Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Hey there entrepreneurs, my name is Sushant and welcome to Treptalks. This is the show where I interview successful e commerce entrepreneurs, business executives, and thought leaders and ask them questions about their business story and also dive deep into some of the strategies and tactics that they have used to start and grow their businesses.

And today I’m really excited to welcome Mel Young to the show. Mel is the founder of Flowerdale Valley. Flowerdale Valley creates Australian made skincare products out of plant based ingredients. And all of their products are handmade in small batches. And today I’m going to ask Mel a few questions about her entrepreneur journey and some of the strategies and tactics that she has used to start and grow her business.

So Mel, thank you so much for joining me today, uh, at Treptox. And I know you’re joining from Australia. So thank you for, for joining me today, bright and early.

Mel young of Flowerdale Valley: Oh, thank you for having me. It’s a pleasure. [00:01:00]

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: So very interesting business. You’ve started a skincare products line, uh, made out of natural ingredients, uh, or plant, plant based ingredients.

So can you share a little bit about your story? You know, what were you doing before you started this business and what really kind of inspired you to start a skincare products business?

Mel young of Flowerdale Valley: Sure. So I had a lot of different jobs before I did, um, this business, but I always knew I wanted to have my own business.

Like I always had that thought in my mind that I would, uh, do my own thing one day. And so it was always there. And, uh, I was working in kitchens mainly, so cooking jobs, uh, were what I did a lot of. And when I had my children, um, I was working at a local place that was doing weddings and functions and things like that.

And, [00:02:00] um, I, they asked me to do some wedding favours for a bride that was getting married there because I was married at the time to a beekeeper. Um. And we had local honey. So I did that and started a little wedding favor business. Um, that eventually became the skincare business because, uh, I’d always loved skincare.

It was always what I spent all my money on and, uh, really enjoyed making my own soap and, and lotions and things like that, but had never. Done it as a business, but doing the wedding favors, uh, Made me sort of go out and find jars and labels and and things like that and gave me the confidence to take that First step so I continued with wedding favors for a while Then where everybody gets a little [00:03:00] present on the wedding table so you might do a hundred little tiny jars of something and And it was very fiddly and very time consuming.

So, um, after starting in that direction of wedding favors, I then decided to stick with skincare and we had a lot of beeswax. So I started with this product, which is Bee Balm and, uh, this is what it looks like and just all the actual. Based around a, uh, skincare recipe, I learned that Cleopatra used on her skin many years ago.

So that was my first, my first product. I started with just one product and then eventually, um, started doing other products as well.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: And right now it seems like you have a wide range of products. I see on your [00:04:00] website, you have aromatherapy and candles, be wax balms, you have clay mask, face oils, moisturizers, and so forth.

Uh, so it seems like you’ve kind of, um, built on your product line over time. How did you, so are you making all of these products on your own? Are you working with other. Um, like a facility that’s creating these products. How, how are you actually creating these items?

Mel young of Flowerdale Valley: Yeah, well, I make them all at home. And so I have a room here that’s fully, um, made up as a, you know, with industrial benches and things like that.

And that’s where I make all the products. Um, so the reason I decided to do a business from home is because I wanted to be with my children. Um, and I wanted to, to be able to be at home because I’m a massive introvert. So those two [00:05:00] things were really important to me. Um, being at home with the kids. So was, was really a big, um.

Instrumental thing with me starting a business at home, and it just has worked doing it all from home.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Yeah, I think, you know, for a lot of entrepreneurs, it’s the freedom, right? So for you, it means having the freedom to stay at home with your kids. For other entrepreneurs, it’s like, you know, they want to have the freedom so they can go out and travel and, you know, do things they like.

Um, so I think it always comes down to freedom and having a, you know, control of your own time, which, which makes a lot of sense. So, so you have. Yeah. Um, so when you started out initially and you had one product and you were doing the wedding favors, um, how did you kind of, um, [00:06:00] um, you know, when you transitioned to like a skincare product company, like, did you, where did you start selling it for like, were you selling it locally still, or at what point did you actually get into an e commerce business model?

Mel young of Flowerdale Valley: So, Yeah. Um,

don’t, sorry. Can you cut that out, that little bit, ?

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: It’s,

Mel young of Flowerdale Valley: it’s not, um,

got a child at home today. Okay. . Um,

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: no worries. That’s, that, that has happened in the past also, so don’t worry, don’t worry about, thank you. Yeah,

Mel young of Flowerdale Valley: I got completely distracted. Um, so first I started selling the products that I was making at the reception center where I was working, and that was the only place [00:07:00] that I sold them.

Then I set up an eBay store, and I, I really think eBay or something similar to that is a great way to start your product selling business because you’re not paying, um, or putting in a lot of time to set up a, a website or spending a lot of money on an online presence. Uh, you’re just creating a little business.

Within a business that’s already there. So you’ve got the traffic coming to your to your products. Um, which was really great for me. So I started this eBay store. And from there, I could see that things would actually sell online. So, so that was so for a while there, I had the local reception center.

Another local business that wanted to stock my products and an eBay [00:08:00] store. And after a little while, um, I had two part time jobs at that time when I started the business, gradually I stopped working there. Those two jobs and decided to go to markets. So just a local like farmer’s market, things like that.

And those were pretty small, but I still have customers today who come to my online store who met me at a farmer’s market years ago and tried the product and liked it. So anybody just starting out, I think that a market is a terrific. Way to to meet new customers that become long term customers and when you stop doing the market They’ll still come to your online store So that was that was really brilliant and because those markets were only small [00:09:00] What I thought to myself is I want to get into a great market that has more customers So I started going to The market in the city here in Melbourne, uh, Victoria, that was like, had a lot of foot traffic.

This was before COVID, uh, a lot of foot traffic and. It was a weekly market in the middle of the city. So going there weekly was a really great way to meet customers as well. And a lot of those beautiful customers are still coming back to my store today. So I’m really grateful for that and think that that was a really great, um, Way to meet lots of customers.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Yeah.

Mel young of Flowerdale Valley: Sorry. Also to see what people like and what they don’t like. And it can be a little bit [00:10:00] different, like what people want to buy online compared to what they want to buy at the stall. But. It was really interesting getting customer feedback right to your face and knowing exactly what people liked and didn’t like.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: I think, I think that’s, uh, you know, that’s a great example of, you know, idea validation or product market fit where you basically test out your idea or product in a small way to, to make sure that it, you know, people want to buy it. Right. Like if, unless somebody wants to give you their money, like you don’t know if they’re, they’re willing to buy it.

Um,

Mel young of Flowerdale Valley: Absolutely. To make like a little, a little batch of something, put the ingredients on it, take it to market, see if people are interested and, you know, not, you don’t have to continue with things if nobody’s interested in it.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Exactly. Exactly. Uh, with low risk, right? So, um, [00:11:00] the products that you’re creating, like, are they, what is the competition in the market?

Like, are there other products that are similar that are in the market? Or, you know, the products that you’re creating are very unique. And so that’s what is creating the demand. Or is it really that, you know, um, like, for example, let’s say your bee balm, um, You know, you have a b bomb, but other people may have their own, uh, you know, b bombs as well, naturally made also.

And it really comes down to marketing and, you know, bringing your own or building your own customer base and so forth. Um, so that, you know, people are buying from you rather than like other sellers.

Mel young of Flowerdale Valley: Yes. I don’t think that a lot of my products aren’t particularly unique. Um, you could get them At other places.

I think what I offer is. Like, there’s a lot of companies, for example, that just sell bee [00:12:00] product, um, skincare. So, you know, you could go there and get your honey lip balm and your, your bee balm for your face and things like that. But, but what I offer is, you know, actual moisturizers and serums and a cleansing balm.

Uh, that, that people can, you know, add those to the, to the order as well. So it makes it a bit, uh, more unique and also different things sell on different sites. So for example, on eBay, one product sells really well and then, um, but it’s not the best seller on my website, for example. So just having multiple products is.

Is a great strategy. I think, although you don’t want too many products, of course, but just having those, those, uh, different [00:13:00] things to different people. Also, you know, I have my products in a few local shops and the thing that sells well, you know, the best in those places are the candles usually, and maybe the bee bong.

I have a few different, different things to different people.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: I mean, that’s, that’s so interesting. I’m just thinking like, why, why does one product sell on eBay? Whereas, you know, other products sell on your website. Like, do you, have you tried to figure that out? Why, why that the reason?

Mel young of Flowerdale Valley: I was one of the first people on eBay.

selling hyaluronic acid, which is a serum. So first of all, I wanted to say before I started this, I had no training at all in how to make skincare. None. Basically I applied my cooking knowledge and what I’d been. [00:14:00] Sort of whipping up at home, uh, to my recipes and just tried them and so, and just took a, took a, took a punt on them to see what would happen.

So eventually I studied skincare and, you know, cosmetic manufacturing, but that was further down the track. Uh, so I was one of the first people selling hyaluronic serum on eBay. And for some reason, that’s just continued, I guess, because I have a lot of people that have bought it and left good reviews.

And then, so I was. Lucky with that. Mm. Um, so that’s why that sells really well on eBay, I think.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Do, are you on any other marketplaces as well? Is, is Amazon big in uh, Australia?

Mel young of Flowerdale Valley: It sure is. It sure is. And you know, it’s just a [00:15:00] matter of time that I haven’t on Amazon, to be honest. I also tried, I tried Etsy, um, but it wasn’t really a good fit for my brand.

It never really took off. Mm-Hmm. So. Even though it seems a bit of a funny thing to be selling on eBay, it, it was what I used as a buyer. So I felt comfortable going on that platform. And it just stayed on there, but I’m sure if I put time and energy into it, I could go into Amazon. I just, I don’t use it as a, as a buyer.

Isn’t that funny? You just don’t think.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: I mean, Amazon, I don’t, to be honest, I don’t know the Australian Amazon. I think I know, I mean, I’m in Canada, so I know it’s really easy to buy something on Amazon. So I use it quite a bit, but it could be different in Australia. So I don’t

know.

Mel young of Flowerdale Valley: I think it’s pretty similar, but okay, but maybe not as big.

Yeah. [00:16:00]

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Okay. So, um, I guess for you, because you’re manufacturing your products in your home, it’s relatively simple. I mean, you have your recipe, you can create it anytime you want. Um, does it really come down to your, you know, in terms of driving revenue for your business month after month and, you know, maybe even growing it is, it really comes down to how effectively you can put your products in front of the right kind of customer so that they can see your product and then they can buy it.

Um, what have you learned about your customer base? Like who, who’s kind of your target market?

Mel young of Flowerdale Valley: That was something that I really started paying attention to with COVID. So, because I was going to market and earning the vast proportion of my, uh, income from the market [00:17:00] store and some online sales, but. Let’s say that was supplementary. When COVID happened, I thought to myself, I’ve got to make this work online now because, you know, I have two children and myself.

So I wanted to, you know, really, really make this work. So I thought about, you know, what would my customer want? And that was when I started doing, uh, bulk products. So like one liter, um, bottles for people that love it and can buy a bigger,

bigger

Mel young of Flowerdale Valley: bottle. Also, um, refill packs so that they were really easy to post cause they could just go into an envelope and they were cheaper to post.

Um, and COVID was when I really thought to myself, you know, okay, uh, I have to reach my customer online. [00:18:00] What would she really be looking for? And, um, my demographic is women usually over the age of about 40. We want to take good care of our skin, but we, we feel a bit bamboozled with everything on the market.

And we just want some nice, gentle products that we know the ingredients are good for our skin. If I don’t, if I wouldn’t use it on myself, I don’t put it in my products. So, uh, it’s really important to me because my customers, a lot of them know my name and my email address. They know how to contact me on Instagram and things like that.

So I really need to be really transparent, uh, with them. So that has played a really massive role in just the products that I create. [00:19:00] And so at that time, I started to think a bit broader about what my customers would be wanting and decided to get better on social media because before that time I wasn’t hardly using it at all.

And this is something I think is really important for business owners to know is that, uh, it’s a lot of your business is going to be marketing. The vast majority of it is going to be. Marketing. So, and a lot of us, we start businesses because we’re good at making skincare or we’re good at, you know, maybe customer service or whatever it is that we’re selling.

We like that. And we’re good at it. We, but. If you want to have a successful business, you’re going to have to spend a lot of time marketing. And that was really a challenge for me. So I did a course that was [00:20:00] like, it was a great course and it was about, um, how to get on camera for your business and be confident on camera.

And it was just a group of us. And every day we did a Facebook live and videos. And basically just through repetition, you got really fine with being on camera because so many of us are so shy and not maybe not shy, but we’re not used to seeing ourselves on camera. You know, we have this self doubt and, and I think it’s massively important for your own personal growth as well to just.

Learn how to be on camera and be okay with that. So, uh, that time was when I started doing Instagram videos that had me in them sometimes. But a lot of the [00:21:00] time, and they were about customer service. So, oh, you’ve bought this product. Here’s how you can use it. This is what you can do with it. Um, or it might be things like recipes that were helpful for your skin or just how to make a face mask at home, things like that.

So I really broadened my. Thought about what my customer might like to see, what might make her laugh, what she might be interested in. And I tried to show up on Instagram and Facebook showing that. And through that, that was how I got a lot of my local, um, businesses contacting me and saying, we’d like to stock your products.

We’ve seen you on Instagram. So I think that was a really pivotal thing to, [00:22:00] to do is get really comfortable on camera and be okay with not being perfect on camera.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Are you still, are you still doing the Instagram lives or have you stopped?

Mel young of Flowerdale Valley: Yeah, I don’t do Instagram lives. Um, and I don’t, I’ve never really done lives, but I did videos.

So reels. Yeah. Reels. Um, I still do them, yeah, I sort of took, we just moved house, so I took, um, a little bit of time off just recently and let the business just, just go without them for a couple of weeks, but yeah, I think it’s a terrific way to reach your customers. I mean, yeah,

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: for sure. I mean, a big part of, you know, I guess skincare that is targeting, you know, as you said, your demographic is, you know, women over 40 years of age and, and so forth.

Um, I’m [00:23:00] assuming that when, you know, uh, when someone is going out in the market looking for skincare products, like they’re trying to achieve some goals with their skin, right? Maybe they have the fear that, you know, they want to men maintain their. you know, uh, their existing skin tone or something like that.

Or, you know, they want to, you know, whatever results that, uh, someone is trying to achieve. How do you, um, I mean, I can, I can see you have a very, you know, very nice skin, but like, is that part of, is that part of like, um, how do you, how do you convince a person? Because There’s so many chemicals. There’s so many products out there.

How do you convince someone that your product is going to get them the result that they’re looking for? Do you promise? Do you make some promises?

Mel young of Flowerdale Valley: No, I try not to. Um, I, I try not to make promises. Um, I, what [00:24:00] I, what I focus on is really showing the customers what’s in the product. So I might have a, you know, uh, A video where I’m showing everything in the product, everything as it’s going into the product as I’m making it, make it a bit interesting.

Uh, and I, I really like customers to, to see that transparency and then to, to sort of. I think that at that point, they’ll make up their own mind what, what, uh, you know, that that would be great for their skin and, and, and sometimes I’ll, I’ll like have an ingredient spotlight. So I’ll get a shea butter, for example.

And I’ll tell, tell you why shea butter is really great for your skin and what it’s used for and, and things like that. [00:25:00] So that’s sort of been my approach because you do have to be careful about, uh, things that you’re promising to your customers. Um, when you haven’t actually had your things tested for that, there’s quite a lot of regulation around what you’re allowed to say, what you’re not allowed to say.

Uh, for instance, you can’t make claims that your product is good for eczema or rosacea, things like that, certain skin conditions, unless you’ve had, you know, tests done on your product. that show that it’s great for that. So, so the way I got around that was just showing customers the ingredients and the process of making and being really open and honest, uh, in that, in that way.

So

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: these kind of products, they’re mostly, really what they’re doing is helping you [00:26:00] hydrate and moisturize. Like these are, essentially it’s an oil, right? So you’re basically hydrating and moisturizing.

Mel young of Flowerdale Valley: Absolutely. That’s what I say that my products do. They’re kind of like the skin care that you would make if you were going to make your own skin care at home.

So, you know, have you, if you were making your own skin care at home, you wouldn’t skimp on the ingredients, you’d want to put really great stuff in there for your skin and you wouldn’t use anything like propylene, glycol or whatever that you went, I don’t know what that does, you know, you probably wouldn’t have access to that.

So that’s where my range comes in. It’s for people that. You know, they want to keep their skin hydrated as they get older. Um, they want to keep their skin soft and smooth. Perhaps, you know, often what people do is, often with skin care, what [00:27:00] people do is they’ve used nothing forever. They’ve never used it.

Never, so now they need to come, now that they’re in their 40s, for example, they notice that their skin’s dry and they need some help, so it’s really easy to just use a cleanser and a moisturizer at that point. And just those two things, you really just want to make sure that you’re being really gentle and hydrating your skin.

So there’s that type of person and then there’s the other type of person is the person. I mean, of course, there’s more than two, but often I find people have used everything under the sun on their skin and their skin is now dry and red and irritated because they’ve damaged the skin barrier and the skin barrier is really important to look after and just needs a lot of nourishing and [00:28:00] hydrating.

Yeah. Does that answer your question?

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: It does. It does. It definitely does. I mean, it basically comes down to, you know, um, just paying more attention, um, hydrating, moisturizing, um, and I guess, you know, just being taking care, better care of your skin, I guess. Yeah, absolutely. So you’re running your business from your home.

Um, when you get orders, e commerce orders, are you the one kind of packaging it and shipping it out? What is kind of your fulfillment and shipment or shipping strategy? Mm

hmm. Yeah,

Mel young of Flowerdale Valley: I have everything here that I need for all my parcels. So when orders come in, I can ship them out usually the same day or next day, and I do it all from home.

I’ve done, I do everything in the business, but I have in the past outsourced things to Fiverr. [00:29:00] Um, and places like that, because sometimes I’ll need help with, um, website, like, for instance, I didn’t make my own website. I don’t know how to do that and it would take me far too long. So I outsource that to Fiverr.

So rather than hire anybody, um, for an ongoing thing in a business, the size of mine, I just outsource things as I need to, to Fiverr. Or another sites similar.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: No, I think, uh, I mean, your, your website looks great. I think, uh, you know, it has, uh, uh, beautiful images. I think, I think your website is, uh, looks very nice for sure.

Oh, thank you. For somebody who’s created, you know, someone from Fiverr who’s, you know, they’ve created the site. Yeah, yeah,

Mel young of Flowerdale Valley: exactly. Exactly. It does the job. It could be better. Probably needs an update. But [00:30:00] it’s, isn’t it good to know that you don’t have to be perfect, um, you can still make sales even without the perfect photography.

You know, I’ve done all those photos myself. They’re not. Yeah, I

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: mean, that’s part of the, I guess that’s part of your brand. Like if, if your products are handmade and you know, you’re giving the impression that it’s, it’s kind of like, um, homemade kind of, uh, you know, uh, organic business, you don’t want your photography to be very great as well, because that’s, that doesn’t go with your brand.

Yeah. Yeah. Um, so you’re selling mostly in Australia. Are you selling internationally as well?

Mel young of Flowerdale Valley: Occasionally I’ll get inquiries from overseas and so then I’ll just work out the postage and things like that for them and send them a quote and I can send overseas, but I don’t have it on my website. It’s just a [00:31:00] little bit confusing to do that.

So, so I’m, I’m within Australia.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Um, what does your future vision for your business look like? Um, you know, every entrepreneur, every business person has kind of a goal for their business. Is your goal really just to, um, to continue to, um, find more customers, to add more products, uh, additional product lines and really just grow your business organically?

Mel young of Flowerdale Valley: Yeah. Um, about a year ago I realized that, that to grow my business, I probably needed to outsource, um, some products. And so I decided to partner with a, a, uh, skincare. Manufacturing company that specializes in products that are great for your skin [00:32:00] microbiome. So I started, I worked with them and they’ve created two moisturizers for me, which I’m, I’m to get soon.

Um, they’re coming in soon. So, um, the reason I outsourced those two products is because the moisturizers are the most I’m consuming product for me to make and I also didn’t have the equipment and the, the know how to create these products that I wanted to, to start selling. So I’m sorry, my dog.

You can edit.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Yeah, no worries. It’s all good. Don’t worry.

Mel young of Flowerdale Valley: I put them in the bedroom.

No worries. I

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: don’t, I don’t, to be honest, I don’t hear, I don’t hear it. Like if it’s, uh, if [00:33:00] your dog is barky, I don’t hear it. Okay. I’ll keep talking then. That’s fine.

Mel young of Flowerdale Valley: Yeah. So the, the skin microbiome is a bit like. The gut microbiome, we have good bacteria, um, in our gut and, you know, it’s really good to eat fermented food like sauerkraut and things like that, um, for your gut in your microbiome, for your, for your microbiome in your gut.

And then your skin actually has that as well. Um, good bacteria on your skin. And when people have skin problems. Often it’s because the balance of the bacteria is out. And that can be caused through things like being too rough with your skin or using soap and things like that that are too, they’re too harsh for your skin, so your face.

Um, [00:34:00] so I became really interested in the microbiome. Of the skin and wanted to create these but didn’t have the know how and the facility at home. So I’ve outsourced those moisturizers and they’ll be coming soon. And, uh, so, so I’m wanting to move more into that area of, of skincare. So I have a whole range that’s great for the skin’s microbiome.

And what it does is when you apply. Uh, product with like a postbiotic on, postbiotic in it, which is what these will have. It’s, the bacteria have already fed on the moisturizer, fermented it, and made it a lot better for your skin’s natural bacteria. So when you put it on, it’s really soothing and hydrating.

And it’s just really [00:35:00] exciting because a lot of people have a skin barrier problem. You know, they’ve been too harsh with their skin. Um, now they’ve got redness or perhaps acne, you know, things like that. Those can all be helped a lot with microbiome friendly skin care. So, so that’s my, my vision is to still have some products that I create at home, but also have.

more products that, that, um, some products that I don’t create that are really great for the skin’s microbiome.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: So basically you’re creating a brand and then now you’re adding more product lines, uh, to your business. Um, yeah. And a couple of

Mel young of Flowerdale Valley: lines will go as well. Like, so, you know, it, it’s interesting as well with the business that you can, you can learn and grow [00:36:00] and Move, you know, put some products aside that no, you can see an improvement for them.

You can, you can improve on them and come up with new products. You don’t have to be perfect before you start is what I’m trying to say.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Yeah, yeah, it makes, makes complete sense. Um, I know you mentioned a little bit around your marketing that you were, you know, making, you’re making Instagram videos on social media and so forth.

Are you doing, um, what, what other marketing are you doing in terms of, uh, really getting new customers and also keeping existing customers?

Mel young of Flowerdale Valley: So, I think I could do a lot more to be honest, but I haven’t put time and effort into some of the paid platforms like Facebook ads, Instagram ads. [00:37:00] Uh, I haven’t, I haven’t put the time and energy into learning those enough. Um, so I’ve occasionally dabbled in them. And haven’t found them that worthwhile for me.

So I think I really need to, to focus on those. What I have focused on really is just doing organic things. So I have a blog on my website and I like to write a blog piece, um, probably every couple of weeks. And then what’s great about that is that I can put that Onto my Instagram and say, you know, here’s a little bit of information if you want to read the whole blog head here it takes customers directly to the website and I find that having the blog is really great because people go to Google and You know if they [00:38:00] type in anything about hyaluronic acid for example A page that comes up quite quickly is my website.

So, and that’s just from a blog that I wrote actually a few years ago. So, it’s really great for Google rankings to have a lot of information on your site because often people do go to Google, they do want to know an answer to a question about skin care and if you make sure that you’re articles cover that topic, you can really make your rankings go up just organically.

So that, that strategy I learned in a book called, uh, They Ask, You Answer, which I’m sorry, I don’t remember the, the, I think it was Marcus, somebody that was a really good book. Basically, he, [00:39:00] uh, he sells swimming pools. And have written, do you know the book?

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: No, I don’t know the book, but I can understand the concept.

Yes.

Mel young of Flowerdale Valley: And he, he basically wrote down all the information about swimming pools, like heaps and heaps of blog pages to answer every question. And so anytime a customer went to search for swimming pools, There he would be right up in the, the top searches. And, and that gives you credibility with your clients because they, they know that you know what you’re talking about,

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: so.

Exactly. Yes. Uh, I mean, the more you kind of share the knowledge, uh, you know about the things that people want to know about and you know, when, and then when they search those questions on Google and you know, your. Content comes up, it kind of, uh, establishes you as an authority and then people want to do business with you.

[00:40:00] So it makes a lot of

sense.

Mel young of Flowerdale Valley: Yes. Yeah, so I do, I do blogging and then social media and between those two things, um, that has kept. So, so I, I stopped going to market probably a couple of years ago because. I was finding that I wanted, I just wanted to be home with the kids on those days, selfishly, and, um, I could make it work.

through reaching my customers online rather than having to go out to meet them. But I still think going to market was a great way to meet customers as well, but I didn’t need to keep doing it forever.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Yeah. I mean, I, I think that’s great. Like if you’ve found, um, you know, your I guess you’re, you’re happy place where you have [00:41:00] enough customers, you know, where, you know, you have enough revenue coming in, you don’t have to go out, you can focus more time online.

So I guess that, that brings me to my next question. Like how much time do you spend every day kind of working on your business or, you know, doing marketing and also fulfillment and all the things, like how much time do you spend every day on your business?

Mel young of Flowerdale Valley: Yeah. Well, I’ve been running the business now for about seven years.

So from the very start. So, it would have been about seven years, and, um, these days, what’s great about it is that you can, I can spend days on it, and then I can spend days away from it, just doing the fulfillment. That’s just doing a post, a social media post and fulfilment of orders. Uh, so that, that’s great.

That’s the freedom that, that we all start the business [00:42:00] wanting. Most of the time when my children are at school, I’m focusing on Flowerdale Valley. So I don’t do the housework. I know I don’t, I walk the dogs, then I come home and I, I’ll probably spend. Probably 6 hours a day, just doing all the marketing, the fulfillment, making of the products, uh, researching anything I need to research, blogging, label designing, you know, all that, whatever just needs to be done, I do that when my children aren’t here, school time,

and

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: on

Mel young of Flowerdale Valley: school holidays, it’s really nice.

Kind of challenging, but it all gets done. That’s the, that’s the beauty of it is that. Once you’ve set it up, you know, you can be you can be doing whatever you want to do and orders can just come in So if [00:43:00] you set it up a few years ago, you know, yeah,

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: that’s I mean, that’s that’s really great. I think you know, it’s uh, I mean in a way you can call it Passive income, right?

Even though you have to spend, it’s like you have to spend time to get it going, but now you have more freedom, uh, that you don’t have to worry every day and spend like 20 hours every day kind of building

Mel young of Flowerdale Valley: it up. No, no. At first it was a lot of work, you know, I’d often find myself overwhelmed with everything that needed to be done, but A few years on, it, it’s, um, it’s a lot more relaxed, but you still have to be self motivated and get made what you want to make.

Like, I don’t think my customers would thank me if it took me a week to ship out their products, for example. I think customer service is really important. So I always make sure I’ve got. The products made and that when a customer is kind enough [00:44:00] to place an order with me, I want to make sure that I fulfill that quickly.

And and I also, um, I think 1 thing that I started doing a long time ago, which is contrary to everything that. A lot of businesses do. I’ve done it. It’s worked for me. Um, is that I decided that I wanted to offer a special offer every month. So customers order a certain amount. Usually it’s 100 or 99 and then they get a free product put in there every month.

It changes and. They don’t need to put a code in or anything. It’s just automatically included. That’s because I like to be generous and I just like to look out for my customers. And it’s a great way for them to try things that they may not have tried yet. And so it’s always nice to get a little bit of something extra.

So I always make sure I do that. [00:45:00] Yeah,

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: I think that’s a great strategy. I think, uh, um, doing promotions is a great way to drive business for sure. Um, in every entrepreneur’s journey, there’s always mistakes made lessons learned failures. Um, what has been, you know, you’ve been running your business for seven years.

What have been, uh, a big mistake that you kind of, you know, Part of that, maybe you could have done without that. What was the lesson that you learned and what can other entrepreneur, entrepreneurs learn from your mistakes?

Mel young of Flowerdale Valley: I think one of the first things that I would do differently is when I first started my business, I would buy things in bulk to get the savings and then realize that I had a whole lot of stuff that I didn’t need.

So for example. When I first started, I went to a gift shop and bought a whole lot of, um, [00:46:00] baskets and bags that were like reusable and, um, for my customers so that I could put the products in. And when I went to market, they didn’t sell that well. They were really slow sellers. And I thought that they would be really fast, so they, they were like, um, you know, little Hessian bags and I’d put a couple of products in them and I thought they looked really pretty, but they were never that popular.

And I’ve still got some of them and I think what I would do differently is just buy a few, even if you just buy 10, try them out at the market, then, then you could always go back and buy more. But it’s hard to move stock that you have, um, and also it ties up your cash flow, so you don’t have that money for something else, which is really important at the start, because everything just [00:47:00] costs money and you’re just outlaying a lot of money.

And you’re not actually getting in the orders as yet. So there were quite a few things like that that I spent on that I really wish I hadn’t. And the other thing is, uh, from time to time, I’ve had a contractor, you know, let’s say I needed some help with marketing or, or, um, one time I got some skincare products tested.

They failed the test and, uh, it was just a lot of money down the drain and also hiring contractors from time to time. It’s your job, I think, to find out beforehand what they’re going to offer you and get it really, really clear. Because if you don’t have it clear what they’re going to offer you, like [00:48:00] really set down that every Tuesday I’m going to spend three hours doing this, if you haven’t asked them those questions, I think in my case that has just led to a lot of disappointment because I’ve hired people, I’ve been disappointed, perhaps we had different ideas of what it was going to, um, What was going to be involved.

So, I think before I started this, I had no business experience whatsoever. And these are just the things you learn. I don’t think anybody’s like, contrary to what we’re told, you know, I’m sure some people are much better at business than others, but I think. There’s not such thing as a born entrepreneur or whatever you just learn as you go and you just got to keep going and keep going.

You got to want it more than anybody [00:49:00] else and you become a business person over time. I was not a business person before, before I began. And I think getting those nuts and bolts sorted with anybody you’re working with really clearly. Is a really good idea.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: No, I think, I think those are, those are great, those are great, uh, business lessons for sure.

Oh, Yeah, uh, now we’re going to, um, uh, do the rapid fire segment. In this segment, I’m going to ask you a few quick questions and you have to answer them maybe in a word or a sentence or so. So the first question is, one book recommendation. For entrepreneurs and why I know you give one recommendation already, but

Mel young of Flowerdale Valley: yeah, sure.

Uh, I would definitely say the E Myth because it teaches you that you have to become a business person [00:50:00] and, uh, you can’t just start a business because you like making skincare. That’s going to be a small part of it. And the rest of it will be learning how to run a business. And that’s very important.

Yeah.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Yeah. E Myth is a great book. Yeah, for sure. Um, an innovative product or idea in the current e commerce, retail or tech landscape that you feel excited about?

Well,

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: innovative product or idea. It could be anything like

Mel young of Flowerdale Valley: Well, I guess I’m excited about, and they’re not that new, but I love the new vacuum cleaners, the Dyson, uh, with the, you know, it’s just revolutionized vacuuming. You don’t have to, you know, wander around the whole house with, with a cord anymore. You’ve just got this battery operated, really easy to use [00:51:00] product.

And, uh, I love mine. So just, just love how they’ve just taken something that we all used to do. And made it completely different, but a lot more user friendly, like how often they must have been thinking about what the customer wanted, what the customer needed, you know, we want to be able to vacuum up a mess really fast and yeah, and quickly, so love that.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Awesome. Uh, a business or productivity tool or software that you would recommend or a

productivity tip? Productivity tip.

Mel young of Flowerdale Valley: My biggest productivity tip would be to, uh, do your books every single month on, like, within a few days of that month ending, because it’s so much harder to go back and find stuff when time has passed. So. I [00:52:00] always recommend that once, you know, you’re only a few months, a few days into the next month, you should really have written down all your income, expenses, whatever software you use, and have that all sorted.

So, you know, you can just put that out of your mind.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: I, I think that’s a great, great advice for sure. Uh, another startup or business, uh, in e commerce, retail, or tech that you think is currently doing great things.

Another startup or business, uh, any products, uh, that you, you like, or any business that you look up to. This

Mel young of Flowerdale Valley: shows how much, shows how much time I’m spending online. If not, we can

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: move

to the next, next question, we can

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: come back to it.

Mel young of Flowerdale Valley: Yeah, sure. [00:53:00] I, I guess I’m kind of interested at the moment in watching what Tim Ferris is doing, you know, he did that four hour work week and he kind of, he kind of really looks at the world differently and strategizes how things work and makes everything a process. I really like that. It’s not how I think, but it’s really, I think, really beneficial.

So I would say that.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Awesome. Awesome. Yeah. He focuses a lot on, um, on experimentation and, and data gathering, and then looking at how, you know, what, what is actually working and what’s not. So

Mel young of Flowerdale Valley: yeah, it’s really interesting.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Um, final question, what business advice, what is the best business advice that you have ever received or you would give to other entrepreneurs?[00:54:00]

Mel young of Flowerdale Valley: Well, two things, two things. I, I think that if you have the dream to be an entrepreneur, not everybody has that, like it’s not, Not everybody has that. So if you have that, I think that that’s a sign that it’s for you and you’ve got to give it a go, because if you don’t, you always feel that, that thought. I know that it was always in my mind.

So if that’s there in your mind, you should definitely give it a go. And the other thing I would say is keep going. So if you try something and it’s not quite right. Not quite working, you know, you just need to give it a little tweak, a little bit more time. It takes time, takes a lot of time sometimes to just, uh, [00:55:00] find your customers.

And so you have to believe in what you’re doing, which is really challenging. And I think most entrepreneurs, if they’re honest, they would, they would say that in the start, at the start, they had a lot of people around them saying, you know, what are you thinking? What are you doing? You’re not earning any money, and that’s a challenge, but, um.

There is an end goal to that if you keep going

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: for sure, for sure. And you’re, I think you’re very correct. Not everybody wants to be an entrepreneur and I don’t think everybody should be an entrepreneur. I think it is. It is. It is. Um. I think some people like to have their freedom and I think, uh, those are, and, and, you know, uh, it definitely requires, as you said, you know, um, taking risk and then keep on going because you don’t, you don’t always get [00:56:00] success right away.

So, um, no, you can be dissuaded by other people kind of saying, Hey. What are you doing or why it’s not working? Why, why don’t you just do something else? So it does require a specific kind of a person to be an entrepreneur for sure. So, Oh,

Mel young of Flowerdale Valley: absolutely. Self motivated for sure. Cause you, you know, you have to get up on a Tuesday and do what you need to do without anybody there telling you what to do.

So, yeah, absolutely.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: For sure. Well, Mel, those were all the questions that I had. Thank you so much for sharing your story, for sharing your successes and failures and also, you know, some of the business lessons learned. Um, if somebody wants to purchase your products, uh, what is the best way to do that?

Mel young of Flowerdale Valley: Sure.

Well, they can head to www. flowerdalevalley.

com. au. And you can also contact me there. So

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: awesome. Well, yeah, thank you. Thank you so much again, uh, for, [00:57:00] for sharing your time, for sharing your story and business lessons learned. Uh, thank you again, and I wish you all the very best and thanks for joining me today at Treptalks.

