How I Turned a Parenting Problem Into a Top-Selling Product | Paul Moore

0:30Welcome to KHA Business and Money Life. Today we are joined by Paul Moore, founder of Smiley, Mia and award-winning baby product company that develops innovative solutions for parents. And we will discuss with him how he turned a parenting problem into a top selling product. Welcome to the show, Paul. Great. Thank you for having me. Look at Ford having a great conversation. You are welcome. Welcome to the show. Welcome to India in this online form, Paul. And I'm sure not just in India, but a lot of people across the globe will benefit from what we are going to talk right now. We'll talk about how we turn a top selling product background. Our story is so that the audience knows who they are listening to. Yeah, we'll start it out.

1:31I was just a single father. I saw a lot of gaps in the market and I just decided to give it a shot. And I started with a couple of dealers we designed and had no idea it would grow to where it's grown. Absolutely. Absolutely. So, I want to understand. But before that, you know, before I come to the things I want to understand, you know, firstly, why being in the US then you move to China, was there a particular reason for going to China and was there for learning, was there for business, was there for earning, what I want to understand from that perspective. So, I had a friend of the family that was starting a computer cable company. He was manufacturing computer cables in Southeast China. And right out of school, he approached me and my family offered me a position as his personal assistant and it would have been involved doing a little bit of traveling.

2:35And at first, they was right when China had just opened the bamboo curtain. So at the first couple of years, I would be the first American, some of these people I'd ever met are seen in person. Where now you can't go five minutes without seeing a foreigner over there now. But for the first couple of years, it was really a special time to be over there. I believe we had 25% of the world's cranes, 30% of the world's steel. All that was being put in the place right before my eyes, all across the country. So it's just an amazing time to be there. Absolutely. So, what did you, when did your entrepreneurship idea come? Was it in China when you saw how China manufactured things? Was it in Alaska? Later on, when you moved back from China to Alaska into fishing, help us understand this whole idea. Was it you, the necessity was the mother of invention. It was a little bit of both to tell you the truth.

3:37I had the idea when my daughter was little. I didn't have the revenue to start it. But I had the knowledge because in the past, we were making computer cables. It was the same process as my teeth, it's called injection mold. So it's just the liquid silicone or whatever material you're injecting into this mold. And so I understood the process very well. How to design the mold. A lot of the testing, a lot of the lab reports. I was already so familiar with it from doing computer cables, keyboards and mice, whatever we made, whatever at the time we were making. I just was pretty knowledgeable about the process. More so than another entrepreneur who's never been over there and never done it, they might have a lot of hurdles to overcome the first year or two. Maybe just the shock alone of being over there would be a hurdle for some of them where I was able to go over there when I was ready to do this and just jump right in, speaking in the language, understanding the culture. And it was way to my benefit, everything I'd done.

4:40The part of fishing was I just had a friend from school that offered me a position on a really high paying boat and people wait two or three years to get this kind of opportunity. And Deadliest Catch had just started airing. Everyone had that little bit of an edge to get up there. There's got to be 50 TV shows about Alaska. So it just kind of life led me there and I didn't fight it. And the first check I got was I believe like $19,000 for two and a half weeks of work. And I told them, okay, I'll do this for a couple of years. I just knew that kind of money. I didn't want it to go to waste and I didn't want it to go to a bar or to a truck or a motorcycle. Whatever I saw, my co-workers money going towards. I wanted it to go something useful. And I had that idea in the back of my mind the whole time of that t-there that there could be something better. And we just thought we'd give it a shot and sure enough, we were on to something pretty well, I believe.

