Discovering New Markets Through Real Conversations | Shelley Gupta | BaKIT Box

Shelley Gupta is the Founder & CEO of BāKIT Box, a STEM-based baking kit bringing global flavors and cultural traditions into homes across America. Her path to CPG began far from the kitchen as a recording artist signed to EMI Music before earning her CFA, an MBA from Chicago Booth, and leading strategy work at Accenture.

Blending creativity with financial rigor, Shelley turned a casual conversation with a homeschooling parent into a breakthrough channel, now approved as an official curriculum in 14 states. In this episode, she shares how that discovery reshaped her subscription strategy, why flexibility beats lock-in for retention, and how understanding the real buyer (not just the user) transformed her business.

Whether you’re an ecommerce founder rethinking your subscription model or a CPG operator looking for smarter customer acquisition paths, Shelley’s story is a lesson in listening deeply, iterating fast, and staying true to your mission.

In This Conversation We Discuss:

• [00:24] Intro
• [00:49] Building community through shared passions
• [02:20] Transforming baking into an educational tool
• [03:41] Launching early versions to test real demand
• [04:32] Reaching first customers through organic channels
• [05:24] Applying to accelerators as a product founder
• [06:00] Differentiating users from true buyers
• [06:52] Rebranding to serve a clearer customer base
• [07:48] Testing niche ideas before fully committing
• [08:56] Stay updated with new episodes
• [09:07] Turning chance encounters into growth channels
• [10:17] Building growth through genuine relationships
• [10:53] Sponsors: Electric Eye, Heatmap & Freight Right
• [15:31] Designing subscriptions with built-in flexibility
• [16:44] Expanding marketing beyond paid social
• [18:19] Understanding customer complexity and fatigue
• [20:41] Leveraging creative roots to build a brand

Resources:

• Subscribe to Honest Ecommerce on Youtube
• STEM Baking Kits for Curious Kids bakitbox.com/ 
• Follow Shelley Gupta linkedin.com/in/shelley-gupta 
• Schedule an intro call with one of our experts electriceye.io/connect
• Clear, real-time data built for ecommerce optimization heatmap.com/honest 
• Turn your domestic business into an international business freightright.com/honest 

If you’re enjoying the show, we’d love it if you left Honest Ecommerce a review on Apple Podcasts. It makes a huge impact on the success of the podcast, and we love reading every one of your reviews!

Transcript

Shelley Gupta

You want to say, I know these people are going to like it. I know these customers are going to like it. And it's easy to just close your eyes and say, everyone's going to love it. But getting more targeted is the hard part. 

Chase Clymer

Some advice is like you don't need to go 100% at once. You can stand up a specific landing page or a specific campaign that is more targeted towards a particular ICP or activity or service or product.

Honest Ecommerce is a weekly podcast where we interview direct-to-consumer brand founders and leaders to find out what it takes to start, grow, and scale an online business today.

Hey everybody, welcome back to another episode of Honest Ecommerce. Today, I'm welcoming to the show, an amazing founder. Shelley Gupta is the founder and CEO of BaKIT Box, educational baking kits for kids. Shelley, welcome to the show. 

Shelley Gupta

Thank you for having me. 

Chase Clymer

I'm excited to be here. I'm excited to chat too. I always like to shout out where I meet people.  And we met at SubSummit, which is a great little conference for anyone that is in the subscription or retention business industry type space. So if anyone is listening and they have a business model like that, definitely check out SubSummit. Did you know that they're moving to Kansas City next year? 

Shelley Gupta

I did. I'm excited about it. I've been going for the last 3 years in Dallas. So I'm excited about the change.

Chase Clymer

Me too. I'm more excited for Kansas City BBQ because I know they're going to get some awesome food there next year. 

Shelley Gupta

Yum. That's so true. 

Chase Clymer

Back to BaKITbox. Quickly, what are the actual products or what are you sending? If I purchase  from BaKITbox, what exactly am I getting in the mail? 

