Creating a product to solve a problem – with Laura Seago – Futliit

Welcome to the Bring Your Product Ideas to Life podcast, practical advice

and inspiration to help you create and sell your own physical products.

Here's your host, Vicki Weinberg.

Hi, today I'm talking to Laura Seago from Futliit.

Futliit makes LED backpacks that use tech to make you properly visible.

Their smart light up backpacks are ideal for kids walking to school,

commuters, and in fact anyone who needs to be seen at night.

In this episode, Laura explains the problem that she had and the product

that she created to overcome it.

I think many of us can probably relate to having a problem and thinking, I

wish there was something out there.

Um, and Laura did just that.

She actually created it.

Um, she tells us all about how she did that, all the people she involved.

Um, there were lots of, lots of teenagers that she spoke to, to find out exactly

what they wanted from the product.

And, um, I think Laura's story is fascinating.

Um.

Everything she's done I think is brilliant.

She did so much research.

She just put so much into her product, and in fact, I'm going to stop talking

now and let Laura tell you all about it.

So, hi Laura.

Thank you so much for being here.

Oh, thank you for having me.

It's really good to talk to you.

So can we please start if you give an introduction to yourself,

your business, and what you sell?

Yeah, no problem.

So I launched Futliit this summer and we make LED backpacks that use

technology to make you properly visible when you're out and about.

So our backpacks light up with two strips of LEDs and they are ideal for

kids walking to school, for commuters and anybody really who needs to be a bit

more visible when they're out and about at nighttime or in low light conditions.

Oh, thank you so much.

And can you talk to us a bit about your inspiration for

creating the Futliit please?

Yeah, so it all started when my elder daughter,

um, started at secondary school.

So she had to walk through the village to catch, um, a bus to go off into town.

We live in rural Warwickshire and our village, it is lovely, but we are

basically little lanes, single track road, no pavement, no street lights.

And very, very quickly after she'd started, of course the clocks changed and

I started to realize that she was pretty much invisible when she was walking.

She's got a dark Navy uniform on.

She's got dark tights, dark shoes.

You know, a dark coat, and as an adult, it's really obvious

what you do in that scenario.

You put on something luminous with lots of reflective strips on it,

and you put a light on your back and you carry a torch and you make

yourself as visible as possible.

Well, I'll tell you what, when you are 11, 12, 13, that is the last thing you

want to do, and the thought of actually having to wear something luminous, my

daughter was like, I can't do that.

I don't want to stand out.

I just want to merge into the background.

I'm a teenager.

So I started to look at what, what there might be out there and sort of

solutions that I could come up with.

So I thought, well, okay, well we've got lots of bike lights in the garage.

Maybe I can attach a bike light to her bag.

And that wasn't ideal.

It was fiddly and it needed to be taken off during the day, otherwise it

dropped off at school or it got broken.

Um, there are kind of backpack lights that you can get that attach.

Again, they're great if you're an adult, but when you are 11, 12, 13

and you spend your time chucking your bag around, they get caught on things.

They fall off.

You know, 11 year olds don't, don't take care of things in the way that adults do.

So I started to think, well, maybe I could find a bag that

had got lights already in it.

Well, there weren't that really that many out there.

Um, so that was where it really began, because I thought, maybe I could

design something, maybe I could come up with a, a solution to this problem.

Because I can't surely be the only mum, uh, or parent in the UK who

is looking, thinking, I really want my child to have independence.

I want them to be able to walk to school.

This is important.

But at the same time, thinking, oh my words, this is really the first

time she's been out without an adult.

With her I'm reasonably confident in her road sense.

But, you know, accidents happen.

Kids get distracted, kids do silly things, and drivers get distracted.

So may maybe there, maybe there's an opening here.

So that, that was really the kind of the, the start of it.

Well, thank you.

Thank you for sharing all of that.

And I think you're right.

Um, I've seen some of the stats on road safety that you shared on your Instagram,

and they're actually really scary.

It's really frightening, isn't it?

I looked at an, um, office for National Statistics report the other

day, and this was from last year.

So they said that 361 pedestrians were killed.

5,032 were seriously injured.

And 11,261 had minor injuries.

You know, that's a huge amount of people who, who were being injured, pedestrians

being injured in, in road incidents.

The real killers for me were things like the peak time for pedestrians to be

killed or seriously injured was 3:00 PM till 6:00 PM prime time for walking home

from school or walking home from work.

30% of fatalities take place on rural roads.

And 13% of all accidents happen to those under 11.

And I just thought, that's really scary.

It's really scary and obviously, you know, the onus is really on drivers, but

you know, the, the changes to the, um, highway code make that really clear that,

you know, the drivers really need to take care of vulnerable pedestrians, vulnerable

road cyclists, horse riders, et cetera.

But again, the, the more I thought of that, the more you can do to

make your child visible, the better.

Absolutely.

Or yourself as well.

I mean, I don't know if there are any statistics about time of year when more

accidents happen, but that probably more do happen in that three to six

window in the winter, like now when it's dark, because I've had a few

incidents where I've been driving and then suddenly someone's there because,

you know, and often it's an adult, not a child, you know, they may be

walking back from somewhere, but they've got a rucksack on and dark clothes.

They haven't got any kind of lights.

Yeah.

And you don't honestly see them until you, you know, if you're driving with

your headlights or you don't honestly see them until you're almost there.

And it's really scary and I think you are right that pedestrians do.

I know it's definitely on drivers, but I think anything a pedestrian

can do to make themselves more visible just makes sense, doesn't it?

