When Jordan Nathan launched his direct-to-consumer nontoxic cookware company, Caraway, in 2019, he knew he wasn't the only founder trying to sell a new brand of pots and pans to Instagram-scrolling millennials. But he realized that launching later than his peers was a blessing in disguise in all respects except one.
When Caraway launched, it joined companies like Our Place, Great Jones and Made In Cookware in an increasingly crowded category of online cookware startups. But being a bit of a late entrant gave Caraway exposure to those other brands' products and target audiences, Nathan said on a recent episode of TechCrunch's Found podcast. This allowed Caraway to change its approach and try to fill the gaps those brands left.
Nathan said Callaway initially planned to source pans from factory shelves and target millennials who are looking for better products than they can find at IKEA, but who haven't yet bought wedding gifts. While it seemed like every other DTC cookware brand was on the same page, Callaway shifted gear, narrowing its focus to wedding gifts and beyond, and putting a bit more time and effort into product design.
“It helped us shift our color palette, our price point, and the items we included in our kits,” Nathan says. “While many of the other brands were doing a lot of things right, we were able to carve out a unique space in the kitchen DTC world that no one else was playing in.”
How the company sold its first product set also changed after seeing other brands launch: Nathan said Caraway initially planned to sell the cookware as a set or individually, but when it realized its competitors weren't selling sets, it went all in and launched the set without offering the option to buy the individual pieces.
Caraway's competitors also helped the company decide to start negotiating with retailers early on. Nathan said the company had planned to sell in stores from the beginning, but seeing other DTC brands not considering going into retail, Caraway started negotiating with retailers even before it started selling online. Today, Caraway's kits can be found in stores like Target and Costco.
Getting into retail early allowed Caraway to solidify its position in wedding registries by starting selling at retailers that had existing wedding registry businesses, such as Target and Bed Bath & Beyond, before the company filed for bankruptcy. This made Caraway a more natural choice for couples looking to build a wedding registry than upstart cookware competitors.
Being a latecomer worked to Callaway's advantage in many ways, but also against it in some areas, says Nathan. “We were actually the last to get to market and the last to raise money,” he says. “So when we went to raise money, every investor that we spoke to had already decided which kitchen brand they were going to work on and invest in.”
This made their first funding round a struggle, but Nathan says that after 10 months of talking to five to eight investors a day, they had over 100 investors on board and were able to close their seed round without needing to raise a large amount of venture capital.
But five years later, that late start seems to have paid off: The company has raised more than $40 million in venture capital and expanded its product line to include baking supplies and food storage containers, with new products on the way.