How Fishwife hooked the stylish, sustainable tinned fish market to reel in 200% growth

Welcome to Creative Growth Memo: the place for breakdowns of authentic brands connecting creative to build their bottom line. You'll get cheat codes to build a brand that lasts with: 1 case study/week and 3 actionable tips to build a strong brand. Like what you read? Click the button below to join for free.

👋Hello pals,

One of the things I love about what I do is seeing brands buck category trends.

Today’s category: Tinned fish. I can practically hear you saying: Is this some kind of joke?! Well, hang onto your tuna, because this is a big one.

In this post, I look at Fishwife, a woman-founded tinned fish company. In 3 years they have:

• Fueled growth of a category, contributing to an increase in canned seafood sales of 9.7% to $2.7 billion in 2022, according to Euromonitor

• Netted coverage from New York Times, Vogue, Nylon and Vanity Fair

• Collaborated with poets, illustrators, brewers, and candlestick makers (not an exaggeration, and no, it’s not tinned fish scented).

• Built an army of tinned-fish evangelists, with 23K TikTok followers and 77K Instagram followers (compare to Chicken of the Sea’s 5651 Instagram followers) who buy Fishwife merch, dress up as Fishwife tins for Halloween, and used Fishwife as a filter for potential suitors on Hinge

In this post I break down how Fishwife fans the flames of tinned fish love. If there is one takeaway to take from this post, it’s that belief and confidence in what you’re selling will reel in your tribe.

Let’s dive in 🐠

Three things that fueled Fishwife’s growth

Chef’s kiss positioning: Positioning is about finding a distinctive and desirable space in your customer’s minds. Tinned fish isn’t new - but what Fishwife have done is gotten tons of people who have never eaten tinned fish interested in trying it. Positioning: Tinned fish = ultimate hot girl food. Writing a positioning statement is easy - what’s hard is sticking to it, but Fishwife does. Fishwife don’t sell tuna, they sell sustainable tinned fish. They don’t work with fishermen, they work with small boat fisherfolk. What do hot girls^TM like? Female founded businesses. Ethically sourced, premium, delicious food. Sexy identities.

Story-culture fit. Here’s where things get interesting. No brand exists in a cultural vacuum. Culture can be an absolute weapon for growth. Fishwife’s growth was fueled in part by the TikTok ‘hot girl food’ trend: women in their 20s & 30s re-discovering tinned fish. What they did well: acted fast, positioned themselves to take advantage of the trend and in doing so fueled the media’s breathless coverage of the brand. Also worth mentioning: co-founder Carolyn Goldfarb, comedian and curator of @officialseanpean, sports nearly 400K followers which “helped things move really, really fast,” according to Millstein.

Investment in bold identity. The higher your margins, the more design matters. Fishwife tapped illustrator Danbo to give life to the brand’s tins, and Natalie Berger to shoot editorial quality food photos. Neither had worked in CPG or food photography before: what matters is the vision and the willingness to be bold.

Clever collabs. Brand growth is fueled by your audience’s ability to remember you (mental availability) and purchase your product (physical availability). Collaborations are a strategic exercise in increasing both. Now, Fishwife are leveraging this strategy by partnering with female founded companies: Fishwife x Talea, Fishwife x MYH Soy Candle Co, Fishwife x Fly by Jing (Sichuan chili sauce) to expand their reach. It’s clear, it’s clever, and it’s an easy filter for deciding who to partner with.

Bottom Line 💰

• Price: $8.60 for a tin of wild-caught smoked albacore (compare to $1.63 Chicken of the Sea)

• Generating revenue? Yes

• Between 2021 and 2022, annual revenue rose more than 200%, according to the brand (in line with other tinned fish brands)

• Investor line up: Rose Street Capital, Redbird Ventures, Everywhere Ventures

• Publicly traded: No

Tactics to love & learn from:

Three things you can copy-paste today:

1. Bathe in the culture of your audience: This is the part where I give you permission to spend hours on TikTok (or wherever your audience spends time). ➡️ Tactic: Find a customer who raves about you. Interview them. Ask them what they read and who they follow. Go there. Pay attention to what they’re talking about, recommending, and doing.

2. Reduce, recycle, reuse: And by that I mean, reduce marketing spend, recycle brand love, re-use press clippings. Anchovy merch? A tinned fish candle? People dressing up as your product for Halloween? Fishwife master the art of being their own hype girl, by regramming their press, collabs, and fan love. ➡️ Tactic: regram your press coverage, recycle brand love by screenshotting glowing DMs (with permish, of course), and reduce your marketing spend (as of 2022 Fishwife were running no paid ads).

3. Stop, collaborate & listen: Fishwife only collab with women founded companies. ➡️ Tactic: Pick one (just one!) pillar of your brand and research 10 target companies. Now dream up 3 products, experiences or services for each target that incorporate both you and your collaborator’s unique selling point.

What I love about Fishwife? It looks like they’re genuinely having fun.

A small ask: Got a brand you’d love to see covered? Reply & let me know!

👋 Until next week,

Amanda

What did you think of this newsletter?

😠 🙁 😐 🙂 😃