$20M in Sales Post-Shark Tank (How This Business Idea Made Millions)
do you want to know how to turn a simple business idea into a business that gets you featured on shark tank and gets more than 20 million dollars in sales if you said yes stick around to find out how powerful ideas can be noam's gonna share with us how they managed to come up with this wonderful idea and many other ideas how they validated them and how you can do the same the problem with this product is it is too good you say but why do we need to make so much margin it's nuts although it's scary it is the best thing you could do to your business and if you pull look how strong it is pull as hard as you can i'm going to give you the 200 000 at 10 and we made a product that went into qvc that just went crazy i'm going to show you why they're better you can have a genius idea that never came to fruition or a silly idea that made millions of dollars before we get into it make sure you smash that like button subscribe to this channel so that you don't miss any of our videos and let's go talk to noah [Music] you guys we're here with the owner and founder of bambooy noam thank you for joining us thank you paul it's a pleasure our pleasure as well let's start with your story what an incredible fun product um why why did you decide to start bamboo what's your background well i didn't finish college okay i um you could say i'm a dropout i i love business i've been being an entrepreneur since i was like six years old and i always have sold things and my wife one day in the kitchen table said you know what she read an article saying that there's only about 12 percent or 20 left of the brazilian rainforest and she says i'm not going to use any more paper towels i'm not going to use anything made of paper you need to figure something out took me about three months three to six months to figure out what was the best fiver i and bamboo is definitely the fastest growing fiber in the world and this is bamboo so bamboo is made of bamboo you can feel it and if you pull look how strong it is pull as hard as you can this is one of the now they are perforated and this this towel is washable up to 100 times so one roll replaces about four to 300 rolls of paper towels and that was the idea the idea is to make a sustainable product for people and then people ask me where do we put them after we wash them they don't go back in the rolls so we created we created a dispenser later so this is how we started our company with bamboo [Music] what was the initial budget for bamboo i mean how much money did it take to get the the product off the program off the line and just make it happen you mean like an actual finished box yeah yeah or you're talking about your product uh not very much maybe between three and five grand okay yeah to actually make it happen yeah and then laurie invested 200 000 for 10 but that we already have been on business for a while you've been selling okay yeah so we it wasn't that i had invested i invest i did 500 grand and then laurie gave me 200 000 right we already have run it and we already had sales but what she she didn't buy just bambooish she bought the whole company right onto the humble company we already had like i don't know like almost 2 million 100 1.6 or 1.8 million dollars in sales okay but to make the first roll of bamboo you're saying it was about three to five thousand yeah it wasn't it wasn't productive i'm talking about trips expenses all the stuff and then my time depending how much you value my time per hour i i i value it at zero because it's my investment right [Music] so how is bambooi different from close competitors other manufacturers of napkins etc uh eco-friendly et cetera look tell us tell us it is unique and it is the best eco-friendly towel that that you or you will ever use because these are washable what they make them different is that this towel here this is the towel here right it's strong now pull it with both hands so you can see these are very strong super strong they are perforated and they do actually fit perfectly on a paper towel dispenser right when you wash them what do you do with them well we created a eco-friendly water resistant a box where you can put them and that's in the kitchen exactly now i'm going to show you how absorbing there i'm going to show you why they're better now this is this is full of water i just put one of the one of the towels there and it will actually suck up all the liquid right it works it's a the term is capillary action you can see it better there you see that there all right everything is absorbed there and it doesn't drip okay and just so you can see how much water it absorbs a lot unlike when a towel is wet now feel that right when it's wet it's just nice and it doesn't work i'm going to put this water here in this table so you can see this is damp it absorbs all the liquid i'll do it again it will continue to absorb because he has he has this affinity for water he likes water it attracts water like a magnet that's why this is an incredible towel eco-friendly do remember it's made of organically certified grown bamboo people really like them the problem with this product is it is too good so people take a long time to rebuy it that's awesome let's talk about trademarks and patents uh if i've got an idea i've got a design and i'm thinking should i patent it now should i trademark it now what are the advantages or disadvantages of doing it early or late patents and trademarks are two different things right trademarks has to do with the trade name that you use you have to get a designer to design it you have to put it in a product it has to be an actual product before you can actually do the trademark it's not expensive you could do it yourself online or you can get a lawyer or whatever my advice is do the trademark as soon as possible