From dorm room to 750 retail locations.
"There were three or four years straight where we were like, if it doesn't go the way we need it to go, we'll close it down at the end of the year -- and then year end comes and we're just like, close enough to keep going."
Ethan Haber was a college sophomore with a studio art degree, a hamster named Mooksy, and a problem: the hamster ball hadn't been improved since the 1970s. So he invented a better one. Then came COVID, molds stuck at the Port of Long Beach, a packaging supplier who switched materials without telling him, four years of unprofitability, and social media backlash from people who don't even own hamsters.
2026 is his first profitable year. We talked about how he got to 750 retail locations, why he quit Meta ads and tripled Amazon sales, and the cold LinkedIn DM that landed him the founder of PetSmart as a mentor.
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The Unofficial Shopify Podcast is hosted by Kurt Elster and explores the stories behind successful Shopify stores. Get actionable insights, practical strategies, and proven tactics from entrepreneurs who've built thriving ecommerce businesses.
Kurt Elster • 00:00.001
This episode is brought to you in part by Swym. Here's the thing about wishlist apps. Most of them just sit there. A customer saves a product, and then nothing happens. Swim actually activates that data. When someone wish lists a product, you could trigger price drop or back-in-stock alerts and feed that intent directly into Klaviyo or your CRM. You're not guessing what people want because they've told you. Plus, customers can share wish lists for gifts and your team can view them to offer personalized service online or in store. And unlike card abandonment, wishlist data is permission-based. These are people raising their hands saying, hey, I want this. Just not right now. Swim's been around for over a decade. It powers 45,000 stores and installs in about five minutes. You can try it for free today at getswim. com slash Kurt. That's G-E-T-S-W-Y-M. com slash Kurt. If you build a better mousetrap, they will beat a path to your door. That's how the saying goes I don't know if it's true, I'm still using regular mouse traps, but our guest today built a better hamster ball. Alright, it's a rodent adjacent metaphor. That's what I got for ya. But no, our uh guest today, Ethan Haber. makes uh small pet accessories and started with hamster accessories. He wanted his own hamster in college to build a better life, started a business. Got patents, is growing it, scaling it, and this year is his first profitable year with the business. It's on Shopify, it's on your favorite marketplaces, it's in 750 retail locations. I want to hear how that happened. How did a college sophomore invent a new hamster ball and then get it in retail online and into a profitable business with patents? That's That's interesting. Ethan. Ethan Haber, thank you for joining me. In person no less. I appreciate it.
Ethan Haber • 02:06.240
Yeah, it's it's a pleasure to be here, Kurt. Thank you for having me. And I'm excited to talk to you about my journey, hear a little bit about you along the way.
Kurt Elster • 02:13.120
So what's the what's the business? What uh what do we sell? What's it called?
Ethan Haber • 02:17.120
So Happy Habitats is the name of the business. Actually, funny aside, when I created the business, it was Rolling Rodents LLC But we didn't think that name would roll. So we switched to Happy Habitats, Bigger Market Scope. Uh and i the vision came because I wanted a safer alternative to what was out there for my small animal.
Kurt Elster • 02:36.820
Safer alternative. So hamster balls existed. You know, I was a kid, I remember them. And then when I googled them, I discovered it's like a hot topic issue. Hamster balls.
Ethan Haber • 02:45.380
Yeah.
Kurt Elster • 02:45.780
Tell Give me the rundown on hamster balls. I want the hamster ball download.
Ethan Haber • 02:49.959
So the hamster, but the traditional hamster ball was invented in the 70s, and then there was no innovation. until uh my business came along. But standard hamster ball uh has large ventilation holes the animal's paw can get trapped in that can lead to injury or even death. Uh they're made of flimsy plastic, they split open, you have to fish your sp your pet out from under the fridge. Um and the lids uh are not safely secure. It's just a quarter turn with flimsy warpable plastic. I've seen my hamster, you know, push his hands. on the side of the ball and pop the lid off and just get out of there. So we uh strived to create a much safer ball and that's what we did.
Kurt Elster • 03:25.960
So what's the difference? What well what's there there'll be a a moment, an origin story, something where you went, all right, uh I think I could build a better hamster ball here.
Ethan Haber • 03:35.860
So I was uh it at Wake Forest University I was a sophomore and my hamster Mooksy was in his hamster ball and we were hamster name. Yeah, he was he was uh he was the best hamster I've ever had and I've I've been through quite a few of them at this point
Kurt Elster • 03:49.020
Yeah, not a real low what's the life expectancy in a hamster?
Ethan Haber • 03:51.739
Uh life expectancy of a hamster is two to three years. I started taking care of hamsters when I was, you know, nineteen. Now I'm twenty-seven, so you can do the math. I'm on my fourth hamster.
Kurt Elster • 04:00.940
Okay.
Ethan Haber • 04:01.820
Uh, but so Mooksie was in his small pet exercise ball and I was just chasing him in circles. I turned and I saw a woman walking her dog and I thought, why can't you walk your hamster? And that was the thought that kind of metaphorically and you know physically got the ball rolling.
Kurt Elster • 04:17.560
The all right, so you've got hamster and a hamster ball. But then how do you know these things are they're problematic? Just from experience with it?
Ethan Haber • 04:25.100
From experience, I my college roommate was a bodybuilder, believe it or not. And he had to pick up the fridge to get the hamster out from under it and fish it out from behind. So I I've had a host of experiences with my small pet where I noticed the issues that uh existed, but just still the value proposition of getting your pet out of their cage and letting them, you know, roll around your room without having to constantly monitor them is very valuable.
