Latest / Imagine If with Doone Roisin | Health, Wealth & Wisdom for Women (formerly Female Startup Club Podcast) / Meet two women shaking up the luxury pet industry with Wild One Co-Founders Minali Chatani and Veronica Becchetti

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Meet two women shaking up the luxury pet industry with Wild One Co-Founders Minali Chatani and Veronica Becchetti · Imagine If with Doone Roisin | Health, Wealth & Wisdom for Women (formerly Female Startup Club Podcast)

• 0:00
  This is Veronica Pachetti and Manali Chitani for Female Startup Club.
• 0:13
  Hey everyone, and welcome back to Female Startup Club. I'm your host, Doona Rasheen, and joining me on the show today are two of the co-founders behind the luxury pet accessories brand, Wild One. Wild One is a one-stop shop for everything you need for your cute pooch, and they've got the kind of job we all dream about. Well, I dream about puppies in the office, puppy photo shoots, and hanging out at dog parks seeing what owners are into and talking about.
• 0:42
  These two women and their third co-founder, Bill, brought their unique skill sets together to build a brand and carved out a space for pets that didn't exist in the market before. They develop products based on what they know their customer truly wants in cute colors and works to build a community of pet lovers by hosting huge events that bring people together.
• 1:01
  And while I've got you here, if you've been loving these episodes, please take a moment to subscribe and rate and review the podcast. It's what helps other ears find us and keeps these incredible female founded stories being shared far and wide. This is Manali and Veronica for Female Startup Club. Veronica and Manali, thank you so much for joining Female Startup Club today. I'm super excited to have you here.
• 1:26
  Thanks so much. Thank you for having us. Firstly, I think I should say I am so jealous of both of your jobs because I imagine you guys on puppy photo shoots. I'm imagining you doing product fit and testing on dogs and cute animals and cute animals like roaming around your office.
• 1:47
  That's exactly it. Although curveball Veronica also has a really incredible like medium sized stuffed dog that she likes to sometimes test fit on. That's like our little office mascot. Oh my gosh, I love that. I want to see a photo. How cute.
• 2:04
  Sometimes we can't get the dogs to sit still for a fit. So I'll just choose my little guy and I carry him around in my little travel carrier with me. Lol, that's hilarious. Before we jump into the background story and what you guys were doing before you launched the brand, can you just tell everyone who you are and what it is that you do and what your business is? Sure.
• 2:28
  Well, I'm Veronica. I'm one of the three co-founders at Wild One, including Manali and Bill. I focus primarily on all of our product development, research and development, production, sourcing, manufacturing, quality control, all things to kind of that do with product. So creating product, producing product, shipping product. And that's really been my whole career of what I've done for the majority of my background in this area.
• 2:57
  Yeah, and I'm Anali. I'm one of the other co-founders of Wild One. I primarily oversee our marketing and creative. So basically anything pertaining to our brand and the Wild One brand, which is, again, my background is actually far more in the creative space. Over time, like just by nature of working at multiple startups have transitioned into kind of the hybrid role of creative marketer.
• 3:23
  So cool. So cool. And for everyone listening, your company sells pet products and pet accessories, mainly for dogs, but maybe in the future for cats too, and other animals. And everything is super chic, really cool aesthetic. Love it. Let's go back to before you started the brand and what you guys were doing that led to you having the light bulb moment of wanting to launch something.
• 3:49
  So I think for me, I've been in the industry of making products for a very long time for other people. And it's allowed me to learn so many things about the industry across several different categories. I started originally producing ready-to-wear clothes for a small-town department store in the U.S. where I learned how to match lab dips for a knit sweater and a knit shirt and some pants...
• 4:17
  I then focused over to baby clothes. I've worked on furniture. I've worked on holiday decor. I've worked in water bottles. And I've been able to build this fabulous structure of how you create a product. And for me, I've always felt so passionate about that. And when I started in the industry, I didn't really realize what production was. Because I knew design existed. I knew buyers existed. But I didn't know there was this whole amazing world in between of...
• 4:46
  creating something that was just on a piece of paper to what you see in the store. And so for me,
• 4:52
  I had known about the pet industry, obviously, was such a huge market and knew that there was a great opportunity there. We felt super passionate about what we had this idea to do and to have an opportunity to do it on your own, to have something that you could own and do it with this family that you were kind of building through our co-founders was an amazing experience for me personally to be able to kind of start it from the very beginning.
• 5:20
  Yeah. And bring your learnings to a new business and to a new industry. Yeah. I think, you know, to piggyback off of that a little, Veronica, Bill and I were all kind of brought together by mutual friends of ours that run a kind of brand building startup platform. And so, you know, as we got together and we were talking about kind of the inception and this idea of Wild One, we all had kind of our respective
• 5:45
  just like unsatisfactory experiences in pet. I've had pets my whole life. I grew up with like every possible type of animal that you can imagine, like in my house from, you know, being a toddler and like finding a snail and being like, this is my snail in a jar. Like, I love this pet. So like my family wants like,
• 6:04
  you know, indulging me and having like 25 guinea pigs to like right now. Yeah, I know. It was a little absurd. My mother's a saint. That sounds like heaven. And now to having like, you know, to moving to the city and to getting my first like own pet, which was a cat. And then I'm a foster mom. So
• 6:21
  have always had this really deep connection to animals and the life of animals. And so, you know, as we started to kind of ideate and think about, you know, these respective underwhelming experiences, product really was kind of that central point product and like retail experience. And so, you know, for me, it kind of came from the background of like, moving into my first New York apartment with this new cat I had just rescued in a like, you know, 500 square feet,
• 6:48
  space where I now had to have like a cat tree and a litter box out in the open. And I couldn't find anything that looked good and worked well. And so like, I think my first year being like my own finally solo pet parent went through hundreds and hundreds of dollars of litter boxes on like a junior designer salary and inevitably built one. Cause I was like, I can't, I can't find anything I like.
