Founders of Nori, Annabel Love and Courtney Toll!

We don’t know about you but we dread using the hotel iron board when traveling… This is one of the many reasons we were so excited when we discovered the Nori Press, invented by two friends, Annabel Love and Courtney Toll! When we first learned about the Nori Press, we knew we had to have it but that it also had to be sold on the fileist. It’s the next gen iron and steamer all-in-one and it’s been a total life saver for Lindsay because it’s compact enough to pack in your carry-on (and gives your clothes the refresh needed without a huge mess!)

It’s not easy to invent and patent a product (as we know!) so if you have an idea for a product, run a small biz or are just ready for some insightful career advice- you’ll love our latest interview with Annabel and Courtney…

“We have learned that performance marketing is all about testing what works: what creatives work, what narratives work, what audiences work, etc.”

Question:

Lindsay Albanese: What is one interesting thing that people may not know about your career?

Annabel Love and Courtney Toll: Our innovative handheld steam iron, the Nori Press, was born out of a personal frustration with leaky steamers and clunky ironing boards that saw us iron our clothes with a hair straightener at the start of our professional careers. In our 2+ year product development journey, we interviewed 19 product development firms, went through four rounds of prototyping and 100,000+ regulatory tests.

Question:

Lindsay Albanese: During your professional journey, what is one mistake you made that you learned the most from?

Annabel Love and Courtney Toll: As a founding team of two perfectionists, we became hyper-focused on presenting a fully-baked brand and product to the market at launch. This desire to have our product and marketing assets perfect held us back from early product/market fit testing in the context of paid acquisition. We have learned that performance marketing is all about testing what works: what creatives work, what narratives work, what audiences work, etc. In the two years we spent on product development, I wish we did some early paid marketing that would have made us a lot smarter a lot quicker.

Question:

Lindsay Albanese: What are you most proud of at this moment?

Annabel Love and Courtney Toll: We are incredibly proud of our growth! We are set to 4x last year’s revenue, having scaled our DTC channel, formed retail partnerships with Bloomingdales, Nordstrom, Williams Sonoma, Crate & Barrel, The Fileist, etc and launched on Amazon!

Question:

Lindsay Albanese: One thing you wish people would stop doing in business?

Copy-and-paste cold outreach! We can attribute much of our success to cold outreach to founders and freelancers we greatly admire. That said, we spent great care to research each individual and personalize our outreach in the hopes of receiving a response. My belief is if you are asking for someone’s time, you should put in the time to personalize your outreach, conveying the value you can offer!

Question:

Lindsay Albanese: Your go-to beverage after a long week (specifics please!)

Two spicy margaritas… the spicier the better 🙂