Hiya Health - No Sugar, No Dyes, No Compromises

Ramon Vela (00:01.946)
Welcome back everyone. This is Ramon Vela and I have an amazing show for you today. I have with me Darren Lit, who is the CEO and founder of Haya Health. Welcome to the show.

Darren (00:31.061)
Thank you. Happy to be here.

Ramon Vela (00:33.178)
Well, I appreciate you making time. I love to have founders, but I also realize that you're running a business, so you're busy, and I appreciate you making a little bit of time for me and my listeners to get to know the brand, get to understand what you do and why you do what you do, and why matters, and why we should take a look at the brand. So let's start off with my favorite question, which is a question of gratitude. Now, I...

The reason why I asked this question for those who may be just listening or new listeners, I love to bring this conversation down to a very personal person level, people to person to person. And, and I like to humanize a brand because the thing is it's so easy for consumers to see a product on the shelf or online and simply just think it's some, you know, large, faceless corporation. However,

you know, there are people who really care deeply about the product quality, who work behind the brand, who bleed and sweat and tear over the brand. And I want you, the listener, to know, and it's a great way to get to know who the people are behind the brand. And it's one of the reasons why I ask this question of gratitude. there's a lot of challenges when running a business, and I always think it's great way to start.

a discussion about the journey of the brand and the entrepreneurial journey by understanding and starting with gratitude. So with that said, Darren, if you don't mind, can you share a moment or a memory when someone did something for you that just made you feel grateful because it meant that they believed in you, your vision, or your potential?

Darren (02:06.321)
Thank you.

Darren (02:16.235)
Of course. What's interesting about my answer is my family is connected to my company, so I'm grateful for my two daughters. As you know and as we'll talk about, Haya, we're a kids' So when I was first getting started, I had the perfect audience, my two daughters. So I asked my kids a million questions, what do you think of this packaging? What about these stickers? And most of all,

my kids became little taste testers. And I remember the first time I got some vitamins to taste test. when, and we'll talk about this later, but when you get an initial round, it's almost never what you want. And I gave them to my kids and my girls, they didn't taste the best because it's the first round, but they love playing along. They love being involved in the process. They asked to stay involved. And when you're a dad and when you're a founder, that's what keeps you going. So I'm grateful for the two of them and how they're so impactful in my life and the journey of Haya.

Ramon Vela (02:57.968)
Thank

Ramon Vela (03:10.818)
Well, I love that. I will say, I may have already shared this with you in our pre-interview, but I do try products every now and then. And when I do, always let my daughter, she's in her teens, and I always let her try the products as well. She's into healthy living as well. But what I love about, know, teens, kids,

is they are very honest usually with their opinion. they don't hide it very well, right? Like if you know when they like something, you know when they don't like it. You know, when they love it, you can see it in their face, you can see it in their voice and everything else. I can tell many times when my daughter, sometimes I bring home bars or whatnot.

Darren (03:40.846)
I'm to

Ramon Vela (03:59.56)
And I know really when she likes it because she will say, you know, like, I want to eat healthy, but it's got to taste good. And I'm not going to eat it if it's not. And, and usually the products that she really likes, like they're gone very quickly. Like she starts using them and then I have to hide them because I like to use them during the interview sometimes. But, but yeah, I love, I love doing that. and like I said, the kids are, think are great testers, even for a lot of other products are great testers. Cause again, they, they.

They do not hold back. but with that said, um, you know, it's great to have people in your corner and, uh, and one of the things I love about asking this question is that founders kind of get to share who it is in their corner that really, that really motivates them, helps them, gets them through, you know, these moments of, uh, challenge and difficulties. And, uh, and it's always just great to kind of look back. So thank you so much for sharing that. Um, so.

You you kind of described a little bit of the company to us and I, I, I am wondering if you remind giving us a sort of a high level overview. mean, we're going to really get into details in a bit, but a high level overview, just so the audience understands what it is that you provide. And then, then from there, let's take a step back and let's understand what was that moment? What was that idea that you had and.

that motivated you to start.

Darren (05:30.075)
Sure, so, we're a kids wellness brand. We're 100 % focused on kids and we're dedicated to reimagining kids' health. And I think it's important, as you said, to talk about the genesis.

of Haya because the genesis of Haya really tells the story of what we became. So when I was, when I first had my two kids, right, two daughters, love them. When I first had two kids, I started thinking about health and wellness. I care about health and wellness for myself, but I didn't come from the industry. My background is actually as a tech entrepreneur, but I wanted to know what should I be giving my own kids? Should I be giving them vitamins, probiotics?

magnesium, should I do melatonin, should I do greens powders, whatever it might be, I wanted to get very smart very quickly, not from the perspective of business owner, but from the perspective of a father. So the story of Highes, I asked my pediatrician and I asked my pediatrician, said, should I be doing vitamins? What brand do you suggest? And she said, I have a brand for you. Why don't you order this brand off Amazon? And she's my pediatrician. So I trust my pediatrician.

I ordered a brand off Amazon and it comes in the mail, a package. And it's a kind of a plastic flimsy package, translucent. I could see a number of gummy vitamins filled at the top with artificial looking colors all stuck together. I see a layer of sugar at the bottom. I turn around the back of the bottle to look at the ingredients and there are a number of ingredients I don't understand. The sugar level is wild. The dyes are insane. And I say to myself,

I wouldn't take this for myself, let alone for my little kids. So I go back to my pediatrician and I say, did I order the right thing here? She says, you ordered the right thing. That's what I suggest. And I thought, this is crazy that we as parents are giving our kids what really seems like it's candy more than anything. So I asked a few of my friends, I said, is this what you do into a tea? They all kind of had the same response, which is,

Ramon Vela (07:30.64)
Hmm.

Darren (07:37.888)
Yeah, we give this to our kids. Our kids like the taste. I don't really know if it does anything. It seems like glorified candy to me. And again, from the perspective of a dad, I thought this is not something I'm okay with. So as I mentioned earlier, I was not from this industry. I do not have 20 years in consumer packaged goods or making vitamins, et cetera. But I became obsessed with trying to create a better

not just the vitamin itself, we started with the vitamin, but a whole brand and a whole experience because what I found on the market just was not speaking to me. That was the actual vitamin you put in your mouth. That was the packaging of the vitamin. That was a lack of experience. That was the plastic tub. That was the way brands speak to parents and that's the way brands speak to kids. None of that was working for me. So I set out to say, I'm gonna reimagine this whole space.