Kurt Elster • 04:49.460
But all right, if when I was in college, the idea of inventing a physical product, you know, going in getting plastics manufactured and then selling it like would have just seemed totally unattainable to me. I'd be like, that's a thing I could do maybe later, right? Like that was the the most I'd be willing to dream with that. How do you even get started? Where do you begin?
Ethan Haber • 05:09.160
It is not easy. And uh when people ask me what they should do, like if they have an idea for a business, I say don't do a physical product. I say do a service or a technology.
Kurt Elster • 05:18.539
Because it is not easy to I do both of those.
Ethan Haber • 05:21.020
Yeah. So it it and you do a great job at it. Uh but for a physical product You have to, you know, find a raw material supplier, you need to get a manufacturer. Our molds are manufactured in China and then they ship out from China to Mexico where our factory is and you know I say fun fact, but it it was quite the headache when it happened. Uh when COVID hit our molds to manufacture the product, we're stuck on one of those boats waiting to port uh in Long Beach, California, and for about nine months We could just twiddle our fingers, we had no product, and we couldn't do anything.
Kurt Elster • 05:54.220
That's uh I had the the same experience, but it was flooring for a basement remodel we started before Before we had all the supplies, thinking how hard could they be to get? Yeah. How long could it take?
Ethan Haber • 06:06.740
Yeah.
Kurt Elster • 06:08.020
Didn't know that uh they would be sitting at the port of LBC for quite some time. So, uh, okay. I mean how would you know to design such a thing?
Ethan Haber • 06:17.840
So I was uh majoring in studio art in college and I was minoring in entrepreneurship, uh, and the entrepreneurship program had an incubator called Startup Lab. which uh I'm an alumna uh alum from and I had these mentors who really helped me. They made introductions. Uh I'm pretty sure I met my factory from a speaker at Startup Labs like secondhand connection. So it was like an aside to an aside to an aside. But uh everyone can help you on your path. Everyone knows someone is is the short answer.
Kurt Elster • 06:47.320
And so we had it through word-of-mouth networking connections through this the this program that was available to you through your college, you were able to find, you know, get the connections to make it happen. Um But this costs money. Did we do any pitching? Like so you have to get someone on board with this idea. There's no way you could do this like purely alone.
Ethan Haber • 07:09.660
Yeah, there's it it is not easy to start a business and it's not easy To manufacture a product. I have two partners. One is my father who is invested in the business, provides high-level advisement And then the third partner is uh this design firm, P9 Design. And P9 Design is a major consumer goods design firm for Brands like Honeywell, Swell, Oxo, VIX, they're based in Edgewater, New Jersey, not too far from me in New York. And they are a one-third partner and they put in Swequity. So that's how we're able to get a lot of stuff.
Kurt Elster • 07:41.340
How did you get someone like like uh OXO? Those are great products. You know, I would imagine a lot of people listening have that stuff at their kitchen. Yeah. And of course Honeywell, you know, huge. Huge manufacture of industrial products, especially thermostats.
Ethan Haber • 07:55.240
Yeah.
Kurt Elster • 07:55.960
And now these guys are also like, you know what? We're taking equity and we're gonna help. New hamster ball. How d what does that pitch look like? Like how did you get them that excited about this?
Ethan Haber • 08:05.160
So my father uh was connected with them through a previous venture that he worked with them on. Uh he was an investor in that and he basically put me in front of them and I pitched the product. And together we did some uh market research and we noticed it was a niche industry which is good. If you want to create a item, uh the niche the more niche it is, the the more likely you are to succeed because there's less competition and there's uh high room for growth in a small space. So we discovered it was a niche market uh with a lack of innovation and that's where we decided to, you know, inject ourselves.
Kurt Elster • 08:37.400
The hamster ball is a product. This is at this point had existed for decades. Yeah. And then you come along, redesign it to solve its, you know, practical problems and its safety problems. uh get a professional industrial design team to assist with this. We're able to find good manufacturing partners up front, which really saves a lot of headache. In a lot of these stories, that's where like you get into trouble. Um and so a a lot is going right here. What was what was tough about it?
Ethan Haber • 09:05.500
There are so many things that went wrong. You know, it's easy for me to, you know, after I've gone the distance, just tell you what's been good.
Kurt Elster • 09:10.620
Yeah, we're getting the highlight reel.
Ethan Haber • 09:11.959
Yeah, the molds was a major thing that uh went wrong.
Kurt Elster • 09:15.160
Uh often the molds go wrong. Tell me about it.
Ethan Haber • 09:18.760
Oh, I'm talking about not being able to actually have the molds.
Kurt Elster • 09:22.260
Oh right, of course, of course.
Ethan Haber • 09:23.940
Uh but the next major thing that went wrong is we had this packaging supplier who our factory was connected with, and we paid them to make the package for our debut product, and they switched out the material on us. It was supposed to be a corrugated printed box and instead it was just like a thin uh paperboard.
Kurt Elster • 09:43.779
And it's like cardstock as opposed to like corrugated which has n good strength to it.
Ethan Haber • 09:48.180
And basically we had to front the payment for that because our our factory fronted the payment and the to the packaging manufacturer and the packaging manufacturer is the one who kind of screwed us over. And we didn't want to jeopardize our relationship with our factories, so we had to pay for those boxes that were effectively worthless. And then we had to get more boxes run. That was a that was a major issue.
Kurt Elster • 10:09.240
Yeah, and that it's just like is it live and learn? You just eat the cost and move on
Ethan Haber • 10:14.820
Uh it's live and learn, you eat the cost and move on. We were able to get a small amount uh refunded to us from the freight company that sent it because the packaging was so flimsy all of it got damaged in transit.
Kurt Elster • 10:25.460
Oh man.
