Full Transcript – Amanda Lacy – Wild Business Growth Podcast #343

This is the full transcript for Episode #343 of the Wild Business Growth podcast featuring Amanda Lacy – Bijou Build, Creative Outdoor Play Structures. You can listen to the interview and learn more here. Please note: this transcript is not 100% accurate.

Amanda Lacy 0:00
You have to really believe in your product, or else no one else really will.

Max Branstetter 0:19
Hello how you Bijou, welcome back to Wild Business Growth this is your place to hear from a new wild entrepreneur every single Wednesday morning who’s turning wild ideas into wild growth. I am your host, Max Branstetter, you can email me at and today’s episode is episode 343, a palindrome, as the kids say, and today’s guest is Amanda Lacy, the founder of Bijou Build the brand of outdoor play structures that are unlike anything you’ve ever seen. They’re for ages three to 103 they use really, really cool materials. They’re modular. And in this episode, we talk how Amanda came up with this crazy, cool idea, how she finds creative inspiration from everything from animals to moss to, yeah, well, a lot of moss, and how to make UGC user generated content work for your brand. It is The Amanda Show. Enjoy the show. Alrighty. We are here with Amanda Lacy, founder of Bijou Build, which has my heart already, because I’m a sucker for alliteration, but really, really cool, I’ll call it play place and beyond creation company, really, really cool things that you’re up to and coming to us from Maine, which is just a pretty cool place. Amanda, thank you so much for joining. How you doing today? I’m doing really well. Thanks. Yeah, yeah, of course. Can you please send me a lobster roll? No, I’m just kidding. That was very, very I warned you I was gonna embarrass myself.

Amanda Lacy 2:00
But you know, tragedy of all tragedies, I am allergic to shellfish.

Max Branstetter 2:04
Oh, no way, no. It is really tragic. They’re not very good. Maine doesn’t bite into Maine, and Portland’s not very good. So don’t try that anyway. That’s like a Twilight Zone episode. But speaking of pop culture, so you before we get to Bijou build, there’s a very famous or infamous movie, Animal House, and there’s a term Animal House, but I heard that you have more than one animal in your home. Can you introduce yourself by giving everybody a rundown of the animals in your home or around your home?

Amanda Lacy 2:34
I’m not, I won’t include the kids, but drive the animals. So we recently got a snake, a lovely little corn snake called Susie.

Max Branstetter 2:45
Susie this that’s the kindest, sweetest snake I’ve ever heard about.

Amanda Lacy 2:50
She’s adorable, if you’re into that. And then we have Henry, who’s a leopard gecko. A couple years ago, we got a rescue from Louisiana, whose name is Finch, in and out of lots of different goldfish. And we currently have four chickens, and my husband is building them a new chicken coop in the backyard using one of our Bijou frames, so it’s going to be the world’s first Bijou chicken coop. And really pumped about sharing that with people, because it looks really neat. It looks like a moon lander.

Max Branstetter 3:23
Really cool. The Bijou. Well, my uh, grandpa, who he passed away back, uh, five years ago. His name was Henry. So whenever I hear the name Henry, I’m a huge fan of anything Henry, uh, including geckos. So you did well, yeah, did well

Amanda Lacy 3:36
with covid purchase. Let’s get something for the kids, and he is hanging tight.

Max Branstetter 3:42
You know what? The timing works out? I think it’s That’s Henry reincarnated. So there we go. But how did, how did you get to a place where you’re surrounded by animals and so much like fun life like that?

Amanda Lacy 3:53
Oh, man, just Yeah, living up here in Maine and having the three kids, and for a long time, we traveled a ton, you know, before kids, and moved a lot when we first started having them. So then once we, like, actually settled into, you know, a place we were going to be for a while, we just started bringing them in. And my husband was really hesitant about the dog, so we got a dog, and happens to be His birthday is on the same day as my husband’s, which is really funny, we have a fun like, dog cake, and then, oh yeah, remember, it’s his birthday too. Yeah. Just really wanted the kids to with the chickens. Specifically. We had no idea the whole egg thing was going to happen in the past year or so. Have plenty of eggs at no cost, more or less. I really wanted them to, like, see where food can come from. And chickens are just awesome, and they free range and run around the yard. And this time of the year in Maine, we don’t have air conditioning, and it’s been really beautiful this summer, so I just leave the door open. And literally, sometimes the chickens will, like, walk into the office and. Have to, like, shoo them out. So it’s a, it’s a veritable wild kingdom around here.

