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Guests: Dan and Justin, creators of Milton the Mealtime Companion.
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.
Designing a Children’s Product Around Story and Safety
Dan and Justin share how they developed Milton the Mealtime Companion to address a common family problem. The conversation explores product storytelling, consumer engagement, food-safe development considerations, and the work required to turn a creative concept into a launchable children’s product.
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.
Filip Valica: The Product Startup, Episode 54, Dan and Justin with Milton, the Mealtime Companion.
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 last episode, I was interviewed by guest host Khierstyn Ross of Crowdfunding Uncut,
Filip Valica: and we talked about manufacturing, so make sure to check out episode 53 if you want to hear me answer the top questions I get about working with manufacturers, and we get a little bit into quality control as well. Let's get started with today's show.
Filip Valica: Dan, Justin, thanks for coming on the show. Thanks for having us, Philip. No problem. Hey, so I'm really excited to have you guys on because you, Dan, you were one of the early listeners of the show. I remember that we were going back and forth on Reddit in like 2016.
Filip Valica: And for a bit, we kind of dropped off because you were focused a lot on building Meals with Milton. Maybe you could talk a little bit about your journey to get there and what other products you've worked on before, Milton. Yeah, happy to do it. Thanks again for having us on.
Filip Valica: So our company is called 60 LLC, and our sole product right now is Milton, the Mealtime Companion.
Filip Valica: So Milton is a product to help parents of picky eaters, encourage the little ones to try new foods, eat healthy, and have fun along the way.
Filip Valica: So the product itself includes the molded Milton character, so he's molded out of food grade silicone, and then it also comes with a children's book titled Meet Milton.
Filip Valica: So the Milton character is used by parents to encourage their little ones at home to try new foods. And it's great for picky eaters. Both Justin and I have little ones at home. I know you do as well.
Filip Valica: And the original idea came from something that a lot of parents do when their little one is maybe a little tentative or afraid to try new food.
Filip Valica: You know, someone might say, hey, watch mommy take a bite of broccoli and they'll feed themselves and then kind of give their child the courage. to try it themselves.
Filip Valica: And that's actually called social modeling. So it's, you know, like it sounds, it's a way to demonstrate the positive behavior and encourage the child to do the same thing. And so we had the idea of what if you encapsulate that into a product that would help
Filip Valica: parents, you know, because when you have a picky eater at home, it can be quite stressful as, you know, as you may know, as you may know, and so it gets to the point where sometimes
Guests: you might be dreading meal time or snack time and can become stressful for on both the child and the parent.
Guests: Yeah, enough for me.
Filip Valica: And I just prefer blending all the food up, like steak and whatever. And you just kind of shove it in and then close the mouth and hope that it just stays down.
Filip Valica: Yeah.
Guests: Yeah, I mean, you do have to try all things.
Filip Valica: Describe Milton for people they don't have access to the net right now and they're just listening while they're driving or at the gym. Yeah, sure, happy to. So he's an aquacolored creature, an alien. He's about maybe four and a half, five inches tall.
Filip Valica: I think pretty cute looking.
Filip Valica: And so, like I said earlier, he's molded from food-grade silicone. And so, and he's hollow inside. So that allows parents, if you can imagine, you can squeeze his cheeks and his mouth opens wide. You can push up and down his head to make him chew, to make him talk.
Filip Valica: And so a parent can use him at either at the meal table or on the high chair. It's recommended for ages 1 through 4, 1 through 5. And so the parent can use him, you know, feed him milk and the bite, see if he likes it. The child can practice using their utensil, feeding milk in a bite.
Filip Valica: And then the parent might say something like, wow, he likes it or, oh, well, he tried it. How about you try a bite? And it's pretty amazing the response that we'll see from, we'll hear from some of our parents when they, then they do this with their children.
Filip Valica: You know, we've had parents talk about their kids trying all kinds of things from asparagus to one of their kids got really into lettuce and salads of all things. So, you know, again, using that social modeling technique to encourage the child to try.
Filip Valica: new foods and make it fun as well. Part of the aspect of picky eating is the stress involved. And so by kind of removing some of that stress and bring a fun element into it, it can help
Filip Valica: encourage them to eat new foods. Yeah, Milton can be put right in the table with the other foods, you know, right next to their plate. We don't recommend that parents use them at every meal, but some parents do. And it's really a tool for parents that they can use as they see fit.
Filip Valica: Another interesting fact is when we were developing Milton, we want to make sure it's really a product that help parents and not just some gimmick. And so we actually parted with a pediatric feeding specialist. She's a speech-language pathologist.
Filip Valica: And in working with her, we kind of designed the product with her help as well as the book to make sure there was really a product that provide value to parents. So her name is Catherine Callahan.
