Today we’d like to introduce you to Evie and Asha.
So, before we jump into specific questions about the business, why don’t you give us some details about you and your story.
Asha: We had been bouncing various designs and ways of being comfy around for a while, we would look at swaddled up little babies and be a bit jealous. So the night before a long vagabond trip, we busted out a sewing machine and sewed up two disastrous looking samples. The next day during our flight we slept like little babies! Evie actually fell asleep before take-off, woke up seven hours later and asked if we were ever going to leave. That was when we knew we had finally found a solution that would seriously change the way we travel.
Evie: We’ve always wanted to sell our inventions, ever since we were really little but I think we truly decided that Cocüpod’s was a go about a week into that trip. Picture this: It is 9 pm. We are all alone in a cold and now suddenly, rather dark ferry terminal. We will be here for another 5 hours. We know it is going to be a rough night. But then, we remember we brought our Cocüpods with us. And about ten minutes in, we realized, we had the perfect opportunity to build a business that could change the world by wrapping it up in cozy.
That was when we decided what kind of material we needed. We talked about the possibility of needing a hood. We took breaks to do a bunch of squats and lunges (it was so cold that even our Cocüpods couldn’t save us) we invented the umlaut (two dots above our ü) it looks like a smiley face… which is to say, we shamelessly ripped it off from the Swedes lol (and learned later a bunch of other languages has it as well)… we came up with our catchphrase, Cocüpod: Comfy, Cozy. Hug! We discussed design and marketing. We realized we were way out of our depth. We agonized over the probability that someone would steal our idea.
We dreamed about building a successful business. We jogged around the building. We cuddled up in an interior room to stay warm and felt like we might die from exhaustion haha. We almost missed our 2 am ferry. And we knew we definitely wanted to pursue this. We had been so much more cozy traveling so far and who were we to hoard this invention that provided so much relief! Then we got home and the roller coaster of life happened. We got intense jobs (because rent in LA is really expensive), we worked insane hours (literally Asha was working 150 hour weeks at times), car accidents and health problems, we had break-ups and heartaches, and for five years we simmered on Cocüpods waiting and fantasizing about when the stars would align.
Several times we thought things were finally coming together but they would come crashing down instead. And at that time, the design got better. We gave it to friends and family to try. We learned to dye cloth and we found a good eco-friendly fabric factory. We learned more about the internet and websites and ads. We saved money. And finally, for the first time in years, we found ourselves simultaneously free from work for months. And here we are. With time and space to actually launch them out into the world and we are just so excited!
We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you?
Asha: Well… we started our adult lives right as the recession hit so…
Evie: Yay for being millennials!
Asha: Totally!! I think for so many of our generation, instead of spending the first ten years of our adult lives building a life and a career, we spent it trying not to drown. So we came up with this idea about six years ago, but we were so busy trying to make up all the distance that the Recession Survival Games had set us back that we couldn’t move on it. I spent years working 70 to 150 hours a week (in my other life I am an Infant Specialist) just trying to dig myself out of the recession hole. It wasn’t pretty!
Evie: Well, she is also a little bit of a workaholic…
Asha: Yeah well you lived out of your car for months at a time to save money so I don’t know if you get to talk.
Evie: (laughing) Oh no, this is going to sound like we are throwing ourselves a public pity party!!!!
Asha: Quick Evie! Say something positive and fix it!
Evie: I do think the entire point of talking about the bumps in the road is to encourage anyone who just hit a bump in their own road. Yeah, it was really rough there… for over a decade. I got a nasty head injury while rock climbing when I was 21 and that was just the beginning. Asha had major spinal surgery when she was 21 and unfortunately, the healing part is the easy part, the paying for it is where the suffering actually is. We had huge medical bills and no jobs were paying well. I only say this because, if you are struggling right now, we know what that means. And it is awful. But keep holding on, you can make it out, it might take soooooooo much longer than you think it will. But it does get better. Just keep going.
Things aren’t completely smooth and they might not ever be. For us right now, they are way better than they were, now it just feels like speed bumps. It’s more of a learning process for us! Figuring out how to market things well can be frustrating, working out what our next step should be can be scary, funding that next step. Cocüpods take up space and space in LA is EXPENSIVE… we can pay the bills for now but will this take off soon enough to keep paying them? Maybe Asha will have to fall back into her life of teaching babies to sleep for a while. Maybe I will have to consult with families on how to get their toddlers to stop throwing tantrums for a bit longer or even go back to nannying. Regardless, we have been in this fight long enough to know that no matter what kind of obstacle we hit, all our roads lead back to this one!
So let’s switch gears a bit and go into the Cocüpod story. Tell us more about the business.
Asha: Ooooh the exciting part!!!
Evie: Yay! We get to talk about how comfy people can be!!! Do you ever just need a hug? You know you need like eight hugs a day for optimal health right?! Basically, we invented instant portable coziness!
