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Guest: Gavin Christman, co-founder of Green&Blue.
Host: Kevin Mako, founder of Product Startup and the leading expert in hardware startup consulting. A hardware entrepreneur since 1999, Kevin has advised more than 1,500 founders and built and scaled MAKO Invent through its acquisition by TriMech in 2024.
Building a Purpose-Led Ceramic Product Business
Gavin Christman explains how Green&Blue develops award-winning ceramic products for wildlife without relying on a one-stop manufacturing approach. He also discusses specialist suppliers, product quality, customer service, retailer relationships, and the value of keeping partners informed.
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Filip Valica: Hey, everyone. Welcome to the Product Startup Podcast, a podcast that helps bring your product idea to life by chatting with successful inventors, product designers, and other industry professionals.
Filip Valica: This podcast is run by Mako Design and Invent, and hosted by Filip Valica. Our goal here is to get to the bottom of what makes a product successful, from initial idea to putting your product on the shelf. We're taking you step by step to build a functional product and scale your product business. Now onto the show.
Filip Valica: The product startup, episode 36. In today's episode, we learned from Gavin Christman, the co-founder of green and blue. Green and blue creates a beautiful range of award-winning products for wildlife and we take a closer look at working with ceramics.
Filip Valica: Hi everyone and welcome to the product startup podcast where we talk about turning ideas into successful products step by step. I'm Filip Valica and thanks for listening today. In the last episode we talked with Paul Potratz about promoting our business
Filip Valica: after we launch and creating a 90-day advertising strategy on a minimal budget. So make sure to check out episode 35 if you want to hear more about that and validating your product ideas for free.
Filip Valica: A big thank you to everyone that sends in feedback on the show. Feel free to shoot me an email at Philip at theproduct startup.com or go to the product startup.com and click contact me. Also make sure that you hit the subscribe button in iTunes or your favorite podcasting app to
Filip Valica: be notified of new releases within hours of the episode going live. If you want a chance to plug your business and pitch the product startup audience, listen for more details at the end of this episode. So let's get started. Hi, Gavin. Thanks again for coming on the
Filip Valica: show. That's a pleasure, Philip. It's really nice to talk to you. So you've got a really interesting background. Can you talk a little bit about your past with Dyson and maybe in some ways how it's helped you along your journey with green and blue and in some ways what it didn't prepare you for?
Filip Valica: Sure, absolutely. I think Dyson was my first job. I was straight out of university and had the opportunity to go along and work for James Dyson, which was a fantastic opportunity. This was
Filip Valica: sort of nearly 20 years ago now. So Dyson was a relatively small company. It grew into a huge entity, obviously, in more recent years. And I think what Dyson offered me the opportunity to do was
Filip Valica: it was a real kind of sink or swim environment. So you got involved and, you know, it was great. It was a wonderful opportunity to see how a large design company works in all of its facets
Filip Valica: from its product development to the way it markets and sells and advertises itself. So Dyson was just wonderful experience for anyone that was considering setting up a business.
Gavin Christman: It was looking back on it. It was a really fantastic time for me.
Filip Valica: So how has it helped you with green and blue and maybe some of the other projects that you had going on? Did it influence the way that you approach problems at all? Absolutely.
Filip Valica: I think that the mantra always at Dyson was to kind of look at a product and understand how you could make that product better.
Filip Valica: Fundamentally, it was through materials and good design and consideration and not including anything that didn't need to be there. So that sort of clean, clear thought process fundamentally instillates how I work.
Filip Valica: I could pretty much say that's entirely responsible for that. the eight or nine years I spent working at Dyson, understanding a problem, seeing how you might solve that problem, then going out, creating the product and launching it from there.
Gavin Christman: It's a really good design principle that I hold absolutely dear to everything that we do. And I really like what you said there when you said editing to just get the essential functions, the purpose of a product, because I think that's probably one of the hardest parts of design
Gavin Christman: is trimming the design down to its essential functions and stripping it from the nice to have,
Filip Valica: from the must-haves. Do you have anything, any insight there to share with everybody on how to go to that process? Yeah, no, that's interesting. I think once you've kind of looked at a product and
Filip Valica: recognize, well, we could make this product better simply by doing this and this, or what if we did that rather than this? Would that make the product more useful for the custom or would it make
Filip Valica: the product last longer? So I think those decisions are sort of based around what particular design problem you're facing. But that kind of mantra of keeping things to as simple as possible,
Filip Valica: don't create extra work, don't create products that are going to have inbuilt problems in later life, really kind of strip it down and ensure that it functions just so, it's just right.
Filip Valica: That is harder than it might seem. I think that kind of level of detail and ensuring that everything is perfect,
Filip Valica: it might look simple when the product reaches the shop floor. But I think it's incredibly difficult to do. And I feel certainly Dyson, one of the sort of world's leading companies at doing that, I really feel passionate about what they do. And having seen the company
Filip Valica: evolves, I've moved on and launched green and blue and obviously kept a close eye on what Dyson
Gavin Christman: are doing with their products. I think it's absolutely there. It's a core to everything that they do.
Filip Valica: Yeah, in a way, if you look at some of the products that you're selling online, they have that elegant simplicity to them, that it's just the bare essentials, but in a beautiful way. I think so.
Filip Valica: I think when we started out on our journey, the first product that we developed was a product called Bird Ball. Now, bird balls are a very simple structural item design as a nesting space for garden birds.
Filip Valica: So we started literally with the shape that a bird makes for its own nest, and that shape is hemispherical. on. It's half of a sphere. Yet we put them in these rectangular boxes and we bought them to the wall
Filip Valica: and we kind of wondered, well, if a bird were creating a bird house, what would be the best shape for that? And we felt spherical was an obvious choice.
Filip Valica: What that led us to was, well, actually we could suspend this and make it from a product that doesn't rot or a material that doesn't rot, I should say. So suddenly you've kind of got the aesthetic, you've created a material
Filip Valica: that you know is going to be outlast to any of the kind of wooden bird box. out there. And then you can think about security and safety. This bird is spending a huge amount of energy raising this brood. The last thing you want is a inquisitive cat or a squirrel
Filip Valica: or something like that, kind of attacking the nest. So by creating something that was impervious and in fact hung up was very unusual at the time. But those, the reasons for sort of doing that
Filip Valica: were very, very clear. It was about creating a product that was better for the birds. It just so happens
Gavin Christman: that a beautiful white ceramic sphere hanging from your tree also looks incredibly beautiful, which was entirely a byproduct of our design process. Yeah, that's very interesting because I think one of the first tips that people will give
Gavin Christman: is say, hey, you need to step into the mindset of your customer and try to walk in their
Filip Valica: shoes and really feel their problem, not just emulated or not just kind of give it lip service. And so your whole description there was basically from the perspective of a bird. Absolutely. They're a customer at the end of the day.
