What Women Want: Challenges Of Launching Female-Friendly Furniture With Dana Bakich

Protect your brand, product or invention from the hazards of consumer product launching and go from idea to product to big brand. With guidance from retail product design and development experts Tracy and Tom Hazzard. Get the insider secrets to put the right things in the right order with the right resources so you can out design, outsource, and out profit your way to retail success.

Hey, everyone. Welcome to product launch hazards. I know we haven't done an episode in a while, but this one needed to happen. It's about time. It's about time someone went and tackled furniture from a female perspective. So, and I know this better than anyone because I've spent a lifetime being the only woman in the room, a career being the only woman in a room, trying to convince buyers and other people that women actually care about the desks that they buy, they care about the chairs that they buy, and they want features that no one's ever thought of before. And someone finally said, enough is enough. And she has decided to tackle the desk industry and develop the her desk. So I've got Dana Bakich. She's an entrepreneur, a digital strategist, a passionate conscious consumer, and she founded her first business, positive equation, in 2017 with a focus on helping nonprofit marketers cultivate passionate online audiences of donors, partners and advocates through social media. And her second business, right now, her desk is a responsibly made desk designed by and for women. It's not only designed by, you're going to hear, it's made by, it's going to be marketed by. There's everything about it, the graphics, the website, all of it is done by women. Her desire is to provide women with a functional and beautiful space to work from home, which is so timely as well. I am really excited to bring Dana to you today because we this is a topic of thinking about tackling an industry that is complex, that has more sophisticated systems, like delivery systems are more complex because the product's bigger in furniture, the weight is heavier, the materials are harder to source in certain regions of the country. And so like, she's taken all of that on. And so I really want you to hear about the genesis of creating a business like this. And she's very early on into it. She's still doing a crowdfunding round. Things are going very successfully. And she does have funding to build the desk. So she's already in build, so they're going to be starting to ship, I think, pretty soon. So there's a lot of things that she's had to bring together and a lot of complications she's brought into developing this business and this product line and I think she's handled it with a very core sensibility about what's important. And that's what I want you to hear from Dana today. So let's talk to Dana Bakich about her desk. Hey Dana, thank you so much for joining me today. So excited to talk furniture.

Yes, thank you Tracy. Happy to be here.

Especially furniture designed by women. Do you know how rare that is?

Very rare, very rare.

Because I thought I was one of like hundred thousand.

Yeah, trust me, for somebody who was Google, searching it to try and find a piece of furniture to purchase from a female owned business or just designed by a woman was very difficult to find.

So let's talk about the genesis of your, your concept and your idea. So what was going on?

I feel like a lot of this, this was pre Covid. I had recently I was actually a digital producer on American Idol. And so for nine months I was working on a set and then I came back and I was doing, I was running my own business doing digital consulting and I just realized I needed a better desk. It was that simple. And so I really respect conscious products of how they're built. And then also as a female entrepreneur, I wanted to ideally purchase a desk for, from a FEMA owned business. And like two things really. It was I couldn't find any good features, I couldn't find a desk from a FEMA owned business on Google. I was searching everywhere. And so I ended up buying a desk off Wayfair, as a lot of us do go to Target, overstock, whatever. And I spent about 450, $500 on this desk and it came in like 14 different pieces. It was made out of particle board, it had that stamp of like made in Vietnam and it came broken in two places and it took me about two hours to put together.

Well, that's actually really low. I'm just going to tell you that from having designed ready to assemble furniture for 25 years, that two hours is like nothing compared to some of the products out there.

It was a nightmare. And all I felt was like frustrated after putting it together. And the only thing I could think of was there has to be a better solution. And that was literally the genesis to thinking about once I sat at the desk. If you really think about it, the majority of desks are very A masculine and B, there's no real functionality besides a top right. There might be some drawers, but most of the time like some of them are standing now, but most of them that's about it. You have a top to set stuff on. So. So I just started thinking about all the pain points and things that I use on a daily basis. And I reached out to a girlfriend of mine who was my college roommate who's now an interior designer, and I was like, hey, I have this idea that originally was just gonna be for myself, and then it kind of evolves from there.

