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Guest: Tim Christian, founder of OORR.
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.
From Sustainable Apparel Concept to Kickstarter
Tim Christian explains how OORR moved from prototype to manufacturing while testing demand for athletic apparel made with recycled materials. He shares lessons on market validation, supplier decisions, Kickstarter preparation, and presenting an environmental benefit as part of a viable product business.
Episode transcript
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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. 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 50. Tim Christian shares how he started O-O-O-R, a cycling apparel brand that uses recycled fabric.
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.
Filip Valica: In the last episode, we talked to Juliana Garizar with a Houston Angel Network about the process of angel investment. So make sure to check out episode 49 if you want a behind-the-scenes view.
Filip Valica: of that process. Before we get started, I wanted to highlight one reviewer on iTunes. Strayo wrote, this is a fantastic podcast with a wide range of interviews dealing with product development and startups. Every interview is a gold line of information.
Filip Valica: Thank you and please keep up the good work. Hey, thank you, Strayo and everyone else for taking your time from your day to leave a review and share the podcast with your friends. If you've just joined the podcast
Filip Valica: and you're getting started, make sure to check out episode 10. I have a an idea, now what? It basically talks about the process of validating your product ideas where we confirm our audience and test to make sure that it will sell. We also get into
Filip Valica: what the value of an idea is, why aren't ideas worth much, and the importance of execution and what it does to help us reduce risk and add value. And we also talk about creating prototypes on any budget, using what we have and learning how to make simple, conceptual,
Filip Valica: and functional prototypes ourselves. Thanks to everybody that's joined the Product Startup Workshop, our private Facebook group, where we meet and collaborate on ideas, lots of people working on some interesting things.
Filip Valica: If you haven't checked it out yet already, search for the product startup workshop on Facebook or go to the product startup.com slash group and you'll be redirected.
Tim Christian: So now on today's show. Hi, Tim. Thanks for joining us today. Hey, Philip.
Filip Valica: Thanks very much for having me, mate. Very grateful for having me on the show. Yeah, I'm really excited to talk about this because you've got an interesting product.
Tim Christian: your company produces odourless gym tops and pro cycling gear made with coffee to talk about that
Tim Christian: it's um yeah it's an interesting way to um get a uh a point of difference in a very saturated market i guess yeah that's about as much as i can as i can give you based on that but um the coffee was
Filip Valica: um an idea that came to me when i was going through an in-flight catalog years and years ago so I eventually dug into my subconscious and produced the product. You mentioned that you kind of dug into some of the issues that you had before.
Filip Valica: What made you think that there was a gap in the market? Like you said, the cycling market seems to be really competitive. I was a casual mountain biker before I had a family.
Tim Christian: And there's just so much gear out there for cyclists. I mean, and so many companies coming up with their own stuff, it just seems so noisy. I'd be afraid of even entering the market. Why did you say, hey, you know what, I've got this different opinion on it? Oh, you'd be wise to be afraid.
Tim Christian: Yeah, it is very saturated. There's a lot of noise. It's hard to be recognized.
Tim Christian: I didn't think there'd be any point trying to compete on a level playing field or going against some of the major or even the minor players. So I think the best way to enter a market like that is to create your own market and your own niche.
Tim Christian: Where I saw a gap or that potential was in environmentally friendly or products that are kinder to the planet and what's currently available.
Tim Christian: So my main sort of focus is trying to make things better for the planet
Filip Valica: in some way or another. And to my knowledge, at the time, there was nothing on the market available like that. Nothing crowded with recycled materials or more eco-friendly materials.
Filip Valica: There are a couple of bamboos around, but that was quite a mid. That's interesting that you would take that take. On the flip side, though, targeting to an audience that is usually more earth-conscious, you know, cyclists tend to be the type of people, at least in mountain biking,
Filip Valica: you have trail days where you come in and picks up the trail and you give back to the environment that gives you that joy. I know there, at least for road cyclists, there are a lot of people that are more conscious about,
Tim Christian: That's one of the reasons that they commute back and forth to work on bicycles because of that connection to the earth.
Tim Christian: So, you know, that's an interesting tip that, you know, people wouldn't normally think that, hey, you know, the gear that I need to use also has to subscribe to those values.
Tim Christian: Everything you do has some sort of impact.
Filip Valica: And, you know, a lot of the time when you get on your bike, you're trying to escape the city or, you know, get out into the fresh air and out into the environment that you love.
Tim Christian: and it's kind of just taking that extra step, I guess. If you want to contribute to that environment or not damage it as much by taking that pursuit, then that's where I come in, I guess. How did you go into creating your first product?
Tim Christian: What was the first product that you made, and how did you create that prototype? The first product that I made, yeah, I made lots of mistakes with. In the end, it still turned out to be a pretty good product, but it was a hard road, and I learned a lot along the way.