Mel young of Flowerdale Valley: Thank you. Thank you, Sushant.

It’s been an honor.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Hey there entrepreneurs, my name is Sushant and welcome to Treptalks. This is the show where I interview successful e commerce entrepreneurs, business executives, and thought leaders and ask them questions about their business story and also dive deep into some of the strategies and tactics that they have used to start and grow their businesses.

And today I’m really excited to welcome Wendy McKenzie to the show. Wendy is the co owner of Everlasting Herb Farm and they handcraft the highest quality plant based organic skincare products in small batches. using top performing botanical ingredients. And today I’m going to ask Wendy a few questions about her entrepreneur journey and some of the strategies and tactics that she has used to start and grow her business.

So Wendy, thank you so much for joining me today at Treptalks. Really, really appreciate it.

Wendy Mackenzie of Everlasting Herb Farm: Thank you so much for having me. This is exciting.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: So very, very interesting, uh, business. [00:01:00] I mean, I’m very curious to know. Um, how you kind of got started, uh, with this and, uh, why organic skincare?

Wendy Mackenzie of Everlasting Herb Farm: Sure. Um, I, I’m a Vermonter.

I’m a lifelong Vermonter. I grew up in a family that was composting a million years ago and gardening and everything. And I never, as a kid, paid much attention to that. I never really thought that was really a great thing, but I became a teacher and I was teaching health. And I had a whole bunch of guest speakers come in and one of the guest speakers was an herbalist and I basically fell in love.

She passed around these jars of gorgeous dried herbs and little vials of essential oil and I just, there was no turning back for me. I did a deep dive into everything plant based that I could and took a lot of courses, did a lot of internships. And I moved to Northern Vermont and unbeknownst to me, I ended up 30 minutes away from Sage Mount where the renowned Rosemary Gladstar lived and taught.

So, [00:02:00] uh, that was just an amazing immersion into the herbal world. Um, many, many years ago and I kind of started an herbal business as a side hustle back in 2003, but I have little had little kids at the time I was a stay at home mom and I just needed a little bit something extra to like sink my teeth into.

So I learned about herbs and I loved making things and so that’s how I got started many, many years ago. Um, and it was kind of a side hustle for a long time until, um, uh, let’s see, until about 2012, and I went away with a friend on a relaxing weekend and we were looking at catalogs and she said, you know, this is a catalog where they make a lot of things like, or they sell a lot of things like you make.

But they don’t sell exactly what you make. You should send them some of your products. And I was teaching. I had three little kids. I thought, when am I going to do that? But the next week we had a snow day where we didn’t have school. So I took every product that I made, did what no one should ever do. I threw them all in a box, not [00:03:00] presented nicely.

And I sent them off to no one in particular, but the right person got the box. And the next week that person called me and said, I don’t know who you are, but the stars are lined up for you. And that started, uh, I’ve been white labeling for 13 years for this Vermont business. So I make large batches, 600 at a time, a thousand at a time, send them off, um, and with their label.

And that’s a big part of what I do, but it’s not all of what I do.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Wow, that’s very interesting. So your products are sold under a different brand name, but of course, your, you have your own brand name as well.

Wendy Mackenzie of Everlasting Herb Farm: Yes, I do a little bit of everything. So that’s, that’s about two thirds of my business. And then I also make skincare products.

And I would say up until about 2020, I kind of had a, you know, a nice line of skincare products. I’m in Vermont. I have, you know, a lot of customers here that want that kind of, um, skincare and who know me and who buy from me. Um, but I was asked to make a natural deodorant by a local woman [00:04:00] in a community group.

Because I’m from a town of 700 people. It’s pretty small. Um, she knew what I did and she had had a stroke and she couldn’t apply apply deodorant to one side of her body and a traditional applicator. So she needed me to make her a cream deodorant. So I said about a two year project trying to make a cream deodorant for her and in the process made a really fabulous.

Deodorant. And then I had friends who said, Hey, I can’t stick my fingers in my armpit. Can you make a solid version? So then I made a solid version that doesn’t have the plastic applicator and doesn’t melt at 120 degrees and actually works like in the natural deodorant world. It’s a natural deodorant that works, which is pretty exciting.

And it comes without all the plastic.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Wow. That’s so interesting. Um, so I mean, one of your value proposition is definitely that your products are handcrafted. Are they still handcrafted? Like, are you making all of these things yourself or do you have like other people kind of helping you with this?

Wendy Mackenzie of Everlasting Herb Farm: This is, this is kind of crazy, but I hand pour [00:05:00] every deodorant and every product at this point.

Um, I recently, within the last three weeks, hired a couple of people to help me pack up orders. So that’s kind of exciting. And I also recently within the last month hired a woman to help me make sales calls. So that’s been a really interesting process. I’m part of a sales accelerator program and that’s working great.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Okay. Well, very interesting. I mean, it seems like your, your business is growing. Um, What, um, I mean, you have a, a wide range of products, you have deodorant, facial care, uh, lip balm, perfumes, um, so, so you, it seems like you’ve kind of started with, you know, one or two products and kind of built your product line over time.

Can you talk a little bit about your products? Sure,

Wendy Mackenzie of Everlasting Herb Farm: sure, sure, sure. I everything is made from plants with ingredients that you would be able to pronounce and know and understand, um, and they’re high end oil. So we use organic oils and organic essential oils to make the products. [00:06:00] Um, and I guess my advice, some advice that I have to some of the listeners would be that if you’re starting a product business, you don’t need 30 products.

Start with one or two. I didn’t do that. That’s one of the mistakes I made. Um, but I would recommend fewer products because you have it. Less to worry about, fewer labels to buy, fewer containers to buy. Um, so consider that heavily if you’re doing it. Um, but I have really winnowed down the number of products that I make.

I’m really working on, um, scaling back, but we live in a cold climate where everybody has dry skin. And so there’s just, I’m always going to need to make a facial cream, the lip balms, the salves. Those are really important because of just the nature of where we live.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: And the reason you want to scale back is because it’s kind of getting unmanageable or you want to basically scale back some products that are, uh, low, like low selling and you want to focus more on the products that are high selling.

Wendy Mackenzie of Everlasting Herb Farm: Yeah, well, the deodorant that we made, like, I, I’ve, I have worn natural deodorant my whole life as an adult and I [00:07:00] didn’t know it actually could work, but like what we’ve made, Meadow Bee deodorant is actually a really amazing deodorant. It’s one. Two international awards, it won two international awards last year in the 2023 beauty shortlist awards where little companies and big companies.

So think like little companies like mine here in Vermont and big companies like Procter and Gamble competed in the same arena. And I know that they were in the contest because their birth bees lip balm won in a different category. And I don’t know if they had deodorant. I don’t know that at all, but I know that there were bigger companies in this contest.

So it was really exciting. We won best. It’s unscented deodorant and best waste free deodorant. And we only sent two products. So that was, um, a pretty exciting thing. And so we’re kind of, we’re kind of running with our deodorant because that’s kind of our hero product. That’s kind of, it’s, you know, we’ve only been making it since 2020.

Um, it took two years to develop. So it really is new to the market. Um, it’s beautiful and it works [00:08:00] and it’s so environmentally friendly that I’m just so proud of it.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: That’s that’s great. Um, so it seems like, you know, when you got started, it was kind of an accident where maybe you started it as a passion project, but and you didn’t know if there’s a big market for it.

And then you kind of accidentally found the right hands to kind of give the distribution to your products. Can you talk a little bit about market for these kind of, um, Um, Like plant based skincare products. Is there a big market out there? I know there’s definitely in consumers mind now a greater awareness of things like, you know, chemical free products and no plastics and, you know, more, uh, awareness of the environment and so forth.

Are you really seeing more and more consumers, like, gravitating toward these kind of products and, like, these kind of products having greater traction rather than, like, more of the Widely, um, bulk [00:09:00] produced kind of, uh, skincare products.

Wendy Mackenzie of Everlasting Herb Farm: Yeah, I think there’s a huge and very much a growing market for this kind of skincare and these kind of ingredients.

I was a student of Formula Botanica in London. It’s an online course. I did a three year program. I can’t say enough about it. It’s fabulous. Anybody who’s making skincare should be learning with Formula Botanica because there’s, there’s just so much that they offer and so much to learn. And because they’re in Europe, they’re way ahead of us here in America.

They, you know, they’re environmentally, they’re on top of their game in terms of chemicals that they won’t allow they’re on top of their game. Um, there’s a lot that we can learn here from them. So it was a great exposure to be in that school. Awesome.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Um, so initially you. Got traction into, you know, uh, in the market slowly.

So can you talk a little bit about, you know, how you got your first customers and over time, how you have been able to kind of grow your business? [00:10:00]

Wendy Mackenzie of Everlasting Herb Farm: Sure. Sure. Sure. It definitely, it started as a side hustle before I even knew the term side hustle and I don’t have a business background. So it was just, it really was a passion project, something that I was interested in and something I loved.

I learned that I loved making sabs where you take. oils and herbs and you infuse them together and heat and then you solidify the mixture with beeswax or another wax so it’s not as messy to apply. Um, so I fell in love with that and curiously enough the deodorant is kind of based on the same principle.

So I started and I’ve kind of ended in the same, um, spot doing that. Um, but, and I, I definitely bootstrapped the business. And, you know, just worked on it when I had time and it was very small for a long time. I think, you know, one year I might have made 3, 000. I was just like, Ooh, maybe someday I’ll make 10, 000.

But what was nice is in 2018, my school, after I taught there for 10 years, was looking to make cuts. And I was able because I had this side hustle that was so successful to raise my hand and just say take me I want to [00:11:00] go and I was just able to get out. So for anybody I loved my job until I didn’t love it.

And for anybody like a side hustle is just such a great thing. I highly recommend that.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: And it seems like, I mean, this, because you’re handcrafting everything and, you know, you own your formula, this, your business has a, probably has a really good margin. Would, would you agree with that?

Wendy Mackenzie of Everlasting Herb Farm: Yeah, because I’ve done everything myself too.

I do have, my husband is my business partner. He’s amazing. Um, he’s, he built one, The business took over our entire house. He single handedly built a building in our backyard that looks like a barn. That’s beautiful. Um, and I have the upstairs space and he has the downstairs space. So, but you’re right. Like there, there, there are really good margins.

I do a lot of retail sales and when I hold, you know, when I wholesale and white label, it’s, it’s, you know, lots and lots of numbers, so it’s exciting. Awesome.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Um, what are your sales channels? So of course you have your website and you’re white labeling it. So you [00:12:00] do, you have some distribution there. Uh, are you also selling through online marketplaces like Amazon, Etsy, um, these kinds of places where, I mean, these kinds of products would likely.

Wendy Mackenzie of Everlasting Herb Farm: I’m on Walmart marketplace, but I have to say for me, it’s a real sleeper. I think I could pay to play and be elevated, but I’m just more of an organic kind of business. So, so I think I, you know, I, I didn’t, I don’t know. I might’ve sold 53 deodorants last year, but I’m always amazed that anybody can find me.

But like. With the sales accelerator program that I’m doing, we’re doing just a simple outreach where you call a store and then you send samples if they’re interested and then an order if they’re interested. But through that, probably in the last year, I’ve picked up 40 stores, which is kind of an amazing thing.

And I’m, and yesterday I got into my 11th state. So now I will have products in New Mexico, which is pretty far from Vermont, so it’s very exciting. Wow. Are

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: you, are you using any of those wholesale platforms like, uh, fair or, uh, some of these other ones where [00:13:00] you can put your product and then people can actually just buy it through, through that platform wholesale?

Wendy Mackenzie of Everlasting Herb Farm: Yeah, I’m not on fair, but I am on UNFI marketplace. I just, that’s just a new thing. So the businesses. To make it easier for them to buy could go on that platform if they’re already on it and buy Meadow Bee, which is exciting. I’m starting to hear from businesses that they need to simplify their ordering, so they like to go through distributors.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Okay. So with the sales accelerator program, I’m very curious, like, do you find the leads just going on Google and doing the search or do you go on LinkedIn? How do you like collect a list of businesses to call to?

Wendy Mackenzie of Everlasting Herb Farm: Yeah, I’m, I’m working with the Duplassie Foundation out of Boston. And we, I was able to do this whole thing because of Center for Women and Enterprise, which is another organization that I highly recommend here in New England.

It’s, it’s been a real business education for me. Um, I’ve learned so much and through [00:14:00] Center for Women and Enterprise, I was able to be a part of the sales. Accelerator program down in Boston, um, and it was an online program. And then I decided after the five weeks that I loved the, the coach so much. I thought his information was brilliant that I signed up.

I invested in myself and said, okay, it’s now or never. You’ve been in business for 20, 20 years. Let’s go for it. Um, and so I have like an assistant who finds the stores. We figured out that it’s natural food stores and co ops that my deodorant will do the best at. That’s kind of where people go to buy deodorant, not so much like a gift shop or like a conventional store.

So that’s, that’s kind of what we’re targeting. And we’re just looking at, um, nearby states is kind of what we’re concentrating on now, but New Mexico is kind of an exciting development.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Awesome. And, uh, and, and do you give them like, you know, in order to incentivize a new store to carry your product, like, do you give them great term?

Do you say? You know, if you don’t sell your, my products in 90 days, you know, you can send it [00:15:00] back or like, do you give them great pricing? What, what, what kind of offer do you offer them to basically have them carry your products?

Wendy Mackenzie of Everlasting Herb Farm: Yeah. No, the thing is it’s, it’s. I don’t have to do any of that. Like this month, I’m going to do free shipping to any stores that would like to carry it just as kind of like a, just a fun little thing to do.

But the reality is when I send the sample to the business and I encourage them, I’m like, you got to get people trying this. They try it and they love it. It’s, you know, very rare that someone doesn’t love it. It’s like, it’s. Because it actually works. So that’s a standout. And I’ve even gotten feedback from business owners saying it’s the best in the business, which was really exciting to hear back.

Um, but because it’s so good and it’s high quality and it’s different, if you look at the deodorant aisle in any store, there’s a whole lot of plastic and things haven’t changed much. You know, you might have one thing in a cardboard tube or something like that, but there’s so much plastic. So this is like different.

And the idea that. A natural deodorant can work is it’s an uphill climb because people don’t believe that a natural deodorant can [00:16:00] work. So I’m kind of going against the odds, but when people try it, they love it.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: I mean, a couple of things. I mean, it seems like you found, I mean, of course you’ve created a great high quality product and you know, when people try it, you know, they can see it and it works.

And so it’s a good product market fit. Um, It’s the next step to this is really to kind of bring your hero market, your deodorant product to like mass market. And, uh, like, is that something that you think, and I mean, if, if you go in that route, I think the biggest challenge would be, first of all, you’ll have to probably outsource your manufacturing, right?

Wendy Mackenzie of Everlasting Herb Farm: I love the idea of like a little cottage industry. So like I, I have in my mind, I just love being able to hire local people to be able to come in and do, you know, I mean, it would just be such a great model to just put a wing on the back of our house, like a, an addition and just have a lot of stations where people could do this because it’s, it’s really, the thing about it is I love making it.

Like I, I [00:17:00] love everything about it. I love everything about everything I make, but this deodorant has just, it’s just so close to my heart.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: I mean, can it be mass produced? Like, I’m assuming that because you have the formula and you’re creating it, you know, handmade, but as long as you have the formula, you can probably automate it, right.

And, and mass produce it. Like, is that something that you ever think about or, or you kind of want to have your business model really handmade because that’s, you know, that, that feels different.

Wendy Mackenzie of Everlasting Herb Farm: I like that. It’s, I can’t imagine it automated. Like, but again, I’m one of the, I live in a town of 700 people, like I think in very small terms.

So this year my, you know, my business has grown phenomenally, but still it’s not a huge business, but you know, it’s still exciting. So I just had this vision of being able to hire like local people because I live in the Northeast kingdom of Vermont. It’s one of the 10 poorest areas in the United States.

So Appalachia is one poor area, the [00:18:00] Northeast Kingdom of Vermont is another one of those top 10. So, yeah, just to, you know, and I, and I live in a pretty nice little town. It’s not the most impoverished town of this area, but the whole area in general is pretty impoverished.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: You know what, I read that when I was doing the research, Northeast Kingdom of Vermont, and I was confused, like that almost sounded like some sort of an oil kingdom kind of a name.

Is that really the name of the city? It’s the area like Northeast Kingdom. It is. I

Wendy Mackenzie of Everlasting Herb Farm: think one of our state governors came to this area and just and said it’s just so beautiful. You know, it should be called the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont. I think that’s what happened.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Okay. Because kingdom means there must be a king.

Wendy Mackenzie of Everlasting Herb Farm: Yeah, no, I know. And that’s not good these days either. It’s just, it’s just an unspoiled area of Vermont. It’s pretty rural. There’s not a lot of people here. Most people are in the Burlington area on the other side of the state. Okay. We’re kind of in the country. Are

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: you doing any marketing efforts? I know you’re doing sales and you have a distribution partner, but are you doing any kind of [00:19:00] online marketing to drive the products on your website and so forth?

Wendy Mackenzie of Everlasting Herb Farm: I did have like Facebook and Instagram and then my account got hacked and I’m kind of old school. I’m kind of a Luddite. So when that happened, I was kind of like, Oh, that’s a relief. Like I don’t have. To like, think about that. So I have like a newsletter, I send it out, you know, every month, a couple of times, and I get really a great response from that.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Okay. Wow. That’s, that’s awesome.

Wendy Mackenzie of Everlasting Herb Farm: Yeah. And that’s kind of the extent of my marketing, although, because I’m in the sales accelerator program, I just made my first commercial

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: for television or for like digital channels. I

Wendy Mackenzie of Everlasting Herb Farm: think it’s going to be on social media. And I meet with an ad executive next week. Okay.

As part of this accelerator program, I’ve done everything I’m supposed to do. So, um, they’re going to take my commercial and, and help me do some things with it.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Okay. I mean, to me it seems like, because this is kind of, um, I mean, I don’t want to call it a niche. I think it’s much, it’s probably bigger than a niche because, you know, a lot of people now are interested in like, [00:20:00] you know, um, plant based, um, fashion and cosmetics and so forth.

Um, to me, it seems like if. You know, if you find the right community on social media, whether it’s TikTok or Instagram, I think there could be a very good traction on this because, you know, the people who are passionate about these kinds of things are really passionate. And I think it can definitely help you drive, uh, demand for your products.

Wendy Mackenzie of Everlasting Herb Farm: Yeah, that would, that would be exciting. I think that’s what I’m working for and getting ready for. Awesome.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Um, can you talk a little bit about your warehousing, your fulfillment, um, um, Uh, and so forth. Yep. This is it. I do it. Okay. So you pack your all

Wendy Mackenzie of Everlasting Herb Farm: orders. Yeah. Well, I have, I recently hired a couple of people to help pack, but it’s pretty, you know what I mean?

But we’re still pretty small.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Okay. Okay. Um, and you’re right now mostly selling in the U S are you selling anywhere outside of the U S as well? [00:21:00]

Wendy Mackenzie of Everlasting Herb Farm: Not at this point. Uh, you know what I mean? I think with my business, I think I could easily work in the United States and be happy, you know what I mean? Like I, you know, I, I don’t have to go to the next frontier kind of like thing.

Okay?

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: So, so you, although

Wendy Mackenzie of Everlasting Herb Farm: I do have labels that are ready for Europe, if I, if I got that big, I kind of planned ahead. Okay? So they’re labeled accordingly to their regulations,

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: but generally you want to keep yourself, uh, your business more. Uh, more on a smaller scale, uh, as, as a business owner, you don’t necessarily like your, your goal is not necessarily world domination, like you want to keep it more of a small business kind of a thing.

Wendy Mackenzie of Everlasting Herb Farm: think so. Because I just think of the headaches that grow exponentially when you. Grow as a business. And, you know, I mean, it sounds exciting to have a 25 million business, but I think the headache that would go with that wouldn’t warrant the 25 million. So, but I’m, you know, I’m quite happy. Like, you know, boy, if I made like, you know, like [00:22:00] half a million dollars, like that, that would be really exciting. Okay.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Wow. Awesome. So, um, in every entrepreneur’s journey, there’s always mistakes made, lessons learned, failures. Um, to me, it seems like you’ve grown quite organically. Um, would you say that you’ve made any, like, big mistakes or failures and, um, You know, what, what did you learn from it and what can other entrepreneurs learn from your mistakes?

Wendy Mackenzie of Everlasting Herb Farm: Sure. Sure. Two jump out at me. One is you don’t have to start with 30 products, start with one or two, make them super special and just go for it. You know what I mean? Make them absolutely perfect. Something you just love and can stand behind. And then the other thing is when we built the building in our backyard.

I have the upstairs and I didn’t understand it, but when I was showing a friend, our new space, he has a big business. It’s a grain business where he feeds animals and he went upstairs. And as he was going upstairs, he said, everything that goes up must come down. For sure. And so like everything, all the ingredients [00:23:00] get taken up and all the boxes get taken down when we have orders.

So now I think of him a lot every time that I’m going up or down with something. So I think my advice would be to, you know, a first floor location might be the ideal.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Yeah, for sure. For

Wendy Mackenzie of Everlasting Herb Farm: sure. And I have the most gorgeous space. It’s absolutely exquisite. And we have pictures of it on our website at Everlasting Herb Farm, but it’s still, it’s still a hike up and a hike

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: down.

Yeah, you may need to install like a small lift, I guess, you know, if you want to automate it.

Wendy Mackenzie of Everlasting Herb Farm: Yeah, that might be a

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: good idea. That’s awesome. Um, now I’m going to move on to our rapid fire segment. In this segment, I will ask you a few quick questions, and you have to answer them maybe in a word or a sentence or so.

So the first one is one book recommendation for entrepreneurs and why?

Wendy Mackenzie of Everlasting Herb Farm: Okay, any book by Donald Miller. He wrote, um, business made simple marketing made simple. He’s, he’s just a genius. And [00:24:00] if you, and if you want to start small and do things yourself, because you don’t have big money to help you, that’s a really great resource.

You can read his books, but he also has things that you can buy programs. You can pay for and help that you can purchase. So it’s, it’s kind of for everybody. I think that would, they’re really great resources. I’ve read every book he’s

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: written. Awesome. I think he has a very. popular other book called building a story brand.

I think a lot of other entrepreneurs have recommended that one as well.

Wendy Mackenzie of Everlasting Herb Farm: Yeah, it’s really good. I highly recommend it. It makes you really kind of think about marketing your business in ways that you might not think.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: You know, um, that’s, it’s, it’s interesting because many people think that entrepreneurs are kind of born, like, you know, there’s a entrepreneurial personality, but obviously, you know.

I’m assuming because you were teaching before, I believe you said you were teaching, um, so you were a teacher, so, I mean, maybe you didn’t consider yourself a born entrepreneur and now you’re an entrepreneur, you’re, you’re a business person, um, what, what are [00:25:00] your thoughts about that? Like, do you, you, you think that, you know, if you have, um, enough passion about your product, you know, business is easy to learn?

Wendy Mackenzie of Everlasting Herb Farm: I think anybody, I always go by, if I can do it, anybody can do it. So I highly recommend that anybody like you just have to start, but like, I’ve gotten a lot of help along the way. So I would say like in new England center for women in enterprise, the, how I built this podcast was like a business education in itself, you could really learn.

Big mistakes other companies made, so you never had to make them. I mean, it’s shocking the mistakes that companies make. So that was like a business education in itself.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Awesome. Uh, an innovative product or idea in the current e commerce, retail, or tech landscape that you feel excited about. Yeah,

Wendy Mackenzie of Everlasting Herb Farm: I love that they’re coming out with washing, like sheets for washing machines that you can, instead of having a big plastic jug of liquid detergent, that’s expensive to send and, you know, bad for the landfill.[00:26:00]

Like, I just love that there’s these little sheets that dissolve in the water. And right now I’m just trying to figure out, okay, what’s the best brand that has the most, uh, environmentally friendly ingredients.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Yeah, that is so interesting. Like, uh, I think I have also interviewed a couple of entrepreneurs who are, who are actually kind of disrupting that, that market.

You know, some, some have different kinds of ideas. Some have like more environmentally friendly products. Some are playing with the, the, the, the bottle itself. So it’s like a reusable bottle. So there’s like a lot of entrepreneurs are kind of, uh, disrupting these kinds of consumer products, um, a business or productivity tool or software that you would recommend or a productivity tip.

Wendy Mackenzie of Everlasting Herb Farm: I like Toggle Track. It’s like a free app that you can sign up for and have on your computer and you can just keep track of your time. You can see what you’re doing, where it’s going. Um, and that’s just been kind of a fun thing just to say like, oh, I’ve got to get going on more marketing or, you know, I’ve got to get going on operations a little bit more.

[00:27:00] It’s just, it’s fast and it’s fascinating to see where your time goes.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Wow. Very interesting. So you basically track, you know, you, you, do you track your time on an hourly basis? Like you do, would you write like this hour I spent on marketing or this hour I spent on operations like

Wendy Mackenzie of Everlasting Herb Farm: that? Yeah. Yep. Marketing operations or sales.

I’m doing that through the accelerator program through the Duplassie foundation. That’s one of the requirements you have to track your time. It’s kind of interesting because I spend way more than 40 hours every week on my business.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Wow. Very interesting. Uh, a startup or business, another startup or business that you think is currently doing great things.

Wendy Mackenzie of Everlasting Herb Farm: I am a big fan of Wright’s Bakery and Dairy in Rhode Island. They’re in North Smithfield, Rhode Island, and they’re a really cool family operation. They’re a very big business. Um, I think it’s a second generation right now that’s running the business, but they basically are a cow to cone kind of place. So they have the cows right there.

They milk the cows. They sell the milk. They make all kinds [00:28:00] of dairy, uh, like, bakery products with it, and including ice cream, and they sell it all on site. So it’s like a destination and a fun little place to go. And they’re, they’re family friends and they’re, they’re absolutely amazing. Awesome.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Um, a peer entrepreneur or business person whom you look up to or someone who inspires you.

Wendy Mackenzie of Everlasting Herb Farm: Yeah, I have a friend in my town. Her name is Mary Ellen Rice, and she’s the whole reason why I got started in this business in the first place, because she helped me, um, do everything that we needed to do to get started. Again, I’m not a business person. I had no idea what to do, but she is a business person, so she helped me.

And that’s the amazing thing about Vermont, is people are so happy to help you. I’ve had so much help from complete strangers. It’s really an amazing place here.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: That’s, that’s great. And I think, uh, everybody can, can use a mentor who has kind of, uh, you know, done, done there, been there, done that. And, uh, and yeah, if, if people can find a mentor, uh, experienced business person who’s willing to help, I think they should definitely get the help.[00:29:00]

What, um, final question, um, a best business advice that you have ever received or you would give to other entrepreneurs, I know you’ve given a couple already.

Wendy Mackenzie of Everlasting Herb Farm: Yeah, like the teacher in me won’t shut up. Um, I, I think it’s definitely like the one, the first floor kind of operations, which if we do get big, I’m excited.

We’re just going to bust out of the back of the house. We’re just going to have a first, like a one floor, um, room, which I’m excited about. But also the best business advice was, you know, not too many products. I just, I learned that late in my business life. But I thought, geez, that’s really smart. And you know, for a lot of reasons, it’s really smart because it just makes a lot of sense.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Yeah, I think that’s a great advice because I think, uh, in probably most businesses, there’s probably like 10 or 20 percent of the products. Uh, if, if a business has probably drive 80 to 90 percent of the, the, the revenue for the business. So I think it’s very important to, I think, you know, good to test out and see [00:30:00] if a product works in the market.

And if it doesn’t, then I think, yeah, definitely good to focus on a few products that, that actually work, uh, rather than having a wide range and because it becomes probably becomes, uh, difficult to manage. Right.

Wendy Mackenzie of Everlasting Herb Farm: Yeah. Well, it’s a lot of different containers. It’s a lot of different ingredients. My other advice would be like, you know, get five ingredients and make, you know, make your three things, but use those, you know, simple few ingredients, have everything come in the same container, ship out in the same size box.

Like that would be a really smart business model to use.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Last question. Uh, so you mentioned that you were a teacher. What, what subject did you teach? And, uh, do you miss teaching?

Wendy Mackenzie of Everlasting Herb Farm: I taught family and consumer sciences and I taught health. And I very much, there’s a lot of the job that I loved, but I was, I got out before COVID, and I can’t even imagine all these teachers who had to do what they did through COVID, and [00:31:00] it’s a really hard, hard occupation where you don’t really get a lot of credit for all the work that you’re doing because everybody thinks, oh, summer’s off, and you know, like, you don’t really have to do much, but I know that teachers are working so hard and it’s just, you know, amazing that anybody would even want to be a teacher.

So, you know, I, I, I miss it at times, but when I’m upstairs in my space, I’m in like a kitchen space and I think what’s missing. And I look around and I think, okay, 20 students are missing. Wow.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Yeah, for

Wendy Mackenzie of Everlasting Herb Farm: sure. For sure. As much as I loved kids, it was a hard, it was hard because you had to like you were like, whatever they were going through, you were having to help them deal with and it was really hard.

I mean,

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: maybe at a certain point you can guide or mentor other, you know, new entrepreneurs in the future because, you know, you, you know, after you’re kind of satisfied with your business journey and, and pass on that. So, I mean, that could be another opportunity to be a teacher again, I guess.

Wendy Mackenzie of Everlasting Herb Farm: Yeah, it’s time for me to give back.

People have [00:32:00] helped me so much. It’s time for me to give back. I definitely see that.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Well, Wendy, those were all the questions that I had. Really enjoyed speaking with you. Really enjoyed learning about your business. Uh, it seems like, you know, you’re really passionate about it. And of course you’re creating a really high quality product.

So I wish you all the very best. Uh, if anybody wants to buy your product, what’s the best way to do that? Yeah, they can go

Wendy Mackenzie of Everlasting Herb Farm: to everlastingherbfarm. com and also meadowbeadeodorant. com.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Awesome. Well, Wendy, thank you so much again for your time today, for sharing your story and lessons learned and, uh, wish you all the very best.

Thanks. Thanks again. And, uh, uh, yeah, thanks for joining me today at Treptalks. Really appreciate it.

Wendy Mackenzie of Everlasting Herb Farm: Thank you very much. It was lovely talking to you.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Hey there, entrepreneurs. My name is Sushant and welcome to Treptalks. This is the show where I interview successful e commerce entrepreneurs, business executives, and thought leaders and ask them questions about their business story and also dive deep into some of the strategies and tactics that they have used to start and grow their businesses.

And today I’m really excited to welcome Krish Himmatramka to the show. Krish is the founder of Do Amore. Do Amore offers ethical engagement and wedding rings that help people in need. And they also hold the title for its most ethical engagement, uh, rings in the world. And today I’m going to ask Krish a few questions about his entrepreneur journey and some of the strategies and tactics that he has used to start and grow his business.

So Krish, thank you so much for joining me today at Treptalks. Really, really appreciate your time.

Krish Himmatramka of Do Amore: Hey, Sushant. Thanks so much. It’s great to be here. Excited to chat.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: So, you know, I, I was watching your Shark Tank pitch and I know [00:01:00] you kind of disclosed your numbers there. So your business is definitely, um, quite successful, I would say.

I mean, not, not many businesses kind of reach, uh, you know, 10, 15 million kind of range. So can you share a little bit about yourself and Uh, I believe in, in the shark tank, which you said you got started with 18, 000 or something. So can you talk a little bit about your story and what really motivated you to start this business?

Krish Himmatramka of Do Amore: Yeah, for sure. So, um, I’m an engineer by background and in my first job out of college, um, as a mechanical engineer, um, I joined an oil and gas company and I was transferred to the middle of nowhere, um, uh, in the U S. In the U. S. and Louisiana, um, about an hour and a half from the, you know, from any, like, nearby city, um, where we’re drilling oil and gas wells.

And very quickly, um, I, like, learned that it’s [00:02:00] really hard to drill for oil. Like, we would drill for weeks and weeks and weeks to get to oil, but we would hit water within just a few minutes of drilling. And then we went to another well, and same thing, and then another well, and I was just really shocked.

Like, I never really understood, like, water is literally right there. Underneath, you know, all of us where we walk every day that I was just shocked that people are dying and, you know, developing countries from not having clean water when the water is literally just beneath where they’re walking every day.

They just don’t know how to get to it. So I thought, you know, I want to do something to help these people. And I didn’t really know how I didn’t really know what to do. So, um, around the same time, I was also looking for an engagement ring for my now wife. And anytime I was looking for a ring and I would talk to these different stores.

I would ask questions about sourcing and ethics and every single store told me the exact same scripted answer. Literally, you know, probably talked to eight or nine different stores. Every single one told me the same two sentence answer, which is, [00:03:00] um, just the scripted answer that people in the jewelry industry say.

And I’ve seen, I still see that scripted answer even today when I talk to folks. So I was just really shocked, like, you know, people were creating their ethics policies out of fear. Not really out of true desire to make things ethical. So I thought, you know, when I propose, I want to do it with a ring that I know doesn’t.

hurt the world. And I thought, well, what if it could actually help the world? And so that’s what I did. I wanted to, I wanted to propose the ring that helped the world instead of hurt the world. So I proposed with an engagement ring made of recycled gold. I, you know, I got a conflict free diamond from the country of Botswana.

Um, everything about it was as ethically made as possible. And then on top of that, the day I proposed, we brought clean water to people in And it just felt like so special, like this life changing moment. Is going to help change another life forever. And that was, you know, that’s how Doe Amore started where we make engaged rings and wedding rings that allow couples to change [00:04:00] a life forever on their own special day.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: And, I mean, it seems like you, because your focus was such, uh, so much on ethics and social responsibility. It does seem to me if you’re sourcing materials or, you know, um, stones and recycled metals and so forth. I mean, what kind of planning and work involved in terms of, you know, getting started, uh, to launch this business?

Like, did you create a business plan? Did you think it through? How, what kind of research went into this process?

Krish Himmatramka of Do Amore: I would say, um, it was pretty, it was well researched, but also like a lot of work in tandem. So, you know, while I was still like, you know, didn’t know anything about engagerings or diamonds yet, I was already starting to design the website because I was so excited about this.

You know, I was already designing the website already. You know, kind of like just designing the business model and also at the same time trying to learn everything about the industry, um, [00:05:00] you alluded it to it. You alluded to it in the beginning. So I had saved up about 18, 000 at the time. Um, and I just decided, you know what?

Like I’m just going to put all 18, 000 into a bank account and start this company. And you know, of course, I’m always going to, I know, I knew I was going to have to put more money in at some point or raise capital or something, but that 18, 000 is still the only investment we had ever made. When we pitched on shark team, that was the first time we ever tried to raise money up till then, like 18, 000 is still the only money ever invested into the company to start.

And so all of our sales have come from that. 18 K only. Um, and I think that that was super helpful, like getting started because I think if we just kept planning and planning and planning, we would have eaten through that 18, 000 very quickly instead was kind of just like, you know, I was planning, but I was also doing.

And I think that’s like, that’s so important because, you know, I actually think if I hadn’t done that, I don’t think don’t worry, I would have ever became a [00:06:00] company because I think I would have seen like how complicated this industry is and how crazy it is. And the planning just wasn’t working. And I feel like I would have probably not done it.

