Catherine Langman:
Well, hello there it’s Catherine Langman here back with another episode of the Productpreneur Success Podcast. Today on the show I’m joined by Steph Pryor, who is the founder of Montii Co and also Lunch Punch. I think many of our listeners will be familiar with these brands. Montii Co’s drink bottles and lunchboxes in particular products, many of us mums who have young children, would have some of these products lying around the house I feel sure. Steph Pryor is joining us today to share her story. She launched a business about five years ago, and she has had the most incredible journey since then. She’s really pushed pretty hard building up her business. She now has a thriving business, wholesale stockists around Australia, e-commerce retail sales in Australia. She has a whole team of international distributors, so export sales and also sells on Amazon in the US. She’s really built quite a significant business.
Catherine Langman:
She’s got a team of over 20 staff now, and I won’t give it all away in this intro, but we dive right into her whole journey really of what that growth looks like, including some of the challenges along the way. I know that the challenges that we all find as product business owners, they’re all fairly similar. But the way that different entrepreneurs approach them and get past them is always a little bit different. I love hearing the personal stories from some of our guests on these shows and hearing about how they have approached these common situations. Without further ado, let’s welcome Steph to the show. This is a fantastic interview. You’re going to want to take notes I feel sure. So settle in and enjoy the interview.
Catherine Langman:
So welcome to the show Steph, it’s fantastic to have you here.
Steph Pryor:
Thank you so much for having me.
Catherine Langman:
It’s awesome to have you here. We’re a team of 99% mums, and we all have some Montii Co products lying around our houses.
Steph Pryor:
Ah, well thank you.
Catherine Langman:
So very excited to have you on the show today. And so, obviously we were going to have a chat about your business and really just to kick us off, I’d really love to hear about the origin story of MontiiCo.
Steph Pryor:
Yeah, so I worked in IT. I am a nerd at heart. Although we had some technical issues getting connected today, so I’m not doing too well for myself. I went to uni and did IT, and worked in a big software development company in Brisbane, so it was always on the Gold Coast. Most of the IT work is in Brisbane, meaning that it’s quite a big commute on a daily basis. And I had my first son, and continued commuting, but by the time I had the second, I was just thinking, there is no way that this can work. I can’t juggle both of us doing the commute to Brisbane, two young kids in daycare and all the other bits that mums have to do to keep life running.
Catherine Langman:
Yeah, absolutely.
Steph Pryor:
Yeah. And probably a little naively thought that I would start a business, because that would be easier.
Catherine Langman:
Sure, a few of us have made that error.
Steph Pryor:
Yeah.
Catherine Langman:
Me included.
Steph Pryor:
It wasn’t. Spoiler alert. It wasn’t. But it definitely is more flexible. And I definitely, I love working in my own business. But what kind of sparked the idea as well, is that I was shopping for my kids. I’ve got two little boys obviously, they’re really rough and tumble stereotypical boys, and I found that the lifestyle products, things like drink bottles and in particular lunch bags. They were either really fun prints that the kids loved, but they didn’t last, or they lasted for ages but they were a bit ugly.
Catherine Langman:
Yup.
Steph Pryor:
And I just couldn’t find anything. I was like, why can’t somebody make something that is bright and fun and colorful and the kids are excited about it, but it actually works as well.
Catherine Langman:
Yes.
Steph Pryor:
And that’s where MontiiCo came from.
Catherine Langman:
And just to give a context for the listeners. When was that, that you kind of had that spark of inspiration?
Steph Pryor:
My youngest son was 10 months old. So I pretty much around the time that you start thinking about what you’re going to do after maternity leave finishes.
Catherine Langman:
Yes.
Steph Pryor:
Yeah. Yup.
Catherine Langman:
Yeah. And-
Steph Pryor:
So, we’re nearly five years old.
Catherine Langman:
Nearly five years old. Yeah, fantastic.
Steph Pryor:
Yeah.
Catherine Langman:
I had two boys first as well, so I completely sympathize with that experience.
Steph Pryor:
It’s a wild ride.
Catherine Langman:
It is a bit of a wild ride.
Steph Pryor:
This morning I’ve actually given up their battle of no balls in the house, because my boys are soccer and basketball mad.