Filip Valica: We're providing homes for them. We need to ensure that that brood will leave in the best possible form that they can. And that's about creating a safe, secure habitat that will provide that. And we take it very seriously.
Filip Valica: It's really quite important that be it a bird or a bee or any other creature that we might be developing products for,
Gavin Christman: it's they are our client at the end of the day and it's imperative that we deliver all of our promises and make sure that that we're doing exactly what they need well i think it's really
Gavin Christman: commendable for you to take up that angle there's not too many products being developed for wildlife i think the space is just so competitive you can basically go down to any corner store almost and buy something for birds that's been designed on a mass scale that maybe doesn't quite
Gavin Christman: fit their needs but the competition is definitely out there in the market seems to be pretty saturated.
Filip Valica: What gave you the idea that you thought, man, you know what, I think this is the space that we can compete in and not just compete in, but actually make a difference and have a sustainable business? I think that that was very simple. We kind of took a number of
Filip Valica: products that were available on the market at the time. This was sort of back in 2005, 2006, quite a long time ago now. At the time, there were no alternatives to the, forgive the phrase,
Filip Valica: but the sort of cheap and cheerful kind of bird feeders and bird houses that were available. We felt they didn't do the job very well. They principally were made from inferior products and certainly in the case of some bird feeders
Filip Valica: actually do damage to the bird. So rather than provide a friendly source of food in your garden, you're actually putting something out there that has the potential to do harm to the wildlife, which was so sort of counterproductive in our eyes.
Filip Valica: It was like, well, let's iron out all of those problems. Let's do away with the materials that are causing the problems.
Filip Valica: The problems that birds sort of face in feeding from wire feeders, which essentially was all that was available when we started the project. Birds can very easily get entangled in the wire mesh. They're in a frenzy to feed.
Filip Valica: It's cold, it's winter. They need to eat their own body weight almost every day. They may have a young brood. It's important that they get their food source and they get it quickly and efficiently and expend a small amount of energy as possible.
Filip Valica: So in looking at something that can actually do harm to it, you're thinking, goodness me, why is this even on the market? This is criminal. It really is. Now, just because it's a bird, it makes it no less important that we think about the design consideration
Filip Valica: and ensure that we're ironing out all of those problems. So I think certainly our feeders, when we looked at that, it was, goodness me, these are the problems. They're so easily solved.
Gavin Christman: He just needs a little bit of thought. and again, you know, look at the materials that we've used and look at how we put them together and create an item that will do exactly as it should.
Gavin Christman: Absolutely imperative to what we do. Yeah, and in a way, basically what you're saying is that there was an unmet need in the market. What I'm trying to do is translate some of this to people that are listening now
Filip Valica: that are saying, you know what, I want to compete in this market, but it seems too competitive for me. And basically what you did was say, you know what, all these other run-of-the-mill feeders aren't really competition because they're not meeting the need.
Filip Valica: Absolutely. Yeah, no, sure. I think that's imperative with any element of design, be it designing a new coffee machine or a bird feeder or a car.
Filip Valica: You've got to come at things from different angles and find your in, find your way to create difference. And certainly in our case, our sort of principle of solving problems is
Filip Valica: critical to that. So how we design. So really kind of analyze every single product. I think, I wonder why it does that? You know, I'm a big fan of taking things apart. I think I always have been. So understanding how things are put together.
Filip Valica: And I think that helps you appreciate, oh, right, that's been done like that. Well, that's perhaps not the best way. What if it did this or this? So I think it doesn't matter what you design, be prepared to come at it from all angles.
Filip Valica: And that way you're just going to find a chink in it and recognize, wow, we can create real pointed difference with this.
Gavin Christman: And it doesn't have to be groundbreaking, you know, but it's just a little niche. And suddenly, wow, that's a wonderful way to invent a niche. new product that no one else has seen before. It's an exciting way to sort of go about
Filip Valica: business. Yeah, absolutely need to differentiate yourself. So as you were going through and creating your first bird feeder, were you working full time somewhere else? Or was that able to
Filip Valica: sustain yourself and your wife? It was an exciting time. I'd elected to leave Dice and I'd been with a company for just under nine years. My wife and also the co-founder of green and blue
Filip Valica: Kate. She had been working for design agencies at the same sort of time I was at Dyson. It was a bit
Filip Valica: of a leap of faith, if I'm honest, Philip. We wanted to move our life to the coast. We live in a beautiful part of the UK and the West Cornish coast.
Filip Valica: That is a stunning part of the world. And we felt, gosh, if we were lucky enough to have a wonderful business that we entirely believed in that was fulfilling in terms of design. And at the end of the day, we were lucky enough. And at the end of the
Filip Valica: lucky enough to be able to love our surroundings in the way that we do. We felt pretty privileged. So we took a real leap of faith. I wouldn't necessarily recommend it, but it's certainly the
Filip Valica: way we did it. So we left two perfectly good, well-paid jobs and took a punt on green and blue, which was very exciting. My wife changed direction a little bit, and she went into lecturing
Filip Valica: design at the university here, which is a fantastic institution.
Filip Valica: And in fact, she's still there. So she runs her time between green and blue and as a lecture at the university.
Filip Valica: So that kind of came about. But yeah, at the time, no, there was no other income. This had to work.
Gavin Christman: The first thing we launched with Birdball and, you know, getting this to market was very stressful. I'm not necessarily advocating the way that we did it. But yeah, it was courageous stuff. And I perhaps look back on it now and think, yeah, that's pretty naive.
Gavin Christman: But I'm certainly glad we made the leap. I really am.
Gavin Christman: at some of the people that have been really successful and with as much positivity as I can put towards it, I can say that there's a lot of people that have gone into business with a certain amount of ignorance because if you knew exactly what you were getting into, I think it would scare a lot of people from taking that leap.
