I love disruptor stories, and Kevin Lavelle, the founder of Mizzen+Main (and now Harbor), has an overlooked but incredibly inspiring one.
Kevin revolutionized the men's dress shirt industry with performance fabrics. Under his leadership, Mizzen+Main grew from a great product idea into a company that has sold hundreds of millions of dollars worth of shirts and is now available in 500-600 stores, including 10 Mizzen+Main stores.
Now, he's tackling a new challenge by creating a more secure and stress-reducing baby monitor solution with Harbor. His journey provides a blueprint for innovative product design and successful company building.
Here are a few key takeaways from the interview:
- Kevin Lavelle shares his entrepreneurial journey of founding Mizzen+Main and the inspiration behind launching Harbor, an innovative baby monitor solution.
- Discover how Mizzen+Main leveraged influencer marketing, including a highly successful sponsorship on the Tim Ferriss podcast, to scale the business rapidly.
- Learn valuable lessons about building and managing teams, giving feedback, and recovering from mistakes as a first-time founder.
- Harbor's unique approach to creating a more secure, reliable, and stress-reducing baby monitor system with remote night nanny services.
- Understand the importance of building genuine relationships and providing value to your target audience when launching a new venture.
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Chapters:
(00:00) Introduction
(02:02) The Story of Mizzen + Main
(14:45) Sponsoring The Tim Ferriss Podcast
(21:14) Favorite Failures From Mizzen + Main
(29:26) What Is Harbor?
(40:23) Conclusion
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Show Notes:
- Kevin Lavelle (LinkedIn)
- Kevin Lavelle (Twitter)
- Mizzen + Main
- Harbor
- Tim Ferriss Podcast
- L Catterton
- Jim Carrey - 2014 Commencement Address
- JJ Watt
- New York Times Article - A No-Sweat Work Shirt?
- Brooks Brothers
- Kelly Starrett - The Ready State
- The Tim Ferriss Effect: Lessons From My Successful Book Launch
- The Tim Ferriss Effect - Podcast Edition
- Who Not How
- Radical Candor
- The Five Dysfunctions of a Team
- The Hard Thing About The Hard Things
- Nanit
- Charlie Hill (LinkedIn)
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Connect With Brett:
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thebrettcurry/
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@omgcommerce
- Website: https://www.omgcommerce.com/
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Past guests on eCommerce Evolution include Ezra Firestone, Steve Chou, Drew Sanocki, Jacques Spitzer, Jeremy Horowitz, Ryan Moran, Sean Frank, Andrew Youderian, Ryan McKenzie, Joseph Wilkins, Cody Wittick, Miki Agrawal, Justin Brooke, Nish Samantray, Kurt Elster, John Parkes, Chris Mercer, Rabah Rahil, Bear Handlon, Trevor Crump, Frederick Vallaeys, Preston Rutherford, Anthony Mink, Bill D’Allessandro, Bryan Porter and more.
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Other episodes you might enjoy:
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Transcription:
Kevin:
The first aha moment for me from idea to, okay, this is a reality, is when I wore our first prototype home from a seamstress who had made the prototype for me and my wife didn't realize I wasn't wearing my normal button down white shirt and suit and tie.
Brett:
Well, hello and welcome to another edition of the e-Commerce Evolution podcast. I'm your host, Brett Curry, CEO of OMG Commerce, and I am delighted to have on the show today the founder, the former CEO now chairman of Mizzen and Main. Now, I've been following Mizzen and Main for years now. First heard about them on the Tim Ferris podcast. Of course, if you're a Tim Ferris listener, he gives great endorsements and I was immediately sold when I heard his pitch on Mizzen and Main. And so I've been following them ever since. And they've worked with some greats like JJ Watt and Phil Mickelson and others. For those that don't know, you'll get the full scoop in just a minute, but it's a performance dress wear performance dress shirt for guys, and they've branched beyond that as well. And so we're going to talk about lessons learned and what that journey was like, and also get to hear a little bit about the new journey. And so I am absolutely thrilled to welcome to the show, Mr. Kevin Lavelle. Kevin, how's it going man? And welcome to the show. Thanks,
Kevin:
Brett. Glad to finally do this. I say in person, glad to do this live together and appreciate the opportunity to share what we're building at Harbor and reflect on what I've learned at MIS and Main.