• 7:14
  And so that same issue that I was having also applied to the entire pet industry, the dog space as well. And so being that that was kind of the common thread, that's where we started. And so the business really started from the idea of the products that we were going to make, which were these better designed, better functional products for dogs.
• 7:35
  that were solving for a lot of the pet peeves, no pun intended, that people had with existing products on the market. So a good example of that is our leash, right? Like,
• 7:49
  You know, a standard leash that you buy at PetSmart is going to be a nylon like webbed material that holds odors, that gets dirty and stained, that dogs can very easily chew through, that you probably replace a few times a year and it becomes this like fast fashion-esque churn type of product.
• 8:10
  And that's really what we aim to fix. As soon as we started the company, we were like, okay, we got to start there. We got to start with the basics. And we got to just improve on what's out there and nail down like all the little things that people don't even realize they hate about their pet products and just make that better. Wow, that's so interesting. And did you have to go and find like...
• 8:32
  other people to validate your idea through? Did you go looking for potential, you know, your ideal target customer to, to figure out if it wasn't just you that had those pet peeves? We had a lot of friends in the space, right? Not in the pet space, but we had a lot of, yeah, we had friends in the pet space and then we also had friends with pets.
• 8:48
  um, you know, we're exactly our customer and our demographic. And so, you know, millennials like us often get pets before they have kids. And so a lot of our friends were also on the same path as us of like starting to adopt their own dogs and starting to get pets. And so as they were going through that experience, we were able to like kind of follow them along that journey, even of that new kind of pet parented experience and say, okay, what is it about your shopping experience that you
• 9:15
  going on to Amazon and just being like overwhelmed by the amount of selection option and not really knowing what to do as a first time parent. Is it product issues? And so we were able to kind of survey what I consider to be like our friend, close, you know, group of like insiders for insights on that.
• 9:36
  That's so interesting. It's so interesting to have like a group of friends. It's kind of like quite lucky that there was all those people in that space. I read that you guys launched in 2018, but I want to talk about the time that it took before the launch and how long it took to start like developing, you know, products, how long it took to actually find your manufacturer and product.
• 9:58
  pulling all of that together and actually what happened at the very beginning? Like, do you hire an agency for branding or do you just start by finding products? Like what actually happens in the beginning?
• 10:11
  Yeah, sure. So for us, we were part of kind of a brand building platform. So we were able to tap into a lot of the resources that already had existed. And when we kind of came on board to create not just, you know, the idea, but the concept and develop prototypes with our suppliers overseas, we were able to tap into a lot of those resources that already existed.
• 10:33
  However, we were developing things that in the pet market never existed before. So we were disrupting things that our suppliers had never been asked to do before, had never been asked to dye trim to match 10 different components before. So there was a massive challenge in the beginning to really just get our suppliers on board to want to work with us and to really understand what the brand concept was that we were trying to accomplish for something that didn't yet exist before.
• 10:58
  And to get their investment and willingness to work with us on, you know, the challenging development requirements that we kind of put in front of them. So I think a lot of that before we even launched were things that we were doing and some of the challenges that we faced. But I guess going back to your original question, remind me again.
• 11:17
  If I didn't answer that. Well, that's part of it. But how long was it taking? And what were you doing in those? Like, how do you start the business? How did you get started? It was about a year of product development work primarily. And towards the end of the brand work,
• 11:34
  Before Wild One was actually like put in the water and we launched the online website. And like I said, most of that was actually developing and testing product and making sure that we had the best in class product out there and that we were actually achieving everything we wanted.
• 11:51
  From the brand side, you know, like Veronica mentioned, we're really lucky as founders to have this platform behind us that really supported our launch as a company. And that platform has resources like a creative team.
• 12:06
  or connections to a supply chain that we were then able to kind of vet and push further and dig into more ourselves, right? And so we worked with an internal creative team to develop everything. We actually didn't hire an outside agency. My background is in design. I come from design school and it's something that throughout my career, I've been mostly focused on is branding and building brands. And so...
• 12:32
  that's kind of the luck of also the three of us. We have really great backgrounds at startups in completely different departments. So I'm in marketing and brand, Veronica's in product development, bills and operations and finance. And so we kind of like, you know,
• 12:48
  By nature of coming together, we became like the Avengers of like pet startup. And so there was a lot of just general like institutional knowledge and how to do this from the get go within each of our respective roles.
• 13:03
  This is probably a really silly question, but like, what do you mean branding platform, branding development platform? And like, how do you become a part of a branding development platform? And what is it? I mean, we were lucky, right? So the platform that we work with is called Very Great. They're essentially like a micro...
• 13:24
  Veronica, maybe you can help me. It's like a small version of an incubator. That's it. An incubator. Got it. It was like also on the tip of my tongue. And I was like, I know what you're saying. It was like on the tip of my tongue. I was like, what do you call those things? It's like a small micro incubator. The way we work with them is essentially the two kind of CEOs of very great are essentially our investors.
• 13:45
  And so it's how we're funded. And they also provide us with these centralized resources that really helped us to kickstart the company and the brand. And we are, again, extremely lucky. We had met our investors through mutual friends and through the world of business in our respective previous roles. And they knew all three of us and put us in contact with each other and avenged us, right? Avenged us together. Yeah.
