MadeGood: Salma and Nima Fotovat Lost Their First Business. They Grew Their Next One Into a Snack Giant.

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**Salma Fotovat** (2:56)
Like some of the things we said yes to, I think probably retailers went to many other suppliers first, and they said no, and they're like, okay, I guess MadeGood will say yes.
We had one thing called the pizza box, where it had probably 13 different products in it. You know what a nightmare it is in manufacturing, to make one skew that has 13 different products in it? But we did it. We said yes to things, not because it was easy, but because we had to do it. That was the only way.

**Guy Raz** (3:35)
Welcome to How I Built This, a show about innovators, entrepreneurs, idealists and the stories behind the movements they built.
I'm Guy Raz and on the show today, how three siblings teamed up to create a bite-sized granola snack and grew it into MadeGood, an organic brand that sold in tens of thousands of stores.
A lot of the founders have had on this show started with a clear vision. They knew there was a product they wanted to create. It's just that they had no idea how to make it. Take Krishnakalyanen, the founder of Catalina Crunch. He had to figure out how to make breakfast cereal from scratch. Or Ben and Jerry, they wanted to make ice cream, but they literally had to take a correspondence course to learn how. But my guests on today's show had the opposite problem. Nima and Salma Fotovat, our brother and sister. Before they ever thought about launching their own brand, they already knew how to make snack foods. Their family business, co-founded by their dad, manufactured fruit and nut bars for other companies. They were co-packers, so they understood the machinery, the supply chain, production, inventory, all of the complicated stuff that goes into making food at scale. But what they didn't have was a brand, and eventually they decided to create one. Their first attempt was a line of fruit and nut bars that wasn't all that different from the products they were already making for other brands. It turned out to be a modest success. But for reasons we'll get into later on, launching those bars ended up with the Fotovats actually losing their share of the business in a painful split with their partner.