Tim Christian: it was just a cycling jersey for men and I made lots and lots of prototypes before basically
Filip Valica: pulling a trigger on a small production run and I went through to make the first prototype I went
Tim Christian: through over a dozen sample runs with different with with over a dozen manufacturers so I made lots of prototypes the trick was finding the right manufacturer and pulling all the pieces together
Tim Christian: so pattern making and fabric and all that sort of stuff Did you have a background in pattern making before you even started this? No, so I contracted a pattern maker to do that for me. I didn't have experience in any of it.
Tim Christian: So basically pulling in experts from their given field and briefing them on what my requirements were and then taking the process, walking through the process with them along the way.
Tim Christian: So it's kind of an exercise in project management rather than me developing my skills. But inevitably you learn a lot as you go along about each different area. So, as I said, you know, I wanted to create an eco-friendly alternative to the popular products.
Filip Valica: And to do that, I needed decent eco-friendly fabric. So I had to start with the fabric and at the same time try and find a manufacturer that could do a decent job at constructing the garment.
Filip Valica: Yeah, so, yeah, the first sort of proper journey was all about finding the right people
Tim Christian: and creating a fabric. And creating the fabric was a lot more challenging than I had anticipated, actually. So when you first started, you created the pattern first or the fabric first? It was kind of a parallel thing. I did them in parallel.
Tim Christian: And when you started looking at manufacturers, now if people can't tell, you're over in Australia. So I imagine you're looking at manufacturers that were over in the Asia part of the world. Is that right? I looked everywhere, man.
Tim Christian: I looked, I started in Australia because the initial vision I had for the business was to do everything in Australia. Australia used to be really very self-sufficient. I guess a lot of countries were the same.
Tim Christian: And the global trend is sort of everything is going into Asia. There were a few sort of small manufacturers left in Australia, but none of them could do what I needed them to do. So I ended up searching further. I went to New Zealand, Fiji.
Tim Christian: I went to America and China and India.
Filip Valica: Oh, I went to Vietnam. So I looked at all these different manufacturers.
Tim Christian: manufacturing hubs. And I settled in China for the garment construction and in New Zealand for the fabric construction. But the yarn to make the fabric was from the USA. So the yarn went
Tim Christian: from the USA to New Zealand. The fabric was made and then fabric was shipped to China and China constructed the garments. That's really complicated. What's the reason for staying in the US for the yarn?
Tim Christian: It had to be recycled yarn and there's a company in the US called Unified. who make recycled plastic yarn, or it's polyester. If you don't already know, polyester is basically just plastic. It's PET plastic.
Tim Christian: And PET can be broken down and recycled an infinite number of times if it's high quality without any degradation in quality each time.
Filip Valica: So basically I knew that I could create an identical fabric from recycled materials that I could create with virgin materials. And I didn't see any point in creating fabric with virgin materials when the other option was available.
Tim Christian: So going back to your question, basically the industry standard in recycled polyester is made by that company Unified, which is based in America.
Tim Christian: Yeah, I wanted to have the best, you know, the most well-recognized and certified recycled polyester. And it seems like after making this whole journey throughout the world, the trip that this yarn takes, your cost might not be any different.
Tim Christian: They might actually be more than just purchasing virgin materials. Is that right? Oh, the cost is definitely higher. Whether it travels or whether it doesn't travel, it's still higher because it's, unfortunately, it's made in lower quantities and there's less demand for it.
Filip Valica: So eventually that change, the amount of manufacturing processes that go into make virgin polyester far outweigh the amount of manufacturing processes that
Tim Christian: go into making recycle polyester. There's nine processes that go into making the virgin polyester starting from digging the oil out of the ground.
Filip Valica: and recycled polyester, you're starting from the plastic bottles that have already been turned into PET, so most of it's already been done. There's only three steps left. In a way, it's just a matter of time until the recycled material that you're using now
Tim Christian: ends up being cheaper because oil and gas is just going to continue to increase in price in the next 20 or 30 years. Yeah, exactly. And my hope is that with education, people realize you can get an identical product with recycled materials.
Tim Christian: But there'll be more demand for that as well. I noticed that your pricing compared to some US pricing is a bit higher than what we're used to here. Have you confirmed that people are willing to pay a little bit more to get that recycled material for something that's more
Tim Christian: eco-friendly and in line with their values? It's hard to price across the global market because of currency fluctuation. Sure.
Tim Christian: But the intention of the price is to pitch it just below the sort of
Filip Valica: the high-end products that are available in the US, you know, the wrappers and the Assos and Kestelli and that sort of stuff. So the intention is that it's cheaper than those products. And if
Filip Valica: you read any of the reviews done by the experts, they actually believe the product is at least
Tim Christian: as good as those brands. So my intent is to offer a viable alternative that's more OK-friendly to those premium products. So something that's just as good, but better for the earth.
Tim Christian: And cheaper. So let's pick up your story where you left off. You were working with, you said about 12 manufacturers or so to come up with that ideal prototype. How did you get that from that point to placing an order for your larger manufacturing run? Like, what did you do to validate that there's
Tim Christian: enough demand in the market and maybe even get some pre-orders to make sure that it worked? Well, that's the thing. That was one of the mistakes I made the first time around, actually. So the first time around, I just, it was more of a leap of faith. You know, I believed in the product.
