She sold her house for inventory, then Shark Tank called
Since creating Bug Bite Thing in 2017, Kelley has been a "Mom on a Mission" to offer the most effective chemical-free solution for insect bite relief worldwide.
In 2013, Kelley Higney moved from California to Florida, only to discover the horror of living with mosquitoes. Her daughter suffered from constant mosquito bites. After many failed attempts using creams and trying home remedies, Kelley discovered a little-known tool that uses suction to help remove insect saliva/venom from under the skin. Kelley was amazed to find that the product worked and also offered instant relief.
The company gained nationwide recognition in October 2019 when Kelley and her mother appeared on ABC’s hit show, ‘Shark Tank. Bug Bite Thing is Amazon’s #1 selling product for insect bite relief with over 40,000 reviews. Kelley is a member of the Fast Company Executive Board and Forbes Business Council. She has received several awards, including ‘Female Entrepreneur of the Year’ by the 2021 Stevie Awards for Women in Business 2021. She resides in South Florida with her husband, Richard, and their daughters, Leah and Lilly.
Kurt Elster: Today, on The Unofficial Shopify Podcast, we are joined by Kelley Higney, a Shark Tank alum who has done the incredible. She has succeeded with a direct-to-consumer product. But aha, there is a catch. Often when we hear about these things, it’s someone had a pain or problem in their life, and they invented a new product. What Kelley here has done is very clever. She identified an existing product and then through what sounds like a grassroots campaign was able to educate people as to this new category of purpose for this thing that no one really was familiar with, and from there was able to turn it into an international success and appear twice on Shark Tank. No easy feat.
Certainly, I think you’re probably the only person… Because of this show, I’ve met a lot of people who’ve been on Shark Tank. I think you’re the only one who’s been on Shark Tank twice, though, so that’s a fun claim to fame.
Kelley Higney: Oh, that’s great. Well, thank you so much for having me on, Kurt. I’m very excited to talk with you today.
Kurt Elster: Well, where should we begin? Well, I’m your host, Kurt Elster.
Ezra Firestone Sound Board Clip: Tech Nasty!
Kurt Elster: And I’m joined by Kelley Higney from Bug Bite Thing. Well, Kelley, what the heck is a Bug Bite Thing?
Kelley Higney: So, Bug Bite Thing is a chemical-free suction tool, so what many people don’t realize is when you get a bite or sting, actually the insect is injecting their saliva or venom just under the surface of the skin.
Sound Board: Eww!
Kelley Higney: And it’s your own body causing the reaction to that irritant that causes the itching, the stinging, the swelling, so our product uses simple suction. You have complete control over the amount used. And it pulls out that irritant out of the skin, so your body stops producing those reactions.
Kurt Elster: So, currently if I get a mosquito bite, the chances are if I’m treating it at all other than just like clawing at myself for several days, which is problematic in its own right, I’m going to apply… Really, like any solution off the shelf is just masking the symptom. Not actually treating the fact that there is anticoagulant venom mosquito spit in my skin, which when you think about it, not so great. You have a suction tool. Straight up pull the venom out. Okay, I like this. I’m done now.
Kelley Higney: No, you’re good. I was just gonna say everybody reacts so differently to bug bites, so some people react more severely to bee venom. Some people react differently to different species of mosquito bites. Children react. They tend to react more severe because they have no immunity to mosquito saliva. So, there’s so many different variations that our product can help with, which is very exciting.
Kurt Elster: I get the product, and it’s a simple, straightforward mechanical solution to this, which I like. I’m mechanically inclined, so I like mechanical solutions, but where… How far back are we going here? When did this start?
Kelley Higney: Yeah, so back in 2017, I come from a long line of entrepreneur women. My mother was an entrepreneur. My grandmother. I got the unique opportunity to relocate our family from California, which is where we’re from and we grew up, out to South Florida, and we had a six-month-old daughter at the time, and one thing we were completely unprepared for were the mosquitos. Had no idea how severe it would impact our quality of life. My daughter, unfortunately, has really horrendous reactions to mosquito bites. She swells golf ball size welts. So, when we relocated here, every time we would go outside it would be a three-to-five-day ordeal. I would end up in the doctor’s office on antibiotics. I was constantly applying the only solution here which was on the market, which was topical creams, which a lot of them are full of chemicals, and just to keep the swelling down and her comfortable, I was applying them throughout the entire day and I just kept feeling guilty because I knew they were full of chemicals, but I was in this tug of war. What’s better? What’s the better of the worse?