Well, you know, this is the interesting thing. So we think about this, but are your needs as a woman really all that different from a man's needs today? Because the design of a desk is based on an old world way of working. It actually has nothing to do with gender, except that there were just all men in the workplace at the time. So the size is outsized. So this is what I discovered when we were designing office chairs, for instance, that office chairs were designed for the average of a six foot male.

Very true.

How many women have reached six feet? Right. Like it's not even close to the average size for a woman. So it was easy to make a change from a functionality standpoint and then from a design standpoint when you realize that the metric of how everything, everything was designed, it was built off a bad premise.

Right, right.

But today I think we're built off a bad premise, not just of gender, the fact that the gender dynamics has changed, but the dynamics of how we work has changed 100%.

I mean, even more so now in the past, what, six months? Right? Yeah, definitely changed slightly. Slightly. So it's even become more apparent into even all the different tools and technology and accessories and things that we utilize in our home office spaces or even if you're in a co working space. Right. That's something new since wework started that's come into fruition for people outside of just a traditional office space. So, yeah, you're right. Technically, all of the features of her desk could also be used by a man. There's no reason that it couldn't be.

Right, Right. It's just a different work style that they maybe didn't realize it could be so great, right?

Yes, exactly.

We used to call this covertly feminine design. This is actually a design process that my husband and I espouse because we couldn't tell the retailers. And I'm going to ask you about your research in just a moment. But we couldn't tell the researchers that we designed it for women, even though women buy or influence 80% or more of the purchases in the marketplace. Because if we did that, they would never put the product in. They would Consider it to be too niche so we wouldn't tell them. So the features were covertly feminine, but the product was just a desk at the end of the day or just a chair.

Right.

And that's how we would get it in. But we knew between us, we knew. And the results were women loved it and men loved it even more than they thought they would.

Right, There you go. That's exactly right.

So they didn't know it could be so good.

Anyway, tell me a bit about your research. So you now get this idea that you want to design a desk. You want to go into an industry that's really a difficult industry to enter. And I'm just. Most people don't understand. There's lots of really close product lines out there. You had discussions on the show about beauty products which have a lot of chemicals. And so if you don't have a chemistry background, those are difficult products. But furniture has a supply chain problem, has delivery issues. It's one of the largest pieces of things you have to deliver. So it falls outside the realm of there's a whole can of worms you probably had no idea you were going to get into. So how'd you do your research?

Oh, yeah. The first thing I did was a. I was looking at fast furniture and understanding the industry of that. I talked to a few different interior designers throughout the country and I asked them their perspective, even on price, on where their customers go. I created a survey on Typeform and I sent it out. It was asking friends of mine and I used to live in Los Angeles. And so I was a part of a bunch of different kind of like female entrepreneur communities. And I sent out my survey that was asking about features, about price, about where they shop for desks, about how often they buy desks, about would it matter if there was like a social component to it? Would it matter? Just a list of questions. And I got back great responses from everyone for that. And from there I continued to just kind of ask the marketplace. And I started to do a lot of research in trying to find female owned manufacturing facilities.

I'm laughing because it's like, do you even know where you could find the manufacturing facilities? Because that's even just as hard.

It was super hard. I honestly went to Instagram and I was searching hashtags like womenwoodworkers or. And trying to dive into that very niche community of like female carpenters and ask them and they didn't even know of like big female manufacturers. And then I reached out to a few. I started searching by like family Owned. I was just trying to get more and more where I wanted to be. And honestly, it wasn't until I found one female woodworker in Atlanta. Her handle is wooden maven. Her name is Char. And she's like, you know, you should talk to this woman, April Wilkerson. And I was like, I don't know. I don't know who that is, because I wasn't in this space, Right. And apparently April has a million YouTube subscribers, and she's very well known on Instagram. She's an influencer there in the space. Super fortunate. She had just purchased a manufacturing facility in March where she has, like, three of her own CNC machines for the purpose of creating custom products. And she's in Texas. So on a whim, I DM'd her on Instagram. I thought, there's no chance that this girl's gonna get back to me. And she messaged me right back, and we got into conversation. I flew to Texas. I saw her shop, and the nicest human being and the nicest team. But it was really, really difficult. There was months. I almost didn't make the product at the beginning, actually, at the beginning of when Covid happened, a. Just because I thought the market was going to be off with COVID happening, not understanding that, of course everyone's going to work, so they need a desk.

