#104 - Imagine transforming your life through running, and the spark of that transformation leading to an innovation in the running world. That's exactly what happened to our guest, Anthony Pong, CEO of Caterpy, and his business partner, Kaji.
Their partnership, born out of Kaji's quest to quit smoking through the discipline of running, led to the creation of a unique shoelace that's taking the running world by storm. Listen to Anthony as he walks us through his journey from a hedge fund to a global product distribution company, making waves with their innovative running gear.
Topics Covered:
Hear Anthony’s story and what led to becoming CEO of Caterpy
Discover how Caterpy’s solution helps runners and other athletes
Learn why movement is so important, even if its not running
Listen to the behind the scenes of Caterpy as a startup
Today’s Guest
Anthony Pong
Anthony Pong, CEO of Caterpy, graduated from the University of Florida with a Mathematics degree in 2 years. After university, he started multiple businesses, ranging from financial services to international product distribution. Central to all of his experiences are analytical skills and making data-driven decisions.
“Inspire to Run Podcast is truly inspiring!” <– If that sounds like you, please consider rating and reviewing my show! This helps me support more people — just like you — move toward the healthy life that they desire. Click here, scroll to the bottom, tap to rate with five stars, and select “Write a Review.” Then be sure to let me know what you loved most about the episode!
#104 - Imagine transforming your life through running, and the spark of that transformation leading to an innovation in the running world. That's exactly what happened to our guest, Anthony Pong, CEO of Caterpy, and his business partner, Kaji.
Their partnership, born out of Kaji's quest to quit smoking through the discipline of running, led to the creation of a unique shoelace that's taking the running world by storm. Listen to Anthony as he walks us through his journey from a hedge fund to a global product distribution company, making waves with their innovative running gear.
Topics Covered:
Hear Anthony’s story and what led to becoming CEO of Caterpy
Discover how Caterpy’s solution helps runners and other athletes
Learn why movement is so important, even if its not running
Listen to the behind the scenes of Caterpy as a startup
Today’s Guest
Anthony Pong
Anthony Pong, CEO of Caterpy, graduated from the University of Florida with a Mathematics degree in 2 years. After university, he started multiple businesses, ranging from financial services to international product distribution. Central to all of his experiences are analytical skills and making data-driven decisions.
“Inspire to Run Podcast is truly inspiring!” <– If that sounds like you, please consider rating and reviewing my show! This helps me support more people — just like you — move toward the healthy life that they desire. Click here, scroll to the bottom, tap to rate with five stars, and select “Write a Review.” Then be sure to let me know what you loved most about the episode!
Hi, my friend. As runners, we are always looking for ways to improve our performance and our overall experience. Well, today we're going to talk about an innovative solution for running shoes, but it doesn't require you to change the brands or shoes that you're using. Today we also get to hear a little bit about what goes on behind the scenes in a startup and how they bring new innovation to market. Hope you enjoy.
Speaker 2:
Welcome to Inspire to Run Podcast. Here you will find inspiration, whether you are looking to take control of your health and fitness or you are a seasoned runner looking for community and some extra motivation. You will hear inspiring stories from amazing runners, along with helpful tips from fitness experts. Now here is your host, richard Connor.
Speaker 1:
Hi, my friend. Welcome to Inspire to Run Podcast. I'm so excited that we have Anthony Pong here today. Anthony is a CEO of Caterpie. He graduated from University of Florida with mathematics degree. In two years After university he started multiple businesses ranging from financial services to international product distribution. Central to all of his experiences are his analytical skills and making data driven decisions. So excited to have you on the show. Welcome to show Anthony.
Speaker 3:
Thanks, guys. Thanks for the introduction.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, for sure. So you know, I love bringing on entrepreneurs on the show to share you know your entrepreneurial journey, but also the great work that you're doing to serve, you know the athletic and sports community, in particular, running. So we're going to talk. You know a lot about you and a lot about your company and products and how you're serving the running community. Cool, looking forward to it, alright, so let's just kind of start, you know, just roll back the clock a little bit and learn a little bit more about you.