So, I got frustrated. We were at the point where we were just avoiding the outdoors and I started doing some research, and I came across an unknown suction tool that was being sold through some industrial first aid kits overseas, and the premise behind it was it removed the irritant, so essentially your body doesn’t produce the reaction to the mosquito saliva. No way it was gonna work, right? Because if something so simple worked, it would be everywhere, especially if it’s chemical free.
Kurt Elster: I saw it and went, “Well, this is too obvious, too easy, and too cheap. This couldn’t possibly work. Too good to be true.”
Kelley Higney: That’s exactly right. Same thing that a lot of people that first hear about our product think, right? It’s the skepticism because it’s a new concept. If something so simple was that effective, it would be everywhere. So, ordered one in not thinking much of it. Got a mosquito bite on the way to the mailbox. I always say the same story because it’s very true. Used the product and within 15 to 20 seconds, everything was gone. All the pain, the itching, the swelling, and I just kept saying, “What the heck? How does that work? How did that happen?” So, started the following week, started really testing it on my daughter who was my case study, because she reacts so severely, and all the reaction was just gone. She never developed the swelling, the skin infections that she was getting from mosquito bites. Within 30 seconds, it was just gone, and I was shocked, and as a mom I of course started talking to other moms in the area, at my daughter’s preschool, and it happened to be a really big problem that a lot of other families were dealing with that I had no idea.
So, I decided to, after I started gathering some feedback, I did a very small test sample run, and I started selling them at my daughter’s bake sales to see if I could prove my concept, to see if other people were getting the same results on a bigger level. And so, I was selling them every Friday at my daughter’s bake sales, and by probably the third week I was getting tracked down in the parking lot with people wanting to purchase the product during non-bake sale days, and that’s when I realized, “Okay, there’s real validity to this product. Other people are getting the exact same results I am. Everybody needs one of these.”
And so, my husband and I made the crazy and difficult decision to go all in, so we ended up selling our house to make sure that we… if this did not go the way that I had wanted it to, we were still stable and okay, so we moved into a temporary rental house and I launched Bug Bite Thing out of the rental house, and I just started… I created a Shopify website, very grassroots, on my own to start, and I started selling it. I started teaching myself social media marketing through Udemy classes. I tapped into the influencer world that was… Back in 2017 is when it really started to develop and take off, so I utilized influencers, and micro influencers to really start creating a buzz around the product.
And I’ll never forget, it was Mother’s Day weekend. After we had sold our house, it was about two to three months after I went all in, and I was a topic in a mom’s group, in a local mom’s group, and they were talking about our product, and a news reporter saw the article and they reached out to me and they said, “Can we come to your rental house and do a story on you?” And I said, “Okay, sure. Come.” And it was literally an hour later, a whole news crew showed up at my house and I just talked about my product, and how if you’re suffering, try it. And it aired, and the next day it got syndicated to about 30 news stations, and I sold out of all of my inventory that I had sold my house for in about a week. And that was my first real taste of once people understood the product, they understood the concept of the product, it almost became an impulse item.
And so, I knew I was really onto something. I kept going. And then that leads us to the Shark Tank experience, which is super exciting.
Kurt Elster: Before we get into Shark Tank, when you got the product, what was the… When did the light bulb go off? What was that moment where you went, “Wait a second. If this thing works for me, should I be trying to get this in the hands of other people? Should this be a business?” And with that, because I think if it were me, I’d look at it and just go like… Just be excited that I found the solution for my child. Your child was suffering, living in Florida, and you found this very… And you, as a mother, were feeling guilty about like, “Well, basically we gotta coat you in whatever the heck antihistamine we can find to work to deal with this.”