So for those of you who have not been out shopping for furniture, right now, there is a shortage of cheap. Of fast furniture, right? Yeah, there's a shortage of fast furniture. So for three reasons. One, Covid in China, where most of the furniture comes from, happened right after Chinese New Year. So they didn't come back from Chinese New Year. So they ship all the products, which mainly get sold out through the holidays and throughout January. And then there's a shortage. Always. There's a downtime, but there's also a dip in orders from February through till April till spring starts again, is when orders normally pick up in the furniture market. So they thought, oh, we're going to be fine. But they never came back in February. So when you never come back, you don't build up inventory stores, you don't ship them, they don't get on the water. And by April, there were no products in the marketplace because they burned through the inventory that had been on a retail shelf, but maybe shifted into digital and sold digitally. So they were all gone. And then they didn't place as many orders because all the buyers panicked. So now we have a shortage of orders for Back to School, which wasn't going to happen. So we normally have small chairs, smaller desks, which those are the things that most people would want to buy for their homes. Slightly smaller footprints, all not ordered and not in stock. So we fast forward all the way to the fall and you can barely get anything in stock right now.

Right. And meanwhile the demand has skyrocketed. That's right.

Way off the charts.

I'm a digital marketer first and foremost. And so the first thing I did, I go to Google Trends and I start looking at what's happening in the press. And if you the search term desks just over the past 12 months is like this, I bet. So it's like do, do, do, do do. And then it like skyrockets up. So 100% what you're saying.

Yeah. And so this is the issue. So there's no place to buy in store, there's no place to buy online. And the shipping's always extended on large heavy furniture. Beds are the same problem right now. If you want to buy a brand new bed, you can forget it. Right now it's out of stock everywhere. Extended deliveries and when it comes, it will be broken, I guarantee it. And so I've been through three of them, so I can say that for sure. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Three deliveries are all broken. You come to this place where it's a nightmare of supply, a nightmare of delivery systems that are really broken and not able to. How do you look at that from a marketer and say I'm going to do this in a different way and what am I going to do?

So I love that question. So the first thing I did was a, I flew to Texas. I wanted to see everything. I wanted to understand what's the product. I need to, I'm a, I'm a very visual learner and so I didn't want anything to be shipped to anybody without a me seeing it first. I wanted to test it. I changed things when I went down there, when we were talking about height, I changed where I wanted specific things I changed once I saw the desks, I wanted to make sure the drawers were full extension and had a soft close. So things that aren't normal on a desk but more normal on like your cabinets right in your kitchen, that make a big difference. And then from a shipping perspective, the desk currently has three different colors and that you can choose from and different handle colors. So I'm having each of the three desks shipped to me separately because I want to QA that process. I want to see is there a problem with a how Long does it take to get to me? From Texas to Atlanta and then B. Are there any components that with these three different shipments, is there anything broken? Is there anything damaged? So I am the one receiving an issue and not a consumer receiving an issue.

So this is the thing about furniture. Furniture's heavy. So when you ship something heavy, things happen. In shipping, it's not just like, UPS is dangerous and they throw stuff around. It's not that at all. This thing is weighted. And so in its own weight, things can crush, things can get bumped, things can. So you don't actually realize that until you do ship one. So I love that you follow that process of like, let's really QA this. Let's make sure that we can quality assure it for the future. So we're not just going to do quality control. We're going to check it and we're going to improve it for the next time, and we're going to improve it every time we move forward. That's a great process. Dana.

