Can a stacking game pull families away from their screens this Christmas?

0:11Hello and welcome to the Entrepreneurs on Monocle Radio, the show all about inspiring people, innovative companies and fresh ideas in global business. Today's program is coming to you from Du Fostrasse in Seyfeld in Zurich at the Monocle Studio Café and Shop. This program is all about seasonal gift ideas for last-minute Christmas shoppers. First, we'll hear how a design student turned a wooden stacking game into an international business. As so much of our lives are very digitally led, to have something that is actually physical and you can play with other individuals. For me, it's all about creating joy and delight.

0:48And later, we'll check in with our friends from a dental care brand that launched just three years ago, but has grown into a global company now tackling the challenge of scaling up and meeting rocketing demand. The reception has been phenomenal. I mean, actually, almost, if I'm honest, too good. We've sold well ahead of forecast and we're now struggling to even create enough for the demand. This is The Entrepreneurs with me, Tom Edwards.

1:21Alexander Newman is a Canadian designer who spent a year studying at Chelsea College of Arts in London. While there, he created Misfits, a project that began as a university assignment and has since grown into an addictive and most tactile board game now sold through more than 35 retailers around the world. It's also caught the attention of the media. One British newspaper described it as Jenga for lunatics. I caught up with Alexander to discuss how a student design project became an international product. He began by telling me about the original concept behind Misfits. For me, when I initially developed this, I saw that there was a lot of, first of all, board and card games that are already out there in the world.

2:04And so I just felt like I didn't want to really add to that conversation already. And I thought that having something that is a little bit more tactile and something that is wood-based or wood-derived as a product would be also just really interesting as a potential start. There's a lot to be said at the moment, especially as so much of our lives are like very digitally led to have something that is actually physical and that you can see and you can play with other individuals. For me, it's all about creating like joy and delight and just making people have a sense of like, oh, like I really just want to get into this specifically how the blocks are laid out in our practicing as well i mean you have 40 blocks that are put all together in sort of this neat puzzle-like pattern often it's our actual and first reaction that for some of our customers is that they just assume it's a puzzle or something like that but it very much isn't it's you know it's a game in that way but i think it's just there's an immediate sense of like oh i want to kind of jump in i want to have a crack at this and kind of have that sort of feeling of anticipation.

3:10We've also done a lot with the packaging as well to kind of like delay the satisfaction of opening up and stuff like that. Obviously, I take notes from the bigger players like Apple who, you know, insidiously like highlight on every single little detail about the packaging. And I think that's really important as well. This is very much of a like a design for projects and something that it's embedded in every part of the product rather than it just simply being part of the packaging or just kind of like a surface value. I think it's interesting, you know, you mentioned Apple there and I know from your kind of own origin story, obviously your studies at Chelsea College of Arts and so on, there are all these different factors that have shaped the instincts that you have and the way that you seek to do practice.

3:51What was the sort of the mix of skills? Because let's take Apple as an example. Clearly that's influenced your kind of practical design thinking, but I know you were thinking back to the kind of board games you used to play with your dad when you were growing up and also obviously you're then more sort of formal academic training how does that mix come together to end up with misfits well it's quite funny because first of all i want to be clear that i'm by no means like a diehard board gamer i think that's kind of that label is like added on to me as soon as i've developed this game but i very much just kind of walked into this space as a graphic designer and thought, hmm, what can I do to kind of ruffle some feathers a little bit?

4:29Design is not really taken seriously within this space, but I just find it really interesting to put something that's traditionally in like a lower culture and kind of deemed as something that's more just like pedestrian and put it more in a graphic designer, like designer light and something that could be actually like beautiful on your coffee table and could be its own set piece, you know, as much as like a really nice National Geographic book. So to that end, in terms of skill sets. I think it has been kind of a unique path to getting to board games. Certainly this is not at all what I sort of anticipated in my life.

5:01For me, fundamentally, it was just a confluence of that graphic design skills, that kind of ability and that background with my dad to be able to play these games, but play them in a way that was accessible and approachable. Like I remember very fondly, my dad would take a lot of time and a lot of patience for me to explain the game. A lot of our games were in German as well. My dad is German. And so it was just very helpful to have that ability to have someone that, I don't know if you've ever played board games as well, especially more complicated ones, but to have to learn all the rules and to actually play the game sometimes is more complicated than just kind of get it going.

