:13
It wouldn't be quirks if they're the same quirks.
Aimee McCammon44:16
So, you know, that's that has been really interesting. It's been a really interesting journey going through that and kind of integrating our different value systems.
Ben44:26
And quirks.
Aimee McCammon44:26
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, they're not a B Corp.
Ben44:29
Yeah. I'm sure you're going to sort that out for them, eh?
Aimee McCammon44:32
Yeah. And it's been fascinating to watch what they were attracted to. Like it wasn't the beauty of our books and our margins and our profits at that stage. It wasn't the incredible efficiency with which we were running our factories. That's not what they bought. They bought the brand and the story. That's what they loved. Because they that's not what they do. It's what we do beautifully. So it's kind of been a really amazing marriage in that respect, bringing really different things to the table. It's tricky. There's plenty of tricky stuff about it, but it's been pretty
Advice For Founders Who Want To Start
Aimee McCammon45:05
good.
Ben45:05
Now, um, one of the key goals of this podcast is to get more people to have a go and start companies like this. Yes. Because the world needs them, you know. We need to build brands and companies that are gonna change the world for the better. You know, we business as usual is not really working. And to use the Patagoni words, business unusual is what we need more of. And you guys are business unusual, right? It is a great problem. Um the great challenge, I think, though, you know, if I'm sitting somewhere sitting here going, I want to be like Amy and pick and start the new one of these, is suddenly, especially if you're sitting in Sydney where I am, they're going, Great, I'll just rent her this and then you go, I can't afford that. And then I'll do this. And you know, Pick started in a small town New Zealand on his kitchen bench. He could afford to live that life because it's got a fairly low cost. He's got markets where probably people spend the time and that sort of thing. Do you have to be in those situations to be able to start these companies, or can you do it from a more difficult sort of city environment? And if someone was sitting here going, I want to start when I don't know how, what advice would you give him?
Aimee McCammon46:08
You should just definitely do it, right? Like, what's the worst thing you can do is fail. Like, does it matter? Pick's done a million things before. Did they all work? No. I mean, this has really been his sort of biggest commercially successful venture, but he's done so many other cool things. And I see the kind of satisfaction that that's given him, even when it's not an economic or financial success. You know, it gives you it's given him freedom. Like he looks at things differently. He has the energy of an entrepreneur and a founder, and he's not afraid to do it. And I can see why people would be fearful. And a lot of people have said to me, why don't you start your own company? And I have a great friend who's he's always just been onto it and he's run some interesting companies. And he said to me, Why don't you start your own agency? I'll back you, I'll give you the money. And I was like, mate, you'd make more money running a dairy. Like I just I wouldn't want to take that money off you. And I don't know if that's my mindset. I realize what I'm best at is helping other people make sense of their brilliant ideas and bringing some kind of order to that chaos without squashing the spirit of it. That's just what I'm good at. But you know, would I get involved in a startup again? A hundred percent. You know, like I would do it again, and it's gonna be, it would be with someone who thinks differently to me and does it differently. So you just do it. Like the world needs more people doing cool things, and you will learn along the way. And maybe that one doesn't work, but the next one does, or maybe five don't work and the next one does. Don't be reckless, though. Please don't be reckless. You know, I've met reckless people who go, Oh, I've been bankrupt three times, but all successful people have. You know, there's reckless and then there's just giving it a go. And I think everyone should give it a go. Is it easier in a small town? Some things, but some things not, right? Like you can spread the word easily in a small town, it's cheap, but how are you connected to your distribution networks? You know, like shipping out of Nelson is really tricky. Road transport out of Nelson is really expensive. To get to the North Island where the population is, the ferries often don't run, things arrive late. Like it that's tricky. If you're somewhere like Sydney, you're surrounded by, you know, innovation and ideas and people who can help and someone who knows someone in connections. Like they're really rich in a bigger center. But yeah, people should do it. I go and talk to university classes sometimes like you, and in fact, um, Waikaro uh university, which is in Hamilton, just did their business case so using like that Harvard Business School business case theory, and they did picks as their final year business case study last year. And to have those teams, I went up to the Waikaro and allowed the course to ask me any of the questions. You know, we gave them financials, we gave them the good news, we gave them the stuff that's been bad. And then they just come back with such cool stuff. And to see those kids and go, you know, you you guys are the next generation that are gonna come out and do it, like that is inspired. I get really excited. I'm like, I got five more years left, you know. Like I can't wait to hand it over to you guys and see what you do. What are you gonna do next?
Ben49:19
If you had to give them three tips, so you get just three things you could tell them. What would you tell them?
Aimee McCammon49:24
Work hard, make money, have fun.
Ben49:26
Love it. That's pretty shit.