And I want to create a brand that it's going to appeal to me, it's going to appeal to my wife, it's going to appeal to my wife's friends, and something that we're all going to want to give our own kids. And that was really the genesis of Haya. And from there, it was just a rocket ship, which I'm sure we'll get into as well.

Ramon Vela (08:53.915)
Yeah, and so I love that story and it's one of those things where I love how, I love there's a personal aspect to it. And I'm imagining that as you were researching and learning and understanding more about all of this, you can quickly go down a rabbit hole of really all the, there's so much, there's so much changes that need to be, that,

So many changes that need to be made in that industry when it comes to, especially for kids, even for adults too. Cause you know, I see adults kind of doing the same thing. They don't want, they don't like pills. don't like, they use the gummy stuff. They use, you know, these low cost supplements sometimes. And you know, when you start diving into these ingredients and what they're made of, how they're made, et cetera and so forth, you start understanding that many of them don't.

Darren (09:26.606)
Mm-hmm.

Ramon Vela (09:49.838)
don't have the efficacy that you're looking for. They have things in them that you shouldn't be eating like sugar and all this other stuff. I mean, it's really, it's all over the food industry in many ways, not just supplements, but I mean, I even look at it from bar's perspective. You you go out for a little hike and you want to take a snack with you and start reading labels and you can really quickly determine like, wow, there's a lot of stuff in these foods that we eat are just not acceptable or shouldn't be acceptable.

And that and people I think are having that experience more and more often. But for you, you not only I'm assuming kind of went through those stages of discovery, but you did something about it. So you decided to create something. Was it was it really from the standpoint of of, you know, was it not was it only well, I should say, what were the

contributing factors for you to actually jump and get off the fence? Was it because you saw this huge market opportunity? I mean, obviously you want to help your daughters and that's the one thing, but to devote your time and energy and money and resources to going in and finding a formulation that works, testing that formulation, doing all the things that you would normally do to start a business like this, that's a lot of work.

But was there something that really spoke to you beyond just your personal issue that you felt like, wow, this could really be a business?

Darren (11:23.298)
Yeah, I think there's two sides of that. There's the mission driven side. And when your company has a mission, it's just easier, right? You're dedicated to making it work. So the mission we're on is we want to raise healthier kids. So everything we do comes from the standpoint of what would I want to give my own daughter? Because the thinking is customers think that way with every purchase they make. If they believe that me, I, the founder,

and comfortable giving this to my own kids and our whole team is comfortable giving it to our own kids, we put much more care into every ingredient. So we brought in a ton of nutritionists and scientists and pediatricians to say, exactly are we gonna put in this? And what are we not gonna put in this? Right? So none of those dyes, gummy additives, sugar. That's the mission that we're on. And that makes life a little...

easier and kind of kept me going in early days. Additionally, I saw the market size as being massive here. When I think of every parent in the world, everybody wants healthier kids, everybody, right? I can't think of one parent that doesn't want the best for their kids. It's sometimes just difficult. Maybe that's because of money, maybe that's because of access, whatever it may be, they want the best for their kids. It's sometimes

Difficult so we have a very big market size here and we have You know, there's there's just a ton of opportunity when it comes to you know The supplement industry and cleaning up the supplement industry It's an industry where people tend to buy again and again kind of repeat purchases, which just helps from a you know a business Standpoint, so I really think I was kind of marrying both sides which is I want to do something that I feel like is making a difference and helping kids

Ramon Vela (13:06.672)
Thank

Darren (13:18.302)
And I think this business is going to work because the size of the market, the repeatability, I think we're doing stuff in a very different way. And there's a lot of me too, products on the market. If you think about without mentioning names of brands or some famous brands from the 1980s that probably represents, you know, that first wave of kids vitamins. And then we moved into kind of this gummy sugary dye revolution.

And there has not been a lot of movements in this space in the last, you know, X number of years. It's wild. So I said, well, what can we do? What can we do? How do we, how do we really imagine this space? And again, that's not just the actual ingredients, but that's literally the whole packaging. So when you buy from us, you get a starter kit and that starter kit comes with a really cool looking bright colored bottle. We sent it with stickers.

You'd spend 10, 15 minutes decorating and personalizing that bottle with your kids. And what does that do? That provides like an emotional connection to our brand from day one. You spend some time making something with your kids. You feel a connection there. Similar mentality to if your child makes a little art project, it takes two minutes. draw, you know, they make a drawing on a piece of paper. It's not the best drawing in the world, but you feel a little, it's tough throwing it right away.

And so we build that connection, you know, which is helpful for our brand. And then from a parent's perspective, they're immediately building this connection to health, right? And so they're making health fun. We're making health fun, not by adding sugar and dyes and gummy. We're making it fun around the ingestible product. So that's just been a focus of ours from day one. How do we create experiences in what's a somewhat commoditized industry?

How do we make the best possible product we have, the best brand we have, the best packaging we have? And we really obsess over all of it, because again, I'm a parent first, and we try to do what I think a parent would want.

Ramon Vela (15:27.216)
I love that example that you gave. It actually reminds me of another brand that really stands out to me. And you guys are doing kind of very similar things in a sense that you're, and this applies to a lot of mission-based brands, but I think others can use it too, other brand owners. You're taking your mission and the...

because of the marketing and your education, et cetera, the parent sees what they're getting and presumably that's why they're buying the product. And they want healthy supplements that work for their children. And so that's part of it, but they're joining you because of that mission. But a brand like yours and like the one that I'm thinking of,

you're taking it one step further. You're not just passive having them, I mean, it's not a passive thing to to buy, but you're taking it one step further and that you're enveloping them in the mission by having them take further action around the mission, which is to customize the bottle, to have that experience with your kids, to have that discussion while they're doing it and so forth. So it's not just,

Not just buying something that you know is gonna be that you hoped and you know or and or hope it's gonna be healthy for your kids But you're you're actually taking them. You're you're having them take an additional action to further cement that That brand message that brand mission, know, yeah, it's almost like you're incorporating them into the branding You know, I mean at that point because they're taking action. I I don't know I I find it from a mission standpoint. That's incredibly effective I

Darren (17:12.066)
Mm-hmm.

