Fabian Geyrhalter:
Welcome to the show, Kim.

Kim Pham:
Thanks so much for having me. I’m excited to do this.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
Oh, I’m already having a blast, just in our little warm up conversation here. So you and your sister are first generation Vietnamese-Americans, you’re daughters of refugees and you are now the co-owners of Omsom, the loud and proud Asian food brand of noodles and sauces and all kinds of things in the future. How did this journey to entrepreneurship begin? I mean, where did you see the market opportunity? Where you like sitting in the kitchen, or was it super strategic? Like, how did this, how did this happen?

Kim Pham:
I love that it’s binary. It’s like you’re either in the kitchen or it’s strategic.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
That’s really it. Or maybe both. How about both at the same time?

Kim Pham:
I mean, I guess, to be honest with you, it’s Omsom is really born from Vanessa and I’s lived experiences as daughters of refugees and as first generation Vietnamese American women. Kind of a quick, quick background. Yeah. Vanessa and I were born in a town just south of Boston to refugee parents who emigrated to the US post 1975. And we grew up in a town that was 98% white. And so growing up, I think had a lot of internalized feelings of shame and being other as it relates to our identity. And we very much carried that, that shame with us well into kind of our young adult years. And I think something happened around the 2016 election where her and I just took a hard look at the world and we’re like, oof, it’s not feeling good. And and how can we kind of create change even in a small way in our lane and that really kind of mirrored our own reclamation and celebration of our own identities and so Omsom was really born from this mission of being proud and loud about being a third culture Asian-American. And we had no idea it was going to look like cooking sauces and noodles, but we broadly knew that we wanted to reclaim and celebrate Asian flavors and Asian stories. And so that was the North Star with which we quit our jobs. I was working in venture capital in Europe. Vanessa was working in consulting here in New York, and we just knew that we wanted to throw our weight behind a mission that really felt like core to us and our family legacy, frankly. And then yeah, then started kind of all the fun stuff, which was like, all right, cool. We know we want to do Asian flavors, but like, what does that mean? And so we spent a ton of time doing customer research, talking to our friends, figuring out the competitive market. But ultimately, Omsom is a labor of love. It is us creating the world that we want to see and and very much using a company as a vehicle for that change.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
Okay, Kim, I’m going to stop you right there with 3 minutes into this interview. And I am completely mind blown. I’m like, starting this based on the mission about individuality. And you know, and not starting because, hey, I’ve got this idea there’s this, there’s this market, you know, niche that we can fill and this and that and really going backwards. But starting with your fist in the air, but not as a nonprofit in any way. But, but just because of you know, because of representation and feeling like there needs to be, there is a voice inside of both of you that needs to be heard. And how bold to just quit your job and say, well, let’s do something.

Kim Pham:
Yeah, that’s so funny that you say that. I mean, yeah, we talk a lot about how, you know, I think the way that a lot of startups are founded today, it’s like there are these trends and there’s this like intersecting, white space and I love that. And I, and I almost, you know, sometimes I’m like, maybe those people are smarter than us, but, you know Omsom was really born mission first. And I think that’s both a blessing and a curse in many ways, because we’ve definitely had to learn a lot of business fundamentals as we’ve gone. Thankfully, you know, Vanessa and I have a decent enough background between tech and VC and consulting, but it really was like, where is our heart? And I think that you’re turning to that returning to our values time and time again has just proven to be the way for us.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
Where you venture backed or was that just your own money?

Kim Pham:
So when we, we were bootstrapped for the first, like I’d say, two years, and by that I mean it was my, it was my bank account.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
Yeah. How fun. How fun. I know how it feels. I’m going through the same thing right now. It’s yeah.

Kim Pham:
It’s like, you know, you really distill, you really learn how to distill, but we then raise a small kind of friends and family around and then a pre-seed And now, you know, we do have investors in our corner just because building a CBG business is so capitally intensive. But yeah, in the early days it was very much just Vanessa and I working on Omsom nights and weekends, just trying to figure out like, did we have something that had legs? And I think thankfully we did.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
Yeah, yeah, you did. And I love how you craft all of your products and most of your products in partnership with iconic Asian chefs, right? You call them tastemakers. But you, and it makes so much sense after this intro why you do this. But I love how you paid them a royalty fee rather than a flat fee for their work. Because it’s, not only is it a cool concept, but it shows how you value them as creatives, right, as artists and how much you value their contributions. How did that come about? This this concept of not creating your own flavors, which I’m sure you could have done right. But but, but is it community? Is it more about the same idea of empowerment?