Aimee McCammon49:28
It is, right? Like, I don't know anyone, you know, and by 54, I've seen you've seen a lot, you know, and you become much more forgiving. I think the younger you are, usually the more judgmental you are. And you have a very black and white view of your life that it's gotta be perfect and it's all your CV's gotta be built, you know, in a straight line. And that's not what happens, you know. The people that you think are gonna be most successful at school, it just they're not, you know, bad things happen to good people. Um, so you just gotta you gotta hold the line and be optimistic, and you have to work your ass off. Like, I have never met someone successful who has not worked their ass off. Never, never. You get lucky and you need luck, but no one just gets lucky and doesn't work hard. I've never seen it.
Ben50:17
I would agree with that. But if you believe in what you're doing, it makes it more fun. It motivates you to do the work, right?
Aimee McCammon50:23
It's a great time. I used to work 80 hours a week in advertising, but like I've just I've never worked with such smart people. Like the mediocrity was not a thing, but you just worked with incredibly clever, clever people, and it was so stimulating. And you know, the best thing was to be the least smart person in the room, you know, and even and as a leader, sometimes you're like, holy shit, everyone's looking at me, and I'm not the smartest person, and you shouldn't be. You don't want to be the smartest person in the room. That is not inspiring. You want to be with other people that are more inspiring.
Ben50:58
It's how you learn, it's how you grow. It's uncomfortable, but it's how you're very uncomfortable.
Aimee McCammon51:03
Always employ people who are better than you. Always.
Ben51:05
It's a good tip.
Aimee McCammon51:06
Yeah.
Ben51:07
What's one thing people are surprised by when they find it out about you?
Aimee McCammon51:10
I have a certificate in sound engineering.
Ben51:14
You could have helped me with my setup. Where were you about six months ago?
Aimee McCammon51:17
I couldn't do it now, actually. It's from when I was about, I think it's 1987. I think I was 15. I went to this live in for like a week, live in recording studio course. I think we're only working with a 16 track or something. Um, I wanted to be a roadie, I thought at the time.
Products And Where To Buy
Ben51:34
Now, we are gonna have to tell people where to buy how to buy some if they want. I was thinking actually, there's a jar just next to you. Do you want to grab it? There's actually a few jars. Tell me.
Aimee McCammon51:44
I'm gonna show actually I'm gonna show the classic because it's just my favorite. This is my favorite. I've basically in Australia, so when you're growing a brand, normally it's really hard to get, right? We have the largest distribution of any peanut butter brand in Australia. I know it's crazy. It's because we were here first. So, woolly's, cohl's, LD, sometimes, job lots, Costco, and IGAs.
Ben52:11
Costco, if you want it by the bulk.
Aimee McCammon52:12
Yep, we do a 1.5 kg at Costco.
Ben52:16
Oh, wow.
Aimee McCammon52:16
1.5k. For the true peanut butter. It's a really decent size. You will eat more, though. I'm just wanting to.
Ben52:21
It comes with the trail.
Aimee McCammon52:22
Yeah. Um, but this is our classic 380 gram glass jar. And inside this label is a poem. Got a few different poets, usually Bill Smith, one of our most famous poets. And what you do when you finish the jar, you just fill it up with hot water, and then the label will peel off whole, and you you get the poems.
Ben52:41
Make your poetry collection.
Aimee McCammon52:43
Yeah.
Ben52:43
And then there's crunchy, there's smooth. And what do you call the halfway? You call it smunchy.
Aimee McCammon52:48
This one's actually called smoochie, and I'll tell you what. Smoochie. No, it was called smunchy, but there's another brand that used the word smunchy, and they didn't care for us to use it here as well. And we couldn't be bothered to pick a fight. It's just a mix of smooth and crunchy. So it's either smunchy or smoochie.
Ben53:05
Smoochie's actually better.
Aimee McCammon53:07
Yeah, I like it. We did a Valentine's Day relaunch when we renamed it smoochy. Um good marketing. Oh no, this is a really funny story. So we had this awesome marketer. She's our head of marketing, and she had been a client of mine when she was a grad. I was working with Whitaker's chocolate, which, if you're a Kiwi, is like another this the country is so proud of Whitaker's. And it's, I think it's our number one trusted brand, like the head of the all blacks.
Ben53:34
I'm obs wow. I know. I'm obsessed with the peanut butter little blocks that they do. Oh. Oh, they are, I'll just chomp them.
Aimee McCammon53:43
I make a great chocolate. So I met this girl when she was a grad girl called Caitlin Attenborough. And I'm like, oh my God, this kid is sassy. I love her. And I was like, oh, we've got this little family peanut butter company in Nelson when it was quite little then. I was like, if you ever go back, she was from Nelson. I was like, if you ever go back to Nelson, give me a call. And um, she ended up becoming our head of marketing, and this was her idea. She actually does work for us in Australia now, too. She works for both us and Whitakers in Australia.
