Native is a natural deodorant brand that is the foundation for the entrepreneurial venture Moiz Ali launched in 2015. Ali started Native in response to his concern after reading the ingredients label on an antiperspirant. In contrast to that product, his desire was to create a clean deodorant. Native grew quickly and after just two years, Procter & Gamble acquired the firm for \($100\) million. Today, Native has 1 million online customers. The firm expanded its product line and now sells personal care products including body wash, shampoo, sunscreen, skincare products, and toothpaste. Ali is a thought leader when it comes to entrepreneurship and business. Posting frequently on Twitter, he has 52,800 followers. On July 11, 2022, he posted a thoughtful tweet, revealing a part of Native’s founding story for the first time. He introduced the story by saying that it was a good example of how scrappy entrepreneurs can be. For this chapter, Ali’s story illustrates how important a single business partnership can be to an entrepreneurial venture. A question posted often to Ali concerns how Native produced its first bar of Native deodorant. This is a logical question—people often have business ideas, like a natural deodorant, but do not know how to start. Ali provides an interesting answer to this question. He says that he found a woman on Etsy who was willing to make the deodorant he had in mind and white label it for Native to sell. Here is what happened. To try to find a manufacturer for his product, Ali went on Etsy and bought a batch of natural-ingredient deodorants. In his opinion, some of the products were good and others were not. He contacted people involved with the products he found attractive and asked if they would be willing to white-label their product for him—in other words, make their product and put Native’s name on it. Most said no, but one woman said yes. At the time, she was selling her own deodorant on Etsy and in farmer’s markets. She made the deodorant in the hobby room of her house with a single assistant. For the first five months of Native’s existence, she made every bar of deodorant that Native sold. SAVVY ENTREPRENEURIAL FIRM How a Single Partnership Helped a Fast-Growth Startup Get Off the Ground Web: www.nativecos.com • Facebook: Native • Instagram: @NATIVE Ali goes on to explain why he turned to Etsy to try to locate an individual to white-label his product. There were three reasons. The first reason involves MOQs, or minimum order quantities. Most contract manufacturers will not agree to make less than 5,000 or 10,000 units of a product at a time. In contrast, Ali had to buy only 100 units from the person he contacted at Etsy to get started. The downside to this arrangement, however, is that one pays more per unit, but Ali was willing to make that tradeoff. Second, with a professional manufacturer, several months may pass before the firm produces your product. On Etsy, you can usually receive something in a few days. Third is reputation or credibility. One needs credibility to get a contract manufacturer to take you seriously. Although Ali is credible today, this was not the case at the time of Native’s launching. After five months, Ali and Native moved on from the Etsy supplier. Today, conventional manufacturing processes produce Native’s products. The Etsy producer, however, is an important part of Native’s startup story in that their partnership was instrumental in helping it get off the ground......

Discussion Questions:

1. What factors and conditions explain Native’s rapid growth? Take a few minutes and study Native’s website. What is it about the firm’s products that you think appeals to people?
2. If Ali had not found the person on Etsy who produced his initial product, do you think that Native would exist today?
3. What does this feature teach us about the value of business partnerships?
4. List three takeaways from Ali’s story about the making of Native’s first product that you think could be of benefit to other entrepreneurs.