Kim Pham:
Yeah. I mean, to be completely honest with you, that was built into our business model day one. I think Vanessa and I as individuals have long been frustrated with appropriation of Asian flavors and and stories. And we were just like, yes, we’re Vietnamese and we have cooked a lot of Asian food and we love Asian food. And it’s really important to us. But it’s not our place to be telling you how to eat Korean flavors or Japanese flavors or Filipino flavors. And so we knew that from the jump we couldn’t treat Asian flavors as a monolith. We couldn’t treat Asian people or communities as a monolith, and that the only way we were going to build a company with cultural integrity was to involve these folks every step of the way from the jump. And so we knew then we got to go talk to amazing Asian chefs who probably share the same vision of us of wanting to build products that honored our heritage and our motherland while also making room for these creatives to tell a unique third culture story of like, there is no one way to eat Asian or Asian American food. And so let’s make it an individual story and bring in these amazing chefs who have deep roots in these flavors and then also pay them equitably. Like also that was something that Vanessa and I had been frustrated with as individuals. And so we’re really like, when I say I’m building the company of my dreams, that’s not a tagline. That’s not a fluffy founder thing. Like, I’m really, really trying as hard as I can within capitalism to build something that feels aligned with my heart. So yeah, that’s kind of how the tastemakers came about.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
Yeah, I love, I love that. It’s really, it’s really beautiful. And then of course there is, there’s that nice ripple effect that the more people you get involved early on, they all have their own audiences and it starts spreading, which was not really the intent, but it was, it was an obvious side effect, which is, you know, obviously very nice for a startup to have kind of like morph that community and morph that snowball effect early on. Very, very cool. You are, you’re a very design driven brand. That’s actually how I, how I got to know Omsom, it just it just pops out right? It creates immediate visual interest in a sea of sameness, right? Like all of those typical stereotypes, right? You had a whole post about it. Bamboo fonts, dragons, pandas. So your design though, and for anyone listening immediately, check it out at omsom.com. The design is bold, it’s spicy, it’s loud and it perfectly reflects what the name means, which is noisy and unruly. You have, you have a melted version of your logo, which I didn’t even realize in the beginning. And last night I realized it, and I’m like, this is so cool. I’m like, this is just the background. I’m like, no, no, no. It’s a hot, spicy, melted version of the logo. It’s so cool. The colors, right, they’re inspired by Southeast Asian fruits and veggies, mandarin, ginger, banana flour, etc.. Walk us through I mean, now, you know, just spending 10 minutes with you, I fully understand how everything is extremely intentional. Walk us through how you got from the idea of the brand to realizing this idea in your visual brand image, because obviously it’s rooted in the mantra of being loud and proud.

Kim Pham:
Yeah.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
But it’s hard to do that. So maybe you can talk us, walk us through a little bit of how it came about.

Kim Pham:
Yeah. So funnily enough, and this is actually not a story we talk about often.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
Yay, I like that.

Kim Pham:
Omsom used to be called something else. So before we launched, and I’m the Chief Brand Officer at Omsom and Creative Director, before we had launched Omsom, we actually had built a whole visual identity around a brand at the time we were calling Oxtale, Oxtale. And that name meant a lot to me because oxtail is an ingredient, oftentimes used in Vietnamese pho. And I love the tale because I believe food is a carrier of narratives and of stories. And we really loved it. And then we started kind of shopping it around and talking to folks, and they were like, when I hear Oxtale, I think it’s going to be a jerky company. And so that for me was a very kind of like rude awakening. And you might be married to a brand and a brand name, but it has to live out in the real world. And so literally months before we launched, we’re like, oh shit, we got…

Fabian Geyrhalter:
Oh god.