Shelley Gupta

Yeah. Good question. Depending on what you purchase, you're going to receive a recipe kit,  which includes all the dry ingredients that you need to make the actual bake. That's the baseline. But in addition to that, you're gonna be receiving some educational workbooks included in your box that introduce you to that country or that cuisine or that topic area, depending again on which you order. 

And it has a bunch of activities, challenges, STEM focused exercises, language exercises, math, all sorts of things related to that topic area. So in the down times of baking, when it's in the oven or when the dough is resting,  there is something that you can do to engage the kiddos in the household and really make it a full culinary experience. 

Chase Clymer

Definitely seems that you've thought this through. Where did this idea come from? 

Shelley Gupta

Yeah. Great question. So it first came from the idea that  there's just very little, if not no diversity in baking today. So if you visit your local grocery store and go to the baking aisle, it still contains brands that are over 100 years old, selling items that are very basic, American bakes, chocolate chip cookies, brownies, birthday cake. And we don't have that enriched culture in the baking aisle yet. 

But we do see it in the grocery store and all the other aisles. So that was where the idea first stemmed from for me, was introducing baking to the DIY at home projects in an easy way. And it was really our customers, those MVP customers that came to us in those early stages who  triggered some ideas for me around the educational side where I had a couple of parents saying, this is really cool. 

What can you tell me about this country? And that was like such an aha moment where I was like, “Oh my God, there's such an opportunity here that we're not capitalizing on.” So I took some time to reiterate on the product itself and then launched it as an educational tool for kiddos introducing STEM. 

Chase Clymer

That's amazing. You had this idea. Do you remember what year maybe that the first iteration of this went live? 

Shelley Gupta

Yeah, it was in 2021. 

Chase Clymer

And then you got that feedback and how quickly did you pivot per se? I'd call it more of an iteration of the product. 

Shelley Gupta

Yeah. 

Chase Clymer

How long did it take you to get that feedback from that initial core group of customers and then make that change? 

Shelley Gupta

Yeah, it took a little while, but that was more because another reason it really pushed me to make the change was when I went through the Techstars Accelerator program in 2022. So that plus all the feedback and really taking the time to analyze my customers feedback was how it pushed me to make that change and do that reiteration. So we launched with the STEM aspect or the educational aspect in July of 2023.

Chase Clymer

I don't want to get ahead of myself here.You still launched and you still got customers who I'm assuming weren't your friends and family. How did you get that first. How are you getting the word out there about BaKIT Box without just being a startup and not having that initial customers to sell to? 

Shelley Gupta

Yeah. At first, of course, it was family and friends. But as we started just blasting with emails and LinkedIn and organic social media, we created a BaKIT Box Instagram account and Facebook account. It was just hoping that people were seeing it. We did not do any paid  media at that time. Didn't have any budget for it. It was just an MVP. And so those first few customers whose names I did not recognize was a very exciting time to see that this is actually going beyond my network in Chicago. 

Chase Clymer

Yeah, definitely helps validate it a little bit more. 

Shelley Gupta

For sure. 

Chase Clymer

You said you went through an accelerator program. Did they reach out to you? Did you reach out to them?

Shelley Gupta

Yeah, I believe I applied. I think it was an application that I saw coming through and figured it would be a good time. And then there was a very rigorous interview process and recommendations and referrals that I needed to get in. And getting in as a product company,  given it is Techstars and I assumed that it would be mostly high tech companies, it was really awesome to be accepted and be able to learn from all those mentors and all those investors. So that was the summer of 2022. 

Chase Clymer

Obviously, it was a whole program. But were there any standout learnings from that whole experience that you could share with the audience? 

Shelley Gupta

Yeah, I think the biggest one was really understanding our customer. And I thought I did at the time. But they definitely challenged us and challenged me to dig a little bit deeper into why our customers are purchasing. And that understanding and doing that exercise really made me realize the difference between a single  young person who's baking and enjoys baking versus a parent who's using it as this tool to connect with their child. 

And it really made this big difference of understanding the why and then understanding what that means for longevity and potential like LTV and which market was truly just a stronger market for us to be providing an actual service that is beneficial to that person.

