UTS Confessions: Monda pins with Kristyn Wuebbolt

foreign welcome to another UTS startups confessions [Applause]

this is a really good one you have to watch this who loves to travel okay who's traveled much in the last couple of years yeah okay who's looking forward to

traveling really soon Okay who wants that experience to be much better to have things to remember it to have gifts to give other people to

have you know real things you treasure for the rest of your life all right got a great solution today and particularly if we have designers watching keep watching all of this

travel lovers Kristen in 10 seconds what is mondapins so monopins is a global Gifts and souvenir company so we started with a flagship product of enamel pins that you could collect

um everywhere you went and since then have now expanded into other products including keychains magnets um tote bags pretty much anything you

can find in a souvenir store okay it's an incredible story of how you got to this point who were you before Monday pets so before I started maunda

pins I actually worked in real estate and I also worked in Chopper retail okay and how do you go from that to Modern pins

so real estate was completely unrelated um but does kind of blend into the story so I at the time was working on a real estate platform and realized that I

didn't have the resources or the investment needed to have that succeed and so I turned to travel retail which essentially was something I had done in the past I worked as a buyer and child

retail and that got me thinking about what products I guess were missing from the stores and that's kind of how mondopins

was born yeah so to be involved in that kind of area to start to see here's how people are buying things here's the things I wish

were there and see a gap in the market how do you go from that to one defense so actually when I was working in travel retail the one thing that I kept

thinking of was why isn't there something you can collect wherever you go if you think about Travelers they often buy souvenirs um and so yeah there was just this

question of you know generally when people collect things they like to collect the same of something and so at the time we didn't know what it was going to be my partner and I actually were walking on

the beach one night and we're trying to brainstorm what what could the product be we didn't know um and eventually um yeah I guess through what we spent

months um walking around the city actually we walked around UTS we actually went to there's a spot where you can see the planes take off near the airport and at the time we thought that

our product might be related to um I guess uh airport staff and specifically pilots and so we had gone there and asked them you know what do

you collect when you travel or what do you and eventually we just get started to get the same answer and over and over again that was that people collect pins so

that's how it was born okay uh I I would be too scared to make pins how do you start to make pins so we had no idea at the time so we

started with um finding a designer which we also had no experience on how to do and actually a friend introduced us to someone who

helped us design the pins and then from there um yeah we ended up going um I guess online and trying to find factories that could produce pins and

that was a whole learning experience in and of itself but eventually found a lot of factories that produced them and started testing out samples and went

from there okay so continuing down the path of like this sounds kind of scarier at every point

there's a lot of places on Ali other places where you can get things manufactured how do you figure out which ones to use and how do you then get a good deal from them so we spent months

like I I spent months trying to find suppliers on Alibaba and we got so many samples made and so many of the samples were a poor quality and it seemed weird

we were like why is this so hard it shouldn't be so hard and after spending so much time and so much money getting samples made um we finally just pulled the trigger

and I went I'm going to China so just decided to physically travel to China meet with a bunch of the factories and then found that once we were there

um they were taking us a lot more seriously the prices were a lot more competitive because that was one of the problems online is we were negotiating so hard and we just weren't getting

anywhere and so as soon as we you know went to China and had the chance to have dinner with these factories and convince them of our idea we ended up finding some really good partners and went from

there yeah okay there seems to be a bunch of UTS startups that have gotten to that extreme and I'm getting on a plane I'm going to China yeah um which maybe it's not that extreme but uh it

sounds like a good step in your process I actually just came back from China so China just opened the borders March 26th and I was on a planet because we've been

waiting for basically the borders to open because we know how much easier it is when you just physically go there so tell me a bit about that because obviously borders reopening

that there's been this pandemic thing the last couple of years how has that affected what you've done so we're lucky um at the time so we started at you

start the business or essentially you launched into stores November 2019 which was about three months before everything kind of went crazy in the world and so

we're lucky because we didn't have a lot of overhead costs at the time we didn't have warehouses because we were startup we didn't really have staff and so we were able to pause the business and so

we paused the business essentially for all of covid and I just started working on it full-time again in January so I guess in total we've been running the

business for a year okay yeah so it's nice to be able to not have a huge amount of costs like you've kept things quite lean in how this is run yes

um how do you do that while delivering the volume of pins that you are and other things so the factories can produce things quite quickly when you're selling B2B there are a lot of challenges but there

are some benefits and one of the benefits is that you don't always need to have the product um you know in your hands at the time of ordering because they are bigger businesses and they are ordering large

quantities they know you can't hold that stock and so luckily we often can you know order the stock After we receive the purchase orders

that said as you as you go along and you get to know you know the I guess how regular the orders are coming in there does become a bigger expectation that orders are delivered

faster um but at the beginning it's yeah you can you can I guess get away with um ordering only after you receive purchase orders so okay it sounds like a

great model if you're able to finance it through the orders yeah that sounds amazing so let's call it one year in total operation Let's ignore the bit in the

Middle where is Monda pins now so essentially now we're looking at um various different products um so as I mentioned at the beginning in

terms of what we do you know we started with pins and now we have keychains magnets tote bags Etc so we've grown a lot in terms of our product range

um and yeah are now just looking to this is our first chance really to scale so we're just looking at ramping up our sales and yeah okay beautiful and

can you take us forward a little bit so uh what does mondo pins look like in the future so I guess our vision for Wanda pins is

that you know one day we're in every gift and souvenir store in the world it's a big goal um but we think it's possible we think it's possible to

um yeah be able to expand that far um knowing what we know and yeah I don't see how it's not with the progress you've made so far

and also uh something you were saying earlier about those kind of stores like buying a lot of things from a small number of suppliers as you get bigger and bigger

the lock-in gets better it sounds like your position gets stronger and stronger the longer you do this for just here and and to replace you as long

as obviously your products sell so yeah okay so for people watching at home and people in the room uh what do you need or what might be helpful to hit that future

so as we look to scale we are now looking to bring on someone to help manage the entire product development side of the business so today I've been doing a lot of this but in the future as