Max Branstetter 5:04
Oh, my God, those chickens seemed like a cluck and hoot there, besides the chicken and the whole egg. Surprise, what’s been the biggest adjustment in terms of like an animal that that you call your your family, we’ll call it

Amanda Lacy 5:19
PSA. Chickens are not very smart, and they don’t move when cars are coming toward them, including minivans. So that was a hard lesson to learn, and I was in a lot of trouble with the family for a while after that unfortunate incident. So, yeah, they don’t move like, not like squirrels or other birds or dogs. They just hang out

Max Branstetter 5:52
right on cue dogs, yes, well, sorry to hear about that. Oh, we got, we got a guest podcaster, dogcaster.

Amanda Lacy 5:58
Yeah, we got our dog caster. He’s our Bijou mascot. He hangs out with me because I work by myself at home in an office, and I’m an extrovert, so I needed, I needed some company.

Max Branstetter 6:12
I don’t blame you. Sorry to hear about the chicken and the road incident that totally that like ruins the joke of, why did the chicken cross the road like that? It’s kind of like, was it created in bad taste, that joke? It sounds like

Amanda Lacy 6:25
we because we free range our chickens, and we live in a small town, we’ve literally been driving up the road, and our chickens have been crossing the road in traffic. So we, like, have stopped and gathered them into the minivan, and, like, people made a lot of that joke when we had that happen. Makes you imagine what the state of the minivan is like. We’re loading chickens into it,

Max Branstetter 6:51
all right? Well, we’ll take you off the animal Hot Seat. So let’s get to Bijou Build. So really, really cool company that is growing in a beautiful fashion, just like the what do you call them? You call them play sets or builds. Like, what do you call the individual?

Amanda Lacy 7:05
So we call them bijoos. The Bijou is easy enough. Yep, we call them bijoos. And I tend to refer to them as play structures, which is a little bit more of an industry term. So yeah, looks a little bit more structured. Yeah, play a playset swing set, you know, those sort of things. But yeah, we call them bijoos. So if

Max Branstetter 7:22
anybody’s not familiar with Bijou Build, go look it up. Like it’s you’ve never seen any sort of play structure like this. And in fact, like it’s organic and dynamic and can change. And it’s like made to grow with your children. So really, really cool. And they look so like natural and kind of just like they have such cool vibe to it. So you’ve done a great job with that. But take us back to, well, the first thing everybody’s wondering, What does Bijou mean?

Amanda Lacy 7:47
So Bijou, so I first chose the name because I wanted, it’s very unromantic, but I wanted a name that I could own in SEO. I wanted to like your first thing if you’re ever gonna name a company, Google it, because you do not want to, like, pick a name that’s already super well known or that somebody else has really already, like, gotten the SEO game dialed in. So I wanted a word that didn’t really like, have much of a meaning specifically to anything, especially in the United States. So in English, which it’s mostly used in the UK, Bijou is a small, charming dwelling. So you would use it. Some people would say, like, there’s, that’s a Bijou apartment or a Bijou house. So to describe a dwelling in French, it is a jewel or a trinket. I thought that that was a good description of the the actual structure part. I always wanted something that was kind of like multifaceted. So there’s the jewel part, and then obviously the small, charming dwelling is just perfect for what we ended up coming up with.