Catherine Langman:
Oh.
Steph Pryor:
And up until now, I just feel like I say it 100 times a day. “No balls in the house. Stop kicking the ball in the house.” And now I’m like, “All right.” I’m giving out on that dream.
Catherine Langman:
Yeah. I remember someone saying to me, “Yeah, they’ll put that down when they discover the TV remote.” Or something like that. Anyway. Yeah, it’s a losing battle, but what an amazing brand that you’ve built in the last five years. So, I guess you’ve been through this journey of developing the products from that spark of inspiration, and then going through manufacturing and building up a business around that. Yeah.
Steph Pryor:
Yes.
Catherine Langman:
Yeah.
Steph Pryor:
Yes. It’s been a long journey. So, I actually started working on the lunch bag product first.
Catherine Langman:
Yup.
Steph Pryor:
But it wasn’t the first product that I released, because the design and manufacturing process just took such a long time.
Catherine Langman:
Okay.
Steph Pryor:
Yeah. I totally underestimated estimated how hard that would be. I found with products like drink bottles and smoothie cups, and the [inaudible 00:04:25] products, where you make a molder, you get the molder working exactly how you want. And then it’s fairly consistent each time how the product turns out.
Catherine Langman:
Yeah.
Steph Pryor:
But things like your fabric and multiple layers and all these moving parts and their hand style, and it was just… It took about 18 months in total.
Catherine Langman:
Wowzers. Yeah.
Steph Pryor:
So, yeah.
Catherine Langman:
That’s significant.
Steph Pryor:
That was my first introduction to product development.
Catherine Langman:
Yeah. Baptism of fire, hey.
Steph Pryor:
Yeah, pretty much.
Catherine Langman:
So what was the first product to market then, in the end?
Steph Pryor:
It was the drink bottles.
Catherine Langman:
Is was, yeah.
Steph Pryor:
Yeah. It was the drink bottles. I started with four colors, and I begged and begged and begged the factory to bring the MOQ down, the minimum order quantity down, so that I could afford my first run. And I remember there was just so many nights when I looked at all those drink bottles in my garage and thought, what have I done?.
Catherine Langman:
Yeah.
Steph Pryor:
What have I done, used our savings, and is this ever going to work? Yeah, that [crosstalk 00:05:35].
Catherine Langman:
It’s a common fear, I’m sure. Yeah, absolutely.
Steph Pryor:
Yeah.
Catherine Langman:
So, when you think back to that time when you were launching first. And apologize, I didn’t ask you this before we started the recording. But what did you do to launch? Can you remember what you did to sort of get it off the ground?
Steph Pryor:
Yeah. I was really lucky actually, in that I had good friend who is a stockist, so who had a store. And without her, so it was Peta from The Bento Buzz, we actually met in mum’s group.
Catherine Langman:
So cool.
Steph Pryor:
She’s great. Without her I wouldn’t have had a clue where to start.
Catherine Langman:
Yeah.
Steph Pryor:
Because she was able to kind of tell me what a stockist would look for. She was my first stockist. And I really started with a wholesale focus. It wasn’t until 2020, or maybe mid 2019, that I even tried to create a retail presence Montii.
Catherine Langman:
Yeah.
Steph Pryor:
Yeah.
Catherine Langman:
Good thing you did then, hey.
Steph Pryor:
Yeah.
Catherine Langman:
In hindsight.
Steph Pryor:
Yeah. So that was actually a really great platform to get started, because wholesalers, when they come on board, they already have their own audience.
Catherine Langman:
Yeah.
Steph Pryor:
And it spreads your brand names so much quicker.
Catherine Langman:
Yeah.
Steph Pryor:
And that’s really how we grew for the first couple of years.
Catherine Langman:
Yeah.
Steph Pryor:
Is through wholesale within Australia, and the other channels, so our retail channels and our international distributors came on board a bit later.
Catherine Langman:
Yeah. Fantastic. I mean, how amazing that, having a conversation with a friend was able to really help lead you to this?
Steph Pryor:
Yeah. Meant to be.
Catherine Langman:
Well, it is.