Brett:
Absolutely. And so yeah, really excited to hear about the journey with Mizzen and Main, but also talk about Harbor, the new venture baby monitors, but to the next level, which I was just telling you as the father of eight kids, I could have used your software, your technology back in the day if only you'd been available. So can't wait to hear the story there as well. But let's dive in, man. Let's talk a little bit about Mizzen and Main. And so why did you start an apparel company? Why Mizzen and Main? Just give us the
Kevin:
Scoop. So right out of school, I got a job as a management consultant, did that for a few years and then worked for an investment team within an energy company here in Dallas. Two great organizations and I learned a whole lot, but I just had this burning desire to start my own thing. And there are some people who are an idea a minute, and there are others who have one great idea. And I felt like I had this one great idea. I was a college intern in DC, which taught me I never wanted to work in politics in dc, but I watched a guy run into a building soaked in sweat, and I grew up playing golf. I wore performance polos. I watched them sort of take over on the golf course and wondered why no one made a dress shirt out of this type of fabric makes, and I knew nothing about textile design, manufacturing, branding, none of that. But I just couldn't shake this idea and stayed with me for years. And I got to this point in my mid twenties that I just said, you know what? If I'm ever going to do it, now is the time. And candidly, working as a management consultant and then an investment analyst doing due diligence on other companies, I just sort of had this realization that no one knows what they're doing. We're all figuring it out as we go. It's not like I didn't have some magic playbook.
Brett:
Dude, I just want to pause for a minute. That is one of my favorite quotes, and I remember hearing some really smart people saying that, and even Paul McCartney in from the Beatles, I heard this interview where people were like, Hey, how did you do it? How did you plan to create this great band? And he is like, nobody knows. We didn't set out to be the largest most successful band in history. We just started making music.
Kevin:
You do something you love and things can really work out. Totally. And I'll extend that. We'll get to point where El Caterton, the world's largest consumer retail, private equity firm and really the gold standard in PE on consumer invested in mis doMain. We were so excited to have them, huge stamp of approval. We got them in our first board meeting. I'm sort of ready for them to show me, okay, now that you're in, here's how we do it. Right's, the secret sauce, the playbook sauce. Here's the secret sauce that no one has allowed to know unless we've invested in them. And as it turns out, they don't know either. And what works for one of their companies doesn't work at all for another one of their companies. Now, to be clear, they're brilliant operators. They're great investors, they've got a lot of good advice,
Brett:
Amazing track record.
Kevin:
There is no playbook, there are principles and there are things that change over time. But ultimately it was a little bit of that. You know what, I might as well just give this a shot. And it was sometime around the early days of starting, I don't know if that's when Jim Carey gave this speech or someone sent me an older kind of commencement speech and he talked about his father and lessons he learned from his father, and he said, I just realized I could fail at doing something I don't love. Or I could try to do something I love and it could work out great, but you can fail at anything. And so it might as well be something that you are deeply passionate about. We'll talk more about it. But I spent about a year sort of tinkering, launched in July of 2012. I expected we would like the world on fire with our performance fabric dress shirt, and that didn't even sort of happen. We actually had to go build a brand and build a team and build a business. But it's been an amazing ride and we've done hundreds of millions of dollars in sales since I started the business and gotten to do some incredible things and work with really great
Brett:
People. Yeah, it's so good man. And I know exactly that Jim Carey speech you're talking about. And it is so good because we sometimes are, human nature is like, lemme just go the safe route. Lemme just do the safe pick the safe venture, the safe hire, the safe whatever, and really the quote safe way, you can fail at doing that as well. So do something that you have conviction in passionate about fail doing something you love. So yeah, really, really great advice. Okay, so 2012, you launched the business and so you finally this dream that had been banging around in your head for quite a while. You put it into practice, you make your shirts. When did you realize, okay, I'm onto something. This isn't just an idea that I liked and a product that I wanted scratching my own itch type of thing, but I think there's a real market here.
Kevin:
There were a couple moments as I reflect on that question. Certainly when we launched and we had a launch party and some people came and said, oh, this is so cool. That was a kind of real crystallizing moment for me. I had the idea for years, the first aha moment for me from idea to, okay, this is a reality, is when I wore our first prototype home from a seamstress who had made the prototype for me and my wife didn't realize I wasn't wearing my normal button down white shirt and suit and tie. And that was like, okay, if she doesn't know and I've been talking to her about this since I met her, then there's an opportunity here. Then we launched the first we launched, we had a launch party that was great. I would say then there was the kind of valley of doubt for a while because it was hard.
And I mean it was literally, I poured my life savings into buying the first batch of product and that was the only way I could do it. I didn't pay myself for a couple years and there was a moment, and honestly now I can't remember when it was maybe 18 months, 24 months in something around that timeframe where I realized, hey, I don't remember the last time we had a day of zero sales because I had Shopify's app on my phone and I would see every sale that came in for years. I packed and packed and shipped every shirt from the house. And when I was traveling for work, my wife would fill in and pack and ship for me. But it was a moment where I just realized that I hadn't seen a zero day in a while. It wasn't like, oh, we haven't done it in a week or 10 days or a month.
