Alex Sinickis: It's crazy. Like you can't even show a nipple on Instagram, even if it's a breastfeeding nipple. All we have to do is get it to be smaller and smaller, easier to manufacture, cheaper, more reliable, to the point where it meets the beautiful design that we've got. And then, voila, you've got a product. I managed to weave the word voila into a sentence, so my day's done.
[Voiceover]: Welcome to ADD to Cart, Australia's leading e commerce podcast that express delivers all you need to know in the fast moving world of online retail. Every week, Nathan Bush from E Suite and an e commerce industry expert will share the news, research and insights that you need to know to keep you at the top of your game and, of course, keep your customers. Adding to Cart.
Nathan Bush: Hello and welcome to Add to Cart. My name is Nathan Bush, host of Add to Cart and director at e commerce talent agency eSweet. Today we are talking about sore nipples, round nipples, inverted nipples, all things nipples. I know it's about time and it's exactly what you've been asking for. Joining me today is Alex Sinickis, who is the co founder and engineer at Milkdrop. Milk Drop is changing the way breast pumps feel for women by redesigning the pump from the nipple up. And as you'll hear from Alex, they've got a much, 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. Today, Alex talks us through her approach to product prototyping with her engineering background. We also discuss some of the ways Alex and the 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 at work, really,
Nathan Bush: and totally unrelated, but very cool. Alex tells us about the time as a ski patroller where she had to use dynamite to trigger avalanches. So I think I'm going to struggle
Nathan Bush: to make this more interesting without getting myself in trouble.
Nathan Bush: Thanks to our partners, Shopify plus and Cygnet.
Nathan Bush: Here's our conversation with Alex Sinickis from Milk Drop.
Nathan Bush: Alex, welcome to ADD to Cart.
Alex Sinickis: Thank you for having me, Nathan. It's a pleasure to be here.
Nathan Bush: Awesome to be speaking with you. I've been following the Milk Drop story for a while now and you guys are doing incredible things. For anyone who hasn't seen Milk Drop or heard of Milkdrop, can you explain what you guys are doing? Sure.
Alex Sinickis: So, look, Milkdrop is a design company, right? And we're focused on creating medical devices for Women, women's health and women's pain in particular is so often almost chronically overlooked up until probably recently. And so there's all sorts of areas where this happens, women's periods or women complaining of pain with certain medical procedures and things. And where I first came across it was with breast pumps. And so at the moment, we're working on trying to change the way women feel about breast pumps by redesigning the pump from the nipple up. And so we have our first product just released on the market a few months ago, which is an ultra soft silicon cushion that stretches over breast pump heads to make pumping more comfortable for women using pumps to express milk. And then we're also working on our second product in our lab, which is a sort of redesigned breast pump, which should be quite exciting.
Nathan Bush: Great. Now you've led with a big mission there. And in our initial chats about coming onto ADD to car, we were talking about the eye to sports story around how they're trying to make inclusion in sports for women a lot easier through athletic equipment. And it's funny that you lead as a design company with medical devices for women. Is it fair to say that the breast pump is one step into what's a much bigger mission?
Alex Sinickis: I think so. I mean, you always, it's always good to think big, but at some point you've got to sort of put your first step forward. So I think, yeah, thinking big in 10 years time or something. Yes, we would have a series of, you know, for us, it's the medical devices that aren't that medical, you know, like they are medical devices because they need to be made in a certain way so that they're as safe as possible for women, but they don't need to feel clinical. So a breast pump is a great example of that. And so, yes, in 10 years time, we'd love to have a whole suite of devices that are designed in a way that make women feel good about whatever taboo topic they're dealing with. But our first step and our focus 100% at the moment is on just breast pumps. So we're a small team at the moment. You gotta be able to focus your energy on one thing.
Nathan Bush: And it's funny that it is a taboo topic when it's something the majority of the population experiences at some point in their life.
Alex Sinickis: Yeah, I know. I mean, it's crazy. You can't even show a nipple on Instagram, even if it's a breastfeeding nipple, you know, like what? Yet we can show violence and, well, all sorts of other nipples. You know?
Nathan Bush: Yeah.
Alex Sinickis: So I think, yeah, there's some things that are a bit taboo, and I'm not sure that breast pumping is taboo. It's just like, not glamorous. So why would you talk about it? I mean, there's so many other things to talk about. Right.
Nathan Bush: So as someone who we've got two kids, I've seen my wife go through breastfeeding and seen how uncomfortable and stressful it can be. What made you go, actually, I think women have tolerated this for so long. I think this is a problem that I can solve.
