My wife had been telling me for weeks that she ordered our kids something called a “nugget”. I didn’t think much of it.
I came home from golf on Saturday and there was this orange box in the driveway. It caught my attention:
Great packaging. Then I remembered that my wife mentioned that she was tracking her order with the Shopify updates. That means Nugget Comfort runs on Shopify, which means I can breakdown the sales numbers for Nugget.
In the month of June, Nugget processed more than 18,000 orders. I estimate this to be just north of $4M in sales. But what was most surprising was this was done with ZERO paid advertising. $4M in sales and zero paid advertising. Absolutely crazy.
So How Do Did They Do It?
When people rave about something but you can’t have it. It makes you want it more. This is exactly what happened with Nugget. Before COVID hit in 2020, Nugget had a popular product. But when schools closed and everyone had to work from home, parents scrambled to find things for their kids in the house. Demand shot up for Nugget. So much so that they created a lottery for 60,000 people to buy a Nugget before Christmas. Over 200,000 people signed up to this lottery.
“When you tell people they can’t have something it makes them want it more. Like little kids.” – Daniel Garcia
Remember the ‘Tickle Me Elmo’ craze?
People were selling their Nuggets for twice as much if not more on third party market places.
Now its mid 2021 and Nugget has figured out their supply (sort of, there is still a 4-6 week wait for delivery). But the popularity created by the supply shortage in 2020 and early 2021 still carries over today.
@nuggetcomfort Instagram
Nugget has 414K followers on Instagram (100K on Facebook). I would put this in the mid to large following range for a direct to consumer brand.
If we look at their stats behind their account, I can see that they have an engagement rate of 1.1%. As this relates to brands, this is actually a fairly good engagement rate. Most brands I have studied have 0.2% – 0.8% engagement rate.
Nuggets audience is 96% female and nearly 50% of them are between the age of 25-34.
On average Nugget posts every 1.5 days and on average getting about 3,000 likes per post, however they do have a few posts that have 10,000 or 50,000 likes.
In June Nugget Was Tagged In 822 Posts By Their Fans On Instagram!
People love their Nuggets and they are not shy to share it. This sharing replaces their need for paid advertisement. What’s better than a Facebook ad? People seeing their friends share a product they love organically.
There is some competition for Nuggets but as it stands right now the buzz created around their product has replaced their need to advertise.
The History of Nugget
Nugget was launched in 2014 on Kickstarter to replace futons and be “The Easiest Couch Ever”. This product was not yet geared towards young kids, they were going after college students and young adults. They set a goal of $20K for their campaign, which was reached within 1 day. The campaign ultimately ended up going on to raise a total of $84K.
It wasn’t until 2017, when Hanna Fussell (a former elementary school teacher) joined the team and repositioned the product to be utilized by young children.
“When I saw this product marketed as a college futon I was like, ‘Wrong,’” Fussell, now the company’s chief product officer, said. “As soon as I got one into my classroom, I was like ‘This is really something that unlocks so much opportunity and play and imagination in these kids.’” – LA Times Article
My Review