• 14:12
  That's my analogy for the three of us. And so, you know, it's not, I know that it's not like the most common kind of founder story. And it's not, you know, how traditionally, you know, garage startup style you hear, but we're, you know, I would say there's always an element of luck in starting a company. And I think ours was, you know, the luck of having great connections and great founders and people with a lot of experience in doing this to help guide us.
• 14:43
  Yeah, absolutely. And so does that mean like they're kind of with you on the whole journey, like you don't need to go elsewhere to raise money ongoing or you still can do that kind of stuff, but you've just always got their support no matter what kind of thing? Yeah, we still can. You know, we're only in year two, so hopefully that comes. But right now we're really focused on kind of our kind of inception and early growth. Yes. I want to talk about the early growth. I want to talk about
• 15:11
  The time when you were just launching the business, like leading up to pre-launch into that, you know, early initial finding your first customer phase and what you guys were doing to generate the buzz, get the word out there and kind of, you know, do all the marketing things. What was working for you guys?
• 15:28
  Well, for me, it was interesting because before we launched, customers didn't exist. Nobody knew about Wild One. I had never kind of taken that leap in my career where I was part of a company that didn't have customer base yet. And so we had this really unique opportunity before that time to really brainstorm and identify who was that for us and what did that look like and how could we generate that buzz. And I think respectively through each of our areas of expertise and just general, you know,
• 15:57
  experiences that we've each had respectively through the various startups that we've worked in kind of was it we're able to come to the table with a lot of different ideas but one of the biggest things i think we learned pretty early on was just the general sense of community in the pet industry you know the dogs aren't buying those products the pet parents are and the pet parents crave a sense of community think about when you go to you know the tomkin square dark dog park in the east village and
• 16:21
  You see everybody kind of chatting with one another about, you know, whether it be dog products, politics, love life or whatever. There's a sense of community where people are kind of talking. And I think when Wild One first came out, a lot of the people that were our friends and were our prototype testers and kind of had Wild One in the wild before it even existed, were able to start to talk to a lot of people to be like, what is that poop bag? What's that leash that you're wearing? What's that harness? I've never seen that before.
• 16:48
  And on our behalf, be able to talk about our brand, our concept, what we were doing, and start to generate that buzz and excitement of what Wild One was. Because at the time of launch back in 2018, nothing really existed in the category of business that we were trying to capture for pets across the essential buckets of categories that we launched in and have since expanded even further into it.
• 17:13
  So yeah, that's kind of what I would say, Manali. Feel free to add anything else there. Yeah, I think, I mean, I think you really hit the nail on the head with talking about kind of the dog park and that community. We were able to identify that camaraderie that happens within, like, amongst pet parents. And so...
• 17:30
  For us building that community and kind of that grassroots like wild one movement really came from trying to build that same feeling, but online, that feeling of being at the dog park and sharing what you, you know, your dog's doing or what your dog's wearing or this or that. And
• 17:48
  I would say like our first kind of big risk that we took when it came to customer acquisition and launching the brand was two weeks after we launched our website, we opened up a three month pop-up on the busiest block in Soho. And it was like,
• 18:03
  incredibly aggressive in terms of just like timeline for like how businesses open retail stores. But it allowed us to very intentionally create a space for people to come with their dogs. And the way that we designed the space was actually to be pretty minimal in terms of retail. We only had 10 products. We displayed those products. But
• 18:25
  We also had an entire kind of like open seating area where we could host events, where we could bring that community that we've seen at the dog park and that we've all experienced into an enclosed like indoor wild one space that introduced people to our brand, allowed us for the first time to get in front of customers, find out more about them, dig into who they are, get feedback on our products. You know, at one point, Veronica...
• 18:50
  set up a desk like at the front of the store and had all had all our toy prototypes out there before we launched toys. And she was asking people, like, what do you think of this toy? What do you think about this idea? What do you think about that? And it was it was really like, honestly, just incredibly valuable to be able to leverage kind of the New York dog park community that came in to the Wild One store to, you know, create that groundswell of brand evangelists that really kickstarted the business.
• 19:20
  Yeah. And I imagine seeing people's reactions is just so critical to that process of seeing whether their eyes light up when they see the product or seeing it on their dog and being like, oh my God, this is so cool. Our best selling item came out of that pop-up, right? When we launched, we didn't sell kits. We sold an individual harness, collar, leash, poop bag carrier, and we started watching how customers were shopping. We would literally sit in the store
• 19:50
  And we see, you know, we watch the customer behavior. We watch the way people shop. We watch the trends of what they were buying. And we noticed, okay, people are buying these in sets. They're buying full outfits for their dogs. Like let's trial a walk kit. And it was, so we opened the pop-up.
• 20:08
  early October 2018. And it was Black Friday, like Cyber Monday weekend, when we kind of started to talk about like putting together what we call now the walk kit. And so we said, okay, let's trial it over Black Friday, Cyber Monday, as when you buy all three pieces, you get a pretty significant discount on the item and see how it sells. And so we trialed it in store.
• 20:33
  It was wildly popular. And immediately then after, a few weeks later, launched it online for the remainder of holiday. And now it's our number one selling item. And our hero product, it's what we're known for.
• 20:46
  Wow. That's amazing. That's so cool. So interesting. And I also read that you guys hosted something called the Dog Day Summer Party. Can you talk a little bit about that and what that was? Yeah. So in 2019, we had, you know, we'd closed our pop-up. We didn't have any retail plans on the horizon and we were approaching our first birthday.
