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How important was winning the Rutgers Business Plan competition?
Dubroy: It was important because of the seed money that came with it. We didn’t want to go into debt starting this business, so we could only invest what we had. For the competition, we had to pitch our business plan to a team of judges as if they were potential investors and tell them how the company was doing, how much we needed to make it grow, and where we could take our business. We were competing with about 20 other companies. We were nervous pitching a company about hair care to a room of all males. But winning was for us a moment a truth. It told us we exist. We have a great idea.
What have been some of the biggest challenges?
Dubroy: Honestly, just working with lots and lots of new people. We genuinely wanted to work with women-owned companies throughout this process, but finding those companies was more difficult than expected. And in general, building new relationships with people can be very challenging. We learned that quickly. Also, identifying the customers’ needs was a challenge. We knew we could consider ourselves our own customers, but we couldn’t just create products based off our personal needs. Even focus-group answers didn’t reflect buying choices in practice. Once we realized that, we knew we needed to bring in experts, and then started to grow our number of employees.
Lash: It was also challenging to find employees just as passionate as we are about this startup. And as always with startups, finding the capital was another challenge. We didn’t want to go into debt to start this and decided we would fund it on our own using the money we made from day jobs. So our growth at the start was limited by our paychecks.
What’s next for Tea and Honey Blends?
Dubroy: Right now we sell in several retail stores and the majority of our sales come from online orders. We also are getting our product into boutiques and salons.
Lash: We’re still in the early stages and are looking for investors to grow our distribution channels. The goal is to tie ourselves to a major retailer and then we think we’ll launch quickly. The money from the Rutgers business plan competition is slated for sales, marketing, and new product development, and we think it will help to grow the enterprise on a global scale.
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