Yeah.

Yeah.

You're exactly right.

My husband came home the other day and he'd been driving home from

work and seen a lad who, who had, he'd sort of looked when he stepped

out into the road but didn't really clock what was coming and walked out.

And Richard said his heart was in his mouth thinking.

Oh my word.

The driver's not going to see him because again, as you say, he was dark,

dark rucksack, dark school uniform.

You know, the more you can be visible, the better.

Absolutely.

And so when you looked.

So I know there are all sorts of, like you say things, I've got

wristbands that I, you know, yeah.

during my rounds to keep me visible.

You can get lights and all kinds of things, but were there not, at that time,

did you find any backpacks that had lights included or was there nothing out there?

Yeah, I found some.

Um, but again, that, there were quite a few aimed at cyclist.

But they are very luminous, so they were kind of out from a teen style perspective.

So that was the end of that.

Um, there were some that were kind of suitable and so we had a look

at those and kind of went through the kind of, do we like this one?

Do we not, what don't we like about it?

How bright actually are the lights, because some of them have,

there's stuff called EL wire.

So EL wire is a, um, is a type of wire that when you put a current through

it from a battery, it will glow.

And it's used in quite a lot in things like, um, dressing

up, dressing up costumes.

I think they use it for a lot of cosplay type, you know, those fancy costumes.

So we got ourselves a few strips of that, um, in various different colours.

And then we literally made a mock up of what we wanted and I made my poor

husband walk up and down in the dark in the streets and outside with me measuring

how far he could go before I lost sight of him, or he really wasn't visible.

And quite quickly did we realize that the bags with the EL wiring

just weren't bright enough.

They, they just didn't glow as clearly as we wanted them to.

And they've also got, when they've got like a, a little battery pack attached to

them, when the current goes through the wire it actually makes a humming sound.

So you can, it's just about audibe enough to be really annoying.

So I thought, right, that's out.

We don't want that.

So then we were down to the L E D, L E D lights.

So we sort of went through the same process again and then started to

look at what did we like about the backpacks and what didn't we, which

is where my lovely, lovely team of testers and parents came in.

So I got together a little group of teens, and they probably ranged in ages.

At that point I think, Alice is 16 now, so they were probably about 13, 14,

down to about five or six, and started to talk to them about what, what did

they like about their school bag?

Why did they like the things that they did?

Like what was really annoying?

What would be better?

And in the whole process of, um, no idea is a bad idea, wrote everything.

Then discounted some of the more bizarre ideas, like wouldn't it

be really good if it had a massive speaker on the back and then you

could play music like really loudly?

No.

As a parent, no, that's not a good idea.

But some of the things that they were really interested in were things that

sort of were quite surprising actually.

They took it really seriously.

So water bottle pockets, you know, the usual topic of conversation that

suddenly became a really big issue.

How deep should they be?

Because actually if they're not deep enough, it transpires when you chuck your

bag on the floor in the corner of the classroom, your water bottle comes out.

If they haven't got elastic round the top, if they're too loose at the top,

when you go through doors, there's a danger that they get caught on the

door handle and then get ripped off.

So actually the, the kids were really useful giving us a kind of

an insight into how they actually use their bag kind of day to day.

What sort of a handle did they want on it?

Did they just want a strap?

Did they want a grab handle?

Did they want a handle to hang it up?

Where are they kept during the day?

How, how big do they need to be?

Because if it's got to fit in a locker, you can't have

anything that's too enormous.

Um, and the parents were, were sort of useful as well.

People saying things like, we want a key holder.

It's got to have some method of keeping a house key safe, because actually if you're

going to come home on the bus or you're going to walk home and let yourself in.

You know, several parents were saying the number of door keys we've been

through, because he keeps losing them, you know, so, so all that kind of

input was, was really, really useful.

I did get through a lot of bars of chocolate though, bribing everyone.

That's amazing and I think that's so valuable.

I just actually recorded a podcast episode yesterday just by myself talking

about this sort of research exactly.

And why it's just so important.

Because yes, you could have sat down and asked your daughter, which I'm

sure you did, but she's one person, and actually the more people you can

speak to and get input from, just the more rich and valuable that.

Yeah, they're, becomes, better.

And actually parents had had different views from kids

and their kids were quite open.

Actually what happened to their bags during the day?

I mean, one of the things that I decided I was going to do fairly quickly was to

make sure that the, um, there's a device sleeve in the bag, or the device sleeve

is padded all the way around, including the bottom, because I watched one lad and

he said, oh look, you know this, I like this because it's got a special sleeve.

I can put my laptop in, and he demonstrated by picking his laptop up

and dropping it into the sleeve, and there was an audible thud as it hit the

ground at the bottom and all the parents kind of winced and went, oh my word.

That's awful.

Winced.

That wasn't the immediate thing.

I was like, right, if my sleeves need to be padded on the bottom as well,

because again, when you're a young teen, you don't, you don't pay that

much attention to things and yeah, you know that your laptop's valuable,

but you've put it in your bag.

So what?

You know, so what if it went in with a bit of a clatter?

So, uh, so yeah, they were very helpful, all the kids.

And I think it is interesting that you said about talking

to the parents as well, because I think their input's also valuable,

because I'm assuming that parents are the ones paying for these school bags.

You know, their kids are still at an age where this isn't something

that, they might be choosing it, but mum and dad has to endorse it

because ultimately it's their money.

