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. 

ORIGIN, CARINE CARMY: Physical Therapy for Women’s Health

The Femtech market is expected to reach $3 Billion by 2030, and yet there is a huge historical gender bias in medicine. Issues such as postpartum, pelvic floor therapy, incontinence, and painful sex have traditionally been overlooked, deemed taboo, or tackled via invasive procedures. On a mission to provide affordable physical therapy to women across the US, co-founder Carine Carmy launched Origin, to use movement as medicine. 

Did you know that on an annual basis, over 1 in 3 adult women in the US experience health issues that can be treated via pelvic floor physical therapy? “1 in 4 women have painful sex and 1 in 6 women have chronic painful sex. So much of it has to with the over-activation of the pelvic floor muscles which you can treat with physical therapy”, says Carine Carmy, co-founder of Origin. 

Carine struggled with her own health issues for many years which included ulcer colitis and painful sex. “No doctor could tell me what was going on and when I went to see them it would involve giving me a biopsy and highly invasive procedures to try and figure out what was happening. Finally, I went to physical therapy and after two sessions I was feeling much better.” 

The Aha Moment

Co-founders and besties: Nona (on left), Carine, and David (on right).

It was early 2018 when Carine connected with her longtime childhood best friend, Nona Farahnik Yadegar. Nona has just had a baby and was experiencing postpartum incontinence and pelvic pain. “No one had prepared her for this journey and she was left in the dark and told to return back to work and everything would be fine. But it wasn’t fine.” 

Nona ended up finding a physical therapy clinic called Bebé Physical Therapy in LA and was completely healed. The founding team then grew to include Nona’s husband, David Yadegar who had a background in healthcare and finance to build the business. To test the market, the team partnered with Bebé Physical Therapy and retained the clinical team via a formal partnership. This also allowed them to gain an existing database of customers and clinicians. 

By engaging in this strategy early on, Origin (launched in early 2020) is able to claim that they have treated “thousands” of women in Los Angeles and have more than 250 referring providers such as OB-GYNs. 

“We always thought there was going to be a digital component.”

During March 2020 and with the pandemic causing physical stores to shut down, Carine was able to pivot the business model to launch telehealth in less than 48 hours. “We now have 3 physical locations in Brentwood, West Hollywood, and San Francisco that are owned and operated by the Origin staff with a proprietary training program.” By going digital Origin was able to tap into the daily routines of busy moms who sometimes can’t come in for physical therapy, are looking for autonomy or don’t want to be touched by another human during COVID. The digital component increases convenience and retention due to empowering customers to learn the moves themselves. 

The team currently consists of 50 employees, with the first hire being a healthcare operator to set up systems and processes that scale. 

The Marketing

“What we have found is that word of mouth is the most powerful marketing tactic. People are really excited about what they are going through and want to share it with their friends and family. We have an NPS score of 96 which is completely unheard of in healthcare. Not only are we supporting women who have been told for a long time that their pain isn’t real, or doesn’t exist, but we are providing them an opportunity to do something about it. We are currently setting up a referral system to amplify the voices of our clients.”

Origin does a lot of partnerships with doula groups and fitness instructors around women's health. “We also have something called Real Talk in which we speak about sex and pain and how to navigate it with our clinicians.”

The Name

“Amma was the original name, but we found it too limiting. We didn’t want a name associated with the specific phases in life. When choosing a name, we wanted a name that was inclusive of women's journeys from maternity to menopause. We landed on Origin as this idea that through different phases of our lives, we have new beginnings and you can take that origin moment and regain strength.”

“I think in another life I would have become a writer. I encourage people to study what they love in college.”

A graduate from the University of Pennsylvania, with a major in economics, Carine Carmy grew up in LA with immigrant parents from Israel. “My dad sold used cars and my mom was an Architect. Being around small businesses my whole life gave me the spirit of what it means to work for yourself, but also scared me in a big way due to the immigrant small business stories you hear versus the VC-backed startup narrative. It was very different.”

However, if we backtrack to Carine’s childhood, she mentions that she was always “organizing people and things. In high school, I started a radio station and graduated when I was 17. I ended up launching a tutoring program with a friend of mine for SAT prep because I had a hard time getting a job.” Carine’s work experience ranges from being the VP of Sales and Marketing at Amino, a healthcare financial wellness platform as well as previously working at Shapeways before starting Origin. 

