How Yeseco Used Kickstarter To Build A Brand (special guest Jamie Phillips).

Kickstarter Wins, Manufacturing Nightmares and a Sink Brush That Broke the Internet: The YesECO Story with Jamie Phillips

Today I’m chatting with Jamie Phillips, founder of Yeseco, creator of the magnetic dish brush that completely changed the way thousands of people deal with their sink situation. His journey? Wild. Beautiful. Painful. Product-founder AF.

Jamie takes us through everything, including:
 • the moment on a remote beach in Indonesia that changed his entire career
 • why his first eco-friendly range worked but also didn’t work
• the messy truth of manufacturing a brand-new invention
• how he used Kickstarter to validate demand AND fund a very expensive mold process
• what 12,000+ customers taught him about product design
• why retail and DTC must work together (and how he balances both)
• his big mistakes, biggest lessons, and why perseverance beats everything
• what launching Version 2 looks like (spoiler: it’s live now)

Jamie is honest, generous, and gives you a real look at what actual product development looks like behind the scenes. If you’re a maker, product founder, wholesaler or inventor, you’ll want to take notes.

LINKS:
👉 Explore YesECO: https://yeseco.life

👉 Support the YesECO V2 Kickstarter: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/yeseco/yeseco-v2

👉 Follow me on Instagram: @thelotco

 If you want to build a profitable product business you LOVE (without the burnout and chaos), come join me inside my Roadmap to Profit program. Details at thelotco.com.au.

Transcript

 Hello and welcome to today's podcast. My name is Melissa Robbins. I have a special guest today, Jamie Phillips from Yeseco, and he's here to share his journey, and I cannot wait to share the ups and downs let's get into it. Jamie, welcome

good to see you. Thank so much for being here. Thank you. I've, been looking forward to it. There's a, there's a lot to share. Such an interesting journey. So yeah, really just being able to take people through some of the things you've been through, some of the ups and downs as, you mentioned that come with, , starting a new business and starting a.

Brand new product 

So I was in advertising and post-production, mostly retouching and special effects. And I'd had a really great career. I'd worked for all the companies that I'd worked for, big overseas campaigns, all of that. And I was on a boat trip in Indonesia.

I was on a very remote island and I saw a beach that basically humans hadn't touched. Covered in plastic. And I kind of went, okay, am I gonna spend the rest of my good working days in Korea working for these brands that I love doing the work, but do I believe in their mission and what they're doing? So that led me seven years ago to start a eco brand, and I came home from that trip, I had a look around my kitchen and I went, I'm gonna start here.

And at the time we had all of these colorful sponges and dish brushes and all this stuff, which no one actually liked. But we had to use it every day. It was a functional tool that every household had to have. So I started there. I took a trip to China to meet manufacturers, is one thing I wanted to do.

And when I decided I was gonna start a company, I kind of looked at the reasons why I was doing it. I wanted to use all of my skillsets that I already had and I wanted to learn a lot more. So going and visiting the manufacturers was the first thing I wanted to do. 

So I into like, how can we get this going?

Like what could it look like? 

Yeah, I was trying to find gaps in the market and see it was my first company and first brand, so what could I do it? And so what I did was a bamboo range to begin with. 

Yeah. 

Which at the time was considered a very eco product. And it still is. It's an incredibly.

Versatile product and fast to grow. Probably more on that later on. But manufacturing with Bamboo is actually, there's some processes there which aren't that eco, it's a bit like a lot of eco products. It's a catch 22. So I started the Bamboo range and started yes, eco and it went really well. It was right at the plastic free kind of movement time, and it went well for let's say 12 months.

And it could kept going, but I. I'd started a good, what I'd call a branding exercise. I had found overseas products, I'd put my own little design twist on it and put my brand on it. I hadn't solved anything, and so for me, I was just creating more products, relabeling more products in the market. I hadn't actually put my design standpoint expertise besides branding onto this product.

So that was the first kind of, we'll call it a start, stop. So then Co COVID happened and I was actually living with two product designers and they said, Hey, what's happening with Yes Eco? It clearly had an incredible start and you've kind of gone back to your retouching on special effects work and it's kind of like sitting in Nom Man's land.

You know, it was COVID, the start of COVID. Everything had stopped and I said, I always had this idea that we could elevate those everyday products we had as humans. 

Got a kitchen right. 

Yeah, once I started to look around, I realized that they weren't any good.

They were often hidden away in a cupboard, sometimes going moldy, sometimes uncared for, and that design aesthetic and value just wasn't there. So I started just drawing one afternoon and I really knuckled down on what are the pain points. And the main pain point I could find is no one knew where to store a dish brush.

Yeah, a little. Does it sit up on the edge? Does it a little holder or, yeah. What does it do? What does it 

No, there was no, 

Amongst it messy and 

yeah, there was no functional position for a dish brush. 

Yeah. 

And so I just kept drawing and drawing and I walked the aisle of Bunnings trying to find, trying to see shapes, trying to see techniques, trying to see things.

And I can't remember why I picked up magnets. I think I was just picking up various things. And I remember a day later sitting on the couch doing this with magnets. 

Yep. 

And I finally realized that a magnet could go on the inside and the outside of sink. And it was irrelevant what material the sink was.

It was the thickness of the sink. 

Yeah. Okay. Yeah. 

So it, 

it sounded like most sinks would probably be the same, like they've probably not most, yeah. 

Stainless steel sinks are, are the same San thickness. So that was the lightning moment. And as I designed that and started to develop that over the next few weeks, I kind of went, oh, I've kind of rarely got something here.