And then you found this solution that’s like a silver bullet for this, and so was it more like, “Hey, I’m just excited about this,” and certainly other people in Florida know this struggle. I’ve been to Florida enough times to know there are some next level mosquitos.
Kelley Higney: It didn’t click for me… I think it didn’t really, really click of the validity of the business until I started getting the feedback from the consumers at the bake sales. So, I was thinking this may be a side business, I would be able to sell them at farmer’s markets or bake sales. I was gonna be able to flip between that and my kids. Literally, that was my mentality going into this, and it wasn’t until I was getting tracked down in the parking lot with all these people saying, “This is a game changer. You don’t understand how bad I react. It’s just gone.” And I kept hearing the consumer feedback and it wasn’t sitting right that nobody else knew about it.
And the more people I told, and the more people that were using it, they would tell 10 more people, and it just started spreading like crazy just in my own little, small circle. And so, I just… I wanted to test, to see if I could get this off the ground on a bigger level. No way did I think this was gonna take off the way it did, to be honest with you. I grew up in an entrepreneurial world. I understand business a little bit differently. I was answering phones since I was four years old. I watched my parents struggle, and pivot, and-
Kurt Elster: Certainly, that entrepreneurial lifestyle would feel like a more natural option to you than other people who didn’t grow up with it.
Kelley Higney: Yeah. I did. And so, my mom always taught me to think outside the box, and who’s telling you no, and test your theory. If you don’t, as long as you’re being smart about it, like when we had sold our house we had a cushion, so in case this didn’t work, we weren’t gonna just be… Our life savings wasn’t just gonna be gone. So, we did things very slow and very grassroots, and I really focused on building a community, and figuring out how to market our product in a way that others would sell it for me, that others would be excited like I was when I discovered it, and because it’s a game changer for a lot of our customers. It’s life changing.
If you look through the reviews, we’ve got over almost 50,000 reviews online, and-
Kurt Elster: Tell me a little bit about that. You said, “Hey, we market in a way where they could get excited about it the same way I did, and I was able to build a community around it.” And certainly, like locally, within your community, word of mouth and grassroots did do that.
Kelley Higney: It did.
Kurt Elster: But it also sounds like there was some intentionality here where we want… Maybe it was the positioning that did it. Give me a little more on… Let me back up-
Kelley Higney: How I did it? What my thought process was?
Kurt Elster: Some background. A common theme we’re seeing is community, especially as like Facebook ads get more expensive, community becomes more and more important.
Kelley Higney: So, you touched on a really good point, so from the beginning, my customers have been it. They’re the ones that are driving the entire company. They’re the ones telling us what they want next. They’re the ones telling us they want color extensions, and keychain holes, and things that we’ve been adding. I listen to our customers. From the beginning, we have studied the feedback, the comments that come in on all of our social feeds. I tag everything. I look at trends and the most lucrative thing for us has just been repurposing people’s real-life experiences with our product through testimonials… One thing at the beginning to overcome the skepticism that I think set us apart, which really helped, was we offered a 100% moneyback guarantee from the beginning, so I was so confident because of the feedback I was getting that if I could explain how to use it properly, and you are suffering…
Kurt Elster: Well, I think there were two things that stood out to me. You said, “Hey, we started with a 100% moneyback guarantee,” which I think the nature of the product lends itself well to that, but being able… So, my point is not everybody could do that, and it’s lucky that you could, and that you did it early, because there’s just a gigantic series of objections to purchasing that go away. It’s like, “Hey, if you don’t like it, we’ll just give you your money back. It’s not a big deal.” There is straight up no risk to you trying this.
Kelley Higney: In addition to that, that really helps on the customer service side, right? So, when you’re in a live thread, since that’s the… Our customers are what drives the brand, so we’re very heavily involved in social media we answer all of our customers’ comments. So, being able to say we understand the skepticism, here’s some credibility from our other customers, here’s what we have, and in addition to that, we will give you your money back if it does not work for you. We offer troubleshooting tips, and we still do that on this level today, fast forward four years, so I think that really helped at the beginning, and then that really got our customers on board with we’re not trying to push our product down your throat. We’re just trying to educate the market that it exists, and we are really, truly trying to get other families that are suffering like I was relief, to let them know that this exists, and that has been monumental for us.