That was one of our main conversations when I was down there, was around, how do we want to make sure. I'm also trying to be as sustainable as possible, which is tricky when you're trying to make sure that you have padding and it's being creative. Like, is it foam that, like, molds to it right where you put it in, or is it something that's like when you're moving in those boxes, you know, you have those little corners that go on your television if you're gonna move it. Like, what are the pieces?

A crate kind of stuff.

Yeah, exactly. So, like, what will be what's the most sustainable idea and minimal, but will still give the best result at the end of the day, is kind of where my brain goes. And so what I love about the team is even when I was down there, we're actively troubleshooting and discussing options. So they might even ship one desk one way and another desk another way. And we can see, is there any difference? Do they both work? Does one work better than the other?

Yeah, because this is the thing. So how you pack a box matters. And this is, you think that, oh, logically I'm going to pack it from the biggest pieces to the smallest pieces. Like that just seems like a logical way. But what happens is then when somebody tilts it up on their truck, you created an imbalance and it leans and it shifts. Yeah, it shifts. And so then they store it the wrong way because it keeps falling over. And so now they're not following your recommendation of which end is up, right? And so this is where stuff goes wrong. Like our logic doesn't always work in the actual process of how something gets delivered. So good for you to keep testing. I love that.

Always.

What about scaling? Because this is a pretty small manufacturing facility and it's the startup manufacturing facility, so there's a lot of risk there. I mean, what about scaling? Are you going to be able to handle that?

So that was one of the questions that I also asked April and her team and her answer was she's like, if you bringing in too many orders that I can't handle, I'm going to get another CNC machine and I'm going to hire more staff. The dream world to me is a facility where there are women hired in building these desks. There are very few women in the construction space, in the woodworking space, carpenters. So if I can employ, like right now, the person who built my website, my publicist, marketing the branding, every single person has been a woman that's been hired. So I'm trying to be authentic and true in the process. So scalability, I would say, I would honestly right now stick. April is an expert in what she does in understanding woodworking and building materials. And so with her leadership, I would say let's work on hiring women in Texas. Or if we notice that New York is a hotspot for her desk, maybe we say, okay, let's invest in getting a space there and being in building the desk there, or if it's in California, figuring out where is the demand for the desk if it happens to be regionally and being smart. Because therefore, like you mentioned, with shipping, I include shipping in my price and shipping is very expensive, very expensive for a 60 pound, 48 inch item. So if there is a way to make the shipping more cost effective and create facilities that are closer, that would be amazing.

I'm going to give you a tip here. There's a couple of people I can introduce you to. But the shipping, putting your facility as close to your shipping ideal location actually matters with furniture. There's a couple companies that I worked with over the years and they created five different warehouses and five facilities near those warehouses because the shipping made it more efficient to get it out to every single region within the country, which allowed them to be almost prime or prime certified for Amazon in that particular case, which was one of their goals. So not every product can hit that because if you have a large oversized, it does have to still be trucked. A cow king bed has to be trucked. There's no way about it, but 48 inches and under, and you can certainly do that. They found that there were five ideal locations that would allow you to get to every single region in the country. But these things, you wouldn't know. It's not your standard ones. If you did research and said, okay, where do coffee suppliers do that? It's not the same. And it has to do with the size of product and the shipping facilities and the types of runways at the airport that's there. It's a very unusual ask of people to find and research and match something and say, I'm going to be able to model this. So you took on something that's hugely difficult to model. And so that's the next question I have for you. So you're a marketer first and you have marketing models that work. Go to Kickstarter, go to Indiegogo, do these things. Have they been working for furniture in the way that you expected, in the way that they work for other products?

