The Startup CPG Podcast


In this Founder Feature, host Caitlin Bricker sits down with Harri Magaldi, founder of My Neighbor's, a regenerative tallow and vegan skincare brand manufactured in-house in the Hudson Valley.


Harri left nine years on Wall Street after her daughter developed eczema as a baby. Unable to find anything that worked, she started making beef tallow balm at home in a crock pot using suet from a local farm, initially just to help her own daughter and as gifts for friends. After encouragement from other moms, she launched at the Hudson Farmer's Market in May 2024, selling $4,000 worth of product on day one. Four months later, she was picked up by Anthropology and Terrain, catapulting the brand into wholesale. My Neighbor's is now in over 500 retailers, on track for 1,500 doors by March 2027, and manufactures everything in-house just steps from the same farmer's market where it all began.


Caitlin and Harri dig into the real difference between grass-fed and grass-finished, why sourcing and rendering suet locally matters so much for both quality and community impact, the $30,000 the brand invested unprompted in microbial, stability, and heavy metal testing, and how a chance encounter while pumping breast milk at Expo West led to a major new retail partnership.


Listen in as they discuss:

  • How Harri started making beef tallow balm at home to treat her daughter's eczema
  • Selling $4,000 in product on day one at the Hudson Farmer's Market
  • How being picked up by Anthropologie and Terrain four months in changed everything
  • The real difference between grass-fed and grass-finished, and why it matters for both meat and skincare
  • Why suet sourcing, local rendering, and naming the actual farm matters more than most tallow brands admit
  • The 12 Hudson Valley farms My Neighbor's partners with, and how the relationship benefits both sides
  • Why the brand invested $30,000 unprompted in microbial, stability, and heavy metal testing
  • How partnering with QVC pushed the brand to raise its own safety and testing standards
  • Meeting a major buyer while pumping breast milk at her booth at Expo West
  • Why Harri cares more about "regenerative" than "organic," and what that means for sourcing claims


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Creators and Guests

Host
Caitlin Bricker
Managing Editor @ Startup CPG

What is The Startup CPG Podcast?

The top CPG podcast in the world, highlighting stories from founders, buyer spotlights, highly practical industry insights - all to give you a better chance at success.

Harri Magaldi
For me, as a consumer, I actually don't care if something's organic. I really care if it's regenerative. And I think that sometimes people use that word regenerative, but don't necessarily know what it is. And there's now going to be more like regenerative seals and certifications. So I think it's really doing the due diligence and making sure that people on their websites, you're really talking about ingredient sourcing and where things are harvested from. We love to be able to kind of like name that farm or name at least the region that it's coming from. We are a company that's built on trust and transparency and like, if I don't feel like it's safe enough to put it on my own kids, I'm not going to put it into a jar and sell it.

00:48
Caitlin Bricker
Hey, everybody, this is Caitlin Bricker, Managing Editor at Startup CPG. We are back with another founder feature. Today I'm sitting down with Harri Magaldi, founder of My Neighbors, a regenerative tallow skincare brand manufactured in the Hudson Valley. Harri left nine years on Wall street to make beef tallow products after her daughter developed eczema. She launched at Hudson farmers market in May 2024, made $4,000 in her first day, and is now in over 500 retailers headed toward 1500 doors by March 2027. We're diving into grass fed versus grass finished. Why? She invested $30,000 in microbial and heavy metal testing unprompted her full circle farm partnerships and meeting a major buyer while pumping at Expo West. We hear from founders on this podcast every week. If you're a brand and want to get new opportunities right in your inbox, text CPG to 833-605-7002.

01:47
Caitlin Bricker
That's 833-605-7002 and we'll get you hooked up. Hey, everybody. Welcome back to the Startup CPG podcast. This is Caitlin and today I'm here with Harri Magaldi, founder of My Neighbors. Harri, welcome to the show.

02:06
Harri Magaldi
Thank you.

02:07
Caitlin Bricker
Very excited to have you here. I have balm on my hands right now. I've been using the balm on my face, but there might be people right now who are not familiar with my neighbors and they're like, what are you talking about? So before we get any further, can you tell us all what my Neighbors is?

02:27
Harri Magaldi
Yeah. So My Neighbors is a regenerative skincare brand that has both tallow based formulas and vegan formulas. And we actually manufacture everything ourselves here in the Hudson Valley.