Steph Pryor:
I’m a big believer in the universe working its ways and then yeah, it just felt like it was meant to be for both of us. We have really complimentary skills.
Catherine Langman:
Yeah.
Steph Pryor:
Which is so helpful in those early days of business, she was quite strong in marketing and understanding that side. And I was quite from the IT side, so between the two of us, we gave each other a bit of a hand.
Catherine Langman:
Formidable team by the sounds of things.
Steph Pryor:
Yes.
Catherine Langman:
So at what point after getting off the ground and getting moving. At what point did you realize that you really needed to start scaling up?
Steph Pryor:
It didn’t happen super quickly for us. I think it’s something that from the outside it always looks like you’re an overnight success, but no. I think our first bottles landed in October. And the sales were okay over Christmas and back to school. So, for us January, which is back to school season, is our biggest peak of the year.
Catherine Langman:
Yes.
Steph Pryor:
For the first year they were okay, but it wasn’t until my second year in business, that things really started to take off. And for me, that was when the lunchbag launched.
Catherine Langman:
Right.
Steph Pryor:
And we kind of had a bit of a matching set and a bit of a range. I’ve found with wholesalers, that they weren’t super interested in talking to me when I only had a single product, because guess it’s quite hard for them if they potentially have 1,000 products in their shop, if they’re just buying one product from each supplier, it’s really hard to manage.
Catherine Langman:
For sure.
Steph Pryor:
And once I had a bigger range, that’s when things really started to take off. But I still kept working from home up until, I think 18 months now, nearly two years. But I worked from home, started in the garage, then took over the kids playroom, and took over another bedroom. And then we got some offsite storage, so some shipping containers in a local storage yard.
Catherine Langman:
Yeah.
Steph Pryor:
And yeah, just got to the point where I was like, “Well, I actually need to hire staff, and I have nowhere in my house to put them, and this whole shipping container and garage solution isn’t working.” So it was a huge jump to go into a warehouse, but once I had made that jump, our business just scaled up really quickly after that.
Catherine Langman:
Yeah, right.
Steph Pryor:
Because I think being at home was limiting us from a space point of view. How much stuff I could buy. But also from the staffing, and once I was able to get some help, yeah, it just went next level.
Catherine Langman:
Yeah, absolutely. I remember in my last business, the day that I hired a warehouse manager, I was like, “Oh, this is like somebody sent from heaven.”
Steph Pryor:
Yes.
Catherine Langman:
“Why did I not do this before?”
Steph Pryor:
Oh for me, my favorite hire ever was getting a bookkeeper. I spent so much time reconciling all those individual transactions and-
Catherine Langman:
Yes.
Steph Pryor:
And then the day that I was like, “I have really made it now that I can pay someone to reconcile those transactions for me.”
Catherine Langman:
I love it. I love it. So, who was the first hire then in your business?
Steph Pryor:
My first hire was a virtual assistant.
Catherine Langman:
Okay.
Steph Pryor:
Kirsty Whybrow. She still works as a VA now.
Catherine Langman:
Yes.
Steph Pryor:
And I hired her, it was two hours a week to start with, and that felt like a huge stretch, because my business wasn’t profitable at that point. And so, I was still working part time. Yeah, I was just stuck. When you don’t have… I needed to keep working part to fund the business. But working part time, then I didn’t have the time to grow the business.
Catherine Langman:
Yeah, you have to buy the time, don’t you?
Steph Pryor:
Definitely yeah, its a juggle. And yeah, so she started just doing two hours a week, and then she continued working for a couple of years until she had her son, Henry.
Catherine Langman:
Okay.
Steph Pryor:
He’s just about to be one. Yeah, but by the end, she was doing kind of 30 hours a week for us.
Catherine Langman:
That’s incredible. Yeah.
Steph Pryor:
Yeah, it just kind of went from there. VA is a great place to start actually, just because they can be a little bit of an all rounder.
Catherine Langman:
Yes.
Steph Pryor:
And she came with experience that I didn’t have at that stage.
Catherine Langman:
Yes. Yeah, absolutely. So I guess really, having a good idea of where your strengths lie, and mitigating that with the time you can buy from somebody else.