okay patents when you have patents and you have that you have two types of patents you have a design patent which is how it looks what is the design and number two is a utility patent how it functions right and when you do that you have to do drawings and you have to do prototypes and you have to a the mo the first day you have the idea put the date right and and draw the idea interesting yeah the laws have changed a little bit patents can be a little bit expensive right but i do recommend if you like your idea uh first do a trademark and then maybe do a patent patents are expensive you have to know if you get if you decide to do a patent it is a process and you should select a good lawyer trying because remember you pay for them to do a patent but that's not the end of the cost because then the patent office gives you a reason why they're not going to accept it so then you have to give an answer right and every time you give an answer the lawyer charged you thousands of dollars so the charge they give you at the beginning is not the first charge so you have to discuss that with a lawyer make a deal before you start otherwise you can end up spending a lot of money but if the idea is good and you've tested it and you like it i recommend you you have that but remember always in a book do your drawings put a date so that they can be proof that you were the first one to come with this idea what are the profit margins i know you've got a lot of products what are the best highest profit margins which products and what are the lowest last year we did although it was a pandemic here we actually did millions of dollars we actually did okay my recommendations for products okay if you're selling product just products right you need to be your profit margins need to be above times three what means minimum but it's a minimum right uh which means if the product costs you a dollar you will sell it for three dollars right you have a margin of two if you're by yourself with your wife it's a small operation that's okay but the moment you grow a little higher and you have employees because it will happen you have to try to go to times four five six seven eight and coca-cola and pepsi you know it's times a lot more because it costs nothing to make that drink but because you say but why do we need to make so much margin well i only need 100 of the profits because you have to consider you have to spend the money for the product to be there you have to have a warehouse to have it you have to have shipping right you have to have insurance then you have to um then when you ship the product today shipping it's very expensive you can sell a product that costs ten dollars and the shipping can cost you six it's nuts so you started with this but i see the pillows why why go into pillows after the fact and then who who designs these products who works on the well i am the inventor i i start tinkering like i started tinkering until i got a good product right and then we found that the bamboo fibers are come from rayon rayon um it's a rayon fiber which was designed to be a softer silk so i found out that it could be a great product for for sleeping right so just bamboo started opening up another i mean bamboo today if you go and you look for bamboo there's this bamboo everything is made you can do anything at bamboo except the camera right but but so you feel this this is really really soft and and i wanted a pillow that was amazing and we made a product that went into qvc that just went crazy right and this is the latest evolution of the pillow this is charcoal infused because a charcoal is it's supposed to be very good for skiing okay and and this is soft and it's made of organic bamboo and if you open this inside here you have uh you have shredded memory memory foam and the reason this is shredded is because uh because it will adjust instead of being a block of of memory foam like normal pillows and and you can adjust this so i can take a whole bunch and make it softer so if i like smaller pillows we can take out half this stuff oh my god these pillows are amazing you have to feel it yeah i don't want to get up in the morning you made me get up this morning very early for this shoot but these pillows are you guys need to get one these are an amazing market we have this in every house and whenever we have guests coming to our house they always like to steal a pillow [Music] all right let's talk about shark tank your experience how did it help your business after the fact and would you recommend other entrepreneurs with ideas to pursue this kind of exposure via shark tank absolutely i would recommend it absolutely because you're there right and i remember walking and you know when you're walking and it's a stanton you know there's no music so i had to play it on my head as i'm walking right there pure silence yeah pure silence right working with my wife but i'm telling you that um although it's scary it is the best thing you could do with to your business because it gives you immediate international exposure i mean nationally when it when it airs and then they re-air internationally people you know emailing me from all over the world but today you have many choices business people and entrepreneurs are are coveted by many different platforms and you have shark tank definitely should do it but if you go in short time you better have some sales okay otherwise they'll eat you alive um you can do kickstarter and if that's too much for you just make some and go to the farmer's market or the flea market it doesn't matter as long as it's a a platform for you to do it i recommend people instead of going to chartang first or to go to test their products with real public so because that's cool exactly because that that is more real if i go to my local market and and i get feedback and i i do i i can i can better my idea i can make it better i can make it i get the response direct from the customer you guys make sure you check out our blog upflip.com forward slash blog it's a great place to go with a ton of articles out there that'll help you understand how to open businesses go through the challenges and a ton of other information so that's there for you check it out upflip.com forward slash blog
