How was the success of the cart 'UpCart' that can overcome the stairs and steps easily?

by Min An

Carts used to carry luggage of travel or carry large quantities of goods are generally difficult to climb stairs and steps because there are only two wheels. To eliminate such inconvenience, " Cart " is a cart that has multiple wheels attached so that stairs and steps can go up and down smoothly. Co-founder and CEO of Startup "TriFold" to develop UpCart talk about its secret story.

How Two Unlikely Partners Invented the UpCart and Went Viral on QVC -
https://starterstory.com/stories/how-two-unlikely-partners-invented-the-upcart-and-went-viral-on-qvc

According to Mr. Michael Reznik, co-founder and CEO of TriFold, TriFold aims to improve people's mobility and to be able to send more productive lives. The UpCart product group is a folding cart that can easily move stairs and uneven terrain, and it is said that it has recorded explosive sales since its launch in 2015.

This is a movie that shoots how you actually use UpCart.

The UpCart Original Stair Climbing Cart: The Must Have Household Item!


Co-founder Leonid Khodor who had the idea of UpCart was of the same age as Mr. Raznik's father and that Mr. Khodor told Raznik the idea of UpCart together with Mr. Raznik's father's birthday party It was when I was drinking. Khodor, an engineer, invented UpCart, but he said he did not know how to connect with the business. However, Raznik who saw a simple prototype made by Mr. Khodor and a movie actually running is intuition that "UpCart has many uses".

After exchanging contacts with Mr. Khodor, Mr. Raznik persuaded his family to start a business with Mr. Khodor, and in February 2013 TriFold was founded. Mr. Raznik at the time was a company ranked in Fortune 500 , but he was a management consultant but he had had the idea of starting business earlier. However, at the timing of thinking about entrepreneurs in the past, unfortunately the stock market crash occurred, it seems he gave up at that time.

Mr. Raznik starts working on TriFold without fail until it is established and works during the weekday's work day at the company, Mr. Raznik starts living daily for TriFold evening and weekend. "Some people advise" You must devote all of your life to make a business successful, but I could not do that for my wife or two children, "Raznik said after all About three and a half years until December 2016 he said that he had worked out each work.

Although Mr. Khodor did the design of the product using CAD , requesting the factory for the prototype manufacture of the prototype would take a huge cost and time, so that it is not necessary to go through the prototype manufacturing process as "big bet" It seems that he has just started looking for a factory by making manufacturing tools etc. Mr. Raznik asked the procurement consultant to visit the factory in China to visit the site. I took estimates from three factories and asked the factory to undertake manufacturing with a small number of lots in exchange for having to pay 100% cost of manufacturing tools. In addition, Raznik says that if it had been asked to a factory in the US it would have cost at least three times.

However, at this stage, the problem of "TriFold's initial funds run out" occurred. At that time everyone was thinking about investing in high-tech, biotechnology, mobile market, etc. It was said that UpCart, which is low tech, did not have much capital contribution. Although financing at the cloud funding platform · Kickstarter ended in failure, because we were able to establish a relationship with angel investors, we managed to establish an international hardware show to be held in Las Vegas Exhibiting UpCart has come true.

When the show was held UpCart gathered many audiences and received the "Most Innovative New Concept" award. And UpCart's sale will be held at " QVC " specialty channel broadcasting 24 hour TV shopping. Since UpCart was only sample goods at that time, in the program broadcasted in May 2015, the comment that "shipment of the product is from August 2015" was entered, but it was still prepared in only 5 minutes Raznik says that the frame has been sold out.

Also at the end of 2015 Mr. Raznik made a product PR movie on MacBook, posted it on Facebook, and advertised at a cost of $ 20 a day (about 2200 yen). Then, the movie showed a popularity exceeding 7.5 million playback, and there was a situation that the stock of UpCart runs out before Christmas. Advertisement talks about movies is best Raznik points to 10 to 20% of advertising expenditure to "Identify the target layer of advertisement" and 60 to 70% to "show advertisement to the target audience and have a higher conversion rate To concentrate on the layer ", the remaining 10 to 20% should be applied to the advertisement to" the one who saw the advertisement but did not reach the purchase of the product ".

Although it seems that TriFold maintained a very conservative cash flow, when actually entering the stage of manufacturing UpCart and selling it, he touched the wall facing the startup handling physical products. In the case of a system where the customer actually receives the product and then pays for the product, in some cases it seems that there has been a delay of payment of several months, up to six months from the shipment of the product. TriFold, which has grown beyond imagination, has suffered from the situation that cash flow becomes unstable according to the order.

Although UpCart was introduced in QVC definitely contributed to the growth of TriFold, on the other hand, payment of the item purchased via QVC was very slow. For startups who want to get cash earlier, this delay seems to have been tough. In addition to the high return rate of items for QVC customers, Mr. Raznik says it is a shame that product ideas will arrive at "people who look for products viewed on TV" as well.

by bruce mars

Raznik believes that two things, "being a lifelong learner" and "managing your vision and beliefs" are important for launching a startup and getting success.

According to Mr. Raznik, the person who launched the startup faces innumerable everyday tasks that can not be confidently answered with just the knowledge that he owns. Since it is impossible to get all the information in advance to deal with the problem, you must quickly find out the information and related topics and confirmed the facts in the face of the problem. It is important for startup managers to learn quickly and to continue it, and the spirit of "being a lifelong learner" becomes important.

Also, at the beginning of launching the startup, Mr. Raznik received advice from many people, mostly "Raznik, you are wrong." People who advised on purpose have not advised Mr. Raznik adversely, but for startups that differentiate themselves from other companies to succeed, advice from others will be beneficial for them There is not much. For that reason, Raznik says that it is important to evaluate it calmly, even if you advise respectfully, not to lose sight of your vision and belief.

by Lukas