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

Hi Jelena , thanks for joining us today. To kick things off, we’d love to hear about things you or your brand do that diverge from the industry standard

As a small family business, our ability to cater to individual customer needs by personalizing our high-pressure misting and, on occasion, installation needs, set us apart from the industry standard. We started our company as consumers, looking for a high-pressure misting system that met our needs and addressed the negative aspects of standard misters. So, we truly understand what people are looking for, and created aerMist to close those gaps.

Another key differentiator is our commitment to exceptional customer service. Operating as a small team that developed the product, we communicate directly with our customers and answer even the most complex and mechanical-focused questions on the spot. This builds trust and enables us to build lasting relationships with them. Our aerMist systems are tailored to a person’s home so shoppers aren’t buying extra materials that they don’t need. We go above and beyond from helping them determine how much tubing and nozzles are needed to even helping with the installation.

One example is the DIY aspect of aerMist’s installation. We received feedback that a majority of people wanted to install aerMist in their outdoor spaces themselves, so we made sure we created manuals that are straightforward and easy to follow for a simple DIY project. We have received excellent feedback on that!

For customers who wish to outsource installation, we have grown our pipeline of trusted installers as far as Nevada. We travel and take the time to get to know them and their work, so that we can provide recommendations for workmanship that measures up to the quality that our customers expect of products and services associated with aerMist.

Jelena , before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

My husband Boris and I came up with the idea for aerMist during the summer of 2020, when looking for a solution to cool our outdoor patio that gets uncomfortably hot in the Texas heat. We love entertaining in our backyard and outdoor kitchen, but could not find a misting system that met all the criteria that we wanted: a high-quality product that used minimal water, was quiet, wirelessly controlled, and reasonably priced. We also wanted a misting system that addressed pain points of the industry-standard products that are bulky and create a lot of humidity that make your hair frizzy and soak patio furniture.

We were confident that other people shared our issue. Our research found that on average, homeowners spend $45,000 to create outdoor spaces, but they are uncomfortable to use up to 40% of the year in Texas due to the hot weather we experience. With that, we put our entrepreneurial spirits and combined backgrounds in engineering, finance, and manufacturing to work to bring aerMist to life!

Our aerMist systems create chilled, dry air that can cool an outdoor living space by up to 20 degrees with the tap of a user-friendly app. And, it has a sleek design and keeps bugs away, too!

Lastly, cost is a deciding factor for our family’s own home-related purchases, so we structured aerMist as a direct-to-consumer company to provide consumers with the best value for the highest quality misters on the market. This approach also enabled us to better control our inventory with all of the global supply chain issues that businesses across industries continue to face.

Any advice for growing your clientele? What’s been most effective for you?

When you have a product like aerMist that is like a home appliance, demonstrations are key. However, that is difficult to scale. At the beginning, we heavily relied on social media and media coverage to amplify our reach about the benefits of aerMist.

Now, it is word of mouth, which means so much to us. Our customers love aerMist and trust it enough endorse us to their loved ones. We are fortunate that what we built with our aerMist systems—innovating what was considered the industry standard for so long—resonated with so many. Once our first customers installed aerMist systems in their homes, their friends and family then saw first-hand what makes our aerMist high-pressure misters superior to others on the market. In the spring and summer months, we receive a lot of calls and orders following the weekends!

Can you talk to us about manufacturing? How’d you figure it all out? We’d love to hear the story.

My husband Boris is a serial entrepreneur and I have an extensive background in finance, supply chain, operations, sourcing, and manufacturing. While we were new to the cooling industry, we have experience designing, manufacturing, and launching products into the marketplace. For aerMist, we identified and contracted with vendors that specialize in these types of products. In addition, we worked with a separate team to design aerMist’s user-friendly app to complement the misting system’s ease of use and functionality.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://aermist.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/aermistusa/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/aermist/