We have doctors recommending our product now because their patients are talking to the doctors about it, so it all stemmed from the consumer for us. Same with the retail sector. We’re gonna be in probably close to 30 to 40,000 retail doors this year.
Kurt Elster: Whoa!
Kelley Higney: Yeah. Walmart, Target, Home Depot, Lowe’s, CVS.
Kurt Elster: Love those impulse purchases at Home Depot. They get me every weekend.
Kelley Higney: But the great thing about our product is it fits every category. It’s chemical free, which is obviously a huge thing that I wish everybody would pay more attention to, because there’s so many unregulated chemicals on the market that people just don’t know, that they think they’re being protected from, and unfortunately they’re not. So, educating yourself around that, so the chemical-free component was really important for me. And just being able to teach people the science behind bug bites, our product has clinical testing. Just like I had explained earlier in the show, there’s a science behind it. When a bug bites you, they’re injecting something, so teaching the concepts, educating, and giving the consumer the power to be able to teach other people that may not know about bug bites. So, when they’re at the park and they know about our product, and they understand how bug bites work, and what our product does for them, they’re very inclined to see a child that’s screaming at the park, who got stung by a bee, like what do you do? If you have a child that gets stung by a bee at a park, what do you do? Well, now we have parents pulling this out, suctioning out the venom, and their kids are going back and playing, and it’s not a three-to-five-day ordeal.
Kurt Elster: This is so brilliant.
Kelley Higney: Say that again?
Kurt Elster: I said that’s so brilliant.
Kelley Higney: It’s a game changer for people.
Kurt Elster: They keep this, the parent keeps this thing on them. It’s in your stroller, in your purse, in your diaper bag, whatever. And then-
Kelley Higney: Glove box, golf bag, boat, camping, and we have people carrying them everywhere like eyeglasses.
Kurt Elster: And then when you encounter an issue, whether it’s you or someone else, you go, “Hey, look. Oh my gosh, let me help you.”
Kelley Higney: Yes.
Kurt Elster: And of course, no one wants to see their child in distress, and so they’re like, “Please do.” And then immediately seeing is believing, and then they’re like, “Well, all right. What is that? Where’d you get it? How do I get one?”
Kelley Higney: Exactly right.
Kurt Elster: Wow.
Kelley Higney: And that’s been the power. So, the educating our own customers just about insect bites and what it does to you, and then providing them solutions that are chemical free, in a very easy, affordable way, has been our push since the beginning.
Kurt Elster: Did you ever secretly hang out at parks just hoping somebody gets stung by a bee? You’re like letting bees loose in parks?
Kelley Higney: You know what’s crazy? We thought about all of that at the beginning, because of course it crossed our mind. No. If you go through, like I said, we’re the number one bestselling product on Amazon for insect bite relief. If you just look through some of the testimonials, you’ll understand. It’s so specific, all the different scenarios people are using our product for, and that’s what gets me excited to keep going, because it’s not just me and my little circle anymore. We’ve sold millions of them at this point, so there’s proof of concept now. It’s just a matter of educating that it exists, and what it does, and how much it’s helping our consumers that already are aware of the product.
Kurt Elster: There was another brilliant insight you revealed a little bit ago, which was that being able to look at reviews and take people’s real-life experiences and hold them up to potential customers in your marketing copy, in your website, has been a boon to your business.
Kelley Higney: That’s been the driving force.
Kurt Elster: Talk me through it.
Kelley Higney: It really has. So, you know, again because we started with our customers, we constantly asked for feedback. We’re constantly engaging and interacting with them. We tag everything to identify trends, so once we start gathering the data from this stuff, we can then make decisions on how to tweak and pivot on our marketing, so people are relating even more to our brand. If there’s a series of questions that they’re asking, we tag every inquiry that comes in so now we know, okay, people don’t understand that the cap is reversible and it flips around so you can use it on smaller areas, like fingers and toes, so then we create a whole campaign around that, target our existing customers, new customers, so they get better results.