5:43So just having some sort of role model there that was able to have that patience, I think that really sort of imbued in ensuring that this project was very approachable and very accessible and it was something that could be easily taught from someone that was as young as maybe five years old as old as maybe 19 and i've certainly seen that in that respect i like i like that alexander and i think what's nice is you've identified one of what seems to be one of the great strengths of the of the game which is that it relies on on intuition and actually there isn't the great instruction manual and people can just pile in and that's the great quality i guess right with a game is that yeah people look and they say oh let me have a go and it's it's got the let me have a go ability of a game that's been around for decades maybe yeah and that's the other beautiful thing i find about it as well is that i think also a hallmark of a great game is a game that individuals can or players can take ownership on so i don't know about you but when i play Uno with my family.

6:44I absolutely am sure that we play the wrong rules or like the way that we go about it is like completely the most butchered version of the game, but we still enjoy it. Right. And so I've seen now so many of our customers, they've now inherited like all sets of like new blocks into their set or they've like come up with like strange wild rules that I've never come up with. There's something really great about like, like almost a classic game kind has that ability. It's just not only is it, you know, so that just let's get cracking on with it, but also just like we can take ownership with it. And just also like, I just felt like there's no real need to have a rule book.

7:25I mean, the rules fit on the backpack thing. There's about seven rules. And that's all you really need. Why overcomplicate this more than you need to, especially so much like, I don't know, reading like tech manuals, or, you know, if you even go to like a key a manual like some of those things like they seem very simple but then it's like go to appendix a to flip to c and whatever and it's like i don't have the time for that i don't have the patience exactly if it's if it's so intuitive why am i being driven to to distraction and i think there's obviously something wonderful and this is where maybe there's a degree of serendipity alexander which is that there has been this clear shift i think especially from parents again to get kids playing and this is a it's sort of held up as a bit of a european tradition you know it's wooden toys and this kind of thing but to get away from screens obviously but also to do stuff that's physical that is about hands these things are beautifully crafted from beach i think i'm right in saying they feel nice and it's kind of there's a natural quality to playing with stuff that's made of these materials and that involves the kind of cognitive and spatial skills that make you, I guess, a good player, whatever that is in Misfits, which is really good, isn't it?

8:34And it's a good moment, right? When we're all being exhausted by the white noise of the digital realm to get away from that and get back into something physical. That's what I find. And it's also beautiful because I find that, you know, despite language barriers or ages, you know, across generations as well, like there's a real adaptability of the game and that individuals are just, there's an innate enact to want to have that play. I mean, I remember, for example, at a trade show, we had a nine-year-old against three sort of 40-somethings. And of course, the 40-somethings were very, very smug and assumed that they would win.

9:07And of course, this girl comes out of nowhere, absolutely smokes them. And it's just, it's kind of that beautiful moment where it's somebody thought that was unlikeliest to have a go at this, feels welcomed and feels like they have a shot at this as well. And I feel like a lot of digital interfaces and And products that are out there are very much like there's almost an inherent barrier. If you don't have the currency or the sort of literacy to understand it all, it's just very like confounding for some individuals. Whereas there's just such immediacy with the game, I think, and just that breadth of dimension by it being just such an accessible product.

9:49Let me ask you about a challenge that I think a lot of the entrepreneurs we've spoken to on this program, Alexander, have run into, which is if you have a product that maybe surpasses your expectations in terms of how it performs, it's popular, you end up with a big wait list, but stuff is kind of handcrafted and you've got supply chain issues with materials. How do you deal with that? Because I guess it's the problem that almost every entrepreneur would like to have, which is like, wow, can we meet this demand? But how do you do it? Because you're selling in different continents, but even where you have a success story, like here in the UK, you have a brand like Oliver Bonas start selling it, but then they immediately sell out and they say, wow, can you get us more?

10:22How do you, i don't know you've got to keep pace but you don't want to run before you can walk you've got to keep an eye on quality what are those challenges like i mean it's it's pretty nuts i'm not gonna lie i mean you know as a as a designer did i think i would be you know overseeing quality control inspections or like freight forwarding or you know look at like what this rate is versus like you know all the not to bore you but like all the inco terms like flb X works whatever like these are things that are as much as they are English as it is to read Mandarin to me you know like especially coming from a graphic design background but I just take it more from an approach of being more of a problem solver I mean fundamentally being a graphic designer is that and so for me it's like okay yes I'm not making a logo yes I'm not building a brand but I'm doing kind of the similar things like I'm trying to figure out how to get goods from A to B.