But because I had already started it and I was already launching a website while learning everything. Um, It was just kind of up there, you know, like I had to, I had to just keep going. So I’m, I’m very appreciative that I didn’t over plan and I started working on it, um, and just started, you know, really getting into the, the roots of it from the start.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: So in terms of your business model, are you. So you’re sourcing different, so you’re sourcing, uh, stones from different places that are, you know, you’ve ensured that are ethically sourced and socially responsible. You’re getting metals from different places. And, um, are you putting it together yourself?

Like, are you working with, uh, some sort of a shop that is putting it together? Who’s creating the designs? So can you talk through the [00:07:00] process of your kind of how you, how, how does your business bring value to the product?

Krish Himmatramka of Do Amore: Yeah, for sure. So, um, so we work with like some of the best, you know, for, for example, with this type of purchase, like an engagement quality was really key.

We wanted our product, not just to be ethical and beautiful and also, you know, make this amazing impact. We wanted it to, you know, really be one of the best products out there. Um, like I always kind of, Around the time, like, people didn’t really know about Tesla much when I was starting Domore, but like, at the time, like, I knew about it as an engineer, and it just kind of always stood with me.

Like, you know, they’re making, they’re trying to make, a totally different model. Um, a totally different business model. And they were trying to make the best cars out there, the fastest cars out there. And I think that was kind of like, uh, inspirational to me, like I wanted to make the best rings, the best, most beautiful rings, rings that helped the world rings that were, you know, not making a negative impact on [00:08:00] the world.

And on top of that, they were also the highest quality, like all of that was very important to me. So yes, we work with some of the best manufacturing, um, jewelry manufacturers all around the country. Um, And what we bring to it is we require certain metals. We require the gold to be recycled. We require, you know, that the, the diamonds that we source, like they have, we’re very strict about that.

And, um, of course, when I started doing where I lab diamonds were like a very new thing at the time, and now lab created diamonds have really started to take over the market, which is amazing. We were one of the first companies that were embracing lab diamonds and, um, really, you know, talking about lab diamonds and how great they were.

And at the time, like most. Most, uh, engagement companies were kind of bashing LabDiamonds and now all of those companies, of course, are like talking about LabDiamonds and all of their ads because they know it’s the future now, right? So we kind of embraced it from the start, which was really cool. So I think we kind of had a head start by, you know, being ahead of being ahead there.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: You [00:09:00] know, I have, I have thought about LabDiamonds. Uh, a little bit just from a consumer perspective, not, not, I mean, I don’t know how they’re created and everything, but when I think about, like, from a consumer perspective, the reason why a diamond is so expensive is because it’s considered a rare stone right now, there may be some, some controversy there because, you know, I think a lot of the companies that mine diamonds, they’re kind of, you know, Keep the supply low and, you know, have the, and, and then when I think about like a lab based or lab grown diamond, um, what is, what makes it, why is it expensive at all?

Like you, you basically, if you have the right process and right machines, you can create as many, uh, stones as possible. Yeah, for

Krish Himmatramka of Do Amore: sure. Great question. So, um, So when I started doing worry, lab diamonds at the time were almost the same cost as natural diamonds because, um, you know, that’s just how it was like there [00:10:00] weren’t that many leather was not much lab diamond supply and about, you know, a year or two and it was about 10 20 percent cheaper.

And now we’re talking about lab diamonds being 80 percent cheaper than natural diamonds, right? Significant. Um, but I think we’ve kind of hit this point now where I don’t yeah. You know, I’m of course, you know, making like an educated guess here. I don’t think we can get much cheaper than we are now with lab diamonds, because the thing is, like, even though, um, you know, of course, diamond is a car is carbon at the end of the day, nothing crazy expensive, right?

It’s just the crystal structure of how it’s arranged. And I don’t think That, um, even like creating a lab created diamonds, it takes time. It doesn’t, it doesn’t happen over a few minutes or a few hours. It, you know, it can take months and months and that’s a lot of energy use at the time. So there’s two processes, high pressure, high temperature, or a chemical vapor deposition.

And those three, two processes, they’re very time consuming, they’re [00:11:00] energy consuming. So like when you start to think about all of the time that’s going into it, all Energy that’s going into it and cost associated. I don’t think they can get much cheaper than they are now. Personally, I think we’ve hit that now, of course, with our love diamonds because their energy intense, like we really cared about making sure that our suppliers were actually switching or using renewable energy.

So a lot of our suppliers are using solar energy, hydro energy, different, you know, renewable energies and That, of course, helps with the cost a little bit. Of course, there’s a big upfront investment, but then once you have solar energy, it’s not, um, but I just think the time, the time commitment is going to make it tough.

It’s kind of like, it’s kind of like, you know, if you, if you sell trees and you sell flowers, you know, uh, selling flowers that grow within a few days. Those flowers will be cheap, but those trees that take six months to grow, those are going to be more expensive. And I think, I think lab created diamonds kind of are a little bit more like those trees that take a little bit of time to [00:12:00] grow.

And you know, when you’re trying to grow a tree, you’re having to give it more water. You’re having to give it more fertilizer. You’re having to do more things which add up the cost. So that’s why I don’t think lab diamonds can get too much cheaper than they are now.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: I do want to ask you about your customers.

Uh, I mean, I think a lot of people who buy diamonds, you know, I think there’s a special meaning behind it because diamonds are considered more expensive. And so, you know, if somebody is gifting their, let’s say, you know, girlfriend or fiance a diamond in a ring format, like there’s this, that, you know, I’m making a commitment to you because it’s a monetary commitment as well.

Um, have, I mean, it’s the culture of. You know, giving diamonds to your significant other or, you know, um, is it, are you seeing like this trend kind of, um, continuing to increase? Like, do you see this growing more and more or do you think there is a shift away? Because I think [00:13:00] also consumers nowadays are becoming more and more, uh, you know, socially conscious, eco conscious and things like that.

And are you seeing a shift? Away from like, you know, diamond giving towards like, you know, some more sustainable items and so forth.

Krish Himmatramka of Do Amore: Sure. Um, I would say yes, there is a shift for sure, but I think there’s brands like ours and others that are there now that are satisfying that need. So, um, I feel like if we were, if every brand and every, you know, engagering company out there, you know, Um, was where we were in the world 20 years ago, I think engaging sales would be way down, but because, because everyone has kind of shifted with the times, um, I think that’s why they still are in demand.

And, um, and also about the cost part, like even the lab created diamonds are cheaper. They’re still like expensive. Like it’s still, it’s still not like cheap, right. It’s still, it’s still a, it’s still a [00:14:00] relatively expensive purchase. Even now, um, You know, when people are buying an engagement ring, it’s still one of the most expensive things that they’ve ever bought up till that point in their life.

So it’s still expensive. Also, what we’re seeing is instead of people just, you know, um, taking a, but like slashing their budget because now with the lab diamond, they can get away with less. And instead of people are kind of spending the same amount they would have, they’re just getting larger diamonds.

So that average order price isn’t really shifting down that much. People are just getting nicer and nicer. higher quality, bigger diamonds instead.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Is there a resale value to lab grown diamonds? It’s a good question. I think,

Krish Himmatramka of Do Amore: I think that it’s kind of, I think like we’re at a point again, this is all my own educated guess.

I think we’re at a point now where it’s just what the energy use and everything that goes into a diamond. I don’t think that diamonds can increase, decrease much more in price. So I have a feeling that there will be like this balance now. [00:15:00] Um, At the same time, I kind of like to think of it like this, because we also do sell natural diamonds.

When we sell a natural diamond, we only source it from countries that, you know, we feel strongly about. So such as Canada, Botswana, those are two countries where we embrace diamonds from, um, what I would kind of say is that if someone really is looking at the engage ring as a purchase, like, you know what, I want to make sure in 50 years or 20 years, whatever it is, that engage ring has to You know has the same value or has appreciated Then because we have decades and decades of pricing history.

I think the natural diamond makes more sense But if you’re really just trying to get something that looks beautiful and gorgeous And you don’t really you’re not really thinking like what’s the price of this going to be in 30 40 50 years then I think lab diamonds makes sense and The other thing, too, is like what I kind of like to say is I, and this is my own industry, and I’m going to say this, but I don’t necessarily think natural diamonds are like the best [00:16:00] investment in the world.

So I would advise if you care about that is maybe buy a lab diamond, save money and invest that extra money you’re saving and something else. And I think you’ll come out more ahead than buying a natural diamond and seeing if that appreciates over time. So that’s what I kind of. Personally think I would do at this point is save money, buy a lab, create a diamond, invest that extra savings in something that will perform better than a natural diamond would over the next, you know, two, three decades.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Very interesting. Yeah. So, so you started out with 18, 000 and um, of course, you know, if you are even buying, I mean, what can you buy to sell in 18, 000? So how did you get, like, did you start off with like, you know, just a few kind of rings, uh, and how did you get your, like, first customer?

Krish Himmatramka of Do Amore: Sure. So we started off with wedding rings, actually not engagering.

So just wedding bands, right. Which is more just like simple pieces of, um, you know, rounded, rounded gold, right, gold that’s [00:17:00] been made into a round shape. Um, so those are always a little bit less expensive than an engagering. Um, a lot of the money initially went into like, you know, website development and, um, getting some samples and photography and things like that.

Um, and then we put, you know, we, once we had. Supplier that was going to use recycled gold. We put up some wedding rings and, um, early on, I didn’t have money for advertising, obviously. So it was really just like, what can I actually control? And at the time, I was like, okay, there’s two things I can control.

I can control search engine optimization. So I really focused on search engine optimization and making sure That we were, you know, targeting proper keywords for customers that will look for us. Ethical engage rings, conflict free wedding bands, like those types of keywords. So I really focused on that.

And then, um, the second thing I could kind of control was just making sure that, um, like making sure that whatever we did, we were like very, very Just get customers the best [00:18:00] customer service ever. Like when customers called us or talked to me or emailed me, they should feel like, wow, like I’ve never had a customer service experience like that.

Those are the two things I could control. So, um, The very first customer ever, I still remember a customer called our phone number, um, which forwarded to my cell phone, of course, and just had some questions about wedding rings. And I answered them. And then I remember like the next morning there was like an order.

And I still, of course, remember that order email. I still remember my second order email. I still remember these customers names, like the first 15 customers, I remember everyone’s names and what they bought. And it was just this like remarkable feeling. Right. And, um, and what was so cool, it was like this double feeling, this feeling of like, okay, amazing.

Someone just bought a ring from us. That’s great. And this other feeling of like, wow, like people are going to get clean water from this. Like it was this really cool feeling. So yeah, so we started off by not selling the most expensive products. And then the third thing we did was we did not make anything until the customer ordered it.

So on our shipping timelines, it said straight up, like, [00:19:00] This is going to take about three weeks to be delivered because two and a half weeks of that was going to go into making the item. And luckily with our product engagement rings, wedding rings, generally, those are not like impulse buys. So generally people do start looking, you know, no, they don’t, they don’t need like two day delivery.

So fortunately for our product line, like that worked, like people are, we’re okay with three weeks because. You know, their wedding wasn’t for two months, so it worked for us. So we would get the money, we could pay the supplier to make the product, and because of that, it wasn’t like a very capital intense process.

process because we weren’t doing any inventory at all.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: And what, I mean, I’m assuming that there are competitors who are doing similar things, who are selling, you know, uh, lab, uh, created diamonds and ring format and jewelry and so forth. So what, what really is Um, the differentiating factor, is it really, [00:20:00] does it really just come down to marketing, branding, and, you know, as you said, you’re providing the great customer experience.

Um, yeah, I mean, what, what, what, what differentiates your, uh, Product or business from anyone else was doing. Yeah.

Krish Himmatramka of Do Amore: Yeah. So there definitely are other companies like that that exists now. Um, I would say there’s 2 things. 1, um, this isn’t just to do with any engagement company, but per product sold. I’m not talking like total because we’re still a small company, but per product sold.

Uh, Doa Mori has the largest social impact of any company in the world. So, you know, giving someone access to clean water with a single product being sold and changing that person’s life forever, that’s the largest social impact of any company in the world per product sold. And then secondly, um, I would also say like, yes, we have like the cleanest supply chain of any engagering company in the world as well.

And, um, [00:21:00] I think like, so for us, I think what stands out about us is just the fact that we exist. Not to make money. Like we exist in this world to improve the world and to help the world and to make sure that that person’s once in a lifetime purchase of an engagement or wedding ring is going to make massive difference to someone.

So I think like that’s what shows through. I think there are definitely other companies. Now that are doing lab diamonds. A lot of them actually, um, which is great. But I think like for us, I think it’s just what’s different. It’s like, that’s the reason we exist. So it’s like a little bit more of a brand type experience rather than, you know, just like buying a lot of diamond from anywhere.

And even within there, there are some companies that also are, are looking at recycled metal and stuff, which we embrace, like we actually had a competitor call us like a year ago. Um, actually right before Christmas last year. So a year ago, almost exactly. And they were just like, Hey, like. How do we do recycled gold?

We have a customer wanting recycled gold. We [00:22:00] saw you offer it. Like we literally emailed them our supplier’s name. We’re like, Hey, get recyclable from here. Right? Like we’re here to try to improve jewelry industry for everyone. Um, so I think like some, some customers just really like that. Secondly, like for me, it’s always been this thing, like being ethical should not cost more.

Um, and gold is gold, like whether it’s recycled or whether it’s mine, like there’s not a difference in price. And so, um, like, you know, Like for that reason, like I, I don’t, I’ve always like tried to make sure that our products are extremely competitive. And just because we have like more strict supply chain, like it shouldn’t be a cost added thing.

It should cost the same as any place. So we’re very competitive on pricing. Um, I think that customer service thing I mentioned at the beginning that has stayed with our team. I think when people give. You know, give us a call or email us. I truly believe that they’ll probably have one of the best customer experiences they’ve ever had that entire year of anything they’ve purchased.

So I [00:23:00] think these are the things that kind of matter. Um, and, and we’re a small company, we’re a team of seven people and, um, So I think like having the small team has really helped because, um, you know, people are constantly learning from me and I’m constantly learning from them and all of these things that really, uh, make up Delamore.

Like it’s in every single one of our team members, every single one of our team members is here because they want to improve the world. And yeah, so I would say that’s what sets us apart.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Do you think that any entrepreneur who’s trying to create a business, right? Um, so I mean, diamonds and rings, they’re very traditional.

I mean, this is not a new business, but your angle really is the social responsibility aspect of it, right? Do you, in your experience now, do you think that, uh, an entrepreneur who’s trying to start a new business, not in the same category, but you know, just taking an existing category and kind of You know, creating an angle on that.

Do you think [00:24:00] by having a social responsibility angle, making a difference in the world? Do you think this is a good general strategy in the world that we are living in today where, you know, people are more conscious of, you know, social responsibility and ethics and, you know, environment and so forth? Do you think that that is a legitimate or a good strategy to kind of differentiate yourself?

Krish Himmatramka of Do Amore: Yeah, great question. I think that

I’m gonna almost say I’m not, I’m not sure, honestly, because I think for us, it makes sense because we have this once in a lifetime purchase. Like people do not buy an engaged ring once a year, right? It’s a once in a lifetime purchase. A wedding ring is a once in a lifetime purchase. I think like those products have a lot of meaning to a consumer.

So it makes a lot of sense. Um, I don’t know. And again, we’re not charging any more than anyone else. So, and the reason for that is because [00:25:00] whatever we spend on making this life changing impact. Like we also have a lot more word of mouth because of that. So it’s almost like we spend less on marketing than other jewelry companies.

So that’s why we don’t have to charge the customer anymore for this. I think that, um, for a while it was like very popular and fashionable to do it. And I think personally that consumers are kind of over it. I don’t think like consumers seeing like, Oh, this company, if I buy this, you know, t shirt, this is going to help these.

I don’t, I don’t think like that’s really that appealing anymore. Um, And so what I think is important is like to do something that’s really close to your heart. That will do something. So the reason that like if we were just selling engaged earrings that were bringing people water and that was it, I don’t think it would be enough.

I don’t think we would be successful. I think why we are successful is because we’re constantly thinking about quality. We’re constantly thinking about designs and, you know, Most aesthetic designs with constantly thinking about comfort and customer service [00:26:00] and all these things like I believe, like even without our social mission, we would probably still be existing.

We could still be successful, but having our social mission is what like energized me and energized our team to do the best we can. And we also have the fact that it’s like this once in a lifetime purchase, which matters. So I would almost say, um, not necessarily needed. Anymore, but I do think like consumers can see through like true Desire for a brand that’s trying to improve the world versus a brand that’s just doing it for marketing So like that’s like one thing we did this year like we don’t actually like we don’t really write like how Are you know that we’re ethical and we’re the most ethical like we don’t really write that in many places anymore , we don’t really talk about it.

And instead, like on all of our products, customers can like just click on a little arrow and they’ll be like, oh, this ring was made here. Oh cool. This gold is recycled here. Like they can just see it. If they want to see it, they can like click on a few things and they can see the sourcing, but we’re not like openly advertising [00:27:00] it or stating it anymore because I just feel like a lot of, it’s like hard for consumers to believe when every single company is claiming that they’re this, this and this now.

Yeah. So that’s kind of what I think is gonna be the tough thing for 2024.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Yeah, I think, I think a lot of this has become marketing and, you know, just like, just like wordplay, wordplay. Um, and

Krish Himmatramka of Do Amore: like, I think even on Shark Tank, like Mark Cuban said that same thing to me, like anyone can do what you’re doing.

And I was like, um, and I was like, disagreed, like, no, I don’t think so. Like I, and I, they, you know, it’s a 15 minute, I was out there for 15 minutes. They cut it down into an eight minute show, but like we, me and, uh, Mark talked a lot about this, discussing this. And I think I, You know, I felt very confident in telling him that, you know, consumers can tell the difference between a brand that actually has a studio girl to do good in the world versus a brand that’s just trying to market themselves as good.

Um, I think consumers can tell the difference these, these days, especially.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: For sure. [00:28:00] Yeah. Speaking of Shark Tank, um, I mean, when you went into Shark Tank, I mean, your numbers looked pretty decent to begin with. So what was your kind of motivation? Like, did you apply? Did they kind of contact you? And, um, question, what, was it mostly marketing or?

Sure.

Krish Himmatramka of Do Amore: Good question. So I think when I originally applied, it was, um, not for Shark Tank. that reason. It was because I wanted to have, you know, an expert, an advisor that, that can grow a business like we’ve seen all of the sharks do. Um, and I had tried for a few years and, um, I think I’d kind of given up because I had always gotten like pretty far in the process, but at the end I would get cut.

And it’s like an extremely competitive process. Like, Massively competitive. Like, I don’t know exactly, but probably I want to say like a hundred times harder than getting into Harvard or MIT. Like, [00:29:00] like I think of those are like a 10 percent success rate. These are like a 10th of a percent success rate.

Very, very challenging. Um, so I think after a few tries I had just given up and then something in me, I think was just like, Hey, I gotta give it one more shot. And, um, and it worked out that time. And I think the reason for me wanting to go on to shark tank was two reasons. One. Um, I wanted, and yeah, the mentorship aspect is still there.

I wanted a mentor that could help us, you know, um, grow this business to be as big as it can be, because I still believe Del Mar can be one of the largest jewelry companies in the world. Um, and then the second thing was, Um, even though we might not be as small as like some of the companies on Shark Tank for what my goals are, we’re, we’re like still minuscule.

So, um, I still feel like it was the accurate, the right thing to do because, um, again, I want to go up against the largest jewelers in the world that have been around for decades. You know, a decade, a decade, a century, and so on. So, [00:30:00] um, because of that, I still think it was the right move to make. I, saying that, like, I understand we’re not, uh, you know, a company that has, you know, you know, a few hundred dollars like some shark tank companies, but, um, for what I want to do, it was the right move.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Um, in terms of your marketing, I mean, you, you talked a little bit about it, but, um, um, what is working right now in, in terms of, uh, as you said, I mean, it’s, it’s like a one in a lifetime kind of a purchase. So there isn’t really a funnel where, you know, you can acquire a customer and then make the money in the back.

Yeah. Yeah. What is the

Krish Himmatramka of Do Amore: lifetime value? Yeah. What, what,

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: uh, what is working in terms of customer equity? Like, do you do a lot of paid ads and does that, I mean, it is. I would assume it’s a multi touchpoint kind of a purchase because, you know, people are doing research and so forth. So,

Krish Himmatramka of Do Amore: yeah, it’s a massive purchase cycle, um, extremely lengthy.

In fact, it makes marketing hard because a lot of times the cookies will expire by the time the [00:31:00] customer will purchase. Right. So it’s a very, very lengthy, uh, customer journey. Um, I think what’s working for us and of course we, we can always even do better, but I think what’s working for us is. Um, really like focusing in on what the customer who’s buying an engagement ring probably cares about, and there’s probably five things.

One is like, um, how do I know the ring is going to be good quality? Two is like, how do I know that the ring is going to be like, Affordable and number three is like, how do I make sure I’m not getting ripped off, which is like a big thing within jewelry, as you can imagine, and then we add in this fourth thing, like, how do we make sure the ring can be ethical?

Now, not every consumer across the globe cares about that, but but a lot do, you know, so we’re, we’re, we’re trying to work with the ones that do care about that. And then, and then the fifth thing is, um, How do I make sure that, like, I’m going to be covered in case the ring doesn’t fit her or something goes wrong with the [00:32:00] ring?

So, like, we really try in our marketing to talk about all five of those things. The fifth one is really important because, um, like, we want to make sure That the customer is going to be wearing this ring the rest of their life. We want to make sure that like, they can wear their ring the rest of their life.

So like a lot of companies will have like free resizing and then you’d read the fine print. It’s like free resizing only for like the first two weeks or 30 days. So we’re like, no, like let’s do free resizing for like a year. And then we’re like, no, no scratch out a year. I do it for life. So like we do free resizing for life, like for the rest of the life of the ring, like, And I think mentioning this to customers through marketing is important.

And when I say marketing, I don’t just mean paid ads. I mean, just, just even on organic social, even on customer service emails, just like making sure customers know that. So that’s what I would say our five focal points are.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Awesome. Um, I was going to, a question came to my mind when you were talking about it.

I [00:33:00] Okay, so you talked about your team. Um, I guess one curiosity that I have, of course, you know, you have an engineering background, um, and now you’re in business. Um, did you always want to be in business or, you know, how did that transition? Okay. Yeah, no, no. Are you, are you satisfied that you’re not in engineering profession?

Good

Krish Himmatramka of Do Amore: question. What’s cool about. Doing engaging wedding rings and like caring so much about quality and caring so much about comfort is like I actually feel like there’s a lot of engineering in it, which is really awesome. But, and then even like in the water projects, even though we’re not, you know, like, I like love talking to our partners about the water drilling and how it’s working so it is really fulfilling in that sense but no like I always thought I was going to become an engineer.

I was going to go work at a company after a few years, I’m going to go get an MBA and I’m just going to stay at that company. I’m going to climb up the ladder. And one day I’m going to become an executive at a company. Like that was always [00:34:00] what I thought. Um, it was always like a goal to, you know, be become a, you know, a C C suite member, a CEO or something at a longterm company like Procter and Gamble or something that was always a dream.

So no, um, that this was not the plan, but I think, um, at some point there was just so much, Like passion and momentum in my head that like, this was just something I had to do. Um, and I’m glad I did, like, you know, we’ve brought over 21, 000 people access to clean water now. And what’s, what’s like very fulfilling, um, is like, if Domore didn’t exist and those customers could not come and purchase from Domore, that would be 21, 000 people less in the world without water.

You know, you know, that’d be many, many communities around the country. Sorry, um, there’d be many, many communities around the world that just wouldn’t have water, and they would still be, you know, using dirty water. [00:35:00] And like, I think like keeping that in mind is just really, really, um, truly great for us.

Yeah.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Um, I, I remember what I was going to ask you as you were talking about, you know, the fitting and fighting and those kinds of things. Like, do you think about, you know, More of a retail experience like opening retail stores and like big cities because you know, of course that that gives people opportunity to try things out and

Krish Himmatramka of Do Amore: sure.

Yeah, I think, um, I think trans transparently for like what we want to do, which is to allow people from all over the world. You know, use these special milestones like an engagement, a wedding anniversary to make change in the world. I don’t think we can do it like one store at a time. I think I think we have to just continue to embrace digital.

Um, know what we are trying to do is make it easier for people to shop digitally and You know, always looking into different augmented reality, different technologies we can do to make it easy as possible. But I don’t think [00:36:00] we’ve embraced the store concept yet because I think going store to store to store will be just too time consuming and, um, when we can grow faster this way.

Um, in every thing about that, Sushant is like this price thing really does matter. Like we really want to make sure that people are not paying extra to shop at Delamore to make a difference. And I think going the retail route, it requires a little bit more of that. It really requires a lot more of that capital expense, which ends up meaning a more expensive product.

So by being online, it just allows us to be very competitive. Yes.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: I think that’s a very important point for sure. Uh, in every entrepreneur’s journey, there’s always mistakes made, lessons learned, failures. Um, what has been, I’m sure, you know, there were times or circumstances where you felt, you know, there was some failure or, you know, you could have done some without something, or there was a lesson learned.

Um, [00:37:00] what is like a one or, you know, a big lesson that you learned and that other entrepreneurs can benefit from?

Krish Himmatramka of Do Amore: Yeah, for sure. I think, um, a few things. One, like, I think like early on, um, we had a few manufacturing partners, which are, you know, really great, but they always said no to everything. Like anytime we had a question, like a customization, anything, the answer was always no, but we kept working with them because it’s like, well, you know what?

They’re one of the best, one of the best. And, but what happened is like, we started having to say no to customers and it just became like this cultural thing, which I didn’t like. Um, it’s kind of like, do you know how, uh, Like I always hear this thing, like when you’re growing up, like you are going to become you’re a mixture of your closest five friends.

Like your closest five friends is what, who you’re going to become. And I think that’s how it is for business. Like you will become your closest five suppliers or vendors or manufacturers. And once we had these one or two manufacturers that were constantly saying no, it started becoming part of our identity is we started saying [00:38:00] no.

So we realized that we quickly like made shifts and we, we did things to. To be with people that say yes and to be with people that care about our customers as much as we do, and that like really made a shift. So I would say that, like, even your manufacturer, even your vendor, your supplier, whoever it is, there has to be like a cultural connection.

When I say culture, I don’t mean like, I mean, culture in terms of like values. There has to be like that connection. Otherwise it’ll end up hurting you in the long run. So that was something like very key to me. And, um, like even now, like it really does matter. And it’s like the same thing with a customer.

Like if a customer is only coming to us because they want something as fast as possible because they want to propose tomorrow, we will see what we can do. But like, we’re probably not the right fit. Like if they don’t care about the ethics, they don’t care about the impacts and all they care about is getting something tomorrow.

We’re probably not the right cultural fit for them. And I think like it works like that with, you know, your own suppliers, vendors, and so on.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: I mean, I don’t know what I would think about a person who [00:39:00] like woke up today. Yeah. Okay. I’m going to propose to more. I need.

Krish Himmatramka of Do Amore: Yeah. I mean, I think there’s been like one or two instances.

Um, and that’s where it made sense because the customer bought a ring from somewhere and they lost the ring the day before the proposal and that like made sense. Um, but yeah, like generally with our purchase, what’s great is people do have some planning and things going in for, for reasons.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Yeah. Now I’m going to move on to our rapid fire segment in this segment.

I’m going to ask you a few quick questions and you have to answer them maybe in a word or two or a sentence. The first one is a book recommendation for entrepreneurs.

Krish Himmatramka of Do Amore: Uh, built to sell, uh, built to sell great.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Okay. Uh, an innovative product or idea in current e commerce retail or tech landscape that you feel excited about?

Krish Himmatramka of Do Amore: Oh, i’m gonna get people won’t like that. I’m gonna say the cyber truck.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Okay Hey, it’s it’s it’s definitely innovative. And yeah, yeah, you can’t shoot through [00:40:00] it No, that’s true. Yeah a business or productivity tool or software that you would recommend or a productivity tip

Krish Himmatramka of Do Amore: trello I know it’s old, but Trello, yeah.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Trello is a good, good piece of software for sure. Another startup or business that you think is currently doing great things?

Krish Himmatramka of Do Amore: Uh, there’s a company named Sheets Laundry Club. They are making, uh, instead of using, you know, soap in your washing machine, you can put sheets in there and it’s a lot more eco friendly and it washes your clothes really, really well. Um, I like them a lot. They’re a shark tank company as well.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Well, yeah, a peer entrepreneur or business person whom you look up to or someone who inspires you.

Krish Himmatramka of Do Amore: I’m going to say Daniel Lubetzky, founder of Kind Bars.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Final question, [00:41:00] best business advice that you have ever received or you would give to other entrepreneurs?

Krish Himmatramka of Do Amore: I’m going to go back to the book Built to Sell. Um, and I feel like in that book, there’s just so much wisdom. But the main concept of the book is you should build a business In order, like you’d like, you’re trying to sell it, even if you’re not wanting to sell it, but like everything you do in your business, it should be about preparing it for a sale for an acquisition, because when you do that, it becomes extremely efficient.

You’re profitable, like you do all these things correctly, and you’re doing things to make sure you as an entrepreneur are focusing on the right things. It’s very focused on, you know, the entrepreneur should not be doing every day. Tasks because you’re never going to get acquired then because people don’t want to buy a business that’s all about this CEO, like it needs to exist without the founder.

And so the book built to sell is just filled with so much wisdom. Even if you’re not trying to build a business [00:42:00] to sell it, it’s, it’s an amazing book. Uh, it’s one of the best books I’ve ever read. Uh, yeah, Harry Potter and Built to Sell is my favorite two books. Yeah.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Awesome. No, those are definitely great books.

Well, Chris, those were all the questions that I had. Um, thank you so much again for joining me today, for sharing your story, for, you know, uh, inspiring a new generation of entrepreneurs, uh, and a little bit about your successes and failures as well. So thank you so much again. If anybody wants to check out your products, what’s the best way to do that?

Krish Himmatramka of Do Amore: Yeah, the best is dohomore. com, D O A M O R E. com. It’s like do more with an A between the two words. Um, so yeah, please check us out. And yeah, Sushant, thanks so much, man. I really enjoyed it.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Awesome. Well, thank you so much again, Krish, and I wish you all the very best.

Krish Himmatramka of Do Amore: You too, man. Take care.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Hey there entrepreneurs. My name is Sushant and welcome to Treptalks. This is a show where I interview successful e commerce entrepreneurs, business executives, and thought leaders, and ask them questions about their business story, and also dive deep into some of the strategies and tactics that they have used to start and grow their businesses.

And today I’m really excited to welcome Nikki Smith to the show. Nikki is the founder of Nikki Smith Designs. Uh, they create modern dainty and affordable jewelry for customers that appreciate the power of accessorizing. And today I’m going to ask Nikki a few questions about her entrepreneur journey and some of the strategies and tactics that she has used to start and grow her business.

So Nikki, thank you so much for joining me today at Treptalks, really, really appreciate your time.

Nikki Smith of Nikki Smith Designs: Hey, thank you for having me. I appreciate being here.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Awesome. So yeah, maybe we should get right into [00:01:00] your story. Um, can you share a little bit about, you know, what were you doing before starting this business? What really kind of, um, interested you about entrepreneurship? And how did you kind of. get, get started with this business

Nikki Smith of Nikki Smith Designs: idea.

Yeah, absolutely. So, um, gosh, my journey goes back about 10 years now. Um, I am from Minnesota. I grew up there and I went to school in Wisconsin and I ended up in, um, Texas and Dallas, Texas, where I reside now, 10 years ago. So I moved here to work for JC Penney’s headquarters. I came here right out of college.

I came to join their buying program and I had a great job there. I was really looking for jewelry to wear to work. So I really didn’t want to spend a lot of money. It was my first job out of college. Um, I bought a couple of pieces from different boutiques here and there, but I had something break and then something tarnish.

I didn’t really [00:02:00] want to spend my money on that. So I just truly started making jewelry to wear to work. Um, I bought some stones, some string. I watched some YouTube videos. I went to the Michael’s craft store and I kind of just started playing around with pieces, um, that. People actually really loved. So a couple of people at the office said, Hey, where’d you get that cool necklace?

Where’d you get that pretty stone? And I told them I made it and I told them the price and I essentially, um, sold jewelry right off of my neck. So that kind of, that was 10 years ago that evolved into selling jewelry at. Pop up shops and festivals, farmers markets, music fest, really wherever I could pop up a six foot folding table, I did.

And I did that for quite a few years and it really became a lucrative side hustle. Um, and that is kind of where the brand was born out of just, you know, a true need for some jewelry that I couldn’t find.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Well, that is so interesting that you, it [00:03:00] just, uh, I mean, you must be doing something, right? Like, what was it?

Were you, because I mean, there’s, I don’t think there’s any shortage of jewelry out there. So what were you like? What are they different about yours that people were wanted to actually pay you and buy it?

Nikki Smith of Nikki Smith Designs: Yeah, great question. Well, I would say overall jewelry is a pretty saturated market. Um, like, you know, a lot of things are the entrepreneurs get in, let’s say candles or, you know, just things that people can create.

Um, but. I don’t think any market is saturated in the right products. I think what made me different was that if I didn’t sell something at a pop up table, I would take it apart. I would reuse the stone. I would throw the chain away. I would. actually watch what sold and make more of that and watch what didn’t sell and take that apart.

I figured if a hundred people saw a necklace and no one bought it, chances are I’m not going to sell it at the next show or the next show. So, [00:04:00] um, I think that was a pretty important aspect of the business. And then that’s. Probably one of my strengths is really like listening to customers and really understanding that products evolve and products change and that it’s not so much what you love.

It’s what people are buying. So I have been pretty quick to pivot from the beginning on what people like. and follow that lead. Um, I think that the analytic piece of the business is so important, no matter what industry you’re in. And if you continue to evolve your products and you continue to listen to your customers and be okay with moving on with the times, I don’t think any market is too saturated for that kind of a business.

And so what

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: was it? What did the customers like? I mean, can you give a little bit of an idea of your, I mean, business and the kind of pieces you’re selling? I mean, they’re inspired from everything that you’ve learned. Yeah. What is, what is different about

Nikki Smith of Nikki Smith Designs: it? Well, [00:05:00] okay, so let’s start at the beginning. So at the beginning, people loved real stones.

They loved cool stones, tiger’s eye, Jersey, things that would sparkle things that were wired wrap things that were truly unique. My whole proposition at the beginning was, well, I handmade this. I only make one of pieces. So. You kind of take it while you can, and people be like, Oh, my gosh, this is such a pretty stone.

So I think it really started out of, um, really you buying unique stones. Um, I made a lot of bracelets and I would put like center Jersey centers in the middle, or I would put a really great, like one off piece of a stone and turn it into an elastic bracelet. Um, if it didn’t sell, I would cut those off and try different beads around the stone.

Um, so I think at the beginning, it was really finding that unique thing. Over time, we now, um, manufacture jewelry, and we make jewelry for over a thousand different retail stores, boutiques, department stores, all sorts of different stores, [00:06:00] and, um, I have three retail stores of my own. I would say now, we are more on a proposition of waterproof jewelry that is affordable.

