She Invented a Product for New Moms, Now it's a Bestseller at Target: PippySips Founder Amberlee Venti

0:00Hey, it's Paige. I'm the one who edits your podcast every week on the Female Founder World Team. I was editing the pod today and I wanted to quickly flag that some heavy stuff comes up around addiction and mental health in this conversation. If that's tough for you, please skip this interview or skip past about the five-minute mark. Okay, over to Jasmine. Hey, business besties. Welcome back to the Female Founder World podcast. I'm Jasmine. I'm the host of the show and the person behind the entire Female Founder World universe. Today, I'm chatting with Amberlee, the founder of Peepee Sips. Amberlee, welcome to Female Founder World.

0:37You are now entering Female Founder World with your host, Jasmine Garnsworthy. Thank you so much. Happy to be here. For people that don't know what you guys are building, tell us all about the business. We are on a mission to reduce barriers in breast milk storage through tech, innovation, and beauty. The first step in that process is the launch of our flagship product, Maya, which is a breast milk storing, cooling and monitoring device. So moms don't have to worry about finding a fridge on the go or carrying around a cooler with bulky ice packs. This is like a fridge that fits in your purse or a work bag.

1:13This is so smart. As someone who is just like winding up on breastfeeding my first baby, this is this is the thing. This is an issue, especially if you're like going back to work and like you're pumping all the time and you have to put your breast milk in like weird office fridges and it's like all kinds of awkward. Why did you start the business? Where did the idea come from? Exactly from one of those experiences that you're referencing. Yeah, so I have worked in mental health my whole adult life. So I've had a wide variety of jobs that include, you know, going out in the field and meeting with people.

1:52And then when I actually had the idea for this product, I was working in an outpatient unit here in Philadelphia, in Kensington, which is pretty, it has been the epicenter of the opiate epidemic. And when I was working there was really when the height of the opiate epidemic was hitting. So I was running a mental health outpatient clinic during that time, which in and of itself was already a challenge. And I had been newly put into a leadership role, which added another challenge. So much of my day to day was making sure that people weren't shooting up in our bathroom or if they had, they were safe and OK and we could get them the resources they needed.

2:37We were we also had a walk in clinic. So people were coming in for treatment every day and it was our job to make sure that they were they got the services that they needed. but it could be really hard because it was high intensity it was high crisis people were coming in with suicidal thoughts feeling psychotic or experiencing psychosis withdrawing from opiates all sorts of things so all of that in and of itself very very challenging and then you layer on top of that that I was a breastfeeding and pumping mom so there were many barriers in my pumping process. I would say finding time and space to pump was definitely a huge issue.

3:22It was a really, like I said, high intensity job and people kind of needed my support to make sure that we were giving people what they needed or trying to find what they needed. So often it was kind of hard to find some time alone to pump. And then on top of that, Our fridge was in like our staff meeting room and that staff meeting room was also used for group therapy as well as the staff meetings. So there were it just was sometimes near impossible to get into that room because it was being used so often. And my second option was a cooler with ice packs. And I really didn't like the cooler option.

4:06you know it's a long hot day the ice packs are melted they're leaking in your purse you don't know if it's kept your breast milk the right temperature that was only kind of a question that lingered for me um so crazy day at work can't get to the fridge uh didn't have my cooler and I looked at my swell water bottle and I thought to myself if this thing can keep my water cold why can't we make something beautiful like this for my liquid gold and that was kind of that was the genesis of the idea and then we kind of moved into I talked to my brother-in-law actually about my idea and he hooked us up with some engineers who helped us to make a works-like prototype and what we quickly realized is a swell water bottle maintains the temperature of the liquid that's in it.