So I think it was really sensible to get everyone's input.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Um, and so at this stage, were you also showing them sort of other LED backpacks

or light up backpacks that were on the market to get their views on those?

Yeah, so I took a whole load of samples and I took a whole um, but.

You know, I, lots of this stuff, I don't have any experience of, so I've

just kind of used my common sense.

I printed out pictures that I got off the internet of all different styles

of backpacks, different colourways and you know, different, some of

them had massive branding on them.

Some of them had small branding on them.

Some of them had thin straps, some of them had fat straps, you know, and

we just sat and we talked through.

What do you like about these samples that I have got in front of me?

Assess them for me.

Tell me what you think.

Because actually what, you know, I think as a mid forties mother is not what

a 12 year old boy thinks, you know?

And, and I'm really conscious of that.

So actually that was really useful because they went, well, I don't like that colour.

And you think.

Okay.

It's red.

What, what, what's, what's wrong with red?

Oh, no, no, no.

I don't want red.

So at, you start to kind of refine what you, what you do and don't want, um, some

of them were interested in kind of how the branding was portrayed on the bag.

We talked about what was cool about cool brands.

What, what, what wasn't cool.

The youngest one, Tim, was absolutely delightful and he kept telling

me, he really loves the colours.

Green and blue, green and blue, green and blue, whilst pointing

at a red and black sample.

I really like that one . So, so some of it you kind of take with a pinch of salt, but

actually they've been, the kids have been quite interested in the ongoing process as

well of, of, of how you set up a business.

Because actually the kids who gave me all the advice are the models on the websites.

You know, are, are kind of my kind of advice team.

So it's been good for them as well to learn, you know, how do you

go about setting up a business?

What happens, what happens next to their advice that, you know?

What happened next was I found somebody in, in, um, China who was able to help

me translate my drawings and my kind of research into an actual sample,

and then you could bring the sample to the kids and to the parents and

go, well look, this is, this is the sum total of what we came up with.

What do we think now?

We can see it in reality.

That's brilliant.

That was going to be my next question actually, was, was what next?

I think it's brilliant that you sort of, as you said, went into this

never having set up a business before and just worked through the steps.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So I did.

I talked to loads of people.

I just talked to as many people as I could do.

I talked to brand manufacturers in the UK.

I talked to people who make kind of branded goods,

branded goods type agencies.

I talked to them.

I talked to backpack designers.

I talked to electronic type, engineer type people, designers, um, and

people were really, really helpful.

It just gave me kind of loads of, loads of advice and then found a guy

in China who was able to, um, translate my frankly, quite dodgy drawings into

something that, that he could work with.

And one of the things that I was really, really keen on, the sort of key point

for us was that once you put the backpack on your back, you should be able to turn

the lights on without taking the bag off.

So a lot of the samples that were on the market, they had got switches for the

lights, but the switches were inside a pocket or at the bottom of the bag, or you

know, just somewhere really inaccessible.

And my thinking was when you are 11 or 12 and you get off the bus and

it's raining, the last thing you are going to do is faf about trying to

put your hand in the bottom of the bag to find the little switch or take

your stuff out to get to the switch.

It's got to be somewhere really accessible.

So, you know, can you put the switch at the bottom of the straps?

Which is, which is what we've done in the end, but that, that turned into quite

an interesting kind of production issue.

How do you go about putting strips of LEDs into the fabric of the

bag in such a way that the switch is somewhere that's accessible.

And more, even more than accessible, just to be turned on and off.

You can actually get to it so that you can change the batteries when you need to.

So the contact you found in China, is that,

is he a bag manufacturer?

He is, yeah.

He's actually a guy.

He, he's from Halifax in, in the uk.

He's moved out to China.

Since I've first dealt with him, he's now moved his operations to Malaysia.

But he works with various different small, and I'm talking really small

family run businesses in China.

So they are very small, um, factories that are making small runs of, of, of things.

Because obviously you can go to Ali Baba and you can, you can kind

of find manufacturers that way.

But this way I'd got this chap's name is Rick.

And he's been utterly fantastic in helping to translate what was quite

an anurous idea in into something that that is a physical project.

So we worked through various different samples.

So we had a kind of an initial sample, which was.

As we suspected kind of way off, refine that into a second sample

where we thought, yeah, yeah, this, this is getting there.

Right.

What we need to do now is we need to tweak how the reflective panels are attached.

Because actually there are, there are three kind of triangular reflective

panels on the front, which, which add to the visibility of the bag.

How do you attach those in such a way that we were happy with them?

Were we happy with the switches?

Could we tweak the way that that works and the structure of the bag?

And, and sort of, we kind of refined it and refined it until we got to

the kind of final production sample where we were like, yeah, yeah.

We were all systems go.

But all of this was happening at the same time as Covid was happening, which

made for a bumpy ride in some ways.

So it took way longer than perhaps it might have done in ordinary times

to get to a point where we'd got a production sample and we could get on

with actually manufacturing the run.

Um, and by the time we got to I don't know, probably Christmas last

year we had been through several rounds of where, were all systems go?

No, no.

There's covid in the factory.

The factory's been shut down.

Um, yeah, we're all systems go.

No, there's covid in the factory again.

So we kind of went through this awful cycle, the, the, the Chinese way of

dealing with, with Covid was quite different to ours, so things just stop.

Then Rick got covid.

Then once we were back up and running again, then they had all sorts of

issues with, um, electricity supplies.

So the factory actually wasn't running because there wasn't

enough electricity to run it.

So sort of Christmas time last year, I started to think maybe, but

maybe this is just not meant to be.