So, just constantly paying attention to our customers, I can’t stress that enough. We just literally listen to our customers, and they tell us what they like, what they don’t like, how they interpret what we’re putting out there, so just being really aware of the feedback, and not taking it personal. I think a lot of businesses get lost in that. They take it very personal if it’s negative feedback, or somebody doesn’t love your product. Nine out of ten times, they’re probably not using it correctly if there’s a new concept, or a new situation behind it, or there’s… Customer service can make that situation right.
So, they all play a little piece, but again, we focus on our customers. Everything is customer driven here.
Kurt Elster: The superpower that you have here is you are very much not letting your ego get in the way of things.
Kelley Higney: No.
Kurt Elster: And that is such a benefit, like rarely does ego help anyone.
Kelley Higney: I see it. I never started a business before. This is my first business on my own. And for some reason, I had this preconceived notion that there was this straight arrow path with this is how you go, these are the levels, this is how you climb up, this is how you do it. That is so far from the truth. Every business is so different. Every product is so different. Every situation, every story. A lot of our customers will purchase our product because of our story, just the grassroots story to just give it a chance, and I think being relatable with people, and giving the consumer back the power, and the credit. They’re the ones buying the product. They’re the ones telling other people about it. All we’re here to do is educate and support them.
Kurt Elster: There is such a purity, and transparency, and authenticity to the way you present this, that it’s irresistible. It makes you trustworthy. It makes the brand, the thing, trustworthy. I think it’s easy to overlook the power of what you just described, and I would encourage people, like she’s really laying out the… When I say you have to nail the fundamentals, you just… You did it. You’re describing them.
Kelley Higney: Thank you.
Kurt Elster: Fantastic. So, so confident, sold your house.
Kelley Higney: I know.
Kurt Elster: How did that feel?
Kelley Higney: That was terrifying. That was probably the most terrifying thing I ever did in my life. My husband was still working full time for another brand. Now he’s in full time here with Bug Bite Thing, which is super exciting, but it was terrifying. I had probably three backup plans, because I’m a perfectionist and an overachiever, and so I just was like, “If this doesn’t work, I need to have a pivot. Am I gonna go to farmers’ markets? Am I gonna do…” So, I was overprepared with not as high of expectations when I launched this, but I obviously was completely shocked and blindsided of what actually ended up playing out and happening, which I’m very grateful for.
Kurt Elster: What gave you the confidence to sell your house, though?
Kelley Higney: I’m telling you; it was the feedback. I was literally getting tracked down in the parking lot and then what was happening was all the families from the preschool were telling their family members, so now they were coming back to purchase for their family members, and I’m like, “I need to just open up a website, and if I’m gonna do this, I need to do this smart,” because at the time I was still working for my mother’s company. I was learning to take over her distribution company. And I literally… I had to quit. I said, “If I can’t juggle both of these and be fully committed, and this is my chance, I want to give it a crack.” But again, my mentality was I’m gonna make a nice little living for myself selling these at farmers’ markets, and networking in my own community, and really getting this going in South Florida. I didn’t think it was gonna be a national brand this quickly, nor a global brand, as fast as it’s happening. Which is exciting.
Kurt Elster: Having success locally is great, and it gave you that early… that confidence, and really validated it, and provided you with a lot of-
Kelley Higney: Insight. Feedback.
Kurt Elster: … insight. Yeah.
Kelley Higney: Yes.
Kurt Elster: And so, you’ve got that going for you. So confident, you sell your house to stock up on inventory. And immediately had this wonderful event happen where you appeared on the local news and that got syndicated nationally, and then from there, and you already have the Shopify store at this point.
Kelley Higney: Yep. I have the Shopify store. That’s how I was able to sell out. And this was all grassroots, like my first version Shopify store was so bad. It’s not even funny. I literally created it myself. We’re still tweaking it. We’ve probably… We constantly tweak it, so we’ve got another big batch of updates coming soon.
Kurt Elster: And I will say, your site, as it stands now, is very nice. And of course, I will link to it in the show notes. It does a really good job of like, “Hey, this is just one simple product, and if you just want to buy one, it costs 10 bucks.” And the page itself is long, and graphical, and has video, and walks through like this is the problem, this is how we’re solving it, really walking you through that whole thing for what is a simple, $10 product.
