Listen Now
Guest: Jill Bong, inventor of Chicken Armor and homesteading author.
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.
Finding Opportunity in a Market Others Overlook
Jill Bong explains how Chicken Armor found traction by serving a highly specific homesteading need. Her story shows how close customer knowledge, focused positioning, and a practical invention can create a viable business even when the total market looks small.
Episode transcript
This transcript is provided for accessibility and reference. Download the SRT transcript.
Read the full episode transcript
Filip Valica: Hey, everyone. Welcome to the Product Startup Podcast, podcast that helps bring your product idea to life by chatting with successful inventors, product designers, and other industry professionals. This podcast is run by Mako
Filip Valica: Design + 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. The
Filip Valica: Product Startup, Episode 32. In today's episode, we learned from Jill Bong. She's an entrepreneur, homesteader, an inventor of chicken armor. And we'll get into what that is early in the show. She's also the author of over a dozen books on homesteading and self-reliant living.
Filip Valica: Welcome to the Product Startup Podcast, helping you turn ideas into successful products step by step. With your host,
Filip Valica: Filip Valica. Hi, everyone, and thanks for joining me today. In the last episode, we talked with Elizabeth Versace. She worked with an industrial engineer and pioneered the cocoon cap, a stainless steel drinkware cap, to be leak-free and spill-proof. So
Filip Valica: make sure to check out episode 31 if you want to hear more about the technical details of bringing this new design from concept of prototyping through engineering and manufacturing. And we also check
Filip Valica: in with David Frankel of the perky collar to hear more about his progress since episode two. Before we get started, I wanted to read at listener question from Cornelius Robinson. He says, so one of the things that was brought to my
Filip Valica: attention was the subject of intellectual property. The concern is that my current employer could claim the IP on my ideas even if it isn't in direct competition with them. Obviously, I need to
Filip Valica: talk to the legal department, but I was wondering if you had any other suggestions.
Filip Valica: Cornelius, I would read your employment agreement that you signed when you first onboarded. Most are limited to anything that you create at work and it typically reads that the company would have IP rights to
Filip Valica: anything that you create if you make it while they pay you a salary or if you use their equipment to do it. Obviously it's really tough to prove this but it's become a little bit easier with web traffic logs and computer monitoring tools and things like that. It's also really likely that
Filip Valica: they don't really care about any of this unless it would affect your duties at work. So personally I probably wouldn't bring anything like that up because it might raise suspicion that you are doing something at work other than the task that they've hired you on to do.
Filip Valica: And I would make sure that you try to keep things separately. So if you are working on something on the side and you want to, during your lunch break, you use a different sketchbook. And in my case, I've even kept a work phone and a personal phone just because I really
Filip Valica: like that separation between work and personal stuff. And that way the two don't really touch. I've also seen some non-compete agreements that prohibit me working for companies or
Filip Valica: creating products that are in the same space within a certain amount of time. I think those are questionably enforceable. I think it depends on what the terms are. But as you said, your product
Filip Valica: isn't in the same industry, so you should be okay. If it were a product that's in the same space and it could appear that it is in direct competition with your employer, then I would probably get something in writing that says that you are free to develop and sell this product, providing
Filip Valica: you do it on your own time, using your own equipment outside of work. Of course, this is a just my perspective on it. I am not a lawyer, nor do I play one on the internet or on this podcast. So please make sure to consult one if you feel that you're in a great area.
Filip Valica: And now on to today's interview. Hi, Jill. Thanks for coming on the show today. Having me, Philip. When I first got your quest to be on the show, I thought that someone
Filip Valica: was playing a joke on me because I've never heard of chicken armor before. Can you give
Jill Bong: everyone a quick introduction on what chicken armor is? Sure. Chicken armor is basically a reinvented chicken saddle. It's basically like a vest or a cape that you put on the chicken to prevent them from getting injured from mating or molting injuries.
Jill Bong: So it's just an extra layer of protection you put under chickens because when the rooster mounts the hen, they often get scratched.
Jill Bong: And when they lose their feathers, they often also may get injured or attacked by other chickens during that time. So it's basically a little piece of fabric or leather or canvas or.
Filip Valica: We use vinyl and you put in a chicken and that helps with him. Why do you think that until now no one's created a solution for that?
Jill Bong: Why did you see a problem and think, you know what, I'm going to be the first one to solve this? Well, we were not the first one. It's been around for a while when we were doing the earliest one I found in the 1930s, I think,
Jill Bong: and I think it dates even further back in UK and Europe. The problem was that we were not able to find a saddle that was affordable enough for us to buy.