02:38
Caitlin Bricker
Beautiful. They really are beautiful products. I was stunned by the packaging. I mean, come on, like, pretty cute.

02:48
Harri Magaldi
And then here's a lip.

02:50
Caitlin Bricker
It's so good. Like, you know that feeling that you get when you leave the house and you're like, oh, I left my lip balm at home. Like, what am I going to do? For me, it's like a security blanket. That is something you would not just accidentally forget. It is.

03:05
Harri Magaldi
I love it. Thank you so much.

03:07
Caitlin Bricker
That's. It's a thing of beauty. So just going to give your flowers for that because the packaging is absolutely gorgeous. The formulas are amazing. You're not using any artificial fragrances. They smell. Smell good. They look good, they feel good. So what brought you to creating my neighbors?

03:25
Harri Magaldi
Well, thank you for the packaging part because honestly, I really wanted to make something that was great formulas, but beautiful. So it kind of sells itself. So when it's in someone's home, you don't have to hide it. You can actually just tell your friends about it. But what is the origin story for us? So it is kind of a wild transition. So I actually used to be on Wall street before, so I used to do derivatives trading and then I was in sales because I have the gift of the Gap, say, a little chatty. So I worked on Wall street for nine years, and then I got pregnant with my first little girl, Wilhelmina, and were in a lucky position where me and my husband had these, like, two really great jobs.

04:03
Harri Magaldi
So we had a home in the Hudson Valley for the weekends and we'd Airbnb it out to make a little extra income. And then we had a house in Darien, Connecticut. And so when I gave birth to my first baby, I had all intention of going back to work. I was actually like the breadwinner. Husband did well, but I actually was Ms. Moneybags over here, which is good for you. And so I always had the plan of, like having a nanny and had already booked someone, et cetera. And then when I had my little girl, I looked at her and I was like, wait, I'm never going to get to see you. And I spoke to my husband over the first three weeks of maternity leave and was like, I want to stay home. What can we do?

04:38
Harri Magaldi
And he was like, well, we can't have two homes. We're going to have to sell our primary house and move upstate. If we want to have you be a stay at home mom, like, we just can't do it on my salary. And I was like, okay, like, let's do it, we sold our house, we moved upstate full time, which was like definitely a big change. But we had done it during the pandemic too, and it was amazing. So we kind of knew a little bit like, this is where we want to be. And I was at home with her and my little girl, around seven months in, started getting really bad eczema. And basically I started making beef tallow products for her.

05:12
Harri Magaldi
And the way that I found out about beef tallow, because this was in early 2023, was actually on kind of these like homesteading trad wife forums that I kind of like always like idea, like idolize the people that were able to kind of grow things and make things more holistically at home and grow food and raise animals for their families. But I wasn't like doing that. I wasn't a homesteader. I had chickens, but, you know, I wasn't a full on homesteader. And so I was in those forums, I was like, hey, does anyone have any like homeopathic kind of like recipes for eczema? And they were saying lard and tallow. And I was really lucky. I had this. I still had this lovely friend Lizzie, who had a farm called Wovenstar Farms.

05:52
Harri Magaldi
And I actually got some suet from her and I made beef tallow in my kitchen in a crock pot. And it was actually the only thing that worked on my daughter's skin. And I was giving it to the bougie mum friends that I have in Darien, Connecticut and Greenwich as gifts. And then I was also giving it to mum friends up here at the library. And people were like, stop giving this away for free. It's amazing. Why don't you try and sell it? So. So my daughter had eczema, but she was a very good napper. And I was home with her while starting this business for 16 months. But we started formulating in house in my kitchen in probably October of 2023. And then I launched the business in May of 2024 at the Hudson Farmer's Market.

06:34
Harri Magaldi
And we sold about $4,000 the first day.

06:37
Caitlin Bricker
Whoa.

06:38
Harri Magaldi
That's how it started. And we had kind of like a crazy moment happen to us. And at month four of being in business where were picked up by anthropology and Terrain at a farmer's market. And that really catapulted us into the world of wholesale. And we're now in upwards of 500 retailers two and a half years in.

06:57
Caitlin Bricker
I am just, I'm beside myself right now. $4,000 In your first farmer's market.

