706: Jay Hated His Plumbing Job - Now He Sells Beach Pools and did $50K in a Month

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1:06Welcome to Little Empires, brought to you by the team at Founder. At Founder, our mission is to support the next generation of e-com founders. So while you may know us for interviewing some of the world's most successful entrepreneurs, this series is a little different. Little Empires shines a spotlight on the builders inside our own founder community, the entrepreneurs who are in the trenches, taking action, learning, and building their businesses in real time. These aren't overnight success stories. These are real journeys, real lessons, and real founders creating their own little empires one step at a time.

1:39This podcast is proudly produced by the founder team to give our students a platform to share their experiences, wins, challenges, and honest realities of building a business from the ground up. Now, let's dive into today's episode. All right. This is Leah Finch from the team at Founder. I'm here with Jay Haddad. He is the founder of Sunny Seekers. So, dialing in from Newcastle in Australia, Jay, welcome to the podcast. Thanks, Leah. I'm excited to be here, excited for this opportunity and to talk to you. and whoever else is listening. Excellent. You're ready to get sharing? We're going to get into the details here.

2:19I know you've got a lot to share. Let's do it. All right. So I want to start from the very beginning, right? So before you even had the idea of Sunny Seekers, which you can tell us a bit more about, before e-commerce, what was your life like? What was your career and your background? Yeah, it was very exciting. I was walking in sewer trenches as a plumber. I was swimming in sewer. It was very dirty, very fun. I'm actually a germophobe, so it wasn't really that fun. I hated it, really. It was just a job. No, I hated working for somebody else, like being a slave to somebody else. It's not for everyone.

3:01It is for some people. But But yeah, working away as a plumber, long hours, long afternoons, coming home late, early mornings. On the weekends, that's what I lived for, to hang out with my friends, my wife. And we were free diving. We were going to waterfalls. We were going to the beach surfing. I just loved being outdoors and being out in the sun, not behind a computer, not behind an office desk, which is kind of ironic how business turns out. Yeah, just loved being outside. We were a venture family or a couple at the time. Yeah. And it sounds like you like getting outdoors. And my big takeaway from that is that you were kind of living for the weekend, right?

3:44So you weren't really enjoying your line of work, what you were doing. You mentioned you hated working for someone else. At what point did you have that penny drop moment when you were like, I need to do my own thing. I don't want to work for someone else. I've always had that in me. I became a dad. We had my firstborn in 2023. When we had her, I just didn't want to leave her. I wanted to keep on, just be present and have the freedom to be around and not have to go to my nine to five job and work 40 hours a week. And I'm like, I really need to start something, but I didn't know what. I had no idea.

4:20How did the idea come about? First of all, tell us about the product. Tell us who it's for and tell us how it came to life. Yeah, so Sunny Seekers, we started off with the beach pool. My wife actually saw something overseas, sent it to me. It's like, this would be great. I'm like, let's make it. And becoming parents and a couple who loved being outdoors and adventuring, when we had our first daughter, we weren't getting outdoors as much. We weren't doing the things that we loved. we always said we'd be that couple that family that can keep on doing those things and we just bring our kid with us but it was much harder than we thought not necessarily taking them but just all the extra effort the thinking the planning protecting a small baby from the elements that's what we're thinking about us what was a friction that was really stopping us yeah so it's a pain point that the two of you experienced as parents being being the types that want to adventure get get out there, go to the beach, be out in nature, but then also yourself looking to potentially start a new business for yourself.

5:30So there's a bit of an intersection there of how you came up with this product. Yeah. So we really wanted to make a parent's job easier to take their kids outdoors and get to the beach, remove that friction. Okay. So I'm on your website now. So let's have a look at the beach pool and I want you to describe it. But to me, it's like a really a lightweight thin sheet of some sort of material and you dig a hole in the sand and then you create a pool quite easily at the beach with the ocean water right yeah so if you visualize a picnic blanket it's just a flat sheet of fabric that's waterproof it's really lightweight but still strong and what the product does you take it out of your bag and you dig a small hole in the sand and lay it over the top.