Chase Clymer

Absolutely. And would you say that maybe as an entrepreneur, it's easy to put blinders on to some of that outside information because you feel so passionate about the version of the idea you came up with?  

Shelley Gupta

Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. It's so easy to tunnel vision and you want to say, “I know these people are going to like it. I know these customers are going to like it.” And it's hard to close the door because as soon as we rebranded.

It wasn't a whole rebrand but kind of shifted a little bit of our marketing, our branding. I knew that that was closing the door to some individuals that don't have kids and maybe see this now as a total kids brand, which it is. But it was that scary moment of saying, “Am I really comfortable with this?” Because it's easy to just close your eyes and say, “Everyone's going to love it.” But getting more targeted is the hard part.

Chase Clymer

Yeah, think niching down, it doesn't matter what you're doing. With a service business, if you're in the agency world or a handyman world or selling a product like yours, it is scary to potentially turn off customers to double down into what should be a more profitable area or niche. There is some fear there and you do need to take a leap of faith and just some advice. It's like you don't need to go 100% at once. 

Shelley Gupta

Right.

Chase Clymer

Stand up a specific landing page or a specific campaign that is more targeted towards a particular ICP or activity or service or product. I think it would probably be a worse idea to just overnight change everything unless you had a bunch of research to back it up. 

Shelley Gupta

Right. 100%. It is. It's very challenging. But it feels like as an entrepreneur, I got to listen to the feedback I'm getting. I have to listen to my customers and really understand that in order to be able to serve my customers and be true to the mission, sometimes you do need to look at the niche markets and see what just makes the most sense. 

Chase Clymer

Hey everybody, just a quick reminder. Please like this video and subscribe if you haven't. We're releasing interviews like this every week, so don't miss out. Now back to the interview.

Chase Clymer

You go through this accelerator program. ah You come out with a better understanding of the market that you want to go after.

and you start pivoting towards that market, then what happens? How did you grow from there? What was going on? 

Shelley Gupta

Yeah. So 2023 and then 2024 we were starting from scratch, but I still had a few years under my belt of learnings. And we discovered a market by fluke. And this was the homeschooling communities.

So I worked with a mom who was actually just filming some content for us and we were kind of hanging out and she mentioned that she homeschools and she was like, “This will be a great market.” I knew nothing about the homeschool market at that point. And from that point on, it was something that we did a lot of research on, trying to understand what they were looking for? What kind of curriculum is standardized? Is it not?  

And after some time, we are now approved in 14 states as an official curriculum in the homeschool world. And we are selling through a lot of grant programs where parents are receiving funding and they can use it on educational tools like ours. 

Chase Clymer

That's amazing. Again, it goes back to you were just listening to not only your customers, but this was now a customer that had become an advocate for the brand and an influencer for the brand. 

Shelley Gupta

Absolutely. And it was great. I was just having some conversation, understanding her and getting to know her and her daughter and  to learn that there's this market of parents that  are creating  tailored curriculum in their own homes and they have the flexibility to bring on tools and hands-on experiences. It was just a perfect fit for us to try and  turns out that it's a great market for us.

Chase Clymer

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Chase Clymer

Now, was subscription always at the forefront of the product offering or did that come later on? 

Shelley Gupta

Kind of. It was always an option. And the reason I say that is baking is an industry where it's very challenging. There's such a science to it. So it's not the easiest task and we want to make that easier for people.  

So I wanted to always give the option of you can try this without committing. So whether that means you're gifting it to a family or friend or somebody that you care about, or you just want to try it out for yourself, we didn't want to limit people to having to lock in to a recurring subscription. So we always had both options. The subscriptions though have become, you know, over time as we relaunched have shifted a little bit where

We do three months of content in one box and you get that four times a year. So it does end up being kind of a once a month experience, but you have the flexibility to do that within the three month period. So three boxes every three months is our subscription. So it's a little bit different than the kind of a la carte business where you can try one recipe, you can try, you know, a couple of things here and there without committing.

Chase Clymer

In more recent years, has marketing expanded beyond just social posting  and word of mouth? 

