Sourhouse, which manufactures and sells its own sourdough bread baking tools, prioritizes earned media to grow its brand in the niche category.
From a transactional standpoint, public relations marketing is sometimes worth the time investment and sometimes not, said Erik Fabian, co-founder of Sourhouse, a sourdough bread gadget manufacturer. But just thinking about the channel in terms of transactions is missing the point.
Public relations marketing is important— even in today’s world — to build a brand, especially one in a new category, like Sourhouse is doing, Fabian said.
He began Sourhouse in 2022 after giving a lot of advice on how to bake sourdough bread during the pandemic. He had always enjoyed sourdough bread baking as a hobby, and it became a leading conversation topic during the 2020 lockdowns. He developed a few products designed to make the sourdough baking process easier with his industrial designer friend and now co-founder Jennifer Yoko Olson. A few Kickstarters later, Sourhouse was an official business.
Today, the brand has 18 SKUs and has sold 10s of thousands of products. Olson and Fabian now work on it full time. Sourhouse is still a small business, yet to surpass $5 million in annual sales.
Using Media and Public Relations to Introduce the Sourhouse Brand
Because of his background working in marketing — he was head of brand for the Americas at luxury notebook brand Moleskin and as an independent marketing consultant — Fabian went to work getting the PR engine humming for Sourhouse.
“A brand is built around three pillars you can control; It’s the product, the story and the community,” Fabian said.
He had confidence in its product, as it is well designed, aesthetically pleasing and serves a unique purpose. Next, was telling that story and rallying a community around it.
Fabian had a few quotes included in articles in “Wired” and “The kitchn,” which helped introduce the brand to bakers in those early days. Since then, it’s had steady cadence of articles either mentioning its products or featuring a deep-dive about them.
For example, “The New York Times” featured Sourhouse in a story about tariffs. The publication featured the brand as a U.S.-based company suffering from importing its goods from China. Sourhouse’s tariffs are now 50% of its cost of goods, up from an average of 10% previously.
One article that is a source of pride for Fabian is when its sourdough starter warming container won a Best Kitchen Gear product award in “Good Housekeeping” magazine in 2024.
Earned Media Reaches a Variety of Audiences
The variety of earned media helps Sourhouse reach different segments of consumers who may be interested in baking or aren’t interested, but the exposure still helps.
“It’s a longer-term investment in building a brand,” he said. “And then also just discovering new audiences outside the internet echo chamber — particularly people who maybe aren’t already identifying as sourdough bakers but maybe are just food curious a little bit higher up in the funnel.”
Return on Investment From Earned Media
Most stories will drive a modest bump in sales for a day or two after the article publishes. The brand’s goal with earned media is not to drive a significant amount of revenue, but to drive exposure.
“That original ‘Wired’ article continued to have small numbers of transactions for a good year, but it’s not something that’s going to radically change the economics of our business,” he said. “But it shows people are reading and discovering it and it’s helpful probably for SEO and still just part of a mix.”
Overall, the majority of Sourhouse’s marketing budget goes to digital ads, as that drives conversion. PR and earned media is about 1-5% of its budget. But, 47% of its traffic is from organic sources.
Just this year, The Fast Company and The Kitchen awarded Sourhouse’s Doughbed product design awards. This all helps keep its products and brand visible.
“In terms of AI SEO, AI is scraping a lot of the traditional media looking for credible sources for its data,” he said. “Being in PR is a little bit of a toe in advance of whatever that world looks like.”
While it is a time investment to continually have its products mentioned, it was worth it when it launched. Now that the brand has relationships with media companies, it’s less leg work to be included. Sourhouse wants to ensure the media mentions new products or includes its products in any gift guides or wrap ups now that it’s Q4.
‘A Generous Corner of the Internet’
Another factor the brand has going for its that sourdough bread baking is a naturally generous hobby, Fabian said. Bakers quickly have too much starter and need to use it or throw or give it away. Bloggers and bakers are often swapping tips and ideas to encourage one another.
“It’s one of those corners of the internet today that’s very generous and kind of nice,” he said.
Bakers often will lend someone starter to get started on their hobby. In fact, Sourhouse had a form on its site where consumers could enter their email address to sign up for a free sourdough starter. Fabian would mail — with free shipping — starter to interested consumers.
“It is just to get them making their first loaf of bread,” he said. “Once you’ve made a couple loaves of bread, you start to understand, okay, what’s easy, what’s hard? How do I fit this into my life? And then tools like ours that are about controlling temperature, once you have a few loaves under your belt and you have a little bit more experience, the relevance of controlling temperature in your home becomes way more real for people.”
The brand steadily mailed hundreds of orders a week, until it eventually got out of hand. He received 10,000 orders within a few hours and had to shut it down. He still brings his own starter to events and gives it away.
Sourhouse Acquires Customers Through its Giveaways
Still, the giveaway was a great acquisition tool, as Sourhouse received that interested consumer’s information and could then remarket to them later with tips and coupons to be a successful sourdough baker. Fabian knows that it works as the brand has sold more than $100,000 worth of goods associated with coupon transactions.
It has other free initiatives with similar tactics in mind, such as a free cookbook shoppers can receive with sourdough recipes.
“At the end of the day, we are never going to be able to compete against a hundred-million-dollars brand, but we can do lots of things that they can’t do, whether it’s giveaway starter — that’s my own personal starter — or answer emails ourselves and chat with customers directly,” he said. “And that builds a really strong connection.”
The Sourdough Bread Pandemic Bump
Sourdough baking was a cultural trend during the pandemic. Now it’s more of a seasonal hobby — especially during the cold months — that people keep returning to, Fabian said.
“There’s also people who didn’t take part when it was a buzzy trend a few years back and are still curious about it and wanted to participate,” he said.
Even though Sourhouse launched after the pandemic buzz, it is benefitting from the trend. Retailers are more open to hearing about its products and including them in their product lines. This way, the retailer can hop on the trend without developing its own products. The brand is in about 20 retailers worldwide, including Williams Sonoma and Sur La Table, but its largest portion of sales is through its direct-to-consumer website, he said.
“The biggest thing is we want to keep the lights on. We are bootstrapping what we build,” he said. “We want to grow, but first and foremost, we have to build a brand and that’s what ultimately is our differentiator.”