I can't find anything else on the market that's using this technique. So I spoke to a patent attorney and she did a global search, got back to me two days later and said, this never happens. There's nothing, there's nothing. There's nothing. And she said, you need to just never stop and keep going on this.

And so I went, okay, am I going all in here? And I said, this might be the chance, this might be the golden goose of, I've managed to invent something that I can put my name to, that I'm super proud of, even to this day that, you know, there's over 12,000 customers who use it every single day. And I get feedback from people at trade shows and things all the time being like, you know.

You save my marriage is one thing I hear quite often. Oh. Which, which 

is very good. But it's true. It's those trivial little arguments of something so stupid and minimalist too. And, and like any, anything that would be like Yeah. Streamlined. He would be very happy that it's, it is just mine. He's buying a little black, I've got a black phone with the black sink.

It looks perfect. 

Exactly. And I get people go on holiday and they're like, we didn't realize how, conditioned we've been to using it. Like now when you go and you have to think where's the dish brush? It's actually quite frustrating. So, yeah, that's kind of the start and how it happened. So once the patent attorney had said, you need to go all in, or you need to think seriously about this, I spent my life fortune on trademarks and patents.

Yes. 

Which is a very sliding scale. But for me, I went, if, in a few years if I wanted to sell this or it goes really well. The fact that I've been through that journey and understood all the implications was once again, back to the core thing of I wanted to learn through doing this business.

So that went really well. But then I had created a product that was probably 10 times more expensive than anything else in the market. 

Mm-hmm. 

Due to manufacturing techniques, due to the raw materials. Magnets are incredibly expensive and recently with all the tariff battles, I've only got more expensive.

Yeah. 

So. I created this great product, which was expensive and the only feedback I was getting was from friends and family and I knew that I needed to break out of that. 'Cause your friends and family see how much work you're putting in, they see it's a great product. We see all the value in it.

I needed to prove that someone who I didn't know would see the product for the very first time and get out their credit card. 

Yes. 

Which to me is 

put your money on the line. Yeah, exactly. A completely different, right. 

It's just the biggest jump. It is such a huge thing to show someone an idea that they've never seen before and get them to pay, a significant more amount than the bottom of the range dish brushes.

What they reached out for Now in Australia, 

they're 59 95. 

Yeah. Okay. 

So that led me to Kickstarter. 

Yeah. So I'd love to hear so much more about this because I know a few people have spoken to me about like, you know, should I do this? He's a good start. And that's obviously when we've met a number of times over the years at the show shows and had some chats together.

You've mentioned you, the Kickstarter, so I'd love to hear some insights actually, I've, I've put you onto a few people and you've helped out, which has been amazing. Tell me a bit about Kickstarter. 

Yeah, I am more than happy to chat to anyone about it and, try and save people any mistakes that I've made or just help along the way.

'cause it, it's a big undertaking. The first thing about a Kickstarter, which is really good in ways is it forces you to do everything properly. 

Okay. 

A video, all of the content, all of the images, your brand strategy, your pricing strategy, your customer service. It really is trial by fire. 

That right to be able to run the campaign.

Yes, and particularly follow up with the campaign afterwards. The campaign that I did went really well, 1500 backers worldwide . 

So if you have a goal at the start, like when you do your Kickstarter, you have a goal of how many backers or how does it work? 

Yes. Essentially you choose a goal. The thing is, with Kickstarter, it's like probably most e-commerce now there's strategy and games to it. So Kickstarter's algorithm is very powerful and you want to get on there quickly.

So in the first 24 hours, in the first day, you actually want to hit your target, which seems counterintuitive because. You set your target low, which is like 10,000, $15,000, but your real target's probably 10 times that. Okay. Particularly when it comes to mold design and manufacturing. You don't get a lot of change back from, a hundred thousand dollars.

Okay. So that's what we're like, I need to see if it's viable. I need this much to be able to set everything up properly. If people resonate with it, and if you get that response, then it's worth doing. And obviously you've already got that money coming in once you, 

yeah. So, so Kickstarter is an all or nothing campaign.

If you don't reach your funding goal, Kickstarter will get no money and you'll get no money. So therefore, Kickstarter, I really want you to hit that goal, which is one of the things behind trying to hit that goal in the first 24 hours. And within that first 24 hours, you should be able to hit your goal if things are going right.

'cause you'll often have your friends and family and you'll have some momentum there and people who you have organized pre-launched who are interested in the campaign. So there's a big spike there in the first. Four days then it starts to taper off because you start to come down the Kickstarter algorithm a little bit.

Um, you're not a new project, you're not ranking quite as highly. So then it's about running ads or working with Kickstarter partners specifically. 'cause they have really curated Facebook audiences. They've done it for the look. The last 20 years, they've built audiences that they know will a back Kickstarter, a product that's not ready yet, and B, they'll maybe know in kitchenware we've got this audience of several thousand people who we can target.

Yeah. Early adopters who like, let's take some risks. So I'm happy to be the first one to see it or get it or access it. 

Yeah. I think it's a type of customer who's, really excited and proud to come across new ideas and support someone who has put themselves on the line. Because that's one of the things, you know, for these big companies to produce a new product, they've often got all the pieces in place to make it happen.

As a solo entrepreneur, like there's a lot of hoops you gotta get through to get a product to market. 

Yeah. 

So that, yeah, that was the first Kickstarter, which did 1500 customers, so a couple of thousand units, and then I had to produce it during COVID. 