07:04
Harri Magaldi
Can you name. I did have my baby with me and my. I was actually the cancellation person for like a good six months. So whenever the farmer's market had a cancellation day of, they would call me and I'd be like, I'm coming. And like, I'd come with my baby Wilhelmina and like, show before and after photos and I'm. I'm charming. But also the product, like, people really liked. But no one really knew about Tallow yet, so there was still a lot of education. And then I got really lucky with Tallow becoming so popular on TikTok that people started coming up to me being like, tallow, yes, this is exactly what I'm looking for. But that was a really big shift, like just kind of from that May till about August. That's when people started knowing about tallow in 2024.

07:46
Caitlin Bricker
Unreal. I mean, I would say that this is lucky for you, but it sounds like you really worked your butt off to get here and made a lot of sacrifices.

07:55
Harri Magaldi
Yeah, literally, like sometimes four markets a weekend. A lot of. I had another baby, so, you know, I was writing purchase orders, like putting in things into Shopify from labor with my second baby. I brought my second baby into the lab since day eight. So she's now with my nanny who they come to visit me every day, which is amazing. But yes, there. There even is a little baby rocker right here, which to go home with me.

08:22
Caitlin Bricker
So good.

08:23
Harri Magaldi
But yes, mother owned and babies often here.

08:27
Caitlin Bricker
Wow. All right. Can you name drop the farmer's market that you had so much success?

08:32
Harri Magaldi
The Hudson Farmer's Market. Honestly, it's the best and the really cute thing about where we are today. So we've had a few different locations of where we manufacture everything ourselves because we've outgrown spaces. But our newest space as of November of last year was actually the building that we're in now, and it sits on Columbia and seventh, right where the Hudson Farmers market is on the weekends, on Saturday. And you can actually see it through our flagship store window. So our manufacturing is one side of the building, and then shipping is behind the store. We do also have five storage units, so we're kind of crazy. But you can see the farmer's market where it all began from the window of the shop, which just like means something to me.

09:12
Harri Magaldi
But we also allow vendors to kind of park out front of our shop every weekend so that they can really get involved in that farmer's market traffic, which really helped us. And it was really hard to get a spot sometimes. So always down for CPG founders. If they want to come to Hudson, they're more than welcome to park out front of our shop because it brings people into our shop, but it also gives them visibility for the weekend traffic.

09:34
Caitlin Bricker
What a kind offer. And it is pretty nuts that you were launching this product, putting these products into the world when tallow was really trending. Now I feel like when something's trending, you have two camps of people. You have one camp who's like, oh, this product's trending. This ingredient is so hot, let me get my hands on it. And then you have another camp of people who's like, it's trending. Like now I'm turned off and they might not even read into what tallow is. So for anybody who's listening right now who isn't familiar with what tallow is, can you give us a little background about what it actually is?

10:12
Harri Magaldi
Yeah, for sure. So, and there is a little bit of like greenwashing, grass washing kind of going on in this kind of arena as well. So with tallow. So tallow is going to beef suet. So it's going to be fat that's around the kidney of a cow. When were first manufacturing, I was actually receiving a lot of my suet still with the kidney on. So I still have a lot of those really lovely photos of me like a butcher, but really made me be able to understand like the difference in beef trimmings and then suet. So suet fat is going to be more nutrient dense. It's also going to be. There's only about 18 to 25 pounds on the average cow in the United States.

10:49
Harri Magaldi
We are in this like really lucky area of the Hudson Valley where regenerative farming, grass fed, grass finished, is so prevalent. But it's a byproduct. So we render this fat and we actually render it in house too. We don't get it from a bigger facility that renders it in massive amounts. Because when you do get tallow in that way, one, you're not helping your local economy and the farmers that need to get rid of a byproduct. But two, they're going to be excessively heating it. And often they don't know where they're sourcing it from and they also don't know where on the animal that fat came from. And then the reason why suet is so good for your skin is because it has so many similar properties to human skin. The fatty acid profile is almost identical to ours.

11:31
Harri Magaldi
So it really soaks in and then People like to talk about the vitamin content of tallow, having vitamin A, D, E and K. But that actually isn't the, like the main secret source of why tallow is so good for the skin. It's such a small amount of those vitamins in suet and people really love to do it as a marketing claim, but it's actually the fatty acid profile. So the fact that it's so similar to our skin. Tallow in Latin actually directly translate to sebum, which means skin. And people were using it for centuries. They were using it the Egyptians, the Greeks, the Romans. And it kind of only went out of vogue in the 1920s when more petroleum based products could be made and mass produced. That never went bad.