Max Branstetter 8:51
Yeah, your the name is as versatile as your play structures. Okay, so to the actual beginning, what, what was, what was going on, that you’re like, you know what? I have this crazy idea that we can actually create something that’s pretty different

Amanda Lacy 9:05
out there. It’s funny how ideas kind of like happen, because Bijou started out as a cube as a square. So when I first was ideating on on an alternative to the existing play structure market, my only goal was to use existing wood, and when I say that, I mean wood that is already readily available in Lowe’s or Home Depot or your local lumberyard. Maine is the pine tree and state we’ve got tons of great wood and of every other play structure out there. People don’t realize this. A lot of the wood is harvested in like Canada, and then it’s shipped overseas, and then it’s made into the play structures, and then it’s put on these big containers, and then it’s shipped all the way back. And that’s just inherently wasteful, like you’re just shipping wood around the world. So my number one goal was like, there has to be a better way to do this, using existing lumber sources. So then. Came up with the idea of like a bracket system using two by fours and then panels. And up here in Maine, there’s people that are doing really cool stuff with reclaimed materials. So there’s this company that’s making bags out of old sails from boats and ships. There’s a company that’s making really amazing accessories and bags out of old lobster men outfit like that. But they wear the lobster in because they’re weatherproof and everything, but they wear out. So they repurpose those into all sorts of

Max Branstetter 10:30
things. You’re allergic to those outfits, though, so we won’t talk about it.

Amanda Lacy 10:34
So the goal was to try to use like sale material or some kind of found material, and then we had the designs reviewed by a structural engineer, and they were like, man, the wind is going to hit that and that cube is going to turn into like a parallelogram. So you need to think of like slanting the sides. So it was a cube, and then it became like a pup tent briefly. And then we were like, well, let’s just slant all the sides and it’s even cooler. So then it became the shape that it is today, which, as anybody who’s familiar with the shape of a teepee, is just a very naturally strong shape and portable shape, which are two of the things that we were really looking for. So that’s where the kind of the shape and the idea of it, the genesis of how it got to the way it is today. I think some people might look at it and be like, Oh, that’s a teepee, but we’re really just kind of like tying into the fact that that shape, in general, over like millennia, has been used by nomadic peoples because it’s really strong and it’s easily deportable. So we applied those to the play structure world. I came up with the idea around the time of covid and the three kids and I was looking for a play structure in my backyard, and just didn’t really see something that I wanted, because I mostly didn’t want something that I knew they were going to get tired of and that I was just going to have to look at permanently. So the portability and the ability to move it around and store it was also a big deal, because I think that you have tell people this You were recently a parent and still am. As parents, we give a lot to our kids. I didn’t necessarily want my backyard to be yet another thing that I sacrificed on the altar of parenthood. So with Bijou, the idea was always is that if you you could have your backyard where your kids could play, then if you wanted to have a garden party or whatever, a barbecue, or just wanted to not look at it, you could put it away too. So during covid, everybody was really thinking about how to make your space multifunctional. You know, people were like, using their kitchens as their offices and using their living rooms as their playrooms. So when you’re thinking about your backyard being a multi functional space, that really kind of like made sense for the way that Bijou is used.

Max Branstetter 12:59
And this is really special. This is like, the first time listeners have heard about her daughter, Jamie. No, I’m just kidding. I was speaking Hi. That’s so funny. We start talking about a daughter and then just Voila, yep. But I’m just kidding. Of course, as soon as soon as our daughter, Jamie, came into the world, you know, pretty much every episode since then, of course, I’ve talked about her. So that’s not the first time she’s came up. Yeah, exactly. Surprise everyone. It’s a lot of, like, really smart elements that you’ve built into the actual Bijou is in the business as well. First, unlike the natural and kind of reclaimed material standpoint, can you run through real, real quick again, like, what are, what are the most common materials that are in the Bijou is like today, as you’ve scaled up,

Amanda Lacy 13:47
so we’re using recycled materials whenever we can. So the panels, for example, they have using, are using 50% recycled water bottles. Oh, cool. The steel top hub that kind of holds everything together is using 20% recycled steel, and then, you know, the feet and any other plastic parts we have, anything that uses abs are made out of 50% recycled milk jugs. But the real, the real, like part of Bijou, that is the green part is the fact that it’s reusable and repurposable. So the whole product is designed to never need to go into a landfill, whereas pretty much every other place structure on the market at some point or another is ending up in a landfill. So the idea is, is that we say the age range is from three to 103 and we mean that because the idea is, is that you can buy this in your 20s and you can use it. We have a haven version, which is basically the same structure, just without all the play features, but it still has the panels. It still has the solar Oh, and we have solar lights with 100 LEDs, which are really magical at night. We have a adult version. So the idea. Is that you can buy this when you’re in your 20s, when you have kids, eventually, you can add on to it, and it turns it into a play structure. You have another kid, you can add another one, and then when the kids are done with it, or they’re gone, which we find, teenagers really like it. So that doesn’t really happen until they literally leave the house that they’re not using it anymore, you can convert it back into just a really epic hanging chair stand. So we have pictures of people who have, like, put them around their fire pit, and then, hypothetically, grandkids come someday, you can convert it back into a play structure. So the idea is, is that it’s always relevant to wherever you are in your life at that moment, and it’s always useful, and it’s always enhancing your enjoyment of the outdoors, and that it just constantly ebbs and flows with your life, but never goes in the trash. So that’s the real, like, revolutionary element of its sustainability,

