S9 Ep16: Fabric of Change: Conscious Gifting Meets Sustainable Wrapping with Monica O’Neil and Cindy Estes
“It is challenging to stand out there and pitch your idea to total strangers. But as you do it, you realize you can do it, and you get better at it the longer you do it.” —Monica O’Neil
“Not only in the business, it's extended to our life. I'm now driving an electric car, and we're now both composting, which we weren't before. The little, tiny bits we're doing with this are starting to eat into our lives.” —Cindy Estes
The holiday season is a time of joy and celebration, but it also generates an overwhelming amount of waste from single-use gift wrapping. This staggering issue highlights the urgent need for sustainable alternatives to reduce our holiday footprint.
Monica O'Neil and Cindy Estes, the co-founders of Rapt GiftWrap, have answered this call with their innovative and eco-friendly solutions. Monica and Cindy have combined their expertise to create a reusable fabric gift wrap that not only reduces waste but also offers a stylish and practical alternative to traditional wrapping paper.
Tune in as Monica and Cindy share their inspiring journey, covering key insights on sustainability, thoughtful product development, embracing sustainable lifestyles, educating and building a market, leveraging entrepreneurial experience, adaptability and customer-centricity, overcoming marketing challenges, and their collaborative strengths.
Connect with Cindy & Monica:
A California native who married New England, Cindy Estes started Seam, a children’s clothing line, with 4 children in tow. As a young graduate, Cindy became the first in-house graphic designer at The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles and worked with various artists and curators to create a consistent brand strategy. With a background in design and experience in clothing manufacturing, she brings her sense of style, design, and implementation to Rapt gift wrap.
Monica O’Neil is a New England transplant with a youth spent in Chile, Venezuela, and Morocco. Fluent in 3 languages with a Master’s in French Literature, Monica spent a decade teaching at several area high schools. Becoming a mother was a natural evolution - there is a lot of overlap in the skill set. Monica is still trying to educate but the subject is a little more straightforward - reducing waste with fabric gift wrap - and there’s a lot less homework.
Episode Highlights:
00:50 The Birth of Rapt
04:02 Developing the Product Concept
06:52 Sustainability and Business Practices
09:45 Cultural Context
13:02 Marketing and Customer Feedback
15:16 Entrepreneurship and Collaboration
18:28 Navigating Challenges
Tweets:
Tis the season for conscious consumerism, but our gift-giving traditions have taken a toll on the planet. Discover how small, conscious choices in our wrapping can have a big impact, unwrapping a greener future one present at a time in this week’s episode with @jreichman and Rapt GiftWrap Co-Founders, Monica O'Neil and Cindy Estes. #podcast #entrepreneurship #socialgood #inspiration #impactmatters #NextGenChef #EssentialIngredients #Season9 #RaptGiftWrap #SustainableGifting #EcoFriendlyWrapping #HolidayWasteReduction #ReuseableGiftWrap #ConsciousConsumption #InnovativeDesign #FemaleFounders
Inspirational Quotes:
02:03 “This is a good idea. I'm going to do it!” —Monica O’Neil
07:35 “Not only in the business, it's extended to our life. I'm now driving an electric car, and we're now both composting, which we weren't before. The little, tiny bits we're doing with this are starting to eat into our lives.” —Cindy Estes
09:33 “The culture is changing. One of the challenges as entrepreneurs is building a business while also trying to build a market.” —Monica O’Neil
13:21 “We do listen to customers and what they're interested in and what they feel like they need.” —Cindy Estes
17:16 “Every day you wake up just trying to solve a problem. This business started by solving a problem.” —Monica O’Neil
18:50 “That's a big deal for entrepreneurs when they reach that threshold and they're now trying to do marketing and paid advertising.” —Justine Reichman
20:11 “It is challenging to stand out there and pitch your idea to total strangers. But as you do it, you realize you can do it, and you get better at it the longer you do it.” —Monica O’Neil
20:38 “Don't overproduce. Our inventory is such that you don't need to recreate it every second.” —Cindy Estes
Transcriptions:
Justine Reichman: Good morning, and welcome to Essential Ingredients. I'm your host, Justine Reichman. With me today, I have the pleasure of having Cindy and Monica, who are the Co-Founders of Rapt Giftwrap. Welcome, ladies.
Monica O’Neil: Thanks, Justine. Thanks for having us.
Justine Reichman: Oh, I'm so pleased to have you. I absolutely love what you're doing, and I can't wait to share everything that I've learned, and that we've discussed so far with our community with those watching and those listings. But before we dig in, can you just share with everyone what Rapt Giftwrap is?