Gavin Christman: Absolutely. I think it really would. It's impressive for you guys to take that next step. As you were developing your product line,
Filip Valica: can you talk a little bit about how things evolved? Did you take the bird ball to market first and kind of see how that would react or were you working on other products in parallel while you were taking it, you know, where you were selling it and trying to see
Filip Valica: if it got any traction on the market?
Filip Valica: Initially, it was an exciting thing, but we had this wonderful idea and we had manufacturing in place. That was UK-based ceramics
Filip Valica: predominantly made in Staffordshire, a region in the sort of Midlands of the country, which is historically where ceramic is made. It's been exported all around the world from Stoke-on-Trent for hundreds of years.
Filip Valica: So that's kind of where we wanted to make it. We knew that was the best place to make it. That was where the skills were. That's where the best materials were going to be. And that's where all that knowledge was. So it was trips back and forwards to meet mold makers and
Filip Valica: slip casting companies and people that could help us with glazes. And, you know, this was exciting. We didn't know anything about this kind of thing. We had an idea and we needed to push it forward.
Filip Valica: But certainly no, but Burbill was, that was the idea. We took that to market. And in fact, we were taking orders before we really had a finished product. We knew we could do it. But certainly
Filip Valica: the finished packaging and the sort of literature wasn't quite there. But I think we needed to do that, if I'm honest, Philip. I think it gave us the impetus to make it happen. We had a lovely
Filip Valica: idea. We were confident that it would sell. So I was already going out with postcards and And this was almost pre the wonderful internet that we now enjoy in terms of business.
Gavin Christman: So we were kind of searching through kind of phone books and finding retailers and telling them about this product and just desperately trying to get our literature under their noses. So they could look at it and think, well, yeah, okay, this is a very different product.
Gavin Christman: This isn't what we currently have. Let's take a chance on it. And we're very grateful that a number of retailers did that and that really got us off the ground. That's a really interesting story. And I want to definitely dive into the manufacturing part of it more.
Filip Valica: The inner geek in me definitely wants to know more about that. But before we get into that, you said that you were reaching out to some retailers to see if they would sell your initial bird ball. At that point, did you already have a unit cost for that because you've gone through
Filip Valica: maybe a first round manufacturing or you've had some sort of reasonably good estimates for it? Yeah, we'd already done that. So we'd got a mold maker in place, a great guy that we still work with to this day. And so we knew what the molding cost was going to be.
Filip Valica: we knew that we could go and talk to a slipcasting company and they provided samples.
Filip Valica: This is kind of low-tech stuff, you know. This is handmade. It's a beautiful process of pouring liquid clay into plaster moulds. The mould takes on the form of the product as it dries back and leaves a wall thickness.
Filip Valica: So it's a wonderful process. You can look at any teacup or any bowl or any piece of ceramic that's slipcast and it still has that lovely quality to it. this handmade quality.
Filip Valica: So we had samples, so we had prices. So we kind of knew the kind of margins that a retailer might be looking for and sort of felt, well, okay, this sort of stacks up. I'm pretty sure that we can make this work.
Filip Valica: So, yeah, we had kind of figures that we could stand by.
Filip Valica: I guess what we didn't have was a great deal of knowledge of getting the product to the customer dealing with returns and all the other side of the business that had to follow. So we were kind of finding our feet and discovering all the challenges as we went along.
Gavin Christman: I don't regret that. And I'd certainly recommend that. You know, it might sound a bit crazy. But I think you've got to be in it. When you're in it, you can kind of, you know, you can deal with the nitty-gritty as it comes. But otherwise you'll perhaps never do it.
Gavin Christman: You'll just stand on the sideline and think, oh, what if this? What if that? I think immerse yourself in it and go for it. I absolutely agree. I think there's only so much research that you can do before you get into the thick of it,
Gavin Christman: like you said, while you were going through that process and you're contacting these retailers, what kind of agreements, and you don't have to speak specifically. Obviously, we don't want to break any terms and conditions, but do you think retailers were more willing to take on
Gavin Christman: consignment orders or what kind of margins were you looking at? For example, in our line of work with some of the products that I deal with, it's usually a 4x multiple. So if the manufacturing
Filip Valica: cost is maybe $5, then you expect to go to retail for $20. keeping in mind everybody takes a cut along the way there's so many middlemen so to speak whether you're dealing with distributors or otherwise and maybe in your case because you're selling
Filip Valica: direct now on your website obviously the margins are going to be different but give somebody a picture of what their ballpark should be whenever they're developing their product yeah absolutely
Filip Valica: so as a kind of a 2.5 to 3 sort of multiple so not quite as high as your area of business but obviously, you know, we've got to kind of get the product in, get it delivered to us here,
Filip Valica: assemble it with all of those costs needed to come into play, we need to package it, we need to provide the literature and get it back out to a retailer. So, yeah, you've really got to kind of go through the nitty gritty in terms of your costing
Filip Valica: and ensure that once you've done all of that, does it still stack up? Obviously, a retailer is looking to make a good margin. They have expensive costs. They're dealing with expensive business rates on premium parts of the high street. and that sort of thing.
Filip Valica: So they have huge costs to deal with themselves. But it's only a challenge. When you look at any product, we have very strict criteria in terms of taking something forward. If the margin isn't there, we just can't do it. And it might be as good as an idea as it is.
Filip Valica: We either have to re-engineer it and kind of think of another way to do it or quite simply shelve it, which is tough.
Filip Valica: Having green and blue.com. It's great. Obviously, the margin we make it is better. It's a great platform for us to meet our colour. customers directly. We have great sort of feedback from our customers.
Filip Valica: So certainly that portion of the business would be a lovely portion to grow,
Filip Valica: but it's a tough part of the business to grow.
Gavin Christman: It probably represents less than 15% of our business at the moment.
Gavin Christman: Our focus really has been building up our trade customers, creating those really important relationships. I can't stress that enough. You have to have great relationships with your retailers. You have to listen,
Gavin Christman: understand what they have to do because they're the guys that are meeting the end user at the end of the day. So you really, you know, you need to feed off those guys because they have wonderful advice to give and it's important that you listen to it.
