Product Startup Podcast Episode 180: Hardware Tips for Nontechnical Founders

00:00:00 Kevin Mako: Hello, product innovators. Today we learn from a non-technical inventor whose product now sells all over the world on tips

00:00:05 Kevin Mako: for getting an invention idea off the ground as a side hustle.

00:00:08 Narrator: You're listening to the Product Startup Podcast, a show to learn from top leaders in product development, prototyping, manufacturing, product selling, and everything in between.

00:00:16 Narrator: Hosted by Kevin Mako, the leading expert on product development for physical product startups, sponsored by PTC's two best in class 3D CAD product development software solutions

00:00:25 Narrator: Onshape and Creo, and produced by Mako Design + Invent, the original firm providing world-class,

00:00:30 Narrator: consumer product development services tailored specifically to startups, small manufacturers, and inventors.

00:00:35 Kevin Mako: Welcome back, everyone. Today I'm very excited to introduce Graeme Whitehead to the show. Graeme is a client of our very own Mako Design who invented the CNCT Cooler,

00:00:44 Kevin Mako: an ultra high-end cooler that has won three international product awards, including Indiegogo, Creativepool and the New York Product Design Awards.

00:00:51 Kevin Mako: He is a corporate vice president that invented design manufactured and sold his product as a side gig still to today.

00:00:57 Kevin Mako: Now, Graeme is going to share some valuable knowledge for inventors startups and small manufacturers

00:01:01 Kevin Mako: on how to design a quality consumer product, tips for getting to manufacturing and working

00:01:05 Kevin Mako: with manufacturers, and how to leverage influencers to gain early products exposure and traction in the marketplace for your invention idea as a hardware startup.

00:01:13 Kevin Mako: Now, on to the episode.

00:01:16 Kevin Mako: Hey, Graeme, welcome to the show. Thank you very much for having me. We're excited today to talk about your journey with CNCT Coolers and how you went from

00:01:24 Kevin Mako: just an idea to a product that's being sold all over the world. Highly acclaimed by influencers, all this sort of great stuff. I think you've got three major

00:01:33 Kevin Mako: awards now, design awards, product awards, that sort of stuff. So today, I really want to pick your brain about tips and tricks for non-technical founders, people

00:01:42 Kevin Mako: who have an invention idea and want to get that product to become a real product business and your journey along the way

00:01:49 Kevin Mako: to get there and tips and tricks for how you became the success that you are today. Before you get

00:01:53 Graeme Whitehead: into all of that, just give us a bit of a background to your history and your career. Great. Yeah, I come from a professional services background.

00:02:00 Graeme Whitehead: And I certainly don't have experience in manufacturing, marketing, or engineering. So I think that one of the keys for me was to identify what I don't know right up

00:02:09 Graeme Whitehead: front and say, well, there is some organization, there is some planning that I'm good at. What I do know, I can converse with people. I value customer service.

00:02:18 Graeme Whitehead: But there's things I don't know. And what I don't know, I could engage. There's lots of professionals like Mako that I engage with sort of my first step.

00:02:26 Graeme Whitehead: I'm saying, clearly I'm not an engineer, not an industrial designer.

00:02:29 Kevin Mako: So that was the first step. So that's amazing because the interesting thing about what you were trying to do is you really wanted to achieve a quality

00:02:37 Kevin Mako: product right out of the gate. And you had a really high standard for what you wanted the eventual thing to be in manufacturing. You essentially allowed the design team to do their

00:02:46 Kevin Mako: best work to see your vision, understand your vision, understand all the direction, which you were

00:02:51 Kevin Mako: great at and guiding what that vision is and what you want the product to end up being and how you

00:02:56 Kevin Mako: want it to work and all these different standards that you put behind it, but allowing them to put their best efforts into creating the underlying design, prototyping engineering

00:03:04 Kevin Mako: that could build an actual manufacturerable product at the end of the day.

00:03:08 Graeme Whitehead: Just explain to everybody what the cooler is. So CNCT Coolers, the product we designed specifically for Tesla storage spaces. So for those

00:03:17 Graeme Whitehead: listening, you know, that may have a Tesla. I've seen it. It's that strange frunk, that front trunk, There's the sub trunk where usually there's parts in the back that

00:03:26 Graeme Whitehead: Tesla's are able to accommodate extra storage spaces. And that's where the idea came from is I have one myself, I bought it in 2018, and this looked like a cooler storage space.