Speaker 3:
Yeah, sure. So I mean I think you did a pretty great introduction. Well, after college, I graduated the math degree. It was about 2011. I was in school around 2009, right after the financial crisis. So I personally didn't think I could find a job, so I thought I could only go out and make jobs, you know. So my first job out of college, I started a hedge fund with a couple other guys. We specialized in algorithmic trading, thinking that markets were turning bad and I wouldn't be able to find a job elsewhere. You know good good at bad timing. We kind of started the markets, started the fund, into one of the best market times in history. I was a really stable five year period of growth. So you know something, we learned something. We didn't do so well, but that was my first venture out of college.
Speaker 1:
Alright, wonderful. Well, thank you for sharing that and you know I really love to learn more about, like, what led you down the entrepreneurial route in terms of creating products for you know, our community, so you know, kind of tell us a little bit about that journey.
Speaker 3:
Yeah, sure. So growing up, you know it could also it could be said that it was kind of trained into me growing up. Growing up I would travel between the US and Asia every year, just growing up because my family was there, my grandparents are there, and for me to just be accustomed for the culture, society and my family there. I traveled a lot and so in these travels I kind of got accustomed for language barriers, culture barriers, product barriers as well. Right, products are kind of built as a end goal of societal needs and so there are different products that you can see very clearly from different societal trends. And so just going back and forth between the two.
Speaker 3:
I kind of realized this is what I was good at, this is what I was interested in. These were all where all my kind of family connections and strengths were as well, and so I wanted to dive deeper into it, how I got into this from the finances. So, after doing the hedge fund, I started doing financial consultings for a little bit here and there just different companies and places and ultimately I found the inventor of Caterpie right. So he full disclosure, I'm actually not the full inventor of Caterpie. I do run the company now, but I was the. I wasn't the original inventor.
Speaker 3:
He's a guy in Japan named Kaji, and so I worked under him or worked for him as his financial services consultant for a little bit while he invented Caterpie. He sold Caterpie really well in Japan, and so he needed help expanding it globally. I was just lucky enough to be in the right place at the right time. I spoke the best English, I was the most familiar with Western culture and Western society out of everyone in the Japanese company, and so it kind of just fell into my hands to try to expand the product distribution globally.
Speaker 1:
Tell us a little bit about like what? What drove your partner to come up with this idea or this invention?
Speaker 3:
Sure. So my partner Kaji, he's actually a big runner, he's a big marathon runner, has run the Tokyo Marathon a few times. He actually started running to kick his smoking habit smoking cigarette habit and so that was one of his the only hobbies, if you will, that allowed him to markedly show a difference between stopping the smoke and not smoking. Right, obviously you're going to run better if you don't smoke, but also running four hours straight blocks you from smoking for four hours, right? So the act of running itself not only help clear his mind of trying to smoke afterwards, but also, in the moment, stopped you from smoking. So that was his big inspiration to start running was to kick the smoking habit.
Speaker 3:
As he was running, he just kept dealing with shoelaces over and over again. He just hated tying shoelaces. You know, tying them on a run, tying them after training. They feel a little different from training day and running day. So, after a lot of iterations, what he started doing was use a normal shoelace. He would tie a little knot at the end of every agglot, agglot, no, no, sorry eyelet hole. So he would tie a knot just to hold the tension, loop it through the next one, find the right tension tie and not hold it in place. So he would do that all the way up. So there were just these static knots at the end of these H-ilyne going up the shoe, and then he started experimenting. Oh, if I made them a little bit smaller and I used an elastic lace, then I could adjust the knots a little bit between the two.