Ben54:11
There you go.
Aimee McCammon54:11
And in New Zealand, we have a Whitaker's Picks combo chocolate peanut butter, which is amazing.
Ben54:16
Can you get it online?
Aimee McCammon54:18
Yes, you can get it online here. I really want to get it into Woolies and Coles because it's a beautiful product. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But it's two great brands together, which I love. Anyway, Caitlin was trying to come up with some new product ideas, and Pick, Pick hates new products, so he only makes what he likes, right? We had to talk him into making a smooth. He's like, that's bullshit. We're not doing smooth. I was like, you gotta do smooth dad. He's like, anyway, he got overruled, but he didn't like anything else. It took me five years to get the chocolate product made because he doesn't eat chocolate. He's like, oh, doesn't have a sweet tooth. Anyway, Caitlin came to me and said, Oh, we've got this idea about a combo of smooth and crunchy. And I was like, oh my God. I was like, that's so gimmicky. And she was like, Oh, they actually do it in the UK and it works quite well. And I was like, I mean, it's a gimmick, but if you reckon, you know, it'd be a bit of fun and get us some attention and talkability, and people would like it for us, like, do it. It's like our number three product. So what a great work. Go Caitlin.
Ben55:12
What do I know? Go, Caitlin.
Aimee McCammon55:14
Okay. I said it about the iPad too when it came out. I was like, what is this iPad? It's like, it doesn't know if it's a laptop or a phone. I was like, this will never catch on. Yeah.
Ben55:24
So there you go. Kids everywhere. Yeah. Yeah. My my daughters grew up watching, you know, ABC kids. I know. And then I remember the day one of them walked up to the TV and tried to swipe it to change the channel. I know. My kids are like they don't get out. Yeah. There wasn't a TV, it's the big iPad.
Aimee McCammon55:41
Yeah, my kids are always, and even on the laptop. So there you go. Yeah, crunchy, smoochy, and smooth.
Ben55:48
And my son eats the smooth. There you go. Well, the kids like smooth, eh?
Aimee McCammon55:51
Yeah, he likes it in that kind of soft bread sandwiches. Really, most schools in New Zealand you can't take it to because of allergies. Um but we straight after school, the first thing I give him is a peanut butter sandwich. And then I'm like, then you can have the chips or the cookies or whatever you want, preferably the fruit, but you know, usually the cookies and the chips. Because I know that he's kind of had something healthy. I mean, it's really healthy. Five star. Good fat, protein, fiber, you know, it does, it ticks all the boxes. It's really good.
Ben56:20
And if someone just can't make it to the supermarket or they're sitting listening somewhere deep in the world, you can actually get it at PixPeanutButter.com too, bro. P-I-C-S, that is. No, no kids. P-I-C-SpeanutButter.com.
Aimee McCammon56:34
Yep.
Ben56:34
Yeah. And you guys are all over social media, I bet you are. Yes, we are all pickspeanut butter, picks underscore peanut butter, picks hashtag.
Aimee McCammon56:42
Um Insta, Facebook, big, it's really interesting. The audiences pick everyone on Facebook because it's like the boomer channel. Sorry everyone, no judgment, but it's the boomer channel. They love pick. Anytime we put something up with pick, especially the guy dog, he just goes crazy. Insta's all the great food porn, all the stuff that's happening in Australia, all the cute Pilates stuff that we do, and the kind of health numbers day stuff, which is awesome. And then TikTok has really gone crazy
Final Takeaways And Farewell
Aimee McCammon57:12
for us.
Ben57:12
Um, well, it's been wonderful talking to you.
Aimee McCammon57:15
Ben, thank you. I love this. I could just yarn to you all day. So much fun.
Ben57:21
See if I can find some more questions.
Aimee McCammon57:22
We'll do part two. It's great. Thank you for spreading the good word about, you know, you say entrepreneurs, but you know, just everyday people doing extraordinary things, right? And giving it a go. Like it's it's really hard work and it's hard to keep up the enthusiasm. And every time I do something like this, it reminds me of the privilege of doing it and the enthusiasm. But I have plenty of days where I just want to crawl up on the sofa and put a pillow over my head. You know, you've got to keep going. So thank you for doing this.
Ben57:54
Thank you. Look, the hope is more people learn how, more people inspired how, learn how, and have a go. That's how you change the world, right? Totally. Totally.
Aimee McCammon58:04
All right. That's great. Hold it for that. Thank you.
Singers58:07
I'm gonna change this world today. Make those bad things go away.