Steph Pryor:
Yeah. That’s exactly it. Yeah.
Catherine Langman:
Yeah. So cool. So what does your team look like now, five years in?
Steph Pryor:
There’s 21 people total in our team.
Catherine Langman:
That’s exciting.
Steph Pryor:
Which I only just realized yesterday, and it gave me a bit of a shock. That’s a lot of people.
Catherine Langman:
That’s awesome.
Steph Pryor:
Yeah, but they’re about half and half, office and warehouse. We’ve got quite a big marketing team, because we have two brands. So Montii and Lunch Punch.
Catherine Langman:
Yes.
Steph Pryor:
And then we have three different customer types that we market to, so there’s quite a bit of marketing work there. But other than that, we have accounts and warehouse team.
Catherine Langman:
Yup.
Steph Pryor:
Customer service. And then I have someone, Craig, who looks after coordinating all our manufacturing and shipping.
Catherine Langman:
Awesome.
Steph Pryor:
Which has been a Godsend as well.
Catherine Langman:
Yes, that’s a huge job, isn’t it?
Steph Pryor:
Yeah, it is now.
Catherine Langman:
Yeah.
Steph Pryor:
It is.
Catherine Langman:
Yeah, so cool.
Steph Pryor:
It’s actually a really great thing where most of us are mums who work part time.
Catherine Langman:
Yes. Okay.
Steph Pryor:
So yeah, I couldn’t find a job where I felt like I could use my brain, and to feel really rewarded in a job that I loved, and do that part-time and sit around the kids. And now, being able to do that for myself and for quite a few other people.
Catherine Langman:
Other people. Oh, that’s music to my ears. I mean, that’s absolutely the same experience that I had with my corporate job as well. And, it’s such a familiar experience to so many women, unfortunately.
Steph Pryor:
It’s really hard, isn’t it? Just because you’ve got kids doesn’t mean that you don’t want to also have a career.
Catherine Langman:
Yeah.
Steph Pryor:
Yet it’s really hard to juggle both. So I’m glad that we’ve been able to make that work.
Catherine Langman:
Yeah, absolutely. Kudos to you, I think that’s brilliant. You mentioned just a second ago, that you have a number of different customer groups. Can you talk a little bit about, because I think you talk about an omni-channel, or at least that’s what I perceive anyway, omni-channel business.
Steph Pryor:
Yeah.
Catherine Langman:
Talk about that a little bit.
Steph Pryor:
Right. Yeah. So we have our stockists here in Australia. So we distribute for ourselves in Australia to all our wholesale customers.
Catherine Langman:
Yes.
Steph Pryor:
We have retail customers, so they can purchase either through the Montii website, or through the Lunch Punch website. So there’s two standalone brands, although there is a little bit of crossover between the products.
Catherine Langman:
Yes.
Steph Pryor:
So selling each others products.
Catherine Langman:
Yes.
Steph Pryor:
And then, we have distributors who purchase from China. So, we have a warehouse in China as well, and they typically, we have an agreement where they are exclusive for a certain country or region, and they purchase stock directly out of China as well. Yeah.
Catherine Langman:
Yeah, fantastic. That sounds complicated.
Steph Pryor:
It is complicated. It is, because we have three customer sites that we just spoke about. But we also have three brands, because we have Lunch Punch, Montii and then WestBridge Group is our wholesale brand for wholesale and distribution. So, that’s the company that those customers purchase through. So, it’s great, I mean, the structure really works for us, but it does mean that often we’re doing same thing a bunch of times on different websites or for different customers.
Catherine Langman:
Yes.
Steph Pryor:
Yeah.
Catherine Langman:
Yeah, absolutely. Was that a recent move then, to set up that wholesale overarching company?
Steph Pryor:
I actually started it from the start, because I had intended on having a couple of brands. I didn’t want to just be held back just using one.
Catherine Langman:
Oh, I love that. Yes.
Steph Pryor:
And so, I separated them right from the start. To be honest, there’s been plenty of times through my journey where I wondered why I did that.
Catherine Langman:
Yes.
Steph Pryor:
Because I did have a bit of overhead, but now I feel like it just gives me the freedom that, when I feel like I’ve done as many products as I want to do in Montii, that I can, and Lunch Punch, I can potentially add a novel brand in there alongside.