00:03:36 Graeme Whitehead: And I thought, somebody's got to make this for that. So that was the genesis of it.

00:03:40 Kevin Mako: I just thought this looks like a cooler holder. The concept was great. You saw an opportunity for the space, but then you wanted to take it one

00:03:47 Kevin Mako: step further. And you basically said, I want this thing to look and feel like. like it belongs at a Tesla. I want it to have that quality. I want the handles to have that

00:03:56 Kevin Mako: chrome dip. And arguably, you made as many awards a test, but you've essentially designed the

00:04:00 Graeme Whitehead: world's highest end cooler, arguably in many different ways. I guess that all came from have other coolers, other brands that don't need to plug on your podcast.

00:04:09 Graeme Whitehead: The other ones that I was quite fascinated. I left the performance of these high-end coolers. And people really love it. And they

00:04:16 Graeme Whitehead: actually enjoy the cooler when you're poolside or something like that or you're having a get-together

00:04:20 Graeme Whitehead: and you pull out the cooler and if you got warm content, warm stuff in there, it's just horrible. Like everybody's moods down.

00:04:26 Graeme Whitehead: So I liked the cooler product, but I knew full well, I would be a potential customer myself.

00:04:32 Graeme Whitehead: And I think that was key for me is pushing quality is like, what I buy this. And if I wouldn't buy this or I don't love it, then why would I expect anybody

00:04:42 Graeme Whitehead: else to buy it? Why would I buy this? Why would anybody else buy this? There's already established brands out there.

00:04:48 Graeme Whitehead: Why would anybody do that unless it had something unique, something different than other brands? So it had a head of a Tesla aesthetic connection.

00:04:58 Graeme Whitehead: So I pushed your design team and to actually build door handles that mirrored Tesla's door handles on the top of it.

00:05:06 Graeme Whitehead: That's unique and it has an aesthetic connection. We made the same color as the paint color on the car.

00:05:11 Graeme Whitehead: All those things just say, well, it was now it's just an accessory to the car as opposed to a generic brand that just happened to

00:05:18 Graeme Whitehead: fit or we found a way to make it fit, it had to be unique. Because if I'm doing it for that

00:05:24 Kevin Mako: unique space, it had to look like it was designed for it in that car. Yeah, that's amazing. It looks

00:05:30 Kevin Mako: so beautiful. If anyone's listening in on the podcast, you'll have to take the effort to actually click in the links below.

00:05:35 Kevin Mako: I'll put the links below to the CNCT Cooler, cnchtcooler.com. And you'll have to just take a look at this thing. And you'll right away, why won all the awards that it did.

00:05:43 Kevin Mako: It's just something that's very special because not only were we given the tools as a designer, and I would say given the green light, to be able to go after the best and make

00:05:53 Kevin Mako: something that is the best. But you were very specific in the details that you wanted. I mentioned earlier about the vision.

00:05:59 Kevin Mako: Talk a little bit about the clarity and vision and how, I guess, looking at yourself as your own customer, enabled you to really almost co-design with your design

00:06:08 Graeme Whitehead: team, something that really hit all the marks you were trying to achieve. So going back to the

00:06:14 Graeme Whitehead: initial comment, I come from a professional services background, and I knew it wasn't an engineer. So I had to ask all these tough questions.

00:06:20 Graeme Whitehead: I knew what the requirements would be, but I don't know what makes a high-performing cooler. Mako had engineers that could help me with that.

00:06:27 Graeme Whitehead: So I didn't know what would be the amount of insulation that I would need. What would be the design requirements in order to have it perform?

00:06:35 Graeme Whitehead: What are the key features that would be necessary in doing that? How do the thermal dynamics really work? I don't really know. I know the outcome.

00:06:42 Graeme Whitehead: I want the cooler to perform really well. But how to do that? There was a lot of unknowns to me. So different qualities of insulation materials, that air is an insulator,

00:06:51 Graeme Whitehead: how good is air is actually a good insulator? So all these things that I had to work with Mako and your engineers to get that over the finish line.

