We recently connected with Jocelyn Olsen and have shared our conversation below.
Alright, Jocelyn thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. We’d love to go back in time and hear the story of how you came up with the name of your brand?
Hüga strives to bring people together outdoors to enjoy nature, friends and family throughout the year by warming our cores from the bottom up. Our cushions are named after the Danish concept of hygge, which is pronounced hüga (hyoo-ga) and stands for “a quality of coziness and comfortable conviviality that engenders a feeling of contentment or well-being.” Our heated cushions make spending time outside comfy-cozy so everyone can enjoy winter just a little bit more. The phonetic pronunciation of hygge brings to life our company mission and our hüga logo makes a happy little face with the ü.
Jocelyn, 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?
My partner, Colin Greig, and I built hüga and designed our heated cushions together. I am a former consultant and have always worked for large corporations while Colin is a lifelong self-employed carpenter and is now a realtor as well. We were out of work during the pandemic and dreaded the oncoming winter in Maine since restaurants were only legally allowed to serve outdoors. We couldn’t imagine being confined to our house again and worried that our favorite restaurants wouldn’t survive.
We kept wondering what “they” would come up with to keep people warm outdoors while eating a meal in Maine. I even bought a bunch of heated apparel to attempt to stay warmer, but when I sat on a metal chair on a restaurant patio I said “I wish they made heated cushions.” When we got home I researched heated cushions to see if I could buy one, but nothing on the market seemed sturdy or long-lasting enough. The next thing I knew, Colin and I were testing materials and batteries to design a super durable, waterproof, long-lasting heated cushion that could be used by restaurants. It was also really important to us that we procure as many materials and services from Maine companies as possible, so we partnered with our friends at Flowfold to sew them right here in Maine. After a few months of prototyping and testing we launched our website, hugaheat.com, and the same day were interviewed by a national news show. Sales took off and haven’t stopped since!
We now have two battery models, one which will go 6 hours on high and another one that will go 10 hours on high. We’ve expanded from our original marine grade vinyl covers into Cordura® fabric and new colors. What’s really amazing is that we are now in 30+ restaurants and have sold thousands of cushions to individual consumers. Word of our cushions went viral in the tight Portland, Maine food scene and now we’re expanding into other states as well. All someone has to do is try a hüga when they are cold and sitting outside. You see their face light up when the heat starts warming their whole core. Folks use them on the metal bleachers at their kids’ outdoor sports or in hockey rinks, around fire pits in their backyards, camping, hunting, ice fishing, and really anywhere they want to be warm while enjoying the outdoors.
We’d love to hear about how you keep in touch with clients.
Our original mission was to help our local restaurants survive the pandemic and supporting them continues to be incredibly important to us. Many purchased our cushions in the winter of 2020/2021 and are still using them today. They’ve proven to be as durable as we had hoped and are still going strong going into their third winter despite the wear and tear of daily restaurant use. It’s been incredible to hear our restaurant customers’ stories of how hüga heated cushions allow them to keep their outdoor spaces open year-round, and the positive impact that additional capacity has on their business. Our batteries are rechargeable, so they’ve also saved money on propane or electric heaters, not to mention the hassle of refilling heavy propane tanks on a daily basis. And of course the environmental impact is similar to driving an electric vehicle instead of a gas-guzzler.
We are lucky enough to have personal relationships with every single restaurant that uses our cushions. We work with them up front to understand their outdoor space and chair designs, then walk them through the process of setting up recharging stations using multi-port USB chargers. We check in with them to make sure their cushions and batteries continue to work properly and talk them through any adjustments needed to keep them running in the long term. On the rare occasion that they have a problem, we immediately head over to replace anything that might have been accidentally damaged, at no cost to them. This level of customer service and support is core to what we do and is mutually beneficial since patrons first experience our cushions at these restaurants and often end up purchasing them for home use afterwards. Plus our restaurant customers recommend hüga to their friends in the restaurant industry, so it’s a win-win and we genuinely enjoy these interactions and relationships.
We also have consumers who have bought 10+ cushions to use personally and give as gifts to loved ones. People who love our product know what a great gift it can be for someone who loves the outdoors and hates being cold. You usually know that person doesn’t already have one and a hüga is one size fits all. My favorite moment is opening my email to see a familiar name on the order and an unknown name as the shipping address. That means one of our biggest fans is sending a hüga to a friend or family member to spread the love. We have hand-written a thank you note to every customer that orders from our website and we reach out over email or text once we see the same name more than once. For local orders, we love to drop off cushions at people’s houses or talk to them when they pick up at our house so we can get to know them and their hüga story.
We think it’s so important to humanize the sales relationship. It’s the best way to get customer feedback and understand their needs, and it also builds a level of loyalty that is rare in business today. We tell people all the time, “we’re a two-person startup, so if you email or message us you will be talking to one of us…and the other one is probably sitting nearby.” We want everyone to feel great about their purchase and we will stand by our product no matter what.
How did you put together the initial capital you needed to start your business?
We are so fortunate to have started our business in Maine. The startup ecosystem here is truly incredible and I believe there is no other state that has so many resources available to help new businesses succeed. Maine has one of the oldest populations in the country and startups are critical in the effort to attract younger folks to live and work in Maine. That means there are organizations like MTI (Maine Technology Institute), Maine Made, MITC (Maine International Trade Center), Maine Outdoor Brands, Score, Startup Maine, Live and Work in Maine, CEI (Coastal Enterprises Inc.), SBA (Small Business Administration), and many others that exist to support companies like ours.
In addition to mentorship, connections, and a startup community, these organizations have also helped us secure grants that played a fundamental role in funding our growth over our first two years. When we first started hüga, the economy was beginning to come out of the pandemic rut and we were both able to start working full-time jobs again. This meant that we were able to self-finance our original prototyping and discovery. Once we opened our website, we started selling immediately and therefore had some money coming in, which financed our continued build-up of inventory. But we were scared to advertise at first because our word-of-mouth and news-driven sales were so strong. It took about a year to build up enough inventory of Maine-made products to feel confident that advertising wouldn’t blow up our ability to service orders. And the only reason we were able to do that was because we received two grants from MTI.
I can’t encourage other entrepreneurs enough to invest the time in understanding the resources available to you locally and connecting with these organizations. They are there to help and they want you to succeed. Whether that is in the form of advice, connections, or funding, they want to hear from you. They want to understand your story and the benefit your product brings to the world and help you make that a reality. Without the unbelievable local Maine startup ecosystem, we might not be here today.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.hugaheat.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hugaheat/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HugaHeat/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/h%C3%BCgaheat/
- Twitter: N/A
- Youtube: N/A
- Yelp: N/A
Image Credits
Zack Bowen