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Hey there and welcome back to Farm2Me. We help you discover the best D2C brands and the tech stacks powering them.
We hope you are staying cool! This week we have a new brand to breakdown (Wavy Wonders) as well as a unique tool to discuss (Stack Influence) to grow your brand with AI automated influencers
Now, let’s get started 🛠️
Wavy Wonders Seaweed Crackers wholesale love Seaweed. Just in case that it wasn’t obvious that Wavy Wonders loved Kelp, they made crackers out it.
Wavy Wonders co-founders – Neil & Thomas – both grew up near water, but Wavy Wonders’ love of seaweed only truly took off in 2020. Wwavy Wonders were amazed by seaweed's potential to become a superfood – one that can do super things for both the planet's health and hUmani, too.
So Wavy Wonders founders did the only reasonable thing – quit their jobs and started Wavy Wonders Seaweed Crackers. They’ve since pulled together a kickass team of product developers, found the freshest Norwegian Seaweed, and created the tastiest snacks around (trust us).
Made in Copenhagen, Denmark
Founded by Neil Southwell & Thomas Thulesen in 2020
Betterment
Betterment’s financial experts and automated investing technology are working behind the scenes to make your money hustle while you do whatever you want.
The Hard Work of Bringing Kelp to Market
As seaweed farms develop on both coasts and begin to contribute to America’s blue economy, much depends on infrastructure.
It was nearly sunset on a breezy May afternoon when Scott Lord and his wife Sheena pulled into Port Clyde, Maine, on the Eva Marie. The hull sat low in the water, weighed down by 2,500 pounds of sugar kelp. The Lords had been out on the water since 5 a.m.
“Anything you do on a boat is a long day,” said Scott. Especially if you’re a kelp farmer, trying to make the most of a short, 12-week season. That day, they’d been out to their four-acre farm and back twice, harvesting a total of 6,300 pounds. The wind had whipped the rubbery, golden-brown kelp fronds across Sheena’s face as she hand-cut the seaweed from the lines raised up from the water onto the deck.
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Scott Lord pictured in Port Clyde, Maine. Image by Alexandra Talty. United States.
She and Scott had worked quickly to stuff the kelp ribbons into giant bags. Now those bags were ready to be offloaded into a waiting truck and driven 100 miles southwest to their processor, Atlantic Sea Farms (ASF), near Portland, where many of the state’s kelp companies are based. Maine is the heart of America’s farmed seaweed industry, supplying half its harvest—well over a million pounds—last season.
Largely developed in Asia, seaweed farming is a new venture on American shores. One type in particular, kelp—a large brown algae with many species, including sugar kelp— has been hailed as an ecologically beneficial, nutritious superfood that can be farmed on both U.S. coasts—and could help fight climate change. These remarkable characteristics have helped the seaweed industry attract roughly $380 million in investments since 2018, from government, venture capital, and nonprofits.
However, that’s a drop in the bucket compared to the global $9.9 billion market. And, according to farmers and kelp companies, the U.S. investment doesn’t yet address a range of logistical issues that challenge—some might even say threaten—the success of seaweed production.
A Highly Perishable Food
Scott Lord became a seaweed farmer five years ago to potentially help his other harvests—oysters and lobsters—adapt to rising ocean acidification in Maine; kelp has a remarkable ability to lower the water’s pH. What he calls “kelping” also gives him an additional income stream.
We put your money to work
Betterment’s financial experts and automated investing technology are working behind the scenes to make your money hustle while you do whatever you want.
AI TOOLS
Tech tools powering the best DTC brands
Rebuy: AI-powered personalization for e-commerce (link)
Klaviyo: Email personalization with AI integrations (link)
Smartly.io: Personalize your Ads 100,000x with AI, per geography and customer use case (link)
Range.me: Meet 3 buyers free, and over 50,000+ emerging food buyers (link)
Okendo: Reviews & Loyalty based on paclaging, flavor, ingredients, CX, and more (link)
Fairing: Attribution Surveys to help make sense of customer intent blackholes (link)
Algolia: Personalized Search using AI for e-commerce (link)
Braze: Personalized Customer Profile Databases (CDP) (link)
THAT’S A WRAP
Stay Cute,
Garry & The Farm2Me Team 🌈
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