Monica O’Neil: So Rapt in a nutshell is fabric gift wrap that replaces single use wrapping paper so it can be used again and again because it's fabric, and there's nothing to throw away.
Justine Reichman: Awesome. I love this. I know when we were talking before you guys came up with this idea, Monica, when you were in, was it The Container Store or shopping for wrapping paper, can you just go on a little bit about that for us so we know where the inception of this idea came up?
Monica O’Neil: Yes, thank you. And so it was eight years ago. I was at The Container Store buying a large amount of wrapping paper because I have three children. I'm one of seven in my family, so large family, and buying lots of wrapping paper, the bows and the tags, everything. And I got to the cashier with a cart load of paper and it just hit me all of a sudden, and I said to her, even though this is a bit rude, I said, oh, my god, this is going to just be bags and bags of garbage on Christmas Day. And I said, do you sell reusable gift wrap? And she goes, no, but that's a really good idea. I bought the wrapping paper anyway. But then I got in my car and I thought, this is a good idea. I'm going to do it. And I thought, there's got to be a better way. And I called my sister, who I figured--
Justine Reichman: And this is not your sister, just for those watching.
Monica O’Neil: Even though Cindy would have told me if I was crazy. I called her first because I thought, and I was actually shopping for her children at the time for Christmas. I just pitched this idea, what do you think? And she thought it was a great idea. And then the second person I called was Cindy because we'd been friends since our children were in elementary school or kindergarten. Actually, preschool. And she had a company at the time called Seam, a children's clothing company. I knew she knew all about fabric. She made the most beautiful dresses and all sorts of really interesting clothing. And I thought, well, this is the person to ask. We had a great relationship. But I thought, I'd just see what she thinks of the idea. And she loved the idea. And at the time was pivoting from Seam. I don't know if you want to talk a little bit about Seam now, but she had everything in Massachusetts. She had the cutters, the sewers. The resources, most importantly. And I said, what do you think of this idea? And she said, it's a great idea. The whole time, I'm shopping for things on the phone, filling another cart with christmas gifts and handing money over to cashiers while I'm still talking on the phone. Totally obnoxious, I think. What was funny about the story is that I was so distracted and so excited about the idea, about all the wrong things I bought, the wrong sizes.I bought women's things for my nephew. I had to return everything the next week. Because Cindy had Seam, I thought, we have to come up with a name that kind of works. Must be a four letter word. I thought it'd be an offshoot of Seam. And so by the time we got home, we came up with the name Rapt, R-A-P-T.
Cindy Estes: She came up with the name Rapt. I always say that it was her idea. And I think it's fabulous. I love it. It's a good name. Does everything perfectly.
Monica O’Neil: You can pick it up if you want.
Cindy Estes: So then we started practicing. We'd buy fabrics, we'd go to the fabric store. We wanted a lot of things. We wanted it to do a lot of things. It needed to have opacity so you couldn't see what the gift was underneath. And we wanted reversibility. Because when you are wrapping a gift, you see both sides, whereas on old school wrapping paper, you don't. So you need to have reversibility. You needed a weight that would actually tie a knot and not be too difficult to tie, not corduroy, right? Corduroy doesn't work. We were solving for all those different pieces when we started to look. I had used a lot of men's shirts in my kids line because it was just perfect, washable and everything. So I would reach out to them. They would sometimes have five yards of something left, or two yards of something left, and we could pick that up. So we did that. Another was a larger company where we were able to get some basic fabrics. Then we went down to a local company, and we started to pick up some remnant stuff, or I used remnant stuff that was left for my kids line. And once we started making it, we realized that just the square of fabric was the solution. The old school art of furoshiki, which is the Japanese art of wrapping with clothes.
Justine Reichman: Was furoshiki something that you guys were really familiar with before?
Monica O’Neil: In fact, we were like, how are we going to close this? We attach snap tape that you see in hospitals, long ribbons, but it looks so messy. The snaps didn't line up exactly for the present side.
Cindy Estes: It wasn't as versatile. If it was medium and you wanted to do a smaller book or a smaller box, if you put snaps on it or Velcro on it, it might not match.
Monica O’Neil: That's the problem. And so we wanted to look really pretty like an old school wrapping paper present does. We finally were like, oh, it's kind of interesting too because it's a square. But what's interesting is, in the same way that your mind just needs to shift, the fabric just needs to shift from a square to a diamond. And once it becomes a diamond, you have the ends to tie. As you saw when you were wrapping a coffee table book, you don't need anything. No scissors, no tape.
