On this episode of Honest Ecommerce, we have Kelly Oriard and Callie Christensen. Callie and Kelly are the co-founders of Slumberkins, a leading direct to consumer children’s brand that provides tools and resources to support little ones, families, caregivers and educators with early emotional learning.. We talk about connecting authentically with your community, a transformative experience with Shark Tank, navigating the continuous evolution of Ecomm, and so much more!
Kelly Oriard is the co-founder and Chief Therapeutic Officer at Slumberkins, a children’s education and emotional health brand. She holds a dual master's degree in Marriage and Family Therapy and School Counseling.
As a therapist, school counselor, and mother, Oriard is passionate about changing how we support mental and emotional wellbeing for children and families.
As the author behind the character storylines at Slumberkins, Kelly is changing the way children and families can access the content and strategies, usually found in a family therapy session, in a fun, easy-to-use way that creates healing and brings meaningful moments of connection that make a lifelong impact on the emotional health of children.
Callie Christensen is the co-founder and Chief Community Officer at Slumberkins, a children’s education and emotional wellness brand. Callie holds a master’s in teaching elementary education and special education.
As a mother and educator turned entrepreneur, she’s on a mission to use her educational background to create an accessible, meaningful, and purposeful brand that is useful in every home and school to help support families and communities on their journeys of emotional health.
Slumberkins is at the forefront of brand building online as they expand into children’s entertainment by bringing the characters to life in a preschool television series produced by The Jim Henson Company.
They just launched the first-ever music album for kids & families: Together We Shine, Vol. 1. Debuted as #1 kids album on iTunes https://orcd.co/slumberkinstws
They also just launched a New Affirmation App on iTunes that's free for kids and families https://apps.apple.com/us/app/slumberkins/id1627118113
Slumberkins children's show streaming now on Apple TV+ https://tv.apple.com/us/show/slumberkins/umc.cmc.4r9fjly8gp831gqkfe8ft1xrb
They are making as many tools and resources available to families so they can easily integrate moments of connection and social emotional learning into every day.
In This Conversation We Discuss:
Resources:
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Callie Christensen
The ability to not have to pay ourselves from the business in the early days was key to being able to use those resources for growth.
Chase Clymer
Welcome to Honest Ecommerce, a podcast dedicated to cutting through the BS and finding actionable advice for online store owners. I'm your host, Chase Clymer. And I believe running a direct-to-consumer brand does not have to be complicated or a guessing game.
On this podcast, we interview founders and experts who are putting in the work and creating real results.
I also share my own insights from running our top Shopify consultancy, Electric Eye. We cut the fluff in favor of facts to help you grow your Ecommerce business.
Let's get on with the show.
Today, I'm welcoming to the show not one but two amazing founders.
I've got Callie and Kelly joining me from Slumberkins, a leading direct-to-consumer children's brand that provides tools and resources to support little ones, families, caregivers and educators with early emotional learning.
Welcome to the show.
Callie Christensen
Thank you so much for having us. We're excited to be here.
Chase Clymer
Absolutely.
So for the listeners that are unaware of Slumberkins, can you quickly... What are the types of products you guys are currently selling online?
Callie Christensen
So Slumberkins is mostly known for our book and plush bundle. So what that means is we have characters that represent different emotional skills that we, as founders, being an educator and a therapist, built a brand that has tools for families and parents and kids around teaching children early emotional learning skills.
But our primary product online is a combination of books that teach the lessons and plush characters that are like candy for the kids.
Chase Clymer
Awesome. Absolutely. So take me back in time.
Where did the idea for this business come from? Was that the first idea or did you get there eventually?
Kelly Oriard
Well, it goes way back because Callie and I have been best friends since we were 14 years old. We met in high school and sort of did life parallel to each other.
We were both D1 athletes, went to college, and then after college went into our respective careers, and myself into marriage and family therapy and school counseling, Callie into special ed.
And just because we were doing life around the same time, we serendipitously ended up on maternity leave at the same time with our sons. They were born two months apart.
So when we were walking around on our maternity leave talking about what we were seeing in the schools and the students and families that we were working with–which was actually quite concerning at the time, and this was pre-pandemic. The rise of mental health issues, behavioral health issues, parents feeling overwhelmed and not knowing how to support their kids, really trying to get them into groups with us or hand them over to us to fix, quote unquote.
And we were inspired by our own babies and thought, there’s so many turnkey things that parents can be doing from the moment children are born until they get to school that we can empower parents and give them those tools through basically scripted stories.
So we started by borrowing $200 from my mom, going to Joann Fabric and sewing our first creatures, pairing them with these stories and selling them at craft fairs, and it was really going to be a kind of mom-made, teacher-made side hustle.