I wasn't keeping track. I just remembered that that was the case and that really was the first, okay, now we're rolling. And I remember talking with some former colleagues who had expressed an interest in investing and I showed them kind of how we were doing and not disrespectfully, but they were basically like, this isn't something that I can invest in. You don't have any form of traction really. I like the idea. I think it's cool, but there's nothing I can invest in. It doesn't feel like a real business yet from an outside perspective. I mean obviously I disagree, but I saw him maybe two years later and this, he's a great guy and he's a great mentor and a friend, but I saw him about two years later and he's like, how's it going? And I told him and he basically was like, well, shit, that's a real business.
Why didn't you call me back? I'm like, I forgot. But there were moments like that where all of a sudden now we're rolling and I'm not. One of the things Mark Andreessen talks about is with product market fit and product market, that's a little different in apparel, but this idea of you move from pushing a boulder uphill to the boulder is going downhill really, really, really fast. It doesn't mean there aren't a thousand problems a day or things that could put you out of business at any moment. Totally. But in the 2015 timeframe, we sponsored Ferris's podcast, we got an endorsement deal with JJ Watt. We were well over, I think 200 retail stores carrying a product. All of a sudden it was like we couldn't miss, which took off, came with its own set of problems because we didn't think through some of the implications of our decisions. But those were some key turning points where it no longer felt like, I'm just trying to make sure that we sell enough shirts to live another day. Now we're trying to figure out how do we build a business, how do we scale? How do we build out some of the key capabilities that we'll need to grow?
Brett:
How do we stay healthy and grow in a way that the whole thing doesn't implode, which is a real issue when you're growing at the scale and the speed that you guys grew up. Now, I know you don't disclose publicly revenue and things like that, but for those that don't know, and I know a lot of people are geeking out listening to this because they've followed you like I have, but give us some idea of the size of Misam in Main. Yeah, so
Kevin:
2012 we launched in July of 2012. We did something like $50,000 in revenue, and then in 2013, something like 250,000. In 2014 we officially crossed a million dollars in revenue, and that was when things really started to bend upwards. As I said, 2015, we sponsored Ferris's podcast, we did the deal with jj. It was like now we're rolling. And we were growing at multi hundred percent a year for many years. And since I started the company, we've done many hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue. And today we're in something like five to 600 maybe more points of retail distribution. We have 10 of our own stores and a vast majority of our business is direct to consumer through our stores and our website.
Brett:
It's so awesome, man, and kudos to you and you guys really started this trend because there's a lot of other brands that sell shirts that are similar, but really, you guys were the first, right?
Kevin:
Yeah. It's funny. We launched in July of 2012 and right around the same time that we launched it, no one had ever made a performance fabric dress shirt. And at almost the same time that we launched, there was another company that started and was doing some of the same things that we were, but then we were sort of alone for the next four or so years, and we were laughed out of every trade show multiple times by the same vendors who told us, no one will ever wear this product. And at first it was a little disheartening and you just as an entrepreneur, you just sort of have to shake it off. But then all of a sudden when they would say, well, no one will ever wear this. I'd be like, that's fine. We got 50 other stores that are carrying our product and we've sold over a million dollars worth of it. And they kind of look at you sideways. Clearly
Brett:
Somebody's wearing these
Kevin:
Things, someone's wearing it. And that comes to know your customer, not a fashion company. And for people who are apparel snobs who need to get perfectly bespoke suits and perfectly bespoke shirts where everything is exactly to the right millimeter, sure, well, we're not competing with that. We're competing with everything else where guys are going in and they need a shirt that makes 'em look great and feel great. And existing options just weren't cutting it. And now today, virtually every men's apparel company, and now lots of women's are doing some or all performance, everything that they do. And one of the more memorable moments, we got a great article in the New York Times in, I think it was 2014, may have been 13, and the writer doing his due diligence reached out to Brooks Brothers and said, well, what do you think about this? And one of the guys was, I mean, professional and respectful, but basically was like, we are a natural fiber house and sort of let the kids be kids, other kids will go do other stuff.
And it wasn't rude, but it was very direct. That's not what we do. And at first it was a little unnerving for me at the time, especially being a first time entrepreneur, I was a little nervous like, oh no, now they're going to be onto us. But then I realized I want everyone onto us. I want everyone to know about us, and if they don't know about us, I'm doing something wrong. And that sort of stuck with me for a long time. And then when I saw other businesses start to copy what we were doing, it really never bothered me at all. In talking with some investors, they have some investors and I'll overgeneralize here would say things like, well, a man has 15 dress shirts in his closet. Which one are you replacing? Which one is he taking out to put yours in? It's like, none guys don't
Brett:
Have
Kevin:
One in one. It's kind of
Brett:
A silly question,
Kevin:
Honestly, mentality on their shirts. Now they may stop buying something else, but unless you are Tiger Woods and even he left Nike, unless you're Tiger Woods, you don't have one brand in your closet, most guys are going to have five to 15 brands in their closet. And so there was an opportunity for us. We established a beachhead with our dress shirt, and then we were able to expand into different verticals.
