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Alright, on today's show, my advice buddy is the legendary Tom Rinks.
Tom is the mastermind creative behind some of the most innovative products of the past 25 years, including the Taco Bell Chihuahua, Daily Ontokila, and of course Sunbumb skin products.
Tom, my friend, welcome to the show.
Thanks Guy. Great to be here.
Love ya. Tom, you were of course last on how I built this, telling us your incredible life story.
And for those of you who haven't heard it, we will put a link to it in the show notes.
But basically, it's a story of how you built Sunbumb into an iconic sunscreen and skincare brand.
And Tom, I have told your story so many times to friends and colleagues, you know, how you spent more than a year looking for inspiration, everything from Mondrian paintings to Eames chairs to Japanese streetwear to wooden surfboards, and how all of that and the story of that really came together in designing the Sunbumb brand.
Tom, I suspect that branding and design is going to come up in our calls today, but let me just start by asking you a general question about branding.
In your view, right, why does brand and design matter when you're putting out a product?
Why is it that important?
It matters because everybody buys on feeling, Guy, like everybody.
So if you don't give them the right feeling that they want, whether that be in your packaging, in your advertising, wherever, if you don't give them the feeling that they're looking for, they're not going to buy.
And it doesn't mean it has to be a cool brand, like a, you know, cool surfer brand.
Because cool is different to everybody.
It could be, I want to feel rich, so I need to buy Louis Vuitton or Prada, because I think that's cool.
I might want to feel, you know, like I'm an outdoorsman.
If I was an outdoorsman, I want to buy Patagonia and I want to drive a Subaru or whatever that is.
And so you got to give me that feeling to know that it's going to deliver what I want to deliver.
And it may just be wanting to deliver a message that, you know, it's a smart brand.
It's going to actually clean the clog in my drain.
So 10 times more unclogging strength is what I need to feel.
I need to know that it's going to work because I got a problem and it's going to fix it.
So the brand is what gives you the feeling to accomplish what you need to get done, which is why you're purchasing the product.
Yeah. Tom, should we take some calls?
Why don't we take our first caller?
What do you say? Sure. Okay.
Caller, first caller, are you on the line?
I am on the line. Here I am.
I'm here. Hello. Hi. Hello, Wendy.
I think it's Wendy. Tell us your name, where you're calling from and what your business is.
Thank you. Guy and Tom. Hello and nice to meet you.
Nice to meet you. My name is Wendy Cushill and I'm from a little old town in South Carolina called Bluffden.
I have a business called Wendela's Low Country Sugar Scrub.
Okay. Tell us about Wendela's Low Country Sugar Scrub.
What is it? I mean, I'm assuming it's a scrub, skin scrub or...
Yes, it is a skin scrub, but I started out with a body scrub.
I'd never heard of a sugar scrub in my 50s.
Somebody told me to try sugar and coconut oil and rub it all over my body and I was like, oh my God, this is the most amazing thing I've ever done in my life.
Wait, did you just say coconut oil and you mix it with granulated sugar and just scrub it?
Right, because sugar is an exfoliant, right?
It's going to take off old dead skin, right?
Yes. And it's not like you're going to become diabetic just rubbing sugar into your skin.
It doesn't soak in that way.
Okay, I got you. Just making sure.
All right. Yeah. Okay, so I did that.
I did that. And then I said, I'm going to start a sugar scrub company, but I didn't know that I could formulate or make anything myself.
So because I was in the game, these ladies suggested something that would maybe take away the icky smells after you cook, you use it, you soften your hands, and that's how I came up with the hand scrub.
Okay, and tell me what's your question for us.
Okay. If you Google hand scrub, you're not going to really come up with just a hand scrub.
You might come up with like a gojo type of O'Keeffe's working hands thing, or you might come up with a product that's a body and a hand scrub.
Mine is a niche made for the hands, and it says in big letters on the label, the hand scrub, but I would like to ask, what can I do to let the customer know what this is, what it does, and how to use it?
Tom, before we answer Wendy's question, do you have any questions, just clarifying questions for her?
Yeah. Is it different than soap?
Yes. It's not an antibacterial, although shea butter, which is one of my ingredients, and beeswax have natural antibacterial properties.