5:41Absolutely, absolutely. So this particular thing you started in 2018 if I understand that. Yeah, I was fishing the first five and a half, six years. I was still a commercial fisherman full time. It was almost like a side hobby. But once we started to get a lot of traction in the market and started to be named best t-there and show up on so many baby registers, I realized, okay, this isn't a hobby anymore. We really have a great product and all of our other products started to follow suit and gain popularity. And we realized we weren't just popular for one product anymore that we were actually brand in this industry that was well known for safety and high quality. It was time to hang up our reindeer, quit fishing and move to the lower 48 and treated more as a hobby, more as a full time job. Absolutely. Why this particular product, you know, t-thirst pockets is because it's a very competitive

6:45market and especially in China itself, there must be so many manufacturers applying to the whole world. Oh, it is. And it's Nito and a haystack, about a great assault inside of a haystack. I mean, it's really hard to get discovered. So that's what was to my benefit was I approached something every time I was reading some book about the first few months of life when I was being a father for the first time. I was a nerd. I was reading book after book, article after article and I wasn't China. All my free time, it wasn't like I could be distracted by a lot of things here in America that we get distracted by. I was just go home to my apartment with my wife and daughter and I would read books about and I just saw so many things for the first three months, four months. All these books, all they recommended was just the pacifier. And I got a laugh out of it because that's what I used as a kid.

7:45So my mother used as a kid. So I'm thinking three or four generations. For the first three months, there was nothing the baby used other than the pacifier. Maybe the color changed or the type of the handles change. Maybe they put little ridges on the nipple part of it, but in general, the pacifier stayed the pacifier. So then you put in the baby's mouth, they get spit out. Maybe they add a clip to it so it doesn't fall on the floor, but it's still getting spit out and not in use. And I just figured I could get something that the baby could interact with a little bit more. And so with my my design, it's just really light and weight three ounces so the baby can use it after a week to 10 days. They can already use it. And it helps with the graph three clicks. It helps with the hand and mouth coordination. What I didn't count on was all the mothers that are telling me that it gives the breast a rest that the moms pretty much a pacifier, either the first three or four months. And that this gives the baby something that keeps her interest.

8:45They can use it on either hand. Some some mothers send me a picture of it on both hands and they call it boxing gloves. And just little things like this, I love to see it's just natural and organically has fallen in the place as one of the standards for zero to three months. You can be found on all types of baby registers all over the world now. It's just pretty amazing and just an idea that started with some friends at dinner one night because we didn't like those on the market for our kids. And just like I said, we never imagined it would grow to where it's grown. Absolutely. So what is all bootstrap? Are you got some money, you know, funding from outside? We didn't. We none of us took payroll because like I mentioned, we all had our other jobs. It was really like a hobby for us. We took it serious just because we had a serious product, but we didn't know it was going to grow up. We had a couple of celebrities post their kids with it. There's a show on about a Hollywood Beverly Hills family and they did an interview and they

9:49pulled one out of their diaper bag. So here is a Gucci diaper bag and a Tiffany rattle. All these real high-end designer brand products and they pull out my penguin and say, but we'll never leave home without this. And we saw the sale spike that night. I just didn't realize why. That episode had aired where they talked about it. And again, that was zero payment. We didn't pay one penny for that. It was pure naturally organic. But it let us all know that we better quit doing our day jobs and start doing this full time. So yeah, you're in a half ago. We all started doing this full time, putting our full address to it, attending trade shows all over the world. So I'm in toys, arrests, and several countries. And now that was my personal little feather in my cat that I really enjoyed. I grew up a Toys R Us kid. And the year I started this, Toys R Us won bankrupt in the US and shed their doors. And I just thought, oh great, babies RS and Toys R Us were going to be one of the customers

10:50I approached first and they shed their doors. But they didn't shed them on other countries. So I was able to give my product on their shelves in different countries and different languages. And that was really kind of a made a moment. Absolutely. So how confident were you about your product? Was it your USP? Was it your design? What made you confident of your product to take it to the market? Well, we knew we had a couple other teasers that we had tried first. Like a dinosaur rain that I was reading about symmetry and how you should pretend there's a line down your baby. And you want each side to develop evenly. And I was just paranoid because I was really dominant on one hand with all the exercises I had been doing with my daughter. So I'm designing this one to kind of help a parent who didn't know about that and just naturally let the baby progress with that symmetry bringing the hands together.

