Business Builders to Know: Ayo Oshinaike’s Journey to Success
Ayo Oshinaike has been on a rollercoaster of an entrepreneurial journey. His path to success has involved steep learning curves, breakneck changes of direction, and constant innovation, all driven by the deep-rooted desire to improve food systems and empower shoppers.
Despite this, the founder of Foodspace — the CPG and Retail digital product management tool — has been assured in his decision-making, each step of his journey informed by extensive research and careful listening to the needs of the market.
Here, Ayo shares some of the pivotal moments in his journey and how building on the Salesforce Platform helped Foodspace to connect with CPG customers to better understand their priorities, in order to provide them with a 360 experience on a unified platform.
Can you tell us how Foodspace was born?
Ayo Oshinaike: I’ve always been interested in food. My Dad had diabetes when I was growing up, so there was a lot of focus on how to eat well and ensuring he had the information he needed about food products. After I finished school, I kept thinking about how the food systems could be improved to provide better education on health and food.
At first, I focused on building a consumer platform called Lunchbox — an idea that came from wanting to educate shoppers and help them eat better. The idea was to bring consumers closer to their food through recipe recommendations, however, consumer-facing apps are notoriously difficult to create, and we faced a lot of challenges. In hindsight, this positioned us well to always be consumer-centric. Serving up a recipe based on what a consumer has in their virtual shopping cart requires a deep understanding of what attributes make up the product. This translated well to us focusing on providing product data to CPG brands, a B2B business model.
The switch came about when I attended a conference called Grocery Shop, where we spoke to a lot of retailers and brands about what they needed within the industry. What we heard, again and again, was that there was a need for more product information. Hearing this, we pivoted, and pivoted fast! One day we were a shopper app, the next day we were a B2B platform. We had to adjust quickly and switch our mindset in order to make all the pieces work, but instinctively it felt like the right decision.
It was Walmart who introduced us to the idea that information about food products could go one step further and help us to understand CPG customers better. Following this conversation, Walmart became our first client and from there we expanded rapidly — and so Foodspace was born.
What made you choose the Salesforce Platform to grow and develop your business?
AO: I heard about the Salesforce Accelerate program through a friend of mine who works at Salesforce. Exploring the program made me see that Salesforce was so much more than just a CRM platform and provided an opportunity to join an ecosystem that really mattered to our clients. We went on to win the Salesforce Accelerate Pitch-Off and that led us to find one of our executive sponsors, the SVP and GM, Retail and Consumer Goods. He was a big advocate of what we were working on.
We also realized that all of our CPG customers were already on Salesforce looking for product information and that they needed a unified, 360 commerce experience. Due to this, it seemed like the obvious choice for us to develop our platform on Salesforce; it offers that unified platform and shares a lot of our values, such as creating a source of truth to connect with shoppers and power the digital age.
How has the platform helped you to innovate and overcome challenges?
AO: One of the challenges we faced was creating a platform that our brands trusted. With Salesforce they were already there, using it for both commercial activities and service and marketing capabilities. We were primarily working with the e-commerce department and marketing individuals, and so Salesforce allowed us to branch deep into the CPG customers we work with, to enable them to have a 360 experience. I think of Foodspace as creating the source of truth, and Salesforce as being the holder of the source of truth. Together that creates a unified platform.
How do you stay one step ahead of the curve?
AO: We’ve created a company that has a mix of experts, consultants, and nutritionists in the field, which provides us with a rich source of information. On top of that, a major focus for Foodspace is innovation technology, creating partnerships like the one we have with Salesforce. This enables us to understand where our CPG customers actually need our solution and to have the education and standing to be able to deliver that to them. Together we have created an ecosystem that was never there before. Now brands have unlimited access to their product information to help power their commercial activities.
What motivates you?
AO: There are a few key things that drive what I do. The first is, in this digital age, I want to reduce a lot of the manual work that customers have had to take on in the past. It also motivates me to create a new food system that enables the CPG industry to unlock growth opportunities and match consumer preferences through shopper-centric attributes. For example, a parent shopping for a child with a nut allergy needs to understand the entire dimension of information on a product in order to feel confident in their product purchase to ensure their child’s health and safety. Every CPG product contains key information that needs to be communicated to shoppers, and this is where we at Foodspace come in.
Can you share with us a customer success story?
AO: One of the brands we work with is a major chicken supplier that has over 15,000 products. Foodspace helped them to initially digitize 500 of their top products in just 25% of the time it took them on average previously and provided each digital product with robust product information. This helped them gain new understandings of their products, for example: which shoppers were looking for spicy chicken. We were able to attribute this out and help people search for these specifics online. We also made it possible for them to update the products easily with new information, which led to them seeing a 200% increase in sales and 400% increase in discoverability on the digital shelf.
As a founder in 2021, what do you think the key to success is?
AO: After COVID-19, resilience is especially important. You have to be able to continue working hard and supporting the customer, which is something that Salesforce really prioritizes. In order to stay customer-focused, you have to be able to continually ask questions and dive deep into what the pain point is. Staying on top of that and ensuring that both your team and the customer have clarity as you deliver your solution is key.
Also, the importance of people can’t be understated. At the beginning, of course, you know how important your co-founders and early employees are, but as you grow into an organization, you realize how important managing the team is, and ensuring their happiness, in order to drive success.
Foodspace’s values and vision are all about creating a unified experience and empowering people through clarity and information, so a big learning curve for me was the importance of sharing successes with my team and having the tools to keep helping them.
Foodspace is a CPG and Retail digital product management tool providing complete, accurate, and rich shopper-centric data to help increase discoverability of products everywhere they’re sold online. Find Foodspace on AppExchange today.