00:07:00 Graeme Whitehead: And even if I was comparing it to other premium cooler brands, well, what

00:07:04 Kevin Mako: was key features there that I'd be able to run a side-by-side test and perform the same? Because you were asking those questions, it allowed the designers to open up their mind

00:07:14 Kevin Mako: to the key points that really would allow the product to achieve those milestones with the performance or the look or the feel or whatever

00:07:21 Kevin Mako: else it is to make sure that it was best in class. But to hardware startups and ventures that are listening, think about the questions.

00:07:29 Kevin Mako: That was really a highlight for me and what you were saying here, Graeme, is that you thought about not just the vision that you wanted it to be,

00:07:35 Kevin Mako: but you started asking the key clarifying questions so that the experts could give you the

00:07:40 Kevin Mako: information and then you could make the decisions on really how to best achieve that vision based on the most relevant technical details required in order to achieve that vision.

00:07:48 Kevin Mako: And that's really something that as a hardware startup and a hardware founder, it's important to keep in mind because they are there to bring your vision to life.

00:07:57 Kevin Mako: Well, in order for that to happen, you have to work with them on that vision. You have to describe it and ask those clarifying questions.

00:08:02 Graeme Whitehead: And every week we're collaborating, coordinating, honest, absolutely. Even as we progress to the point of potentially manufacturing, there's another round of doing

00:08:12 Graeme Whitehead: the same thing because the tooling and machinery, the manufacturer then pushed back. A couple of them want to redesign the whole thing in order for them to manufacture.

00:08:22 Graeme Whitehead: Well, that took them off the list, obviously. But ultimately, the manufacturer we utilized still had its own limitations on what it could

00:08:30 Graeme Whitehead: manufacture because of the materials, because of the process. And that was another piece that I relied on Mako's engineers to say, well, how do we do this?

00:08:39 Graeme Whitehead: Without compromising any of the requirements, how do we still do this? this. They can't make corners as sharp as I want it. It just doesn't work that way. Would

00:08:48 Graeme Whitehead: I notice? Is it a key thing? So throughout the process, continuing to go back, but just being patient

00:08:54 Graeme Whitehead: through that process because there's several smart minds trying

00:08:58 Kevin Mako: to figure out how to accomplish something was a big piece. Backo played a big role in that as well. Well, I appreciate that.

00:09:05 Kevin Mako: And it was really helpful because our technical experts could work with manufacturing experts and

00:09:09 Kevin Mako: working in collaboration with you on the vision planning to essentially assure that the best of all of these different pieces was able to get done.

00:09:17 Kevin Mako: And a lot of the time, that relies on also pushing back on the manufacturers, as we did with your product, getting into the rotel molding, local manufacturing,

00:09:23 Kevin Mako: which I think we should talk about as well. It was key to understand all of those criteria and have all the different stakeholders.

00:09:29 Kevin Mako: And this is something that's really important as a hardware startup. You have many different stakeholders. Each of them can be very helpful in many different

00:09:35 Kevin Mako: ways. And if you utilize all of that expertise and all of those opinions, organize it,

00:09:41 Kevin Mako: prioritize it. At the end of the day, you can best capture that original vision. And I like how

00:09:46 Kevin Mako: you mentioned that that trails all the way through to and including manufacturing, because that's

00:09:49 Kevin Mako: also a big missing step that a lot of folks misinterpret is that when they're done, the prototyping, they're ready for pre-production.

00:09:55 Kevin Mako: There's still going to be some checks and balances and tweaks and refinements as you go into that production process. Sometimes it's to save money. Sometimes it's to improve

00:10:03 Kevin Mako: quality. Sometimes, as you mentioned, there's a design change that needs to be made for whatever

00:10:07 Kevin Mako: reason. Sometimes it's a part that all of a sudden is no longer available that you were relying on.