All of our pieces are under 50, and we’re using Gold filled, stainless steel, sterling silver, things that are great quality, but won’t break the bank. Um, so it has really evolved over time. Like for example, I have a necklace on right now. It’s nothing special, but it’s a tiny mini type tennis necklace. It has tiny little cubic zirconias.

It’s different because a lot of tech tennis necklaces are chunky, but we took that trend and we made it super dainty to be on our on brand for us. And it’s waterproof and it’s 42 and I shower in this and I sleep in this and I play tennis in this and I don’t worry about it breaking or tarnishing. So I think that is the value proposition now.

It has changed and evolved, but I have always been okay with that kind of change, um, coming with the business. And I think that [00:07:00] that has been a valuable, um, lesson. It really, that spans across any type of entrepreneurship.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: And so you are, I mean, one of your, uh, value propositions is waterproof. So are you using like certain kind of, um, polish that does not fade over time?

Like, of course your, your necklace is very, very shiny. Yeah, it

Nikki Smith of Nikki Smith Designs: is. It’s very shiny. And I’m not lying to you. I’ve had this on for many months. And I do all of the things in it and I don’t ever take it off because it’s so dainty. So we’re using, you know, it’s funny, we, the materials are a little bit tricky because what we found over time is that the same material doesn’t work for every type of, um, daintiness or every type of setting of a stone, but we’re using gold filled materials.

Gold filled is basically enough real gold around a base metal. That is durable enough where they just don’t turn or tarnish over time. That’s kind of the definition of gold filled. And then stainless [00:08:00] steel. Our stainless steel. Hi, sorry about that.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Our

Nikki Smith of Nikki Smith Designs: stainless. Hi buddy. Our stainless steel jewelry is made of, um, steel, which is, has, basically we use a PBD coating over it.

Steel already keeps its natural color very well. Um, but with that, the way that we basically coat it, it repels water. So it’s just really interesting. Um, we found a few different materials that really work and withstand the test of time.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: That is so interesting. I mean, you’ve been able to evolve your product so much and basically, I mean, you’re innovating.

Nikki Smith of Nikki Smith Designs: Yeah, we’re super innovative. Um, and the other part that’s been a fun challenge is that I have two little boys who I’m about to Turn on a TV show. So sorry for the interruption.

So anyways, sorry to interrupt this. Um, I told my husband to come in with them, but [00:09:00] that’s part of entrepreneurship too

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: is totally fine. This has happened before. Yeah. It’s

Nikki Smith of Nikki Smith Designs: the whole work life balance, um, you know, thing, which is another fun, uh, part of entrepreneurship because usually by the time. You get to running a successful business.

You also probably have a family. And so that’s been a whole nother, um, challenge in

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: itself. For sure. So, so you were doing it as a side hustle for a few years, you said. And at what point, of course you said you were making good money. Um, at what point were you able to kind of. Transition out of your nine to five and make this your full time

Nikki Smith of Nikki Smith Designs: project.

Yeah. So I waited quite a long time. I did this as a side hustle, um, for gosh, almost five years before I went out on my own. Um, I have always been very careful to not make more money than we were, not spend more money than we were making. Um, so, you know, meaning that profit has always been a [00:10:00] key part of the business.

And it took, I would say a solid five years until I thought to myself, okay, at the rate we’re going and the way I have my sales coming in and the volume I think I could do for going my full time job, I think I could be making a comparable salary to my real job. So I truly waited till it felt pretty comfortable.

It wasn’t, um, as much of a gamble at that point because I had a good idea of what I was bringing in. Um, and at this point, so that, you know, that takes us to about five years into the business. Now over the last five years, this has been, you know, my full time job and I do pay myself and all that good stuff.

Um, but it, it took some time and it wasn’t a big leap of faith because I am pretty conservative and I, I waited.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: I think that that’s a great, uh, strategy for any entrepreneur who’s kind of, you know, coming in the same path. You know, some people [00:11:00] say I want to quit my job, go a hundred percent, but I think this is really the pragmatic, pragmatic way to do it where you have tested your idea, you, you have the revenues coming in and, and you basically transition out of your job.

So I think Exactly, it takes a

Nikki Smith of Nikki Smith Designs: lot of the stress away. I don’t have, I’m not a very risky person when it comes to things like that. And um, I, you know, definitely preferred having a little bit of, you know, something under my belt where it felt comfortable. And I was like, I’m actually missing sales now. I think that could be a key piece too.

For anyone listening. I mean, at what point are you truly missing business because you’re working? If you’re not, you don’t really need to transition.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Um, so you mentioned that now you have three retail stores and also you have distribution in thousands of stores, um, jewelry shops and so forth that you mentioned.

[00:12:00] Um, is that kind of your main business model? So you’re not. Um, your online business is really a small part of it. Your main strategy is really, um, retail and, um, brick and mortar stores.

Nikki Smith of Nikki Smith Designs: Yeah, um, so I would love for our online business to be a larger percent of our overall sales. Um, we It was harder for me, uh, as a strength, I guess, of my own strength.

It was harder to grow the online business. Um, our website is nickysmithdesigns. com and if you hop on there, you can see, um, at this point, we have elevated pictures, we have better descriptions, we have a professional photographer, we switch things out seasonally for holidays. Um, But that took a long time for me to figure out how to do.

And so online has just grown slower naturally. Also, I think there is, you know, some very key competitors online. And it has been harder to capture people’s attention and capture some of [00:13:00] that market. So just naturally, our retail stores are a much larger percentage of our business. And our wholesale business has grown pretty significantly as well.

Um, but I would love to grow the online business, and we have focused more on that, but kind of to your point when we started, it is a tough business to capture eyes and clicks, um, at this point in the game online.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Yeah, I mean, it can be very competitive, especially like online customer acquisition with the marketing spend and so forth.

Nikki Smith of Nikki Smith Designs: Right. Right. And it’s just something where when I got to talk to someone in a store and they usually would buy something, you know, from me, but I don’t get that personal, um, feel with customers online. And although you have this huge audience out there, it is not as easy as one would think to, um, capture, you know, their attention and their credit card.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Yeah, for sure. So, you mentioned that now you, of course, you can’t make all the jewelry yourself. Yeah. So now, now you have kind of outsourced [00:14:00] it to, um, manufacturers? Or, so, so how does it work? Do you provide them design instructions? Do you provide them design files and they kind of take that and create the jewelry pieces?

Nikki Smith of Nikki Smith Designs: Yep. Yep. That is about right. Um, you know, we don’t really have all of our eggs in one basket because that’s another thing that I’ve always been like worried for. So we still have one, um, or actually, you know, two gals in the office that still make jewelry, um, stuff that, you know, special, Bowls that we haven’t found already manufactured things that are seasonal that we maybe will only make 50 pieces off or something.

So we’re still making, um, in our back room, quite a few of our pieces, but things like, for example, tennis necklace, we’re not setting stones in. You know, things like this. So we’re really designing stuff that we see, um, avoided the market or we see, you know, that our competitors aren’t doing. And we’re like, Hey, let’s get a real, a sample of a really skinny tech tennis necklace [00:15:00] from a couple of suppliers.

Let’s wear them. Let’s see how they wear. Let’s see what the cost is. Let’s see what we could retail for this for, and then let’s pick one. So we’re, we’re kind of diverse in that we are manufacturing overseas. We are manufacturing the United. States. We are still making stuff in our back room. We’re a little bit all over the place.

Um, and part of that is just, you know, learning and growing and transitioning. But the other part is just not having all of our eggs in one basket. Um, you know, and that way, as times change and, you know, things happen, like for example, COVID, if you’re making all of your stuff overseas, you were kind of in trouble during that time.

That was a great time where we honed in on all the things we still manufactured in our back room. Um, so it’s kind of, it’s been an advantage and it’s also just been, you know, an organic type of different growths.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: So your strategy of being more of a cost effective jewelry brand, I mean, that’s, that’s [00:16:00] more of, that’s kind of a double edged sword, right?

Of course, you know, on the one hand it’s, it’s targeting a certain demographic, a certain customer type, um, but does on the other side, you know, it also probably reduces your margins, uh, you know, uh, so how are you finding, are you able to kind of manage this, um, You know, this, uh, letting go of, uh, margins to kind of go the volume route?

Yeah,

Nikki Smith of Nikki Smith Designs: sometimes more than others. Um, so, uh, that is something that has kind of changed over time, I would say. At the beginning, uh, making everything myself and not having a whole lot of overhead costs, no office, no employees, no nothing, really. Um, the margin naturally works. Uh, as you grow, it’s a different story and there are times where we have decided to bring something in where I’m like, Oh, it’s kind of expensive, but it elevates the rest of our [00:17:00] products.

So we’ve done some things like that where, Oh, we’re not making as much on these, but this is a trend that we wanted to follow, or this is something that is more special. Um, so we do have various different price points, various different margins. We have focused, um, part of growing a business too. Has been not to just go with your heart and what you really love, but to actually start to watch the margins.

Um, because as you grow, your overhead expenses grow way more than one than I would have thought. Um, so that is something that we are paying more attention to now. I used to kind of just do whatever I wanted or whatever I loved, or I would make something a little bit more expensive if it had to be because the cost was higher.

Um, We have now, you know, taken away some things where we’re like, this is one of our most expensive pieces. This is not one of our best sellers and the cost is high and it’s hard to source and we’re not getting the stones the same quality we used to and then we’ve cut pieces. So we have made more decisions by the [00:18:00] numbers.

Um, I would say I made more decisions by my heart at the beginning and that factor has kind of been taken out of it.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: And so what, what have you learned about your customer base? Is it mostly like the, you know, you started out 10 years ago when you were a young person and we’re looking for like, uh, more of the, you know, um, cost effective jewelry to wear.

Are you finding that your customer is that persona, like young students or, you know, people who are just starting out their jobs and things like this? I’m assuming, you know, women who are more settled in life, they would want to wear more expensive pieces.

Nikki Smith of Nikki Smith Designs: Right. Right. Well, we actually, um, funny, my marketing gal just pulled a report from me and our average customer is 24 to 38.

in, uh, age and almost all females. We, most of our jewelry is female, but that female 24 to 38 kind of our sweet spot. And our value proposition is waterproof pieces under 50. So I think that [00:19:00] does. Fit the demographic. Um, it’s not as inexpensive as going to Target and buying jewelry. So that’s probably more of a teen thing.

Um, it’s not fine jewelry, which to your point, probably when you’re about 50, you’re like, I might not be wanting to take a clasp off all the time. And you know, I want something solid gold. Um, so yeah, I mean, we have found our target market does love that price point and it’s, you know, it’s a large target market.

So it’s. It’s working for us right now. Awesome.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: And it’s, it’s so interesting that you’re, you know, you have, uh, uh, your retail, three retail stores and all concentrated, I’m assuming in one city, is that, do you, do you have plans to create more, like, uh, grow your retail presence?

Nikki Smith of Nikki Smith Designs: Yeah, so, um, we have three retail stores.

They’re all in Dallas, Texas. So, the first retail store was at the Dallas Farmer’s Market. That came naturally out of having a booth there for so long. I had a presence there. I had a pop up shop. I did what many entrepreneurs [00:20:00] do. Um, you know, I was in between someone who makes candles and someone who makes bread and someone across from someone who makes dog food.

Um, so I got the opportunity to open a store after I spent a lot of weekends there. They saw my business. They saw how many people loved it. People were asking about me and they were like, we should give her a chance. So that first store kind of came up naturally. The second store grew out of a need, um, to have a presence a little bit more north in Dallas, as well as a headquarters.

So we opened that second location really because we found a great spot that we could also use the back half for a headquarters. It was too big for a retail store. But it was great to use half for retail store, half for our warehouse, our inventory, my full time people, all that kind of stuff. Our third retail store in Dallas just happened to be a small niche space.

It was long and narrow, and they couldn’t find much to put in it. And one of the owners attended my grand opening of my other store, and she gave us the opportunity to open that. So, [00:21:00] They’ve all kind of come, you know, not for me being like, I need to be here, but just kind of the natural progression. I would love to expand outside of Dallas.

I think we’re learning how to manage stores, manage inventory, manage transferring, keeping the brand aligned at all three stores. I think we’re learning a lot of key pieces right now. And once we fine tune all that, it will be easier to open in another city or state and keep the brands true. And, uh,

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: and you said that you’re, you are present in thousands of other stores.

Is that really through your wholesale strategy or are you in some major retail stores as well? So

Nikki Smith of Nikki Smith Designs: mostly our wholesale strategy. So our wholesale strategy, um, we attend trade shows. And that’s where, you know, we said there are many trade shows out there, a per apparel and accessories. Um, they’re in Atlanta, Vegas, Nashville, Dallas, kind of all over the place.

We attend trade shows. Um, and then we [00:22:00] also use online platforms. If you have a store, you can go onto a website like called fashion, go, and you can look for. wholesale, um, you know, pieces you can go on a, a platform called there. So we’ve done a few different things. We’ve also, also reached out to people like just cute boutiques.

Hey, here’s our jewelry. We love doing wholesale. We’d love to get in touch with you. So we just kind of have a knack for that. And we’ve always just kept exploring that and people have reordered. They’re like, yeah, cool. I do love this jewelry. It is at a great price point. I can make a really pretty display in my store.

Um, We also sell displays, which people love. So I can buy a necklace board from her with the necklaces on it and put it in my store. So, um, wholesale is just another thing that I think we as a brand liked doing. And we found a niche and we have grown a little bit organically. And then we’ve also done a lot of like reaching out and taking advantage of the platforms that are out there.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: What kind of, [00:23:00] um, Um, as, as the CEO of the business, as a business person, um, what part of your day is spent kind of working on the business? Like how much do you think about, because to me it seems like you’re fine, found a really good product market fit and it’s now it’s kind of like, how do you scale this business?

Right. How can you bring it to more people? So yeah. Cool. Yeah, do you do spend a lot of time thinking about that?

Nikki Smith of Nikki Smith Designs: Or yeah, that’s a great question. And that’s something that I don’t think any entrepreneur ever, you know, completely achieves because it is tough. I love being at the I love being at the headquarters because I get time with my full time employees and we get to strategize together.

We get to talk together all that good stuff. But, um, I often work for the business when I am there, um, I just can’t help it. I love to organize the displays or clean something up or put together, you know, something for a customer or open the Amazon packages. It’s just what I do when I get [00:24:00] there. Um, But the valuable piece is when you learn how to stop doing that and how to actually work on your business.

I would say my more of my creative moments and my working on the business happens outside of the office. It happens, you know, at night when I’m going to bed, I’m like, I wonder what our margin is on our top five items, you know, or who are our best customers. It just kind of is stuff that naturally I’m curious about.

And so I end up working. on the business outside of the office more often. Um, but I would say right now I’m probably more working on the business than for the business and it’s taken a long time to get there, but I try to spend the majority on my, of my time strategizing and delegating to my team at this point.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: To me, it sounds like you’re kind of satisfied with where your business is or, you know, or, or the organic growth or the organic growth that you’ve achieved. Um, do you like, Do you have any goals for your business? Like, do you see your [00:25:00] business 10 years down the road, like, do you envision your business to be like a national brand kind of a thing, where people have national presence?

Nikki Smith of Nikki Smith Designs: Yeah, I would definitely say that’s the goal. I mean, I would love to be a national brand. Um, I, you know, obviously one brand that comes to mind, because I’m in Dallas, or I’m in Texas, is Kendra Scott. Like, they’ve built such a great business of fashion jewelry. And I’m like, Our product is that great too.

Our product is different, but just as good at a less price point. So, um, I am really motivated to continue to grow the brand. I wish I had more of a, in five years, I want to be in this many stores doing this much volume, but. I, I keep thinking about it and I pivot all the time because sometimes I’m way more excited and way more, you know, feeling the growth.

And sometimes I’m feeling the, you know, profitability pains of growing and I want to scale back. So I’m a little bit still all over the board on growth, but I truly [00:26:00] enjoy all the different aspects of the business. And I think if we can stay, you know, focused and continue to improve every day, like we have over the past, I mean, eight years or so, um, I think that we can be very competitive in the overall jewelry, um, market share.

Thinking about

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: pricing, do you, um Um, have you, uh, have you tested with pricing, like, you know, um, increasing the pricing and, and like, have you, have you done a lot of testing with pricing? Yeah,

Nikki Smith of Nikki Smith Designs: I wouldn’t say a lot of testing, um, but yes, we have priced things a little bit higher, um, uncomfortably higher. We haven’t felt as good about it.

Um, we don’t feel like it sells as well as that under 50 sweet spot, but now in our lover’s lane store, our lover’s lane store is, um, in Dallas. That is a really kind of a nicer area, a wealthier area. They have. Find jewelry stores there and everything. We do [00:27:00] have tested some fine jewelry in that store. Now it doesn’t sell like the South.

There’s not as fast as our fashion jewelry. It’s just like a small capsule collection. And we were like, let’s get into fine jewelry, but it’s not exactly where my passion lies. I worry about the clasp. I worry about the diamonds. I, it’s kind of like a worry to me. Um, it’s an expensive piece of jewelry and my husband bought me one pair of diamond earrings and I lost one in the first month and I am like, I don’t ever want to have that stress again.

So it’s not, I think like where my, um, my passions super lie. I love like the affordability and the durable durability of fashion jewelry. And I would say when we price things over 50 versus under 50, we see it move faster versus slower.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Okay. Very, very interesting. Yeah. Um, and you mentioned Amazon a little bit.

I mean, given that your jewelry is more cost effective and Amazon, You know that the Amazon buyer kind of fits [00:28:00] that profile. Uh, are you on Amazon and do you see a lot of things? We are

Nikki Smith of Nikki Smith Designs: not. Okay. No. So, I mean, really the reason we are not on Amazon is because we, sir, we make jewelry for so many specialty boutiques.

And I think it kind of deters the brand. Um, when you can go on and type in Nicki Smith and every SKU is on Amazon, why would a boutique carry our jewelry? And we have built that business really strong and awesome. Um, and so I just I’ve thought about it. I haven’t thought about it thought about it and i’m just like i’m not there I I just don’t want to be like, you know Fluctuating the pricing and sitting next to a sponge on the website.

It just so no we’re not

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: by the way um another entrepreneur I was talking to They kind of found the solution there the solution for that them was They put their products on Amazon, but the pricing was higher on Amazon [00:29:00] than everywhere else, like on their website and everywhere

Nikki Smith of Nikki Smith Designs: else. That’s actually interesting.

That’s what I always get these, um, like Instagram ads that are like, if you buy Dawn Dish Soap for 1. 99 at Walmart, you can sell it for 5. 99 on Amazon and you can make 1 million, you know, when you use, when you sell 300, 000 units or whatever they say. I’m like. Do people really do that? But I guess they do.

And to your point, some people just want to pay for the prime, the two day delivery, they want it fast and they are, they know it’s a little bit more or they don’t know it’s a little bit more.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Yeah. But, but the rationale was that. You know, a person looks at the product on Amazon, they see the higher price, maybe they go and search on the web and then this, they come across your site or they come across others.

So it’s, in a way, it kind of drives that traffic from Amazon to, to, to your other

Nikki Smith of Nikki Smith Designs: places. That’s actually really interesting. I have not thought of that and I like it. I like [00:30:00] it a

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: lot. What, uh, let’s talk about your marketing for a second. So, um, are you doing a lot of online marketing? Um, and

Nikki Smith of Nikki Smith Designs: no, we actually don’t.

Well, we don’t do any paid advertising

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: because that’s because that, um, your, your pricing structure is really not, uh, aligned with that.

Nikki Smith of Nikki Smith Designs: You know, it’s just I have dabbled in paid marketing and I just am I kind of like I’m instant gratification purpose person and I’m like, I just feel like we’re throwing our money away right now.

Yeah. So, um, yeah, I just haven’t really gotten there to like love that. Um. throwing money at the line. But I mean, I do think that’s how tons of businesses grow and you don’t have this great website where they sell tons of orders. So I definitely think it’s a future opportunity. Um, but as of right now, we haven’t done any paid marketing.

Um, let’s

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: talk about competition for a second. Um, so you have, your value proposition is very, very clear. So your, [00:31:00] your jewelry is. Uh, permanent jewelry, waterproof, you know, pri cost effective, uh, and of course design looks beautiful, shines, everything. Are there other competitors who are playing in the same kind of category or, you know, what you have, what you have, the combination that you’ve kind of dialed into, it’s very separate and nobody is, uh, nobody’s looking

Nikki Smith of Nikki Smith Designs: at that.

I think we found our niche within fashion jewelry. I think we have a different brands than any of our competitors, but I would say. Yeah, I mean we definitely, there are other people doing it and there are other people that are great at jewelry. Um, I feel like our brand is a little more modern and dainty and following the trends and keeping the price integrity.

So I think all those things together we found our niche. Um, but I mean there’s definitely competition and there are definitely other people in a similar, a similar game to me.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Okay. Um, for, for your website, do [00:32:00] you, um Do you have large enough order volume? Like how do you fulfill, what is your shipping style like?

Do you

Nikki Smith of Nikki Smith Designs: So we, yeah, so we have a girl in the back. Um, we have an order, you know, she’s a order manager. She fills both wholesale and retail orders. So we do it all in-house, in our back room. Um, we print off the order, we look at it, we write, you know, thank you. And we. Put it in a cute little gold envelope with our package or suede pouch and our box and a little about us card.

Um, but yeah, we keep all that shipping and everything in house as of now. Awesome.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Um, what does your team look like right now?

Nikki Smith of Nikki Smith Designs: So I have, um, seven full time employees plus myself and they are all, you know, 40 hours a week, Monday through Friday for the most part. And then we have about 25 part time girls.

And those are gals who are covering the sales floor, both during the week and then on the weekends. Um, we have three retail stores, so about 25 employees is what it takes to get those hours covered. [00:33:00]

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: So, so I, so I guess I’ll go back to my pre, one of my previous questions. Do you, do you want to grow your retail presence?

Because it seems like a scalable thing, like, you know. Yeah.

Nikki Smith of Nikki Smith Designs: I mean, I do. I do. Um, you know, we opened our first store at the Dallas Farmers Market three years ago, maybe two years ago. Um, we opened the Lover’s Lane store about eight months ago, and we opened Greenville two months ago. So the retail actual storefronts is still kind of new.

Um, you know, three and a half years ago, I did not have any stores. So I kind of like the pace we are. And I, um, although I would love having a lot of stores, I like to focus on one at a time, keep the overhead reasonable, and then move on to the next one.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Um, do you love being at the stores? Like, do you think that at a certain point you can hire like, um, a business manager that kind of takes your place, you know, in terms of managing all these retail stores and you become kind of like more of the idea [00:34:00] person and, and maybe you have more time than to focus on your family and things

Nikki Smith of Nikki Smith Designs: like this.

You know, I think I kind of, I am getting there and I have gotten there, um, in the past year alone, I guess. A year, a little over a year, I’ve added three full time people to my team. Um, I’ve taken away the, you know, a lot of the design, a lot of the customer service, things that I was keeping close, a lot of the, um, scheduling of people, meeting people and hiring them.

Really, I’ve taken all that off my plate. So I have definitely moved in that direction.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Awesome. Um, I have to say, you know, when I, when I hear your story, it almost seems like things fell into place very easily, but I’m sure, I’m sure that’s not the, I’m sure there was hard work and mistakes made and things like this.

Nikki Smith of Nikki Smith Designs: Yeah. I mean, I definitely just enjoyed the journey and I have made some terrible mistakes. Like I have definitely sent 5, 000 straight to a scammer [00:35:00] before for my business thinking I was getting these incredible stones. That was a low one. I have done tons of pop up shops where it was windy, where it was rainy, where everything blew over, where only one person bought something, where it was zero degrees outside.

Um, so a lot of that growth at the beginning is, someone told me a long time ago, Being an entrepreneur, you’re going to make a lot of 5, 000 mistakes. And I was like, Oh no, I better not. Yeah, no, I have. I mean, I have ordered 5, 000 boxes that came from overseas that took up in our entire office, our entire back room, not thinking what it would be like to order.

shipping boxes, but 5, 000 of them. Um, I have done events that just like weren’t the right fit, or like were just super long hours where I’m just like, I cannot go on. Um, I have, you know, struggled learning how to manage people, learning like, you know, just the whole thing of [00:36:00] hiring and making people mesh and mingle together.

Um, so there’s been a lot of that, but I think I’ve learned that that’s like, Part of the growth and part of the fun and you’re going to make mistakes. Like you’re going to throw money away on something you never use. And it’s like, okay, I learned from that, but I better not do it again. So that’s my mentality.

I’m not one to like stew over a bad mistake. I’m like. Shoot, that sucks. I should have done that.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: So I think, I think that’s the most important thing. Like, you know, if, if you make a bad, bad decision or mistake, it’s like, as long as you’re learning and you know, you don’t make it again. I think that’s, that’s the most important thing.

Nikki Smith of Nikki Smith Designs: Exactly. And sorry, I have to wrap up in a minute. I have, I have a Teacher conference tonight. So,

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: okay. Okay. So, um, I’ll do a quick rapid fire segment very, very quickly. Um, so in this segment, I’m going to ask you a few quick questions and you have to answer them maybe in a, in a word or two. Okay. Um, one book recommendation for entrepreneurs.

Um, [00:37:00] and why?

Nikki Smith of Nikki Smith Designs: Ooh, one book. Gosh, I’ve read a lot of books too. Um, The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell. And why? Uh, I just liked learning about people and about customers and about, you know, that whole, um, point of, you know, getting past certain things and moving into the right direction of the business.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Um, an innovative product or idea.

that you feel excited about.

Nikki Smith of Nikki Smith Designs: Ooh, new product or idea. Oh, coming up with a signature piece of jewelry.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Uh, a business or productivity tool or software that you would recommend or a productivity tip.

Nikki Smith of Nikki Smith Designs: Ooh, product. Um, all hands meetings every week with the whole team. Love that.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Another startup or business that you think is currently doing great things.

Nikki Smith of Nikki Smith Designs: Ooh, that’s a tough one. [00:38:00] Um, startup that’s doing great things.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Or it could be business. It, you know, established business. Oh,

Nikki Smith of Nikki Smith Designs: that’s a good one. Wait, can we come

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: back to that? Sure, sure. Uh, a peer, entrepreneur, or business person whom you look up to, or someone who inspires you?

Nikki Smith of Nikki Smith Designs: Oh, I have a friend named Mallory that has a, um, going live business called ShopStyleYourSenses, and I think she is definitely onto good things.

Awesome.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Um, best business advice that you have ever received or you would give to other entrepreneurs?

Nikki Smith of Nikki Smith Designs: Uh, probably two things. One, to just start it. The successful people are the ones who actually went and did it. And then two, that you’re going to have expensive mistakes and you gotta learn from it and move on.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Awesome. And then I’ll come back to that question again. Another startup or business that you think is currently doing great things? Um,

Nikki Smith of Nikki Smith Designs: I mean, there’s a lot of different levels of startups that I love, but I would say, I [00:39:00] mean, I love my all bird shoes. I think that I’m loving like brands who are going like carbon neutral and using recycled materials.

So I’ll go all birds, but there’s so many kind of good ones. Awesome. Doing sustainable things.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Awesome. Well, those were all the questions that I had, Nikki. I know you have to go. I know, I know you have a busy, busy day. So I really, really appreciate your time. Thank you so much for sharing your story and, and your, your business successes and learnings.

Um, so thank you so much again for joining me today at Treptalks and, uh, um, I really appreciate your time.

Nikki Smith of Nikki Smith Designs: It was nice to, um, e meet you and yeah, I look forward to, um, maybe working together again on something. Awesome. Thank you. Okay. Have a

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Hey there entrepreneurs. My name is Sushant and welcome to TrepTalks. This is the show where I interview successful e commerce entrepreneurs, business executives, and thought leaders and ask them questions about their business story and also dive deep into some of the strategies and tactics that they have used to start and grow their businesses.

And today I’m really excited to welcome Josh Thurmond to the show. Josh is the founder of Lavabox Portable Campfire. Lavabox is a portable campfire solution designed for outdoor enthusiasts seeking a hassle free and safe way to have a fire anytime. And today I’m going to ask Josh a few questions about his entrepreneur journey and some of the strategies and tactics that he has used to start and grow his business.

So Josh, thank you so much for joining me today at TrepTalks, really appreciate your

Josh Thurmond of LavaBox: time. I’m so happy to be here. Thank you for having me on. I appreciate it.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Thank you. So interesting product. [00:01:00] Um, I’m curious to know a little bit, maybe we can start off with your background. What were you doing before starting this business and what really motivated you to go the entrepreneur entrepreneurial route?

Josh Thurmond of LavaBox: Sure. Sure. So, um, I like a lot of entrepreneurs. I’ve had a kind of circuit to it as route to get here. Um, you know, for many years, I worked as a professional guide, uh, taking people down the river hunting, uh, actually a lot of up in your neck of the woods, Alaska, all over the United States and even around the world, uh, leading caving expeditions, and So all kinds of outdoor sports, but then I, uh, I needed to make a little money.

So I changed jobs, went back to school and I actually started working in law enforcement. And for a number of years, I worked at the Denver district attorney’s office here in Denver. Uh, my wife is a forensic scientist, so we worked side by side fighting crime. And uh, and then, uh, uh, I got a little burned out.

I’ll be honest. I was tired of, [00:02:00] uh, it’s, I, you know, I, I used to say, I see people on their very worst day. And, uh, I really wanted to do something that didn’t feel like that all the time. And so, and of course you get a taste of taking people on, on their peak experiences or peak life experiences, like, like when you’re guiding, that’s something that you never forget you if you’re, you’ve been riding and rafting before.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: I have not. Um, I wish I, I definitely want to do more of that, but yeah, I’ve not been a very natural person in the past, but I, I mean, it’s interesting. I’ve been, I’ve been seeing a lot of YouTube videos of people camping and that has kind of motivated me to do that.

Josh Thurmond of LavaBox: Gain the bug. Um, well, you know, like rafting is definitely something that people say, man, I was the best thing I ever did in my whole life.

And, uh, I’ve always wanted to capture that feeling in a bottle. And, uh, So I kind of, you know, I say I got burned out a little bit and I said, you know, I want to do something else. And so I actually moved to the national sports center for the disabled. Here in Colorado, it’s the largest adaptive sports program in the world, at least the skiing side of it is.

[00:03:00] And there I was a program director for a number of years. And that’s actually when I sat, uh, I also sat on the board for the Colorado whitewater association. I’m a big whitewater kayaker, of course, and rafting. And uh, this is what brought me to this place where I started making products. I was making adaptive equipment for people with disabilities.

Um, always been a big tinker and I’ve always made a bunch of stuff. I’ve even tried to launch a couple of other products. Um, but this was, uh, and like a lot of entrepreneurs, I’ve failed a few times, um, many times, but, uh, get back up and, uh, Finally, I, I struck something that I, even when I, I first made it, I said, when I finished the prototypes, I told my wife, I said, this is the one that has legs.

So I’m 40. I, I invented LavaBox. I was 45. So, you know, it took a, it took a little while to get there, but I’m, I’m here now.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: I mean, that’s that’s the entrepreneurial journey, right? I don’t, I think it’s very rare that somebody gets it right the first time because there is a learning process like entrepreneurship is not like [00:04:00] one skill you have.

You have so many different things you have to get right like even if you get the product right and you don’t get the sales or the marketing or you know, go to market right then it’s not going to be successful so it’s definitely you know. Every time you try something new, it fails, you know, in the process, you learn it.

And I think, you know, it becomes kind of the, the factor that helps you succeed,

Josh Thurmond of LavaBox: uh, eventually. No, I think you’re exactly right. That was, um, you know, I, and I, it was a diverse set of products, um, that I kind of worked on over the years. Uh, one was a piece of software, um, right before the advent of the, of the internet, uh, and that, and actually the internet kind of tanked the idea of that software, uh, that was a couple of other projects that I worked on that didn’t make it another company that, uh.

Used, um, some proprietary, uh, presentation software and we were building presentations. Couldn’t quite get that off the ground. And I was still working of course, full time while I was trying to make all of those things happen. And, uh, but this was the one I said, you know, I’ve never [00:05:00] done a, just a product launch.

Let’s try it. And I really felt confident that it was that LavaBox was the right one. And I was right.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: And what made you feel confident? Like, were there not similar products like this in the market already? I mean, I know you were kind of in touch with the people who are, I mean, because you were yourself a camper and you were a guide and you were taking people out there.

So you probably knew the need and the market and what people were looking for. Um, but had you done any market research to see if this kind of product already exists? Uh, maybe you can talk a little bit about your product and how it’s kind of different from what’s, what else is in the

Josh Thurmond of LavaBox: market. Sure. So just the advent of the product, um, the Genesis was a camping trip.

Uh, last one of our last raft trips of the year, of course in Colorado, just like in Toronto, by the time it gets to October, things are getting pretty cold and uh, it was a cold night and uh, we were all having fun and [00:06:00] relaxing, but the, we were so cold from being on the river and we had kind of one of those, the fire pits that are already on the market.

And it just didn’t put out a whole lot of heat and put out a lot of fire. And I said, all right, I’m going to, maybe there was a few beers involved. I can’t say, uh, but we had a couple of beers and I said, you know, I’m going to make something better. Um, and it has to be something that actually is a lot more compact.

Uh, and we, and we, that was really the goal was to say, I want something I could put on my raft or I can throw it in the back of my truck. It’s not this big, giant, you know, kind of cumbersome thing. And, uh, yeah, so I went home and I built seven prototypes. Number seven was the classic inside the classic ammo can people have been building fires inside of ammo cans and using ammo cans for everything for a long, long time.

But, uh, we were really the first to bring something like that to the market. And that’s why I’m pushing the patent. The whole, that whole process has gone through. So that’s, that was definitely the, the, the origin of the story of the lava box. What makes it different is truly the size. [00:07:00] So most portable, uh, campfires out there and I’ll put portable and air clothes, cause a lot of them are, are big, uh, 37 pounds, 27 pounds.

Um, and they all range from about 35, 000 British thermal units, BTUs up to about 65, 000 BTUs. So, uh, I wanted to bring something to the market that was more like 200, 000 BTUs. Um, and so I said, how do we, you know, how do we maximize, um, the flame height, but keep it inside of the constraints of the Canadian and the U S, um, uh, fire fire bands.

You know, we have a lot of fire bands now. It’s pretty commonplace and especially in the West and of course, in Canada. And so now we’re seeing, we’re seeing like, what’s this, what’s, what would be the right transition to make this work for us has to be small. I wrote it all down and said, it has to be small.

It has to be, you know, it has to be light, has to be indestructible. And it has to put on a big flame that can keep us safe. It’s [00:08:00] warm, all those things. So that’s how I knew is that I, I, I did very little market research and we really honest with you. Um, it was, you know, anecdotal, uh, you know, and very personal to me.

Um, just like you said, I, I know the market very well and I, and I would tell the entrepreneurs to Probably not go far afield of your own personal expertise, um, or things that you’re really familiar with. I, I definitely have tried to go outside of my scope. Um, especially things that I really feel like I know very well and I failed.

I don’t know that’s the exact reason I failed, but it’s definitely might have been part of part of the story. Uh, and so I would say that, that, um, I knew it was a good product because I knew it was something that was definitely different. Uh, and I’ll tell you that I think that things don’t sell unless they’re, they look good.

