w/ Kelly Oriard & Callie Christensen
Also available with video on Youtube: https://youtu.be/-qxIqPtAYhE
Join us as we explore the journey of Kelly Oriard and Kaylee Christensen, founders of Slumberkins, an emotional wellness brand dedicated to fostering children's self-esteem and mindfulness.
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Kurt Elster (00:17):
Hello again. Welcome back my friends today. If I were to tell you that we were going to talk about plush toys that would be both factual and wildly underselling the success of the brand we're going to learn about today. I want to know everything about this. I want to walk through the story. I want to go deep. I want to hear how this happened because the brand we're discussing today doesn't just sell Plush Toys and they've also been on Shark Tank, but they've gone at this point. Come on, shark Tank, you Shark Tank at contestants are dime a dozen. We've had so many on the show, which is really cool. We've had a handful of folks who had TV shows and this brand has not just a TV show coming out, a Jim Henson produced TV show it seems. I want to hear the story. We are joined by Kelly Oriard and Callie Christensen, the founders of Slumberkins and well, Kelly Kayley, welcome. Thank you for joining me on the unofficial Shopify podcast today.
Kelly Oriard & Callie Christensen (01:22):
Thank you for having us on. We're excited to share the story.
Kurt Elster (01:25):
Alright, Slumberkins, what is it?
Kelly Oriard & Callie Christensen (01:28):
Slumberkins is an emotional health and wellness brand for families. We have characters that teach different emotional skills like everything from mindfulness to self-esteem to conflict resolution, stress relief, and even a collection for grief and loss. Kelly and I are both former educators. I'm a former special education teacher and Kelly is a marriage and family therapist and school counselor and we've been best friends since we were 14, so it's, there's a long story behind how Slumber King's came to be.
Kurt Elster (01:56):
Then let's start at the beginning. What inspired you to start Slumber King's?
Kelly Oriard & Callie Christensen (02:00):
We ended up serendipitously on a maternity leave at the same time lined up with Callie's second son and my first son, both working in the schools and Title one schools at the time. And while we were on maternity leave with our new babies, we were really inspired. We were going on walks and talking about the difficulties that we were seeing in the schools, which was a rise in behavior, lack of supports for mental health, not enough homeschool connection where the skills that we were teaching as a therapist and a special ed teacher weren't connecting in the way that we wanted them to back home. And so we thought, well, maybe we can do something on our break from being in the schools and we decided to try to do something about it. So at the time we taught ourselves to sew, we created, we thought, let's use creatures and stories to help parents connect with their children and have these tools to support emotional learning on a deep level. Similar things to what I was probably doing in family therapy sessions to help boost self-esteem or start with mindfulness, things like this. So taught ourselves to, so wrote the first stories and sold Slumberkins at some craft fairs in the local Pacific Northwest and kind of just through the power of social media and community were able to get an intense following of people who loved the product and grew from there.
Kurt Elster (03:39):
How long ago was that? What year was this? When we started,
Kelly Oriard & Callie Christensen (03:42):
We started, that was in 2016. Well end of 2015, early 2016.
Kurt Elster (03:49):
So early on you come up with the idea and it's often in these entrepreneurial stories, it's pain or problem in someone's personal life. And so for the two of you, it sounds like it was professional experience that you were seeing issues that you felt you could address.
Kelly Oriard & Callie Christensen (04:07):
I would add and pain and problems in our own parenting lives with our own kids and our own journeys too. It was kind of a culmination of all three.
Kurt Elster (04:15):
Alright, I accept that and the serendipity. How do we go from that to let's make books and plush toys to help with this?
Kelly Oriard & Callie Christensen (04:25):
I think as moms and educators, we both recognized the power of story. We were doing this type of social stories and interventions in our roles as educators, and then we also had kids that love characters and love favorite TV shows and favorite books, and we kind of just saw the opportunity to really wed the two in a new way that had never been done before. A plush toy is an innovative children's book isn't innovative, but what we did was created really meaningful moments of connection through our publishing, like the way that we write Kelly as a therapist, infused therapeutic research, back therapeutic techniques into each storyline that then really created the magic that people really felt and experienced when they read a slumber and story and cuddled up with that creature. And then that magic really our first customers are what really fueled the brand forward. All of a sudden it wasn't us trying to figure out what to do, it was us trying to keep up with manned.
Kurt Elster (05:29):
I love in these journeys when a sewing machine becomes a rapid prototyping tool and it sounds like that would've happened here. The first plush toy, the first slumber, what was it?