Ramon Vela (17:21.272)
I covered a blanket company. They have these wonderful, beautiful blankets and so forth. And they have a whole thing around where if you buy a blanket, not only do you buy, you you get the blanket and it's this great blanket, but you also, they also will donate that blanket to a homeless shelter that's near your zip code. At your zip code or near your zip code.

which is pretty cool. Like you think, okay, that's a good, that's a great mission. But when you receive the box with the blanket in it, the box comes in and in, when you open it up, it says, you know, if you would like to take further action or something like that, you know, here's a list of materials that, you could fill this box up with afterwards and drop off at a homeless shelter or at our partner, which was like a car company or something like that.

Darren (17:49.862)
Mm-hmm

Ramon Vela (18:17.346)
And I just thought that was really amazing. It's like, not only are you, you know, we're, buying into this mission that they have, which are like, you, have parents who are buying into this mission because they feel strongly about it too. But now the brand is asking you to take one step and take action. And in their case, it's like filling up the box, which I did with my kids. thought, this is a real good lesson, you know, for them. And let's fill the box up with stuff, with stuff and everything else.

And we're taking action and I almost feel like what you're doing is very similar in that you are, you know, you're getting the customer to not only buy, but to buy into this mission, but you're getting them to be involved. I don't know. I just feel like when you're, when you take those, when you take those extra steps, it just cements you to the customer and to the mission even further. If that makes sense. don't know. Maybe I'm not very nice.

Darren (19:06.026)
Mm-hmm

I think it's great. think that's what we believe in. When we talk about our product internally as a company, when we discuss product, we don't talk about the vitamin or the probiotic. We talk about the entire experience. That to us is product. It's everything. It's that unboxing experience. It's that decorating experience. Every month we send a monthly game that you do with your kids. That's part of the monthly experience. And I think to what you mentioned,

The key to all this really is authenticity and really believing what you, while you're doing what you're doing. There's a lot of, you know, the trend of the last, you know, 10, 15 years, they had a lot of, you know, give one, get one or whatever that was called and all the brands piled on. And it didn't feel like it was built into the DNA of a lot of the companies that did that. But some of it, it really was. So when you talk about that,

blanket business that feels authentic, you know, even just hearing about it. And I think customers and in case our families, people are smart. They see through businesses, ideas, experiences that feel like they were created in a boardroom or on a spreadsheet or via an MBA presentation and they crave authenticity. And authenticity could take a number of forms to us. For us, it's, you know,

our team, is mainly parents, thinking about what would we want for our own kids. You know, when we all buy our product, we receive our product, we decorate our bottles with our own kids, we see what's working, what's not working. And from an authentic perspective, we do this. Yes, it helps the business, don't get me wrong. Like it helps build lock-in for the brand, but we also just believe it's the right way to teach families about health is to get them involved.

Ramon Vela (20:58.832)
Well, and in similar to that blanket thing, I looked at that brand in a whole new way. It wasn't just a business relationship where they're a vendor and I'm buying a product. And I think that parents who want to be active participants in their children's lives and their health lives and so forth, you're giving them an opportunity

Darren (21:06.573)
Mm-hmm.

Ramon Vela (21:27.364)
to share a moment with their kids. And just that one little thing that you built into the whole customer experience. And that, I think from a parent standpoint, just like that blanket company, I had a moment with my kids when I did this. It made me feel better. It made me feel like an active participant in all of this. And it made me look at the blanket company much differently. The way that I kind of feel like maybe parents who

Darren (21:30.882)
Mm-hmm.

Ramon Vela (21:56.432)
This is a whole experience. they, I mean, I'm just assuming, correct me if I'm wrong, but you know, they order the product, you know, they bring the, the product, they tell their kids about the product. They spend some moments unwrapping, know, unboxing it and then, uh, customizing it, putting the stickers on things like that. You know, it becomes a whole moment that, uh, it becomes an experience that then they share with their children. And I'm just saying that I think when you do that and you do it well, and of course not everyone's kind of.

Darren (21:57.486)
Yes.

Ramon Vela (22:25.88)
gonna, you know, do have this, but I think a lot of parents will have this and it'll become a moment similar to the way I had with the blanket company that parents then tell others about because it becomes more than just like you're just a vitamin company, right? Like you're now helping them create moments where they're with their children and with other people. So, you know, I mean, I know there's a lot more we can talk about, but I'm just saying I'm very impressed by what you're doing.

Darren (22:47.505)
Yeah. Thank you. And I'll just describe something that we

did to kind of take it one step further, we realized that that experience is so key to what we do and that decorating process is so key to what we do and we want kids to really enjoy kind of and take ownership of their bottle because they have ownership of their, you know, this unboxing experience. They're going to want to take their vitamins and probiotics more. So one thing we did recently is we said, well, how do we make it more fun for certain families? And we've started to do really great partnerships with

you know, big, I mean, essentially kind of media brands where we did a partnership with Barbie, where you have a Barbie bottle. We did a partnership with Hot Wheels. We have a Hot Wheels bottle with stickers and we just announced a partnership, like a great partnership we're doing with Disney for a number of their properties. And again, Disney is the ultimate when it comes to experiences and kids. So we're a kids focused brand. That's one thing that really stands out for

us, we're not an adult brand that's slapped on a kid's label. You see that all the time, know, adult brand and then it'll say kids on it. It's the kids version. We're a kids focused brand. We put kids first. So we're finding other brands and media properties out there that say, hey, Disney, you're kids focused, right? We're kids focused. What can we do together? We think that's just a special way to continue to grow that experience.

Ramon Vela (24:00.591)
Hmm.

Ramon Vela (24:21.934)
Yeah. wow. That's fantastic. Yeah. I mean, there's no denying that, you know, that definitely helps. And I think anything that can help with getting kids, you know, a closer connection to health is worth it. And obviously, you know, there's that old marketing saying where, what is it?

you know, enter the story going on in the mind of your consumer. And so they're already looking at Disney platform programs, or they're already looking at different programs like that. The lead loan stitch thing, I was watching the trailer the other day.