Kim Pham:
Completely scrap this and build something from scratch. And so that was a really fun challenge for me as a creative of like I had been so married to some thing, but maybe this is an opportunity for me to really recenter in like our ethos and our heart and when I thought about Omsom, which I didn’t even know the company name, but when I thought about what Vanessa and I were trying to build, we were trying to build something proud and loud and a little bit of like a middle finger in the air. And I started thinking a lot about this phrase that my parents used to chastise Vanessa and I with growing up. It’s actually a negative term. So Omsom comes from the Vietnamese phrase om sòm, which means rowdy or rambunctious. And it’s negative like it’s meant to be like quiet down. And I thought a lot about, you know, Asian-Americans and our place in this country for so long has been as model minority, submissive, docile, quiet, used as a pawn within larger racial and socioeconomic conversations happening on a national level. And I was like, I hate that. Like, what if we reclaim this word? You’ll notice this reclamation is a big thing for us. What if we reclaim this word and make it ours and make it this gigantic like F-you to the way that Asian people and Asian flavors and Asian food have long been treated in this country as diluted and compromised and washed down? What if we were just like the total antithesis to that? And once I had that heart and that ethos, I was able to pull the thread through on like, okay, what does that look like? Not just with our visual identity, but also our voice and tone with our positioning. That’s how proud and loud as a tagline came to be. That’s actually how we think about our flavors. Like we really don’t pull our punches on the spice and the heat and the umami. And it just became this like rallying cry behind every little thing in our brand. And I even see today with my team now, when we’re at hard decisions, we’re like, what’s proud and loud? Like, let’s return back to that. And it, and that, that for me is what strong brands they feel cohesive all the way through. And so when I think about our visual identity right, like it was a lot of really bold flavors. I mean, sorry colors that represented our flavors, we also didn’t want to touch anything that felt stereotypical. So we don’t have red and black, we don’t have the chopsticks and the panda bear and the dragons, which, you know, no tea, no shade. Those things have existed for so long. We just wanted to do something a little bit more eye catching. Yes, our colors are coming from Southeast Asian fruits and veggies, our brush stroke, our logo, our word marks are really kind of tattoo like, they’re really bold. Like, I just, I just wanted it to be unlike anything Asian you’ve ever seen before and really redefined what it means to look and signal something as Asian. Yeah it was a lot of fun honestly as a creative.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
Oh yeah. Well and it shows right and that’s and people can feel it and I just imagine you know it being Oxtale and how this would have potentially changed things even though to your, to your point, it’s a smart name. It’s a good, I mean, I could say it has legs but it is a name like that, right? Where you would as a creative, you would think, well, this would make a lot of sense and we could still have it be really bold and all of that. And so, you know, new images come to mind. But that idea that when you go so deep, like you had to go two months before launch and and come up with something like Omsom, which you know, which is so deep and there’s so much soul in it. Right. And in having that as the driving force. You know what, like three or four years later, you know, something like that, right. And it’s still, it still is like that fire, which is really, really amazing. So super cool. Super cool.

Kim Pham:
Thank you. Thank you so much.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
Envision a world without Tik Tok and Instagram. No social media at all. How would things have been different for Omsom’s trajectory? Like how would, like how important was being able to create this almost instant connection with your community, you know, so quickly? Like how would it have been different? I mean, it’s a strange question, but I’m just wondering because you’re so, you’re so born in social media as a brand, at least it seems to me.

Kim Pham:
Yeah. That’s such a wonderful question and honestly, such like a fun intellectual exercise. I to be completely honest with you, I think if Omsom was born in an age without social media and without the digital real estate to tell our story, I don’t know if we’d be alive. I, only because I think, like, you know, for so long, especially when you look at this, you know, the mainstream American grocery store and you look at products and that quote unquote ethnic aisle.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
Oh yeah.

Kim Pham:
They look the way they look because of the space on both like a physical, but also on a cultural level, we have allowed Asian products to exist in the mainstream. And I don’t want to shade, you know, the, my predecessors, but they had to do chopsticks and panda bears and dragons because that was the only way to communicate to Americans like Asian flavors.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
It was branded right, like that’s how you branded quote unquote Asian food, right?

Kim Pham:
Yeah. And you know, I would love to say that, you know, I have hope that things would change without social media, but I’m not sure that they have. We look at 2020, we look at these larger reckonings around race and identity in America. And a lot of that was driven by minority communities and communities of color, using social media to tell our perspective and our story.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
Yeah.

Kim Pham:
And so I, you know, I think Omsom would look so different in a non digital world, you know, I think we might, we would be in that ethnic aisle. We would probably be looking that, you know, designed that way and branded that way because that’s what exists. And that’s probably what the status quo is. And I think it’s really hard to change the status quo nowadays without the internet.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
Yeah.