Jill Bong: and that did not need to be laundered because we had a flock of 80 chickens and I just did not want to wash and deal with the hassle of the traditional saddle.
Jill Bong: We decided to come up with our own because we couldn't afford to buy it and I didn't want to sew it.
Filip Valica: So after a year of testing and playing with different materials and different designs, we decided we had something that worked and we decided to launch it. And I noticed on your website that you started back in 2011, so you've been going through this problem.
Jill Bong: process for a long time and that you've designed and developed it yourself and you're still even responsible for your own manufacturing, is that right? Yes. We are very, very small. We are definitely what you call mom and pop in terms of everything.
Jill Bong: We still have a distributor or a supplier who supplies us with the material that we get wholesale,
Filip Valica: but we pretty much make everything by hand. We take orders. We process everything ourselves, basically, down to the shippings. When you first got started with this and you noticed that some of the other saddles weren't solving the need out there in the market. Did you do anything else to validate that
Filip Valica: market to say, hey, you know what, there's going to be enough people to buy this that
Jill Bong: it's going to create a revenue stream for us? Or were you just chasing a solution for yourself pretty much? We were chasing a solution for ourselves without a doubt because we needed it. We had 80 chickens and we needed something to, you know, settle our flock with. And so
Jill Bong: trials and, you know, after we did our prototypes and found that it worked, we decided, hey, we already have this thing, let's try selling it.
Jill Bong: I have a background in online sales and stuff like that because I've been selling on eBay for many, many years before that. So we were like, well, okay, you know, why don't we just throw it up on eBay and see if it sells?
Jill Bong: And we saw some,
Filip Valica: we didn't sell a lot, but pretty much gave us the idea that there is a market for a
Filip Valica: little bit more. We're definitely going to dive into some of the online selling part, but I want to talk a little bit about some of the prototyping that you did. I think people get hung up with prototyping because they think that they need some fancy 3D printers or they need to contact some companies
Filip Valica: that will do things for them. And I know in your case it's a little bit different, you know, food products, textile products tend to be a little bit easier to prototype at home. Yes.
Jill Bong: How did you go through that process in terms of testing materials and deciding on shapes for things and the variables that you had in your design? Sure. The standard chicken saddles, they usually don't from fabric and then they usually
Jill Bong: come with fastenings or hooks or elastics and things like that. Those were things that we didn't want to deal with. We didn't want to have multiple components to it.
Jill Bong: So we decided to contact some wholesalers and we said, could you send us some sample material for some like that? Well, we didn't say experiments. Right, for testing.
Jill Bong: Yeah, we were going to experiment with some material we had in mind. What they did was they sent us those swatches of scrap metal and some were actually quite generous in size and we kind of looked off from this.
Jill Bong: Now, I'm not saying this is going to work for every product or prototype that someone's going to have an idea for a customer one. Ours is a really, really simple device with no moving parts or components or anything like that.
Jill Bong: But that's an idea, you know, maybe contact our distributors to see if they can send you samples or stuff and try to gee up something with what you have.
Jill Bong: We were really, really adamant about keeping our startup or our prototype costs low because we didn't really have any money. to come.
Filip Valica: Kind of where we came from is that we general choice we had to work with a shoestring budget or almost no budget in this case.
Jill Bong: Right. I think a lot of people are in the same boat. Did you need any additional skills to work with those materials or did you kind of learn on the go, Googling and YouTubeing, whatever you needed to know.
Jill Bong: No, we just use a pair of the cloths and we knew what the saddle looks like in general, you know, the basic design of what the saddle looks like. We need a little hole on each side of
Jill Bong: of it to put the wings through, and it has to be big enough to cover the chicken. So we kind of worked at it, and because we had to make quite a few of them, we wanted it to be a very streamlined, simple design and pattern
Jill Bong: where we could just, you know, make simple cuts to it, and that allowed it to work on a decent range of chicken sizes. So they had to be snug enough to stay on the chicken, but it had to still be put on the chicken.
Jill Bong: So we kind of messed around with sizes for a while, and a lot of them, you know,
Filip Valica: fell off and things like that because they're live animals. You're not going to say it
Filip Valica: was pretty much the year of testing that went into that. I really like what you said where it took you a year to go through this. It's nice that you had 80 chickens to go through and test all of this on because it gave
Filip Valica: you, I guess, a broad range of body shapes and sizes to develop this product. I think a lot of people might not have that test market in their backyard to set a product Right.
