Creating Eco-Friendly Shoes for Kids – with Jeroo Doodhmal, Pip & Henry

Welcome to the Bring youg Product Idea to Life podcast. This is the podcast for you if you're getting started selling products or if you'd like to create your own product to sell.

I'm Vicki Weinberg, a product creation coach and Amazon expert. Every week I share friendly practical advice as well as inspirational stories from small businesses. Let's get started. Hello.

So today on the podcast, I am delighted to speak to Jeroo Doodhmal . Jeroo is the founder of Pip and Henry.

Driven by a lovely environment, Pip and Henry creates beautifully stylish, comfortable and responsibly produced shoes for children. Their playful footwear is made from sustainable materials and can be recycled when outgrown.

Better yet, if recycled customers receive a discount off their next order. I had a really great conversation with Jeroo .

She had so much to share with us from starting a footwear brand with no experience at all in the footwear or fashion industry. She talked a lot about how she funded her business in the early days. Her new technology, which is, which has just been approved for pattern just.

There was just so much good stuff in this episode. I think you're all going to be really interested, inspired, entertained by this conversation and going to learn a lot.

So I would love now to introduce you to Jerry. So hi Jerry. Thank you so much for being here.

Thanks Vicki. Thanks for having me on.

Oh, you're so welcome. Can we start by you giving quick instructions to yourself, your business and what you sell?

Sure. So my name is Jeroo Doodhmal and I am the founder of Pip and Henry.

We create beautifully, stylish, luxuriously comfortable and responsibly produced shoes for kids. So our playful footwear are made from eco friendly materials. They're made to be recycled once they are outgrown.

We have packaging that duels up as a little board game for kids that's a bit educational and encourages them to use arts and crafts sort of waste around their home for arts and crafts. And as part of our commitment to change, I also write storybooks about Pip and Henry. Pip is a little girl.

Henry is her dinosaur friend and they go off on adventures organizing beach cleanups and learning about the difference between good bugs and naughty bugs and that kind of thing.

Amazing. Thank you. I've got so many follow up questions, but let's start with what inspired you to start Pip and Henry?

A multitude of different things to be fair, but I suppose the big thing was I had just finished maternity leave and whilst I was on leave, I was, I was kind of figuring out what I wanted to do next And I didn't feel like I wanted to go back to my job, although I did for a whole year after I finished maternity leave. But whilst in the process of thinking about what I wanted to do, I knew I wanted to do something in the sustainable space space.

And I started off with a small business on Amazon, actually, in the us, selling sustainable household products. So things like silicone glasses as a replacement for plastic party cups.

And that business was actually, you know, ticking along whilst I still had my corporate gig going on the side.

And, you know, it's a story for another day, but I got hit by a patent infringement notice and so I had to shut that business down, liquidate the stock that I had. But through the process of, you know, growing that.

That business, I was getting more and more into sustainability and environmental materials and material science, material research. And in parallel, you know, I had my daughter and she was.

I could see that there was a clear gap in the kids space where, you know, they're outgrowing clothing and footwear really faster than you could have. That I had ever imagined, and certainly faster than I could get rid of them, you know, in a sustainable manner.

I just didn't know how to recycle them. Where to give them. Shoes in particular felt like a real problem area because charities don't want to take shoes. They don't know how to process them.

And, you know, selling them secondhand on Facebook is a massively painful journey. It doesn't feel like it's worth the effort, you know, and so I just really faced this.

This problem with footwear in particular with my daughter, where she was outgrowing them every three to four months. And I thought, you know, surely there has to be a better way to figure out footwear for kids.

And that kind of gave me sort of, so the seeds for the Pip and Henry business.

That's amazing. Thank you. Yeah, I totally relate to that.

My kids are a bit older now, but, yeah, the amount of shoes they need when they get older, because it's not just trainers, school shoes and wellies and, yeah, you get through them.

Sandals, slippers, all of that. Right. Casual shoes, sports shoes. The average British household has 15 pairs of shoes for their kids every year.

And, you know, most of them are used for three to four months and then thrown out. And 90% of them, sadly end up in landfill. So 80 million pairs of shoes for kids end up in landfill every single year.

That's a horrible statistic, one we certainly need to. To change.

Gosh, that's really shocking.

