Snippets with Leon Goren

Vetting Virtual in an Era of eCommerce: Parent Tested Parent Approved's Sharon Vinderine

June 01, 2020 Leon Goren, PEO Leadership Season 1 Episode 15
Snippets with Leon Goren
Vetting Virtual in an Era of eCommerce: Parent Tested Parent Approved's Sharon Vinderine
Show Notes Transcript

With more people buying online, the need for outside vetting on products is more vital than ever. In today's Snippets, Leon Goren speaks with the CEO and Founder of Parent Tested Parent Approved (PTPA), Sharon Vinderine, about how her experience as a mother prompted her to found PTPA and provide other parents a credible source of information on child products, and how she then shifted to use her community of moms to provide brands thorough and honest testing. 

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Leon Goren :

I'm Leon Goren, president of PEO leadership, a peer to peer leadership advisory firm. We're an amazing community of CEOs, presidents and senior executives. Ask yourself, are you learning as fast as the world is changing? It's time for Ontario business leaders to band together for counsel and support. It's time for you to tap into the business wisdom of our peer groups and unlock new ways to grow. I want you to come out of this COVID crisis a better leader and your organization ready for what's next, take the first step at peo-leadership.com. Today on our snippets broadcast, we have Sharon Vinderine green founder and CEO of PTPA, parent tested parent approved. Sharon's been a valued member of our organization, and especially a group over the last couple of years. Sharon, thanks for joining me today and I'm really looking forward to having you share some of your entrepreneurial energy and insights with all of us, are you doing?

Sharon Vinderine :

Thanks for having me.

Leon Goren :

So I thought we just start let's start beginning in terms of PTPA, maybe just give us a little bit of the journey, how you I mean, you're entrepreneur, you've been an entrepreneur through your whole career, how'd you get into this?

Sharon Vinderine :

Um, I was a new mom, I was running out and buying every product under the sun, and I didn't know how to choose what the best product for my newborn was. So I figured, okay, if it looks fabulous in the packaging, or it's super expensive, then it's going to be the best product out there. And I would bring those products home and they would be truly lousy. So I thought, Okay, I'm gonna call my friends who are at the same life stage as me and get their recommendations and their recommendations, or always the best recommendation. So I thought, wouldn't it be great if I could walk into a store and at a glance, be able to tell what all of my friends loved and that was really the concept behind parent tested, parent approved, it's a seal and you walk in and it's like shopping with your best friend and you see it and you know, your friends recommended it.

Leon Goren :

Pretty cool. It's it's amazing taking your own experience and sort of building from it right?

Sharon Vinderine :

Yeah. Yeah.

Leon Goren :

So 12 years, almost 13 years doing this. Well, how's the journey been?

Sharon Vinderine :

Exhausting? exhausting? I know this is gonna, this is an audio thing, but the bags under my eyes have grown drastically. And you know, it's no different than any other entrepreneurs experience. I feel like, what what COVID has really taught me is that we are all kind of in the same boat, huge companies, small companies like mine, and it's a constant roller coaster ride. It's, uh, you know, I feel like there's a hell of a lot of lows. But the highs are so fantastic that they helped me get through the lows. But it's, you know, every day is a new experience

Leon Goren :

while you were talking and I know you've got lots of energy right, and you'd love the interaction for those that don't know, Sharon's on TV. More than more than anybody that I know really doing all these shows all the time and promoting the products and stuff. So are you dealing with in terms of working from home to drive me absolutely crazy.

Sharon Vinderine :

It's driving me bonkers. So I my usual routine is get up around quarter to five be at the gym at 530 workout, get to the office around 730 interact with people. And by interact I mean kind of barge into people's offices with new ideas and drive them insane. That's my personality. And so I'm really missing like my friends at the gym and these communities that I have between the office and you know, working out but at the same time, I'm kind of loving but I can roll out of bed, go for a nice leisurely run, you know, take my time get to my desk at eight or 830 when my staff is online. I'm doing a lot of mental health related things. So I'm doing a lot of more exercising, I would say started doing some meditation, which is a struggle for me, because being focused for even a couple of minutes is really hard. Um, but, you know, I realized that I'm in a much better situation than a large population, but a large portion of our population and that I'm blessed. So I really have to take advantage of that. And only think about that.