Kelly Oriard & Callie Christensen (05:42):
We did a bigfoot and a sloth. Those were two first ones we're from the Pacific Northwest near Portland, Oregon. So Bigfoot, some people really believe in him out here, and it's just a really kind of fun character to play with and to infuse the storyline. Our Bigfoot character stands for self-esteem and some of his storylines are inspired by my own experience being very tall. I was six feet tall in sixth grade. Kids don't say the nicest things when you're so different. And so his storyline, Bigfoot copes with hurt feelings comes from those painful personal experiences.
(06:20):
And then our sloth sloths weren't trendy at the time, but it was a fun and unique creature. And Kelly saw the opportunity to really infuse a progressive muscle relaxation routine into a storyline for a bedtime routine for kids. And so those were our two first and most popular characters. And the sewing machine was a big part of year one. We personally sewed hand sewed about 4,000 Slumberkins, and while we were trying to understand overseas manufacturing and production and finding the right partners, especially when you're in the world of children's toys and especially in the world of toys or things that children sleep with, safety and production was a really big piece of the puzzle for us.
Kurt Elster (07:07):
Absolutely. Well, how did you go about researching that or figuring it out even when you're making it yourself? It still has to be flame retardant. It has to be nontoxic. Ideally we don't have lead in our plush toys, right? How do you address it?
Kelly Oriard & Callie Christensen (07:20):
Yeah, I mean, early days we were going down to our local craft stores where we were buying the fabric at Joanne Fabrics or just wherever was around town and putting together, it was really handmade crafted project almost in the early days. But then as we were unable to keep up with demand and wanted to keep trying, I started to do research about, okay, I had no experience in this. So I googled who makes Disney's plush toys, who makes Ikea plush toys, who are the best going to because they're going to have to follow those rules and standards, which we wanted to have as well. So actually it was like 11 pages deep on Google that I happened to run into the name of the president of a company that was based overseas, but he was in la. And so I just took a chance, wrote him an email and said, Hey, I'm a teacher turned entrepreneur.
(08:22):
I'm trying to figure out how to make Plush. I'm making this here. I can't keep up. I've bought out all of the plush in my local stores here and I think I have something, but I'd like to make, I think I said at the time, a thousand with you. Could you help me? And they did work with Disney and Ikea and everything. He's like, oh, that's really sweet. We make one skew, so one is 5,000, have to make 5,000 of them for one sku. And we were like, oh, so we're a little bit too small for you right now. But actually through connecting with him and I asked if he would be a mentor or just help me as I navigated trying to figure out how to do it on a smaller scale in an ethical way. And I think just through relationship building, by the time we got to the point where we were almost about to produce with somebody else who was smaller, they weren't able to give us their certificate of compliance around child labor laws.
(09:28):
And he was like, don't do it. This is like a scam. I cannot watch you go down that path. And so he ended up lowering his MQs for us and taking us on and taking a chance on us in that factory. And that person actually then we met people behind the scenes like the founder of Build Bear, Maxine Clark, because she also was using them in production and became good friends with her. And it just opened so many doors to have the right production person. And again, that is serendipity at its finest page 11 of
Kurt Elster (10:00):
Google. Yeah, that's incredible. There's so many, so often on the show we hear, he said, Hey, you're going to get scammed, like run, don't do it. And I've done enough of these interviews. It happens a lot. That's often the first terrible thing that occurs is issues finding and getting a manufacturer to deliver. And so I'm happy to hear you were able to avoid that. Where in the early days, what was one other primary challenge you faced other than locating a manufacturer?
Kelly Oriard & Callie Christensen (10:36):
I would say when we appeared on Shark Tank, that was right around the time that we were still making them in the US and actually our first shipment of, I believe it was 14,000 that we ended up getting in our first shipment over was landing on the day we aired on Shark Tank, but they were unpackaged. We had to figure out how to package them stateside. And then we aired in November and November 12th or ninth or something like that. And then it was the e-commerce holiday shipping window where we needed to quickly turn them to deliver them to families in time for the holidays. And so that was one of our biggest, most stressful pain point. We didn't have a facility that could receive pallets. We were still working out of our homes and I think we had a small office at the time that was 800 square feet or something, and we were still shipping them from our office as well.