Filip Valica: And one of the things we learned along the way working with her was that a lot of feeding therapists actually use a similar method in some of their practices where that might use a sock puppet or something else to kind of demonstrate and model good eating behavior and how you chew,
Filip Valica: how you swallow, safe bite sizes, that kind of thing. So she was really instrumental in developing the product. And I mentioned earlier the children's book called Meat Milton that comes with every product. In that book, it's a little story following Milton from his home
Filip Valica: on the moon where all the food was gray and bland and follows his journey ultimately to the children's home where the child kind of becomes a hear of the story. And with Melton's help, they try a lot of new foods.
Guests: But throughout the book, we have Catherine's tips sprinkled in. So in a way, this children's book also kind of doubles almost as an instruction manual for the parent on how to use Melton to encourage their child to become a more courageous eater. That's pretty great.
Guests: So what's interesting about the way that you guys rolled out the product was that I like how you have a storybook that kind of goes along with it because we've heard since, I don't
Filip Valica: I've heard at least for the last two years that marketing is going towards storytelling. And this is just like a literal interpretation of how to increase engagement for your product by telling a story and getting people wrapped up in the emotions of things. That is for sure.
Filip Valica: And with the book, it's almost like a physical version of that. Whereas like normally like, so my background is in industrial design. This is just enough.
Filip Valica: And so we've always been taught to when you're trying to sell your idea. to tell the whole story about it. And like you said, companies now realize that you can't just sell the physical thing.
Filip Valica: You have to sell the app that goes with it, the packaging that goes with it, the whole brand.
Filip Valica: And so with Milton, we kind of created this little backstory for him. So the kid really becomes engaged in, like, who he is, where he comes from.
Filip Valica: And then when the kid actually sees Milton in front of them, they're like, why? he actually exists. You know, he's from this book. And so that's a really good point. Yeah. I just remind me one thing. I know there's one parent in particular.
Filip Valica: I remember who they purchased Milton after seeing it, I think, on Instagram,
Filip Valica: or maybe it was read it somewhere like that.
Filip Valica: And so the way they introduced Milton to their child, which I really like, was, you know, they got at home, say, you know, on a given day, that evening they read just the book with their child and it went through the story. But kind of like Justin was alluding to. didn't actually show, you know, the child of the Milton character.
Filip Valica: And then I don't know if it was the next morning at breakfast or at lunch, then Milton showed up. So that really gets the child kind of engaged and, which is important, I think, for, you know, for Milton to be successful.
Filip Valica: One thing we've seen is, you know, on occasion, you know, a parent might purchase Milan and just expect that, you know, pop on the table and that's that. And that's really not how it works.
Filip Valica: You know, it really is both the child and the parent using Milton as a tool to introduce new foods and texture.
Guests: and smells into the eating and feeding process. But I do think to Justin's point, to your point, Phil, the book really kind of helps encapsulate everything and, you know, the book is something that's an interesting story, at least we think so. So the child wants to go
Guests: back and read it and it's got some fun pictures and stuff, milling the grocery store and
Filip Valica: on the moon and a spaceship, that kind of stuff.
Guests: So it's a way to kind of keep the child engage and keep the system and use in the home. Yeah, I like that. And I think the takeaways for other people that are listening that are building products, you know, how can you incorporate that storytelling in what you're developing and even if you don't have a kid's product
Filip Valica: maybe there's a way of creating that mystery right or that nostalgia or so that eliciting that emotional response somehow yeah and as you know with the show we kind of go through the steps of the product
Filip Valica: development process so i wanted to pull back a little bit and ask you guys about developing
Guests: milton when you know if you think back to when you first had the idea and you started to you know
Filip Valica: Let's get some designs and create some prototypes. How did you do that? All right. This is Justin again. I'll take that one on. So Dan and I are both from the product development field. Dan is a mechanical engineer and I'm an industrial designer.
Filip Valica: And so we realized early on that we complement each other's skills very well, as you probably know. But explain that to people that don't know what the difference is.
Filip Valica: There's quite a difference. Now,
Filip Valica: there's usually like a fake, struggle between engineers and designers because they have different priorities, but honestly, it just depends on the person.
Filip Valica: So designers
Filip Valica: typically will create the front end
Filip Valica: part of the design process, such as like the sketching, like how the thing's going to work, how it should work, how the person's going to interact with it, what it's going to look like, what materials and colors and finishes it'll be made up of. And then typically the engineer
Filip Valica: will bring that into fruition and make sure it's correctly designed for molding, for production, all the fine details of actual production of the product.
Filip Valica: Dan is the McAllenic engineer. I'm the designer. Fortunately, he also speaks the language of a designer, and I speak the language of an engineer. And so we get along really well, we feel anyway,
Filip Valica: most of the time. And so that part of the process we found was pretty natural. to us. So we started like any,
Filip Valica: any product. We started sketching ideas. We knew, once we knew we wanted to create a Milton-like little creature,
Filip Valica: we thought of how I had to have a large mouth so the kid could put food in his mouth.