• 21:16
  you know, within the dog community, whether it be, you know, rescue pop-ups or events with our rescue impact group, Badass Brooklyn, but we hadn't really done something yet of our own that year that felt like we were re-bringing together that community that we had worked so hard to build in year one or like late in year one. And so we decided to throw a massive birthday party alongside the launch of our new toys. And I,
• 21:44
  Honestly, at first did not think anything much of it. We were in conversation with the William Vale. They had really cool elevated outdoor park. And so we worked with them. We said, we want to throw a big dog party. Dogs are usually not allowed in that space. And so it was new and different to like to the pet community in New York to be able to take their dogs to the kind of like luxe feeling like third floor dog park.
• 22:10
  And lo and behold, we put this thing online for free because they were like, come join us for our birthday. It's casual. And within a week, we had over 2000 people RSVP, not to mention the additional thousand plus dog RSVPs. And it ended up being, you know, a wildly, wildly successful event in terms of bringing people together around their pets, allowing, you know, dogs to kind of just like,
• 22:40
  hang out with your friends, grab some tacos, like grab a drink, just have a really good like outdoor summer day with your dog, which unless you're going to the park or you're organizing that yourself, like we live in New York City, like you can't take your dogs into a restaurant. You can't, you know, so there are limited opportunities for pets and people to really come together. And so that was the whole thing.
• 23:02
  idea there was creating an event and creating a space where pets and their people can come together can have a good time to just relax and like celebrate wild on the brand
• 23:11
  That's so cool. And did you have to like, what initiatives were you doing on the day to try and, you know, capitalize on the fact that everyone was there and trying to get people, were you trying to get them to buy like things on the spot or was it more the, you know, we have their email, we know they're going to love this day. Let's reach out afterwards and like touch base then. It was definitely more the latter. We did have like a little booth set up with bucket hats and
• 23:35
  little fans and things like, you know, promo type of things, poop bags, poop bag carriers, like small items that felt like these are necessities for a summer day. But no, we weren't there with like a full wild one store set up. That wasn't the idea. It wasn't to like try and trap people and then be like, let's sell you stuff. It was definitely more of just a celebration of community.
• 23:56
  Oh, it must have been so fun to see all the dogs like hanging out and having fun. It must have been content heaven for all the pictures that you could have got. What, um, what initiatives are working for you guys now when it comes to marketing? What are the sorts of things that you're doing to drive further awareness at this size of the business that you're at now? I mean, I think outside of, um,
• 24:21
  the traditional owned, earned, paid media, which any brand or business is kind of constantly turning on, right? We have our own channels of email and social, and we're growing those. And we communicate through those almost on a daily basis. We have constant PR pitching going out. And we have our network and our group of people
• 24:44
  close media contacts who we kind of see new product to and are constantly talking to. And then obviously, like any econ business, we're on paid channels. This year, we dabbled a little bit in TV, which was super exciting. Something that we're hoping to expand.
• 25:00
  But I would say, and Veronica can talk to this more, but our product is truly always at the heart of our strategy, right? We've done a lot of work building the brand and brand loyalty. And I think people trust us because of our product ethos and the care and thoughtfulness that we put into every single thing we build. Like when you talk about acquiring customers and what really works, for Wild One, I think what works best is we've created a product
• 25:30
  unlike anything available anywhere else in the pet space, right? I was giving you the leash analogy earlier. If you want an odor-proof, waterproof, chew-proof,
• 25:42
  like easy to clean, looks good, like has a matching set leash, you're coming to Wild One. Like there really isn't anywhere else that offers all of those things and checks all the boxes. And the same applies for our travel carrier. And that's the product development ethos of Wild One that Veronica's built. Yeah. And I think like the having that, you know, the word of mouth marketing built in because your product is just so great.
• 26:10
  It's something that I think the more women I speak to who have this same vision to do that, whereas sometimes I think people forget that. Sometimes I think you have products out there that aren't the best experience and you're like, hey, but why aren't you guys investing in the actual product instead of the marketing, you know? Yeah, I think, you know, it's the fast fashion mindset, right?
• 26:33
  Like it takes you a while to kind of realize, you know, that you need, you should, or that you want to apply the fewer, better things mindset to your own life, let alone your pet's life. Right. And that's, that's why we're here is we're here to make that, you know, higher quality, more durable, longer lasting products accessible for you at a pretty reasonable price point for something that you're using on a daily basis. And that is super cute.
• 27:04
  Every business owner that I speak to, obviously, and every entrepreneur in general is obviously a problem solver. There's always challenges. There's always things that go wrong. What are the kinds of challenges that you're facing at the moment in your business?
• 27:19
  Yeah, well, I would say, you know, obviously challenges are different every day, depending on what's happening, especially with COVID. There's a lot of different challenges that we face, not only in the U.S., but globally through our supply chain. So for us, it was really, you know, working with our suppliers really, really early on when this global pandemic was taking place and making sure that those strong relationships, those strong partnerships,
• 27:43
  that we had previously had in place were still there and that we could partner and work with them to support them in any way that they needed to help get through this crisis and ensure that they knew that we were still their partners and we were there to support them and vice versa.
• 27:58
  So for us, it was a unique experience and one that I've never experienced myself through my entire career. And it was just so important and critical early on to make sure those conversations were being had with all of our suppliers to make sure that we had that relationship still intact so that we could continue to build a future together. Because in March and April, nobody really knew what the future looked like.
• 28:20
  And come May and June, we were able to really kind of come out of that moment and really start to build back into production and manufacturing and product development and innovation, where that had kind of paused for a moment in time for us that we didn't anticipate. So one of the things, too, that I've learned through what happened earlier this year is that the impact is a long term one. It's not one that for us in our business that.