Alex Sinickis: Yeah. I think. I mean, it was kind of selfish, to be honest. I had a baby and we had trouble feeding, so couldn't get a good latch, and so I ended up on a breast bump. I really wanted to feed her breast milk because I guess that's what you do if you. That's sort of the desirable thing to do. And I thought, well, I can. I can still do that if I'm using a breast pump, even if I can't get a good latch. And so I ended up on the pump probably six to eight times a day every. Every couple of hours. And after a few months of that, to be honest, it just got to me. And being an engineer, I think I could see that it wasn't necessary. And it just irked me that my breast is soft. Why am I putting it against hard plastic when there are so many other materials out there, especially in the last few years, that are appropriate to put against the skin, even broken skin, that, you know, they're not cheap, but they're not so expensive and they're hard to work with, but not impossible. And so I just felt like, whilst I'm grateful that breast pumps exist and I'm grateful to the designers that made them and, you know, they help us feed our babies when we couldn't otherwise. I just felt like the design could be improved. And so that's where it all started, I think. At the time I was working for an amazing global engineering design firm, and I was working in their research and development group. And how whole job was to take fantastical ideas or ideas that would solve problems ideally and turn them into reality. And so that was kind of my whole world. And we had been playing with this, like, sort of jelly like material that had robotics embedded in it. And I was just like, how. How are we not using this for the breast? Why have we not got a pump that almost completely mimics what a baby does with robotics? And I realized later that it's just a bit creepy that's why we don't do it. You don't want a pump that looks and feels like a baby on your breasts. There's some things that humans will accept and they won't. But, but the basic principle is that it.
Nathan Bush: I can just imagine walking into a prototype lab of like all these creepy,
Alex Sinickis: creepy, you know, like they, they do. They did find that in automated vehicles and some robots and things, they kind of make them cute, you know, and that's because they, they need the human to accept it.
Nathan Bush: Yeah.
Alex Sinickis: So I mean, that's why we didn't do it. But, but the same principle of making something softer and comfortable and more something that fits the woman rather than the woman having to fit the device. I think that's something that in the last decade we've suddenly got this capability of doing. So why not do it, you know?
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Nathan Bush: Tell us about your engineering life before milk drop. Like what kind of things were you engineering?
Alex Sinickis: Oh, I mean, I think engineering is one of those professions that's quite misunderstood. I think there's this perception that you're working alone on spreadsheets or coding and that you're all introverts and everyone's super nerdy and like there are people like that. But most of the time you're working in big teams on complex problems. And when I say big teams, it could be 20 people to 2,000 people, you know, in all sorts of disciplines from user experience. So you know, like how, how people experience a service or a building or infrastructure or whatever right through to super technical details about like how a building might respond to earthquake, you know, like it's so, so varied. So I trained in, I trained in civil and structural engineering and I worked for a while in investment banking. I was terrible at it and went back to engineering very quickly and ended up in natural hazards which in Canada. I followed my husband to Canada and. Well, my future husband to Canada. And I ended up working as a ski patroller. And while I was ski patrolling, one of the things that if you were lucky enough to be chosen that morning, you would be able to kind of do what they call avalanche control in the mornings, which is making the mountains safe for people to ski. This is in Canada, where they have lots of snow and steep mountains. And so you would walk along the ridges and you would be throwing dynamite sticks over the edge of the ridge to set the avalanches off often so that they don't all build up into one big avalanche and make it really unsafe. And that just kind of blew my mind a little bit.
Nathan Bush: That's a cool job.
Alex Sinickis: It was cool. I mean, I didn't get to. It wasn't like that was my day job or anything. I did it a few times. But it did get me thinking about the science of snow and stability and how that happens. And so I ended up studying that and working as an avalanche engineering researcher. And I was looking at how to keep people and infrastructure safe in mountain regions. So we're using a lot of probability and statistics. And I guess, like, one of the things in that whole experience was that how to make decisions in uncertain situations. And that really, I know that it's natural hazards, but it's not that different. It's all design and trying to take the available science and the problem you're trying to solve and stitch it together through the uncertainty. That's kind of what engineering is. And trying to make something that's acceptable for humans and your environment and that can actually be made and can be made cheaply enough and all of these things, that kind of discipline of engineering is really helpful for. I mean, I wish I'd had a discipline of law as well, that might be more helpful in business.
Nathan Bush: But you would be unstoppable with law, investment banking and engineering. Gee, Liz.
Alex Sinickis: Well, like I said, I wasn't very good at banking, but I think, yeah, it's just. It's a great. It was a great sort of background to create, you know, to create new things from. And. Yeah, yeah, that's. I don't know. I ended up here because I experienced the problem myself.
Nathan Bush: And do you find that when you speak design in E commerce circles, people have a very different view or approach to design?