Brett:
Yeah, so cool. So I want to talk a little bit about that expansion of the verticals in a minute, but let's talk about the Tim Ferris podcast and other inflection points. So that's just a frame of reference for me where I heard about you and I heard about him talking about how he could wad the shirt up, throw it in a bag, sweat in it, wear it three days in a row is all good. So I was like, wow, this is this magical shirt here. What was that process like? How did you get onto the podcast? What did that do for you? And talk about how that compares to maybe other inflection points.
Kevin:
Well, Tim, we worked with some pro athletes in 2014, and we started selling into pro athlete locker rooms, which gave us an opportunity to do the endorsement deal with jj. That was 14 in 15. We did the endorsement deal with jj. That was the first big, now we're being recognized.
The explosion point though, all of a sudden we doubled overnight and never looked back from a daily sales perspective. And we had huge pops was the Tim Ferriss podcast I remember pulled into, I used to go to Gold's Gym in uptown in Dallas, and I pulled into the parking lot and I saw on Twitter, he posted, I'm accepting sponsors for my podcast in q1. I've got one slot left, lemme know if you're interested. And so on. My phone just tapped in a whole bunch of details about Ms. Main said We would love to sponsor you. And I referenced the fact that Kelly Star, who is also known as the supple leopard or mobility wad, Kelly loves our product and Kelly and Tim are friends. So I mentioned Kelly and I got a note back from Tim, I don't know, within a few days, and basically said, Hey, this seems really interesting.
Send me your product. I'd love to check it out. I need to believe in it to endorse it. And a couple days later, he called me. And if you followed Tim, that in and of itself is a unique experience. He is very much like Async and manage my time. And I'll never forget he called me because he said, I want to be certain that the podcast was expensive. Now, probably, I don't even know, tripled quintupled in price since then, but at the time it was incredibly big bet for us. I'm sorry. And he said, I want to know that this isn't make or break money for you. I know you're a small startup and I believe I could do really good things for you, but if this is make or break for you, I don't want to do this.
Brett:
Wow.
Kevin:
And
Brett:
That's impressive, man. That's just some real integrity.
Kevin:
It does. And I think it is who Tim is. It helps that there was a personal connection he did. And he told me I called Kelly and I made sure that this what you said was true. And Kelly gave us a ringing endorsement, but I said, no, no, it's not. We're good. And I wasn't lying, but it was pretty close to being a makeup.
Brett:
It was a big bet. It was a big bet.
Kevin:
It was a huge bet, and it wouldn't have sunk us as a business, but it's more like, I don't know how many more swings or at bets I could have even taken. Yeah, yeah. So I could go through all the details, but I mean basically the podcast, the first one dropped on a Tuesday and by I think Wednesday or Thursday, we were a net positive ROI across all three podcasts within 48 hours or 24 hours or something like that of the first podcast advertising advertisement. And it was also absolute chaos for us as a business because our systems were not prepared for that level of influx we did.
Brett:
He talks about the kiss of death. If it goes too well, you could put someone out of business because like the Oprah Effect or whatever, you may not be able to handle this type of volume, and
Kevin:
We could not. It was a nightmare. But you do the best you can. You make up to customers that you let down, people would order things, and our inventory systems weren't correct. So we'd be out of stock. We just took care of customers the best we could. We were transparent about it. But one of the outcomes of that experience was I had read an article called the Tim Ferris Effect, and it was about an author who Tim mentioned his book and the author could see his Kindle, and he had a bunch of other big press hits and big moments that didn't move the needle on his Kindle ring. And then Tim mentioned it and he went from 1000 to 192. And so I thought from a thank you to Tim and a reality of how do I tell this story of what we're building at Visitor Main?
I'm going to open the book on what this experience was like. So I wrote a media article called the Tim Ferriss Effect podcast edition. And still to this day, Tim has my article linked in his webpage in his Tim blog about what it's like to work with him. Because while I didn't give real numbers, I gave total percentages like 400% increase in ROI. And it was a thank you to Tim, and it was a great opportunity for us to tell our story, and it has resulted in this long tail of awareness for many, many years. And to put a full circle bow on this, I hadn't talked to Tim in a couple of years, and when I launched my new business harbor, I shot him a text and I texted almost everyone I knew and said, I launch a new business. Will you buy a waitlist spot?
Will you tweet about us? Will you share it with your friends? I wasn't going to do that to Tim. And so all I said was, Hey, Tim, you changed my life with Ms and me. I just wanted to let you know I launched a new business. I'm really grateful for your partnership. By the way, I don't even know if this is still your phone number. And we ended up texting back and forth, and the next day we got on a phone call and he said, I want to invest in what you're building. And so Tim is actually a very significant angel investor in Harbor. That's amazing. Which is a really cool full circle moment and a testament to the power of good relationships.