But because of the right product, right time, just everything hitting, a community really built around the brand through Instagram and Facebook groups at the time and helped catapult us into ending up quitting our jobs in education and going full-time for Slumberkins as we grew the brand.
Chase Clymer
That's amazing. I guess my follow-up question would be... Obviously, this didn't happen overnight.
Once you made the first creature, as you said, and you started to sell at craft fairs, how long were you in the trenches getting that direct feedback from people at craft fairs before it started to snowball a bit?
Callie Christensen
So we did 3 craft fairs. We're from the Pacific Northwest in the Portland, Oregon area. And so we did 3 craft fairs.
And at the last one, it was nearing the time. We needed to go back to our roles in the classroom too. Maternity leave is coming to an end.
We kind of looked at each other and we’re like, we wanna keep going, like, this doesn't end.
We're getting such great feedback, we keep selling out of these craft fairs. So the first step we took was to open up an Etsy shop and just put some online. And we had an Instagram account that was driving all awareness and traffic for what we were doing.
And I think the magic is we found a very unique niche and we had a different product.
We did a lot of research in the early days over if anything like this ever existed in the market and even took the step to take our handmade version of Slumberkins. We had Bigfoot and Sloth at the time, and took it to an IP lawyer in Portland and was like, we want to trademark this.
We want a design patent, we want to trademark lumberkins. We did all of this stuff because we had a bigger vision, knowing how powerful storytelling is for kids and families and learning.
And so we did those right things before we even paid ourselves in the business.
But for context, in the first year, 2016 is when we put them in January, like December, January 2016 was when we put them online.
And in the year of 2016, we hand sewed like 4,000 Slumberkins. Like it was insane.
We couldn't keep up with demand because of... and it was all organic at that point. Because I also think there was something around... We couldn't keep up with sewing them fast enough that then we would sew batches.
And then people couldn't get their hands on them because we'd sell through 300 at a time. And it just became this tidal wave of not being able to keep up.
And the power of social media back in 2016 from an organic lens was completely different than it is today.
Chase Clymer
That's amazing.
How long did it take you to find a manufacturing partner that you trusted to take what I'm assuming is one of the biggest time stocks off your plate?
Kelly Oriard
Yeah, that was one area where… because of how fast it was moving, we were also really caught up in doing the production ourselves. A lot of the people who were our customers loved that it was handmade.
It was a moment where Callie and I had to really take a step back and in the early days we had done like a little one pager business overview that her old basketball coach had given us because we weren't business people at all.
But one of the questions on there was, what's your Big Hairy Audacious Goal? Like you'll know you've made it when, and finish that sentence. And back then we said, when the Slumberkins on Ice.
So we had this big vision of getting to a place where our characters would be at coliseums. And so we got to this point where we were like, there's no way we can continue selling these ourselves if that's our goal.
And so at that time, again, we had no idea how to find a manufacturer. Google page 12 found somebody who was in LA that worked. I Googled who makes Disney's products, who makes IKEA products, and kind of went for the top and just tried to connect with people that I found contacts for and just struggled in talking to somebody who was much too big for us at the time. But because I approached it from a place of information gathering, collaboration, asking questions, trying to understand not making it transactional from the very first moment.
We were able to kind of create a deeper relationship where that person was sort of mentoring and helping me maybe find a lower level manufacturer that we could actually work with.
But when the time came to make that order, that person didn't have the paperwork that was needed to kind of prove that it was like all buttoned up for child safety, child labor, law safety.
And because we had built a relationship with this person, he was like, “I can't watch you do it. I'm going to lower my MLQs for you.”
And so we were able to enter in with a very high-quality manufacturer from the get-go. It was a stretch for us at the time. And that was when we first took our first money into the business to try to get that purchase order done.
But it all serendipitously happened at the right time because we ended up going on Shark Tank. And the day we were on Shark Tank, we sold out of all of our handmade products before we even aired.
So we ended up having to sell that first batch of overseas-made products on the day that Shark Tank aired. And we had to air freight it over, package it ourselves, send it out, miss Christmas, holidays, everything ourselves.
So it was just like a true bootstrapped learning process over here.
Chase Clymer
That's amazing. So obviously, we're going to talk about Shark Tank. We'll get to that here in a second.
So with finding this partner… What else was going on in the business? Were you still on Etsy? Had you graduated to your own.com?
Were you still just growing organically through social? Or had you started to learn to explore other channels for growth?
Callie Christensen
Yeah. So we ended up switching from Etsy to Shopify back in the summer of 2016. So midway through that year, we just realized we were outgrowing Etsy and needed to develop our own website and brand and all that.