(11:33):
We were our own fulfillment partners. And so that was chaos. And we had all of our friends and family join in on the fun on hand packaging, 14,000 slumber cans and shipping them out. I know Kelly and I personally missed Thanksgiving that year because we were doing customer service for Black Friday. It was just complete chaos. But at the same time, it was such an amazing opportunity for us as a brand just to think bigger for the brand. When you're put on that scale of a platform and program over what your strategy really is moving forward.
Kurt Elster (12:10):
Well, absolutely. Tell me about that Shark Tank experience. Did you get funded through Shark Tank?
Kelly Oriard & Callie Christensen (12:16):
No, we didn't even get an offer. We went in thinking, gosh, of course we're going to get an offer. We're going to win. And our only experience in business at the time was literally watching Shark Tank. So we watched every episode before we went there. We went in confident we quit our jobs before we got there. We were like, they're going to ask us if we're committed. We have to be true and honest, that we totally are committed. And then, yeah, we went in and I remember one of the things they asked us, so one of the things when we watched the show was we saw a lot of people get attacked for being wishy-washy when they were talking with the sharks. Like they said one thing and then the sharks said something and then they kind of waffled and then people would go out.
(12:57):
So we were like, whatever we say, even if we don't know that that's fully true, we're going to just be really confident about it. We're going to be like, yep, that's what we're doing, and we know exactly what we're doing even though we had no idea what we were doing. So they asked us, well, you're doing direct to consumer now. What's your plan for growth? And we were so early in that time, but we were like, we want to go mass. We're going to go mass. We want to get to more families. We want to get to spread this mission. And I remember Mark Cuban saying, well, you're going to have to decide is it the money or the mission? And I remember being like, it's the mission. And so it was like made us look really like, oh, these nice teachers. But then the next day after Shark Tank that we filmed, toys R Us went under, all retail was going down. We weren't super aware of that, but all of the sharks were, so they were like, yeah, no, we're out. We're not going to support you with your crazy idea to go to. You have something going good for DTC and you're going to switch to mass. That doesn't make sense. So everybody went out.
Kurt Elster (14:01):
So your experience is not unusual. Most people don't get the offer and even when they do, the due diligence comes after the show and you know this, but the due diligence comes after the show and then often it falls through there. I don't know that I've interviewed somebody or talked to somebody that actually got the investment through the show, but the real magic is the experience, the exposure, the legitimacy, and the bump. Every time the rerun airs, do you see it in your traffic? You're like, oh, rerun was aired.
Kelly Oriard & Callie Christensen (14:28):
Yeah, we do. I'll randomly look and see spikes and I can attribute it to airing. Or if I know that we're airing, I'll look and we do get, we'll still get, and people consume media so differently these days. People are still watching our season for the first time, just watching it on Hulu. And so we get dms all the time that it's like, oh, I just saw you guys on Shark Tank. I'm so glad you guys are still around. They really missed out. We still, I think, win over the consumers even nine years, almost like eight years later. Now,
Kurt Elster (15:01):
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(16:32):
So I always do this when someone says they're on Shark Tank. I Google brand name Shark Tank, and I check to see, do you have a Shark Tank landing page on your site? And I don't think you do it. Totally missed opportunity. Make a page for those viewers where you're like, oh, talk about your experience. Sometimes if you're lucky, you could embed a clip from the episode and then it's like, oh, and if you want to learn more, here's our products, our collection, get them to then browse it.
Kelly Oriard & Callie Christensen (16:59):
That's a great idea. I haven't thought about how to continue to leverage it other than just the inbound traffic that we see from it, but that's great.
Kurt Elster (17:07):
Yeah. Just a little quick. SEO win for the small community of Shark Tank attendees, when you think about your target market in your head, who is it? Who's the ideal customer? Like it's a unit, potentially multiple people?
Kelly Oriard & Callie Christensen (17:25):
Well, so this is where I think founder market fit really helps us. I mean, we typically market to overwhelmed parents, which we are. I have three kids, Kelly has too. We're very much in it. And so it's a natural voice and brand message where we can really kind of position our brand as, I mean, we are users of our own products as well, but right now, I think if we had to name our target personas that we've identified as a brand, it's a big segment of overwhelmed moms, another segment of first time super learner parents, people that just want to do everything perfectly for their first child, and then we know that if they have a second, they become the overwhelmed mom very quickly. But yeah, I mean our primary demo is millennial and Gen Z parents.
Kurt Elster (18:21):
I should have asked earlier, slumber King such it's a fantastic name. Was that always the name? Did you start with that? How did you come up with it?