Brett:
It's so cool, man. And it's so cool that you did that the right way, first of all, for you to recognize on your way to the gym, you recognize opportunity, you acted on it right? Then you direct messaged him, you had the connection with Kevin and you made it all, or I'm sorry, Kelly, Kelly. And it made it all work. And then that just led to this long time effect on the business and a friendship and really powerful, now very influential investor. And so kudos to you for doing that. That's awesome. I want to dig in a little bit, and before we talk Harbor, which I want to get to in just a second, any good lessons from failure and I think the way Tim sometimes talks about in the podcast, any favorite failures along the way, lessons that you're taking into your next venture?
Kevin:
Yeah, I would say not any specific failure, but plenty of failures around the product side. For a while, we just did so well at selling out of most of what we made that we weren't very good at forecasting, inventory planning, managing merchandising. What does it look like when you end up with 250 of these units at the end of the season? Well, we didn't really have that problem. And so we just were constantly underselling under buying what we should and not really sophisticated in merchandising. I had an interview with a prospective board member once Catterton invested, and she said, tell me about your merchandising team. And I said, well, I will when you tell me what merchandising is. And she said, at the end of our interview, she goes, I hope you picked me. I understand it, but I'm not the right fit for this.
And she was awesome, but she said, promise me you will go hire a merchandiser tomorrow. And the reality was, the way I described, it's we were tripping forward so fast downhill that we never fell on our face. We tripped a lot, but we just kept going. And our mistakes were, yes, our mistakes were always salvageable. And that's fine up until a certain point, right? When you have a hundred thousand dollars purchase order and you screw it up, you can survive that when you have a $10 million purchase order, you cannot survive if you mess that up because the ability to fill in underneath that gap is almost impossible. And so I think what I would say from a failure perspective in the lesson learned is I couldn't necessarily hire experts along the way. At MIS and Main, we had very little funding forever, and most of the industry experts I talked to told us why our idea wouldn't work and why we'd never be successful.
So I just sort of like, I'm not going to hire anybody from the industry then. And all of us outsiders changed the industry ourselves. Now that was misguided. I could have found one or two industry insiders who were excited about what we were doing and could have helped us build a more robust engine. And so as I carried that forward into Harbor, and also importantly, I have a track record with Mizzen and Main. So I've been able to get investment to Build Harbor, very expensive to build a consumer electronics business. And we have telehealth and software services. I have brought in some incredible partners. My co-founder is a chief product officer. We've got an incredible head of hardware, really sophisticated and technical people that are required to do something as sophisticated as hardware. And so surviving each of those crazy mistakes would be a, I'll say, a favorite mistake.
And then I think the other thing is the first time around favorite mistake was learning what it meant to hire, grow, and manage, including managing out a team. I made so many mistakes in that hiring process. When I started Mizzen in Main, I'd never even interviewed someone, let alone hired them or been a manager. And so learning a lot about what it means to be really transparent and direct with team members along the way. And there are some people who are incredible at another company and not the right fit for your company or your style or that role. And you're doing them a disservice to keep them in that role or even in the company. And letting someone go is always difficult. Sometimes people make it easier for you, but it's always difficult. And for all of the really great people that I worked with that we had to let go because it wasn't the right fit or performance wasn't there, I feel like I got better over time about coaching and feedback and all of that.
And even when it was a hard exit within three to six months afterwards, I saw where they landed and they were a happier person and their life was better. It was a better fit. And it doesn't mean it's easier to let someone go, but it gave me more as I moved through that. And as I think about building Harbor that you treat people with respect, you set them up for success, you give them clear, concise, consistent feedback, and if it doesn't work out and you've done everything that you are supposed to do, well, then they will be happier and more successful somewhere else.
Brett:
100%. I fully agree with that. And it's one of those things where we think we're being kind. We think we're doing someone a service if we either A, don't give direct feedback or B, just keep someone longer than we should. But really having that direct feedback is what people need, even if they don't love it in the beginning. And then you're promoting them to their next opportunity, which is a great way to put it. As long as you handle that with honor and dignity, man, it sucks. It sucks for both parties. I've had to do it a number of times, but I would agree with you when it's not the right spot, then they're going to be happier eventually somewhere else. A couple of books that they just come to mind that I really love that tie you into what you just said, I love the book Who, not How, and I cannot remember the author, but often the problem we need to solve and the fix we need in our business, it's a who not as much a how.
And I also love candid conversation, or I mean, I'm sorry, that's a good one too, but Radical Candor. Thank you Kim Scott. So good. And I love her quote. It's not mean, it's clear. And so just being very clear with feedback, I want it. I think top performers want it as well. And then quick side one is Five Dysfunctions of A Team by Patrick Lin, a great one, just like how to build and lead a team. And dude, it's hard. Most of your natural instincts are not right when it comes to attracting and leading teams. And it's a skill you got to develop, and really you don't get it until you do it. And so I'm right there with you. I've had many mistakes in building and growing teams, but thankfully, hopefully I've gotten better.