Alex Sinickis: It's interesting, actually. No, I find that design is the thing that I can hook into that everybody understands in E commerce. So where other areas we might differ, people's understanding of Science is quite different to my understanding of it. But design, what does your user experience, what does your customer need want? How do they behave? All of that really the same. And having, you know, having the discipline to spend the time understanding that makes you a better. I mean, as far as I can tell, makes you a better E commerce business person. And so that's no different. And so I think it's actually a point of shared, I don't know, shared experience.
Nathan Bush: So talk us through.
Nathan Bush: So we mentioned before the ITA sports story, and I loved their version of the Franken shoe. So they don't have an engineering background, but they put together their first design on kitchen table using pap and paper, papier mache and the rest. I'm assuming that as an engineer, your first prototype and getting first experience out would be a bit different to that.
Alex Sinickis: Not necessarily. Like, when I heard their story, I was like, well, they're basically engineering themselves. I mean, one of the principles is that you design like, you start prototyping early. So I think, you know, we have these two products, so we've got the cushion and then the pump itself. But, you know, with the pump, which we're. Which we're working on, our first prototype for, that was a paper cutout. I mean, we were just kind of fiddling with how that might look and feel on a. On a breast. So it's not any more sophisticated than that. I think the first prototype for the cushion, I think I ordered some hobby silicon from Barnes or whatever and. And a robotics kit and started trying to play with that. But I ran into my limitations very, very quickly. And so I called a friend of mine, Daniel, who is a roboticist, and he had a friend, Ravi, who works as a prototype at Swinburne Uni in a lab there, and his whole job is to help people make stuff. And so with those two guys, and also my husband, who's a gp, we had sort of. We understood the physiology of the breast and what's happening when a baby's suckling. I just was. I'm just really good at bullying people. So I got all of them together to kind of work through this stuff. And so with Daniel and Radha, we started 3D printing molds, pouring the silicon in. And then every time I went to pump, I'd try a new prototype. And we just did that over and over and over again. And we had a couple of criteria. So we're like, okay, it has to feel more comfortable, it has to fit the pump, it has to allow me to collect milk. You Know, we could make something comfortable that doesn't let you collect milk. There's no point, right?
Nathan Bush: No one's doing this for fun, right?
Alex Sinickis: No, exactly. So, yeah, so we just kept going through that until we hit all three and then we kind of refined from there. And so some of the stuff, some of the prototypes, like, they're pretty horrendous looking. They wouldn't have been any fancier than that Franken shoe, but they were usable. And yeah, we finally got to something that worked. And in terms of our pump, right now we basically have one 3D printed, beautiful, sleek, elegant model that doesn't work. And then we have a Franken pump, which is like made up of oversized parts that we've ordered on the cheap and it's got wires everywhere and basically you put it on and Daniel's sitting at the computer, like making it a scalable model.
Nathan Bush: That one.
Alex Sinickis: No. And I would never put that on a human being other than myself. And I think. But it's enough to know that it works. So. So then all we have to do is get it to be smaller and smaller, easier to manufacture, cheaper, more reliable, to the point where it meets the beautiful design that we've got. And then, voila, you've got a product. So.
Nathan Bush: Sounds easy.
Alex Sinickis: Yeah. Also I, I managed to weave the word voila into a sentence, so my day's done.
Nathan Bush: You know, that's going to make the, the sound bite at the start of the episode. So tell us, when you've launched this to market. It's something that no one's really seen before.
Nathan Bush: What kind of feedback did you get
Nathan Bush: from women when you put it out there?
Alex Sinickis: Yeah, I mean, it's funny because in a normal sort of product development world, non medical, you would be testing those prototypes with people straight away like Ashu. Right. You can go and test. I mean, the only thing holding you back is embarrassment or fear or whatever. But with medical devices, you need to make sure that what you're putting out there is designed to be as safe as possible and most ethically appropriate to share with women. So we actually had to this sort of idea of a minimum viable prototype. Like for us, it's got to be a little less minimum, if that makes sense. So we actually had that 20th prototype that I tested made in a medical grade facility, which means we had to do a big production run to even access that kind of environment. And then we tested after that once we'd. Once we'd met medical regulations for sort of safety of silicon against the breast. So anyway, we had a pilot that asked for 30 women to test the cushion and against their pump without the cushion. And we just did a little survey with them kind of pre and post to understand four things I think we wanted to know was it more comfortable or less comfortable? What happened to nipple swelling and redness? Did it feel more or less like a baby? Like was that a thing or not? And the last was milk volumes. We wanted to understand if we were having any effect on hopefully increasing milk volumes, but if it was decreasing, wanted to know that too. And so we ran that pilot in February of this year and then the results were good enough. Like actually mind blowing in some areas, but areas for improvement in others.