Kelly Oriard & Callie Christensen (18:28):
Actually, we started because we were doing craft fairs, it was sort of me and Callie doing just different products. We had at our first craft fair, we had sewn what we were calling Slumberland creatures at the time, so those were our Slumberkins. So slumber was always part of the name because it was a bedtime routine that we came up with the plush, but we also had nursing scarves and decor. We were just going on this crafting project for these fares, and so our name at the time was Spoon and Moon, so Callie's last name was Spooner, so that was like spoon, and my partner called me Luna, so it was like spoon and moon. We thought, oh, that's a cute little baby brand and these are our slumberland creatures. But then we saw that the slumber, the creatures were the things that we're selling. So we're like, okay, wow, we have something here. We can drop the nursing scarves.
(19:28):
And we went to look up like, oh, could we get that name? And that is actually owned by Disney. So we were like, whoa, okay, that's not going to work. So we started just brainstorming around what are we doing? What are we trying to go for here? And slumber? We landed on Slumberkins with a whole bunch of the other funny ideas now that we look back, I think we really landed on the perfect name, although sometimes it doesn't express the fullness of what's underneath the surface with all of our creatures and the mental health and emotional wellness side. People just really hear Slumberkins and feel that comfort and connection and cuddling, which is great too.
Kurt Elster (20:17):
It is a good brand name and it's one of those where it's like it feels right, but when you hear it, you're like, I got to know more. There's an air of curiosity to it. I love that early on, you start with in-person events, I hear this a lot talking to entrepreneurs is they do in-person events because it makes a very impactful connection depending on where you live in-person marketplaces can be quite accessible, certainly me in the Chicago suburbs, there are several I like to go to and you get to connect to people face to face and help develop word of mouth and get feedback early on. Did you feel that, were you in potentially unintentional iterative product development cycle just going to those fairs and meeting the same people over and over?
Kelly Oriard & Callie Christensen (21:10):
Absolutely. I mean, the feedback was the thing that I think fueled us forward people. And to this day, when our brand is at any sort of trade show, we get lots of criers in the booths because the moment someone reads the storylines, it connects with them in such a deep way because what's embedded in the storylines is really a lot of inner child healing narrative and work that adults never heard as a child. And then it gives the parents that tool and that script from a family therapist to then read and kind of parent their children in a different way than all of us that were raised in the eighties or nineties didn't receive just because. And it's not that our parents, they didn't do anything wrong. The conversation around mental and emotional health, so much less stigma around it now. Now it's like, yes, proactively we build these skills instead of waiting until something's really wrong to address it,
Kurt Elster (22:07):
It makes me feel like I should be purchasing some of these books for myself. You're starting in markets. At what point do you start the Shopify store? When do you start selling online?
Kelly Oriard & Callie Christensen (22:20):
We actually started on Etsy first because it just made it easy. I mean, we were educators turned entrepreneurs. We just needed, its a marketplace market. And then we waited once we knew we were going to change the name to Slumberkins because we did our diligence of filing trademark before we launched with it. And that's something that really early on, because we were working part-time in the schools for the first 18 months, we didn't pay ourselves anything from any revenue we made. We invested it all into either purchasing more fabric and or IP protection. So to the point on sewing machines and prototypes, we got design patent awards on our character designs and also early trademark protection, which down the road has benefited us so much in the world of IP licensing in our deal with the Jim Henson company that you mentioned, the show, it streams on Apple, all of that, had we not laid that foundation either wouldn't have happened or it would've been a different scenario for us.
Kurt Elster (23:28):
Exactly. There would be a Jim Henson show that's suspiciously similar, but not the same thing. Yeah,
Kelly Oriard & Callie Christensen (23:34):
It's crazy. Even back in 2019, there was a blatant knockoff that ended up appearing at TJ Maxx, and when we sent a cease and desist and showed that we had proof of a design patent, they took them down, stopped selling and said they were actually surprised that we had that type of protection, but we were able
Kurt Elster (23:59):
To And they weren't counting on you to have it.
Kelly Oriard & Callie Christensen (24:01):
Yeah, no, they weren't. So it's benefited us for sure as a brand and just protecting the characters, which goes back to we started out as teachers and moms wanting to provide tools that just made bedtime more meaningful, more intentional, helped to proactively have these conversations around emotions and meeting kids' emotional needs to really help prevent some of the things that we were seeing in the schools with school-aged kids. And what we didn't really realize in the early days was that what we were really creating was some really valuable IP in the form of character IP that now that the brand is built and we have the 15 core characters, each character has almost its own platform around the different themes that they stand for and can be leveraged in the world of licensing and IP and content in so many different ways that it truly we're almost nine years in. And some days it feels like we're just getting started
Kurt Elster (24:58):
This pivotal business decision to get those trademarks to make sure this is, you formally own the IP for these characters and early on you can't picture what's going to happen. And so it just feels like this is a thing I know I'm supposed to do as a potential business owner here. And then down the road, you want to go back in time and thank yourself it seems.