The Advice 

Carine mentions how when she was at Shapeways she did a one-hour session with author Jeremy Colonna. His best piece of advice, “know what role you are in and take the authority and responsibility for the ups and downs.” Carine further goes on to say that every founder should have a therapist as a MUST! “The biggest shift for me has been to try and have fun while building this company. I could look at things and say this is high pressure and freak out or say what a gift I have been given. The opportunity to build something for people.” For those in the midst of setting up a venture, Carine advises the following:

• Make sure you want to start a company. The likelihood of success is very low from a financial standpoint and it is very risky. There are a lot of factors working against founders such as pattern matching, and timing.

• Have obsessive conviction.

• Start small, test products, and talk to lots and lots of customers.

• As a founder, be able to constantly adapt to new modes of business such as going from being the head of HR, to head of product to head of marketing and so on.

• Venture capital is not the only way to finance your company!

• Some books to check out: Crossing the Chasm, The Great CEO, and The Invisible Woman.

Interested in improving your pelvic floor? Visit Origin today and let Carine know we sent you. Services span a range of offerings that include sexual health, fertility, pregnancy, postpartum, and menopause. 

Photo courtesy of Origin. 

Written by Alysha Malik.

JIGGY, KAYLIN MARCOTTE: Puzzles Worth Framing

As the world moves through a pandemic, it definitely feels like pieces of our lives are falling apart. Socializing has come to a decline leaving boredom on the rise. Luckily, founder Kaylin Marcotte launched Jiggy, a D2C puzzle company, to help us put the pieces back together. 

When it comes to purchasing adult puzzles our options tend to be pretty limited. Between animal prints, cottages, and scenic views, nothing ever seems worth framing. We caught up with Kaylin Marcotte, founder of Jiggy to chat about her personal journey. 

“I found myself doing puzzles all the time, but the options in the market were cheesy, outdated, uninspiring, and super old school. I was spending so much time with these designs that the idea of launching Jiggy just came to me as I thought, why was no one elevating this experience?”, says Kaylin. 

Jiggy is a D2C adult puzzle company that makes puzzles worth framing. Jiggy partners with female artists from around the world and licenses their art onto puzzle pieces. “Each artist gets a percentage of every sale.” Each Jiggy also comes with puzzle glue so that customers can bind the pieces together and hang it using Jiggy’s partnership with a family-owned framing company in Ohio. “We have an affiliate relationship with them.”

“Our goal is to reconnect people with their downtime while supporting female artists.”

Jiggy was launched in November 2019, but the idea came to Kaylin back in 2017 when she was working at the Skimm, a subscription newsletter for a millennial audience. “I remember coming across their newsletter back in 2013. They had just launched a year prior and were fundraising and growing their team. I was working at IBM at the time as a consultant and felt ready to dive into something where I would have a lot of ownership and responsibility. I reached out directly to the founders and met with them in the West Village in NYC. I was their first hire for a company that is now greater than 60 people.” Kaylin led the Skimm's brand ambassador program, community building, and grassroots marketing. 

“I was staring at screens all day long and wanted a way to unwind and get away from technology at the end of a workday. I had tried meditation and yoga, but nothing stuck with me. I started doing puzzles and it clicked. I found them very relaxing and cathartic.” 

As we roll out into mid-2020, Jiggy has seen an uptick in sales due to the pandemic. It seems as if people are looking for new activities to fill their COVID days. “March was a great month for us! 95% of our sales come from our website. However, we have also started to explore retail partnerships with cafes in Brooklyn and engage in brand giveaways.” Unfortunately, due to the rising demand, Jiggy was running out of inventory fast. In an effort to continue supplying products, they launched a campaign called Originals. “The Originals campaign allowed artists to paint directly on a pre-cut blank puzzle to create a one of a kind piece that would then be auctioned off. The proceeds would be split with the artist and a COVID relief fund. It was a creative way for us to solve a challenging problem.” People have been able to win puzzles from Sophia Bush, Allison Williams, and Lili Reinhart. Future collaborations include Demi Lovato, Social House, and Rebecca Minkoff. “We launched this at a time when artists were struggling due to galleries being closed.”

