1,084 Stores, Zero Outside Investors - Jia Liao on Growing Hotpot Queen Organically

Jia Liao is the founder of Hapa Queen, a Sichuan hot pot brand built to honor her mother, the original "Queen of Hapa" in China who invented the split broth pot that let spicy and non spicy eaters share the same table. In this episode, Jia opens up about walking away from her first venture (a tea lounge that raised eight million dollars) after learning hard lessons about outside capital, why she chose to bootstrap Hapa Queen instead, and how a failed Kickstarter forced her into a last minute Expo West launch that became the turning point for the brand.

Jia and Connor get into the real numbers behind building a CPG brand from scratch: going from 100 cold emails and 7 replies to over 1,084 stores in the US and 215 in Australia, signing two distributors before landing a single retailer, the Whole Foods "golden ticket" that didn't convert, and the packaging mistake an eye tracking study exposed that changed her entire product line. She also talks candidly about why she shares her failures on LinkedIn instead of just her wins, and what it means to build a business at her own pace instead of someone else's.

Topics covered:

• Why she turned down outside funding after her first startup
• The Kickstarter that failed days before launch
• Betting everything on an Expo West debut
• Reading buyers on the trade show floor
• The packaging fix that changed her growth trajectory
• Building a community on LinkedIn through honesty, not highlight reels

Connect with Jia Liao: / weijia-liao

Connect with Hotpot Queen: / hotpotqueen

Visit Hotpot Queen Website: https://hotpotqueen.com/

Connect with Connor Macpherson: / connor-retail

Connect with Luke Anthony: / luke-anthony-🍵-394052131

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