Um, and then I got a call from Rick just before Christmas last year saying,

do you know, I think, oh, I don't want to, don't want to get your hopes

up, but I think we might be on here.

Um, and of course, you've got to bear in mind that what I

was asking for was one sample.

I, I wasn't running a major run of anything, so of course I was

down the bottom of the pile.

But between Christmas and Chinese New Year, beginning of this year, we managed

to get the sample out and then once after Chinese New Year was over, we

were kind of all systems go and we were, um, up and running and they finally

arrived, uh, just before the summer.

That's amazing.

That's really good timing isn't it as well for like parents getting bags or kids?

It was, it was.

At school, going to secondary school.

Oh wow.

That's, wow.

That's quite and well done for persevering as well because that must have been so

disheartening because as you say, if you were just after the one sample, I can

imagine that, you know, you were getting moved further and further down the que

as these bigger orders were coming in.

Yeah.

And I think they had difficulties in getting the materials, you know,

that, that all of those issues all kind of wrapped together.

Including the whole kind of shipping fee.

At one point Rick was ringing me going, actually, even if you, if we do get the

go ahead, you don't want to be shipping from China yet because the prices for a

container have just gone through the roof.

So it's been a real kind of balancing act.

But sometimes I think you, you know, I think it's a really good product.

I think it's a really good idea.

I think there are people out there, there have got to be people out there

who are like me thinking I really want my child to be much more visible.

I've got to keep going.

I've got to keep going.

So that's, that was all I did.

Every, you know, you just got to keep putting one foot in front of the

other and, uh, and moving forward.

I think it's amazing that you kept going.

And how, were there any things that you were able to do to fill

that time where you were waiting for new samples, for example?

Um, yeah, so I did a lot of, training courses actually.

So my background is in marketing and PR originally, but b2b, um,

sort of tech engineering stuff.

And then more lately, I'd worked in the family business.

So a lot of the things that I'm doing now, I just had no clue about.

So, you know, I've dealt with producing content for websites

before, but I'd never built a website.

Um, I'd never taken photographs, uh, of products.

I'd done a tiny bit of seo, but only following somebody else's instructions.

You know?

So all of those things actually, that time gave me the ability

to spend it doing that.

One of the things that happened quite early on was I got put in touch with

the, um, Coventry and Warwickshire Chamber of Commerce, who had a

fantastic scheme going where they, um, were able to give you some mentoring

time and also some, some courses.

So we used a lot of it to do that.

And we just went on as many courses as I could do and free trainings.

And, you know, a lot of these big players like, um, Meta, Facebook, have

a lot of training that, that you can do.

Um, and YouTube is a wonderful resource if you don't know how to

do something, how do I do whatever?

And, and you can, you know, get yourself going from there.

So a lot of the stuff that I've learnt has been entirely self taught.

I've never used Instagram before I set up Futliit.

Oh, your Instagram's great.

Thank you.

Um, I think it's, yeah, as you say, a lot of these

things do take time to learn.

So I guess in a way it was, you don't want to say it was a good thing, but I

suppose the silver lining to all that time you did have to wait, was that you were

able to put that time to really good use.

And, and sometimes you don't know that until afterwards do you.

You can look back at and you can think all, you know, I'm a big believer in

all these things happen for a reason.

You know, maybe it was just meant to be this way.

You've just gotta make the best of it.

And I can't, you know, I can't do anything about the, the covid situation in China.

I can't do anything about rising prices.

You know, I've just got to go with it.

So that's what we did.

So the bags were ready this summer.

So how have things gone from then?

Yeah, not too bad.

Thank you.

Not too bad.

It's, um, now that the, the clocks have changed, it's made it

much easier to film in the dark.

Because at one point in the summer we were having to stay up really, really late

to try and get, um, filming in the dark.

But that's been another learning curve, actually taking photographs,

um, how to, um, make the videos of actually filming in the dark.

So, so we've done a bit more of that, but yeah, everything's,

everything's going fine.

Thank you.

Brilliant.

And are your, your original testers, are they all using?

They are, yeah.

Even my husband has got one.

So, so yeah, so I think that, that, you know, the next, in terms of kind of

product development, the next round will be actually looking kind of a year on.

How have the bags stood up to the test?

How could we make them better?

What, what's, what's the next alteration going to be?

And, you know, we've got plenty of ideas in the pipeline.

Once we get kind of up and running and we've got a, um, you know, a bit

of bulk funding behind us, there are other things that we could be doing.

It's the more you talk to people, the more people say, oh, I'd

really like a you know, whatever.

So you know that that'll be kind of the next round of it.

And, um, and starting to get some new, new advisors on board.

Because obviously, my, my advisors are getting older every year and, um, you

know, I, I need, need some more who are kind of at the eleven, twelve age, which

is where my original intention was.

So.

That makes sense.

And what other, I meant to ask this earlier on actually.

What do the teenagers, um, think about like the LED aspects and about

lighting up and being really visible?

Because you mentioned your daughter wasn't keen on like, of clothing or whatever.

What do they feel about the bag, I'm just really curious.

Yeah, yeah.

They really liked it.

They, they, none of them have said, oh no, I don't like it.

I think that what they do like is the fact that you can turn it

on when you want it on, so you can, you know, take a few steps.

You can wave goodbye to everyone at the bus stop, or you can wave goodbye

to everyone at the school gate.

Take a few steps and then turn it on when you are ready for it.

Um, and I think they all understand, you know, they're all sensible

kids and they're, they're quite conscious of their own safety.