The Challenges

“Given my background in marketing, content, and branding I found the manufacturing world to be such a learning curve. I thought getting something made would be very straightforward, but it is all about finding the right factory and creating the right partnership.” Kaylin has also found product design and forecasting inventory a particular challenge as a first-time founder in a time when established brands are struggling to keep afloat. “We have two manufacturers, one overseas in Hong Kong which produces our higher quantity designs, and a local manufacturer in the US that we use to launch smaller quantities to test out new designs. Every day I find it hard to hold people accountable because the world is constantly changing.” 

Founder, Kaylin Marcotte.

The Childhood

Kaylin was born and raised in Pasadena, California. She has two siblings and grew up to parents who were both accountants that met at KPMG. As a child, she was always involved in projects at home with her family since her dad loved physics. “We would do a rube goldberg, domino effect project.” Later on, she attended Barnard College, with a major in Political Science and Psychology, and created an Entrepreneurship Club on campus. “In my senior year, I developed the idea and strategy for a small bank to grant students microloans to support women entrepreneurs.” Kaylin goes to give back further to the community by launching Project Plastick in 2018 with her sister to help reduce the amount of plastic waste in the world. 

The Advice

As a bootstrapped company, Kaylin invested her personal savings of $40,000 to launch Jiggy. “I thought about fundraising, but wanted to make sure the unit economics work organically, and I can be profitable before taking outside capital.” Her team consists of two part-time employees, an intern and she is now looking to hire a full-time head of operations. “The constant advice I heard before launching was to create an MVP and move fast. If you are not embarrassed by your first product launch, you were too slow about it. I actually felt that with a product-based business, that advice didn’t quite fit, and instead you should start building traction and interest, but get the product right from day one.”

For those looking to launch a product-based business, check out Kaylin’s advice below:

• A good early-stage CEO should manage cash flows, set the future direction and vision, and reprioritize the day to day. 

• You should constantly be firing yourself from roles in the company by hiring the best person and instead focus on your strengths in order to not become a bottleneck.

• Stay nimble with manufacturing by setting up two locations, one locally and one internationally. Use the local manufacturer to test out new designs with low quantities while sending your evergreen products with high orders overseas to receive a bigger margin. 

• If you are building a product-based brand, you should have a differentiator and this can take a long time, but it is worth it. 

• Start gaining traction while you wait by collecting emails, launching a landing page, and social media account. 

• Sometimes all you need to do is differentiate the consumer experience versus building something from scratch. 
  
  
  

Looking for a new activity in your COVID downtime? Check out Jiggy here or gift it to a loved one just because.

Photo courtesy of Jiggy. 

Written by Alysha Malik. 

THE GOODS MART, RACHEL KRUPA: The Healthier Convenience Store

As individual food and beverage brands turn towards sustainability, and good for you ingredients, retailers have not kept up and customers are left shopping online. In an attempt to clean up your local bodega and provide a higher offering with organic foot traffic, founder Rachel Krupa launched The Goods Mart to foster community, clean ingredients, and conversations. 

Rachel Krupa wasn’t always the owner of a retail store, The Goods Mart located on 189 Lafayette street in NYC, across the street from our favorite boys over at KOIO. In fact, she spent her last eighteen years in PR working with brands within the food and wellness industry. “I started my career in PR working for Lizzie Grubman Public Relations. But, before that, I was interning in PR in the political field but didn’t like wearing nylon clothing. I had a degree in political science and public relations.” 

“I have one rule in life. If I am not happy with what I am doing every day, then why am I doing it?”

“This was the catalyst for starting my own PR agency. I quit in 2010 and started Krupa Consulting. It was really tough getting my first client, but all you need is one and then you grow based on referrals.” Rachel started her agency by focusing on restaurants and later entered wellness. After 3 years (and a decent Rolodex) she decided to only work with founders who are changing the narrative and shaking up their category in some sustainable way. Her clients include WTHN (previously featured on RADICHE), Shake Shack, Miss Grass, Sustain, Our Place, By Chloe, and more. “It’s about telling the story of the company from the business side, but also from the ingredient side and defining why it is cool.” Over the years, Rachel has been able to build strong relationships with publications such as The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Well + Good, and Fast Company. 

