276 | Maintaining Momentum: Staying in Motion & Scaling Up | with Kent Yoshimura

Honest Ecommerce

Kentaro is a multimedia artist, creative director, martial artist, and entrepreneur from Los Angeles, CA. After studying Neuroscience at UCSD then entering into the film program at UCLA, Kentaro started his career creating content for global brands such as McDonald’s, Lego, Benjamin Moore, and many others before eventually transitioning to be a children’s book illustrator and brand director.

He created the visual direction for the Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf’s children’s line with The Magic Tea House, and his children’s illustrations have traveled across museums throughout the United States.

He has been featured on NBC for his large-scale guerilla pieces, the New York Times for his mural work, and in TIME magazine, Slash Film, Forbes, Huffington Post, Men's Health, GameRant, Vice, and NPR for his films.

As a martial artist, Kentaro competed internationally, fighting Muay Thai at Pattaya Stadium in Thailand and training with Judo Olympians at the Kodokan and the Japanese royal guards within the Imperial Palace. He currently remains one of the cultural ambassadors for the upcoming Los Angeles Olympics.

In 2015, he co-founded Neuro - a functional confectionary brand revolutionizing the consumable supplement space. With over 50 million pieces sold since Neuro’s successful Indiegogo campaign, the company has been featured in TIME magazine, Dr. Oz, Forbes 30 Under 30, The New Yorker, Buzzfeed, Shark Tank, The Joe Rogan Podcast, Fast Company, and Entrepreneur magazine. It can now be found in over 12,000 retail locations nationwide including Walmart, Whole Foods, Erewhon, Bristol Farms, Wynn hotels and Jet Blue.

Alongside his ventures, Kentaro currently paints large scale murals as both a freelance artist and a qualified muralist through the Department of Cultural Affairs. As an experiential artist, he co-designed the immersive retail experience CAMP in New York, The Sixth Collection for Jerry Lorenzo's streetwear brand Fear of God, Britney Spears’ The Zone, and Diddy’s 50th Birthday through okidoki, an experiential design agency he co-founded in 2018.

In the digital space, he has worked alongside Clubhouse and Crypto.com to do their first NFT drop and most recently finished two 2500SQFT murals in Downtown Los Angeles celebrating Ellison Onizuka, the first Asian American astronaut in space.

In This Conversation We Discuss:

• [00:43] Intro
• [01:04] Redefining gum and mints with supplements
• [02:33] From athletes to innovators: crafting a vision
• [03:48] Finding a co-manufacturer in the confectionery space
• [04:40] From concept to creation: the R&D journey
• [05:51] Challenges of defining a new product category
• [07:43] Adding value to existing products
• [09:34] Seizing momentum & harnessing community support
• [11:36] Bootstrapping triumph: the crowdfunding journey
• [12:13] Building genuine community connection on Reddit
• [14:16] Electric Eye: Your true Shopify experts
• [15:13] Strategic outreach: The PR hustle
• [16:19] Catalyzing success: from GearDiary to Time Magazine
• [16:52] Authenticity in action: Sustaining the original vision
• [18:18] Accelerating growth by investing in talent
• [19:33] Prioritizing progress over perfection in hiring
• [20:42] Adapting to demand & managing hiring complexities
• [21:44] Branching out & transitioning to omnichannel
• [23:04] Get Neuro functional gum and mints

Resources:

• Subscribe to Honest Ecommerce on Youtube
• Neuro functional gum and mints neurogum.com/
• Follow Kent Yoshimura linkedin.com/in/kentyoshimura/
• Schedule an intro call with one of our experts electriceye.io/connect

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