Let the customers do the talking…or breaking

Laura Youngson
6 min readDec 13, 2020

Last week, I had the rush of excitement that comes from seeing Ida products being worn in the wild. Admittedly, this one took a while to get my head around, not least because the person wearing the Ida wave was upside down.

Our socks were on a billboard! Raygun143, aka Rachael Gunn, sent us a message on instagram showing her repping our socks for a Daily Telegraph article about breakdancing being included in the Paris 2024 Olympics.

Ray Gun upside down on a billboard in Sydney

With most milestones in Ida’s journey, I have normally dreamt about them for months before they happen: making our first production run; seeing AFLW athletes wearing our shoes in competition; and receiving 5* reviews from players who have been helped by wearing our boots.

However, this moment — seeing our socks on a breakdancer on a billboard — was one that I hadn’t even considered, and I started reflecting on our customers and how they perceive our products and our brand.

#1. Don’t second-guess how people will respond to your product

When consulting to other organisations I aim to stimulate creativity and build on ideas by encouraging team members to NOT:

  1. Judge;
  2. Joke; or
  3. Justify

when they are presenting ideas. Let the audience react, I say, let them reflect to you what they are thinking. Don’t prejudge someone’s idea that can build upon yours, don’t presume they are thinking the same thing you are, don’t write off your idea before it’s had the chance to fly free into other people’s brains.

The same goes for products. Although I have many opinions about my boots and I’m already designing version 6 in my head because version 2 isn’t good enough for me, I try to wait and see what my customers feel, think and say when they connect with Ida. It’s taken a long time to get into the habit of not saying what I think when people are reacting to Ida for the first time.

I have worked on removing the judgement: “Oh well, it might not work for your sport”.

And the joking: “Yeah, all black, right? ‘Cos we didn’t want to make it pink”.

And the justifying: “So, this bit needs fixing and this bit but we worked really hard on this bit”.

Because I do not have the same lived experience as my customer. I don’t know what colour preferences they have or how they react to a particular style. I don’t know where they are going to train and with whom. And I can still be surprised by the uses they find for our awesome creations.

Watching TV inside wearing Idas

Our boots are used primarily for football (soccer) and AFL (Aussie Rules Football) but we’ve also had players who rep them in Ultimate Frisbee, Rugby, Touch, and even enquiries from Quidditch players (be careful when you go down the Quidditch YouTube wormhole…). Players send us pictures wearing our shoes on the pitch for games, in training, in the blazing heat, in the rain, kicking a ball with their dog, slung over their shoulder at the pub and even in the house watching TV.

Our socks are used for kicking a footie, lounging, skateboarding, learning new tricks, CrossFit, gardening (classic sport), and now breakdancing.

#2. Do give people space and silence to tell you what they think

Core to Ida’s DNA is listening. We spend a disproportionate amount of time listening to feedback from our customers, athletes and future customers.

I never would have envisioned many of the uses above without the crucial skill of listening to understand what athletes want. I also try to listen with my whole self to hear what people are saying but what they aren’t as well. To see how their bodies and faces react to our ideas. We then take their feedback and adapt our products and marketing accordingly.

But wow, does feedback hurt sometimes (people who tell you it doesn’t have to be robots). I’ve built a thicker skin over the past few years as I’ve shown version after version to different people and waited for their reaction. I look back now and laugh at what we started with but I know that how we began got us here so it was worth the critiques.

There are a few things I do to put myself in the frame of mind to receive (tough) feedback about our products:

  • Try to sort or categorise the feedback. Is what the person saying a one-off issue or something that comes up again and again? This is especially helpful when making design changes.
  • Is the person giving you the feedback in your target demographic? Weight their feedback accordingly as to whether they are a) female, b) a professional player, c) have even tried your shoes on.
  • What’s important to the customer might not be important to you and vice versa, but their perception will affect how they interact with your brand. Instead of presupposing they should interact with the products and brand in a particular way, how can I address their concerns?
  • Try to separate the manner in which the feedback is delivered from the content. Someone might be having a bad day but their observations are valid.

Feedback is learning. Bad feedback can deliver as many, if not more, insights as good feedback. Comments can be delivered in all sorts of ways but if you’re not listening to your customers then you might as well be building chocolate fire engines.

#3 Allowing your product to have a life of its own.

It was always our intention to be led by athletes. We made our first boots to satisfy demand in football and AFLW. We made those first boots predominantly black because that’s what players told us they wanted. We then came up with the best version of our product for those sports.

Then our products started flying the nest and generating stories of their own. People started playing other sports with them and other people started spotting our shoes on professional athletes at training. We spent much of 2020 focusing on selling in Australia but our brand is resonating further afield we’ve had orders from the US, Brazil, Mexico, Sweden, the UK and Canada.

Our products have also given us magical surprises by having additional positive features that have only been revealed by our customers. For example, we knew they were comfy, but we didn’t really realise the extent to which there is often no break-in time. Players can literally wear the boots out of the box onto the pitch.

We are seeing people connect with brand for a whole variety of reasons and bringing Ida into their lives. I’m so proud of how our first shoes have more uses and engaged in more spaces than I had ever imagined.

I keep this all in mind as I work with the team on our next versions — just wait until you see what’s coming. I have an idea, but you probably have ideas of your own.

Until then I’m going to keep spotting Idas in the wild and cheering on all the people putting our products through their paces and pushing our ideas further than they ever thought they would go.

Ray Gun pulling some incredible moves

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Laura Youngson

World Record Holder x Equal Playing Field x Entrepreneurship TEDxMelbourne