Ethan Haber • 10:26.500
Talk about silver linings.
Kurt Elster • 10:28.639
Okay, so you know it takes some of the the paint out of it. Um but you know you just you keep going. And the other thing you've got is utility patents. Yeah. So on a there's more than one kind of patent. Just remind us of the difference, like what a utility patent is, and then talk about that process a little bit. Because it it's time consuming, it's it's not easy, but it's doable.
Ethan Haber • 10:51.339
Yeah, we submitted our patent application maybe in 2021, late 2021, and we actually got the patents in 2025. So it was a four to five year journey to actually get it. But all the while it's patent pending, so you do have this uh coverage as long as you can afford to keep the application alive because the uh patent office is gonna come back and they're gonna tell you all the issues with it and then you need to resubmit. So it's a long, arduous process. But to answer your original question about what a utility patent is, to be very concise, there are two patents. There are utility patents and design patents. And the design patent is form and a utility patent is function. So it generally speaking, in most industries, a utility patent is what has the value.
Kurt Elster • 11:35.800
It it took several years. Is there resistance to it? Like you just file it and then they stamp it or they file it and they go, Okay, we have questions. Yeah, how much back and forth is there? I've never done this.
Ethan Haber • 11:45.240
There's a lot of back and forth. So you get an examiner and it really depends on who the examiner is and how much they want to, you know, shake their hand at you and resist, but they'll pull up anything that's e existed beforehand is considered prior art, whether it's patented or not. So it's public domain. So when you create a hamster ball, they're like that already exists. And they're like but then you have to be like, no, our has a better ventilation pattern. They're like those hamster balls have ventilation. Then you have to go back and you have to say ours has technology that like exists to make it safer, it's very much an argument. And it takes a while because these people these examiners have, you know, dozens of hundreds of patents that they go through. So you can Give them a response and then they they can take eight weeks to respond and then you can respond, you know, that day, and then you'll take another eight weeks to hear back. So you can very quickly see how the time
Kurt Elster • 12:33.220
Yeah. All right. Seems like you dealing with a typical government agency. Yeah. You know, they're clear in like, all right, here's the issue, now respond. And then just back and forth. This is like dealing with the IRS. Yeah. Um not that I would know anything about that. The okay. So it it sounds like there's a long time between idea and product development here. Months, years, how long you know before we started actually trying to pre-sell this?
Ethan Haber • 12:58.940
So we incorporated in October 2019, we had a prototype that we debuted at the Super Zoo Trade Show in August 2021. Then the whole thing with the molds happens where we couldn't manufacture for months. Uh go to market debut, it's fall twenty twenty two. So we've been selling product since uh late 2022 all the way through now. But just to go back to that beginning, uh we incorporated in 2019. So there was about three years that it took to Get everything going before we could have a product for sale.
Kurt Elster • 13:33.180
Man. And part of it was the Yeah, the COVID through a wrench and things. I'm sure it would have been faster, but it still would have been like two years.
Ethan Haber • 13:41.580
Yeah.
Kurt Elster • 13:42.339
Yeah. Anytime it's a physical product, it's just it's time consuming. You know, it's resource intensive. So when you first start selling, you know what what's the first one you sell? Where do we get somebody's gotta give up a dollar to buy your product, to validate it. When's the first time it happened? What's it look like?
Ethan Haber • 13:58.560
So the first uh retailer that took a chance on us was Pet Supermarket. They're a two hundred something chain in the southwest. So you're talking like Florida, North Carolina, that area and we got them to uh take a chance on us. They really appreciated the innovation we had. And at the time that we had those issues with the boxes and whatnot, so there were a lot of hiccups. But they were the first person to get a chance on uh t take a chance on us, which is what really helped us validate to the market. Uh and now all these years later I'm talking with them about a relaunch as we have our products, you know. Nice and pretty. We have a new item coming out and there's a lot of excitement around uh what my business has to offer.
Kurt Elster • 14:35.100
And so we've got so wait, you started with retail?
Ethan Haber • 14:38.380
We ha we started with retail, we tried it Every every play in the book to do uh direct to consumer via social media advertising and it just did not work Because like you had said earlier, uh hamster balls are a hot topic. They're a hot button issue.
Kurt Elster • 14:53.019
I had no idea. But if you Google this, you will find out it's true.
Ethan Haber • 14:56.140
So I put I could put I have a we have a few viral TikToks. I have, you know, ten thousand plus subscribers to our uh TikTok account and the amount of hate comments I have to sift through.
Kurt Elster • 15:07.660
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Ethan Haber • 16:24.440
Yeah, it's it's very tough to prove to someone uh that they're wrong. No one wants to be wrong. Uh, I should know because I'm never wrong. Yeah. Weird, me too. No, but seriously, uh the way we were able to prove uh Validation is through market. We what we ended up doing is we look at ad spend now mo exclusively on marketplaces. We do no social media. So we're we're talking about Amazon, Walmart. Uh and also chewy. Uh and now Amazon, our product is exploding. You know, three, four months ago we were selling two hundred hamster balls a month. Uh cut to now right after the holiday season, we're selling six hundred plus a month. And it's just been the growth has been exponential.
Kurt Elster • 17:04.319
So we've got so marketplaces are working. So you're listed on Chewy, Walmart, Amazon.
Ethan Haber • 17:09.760
Yeah. And those numbers I shared were specifically Amazon. It didn't include the other market.
Kurt Elster • 17:16.299
And then we've got you have a Shopify store.
Ethan Haber • 17:18.539
We have a Shopify store. We do like two grand in sales on Shopify a a year. So it's it's like one percent of our less than one percent of our sales. And I'd love to tap into that and figure out how to actually make that work.