Yeah.

Okay. Wow. Let's talk a little bit about you. So this might sound like a really basic question, Julie, but how do you go about creating a shoe?

So it sounds like you had, you know, you had the idea for the company, but then when it comes to the shoes themselves, how do you go from having an idea to having a finished product?

You know, I didn't come from a footwear background, so I had to spend my time kind of researching this space myself. I put myself through a little course on footwear making and, you know, understanding the footwear industry.

And this is all while I was still, you know, working at Barclays, but then also just going out and meeting people in the industry and kind of figuring out the space. And sometimes serendipity works to your favor.

You know, the more people you talk about it, I feel like you should always share your ideas, even if you haven't actually launched something, because people somehow come out of the woodwork, you know, sharing some. Some really useful tips. And for me, actually, I found my first supplier through a conversation at a bar where it was a colleague of my husband's.

We were having a drink and he asked what I was know, just generally talking about life. And I was talking, thinking, talking about, you know, thinking of starting this business.

And he went, oh, I have a friend whose cousin runs a footwear manufacturing factory in India. Do you want me to connect you? And I said yes. And then I spoke to that guy who connected me to his uncle who was the actual owner of the factory.

And, you know, five years now down the line, I have a really, really strong relationship with that factory. They are, you know, massive manufacturers of kids footwear for all sorts of brands. Geox, Palm, diape, you know, Clarks, John Lewis.

All of them kind of manufacture their kids shoes in their factory. So it's massive. And I built a good relationship with them, and they're now one of our key suppliers for our shoes.

That's amazing. And how much do you do? Did you need or do you need to be involved in the design of the shoe?

So I think the design kind of direction was given by me, but I'm not a designer by craft, so I knew I wanted to do something that was fun and playful for kids that kind of related to them. I was really fed up of seeing, you know, the blues, blacks, grays on the high street. And I knew I wanted something vibrant.

And I also knew I wanted something that was more print focused. I knew I wanted to bring the Pip and Henry characters into my shoes, my packaging, my stories, you know, that kind of thing.

So I kind of crafted the overall vision for, you know, or mood board, if you like, for what our shoes could look like. And then I outsource the actual design process to a designer.

Amazing, because as you say, you must have had to learn so many new skills to start this business. It's so, just. Just so much. And then, I guess, yes, shoe design as well, that's a lot.

Sometimes I joke if I knew how hard footwear was, I probably wouldn't have done it. But sometimes ignorance is bliss. You know, you just kind of go into the process things saying, how hard can it be?

And you challenge the factories, you challenge the designers around, you know, why can't I do this? And why can't you do that? And that kind of sparks interesting opportunities for the business.

So it's not necessarily a bad thing to not come from the industry, even though it is a bit scary and.

You don't always get things right, I think. But I think. And we could talk about this as we go through, I think, sort of we. We all make what we call the mistakes, but we all learn as we go.

And I think that's. That's actually. That's actually good and really healthy as well.

And as you say, coming from outside the industry, I guess the good thing there was you were coming with a different perspective. So it sounds like your ideas for your shoes was totally different from what was out there already.

And perhaps if you'd been in that industry, you might have been in the mindset of, this is how we make shoes. This is what shoes look like.

Exactly. These are the manufacturing processes, these are the materials we use. You know, this is how long it's going to take.

And this is, you know, all of this is who are typical customers, and this is what they want. You know, I was challenging all of that.

And so, yes, it did mean we came out with a proposition that was unique in the market and that actually customers in the end responded really well to. So it was worth the kind of the punt.

Yeah. And let's talk a little bit about something I know that makes your shoes really different is your extendable sole technology.

Can you explain to us what that is?

So, you know, like I said, I was getting really frustrated by how quickly my daughter was outgrowing her shoes. And what I found was often those shoes were still in perfectly good condition. They just, you know, they just didn't fit her anymore.

And, you know, I just wondered, you know, why we couldn't figure out a way to create shoes that would grow with a growing child's foot. And I saw examples of this in the clothing space. I don't know if you've heard of the brand Petit Play, but they do clothing for kids that grow.

They grow all, you know, I think for up to six years, like from a newborn all the way to age 6. And they kind of have a very novel technology in terms of how the material is made to. That allows for it to stretch and expand.

