Building a Lean Physical Product
Many of the people that hear about Femgineer’s Lean Product Development course, assume that they need to come in with an idea for a technology product. But we have a number of students who create physical products as well!
The students who are creating physical products are interested in Femgineer’s Lean Product Development course because they are eager to transition their idea into a physical product or understand how to use the internet as a distribution channel for their product.
Lisa Curtis is one of those students. Her idea is to manufacture a nutrition bar called Kuli Kuli.
Although there are many types of nutrition bars in the market, Lisa’s Kuli Kuli bar is unique because it includes a special type of ingredient, Moringa.
Lisa‘s was inspired to include Moringa as the special ingredient for her protein bar after serving in the Peace Corps. While in West Africia, Niger, where she was stationed, Lisa started feeling weak and began to experience early signs of malnutrition. It wasn’t until she received her meal which was supplemented with Moringa, working in the women’s cooperative, that she started to gain her strength back.
Seeing the health benefits that it brought to the people in her village and herself, she was surprised that no one was selling it in the United States.
It was then that Lisa decided that she would introduce Moringa to the US, and be involved in something she was deeply passionate about. She also wanted to use the profits to give something back to the women harvesting the Moringa in the villages’, by sourcing 20% of their harvest and paying them fair wages.
But the concept of the nutrition bar didn’t come to her immediately, Lisa and her friends, at first, experimented with different types of foods such as cookies, hummus, and pesto before deciding on a nutrition bar.
Once the first batch of nutrition bars were packaged, they brought them over to their local farmers market to sell for the first time.
Surprisingly, they sold out within hours! It was then that Lisa knew she was onto something…
To further validate their idea, Lisa did surveys in which they discovered through Marketing Pros that they beat their industry average by 16%.
The major lesson Lisa learned from Femgineer’s Lean Product Development course, was how to do user segmentation and position a product. She has been able to focus her customer base particularly on women in their early 30’s.
Although, she has gone through many difficulties such as having to obtain health permits , food safety certification, and manufacturing registration, Lisa is ready to take Kuli Kuli to the next level!
With a shoestring budget, she can only produce so much bars. It takes her and her team a whole day to produce 200 bars. With retailers like Whole Foods requesting shipments of bars, the need to scale manufacturing has been dire.
Using Indiegogo, a crowdfunding website, Lisa is launching a campaign to gain more funding to ramp up manufacturing.
After a week of it being launched she has already amassed $44,470 out of her $50,000 goal.
As she continues, Lisa recommends Femgineer’s Lean Product Development course to everyone pursuing a venture.
“No matter what your product is, the methodology behind iterating and setting milestones is really helpful, and can help anyone in any field.” – Lisa Curtis
To learn more about Lisa’s Kuli Kuli bar or contribute to her campaign visit: Kuli Kuli’s Indiegogo Campaign.
Angie Chang is Editor-in-Chief and Co-Founder of 
