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Equal Parts Launches As Pattern’s First Direct-With-Consumer Brand

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Today marks the first product launch from Pattern, a new family of brands founded by the team behind former branding company Gin Lane

Equal Parts is the company’s first articulation of a product line under the Pattern umbrella, which  is rooted in the direct-with-consumer model that focuses on leveraging customer feedback to inform all product decisions. 

It’s a product of the team at Gin Lane deciding to pivot away from branding to go in a new direction: Launching custom products paired with a service—most often in the form of coaching or guidance. 

This first product line, called Equal Parts, offers five sets of cookware made from sustainable materials that come with eight weeks of access to a cooking coach that’s available via text messaging. 

Co-founder Nick Ling explained that the evolution from Gin Lane into the new company, Pattern, was a long time coming. 

“A lot of our team members—myself included—are entering a new life phase. We found ourselves thinking and talking less about projects and more about what we really wanted in our lives,” he said.

Many of these conversations circled around the emergence of the direct-with-consumer model, wherein brands get an opportunity to build deeper connections with customers. At the same time, customers get a larger say in brand and product decision-making, which increases perceived value.

As a result of these value-focused conversations, the team decided to focus on building Pattern so they could create a family of brands that were all rooted in helping others find enjoyment and fulfillment in everyday life (an approach on which they extrapolated on in a Medium article.)

“Time is precious—especially when you spend eight hours during the week at work,” Ling said. “We wanted to help people learn how to put down their phones and be present—and cooking was one of the ways we felt this was most easily accomplished.”

The team at Pattern collectively agreed cooking and food preparation were simple ways to unplug at the end of the day, which is why they chose to start within the cookware vertical and made Equal Parts their very first product line to roll out.

They’ve also strategically tapped into a growing consumer trend, considering data shows that in the United States, about 70% of meals are consumed outside the home. 

Their goal: Reverse that trend and get people comfortable with cooking at home so they can be more mindful and present during activities in the kitchen.

With this line of cookware and the corresponding guidance that comes with it, Pattern’s big picture vision is that it will help consumers experience an evolution wherein cooking becomes an enjoyable experience—not just another task on the daily to-do list.

It’s too soon to tell if they’ll ultimately succeed in that goal, but it’s a unique challenge they’ve decided to tackle. 

Writer and consumer product good analyst Emily Singer made a valuable point on the launch in her newsletter, saying: “If Equal Parts is aiming to facilitate habituation and intuition among beginner cooks, cookware usually isn’t the biggest hurdle — it’s knowing what ingredients to start with and what to do with them,” she wrote.

“That, in theory, is where the cooking coach can add the most value. But to be truly valuable, it should go beyond recommending recipes. It should generate grocery lists, and maybe even pre-populate Instacart orders.”

This is the type of feedback the direct-with-consumer model thrives on, so it will be interesting to see if commentary like this is incorporated into the business in the coming months.

Looking ahead, Pattern will continue to introduce new brands over the next 12 months, with the next brand rollout coming in winter of 2019.

All future launches will also focus on helping consumers find more enjoyment in daily life and will include custom products paired with one-to-one guidance. Live, in-person events are also slotted for in-person brand activations.

Even with a launch schedule in place, the team at Pattern is being careful not to over-plan, as they want to leave plenty of room for customer input over the coming months—as the direct-with-consumer model calls for.

“We’re continuously gathering feedback and we’ll keep learning as we go, so the development process is never-ending,” Tyler Sgro, the brand’s GM said. “We’ll continue to work on building relationships and leveraging the insight we get from conversations with our customers along the way.”

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