Nanotech Scientist Creates Antimicrobial Product

This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.

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In today's story, after creating an antimicrobial coating for face masks, this scientist applies the product to his own armpits in an attempt to reduce odor from his bike rides to and from the lab. Now as you'll hear, and as you might guess already, the invention of this product came about by accident, but he and his wife are now running with it, offering it for sale direct to consumers and pursuing some business partnerships as well. So we've got an origin story, how to go from idea to execution, how to get something to market, as well as, I'll get into this a bit in the analysis at the end, is it better to do B2C, business to consumer or business to business? I've got some thoughts on that, but let's focus first and foremost on the story. Welcome to Side Hustle School.

My name's Chris Guillebeau. The story is called "Nano Tech Scientist Creates Antimicrobial Product." That story's coming up after this quick message from our sponsor. [Music]

Dr. J.J. Richardson is a nano tech scientist.

That means he works with matter on an extremely small scale. In the middle of the pandemic, J.J. had an idea to create antimicrobial coatings for masks. It'd be face masks, like we've all been wearing, or at least we all wore for a long time. J.J. applied for funding at the University of Tokyo

and got it. Soon, he and his wife, Susanna, and their son, were heading to Japan from their native Australia. The lab work went well, and J.J. got great results right off the bat. However, he conducted market research and quickly realized that this product might not be able to sell.

What he found was that everyone who was concerned about COVID-19 already had the high-end masks, the most effective ones, like N95s. Whereas the people who had lower quality masks weren't as likely to purchase a product that would increase their performance. Around this time, J.J.'s wife noticed that he wasn't smelling so great after his bike ride to and from the lab. Delicate conversation there, but she brought it up, and they thought back to the antimicrobial coating. The best formula that J.J. and his colleagues invented

included silver, which reduces odor. And that got them to rethink how the product could be used. Susanna suggested that J.J. spray the formula on his clothes. Like any good scientist, he conducted an experiment.

He sprayed only one armpit with the solution. At the end of the next day, he had Susanna conduct a sniff test between two armpits. Very kind spouse here to offer that service. But as J.J. says, her face said it all.

The spray worked. From there, the two began to look into manufacturing this product for the public to use. J.J. and Susanna's spray is odorless, sustainable, organic, and hypoallergenic. Compare that to other sprays, which typically warn against using them around children or pets.

They believe their simple, safe ingredients would help them stand out. Their spray could also be applied directly to the skin and it would last for several days. But they had a couple challenges. The first big hurdle, getting the product to market, was determining how to make it usable at home and easy to apply. Or as J.J. calls it, idiot-proof.

Due to environmental considerations, they decided not to put it in an aerosol can. Instead, they wanted to use a small bottle. But that would make it more complicated for their particular spray to be in a bottle because the product actually contains two different ingredients that need to be mixed on the fabric. One is silver, which goes on first, and the second is gallant, which is applied right on top of the silver. The ingredients have to stay separate until application.

This meant they needed a two-chamber bottle. Only two suppliers could source the product in different colors, so that narrowed it down. Once they received the bottles, J.J. and Susanna performed usability tests. They also sent those test bottles to friends, family members, even strangers from Reddit who expressed an interest.

The results were overwhelmingly positive. The product worked for every person they sent it to, and some even asked if they could buy it. J.J. and Susanna could smell a whiff of success. They settled on their favorite design and ordered more samples.

The product, called Swift, came together with the additional focus towards branding. Suddenly, it felt like they had a real product to sell, and the public seemed to agree. From here, the business began to take off. This all took place in the late summer and early fall of 2021. And in the months since then, Swift has had a steady stream of sales.

Right now, they're making about $1,000 a month, but J.J. thinks they can do much more. At this point, Swift has been sold in 11 different countries with lots of repeat buyers. Also, J.J. and Susanna have finished the trademark process, and Swift has began to garner some press attention.

With that attention, some clothing manufacturers have reached out to them about collaborating. By 2023, they hope to see clothes manufactured directly with Swift. In the meantime, J.J. is continuing to work his day job as a scientist. He has no intention of quitting and says that the financial security it provides has allowed him to make more disciplined decisions, rather than making those decisions frantically or out of stress.

In the future, they hope to continue to grow Swift and their other side hustle. What's that? Well, that is a forensic fingerprint powder that J.J. invented. They're excited to see what develops.

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All right, all right. Congratulations to J.J. and Susanna. Sounds really interesting. Sounds like they are going the right direction, especially in kind of making that adjustment from microbial face masks to asking, what else can we do?

Now, speaking of asking questions, a couple of things you wanna think about when you're making a product of any kind. Does this work? Is this effective? Like we focus a bit of a story about that. That's a different question from, do people want it?

Which is also a different question from, do they want it enough to pay for it? So I always encourage people to think about that from the front end, not later. Don't just focus on, is this effective? Is it going to work? I mean, that's essential, but you can't just have something that works.

You have to have something that is desired and really something that's desired enough that people are willing to part with their money for it. So at the top of the episode I mentioned, you can go B2C or you can go B2B. I'll be curious to know what happens here. In my mind, like their best bet is to focus on the B2B route and to work with clothing manufacturers. 'Cause I think that could be a game changer to get some clothing manufacturers like building this into the concept and that's now a feature of the clothes.

Going B2C, that could also work, but it's a very, very different process. And most startups or people making a startup like products, even as a side hustle, they tend to go one way or the other. It's pretty hard to split the difference just because the product development, the marketing path, everything associated with the decisions you make, they're quite different depending on if you're focusing on consumers or businesses. So just think about that as you're thinking through your ideas and also check out SwiftSpray.com. SwiftSpray.com, inspiration is good, but inspiration with action is so much better.

I'm gonna link up the SwiftSpray and anything else I mentioned on today's notes page. That page would be sidehustleschool.com/2082, episode 2082. Thank you so much for tuning in today. I hope you take care of yourself. Hope you do something for yourself and I hope you'll tune in again tomorrow.

My name is Chris Guillebeau, this is Side Hustle School. [Music]

From the Onward Project.