Failed product experiments

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We are trying to prove ourselves wrong as quickly as possible, because only in that way can we find progress.”

-Richard Feynman

With every inventor comes failed product experiments. For our Harvestcare hand balm as an example, I made over 30 iterations before I found the right ingredient mix.

It takes a lot of time and sometimes supplies to get something right. And some of my friends and current customers have suffered through the trials. I think this is why I procrastinate so much on this important activity.

It also cost money to add products to the line from a packaging point of view. So, I try to limit the downside by only purchasing a small quantity of labels for every new product. This brings up my unit cost of course, but reduces cash stuck in unusable inventory.

Our body lotion product as an example still needs work though I’m pretty close to the end of that development process.

Failed body lotion experiments
Failed body lotion experiments

A number of my experiments haven’t worked at all. For example, I tried to see if I could create some sort of “mochi” single-use soap pods. The idea was that it would melt in your hands before use to eliminate the need for packaging for our hotel clients. So far, that hasn’t worked. Instead, the soap melts at room temperature with no ability to contain it… yet!

Melting soap pods in another failed experiment
Melting soap pods in another failed experiment

I say “yet” because every inventor/designer/developer will tell you that it takes a lot of experiments to find the right solution for hard problems. So, I suppose my failed product experiments are really just lessons learned in disguise with more work to do.

Truly Local Manufacturer

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From the very beginning of the product development of Harvestcare, I wanted to be a truly local manufacturer. It was more than just making the products in Canberra. It was also about sourcing as many of my ingredients locally too.

So right now we are using:

Box of local beeswax
Another delivery of fresh Canberra beeswax – rescued this time from the Jerrabomberra Wetlands

I’ve also recently moved our label making from a Melbourne company to Prinstant in Fyshwick. This has saved me so many communication hassles I dealt with before.

We’re also using Australian ingredients like:

  • Sweet Orange essential oil
  • Lemon Myrtle essential oil

Unfortunately, not everything is available locally like our aluminium tins. Though I do have ambitions once we have sufficient volume to justify the cost of developing with moulds. So, for these items, I’ll have to continue to source them from overseas.

Nevertheless, I think we’ve already made good progress on being a truly local manufacturer of natural hair and bodycare products.

Another Shift in Target Retailers

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It’s been such a strange journey for Harvestcare as I’ve learned more about my customers. I originally envisioned the line to be focussed on the tourist industry. However, during the lock-down I realised that there was a local demand too. Now, I feel the need to do another shift in our target retailers.

Original Retailers

When I originally started targeting local retailers, I thought first of natural food stores since they already carried similar lines. Wrong! I was only able to get into two. One placed a small order and then refused to pay me. The other has never done a reorder.

Having no luck with the natural food stores, I started targeting normal ones and found that a really easy sell. Yet, only two have done reorders. Personally, it’s always felt a little weird selling my tinned products in these stores anyway as it’s so hard to display them properly.

I also tried the higher end food/deli type places. Yet recently, one of my best customers had decided only to carry my “gift type” range moving forward. The others haven’t placed any reorders.

I’ve had a little more luck with the “gift shop” type places, but the Canberra Visitor Centre (which I thought would be one of my best customers) still hasn’t sold it’s original stock which I find really odd.

Another Shift in Target Retailers

Then out of the blue, I had a large unsolicited order from a hair styling place. They did gift baskets and had some specific requests for new products. While, they weren’t interested in any of our hair or soap line, they loved the tin products that I made personally. And suddenly it occurred to me that I should be targeting the hair and body care / spa places instead.

To do this, I need to make more products they can use in their businesses which will take more time and money. However, it makes so much more sense to me than trying to sell in IGAs across town.

So, I have started testing some new ideas around a body butter scrub and some other things. I’m waiting for more customer feedback, but I think we’re getting closer.

Harvestcare body butter scrub
Work in progress on a new body butter scrub

Now it’s just a matter of time to see if I have finally found the right match for target retailers.

More mistakes

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How many mistakes can I possibly make on the same products? Let me count the ways.

As this is the first product that I have ever made from scratch myself to resell (the others were designed by a contractor), I don’t think I could possibly stuffed up in more ways.

Some of the lessons this week:

1) If I’m going to use unrefined (raw) ingredients, I have to be able to expect variations.

If you can see the whiter bits in this block of unrefined shea butter below, you’ll know that I had to change my recipe to accommodate it. This also means I didn’t know that I had to adjust for this until AFTER I made a batch because it takes a while for the product to settle.

Long story short, more money, lost time, and lost ingredients, but this unrefined version is still better for you.