Asha: A Cocüpod is a hug hack!!!
Evie: That one, we hacked hugs haha! You can carry a hug in your handbag now! Anytime you are feeling anxious or chilly…
Asha: Or squeezed in a plane or bus with nowhere to put your arms, because as it turns out, most of us are not 12 inches wide with one inch wide arms.
Evie: If you just need some quiet time, or you are chilling watching a movie, reading a book or drinking coffee or maybe you’re even sad… a Cocüpod is what you need!
Asha: We are proud purveyors of snuggle, the keepers of comfy, peddlers of serenity… we are going to be titans of the cozy industry!!
Evie: To be serious though, a Cocüpod is a travel garment that can be used as a super soft scarf or pulled down over your torso, holding your arms in snug for the Cocüpod hug. While traveling, you don’t have to worry about bumping into your seatmates. You can even pull it around your legs if you are afflicted by automatic man-spreading (even I want to man-spread on flights). We have hooded ones you can pull over your face if you want to sleep with your mouth open but you don’t want people to see you lol, or if you just want better shade for your iPad movie watching sessions. We actually have a long list of versions of Cocüpods we will be making someday! A Cocüpod is this little cocoon you can wrap yourself up in so that you can be as peaceful as a wrapped-up little baby.
Asha: We make them out of certified organic bamboo and cotton fleece. It comes from a factory that uses good eco-friendly, sustainable practices. So the impact on the environment is low. Right now we are making all of them ourselves so we probably aren’t treating our workers as well as we should (laughing)! But once we do get into larger production we are committed to finding a way of producing them that is responsible for the environment and the workers. We have no interest in a sloppy supply chain, sweat-shops or slave labor. Right now we are really focused on the boutique sort of fabrication, most of what we are doing now is limited edition and unique. We hand-dye them ourselves using water-conserving techniques. We are experimenting with natural dyes on the side… We are always looking to be better as a company.
Evie: We would rather have Cocüpods fail than to add more misery to the world with its success.
Has luck played a meaningful role in your life and business?
Asha: Luck… I mean… I think so much of success comes down to luck. We were lucky to get this interview, lucky to grow up in a creative family that prided itself on unique solutions and flexibility, lucky to be privileged. We certainly didn’t do anything to earn any of that.
Evie: I think a lot of the time, luck is actually just privilege. What family you’re born into and how much luck they have had with finances, education and who they know. Luck of good health. Luck of skin shade. We are white women. And of course, that doesn’t mean our life has been easy or that we haven’t had to work crazy hard. But let’s be real, what it comes down to is our easy times were easier and our hard times absolutely weren’t as hard due to our privilege. We are more likely to get jobs, more likely to be taken seriously, more likely to be paid better, more likely to be respected, and less likely to get punished wrongfully.
My gosh, studies show that our physical pain is statistically taken more seriously. Unfortunately the list of luck our white privilege gives us goes on and on. I think the compounding of that privilege is often what so many white people would call good luck, but actually, it is just white privilege. Everything has been “luckily” sugarcoated. Beyond that, yeah we’ve had some really bad luck and some really good luck. There really aren’t words to express how lucky I’ve been to get to do this with my sister.
Asha: Hahaha! Oh my goodness, I can’t imagine not having a sister in my life!! We’ve got brothers and neither of them has much interest in launching a company dedicated to the spread of cozy. Cocüpods absolutely wouldn’t be an entity without my sister! Something we talk about a lot is our specific plans for sharing whatever good luck we have as widely as possible. In business, it is easy to fall into a scarcity trap, but it is really important to fight that fear and I think one of the best ways to actively fight it is to treat the people who work with us well and invest in them and their inventions. I think if you pay people enough that stress isn’t the primary thing in their mind, that is when you get really cool innovation.
Our best ideas come when we are free to let our minds just run away on a thought. I would love to see what people would do if they could have more access to space and time to actually run with their ideas. I don’t know what the point of success is if it is built at the expense of other people. We want to give back and build up the communities that have helped us get to where we are. For us, community is everything.
Evie: I think one of the biggest things that we have learned is that community is absolutely vital to doing something big. I don’t think we can be successful unless we reach out to a community for help and guidance. And for that reason, we not only owe it to them to give back but are really looking forward to it!!!
Pricing:
- Cocüpod Hug $35
- Hoodüpod Hug $60
- BigSpün $50
- Manspreaditus Cüre $10 (coming soon!)
Contact Info:
- Website: cocupod.com
- Email: [email protected]
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/cocupod/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Cocüpod-102316404607014/?modal=admin_todo_tour
- Twitter: https://www.amazon.com/Cocupod/dp/B081PVV8T8/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=cocupod&qid=1578702333&sr=8-1
- Other: https://www.etsy.com/shop/cocupod?ref=shop_sugg
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