Frego Founder Story: Overcoming Setbacks
Watching a roomful of people new to frego react with a gasp when frego founder Juhi Gupta intentionally tosses her product on the floor never gets old. It’s still the most effective way to demo this product – one made of borosilicate glass surrounded by a silicone sleeve and lid – and make it memorable for consumers.
Of course it doesn’t shatter. It has a lifetime warranty. It’s also a highly sustainable choice for food storage with a non-toxic, plastic-free ingredient list. Perhaps in 2013, nearly seven years ago when frego launched, it was ahead of its time for mainstream consumption. Today, in 2020, it couldn’t be more relevant and accessible.
Laura Roos, So Fail So Good podcast host, met Juhi after using the product and probing a bit into Juhi’s founder story.Laura reached out to do a podcast that would paint the picture of frego’s journey – highpoints, setbacks, resiliency and timing all included.
On the podcast,Juhi shares her education and career path from a degree in computer science ,to earning an MBA in international management and finance, to landing her dream job at General Mills, a progressive and internationally focused business.
When motherhood fully took hold, she had two young boys and 18 years of school and career behind her. She decidedit was time to give these little people she brought into the world the time and attention they were due. This would be the new dream job. Entrepreneurism would eek in though.
While packing nutritious lunches for her boys to take to school, she noticed a lot was amiss in the market for food storage choices. Namely, something visually appealing to pack meals in that wouldn’t leak or break; and something non-toxic, non-plastic that would be mindful of the planet and wouldn’t harm her boys’ health. Lots of research later, she had her answer. It did not exist.
The podcast walks through Juhi’s journey and frego’s evolution from prototyping models to finding factories to produce the glass and silicone. She relives moments of complete affirmation on the viability of her product as well as other moments, like receiving news that product sales were not reaching a high enough volume to warrant shelf space at a few of America’s top household retailers.
There is innovation in failure, Juhi notes in the podcast. Setbacks out of her control from frego’s glass manufacturing facility burning to the ground to finding a new manufacturer, required a certain amount of resilience. She redesigned her packaging to show the quality of the product when shelved next to plastic and other popular, less expensive food storage container options, she worked through all of this, nearly every day during these times questioning if frego could continue and how she could make that happen.
She appeared on the Home Shopping Network so people would know her story and could see first handthe value of the product. She redesigned her website, allowing her to capture more traffic from search and increase online orders.
She survived. Frego survived. With so much learned from experiences, setbacks and finding a solution, it’s hard to argue that failure isn’t a necessary part of every business and personal journey. Laura brings Juhi’s founder story to light along with the hurdles faced and she does it in such a storytelling way that any business owner or founder would find refreshing and relatable.
You can catch the entire podcast here (https://www.sofailsogood.com/episodes/juhi-gupta)
Thanks, Laura!