Fishwife grew on tin design, then Whole Foods.
A $32 three-pack of tinned fish, launched online at the end of 2020, now on 4,000+ store shelves at about $6M a year in revenue.
BLOOM10X did not work with Fishwife. This breakdown uses public sources only, linked below.
- End 2020100 beta boxes sell out in under an hour
- 2022Revenue up more than 200% on 2021
- Jan 2023Whole Foods, its first national retailer
- Jan 2024Shark Tank; about $6M a year
- 2024From 1,800 stores in April to 4,000+
- Aug 2026Whole Foods tote: 70% gone on day one
Store count doubled in one year.
Stores, 2024
The Fishwife loop
Five plays behind the growth.
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Make the tin the ad
Co-founder Becca Millstein picked her illustrator by looking through Instagram and surveying friends, then gave them a narrow mood board (Shopify, Feb 2024). Fortune points to its colorful, illustrated packaging in a $2.6B US category (Fortune, Apr 2024).
Copy this: brief one illustrator to make a pack people photograph, then use those photos as your first ads. Creative →
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Sell 100 boxes before the launch
Before the official launch, Fishwife sold 100 beta boxes of samples from its canneries. They sold out in under an hour (Shopify, Feb 2024). It also sent small samples to creators instead of full product.
Copy this: run a small paid drop to your list before you order full inventory. Creator seeding →
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Launch online, scale on the shelf
“We launch our new products on DTC. We launch collaborations on DTC,” Millstein told Klaviyo (Klaviyo, 2024). Whole Foods became its first national retailer in Jan 2023 (Ad Age), and brand ambassadors hand out samples in stores like Whole Foods (Forbes, Aug 2025).
Copy this: use your store as the test kitchen; take only proven sellers to retail. Check the margin →
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Treat collabs as media
A smoked salmon made with chili crisp brand Fly by Jing sells for $39 (Fortune). Whole Foods’ first merch collab, a Fishwife tote, sold 70% of stock on day one and 99.3% by the end of week one; Sweetgreen put a co-branded tin in a salad across 285+ restaurants (SeafoodSource, Aug 2026).
Copy this: partner with a brand whose buyers already pay premium, and launch it as a limited drop.
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Catch the TV spike in email
Before its Jan 2024 Shark Tank episode, Fishwife rebuilt its welcome flow: a plain-text note from Millstein, product education for first-timers, and a last-chance reminder on the welcome discount. Email revenue rose 110% year on year that month; flow revenue was up 35% for the year to date (Klaviyo, 2024).
Copy this: before any press or TV moment, write the founder note and the beginner guide into your welcome flow. Retention →
The Fishwife buy box, annotated.
- 1Stars before the name4.9 from 201 reviews on this tin.
- 2Priced by the pack“$32 • 3 Pack”. The per-tin price, $10.67, isn’t shown.
- 3The flavors are the packsEach flavor is a tile of its tin art, including the Fly By Jing collab.
- 4One-time is selectedThe default is the $32 one-off, not the plan.
- 5A small plan discount$28.80 to subscribe, 10% off, every 30, 60 or 90 days, with gifts on the 2nd and 3rd order.
- 6Quantity next to the buttonFree shipping starts at $75, so two packs ($64) fall short.
- 7A delivery date“Arrives as soon as Sun, Nov 15” under the button.
Our math on the buy box
Our math on Fishwife’s live prices: $32 one-time, $28.80 subscribed, free shipping at $75. Leaves out tax and the gifts on orders 2 and 3.
Copy this on your product page
- Show the per-unit price on every option. Conversion
- Sell a bundle that clears your free-shipping line in one tap. Raise AOV
- Let your packaging do the variant picker.
- Put a delivery date under the button.
One question, then a starter pack.
“Are you new to tinned fish?”
- The offer is a “Mystery Discount”, so the amount isn’t the hook.
- Yes or No splits first-timers from fans before the email field.
- It matches the welcome flow’s beginner education (Klaviyo, 2024).
“Try Our Starter Pack!”
- A lineup of top sellers, “smoky to bright and citrusy”.