• 28:48
  was an immediate impact. It was one that we're seeing now and we're having to kind of deal with in terms of inventory management, development, growth, negotiations, and onboarding new vendors and creating new categories that we're kind of seeing that domino effect of what happened earlier in the year. So getting extremely creative, working with both Manali and Bill to kind of brainstorm on how we can kind of
• 29:12
  get proactive and react where necessary to certain things that we couldn't have foreseen that would have happened with, you know, peaks in production with our suppliers overseas and capacity and container shippings that are taking place right now globally, facing delays from that end. Yeah.
• 29:30
  I think it's to be expected. And these are things that, you know, having been seasoned in the industry, nothing really does come as a surprise anymore. You have to expect the worst most times and really just try to think all scenarios, what could go wrong so that you kind of have an answer to everything before it does or as it's happening and you can get ahead of it and make sure that, you know, your ultimate business is still working.
• 29:57
  thriving through the challenges that happen behind the scenes that nobody else necessarily needs to know about. Yeah. I think, you know, we did a really good job, um,
• 30:10
  the three of us on just being very in contact and nimble around everything that was happening this year. And part of that is our relationship with each other and Veronica's relationship with our suppliers and our ability as a two-year company to just be incredibly flexible. I would say, you know, a lot of businesses don't have that luxury, but when you're only two years old, you're almost used to it in a way. So it was just like, you know, the usual, you know,
• 30:40
  I think outside of this year, one of our biggest challenges, and I kind of generally assume this for a lot of founders is, you know, the ability to kind of keep the blinders on and stay really focused according to like plan and goal. And that is like so much easier said than done. You know, when you have
• 31:03
  your year planned ahead and you know exactly what you're launching and you built out your marketing calendar and you're like, all right, we're all set. We know when we're going on a photo shoots, we know exactly what we need to do. And then all of a sudden like this little collaboration opportunity pops up or, Oh, we really want to make these because our customers are asking for them. And like, you really have to be able to,
• 31:24
  to vet each opportunistic moment that comes by and not close them off, but just know when to say no. Um, there's actually a really good podcast on this. Oh yeah. Um, the HBR idea cast, they did a podcast a couple of weeks ago on the subtle art of saying no, and it is something everybody should listen to, but really about like embracing opportunity, but kind of, um,
• 31:52
  deciding when to decline projects or tasks or requests in a way that is, you know, evaluating the ask and determining whether you're going to go back with a strategic approach.
• 32:04
  And yes, with a plan or whether with a really thought out no. And I think that that applies on a daily basis to a founder's life, whether it's a small ask coming in from someone in your team where they're like, I really need 30 minutes of your time today to talk about this. But you have a back to back calendar and you really want to be present and you want to be there for them.
• 32:27
  You know, it's okay. No today, but is this something I can get to you tomorrow? Is this something I can review overnight? Is this something that is super timely? Okay, then maybe we'll make the time for it. But and then on the flip side, even bigger, right?
• 32:39
  a perfect example of which that we, something we said yes to was, you know, this is dropping tomorrow. So by the time this podcast makes it out, people will have already seen it. But two months ago, we were approached by Meredith poop, who's Michelle Obama's stylist for the last 10 years on an opportunity to
• 32:58
  kind of contribute to this large collaboration drop that's happening for Michelle Obama's organization, When We All Vote, that basically encourages voter participation in every election. But of course, this year above all, it being super timely and for us being really important to hammer that home and to communicate that to our customer, like the importance of registering and getting out to the polls and voting in the November 3rd elections, um,
• 33:27
  it wasn't something that we could turn down. And so, you know, I remember like getting off the call with her and calling Veronica and being like, Veronica,
• 33:34
  I know it's holiday. I know we're like, we're going insane already. And it's September. But like, how do we make this work? Like, this is one of those rally the troops. This is one of those things that like, morally, we couldn't like we really wanted to do from, you know, a business standpoint, it made it completely aligned with our brand. And it made a lot of sense for us to to put out something where we could raise money for this nonprofit that's doing an incredible thing. So, you know,
• 34:03
  Like I said, the subtle art of saying no, really keeping your blinders on, having your filters on, knowing when to say yes, but also knowing when to thoughtfully say no is a challenge.
• 34:12
  That is so exciting and so cool. Congratulations. I'm so excited to see it tomorrow. And I think that's also why it's important to master the art of saying no, because if you say yes to everything, then, you know, the amazing opportunity that comes up, that's going to be a lot of work and it's going to be taking up a lot of resources. It's hard to then take that on and do it with, you know, true, truly meaningful and to create the best campaign that you can. So that's
• 34:38
  It's definitely something we all need to work on. I'm going to listen to that episode for sure after this. What's happening at the moment in the business? What's next? What does the future look like? I know you guys brought out the travel carrier recently, which is obviously just so cute and so cool. What does the future look like?
• 35:01
  Well, there's a couple of things. I think Manali can talk more about it. But, you know, last year when we launched a travel carrier, it was a really exciting moment for us because it was something that was completely different than what was on the in the market. There were so many features and functions that we developed into that product. We took over a year or two.
• 35:18
  develop it and test it and research it, not only with our supplier, but with our family and friends and our office and our creative team to really get that to a fabulous... What we thought was a really fabulous place for the littlest of details of turning the shoulder strap into a leash when you're going through airport security. The other thing too, that coming from a brand where you had one product and you're introducing several different colors in a water bottle, I was super
• 35:48
  in our walk kit, which was a major success. I would have never imagined how good it looked on every dog fur color I've ever seen.
• 35:58
  Every dog, no matter what their fur color is. It's like the most photogenic product of all time. It's unbelievable. It looks so good. And I was so excited to be able to prove out not only the six core colors that we do, but the new seasonal color that we introduced for the first time and really start to turn that into something as a brand that we can offer as collectors to our brand and people who are wanting to kind of build different colors into what it is that they're doing with Wild One.