So it's really interesting. So my background is in really the nonprofit space, so in fundraising. So this e commerce space is very new for me. But I've been utilizing the traditional models that I know. So I did do a crowdfunding campaign on ifund women that's been predominantly family and friends backed. But then through that, which is interesting, is those campaigns just open you up before you're selling a product. Right. For marketing opportunities. So through that, I was able to get a speaking gig with Create and Cultivate, which is an organization with a ton of female entrepreneurs. And I was speaking on how to create a business during COVID So it enabled me to be able to have that opportunity. It's also opened the door where I've received interesting requests from angel investors in the business. Right Now I want 100% equity of the company, but it's good to at least have those inquiries coming my way, which shows there's an interest in the product. And then the other angles I've gone have been through social media advertising, which I know really well, through digital marketing. So Facebook, Instagram, and what was amazing about those is when I was trying to just gain an email list, when I had a wait list, I was able to have an email lead for less than 15 cents per person because.

It'S a hot topic, number one, because you understood how you're reaching them and who you're reaching, and you were dialed into your target market. So I'm assuming that those three things kind of came together for you.

Yes. And it was really interesting. I Did a lot of work on the target audiences. And I went from the female entrepreneur space, which I know well, and the people that they look to. I also went the media outlet way because I know it's a hot topic in the media and actually got sales from that demographic as well, which was.

Interesting because we're all working from home, right?

Exactly, exactly. And then I've gone the other route, which is the very typical. I'm searching for furniture, I'm searching for desk, home, office. So entrepreneur, media driven, and then straight like ikea, target product driven. Yeah. So right now I'm still running all of those, so it's a learning phase. And then the other one that's driving a ton of website traffic right now, Google Ads, searching for desk and Pinterest, because women go to Pinterest is more of a search engine versus a social network. So they go there for ideas. Right. About interior design or home office spaces. And so I've been running targeted pins around those different keywords and that's driven a ton of new traffic. So, yeah, the channels are working. I think. I'm only at this point a week in, so I'm running the ads and I'm seeing what works and doing a bunch of AB testing and then spending more money into obviously, the ones that are providing results.

So what's next? What challenge do you have to fix now?

Honestly, it's brand awareness that's the largest chunk. So it's going to be. I'm working a lot on finding the right collaborations and partners to try and do this as organic as possible without a ton of paid. But it's a lot of work to make the dent into becoming essentially having a share of voice. So I need to make sure that I'm thought of when IKEA is thought of. Right. Or when Target is thought of or Wayfair is thought of is how do I find. And I don't need. I don't want everyone. I am looking for a very specific consumer that is a woman who wants to feel empowered. But they sit down at a desk and believes that it's more than just a piece of furniture, but this is a piece that somebody has put a lot of love into. And I feel positive energy here and I feel creative here and it has all the functionality that I want. Plus they have a little bit more of a disposable income because it's in that like $800 range. So I was looking at a lot of competitors. It's not over 1,000 DOL, but the fast furniture space is really, in that $500 and less. And I didn't want to be there. So it's finding that niche target demographic that I'm looking for.

Well, you know, that's pretty challenging as to put your name up there against someone who's probably half the price point of where you are. So the problem for you is that there isn't competitors at that higher end. Like, there isn't anyone doing what you're doing in that space at a higher end, making it work, and that you're coming in kind of in that midpoint. You're not. So you have this very odd place of trying to find your brand, your brand voice amid someone who's never considered that this is value.

The marketplace hasn't, the audience has, but the brands and the marketing hasn't appeared before.

Right. I would say the two that I look to a lot are Joybird. I look to a lot. I have a Joybird. It's actually the love seat that's sitting right there. Burrow with their couches. Like New York made. Or Joybird is California made. The sustainable, you get to customize. Right. Your fabrics and your chair legs. So those are two brands that I kind of look to that are in that above $1,000 range. And their desks. Joybird has desks that are 800 and above. So it's going for essentially, like, me, I'm 31, and I'm willing to spend a little bit more for something that's made well and has a social purpose behind it.

We're getting to a place where people are starting to get a sense of the devastation of fast furniture. There's a great documentary on Netflix right now called Broken. It's a series, and the first one on cosmetics will scare the crap out of you.

Ooh, I'm going to write this down. Yeah.

You'll never be able to buy another product without, like, scrutinizing every single piece of the packaging, wondering if it's a counterfeit cosmetic or not.

Anyway.