Nathan Bush: What parts were mind blowing?
Alex Sinickis: Oh, like everyone said it was more comfortable. And the median comfort score went from 5 out of 10, so pumping without a cushion to 9 out of 10.
Nathan Bush: Oh wow.
Alex Sinickis: And the swelling, that was the best bit. So swelling went from six out of 10 from memory to zero. So we were just like, oh my gosh, this is amazing. Like we've solved and solved it. The catch was that milk volumes. So we, we found that 20% of women collected way more milk. They were overjoyed, like, oh my God, I don't need to pump as much because I'm collecting more milk because I'm in less pain and it's more comfortable. Awesome. About 60% of women collected about the same or a little bit more. So that, that was unchanged. So they were just more comfortable. So that was great. But there were 20% of women who were finding that they were collecting less or weren't able to get milk at all. And so for in medical device land, as my husband kept telling me, that is insane. You know, sometimes with medical devices and drugs and things, you might have a bundle of treatments that might improve the experience by 5% for 20% of the population and it's still worth it to use that bundle. But so we'd done really well. But in E commerce land, a 20%, like it was a big decision for us. Like do we put this out there because we know we're going to be helping 80% of women or do we hold back and wait until we can have a second cushion so that we know that we've covered all women and what we decided to do was kind of a mid range. We put it out there, but we had, we tried to get, get the messaging as honest and strong as possible saying, look, try it, you've got 30 days. Or really to be honest, as long as you want to try it. And if it's not working for you, then we'll just do free and friendly returns and, and then in the meantime we'll work as fast as we can on finding out what it was about that 20% of women. Like, was it nipple shape, was it milk volume, was it pump type? Like, there's so many variables. So we just went as hard as we could trying to figure out what it was about those 20, 20% and to design something specifically for them. And now in, you know, six months later, we have that product available. And so all of us being sort of design perfectionists can breathe a sigh of relief because we feel like we've kind of served everyone and we'll be, you know, feeling a lot more confident and happy about that because, you know, we've only really had sort of 5% of people write back to us after a lot of prodding to say, oh, it's not quite working. And every time you receive one of those emails, I think as a designer it's just devastating. And yeah, I know that we should be more hard nosed about it, but for us, like the point of this was to improve women's experience and so until we're doing that, we're just not happy. So anyway, this is a big milestone for us to have this second one and to know that we'll be able to help hopefully all women.
Nathan Bush: Yeah, I think that's a brilliant goal and sounds like you're very hard on yourself. But is there any like, customer story that stood out for you around how you've changed someone's life?
Alex Sinickis: Yeah, actually the loveliest one. Oh, I mean, there's so many. And then I got this advice very early on from one of our mentors who always, like I was chatting to someone else who this person is a mentor for and they were like, take, take her advice. Always. What I said, I was like, yeah, that's true.
Nathan Bush: Noted.
Alex Sinickis: Anyway, she said that if you're having a tough, you'll have tough times in business. And so what you need to do is print out all of the lovely things that people have actually gone out of their way to tell you about, stick them on the wall. And then when you're having those tough times, just read through them, be like, it doesn't matter what the investor says or it doesn't matter what, whatever says, this is what you're doing and you're doing it. You're doing a good thing here. So that was kind of nice.
Nathan Bush: And it's great advice because natural human instinct to dwell on the negative feedback.
Alex Sinickis: Yeah, exactly. And I Think we're also trained for that. I think in engineering and design, like you get, you actually don't tend to let it get you down. Usually it's sort of part of science is contested. You see it everywhere with coronavirus and unfortunately in the media it gets to be not spun but misinterpreted, I think where if two scientists disagree then one of them is wrong. And it's, it's totally possible for two people to be right and have differing opinions. And so it's just about like which evidence you're taking and how you weight it and all that kind of stuff. So I think you're kind of trained to take on the evidence, but. And then the negative stuff, you kind of actually are like a heat seeking missile for the negative because it helps you improve your design. But anyway, it can get you down from a business side if you don't have it there anyway. So, yeah, the loveliest story I think was hearing from a woman whose mum had bought the cushion for her. And there's this kind of thing that you have when you've had a baby and your mum comes up to you and sort of says like, oh, this is how we did it in our day. And you're like, oh, come on, you know, it's different now. And so she sort of didn't, I don't think she took it seriously. But she was having a dreadful time pumping. And so her mum eventually kind of dogged her into trying it and she did. And she was in tears every session, totally distressed, tried the cushion and suddenly there was no pain, no discomfort. She was able to collect milk. She said that it was the difference between her and not breastfeeding her baby and stopping and being able to continue. And it just changed her entire outlook and even her mental state. And so I think that was a lovely one. I heard another one from a woman who was preparing to go on a conference. And so she was actually in our pilot program and so she'd had a loaner cushion and she was like, oh, can I just keep it for another couple of weeks? Because I've got this conference and I just don't want to have to sit on a pump because if I have it on I know I'll collect more and then I won't have to pump so much. So that was kind of cool.
