Crowdfunding Essentials with Forbes Female Founder to Watch, Amorsui’s Beau Wangtrakuldee
“Traditionally, it is hard for women to get funding. Last year alone, female owners of smaller businesses received $6,655 less per Payment Protection Program loan compared to male owners. Crowdfunding provides options for ladies who are providing real products and services to their customers.” Today’s woman dreamer, Beau Wangtrakuldee, is the founder of Amorsui, a startup that is creating sustainable personal protective equipment (masks, hospital gowns etc). A Forbes Female Founder to Watch, Beau shares how she founded Amorsui, how she navigated from being a scientist to entrepreneur, and tangible tips for all women on brand-building and crowdfunding! Enjoy her story below!
1) Tell us your story, and about founding AmorSui. What was the need you saw, and how was the business impacted by the pandemic?
Many of us know about the importance of personal protective equipment (PPE) in the form of face masks used regularly in public for the past year to prevent the spread of coronavirus droplets. What you may not know is that PPE is not a new concept; workers in many industries including healthcare, oil & gas, emergency services, transport, manufacturing, construction, research & development, nuclear, and more, rely on PPE on a daily basis to protect themselves from hazardous materials or potential workplace injuries. I founded AmorSui to address a gap in the protective apparel market—a gap that, if not addressed, could be the difference between life and death for someone. I know this because I had a firsthand experience fearing for my life when hazardous chemicals that could make my heart stops burned through my lab coat and onto my body. In the early stage of AmorSui, I saw the need for more size-inclusive and functional PPE, so I built a team to create a brand delivering the highest quality and most functional PPE you can find.
After becoming deeply involved with this industry, I saw an even bigger gap in this market, especially during the past year’s pandemic. The world simply needs a sustainable way to use and recycle PPE products, one that is simpler, locally-curated, size-inclusive, and zero-waste. Over 2M tons of disposable PPE go into landfills daily, getting into our food and water sources and damaging wildlife habitats. I know AmorSui must expand to be more than our original idea. We developed the first integrated platform for companies to automate cleaning, life-cycle management, and recycling of our premium washable PPE, and to track their environmental impacts towards reducing one-time use products over time. Currently, we are piloting this solution in the healthcare market where need and volume are the greatest, focusing on mapping how to provide zero-waste gowns that can be easily integrated into any type of hospital and clinic workflow without the customer having to change anything. In turn, we provide them with all their data related to PPE usage, which is key to budget optimization and major cost-saving for one of the biggest consumables industries in the world.
2) You are also a Forbes Female Founder and Brand to Watch in 2021. That is amazing! What is your advice to women looking to grow their startup's brand outreach and awareness?
With their reputation, we knew that we wanted to be featured in Forbes one day. The feature was an effort put together as a team over six months to precisely define who we are as a brand, what we stand for, and our impact on the world. As a young brand, you need to have clear brand messaging, an easy-to-navigate press kit, and a highly targeted list of publications to get started. For the brand messaging, I recommend starting off with putting together a one-liner, mission, and vision statement that you can stand behind. Then, create a cloud-based storage site (such as Google Drive) where reporters can grab your bio, headshot, learn more about your products, etc. Finally, research targeted publications where you would like to be featured. Identify names, email addresses, social handles, and recent publications of reporters who you want writing about you. Then, all you have to do is pitch them on why you are going to change the world.
3) You have served as a certified crowdfunding coach for iFundWomen. What are your thoughts on crowdfunding and some trends you have noticed? Why is it important for female entrepreneurs?
You may not know, but we funded the first production run of AmorSui’s products through a crowdfunding campaign on iFundWomen. I found crowdfunding to be an excellent marketing tool to test your brand and product idea on the market. Basically, you are testing whether your target customers are willing to pay for your products out of their own pockets even before those products are available. You set the target funding to determine whether this hypothesis is true, and you work very hard to see if it would work. Our brand did not do this during the pandemic, but I know crowdfunding was a lucrative platform to get funding for many women-owned businesses over the pandemic. Part of it is because traditionally, it is hard for women to get funding. Last year alone, female owners of smaller businesses received $6,655 less per Payment Protection Program loan compared to male owners. There has also been a 36% decline in the VC funds raised by female founders. Crowdfunding provides options for ladies who are providing real products and services to their customers, especially on the iFundWomen platform where funds are available weekly during the campaigns so they can pivot right away.
4) As #Dreamcatchers, what is your next big dream?
I would love to see a world that is using zero-waste PPE, and my team and I are working really hard to make it happen!
Thank You Beau for sharing your expertise with us! We are excited to have you in our global women’s network!
MORE LIKE THIS
Bio: Beau Wangtrakuldee is a PhD scientist-turned- entrepreneur whose mission is to make safety accessible for all without sacrificing the environment. After a successful career in research and development, Beau experienced a chemical spill in the lab which resulted in her suffering minor burns due to the lack of protection from her lab coat. It was because of this incident that she discovered the overall lack of size-inclusive safety products for women, so she teamed up with a group of female scientists and fashion designers to launch AmorSui as the cutting-edge destination for safety.