11:16And so there's efficient ways of going about it. There's simple ways about it. There's cheaper ways of going about it. And so it's just using that similar set of problem skills. I think, yes, I'm also very, very lucky, of course, to be in the position where we have products that just people just can't like stop, get their hands on. But I also think as well with this game, it's, you know, inherent with it is almost a bit of a inbuilt referral. Of course, you have to include other people around the table in order for them to play. And then it's just a natural sort of extension is like, oh, like I've enjoyed this experience.

11:48I would like a copy for myself or I like to have this as a gift. So I feel if you make a good enough product, it doesn't really matter so much about the troubles because those are like some of the highlights or the problems that you might foresee because they're a lot more manageable than actually just ensuring that someone gets it. I think being very tuned to what your customers are after having a good products like those things will do far more than any sort of other challenges that sort of lie ahead of course it's very stressful and of course you know dealing with these things are not necessarily within my wheelhouse but i also think just having that assuredness and confidence with yourself does so much more than anything else what about looking forward then alexander how because presumably once you have a product like this that works there'll be plenty of people saying oh could you do a travel version and a large version and they'll start to come up with their own ideas for new product lines before you're even, you know, finished getting this game out into the world.

12:47What are the next steps look like? Obviously, I can imagine you must also have had conversations with people who say, look, we love the product, you know, can we help you to grow or expand? How do you make sense of this next phase of development for the business? Yeah, I mean, it's funny you say that, because hopefully I don't get in trouble by saying this, but we had a conversation with the buyer at Nordstrom. And they're like, we need like a travel version so i'm like okay just calm down we can have a conversation in january if you like but i mean again like not something i would ever envision for myself i think you know focus is really important in that and in not getting too led astray obviously if there are a little bit more tantalizing offers like sure i might entertain a little bit more i think for me you know our game i want to imbue with a sense of value and it's not just like another product that is out there i mean We have this charity auction initiative to support LGBT and mental health causes.

13:46I think that's just something that's really important to put out into this world, that a board game can, in fact, be an object for change or at least have some sort of positive impact than just simply, you know, providing just a little bit of joy and delight into people's lives. So I think that is something I definitely want to see into the future. Obviously, you know, we look to more, you know, established retailers, national retailers. I know there's a number of conversations that are had or to be had very soon in regards to those. And I think that intuition of like thinking of what is actually a really good offer versus someone kind of taking advantage of this situation.

14:23I've had, quite frankly, a number of individuals that say that they want to help, but really it's just kind of a means for them to kind of get a bit of a slice of the pie. So you have to be very, very protective of your IP in that way. But I think just as long as if the customers keep on, you know, getting their units, being happy, you know, I see a world of opportunity ahead of me. And I feel very fortunate in that respect. That was Alexander Newman, the creator and founder of Misfits. You can find out more and secure a gift that delivers hour upon hour of fine motor skill building, screen-free haptic delight by heading to misfits.co.

15:12You're listening to The Entrepreneurs. Friends of the show, Mark Rushmore and Giv Safavi are the co-founders of Suri, an innovative toothbrush and personal care brand that regular listeners will remember, I trust, from their previous appearances on the programme. They pop by Midori House for a pre-Christmas catch-up about the opportunity and challenge in global growth and expansion into new products. Mark began by telling me about some of those challenges they face as they scale the company. The challenges in some ways remain, how do we get more brushes to more people more effectively, more efficiently?

15:47But then there's also a lot of new challenges. When we first met, it was Gieve and I and maybe one other person. In August 23, I think we were six people. And now we're 36 people. We have some people in Hong Kong. And we also have the rest in London. So actually, how you create the right processes to deliver things at scale and especially when Keeva and I can't be involved in every single decision anymore. Although I think we try to be. We try to and we get pushed out of the room. Yeah, it's an ever evolving beast. We'll get to that point. We were just chatting actually before we started taping and you were saying about how you like going to work.

16:26Is that actually one of the kind of secrets if there are secrets other than, you know, hard work, great products, good people. It's one of the secrets reminding yourself that while you're doing it and actually you like working with Mark, you like working with the team I mean, you're passionate about the project and the product, right? Completely, genuinely, I love coming to work, and Mark does too. I mean, we have a part work from home, part come to the office three days a week, but we're in the office as many days as possible, I find. And the thing is, I say that now, like, oh, yeah, it makes sense.