Gavin Christman: I absolutely agree, especially when it comes to creating those relationships. People will approach me for advice about contacting manufacturers and I think people just want to send out
Filip Valica: a bunch of RFQ's request for quote without creating that relationship. Instead of getting a good price or a manufacturer that will work with you, you're just getting someone. and that's just replying back to an email that taking the human portion out of the process
Filip Valica: and there's a lot of benefit in being able to negotiate with people and having some of your questions answered that you didn't even know that you needed to ask. Can you talk a little bit
Filip Valica: about your way of striking some of these relationships? Absolutely. No, no, absolutely. I hear what you say. It's the human element, the contact, the understanding what your manufacturer needs
Filip Valica: to do, what he's got to go through to create that component for you. It's a really important you understand that journey, rather than just send a CAD file and expect a quote back and maybe, you know, put your order in for the first 200.
Filip Valica: I personally feel that you really want to understand what he has to do to make that product because that way you're going to learn more next time you go back to him.
Filip Valica: And certainly over the years, I'm not a potter. I'm not a ceramicist. But over the years, the information that I've gleaned from these guys who,
Filip Valica: it sounds a little rude, but are in the sort of twilight.
Gavin Christman: of their careers, you know? They're kind of, they need to be listened to because they really, really know what they're talking about. And they've got so much to give if you're prepared to listen.
Gavin Christman: So when you're kind of striking up those first relationships, be it your retailers or your suppliers,
Gavin Christman: we're absolutely, our foundation is based on the relationships that we have with those people. We hold that absolutely dear. It's fundamental to what we're about at green and blue.
Gavin Christman: well and I'd also like to touch on one other thing that you mentioned you said that you made all these different visits you had someone that was doing the casting and someone that
Gavin Christman: was doing the glazing for you when people talk to me about going to a manufacturer they expect to go to somewhere that is a one-stop shop that will basically they just pick
Gavin Christman: up their product in a box and everything is completed now a lot of the manufacturing that I'm used to it's very piecemeal so the companies that I've worked for for example they're very much like green and blue they prefer to do their assembly in-house but
Filip Valica: but they source the individual components of their products from different manufacturers, and they might even have someone that's adding value, that's adding a coating such as your glazer.
Filip Valica: And a product really flows through this chain before it gets to the end goal. And in a way, I think a lot of the reason that people do hold on to that chain themselves
Filip Valica: is because it keeps a better eye on quality and they're able to have more control over the process. what's the reason that you've kept it that way instead of just going to like a one-stop shop? I think fundamentally for what we do, there probably isn't a one-shop stop.
Filip Valica: We're drawing together components and materials that might not necessarily have been put together before or certainly not for this particular use.
Filip Valica: So for that reason, it's important that we kind of understand the relationship between each of the materials and how they're going to fit. And I think you can't really expect sort of one company to take that on for you.
Filip Valica: outsource and bring all the bits into you. Plus,
Filip Valica: it's about quality. Our products are about the very best materials that we can source and put together to create a product that is going to last your lifetime. That's fundamental to green and blue. It's about creating really good products
Gavin Christman: that are going to last and last. So that last little bit of detail that exactly where the leaflet goes and putting the box in the outer cart and knowing that's perfect every single time is
Filip Valica: is really key. You know, we're a pretty small company. So our reputation is absolutely the most important thing to us. We want every customer to be delighted with what they open.
Filip Valica: And certainly for us, the only way we can absolutely ensure that is if we've done it. So yeah, that's absolutely key to what we do. One of the guests that we've had on the show described it to her employees as,
Filip Valica: what if your mother or your cousin was opening this or your brother was opening this package for the first time. How would you pack it? How would you assemble it? Absolutely.
Filip Valica: You know, we're less than
Gavin Christman: a month away from Christmas. We're kind of packing products like it's going out of fashion in the workshop at the moment. It really is a very busy time for us. But the care goes into every single one
Gavin Christman: and you have this kind of very slightly strange feeling on Christmas morning as my children are opening their presence. I'm thinking, goodness me, hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people are opening what
Filip Valica: we've made, let's hope they're as delighted as my kids are with what they're opening it at the moment. So if you kind of reverse it back on yourself and look at it, anything you make, you know, you want to be proud of it and kind of think, yeah, that's the best we can do.
Filip Valica: Yeah, that's really great advice. You mentioned about reaching out to retailers, and it sounds like you went about it in a very manual way, looking people up in the yellow pages
Filip Valica: and things like that. Was there anything that really worked for you to help get that traction other than just straight knocking on doors and creating a really compelling pitch.
Filip Valica: It's tough. I think certainly from the outset, it was yellow pages. It was finding the sort of retailer that you felt might be in that town or what have you. Searching design books or home
Filip Valica: lifestyle books, that kind of thing just to sort of see, well, there's a great retail. Let's get it in front of them. That was tough. That was hard legwork. That was a spreadsheet that just went on forever of contacts
Filip Valica: and who you spoke to, what they thought of it, have they received the sample? Just a huge amount of manual time on our part, on my part, certainly to begin with.
Filip Valica: What we've kind of moved to now is we have two trade shows that we go up to London with our products. It's very specifically tailored to the kind of market that we're at, which is really high quality products for the home and for the garden.
Filip Valica: And that really suits us because we get to see and nurture the relationship. that we have with a lot of our retailers and we get to meet new retailers and we have an awful
Filip Valica: lot of buyers that come in from Europe. So we wouldn't have that outreach. There's no way we could get to the right person every time in every company that we contact.
Filip Valica: So having the most relevant trade show is key. But you've got to go absolutely prepared. You need to have your product's got be just so. Obviously your prices have got to be right. Your, you know, your shipping costs, your delivery times.
Filip Valica: So you've really got to kind of have gone through the process before you go there because these people are going to expect that. They don't have a lot of time. They've got a big hall to go around.
Filip Valica: They just want to know the key things and they'll go away and think about it and with luck they'll come back and place an order. So certainly that's still what we do today is a couple
Gavin Christman: of shows a year as well as legwork, the continual legwork of nurturing the relationships as retailers. But it is tough.
Gavin Christman: The best thing, if I'm honest, is the reorder.
