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[Voiceover]: Welcome to the checkout. We catch up with previous add to cart guests and ask them five quick questions to get to know them better and leave you with a little extra inspiration to get you through your Friday.
[Voiceover]: Today's checkout features Alex Sinickis who is the co founder and engineer at Milk Drop. Milk Drop is changing the way breast pumps work for women by redesigning the pump from the nipple up. And as you'll hear from Alex, they have a much bigger mission at Play. Established in 2019, Milkdrop has already attracted funding, won the Amazon launchpad, worked closely with universities and won government grants.
Nathan Bush: All right, Alex, welcome to the checkout. We're going to learn some things about
[Voiceover]: you on our Friday morning. Question number one.
Nathan Bush: What's the weirdest thing that you've ever bought online?
Alex Sinickas: Oh, we bought. We. I'm already deflecting the blame.
Nathan Bush: Here we go.
Alex Sinickas: I bought what we call Artemis who is our breast model on. I didn't even know what it's like Alibaba or something.
Nathan Bush: As long as it's not like wish.com.
Alex Sinickas: no, but it did, it did screw up our because it was both me and my co founder Ravi because we're both searching for this for something that we could use to test our pump on and it's just like a silicon breast. And so yeah, we were trying to find lifelike silicon breasts as opposed to porn like silicon breasts and it just went down places I've never been before and pricing and it was super weird anyway. Yeah, that's probably the weirdest thing I've ever bought online. But she did arrive and we use her so it's I guess worth it. Ends justifies the means.
Nathan Bush: And why Artemis?
Alex Sinickas: Oh, we just felt like she, you know, she needed a goddess style name and she needed to be majestic and Artemis seemed like the most dignified sort of name we could, we could Give her. Because we thought that, yeah, she needed to be respected. It's sort of a bit weird when you're working in a lab with breasts and. Yeah, we just wanted to, I don't know, make it a little less weird.
Nathan Bush: I like it. I like it. I can imagine you had to clear your search history after that one.
Alex Sinickas: I did. I'm never really sure if that clears it, though. You know, I don't understand how that stuff works. I'm sure someone knows somewhere.
Nathan Bush: Just go on what ads you served up afterwards. Number two, who is your favorite retailer?
Alex Sinickas: I would say there's a little coffee store in Melbourne called Market Lane. They roast their own coffee and they have a flagship store, but they also have small stores set up around Melbourne. One on Faraday street, if anyone's ever been there, which is just a window. And the reason why I love them is because they have this attention to detail and everything is beautifully and perfectly done with so much of everything that they do in the mind of the customer and it's just imbued throughout the people that work there. You know, you never get a stroppy person. They're always delighted to see you. I just think that they have. They have somehow figured out this culture of beautiful design and high quality product that I always try to kind of go back to them when I'm struggling with that. So it's not like a full retailer in the traditional sense, but I think that they do a really brilliant job.
Nathan Bush: Are you attracted to other retailers who have strong design, esthetics and principles?
Alex Sinickas: Yeah, exactly. I mean, I've got a. I mean, I'd have to shout out to adore beauty. I think that the way that they have set up their business, again with the experience of the woman in mind, all of the educational stuff they put around it, you know, they're sort of gold standard in that area. You know, imagine if you were that good.
Nathan Bush: Yeah, yeah. All right. Number three, which retail fad do you wish was history?
Alex Sinickas: I don't know if it's a fad because it's been around for a long time, but I really, really dislike fast, cheap products. And I think that we're starting to see that change with environmental need. I think that we should be making things once, preferably from things that can be fully recycled, making them well and not sort of throwing them away. And I think that is starting to kind of have its rebirth, but it's still not there yet and we're going to have to solve that in the next 10 years. So, yeah, I wish that was history.
Nathan Bush: From a design perspective, as an engineer and a designer, is it actually. Does it take a lot more effort to design things that are sustainable than not sustainable?