Had you, did you have the sort of concept of how it was gonna be manufactured at that stage?

Like where were you at in terms of the manufacturing? Did you knew how much the mold was gonna cost or what, where were you at? 

I did. We had the mold prices nailed down. We had the manufacturing nailed down. In terms of an overall price, like it's always gonna move a little bit. The issue I had was COVID, of course, like at one point the mold set still for.

I think it was four months where that they couldn't get to the factory to test them. And the hugest advice that I can give anyone who's inventing a new product, like a brand new product, a new concept is the gap between. Design and manufacturing. It's so vast. It's incredibly huge. You can have a 3D printed prototype that everyone's saying, Hey, it looks great.

That's gonna work in manufacturing. But until you start building the molds actually testing what's coming out and that's when it really slows down as well. So a change to any change to the mold is kind of like a three to four week turnaround. By the time you've solved the problem, you've done the design change.

They then go, 'cause they, they're huge bits of steel. Then they have to machine and adjust and polish, and it's just a slow process. And then they put it back on the machine, which sometimes can be, three to four hours to half a day of testing just to get it up to temperature to then run some samples.

Yeah, because what is it made of? What's the fabrication? 

Of my, the products recycled plastic and the molds are ginormous bits of steel. 

Yeah. Okay. So it's like huge investment in those molds 

yeah. It is, I've obviously never done another product where you kind of run alongside another bit of design and just adjust.

I feel like that would be an easier process, but when you're just doing something bespoke with a factory where they can't just follow. It does take a long time, and just a lot of learning, to be honest. 

Well, and that's been three years of learning 

i've had several starts and stops mostly. Due to kind of rapid design development. So that initial product that went to the Kickstarter audience, it actually used a bamboo head for the brush head, which once again, I wanted it to be as eco as possible, and I wanted the percentage that was being thrown out to be.

Recyclable, combustible as minimal as possible. This brings us back to the issues with bamboo. It's a beautiful product when used in the right way, and unfortunately, the first part of anything decomposing it's mold. 

Mm. 

Bamboo actually has sugar and starch in its fibers and they wash it for about 24 hours.

Then they bake it to try and crystallize all of those sugars and starches. But if that process isn't done correctly, then mold has a food source and. The mold happens. 

And so water and damp, it's part of the process 

Exactly. Yeah. The water constantly getting hot and cold, dry and wet, and forces the wood to swell and contract, which starts to, open up those fibers and.

, You find yourself stuck in this position where it's like, well, that's the most eco things to do, but the customer doesn't like it and it's not lasting as long as it should, 

as you want it to be, 

So I decided to make the shift and make the shift quickly to recycle plastic head with the still the natural CIL fiber.

So CIL fiber is a byproduct from the agave plant when they make tequila. So they make tequila and there's these really long strands in the plant that come out. They dry those out. Um, and you've just wash those, dry those out and you've gots fiber. So that's kind of stick to the eco values and I think that's one of the things is, which I've learned over time, you know, if you were trying to do an eco brand, the most eco thing you could do is not produce products.

Yeah. Like more, adding more products to the world. Yeah. Okay. 

. So I kind of look at it now that those eco values need to be tied into really good design. 

Yeah, 

having an eco product is not enough. Having a really well designed product with eco values is a better proposition 

and a very long lifespan with,

exactly. And that, that was my thing about elevating an everyday product. How do we design it in a way that a people value, so therefore they won't throw out. And something that'll last a long time, something that they only have to replace. The small percentage of it that wears out is a bit like a toothbrush or anything.

Will the race to the bottom is designed it so fast for manufacturing that you throw out the entire thing. Mm, 

yeah. 

And we'd reach the bottom there, I think. 

Yeah. 

Coming back to a place where people actually value the design and product that they have and enjoy using above all.

I think that's one of the things that through good design, you can elevate someone's user experience every day of something that they're using 

and talk. Touching on that. We'll get back to the manufacturing a little bit, but you talked about that you lived with a product designer, and so that was a big part of that.

You know, how beautiful the product is. The packaging, like your packaging from the very beginning has been next level. Can you touch on that a little? 

When I look, particularly now at the, at the business and where my time is best spent and what value add I truly have as the founder, that's kind of my secret weapon.

I've worked in photography and design my whole career. I love it. It's something I'm really, really proud of. So that's, it is a bit of a secret weapon that I had that I could photograph things, retouch things, put the best foot forward from day one. And truth be told, that would've been a hugely expensive process if I didn't have those skills.



And I think that comes back to like, everyone's coming with history and background. It's like using that and evolving who you are or what you create because you've got this background. 

Yeah. And it's, it's also, to look at yourself and go, what do I truly bring?

So I wish I was more the numbers. 

And love you obviously love it too. 

Yeah, I wish I was more of a numbers person when it comes to business like this. I wish I loved being in the numbers more than I do. That's one thing I've really had to learn and focus on, because at the end of the day. 

You need a 

business to work and be profitable or else it's not gonna be around for long and you're not gonna make any impact or change with a, I know we've had those 

conversations when we have chatted before I go on to back to the manufacturing, with part of that design elements and the packaging, clearly you from the beginning thought that you would, be able to sell this or your distribution.

Was on in terms of I wanna sell it direct to consumer, but I also wanna sell it on the shelves. And so that's where that packaging came into it too. It wasn't just a deliver the product D to C like that. It's like, how's it gonna sit on a shelf? 