16:54We're co-founders, we love our company. But I never liked going to work, you know, like my whole life. I'm now 42 years old. And, yeah, I think it has to do with the fact that we are doing something different, and we have a team of brilliant people who are on that journey with us and pushing the journey forward. And we have at the core of what we're doing a strong sense of purpose. And I think when you combine those ingredients together with people who are really willing to take something and move it forward in a different way, you know, at the core of it, we are an electric toothbrush company, an oral care company.

17:29But if you were to look at our marketing materials, you wouldn't think that's what we're selling. And that's what makes it exciting. You know, that we are doing something different and with real purpose. You know, now we are three years in and we've released three sustainability reports. We feel proud to be the only electric toothbrush company that has B Corp on it as well. So, yeah, I love coming to work, as cheesy as it sounds. And I like to think that of our 36 employees, majority of them do too, because there's a strong sense of purpose and differentiation. Well, we'll talk a bit more about that.

17:59And I'm interested in, once you hit a certain kind of scale and impact, what that burgeoning expectation from the outside means. But we'll come back to that in a minute. But you mentioned product. Look, Suri Brush 2.0. Just quickly, Mark, talk to us a little bit about the innovations, because I think one of the smart things that you guys do is push the boundaries, make those iterative changes kind of before the consumer knows they need them or want them, if that makes any sense. So talk to us a bit about that thing of that, I guess it's a restlessness and an eagerness to constantly improve and iterate.

18:33The 2.0 brush is the embodiment of that mindset, I guess. Exactly. If we take it back a second, you know, for those who don't know, the Surrey 1.0, we looked at the whole category and saw that billions of brushes are thrown away every year and end up in landfills and oceans, which is, you know, a huge sustainability issue. So we wanted to see whether we could improve that from a materials perspective and from a process perspective. So we offer things like free recycling. We use plant-based materials, aluminium in the handle and no plastic in the packaging. But then we also did this real basic business 101 thing of just asking people, you know, do you use Bluetooth?

19:08Do you love that gunk on the bottom of your brush? How often do you have to charge your battery? And we took all those insights and we put them into Siri 1.0 and people loved it. And it was growing really quickly on Trustpilot. Now we have almost 14 ,000 reviews at a 4.7 rating. But we don't stop listening. And I think where we think that companies sometimes lose their way is when they stop listening to consumers and start just thinking about revenue and profit and making decisions based on those reasons. And so in those 14 ,000 reviews, people have said to us, you know, I love your brush, but I would love it if the UV light can work independently.

19:42I love the brush, but, you know, I'm a dentist and I really want to recommend using a pressure sensor. and these are two of you know several you know you can probably share more of the new features but we've incorporated them into the product and really elevated that surrey 1.0 into 2.0 and the reception has been phenomenal i mean actually almost if i'm honest too good we've sold well ahead of forecast and we're now struggling to even like create enough for the demand well i guess look struggling to meet this voracious demand gave and this point about the check the difference well Well, is there a difference, actually?

20:18When expectations change, you get a product that goes from something that's an incredible novelty people are excited about, then something that becomes kind of an essential for them. I imagine your users are quite evangelical about the product. Does that change your approach, or does it just mean you actually have to double down on those same foundational values you're talking about? Double down. And so, as Mark mentioned, I like to think we've systematized listening to our customers. So we have on our Slack feed, all of the Trustpilot reviews come in. Nobody sees it because it's there. So we dissect the positive ones, the negative ones, and then they go into the product team to assess them.

20:52Not everything we can do, but I would say, you know, when we launched Suri 1.0, because of, you know, hardware, it's very hard to ship changes. It's not like software where you can constantly release new things, but we are. Like there are things on the insides that are changing slightly. We're making certain things better, buttons in different ways. With Suri 2.0, we really hit a point where we realized we had some really big stuff that we could change that we wanted to change. as Mark mentioned, we have a pressure sensor, we have a stronger motor, we have an airplane mode, a few other features that I...

21:22Can I say, the airplane mode's my personal favorite. Is it? Of the editions, yeah. Well, I didn't realize that occasionally I would send my sponge bag and it would start to work in its way across the security tray like in a airport. People are looking at me funny. It's clever, it's clever. I love your case, and I love it when I'm traveling long distance, but if I'm going to the gym, maybe I don't want to take your case, and I'd love a cap in some way that I could just put it in my beautiful wash bag that's nice and small. What can I do? Your brush is very small, but the case is a little bit bigger, obviously.