6:19You put some sand in the corners to keep it down and the bagger comes in, you go to the beach, you scoop up the water and you just tip that in and you have a little pool. You can put an e-champ roller next to it, keeps the kids safe from the sun and it gives them just a safe place from the waves, from the jellyfish that they can just stay and play in. Yeah. Okay. Nice. Thank you. Yeah. That's a great description. I love the design on the corners waiting down the beach pool with the sand on the corners there. Very cool. And before you started with Sunny Seekers, did you have any experience in e-commerce, marketing?

6:54Like sounds like you came from a completely different industry, but did you have any experience in this space? Not at all. No experience at all. The only thing, skill that I had that was somewhat transferable on the weekends when I was taking photos of waterfalls, I knew how to use the camera. So that was handy when we had a product we had to photograph. I'm like, you know what? I know how to do this. That's it. No idea. Yeah. Okay, cool. So a whole new area, a whole new industry for you. And so I want to go into the problem, who this product solves the problem for. Obviously, it was yourself and your partner with a young child wanting to adventure, but then also make adventuring, getting to the beach easier for young parents.

7:38have you identified the product being useful for other people or like like who's your target customer can you tell us a bit more about your target customer yeah so our target customer was us we're a young family who wanted to be outdoors and go to the beach we wanted to target those families that like onto the beach but decided not to because they couldn't be bothered holding their kid in the waves with the wave crashing up on them or the mum who wants to go to the beach during the day while their husband's at work with the kids and be able to do it on her own. We want it to be really easy, really convenient, keep the kids safe.

8:16How did you come up with the name Sunny Seekers? To be honest, I can't remember the exact moment. We're just going through names and it was one that stuck. It's got the SS, the Sunny Seekers, and it just aligned up with what we wanted to do, be outside. We didn't want to be in an iPhone, a phone, tablet, iPad kid family and our family and just seeking the son, being outdoors. Yeah, of course. I love it. It's so easy to remember. It rolls off the tongue. You want an easy, simple name like that. And what else did you see out there on the market? When you were researching, looking into it, when you said to your wife, let's make this, let's do it.

8:59What else did you look up? What did you find in terms of competitors? There was nothing really like this. We have the plastic shell pools that you might put in your backyard. You had inflatable pools, but nothing that was lightweight, portable, that fits in your handbag, that you can just take to the beach, flip out, put back in. There was nothing really like that. And when was this time? When you started playing around with this idea, when was that, Jake? It was my first Father's Day. We had the idea and we went to Spotlight and bought some fabric and we're like, let's just, let's make it. Let's find some waterproof fabric and sew something together.

9:37So our daughter had somewhere to play. And it was that night we watched some YouTube videos and tried to learn how to set up a sewing machine. Okay. So this is, sorry, September 2023? Yes. Yeah. September 2023. Did either of you know how to sew? No. Okay. So did you get yourself a sewing machine to do this? We borrowed my wife's mum's sewing machine that she just had sitting in the garage, hadn't used in a long time. And thank goodness for us, it had already had a thread on because that was complicated. That was a whole nother day trying to figure out how to re-thread her sewing machine. And yeah, we just bought some fabric and just tried to sew.

10:22Our first attempt was shocking, but luckily we figured it out. my wife did I'm still struggling so that was your first prototype yeah right and so then where did it take you from there so you made what you thought it should look like like that first iteration of the product you could see it go from basically pen and paper to producing that first prototype and then what happened from there after we got better at sewing we thought it was great we made it slightly bigger big enough so we could have a few kids sit in it so they had siblings or if mum wanted to sit down and stretch her legs, it's big enough that you could fit that without being too small.

11:01Did you test it out a little bit with that waterproof prototype? Did you take it to the beach and test it out? Yeah, so we took it to the beach, we tested it out and it was working well. People were stopping, they were commenting and saying, this is genius, where can we buy this from? And that was kind of the first moment we realised, hey, let's make more and try and sell them. you know we've been wanting to do a business like maybe this this could be it um so we did that and we're getting a lot of attention from the beach and and it was working really well okay this is really interesting right because I was going to ask you about validation because validation is this step that we see a number of founders take really seriously and go out and get you know like 20 to 30 responses and feedback and we emphasize how important this is and then we hear of these brands that have come to life and are doing quite well that actually just followed a level of instinct, right?

