Episode 01 · 37 min
Isabella Hoag
Founder, OSIA — Building a CPG brand in 2026.
The episode
Isabella Hoag never intended OSIA to be a business. She is gluten intolerant and was not drinking, and at her local liquor store the non-alcoholic options were beer or water — so she started making mood beverages for herself, then for events, building NA bars and menus until she was running five events a day and burned out. She and her co-founder Gabriel pivoted into manufacturing, neither of them from that world, and reached a hundred-plus stores by walking into independents and pitching in person. Bootstrapped the whole way. This episode is mostly about what that cost her: a wholesale price set higher than the can now retails for, a formulation mishap on the first run, and one missing line of label copy that shut her out of distribution entirely. She is now pausing the entire four-flavour line to relaunch around a single SKU in October.
The takeaway
Two things to copy before your first production run. Check what legally has to be on the label — Osia left “Distributed by” off theirs and it locked them out of distributors, forcing them to self-distribute for a long time. And keep run one at the co-packer’s minimum: the job of a first run is to find out what is wrong with the product, not to build inventory.
What she actually said
- Set wholesale at $6 for a single can. The same can now retails for $4.99 — she was priced above retail and the buyers who said no never explained why.
- Left “Distributed by OSIA” off the first label. Distributors would not take it, so they self-distributed for a long time.
- Kept the first production run at the co-packer’s minimum — which turned out to matter, because that run had a formulation mishap that cost them accounts.
- Three to five rejections before the first yes. All independents, and several are still stocking her.
- Sold liquor stores on their own upside, not on her product: be the only shop on the block with an NA set and you take the customers.
- Added four-packs to the SKU list so retailers had something shelf-ready and shoppers could understand it.
- Chose B2B over DTC deliberately. Shelf life makes volume the priority, and a 48-can wholesale minimum moves more stock than an eight-pack online.
- Held off on Meta ads for years and only started recently — now seeing a strong return, and says she would test packaging with $50-a-day static ads if starting again.
- Large retailers take over a year, and some only review new brands once a year. Miss the window and you wait.
- Faire and AirGoods convert about evenly. Retailers use them because they can order fifty brands in one cart.
In her words
“In the beginning we were selling a single can wholesale for six dollars, and now we're selling retail for four ninety nine. So you can just imagine the trial and error it took.”
“On a block, if there's five liquor stores and you're the only person selling non-alcoholic drinks, you're gonna get a lot of new customers.”
“There's four different moods and they all have their own herbal properties… that's four different things you have to explain. Most consumers want something they can understand immediately.”
“Don't sign a five year contract in your first production.”
Backed by
Two partners in.
One slot open.
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