Founder update
After returning back from the I’m a Celebrity Jungle to London, I mean after returning from Northumberland to London, having overcome many challenges including power cuts, snow and haunted castles, this week's progress has been good.
My usual style is to pick something from the week that is spontaneous, relevant, funny, or of interest to me, and then write really long updates in the hope that you all fall in love with them and tell your friends to sign up to Bob’s waiting list.
However every now and then I hit writer's block (I know, even me) and the updates just don’t flow like I want them to. For some of you this will be a blessing, whilst for other content connoisseurs you may find this update short, boring, and lacking any va va voom (in Thierry Henry’s French Renault advert voice).
I have literally spent the last two hours trying to write the intro to this update, ate a multipack of wotsits, walked the dog, scrolled Instagram, asked chatgpt for the top 10 blog updates, had three coffees, ate seven hobnobs, answered the door six times as a result of my wife ordering all of her Christmas presents via Amazon. I am now best mates with the Postie, the DPD driver and the Evri delivery man. I am however not a fan of the Yodel delivery chap. He keeps chucking the parcel over the wall as it seems too hard for him to ring the gatebell. I have actually just ordered a pop up bird hide and some camouflage clothing in order to stake out Mr Yodel, and catch his throwing capabilities on camera.
So, after all this excitement, I have decided the best thing to do is give you all a short, sharp update on all the functions of the business from this week.
The business
Every organisation needs a set of guiding principles for everyone (including myself) to look at, and be guided by when it gets a bit busy, difficult, and scary. They should be gentle motivators that give us all confidence that we can, and should, do things in a way that makes the business a success. Too many businesses think of 4 keywords, or long and fluffy sentences, that their employees are supposed to remember, but because they don’t mean anything to them, they don’t.
The important thing for me is that every business's guiding principles are understood both internally (by employees) and externally (by customers and stakeholders), and so below I have listed the 9 principles I have decided we will use ongoing.
They are designed to motivate, inspire, remind, and confirm what we are allowed to do, and more importantly must do, to survive and thrive as a business. It provides freedom of thought and freedom to do, and it enables outcome-driven leadership.
- We believe we can achieve anything
- We care about everything we do
- We innovate everything
- We challenge everything
- We do and we deliver
- We communicate no matter what
- We break the rules and apologise after
- We are a start-up up so act like one
- We win together
The Thingymabob
After taking two steps back to go one step forward, we worked closely with our design agency to ensure we took two new steps forward this week, taking us one step forward overall.
The work going into the product this week has been:
- A new mechanism to seamlessly allow you to push up and down the soap, so you can choose how much or how little you want.
- Ability to ensure the bob bar never falls out of the Thingymabob
- A reconstruction of bristles to maximise the lathering of the soap and foam
- A resizing of the product to ensure it fits all of the above in, whilst being perfectly formed for your hand
As a result of signing this all off, we are now moving to phase 2 of testing, which focuses on;
- The feeling of wash for both body and hand
- Lathering and foaming
- Mechanism and soap delivery
Subject to getting this all green-lighted, we will then progress to getting the first of our Bob prototype models made that will both look like Bob and also be able to be tested in the shower as if we were using the finished Thingymabob.
Will and Max are spending lots of time with Beta, particularly through the testing phase to make sure that points 1, 2 and 3 of testing work as expected.
Safe to say we will all be in the shower a lot over the festive period.
Bob bars
The next round of soap-free soap bar development is underway and we are hoping to have the next test samples in hand by mid-December. So subject to everything staying on track, I should be able to wash my bits and bobs with our test soap over Christmas. Guess what is going to be in all the male family members' stockings this Christmas? Yup, you guessed it. Bob test soap.
The non-negotiables for us are ensuring that our soap is:
- pH 5.5
- Dermatologically tested
- 95% to 100% biodegradable
- Safe and good for sensitive skin
- Foam, foam, and more foam
- Cruelty-free
- No sulfates
- No parabens
- No phthalates
- Silicone free
- Microplastic free
We aren’t asking for much, are we?
And so there we have it, a relatively tame update from me this week.
Shorter than normal and calmer than normal, but my goodness isn’t it exciting? And next week will be exciting because we have….
- More investment to announce
- More advisors to announce
- Test rigs to try in the shower
- Kickstarter content beginning to be made
- So much more.
Until next week, keep safe, keep warm, and get yourself into the Christmas spirit if you haven’t already!
(Hello Sally, and Michael by the way, our latest Bob followers. My wife signed up her wonderful grandparents for Bob, as they wanted to follow Bob’s progress. My wife also forwarded them all 13 updates before this one, which I believe they read in one day over a cup of tea, a scone and lots of cream. Granny Sally has a love for cream, don't you Sally :).
Much love,
Bob