Max Branstetter 15:54
yeah. So how many different ways then can you convert it in theory?

Amanda Lacy 15:59
I mean, gosh, I am we have, last we counted about 144 different ways, because it’s modular. You can just, I mean, you could string 10 of these things together if you wanted to. You could surround your whole house with bijoos,

Max Branstetter 16:16
the Bijou house to go with the Bijou coupe. That’s a real differentiator. As you said, like not many products, especially in the children’s, well, this is children’s and adult space. Can say that. What advice do you have for anybody that like has a product idea? How do you make that like modular and convertible, which, when I say convertible, I keep thinking of like a Corvette convertible going down the street. But you

Amanda Lacy 16:40
know, I mean, my background allowed me to do this in that I have a background in product development in this space, like, I’ve been developing kids outdoor products for the last like 15 years, and that includes going through all of the safety testing requirements. So I think that that is one of the reasons why there hasn’t been a lot of innovation in this space, really, in the last, I don’t know, 2030, years, is because people don’t feel comfortable with all the safety and testing regulations part of it. So the biggest takeaway from, like, doing anything modular is making sure that every iteration is safe. So like making sure that all of the pieces, no matter how they get put together by the customer, they’re all passing safety standards. There’s never some hazard that gets created by somebody putting together something that they shouldn’t so I would say that that’s something that I learned a long time ago in my career, is like how to make products safe that will pass testing that I was able to apply to this concept, because I had that experience in doing that. I think if somebody was just trying to, like, come up with a modular thing, and didn’t understand how the safety requirements worked and what you needed to do in order to pass the requirements, they would find themselves in with a lot of great ideas. Ideas are the easy part. Executing them is the hard part. So I think there’s a lot of ideas on how things can get put together. I see amazing stuff on like Pinterest and Instagram that parents are doing, and I’m like, there is no way that would pass safety testing. So when you come when it comes to kids things, it’s not enough just to, like, have an idea for a cool product, you have to make sure that, like, it’s safe and can be used, and, by extension, for a business that you can get pass all the safety documents and have the insurance that covers everything, because that’s part of the requirement, is making sure that all of our things pass the strictest safety standards.

Max Branstetter 18:37
And what is that? I mean, you don’t need to go in detail by like, all the standards, but like, what are some key things to keep in mind when you’re focused on building something that’s like, child safe, like that, if you will.

Amanda Lacy 18:49
Oh, I could

Max Branstetter 18:51
article four, section B, no.

Amanda Lacy 18:54
So in the US, you’re talking ASTM, and in the EU, you’re talking en 71 so our product passes for both of those standards, and they’re slightly different, so we just pass whatever the strictest one is. So I’ll give you an example. Our cargo net, our climbing wall on the mainstay has rings that we develop so that feet could go through them and that little hands could hold them, and they’re just awesome. There’s a lot of reasons why I picked that shape to use. It has to be a five inch or less diameter for it to pass head entrapment and torso entrapment. It’s five and a half or six inches for the US market, five and a half for the EU so ours is five. So we pass both. And what that means is, is that the requirement, I’ve always found this very interesting, is that if your torso can fit through an opening, a child’s torso can fit through an opening, and there’s a probe for this. It’s all very regulated. If a kid’s torso can fit through an opening, their head must also be able to fit through that opening. And then when you. Think about what that means for like, play. You’re like, Oh my God. That’s because at some point, some kids got, like, stuck into a in a play structure, and we’re like, hanging there. So that’s just one that we always have to make sure there’s, like, pinch points, finger entrapments. And that’s another one where it’s like, I use my I use if your pinky can go through it, your middle finger must be able to go through it. But there’s just all kinds of like fall hazards the height. So like for us, what’s another great thing about the shape of our product is that the further up you climb, the safer you get, because you’re actually going towards the center of the structure. And then also we have two levels, and the level on the bottom is bigger than the level on the top because, again, it tapers as you go up. So if there’s any kind of like falling or anything, they fall onto the other platform. So there’s just a lot of a lot of things you have to think about when you’re designing product.

