Small Business Project: Sick child prompts entrepreneurial mum’s quest for reusable syringe

Monday, 6 April 2026

The Small Business Project is a weekly series that shines the spotlight on Kiwi small businesses doing interesting and unusual things in their industries.

Entrepreneur Sasha McLeod, creator of reusable syringe company DoseBuddy, started her business after facing a drawer full of syringes while her child was sick. Realising there was a gap in the market, she took action. After two years of product development and a successful PledgeMe campaign, the Wellington digital marketer, also a mother of two, tells Aimee Shaw the business is undergoing its first round of manufacturing and will soon launch a website.

What motivated you to start this venture?

I was standing in the kitchen one night trying to sort medicine out for my son who had a fever, and I realised the numbers had rubbed off every syringe in the drawer. In that moment when you're sleep-deprived and exhausted, and your kid's sick, your tools are letting you down. The next day, I resolved to buy a reusable one and thought that would be “problem solved”. But I couldn’t find one, and it was really shocking to me that it didn't exist - there’s not many things like that in this world. I immediately thought it was a huge opportunity to create something, so I jumped on it and did it.

It's been quite a long development process. It's tricky to get a product like this right and it's so important that it's safe. There's a lot of regulation around medical devices. I feel like I've basically done a whole other degree, studying all the medical guidelines and understanding the requirements. But I'm really happy that, through careful testing, we've created something that's really durable and going to reduce waste and make life easier for parents.

How did you find a manufacturer to create your product?

I had an amazing product development partner called Tune Design Office, and they help entrepreneurs develop products and design them and connect them to a manufacturer. Together we found a great manufacturer based in China who has lots of experience creating these sorts of products needing FDA approval and meeting all-important safety standards.

We’ve been through about 15 iterations of the product, to make sure we got all the elements wanted right, including the glass barrel, which I wanted because it's non reactive to anything that goes inside it. Then there's a silicone sleeve around it, to grip onto, and a cap that goes onto the medicine bottle that you can plug the syringe directly into it and flip the bottle upside down so you can get the medicine out, right to the bottom.

How much time and money have you invested?

For the development of the product, around the $40,000 mark. The other really expensive piece has been protecting our IP. This is an innovative product that hasn't been created before - the silicone sleeve and cap combination - it's something we wanted to patent. We’ve spent $50,000 protecting IP, and that’s just the very tip of the iceberg. We'll slowly patent our products in other regions, but that's a huge expense.

I'm co-owner of a digital marketing agency, still full-time there. I put the kids down to bed, and then I get straight back into work on DoseBuddy, and that's pretty much a nightly occurrence.

What’s the biggest challenge your business is facing?

The hardest thing has been getting to grips with medical device regulations; making sure the product is compliant, but also that our packaging is compliant, right down to what sort of safety warnings and phrases that we include in the packaging copy, all the way through to which little symbols we need to use on the packaging, the phrasing of our instructions; it's been a huge learning curve.

What’s the biggest issue impacting your industry?

What's shocked me has been how relaxed the medical device standards are in New Zealand; DoseBuddy is going far above and beyond what is required of us here.

For example, you'll notice the disposable syringes that are available in pharmacies don't come with any packaging. There's no real instructions, and there's no guidance on what is a safe measurement to use those syringes for.

What’s next for DoseBuddy?

It's been a long wait to get to this point. Through the PledgeMe campaign, we built a big community of supporters of the product. We started the crowdfunding campaign with 4000 people on our wait list, and we hit our minimum raise target of $20,000 in three hours, which was a record for PledgeMe. After that, we went on to triple our goal, so we ended up with $58,000. I'm itching to get the product out there to people.

We still have a wait-list of people who didn't get their syringe in the first round, so we've been able to order enough stock to cover all our pre-orders, but also to have a bit of inventory for our website to sell when that launches in April. A single syringe kit, which includes the syringe and the cap, will be $50.

The first hire we'll make will be helping us with order fulfilment and packing and shipping orders. “When” is dependent on how quickly we grow and how many orders we have coming in, and how long I can sustain doing that myself. It probably won't be long before we need more hands on deck.

In three years’ time you will be …

Our primary retail goal is to get into pharmacies and baby retailers in New Zealand. I want to continue with consumer sales, and then our next region that we will enter will be America, just because, actually, the medical device regulations in America are the most easy to get through, after New Zealand. Then after that, we'll be looking to get our EU approvals and going into the EU, the UK and Australia.

What’s one thing you wish you’d known before starting the business?

I don't wish I'd known more, because I genuinely think if I'd known how complex things such as the medical device regulations were, I probably would have been scared off from doing this.

It is a whole other world, and it’s been quite overwhelming, and a lot to learn. It doesn't feel like a system that is set up for a little guy like me to be able to manoeuvre through; it's designed for big pharmaceutical companies who have compliance specialists on their teams.

I genuinely didn't realise when I was going into this that this would be considered a medical device, as silly as that sounds. My naivety led me to dive straight in head-first and get into it. By the time I realised what I was getting myself into, it was almost too late, so I had to go for it. My lack of understanding of it was actually quite helpful.

Most helpful piece of advice you have ever received?

My approach has been to do one thing that moves the needle each day. I don't necessarily mind if I'm going in the right direction slowly as long as I'm moving. For example, when it comes to learning those big medical device regulations, I said to myself, I’d sit down and read even a paragraph every night, then I'm still moving in the right direction. Small steps in the right direction are always going to get me to the destination.

If you would like your business to feature in The Small Business Project, email Aimee Shaw at aimee.shaw@stuff.co.nz