Tim Christian: and I'd gone down the path and there was nothing stopping me. I was going to do it regardless. So I just got it out there. I started promoting my website. I had a few sales, not a lot, you know, enough to sort of keep me interested, but not really enough to turn a profit or to recover the cost.
Tim Christian: So I reset and I started again. Basically, we're back to the drawing board. I did it all over again. I changed the model. That's when I started producing the coffee garments that you're talking about. Now, so the first ones didn't have the coffee in them. And it was completely different.
Tim Christian: in every way. And the fabric is now no longer made in New Zealand. It's all made in Asia. So the other problem that I had with getting yarn from America, sending it to New Zealand and then sending the fabric to China
Filip Valica: was the carbon footprint of the fabric and the carbon footprint of the garments themselves. After flying it, you know, shipping things all over the world, it was almost defeating the purpose of trying to make something more eco-friendly.
Filip Valica: So, yeah, I decided to try and centralise everything to not only cut down on cost,
Tim Christian: but also cut down on the carbon emissions of getting everything into the factory.
Tim Christian: And so I started looking at that. I also thought presales might be a good idea and market proof might be a good idea as well. So the best model for that, in my opinion, was to go to Kickstarter to prove the product. Yeah, and that's interesting because a lot of times people will start with the Kickstarter,
Tim Christian: but they might not have a large enough audience. And sometimes the Kickstarter doesn't fund all the way because they don't get that push that they expected. What type of audience did you have coming into it? How big was your audience and how has your Kickstarter done?
Tim Christian: I see that you've been able to pre-sell a fair bit of product. Yeah, almost 300 pieces, I think. Yeah, there were 179 backers. Okay. But most of those backers pledged for more than one garment.
Tim Christian: So I'm still waiting on the final numbers to come in because it was only basically December when the Kickstarter wrapped up and people take their time getting the survey results back to you. But yeah, there'd be over 300, well over 300.
Tim Christian: three hundred garments to make from there. The audience, that's a warning for anyone who is considering going to Kickstarter. Kickstarter basically don't promote your product or your video or your campaign at all.
Tim Christian: All they are really is just a platform for you to host your own show. So if you don't have your own traffic, if you can't draw your own traffic to your Kickstarter page, Kickstarter certainly aren't going to be doing it for you. Right. I know you know that, but the listeners may not know that.
Tim Christian: So that was something that I was made aware of before I started. It sounds like something simple, but yeah, don't just go to Kickstarter with a great idea and think that it's going to go gangbusters because it won't and you make it happen and get your own traffic going there.
Tim Christian: Initially, I had a small audience of my previous customers from the initial product and they're all committed bands, basically, of the brand, which is a really nice thing to have.
Filip Valica: They helped promote the Kickstarter for me. And also I ran some Facebook marketing campaigns and had some influences pointing towards the campaign as well.
Filip Valica: So probably the most powerful thing that I did was I ran a competition. I ran a few competitions, but one of them was a Facebook competition to encourage people to sign up with their email address.
Filip Valica: So I built my email list prior to launching the Kickstarter campaign. And that was probably the best driver of traffic towards the campaign.
Tim Christian: campaign itself and also got people on the radar to sort of learn a bit about the product before the campaign has even launched. Yeah, so talk about that a little bit. I think people struggle with creating a list because it's just so hard to get traffic on anything now.
Tim Christian: There's so many competing products on the market and so much noise out there and it's really hard to stand apart. So it feels like you have to spam all your friends and family to get that initial hit. And even then sometimes people, you know, in a way that works sometimes because people that
Tim Christian: know you best are the ones that are going to believe in you. the most but it's also hard to kind of get that traction were there any any tips you can share to help create that list for pre-launch yes your friends and family are great at helping and
Tim Christian: spreading and lots of people lots of your friends will share for you and that sort of thing but it's i don't i was never that comfortable in trying to push something on on my friends and family so i did do it but it was very gentle approach basically just said hey you know this is what
Tim Christian: done you know check it out if you think it's cool and you know i really appreciate you passing it on And that's basically as deep as it went. For the list building, there's a really cool tool in Facebook advertising that you can capture lead.
Tim Christian: They have a lead generation form where you capture the lead or the email address from Facebook itself. So they don't have to click a link and go out of Facebook, a lead generation or a lead gathering page.
Tim Christian: It's literally a little pop-up that happens when they click on your advert and they can just put their email address in and hit send. And they're done. And they can keep scrolling down there, their newsfeed or wherever they found the advert.
Tim Christian: So that was how I did it.
Filip Valica: But getting people to open it in the first place or put their email address in, that's the tricky part. And you basically have to offer value to the person.
Tim Christian: Why are they going to put their email address in? What's in it for them?
