BaKIT Box, a seed-stage startup, was growing quickly but didn’t have a clear understanding of who was buying their baking subscription kits and why. 

The company was spending too much money on customer acquisition, and spending too much time on experiments to figure out what worked to attract and retain customers. The small team risked running out of steam and money before they hit profitability.

BaKIT Box asked Amplify to help clarify which target customer was the strongest opportunity, and how to refine their brand and products without starting from zero. This challenge cut to the core of the business, and our insights would lead to a major pivot for the young company.

The Amplify team used a human-centered innovation process to break down the broad strategic questions into testable concepts:

1. Opportunity framing

Subscriber data allowed us to quickly form a hypothesis about who the current subscriber groups were: 

• Parents of kids 5-10
• Young professionals with a recreational interest in baking
• Organizations buying corporate gifts

A fast round of qualitative research with these three groups allowed us to define and differentiate the user needs and product requirements for each group, and the level of consumer demand we heard in our research.

When qualitative insights were paired with a market opportunity sizing, leadership quickly came to a consensus: the biggest opportunity was to re-focus BaKIT Box and their kits on kids and families.

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2. Prototyping

Now, for the fun stuff. The team got out our glue sticks and prototyped a branded mailer box and new kit materials, including recipes repurposed as play-based baking activities that parents and kids could enjoy together.

From our research, we knew that the outer box had to instantly communicate FUN and appeal to kids' curiosity, or parents would never subscribe in the first place.

Parents were clear - they were not going to try to convince their kids to do this, the box had to sell itself.

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3. Testing

We took a Mexico-themed kit prototype on the road and tested the new, kid-focused concept with 5-10 year olds and their parents.

A few insights that influenced the product pivot:

• Parent positioning: The parent or grandparent is the customer to acquire, but the kid needs to look forward to the kits to retain them. Parents more interested in an activity that facilitates fun and allows them to have a conversation about food tastes and memories than an explicitly educational activity. But most importantly parents will pay for any activity that holds kids' attention.

• "Cooking" vs fun: everything about the activity was fun for kids - other than following the recipe steps. For example, taking out all the ingredients and tasting them, the feeling of smearing chocolate, the challenge of popping out a chocolate mold without breaking it (and eating the broken pieces).

• Amp up the WOW factor: Recipe titles alone are not enough to excite kids. The outside of the box needs pictures and phrases that emphasize the extreme/weird/icky/unusual nature of the experience to build excitement and show that this is not like school.

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