This is something that's made to exfoliate, which is going to take away dead skin cells, but then it moisturizes your hands like a lotion.
So no, it's not a soap, but it is something you wash just like you would with soap, with water.
The water activates the scrub, the sugars dissolve, and then these butters, you know, raw shea butter and coconut butter, they melt into your skin, and you're like, oh my gosh, this is amazing.
Yeah. So when the buttery skin, you're basically turning skin into butter.
Buttery skin. Yes. Yes.
It's like butter. It's the fat you want on your skin, not inside or outside.
It's like butter. Yes, I like butter.
I love butter too. I love it.
I love eating it. Extra butter on pancakes.
Just great. More. If you ever have dipped your hands into shea butter, you would love that too.
It's beautiful. So when do you use it?
Is it by your bathroom sink?
Is it by your kitchen sink?
Because I looked on your website too, and it seems like it gets rid of odors and things like that too.
Yes, some of the skews do.
And those, yes, you would keep by your kitchen sink.
You touch the garlic, you touch the seafood, you touch the onion, whatever, refresh your hands.
Otherwise, it's nice in the regular bathroom to just make your hands feel good.
But you know that you're softening your hands.
Like someone wouldn't use a lotion is you would use it.
All right. So your question is, how do you get consumers to understand your product?
How do you even show people how to use it?
I have a lot of thoughts.
Tom, do you want to start on this?
Well, I'm just kind of catching up.
So it says, it says removes wonky cooking smells from the hands.
Is that, is that what it, what does it say on the packaging?
Yes. Well, for this one, for that skew, you're looking at the herbal line, which yes, it does say, no, keep this scrub by your sink, grab a small bit, wash with water, mushy mush, washy wash, all up in those Foxy Fox hands of yours.
Got it, got it, got it. So that's what it says.
Okay. So it's the hand scrubs.
Yeah. So it's, so it's Wendela's, the hand scrub, the hand scrub Rosemary Mint.
I'm looking at that, right?
Yes. For that one. Yeah.
And you've got tons and tons of different, you've got the gardener scrub, the chef's line, you've got a line for chefs, you've got the man scrub.
Oh, the manly scrub. And this is only for hands, right?
This is not foot scrub. These are not.
These are not. I have a separate line on there.
Yeah. That's another story.
Okay. But yes, these are the hand scrubs is what my niche is, which is what I'm going after, period.
Okay. Tom, any, any initial advice?
Cause I have a piece of advice, but I want to hear yours first if you have it.
Well, it's looking at it.
It just seems like the messages are kind of a little bit confusing, right?
They're kind of all over the place.
There's some fun, you want to be like fun and live, laugh, scrub.
And then it's kind of, there's some other ones that are like luxurious and more spa seeming.
I think for me, you know, you want to be like, you know, you want to be like, you know, you really got it.
You really got to get some attention.
It's so hard, right? Like hand lotions and all that stuff that's out there.
And you know, the, the, all the organic stuff I did, I was doing probably, I don't even know that I've ever told anybody this.
I certainly not on air. We baby bump came out with a, it was going to come out with a nipple butter, a nipple cream.
Oh, this is the baby version of sunbumb, the baby line.
Baby version of sunbumb.
I had an ad that I wanted to do for it a standalone thing that just would be on shelf that would say your baby sucks big, huge letters.
So you're going to need this product underneath really small.
And that didn't make it, they were like, no, we, no, we never, we didn't make the product, but I was so proud of that only, I know it would never make it and no store would carry that.
But, but it was just, you just had to get people's attention, you know, and I, and also on the, on the lip balm side, I was wondering how am I going to ever take on chapstick.
And I was sitting having a taco at the taco stand in Encinitas and looked over and there was a bar there, first street bar and it said best burgers in San Diego.
And I was like, yeah, I should go try those burgers sometime.
Right. It's like those coffee shops, those best, best coffee in town, but voted best.
That's the only reason I'm ever going to stop and check out their coffee or go to the, I would have never gone to that bar to check out their burger unless it said best burgers.
And so we ended up making it a signage that said world's greatest lip balm to us in little parentheses underneath it.
So it was, you know, world's greatest lip balm.
So my long way to make a point is really got to get some attention.