12:10
Caitlin Bricker
You know, it's interesting too because when I think of fat, my mind immediately goes to like the fat that you'd see after cooking food, like using bacon. And it's going to clog up your drains. It's going to do all this. Yeah, these products feel so good and it really does feel like my skin is just so moisturized, not greasy at all, which is what I would expect with a fatty based product. Product. It's not like that whatsoever, which is really impressive to me. And I will say that I was hesitant about tallow products in the past. I had never used them. I didn't want to break my skin out. I have not had any issues. If anything, my skin feels and looks better.

12:54
Harri Magaldi
Well, you look great. I also like I was someone that, I mean, I think that having children actually helped my skin get a little bit better. But also having my tallow line has definitely helped. I used to kind of always get like kind of hormonal pimples kind of around my hairline. But I've never been someone that suffered from acne, so I haven't had that story. The thing that really matters with tallow is the sourcing. So it's like making sure that it is suet. It's grass fed and grass finished. It's not going to have corn or soy to be what finishes off the animal or grain fed. It really makes a difference in how the fat smells but also how it performs on the skin and then also your carrier oil.

13:29
Harri Magaldi
So you might order a tallow for Face off of Amazon and it, you know, has 10,000 sales a month. But the way that it's being sourced, they probably can't name a farm. It's probably not grass finish and it's probably has things like beeswax or olive oil or coconut oil that can clog your pores and actually make your skin worse. So just being really careful about what the additional ingredients are that are associated with the tallow product that you're getting. Look, I love when people are making local tallow in their community and they do a really great job. More people making tallow is a good thing. It's not something that like I'm concerned about, I'd rather it not go to waste. But making sure that it's not mixed with things that are just going to irritate you.

14:11
Harri Magaldi
Like you don't need vanilla and tallow because vanilla isn't good for your skin.

14:15
Caitlin Bricker
And I love vanilla. So that's so sad.

14:17
Harri Magaldi
It smells so good. But like you don't really need a vanilla tallow because vanilla isn't something that really is beneficial to the skin. So any of our essential oils that we add to our products are actually things that benefit the skin. So our blue tansy, for example, which is one of our best sellers is a Moroccan chamomile. And it like really helps with antibacterial properties but also with anti inflammatory. So people that have more acne prone skin absolutely love it. It's also kind of like gender androgynous in terms of the scent.

14:46
Caitlin Bricker
It makes my mouth water. It reminds me, I love it so.

14:51
Harri Magaldi
Much to have a blue Tanzania.

14:52
Caitlin Bricker
Literally, it is so nostalgic for me. That scent, the blue tansy reminds me of blue Jolly ranchers. Every single time I smell it. That's what it brings me back to. And it's my childhood.

15:03
Harri Magaldi
Like it's kind of fun, but also people are like, wait, this is natural. And it's literally from a yellow flower that makes that blue amazing essential oil. And then our rose and sea buckthorn is like probably our second bestseller and we launched that last August. Love insane. It smells so good. Most incredible rose ever. But sea buckthorn is so good for pore size minimization. So they're kind of like competing now or off to the races kind of with that the other hero. So we'll see who wins by the end of year.

15:32
Caitlin Bricker
Sea buckthorn saved my skin. I was also in the camp of people who used to get hormonal acne. But I would get it around my chin and I started oil cleansing with sea buckthorn.

15:44
Harri Magaldi
Oh, I love.

15:44
Caitlin Bricker
Changed my skin. Changed my skin.

15:46
Harri Magaldi
We have it in our vegan serum too. So blue tansy and sea buckthorner in that. And honestly I use my serum as an oil cleanser and a serum which is kind of fun. I Just like, I like a simple routine. I'm like a merit makeup girl and then Tallow skincare. So like five things and I'm done.

16:03
Caitlin Bricker
Perfect face for the product too, because your skin looks totally flawless to me.

16:08
Harri Magaldi
Oh, thanks. I actually put concealer on for this. I don't normally wear makeup, so I was like, I'm gonna be on a podcast. I have to like look more presentable. My baby is not sleeping, please.

16:17
Caitlin Bricker
You look great. You look great. Okay, I have a question because I do not know the answer to this. You've said grass fed and grass finish. I know what grass fed means. I can kind of take a guess at what grass finished means. Can you tell us what that means for sure?