Filip Valica: I think one of the things that people can take away from all this is that all design is iterative. You're going to go through these one step forward or one step back situations.
Jill Bong: Was there a point where you felt like, man, this is so frustrating. We're not going to get this? Or was it a pretty easy one step after another going through the design process? No, it was one of those. Well, it's not working. Let's try something else. And, you know, it wasn't all me.
Jill Bong: My husband did play a bit, kind of figure out maybe tweak a little,
Jill Bong: tweak a little bit there. And since we were working with just material in a simple design, that wasn't too big of a deal. Once again, you know, if you have a more complicated machine or design, then the tweaking may get a little bit harder. But no, we weren't frustrated at all.
Jill Bong: It was just, this doesn't work. Let's try something else.
Filip Valica: And that's kind of what inventing is because you can be successful the first time. It's a very, very rare thing for you to come up with the ideal product, in
Filip Valica: my view. I totally agree with you. And I think it takes that persistence to kind of keep pushing forward. And it's nice that you had, like you said, such a relatively simple product that allowed you to iterate so quickly. Right.
Jill Bong: And the ability to make prototypes on your own, I think was great because you were able to take that idea, run back to the garage to the workshop, make the next prototype, and then put it back on another chicken and get that immediate feedback. Right.
Jill Bong: And, you know, we didn't test it on all 80 chickens. We tested maybe three or four prototypes at once. And we started with just one size.
Jill Bong: It was only until, you know, we felt that that design was going to work that we started offering the other two sizes which fit the smaller sized chickens and went from there.
Filip Valica: But in the beginning, it was just let's make a design that fit most of our chicken. And that was the standard.
Jill Bong: That's a really good point. You had four different designs that you're doing at the same time.
Filip Valica: So people talk a lot about AB testing and marketing and you did ABCD testing and prototyping, right?
Filip Valica: Right. I mean, once again, you know, I was just a simple design. But that's smart because like you said, it cut down some of your time.
Jill Bong: I'm actually surprised that it took that long to get it to market. Was it just because you made so many changes or what were some of the stumbling blocks that you had along the way? We wanted to make sure that it was really working,
Jill Bong: but we really wanted to make sure it was working. So we wanted to see how
Jill Bong: in the winter time as well as the summertime.
Jill Bong: We weren't sure how it's going to hold up in our winters because we wanted to make sure how it's going Back then, we were living in the Colorado foothill
Jill Bong: would go down to minus 50 degrees. And so that was a big factor in our delay to market. And the thing was that the product itself looked nothing like any others on the market.
Jill Bong: So we were a little bit concerned about the simplicity and what it looked like, even though it was cheap.
Jill Bong: So we would think we could still make a decent profit if we sold it at a dollar piece. Now, when we did finally launch it and sell it, we did get those problems crop up.
Jill Bong: This is starting to get mad and, you know, asking if this is just paper and things like that. So those problems that we foresaw and we were concerned about came up in the end. That was why in the beginning we were a little bit hesitant to sell it.
Jill Bong: Later on, we decided to one, put that in the FAQ. Is this paper? No, it is not paper.
Filip Valica: It looks like, feels like paper, but it's not. But we also gave that 100% money back guarantee, no time limit. If you're not happy, we'll give you your money back. That kind of helped a lot down the road.
Filip Valica: I agree with what you're saying where customers might have some inhibitions to buying your product
Jill Bong: and there's some good techniques to alleviate those. While you finished up your design, before you started selling, at what point did you decide that this was something that you're going to patent? I know you said that you did some patent searches before you started.
Jill Bong: We wanted to protect our idea because it's so simple. And we actually did go through the patent process, but we ultimately abandoned it because it was getting really expensive. I
Jill Bong: think at this point we have established ourselves enough that we have built a brand that's big enough to overcome any potential imitators.
Filip Valica: And that's pretty much the crux of it. Even with a patent, we cannot afford to defend it, honestly, if someone were to infringe on it. So it's kind of a moot point in that sense.
Filip Valica: one question that I get is I have this great idea and I just need a rich investor to give me $10,000 so I can go and seek patent protection.
Jill Bong: But I think people are forgetting, like you said, the long game where you're having to even protect that idea in court and court fees for, you know, patent litigation are way more expensive than the initial patent application.
Jill Bong: You know, honestly, we would never be able to afford litigating.
Filip Valica: I think our market is small enough that the legal cost, it
Filip Valica: could make that.