I know you're going to describe what this thing actually is, but you know, Wendala's amazing coconut, sugar, scrub, sugar scrub, you know, I love it.
Best on the planet. Best on the planet.
According to some people, you can make that.
I mean, I mean, Tom, you're right.
How many restaurants or burger joints you go to?
This is world's greatest burger.
There's at least five of them in San Francisco.
And some of those burgers are not the world's greatest, but it doesn't matter, especially if in the parentheses under you say according to my mother or something, you know, like, right.
Like Wendala's famous sugar scrub.
Okay. What am I been missing?
It's famous. I don't know about Wendala's.
Yeah, I don't know this art.
So I'm going to, so something like that, something, something to get me to think.
This is really something that I haven't heard about and know.
And how come I haven't heard about it?
How come I haven't tried this coffee?
I think you put world famous Wendala's.
And then you just put world famous.
Add that in the venture.
I think you're absolutely right.
I don't know why. I think it's the best advice.
I'm literally going to change all my labels.
I'm getting it. World famous.
It's great. So here's something, here's a practical thing that you should try.
You have an incredible, you have incredible charisma because you're so, you're jumping out of this microphone.
Like you are in the room with, you are in the room with everybody listening and you have this incredible personality.
You need to be scrubbing your hands multiple times a day and putting videos out wherever you can on TikTok, Instagram.
Now, I'm not saying millions of people are going to find you, but you're funny and you're interesting and you've got a lot to say about this.
And I need to see you or other people or go out on the streets and be like, can I just scrub your hands?
Can I give you a hand scrub?
Just try weird things like that and just put it out even if it's to 100 or 500 people.
That's interesting. I'm going to do that.
I think I'm going to scrub a person's hands in all 50 states in 30 days.
I think I'm going to do that.
That's a great idea. Or, and go into kitchens and say, I'm going to scrub the hands of these hardworking chefs and just go and say, hey, take a break.
Everybody, I'm going to scrub your hands and then just leave some tins and you go to the next restaurant.
I think that's great. It's boots on the ground, going and doing.
Going and doing. And I think just one more time, just be really disciplined.
We really disciplined on who, what the brand is, right?
If you look at Ben and Jerry's and the names of their products and the humor and the way they write, they went all in on that liquid death, all in on their edge.
It's just so, I know who they are.
When I look at your brand, I see you're over here and then you're over here and then you're for a spa and then you're live laugh scrub and then you're, no, it's coconut sugar and it's like, I want to see like a coconut oil and organic cocoa butter.
Like putting some of those words on will attract that organic natural customer without saying it's natural or all organic, but you can still put the words on it that are the buzzwords that people look at it and say, oh, that's good for me and it's going to make my hands and it sounds luxurious and it seems kind of cool and you're cool, but you got to get me there to even
look at the can. And that's where I think the name's got to change.
Well, that's a lot of words on a label.
How am I going to get all that in there?
No, you don't need to repeat stuff.
You're repeating, you know, you got the hand scrub, the hand scrub twice on the front.
And you're repeating stuff left to right on the label.
You have the same thing, I think on one side as the other.
You got, you got some, I mean, you can't put it all, but.
And Tom, I think, right, I think what you're saying is you throw those words out on a piece of paper and you distill it into one or two or three words that tell a story about you, about this product, Wendala's world famous coconut scrub, you know.
Maybe lose, maybe lose, live laugh scrub and give a, give a something else there, you know what I mean?
It is, I don't know what that means yet.
I don't know what, how I'm supposed to live, what I'm laughing at and scrub.
I'm not, I'm not a fan of that.
So maybe you can maybe take some words out and put some important words in for people to be like, oh, it's natural.
It's got these coconut oils and all that.
It's fun and it's world famous.
How come I got to try it. Commit to your personality.
Like if I was talking to you like separately, I would be, I would be listening to you and just like Guy pointed out like you're funny and you got great personality.
And so go with that. Like that's what it is.
Don't try to be a spa. If you're not a spa person, don't try to be a spa person.
If you're, if you are, and so just come down to the essence of your personality and be authentic and be vulnerable, go all in on you.
Yep. All right. Wendy Cushill.
Wendy Cushill of Wendala's now world famous.