Shelley Gupta

Absolutely. So when I launched the educational side of the business and the products, we  worked on some  social, like some paid social. It wasn't our favorite way of going about it, but it was great for brand awareness. It definitely brought a lot of eyes on the business, which is wonderful. 

And that's when we also started pursuing homeschool and started working with more influencers and creators and just wanted to spread an organic message about this. What's always interesting about a product that's for families is that the kids who benefit the most from the product are not the ones purchasing. You need to convince the parents that they want this for their child and their child is going to like it.  So there's so many little steps that need to happen.

So paid social is definitely something we did. We're not doing as much of that now. And then  in the homeschool market, we go to conventions, we're in person in different states, showing off the product and gathering names and creating email campaigns. And then we also work with influencers. Outside of that, we are also working with some gift shops and museum gift shops. 

Again, we're very targeted to educational avenues. So we're working with a few museums across the country now where we're in their gift shops and we tie to an exhibit that they have. 

Chase Clymer

That's amazing. Is there anything like looking back  on the tenure of BaKIT Box. Name [of] the show is Honest Ecommerce. Are there any mistakes you might have made along the way that you're like, “Hey, maybe don't do this, listener?” 

Shelley Gupta

For sure. I mean, I think at first,  to be honest, I thought Ecommerce would be easy. It's not. It's not at all. And I thought that just throwing your name out there and throwing money at social media and all that would get the results that I think historically people have seen  with successful brands. But it's definitely not that easy. I put a lot of eggs in that basket at first before realizing that there's probably more niche markets we can go after like homeschool, for example, or like gifting.  

And I wouldn't say I wouldn't do it again because it taught me what's the right avenues for us. But it was definitely a stressful time to be looking at the conversion numbers every single day and wondering why they're not moving in the direction that we want. But that just wasn't the way that it was going to work for us, at least in the early stages. Again, it's a little bit challenging too. You're trying to convince a parent to do something for their child. They're not going to do it themselves, necessarily. It's a family experience.

So, I think that was something that we learned really quickly. It's like, let's save some of this budget and try something that's a little more targeted. And it worked out. 

Chase Clymer

Yeah, absolutely. I like what you said at the beginning. That you thought Ecommerce was easy. And that's where the show comes from. It's not really easy. And it's all those.

Shelley Gupta

No. 

Chase Clymer

All those success stories out there. There's a little bit of confirmation bias out there because the things you hear about are the ones that are successful. You don't hear about the thousands and thousands of failures. 

Shelley Gupta

Absolutely. It is definitely more challenging and you can. There are so many success stories, which is amazing and great data too. If you want to mimic that or try some things that you've heard that have been done well. But every company is just so unique. And naturally, all the customers are changing. They're more savvy. They're more and more educated. And there's so much competition, not just for products, but for their time and for their eyes, whether it's Instagram, TikTok, however they're finding you.

So it's so dynamic that you can't. There's no playbook that works for everybody. 

Chase Clymer

Now, is there anything I didn't ask you about that you think would resonate with our audience?  

Shelley Gupta

Oh, that's always a hard question. Well, I guess a little bit about my background, because I have a dynamic career path. I started off as a musician. I'm from Canada, from Toronto. And my first experience building any sort of brand was around me and my name.

Because I put out an album when I was like 20-something and built a whole brand around myself, trying to connect with an audience and trying to understand what it takes to build a business. And so I took a lot of those learnings with me today. But that's probably one of my more unique background  items. 

Chase Clymer

It tells everyone that you can pivot and anyone can start an Ecommerce business and find success if they work at it. Like you said, it's not going to be an overnight thing. 

Shelley Gupta

Absolutely.  

Chase Clymer

Now if I'm listening to this, ah and  I'm interested in picking up a Bake It Box for myself, for my family, where should I go? What should I do? 

Shelley Gupta

Yeah, you can visit us at bakitbox.com. It's B-A-K-I-T box.com.  And you've got a lot of options there. We've got about 16, 17 SKUs and different recipes you can try out. Or you can also subscribe. 

Chase Clymer Shelley Gupta

Awesome. Shelley, thank you so much for coming on the show today. 

Shelley Gupta

Thank you. Great to have you.