how did you know the pillow this would be a good business idea how did you validate it in a nutshell how would other innovators watching you right now go through a process to figure out this is the right part you see the thing is you're thinking too much okay right when you are a business man or entrepreneur you you do more and you think less and there's a thing i call analysis paralysis right if you analyze too much you'll be you'll be paralyzed and months will happen years will happen and all you will leave is with regret the purpose of being an entrepreneur and businessman is to do things you have an idea just make it happen it doesn't matter how it takes scissors and a glue gun and a knife from your mom or whatever the case may do do do the project make it happen show it to people see what they excite said do some changes and start calling manufacturers it is just a doing this thing and and more important executing more important take a piece of paper and a pen and write down what you're gonna do a good list is much better than the most genius ideas that you might have you can have a genius idea that never came to fruition or a silly idea that somebody made a list and made it happen and made millions of dollars well said [Music] oh sorry we're actually on camera okay i got a question for you so for other innovators who are looking to innovate new ideas what would you suggest to them on how to turn their idea into an actual business okay really simple it's three steps number one you have an idea buy a book or get a book and write the date and your idea on top then write what will be your ideal scene where you want to be where do you see this like like i see myself in a jet and i have these cars and you have to you have to write your ideal scene what is the thing ideal for you some people will be changing the world some people will be being rich some people will be etc right many many different things number two uh you already wrote your idea now write your goals okay and then look at your actual scene you have to look at what you have today you look at the top you look at the bottom and there's a chasm in between there's like a big big you know um space in between and then you have to work the steps that need to be done and the second thing is don't have analysis i mean the third thing don't have analysis paralysis which means you think so much that you don't do right go to shows go to exhibitions look at videos look at videos like yours right they inspire you but always do something and then produce an actual part production actual product if it's a product produce a product if it's like you know you have one of those amazing laundromat machines and i mean businesses if you want to have a business like i go there and talk to an owner right get information okay because information is what gives you the next step to follow if you really focus on that and don't decide to watch tv like you know from six to two o'clock in the morning which is hard sometimes right um and you have a plan for the next day there's no reason why you shouldn't make it [Music] all right you got a deal with lori on short saying what's it like to work with lori how much input she actually provides just out of curiosity our audience loves to know how often you guys talk the reality of the you know the phone we were very lucky we were very lucky we actually wanted lori and laurie is the best shark out there and we we got into thanks to her we got into qvc and the doors open in many many ways what happened as far as the deal with lori we got exactly what we asked for right we we wanted like 200 000 for 10 percent and she gave us exactly that and all i can tell you is that you can own a hundred percent of zero of a company that doesn't do very much or you can own ninety percent of something that explodes i will take you know ninety percent and even if it's less of something that explodes because the exposure that you get in in shark tank and the amazingness of of our shark for example but all sharks are good i mean they're sharks i mean believe me they you know that's why it's called the shark tank but once they're your partner they're on your side yeah does that make sense yes [Music] what's the percentage of qvc sales your online sales amazon sales overall with your you know 20 million dollar business is that something you can share with us how much is coming from qvc revenue it's a good question it's a good question it's a it's a very personal question it's like saying open your bank account and show me but i can tell you that um the qvc is big in the millions of dollars okay um amazon a it's a love-hate relationship if you want to go on amazon we hear that all the time just uh don't do it don't do it they have no respect that's no respect you're a business person yeah um amazon amazon i mean it used to be great and then and then amazon themselves what they do you wouldn't believe this they if you do well with your product they'll promote it to other people so they will do your product as well how about that not only that but you will get people from abroad right from other countries let's say asia i'm not going to mention a country and because they they have they don't have to pay tariffs right they pay no tariffs we pay all the tariffs our products more expensive they sell it cheaper than you they copy your product they do all kinds of horrible things and and then your sales go to crap and if you if you if you