That's gonna be amazing. It looks really good. But I remember when my kids were young and taking them and now a whole new generation of kids are gonna experience that whole little stitch in a whole different way. And these are powerful. And so if you can connect them with health and so forth, think it's great. What were some of the challenges that you faced in doing this? Because obviously this is important. So obviously the formulation has to be important.

you know, what you choose is gonna be important. You have to go through regulations and other things and so forth. What were some of the challenges? it in the formulation, in the manufacturing, or in really building sort of the awareness of the brand? I mean, obviously there's lots of challenges, but what stands out in your mind?

Darren (25:37.55)
I'll tell you one challenge that stands out in my mind when you were describing some of those potential challenges. We launched the company March 2020 and

If you hear March 2020, you're probably thinking, oh, March 2020, that's the month, you know, we were all shut down by COVID. So you spend so much time getting ready and getting going and you get punched in the face because the world shuts down and supply chains become tough. know, people aren't going out to retail, whatever it might be. We all know the challenges of, of COVID. So that's hard enough for a mature company to deal with. It's

especially hard for a company that is on month one of launching trying to get punched in the face and deal with, know, are you your containers gonna arrive, your ingredients gonna make it, are people even gonna buy or they have disposable income, whatever it might be. That's the main challenge that comes to mind just because it was so present in that first month. And a lot of times when you think about the founding stages of your

company, you really think about those first few months because that's when stuff's like just the most wild. You have no idea if it's going to be success. You haven't sold to a single customer yet. They might love it. They might not love it. And so I think that is just a uniquely interesting time for us.

Ramon Vela (27:10.308)
Mm-hmm.

Ramon Vela (27:21.712)
And, you know, I've actually, lately I've been having those conversations with founders really, you know, just referring to this as like their COVID story, right? Because this is such a unique event in so many people's lives and so many people have their COVID story. I'm imagining that...

Darren (27:34.092)
Mm-hmm.

Ramon Vela (27:45.742)
You know, once things kind of settle down that, that the company benefited from the online component of it.

Darren (27:53.526)
Yeah, so we see ourselves, we use direct to consumer to sell, right? That's where we see ourselves as a much bigger brand, but one main channel for us is direct to consumer. So we sell a lot online, we storytell online, we describe to customers and our families, you know, what's in our product, why it's great, why this is right for your kids. We do that online. And so when I guess COVID first hit,

if you had asked me day one, is this gonna be good for you? Let's say this is not gonna be good for us. I don't know what you're talking about. Time goes on a little bit and you say, wow, there is now a dramatically different focus on kids' health than there was previous to that. as I keep mentioning, we're a kids' health brand. And if parents always cared about kids' health, post-COVID, when they're sitting at home,

Ramon Vela (28:46.948)
Mm-hmm.

Darren (28:47.116)
and they're worried about a virus out there, they care about it a lot more. So it turned out to be a very arguably good thing for the business itself, that focus on, that increased focus on kids' health. People weren't going to Target and Walmart to buy vitamins the same way, right? So they had to search online. And I think that really helped in the early stages because it's hard to get a brand, build a brand and get it going. But when people have a...

anywhere else to go and that's the month that you launch. We came out pretty hot and in retrospect it was a positive, you know, it was positive for our business.

Ramon Vela (29:26.704)
Yeah, well, and I can imagine that because I remember when it, I remember March 2020 very clearly because I had just come back from a conference in Palm Springs and we're all talking about our plans and what we're gonna do with these partners and everything else. And then a week later, everything closes down. And so I remember very clearly, I remember that the first couple of weeks are, it's kind of a blur now, but for the first few weeks,

You know, I felt like I was stress eating a lot and then watch the news and just, you know, just being indoors and just feeling like, Hey, we don't know what's going on. But then after a little while I realized like, okay, we, better start.

eating healthy again, I better start working out again, better, you know, you know, this is, we're just stuck here, let's just accept it and so forth. And I think a lot of people as time went on, started realizing like immune health is so important, like let's do any, and I know for me, that's what I started doing. I was like trying different products, really just focused on immunity. Last thing I wanted was to get the virus and eventually it did, but it wasn't so bad. Thank goodness. But,

But yeah, I can see where that can happen. As things have obviously tapered off, I think there's a big, there has been, I don't think it started with COVID, but I think it's probably pushed along with COVID is really the trend for people to look at labels, look at nutrition labels, to think about more importantly with the things that are inside their products, at least the consumers that you want, I think. You want people who care about what the ingredients are.

Darren (31:06.99)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm, for sure.

Ramon Vela (31:08.08)
There was something you said earlier about, you uh, and you didn't want to name companies and that's fine. I don't want to, I don't want to throw shade on anyone. But I remember as a kid, there was a brand that I remember where now that I think about it, it's like, they were like candy. It was like candy. Um, uh, and it was, and it was, yeah, I just remember, uh, as a kid, wasn't in the seventies and early eighties. was like, it literally was candy now that I think about it, but anyhow, you know, but, but the,

goodness is that the trend has changed and people care more about what the ingredients are. And I think that the pandemic really kind of helped that. So let's talk a little bit about what the ingredients that really stand out. I mean, I don't know if you want to go through every product, but let's talk, if you can, let's talk high level in terms of the philosophy around the formulations.

Darren (31:47.15)
We obsess over our formulations and we obsess just as much about what we put in as what we leave out. We have a number of different health products. When we first launched, we launched with our kids' multivitamin.

That was kind of the genesis of the story I told with our pediatrician. So I obsessed, we're gonna have every single ingredient in this, in the form and in the amount, we are going to obsess over. And for the first call a year and a half of the company, we had one product. That was it. And we've been through maybe seven or eight different evolutions of that formulation. Some brands see evolutions and reformulations as a negative.

That's built into what we do. So we're constantly evolving the formulation. Science of nutrition is consistently changing our understanding of it, this, and as it changes and as the experts in the space might say, this ingredient actually in this amount, in this form, we've learned a bit more and we've run clinical tests and we've decided that this might be better for a four-year-old, we adjust that.

ingredient. So we launched with our daily multivitamin. We wanted to be very methodical with how we do it because it was so core to what we do, which is let's obsess over the ingredients. If you obsess, you can't then roll out 80 products because you'll lose that obsession. It's impossible to do. I also felt as a founder that a lot of these brands roll out skew after skew after skew.

because they want to just sell, sell, sell products. And the downside to that is it just confuses parents, right? So you have this whole world of health and wellness, which is just confusing to begin with. And unless you obsess over the space the way I do, you see vitamin D3 and K2 in this form of choline and this, this and that. And you say, I don't know what's going on here. Just tell me what to do. So.