Yeah. So I think that comes back to the design aspects and, and the price point kind of early on, kind of figured out my customer was a, a slightly higher price point, and that's why retail really mattered to me.

I really like retail. Essentially you've got these store owners who've put incredible amount of work into curating a beautiful experience for someone to go into and for my product. If you just saw it online and it was say on Amazon. Are people really searching for a high-end dish brush on Amazon?

Not really. So their first 

choice, yeah, 

it's not their first choice, but if they go into a homeware store and it's around the right items, they see the value in that product and they go, yeah, clearly that aligns with what I wanna do. And like I said, the store owner who's curated that space, they really care about the products they have.

And they believe in what they have. 

Yeah. They want the story and be able to sell that too. And they're invested in it as well. 

Yeah. So that was from day one, I was like to tell the story properly from design all the way through. I needed the packaging to ai, I needed the user experience of opening the packaging to be right.

The packaging is actually designed so that it spins around and it creates one entire image with four boxes. 

Yeah, it's so, 

smart way of each stalk and really quickly make a shelf display Yes. With the actual product, not actually having to add more to it. So, yeah, it was just the whole holistic experience of the product.

Yeah. 

And it's also, become a big gifting item, which I kind of knew was there, but it had to be done right. 

For the person who's got everything, what do you get them? 

Exactly. And it is without great packaging and that whole approach to it, if you gave someone a dish brush, they might be underwhelmed.

Yeah. 

But many people who receive this are completely overwhelmed. They're just like, it's awesome. Wow. Like everything about, everything about it works properly. Even down to things like, I'll show you here. Got one here. If I take off the base of the brush? 

Yep. 

The magnetic stand. 

Those who are listening.

Yeah. 

Yes. So here's the brush. It's got the magnetic stand, which attaches to the brush, like so, and it goes on either side of the sink. 

Magnets. Joined together to hold the holders in place. So then you can move the dishcloth on and off the As in use. 

Exactly. So the magnets are super strong, so we designed it so that the magnetic stand can be stored on the inside of the handle.

Which once again is just from a logistics point of view, cleans it up. But from that user experience of everything's been thought through. 

Yeah. 

It shines at the end of the day and people see the value when they dish brush. 

Yeah. And so take us back again. So you've been through some ups and downs and you've just relaunched version two.

Tell us a little bit about that. 

I have version two on Kickstarter right now. 

I'll put the link in the, show notes and the underneath as well. 

Yeah, we're four days into the campaign, which has been a really good start. Version two is an evolution of the design. The overall function and aesthetic has stayed exactly the same.

That is one thing I'm really proud of. I managed to nail that from day one. There's been no complaints over the ergonomics or the actual function of how it works, so that's really cool. But what needed to happen was the internal design specifically for manufacturing, speed of manufacturing and just function of manufacturing the way it was designed previously,

originated from the bamboo hit, which can only be machined in one direction, reduced to to make a male thread. So once that changed, it allowed other parts to change. So we took 12,000 customers. We went through all of their reviews. We kind of got the pain points and we went for version two, which means that you have to make all of the molds again.

You have to go through the entire design process again. 

That's why you've done Kickstarter again, because I was wondering actually. Why you've done it that way again, but yeah. Okay. That explained it. That's 

why I'm back on Kickstarter. The one thing I've done this time is I've fronted all the money for the design development and the tools, so all the new molds are made.

I've actually been in China twice this year visiting, visiting factories, which has just been an awesome experience. 

Mm. 

They're incredibly good at what they do. And the less lessons learned from me were were invaluable proper life experience, which once again is why I started this. I wanted to develop my skillset and learn more.

So that's the thing people ask me about manufacturing right now and I love sharing my experiences. That's good. Well, I've what I've done, so yeah, version two. There's another factor there, which is a purely economic factor. New Zealand and Australia were my test markets. I love both of them. I grew up in New Zealand, I live in Australia now, but they were my test markets to see whether it would work in direct to consumer and whether, whether it would work in retail.

And in both instances, it's proven itself so well. Yeah, I'm extremely happy. The retailers are happy. 

Well, you've got, have you got about half and half? Like what is your balance? 

Yeah. It's essentially half and half. Like I said previously, I really like retail and I like wholesalers and I like working with these independent small stores.

Well, it's, it's 

gonna keep, like people are just gonna keep replenishing their stock for, so you're gonna keep having that lifetime value of that. Customer's gonna be huge, so. And it can go into so many stores based on the design of it and the type of products it is. 

Yeah. But what I had to do there is I had to do DTC as well because no one knew about this product.

No one knew about this brand. So DTC. I've essentially used as a brand building exercise to get people to know the product. And it's a bit of a catch swing too, because you don't wanna be competing against your retailers. Mm-hmm. You know, they've got their customers value. You don't wanna be trying to take their customer as well as selling to them.

But at the same time, I'm spending hundreds of dollars on ad spend to make this product known and brand known. So at trade shows, often people who I meet, they say, Hey, your ads are working incredibly well. It wasn't until I went into this store in Sydney that I realized how nice the product was, and so you've got someone second or third time touchpoint, so they, they kind of go hand in hand for me.

Yeah, I love that. And I think that's really important to remember too, that you can't have one, I don't think you can anymore have one without the other. It does support each other. Yeah, and I think all your, as you said, like your direct to consumer marketing supports the retailers too, because yeah, someone might see it on the ad or two, three times, but then they see it in store or they go and actually touch it, or they need a gift that day or something.

Even as well, like that instantaneous nature of retail. Physical retail is big as well. 