Gavin Christman: When you've got a
Filip Valica: great retail, you're really excited about it and you send your first order to them and you're kind of desperately waiting for them to come back. In fact, we just had a wonderful retailer come back to
Filip Valica: us this evening and they're over the moon with what we've done. We're really excited to work with them and they've come back and for me that's testament they've sold the goods the customer likes it
Filip Valica: they've come back for more so that's that's that's certainly for me that's what you look for yeah it must be an amazing feeling especially since uh now you feel that you've started that relationship
Filip Valica: you've forged it and so it's yours to lose at this point absolutely that's that's that's that's key and that's about product quality and customer service i can't stress that enough it's keep that
Filip Valica: relationship fresh and keep telling them everything that you're doing all the new things you're involved with get feedback from them ask them lots of questions about you know what do you think
Gavin Christman: we could do to help you sell this you know it doesn't just stop when they send their check to you you know it's important that you kind of put the time in with these guys because they've got the
Gavin Christman: shop floor they've got the space they've got the ability to reach far more people than we can ever reach you know so and more importantly i i'd I think our web sales are really key, and it's fundamentally where we'd like to grow the business.
Filip Valica: But we have wonderful products that are handmade. It's so stunning when you see them in the flesh that a retailer can do that so much better than we can ever do that. So it's about showcasing your product.
Filip Valica: Yeah, and one of the things that I like that you said was that it seemed like the trade shows weren't going to be effective for somebody unless they've gone through the process. And so the recommendation that I always make, and feel free to correct me, is that you need to be.
Filip Valica: be out there selling and have some retailers under your wing before you take on a trade show because trade shows will set you back a few thousand dollars for booth fees and all sorts of other expenses for travel and you need to be able to handle the volume that some of these
Filip Valica: buyers expect absolutely they're hugely expensive it's sort of you know occasionally we'll come back and think okay well that that wasn't great but it's in it's in the follow-up it's all in
Filip Valica: the follow. It's taking as much information as you possibly can about a customer or a potential new lead and coming back and following that up, really ensuring that you're kind of drilling down into those contacts and really following up just to make sure, you know, this fit is going to
Gavin Christman: work because there's no point in sort of forcing something on someone if they're not, you know, if they're not going to love it because at the end of the day, they're going to spend their money on it and they're going to have it in their store. So you want it to work well for both of you.
Gavin Christman: It's really important, but I hear what you say, trade shows that they're hugely expensive.
Gavin Christman: I'd recommend for anybody, if at all possible,
Gavin Christman: some aren't just trade, some have sort of public days. If you're kind of contemplating a trade show, certainly get along, go and have a look around, see what's there, see the way things are done, talk to as many people as you possibly can that are
Gavin Christman: in the situation that you're likely to get yourself into before you commit to the sort of the cost of it. I think that's quite an important thing to do. No, absolutely.
Gavin Christman: I think going as a guest is amazing, especially since, like you said, you can usually come in for a free day and can meet a lot of suppliers and vendors and get those contacts that you wouldn't normally.
Filip Valica: I've even been sold to at a trade show, even though this isn't legal, and a lot of trade shows prohibit this, but guests would come in and the guy literally opened his trench coat and I like showed me some samples of their product.
Filip Valica: So, and I'm not advocating this, but I'm definitely saying that it's possible for you to make some really good content. like you said. Absolutely. No, absolutely. Before we moved on, because I definitely want to talk about some of your other products,
Filip Valica: I want to kind of wrap up this talk with the bird ball. So you've slowly moved into working with some of the retailers and selling online. At what point did you decide? You know what?
Filip Valica: We need to have another product in this line because it's not sustainable for us just to sell one item. I think initially getting a product from the sort of, the, the drawing board,
Filip Valica: into a manufacturer,
Filip Valica: into a retailer, into a customer's home, and those customers keep coming back, it is a wonderful process. It really is. It's really, really exciting to sort of know that your products are in people's gardens, doing exactly what you've designed
Filip Valica: it for. It is a great process. It's quite addictive. It kind of means you want to do it again and again and again.
Filip Valica: Feedback from our retailers were, gosh, you know, this is a wonderful product. We're really excited. We've never seen anything like this. It's selling really well. what else are you doing? So these guys kind of drive it. They want the next thing. They want to know what you're doing next.
Filip Valica: They want to see is it a totally new thing or a lot of make recommendations about what they feel would be a great next product. So advice being, you know, listen to what people have to say because these guys are far more experience
Filip Valica: and certainly I was at the time. They're dealing with the customers directly. So it was, you know, key to listen. And with the feeders, again, I think we kind of concluded that, you know, if we're doing this with
Filip Valica: providing habitat for birds, we should be looking at the problems with feeding birds. That's our next interaction with them. And again, we found the same problems that fundamentally were possibly damaging to birds, beaks and claws, which was just disastrous.
Filip Valica: They didn't keep the food source dry. Very basic things when you kind of think about them. So what we then did was go back to the drawing board to think, okay, how can we resolve these issues? Are these something that we can do from where we're at?
Filip Valica: We've got this manufacturing process. We know this works well. We've got a database of customers who we're pretty sure would like to hear from us, you know, get some drawings down,
Filip Valica: get some prototypes made and get them in front of some key retailers, talk to people about this before you can, you know, press the big button in terms of spending lots of money.
Gavin Christman: They're your best sort of advocates, really. They're going to, provide you that really key information.
Gavin Christman: So I'd certainly recommend doing that before you commit to a huge production run is with any new product, get it out and about, talk to end users, talk to your retailers.
Gavin Christman: And certainly from our perspective, obviously we create products for wildlife. So it's imperative that we have either gone through an entire life cycle or gone through a number of seasons with our feeders and that sort of thing
Gavin Christman: to ensure that the birds interact with the product well, that they're comfortable using them.
Gavin Christman: sort of without that feedback, Mother Nature's feedback, so to speak, we're dead in the water.
Filip Valica: So, yeah, you've got to, yeah, you've certainly got to put the time in, as I say, don't push the big button until you're absolutely sure you've got something that people are going to want. Yeah, so let's talk about that a little bit.
Filip Valica: You know, our clients that I've worked for and to sell services to have basically all asked similar questions, what's the field history for this type of technology, where has it been used in that similar application before, prove to me that.
Filip Valica: what we're buying is and these are you know much more expensive products or high tech products but the question is basically the same leave my risk and leave my concerns somehow and so when you
Filip Valica: went in there to sell did you have a prototype at that point or had did you you said you undergone maybe a year or more of testing how did you do that without having to pay that
Filip Valica: a front cost for the castings yeah it's tricky because obviously as soon as you you tool up in ceramic, you create a master to take the mould from, and then once you have that master
Filip Valica: mould, you create working mould. So you have to commit all your money up front, which is a little bit terrifying.