Yes. Nice hands scrub. Thanks so much, Wendy.
We're going to be following you.
Good luck. Thank you. Both of you.
It was wonderful to speak to both of you.
Mwah, mwah, mwah. You're too.
Thank you so much, Wendy.
You're the best. Thank you.
World famous. I'd go for, you're so right about that, Tom.
Like how many times you pass a, any like a taco stand or a churro stand or, or a lemonade stand is like world famous and you're like, huh, we don't, we're not like, oh, where's the, where's the, where's the proof?
Where's the proof? Where's the committee that actually, we have no idea.
They just write that. No idea.
Yeah. Think about if you were like walking past the chip aisle, you're having a, you know, a Cinco de Mayo party, right?
And you're walking past all the chips and then it's like world famous Wendala's chips.
You know what I mean? You'd be like, I'm like, that gives you at least a second to pause, to read more, to look at the chip, to read the ingredients or whatever.
But if you don't have that, if it's just like Wendy's chips, no chance.
Okay, Tom. We're going to take a quick break.
But when we come back, we're going to hear from another caller, someone who went from producing reality TV shows to selling trucker hats.
Stay with us, everyone.
I'm Guy Razz and you're listening to the advice line on how I built this lab.
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Hey, welcome back to the advice line on how I built this lab.
I'm Guy Rhoz and I'm taking calls along with my friend, the branding expert Tom Rinks.
Tom, you started Sunbomb more than a decade ago, I think.
I think late 2009, I believe, if I got my timeframe right.
If you were doing it today, a lot has changed.
The 2010s was kind of like the decade of direct to consumer.
In general, do you think it's harder to launch a consumer product now than even when you did it in 2010 or not?
I don't think so. I think you just have to find what's not being done.
With Sunbomb, when I did it in 2009 with my friends, we saw what was in the marketplace and we went in a different direction that we could go because we were small and we could just move faster and be with the times a little bit better.
We knew what that looked like.
If I was going to do it now, I would do something opposite of Sunbomb.
It would be the opposite of cool.
It would be like a nerd sunscreen or something.
I know, I got you, okay. You know what I mean?
It would just be like, hey, it's just a product to protect you and they all work pretty much the same.
Buying our product isn't going to make you any cooler.
By the way, nobody's cool.
Either everybody's cool or nobody's cool.
Just wear sunscreen and carry on.
Okay, let's take another call.
Tom, shall we? Sure. Who's next?
Okay, next color is on the line.
Is that Allison on the line with us?
Yes, it is. Allison, welcome.
Tell us your name, where you're calling from and a little bit about your business.
Sure. My name is Allison Mandelbaum and I'm calling from Fairfield, Connecticut.
And I'm the founder of Shady Lady, which is a beachy lifestyle brand, but we specialize in baseball and trucker hats that are made to fit the measurements of a woman's head.
Okay. And baseball and trucker hats made to fit the measurements of a woman's head, which we'll get to in a moment.
And what's your question for us today?
So my question today is, as a small business with a very little, little advertising budget, how do you get your brand out there if you don't have the backing of like, if you're not a celebrity, if you're not a huge influencer, once people see these hats, like they love them, they love them because they are the best fit.
They're so comfortable.
But how do you cut through all that noise on social media and this crowded marketplace to get people to understand what's so different and special about these hats?
Got it. Okay. We'll get to your question in a moment.
Allison, tell us a little bit about how you got into the, because I think you started, you founded this in 2020, right?
How did you get into the hat business?
What were you doing at the time?
I mean, kind of by accident.
So I was a TV, a reality TV producer by trade.
I worked a lot at MTV, my super sweet 16, true life, catfish, all that fun.
And then I had my two little kids and I was traveling a lot as a TV producer and kind of my lifestyle changed.
And all of a sudden I just, I don't know what happened.
I got this like entrepreneurial bug where I just kind of kept looking at things for different ideas and I just kind of became obsessed with finding something.
You know, in shady lady, this really just grew out of me not being able to find a hat that I felt like fit me well.
I felt like my husband could easily throw on a baseball hat, walk out the door, you know, and looked great.
I, you know, was a hot mess.
Two little kids wanted to still, you know, look okay at pickup and drop off, but could not find a hat that fit me well.