Speaker 3:
So then he started making he physically tied knots, you know every whatever centimeter, and then used that as the shoelace, and so over a couple of iterations, probably one or two years. He figured out hey there's a modular system that we can use with one lace, with these elastic bumps iterated throughout the whole thing that allow for multiple uses, right, the not needing to tie shoes and being able to control your tension.
Speaker 3:
And so it's from his own need of not wanting to tie shoes anymore that he invented this. He invented the first batch just for himself to use, just so he didn't have to tie shoes right. As most great inventions are, the simple ones always seem to be the ones that work the best and the ones that were intended to be sold. He just wanted it for himself. He got really popular with the running community, whether it's the running group, the marathon group, his local community.
Speaker 3:
He just started making more, selling more and yeah over a relatively short period of time, it grew up to be quite successful in Japan.
Speaker 1:
Oh, I love that. I love that and I read online that there's a lot more benefits. You know, one of the benefits that you described is a feeling of the shoe lace if you tie differently you know training or race day but also in terms of like circulation, right, if you tie your shoe lace in a certain way, it might impact circulation. So, you know, can you tell me a little bit about, like, some of the other benefits?
Speaker 3:
Sure, absolutely so. In the running world, a lot of people focus on shoes. Obviously they're important for the foot, health and the comfort Within the shoe. Almost everybody talks about the bottom of the shoe, but nobody talks about the upper of the shoe, right. The bottom of the shoe is where the impact is, where the bottom of your foot is, where your sole is, where cushioning is. We all understand that. But the upper of the shoe is how the shoe binds to your foot. Without good binding, your shoe can never reach its full potential, if you will Right the binding.
Speaker 3:
As you guys have probably seen too, there's different types of lacing methods for different pain points. If you have heel slip, you have high arches. If you have different things, you can lace normal laces differently and have different kinds of tension patterns for your own foot. The point with our laces is to not need different lacing patterns, so you can lace just like normal. Our laces have elastic bumps every centimeter or so, so it allows you to adjust tension to every row throughout the shoe, meaning, if you have wide feet, high arches, narrow heels, you're able to adjust tension in every row of the shoe independently to your foot shape. The bumps lock in the eyelet holes. So every time you take your shoes on and off they become slip-on shoes but have that same custom tension. So you don't have to re-tie your shoes every time and find that sweet spot.
Speaker 3:
Now the big problem we're trying to avoid from tying shoes is the knot itself. So when you tie a shoe, the knot is the singular piece that holds it together. It's the singular point of failure. So if your knot comes in down, your whole shoe comes in down really quickly. The knot also becomes the choking point on your foot. Since tension isn't controlled all the way throughout the shoe, all the tension will eventually build at the knot, because that's what's holding it together and therefore it's always the tightest part on your shoe. You may start to get like a numbing, pinching sensation from the top of the foot. It's called the lace bite and your lace is too tight from your feet getting swollen and it's blocking further blood and nerves getting into your foot.
Speaker 1:
So with our laces.
Speaker 3:
there's two points to it. One is it being elastic, so it expands a little bit with your feet as they start to swell. And also two is it allows contention throughout the entire foot rather than bunched up at the knot, so it prevents that one singular lace bite that you may get from the knot that you make time.
Speaker 1:
Okay, okay, I appreciate you sharing that. That makes a lot of sense and I love what you said about your partner inventing this for his own use. But now it's been popular and globally. I think you're distributing this globally and I think there's a saying goes necessity is another invention. So really interesting how you're solving a real problem and again helping our community.
Speaker 3:
Yeah. So speaking of communities, I know we talk a lot about the running community, so athletics is by far our main target market. With this, all athletes would be use cases for us that we would want to eventually get to running specifically right, because if you're an athlete, you have to run at some point.