Kim Pham:
So I think we would look really different. I hope that we would still commit to the same way as we have, as always, to our mission. I just think that’s so much harder in store. Like Omsom is a brand. Omsom is the brand that we are today because we have the digital real estate and the community to tell our story and to really rally first and second gen Asian-Americans around us, like they are our ride or dies, they are our evangelists. They’re the reason why we’re here today. And I just don’t know what that would look like in the store.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
Oh, absolutely. It’s pretty hard to show that heart and soul and mission and community on the package when you have one second to look at it. Right. So totally. Well, let’s talk about, let’s talk about you being a sister duo the two of you. I had a sister duo on the show previously and just like I did with them, it’s the obvious question I’m sure you get asked a million times. But I do have to ask you too. How is it working with a sister? Right? Like, yeah, so I mean, you have the advantage that Vanessa’s not here with you right now, so anything goes, she’s too busy, she will never listen to this.

Kim Pham:
You can have her on the show later. Yeah.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
Yeah, exactly. Yeah, exactly. Breakout session with Vanessa.

Kim Pham:
Yeah. So I personally think it’s one of our greatest strengths as a team is the fact that we’re sisters. I mean people, I’m sure tell you this all the time, but finding a co-founder is oftentimes like finding a partner or finding someone to marry. It’s deeply intimate. It’s a very integrated and very intense. And I’m just very grateful that trust and love for one another is never on the table. It’s always going to be there, for better or for worse. Like we are tied together by blood. And I just never, ever have to question if she is moving and making decisions with, like, our best interests at heart. I just always know that that, that is a given. And that is the, the wonderful benefit of 20 plus years of of being really close. Obviously as siblings. I will say what is uniquely difficult about working with a sibling is that when things are personal, as it inevitably does during conflict and tension, it’s really loaded, right? Like, Vanessa and I really struggled in the beginning of building Omsom because we would come into, you know, regular kind of quote unquote professional or business conflict. But they always felt heavier because we had all this childhood baggage and trauma and stuff in the room as sisters that affected the way that we interacted with each other, where we weren’t just arguing about, oh, should the packaging look this color? We also had in the room Vanessa as a little sister, maybe feeling like ignored or bullied by me growing up and me having like being jealous of her like some of that sister sibling crap that you have during your childhood still hangs around you, even though you’re in your twenties and your thirties. And so we had to get really vulnerable and really honest real quick in a way that maybe other founders don’t ever have to do because it’s never that personal, perhaps. So I’d say that’s like that’s where we have challenges is like when the challenges are hard, they feel deeply personal. They feel like intertwined with like a lot of our personhood.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
Sure, sure.

Kim Pham:
And that’s quite difficult to divorce.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
Well and well and you have your own individual personalities. Obviously, you’re I mean, you personally, you seem to be a straight shooter. You’re a self-proclaimed internet weirdo. You know, like you’re BDSM educator on social media. So it’s like I mean, you both are most probably very different, you know, personalities. And that actually gets me to the next question. Was the decision for both of you to become both the faces of the brand in your own unique individual ways, was that a decision you made from the get go, or was there ever a thought of both of you staying behind the scenes of the brand? And I guess with the intro of like how personal this is for you both, it’s most probably obvious that you always wanted to be the face of the brand in one way or the other.

Kim Pham:
Fabian, you’re killing me with these questions. They’re so good.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
Well, hey at least it’s, at least it’s like noon in New York. It’s like 9 a.m. here, you know, Pacific so.

Kim Pham:
You’re killing it. You’re killing it. So what’s really funny is that we were never meant to be public or external facing at all.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
But that didn’t work out.

Kim Pham:
When Vanessa and I started the brand, we were like, oh, well, this is the chef story. The tastemakers are the story.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
Oh, that makes sense. Yeah. Because you always knew that’s what you wanted to do, right? Like put them on a pedestal. Right, yeah.

Kim Pham:
From the start, they were the ones whose story wanted to tell. They were the ones, you know, who were literally creating these flavors. And so we were not, you know, we were on the website and like, yeah, of course we were started by, you know, two Vietnamese sisters, cool. But what was really interesting when we launch and we started talking to journalists and community folks, people wanted to hear our story and we were really shocked by that. But I think it’s because, again, we launch in May 2020. Think about the sort of conversations we were having on a national level and then also think about, you know, we were seeing not just with Asian communities but lots of communities of color reclaiming their perspectives, owning their identity, being proud of it. And I think it was quite radical to see two daughters of refugees do something so proud and loud, especially during a time again peak pandemic when a lot of Asian-American communities were receiving a lot of hate. Right?

Fabian Geyrhalter:
Absolutely. Yes. Yeah.