Like they were all too big, too stiff.
I felt like my ears either I had to have them sticking out or tucked in.
And so I, you know, kind of did some research around this and realized that even hats that are pink or say things like, you know, hashtag mom life were still the same measurements as the hats that were made to fit men and that my husband was wearing.
So I figured other women may be having this same problem that I am, you know, with hats not fitting correctly, cause they're just not made for us.
All right. So you started this in 2020 as a direct to consumer business, right?
So we're actually right now, we're mostly wholesale and we do awesome in wholesale.
Like we're in Macy's and we got picked up by Ron John surf shops and really like boutiques all over the country.
But my wholesale margins are really small and they've gotten smaller, like all through COVID, you know, prices of materials went up, prices of shipping went up and my wholesale margins just kind of kept getting down, down, down.
So really to keep the business going and keep it healthy and really have it thrive, I need to be doing more direct to consumer.
So before we answer Allison's questions, you have any, do you have any questions about her business?
When you say your margins are bad, what are you selling them for the same prices you're selling on your website or are you selling them for less?
So my wholesale price is $15 and on my website, we sell them for 36.
Got it. And can I ask how they're selling at Ron John's and the places that they're, they're actually are at retail, are they selling okay?
Yeah. They do well. I think part of the problem and, you know, I've talked to Ron John about this a little bit is they get lost a little bit because there's a huge wall of hats and a lot of, you know, billabong, you know, displays and a lot of Roxy displays and our hats are kind of mixed in with all of it.
You know, so that is like one problem, you know, but they do sell there.
But it's, you know, but even then in a store like that, I'm still not getting my, my like point and mission across of like, these are the best fitting hats because I made them to fit women.
Like they have shorter brims in the front and they have smaller domes and they sit right above your ears.
Like they really are an awesome fit.
Yeah. I think that's super important because I know from stuff that I've done before, like hats on like women's hats, especially trucker hats, trying to fit them really tough.
Like you say, the ear stick out, you know, you should definitely, if you don't have it, like show, show what that looks like on your website or show what that, a diagram of the problem of the hat world.
To lean in. Yeah. For women.
And then, you know, the double conundrum for you is it's not just the fit, right?
It's fit and fashion and there's so many brands.
And so you not only have to have a better fit, which you do.
It's great looking hat.
You have to have fashion.
You have to know what's selling and you have to know what icons they want.
So you have to be up on top of, you know, looking at the Ascot and Hart or Aviator Nation and what are they doing and not trying to think of it so much yourself, but trying to see what's really, really popular out there.
You know, the happy faces.
I think you have a happy face on your site.
We do. This is my coat right next to me.
Yeah. Some of those things are just those iconic pieces that people are actually, women are actually looking for.
So it's kind of, you're kind of, you've got the hat that fits good, but you just have to be so on top of fashion.
And then, you know, looking at your website, I just see, you know, there's YouTube beanies as well.
And let me go back to that.
Like, like Shady Lady, tell me about that one.
I'm not so sure everybody wants to be a Shady Lady.
What is that? And you know, do you need like a thing underneath it that's like custom shade since 2020?
Like something that says, oh, this is for shade.
Like if the mission was more because it's called Shady Lady to give shade to your face, which is so important, then beanies don't make sense.
And you know, tote bags don't super make sense unless they're a free gift if you buy so much, but just leaning in to protection and face protection for women, especially with these hats and staying super focused.
So you're doing, you're doing big beach hats with big brims.
You're doing visors. You're doing, you're doing lifeguard hats.
You're staying in that lane.
So you're really focused on the missional part of why you're doing this as opposed to the fashion part is huge.
But if you have a little, little mission underneath it, that's like you'll be protecting your face and that's really what it's all about.
I think, Tom, I think that's such an important point because if ultimately like you can create this wormhole in a crowded market, crowded category, right?
Hats are crowded. But basically what you're saying is look, these are designed for women and it doesn't, that doesn't jump right out at you in the way that you, you put this on the website.
So it's important to pull that out to make it clear that, you know, these are designed for women's heads.
These are designed to look great on women.
Chip Wilson did this with Lou Lemon when he introduced that product, you know, 20 years ago and revolutionized, you know, active wear and yoga wear.