Kelley Higney: Yes.
Kurt Elster: And that’s the level of effort it takes to convince people when it’s something they’re not familiar with. So, okay, how did you get on Shark Tank? We go, so we’re national, we’re selling, things are going well, and now Shark Tank.
Kelley Higney: Right. So, yeah, so I was contacted by Shark Tank. They had encouraged me to audition for the show. And when that whole situation happened, we were doing pretty well on our own. This is after the news broadcast. Things really picked up at that point, because we had sold out of 10,000 units in a week, all those 10,000 units now people were using it and telling more people, so it was already starting to spread on its own because I was able to get product in people’s hands. So, I had moved from the rental house to a bigger house up the road that we had repurchased. We were able to get our money back that we had sold from selling out of the inventory and we purchased a house, so with the mindset that we were gonna be able to run the business out of my garage. We purchased a house with a bigger garage.
We had converted my garage. We put AC in it because I knew I needed like one local person to come help me pack orders. And so, we were in a house that we had purchased, and when we got the opportunity to finally go on the show, that’s when I said, “I need my mother’s 30 years of business experience,” so I brought her back on. She ended up going on the show with me. We pitched, terrified, most surreal experience. I’m pretty sure I blacked out almost the entire time. But we were very… Again, we were very overprepared. We studied our numbers like crazy. We studied all the skepticism, the questions that were gonna come, and we were extremely fortunate to get offers from all the sharks.
Lori Greiner offered us her golden ticket, which she gives out one per season, so we ended up striking a deal with Lori, so she’s part of Bug Bite Thing, which is super exciting. And then when that happened, everything took off. Again, the consumers drive our brand, so once all the consumers got word from the Shark Tank rush about what our product was, what it did, they started reading through the testimonials and reviews, it just exploded, and again, what I’m discovering now which may be a little unique is we had an influx of mass merchants reach out to us to say, “Hey, we have customers wanting your product. We want to carry it.”
So, this year we’re gonna be in, like I had said, close to 30,000 retail doors. That happened. Then COVID hit and that threw a little monkey wrench, but we were still able to pull through and continue our growth, and then we were fortunate enough to get an update last year, in 2021, showcasing kind of what we had accomplished since the show.
Kurt Elster: That’s good to hear. I’ve talked to enough Shark Tank people to know that even if you see them get the offer on the show, after the fact when they go through due diligence-
Kelley Higney: There’s a due diligence process.
Kurt Elster: That’s when it… You thought it was tough before, oh, now really they’re like, “All right.”
Kelley Higney: It gets down to everything.
Kurt Elster: Brass tacks. Rubber hits the road.
Kelley Higney: Luckily, again, for us, I started this out of a necessity for my daughter, so for me, it’s this all came about not with the mindset I want to grow this to a global, huge brand, and be a household name. It started out of necessity. And then what was happening was the customers were having the exact same results as me and it didn’t sit right that I was not pushing this to let people know everywhere that it existed, and I think that, again, has been the driving force of our brand, and now all of my team… We have a team of 30 here at Bug Bite Thing, and they are all now seeing the feedback, and the testimonials, and the reviews, so they’re just as enthusiastic and excited as we are, and that’s how I truly feel our customers feel when they use it. They feel like they’re part of our Bug Bite Thing family. It’s a community. Now they’re gonna tell everybody because why don’t you have one?
And that’s the biggest thing for me, you know, is just educating and letting people know it exists.
Kurt Elster: I wish everyone could believe in their product so thoroughly that it becomes their duty to tell people about it. That’s the dream.
Kelley Higney: I feel like I was put on this earth to do this. I don’t know how else to explain it but it’s life changing for so many people and I can’t stop until everybody knows at least it exists.
Kurt Elster: So, you’ve been working with influencers, and certainly on social media platforms, for what, probably five years at least now?
Kelley Higney: Yep.
Kurt Elster: And things have changed in social media world.
Kelley Higney: Tremendously. Every year. Every single year, they change.