By working closely with these founders, Rachel gained further insight into the marketplace and realized that there was no retail store, similar to a 711 business model that was selling good-for-you products in a convenient way. Alas, she decided to launch The Goods Mart in 2018 in LA and then NYC. 

Unfortunately, her first store in LA didn’t work out according to plan as the rent was very high and the foot traffic low. It was her first time operating a retail store, and looking back there’s a lot more to it than one would think. Our advice? Margins, margins, margins! Plus foot traffic and lots of it. She shortly closed the LA shop and opened one in NYC. 

“We want to create a closed-loop system.”

The Goods Mart sells snacks, food, coffee, CBD drinks, and Kombucha. Their product assortment is a mixture of new-comer startups and legacy brands, well-known snacks to establish a clientele, and reassure visitors that this space knows what is up. Instead of tipping, they allow customers to donate their tip to a charity from their network. 

Their product offering includes brands who don’t use any artificial colors, artificial flavors, growth hormones and are GMO-free. If you are a beverage brand with single-use plastic packaging, they will not work with you (victory to the glass!). 

However, as we all have experienced with COVID, retail has been taking a major hit these days and for some, it feels like the world is ending (especially in NYC where every store seems to be boarded up these days). In order to pivot and stay with the times, The Goods Mart is now offering a Surprise Snack Program in which consumers can create their own snack box to send or donate to other humans. If you are into paleo, vegan, gluten-free, and low sugar options, this one is for you!

The Advice

Rachel shares how everyone has their own journey and path in life and we shouldn’t compare our timelines to others. Her advice for those looking to start something:

• There is never a right time to launch something, it is never going to be perfect. 

• Have a team that is smarter than you and can bring skills that you don’t have. 

• Know that when you have a setback there will always be a lesson learned. Hence, there is never really a wrong way to do something because it is the path you had to go through to get it right. 

• No one really knows what they are doing, but be confident in the decisions you make to find the right answer. 

• When it comes to PR, as a publicist you should never guarantee placement to founders, but instead, try to over-deliver on your promise. The hustle will get you there!

Bored at home and feeling the munchies? Try out The Goods Mart snack box to indulge in a healthier way of refueling your body. After all, you are what you eat.

Photo courtesy of The Goods Mart.

Written by Alysha Malik.

LALO, MICHAEL WIEDER: Baby Gear that Grows With the Family

When it comes to babies, they grow up just so darn fast. Sometimes within a blink of an eye or a celebration of a fallen tooth. As a result, parents are spending a fortune trying to play catchup with their baby’s needs. In an attempt to save your wallet, store visits, and growing pains, Lalo develops premium, modern baby gear for millennial parents.

For those who don’t know, the baby gear sector is deemed a $10B dollar market. However, Co-Founder of Lalo, Michael Wieder realized very quickly that when it comes to shopping for baby products, parents tend to get overwhelmed by their unlimited options. As a result, Lalo focuses on two core products, the Daily Stroller ($515), and a 2-in-1 high chair and play chair combo called The Chair ($195). When it came to designing these products, Michael wanted to create solutions that would grow with the baby. Thus, parents are able to decrease the height of the high chair as their child’s height increases, allowing him or her to become a crucial member of the home dining experience. The Lalo stroller can also expand as your family expands, fitting up to two kids. Talk about a bargain! Available in multiple colors, Lalo leaves gender biases out the window. And while we are still on the topic of gender, did you know that back in the day the color pink was originally meant to represent boys? It’s true.

We caught up with Michael Wieder, the co-founder, and CMO of Lalo to chat about his personal journey with family planning in the Lalo Loft, located in Soho (during pre-Covid times when face masks were not a fad). 

“There were multiple aha moments of how crazy this industry is, and how underserved parents are at this moment when they are going through so much. Your life literally changes and your responsibilities change”, says Michael.

Going back to his childhood, Michael grew up in Plainview, New York, a suburb of Long Island. He attended the Ross Business School of the University of Michigan and instead of taking up a job in a traditional field such as banking, law, or consulting, he decided to start his first company within the music and event production space. “I was managing up and coming artists, producing concerts, and events. I ultimately networked my ass off and ended up becoming a sports agent.” 