Unrefined shea butter
Unrefined shea butter

2) Not all boxes of the same size, are actually the same.

Below shows to bamboo boxes side by side. I bought them from two different retailers to act as display boxes for my new hand balm products. However, you can see the box on the left can easily hold six tins, while the other one can only hold five because of how they are made.

Two boxes of the same size cannot hold the same number of tins
Two boxes of the same size cannot hold the same number of tins

3) Yellow orange to you is not yellow orange to me

I have been struggling with getting the colour right for our peach flavoured lip gloss as it looks too much like the watermelon colour that I’m using. I hope that the third order is the charm as I reckon that their formulator must be coloured blind as they all look almost the same.

Can you see the difference below? I struggle to do so.

two lip gloss containers that are supposed to be different colours but are not.
Which is peach? Which is watermelon?

4) More mistakes with labels

The labels have finally come in, but the backs of the lip gloss are hard to read. This is my fault as I was in a hurry to redo them, and I squeezed the lines to make it fit with a 6 pt font when I had to reduce the label size to fit the smaller sized tins.

Unfortunately, it’s just going to have to be good enough. Luckily I only ordered 100 units, and I’m hoping that the new blank labels and laser printer will allow me to become less dependent on suppliers for these in the future.

New product labels are hard to read

Despite all of these issues, I managed to get my first order to a retail customer on Monday. It wasn’t without other mistakes, but it was pretty good for my first go as a product maker.

New Products to Launch

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It took a total of 29 different trials for me to be happy with the formulas, but I finally have new products for the Harvestcare line that I actually made myself. And now, I’ll be launching them next week.

Evidence of product trials
Product trials – tins to be reused in future trials

Just a few weeks ago, I was telling a friend that I didn’t want to be a skincare maker. Instead, I wanted to run a business and have experts make the product. While I still prefer to do this, I have to admit that it’s incredibly satisfying to go through this process – from research to trials to production of some products that I’m very proud of to put on the shelf.

Even more so satisfying is the feedback I’ve had from friends who have tested my products. The real test will be when strangers give me unbiased feedback.

I just ordered the labels that I designed myself too.

New Harvestcare products launching next week
New Harvestcare products launching next week

My timing for finalising these products was quite important too as yesterday the Old Bus Depot Markets finally responded to my application. They had more questions about my products and how they are made. Fortunately, I could finally say that I made some of them myself which has been a stumbling block for other markets.

I have much bigger plans than weekly markets, but I need to start somewhere to get customer feedback and to frankly, just to pay the bills. So hopefully they will say yes.

I applied to be a part of their markets a few years ago with my tea company, but they told me then that they already had enough tea companies. So, hopefully they won’t say that my new skin and body care products are too much like other stallholders they already have.

In the meantime, with these new products and more reasonable margins, I feel that I have something valuable to offer retailers especially with more of them opening back up in Canberra.

Now, I’ll be spending this long weekend getting ready for the launch of these new products!

Pivoting again

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With my office full of hand and body care inventory, I’ve decided to pivot again. This time, I’m pivoting from a Business to Business model (B2B) to a Business to Consumer model (B2C).

The reality is that I really don’t have a choice as the travel industry has come to a screaming halt without an end date and hair salons are also struggling to stay open. I’m not even sure if my few retail customers will honour their original orders at this stage.

Introducing Harvestcare

So, I’m pivoting and I finally have everything I need to do so except for my website which I’m still working on and will be located here when ready. Doing a B2C model will require a lot more work for selling and shipping, but right now my time isn’t worth anything. Therefore, I might as well give it a go.

After all, that back-up plan I had about finding a job if I couldn’t make it work as an entrepreneur isn’t looking very good right now either. So, I pretty much have no choice now. It’s either pivot and try to do something regardless of this crazy world or risk losing everything.

Hotel Amenity Pilot is a Go

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It’s a go for our non-plastic hotel amenity pilot! While I won’t make a dime from this 1 month pilot (and will likely lose some money), it’s worth it to test the solutions that we are considering right now.

There are so many little things to consider such as how easy it is to dent our aluminium tins. About half of the tins from one sample pack that came in via Amazon.com.au showed up with dents or scratches.

I’m also considering the labelling requirements. I want to print right on the packaging from the start, but it costs a lot more to do this with small volumes. However, using a compostable paper labels isn’t possible because it’s not waterproof – a “no no” in bathrooms where they might discard unused tins only because the wet label makes it look used.

Right now, I think I’m going to have to order two lots of tins. Some that are blank, and then I buy plastic labels to hand place on them. And others that have the printing on them from the start. This will allow us to test the printing capabilities during the pilot itself.