Yeah. So you can't buy online without, like, worrying about this. But I think it's the third one, the second or third one that is on furniture, and it talks about sort of the problem of deforestation and a whole bunch of things that are coming in and sort of the rise of ikea, which, you know, inarguably is also a. There's all kinds of banking and fraud and laws that they're being investigated under and have been for decades, international banking rules that they are violating. So in addition to all kinds of sustainability issues that they claim they don't have, but they do. And then, of course, the really scary part is kids dying because their products are collapsing on top of them.

I have seen those. Yeah.

Yeah. And so this is what this whole. It's called Broken. And what this whole series is about in this particular episode is about fast furniture. But what, as I was watching that coming from the furniture industry and understanding what's happened here, is I think they missed the big mark here. And what they missed is that that love and care that you were talking about that you put into the design of your furniture, that you put it into it, has completely disappeared over the 25 years that I've been working in the industry. When I first started, there were designers, there were people who were spending time thinking about the ergonomic needs of their consumer base, thinking about how things were being sold, how things were being shipped. We were considering all of that.

And the majority of furniture was built in North Carolina.

That's right. It was built in North Carolina. South Carol, Virginia, is another really good place. They talk about that. They talk about Bassett as being a big wood manufacturer, but there are also other places that have different types of woods around the country and around the world where they were making. So it was very diverse in terms of where you could buy furniture from. And I worked out of the furniture industry in Michigan, so I got to work at Aeron Chairs and contract furniture out of Herman Miller, which was very sustainably focused as well. But we were building furniture for a lifetime. We weren't building fast furniture. And there's one thing about making something easy to assemble, because we want to lower our ability, our package size. We want to make it easier for people to buy products and receive them in their home and put them together. That didn't mean we had to go and make something that didn't last a lifetime. And that's the mistake that happened. Somewhere in that process, they decided, well, if the consumer puts it together, then we don't have to care about it lasting. Where did that mindset come from? When did that happen? Because I don't think that that was what any designer would have been. On the outset, we were always concerned with cradle to grave and what was going to happen to products. But what happened over time is as the sourcing moved overseas. And we did that, we went overseas, we worked with factories. We did that for 15 years and helped transition lots of products and lots of companies to being able to do that. But we were involved in the process along the way. And over time, what happened is office Max would go direct and Target would go direct and Wayfair would pop out. And all they did was buy furniture designed by a factory. So there was no care, no love. And what I call styling happened. And that's where you may get an interior designer or a stylist at the company who goes, yeah, we want it in blue, we want it in black, we want it in espresso. But that's about the extent of what they did. And they said, we want three drawers instead of two. Like it was just that kind of thing. It wasn't a real care at, wow, how does this work with the way that people are working today? There was no industrial or product design happening anymore, and we recognize that, which is why we moved out of the industry at a time at which we moved into other things. And that's why I have a podcast business now instead of a design business. But, you know, I mean, my products are still selling on the market, so I still keep in touch. I know how things are working, but this is where it's disappeared. And so you're bringing back full circle, Dana. You're bringing back love and design into the process, and you're bringing back consideration for the entire cycle of the product, like how it gets shipped, who's making it, where it's made from, what materials go into it. And you know what? It's time again, I think that you're about to start riding a wave of that consideration happening on products all over the place. Because we cannot continue to make wood products and deforest in the way that we have. It's just not possible.

Yeah, I think people are caring more, especially Gen Z and the younger generations that are coming up care more about what they're buying, where they're buying it from, how the materials are created. I know. I watched. Speaking of documentaries, I watched one on Netflix as well that was on Fast Fashion.

That's why I never worked in fashion, because it scared me because of how disposable it was.

Oh, I'm gonna, like, hate that. I don't remember my fair something. Anyways, essentially, it again scared me so much about what I was wearing and how it was treated that I now read the tags on my clothing like I do my food.

There you go. It's time. Things are changing. We're starting to pay attention to that. But, you know, this is the thing. When you start to take on a company like this, though, and you start to take on a task that is really big and broad. How do you surround yourself with people, research? What do you do to make sure that this isn't all on you. Because this is where a lot of fails.

