JULY, MUHAMMAD SAIGOL: The Window A/C
The US window A/C market is valued at $2 billion out of which New York City makes up 20% at a valuation of $400 Million. Yup, bet you never thought about those clunky boxes and their ripeness for innovation hanging above your heads? However, one founder did. Muhammad Saigol. Co-founder of July, a DTC window A/C brand that combines millennial design aesthetics with free installation to offer a premium service at an affordable price to city dwellers.
Having grown up in Lahore, Pakistan for most of his life, co-founder of July, Muhammad Saigol was no ordinary child. In fact, his mother is the chairman of one of Pakistan’s largest media groups, Dawn while his father is an industrialist within the air conditioning sector. Being the youngest of four siblings, Muhammad is also known under the name of Mowgli by his childhood friends, wink, wink. When it came to his entrepreneurial spirit, he tells us how “I had seen my parents run their own companies and make major decisions. It was very much ingrained in me that this was a path I would be interested in.”
Co-founder of July, Muhammad Saigol above.
The Aha Moment
It was 2019, and “at the time, I was working at Digital Ventures corporate innovation arm of Boston Consulting Group. We worked with traditional large clients and would build new businesses in the digital space. For me, it was a really great way to start to learn what are the muscles of entrepreneurship and innovation that I can apply to build a business. It had been a rough 2 weeks at BCG and I took a walk at 10 pm one evening with a friend after work. I was talking about how I want to use what I have learned to build something new and leverage what I have done with my family and use it here, in the US. On my walk, I looked up and noticed windows and windows of A/C’s hanging out and as I was talking, everything clicked and the rest was history” says Muhammad.
July is a window A/C direct-to-consumer brand that provides free installation as a service for those in NYC. But, it doesn't stop there. July has reimagined the aesthetic of a window A/C by working closely with Box Clever, the agency behind Away Luggage to patent a design installation system and develop a unique aesthetic. Each A/C comes with a front panel that can be swapped out to match the aesthetic of one’s home. By adding customization to their business model, July is able to partner with artists in the future for limited edition launches to add scarcity and exclusivity to their product while enticing customers.
Their current product offering includes a small A/C unit that comes equipped with 6,000 BTUs for $375 and a medium unit with 8,000 BTUs for $415. You can also add on an air purifier for an additional $30. Both units come with a baby blue remote control, and an app to allow customers to set the temperature of their A/C before coming home on a hot summer day. “There is nothing better than walking into a cool apartment,” says Muhammad. Take it one step further and July also connects with Alexa and Google Home for Voice control via wifi. Their products can also be found on Goop. Talk about being a fashionable A/C brand! For those not in NYC, July can be installed via a partnership with Handy for an additional $150.
“We originally tested the market under a dummy website called Don’t be Hot and at the time sold regular A/C’s from Best Buy via a wholesale order of 100 units.”
Start small, prove out the demand in the market and then use your learnings to raise VC funding. That is the exact process that Muhammad took with July, formerly known as Don’t Be Hot back in 2019. Muhammad managed to recruit a former colleague from BCG, Erik Rauterkus as his co-founder as the two had worked on many projects together. Together they offered free installation as their unique selling proposition while price-matching Best Buy’s A/C’s and it worked! The learnings? Insight from customers on their pain points of owning an A/C and its installation system, and in-field marketing of how customers live and their design aesthetics. This allowed the co-founders of July to garner ideas for what their future product should look like and how to offer a better customer experience.
“The testing originally started out with a survey and a wide group of friends to understand if they owned a window A/C, where they got them from and to familiarize ourselves with the market. We didn’t want to only rely on our biased experiences.” July officially launched in 2020 with VC backing.
“When it comes to the A/C industry, it is very fragmented. You have manufacturers and even your main brands don’t manufacture their own products, they contract it, similar to the mattress industry. Then you have retailers such as Best Buy and Home Depot where customers buy A/Cs and separately sign up for installation services which get referred to a third party. So along this whole supply chain, the customer ends up paying more for the product, and more for the service versus going to a one-stop-shop. We are a one-stop-shop.” July also picks up existing A/C units from customers and disposes of it properly as A/Cs are a large contributor to global warming.
“We have created for the first time a brand in this space and I won't underestimate how impactful that has been. Over time appliances have become commoditized and lost their meaning.”
“Traditional A/C’s always advertised around keeping you cold. You see these ads and it always involves someone wearing a winter coat in their house while it is summer outside. We wanted to turn that on its head a little bit because actually, we love summer. We think summer is the best time of the year. It is the time you get to go out, you go to the beach, lay by the pool, etc. We want July to embody the carefreeness of summer itself. We want customers to think positively about their summer experience and when they do, they think of July” says Muhammad.
The Advice
As most founders will tell you, launching during a pandemic presents a bunch of new challenges no one could have predicted. In order to offset the winter months to spur demand, July launched a beach towel collaboration with artist Amber Vittoria for pre-orders as a gift with purchase. And...it worked!
For those looking to launch a D2C brand in this crazy world, Muhammad shares some of his advice with us:
Start small and think about what are the key assumptions of your business you are making and without that assumption, there is no business. Think through how you can test this assumption out before quitting your job.
When starting a new business there is always a lot of ambiguity, confusion, and unknowns. It feels like such a huge effort to actually hone in and create something, which is why most people don’t get off the ground, flounder, and go in too many directions. Test and learn as you go along to give yourself conviction in the process.
Think about partnerships in synergistic industries that can help differentiate your brand and provide out-of-the-box marketing growth.
Don’t be hot this summer and buy yourself a damn cool-looking A/C here.
Photo courtesy of July.
Written by Alysha Malik.