Tim Christian: So if there's no value there, they're not going to do it, basically. There needs to be something in it for them. For a product business, the best way to do that is to offer friends. product run a competition you know you you know getting the draw to win so get notified about this cool
Filip Valica: new product we're launching and you're going the chance to win one of these products that are going to be produced and be you know one of the first people in the world to to get this product
Filip Valica: for free yeah that's how i did i just offered free stuff you know and that's a huge cost for some products maybe especially for yours you thought that was worth it then it was i guess cheaper to do
Filip Valica: that than paying for paid ads, which I guess you did anyway through the Facebook leads platform like you mentioned. Yeah, the paid ads were a cost.
Filip Valica: Offering the product wasn't a huge cost because it's a, you know, you're going to draw to win. So you only have to offer one product
Tim Christian: essentially. Not everybody signing up gets a free product. I mean, yeah, that could be in the control. I'd be scared to do that.
Tim Christian: So tell me how you were able to hone in on your audience. I guess because your audience is very specific, you're offering it for cyclists. With Facebook, you're able to do some really fine targeting with that.
Tim Christian: I know, for example, with a product startup audience, my audience is just crazy broad. And so I have a really hard time doing anything that with targeted ads because I've got inventors that listen and small business owners that listen.
Tim Christian: Some of them listen to podcasts, somewhat shark tank. And if you try to create this all-encompassing audience in Facebook, your cost per click is just going to be insane you're going to be paying way too much money and not the
Tim Christian: right people are going to be seeing your ad that's a hard one for me it's a lot easier than it is for you i'd imagine just just trying to get my head around your audience as well for me i
Tim Christian: can really drill down and get very specific um so it gets easier the trick is just still trying to get noticed in that in that market but um for you there's probably a few strategies that the tools that
Tim Christian: are available and Facebook are quite powerful, one of the things that would be that spring to mind that would be really powerful for you would be dependent on your email list already
Tim Christian: or your current followers. So you can do lookalike audiences. Have you yet? You know those. Yeah.
Filip Valica: So you do like a 1% lookalike audience. If it's the United States you're targeting, for example,
Filip Valica: a 1% lookalike audience would be between 1 and 3 million. And that's a pretty good size to market to the one million sizes sort of is is a good size so if you've already got the list
Filip Valica: and there's over a thousand people on the list then the lookalike targeting gets pretty good Facebook algorithm works really well and you get a you find you get a pretty good lead generation
Filip Valica: rate out of that lookalike audience and then as you build that your own leads then the lookalike audience can be redone and you go again yeah get more focused as you go. That's quite a good way to do it. If you already have the audience.
Tim Christian: If you don't have the audience, then you have to get pretty clever about it, I guess. I've done that a little bit.
Filip Valica: I've experimented with the look-alike audience and it could be, you know, I think some of the people that listen to the podcast aren't always necessarily the ones that sign up for the newsletter. So if you're listening to this, please sign up to the newsletter.
Filip Valica: Because you'll get a lot of valuable input and a lot of weekly tips. No, that's a very good point.
Tim Christian: And so, congrats on being able to narrow that down for your group and being able to have those really targeted ads. I know that Facebook leads platform is nice because they don't have that additional click they need to make, like you said. And even foregoing that additional landing page
Tim Christian: that people have to land on to fill out their email address, just that one step means huge conversions because I've done it the other way around where I was driving it to landing pages
Tim Christian: back before the lead ads came out. And you lost 30, 50% of the people just through that one click. Yep. They just lose interest and got some of us. Yep.
Tim Christian: I noticed that you've got a lot of athletes that have received review copies of your merchandise and they've put up some favorable reviews. I know a lot of the other people that have been on the show here have used influencers before to help them with their marketing.
Tim Christian: Can you talk a little bit about that? How was your strategy in getting that going? I didn't have a specific strategy. I had a few sort of things running. I was building my Twitter profile at the same time.
Tim Christian: And a few of the contacts were made on Twitter.
Filip Valica: So I noticed that an athlete would follow me on Twitter or follow the brand on Twitter. So I kept a close eye on that.
Tim Christian: And if an athlete that I knew or an appropriate athlete would follow the brand on Twitter, I'd send them a direct message, a personal message, and say, hey, wow, you know, like I'm really flattered and humbled that you like the brand and whatever
Tim Christian: and just start a conversation with them. And generally, if they didn't have contractual obligations to wear a certain type of apparel, then they were pretty stoked to get free stuff from me.
Tim Christian: So that's kind of how I did it on Twitter. There was another app that I used on my iPad. It's only available on Apple devices called Brand Snob. So Brand Snob, you basically put your profile up. There's a few of them around that are similar.
Tim Christian: In fact, I just signed up to another one last night, which I can look up for you.
Filip Valica: Brand snob's a really easy platform. It's kind of like… Tinder? Tinder, yes, that's the one I was trying to think of. Not that I know what that is, by the way. I'm just going to throw that out there. I don't know what Tinder is.
Tim Christian: I'm a happily married man. Yeah, brand snob is very similar to Tinder.