16:33
Harri Magaldi
So there isn't regulation really around like how you can speak about this. And that's something that is going to becoming like FDA more regulated. So it is something that should be on people's mind. Grass finished is when animal is never given corn or soy at the end of their life to fatten them up. So some delicious meat is sometimes given some corn or some soy at the end to kind of give it a little bit more marblizing and to give it a little bit more kind of like a fatty profile. While that might taste great, it's not what those animals were intended to eat. A lot of those corns and those soy products are one not native to here, but also have GMOs in them. So we have to be really careful about what we're consuming.

17:19
Harri Magaldi
So when you're in the grocery store, you're definitely going to be looking for like your pasture raised eggs, cage free eggs, pasture raised. And then with meat, you're going to be looking for your grass fed and your grass finish. It's definitely going to trade at a premium, but it's better for you. I mean, I'm someone that eats red meat four times a week. We buy a cow every year for us to eat as a family. We do not suffer from high cholesterol because we're getting it from a very healthy source. And then the same with your skin care. If you're going to be using a tallow, you want to be having one. Something that was raised in a really humane way. So they live longer when they're grass finished as well. They're also eating what they were intended to eat.

17:56
Harri Magaldi
But also the fat is going to be of a higher grade and also isn't going to smell like a cheeseburger. So if you smell some tallow out there, they're not going to smell great. Some are also being bleached and deodorized too. So that's just also something to note. We're building in public. We let people know our procedure, how we do it. And I think that's also why the brand has resonated with so many people.

18:18
Caitlin Bricker
Yeah, I mean, it makes total sense to me. And how did you go about finding your source for tallow?

18:25
Harri Magaldi
So we do work with about 12 different farms in the Hudson Valley. And you know, as we grow, we want to make sure that the Hudson Valley is where we always get it from first. But we will probably extend to more of just New York as things continue to grow. And. But we basically one, we go to the farm for a farm visit. We want to also make sure that obviously it's all USDA butchered. So when the animal goes to get processed normally about three years of age. When it comes to grass fed and grass finished, these are animals that a lot of these farms sometimes are selling the whole animal to individuals too. So that's a really cool thing too where you're eating that whole nose to tail and then people don't often want the suet and that's what we buy from them.

19:05
Harri Magaldi
We also wanted to work with farms that also have a little bit of a retail presence as well. So we buy a byproduct from them, but then we also sell them the finished product to sell in their farm stores. So that's something that makes me feel really good about myself and the business is the fact that these farms can make money twice. One, from us buying the byproduct and then second from then selling our product at retail. And we also interview them. We have some really badass farmers that we have. One, Frankie is a girl that works at Liberty Farm. She's like the head. She's more of a shepherd, like loves the sheep, but she also helps out with the cow program as well. And she actually makes like baby outfits for the lambs that get rejected from their moms.

19:42
Harri Magaldi
And they're hot pink and she wears a hot pink kaha jumpsuit and she's just such a badass. So I love how many female farmers there are up here too. But we also have some like really cool cowboys too. We've got dirty dog farms. We absolutely love working with them too. And they're just like hilarious with their content.

20:00
Caitlin Bricker
Wow. I really like that full circle moment of you sourcing from them and then you giving back to them and then getting back into the hands and faces of people in your community too.

20:10
Harri Magaldi
For sure. And I think that also now that we've grown as a business, like we actually have to be documented in way different ways. Like we don't have a small business exemption anymore. Anymore. So even though we are a small business basically in cosmetics, like once you hit a certain amount of income for three consecutive years, your exemption is gone and you have to actually be registered as an FDA facility. So we are. And then we actually have to give our sourcing to our SDSS so that we can actually make sure that our safety data sheets and all of our batches are coded to a batch of suet that we've rendered from a specific farm and a specific butcher. So.

20:46
Harri Magaldi
So there are some really good regulations going in place so that people can get more transparent skin care and make sure that it's being sourced in an like, ethical way.

20:59
Caitlin Bricker
Is this something that's unique to tallow based products because you're dealing with animal products and byproducts versus a typical cosmetic brand that might not be using.

