We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Alexandra Leach a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Alexandra, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. How did you come up with the idea for your business?

The idea for my product, The Earth Lounger, came from our adventures at the beach as a family over eight years ago. At the time, I was pregnant with my second child and found it hard to sit on the ground comfortably. My son always wanted me to be on the sand with him to play, but my back was strained from the pregnancy. I needed extra support and couldn’t sit in a traditional beach chair because it restricted my ability to change positions and I couldn’t play easily with my son.

A few days later, while driving to Palm Springs, I started talking with my husband about my problem. (At the time I was making pillows as a side business.) SO, we pondered some ideas, and then just like that, he says, “why don’t you sew a pillow that has an opening at the top, and it can be filled with sand?” I thought about this and it made sense. I could bring the pillow to the beach, fill it with sand, and then rest up against it while sitting on the ground. That first Earth Lounger prototype was created on my dining room table with some scrap fabric that I had lying around. When the pillow was finished, it was exactly what I needed to solve my problem while at the beach. The concept was so simple, yet I had no idea how this would impact our future.

A few years go by and the kids are getting bigger and we were going to more places, and I discovered that I needed my lounger to go to more places too. The current lounger could only be used at the beach, because it uses sand to fill up, so I was facing yet another dilemma. I knew I needed to make the Earth Lounger inflatable and deflatable, portable, lightweight, and easy to clean. I was excited to get started, but then COVID struck.

We were in lockdown, and I had this new design in my head and with nowhere to go, I took this time to evolve and develop a new prototype of the Earth Lounger. Once again, I used items from around the house, like a round pool float to help me conceptualize the inflatable component I was visualizing, and reworked the shape and size. It was exciting when I had my second design ready, I had a real, tangible, and usable product, and I was ready to build a business out of this experience.

Kids were back in school and I remember sitting in my car after drop-off, taking out my phone and Google searching “manufacturing companies.” I clicked on the first link, watched the company’s pitch video, and I ended up calling them that very morning. Together, we worked closely for about two years until we finally reached our golden sample.

It was an exhausting, emotional, but very exciting time while we worked to develop our idea. Looking back, I still can’t believe we developed an amazing product that allows anyone to relax and lounge anywhere and everywhere! I never thought I would be in this really fun role that I am in today, and I am proud of my family and proud that we are now small business owners with a growing company, and we can’t wait to see what is to come our way with The Everywhere Chair!

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

I never thought I would be a small business owner, let alone an entrepreneur, but I am forever grateful for being where we are today, and I can only thank my kids and husband for putting a simple idea in my head all those years ago. Before this all happened, I was an Interior Designer, having graduated from SDSU in 2010. I started working for a small company that focused mostly on model homes and commercial spaces. I thought I was happy working in this fun and energetic world of design and creativity, that is until I was laid off only a year later. Being laid off at the time, hurt, but it ended up being a blessing, which led to me to becoming a teacher. My mom was a teacher, and I grew up with her always being around, taking us to school, taking us to our after-school activities, and we always had a home-cooked meal around the dinner table. I realized that that’s the life I wanted more than design. I wanted to be a mom first, but also have a career that provided a home and work-life balance. I knew that becoming a teacher would allow me to have both, so I went back to school and achieved a Master’s in Teaching. Afterward, I worked part-time as an art teacher for a great school district. A couple of years later, I found out that I was pregnant. It was an exciting time, and we managed to have a good balance of family and work until my program decided to go in a different direction, and they announced that they were going to dissolve our positions and place us in a full-time classroom. I was once again at a crossroads, but this one was easy, and I decided to stay home with my son and grow our family. It was the best decision I could have made. While being home during these wonderful years of raising my babies out of the workforce, I somehow found design again, not for homes anymore, but for my product that stemmed from our adventures at the beach together. It has been such a thrill to learn how to create something from nothing. Our simple idea is now a real, tangible, fun, and one-of-a-kind product that we believe will benefit so many people, and the best part is that all of this was being done while at home, in between school drop-offs, baseball games, and dinner around the table.

Where do you think you get most of your clients from?

The best source of finding new clients and also making sales I found, is by attending farmers markets or festivals. These events allow me to not only display the Earth Lounger and demonstrate how it works, but I am also able to make connections with those who have had experience in my industry. I have had individuals stop and spend time with me, offering some great advice and tips on how to help navigate my business or how they dealt with the manufacturing side of things. I appreciate when someone wants to offer help, because, starting a business is a big decision, and we don’t always have all the answers right away. I learned that attending markets helps me gain valuable feedback, get ideas for future products, and learn from others by listening to their advice. Finding clients can be difficult, but being approachable and well-rounded will help gain trust, and then in turn gain sales. Being reflective on your business is important because learning from the good and the bad is all part of the growing pains.

How’d you meet your business partner?

My husband is my partner in life and now my partner with AVKARA. We met when I was fifteen at the Ritz Carlton during a Christmas Tree lighting ceremony. We dated on and off for 12 years before he finally proposed, (I was a patient person).

Together, we have gone through so many crazy situations, sometimes more than we could handle, but we always came back to each other and tried again. Trying to find yourself at a young age is hard enough, and then also trying to navigate a relationship is even harder, but we have been together for 24 years and like wine, we are getting better with age!

When we started talking about creating the Earth Lounger, we had decided to use our savings to pay for the start-up costs. I trusted him with this decision, because I knew he would never put us at risk, but we also knew it would mean we would have to make major sacrifices. My husband is a full-time CPA for a company, so naturally I appointed him as my numbers guy for the company. He is always working on the spreadsheets to make sure we are going in the right direction and I handle all the marketing and well…everything else.

Working with your spouse can be tough, but we find it has so many positive aspects to it too. We have been side by side seeing this project come from a simple idea to an actual product and we know our business better than anyone ever will. Working together encourages you to be honest with each other, listen to what the other person needs, allow a good venting session, be there to offer big hugs when the times are tough, but more importantly, we are there for each other to celebrate the little wins and all the hard work. We create a balance that works and we can’t wait to see what we can do together next.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.avkaralounger.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/avkaralounger/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/avkaralounger
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexandra-leach-140496293
• Other: TikTock: https://www.tiktok.com/@avkaralounger

Image Credits

I took all these images myself