Kurt Elster • 17:31.000
But it like it's a good-looking website. The content in the pro you know the product's the same between this and the marketplaces. It's materially similar in content. What What do you think the difference is? I think all right, from my perspective outside looking in, I think you've told us. It's you've you know, listing it on the marketplace, you have, you know They're already middle of funnel, those people. They're already looking for a solution like this. And one of the things I love about pets as a category is people are often willing to spend money on pet accessories. And whereas the website, you know, here we're trying to advertise it on social media. And so that's top of funnel. It's interruption marketing. And then we're getting bogged down by people just having like nonsense knee-jerk reactions. Which you know probably none of those people even have hamsters. Yeah. You know, that's just like a thing they heard 10 years ago. Yeah. Right. Um And so we've gotta like try and reach the right people there. I'm sure you could make it work. My guess would be i influencer marketing, Shopify Product Network to get it into, you know, other stores that are already selling pet supplies, you know, something like small pet select. We have rabbits and we get hay from small pet select. Yeah. You know, like those uh those places would be probably like the strategy I would go for. Shopify collabs, um, or shopify collective, sorry, for getting it. Listed with some of these other stores. Yeah. Do you have it listed on Shopify Collective?
Ethan Haber • 18:54.320
No, I'm not familiar with what that is, to be honest. And I so I'd love to hear your pitch on what Shopify Collective is. And I'd also be more than open to doing um It's not affiliate marketing, but like affiliate where like I sell their products on my site and they they sell mine on theirs. Like cross cross cross cross public.
Kurt Elster • 19:09.520
No, that's so Shopify Collective Free app from Shopify you install in your store and you it it does exactly what you described. You can make your products available for sale. You pick which ones. And then other stores can apply or I think even be auto-approved where they can then just list those in their store and when it purches, Shopify automatically routes it. Like it works like a really nice drop shipping setup, except it's two Shopify stores talking to each other.
Ethan Haber • 19:36.080
And the uh the store that my product sells on, I'm assuming, gets a commission. Or like like a ten or fifteen percent.
Kurt Elster • 19:42.480
Yeah, it's like a wholesale agreement, you know, where they're gonna sell it. You're sell they're selling it at list price, so then you've got it You're selling it to them at a discount. Yeah. But that you know, they sell it and then you do the fulfillment and like the tracking automatically gets sent across.
Ethan Haber • 19:55.120
Yeah, I'd be more than happy to do that. And it sounds like I have some homework cut out for me.
Kurt Elster • 19:58.640
Yeah. So like that's one Um have you tried shop campaigns or listed on Shop App?
Ethan Haber • 20:04.360
Uh I don't think I'm not sure if we have it on Shop App. I have a friend who works for Instacart. Not that that's the same thing, and he sees my products on Instacart.
Kurt Elster • 20:11.639
Uh so Okay.
Ethan Haber • 20:13.340
I don't know what that means.
Kurt Elster • 20:14.539
Uh I mean it could shop app does it like if you run shop campaigns, it does have like third party placements. But I d specifically I don't know if that's how it's getting it into Instacart or that's through a different integration. Yeah. But I mean th like those two, they're just so They're very easy to implement and it's like other ad platforms, you know, Meta Google, as you discover, especially Meta's, it's like it is so complicated. Yeah. You could spend years trying to master it and you still you know won't know what like the best meta marketers know versus it's something like collective um and and shop campaigns they're intentionally very simple to use. And so it's just like it absolutely nice to have, I would try.
Ethan Haber • 20:53.880
No, I'll for sure look into uh Shop Collective. I think that seen it sounds very valuable.
Kurt Elster • 20:58.040
And uh one thing we're doing as we could
Ethan Haber • 21:00.140
are continuing to try and grow our, you know, direct to consumer Shopify site is uh email blasts. We're doing uh we have like an email list of 500, 600 people. We're trying to do monthly email blasts just to keep people engaged with our brand, get them on the site. We have blog posts that we put out, things like that. Um but the Shopify Collective sounds like a great step in the right direction for us.
Kurt Elster • 21:21.700
And I think you know with a with an animal, a pet, especially a small pet, there's gonna be a lot of r uh like a research phase that occurs, especially when you're you know considering adopting, you know, getting a pet um or you first get it. You do a lot of research. Like my wife bought books on rabbit ownership before we committed to a rabbit. And yeah, I think creating There's advantage to doing educational blog content, how to and you've had hamsters eight years now. Yeah. So like clearly you've got experience there. You could a hundred percent put together that content, you know, and get it in a blog, get it indexed. I think that's a worthwhile effort. Do you have blog content? Yeah, we have blog content.
Ethan Haber • 22:02.720
Uh in my prime I was putting it out twice a week at this point just 'cause I have so many, you know, fires to put out and hats to wear. We we do one or two blogs a month, but we have we have a host of blogs with uh rich content uh regarding, you know, taking care of your hamster. And then there's all those also cute little fun ones like what should I name my hamster or why do hamsters love apples. Random little things like that.
Kurt Elster • 22:23.760
Does it do do we get any organic search traffic?
Ethan Haber • 22:26.960
Uh yeah, we do. We do a lot uh we a lot of our uh traffic comes from the blogs. So people are coming to our site, uh they're reading our periodicals, but they're they're not uh converting to sales.