5:02It doesn't actually make it warmer or cooler. So the first step in making our product was to figure out a way to bring the temperature of the milk down. And then for it to be in that stainless steel canister so that it would maintain the temperature. Wow. Okay. This is such a crazy story. I didn't know all this stuff was kind of the motivation behind everything. So fast forwarding, you know, this was back in, I think, 2016 when you had the idea and you kind of created this early first version about a year later. And then this year you've just launched into Target. So we're going to kind of like follow through how all of that has happened over the last, I don't know, seven years and how you got to this point now, which is this really huge milestone of a Target launch.

5:49So you mentioned that you're working with engineers to kind of get that first product started. And I know that you filed a patent? Can you talk through like why you needed to file a patent, what you learned through that process? Like I always find it really interesting when people are like truly innovating and creating something really, really original to the point where you can file a patent. What have you guys been able to patent and what does that do for you as a business? Yeah, so we have a utility patent. We filed the patent in 2019. So we had moved through quite a bit of our prototypes. We had a works-like prototype, so function the way we needed, as well as a looks-like prototype, so had the aesthetic that we wanted for the ultimate product.

6:36So at that point, we filed the utility patent. We got a really good recommendation for Riverside Law, which is located in King of Prussia, outside of Philadelphia, from a founder who was making a pumping bra, actually. and they were really well priced, which was something, you know, we were concerned about as an early stage company without a ton of funding. So we filed our utility patent and we made sure one of the things to know about patents that I actually didn't know until we got into this process was that we couldn't publicize what we were doing in any way until we had filed a patent. um so we were gearing up we filed it in 2019 right before we did a crowdfunding campaign on if I women um to help raise funds for manufacturing but anyways we made sure the patent was filed before we publicized the crowdfunding campaign which showed our prototype so it was like three or four no four years between having the idea and actually being able to go into manufacturing is that right?

7:45It was, it might have been even longer. Wow. How do you like, okay. So I think for a lot of us, we kind of like have these ideas and you want to move really quick and you want to see it out in the world. And I think that's quite a, I don't know, quite the cornerstone of being entrepreneurial is that like wanting to like move quickly and see traction. I think that it takes a very special kind of perseverance and focus to be able to work on something for four years without it actually being out in the world. What other things were you doing in the background to kind of like get the business ready for launch?

8:21Were you doing branding? Were you working and getting surveys? Were you speaking to customers? Or was it really just like, let's focus on making this product good and getting it developed? Yeah, yeah, we were doing, I'd say a little bit of all those things you just mentioned. So when I first had the idea and I told my brother-in-law, I have this crazy idea. I want to make a product, but I don't know this like I don't know if that's like a reality he was like no crazy ideas turn into very successful businesses people experience problems and then they solve them but you know him and the engineers we worked with gave us really good advice which was you do want to survey your market and make sure this isn't just an Amber Lee pain point which we knew it was an Amber Lee pain point but we didn't know and I knew like I had friends that were moms and pumping and they were like, yeah, this is a great idea.

9:09But, you know, if five people tell you it's a great idea, it doesn't mean you should pour hundreds of thousands of dollars and years of work into a business. So we surveyed women in metropolitan areas. At the time, we used Craigslist to find potential consumers. And we, I think we paid them a small fee. So we surveyed like hundreds of consumers. We built out a survey with the engineers who also had MBAs and business experience. It helped us build out the survey in a way that would elicit the answers to understand if this was really a pain point for other women who were pumping. And so we did that and we quickly found out that a majority of the women that we surveyed also found breast milk soarage and breast milk cooling specifically to be an issue and a pain point in their pumping process.

10:00um so that was the green light for us to proceed in making prototypes and kind of getting to an ultimate product in the background I was trying to build a brand um I'm at an older millennial so I was trying and I say that with a giggle because I I wasn't super um I didn't know how to use social media the way somebody who five to 10 years younger than me did. It wasn't a huge like I didn't have a huge following like many founders before they started brand. You know, I had like a private Instagram account with my 100 good friends and family on it. So I opened up an Instagram account. I opened up a Facebook account and I just started kind of experimenting.