Filip Valica: What I've tended to do is I've been a very hands-on designer. So getting from a drawing stage to a working prototype involves a number of stages. And if I'm honest, this goes back
Filip Valica: to my time at Dyson, where we'd create a cardboard model, the cheapest, quickest solution, sit on the kitchen table with a couple of sheets of cardboard and put something together, check the fit, make sure things are going to work.
Filip Valica: And then we create what we call a breadboard model, which again is something that we would create a Dyson.
Filip Valica: So you can see how when you're going to get a little bit of wood and a bit of plastic and a piece of rubber and it's all going to hang on a piece of stainless steel wire. How does that fit? How does it hang? Does it sit right? That sort of thing. So
Filip Valica: you can make an awful lot of decisions very quickly, very cheaply, before you've actually had to commit a huge amount of money.
Filip Valica: To create something that was aesthetically how we expected the finished product to look and work is tricky. You kind of, depending on your skill set and depending on the resources,
Filip Valica: dictates as to what level that prototype is worked up to. But certainly we would produce a fiberglass product that first off, we weren't putting out for the birds at
Filip Valica: this stage, but we were getting the fit right, we were getting the size, we were hanging it up, we were kind of talking to retailers about it, we were able to show them a physical product, you know, sending them photographs and drawings and so saying, this is what we're going
Filip Valica: to do, it's going to be great, it keeps the food source dry, it protects the bird's beaks
Gavin Christman: and claws from the damage that can be caused by wire mesh feeders. Even our perches are flexible, so they're designed for feeding just the small birds, not the huge carrion crows that
Gavin Christman: don't really need the help in the garden. This is about feeling very specific sort of types of garden bird that really need the help. So all of that can be done relatively simply
Filip Valica: and relatively cheaply with the working prototype.
Filip Valica: Certainly the products that we develop, they're relatively simple in terms of the number of components and what they're made from. There's not a huge amount of technology. Obviously, if someone is coming at something with very much a technology-based product, they're going to have different challenges. But
Filip Valica: Certainly my advice would be keep it really simple to start with,
Filip Valica: get feedback at every stage. So you're not committing to either production runs or huge prototyping costs without being sure you've got something that's going to work.
Gavin Christman: Yeah, I absolutely love the advice with prototyping as cheaply as possible. I think people jump to 3D printing or whatever the latest craze is without really understanding that there's a lot of time that goes into creating those 3D models and creating the prints.
Gavin Christman: and like you said there can be a lot of benefit into just creating some of these quick models
Filip Valica: using whatever tools that you have available whatever materials that you're used to working with absolutely we can cover a lot of ground very quickly i think that an example of one of our feeders
Filip Valica: the bell feeder i think was prototyped on the afternoon that it was thought of in the morning so literally by the following week we got a fiberglass cast shell that we knew was going to work we'd already talk to retail that's the quickest thing i think i've ever designed and by
Filip Valica: moving quickly in terms of using very cheap resources that you can throw together really, really kind of something very quickly. You've got something. You've got a finished product. So, yeah, don't spend money where you don't need to because you're certainly going to have to spend
Filip Valica: it elsewhere. Yeah, save your money for when I need to ramp up production because that will definitely open your eyes. One of the products that I definitely wanted to talk about were the V hotels. If I could describe it really simply, it's the size of a brick, but it has different
Filip Valica: sized holes inside for bees to nest in. Can you kind of elaborate on that? That's right. I'll begin with sort of saying that the bee brick is designed for solitary bees.
Filip Valica: Now, we have honeybees, hiving honey bees that provide us with wonderful honey. We have bumblebees, the big black and yellow fluffy ones that buzz around and look far too big to fly. What we then have are a huge number of what we call solitary bees. In the UK, we have over
Filip Valica: 250 different species of solitary bee. I think it's even more in the US.
Filip Valica: A solitary bees, as the name suggests, is a female bee that lives a solitary life. She doesn't spend a time in a hive. She doesn't create honey, but what she does do is she's a key pollinator.
Filip Valica: Solitary bees are, I think a red mason solitude bee specifically, can do the work of 120 honeybee. workers, which I think is an absolutely staggering fact. So essentially the way she does that,
Filip Valica: she's a fantastic pollinator. What she's doing, she's finding a suitable cavity,
Filip Valica: certainly in a bee brick, but in an old wall or in a grass verge or a grass bank or something like that where she's historically made a nest. She will go to the back of a long, thin tunnel. She'll lay an
Filip Valica: egg, she'll then go out and collect nectar and pollen for that egg, which is remarkable when you kind of consider it. Now, it's as she goes out and collects the nectar and pollen, this is
Filip Valica: where she's splashing from one flower to the next to the next. This is where she's a fantastic pollinator. She's not a great collector of nectar and pollen in the way that a bumblebee or a honeybee
Filip Valica: is they have baskets on their sides, on their flanks where they kind of collect all the nectar and pollin and very neatly take it back as and forwards to the hive. She's not so good as
Filip Valica: that, but that actually makes her a better pollinator, the way she splashes into one flower and then on to the next. She's collecting a small amount of nectar and pollen, provisioning each of her eggs
Filip Valica: with that. She's then making a mud wall, certainly in the case of Red Mason Bee, between each egg and each provision of nectar and pollen. It's quite a remarkable process. She's making little
Filip Valica: bedrooms for these guys all the way down this tunnel.
Filip Valica: You'll then finish that process by putting a little mud cap on the front and those eggs will hatch out this side of Christmas and they'll be with us as fully fledged bees
Filip Valica: sort of end of March, April next year, certainly where we are in the UK. When the sun warms up, they've got the energy to hatch out. And away they go to repeat the process. It really is a magical, magical process.
Filip Valica: Solichuiz, they're critical to our survival, put simply. They're a wonderful pollinator, and quite simply, without our bees, we really would be in quite a sorry state.
Filip Valica: We understand there's a region in China where rapid industrialisation and poor farming practices have actually led to an area where pollination of fruit trees is carried out by men and women
Filip Valica: with huge long paintbrushes on sticks, hand-pollinating one flower to the next to the next. If we lose our bees, we really are in a disastrous state.
Filip Valica: The bee brick,
Filip Valica: the idea there, again, we looked at what was available in terms of solitary bee nesting spaces commercially. We felt that we could improve on a number of things from the material. We know that the life cycle is almost a full 12 months.
Filip Valica: So it needed to be made from a material that could withstand the worst of the weather.
