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Real-revenue cases

How Regina Ye Started A CPG Company While In College

Real demand

A college student built ZIRUI, a modular magnetic travel toiletry case, pre-sold it on Kickstarter to fund tooling and the first production run, and now sells direct through Shopify, self-reporting about $1,000 a month in revenue.

Founder interview, self-reported Kickstarter 众筹预售Shopify 独立站Instagram
Primary source
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01

Real-demand verdict

Real-demand verdict

Real demand

It replaces a concrete old habit: packing liquids in generic bags and bottles that leak. Strangers described the pain unprompted, Kickstarter backers paid up front, and the store keeps selling, so demand shows up as money, not just enthusiasm, though the scale is still tiny.

How it makes money

One-off consumer sales: Kickstarter backers paid up front to cover the first production run, and travelers buy the case outright on the Shopify store. No unit price is disclosed.

What old behavior it replaces

The old habit of packing liquids in leak-prone travel bottles and generic toiletry bags.

02

Where the first customers came from

First paying customers came from the Kickstarter pre-sale; before building, she validated the pain by interviewing strangers on campus and at malls. Where the Kickstarter traffic itself came from is not mentioned.

Acquisition channels Kickstarter 众筹预售Shopify 独立站Instagram

03

Tactics you can copy

  1. 01Interview strangers before building anything: pitch the pain point on campus and at malls until people say 'I'd buy that,' then start.
  2. 02Use Kickstarter as a paid-demand test and production budget: polish one presentable prototype for a year, then let crowdfunding money cover tooling and the first run.
  3. 03Scrape the prototype together for near-zero cash: a school CAD class and lab 3D printer for v1, then a Chinese prototyping agency and factory, visited in person.
Moving it to an AI business

Not an AI business, but the sequence transfers: confirm the pain in one-on-one interviews, test willingness to pay with pre-orders or a waitlist, then spend on building. For an AI tool, a landing page collecting pre-orders beats three months of silent coding.

04

Evidence and limits

Self-reported numbers are unaudited — treat them as leads, not facts
Founder interview, self-reported

Revenue basis · Founder self-reported, unaudited (see source page)

What evidence is missing

The $1,000/month figure is founder self-reported, unaudited, and undated.
No unit price, order volume, or margin data, so profitability is unverifiable.
No data on what Instagram actually contributes or where Kickstarter traffic came from.

Primary source

https://www.starterstory.com/stories/how-regina-ye-started-a-cpg-company-while-in-college ↗