Max Branstetter 20:58
Yeah, this is something I’ve been thinking a lot about recently, because, because with the Jamie, like, you know, we’re exposing her to more and more toys and different types of play things and ways to teach new skills and stuff like that, and which is just a long way of saying, baby toys. But I’m always amazed at like, How much must go into, like you were saying, making sure that these are baby safe, and like making sure that, you know, like it’s not too pointy around the edges, or like making sure that anything can go in a baby’s mouth and is okay. There’s so much that goes into it, and you’re kind of seeing it from a different level of, you know, the slightly older age, three to 103 age group of how many things you have to keep in mind there, but it was a really cool peek behind the current peak behind the Bijou there.

Amanda Lacy 21:46
Yeah. The other thing is to always, always, always test your prototypes out with kids, because you think they’re going to do one thing with it, and they end up doing a total other one. So like my kids go to this amazing Montessori school here, and I was able to, like, set some product up there early on and just watch them just tear it to shreds and do all kinds of crazy stuff. So that was huge. And, like, adults just can’t simulate that. So you have to get kids, you have to get them playing with it to really understand what they’re going to be doing with it. Even if you don’t intend for them to do it, they’re going

Max Branstetter 22:27
to do it. Then you could, I’m sure there’s like an industry legal badge that you could put on the packaging that say, test it on kids. I’m sure that goes well, no, I’m just kidding. But no, the prototypes are super key. How about on the like, if you kind of zoom out a bit and look at the business like, you’ve had some great growth and great online website as well, what’s kind of like, a a big step that you and the team made that has helped you scale up from, like, starting to test out these prototypes to actually, like, No, you can, you can, like, buy these things and, you know, have them to your home.

Amanda Lacy 23:00
I mean, I knew I knew what I had when I when I came up with it, and we started doing our first photo shoots and started getting customer feedback. So you have to really believe in your product, or else no one else really will. So the biggest thing that we did out of the gate is just leaned in really heavy to marketing. Like people were like, oh, start slow. Like, maybe go to, like, the county fair and sell it. And, you know, like, why don’t you go talk to the toy store downtown? And I just made the decision really early on that we were going to be super aggressive with this concept. Because also just knowing how the industry works, it was like, if I don’t lean into it and someone else sees it, then they’re gonna, like, knock it off and lean on to it and lean into it earlier than I am. That has so I think that was the biggest kind of learning. As far as scaling it to where it is is like I just believed in it so much that I put, I mean, everything, life savings, everything, into launching it as aggressively as possible. And then we have really amazing user generated content creators that just love it and crush on it and continue to post about it, and that was really huge, because this product had never existed before. No one had ever seen it. No one knew what they were looking at. They had no idea how it worked. And me telling people how great it is is not the same as you know, other people telling telling customers that, like, we really, like, really, actually do love it. It really does work for our family, so that obviously, you know, just having authentic content has been really big, and then, and then we started hearing from people doing things with it that we didn’t even think about. So we started hearing from occupational therapists and people that work with kids with special needs, and they were just really, really excited about it, and they were bye. Day have fun at soccer, and really like telling us, you know, you don’t realize, like, how great your product is for this or for that or the other. And now we started, I’ve started going to like occupational therapy conferences and trying to, like, let people know that there is an alternative to your traditional play structure that will allow some of the things that your child might be doing in their kind of more clinical settings, that you can have at your home that will continue upon that learning, which is really something I’m really passionate about, is like the accessibility of play. Think is has been missing in the market.