Essentially what you're saying is this is designed for women and to Tom's point, it's designed to protect you from the sun.
And you mentioned that it's really hard to get attention where you don't have celebrities or big influencers, but there are micro influencers who are focused on, on skincare and on protecting your skin from the sun, on using products like Tom's, you know, Sunbomb and other skincare products.
It seems to me that if you can connect with one of these micro influencers and it might cost you a thousand bucks and not that much to get them to wear the hat and to talk about why this hat is so important as part of a whole regimen of skin protection for women, that could be an interesting wormhole.
Yeah. Yes. No, definitely.
Definitely. I 100% agree.
I think, I mean, I'm not the best D to C guy, but I would to to your approach it.
I would, I would do exactly what Guy said with some micro influencers to try to get some, some drive to your website.
And then I would, you know, Sunbomb in the early days, you know, in Florida.
We would give it to the breakers.
We would give it to like the four seasons and just tell them, you know, they'd be like, we don't have, we don't need it.
We don't sell sunscreen or we already got plenty of sunscreen.
Just take it and I'll come back next weekend.
And if you don't want it, you know, if you didn't sell any, then you just, we'll just take it back or you could throw it away.
And if it's sold, you can order some more early on some of those breaks that they would take it and they would sell it and then they would place an order.
And as soon as they did, whether it was the breakers or the four seasons or whoever, we would just use that.
The breakers carries it down, down the street.
You should carry it. The four seasons.
So all those aspirational hotels, I would go to some really high end hotels and I think you look, you seem like a good salesperson and your product looks great.
And I would, I would get just, I would do whatever it took to get into that one hotel.
And then you go to the next hotel and say, Hey, they, they have it.
And they're like, Whoa, it must be something.
Yeah, four seasons is carrying it.
I think a high end retail is a cheaper strategy, um, long term than trying to think about this D to C, but again, I'm not a D to C guy.
No, I'm, I'm also not opposed to that.
If like a big hotel, you know, yes, yes, please, I would totally be into that.
I would also, and this is not a shot in the dark.
I mean, I've, we've seen small, small brands do this with great success, which is to try and find, um, some kind of brand collaboration.
You're seeing, again, you're seeing liquid death do this with different types of brands.
He's really interesting collaborations with, with makeup and skincare, you know, Rihanna and Fenty did it with ketchup.
Um, I could, I could imagine some kind of collaboration with a sunscreen or sun, you know, sun lotion brand that is designed for the face, right?
Whether it's a, we're talking about sunbomb here, but it could be, you know, super goop or, or, or, or another, or even a small up and coming brand that seems like it's, you know, gaining some traction that might be easier to kind of reach some kind of collaboration where it's like hat and sunscreen together to protect your, your face.
And you also, right? You also look great and it's designed for women's heads and, and, and that kind of thing.
Yeah. No, that's an awesome idea.
That's awesome. Tom, any last minute advice for Allison?
Words of wisdom? I know how hard it is, Allison.
Okay. I feel you so bad. I know it's so hard, right?
I mean, I used to hop. It is.
It's Michigan games. Like, and it's just so hard to keep going, but your product looks really, really, really great.
And that's the bottom line.
If you have a great product, you can make, you will make it.
So it's really just hustling more and getting it in the right placement.
And again, I would, I would say because it's so expensive and because you don't have your margins, those resorts can go higher.
They can have a $50 trucker hat.
You know what I mean? And you can make the money, but you got to make the money.
So you got to go places where you can charge enough so you can stay in business and get these hats over the line.
Yes. Thank you so much guys.
That was amazing. Thanks Allison.
Allison Mandelbaum, shady lady.
Good luck. We'll be following you.
Thank you. Bye bye. Bye.
Tom, we're going to take another short break, but when we come back, one more call about a product that lets you read a bedtime story, even if you're far away from your kids.
Stick around. I'm Guy Razz and you're listening to the advice line here on How I Built This Lab.
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Hey welcome back to the advice line on How I Built This Lab.
I am Guy Razz and I'm with Tom Rinks, founder of Sunbomb and we're picking questions from small business owners.
And all right Tom, let's bring on another caller.
Hello caller. Is it Zephyrus?
