Lou Rice was breastfeeding her son Archie one evening when catastrophe struck—she dropped her Kindle on his head.
Whereas that have was upsetting for each of them, it sparked an concept for Lou and her husband, Ben, to create an answer.
Ben common a silicone strap with staples to connect Lou’s Kindle to her hand and stop any future dropping incidents. Lou examined it out over the subsequent month and completely liked having the grip and safety of the strap for comfy one-handed studying throughout these lengthy middle-of-the-night feeds.
With that, the Strapsicle was born—a aspect hustle now producing over $50k a month promoting progressive Kindle straps. Not solely that, however Strapsicle is on tempo for its first-ever 6-figure month after just lately going viral on TikTok and Instagram.
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Ben, Lou, and Archie courtesy of Stapisicle
Getting the Strapsicle manufactured
After constructive preliminary testing, Ben and Lou explored whether or not there have been any related merchandise in the marketplace and located only a few opponents. The merchandise they did discover had been moderately unappealing.
“That they had like little metallic claws, or they’re very industrial-looking, and nothing form of modern and classy like our straps are,” Lou says.
This gave them confidence {that a} modern, fashionable silicone strap customized molded to suit Kindle gadgets could possibly be a successful product. Fortunately, they’d a producing contact in China by a good friend to provide prototypes and in the end fulfill stock orders.
It took a number of rounds of forwards and backwards with the manufacturing unit to excellent the design of the very first Strapsicle strap. As soon as the ultimate manufacturing pattern was authorised, Lou created a web based survey and distributed it by Fb, associates, and household. The suggestions assured Lou they had been fixing an actual buyer downside, given the passion expressed by present Kindle house owners.
With this validation fueling their want to develop an answer for Lou’s preliminary dropping problem, they determined to maneuver ahead and place a minimal order amount of 500 models for about $2,000, together with delivery charges.
Freely giving product
After the primary stock cargo arrived, Lou and Ben had been paralyzed on launching for months. However after listening to a podcast that impressed her, Strapsicle formally launched on-line by gifting away merchandise totally free. Prospects solely paid the delivery prices and had been solely requested to supply suggestions concerning the strap.
This strategy allowed Lou and Ben to construct group and begin a dialogue with actual prospects utilizing Strapsicle on their Kindles. Plus, it enabled the gathering of user-generated content material and evaluations to help subsequent advertising and marketing efforts.
Lou unfold the phrase on-line primarily by Fb communities like feminine entrepreneurs teams and native neighborhood teams. She additionally made posts on LinkedIn and her private Instagram account, yielding virtually 100 gross sales within the first month.
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Advertising on BookTok
By no means one to face nonetheless, Lou quickly stumbled upon BookTok — an engaged subculture on TikTok obsessive about studying and raving about their favourite books. She quickly realized BookTok contributors had been a super goal market, given their affinity for Kindles.
Lou determined to experiment with a micro-influencer affiliate internet marketing technique. This concerned looking related Kindle hashtags like #Kindle and key phrases to search out nano and micro-influencers on TikTok and Instagram with small however focused followings between 2,000-3,000 followers.
She reached out to many micro-influencers, supplied them free samples to strive, and supplied low cost codes they might share with their followers to drive gross sales.
The micro-influencer content material spreads model consciousness and creates extra user-generated content material for Lou to repurpose on Strapsicle’s social channels. She continues nurturing relationships along with her influencers by sending new merchandise and preserving in fixed contact as they drive an increasing number of site visitors and gross sales.
This micro-influencer technique and the preliminary free giveaway enabled Strapsicle to realize important natural traction in simply its first three months in enterprise.
Launching on Amazon
Lou and Ben began promoting on Amazon utilizing FBA (Fulfilled by Amazon) to ease order achievement and distribution, particularly throughout the US market.
They knew the facility of Amazon but additionally understood the significance of driving exterior site visitors to the listings. So Lou applied referral bonus hyperlinks and affiliate internet marketing by a number of channels again to the Amazon product pages.
She continues contacting micro-influencers on TikTok and Instagram that cater to the Kindle area of interest. By offering them with Amazon low cost codes as a substitute of codes for Strapsicle, any ensuing gross sales nonetheless credit score the influencer whereas permitting the client a seamless Amazon purchasing expertise.
This ongoing effort offers the important exterior visibility to assist Strapsicle’s merchandise rank larger in Amazon search outcomes. And the excessive placement then permits extra natural gross sales.
Hitting $50k+ a month
Flash ahead to at the moment, and Strapsicle is flying excessive at over $50,000 month-to-month in gross sales between Strapsicle.com and Amazon. Lou credit constant effort delivering micro-influencer seed content material and huge distribution of affiliated hyperlinks driving exterior site visitors to Amazon product pages.
The crowning achievement to date has been a single viral TikTok video that generated over 2 million views. Mixed with a “The 9 Greatest Kindle Equipment to Store on Amazon Underneath $35” PR roundup Cosmopolitan printed, together with Strapsicle, the widespread publicity pushed Lou’s aspect hustle over $100k in gross sales in its first month, topping six figures.
Studying from their errors
Regardless of breakout early success, Lou admits they have been figuring issues out as they go. From pricing adjustments to get the optimum value-based buyer conversions to sizing mixups that led to unfavourable evaluations, they’ve endured their justifiable share of classes about promoting on Amazon.
One laborious lesson got here from a manufacturing unit high quality management challenge with their producer sending the wrong-sized models to Amazon warehouses. It wasn’t caught initially, main confused prospects to complain about ill-fitting straps.
Lou used the chance to reply with considerate feedback personally, ship replacements from their Shopify-fulfilled stock, and in the end change disillusioned 1-star evaluations into delighted 5-star raves.
This consideration to particular person buyer care reminds Lou that Strapsicle is not simply one other faceless company entity. As a bootstrapping startup and household ardour challenge self-funded from her company wage, each sale counts.
Lou additionally started receiving suggestions that the versatile silicone strap design helped readers affected by arthritis, Parkinson’s, and nerve injury comfortably maintain Kindle gadgets and options from Kobo that normally slipped from their grasp.
Phrase unfold and a girl with cerebral palsy even wrote to Lou and mentioned, “You’ve modified my life.” Whereas Lou initially got down to resolve a easy downside for exhausted dad and mom like herself, this discovery added a better sense of objective and refinement to the model’s imaginative and prescient.
