New Product Samples

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Body lotion and beeswax products

This week has been all about finishing products I started last week for my sample testing event on Sunday. I set up a test group I call the “Harvesters” about a month ago – mostly with friends, but I opened it up to anyone living in the ACT.

My hope was not only that this group would give me important feedback prior to going to market with my ideas, but they would also act as future ambassadors for the new products as they had input into them coming alive.

The first six samples I’ll give them to try are our new body lotion with 6 different potential scents and 3 different consistency. Ideally, I would have tweaked the products at least once myself before getting feedback from third-parties, but I just received them on Friday from my soap maker, and so we didn’t have time to make any adjustments.

Of the six, there are three scents that I definitely like, but think the consistency of all of them needed some work.

I’ve also created some samples of a hand butter salve and lip balm for them to try that I made myself using Canberra beeswax. It sounds easy enough, but I made 14 different samples, and still am not completely happy with the texture. It feels like I’m baking a cake and just tweaking the recipe constantly to find that perfect fit.

Hand salve and lip balm test samples
Hand salve and lip balm test samples

It will be interesting to see what my test group says about these samples. I won’t tell them which ones I like as I don’t want to skew the results. Still, I am quietly cheering on my favourites.

plastic hotel toiletries

The price of non-plastic toiletries

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I have another meeting with a hotel on Monday. This one is to discuss a pilot with some of my non-plastic toiletries with all natural ingredients. When I originally did the numbers, I thought that packaging cost was less than the ingredients inside of it. Now I know better.

I have actual bids now with exchange rates, transportation costs, duties, etc. It’s clear that the packaging will be just as expensive as the natural ingredients going into it, especially on smaller volumes. I would need to win an actual hotel contract with guaranteed volumes to be able to achieve any profit even if I sell it at twice or more of their current buying price.

I suppose the good thing is that I don’t think that’s an unreasonable suggestion for them to charge each guest an extra $2 per night to offset the non-plastic toiletry option. In discussion with hotels, some of them seem to agree with my theory.

I also have found a local manufacturing partner. They too would need to scale up to service a contract. Fortunately, they are a young company which makes it more doable than with one more experienced but unwilling to work on margins or try new ideas.

Everyone I tried to outsource the work to so far said that it was impossible to service the hotel industry from Australia with all natural ingredients at a reasonable price. In fact, one business said they could only do it for $2.50 an unit to me which is ridiculous when the average price online seems to be about 32 cents each to hotels now.

I believe it can be done, but I need to pretty much build out the supply chain myself and offer something special that can’t be easily copied by bigger players.

So, here I go trying something new with non-plastic hotel toiletries and all natural ingredients that people in the industry are saying is impossible to do for a reasonable price. If I’m wrong, I could either fail at the sales call or fail in the implementation. If I’m right, there will be a lot less virgin plastic in hotels in Canberra and elsewhere in the future.

It’s worth the effort to know.

Always be pivoting

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They say as a start-up entrepreneur that you will always be pivoting. I can totally relate. I have five product lines ideas in progress right now in different stages of development.

At this point, I’m not really sure which one is going to make it successfully through the market testing, and so I’m trying to get through the processes as quickly as possible. The challenge with developing products rather than services is the time it takes to make it.

I have two product lines where I’m still waiting on samples, and I have another where I’m waiting for a potential business partner to say yes. I’m not the most patient person anyway. So, all of this waiting is pretty much torture for me.

At the same time, I have to concentrate on both short-term and long-term income. I can’t survive passed this financial year without personal income, and so I’m in a hurry more than ever to covert one of my ideas into cash.

Last night, I was going through some of my old journals going back to high school. Even then, I struggled with too much structure and lack of control in normal jobs. I had written down business ideas since university. It’s time to make something happen on my own.

Right now I’m dedicating to the philosophy of “always be pivoting” until I find that one door (or two) that finally opens.

Understanding the mind of a consumer

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People are interesting. They don’t always do what they say they will do, and thus understanding the mind of a consumer is difficult.

Based on feedback so far of the pet barrier, I do believe that I could sell quite a few of the product. My challenge is that they don’t want to pre-order the product through the crowd-funding campaign. Instead, they want to buy it now – not wait for it or invest in it.

Hershey the Dog
Hershey, another successful prototype tester.

Of course my challenge is the ability to pay for the moulds so that they can be made in the first place. Could I sell 1000 units to break-even if I invested the money up front? I think yes if I did home shows and expos, but really I need to get it into a major retailer to make any real money off of them. And to fulfill that order, I would once again need more cash.

So, I’m pushing forward on the digging product which requires less capital. I spoke to my manufacturer last week, and he’s only capable of injection moulding which is what my original design was based upon.

However, I’m considering the fact that many people have larger yards and probably don’t want to put down one 25cm of the “no dig” product at a time to cover their fence line or yard in general. For them, a different type of product design would be more suitable.

So, I have a chat scheduled with a different kind of manufacturer next week that does more garden product type manufacturing. The good thing about this product is that it can definitely be made with 100% recycled plastics including possibly soft-plastic rubbish too.

I’m trying to line up some focus group conversations now for the digging product. Understanding the mind of a consumer is critical so that I don’t lose a ton of money by making the wrong product. Gee, this would be so much easier if I could just read their minds and of course, have a bank account full of cash.

When women in business make us all look bad

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Went to a women’s “green” conference in Sydney over the weekend. I was hoping to see what other products were being made that were good for the environment. Unfortunately, it was really hard to see anything with the large crowd and the way the booths were set up. I tried to buy something at one booth, but found they couldn’t break a $50, nor did they have EFTPOS options. They told me to come back later and maybe they could make change. It’s a wonder that they’re even in business.

Eureka! Product #3

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I was laying in bed late last night when I finally figured out how to solve another consumer problem with a Product #3 – still in the same product category as the others. I also think I can mock up the idea from parts to test it.

Market research for products

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Met with a friend who gave me some new product ideas to research. Chatted with another friend on the phone about Product #1 – he had some ideas for how to design it better and also told me about some external variables that I wasn’t aware of at all that could impact the product. I admit that it’s complicated.

No go on local product designer

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Heard back from a local product designer – he’s busy for the next few months. Damn! There doesn’t appear to be many here in Canberra.

Picked a company name

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After considering a huge number of potential corporate names over the last 24 hours, I finally picked one: The Refoundry. I applied for a sole trader ABN just so I could get the domain names.

Met with a friend of mine that works in the building industry and asked her about products that might be better in recycled plastic rather than wood or metal. She pointed out quite a few, but we both know that other manufacturers are already making these. She did like my consumer product ideas though.

Market research on the street

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Did some market research on the street asking strangers about their needs. I haven’t done anything like this in ages, and I get the same strong desire to procrastinate like when I have to cold call – ugh! I didn’t get a good enough answer to support my product idea from this process, but I’m still convinced that the need exists – just perhaps not with the random people I surveyed. I need to figure out a better way to do this market research.

From an useful perspective, I did get an idea for another product need in the same category – Product #2 which is likely easier to make