Catherine Langman:
Yeah.
Steph Pryor:
And it was just slot in, because the product development is the part that I love, and that I want to continue doing, so.
Catherine Langman:
Yes. Yeah. Oh, I love it.
Steph Pryor:
Yeah.
Catherine Langman:
Oh, that’s so cool. So, let’s touch on a little bit with the challenges of growing, because I mean really, from my perspective anyway, you’ve grown pretty fast in five years. There’s got to be some challenges that come along with that?
Steph Pryor:
Yeah. Oh there definitely is. We’ve basically doubled our revenue every year. We’re at 110% growth average for the last five years.
Catherine Langman:
That’s crazy.
Steph Pryor:
Which is great and challenging.
Catherine Langman:
Yes.
Steph Pryor:
Probably our biggest challenges have been cashflow. And that would be because we would launch a product and it sells out, and you need to reorder twice as much which costs twice as much. And just trying to keep up with that growth was hard, particularly in the early years where banks and whoever just don’t even want to talk to you when you’re only just starting out.
Catherine Langman:
It is tough.
Steph Pryor:
Yeah.
Catherine Langman:
Absolutely.
Steph Pryor:
It is really hard. And so, we put literally every cent my husband and I, every cent that we had into the business. So any savings, any kind of extra that we’d paid off our home loan.
Catherine Langman:
Yeah.
Steph Pryor:
At one stage we even went down to one car. My poor husband was bragging about a 20 year old motorbike that he’d borrowed from someone so that we could sell his car to buy more lunch bags.
Catherine Langman:
No way.
Steph Pryor:
So, we’ve definitely, yeah, struggled and put every single cent that we could into it. And I’m not sure really what the magic mark is that we hit, but its been a lot easier now. So, we have someone at CommBank who we work with who has just made everything so much easier in terms of cashflow.
Catherine Langman:
Yeah.
Steph Pryor:
And then other than that, I think with a product based business, space has always been a challenge. Especially in a business where we have the Christmas peak, and the back to school peak so close together.
Catherine Langman:
Right.
Steph Pryor:
So we need to hold all of that stock for three or four months peak, at the same time.
Catherine Langman:
That’s huge.
Steph Pryor:
So we really have this huge fluctuation of stock, yeah.
Catherine Langman:
Yeah, that is huge. How do you even resolve that?
Steph Pryor:
[crosstalk 00:19:09] we actually. I don’t know. If you know, please tell me.
Catherine Langman:
You need some winter products now, don’t you?
Steph Pryor:
We do. Actually, yeah, we do. And actually, I think some way that we might even out those peaks and troughs, is by expanding to other markets.
Catherine Langman:
Yes.
Steph Pryor:
So, the good part about working with international customers is that they’re back to school is in September.
Catherine Langman:
Yeah. Good point.
Steph Pryor:
So, it means that they’re busy in July and August when we’re quiet here. So, that’s kind of one of my goals for 2022, now that hopefully most of those international customers have recovered from COVID a little bit.
Catherine Langman:
Yeah.
Steph Pryor:
But one of my goals is to really grow that, to try and even out the peaks and troughs. But it still doesn’t help us with the physical issue of storing all of that stock.
Catherine Langman:
No.
Steph Pryor:
In that peak time.
Catherine Langman:
Because it sounded like before, when you were talking about, gradually inching forwards with the sized spaces that you were using. That you’d move into a bigger space and thinking it would be enough, and then you quickly out space it.
Steph Pryor:
It wasn’t. Yeah. Yeah, we actually put, with the warehouse, we were able to do it through our Super.
Catherine Langman:
Wow. That’s cool.
Steph Pryor:
It means that we’re basically our own landlord, which is really great. But then we outgrew it within eight months.
Catherine Langman:
No.
Steph Pryor:
We rented the one next door, as well.
Catherine Langman:
Yes.
Steph Pryor:
And then, this year in the off-season we basically fit both of those warehouses out with mezzanine to double the space in both of them. So I’m hoping that will get us through this year, and then next year not sure yet.
