How did I come to run an adult diaper business and enroll in a coding bootcamp? It started while I was having dinner with a friend who had landed in Miami from a long trip to Asia. During dinner, he said, “The food in Asia is awesome. Oh, and did you know Japan is the adult diaper capital of the world?”
“We’ll get to the food part in a second, but can you elaborate on the adult diaper part first?” I asked. “Japan has the oldest average population in the world and people are living longer than ever” he responded. He continued, “The US baby-boomer generation is about to retire and our demographics will be like Japan’s in a few years.” It was then that we decided to get into the online retail adult diaper market.
We were two guys in our twenties with no experience in ecommerce or adult diapers. We knew we could improve the online purchasing experience and the customer service. But, we had no idea how difficult it would be to grow our idea into a profitable company. Eventually, my friend decided he wanted to start his own passion project and remove himself from the company. My fiancée, Bianca, and I then bought my friend out and continued building our company, Care Club.
During the day, I was an MBA student at the University of Miami and Bianca was a software developer. At night, we worked. I handled the business operations, order processing, and customer service. She handled our e-commerce site, digital marketing and all things technical.
The more I watched Bianca work, the more interested I became in technology and software development. It seemed like she had a nack of making everything we did easier or automated. Bianca recommended that, after graduating from my MBA, I enroll in a coding bootcamp. I kept it in the back of my mind.
As our business grew, I wanted to contribute to the site by helping design and add functionality. We needed projects finished quicker than what Bianca was able to complete on her own. If I knew how to code, we would be able to conserve money on development costs and finish projects faster. With some coding knowledge and programs like Zapier, I could automate routine tasks. I would be able to free up my own time to work on more important projects or tasks.
I felt like I was getting left behind. I was always lost when Bianca explained the technical decisions she made for Care Club. I didn’t understand programming or its terminology enough to grasp what was happening, or to give opinions on important decisions. Without learning to code, I couldn’t be an effective partner as we continued growing without learning to code.
After some research, Bianca and I decided that Charlotte would be a great area to grow Care Club and make our first hires. I also had decided the natural next step would be to learn computer programming after graduating from my MBA program. While visiting Charlotte, I met Betsy, the founder of TTS, and it was clear that the school was a perfect fit for my goals. After completing the bootcamp, we will look to raise our first round of investment money. Our mission is to grow Care Club into the best adult diaper service in the world! TTS will help this become a reality.
