Merriken raised LÄRABAR's seed funding from six yoga and Whole Foods friends
Lara Merriken · LÄRABAR: Lara Merriken (2018) · Oct 28, 2019 · at 30:19
LÄRABAR founder Lara Merriken recounts how she raised early capital after previous potential investors backed out.
0:00 / 0:13exact quote · 13.5s
720p mp4 · rendered on demand · StarZero watermark
“So, I started talking to some other friends about it, friends in yoga class, friends I worked with at Whole Foods, and then all of a sudden, a whole new group of people came that were just thrilled, like, six, six people, and said, we'd love to invest.”
quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading: filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard (the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →
More from Lara Merriken
Merriken: Placing LÄRABAR in the candy aisle would have killed the product
“I remember we were getting into a major retailer, and at the time, I wasn't clear about where I saw Larabar, and they decided out of nowhere to put it near candy bars. That would have been the kiss of death for us in terms of going straight out of that store, …”
LÄRABAR occupied Whole Foods' top five best-selling spots within two weeks
“Within two, two weeks of being in Whole Foods, because one of my friends still worked there, he said, Lara, you have to go look at the movement chart upstairs, and I said, what? And he said, Larabar is the top five One through five selling products in the enti…”
Merriken worked at Whole Foods to gain ground-level retail industry knowledge
“For me, I realized that I knew very little about the actual business. I knew that I was kind of my own core consumer, but I also, I guess the way I would liken it is I wanted to put my fantasy into a reality check. And so by getting into the business at Whole …”
A last-minute trademark dispute forced Merriken to rename MANABAR to LÄRABAR
“Well, the trademarking attorney called me at the 11th hour, and we were getting ready to launch. It was the year 2002, summer, and she said, I think there's gonna be a problem. And she said, there's actually mana bread, M-A-N-N-A. And I think it could be confu…”