They have to be vogue and sexy and feel right and be, you know, kind of a classic design in a lot of ways. Um, you know, you design a new [00:09:00] motorcycle, you don’t, you don’t, you know, there are rules, right? You can, you can go pretty wild on a concept vehicle, but you still have to hit certain lines. There’s, you know, obviously our eyes enjoy certain things.

I knew that the lava box had all the static pieces that. Made it interesting to us and made it sexy and familiar. And, uh, and that’s how I knew it was something that was going to be great. And it started small though. Don’t get me wrong. We didn’t just look, I’m sure we’ll get to it. We just jump on the scene and sell, you know, 10, 000

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: units.

So no, no, for sure. I mean, I’m, I’m very curious to know like the, the different prototypes that you, I, so you mentioned that you wrote down all the different features, which I think is a great way of doing it. Like, you know, making a list of like your ideal product and starting there. Right. And. Did you kind of, you know, pull things together yourself, you know, the box and, you know, try to put that, um, as a prototype yourself?

Or is that something that you had the list of features and then [00:10:00] you kind of went out there and hire some sort of an expert or a manufacturing company and have them build the prototype? What was kind of

Josh Thurmond of LavaBox: Yeah. Yeah. I built the first thousand units myself by hand in my garage. Whoa. Not everybody can do that.

Um, let’s be fair, you know, and I, and I don’t know that you have to do it that way, but of course it kept me incredibly lean. Uh, you know, I was able to produce a product that met a standard in the market that people saw value, but I, but it was something that I could keep the costs, you know, way, way down, being able to hand make each one.

Do I recommend that, that route? I don’t know. I think that everybody has to assess their situation, um, decide if that’s something they can actually pull off. I, you know, I was completely inundated. I mean, there was a, you know, we started off, sold 40 in two weeks. I put a website up and just [00:11:00] started selling.

They went crazy. And nobody even knew about the product. I wasn’t doing any marketing. There was nothing happening. It was just a couple people talking. And then it went way outside of my, like, friends and family circle. And then it, you know, obviously now it’s, you know, we’re getting, we get You know, people wanting the product from Australia to Indonesia, you know, Middle East, Africa, everywhere.

So, uh, yeah, so there’s that. And I, you know, I attribute some of that, you know, to, to some shark tank reach, but that was happened before shark tank. People saw the product on, you know, we, we live in a different world, right. And we live in a place where YouTube can make that happen. And so, uh, yeah, I was not anticipating that, but that was really the, the part of, of what made the startup.

Feasible was that was that ability to build them hand make them in my garage?

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: No, I think I think that meets a lot of the criteria of lean startup, right? Like you That was kind of your minimum viable product Right, and you were able to save [00:12:00] costs and you were able to see what what customers like about it or don’t like about it so you basically created these items in your garage and you took photos you put it up on your e commerce website and And people just showed up.

Like, can you share a little bit about, you know, how you got your first sale? Yeah,

Josh Thurmond of LavaBox: I’ll, I’ll tell you a little bit about that. Um, and I know it’s just me and you watching this. No, I’m kidding. I’ll tell some secrets. I definitely went out and did a lot of guerrilla marketing. Now I would go on to, and I still do, um, I would go on to Facebook pages of people who liked camping or, you know, or doing RVing or, you know, overland, all those things.

And I went on and showed the product and I pushed and pushed until they threw me off, to be totally honest. Okay. Um, I, and you know, it’s, uh, sometimes that’s what it takes. You gotta go out and make the sale. And so, um, and there’s a. Let’s, there’s a reality about the whole thing is that there’s a lot of heart here too.

I, I really want, there’s [00:13:00] an authenticity here that I, I really wanna help, you know, prevent wildfires. So there’s this piece of it that appeals to people. There is a, a, um, philanthropic bend to the whole thing. Okay. Um, but, uh, to be out there and be super scrappy was, was absolutely necessary. Uh, like I said, I would go on, I’d go on a Facebook page until the admin would throw me off.

Hmm. I’d go onto this. You know, all different kinds of Jack groups. So they said, you can’t sell stuff here unless you pay us. So I pushed and pushed and pushed until they, you know, and the, and the, and the, the people who are consuming that information were loving it. It was just the admins that were like, you can’t do that.

Or you need to pay us or that sort of thing. So I would do it as far as they’d let me do it. Um, and of course there was also a lot of like, Hey, if you let me show it, I’ll send you a product. Um, this may be not stuff people talk about, but that’s in real in the real world. I think that’s what really happens is you’re talking to people and helping them see the value.

And, you know, [00:14:00] maybe you are doing favors for people to get it going. And I don’t, I just not, I don’t think it’s too shifty. I think it’s the reality. No,

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: I think, I think that’s how most people do it. I don’t think it’s, uh, I mean, entrepreneurship, especially in the beginning, you have to, you have to really take that gorilla marketing kind of an approach and, um, and, and go knock every door sell until they kick you out of there.

So I think, I think it does take that to, to get a business going. I don’t think there’s like, um, the reality of entrepreneurship is not very glamorous, at least in the beginning. I

Josh Thurmond of LavaBox: don’t think so. I think people want it to be, but it’s not. So at one point,

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: a lot of hard work for sure. Um, at what point did you transition to, um, getting a manufacturer and kind of scaling the business?

Josh Thurmond of LavaBox: Yeah, that was, um, about eight months in. So, uh, just to let you know how lean it was, we had no money. You know, [00:15:00] this was very, very lean startup. Um, it was, you know, I was still working full time. And about eight months in, I started, you know, really turn things around financially. And that’s when I realized I had to bring in manufacturers.

Um, one of the critical pieces for us was that there was a safety, a lot of safety concerns around the, the, the actual elements of the, of the product. I wanted to make sure it was food safe and, you know, something that people felt comfortable with and that had, uh, of course a very polished professional look, um, and so making that transition was really important and people always, you know, kind of.

But I will tell you that, that I found that Alibaba and a bunch of other pieces are really useful to me. We now pull steel from Vietnam, uh, some from India and some from China. And then we do all the assembly in the U S so like most companies in the U S maybe all have products, you know, parts of being pulled from all over the world and then assembly is happening [00:16:00] here.

So I really decided within about seven, eight months that we had to figure out a way I couldn’t, first of all, my hands were killing me. I was so tired from making the boxes and I was covered in paint all the time. Powder coat. Uh, no one wanted to loan me their basement anymore to paint in their basement because it was getting, you know, winter months, I had to go through the winter painting, uh, which sounds crazy.

I know, but, uh, exciting every box we had to strip at paint. There was a paint we couldn’t use. It wasn’t fire retardant, so we had to use it. I had to strip all the boxes. I was tough. Um, but then, yeah, we, I realized that I could pull, pull products from all over the world. Or at least pull parts from all over the world and then complete the products here.

And then it became kind of a mission. I thought I’d be, if I’m being honest, I, I decided then that I wanted to be able to employ people and have. A business. Cause I can, you know, everybody can make, you can have a whole product made overseas. Yeah. You’re going to take a, you’re going to get dinged on tariffs, but you could [00:17:00] truly have the entire thing as everybody knows made overseas.

And that’s totally something everybody does. Uh, but I wanted to pull in employees. I wanted people to actually make stuff, put their hands on stuff. And so we, we went that route. Um, I can’t guarantee it’s going to always be like that, but that was, that’s what we had to do. And I, and I’ve been really lucky to, to have, um, great connections that kind of sprang forth from Alibaba, from a bunch of people in Vietnam.

Uh, and it really worked out well. So that meant talking to, let me get, I talked to. Probably a thousand people. Like, so I tried to manufacture the boxes. This is actually pretty interesting. I tried to have the actual steel from the boxes made here in the U S and I got turned down by everyone. I mean, everyone, I talked to probably 300 or more.

People trying to get them to build the box for me. No one would build it. Uh, if they did want to build it, they wanted like, you know, 50, 000 pieces. Right. You know, I couldn’t [00:18:00] raise three, 4 million for a product like this, you know, maybe in the tech sector somewhere else, but not here. And so, uh, I really wasn’t going to have a business unless I figured that out.

And, uh, luckily I found manufacturers overseas who are willing to do 200 pieces, 500 pieces. Now we buy 5, 000 pieces, but it started off. You know, in that place where we were just getting, you know, Hey, would you please make me a hundred? Like who are you and what do you want from me? And I said, please, let’s do it together.

You know, and I promise I’ll go from a hundred to 5, 000 and we’re going to make money together and do something great. But they, it was, you had to sell it. And I could not do that in the U S.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: So did you, were you, um, did you connect with these people, manufacturers really purely through Alibaba, like cold outreach, or like, did you have any introductions made?

Josh Thurmond of LavaBox: So I’ll do, um, I did two, two, two things. Um, one, I totally just [00:19:00] called them. I, I. Cold call them and said, here, here’s what I’m making. Uh, do you want to work together? Didn’t work very well. Alibaba has a great system for an RFP. You can put a request for proposal into the Alibaba system and you’ll get a ton of different, really vary, um, prices on, on product, uh, manufacturing.

So it’s really, you have to, I’ve learned a lot about using that system. I like that system. Um, I know some people don’t like it. There are fees involved. But the, there are a couple of things that are really great about it. I’m not, I’m not paid by Alibaba, uh, but, uh, there’s a couple of things that are really great.

One is that they protect you and we’ll do onsite inspections, those sorts of things. So I think there’s a mutual understanding that, that, uh, that we want to find a common ground and work together and everybody wants to make money and do a good job. And so I’ve had, I’ve had really great success with that.

Um, but the RFP system that they have built into the actual software is fantastic. [00:20:00] Yeah, it’s going to be, uh, you’re going to have to wade through a lot of proposals, but you get there and you’re like, all right, this is the one that this person seems like, and of course, just like you, you interview people for a living and you know, That you either connect or you don’t.

And, uh, some people I didn’t connect with, they didn’t understand the vision. And there are people that like, uh, a guy I worked with, uh, working now, Tommy Yee, great guy, we really personally connected and, uh, now he’s one of my top producers, so awesome. Yeah. I mean,

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: yeah, you know, there’s, there’s definitely.

a, um, uh, an aspect of somebody or you, you know, really, um, aligning or towards a certain goal, right? And, and there could be different, uh, people or companies that can do those things, but, you know, when, when you find that right connection or, you know, alignment, I think that that’s when it kind of works out.

I’m, I’m curious, um, do you ever think, I mean, just by [00:21:00] talking to you, to me, it seems like you’re more of a sales. Uh, personality, you would have been great in like sales roles. And, you know, based on what you told me, uh, you were not in sales role. I mean, you are doing, you know, uh, guide stuff and things like that.

I mean, do you ever find that maybe you, you could have been doing some sort of a sales, uh,

Josh Thurmond of LavaBox: role in the company? Sure. Um, yeah, I, I definitely was a salesman type of person. There’s no question. Um, but, uh, I never found a whole lot of pleasure in it. I’ve, I’ve tried a couple of little jobs here and there. Um, this wasn’t really my thing, but yeah, that it is a sales job all day long every day.

And I feel like entrepreneurs who have great ideas, um, but can’t sell them just really struggle. I, I, I sit in on a couple of, um, local groups where we, we meet and talk about things and, um, it’s really hard to see people who have pretty great ideas. [00:22:00] Um, but just don’t have the personality and probably the wherewithal to go out and just sell it.

Um, you know, there were, to your point, there were already a lot of portable campfires on the market. Yeah. Um, but I wanted to create something that was, you know, that I had to sell, I had to sell the idea and I had to sell the lifestyle, you know, and so there’s a big piece of like our, if you look at our social media on Instagram fire, anytime you’ll see the, you know, we live the life.

And I think that’s like a core, you know, part of becoming an entrepreneur is that you have to live that life. It is the life. You’re selling it all the time. I wouldn’t even come on here without my logo on your show. For sure. Yeah. Uh, I wouldn’t, I drive, all my vehicles are wrapped. I drive around, I’m selling it.

Constantly. It never ends. Um, and I think that’s really what it takes. People are like, Oh, I got a great investor and he’s going to give me two million bucks and blah, blah, [00:23:00] blah, blah. That’s not really what it’s about. And, uh, cause I’ve had plenty of people who want to offer me lots and lots of money. I’m still, I still own the hundred company outright, a hundred percent.

Um, I’ve never diluted at all. And so, uh, yeah. I think that’s what it really takes is you have to live it and sell it all the time. Yeah, I know. That’s not what everybody wants to hear.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: No, I think, uh, you know, the people who are successful, I mean, that’s what it takes. I don’t think there’s, there’s a different way.

I don’t think it’s like, you know, once you found something that works, now you can relax and, you know, watch TV and expect it to sell your, you know, it’s right. Um, so. Where are you right now? So you’ve, you’ve found the product market fit. You have sales, people are buying. Now you have, um, you know, international orders and so on and so forth.

What are you thinking about now? I also saw on your website, I think you’re in the retail, um, uh, uh, channel as well. So what, what are, [00:24:00] what are you thinking about right now in terms of, uh, growing your business? Is your focus really on marketing? Is it on, you know, building, uh, channel? Um, Uh, you know, I know you’re, you’re focused really on really driving growth.

Um, so what, what is it like your day to day, uh, concerns?

Josh Thurmond of LavaBox: Sure. So we have, um, three things that we say on, uh, at the shop, we say do good. Innovate and keep going. Uh, and I think number two is really what we focus on a lot. Um, but, but there is a caveat there too. Um, but right now we’re thinking about we’re going to year three, you know, January one will be our, our year three Q1 of 2024 is year three.

And, uh, I think right now we, we, we, we really would like to broaden our, our retail and reseller space, the channel there, but the, um, I’m super selective and I, and maybe I’m in, I’m still [00:25:00] trying to figure out where this laminal space between, um, you know, direct consumer versus these wholesalers, retailers, resellers, all of them, um, where they live in our universe.

Uh, and so I’ve decided that rather than spend a lot of time working with really big distributors, really big resellers, I decided to kind of focus on. making personal relationships with a lot of small mom and pop stores. Um, it’s a tough call. My direct competitor went straight to the biggest stores they could go to.

They came out with their product about eight months after ours. It looked suspiciously like ours. Classic, you know, happens all the time. Um, but, uh, and then I had to make a decision. Do I want to try to meet them on that field? Um, or do I want to Kind of stay where I am. And you were talking about growth stick.

There’s also a duality on that side too. [00:26:00] Is there, do you want to go with this huge upshot, pull in all the investments, you know, dilute quickly, but put it out in the world, go into big shops, blah, blah, blah, blah. Um, and maybe burn out fast, maybe hit, maybe hit a home run. Who knows? Um, or is it better to chug along and kind of grow incrementally and really tweak the product, know the people, know the market.

And I decided to do the latter. Um, I’m 47. I, uh, I’ve had a great career and I think I’m lucky enough to be in that position where I said, right, I’m going to just cruise a little bit. We’re going to make great money. We’re going to change the world, but we’re also going to be really smart about our growth.

Um, and so I chose that latter place just so I could do that. Um, it’s still a ton of work, don’t get me wrong. They’re both, they’re both hard, right? Um, but I think that this model allows me to build a better product, do a better job. You know, just be [00:27:00] more, uh, attuned to what’s happening in the zeitgeist of our world.

And so that’s why I chose that direction.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: I mean, that’s really interesting that eight months after you came up with this product, you know, you already had someone kind of copy, copy it and, and bring it to market. Did you, um, do you have any patents on this? I mean, no, I think the challenge for having a product like this is of course, um, I don’t want to call it simple, but it is, I think, relatively simple.

It’s a mechanical product and, you know, anybody can get the parts and, you know, kind of assemble it. Um, so how do you, how do you keep your competitive advantage? I mean, right now, if you have one big competitor, that’s, you know, that kind of took over the retail channel. Um, how do you, how do you stay competitive?

Josh Thurmond of LavaBox: Yeah. So they, um, it’s a great question. The, uh, I think there’s a couple of [00:28:00] things there. Um, one is that the landscape has changed and I wouldn’t say this competitor hasn’t taken over the retail channel to be fair. This was already a pretty busy channel out there anyway. There were a lot of portable campfires.

We were just the first to package it in the way we do. Um, but I think about companies like Yeti. Yeah. Um, the cooler makers, uh, I think that, you know, they’re, they’re already wrote them all in coolers. They couldn’t pull a patent on that, but they did something really smart and different and they created an entire lifestyle around that.

And I think it really does matter. I think that we, we really push. We push the consumer really hard to jump into our world. And once they’re in, they’re in and it’s cool. And it’s fun and they’ll see us out and we have a great time. And I think it’s aspirational. And I think that’s a very different thing than what’s happening with a corporate, you know, knockoff.

People know that they can see it. They can feel it. Um, and it comes through in [00:29:00] the, in the, in the entire vibe of the company. I hate to use that word, but it does. I mean, people see it and feel it. They go, man, these guys look like they make this thing that, and it’s fully made overseas. It’s not, there’s no assembly.

That’s not what they do. Um, their story is bullshit. It’s that kind of thing. Sorry. Uh, and that’s the kind of thing that, that people see right through. They’re like, nah, forget it. Those guys aren’t living the life. They’re not, this was a made up product that these guys knocked off these other guys. And I think it comes, it comes around.

Um, but I’ll be really honest about this part of it. I don’t let it, I don’t even think about it. I keep my head down. I work hard because if you think if you spend all your time worrying about everybody else and what they’re doing, you can’t do what you’re doing. And I, and I, I feel like a lot of people make that mistake is they spend all their time worrying about the, you know, the competitors and, and who’s doing this and who’s doing that.

And, uh, I think it’s a mistake. I think my dad always said, just, you know, just do your thing, you know, [00:30:00] put your head down and do your work. And so, uh, that’s what I’m trying to do. And I think it, I think it’s working. I think that they burned out real fast. And so, uh, and then, like I said, there’s some big players out there that are much bigger than, than our direct competitor.

Um. That, uh, have also followed suit. So I was pretty excited to see them build a product that was very similar to mine. I know it, it was validation, uh, and they, they clearly couldn’t destroy us. So I’m pretty excited that we weathered that storm early on in the, in the business.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: I think, I think that makes a lot of sense.

I think if you are building a, I guess, a, I mean, the word that you use is lifestyle, but it’s, it’s kind of like a, you know, um, an ecosystem around a certain category. I think that’s, and a brand around that, I think that’s tough to beat. Um, in that line, I mean, if you’re building an ecosystem around this whole camping [00:31:00] lifestyle, are you I know you have like one product, but you do have some variations of it.

But are you thinking about adding additional products that kind of go with that lifestyle, that camping lifestyle? Are you, you know, researching, thinking about any other products, uh, to add to your

Josh Thurmond of LavaBox: product line? Sure. So we, um, we actually just finished, we just got our patent for, uh, another product I make, which is a propane tank cover.

Uh, we all know that. If you’ve, if you’re, even when you’re grilling outside, if you’re using propane, propane tanks freeze up, they’re kind of a pain when that happens. So I actually created a, um, a thick neoprene cover that sits very tightly, just like to your body on the tank. Um, just received the patent for it.

Uh, pretty excited about that. And, uh, that, that, that’s already in the market and we’re about to do a really big push to get that. We’re actually going to bring that to larger stores. So you may see that. Um, I forgot what the big, um, I forgot what the big [00:32:00] store is in, in the, the Walmart of Canada. I can’t remember what it’s called.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Um, Home Depot or Rona?

Josh Thurmond of LavaBox: Oh, maybe it’s that one. It’s the second one. Yeah. So we’re, we’re, or I’ll be out. No, what’s the name of that out there? Maybe it’s an outdoor store, but anyway, um, we’re thinking about bringing that as a, as one of our bigger store products, um, it’s definitely a Home Depot style product, a low style product, um, really a neat product.

Cause it’s, you know, everybody has the same problem, which is you put the propane tank in the back of your car and it rolls around, this thing has a, uh, like I said, a tight cover and it has loops all over, so you can tie it into your vehicle, you can strap it in. Um, and it’s a nice carrying case. And so, and it looks better than a propane tank.

And so we’ve brought that to the market and a number of other things. We have a special grill and actually we just launched a really neat product. That’s a dual burner stove. So now you have a big campfire on one side and then an actual cooking. Unit inside of that. It also works. So it’s, [00:33:00] we’re definitely expanding quickly.

I was going to say earlier, just as a, a word of caution is that, uh, every product that you bring to market costs money, right? Safety testing, manufacturing, all the pieces, marketing, of course. Um. And, uh, you gotta be careful not to overspend on that side. If you’re constantly innovating, I feel like you may miss a lot of really great improvements to your core products, but also put yourself in the poor house by spending all that cash on things that, you know, may or may not hit, hit just right.

And so I felt like for year three, we need to pull back really focused, not pull back, but just kind of keep the status quo, um, roll out this new product called the Trident. Just the dual burner system. And then we’re going to ride that for a little while. We, we definitely like to innovate. Like I said, it’s our number two core principle.

Um, but, uh, I think you can’t innovate yourself. Yeah. Not as a business.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Yeah, for sure. Be careful. I think, I think that’s, that’s kind of [00:34:00] a, a big, uh, lesson that a lot of investors give to entrepreneurs is, you know, um, it’s like when you have a product that’s working, it’s like take full advantage of that, you know, just to max out the sales for that before kind of diverting your attention to a different product.

Josh Thurmond of LavaBox: So definitely. We’re not going to build a tent or, uh, you know, we’re not. We’re going to stay in our lane for, uh, maybe for until, you know, until we sell or whatever. So for sure required, I, you know, it’s always a, I was on the table. Okay.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Um, can you talk a little bit about your marketing? Um, what, what is working right now in terms of customer acquisition?

Um, and Yeah, I mean, I’m assuming, you know, marketing has its costs. So, uh, can you talk a little bit about, you know, what does it take to, uh, to acquire a customer in this space?

Josh Thurmond of LavaBox: Yeah, this is, um, actually the, the part that I enjoy the most and I’m also learning the most, [00:35:00] um, which I think is pretty typical, but, uh, the thing you’re interested in, you seem to hone in on, um, And I think it’s, it’s been really interesting to learn what really works.

So we were talking earlier about the initial grill and marketing, getting out there, just talking to people, um, getting into the ecosphere, uh, and getting the product into that space. But the, the next step was definitely looking at our segments, deciding what really was going to sell. And, uh, getting into real data.

So I invested early in, into, I won’t mention the product, but a product that gave us that ability to really see who was coming onto the site, you know, all of our analytics are very, very clear about who makes, who buys the product. And I would encourage any, any entrepreneur, you can have a great idea, but you’ve got to know this stuff now.

It’s just a huge advantage. Those tools are, are indispensable in a way that, that people, a lot of people that don’t, I think you’ll come out with a product and they’re like, Oh, you know, it’s a great product and it might be. But, uh, if you [00:36:00] don’t know who you’re selling it to, none of it works. And so I’ve been, I spent so much time and some capital on that piece of it to really understand the customer.

And so now I’ve, you know, I can move my targets over to, so I know that. I know that mostly men buy my product, let’s be fair. Uh, and I also know that those men are usually over 35, uh, and I know that they’re heavily Facebook users. So I was been, I’ll spend a large portion of my cash, uh, for short term sales to get them in the funnel on just.

on just Facebook marketing. And we, we really try to tap into a lot of things that that particular demographic likes. So we spend a lot of time thinking about the things that they, they remember or make them feel nostalgic, make them feel like, gosh, I really want to be, I want to have this product. So I feel like this.

Um, and we, I know it sounds simple, but It’s a, you know, it’s a pretty complex set of factors that gets [00:37:00] you to get somebody to trigger them that way. Um, so I, you know, for our marketing majors out there, I’m sure they’re used to hearing, but that really is, we’re tapping into something that’s very primal, that’s something that’s very, uh, innate inside of.

That consumer that, that they love, right? They’re hearing music that they remember they’re, they’re seeing the sites, they remember they’re having these memories that, that are really pleasurable and memorable and exciting and things that remind them of being a feeling good. That’s how I want my consumer to feel.

Cause it’s a cool, feel good product. Um, and then for my long term play. I am trying something I’ve never done before, and I can’t tell you the results yet, but I’ve put some capital into a couple of television shows. Okay. I’m not sure where it’s gonna go. Okay. I won’t mention it. Um, but, uh, you know, I just don’t, I The viewership is good.

Um, it’s actually a Canadian company, uh, that does the production, but I [00:38:00] do believe that there is no validation for a product like TV validation. People see it on TV and they know it’s good, right? It’s an, it’s, it’s an incredible thing. I mean, you can sell anything on TV, uh, for some reason, we all have all decided that that’s an authorized space and you can see something on TV and be like, it’s a good thing, you know?

And that’s why shark tank was great. Um, and so I’ve, I’ve definitely sunk some cash into that. Um, and it’s, I’m yet to really understand my customer acquisition costs there. Um, so don’t data’s hard. You probably know some about this, but it’s not like that, that one to one quick return on that data. I can’t see it.

I can see what markets are. You know, tuning in, I can see on people watching, I can see, look at Nielsen, you can look at the things that people are watching the shows, but their actual conversions are really tough to calculate. And, uh, so I’ve been learning that side of it, like what, what’s really happening [00:39:00] there, you know?

Um, and it’s a little bit of a leap of faith. I’m not gonna lie.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Yeah. I mean, I guess, I guess there would be a, uh, you know, a bit of a qualitative thing, right? So, you know, that when, you know, and I’ll ask you about your Shark Tank appearance in a second. You probably know that once probably your, your episode, um, runs on, you know, uh, on Shark Tank or on TV, you probably get a bump in sales from that, right?

For sure. And I’ve heard that from other entrepreneurs I’ve spoken with. It’s like, you know, when, when they have reruns, they know when they have the reruns because, you know, they start getting a bump in sales. Best part. Yeah. And I guess that’s, that’s kind of similar with TV also, even though maybe. It’s difficult to have that, you know, direct attribution to the show.

Um, but you can know when, when your, um, ad is showing up and, you know, is that really giving a bump in sales? Um, I’m assuming like your ad, you’re, you’re targeting like shows, but that are really [00:40:00] more outdoors focused or, you know, the kind of, yeah,

Josh Thurmond of LavaBox: yeah. And I, um, Like I said, I just don’t know. I know, I know the viewership, you know, so you can see that, but we don’t use codes on that show.

It really is just brought to you by lava box. Um, and so it’s a tough one. And that one is, it always feels strange. And of course, um, you know, on the same marketing piece of it, uh, we spend a really diverse, I spend a lot of time with influencers as well. I probably have, oh, I don’t know, 30 or so on the roster right now.

So not a ton, but. It’s something for me to manage. We use software for that too. Um, but, uh, yeah, I mean, that’s a big piece of it. And then, and once again, these that’s a, I don’t know if you want to talk about it at all, but that’s a, that’s a very wild West world that entrepreneurs nowadays really have to understand.

Um, how to work with, with all those influencers out there because they, it [00:41:00] runs, you know, this incredible spectrum and these are wonderful people, like they’re really neat people who are doing really neat things, especially in my space. You know, they’re building awesome jeeps or they’re, you know, flying through the air on some paraglider or something, you know, they’re doing something really cool.

Um, And they, and they, they’re either professionals at, at this job, or they’re just learning the job. And I think it’s really interesting to, um, work with them and figure out how they’re going to help the company grow, how, how we’re going to make sure that they get paid. Um, so it’s been, that’s another whole nother piece that I think entrepreneurs just need to like.

Yeah, get in their heads. That’s going to happen if you’re going to get off the ground without a massive amount of capital Yeah,

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: influencer marketing is tricky and I mean i’ve been hearing a lot of different feedback like A lot of times I hear that it has become more and more challenging and it’s almost like you know You put in the money and you don’t see the results But I also know as I said, you know, i’ve been watching a lot of you know, camping kind of [00:42:00] content I’ve been following some influencers on youtube.

Um and I can tell you, like, I was not a camping person before, but now seeing the lifestyle, you know, I, like, that’s kind of my go to these days, like, I’ve watched those videos and I identify with that influence. In fact, that has kind of motivated me to, to, to go outdoors. So I’ve been actually. Paying really, uh, you know, focused attention of the kind of, you know, tools and equipment that this person is using and I write it down.

So I think it’s, it’s not, you know, where you have an influence or where the audience connects with them in a very deep way. I can see, you know, marketing with an influence is working really well as well. So it is definitely an interesting space. Yeah.

Josh Thurmond of LavaBox: And they’re aspirational people. I mean, I’m, you know, I’m always impressed by them.

You know that. When I see them go out and do a, an incredible hike, I’m inspired. I want to do that. I go, I want to, I want to be like that [00:43:00] person. And so I, I really like working with them. Um, you’re exactly right. There are gosh, I feel terrible. Um, every once in a while we have some, I’ll sell, I’ll tell it for entrepreneurs, set standards.

decide the valuation and the value proposition of what your product is worth versus, um, how many followers, what their reach is. So, um, it’s not a, you know, it’s not a set in stone calculation, but I think for us, we’re, we usually require about 20, 000 followers on Instagram before we’ll give you a product.

So, and I’m really upfront about it. I just say, look, No one gets free stuff. You got to buy in and have some skin in the game unless you’re really big. And I know you’re going to produce great content, but if you’re new and you want to get in, you got it. You got it. I’ll give you 40 percent off, but you got to get in.

Um, and so there’s this. I think that’s a, I don’t, I don’t know if that’s, I don’t think that’s perfect, but I think that’s a good way to weed out people who just want free stuff because they’re, [00:44:00] it happens and uh, it’s totally fine. But there are great, um, I have some, my best influencers are people who just trying to get their page bigger, trying to grow.

Um. You know, really love the product already own the product, um, you know, have some investment or willing to go on the journey with me, but, uh, Hey, can I just get a free thing? And then I’m never going to hear it. You’re never, I’m not going to hear from you ever again. And you’re not going to make a video.

Get

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: out of here. I think the best one is where the influencer themselves have, uh, are using the product or have used the product and they can, you know, they, they connect with the product. Then, then they can really push the product or, you know, they can really show the value proposition to their audience.

It’s, it’s

Josh Thurmond of LavaBox: very rare that I reach out to somebody, I wait until they are like, I really like your product and I’m growing my channel. Can you, can you help? Yeah, that’s that’s the person I work with because I already know they own it and they love it

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: for sure So I want to briefly talk about shark tank appearance because that’s definitely a big a big thing [00:45:00] given how popular it is and So yeah, can you share a little bit about your experience?

You know, i’m assuming you probably went there for the uh for the you know, the the the viewership and you know the the exposure that that I you know, I have spoken with a few shark tank entrepreneurs and Um, I think that’s, that’s one of the big motivations. Um, how did you, how did you get on? Um, and, uh, what was your experience

Josh Thurmond of LavaBox: like?

Sure. So, um, well, first of all, and I think everybody says the same thing and it’s, and it’s real is that I thought it was a great experience. Um, just personally, I’ve heard a few, you know, you hear different, everybody has their own attitude and I’m kind of an optimistic person. I thought it was wonderful.

I thought it was really fun. It was a cool life experience. I wasn’t going to say no. Um, so I want to lead with that. Um, I initially, uh, we were about a year into the business and I sent an application and it really was because, you know, once [00:46:00] again, I’m a neophyte in this space. Um, so I, I definitely thought it would be interesting to have somebody.

On my side, who was so visible, um, and also so knowledgeable that that might be a great person to bring into the company. Um, but I, uh, I had no sales. It’s so little sales. You know, I think we did about 40 grand in our first year. So really nothing. Um, and now we do over a million just to, so we’ve had incredible growth in a, in a, in a year and a half.

Uh, so, but, um, it was, uh, you know, I wanted to see what it was, what it was all about, and I liked the show. Uh, you know, obviously as an entrepreneur, I was already kind of keyed into it. So I applied. Um, they said what I suspected, which was, um, you don’t have enough sales. They liked me. They liked all the auditions.

You do a lot of tapes and all that kind of stuff. I can’t talk too much about it, but, um, you definitely need to hustle to get onto the show. And there’s a [00:47:00] lot of paperwork, uh, and you earn your spot. I think they start off with 60, 000 applicants each year and whittle down to just a couple hundred. So it’s a pretty serious and then it goes down from there who actually airs.

So it’s a pretty serious process and you need to take it seriously. And it is like a second job, I mean, nonstop paperwork, due diligence, financials, everything. Um, so I’m, I’m very impressed with their whole machine. The, you know, the, the machinations of actually making it happen is pretty impressive. Uh, but didn’t make it first year.

I was definitely disappointed, but I say, you know what? Uh, they said, you know, he told me that we love the product. Please come back, try again, try to get in the next year, right through. Uh, we had great sales, uh, and you know, our margins are very, very good. Uh, so we had, uh, so we’ve definitely marched right into the show.

And it was, uh, like I said, it was, um, not easy. People who think it’s easier. You just go on. It’s not like that at all. They, uh, they require a lot of you and that’s, uh, that’s good. [00:48:00] You can see it, it comes through on the show, I think. No, I,

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: I, I agree. I mean, it is a show business. It’s not just, you know, anybody can go and make a pitch.

I think, I think they’re probably looking for a combination of factors. You know, you, you need to have a legitimate business. You need to have sales, but at the same time, you also, they’re probably also looking for someone who has a certain kind of personality who would look good on television and things like that.

So I, yeah, I mean, it’s, it’s definitely a challenging thing to get and definitely congratulate you on that. Um, maybe we can talk a little bit about your fulfillment and shipping. Um, sure. Uh, are you shipping? You said you’re shipping worldwide now. Can you talk a little bit about, you know, are you doing that yourself or are you working with like a third party logistics

Josh Thurmond of LavaBox: company?

No, we don’t do three PLS. Um, we are still shipping ourselves. Um, once again, I, I like keeping it in house for a little while longer. Uh, you know, we will let it go relatively soon. We just can’t do [00:49:00] it. Um, but we have a really great space. And we, we, you know, I think that’s another huge piece of it is you just have to think about our, are your nuts and bolts.

Can you make the rent, uh, you know, moving out of the garage and moving into, uh, you know, warehouse space was a big deal for us and having where else space that we could afford and be able to ship out of and receive and all that was important. Um, and so if you can save pennies there, that’s a, that’s a huge piece of it.

Um, but anyway, the, uh, shipping right now, you know, once again, fully automated, I love it. Good solutions. Uh, and it does take work as you know, you have to go and talk to all these salespeople and really see how it’s going to integrate and fix your stack. So it actually works right for you. Um, and it’s never actually fixed just for the, I was like, Oh man, we’ve got a dial and then something goes haywire and you change something on yours.

We, we use Shopify. I’m sure people will want to know. Um, we, as we scaled, we shot, we still have [00:50:00] Shopify and I love Shopify. I think it’s great. Uh, but the, uh, You know, we’re making it work with the rest of the stack was really interesting, you know, saying, Hey, how’s this going to integrate with our shipping situation?

So, but it’s all worked out pretty well. Um, and I think it’s, it’s fine for a little bit longer, but to your point, we’re going to have to move it off site, uh, relatively soon, probably in the third quarter of next year or so. Okay.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: What does your team look like right now?

Josh Thurmond of LavaBox: Yeah. So we, um, I, once again, super lean cause I, I really rely on software.

Um, You know, it’s a, in fact, we’re, we’re looking at a bunch of copy, copy writing and that sort of work through AI. Um, my friend owns a company that does that, and so we really keep it lean. I’ve got about, I’ve got three builders, packers, see, you know, a guy who actually really runs the show at the shop. Um, my operations officer, and then, uh, and then I really lean heavily on [00:51:00] an art department.