Jill Bong: right so we decided to just let it go yeah you were hoping that being first to market with this new idea was enough to saturate the market with this product right and to be honest we're not the
Jill Bong: first ones there are other companies and lots of other little mom and pop stores show you know companies or businesses that make chicken sales ours is just different it's the only one that's
Jill Bong: different from all the rest and that's more affordable than all the rest so that's how
Filip Valica: differentiating fact in terms of product itself there are if you google it
Jill Bong: you can find many different iterations of it. So we are in a niche of a niche, baby.
Jill Bong: So you decided maybe we're not going to chase patent protection, but we're going to keep manufacturing in-house. Why did you decide to do that? Honestly, we just don't know where to go from what we are now to
Jill Bong: wholesale or a large-scale manufacturer and then larger-scale distribution and things like that. We're not quite set up for a bit, and we're not quite sure how to do that And to be honest, we're kind of happy where we are.
Jill Bong: So for us, our business is just a means to an end, which is our lifestyle, which allows us to stay on our homestead and pursue a self-sufficient in our lifestyle.
Filip Valica: We're not looking to get rich, although, you know, we went turned down riches if something blows up.
Jill Bong: At this point, we're pretty happy just making enough to get by without a life, basically. Perhaps if you got a really large order from a farm, that would maybe be the impetus to start looking into contract manufacturing or something like that. It's possible.
Jill Bong: We can actually produce them pretty quickly by hand, my husband and I. Yeah, but an efficient little sweatshop there on your homestead. Yeah,
Jill Bong: we took in a sense.
Jill Bong: If it's a large order, and sometimes we get 100, our biggest order was 300. They just have to wait a little bit. I'm sorry. It just has to be. So, yeah, that's kind of where we're at.
Filip Valica: Our target audience are backyard chicken owners, so we don't really get a lot of the large.
Filip Valica: Now, every time and then we do get an organic farm or a pasture poultry farm that we'll order the bigger lots, but that's not our main target market there.
Filip Valica: So as you started to identify some of these target markets, you said your main customer is the backyard chicken farmer or the person that wants to kind of live off their own land,
Jill Bong: maybe, or supplement the herb garden that they might have in the backyard or small garden that they've got with chickens. Yes. How did you identify that that was your primary market? Because they were asked, and we understood,
Jill Bong: which are not necessary, the problems that an organic farm or a pastry farm or the industrial farms, which would have no use for our fables, because they're on a whole different level of chicken.
Jill Bong: So we kind of understood the problems. Some bad get chicken or homesteaders have, which was one, we want efficiency, and we don't always have a lot of money to spare.
Jill Bong: And we kind of aimed at them because that's what we are and that's what we understood. Now, there are some people who make the little frilly chicken saddles with glitter and
Filip Valica: Google it and Etsy, you can probably say some of those.
Filip Valica: Those are not our target audience because they have a little bit more money and they have a little bit more time to spend under one or two pet chickens and they want to dress them up and things like that.
Jill Bong: Once again, that's a different market. That's interesting. Have you ever thought about adding a market to that or having more than one target audience that you market to? or like, did you have any internal struggles with maybe this isn't a large enough market for us?
Jill Bong: We thought about offering more designs by printing custom designs onto the material itself so that we could, you know, have it in more variation in color and things like that.
Jill Bong: And we've kind of put that on whole because we want to keep things simple for ourselves. And while we can probably expand our market a little bit more by doing that,
Jill Bong: we didn't think that effort and the time involved in doing custom designs would be worth it for us.
Filip Valica: Being that we do have small children and I homeschool, you know, effort and time is of an essence to us. But maybe down the road, maybe as we get older, we might go back to that idea, but not at this point. Yeah, I don't see how you do that.
Filip Valica: I've got an 18-month-old at home that get like zero work done.
Jill Bong: When she's at home, you know, when she's sick and she doesn't go to school, it's a It's definitely a full-time job. When you went through this process, how long did it take you to start selling your first saddles and realize that maybe you were on to something?
Jill Bong: When we first decided to launch it, I actually talked about it on a gardening forum that I was active on, and I was laughed.
Jill Bong: But one of the participants there said, I'm going to try it because I had a business that I came up with and everyone laughed at me when I came up with that idea. But now my business is actually doing pretty well, so guess what? I'm going to try it.
Jill Bong: So that was our first sale. I don't know if she actually had chickens, but it just made my day. From there, we kind of just started selling on eBay because that's what I knew. I knew how to sell on eBay.