Ramon Vela (34:09.04)
Hmm.

Darren (34:10.294)
we said, we're gonna be along this journey with you, we're gonna tell you what to do. So that's why we worked with a ton of nutritionists and scientists and pediatricians to say, these are the ingredients that's gonna go in the multi. We then released the daily probiotic. This is what we're putting in the probiotic. We then released the bedtime essentials. And with each of those products, as I mentioned, I really cared about, not just what we put in, it's what we don't put in. So an example would be for our bedtime product, everybody on the market was just filled with melatonin.

you know, for their kids. And there's, I don't know if you ever read up on melatonin, there's a lot of negatives that happen potentially if you're giving melatonin on a daily basis to your four year old. So I said, does that help your kids sleep? Maybe. Are there other ways, more natural ways, natural ingredients to include that have what's potentially fewer downsides? I think there are.

Ramon Vela (34:40.814)
Mm-hmm.

Darren (35:08.236)
Right? And so we left out melatonin. And that's just an example of not just what do we put in, but what we leave out. And I think that's why our parents really trust us. Cause even when you read the back of our labels, I think you just recognize everything. You recognize the terms, you recognize the words. You kind of alluded to people caring more about health and wellness more than ever. You have the...

Make America Healthy Again movement that's really targeted towards kids. We're riding that alongside the whole movement. believe in that. We believe in helping make that next generation healthy. But to wrap up, we just obsess over all the details.

Ramon Vela (35:56.72)
Yeah, no, I think, you know, it sounds like you guys are on the right track in terms of the formulation. And I like the idea that, you I don't know. And I'm sure it's not a positive, negative or anything like that. There's advantages, disadvantages and so forth. And I always just think that if there's an ingredient that, you know, has some negative effects to it and has a lot of positive effects to it and

I don't know, I kind of feel like it's better maybe just to like leave it out until you have time. And that's the thing with the melatonin, like I'm a little concerned about that as well in terms of the melatonin. I mean, I know it can be...

Darren (36:29.806)
Mm.

Darren (36:39.766)
And no shade if anyone does that. If that's what you want to do, that's great. It's your choice as a parent. There are a lot of advantages to it. It's more should that be the default? Should that be the default in a kid's sleep product? My view is let's start with ingredients that have the fewest known downsides and work our way back from there.

Ramon Vela (37:02.862)
Yeah, no, I agree. And that's exactly what I was getting at. For everyone who wants to take a look at what we're talking about, you can go to hiyahealth.com. That's two words, hia, which is H-I-Y-A, and then the word health.com. hiyahealth.com is the website. You can take a look at that and see, and we're gonna talk about that in a sec.

So in terms of the trajectory of the brand and so forth, just to kind of step back for a second again, also in the early days was the biggest milestone, like I always like to know the win milestone and then the challenges. We just talked about one of the challenges of COVID and maybe they're the same, but I always like to make sure that we talk also about the wins.

Was there a milestone that you can recall where maybe the first, maybe the early ones where you really felt like, wow, I think this is really, this is going to be a, this can be a great business. This could be a big business, you know, like in terms of growth or I don't know.

Darren (38:14.933)
Yeah, I would say I didn't raise outside capital for the business. We essentially bootstrapped the company.

So I do obsess over every metric we have and our front end, meaning the product and experience, it's a beautiful product. fun to look at. It kind of catches your eye. It feels very Instagramable on the back end. We're very metrics driven in terms of, how do we make sure that the actual math of what we're doing makes sense? So when you talk about wins, we're

or a monthly service, meaning it's a subscription service. And once I started to see that, you know, that retention curve, what's interesting is if you don't run a, if you do run a subscription-based business in kind of the CPG space, you study your cohorts, which is the all the, that month's customers and how they drop off each month. And you study that like crazy and you're trying to get another 1 % out here and 3 % there and 4 % there. But at the end of the day,

every cohort has kind of a similar general curve to it. So I would say once we launched, I could see that curve at three months, six months, 12 months. And I could see the percentage of customers that were staying with us. And it was best in class. Talked to a ton of investors, business owners, and we were being everybody. And so that says something for the, you know, the brand itself.

And that's how from there we were able to get millions of families on board.

Ramon Vela (39:55.184)
Yeah, I love that. And I'm glad you're so, well, it's a DTC company. have to be really numbers driven, I think. And have you ever gone to the sub-summit by any chance?

Darren (40:09.024)
I believe some people in our teams have presented there.

Ramon Vela (40:11.824)
Oh, yeah, I was just curious because I know you guys are being into subscription. I was actually supposed to speak to not this year, but last year I couldn't make it. But anyhow, I heard it's really good. So I want to talk about the products right now. However, I have one more entrepreneurial question. I am always envious of companies like yours where you can create a business that you can make money and so forth, but also.

Darren (40:28.078)
Mm-hmm.

Ramon Vela (40:38.736)
Create a business that has a mission to it, where you are creating products that can truly impact people and really help people. And supplements, obviously, health and wellness is huge. And so I love that combination. Build a business, it's more than just a business because it's also a mission. And when you combine those two, I just think it's great. So if there are people out there

Darren (41:01.165)
Mm-hmm.

Ramon Vela (41:08.592)
who feel the same way. And I think a lot of people do. I kind of feel another trend that came out of the pandemic is that people want to really do work that matters and really create companies that matter. If someone's out there listening, another entrepreneur at a much earlier stages than you, is there any advice that you would give them?

Darren (41:30.36)
So there's two sides to kind of running one of these businesses as you said. There's the mission side and make sure that you are as mission driven as you can be because this thing is going to be hard and you're going to be exhausted and the more that you care, the easier it becomes during those kind of tough times which are inevitable. But you can't just be mission driven. Like you need the metrics and the math to work here. And that's kind of common sense. But a lot of people in the CPG space

the consumer packaged goods space, don't obsess over margins and shipping rates and cost of acquisition. And you need all of that to work, right? So it can't just be, oh, hey, I love this mission and we're gonna run through walls for this. That is great. You need the math to make sense. So if you find yourself too much in one of the two camps, I would say make sure you balance yourself out there.

be as mission driven as you can be, but also know your numbers inside and out because that's what's gonna make the actual business itself thrive.