The Aha Moment 

Michael later went on to work at WayUp as Head of Brand Marketing. “I remember the CEO of WayUp told me that my best friend already works there. He was referring to another colleague whom he thought I would vibe well with.” Fast forward to today and that colleague was Gregory Davidson, who is Michael’s co-founder and the CEO of Lalo. 

On Making That First Hire

When it comes to hiring your first team member, many startups struggle with defining that role and its responsibilities. “Our first hire was a Customer Service Associate. We had a bunch of freelancers that we worked with for product design. I handled marketing, brand, technology, and partnerships while Greg handled operations and logistics.” Michael felt that as a D2C business he wanted to wow his customers with over the top service. Speaking of great service, while Lalo operated out of a WeWork, Michael actually ended up hiring his first team member by stealing her from WeWork (she was the Community Manager). “WeWork has a great training program for its hires.” 

 “Think about who your customer is. If you don’t define the customer at the onset, you’ll have a tough time defining your brand. If you then innately know your customer, you can create the pillars that are right. Just by thinking about them as people, you can build a brand in relation to those people.”

In order to do this, Michael sent out thousands of surveys to people to gather data and design a brand that would appeal to parents in New York City as well as those in St.Louis. Guess what? It worked! This strategy also helped Lalo gain a track record of celebrity followers organically within their first week of launch! “Jessica Alba just started to like our photos on Instagram, and when we jumped on a call with her, she told us that she loves and uses our products.” Without paying a cent for influencer marketing, other celebrities have publicly endorsed Lalo’s products, including Khloe Kardashian and Shay Mitchell. Talk about generating free buzz!

Michael also gave much thought into the product pricing, and settled on a middle ground pricing strategy similar to suitcase brand, Away. “We landed on a price that would attract parents with less disposable income to buy into higher quality and longer-lasting brand, while also attracting new parents who want to splurge.” 

“Community is also a big part of why we created this business. A lot of parents suffer from fear and anxiety around shopping for baby products. We wanted to create a place where people feel welcomed to test out our products, hang out, and feel loved.” For those who don't know, the Lalo loft is a mixture of residential and commercial space. It is a showroom in the front with an office in the back (similar to Casper’s first office back on Bond St in the early days). 

The Name

As catchy as it sounds, Lalo is an acronym that stands for Love All Little Ones. Michael was touched by the recent stories of migrant children in detention at the border. “We believe that every child regardless of where they are and where they come from deserves the same amount of love.” The brand is designed to sell love, not fear, and make parents and all children feel taken care of. 

The Advice

Launching a company in the baby care space is no pat-a-cake endeavor. It is filled with strict product safety regulations, alongside emotional customers. Michael shares his top tips for those looking to start a baby gear brand:

• Target angel investors and small funds. It is important to do your research and know what sector and stage each fund represent. It is important to choose strategic investors who can add value to your company versus just writing checks.

• Be smart about managing your cash. Future funding isn’t guaranteed, especially in this time of the coronavirus, so balance your growth and profitability.  

• Don’t compare your growth to other companies. Every company should be focused on building their own playbook.

• Define your ideal consumer early on. Build a brand in relation to their needs, vernacular, and aesthetic.

If you are expecting a baby or know someone who is share the Lalo love with them by mentioning “radiche” for a 10% discount. Offer expires on May 30, 2020. 

Photo courtesy of Lalo.

Written by Alysha Malik. 

MAX-BONE, PARISA FOWLES: The Unleashed Designer

 As design-forward, modern-day consumers, we want to purchase products that appeal to our emotions and personal space. However, when it comes to shopping for your pet, your options are pretty limited as far as design and aesthetics go. Like many of us, this is something dog owner Parisa Fowles-Pazdro struggled with, which led her to launch Max-Bone, a direct to consumer lifestyle pet brand. 

When Casper, the mattress company, launched dog beds back in 2016, it made its decision solely based on data. At the time, the data showed that the majority of folks in New York owned a dog rather than having a baby. Fast forward to today and the pet industry is a booming one, currently valued at $75 billion dollars. We were able to visit Parisa Fowles-Pazdro, founder of Max-Bone in their Hamptons re-tail (see what I did there) location to chat shop. 

