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

Melissa, appreciate you joining us today. What’s the backstory behind how you came up with the idea for your business?

My oldest child was incredibly sensitive to light when he was a baby/toddler and we soon found that blackout curtain options that completely darkened a room were nowhere to be found. He was up with the sunrise at 5 am and would have trouble falling asleep when the sun was still out during Seattle’s long summer evenings. This often led us to tape garbage bags and aluminum foil to the windows in order to block all of the light leaks that came in around the curtains to create a better sleep environment. It took so long to set up every night that we often left them on the windows, which meant our son’s room was a sunless cave for most of the year. Ever since this experience 9 years ago, I have wanted to come up with a better solution. When my second child was born in early 2020 I realized that blackout options still had not improved. So, I decided to create a better product!

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

When I was in graduate school, obtaining my Ph.D. in neuroscience, I was developing brain-computer interfaces that assisted stroke survivors with their motor rehabilitation and I realized that, while I loved the research, I really wanted to be a part of bringing products like this to market and into the hands of people that need them.

After getting my Ph.D. this is exactly what I did as an innovation consultant. I helped both small startups and large corporations develop and build solutions and products for their pain points and helped guide them to market.

Fast forward to early 2020 when my second son was born, I realized that parents everywhere were still having to tape aluminum foil and garbage bags to their windows to block out enough light for their young kiddos to sleep past 5 am or take naps during the day. The blackout curtain options were so limited and often required clever hacks to block out all of the light. I knew there had to be a better way to solve this problem. So, I used my love for innovating to create a better solution. I wanted to develop a solution that reliably blocks all light from a window while also retaining the ability to easily let in light when desired.

After many prototype iterations, I developed our patent-pending blackout layer that blocks all light from a window, is non-damaging, can fit a wide range of window sizes, can be taken with you for travel, and is customizable to accompany the decor of your room.

How did you build your audience on social media?

We were lucky that our product is something that parents have been wanting for a long time. So we have been able to grow mostly organically so far. With Facebook advertising constantly changing, we have been exploring other ways to grow and share our product. I think word-of-mouth recommendations can be huge for any business and we have found that our mom communities on social media to be so helpful when building excitement around our company and our products. I think my advice would be to be authentic!

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

Right now we are selling on our own website. The downside to this is that it is difficult and expensive to drive traffic to our website. We have been considering offering our products for sale on Amazon to reach a wider audience. However, the fees involved can be steep, especially for a new business.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.inotterspace.com
• Instagram: www.instagram.com/otterspacesleep/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/melissasmith8

Image Credits
Angela Carlyle