Kurt Elster • 22:36.460
Okay, so my experience is like you could get successful with a blog by creating valuable content. You're there, but then those people are like all the way at the top of the funnel. They may even be above the funnel looking down. You know, they're so early in that process. They're the least likely to buy. But also you're not paying to acquire them. Those articles tend to be evergreen. Um the one way to supercharge the SEO content, structured data, your theme will support it already. You can expand on structured data if you get fancy. It's like technical SEO, and I don't want to get like Delail us to go deep into it. But especially with like um answer engine optimization, adding structured data can be helpful. And then The one time thing you could do is build a piece of pillar content. Like literally call it, you know, the ultimate beginner's guide to you know, adopting a hamster and it's called like, so you want to be a hamster mom, you know, whatever it is. And then it's got a it's, you know, a like 3,000 word article. That gives you the high-level overview of all the other articles you wrote and then has like links to those individual things and articles and stuff. That um that pillar content approach tends to really help Google understand like this is the overview of the site. You know, think of it as like a very descriptive semantic site map. But like we did that at my wife's Disney World blog. That helped a lot. I've seen other sites do that. The where suddenly Google goes, oh well now you're an authority on this topic. Yeah. Because it's like it's no longer sporadic articles spread out the way it sees it. It sees like, ah, this is like the wiki of hamster ownership.
Ethan Haber • 24:12.760
No, that's really, really smart. And uh just the way my mind is wired, I never would have thought. To do that. Uh so I have two pieces of homework now. I've Shopify Collective and I have pillar content like a uh a a Bible for hamster ownership.
Kurt Elster • 24:24.360
Yeah. Okay. They both get you in front of new eyeballs potentially. Um Shopify Collective though is nice because that gets you in front of like really new audiences. You know, other other store other Shopify stores selling pet stuff could now list your product and it just it is so easy. So and then um Shopify Product Network. that we heard from uh or will hear from Amanda Engelman from Shopify about it on the show. Sorry, don't know what order we're gonna publish in. Shopify product network. you can have your product show on like the order status thank you page collection page of other people's stores who have opted in.
Ethan Haber • 24:59.520
Oh, that's interesting.
Kurt Elster • 25:00.720
And then when your product sells as like an add-on in their store That one's a little different where Shopify makes it more clear that it's a different store shipping it and then the selling store gets a commission on it. So it's more like an even more automated version of that collective product. And so for like a new store where you have a validated product, you know from your marketplaces 100% this sells. Yeah. It is, and you've got this great looking Shopify site with you know great content. It's just a matter of Can we get this in front of the right eyeballs, but can we do it profitably? And like unit economics, customer acquisition cost on meta ads. I get why you quit. It's harder than ever. It is so hard. And so just, you know, finding all these other alternatives. And knowing that, you know, none of them has the scale that Meta has, but that's also why Meta became so competitive. And so you stacking them all together, okay, now we can get somewhere. And now you're gonna start figuring out like this is ideal customer profile. This is the triggers that get them to buy, these are the things that they resist, and you know, or like what the objections are. And so suddenly you'll get to a point where you'll try meta-ads again. But now you're armed with so much more info. You know, you're not gonna be just burning money figuring out what doesn't work. You're gonna be in a much better starting position.
Ethan Haber • 26:11.500
I definitely have burnt quite a bit of cash figuring out what doesn't work.
Kurt Elster • 26:14.620
So Yeah, especially and with meta ads, it's like, you know, well maybe my budget wasn't enough. I should spend more and then we'll figure out how to make it profitable. But pretty soon you like you do make it work, except you're paying customers to take the products from you.
Ethan Haber • 26:26.240
Yeah, you can spend infinity trying to figure out how it works. And uh I don't have a specific example off the top of my mind for Meta uh or something like that, but on Amazon we had a a partner who manu managed our marketplace. And they were spending, you know, if if we made a dollar, then we were spending three to make that dollar with them.
Kurt Elster • 26:45.700
And they were like, oh, it's just X, Y, or Z.
Ethan Haber • 26:48.019
There were all these reasons why it wasn't working. Now we have a new partner. Mark knowledge who does really great job managing our marketplaces and we are profitable. So it it it it really also just depend there's a lot of people who claim to be, you know, experts on this and and They have something that works, but it doesn't translate to your business.
Kurt Elster • 27:05.620
That's that's yeah. It's like you'll find someone who's like, Hey, I've got these case studies, you know, hey, we're we've got a track record of success. And a hundred percent all of it could be totally true. Yeah. But There is so much nuance in variations between you know what you sell and who you sell it to that it's not necessarily going to be applicable to you. Like their experience may not work. You know, for us our specialty is uh aftermarket automotive. Performance parts for car cars. You know, you want an exhaust that makes your Lamborghini louder? Who doesn't? Right? I need a new exhaust for my Lamborghini. Um, no, I don't have that problem. But like that's just it's a different audience, it's a different way of selling, you know, different restrictions than another one would be used to. And so, you know, we have an advantage there. But then like if I had to sell hamster balls, I probably would not do very well at it. I've not sold pet accessories before.
Ethan Haber • 27:58.340
I would say the overlap between aftermarket automotive parts and hamster balls is is It's slim. It's slim, yeah. So for sure. And I wouldn't be good at selling car parts. I know nothing about cars.
Kurt Elster • 28:09.220
The uh you know, we j it just needs to be louder and flashier. That's not true. True. Okay. Uh let's see, where were we? Yeah, we're talking about like the the go-to-market reality that like it's hard and you just early on especially you're just trying stuff to see what sticks. Yeah. The uh so you're probably your breakdown's like sixty percent marketplaces, forty percent retail, right?
Ethan Haber • 28:35.240
Yeah, that's historically that's been uh the breakdown of our sales, although I do have our new pro we have this new product, Burrow Bricks. which are these really great three by three uh clear plastic squares you can snap together to create hides, mazes, and permanent enclosures for your small animal.
Kurt Elster • 28:49.440
Oh, that's smart.
Ethan Haber • 28:50.160
Think of it like Legos, meats, hamster habitats.