Jill Bong: So we put it up there, and it so fairly quickly, maybe after a week or two, sales were not, you know, they didn't come fast and furious at all. But there was definitely some demand for it, and from there we decided, okay, It's going to work.
Jill Bong: There are customers out there. So it wasn't until I actually pitched and wrote an article to Baguette Poetry magazine
Filip Valica: and a few other homesteading slash Backyard Chicken Keeping magazines that we actually started seeing a big growth in sale. So definitely it was a very, very targeted audience, even though it was a very small audience.
Filip Valica: We managed to get some exposure in it.
Jill Bong: Yeah, I noticed that you've been mentioned in a lot of publications. some of them that I haven't heard of myself, because I'm not a homesteader, but what would you say to somebody that's kind of in your shoes that is working in a niche market?
Jill Bong: Where should they prioritize their time with their outreach and their marketing to help drive that traffic? I would say especially if you have something
Jill Bong: that makes an interesting story, definitely look for publications to that market. Because one,
Jill Bong: they're always looking for stories,
Jill Bong: and two, you get in front of that audience immediately. You need to have a fairly interesting story to tell or something like that.
Filip Valica: And that gives you the opportunity to put yourself in front of that. So, you know, a lot of people try to put themselves in front of the New York Times. They want to go for the big coverage. I found that, yes, we've got mentions and features in some of the bigger mass publications,
Jill Bong: but sales from those articles or exposure has been minimal compared to the targeted ones.
Filip Valica: That's a very good point. You're basically reaching your target audience, backyard poultry magazine. That's almost 100% your audience. Yes. Versus some of these other larger publications where you're reaching maybe a 5% of your audience, if that. Less, I think.
Filip Valica: So it's much bigger, but chances are a lot of them probably don't have chickens. Right. No, that's very interesting. So if I was the editor of some of these smaller publications, what would you tell me?
Jill Bong: Well, how did you pitch to me to make me want you on your show? So I'm going to answer that from my side because you pitched me. And the reason that you're on the show today is because I thought your product was crazy, niche and interesting that I wanted you to come on and kind of talk about it.
Jill Bong: I know some of these publication editors are used to getting those types of pitches. I think, for one, you have to understand that publication is audience.
Filip Valica: And then you've been your stories so that are talking and appealing to their audience. You're not appealing to the publication itself who are trying to appeal to their audience
Jill Bong: so they can see you as a value add to their public. So it could be a, how do you do this kind of article or an advice kind of column or something like that? So it's not really directly related to your product.
Jill Bong: You might be just providing advice on a topic that's interesting to their audience and then you slide in your product towards the end or something. Right. In our case, I kind of pitch my story as more of a human interest.
Filip Valica: story for, especially like a backyard poultry magazine, there's this more of a little conversational narrative, I did this and I did that with my, so that's pretty much how I pitched my story for
Filip Valica: them. Human interest stories work pretty well for location. Once again, you have to maybe read one or two copies of that publication, get an idea of the voice, the style that they run and then go from there.
Jill Bong: Did you name drop at all? Did you ever say, hey, look, I was just on backyard poultry talking about this other topic. I'd like to talk to you about something related.
Jill Bong: That's a good thing or a bad thing, but I've never done that. Yeah, I've always wondered that. I get pitched that way all the time. You know, I was just on this other podcast, so I think I'd be a great fit for your show. And sometimes it work, and sometimes I'm like, nah. I
Filip Valica: mentioned when I pitched that we've been featured in other publications of media,
Jill Bong: but it's not necessarily related the outlet that I'm pitching. So if I'm pitching to say chickens magazine, I don't say I've been featured in Beckett, because I'm not quite sure how it will go honestly.
Jill Bong: I figured if they were interested enough, they might check it out and see where we've been featured or mentioned, and that would out-opening.
Jill Bong: So what other techniques have you used in your marketing that you think was pretty effective for you guys? That was pretty much the most effective thing.
Filip Valica: We've told on eBay and Etsy, and that kind of gives us those audiences that are already on those platforms.
Jill Bong: But other than that, pitching to media has been our most successful. We've tried Facebook ads, but that quite worked out so well.
Filip Valica: I know some people are very successful with it. We have not seen that success. It has been a time and money drain for us, so we cannot shut that down. Yeah, especially for a lower cost product where your margins might be really tight.
Jill Bong: It sounds like you might not have a lot of room for paid advertising at least. Yeah.