Yeah. And that's where it also brings back to the value point. A lot of people are going into a home where store to spend much more than $60, and then they see this product and they go, wow, look at it. It's beautiful.

That's also a gift. So that's the perceived value and the right, brand positioning and store as well. 

Yeah. I love that. And so tell me, the new manufacturing, you've got a, bit better margin or you've just worked on, being able to scale in different places because of that?

Yeah. 

Yeah. So the, it's kind of twofold. The version two design it. There's a few things that I wanted to adjust a few little, little problems, but it also increased margin through more efficient manufacturing. What's actually happened is we've managed to improve the product and make the product better.

While still reducing the margin. 

And that was streamlining the process too. 

Exactly. Which then the main thing there is looking to go overseas to get distributors involved, you obviously need a lot more margin. And from my point, I'm a team of one. I have a couple of people that help me.

One with customer service, one with, running ads and things like that. 

Toast. She's definitely a big help at your straight taste. 

She is the true, true secret with she. She's great. She absolutely loves the trade shows and I can't thank thank her enough. She just shows up. She's just involved.



Passionate about how good this product is too. 

Yeah, and it makes it a lot of fun. Like trade shows should be fun. It's a great experience. It's great brand building. Meeting other founders. And that's one thing with mum being there, she's happy to run the store while I go and chat to other brands and figure out some extra strategies.

Yeah. 

Which once again, is the overseas thing as well. 

Yeah. 'cause I know you've had lots of conversations with, different fellow exhibitors and different people who've been there before. , Kelly from Klipsta. I know you've had a chat with her or you met her early days.

She's my favorite. 

Yeah. 

Orbit key, another one. 

Say orbit key. You've done a great job and memo. 

Memo bottle. Yeah. So those three, you know, Klipsta orbit key and memo bottle, they were really helpful for, to me early on, I consider them friends, but it's one of those things of if people see that you're aligning with them or you, or that you've got the kind of right start.

People are more than willing to help. Yeah. 'cause it's, there's huge markets out there and it's just such a different world. I'm actually coming on board with a distributor in Canada, which will be my first distributor next year. 

Yeah. 

That was introduced to me by one of those brands. So that's a really exciting start.

It's quite hard there to find a partner, particularly overseas who has the same vision for your brand. A lot of distributors just wanna sell product, which is understandable. That's their job, is to sell product. It's about finding the right stores and the right partners to build with 

And I think that's a good point on distributors because not everyone knows sort of, I guess, what they do, but essentially they're doing all the sales for you, handling everything.

And that's why you do give them more margin because they give you that one big order that you just send and then they distribute out to all their contacts and stores to take place the orders. But it does mean you get generally less control because. So I guess that's where that early days of conversations, like you knowing where you're both going is important.

Yeah, and I think there's a real give and take there because this is only my first start with the distributor, but they're investing in your stock as well. So usually it's the brand, yeseco that's investing in the stock and they sit it in a country and they churn through. You try and get through that run as quickly as possible.

But with the distributor, they import on bulk. So they're investing in the stock, which means that they want the stock to turn over as well. Yeah. So you've gotta start small and a bit conservative there for both parties to make sure that it's working, because you don't want the distributor to all of a sudden have several thousand units that they want to get rid of really quickly, and they put it in some kind of clearance store and your brand just.

Takes a dive in that country. 'cause everyone goes, Hey, we got it at this, you know, 55% off at this place. It is essentially out of your hands that there's obviously a lot of conversations and contracts and things you can try and put in place, but at the end of the day, it's their product to sell at that point.

They've bought it from you. 

So we've got the Kickstarter running now for 30 days, which will then, it'll give us a good insight into how many units we're doing for that first production run. All of the stockists in New Zealand are patiently standing by.

They've been incredible to stand by me through the last 12 months, and I know it's hard for them because they, I'm, I get emails daily saying, Hey, we woke, got. 25, 50, 75 customers standing by. When is it, yeah. So that is, that's the thing that's kept me going to be honest, is the feedback and from stores and from consumers is, hey, we love it.

Like keep going. 

Yeah, keep it, bring it out. Again. We need it. We need the access to it. 

We need it out. So we missed Christmas this year, which is of course, upsetting. But it's one of those things that I did version two to get the product right. It's taken six months longer than expected, which is that manufacturing 

thing.



We are ready to launch in 2026 with it. So the Kickstarter is a pre-order for stock that we should have by February, next year. 

Okay, so then that'll be going out then? 

I'll try and never stop the company again, because at start of the year. 

Your probably gone like up and down

exactly. And my, my, my accountant, when I said I was gonna change from version one to version two, he is like, okay, how are you gonna keep selling version one? I said, no, I'm gonna stop everything. And he said to me, whoa. How, why? It was just, that just came back to my morals of the, I didn't wanna sell version one right up until all of a sudden version two is released.

I was wanted to be honest with customers, Hey, I'm doing this. There are gonna be design changes and product changes, but I wanted, you know, there to be a large enough gap there. I didn't want to be the iPhone where they, all of a sudden someone bought it a week ago and a new one comes out and they're upset.

Yeah. And so you've added different things since then as well, so you've got some additional add-ons to the product. Well, tell me about that. 

We do, so we've got the microfiber closs, those are in stone and black, and we've got expanding little sponges and charcoal and white again, and we've got the Swedish dish gloss.

These were, and I think that's where, I dunno if you've seen people talk about, one of the coaches I used to work with, Erica Reitman. Her biggest thing is, she used to be an interior designer as well, but merch in your life.