21:11
Harri Magaldi
So any cosmetic brand in the US like if you're making kind of like under a million dollars, like you're have a small business exemption. So kind of once you get over that 1 million threshold for three consecutive years, you then are governed by the FDA. But then there's also like new regulatory things that have come in through the FDA that basically talk about making sure that it says suet fat on your, the pieces that you're buying of the animal that you're rendering and that it's rendered to a cosmetic grade. So there's procedures in place for that and there wasn't really any of that regulatory procedures before. So it's something that we're kind of like charting a new. As we grow, we're trying to make sure that we stay compliant and we kind of lead the way, but also educate people too.

21:57
Harri Magaldi
Like I have other friends that make tallow maybe on a smaller standpoint. But now, you know, we send, I think we spent about $30,000 just on getting like microbial testing and stability testing and heavy metals testing and everything like that for all of our products to actually have them be deemed as safe. So a lot of products on the market today might just say the safety of this product has not been determined. Whereas we've actually now invested money into making sure that we can say the safety of this product is determined and it is safe for consumption or being used on the face or on the body by a certain age group, for example.

22:32
Caitlin Bricker
And that's not required.

22:34
Harri Magaldi
You've not chosen to do that we've decided to do. And that's also something that's going to help us stand apart from other brands too. So there's kind of like a great thing that one, we can also be more transparent to our customers. But then also it's going to help us differentiate ourselves when we're trying to get on shelf in these larger retailers. So the reason we had originally done it was we're going to be working with qvc, which is very exciting. But QVC is so diligent on all of their testing and it actually made me respect them so much more as a company because I was like, wow, they care more than like any partner I'd ever worked with.

23:09
Caitlin Bricker
Interesting.

23:11
Harri Magaldi
And I don't think people know that. So they helped us kind of figure out what lab to work with. And now we have all that documentation which has been so great. And it's now something that we kind of. We have to practice with any new SKU creation. So we can't just be like, let's make a new product. We say, can we budget for $5,000 to make sure that this product is safe.

23:31
Caitlin Bricker
Wow. So QVC helped.

23:34
Harri Magaldi
Hey, we love qvc.

23:36
Caitlin Bricker
That's pretty cool. What you're saying to me right now about doing this extra testing for your products to make sure the customer is getting a safe, effective product is reminding me a lot about the hemp boom. I was in Massachusetts when this was happening about 10 years ago, and I remember there were just so many hemp products on the market at that point. Obviously unregulated, it was so saturated. And the only way to tell if you were really getting a product that meant what they were saying, that they were making these claims. I'm sure that they shouldn't have been, but you always knew the key players by the ones that had those COIs, the certificates of analysis that were doing the microbial testing, that were testing for heavy metals.

24:23
Caitlin Bricker
So what you're saying about your products is reminding me very much of that hemp boom. And I think it's definitely something for consumers and retailers to keep an eye out for, especially during these ingredient booms too.

24:38
Harri Magaldi
It's tough because there's obviously a barrier to entry. So, like, for me, yes, I had to make enough money to be able to have those procedures take place. And I don't want to deter other companies from, like, you'll get there. Obviously you need, like, you need to save a little bit to be able to do that. But it's worth the investment for your consumer and for these Bigger placements. It's tough because it's similar to like the organic certification, right? Where it's like some farms just can't afford it. And for me, as a consumer, I actually don't care if something's organic. I really care if it's regenerative. And I think that sometimes people use that word, regenerative, but don't necessarily know what it is. And there's now going to be more like regenerative seals and certifications.

25:22
Harri Magaldi
So I think it's really doing the due diligence and making sure that people on their website, you're really talking about ingredient sourcing and where things are harvested from. We love to be able to kind of like name that farm or name at least the region that it's coming from. But also with that, it's like if you then change supplier, your SDSs need to change. And that's also cost money too. Authoring, you know, we have 26 SKUs and authoring all of those is about $30,000 a year.

25:51
Caitlin Bricker
Wow.

25:52
Harri Magaldi
So, you know, it adds up. But we are a company that's built on trust and transparency. And like, if I don't feel like it's safe enough to put it on my own kids, I'm not going to put it into a jar and sell it.

26:01
Caitlin Bricker
Boom. There you go. So speaking of selling jars, what is the future looking like for my neighbors? What do you have going on? What's your retail presence looking like? Where are you headed?