11:51I thought I had the it product. I thought that was going to be it and it just didn't. And the pig one, we knew there was nothing else like it. And like I said, they call it a wearable. Some people call it a no drop design. But what it does is for any baby that's a thumb sucker. My daughter was she bit her finger for stress whenever I'd be away for work on it. And some babies suck their thumb. So what that does is that wearable design is like a little glove or a mitten that puts all the digits out of play. And it was just a matter of timing. There was nothing on the market like it. We had a shortage of materials. So even the companies that were starting to see my product, they couldn't go out and make it because there was a real shortage of material that about eight or eight or nine months. And it really just played our benefit. My supplier is one of the owners of Smiley Mia. We brought them on board because of this kind of matter. In case there was a shortage, he has stock kind of put aside.

12:55And we were just putting them out. We were one of the only teethers that came out with a new product that year. And for that product to be such a new design, a wearable tether that replaced the pacifier, it just took off. It was just really magical. KJ was really, really you couldn't replicate it if you tried. It was just natural organically all filmed the place. We also had COVID that year. So I think a lot of parents were at home shopping. And again, with no new options during that little window, other than ours popping up, it shot us up to be the number one seller in Amazon. It got us mentioned by Forbes as a best tether for a newborn or breastfeeding baby. And that trade show that year again, we were the only company pretty much to have a new product that year. So it was just really the timing was magical. We joke about it like the movie Forest Gump. They had the storm destroyed all the boats, but there was one boat tripping so that my friends joke that I was the only boat tripping still.

13:57And just really fit into playing with the fishing story with it. So it's got a funny little story to tell along with it. But it was. It was really just a magical time in forest to build a name for a brand new company like this in this industry that's so big on trust to come out of nowhere and have a product that's accepted like that across the board. We really had no complaints about our product. It was just amazing. It was really amazing to see a product go to thought the sample to show. Absolutely. What about the marketing part or were you only reliant on you know, just Amazon at the beginning like I mentioned, I was on an island in Ramota, Alaska. And I'm the only one that was doing it in the US at the time. So it was just me and I was out at sea 280 to 300 days of the year. And when I was out at sea, sometimes I would not have so signal I wouldn't be reachable for a day or two.

14:58So there were some times that a little bit of a delay here and there. But for the as far as. FBA that had to rely on them, I was doing 3000 units a day, even if I was here in the lower 48 in a warehouse, that would have been difficult for one or two people to do. So I did rely on Amazon the first two or three years. As we slowly progressed, I wanted to diversify a little bit, not have all my eggs in one basil basket, so to speak. So just started to diversify, get into more brick and mortar. Now we're on a few other platforms. I stream on TikTok. A couple of excuse me, a couple hours a day. And so it's interesting that some of these different platforms I never thought about being a channel to have revenue from, but it's working out pretty well so far. Absolutely. What was the biggest challenge that you faced during this whole process of entrepreneurship?

15:59I think it was timing. Like I said, the first one or two teasers I thought we had the answer for everything, for all the parents, and just didn't really take off like we thought it would. But once our penguin got popularity and everyone started to recognize our brand, our logo, they started to come to the show to see us. Then our others started to follow suit, which what kind of parent doesn't want to see the children do well. So of course it was exciting for me to see them do well. But what one day an age parent tells is that each one of our products suits a different purpose or a different need. And they love that. They can support us without having something that's going to be replicated or just a duplicate of what they already had. And that just goes the harder what we do. I think a lot of it's just we're thinking of what could be made to make a parent's life a little easier or to be improved upon. And a couple of them, I have one freezeable. And unfortunately this year there's been three major brands that have had recalls because

17:01of bacterial contamination. And with my freezeable you put fresh water in it just eliminates that gel that they use. And the parent puts a fresh water in and it's just nice to be able to have a solution that was able to be able to fill right in for parents that were getting those recalls. They could say, hey, well we had to turn this one in for a recall, but we had this one as a replacement. It one lets the parents know that we're already thinking about potential problems and we're already addressed it. When we had this ice come out a year already before these recalls even happen. But that was purely because I was soled to others and was a paranoid father. I think that's not good. I said, I've been to factions where they make this kind of stuff. They're not the most sanitary conditions on some of them. And I definitely wouldn't give my daughter something she could potentially ingest. That was stored inside one of those containers like that for who knows how many months before it got here on the shelf. So for manufacturing, travel overseas, traveling on a truck to the store, distribution center,

