You know what it is? That's right. It's time to talk money with your money nerd and financial coach. Now tighten those purse strings and open those ears. It's the Money Talk with Tiff podcast. Hey, everyone. I am so excited because I have Amy Vail here. She's the founder of for the Cubs and she's here to talk to us about how she started her product based business and got to where she is today. So. Hey, Amy, how are you? I'm good. Thanks so much for having me. Yes, no problem.
Thank you so much for coming on. I thought this was a great topic for my audience, so let's just hop right in. So I know you have a product based business, but it's product based for a cause. So can you help, like just explain a little bit of that for us? Like, what made you decide to do something for this cause and what is the cost? Yes, absolutely. So the background there is, I came up with the idea for, for the Cubs while I was training to be a foster parent.
And one of the things that you learn how to support kids while they're in your care who have come from hard places. And so a lot of that is focused on sensory processing tools. And one of the insights that I learned was that we need 8 to 12 hugs a day as humans to maintain our emotional well being. And so that sort of sparked the idea of my hero product, which is a weighted bear named Percy.
And one of the things that I was really struggling with was the need that is so great for kids and fosters foster care. And so this for me was a way to care for more than one child that was in my home at any given time and to really sort of create impact for kids that are probably going through one of the hardest chapters of their life to date and really showing up for them in a way that is just a small signal to them that there are people in the world that believe in them and care about them.
Awesome. Awesome. I love that. So tell us a little bit more about this weighted bear and how it helps these kids. Yeah. So Percy, one of the things, was really sort of focusing on designing him to mimic a hug. So when I researched the market, I saw that a lot of products had the weight distributed in the center of the body, whereas a hug often has different pressure points.
And so the weighted bear sort of acts or pulls from theories around deep pressure therapy, which helps regulate the body, calm the mind, lower blood pressure, all of those types of things that when we're really struggling in a hard spot, we're overwhelmed. We're overstimulated. That gentle pressure just really helps sort of realign things and get us back to center.
So what I focused on with the design was really distributing the weight in different points of his body so that he could be sort of maneuvered around a child or an adult. So it felt like it was more of an embrace than just sort of one focused area of weight. So when you were developing this product, how did you go about that? Like, were there different iterations that you have, different prototypes? Did you have groups to try it? Like, how did you go about developing this physical product?
I spent a lot of time and money developing this product, and it was because I'd never done it before. A lot of it was really sort of having a vision of what I wanted to achieve and continuing to iterate until I sort of found the sweet spot of delivering on the promise that I wanted to offer to customers. And so the first thing was I actually started working with an illustrator because Percy is a character. He's not sort of just a bear or any other sort of random animal or thing like that.
He really sort of embodies that idea and support of belonging, which is something I think everyone is sort of striving for as a human. And so that sort of character development was really important at the beginning, and the element of sort of being able to bring through his personality. So I actually worked with an illustrator first to really bring his character to life.
I wanted to see what he looked like when he smiled, when he was curious, things like that, so I could sort of really round out the story of who Percy is to the customer. So all of the details around his wearing the glasses and the love heart nose and the sort of little smirk on his face, they were all really intentional details. And one of the other pieces that sort of went into making Percy was my grandfather.
At the time that I was sort of working on the concept of this product, he passed away. And as a child, he played a really, really big role for me in creating that sense of belonging. And so I wanted to find a way to honor that, but also sort of send some of that feeling out into the world that could be created with this weighted bear. So Percy was my grandfather's nickname. And so that's why I sort of wanted to bring everything together in a personality before I went into the design.
And then when we went into the production design, I went through several different iterations of this bear. And so originally, he was an off white snow color, and he represented more of a Polar bear. I quickly realized that if children were going to play with this and he isn't machine washable at the moment, he white was not going to be a good color. So I needed to change the colorway and sort of turn him to that almond brown color. That was like one insight that I learned very quickly.
And then sort of building out his body in a way where the mimic the design of creating that hug experience also took a lot of iteration because I focused first on him laying down and then it was to move him to sitting up and then it was like testing into the amount of fill that was in his body. It was testing into the stitching and the, the gauge of the thread that was being used. Things like that that I would never have considered when I first started.
But it was such an exceptional learning experience to be able to dig into all of these aspects of product design that in my career in the past I had never had as much exposure to. So this was a really sort of good way of. I was learning on the job, if you will. But it was also sort of teaching me a lot in terms of like the investment of getting it right up front, regardless of the amount of samples that I to go through to get to that sort of ideal first product.
That was a really important learning curve and it took 10 times longer than I thought it would. But I also am glad that I didn't rush into something because I don't think that I would have received the wonderful feedback that I have from this bear and how he's helped so many customers so far. That is so awesome. And I didn't even think about the illustrator like making sure all of the facial expressions, all of that stuff I didn't even think about when it came to a physical teddy bear know.