Speaker 3:
Running is kind of the most human activity, if you will, for our own likes and feet, and so we wanted to start with one of the most broad areas possible and work from our way from there. A big secondary community that we would see for us specifically would be the medical community or sports medicine community, especially those with arthritis, foot, hand, back surgery or back pains. The one specific disease for the US would be diabetes or diabetics. You know there's a lot of feet swelling, nerve impingement issues already. Normal shoelaces, literally, are attorney on your foot, and so we're trying to solve this issue. So we're trying to bring awareness to it, bring it both for the patients, for the doctors, for the customers, and to solve them with the product too.
Speaker 1:
Oh, I didn't know that. That's really interesting and I love the you know kind of how you can use this same technology and help different people right With, in this case, on the medical side. So I love you sharing that. And then you know, you mentioned about, you know, the running community, which I love to. You know, turn the story back to you for a moment. So I know that you're not necessarily a runner per se, but you run, so tell us a little bit about that.
Speaker 3:
Yeah, so you know I've I've always run my life, throughout my life. I'm a big tennis player. So throughout high school, growing up, I played a lot of tennis. High school played on the team. In college I played post college. I didn't play competitively, but I still play in leagues or with friends or as my daily exercise. With tennis comes. Conditioning, of course, and running is obviously the best condition. So I run out of necessity to condition for tennis, although I don't actually run for myself. Since starting the company I have been around the running community very often, both with running groups, marathon expos, podcasts. You know my wife is actually a big runner as well, so I am surrounding.
Speaker 3:
I do auxiliary the running community quite a lot. I am familiar with the lingo. Although I don't base myself as a true runner, I do try to do runs too.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, yeah, and you know and thank you for sharing that, and you know it's great that you're doing that because you know a lot of the guests that I bring on the show. We had these conversations. If they're maybe runners now, but they weren't always runners and it's interesting to hear how everybody starts with running. It's either, yeah, I did run you know cross-country and track and high school or I ran as part of another sport, so I played soccer, played you know some other sport, and you know I did running. Or I had to run in gym class and it was punishment for me and you know, took me a long time to actually want to do it so.
Speaker 3:
I think there's a beauty in the running as well. You know you're a runner, so you know everybody.
Speaker 3:
There's a reason why so many people like to run you know there's a lot of new documentaries too, where it almost seems like the humans are the ultimate runner, right, we have the most efficient way of running because of our two feet, because of our Achilles tendon, because of the way we can sweat. You know, we can outrun most other animals in terms of long distance and longevity. So, you know, things like that make me think, hey, I really should pick this up more. We were born into this, we were built for this. I really got to expand on these strengths that we have all as humans.
Speaker 1:
Oh well, you know you're on the show, maybe speak it to it. It exists here, you know.
Speaker 1:
But but yeah that's really cool and, yeah, like you said, you know I'm a runner as well and I've been kind of on this journey of not only running but just doing things that I've never done before, right, so, whether it's strictly running or obstacle course racing or, you know, maybe running longer distances, and that's the journey I've been on and that's been a lot of fun for me, but also hearing the stories and sharing the stories of others, and part of the fun that I've been having is learning about the gear and things that can help improve my experience and improve my runs. So, you know products like yours and others to, yeah, like I said, improve the overall experience.
Speaker 3:
Yeah, I mean, I think there's. There's a fine line right now with having too many products and not enough products. Right now there's a lot of products out there from head to toe, that that you know people can access, rise up to. Running is a Pretty unique sport to where you have the ability to customize much gear you want. Right, tennis, basketball, everybody kind of has a set standard of gear, but running you can kind of go ball. You can have more, you can have less and can be a little bit more minimal.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, for sure, and it depends on what you're doing, too, right? So if I'm, you know, running 5ks and my training is distance is relatively short that I may not bring you know as much gear with me, right, versus you know longer distances, I'm bringing more gear, more hydration, you know, fuel and and things like that. So, yeah, it also just depends on what specifically you're doing and you're running. So so, yeah, so tell me a little bit you know about, like, what's kind of next for you? Well, actually, before we get there, one of the questions I like to ask all my guests is like, can tell me one of the biggest Obstacles that you face in your journey and how did you overcome it?