26:13
Harri Magaldi
Things are kind of crazy, but it's good. So we are about two and a half years old. We are in about, I think we're in a 508 stores as of now. Well, maybe a little bit more because the fair sales going on right now. So we haven't updated the tracker. But FAIR is a great tool too for any other CPG founders that are not on there. Fair. And we just launched with AirGoods, which is great. But we will be upwards of probably $1,500 by March, which is really exciting. So we're actually buying a bigger space. So we're a renter right now, which is great. We're going to continue to have this space for a little bit longer and we're also going to have our storefront continue to stay here, which is awesome.

26:50
Harri Magaldi
But me with my family, we're buying a bigger facility so that we can be able to do this, which is definitely a little scary. And, you know, we're pulling from our. What we thought was retirement and is now my neighbors to be able to do that. But I think you have to take risks. And like, look, I'm in my early 30s, I've got two kids. I want to make something that like I can really grow into. And this space is obviously getting a little bit cramped with the five storage units too. So moving into a new space which should allow us to be able to be more nationally distributed. So we got into the UNFI Up Next program this year, which has been really great. So we're opening a bunch of DCs.

27:25
Harri Magaldi
We just did our first UNFI show in the Connecticut at the Connecticut show, which is amazing. Definitely like a lot of interest from co ops, but we have some really cool retail partners that are all across America for 2027. So we're really excited to kind of pioneer that with them. We actually met them, a few of them at Expo west and it was our first time being at Expo west in March. Brought my whole family. One of the kind of like best parts was I was pumping because obviously I had a four month old and I was pumping milk like at my booth. And the buyer that I've always dreamed of came into my booth and was like, wait, I didn't know this brand was mother owned. And I'm like, yeah, she's mother owned with her spectral pump right now.

28:08
Harri Magaldi
And we got invited to go to headquarters. We will be able to announce that a little bit later this year. But I kind of got, you know, my first kind of big break was when startup CPG let me come to a Shopify event in New York City and I got to demo and that's actually the first time I met that retailer group, which was really awesome. And then you guys also let me be at Nootopia and that's where I met one of our investors, but also have met a bunch of really great partners kind of since then too. So you guys really gave me that kind of like first chance other than the Hudson Farmers Market.

28:42
Caitlin Bricker
Oh, we love to hear success stories like this. I am just so happy for you. I mean this is the first tallow brand that I've ever felt like, okay, I can trust this. I'm going to try it. Let's do this. And I'm very pleased. I feel like I was holding out for a very good reason.

29:02
Harri Magaldi
I'm glad you held out for us. But the one really cool thing right now is that we're actually the only UNFI coated tallow brand for skin. So that's really been like a cool leg up for us. So really happy to be part of that. Up next accelerator. They. I actually, like, did that interview with the flu and my kids had. Both had the flu and I was like, in a hoodie and was like, hey, guys, I'm like, sweating through this. But it just shows, like, still show up and sign up for as many of those. You never know. You could get picked. And it, like, has really changed the game and it's been a lot cheaper to do, like, shows and you don't have to pay for, like, new items in DCs, too. So definitely worth it to apply.

29:44
Caitlin Bricker
You heard it here first.

29:45
Harri Magaldi
Yeah.

29:47
Caitlin Bricker
All right, Harri. How do we get more my neighbors into people's hands and on retail shelves? Can you tell us where you're. Can you tell us your website and your social handles?

29:57
Harri Magaldi
Yeah. So we are myneighbors Co. Both the website and our Instagram is myneighbors Co. And you can find us there. And we're real people. We actually reply. It's not some AI bot and we'd love to hear from you. And if any other entrepreneurs are, you know, in this space or in a space that's adjacent, always up for a chat.

30:20
Caitlin Bricker
Beautiful. We love extending the offers to the community and just continuing the success. So thank you for that offer and thank you for sharing your products and your story with us. I'm super excited to hear what you have up your sleeve and these retailers you're launching with.

30:36
Harri Magaldi
Thank you so much.

30:40
Caitlin Bricker
CPG BFFs we've now arrived together at the end of another episode of the Startup CPG podcast. As you may know, we're not just the top globally ranked CPG podcast. We're a community of tens of thousands of CPG founders and experts. And you should join us. If you haven't already. Head to startupcpg.com to sign up. You'll get an invite to our Slack community, hear about events near you, and get access to opportunities that connect you with buyers, investors and other brands. It's free. So what are you waiting for? I'll see you in Slack and in real life. Thanks for listening,