Kurt Elster • 28:52.840
And we are launching That's exactly how it sounds Yeah.
Ethan Haber • 28:55.400
We are launching nationwide with a big box retailer who I can't say yet because it's not out, but in the next month and a half. So that 6040 could very much flip. But traditionally that has been our our sales breakdown.
Kurt Elster • 29:09.400
Okay. The I love the idea of this new product Here's a word from our sponsor, Zippify. Hey, the holidays are over. Traffic's down, ad costs are still up, and you're staring at Q1 wondering how to keep momentum going. Here's the move. Stop leaving money on the table with every order. One click upsell automatically increases average order value by up to 30% with AI-powered upsells. across your entire customer funnel. Launch pre-purchase and post-purchase upsells for every product in your store in one click. Customers get personalized offers and spend more as a result. Unlike other apps, you only pay for those results, not views. It takes under two minutes to set up and it starts working immediately. Q1 doesn't have to be a slump. Make every order count while you rebuild traffic. Go to zipify. com slash curt for your 30-day free trial. That zip ify dot com slash k u r t and let's start the year profitable We've seen well, I've seen similar products be hugely successful for kids, especially over the pandemic, where it's like, you know, you could magnet a fort together with various blocks. Yeah. You know, there were a few of those. Um and your idea We've seen like hamster habitats or small animal habitats that snap together. Certainly small animals love tunnels. Oh man, you give my rabbit a tunnel? It's like the most thrilling thing that has ever happened to her. Um I like the idea of, you know, snapping it together with blocks. Where'd that idea come from?
Ethan Haber • 30:41.159
So uh we designed our first two products with our uh partner P9 and we wanted to have a third one hit the market. And at the very beginning of the ideation there was this c concept for a maze uh and we decided to explore that a little further. And you look at the tr the problem with tubes, like what people in the small pet space have to say. with how it's unsafe is there like oh it can it gets dirty inside and you can't clean it, it's one size, the hamster can get stuck. So our burrow bricks, you can create anything. The sky is the limit. And it's there there's ventilation, uh there's vertical and there's there's snaps on the uh face and there's snaps on the walls so you can do multi-levered leveled structures. Uh really what it came down to is we wanted to give people the opportunity to to create mazes and structures for their small animal in a safe, fun way. Uh and the sky is the limit. You could take it apart when it's done and build a new structure.
Kurt Elster • 31:34.500
That one.
Ethan Haber • 31:37.299
Yeah, it is a lot of fun. And the and the other thing that uh I didn't touch on uh yet with this item is that our first product we designed a premium product within a budget and this one we're designing uh a quality product as cheaply as possible.
Kurt Elster • 31:51.100
So tell me about the difference in how you approach design there.
Ethan Haber • 31:54.300
Yeah, so the nuance is is uh It's small, but it's very real, and it's the difference between success and failure. Our first item, the halo, which is a companion product to the roam, which is our hamster ball. The halo is this orange ring you can snap the hamster ball into. And I can carry it and my hamster can run. So now I'm able to take my small pet for a walk. And it has these legs that snap in on the side. So I can use it as a stand as well.
Kurt Elster • 32:16.920
That's a stationary hamster ball.
Ethan Haber • 32:18.520
Yeah. So uh the Halo is really great and people love it when they see it. Uh our And that's the that's the hero product.
Kurt Elster • 32:24.720
Like on the website, when you go to your website, you see you know, that it's like f head on shot of that, you know, and the hamster in it. And it like immediately you could tell like, oh, this is it kinda has like a UFO look to it. There's a nice industrial design feel to it. You're like, this would This I could see this on my desk, you know, with with my hamster. It's cute.
Ethan Haber • 32:43.300
Yeah, so my hamster, Princess Lady, my current hamster. Princess Lady. Yeah, she she's she's quite the princess and she's a lady. But uh she she loves the halo. Uh I what I put her in whenever I'm gonna clean the cage. When I want to let her roam her about the apartment, I'd snap the roam out and then she's able to use it like a traditional exercise ball. Um but so the h back to uh design. The halo we originally had magnets in it and we budgeted, you know, say eight dollars. to make the product, it costs forty dollars retail. We originally had it at fifty, but we had to knock it down because it wasn't capturing the market. I mean fifty dollars is a lot of money. Uh and people are hurting right now. But back to the original point, uh the Halo had it magnets in it, and it cost $8 to make, then COVID hit, cost of manufacture goes up, you know. 100% all of a sudden it costs us $14 to make this hamster uh carrier and we can't sell it profitably. So the first thing we do is remove the magnets because we noticed most people are just snapping the legs in anyway. and leaving the legs in their snapped position. That's another thing. When you bring a product to market, you have no idea uh what people are gonna like, what people aren't gonna like, uh what's gonna become vestigial about your item. Uh you can guess, but You have no idea what people are gonna do.
Kurt Elster • 33:58.080
It's tough like with software, I suppose we're spoiled because we have analytics data. It's very easy in software to see, all right, hey, you know because it's true, I could build the website, I could build the app, and build the dashboard, put it out there. And how I think someone's gonna use it versus how they're actually gonna use it, often very different. For sure. And then but I get the the privilege of, you know, great analytics data. Heat maps, screen recordings, even just traditional like page views. Where did they spend their time on site? With a product, man, that is a lot harder data to gather. You have to be able to get a hold of someone after they've used the product, but still remember it. And like people are fatigued with the amount of customer feedback requests they get these days. Most definitely. Yeah, like I had to call my insurance company. They sent me they I got calls, voicemails, emails, letters. because I placed one brief satisfactory uh customer service call to them and that just like triggered an avalanche of customer feedback. So I get why they're like it is so hard to get reviews and to get feedback these days. But like physical product getting that feedback, stakes are high. So like how do you talk to your customers?