10:48Luckily, pressure was super low there because we didn't have a product on market. So, you know, know, I kind of had friends and family following along and we could kind of do like sneak peek kind of stuff and little hints of what we were working at without showing the product before we had filed the patent. Yeah, so I just was kind of working on that. I wrote out a business plan. That was one of the first things I did. I remember sitting at the coffee shop and writing a business plan. Have you followed that business plan or has it like totally changed once you went to market? So it is a living, breathing document.

11:27I have had the same business plan since like 2017 and I just keep modifying it. But retail launch was one of the stepping stones that we wanted to reach. Bringing a product to market was one of the stepping stones we wanted to reach. So we have some of the steps along the way. believe it or not we have met and are or are working towards like some of the steps we had on there in 2017 we're still working towards and like have opportunity to reach them like it's not a how did you sorry how did you um fund the business in the early days were you just using like savings did you have friends and family going this with you because it's like it's expensive filing patents, developing a new product, the back and forth with manufacturers and engineers, even before you go into a full product run?

12:22Like where was that money coming from? Yeah. So we were bootstrapping initially. So both me and my husband, who's also my partner, have had full-time jobs. So using our own money and funds, we did a little bit of a family family round. No friend. We did like nuclear family. And then there came a point in which we were like, OK, now we have to like really fundraise. We can't kind of keep it within our small circle. We have to expand this, which is where crowdfunding happened. I think crowdfunding was like our first big push for fundraising and that got us the next step but then the step after that was we applied to an accelerator program here in philadelphia that got us like basically each step of the way we were like okay we need another chunk of money and we would do something like crowdfunding an accelerator we did equity crowdfunding we did grants we've done every when it comes to fundraising we've done everything pitch competitions um design contests yeah all sorts of things equity crowdfunding regular crowdfunding have you worked with like traditional angels or venture capital or anything like that yet not yet okay cool okay good to know we are working on that though.

13:50April 2022 comes along and you guys hit a pretty big speed bump. What happened? April 2022 is when we thought we were going to launch our product. So we were in manufacturing and we are in our bottle, which is a BPA free plastic bottle was being manufactured with a vendor who part of the agreement was that it would be BPA tree and pass all testing related to regulations for baby and child products. And so we got our units from them and we had them tested by a third party. And we found out that there was BPA and a high level of bpa and all of the bottles oh my god okay so what do you do and the most like crushing part about that was we had literally emailed our crowdfunding so we had crowdfunding customers who had waited years for the product um so like people who had bought the product in 2019 2020 following the journey which is part of crowdfunding people understand that they know they're not going to get the product immediately.

15:07Maybe they will, maybe they won't, but that's part of the bet they're taking. And so we had already emailed all our customers like, we're going to have the Mayos to you like in a couple of weeks. And then that happened and it was absolutely crushing, totally, totally crushing. So first step was to write a long, thorough email apologizing to our customers, but also really emphasizing that we put the safety of our customers and the quality of our product, that is a priority and that we would in no way send a product out that could hurt anyone and that was not of the highest quality. So we really emphasized that and tried to make it a strength of our business, even though it was such a hard time and it felt like a weakness.

15:54And then we had to scramble to find another vendor. Luckily, our vendor who was making other parts of our product, which was the stainless steel part, was willing to make the bottle, but it was going to take time because they were going to have to make a whole new mold, which is not like an overnight process. And then they were going to have to push out the product. um so then we didn't launch until July so at least three months later. Wow how did you actually launch and what were some of the um what were some of the things that worked in terms of getting you to market? So as far as launch goes we made sure to have a good cadence in our newsletters so we you know, we had a following from the many years we had been developing this product and we'd been crowdfunding and all of that.

16:46So we made sure our newsletter, we were putting out regular newsletters, kind of being like, it's coming, it's coming, getting people excited. And we did something similar on our social media accounts. You know, we run very lean. We're a small brand. You know, we don't have a bucket load of funding, but we had meta advertising set up a small budget around meta advertising, as well as we had an influencer, Bumble Baby, who we worked with, who is like an influencer in the space. So they breastfeeding and pumping moms and they were kind of following our journey. We had a relationship with them kind of all along.

