Today we’d like to introduce you to Sophie & Izzy Uwins
Sophie & Izzy, we appreciate you taking the time to share your story with us today. Where does your story begin?
It started at school. We were forever switching between pencils and highlighters when annotating textbooks. One day we came up with a simple hack to combine them, by taping a highlighter to a pencil to be efficient in school.
When we showed our parents, they went to get us a real product that would do the same thing. But, we quickly found that none existed. So we decided to design one ourselves. A year later, The Annotator was born and we started a stationery business called SOZY Pencils. Since 2019, we have been designing unique stationery products that are geared toward students to make studying and notetaking easier and more fun.
We are twins and a team, who love to design and collaborate, so decided to give it a try. Everyone loved our idea and told us to go on Shark Tank, but we just felt like it was something we wanted to keep in our family since it’s our first time.
We really didn’t know much about starting a business so we thought it would be a great way to learn about all the aspects first had: research, design, product development and refinement, sales, distribution, branding, packaging, marketing, social media, and financials.
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
Yes, there have been many challenges. For example, refining the prototype and getting the product samples were extremely hard, especially when the pandemic hit as manufacturers were focused on making cleaning supplies, like masks, rather than pencils. Initially, when our prototype pencil came back and we weren’t happy with it, we almost gave up, but we learned to be patient and revised the prototype 10 times till we got it right.
Once we nailed the prototype, spreading the word about SOZY Pencils was also hard as immediately after our big launch at the New York Stationery Show the pandemic hit. So, spreading the word resorted to mostly online marketing and now in-person trade shows.
In the end, all challenges were worth it because we learned from it and keep evolving.
Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
We are most proud of turning an idea into real product that people find useful, then creating a business, and expanding our product line to include notebooks, pens, candles that we design ourselves. We are in 50+ stores Nationwide plus a store in London.
We take inspiration from our daily lives, and as students, it motivates us to create. For instance, we took a really hard advanced math course over the summer, and we were inspired to create a line of motivational jotter pens to help get us through it.
Where we are in life is often partly because of others. Who/what else deserves credit for how your story turned out?
Our parents, Lori Caden at Caden Concepts, Hayley Antonian at Scenario PR
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.sozypencils.com/our-shop
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sozypencils/
Image Credits
Simon Uwins