Filip Valica: He can't tip over because the kids didn't want to like play with it, you know. It has to be easy to clean, dishwasher safe, all these things. So once we had like kind of like a guideline, we moved on from sketching and then I took it
Filip Valica: into SolidWorks, those are a program that we used, and made the actual 3D model of it. And nowadays, because you can 3D print, we had our first 3D print made by an outsource,
Guests: or we outsourced it, and we soon realized that we're going to make multiple iterations of it. And so we just bought our own 3D printer, and that was an immense self because we printed off like 30 different versions of them, and just to get them right.
Guests: Yeah, we went through a lot there. One thing I was going to throw in real quick was one of the challenges, and just mentioned, like, the mouth's got to be big enough so a child can feed food in there
Guests: easily or the utensil or their fingers, was that the mouth kind of wanted to kept the top half of his head, the top of the mouth, wanted to kind of sag and close.
Filip Valica: And so getting that right. And so having a 3D printer just to be able to rapidly iterate different designs was incredibly helpful. Indeed. Yeah, people will ask me all the time about prototyping and if they need to buy a 3D printer.
Filip Valica: And I usually say the same thing that you said that if you're only going to be printing one thing, it's not really worth. with buying one, but if you're going to be iterating, as you probably should be with prototyping,
Filip Valica: it'll pay for itself. Assuming that you're okay with tinkering with 3D printer, some of the models that are out there are definitely more DIY than, you know, than ready for like mass market appeal.
Filip Valica: Did you guys get a big brand name printer or did you get something that you cobble together yourselves?
Filip Valica: It's kind of in between.
Guests: It's a Maker Gear M2, I want to say. Yep, familiar with that. At our normal jobs, we had. 3D printer experience we had like all the way from a like a strata all the way up to like a really
Guests: expensive one and we found that dealing with the maker bot which was kind of in our price range we
Filip Valica: didn't want to I mean I don't want to they may be better now but back then they it was just really unreliable and so we looked online and found that maker gear had like amazing customer support and
Filip Valica: and also like a great community which is really helpful like you can they have all these sorts of like guidelines and stuff you can follow um so we went with them and we couldn't be happier i mean the thing is never broken down no that's great and that's super important to remember because
Filip Valica: you don't want to spend half your time troubleshooting a print you want to get to that to that print and like move on how are you able to prototype the flexible nature of milton because as far as i'm aware they don't have many uh they don't have any silicone filaments they only have maybe some
Guests: nylons and things like that right they unless you buy a really expensive machine you basically are
Guests: just printing like rigid yeah ABS or ELM so that another part of my background is like the
Guests: silicone mold making like two-part silicone mold making sure and so basically we printed
Filip Valica: 3D printed our our first mold for Milton and we printed the just the it was basically a three-part mold it was front back and the core and so that we printed that then we could just
Filip Valica: just pour two-part silicone in there, cure it. And we had our, like,
Filip Valica: pretty, I mean, it was very similar to what our final product was as far as, like, size and all that and flexibility.
Filip Valica: But, like, give us a great idea of how it would act. Thanks for sharing that.
Guests: And that's actually similar to one of the clients that I'm working with. He's done the same thing with his product. I think that's probably the fastest way of prototyping by yourself, if you're not sending it out,
Filip Valica: is to create your own molds. And they've got those kits on Amazon, even if you're totally new to the game, you can Yeah, exactly, create casts of all sorts of things around the house and duplicate them. Yeah, it's not difficult at all.
Filip Valica: I mean, you need some equipment, like a vacuum chamber or something,
Guests: but everything isn't that crazy expensive and you just got to just do it so many guides online. Right. We actually, if anyone is interested on our blog, there was a recent post we did,
Guests: where we kind of show a little gif or gif of kind of the evolution of Milton from sketches to 3D CAD to rigid prototypes and flexible ones. kind of see how all those different things look along the way. Awesome. I'm going to link to that from the show notes so that way everybody can take a look.
Guests: Cool. So you guys created some prototypes. What did you do for the testing? Real life kids? Yes.
Filip Valica: At that point, our kids were two, right? Yeah, both our kids at our houses were around two or so. Yep. So we had our own test subjects if you want to call them that. And then we also have friends, of course, to have kids. And so that was like our very initial
Filip Valica: testing and to see how big his mouth needed to be. and how stable you need to be all these different things.
Filip Valica: Yeah, that's a good point. I was just going to ask you guys if you had a, if you tested it through a range of kids or a range of situations or like put it through like a battery. I mean, so you, Dan, you're a mechanical engineer, and I'm sure you guys do this industrial engineering too,
Filip Valica: Justin, where you've got like these test cases right, where you write out a testing plan and you've got like, I'm going to test for like the extremes, the minimum and the maximum and what's the largest kids fist size and what's the, you know, what's the highest table that it can drop from and all that type of thing. Did you go through any of that?
