Episode 2: Lori - Safegrate with BestViewsReviews

Apurv : so best ways reviews welcomes you to the product life. Here we bring you the latest and greatest products to help you live your best life from Health and Beauty to Home and Garden we have everything you need to make your life more enjoyable so sit back and relax you're sure to find something you'll love. This Apurv Sibal and my guest today is Lori Turk Lori is an inventor of Safeguard in North Vancouver she served as a specialist rep at Shrine Pharma Canada and as a sales specialist in a company. So Lori thank you for joining me today.

Lori : oh thank you

Apurv : so could you tell us how did you get the idea of safe grade?

Lori : well I had been a pharmaceutical sales rep for over 25 years. Selling medicine to doctors and then I was laid off a whole bunch of us were laid off one day and I was just in the kitchen grating a potato for dinner and I cut myself like you know and like really cut really hurt myself and um it had been about the third time that year that I cut myself grating food and I thought why doesn't somebody invent something that protects your fingers when you grate so you don't cut yourself and start bleeding and then I thought well why don't you you know I actually that's it's as simple as that I thought why don't you and the very next morning I was just in my living room with like Scotch tape and paper and like I had a grater and some fruits and vegetables and I started inventing it that like it was as simple as that there was a problem and I felt I really wanted to solve the problem and so that's why I invented it.

Apurv : interesting so what is the key differentiator of your product from the other competitors in the market

Lori : well there aren't many competitors which is why I I needed to invent it so I did do that as market research to start out and um I mean you can buy gloves you can put gloves on your hand so when I tell you like you won't cut yourself just so you understand or people understand like a typical grader if like you're grading a carrot or a potato you see my thumb or your knuckles can actually you can really you can draw blood and you can like cut yourself very badly so some companies sell gloves but once you get the glove a bit dirty you've got to wash it in the washing machine and dry it you can't reuse it right away you can't even you know you might have to wait a couple days before you do your laundry and you need a different size glove for different people in the family like sometimes if you have a teenager or a little kid a little child that wants to help you grate cheese in the kitchen they can't use your glove because you're an adult you have a bigger hand the other products are plastic and when you for instance like if I'm holding here's my safe rate and if I widen it I hold the carrot and I'm going to grade it some of my competitors are plastic a different design and the thing is when their plastic hits the greater times you'll get micro fine pieces of plastic that can go into your food so by being stainless steel it's it's so durable it'll last for years and years and years it won't rust and it's just a much better quality product

Apurv : Got it. For the listeners of our podcast could you describe the greater in words because they might not be able to see the video

Lori : you mean um oh okay fair enough so do you want me to describe my product safe grate or the greater that grates the food uh it's

Apurv : your product

Lori : okay so the safe grate um how do I explain this so if you can picture in your mind your grading cheese or you're grating a potato or even onion on a four-sided grater um if you're just holding it with your hands when you get very close to the holes the food you can cut your skin or you can cut your knuckles or your nail it's happened to so many people I have so many friends that have shown me scars on their fingers from having cut themselves grating food or sometimes you just have a lemon or a lime and you're trying to create a little bit of zest for for your recipe and and your fingers your hands get too close to those little sharp they're called tines that stick out from The Grater to create these small little pieces of food so the safe grate being it's stainless steel it's something that you hold within your hand and you can widen it for a large potato. You can um it's almost like pinching your fingers to hold the food and then when you start to grate the food you're holding on to the food quite hard with the metal safe great but there's like these little protective um shields in a way very small little protective Shields that will totally protect your nails your knuckles your fingers no part of your hand will go near these very sharp uh parts of The Grater so you will never you will not have a cut hand or a finger.

Apurv : got it thank you that was really helpful so we have a dual voice of the customer where we analyze the sentiments and reviews of all the with customers who have actually used your product so we analyzed about 97 000 reviews from 150 nine products in the greater category and we analyzed a total of 10 reviews for this product and according to the AI based tool it received a rating of 7.75 the main reasons to buy were that the finger shield for chopping grating and zesting provides a strong hold it's made of heavy duty stainless steel and it features a dishwasher safe material however there was a minor drawback that it might not offer non-slip grip please can you comment on this.

Lori : um yeah it is important probably that your hands are dry when you first um pick up the safe grate because they're small little holes um that will be holding hard onto the food and if your hands are wet naturally they're going to be a little bit slippy slippery on the stainless steel so that's the only thing you just need to make sure your hands are dry when you start.