17:28So they helped with the hype and building the hype. And that's how we, yeah, that was how we launched. Amazing. Okay. And so then something else that I find really interesting is how within a few months, that first round of product sells out. So you're going back into manufacturing, you're bringing out more products. One of the speed bumps we hit there because we hit another manufacturing bump there. so we sold out our first round we launched september 2022 and then we sold out march yeah 2023 and then we thought we were gonna have our second round ready to go like there's no there's not gonna be any speed bumps we know what we're doing we've been talking our vendors ready yada yada yada and then the next manufacturing speed bump hit which is there was a global supply chain crisis for microchips.

18:24So yeah, so we're searching the world, like literally the world far and wide for microchips. And these huge companies that use microchips like Nintendo and Ferrari and Ford are all like way ahead in ordering way bigger minimum order quantities. You know, they're ordering like hundreds of thousands of microchips and they're willing to pay whatever and we're just like last in line um so once again felt totally crushed and felt like we were making promises that we couldn't keep so we actually did a quick redesign um this is i'm actually very proud of this moment within our company that we were able to problem solve we did a really we did this quick redesign and it made it so that the microchip we needed was a more accessible microchip as well as much cheaper.

19:19Like instead of 20-ish dollars, it was like two-ish dollars. Wow. Yeah, our cost of goods wouldn't be this like exorbitant cost of goods because of a global supply chain crisis. So we did this relatively quick redesign, but then we were still out of stock from March to July. So once again, like three months of a gap where, you know we were hoping we would have product luckily at that point we had traction so people were willing and we had already had the product on the market so people were willing to pre-order and that really kept us afloat until we could launch the second round that is so wild um i need to ask what the microchip is for because yeah i'm listening to this what does the microchip do so the microchip goes into our thermolid so yeah our product is the only product on market it's the only breast milk cooler on market that has a monitoring component that shows the temperature of your milk.

20:16So like if it's a hot day, you weren't able to get home on time, you'll know the temperature of your milk by simply double tapping the thermal lid or shaking the unit. It's kind of like an Apple watch, just needs like a little bit of a motion. So the microchip goes in the circuit board that helps to tell the temperature. Yeah. That is so clever. Have you You just had a million people trying to rip off your patent for this. It's the most clever idea I've had in a really long time. Yes. I won't speak too much about it, but we have definitely had a lot of competitors. We've had, you know, luckily the patent for them, you know, IP law is fascinating.

20:56I can't even say that I can speak with the most expertise about it. But, you know, the concept is you're protecting how you make the bicycle. but somebody else can make a bicycle they just make it differently and they haven't infringed on your IP which is really upsetting when you see you know the concept of a breast milk cooler we created that category but there are plenty of other products out in the world right now that do that they just do it differently than how we do it interesting okay cool um I want to fast forward a little bit and talk about Target. For so many brands in the community, launching with one of these big mass chain retailers is a dream.

21:43It is on the vision board. I want to know how this partnership came about, how they found you and why you think that they were like, they wanted to work with Pippi Sips. Like what was it that really made you a good fit for Target? Yeah. So we've actually had a long and we've had about a four-year relationship with Target which is exciting so in 2020 when the pandemic happened we got recruited for their accelerator program the Target takeoff program for the baby feeding cohort so they kind of reached out to us and they were like we think you should apply we applied we interviewed we hit it off with the two women who run the program so we were accepted into the program.

22:29It was a little odd because it was 2020 and they usually do in person programming, but they couldn't because of the pandemic. They couldn't fly us out to Minnesota. So it was all virtual. And we were the only brand in the cohort that didn't have a product on market. So that was kind of an interesting place to be in. It wasn't a bad place to be in, but it was, you know it was hard because at the end you do a pitch to the buyer and the buyer was psyched the buyer was like we want this we want to sell this the target and we didn't have a product and we weren't gonna have a product well you have to wait a couple years yeah and we didn't know that either I thought maybe we I was like you have to wait like six months you know right yeah you have no idea how long it's going to take to manufacture a product um so but what I did you know is I just stayed in contact.