12:00Or their family and friends. Like they didn't seek out so much public validation. So you took it to the beach, you tried several kids, you tried a parent sitting in it as well, and then you had people walking by on the beach saying, this is a great idea, where can I get these from? Like what did that validation process look like? And getting that feedback from your target customer so after hearing several people comment and essentially asked where we got it from and we told them oh we just made it we're like this you know we can do this but also we were our customer yeah and it was a game changer for us it allowed us to spend hours at the beach rather than 15 minutes and we're like there's there's lots of people like us who want to go to the beach and who have young kids who just don't get to go out as much.

12:52So when we knew how much it solved our problem and our friends who also had some kids, we're like, there's a market for this. And people with kids, they like to spend money too. Yeah, so you got an idea of, okay, who are the young parents or maybe the first-time parents like us that are happy to spend that money for that level of ease or convenience? or even to, it sounds like with you guys, to maintain that level of lifestyle and freedom, flexibility, adventure as you enter parenthood for the first time. Yeah. And so when you took that prototype to the beach and you tested it out, and this was the waterproof fabric that you designed and that you had sewn yourself, were there any iterations of this that came about when you're like, let's change this, tweak this?

13:43you said you made it a bit bigger what did you learn in that process? The first change we made was we increased the size of the corner pockets so if there was a bit of wind on the day a bit of sea breeze the pool would stay on the ground and wouldn't flap sand around into the kids eyes or in our own eyes and then that was it we just increased the size of the pool area and the corner pockets and we thought we were ready until we purchased I'd call a bulk amount of stock fabric from Spotlight made 30 pools ready for the summer of 2023 and we went to the beach to take some photos to put onto our website and the water was just disappearing and we're like this is a problem we are selling a pool that doesn't hold water For some reason, the fabric from Spotlight in a different colour, exact same fabric, it didn't hold water.

14:42Okay. This is a huge learning experience, right? So you just chose the same fabric. It was labelled in the same way and it was in a different colour. And then the water just started seeping through it. But you'd already made 30 of them. Correct. Yeah. So this is 30 of our own time sewing. Yeah. So that took us a long time to make this. Do you know roughly how long it took to sew one pool? My wife and I, I'd probably say about three hours, which is probably really embarrassing to anyone who knows how to sew and is looking at this. But the circle, the circle got us. We could sew a straight line, but sewing in a circle, it was a disaster.

15:24Okay, so then what happened from there? You thought that you'd nailed down this particular waterproof fabric and then it was faulty in terms of what you were trying to achieve, obviously. So then what happened from there? Did some research and was trying to find more fabric options and I couldn't find anything here in Australia. So I went online and found Alibaba and I started researching this waterproof fabrics and tried to source a fabric that would be truly waterproof. And that was where it all started. I tested fabrics for about a year. So we missed that whole summer season, unfortunately, but I'm so glad we did.

16:04We started testing fabrics and we still couldn't find anything that held water long enough to be able to call it a pool and work the way we ended. So you did a bulk order of fabric, but you didn't at the time, you didn't do a bulk order of like trying to get a manufacturer to produce the pool in the design you wanted? This, no, that didn't come until later after. we couldn't find a fabric that worked. I went on to Alibaba and I noticed there was this feature request for quotation. So I uploaded some photos and a short description of what I wanted and it kind of went out into the Alibaba universe and some factories came back to me and said hey we can do this.

16:53I tried to search for someone to make a fool but because nobody had really done it before Yeah. We didn't know what to search, what to say. You know, it's a new product, a new idea. Okay. And so you'd sent your design, like you'd sent the product design, the brief, and then suppliers started coming back to you saying, let's create a sample for you. Yeah. Yeah. So we've had about... Real quick, before we jump in, I want to shout out one of our sponsors, Zero. I've used Zero from day one of Founder. 13 years now and it's still how we run the business today. It's cloud accounting software built for founders exactly like us and it automates all the admin that I used to do when I first started founder.

