Commerce is Chaos

Look, we've all heard the polished founder story—the perfect pitch, the seamless scale, the overnight success. But what about the time you oversold by 100K units? Or when your 'seamless' integration crashed right before Black Friday?Host Samantha Rose has been there—from founding her first consumer business, GIR, managing fulfillment and industrial design for your favorite brands, or acquiring distressed brands on her own.Welcome to Commerce is Chaos, the podcast for founders who knows that building a real business is beautifully, chaotically messy.

Commerce is Chaos is a business podcast hosted by Samantha Rose, with 49 episodes on record and a Required Pod Score of 80. PitchCentric scores this show on Booking Probability, Listen Score, and live audience signals refreshed every 24 hours.

Samantha Rose hosts Commerce is Chaos, a business show with 49 episodes published.

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  Commerce is Chaos

  VANESSA PHILLIPS // FEEL GOOD FOODS CO-FOUNDER & CEO

  Aug 18, 202649 min

  Vanessa Phillips is the Founder and CEO of Feel Good Foods, the #1 natural frozen snack and appetizer brand in the country. Her dad owned Chinese restaurants in New York City, and after a celiac diagnosis pulled her out of the hospitality career she'd always pictured for herself, she started making and and delivering gluten-free lasagnas. From there, she opened Friedman's in Chelsea Market, using the restaurant as a place to figure out what actually tasted good to a real, paying crowd. When she was ready to go bigger, she mailed Whole Foods a Ziploc bag of homemade dumplings packed in dry ice, no meeting, no formal packaging, just a lot of belief. They said yes to 27 stores, and she spent the next four months showing up in person twice a day to demo the product herself. That scrappy start is now a company with 30 SKUs in nearly 25,000 stores nationwide, and about three out of four customers buying Feel Good Foods purely because it tastes good (with gluten-free as a bonus!). Founder Conviction Without Credentials — Mailing a retailer a prototype with no packaging, no meeting, and no track record, and being right anyway Restaurant as Live Test Kitchen — Using Friedman's as a real, paying testing ground for recipes before they became a CPG line Ground-Level Retail Launch — Turning a small store count into real trial through months of showing up and demoing in person ⚙️ Packaging as an Operations Fix — Solving a freezer-fog visibility problem with a full rebrand, while protecting the one element doing the selling Category Expansion Discipline — Deciding when a new occasion, like breakfast, is worth the investment and when an idea stays shelved Mainstreaming a Specialty Brand — Winning taste-first shoppers who make up most of the customer base without losing the original community Whether you're building a brand out of personal necessity, launching into retail with no leverage, or figuring out how to take a specialty product mainstream, Vanessa's story is a fun, ground-level look at what it actually takes to turn a category-defining allergen-specific brand into something everyone just wants to eat. Perfect for: Allergen-specific and better-for-you CPG founders, frozen and cold-chain operators, DTC-to-mass-retail builders, category repositioning strategists Guest: Vanessa Phillips — Founder & CEO, Feel Good Foods Host: Samantha Rose — Managing Partner, Hologram Capital & Founder, Endless Commerce This episode was recorded live and is part of our series on operational frameworks that drive real business results. Subscribe so you never miss an episode.