So she talks about merch your life everywhere. And so it's like every little aspect, if you can merch, merch it in that way. So it's like all those little elements you've shown there, it's like the whole look and feel. Like why can't, why do you need a green and yellow? Ew. They're so, why are they so bright and ugly?

What? Why 

You've absolutely nailed it there. That was the whole thinking, and I've spoken to a really much larger brand and they said, Hey, you've nailed this one product. Now you need to think of all of the touch points around that one situation of being in your kitchen sink. Why would you? Get this dish brush that you love and then have the extra items, dishcloths and sponges and things that you don't like.

It's that whole touch point and experience. And for yes, eco, we call it elevating the every day. And that's why we've got all the little add-ons. It wasn't about reinventing the wheel, it was about doing things that increase the user experience and for a brand also increases average oral value. 

We wanna always bump that up, which Yeah, definitely. 'cause you probably bundled, I think you do bundle as well anyway. Doing you on your website? 

We do bundle a little bit. It's just logistics and shipping costs and ad spend these days you get cut into really quickly and you lose a lot of margin and almost a lot of sleep.

Was that order even, cost effective if you're offering free shipping and all of a sudden it's to a rural address. Yeah. Um, and, and you get I, and it's of those. 

It's one of those things where it is sort of like I say to people, they're like, oh, I can't afford to wholesale.

I'm like, if you can't afford to wholesale, you can't afford to sell, because if you don't have that extra margin in your retail price, then yeah, all those things you're talking about get cut into so quickly. You shouldn't be doing retail if you can't afford to wholesale, I believe. 

Yeah, and it's also wholesale's.

That kind of cleaner experience is probably the way to call it. It's really clear what's happened in that sale. Whereas direct to consumer, you've got a lot of variables going on. Like I just mentioned with the rural shipping that in New Zealand and Australia, if you get caught out by that, particularly in Australia, you're lucky to break it.

Quadruple the price. Which is crazy and it's 

hard, it's hard to control when you're trying to move lots of units, direct consumer, whereas that retail customer who you've got that, relationship with and they believe in the product and they believe in you, all of a sudden that person's buying in bulk.

Not huge amount, but they're buying, , 12 brushes at a time. And so therefore that exchange is really good and you know it's going to someone and that's also a customer. A retailer who you don't have to sell to every time or a direct to consumer customer. You have to sell and find a new customer every time.

Yeah. 

Where that retailer customer, they know their town, they know the volume of people, how many units they can do, and for their profit, they're selling on your behalf, which is huge. It means a lot. 

Yeah, definitely. It's a huge, for your brand to have all these salespeople around everywhere doing the shelling for you.

Like it's, I say to people too, like most of the time the people that you can reach through these stores, you are never probably gonna reach unless you've got the biggest advertising budget in the world because. You can only spend so much on your marketing, you can't reach every single person.

Whereas they can reach people who are never maybe even on Facebook or on Instagram, social. 

Yeah. I think that was one of the first trade shows I went to. And people were saying, I'm from this town. And I was like, I have no idea where that was. And so I went home each night, from the trade show and I'd look on a map and I'd say I could drive for the next 10 years trying to visit stores.

And I would never find. The store or this customer. And I think that's one thing, to admit to yourself, if you're a team of one and you've got a global product, you need to find ways to, either grow a giant team, or you start to find people to partner with like a distributor or the right store that.

They become a brand ambassador for you? 

Absolutely, 

For me, the best thing I can focus on is the product, the product and the manufacturing, and bringing new things to market that makes your brand and that customer 

experience that someone has with the designer elements that you've, created.

Yeah, and I was never someone to camera or. Out there pushing sales. I was at home doing retouching and post-production, which is, uh, very long days, making great images. But this was part of the personal development and growth that, hey, if I'm gonna do this brand and I truly believe in it, and everything I've done, I have to be the person to camera and helping build the brand and creating content and.

Putting myself out there, because a lot of the times that's what people wanna see these days. They, they wanna know what's behind this product. Is it Proctor and Gamble just pushing out another new product that they've, they've just, just bought? Or is it someone who truly believes in what they've done and it's building and it's designed it 

from scratch to build this, you know, over years to get to this point.

Yeah, 

yeah. 

Yeah. I 

haven't noticed recently, but are you doing a lot more to camera and conversations? 

I'm starting to, yeah. 

Be hired, build it in public, as they say. 

Yeah, exactly. So yeah, it, that's a personal growth thing, which is great. Like I, I really enjoy gonna trade shows now because, and I think that's one of the things, if it's an authentic story.

Becomes really easy. Yeah. Because you're literally just telling people what happened. 

Yeah. 

And a lot of the times there's so many pain points there that are actually lessons that you could share with people. And so it just becomes such a, a nice experience. 

And you're so proud of the product as well because you're like, it's been through all these stages and I'm getting it to this point now and you're excited to offer, obviously, I, I've just got the little visual that you can see that it'll, you change the heads over.

Like, you know, it's that whole thing of like, I've evolved because you know how the product is used now and what the needs are and you've sort of solved as you go type of thing. 

Yeah, and I think perseverance is probably. The biggest thing, I have no doubt that every founder probably says it on, on your podcast.

No, not really. But it's crucial. I did, I did a ring about that the other day, like, you know, the biggest thing, it's like business is about consistency and persistence. You gotta just keep showing up. 

I think what's kept me going is that original idea. Mm-hmm. And like you say, the pride that I have in what I've created keeps me going.

