Why Lunoji founder Adrian Lim took a 75% pay cut to design pet products

Many have called COVID-19 the crisis of a generation. For Adrian Lim, founder of pet startup Lunoji, which designs products to prevent pets from choking, the pandemic triggered an existential crisis that spiraled into clinical depression.

Just as Lim hit rock bottom, he received news of his mother’s breast cancer diagnosis. This devastating chain of events blew up his life as he knew it, and set it on an utterly different course.

He left a promising corporate career in London and moved back to Singapore. In his bedroom in his parents’ Housing Development Board flat, he began designing holders for dog chews that prevent choking, eventually launching a pet brand, Lunoji.

Lim, 33, shared his deeply personal journey of familial love, self-discovery and reignited dreams with CNA Lifestyle.

HITTING ROCK BOTTOM

Just four years ago, Lim was living a popular version of the Singaporean dream.

A young professional in stylish London, he had a cushy job at PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) advising clients on how to build digital products. Still in his late 20s, he was drawing the equivalent of around S$10,000 each month.

“I was a busy bee – always going to the office or client sites, travelling a lot and living out of a suitcase,” he recalled.

Then COVID-19 struck and everything changed.

London, where he was then based, was hit hard by the virus. But being young and healthy, Lim did not suffer from severe health problems even when he caught the virus sometime in March 2020. He was also not affected by layoffs. 

However, just a few months into the pandemic, he experienced an existential crisis.

“I think it was the repetitiveness of my life – every day, I wake up, go to meetings, finish meetings, go to sleep and wake up – rinse and repeat. COVID broke the cycle and caused me to question the meaning of everything.

“I started to ask myself, ‘Why was I doing this when everything was going to end? People are going to die anyway. Everything just felt meaningless’,” he said.

Lim started experiencing symptoms of depression in June 2020, which got progressively worse.

“I can’t really pinpoint what caused me to feel this way. But it felt like I was falling into a dark hole and everything around me was void. I felt really alone and worthless. I couldn’t find the reason to get up every morning and didn’t find joy in anything.

“If you watch the movie Harry Potter and you remember the dementor … when it is nearby, it sucks the life out of everything – maybe that is the best visual representation of how I felt,” he reflected.

He saw a psychiatrist in London, was diagnosed with clinical depression and began taking medication in November that year. He also took a sabbatical from work.

“I had a very bad reaction to medication during the first month – I experienced nausea, diarrhoea, I was shaking a lot and felt worse than before,” he recounted.

That same month, he received devastating news from home. His mother had been diagnosed with Stage 2 breast cancer.

DOGS, DEPRESSION AND BEING A FILIAL SON

You might think that this untimely news would crush Lim, but it had the opposite effect.

“Hearing about my mum probably brought me out from the abyss because it made me focus on someone I really care for rather than on myself. This gave me a sense of urgency and purpose,” he said.

“I knew I needed to get back to Singapore and find myself next to her ASAP. That helped me kind of get up on my feet again,” he said.

At the height of COVID-19 in 2020, Lim, who is the second of three children, flew back to Singapore for a month to accompany his mother for medical consultations. He left for London after that but returned to Singapore again in February 2021, this time for close to five months to accompany her for chemotherapy.

All this while, he continued with therapy for depression, seeing his psychiatrist virtually.  

“Most people going through depression don’t know why they are depressed. It’s a journey to find out.

“During therapy, I remembered that I always wanted to be an entrepreneur but steered away from that path and became stuck in a corporate job doing something I don’t enjoy as much,” he reflected.

“Another thing we did during therapy was to remind ourselves of what made us happy. The thing that makes me happy and brings me comfort is animals.

“They are super ‘in the moment’. And as someone who's always planning and thinking of the future, they have taught me to be in the moment,” said Lim, who adopted a greyhound in 2018, when he was working in London.

“Walking a dog is a magical experience. You have this strange connection and synergy with the dog. He or she knows what you want through the leash and you kind of walk symbiotically,” he added.

“Somewhere in my head, those two things connected. I realised that I wanted to do something with animals to bring them joy,” he said.

