Walmart is the biggest retail brand in the U.S. — a potential kingmaker for startups trying to secure space on its shelves. For Philip Freeman and the team at Raleigh-based natural products firm Murphy’s Naturals, it had long been on the radar, a white whale amid a slew of other opportunities.
But thanks in part to a new fundraise, it’s another box checked for the local brand, which got its start in a North Raleigh garage, on a mission to repel mosquitoes the natural way, without products like DEET.
For years, the firm, which first launched on Amazon (Nasdaq: AMZN) in 2013, had been approached by groups working for the Arkansas-based chain, but it never pulled the trigger.
“We’ve always held off,” he said. “We didn’t want to go there until we were ready to go there.”
Flash forward to today, where Murphy’s has gone through multiple manufacturing expansions and proven its distribution model with brands like Costco (Nasdaq: COST).
“We were like, hey, we’re at the point where we can do it,” he said.
Add in a recent $8 million funding round, led by Point King Capital with additional investments from Emil Capital Partners, former Seventh Generation CEO John Replogle and others, and the firm was finally ready.
For the first time, Murphy’s Naturals is on Walmart (NYSE: WMT) shelves, starting with 500 stores. It’s a trial program, and Freeman expects to present to multiple departments at the retailer. But if Walmart follows Costco’s lead and pursues a larger pickup, it could be a huge windfall for the brand.
The new capital will “make sure we can support the inventory,” Freeman said.
At Costco, currently Murphy’s largest retail partner, its products were in 250 locations with a 97 percent sell-through rate in 2023. This year, it’s selling twice as much volume with Costco, and it’s expanded its scope to 400 Costco locations.
“We have some innovation we’re working on that’s really going to be disruptive in the marketplace,” Freeman said.
Replogle, with Seventh Generation, said investing again in the company, whose wares are also in places like REI, Dick's Sporting Goods (NYSE: DKS) and Target (NYSE: TGT), was an easy decision.
"The business is on fire with strong innovation coming," Replogle said. "With the new investment we plan to dramatically expand reach. I was the first investor in the business and have even greater conviction in the company today than I did when I first invested seven years ago."