Catherine Langman:
Yeah. That’s incredible.
Steph Pryor:
Not sure. Yeah.
Catherine Langman:
I remember reading, not that long ago, I was reading a book written by the two brothers who started Catch of the Day. I don’t know if you remember that online store? And that their story too, of growth and managing the space for their warehouse was very similar, so.
Steph Pryor:
Yeah. It’s just, yeah, it’s crazy, isn’t it? And you don’t want the space to limit how much inventory you can buy.
Catherine Langman:
No.
Steph Pryor:
Because then it starts to cut your sales as well. So, with this year, my goal has been more frequent shipments.
Catherine Langman:
Yes.
Steph Pryor:
And not as big.
Catherine Langman:
Yes.
Steph Pryor:
But that hasn’t worked out as well as I hoped.
Catherine Langman:
You’re just selling through it faster, I guess.
Steph Pryor:
Yeah. It hasn’t solved it yet. It probably made it a little bit better.
Catherine Langman:
Yes. You just have to keep trying these things, hey. And seeing if you can inch forward a little bit more each time.
Steph Pryor:
That’s right. Yeah.
Catherine Langman:
Yeah. Really fantastic story there. So when you think about the business that you’ve grown, and obviously you’ve been able to hire around you with people who are really good at doing things that you aren’t so good at, and maybe you don’t love so much. But what do you really love about being a product entrepreneur? I mean, you said designing the products. Is that important to you?
Steph Pryor:
Yeah. Yeah, I love coming up with the ideas. I really love marketing, so coming up with what the vision, what those first photos and text might look like, and running campaigns and talking to customers and doing socials, and things like that. The bit that I don’t love, are the day to day operations.
Catherine Langman:
Yeah.
Steph Pryor:
Yeah. It’s not only that I don’t love it. It’s that its actually not my strength.
Catherine Langman:
Yes.
Steph Pryor:
So, what a business needs from you when it’s just you in your garage at home, is totally different to what a business needs from you, as the boss when you have 21 staff and two warehouses.
Catherine Langman:
Yeah. It can be very time consuming, can’t it?
Steph Pryor:
It is, and it just takes a different personality type. I’m quite introverted. I really enjoy doing, not managing. So, I find when my days are just made up with managing other people, that I kind of finished the day feeling like I haven’t got a sense of achievement out of that.
Catherine Langman:
Yeah. Yeah, interesting.
Steph Pryor:
So yeah, I’ve kind of in the last 12 months put together, we have a leadership team, where I promoted a few internal staff and yeah, just handed off a little bit of responsibility for the day to day running up the business, so that I’ve still got some doing time in my week.
Catherine Langman:
I reckon that takes a lot of courage to do that. Because I imagine it must feel hard when, it’s always like your baby when you’ve built this business from nothing.
Steph Pryor:
It is.
Catherine Langman:
Yeah.
Steph Pryor:
Yeah. And you know what? It probably makes me sound like I have a massive ego, and I really don’t. But its really hard to admit that other people might be better at running your business than you are. Yeah so, because when you start from start you are everything.
Catherine Langman:
Yes.
Steph Pryor:
And you know exactly how everything works and yeah, and so just letting go of that and going, “Okay, well, hiring someone who has warehouse management experience is probably going to do a better job than I could do.”
Catherine Langman:
Yes.
Steph Pryor:
Yeah. And once I got past that, hiring really great people has just been so empowering, because it has freed me up to do the bits that I love.
Catherine Langman:
Oh, that’s awesome.
Steph Pryor:
Yeah.
Catherine Langman:
Yeah. I think it’s Richard Branson, isn’t it? Who talks about growing Virgin brand, he just likes to hire really smart people and then get out of their way.
Steph Pryor:
Yes. Yeah, yeah, I often tell myself that constantly actually. I have a great team, and sometimes I do just need to get out of their way. Let them get on with it.
Catherine Langman:
It must be, there’s that fine balance though, isn’t there? Between being happy for them to do it differently than you might do it, and okay with maybe stuffing up sometimes, but also doing better than you might do. So, without challenging [crosstalk 00:25:14].
Steph Pryor:
Yeah. Trying to focus on the outcome.