Filip Valica: Yeah, we did it.
Guests: I mean, we did it kind of in a, I guess, in a, I don't call it, logical expedited way, maybe where, you know, thought about what are the real ways this will be used. So an example would be like a stain test.
Filip Valica: I remember doing one of the early, you know, Silicon Pro types, which even though it wasn't the final material, we're kind of curious of, you know, all right, spaghetti sauce sits on him overnight or jelly. And so we do these different tests, let it sit 24 hours, then, you know, try to wash it off
Filip Valica: in the sink or the dishwasher and see what happens. And food-grade silicone and even the casting silicone we use is actually really resistant and resilient and easy to clean. Again, being just us kind of bootstrap at this point, sending things out for, you know, third-party lab testing.
Filip Valica: It was really just doing on our own kind of with what we had around us. But with our background and consumer products, you know, we had a good idea of the kind of testing that we ultimately would and did do, you know, at a formal test lab. So that was helpful. Yeah, so let's talk about that a little bit.
Filip Valica: We don't get into that much at all in the show about some formal testing. When did you do that? Was that before or after you went to manufacture or to contact the manufacturer initially? Yeah, so that would actually be, that was with our production product.
Filip Valica: So we had, you know, the actual Milton character itself tested against toy safety testing. So children's product and toy safety, we don't really market Milton as a toy, but it certainly has perceived play value.
Filip Valica: And so we tested it and designed it to meet toy safety regulations. So we tested Milton himself and also the children's book in the box that comes with, you know, those are less of a concern. But, you know, as you can imagine, toy safety testing is really stringent testing.
Filip Valica: Obviously, you're talking about child safety. And so that was really important to us, you know, so as far as there's just aspects of design that kind of as we designed it as far as making sure of the, you
Guests: know, air holes and that kind of stuff were factored into it. One thing that really works for advantage is that being a one-piece product, Milton is just a single piece of, molded food-grade silicone. There's no pieces to break off. You know, and they did all kinds
Filip Valica: of tests, you know, pulling out his teeth and his ears and, you know, trying to rip them apart. But, you know, silicone is really, really durable. That's why it's used in a lot of different applications. So we did, you know, basically just in quotes at some local third-party test labs for
Filip Valica: doing toy safety testing, both in the U.S. and we also lumped in, I think, some Canadian and European testing there as well, just because you save on costs. If, you know, the tests are either identical or it might be basically the same test, but just slightly different criteria. Right.
Filip Valica: There's some overlapping, yeah, requirements. Yeah, exactly. So it was a long-term play to say, you know, we'll spend a little more cost up front, but knowing that eventually we'll want it. So it's jumping ahead a little bit since it was, you know, to be clear with production product. But we ultimately did complete that.
Filip Valica: So when you went out, you were finished with a prototype and you did all your testing. You were confident with the design or reasonably confident enough to push the button on production. Talk about your decision about.
Filip Valica: how to choose the manufacturer and where you went for that yeah sure so one of the things that i think we knew pretty early on with milton um and even before kind of came up with the milton
Filip Valica: concept but just with whatever product we would ultimately launch um was that we wanted to make
Guests: in the u.s um for a few reasons um you know and there's there's pros and cons you know to it like anything um we've had a lot experience with china and in you know other parts of our career and
Guests: stuff. And you know, you can certainly get lower costs over there and things like that. It could also be difficult, though, you know, just with the time zone and stuff and just, you know, obviously not
Guests: physically being there. But also as a children's product, it was really important to us from a quality and safety perspective that we could, you know, either pick up the phone and talk to our factory or, you know, take a plan right out there, which you've done, you know, a few times and check things out
Filip Valica: for ourselves and, you know, and talk to the team. And we're fortunate to have found a really good factory in New York that we've got a great relationship with and so you know getting to that point
Filip Valica: it was definitely quite a process you know I mean there's definitely no silver bullet to it it was a lot of cold calling cold emailing you know just really just a lot of Google searches sometimes we'd
Filip Valica: ask people for references so I'd like to take a quick break to talk about the one-on-one coaching that I offer entrepreneurs and other small business owners for launching their physical products If you're just getting started, I can work with you to create a game plan based on your skill set and budget.
Filip Valica: We'll go through the product development process together and outline your steps specific to your industry or product.
Filip Valica: Based on your capabilities, I can suggest ways that you can create or outsource work with prototypes, do feasibility testing, or even just make sure that you're working on an idea that has legs. Most sessions are usually an hour long and we talk on Skype or through the phone.
Filip Valica: You set the pace and we come up with tasks that you can knock out before we meet again. again, moving at the speed that you're most comfortable with. I'll help to hold you accountable and make sure that you're biting off a right-sized
Guests: chunk that works for you. Go to the product startup.com and click on the consulting tab to sign up for a call.