I transition more into sales um we're essentially looking for anyone who's interested in working in design and managing a team of designers to help

us and so if you love travel um and love that lifestyle and love design um I mean I'm a bit biased but it sounds like the dream job yeah it sounds pretty

good and based on the hands before it sounds like we've got half a room full of people anyway so get in quick if you're watching at home but oh it sounds like a great chance to

design things that go into thousands of stores yes how many stores are you in at the moment so I think we're in probably over 200 now so 200 stores gone

uh I'll also point out this quickly Russ are in the background so our Tech Central artist in Residence doing an impression of your journey which is taking shape behind us thank you very

much Russian Round of Applause please [Applause]

and we'll wrap up with uh firstly how has the entrepreneurial Journey changed you as a person I'm laughing because we've talked about

this about this before and it's I found it a quite difficult question to answer and have actually forgot about what I was thinking of saying I also changed up

the order of the questions but I know your answer to the other question and I wanted to say that the last uh it sounds to me from the conversation before that like

this hasn't changed you a whole lot it sounds like your personality with entrepreneurial parents yes uh made you into a person that is quite comfortable in this kind of environment what do you

say that's right yeah so I've definitely grown up in an environment that's very similar to I guess the environment I work in now and I think a lot of people grow up doing what their parents do or something similar to that so for me

working I guess in entrepreneurship is very comfortable because that's in my life or what I've seen in life and generally what you're familiar with is

comfortable um so yeah that part definitely hasn't I guess changed me but

yeah that's uh it's still the same uh but if you could go back like I love the idea of you four years ago watching this video wouldn't that be

lovely what would you say to yourself so there's a couple of things that I think are really important when you start a business and these are things that maybe um you know I didn't know when I started

mod pins or any of my other future I mean any of my other previous businesses either but one of these things is that I think it's important no matter what you

start to know your distribution Channel so what I mean by distribution channels to know who you're going to sell to and how I think if you don't have that planned out from the very beginning then you shouldn't start I think that's one

of the most challenging things to figure out but one of the most valuable and ultimately you know if you don't have someone to sell to it's very hard to succeed so just knowing up front who

that's gonna be can help you tailor your product and um yeah just help you a lot um I think also

um a couple of other things so I guess another thing I've learned along the journey through doing my mbae is that

every business has I guess a certain set of things that requires in order to succeed so if you're starting a business and you know that you know in order to

do this business or in order to compete um you need this this and this and you aren't willing to say spend that money

or put in that time or those resources again don't start because it won't succeed you definitely need to know

um you need to be realistic about you know what what that business will look like in order to succeed and actually my first startup was real estate investing

platform and you know to start a essentially a community it was what I was trying to start in order to successfully execute on that Community it took me a long time to realize but I

would have needed to put in a lot of money without um expecting any returns for a very long time and so when I finally realized that I

was like am I willing to do that no okay it's time to shut that business down um and then the third thing I wrote These down because I think

they're very important um this much for one of these I feel very oh grateful Okay the third one is

that acquisition costs are very high when you run a business and so it's so important to think about how you're gonna basically get repeat customers and preoccurring purchases and if you can't

figure that out well you better have a very high margin product um because advertising costs are super super high so for example with us in our

business or Monda pens you know it can often take up to six months to get a customer to place their first order the cost associated with running a business for six months and not having

any income come in has to then be repaid through reoccurring orders if you had to put six months in every single time for every order the business wouldn't be feasible and same with online businesses

if you have a product where you know you are paying x amount for advertising to get that sale generally the online businesses that succeed are the ones

that then can rely on you know repeat customers to come back without having to pay that acquisition cost um which is where they make their money so the first sale they might not make any money but the ongoing orders is

where they make money and so I think that's those are very key things that I guess I've learned during my journey from other people that I wanted to share with you guys

I love those to the second one do you think people think enough about what's going to go into what they're trying to build

so what do you mean by that so uh when people are building marketplaces or other kind of kind of General stood up things do you think they're thinking about what goes

into them or not so personally no I don't think so just because I've tried starting various things and I can tell you that I wasn't thinking about that so I imagine a lot

of people weren't either and I think naivety is good sometimes because you know it doesn't scare you away from trying different things but then the same time I think there are certain

businesses where you really have to look at what you need and be realistic and more people need to be thinking about that yeah and the kind of enablers of people as

well like that yeah the passions that you have that'll keep you going about things all right it's it's one thing to need a

lot to do something but if you're losing passion for it along the way as well if it's not there at the start it's not going to stick around yeah I think you're doing

something you obviously want you obviously love and uh something that has huge potential and uh it sounds wonderful so

thank you very much for sharing uh this is uh again where do people go to uh learn more so our website is www.mondapins.com

it's not Mondo it's Monda we get mine so with an a at the end um and yeah you can reach out to us there okay perfect uh I'll say every

Friday we run these sessions uh 3 30 at UTS startups at Central we have the best pizza that you'll ever have or another assortment of different foods sometimes but also the best people I think that

you can meet wonderful startup interested people so come down and join us every Friday and thank you Amazon web services for supporting us in doing that uh we also have a private q a that we

start now where all the kind of Juicy confessions come out but you have to join us in person for that so come down and join us then join me please in thanking Kristen from wonderpines

thank you [Applause]