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  Commerce is Chaos

  KATE ASSARAF // DIP SUSTAINABLE HAIR CARE FOUNDER & CEO

  Aug 11, 202647 min

  Kate Assaraf is the founder and CEO of Dip Sustainable Hair Care, a plastic-free shampoo and conditioner bar brand she built after 20 years working inside the beauty industry. She launched Dip in October 2021 out of frustration: the plastic-free hair care that existed was made for the crunchy, all-natural consumer, and completely ignored everyone else who wanted salon-quality performance. When her contract manufacturer went bankrupt in 2022, she rented a commercial space, put equipment on a credit card, and built a factory. She has grown Dip into a seven-figure business sold through independent surf shops, zero-waste stores, and eco salons. And here’s the kicker: she grew it entirely by word of mouth, with no paid ads, no influencers, no fake UGC, and (wait for it) no Amazon listing. Unchampioned Customer Identification — How Kate spotted the luxury hair care buyer no sustainability brand was talking to, and built the product and positioning around them instead of the eco-convert already buying bars Analog Brand Building — The operational logic behind a word-of-mouth-only model: no influencers, no paid ads, no fake UGC, no Amazon, and why the friction points most marketers try to eliminate are actually load-bearing Customer Service as Retention Infrastructure — Why treating customers well is cheaper than acquiring new ones, how to handle extreme customer behavior without dehumanizing the interaction, and when it's right to fire a customer entirely ⚙️ Forced Vertical Integration — What a contract manufacturer's slow bankruptcy actually looks like from the inside, and how an emergency credit card decision became a structural business advantage Certification Economics — The five-figure mistake that made Kate allergic to certs, how to tell pay-for-play badges from ones worth earning, and what it takes for a certification to actually mean something to customers Decision-Making Under Uncertainty — Making good decisions with the information available, forgiving bad outcomes that followed good reasoning, and why gut instinct is a real operational tool Dip is five years old, seven figures, and entirely word of mouth. Kate gets into exactly how that happened. Perfect for: Bootstrapped founders, sustainability-led CPG operators, independent retail-focused brands, lean-team operators Guest: Kate Assaraf — Founder & CEO, Dip Sustainable Hair Care Host: Samantha Rose — Managing Partner, Hologram Capital & Founder, Endless Commerce This episode was recorded live and is part of our series on operational frameworks that drive real business results. Subscribe so you never miss an episode.

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  Commerce is Chaos

  ADAM HINER // CO-FOUNDER & CEO @ PACHA

  Aug 4, 202651 min

  Adam Hiner has started five companies — catering, restaurants, an acrobatics festival, hard kombucha, and now bread. He built Boochcraft into the nation's first hard kombucha brand, grew it to $15 million, hired himself out of every role, and went looking for the next thing nobody was doing. He found it when he couldn't source a single certified organic gluten-free bread anywhere in the country. PACHA, which he co-founded with his wife Maddie Hamann, makes organic sprouted buckwheat sourdough out of a dedicated allergen-free facility in San Diego. PACHA sources 100% of its buckwheat from U.S. regenerative farms and recently joined the Purpose Pledge, a collaborative business commitment framework co-anchored by Dr. Bronner's. Five-Company Operating Pattern — What actually transfers across catering, hospitality, beverage, and bakery when you keep building from zero, and what you have to relearn every time Whitespace Before It’s Obvious — How Adam identified that no certified organic gluten-free bread existed in the U.S. and turned that gap into a category ⚙️ Building a Two-Day Production Process at Scale — From soaking and sprouting buckwheat in 350-square-foot shared kitchens to custom tortilla presses, borrowed industrial equipment, and a move toward full automation The Founder Handoff — How Adam hired himself out of every role at Boochcraft and is doing the same thing now at PACHA, with a contracted CFO, contracted VP of sales, and a new in-house director of operations Regenerative Buckwheat Supply Chain — What it actually took to find farmers willing to transition, build a direct sourcing relationship, and grow regenerative acreage 50% year-over-year Co-Founding with Your Spouse — How Adam and Maddie stay out of each other’s lanes day-to-day (she runs marketing remotely, he runs the facility) and what makes the structure actually work Whether you’re building a repeat-founder playbook, creating a category from a recipe you found at a spiritual retreat in Mount Shasta, or figuring out how to automate a two-ingredient fermented product without losing what makes it work, this one is worth the full listen. Perfect for: Repeat/serial founders, category creators, regenerative agriculture operators, gluten-free and better-for-you food entrepreneurs, founders navigating an operational handoff, co-founder couples Guest: Adam Hiner — Co-founder & CEO, PACHA Host: Samantha Rose — Managing Partner, Hologram Capital & Founder, Endless Commerce This episode was recorded live and is part of our series on operational frameworks that drive real business results. Subscribe so you never miss an episode.

