Sarah Kallile is the founder of Lunnie, a consumer brand redefining postpartum with its patent-pending, leak proof nursing bra.
She is also a busy mom to three girls under the age of 4 and found a problem she knew could be fixed.
After spending her career at early-stage tech startups, Sarah was inspired by her postpartum experience to found Lunnie. She built Lunnie as a community-led brand of moms, known as the Lunnie Hive, whose insights fueled Lunnie’s product development and marketing.
Lunnie’s nursing bra launched in March 2021 and sold out almost immediately, so she quickly restocked and got the product back up and available. Here are a few of the topics we’ll discuss on this episode of The Quest for E-Commerce Success:
- How Sarah went from the idea for Lunnie to bringing it to market.
- How to test the concept of a product.
- What happens at pitch competitions.
- Being successful at pitch competitions.
- What winning a grant enables you to do.
- The process of gaining a patent.
- How to continually find new customers.
Resources:
Connecting with Sarah Kallile:
Connecting with the host:
- Rebecca Babicz on LinkedIn
Quotables
- 6:00 – “This is interesting but I need more data on this, so I just real scrappy made a Google survey sent it to friends who are moms and said take this it was basically asking what are pain points you find with your nursing bras, what could be better, are there brands you like or what’s missing from brands and within days I had over 300 responses and these mums were just lit up on this topic.”
- 8:14 – “I always describe Lunnie as a community-led brand because the community truly came first before the product itself so as I started prototyping and iterating I kept these women along for every step, I live in a small close-knit town right next to Dayton Ohio so I was literally hustling this bra prototype around in a pink bag to different moms and getting their feedback and collecting it and just trying to make the bra better.”
- 18:41 – “This brand isn’t just a pretty face this is truly a superior product that is making a difference in women’s lives being able to talk to the fact that I built this as a community-led brand and I sold out in my production run with zero marketing dollars just because women are really rallying behind this and the power of social media and how you can be savvy and hack that.”
- 28:56 – “It’s really taking one step at a time and if you don’t know something what I always did was cold reached out to people that did and make the ask and I was really blown away by how many people would answer my emails and calls and say yea what you’re working on is interesting and I’d be happy to talk to you.”