I reach out to people who are smarter than me in different elements and use their expertise. All I'm doing is going out. And I have been so fortunate with finding people like Char who make the recommendation for someone like April. April who says yes, which makes a recommendation for this person who makes. You know what I mean? It just like. And April said it and Char said, when you find somebody who, if there's a good concept, who's a good person, you want them to succeed. And everyone's willing to open those doors to make those relationships happen, or else I wouldn't be sitting here talking to you right now. So I think that's it. I feel like if you're a good person and you're trying to do something good, people want to help. And it's just finding the right people who are skilled at what they do and saying, yes, I want you to help with this. Yes, I need you to help with this. And bringing them into those conversations when you need their help.

Are you already starting to hear ideas for your next product?

Oh, man. Oh, yeah.

You're getting requests already, aren't you?

We want to build a chair. We want to build different styles of desks. There's plenty of ideas out there.

Well, I'm going to put in a request for kids desks because I don't believe that our virtual classroom will go away. It's not just because of COVID I don't believe that. I think that once you go virtual, there's going to be a significant amount of students that stay virtual for at least a segment of their education. I think our high school students, our junior high school students are going to stay virtual because it's more efficient, cost efficient for the school systems that are running out of budget. The students are responding well to it. So I think that at the end we're going to need some student size desking.

That'll be on the list too.

Yeah, let's add that one to the list.

But chairs are 25 years doing chairs. This is a challenge. Chairs are the biggest. So they're the biggest liability out of all furniture pieces. So, you know, you're now taking on something even more scary.

Bring it. I mean, bring it on. I think one of the best quotes, and I'm gonna mess it up, it's from Sarah Blakely. And it's about having. When you're naive, you're not afraid to mess anything up because you don't know, so you go at it trying and then you figure it out as you go versus if you go into it with the fear you're never going to attempt it in the first place.

Well, good for you, Dana. So now tell us how your Kickstarter, it's not quite closed as we're recording this, but it should be closed by the time we're done. How did it go for you?

I just looked at it earlier. I think there's 23 funders and I'm at almost 3k and my goal is 10k and I have 10 days left. So honestly what I need to do is it's the hardest part to ask people for money. So I need to be diligent about making my very strategic asks to fund the rest of it. To me, if I could get like 8, 7500 AK, that would be success for me.

Well, you know, here's the thing. You haven't asked Kickstarter yet. They're notorious for being bad for women products in general. I did a whole study and I did an article about it, I don't know, a couple years ago about a razor that came out for it was eyelash curler and a razor that came out at the same exact moment. And the razor was just nothing special, just had this sustainably wood handle and it was luxury. And it overfunded the eyelash curler which was really cool, 3D printed to fit your eye. It had all kinds of really cool things to. It didn't fund.

At all. Significant difference. It is because the funding base, the base that makes a Kickstarter kick off and get noticed and then picked up by the Kickstarter organization and giving that boost is all male. So if you can't get to that male audience first, you will never get the boost. And they're very criticized under it. So I'd put a little kick in there for this last instance. Say, hey, this is just yet another example of why your base is all male and not working.

Interesting. Well, that's a reason I went with. So the platform that I'm fundraising on is ifund women. So they are all funded by women and they reinvest the percentage the fees that you pay on your end. They reinvest into grants for the female owned business on their site.

Nice.

Yeah, so it's a really unique platform and they do mentoring and coaching to help you succeed. So that's even like I have a direct contact with somebody to ask them about are there more things I should be doing? Do you have recommendations? Are there grants Available. So I purposely went with them instead of like an Indiegogo and actually a lot of other crowdfunding platforms, they won't give you the payout until, A, the very end, or B, if you don't raise your goal, then you don't get any of it.

Right, exactly.

So I fund women. I've been getting payments weekly, which is amazing, because that way I can continue to grow and scale my business without waiting for 27 days to go by.