say something or do something they they will do a complaint or something and your product will get pulled out of amazon because everything is like exactly there's not a person to talk to [Applause] [Music] let's do some blitz questions okay 10 seconds at most if you could win the lottery today and earn a fortune that will last you just a lifetime right would you just give this business up an innovation like at all absolutely not absolutely an entrepreneur is about passion and if you have money or no money that's not is not an issue okay what was the final thing that pushed you to start working on this business uh my wife okay what is one of your hidden talents can you show us or tell us i can speak spanish fluently okay what's uncommon what is the one news that you would like to wake up to tomorrow i would like for the world to rewind to in 2019. now i'm with you when are you when you are not running a business what would you what would we find you doing i am passionate about uh food i actually am passionate about chocolate chocolate i i'm so passionate about it i put a i made a chocolate in my in my garage i'm sorry you know i you know bon bons and and stuff like that so i have like a spray booth and i have a temporary machine so when i retire and i'm gonna sell whatever if i sell the company or whatever i would love to do chocolate chocolate okay what's your favorite book that just helped you either because you're the journeyer journey the journeyer the journeyer the journeyer okay it's an amazing amazing book i wanted to talk a little bit about amazon fba right a lot of the companies we've interviewed do business with amazon some are leaving amazon for one reason i want to hear your experience with amazon fba well nobody will want to tell you about amazon because a lot of the revenue can come from amazon nobody wants to say it but but they do not take care of their vendors just just what it is it's such a big such a big company and has so many pieces and stuff that and they want to be bigger and bigger and bigger that i think that they do not respect the american business because what happens you have amazon that was in america first and then they expanded and they went to asia and now what's happening is that all us vendors from the us have gotten affected by by that expansion imagine if you're in asia and and you copy somebody's product because it's selling well but you don't have the same consequences legal consequences of somebody breaking the law in the u.s and there's nobody to talk to in amazon to help you today you go and it's like automated and you go again and automate it even when you go with a lawyer right they they take long time a long time and meanwhile you can lose hundreds of thousands of dollars so so when you ask me what's my experience with amazon uh if fba don't do it and here you guys we're not here to bash anybody we're here to get first-hand experience from all these successful business owners on their experience [Music] so how early in the process of the idea do you think entrepreneurs or innovators need to create a prototype immediately immediately yes immediately they can't do it themselves anybody can do it look imagine i want to do um i see your camera guy there is wearing flip-flops right okay i want a different type of flip flop because the flip flop uh broke right and my foot got hurt okay so i take the flip-flop i cut it and i have ideas that i'm going to put a certain thing and and as you start thinking and grab anything and everything is is for a game in your house in the store it doesn't matter what it is and i had a friend um that that also innovates things and he called it frankenstein in it right right so he he makes that product and then with that prototype because remember most people that are on that industry did not create that because because they are set on their ways and they say this is the only way that is done so with the flip-flops you went straight to actually working on them instead of overthinking it and exactly because there's nothing well there's nothing you can draw all you want right and you can do cat all you want but you need an actual real sample today is really it's a lot easier because you can pay someone okay so let's go the proper route you you have an idea you do a little design you have a little bit of money or you have a friend you ask them to do a cat file which is a drawing right 3d drawing and then you go and you you find online a 3d printer and they print it and it looks exactly how it will look i mean that's how easy it is today in my day with frankenstein in it i see okay so do it right away guys you have an idea come up with a prototype [Music] so you've gotten the housewares show innovation award for bambooi yes how did that happen and how did that help the product and sales in general well i haven't thought very much about awards before then but um when you get awards it's very nice it's good yeah yeah it's a big it's a big organization we do trade shows that's where we got the it's a new product when it was new and the way that you can use them is for buyers when you're trying to get into stores or you or you're getting you're getting pr those those always help so it's always good to it seems silly to apply for them or regionally right right i'm just like asking to be awarded right it's very strange for something that you want to do it's it's strange um but you you feel up it's like filling up an application it's almost like a credit application right you fill it out you show the products you show the thing and then they they and then they give you an award okay if if you merit it right [Music] okay so you're talking about flip-flops where's that flip-flop all right so roland give me your flip-flop okay so this is your camera your flip-flop right yeah it's dirty and stuff but as an entrepreneur