Guests: A good tip is definitely, you know, don't be afraid to ask strangers or people, you know,
Filip Valica: but certainly strangers for help because some of the places we contacted, you know, would say, look, you know, this is not in a wheelhouse because in some cases maybe they were a medical device manufacturer, and they're like, look, our cost is going to be way too high for you, but
Filip Valica: talk to these guys over here. And so, you know, or if they didn't do that, we would ask sometimes, you know, could you refer us anyone? And they might know, because they have contacts in the industry, they would refer us to people.
Filip Valica: And so, you know, ultimately, I think it was through, just through search results, you know, kind of just, we probably contacted, I don't know, 25, 30 different factories. And, you know, some of them, you couldn't even get them to return your call. But others would.
Filip Valica: And most were pretty honest. We try to be very upfront and say, look, we're a startup. We're not, you know, some big company that's going to place an order for 200,000 units initially. So we gave them idea of what kind of our quantities were and who we were and what we were about.
Filip Valica: And we wanted someone who was essentially kind of willing to take some risk on us, you know, hopefully for a long-term payback. And ultimately, we did find a partner that's been extremely helpful for us. As you went through the process,
Filip Valica: were there any red flags or any issues that you found while trying to choose a manufacturer that you thought, okay, we're definitely not going to go
Guests: with these guys? Or we don't want to work with someone that does this?
Guests: That's a good question.
Guests: I mean, like I said, there were so one thing just for listeners to know is
Filip Valica: like, so Milton is molded
Guests: from silicone and liquid silicone rubber molding is the process. LSR molding, they call it. And it's kind of a niche within the injection molding industry.
Filip Valica: And a lot of the silicone applications are in medical and there's some military ones. And so one of the things we started finding is that you kind of very quickly get a sense of, you know, what the other products are doing? So we would ask, hey, what are you, what products are you doing currently? And
Filip Valica: you know, you start to hear a lot of, you know, implants or things like that. You, you kind of get the sense that, you know, they're operating by some very strict ISO standards and that's going to relate to higher costs, even if they don't tell you up front. So that was one of our
Filip Valica: takeaways. Whereas on the flip side, you know, the factory that we ultimately ended up working with. They have a really great track record of working with other companies at the time
Filip Valica: we're startups and have gone to produce some pretty great products, many of them in the same industry. So it doesn't say that you can't work with a manufacturer that does products outside of the market you're looking to launch a product in. But if they have experience and a track
Filip Valica: record in that area, that's definitely a good starting point. Yeah, absolutely. Because when you talk about food grade silicone or you mention child safety requirements, you don't want their eyes to glaze over, Or other side of the coin where they say, oh, yeah, I'm sure, no problem.
Filip Valica: And then you've got 1,000 units of, you know, non-qualifying product. Exactly. Yeah, you're exactly right with that. So any issues during manufacturing or any lessons learned up until this point that you can share that, you know, words of wisdom?
Filip Valica: Overall, the manufacturing, honestly, went pretty smoothly.
Guests: You know, there's some stuff like, you know, I think our actual cycle time for molding melting, in which, you know, is basically essentially the time to mold one unit, ended up being a little bit higher than we initially thought, not by a ton, and we had kind of already had a factor safety in there, you know,
Guests: when we were doing some calculations. But you definitely want to consider that kind of stuff because stuff, you know, things like cycle times, which can directly impact your costs or maybe for some folks the time to assemble or pack out their product.
Guests: Yeah, labor costs, you know, always want to have some factor safety in there because if you're you're operating on kind of razor thin, you know, this may or my network financially, you can't essentially overcome any little hiccup like that.
Guests: That could certainly be an issue, especially at a point we've already sunk all these costs. But overall, you know, the manufacturing process went really smoothly, you know, where we were
Filip Valica: pretty confident from what we had done with our cast, you know, cast in silicones because similar material properties. And with silicon, you can pull really big undercuts because it's very flexible, obviously.
Filip Valica: And so we were pretty confident from what we've seen in Justice Cass that we could do it. But you never know for sure until you're molding off an actual tool and the actual, you know, production grade material if it's going to work. So that was kind of a nervous call when we were kind of waiting to hear, hear how it went for the first run.
Filip Valica: But they did a great job. And like I said, this factory does a lot of work and more challenging designs and unique things. So fortunately, that part of it went pretty well. Yeah.
Filip Valica: And when you're talking about undercuts, just want to make sure that, you know, people in the audience that aren't industrial designers and mechanical engineers.
Filip Valica: So whenever you're creating a plastic product, you've got, usually you've got some sort of shape or something that juts out or there's some sort of a taper to it. And silicones, obviously, because being flexible, it's really forgivable for that.
Filip Valica: But with some of your other plastic products, you have to be really careful when you're making the bolt because the designer has to consider how the plastic is going to be injected in
Filip Valica: the mold and make sure that it flows properly into the furthest corner of the product, as well as it's able to be ejected out of the mold when you're done. Some of that is mold design, but I mean, some of its product design. Right.