Kelly Oriard & Callie Christensen (25:21):
Yeah, I think that's also just founders, other entrepreneurs and founders that we meet, it's a certain type of person. They're a little bit crazy if you regular people look at what you're doing and they're like, why? This is really weird. If you're not on the edge of people judging you and feeling like what you're doing is a little crazy or weird, you're probably not doing enough. Because really, I remember getting that first patent. The lawyer was like, I mean, sure we can get a design patent on this if you want to pay me. And I remember my mom saying, I don't know guys, this is really weird. Are you sure you want to do this? This is lovey flat animal. What is this? And I think we were so passionate about it and seeing people respond and having the experiences that they were there was just no stopping us. We just were like, Nope, this is how it goes. We have to get it protected. We're going to someday we'll have a TV show. And we did say that on Shark Tank and they laughed at us. So that was another one where they're like, yeah, that's what everybody says. And we were like, but we're going to do it. And
Kurt Elster (26:30):
Yet you were on TV with them and you did get that TV show. How did that happen? How did you get the show?
Kelly Oriard & Callie Christensen (26:40):
So we were at a conference called the Altitude Summit, the alt summit that is for creative entrepreneurs and design, and it's really geared towards women. And we ended up at a sponsored dinner and we ended up sitting at the same table as the president of television for the Jim Henson company. And we had done our diligence to know that they were going to be there or that she was going to be there. And so we were just hoping and wishing and praying that we had an opportunity to speak to her and that dinner was it. But to back up for a second, I'm leaving out the piece that's crucial to this story. When we appeared on Shark Tank, we did see a bump in revenue enough. So where Kelly and I said, okay, let's take $15,000 of that increase of bump and revenue of cash that we just got, and let's invest it in YouTube.
(27:30):
Let's invest it in making a puppet and content and let's try to bring one of our characters to life and see if we can do something ourselves on YouTube. So we had a friend build a puppet. We gave him the money to do it. He built a set in his garage and we filmed three puppet, Bigfoot puppet YouTube videos, and we learned a lot of lessons. We learned how expensive it is to make content, and then we also had the prototypes of our puppet. We had the concept, we had the vision that these things can come to life, so that in that moment when we met Halle, the president of television at the Altitude Conference, we were like, oh my gosh, look at what we're making. And she was like, what? It's a puppet. We need to talk more. And I love the mission. At the time, she was a single mom and she had a child that had anxiety, and so she really just connected with the mission and what we were doing, and it really became relationship based where we went out to dinner with her at the conference the next evening and at that dinner table, she was like, let's do this.
(28:38):
Let's make a show. And Kelly and I are sitting at the table kicking each other underneath the table, just not even knowing if this is real. And it wasn't until we got back to the Portland area back home and the next week we were like, okay, let's get on a call. Let's see what we need to do to actually make this happen. And I just remember exactly where we were standing in my house at the time when she goes, no, girls, this is happening. I'm the person you need to talk to. You don't have to pitch to anyone. We are just going to do this together. And so we have a very unique process. That's not how it goes for a lot of people to get a show made for us. It just comes back to relationship, serendipity, the timing, also the grit and tenacity around the work that we had put in to even get to the prototype and vision of it. So
Kurt Elster (29:34):
It is easy to dismiss your success as they got lucky, but when you just keep getting lucky over and over, it's not luck anymore. You have created a scenario, and there's a term for this. I heard a TED Talk called a luck sale, and I've been obsessed with this concept for years, since that the culmination of these decisions of your actions, of the things you're doing and the energy that you're putting out into the world and making people aware of what you're doing and what you are hoping to get is what creates these opportunities. And man, did it ever pay off for you? This is just incredible.
