320 | The Challenges Of Bringing A New Product To Life With with Zeba Parkar, Treleaf

The best products solve a problem or create an emotional connection. The ideas for these products stem from our own pain points or challenges as well as the joys in our life. That is what our guest did when she brought a new product to market.

Today's guest is a scientist by training, a creative tinkerer, and a natural show entrepreneur. Zeba Parkar is the owner of Treleaf, a product line that was created from Zeba's own needs as a plant owner and lover during the pandemic.

Zeba was looking for beautiful and functional ways to support her plants, and after trying multiple products, she hopped on a laser cutter and created her own. Over the last 3 years, Zeba has grown Treleaf into a thriving brand, selling products through direct-to-consumer channels and wholesale channels.

Her products can be found in over 150 stores, and she's working with a distributor to expand her reach.

In this episode, Zeba shares about the early success of her business, including how she fulfilled orders 1 by 1 on a shared maker space laser cutter to now having a warehouse space that supports multiple laser cutters, a team, and her production space to service again the direct to consumer and wholesale customers. We also talk about the challenges of bringing a new product to life and how she's legally protecting her brand and the products that she creates.

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Bringing a New Product to Market

Zeba, an engineer by profession and a plant enthusiast, found that her love for indoor plants grew even more during the pandemic. However, she struggled to find suitable accessories to support and style her growing collection of plants.

Determined to solve this problem, she began experimenting with various materials and designs. She was already playing around at a local maker space with access to lasers and wood, allowing her to create her first plant support.

She came home, put it in one of her plants, and uploaded a picture to the plant Instagram account she had at the time. Of course, it was a hit, and everyone wanted to know where she got it from.

Zeba ended up opening up an Etsy shop, creating a few more designs, and they began selling out quickly.

Each plant support was being handmade by Zeba and they were selling fast. This was all during the holiday season, so she was spending a lot of time creating each support. She was able to take off the week between Christmas and New Year's and, during this time, thought long and hard about creating a business around this product.

At this time, Zeba was already working on creating a completely different product, but that wasn’t taking off as quickly. With the creation of this product, something completely new to the market, she realized that going all in on the plant support would be the best decision for her business.

She turned her hobby into a business, opened up her Shopify site, and began scaling the types of products she was creating.

Expanding Product Categories

Initially, Zeba focused on plant supports. But as time went on, she transitioned into creating other plant-related products and expanded into new product categories.

Treleaf sells:

Staked trellises
Wall mounted trellises
Plant shaped coasters
Celebration tags & wooden plant tags
Plant ornaments

Zeba's goal is to provide functional products that not only help plants thrive but also enhance the overall aesthetics of an indoor garden.

By offering a range of well-designed and visually appealing accessories, Treleaf aims to inspire and enable more people to bring greenery into their indoor spaces.

The Decision to Explore Wholesale

In 2021, Zeba recognized the need to diversify her sales channels. Despite her success in direct-to-consumer, scaling with limited resources proved challenging.

She started looking into wholesale and came across Proof to Product, LABS, and our Paper Camp program, which is designed for people just like Zeba who are looking to scale wholesale and put in the work needed to make that happen. In fact, Zeba was the winner of our full scholarship to Paper Camp.

Through her participation in Paper Camp, she discovered the benefits of wholesale.

She recognized that partnering with retailers could significantly expand her brand's reach. She pursued wholesale opportunities and successfully secured partnerships with over 150 stores as of the time of this recording.

That amount of stores is a HUGE accomplishment in such a short period of time. Her product that was new to the market combined with her determination to scale her business, allowed her to get into that many stores so quickly.

Navigating Manufacturing Challenges

As Treleaf experienced rapid growth, Zeba faced the challenge many of our alum face of scaling production to meet demand.

Initially, she relied on the resources at her local maker space but soon had to establish her own workspace and invest in laser-cutting machines. This allowed her to maintain control over the manufacturing process and ensure high-quality products.

Due to the uniqueness and newness of this product to the market, she has maintained manufacturing in-house because it requires non-standardized solutions.

text overlay- "We are managing manufacturing currently...we have managed to keep it in-house, which is a lot of work but has been really helpful because we are making a product that does not exist."

Protecting Intellectual Property

Anytime a new product is introduced to the market, the risk of knockoffs and copycats is high. This was no exception in the case of the plant supports created by Treleaf.

Zeba took proactive steps to protect her brand and her intellectual property.

She obtained trademarks for her brand name and design patents for her products. With her background in material science and experience working with attorneys, Zeba was able to navigate the patent process independently, allowing her to protect her unique designs while staying within her budget.

Bringing a New Product to Life

Looking ahead to 2024, Zeba plans to double down on wholesale expansion and improve the operations of a growing business.

Zeba’s journey with Treleaf exemplifies the power of passion, innovation, and adaptability in building a successful business within a niche market.

Through her unique plant accessories, she has not only filled a gap in the industry but also created a loyal customer base.

As Treleaf continues to grow and evolve, Zeba remains focused on her mission of bringing more greenery indoors and inspiring others to do the same.

Quick Links

Here is a quick recap of links to other helpful blogs and podcasts shared in this post:

Did you know that 49% of your customers want to hear from you on a consistent basis? Yet only a small percentage of product makers are actively sending monthly emails to their direct-to-consumer and wholesale customers.

When I asked our community why they don't send more emails, they said they weren't sure what to say or how often to send those emails, and their biggest pain point was perception. Nobody wanted to come off as salesy or pushy. They didn't want to bother anyone, so I kindly reminded them that if people don't know about your product line, they are not going to purchase it.

Email marketing is hands down one of the best ways to create long-standing strong connections with our customers. So, sending consistent nurture emails, leads to repeat orders and it leads to larger orders. But sitting in front of a blank screen can feel really intimidating.

If you have struggled with what to say or when to send those emails, how to plan out your email marketing strategy, I want you to grab our free email marketing guide that has helped hundreds of product makers plan out an entire year's worth of emails.

download the free guide

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MEET zeba

I was born in a Aurangabad, India but grew up most of my life in the city of Mumbai which is on the west coast of India.

I am a scientist by training. I did my Bachelors in Polymer Engineering from University Institute of Chemical Technology, Mumbai. I completed my PhD from University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign in Materials Science and Engineering. Materials fascinate me and dreaming up products that make human life better and bring joy is my passion.

I worked as a corporate scientist right out of graduate school where I was introduced to the idea of digital manufacturing. The whole premise of designing your parts on the computer and hitting print and get a physical object in a few hours made my heart skip a beat. This is when I knew I wanted to be part of this maker movement. I started using 3D printing (additive manufacturing) as well as CNC lasers (subtractive manufacturing) to bring my ideas to life. I love nature, and live with hundreds of plants in my house. I started looking for beautiful home accessories and I never found products to help integrate them with my home décor. I started making some plant supports for my personal houseplant collection and that morphed into Treleaf. My inspiration is nature, and greenery all around me.

CONNECT WITH zeba

Connect with Katie Hunt

Katie Hunt is a business strategist, podcaster, mentor and mama to four. She helps product based businesses build profitable, sustainable companies through her conferences, courses and coaching programs.

Website: prooftoproduct.com | Instagram: @prooftoproduct