Filip Valica: As you've gone through this manufacturing phase, when did you start working on the marketing and packaging side of it? So as soon as we basically had the green light for production on the actual silicon piece,
Filip Valica: then we turn our focus on the book because we knew that would be the next very time-consuming.
Filip Valica: And actually, that brings up a point of one thing to. another and I think in general you have a product that has a couple things like a book or a
Filip Valica: website or app or whatever you should definitely focus on one finish it move on to the next you can always go back but just staying the course on one thing and just getting it done
Filip Valica: it makes your life so much easier but um going back to the actual book so um that was a long
Guests: process and this is about the time where um our sLP katherine came on board and really helped us out with this because it was basically Dan, myself, and
Guests: her just doing multiple iterations of this book, just doing drafts and drafts, adding different tips and doing different photography. I mean, the whole thing was just like so many different
Guests: drafts. And we also got like friends and family to look over it, like to make sure grammar and spelling all that stuff was right. I mean, it took a lot longer than I think we thought it would, but I think it turned out pretty well in the end. I think some point probably early into
Guests: those drafts, you know, kind of hit us that, you know, to launch, you know, the product with a legitimate children's book would, you know, mean, okay, we kind of have to become authors. And it's, I think, almost doing the Milton design because it's a physical product.
Guests: It's something we're more comfortable with, you know, was writing a children's book and, you know,
Filip Valica: doing the Justin Dillard of photography and stuff is not something either of us have come
Guests: close ever doing before.
Filip Valica: And so, you know, to Justin's point about focus, it became really important to just really say laser focus. And, you know, we probably did countless iterations. it'd probably be pretty scary to go back and read the first draft. I think the current book rhymes and stuff and hasn't a good flow to it.
Filip Valica: The early ones definitely didn't. But some of the family and friends who we shared the draft with, some kind of say, oh, it's great, whatever, but some kind of gave us the hard truth of, look, it's got some good core in the middle of it, but it just doesn't flow and what's happening here
Guests: and why is Milton doing this? And it, you know, so some of that honest feedback was really helpful. It kind of hard to hear, but, you know, certainly in the end it was really instrumental in coming out of the right book. in the end. Yeah, and I'd like to point out for people that haven't see the book yet. So, first of all,
Guests: it's a children's book, but it's photography, which is pretty cool, because you don't see a whole lot of those books.
Guests: And it kind of jives with the marketing that you've got on the site, which is like a stop action animation. I think all of that is really neat, because it's kind
Filip Valica: of refreshing for a children's product to not be animated. And looking through some of the photos that you took, they're actually pretty funny, you know, where you've got Milton, like, holding onto, you know, the yellow squash just like by biting on the end of it and looks
Filip Valica: like he's like getting carried away. I think the products like inject some humor into the marketing or at least the storytelling piece, a little bit of extra for the parents, just make it so much easier for, you know, to increase some of that adoption and it make it easier
Filip Valica: to even share with other people because if you enjoy it and your kids like it, it's just that additional benefit, right? Right. Exactly. And I mean, you can kind of think of like Pixar doing
Guests: this where their movies are their kid movies but they always have these like subtle jokes
Filip Valica: for the parents so the parents can enjoy as well and not the same where Pixar anything but we definitely took inspiration from them like trying to make it fun for everyone not just the kid i think as parents too we all we all have those those books that we read our kids a night some of them
Filip Valica: we enjoy reading other ones when maybe when your little one picks it out you kind of like ah this one again you know it's just it's not interesting the parents we wanted to at least keep engaging for the parent and maybe a little humor in there for them as well. I love that. That's a great idea.
Filip Valica: To talk about the box a little bit, you're using a brown box, so it's an unbleached cardboard, but it's got a nice modern design feel to it. How did you come up with that design and talk a little bit about the reasoning for springing
Filip Valica: for something that, to me, looks pretty retail ready, which is usually not what people do
Guests: whenever they first launch, you know, their first packaging is something for mail order or for internet order and the packaging isn't usually as important. Yeah, that was like the third phase of
Filip Valica: the process. After the book was done, we started focusing on the packaging. Again, tons and tons of different iterations, different designs we tried to think of. And like throughout the middle of all
Guests: these iterations, we realized that honestly, it was one of the huge drivers was cost, but also,
Filip Valica: we also want to make it 100% recyclable. And so when I talk about costs, like it's a amazing how many what adds up when you want like more than one color I mean it's
Filip Valica: crazy just like we that was probably one of the things we knew least about was packaging design and like printing and all that whole process so did you have any inserts or
Filip Valica: anything in the box like die cut things to keep Milton in place there is one piece that's basically glued in there and so the box can be folded flat and then as you when we when the boxes are assembled and kind of fold into the box structure
Filip Valica: then it kind of forms basically a pocket for Milton and then a pocket for the book
Filip Valica: but it's yeah it's just all I think it's e-flute craft colored corgit and all from the US as well but as Justin was saying you know at all different costs each different color of ink you know adds up and you know you can do other stuff too you can put
Filip Valica: you know lamin it's over to kind of give it a soft touch feel but it does all add up and when you're not at you know massive volumes these kind of you know printed things the book and the box both being produced in the U.S. especially are very price sensitive to buy them. So the more we
Filip Valica: run, it gets significantly cheaper. We knew initially being a startup, we wouldn't be running millions of them. So that all had to kind of be factored in. Yeah, can you share what your initial buy was or what confidence did you have whenever you first came out of the gate that you knew
Filip Valica: you could sell X number of these? Like, how did you come up with that number? Yeah, that's an interesting question. I mean, we didn't really, you know, you see a lot of times, you know, some people might calculate and say the size of the market is X.