Uh, of two, it’s sister and another, another, and a friend. And then, um, you know, accounting staff, it’s pretty small. We have a couple of people we work with, but they’re in a firm, um, so we can pull resources from them. And, uh, and then finally. Uh, people heard me say it before, but I’ll state it again. We’re really trying to have the assembly and the work done at the shop, done by people with disabilities.

And so we brought in our first person, um, with a disability to work at the store, uh, which is really great. So he helps with, uh, building everything. Uh, really cool guy is, uh, he’s a rapper. His name is Kay Ice. Do you want to look him up? But, uh, Kevin Wagner, great dude, uh, with down syndrome and he’s helping us do a lot of the.

He loves the marketing and making music. And so he helps us with that as well, but, uh, we keep it pretty lean. I mean, I, you know, it, if it’s just the assembly and it’s simple assembly, like, um, you’re able to make it so that if you had, first of all, it was [00:52:00] easy to make, uh, easy to assemble, but also if you had a limb difference or you didn’t have a way to.

So you didn’t have a lot of strength in one hand or something. Um, you could still work at the shop and do the assembly. So it’s a pretty small team. No, I think that

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: makes sense. And I think that’s, that’s great that you’re kind of supporting, uh, you know, uh, the team, uh, in, in your community. Um, I think that makes a lot of sense.

Um, in every entrepreneur. Yeah, for sure. Um, in every entrepreneur’s journey, there’s always mistakes made, lessons learned, failures. I’m sure, you know, in your, uh, entrepreneurial journey, you’ve, you’ve encountered a few. Uh, what comes to mind when you think of like mistakes or failure? Like, what is, what is something that you think that you You could have done without and what did you learn from that experience?

What can other entrepreneurs learn from your mistakes?

Josh Thurmond of LavaBox: Yeah, I think I think the big one one of the well I’ve made a lot of really funny small mistakes. [00:53:00] I think people can learn from I i’m, you know, not understanding exactly where my product would sell so I did a lot of testing and I feel like The testing was expensive when it really could have probably figured it out with research, um, and it was too lazy to research.

I just threw money at it. That’s just not the answer. I’ve found over and over again, that with a little bit of due diligence. I really can make a much smarter, more informed decision. And I know this is really hard to say to entrepreneurs because everybody’s tired. Everybody’s, you know, overwhelmed, but pushing past that and digging in and doing a little bit more research and doing, doing the hustle is a huge piece of it.

I, I. Would be in a better financial position and we’re doing fine, but I, but I, I would be even better if I had, if I had just said, all right, I need to figure this out. I’ll give you a good example. Um, one thing that did not work for us and we spent a bunch of money on it was, uh, um, an in flight [00:54:00] magazine for Christmas push.

And, uh, that might work fine for some folks. For us, it was, if I had done even an ounce of research and not just thrown cash at it, I wouldn’t have made that mistake. And I needed that money at that time because of Christmas inventory. So I ended up running out of inventory on a time when I absolutely could have just bought more inventory with that cash.

So it’s those kinds of things. And if I had done, like I said, I owed him of research, I would have known that was a bad fit. But I was like, Oh man, I gotta, I’m tired and I just, yeah, hell just, yeah, okay, let’s advertise with you guys. Total mistake. But it happens. It happens. Yeah. Um, and then I’d say, uh, um, for me, I just don’t want to tell anybody the wrong thing, but for us, it really was about slow and steady wins the race.

That may not be the truth for everybody. Um, but it’s been the truth for us. Every time we try to rush a product through or do something like that, we make a huge mistake. Um, the other [00:55:00] piece is that, uh, and I’ve been guilty of this. I work too much. And I think it’s really important for entrepreneurs, especially if you’re on the creative side and you’re actually building products.

And I, I love making things. That’s the core of me. It’s just making stuff. I’m. I’m building out my, I’m rebuilding out my van for the third time. That’s what I want to, I like it. I enjoy it. Um, and, uh, if you’re not true to that piece of you, then you’re, you’re, you can’t run a company. And I think that’s really important.

So I I’ve, I’ve made that mistake where I’ve, and it’s, and it alienates your family and it, you know, it’s all those things that, that you push, you know, you see this TV shows and the movies and it’s like, this seems like a cliche, but it’s really not that part’s not. Um, so I think that’s the biggest mistake you can make is to.

Is to forget what you’re doing here and why you’re doing it. Um, so I’ve, I’ve been a boss for a long time, a manager for a long time. And I think, um, you know, [00:56:00] really getting so wrapped up in everything else and not paying attention to your team and not taking care of them is a huge mistake that people make.

Um, and so that’s another one I would, I would caution people about is to really, those people are who make it happen, you know, I, I try to, I try to spend as much time as I can praising and thanking them and thanking our customers, um, Cause that’s what really happened. You know, they fell in love and I fell in love with them and we all worked together.

So too much love, sorry. So much love for a business chat.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: I think, I think that’s great advice for sure. I mean, yeah. Um, there are some things that are absolutely essential and you cannot ignore them in the journey. Of course, you know, it’s a tough journey, but some things are, you know, you can’t ignore yourself.

You can’t ignore, you know, your team and so forth, customers

Josh Thurmond of LavaBox: as well. I think you just. You’re not as productive either. I mean, you just don’t, you’re not hitting all the, the things that made it great in the first place. So I don’t know. And we’re, and we’re, you caught me at a funny time because, um, the initial [00:57:00] shine has worn off, right?

And now the real work is going. And I think that entrepreneurs, a lot of them, especially on the inventor side, the side I’m on where you’re making new things, uh, it’s all shiny, right? It starts off really shiny. And now. The discipline is already disciplined, but now the real discipline kicks in because you’re tired and you’re worn out and you want to do the next shiny thing.

And, uh, that’s where I think you can really go.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Well, I, I hope, uh, I know. I wish you all the best. I think, uh, yeah. You know, thank you. Things will work out, um, you know, slow and steady once there is. Um, now I think, so now I’m going to move on to our rapid fire segment. I’m going to ask you a few quick questions, and you have to answer them maybe in a one, one word or two words or a sentence.

Okay? So the first question is one book recommendation for entrepreneurs and why.

Josh Thurmond of LavaBox: Oh my gosh, I would say, um, [00:58:00] I gotta use more than one word. Trying to think, um, what have I liked recently? I’m trying to think of something I’ve liked recently. Uh, cause I never have time to read anymore. Just so sad. Who has time to read?

Uh. I don’t know. I, what was that? Let me have to come back to this one. Let me think about it for a second. I know it’s rapid fire, but let me think about it. No worries.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Yeah, no worries. I know. I know some people, you know, uh, they don’t read a lot of books and that’s, that’s totally fine as well. Um,

Josh Thurmond of LavaBox: I read a lot of books, but I don’t, it’s a, I don’t read a lot of the leadership books, um, even though I’ve done my math, I have a master’s degree in public affairs, uh, so I’ve read a lot of leadership books.

Um, But I’m not, they’re also Vogue. I hate to say this, but they’re like, they go in and out of popularity and this management style and that management style and this thing and that thing. And I want to, I don’t want to [00:59:00] give somebody something that’s already trite or that style’s out or, you know what I mean?

So let me think about it just for a

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: second. Okay. Um, an innovative product or idea, uh, it could be e commerce, retail, or tech that you feel excited about.

Josh Thurmond of LavaBox: Hmm. I am excited about, um. AI generated, uh, content big time, um, especially, um, bigger learning models that allow me to, to see where my, my sales are going.

I’m seeing some predictive stuff now, uh, coming out of a lot of the, um, segmentation, uh, software for marketing. I love seeing it. You know, being able to, being able to predict the next time someone’s going to purchase on Q1, Q2, Q3 for the next year, uh, looking at their habits is really interesting to me.

Uh, and I, the more I dig into it, the more I want to know.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Wow. That’s, that’s very interesting. And you find that to. To be true. Like when, when the AI [01:00:00] predicts that this is the time that somebody’s going to watch,

Josh Thurmond of LavaBox: I’m finding it to be truer and truer every moment. Wow. Get the AI keeps increasing. You know, once again, you know, these large learning models, they, as they aggregate that information, they just, they really get to know our habits so well, and I am just blown away.

Their predictive models are, are so solid. So I’m excited to see where it goes. Little scared.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: For sure. I think, I think people won’t stop camping anytime soon. So you

Josh Thurmond of LavaBox: don’t have to know, but we all have behaviors. Right. And it’s, it’s really interesting to see what, what marketing, you know, 30, 40 years ago was trying to predict and what we can predict instantly now, just looking at basic habits, pretty amazing.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: think, I think the scary part is, you know, how much, um, how much. Somebody can, you know, can know about you or predict about you or, you know, the, I think yesterday I was watching where in the airport now you don’t even have to carry a passport and, you know, they’ll just scan your face and this was in [01:01:00] UK.

So I think, I think there are some, I think it makes things easy, but that’s at the same time. It’s very scary. Also, I mean, you know, you don’t have any privacy, so.

Josh Thurmond of LavaBox: You do not, and the habits are so easy to trace. For sure.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Seven. Uh, a business or productivity tool or software that you would recommend or a productivity tip?

Josh Thurmond of LavaBox: Sure. Um, if you are doing, uh, you know, under 10 million, I think that, that I, I, I don’t work for Shopify, but I have found it to be incredibly useful. Um, it’s, uh, it, it, it is actually really intuitive. Um, I have a little bit of a soft software background, but I, I still found it very, very easy. Um, and I think just about anybody can run a successful business, a Canva account and a Shopify

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: account.

For sure. Yeah. It’s, it’s, it’s very, yeah. Now it’s, it’s very easy. Like the softwares have made it very, very easy now. And,

Josh Thurmond of LavaBox: and, and probably an AI, AI production. [01:02:00] Um, piece of software, especially, um, photo manipulation, that sort of thing. If you, a lot of times it’s really hard to generate enough images. Um, it’s expensive, although you’re, you know, your iPhone 15 can shoot a great picture.

Uh, sometimes you need to be able to drop out that stuff. You have to be able to, um, feel comfortable jumping on those apps and, and, and making it work. Like you may not be able to afford, you know, A whole bunch of great photo shoots, but you can produce a pretty great looking photo that feels good to people, um, right off the bat from, from your iPhone 15 or whatever.

For sure. For

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: sure. Uh, a peer entrepreneur or business person whom you look up to or someone who inspires you?

Josh Thurmond of LavaBox: Yeah. Um, so the best one, I, I look up to a lot of people, but I have a friend. Um, he makes a product called the anti shanty. And, uh, I just looked, the reason I look up to him, his name is Rod. He’s the owner of this company owns many, many companies.

[01:03:00] Um, but anti shanty is one of his, how we met in the outdoor space. But I look up to him because you can tell he’s having a good time. Like this guy loves life. And, uh, And he still loves life. He’s been an entrepreneur his whole life and, uh, he doesn’t feel pessimistic or crushed or, you know, cynical about what happens to him.

He’s still out there riding mountain bikes and having a great time. And he made lots of money and he did all the things right. He made the world better. And, uh, I look up to those kinds of guys. It may not be the, you know, the flashiest guy out there, but man, he did it right. And that’s. Like that’s why I look up to him.

I, we’re about to do a collaborative project together, um, building one of his structures into our show van for, uh, trade shows, and I just really think he’s one of those guys. Awesome.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Final question, best business advice that you have ever received or you would give to other

Josh Thurmond of LavaBox: entrepreneurs? Well, you said it in the very beginning, write it down.

You know, it, [01:04:00] uh, it really does make a difference. Like say, this is what we’re about. This is what we’re trying to do. Write it down. Uh, cause you and make it concrete, make it real, cause that’s the thing that actually changes it. Cause people talk about shit all the time, you know, nothing happens, uh, and until you actually say, this is what we’re going to do and make it real and make it, you know, you can hold it in your hand.

So we, at the shop we have, you know, we really do believe in it. We put the, it’s on our mouse pads. It’s just our core values. So write it down and make it real and then go do it. Um, that’s what I would say that, you know, it’s, you’re gonna, all the other stuff is, is noise. Cause you’re going to make mistakes.

All that’s going to happen. Um, you’re going to fail, but, uh, if you don’t like actually take the first step, it’s never going to happen.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Definitely. That’s, that’s definitely a great advice. Um, and uh, uh, yeah, Josh, those were all the questions that I had, unless you remember another book. [01:05:00]

Josh Thurmond of LavaBox: I’ll think about it.

I’ll get back to you next time. Okay. Rain

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: check.

Josh Thurmond of LavaBox: Sure. For sure. Um, waiting and influencing people. I’m

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: kidding. No, no, that’s, that’s a great book. That’s a great book. I mean, people have recommended that in the past, for sure. It’s a good book. That’s a good book for sales, for sure. Um, well, those were all the questions that I had.

Thank you so much again. If anybody wants to check out your product, what is the best way to do that?

Josh Thurmond of LavaBox: Yeah, best way is to go on to fireanytime. com. Uh, of course, you can Google LavaBox and a million things will come up. Uh, another great place to see our product in action is Instagram. And once again, our handle on Instagram is fireanytime.

Uh, and on YouTube, we have lots of funny videos. We spend so much time just having fun, uh, with our videos that I think you’ll get

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: sucked in. Awesome. Well, Josh, thank you so much again for sharing your story, for sharing, uh, you know, your business advice, your successes and failures. And, um, I’m sure it’s going to be very inspirational, uh, for other, um, [01:06:00] entrepreneurs.

So thank you again for your time and opportunity. Really appreciate it. And

Josh Thurmond of LavaBox: thank you for having me on. You’re a great interviewer. That was really wonderful. Thank you. Thank you.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Hey there entrepreneurs. My name is Sushant and welcome to TrepTalks. This is a show where I interview successful e-commerce entrepreneurs, business executives and thought leaders and ask them questions about their business story and also dive deep into some of the strategies and tactics that they have used to start and grow their businesses.

And today I’m really excited to welcome Scott Unkefer to the show. Scott is the founder of JustPanela. JustPanela sells a unique unrefined form of cane sugar, otherwise known as panela. And today I’m going to ask, um, uh, Scott a few questions about his entrepreneurial journey and some of the strategies and tactics that he has used to start to grow his business.

So Scott, thank you so much for joining me today at TrepTalks. We really appreciate your time.

Scott Unkefer of Just Panela: Thank you Sushant for your time. I, I appreciate, uh, uh, uh, uh, the interest

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: for sure. Um, so, uh, maybe we can start off with [00:01:00] the product itself. You know, it’s, um, uh, seems like, uh, um, some sort of a sugar cane sugar. Um, is it different from regular sugar, sugar cane sugar?

Is it like some sort of a unique thing to Colombia? Can you talk a little bit about your product and, and then we’ll get into your entrepreneur story?

Scott Unkefer of Just Panela: Sure. Uh, you know, I, it, it’s. Pinella is very similar to JY or Ger from South Asia. Uh, and, and, and there are names for it in other, various other parts of the worlds and, and cultures.

Um, the I for what it is, is truly unprocessed, unrefined, uh, uh, uh, uh, su sugarcane. So it is, it is not industrial refined. It is not centrifugal, refined. Um, all of the sugars in Western culture. Are are are refined and and and the differences between one and another are very minimal, uh, from white white refined to [00:02:00] turbinado to even brown sugar.

They’re all centrifugal refined, which is why they’re hard. And there are rock and there are crystal. Um, that was really the end game was to make it into a crystal so that. Frankly, the thousands of years ago, up until hundreds of years ago, you could transport it from India largely, uh, to the Western world.

Um, because as that hard rock crystal form, it, it was durable against the elements, the elements being humidity and everything else that happens in, in, in the atmosphere and on, on sea and land. Um, as such, it was. It also makes it really easy to package. It’s, it’s, it’s good for machinery, it’s terrible for human beings.

Um, it, it, so, so this, this is unrefined, non centrifugal refined sugar that the, the, the, the harmonized tariff code is literally non centrifugal refined. Um, and so [00:03:00] yeah, this is, this is, this is unrefined, uh, uh, handmade sugar, if you will. And so, as such. Really, the difference is it retains the characters, uh, the character of sugarcane grass.

Sugarcane is a grass. It’s an equatorial grass. It comes from the equator and ideally within three degrees of the equator. And there are other climate requirements and nice to haves for the sugarcane grass. And Columbia happens to be Columbia. As the best that I’ve found in the world when the, when it, where, when it comes to heat and temperature differential from night and daytime and how that allows the crystallization of the sugarcane grass to occur.

Uh, and the, and the, the, the volcanic soil and the temp and the temperature and the, and the sun it gets and the rain it gets and the water it gets and the movement of that water in this very, in this three mountain range country of Columbia that has three mountains. So it’s hard to get to. [00:04:00] It’s it’s it’s hard to grow your typical views of a very flat field full of cane that looks like carpet and then these big industrial machines doing cultivation and whatnot.

That works great for again for machinery. It makes a terrible product for human beings. Um, so that’s That’s kind of the, the, the, the nutshell when people ask what the, what is the difference? I really try and get the product into people’s mouths because they will, they, they it’s, it’s, it’s very much a, it’s a natural product.

It’s not an artificial product. And that’s where, that’s where the wow comes from. We have a huge. Sushant, I’m sure I’m not, uh, uh, stretching the imagination if I imagine you’re, you’re from South Asia. Yes,

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: yes. And I’m, I’m definitely, you know, I’m, I’ve, uh, um, you know, I’ve used Jackery, uh, I’ve used sugarcane, you know, I’ve had sugarcane sugar also, you know, uh, of course, the sugar that comes [00:05:00] out of it also.

Scott Unkefer of Just Panela: Yeah. So that’s, that was kind of the wow moment for me as I was, I moved to Columbia from, from, from. Argentina and I would go to the coffee shop and I would find this stuff in the single serves at the coffee shops at the cafes. And I finally asked, what is this stuff? And they told me it’s sugar. And I was like, okay, and I opened it and tried it.

And I, and that was my wow moment of, well, good. This is what I wanted all along. That’s That I I wrote that too. That’s I I read that in a very good marketing book I think it’s called difference or uh, uh, uh, it’s a it’s a somewhat well known marketing book That that when you go in in in entrepreneurialism don’t Look for a void in the market and then fill that niche or void.

Look for something that when the market experiences it, it says to itself, well, this is what I wanted all along. And that’s what this unprocessed form of sugar is. We don’t [00:06:00] people there’s, there’s so much misinformation between raw sugar and sugar and the raw, which is not raw at all. It’s absolutely as refined as white refined sugar, and then these other words that have been misappropriated, particularly in America, uh, which we allow misappropriation to occur in, whereas Canada, where you are, you guys are far stricter with the usage and terminology, but America is what it is, and we just sort of misinformed the world on sugar, you You combine that with Western culture that, that, that, that bastardized sugar into a raw, a highly refined form, uh, so that it was transportable.

And you’ve got what the American market largely, and, and, and can the Canadian and the Western market is today, which is this horrible, all these horrible refined sugars. Whereas most people, when they try jaggery or or, or Chancaca or Piloncillo in Mexico. Or, [00:07:00] uh, Rapadura or Raspadura in Brazil and Costa Rica or Panela is they say that they, they, they realize, well, this is what I wanted all along.

Awesome.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Um, I mean, I’m, I’m curious that you, you seem to be from us, but you’re obviously living in Columbia and it seems like you found this product when you were living in Columbia. So, I mean, can you share a little bit about your story? What were you doing, um, before you kind of started or decided to start this business?

How did you come to Columbia? And, uh, what’s, what’s your story? What, what motivated you to start this business?

Scott Unkefer of Just Panela: So to, to the, the initial response is my confidence. Far as outweighs my far outweighs my intelligence. I found this product. Like I said, I, I, I had been living in Argentina for a long time. And then I moved to Columbia from there as I, people ask why, why Scott?

Why you’re correct. I am an American. I’m from Colorado and San Francisco and [00:08:00] stuff. Uh, but I, I’m a, I’m a world. I’m a world citizen, and I’ve lived so I’ve lived 20 years now in South America, and so that’s kind of how I got here. And I just happened upon the product. And like I said, I had my wow moment with it where I realized I can position this.

This is this product needs. This needs to be positioned as the as as ideally. The staple sugar for most human beings because of how bad we all know the highly refined sugars and all refined sugars are and that story just continues to, uh, increase in, in, in coverage and knowledge. Uh, and then we, we, we try and replace with these artificial sweeteners and it’s just a matter of time until each one of those gets.

Found out to have a nasty surprise in it. So, uh, so yeah, so I, I came here by adventure. I happened upon the product and decided that looks like a [00:09:00] really big, big, fun problem to solve. How do you, how do you, uh, take something from the ground? And from another culture and reposition it for Western culture.

Let’s go solve the import export problem and the free trade problem. And the positioning and the marketing and the education problem for the consumer. And, uh, and let’s, let’s, let’s, let’s go solve a whole series of problems that I know is going to take a long time. And let’s see if we can do this.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: So basically in your business, the problem, I mean, you had kind of found the product.

Uh, so the problem was not necessarily, you know, uh, coming up with the right product or, you know, uh, it was more about how do you take, bring this product from Columbia or South America to a country like the U S I’m assuming that’s your primary market. And how do you kind of educate the market on what this is and, and really build [00:10:00] the awareness and, and get the uptake.

Um, so before you kind of, uh, Invested significantly in the, in the product itself. Did you do any sort of like testing or idea validation or, you know, do anything in the U S to try to figure it out? If you put this out, mark it out in the product, people are actually going to buy it.

Scott Unkefer of Just Panela: Yeah, I did in my own way.

I, I, it definitely takes a certain amount of ignorance and just, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, to, to, to make the leap. Uh, without that kind of, uh, uh, uh, demographic information and, and, uh, and litmus tests and acid tests and stuff. And I definitely jumped. I definitely jumped early, but. The one thing I did do successfully and accidentally is I, I thought I was going to conquer the world with the individual serving size sachets.

I thought if I got those into every [00:11:00] Starbucks and coffee shop in America, I win. And that’s how I get it in people’s mouths and I get them to realize it. Uh, so I started with that as sort of the campaign and the pro and the objective. And so I would go to, I, we would go to the coffee fest shows. And we happened to win best new product at Coffee Fest.

I think that was in New York. Uh, now eight years ago, probably at least. And in winning that award. We then had, uh, uh, ignorantly gone and entered the natural food retail space and were, were going to the fancy food and expo shows. Fancy foods, there’s east and west, and there’s expo east and west shows. And we, uh, uh, applied, uh, for co the, the, the competition in the fancy food shows, citing that we won the coffee fest show.

They put us in the competition for the fancy food show, which put us in front of All of the head buyers for Whole [00:12:00] Foods and, uh, and, and Safeway and, and other large natural foods chains. Uh, and so we, we just sort of segued really well and accidentally into what we were told is the fastest any market.

When any product went nationwide in Whole Foods in the history of products sort of being introduced to market to going to being taken what’s called global in the Whole Foods, uh, world, but nationwide into into Whole Foods. That was just a very, uh, luck, luck and effort for sure. Um, so, so that’s, that, that was, that was, uh, that was, that was, uh, exciting and we had a lot of luck and, and we won some competitions there.

And so. Uh, that that worked out well as sort of a B. Okay, we’ve got we’ve got distribution now. Now let’s get education and let’s get marketing while we sugar is a sweetener and it’s an ingredient and it’s an additive. And it’s a [00:13:00] product that goes into what’s called the baker baking slash sweetener aisle in the it’s a retail product So then we went and chased all these different markets.

Uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, it and and and we Being as small as we were we never took fund. We never took venture money or anything like that We just it was I I think a few hundred thousand dollars maximum for me and uh and a business partner and some other people And it was a case where we did the organic thing and in the end, I’m glad, but there is a good, there is good use of getting venture backed money.

Once, once an idea has been tried and tested and true, if you will, um, It’s good. It’s good to get venture money and and and give yourself the resources to cover every aspects of enterprise resource planning and customer relationship management and be able to pay for all the pieces that make [00:14:00] internally and externally a company succeed.

We, um. So in that sense, we, I probably should have, should have applied for venture money, uh, a few years back, but in the food market, an ingredient like this isn’t very attractive because the margins aren’t super high. It’s a commodity, but it is a specialty commodity. But nevertheless, it is still a commodity.

You know, venture people, they want to see X’s, 2X, 4X, 6X, right? You don’t really get that on a commodity product like a sugar or a specialty sugar. So there’s, there’s, there’s that, that, that would have probably been proven to be hard is to, is to get millions of dollars from people and stuff. Yeah.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: So, I mean, uh, one challenge that I, I assume, um, in getting like math.

Um, utilization or mass, um, uh, [00:15:00] adoption of a product like this is, you know, if you know, a regular person, uh, who goes to a grocery store and can buy that processed sugar for like four or five bucks, you know, to buy the same thing, the same alternative, even though it’s, you know, the healthier option, uh, maybe tastier as well.

Um, you know, of course, the price point is a bit higher. So who is kind of the your target market and who’s actually kind of using these kind of, uh, is this considered like more of a premium product that only people who are more health focused and who have kind of the extra money to spend, uh, are buying it?

Scott Unkefer of Just Panela: Yeah, absolutely. Price point, price point, price points a hindrance, but to be honest, I thought it was a bigger hindrance than I think it is now. I think if I were better at marketing, I could have, I could have, I could have charged 7 for a pound of sugar. [00:16:00] If people. Knew, knew it and tried it and liked it and wanted it.

I think, I think that I felt like price point was a bigger issue than I think it is now. I think if I were better at, at, at educating the world, at at, at the, at the benefits, which there are two, there are huge health benefits to unprocessed sugar and more and more of that information is coming out now.

This is actually a, we have a lot of type two diabetics that email us and call us and tell us this product does not, does not spike their sugar levels at all. Their blood sugar. It’s kind of amazing. There’s some amazing health benefits to this product. And then we have. Bakers that buy it by the pallet because all they care about is the flavor profile and the flavor profile when applied correctly in baking and cooking is second to none.

We have a, oh, we have hundreds across the United States and [00:17:00] Alaska and Canada as well of rum, premium rum distillers, micro distillers that make rum with it because the taste is so good too. So. Yeah, price point is an issue, but I, I do feel that if I did better education to the north, the non already acquainted market, the acquainted market would be the Latinos or the, we have a lot of Indians and, and, and, and Pakistanis that buy from us direct and whatnot.

Lots because, because It’s it is. It is very similar to jaggery. And they found that and within their communities, they sell it. They actually resell it. And we give them we give them discount codes to do so. So you’ve got the educated people, the Latinos, the Middle Easterners that are purists, the kosher and halal people that are purists.

And they and this is a pure product, right? And you, so you’ve got, you’ve got the cultural [00:18:00] people and then you’ve got the natural foods and organic and unprocessed North American market that needs

is it one is a cultural target and another is a natural health, uh, and flavor profile target, but, but different demographics, right? Yeah. Awesome.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Awesome. Um, what is it like running the business from overseas? I mean, do you kind of go back and forth from Columbia to us very frequently or your business is like you’ve already created all the processes.

So it’s kind of like a hands off thing that runs on its own.

Scott Unkefer of Just Panela: It’s not hands off at all. And another thing, another mistake I’ve made is, uh, I mentioned to you before I was at the Toronto food show. I, I have failed at spending more time in my market talking to store managers and seeing and [00:19:00] going to shows and being and, and, and seeing where we fit.

I, I, I, I need to spend more time geographically present in North America because I’ve, I’ve missed. Uh, positioning of my product correctly just by being just being, uh, detached or out of touch with it. It’s really, really important to go to those expos, uh, talk to people, uh, and find out where they see it.

And, uh, and whatnot. I it that idea that you can sort of eliminate geography with the Internet. It’s just it’s just not true in the physical world. I learned so much at the Toronto show from the nutrition houses, which is a big one for us because this product has nutrition value and it and it has health real health benefits, obviously, to to refine sugars.

I realized how, how accepted this [00:20:00] product is in these nutrition houses. And that’s a huge growing space subspace in the food industry. Right. Um, and let alone the bakers and whatnot. So no, man, I, I, I need to spend more time, uh, in, in, uh, surrounded by my, my target consumers.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Are there any challenges? So you said, you know, once you discovered the product you had to figure out, you know How it was exported and to uh to united states and things like that Can you talk a little bit about your supply chain logistics?

Fulfillment processes is I mean you are in in um in retail um, yes Yeah, I want I definitely want to ask is your direct to consumer business bigger than the retail? Um,

Scott Unkefer of Just Panela: or

So, yeah, I mean, again, we, I, I, uh, I own a food company. I hadn’t worked in food [00:21:00] before. So food safety, organic certification, all that stuff. That’s we, we now we’re experts at that. Um, another thing that’s rare about us is we are our own package. 99 percent of the stuff you see in the metro there in Canada, Suzhant, or in Whole Foods.

All that is, is a sales and marketing thing. They don’t actually make their own product. They have contract manufacturers making their products for them. They just, all they do is that customer facing sales and marketing and positioning stuff. Um, so I kind of lost track of what your, what your direct, Oh, your question was direct versus, versus retail, if you will.

Yeah. Yeah. Um, yeah, I mean, honestly, we love Amazon and I’m, I’ve got. I’ve got deals in the works for walmart. com and and more and more of the platform online stuff because the shelf size doesn’t matter. We sell, we sell a five pound [00:22:00] bag and we sell a one pound bag. We sell five times more. 5 bags on Amazon than we do 1 bag because of the volume economics of the thing, yet we can’t get that 5 bag.

It’s probably in somewhere around 5 percent of the brick and mortar we’re in because it’s too big for the shelf, right? So what are called planograms, which is when you look at a, an aisle. That’s a planogram is what is is is how the grocer or the natural food store manages the dimensions of everything that goes into that aisle.

They won’t take the 5 bag, but online that thing sells like hot cakes. The 1 does too, but. Yeah. So we, we, we love Amazon. It’s, it’s, it’s a friendly, it’s a, it’s there. It is way friendlier to the supplier than, than the brick and mortar distributor, natural foods supplier model, [00:23:00] which is what that model is.

We’re a supplier manufacturer. Then we’ve got this distributor that is not the buyer. And you’ve got those two guys that whenever there’s an issue, the guy that eats it is me. That the small supplier, um, it’s, it’s a tough world. That food, that, that, that brick and mortar, uh, food world is food retail world.

It’s really tough because Yeah, I’m dealing with, they’re getting screamed at by 30, 20 or 30 other sweeteners all day. Uh, let alone pasta sauce and, and, and, and, uh, and everything else that’s screaming at them to, to get demos and promos and stuff done. And they’re, they’re, they’re, God bless them that their life isn’t easier than mine, but it’s, if there’s a lot of noise in, in their world and I’m just part of that noise, you know, whereas online it’s, you don’t, you don’t, you don’t have that.

So with Amazon,

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: that’s that’s great to hear. Um, I did, I [00:24:00] did, I did ask you multiple questions last time. So I’ll kind of follow up on the other one that I had asked. Um, can you talk a little bit about your supply chain and how you’re kind of warehousing it in the US? How do you fulfill your products and so forth?

Scott Unkefer of Just Panela: Yeah. I mean, the number one thing I would say with regards to supply chain, when I talk about what’s hard for me, It’s I’m the world’s smallest multinational sugar company is what I am and in the u. s I I have this belief that It was, it was really pleasant to be at the Toronto show up there in Canada and you’re just you’re dealing with just inherently smaller, smaller things upstream and downstream from you in the United States, just like the rich and poor gap is so huge and pronounced.

It’s that’s it’s this, it’s reflected the same in biz in the business world and in the food world. You have the 800 pound [00:25:00] gorilla distributors. that are used to dealing with Heinz and craft and whatnot. And little guys like me are coming along and, and, and, and, and killing them with a thousand paper cuts, but these massive distributors that are nationwide and these, and these, and these massive, uh, chains of stores that have 400 stores and whatnot, and then I come along and they got to deal with my.

My dumb little tiny ass. It’s not fun for them. They want, they want to deal with someone that has 50 SKUs, not someone that has two, you know, so it’s, it’s really important to do your best to work with people up and down the supply chain that are the same size, roughly as you are, because it just works better.

Um, and it’s and it’s and it’s really hard in the U. S. Because the U. S. Is so mad. It gets big so quickly and the big guys the minute there is a small regional distributor that owns a [00:26:00] fleet of five trucks that handles The greater Ontario area, the big guy comes along and snatches them up, right? Because they, they don’t want any competition.

They are, they are by, by nature, mafioso. If they own trucks that they need to buy brake pads and radiators for, by God, they’re going to buy anyone, anything else that comes along that might. Might someday down the road pose a problem for them. So it’s it’s it’s and and and again that the little the the hundred the thousands of little food supplier manufacturers out there.

We get kind of caught in the middle of that of that whole thing. And it’s and it’s uh, and it’s tough. Awesome.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Um. In terms of you, I mean, you’ve been running your business, what, eight years plus, uh, now, um, have you had any, um, any big successes, any [00:27:00] big marketing campaigns that work, like what has been the biggest success or, you know, uh, or, or has it been really been more of a gradual kind of a growth for you?

Scott Unkefer of Just Panela: No, no. Um, uh, absolutely going to the expo is, is, is required in this business. It’s, uh, the, the, those. Those things are very, very necessary with regards to getting yourself in front of the, uh, uh, in front of the market. Um, like I said, I, I, my, I mean, we, we succeeded at Coffee Fest and that segued into succeeding, winning, winning an award at the Fancy Foods Show.

That was a very quick and early. Sequence of successes that that justified my thought that this form of sugar is really what everyone wants. They just don’t know it Um, i’ve done not a great job from there. I’m not in every every store across north america Uh [00:28:00] just because I I didn’t Get massive funding.

I didn’t seek it because I’m in Colombia. If maybe if I were in the U. S. And I had the mindset of venture backing and kind of and kind of, uh, um, saturating as quick as hard and quick as I could. I might be a lot bigger. Um, we’ve had we were doing well, and it’s frankly night for a nice size, but we yeah.

We we are planning some very good marketing campaigns right now as well that will further, um, these this wonderful scientific data that’s coming out with regards to the health benefits of non centrifugal sugar. Um, and we are expanding the Canada right now. Actually, today, our Canada bags arrived at our warehouse.

Uh, so, uh, that’s. That’s exciting. We’ve got our, our, our French and English Canada bags ready to go that we’re packaging and containerizing in about a week. Wow. Well, welcome to

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Canada. Thank you. [00:29:00] Um, in terms of your products themselves, um, is it, is it really, um, I’m assuming that there are factories in Columbia that you’re, you know, all you’re doing is simply purchasing the products and packaging them.

Is that the

Scott Unkefer of Just Panela: process? Yeah, totally. I, I, the thing I found is. Is that they needed exactly that they needed a packager in countries like columbia stuff like that is very very not um Not mature. Okay. Packaging is, is, is, is really immature and therefore positioning is too. Frankly, similar to Jaggery and Gura in, in, in, in South Asia, their, their preferred consumption form is a block or a cone or a hockey puck or a, or, or, or a disc.

Um. They didn’t even grinding that into a powder was just more labor [00:30:00] that they didn’t want to do. Because they, because they are not consumer conscious. Um, it’s right. So I, they needed me to create this product to enable it to interface with the Western consumer. For sure.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: For sure. I mean, I know, I know, you know, being from India myself, it’s like, it’s a very traditional thing, right?

