Throwin’ it back

WOW! Ohhts! hit the streets this week in JANUARY 2017! That’s 4 years ago! 🙀🙀I know time feels pretty irrelevant some days, but wow! I realized so many of you don’t know the story behind Ohhts! so I figured I’d share it! 

I’ll never forget Rob and me pitching Joe and Eric, the guys at @smorgasburg who give makers like me a chance to dream big. We came to them in December, asking to be a featured vendor at their event, figuring it would be Spring. They told us it’d be risky to bring cold overnight oats to the winter Smorg but they loved it and invited us to participate in JANUARY!  It felt like we were dreaming. If you’ve ever made something you love so much and then have other people love it too, you know how I felt at that moment.  And to be honest, I still get that “THIS CANT BE HAPPENING feeling feel each time someone buys Ohhts, leaves us a comment or a 5 star review (check the website, they’re all there!). It’s validating and keeps us pressing forward. Cuz believe ME, owning an e-commerce business is NOWHERE near as sexy as anyone makes it look!

Smorgasburg, January 2017. 

Anyhow, enough rambling. Fast forward and we crushed it... it didn’t matter that we had crazy snow that year or when it was bitter cold... we were selling out parfaits of our overnight oats each weekend for 8-10 hours a day! (On top of our full time jobs, I might add..) Needless to say, it was a tense 3 months! But seeing the expressions of utter delight on new and familiar faces each week, we knew we were on the brink of something great.

WHEN LIFE GIVES YOU LEMONS...

Over the next few years, Ohhts took a backseat, life gets in the way, bills gotta get paid, yadda yadda.  After a personal and emotional Fall 2019, I set my eyes to 2020 and announced we were launching Ohhts in the Spring, blissfully unaware of the pandemic and how our lives would be changed. So cut to April.. couldn’t back out now. We saw the writing on the wall and knew people were going to NEED good, healthy food in their pantries that would also put a smile on their faces. So we went into production.

FULL STEAM AHEAD

We decided Kickstarter would be the best way to see if people would be into Ohhts, and holy cow, were they! With NO ADVERTISING and the support of some great people along the way, we were anointed a “Project We Love” by the folks at Kickstarter after the first 2 days! And less than 2 days later, we met our goal! This is a  BIG DEAL, considering more than 63% of projects fail to meet their goal! We were blown away and we were off to the races!

We ended our Kickstarter in late August, immediately went into filling and packing and were in homes by the first week of October! (I’m still waiting for some sort of Kickstarter award for moving so fast) thanks to our remarkable partners at Brooklyn CPG and Rob’s unparalleled operations skills, we were able to ship HUNDREDS of boxes of Ohhts!, all the way from Brooklyn to Hawaii!

And so here we are... my first blog post... 4 years later, thriving despite the pandemic and thousands of people enjoying Ohhts!, all over the country!!  It’s a freakin dream come true. THANK YOU! 

XOhhts,

Patrick