“I had never grown up with a dog and had traditionally been very scared of them. It wasn’t until my husband Max got me an English Bulldog, Macintosh, that my world was transformed both personally and professionally,” said Parisa. 

Parisa was born in Iran and fled the country at a young age due to the revolution. As a result, she grew up in Sweden with Swedish values and aesthetics. “My parents always wanted me to become a doctor of some sort, so I entered the world of Dentistry and eventually moved to London to work in this field. However, I hated it. I hated the blood, saliva and literally the entire process!” Parisa said. Random fact: apparently dentistry is classified as one of the top 19 jobs where you are most likely to kill yourself. Eek! No wonder Parisa wasn’t having fun. 

Life Before Max-Bone

Believe it or not, Parisa actually had a prior brand called Max Fowles back in 2008. “My husband was a big believer in me and encouraged me to quit my job and start a fashion line. Even though I didn’t have any background in fashion, I was able to put the supply chain together and ended up moving to NY and then LA as London didn’t have garment manufacturers readily available like the U.S does.” This totally explains the dominance of the fintech startup scene in London as most fashion and CPG brands probably have a hard time setting up shop! 

Under Max Fowles, Parisa bootstrapped the company and was the only employee working full-time. “We sold high-end fashion clothing such as leather jackets and got orders from Moda Operandi. Even Vogue had written about us, but as the company scaled, the margins didn’t make sense. So in 2010, I decided to close the business.” 

The Aha Moment

“When Macintosh entered my life, everything changed.” It was 2015 and Parisa was looking to purchase a dog bed, but was left with very limited options. “I realized that there was nothing in the market available that could hold up to the style, quality and aesthetic modern consumers such as myself were looking for.” 

As a designer with a well-decorated home in LA, Parisa started contacting manufacturers to design her own dog bed, but unfortunately, Macintosh would end up peeing on it, destroying the $2,000 creation. “He also shed like mad, so I started putting a jumper on him for our car rides. Slowly, I started to build out his wardrobe and created a dog clothing collection by streamlining my production process where each product is made in-house versus running around to different vendors to retrieve snaps and buckles. Unlike humans, dogs don't complain about fit! I also had all of the PR contacts from my last company which allowed me to successfully market this new collection.” Parisa realized the potential and growth in the pet sector and decided to officially launch Max-Bone in 2016. 

“We cater to all dog sizes.”

When it comes to marketing today, it is all about the collaborations, or collabs, as the cool kids say. COL-LABS! (Ok I’m done now). This tactic helps spread awareness and reach new customers. In the past, Max-Bone has created a capsule collection with Disney in addition to collabs with Illesteva, Wag, Rover and 11 Howard. It has also been endorsed by celebrities such as Kendall Jenner, Reese Witherspoon, Lena Dunham, Beyonce, Selma Blair and more. 

Max-Bone also believes in retail as a customer acquisition strategy and has engaged in multiple seasonal pop-ups over the years in locations including NYC, LA, the Hamptons and Aspen to cater to their prime customers. “I believe in organic growth and executing a D2C model where margins don’t get cut by the wholesaler.”  

On Finding An Investor

As a second-time founder, Parisa knew that she didn’t want her latest business to be bootstrapped and instead preferred to take external funding via strategic investors. “I find that the network strategic investors bring is more important than the money. Money is widely available today, but I look for investors who like to get involved, come up with new ideas, and have PR connections or contacts that can help grow my brand.”

The Advice

Today, Max-Bone’s product line has expanded to include pet grooming, treats, accessories, clothing, and toys. Their price point starts at $14 for a toy and ranges to $300 for an XXL dog bed.  When it comes to launching a D2C pet company, Parisa shares her advice with us:

• Create something that is missing in the market, but has demand. Do your research to figure this out and when you do, act fast. Don’t wait too long!

• Learn quickly from your failures and understand the value of money.

• Try to streamline your production process for efficiency. 

• Don’t buy into your own press. True success is what occurs behind the balance sheet.

• Create a business that has the margins built-in from day one or you will not be profitable. 

Do you feel awkward that your fur baby is walking around naked? Yes, it’s a thing! Visit Max-Bone to provide your pet with elevated, high-quality products and join the tribe of celeb parents. 

Photo courtesy of Max-Bone. 

Written by Alysha Malik.