And I was like, you know, why can't we do that for shoes? Obviously, doing that for shoes is super hard. You can't. It's not easy to stretch a soul and.

But, you know, I was really determined to kind of figure out a way to do this. Coincidentally, John Lewis ran a competition where they were asking for ideas around circularity from any, any industry, any.

Any kind of business idea, consumer products idea. And we pitched the expandable shoe and actually won some grant funding for this.

So we won a quarter of a million in grant funding from them, which was amazing for a startup that, you know, came from very small resources. And I invested that in research with an R and D lab that specializes in footwear manufacturing, footwear development and innovation.

And together we kind of, you know, worked through, I don't know, maybe 50 different ideas for how we could create this expanding shoe. And we've now finally hit on the one that works. We've tested it, we've prototyped it, we've got various manufacturing techniques to delivering it.

We don't use traditional footwear manufacturing methodologies. We actually have borrowed from the toy industry and from the jewelry making industry. But what that has led to is a sneaker that grows three sizes.

So it triples the lifetime use of every shoe.

And it does so through a very simple mechanism whereby you have a removable insole in the sneaker that kind of comes in three sizes, like, say, a UK size four, five and a six. The child starts out with a size four.

When their feet grow, the parent removes that insole, puts in a size 5 insole, and that size 5 insole stretches the sneaker. And likewise, a size 6 insole was stretched out even further.

There's obviously a lot of complexity in the sole in terms of how it's made to allow for that stretch, which we've patented now. And yeah, we've developed this concept and we're actually now in the process of figuring out how to launch it in the market.

Wow, that's really impressive.

Wow, it's really exciting. It took us two years to develop this, so it's, it's been a long time journey, but clearly well worth it in the end.

Yeah, I can, I can see that this is just going to be a game changer for shoes.

Yes, that's certainly the hope. And you know, people certainly respond to it that way. It's not something that has been done before.

It has so much consumer value and utility and you know, it actually has a lot of value from a planet perspective as well. So yeah, it's beneficial from multiple perspectives.

And you mentioned that you'd patented it. How did you find the patent process?

You've got to hire a lawyer for this. I spoke to several patent attorneys before I selected one who seemed to have a lot of experience in patenting footwear specifically.

So, you know, working with the likes of Adidas and Nikes, you know, these guys file hundreds and thousands of patents. You know, we're a tiny brand filing one patent.

But essentially you want to find someone who understands your industry, understands your space, understands, you know, the mechanics, what's been done before and kind of do a little bit of research into what's already patented out there.

You know, what are you going to infringe on, what won't you, you know, how to file the right thing to give you the best chance of actually securing that patent. So it took us a couple of, well, it took me a couple of weeks if not months to kind of narrow down on the right attorneys.

But I think we've got a really nice one that works for our business and our needs.

That's brilliant and that's great advice to know to find the right attorney would help the process.

Yeah, because it's not as simple as just going to. It's not a simple document.

It's prepared with a lot of technicality and a lot of thought behind what will give you the best chance of defending that patent. You know, once you go into the market, who's gonna, who is who might try and copy you in what ways?

What might you be challenged around infringing, etc? You said there's a lot of thought that goes into how you file a patent and it's right to find the attorney that has the experience in that space.

I think that makes a lot of.

Sense because I guess if they're familiar with that industry, they will know what kind of things might come up, who the other brands are. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.

And so you mentioned, to change the topic slightly, you mentioned you got the funding from John Lewis and that's something I was going to ask about, like how did you fund this Business in the early days because what you're trying to do is huge. You know, it's new, it's brand new to you. There's a lot of goes into, you know, shoe manufacturing without all of the design and everything else.

How did you fund this as a startup?

So initially, you know, it was, I was completely self funding it, you know, in the early, early days and competitions I found really useful at the, at that stage. You know, it was like small competitions that gave you like five grand here, ten grand there.

I think the biggest one we won was 20 grand before we won the John Lewis grant. So, you know, just small things to just kind of keep things ticking over.

You know, developing product as you know, requires several phases of iteration and development and all of that costs money.

And then when you do want to launch those products in the market and test them, you want to, you know, manufacture a small, you know, capsule collection and a small run. You need money for that.