Jill Bong: And we did try paid advertising in those magazines. They did not have the same effect as editorial coverage. Ah, that's interesting. So a lot of those magazines might want, let's say, $1,000 for four issues for a
Jill Bong: quarter page or something like that and because you have to do it for more than one issue yeah to see anything and that's actually pretty cheap because the one we ran was 700 and it was only
Jill Bong: I think an eighth of a page for one issue oh wow it was yeah it was expensive and we've tried advertising with influential bloggers it's a definitely your mileage for very kind of thing
Jill Bong: when we were starting out I did approach a fairly big chicken blogger and did a give away with her and she wrote an article about it. And that was back in 2012.
Jill Bong: And that article turned out to actually be one of her most popular posts still. And I think that's been giving us some traffic to our website. And then later on we tried with other bloggers, some bigger bloggers
Jill Bong: who didn't put in as much coverage for us because they have a lot of sponsors. And response for that has been lower. So once again, I would definitely say target smaller outlets,
Filip Valica: whether it's a blog or a publication, because they usually have, you know, a little bit more time and would put in a little bit more effort towards their sponsors. I'm not saying that's, you know, the case for large media outlets or anything like that,
Jill Bong: but when you're trying to deal with someone so high up there and so successful, then you're kind of competing with a lot of other people who want to be in their sphere of influence as well. So I would say go for the smaller fish. That's very good advice.
Jill Bong: While you're reaching out to some of these influencers in the blogging space, Did you reach out to any social media people, particularly Instagram, you'd think that since your product is so visual, you could get a following through that space. I have thought about it.
Jill Bong: I'm not a big social media user, and to be honest, I've never used Instagram because I don't have a smartphone, and I'm a little bit of a tech dinosaur living in the boonies for so long.
Jill Bong: Sure. So I've never tried Instagram. I am fairly active on Facebook groups, but I found that Facebook is really more for socializing.
Jill Bong: and people don't really cotton too well towards, you know, buy my product, buy my product. And I don't do that because I don't like it when people spam me. It is, however, a good place to maybe get some feedback on stuff to brainstorm ideas and things like that.
Filip Valica: I think Facebook groups are really good for that. But in terms of advertising, not so much. I actually got some sales through Pinterest. And once again, I've not been particularly active on it other than doing some personal pins every now and then.
Filip Valica: But I have gotten sales from it, so that's definitely something to consider if your product is visually attractive.
Jill Bong: And ours is not the most attractive items, so it can work.
Jill Bong: Some good advice. So you mentioned that you had some experience with eBay before. So it's interesting that you just put up your product for sale on eBay. I wouldn't immediately think that people that are looking for your product are on eBay.
Jill Bong: But I suppose eBay is just like Amazon where people are going looking for anything. Right. Did you experiment with Amazon at all? I
Jill Bong: buy a little bit, but because Amazon fee structure is a little bit higher. Right. We kind of mixed it. We did not sell enough to justify the listing cost and then all the monthly fee.
Filip Valica: We're going to try the handmade by Amazon, you know, the one that they're trying to compete with Etsy where they sell the handmade goods. I did apply when it first opened, but they said that my product wasn't going to fit their categories at that time. and I'm going to try what…
Filip Valica: They didn't have a chicken saddle category on Amazon? Yeah,
Filip Valica: so I'm going to try to see if they'll pick me again sometime soon. I know they've expanded and it's gotten big and quite properly something we're looking into. Great. So I've got one product in Amazon myself, and I'm preparing a second one now.
Filip Valica: And I think the keys there are, especially with a product that's as inexpensive as yours,
Jill Bong: is to create a bundle of some kind that will raise the price. I don't think products that sell for under $10 make very much because, as you said, the margins the Amazon receives are just so high.
Jill Bong: So I think if you were able to sell maybe 40 saddles out of time in a package or something like that,
Filip Valica: that would maybe be something that would be worth it. Fortunately for you, the shipping cost and the size and the weight and everything is pretty low. Right.
Jill Bong: So, for example, we don't sell on eBay anymore, but we do sell an Etsy. And we only sell, like, bundles for five or ten on Etsy because it's just not cost-effective
Jill Bong: pieces on anywhere else except on our website. I know where we go with a
Filip Valica: party platform. Oh, that's a good idea. So as you're kind of, we're starting to wrap up here.
Jill Bong: Actually, let's talk about shipping really quick, because you do sell through your website. Do you sell fulfill products or self? Yes.
Filip Valica: We process everything.