Max Branstetter 25:39
I was going to ask, like, what marketing tactic worked the best for you? And then, like, as I started thinking of that, you started talking about UGC. And I think UGC is, like, real, you know, user generated content is, is a really powerful place. Because, to your point, it’s like, it’s like, why testimonials on a website have always worked? It’s because when you have that, that social proof of hearing from somebody else, instead of like only from the brand all the time, it’s just that much more relatable and that much stronger. I think UGC, there’s great opportunity there, but also it’s kind of hard to do it authentically if you’re not careful. So like for you and in Bijou, what has worked like really well so far in making sure that there’s like, that there is UGC in that it comes from like a genuine place.

Amanda Lacy 26:22
We don’t really have much in the way of retail distribution. It’s not something I’ve ever gone after just because it’s an I guess it’s a new product. No one knew knew what it was, and I was afraid that in a retail store, people would just they wouldn’t even know what they were looking at. But what that means is, is that there’s not a lot of places that people can try the product in person or see it in person, and we’re working on that. But because our product has been really embraced by Forest schools and just kind of like outdoor based programs, and like I mentioned, the Occupational Therapy community, what we have found has been really helpful for us is placing the product and into those places. So basically meeting customers where they are. We’ve had a lot of success with restaurants, breweries, vineyards, all of those places, even wedding venues, really latching onto the product because of the portability element. So that has been a big benefit of our product, is that it can be used anywhere and popped up and taken down, and that gives people the opportunity to use it without having to buy it. And then what we find, and we have, you know, people who have glamping or campgrounds, they’re putting them up, and then we see a lot of people coming like, oh, you know, you guys were at the Airbnb that I stayed at the summer, and we really loved it. So we came home and bought one. Or, you know, you guys are we were at the campground and saw it and loved it. Or, Oh, we played on yours at the local pizza place, and we just, my kid just loves it. So now we’ve bought one ourselves. So the idea of influencers, I think, when you’re really talking about experiential marketing, is that influencers are found everywhere. They’re not just people that charge a lot of money on Instagram, and you know, it’s everybody in your community that interacts with your family and your children are influencers. So just having more Bijou out there in the world has just naturally increased our sales in a really organic way. That is so great, because the first year, all of our sales were paid, paid traffic, and that is so painful. We are constantly looking for ways to limit the percentage that we’re doing in paid and trying to grow organic as much as possible. And luckily, people love the product, and they talk about it to their friends. And we have people who, if they put it in their front yard, they’ll often tell us that, like people slow by and take pictures of it as they’re driving by, because it’s it’s so unique. And then the fact that it lights up at night. It’s like this beacon in the neighborhood. So a lot of times what we see is like one person in the neighborhood gets it, and then a lot of other people in the neighborhood get it.

Max Branstetter 29:12
That flows beautifully to what I want to get to next. I want to switch it up a bit and get to inspiration and creativity, just because the Bijou is one of the, like, most creative things I’ve ever seen. It’s You said it yourself like I’ve never seen anything like it. And I think it takes a lot of creativity to create that figures, and also a lot of creativity to market it and to grow this thing and grow a business around it. So for you personally, like, what do you do to stay creative and kind of keep your mind

Amanda Lacy 29:44
fresh? I spent a lot of time in the woods, a lot of time in the woods. That’s just like, good on so many levels. And after a day of working in my office, my eyes hurt so much I’m with you. You gotta. Work those cones. You got to get that long distance vision. You got to work those,

Max Branstetter 30:04
oh my God. You know, I forgot rods and cones were a thing, until you just said that.

Amanda Lacy 30:09
I totally forgot to work those rods and cones. I went into a big Moss, like part of my life a couple of years ago, where I learned all about moss, and that was super fun. That’s a really cool organism.