Cindy Estes: The other thing is we've been doing it, not only is it sustainable, and that's fabulous, and we're going down that route as much as we can, but also it's easier. On my birthdays right before Christmas, two of my kids went upstairs and I said, you guys, there's wrapping paper and there's Rapt, you can use whichever one you want. And they said, oh, Mom, we won't use the Rapt because that's for you to use for Christmas. And they came back down and they'd used all the fabric, the Rapt. And I was like, what happened? And they said, it was much easier.
Justine Reichman: What role does sustainability play from the get go? I know it was inspired because there's all this waste, but then it seems to come through the whole company in so many different ways. Was that intentional?
Monica O’Neil: Not really. What's funny is it started with the idea of, obviously not throwing all that paper, buying all the wrapping paper. And then as we sort of chose our boxes, we thought, okay, we got it. We're going to do one that can be recycled, that is craft paper boxes or cardboard boxes. And then we started thinking about the amount of paper that we're using, I would say, it became more, and more, and more. And then keeping it in the United States because that was not--
Cindy Estes: But not only in the business, as you and I have talked about, it's extended to our life. I'm now driving an electric car, and we're now both composting, which we weren't before. All of a sudden, the little tiny bits we're doing with this is starting to eat into our lives.
Monica O’Neil: For example, I'm taking my jug of laundry detergent and refilling it at a store in Lexington. There's a lot of zero waste stores around, just little things. All of a sudden, I started buying handkerchiefs instead of using tissues.
Cindy Estes: We've done a pop up at that store. We reached out to that.
Monica O’Neil: Connection, so many different things. I saw a sign recently that said, we don't need people to do zero waste perfectly. We need a million people to do it imperfectly. Just these small changes. And then driving the electric car resources are finite, or your paper towels. I have a stack of rags now next to paper. I still use paper towels, but so much less. Cindy turned me out to the composting. All of a sudden, you start looking at your life a little differently from other areas where you can do something really similar. And obviously, we haven't started a business in any of these things, but it really does have a little bit of a snowball effect. I did think of one thing though that we could do if you could replace the plastic on dry cleaning with a fabric, one that they could reuse every time.
Justine Reichman: Put them in garment bags, which some dry cleaners do, but then they use the nylon ones. I prefer a cotton one that doesn't have plastic in it, but that's just me.
“The culture is changing. One of the challenges as entrepreneurs is building a business while also trying to build a market.” —Monica O’Neil
Monica O’Neil: I think it started with everybody using reusable bags at the grocery store. Also the water bottles. At least the town of Concord, Massachusetts outlawed single use plastic bottles several years ago, and then the people bringing the reusable bags. The culture is changing. It's changing slowly, but it's changing. And I think that for us, one of the challenges as entrepreneurs is we're building a business, but we're also trying to build a market because it's fairly new. In the United States, Japan, and parts of Asia, it has been for centuries that they've been wrapped with red fabric. But in the States 100 years ago or more, Hallmark started wrapping people's things in tissue, and then that morphed into wrapping paper. And so it's changing, but it's a hard habit to break, I think.
Justine Reichman: If we could, I'd love to just share with our community. I don't want to butcher the word furoshiki. If you could, what I would love to do is, just because I know that as you were doing your research and as you were going about doing this, you learned about furoshiki and what that means for you, as well as how you've incorporated into the business and what role it plays. So can you maybe define furoshiki for us?
Monica O’Neil: Centuries ago in Japan. It started with baths, the public baths, and had a different name too. Fortunately, they seem interchangeable, but people would bring their, I guess you'd call the toiletries now, and their clothing to the baths wrapped in bundles of fabric centuries ago. And then that kind of morphed into becoming a commercial use where you'd go and buy your things from the market and wrap them in your fabric. And then it became a gift as that tradition evolved. And so that's kind of the history of Furoshiki.
Cindy Estes: To use it as a gift in stores. And so then it shifted into that because nobody was using it to go to the public bath house anymore, but it has been around for centuries. But we were saying, it tends to be in one size. They don't tend to sell various sizes.
Justine Reichman: That's the difference, basically.
Cindy Estes: They don't tend to sell it in sets like we find a lot online. We can find Eden hallmarks doing it now, but you're gonna buy a sheet of one pattern or print whereas we're trying to provide you with a set so that if you put it out for a birthday or whatever, you go somewhere, they all kind of go together,
Justine Reichman: Makes sense, and it looks nice underneath the tree for the holidays, or bring a group of gifts. They're paying off you twins. They could be cousins, but they all work together. Now that you've sort of got your head around the Rapt to market, and what you want to sell to the community, and the impact you want to have for sustainable life and living, and you're really making an impact there. Because as you said, how many football fields of waste do we have from just Christmas?
