Looking For Product Innovation Techniques? This Entrepreneur's Story Would Help You In a country where speaking the language of the birds and the bees is forbidden, this entrepreneur forays into lovemaking furniture space and fights the taboo till he succeeds.

After months of market research and brainstorming product designs, IITian Gaurav Singh launched the first few of his camel-shaped couch - LoveRollers in August 2017. He used premium quality leather and foam keeping in mind the comfort and the feel. "I forayed into this segment because of a few bad experiences. Since, I have a background in product designing, I thought why not utilize it to design brilliant products," he says. A bit beyond the pocket for many but a perfect fit for the purpose. He sold few of those to his friends and colleagues, and further, received several queries. "However, we could not convert those to business leads. Many said, the product was too heavy and the price point was too high," shares Singh. Most of them, including some of his friendscum-customers, explained that keeping the product in their house was a major hiccup. Next, he approached the e-commerce companies and few major hospitality giants, including Vivanta. But, even they were skeptical.

ROLLING IT OUT DIFFERENTLY

Taking failure in stride, Singh designed the mini version of the same model using recyclable wood and foam. The price came down substantially. Further, this move drastically changed the course of his journey. Instead of looking for customers, "I started educating them through social media clips, explaining the advantages of using it," he says adding, "Our product can be easily used by expecting mothers and also by women having their periods." Amazon joined hands with him and then others followed. Its daily orders increased by 15 per cent. Gradually, major hospitality giants too started showing interest. "Vivanta's Director highly appreciated the newer design and innovation. Many of them bought our product for their honeymoon suits and spas," he says. Now, the fix was selling the bigger, high-end models which were rotting in the warehouse. "I needed a "one-size-fits-all' approach and crunched through a lot of user data for designs," he explains.

To end the dilemma, he re-designed it as a plug-and-play convertible couch which means family acceptance won't be a hindrance anymore. "You can now split it into two elegant couches; however, with the help of a button it can be re-assembled. This saves the embarrassment of explaining the product," he reveals. The new model was launched last month. However, the products are manufactured depending on the order flow. Right now, the B2B v/s B2C model is at a ratio of 70 to 30.

(This article was first published in the July 2018 issue of Entrepreneur Magazine. To subscribe, click here)