Alex Sinickas: No, actually, it's on the commerce side that the trouble is. So, you know, in your design, you just change the requirements. You know, in structures, for example, we design sometimes for a 300 year life or a 100 year life or whatever. The catch. And you can do the same for products like, we've designed this cushion to last the entire pumping journey. The catch is that it costs more. So in the long run, you know, this is. At the moment, it's. It's $79. And that puts people off. But if you weigh it up against the times you don't have to replace it, the fact that we will pick it up and recycle it on batch, it's cheaper for the planet and it's cheaper for you in the long run. But getting that messaging across and having people be comfortable with that, and it just takes a little bit longer. And so the easy thing to do is say, oh, well, I'll just make. I'll make a simpler, thinner one. And my business will be healthier because I've got repeat customers. And so there's commercial drivers in there that actually change how you design. And I think consumers have a lot more power than they realize. If they really want to change the products that are designed for them, they can vote with their feet a little bit. It's kind of hard if it's not there, but you can choose what you buy and try and choose the things that will last.
Nathan Bush: Yeah, absolutely. All right, number four.
[Voiceover]: Can you recommend a book or a
Nathan Bush: podcast that our listeners should immediately get into?
Alex Sinickas: Yeah, I mean, I love. There's a podcast called Cautionary Tales, which is stories of failure, but they're told in a really, really interesting way.
Nathan Bush: I don't think this is helping your dwelling on failure that we're talking about on the main episode.
Alex Sinickas: Oh, they're not really failure. Like, there's one about a cult that believed that the end of the world was coming in the 20s or something. And there was a reporter who infiltrated this group because he wanted to see what would happen when the world didn't come and how the end of the world, sorry, didn't come, and how the group of people that absolutely believed this would, like, would they change their mind? Would they be like, oh, I was wrong, or would they, you know, how would they react and how they reacted was that they. They just said, oh, it was. It was the wrong Date, you know, so they never. And I think that you see that in modern. In the modern world as well. Like these days especially, people will make an opinion and back it up with random evidence rather than look at the evidence and form an opinion. And I think, like, there's all these little interesting quirks of human nature in that podcast that I love. And also, it's nothing to do with business and it's nothing to do with engineering. It's just human behavior. And I find it absolutely fascinating.
Nathan Bush: That's brilliant. I'm going to have to have a look, because I think I was actually discussing it with someone this morning, is that you can pretty much say anything at the moment and find some source that will back you up.
Alex Sinickas: Oh, yeah. This is. I think the single biggest problem of our time is we are now arguing over what is fact. I think Richard Flanagan said it really well in some podcast a little while ago. He's a Tasmanian author, and he was saying that there was some data that had come out from the Australian Meteorological Service. What is it?
Nathan Bush: Bomb?
Alex Sinickas: Bureau of Meteorology. And they were talking about the temperature records in a city and how they were rising over time. This was a few years ago. And a politician said, no, they weren't. They weren't correct. And so this was like the first time a couple of years ago where we're saying, actually our data is not, you know, we're not actually trusting our data. So when you do that, what have you got to go back on? You can't have a rational argument about it because you don't even agree on the basics. And I think this. This is a big problem we're going to have to solve or figure a way around.
Nathan Bush: Yeah, it's bad when power overranks data.
Alex Sinickas: Exactly. And yeah, this is a whole other podcast we could go. Yeah, I feel like I have a lot to say on this topic.
Nathan Bush: Sorry if you tuned out already. All right, number five, the last one I've got for you.
Alex Sinickas: Quick fire.
Nathan Bush: Oh, no. I could go down that path all day. All right, finish this sentence. The future of retail is mass customization.
Alex Sinickas: I think that we have the technology now with 3D printing and all sorts of other things to be able to make things that fit each human being en masse.
Nathan Bush: That's exciting, especially when you're out to solve medical devices for women.
Alex Sinickas: It sure is.
Nathan Bush: Yep. Beautiful. Alex, thank you for joining us on the checkout.
Alex Sinickas: Thank you so much.
[Voiceover]: To hear more from Alex, jump back into episode 123, where Alex talks us through her approach to product prototyping with her engineering background. We also discussed some of the ways Alex and her team are getting information on the size and the shape of Australian women's nipples, which includes getting flashed in public.
Nathan Bush: Just a standard day in the office,
[Voiceover]: and totally unrelated but very cool. Alex tells us about her time as a ski patroller where she had to use dynamite to trigger avalanches. Thanks for listening, and until next time,
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