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It all started after a year and a half of being unemployed. Thirty-five years old, a Master’s degree, and no job prospects in sight. In 2013, I set out to make good on a promise I had made to myself after I got my political science degree — I wanted to work for an international organization somewhere far away and do some good with my life.

Well, life happens, doesn’t it? I had been job hunting for far too long and was close to throwing in the towel. I took a job trying to help franchise a local health food restaurant to pay the bills. Not my dream job but time was running out to make a move.

That’s where I found Fatso. We were selling it at the restaurant and the feedback from customers was incredible. Fatso, incredibly delicious peanut butter that was enriched with all sorts of good fats including MCT oil, coconut oil, chia and flax, was selling like hot cakes! The name was brilliant, the formulation was a solid concept, but the business owners were not doing it justice.

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One day I got a call from a fellow retailer who knew how much I loved the brand. They told me that the business was going under, and this was my chance to rescue it. I snapped up the company (or at least the recipe, materials, list of suppliers, and the name) for the price of a used car. Fatso as we know it today was born, and I started the long uphill climb towards relaunching the brand.

Let me be clear, I had no idea what I was doing. I had no experience in business or peanut butter for that matter. All I knew was that this little peanut butter had legs and I had to make the best of it. Thankfully, I had a solid background in research owing to my graduate degree, so I set off to figure out how to build a business, starting with a Google search: “how to start a business.”

First off was the minutiae of business: the business licence, the insurance, the trademarking, and incorporation. Then I dug into the fun stuff: I reformulated the recipe for scalability with the help of a nutritionist, solidified a co-packer (making it myself was sticky business, to say the least), rebuilt the retail relationships, and launched a new and improved social media presence and website.

For the first two years I learned the ups and downs (there were many downs) of running this business. I demoed my product every weekend for two years straight, knowing that if I could just get this peanut butter in people’s mouths, they would buy it. I was right. The sales began to grow and with the sales came new listings from bigger retailers. Before I knew it, I had a viable and growing business, and I was able to look in my rear-view mirror knowing I had made the right move.

Today, Fatso is a national brand, and it’s still growing. We are in stores right across the country, including Whole Foods, Sobeys, and Loblaws. We now have two nut butter lines, including three peanut butters and three almond and seed butters. It has been 5 incredible years. We still have a lot of work to do in Canada, but now it is time to turn our attention to a new market, the United States.

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The US market for a brand like mine is incredibly seductive. The market, the opportunity, and the stakes are enormous. The state of California alone is equivalent to the entire Canadian market. The money to be made in the US is truly what drives brands to reach across the border. Incredibly successful brands like RX Bar, Smart Sweets, and Skinny Pop have hammered the US market and achieved exits that land in the hundreds of millions. All you need is skyrocketing growth, unimaginable success, and no missteps, right? The thinking for many brands is, “if it can work in Canada, it can work in the US.” And, oh, how the mightily ambitious can fail.

The sheer size of the US market is the critical problem here. Supply chain demands can be crippling, massive POs with late payout dates can bankrupt you, and a single misstep, like an ingredient recall or packaging issue can blacklist you in an instant. Canadians continue to see the US market as just a bigger Canadian market. This is truly the first mistake Canadian brands will make. The Pacific Northwest is like another country compared with the likes of Texas. California simply can’t be compared to Pennsylvania, Illinois, or Idaho.  Each region must be approached with a unique eye for the market and an understanding of what will work and what won’t work. Has Fatso achieved this? Truthfully, that remains to be seen. What we do know is we cannot superimpose our “Canadian-ness” onto a market like Texas because that simply won’t translate.

However, if you can enter the US and do it well, with an eye to sustainable growth, then the wins are limitless. The ability to grow your brand in one of the biggest consumer markets on the planet offers the ability to fully realize your brand potential. Of course, revenue growth is top of mind, but it also offers the potential for new product development, interesting brand collaborations, and new sales channels.