Monica O’Neil: I think I said 260, 200. It's a lot of football fields. That's a lot of weight. 100 yards is a football field, and so it's kind of a measure you can sort of visualize. It's just a crazy number.
Justine Reichman: I wonder about the carbon footprint because it's single use. You have to ship this around the world. This is not single use so you're keeping it, yes, there's a little carbon footprint, of course, whenever you ship it somewhere, but you're continuing to use it so it's not single use anymore so I really appreciate that aspect of it. So now that you've captured this Rapt market, and you're making beautiful wrap things for people to be able to give their gifts for, whether it's a birthday or a holiday, are there any other things that we're going to see from you guys in the near future?
“We do listen to customers and what they're interested in and what they feel like they need.” —Cindy Estes
Cindy Estes: We do listen to customers and what they're interested in, and what they feel like they need. So sometimes, we do add things. And earlier, I think I mentioned that we were thinking about how to create something that you store the Rapt in because the storage is different than your regular wrapping paper container storage that you've bought in the past. It doesn't work the same way. So thinking about that, maybe we offer some kind of embroidered gift wrap tags so that you, your family, could buy little ones that are stamped, or embroidered, or whatever that you just keep. So in my case, I do use the ones that we've created, and I write it in ink, and I keep those. But maybe there's another level to think about.
Justine Reichman: I'm just curious, are you familiar with the meat method? Anyway, they go in, they sell all these different things for your pantry and your home. And then on the front of it, you can get different kinds of labels that you stick on. They're magnetic. You can move them around, and they give you an erasable pen, or you buy an erasable pen to put so you can go like this and like that. Something like that could be clever, obviously, in a different format. Because if you use something and you use a pen that you can then erase, you're keeping it in the house. So after the gift, you're not ruining it, you're just taking that off, and it's good for somebody else.
Cindy Estes: That's one of the things that we float around and how to do that, and then always looking for different ways to find fabric that builds part of this market in a positive way.
Justine Reichman: I want to build this. Back a little bit because I know that, Monica, you were originally a teacher, so this is your first endeavor as an entrepreneur. Is that correct?
Monica O’Neil: Yes.
Justine Reichman: You would have a children's company, and this is a second endeavor. I don't know if you had any entrepreneurial endeavors before, and you're some serial entrepreneur that exists all the time.
Cindy Estes: No, this is my second. I started making clothes for my daughter when she turned one. I just didn't like the fit of what was out there, and people would ask me for it. And then eventually, I started making it for stores. And then eventually, I morphed into production, finding production and then trade shows. I was in Barney's for a minute and a half.
Justine Reichman: They had a great kid section, by the way.
Cindy Estes: It was a fun ride. But at some point, it just became tricky. Because at my price point, it was this clothing that could be washed and dried, and go to the playground and the party. Didn't need ironing, but people wanted to spend a little more. They wanted the party dress, and that kind of didn't work. It was just one of those tricky things. So at some point, I was ready to morph.
Justine Reichman: So now you guys come together, and you raised your family, and you were a teacher, and you were an entrepreneur. When you come together, decide how you're going to divide these tasks, stuff that you had to do, you had different experiences, what were some of the things that you leaned into?
Cindy Estes: In college, I was a graphic designer for years. Worked for a museum, and so my background is all very design based.
Monica O’Neil: Cindy designed our logo. All the graphs.
Cindy Estes: So the website, the photography, the Instagram, that was kind of easy, actually.
Monica O’Neil: And then the inventory was at my house at the time. And so it was kind of an easy division of labor insurance. Even though I don't have a business background, I started just reading every book I could find, starting with the Lean Startup. We still are very lean, actually. It's been learning, but it's been really interesting. I feel like every day you wake up just trying to solve a problem. This business started by solving a problem. It's been interesting to talk to people to buy it. It's been interesting to see people adopt things well.
Cindy Estes: And see people that find us. It was kind of cool that you guys found us.
Justine Reichman: I'm curious, as you came together and you went into your specialties or your niches, it was very straightforward. I'm sure there were other things that came up that maybe you guys were not familiar with. Are there any tips on how you navigated that that you might share with other founders today?
Monica O’Neil: We did a lot of learning, trial by error and weird marketing. Well, we're still trying the marketing piece, don't go to the print magazines, which we're transitioning in the last 6, 10 years. Transitioning to digital, the actual digital marketing. A lot of it, we didn't know anything about and just had to learn. I joined a cohort at Babson. Cindy did another one too.