Nathan Bush: Awesome.
Alex Sinickis: And then also the other ones that always get me are like little testimonials and how funny people are. Like one woman said that the cushion was like the difference between silk and polyester sheets for her Nips. And so, like, we're always really nervous about, like, making light of the situation because women are in such a dark space sometimes. And so we. There's a lot of jokes you can make, but it's not funny when you're at 4, you know, it's 4am and so it's always nice to sort of see that come back from women who are. Who are seeing light at how ridiculous this whole situation is.
Nathan Bush: That's awesome. I saw one of your reviews, said that it felt like a nipple hug. Yeah, it's great language.
Alex Sinickis: It is, yeah. We've been lucky with the little community we've built. There's some. Some pretty clever, funny women in there.
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Nathan Bush: It's funny that you say that around. You've got to be careful of the language because as you say, it makes so much sense that that time, it's so stressful, it's frustrating, it's scary. It's all those things going on, plus a million other things going on. When you've got a baby that young, one thing that it feels you've done such a phenomenal job in the design, the brand, design aesthetic, it actually looks like a skincare brand or, you know, one of those kind of brands. How did you land on that type of design and that tone of voice?
Alex Sinickis: Yeah, so design is really important to us to start with. And I think that when you think about a woman's journey through even getting pregnant, staying pregnant, having a baby, dealing with a newborn, I think one of the big shocks to the system is that you go from being a woman in control of your life and especially our customer. Often they're the boss of their own domain. Right. They have careers or jobs or even their family life. They know what they're doing. They're smart women and in control. Then they have a baby and suddenly all of that goes out the window and they find themselves on a. On a pump. You know, it might be at 4am and there's nothing they can do to increase their milk volume or get their baby to sleep or just all of These things, you're just suddenly thrown into this world where you just feel like seaweed in an ocean. You got nothing. Like, you can't read more to make it better or. Or like, work harder or find someone who can help you. It's just like, you kind of just got to stick with it. And so what we really wanted to do was give back that kind of sense of control or agency for the woman and have her feeling like she is, you know, yes, she's on a breast pump, but she should feel really strong and beautiful and powerful while she's doing that, because what she's doing is actually quite a remarkable thing. Like, she's sitting on a machine that she hates to try to feed breast milk to her baby because, you know, chances are that gives their baby, you know, a good start. Like, that's pretty. That's pretty remarkable. And often there's a partner around there who's really trying to enable that as well. Like, some of the partners and dads involved in this are just lovely. Like, I heard about a guy who saw his wife in pain pumping and just went to baby bunting and bought everything, like thousands of dollars worth of just anything, just like, grab it off the shelf, come home, like, try any of this. Anything that will work, you know, so there is support around there, but they just. Don't. They just feel like a cow? Like, I think it was something like 7 out of 10 women who we surveyed said that they felt like a cow and that the noise of the pump is kind of triggering and like, it's just. It's just a crappy experience. So. Yes, so we wanted to kind of create this emotional experience that was less clinical, less you as a utility and more you as a woman. And where do you find products that do that beautifully? Well, skin care, beauty. So that's kind of where we were aiming to get there. I don't think I knew how to do it. Like, I knew how to do it in the product world, but didn't know how to do it on a website. And we've had some amazing mentors to help us with that. You know, how to. How to get a photographer how to. And, you know, a beautiful one and how to frame it in that way.
Nathan Bush: Was there any challenges from a medical regulation perspective that other brands may not have when getting information out there?
Alex Sinickis: Yeah, we have to be very careful about our claims. And I mean, there's a lot of brands that probably should be more careful about their claims, but we've been quite conservative about that. So if we don't have the data to back it up. We don't say it. So, yeah, when you go on our website, sometimes it's frustrating because you can't sort of do the old. Got sore nipples, like reduce pain and increase milk volume, like all of these things.
Nathan Bush: Yeah, nipple pain is good.
Alex Sinickis: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So we have to be kind of muted about it. I could probably push it a bit more. I think that's one of my failings, is that I think in my career so far, it's all been kind of B2B sort of world where it's all about slow burn trust and calm and quiet and underselling, which actually creates business. Whereas in this world it's been such a struggle to kind of just say what the thing does and get people to buy it. I think I found that really hard. I'm probably just going to have to ask someone to help me with that.