Apurv : oh got it now moving on you have another product which comes as a bundle with safe grade which is too great could you tell us a bit about that?

Lori : sure um the two it's it's called the two great grader so it was an expansion so I thought well I sell uh the safe grade and then I thought it would be nice to sell a grater that instead of just the four-sided box grader that we all have So um I'm not sure I don't I guess people can't necessarily see this but it's it's almost like a two in one grader so it's only about barely 12 inches long and it's quite thin and it's kind of curved so on one side you have the the holes that are the normal size holes for grating that all of us use for grating cheese and carrots and uh and on the other side are the smaller holes if you want to grate some ginger or a whole nutmeg or chocolate if you want micro fine chocolate or Parmesan cheese so it's almost like you get two in one in a nice small package and it's super easy to clean and hold and I love it like I actually have about five or sixth graters in the house and I and now I use this only and it's not because it's mine but um it's just it I have no need for the other ones anymore

Apurv : right so how did you get the idea to create too great and what is the key differentiator of your product from other competitors

Lori : um so the idea for the two great was that I just really wanted to come out with a really unique special kind of grater that uh people because most of us already have a grater at home and there's lots for sale you go into any store and so I thought well if I'm gonna sell one it has to be really different like people have to have a reason and so there are some graders that are like that have two different sized holes but I tried them out and they're too skinny or they they weren't sharp enough or for whatever reason and this too great it's it's a great complement to the safe grate um because you can use the safe grate when you've got food in it you can grate on any grater that you already have at the house and then the two great you can easily grate on one side or the other it's just they're very complimentary it makes a perfect package or a perfect bundle.

Apurv : Got it makes sense so according to our tool the voice of the customer for the bundle uh the reasons to buy over that you can use it as a garlic grater or Citrus zester vegetable grater coconut grater carrot shredders and so on and it is equipped with soft rubber grip that makes it comfortable to hold however there was a minor drawback that it might be slightly small in size could you comment on that

Lori : um there are bigger graders than the two great grater but there's also smaller ones so it really depends on the individual and what they want so most people probably already have a larger four-sided grader um some people might have a zester or something smaller um already you actually you need a decent size of surface to grate the food otherwise it'll take you twice as long to grade so you don't want it too small to be honest so um if if people want something smaller there are other options out there for them personally it's the perfect size for me for the vast majority of the different grading requirements that I need.

Apurv : Got it make sense so how do you see the safe grade in the next five years

Lori : well I'm X if I have been selling in stores but and that's been okay but really the growth is with e-commerce so right now I'm selling in Canada and the United States and so I plan to expand uh throughout Europe next year and I also want to explore getting another manufacturer actually and I have considered India because I know they're they're really they're excellent manufacturers and um and it's just such a hard job to try and find a brand new manufacturer and um I do plan to make an adjustment or a a bit of a change possibly to the safe grate it depends um it I'm not 100 sure if I'm gonna do that yet and maybe some other products I have other product ideas that relate to grating that I think could be on the marketplace so I want to maximize in the markets where I am.

Apurv : got it so I have two questions to follow, so one is how did you find the manufacturer in the first place so you mentioned that you got this idea one day but how did you actually make this product in the first place?

Lori : oh it was so hard the most difficult so there are some companies that will help you that will source for you and because I knew a lot of people were getting products manufactured in China I knew India was a possibility I had considered Mexico as well I didn't know a soul in those countries I wasn't going to travel over to those you know to all the countries so I didn't know the language is so I actually got the services I got in touch with an individual it's a company called lean launch they're based in Utah because they already have contacts they they have contacts in India in China in like all all over the place who then can go into these um manufacturing places these companies and say okay we've got this product can you manufacture it or not and then they get quotes or they kind of kind of test out some of the different manufacturers and then they will send to me the prototypes like I already had the uh so they'll make like it you know a trial product and you have to determine if it's good enough quality for you or not it's kind of risky because you know they could copy it so you have to make sure you have all of your all of the legal documents in place for them to sign before they even see it so that they can't I mean they might still copy it but then you can take them to court in case they do if you've had them sign the right forms.

Apurv : oh got it sounds like an interesting process so you also mentioned that there are some new Innovations coming soon or that are in development for safety could you tell us a bit about them?

Lori : well I kind of can't right because this is that case where you can't if you talk about a design change or even a new product and people hear it then they can rush out and and copy you so for that reason I can't really do that. Actually I have to leave it at that I just can't talk to be honest I just can't really I can't talk about it.