The US offers a unique opportunity for not just Canadian brands, but brands from around the globe that put all their chips on the table to vie for a spot on their shelves. The US market drives consumer trends, demands, and insights. We continually look to the US for innovation, particularly in the CPG food space, to see what the next big thing is going to be and what is going to drive the future. This is why brands with big ambitions want to test their metal in such a risky market. If you can make it in the US, your work is essentially done. The payoff is huge, the potential is real, and the sense of validation of ‘having made it’ can be found on the shelves in the US.

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So, what is next for Fatso? We are among the ambitious, the bold and the risk-takers. However, we are keenly aware that we must take a sustainable approach. Fatso has started with the region that feels most like home: the Pacific Northwest. We understand this market. As a British Columbia- based brand, these are our people! In many ways we understand people from Seattle and Portland better than we do people from Toronto. Our strategy is to start on the west coast and expand from there. The California market certainly puts stars in our eyes, but we aim to grow as sustainably as possible.

We’ve always tried to practice the principle of “Inch-Wide, Mile Deep” — saturate each market before moving on to the next. We can try to practice this principle in theory, but the US market has a way of taking you on a bit of a roller coaster ride. One minute you’re in Whole Foods in Washington state and the next you’re getting listings out of Texas. It can be difficult to reign back in.

We feel that Fatso is ready for a US expansion and that the US market is ready for us. Over the next three years, we hope to move our brand down the coast into California and into parts of the midwest. I don’t know if it leads us to a big exit or if we simply continue to grow as a lifestyle brand and keep it in the family. What I do know is that the journey will be full of excitement, both predicted and unpredicted. We will have missteps, but we will have huge wins too. The only way to find out what the temperature of the water is to dip your toe in.

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About the Author

Jill Van Gyn founded Fatso in 2016. She ran the business for a full 2 years as a solo entrepreneur before building her team in 2018. Today, Fatso is a nationally recognized Canadian brand that has expanded into the US through retail and e-commerce. In 2020, Fatso made the Maclean’s and Canadian Business Growth 500 List and in 2021 Jill was Business BC's Entrepreneurial Lead winner. Jill runs her business from the family farm in the Blenkinsop Valley where she lives with her husband, Chris, and 2-year old son, Remy. She is a passionate advocate for a range of social justice issues and aims to use her business as a platform for change.

Learn more about Jill Van Gyn at eatfatso.com or on Instagram at @eatfatso

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Whether you’re in the early stages of developing your own brand, have built an established company, or are simply mapping out your dreams of small or big entrepreneurship, you’ll know there are a thousand different items that need to be considered and a lot of moving targets you’ve got to hit simultaneously.

In tandem with money and logistics, you’ve also got to think about the power you require to move things forward. Translation? Who are the right people in your camp that can help drive your vision into reality?

Learning takes a lifetime, and it comes through discovering new things, making mistakes, meeting new people, and asking tons of questions. Fortunately, we’re allowed to pivot, adapt and grow based on our learnings. It’s never too late to learn something new, and it’s never too late to unstick yourself from routines that no longer serve you.

Building a business (or even acclimating to one you’ve built) is like building an airplane while you’re flying. And while there are tons of guides on how to build a successful one, intuition, empathy, and a breadth and depth of knowledge about many different fields of work are all good foundational tools that you can’t necessarily pull from a step-by-step book.
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My name is Dani Roche, and I am a self-taught (and then formally trained) graphic designer-turned-entrepreneur. I started young – I was 12 when I began learning the Adobe Creative Suite, and I was 16 when I opened my first business. The decision to start a business wasn’t really a decision at all; moreso, it was a fast-moving progression of a hobby. Because I never wrote a business plan and grew up with the idea that “creativity” or “the arts” would never translate into a successful career, it took many years for me to see myself as someone who could be a business owner. I didn’t think it was possible to possess both left and right brain thinking, and I certainly didn’t think I could do so and succeed.