Catherine Langman:
Yeah.
Steph Pryor:
The outcomes and not how people get there.
Catherine Langman:
Yeah.
Steph Pryor:
Yeah.
Catherine Langman:
So good. So, when you think about the journey that you’ve had so far. What would you say would be your favorite tips then to up and coming Productpreneurs, who really want to follow your footsteps, perhaps not doing exactly the same products of course.
Steph Pryor:
Yeah. Two things. So first one would be up skill before you hire. So probably the mistake that I made in the early days, was hiring too early, or hiring professionals without really understanding what they were doing in my business.
Catherine Langman:
Yeah.
Steph Pryor:
So, some examples like Facebook ads or Google ads, or-
Catherine Langman:
SEO websites. Yup.
Steph Pryor:
All of that stuff, where you just… Yeah. So you can’t expect to be able to just pay a professional and completely switch off to it, and then just come back and have it be done.
Catherine Langman:
No.
Steph Pryor:
You have to have enough of knowledge yourself to know, to be able to contribute to that conversation with them, and to know whether they’re doing a good job.
Catherine Langman:
And to set the expectations too, I think.
Steph Pryor:
Exactly.
Catherine Langman:
Otherwise somebody else will just do what they think, which might not be what you wanted.
Steph Pryor:
Exactly. Yeah. And I really enjoyed learning new skills, so I’ve made that, I guess, my way of working now is I typically go and do a course and then hire someone to do it.
Catherine Langman:
Yup.
Steph Pryor:
So I’m doing the course so that I know just enough to be dangerous.
Catherine Langman:
Love it.
Steph Pryor:
And to able to have some input into the way things are done.
Catherine Langman:
Yes.
Steph Pryor:
But in the early days, yeah, just being able to pay someone and then not worry about it. And it didn’t really work.
Catherine Langman:
Yeah. I totally made that mistake. I remember hiring an SEO agency, and then it was some young guy who really had no idea what nappies were. And I’m like, “Why are we not getting any sales off all these visitors?”
Steph Pryor:
Exactly.
Catherine Langman:
Yeah.
Steph Pryor:
But I mean, part of it is just the learning curve anyway.
Catherine Langman:
Yeah.
Steph Pryor:
I don’t think you’re ever going to nail everything first go. And you kind of do just have to be able to dust yourself off and get on the next thing when things don’t go perfectly.
Catherine Langman:
For sure.
Steph Pryor:
But I definitely think having a bit of knowledge yourself as a business owner never hurts.
Catherine Langman:
Yeah, absolutely.
Steph Pryor:
And then, my second tip would be that omni-channel. By having multiple channels, it really helps with risk management. And I think that’s something that really saved us last year when COVID and everything happened. Because we were selling to quite a few different countries, and we had wholesale and retail, and we also do Amazon in the US.
Catherine Langman:
Yep.
Steph Pryor:
But when one of those channels was really suffering. So for instance, when Australia was in lockdown and sales just closed here.
Catherine Langman:
Yeah.
Steph Pryor:
The other channels were doing well.
Catherine Langman:
Yeah, yeah.
Steph Pryor:
And it just really helps protect us against the risk, and I’ll be going through what we’ve gone through in, the last couple of years, I kind of made that something that I want to continue to work on. To just have more different revenue streams coming in.
Catherine Langman:
Yeah.
Steph Pryor:
So that we are spreading our risk.
Catherine Langman:
Yeah. Super smart.
Steph Pryor:
[crosstalk 00:28:45] different channels. Yeah.
Catherine Langman:
Not putting all your eggs in one basket.
Steph Pryor:
Yeah. Yes. Which I did, for the first couple of years when we were purely a wholesale business.
Catherine Langman:
Yes.
Steph Pryor:
And then yeah, now that we’ve diversified a bit, its really helped.
Catherine Langman:
Yeah. That’s interesting that you would say that, because I mean, I get asked a lot, what’s the best business model online, like e-commerce versus wholesale. But I always say both, because I think that you do [crosstalk 00:29:15] the better result at the end of the day.
Steph Pryor:
Yeah. You do, and I love working with our wholesalers. And just the exposure that you get through their networks is amazing. It’s almost like having a team before you have a team, working with the wholesalers.
