Okay, bro, let me let you in on some heavy inside baseball. If you're looking at the Trenchies and trying to figure out how a candy tasting like actual battery acid is moving units, then you are looking at the wrong layer of the matrix.
Trenchies is not a candy company. I'm not even sure it's a nootropics company either. Trenchies is a $30 Temu drop shipping trap designed to extract money from NPCs in a parasocial relationship with lifestyle vloggers on YouTube.
The teens and twenty somethings who are buying this?
Gen Z marketers and social media influencers who believe they're ahead of the curve. Nootropic stim maxers. These people aren't buying caffeine and L-Theanine, they're paying $35 a bag for zome sugar free legal za that makes them feel like they're hanging out in Miami with Brez and Fredo popping Zyns and sharing stims. People who place bets on betting apps and smoke Hookah like Drake. Anyone who wants to buy candy from course sellers like those guys who sold candy out of the white vans. I heard Orangie and TJR both tried theme recently and said they were good. Not surprising considering these guys are always cross promoting each other's shit. When is the next In N Out Car Meet?
Let's do a quick red team audit of the actual product formulation.
The sheer negligence here is a case study for why rushing an MVP is necessary for cash flow but a total burn to the consumer. BSM Fredo himself said that 90% of his users hated the taste of Trenchies. Which is an astronomical failure rate for a product that classifies itself as a food consumable. No matter how much Fredo and Brez try to convince you Trenchies are a supplement and not a candy, the fact is you're not injecting this shit, so yes flavor matters. Why they went with a hard candy and not a taffy is beyond me. I guess Fredo really wanted to go out of his way to make sure you hated Trenchies. For that I say job well done!
Read the reviews on social media... I'm not exaggerating when I say this stuff tastes like pure medicine and chemicals. People are saying it tastes like buns, it tastes like ass, it tastes like a chemical acid spill happened in your mouth five minutes after you eat it. The square hard candy feels weird in your mouth
But in this new era of commerce, here's the hardcore energytruth: Trenchies will sell to normies anyway.
Let's look at the architects of this operation.
BSM Fredo didn't develop his skill set on scaling CPG supply chains; he built a following on dropshipping low-quality, highly hyped-up grey area products on organic TikTok. Remember those plastic doohickeys that turned Fiji water bottles into a bong? But they had to fill the bowl with things like fruity pebbles to avoid getting account banned? That was Fredo's shtick on TikTok.
Fredo pioneered cool angles and hand movements including the iconic balcony product shot. Brez Scales resume was built on the same hype cycle architecture. He attempted to launch a now defunct clothing brand that nobody could tell you the name of todfay and the Fiducia watch: a $300 luxury watch nobody wanted other than his own ERT members. His first attempt to prove "he really be in the trenches doing this shit" failed miserably I dont even think he got rid of his initial inventory before that watch quickly got temu replicated a thousand times and went out of style. Will it work this time with the temu candy?
The streets are calling Trenchies blue cocaine.
For stimmies who love hitting zyns while drinking gas station energy drinks. Heck I heard people are mixing 5 hour energy drinks with stims and crashing out so it's a step in a better direction. These guys aren't logistical masterminds; they are attention arbitrageurs. Business Influencers who rely on their clipping armies to keep the relevant and top of mind. Which is why they are so determined to flaunt this large, seemingly productive warehouse on their social media. They sold how many bags of this stuff in their first run, 2,000?
The empty warehouse isn't necessary; it's a stage set for TikTok clips.
They are renting commercial industrial space just to film TikToks so you believe they are part of a 9-figure business when in reality they are two guys standing in a bare room surrounded by boxes of an ass-flavored candy.
Okay maybe I'm being a bit too harsh.
90% of the people who tried it also loved the effects of Trenchies Fredo could be the Tony Montana of Nootropics. Obviously he found a formula that works. Is it the next NZT-48? The real life limitless pill in a blue razz flavored hard candy?
This is the greatest lesson in how to scale a brand in the new era and if you're paying attention, it totally redefines the play book. You don't build a quality product and hope you get traffic. You build a high-conviction, cult-like traffic engine and monetize it with whatever physical product fits the aesthetic.
Brez and Fredo know you can afford the cars and cribs they flash on YouTube.
But anyone has $40 bucks laying around unless they're a complete brokie.
If you're a freelance brand scaler or scaling a brand with AI, pay attention to the architecture, not the candy. The product is totally secondary. The story is the deliverable. They are selling the lifestyle; they are selling the notion of the hustle, the notion of being in the trenches working toward your first million.
So, what's their next play? Simple: They'll set up a camera in that empty warehouse and drop a new YouTube video talking about how they've "listened to the community," they've "taken the hits on the chin," and now they've "gone back to the drawing board." The normies will once again pull out their credit cards, because they aren't buying candy, they are buying into Fredo and Brez's story and they'll gladly buy ass candy 2.0 just so they can flaunt it on social media and legitimize themselves by larping as a successful freelance brand scaler, crypto, or forex trader. Because it's a hell of a lot cheaper than renting a Lambo and even the replica watches from Time Piece trading are expensive.
Quit buying candy from course sellers bro.
Stop looking at the ingredient list, the candy is terrible and they know that. Until you understand that attention is the actual product and the physical good is just a vehicle of monetization, you're going to be consistently tricked into paying $30+ for a bag of battery-acid flavored jolly rancher squares on TikTok.