From an idea to an everyday product ✅
Basile, CEO and Founder of RegloPetFood 🐶
Hello Basile, can you please introduce yourself?
Hello Lisa, thank you for welcoming me.
My name is Basile Laigre, I am 26 years old, I am a graduate in entrepreneurship from EM Normandie (class of 2018) . I am an animal and nature lover, I have a deep interest in DNVB (Digital Native Vertical Brand) and e-commerce.
I am also a "budding environmentalist" 🌱.
What is Reglo Pet Food?
Through Reglo we put ethics back in our pets’ bowls. It is a kibble recipe which delivers a better nutrition for dogs, and which does not damage the planet, by using insect proteins 🦗. In fact, we replace meat with complete and environmentally friendly insect proteins.
Awesome! When did you start the project?
The company was launched after a crowdfunding campaign, without which we would never have been able to start our project.
On the product side, we were due to launch our first one in March 2020 but Covid went through and we had an issue with the delivery of our insect ingredients, we had to change suppliers - which postponed the launch to June 2020.
Where did you get the idea? 💡
When I was a student in Le Havre, I used to go to the local animal shelter to walk the residents. I loved this experience.
On the personal side, I am in the process of going through an "environmental transition" by making my consumption habits increasingly sustainable.
These two parameters led me to think about solutions to "transform" dog food, which was resolutely not adapted to environmental transitions, except for the completely vegetarian solutions which are not adapted to the - carnivorous - dog diet.
How do you go from "I have an idea" to "I’m launching my product"?
I do not think there is a general rule. Personally, I have gone through several steps. There is much to tell but here are a few points I want to highlight ✨:
· My first reflex was to ask people with proven track record in entrepreneurship. So, I immediately called Julien Sylvain (founder of Tediber and manager during my internship) to talk to him about my idea, and above all to ask him for advices. Being a solo founder, it was fundamental for me to find professional "mentors" in this field, to receive guidance in my entrepreneurial adventure. I showed him a rough draft I had done in an hour. His response was: "It's a good idea, these are fairly strong market trends. Go for it!"
At that moment, I wanted to do it - the engine started running 😊.
· Then, I delved into my market research: who are the manufacturers? who are the suppliers? who are the retailers? what is the competition doing? what do the products look like? what are the prices?
It's a real "deep dive" into the ecosystem, a long research work during which one truly understand the guts of the product. And little by little it becomes urgent to get it out of one's head.
· Once I had studied the market well enough, I interviewed potential customers (dog owners). I spent whole days at the Bois de Vincennes, with a notepad and twenty or so well-prepared questions. I questioned hundreds of people and sang the same song "Hello, I'm a young entrepreneur, I'm trying to come up with a new recipe for kibble blah blah blah blah".
How to conduct customer interviews? You must determine beforehand what you want to learn from them. You should not influence them to try and get answers that reassure you but ask generic questions.
For my part, I did not want to bring them directly to sharing their opinion about insect-based kibbles right away. I asked them about their preferences, their decision criteria… I was introducing my idea to test their interest, their feelings, and to see if there was any reluctance.
What kind of obstacles did you face?
Quite quickly in the process of creating the product, we came up against obstacles and difficulties. Very quickly, I realised that there was no insect-based kibble already on the market (which meant consumers were not educated on the topic), and - even worse - you couldn't find it "on the shelf" (as a white label products, which you could choose from manufacturers' catalogues).
So, I looked for the factories 🏭 which produce the regular kibble that you find in retail. I called them all (more than 30 of them just in France) to try and convince them to produce insect-based kibble, by making my project as attractive to them as possible. These are big manufacturers, with a challenge using their factories to full capacity, so they need high production volumes.
During this process, I suffered many drawbacks. Manufacturers refused to produce my insect-based kibble, their mindset is akin to that of investors, they will not say yes easily. You must be resilient. And by dint of resilience I ended up having a good first contact with a factory in the Loir et Cher. The company put me in touch with one of their R&D partners, the ensuing meeting and relationship kickstarted the project.
The project was somewhat started: we started working on the recipe. Faced with industry professionals, I had to trust them and follow their recommendations: "It's your job guys – help me out!". In the end, we shared the same vision, and found common ground between the dream of the perfect kibble, and technical, nutritional, or industrial requirements and constraints until we found the right recipe.
Can you tell us more about your benchmark ?
The idea is to assume nothing, but to look at all the good practices of competitors, to know their products (to order them, to try them), to go out into the field and observe the way they are promoted, but also and above all to talk to customers: play the mystery shopper.
It is thanks to this that you build your specifications to perfectly understand the unspoken rules of the market.
How can you stand out among all the competitors?
We are the only ones in France to develop kibble which contain no other animal product than insects. Let me elaborate: all kibbles, even those that claim to be ethical and more sustainable, use animal fats (controversial ingredients such as poultry liver concentrate, which is highly processed) because these ingredients smell strongly and dogs love them. It is therefore this difference that makes our brand difference. We did not look for the easy way out - we are certainly more expensive than our competitors - but we went all the way and found a natural, vegetable coating that is suitable for dogs. To achieve this, we sent our prospects the different samples with different settings (varying coatings). The feedback was very positive ☺️. At the same time, we sent the same samples to partner breeders until we found a satisfactory plant-based coating.
In short, the formula will surely never be ideal, we constantly keep on trying to improve it with the help of our faithful community…
What did you learn in this creative process?
We are always connected to the end user. Through satisfaction surveys, feedback, requests for advice, or phone calls (these are probably the most important ones because that is where we learn the most).
What are the next steps? 🔜
We are focusing on improving the product attributes (such as palatability, digestion, etc. which are the product's benchmark criteria), still working alongside our R&D partner.
The next big step will be to create product variants for senior, large, and young dogs. Our starting product works very well, but the market we are addressing is very fragmented.
Thank you Basile, it was very interesting! See you soon! 👋🏻