Leon Goren :

Yeah, no, that's, that's awesome. Thanks for sharing that. All right, let's talk about I read on your wall when I was going through LinkedIn a little bit, but yeah, talk about standing up from the crowd. And that sort of grabbed me because in this new world and COVID, right, it's all about differentiating each other companies, right? Yeah. Maybe Can you talk a little bit about because you're talking to your customers about this in terms of trying to help them distinguish themselves used to do it on the shelves was the early experience. And now we know e commerce has just become it's just ramping up. So Maybe there's some stories you can share with us in terms of what you're doing to help them and to maybe there's some best practices that you're seeing them engage in.

Sharon Vinderine :

So it's interesting, I expected everyone to, you know, really start saying a heck of a lot of nose to me. And what I found was people were finally it was almost like it was all of a sudden clicking for them. Oh, wait, a seal of approval that is actually going to help me stand out. And now that everybody is buying online, you're used to having consumers go into a store, they know they want to buy a steam mop, they go into the aisle, they see five to 10 choices and they pick one. But now they go online to buy that steam mop and they see 500 to a million choices. How do they pick? So having a seal of approval associated with the product is kind of like Pick me Pick me from Shrek if you've seen Shrek the donkey And that's kind of the equivalent because how are you going to stand out? Like, how are you going to prove to consumers that your product is better than the rest. And not only that, we we have a community of over 200,000 moms. And what we're trying to do with those moms is any products that they test with us, we are asking them to go online and leave reviews on on all different sites about their experience with the product, because as a mom, when I'm shopping, I want to know that there's legitimate reviews out there, and there are so many legitimate reviews that people are just paying for. That it's really hard to sift through the noise. So, you know, going right back to the beginning, the seal of approval is actually getting a lot more traction from brands who are looking at launching shortly, and they want to walk launch and award winning product line, they want to do something that's going to help them stand out. So you know, that's kind of an exciting topic. For us,

Leon Goren :

sure, how do how does one even think like, how does one go about getting a seal of approval? Like how do you how do you go make them go through the process.

Sharon Vinderine :

So anything that wants to earn our seal has to be tested with families in our community. So we will pick the, let's say, we're working with Dyson. And they tell us you know, this is a $600 vacuum I wanted for families who have allergy problems, pets, and have an income level of over $60,000. Let's say, we will select a number of families for them, they will ship the products to those families, those families will fill out a really detailed evaluation on their experience with the product, and that's how we determine if it wins. So it's all dependent on the consumer experience. So if Leon hated that vacuum, um, you know, that's gonna have an impact on whether this product wins or not.

Leon Goren :

And do you have like, have you had experiences where somebody gives you a product and it just Oh, these are just horrible.

Sharon Vinderine :

Yeah. Yeah. So first of all, we're picky in terms of the products that we take. But we had one huge fortune 500 company, they submitted about 30 products to us. And all of the products did exceptionally well, but one of them lost and I was dreading the phone call to the client and tell her, sorry, there's one product lost. And I called her and I said, Okay, listen, this was the feedback from consumers. And I just waited, there was silence. And then she goes, it just want you to know, you just completely validated your program for me, because our research team already found all of these errors with the product, it's being pulled from market. Ironically, one of your competitors just gave it a seal. And now we understand the difference between the program you're running and the programs that are out there that are simply taking money in exchange for you know, a sticker that they can put on their package.

Leon Goren :

Wow, that's amazing. That's that's a great story.

Sharon Vinderine :

Yeah.