Wonderful. Well, good. So, yeah, go out, reach, ask. It doesn't hurt. Be that voice of contrast, because it is a big contrast, what you're doing to what exists in the marketplace.

Thank you.

You got to live in that differentiation because people are out there looking for it. So this is the last thing that I want to say to all of you out there listening to Dana, especially I want her to hear, is that women are not loyal consumers. That's a mistake. They are not loyal to one product. They're not loyal to a brand that doesn't exist anymore. It hasn't existed for at least the last 20 years. They are loyal to what they want to someone who solves their problem. They are constantly on the hunt and constantly looking for the right thing. And when they find it, they will find money to pay for it because they've been looking for it. They may have bought disposable things along the way because they had to fill a need, but they bought it. I call it buying under duress. You buy something because you have to have something to fill this spot. So you'll spend as little as possible to do that. But that still doesn't mean you're not out there looking for just the right thing. And when the right thing shows up, you will buy it because you don't want to miss out on it. So, Dana, I think you've got the bright product at the right time, and I wish you luck in making sure that the market gets it and hears it and sees it.

Thank you so much. I appreciate that.

So I told you that was going to be really complex and interesting to think about all these working features and functions. And so often we can get into mistakes and into dangerous territory that derails us. And we don't solve ourselves out of reaching out to the people that she's working with, the collaborators that she's in. And solving those problems is exactly the way she should be doing that by saying, gosh, okay, I now have a problem of how do we package this and how do we ship this? And she's working in Concert with her manufacturing facility, shipping it to herself, checking this out, really staying involved in that process. And so one of the things that I found in my career of product design and development is that we were more successful if I stayed involved from the ideation stage all the way through to the first run, first ship, and into probably them starting the second run. When we did that in the process, the product improved tremendously all along the way. But more importantly, the decisions that get made along the way don't derail the big vision for the product. And that's where Dana's involvement essential. And some people will criticize and say, wow, she's heading a company, she's the CEO. She should step back and let other people do this. This is her vision, this is her expertise and her differentiator in the market. So her staying involved in making sure that this happens and it achieves that vision is essential to putting that love that she keeps talking about into her product and into the line. And at the end of the day, this is building great brand value for herself for how the market's going to perceive that, for the consumers that receive it, that love it, and then rave about that. And our ultimate goal. This actually used to be our tagline when we had our business before. So has design's tagline was that we wanted to get products that were bought and used again and again and raved about that. If we did that, if we designed that, then we succeeded. So the used again and again was our way of saying sustainability. But the fact that people love them and raved about them, that just was that tipping point of saying that this isn't just something I bought and I used it and I'm happy with it. I loved it so much, I had to tell everybody how great my experience was with it. And that experience extends beyond the product into how it's received. The fact that it's not broken, the fact that it's easy to assemble at the end of the day and doesn't take you an excruciating amount of hours to put together. This is all a part of the process. And I love that Dina has just said, I'm going to reinvent and look at this from a new perspective, from this naive viewpoint, but actually from a concerted viewpoint about a very specific goal that I'm trying to achieve. So as long as those things are in place, having a naive viewpoint doesn't matter, because you have a goal of what you want to fix and how you want to fix that. Wow. I'm really excited for Dana I'm really excited to see how this goes. I'm also really interested to see product line expansion and other things happen because that's where businesses have a lot of hiccups. As you go from that first flagship product into more, it gets harder and harder to sustain principles and do things. So I look forward to following her journey and see how she does this because I have a feeling she's not going to let go of those principles too easily. So I wish Dana luck and check out her desk. There's images, there's going to be links to everything. All of that is at the website productlaunchhazards.com you can also go to hasdesign.com and you'll be able to find blog posts for this episode and all the links out to her desk and to Dana Bakhage. So thank you everyone for listening. I'll be back next time I find a really cool and interesting product story to bring you. And if you have a great product story you'd like to share with me, you know how to find me. You can find me HAS design on social media and that's HAS with two Z's. So again, thanks everyone for listening. I'm Tracy Hazard on Product Launch Hazards.

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