"If you haven't already established a digital ecosystem for you to do business it really is something that needs to be done."
Melissa Haque is an award-winning entrepreneur, business mentor, author, marketing specialist, and mother, known for her passion for business, cheerful disposition, and overly loud laugh.
As founder and CEO of award-winning playdough brand Wild Dough, Melissa is on a mission to give mothers the tools, education, and products to facilitate exciting sensory experiences for their children, whilst claiming some time back for themselves. Wild Dough is a playdough like no other as it was developed specifically for little hands. Melissa created it for her own daughter after tiring of the generic playdough tubs continually drying out and never being soft enough for her two-year-old daughter to roll it herself.
After an extensive amount of time searching for an alternative, Melissa took matters into her own hands. She perfected the playdough recipe by creating Wild Dough. It’s incredibly soft, non-drying, great smelling playdough that encourages hours of imaginative and sensory play. Melissa has successfully scaled Wild Dough from initially working from her kitchen bench, to a factory leading up to 10 staff with the capacity to produce up to 10,000 units per week. Wild Dough is proudly handmade in Melbourne and is stocked in specialty stores across USA and Australia.
Melissa is also passionate about supporting other women to succeed in business. She has drawn on her background in strategic marketing and own experience building the Wild Dough business, brand, and manufacturing to mentor and coach other business owners wanting to launch and scale their own self-made product business.
Melissa has recently co-authored a book titled “Courage and Confidence” which is full of tips and tricks to help aspiring business owners to become entrepreneurs themselves.
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Table of Contents
We are thrilled to have you join us today, welcome to ValiantCEO Magazine’s exclusive interview! Let’s start off with a little introduction. Tell our readers a bit about yourself and your company.
Melissa Haque: My name is Mel and I’m honoured to be here with you today.
I’m a courageous entrepreneur, CEO and founder of Wild Dough Playdough.
People usually hear me coming as I tend to laugh a lot and pride myself on seeing the positive side of life.
I started my company from my kitchen bench in 2018, with a toddler and baby on my hip. Wild Dough is a playdough like no other as it was developed specifically for little hands. I actually created it for my own daughter after tiring of the generic playdough tubs continually drying out and never being soft enough for her two-year-old fingers to roll herself.
After an extensive amount of time searching for an alternative, I took matters into my own hands by perfecting the playdough recipe and creating Wild Dough. It’s incredibly soft, non-drying, great smelling playdough that encourages hours of imaginative and sensory play.
Wild Dough is proudly handmade in Australia scaled it successfully to produce 10000 units a week. Wild Dough is available for purchase online in Australia and USA as well as through specialty retail stores.
Being a mother is the hardest job in the world, which I know first hand. I am on a mission to give other mothers the tools, education, and products to facilitate exciting sensory experiences for their children, whilst claiming some time back for themselves. I mean, what mama couldn’t use more time for themselves?
I’m also passionate about supporting other women to succeed in business and am sharing my own experiences in building the Wild Dough business, brand, and manufacturing to mentor and coach other business owners wanting to launch and scale their own self-made product business.
2020 and 2021 threw a lot of curve balls into business on a global scale. Based on the experience gleaned in the past couple years, how can businesses thrive in 2022? What lessons have you learned?
Melissa Haque: 2020 and 2021 were actually our 2nd and 3rd years in business and it has been an extremely difficult time to continue scaling our manufacturing in this environment. We’ve been lucky that the Wild Dough product demand grew whilst the world was in lockdown and many families were at home and looking for activities and engaging ways to teach their children that were screen-free. Whilst the demand for our product grew significantly we had the most difficult time making our product, especially as our headquarters are in Melbourne, Australia which earned notoriety for having the longest (and harshest) lockdown in the world.
My biggest learning has been to plan as far ahead as possible, and to start putting the plans into play early. Never assume that things will stay the same way they are and to be ready to shift your strategy when needed. I’m a huge advocate for planning and strategy but also believe that pivoting and changing the strategy when required is also important. We now live in a society where we never know what will come at us next so we need to be ready to ebb and flow with change to continue to be successful in business.
The pandemic seems to keep on disrupting the economy, what should businesses focus on in 2022? What advice would you share?
Melissa Haque: If you haven’t already established a digital ecosystem for you to do business it really is something that needs to be done. If you sell products, you need to have an option to sell them online. If you are a service-based business, again, you need to make sure you can run it digitally. Consumers are more digital-savvy than ever and are now used to accessing products and services easily online. So if you don’t have a digital presence, make it a priority.
This includes digital contact, and building email lists. Secondly, I’d say you should do some work to really identify your target market and their current needs and wants. With such huge change taking place across the market since the pandemic started, it’s really important to go back to basics and make sure you are really talking to your core target persona, and understand what it is they want right now.
How has the pandemic changed your industry and how have you adapted?
Melissa Haque: A huge number of families across the world were forced to homeschool for a very long time, including families who would never have chosen to do this before. This shift brought with it many challenges for parents as they continued to work whilst needing to care and teach for their children.
We focused on morphing our social channels and communication into a place offering free resources and different ideas of how a parent could use playdough in an endless amount of ways.
We wanted to help support them by ensuring that if they had one learning resource in their house, playdough, then we could offer them new activities each day for their children to do. Some needed a parent to join them, and many others could be done independently.