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18:04Three to four different suppliers contact us. And we're chatting, they're giving us prices on sampling. And it varied. Some of them were hundreds of dollars and some of them were much cheaper for a sample. And we did that. We got a sample made and we're like, amazing. Like this cost us much less to have a finished product that was way better than what we could do in terms of sewing and the quality. And like, this is great. We like makes it actually possible rather than having 30 pools to sell for a whole season. Now we could have hundreds. And so you decided on the best quality sample that was right for you.

18:46What did that first run look like? Like your first, did you do a first bulk order? How many? Yeah, so we found a manufacturer that we were happy with, mainly the price, and we just purchased from them. We didn't test anyone else out because we had already been testing fabrics and we're like, we found something that can give us the fabric and sell it together and that it works and it holds the water. I'm like, that's it. We found it. We found the Goldilocks. We placed an order with them. Their minimum order quantity was 200 pieces. We ordered 200. They arrived. We thought we were happy until we opened them up and the quality wasn't really what we were hoping for.

19:28The attention to detail was poor. There was threads that were loose and we had to go through and open everyone up and cut threads off. It just wasn't a really finished product that we felt happy to sell. Okay, so then where did that take you to in terms of your product that you were happy with? So where did that lead us to in terms of the product today? After we did some fine tuning and just knitting up, those 200 pieces we sold in about a month. We were really shocked and surprised. But leading up till Christmas, we did some ads on Facebook and they just sold really quickly. Sold out before Christmas, which was great.

20:12and we're like wow like people have our stuff like this is something we made we designed and it was a really crazy feeling to know that something we created was out there in in the world yeah it would have been really cool really rewarding especially after all the yeah the ups and downs and the challenges that you'd had with the the quality of the product in your own sewing process as well this first 200 how much did they cost per unit and what were you selling them for they were selling for 115 at the time Australian and they were costing us about 25 so I think our total order was around that five thousand dollar mark yeah that was recruiting shipping and yeah we'll we'll start with that like it was costing us over 130 dollars to just buy fabric here in Australia.

21:09So we were able to actually have a business. We were going to go to market previously with something we would lose money on every single piece. You sold that first 200 within a month. What did that... So that would have been the summer of 2025 leading into 2026? Yeah, yeah. So December 2024, before Christmas, we sold out and that we had nothing to sell in the new year, which it's great that we sold out, but then we were like, we don't know if people buy them after Christmas. Is it something that people just buy as gifts or is this something people are buying in general? We didn't know. And we had to wait a whole nother year to find out.

21:52Tell us about your sales period in December there. Tell us about those sales and what that looks like. You said you run some ads. Like, I really want to hear more about it because you sold 200 units in a month. I don't know if we got lucky or it's the product that sold itself. We just had some reels that we posted to our social media and the reel that did well, we decided to put some money behind and that was it. People were just buying it. It was crazy. Can't explain that feeling. Yeah, that's awesome. So that 200 units at about$115 Australian dollars per beach pool, around$23 ,000 in sales in December 2024?

22:32Yeah. Awesome. Wow. And so then what did you do after that? You sold them all in December. Were you ready to order another batch and do it all over again and try and do that that summer? Well, no. It took us quite a bit of time to receive that stock. And then that manufacturer was ignoring us. So we're like, we need to find someone who's more professional, who can make a better quality product. We wanted to make some changes and improve on that design. So that's what we were doing throughout the off season in 2025 and preparing for the season in 2025, December to sell a new and improved product.

23:11Yeah, cool. Well, so leading into December, summer of 2025 into 2026, right? So into that December 2025 Christmas season, how much stock did you order? What was your plan? Like, how did that all go? Okay. So the plan was to be organized. So we didn't have to pay a lot of money on air freight to have something in time. So like, let's be organized. We found a new manufacturer. we ordered in December of 2024 we ordered 500 pieces from a new manufacturer like great this will come in a few months we might be able to sell them on the back end of of that current season when did you order those 500 pieces?

