Making sea moss something he wanted to take.

Ethan began adding some of his favorite fruits to sea moss gel, trying to create a version he would actually enjoy eating.

At first, it was for himself. Then he came across a flyer for a local market and decided to see whether other people would want it too.

One of his first regular markets was in Northridge. Ethan brought roughly 20 to 25 jars and sold out within a few hours. He returned the next week and sold out again.

The repeated response changed the questions he was asking. Instead of wondering whether anyone would buy it, he began thinking about how much to make, how to price it, and how far the idea could go.

The product may have connected quickly, but selling did not feel natural at first.

Ethan did not come from a sales background. Before becoming established at markets, he practiced in one of the most direct ways possible: he walked into gyms with samples in his backpack and asked strangers if they wanted to try sea moss.

At the time, many people he approached did not know what sea moss was. That meant he had to explain the product repeatedly, handle awkward reactions, hear “no,” and keep going.

Those uncomfortable conversations became training.

By the time he was standing behind a market booth, he had already spent time learning how to introduce an unfamiliar product to people who had not asked to hear about it.

Early success did not mean every event worked.

At one event, Ethan prepared more than 100 jars and sold only a small fraction of them. The result hurt, but it clarified something important: strong demand in one setting did not automatically transfer to another.

A health-focused product could perform well in a place where customers were already thinking about wellness and still struggle at an event built around a very different experience.

That lesson became part of how Ethan thought about markets: product-market fit was not only about the product. It was also about the environment surrounding the customer.

One of the biggest shifts in Mighty Moss came through a mentor Ethan met while he was still developing the business.

The mentor challenged him to look more critically at the brand’s presentation. Instead of treating the first version as permanent, Ethan began changing almost everything: labels, tablecloths, the tent, the backdrop, colors, and other visual details.

The experience reinforced a principle he still values: when a company is young, very little has to stay fixed simply because it was chosen first.

Ethan has brought that same hands-on approach to other parts of the brand. He has drawn logo ideas himself, compared colors, thought through labels, and spoken directly with manufacturers about how products should be presented.

His uncle and other mentors pushed the thinking even further by asking him to define the problem Mighty Moss was actually solving and the specific customer it was trying to serve.

For Ethan, the idea became simple: make a nutrient-focused daily product taste good enough that people actually want to take it.

Not every attempt to grow the product line worked.

At a natural-products expo in Las Vegas, Ethan connected with a supplier offering sea moss gummies and other superfood products. He made a several-thousand-dollar inventory investment, believing gummies could become a natural extension of Mighty Moss.

The product did not move the way he expected.

One of the problems was fit. The ingredients and sweetness did not align closely enough with the natural positioning Ethan wanted for the brand or with what many of his customers expected from Mighty Moss.

He was left with inventory he could not easily sell.

The experience gave him a different kind of lesson than a bad market day. A company can have a working core product and still make the wrong product-extension decision. Growth has to fit the brand as well as the opportunity.

Ethan’s business has never been static. He has changed presentation, adjusted where he sells, learned to communicate the product, tested extensions, and kept revisiting what the brand should look and feel like.

That willingness to revise is a large part of the company’s identity.

Mighty Moss did not start as a finished business. It started with a product Ethan wanted to make better for himself—and then kept changing as real customers, real markets, mentors, and mistakes gave him new information.