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  Commerce is Chaos

  SUAHN HUR // BARI CO-FOUNDER

  Jul 28, 202651 min

  When Subin Hur's pediatrician told her U.S.-grown rice wasn't safe for her baby, she called her sister Suahn and started a company. For most Asian families, rice isn't just an ingredient — it's the first solid food, the thing that's been on the table at every meal across every generation. They could have just switched brands. Instead, they moved their families to Korea and built a new supply chain from scratch. That became BARI, America's first Asian baby food brand. In this episode, Suahn Hur, co-founder of BARI, walks us through how they built it: organic rice porridges, roasted grain teas, Asian-inspired meal pouches, a 74% reduction in heavy metal levels, and #1 on Amazon in their category. Now expanding into U.S. retail. Supply Chain as Brand Foundation — How BARI built its sourcing infrastructure before its product line: visiting farms, partnering with Seoul National University, and striking a direct supply deal with the Korean government before they had a single retail customer The Information Symmetry Playbook — Why radical transparency with suppliers and retail buyers — sharing margin targets, cost breakdowns, and growth forecasts — unlocked more room to grow than negotiating from opacity ever did Cross-Border Manufacturing Operations — What it actually takes to manage FDA-compliant food production in Korea for a U.S. market: export-ready co-man selection, certification stacking, and navigating supply shocks like the Middle East oil disruption that delayed BARI's pouch production by months ⚙️ Packaging as a Mission Decision — How BARI discovered that most U.S. baby food pouches are aluminum-lined (despite brands recommending microwave heating) and chose a costlier foil-free material to stay consistent with the brand's safety thesis Demand Planning and Landed COGS from Zero — How two founders with quantitative backgrounds built forecasting models, locked in price stability with manufacturers ahead of retail conversations, and used a back-of-envelope retail readiness model to show up credibly to a national chain line review on one month's notice Hyper-Narrow Positioning as a Growth Bet — Why BARI leaned into 'America's first Asian baby food brand' as its wedge, and why Suahn believes that label, which might have limited them five years ago, is now a cultural asset that's bringing in a multicultural customer base far broader than the Asian segment alone Whether you're building a culturally rooted food brand, navigating overseas manufacturing, or positioning a safety-first product as regulation catches up to what you've already built, Suahn's frameworks offer a ground-level look at what it actually takes to make a supply chain the brand. Perfect for: Food and beverage founders, DTC-to-retail operators, immigrant and multicultural brand builders, founders navigating overseas manufacturing, early-stage CPG operators Guest: Suahn Hur — Co-Founder, BARI Host: Samantha Rose — Managing Partner, Hologram Capital & Founder, Endless Commerce This episode was recorded live and is part of our series on operational frameworks that drive real business results. Subscribe so you never miss an episode.

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  Commerce is Chaos

  CHRIS KOLBE // HYPERNATURAL FOUNDER

  Jul 21, 20261h 6m

  Chris Kolbe spent 30+ years as a senior executive at Ralph Lauren, J.Crew, Original Penguin, Lands' End, and Kohl's — which means he knows exactly how the industry works, and exactly what it's been getting away with. After decades of watching apparel shift to petroleum-based synthetics, he left to build HyperNatural: a performance apparel brand made from bio-based materials instead of plastic. The flagship fabric, HyperCool Jade, is built from Supima cotton, jade stone, and chitosan from shellfish waste, OEKO-TEX 100 certified, and took two years to develop with a material science partner. The brand launched in premium menswear, landed at Nordstrom, and is now expanding into women's. Apparently once people find out their gym shirt is low-key dosing them with synthetic chemicals, they want options for the whole wardrobe. Bio-Based Fiber Development — How HyperNatural built a patented cellulosic fiber process using Supima cotton waste, jade stone, and chitosan — and what two years of R&D actually looks like inside a startup Why Apparel Prices Haven’t Moved in 26 Years — The offshoring and petroleum shift that bent the cost curve down — and why tariffs and inflation are now colliding with a category that has no room to absorb them The Pyramid Brand Strategy — Why HyperNatural started at the top of the market and is building down, and how the brand-to-licensing sequencing works for a materials platform with aspirations to become the Gore-Tex of natural fiber ⚙️ Fit, Fabric, Styling — The merchandiser’s framework for what actually drives loyalty in apparel (in that order) and how to keep a SKU range tight when every customer signal feels like a reason to expand Building Through a Bad Neighborhood for Investors — What it looks like to self-fund a material science startup through COVID, inflation, and an investment environment that sent all the oxygen to AI, and how Chris kept HyperNatural alive anyway Health Over Sustainability as Commercial Positioning — Why “I didn’t realize it was bad for me” converts when “it’s bad for the environment” doesn’t, and how clean food and clean beauty show the path Whether you’re building a material-first brand, navigating an industry that doesn’t want to change, or trying to stay alive through a funding environment that’s working against you, Chris’s conversation is a ground-level look at what it takes to build something genuinely different in a mature category. Perfect for: Apparel founders, material science and wellness operators, self-funded entrepreneurs, consumer brand operators navigating a difficult capital environment Guest: Chris Kolbe — Founder, HyperNatural Host: Samantha Rose — Managing Partner, Hologram Capital & Founder, Endless Commerce This episode was recorded live and is part of our series on operational frameworks that drive real business results. Subscribe so you never miss an episode.

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