Interestingly, the younger children, when I first did it, the thought

of being lit up was delightful.

They, in fact, they wanted to be lit up in as many colours as possible

with as many different flashing light combinations as possible.

So there's obviously quite a, a change in attitude from moving from primary

where actually having lots of flashing lights in lots of different colours

is really cool and really exciting to secondary, where suddenly you,

you know, that there's, there's a definite intent to grow quite quickly.

Which is one of the reasons why the bag is kind of grey because

the kids said it's a, it's a fairly kind of neutral, neutral colour.

There's nothing that can really go wrong with it.

I mean, I'd, I'd like to introduce more colours once, once we're

sort of up and running a bit more.

So, uh, but, but yeah, they, they're all fine with it.

That all, you know, makes total sense.

Because I've got six year old and a nine year old, and I would put money

on the fact my six year old would want to be lit up like a Christmas tree

and my nine year old just wouldn't.

But what I really like about your bags and what I've seen, um, on your

videos is they are lit up, but it's not garish or it's not like a Christmas

tree for part of a better word.

It's, it's really, I don't want to say subtle because it's really effective.

Because I've been watching your videos of your daughter, I believe it's

your daughter, and she is walking and it's really, really visible.

But it's not garish or like, I, I don't know, I'm not a teenager, but I

wouldn't have, what am I trying to say?

I think it's, I think it's really, really well done because I can see that they

might not want flashy lights and yeah, different colours and things like that.

I mean, I can remember back to being that age and I just,

uh, being very self-conscious and not wanting to stand out and not wanting any

opportunities for people to go, oh, look at you, you know, that sort of thing.

And I think that that was one of the reasons why we try to make it so once

the lights are off, you can't really tell that there are lights on the bag.

They're, they're pretty invisible.

They're in there in case some kind of a, a fairly thick piping.

Um, and that was one of the things that the kids had said, I don't

want to wear a safety product.

I don't want people thinking I'm a baby.

I don't want anything that looks really obvious in the daytime.

So that, that's kind of the end result.

What we've tried to go for is something that, that is useful and and visible

when you need it, rather than being kind of garish during the day.

That makes sense.

And I think, yeah, I, I, I, as we talk, I could just see how valuable

it must have been for you to get all of that input from the teenagers.

Um, because you, you just can't get inside their heads, can you?

There's nothing like actually finding out what they actually think.

No.

And they, they come up with such hilarious things.

I don't want a bag that's got massive branding on it.

I, I really don't want a bag with massive branding on it.

Okay.

Could you go and get your bag and show me what you've got at the moment?

And I look at his bag and it got super dry all over the back of it.

And I was like, branding, you know, so, so it is harder to get

into, into their, into their heads, but they've just been brilliant.

In fact, one of the lads, Joshua, he made me a little video.

He, he started off using his bag in September, and as the clocks

changed, he said, right, I'm going to make a little video.

And I'm just astounded by their tech ability.

He's, you know, if you have a look on my, my Instagram or my Facebook,

it's on there and he's just made this, this really, really slick video.

He's cut various different bits of video together.

He's done a voiceover commentary and I just think well done, well done that man.

That's brilliant.

And I guess that's also the kind of, it's kind of what you need to promote

it as well, because I guess it's one of those products that, um, because it's,

I guess parents may not know it exists.

I mean, until I heard about you, I had no idea that this was a thing.

And I mentioned that when my son goes to secondary school, this is

something I'll be thinking about.

Um, so I think it's one of those things where people are going to see a child

with the bag, or parents are going to tell their friends oh my child uses this bag.

Um, so it's great that, that he's doing that for you and saying,

this is my bag and I love using it, and it makes me really visible.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

And that's, that's one of the things that I'm finding quite interesting

with the whole kind of marketing of it, is that it is something that

people don't really know exists.

People have a problem.

But there isn't an obvious solution to search for necessarily.

So it's not, it's not quite like, I don't know, launching a new cosmetics brand or,

or a, um, you know, a, um, I don't know, a scented candle or something like a top

or a pair of trousers where, where it's kind of obvious, I want some dark blue

trousers and you can search for that.

This, this is more of an interesting sell.

So with my marketing head on, it's been quite kind of interesting

looking at how do you sell a product into kids when they're actually not

the ones who are buying it, it's their parents who are buying it.

And the parents and the kids have got quite different ideas about how to be

visible on the way home from school.

Because as I said before, as as an adult, it's really obvious you just

wear luminous stuff and you put lots of reflective panels on and, and as a

kid you're like, I'm not doing that.

That is a challenge.

And I think you're right that in a way it's, it's nice to be selling

something that's so unique because if you were selling a top, for

example, it's so hard to stand out amongst the millions of others.

However, I guess it's hard because people, if they don't know your

products exists, they might not necessarily be looking for it.

So I guess, I guess that's where things like SEO you know, really come into

play and thinking about what people are.

Yeah.

Looking for.

Um.

And SEO, oh, my word, that's a learning curve.

I think it all is, isn't it?

But I think that is a, that is a challenge when you're selling

something so unique because if people don't know it exists, they might

not necessarily be looking for it.

So I guess it's trying to get in people's heads, isn't it?

And thinking, what are people searching for?

I mean, are they going into Google and searching how do I make my child visible?

I, I don't know what people are searching, but.

Oh, all sorts of things so when you actually start to look, I mean,

there's so much information out there that, that you can, you can find on what

people are searching for, but I think it's just a very slow burn of matching.