21:51And so that's where we said, well, yeah, we only have one button. And so I guess that is a limitation, right? We've tried to stay to certain constraints of we don't want to have 10 buttons and 10 lights. And so that's been a bit of a challenge. But that is the magic, I would say, that how do you take all these sort of requests and then narrow them down into the ones that make the most sense to ship in another build? and one of the things that a lot of people were surprised by was that we didn't change the shape of our brush or the colors and that was intentional because we thought, you know, we've only been around for a short period of time, we are making improvements to our brush and we feel there's a need to denote a 2.0, it's a different model now, but nobody's ever given us feedback on the shape or the design of the brush.

22:35So why should we just, you know, add a stripe on it or something else? You know, they're both great products. One has some better features, but very much so that was intentional. Can I just add, you know, you talked about some of our customers being evangelical. Big shout out to one of our customers called Ken who is one of Monocle Radio's biggest fans. He's listened to every episode for the last 14 years. Sounds like a man of impeccably good taste. 14 years. Yeah, well, he's based in Kyoto and he sent us a cold email saying, you know, I'm on my honeymoon in London but I heard your story on Monocle Radio.

23:13I'm a huge fan. I'd love to come and meet with you and share my insights and thoughts. So he came into our office and we've developed this beautiful friendship, also this business relationship where he's explaining why he believes that same ethos that Suri brings is really important. But beyond that, he actually talked about a very personal story to him around his grandmother and how her oral health deteriorated and how he sort of sees oral health as a gateway to whole body health. And therefore, it was a very personal mission to him. And that connection for us between the people who use our products and how much value they put on health makes it even more important for us to deliver our purpose in improving oral health, but also doing it in a sustainable, beautiful way.

23:59And that's interesting. And it strikes me that the sort of broader narrative or discourse around health and well-being, even in a relatively short lifespan we're talking only a few short years is catching up with where you guys kind of were at the beginning that must be quite helpful for you I guess in a way and again offers potentially other interesting routes to explore as the brand grows and continues going forward. Completely yes I'll talk about future innovation a bit but I would say that yeah in the beginning we knew we wanted to be different and one of the angles was how could we portray our company as a well-being company?

24:33Taking care of your mouth oral care, it is one of the fundamental steps. There's a lot of connections between good oral health and good body health, and heart attacks are related to your oral health as well. And so we wanted to do it in a way that still was backed by clinical data, like most of established oral care brands, but we didn't have to do it with white lab coats and in a very sterile way. How could we do it in a much more lifestyle and well-being focused way? And I guess as a brand, that Suri stands for sustainable rituals. Brushing your teeth is one of the fundamental rituals we've had since childhood.

25:05We do it twice a day, two minutes in the morning, two minutes in the evening, last thing. It's a moment of meditation that we take for granted. And so we see a lot of things around there in the well-being space. We recently launched a toothpaste. We're looking at going around that area. I wouldn't say too far and too wide. Part of our success, we like to think, is the focused aspect we've had on product innovation where we've really stayed, we've proved ourselves in the toothbrush category rather than going very wide and diluting our efforts. because obviously we're a small team. If we were doing a million things, they might not be as good as if we did four things really well.

25:39Keith, you already sort of hinted and mentioned a couple of things in terms of looking forwards. What's most exciting? What's coming up? What are some things that, whether people are devotees or maybe there'll be new converts today, what should they be getting excited about? I mean, right now we're about to go into big sales period, so that's always exciting. We like to think our toothbrush makes a great gift for everybody. In terms of products, we recently launched a new toothpaste. It is a non-fluoride toothpaste, which florida is the holy grail for many dentists. But there's a new ingredient called nano-hydroxyapatite.

26:08It's a bit of a mouthful. Nano-HP. It's a modification of something people have used before called hydroxyapatite, but the nano part makes it very special. We're one of the only, I believe, still the only toothpaste that registered it in the UK to sell it because it has a nano material. It requires six months pre-registration. But what makes this ingredient so special is it was originally invented by NASA for astronauts because in space there's a lot of tooth and bone decay. It happens at an accelerating pace. And this ingredient coats your teeth in a way. It's made out of a similar material as your enamel, and it coats it, so it's very effective against cavities.