The buzz of winning work

It’s strange that when I used to win multi-million dollar contracts back in my IT days, it never gave me a buzz like it gave other sales people. I was more proud of the proposals I turned in that solved a customer’s problems, and therefore it didn’t mater it we won or lost to me even though I would only be rewarded if we won.

For this hotel amenity pilot, I’m excited even though it will likely cost me more than I make to do this. It’s the fact that a hotel is willing to take a chance on my crazy idea that can really reduce the amount of single-use plastic in hotels locally and nationally if I move fast enough. It’s the potential impact down the road that is giving me a buzz. How awesome would it be to literally change the hotel industry’s practices to benefit the environment!

Reducing plastic waste in hotels

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I’ve been working on another project for nearly two months. This one is purposely designed for reducing plastic waste in hotels. As a natural wanderer, I usually take two to three overseas trips a year. I love exploring new places and food and staying in nice hotels.

So, when some of the major hotels made public commitments to reduce their plastic waste, I wondered what they would do. Many have opted to use dispensers or larger bottles.

However, I’ve never been a fan of these myself. For one, it’s too easy for people to tamper with the refillable bottles when they are staying in private rooms. Can you imagine the temptation for pranksters to put bodily fluids or something worse into those bottles?

It also doesn’t support the higher end brands who have worked so hard to build a certain feel. To me, a dispenser on the wall feels more like a locker room shower rather than a four or five-star luxury hotel no matter how fancy the bottles are.

Furthermore, many travellers like to take home the little hotel amenities as souvenirs from their holidays and perhaps to use them at the gym or while camping later. I personally stockpiled them for my own guests when I had a bigger home. It made their stay feel a little more luxurious then my normal guest bedroom.

So, what to do? I’ve already presented some alternative packaging ideas to a few hotels in Canberra, and they’ve been very receptive. If all goes well, I hope to get a commitment to run a pilot soon.

The main challenge for me right now is not the packaging, it’s the cost of all natural ingredients for the products themselves. While many hotels are not as concerned about what’s on the inside of the container, I am. I cannot with good conscious offer a product to reduce plastic waste and put something in it that’s not just as eco-friendly.

If I can overcome these cost barriers by doing more of the work myself or perhaps partnering with a local business (discussions still in progress), then I feel like we can have something ready to go as early as next month.

Fingers crossed! I need a few more things to line up first, but this idea to reduce plastic waste in hotels seems to have a solid customer demand.

Making plastic things

Becoming the maker

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I’m not a natural maker. What I mean by this is that I’m not someone who has spent a lot of time making things with my hands. Instead I’ve been the one that typically brings together makers to make something or to achieve a goal.

I’ve been trying to make things from recycled plastic for close to a year now by outsourcing the manufacturing to other people. It drives me nuts that I still don’t have anything to sell because I am so dependent on others with much slower processes.

If I need anything digitally done, I can get it down in 1 to 3 days. Yet, when I’ve tried to get a physical sample of something, it’s taken months. Try to design something from scratch? Months again. Repurpose a private label product? In Australia, it’s going on 2 months of just trying to get the right info because everyone seems to take their time.

I’m starting to realise that I might have to become the maker. It just takes way too long, not to mention cost to get anyone to do anything here. Maybe it would be different elsewhere, but I just don’t understand why the manufacturing process has to be so slow for makers when China can build an entire hospital in a week.

It’s no wonder that we struggle to be competitive against them. So, as I look forward, I think that I’m going to have to be a maker and do more of this myself at least in the short to medium term if I want to see any progress.

Experiment #3: plastic air bubbles

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Following on the back of Experiment #1 and #2, this next Plastic Experiment #3 is designed to see if I can remove the plastic air bubbles by blasting the melted plastic with a heat gun afterwards. This idea was given to me by a friend who used this technique with something else.

The results were encouraging for the small silicon mould that I used. Unfortunately, I also accidentally melted the mould in this process too. The difference is very obvious in the green sections below.

Pineapples in recycled plastic

Unfortunately, it didn’t work as well for a larger piece that I tried to make in a baking tin.

Bubbles in plastic

This muffin size piece of plastic weighs about 2k and is made from nearly 100 bottlecaps. As I can see once again, the larger the piece, the harder to control the plastic air bubbles – especially on the top without pressure. Unfortunately the form was also slightly disformed just like my previous square silicon mould test – a product of HDPE’s features when it cools down.

Conclusion for Plastic Experiment #3. Plastic air bubbles will continue to be an issue especially with larger pieces with HDPE if I do not use a pressurised mould. I wonder though whether or not I can use a millsaw to cut the plastic to smooth out the rougher edges? Next test!