Ramon Vela (42:38.096)
Yeah, I love that. And you're absolutely right. think there's, you know, I've been doing this since 2018. So I've seen the changes occur. know, people were very growth oriented, growth at all costs, didn't really look at the profitability, didn't really, you know, pay attention as much to the metrics around, you know, unit economics and whatnot.

And so there's been a definitely a towards there out of necessity. But I think you start off that way and you can really build a great company. And I just talked to an owner yesterday about this from a company called Blue Nations and he had a lot to say about that too.

Darren (43:18.222)
And that's something that we've as I mentioned earlier, we're we bootstrap the business. I bootstrap the business that we have a choice, right? This was not, hey, let's go raise 50 million dollars in venture financing and grow, grow, grow at all costs. If we wanted to grow, it's because the numbers worked. Right. So we needed the the map to work or the company was not going to work. And that was not easy to do. But within five years of our launching as a bootstrap business.

Ramon Vela (43:40.09)
Yeah.

Darren (43:46.99)
we sold majority share back in Christmas to a great company called USANA. We sold for 260 million. And I think, mean, we're, don't know of many other companies that have kind of had that rise as like a bootstrapped business. That's not something that's, it's a little lightning in a bottle. We got a little lucky in a sense. I think we're doing a good job. think people love the brand and you put all that together. But at its core, you really have to obsess about, you know, the...

you know, just the business side of it. It's not as fun as, you know, the brand side, but it's important.

Ramon Vela (44:19.92)
And I'm wondering, given what you just said right now, because it's my theory and what I've seen, but not everyone, like you said, buys into it because they're so focused on growth, on the marketing side, the brand side, they don't really pay attention to the unit, to the economics of it.

But it's my belief that if you can run a really profitable company, if you can run a profitable company, can grow it and you find that formula, that process that works for you, then you obviously pay attention to the brand that when it comes time to raise capital and or sell a percentage of the company, you are in a much better, you have a much stronger hand.

you have more leverage than you would if you really, if you were in a place where you weren't as profitable or you weren't profitable and you really needed that cash to kind of infuse, you know, not only just the growth, but also the sustainability of the company. I just think that if you can run it well, you know, and you can be fortunate to and so forth, there's luck involved. If you run it well, you just, have so much more leverage.

down the line.

Darren (45:39.15)
For sure, I think if five to ten years ago during kind of this VC run-up in CPG, not everybody was thinking that way. It's kind of just common sense, right? Like you want to grow a business, you need the numbers to work. You need to be profitable. The more profitable you are, the more leverage you have. If you're not profitable as a business, you've really got a story telling about why you're not profitable.

take on outside investors, which could work and could not work. as a founder and entrepreneur, I think it's great to really be in the driver's seat and maintain optionality. And the ultimate in optionality is when your cash and profitability make sense.

Ramon Vela (46:22.928)
Yeah. I came from the enterprise technology market. So when I started working with brands and I saw how they run back in 2000, I think it was like 2016, how a lot of brands ran, I just thought it was like a distorted reality. Like what are they doing? Like I had always come from a place where you have to be profitable to run a business. But anyhow, let's talk about the products.

So everyone out there, can go to hyahealth.com. Let's talk about the website. What are people gonna find? And most importantly, for people who are listening to this and really love this conversation about the mission, about the brand, about the experience, where do you want them to start with their journey with the brand?

Darren (47:14.825)
So when it comes to starting with the journey,

with our brand, it's different for everybody. Our philosophy has been from a marketing and messaging perspective, we want people to hear about us in all kinds of ways. So we work with a number of health and wellness experts that talk about us on Instagram and TikTok. We go on podcasts and sponsor podcasts. We work with a number of pediatricians and health practitioners who we educate people on the product.

They talk about us. We're very visual. So maybe a parent sees us, you know, at a friend's house. And for us, we know that the average family takes a few weeks at least to make a purchase decision in this space. So maybe they hear about us on a podcast. They see a doctor talking about us. They ask their pediatrician and they mention hi. They go to a friend's house and they see, you know, a Barbie bottle. And eventually they say, OK, this seems like this makes sense.

When it comes to the actual products, it's really up to the families themselves and what products it feels like speaks to them. We put great care into every product and every product we think fits a very specific need. So the question becomes, well, what does that need that you as a parent are trying to fill? Is it that your kids aren't eating enough vegetables? Got it. We have a greens powder that tastes like chocolate milk. Your kid can't sleep well or is, you know, having trouble winding down.

We have a bedtime essentials product. Your kid often gets sick and needs to boost their immunity. We have an immune product. So we have five core chewables that are each essentially daily chewables. As I mentioned, we have a greens powder, which is with our transition into a different format. It's killer for us. People absolutely love it. So again, it's

Darren (49:14.35)
55 whole food ingredients you add it to milk you shake it up. It tastes like chocolate milk You almost think like athletic greens for kids amazing product. We recently released a daily hydration product. So again, every product's really filling a specific Need and it's up to customers and families to decide, you know, what's the most important to you?

Ramon Vela (49:23.152)
Thank

Ramon Vela (49:39.408)
Well, I think the the the mix the things that you have available I think are hit the mark I think for every parent so you guys have done a really great job of identifying those areas that I think a lot of parents care about as a parent myself I've had three kids so I know what it is and I kind of wish you guys were around when my kids were young because I remember having a hard time finding a good multivitamin for the kids

But not only just that, but the probiotic component of it. I don't think I ever was able to find anything made for kids on the probiotic, unless you were choosing something that was already like one of the, you know, yogurt type of stuff that you can buy. And so finding a good one was always very difficult. And the other thing too, is also the greens. Like I have been eating greens for many, many years.