23:24I didn't let the relationship go idle. That was, and I kind of knew that in my heart that that was the thing I needed to do in order to get into Target at some point. But it took so long that the buyer who loved us had moved to a different category. And so I had, yeah, luckily she was a lovely human being. So I like sent her a message and I was like, can you introduce us to the new buyer? Like we have the product now we're ready to go. and she's super kind and did that. And then we have brokers that helped us to do the actual like pitch. And they have a really great relationship with that buyer in the baby feeding category.

24:03You know, they pitched over a year ago that we had to work on inventory, that we had to work on logistics, EDI, all of those really fun things that come with the retail launch. I think a lot of people don't realize how much is involved, especially with the mass retailer. and like you need to be you need to be ready it's a it's a really big job we are um currently more than halfway through our retail boot camp course and if anyone wants to do it again in the future we'll have a I put a wait list in the show notes um so people can can join the next one because there's a lot of stuff in there that I just think you don't learn until you actually get that okay sure let's roll with the retailer and then you're kind of like oh shit like there's actually so much more to this and if you mess it up like it can be a really expensive thing to mess up um I'm keen and we're still learning yeah a hundred percent and like you probably will like for the next couple of orders from them you know it'll be like this ongoing thing I'd love to know how you found your broker um that that happened that was like another relationship-based thing relationships are so important in the entrepreneurial journey as part of the accelerator they introduce you to founders who have launched in Target and are successful at Target.

25:19So when it came to finding a broker, we reached out to her and then asked, who do you recommend? And that's how we landed on the broker. And they've been really great. They've been amazing. Yeah. And then how do you, once your product is actually in Target and now you have to like move this product off shelf, right? Like you need to actually sell it. Are you in now or is a launch coming up? So we're just on Target.com. We're hoping to be in stores in the near future. We really wanted to start with.com because of the novelness of our product. So we've been in retailers and we don't move as quickly in retailers as we do online because our product, you kind of need to see a video of it.

26:06You need to see a user with it. it's it's an intuitive product but most women I talk to are pumping or like wait there's a breast milk cooling device I've never heard of this like not a fridge not a cooler so it's still a new thing you know which is where I think having competitors is actually really great I think we're all educating the consumer about this new product on the market and helping to kind of educate the masses. I imagine for a product like that, I just see it playing really well on like Instagram Reels, TikTok. Is that something that you're leaning heavily into? And like digital ads, I feel like you do so well with, I mean, I know that you, I know that now you are leaning into ads as well, but I can just see that like problem solution story being sold really easily through this kind of content yeah yeah I think um UGC a combination of UGC and then a bit of putting my face in front of the camera which I would always love but me explaining you know like how I had a problem what I did to solve it all the all the intricacies of making a hardware product and how we thought about each part of the product like the thermo lid so you know the temperature and the cooling pumps so you don't have to get ice you can just take this thing out of your freezer and put it in your product so the combination of that and then the UGC where you're showing different users and how they use it differently so are they showing it when they go to a day of work are they showing it when they go on a day trip are they showing it when they go to a concert so showing all the the freedom that the product offers you so that you can do all those activities you did pre-baby.

27:55You can do them post-baby pumping and not have to worry about how you're going to cool your milk when you're doing them. Before we were, I was asking you, I just remember we got sidetracked. You switched up a part of the business because you found a recommendation through the community. And I just want to like emphasize that because it's made a really big difference in your business. What was that? Because it had to do with digital ads. yeah so um the founder from elijah's who is elijah the yeah yeah it's a fragrance brand yeah so i saw she had done the e-commerce equation um course which is like a almost like a you do um actual tutorials and how to run meta ads but then you have weekly coaching calls to kind of help reinforce the learning you got from those tutorials and to also look at your campaigns and see how they're doing and get that expert eye.