So those competitions kind of helped with that and also with just refining our business proposition because we figured out, you know, what was working, what was connecting with the consumer, what was connecting with these judges of these competitions and things like that. So it helped me refine our business idea and proposition as well.

John Lewis was the first big piece of money that, you know, that we won and it was a quarter of a million. So it was massive and really game changing for us as a business. But it was ring fenced for the R and D. We couldn't use it for the wider business.

And I knew the R and D process would take a while and I still wanted to launch Pip and Henry in the market and develop a range that was still, you know, better than the products that we have in the market with our storybooks and our packaging and our recycling scheme and that kind of thing. And so for that we raised a little bit of angel funding. So that we raised, I think about six months or so after we kicked off the John Lewis project.

And the fact that we were going after such a novel innovation helped with getting excitement and securing that initial round from angel investors. Again, it was a really small round. We raised 200k.

Seis precede funding, but it just helped us kind of, it helped me develop our range, develop our proposition, launch in the market, test a few marketing strategies. I mean, it wasn't a massive round. So it's not like we're spending crazy amounts of marketing or anything like that.

We're still growing organically relatively, but you know, it just helped us get off the ground.

Yeah, I can See that. And I'd love to ask some follow up questions if that's okay.

Sure.

We start with the competition. So what kind of competitions were you entering and where were you finding them?

Because I, I'm sure that there'll be people listening and their ears will have pricked up at that because I didn't realize there were competitions that could help you with grants for your business.

There are loads.

You just have to keep a year to the ground for what is going on in your industry, you know, so I was obviously in the fashion space or the consumer product space or the sustainability space.

You know, likewise, there'll be others that focus on different industries, different, you know, whether you're a tech product or you're a consumer products business or you're in beauty or, you know, et cetera, et cetera.

So I would advise stalking LinkedIn, you know, stalking the founders of brands that play in your area, because very often they'll post on LinkedIn, hey, we won XYZ competition. And then, you know, you've to apply for that next year. And then also just doing simple things, setting up Google alerts.

You know, there are lots of grant writers who have websites and you know, you can subscribe to their newsletters because then they send you updates on, you know, what grants are out in the market, you know, things like that. So yeah, just being clever about how you source things for your industry.

There's lots out there and I think every little bit helps, like, you know, go after everything. Even 1k sometimes is worth it.

You know, it's for example, ebay, we won a tiny competition, we secured 15k in funding from them, but just having ebay on our letterhead helps open some doors, you know, likewise having John Lewis helps open some doors.

So, you know, big or small, you might, you might not get the most benefit from the funding itself, but actually they might organize events, they might organize, you know, showcases for winners, you know, those sorts of things and help you build relationships in the industry, etc. So just, yeah, be strategic about going for these competitions. On the flip side though, it does take a lot of time to apply for these things.

Some of them are massively lengthy processes. Innovate uk for example.

Again, we want some funding from them, you know, their, their application process, like 50 questions, 600 to 900 words per question. You know, it's not easy to win it. Your chances are like 3%, etc. So sometimes it can be disheartening.

Feel like you're just going through one application after the other. But Then you might hit a John Lewis and win a quarter of million. Suddenly, you know, all that time and effort is. Is worth it. So.

So definitely keep going for it is what I would say to young businesses. Preserve your equity, save your own finances for when the going is tough. But, yeah, keep going for. For competitions.

That's brilliant advice. Thank you. And how about the angel funding? How did you go about that?

So I got into an accelerator. So my.

The first accelerator that I joined was called Hatch, and they focused on female founders, and so they kind of helped me figure out the fundraising process. And through them, I connected a fundraising expert called Hattie, and you can look her up online.

She specifically advises founders on, you know, how to go through this process. You know, what does it look like? What. What do the various fundraising terms mean? How do you create your comms plan? Who should you reach out to?

How do you figure out your valuation? What does, you know, what should go into your financial forecast? Like, all of these questions that, as a newbie can feel really daunting.

She kind of breaks it down for you.

So I worked with her for, I think, two or three months and built my kind of fundraising plan, you know, pitch deck, all of that, all of the assets, and that just kind of gave me confidence to go out to the market and raise money. And actually, I think I finished. I closed my first round within four months, which was quite quick. So I was led to believe.