Ethan Haber • 35:05.400
Uh the majority of the way we do it now is uh reviews. We have uh one eight hundred number people can call and leave messages on that, you know
Kurt Elster • 35:12.800
Oh, that's cool.
Ethan Haber • 35:13.600
Hotline straight to my personal phone. So I I'm able to pick up and speak directly with people. It hasn't grown to the point yet where I'm getting ringed off the hook. So at that point maybe we'll have to uh offshore. But we uh we have uh info email, info at happyhabitats. net. We have our number uh it's like 1833-Hammies. Uh and we have reviews where people, you know, engage with the product. And if you look at our marketplace reviews, we have uh hundred plus Five star reviews speaking to the uh credit and quality that the product has.
Kurt Elster • 35:47.599
That's good sho good social proof to have on there. Um yeah, early on you said you debuted this thing at a trade show. Trade shows also seem well Going to a trade show is one thing. Exhibiting at a trade show feels intimidating. Uh it are you still doing trade shows? Tell me about it.
Ethan Haber • 36:04.240
So this year there are two major trade shows in North America, more s like in the United States for the pet uh segment. It's the Global Pet Expo and Superzoo. Global Pet Expo is actually this March. I will not be going to that. And trad in the past I've gone every year. The main reason I'm not going to the Global Pet Expo this year is my new item is launching around the same time. I'm not going to be able to sell it to anyone at the show. Uh I have a ninety day exclusive with this big box retailer it's launching with. So I figure I should get it out on the market first, have it available to purchase before I, you know, exhibit. So we do go to trade shows. We're gonna be at Super Zoo this year in Las Vegas in August. Perfect time to be in Vegas, but Uh trade shows are definitely valuable if you want to get your product in front of the uh right people in terms of vendors.
Kurt Elster • 36:53.099
The So you think like the the cost works out on trade shows? I mean how much How much are we uh it's like asking how much does a a house cost? But like w give me a budget range for showing up at a a typical trade show
Ethan Haber • 37:07.200
Uh 3 to 5k. Uh and if that's if that's like a international trade show, you could go to a local show. I've done local shows for a few hundred bucks that have been great for like I did one in Pittsburgh. Uh I've done one in s San Francisco. Uh I've done one in New York.
Kurt Elster • 37:22.420
Uh local And this is just like a vend the fee you as a vendor pay to the venue.
Ethan Haber • 37:26.660
Yeah. And those and all those trade shows are uh consumer focused. So it's like rent like you take the wife and kids to go to the trade show and walk around and see and see what's available. And those are those are, you know, the costs of acquisition are much lower. In terms of industry events, um Our very first trade show, we, you know, invested all this time and money into creating the perfect booth. Our booth had two TVs. We had a video that looped, the table. had a half inch lip above the face of the table so that the hamster ball could run around on it and not fall off.
Kurt Elster • 37:58.599
Smart.
Ethan Haber • 37:59.160
And we it was it was smart, but it was not Uh prudent. Like it i i i i we spent all this and app money creating the perfect booth, it didn't make a difference, and then three days later it got torn down. So now we uh have a banner that we've used at every trade show since we show up, we go to Home Depot, we buy a table and two chairs, as opposed to renting them from the exhibition space because They're gonna surcharge you like four hundred percent for a simple table and chairs, and then we just donate them after. There's a lot of ways to bootstrap exhibiting at a show and you can stretch your dollar a lot further if you take some time to be thoughtful about it is what I've learned.
Kurt Elster • 38:37.859
Yeah, it's uh I have never you know I guess I've never asked the right questions about going to a trade show before. That's really useful advice. Uh okay. Man, so you're you're twenty-six now, right?
Ethan Haber • 38:48.440
I'm twenty-seven. I just my twenty-seventh birthday was in January. I went to medieval times. So
Kurt Elster • 38:54.280
When we talked, I might have been 26. Schaumburg, Illinois.
Ethan Haber • 38:57.000
I went to I'm from New York. I went to the one in Jersey.
Kurt Elster • 38:59.640
They use like a specific bird this will get cut. They use a specific breed of horse. It's like a Spanish horse. Look, medieval top times up on Wikipedia, you when you strip away the ridiculous show, like how they treat horses and the way they approach it is like this historic family thing. Real. There's husband. Wow. And it's like specific to like they use a very specific breed of horse. We took our our kids Like Christmas Day or like the day after and it was a lot of fun a couple of times.
Ethan Haber • 39:27.380
Yeah, it's it was a bl I want to go back. It was a blast.
Kurt Elster • 39:30.260
Sorry. Just turned 27. Yeah. Happy birthday. Thank you. And I also uh turned an age in January. Congratulations. Thank you. And But yeah, you've been at this since twenty nineteen. This is a grind. Twenty twenty-six your first profitable year. Okay, seven years to get this going, but you believe in it, you're still going. Like what It's gotta feel validating now to where you're like, all right, this is this is gonna pop off. But you've had well, you know, tell me about it, like the grind, what kept you going?
Ethan Haber • 40:02.120
There were three or four years straight where we were like, if it doesn't go you know, the way we need it to go, we'll close it down at the end of the year. And then year end comes and we're just like close enough to keep going. So Uh it's tough because I don't want to tell someone who's, you know, pouring money into a failing restaurant, let's say, to just keep going. There's a fine there's a fine line between uh sunk cost fallacy and sticking it out. But it really it really it really is just not giving up and continuing to, you know, go at it. Uh I'm mentored by the founder of PetSmart and I talk to him every two or three months.
Kurt Elster • 40:38.640
Wow.