Kurt Elster: Well, do you still work with influencers, and do you think if you had to start over today, do you think you would approach social media the same way?
Kelley Higney: I would 150% approach social media the same way, the way that we do it. We’re actually about to launch, now that the iOS update threw a wrench in everybody’s marketing plans, we have always been, again, consumer focused, so all of our content that we put out there is usually educational, is usually repurposing testimonials, is usually… It’s not a salesy-type post or anything like that, so what we’re gonna get more involved in is the storytelling portion, really showcasing where we are, who we are as a brand, how we’re doing things differently, almost like a behind the scenes reality show of Bug Bite Thing. How we’re doing it, how we can have fun by creating content.
We’re pivoting over to TikTok, which a lot of brands are now doing, because of the storytelling component. What we’re realizing is there’s validity over to the Kelley Higney entrepreneur side, because now I’m on Forbes Business Council, and Fast Company’s Executive Board, so I’m getting a lot of B2B contacts and people wanting to know some of the same questions you’re asking. How did you do it with not that much money and build it into a global community and a brand? And I love sharing what worked for me. It’s not a one size fits all for every business, but if I found or tapped into a community a specific way and somebody can gather some of the things that I did and apply it to their business and it’s successful, that’s a win for me.
So, I feel like it’s my duty to just share the transparency of what’s worked here and how we can help other entrepreneurs, and it doesn’t have to be a scary thing starting a business. There’s a lot of help and a lot of resources. You don’t have to go to college for a specific thing to be a CEO. It’s an open playing field and I wish more people felt confident in doing that. It was very difficult for us. Now, I have the confidence because I’ve seen a lot, and I network a lot, and I just wish other entrepreneurs would not get so intimidated.
Kurt Elster: Yeah. I think part of what’s so intimidating about it is it just isn’t the norm. You’re immediately going to commit your entire life and career to something that is so atypical, and so out of the norm, that most people can’t relate to it. So, like often, I think what discourages people, especially early on, is they talk to friends and family who don’t get it. And that becomes very discouraging to them and it's like often it has nothing to do with you as an entrepreneur or your business.
Kelley Higney: It’s outside influences. I was told Bug Bite Thing was never going to succeed as a one-SKU item. I was told the big box stores were never gonna take us on as a one-SKU item. I was turned down by a marketing agency. They would not take my product because they said it was too difficult to teach a new concept for a $10 with free shipping product. And I said, “I’m not raising the price.” I said, “Our customers need one in every location. It needs to be affordable.” So, I just stuck with my guns, and I listened to my customers, because again, my goal wasn’t to get up here. It was to build a community and just educate people, hey, I have this tool that’s really helping a lot of people. If you’re suffering or your child’s suffering, just try it. And you know, that’s just Bug Bite Thing. That’s how we started, and I think that’s how we’ll always be.
Kurt Elster: I love the purity of it. It’s just so great. And that really, like that is the driving force and the cornerstone behind this. But I do want to ask about tools, right? You said you’ve got 30 people, you’ve got really on top of social media and communicating with customers, and I heard you say like, “Oh, we tag things or flag things.” What kind of social media tools, or CRM, what are some of your favorite software tools that you use?
Kelley Higney: So, we have one of our… A good CRM we use is Zendesk, so we use Zendesk throughout our company. We tag all the emails that come in. We set up groups. That’s how we essentially are now rolling it out companywide, because we started in customer service to gather up the feedback, and then be able to have our customer service teams work with each other, and complete tickets, things like that. We found a huge benefit that we can apply those same strategies to other departments and then have them all communicate with each other, so Zendesk has been a great tool for us.
Socialbakers for social media, for comment moderation. Obviously, Shopify Reviews has been phenomenal for SEO. I feel like we pop up all over under our Shopify’s Reviews little add-on on our Shopify store. Klaviyo is a huge tool that we use for email marketing. We actually utilize Klaviyo a little different than other companies. Our influencer program is very custom, and we really go after micro influencers, so we do volume over more tailored approaches. I’d rather multiple people know about our product, even if they don’t have a large following, because I know with the strategy and the tools we give them, one post is… They’re gonna tell 10 more people about it. So, we’ve kind of cracked that with the influencers, so we use Klaviyo, and we can segment campaigns for our influencers based off of the category they’re in. We can work on collaborations with them through that. What other programs? Yeah, those are the top ones that I think come to mind. Obviously, we look at Google Analytics quite often.