And, I would get mine, a very, you know, health and wellness centric brand that you get, you get in one of those, like, those niche stores. My, kids hated it, right. It was, it was chalky and everything else, but I ate it because it was for me was like, it was about the health, not so much how it tasted, but getting them to drink it. was like nearly impossible. So finding something good like that.

is really difficult. And so you guys have the kids daily greens, also the daily immune, the iron, the hydration. The hydration is a big one too, because you want your kids to stay hydrated. It's really difficult for them to drink water. Like they only remember to drink water when they come in sometimes, or like every now and then. And when they do drink, they want to sodas or something like that.

Darren (51:10.574)
Or Gatorade or juice boxes. Those are like that. So in terms of what I always think about it from. What's.

Ramon Vela (51:31.287)
Exactly.

Darren (51:36.726)
I'm not going enter a space, we're not going to enter a space that we think the products are fantastic. If we think everything is great, that's not our area at the end. When it comes to kind of this hydration world, kids drink Gatorade or, you know, other sports drinks, I should say, all the time. They drink these juice boxes all the time. They're filled with sugars. A of those sports drinks, they don't need to be neon colored like that. Why are they so bright colored? It's probably not that good for you if you have a bright colored sports drink.

So we said kids aren't drinking enough water, they're not getting enough electrolytes, they're activists can be, they're relying on sports drinks and juice boxes. What can we do? So that's our most recent product, this daily hydration, it's doing very well. Because again, I think it's really tapping into this obvious point that all parents have these similar issues they're dealing with. This one is my kid just doesn't drink enough water and he runs around all the time.

Ramon Vela (52:31.824)
Mm hmm. Yeah. And that's what I mean. It's like, think you guys have done a great job of identifying those those areas that parents are concerned about and care about, but who also find a hard time to find a good product to use, you know, like a kid's daily probiotic and so forth. When I was, you like I said, when I when my kids were young, it was hard to find some. mean, the ones that we found weren't necessarily made for kids. They were made for

like anybody. And so finding these things I think is pretty cool. And you guys have done a great job of identifying the multivitamin and the probiotic, the bedtime, the iron, the immunity, the greens, the hydration, all of that. And on your website, I also love the education component of it about what the difference is regarding how you guys reimagine the vitamin world and so forth. You guys have charts and you guys can, comparison charts, you can see

you know, how others compare, which is actually I'm looking at it right now, which is actually pretty crazy. I'm looking at the number of sugar other brands have and I'm not going to name them, but people can go to the website and they can check it out for themselves. Hiya health.com, but just the, the amount of sugar in that one section. I mean, it's, it's pretty amazing. You guys have zero grams and some of the others have anyone from five to two grams. You know, your competitors.

So that's pretty cool. You have a lot of really good information. In terms of purchasing, so this is available on hihahealth.com. Is there available anywhere else? And do you have any plans to get into retail?

Darren (54:14.158)
We're not available anywhere else. We're very interested in expanding Haya into other areas. We decided to launch on direct consumer because we think for our brand and our product storytelling really matters. When you're on a shelf, you can storytell a little bit, but you can only storytell so much. Same goes for Amazon. We really care about that one-to-one relationship with our families. And we think it's important for

parents in particular who are overwhelmed in their own life and they're dealing with screaming kids and they're dealing with pick up and you know making dinners and whatever it might be they got a lot going on they want to learn but they also want a company that's like really kind of educating them in a way that's approachable so we try to be as approachable as possible and we try to be

as personalized as possible. So even when you sign up for Haya, we have a real member of our team that reaches out. This isn't a bot, right? It's an actual parent on our team that reaches out and makes sure that everything's okay. You email us, we have thousands and thousands of interactions every day with customers. You email us and a parent on our team will get back to you right away. Again, it's not a bot, it's not...

overly scripted, you know, it's we want to be there to really guide you, answer questions that you may have, demystify this world of kind of kids wellness and hopefully just make your life easier.

Ramon Vela (55:50.07)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, I love that. And are you guys available in the marketplaces?

Darren (55:55.554)
We're not, we're not, we're 100 % on our website right now.

Ramon Vela (55:57.782)
okay. okay. It's interesting. Yeah. I mean, there's, there's a lot of places, you know, for, choose from, you know, Walmart and so I had a conversation with someone around Walmart, cause their marketplace is kind of built, being built right now. It's, not as sophisticated as Amazon, but it's, it's sort of like the early days of Amazon, where there, there's an opportunity, but there's still a lot of work to be done. You know, like, you know, there's a,

Darren (56:13.624)
Mm-hmm.

Ramon Vela (56:27.088)
a lot of part on your end that you need to be aware of and all that kind of stuff. But there's opportunities. And then people, by the way, I heard someone tell me a strategy where they're using the Walmart marketplace to basically create a better story to then to pitch Walmart as a, to get into Walmart as a brand as well. So it's an interesting strategy. Anyhow.

Darren (56:50.882)
Mm-hmm.

Ramon Vela (56:55.748)
This has been fantastic, man. I want to be respectful of your time. You guys, I'm very impressed by what you guys are doing. I love the conversation around creating experiences around for parents. I think that's huge, you know, from a parent and kid to do things together and or just to have the child kind of participate in their health. I think that's pretty cool. I think you guys have done a great job in terms of identifying the kind of the concern areas that parents have around their children's health.

And it's made it really easy, you know, in terms of how to choose what, you know, what to choose from and so forth. I love that component of it. And I love that even the entrepreneur and the business side of it that we talked about, I think it's pretty cool. I always like to kind of mix both because I also like parents and the, and people who buy the products to understand that there's a lot that you do in the backend. There's a lot of care and feeding that goes into building a brand like this. And it's not easy. mean, you know,

Darren (57:33.39)
Hmm.

Ramon Vela (57:54.69)
I'm sure you can tell us even more horror stories about things that went on in the company. I mean, everyone has one, but it's difficult. It really is. so I think parents and consumers should know how difficult it is and how cool it is that you're still able to bring this stuff to market. So that's fantastic, Any last words you want to leave with the audience? Anything you want to leave with people listening?

Darren (58:15.859)
Thank you. I mean, I guess just to piggyback on what you said, have, we really, we've entered a very hard market, right? Like we have two customers. Most companies really have one customer. We have parents and we have kids. And so parents are the one making the purchase decisions. Kids are the ones really enjoying.

Ramon Vela (58:33.188)
Mm-hmm.

