73: {Solo} The Journey of Creating ChilledVino

Did you know that I'm the Founder and creator of a wine drinkware product called ChilledVino? Today I share my journey of inventing ChilledVino, my patented wine drinkware product that keeps beverages cold for hours. I talk about the inspiration behind the product and the challenges faced in bringing it to life. I emphasize the importance of having a supportive partner and hiring the right professionals, such as a mechanical engineer, manufacturing partners, marketing companies and a CPA. I also talk through the challenges of what it looked like bringing a product to life in the middle of a pandemic! 

Takeaways

• Creating a product from an idea to physical creation is a challenging and expensive process.
• Having a supportive partner and hiring the right professionals is crucial.
• Prototyping and testing are essential to ensure the functionality and aesthetics of the product.
• Finding a manufacturer and navigating legal contracts can be difficult.
• Dealing with shipping and warehousing issues can present additional challenges.

ChilledVino has been featured in television segments & magazines and I wouldn't change it for the world!  

You can purchase ChilledVino HERE or on Amazon HERE

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Transcript

Caroline (00:00.84)
Today, I want to talk about my journey of creating chilled vino. For those of you that don't know, I have a wine drinkware product that I invented. I have a patent on it and a trademark and it's been a journey bringing an idea to life, but I wouldn't change it for the world. So chilled vino is my wine drinkware product. You put it in the freezer for four hours and then take it out and you, it will keep your wine or beverage or cocktail cold for hours.

I wanted to create something that looked and felt like a real wine glass, but would keep your wine cold and be shatterproof and be made with plastic. But again, how the look and the feel of the actual glass. And so to go into the backstory of exactly how I created chill, you know, and exactly how I brought it to life. I really wanted to impact the story because a lot of you guys don't know that side of me and it's a side of me. I'm very proud of. So in 2018.

Gary and I were on vacation and I ordered a glass of Rose by the pool and it came in this little shitty plastic cup. It was maybe like $18, $19 an hour, something ridiculous. And I basically had to drink it really fast because it was getting warm. So you had either two choices, drink the wine fast or buy ice cubes in it, both of which I don't like. So I decided to, there must be a better way. So after we get back from that vacation, I.

scoured the internet. I wanted to find something that would keep my beverage cold, but also resemble wine glass and be shadow proof. And I couldn't find it online. And so I decided that I wanted to create it. I had no clue what I was doing. I had never done this before. I didn't even know anybody who had done this before. I just went on this journey down. I went down this journey by myself.

And thankfully I have a very supportive husband who has been so helpful to me throughout the journey as well. So one thing I'm going to add quickly is you've got to have a supportive partner because I could have not done this without Gary. Okay. And on top of that, so I knew from my recruiting days, I needed to interview and hire a mechanical engineer. And one day I was interviewed, I was reading the wall street journal and.

Caroline (02:22.696)
I heard about a website called Upwork. I had no clue about it. No clue what it did. I got on there and figured out what it was. And it was basically a platform for freelancers. It's kind of like the platform Fiverr for marketing professionals, but Upwork has a broader clientele of professionals on there. And so what I did was I took my recruiter skills and I wrote an ad and I had a huge influx of mechanical engineers that were flooding my way.

that were interested in helping me create the product. So I went ahead and made a short list. I interviewed mechanical engineers, which if you know a mechanical engineer, they do not have the best personalities. But anyways, I wanted to hire someone that was as enthusiastic about me as the product and the idea. And so I finally found that one person. I hired him on Upwork. You can work.

transactionally through an hourly rate or flat rate. We decided to work together on an hourly rate because that worked best for him and for me. At the time I was still in my corporate recruiting job. And so the money I was making in that corporate role was going to fund part of it. So I'm going to, going to fund this project. And I had no clue what I was getting into from a financial standpoint. And so buckle up for that. So anyways, he and I started working together.

He, when you have an idea, you have to create drawings and prototypes to actually get to the place where you actually, the product is functional and you like it aesthetically. So he and I went through, we worked together for about eight months and went through eight rounds of prototyping. So what that looks like is every time you get a prototype, you have to test it out and see if you like it, see if it works, see if it functions, see if it feels like you want it to look. And so finally the eighth time.