18:06then to the actual store, to the parents, there's probably two or three months maybe longer that that liquid was sitting inside that contained environment. I just was always paranoid. And again, that just gave me the inspiration to come up with mine. So I think being a paranoid father has definitely been to my benefit. Maybe my daughter hasn't been able to enjoy as many things in life because of it, but I think it's definitely given me inspiration for some of my products. Absolutely. So what about manufacturing? Is it in the US or the outsource from China? I've tried to bring it here to the US. Just parents want to see that made in the USA for some reason to give them that different level of confidence when they're talking about baby products specifically. But I tell parents now, as you know, I've sent my product to the top five manufacturers for silicon products and medical devices and none of them can make my product. Even I offer two or three times what I pay to have them made in China.

19:06No one I'd pay more for it here. They just can't make this quality. They all tell me. They tell me three places I need to go and one of them is where I make them. So I just, I know I'm making them in the right place. I just, it's my job as the business owner to educate the parents on why I can't bring it here and why they have to be able to trust some days in China. I do demo side by side with some other cheaper versions and the version that they could make for me in America. And none of them, I think, would pass some of the tests that are required for baby products. Absolutely. So where to from here? Where is it that you want to take this product? You know, I wanted its age up with my customer base. We started out with zero to six months and we added an actual tether up to two years and then we do a feeding bowl and a plate up to two and a half, three years. But you know, then I started thinking, how how can we go? You know, we're not going to follow them through college. You know, we can't give a step in about much and thin out that much and then maintain

20:10our quality. So we backed off and we just started to stay with the two and a half is probably our maximum age. And what else was missing through there? So now we do a couple of, we do a white noise and a shusher and then we do a bottle warmer. Again, it's all about portable life. People are on the go. I would take my daughter on a lot of the fishing trips. If we were gone more than a week, I would get a note from the school and I would take my daughter with me. I would just give her lessons on the boat and she would go with me. But again, that would give me some knowledge of life on the go, some with some parents' face when you're away from your house for more than a day or two. So a lot of my products, some parents use on camping. I get people sending me pictures all the time and then on a camping trip or on a road trip. Sometimes in a plane, you know, so I think they do associate a lot of my products with making travel a little more convenient. So I think that's where I'm going to go. I'm just going to keep going to trade shows to kind of see what's missing, trying to

21:10fill some gaps. But for the most part this next year, we're just trying to get our brand out a little bit more. We have a lot of great media press so far and attention so far, but there's still people that haven't heard of me. So I think we still have a lot of ground to cover. Getting into India is a big idea for us. We have a few distributors we've been talking to. We met at a Hong Kong trade show. I think with our price point, it's not an attractive product. There's some other alternatives for the Indian market. But I think we can still find a little niche there. The populations enough, we wouldn't need a too big of a piece of the pie to still make it worth our while down there. Absolutely, absolutely. There's so much to learn about. Always from you Paul and I'm sure a lot of people would want to connect with you. What's the best way for them to do so? I think our website, smileymea.com. Smily doesn't have an e so it's smi. M-I-A.com.

22:11Me as my daughter. So I'm a pretty happy, go-like person that just fit my name really well. But on our website, we have videos of me and the factory for production part of it. Me doing some of the testing and some of the labs. Pretty much some really great description, but it has a description of all of our product on there. So I think that'd be a great way to follow with a ran. You can place orders through there as well. They have links to all of our other platforms we sell on. You can see we have like 35,000 plus reviews on Amazon. So we're past the level where a parent trust or not when they go to our website. They see that many reviews. They know we're not an upstart brand. I just started this year and we're going to be gone next year. And that's price of the Miss industry. Wonderful. But this, it's set up on this very special edition of the cage of business and money live. And that's how much indeed for joining us.