Because I believe creativity and design is still undervalued in “the business world,” I’ve listed some considerations that might add to your knowledge bank and provide some guidance in hitting one of those perpetually moving targets.

1) A brand identity can’t just be aesthetically pleasing – it also must be strategic

I’m a graphic designer by trade, so I can happily share that a good brand identity is more than just a logo and typefaces. A brand identity is the way that a company visually communicates to an audience; therefore, visual assets are only a small part of a bigger picture. Design is strategic – it’s not just pushing around pixels and having a selection of brand assets that “do the job.” There is a preconceived notion that design (and designers) aren’t worth the investment,  especially in an automated world where new design tools are templated, drag-and-drop, and turnkeyed.

When you’re hiring someone to create a brand identity, look for someone who asks a lot of questions, tries to understand your business capabilities, target market, needs and is forward-looking. A designer with a solid portfolio is a plus, but you should invest in their ideas beyond just images for a better long-game approach.

2) License your typefaces!

Fonts are more than just the default tools that come pre-installed on your laptop. Fonts are crafted by designers, much like how photos are taken by photographers and drawings are created by illustrators! Consider the importance of licensing the fonts you use the same way you would pay to license stock photography (and not just pull them off Google so you can sell your products).

Fonts are spectacular tools and beautiful works of art with many different personalities. The fonts you use to tell your brand story are designed by someone, somewhere, and they should be treated with respect.
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3) Accessible and universal design for all should be a standard

If you’re starting a new business or are thinking about refreshing your old one, chances are, building a website is top of mind. Because you might be in the early phase of your planning, consider doing your part by creating an accessible web experience.

The amount of accessibly designed websites is not reflective of the individuals out there living with disabilities – be they hearing or sight impairments or neurological disorders like epilepsy. Tools like colour contrast checkers and screen readers can be used to help your website better reflect the ADA Standards for Accessible Design. If you’re unsure of where to start, check the latter to learn more.
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4) Not all “creative” roles can be done by the same person

Your company is rooted in the people part of the story. If you’re a small business owner looking to scale, consider investing in design and branding OR finding a network of freelancers who care to understand what your brand is trying to do or say.

These days, we often hear the term, “jack of all trades, master of none” being thrown around. While there’s nothing wrong with playing in different sandboxes and exploring and learning new tools, the expectation – as a business owner – shouldn’t be to categorize all “creative people” as the same. If you’re running the show, you must identify with how easy it is to be burnt out when you’re doing too many different things at once. Similarly, your team should be able to do the best work when they have focused goals and are committed to something they excel in. For example, someone who is a creative marketing strategist should not be the same person running all social media accounts on a day-to-day basis. Just because these roles are categorized under “marketing” doesn’t mean they possess all-encompassing skills that cover the various disciplines and expertise that fall under marketing.
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5) Be flexible, and don’t get stuck

A brand identity should be flexible, and it should grow alongside you. Even the largest and most recognizable companies rebrand. No matter what scale you’re at, if you think your brand needs a refresh, don’t feel tied down by the saying “if it’s not broken, don’t fix it.” Consider what decisions will help you build a more sustainable future.

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About the Author:

Dani Roche is a creative director and designer based in Toronto, Canada. A product of the internet age, she combines a multi-disciplinary design background with a drive for digital strategy to create thoughtful and engaging output that spans print, brand identity and holistic marketing campaigns. Her empathy, forward-looking and acute understanding of digital communities has garnered her a spot on the prestigious Forbes Under 30 List (Marketing & Advertising 2019), as well as recognition from Marketing Magazine as a leader in Canadian marketing and by Applied Arts Magazine as a design industry disruptor. Dani has also been profiled internationally by Vogue, Fashionista.com, Coveteur, and Refinery29. She currently owns the design + marketing agency Kastor & Pollux and has worked on projects in the realms of fashion, tech, finance, and lifestyle.

Learn more about Dani at kastorandpollux.com or on Instagram at @daniesque

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