So as soon as we had the trademark filed for Slumberkins, we went to work on opening up our first Shopify site.
And yes, so from 2016 to basically mid 2018…
And then we really bootstrapped the brand. Shark Tank was an amazing opportunity, but we bootstrapped the brand to 1.5 million before we took in our first investment round.
And that's something that I look back on and I'm like,”Oh, I don't know how we did it.”
It was like, it never felt like a grind though. Like, yes, we were slammed, we were so busy, but it was more of this like tidal wave of traction that was just kind of like forcing us to try to keep up, which, fast forward to today, it's quite different.
Chase Clymer
Absolutely. We're jumping all over the place. But I do want to go back and ask specifically.
Now did you return to work after maternity leave? Or did you see what was going on and just jump feet first into slumberkins?
Kelly Oriard
We did both return after maternity leave. I went back part-time. Callie went back full time. But our hearts were always with Slumberkins and we were really excited about it and trying to figure out ways to keep it going while we were both still working in the schools.
The moment that we decided we're going all in was when we got the call that we are filming for Shark Tank. Our only business experience at that time was like literally watching all the episodes of Shark Tank.
So we were like, “They're going to ask us if we're all in. So we have to be able to say yes.”
So we just called our principals and said, sorry, we're going on Shark Tank. So we're taking a leave and haven't looked back since then.
Chase Clymer
And what year was that?
Callie Christensen
That was 2017. So we went back for a year after our maternity leave ended and worked for a year.
But at that time, we had hired some contract seamstresses in the Portland area to help us with the sewing. So while we were teaching, they were sewing and we were doing full-time Slumberkins and full-time teaching, it was a grind.
But the ability to not have to pay ourselves from the business in the early days was key to being able to use those resources for growth of buying more fabric to make more sewing, to be able to file trademarks and IP protection, making those types of investments in the brand early is what has set us up for success.
And we couldn't have afforded that had we been taking the salaries that we were using or that we were getting from being educators.
Chase Clymer
Absolutely.
I think there are probably some listeners out there right now that are in a similar situation where they are starting to find product market fit and they don't necessarily know when is the right time to go all in.
Not everybody gets a call that says you're going to go on Shark Tank to really be the kick in the butt to make that decision.
Is there anything that you can remember from your experience or looking back on maybe a little bit earlier, you should have taken that leap? Or what should entrepreneurs be looking at?
Kelly Oriard
I think for us, we just come from a team mindset and collaboration. So every time we would start to feel overwhelmed, and like Callie said, there was this push and traction behind us.
So there was this energy behind like, oh, we're leaving things on the table. And when we had that momentum, making sure that we hired or got people there to help us, especially with tasks that were easily done by others like customer service, helping with the shipping, all of this stuff, those hires were really important to get off of our plate so we could keep thinking bigger for the brand.
So again, we paid people before we paid ourselves to get that groundwork set up.
And then even when we did start paying ourselves a little bit, because we took the leap and said, “Okay, we’re no more at the schools, we split a salary.”
So we were making basically part-time schoolwork salaries. So we kept our salaries very low to make sure the company could handle it.
We could take those growth steps that we needed. So we didn't make the plan of like, I need to replace my salary at the level that I'm accustomed to.
We really took that hit in the beginning and put the blood, sweat and tears into the business. And I would say that over the long run, it really helped us stabilize Slumberkins, understand and take in money at the right time.
And we sort of did it by accident by just being conservative teachers and used to not spending a lot of money and having a glamorous lifestyle. We were used to that. So we just stayed within those means as long as possible while building the business.
Chase Clymer
Awesome. Thank you so much for sharing that. So let's move forward a little bit now.
You are on Shark Tank. It airs. Is it the entire first order that sells out?
Callie Christensen
Not of the... Well, close to. In the holiday season, we ended up selling through that entire first order. We attribute Shark Tank to about 150,000 in revenue if we look at the air date, website traffic.
So it wasn't like some of the experiences that others have had or like it was millions of dollars when you air.
But in the way that the streaming world works these days, we just had someone DM us on Slumberkins or right on Facebook saying, “Oh, I just watched your Shark Tank episode,” because people watch and consume media in different ways than previously, even 10 years ago.
So we kind of have this trickle effect of brand awareness that comes in from that experience.
And, you know, I honestly think even the process of going on Shark Tank, the filling out of even the paperwork made us better business owners or like being able to even button up all the things that we didn't even realize we didn't have together that they want to go through in their diligence process, did make it a lot more serious over like, oh, okay, we need to have this together. Oh, okay, we need to have that together.
