Over the coming weeks we’ll be interviewing each of the eleven finalists taking part in The AIB Start-Up Academy. This week we caught up with Liz Fingleton, co-founder of Obeo, to find out what it’s like to be part of an Irish start-up and the key pieces of advice she has been given so far in her career.
Obeo Ltd is co-founded by Kate Cronin and Elizabeth Fingleton and is a spin-out company from The National College of Art and Design. The Obeo food waste box is an easy, clean way to deal with food waste. It’s a compostable box for food waste that goes straight in the brown bin when it’s full.
Obeo is tough and water-resistant so there’s no smells and no mess. Obeo is stocked in Dunnes Stores nationwide and selected SuperValu stores where a pack of 5 boxes retails for €3.75.
What prompted you to start your business?
I wanted to change the world, one little brown box at a time! Well kind of. It started out much more modestly than that.
I was working as an accountant and slowly realising I needed to work at something I really loved.
Meanwhile Kate, my co-founder, was researching the area of food waste as part of her Masters in Sustainable Design.
We realised that people weren’t using their brown bins because they thought it was really gross, so Kate set about designing a new little invention to take all the mess and smells out of food waste recycling.
Once we realised there was a gap in the market for Obeo, we knew we had to give it our full attention as it had such potential. So we took the plunge.
Why did you choose to go into the food waste recycling industry? What research did you undertake before starting out?
I’m interested in the area of sustainability and wanted to do something that would have a positive impact on the environment.
We spent a year and a half researching the market, building and testing prototypes, speaking to potential customers and retailers and finding out all the issues people had with their brown bins.
What did you do to make you stand out from the competition?
We listened to the problems consumers were having and set out to solve them. The product is very user-focused and that helps us stand out from the competition.
We also wanted to keep the earthy feel of the product so we kept the packaging quite plain and minimal and this helps us stand out in a very crowded and colourful bin bag aisle in the supermarket.
What is your USP? How did you decide to market your USP?
Obeo is the first of its kind. It’s water resistant and closes tight so it keeps those nasty smells locked away. It’s sturdy and doesn’t leak and tear like our competitors’ bio-plastic liners.
We market this message through our packaging, our point of sale units in stores and through our digital marketing campaigns.
What has been your biggest barrier since starting up Obeo?
Obeo is a new concept. It is a stand-alone box for food waste and not a caddy liner. Getting people to understand this has been a big barrier.
It’s so much easier to explain this to people in person when they see the product in action. So we’ve had to re-jig our packaging to make sure the message is getting across.
Have you had many mentors? What has been the best advice they have given you?
We’ve had so many great mentors provided by Enterprise Ireland and UCD Nova.
Brendan Chambers and Cody Mayoh have given us invaluable advice over the last two years. I think the best piece of advice we’ve gotten is ‘don’t promise anything you can’t deliver’, and we’ve always stuck to that one!
What has been your greatest moment since starting up?
Getting the nationwide listing with Dunnes Stores as our first customer definitely stands out as a great moment. Myself and Kate tried to look cool, calm and collected walking out of their head office on George’s Street, and once we were a little bit down the street we started jumping around and laughing like two big kids! High fives all round!
And your worst?
I remember that anxious feeling when we got our first order and we were still waiting for our product to arrive. We didn’t want to be finished before we even got started.
So there was a bit of panic but luckily the product arrived and we fulfilled the order in time.
What’s the bravest decision you have had to make in business so far?
Investing our life savings into our first production run was probably the bravest decision we’ve made so far. Luckily it has worked out for us!
Name three things you have learnt at The AIB Start-Up Academy so far…
- Be adaptable. Bobby Kerr highlighted the importance of changing your market offering according to market conditions.
- Be concise. The elevator pitch is essential to grabbing someone’s attention in a short space of time.
- Sell the benefits not the features. People aren’t interested in all the details of how your product is made, they want to know what problem it solves for them.
What are your three pieces of advice you would give to somebody starting off?
- There is no perfect time, so what are you waiting for? Just do it.
- That said, make sure you identify the problem you are trying to solve and research the area enough to know people are willing to pay for your solution.
- Get a co-founder. Kate and I are very lucky that we have such a complementary skill set. I don’t know how people do this on their own!
What Fortune 500 company would you MOST like to be in charge of?
Whole Foods Market. I love what they stand for and their ethos. Not to mention we could then roll out Obeo across the States.
What Fortune 500 company would you least like to be in charge of and why?
Coca Cola. I actually don’t know how I could be in charge of pushing a sugary drink on consumers. Not for all the money in the world!
What are your “cheats” or “hacks” for making life easier in the business world?
- Be nice to everyone and remember their names!
- To-do lists. I can’t live without them. Make sure to prioritise the items on the list though. Writing a fun blog post can’t always take precedence over preparing financial projections!
- Ask for advice. Lots of people have been there and made the mistakes before so you don’t have to.
Who would you prefer to face off with in a fight to the death: Bill Gates or Donald Trump? Keep in mind that the winner keeps the loser’s business…
I was definitely going to say Donald Trump because then I could finally find out what the hell is going on with that barnet of his.
But now that I read the second part of the question, I’ll have to go with Bill Gates. I could totally take him. But glasses off; let’s be civilised.