Jill Bong: I personally answer all customer emails, and I personally make, address, ship everything. So we are a two-man show. We get PayPal to process payments and all that stuff. But we are most definitely a two-man show. Congratulations to make that.
Jill Bong: work especially since you're homeschooling two kids and I'm sure it's a challenge sometimes we have other business too we believe in multiple income streams yeah so let's talk about that briefly what other businesses do you have funny enough the
Jill Bong: chicken armor led to self-publishing business was pitching stories and articles to all these publications and so I was starting to accumulate a nice pile of rejected stories and articles so my husband was like well why don't she write a book
Jill Bong: So I thought, okay, let me compile it and turn it into a book. And I didn't know anything about self-publishing or anything like that. I just had this vague idea that Amazon does that. Without knowing anything, I just wrote the book,
Jill Bong: and then I started researching and self-publishing and learned about Amazon and what they did. And from there, I found a forum of some very, very successful self-published or indie writers,
Jill Bong: you know, some six, seven-figure authors, and most of them are fiction authors. Wow, you can make money from this? So I said, you know what, I'm going to write more books.
Jill Bong: So I kind of wrote stuff I knew about homesteading, different little homesteading topics, about selling on eBay because I knew that. And I just started writing and publishing more and more books. So that's another income stream.
Jill Bong: And then I very recently branched off into print-on-demand T-shirts with a homesteading theme. And that's also through Amazon, the merch by Amazon.
Filip Valica: Once again, you know, trying to keep everything as streamlined within the brand.
Jill Bong: while keeping my time involvement as low as possible. You know, once I've written the stuff or once I've designed my designs, it's pretty much on autopilot. So that's what we're moving towards. It's a more passive income stream, rather than having to put
Jill Bong: something like a product that we have to process and ship. Right. And this way it doesn't put all your eggs in one basket, huh? Right, exactly.
Jill Bong: What percentage of your income comes from your product versus your books and your merch? Definitely.
Filip Valica: It varies from month to month. When it's molting mating season, the chicken saddles could be maybe 60, 70% of our income. And that also happens to be the time that sales for books are low.
Jill Bong: That's the summertime when no one's buying anything and just outside. So it could flip itself over. In the winter months, our book sales go up, but the chicken saddle sales go down. It can really flip from.
Jill Bong: And the T-shirts are very new, so we've just only made a few sales on that. Let me ask you one last question here. As we're wrapping up the show, and you had to think about some of the process that you went through.
Filip Valica: Would you have done anything differently, or would you have changed your approach on launching this product? Probably not launching it. We probably should have helped back on the rush to patent it just because of the cost involved.
Filip Valica: But other than that, I don't think that we would have really changed very much in terms of the whole process.
Jill Bong: It was something we came up with that we never planned or thought we would. It was more an item of necessity for us. So I see it as anything we make from it is a bonus and awesome.
Jill Bong: And the businesses that have spawned has just been awesome for us. That's great. Congratulations. Thank you. So if you had to give a tip to somebody that was struggling to bring their product to market
Jill Bong: or they were having some issues and didn't know if they should continue pushing forward, what would you tell them to stay the course or what would you tell them to kind of help them along the way?
Jill Bong: I would say definitely start all in terms of time and money investment, well, more so money
Filip Valica: investment because sometimes your product can just suck everything out of you, start more money wise and try to find your cut before you invest too much.
Filip Valica: In our case, we were our own customers, so it's a little bit different, I have to admit,
Jill Bong: because we needed this product. But if I were to make a product with a customer in mind, I would definitely want to find someone who would buy it. Not just say they would buy it, but they would actually buy it.
Jill Bong: Other than that, don't worry about the people who laugh at you. Those people, they're not your target audience. They're not your customer. They'll probably never buy from you unless the situation. How do you know when to quit versus keep pushing forward?
Jill Bong: How do you know if the feedback that you're getting is important for you to consider or to dismiss because they're not part of your target audience. As you keep trying until you find someone, if you don't find someone to buy your product,
Filip Valica: then I think it's time to stop. Now, when you want to decide, you know, that time frame between finding the customer and when to stop, that would probably depend on the individual, you know, what's your… What's your tolerance?
Jill Bong: You know, how long do you have? How long do you want to wait before your product launches or, you know, you go onto something else? For me, personally, I would say no more than a year.
Filip Valica: If you couldn't find a customer, one customer in a year, then your product is probably not viable, but that's just me.
Jill Bong: No, that's excellent advice.