Darren (58:40.844)
the product. And so I think when we first launched Haya, I understood that I didn't appreciate how challenging that dynamic might be because not only do we have two audiences, we have two of the most discerning audiences in the world. There's nobody more discerning than a mom. We're mostly moms. A parent, I should say, that's really obsessing over their kids health and if they're getting enough veggies or water.

or vitamin D or whatever it might be. And then the flip side of that, there's nobody more brutally honest, as you said earlier, than a two-year-old, a six-year-old, a nine-year-old, whatever it might be. And so, you know, really navigating that dynamic has been, we love it. It's what we do every day. It's not the easiest of things to do, but we really love our families. So I think anyone that's kind of like entering this

Ramon Vela (59:18.256)
Thank

Darren (59:38.612)
industry, just really know who your customer is because sometimes it's not so obvious, right? It's like, if you would have asked us who's the customer, it's the parent, but really the kid that's kind of deciding whether or not they're sticking around. So know in your audience, it's just a, it's something important to do.

Ramon Vela (59:55.47)
Yeah, and I would just say really quick on that, that as a parent, I love what you just said, because you can sell me all day long about the efficacy and about the formulation, about the customer experience and all of that. It really just boils down to will my kid...

like it and will they want to continue taking it? That is the hardest part for parents is kind of going back to that greens example that I told you. I try to get my kids to drink the green stuff and people would just tell me like, just, you know, like get them used to it. They'll like it. I couldn't get them used to it. just, it was a bad experience for them. Even though I was sold on the greens, I loved them. They just couldn't do it. And I think as a parent, you're right. You have two customers.

Darren (01:00:32.654)
Mm-hmm.

Ramon Vela (01:00:44.78)
And the most important for the parent is, yes, I want to be educated. I want to know all these things about the product I'm buying for my kids. But the bottom line, will the kids eat it? Will they continue eating or taking it? That's the key part. And I love that you're thinking about that because that is the hardest part for a parent, right? Like we want our kids to do it.

Darren (01:00:53.422)
For sure. sure. So the challenge for us and what I think really has helped us stand out is we said, taste is everything. We want our kids to make sure that they like

the taste. We understand that. So we obsess over taste. But is there anything else we can be doing separate from adding sugar and dyes to making it more exciting with the actual ingredients? Because there's only so much you can do with ingredients to make something more exciting. So that's why we said, let's make the excitement around the product. Let's not have the excitement be the sugar and the dyes. Let's have it be the bottle. Let's have it be that unboxing. Let's have it be games that we send. So

before you even put this into your mouth, you've spent eight minutes, 10 minutes, 15 minutes as a kid growing that connection to the brand. So you really wanna like this. You really wanna like this product. And if you're iffy about it for whatever reason, we hope no kids are, but if you are, you're prone to kind of, you've kind of bought in when you've spent some time with the brand. So we think that's like something we do, which I don't see a lot of companies do. It's a great, you know.

Ramon Vela (01:02:09.04)
Mm-hmm.

Darren (01:02:18.028)
Our team has been fantastic on it around the idea of let's make it exciting, but don't add the excitement with unhealthy ingredients. Add the excitement around the ingredients.

Ramon Vela (01:02:25.496)
Yeah, yeah, I love that. And I think that's a great place to leave it. And I want to be respectful of your time. And we've gone over a little bit, but I appreciate you making time for us. And I love this conversation. So let's make sure people know where to go again. So if you want to give us the website and your social media or whatever social media channel you want to give, that would be fantastic.

Darren (01:02:47.793)
Hiahealth.com, so H-I-Y-A health.com. You can find us on Instagram, you can find us on TikTok, you can find us everywhere that I think you can guess that you could find us. We have a standing discount for our product. We always do 50 % off the first month. So anybody listening, if you say, this sounds great, I'm not sure if this is right for my family, you get 50 % off your first month. We do that for everybody. It's a great way to try. We do that because we know you're gonna like it.

And so we, it's a great way to kind of get you in the door and it kind of lowers that barrier to entry. we hope you all try.

Ramon Vela (01:03:24.868)
Yeah, I highly recommend it. Everyone out there, we're to have those links on our podcast description, which you can find on Apple, Spotify, pretty much anywhere you listen to podcasts. Simply type in the story of a brand show and you should be able to find it. And I just want to say thank you again to our guests for being here on the show. I really appreciate it, Darren, making time for us. I know you're busy, but this has been a great conversation. I've learned a lot about the brand and I really appreciate and impressed.

by some of the things that you're doing there. So thank you so much for sharing all of that.

Darren (01:03:56.27)
Thank you for being so thoughtful with your questions and conversation.

Ramon Vela (01:04:00.132)
Well, and everyone out there, have just had Darren Litt, who is founder and CEO of Haya Health. Again, we're going to have all those links on our podcast description. And this has been really a great conversation. I think they really fit our tagline, which is products we're buying, brands we're supporting, because it's great mission. They've been very thoughtful about how they come to market and how they present to kids and to your children.

And this is really, as a parent, it's really difficult to find one company that has all these different products that really meet all the different concerns that you have as a parent. And then what we just talked about a second ago, which I find really, really great as a parent is that, you you are sold on trying to get your kid to be more healthier, your child, but you have to make sure you find a company that where your child is also going to be engaged and want to actually take this stuff.

I think they've done a great job on that. as I always say, stay sane, stay safe, stay healthy. And in this case, go to the website, hyahealth.com, sign up for the newsletter. It's probably the best thing to do. That way you keep up to date on their products or promotions, their new things that are going on. Probably a great way to keep up to date on that. Go to the website, check out the packaging and everything else as well. It's really incredible. And then the education component of it, I think you'll find that really, really useful. Beyond that, everyone,

One last thing, we've all been going through lots of difficulty with the pandemic and then with the economy and then politics and then geopolitical wars and just, know, the world's a little crazy right now. So let's just do ourselves a favor. Everyone is going through something, you know, it could be a health thing. It could be illness. It could be financial. It could be all sorts of other things. So let's just do ourselves a favor, be a little kinder to each other, remembering that everyone is going through something. And I know we can make this human experience a better one. Beyond that, thank you.

from the bottom of my heart for listening to another episode of the story of a brand.

Darren (01:05:59.633)
you