Filip Valica: Swipe left, slight right,
Filip Valica: and that can help you get in touch with influences as well. And just targeting people that you think might be sympathetic to your cause or think might be interested in your product. So if you follow someone or you find someone interesting or you know someone's a thought leader in your field,
Filip Valica: then there's another, I guess you can always try approaching them gently LinkedIn. And if you have a strong enough story and a gentle enough approach and a friendly enough attitude, I guess, you can get some traction by approaching on LinkedIn as well.
Filip Valica: But I generally don't do that unless I'm sort of really keen because people don't like being band and make it up on LinkedIn.
Filip Valica: Right. For some reason. They probably get it all the time, I'd say.
Tim Christian: It's not like Twitter where Twitter you'll have random people you've never heard of just sending you DMs. With LinkedIn, it's like you want to be added to my network? I don't even I've never met you before basically they know that you were just trying to sell
Tim Christian: them something so right it's all about being a bit clever with your approach so a lot of influencers especially if they're at the celebrity level want something in return in addition to free product and I think at least from what I've seen the influencers that are at the early and
Tim Christian: middle stage of their influencer careers right where they might be semi-celebrity status or less than celebrity status they might only have let's say 100,000 followers or something
Tim Christian: like that they're way more inclined to get you know to produce a review in exchange for product and they probably would even from what i've seen again have better returns on your investment because they have a better connection to their people than some of these megastars that you would think
Tim Christian: you know that some some popular celebrity in your space who has five million followers if they
Filip Valica: just mentioned you once that might not really work as much or as well as some of these smaller level influencers that are easier to even approach definitely definitely i'd agree
Filip Valica: 100% with everything you just said, yeah, I found that the people with, yeah, I guess if you're going to use 100,000, the people with less than 100,000 followers had much higher engagement levels.
Filip Valica: I think at that point, it's very hard for them to stay engaged with their audience because it just gets, it probably gets too much for them, going beyond 100,000, but the people in that space, they're still very engaged with their audience.
Filip Valica: So they respond to people when they write to them on Instagram, for example, they respond and they'll give a good story about each post that they put up and just generally more engaged with the audience.
Filip Valica: And that's when people feel like they know the person, whether they know them or not, then
Tim Christian: that's basically what makes people more comfortable with listening to them and, you know, taking their advice and basically buying product based on their recommendation. They don't feel like they really know them or in touch with them, then it's a lot harder to get that conversion. Yeah.
Tim Christian: Yeah, and that's interesting. Last one, we left your product development story here. you'd launch your Kickstarter, were there any parallels to that with creating this connection with your backers that you thought were really helpful or that helped your campaign?
Tim Christian: Was there any techniques that you use maybe certain types of video, certain types of ways of connecting with your audience that really helped to get some of that response that you were looking for? For example, some guests that have been on the show have said that the lifestyle video
Filip Valica: that shows the product in use has fared a lot better than the making. of video, which used to be a really popular way, you know, the behind the scenes, how this is made
Filip Valica: is now maybe second in popularity to, you know, show me a one-minute cut of the various ways of using this product. Right, yeah, okay.
Tim Christian: Well, I only made one video because I had very limited budget, and it was just the Kickstarter video, so three minutes of, you know, what I've done and why it's different, pretty much. And within that video, there were various lifestyle shots, and there was, like, an interview
Tim Christian: style shot of me talking to the camera, sort of telling people about what I'd done and why I thought it was a good thing and why I needed your help. So that was kind of the only, I don't really
Tim Christian: have a comparison, anything to sort of cross-reference that with or say that one was better than the other, unfortunately. But I do believe that, yeah, the product, showing a product in use
Tim Christian: as opposed to being made is more powerful. But yeah, I haven't moved on to that, those videos or anything yet.
Tim Christian: Fair enough. Were there any lessons that you've learned that you can pass on to other people about
Filip Valica: the Kickstarter campaign that, you know, that were really helpful for you to kind of close those last minute deals? Or did you find that you had a surge of funding towards the end or in the beginning? Or was it pretty even along the way?
Filip Valica: Or did you have to tweak anything, you know, along your campaign to kind of get more performance out of it? Yeah, it's a long road. My campaign was 30 days. I think that's about, you know, maybe on the lower side.
Tim Christian: of average for the length of a campaign, but it seems like it goes on forever, and that's from your side, from the other side, 30 days may seem short or short enough. If it goes too
Tim Christian: long, it's kind of hard to keep it interesting. What's really good about running a Kickstarter campaign is the sense of urgency that it creates. And that sense of urgency, the fact that it's
Tim Christian: got a finite period means that people have to act now or they're going to miss out on the offer. If without that urgency, then people just don't act or there's a lot less incentive
Tim Christian: for them to act. They can do it later if they want to. They don't have to make a decision now. So that's the benefit of running the Kickstarter campaign. You mentioned having a sense of urgency
Tim Christian: and I've also heard other people say that as well in terms of how they structure the product pricing for their Kickstarter. They're trying to make some of these rewards to be enticing enough
Tim Christian: to where you know that this company isn't going to produce anything at that price level again, and so you need to jump on it now because it's at least 30% off or whatever that is, the retail price. Did you find that to be true?