Kelly Oriard & Callie Christensen (30:11):
Yeah, thank you. We have a group of entrepreneurial friends that will joke around. In the early days, they would joke around and say, we were like the Mr. Beans of Business because we would just come back to the meeting and be like, and guess what's happening now? They just don't even, they were like, shark Tank. They're like, I don't even want to hear it anymore. Oh, you just stumbled in and now you have a TV show. Oh, we're selling these and now you found the best manufacturer. But I also just think too, it's like what we were saying, we definitely were, we've always been authentic and open and just ourselves and willing to look like crazy people because we were in it together. So we would always say, okay, well, even though this is scary and strange or weird, or people don't get what we're doing, we get what we're doing. And so we pump each other up and I think that's helped us keep driving forward. When I think other entrepreneurs or solo entrepreneurs, sometimes you lose your confidence or you feel like, oh man, maybe I need to go get my MBA or have a go to business school because this isn't working, that there's someone who's going to answer or be able to help you do it. But I think that it's just that tenacity and willingness to put yourself out there and fail a lot.
Kurt Elster (31:30):
Yeah, it is. You're right. I mean, you're going to get punched in the face. It's just accepting that you'll have to dust yourself off and then do it again. And as long as you could keep doing that, you get somewhere. Eventually
Kelly Oriard & Callie Christensen (31:43):
We thought that that would end at some point, maybe once we got to some sort of status in place with the business that we would stop turning around corners and getting punched in the face. Let me give you a little hint. It never stops.
Kurt Elster (31:57):
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(33:10):
I really don't have a ton of experience selling parents or family's children and parents. Is this a competitive market?
Kelly Oriard & Callie Christensen (33:21):
Yeah, it's very competitive. I mean, the toy industry by nature is one of the most competitive spaces out there, but that's more the traditional toy industry where they're fighting for kind of aisle space. I personally love the documentary on Netflix called The Toys That Made Us, it goes into the history of competitiveness of the industry, and that's where I think being direct to consumer really kind of set us apart in the early days because we didn't rely on retail to sell our products, and we also were able to build connection with the consumer with that Direct one-to-one relationship and really build an online community. You mentioned the big thing that happened to everybody in 2020 when Covid hit. It actually accelerated us because parents were really looking to find community online, and it's when our Facebook group of mostly moms kind of grew the most, and it still has almost 50,000 members in it. And there just our diehard Slumber King's community where we know of 10 adults that have Slumber King's tattoos because the messages and the characters are so meaningful to them, and everyone was shopping online and looking for ways to support kids and tools and resources. You were all trapped at home and you really needed support.
Kurt Elster (34:45):
Oh, yeah, a hundred percent. And people getting tattoos with your stuff. That's in business school. In case studies, when you talk about branding, inevitably Harley Davidson will come up and it's like, well, what other brands do people get the tattoo of the logo consistently? And so in my head, my MBA background says if they're getting tattoos of it, you have nailed your branding. Listen, we always
Kelly Oriard & Callie Christensen (35:11):
Put that in the decks when we talk to investors and we're like, here's our tattoo page. And they'd be like, okay, this is real.
Kurt Elster (35:18):
Yeah, there's a lot of legitimacy in that. I am curious about the way you purchase social media and community engagement. You've got a Facebook group with 50,000 people. Just talk to me a little bit about how you interact with that community or think about it or initiatives or within it.
Kelly Oriard & Callie Christensen (35:38):
Kelly and I stay very connected with that group. They're really the diehard community that shows up for when we do lives weekly in there, just really wanting to stay connected and also just show that we're just human. We're also in the trenches of parenting and figuring it out. We might be experts in our fields of a teacher and a therapist, but we're also still human and moms. And I think that in the world of children's toys and education, you can't find brands where you can get access to the founders. We've kept it and because it's just so meaningful. Another thing that happened where the community really showed up for us was when the Silicon Valley Bank crash happened, our funds were tied up in Silicon Valley Bank. Oh, no. Oh yeah. I mean, we had, so Kelly and I were flying back from New York that day back to Portland, and we had requested that the funds be transferred out to a different bank, but they did not make it out in time until when it crashed.
(36:45):
So when we landed in Portland, we didn't know how we were going to pay payroll the next week, and we had $0 in the bank, and we literally, we didn't know what we were going to do. And the bOriard had done an emergency meeting while we were flying, and someone on the bOriard had just said in recognition of as a bOriard member, or it's our fiduciary responsibility to think about wind down plans if this is bad, nothing if we can't recover funds and any of that. But Kelly and I, as the founders, you hear wind down plans of your baby that you've built and go into like, oh, no, valley are not going to kill us right now. We did not come this far to be killed by the bank. So we ended up launching a sale because what we did have was inventory that we could sell to generate cash.