Filip Valica: So that was absolutely key. We then sort of looked at the cavities, the sizes, the depths, the different sizes that different bees might look for, and thought, well, it's important that we
Filip Valica: provide a number of different sizes for each of the different females that will use it.
Filip Valica: Solidary bees are quite happy to nest alongside one another. They're not creating hives. They're not creating honey. They're entirely harmless. They're a wonderful species to encourage. They're safe to encourage around children.
Filip Valica: The b-brick was a very exciting thing. We touched on concrete. We thought, well, concrete's a fantastic material because it's great year-round. We can make it all sorts of different shapes.
Filip Valica: Our experience with ceramic had taught us about moulds and making masters and batch production, that sort of thing. So it was tangible on our scale as a small business that, we could do this. This really could work.
Filip Valica: However, what we recognised was that the challenges that we have in terms of, of pollinating enough crop to provide the food that we need is vast. It's absolutely enormous. It really is.
Gavin Christman: Yet we're doing a huge amount of damage to our pollinating bee species in how we farm and how we industrialise areas, how we build homes, how we desecrate greenfield
Gavin Christman: sites to put up housing developments. Obviously, we need to provide houses for ourselves. And in
Filip Valica: doing so we we sort of do away with homes for nature this kind of was a light bulb moment which these don't happen very often but when they do it's very exciting we thought okay so we can cast this
Filip Valica: out of concrete why don't we make it brick shaped so if it's made brick shape there's no reason why
Gavin Christman: this brick can't be picked up just as easily as a standard house brick that way we can piggyback on the back of a much larger industry,
Gavin Christman: that way, you know, there's potential for a bee brick
Filip Valica: to go into every new house, every new garden wall, every new garage wall, Gable Land, you name it. There's absolutely no reason why this can't be included everywhere.
Filip Valica: That way, we stand a chance of redressing the damage that we've done to bees by simply putting a brick in a wall. It was a lovely moment. Thanks for sharing that. I feel like we were,
Filip Valica: just listening to the Discovery Channel live here. So I appreciate the background on that. First of all, congratulations on creating a product that has such a huge social impact and environmental
Filip Valica: impact and being able to create a business out of it. I think that's just a feat by itself. I think that's something that we all strive to do, or I definitely do.
Filip Valica: It's very exciting. We feel like we're poised to do something really great with this product. At the end of the day, our client is the B. It's about providing.
Filip Valica: habitat for them, the best possible habitat in the volume that's large enough to create a real difference. This is the key. This is the fundamental thing to what we're trying to do with the B-Brick. One thing that stuck in my head, I guess the practical engineer in me, I thought
Filip Valica: that the adoption of this would be the biggest problem for you as a business, you know, trying to get construction companies to pick it up. How have you been able to counteract some of that resistance? That's an interesting question, actually. The resistance, we have really
Filip Valica: haven't felt, if I'm honest. We've done what we do. We've done IG diligence in terms of creating a great product, creating prototypes, talking to structural engineers and architects, understanding
Filip Valica: what would be required of the product in terms of implementing it into buildings on a large scale. And what we've recognised is that certainly architects and specifiers and green ecologists
Filip Valica: are almost crying out for products that will do this. It's about putting nature back into our buildings back into our spaces around the homes that we build.
Filip Valica: So BBRIC has the ability to do that. So certainly in terms of architects, best and farming products, that's not the challenge. The challenge is perhaps with the construction industry as a whole. How do we ask them nicely
Filip Valica: to implement it into each product, into each project that they're doing? We have a number of construction companies that we already work with, which is wonderful. So we understand, we're beginning to understand the construction industry. There's a huge learning curve for a small
Filip Valica: company like us to understand how a product gets put into a building is a huge process.
Filip Valica: But fundamentally,
Filip Valica: it is doable. People do want it. Clients want it. Architects want to use it. It does great things for nature. We feel there is a disconnect in terms of an understanding of one, what a
Filip Valica: solitary bee is and two, well, I should encourage it around my home and around my children. So that's the big challenge for us. We feel it's an education of this is, this is a bee, this is why they're important.
Filip Valica: You know, we kind of see a state where every new home would, let's say, have a bee brick. What we've had to recognize is, you know, we've been making the bee bricks in our workshop, which is hugely challenging.
Filip Valica: It's casting twice a day. It's dealing with moulds. dealing with concretes, dealing with all of those materials that go into making the product. And that's a challenge.
Gavin Christman: What we've recognised is that if we want to see the real change, the real big idea, which is getting as many B BRICs into as many new homes as possible,
Filip Valica: it's probably not something that we can do alone.
Filip Valica: And that's an interesting place for us as a company to find ourselves. We've been able to do this with ceramics and so on. But this is a bigger challenge. This isn't about us. This is about providing really good habitat for bees.
Filip Valica: So what we've very recently done is started to have conversations with very large concrete casting companies that have all of the contacts into the construction industry.
Filip Valica: They're able to cast the products on the scale that is required to see the change that we would like to see. That's really exciting because suddenly we can go out and really talk about our product,
Filip Valica: really passionately and have construction people understand why it's important that these products go in. This is for a lifetime. This is providing legacy for your wonderful developments. Put these
Filip Valica: in, you know, it's really genuinely going to help this sort of biodiversity of the entire
Filip Valica: development that you've done. It's very exciting to suddenly find ourselves in a place where
Gavin Christman: we're not going to be making every B brick, but it means that we can really go out and talk to far more people about what we're doing.
Gavin Christman: Yeah, so talk about that process a little bit about IP protection and what have you done with your products, if anything, to keep competitors from coming in and just stealing your designs?
Filip Valica: It's absolutely something that you have to take very seriously. It's very difficult sometimes because there's quite often considerable costs in terms of protecting your product. At green and blue, we probably, from my background at Dyson, we ensure that every product
Filip Valica: that we develop is registered with the patent office. That's key. And certainly then when you go out and start talking to manufacturers,
Filip Valica: the bare minimum you want to sort of do is ensure that there's agreement between yourselves that what we're going to discuss today is just strictly to be kept between us. The content of what we're going to talk about is private. This is a development
Filip Valica: meeting to talk about how we go forward. A very good NDA is very important as a starting point.
Gavin Christman: I think you need to kind of gauge the sort of companies that you're talking to. Again,
Gavin Christman: this is where we go back to what we're good at. We'll go along. We'll meet with them. We'll talk to them. We'll walk around factories. We'll understand their business.