Something that’s been coming on generation after generation. So they never, never even bothered trying to package it or something, you know, you, you buy it locally and you consume it. And, uh, you know, so, so that’s like, uh, but I’m, I’m sure now people are more commercializing it more and more. So what is

Scott Unkefer of Just Panela: it?

But I am. But that, but that’s about it. I mean, for North America, I mean from Columbia. I’m the only one dude, . But anyway. No,

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: that’s, that’s, that’s great. I mean, I think, um, there is definitely a big problem of diabetes and, you know, [00:31:00] health, health issues. And I think, uh, if, uh, if there are products that kind of, um, help with that, I think it’s definitely a great

Scott Unkefer of Just Panela: thing.

Oh yeah. It’s all about the baby boomer, right? I mean, it’s the baby boomer is, is what? And that is, is a huge, that falls right in with the baby boomer thing, but yeah, go ahead, Sushant. Yeah. What is, what is what?

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Um, what does your team look like right now? I mean, you said that you’re a small, you know, the smallest multinational operation.

Um, what does your, uh, operation team look like right

Scott Unkefer of Just Panela: now? Well, and I mean, in this, in this gig economy, it’s a, it’s a, it’s an amorphous blob between between Columbia and the United States and Canada. I’ve got two, I’ve got two, two brokers in Canada now, which are wonderful. Um, so on there, there, again, there’s, I don’t know if you’re familiar with the, the, the, the ERP and the CRM, uh, uh, model of a company.[00:32:00]

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Enterprise planning and

Scott Unkefer of Just Panela: everything. Yeah. So Columbia is really the E. R. P. Then the us, the US and Canada are the CRMs. Okay. Um, they’re, um, so on the, on this side, the ERP side, all of the operation and all of the cost, basically, uh, the packaging, the, the sourcing, the, the, the quality control, the food safety, food hygiene, um, um, we are 10 people.

I would say full time. Yeah, uh, and then and then a handful of accountants and and um, and and logistics uh, uh, uh Of people, you know, I mean, let’s not let’s not talk. Let’s let’s not not talk about the elephant in the room I’m i’m i’m exporting powdery substances from columbia, right? It took a while it took a while for for for all for uh, the people to rent me the the facility [00:33:00] And for the people to work at the facility and the, and the logistics shipping logistics companies to believe that this is what I’m doing.

That I, the whole thing wasn’t a front for another famous Colombian powder, if you will. Um, and it’s funny that the funny part about that is kind of one of the big days that I got over the hurdle. There was, uh, my, my, my business partner and I, we have the, we have the facility rented. We have the machines coming from the States because again, can’t get these kinds of packaging machines in countries like this.

We had to import the machinery and stuff. Um, Is we went to the, the, um, the porteros, I lose my English, the, the gate, the gatekeepers, the security guards, if you will, for our, for our, the complex of facilities that our facility is in and said, Hey, do you have any, do you have any cousins or, or, or, or nephews and nieces that can, can come help [00:34:00] us package?

And they’re like, absolutely. Flora and Maria and Christina. Absolutely. And so they. So the, so the, the security guards sent all their nieces and nephews, and then everyone agreed, agreed, we’re okay. Right. And then all of a sudden the shipping companies realized. We’re good. We’re the good guys. And then, and then, oh yeah, we’ll, we’ll send containers and let you, and let you export them.

And we’ll, you know, we’ll handle that and all that stuff. So it was, it was a fun, it was a fun, uh, uh, uh, hurdle to get over. Um, uh, because, because people wouldn’t, the logistics company, they wouldn’t touch us with a 10 foot pole. They all thought we were a front. For for various things. So, um, yeah,

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: yeah, that’s that’s that’s interesting to be doing business from some of the South South American countries, I guess.

Um, so you kind of got into this business, you know, by accident, or maybe not even by accident. But, you know, you came across the product by accident. What is, um, [00:35:00] are you happy that you got into this business? And what does the future look like for you? Let’s say five years down the road. Yeah.

Scott Unkefer of Just Panela: I love being a small business owner and being able to wake up every day and, and be, be, be the, the God of my own little, my own little world and universe I’ve carved out.

It’s fun as hell. Um, being, being given the keys to my own kingdom on the marketing side, as far as how do I get this into more eyeballs, brains, and mouths. Of more people in North America and and being given the opportunity to solve that problem. I love it. I, I, I love it. Um. So I, I, I’m, I’m, I’m, I’m, I couldn’t be happier.

I, uh, again, I mean, I’m 50 years old. I, I went back to Colorado and hung out with all my friends, my age too. And they’re busy raising their kids, something that I don’t have and good for them. And that, that makes them fulfilled. But I don’t have though, I don’t have those little munchkins. And so this is [00:36:00] the debate, honestly, all of my, all of my employees, you know, in a country like this.

I’m, I’m doing more for this country than most foreigners that come here do. I, I am, I am, I am a, upwardly, everyone that works for me here is female. I have one male that just started two, three weeks ago for me. He’s the first one. It is all women, single women with children. The work will be here. So I am enabling people to, to, uh, to break through their respective glass ceiling that otherwise they wouldn’t be doing, you know, understanding the intricacies of food safety, food hygiene, organic certification, um, raw materials to finish product and how that has to flow through a food safety, uh, protocol, uh, uh, and, and, and, and stuff.

It’s, it’s, it’s wonderful. And then they’re my children, you know, and so [00:37:00] it’s, it’s a family we’ve got. And, uh, like I said, otherwise, I don’t think anyone else would be doing this. It’s, um, I feel like I’m, I’m making the world a better place.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: No, that’s that’s that’s really great. Um, in every entrepreneur’s journey, there’s always mistakes made lessons learned failures.

Um, I’m sure you had your own fair share. What has been, um, a big mistake or failure that sticks out in your mind? What did you learn from it? What can other entrepreneurs learn from your mistakes?

Scott Unkefer of Just Panela: Well, we put the wrong barcode on 35, 000 bags. Okay. That was a good one. Or Amazon. Uh, that was long before we, we now are huge on Amazon.

Um. Yeah, we if you if you search on like panela sugar and stuff, we we are the we are amazon’s choice We we I saw we sell a lot, uh through there. Um, but um Have we had a have we had a [00:38:00] recall? No Um, but we did we we did ship bags with the wrong barcode on them. Uh, and we and luckily caught that Somewhat in time that was a that was a huge.

Um, huge error Um And as far as like, uh, yeah, labeling when you’re, when you’re, when you’re a packager and a food company, when you make a mistake. It typically does, uh, it is a mistake that covers hundreds of tons or tens of thousands of units. And so it tends to be a very big mistake. I was in software before.

You can’t go rev a different release at midnight to fix the mistake. It’s like video games in the 90s when you printed 400, 000 copies on DVDs and you shipped them out and you found out that there [00:39:00] was a Show stopping, PC crashing bug, right? Heh, it’s too late! It’s already been distributed. It’s out there.

Um, so labeling is, is, is really, really tough particularly in Canada. You guys are, you guys are insanely strict on labeling. Uh, so that’s where the, that’s, that’s where big mistakes can occur. The whole COVID thing crushed the supply chain. You couldn’t find pallets down here worth a damn. We had to, we had to, uh, we had to ship containers with pallets that just fell apart upon arrival.

If, if, if DEA or, or customs, if you will, which DEA falls under, if those guys had chose. To do intense inspections, which they do most of the time on sugar. If they chose to do intense inspection and unload all of our pallets out of those containers that had the bad pallets in ’em, our pallet, our, our product would’ve just crumbled to the ground and we [00:40:00] would’ve been out $40,000, uh, uh, uh, on, they wouldn’t have reloaded our pallets and reloaded our container.

They would’ve incinerated all of it, so, whoa. Interesting.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Yeah. Um. A lot of, a lot of things on, on the packaging side of things, it seems like, and I know Canada definitely has a lot of regulations for sure. Now I’m going to move on to our rapid fire segment. In this segment, I’m going to ask you a few quick questions and you have to answer them maybe in a couple of words or a sentence or so.

Um, one book recommendation for entrepreneurs and why?

Scott Unkefer of Just Panela: Well, the, the, the, the one that comes to my head is the one that the Clif Bar guy read, wrote. Um, the guy who wrote Clif Bar and, and yeah, just read, uh, and that one, honestly, because of one thing he said, which is give your product away for zero margin, give it away for free in the beginning, get it into people’s hands and mouths and, and just get, you need to get it [00:41:00] into velocity and you have to get it moving and don’t worry about your price point and making sure you’re not losing money.

Because that guess what? You probably aren’t. You were probably not good at the very difficult financials of. balancing, uh, um, uh, uh, doing your financials to understand that if you’re making 35 units at 35, 000 units at a time, you’re probably making money and you’ve done your financials too conservatively.

So the, the cliff bar, the cliff bar business book. Awesome.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Um, an innovative product or idea in the current e commerce retail or tech landscape that you feel excited about,

Scott Unkefer of Just Panela: um, an intro and

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: product or idea. Any, anything, any product or idea that you use or you, you like, uh, feel for

Scott Unkefer of Just Panela: me, for me, I, I, I, I guess data robot. Which is an, a business artificial intelligence [00:42:00] software, because again, we package in Columbia and then we ship to Miami and now we’re shipping all the way to Ontario, but that all of that is packaged in Columbia.

So we need to project what are in those containers as between our five pound and our one pound and our conventional bulk and our organic certified bulk and sachets, we need to predict. What is going to happen in the future, right? Because we don’t do our packaging on site, if you will, on the States and Canada.

Therefore AI and data robot being a really good one is really good at that predictive forecasting stuff. Awesome.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: And you use the, like, does that integrate with the, I’m assuming you use Shopify

Scott Unkefer of Just Panela: or. Well, no, there’s no, no, no data robot doesn’t integrate with with we use Squarespace. Sorry, Canada. Um, and we love Squarespace.

It’s wonderful. Shopify is awesome to both. They’re both great. And they’re both wonderful. But no data robot. That’s. That’s, that’s [00:43:00] kind of more, uh, uh, I think, I, I don’t know if DataRobot has any sort of APIs for, for, for the, the billing systems, uh, the customer facing billing systems or not. I’m just more, yeah, I’m not sure, do you know Soushant?

Are you familiar with it? No,

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: I don’t. I’m sorry. A business or productivity tool or software that you would recommend or a productivity tip?

Scott Unkefer of Just Panela: Google Sheets. I run my whole company on Google Sheets. People, I worked in enterprise software. I was an Oracle, a director of Oracle applications before. I worked at Netscape Communications back in the day.

Everyone wants you to put your, put your, your business in their enterprise software so that your You’re handcuffed to it for the rest of your life. Google sheets are, can, I I’ve, I’ve worked for midsize, uh, uh, tech companies that run their entire businesses on Excel spreadsheets. That it works great.

Don’t, don’t get beholden [00:44:00] to enterprise software just for the sake of you. Thank you. It’s making you big and cool. For sure.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: For sure. Um, I didn’t know you were in software and I. T. That, that sounds very interesting. Um, a startup or business, uh, another startup or business in e commerce, retail or tech that you think is currently doing great things?

Scott Unkefer of Just Panela: Yeah. Canyon, Canyon bicycles. Because they are, they figured out the direct model a long time ago. Uh, and, and you buy Canyon bikes online, a bike that would cost 15, 000, like a specialized you can buy from Canyon for 6, 000. I mean, literally you get, you get, you get twice the bet bike at half the price. And, and they’re just an incredibly tech savvy, uh, company that is leveraging technology to make, to, to sell bikes around the world.

Awesome.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Uh, a [00:45:00] peer entrepreneur or business person whom you look up to or someone who inspires you?

Scott Unkefer of Just Panela: Um, yeah. Okay. Interesting. I should have read, read these questions maybe before talking to you.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Anybody, anybody you look up to, or, you know, any. Anyone who’s kind of an inspiration. I’ll

Scott Unkefer of Just Panela: tell you what’s inspiring is I, I consider myself a, a, a, a couch. What is the term a novice or a, a, a part time stoic following the, the, the writings of stoicism.

And I, I, I really. I really, uh, uh, uh, follow the, the, the belief set of the, of the stoic, of stoic stoicism. So, that Marcus Aurelius stuff, if you want to go to the deep philosophical side, and also the contemporaries that speak to it, are really good guys to listen to as far as how [00:46:00] you should approach your business and personal life.

Uh, I think it’s, I think they’ve got it really nailed out. And how to, and just, and just approach everything with logic. And using the stoic logic is, is, is, is a, is a good way.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Yeah. Marcus Aurelius has a great book, uh, the meditations and, uh, I think, uh, Seneca is another stoic, right? Uh, final question, best business advice you ever received or you would give to other entrepreneurs?

Scott Unkefer of Just Panela: Um, the best, uh, yeah, in the, in the business I’m in the best business of the cost. There was a book written by Gordon Bell, who was one of the, uh, Three founders of Intel that’s been out of print for years. It was called high tech ventures. Uh, he, he had it all worked out in that, in there. Um, well, I’ll get rich slowly.

Like I said, I’ve been doing this for honestly 10 [00:47:00] years and, and, uh, that idea of, of, of, of being a unicorn, just throw that out the window. You don’t do it. Just don’t just, just go, go, go work for somebody and don’t waste your time. The flash in the pan. So here’s the one that I figured out because I did work in Silicon Valley and I started startups is don’t yeah, get rich slowly, which is what, what, uh, what’s his name?

Berkshire Hathaway says, and the other, and, and, and, uh, gosh, what was it? Yeah. Don’t, don’t see going and raising venture money as the end game. People think that I do that. I win. Like, no, then, then, then you fail. Um, yeah, go, go, go, go, don’t do that. Don’t, don’t go raise money, go, go suffer, you know, so that’s it.

Yeah,

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: for sure. That’s a great advice. I mean, I think a lot of the times unicorns are [00:48:00] really a result of like, accidental luck, you know, you’re trying something and it just worked. And I, I find like, even, you know, on this podcast, I’ve spoken with people who are doing really well. And, you know, they’re just selling like regular products.

You would, you would not even imagine like that this would make this person multimillionaire and things like that. So it’s like, There are so many things one can do to, to make money. And I don’t think chasing to be a unicorn is really a great, a great way to do it. Well, Scott, thank you so much again for sharing your story, for sharing all your business advice, how you started your business, successes and failures.

Um, really, really appreciate it. If anybody wants to get in touch with you or buy your product, what is the best way to do that?

Scott Unkefer of Just Panela: Well, our website, J U S T P as in Paul, A N as in Nancy, E L A dot com, 1 L, JustPanela. com, and [00:49:00] feel free to email Scott, S C O T T, at JustPanela.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: com. Awesome, thank you so much, Scott, really, really appreciate your time, thanks for sharing your story, and wish you all the very best.

Scott Unkefer of Just Panela: Yeah, Sushant, I might be in Toronto in the new year, I’ll let you know.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Hey there entrepreneurs, my name is Sushant and welcome to Treptalks. This is the show where I interview successful e commerce entrepreneurs, business executives, and thought leaders and ask them questions about their business story and also dive deep into some of the strategies and tactics that they have used to start and grow their businesses.

And today I’m really excited to welcome Jared Madsen to the show. Jared is the founder of Madsen Cycles. Madsen Cycles creates cargo bicycles for the whole family. A Madsen bike makes it easy for parents to get their children outside to create unforgettable and happy memories together. And today I’m going to ask Jared a few questions about his entrepreneurial journey and some of the strategies and tactics that he has used to start and grow his business.

So Jared, thank you so much for joining me today at TrepTalks. We really appreciate your time.

Jared Madsen of Madsen Cycle: Yeah. Thank you. I’m glad to be here.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: So, um, very interesting business. Um, so how do you [00:01:00] describe your product? So, you know, we, we were just discussing, you know, they’re most commonly known as car cargo bicycles, but of course there’s, it seems like there’s an e bike component to them as well.

Jared Madsen of Madsen Cycle: Yeah, there is an e bike component to them. Uh, and I would describe it as. Again, a cargo bike, but most people that I run up against, they don’t quite know what that is, but our bike is unique that it can carry a big load. It has a big bucket on the back that it comes stocked with 4 seats in the back for kids and that’s our primary customers, moms and dads with kids, but we also sell it into the community.

Delivery, uh, and warehouses for running errands and stuff, but it’s primarily moms and dads with kids.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: You know, when I see this, uh, this item, it almost reminds me of, you know, what is called a rickshaw and like Asian countries are commonly on the roads and, you know, they’re, they’re common mode of transportation.

So I’m very [00:02:00] interested to hear, um, a little bit about the story. When did you start this business and what kind of really, you know, what were you doing before and what kind of really gave you the idea for this kind of a product?

Jared Madsen of Madsen Cycle: Yeah, so it started in 2007. So I think we’re on our 14th year or 15th year right now and it’s, I’ve, I’ve been in the bike industry for years.

I started in a Schwinn bike shop when I was 15 years old and I’ve been in bicycles and scooters and motorcycles and, uh, I’ve also been in manufacturing of gumball machines of any machines, just anything mechanical. And with an engineering twist on it, that’s where I’ve always been. And luckily, I worked for a few of those bicycle companies that, uh, we did manufacturing overseas.

And so at a young age, I was sent over there to work with some of the engineers there. So it really opened my eyes to what could happen. And then fast forward, I’m married with. We just are [00:03:00] barely starting a family, my wife and I, and we took, it was the first trip we ever took when we left our kids at home and we went to the Netherlands.

I used to live in the Netherlands and my family’s all from Denmark. My dad immigrated to the U S uh, when he was a teenager. But so we were back in the Netherlands and we just saw all these. Cargo bikes, which were commonplace, but they were usually only used by the butcher and the baker. But since that time period that I hadn’t been there, my wife and I showed up and just saw it had that whole market had been taken over by moms, delivering their kids to school or taking trips to the grocery store.

The bicycle is more common than the car in the Netherlands, but just seeing that it being used in this whole new way with. Families and kids and, and we had our brand new kids at home. So when I got home, I had a little shop and I, I built one that was an exact copy of what they were using their buckets out in the front, which works really great in the Netherlands on the [00:04:00] flat, perfectly smooth bike paths.

And, and I just couldn’t leave it alone. I kept making different prototypes and kind of came up with what we have now. And then started to think that maybe it should be a business. Awesome.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: And I mean, it’s, it’s such an interesting point that you brought up. And I didn’t know that this about Netherlands because right now I’m actually following a, a YouTube creator.

She goes by the name of itchy boots and she drives these motor bicycles and she is going all over the world on this bike, like years. And she’s going from place to place. And it’s such a, such an interesting thing. And she’s from Netherlands. And so it’s, it’s, you know, when you shared that, it, it, uh, it makes sense now that.

That seems like a culture, uh, in that part of the

Jared Madsen of Madsen Cycle: world. Yeah, it definitely is a mainstream. And then especially 14 years ago, it was not mainstream in the U. S. So when we, when we launched, we were one of two companies in the whole country [00:05:00] that, that had a product like it. So, and there’s been a lot of popularity since, so there was a lot of really great timing for us to be one of the leaders in the, at least here in the U.

S.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: So given that you are, you are coming from like a cycling industry, why not consider a different kind of a product? I mean, Schwinn is, you know, is big into exercise bikes and so forth. Um, why this kind of a product? I mean, to me, um, did you do like any sort of market validation and find that there would be a market in the U S for these kinds of products?

Jared Madsen of Madsen Cycle: No. And in fact, the few people that I talked with some, uh, mentors Did not think it was a, it was a good idea. So, and I’ve been in that bike industry. I went and talked to a few, uh, shop owners and a few people since I’ve been in that industry for so long and asked them what they thought after I’d made some prototypes and showed them either the bike or some photos and everyone [00:06:00] wasn’t excited about it.

I remember the shop that, that exact swing shop that I worked at, I went back. To my old boss, and he says, you know, Jared, no one has ever walked in my shop and asked for anything like this. So I don’t think I would ever buy a bike from you until someone asked for it. I’m not interested. I don’t think it’s a good idea.

And it really, if anything, it drove me to want to. Prove them wrong. So it was more of a passion that drove this, this, uh, this product. And I wanted something in the bike industry. I love bicycles. I love the whole industry. I love everything. Uh, not everything about it, but I, I just really enjoyed that bike, uh, the simplicity of it, the pureness of it and living up in Europe and seeing how it’s used there and then not seeing how it’s used in the U.

S. Uh, but I knew I didn’t want a bike that. Was mainstream either, because there are, there’s a hundred people with deeper pockets [00:07:00] selling mountain bikes and road bikes and touring bikes, and it would just be one of another. So as soon as I saw those and started thinking of it, the more I thought personally, like, oh, this is, this is perfect.

This is perfect. I will be the first in the U. S. I, I passionately felt like it was going to catch on just because we used it all the time. We loved it. People asked us about it. And I also felt like. In the Netherlands, nobody says they’re a cyclist, even though they ride a bike every single day. They would never say they’re a cyclist.

They think that those are the guys with the stretchy pants and a helmet. And that’s always been my idea too, is that bike shops and typical cyclists aren’t necessarily our customers. It’s moms and dads that want to just still go on bike rides and they’ve got little kids and and they see the potential and that it’s fun and they get out.

So that’s no research. Just just a passion. I think they drove it more than anything [00:08:00] and wanting to prove wanting to prove those guys wrong years later, that same boss, uh, from that swing shop contact. He didn’t, but his manager contacted us and tried to buy some bikes. And at that point we were going directly to the consumer, so I wasn’t open to any shops, but it was, it was kind of fun to get that call.

Wow. Very,

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: very interesting. So what kind of, uh, investment did it take, um, for you to kind of bring this idea to market? I mean, did you kind of start off with a prototype and try to sell it first and, you know, uh, then you went into mass, mass kind of market. What was it like? To kind of, um, I mean, did you target because these bikes were already being, I mean, I’m sure there were manufacturers who are creating it.

If it was already in Netherlands, did you directly go to the, those manufacturers and say, you know, I just want to bring them to the U S can you share a little bit of [00:09:00] that

Jared Madsen of Madsen Cycle: beginning? No, because the design that we came up with was completely unique. There’s, there still is nothing like it, even in the Netherlands or, uh, there’s some things closer to it in the U S, but there’s.

Especially back then there was nothing like it and it was the design that we wanted. So I wasn’t going to help to go to another manufacturer. And because of my experience working with bike, uh, manufacturers already in frame factories. It was easy to settle on who we want to work with and I just knew how the industry works.

They, we get this idea that they’re. Sharing each other’s plans and that you can just knock something off, but that’s really not how it works. I mean, they, you can knock somebody off, but I didn’t want to, I wanted my own unique, unique bike. So I ended up working with a really great, uh, frame factory in Taiwan.

We actually started in China and had some terrible experiences and lost a lot of money. And I knew it because I’d done it [00:10:00] for other companies and seen them do the same thing. But I was so tempted by that lower price tag coming out of China. But we couldn’t maintain quality. We just had so many headaches.

And so our next, that was our first, uh, two containers. And then our next production run, I moved everything over to Taiwan or started over. I should say in Taiwan with. Factories that I knew were going to work for us and that we could control quality. And I’ve always, my name’s on the bike and I want a bike that’s going to last and last and last, and I’d be proud of my name’s on there.

So that’s always been really important for us. And was

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: the entire investment completely out of your pocket or did you kind of go about finding it?

Jared Madsen of Madsen Cycle: Yeah, no, it was in the beginning. It was. Uh, once we got product and once we started selling to dealers, we did, we took out a line of credit. Uh, I, I looked around and talked to our banker and nobody wanted to give us [00:11:00] any line of credit in the beginning when we really needed it.

But, uh, I did have, uh, a rental property that I had worked really hard to pay it down and build up a lot of equity in there. So we pulled a lot of equity out of that, uh, rental. And that’s. What I’ve done, uh, besides the bicycles is construction. My dad’s a contractor. And so I buy, I’ve in the past, I’ve bought a lot of homes and either flipped them or tried to rent them out.

And so, so we had some, some cash. They was the biggest investment for us. And the thing that made us realize that we’re actually going through with this was getting the molds made for that bucket because everything else is. It’s still just a bicycle. Uh, you know, it’s, it’s a long bicycle, but it’s, it’s just a bike, but that bucket’s what really sets apart.

And it’s, it was a huge investment for us back then. It’s still a big investment to get something that large plastic, uh, molded. So that [00:12:00] was when I put the money down for that mold, that really put everything. In reality for me that oh my gosh, we’re really going to do this This better work out because that’s a lot of that was a lot of money for us

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: It is it is I mean it is a rift like if you think about it Where you know, it’s a new idea you’re kind of coming up with a newer design product, you know um And you’re trying to launch it in a new market where you’re not, I mean, you have a hunch that it may work, but you don’t really know.

Jared Madsen of Madsen Cycle: Yeah. Not my wife was even a little leery, a little worried that we were, I was spending the money. She wasn’t involved in the business till we were in business for, I think like seven years. But, uh, yeah, she was worried that I was taking our savings and dumping it into something that may not work out. But, but it, it worked out.

So, I mean, it could have. We also, I, you asked the question, like, did we pre sale them from a [00:13:00] prototype? We had, I had filed for some patents. We have a design patent and some provisionals. Uh, actually application patent on our kickstand because it’s totally unique. There’s no kickstand like it, but I was waiting for these provisionals to be filed because legally we can’t, uh, disclose and keep our patents strong until they, until the provisionals were filed.

So we had bikes on our way coming from China at that time, and I had signed up for a, uh, A big bike show, the inner bike show, which was a dealer’s only show. And I wasn’t able to advertise. I wasn’t able to pre send anything out there or anything. So we got those provisionals done literally the week before I showed up to this, uh, big convention set up our little 10 by 10 booth and still wondering, is this even going to work?

You know, is this, was this a good idea? [00:14:00] I actually sold one bike. And every single I’m forgetting a lot of these stories, but all the bikes I had 200 show up in 1 container 1st and we got them out and I started building them and realize that the brake mount on the fork was welded on upside down and I couldn’t sell these bikes.

So we quickly work with the fork manufacturer. They’re afraid of new forks. I’m going to have to swap them all out. And I had a bike shop mechanic that found, found us and really wanted to buy one of our bikes, but I didn’t want to. And this may have been after that at our bike show. I’m sorry, I can’t I can’t remember, but it must have been because we had disclosed, but I wasn’t selling any bikes because I couldn’t ship them with these.

With this fork that problem, but since he was a bike mechanic and he was local, I said, I’ll sell you. They still work. It just wasn’t perfect. It wasn’t the way it should be still work. I sent your bike mechanic. I’ll sell you one. And then as soon [00:15:00] as I get the forks, you know, I can give you the forks and you can put them in there and he took it and they had it for about two weeks and they actually returned it.

So the first bike I ever sold was returned. And they, their feedback was that it’s just way too hard to ride. His wife couldn’t ride it. It was super unstable. It wanted to tip over as soon as they put the kids in there. And of course I took, you know, gave him his money back, but I am. It wiped me out. I think it took years to recover from that.

It, it was our first and only return for years and years and years. Uh, it’s not an easy product to return, but. It’s also, that was just a anomaly. It wasn’t, uh, it wasn’t at all the case. I think they, maybe money was tight. Something else was going on. They wanted that bike, but it took me out. And here I had 200 bikes sitting in my warehouse.

I haven’t shipped out any of them. And I’m worried. Did I just make a huge mistake? If this one mom bike mechanic, you [00:16:00] mean experienced cyclists. If he can’t ride this, have we like, what are we going to do? Luckily, it worked out. We were at that bike show that first day, almost nobody came into our booth.

And here we haven’t done any free advertising. We were off in the corner, uh, and really starting to worry. And, well, not starting, we’ve been worried for a long time, but wishing that we had people coming in and showing an interest. And maybe unrealistically, just to think we could show up at a trade show and take off.

But the very next day we went to our booth and there was actually a line of people wanting to come into our booth. And we’re like, what is going on? You know, yesterday we didn’t talk to anyone. We just started talking to all these people, and finally someone said, Hey, congratulations, getting put into the show Daily, which is a magazine that’s published every day of the show.

And somebody that had come in that first day, talked to one of us, it [00:17:00] was my dad, that was down there, my dad and I, which, he’s awesome, he’s got this thick Danish accent, and he’s just this typical Dane, and people like him, so I wanted him there. And, uh, so I don’t know who he talked to, but they brought up this article and it, that’s really what launched us was that article.

We had a big shop that up in Oregon that, uh, they had multiple shops that they had like 3 or 4 shops and they placed an order that day for 30 bikes, which was huge. I mean, we had a minimum order of like 3 bikes to a dealer and he just sight, you know, just blind said, yeah, I’ll take 30 of them, which would.

It was a great market up there and they had the shops and they had to know how they knew they could move them. And that’s what, that’s where we started.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Wow. That’s, that’s so interesting. So right now is your model direct to consumer or is it more to cycle? It is.

Jared Madsen of Madsen Cycle: Yeah. It’s, so the first few years And I think it was really [00:18:00] key for us to have those dealers.

So we set up dealers in almost every state, just small mom and pop shops, really small bike shops that were ordering three or minimum. And if they talked to me, I’d even sell them one. And what was starting to happen though, is that they would have one on display. And then when a customer. Wanted one, they would order it from us and then put it together for them.

And which was kind of frustrating. We wanted them to have them on hand, you know, so they could just buy it and more have that impulse by, and we, we had been working since the second year. We’d been working with REI, which is a really large retailer in the U S and it took about a year to get signed up on there.

System and to qualify to be a seller to and just this whole new portal that they had all of these checks and we had to go through and we finally got it and we were so excited and the it didn’t turn out [00:19:00] very well. They immediately told us that they didn’t want to put their bikes in the store because they’re too big their margins per square foot.

Uh, don’t work with, uh, with that big giant bike and they wanted to sell them online and then allow the customer to pick them up at the and we would drop ship them directly to the and we were already a little frustrated that bike shops weren’t, uh, selling them. Customers were calling us and asking us all the questions and then going to the bike shop and the bike shop was ordering them.

And when REI said they were only going to sell online, we decided to drop REI and we at the same time decided to drop all of our dealers and only go direct to the consumer. We had, we had worked out a lot of things with shipping direct to consumer. We’ve already been doing it in areas that didn’t have a shop, but with REI, we had to sell three bikes.

To make the same margins of selling one direct to the customer. And in the same token, we had to have three times as many bikes then, which [00:20:00] meant our warehouse needed to be three times bigger, which meant our inventory had to be three times bigger, which meant that was just a lot of money out, you know, that we had to keep inventory.

And so after looking at it that way, the direct consumer, and we thought we would see a decrease, which we were okay with, but we just continued to grow. This was. Also back when like Instagram and Facebook, uh, it was just so easy to market. They’re so easy to sell. Everyone that followed us saw our feeds every day.

I mean, it was, there was this magical time, this window before. That all went away, but, and that’s really what launched. We first started with blogs. We had a really big blogger that wanted one of our bikes, entered a contest to, it was a, it was a girl, her name was Nini, that nene’s dialogue. She was really popular.

She had a, she crashed in a plane, was burned and, and was in a coma for like eight months and had all [00:21:00] these followers. And one of, she entered this, this contest to win a bike and she just made a comment like, oh, I would love to buy this bike. And I didn’t know, we didn’t know anything about this, but I had 2 anonymous customers call me and buy her a bike and she was local.

So I decided, man, I’m going to deliver these because. And then I went online, of course, and read all of her blog and it’s like, wow, this lady’s really great and how cool is she wants one of our bikes. So I took, I deliver them personally and met her and she had just come out of her coma, covered in neoprene skin and this amazing story of her survival and her husband, both in this plane crash.

And, and they use the bike all the time. We kind of became friends. And so they used it more than just, and this was before anyone charged for a post, you know, if we, and I think that’s also why people took the credibility from influencers more back then, because it wasn’t. Well, it wasn’t the same, you know, if I gave someone a great deal on a bike, they would just [00:22:00] post there was no Negotiation about how much and how many times and what kind of you know Compensation we need to give them and so she was huge for us to go direct to consumer and then we realized when we’re direct to consumer we have that relationship with the customer and Not with the bike shop, which is awesome because our our product Just by itself, it builds this community.

So we have lots of little pockets of communities that we stay in contact with. There’s contests all the time with decorating your bike and going on group rides, and you have people in different areas that have taken this responsibility on just because they’re a cyclist. It’s a way more, uh, I don’t know what the right gorilla marketing, but instead of these large.

Influencers, they’re just much smaller and it’s awesome because they still are like those, like they used to [00:23:00] be, you know, they’re just genuinely wanting to use the bike and loving it. And so having that community, having that direct connection with the community is great. And when someone buys a bike, if there’s, if it shows up and has a little scratch on it or something, of course, nobody wants a scratch on their bike, but they wanted the product in the first place.

They call, talk to me. I’m really sorry about that. You know, what can we do to make it better? It’s just so easy. Where the bike shop was, they just couldn’t sell it as a brand new bike. You know, they just wanted money back. That was it. They just wanted to sell the bike to make money. It wasn’t at all about this love of our product or It’s just night and day working with the customer and working with the bite shops.

And so I was, I’m, I’m really glad we did that. And it’s been great moving forward. And we toy every once in a while when a large retailer will contact us, but. It’s just hard to, hard to give up that, what we’ve built with the community. For sure. I

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: mean, there’s definitely, [00:24:00] definitely an appeal to this kind of a product, especially in the time that we’re, we’re living, you know, everybody wants to be in front of computers and things like that.

And I’m sure there are a lot of people who don’t just want their kids to be sitting in front of their computer. They want to spend more time with their kids. And, you know, this kind of a product really makes it easy for people to get out in nature, get out and, you know, in the evening and kind of have fun.

And. Spent some time together. Um, the communities that you’ve talked about, like, what, what are you like? Like, are these really parents who are buying it or are there like other kinds of more nature enthusiasts and people like that? Who

Jared Madsen of Madsen Cycle: are there? Are we, we say we have a lot of, we, and the whole bike industry, we call them garage bikes.

They’re bikes that are sold. And they sit in somebody’s garage. They don’t they get ridden once or twice a year and then they sit in the garage. So we, of course, we sell a lot of garage bikes, but then we have these customers that will give up a car of going car free that are maybe they have 1 car.

They’re [00:25:00] young with, you know, new newly married, trying to make life work and trying to save up money and they’ll have 1 car. And those are the customers that really get involved in our community. We love anyone that will buy a bike, of course, but and we sell a lot of bikes to someone that really wants a photo opportunity.

I think they’re buying them. They’re getting those really cool photos that you can get with your kids going on an adventure, but then they may just sit in the garage, but we’ll sell them to anyone. Of course, but it’s those customers that really get. Into it and, or really need it, but that probably is a small percentage of our, that’s the smaller quarter or whatever.

I don’t know direct numbers, but it’s, but that’s the community we love, love to work with. And that’s, that’s, that’s who interacts with us also.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Is, is pricing, I mean, how did you come. With your pricing, because, um, from a pricing perspective, like, would this be considered more of a premium [00:26:00] product? I mean, I’m, I’m assuming not everybody can afford like a, I mean, your, your pricing is ranging from like 2, 600 to about 5, 000.