The long months in Singapore where he accompanied his mother to Tan Tock Seng Hospital for her medical consultations and waited with her during her chemotherapy treatment, his mind wandered to his dog in London and a problem he had as a dog owner.

“My wife’s a dentist. She made me very aware of dental health. So one of the things we really liked to give my dog was good dog chews because that really helped his teeth.

“But we stopped when we heard that our neighbour’s dog had passed away after swallowing and choking on a chew. Because of this, my dog’s teeth were getting from bad to worse,” he said.

“We also used to live in a one-bedroom apartment with no garden in London, so when we gave a chew bone or tendon, it would get quite messy. There would be crumbs, saliva and slime everywhere,” he added.

DESIGNING PET PRODUCTS FROM SCRATCH

At the hospital, while he waited with his mum during her chemotherapy treatment, Lim began to casually sketch a holder that would secure the chew and prevent choking and mess. That was how his pet brand Lunoji was born.

The brand’s key product Chewden includes a chew grip, a trove for dog ice popsicle, and a base to anchor the grip and trove, and eliminate mess.

It was a long journey from the initial sketch to the final product. Moving back to Singapore for good in October 2021, Lim, who had no design background, began building prototypes at home.

“I bought different parts and spent hours into the night hacking them together. I was burning plastic, and using a saw or hammer usually really late at night, even at 3am,” he recalled.

He also rang up old friends, begging to test his prototype on their dogs. "When some people looked at my early prototypes, they said, ‘You’re crazy. It’s so ugly. What's the point of it? Who would buy this?’”

But Lim stuck with his vision. Five months and 20 prototypes later, he finally had a working model.

Lim invested S$80,000 of his own savings and borrowed another S$60,000 from his mother and sister. He paid a design agency and freelance designer to refine the product design, and also invested in research and development, 3D printing, testing and marketing.

In January 2022, he launched a crowdfunding campaign on Indiegogo. “"We raised S$12,000 in eight hours and hit our initial goal, and raised S$40,000 within a month. It was kind of surreal,” he said.

Lim began making moulds and mass producing the product. By the end of April 2022, he began shipping out his first batch of products.

A JOURNEY OF SELF-DISCOVERY

Today, Lunoji is distributed in 16 places around the world including Hong Kong, Taiwan, Japan, Indonesia, Malaysia, France, Hungary and Canada.

Lim also expanded the brand’s offering to offer crocodile leg bone chews and beef bone marrow chews, as well as healthy dog ice popsicle blends in flavours such as strawberry and coconut, pumpkin beef broth, and peanut butter and jelly.

“Because the weather is so hot in Singapore, dog popsicles are becoming quite popular. But dog owners have to hold them for their dogs. For some dogs, these popsicles make a mess and often don’t last more than a minute since they’re bitten rather than licked.

“With our powdered blends and bowls, you can easily make the popsicles at home and pop them in the freezer. When you need one, simply take the frozen bowl out and give it to your dog – it’ll occupy your dog for much longer, minus the mess,” he said.

He is also preparing to launch a new lick mat for pre-orders within the next few months. This grooved mat spreads treats that come in pastes and purees so that they last longer, and is designed to be easier to clean than most lick mats in the market.

From a one-man operation, Lunoji has now expanded to a team of four, including two designers and one marketing person. His mother, who is currently clear of cancer, also helps part-time, making treats and blends, and fulfilling orders. 

“The biggest issue we had, and still have, is funding,” said Lim, who currently pays himself a modest salary of S$2,500 a month to channel more money into the business.

“When I walk past places like Tori-Q where the salary of full-time staff starts from around S$2,800, I sometimes question myself. Am I stupid for doing this? Because I could be earning close to S$10,000 with my previous job. There is a lot of sacrifice,” he admitted.

But he has no regrets embarking on this journey, which has also helped in his recovery from depression – Lim was able to go off medication last year.

“To say, I thought of an idea and now we’ve got thousands of them all around the world is priceless. 

“With this business, I can really see the impact of what I do on people’s and animals’ lives. One of the little things I like to do is just lie on my bed and watch the Instagram stories and posts that people tagged us on. My bank account is empty but my heart is full,” he said.