I mean, those four months can feel like, you know, you're on this roller coaster where you, as Hattie says, you should kiss 100 frogs before you find your prince.

So you've gotta, you know, really develop a thick skin and accept the nose, but, you know, keep going for it because you will find the right investor for you.

Well, that's brilliant.

Thank you.

Wow, that's. I think that's really useful and I think that's given people lots of options of things to consider as well. Sorry.

Let's talk about something slightly different, if that's okay.

I'd like to talk about your approach to sustainability because I know you're doing such a lot beyond your, you know, beyond your extendable cell technology.

And you've touched on some of this at the beginning, but let's talk a little bit more about all that you're doing because, I mean, I've looked at your website. I've seen. And it's really impressive.

Thanks.

Yeah, we kind of look at sustainability through multiple lenses, you know, so for us, sustainability is just using organic cotton or having a recycling scheme, you know, for us, it's about the entirety of all of those things coming together and creating something that is, you know, greater than the sum of its parts. So there's several elements that we've kind of brought together under the Pip and Henry umbrella.

One is of course, the materials that we use in the making of our shoes. So as far as possible, we try and use factory offcuts. So, you know, we don't buy virgin material.

We buy waste left over by other brands that often ends up in landfill. We kind of rescue that back. But we're also very selective about the waste that we pick.

So we pick gold certified leathers, for example, or organic cotton. We use recycled rubber soles in our, in our sneakers, you know, things like that.

So, you know, we use good quality materials that will be long lasting, that aren't as polluting, that are tanned through chemically less intensive ways, etc. And bring those into our shoes.

We've also experimented with a few kind of biomaterials, things like pineapple leaf fibers and things like that to kind of incorporate those into our range. So that's the kind of, you know, what our shoes made. Then we thought about the packaging.

Traditionally, of course, all shoes have always been sold in shoe boxes. And there's a reason for that. It protects the shoes and you kind of need that in E commerce.

But I was really keen to make sure that that box had a dual purpose. And so after a lot of experimenting, we developed a shoebox that is designed to be a game for kids.

So it kind of, it's kind of like a snakes and ladders game, you know, very simple, but it leads kids down to the landfill. And from the landfill they've got to go and pick up items to use in their arts and crafts activities.

So kind of there's a lot of options that they can pick up as cards.

Go find an old egg box and create something, you know, plant some seeds or you know, find a used toilet roll and create a bird, bird feeder, you know, those sorts of things. It just kind of sparks their imagination around what to do with waste from around the house.

And in addition, we also have a foot measuring chart in our shoebox so parents can, can access that when the kids feet grow and they can figure out what their kids feet are grown to and then order their next pair up accordingly. So that shoebox serves multiple purposes. We then have a recycling scheme.

So we encourage parents to send back outgrown shoes to us in exchange for money off their next purchase with Pip and Henry. And we have Partnered with two organizations. One is a charity that donates shoes that are still in good use to kids who need them.

And the other is a recycling organization for shoes that are completely outworn and not in great condition. They take those in and they create things like playground foam and insulation from old shoes. And so we partner with them more often than not.

Actually, we end up sending the shoes to this charity because like I said, about 80% of the shoes are still actually in decent enough condition to be reused. So the bulk of our shoes end up with the charity being reused. And then finally, yes, like I said, we have storybooks about Pip and Henry.

So, so this is Pip, she's kind of modeled after my daughter and Henry is her dinosaur friend. And you know, we have various stories. There's Bug Hunt, there's Cleaning up the Beach.

This one kind of talks about fashion waste and natural, you know, that kind of thing.

So they're just kind of fun stories about the adventures of these two characters that kind of, in a fun and playful way, educates kids about nature and the environment, but also importantly empowers them to drive change on their own, which is.

Brilliant. Thank you. You do such a lot in this area and I can tell that sustainability is a huge part of your brand.

I said, well, everyone who's listened because of all you've talked about, let's talk about, are there any challenges from, you know, having such a sustainable brand? And on the, on the other side, what are some of the rewards that you see? So end it with a positive.

Yeah, of course. I mean, the challenge is of course that if you try and just sell sustainability and push it down on consumers, your product doesn't sell.

So initially when we launched, I was all about the sustainability, you know, like we were shouting about that from the rooftops and actually we didn't have as much traction as I was hoping for. And I couldn't figure out, is it our product, is it our marketing, is it our website, you know, etc.