Kevin:
The thing that I have to remind myself when I don't want to give feedback is me not giving them feedback that is a reflection on me, not them. I'm uncomfortable. I don't want to tell someone something that they may not want to hear, but if they don't want to hear it and they don't respond, well, that tells you everything that you need to know because great performers will say, give me more so I can make better decisions, and I don't want to find out later that you wouldn't tell me something along the way. And then if people can't handle the feedback, then they're not a good fit for your culture, and that's okay. It's not a bad thing to say you're not a good fit for this company because there are a lot of other companies, and you deserve to wake up every day and feel like this is where I should be. And yeah,
Brett:
Hundred
Kevin:
Percent doesn't mean that that always goes smoothly.
Brett:
So true. So let's pivot. Let's talk new venture. Let's talk harbor a little bit. And so explain to us what this is, and again, what was the inspiration behind this?
Kevin:
Yes, I will say one thing as you were talking about books, the one that I will, I think it's my most gifted book from a business perspective, is Ben Horowitz. The Hard Thing About the Hard Things, and
Brett:
I've never read that one. I will absolutely get that.
Kevin:
The first time I read it, I felt like I had a new sense of calm and that I wasn't crazy for how unbelievably difficult building an organization really is. Ben is an incredible investor, a great human, and the book is every person should read it, whether you are a CE manager or an entry level team member, it's just absolutely fantastic. So the hard
Brett:
Thing about hard things by Ben
Kevin:
Horowitz, yes, hard thing about the hard things. It's somewhere on the left side of my shell. It's right there in the middle. Hard thing about the hard things next to George Marshall. Nice. So Harbor. Yeah. Where did this come from? So in the journey of building Mission and Main, my wife and I actually worked together for many years. She came on board full-time in 2014, and we had our first child, Jack in 2016 actually signed the term sheet with El Catterton in the delivery room. It was a momentous time,
Brett:
True like an entrepreneur. I was answering emails when my wife was in labor one time and she was not happy about that.
Kevin:
That is the correct feeling for that moment, yes. But when my son was born, I did a whole bunch of research and it seemed like the most innovative product on the market was a company called Manic. Nanit is a wifi camera, like a Nest or a ring camera wise, any of the just basic wifi cameras that runs an app on your phone, and they market it as a baby monitor. Importantly, it is not a baby monitor. It is a wifi camera that runs an app on your phone. And so how do you monitor your baby? You have to have your phone next to you all the time, and you need to be running that app in the background. But I learned that apps crash all the time. And if an app crashes, it can't warn you, I crashed because the app crashed. If you forget to plug your phone in at night or you plug your phone into a dead outlet or the cord doesn't work, rarely do we check that our phone is charging if we've plugged it in a routine that we're used to.
If your phone dies, there's no way for you to be alerted that you're no longer monitoring your kit. And I learned this the hard way because I woke up one morning, my son was a couple months old, and the app had crashed, and I rolled over and I realized there's no audio coming out of my phone. I don't want to sleep next to my phone. It's a problem for basically all of us. We shouldn't sleep next to our phone, but that's what I was doing. And so once that crashed, I did a little more research and learned you can't rely on a wifi based camera with an app on your phone. So I went out and bought an old school Motorola camera and an old school Motorola Monitor. So we had a dedicated, albeit very junky device that would tell us if we were no longer monitoring our kid, but we also kept a wifi camera because as my wife went back to work and we have babysitter and nanny's in the house, we want to be able to check in and you want some sort of record, absolutely anything got wrong.
Seven years later, no one has solved this problem to have the best of both worlds, a camera and a monitor that is a dedicated device that will alert you if it's disconnected or if it fails or any of those things go wrong. And I have wanted to build this since 2017 when it happened to us. And so what we built is a, I've got one of the monitors here. It's a camera and a dedicated 10 inch tablet that you can watch up to four different kids at the time, the camera and the tablet work without internet. They connect directly to each other, so you can use it if your internet goes down, if your wifi goes down, you can use it at a hotel or you're traveling somewhere that doesn't have wifi. Both devices also connect to the cloud, so you get the best of both worlds.
We built the device. Charlie, my co-founder, awesome guy, great dad, he's a dad of two young kids. We built the device that we'd wish we'd had when our kids were that age. We also did things that really prioritize security. And so the camera itself has a memory chip in the device. So all of your memory and all of your footage is on your device, and you can choose to save it down to your iPhone. Cute moment happens, there's something you want to say. You can save it down to your phone and manage it however you want to, but we don't have access to your memories and your feed. And that is a really important distinction because all the other wifi based systems are running through someone else's cloud. And if you are at home, your feed does not leave your home. Now, if you're out of the house and you check in on our Harbor app, of course it leaves the house going to you, but that's end to end encrypted and we cannot see it.
