We recently connected with Greg Hegger and have shared our conversation below.

Greg, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today One of the things we most admire about small businesses is their ability to diverge from the corporate/industry standard. Is there something that you or your brand do that differs from the industry standard? We’d love to hear about it as well as any stories you might have that illustrate how or why this difference matters.

We believe there are MANY everyday products that can be designed to be more efficient – some might even call these boring products! At Fox Fold, we’re changing a product that hasn’t changed in over 100 years: toilet paper. And we’re starting in hotels.

Hotels buy TWICE the tissue they need, and throw much of it away. Why? Bc toilet paper rolls and facial tissue boxes are replaced before they’re finished. Our patent-pending refillable solution solves this, helping hotels avoid waste and save money. Plus it’s super soft bamboo which grows 15 x faster than trees.

We’ve been incredibly lucky to partner with amazing designers, suppliers and hotel partners and look forward to helping hotels cut costs, avoid waste and switch to bamboo.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I used to be in the wireless industry and traveled considerably for work – my team managed retail marketing for over 5,000 stores accross the US. My cousin, who is now my business partner, similarly traveled alot in his role as a wealth manager. For as long as I can remember we traded new business ideas, I think deep down there was a desire to start something that could truly have an impact. One day we discussed how hotels changed toilet paper rolls before they were finished, particularly in the mid-to luxury segment. So we simply asked housekeeping staff and operators what they did with the unfinished rolls, to our surprise most of it ended up in the garbage. Toilet paper is water soluble so it can’t be recycled. Additionally, while some end up in the staff the rooms – if you have 300 rooms and 4 staff rooms, the excess becomes too much. So net net, hotels were throwing out about half of their TP inventory, which is bad for profits and the planet.

We had some friendlies in the industry and pitched them on single sheet TP dispensers – we had seen them in Europe. While the format was great, the quality of those dispensers and the paper wasn’t there. We must have left 20 meetings with hotel GMs/owners stating that if we had elegant product that could cut down their tissue waste, they would run a trial. During this time, we were introduced to an award winning product design firm called Box Clever, the same agency behind incredible products like Away Luggage, Caraway Cookware and Nebia Showers – they loved the idea and wanted to become equity partners. So with potential customers wanting to trial the idea, an incredible design partner and the trust and excitement shared between my cousin and I – we decided to go all in! Scariest but best decision of my life.

Fast forward two years, we have a manufacturing partner creating our patent-pending dispensers, bamboo pulp suppliers, two tissue converting facilities and most importantly… customers! We’re working with some incredible boutique hotels accross North America, we’ve secured local and national distribution partners like Sysco, and proud to be in trials with some of the largest hotel brands in the world. We have also introduced a refillable facial tissue dispenser that cuts packaging by 50% and allows hotels to store 50% more product.

Much like hotels moved from small, single-use soap bottles to wall-mounted dispensers – we’re moving hotels to a refillable format for tissue – saving them money while helping them achieve their sustainability goals.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

No one prepares you for the onslaught of challenges when starting a business: financing, manufacturing delays, logistical hurdles, IT issues, legal hurdles and the MANY mistakes you’ll make along the way. If I can focus on a few tips it would be the following:

1) Be committed to finding solutions. I have learned alot from my business partner here. There were times when I’d say” this is nuts, the cards are stacked against me, how does anyone start a company?” – but if your resolve is to always say, “ok, that’s unfortunate, now what?” – you create a reflex muscle that focuses on problem solving. This muscle begins to grow; you become less affected emotionally by the challenges and act quicker to fix things. It definitely helps to have a partner you trust here as the burden can be split.

2) Double click on everything. No one will care as much as you do – because it’s YOUR business not theirs. Early on we assigned an incredible amount of faith and trust to all of our partners, while these individuals were dedicated and well-meaning, they didn’t share same vision or absolute dedication. This is natural. Today we don’t just take things at face value – we ask alot of questions, we revise plans, we follow up constantly to move the ball forward and we become knowledgeable in every part of our business. This will change as our team grows and we can assign specialists, but for now we need to be into EVERYTHING.

Can you tell us about what’s worked well for you in terms of growing your clientele?

We’re a B2B company focusing on hotels, we don’t have huge budgets and have found the following to work:

-Linkedin – we post alot from our personal accounts and try to make our content fun and approachable. I think it’s been well received because we keep our audience up to date on our journey. So, we’re not only sharing content on our value proposition but also what it’s like to build a company and break into the industry – it makes it more human. Because of this, we’ve received many leads from this channel.

-Trade shows/networking events – nothing beats being able to meet potential customers face to face and share our mission. Our team is pretty extroverted which helps, so we’re able to work a room and build relationships. It also helps to have a fun product… starting a conversation with “I’m reinventing toilet paper” generally gets their attention!

-Good old fashion selling. Listen, we’re fans of data, optimization and all the tech tools that are out there to streamline sales, but nothing beats getting out there and building relationships. We go to hotels directly, we participate in industry events, we cold call and we keep growing our network. Trust me you’re not going to win in B2B if you’re stuck behind a screen all the time.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://foxfold.com
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/foxfold/
• Other: Founders:
  https://www.linkedin.com/in/ludovicsiouffi/
  https://www.linkedin.com/in/gregoryhegger/