This Aspect Hustle Highlight Q&A options New York Metropolis-based husband-and-wife founders Lee Kojanis, 37, and Daniele Orellana, 34. Kojanis is a board-certified oral and maxillofacial surgeon, and Orellana is a board-certified pediatric dentist. Be taught extra about how they began and grew their aspect hustle, Mittsthe model behind an ergonomic sponge designed to scrub delicate glassware. Responses have been edited for size and readability.
Picture Credit score: Courtesy of Mitts. Lee Kojanis and Daniele Orellana.
When did you begin your aspect hustle, and the place did you discover the inspiration for it?
Orellana: The concept for Mitts was born in the course of the pandemic when Lee was getting ready for his Wine & Spirit Training Belief (WSET) exams. With elective surgical procedures on maintain, he took benefit of the additional downtime to deepen his information of wine — considered one of his long-time passions. The tasting portion of the certification required a ton of wine sampling at house, which, in flip, meant a whole lot of wine tasting and a rising assortment of delicate, high-end stemware in want of cautious cleansing.
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Kojanis: Daniele usually took on the duty of washing these fragile glasses, however their skinny, hand-blown design made them notoriously tough to scrub with out breakage — leading to a whole bunch of {dollars}’ value of shattered stemware. Annoyed by the shortage of a cleansing instrument that supplied each precision and safety, we started brainstorming over a bottle of wine one weekend. That dialog sparked the idea for Mitts: a sponge designed particularly for cleansing delicate stemware, providing improved management and ergonomic dealing with.
Orellana: We additionally needed to ensure it was sensible and aesthetic. A number of the merchandise marketed towards wine and wine glasses have been both impractical by way of use or cumbersome and seemed horrible on our kitchen counter, so we designed one thing we’d wish to show on our personal counter that served multiple use — which is why the bottom is essential to every Starter Kitt.
Picture Credit score: Courtesy of Mitts
What have been a number of the first steps you took to get your aspect hustle off the bottom?
Kojanis: The morning after our concept we got here up with Mitts, we instantly began doing market analysis. Initially, we reached out to a number of engineering companies, greater than 5 in complete. After a number of emails and Zoom conferences, we finally selected Artistic Engineering, a specialised agency based mostly in New York.
The prototyping course of took a number of months and required a number of iterations to refine the design. As soon as we finalized a model that match our imaginative and prescient, we filed a utility patent with the USPTO. From there, we turned our focus to branding, collaborating with Make Tremendous Good, a artistic company that helped us develop our title, visible identification and packaging design.
Are there any free or paid assets which have been particularly useful for you in beginning and working this enterprise?
Orellana: Consider it or not, one of the vital invaluable assets has been ChatGPT. Coming from healthcare, we had little to no expertise navigating the CPG house. ChatGPT turned a useful instrument in creating a go-to-market technique and simply answering very fundamental enterprise questions. Past AI-powered assist, our engineering, branding and manufacturing companions performed large roles in guiding us by way of unfamiliar territory. They have been extremely useful and accessible to us as we have been on the brink of launch.
Moreover, the StartupCPG group has been an unbelievable useful resource. Everybody there was supportive by providing networking alternatives and sensible recommendation. Its Slack group has turn into one of many key locations I flip to once I’m not sure or caught.
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If you happen to might return in your enterprise journey and alter one course of or method, what would it not be, and the way do you want you’d accomplished it otherwise?
Kojanis: If we might return and alter one facet of our launch technique, it might be the timing and administration of our product launch. We formally launched in November 2024, proper within the midst of the vacation rush, with out having our full stock readily available at our 3PL facility. Manufacturing estimates have been overly optimistic, and unexpected transport delays meant that a good portion of our product did not arrive in time for the vacation season.
In hindsight, we should always have both deliberate much more conservatively for peak-season logistics or delayed our launch till after the vacations, when achievement timelines would have been extra predictable. Higher contingency planning — akin to constructing in additional buffer time for manufacturing and transport — would have saved us vital stress and ensured a smoother rollout. It was a troublesome however useful lesson within the significance of timing and provide chain preparedness.
On the subject of this particular enterprise, what’s one thing you have discovered significantly difficult and/or shocking that individuals who get into one of these work needs to be ready for, however probably aren’t?
Kojanis: Rejection is fixed. Prospects will reject you, influencers will reject you, companies will reject you, and buyers will reject you. You must take criticism properly and roll with the punches. What’s helped us is studying to separate emotion from suggestions — each rejection is knowledge. If somebody says no, we ask why and use that perception to refine our pitch, product or method. The important thing is not avoiding rejection; it is utilizing it to get higher.
Are you able to recall a particular occasion when one thing went very unsuitable? How did you repair it?
Kojanis: We have been unable to fill a big portion of vacation orders because of manufacturing and transport delays. Many purchasers bought Mitts in hopes of gifting them to family and friends, and we fell quick. In an effort to make it proper, we personally emailed all clients whose orders we have been unable to satisfy in time and supplied low cost codes for future orders.
How lengthy did it take you to see constant month-to-month income? How a lot did the aspect hustle earn?
Kojanis: We’re solely three months into our launch, and month-to-month income has fluctuated. We have now solely lately began a constant advertising marketing campaign and hope to see extra constant gross sales shifting ahead. In the mean time, the hustle has introduced in simply over $15,000. We’re projecting about $75,000 in gross sales this yr.
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What does development and income seem like now?
Orellana: Development and income for us ideally is tripling our present income by the tip of the yr, and we’re slated to be in our first retail house this spring with Pop-up Grocer. We hope so as to add a handful of small retail retailers by the tip of the yr. There isn’t any personal capital or funding in Mitts — it is all us, and we’re dedicated to sluggish natural development.
Picture Credit score: Courtesy of Mitts
How a lot time do you spend engaged on your enterprise on a day by day, weekly or month-to-month foundation? How do you construction that point? What does a typical day or week of labor seem like for you?
Orellana: As docs, we each have demanding full-time jobs, so we’re virtually all the time working both in personal follow or on Mitts. Mitts-related work occurs all through the workday and evenings; it occurs in between sufferers, throughout lunch, on the way in which to and from work. We reply to emails or hop on Zoom calls all through the day — anybody who has labored with us has taken a Zoom assembly with us in our scrubs.
Our weekends are additionally allotted to larger Mitt-related tasks (like photoshoots, videography, and so on). We’re additionally actually good at allocating and splitting crucial duties between the 2 of us. We discovered early on in our relationship as a pair that communication is essential to a powerful and wholesome marriage. We use that very same mentality with our joint enterprise: Talk early and sometimes.
What do you take pleasure in most about working this enterprise?
Kojanis: Mitts has allowed us to work collectively in ways in which would have in any other case by no means been doable in our common careers. The perfect a part of this startup is that we get to spend time collectively working in the direction of shared targets whereas concurrently selling a tangible product that we created from scratch.
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What’s your greatest piece of particular, actionable enterprise recommendation?
Orellana: Earlier than sinking vital money and time into product improvement, branding or stock, do thorough market analysis. Interact in direct outreach — ship samples to your audience, collect suggestions and refine your concept based mostly on real-world knowledge. Additionally, be strategic about your launch and ensure to construct buzz previous to your launch; it makes an enormous distinction.
Kojanis: For us, that meant creating an early prototype of our stemware sponge, getting it into the palms of wine lovers and bartenders and utilizing their suggestions to enhance the design earlier than committing to large-scale manufacturing. That iterative course of gave us proof of idea and a transparent path ahead.