00:10:12 Kevin Mako: It's okay, though, if you take that kind of collaborative, interactive, expert-based approach,

00:10:18 Graeme Whitehead: put all these various stakeholders together and really try and find the solution in amongst the nest. Yep. So one thing was, it's really great to say that the cooler held

00:10:27 Graeme Whitehead: 24 cans. Well, Well, in order for it to hold 24 regular size cans meant the dimensions would be altered slightly,

00:10:35 Graeme Whitehead: but how would that affect its performance, all that sort of stuff? So these things, and you just have to work through to make sure that all these things worked out

00:10:43 Graeme Whitehead: and then as manufacturer pushed for their own design elements, absolutely. I would also suggest, too, that the manufacturer will push back, one, because they don't want

00:10:52 Graeme Whitehead: to do it is another thing, which is really not my problem or your listener's problem. they're looking to launch a product, but it may boil down to cost.

00:11:00 Graeme Whitehead: So they'll push back based on labor or requirements like that. And it just may mean that the product may have more scrap and may be more difficult to make.

00:11:09 Graeme Whitehead: So it just could push the price up. So their pushback may end

00:11:13 Kevin Mako: impacting the price if you just keep pushing forward. So you have to strike a balance in order to get your cost reasonable.

00:11:19 Kevin Mako: Absolutely. And a lot of the time with the expertise weighing in on your side. That's why it's good that you're bringing in the manufacturing engineering and the industrial

00:11:27 Kevin Mako: designers, mechanical engineers, et cetera, to be working with the manufacturing engineers on their

00:11:32 Kevin Mako: side to really determine what is something that can be done and is maybe just an inconvenience. Well, like you said, that's the producer's problem.

00:11:39 Kevin Mako: Let's overcome that hurdle. Let's work together to solve that problem. What are the things that are related to cost and how can we achieve a balance

00:11:45 Kevin Mako: within that when we're dealing with the producer? Eventually, all these things start to come together.

00:11:49 Kevin Mako: The other thing to consider as well, as you did is you looked at multiple different manufacturers, you're going to get different answers from different producers.

00:11:56 Kevin Mako: Even if you're looking at three relatively identical injection molding facilities, I can assure you that they have different

00:12:02 Kevin Mako: equipment, different processes, different labor, different expertise, different familiarity and

00:12:07 Kevin Mako: experience with what they've dealt with this in terms of even the equipment that they have on site, even if it is identical to other facilities.

00:12:12 Kevin Mako: So it sometimes requires a little bit more work with your manufacturing engineers, your design engineers, to be working with a number of

00:12:19 Kevin Mako: different players in order to figure out who can really accomplish a goal that you want and really not giving up until you find it.

00:12:25 Kevin Mako: Talk a bit about the rotel molding because that was something you did, not only your decision to have manufacturing in the USA, but

00:12:31 Graeme Whitehead: also with the rotational molding process so that you could accomplish a number of these factors together. Yeah. So during the

00:12:37 Graeme Whitehead: process, we had gone out for interest as well, for manufacturers to work with the startup company

00:12:43 Graeme Whitehead: that our minimum order quantities wouldn't be a massive amount. So they had some willingness to work

00:12:48 Graeme Whitehead: with small initial order quantities, which was big, just so you can test the waters, understand what you're doing. So that was a big thing. Luckily, we found some interest in

00:12:58 Graeme Whitehead: doing that, an ability to make molds. And in talking with the manufacturer, they're selling

00:13:04 Graeme Whitehead: points where it was well established in the industry that the best in class coolers were rotational molded.

00:13:11 Graeme Whitehead: That construction allowed for strong, rigid plastic and allowed for a large

00:13:18 Graeme Whitehead: cavity to be filled with insulation quite easily, including the lid. So your economy type coolers don't have any insulation in the lid. They're not rotational mold.

00:13:28 Graeme Whitehead: They have a rough shell, a rough outer surface to hide all the imperfections. That's why it's like that. And they can't easily fill the insulation.

00:13:35 Graeme Whitehead: It's too much labor to do all that stuff. And I said, well, that's a nonstarter. I don't want any of that. I don't think that's what my customer wants. At the time,

00:13:43 Graeme Whitehead: I didn't really know, but that was what we were pushing for. So the manufacturer sure,

00:13:48 Graeme Whitehead: and they had done some prototypes of other very high-end premium brands, very well-known brands

00:13:53 Graeme Whitehead: in that premium cooler space and showed us how those were designed and manufactured using their rotational molding process. What was helpful for me is it's just me as a startup.

