We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Ray Kim. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Ray below.

Ray , thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Often outsiders look at a successful business and think it became a success overnight. Even media and especially movies love to gloss over nitty, gritty details that went into that middle phase of your business – after you started but before you got to where you are today. In our experience, overnight success is usually the result of years of hard work laying the foundation for success, but unfortunately, it’s exactly this part of the story that most of the media ignores. Can you talk to us about your scaling up story – what are some of the nitty, gritty details folks should know about?

We launched during the pandemic, so it was not a smooth road. We did our best to promote our product door-to-door to small business storefronts, as well as to build upon our online presence. When the pandemic began to falter, many businesses still had to shut down, but we were determined to figure out ways to stay afloat. We struggled with where to allocate ad spend the most; ultimately, we shifted our focus to lowering and diversifying our ad spend even more, while still growing and improving our KPIs. By focusing on our DTC business model and returning customers, we were able to continue growing and optimizing our business; hence, becoming profitable in the summer of 2023. As a fast-growing startup, there are many challenges you encounter and learning to be flexible, adjust, pivot, and move forward is what has contributed to our success.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I graduated from the University of Chicago with a degree in economics and I put my degree to use by creating the liver supplement brand, The Plug Drink. My brother, Justin and I co-founded our Company in 2019; together, we wanted to bring a healthier, more effective liver recovery product to the U.S. market, as we had seen the industry rapidly growing in South Korea. Currently, we have two products, The Plug Drink and The Plug Pills, which each have 13 herbal plants, fruits, and flowers with the highest herbal concentration on the market (10.83g). The Plug Drink has electrolytes to help you rapidly hydrate, and The Plug Pills have additional support of turmeric, milk thistle, and B vitamins (B1, B2, and B6). Each ingredient benefits not only the liver, but also helps with gut health, fatigue, headaches, and dehydration. Our Company’s mission is educating consumers about the power of plants and spreading awareness of liver health. As we grow, we hope to be making a bigger positive impact in the scientific community when it comes to clinical research, working with pharmaceutical companies, and partnering with liver associations and really doing our part to improve our society and bring awareness to the importance of liver health.

Okay – so how did you figure out the manufacturing part? Did you have prior experience?

We did not know how to manufacture our product beforehand, but we knew about some of the mechanics of starting a business as we watched our father run his own confectionary jelly cup business. After a visit to South Korea and discovering their extensive range of alternative “hangover” herbal remedies and liver health support, we knew we wanted to bring our own version for U.S. and global markets. Once we started building on our grand idea, we held interviews with multiple manufacturers in order to find one who shared our vision. We finally settled on our exclusive manufacturing partner in South Korea and began developing The Plug Drink after testing 50+ variations. One lesson we learned along the way was that formulating the best product isn’t easy – it took several years – but it can be done with continuous hard work and dedication. And even now, we’re still improving upon our formula; we’ve recently released The Plug Drink 5.0 exclusively on our website. We are always listening to our customers’ feedback in order to make the best product possible.

Do you have any stories of times when you almost missed payroll or any other near death experiences for your business?

After we received a half million pre-seed funding, we bought a ton of inventory and the revenue started coming in. At this time, we were associated with different PR, social media, and website agencies that left us with several invoices and fees that ate up our revenue. It soon became clear that The Plug would have a close call in less than 90 days. After we spoke with our father, as he is an experienced entrepreneur himself, we decided to leave the agencies that were not necessary to us at the moment. My brother and I took over our social media platforms, which piled on more work for us; both of us were still working our corporate jobs at the time. That’s when we thought of starting our internship program; we were young once, so we knew that many college students are always looking to gain valuable experience before they enter the “real world.” Our internship program provided them with opportunities, while we received the help we needed to keep our brand alive on social media. Currently, this is our 20th internship class and we are always learning, improving, and growing collectively to achieve a common goal: bringing awareness to liver health.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.theplugdrink.com
• Instagram: www.instagram.com/theplugdrink
• Facebook: www.facebook.com/theplugdrink
• Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/company/the-plug-drink/mycompany/?viewAsMember=true
• Twitter: www.twitter.com/theplugdrink