Nathan Bush: It probably builds trust over the long
Alex Sinickis: term, Right, sure, yeah. Maybe in 10 years.
Nathan Bush: Yeah, I don't have time for that.
Alex Sinickis: No, I have had to learn how to do that, definitely. It's definitely different and how to do it in a way that's not pushy, that's still classy, that still respects the woman. Yeah, it's a balance, for sure.
Nathan Bush: Yeah. Well, you say that you're underselling, but, you know, the way I heard about you is obviously through some of the press. You've been really great at getting some really, really nice press out there. Things like the Amazon program, obviously you're connecting with universities as well. Was that all part of the roadmap from the start, or has one opportunity kind of opened itself to the next opportunity?
Alex Sinickis: Look, it's always tempting to say it was part of the plan. I think it wasn't. I think that what. And this is the approach I've always taken, which is like, never judge an opportunity until you've seen it through and take as many as you can without burning out. And, you know, that includes talking with people who may not necessarily be directly related to what you're doing, but if you're just curious about who they are and what they're doing, there'll always be something there that's. That's sort of interesting. So I've sort of taken that approach here as well. And it has just turned out that I think our story is quite compelling. And I think that breast pumps have frustrated a lot of women. Maybe they've frustrated some of the journalists that I've written about, about this and, and, you know, and some of the people who have been supporting us along. You know, we've certainly not done it on our own. And so I think that people want to see this problem solved. And so that's been really helpful for us. But there are other avenues that just haven't, you know, ads haven't worked for us at all. They've just been sort of too expensive. But whereas PR has been good, any type of ads, we've tried tests with everything and yeah, just the cost of acquisitions too high. Perhaps the market's a bit too niche. And again, my language is probably not quite, you know, the creative on the ads, probably not quite there yet. But, you know, I guess like every business lends or leans itself to some channels that are better. I think when we first launched, I think there were like 16 different kind of strategies we could have in the market. And the advice we had was just like, throw mud at all of them for a bit and see, you know, which ones seem to work well and which ones don't. And so that's kind of how we've landed on the mix that we've got. But it's changing all the time and sort of the PR and the media seems to be a good one for us, so we'll keep pushing that one. And of course, like being part of the Amazon program, they do a lot of that for you, right?
Nathan Bush: I hear they've got a team.
Alex Sinickis: Yeah, yeah, just a small one.
Nathan Bush: How do you. Apart from journalists coming to you, do you do any proactive PR media outreach?
Alex Sinickis: Yes, of course. I mean, early on we sort of did little media releases about our pilot results and our launch, and we did that with the help of the fabulous Kate Danone and Annie Carroll. So that really helped us in that kind of high end sort of market. I think, like, in some ways I think we've almost done better in the business PR world than in the mum PR world, if that makes any sense. And so that's what I'm focusing on now is like, okay, you know, we've established that that's really great for getting a little bit of credibility and getting the word out there. And that's wonderful and we're very grateful for it. Now we need to start really focusing on, like, where are moms going for their information and how do we support that ecosystem? So can we contribute blogs or guides or. Yeah, how do we kind of get in there a little bit more? I think I'm not naturally like that as a mum. Like, I mean, the last thing I want to read is about parenting because I just feel like, the thing I'm missing is understanding the world. You know, world of innovation or science or I don't know, Fin Review or something. I just like want something so unrelated to children, but that's not actually true when I think about it. If I'm having a problem, I will Google it and I will end up on those pages. And so I think that's sort of. I've been trying to focus on that a little bit more and understand that world.
Nathan Bush: I totally get what you're saying there. I'm reading on Audible. I try and listen to different topics so I don't just kind of become an E commerce nerd and nothing else. I try and like broaden it to make sure that I'm reading a whole bunch of different things. In my book at the moment is a parenting book that I'm listening to. And sometimes after dropping the kids at school, I'm like, the last thing I want to listen to on a drive to work is a book about how to raise your kids better.
Alex Sinickis: Exactly. And it's kind of like you want to be at least two dimensional, you know, if you can. You don't have a lot of time, so, you know, like in, maybe in your 20s, you would read, you know, books and you would, you know, chat with people over long dinner parties and you might travel, you might do all of these things and it would broaden your horizons and you'd think sincere thoughts deeply. But I don't think there's time for that as a parent. So you kind of just have to. Yeah, I heard about this app, software or whatever. I think it's called Blinkist or something that adds everywhere. It sounds awful. Could you imagine? It's like crib notes, like, it's like on the matrix, like uploading the knowledge without the experience of gaining that knowledge. It's sort of. Is it. It's like, is it actually knowledge? You know, like if a tree falls and no one was there, it always gets you then. Then on the other hand, I'm like, oh, it would be really nice to actually just know something different.