• 36:25
  seasonally and so starting to introduce new colors. And so I think I'm personally super excited to see the growth of that over time. There's a ton more that we're working on and Manali, I'll let you decide which ones we want to share.
• 36:40
  Which ones you want to tease out? Yeah. So outside of, you know, what Veronica is talking about, which is like travel carrier and our walk kits and new colors, which are really our brand builders. Those are kind of the hero products at Wild One. We put a lot of work this year into our consumable products. And I think the goal is for Wild One to be a place that
• 37:02
  everyone can come and regularly shop for their essentials and the things they need, not just these higher tier, you know, once a year types of purchases or how many colors you want, maybe more on the brand builders. But having this line of like everyday essentials and consumable products that are better than, you know, what you're able to get,
• 37:25
  maybe down the street at your local pet store or higher quality or more thoughtfully produced, like our biodegradable poop bags. And so we've done a lot of work in that space this year with two new lines that are coming out. The first being a new line of treats that drops next Thursday. And those are, you know, we have existing treats on the market that are more premium treats. They're single ingredient. They're transparently sourced. If you look on the back,
• 37:55
  Yeah, it was really taking the mindset from like human food and applying it to the pet world, which hadn't been done before. And then our new line of treats are actually biscuit treats.
• 38:06
  incredible value. It's about eight bucks for 60 treats in a bag, which is nuts. Um, and something that you could regularly purchase and feel good about because they're plant-based and they're USDA organic. And, you know, you, you can look at the biscuit and see the little specks of like vegetables and stuff in there. They're really awesome products. Um,
• 38:25
  And so we're very excited about those. Of course, we already earlier this year, late last year, launched a grooming line. We have our poop bags. And then early next year, we will be launching a line of supplements that we're super excited about. And so I think the future for us is really rounding out this one-stop dog shop that we've created, right? Everything from the hard goods through the daily essentials through wellness, right?
• 38:53
  And making sure that Wild One is a curated place that you can go or you trust the brand, you know what it is you're looking for. And if you don't, you're not overwhelmed by a million different choices. There is the best of every one thing in its category. Absolutely, for sure. Maybe the next stop will be pet insurance.
• 39:15
  Another one to tackle. Honestly, I have so funny. So I've actually switched my pet insurance twice this year because there are a couple of new brands that have launched and I'm like, oh my God, maybe you're better. Oh my God, maybe you're better. Yeah. I hear it's a really, um, kind of booming industry at the moment from what I've listened to online. What advice do you both have for women who have a big idea and want to launch their own thing?
• 39:43
  I think anybody who kind of has an entrepreneurial mindset throughout their entire life, whether they're four years old, 40 years old, or 80 years old, always kind of has an idea in their mind. And I think the thing that's important is to not be afraid of the idea and to run with it and to use the resources that you have available to you along with the experience that you've dealt with, whether it's in accounting or product or retail or design and to
• 40:09
  and take as much of that respective field that you're an expert in to apply to your idea. And not be afraid to go with it. Like, you know, my sister always comes up with different things. I gave her like an idea notebook, you know, write it down. Don't be afraid to just, you know, think that it's a silly idea. Run with it. And also, when you have an idea, ask a lot of questions, you know, reach out to people in the industry. Don't be afraid to reach out to other brands that are doing something similar and ask for advice of how they did it.
• 40:37
  You know, I think as a community of startups, I think we all kind of have that camaraderie where we are all kind of supporting each other and want to support each other in any way that we can, even though we're each kind of doing our own thing.
• 40:51
  For me, this is my first time ever being a founder. So it was kind of like super exciting. So if it's something that you think that you want in your future, something that you feel that is something that you're very passionate about, don't be afraid to go for it. And create a roadmap of what that looks like for you. It's not going to happen overnight. But try to put milestones step by step in front of you to help you get there.
• 41:18
  Yeah, I think to piggyback off of that, likewise, this is my first time launching a business and there's a whole lot of stuff that I did not know that I've learned on the fly on the job from Veronica and Bill. But there's also a huge leadership component to starting a business, right? Especially if your plans are for that business to grow. And so I think specifically like in that realm for me, like it's been, you know, I've spent a lot of time
• 41:47
  asking a lot of questions, you know, taking Veronica's advice. And I would say, don't ever feel like you should be afraid to admit when you don't know something. Right. Like that isn't a weakness. That's just part of the journey. And so whether it's directly to an investor or to someone else who's doing this, or like you don't have to put yourself in a place where you feel like you know everything. Right. You don't always have to fake it till you make it.
• 42:16
  which I think is terrible advice, frankly. I would say it's almost better. Like even when I'm interviewing people, I love sitting in an interview and almost like sometimes not asking anything until almost the end. I love hearing the questions that people ask and understanding like what people know and what people don't know. And I think that every mentor or boss or, you know,
• 42:39
  person I've had in my life that I've looked up to that I've seeked advice from has given me that same advice. And I pass that on to just not have the chip on your shoulder that you feel that you need to know everything or that you think you know everything. Because the chances are you don't. And the only way that you could is by asking a lot of those questions. Yeah, by asking and going through it. Absolutely, for sure. And I think it also...
• 43:04
  you know, being able to have that courage to ask because a lot of people are afraid of putting themselves out there and looking silly or sounding foolish or something when, yeah, I guess it's a skill that you just need to master having the courage to put your hand up and be like, I need some help. I need some answers. We are up to the six quick questions, part of the interview, and I'm conscious of the time. So I'm thinking I will...