So I'm glad that you bought that all up. Now. How long did it take to get from the very first prototype to actually launching? It took about just over 12 months. Okay, so in that year after you released everything, did you have to go back and do another iteration after release or was that it? Yeah, I definitely was looking into customer feedback in ways that I could continue to iterate.
So with the second version, there were additional sort of elements of like I'd mentioned, sort of the double seam stitching, the heavier weight thread, things like that, where until the first like the 1.0 got out into market and I had multiple people, you know, using him for what he was designed for. One of the things that I did observe was that kids are inclined to throw things up in the Air that have weight and can sort of get air. So Percy's not designed to be thrown in the air.
He's a therapeutic device. He's not sort of a, you know, a lightweight product. So when. When he's thrown in the air, that puts stress on his seams because there's weight in all four of his paws as well as his body. So really sort of working with the manufacturer to make sure that we had clarity on really doubling down on the durability of the bear. Because in my mind, like, I want every customer to have a wonderful experience with this bear.
And so making sure that he can last the distance and offer hundreds, if not thousands of hugs, that's really the goal. So I think the durability piece was one of the things that I was constantly focused on, because that was really important to me. I know that there's a lot of things out there that kids will sort of get attached to and then lose interest in.
And the feedback that I've had is that this is sort of one of those things that kids and adults will attach to just by the support that he offers. And so I wanted to make sure that he was going to be lasting the distance for the period of time he needed to serve his owner. Gotcha. And I could totally see my kids throwing things in the air. When you said that, I just died laughing because I was like, yep, I can absolutely see that happening, or just throwing it down just because.
Just to see what happens. So, yeah, and it's stuff that you don't real. You're developing, you don't take into consideration as much. But once you get it out into the wild, we'll call it, that's when you realize, oh, okay, so this is what they're going to be doing with this. Let's see what we can tweak. So I'm glad that you and. And I wanted to bring that up to the audience because as business owners, we're constantly iterating.
Like, I wouldn't be surprised if there's a few more iterations coming down the road. You know, just because somebody's using it in a way, you're like, oh, didn't think about that. Now let's do this. So I like that you hit that. Now I do want to do one more thing, and that's X. If you have, like, maybe one to two tips that someone who is interested in launching a product, they should do or think about what is.
What are one to two tips for our business owners thinking about that, I. Think always keeping the End customer in mind. My anytime I have someone write in, I've had so many people write in and share unsolicited, like, experiences with Percy and really sort of focusing in on what people are experiencing positively and really leaning into that as much as the feedback for improvement. So when I think about when I initially designed Percy, I was thinking of it as a children's product.
And as I released him into the wild, I learned that a lot of adults really found great value from him as well, whether it be they suffered from anxiety, adhd, they had just gone through a loss, medical treatments.
So I think being able to sort of really take in that feedback and pivot as you find those sort of new niches to serve a customer, that's really an important aspect to keep in mind, especially when you're in the beginning, because what you thought you were designing for, you may sort of open up your aperture to who you are serving in different ways, shapes and forms. Perfect. Perfect. Thank you so much for sharing that with our audience.
Now, if people were interested in finding out more about you, more about for the Cubs, where could they find you? Yes, they can find me on forthecubs.com or on LinkedIn. I'm always happy to connect with folks and help wherever I can. I think the other learning that I would share also is that you need to be incredibly humble when starting a business. I've been in marketing and executive leadership for a long time until I started this business.
And so I had very specific ideas of how things were going to go. And I was quickly humbled because when it's your own money and you're starting with yourself or a very, very small team, you just really have to pivot constantly and just be okay with the constant feedback and changes that you need to make. And sometimes that can really challenge your ego.
But at the end of the day, my focus is always give me as much feedback as possible, because at the end of the day, all I want to do is help people manage through anxiety and any types of struggles they're going through or really just be able to ultimately, at the end of the day, help as many foster kids as I can. Awesome. Awesome. Well, thank you so much and thank you for dropping that last gym for us.
Because ownership, entrepreneurship, small business owner, whatever you want to call it, it is a very humbling experience in many ways because you are constantly learning. You're constantly, you know, figuring out what you're doing wrong. And so I love that you put that out there. Now, what about social media? Are you on social media in any way. I am. We have for the Cubs on Instagram and TikTok.
I don't personally have my own social media presence that's public, but LinkedIn is mostly where I'm at most active. All right, perfect. And I'll make sure I have all of those links in the show notes. So thank you so much Amy for coming on the show today and dropping these gems about for the Cubs and pretty much product development. You're so welcome. Thanks so much for having me. All right, bye. Thank you for listening, joining and being a part of the Money Talk with Tiff podcast this week.
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