Catherine Langman:
True. Yeah.
Steph Pryor:
I felt like they were my team, when this all started.
Catherine Langman:
Yeah. That’s so true. Yeah, and you do, yeah, they’re kind of doing your marketing for you. You’re getting that extra brand awareness and all of that good stuff. Yeah.
Steph Pryor:
Yeah.
Catherine Langman:
So cool.
Steph Pryor:
Yup.
Catherine Langman:
So, you created Westridge Goods, although it sounds like you did that pretty much at the start. But you’ve got that holding company to represent your brands. So does that mean you’ve got other product developments in the works? What’s-
Steph Pryor:
No, I don’t have anything now. I’ve got a whole bunch of new products coming for Montii this year.
Catherine Langman:
Ah, exciting.
Steph Pryor:
Yeah. That’s kind of where my focus has been. I’m someone who really picks a word of the year to focus on, or just one little point to focus on. And this year I’ve been focusing on new.
Catherine Langman:
Yeah.
Steph Pryor:
So, having lots of new strengths, and new colors and new products, and really firming up our product range. So we did quite a bit of quality improvements and little tweaks.
Catherine Langman:
Yes.
Steph Pryor:
And then next year my focus is new markets.
Catherine Langman:
Interesting.
Steph Pryor:
So, I think I’ll look at what new markets we can get into, whether that’s international or different platforms, or yeah, just doing a bit of an explore there. But I would like to do another brand at some point,` I don’t really have anything just yet, so.
Catherine Langman:
Well, you seem to manage to cram an awful lot into a short space of time. So, I’m sure it won’t be long and we’ll be seeing something new from you. Yeah.
Steph Pryor:
Yeah.
Catherine Langman:
And what about for you Steph, what’s next for you?
Steph Pryor:
For me personally, actually, this is a pretty big milestone. My husband has just started working in the business. Yeah, so he was able to resign from his full-time role, which was such a big personal milestone, because for so many years, all the money he was making was going into the business, and I wasn’t actually making anything.
Catherine Langman:
Yes,.
Steph Pryor:
And so, it feels nice to be able to repay that to him a little bit.
Catherine Langman:
Yeah. That’s so exciting.
Steph Pryor:
Yeah.
Catherine Langman:
Congratulations. That’s awesome.
Steph Pryor:
Thank you. So, he is able to take a lot of the operations management stuff off my plate, meaning that I can hopefully go back to working less hours, and spending most of my time just focusing on the bits that I really love doing.
Catherine Langman:
Yeah. Oh, congratulations, that’s a huge milestone. I’m very excited for you.
Steph Pryor:
Thank you. We haven’t had a chance to go and celebrate or anything yet. I was just saying to him earlier, “Come on, surely that deserves a night away or something, when we can.”
Catherine Langman:
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Exactly. Definitely. I mean, I know it can be very common for many of us entrepreneurs to always look to the next thing. We’ll achieve something, but we often don’t take a moment to take stock and enjoy that win. So, hopefully you get that chance.
Steph Pryor:
So true, yeah.
Catherine Langman:
Yeah.
Steph Pryor:
Yeah.
Catherine Langman:
Excellent. Look Steph, it’s been absolutely amazing having you on the show today, and really feel very privileged to hear your story. So thank you for joining us.
Steph Pryor:
Thank you. Thanks so much for having me.
Catherine Langman:
And super quick, where can our listeners go and find out more about your brands?
Steph Pryor:
Where I mostly hang out, is on Montii’s Instagram page. So I absolutely love to have a chat on stories.
Catherine Langman:
Yes.
Steph Pryor:
We are @Montii.co, Which is M-O-N-T-I-I.co. And yeah, that’s mostly where I hang out.
Catherine Langman:
Fantastic. Cool. Well, we’ll absolutely share that link and your website, et cetera as well.
Steph Pryor:
And the website, yeah.
Catherine Langman:
So we’ll pop that on the show notes page today so that people can come and find out more.
Steph Pryor:
Awesome. Thank you so much.
Catherine Langman:
Well, thanks for joining us, and I really appreciate you sharing your story with our listeners today.