Leon Goren :

If you think about I mean originally was kids products, right that you guys were focused on? Yeah. Where are you today? Like you talked about dice and you talked about different price. were sort of the sweet spot where you guys play,

Sharon Vinderine :

I think, in the CPG space. So we've worked with a lot of private label retailers where they have launched full product lines in their, you know, grocery. We also do a lot of work with brands like Procter and Gamble. So we kind of run the gamut like health and beauty. And those are kind of our sweet spot because it's easier for them to add the seal on to their packaging because they're constantly you know, it's a mass product. So they're reproducing these products so often, they're improving them so often, that the seal is a valuable asset for them. And we even do some OTC products. Yeah, I would say the CPG is our primary sweet spot.

Leon Goren :

And is it mostly due or the companies coming to you mostly when they have a new product launch, or they even taking existing products and saying, hey, let's rebrand this a little bit, or let's think about how we differentiate it a bit.

Sharon Vinderine :

Those are the exact two scenarios are they're there. They are mid stages of launching a new product line, and they're like, Hey, we're at the packaging point, let's see if we can earn this seal. Or they're looking to reinvigorate a product, they are rebranding it or they just need a boost for sales for that product. And then the PR team can now go Okay, this is an award winning product, I have a whole new story to go out to the media with and to consumers.

Leon Goren :

So the other question I have because you're in trouble all these these customers, and then you got a lot of the people who are actually buying or approving these products. What's the, you know, if you think about six months to 12 months from today, is anything going to change in your business? Do you Where are you guys going?

Sharon Vinderine :

I think we're pivoting a bit in leveraging our community and in different ways, so we have this amazing community of 200,000 mom, who we've been giving and giving to them for years that we've given away almost a million dollars in product. But now we want to try and leverage them as part of market research element to our business. So we have a lot of brands, even research companies that are coming to us saying, you know, we don't have moms between with children between the ages of zero to five or zero to 12 months, can we put out surveys to your community? So we have amazing data points on all these people, anything from income level age of children, you know, education, marital status, ethnicity, so there's so many data points, we want to look at how we can take all of that value, and pivot the business a little bit so that that becomes kind of a separate division for us.

Leon Goren :

If someone wants to sign up into your community, where do they what do they do? Do they have to come to your website, just register

Sharon Vinderine :

ptp.com and they click Join now and they fill out the forms. And, you know, by doing that they get an opportunity to test products, obviously, you know, we have 200,000 people, we don't have 200,000 products, but there's also a ton of contests a lots of different ways for them to enter. And then the brands they go to PTP. media.com. And, you know, they get a better understanding of the offering for that.

Leon Goren :

Okay. Anything else you want to share with us? You know that that was great. One of the biggest challenges today, like I sit in all these groups is you're right, it's this whole, how am I going to differentiate so some people are all talking about digital moving in that at the end of the day, it really comes down to the product and or service that you're selling. I mean, you can have the best digital campaign out there. If the products crap, it's gonna be pretty short lived.

Sharon Vinderine :

Yeah, that's exactly it. And that's why we're really picky. You can't go on tour site and actually submit a product for review. We need to have a call with you first because I want to bet it I'm giving a 70% refund. fees somebody loses. So that's a huge undertaking. So I want to talk to them first to know that this product that they want to submit is actually a good fit for us before we go through the whole daunting process.

Leon Goren :

Okay. Well, Sharon, thank you so much for joining us today doing the podcast with us.

Sharon Vinderine :

It was really exciting to actually get to speak to someone other than my teenagers and my husband. So thanks.

Leon Goren :

No, I speak to you once in a while we do the P o thing on that peloton on the go or whatever it is.

Sharon Vinderine :

Yeah, and thanks for all the kudos on my runs. I've much appreciate

Leon Goren :

you. Anything to keep us sane. Exactly. So in closing, to all those listening to us, thank you very much for being with us. If you're interested in our live webcasts, the way forward live and any other snippets, please take a moment and visit us peo-leadership.com we've done a number of things over the last 11 weeks that have included various professors Professor Janice Stein, and Harvard's Rosabeth Kanter, Michael Beer also from Harvard, really dealing with issues around mental health leadership, kind of the world's reset government stimulus package and a host of other stuff. Thank you again for joining us. Thank you, Sharon. That concludes our session for today.