Today we’d like to introduce you to Itamar Cohen.
ZIPIT began when a 24-year-old Israeli student was tasked with a design school project that involved making a 2D item into a 3D creation. While sitting at home working on this project, he came up with the unique idea of creating a pouch made from a single strip of zipper.
Several young entrepreneurs heard about his creation and immediately felt there was commercial potential behind the idea. As a result, ZIPIT was established in 2006. Two years later, Itamar Cohen, the current CEO of ZIPIT, came on board after a stint in the IT world with a bigger vision for this clever zippered creation.
Cohen shares, “In my few short years in the Israeli High-Tech industry, I worked with world class creative and passionate people who followed the highest standards. When joining ZIPIT in its very first stages as a company, my goal was to bring those standards to a ‘low tech’ company and create something different.”
Under Cohen’s direction and guidance, ZIPIT has become a multimillion dollar company with $140 million in retail sales over the past five years. Cohen shares, “When we visited the stores and their stationary aisles, all we saw were dull and uninspiring products with low price as the main product attribute. This is when we knew that we wanted to change this equation and introduce cleverly designed, high quality products that would still be affordable for everyone.” Equipped with a clever idea and a lot of passion, they thought long and hard about where to sell the product. Cohen knew that to achieve their goal, they had to mass produce, “To keep costs low and sell our pouches in the mass market. We had no investors or backing, just our own money and determination.”
ZIPIT took its first steps into the American mass market in 2009. Cohen shares, “Our VP of Sales, Ronen Kapon worked closely with a few U.S. mass retailers and was successful in getting Office Depot on board. They were the first to give us the opportunity to test our basic pencil cases in all stores. Sales that summer were great, and it opened the door for us to more and more retailers. The expansion to more retail chains came when we had proven sales and much broader lines of products.” ZIPIT changed the product category by creating new price categories that were higher but still very affordable while maintaining originality, innovation, and quality. ZIPIT has grown by leaps and bounds in the past five years not only generating $140 million in retail sales but producing over 20 million products. They’ve worked with at least 45 worldwide retailers directly and distribute to more than 60 countries.
Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
Building a company and maintaining its growth is very rarely a smooth road. We always think about new ways to excite and surprise our customers and in order to achieve that I can say that to a certain degree we are required to constantly reinvent ourselves. This means that the notion of “comfort zone” does not really exist for us but all in all we were (and still) very fortune to enjoy every step of the road.
ZIPIT – what should we know? What do you guys do best? What sets you apart from the competition?
ZIPIT is a small design house with very unique global reach. One of our customers told me once that he believes that the best way to describe ZIPIT is as a special commando unit where every team member has special field of expertise but if needed s/he can do everything. I love the analogy, since in many ways it is true and this is how we built our company.
Our largest achievement is our incredible team that includes super intelligent and talented people that are all very much committed to ZIPIT vision. While we are a small company we have offices in 4 countries (America, Europe, Asia and the Middle East). We design patented, high quality products, which comes with life time warranty, and we sell our products for mass retailers all over the world. In few short years we were able to capture almost 10% of the US, pencil case market and this is something we are very proud of. Today, we work together with our retail customers in the U.S. and outside to expend our lines to storage solutions, Lunch Bags and Backpacks.
What is “success” or “successful” for you?
Measuring success should be done in my opinion in several aspects. First and foremost is by meeting and exceeding the goals you set to yourself. The goals can be sales, profits but they can also be the creation of new product lines, starting a new social activity with the community etc.
An additional way to define success in my opinion is to make sure you enjoy the road and not only the view at the end. It is something that can easily be forgotten and I believe that to a certain extent it is not less important than the end result. I believe it was Arthur Ashe who described it the best: “success is a journey, not a destination. The doing is often more important than the outcome”.
Pricing:
- The vast majourity of ZIPIT products are sold for less than $10, making them not only fun and quality but very accessible
Contact Info:
- Address: 8 Spring Brook Road, Foxborough, MA
- Website: www.just-zipit.com
- Phone: 1-800-511-6239
- Email: sales@just-zipit.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/just_zipit/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/zipitdesign
- You Tube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCRYaXTTi01NQeXokk-GWX4Q
- Yelp: Pinterest – https://www.pinterest.com/justzipit/
Image Credit:
ZIPIT Team
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