Good morning, Broadsheet readers! Meghan Markle returns to Netflix, Merit explores a sale, and a brand capitalizes on a ‘brandless’ category. Have a relaxing weekend!
– Fish food. Becca Millstein calls the entire category of pantry, shelf-stable goods in the U.S. “dusty”—or stale and lacking innovation. Dustiest of them all, she says, was tinned fish, the category—measured at $2.6 billion in the U.S. and $30 billion globally in 2021—that includes canned tuna, anchovies, salmon, and more seafood products.
“It’s a really big category, but it had gone completely untouched since forever,” Millstein says. “I was eating the same canned tuna that my great-grandma Rose ate in Brooklyn in the 1930s.” She calls it a “brandless” category with “monoliths” StarKist and Bumble Bee that “had no brand loyalty to speak of.”
Mid-pandemic in 2020, Millstein cofounded Fishwife, a trendy line of highly-branded canned fish. With colorful illustrated packaging, the brand set out to take canned tuna from a back-of-the-pantry last resort to a first-choice lunch or recipe ingredient amid a pandemic-era desire for easy work-from-home dishes. It even set off a meme: “hot girls eat tinned fish.”
Four years later, the brand has made it through its meme era, the return-to-office, and a messy cofounder breakup and lawsuit. (Cofounder Caroline Goldfarb, known for her work on social media and as a TV writer, left Fishwife “about a year ago,” Millstein confirms.)
Today, Fishwife earns about $6 million in annual revenue (as recently revealed on Shark Tank) from its lineup of roughly eight products that are sold online and at 1,800 retail locations. A three-pack of albacore tuna goes for $32 and specialty collaborations—like a canned smoked salmon made with chili crisp brand Fly by Jing—cost $39.
A challenge presented by Fishwife’s higher prices is convincing customers to keep buying the brand’s products once they become familiar with tinned fish. Millstein is a big believer that brand loyalty and education, via recipe content, can accomplish that.
The founder says it was “relatively easy” to build a brand in the canned fish category because “the whitespace was so glaring.” She sees potential for brands to accomplish the same in other “dusty” categories like “oatmeal, cereal, and canned beans.”
“You didn’t think about their story, their sourcing, their origin,” Millstein says of Bumble Bee and StarKist. “When you find a huge household category that has never had brand loyalty, the potential is extremely high.”
Emma Hinchliffe
emma.hinchliffe@fortune.com
The Broadsheet is Fortune’s newsletter for and about the world’s most powerful women. Today’s edition was curated by Joseph Abrams. Subscribe here.
ALSO IN THE HEADLINES
- On the small screen. Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex has new Netflix projects in the works. One will feature "the joys of cooking, gardening, entertaining, and friendship" (as she launches lifestyle brand American Riviera Orchard), while the other will focus on the professional polo world alongside her husband Prince Harry. Deadline
- Sell, sell, sell. Founder Katherine Power's popular beauty brand Merit is reportedly exploring a sale as beauty M&A heats up. Power is also a cofounder of Cameron Diaz's wine brand Avaline and already has two media exits under her belt. Puck
- Proof is in the polls. South Koreans voted overwhelmingly liberal in Wednesday's parliamentary elections thanks in large part to young women who oppose conservative President Yoon Suk Yeol. Yoon rallied support in 2022 from young men who felt threatened by the country's growing feminist movement. The Wednesday vote rendered Yoon virtually powerless, deflating his agenda that’s mostly dismissive of women's issues.
- Spotlighting the victims. President Joe Biden’s reelection campaign will spend coming months promoting the stories of women who have been affected by abortion restrictions. The first example aired in an ad this week and featured the story of Amanda Zurawski, a Texas woman who was denied a medically-necessary abortion despite suffering life-threatening symptoms from a miscarriage. Politico
- Real estate figure sentenced. Vietnamese real estate powerhouse Truong My Lan was sentenced to death on Thursday after she was convicted of embezzlement, bribery, and violating banking rules in connection with a more than $12 billion financial fraud case. Investigators argued that Lan and accomplices siphoned money from a Vietnamese bank she unofficially controlled through unlawful loans to shell companies. CNN
MOVERS AND SHAKERS: Underdog Venture Team promoted Megan Hughes Allison to president. WeightWatchers appointed Donna Boyer as chief product officer, Jacquie Cooke as general counsel and secretary, and Debra Benovitz as chief insights officer.
ON MY RADAR
OpenAI CTO on the future of Sora, ChatGPT, and AI rivals: Full interview Wall Street Journal
It all started with Sue Bird Harper's Bazaar
Alone in a bathroom: Fear and uncertainty of a post-Roe medication abortion The Washington Post
PARTING WORDS
“No matter where or how they decide to give birth, parents deserve access to safe, dignified care. Right now, that human right is out of reach for far too many.”
— Journalist Elaine Welteroth and tennis star Serena Williams in a Time op-ed announcing the launch of BirthFUND, a coalition providing grants for moms to receive midwifery services
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