So just going through that experience, I would encourage anyone, any entrepreneur to apply because the application process is just good... It's like business school.
Chase Clymer
That's amazing.
So you’re on Shark Tank and you've got some nice momentum behind you. How do you capitalize on everything that you have going for you and sustain that growth?
You can't guarantee that you're going to be on Shark Tank as an entrepreneur. You can't guarantee a celebrity is going to wear your t-shirt.
So what else are you doing to make sure that you're maintaining this momentum and this goodwill that you've won?
Callie Christensen
Number one, I would say build a community. Have a direct relationship with your consumer. Get to know them.
Really, we ended up growing pretty organically from a community on social media and then ended up developing a Facebook group, which was our most conversational community about the brand.
And I think there's just something really special about when a consumer... We know that consumers like to buy from brands that they feel like they like, know, and trust. And I feel like Kelly and I do a lot of just engaging with them.
And our primary customers are parents, and we are parents. And so we just show up and we're really authentic with them and they see the behind the scenes over what we deal with as customers or as entrepreneurs and business owners so much, because we're pretty transparent with them when something does go wrong.
You know, when a PO is gonna be late and they've pre-ordered it and they just have to wait longer, we are transparent with them, like, “That's on us. This really sucks.”
But they also are the most patient because they see the humans and they connect with the humans behind the brand.
So yeah, that was like the... That's been our key differentiator, the community that we've built.
Chase Clymer
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Chase Clymer
Since Shark Tank and all these years, you guys have had some other amazing things happen.
Talk to me about the TV show, how did that come into reality?
Kelly Oriard
Yeah. So after Shark Tank, there was a little bit of a surplus of cash because we sold more than we expected in that holiday season.
And so Callie and I, again, thinking of our Slumberkins on Ice big dream, we let the team keep things running. And we took some cash out of that budget and said, we're going to bring one of our characters to life.
So we had this whole plan that was probably short-sighted, but, you know, a typical founder move here.
We're like, we're going to build a puppet. And so we're going to make Bigfoot a YouTube star. So we kind of started on this journey of like, we're going to bring one of them to life ourselves because that, as teachers, we just knew how to do that on our own or just strap things on our back.
Well, we ended up going to a conference called the Altitude Summit and meeting at a dinner the president of television for The Jim Henson Company, which we had chosen to do a puppet for because I was really a big Henson nerd when I was younger, I loved puppets.
So we met her at dinner and said, “Oh my gosh, we have a brand. Look, we built a puppet. We're going to make a TV show.” And she was like, “What's happening here? This is amazing. Like why are you doing this alone? We should be working together.”
So we ended up just serendipitously getting in touch with her and she fell in love with the brand. She was a single mom at the time with a kid who had anxiety really resonated deeply with the messages and the ideas that we were building within the brand.
So it was kind of a non-traditional path because I think most of the time you set your sights on going and pitching and Henson was like a really organic connection that we made and kind of led us through the process of how we do that.
So we did go through that whole process of developing a show, pitching it to networks.
All along the way, I think Callie and I were, from the moment we met her, we were like, “Oh, we're gonna have a TV show.”
Now that we're on the other side of it, we realize how special that is and how many don't end up happening or get to that place and fall through.
But I think our excitement, our belief in it, the magic of how it happened, the real relationships we made along the way that felt so authentic just carried it all the way through to airing which has been such an incredible experience.
We pinch ourselves every day that that actually happened.
Chase Clymer
I don't think I've ever been able to ask this follow up question.
How does the impact of a television series? What's that impact on the sales of the product? How do you correlate that?
Callie Christensen
Our partner, our streaming partner is Apple TV+. Apple is notorious for not sharing viewer data. So it can be pretty hard to track.
But the way that we've attributed it is from an Ecom perspective in a couple of ways. Organic search definitely spiked upon airing of the first season, the search for Slumberkins.
Same thing on search on Amazon for Slumberkins, which is a more traditional toy channel for a lot of people looking for things.
And then we do post-purchase surveys over How did you hear about Slumberkins? And we do that on the E-comm side, but then we pull our community and our Facebook group all the time too. And so we have more anecdotal data that kind of shows.
And you know, we did see an uptick specifically in website traffic over that time period. And I would say like a slight uptick.
That being said, I will say that TV shows, especially in today's age of streaming, also heavily depend on a good marketing budget and support specifically for that show.
So it's one of those things that...Apple loved the brand, Apple loved the community that we've built. This is another way that we leveraged our community.
When we went to pitch networks, we actually put together a chat book of photos of our customers and their kids and their love for Slumberkins and a parent testimonial asking for a show.