Apurv : no I totally understand so could you tell us about your creative process how do you come up with new Innovations how do you understand the customers needs

Lori : was not what I it wasn't much like my initial idea so my I originally wanted to make an electrical product or an electrical Appliance and I I got in touch with an electrical engineer um and I and I met with him and I said this is my idea of so I just kind of verbalized it to him like how I imagined it in my head and um he said he was gonna go home and he worked full-time so on the side he was gonna spend time trying to create drawings so it was him coming up with the drawings to try and figure it out because I didn't know how to do those drawings on the computer you know there's so many programs and um I didn't have those programs on my computer but I realized while I was creating the, when I was on my couch and I was experimenting myself with you know my silly little prototype that I had that the the best thing for for the to grate something was to actually use your hand your hand is one of the strongest best tools to hold the food so I thought well I'm not and he also advised me not to go electrical if I could help it because there's so many regulations and so many tests that I would have to pay a lot of money for to prove that it was safe of course right being an electrical product um I actually called him and I said stop I've got this idea and I I just drew it on a piece of paper and he and I emailed it to him and he looked it over and so he actually then came he drew a design from what he thought I wanted and I and then I made him do some changes to it so we went back and forth a couple times and then we did a 3D mock-up like a prototype so a 3D plastic prototype and tested that out to see how it worked and and then we perfected it from there to stainless steel so we then I had to send I'm in Canada and I had to get a company that's a four hour plane ride away to create a prototype for me there was nobody close by here in my province of British Columbia where I live so um it's a long time it they say it takes a year to bring a product to Market and I thought I would do it faster I it actually took me about a year and a half so if you're gonna invent a product it's best to keep your full-time paying job and work on it on the sidelines until you're ready even when you first launch sales sometimes are a bit slower than what you thought they'd be so it's good to have that steady income from your full-time job until you then can see the sales increase enough that you can start doing it full time.

Apurv : got it so that brings me to my next question how do you manage your brand awareness Marketing in this competitive e-commerce category help me I'm not I'm not very smart about all the social media online marketing I have had a steep learning curve trying to learn it all so right now the priorities for me I mean I'm doing things like this with you as often as I can I try and tell people about my business I do not go to the consumer shows or the fairs I was advised that that's a lot of work and sometimes at you sell a lot of product but you have to pay a lot of money for a table and for advertising so you don't make money in the end so Mike I mean I sell on Amazon so I spend money for advertising on Amazon and that that's that's become very helpful very uh and what my most my highest sales day was when somebody did a video I didn't even know them of my safe grade on Tick Tock they did a tick tock video grating a banana can you believe it and and it actually went viral because everyone's like what the heck are you doing grading a banana it was all like green banana and she turned out to be from Central America and they have a lot of recipes that require grated green banana but I have had someone else do a tick tock video for me that um and I didn't really see increased sales from it so I know that I need to do more I need to do Tick Tock videos myself and I am on Instagram and I post every week there but I don't think I'm necessarily getting much business from that and I also buy advertising to increase Awareness on Pinterest so for instance I just launched safe great in the United Kingdom nobody knows about my product and if they go on the Amazon website they won't even know to look for it so if I advertise on Pinterest about it and they do you have Pinterest in India I imagine you do yeah so um if if somebody's interested enough they of course could just press find out more and it'll take them right to my website where they can purchase it right there so that's actually my main form of marketing and advertising. I have but the last two years I have paid public relations firms to help me and last fall I think I think it was helpful and useful but you have to pay them a lot of money like at least two thousand two twenty five hundred minimum you know dollars to for them to work for you for well that was like for three months but there was one company that said it was 2500 a month for three months for them I was promoted on TV like on these little shows and to be honest I thought I'd get great sales for my TV somebody using it on TV and it that didn't work for me so um I think it's just people spontaneously doing these little videos on Tick Tock so I'm going to try and reach out to people that do a lot of cooking shows on Tick Tock and um and and offer them like a free safe grate and maybe pay them if if they've not too much because I can't afford that but um and try and um kind of organically create business I don't know why so it seems like there's probably influencer marketing is the way to go.

Apurv : Got it so yeah thank you Lori this was very interesting uh so thank you to the listeners of our podcast we hope you enjoyed it if you have any suggestions for future products or guests please let us know until next time goodbye