23:52December 2024 after we had sold out after you'd sold out you already ordered another 500 we yeah well yeah we we hope to speed it up and hopefully we'll be able to sell some in that same season if people were still buying in March. But that stock never came until about eight months later. Wow. They did the wrong print. We had like shapes on the beach pool that were approximately like 15 centimeters and they were 15 millimeters on the print and there was a lot. It looked like a mess and we're like we're not happy with this, This is not what we asked for. And so they started again. And yeah, we didn't, I didn't feel too happy about that.

24:34They seemed to take their time after that. And yeah, we didn't receive it until August. Yeah. We opened it up and the carry bags that we put the beach pool in to carry that water to the pool was also leaking. This wasn't too much of a concern, but it wasn't the kind of the quality that we wanted for our brand. So we had to solve that issue really quickly because peak season was approaching. So we got this waterproof iron-on heat shrink kind of tape and we had to iron all these bags and that was a really tedious process. So we did that and we also built up the courage and we placed another order after they sorted out that problem of another 500 pieces.

25:15I'm like, I want to have a thousand pieces. I want something that's going to actually change the trajectory of a life and a thousand pieces could do that. Yeah. So I placed another order and that didn't come until the 1st of January, 3am in the morning. It arrived at my door. Okay. And so while you were waiting for the second 500, you solved the leaky bags of the first 500, right? So then did you sell them in December? Yeah, we started advertising and started selling just before Black Friday. Okay, right. We're like, we need to have stock before Black Friday because we know that they're going to sell before Christmas.

25:52But after Christmas, we're not sure. There's still a question mark there. So we were able to do that. We started posting to social media and started doing ads and it sold really well. So let's get into that. So you went with the same sort of strategy, right? Like a reel that worked quite well. And then you ran paid ads leading into Black Friday, 2025. Tell us about the sales. Tell us about your ad spend, your sales. Like how were they tracking? Yeah, we were making more reels. we were getting more of a following on our on our page and we had more confidence about how to use meta ads and we could see that it was working so we increased our ad spend slowly and we kind of just doubled what we were spending so we were doing like 10 dollars a day and then we like we're getting a couple of orders a week and i'm like let's see if we double it do we get double the orders and we did and we doubled it again and again and we kept on getting more orders i'm like okay, well, let's just spend more money and get more orders faster rather than drag it out.

26:56We ended up spending$1 ,000 a day on ads. In November? In the November, December period. And we sold out. Wow. Okay. Do you know what your revenue was for November and then December? We hit a record sales, which blew our mind. We did 50K in that month. In December? In December, yeah. Wow. Okay. $50 ,000. and you sold out of your range. We sold out of that range with stock still coming. And so I bet once you made that work and then you sold out and you did that 50K in December, you were pretty happy that you had already ordered another 500 units in advance. I was so glad. I'm like, I was right.

27:41I backed ourselves. We were a little bit nervous about putting all that money on the line. You know, it's cash out front. Like we don't get that money back until we can sell it. Yeah. And yeah, we felt on top of the world. And you knew that, so that second batch of 500 units, they were going to arrive in January? My manufacturer was very slow. That second order was meant to arrive before Black Friday. Yeah. Wow. But they ended up coming the 1st of January, 3am. I won't forget it. Yes, that's right. You said 3am. So then how did you go with that second batch? Did you manage to sell those still in that summer period?

28:17No. So something that we learnt is it got really expensive. Ads, it was, we were spending a lot of money, the same amount of money, but getting far less orders. So we learnt that a lot of the people were purchasing them either for gifts or come January, they had spent a lot of their money and they, you know, they were trying to save, you know, new year, new me, they were trying to save money. So we decided to stop spending money on ads and just focus on organic posts to social media. So we sold a few more, but we were left with quite a bit of stock and we were down on all that money that we had just outlaid and so we essentially had no cash in the bank for the winter month.