Like many successful entrepreneurs, the founder of Oonia, Kristian Tapaninho, the moment of the bulb got here when he couldn’t find the product he was looking for on the market. It was around 2010, and Tapaninho and his wife and co -founders Darina Garland recently married and lived in London.
Image loan: Jukka Salminen
Tapaninho took a latest hobby – making a pizza at home – and fell on a road block. He couldn’t recreate the experience of eating in his favorite pizzerias, because his oven at home simply didn’t heat up like traditional pizza ovens.
At that point, if you wanted to play at home at home, you had to build a large, road oven in the open air, which used wood, it took a very long time to heat up and was not portable.
“I realized that there is an opportunity to build something, because no one else did an inexpensive and fast oven for use at home,” says Tapaniniho. “I thought Well, let’s see if it can be inventedIN And he started on this journey to find out how it happened. “He had a strong impression that if he could come up with a solution, it could create a promising business.
A few successful Kickstarter campaigns and greater than a decade later Oonia is the world’s largest pizza oven brand-in the amount of 157 million kilos (about $ 200 million) of income.
Entrepreneur He recently sat down from Tapaninho and Garland, who live in Edinburgh, at the North American Ooni headquarters in Austin, Texas to discuss how they built their site the yard in a global brand and the best advice for beginner entrepreneurs.
“Kickstarter would not let you run such a product [today]. “
After inventing the first idea of Tapaninoho and Garland, they asked a neighbor – a metal welder, who normally created gates – to create a “sketchy” prototype of an oven idea for pizza. Then, in November 2012, they began Kickstarter to raise funds to revive their product.
“To be honest, I have sweaty hands, thinking about the risk level we took in this campaign,” says Tapaniniho. “Kickstarter would not let you run such a product [today]. “
. campaign He was a success, collecting 17,136 kilos from 142 supporters (at that point around 27,000 USD), exceeding the initial goal of 7,500 kilos. (Out of almost 10,000 food -related projects that have been successful Financed on Kickstarteronly 25% increases from 20,000 to 99,999 USD.)
Photo: OONI
Then Tapaninho and Garland had to fulfill their promise. They began looking for a producer, and after an offense in Great Britain, they headed for the native Finland Tapaninho to produce the first round of oven.
At that point, Oonia was a side hustle and bustle for a couple who ran an educational company that cooperated with schools to create curricula around creativity and innovation. “We were very freelancers, moving from work to work,” says Garland about their education related to education. “It was based on delivery, [so] When Oono came, I thought Oh my God, we earned money when we slept last night. What did we do?“
“It is our duty to make him as great as possible.”
The couple balanced their two firms – and a newborn baby – while they began to grow Oonia. “I think we were not worried about the disadvantage because we were not in the corporate machine, so we didn’t think we were losing anything, jumping,” says Garland. “In our educational business at that time we earned about 50,000 pounds a year – not loads, but we were satisfied, and not having a huge income meant that we were able to take the risk and set Oonia.”
Oonia began to deliver pizza ovens about seven months after the Kickstarter campaign, starting years of constant growth and growing pains, reminiscent of finding producers who could sustain with their trajectory and changing the company name in 2018 ( Original spelling he was uuni). “From the very starting there was such a feeling We look here at something great and it is our duty to do it as great as possibleTananhoans said.
Tapaninho went full -time from Oonia, shortly after the first Kickstarter campaign, and Garland worked 4 days a week in the industry in the next few years.
Then, in 2020, when the Covid pandemic hit, panic occurred when Oonia retail partners began to cancel the orders and the company sat on excess stocks. “This turned out to be a blessing in a disguise,” says Tapaniniho. “Suddenly we start to see our online sales, especially in Great Britain, and then climbing, climbing, climbing, climbing.” He was in mid -March 2020 and they managed to have a record sales day in Great Britain.
This huge increase lasted for about 20 months, which prompted the company to employ more employees, especially in the customer support department, while dealing with a logistic problem. Example: He had 17 containers for shipping from over 2,000 pizza bakery aboard the evergreen green ship, which got stuck in the SUEZ channel in 2021.
“We feel incredibly privileged because we were a category that was able to use, and we could also easily rotate to completely online as a global organization,” says Garland.
Oonia increased from 14 million kilos of revenues in 2019 to 157 million kilos a 12 months, all without accepting private equity financing. Quick expansion meant that the company was more global than ever, so in 2023 Oonia began to build executive teams to manage each region, bringing latest employments from the primary brands of consumer goods, including Breville, Dyson and Yeti. “You can talk about strategies and tactics, but until you have people with skills, abilities and experience, it doesn’t matter what your strategy is,” says Tapaniniho.
“There are many ways of trading and extension.”
Although Oonia has significantly developed its line of products from the original pizza oven, in January the company announced its first large expansion outside the category – it introduces to the market Oono Halo Pro spiral mixerwhich shall be available from April 8. The mixer, which can sell for 699 kilos in the UK and 799 USD in the US, imitates the spiral pattern of mixing skilled bakery machines – a technology that is higher for making pizza dough, but so far has not been widely available for home cooks.
Photo: OONI
The philosophy of a couple who develop for other categories is not to create existing products, reminiscent of large traditional pizza ovens or spiral mixers of the size of the bakery, outdated, but slightly sharing them with more people. “There are many ways to expand and expand, and we have many ideas, but we must make sure that we add significant value, and for our customers there is a unique proposition or challenge,” says Garland.
“We really believe that people are happier when they make a pizza with their family at home.”
More than a decade for the construction of Oonia, the couple has useful advice for individuals who have an idea for a product, but they do not know how to turn it into reality. “Get feedback, but in very specific areas, not necessarily for the whole idea,” says Tapaniniho. “What do you really need to build it? Are you really sure there is a customer for it? What is the unique proposition on the market?”
And when you set it, protect your idea at all costs. “Unfortunately, what you do not consider to be an entrepreneur at the beginning is IP and protection,” says Garland. “We’ve won a lot of prizes [in the] Early days and [the prize money] He was spent on IP. Protect what you have. “
And although many successful firms began, because someone just wanted to be an entrepreneur, it is much easier to spend hours if you are passionate about the product or service sold.
“We really believe that people are happier when they make a pizza with their family at home,” says Tapaniniho. “Our goal is to keep this position as number one on the market [and] Continuing the innovation so that in five years, 10 years, 15, 20 years, we still define what the market of our category looks like. “