In this episode of Behind the Shelf, Keren Novack sits down with Maggie Schmieder, founder of Bitty Balm, to explore how a simple kitchen experiment evolved into a thriving clean beauty brand with an impressive 55% repeat customer rate. Maggie shares the lessons she learned from building products by hand, listening closely to customer feedback, and prioritizing relationships over traditional marketing tactics. The conversation dives into product innovation, brand positioning, consumer trust, and the challenges of standing out in the crowded beauty industry. 

Maggie explains why simplicity can be a competitive advantage, how transparency builds loyalty, and why understanding customers on a personal level creates lasting growth. This episode offers valuable insights for founders, marketers, and anyone interested in building brands that customers genuinely love. 

Maggie Schmieder is the founder of Bitty Balm, a clean beauty brand revolutionizing multi-use cosmetics for health-conscious consumers. A special education teacher and lifelong maker by nature, Maggie identified a critical gap in the beauty market: the near-total absence of dye-free, ingredient-conscious makeup options safe for both kids and adults. Since launching Bitty Balm in February 2024, she has hand-formulated and manufactured every product, earning recognition including a Clean Beauty Award in her first year and placement in premium retail locations across the North Shore of Chicago.

Maggie learned that positioning Bitty Balm as “makeup for girls” limited its appeal because younger consumers aspire to use the same products adults use, not simplified versions designed specifically for them. By shifting from age-based marketing to aspirational, lifestyle-focused positioning, she broadened the brand’s reach and attracted loyal repeat buyers. The experience highlights how values-driven branding can outperform demographic segmentation and create stronger connections across multiple generations of consumers.

Maggie discovered that seemingly minor inconveniences can have a major impact on customer satisfaction and retention. Bitty Balm redesigned packaging so customers could quickly identify colors and transitioned from pots to sticks to improve usability, even though it required significant reformulation and extra production work. By treating small customer frustrations as important product opportunities, she improved the overall experience and strengthened loyalty, proving that repeat business is often earned through thoughtful details rather than large marketing initiatives.

Rather than viewing complaints as problems to resolve quickly, Maggie treats them as opportunities to deepen customer relationships. When a customer questioned product variability, she explained the hand-crafted process behind Bitty Balm and provided personalized guidance to help find the ideal product match. This combination of education, transparency, and individual attention transformed skepticism into trust. Her approach demonstrates how thoughtful service recovery can create stronger loyalty than a frictionless experience and generate powerful word-of-mouth advocacy.

Operating in a crowded beauty market, Maggie built strong repeat purchase rates by prioritizing genuine human relationships over traditional customer acquisition tactics. She invests time in remembering customers, engaging personally at events, and creating meaningful community connections that extend beyond transactions. These authentic interactions frequently lead to referrals, partnerships, and repeat purchases. Her experience challenges brands to view relationship-building not as a supplemental activity but as a primary growth strategy capable of outperforming expensive paid marketing channels.

Maggie argues that many beauty brands rely on complex ingredient stories and exaggerated claims that often confuse consumers. Bitty Balm takes the opposite approach by emphasizing streamlined formulas, transparency, and realistic product benefits. Rather than adding more ingredients or promises, the brand focuses on creating effective products with fewer components and greater clarity. As consumers increasingly value authenticity and regulatory scrutiny rises, simplicity becomes a meaningful form of innovation that helps build trust and differentiation.

In this episode of Behind the Shelf, Keren Novack sits down with Jason Burke, founder and CEO of New Primal, to explore the realities of building a food brand that survives, and thrives, on crowded retail shelves. Drawing from his journey of growing New Primal from a homemade jerky business into a brand carried in more than 10,000 stores, Jason shares why consumer behavior is often misunderstood and why repeat purchases matter far more than initial curiosity.

The conversation dives into product development, retail strategy, consumer trust, and the economics of shelf space. Jason explains why familiar products often outperform flashy innovations, how brands should think about expansion, and why authentic credibility is difficult for legacy companies to recreate. He also reveals why taste remains the ultimate competitive advantage, regardless of trends, health claims, or marketing campaigns.

Jason Burke is the founder and CEO of New Primal, a leading clean-label food company whose products are sold in more than 10,000 stores nationwide. Inspired by his parents' health challenges, Jason transformed a homemade jerky recipe into an eight-figure business with multiple #1-selling product lines across jerky, kids' snacks, sauces, and seasonings. Known for challenging industry norms, he has helped prove that clean ingredients can succeed at scale while influencing legacy brands to rethink their products. Jason regularly shares insights on building category-defining consumer brands.

Jason explains that while consumers often claim to prioritize health benefits, certifications, and clean ingredients, their purchasing behavior tells a different story. Taste remains the single most important factor behind repeat purchases. He advises brands to build products around exceptional flavor first and use nutritional benefits as supporting proof points. New Primal succeeded by offering familiar, enjoyable flavors while improving ingredient quality, proving that authenticity and great taste create stronger loyalty than health-focused marketing alone.

Jason shares how New Primal introduced chicken meat sticks by anchoring them to the familiar taste of rotisserie chicken rather than leading with novelty. Consumers are more willing to try something new when they can connect it to a flavor they already understand and enjoy. He argues that successful innovation starts with familiarity, allowing brands to build trust and trial before expanding into more adventurous offerings. Winning the basics first creates the foundation for long-term product innovation.

Jason challenges the common belief that more retail doors automatically create growth. He argues that emerging brands should focus on dominating a smaller group of stores before expanding. Strong repeat purchases and sales velocity create a flywheel that supports profitable scaling, while weak performance across many locations often leads to costly retailer exits. Since most revenue comes from existing customers, building loyalty and performance in core markets is far more valuable than chasing rapid distribution growth.

Jason encourages brands to distinguish lasting consumer movements from temporary industry trends. He points to protein as an example of a long-term shift rooted in human nutrition rather than a recent fad. Instead of relying on trend reports or survey data, he recommends looking for behaviors connected to ancestral eating patterns, nutrient density, and real food. Brands that align with these enduring movements can create sustainable growth opportunities that last for decades rather than a few years.

Jason observes that younger consumers are already highly aware of nutrition and ingredient quality. During a visit to a high school entrepreneurship class, students instinctively examined ingredient labels and nutritional information before tasting products. He believes this signals a permanent shift in consumer expectations. For brands, transparency and clean ingredients are quickly becoming standard requirements rather than competitive advantages. Companies that establish credibility early will be better positioned than legacy brands trying to rebuild trust later.

Jason highlights the hidden financial realities of retail distribution. Emerging brands face the same slotting fees, promotional expenses, and placement costs as major food companies, despite lacking the scale and resources of major food companies. This creates pressure to prioritize carefully and avoid launching too many products too quickly. Understanding these economics helps founders make smarter decisions about retailer partnerships, product portfolios, and expansion plans while avoiding costly distribution opportunities that fail to generate sufficient sales velocity.