and a business you shouldn't be afraid of getting your hands dirty right right or smelly right what is smelly running okay so let's say that this part broke and when you were walking and you hurt yourself i got cast and then you decide to create a look and and change the material here and you start frankenstein in it right you cut it you add it you glue it basically it doesn't matter cut it with scissors cut it with a knife do whatever it needs and then test it and then do it again you know the the dyson i think he did like hundreds of prototypes before he got that perfect he call it the perfect suction i cannot do the british accent right yes let's give it back to ronan thank you thank you but anybody you can do it you can do that with anything it could be a new item for cows it could be a new idea for a camera it doesn't matter if somebody in japan has all the money hundreds of millions of dollars if your idea is better than theirs you shouldn't be afraid just do it man [Music] so in terms of you know additional new product development that you're working on walk us through that sort of in closing it's really exciting to see what we've got ahead you know in front of us here when you deal with knock-offs and you've worked your life and savings into a product or something because you put your life force in it it's it's completely devastating so we created something that was uncopyable that was a collectible right right and we created and the best way and disney has it right when disney creates these characters you have more protection when you have a thing called ip property you talked about patents ib property is more secure than patents because it's clear that that's the image that is yours yep and nobody can copy it so we created these characters called unimos can you see that there this one this one here are africa we have the farm these are really cute these are the kitties right and then i have these are our ninja ninja dogs which are really awesome and and so forth and so forth and so forth and we created 16 different scenes with five characters each 80 different characters and you can see them all here you see that there yeah these are just the faces because what we're going to do with this is we're going to do charms and pins right that are collector people love those right and and a customer is still buying one thing like one roller bambooy they if they like it they end up buying all 80. what's amazing about this
is that this thing here it's this collectible is also an nft an nft is a crypto type of product right so you have these together with the nft attached to it and we created this app where people can actually trade they can scan the item here right and they will scan an item you press scan there and they can trade anywhere in the world you can have someone in russia right and you can have someone in the us or china or south america and they they decide to trade on the app and boom [Music] what would you tell them in terms of advice anything that comes to your mind running a business being an innovator changing the world just anything from your heart i believe that entrepreneurs and business owners are the heart of any society without entrepreneurs there's no jobs without a without businessman they there's no innovation there's no new things that happen there's no economy right so when you're feeling down just remember that you are giving jobs to people that have families and without that job they wouldn't be able to leave and just remember that whatever whatever business you decide to do make sure something you like doing because you're going to be doing it for a long time it's like a marriage so and my last and my last thing for those who are not that yet and are thinking of being it you do not learn business in school i know a lot of people schools teach you that you shocked a lot of people yeah that's good you do not learn business in school you learn to be a worker in school as a business owner okay it's not a bad thing because you get a job and it's good but if you want to be a business owner you don't need to go to school and spend 40 50 100 20 000 in debt just to start doing business that's actually bad business okay makes sense all right just just just go for it whatever idea you have just go for it uh have a an etsy account um sell something in ebay um selling in a flea market buy and sell cars whatever the idea is and if it doesn't work don't worry about it do another one you only have to worry about the things that succeed you could have done 100 things the 100th thing could have been the thing that made it and at that 98 you say oh i'm not good at this you never know until you hit the one that makes it so my recommendation is never give up and uh and follow your dream just do it guys as always we've got something very special for you from the people that we interview so uh no one know him tell him a little bit about that well i uh this has been fun right and i just want to thank you for watching this episode i hope it it inspires you or it opens ideas and that's all that matters because all that's all you can do and uh i would like to give you a coupon just for app flip which we're cooping will be the coupon will be will say app flip 30 and that will be a 30 coupon for anything in our website at bamboo.com awesome thank you so much it's been a pleasure maybe it's a pleasure bamboo what an incredible story lots of innovation that you guys saw i hope you enjoyed it and will execute on many business ideas and insights that noam has been able to share with you make sure you hit that like button subscribe to this channel we're doing this for you guys also comment below with what other businesses you want us to interview thank you so much for watching i'm checking out because these pillows are incredibly comfortable and and nice
2021-06-29 00:08