Tim Christian: Yes. Yeah, I found once the early bed pricing was gone, there was a lot less interest in the product uptake or the, yeah, but there was a lot less people going for the product.
Tim Christian: So I've seen a few successful campaigns where there were a few different, tiers of early bird pricing, so maybe three different levels, as opposed to just early birds
Tim Christian: and then full price, or early birds and then Kickstarter full price, which could still be a discount to the retail price. So, yeah, maybe having two tiers of early birds, like a super early bird, an early bird, and then the Kickstarter price, and making it very clear that the Kickstarter price
Tim Christian: is still a solid discount from the end retail price. That would probably be my recommendation.
Tim Christian: I did notice that the initial interest is always the biggest hit in the first sort of 48 hours, 48 to 72 hours, and then it tapers off quite a lot from there.
Tim Christian: And that's just due to the fact that you've built up all this hype around your product launch and you've got all these fans or all these people that are, you know, are really
Tim Christian: interested in your product and they've already decided that they want to buy it or contribute to your project before you even launch it.
Tim Christian: So you've sent all of your email list and all of your Facebook followers and your Twitter followers and everything to the campaign as soon as you launch it and they've all gone, yep,
Filip Valica: I'll have it and they're done. So once that initial surge is gone after the first 48 hours, you've got to try and find ways to keep the interest going and keep the campaign ticking along. And that's why it sort of surges and then sort of plateaus.
Filip Valica: But sort of you don't really want to run a two-day campaign. Right. Yeah,
Tim Christian: it did. So after the first two days in my campaign from memory, I think we got through about $12,000 or something like that. And after 30 days, it finished at about $43,000.
Tim Christian: So there was still a long way to go after that first couple of days, but it was definitely the fastest earning period. And the way to continue the interest was I had a number of
Tim Christian: Twitter campaigns with some businesses that had followers in that space, and I ran marketing
Tim Christian: campaigns on Facebook, and then I had different influences pushing the product through their channels at various points throughout the campaign as well.
Tim Christian: So each sort of one had its own little surge as it went along, and then basically once a week,
Tim Christian: I'd hit my email list again and just sort of say, you know, give them update and say, hey, can you go out there and push? No, that's great, great advice. So I know when we first talked for you
Tim Christian: to come on the show, you had just finished wrapping up the campaign and you needed some much deserved R&R. So now you're going to be fulfilling some of those orders. Are you going to be fulfilling them yourself or do you have some third party fulfillment lined up? I've got third party
Tim Christian: fulfillment lined up. I'm trying to build a business that is for one of a better word as automated as possible. I don't want to just have robots or, you know, a fully automated
Tim Christian: process because I don't want to lose touch with the customer. But, you know, at the moment, as a sole trader, I want to keep the man now as low as possible, so it's manageable.
Tim Christian: Especially with their full-time day job. Yeah, that's right. So if I can have the orders come in
Filip Valica: and automatically go to the fulfillment warehouse where the product gets picked and packed and shipped without me having to actually do anything, then that's kind of the plan. So that's what I'm setting up at the moment.
Filip Valica: Having said that, I don't want to lose contact or I don't want to lose the touch point with the customer, so I still need to add personalisation in there.
Tim Christian: For the way I'm doing it is still not set in stone.
Tim Christian: because I'm waiting for those last few backers to come in and finish, fill out their survey in backer kit to tell me what they want and where they live and all that sort of thing. So once I have all of the details, I know the strategy that I'm going to take.
Tim Christian: There's a few sort of big shipment, fulfillment businesses that I can use to handle everything, but I probably won't take that strategy. I've got a few contacts that do fulfilment in the United States and in the UK and in Australia.
Tim Christian: And I think I'll probably send them all to separate businesses within those countries because they're the three main centres for my customers, where the customers come from. Right. Yeah.
Tim Christian: So I'll have them packed in China in the factory where they're made and then shipped in bulk to the countries that they need to go to and then fulfilled the smaller fulfillment warehouses.
Tim Christian: Talk a little bit about your strategy for how many units you're going to buy in the beginning.
Tim Christian: As you mentioned, that you sold about 300 through your crowdfunding campaign, but that might not be that break-even point that you need to, you know, for a large enough order for the manufacturer to start the work.
Tim Christian: And I'm sure you'd want to sell some through your e-commerce site as well. So talk a little bit about your sizing for the first order and what you're basing it on.
Tim Christian: So the Kickstarter campaign was to allow me to develop or produce the coffee fabric that I wanted to produce.
Tim Christian: of garments. I have made the copy fabric for the prototype garments, but it was in a trial, a trial fabric production, which is a very small run. It was only, you know, sort of 50 metres
Tim Christian: of fabric at a time. And there's only so much interest from the fabric manufacturer to produce those small runs. It takes them a lot of time to set up the knitting loom and whatnot.
Tim Christian: And once they turn it on, if they turn it off straight away, it's still going to make 50, at least sort of 50 meters of fabric.