We cannot access it. And that is a fundamental distinction. We also are building both products, the camera and the tablet outside of China. And so from a security and a firmware perspective, we've heard a lot of concerns from parents about backdoor access from some of these wifi cameras that knows where they're built or where the clouds are, or if there's some sort of glitch in the firmware. So we feel we're really excited about that. And then the second kind of unlock, and the big moment for us is our camera and our tablet become the foundation for a remote night nanny platform. And the idea is to democratize access to sleep training. In Dallas, where I'm from an in-home night nanny costs three to 400 plus dollars a night in a city like New York or la, it could be 700 or more if you can even find someone.
And it's also a total crapshoot in terms of quality and reliability. It's an unlicensed, unregulated uncertified position. And I'm not suggesting we should be regulating night nannies, but it's just the reality that it's the wild west. You don't necessarily know what you're going to get. We work with some night nannies. They're incredible. We've worked with advisors who built night nanny companies, amazing people that have helped thousands of families, but most people can't afford that. And so what we are offering is for $20 a night, you get all night coverage where you remotely have a professional night nurse or night nanny, control the volume on your monitor and only wake you up when it's time for you to go in. So broad strokes, what does that look like? If you have a healthy four month old, it's about 10 minutes that you can let them fuss or cry before you go in, as long as nothing is wrong.
So they start to fuss or cry. Our team looks in remotely and says Nothing is wrong following safe sleep protocols, and they're not stuck, they're not flipped over, and you sort of let 'em fuss and cry for a little bit. 2, 3, 4 minutes goes by and they stop. Well, you won't wake up, but if that 10 minute threshold is reached then and only then we'll turn that volume on and send you through a reminder, Hey, your last feeding was at 11:00 PM We're trying to wait until 1:00 AM. Here's a reminder of how you do it. And so you bring that all night eyes on expertise and coaching and guidance remote. And so therefore, we can bring the cost down to like 95% lower than a traditional N nurse. So we've done this with about a dozen families. The results have been life-changing for the families that we've worked with. We launched our wait list in February, and we'll begin shipping the first a hundred units of our product this spring and begin shipping the rest of the products once we launched our presale late summer. So it's really
Brett:
Exciting. It's amazing, man. It sounds like the wait list has really taken off, so you get a lot of interest. Talk to me a little bit about, so obviously the focus has all been, I'm assuming, on the technology and the plan, and you're solving all the problems that parents of infants have. What's kind of the plan for how are you going to distribute this and promote it, and how are you going to get people interested? And maybe it's just taken off grassroots so far?
Kevin:
So we're doing a couple things. We did launch a wait list. Wait list is filling up, which is exciting. We'll convert that over to presale here in the middle of May is our current target. We'll be finalizing that shortly year one, it'll be almost all direct to consumer. We're in talks with a couple of great baby boutiques where we would have some sort of relationship with them that we're working through what that would look like. We have started from the launch of our website, building out really great clear cut value add content for parents. So if you have a question about sleep training and feeding and all the things that parents have in those first few months and years, we want to have the best answer available to you with unequivocal clear guidance. There's a lot of content out there, and a lot of it basically tells parents, you're the parent, whatever you think is best is best for the kid because they don't want to offend a parent with the idea that whatever that parent wants to do may be wrong.
Now, ultimately, parents are responsible for what should I do? What do I think is best for my child? You're the parent. But there are some things that are really just not up for dispute. Like kids need a significant amount of sleep for the first year of their life, and that will go down over time. Kids crave consistent structure and routine. And so every night before you put your kid to bed, you should try to do the same type of routine. Now, whether that's at six 30 or eight 30 because of your work schedule or whatever else is going on, yeah, you got to adapt, you got to make it work. But the idea that, well, I'll just put my kid down whenever they're tired. Well, kid doesn't know when they're tired. That's your job as a parent. And a lot of these websites will not offer that level of clarity.
Now, if you want to put your kid down whenever you want to put 'em down, more power to you. That's great. But parents seeking guidance and information and Hey, what are some of the best things I can do? Deserve to know science-based answers. So a lot of content to serve parents and create value. And then we've begun working with some great mom influencers. It's 2024 mom influencers carry a lot of weight. Super smart, super smart, no doubt. We're beginning to send some mom influencers product to try and share their experience. And it's cool. We've done about a dozen remote night nanny tests, and we're now working with some of these influencers to help sleep, train their kids remotely and have them share the experience of how much better it was to get that sleep. And then the last thing is kind of, I'll say a myriad of additional tactics.