Filip Valica: Honestly, I don't have any patience because if something's not working, I want to move on to something.
Filip Valica: Well, and that probably speaks to your success. Again, congratulations, and thank you for sharing that advice with us. Can you tell everyone where they can go find you and find your books? So it's chicken armor.com.
Filip Valica: If you want to buy my chicken saddles and buy Jill B, B-Y-J-I-L-B-D dot com, if you want to buy my books on learning self-reliant. Jill, thanks again for coming on the show.
Filip Valica: It was really awesome to get your advice, and I appreciate you being so transparent about the whole process that you guys went through. Thank you, Philip. I really appreciate your time.
Filip Valica: So here are three of my takeaways that we can all use and apply in our businesses. Number one, don't fear small niches.
Filip Valica: The whole benefit of DIY product development or taking products to market ourselves is that we can react to changes in trends in consumer needs faster than larger companies.
Filip Valica: Many companies also won't chase solutions that are too small or don't have a high enough ROI.
Filip Valica: Jill and her husband started by solving their own unmet need and despite a relatively small market with existing competition, they're able to supplement their income.
Filip Valica: Perhaps they won't ride chicken armor into the proverbial sunset, but maybe it will open doors to creating other products and they will be able to leverage their existing customer base and brand loyalty to help them succeed with launching this new product.
Filip Valica: My second takeaway is that design is iterative, and we've mentioned it on the show a lot, but I definitely want to drive it home. Very few people get it right on the first try, including engineering teams.
Filip Valica: There are a lot of variables involved and sometimes it takes experimenting with the product to get a good feel of the design constraints. Isolate your variables and solve each feature, each benefit, one at a time.
Filip Valica: Jill and her husband developed one size of armor before expanding the line. This may be obvious, but I see so many people trying to tackle all aspects of their product design at the same time. Don't chase a moving goalpost.
Filip Valica: Focus on the most valuable, the most differentiating feature first and develop it on your own. work out some of the other details. And the third takeaway is that we should proactively
Filip Valica: handle customer objections and their perceptions. So alleviate fears that the product will not work for the customer by removing the finality of a purchase. Allow them to return a product for 30 days
Filip Valica: or more if possible. The other side of this is educating customers. A lot of times when we as consumers are disappointed, it's because our results didn't match what we expected. So help form realistic expectations by painting a clear picture of how your product looks,
Filip Valica: works, what it's made from, or what it feels like, how durable it is. What do customers expect from other products in the space? Don't forget things that you cannot see online like the weight or smell of something,
Filip Valica: if that's important in your industry. Have clear shipping and return policies on your site and make sure people know how long it will take the ship and order, especially in this age of
Filip Valica: Amazon Prime. If you've got any questions or comments, I've put all the links that we've covered under the show notes posted on the product startup.com slash episode 32.
Filip Valica: Join me next time as I speak with Khierstyn Ross. She's a product launch specialist that's helped creators raise more than $1.1 million through Indiegogo and Kickstarter. She's also the founder
Filip Valica: and host of Crowdfunding Uncut, a podcast that deconstructs the successes that go into funding campaigns. So stay tuned next week to hear that episode. So how did you find the Product Startup Podcast? I'd really love to know.
Filip Valica: Listener Justin reminded me recently that many people may not use the same words that I use product development or product design to find the show. Shoot me an email by going to theproduct startup.com and hit contact me.
Filip Valica: Thanks again for joining me today and I'll see you next week. Thank you for listening to this episode of the Product Startup podcast with your host, Philip Valisa. For more great content and to stay up today, visit theproduct startup.com.
Filip Valica: Your guide to getting there.
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
Filip Valica: to provide global caliber end-to-end physical consumer product development to startups, inventors, and small product businesses.
Filip Valica: If you're looking for product development help on your invention, head over to macawdesign.com. That's m-a-k-o-design.com for a free consultation from one of Maca-Design's floor design studios from coast to coast. Thanks for listening and see you next time.
Expert Help With Niche Product Strategy
Make a Small Market Work Harder for Your Product
A niche can be attractive when the customer pain, access, pricing, competition, and repeatable channels support the business. Get help determining whether your narrow market is focused enough to win and large enough to matter.
Work directly with Kevin Mako, the leading expert in hardware startup consulting, to validate your niche, sharpen the position, and plan a focused route to market. Product Startup provides high-level consulting, coaching, practical industry perspective, and connections across the product development and commercialization journey.
Discuss Niche Product Strategy
Build around a specific customer problem without losing sight of the economics.