3 Key Takeaways:
- Focus beats frenzy: Arrae grew from $0 to $5M with one hero product and one channel—then scaled by specializing, not diversifying.
- Product-first growth: Nish Samantray believes in taking “the biggest bet possible without getting kicked out of the game.” His team launches fast, tests hard, and iterates through wins and losses.
- Brand > business: Direct response drives cash flow, but a strong brand drives longevity. Arrae’s success comes from balancing data-driven performance with creative storytelling that makes people feel something.
When Nish Samantray, co-founder and CEO of Arrae, joined Molly Pittman on stage at Smart Marketer Live, the audience leaned in. This was the founder story everyone wanted to hear: how a husband-and-wife team turned a small apartment operation into a nine-figure brand without outside funding.
Arrae launched in March 2020, at the start of the pandemic, with Nish and his wife Siff working out of a 400-square-foot apartment in Toronto. They invested their wedding money to get the business off the ground. In the beginning, nothing happened. Then one of Siff’s influencer friends posted about their product, and in a single month, they went from $0 to $4,000 in sales. The next month brought in $8,000, then $40,000, and by month eight, Arrae had hit $1 million in revenue. What started as a side hustle had quickly become a full-time operation.
By the end of that first year, Nish quit his job as a software engineer to focus on Arrae full time. They moved to Los Angeles, expanded their operations, and today—just five years later—the company is on track to do over $100 million in revenue.
The $0–$5M Stage: Focus and Simplicity
In the early days, Arrae was a two-person team. Siff handled creative direction and storytelling, while Nish ran the technical and operational side. They sold just one product, Bloat, a targeted supplement designed to relieve digestive discomfort. Their entire strategy revolved around one channel: influencer marketing.
Instead of running large, impersonal campaigns, they built genuine relationships with creators who truly loved their product. They started with gifted partnerships, followed up with heartfelt messages and gratitude videos, and gradually transitioned those relationships into paid collaborations. This approach built trust and authenticity, the kind that can’t be manufactured with ads alone.
What made this phase work was restraint. They didn’t try to launch five products or chase every platform. They focused entirely on doing one thing really well. That focus allowed them to build product-market fit, a loyal customer base, and proof that their offer worked.
The $5–$25M Stage: Specialization Over Expansion
As Arrae began to scale, Nish realized he couldn’t be world-class at everything. He started hiring selectively, focusing on specialists who could elevate the business in key areas like media buying, creative production, and copywriting.
“We wanted every department to be the best in the world at what it does,” Nish explained. “So we started investing heavily in the teams that directly impacted growth—ads, creative, and product.”
During this stage, Arrae stopped relying so heavily on influencer campaigns and began leaning into paid social and conversion optimization. Nish partnered with experts (like the Smart Marketer Agency), refined the company’s ad strategy, and poured resources into creative testing. By this point, Arrae was a lean team of about 30 people generating tens of millions in annual revenue.
Product-First Thinking: Big Bets and Smart Risks
At the core of Arrae’s success is a commitment to product innovation. Nish calls it taking “the biggest bet possible without getting kicked out of the game.”
This mindset led to one of Arrae’s biggest wins: the launch of Creatine for Women, a gummy supplement formulated specifically for female consumers. Nish’s team took a bold approach—positioning creatine as “not your boyfriend’s supplement” and using cultural icons like Victoria’s Secret models to headline the campaign. The result? $1 million in sales on day one, and a 30% increase in company-wide revenue overnight.
But not every risk paid off. A later launch—an all-natural heartburn product—failed to find its footing. Despite rave reviews, it couldn’t compete with $8 over-the-counter options. “The product was great, but the category behaved like a commodity,” Nish said. “You can’t win in a commodity market unless you compete on price.”
The lesson was clear: even the best product can fail if it doesn’t fit the market’s buying behavior.
The $25M+ Stage: Channel Strategy and Scale
Once Arrae passed $25 million, the company began focusing on channel diversification, but only when each lane was ready to be profitable.
TikTok Shop was one of their biggest experiments. After a few months of testing, Arrae became the top-selling supplement brand on TikTok Shop, doing $1.5 million in a single month (with $1 million of that coming in just one week). But despite the explosive growth, Nish realized it wasn’t sustainable.
“The margins were thin, the AOV was low, and customer loyalty didn’t exist,” he explained. “TikTok shoppers were there for trends, not relationships.”
Instead, Arrae doubled down on DTC, Amazon, and retail, the channels that offered long-term stability and brand control. Nish emphasized that every channel has its own economics and should be approached intentionally: “Not every business is supposed to be huge on every platform. Pick the mix that fits your product, your margins, and your goals.”
Going Omnichannel: From Shopify to Target
The biggest evolution in Arrae’s story came with retail expansion. In 2024, the brand launched nationwide in Target, following earlier placements in Sprouts and GNC. Nish called retail a “game changer” but admitted it came with new challenges.
“Retail completely changes your P&L,” he said. “Margins shrink, operational costs shift, and profitability only scales once you hit serious volume. But it also puts your brand in front of millions of new customers who may never shop online.”
Arrae’s Target rollout included five straight months of endcaps, a first for any supplement brand in the category, and required an $8 million inventory investment. It’s the kind of risk that makes even seasoned founders sweat, but it reflects the company’s guiding principle: calculated, courageous growth.
Building Brand and Direct Response Together
One of the most insightful moments of Nish’s talk came when Molly asked about the balance between brand and performance marketing, a constant struggle for ecommerce founders.
“I’m building a brand, not a company,” Nish said. “Customers fall in love with a brand, not a business. Direct response gets the sale. Brand makes people feel.”
That philosophy runs through everything Arrae does. The team never runs ads that compromise on voice or values, even if they convert better in the short term. Instead, they design creative that looks and feels as beautiful as their packaging, content that fits seamlessly into a customer’s lifestyle.
They also invest in brand moments that drive organic visibility, like a “Debloat Smoothie” café collaboration in Los Angeles that generated millions of impressions without ad spend. For Nish, the sweet spot is where brand storytelling and measurable ROI meet, marketing that sells and builds long-term trust.
Lessons in Leadership and Longevity
For all his strategic thinking, Nish credits Arrae’s culture as the true engine behind their success. The team is small, passionate, and close-knit, they even work out of his house once a week, dogs included. “We have fun, and we care deeply about what we’re building,” he said. “That energy shows up in the work.”
His final advice to founders was simple: hire people who are hungry, focus on clarity over complexity, and never lose the joy that got you started.
“We work hard, we take risks, and we have fun doing it. That’s the real secret.”
Arrae’s story is a masterclass in focused growth: start simple, scale intentionally, and lead with conviction. From shipping bottles out of a small apartment to lining the shelves at Target, Nish and Siff’s journey proves that a strong brand, backed by bold bets and genuine belief, can go further than anyone imagines.
