Wet, wet, wet

Founder update

No, I am not talking about the famous band wet, wet, wet, I am talking about the British weather this week. I believe we can finally say any Indian summer we thought we might have is now over, and after returning from Dubai I can honestly say I am one cold Bob. 

But I tell you what is heating me up, Bob’s first £75k of initial pledges secured this week as a result of our Dubai trip. From some big dogs. Not just any old big dogs, some serious hitting big dogs with global reach. It may look like I am able to keep my job after all, and in fact I may even hit the £100k investment pledge target that I set myself for the trip to Dubai. Keep your bits and bobs crossed for me. (Haha now you are thinking about how to cross your bits and bobs. Think Borat, think the mangina scene, and I think it's something like that). 

Money, money, money, must be funny, in a rich man's world is all I keep singing after the whatsapp voice note I received confirming the above pledges. I mean we are targeting men with our first product, but we haven’t forgotten about ladies. In fact here’s a spoiler alert for you because don’t worry ladies, your time will come too, I promise. (I have tried to make a link here between investment and introducing you to the fact that we are now thinking of launching a ladyBob one day too, but my mind is blank, and so I have done a crap job. But imagine this is a great bridge and now, drumroll pleaseeeee. Close bracket). 

Bobi, oooooo word drop, yes Bobi. Bob for ladies bums and boobs (teehee) is already in the pipeline, but for now, we are focusing on men’s bits and bob’s. The marketing funnel is something like partner buys Bob for man, partner likes Bob, we launch Bobi, partner buys Bobi too. Maybe there is even a child’s Bob to complete the family group purchase here too… ickle Bob…. surely not.

Back to investment. Whilst you are still trying to work out how to cross your bits and bobs I am currently walking the streets talking to myself in the rain, as we have been shortlisted for Britains Got Start Up’s pitch event on Friday in Manchester. This means I have had two sleepless nights trying to remember a seven minute pitch script. I love it, but I hate it. So stressful as I want to ensure I do the team proud.

I wonder if Will and Max are stressed whilst they are tucked up in bed by 2100 hours, wearing their eye masks and tog 16 warm pj’s, counting fields of sheep. 

Well they might be stressed now, because I woke them both up last night and asked them to help me complete this email because I am pH-ocused on learning the investment pitch and running out of time. 

Note to self. If we try to do too much too quickly, the whole business will flop like an undercooked yorkshire pudding. So it’s all about pH-ocus. 

Calm will be restored next week.

Maybe. 

God I love it. ‘If you can learn to operate in carnage, then the world is your playground.’ A saying I heard on an instagram reel last night whilst I was procrastinating between learning the pitch. I liked it, so I thought you might like it too. 

Anywhoo, must dash. Oh actually, before I forget, we had a fantastic coffee with a gentleman called Jamie Atkinson this week. He was the growth marketer behind Freddies Flowers, Dash Water (you ain’t getting two free links), and now Untamed (see below for link). Jamie and my wife have worked together and so he was kind enough to give me 31 minutes of his time to review our marketing strategy. In summary, we learnt a lot, we have a great foundation, but we will now change a few things to help speed up our growth (growth hacks I think the marketeers call em). 

Jamie thank you, and if anyone has a cat, have a look at Untamed.

(Disclaimer. The below is written by Will. I hope you like it more than my bit above as it means I can offload this whole email update ongoing to him, that way Louise will be very happy and proud of her boy). 

Product update

Test, test, test. All our energy and thought circles around the successful testing of our product - amply named the “Thingymabob”.  Our promise to our community is that the Thingymabob will intensely lather soap, gently wash your bits and bobs, seamlessly re-load new soap and most importantly, look beautiful. How is it going? To be honest, really well. All tests have passed the criteria for success so far however it is only early so I do expect some massive inescapable fault or failure to occur. Why? Because in all my career of building new products (albeit they were technology products), there are at least three “o shit” stages of a project where it all falls to pieces. However, teams with the customer in mind at all angles of development eventually find a workaround or silver lining that makes the product better than its first inception. So, I greatly look forward to seeing Mike’s and Max’s “o shit” moment so I can swoop on in there to assure their weary thoughts.  

Soap update

The Bob Bar is on its way to the Bob Boys. Max has been working hard with our manufacturers in Germany to develop a unique formula for our bar of soap. It has taken us 4 months to get to this point, Max has removed all bad ingredients available on the market (and planet!)  from the formulation. This Bob Bar will have a pH of 5.5, smell like a man's best friend, moisturise the skin beautifully and lather quickly once in touch with water. Too good to be true? Well let us see how it goes when we test it next week. 

Oh yeh, what about the packaging update

My quest for packaging suppliers was fun… NAAAT. But all suppliers I have spoken with have been exemplary. Similarly to our Design Agency and Soap Manufacturers, all suppliers received the “Apple'' speech from me. This speech is unlikely to spur these guys on to be inspired by Steve Jobs, but the aim is to make sure that quality & customer experience is a mandatory requirement in the creation of this packaging. You can have a top-quality product but if you have sh*t packaging then it will ruin the product before you even open it - you feast with your eyes first before the meal. We are in a good place with packaging, we have spoken to a good amount of suppliers and understand the costing and delivery considerations. Next we get our product sizing nailed,, before we go into prototyping packaging.