Why Did Lucy Gum Grow So Slowly?

John Coogan says Lucy gum took 10 years to reach the size of Soylent because marketing stayed much more targeted on purpose, which meant way lower growth rates, and the company did not really want to be mega viral. Nicotine gum is age-restricted and FDA-regulated, and the claims a brand can make are very important, including whether anyone can say the gum helps you quit smoking. A lot of things cannot be said. Soylent was a food product, generally recognized as safe by the FDA, and people can decide what they eat all day.

He worked very closely with the co-founders for almost a decade, is still on the board, and is still working with them. They grew the business a lot, but Lucy never went viral and never appeared in the New Yorker. They watched Juul go super viral and get a bunch of kids addicted, and that was a huge risk they did not want. Lucy was meant to be the anti-Juul and the anti-cigarette. The customer was smokers trying to quit who thought Nicorette tasted bad, was hard to find, and felt like medicine, along with the post-vape community that had picked vaping up in college and later did not want to vape around family.

The slower path followed from that targeted plan. Getting to Soylent's size took 10 years.