Yes, it is. Hello Zephyrus, tell us your name, where you're calling from and just a quick little bit about your business.
Sure. My name is Zephyrus White.
I'm calling from New York City and my company is Read To Me.
We invented and sell the Read To Me recordable book buddy which is a simple device that lets you record yourself reading pretty much any children's book then it attaches to the back cover of that book.
And then the child in your life can hear you read to them without any screens whenever they want even when you can't be together.
Okay, all right. And Zephyrus, what's your question that you brought for us?
So it's a pretty unique product.
There's not really anything like it out there which is great.
However, no one's searching for it.
So like no one's going online and searching for products to help me read to my kid when I'm away on business.
So I'm looking for some guidance on maybe specific channels or ideas to help raise awareness of maybe the need for the product.
All right. All right, let's break it down.
So this is a, can you describe this product?
It's like a recording device that you slide into a book and then you record your voice reading the book and then you hand that whole thing to a child and then they can just listen to you reading it?
Yeah, that's correct. Yeah, it's probably about the size of a ruler and there are 21 buttons on the side.
It's completely contained.
It doesn't require any apps or anything.
So it's not going to become obsolete and it uses solid state memory.
So it just attaches to the back cover of the book.
So once you've recorded, then you give the book to the child and they can just open it up and press a button and hear that page, flip over to the next one, hear the next page.
Zephyrus, tell me what you, you started this a couple of years ago.
What were you doing at the time?
Were you in book sales or in technology?
Like what's your, is it your profession?
No, not at all. I'm actually, I'm a specialty performer with the Metropolitan Opera, which means if you're an opera singer, I'm not.
No, actually if you go to the opera and you see someone on stage but they're not singing, but maybe they're juggling fire or sword fighting or falling downstairs, that's me.
Wow. Yeah. I've had a lot to do with books, but books have always been a huge part of my life.
That's amazing. So how, so you're the guy like swallowing the fire swords.
Yeah. Swallowing the fire swords.
Not swallowing the fire swords, but I do do quite a bit of fire stuff.
So how did, how did this, how did this idea come about?
Yeah. So this really started about 40 years ago.
When I was little, my grandma lived pretty far away and she used to get picture books and record herself reading the book onto those old cassette tapes and then she'd pack it up and send it.
And my sister and I would listen on the cassette tape to grandma read us the books.
Then flash forward several decades.
My sister had kids of her own.
So we pulled out grandma's old tapes.
I think it'd be great for them to hear their great grandma.
But if you've tried to listen to those old tapes, they degrade over time and they were just unusable.
So that's when I started thinking about the idea that it'd be great if there was something out there that would hold that recording forever.
And how did you develop it?
How did you even crack this thing?
Was it, where did you start?
So that was a real stroke of luck.
I met my partner, Arden, who, she's a single mom, so we did a lot of reading to her son, but she also is a former Navy engineer.
And one time, yeah, really helpful.
One time I was talking about the idea came up and I was talking about it.
I was like, do you think you could design the circuitry for something like that?
And she was like, yeah, I used to work on fighter jets.
I think I can do that. So it's a two-person show.
It's just her and I, we designed it, had it manufactured, ordered 5,000 of them, stacked them up in our apartment.
We do all the marketing ourselves, all the fulfillment, all the sales.
So yeah, that was kind of the genesis of the product.
All right, so Zefra, your question is, how do you get people to know about this thing, right?
Awareness, that's your question, right?
Awareness, right. We started wholesaling to indie bookshops because we figured we had a captive audience, and that's been going very well, but it's a relatively small audience.
So yeah, so we're just trying to generate awareness and looking for specific channels that would be most productive for that.
I have an idea. Tom, do you want to go first or do you want me to start?
You start. Okay, I'll start.
Okay. I think that your marketing focus for the short term and maybe short to medium term needs to entirely be grandparents, right?
Because eventually it's uncles and aunts and maybe if the parents are divorced and one of the parents can't see the kid all the time, but I think, because grandparents have cash, they got money usually, right?
And this is something you can imagine them saying, yeah, I want to do this.
Now it doesn't seem very hard to do.
I'm looking at the instructions, so you get a grandparent recording it.
I think that obviously the way people market products, and especially direct to consumer products is through social media marketing.
