Today we have a special episode of the podcast recorded live at h+h americas 2023. Our Day #3 keynote was a fireside chat with Justine Tiu, co-founder of The Woobles.
The Woobles is a company that makes learn-to-crochet kits for complete beginners. Through The Woobles, Justine has taught over 200,000 people how to crochet. Before starting The Woobles, Justine was a User Experience Designer at Google. Drawing on her background in user research and product design, she creates easy-to-follow and aesthetically pleasing experiences for the beginner crocheter.
We are so pleased to bring you a recording of this live interview with Justine!
In this chat, Justine talks about her years working at Google in user experience design. She explains how she was promoted to a management-level position only to realize that she didn’t enjoy managing a team. With her self-confidence at a low point, she sought out some hobbies that might take her mind off of work, one of which was crochet. It turned out that her mom was actually skillet at crochet, but hadn’t shared her skill with Justine so she had some mentorship.
Justine and her husband both wanted to change careers. They thought about a variety of potential business ideas until settling on crochet amigurumi kits. Justine talks about the early days of winding yarn on a Sharpie to put into the kits. She explains how she applied the concepts of user experience design to creating a crochet kit that would allow all users to be successful.
She also shares what it was like to be on Shark Tank, some of the early successes and challenges the company faced, how the packaging for The Woobles evolved over time, and more. This chat is truly filled with applicable and inspiring business tips! Plus, we take audience questions at the end.