(37:39):
So we ended up being very vulnerable and transparent with the community online and launching a sale and said, here's a code you can purchase with the code, or you can purchase full price. Anything that comes in will help save slumber kins because we literally don't know what we're going to do. And in that one weekend where the cash was in limbo all over the place, we generated as much cash as we lost that we lost in the bank. So then we at least knew, I mean, the community literally rallied and showed up and saved the brand that weekend. And then when everyone eventually got their cash returned to them, it really put us in a better position as a brand in this economic climate to begin with. And the community was just so happy to show up and say like, Hey, this brand matters a lot to us and organically share it with their friends and family, which is kind of what fueled the fire, because it's pretty crazy to me to think that even over that weekend, 60% of our customers were new customers, which means the community evangelized hardcore.
Kurt Elster (38:47):
That's incredible. That really does speak to the power of it, doesn't it?
Kelly Oriard & Callie Christensen (38:52):
And it was really only because we were vulnerable ourselves, not afraid to show our weakness that then people felt really compelled to show up for us. To this day, that was seriously one of the most impactful, meaningful things to have experienced when you really have no idea what you're going to do Well. And I think too, just the difference of how we approach that shows that we're not business people too, because I think some of the business people behind the scenes who are part of our bOriard or advisors, that there were people who were like, you should not have done that. You cannot show weakness like this to your customer. It's going to make you lose. Partnerships really came down hard on us, and I remember responding to that email and saying, look, we are here to promote authentic relationships, how to be in community and support each other.
(39:50):
We're showing up and supporting them, and we're not just going to grin and bear it when we're actually dying. We're going to reach out to our community because that's how we work. It's reciprocal, it's open, we're in connection with them. So this is such a brand aligned move, and it's just authentic to who we are. It's not a strategic thing. And I think just that shift of having businesses or women and just people coming and approaching things differently right now is, I think such a nice shift to just maybe the old way of look good at all costs, so you don't lose any clout
Kurt Elster (40:31):
A hundred percent. You're right in having that authenticity and that vulnerability works really well, but it is core to your brand and your mission. I think that engaging in emotional intelligence and authenticity and candor, just fabulous. Okay. Did you take a screenshot of the weekend sales and send it back to that person?
Kelly Oriard & Callie Christensen (40:56):
Oh, yeah. Oh yeah. They were fully aware. Yep. And I mean, it was one of those things where I think there was just conflicting perspectives, but at the end of the day, no one can be mad when your community generates as much cash as you lost in the bank to put the company back in a safe position. And investors don't have to fork over cash. They weren't planning to invest in a company in the first place. So it was all around a win-win. And actually, I think it brought us some partnerships. And I will say that we're still trying to untangle some of the data pieces. I think because of the unique aspect over sharing to customers that might not typically be our target consumer, we have dealt with some weird retargeting algorithm things behind the scenes over trying to reach the right customers based on if we're retargeting lookalike audiences that something happened with that weekend from a retention standpoint that we still have lots of theories about and that we're constantly kind of untangling, but it's all a learning lesson in the big picture.
Kurt Elster (42:15):
I want to switch gears a little bit, and I want your reflective advice on a few things. So if I'm an entrepreneur and I want to get into manufacturing, selling something into the children's products market and it's so saturated, what advice would you give me?
Kelly Oriard & Callie Christensen (42:34):
I would, we'll probably both have answers to these questions. I would definitely do your research. Before launching, we had an idea over what we wanted to do, and we did a lot of research on design content, what already exists and what would make us unique. And even before starting to sew, well, it was just a lot of online research, which kind of helped us even do our prototypes over how are they going to look different? How are we going to even be able to differentiate them enough to go get an IP to go protect them as ip?
(43:13):
I would say the thing that ended up helping us the most was from the get-go. Once we knew what we were doing, believing in our product, believing in what we were doing, and making real connections with people, whether that was customers or people that we were going to partner with, it came down to relationships that ended up unlocking doors and helping us move to the next step. One step in front of the other, the crafter that we went to, I remember it felt like we were going to the NCAA tournament, packing up the band, and we sold 10 of them, and we were ecstatic. We were so excited. So it's like not letting your planning or thinking get over your skis about where you want it to go, have your north star of what it could be and be excited about that, but also be excited about every step, every person that you impact, every customer that you talk to, and what's their experience and what's their feedback. And we were really just authentically, that was how we were operating, and I think that's what allowed us to gain community, to gain the traction that we did that then now we're able to really leverage the community. It's like the people who can show up and talk on our behalf and say how much they love it. That's what makes partnerships happen. That's what makes the doors open to expanding what we have now.
