The bandage category is not an easy one to break into. Scan the first aid aisle of any store and you’ll see a wall of products that are primarily from a couple of national brands or else are the retailer’s private label products. Beginning in March, however, you’ll find colorful and playfully-designed boxes of bandages from a new player on the shelves nationwide at one of the major extreme value retailers.
The brand is called Hug-a-BooBoo, but if you ask them, they don’t sell bandages.
They sell hugs.
A husband and wife startup
Hug-a-BooBoo is a Staten Island-based startup co-founded by the husband and wife team of Rob Treglia, a retired NYPD lieutenant, and his wife Christine, a NYC Department of Education speech therapist who is the owner of the brand. The idea for the company came following a visit to the pediatrician for their then three-year-old daughter, Mia. After getting some shots and some bloodwork done, she didn’t like the bandage they gave her and subsequently tore it off.
So Christine made her a new bandage for Mia, taking a marker and drawing a frog on it in the likeness of one of her daughter’s stuffed animals, including drawing the frog’s arms outstretched along each end of the bandage so that they “hugged” her wound when it was applied. “Mia thought it was special, because no one else had a bandage like that,” says Christine Treglia. “It was her reaction to the design that sparked the idea for the brand. She was scared because of her wound, and then all of a sudden she was instantly fine and smiling.”
This led to some R&D on Rob’s part. “Obviously, as a startup we couldn’t afford to license something like Disney or Frozen characters, so we needed to come up with our own designs,” he says. “So we focused on the things kids already have in their rooms, like stuffed animals, teddy bears, dinosaurs, and went with that.”
What resulted was a line of kids’ bandages consisting of a variety of cartoon animals, people, dinosaurs and the like with their arms outstretched along each end of the bandage so that when affixed to the wound it looks like the animal is hugging it. Hug-a-BooBoo was born.
They launched the product on Amazon, and sales on the site gave them the confidence boost to start pursuing retail. However, their first experience with one large retail chain left them a bit disappointed.
“They wanted us to pay a fee to get placement on the shelf,” says Rob Treglia. “You basically have to pay rent to get into the circular, and if it doesn’t work out, they said they would send it back to us or destroy it at our own expense, and we could end up owing them a lot of money. It wasn’t an opportunity for us.”
They also approached a variety of independent retail stores, and got placement in several, but the labor and expense of driving out regularly to the stores was not cost effective.
Patience pays off with RangeMe
Eventually the Treglias found RangeMe and upgraded to a Premium subscription so that they could upload their full line of products, participate in RangeMe’s Immediate Opportunity campaigns, and submit directly to retailers. “RangeMe gave us the opportunity to level the playing field and get in front of buyers we’d never get exposure to otherwise,” says Rob. “It gives smaller brands like ours a legitimate chance against the big guys.”
Along the way, Christine & Rob learned a valuable lesson: When you are dealing with the major retail chains, things typically take a lot of time. But patience and persistence can pay off big time.
Over the course of two years, the Treglias spent time submitting products to anything and everything they could. However, they didn’t get accepted for any of these submissions. Frustrated, they were on the verge of canceling their subscription when they got a message from a giant retail chain. “We still had a few days remaining when the acceptance letter came in,” says Rob. “Imagine if we would have canceled; we could have missed out on that opportunity. That could have been the end. In the end, we realized the system does work, but sometimes you just have to have a little patience.”
Hug-a-BooBoo, along with several other brands that were selected from the Immediate Opportunity flew down to meet with the buyers, who were taking meetings in a room co-located with ECRM’s Health & Beauty Care Sessions last February in New Orleans.
“We were a bit star struck being in the room with buyers from a retailer of that size and scale,” says Rob. “They checked out our products, we had a discussion, and they gave us some feedback on our products. Once they started throwing numbers at us, it was clear that this was a different league of retailer than what we were used to dealing with. Much more massive in scope.”
The retailer decided on a small test run of 3,000 units across 100 stores. After a few weeks, the buyer let them know that after a slow start, sales had picked up, and asked if they had any more.
“We had about 6,000 units of a different product, but our definition of ‘a lot’ and theirs were clearly not the same,” says Rob. “They wanted 120,000 units. We told them we could put it together in 60 days, but got the impression that they were starting to think we wouldn’t be able to handle such a large order.”
A bigger deal than expected
After giving it some thought, the Treglias decided to reverse strategy and offered to deliver 150,000 units, which would enable them to take over a full container and get additional efficiencies. The buyers liked the idea. Even better, the buyer suggested they bump the number up to 170,000.
“This not only turns us into a brand with national distribution, it gives us the credibility we couldn’t get anywhere else,” says Christine Treglia. “It also enables us to get better pricing by dealing with full containers, and that gives us more capabilities in terms of speed of shipping. It was definitely transformational for our business.”
The products are set to hit the shelves in March. To support sales at the shelf the brand is working with some social media influencers that specialize in that retailer, and have already produced some media assets for them to use.
The brand has also refreshed its packaging for greater impact on the shelf, particularly to grab the attention of kids who may be walking the aisle with their parents. “We made it almost look like a toy box, placing the animal or character images front-and-center,” says Christine Treglia. “Plus, they are prominent on the back of the packaging too, so even if a shopper takes one off the shelf and replaces it backwards, it will still grab your attention.”
Bandages for adults, too
While Hug-a-BooBoo may have started out making bandages with kid-appeal, it has evolved to include designs that adults like as well, such as American Flag bandages, butterflies and other designs. “We find what connects to people,” says Rob Treglia. “Look at what is on bumper stickers, look at what’s on trucks. There are many cool designs out there that don’t require a licensing fee. The American Pride bandage for example, is a best seller at the Capitol gift shop, and many people wore them on their ears during the Republican National Convention.”
Hug-a-BooBoo is also creating some designs aligned with various charitable causes they support, such as first responder bandages with proceeds going to the Tunnel to Towers Foundation, and a line of Hugging Paws Rescue Cats and Dogs bandages that support local animal rescues. In fact, the brand just donated to a local shelter to help a blind cat to have eye surgery and also to a makeshift shelter started by a vet in LA helping to save displaced pets from the wildfires.
A 6-year overnight success
In today’s world of social media, where we mostly see the end result of success as entrepreneurs flood their feeds with posts and images of their wins, most people don’t see the years of grinding, the endless calls, hearing “no” from buyers again and again, returning back to the drawing board, refreshing the products, refreshing the packaging, trying again and again. But it’s this resilience to get back up after falling, again and again, sticking with your passion through the ups and downs that eventually leads to that big break.
They say that luck is when preparation meets opportunity. Over the past six years Christine and Rob Treglia have put in the work and done all of the prep, refining their offering and building their capabilities. RangeMe provided the opportunity, and this coming March we’ll see the result on shelves nationwide.
“We’re an overnight success, six years in the making,” says Rob Treglia. “RangeMe gave us an opportunity we couldn’t get anywhere else, and it could literally change our lives by taking our business to a whole new level.”