Filip Valica: And if we can only get, you know, 0.2% of this size. And you see that in Shark Tank a lot. I hate that. Oh, that's just like one of my like top three pet peeves.
Filip Valica: Yeah, we're not necessarily fan of it. I mean, there's reasons for doing it. And so, you know, it's fine if people do that. But to be honest, it's difficult to put a number
Filip Valica: on it. You know, we knew our own, you know, basically funded ourselves and a little bit of, you know, friends and family money. But no, no outside investment or partners, anything like that. We we want to retain ownership of it. So we knew.
Filip Valica: kind of what are, some of our internal restraints are from a cash perspective, you know, and based on our product cost, what we could do. So it's, you know, certainly not,
Guests: we're not ordering the hundreds of thousands or something like that. We kind of would talk to the different vendors, try to understand what their, you know, what their MOQs were, how that stacked
Filip Valica: up. And so we had a whole build spreadsheet of, okay, if we buy this many of the box and this many of the book and this many of Milton, here's where our product costs are. And obviously, the more you buy of anything, the costs go down. Absolutely. The way that with, you know, you know, we put everything in there and it doesn't work
Filip Valica: out, and, you know, we're kind of out of lock. And we felt pretty confident about the product. I mean, we did one thing kind of going back away was even before we did, I think really before we had the physical prototypes, we put Justin put together like a nice little
Filip Valica: one-page concept sheet, you know, just a PDF. And we sent that to a lot of family members and friends. But then we also went out on Reddit, you know, we're you and I originally connected. And there's some different parenting groups in there. They call them, you know, subredits.
Filip Valica: There's like Momit and Parenting. on all these different ones,
Guests: as well as entrepreneurial ones. And so we would go out there and kind of ask if people were interested in kind of doing a survey for really just to help us. And we promised, you know, long term, you know, we'd give them a discount stuff, which we did. But it was amazing the kind of response, you know, how many people volunteered.
Guests: You know, I think we had probably over 100 people willing to just basically we sent them, you know, a link to a PDF. And, you know, it kind of showed the price of the product and what at that point, I think they were just sketches maybe of what it would look.
Filip Valica: like, but hey, it came with the book and, you know, we donated a dollar for every unit made and all this kind of stuff made in the U.S. to see what their response was and that helped us gauge what other parents would think because when you're producing a product yourself, you're so close
Filip Valica: to it. And even though you know that it can be hard to something to see the truth and separate yourself from that. We saw it a lot of really good interest, but it helped us refine certain things that maybe needed more attention as well. That's a great point. Can you talk a little bit
Filip Valica: about how long that process took from getting creating a sketch to all the way going to manufacture from the time at least that we kind of came up with the initial yeah i say the first time
Filip Valica: milton was written down anywhere or sketch of him was made it was probably later spring until then when we at least kind of had i mean until we launched milton in um june of 2016 and so if that
Filip Valica: first sketch was around may or something you know that overall process from initial sketch to launching the product in the market was, you know, around a year, give or take. I'm less than that until the point where we had kind of finalized the middle design and a little later finalized the book and finalize the packaging, you know, but within
Filip Valica: within a couple months of the initial idea, we kind of kept internal for a bit, but then as
Guests: soon as we felt like we knew where it was going, we didn't want to get too far down the road and certainly sink too much cost into it until we had, you know, kind of concept tested again through Reddit and friends and family and really every way we could before we went too far down
Guests: that path. It's just something that I always ask because people have these high expectations that
Filip Valica: they, you know, they want a product in stores in three months or something. And that's just really difficult to do. And so I'm glad that you guys are, you know, experienced product designers and
Filip Valica: you're saying that, hey, it took a year. But at the same time, you spent a lot of time refining your design and getting a lot of that feedback. So it gave you that confidence to know that when you do hit the market, you're pretty close to the target. Right. Exactly. Yeah. I mean, you can never
Filip Valica: know for sure but we you know forcing a lot of our money into it in time we want to be as confident we could i think we made the right choices and and you know not everything was done perfectly for sure but you know overall that that early concepting and concept feedback marketing feedback was
Filip Valica: was really instrumental for us so did you protect your idea in any way as you were going through this process yeah so the idea of um you know when it comes to intellectual property it's something we're familiar with our kind of our summer background consumer products um so it's always kind of front
Filip Valica: mind. And so we're actually in the process now of, you know, doing the steps to go through and get, get protection, primarily from a utility perspective, you know, as well as, you know, we've done work on on the trademark side as well.