And so we had like 50 testimonials that we left with these network executives basically saying, “Hey, I have a built-in viewer base asking for a show.”
And so being able to leverage that was an incredible thing to be able to kind of show the power of the community. And I think that was part of why Apple was so interested as well.
Kelly Oriard
I think on a show as well, just with the nature of streaming, again, that halo effect and the awareness, it takes a little time to build.
So it's not like…probably in the old days when it was like cable or network when everybody was sitting around waiting for a show to drop unless you have that huge marketing budget and you're Ted Lasso or whoever. So there's that.
But we also saw a lot because the show aired globally in 22 languages. We've definitely seen an uptick in our international markets starting to open up and bring in questions about distribution into different countries that were kind of non-existent, interest or awareness before.
And alongside that, as you have a TV show, the opportunities for omni-channel, for licensing, for going into different areas beyond just what we have been doing on DTC, those doors start opening as well.
So we've really been able to leverage and build out, use the awareness also as an inroads to expanding the Slumberkins footprint as an IP brand franchise, not just a product that's DTC.
Chase Clymer
That's amazing. Another thing that I wanted to ask about is you guys just launched your new Affirmation app on iTunes.
Can you tell me a little bit more about that?
Callie Christensen
Yeah. So the app mirrors our publishing program.
All of our characters, our 15 characters span more proactive things that all parents want for their kids–building self-esteem, practicing gratitude, practicing mindfulness, being authentic–all of those skills, all the way through to supporting grief and loss, coping with anxiety, coping with change.
So a span of 15 characters and each of those characters has two core books in their collection. And then every book that we have ends in an interactive affirmation.
And so what we did is we took those affirmations and built them into the app that’ll make it more fun and engaging for kids to be able to practice the affirmation that they're hearing and learning when they're reading the books with their parents.
As educators, we look at it as a tool to extend the learning and being able to do the affirmations in a different part of the day where if you're reading the books with your kids at bedtime, the affirmation app is something that you can do when you're sitting at a restaurant waiting for your dinner to be served.
So just trying to find all of the ways that Slumberkins can support parents throughout the day by just building these different little moments that are important in these emotional skill building times.
Chase Clymer
That's amazing.
Is there anything I didn't ask you about that you think would resonate with our audience?
Callie Christensen
I'm curious from your side, from an Ecommerce standpoint.
We've had a lot of success, especially in the early days, with organic growth, you know, like being able to bootstrap a company to 1.5 million, being able to raise, I mean, at this point, we've raised venture capital.
And I think there's a difference, something that I think that has clicked with us a lot and that we've experienced as founders is even understanding the painful things about growth and scaling an Ecommerce brand.
I remember one of our investors saying to us, the team that got you from zero to 7 million is not the same team that can take you from that 10 million to 100 million. That's just a completely different skill set and ability to scale a brand to that level.
And just understanding how much a brand now really depends on…The content machine is real, but just the reality that is scaling.
Starting the brand is one thing and getting it going is one hurdle. The next hurdle is then maintaining and then scaling. And that's what we, along with a lot of other Ecomm brands that have really strong brands, are still working on.
It's a constant grind now, you know? Everything is evolving.
The world of organic content is a different beast than it was seven years ago. It's a completely different way of operating. So I think it's just good to just be open and transparent for people to know that.
Even when you have a TV show, even when you have licensing opportunities out there, even when you are an established DTC brand that's been here for eight years at this point, it's still a grind behind the scenes.
Kelly Oriard
And we're still on the roller coaster emotionally the same way that we were on in the early days. That's another thing to tell founders or people who are starting their business.
The farce is that, “Oh, I'm going to get to the next level and it's going to stop being so intense and like a roller coaster.” Stop fooling yourself. It never stops being that. It will only be that with more pressure, more weight and heavier decisions.
So get used to it. Enjoy it. Embrace that part of your personality if you are a founder and you're doing this because that is what we're signing up for.
Chase Clymer
Awesome. Thank you so much, Kelly and Callie, for coming on the show today. We'll link to all the fun stuff that you have going on in the show notes.
And I'm sure I'll have you back to talk more about this stuff later on.
Callie Christensen
Thank you so much for having us.
Kelly Oriard
Thank you.
Chase Clymer
We can't thank our guests enough for coming on the show and sharing their knowledge and journey with us. We've got a lot to think about and potentially add into our own business. You can find all the links in the show notes.
You can subscribe to the newsletter at honestecommerce.co to get each episode delivered right to your inbox.
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Lastly, if you're a store owner looking for an amazing partner to help get your Shopify store to the next level, reach out to Electric Eye at electriceye.io/connect.
Until next time!