Filip Valica: So we're not making ridiculous kind of expectations about, oh, you know, can you do that? How many can you do? How quickly can we have them? By going along and meeting these guys, you can do that there and then.
Gavin Christman: You can have these wonderful conversations that will give you all the answers that you're going to need. Well, along those same lines, if you had to give somebody a tip, they're struggling to bring their own product to market, or maybe they already have a product to market and they're just
Gavin Christman: looking to scale, do you have any advice that you would just give them that's blanket advice kind of to say, hey, this is how to get to the next step? That's tricky.
Filip Valica: Obviously, it depends on the product that someone's developed. But I think getting anything to the next stage has got to be done.
Gavin Christman: Certainly we take relatively cautious steps. I think it's understanding your market, talking to your retailers, understanding how many retailers like that are out there,
Gavin Christman: recognizing, well, yes, it's big enough for that next step, that next scale, let's go for it, or understanding, well, actually the market for this product isn't enormous. So let's just work with what we know and with the number of retailers that
Gavin Christman: are out there and deliver a really top quality product. It really is difficult to sort of give any unilateral advice because it's so specific to whatever's been designed. The whole process is very iterative. It's almost a guess and check. Yeah, it's tricky.
Gavin Christman: Yeah, certainly. Gavin, thanks again for coming on the show. Where can people go and buy their own bird feeders and their bee bricks if they want to incorporate them in their own project? We'd love you to come and visit our site. Come to green and blue. So it's green and A&D, green and blue.com.com.
Gavin Christman: Come and see what we do. Understand a bit more about what it is, we're trying to achieve. And if we can help you with a few products, we'd absolutely love to. Great. Well, thanks again, Gavin.
Gavin Christman: I really appreciate you being on the show and being so transparent and sharing a little bit about why it's important to have a social impact and environmental impact in our business and really
Gavin Christman: appreciated learning about bees and what we can do to kind of change what we've done to the environment or to kind of hopefully reverse the process so we don't run into pollination issues that you mentioned. It's exciting. I've enjoyed every minute of talking to you, Philip.
Gavin Christman: and if ever you'd like to talk again, we'd be happy to do so. Also, if you go to green and blue.co.com.
Gavin Christman: and use the code startup, it will apply a 15% discount on the entire product range. It's valid for all of 2017 if you're listening to this as an old episode. Here are three of my takeaways that we can apply to our business. Number one, tell good stories.
Gavin Christman: The typical pitch starts with describing the problem and then showing how your solution is better than the rest. Taking care to be clear about the before and the after, showing how. life is before the solution and showing how it's much improved after.
Gavin Christman: Perhaps it's just me, but Gavin really pulled me into his bird and bee world. I was familiar with the pollination problems that we're seeing across the world due to vanishing bee populations, but his detailed descriptions of the different bees fired off a lot of mental images for me.
Gavin Christman: When he addressed the negative side to land development, I actually imagined the bees and birds leaving the area. So when he talked about the solution, I pictured his product as the way forward. I think the key about what Gavin does so well here is to tell you.
Gavin Christman: stories that pulls the listener in. One of the goals of marketing is to get the audience to feel something to make that strong emotional connection. We didn't talk about it on the show, but I bet Gavin's approach to telling good stories is one of the keys to the growth of green and blue.
Gavin Christman: I definitely know that I need to do a better job of doing this myself. Number two, take things apart. Early in the show, Gavin talks about taking things apart to learn how they work and applying the design concepts to his own product. I work the same way. I've been taking things apart
Gavin Christman: since I was a kid, and I think that's the fastest way to learn about products around us. I love going to the dollar store, for example, and buying products that I can take apart and use for components in my own prototypes. Plus, I reuse off-the-shelf parts as much as I can
Gavin Christman: in my designs, so using existing products helps to lower costs considerably because I know those parts are out there in the wild and they're manufacturable. So most of my upfront fees
Gavin Christman: go to aspects of the product that are unique. Lastly, piggyback an established industry. One key to influencing massive change is scaling really quickly. Gavin recognized this and he sought out
Gavin Christman: the usual players in the construction industry to get buy-in. By using the same manufacturers for the B-brick, he reduces the barrier to adoption. Architects and builders are already familiar with
Gavin Christman: the same materials and suppliers. This also takes advantage of economies of scale, no doubt reducing the unit cost of each brick and making it more accessible to everybody. So by not trying to go
Gavin Christman: at it all alone, green and blue has the ability now to enact much faster change. If you've got any questions or comments, I've put all the links that we've covered under the show notes
Filip Valica: posted on the product startup.com slash 36. Join me next time as I speak with Ruth Stone of Boxhead Crafts. Boxhead Crafts is the world's only manufacturer of blank boxheads for kids to
Filip Valica: design and decorate. So this episode really gets meta. We will look at what it takes to launch a product that gets kids making things in real life under the whole Minecraft theme, which is basically
Filip Valica: a video game about building virtual things. So tune in next week to hear that episode. I'm going to try something new. I've set up a number for you to call and leave me questions or feedback on the show. If I choose your question, I'll air it on a future episode.
Filip Valica: Listener David M. had a great idea. Since I don't have any advertising on the show, why not allow listeners for just starting their own businesses to pitch the product startup audience.
Filip Valica: So call in with your question, feedback, or pitch to 681, 3211-1-1-5. Please keep your pitch to 30 seconds or about the time that you'd have to pit someone in an elevator.
Filip Valica: Don't forget to include the problem you're solving and the call to action, what you need us, the listeners, to do. Lastly, thank you again if you've subscribed to the show by hitting the subscribe button in
Filip Valica: iTunes or in your favorite podcasting app. If you haven't done that already, it's the best way to be notified of new releases within hours of any episode going live. Thanks again for joining me and I'll see you guys next week.
Filip Valica: Thanks for tuning into this episode of the Product Startup Podcast, the show that teaches you what it really takes to bring your product to market and turn it into a big success. This podcast series is brought to you by Mako Design + Invent, the first firm in North America to provide
Filip Valica: global caliber end-to-end physical consumer product development to startups inventors and small product businesses. If you're looking for product development help on your invention, head
Filip Valica: over to Mako-design.com. That's m-a-k-o-design.com for a free consultation from one of Mako-Design for design for design studios from coast to coast. Thanks for listening and see you next time.
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