Filip Valica: So it's, you know, it's one of those things where they say, you know, a knockoff can be kind of the greatest compliment. We don't necessarily want to see that. And we haven't just yet.
Filip Valica: But at the same time, you know, we kind of some practical steps to kind of mitigate that risk while not not going over the top because
Guests: you can you can certainly spend you know sink just tons and tons of money into that into that process of all the legal expenses and filings and such so we try to take a balance approach when it came to that so did you file like a provisional patent application or something like that
Guests: before you started working on everything else yeah great and for each of you what's your best
Filip Valica: tip to the people that are listening that are in a position where you were a year ago where you just started sketching or maybe you're kind of in the middle of prototyping and you're
Guests: you're kind of stuck what would you tell people good question um aside from the tip about focusing which i think is probably my number one tip i would say as coring as it sounds yolo
Guests: um basically yeah just go for it seriously i mean you aside from time and money which are things that
Guests: Well, time you can ever get back, but like going through like Kickstarter or whatever, you don't technically need that much money.
Filip Valica: You can kind of, there are ways around it, but there's absolutely nothing for you to lose. I mean,
Filip Valica: you just have to get over that hurdle of like, oh, maybe it won't do that well, you know, no matter what happens, you will learn from it and move on, whether you're successful or not.
Filip Valica: Yeah, I like that one a lot. I guess for mine, one thing I definitely realize, I guess, throughout at all, was, you know, I mean, both Jess and I, you know, we have families and busy lives like most people do.
Filip Valica: So it can be hard just to find the time to work on something like this. But even if you could only find, you know, 20 minutes a day when you first wake up or before you go to bed or half hour here, 15 minutes there to kind of
Filip Valica: keep chipping away at something, whether it's, you know, trying to get marketing feedback or we spend a lot of time reaching out to bloggers and. you know, trying to, trying to get the word out there about a product, you know, even those little efforts daily or weekly, whatever you can do, really do that up in a big way over time.
Filip Valica: It can be easy to overlook the, you know, the significance that just, you know, a little bit each day can add up to them. Great tips. Yeah, from both of you guys, totally agree. You have to be able to make some incremental progress.
Filip Valica: Otherwise, if just from a mental standpoint, if you feel like you're not making any headway, you're going to be your worst enemy there.
Filip Valica: So, guys, thanks again for coming on. the show, where can people find Milton if they wanted to get that for their own kids or they're giving it as a gift? Yeah, thanks again for having us, Phil.
Filip Valica: So you can buy it on our website at Mealswithmilton.com, and we also sell on Amazon as well. Perfect. Thanks again for coming on show. It was great having you on. Really appreciate you coming on and sharing your wisdom with us.
Filip Valica: And also, it was awesome to have a listener on the show that created a product. Yeah. Thanks a lot. Thanks a lot. Thanks again to Dan and Justin for sharing how they brought meal time with Milton to the market. Here are my takeaways for this week.
Filip Valica: Number one, don't be afraid to ask. Dan and Justin found their manufacturer by searching online and asking for recommendations. So don't be afraid to cold email or cold call startups in your space and ask them for advice.
Filip Valica: Meet with other creators in your city. I'm a mentor at a local startup incubator and all of the businesses there are happy to help each other out. And number two, tell better stories.
Filip Valica: Many of the top brands have great engagement with their customers and a loyal following, and I suspect that's also because they're good at telling stories around their products. How has your product made your customers life better?
Filip Valica: What can you do to increase the adoption of your product by getting the customer emotionally invested?
Filip Valica: And number three, focus on incremental gains. If you're just starting to work on your product, it can be hard to make. progress among other priorities like a day job, family, housework, commit to working a little
Filip Valica: every day. Small tasks add up and small wins will help you stay motivated.
Filip Valica: If you'd like to get these takeaways in your inbox,
Filip Valica: just go to the product startup.com, scroll to the footer of any page, and sign up to the weekly wrap-up. Thanks again for joining me today. I hope that you're taking action on developing your products, and I'll see you in two weeks.
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
Filip Valica: by Mako Design + Invent, 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,
Filip Valica: that's m-a-k-o-design.com for a free consultation from one of Mako-design, for design studios from coast to coast. Thanks for listening and see you next time.
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