And when I go to someone's house and they've got the dish brush and the sink, and they love it and they use it every day, I'm like, wow. I've managed to create something that impacts people every single day. 

Mm-hmm. 

In a minor way. 

Yeah, 

it's an awesome thing to do.

Yeah. 

So, yeah, perseverance, 

perseverance. 

That's what a lot like friends and family say to me. They're like, we can't believe what you've, , put yourself through. You've been , and just kept going. . There's, the scale of the world. That is one thing I remind myself of constantly.

There's so many people out there. 

Yeah. 

If you get it right, you can get it really right. Eventually, 

and I think as you said, like even touched on there about the trade show, the people coming, like I say to people all the time, they're like, oh, , the, the shops are closing, physical retails are closing down.

I'm like, that's been happening forever. Like it's just a cycle. It's very normal that shops close down, new ones open. Of course there may be less or there may be different ones, but just the fact that there's towns out there, shops out there, even within the small country of, say Australia and New Zealand, that you've never.

Heard of or would never have discovered. Like there are so many stores and people out there. It's unbelievable. 

It really is. It's incredible. Where convenience of, buying something online these days, it's great. You can quickly jump on, you can find what you need. It can show up at your doorstep in a few days.

But that retail experience of being somewhere and having a walk around, grabbing a coffee and seeing new ideas, I don't think it's ever gonna go away. And if it did, it would be terribly sad. Yeah, I don't think so 

I think people do have to have an experience about their store how they curate the, space and what products they bring in and what stories they can tell behind them as well. But it's, it's not, it's physical. Retail is not going anywhere and I think the last five years have definitely shown that as well. 

Yeah. And there's a lot of stores out there, nor Sue as one in Melbourne who have been incredibly generous to me and helping launch,

to their customer base, but they have a beautiful store in Melbourne, but they also have a really strong relationship to their customers online. So they've nurtured a. Audience on Instagram and things like that by being to camera? By talking to their audience. 

Yes. 

And so now the people who come into their store, they also have a real relationship with them online.

Yeah. 

So I think everyone's kind of walking that balance, but quite often the authentic people who are putting in the hard work shine through 

anything else that you can touch on that you've worked on? So you've talked about social a little bit there, ads. Anything else that you've done to get exposure?

Is it, have you tried editorial, pr, collaborations, anything in particular? Email marketing? How much time do you spend on that? 

Yeah, so there's been a lot of walking before I run with a lot of this. The one thing which I'm really cannot wait to get involved in, but is more influencer type people. I don't wanna do it as paid influencers.

I just wanna give the product to people who love design and good things like that. And if they wanna, if they like it after six months or a year, they take a photo of it and 

share it. 

Yeah. But so email marketing, I have a very strong list on Klaviyo obviously, but I don't bombard them at this point.

If you haven't got the product right now, it's a bit hard 

if I haven't got the product. And also if I'm not offering enough beyond just selling them a product, I feel that's a thing of like, you don't want to alienate an audience by just saying bye bye bye. You kind of wanna go above and beyond that of like, Hey, we are actually, you know, teamed up with a chef who's creating these dishes.

We've got these recipes I plan on doing. Um. A design type show called, uh, I'll do the dishes and I go to, I, I go to friends' houses or designers or people I've met, and we cook a meal together. We have a quick chat about what's been going on in our lives and design and things like that. And I do the dishes at their house.

I think you get invited everywhere. 

Yeah. It, it's just. How do you bring a, I want go to people's houses and have those conversations, but how do you bring more to your audience than just saying, buy my product? 

A hundred percent. I think that's, I just did the email marketing course, for run it through live with a few of my people that I've got an email marketing

the first thing module we go through, it's like, it cannot just be sales. You've got to have content and, create an experience for someone and really understand and get to know who your customer is and what they love to, how do they like to be entertained or what do they like to be exposed to or what are they interested in?

Obviously your customers are design, you know, they have a design aesthetic that they love, so. Lots of things that you could play into there. I think, that'll be exciting when that kicks off next year. 

And it, it's an honor for someone to take time out of their day, to read your email marketing or to watch your video on Instagram.

So a lot of the times someone's on Instagram, they're just having a little bit of a scroll to take a break from their day. So if you do something that gives them a laugh. Or gives them a little bit of an insight. It's a nice experience for everyone involved. So you'll, you'll probably see when I put myself on Instagram these days, it's bloopers and all 

the real

andre just flailing away, just chatting to camera and. I enjoy it more. A lot of friends and family, they just have really good laughs and it and it's a nice, yeah, it's a good thing to do. 

Takes the pressure off too, if you're not trying to make it perfect, right? Yeah. It's just real. Yeah. And definitely I think people respond to that realness more than anything.

It's so crucial. So would you change anything about your journey? 

Yeah. I mean, the easy answer is no, because it's all led me to this point and I've, I've learned all the lessons myself and the hard way and things like that. I could look back and say doing it alone is.

, You've got full control and you can make the decisions that you wanna do. At the start of this year, stopping production of version one and waiting it out, I had another partner or an investor and they said, that's a, you're 

not doing that crazy 



We are not doing that. Like, how, how are we gonna live? That would be totally fair. But doing that on my own allowed me to make those decisions. But also if I had a partner. Who had another skillset, whether it was sales or numbers or direct to consumer marketing or whatever it was, we could probably move twice as fast.

Mm. 

So that is probably something to think of early on. Do you have enough skill sets to do this alone? 

Yeah. 

Do you have enough passion and drive to do it alone? And do you have the resources to make it happen? Do not have a family at this point. But if I had a family, I would've made completely different decisions.