- Ships in a gift tin, so it doubles as a present.
- The same words lead the ads: “New to tinned fish? Start here.”
“4.9, based on 201 reviews”
- Our math: 180 ÷ 201 = 90% five-star.
- The count is per tin, not a sitewide total.
- Reviews sit below recipes, so the page sells use before proof.
About 150 live ads, many from creators.
“New to tinned fish? Start here.”
Starter Pack, from Fishwife’s page, started Aug 24.
See the ad →“Meet the New Fishwife Starter Pack”
Runs as Fishwife with Courtney BBK&Co., started Oct 19.
See the ad →“12 Days of Fishwife Gifts”
Advent calendar, “our biggest product EVER”, started Oct 15.
See the ad →Active US ads matching eatfishwife.com, Meta Ad Library, Nov 10, 2026. “About 150” is Meta’s estimate. Of the first 22 ads: 9 ran with a creator or partner page, 9 sold the Advent Calendar, 5 the Starter Pack.
How a Starter Pack ad is built.
- 1Two names in the header“Fishwife with Foodie Authority”, so it reads as a food page’s post.
- 2A beginner hookThe same line as the pop-up: it speaks to people who have never bought tinned fish.
- 3The tin is the demoShort video of the illustrated tin being opened and shared.
- 4One product, one linkHeadline “Try the Fishwife Favorites” to the Starter Pack.
Our wireframe, built from ads 1042201555474401 and 1752239762642564 in the Meta Ad Library (Nov 10, 2026). Not a copy of the ad.
Three Fishwife videos.
“When you find a huge household category that has never had brand loyalty, the potential is extremely high.”
“70 percent of our total inventory sold out on the very first day.”
Read it with three caveats.
- The timing helped. Fishwife launched into lockdown pantry buying at the end of 2020 (Forbes). A 2026 launch won’t get that tailwind.
- Shelves cost people. 4,000 stores need demos and reorders; Fishwife uses in-store ambassadors to sample.
- What we’d change: show the per-tin price and test a 3-pack bundle at $96, just over the $75 free-shipping line.
Six moves for a $1M–$10M brand.
- Brief your packaging so customers want to post it. Creative
- Sell a 100-unit beta drop before full inventory. Creator seeding
- Ask one question in your pop-up and route the answer to a flow. Retention
- Run creator posts as partnership ads with your own caption. Partnership ads guide
- Build a bundle that clears free shipping. Raise AOV
- Check margin per channel before you sign a retailer. Contribution margin calculator
Where every number comes from.
- Emma Hinchliffe and Joseph Abrams, “How Fishwife built a brand that outlasted a pandemic craze in the ‘dusty’ $2.6 billion U.S. canned fish category,” Fortune (via Yahoo Finance), Apr 12, 2024. finance.yahoo.com
- “Fishwife enters Whole Foods: DTC tinned fish brand CEO discusses growth,” Ad Age, Jan 27, 2023 (paywalled; growth figure from the article summary). adage.com
- Gogo Zoger, “5 Ways to Make a Big Splash with Your Business Launch,” Shopify, Feb 22, 2024. shopify.com
- “Fishwife drives 67x ROI with Klaviyo,” Klaviyo customer case study (vendor), 2024. klaviyo.com
- Monica Petrucci, “Under The Radar: How Fishwife’s Becca Millstein Made Tinned Fish Cool,” Forbes Vetted, Aug 26, 2025. forbes.com
- Christine Blank, “Fishwife, Whole Foods tote bag collaboration sees immediate success,” SeafoodSource, Aug 17, 2026. seafoodsource.com
- Fishwife, Albacore Tuna 3-pack product page and homepage, viewed on mobile Nov 10, 2026. eatfishwife.com/products/tuna-3-pack
- Meta Ad Library, active US ads matching eatfishwife.com, viewed Nov 10, 2026. facebook.com/ads/library
- Fishwife, official YouTube channel (@eatfishwife), videos dated Apr 19, 2024 to May 13, 2025. youtube.com/@eatfishwife
