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I've been on NeoGAF before some of you were born but I've mostly just lurked. I've trolled some sony/ms fanboy threads here and there (and got the occasional ban for it) but these last few years I put my head down and became something of a workaholic. I needed to prove to my self that I could put my mind to something and make it into something that can thrive.
Plus, I was getting bored at my profession so I said screw it let's go do something. My long time colleague and friend always bounced ideas off of me, and I him. We're both tinkers. So we collaborated on this bathroom accessory and it turned out really great. I mean, works better than any of the alternatives and wasn't crazy expensive to get into production. Gave some prototypes out to friends and they loved it.
So we put it on kickstarter and worked our butts off to get the word out and the feedback was promising. It did pretty well on there and we knew we had to get some more investors on board to try to make it big while the opportunity presented itself. Fast forward 8 months later and we're on track to break 7-figures in 1st year sales, got large PO's from at least one major retailer, and have been scheduled for an HSN appearance next month. We've been approached by multiple reality entrepreneur shows as well recently and a few large companies for licensing.
It feels sort of surreal at times, but mostly we feel lucky/blessed/fortunate. Now I feel like I just wanna go and try my hand at something else to see if this wasn't just a fluke. I tried coming out with stuff before (different inventions, businesses, etc.) and it was a whole lot of fail. Thankfully I was too stubborn to give up and I learned how powerful the gained experience from your failures can be. So now I'm browsing that McMansions thread in the hopes of buying something that says "I'm living the american dream".
There is a problem with becoming a workaholic, though... it's hard to shut it off. The mind constantly races. When you're doing something non work-related, you always think "I could be doing something more productive right now". It's pretty messed up. I feel most alive when I'm creating something, so I'm probably going to step away from this project sooner than later. Just thought I should share while I had a free moment.
tl;dr came out with an invention for the bathroom, it's selling a lot, and the money may or may not be spent on extravagant things. also, being a workaholic is a trap.
edit: since mod seems to have OK'd linking to it, the invention is called TubShroom
Update 9/29/16:
Plus, I was getting bored at my profession so I said screw it let's go do something. My long time colleague and friend always bounced ideas off of me, and I him. We're both tinkers. So we collaborated on this bathroom accessory and it turned out really great. I mean, works better than any of the alternatives and wasn't crazy expensive to get into production. Gave some prototypes out to friends and they loved it.
So we put it on kickstarter and worked our butts off to get the word out and the feedback was promising. It did pretty well on there and we knew we had to get some more investors on board to try to make it big while the opportunity presented itself. Fast forward 8 months later and we're on track to break 7-figures in 1st year sales, got large PO's from at least one major retailer, and have been scheduled for an HSN appearance next month. We've been approached by multiple reality entrepreneur shows as well recently and a few large companies for licensing.
It feels sort of surreal at times, but mostly we feel lucky/blessed/fortunate. Now I feel like I just wanna go and try my hand at something else to see if this wasn't just a fluke. I tried coming out with stuff before (different inventions, businesses, etc.) and it was a whole lot of fail. Thankfully I was too stubborn to give up and I learned how powerful the gained experience from your failures can be. So now I'm browsing that McMansions thread in the hopes of buying something that says "I'm living the american dream".
There is a problem with becoming a workaholic, though... it's hard to shut it off. The mind constantly races. When you're doing something non work-related, you always think "I could be doing something more productive right now". It's pretty messed up. I feel most alive when I'm creating something, so I'm probably going to step away from this project sooner than later. Just thought I should share while I had a free moment.
tl;dr came out with an invention for the bathroom, it's selling a lot, and the money may or may not be spent on extravagant things. also, being a workaholic is a trap.
edit: since mod seems to have OK'd linking to it, the invention is called TubShroom
Update 9/29/16:
- Thank you once again, from the bottom of my heart, to everyone who has had kind words, advice, and support for us. We're very blessed and we certainly won't take it for granted.
- Everything is moving so fast right now and things have been going swimmingly. It's definitely a rush. I constantly have to force myself to take breaks so I can dedicate time to the family. I play the weekly games of softball, but that's about my only extra-curriculars these days, other than taking the wife & kids out to fall fairs and other fun stuff. I did finally get to watch Suicide Squad the other day... damn, what a trainwreck.
- We added one employee to our two man team and we have been outsourcing as much as we can in terms of distribution, sales, marketing, admin stuff, etc. although we still do much of it ourselves. Scaling (aka ramping up) is definitely a challenge to get right and still keep things going smoothly while hitting all the targets. Start-ups that grow quickly often times hire an experienced MBA to handle the high-level scaling because it really does require quite a bit of expertise to nail it.
- We started rolling out to Bed, Bath & Beyond locations nationwide. Will take a few months to get into all, but should be in all by year's end. It was surreal to walk into one yesterday and, for the first time, see TubShroom in a brick and mortar location. Early reports have it moving well so crossing my fingers that it can keep up. We're onboarding (ie setting up) with a few other national chains, so hopefully those go as well as BB&B. When I was there, some lady picked one up, examined it and then put it back down. I was about to call her back and sell her on it but then I decided to let nature run it's course, instead lol. Here's a pic I snapped yesterday:
- Our upcoming product, called SinkShroom, has raised over $67k in pre-orders via Kickstarter so we're very happy about that. We should have that out to pre-order customers in late November. I don't think the demand is quite as high with clogged sinks as it is with tub drains but we'll see. We did get a lot of requests for it so it could do well, hopefully.
- The counterfeit battle is still ongoing and will probably go on for the life of the product, but the goal is to get it in check and to send a message. We've hired a firm that specializes in brand protection and they're already on the case. We want to cut the head off of the biggest snake first to slow the flow of fake goods into the markets... using a combination of criminal and civil avenues.
- The other project I've been working on is called TOGA. It's a holder/upgrade/keychain for EOS lip balms. EOS has taken the lip balm market by storm in the west, as many of you know, and one day, as I was admiring their quick rise up the market share charts against more established players (Burt's Bees, Chapstick, etc.), it hit me that perhaps something that could make it easier to use could do well. My daughters use the silicone holders for the purell hand sanitizers so this was inspired by that in many ways. The Kickstarter preview work-in-progress page can be found here. I honestly don't know what to expect, but I plan to launch it at the end of next week to find out. This is the project that I mentioned is being dedicated to help improve education & development for the world's most impoverished people/areas. Any thoughts, feedback, or advice any of you can provide would, as always, be most welcomed. I've got a solid roll out plan in place, but ultimately it will be the market that decides it's fate. This is the first time I'm sharing this publicly, so feel free to critique or ridicule
