We were lucky to catch up with Becca Davison recently and have shared our conversation below.

Becca, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Let’s kick things off with your mission – what is it and what’s the story behind why it’s your mission?

In 2014, my husband and I moved from NYC to Houston to start our family. We welcomed our first daughter in 2015 and after maternity leave, I was preparing to return to work at my corporate job. My mom lives nearby and offered to help us with childcare during the week. But she quickly realized that because of some arthritis in her thumb, she wasn’t able to push the red button on my daughter’s car seat, which meant that she couldn’t take my daughter safely out of the house!

My mom was the right person, in the right place, at the right time to solve this problem. She spent her career as an occupational therapist specializing in rehabilitation of hands, which meant that she designed adaptive tools and equipment for patients with limited mobility in their hands, either from injury or disability. She used her training and experience to create an adaptive tool for her self, that used leverage to unbuckle the car seat, while not interfering with the safety of functionality of the car seat itself. That’s how UnbuckleMe was first created.

I saw my mom’s invention and thought it was genius! I thought, if my mom needs a tool like this, there are probably other parents or grandparents who need one too! So we decided to start our business.

As our business has grown, we’ve seen how a simple tool, applying a basic physic concept like leverage, can be lifechanging for families. We hear from grandparents who are able to plan activities outside their homes with their grandkids, and make memories. We hear of parents with disabilities who are able to pick up their kids from daycare, when they previously had to rely on help from others. These stories are so inspiring and make us realize that inclusive design is so important. Accessibility is at the core of our business, as we believe that people deserve to maximize their independence to the great extent possible. We are proud to create a tool that makes car seats more accessible (in a safe way!)

Becca, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

UnbuckleMe is a small tool that uses leverage to make it 50% easier to unbuckle a child’s car seat (referring to the red crotch buckle on the five point harness). When my mom realized that she couldn’t unbuckle my daughter’s car seat because of arthritis, we shopped for alternate car seats that she could open. We soon realized that child car seat buckles in the USA are regulated to require 9 lbs of pressure to release, so that kids cannot unbuckle themselves. That’s great for safety, but not great for many adults with weakness or disability.

We are proud to have developed an accessibility tool that allows all adults to easily and safely unbuckle their kids. We believe we are contributing to child passenger safety and taking away any excuse for not buckling kids properly in the car.

As the co-founder of UnbuckleMe (with my mom), I became a nationally certified child passenger safety technician in 2018 and proudly support child passenger safety initiatives within my community, and nation-wide.

Can you open up about how you funded your business?

When my mom and I decided we wanted to bring our product to market, we did not initially realize how much capital would be needed. Instead, we started out very “scrappy” in our cash outlays. We used recycled splint material from my mom’s garage (from her career as an occupational therapist) to design dozens of prototypes of our product. We used airmiles to fly to a tradeshow where we exhibited in a reduced-price section for ‘inventors’ to get feedback from the industry (which encouraged us to continue to pursue our idea!) We designed all of the flyers ourselves and we even ironed our logo onto t-shirts for the event. We wanted to conserve capital as much as possible!

When we finally realized that investing in injection molded tooling would be a hefty upfront investment (and our first big capital outlay), we started a Kickstarter campaign. It was challenging to hustle for 30 days to get exposure, press and find backers to support our project, but we were successful in raising about $13,000 to fund our first tooling order.

From there, we had to invest in our first inventory run, but because we were working with a local manufacturer in the USA, we could keep quantities low and also capital investment low.

We were able to successfully self-fund our business, allowing for incremental profit to fund our subsequent inventory purchases. Did we pay ourselves in those first few years? No. Did we make any profit? No. All funds were re-invested back into the business for growth. But after several years, and some operational efficiency gains, we now have a thriving and profitable business, where we own 100% of the equity.

Do you sell on your site, or do you use a platform like Amazon, Etsy, Cratejoy, etc?

We maximize our brand equity and customer acquisition by selling across multiple platforms. Most of our revenue today comes from Amazon. We love Amazon for its ability to reach customers in very cost-effective way, because customers are already shopping on Amazon. Getting them to find our listing page is much easier when they are already browsing the platform, vs. getting them to visit our own website. We find customer acquisition costs to be lower on Amazon, which is a big pro. Amazon also helps us expand our fulfillment capabilities by shipping quickly to customers, and managing our customer service. We partner very closely with Amazon to grow our business, and enjoy many benefits, including LaunchPad and Brand Registry.

However, we also believe it’s important to maintain an identity off Amazon, and to acquire customer data that we can use to up-sell when we launch new products, as we did this year. We maintain a Shopify platform, and we also integrate with TikTok Shop, to attract customers and enjoy higher profits on these sales. Although these platforms can take more effort to maintain, including customer service and shipping/operations support, we believe using multiple platforms allows us to accelerate our overall sales growth.

Finally, we also sell through major retailers like Target.com, which we believe also gives us credibility to the marketplace, and reach new customers who are loyal to shopping at Target, for example.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://unbuckleme.com/
• Instagram: https://instagram.com/unbuckle_me
• Facebook: https://facebook.com/unbuckleme
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/unbuckleme
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/unbuckleme
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@unbuckleme
• Other: https://tiktok.com/@unbuckleme

Image Credits
Shark Tank image credit to Walt Disney Television, ABC / ABC