Ever wonder how those cute, fit girls stay motivated to workout? Especially after a long day of work AND little kiddos? It’s like, “don’t you just want to sit on the couch and watch Real Housewives?!”
Well, today I invited those cute ladies – Niki, Molly, Jessie & Jess to be exact – to Cedar & Rush to give us the scoop. Not only are these women passionate about staying active, but they’re bringing a revolutionary new product to your gym experience. And they’ve already raised over $10,000 on Kickstarter!
Below are their 5 tips for wanting to sweat, along with their journey behind RingHero – your newest gym bag must have!
5 Workout Necessities that Will Keep You Motivated!
- Shoes – The foundation of a great workout. Proper footwear is crucial but the options can be overwhelming! You don’t have to be a marathoner to get help finding the right shoes. Head to your local running store (our go to is Fleet Feet) to understand the right category of shoe you need (flat feet, neutral, high arch). Then hit the trails! #happyfeethappylife
- Sports Bra – It’s so key to have a bra that protects your bounce, dance, jiggle, and hustle. Pay attention to the fitness activity of choice and ensure the bra matches that motion. Don’t wear a bra specialized for Yoga on a 5 mile run – your poor babies! According to a poll by Shape Magazine, most participants really raved about the Victoria’s Secret VSX Incredible Bra.
- Motivating Playlist – Music keeps us moving and with www.runhundred.com, you can browse their database for the monthly top 10 workout songs or search by genre and tempo. Here’s the October top 10 list: Our fave mashup continues to be GirlTalk, Calvin Harris for high energy, and trust me here, the Britney Spears pandora station does not disappoint!
- Positive Attitude – Let’s all agree how amazing we feel after we work out, it’s just getting there that can be a challenge. If you approach it with a can-do attitude, you are strengthening your mind, body and spirit! Get out there and #hustlehard!
- RingHero – THE athletic accessory that keeps your rings safe. Wearing your rings in an environment where they can come into contact with hard surfaces will gradually bend the ring, loosen the settings and possibly cause the stones to fall out! This is our passion project that is currently for sale on crowdfunding site Kickstarter – pledge here to make RingHero become a reality! {they’ve already raised over $10,000!}
Thank you so much Niki, Molly, Jessie & Jess! Now that we know how to get pumped up, let’s get to the fun part – the journey!
How did you ladies come up with the concept of RingHero?
We are your typical group of friends who enjoys regular get-togethers over good food and wine. We started trading business ideas one night and decided to come prepared to any subsequent gatherings with a few more. One of the ideas resonated with all of us when we realized we encountered the same issue of protecting our rings when working out or doing anything active with no real solution. If this was a problem for us, we thought it might be for others and off we went to validate our thinking and make the idea a reality.
What are your backgrounds?
We all come from very different backgrounds. Jessica has spent her career consulting with clients on their employee benefits (where she met Nicole!). Her primary focus has been client service while also working in analytics and operations over the years. Jessie has always worked in the food industry in many different facets; product development, sales and most recently global sourcing. Molly has spent her years in the technology arena, from hardware to travel solutions – Just don’t ask her to fix your printer 😉 Niki has been in the retail leasing industry for over 7 years; cold calling, sales pitching, negotiating contracts and shopping malls are her jam. Regardless of our professional backgrounds, we all share a passion for being active.
How did you get started? What is the very first step one can take if they too want to start their own product line?
We can only relay how we went about getting to where we are today, which we’re sure can be improved upon for the next go around, but here’s a summary of how we got to today.
- Validate your idea: We sent a survey out (see below) to a hundred of our close friends to gauge interest and need. They agreed we had had identified a problem with no real solution in the market and we moved full force ahead. Here’s how we asked them!
Hi Friends,I’ve been working with a few girls here in Chicago on a functional accessory to wear while you workout. Although we think it’s a great idea, we need some validation from a wider audience to move forward with our idea. That’s where I need 5 minutes from you!
Thanks in advance!
https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/MNTJ8CR - Do your research! Make sure your idea doesn’t already exist or if it does, that you are improving upon what’s already out there. Know who your competition is, who your target market is, decide how to go about the design process and ultimately how you will get a prototype (more on this later).
- Come up with a name/logo: The name was easy. We’ve had that pretty much since week one. The logo was another story. We had many variations that we actually didn’t finalize until the week before launch!
- Actually design the product: We had been drawing and ‘making’ our own prototypes from the day we came up with the initial idea. None of us have design backgrounds so this was incredibly basic and some even involved tinfoil. We made the decision to partner with a design firm to help us bring our drawings to life. We sent out an RFP to a few local design houses in Chicago, went through interviews and ultimately decided to partner with The Apparel Agency. They worked with us on iterations of the wristband design, finalizing dimensions, picking a fabric and recommending the closure technique. They made our first prototypes and who we are using for our initial manufacturing run after our Kickstarter campaign gets funded.
- Create a website: We probably created three to four versions of the site you are seeing today. There are so many options here and someone with no technical expertise can actually create a pretty neat site these days using a template. We got super lucky and ultimately ended up partnering with a pro to get the look and feel we wanted.
- All the other ‘stuff’: Beyond the obvious, there’s a lot more to do behind the scenes to get ready to launch a product. Patents, product photos, building our Kickstarter campaign, setting up social media, building a marketing strategy, the list goes on! We are constantly learning about other things we should be doing, new ways to promote our product and how to launch a product in general (which we hope you gather there is no one right way to do)!
What surprised you the most about starting your own business?
How willing all our friends and family have been to chip in and help us. We have been so lucky with all the support we’ve received from our Kickstarter video, professional product photos, website design and even advice from other successful entrepreneurs in our network, we couldn’t have gotten to where we are without them!
What’s been the most exciting/rewarding moment so far?
There’s been so many rewarding moments along the way but hitting the launch button on our Kickstarter campaign is pretty high up there. All the hard work leading up to that moment finally paid off and we are live!
What words of advice can you offer others wanting to start out?
If you have an idea,go for it! We are all very busy in our everyday lives with our family, friends, careers and other life commitments but made the conscious decision to carve out time to see this through. It wasn’t always easy and expect there to be many challenges to come but we are so proud of how far we have come and look forward to what’s in store for us and RingHero. Fun fact that from when we first had the idea to now, three of the four of us have gotten pregnant! It’s been a whirlwind and we can’t wait to see what’s next.
Thank you again ladies for sharing your story today! I’ve been incredibly curious how a product business gets off the ground! Now lets get our tush to the gym and don’t forget to support RingHero’s Kickstart Campaign! A little tip: Kickstarters make for fabulous Christmas presents.
Such a great article! How fun and exciting for these girlfriends!!
When I first heard Ring Hero I thought it was going to be one of those rubber rings that you wear instead of your regular rings. I don’t understand those because, honestly, I much prefer to workout sans jewelry of any kind! But I like the idea of being able to take them off but keep them with me instead of just in my gym locker. Only downside? I don’t want the kettlebell to bang into them on my wrist when I do kb cleans!