The birth of Stroli – Where did it all start?
For my entire working life, I have been an advertising person. I owned and ran my own agency, Trumpet, in Soho London for almost 17 years. We worked with amazing brands – Grants Whisky, Samsung, Vespa, English Heritage, Calvet Wine to name but a few. We won awards and had a stack of fun doing it.
But there comes a time when you want to try something new. I set myself some objectives that the business had to meet:
- It had to be an actual product, not a service.
- It can already exist but there should be no ‘go to’ brand existing.
- It has to have some kind of actual benefit to humankind and the planet.
Put these three thoughts together and I arrived at the humble Shopping Trolley on wheels. But we would make them with several strong points of difference. They will be made from recycled materials and responsibly sourced materials. They will cool and change the perception that they are for ‘old people’ and give it a great name. Ta dah! Stroli was born.
Bringing the idea of a shopping trolley on wheels to life
As you have seen from the intro, my marketing skills covering design, branding, brand strategy and creative implementation of communications are my core skill set. So the easy bit for me was bringing the brand to life.
The hard bit has been the product development and manufacture. This was further compounded by starting in lockdown!
However, with determination and a strong focus found an excellent manufacturing partner. We then worked through the supply chain issues, shipping price increases and more, and launched in November.
We have now started generating sales and interest and were also picked up by a social media influencer called Anais Gallagher.