And enabling Google to find you as a response to that kind of questioning.

Um, and I, I suppose I just keep thinking, you just got to keep

at it and show up every day.

The more you do, the more Google will, um, serve you up as a result.

So, the more I can do, the better.

And somebody said to me the other day, oh, you need to be on

TikTok, you need to be on TikTok.

You need to get kids making loads of videos and be on TikTok.

And I'm thinking blimey, I'm only just getting my head around Insta.

I think TikTok might be the next step.

So, you know, the socials are going to be really important.

Yeah, but I think I agree with you though.

I think this is, this is my personal opinion, that actually you can spread

yourself too thin and it's probably better to get your head really around

Facebook or Instagram or whatever it is, and then go, okay, that's kind

of going well and then moving on.

Because I think it can be a real, really tempting in the beginning to

be like, I have to be everywhere.

But yeah, I think, yeah, when you spread yourself that thin, often you're not seen.

That, you know, it's the opposite, isn't it?

You're just not doing very well at the end.

Yeah, and that's you.

You're exactly right.

That's exactly what I decided in the end, that I would just

pick a couple of channels and I would try to do them really well.

So I went for Facebook because I thought actually a lot of parents are on Facebook

and a lot of grandparents are on Facebook.

And I went for Insta because I felt that that was a slightly

younger demographic and that way I'd kind of got them both covered.

And the fact that they're both connected makes it really easy to

deal with and I think, you know, do do something and do it well rather

than spreading yourself too thinly.

There's lots of talk of, go on Twitter, you know, you could be on Twitter and

I'm thinking, well, but I need to just do, do a couple and do them well, and

then think really hard about what the next demographic is that I want to

target, and maybe that will be TikTok.

I don't know.

But I think you've got to be able to create the content to keep the whole

thing going, because there's nothing worse than going onto somebody's

website, for example, or their, um, Facebook feed and saying that the

last blog post stroke photograph that was posted was from six months ago.

It doesn't, you know, it doesn't make you look like you're taking it seriously

and, and you know, I just wanted to be sure that people knew that, you know,

that this is really important to me.

I'm really keen to make it work.

I think you're right.

It just, especially when you are a brand that people haven't heard of when they

land on your website, you know, I feel like if I'm going to buy something from

someone I haven't heard of, I want to feel like this is a legitimate business.

Yeah.

So, you know, you want to see like, they are keeping, like

you said, they're keeping their blog up to date and everything looks, yeah.

It just wants to look current because it's a bit nerve wracking.

You're putting your card details in somewhere and you've

never heard of them before.

Um, I think you're right.

Um, sort of keeping everything up to your website, your social media, as you've

said, it just kind of goes, I am in business and I'm taking this seriously.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It just gives off a much better impression because I think

if you go to a website and you can, like you say, you see it hasn't been

updated for six months, I definitely think twice about, you know, happy

tapping my card details in, for example.

Yeah.

And that has been, in some ways, that's been one of the hardest things

to say, I'm actually selling me.

As well as the product because I'm, I'm the face of the company and you

know, but listening to yourself, being, making little reels and all

that sort of stuff is mortifying.

You know, I'm not from the social media generation.

I've really had to kind of get over my fear of doing these things, but I am a

mum in Warwickshire who had a problem, who thought, I can't be the only one.

I'm gonna see if I can do something about it.

So, you know, actually that's quite important to people that they,

that if they ring up, they get me.

If they email, they get me.

You know, we're not a faceless company with a, with a call centre, you know,

on the other side of the world, it's me.

I think your story also helps make it really relatable

to people because you say you are a parent, you did this to keep your child

safe and other people's children safe.

I think people can relate to that as well.

Yeah, and it also gives you, it gives you something to talk about, and I think it's

brilliant that it's you talking on your reels and that you are really visible.

And actually that's something I meant to ask at the beginning, but I

completely forgot, is that when you had this, um, we'll call it a problem,

and you were looking for solutions for your daughter, at what stage did

you go, oh, actually I might make a product and turn into a business

as opposed to looking for something just for the situation you were in.

I think it probably sat there.

The, the first time we had it, so was when my elder daughter started secondary.

She's now about to take her GCSEs, so it's, its been a bit of, a

bit of a burn and I think it sat there for a couple of years.

I wasn't really in a position where I could do anything about it.

And then, um, my position changed.

I'd stopped working for the family business and I thought,

what am I going to do now?

What, what, what do I want to do?

And I think the little gem of an idea that I'd had.

That had obviously been kind of percolating away in the background

kind of came to the fore.

And I thought, you know what?

I'm going to give it a go, which is sort of a brave thing when I look back on it,

it just seemed quite obvious at the time.

Do you know what I've had this idea?

I think I've, I've got a few contacts that I can ring.

I will, I will see if I can make something of it.

And actually that, that was something that I was going to say to anybody else

who, who's sort of in this position where they've had a bit of an idea

and thought, I wonder if I could.

Whether you know it or not, you've got a massive network out there and it it

not in the kind of sense of an old boys network of, you know, terribly fancy

people, but you, when you start to think about it, you know all sorts of people.

I've got a friend who's worked in product manufacturing, so I rang her.

I've got a friend who, um, was an electronic engineer, so I rang

him and the more people that I talked to, the more I found out.

And people are so kind, people are really rooting for you and

really willing to help you.

So my husband, for example, spoke to one of his colleagues at work and said,

oh look, we're thinking of doing this.

Have you got any advice?