Like we've partnered with a hospital to give a month of sleep coaching for free to all their parents who are going through and delivering at their hospital. We're looking to partner with corporations to offer it as a perk to their employees. We are forming partnerships with some PTAs and some mom groups. We've also brought in a number of obs pediatricians, lactation consultants to be advisors to the company. We've created the Harbor Council to provide guidance and insight where they can also write and share their perspective that they may not be able to share in their clinical setting. So all of those, I mean, it's early days. We officially launched our website just a couple months ago, and we began taking pre-sales in February. So excuse me, wait list in February. So early days, and excited to see, I mean, when I launched Mizzen and Main, Instagram was barely a thing. And now it's one of the most critical drivers of most consumer brands. So you got to adapt and find the right way to get the message out
Brett:
There. I love it, man. And you're scrapping, you're hustling. You obviously got great connections now because of your past success. But looking at all those ways that you're partnering with the people, the entities, the resources that have the ear of your customers, obs and hospitals and PTA groups, I think you're about to do a Facebook Live. As soon as we wrap up here, which I'm watching the clock, I got to let you go here just saying, doing a Facebook Live to a moms group. You're out there sharing the word, and that's what it's going to take. And yeah, man, I'm really excited, excited for you. Again, a little bummed that this wasn't around for at least one of the eight Curry kids. But yeah, really excited to watch this grow. So if people are watching and thinking, man, I'd like to get on that wait list, or I need to share this with my kid or family member, how can they check out? So we
Kevin:
Are online@harbor.co, H-A-R-B-O r.co. We're on all the socials at Harbor Sleep. I tweet at Kevin s lavell, and you can find me on LinkedIn. I've been posting some of the journey along the way. So those would be the best places to find us. And I think the other thing I'll say, just to put a bow on how we're launching and going about this, our focus, we are mission is happier parents and healthier families, one restful night at a time. And we want to lower the stress and anxiety of parenting. It's already an unbelievably difficult experience, the most stressful life altering thing that almost anyone will go through in their life. And so much of what's out there increases the stress, the pressure, the anxiety, the shaming, there's guilt, there's all of that. We want to try and lower that. And one of the ways that we're doing that is telling the truth about these baby biometric devices that are now prolific.
Some of these companies, some of the key players have created devices that are supposed to track your baby's heart rate, their respiratory rate, their blood oxs, all of these different things. Unfortunately, none of them are approved by the FDA and the American Academy of Pediatrics advises against using these devices because they're not reliable. They haven't undergone independent clinical tests. And that's why at the bottom of their websites, usually somewhat hard to find. There are huge disclaimers about do not rely on these devices to prevent, cure, diagnose any diseases. They cannot be relied upon for sids. They cannot be relied upon for R sv, but yet they market, Hey, as a parent, don't you want the ultimate peace of mind? Are you worried about your child's breathing? And that's just, it's shameful marketing, and it is not the,
Brett:
They're giving false hope, false sense of security,
Kevin:
Right? Absolutely. And this is part of why the American Academy of Pediatrics advises against it, because what you need to do every single night as a parent is be vigilant about safe sleep. Is the mattress the way it should be? Is it at the right height? Is it a tight fitting crib sheet? Are they in the right type of pajamas? Nothing else in the crib. That is how you protect your child in a physical sense. If you follow that, you've done everything that you can do and you've done everything that you should do. But when you strap a wearable to a kid, not only does it increase parental anxiety, it lowers the sense of vigilance that parents should have about what they should do every single night. So I have found this has been one of the things that people have been most responsive to in our early days of messaging. They're excited about our new product, but I just got invited on Cheddar News up at the New York Stock Exchange earlier this week to talk about why we are not going down that road. And it is a very different approach to baby marketing and parent marketing that we are proud to stand behind. We're not going to use the fear-based marketing. And I just want to make it easier to be a parent. I know what it's like. It's the most wonderful and stressful thing that any of us can experience. So let's make it a little bit
Brett:
Easier. I love it, man. There's this safety aspect you built in the privacy piece, which is becoming more and more necessary. We're all aware of, man, we don't really have any privacy. So making your product very secure. And then, yeah, there's just the good sleep portion of this, right? Because my wife and I always said, man, if we can get a good night's sleep, we can probably handle anything. But if you don't get sleep, man, there's only so much you can take. And so kudos to you, man. Really excited to watch how Harbor takes off. I'll be watching and cheering from the sidelines. So with that, Kevin, thanks so much, man. This was a blast. Appreciate the opportunity, Brett. Absolutely. And as always, thank you for tuning in. We'd love to hear from you. If you've not left us a review on iTunes, please do that. Or if you'd love this episode, which I'm sure you did, then share it with someone who needs to hear the harbor story, the mis and main story. And with that, until next time, thank you for listening. Alright, my man. Hey, that was
Kevin:
Awesome. Thank you.
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