· By Eunice Low
Joey's 2nd Birthday Party
Joey's 2nd Birthday Party
2 years ago today, we (Joey and Winson here 👋🏼) decided to start on a mission to bring better sleep to all Malaysians. We've done just that, bringing great sleep to tens of thousands of Malaysians nationwide, and we're just getting started! 🔥💤💙😉
For our 2nd birthday, we didn't want it to be a regular old business "birthday celebration". We wanted our 2nd birthday to be a meaningful one, especially after the 2020 everyone's had.
We wanted this birthday celebration to
- Bring better sleep to all Malaysians (as expected, we are a sleep company after all), and
- Do good for the Malaysian startups/entrepreneur community
We put our thinking hats on and thought of how we could kill two birds with one stone. We ended up deciding to work together with 7 other local Malaysian startups to come up with great, high-quality sleep products to help Malaysians sleep better!
👨🏻💼👩🏻💼 Behind-the-scenes of the production process
We worked together with Ana tomy, Lilin+Co, Perfectly Tea, Goodpair Socks, Salang Design, Bros, and Kandle Kandle to produce a wide range of sleep products for Joey's 2nd Birthday Party. Their team and ours put a lot of blood, sweat, and tears into creating this product in the hopes that it would give you better sleep! 😴💤
One super-cool fact about this collaboration? It was fully done and completed online, via virtual meetings.
We had all meetings via Google Meet (shoutout to teknologi canggih!) and worked via email and WhatsApp with the companies.
Product samples were sent over via courier for us to check over, of course, but there were no physical face-to-face meets throughout this project.
After a few back-and-forths between our teams, we finalised the design of the products and sent it into production. It went smoothly from there on and then TA-DA, here we are with the finalised products for this project and collaboration!
The key thing that we learned? Don't let old mindsets restrict what businesses can do in this new age. We're a new wave of Malaysian startups and businesses, and if you're an aspiring entrepreneur wondering if you can run an entire business online and have successful projects, the answer is YES, YOU CAN!
Don't let traditional notions of how a business should be run stop you from starting your own thing!
The most important tip we can give is to go ahead and start it. Doing is always better than wishing! 💪🏼✨
Working with Ana tomy
We learned a lot from working with Team Ana tomy. Jon, Fidella, Cliff, and ZeeJay are really experts in the field (and art) of creating journals. They were very thorough in explaining the process of creating a journal, all the way from sending us premium swatches and elaborating on the printing processes, to reviewing our final drafts for the completed sleep journal.
We definitely learned a thing or two about quality and efficiency from team ana tomy, and we're thrilled to be able to unveil the Sleep Journal to all of you!
Working with Perfectly Tea
Vivienne, Cindy, and Oflavia were amazing to work with. We're stoked that this collab worked out especially because we have a team member from a different time zone (Vivienne is based in California, USA!)
The biggest thing we learned from collaborating with them was how to more efficiently plan our timeline when planning to collaborate with other brands, and to keep in mind the lead times that other brands might have as well. They were the first brand we reached out to for this collaboration, and it was through discussing with them our proposed timeline that we saw we needed to revise it. This directly impacted the way we structured our timeline for the other brands, and it's been super useful!
Thank you Perfectly Tea for being a delight to work with! Check out the 'Good for Bed' Sleep Tea.
Working with Kandle Kandle
Team Kandle Kandle personally drove down all the way from Penang to deliver these Bedroom Sprays to us! 🚗
Seeing how dedicated Junor and Chew are to their customers really reminded us of how we need to step up for our customers. Fun fact, Junor was also the photographer of a lot of these pictures for this birthday project, and he took such meticulous care when taking the pictures, just as if he were taking pictures for Kandle Kandle itself!
Thank you Kandle Kandle for being a gentle reminder to us that we should never slack and forget to put effort into the day-to-day activities of running Joey Mattress!
Working with Salang Design
Deryin, Jiun, and Wilden was simply a joy to work with. They thoroughly explained their industry when we got confused, and also gave lots of patch samples for us to check out (including a tatami stitch one that we did not go with, but looked freakin' cool nonetheless!)
We're super grateful for them giving us regular updates about the production, all the way from design ideation to when the Lalamove was sending the completed t-shirts over.
Thank you for being such a great team to work with, Team Salang Design! Check out the 'Good in Bed' Embroidered Tees.
Working with Goodpair Socks
Fei and Sam from Goodpair Socks make up an absolute design POWERHOUSE. They truly inspired us throughout this entire project of creating designs for 7 new sleep products. When we first asked what the limitations for the socks' design, Sam replied: "No, we don't want to talk about limitations first so that our creativity is not limited by ourselves."
"Let's talk about what we want to do, and find ways to do that, instead of focusing on the negatives like what we can't do," Sam continued. We thought that that was super wise of her.
This really spoke to us because it reminds us that we should not limit ourselves when it comes to creatives. Humans have a natural instinct to create beautiful things, and we must remember to not put a limit on ourselves!
Check out the ‘Good in Bed’ Socks.
Working with Bros
We grew up with Bros bottles, so it was surreal that now we're working with them for this Joey Mattress 2nd Birthday Party!
Chia, the person in charge of this project, was great to work with. Through working with them, we had a great discussion on how we should do the marketing for Joey's 2nd Birthday Party and also this "support Malaysian startups" movement. We definitely saw and considered new strategies that we never really considered prior to meeting with them, and we'd like to thank their team for the great input!
Check out the ‘Good in Bed’ Bottle.
Working with Lilin+Co
Lilin+Co managed to collaborate with us even while they're SUPER busy, and we're very thankful for that opportunity!
We worked closely with Julie and Marcus to make this collaboration happen. Interesting fact: We corresponded ONLY via email 📧, and we've never 🙅🏻♂️ met via any video calls!
The main takeaway and lesson we learned from this collaboration is that collaborations can be done effectively via email alone (we always thought we needed at least 1 video call/face-to-face to cement any collaborations!)
So, if you've ever wondered if that is possible, we're here to tell you it definitely is!
Check out the ‘Good in Bed’ Candle.
About the Joey Mattress 2nd Birthday Movement 🎂
The vision for this Birthday project was to start a movement for the good of all Malaysian startups out there, be it big or small. The "support local" movement was HUGE a few months back but seems to have died down recently. However, small Malaysian businesses are still operating and are honestly facing more troubles and obstacles than ever.
It is our hope that by collaborating and cross-promoting this movement and message with other Malaysian startups, we serve as a gentle reminder to all Malaysians that we have great local Malaysian businesses producing great products that are not only comparable to, but even exceed the quality of products produced by international and foreign companies!
We're very excited to share this project with everyone, and we hope everyone enjoys the products as much as we enjoyed making them for you. Thank you for your support thus far, because we wouldn't be here if it weren't for you. Do also remember to support local whenever you can this 2021!
Trust us, we're good in bed 😉 (and also for the Malaysian economy)!
🎉 Shop the Joey's Birthday Sleep Products.