Start small and make it good

Sugru is mouldable glue – ‘21st Century Duct Tape’, said Forbes – created by Jane ni Dhulchaointigh. Here she is at the 2015 reasons.to conference, talking about the advice she was given when “we’d basically spent all the investment money and I’d put four years of my life into mixing those chewing gum things” but they still hadn’t had a major commercial breakthrough. The customer base was enthusiastic yet very small. “There was a point, kind of Christmas 2008, where I thought… ‘Have I done all of this for nothing? Is it not going to amount to anything?’ Because we had no money.”

I went for a cup of tea with a friend – another designer – and she basically gave me the best advice that I’ve ever had. She just said "Look Jane, I know you want it to be big and I know you want it to be in every kitchen drawer and I know you want to affect millions of people… but you can’t just do it like that. You’ve got 100 people that are sending you pictures. Focus on them. Get those, get another hundred, you get them, you’ll get a thousand, if you get them, you’ll get another thousand." And for me, that was just like – yeah – I mean, it totally changed my mind. And I was like "Yeah, that’s what I’m going to do. I’m just going to make it small. And I’m going to make it brilliant."

[This post is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0]