Tim Christian: So it's not very beneficial for them to do any trial runs. It's really only just to get your business. So there's only a very limited time that they'll do trial runs until they say, I'm done doing trial runs because this costs us money and they're not getting any money
Tim Christian: out of you. Right. So even if you offer to pay for the trial run, it's still not, there's no cost benefit for them to do it.
Filip Valica: So they say, look, we'll do a few trials for you. Then you have to produce bulk. So the Kickstarter was to enable me to produce the fabric that I needed and to produce it in a bulk quantity that I needed to do it in to actually get the fabric made.
Filip Valica: So the fabric's being made now. It's made in bulk. So I'll have it sitting there and I can produce the garments whenever I need to
Tim Christian: in whatever quantity I need to produce me. And that's one of the advantages of my new garment manufacturer is that I can produce one or I can produce 1,000. and it's no big deal either way. Oh, that's great, especially with your sizing,
Tim Christian: because you're going to have so many different sizes between men, women, children. Yeah, exactly.
Tim Christian: I won't be offering children sizes just yet. That might come down the track. But I've offered sizes from extra small to 5xl as well because a lot of brands don't offer up that high, that large, up to 5XL.
Tim Christian: So that's another niche market that I can take advantage of. The plan is to, because I'll have all of the fabric and all of the what you call notions sitting there and available ready to go,
Filip Valica: the plan is to produce basically 10 or 15% more than the Kickstarter order in every size and colour and have that sitting ready to go in the fulfilment warehouses.
Filip Valica: So that way I have it basically, I should be able to cover the cost of it all.
Tim Christian: And when I start marketing the products on my e-commerce site, then I'll be able to fulfil the orders straight away. When they start to sell out, then that will trigger production of some more comments.
Tim Christian: Talk about that a little bit with your relative size with the Kickstarter order versus what you need to keep going. You mentioned that it's allowing you to purchase your custom material.
Tim Christian: Are you breaking even with your Kickstarter campaign or is it basically an investment into a larger operation? Or are you even making a little bit of profit on it to where you can feed that back into the business?
Tim Christian: No, it was, the numbers were done to basically break even on producing the bulk fabric and producing the garments. Okay. So that's where the numbers were at.
Filip Valica: So the plan is once I'll finish the Kickstarter garments, I will have broken even on the fabric production and the garment production.
Filip Valica: And then the excess will be used for producing packaging and redoing the website, which I'm in the process of doing at the moment, and that sort of thing.
Tim Christian: so but when it's all said and done i'll get zero dollars um but the uh i'll have the fabric in bulk ready to go and every order after that should be clear profit we're not not clear
Tim Christian: profit but um uh over the manufacturing cost it'll be it'll be profit right no that's great i imagine that as you're going through this process you've probably looked at various fulfillment methods
Tim Christian: like you said you've got places around the world to fulfill for kickstarter now your um your full-time fulfillment options. Have you looked at Amazon at all or you know you're going to focus on you're rolling your own e-commerce store? I've kind of looked at Amazon. It's not, it's not,
Filip Valica: it's kind of a big behemoth that I, it's like a bear that I don't really want to poke at the moment, I guess. There's a lot of information out there about how best to sell and market on Amazon,
Filip Valica: but I haven't read any of it. And it's just like, it's something that I just don't have time to do at the moment. But I do, I have done a lot of reading about my own marketing and I'm learning about all of that sort of side of things.
Tim Christian: So at the moment, I'm a lot more comfortable just running my own marketing campaigns and selling on my directing traffic to my own e-commerce store. Having said that, maybe later in the year, I'll look at Amazon as well. But at this point, it'll just be in my own store.
Tim Christian: And I'm looking to employ some sales reps and looking for distribution partners. Yeah, and some guests that we've had on the show had to have really great luck actually with employing commission-only sales rep that represent similar products,
Tim Christian: so they already have those types of connections in the industry, and they would just be taking on your line. And so in addition to mentioning other people's products, whenever they make a visit to a buyer, they would basically drop in yours. Yep, yep. Yeah, so that's all the stuff that I'm working at the moment.
Tim Christian: So before I go into Amazon and that sort of thing, I'll be focusing on those types of strategies. It's a lot easier for me to have one sales rep to go and sell to,
Tim Christian: various people or one distribution partner who will buy 100 garments at a time than to sell to 100 different people right absolutely myself yeah so even though that the margins will obviously be
Tim Christian: lower because you're creating you know middlemen and whatnot it's still the cost of time benefit is still heavily weighed in in favor of selling 100 at a time than as opposed to one yeah well
Tim Christian: tim i really appreciate you sharing your story you know as we walk through this path with you you've definitely shared some of the missteps along the way that you've had, some of the struggles, but also some of the huge wins. And I think that's indicative of taking any
Tim Christian: product to market is that you're going to have to iterate a bit, you know, go back a step and forward a step. Yeah, it's a journey. Can you share your parting tip for someone that's kind of in the place that you were before you launch your Kickstarter? That's still kind of
Tim Christian: struggling with taking their idea to market? I've got a couple of tips. I won't ride it on too much, but probably the biggest thing for me is I'm not in the business to just make profit.