Max Branstetter 30:22
What’s a quick fun fact about moss? You could tell us

Amanda Lacy 30:25
that it’s very, very sensitive to environment. So, like, you cannot, you can, very rarely ever transplant moss. It is it works where it works. And like, if you have a log, you’ll see like, five different types of moss on one log, completely contingent upon exact amounts of sun, the exact, you know, type of amount of water that they get, the runoff from other things. It’s just fascinating. It is we could do a whole mosque cast. We could do a whole moth segment, but we won’t, because no one would listen to you. I was

Max Branstetter 30:56
going to say, right before, right after the paint drying segment,

Amanda Lacy 31:00
going off on a moss tangent. That’s so that’s how I like try to, like, clear my mind. But the creative element is looking. I’ve always had success in my career when I look outside of the industry that I’m in. So I’ve been in the toy industry now for the last, you know, 15 years, and I rarely look at the toy industry for inspiration. If you do that, you’re just gonna end up making a version of what everybody else already has. So I look a lot at just the world in general, like I am constantly just walking around being like, Can I turn that into a product? Can I use that in a product? Can i Is that a good idea? 99% of the time it’s a bad idea. But every once in a while you get a really cool idea, and you can turn something really neat, you know, turn something really cool out of it. So, like, you know, just looking, I look at, I’m in a place where that we have the Windjammer fleet, which is a fleet of, like, really amazing old wooden schooners. So I spend some time around

Max Branstetter 32:02
those, also just to add boats, sailboats, right for those, just, just to add the next level of the lost,

Amanda Lacy 32:09
yeah, sailboats, yeah. Good point. And always looking at, like, the boat cleats that they use and the different pulley systems. And like, you know, right now I’m working on developing a pulley system for the Bijou program, where you can connect it from one mainstay to another, or one mainstay to a tree, and literally, where you can, like, have a pulley, and you can send messages or treats or water bottles or whatever across the bijoos. So looking at things like from the boating industry to figure out how we can do that. I use cam buckles in my product, which is something that’s, you know, traditionally used in like tie down straps. I use different kinds of carabiners that come from the climbing world. I used to spend a lot of time going to the Outdoor Retailer show out in Salt Lake City in Denver, and I would just walk around and hang out in the the climbing section just to see, like, what can I do with elements from climbing that kids would find interesting? So I try to take things from the outdoor industry and make them something that’s safe and usually more affordable that kids would get a big kick out of because kids are extreme, and a lot of toys are not. So like, how do we get that really cool extreme stuff, but make it safe for kids to use their imaginations with and to take a few risks. Within reason,

Max Branstetter 33:34
I used to be obsessed with the word extreme, spelled with an x first, not the E, and it was actually, and it was around, you know, I was growing up, I was all into extreme sports and all that, but shout out to Gravity Games in Cleveland, but my aim screen name was xtrememaxy. As

Max Branstetter 33:58
if that wasn’t enough, creativity in moss, fun facts. Let’s wrap it up with some rapid-fire Q&A. You ready for it? Let’s get wild. Let’s get extreme. So I saw that you studied abroad in Barcelona as Yeah, there you go. You got the Catalan list thing. What’s the best single tapa of all time?

Amanda Lacy 34:19
Oh gosh, the hamone just like straight, the straight ham stuff. So good. And my husband’s from from Virginia, and they have, like, a slight Virginia version of ham that is reminiscent thicker. But I was like, Yep, this is the same flavor profile.

Max Branstetter 34:37
Speaking of Virginia, I saw you went to Miami and Virginia. So shout out Ohio there. But you left us. I’m from Cleveland region. What was the biggest like? Stark starch. Stark different, not starch different from Miami to UVA. Oh. I mean, you’re

Amanda Lacy 34:52
going from the mid the Midwest to the south. The tea is sweeter, the hats are bigger. I. Miami was great. It was a beautiful, beautiful campus. But I really love history, and so as far as being in the US, going to Mr. Jefferson’s University, as they call UVA, was just an absolute dream. As far as, like, history and American history. So yeah, Miami was wonderful. But man, I loved going to UVA.

Max Branstetter 35:23
Yeah, that’s cool. Well, with Miami, you can tell people you went to school in Oxford and no further questions.

Amanda Lacy 35:29
It’s a very confused school. They have bumper stickers that said Miami was a university before Florida was a state. I think they’ve got a little bit of a chip on their shoulder. Yeah, it’s very confusing. I went to Miami University in Oxford, and it’s all in Ohio, yep,

Max Branstetter 35:45
makes perfect sense. Love and Honor, all right. I mean, I had to ask Henry the gecko, does he like the Geico commercials?