00:14:03 Graeme Whitehead: This is a side venture that I'm doing. I was pushing hard for this to be made in the U.S. I think U.S.

00:14:11 Graeme Whitehead: customers being the largest market where Teslas are available and I'm looking to sell to. I think that's a value to the U.S. customer that it is made in the U.S.

00:14:20 Graeme Whitehead: And I lucked out in finding a manufacturer that's about a three-hour drive for me.

00:14:24 Kevin Mako: So I can do that. I can't drive to Asia. So that was allowed me to at least start the conversation with them or be open for them to do it.

00:14:32 Kevin Mako: I want to talk a bit about the front facing side of things because one of the ways that I saw you get to market, which I thought was brilliant.

00:14:40 Kevin Mako: We've seen it work other times in many different categories, but you just took units of your product off the production. line and gave them to influencers.

00:14:48 Graeme Whitehead: No contract, no guarantee that they're going to even talk about you, let alone say something good about you. Yeah. And really no money changing hands. And you had a ton of

00:14:56 Graeme Whitehead: success with that. Funny the people that I had followed and you kind of get a sense of their reputation, I had met them in person.

00:15:03 Graeme Whitehead: And to whatever degree of comfort that gave me was enough. To your point, I really didn't know what they would say. The integrity piece was important,

00:15:11 Graeme Whitehead: of course, that if I paid for something and then I couldn't say it online or social media, or in any advertising that this was a real review.

00:15:19 Graeme Whitehead: It's not if I'm paying for him to say what I need him to say. So other than shipping the product, that was with the commitment to do.

00:15:25 Graeme Whitehead: And I trusted that the product would be enjoyed. So it worked out that they picked it up and did really enjoy it. That really helps.

00:15:32 Graeme Whitehead: And it essentially created a couple hundred dollar version of a YouTube campaign that is much more powerful than what I could do as content myself.

00:15:41 Graeme Whitehead: So it's something that I can share and I promote their content. But you're quite right. There was no contract that they had to say nice words or certain keywords or

00:15:49 Graeme Whitehead: anything like that. And the only exchange was the YouTubers are looking for their own content, new interesting content

00:15:55 Kevin Mako: that others hadn't done. And he gave their subscribers a little promo code. That's plenty of consideration for them. That had worked. Yeah, it's amazing.

00:16:03 Kevin Mako: I saw your interview with the Tesla Owners Club, the founder of that. And you just sent it to him.

00:16:09 Kevin Mako: And this is where the quality that you put into the product really Sean, because he

00:16:15 Kevin Mako: He spends minutes on this YouTube video just talking about the features and how much he likes them

00:16:20 Kevin Mako: and the finishes and the handles and how smooth the operations were and all this sort of stuff. And it just goes to show you that when you put the time and the effort into quality,

00:16:28 Kevin Mako: you were able to send that over with this like tens of thousands of followers. And he for free just did this long review and all kinds of stuff showcasing your product, right?

00:16:39 Kevin Mako: How amazing. But really, there's no way that wouldn't happen if, A, the product vision wasn't good and B, if it was a crap product.

00:16:45 Kevin Mako: So if you actually focus on quality, you start seeing these both direct and indirect benefits start to come back to you, especially as you start releasing

00:16:53 Graeme Whitehead: to market. And all of this was something that you got, all this media was earned for free, which is phenomenal, right?

00:16:58 Graeme Whitehead: I just want to add, though, that what people don't see and I'd love to share with your audience is that keep in mind that there's a time as we built the product

00:17:08 Graeme Whitehead: and slowly tested in the real world. You would test myself. I would test it with customers. get feedback and we had to address it. You had stand by the product.

00:17:18 Graeme Whitehead: You had to deal with it. So I'm just sharing that the path to having some success is not linear.

00:17:24 Graeme Whitehead: And there's going to be challenges in there until I got to a point that I knew I could ship and he would love. And even

00:17:31 Graeme Whitehead: to be really granular with that explanation, you want to test a product, ship it on a FedEx truck or a UPS truck. You're really going to test, but your product is going to survive.