Tim Christian: I'm in the business to benefit more than just myself and more than just my business. And my strong tip is that if you're just in it for business and just in it for money,
Tim Christian: then try and integrate something in your strategy to benefit someone else. People are more willing, not only for your business's health, but also for your own
Tim Christian: sense of well-being and for your own purpose. It definitely pays dividends in more ways than one. People are more willing to contribute to a product or buy a product or help promote your
Tim Christian: product. Your product is actually doing something good. So my products are all the most environmentally
Filip Valica: friendly high-performance apparel on the planet. So that's something that people can sort of get behind. It's the most eco-friendly stuff why wouldn't buy it, you know, that sort of thing. Also, my
Tim Christian: products contribute to charities in Australia and in South Africa. So, I guess the tip is, yeah, is that exactly, the people are more willing to
Filip Valica: say to give you money for your products. If they know that it's going to work for them, it's going to do more than just go in your pocket.
Filip Valica: And the flip side of that is the reward you get from helping someone in a charity is, you
Tim Christian: know, it's more rewarding than just getting the cash. So that's my strong product tip And I'm sure that's one of the reasons
Filip Valica: For the success of the Kicksada campaign as well Because people were a lot more willing to share it Because it was doing something good for the planet And it's good for the charity that we support The other tip is split test
Filip Valica: So with the Facebook marketing We were discussing before I used a program called Ad Espresso Yep, familiar with that You're familiar with it? Yeah So Atespresso has a university
Filip Valica: in there where they teach you how to use the tool and they teach your techniques on how to refine your audience and all that sort of stuff. You get a free 30 days, I think, to sort of test and use the tool. I use the free 30 days to go and do all the university videos and learn
Filip Valica: about it. And you can, instead of in the Facebook tool, you can only do one ad at a time. In ad espresso, you can split test up to about 150 ads at once and it only takes you about the same amount of time to build that one ad.
Filip Valica: So I found that a really powerful tool for my Facebook marketing. And they also have people who help you refine your ads and give you tips on why certain
Filip Valica: things are working and certain things aren't and what you may do to refine your ads as well. So, yeah, that was a great tool. And that sort of, that helped a lot at espresso. Tim, thanks a lot for all the tips that you gave us.
Filip Valica: As people listen to you, I'm sure some of them, are cycling, go to the gym, they want to buy some of the gear, where can they go to make a purchase? Okay, you can go to wwwr.com.a u-o-o-r.com.a-u-o-r.com.
Filip Valica: Well, Tim, thanks again for coming on the show. It was my pleasure having you on, and thanks again for being so transparent. And I hope to hear from you in six or 12 months down the line.
Tim Christian: We'd like to have you back on the show and to give us a five or ten-minute update about what type of progress you've made,
Filip Valica: especially in the V-2-C e-com space. Thanks, man. Yeah, I appreciate that.
Tim Christian: I'd like to come back on and that'll give me something to some accountability.
Tim Christian: Thanks very much, Philip. I hope that you enjoyed our conversation with Tim this week.
Filip Valica: Here are my three takeaways from the interview. Number one, understand your supply chain. What path do your raw materials take to get to the manufacturer and how is your product made and shipped to your warehouse? If you can learn what entities are involved in your product,
Filip Valica: you will be in a better position of influencing costs and setting up contingencies when emergencies come up. Number two, build your customer list. Social networks come and go. And in the case of Facebook, reaching your followers organically is getting more and more expensive
Filip Valica: as the network is flooded with noise. Create your customer list early on when you first start to test the market and develop prototypes for your product. That way, you can reach out to customers directly as your company grows. And number three, find a deeper meeting in your work.
Filip Valica: It will help push you forward when things get tough. and customers will make a stronger connection with your brand. You don't have to change the world, just your piece of it. To quote Tim, it's more rewarding than getting cash.
Filip Valica: Of course, if you'd like to get these takeaways in your inbox every week, just go to the product startup.com, scroll to the footer, and sign up to the weekly wrap up. At the end of every week, you'll get my three takeaways for each guest, along with interesting articles, free tools,
Filip Valica: and inspiring innovations to help you with your own product startup. So join me next week as I speak with Samantha and Elaine from Midas Cup when they talk about creating an all natural alternative to coffee. So make sure to tune in next week to hear that episode.
Filip Valica: And again, check out the Product Startup Workshop, our Facebook group that I created for you, just to meet and get help from other product founders like yourself. Go to the Product Startup.com slash group or search for the Product Startup Workshop on Facebook.
Filip Valica: So thanks again for joining me. I hope that you're taking action on developing your products. And I'll see you 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,
Filip Valica: the first firm in North America to provide 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 over to Mako-design.com. That's M-A-K-O-D-D-Sign.com.
Filip Valica: for a free consultation from one of Mako Design Four Design Studios from coast to coast. Thanks for listening and see you next time.
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