And she said, well, do you know what my, um, my child's just about getting

to the age of secondary school.

If you give me a bit of a talk about how you applied for secondary schools

and how the process works, I'll put you in touch with so and soso.

There was a bit of a, sort of a quid pro quo.

And then even people that I didn't know when I was in the research stage, I rang

a, my original plan was I really wanted the bags to be made in the uk and for

various reasons that wasn't possible.

But I rang a bag manufacturer in the UK, um, up in Wrexham I think

they are, and I left a message.

And the managing director rang me back and he spent a good half an hour on

the phone after he'd said, I don't think we can help you and this is why.

Giving me advice, talking me through things that were important, talking

me through things that, that, um, I should really sort of consider

how the bag was manufactured.

How, how I was going to get it off the ground.

No, he didn't have to do that.

He was just a really nice bloke who thought, yeah, okay, I'm going

to give you some advice there.

There have been people who I haven't spoken to in years on my Facebook who

have shared my posts, who have sent it out to their friends saying, oh,

this is a lady I used to work with.

She set up this business.

Don't you think it's a great idea?

You know, so actually everybody does have a network of people.

Even if you haven't worked at the, the, the, the top light of business and you,

you know, you haven't been a fashion director of a major brand, we've all

got people out there who will help us.

And sometimes if you believe in what you're doing and you talk to people

about it, they really will help you.

People are nice, aren't they?

They are.

I like hearing stories like that.

Yeah.

And I think you're right.

And also I think it's worth remembering that the worst that can happen is someone

says, no, or I don't have time right now.

Yeah, most people don't.

But that's the very, very worst that can happen.

And I'm with you.

I've, I think that reaching out and asking people, can you help me?

Do you know someone who can help me?

It just beats spending hours trolling YouTube or whatever it is, you can

find a person that can help you.

And you're right, most of us are better connected than we think we are.

We might think we don't know anybody, but when you start talking, um, I had

something last year actually where I was at a kids' birthday party and

a lady was talking to her friend and she was saying, oh, and I'm,

you know, I want to start selling my products and I'm not really sure what

to do and I don't know who to ask.

And I sort of had to put my hand up and go, I can help you with that.

And it's really funny, we were just standing a metre away from each other

and she had no idea what I was doing and I had no idea what she was doing,

but it turned out we could, yeah, we could really help each other.

So yeah.

People have been absolutely fabulous and it's a

small world and people are really willing, you've just got to ask.

Um, and people, people do want it to work and the number of people that

have said to me, I think it's a pants idea and it's not going to come off

and you'll never manage it, is zero because actually everybody's gone.

There are a couple of people that I've spoken to who I can

tell, have thought, not really sure about that, but that's fine.

I'm not trying to sell it to everybody.

There.

There is a market out there of people who need this.

Yeah, and that's who I want to talk to.

And sometimes I think that says more about those

people than it does about you as well, if you know what I mean.

Plus, as you've just said, it's, your product is not going to be for everyone.

And that's advice I give people all the time.

Like an example I give loads is if you were creating something for

new mums and your grandad didn't like it, well, no disrespect, but

actually does that really matter?

Probably not.

Um, so yeah, and equally, you know, if you were making something for pensioners

that you wouldn't really be that worried if your teenager didn't like it.

So I think knowing who, and it sounds like you've been so clear about knowing

who you're selling your product to, who it's for that yeah, that, I think

that's, I think that's really, really helpful because then, you know, you sort

of know whose advice to take on board and who you can go, well, thank you.

I respect your opinion, but actually yeah.

You know, I'll put that to one side and won't worry about that.

Yeah.

And, and I think you do have to have that ability.

Sometimes it's, it's quite easy particularly when you are a woman and

you've got to the age, I'm mid forties, you've got to the age that I am.

You, you, it is easy to kind of lose your confidence a bit, especially

if you've been out of the kind of mainstream job world for, for a

while through children or whatever.

And, and get a bit kind of buffeted by other people's opinions of what you

should do and how you should do it.

Well, I've decided, it's not to say that it I won't change my mind, but

for the time being, I'm going to concentrate on doing this and this.

I'm going to do my Facebook, I'm going to do my Instagram, and

this is the way I want it to be.

You know?

That's the joy of running your own business, isn't it?

It is your own business and you can do it the way you want to.

And good for you as well.

And also, as you said, um, you've also, this is also something that's

totally new for you, so I also think it's great that you have the

confidence to go, do you know what?

I might not know exactly what I'm doing, but I'll figure

it out and I'll do it my way.

Um, yeah, I don't, you possibly don't realize, Laura, how much

confidence you must, you've got.

Um, and how much it's probably given you as well.

No, I mean, it's probably given you a lot as well, because I think when we

prove to ourselves, well, actually I can do this, it kind of, I think it impacts

other parts of your life as well when you go, actually, I have built a business so

I have, you know, created this product.

I honestly think that has a knock on effect.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Oh, well, you know, anybody who's out there who's thinking about it, do it.

Just have a go and, and as you say, what is the worst that can happen?

The worst that can happen is nobody buys them.

Really?

Is that the end of the world?

No.

You know, there are a lot worse things that could happen, you know?

Yeah.

And I also will say, um, that when you put in the amount of work you do, you you've

done on researching, I actually think it's fairly unlikely that nobody will buy it.

And I'm so big.

I mentioned I, I recorded something about this yesterday because I'm so

big on people doing the research.

Because I do honestly think if you do the research and you take lots of time

and you speak to the right people, obviously you speak to the right people

and you find out what they want and you find out, you know what they're after,

you are so much more likely to create something that people do want to buy.