• 43:28
  run through like all the questions that are, um, like individual questions. And then maybe one of you can answer the, you know, the marketing moment question kind of thing. So number one is what's your why? Um, I guess I'll go. Yeah. I mean, it's an interesting question and sometimes hard to answer, but you know, why do you do the things that you do for me? I think back like,
• 43:52
  you know, to just my passion about creating products. I think back to when I was a kid and I went to bring your daughter to work day and I kind of learned a little bit about the business world and what that looked like and how I could be a part of it. And it's funny because...
• 44:06
  I look back and I think about the things I used to say on a profile, which are my favorite part of Mr. Rogers is when he went to the factories. Only in, you know, later on to realize that that's kind of the career I've set up for myself over time. And so I think the things that are small indicators that you're interested in, that you're, if you're able to find a career out of it and build, you know, your day-to-day life around that thing that you feel super passionate about,
• 44:36
  is amazing. And for me, that's kind of, I think, why I love doing what I do and creating new things out of nothing. Yeah, for sure. And you, Manali?
• 44:49
  A couple things. I think, you know, you said it earlier, all founders are, but I'm a problem solver by nature. So in coming up, you know, against a problem that I was facing in my life, obviously strikes a passion of like, how do I fix this? And then on this other hand, like I love animals, right? I've always been a pet person. I've had pets my entire life. I told you earlier, I had, you know, a ton of guinea pigs. I've had birds, I've had dogs, I've had cats. Um,
• 45:18
  had weird insects. I had like an ant farm growing up. Like, so I've just always loved having pets and the idea of creating a brand that was a resource and support to pet parents, um, just inspired me. Amazing. Question number two, one of you can choose to answer this is what's the number one marketing moment that's made your business pop?
• 45:46
  So we talked a little bit about this earlier, I would say the first one was that pop up in Soho. Again, like, very aggressive for a two week old business to decide to open a store. But
• 46:00
  getting in front of our customers was invaluable. I mean, it was, it was one of the best decisions I think we ever made to put ourselves in a spot where we were vulnerable to feedback and, and open to hearing what people had to say about our product. And for the first time ever really learning about our customer firsthand, rather than this like idea or like, you know, customer we had built in our brand book or in our minds. And,
• 46:31
  The second, I would say, was last November with the launch of our travel carrier. The product itself was in development for over a year. We put a lot of effort into making sure that we created something that was not only best in class, but unlike any other carrier on the marketplace. And so when we did drop that product, we made a huge deal about it. It obviously flooded our own channels. We had a significant amount of press behind it.
• 47:00
  Also, we're really strategic in the timing of the launch. We launched it right ahead of holiday and Thanksgiving, which we know is one of the busiest travel seasons of the year. And that a lot of people would be either traveling for Thanksgiving or going home in general for the holidays. And so we wanted to make sure that it was just timely in its release.
• 47:20
  And then, you know, it just took off. It was kind of like at that point, we had all our ducks in a row. We set up all our channels. We seeded it to influencers. We did what we needed to do just from like the marketing checklist. And at the end of the day, like I said before, the product was the hero in that situation. We created the best travel carrier for dogs, point blank. And it had its own kind of virality and spin after launch.
• 47:48
  It is certainly extremely cool. That's for sure. Question number three is where do you both hang out to get smarter? Yeah.
• 47:57
  It's a good question. I don't know. I mean, I hang out everywhere to get smarter, whether it's a bar, it's a pet store, it's our pop-up, our office. But I travel a lot for work. And when I do that, I always have had an opportunity to do that throughout my entire career. And every time I do do that, I come back home with something that I would have never thought I could have either experienced both personally or professionally, but I come home with something that I've learned of,
• 48:22
  Whether it's, you know, the nature of how you can build a relationship with a supplier or the way you can develop a product or how you can kind of innovate on something that you never thought you could have innovated into. And so I think for me, it's kind of just exposure to the world, exposure to learning about how people are, how it's made, how are people doing other things and how can you kind of ideate on that to create something that's done in a more efficient, better manner and
• 48:51
  to really apply that to your business and your products. Yeah, I think likewise to Veronica's original statement, not really necessarily any one place, but more of just having the general openness and mindset that
• 49:06
  you know, you don't know everything and anywhere you go and anywhere you sit down and whoever it might be next to you that you have something to learn from that person. I think that I'm very fortunate to have a lot of friends who are a lot smarter than me and co-founders who are a lot smarter than me. And so I'm learning a lot just on a day-to-day basis through conversations. If I were like,
• 49:27
  If you ask like, where am I actively going to seek new information? I spend a lot of time on the internet. You know, being a marketer, just reading case studies and looking at trend reports and trying to understand specifically like the pet space in our area of business a lot more and our customer a lot more. I'm a little bit of a podcast junkie, so excited to be here. But, you know, huge fan of how I built this. I get my news from the daily or NPR news media.
• 49:56
  I recently started listening to a mentor of mine launched her own podcast. It's called the Fahrenheit podcast and her mentor was on it the other day. And I listened to that episode and it just like, you know, when your mentor's mentor is talking to you, it just kind of like blows your mind. Um,
• 50:10
  picked up the Michelle Obama podcast recently. And then one that I'm actually very excited to start is the HQ Trivia Boom Bust podcast that I have heard really good things about in the last few days. So I'm excited to start that one. I haven't heard about that. Yeah. The name speaks for itself. It's just about like the boom and the bust of HQ Trivia, which, you know, if, you know, you were...