Speaker 3:
So, I mean, I think the biggest obstacle for us in any small business, entrepreneur business, is just straight up, spreading the word, getting the word out there, right? Um, we, I believe we have a good product, I believe we have good margins, and we, I believe we have good operations. But without the marketing and sales, nothing else really matters, right? And so, as all startups, a lot of effort in the beginning should be for marketing and exposure. The plan of attack with us in the beginning was to hit it at every field, meaning we hit online sales. We had in-person events, both small groups for running groups, like weekly running groups, up to the bigger ones for marathon training groups are Sponsored running groups that go to marathons. We would go to a lot of trade shows, both running expos for consumers and retailer trade shows, to sell to the retail stores we would market to and we would sell to retail shops as well, and then we would sell to distributors, right? So it is a plan of attack in every level.
Speaker 3:
I think the important thing to do is be able to measure what kind of effort you're putting into it, what kind of returns are getting out of it. Rather than have it as a qualitative judge, have a quantitative in terms of a return. And so you know, obviously, on the ones that you do better, on you hone a little bit better and kind of dig, double down into it more. The ones that you don't do well, you either try to fix or you drop as as a marketing champ. And so there's been a lot of a B testing for online ads. Right online, I think, since Kobe is, is obviously the most scalable way to grow exposure and to grow sales Right. And so a B testing with online ads since Colbert has been the main objective over the past three years. Previous to that was probably a little bit more emphasis with in-person shows, just to get the ball rolling with in-person shows, in-person sales, in-person retail exposure to yeah, for sure, and you know it was such a challenging time over the last few years.
Speaker 1:
So I Think there's some pros and cons, right. So having that exposure through digital, that's really expanded over the last couple years. I mean this, we were talking about this earlier. This podcast was born out of the pandemic, right, but now that we're back in person, it's great to have kind of this multi-channel Opportunity to, to reach people.
Speaker 3:
And you know, the devil is in the details, both in person and digitally. There are many more facets, right. So digitally, there's blogs that we should be doing or that we have. There's SEO keywords, you know. There's ads, there's landing pages, there's follow-up emails, there's text right, there's. So there's. There's many different systems within each group to really Complete through right before we can measure how things are, how effective things are. Mm-hmm.
Speaker 1:
So you know, let's talk about like what's next, like what's next for you as a tennis player with some running, and then what's next for the company.
Speaker 3:
Yeah, sure. So I, you know the sky's the limit for us right now. I mentioned earlier that Japan sells really well. So just to put some figures to it, japan has sold over a million pairs a year for the last seven years straight a Year, which is crazy, right. So you know, we see that the US market can be much bigger. We're not close to capacity that we believe. We believe the US market is probably three to five times bigger than the Japanese market.
Speaker 3:
So that's just within two laces, right? So within laces we have a couple different variations or types of laces that we have to come out with. So right now we have the run version, the catapult run version, which is our most signature product, that has equally spaced bumps all the way through. Or we have a casual line that's called catapult air, where it looks normal halfway and just bumps at the very end to hold it in place. It's a little bit more for the sneakerhead, casual shoe, everyday Nike shoe that you wear with jeans, not as performance based, but still no ties, still a little bit of those benefits, just not as performance and not as tightly based, you know.
Speaker 3:
So these are the two lines that we're working on immediately with the US. So one is sports based and one is casual based. So those are the two main target markets. There are a couple sub industries in terms of workers comp with like factories with healthcare workers, you know, or boots and dress shoes too, so all shoes eventually could be the market, but I think those are much smaller categories. And the sneakers between sports and casual. So that's just within shoe laces.
Speaker 3:
Now our technology or a patent is in elastic string and rope, not necessarily laces. So what this could be applied for can be used for a couple different industries. One of the main other things we're starting to make and sell right now would be hair ties and bungee cords. These are just smaller Consumer type products that you can kind of see and feel the product without needing to use the laces. These could also be used as a drawstring, right draw strings or hoodies.
