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How an olive oil entrepreneur discovered success by emulating Ralph Lauren

– Only the best. When she founded the olive oil brand Brightland in 2018, Aishwarya Iyer positioned its products as luxuries. She saw brands in the food and consumer packaged goods space falling into three categories: good, better, and best. Most of the emerging brands tapping into health and wellness trends fell into the “better” bucket, she saw—she wanted Brightland to be considered the “best.”

Brightland’s glass-bottled olive oils sell for about $40 each—a price point that has built a business in the mid-eight figures, mostly through gifting. “It became really clear we’ve built this incredible gifting company,” Iyer says, citing a stat that claims a Brightland product was gifted every minute during last year’s holiday season.

Starting at the top has given Brightland more room to play as it tries to reach a customer who’s shopping for their own kitchen year-round. Earlier this month, the company introduced an “everyday” oil that costs half as much as its traditional product—which Iyer considers to be part of the “better” category of CPG. It took years—and a not-previously-reported fall 2024 Series A round, for a total of $15 million in funding—to get the idea over the line. Brightland’s California olive farmers were not big enough to produce a more mass product; eventually, Iyer found a farmer who had not previously worked with a brand, and had instead been mostly supporting food service providers.

Aishwarya Iyer
Aishwarya Iyer, founder of olive oil brand Brightland.

Courtesy of Brightland

The hope is that customers who have been buying Brightland products as gifts now turn to the brand for their own day-to-day use. Some consumers could downgrade their own purchases and start buying the cheaper product, but Iyer is excited about reaching a broader array of customers—online and across Whole Foods, Amazon, Erewhon, Bloomingdale’s, and more retailers. “It opens our universe up,” she says, adding that she could see the business doubling or tripling within a few years as a result.

“I haven’t seen any other food brands have luxury and everyday and bridge that together really seamlessly,” she says. Instead, she looked to fashion to make the transition—specifically Ralph Lauren. “Ralph Lauren not only has Purple Label, but they also have Polo, and they’re able to do that so beautifully,” she says. “That’s who I looked at for inspiration.”

The new everyday product comes in a plastic, squeeze-top bottle. Brightland’s first squeeze top product, a “pizza oil” it used to test-drive the concept in 2023, drew the ire of olive oil competitor Graza, whose cofounder accused Brightland of copying its own packaging. Iyer has never publicly weighed in on the olive oil drama, but does so now: “The squeeze bottle is not novel or new. It has been used for decades in kitchens,” she says. “And if that’s the only thing that somebody has to talk about, I don’t know what to say. There are so many other things that Brightland has to talk about. And for these oils, this is just a convenient packaging format.”

Emma Hinchliffe
emma.hinchliffe@fortune.com

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