Kim Pham:
And so, strangely enough, like our stories started to kind of surface more and people wanted to talk to Vanessa and I and people wanted to understand, like, what Omsom meant. And so we never, ever set out for it to be the Vanessa and Kim show at all. And strangely, people are just curious about our story. And so we’ve started to surface more of that and surface more of like what it’s like to build a business with a sister and what it’s like to build a food brand in the ethnic aisle. You know, all of that became more and more interesting in a way that we just weren’t expecting it to.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
Well, and it makes a lot of sense, right, because it is all rooted in authenticity and individuality and about, you know, talking about your community. And so it would be insane for you not to step out and talk about it. Right? It’s like, no, like we can’t do this. If you’re being asked of course you will. But is it, is it difficult, you know, specifically for someone, someone like you, who has you know, who is very outspoken on social about who exactly you are, right? Like, that’s you know, it’s just you are yourself and that’s how it’s going to be. Is it difficult to remain true to yourself when you’re sitting in a chair being interviewed by CNN or Elle magazine, to not put on like that the typical brand facade, the narrative? I mean, I just read your Elle interview, so I guess you manage quite well.

Kim Pham:
Fabian it’s so clear to me. It’s so clear to me that you are such a strong brand thinker because these are only the questions that a brand thinker can come up with. And I’m just so grateful for them. I really just want to give you props for that. Yeah, like it has been a deeply difficult journey back to my authenticity and I think that’s like kind of a consistent theme, this reclamation and this authenticity piece in the Omsom story. Because again, as the daughters of Vietnamese refugees, as first gen Vietnamese Americans and women who have long worked in professional spheres where the majority of the folks have not looked like us, there was, by the time we started Omsom a lot of internalized scarcity around how to show up and building Omsom to be proud and loud has also been an exercise and challenge for Vanessa and I to kind of excavate for ourselves how are we proud and loud? So like I am not the person I am today without Omsom because Omsom created the space for me as a, as a creative, as an individual to find myself. But it’s absolutely difficult. And it’s been a brutal journey. There have been many times where Vanessa and I have had to have hard conversations of like, hey, Kim you’re on the internet talking about BDSM, using your real face and your real name. That could absolutely have a very real impact on our ability to raise funding, our ability to sustain our business, to pay our team. Like, is that a risk and a bet that we’re willing to make? And there are a lot of founders who I completely respect and understand who are like naw.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
Sure.

Kim Pham:
I don’t need to be myself all the time. I don’t want to do anything that would jeopardize.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
Whatever’s best for the company. Yeah, Yeah.

Kim Pham:
And I, Vanessa and I are making conscious efforts to choose abundance, which is we are building a proud and loud brand. That doesn’t come from nowhere, that has to come from proud and loud people. And you said it yourself. The most authentic brands oftentimes feel like they have real humans behind them. And I’m choosing to take a long term view on this, which is that I know that Omsom has the capacity and the ability to be a long term brand, and I need to make those moves now to sustain that future. And how I do that, like brand is an everyday thing. It’s not just the splashy photo shoots, it’s not just the big campaign moments, but it’s built in the every day. And I’m just choosing to believe that by Vanessa and I, being proud and loudly ourselves in all of the ways. You know, Vanessa is a D.J. I’m a BDSM educator, we are quite open, we are public. You can look at our Instagrams, but we are choosing to believe that consumers, especially gen-z consumers, see that and value that. And that’s going to be part of the long term health of our brand.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
Absolutely.

Kim Pham:
It’s a bet though, it’s a big bet.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
And yourself, right. Because I mean the idea that you know, I mean you should, you should literally be proud of being loud, right? Because it’s like, it’s so much in your, it’s your brand’s mantra. But it really, it’s what drives, it’s what drives you. Otherwise it would drive you nuts, right? To not be yourself and be hiding behind this corporate shell that you yourself created. So why create it in the first place? Right. So I think I think it’s amazing. It’s really cool and it is difficult. It definitely is. And, you know, when you go through on Tik Tok or Instagram, you can very quickly see like, oh, they’re having fun and they’re always like, everything is so exciting and it’s you know, but, you know, a lot of a lot of these things are hard. It’s a hard decision to actually remain true to yourself like that. And so it’s, kudos, kudos to you and Vanessa. It’s very cool to see.