Ethan Haber • 40:39.119
And he always just says you can't see it now, but uh you're on the right path and if you keep going you'll make it to where you need to be.
Kurt Elster • 40:44.640
How'd you make that connection? That's valuable for someone selling pet stuff.
Ethan Haber • 40:48.240
Yeah, I I just DM'd him on LinkedIn. What? Yeah, and he responded and he called me. And everyone's accessible. That's another great lesson uh to share. But yeah, he he put out a book called uh The Pet Project. I might be butchering the name, but that's you'll find it if you Google that. And uh I have a few pages in it. Uh so it's been a very valuable connection. Especially when I'm at a trade show and I say, Oh yeah, I know Jim Dougherty. It's uh it's helped me out a lot.
Kurt Elster • 41:12.720
Yeah, I imagine. Well that's incredible. Hmm Yeah, it well, you should have led with that. I didn't even know.
Ethan Haber • 41:18.700
Well, we're here about me, not about the uh not to be a narcissist, not but not about the uh Petsmart mentor.
Kurt Elster • 41:24.320
Yeah, alright, you're right. Um the other thing this came up in our our pre-interview, you are credit there's a VR game over the pandemic that I I played and enjoyed uh from Squatch Games, you know, related to the Ricked Morty guys. Uh Trover Saves the Universe. You're in the credits for it.
Ethan Haber • 41:40.960
Yeah, I'm in the special credits. Uh I as as a hobbyist, I hand sew stuff to animals from scratch and I create my Instagram handles at HaberPlush Productions if you want to see my work. Uh but I create these really high quality soft sculptures and I was a huge Rick and Morty fan. And they have uh a satellite office in Raleigh d in Raleigh, North Carolina. I went to school in Winston-Salem. And I sent them a s I made a really nice stuffed animal and I sent it to the I found the address through their, you know, realtor. Like it's not publicly available information, but I was able to dig it up. I sent them the stuffed animal. They loved it. Uh, to make a long story short, I became a hired contractor with them uh for about a year and I made them hundreds of stuffed animals. uh that they used for you know promotions, giveaways, uh social media. And I play tested their game, found some bugs. My name's in the credits.
Kurt Elster • 42:37.560
That's cool. Did you I mean did you anything come out of it like uh you know networking lessons or it was just a cool experience?
Ethan Haber • 42:45.119
Uh I have the connections still and once in a while I'll reach out to one of the guys or a few of the guys who still work there. Uh I was back then I w I thought I wanted to be in the video game space. Uh since then, as you can tell I'm now in the pet space. So a lot of the connections are just people I know and you know see act their activity on uh LinkedIn or Instagram and keep in touch that way. But uh before I die, I would like to make a video game, so uh I'm sure the connections will pan out
Kurt Elster • 43:12.460
That, you know, had I known that sooner, the this episode would have been derailed. We would have done an hour on video games.
Ethan Haber • 43:18.860
Well we could talk after. We could talk short.
Kurt Elster • 43:20.620
No, I'm a big gamer. Uh okay. So if someone's listening, you know, what's one thing you want them to take away from this?
Ethan Haber • 43:29.840
I would think I would just reiterate my earlier lesson that everyone's accessible. Uh it's very easy to get lost in the weeds of uh someone being a superior or you feeling as inferior. Uh but Every way everyone puts their pants on one leg at a time. Uh not to semi cliche, but as long as you treat someone with respect, uh everyone's accessible.
Kurt Elster • 43:50.420
It is it's very easy to talk yourself out of reaching out to someone, you know, when the worst thing that can happen and the reality is they're probably just gonna ghost you. Yeah. And didn't that didn't cost you anything. That's fine. That is that's good advice. What uh all right, if I need to upgrade my hamster's living situation, where am I going?
Ethan Haber • 44:10.140
So our Shopify site is www. happyhabitats. net. You can find our products on Amazon. You can find it on Chewy. You can find it on Walmart. We're in Pet Value in Canada. We're in PECO, Mexico, and Mexico. We're in Petlands. Um if you look for us, you will find us.
Kurt Elster • 44:30.880
That's cool. And then my final question, we gotta save this for you know founder of Pet Smart. The logo pet Which is the where does the word change? Is it pet smart or pet space smart?
Ethan Haber • 44:46.180
So uh if you read his uh biography about founding the business, you will know that that's intentional and there's not a proper answer. It's like GIF versus GIF. It's just to drive Uh thought.
Kurt Elster • 44:56.800
Hmm.
Ethan Haber • 44:57.600
So that's my answer.
Kurt Elster • 44:59.280
Okay. And for the record, it is definitely GIF like GIFT, except the guy who created the format according to the game. The guy who created it says it's GIF. Yeah. So And I still think he's wrong.
Ethan Haber • 45:09.400
So what are you gonna do? There you go.
Kurt Elster • 45:11.720
The uh no, that one's always a fun debate. But uh Ethan Haber, happy habitat. Thank you so much.
Ethan Haber • 45:17.240
Thank you. It was a pleasure to speak with you, Kurt, and uh I look forward to seeing what comes
Kurt Elster • 45:23.539
Hey, before you go, I was hoping you would check out our new app, Promo Party Pro. It is what I want to be the single best, easiest way to run a free gift with purchase promo on Shopify. We just put it live in the App Store. We've got less than 50 users. We want your feedback. So if you need to run a free gift with purchase promo in the near future, install it, try it. There's a live chat. I check that all the time. And so if you have any issues at all, you know, or any suggestions on how we can make it even easier to use, let us know. We're happy to help. If you wanna try it, search promo party in the app store, promo party pro's the app. Give it a shot. It's got a free trial. Thanks.