But then we did a little bit of research and we looked into the drivers of consumer purchase and you know, things like price, comfort, you know, is it good quality, is it long lasting? Those sorts of things are what parents care about.

You know, is it good for my kids feet, is it going to give them enough room for their toes to wiggle, you know, that kind of thing. And you know, when I thought about it, I was like, duh, I'm a parent myself and these are the things that matter to me as well.

And of course sustainability is lovely. It's a lovely cherry on top, but it's not the first and most important driver of purchase.

So we changed our kind of marketing mix and the kind of messages that we were talking about or the importance of each message and we saw that reflecting in our sales.

So, you know, sustainability, everyone wants to say that they're sustainable but actually it needs to be convenient, it needs to be quick, it needs to be easy, it needs to be accessible. And so how you sell that is really, really key.

And you know, at the back end, making things sustainable is expensive, it's laborious, it's the process is longer.

You've got to educate your suppliers, you've got to figure out the supply chain yourself, you've got to play with different materials, see what works, what doesn't, because your manufacturer probably doesn't know what works on their factory line, things like that. So product development takes longer, securing materials takes longer, etc.

So it is painful, but the long term impact is that your brand is then distinctive. So whilst there is short term pain, there is long term gain.

So I think it is worth figuring out your niche because it's a niche, it is not going to be easy but then that's what's I think going to drive success in the end. So it's worth going for it.

That makes sense. And as you say, you've got a really strong brand story and identity of all the things you're doing.

But it was really interesting what you said about how customers weren't responding initially.

And I think that's a really good lesson because I think the things that we feel are important to us and to our business isn't always the things that resonate with customers.

Yeah, absolutely. You've got to really understand your customer and you know, different customer segments may want different things and care about different things.

So you might need different messages for your different customer types as your business grows, you know, and things like that.

So.

Yes, I mean I came from a background of market research so I understand the value of, kind of understand of really knowing your customer and I saw that reflected in the way in which our business kind of grew.

That's really interesting. And so what kind of feedback have you had for that, you know, for all the things you're doing around sustainability?

For example, the recycling, what kind of feedback and uptake do you have from your customers?

The recycling scheme has really surprised me. It's expensive for us to run the recycling scheme and so I was kind of nervous about how we would drive this without putting pressure on us.

As a company. So the most obvious one was for us to run an online campaign where we said, post us your shoes and we'll get them recycled.

And because we weren't giving people shipping labels or paying for the cost of shipping, really thought we'd have zero uptake. And that really, really shocked me because customers responded to that so well.

I've had customers send me like a bag full of eight different sneakers. Yeah. And so shipping that is not going to have been cheap.

It's not a £2 shipping label that, you know, you can, you can slap on for a bag full of eight sneakers. And yet they're doing that. They're doing that at their own cost.

And I think that's just, you know, a reflection of how frustrating it is for parents to get rid of shoes. We don't want to throw them in bins, but there sometimes feels like there's just no other option.

The charity shops are not taking your shoes in the recycling organizations. Footwear recycling isn't the most common thing you hear about.

You have no idea which players in the market will actually take your shoes for recycling. Clothing recycling outfits don't accept shoes. Selling them secondhand just feels like such a fragmented marketplace.

It's not easy to do and, you know, there's just so much coordination you've got to do around pick up the shoes from here and, you know, it costs four quid and someone's haggling over that four quid. It just feels like such a painful process. So I think, you know, consumers responded to just the simplicity of our scheme.

We then, you know, saw the success with that and we started rolling out a few, to a few physical locations. So we tied up with Gymboree and we have physical bins in six of their kind of centers around London.

And so, you know, we're growing, growing the recycling scheme slowly but surely, but, you know, it's again, coming along really nicely. Salz Shoes, who process our shoes for, you know, for our shoes for Secondhand, you know, for charity, they always request a donation of £1 per shoe.

And so we, we put that on our website and most of the people who send in the shoes send in that one 1 pound coin. So, you know, people are willing to even donate to charity on top of donating the shoes, on top of paying for the shipping themselves.

It's just been a really, really good, positive, Nice, nice thing to roll out.

Yeah. And that's amazing.