Kim Pham:
Thank you.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
So let’s, as we’re coming slowly, slowly to an end here. I want a couple more questions. One that I’m always really interested in is when did the two of you feel for the first time that there was big enough of a breakthrough moment where you felt like, you know what, this is no longer a bedroom startup.

Kim Pham:
Yeah

Fabian Geyrhalter:
This is actually, this is a brand. Like this thing is going to work. It’s going to happen. Like, was there a specific moment or usually it’s a series of moments, but you remember one specifically, perhaps.

Kim Pham:
I mean, it is a series of moments. But when we launched, we sold out within 72 hours. I think I was like, oh shoot.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
Wow. How many, how many did you produce? Ten?

Kim Pham:
No. I don’t even remember. We like, we launched with three sauces and we were like, okay, you know, we’ll see how it goes. And then it all of the sudden just started going gangbusters. And then we were on, the moment for me when it was like big, big was when we were on the Today Show, maybe a month into launching.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
Wow. That’s amazing.

Kim Pham:
And we were like oh, there’s like, people want Asian flavors. People are cooking at home now more than ever because of the pandemic. And people want Asian flavors that are legit and bold and really in your face. And so then we were like, uh oh, we got to, we got to start hiring and building out our supply chain more because, yeah, you know, selling out is really cool, but making sure that you have a sellable product is also cool.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
You know, and that’s the big thing when you said, you know, when I asked what was that big awesome moment and like literally the moment that you said this was it and then the next thing is uh oh moment, right? So it’s, and that, that I think is the hard thing about being an entrepreneur that you never get to celebrate the moment when it happens because the minute that amazing moment happens, you’re like, oh shoot. Now what? Right? Like, it’s like, oh my God, I’ve got this amazing press. Now we’re going to make sure we have inventory or, oh my God, now we got to hire. Oh my God. Like there’s always. It’s really, really hard to just be in the moment and just breathe and say good job us, right? This is amazing. It’s not, it’s not easy, but very, very cool. On the other, on the flip side, what was, what was a ginormous brand fail that you went through? Was there something where there was a big fail, there was, and fail in the celebrated entrepreneurial internet kind of way, like fail forwards and it’s a good thing. But was there something where you feel like I mean, obviously, you know, that stuff happens like every other day with a startup, but was there something that is either like a fun story or you look back and you’re like, oh shoot, you know what? Any other CPG entrepreneur could learn from it or any, anyone else who’s branding can learn from it. Or was there something?

Kim Pham:
Yeah. I don’t know. I guess there’s kind of a fail, I mean, it was, so it was a fail that happened to us. But earlier this year, I don’t know if you remember when like Silicon Valley Bank.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
Oh yeah.

Kim Pham:
Kind of collapsed.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
Oh where you part, was that your bank?

Kim Pham:
Yes, that was. So it was I’m going to I’m going to try to keep the story short because it was gnarly, to be honest with you. But Vanessa was away at a conference. I was here in New York and I think it collapsed on like a Friday. And we were so busy with running the company that we hadn’t gotten our money out. And so there’s, there was this really scary, I would say like 24, 36 hour time period where we were like, I think Omsom’s going to die.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
Yeah.

Kim Pham:
Because, you know, being a CBG business, we are so reliant on working capital. We had no idea when we were going to get the money back and the SEC was giving us all sorts of information and we were coming up to our noodle launch in May and we needed to make that timeline. We had vendors to pay. We had our to pay, all these ingredients to buy, but we had no capital. And so there was this, I remember this period of 72 hours where we were working through the weekend, literally every single person on my team literally bless every single one of them. We were like, all right, fuck. Like, what do we do? Like, we got to, like, try to find some loans. Do we put together like a crowdfunding campaign, like we kicked into overdrive? Really from a place of panic of like, if we don’t get this stuff done, we’re not going be able to produce in time. We’re going to got to get our noodles. All this. And I remember during this, this, this weekend, my marketing director, Nina, she looked at me and she was like, what would we do that is proud and loud? And again, I keep coming back to this north star.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
So good. Yeah, It shows you what the team is made of too, right?