Nathan Bush: Yeah.
Alex Sinickis: For once. Not in the trenches, but anyway, I'm sure when we get out of it, you and I both will have something more going on in our brains in 10 years time.
Nathan Bush: We'll become more interesting people.
Alex Sinickis: Yeah, sure.
Nathan Bush: But it is funny that you said, and you've said this word a few times throughout the podcast is the word community, in that obviously mums form really tight communities. So it feels like it is a long burn rather than a Facebook ad. That you see once and go, that's the answer to all my problems. Yeah, but it's not easy to get into those communities.
Alex Sinickis: Yeah, exactly. Like sometimes I just sit in those Facebook mum communities, you know, like mums of whatever, suburb X and I'm just like hovering over the button and I never actually like, type. Because you don't want to betray the trust. Like you don't want to sort of. Yeah, yeah, that's the stuff. I really need to learn how to do better because I know other women who are like, whatever, just chuck it in, you know, and, and so I think that sort of shyness maybe might be getting in my way. So maybe I need to sort of move away from that a bit.
Nathan Bush: When you, when you know you are legitimately solving a problem too, you have the data to say that I can solve these problems and there's that, that sales in the back of your head going, I don't want to be pushy.
Alex Sinickis: Yeah, need to get over that.
Nathan Bush: One of the things that's amazing on your website is that I stumbled across the real boob section and I even took the survey. I didn't submit it because it'd be weird because it'd be dummy data. Yeah, you've probably seen my weird measurements. Is that having to stimulate the nipple and then measure out different nipple sizes and all that sort of stuff. Like it's a really in depth survey. And ask a lot of your audience, how have you found the response to that so far?
Alex Sinickis: Yeah, amazing. I mean, I'll give you an example in real life as opposed in the survey. I, I live in a town called Bright and in. In northeast Victoria and I went down to town a couple of weeks ago and I asked a girl, I know, I know her, but like, hey, I, I'm struggling to get nipple dimensions I need it for. And my question was going to be, would you mind, you know, in the privacy of your own home measuring your nipple for me anonymously. And I wouldn't share the data and be all safe and secure. And she just like lifted up her top. She was like, yeah, yeah, sure, I'll show you now. Like, is it for the good of womankind? Like, yeah, it is. So I think that women, once they've been through the kid thing, especially if they've been through the pump thing, are more than happy to share whatever it is that will make it better. And I think there's almost like a pride in that. Having said that, we know surprisingly little about our own nipples and that that's the reason for that real boob section on our website. You know, one of the things when you're trying, like, I believe the future of breast pumps will be customizable. Like, it'll. It'll match your breast as it changes through your sort of postpartum experience, like breast size and nipple size changes. And so I think pumps should change with that. But to understand how to do that, we need to know about nipple measurements. And most of the research in the literature, like scientific literature, there's quite a bit on breast shape and size, but not that much on nipple dimensions, specifically the width and the length and the shape. And what is there is often for reconstructive surgery and sometimes in a kind of creepy way. But, like, I mean, it's. It's about the attractive nipple or the ideal nipple, which seems kind of crazy because to me, like, all nipples are attractive. All nipples are ideal. So, yeah, if we don't have that data, how do we design a product for all women? And so that survey is really about trying to get a better understanding of what real women, real boobs, real nipples look like so that we can make sure that breast pumps are designed for them. And, yes, it's not super hard to get women to put in their details and. And to also share with them. What.
Nathan Bush: What was that?
Alex Sinickis: That's a chicken.
Nathan Bush: Oh, we're just looking through your window. You have chicken that's popped its head in.
Alex Sinickis: Yeah, we have two chickens. One's called Henterio and the other one is called Alberta Eggstein.
Nathan Bush: That's amazing. They wanted in on the nipple measurement conversation.
Alex Sinickis: Yeah, they're lovely girls. So the one example of how little we know about our own nipples is, you know, we have a lot of women coming to us who have inverted or flat nipples. And I think people with inverted or not flat nipples have a tough time pumping. Possibly. I'm not sure yet, but I think it's because if you think about it, you're applying suction to a nipple. If it's already longer, then you've got less to travel for that suction to be applied, and so you have less damage. Whereas if you're flatter or inverted, you might have to experience more trauma before the nipple, like milk can be expressed. And so a lot of women who come to us in pain, we find out they actually have flat or inverted nipples. But the thing is that they say things like, oh, no, I'm just weird, or I'm different, or it's my fault or whatever. And it really upsets me because I know from our nipple Data that about 10% of women have inverted nipples. So that's not weird. That's like. That's a pretty big proportion of the population. So I just sort of wish people, you know, just because we don't see it on TV or it's not, like, shown in ads or whatever, it doesn't mean that you're not, you know, common or you're not. You're weird or anything like that. So.
