Going Nuts

摘要

Last fall Josh Cohen passed a UPS pushcart in midtown Manhattan piled with boxes from snack company Nuts.com, which happened to be owned by a friend of his. Cohen stopped and stared, impressed by the brand's eye-catching packaging and his friend's evident sales success. But then Cohen, being a marketing guy, decided to do an experiment. Over the next week he asked a dozen people if they had heard of Nuts.com. Not one had. In October Cohen ran into the friend, Jeff Braverman, at a fundraiser. When Braverman mentioned that he was talking to investors about expanding Nuts.com, Cohen sternly advised him to get the word out first "You have a great thing there," he said. "The name alone is phenomenal. But the only way people are finding you is by stumbling upon you online. You can create a national brand. You need to do some marketing." For Braverman, the conversation underscored one of the great hurdles of building a business: How do you turn a reasonably successful midmarket company into a household name?