Author’s Blurb: I like to think that I’m usually a prepared person whenever I go out. I always ensure that I have the necessities like tissues, wet tissues, some medicine, and hand sanitiser. But there will be times when I tend to leave out one small thing, or run out because I didn’t have extra.
I’m not surprised if many others aren’t well prepared though, as I’m used to being the one pulling out tissues and other necessities from my bag in my friend groups.
Upon realising that most people usually never knew what they needed to prepare themselves, Bay Pui Ling thought about designing convenient and practical prep kits.
She saw these as solutions to overcome minor situations and began creating them under a brand called In Case Of.
In these kits, you’d find stuff like face masks, soap, hand sanitiser, a coffee brew bag, and mints, for example, depending on which kit you go for.
You might think that these are trivial products compared to a First Aid kit, but these aren’t meant to address serious emergencies anyway.
Think of them as care packages instead, for unforeseen, small alamak moments.
“We’re tapping into the millennial market that wants a bespoke experience,” Bay said.
“They desire touching care, excitement, and love to share experiences to their own community. If anything delights them, they’d like to own one and even buy it for others.”
An Actually Useful Gift
I personally thought that In Case Of’s prep kits aren’t something I’d buy for myself, since I could assemble something similar on my own.
Having said that, I would still appreciate receiving one as a gift, and would definitely gift it to someone.
Unsurprisingly, the team behind In Case Of has 14 years of experience in the gifting industry, and created these products from customer feedback and insights.
“This helps develop a complete buyer persona and helps us create ideas that are unique for our target customers,” Bay said.
As these kits are meant to be gifted, the team also invested effort into their brand design, which was what initially caught my eye.
Simply because the branding is adorable and what’s in the prep kits are actually useful, I see these as thoughtful and fun gifts for someone you care about.
There are several different prep kits In Case Of offers, and each one deals with a different situation like balik kampung, going back to school, or even just our daily life in the new normal.
“We create ideas from customers’ perspectives. In everyday life, we encounter a lot of common situations,” Bay shared.
“We relate products to events, we need to ensure it bundles well and works practically for the consumer.”
Convenient And Cute
When I first saw the pricing of the prep kits, I did balk a little. Take for example the “On-The-Go” prep kit, which has:
- 3x surgical mask,
- 3x pocket mask clip holder,
- 1x disinfecting wipes,
- 1x sanitiser spray,
- 1x soap,
- 1x soap container (assorted colours),
- 1x emergency pod, which includes some plasters, stomach medicine, Panadol, and more,
- 1x A5 memo bottle,
- 1x First Aid pouch.
It costs RM98, and I’m assuming that if I were to assemble all these myself in the same quantity, it wouldn’t quite reach this price.
However, I would also be spending time buying each one of these products, and they wouldn’t come in cute packaging.
So, for the convenience, cute packaging, and the fact that these are meant to be a gift and not necessarily for yourself, I see why the price can be justified.
In fact, “On-The-Go” is one kit that they’ve been getting an overwhelming response for, which Bay put down to the fact that it offers most of the basic necessities for the daily new normal.
A Growing Demand
While she declined to share numbers, she said that their customer base and sales have been growing steadily throughout its 2 months of being in the market.
Mainly, they’ve received lots of corporate enquiries to help them deliver care for employees working from home, and to cheer them up during this challenging time.
Lifestyle stores have also reached out to the team to list In Case Of’s products, showing that there is demand for what they’re offering.
Customer needs tend to change very fast though, and that is one of the biggest challenges the team has to constantly address.
“Customers get bored easily. We want to ensure our teams are responsive enough in capturing the changes and working out the ideas that are exciting enough to consumers,” Bay said.
She foresees that they’ll see tremendous growth during the Christmas season, but they plan to launch more than seasonal gifts too.
For the moment, their focus is on improving their products for the market’s needs while ensuring that the kits are fun and exciting enough for customers to recommend them to others.
Bottom Line: I think what In Case Of is offering is actually quite an attractive product once I understood it was meant to be gifted. I’ve always struggled with finding meaningful or useful gifts, but with these, I don’t doubt that they’d be used right up by the recipient, whoever they may be.
- You can learn more about In Case Of here.
- You can read about other Malaysian startups we’ve written about here.
Featured Image Credit: In Case Of