00:17:41 Graeme Whitehead: When it sits on the back of an aluminum bed truck for two days. If anything can survive that, it's going to be just fine by the consumer.

00:17:49 Graeme Whitehead: So just a tip to always do that, but I learned a lot, slow rollout of product. You learn, you retool, you figure out where the problem is. I came back to Mako's

00:17:58 Graeme Whitehead: engineers and I said, here's what we're experiencing. Okay, we retool. We found new parts, resource, but they were all interchangeable pieces designed for that purpose because

00:18:08 Kevin Mako: challenges are going to surface. Customers are going to give you feedback. As long as you're response of most people are pretty rational.

00:18:14 Kevin Mako: It's a great way to build a product brand is to roll out things in sequence and learn. And that was something you did really well, Graeme,

00:18:21 Kevin Mako: is every time, whether it was early prototypes all the way up to production units, every time

00:18:25 Kevin Mako: you sent it out into the world or did the test, you'd very carefully listen to the feedback and look to overcome the obstacles that were there.

00:18:33 Kevin Mako: So that's why as it, the product evolved, it became this thing where you were so confident you could send it to some of the top

00:18:40 Kevin Mako: influencers in your particular niche industry with the confidence that they were going to love it. And they were going to see a lot of those details.

00:18:48 Kevin Mako: And that's what I find so amazing about the reviews is how much detail they go into because these are people who are few products all the

00:18:53 Graeme Whitehead: time. So if you actually put the effort into the details, that's what they're going to see. That's the reason why you're getting free reviews essentially.

00:19:00 Graeme Whitehead: The detail, even like we have a magnetized bottle opener on the lid, but that's really difficult to push on a website that a YouTuber,

00:19:07 Graeme Whitehead: to your point, is really going to, wow, this, okay, everybody forgets the bottle opener,

00:19:12 Kevin Mako: and now you're not going to forget.

00:19:13 Graeme Whitehead: It's the little details that don't really come through in a lot of images that comes through in those reviews. That's great, Graeme.

00:19:19 Graeme Whitehead: Where can people go to learn more about the cooler or to potentially buy one of the coolers? So our website is CNCT Coolers, spelt CNCTCoolers.com.

00:19:28 Kevin Mako: We ship free in North America.

00:19:29 Graeme Whitehead: We also have wholesalers as well that quickly find, but just searching under that, you'll find them. And you guys now are starting to ship in multiple customers.

00:19:37 Graeme Whitehead: countries all around the world. Yeah, we ship direct in Canada and the U.S., but now through wholesalers

00:19:43 Graeme Whitehead: we're offering worldwide shipping and utilizing their presence in shipping, which was a nice offering. It is an amazing feeling to get customer photos from Australia.

00:19:52 Graeme Whitehead: I can tell you that. That's special moments. Like as a startup, you just can't ship to distant places in the world and expect to get any

00:19:59 Kevin Mako: sort of return on that. But there are other channels and there are others that can do that or specialize lies in that. Just really cool moments, absolutely.

00:20:08 Kevin Mako: Graeme, thanks so much for all your words of wisdom, for emerging hardware startups going on their journey, going from idea to productions.

00:20:14 Kevin Mako: Much appreciated. Thanks again for being on the show.

00:20:16 Narrator: Thank you so much. Thanks, Graeme. Take care. Thanks for tuning in to this episode of the product startup podcast.

00:20:22 Narrator: If you found some value in the show, please do us a huge favor and leave us a quick five-star review.

00:20:26 Narrator: If you have any questions, guest suggestions, or anything else, feel free to reach out to us anytime at our email podcast at MakoDesign.com. That's podcast at MakoDesign.com.

00:20:35 Narrator: This show is hosted by Kevin Mako. North America's leading expert on product development for physical product startups.

00:20:41 Narrator: Huge thanks to our sponsors, PTC, and their two best in class 3D CAD product development software solutions, Onshape and Creo, and Mako Design + Invent. The original firm

00:20:50 Narrator: providing world-class consumer product development services tailored specifically to startups, small manufacturers, and inventors. Thanks for joining and see you next time.