Mom Starts Side Hustle After Dropping Kindle on Baby’s Head

Lou Rice was breastfeeding her son Archie one evening when catastrophe struck—she dropped her Kindle on his head.

Whereas that have was upsetting for each of them, it sparked an thought for Lou and her husband, Ben, to create an answer.

Ben normal a silicone strap with staples to connect Lou’s Kindle to her hand and stop any future dropping incidents. Lou examined it out over the following month and completely cherished having the grip and safety of the strap for snug one-handed studying throughout these lengthy middle-of-the-night feeds.

With that, the Strapsicle was born—a facet hustle now producing over $50k a month promoting modern Kindle straps. Not solely that, however Strapsicle is on tempo for its first-ever 6-figure month after just lately going viral on TikTok and Instagram.

You possibly can hear the whole story on the Facet Hustle Present podcast.

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Ben, Lou, and Archie courtesy of Stapisicle

Getting the Strapsicle manufactured

After constructive preliminary testing, Ben and Lou explored whether or not there have been any comparable merchandise available on the market and located only a few rivals. The merchandise they did discover had been somewhat unappealing.

“They’d like little steel claws, or they’re very industrial-looking, and nothing type of smooth and trendy like our straps are,” Lou says.

This gave them confidence {that a} smooth, fashionable silicone strap customized molded to suit Kindle gadgets might be a profitable product. Fortunately, that they had a producing contact in China by a pal to provide prototypes and finally fulfill stock orders.

It took a couple of rounds of backwards and forwards with the manufacturing facility to good the design of the very first Strapsicle strap. As soon as the ultimate manufacturing pattern was authorized, Lou created an internet survey and distributed it by Fb, associates, and household. The suggestions assured Lou they had been fixing an actual buyer downside, given the keenness expressed by present Kindle homeowners.

With this validation fueling their want to develop an answer for Lou’s preliminary dropping problem, they determined to maneuver ahead and place a minimal order amount of 500 items for about $2,000, together with delivery charges.

Giving freely product

After the primary stock cargo arrived, Lou and Ben had been paralyzed on launching for months. However after listening to a podcast that impressed her, Strapsicle formally launched on-line by giving freely merchandise without spending a dime. Prospects solely paid the delivery prices and had been solely requested to offer suggestions concerning the strap.

This method allowed Lou and Ben to construct group and begin a dialogue with actual clients utilizing Strapsicle on their Kindles. Plus, it enabled the gathering of user-generated content material and critiques to assist subsequent advertising and marketing efforts.

Lou unfold the phrase on-line primarily by Facebook communities like feminine entrepreneurs teams and native neighborhood teams. She additionally made posts on LinkedIn and her private Instagram account, yielding nearly 100 gross sales within the first month.

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Advertising and marketing on BookTok

By no means one to face nonetheless, Lou quickly stumbled upon BookTok — an engaged subculture on TikTok obsessive about studying and raving about their favourite books. She quickly realized BookTok contributors had been a great goal market, given their affinity for Kindles.

Lou determined to experiment with a micro-influencer affiliate marketing technique. This concerned looking related Kindle hashtags like #Kindle and key phrases to search out nano and micro-influencers on TikTok and Instagram with small however focused followings between 2,000-3,000 followers.

She reached out to many micro-influencers, supplied them free samples to strive, and offered low cost codes they might share with their followers to drive gross sales.

The micro-influencer content material spreads model consciousness and creates extra user-generated content material for Lou to repurpose on Strapsicle’s social channels. She continues nurturing relationships along with her influencers by sending new merchandise and retaining in fixed contact as they drive increasingly more visitors and gross sales.

This micro-influencer technique and the preliminary free giveaway enabled Strapsicle to achieve important natural traction in simply its first three months in enterprise.

Launching on Amazon

Lou and Ben began promoting on Amazon utilizing FBA (Fulfilled by Amazon) to ease order achievement and distribution, particularly inside the US market.

They knew the facility of Amazon but in addition understood the significance of driving exterior visitors to the listings. So Lou applied referral bonus hyperlinks and affiliate marketing online by a number of channels again to the Amazon product pages.

She continues contacting micro-influencers on TikTok and Instagram that cater to the Kindle area of interest. By offering them with Amazon low cost codes as a substitute of codes for Strapsicle, any ensuing gross sales nonetheless credit score the influencer whereas permitting the shopper a seamless Amazon buying expertise.

This ongoing effort offers the important exterior visibility to assist Strapsicle’s merchandise rank larger in Amazon search outcomes. And the excessive placement then allows extra natural gross sales.

Hitting $50k+ a month

Flash ahead to right this moment, and Strapsicle is flying excessive at over $50,000 month-to-month in gross sales between Strapsicle.com and Amazon. Lou credit constant effort delivering micro-influencer seed content material and huge distribution of affiliated hyperlinks driving exterior visitors to Amazon product pages.

The crowning achievement to this point has been a single viral TikTok video that generated over 2 million views. Mixed with a “The 9 Greatest Kindle Equipment to Store on Amazon Beneath $35” PR roundup Cosmopolitan revealed, together with Strapsicle, the widespread publicity pushed Lou’s facet hustle over $100k in gross sales in its first month, topping six figures.

Studying from their errors

Regardless of breakout early success, Lou admits they have been figuring issues out as they go. From pricing adjustments to get the optimum value-based buyer conversions to sizing mixups that led to destructive critiques, they’ve endured their justifiable share of classes about promoting on Amazon.

One laborious lesson got here from a manufacturing facility high quality management problem with their producer sending the wrong-sized items to Amazon warehouses. It wasn’t caught initially, main confused clients to complain about ill-fitting straps.

Lou used the chance to reply with considerate feedback personally, ship replacements from their Shopify-fulfilled stock, and finally change upset 1-star critiques into delighted 5-star raves.

This consideration to particular person buyer care reminds Lou that Strapsicle is not simply one other faceless company entity. As a bootstrapping startup and household ardour mission self-funded from her company wage, each sale counts.

Lou additionally started receiving suggestions that the versatile silicone strap design helped readers affected by arthritis, Parkinson’s, and nerve harm comfortably maintain Kindle gadgets and alternate options from Kobo that often slipped from their grasp.

Phrase unfold and a lady with cerebral palsy even wrote to Lou and stated, “You’ve modified my life.” Whereas Lou initially got down to resolve a easy downside for exhausted mother and father like herself, this discovery added a larger sense of function and refinement to the model’s imaginative and prescient.