I finally had a finalist. And so then it was time to get with a manufacturer to see who actually could bring this product to life. And this may sound easy at the end of the story, but let me tell you, this was the hardest thing I'd ever done. I had to go out there and solicit myself, my product to thousands of manufacturers to see if they could help me do this. And when I say help me do this, I mean, I'm still paying them to do it. So I just was soliciting.

Caroline (04:46.344)
Thousands of manufacturers to see who would even want to do business with me. No one answered me. I completely fell silent. I was a nobody. No one knew who Caroline Pennington was. Nobody knew who Chilvino was. And so it was very difficult to find someone who was interested in doing business with me. Finally, I got one manufacturer that said yes. And so we started the process of working together, which involves a lot of money and a lot of legal contracts. Okay.

So let me tell you right now for the record, getting a product from an idea to actual physical creation is very hard and very expensive. And I say very expensive because again, I had a corporate job and I was filing what I was making into the product. Okay. And when you have a product, you have what's called a tool that you have to create and that tool is yours. And once you have that tool made, it's yours for forever.

But you have to have that tool made before you can actually bring your product to life. So, and that process takes, you have to pay for the tool. They have to make the tools. So it's time and money invested. So that took about six more months. And so finally we were ready to go into production. We, at the time we were in full on pandemic mode, which is the most terrible time ever to bring your product to life. But I still wanted to continue pressing forward. So, and again, at the time when you go through a production run, you go from.

zero to three months and manufacturers also have what's called an MOQ, which is a minimum order quantity. So I had to heavily invest my own personal money into this first order of thousands of units. I had no clue if, you know, it would sell or anything. It was a huge, huge risk. And also to get the product from the manufacturer to me at the time where the pandemic, it was triple shipping rates. It was crazy. Okay.

Also at this time, let me note, I don't have a fancy warehouse. Like I don't have people working for me. I don't have any of those things. It's me and only me. So I had the product. My goal was to have the product shipped to my house and lo and behold, the shipping company said, no, we're not delivering a product to residential address. So Gary and I had to rent a U -Haul and go down to the Savannah port and basically their warehousing section close to the port where the truckers come in and out.

Caroline (07:10.6)
And he and I had to hurry you all and go get the inventory. So once we got the inventory, brought it back to the house at the time, I was building a website out landing page, trying to build hype online. And the day I went live, which was in July of 2021, I sold out hundreds and hundreds of orders and it just was complete validation to me. I mean, it felt like Christmas, but it was also validation that people liked my idea and that they wanted to.

invest and in their own, invest it in having, you know, one for themselves. So after that first day, I have been grinding on building the chilled vino business out chilled vino is sold online and on Amazon. So now I am so proud. I mean, thousands and thousands and thousands of orders have been placed and sold and Amazon's on fire and I couldn't be more grateful. So thank you to each of you. If you're listening to.

to this for believing in me and my product. It was very important to me to create something that would look and feel like a wine glass. And I have the patented cooling technology in between the walls of it so that your beverage stays cold. And that was really important to me. I live in South Carolina again, and we spend a lot of time outside. And I really want to create something that would provide a positive drinking experience for the customer.

And I also wanted to roll out a couple of different colors. So the original, the OG color is blue. And after that, I rolled out four more colors, pink, purple, green, and orange. Pink and purple actually are huge big sellers. Orange does okay. Purple does okay. And blue has always been well, because it was the original. So my point of this message is today to you is if you ever have any questions or are thinking about bringing a product to life.

Be ready to go through a journey. I've been on a complete roller coaster with this product. I can't tell you how many highs and lows I've been through with it, but the number one thing I will say, and then we'll take away from this podcast. I hope that you have is if you decide to create a product, you need to market test it and make sure that there is demand out there for it because you don't want to invest this time and money into a product. And then once you have it brought to life, not have anyone buying it.

Caroline (09:35.368)
So my encouragement is to really start marketing the heck out of it before you bring it to life. That way you can have a wait list created and have buzz created and it'll be less of a slow roll out the gate for you. That's one thing I had to learn in this whole process. And it is the marketing. I mean, I was okay at marketing beforehand, but.

Chilledvino has really put my hands to the fire when it comes to marketing and learning strategies and email marketing and social media marketing and strategy and everything. And so I hope this has been helpful. The link is in the show notes for Chilledvino. We are in busy season now, so go get your Chilledvino. Thanks for listening.