And there are micro influencers in every category.
There are tons of grandparent micro influencers.
These are people who charge a little bit of money to talk about products, and there are probably some with a 10,000 followers or 5,000 followers, but if they can show this product and how it's being used by their grandchild, that I think is a way to start.
Tom, what do you think? Yeah, I've got so many thoughts.
I'm just looking at the website.
And people who know me know I'm super brutally honest and they know it.
We need this is what this is for, Tom.
Bring it on. I think I was coming to get on this podcast, they were like, don't crush any souls, don't crush the spirits like you do.
No, I'm already, I'm prepared.
He's girding himself, Tom.
Yeah. Okay, so I'll start by saying, I think this is a genius product that's unbelievable to be honest with you.
And I see huge space for this.
I think the idea is great.
I think the execution is tough, man.
I think the website's tough.
I think the photography is tough.
I think the colors that you chose back in the day were tough because you're not that, right?
But in a world of Apple, this just can't exist like this for such a great idea.
But it's such a great idea.
I would put, I would go all in, you're on stage and I know that's your life.
But man, you gotta, if you're going to do something like this, needs to be completely redesigned or retouched.
This has to be not the technical parts of it, just the aesthetic parts of it.
And the way it looks and who you're focused on selling.
So I would have another idea for this on top of Guy's idea.
I, I mean, Arden, you said she was in the Navy?
Yeah, she was. Yeah. Okay.
To me, I would focus this whole thing initially, I mean, not the whole thing, but 99% of it on military.
Ah, military. Yeah, several to, yeah, to military members.
I want to say there's 100,000 parents deployed every year, right?
Which makes whatever that is, 250,000 kids.
Brilliant. That are without parents to read them every night.
I don't know how many millions of stories that are a year that aren't getting read to.
But I would, there's places that she should know that she shopped at called the Navy Exchange.
And the government has set up all these stores for all of the military veterans, their families, on each base.
I walked one once, they're like a Walmart.
They're huge. Yeah. But they let all of the people who are serving our country get discounted gas, discounted food, discounted, and they're gigantic.
And you have to be in the military to get it.
And to me, if I saw this and it said read to me, and just because you're not home doesn't mean you can't read to your child every night.
And I see a kid in his bed with this teddy bear and you kind of push this straight towards the military.
Oh, such a great idea. I swear, if I'm walking around Barnes and Noble, I don't know if I'm not a grandpa or I'm not thinking about it or I don't get it.
But if I'm in one of those stores away from my family and I see read to me, you may not be there, but you can still read to them.
And I see that and it looks like it was made for me.
I'm getting that because that's going to pull every heartstring.
That's a great idea. Tom, it's also a world where you could, where Zephyrus could create a program where people could buy one or donate one to somebody deployed, to a deployed, someone deployed on a ship or deployed on a mission somewhere around the world.
You have a program on the site where it's like, hey, this Christmas send one to a soldier marine.
Oh, that's an amazing idea.
Yeah, that's fantastic.
I love it. And you're not trying to, when you go in there to sell them, you're not selling them a candy bar or a new kind of pop.
You're not doing that. You're going to sell them something that their servicemen need and would benefit them and that's why they exist in the first place.
So you're in with that kind of a store is just like, it seems like a no brainer to me.
And I would focus the marketing, the packaging, the website, all of that just straight ahead at that.
Like I see there's a kid on a blue velvet sofa with nail trim sitting there reading that book.
There's a kid in bed with his teddy bear and his service father or mother.
He hears that voice to them and you could show them kind of recording it.
I would go straight to military and it's huge.
Huge. Yeah. Just scroll up in your podcast.
You will put a link in the description below.
Check it out. It's an incredible story.
If you want to learn anything about branding, about design, you've got to hear that episode.
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This episode was produced by Casey Herman with music composed by Ramteen Ereblewe.
It was edited by John Isabella.
Our audio engineer was Sina Lafredo.
Our production staff also includes Alex Chung, Carla Estevez, Chris Messini, Elaine Coates, J.C.
Howard, Catherine Seifer, Keri Thompson, Neva Grant, and Sam Paulson.
I'm Guy Roz and you've been listening to the advice line on How I Built This Lab.
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