Kim Pham:
Yeah. And she was like, what would we do if we were proud and loud? And I was like, you know what, Nina? We would tell our community about this. We would be super transparent, put it all on the table, tell them what’s going on. We’re not going to die in the dark. And I just remember Nina was like, all right, let’s do that. And so her and I worked quickly one morning to just put together like this really quick Instagram post. I designed it myself on InDesign, and it was literally just like a single frame that was like, hey, here’s what’s happening. Silicon Valley Bank is not just affecting big tech companies. It’s also affecting small startups like us. There’s a chance in which we die because we do not have the capital to pay our vendors, buy these ingredients, etc., etc. We are telling you this not to like garner pity, but to show you what it’s like to run a small business as women of color and during a pandemic, during a recession like and so, you know, our call to action was like, go support small business. And we were just expecting, you know, like a couple of our community would be like, oh no.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
Pity, yeah.

Kim Pham:
The post ended up going viral. It had over, I think like 250,000 impressions and views and likes across all of our platforms. CNN called us, NBC called us, CNBC, and all of a sudden this entire community of Omsom fans rallied around us. And I think we did more in sales that day than we had in a month. And it just really showed me like, what happens when you return to your values. Like, yes, this fail happened to us and this like this, the failure of the American banking system happened to us and we were able to survive it, thankfully, and it got us the capital that we needed to like wait out the two or three weeks before we got the money back.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
Fantastic. Amazing.

Kim Pham:
Because we just loved our values. And it was, I was just so heartened by that of like when, during hard times, like just return to your heart. You know. And that helped us really yeah, make it, make it through.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
Well, and, you know, that whole idea of, like, it gets you closer to each other, like, I’m sure it was 72 hours, right? Like what it did to, to you as a team and to you and your community. And, you know, it’s like once you, once you’re out of this, you look back and you’re such a much stronger brand. It’s amazing.

Kim Pham:
Yeah.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
Wow. Well, here’s the big question I have to ask this. What does branding mean to you? So you are, so Vanessa is the CEO, right? You are, you’re the creative mind behind everything. What does branding mean to you. It’s such a sad, misunderstood word.

Kim Pham:
Oh, I’m sure there’s a technical answer that my…

Fabian Geyrhalter:
No, I want your answer.

Kim Pham:
I studied marketing in school. I’m sure there’s a NYU professor out there who’s leaping to answer that. The way that I think about branding is that, how do I say this is succinctly. It is the universe that a customer, a consumer, whatever you want to call it, aligns, a universe and a set of values that a consumer aligns themselves with when they make a purchase. Like, I got this.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
You teach at NYU, right?

Kim Pham:
I got this kind of, I got this really interesting piece of knowledge once where someone was like, people don’t buy products. They buy what that product tells the world about them. And I just, I was like, oh, I’m obsessed with that. This universe, like someone buys into a universe and they want to have pride in that universe and what it tells the world about them when they buy into that universe. And so when I think about Omsom I’m like the universe that someone aligns themselves with when they buy Omsom, is this like belief and vision in a proud and loud Asian-American world where, like, Asian-Americans are quiet and docile and silenced but celebrated. And that’s, that’s like, that’s the Omsom brand.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
And that’s your DNA, too, right? Like, that’s your DNA, loud and proud and yeah, totally.

Kim Pham:
Yeah.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
I love it. I think it’s fantastic. So listen, what’s next for the Omsom brand? What are you, what are you up to that you can talk about that’s exciting?

Kim Pham:
We are continuing to expand into more and more doors. Like that’s really the vision for us is that we want to become a household name in the US and we have to meet consumers where they’re at. And so we’re going to be continuing to expand into more kind of brick and mortar stores. So right now we are in every Wholefoods in the nation, most Targets, and soon we’re going to be expanding into more doors and by the time this launches, we will also be in Sprouts, which I’m really excited for.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
That is exciting.

Kim Pham:
Yeah. So just continuing to get folks Omsom where they’re at.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
World domination. Yes, exactly.

Kim Pham:
Hopefully. But if anyone’s listening and wants to shop directly from us please, you can use the coupon code hittingthemark for 10% off because yeah, buying direct from us is always the best way to support brands.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
Awesome. Fantastic. Thank you for giving this to our audience as well. How can, how can people follow you personally and how can they get to experience Omsom? Obviously at omsom.com with a coupon card hittingthemark. But where can people find you personally?

Kim Pham:
Yeah, for sure. I’m KimOfTheInternet on every social platform and you can also get in touch with me at kimoftheinternet.com.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
That’s fantastic. Well Kim of the internet. This was awesome. This was Omsom awesome. Really appreciate it.

Kim Pham:
This was such a lovely conversation. I so appreciate the thoughtfulness. Yeah, such a fun, such a fun chat.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
Thank you for making the time.

Kim Pham:
Of course.