Amanda Lacy 35:53
I don’t think he’s ever seen him. He’s, um, we didn’t really think about this. Um, he sleeps all day,

Max Branstetter 36:01
really, that’s like all night too, or just day.

Amanda Lacy 36:06
He sleeps all day, and then he’s up all night. So it’s not a best animal for kids. They’re nocturnal, and so are snakes. So I would say we didn’t really learn our lesson. So yeah, he’s he’s more of a novelty, all

Max Branstetter 36:20
right, well, what is the lesson that you learned from working in the toy industry for so many years that people outside the industry would be shocked to hear

Amanda Lacy 36:28
that for a very, very long time, Amazon, and they’d finally changed this. Amazon did not require any safety testing on anything. Wow, people would like because I sold zip lines for a long time, and we had to do so much safety testing, and we had to do all of this stuff and have an gigantic insurance policy. And then we started just seeing all of these super duper cheap zip lines popping up on Amazon. And we realized that like and it had came about when Amazon got sued a long time ago for when there was a Eclipse and a bunch of people went blind because they bought a bunch of eclipse glasses from Amazon, and Amazon finally had to, like, admit, like, we’re just a platform. We don’t like, we’re just a marketplace. We’re not a retailer. I think a lot of people think of Amazon as, like, a Walmart, and they’re not. They are just a marketplace. So all the toys and everything that people buy on Amazon up until very, very recently, had to have zero safety testing. And I think that surprises a lot of people, because, yeah, we all shop there, and you would assume that there would have to be some safety testing if a product is being sold in the US on that, and it’s, they didn’t require it.

Max Branstetter 37:42
Wow, yeah, that’s, that’s insane. That feels like a whole barrel of monkeys there. That’s a lot of issues, yeah. All right. And then last one, because you could answer this, is it the chicken or the egg chicken? All right. Well, we’ll have a rebuttal from the egg we’re interviewing next.

Amanda Lacy 38:06
So definitive. It’s been it’s been answered now, perfect.

Max Branstetter 38:12
You heard it here first got the gavel. Well, Amanda, thank you so much. Just love what you’re doing and all the creativity. And I’m going to start geeking out about moss now. So thank you for that. But big fan of all things Bijou build, for those watching on video, is a book called Moss from forest to garden, a guide to the hidden world of moss.

Amanda Lacy 38:32
Moss nerd, authored

Max Branstetter 38:33
by Randy Moss. No, I’m just kidding, but thanks so much for coming on. I know if anybody wants to learn more or get one of your play structures they can do so at BijouBuild.com Is there any other place online to connect with you or your company you want to shout

Amanda Lacy 38:47
out, oh my gosh. Our Instagram and Facebook are really fun. They show we have a lot of customers doing some really cool things. So I would definitely check out our Instagram, which is @BijouBuild

Max Branstetter 38:56
Perfect, awesome. And then you can get mossed as well. And then, last thing, final thoughts. It could be a quote. It could be a stupid chicken joke, whatever you want, words to live by. Send us home here.

Amanda Lacy 39:08
Always ask yourself what you are hoping to accomplish by saying something that is just my dad told me that a long time ago, and it has helped me many times to not put my foot in my mouth. And I tell my kids all the time now, because kids never think about what they’re saying, they just say it. So I’m like, think about what you’re hoping to accomplish by saying what you just said. So. And I find that, like adults, also could use that advice a lot

Max Branstetter 39:34
good thinking. Thank you so much. Amanda for coming on the podcast, sharing the beautiful Bijou Build story and thank you Wild Listeners for tuning into another episode. If you want to hear more wild stories like this one, make sure to follow or subscribe to Wild Business Growth on your favorite podcast platform and subscribe on YouTube. YouTube is @MaxBranstetter. That’s where you can find the video versions, which, when this video is up, it will have. Cameos. I’m cameos and cameos. You can learn more about MaxPodcasting, about the Podcasting to the Max newsletter, as well as Wild Business Growth at MaxPodcasting.com and until next time, Let your Bijou Run Wild…Bring on the Bongos!!