• 50:34
  I guess I don't know where you would have to be specifically. I guess if you were like, especially for me, like I was in New York in a big office and you know, a few years ago. And I remember that like, you know, that three, I think it was like three o'clock or 11 o'clock or whatever it was where you would, I for one would like stop working and be like, oh my God, it's a huge trivia time. We have to like tune in. And then all of a sudden it disappeared. So I'm excited to learn a little bit more about that business.
• 50:54
  I started listening to Hillary Clinton's podcast today and I really enjoyed the first episode. Highly recommend. Question number four is how do you win the day? And that's around your AM and PM rituals that keep you feeling happy and motivated and successful. Manali, you want to go? I'm nervous. I don't like work-life balance questions. Yeah.
• 51:21
  I aim to, how do I win the day? I think that being a founder is all encompassing and you are never not thinking about your business. And I aim to find, which I'm very lucky has not been difficult, but wins every day that I can be excited and proud of and proud.
• 51:46
  for me, from a business standpoint, that's how I win the day, right? Is making sure that every day there's something that I'm either looking forward to or really excited about. I think
• 51:55
  This morning I was slacking all of our founders chat. And I was like, guys, I'm so giddy because everything's back in stock. And like, that's how I won today. I love that. Yeah. And so that's kind of the mindset that I try and apply to each day because there are days where like, you don't feel like you won. And then you take that as a founder and it's really difficult not to, you take that home. Right. I mean, I'm in my bedroom right now. It's hard to not take work home, especially this year.
• 52:21
  And so I think it's really important to have something within your business that's getting you excited, that's making you feel like you want every day, even if it's a little thing. Ain't that the truth. Completely agree.
• 52:35
  Do you have anything you want to add, Veronica? No, I mean, I would say that's 100%. It's the little things in the day for me that helped me win my day, whether it's a container that just shipped or something that just arrived or getting something back in stock or confirming a new color. You know, just having those each day, whether they're small or big, I think help just contribute to the day-to-day success of what we really thrive and crave as co-founders.
• 53:07
  For sure. For sure. Question number five is if you only had a thousand dollars left in your business bank account, where would you spend it? Easy. We'd throw another party. I know. Definitely. I mean, I think if you're at the point where you only have a thousand dollars in your, in your bank account, like that money should be dedicated to like a going away part.
• 53:32
  I don't think we'll ever, I don't want to think about getting to that point, but yeah, but yeah, I think we'd, we'd throw a big bash and just celebrate everybody who participated in wild one. Yeah. Love it. Great. Everyone will show up to a dog party for sure. And question number six, final question is how do you deal with failure? And that can be around a personal experience or just your general mindset and approach. Sure. I mean, everybody's slightly
• 54:03
  You know, I find myself and I found my first boss in New York. We said, we're not brain surgeons, you know, and things happen, whether they're big or small, they happen. And you have to learn from your mistake and you have to put checks and balances in place to make sure that those things don't happen in the future. And it helps you grow smarter and it helps you grow more proactive to have kind of option A, B, C, D, E, F, G in place for when things do go wrong.
• 54:29
  So I think it's just so important to know that, you know, failure, failure sometimes does happen and to be able to react calmly to it and kind of put some structure in place to, you know, avoid it in the future is, I think, a major win. Amazing. And you, Manali, do you have anything? Yeah.
• 54:51
  Yeah, I think what Veronica said is honestly perfect and perfectly sums it up. I think the one thing to note is that if you do fail, whether you're a founder or not, it's just to never be so silently. And I live by that, right? Anytime I screw up, the first thing I do is I'm flacking or calling Bill and Veronica and I'm saying, this is an issue we have. Like, this is my fault. I really need either support or help or, you know...
• 55:20
  answers on how we go forward from here. And, you know, in general, just lucky, obviously, to have co-founders, because if you fail, you're never really also failing alone. You always have a support system. Yes, that's definitely true. That's a really nice way to approach it for sure.
• 55:38
  Wow, guys, thank you so much for sharing your brand story with me and what you've been building. And I am just such a fan of what you're doing. Everything is so chic and so cool. And I'm getting my dog soon. So I will be placing some orders for all of the cool things. Amazing. Thank you. It was awesome to be here. Yeah. Thanks for having us.
• 56:05
  Hey, it's June here. Thanks for listening to this amazing episode of the Female Startup Club podcast. If you're a fan of the show and want even more of the good stuff, I'd recommend checking out femalestartupclub.com where you can subscribe to our free newsletter. We send it out weekly covering female founder business news, insights and learnings in D2C, and interesting business resources.
• 56:29
  And if you're a founder building an e-commerce brand, you can join our private network of entrepreneurs called Hype Club at femalestartupclub.com forward slash Hype Club. We have guests from the show joining us for intimate Ask Me Anythings, expert workshops, and a group of totally amazing, like-minded women building the future of D2C brands.
• 56:52
  As always, please do subscribe, rate and review the show and post your favorite episodes to Instagram stories. I am beyond grateful when you do that.
• 57:08
  Hey, it's June here. Thanks for listening to this amazing episode of the Female Startup Club podcast. If you're a fan of the show and want even more of the good stuff, I'd recommend checking out femalestartupclub.com where you can subscribe to our free newsletter. We send it out weekly covering female founder business news, insights and learnings in D2C, and interesting business resources.
• 57:33
  And if you're a founder building an e-commerce brand, you can join our private network of entrepreneurs called Hype Club at femalestartupclub.com forward slash Hype Club. We have guests from the show joining us for intimate Ask Me Anythings, expert workshops, and a group of totally amazing, like-minded women building the future of D2C brands.
• 57:56
  As always, please do subscribe, rate and review the show and post your favorite episodes to Instagram stories. I am beyond grateful when you do that.