Nathan Bush: Yeah, but did you.
Nathan Bush: Did you go out to create that
Nathan Bush: survey because you couldn't find that data anywhere else? It literally doesn't exist anywhere.
Alex Sinickis: Yeah, like, there's. There's a couple of studies. You know, like, there's a Turkish study of, you know, 100 women. There's, I think, a Japanese one. There are studies where people have taken scans of the whole breast for all sorts of reasons, but, you know, you can't access them after the. After the fact. It's, you know, the ethics of doing science is that the person who's in that study, it's clear what that data is being used for. So you can't just kind of farm it out and give it to anyone, which is good. And so, yeah, it's quite hard to find big data sets. And that's what we need of nipple shape. And so, yeah, that's why we started that survey. So we'll probably do a campaign soon on that. We haven't quite got that ready yet.
Nathan Bush: That's amazing.
Alex Sinickis: Yeah.
Nathan Bush: Oh, I feel like I've entered a whole new world and learned a lot about. A lot that I should already know. So. Thanks, Alex. Love what you're doing. Milk drop. What's next on the radar for yourself and milk drop?
Alex Sinickis: Yeah, Well, I mean, it's all about. For us, it's all about the pump. So we've got this working prototype and we just have to move that from prototype to product. And we'll probably just go through the same process that we did for the cushion. So we'll invite people to use it as part of the pilot, go back and redesign if we need to, and hopefully that will be on the market 18 months to two years. So that's pretty much our focus. And then just learning as quickly and effectively as I can about E Commerce to try to get the word out about the cushions that for now, take the edge off. They don't solve the whole problem, but for some women, they'll be really helpful in taking the edge off. Pumping.
Nathan Bush: Yeah. Beautiful. And if people have heard your story and they. I've got to reach out to Alex what's the best way to get in touch?
Alex Sinickis: For now, probably Instagram. So we're at Milkdrop M I L K D R O Pump. Beautiful and yeah, just DM us there.
Nathan Bush: Awesome. Alex, thank you so much for joining us on Add to Cart.
Alex Sinickis: Thanks for having me.
Nathan Bush: That's one of the things those conversations is why I love Add to Cart. Getting to go deep with founders who
Nathan Bush: are solving age old problems is just fascinating to me.
Nathan Bush: And apart from heightening my appreciation and my awe for mothers everywhere, here are my top three e commerce tips from my chat with Alex. The first was that your customers will share with you a stupid amount of information if you do two things. Make it really clear the mission you're on and as we heard from Alex, they have a big mission and make it easy for customers to do so. Right from the start we heard Alex's mission was a big one and as expected, not hard for the women of Australia to get behind. She loves data and is getting loads of feedback. Check out the Real Boobs section on the Milk Drop website. If Alex and her team can get women to stimulate and measure their nipples, what will your customers do for you? The second takeaway for me was the piece of advice that Alex embraced early on when it came to marketing. Try everything and see what works. For Milkdrop, paid advertising didn't work, but PR got great traction once they found that they were able to pause ads and double down on print. It will evolve over time and it probably won't stay the same, but it's worth regularly throwing everything at the wall
Nathan Bush: and seeing what's working.
Nathan Bush: And the third takeaway for me was what Alex said about being kind to yourself. You are going to get negative feedback from customers, investors, team members, friends. It will be everywhere. Don't ignore it, but don't dwell on it. And certainly don't wait the negative feedback more heavily than the positive feedback. I loved Alex's action of printing out the positive feedback and the customer stories and keeping them visible at all times. It's a really hard road.
Nathan Bush: As a founder, be kind to yourself.
Nathan Bush: To finish up, I have three resources for you. Firstly, if you're a first time listener of Add to Cart and you want to stay up to date with new and episodes, head over to addtocart.com and you can sign up for our weekly newsletter. We'll let you know every time a new episode drops, as well as giving you my three takeaways from each episode and a link to the transcripts so you can know that this is an episode that you want to dive straight into. Secondly, if you want a weekly roundup of the best e commerce case studies, tools and research, sign up to the Hi5 Friday newsletter which is delivered to inboxes at 8am every Friday morning. I read all the e commerce news and send you the bits that I think you can take action from. Sign up at 12 high 12 h I g h.com au hi 5 and the last thing if you are looking to explore your next e commerce opportunity, head over to E Suite. We are a dedicated e commerce talent agency connecting the best e commerce talent with the fastest growing brands. Check it out. Sign up to the email and get in touch with me if you want to discuss your next move. Until next time, thanks for listening and keep those customers adding to cartoon.