28:51So anyways, I heard Raquel on one of the business bestie calls, talk about her experience with it. And I think the thing that sold me was her and e-commerce equation said this, which is that when you pay a consultant to do your meta ads, they just they're never going to do it as well as you. Number one, they're never going to understand your customer and your product and brand as well as you, especially for us. Like our consultant wasn't bad in any way. He actually was very helpful, but he was also a man. So obviously had never breastfed and punked. And then also the concept of a consultant is that they're serving many brands.

29:32So they're going to check your ad account maybe once, twice a week. versus when you do e-commerce equation, they're encouraging you to, initially you check almost every day and then kind of like an every other day after that. And they give you an Excel spreadsheet where you put in your metrics so you can see what's working and what isn't working. So you can change that as you go, which a consultant isn't really doing that. They're doing it a bit more by instinct. I also, just to clarify, Female Founder World is not affiliated with e-commerce equation. This is genuinely just one of those things where I think that we've stumbled on something because you are not the first person that has told me that they've gone and joined that course after hearing from Raquel.

30:19But it is, yeah, it does seem to be really like transforming a lot of businesses. Because I think it's one of those things that like once you figure out how to do meta ads and you're not paying an agency exorbitant amounts of money to do it, it can be like a really profitable channel. Yeah, it's actually quite enjoyable. I like kind of like the game aspect of it. You know, you're like putting an ad in there that you just worked with a creator to make this like reel or TikTok. You put it in there and then it's like, it catches fire. So you like put it in front of a different audience. You think about different audiences.

30:53I really appreciate that about it. And then as you start to see your ROAS go up and your marketing expense ratio go down, you know, you feel a sense of winning. and you want to keep it's hard to lose motivation right you know like you want to keep going and see it do well yeah one other thing that they helped us with sorry um is you know they also give you're meeting with founders each week who are in those coaching calls so they they give general business advice too which is super helpful and and the gentleman who runs it he's a founder himself so like this is coming from a real place he's been doing this for years he's had multiple brands do really well um one other thing they suggested to increase our average order value was to add bundles um and i don't know why that thought never dawned on me so we did i know why that thought never dawned on me which is because i've never done this before but um yeah yeah so they suggested bundles and that increase our average order value by like 21 percent in like a couple months.

31:58Yeah. So that was a, yeah, very, very helpful. Okay. Great recommendation. And the last thing I'm going to ask you is for another resource recommendation. So you've just given us actually a couple of really good ones there, but is there anything else that's been helping you as you've been building the business and also leveling up as a founder and a leader yourself? Yeah. So I'd say like a tan, one really tangible resource that that has really helped us with a novel product where people kind of need more education about how it works and how it will help them is I really like Tolstoy videos. So it's a Shopify app, or it's an app that you can implement in Shopify.

32:39The first video we did was like Founder Story. That was really effective. Now we have a lot of shoppable videos in there. So like, if you're choosing our product, it will show you a video of a user using it. We actually have two videos up. If you're shopping for one of our extra upsell items, like the cooling puck, it'll show you like the user putting it in the freezer, taking it out of the freezer. So you can just get a sense right away of how the product works, which really helps with conversion. And we've seen the effects of that very quickly. And then my other resource, which is, you know, more of like a practice is to make sure that you have a founder that you are talking to regularly.

33:22So finding kind of one of those besties, maybe in female founder world or at a networking event. And I think it really helps if it's another female founder, because I think our experience is a very unique experience. And making sure that you check in with that person regularly, Maybe it's just monthly or maybe it's weekly. But just even if it's a text chain, just kind of being like, yep, it's one of those days, like my website's not working and somebody just asked for a refund. And, you know, and then they can really validate that experience because you're going to have days like that a lot. Yes, you're going to have a few of those.