Mm-hmm.

I think that just, it doesn't take the risk away entirely,

but it massively reduces it because you've made the best, it sounds like,

to me, that you have made the best bag that you could at this stage.

Yeah.

By speaking to the people who want it.

And so I think it's really unlikely that it's not going to sell because of

all that work you've put in up front.

And I know it's hard and I know it takes time, but um, I'm such a massive

fan of actually doing that work.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And I think it will stand me in, in, in good stead and, and maybe looking

back on it, that that was an advantage of the whole Covid situation where

things were at a bit of a standstill.

But I had lots of time available when I, when I was, wasn't trying to help my

younger daughter get through her primary school, locked down homework, but you

know, that, that time I don't think can ever be badly spent because I just

kept looking at different options and researching and, and, and you've got,

you know, that that's a luxury, that, that time to be able to, to put it in.

Um.

You know, it's not to say that there won't be alterations of the product in

the future, because obviously the, the more people use it, the more feedback you

get, the, the more there will be common threads of things that you think, yeah, I

could do something about that, or, I had no idea that that was what they wanted,

but several people have asked for that.

How can I incorporate that into, into the next version going.

That makes sense.

And also what you said I really liked earlier about, you know, when people

have been using the bag for a year, are there things that a year on aren't

working as they should or whatever.

I feel that was, I thought I really, um, that really stuck out, stood out

to me when you said that because I've never heard anyone say that before.

Sounds really silly, but I spoke to so many people.

I don't recall anyone saying that.

But it is such a good point of a product like yours.

It should last.

Yeah.

I don't know how long it should, but it should last, let's say, it's not

something you're going to buy new every six months or every year necessarily.

I, I think it's a really good point to say, actually, let's see what

they look like after a year of use and, you know, have they held up?

Are they durable enough?

Yeah, I just, I really like that you said that, that really stuck with me.

Yeah.

And I don't, I would like to be able to make them more

environmentally friendly as we go on.

So are there materials that we could make them out of that would be, um,

you know, durable enough, they would have the waterproof, sort of the water

resistant capabilities that they've got, um, but, but perhaps could be,

I don't know, made out of recycled PET bottles or something like that.

You know, I look at my daughter's blazers and they're actually, they are made out

of recycled PET blazers, um, bottles.

Could, could, could we do something like that?

But I think there's a danger and I had to stop myself at one point from trying

to make it perfect before it launched.

Actually I needed to get it to a point where I thought,

not that this is good enough.

This is fab.

I've made something.

Yes, I might be able to make it even better in the future, but I

think if you're on a search for perfection from the start, you're,

you are never going to get anywhere.

Because what?

What's perfection?

Perfection to one user is one thing.

Perfection to somebody else is something different, you know?

I think you're right.

I really like that saying done is better than perfect.

Yeah, and I'm not saying that, not, obviously not for this, but I think in

there are lots of instances where actually it's things don't have to be perfect.

They can be good enough, not maybe the sense for products, but also I think that

can be a form of procrastination as well.

You spend so long designing and refining and tweaking that you

just delay launching your product.

Fish further and further back.

And I do think, I don't know if it's a bit of fear or or what it is, but I see

this a lot where people go, oh, I'm just going to go through one more round of

sampling, or I'm just going to go through one more round of re whatever it is.

And it just gets delayed and delayed and delayed.

So I think you do have to come to a point where you have to go, yep.

They're going to put it out there, see what people think.

Yeah.

And even if it doesn't sell well enough, that also tells you something

and then you can go, okay, why?

What is it that people, what is it that aren't appealing to people?

Or whatever it is.

And you can improve.

And as you say, even if it does sell really well, there still will

be things that you want to do that your customers tell you they want.

There's always room for new effort.

I don't know if effort is the right word, but.

Well, there's certainly new alterations, isn't it?

Yeah.

And you know, you can, there, there are plenty of ways that, that we can kind

of take the kind of classic bag that we've produced and either produce a,

a slightly newer version or a smaller version or a slightly different product

for a slightly different market.

You know, may, maybe there are sort of year six kids out there who really

are starting to walk to school on their own, perhaps being able to

walk from a drop off point and their parents are getting them ready to go.

Maybe they want something slightly different.

They don't have to carry the vast quantity of books.

Or a device in the same way that secondary school kids do.

So, so there's plenty of options for kind of building the business up.

It's exciting.

Yeah, it's really exciting.

Yeah.

So, uh, thank you so much for all that you shared, Laura.

I just, I've taken a lot from it and I hope that everyone else is as well.

I have one final question before we wrap up, if that's okay?

Yeah.

Which is, what is your number one piece of

advice for other product creator?

I know it's a big question.

I think it would, it really would be to ask for help, and

the more you ask, the more you will find out the, you know, there are

people out there who will help you.

Don't try and do it on your own.

Ring people up and ask them even if you don't know them, because the, the

response that I had was fantastic.

And yeah, you're right.

Sometimes people will go, no, I'm too busy to help you, or

they won't get back to you.

Well, that, that, that gives you your answer.

But there will be people out there who've got the information that you

need and they, they will help you.

Oh, thank you so much, Laura.

Oh, it's been really nice to talk to you.

Thank you.

Thank you so much for listening right to the end of this episode.

Do remember that you can get the full back catalogues and lots of free resources

on my website, vicki weinberg.com.

Please do remember to rate and review this episode if you've enjoyed it,

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