Speaker 3:
You pull through the bumps, get stuck. You don't have to tie your hoodie draw strings or sweat pants. Or for board shorts. You pull through the bumps, get stuck. You don't have to tie your shorts anymore. We've thought about doing these for elastic dog Leashes, right, so you don't want the whole dog leash to be elastic. Maybe. Maybe the first foot by your hand is elastic, but the rest of it is static and therefore you still have some control on the dog if you want to hold it closer. But if the dog is, you know, chasing or something or chasing a scroll, you still have a little bit of elastic give for your shoulder, for your elbows, for the, for those big dogs too.
Speaker 3:
We thought about rock climbing, tree climbing ropes. Right now there's only tear away rope, which is a one-time use Rope. Most elastic ropes are too elastic and so if you catch a rock climber it could be too elastic. You fall to the next level of next ledge. So our technology, our pen, is able to control the elastics in certain parts. So we're able to make a rock climbing rope that catches people a little bit better, but not be fully elastic where it could drop to the next level, you know. So rope and string is the ultimate goal of our patent and manufacturing. Where this could be applied is is almost too many industries, you know we have to kind of be careful and pick and choose which next industry want to get into. Really vet the market, see what pricing is like, understand it completely, before we try to expand it to ten different markets and fail at all.
Speaker 3:
Yeah, right so choosing the next industry is a really important step for us as a next step.
Speaker 1:
Agreed, agreed. Well, I'm so happy you started with sports and running, so you know, community definitely appreciates that and it's been really educational to learn. You know the technology that you bring and how it can help us again as runners, so I really appreciate that. So, anthony, what would be, though I kind of as we wind down here what would be the one thing that you would say to inspire our community to run?
Speaker 3:
So I would say there's not so much emphasis on running as in just getting out and moving. I think there's a little bit too much. Go out and run, run, miles, miles, miles. It just makes it seem and feel really scary. I'm an athlete and I don't even like to run, so to convince a non-runner or non-athlete to run in the first place, it just is a bigger hurdle. I think the marketing of it should be a little bit easier. Just get out and move, sweat a little bit, don't be afraid to sweat. When you can build up to the running, that's great, but you don't have to force it. Just get out.
Speaker 3:
Moving is incredibly important. As you probably know, healthy bodies and healthy mind are one. There is no way to be mentally healthy without being physically healthy, ultimately, a long term at least. So I do think reaching out to the community, getting people out there, being healthy and active as a group, is incredibly important. Doing it as a community, I think, is usually more fun. Humans, ultimately, are more social creatures and independent ones, and so join a running group, go to outdoor activity. Maybe it's not running, it's just outdoor sport or something, but I think get out there, start sweating, start moving, get your body moving, get your mind moving. It's all connected.
Speaker 1:
Love it, love it. Great advice for our community. And how can our community find you in Caterpie and follow your journey along?
Speaker 3:
Absolutely so. If you guys want to search us online, our name is Caterpie. You can find us on Google, instagram, facebook, tiktok. It's built C-A-T-E-R-P-Y. Sounds like the Pokemon Caterpie, but with a Y instead of P-I-E. Yep, you can find us on our website of course, so Caterpieus is our. Us site, or Caterpiecom, is our global site.
Speaker 1:
Okay, all right, I'll put that information in the show notes, as usual, to make it easy to find you and Caterpie. So, anthony, thank you again so much for coming on the show sharing your journey, sharing the story behind Caterpie and how it can help our running community. So, with that, thanks, and have a great day.
Speaker 3:
Thank you so much, richard, and I appreciate you being on the show. Thanks, everyone.
Speaker 2:
That's it for this episode of Inspire to Run Podcast. We hope you are inspired to take control of your health and fitness and take it to the next level. Be sure to click the subscribe button to join our community and also please rate and review. Thanks for listening. Bye.