Cindy Estes: Tried all kinds of stuff. It's just a question of, where's the special sauce? And in terms of spending your money. And at the moment, we had hired someone that helped with SEO, and they helped with AD, Google ads. And so we're now running our own based on some of the metrics that they had created over the last two years.
“That's a big deal for entrepreneurs when they reach that threshold and they're now trying to do marketing and paid advertising.” —Justine Reichman
Justine Reichman: That's a big deal for entrepreneurs when they reach that threshold that they're now trying to do marketing and paid advertising. So what was that moment for you when you realized, okay, we need to take this leap, and we need to be able to move forward on this. How did you decide that?
Cindy Estes: We started with someone that actually was reaching out to a lot of print stuff. It's a local TV show called Chronicle, and there was a 15 minute piece on us. We got a lot of bump from that, and we almost ended up on Drew Barrymore, but that didn't pan out. But stuff like that, we realized, okay, at some point, it got us into a lot of magazines, and that was great. But then, we wanted to explore something else. So then we went to the digital media part of, it is just exploring and attempting different ways. And the digital media person worked beautifully for a year, but then the second year wasn't as strong. So then the question is, do you want to spend the same amount? And so we decided that we would use it ourselves.
Monica O’Neil: I think one of the biggest challenges I know, for me personally, in the beginning was putting yourself out there, talking to people in public and putting your videos out. Doing your pitch in front of a group or an audience, it's scary. Even though I was a teacher, I was used to being in front of a classroom of kids, it was challenging to stand out there and fit your idea to total strangers. But as you did it, you realized, you can do it. You can do these things that aren't that difficult, and you get better at it the longer you do it. To me, that was just really interesting.
Cindy Estes: One of the other things I have to say that also came into play was having done Seam for 10 years. The kids line, I had a lot of answers. So some of the answers were, don't over produce. Our inventory is such that you don't need to recreate it every second. I did with Seam because you have to have a new print in fall or spring. And if you try and re bring your spring back, people will know, can't do that. Whereas in Rapt, it's different. Then the other one was, I would do these beautiful prints with Seam, and everyone would love them, and it would draw them in. But that's not what's sold. What sold were, as I like to say, the little black dress. So recognizing that you can do the prints to get somebody's attention and excitement, but what's going to sell are the solids and the neutrals. So it was great that I had learned that previously, and it became a very important jumping off point.
Monica O’Neil: And thinking about how you're spending your money so that we don't have too much inventory. But managing that with the demand, it's been interesting, and we're so heartened by people's reactions when they start doing it. A lot of people have gone really deep, and started a collection.
Justine Reichman: Wow. So Cindy, when you decided to collaborate with Monica on Rapt, did you let Seam go? When you guys first came together to do this, and this was eight years ago, did you imagine you'd be where you are today?
Cindy Estes: I don't know that I had some clear expectation going in. There was a funny moment in the very beginning where Monica's like, we can't have the website live. You can't put it live because if we're gonna sell out, and no one will have an optimist. No one's gonna know it's live. I definitely had the experience on that particular port. I knew that slowly going forward. And luckily, my husband also said that, look, you just keep putting one step ahead of the next, keep going and trying things.
Justine Reichman: Wow. Well, I'm super excited for you guys. I'm super excited to showcase you as part of the Essential Ingredients Gifting Guide for Sustainable Living next week, November 21, at our holiday pop up that Ashley is hosting in ROSS. For those of you in the Bay Area, do turn up. It's from 3:00, 4:00 to 7:00. We'll be sharing the information on Instagram. So if you don't follow us, or you're not familiar with us, follow us at essential.ingredients, or look at Justine Reichman. We'll make sure to share all the information for the pop up as well as Rapt, and we're going to even show some videos on how you get your Rapt product, how you can sustainably, thoughtfully and beautifully wrap all your holiday presents and birthday presents coming up. So I want to thank you guys so much for tuning in today. I want to thank both you guys for joining me and sharing your journey with me, as well as the product and the little tutorial. great
Monica O’Neil: Thanks so much for reaching out.
Justine Reichman: Before we let everyone go, if anybody that's not in the Bay Area wanted to get their Rapt, where might they get their Rapt?
Cindy Estes: raptgiftwrap.com.
Monica O’Neil: Find us on Instagram @raptgiftwrap.
Justine Reichman: Thank you guys again for joining us. Thank you to our community for tuning in. And if you're listening to the podcast, but want to see the video cast, you can find us at NextGen Purpose on YouTube where you can check out the video, as well as all the different ways that you can wrap your presence. We'll make sure to post them also on Instagram. Thank you.
Cindy Estes: Thank you. Justine, it was great.