And I think that does come back to what you said right at the beginning of this call when I asked you about your inspiration and you were talking about how hard it is to pass on shoes.

And so I think that's great that you know, you've solved a problem for so many people because yeah, that is something that everyone, that everyone faces because you don't want like the thought of things going into landfill, for example. That's, that's a horrible thought.

Exactly, exactly. So yeah, then consumers are clearly responding to that.

That's brilliant. And when will you be. We're coming back to extensible toll soul technology. When will you be rolling that out?

Because I guess that's another thing to start talking.

Yeah, yeah, I'm really hoping that we can roll that out by the end of this year, early next year. The plan is to roll this out ideally in collaboration with a bigger existing market player in the market. You know, as I said, we're a tiny brand.

We're still massively underfunded and under resourced. And so you know, if we can leverage our IP to reach more consumers.

So we kind of collaborated with say a Clark's hypothetically, you know, we'd access their customer base but in return give them you know, access to a really market differentiating product and grow our brand and our kind of awareness as well organically.

So that's the hope to find a good partner that kind of believes in our vision, our mission and kind of wants to do something in this, in this space and help launch it together.

That sounds really exciting and yeah, I really, you have to keep me updated on how that goes. I think that sounds really exciting and also I think helpful because this is so new and I don't know what if you have any thoughts on this yet.

It's such a new thing to explain to consumers because I've never, and I think that's the challenge when people haven't seen something before is helping them understand what it is, who it's for, what the benefits are. Because it, it's something, it'll be completely new to everyone. So is that something you've been thinking about?

Yeah, I think marketing will be, will be key to success. You know, making sure people understand what is the benefit. How is this going to work? Is it safe for my kids shoe kids feet?

Will it you know, withstand the rigors of time?

You know, all of those, those sort of questions and we, you know, the more I speak about it to people, the more I hear those questions and, and therefore I kind of of know what I probably need to talk about when we roll this out. So yeah, yeah, as I said, I I always believe in the power of sharing.

The more we talk about our ideas before we launch them, the more value we actually get from, from the responses. And so. So, yeah, I'm already kind of collecting all of that information and building our strategy accordingly.

You're right.

That is so useful because if you're hearing people's questions or objections now, then you can be putting together all the all and the answers and kind of heading that off up front.

Whereas I think if you keep things too close to your chest, you can actually get surprised by people's reactions to things if you haven't been sharing it a bit wider.

Yeah, exactly.

Well, thank you so much for everything that you've shared. I have one final question before we finish, if that's okay. And that is, what would your number one piece of advice be for other product creators?

Number one piece of advice? I would say pick something that you're passionate about.

Like, you know, don't just follow a trend or do something that you think consumers might want. You know, pick something that you're really passionate about. This journey is a really long one. It's a not easy one.

You know, it'll feel like an uphill battle more often than it'll feel like a downhill one.

And so it's sometimes just that passion that kind of gets you to the next stage that drives you every single day, that makes you wake up and do some of the really mundane, boring, stressful pieces of work. Running a business is not glamorous by any stretch of the imagination.

And so I would say, yeah, find something that really piques your interest that you're passionate about. If possible, find a coworker to do this with. I mean, I'm a solo founder. I do sometimes miss having someone to share this journey with.

You know, obviously your friends, your family are there to back you, but no one will really know what you, what you're going through besides yourself and your, your co founder. So if you can find someone to share this journey with you, even better. But yeah, pick something that you're passionate about and, and will.

Will push for against all odds.

That's brilliant. Thank you so much.

And that makes so much sense because as you say, you'll be kind of come as your life when you run your own business and it becomes a big part of who you are and what you do. So, yeah, if you, you have to love.

Yeah, absolutely.

Maybe not every element of it, but overall, absolutely.

Definitely not. I mean, you know, I'm the CEO of Pip and Henry, but I'm also the the Packer. I'm also the cleaner. I'm also.

I have a lot of things, so the admin assistant. And yeah, it is hard. It is a long slog.

Well, thank you so much.

Thanks for having me.

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

Do remember that you can get the Fullback catalogue and lots of free resources on my website, vickyweinberg.com Please do remember to rate and review this episode if you've enjoyed it, and also share it with a friend who you think might find it useful. Thank you again and see you next week.