I started with Google Analytics when I didn’t know what I was doing, and I think I never stopped. I keep my Google Analytics up on my computer. It’s up on my left screen, right there, and it gives me a pulse of what’s happening throughout the day, if there’s spikes. I view the web traffic. Let me clarify, sorry.
Kurt Elster: Oh, you watch the live view?
Kelley Higney: I watch a live view. I keep it on one of my screens all day.
Kurt Elster: You don’t make yourself crazy doing that?
Kelley Higney: No, because it’s like I’ve done it since the beginning, because I needed to know. I needed to learn my customer. When were people coming on our website? Where were they dropping off? Where can I tweak to get better? So, I would just have my page thing up all day and I’d just watch where people jump around on our website. I see how much time people are spending on the site. And I see the traffic increases, at what times of day, and still to this day, I think it’s just a habit now, because obviously I get reporting from my team, but I still keep it up. It gives me an idea the pulse of the company. When we’re starting to hit season. When the traffic’s starting to increase.
You know, if there’s a media hit with our company, we’re a Shark Tank brand, so we fortunately get a lot of these random media spikes or opportunities. We’re gonna be on Good Morning America next month, so every time those hit, we get a huge influx of traffic to our website, so it’s just nice to just see what’s happening.
Kurt Elster: Yeah. Do you see with Shark Tank every time there’s a rerun, you see the spike?
Kelley Higney: Oh, yes. Every single time. And it’s obvious. And what’s happening now is we’ve got two episodes. We’ve got our original episode that aired season 11 and our update episode, which aired season 12, and they’ve both now been syndicated to CNBC, so we’re getting… It’s just random. And sometimes we don’t get alerted ahead of time, so we’ll get an influx of new influencers, new customers, new wholesale inquiries every single time it re-airs, which is the Shark Tank effect.
Kurt Elster: Yeah. Once it’s syndicated and you’ve got this cable show running about your business-
Sound Board:
Kelley Higney: Yes. And what’s happened now is Shark Tank’s going global, so they’re literally starting to re-air United States episodes in other countries, so that’s how we’ve been able to secure distribution in some of these other countries and some of these partners because they saw our episode in their country, which is exciting.
Kurt Elster: That’s cool. So, what’s next?
Kelley Higney: Next we want to continue listening to our customers. Our customers are telling us the next five products they want, so definitely product extensions under our Big Bite Thing brand and our community, new colors, and we’ve got a super exciting product launching this year, I believe April, so you want to peek out and stay tuned for that. I’m just gonna give a little hint, but not tell you what it is.
Kurt Elster: And let’s see, oh, last year you were female entrepreneur of the year for Women in Business 2021? That sounds cool.
Kelley Higney: Yeah. Yeah. Again, I feel very thankful. Our community has been incredible. Very supportive. My team has been amazing so the more people we can bring involved and awareness we can spread, it’s been great, so the award recognition has been nice. It’s been really good.
Kurt Elster: You don’t want to build your identity on that external validation, but man, it’s still so sweet to get it. You can’t not love it.
Kelley Higney: Again, I try to just stay in my own lane. I don’t compare. I try to stay humble. My family is all intertwined with the business. My mother’s our president. My husband’s our COO. Our team here feels like family. We’re all on a mission together to just educate consumers about bug bites, and this industry, and get people on board that there’s another way to get relief.
Kurt Elster: And my final and most important question, where can we get our own Bug Bite Things?
Kelley Higney: Of course. You can buy one on our website, bugbitething.com, or Amazon, and please be sure to follow us on social media. We’re on all the channels under Bug Bite Thing.
Kurt Elster: Kelley, thank you so much. It’s been my honor and pleasure. I appreciate having a double Shark Tank alum on the show.
Kelley Higney: Yeah. Thank you so much for having me on. I really appreciate it.