Yep. 

Because I've taken a lot of risk. Yeah, a lot of risk, a lot of downtime, a lot of time where I could have been working in my profession and making a salary and getting ahead that way, but I've taken a huge bet on myself. And the product to build up to this point. So that's probably the personal look of when I look back of, of how I do it from a product point of view, if you've come up with a new product and a new idea, you need to be really smart on how you get that to manufacturing.

And 

is that working with a manufacturer earlier? Or what would you say there? 

Unless you've done it before, you probably don't have a relationship with that manufacturer. So you've come across a new manufacturer or someone suggested it to you. There's still a lot that someone who, with manufacturing, every time you make a change, it's like, yes, we think that should work.

No one can give a definitive answer until it's done, so quite often you get a percentage of like, Hey, this is 50 50, or actually no, this is 90%. Like if this goes wrong, everyone's gonna be shot. My advice there with a brand new product is to probably spend more money earlier, which is. Really, really scary and really hard because you, you're not sure, you're not sure whether you have a customer.

You're not sure whether people will pay that price point, but if you've done it before, go for it. But if you haven't and you've just designed the product, I would try and team up with a really good product design company who can help take it from that. Prototype through to manufacturing.

'cause they will often have the relationship with the manufacturer that they suggest where they've done 10, 20, 30, 50 different types of products. So they have a real history and a flow on there that can help speed that up and get you to manufacturer. And it may not even speed it up. It may still take an extremely long time, but they'll have that relationship and they'll be able to say to you, Hey, this is not going how it should go.

I had a podcast with Link it, but I'll link it as well. But yeah, I had a podcast with a product designer and yeah, we talked a little bit about that in terms of, she's that connection between the design and the manufacturing because she's like, all well and good, this is what your design wants to look like, but how's that gonna work on the other side?

So sort of having that relationship definitely would help people. I think that's so crucial. 

So, yeah, I made the mistake with version one. I spoke to a product design company who's originally from Melbourne, but also have a office up here in Byron. And I spoke to them when I first designed version one, and when they told me how much it was gonna cost to get manufacturing and I went, I don't understand.

I literally have the product in my hand here. It. You know, the manufacturer says it's gonna be good, and the 3D prototype looks incredible. And here we are several years later and I've gone back to them, their name is Catapult Design, and they're extremely well known in Australia. They do incredible work, incredible products, but they've stayed in touch with me through the whole journey.

I've stayed in touch with them, and once version two was happening, I said. I need to work with them. I need to understand their manufacturing partners, and use their experience and expertise. 'cause I didn't have it. I didn't have the expertise or mostly I did not have the experience.

And that is one thing that they've shown to me time and time again through this process. That it's needed. 

It's needed. 

Wing winging it will usually not work out. 

So now you are starting to get in touch with more distributors and is that something you're gonna expand on as well after you sort of get this version two out into the market in 2026, 

very, very much that that is a core focus.

The core focus will be to get all of the stockists in New Zealand and Australia back up and running. And happy 'cause that's my starting point. And then from there, build distributors overseas. Once again, it's gonna be a bit of a cautious. 

Thing 

there of, of who's the right partner, who's not. I will probably put stock in certain countries and try and build it there first, 

as in through direct consumer.

So let's say the UK or or Europe, we, you know, we get a certain amount of stock. Mark it that way. 

I think it's a good sort of tiptoe into it 

it is a tiptoe one to prove that it's working. And then you've got leverage to speak to stores and speak to distributors.

'cause they've either seen the ads or someone's had it. Or you can say to them, Hey, in the last six months. With a LI Limited ad spend, we've managed to do this and quite a lot of the time they'll be a lot more interested than them having to just take an unknown product to market.

Yeah. 

So that is the building blocks ahead, which I can't wait to be going again 'cause Yeah, you'll be like, come 

I need to have my warehouse of product. 

Yeah, and that's been the hard part. There's been so many starts and stops that I haven't had a clear picture of the business. It wasn't until Christmas last year where we had kind of a good, let's say three to six months of trading that I was like, okay, everything is working, how it should be working.

I just need to take this other step to be able to go further. 

Yeah. Okay. Covered lots of stuff anyway. You've shared so much. Valuable lessons here, Jamie. And so exciting. And I can't wait for you to, yeah, just have this new launch come out and obviously if anyone wants to check it out, they should go to the Kickstarter link that's gonna be in the show notes and so they can pre-order the V two, version two.

Thank you so much for sharing everything. 

Such a pleasure. I mean, we met at trade shows, I dunno how many years ago now, and you were kind enough to help me with advice at the original start of it all, which I appreciate so much and, and I'm happy to do the same for anyone as well.

If people wanna know about Kickstarter, if people wanna, understand how that works and when it's a good idea or a bad idea because like many things you are giving away margin and percentage and, you are getting squeezed is the only way to describe it. But you are also opening yourself to opportunities, opening yourself to a huge market, potential markets.

So once again, it's a brand building exercise and a product building exercise. So, thanks for having me. It's been great. I think we've covered it all. 

I think we've covered it all. I think what we'll do is we'll touch base again towards the end of next year and just see what's next, where you're at, what's happening, and how everything's gone

since now. 

Absolutely. We'll see whether this determination and persistence is, still there at the end of next year and we're flying overseas. 

Sounds good. Sounds good. All right. Amazing. Thanks, Jamie. Okay, bye. Thanks now. 

Appreciate it. 

Bye.