What advice do you wish you received when the pandemic started and what do you intend on improving in 2022?
Melissa Haque: I wish someone told me to take it seriously from day 1. To manufacture Wild Dough, all of our ingredients and packaging are sourced within Australia. So as the world shut down, I thought that my business would continue as usual. I didn’t realise that as China manufacturing closed, it would mean that there would be increased pressure on local ingredients and materials as large businesses started buying onshore. This meant that we had large wait times from our suppliers which we never had before and left us unable to supply our product for a period.
Over the last 6 months, we have rapidly scaled our production as well as our warehouse space to store so this year we are working on ensuring we have continuous production and stock available to quickly fulfill our large partner orders.
Online business surged higher than ever, B2B, B2C, online shopping, virtual meetings, remote work, Zoom medical consultations, what are your expectations for 2022?
Melissa Haque: My expectation is this will continue. All the technology, understanding, and capability is now in place in order to do business online, and businesses have had a taste of a global marketplace. Once we get a feel for what else is out there, it’s hard to hold a business back. I for one have relished in having our USA business feel closer to home as we have run it the exact way we do our Australian arm throughout this period.
How many hours a day do you spend in front of a screen?
Melissa Haque: Great question. I certainly spend most of my days in front of a screen. There is definitely less face-to-face and more screen however I do run our warehouse and factory with many staff which isn’t over a screen. Probably 80% of my workday is screen time.
The majority of executives use stories to persuade and communicate in the workplace. Can you share with our readers examples of how you implement that in your business to communicate effectively with your team?
Melissa Haque: I am really passionate about sharing the big picture with my team. Often an employee does their day-to-day tasks and doesn’t realise how those pieces fit together for broader success with a project or goal.
I am very encouraging and always share what their job and success means for the broader picture. It may be a small thing like our team of influences all coordinating to promote a new product launch, but when everyone works together and executes their own tasks as planned, it can create a huge ripple for a business launch and really drives success. So I like to loop back and share the success we had based on the tasks that the team had done. As well as to praise and encourage and share my journey as much as possible.
Business is all about overcoming obstacles and creating opportunities for growth. What do you see as the real challenge right now?
Melissa Haque: With so much change over the pandemic it’s a real challenge to figure out new ways to do things. New income streams to kick-off, new niches and markets to launch into, and new ways to sell. We’ve had to be really creative and go back to basics to think about who our customer is and how we can help them.
I believe in an insight-led marketing approach, and keeping this front of mind has certainly helped us recognise new opportunities. Additionally, being open to change and not being set in a certain way of doing things has really helped us in overcoming obstacles, rising up when needed, and being courageous when faced with big decisions.
In 2022, what are you most interested in learning about? Crypto, NFTs, online marketing, or any other skill sets? Please share your motivations.
Melissa Haque: This year I’m really motivated to focus more on our exporting business to expand into new foreign markets that we haven’t sold into yet. We’ve had a lot of interest globally however with the increased price in international shipping, as well as the recent delays we have been cautious about entering new markets. Our product is long lasting, but does not have an indefinite shelf life, so until now our focus has been on our core markets of Australia and the US.
A record 4.4 million Americans left their jobs in September in 2021, accelerating a trend that has become known as the Great Resignation. 47% of people plan to leave their job during 2022. Most are leaving because of their boss or their company culture. 82% of people feel unheard, undervalued and misunderstood in the workplace. Do you think leaders see the data and think “that’s not me – I’m not that boss they don’t want to work for? What changes do you think need to happen?
Melissa Haque: I believe, that as a leader, it’s important to give your team opportunities to share honest feedback and constructive criticism in a way that makes them feel comfortable. Either directly or anonymously. Without seeking this feedback, it’s impossible to improve culture, team satisfaction, or self-growth as a leader. No one should ever think that’s not me, we should always be seeking ways to improve ourselves as leaders and mentors to others.
On a lighter note, if you had the ability to pick any business superpower, what would it be and how would you put it into practice?
Melissa Haque: It would definitely have to be teleportation. I often wish I could be in 2 places at once, whether it’s at a sales meeting, trade fair, running our factory or spending time with my family. A lot of time goes into building a company from scratch and I’d love to be able to be in more places at once.
The recent adoption of technology and virtual meetings has certainly helped as I no longer need to be at a face to face meeting everywhere. I plan to continue to focus on where my time is best spent and surround myself with a great team who can be in places when I can’t be.
What does “success” in 2022 mean to you? It could be on a personal or business level, please share your vision.
Melissa Haque: I’ve got some lofty goals for this year, but they are mostly launching into new areas. So this year, from a business point of view it will be about successfully executing these plans rather than huge growth in those areas. On a personal front, I’m really passionate about helping other women in business succeed so I am focusing on mentoring and coaching others who have self-made businesses. I’m lucky to have 15 years of marketing expertise that I’ve been able to put into practice for myself whilst growing my own business. I’m looking forward to helping others more and being a cheerleader for other female-led businesses as well as having a holiday with my family now that international travel will become easier.
Mike Weiss, VIP Contributor to ValiantCEO and the host of this interview would like to thank Melissa Haque for taking the time to do this interview and share her knowledge and experience with our readers.
If you would like to get in touch with Melissa Haque or her company, you can do it through her – Facebook
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