Kurt Elster (44:44):
The brand you have is very creative driven, so entrepreneurship hard enough, then coupling it to creativity. Well, maintaining that creative vision, creative output is tough. Is there anything you do to stay focused as a creative entrepreneur, to stay energized
Kelly Oriard & Callie Christensen (45:07):
At this point in the journey? It's a lot of self-care and balance that we need to do because both of us along the way have hit at different points, like a hundred percent burnout of just kind of running ourselves to the ground. Because in the early days when you have the opportunity to go on Shark Tank, you drop everything to make sure you hit those deadlines to get on that show. Then when you have a potential deal with the Jim Henson company, you do everything you can to make sure that deal goes through. And we sacrificed, and we also had new kids, new babies at home where we were in postpartum eras, not taking care of ourselves in the way that we should be. So now down the road, it's a lot more about how do we actually balance our cortisol levels in our system and be able to show up and add the creative value that we do bring to the company. I would say Kelly and I split a lot of the creative vision where Kelly's more over anything children's from product or publishing, anything that's going to get in front of a child through a parent Kelly oversees. And then anything that's creative and branding and communication to the parents is kind of what I oversee. And that's kind of how we've split the different creative realms too.
Kurt Elster (46:26):
I think that's smart having so work-life balance for sure. Self-care and clear delegation of who's responsible for what seems to be what has helped here, and being self-aware about it,
Kelly Oriard & Callie Christensen (46:40):
And also stepping out of the normal day to day. In this day and age, a lot of people are on Zoom calls all day long, and I don't know about anyone else, but it stifles my creativity. I think Kelly and I sometimes do our best work when we actually get outside and we're driving around going on an adventure. We're just in conversation and we really can have an authentic conversation that leads to kind of a brainstorm instead of feeling like, okay, in this next hour we're going to brainstorm this, this, and this, and we're all going to stare each other on Zoom. Sometimes that just doesn't work.
Kurt Elster (47:16):
So in the last eight, nine years, you've really come an incredible distance, and it's been quite the journey five years from now, where do you think Slumberkins is going to be? What's your vision?
Kelly Oriard & Callie Christensen (47:28):
My hope is that we're on track or on scale with being the next Sesame Street for this generation where we have the recognition across the globe. We have started that across the world with our partnership with Apple TV plus with our show. It's translated into 22 languages. But I think just that awareness and ability for us to help support changing the way we approach emotional health and wellness, and really looking at it from a systems perspective so that we're supporting kids, we're supporting families, and when we are able to support mental health, mental and emotional health, the way that we did literacy or reading with Sesame Street back in the day, I really think that's going to change a lot of outcomes for the future generation. So my hope is that we're solidified in that position in the next five years.
Kurt Elster (48:32):
I have Faith and I absolutely, I believe you and I believe in you because I know Yeti versus Elmo, Elmo's done. It's over, right? That cage match, I think Yeti's winning against. I mean, is there any of the Sesame Street monsters that we're going to be able to take on a Yeti? I don't think so.
Kelly Oriard & Callie Christensen (48:52):
Big bird's pretty huge
Kurt Elster (48:54):
Snuffle up. I guess maybe just by inertia.
Kelly Oriard & Callie Christensen (48:57):
Yeah, snuffle up and I mean, Oscar can be pretty intense. I don't know. Our characters are so sweet. I don't know if they could handle his trash talk. Maybe Hammerhead Hammerhead and Oscar Oscar would be a really fun parody.
Kurt Elster (49:13):
And on that note, where can we go to learn more about you?
Kelly Oriard & Callie Christensen (49:16):
Slumberkins.com and Slumberkins is the handle across all social channels, and our Facebook group is called The Slumber and Social on Facebook.
Kurt Elster (49:26):
I will include that stuff in the show notes. This what an incredible story. Thank you for sharing it with me, Kelly and Callie, just fabulous.
Kelly Oriard & Callie Christensen (49:36):
Oh, thank you. And did you say you're Chicago based? Yes. Oh yeah. Some of, actually our biggest shareholder and investor is out of Chicago. Listen, vc, I don't know if you've met them or have interviewed more of their portfolio companies.
Kurt Elster (49:51):
No, but I will always take an intro.
Kelly Oriard & Callie Christensen (49:53):
Oh yeah, they're great. And a lot of their companies are DDC focused. So yeah, they're good guys out of Chicago,
Kurt Elster (50:03):
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