We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Sophie & Izzy. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Sophie & Izzy below.

Sophie & Izzy, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today What’s the backstory behind how you came up with the idea for your business?

It started at school. We were forever switching between pencils and highlighters when annotating textbooks and losing time. We wanted to keep up and not get behind in our schoolwork. One day we came up with a simple hack to combine them, by scotch-taping a highlighter to a pencil to be efficient and save time. Soon we noticed our friends started doing the same thing to save time when doing classwork.

When we showed our parents our hack, they went to get us a real product that would do the same thing. But they quickly found that none existed at Amazon, Staples, Officer Depot, etc. We couldn’t believe that there wasn’t a pencil + highlighter combo. Only a pen and highlighter combo. But, in school we aren’t allowed to use pens, only pencils!

So, we decided it was an opportunity to design one ourselves and fill an unmet need. Hence, The Annotator was born.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

We are identical twins who started a stationery business dedicated to creating unique and useful products for students.
We’ve always loved stationery, there’s just something about putting pencil to paper!
We started with our hero product, The Annotator, then developed additional products such as pocket notebooks, jotter pens, desk sets, and most recently, The Study Candle.
We think about what would be helpful and useful for us and then we make it accessible to others, hoping it helps inspire students along the way.
We are most proud of putting our ideas into action, creating real products that people use on a regular basis, selling out at Trade Shows, and getting into 50+ stores Nationwide plus a high-end stationery store in London.

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

The best source for developing new clients has been through various in-person trade shows.
Whenever we are at a trade show, people are naturally curious about our products and our story.
There is just something about being in-person, sharing our story, and demonstrating how to use our products to other buyers and shop owners.
It’s really effective to get out there.
And, we enjoy interacting with new people, sharing our story, and learning about their business.
People are so positive and supportive of us.

Okay – so how did you figure out the manufacturing part? Did you have prior experience?

We had no idea how to manufacture our products. So, we decided to partner with someone who has a proven track record of manufacturing products. If we hadn’t found Lori, who is local to our hometown of SoCal, we don’t think we would have ever been able to turn our ideas into real products.

Lori was able to use her trusted partners from her own successful business and guide us through the process step-by-step, helping us get 3D prototypes made, select colors, and refine and test samples.

We learned so many lessons along the way… the key is to be patient and not give up. There were so many times we didn’t think that creating The Annotator was achievable. But, we stuck with it and it turned out better than we thought.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.sozypencils.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sozypencils/
• Facebook: https://m.facebook.com/people/SOZY-Pencils/100063631286662/