Um, I’m assuming 5, 000 bikes are more of the e bikes and then the one on the 2, 600, that’s more of a manual bike. Um, can you talk a little bit about your pricing? How did you price these products? And is that kind of, uh, I mean, is that like only a certain, um, person who has, um, extra money in their pocket would be kind of, uh, investing in this kind of a product?

Jared Madsen of Madsen Cycle: Yeah. I mean, that’s a really great question. And it’s, uh, it just depends on how you look at how you look at it. If you’ve bought a bike, uh, mid range or bike, uh, lately, you, you’ll think a little different about that price tag. Of course you can go to Walmart and buy a bike for. 100, but you definitely get what [00:27:00] you, what you pay for.

So some of our top competitors, their starting prices are around 5, 000 and going up to like 15, 000. So as much as a car in my, in my mind. So, and it, this is like a balancing act. This is a hard game because as soon as we have a product that’s Priced lower if we really worked hard to try to lower the cost of our bikes and put different componentry on there and which could still be a really great bike, but it starts to cheapen our brand and the perception in someone’s mind.

It’s like, oh, that’s a really that’s a low price bike. It must not be good quality. Uh, I was at Costco the other day and they had some bikes ebikes for sell there and I was. Blown away. What the quality was amazing and had a, it had a buffet motor on there. Uh, it had shmallow componentry. I mean, it was just.

Amazing. And the price was really low. And but in the [00:28:00] same moment, I know that people are looking at that bike and thinking, oh, that’s cheap. That’s got to be a really cheap e bike. And because I go to a bike shop, and I’m paying double that, you know, for the same, something I really want, but, but they’re not, you know, it’s just a.

I don’t know if that’s really answering your question or if I’m kind of tying myself in circles here, but uh, so there is a, there is a balance and there’s a game. We still are one of the best entry level mid. I mean, it is a high end bike and it really, uh, I won’t put anything together that isn’t, that isn’t going to last that we can’t always find parts for.

They’re all name brands. They’re big companies, especially with the e bike and, yeah. Anything that’s specifically to our bike, we want the very best. You can always find another tire or another wheel or that’s made by somebody else. It’s going to fit on our bike. But those parts that are specific to us, we want, we want them to last [00:29:00] them.

I don’t want, I hate those calls from the customer when something isn’t working or something isn’t, uh, you know, working the way they want it, or we try to try to avoid that. So, I think that, I dunno answered your question.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: No, I think, I think that makes sense. No, I think, you know, pricing is, as you said, it’s a balancing act.

Like, I don’t think there’s any right or wrong answer. I think No. You know, if, if, uh, you know, if the. If the customer is willing to pay for it and it works, I think, you know, that’s, that’s the best pricing. I mean, sometimes I hear where people increase the price and that kind of increased the demand as well.

So I think pricing is definitely something that, that there’s no right answer to it. Um, one thing that I wanted to ask about, uh, and I think you also kind of briefly touched on that is kind of the size of this product. You know, you’re, it’s a direct to consumer business, but of course, Uh, the bucket itself, it doesn’t seem like it’s kind of foldable, but so you have to, you know, keep the bucket as is.

[00:30:00] Um, does that create any challenges in terms of your warehousing? And especially, I mean, what is the weight, like overall weight of this? And how are you, how are you shipping

Jared Madsen of Madsen Cycle: it out? So luckily that bucket, I designed the bucket, uh, and it, it nests inside of itself, like paper cups, you know, so our storage is.

Is fine with the buckets. What’s the biggest challenges have been shipping it. So there’s no good way to ship that, you know, no tight, easy way, like it was just a regular bike. You can turn the handlebar sideways. You can take the wheel off and you can make it a pretty small box, but with that bucket, we can’t do that.

So what we, we decided years ago is that we were just going to do this white glove service. Because we were stuck paying these premiums, we put it in a box. It’s like a refrigerator box and the bike is completely built, assembled, tuned up, test ride. It just shows up. You got to unpackage it. You do have to put the front wheel on, [00:31:00] but everything else is just completely ready to go.

Everything’s been adjusted. So, and then working with Different because we can’t ship it a FedEx or UPS. It all it has to be freight. So it’s all LTL freight. So we have just I’ve had years of negotiation with freight companies, uh, trying to get those prices down because one little freight and right now with e bikes has become a huge challenge because of some of the fires from from uncertified lithium batteries and I’m sure some certified I’m I can’t say that but most all the Everything I’m aware of, they’ve always been uncertified batteries that have gone up in flames, but that’s that hurts everybody else.

So we have to ship everything hazmat, you know, it’s this giant bike and it’s only this. Battery that’s considered hazmat, but we still have to ship it that way. So that’s been the challenge. That’s a big expense for us is to ship the bike. We often say [00:32:00] we run two companies. We run a bike shop where we’re building bikes and we have this other company that’s almost just as big building.

Boxing and packaging. So what is really hard to keep stored is those boxes. Cause they’re huge that it is like a giant refrigerator and there’s something we can’t store them put together, you know, so they’re flat sheets that we’re always folding and cutting and stapling together and. It’s quite a process to try to keep the weight down, try to keep the size down, and then keep the bike protected, you know, we don’t want any damage or anything, and trying to save every penny we can on the shipping, because it can just eat up our, we, we offer free shipping, so we’re, we’re taking an average of all the shipping from, we’re uh, Yeah.

In the, in the Rocky. So, you know, we shipped to California. It’s a really great deal. We shipped it back East and we’re, we’re paying a lot. So we averaged that out and we, [00:33:00] we eat it a lot of times and we take advantage of it other times, but that’s, that’s the biggest challenge is shipping them and packaging them and staying on top of all those.

Regulations and everything to ship, ship our bikes around. Wow.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: That’s, that’s so, so interesting and challenging at the same time. Like, can you not ship the battery separately as like, you know, the hazmat dangerous good

Jared Madsen of Madsen Cycle: kind of, we can, so shipping just a battery, I ended up shipping it. It’s, it’s around a hundred dollars for that small battery.

So the savings that I get from not adding it to the, to the bike. Are just completely totally outweighed. So we thought of that same thing. I mean, we go right there. So good, good idea, but it doesn’t, it doesn’t work out.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: So, I mean, it does sound like, you know, the, even just the logistics part is a big operation, like how, what, what does your.

What does your team look like right now?

Jared Madsen of Madsen Cycle: So our team has always been [00:34:00] small. We’ve been really lean Uh, we’re myself my wife, uh, who does all our marketing She doesn’t come down to the shop or the office, but I we have a full-time office Manager and then a full-time mechanic and myself. And then we bring in part time help as things get busy.

We’ll bring in part time here for, as we ramping up for Christmas, cause Christmas is always a big time summer, uh, spring going into summer is, is huge. And so we’ll bring in part time help to help us. But a lot of that comes from working with our assembler in Taiwan. So I’m working with. We have like 50 different factories that I work with in Taiwan to get all the parts needed for one bike.

Whoa. So all those 50 components are getting sent to one central location and they preassemble the bike. So they assemble it as much as they can and still fit it into a really small box. So [00:35:00] that means the wheels aren’t attached, but the wheels are built. You know, they’re all laced with all the spokes and stuff that’s done in Taiwan.

So working with them. In Taiwan and trying to get them to do a premium assembly, which normally doesn’t happen. Normally a bike shop gets a bike from Trek or Giant or whoever they’re getting the bike from to do their shop. They know that they’re going to take it out of the box and they’re going to completely rebuild that bike.

They’re going to have to adjust the brakes, adjust the shifting, check the bearings, check the fitting on everything. They’re basically building it. Just become a mindset in the whole bike industry, and it has been forever since we’ve moved manufacturing over to Taiwan and China, uh, that they’re not doing any of those.

Premium services. I mean, you would, you would never buy a motorcycle from Honda and not have that motorcycle all assembled and ready to go, or a car, you know, from Toyota, it comes, it’s, it’s [00:36:00] ready, maybe you got to break it in or whatever, but it’s, it’s all adjusted, but in the bike industry, it’s not, it’s this total rebuild, which is, has always driven me crazy.

And it’s, that was, it’s been a huge challenge to the point of our assembler trying to explain to them what we wanted in Taiwan and them not. Understanding, you know, at all that I want this premium done. We finally came to an agreement. I said, I’m renting a warehouse right next to yours and I’m hiring people that are going to do the final tune up and then, so you’ll have to deliver it to them in the box, they’ll open up the box, they’ll fix everything and they’ll put it back in the box.

And then they can take it back to you. And it wasn’t until I was serious about this that they said, well, you know, we could probably just do that for you. You know, we could give you that service. I’m like, great. That’s exactly what I want. I mean, charge me a premium. It’s still cheaper than me having an extra mechanic, [00:37:00] uh, that I’ve got to go through training and everything.

So, I’ve been through training with them in Taiwan. We told them exactly how we wanted it put together. I’m over there at least once a year. Well, except for covid, we took a long break from traveling over there, but, uh, and then maybe more if we’re doing some big model changes or introducing some new product, but, uh, and it’s been years now.

So we’ve built those relationships. It’s. It’s a lot smoother and a lot easier now in terms of, I

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: mean, to me, it seems like even though it’s a difficult operation, like if there are 50 different, um, items that need to become, you know, uh, come together for the one bike, um, Because you’re working in, in Taiwan or the Asian countries, um, I’m assuming like the, the parts are themselves are not that expensive.

Like the overall cost of the bike, uh, is not that huge. And I’m assuming that it has like great [00:38:00] margins for you to work with. There’s

Jared Madsen of Madsen Cycle: great margins on. Some parts. So on some things, our accessories are amazing margins. We make, that’s where we make our biggest margins are selling all the accessories. So we have a lot of accessories.

Uh, when you break it down the e bike side, there’s not great margins because there are so many e bikes right now and everyone’s just cutting into each other. So I think what has helped us. It’s just having a bike that’s so unique. I mean, it’s got this big bucket on the back and you could go buy a comparable bike without the bucket and pay a lot less, but we’re just.

We’ve got a really cool product and that bucket adds a lot of, uh, a lot of value on there. So I’m not sure if I’m answering your question, but the margins aren’t, the margins are great when we’re selling direct to customer. Then when we’re selling to a [00:39:00] shop, the shop is who takes the big margins. The manufacturer is supposed to make their money off of volume, which I don’t think will ever be.

In that position, just because it’s such a boutique product is such a, uh, not mainstream bicycle. So now going direct to the consumer, it makes it a lot easier to stay in business. Um,

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: I want to talk about your marketing. You said your wife kind of handles that, that part. And, you know, when you started out, it was much easier to, uh, To be present and, you know, different social feeds and things like that.

How has your marketing changed? Um, and what, what kind of marketing you’re doing right now to kind of, uh, get new customer acquisition and what’s, what’s really working well, what’s not working. That’s it.

Jared Madsen of Madsen Cycle: It’s so easy to tell you what used to work. It’s so much harder to, we are, we feel like we’re floundering [00:40:00] with all the.

Changes with, uh, social media and the discredibility of influencers. Cause that was really huge for us, but I just, they just do not hold the same college as they used to. And everyone’s trying to charge money, the algorithms on Instagram and Facebook. They don’t serve up. We have a lot of followers on our account, but they may not see our posts every time.

So what’s working for us right now. This is a hard question to answer because the last two years actually have been the first two years that we haven’t seen growth in our business and it’s, we’re, we’re struggling in that area, you know, I’m just honest with you that we’re not like go out of business struggling, but I’m actually down a mechanic and I haven’t hired one.

Christmas is coming soon. And I’m just putting in a lot of extra hours. Trying to fill that position. So, uh, you know, we’re definitely feeling that entrepreneur, uh, pain that can be there, but, uh, [00:41:00] what’s still working though, and it has always worked and is completely carrying us right now is that community.

So they’re not big influencers, but they’re just regular people that are using the bike. So people out on the bike. Sales of like, we get these hot spots, these zip codes that we just continue to sell to the same zip code or the same school, you know, we find out because they’ll send us photos of like seven mats and bikes all in a row, picking up their kids from the same kindergarten, you know, and they’re, they drove each other, right?

Maybe there was one or two that had a bike and showed up at kindergarten, but all those other sales came because they saw them. And so those. And that’s always been there. But after 14 years of, I just, my wife just showed me a post that somebody sent to us and they got hold of one of our bikes from the original first Madsen.

I’m almost embarrassed that they’re on the road. I mean, they’re still a great bike, but. It’s changed so [00:42:00] much, but he just was raving about him and his daughter. They picked it up for like a hundred dollars and put another a hundred dollars of parts and they’re writing it all around and they draw on pictures all over the bucket.

And, and I, I, I love that. I mean, that’s, that’s a 14 year old Madsen, but it’s out there selling bikes. You know, it’s still, our name is on the side of there and it’s easy to find online. So. I think that’s really what’s carrying us through these really lean, these lean times until we can figure things out or until the economy flips again, or we also have more competitors than we’ve ever had before, uh, in the US, which is great.

That means more people are on bikes, but I don’t know what’s causing this, this little slump that we’ve had the last 2 years, but. I mean, I, I

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: think your, yeah, I think your product, um, because it’s targeted to such a, you know, uh, kind of, if you can, uh, can [00:43:00] tie in a great story with your product, you know, this idea of, you know, getting out, uh, in nature and spending time with your family and things like that.

I think, you know, I think. creating awareness around that story may, you know, maybe, uh, can, can help drive, because I think because it’s kind of a unique product, the big challenge is probably awareness. Like when somebody sees this item and they, you know, they are into this idea of spending time with their.

Family or going out, you know, uh, biking and things like that, it will make a complete sense to them. Like they will be attracted to it, but unless they’re aware that such a product exists, like they would, they would not even know. So I think, um, building more awareness through, you know, to kind of your target segment through more of a storytelling.

Um, I mean, are you doing any, any of those kinds of things right

Jared Madsen of Madsen Cycle: now? Right. Yeah, we do a lot. I mean, we do a lot of that with this. Smaller community right now. We’ve [00:44:00] we just launched a program. Uh, I don’t know how It’s probably like six months ago where we’ve made these badges these literal metal badges that uh, I don’t know if you remember like the mercedes the old mercedes would have like the The 1000 mile club and the 10 000 mile club and they would get a badge and they could put it on their bumper Anyway, there was It was kind of a, a twist off of that.

So we’ve made a bunch of these badges, uh, and we have these contests or these challenges that if you ride your bike every day for a month, you know, and show us some pictures of you doing it, we send out these badges. That badge goes right onto the front wooden crate that’s on the bike. And it’s been a ton of fun.

So I think there’s like six of them out there right now. Right now, what’s the badge that everyone’s earning is this, uh, costume bike. So it’s decorating and people have done it for years is decorate their bikes for Halloween. [00:45:00] So they decorate the bikes and ride the kids around and they send us a photo.

We give them this badge and it’s kind of this little bragging thing that they get to show, you know, online. They’ll take a picture. Oh, I just got my. You know, my 1000 mile where they hit a thousand miles, they get a badge when they hit 5, 000 miles to get a badge. And that’s, I mean, it’s totally on the grassroots.

Our customers have maybe 200 followers, but they’re real, they’re real, they’re 200 real followers. They actually know them and know their kids. And I think, I mean, it’s way more real for us also just. Because we know those customers and we, it’s, it’s a much more fun way to be marketing. It’s a much more fun way to be in business.

Maybe we’re not on a path to become this big giant of a bike, uh, company, or do we know if we want to, I mean, I would be happy if we did for sure. I mean, someday I gotta, I gotta retire and look at a exit strategy, but until then, we’ll [00:46:00] just keep going the way that we’re going. Maybe something will come out.

We’ve been. Playing with Tik TOK lately, which we used to think that was so irrelevant to our customers. But now those little kids are now our customers. You know, those people playing on Tik TOK, they’re not little kids anymore. They’re moms and dads all of a sudden. So maybe we should have jumped on that sooner when people told us that’s where we need to be.

But there’s a platform all the time and we don’t always have the bandwidth to jump on.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Yeah. Yeah. Um, In every entrepreneur’s journey, there’s always mistakes made, lessons learned, failures. I know you shared a few of them, uh, but has there been any big mistake or failure recently that you kind of, uh, think you could have avoided or, you know, what did you learn from any

Jared Madsen of Madsen Cycle: big mistake?

I mean, I, I briefly talked about how we started manufacturing in China and it would probably be the largest [00:47:00] mistake that if I could go back and change, it would be. Not going down there, but it’s not as well. It’s not as recent, but I would say recently what a lesson that was really learned is during COVID.

We like every bike shop just had the most phenomenal year ever. We sold more bikes than we ever had. We were lucky because we were opening up Europe, Denmark. I had a container of bikes ready to go to Denmark when COVID hit. We couldn’t get bikes. We couldn’t get parts. We couldn’t get anything because everyone’s shut down and everybody else is.

Selling bikes. So everyone’s placing orders all at the same time, but normally took me three months to get, I was getting people telling me that I had to wait 400 days to get some of the parts that we normally got quick. So, but because we were about to open up Denmark, Decided to put that on hold and brought that container to the U of S so that helped that like saved our inventory and we sold it all [00:48:00] and we started to.

See that, oh, we’re going to sell all these bikes. Let’s keep the prices high. Let’s like slow down our marketing that slow down. We can save all this money. You know, we don’t have to, people are buying the bikes anyway, and we really pushed our momentum, like stopped it. We slammed the brakes on because we could see we’re going to run out of bikes.

And we did, we sold everything and we had this wall that we just let. Stay a little. And that was a big mistake. I wish we would have continued all of our momentum and just let people see that they’re back ordered or whatever, but still continue. We just really took a break and a big breather and and didn’t realize it until we got product again and tried to ramp up and realized, oh, my gosh, we, this is really hard to ramp back up.

And that’s even with things weren’t as smooth with, you know, the new algorithms and stuff, but we still have the [00:49:00] momentum going. And so it was a good lesson to learn. And one that I wish I didn’t have to learn because it was a big mistake that we stopped. You know, we could have still all of our social, all of our community, we could have been feeding that still, we could have been riding high, and in fact, we could have probably done it better than we ever did before because we had more cash than we ever have before by selling so many bikes so quick and, you know, full retail, and I think it was maybe a little tempting just to take a break, but, well, there’s a recent, a recent challenge that we failed at.

Yeah. That’s, that’s

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: very, uh, it’s, it’s almost like, you know, when something is working, it’s, you have to take it one because a lot of the times it’s like, you know, the right time and the right opportunities and everything coming together that, that, that’s like a, there’s sometimes a luck component to that also.

And so it’s like, if you try to recreate that in the future, you know, that may never happen. So, yeah, I think [00:50:00] that’s a great, great. Advice. I know we are at time. Um, I want to quickly do rapid fire segment. Do you have five more minutes? Okay. So I’ll do a quick rapid fire segment in this segment. I’m going to ask you a few quick questions that you have to answer them maybe in a couple of words or a sentence or so.

The first one is one book recommendation for entrepreneurs and why?

Jared Madsen of Madsen Cycle: Oh, I love, uh, I love, let’s see if it’s, uh, brains on fire. It’s a marketing book. It’s a marketing firm. I just really love it. It really is that base roots, getting your customers to do your marketing for you. It’s well written. I love it.

For anyone that’s going to go to China, I would, and do any kind of work, or anywhere in Asia, I would recommend Poorly Made in China, is the name of the book. And I wish I would have read that before. I ever set foot over there because such an eye opener to read that. So, well,

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: uh, no, that’s awesome. Um, [00:51:00] and innovative product or idea in e commerce, retail or technology that you feel excited about?

Jared Madsen of Madsen Cycle: Uh, let’s see any other product that may not be a question for me, but lately I’ve actually been amazed by this may not sound great, but Alibaba. I, they have exploded and they have made. Things manufacturing over in China. So easy. It is like a light year jump to anyone that wants to come up with any product anywhere.

If they learn to navigate a little bit on Alibaba, maybe read that book for the made in China, but Alibaba also takes away a lot of those challenges. That’s it’s amazing what they’re doing. I know they. Are growing exponentially and it’s huge company and there’s some things with their company that are [00:52:00] problematic and not the best practices, but they, every time I’m on there, it blows me away.

So, for good or bad, that’s, I would say Alibaba.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Awesome. Uh, a business or productivity tool or software or a productivity tip.

Jared Madsen of Madsen Cycle: I’m, I’m really old school and analog. So my only tip is just to make sure that you record, uh, what you have for me. It’s a, it’s a little book that I literally write in so I can go back and look at that. Or I know there’s all kinds of software. My wife uses a lot of other software. She’s always trying to get me to do it, but I’m, I am old school, but it works for me, so that’s a little filled, filled notes, notepad, it’s my technology.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: A peer entrepreneur or business person whom you look up to or someone who inspires you?

Jared Madsen of Madsen Cycle: [00:53:00] Oh, I have a, I have a few great mentors from, uh, from young teenage years that, uh, that I’ve, I’ve leaned on. And then recently some of the entrepreneurs that I look up to are their family members. So I have a. I have a brother in law that’s, uh, in a band and is building retro style keyboards, and a sister in law that’s an artist, a painter, and they both They’re entrepreneur, you don’t think of them as being entrepreneurs, but they are killing it in that in both those industries and two industries that you think are like art and that can’t grow the way they’re growing.

They’re, they’re doing an amazing job. So I’ll say those.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Awesome. Final question. Best business advice that you have ever received or you would give

Jared Madsen of Madsen Cycle: to other entrepreneurs? Uh, I had a good answer for that question. [00:54:00] Best advice. Uh, I don’t know. I can’t think of, uh,

maybe it just don’t always listen to what people say. If you believe it’s something that’s, I mean, if it’s your passion, if it’s what you want, you can make it, you can, you can make it work. The other advice is that coming up with the idea. Is the easy part. So often people think that, Oh, if I got this idea, that’s I’m set, but that is the easiest part.

It’s the marketing. It’s the getting the product out there. It’s delivering all these other things. Those are the hard things. Selling the product is the hardest part, not coming up with the idea. That is, that

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: is the, that is a great advice. And that’s, uh, that’s very, very true. Well, Jared, those were all the questions that I had.

Uh, really, really appreciate you sharing your story and sharing, uh, some of your lessons learned as well as successes. [00:55:00] So yeah, thank you again. Um, if anybody wants to check out your bikes, what’s the best way to do

Jared Madsen of Madsen Cycle: that? Uh, if they Google bucket bike or Madsen cycles or Madsen bike, we got a pretty good presence, but it’s, it’s Madsen cycles.

com. Bucket bikes the best way to find this easy to remember Awesome.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Well, thank you so much again, uh, and I wish you all the very best. Thank you again for joining

Jared Madsen of Madsen Cycle: me today Thank you. This is a fun conversation. Awesome. Bye. Bye

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Hey there entrepreneurs. My name is Sushant and welcome to TrepTalks. This is the show where I interview successful e commerce entrepreneurs, business executives, and thought leaders and ask them questions about their business story and also dive deep into some of the strategies and tactics that they have used to start and grow their businesses.

And today I’m really excited to welcome Braxton Fleming to the show. Braxton is the founder of Stealth Bros Co. They produce fashionable dop kits or toiletry bags to help keep the hormone replacement therapy and other medical paraphernalia Needed by transgender men safe and discreet and today i’m going to ask Braxton a few questions about his entrepreneur journey and some of the strategy and tactics that he has used to try to grow his business So Braxton, thank you so much for joining me today.

I really really appreciate your time.

Braxton Fleming of Stealth Bros. and Co: Oh, I’m excited to be here and super, super excited to chat with you today.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: [00:01:00] So very interesting business. Maybe we can get started with a little bit about yourself, your story. I know you have an interesting story and maybe you can share a little bit about your motivation for starting this business.

Braxton Fleming of Stealth Bros. and Co: Yes, for sure. So, um, as you mentioned, I’m a transgender man, which means I was born a female at birth and I transitioned about seven years ago is when I started my, um, hormone replacement therapy medication and. You know, during that journey, really what it was, what was that when I, I didn’t even realize, let’s just start from the beginning.

I didn’t realize, I didn’t even know that there was transgender people. I spent literally most of my twenties feeling like I had, um, A void in me. And I honestly thought that I needed to change careers. I kind of felt like I was a licensed practical nurse. At that time for seven years. So I had been a licensed practical nurse since I was like 19 years old.[00:02:00]

So, you know, my family and everyone was telling me, Oh, you’re fine. You’re perfect. You’re doing all the things you need to do. You’re making money. Just continue going to school and you’ll be fine. But I was going to school and I was doing all these things, but I still felt this major void in my life. And, um, I happen to be researching different things online.

I’m just like a big reader. So I was reading different things online, just trying to pick up something new. And I came across a video of a transgender man, and it was really weird because At that time I was within like a lesbian relationship and you know, my girlfriend was like, Oh, like, is that something that you wanted to do?

And I’m like, no, no, no. Because it was really foreign to me and I was very ignorant to the whole community. Um, so I was like, no, I don’t want that. But for whatever reason, it just kept drawing me and I kept watching more and more videos. And as I watched these videos, I realized that, hey, look, you know, I, this may be like.

My missing puzzle piece to my life and I went to [00:03:00] therapy and so forth and then after that I was recommended to go to a specialist to get on the hormone replacement therapy. And during that time, I felt so connected to this new community that I had found. And I was like, assessing them indirectly and, and realizing that they didn’t have anywhere to put these medications.

So I was already a nurse for seven years at that time. So I was kind of like indirectly doing all these things while learning about my community. And then once I actually started the meds about like Five or six months after I went to the doctors, um, I realized that I didn’t have anywhere to put them.

And I’m like, well, where can I put it? So I went to the store and I just saw regular toiletry bags. And I’m like, but this isn’t organized to like, how I need to put my medication in. Like I wanted to sit upright. There was a lot of different things. So I joked around and I said, I’m going to make my own bag.

And mind you, I was just like. three or four months on T at this time. [00:04:00] So the entire year went by and in that year, I created a community. I, I gained so many new friends. I talked to so many different people. I indirectly started to build this community around me. Um, and then I went through a really bad breakup.

And I was forced back into my father’s home at 27 years old. And I said, you know what, I’m going to do something. And I decided to put all of my efforts that I put into this relationship, into my business. And at that time I was working a home care nursing job. So I was working with a baby and she slept majority of the time.

So I was able to spend like 10 hours on my computer and just kind of like dive into like, The manufacturing of a product and just really learning all about business. And I did that for about a solid, like three months before I decided to [00:05:00] say, I’m going to move forward with this. And I kind of genuinely did it as a passion project, more like something to be involved with my community.

And two, because I was tired of working overtime and I needed money for my top surgery. So I was like, how can I gain extra funds? I don’t want to work overtime. So I want to create something. It’s really crazy. Cause like all while I was thinking about this, I also was worried about my community because I was like, I don’t want to come out with a t shirt or hat because there’s so many other guys that are out there selling t shirts and hats and apparel.

I have to come up with something where I can have their hat. their t shirt, their shoes, and my bag all in the same picture to promote these items and we can uplift each other. So that was really a big part of why I went down the lane of creating the bags as well. It’s like all these little pieces that came together as I was building community.

And then, um, I reached out to one of my good friends who [00:06:00] was a photographer and I said, Hey, can you help me with this project? Um, he thought it was genius. And as the more people I talk to, they’re like, this is. This is a needed product. And then once I released, I think I really like jumped on it in like August of 2017, and then I launched a business-like full throttle, December 20th, 2017.

So I put literally. Yeah, I put literally every ounce of my time into creating, figuring out, um, like the manufacturing process and just kind of like asking questions, you know what I mean? Not really knowing what to do, but just asking those questions and seeing how far the supplier was willing to go with the dimensions and the colors and the textures.

And as time went on, that’s how I learned more about fabrics and things of that nature. But, you know, that’s how I really started was just really a passion project, um, to just. Push it out there for my community. Um, and then once I realized that the community needed it so much as I was telling [00:07:00] people at my job in my workplace, they were like, my dad’s a diabetic.

Oh, my, my fiance, she’s going through IVF. You know, I take B12 injections. There’s heparin injections. There’s so many different. silent communities that are suffering carrying around these medical items because they’re scared of the stigmatization around society and their views on injectable needs. And I realized that as the business was growing and that’s when I really tapped in to say, you know what, this is bigger than just my community.

This is All underrepresented communities, let’s build a luxury brand for them to give back to these people who have been suffering in silence, excuse me, for so many years, and let them feel good about who they are, if they’re going to be dealing with this chronic illness for the rest of their life. They might as well feel happy about carrying their medication around with them instead of hiding every single time they have to take that injection or take that medication.

So my, my goal really for Stealth Bros is just really to uplift those communities like how [00:08:00] my community uplifted me. Um, you know, and that’s what makes our brand different than other, um, tooletry brands.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: I mean, that’s so interesting because I think, you know, you know, some of the things that you described kind of are the The right ingredients for starting a business, right?

So you identified a need of a product that was, it was kind of an unmet need. So, you know, you were trying to find a product that would meet your needs of, you know, this unique set of products, but you couldn’t find it. So that was a need. And then you found a community, you know, so, you know, a community of people who are going to need these kinds of products.

And also, I think, um, you know, your product, I think, you In your research, you know, phase, you probably realize that, you know, it’s probably even though it’s going to require some sort of investment, it’s not like so much that you have to go out there and fundraise and things like that. I definitely want to know more about that.

But before we go [00:09:00] there, you know, maybe can you talk a little bit about your products? Like, what is your product selection looks like right now?

Braxton Fleming of Stealth Bros. and Co: Okay, so we have right now we have five main products. So our first product is our original job. I can actually show you if you like. This is actually one of our first products we came with it’s like a basic toiletry bag, which I recently just put some new loops here for your sharps container and or your vials of medication and then on the interior there’s some other small pockets that you can also use.

And then behind me here, I think there’s, there’s one here. This is our junior dop kit, which is actually a little bit smaller. This is actually one of our insulated styles. So you can open up the front pocket and it pretty much all this is insulated. So if you have a cold medication, you could put this in here and it’s going to stay cold for four to six hours.

[00:10:00] If you decide to put like a small ice pack, which we, we don’t sell, you can buy that separately. Um, you could place this in here and it will stay cold for like 24 hours. So like you’re going on an overnight trip or something like that, camping, this would be like your ideal thing that you want to keep if you’re a diabetic or someone with, um, like temperature-controlled medication.

And then we have, um, the backside here, also temperature controlled, which just has like a little bit more zippers and just more organization so that when it does come for that time, you’re not scattering, trying to find all the things that you need to have a seamless process. Um, to get that done. And then we have our, which I, I don’t have one next to me right now, but this is our sharps container.

I don’t know if you can kind of see that on there. It’s a small shuttle and it actually goes within the junior DAP or an original DAP. And it’s made for travel or for just a small, discrete way to put away your sharps. If you have children, if you have pets, you could put it high up in a counter. Nobody’s going to notice it there.

Um, so we, we [00:11:00] create those in different colors because there’s really no. Manufacturer right now that’s creating colorful sharps containers to suit the consumer who’s actually using the product. And that’s what, like I said, our brand is all about making people feel more comfortable. So they come in purple, green, and black as of right now, but we’re expanding our products, you know, all the time, um, especially different, different colors.

And then we also carry a larger sharps container, um, which is meant for at home to sit on your dresser. As you’ve seen before, like at hospitals, you’ll see the hazard. Sharps container in the big yellow or the big red. But, um, we have it in black, we have it in purple, we have it in green so that you can like kind of find your style and, um, make it a little bit more comfortable for you within your space.

So those are, that’s the four main first products. And then we have a duffel bag, which we just recently released and that duffel bag. is made to keep, um, we have a specialized front compartment that is organized to hold all your medication. So this way, if you don’t want to bring your adopt kit with you or if you’re going like a three day trip, [00:12:00] you can just put all your medication within this large bag with your clothes, your shoes or whatever else you may have.

Or you could use the front pocket for your medication and then you have our kids. It’s for your hygienic or whatever other things you may have. Um, so we’re just trying to make it more versatile so that people are able to, you know, feel free about where they’re going. So those are our five main products, but our main seller is the junior dot, the small one right here.

And that comes in a ton of colors and we drop different collections and different fabrics all the time to switch it up. Okay.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Um, and can you take me. To the beginning. So you, you know, you had an idea around, you know, you said August, uh, September kind of timeframe. And then you launched in December. So in like a three month timeframe, right?

Um, Can you talk a little bit about, you know, once you had the idea, once you kind of figured that, you know, this may work, what were the next steps? Like, did you, and you were [00:13:00] talking to manufacturers, can you walk me through that process? You know, what did you kind of come up with the product first and then started to market?

Or were you doing some of that concurrently? Can you talk me through those first? A few months when you were designing the product, coming up with the idea, setting up maybe your website and things like that. And how did it lead up to kind of the launch and getting your first customers?

Braxton Fleming of Stealth Bros. and Co: Awesome. Yeah, sure.

Um, it’s really crazy because, um, I had a product in my mind that I wanted to do. I wanted to have a bag specifically for those needs. Um, but when I first, my first product actually was very, very simple, even more simple than the first product I showed you, it had like one main pocket in a zipper and that was it.

And that’s kind of what we launched with. It wasn’t until almost six months later that I launched the more detailed product because as I was growing [00:14:00] and learning the business in the first few months, I was asking more questions to the suppliers and learning them as well. Um, but just to back it up a little bit, bit more before that.

The way that I, because people ask me all the time, how did you find a manufacturer? They’re like, Brax, how do you find a manufacturer? You know, and it’s a great question. Um, I really just Googled everything and that’s the God’s honest truth. I, I literally went to Google and I said, customized bags, customizable bags, minimum quantity, order bulk.

Purchase bags. I literally put those words into Google. Um, and then different manufacturer, um, wholesale supplier websites start to pop up. And one of those websites popped up that I actually was affiliated with. For 10 years, this is, I swear to God, I have proof in the pudding. I can show receipts 10 years under my birth name [00:15:00] on this website.

It’s crazy because just to back it up a little bit more, my dad’s also an entrepreneur my entire life. My dad has always told me to find the need and fill the void. He’s been saying this to me for my entire life. I never knew what it was until I started this. Business, but we used to always try to find like kooky ideas and try to like, we used to do a lot of fun stuff together and we still do.

But, um, you know, I guess I must’ve signed up to this thing, not even realizing what I did, but either way, I had this established relationship under my birth name with this man, with this, um, wholesale. Pretty much. And, uh, I, cause it, cause I tried to put my email in there and it’s like, you already have an account.

So I’m like, okay, cool. So I went into there and I started to search their products. And then once I found a product that I liked, I then reached out to the supplier and said, Hey, are you able to do this amount? Are you able to do that amount? And normally they. They want to do 500, 000 and they wait a [00:16:00] month.

I barely have any money. So I literally begged the supplier. I said, look, if you let me buy a hundred or 300, I promise you the next time I come back, I’ll buy 500. I was making promises. My ass couldn’t cash at that time, but I was so determined that I was just saying anything to get the product. Um, and pretty much my supplier said, and I’m still working with the same supplier seven years later, um, and we’re doing fantastic, but, uh, She said, okay.

And we did the first round of products. And that’s literally how I got the products here. And just to back up to tell you how I had the funding to do that. Um, I had a capital one credit card that I had recently maxed out on my ex girlfriend and I had just paid it off before I moved back to my dad’s house.

I had 4, 000 on that credit card. And I had just finished paying it off. So I said, I’m clean, blah, blah. I said, you know what? I’ve wasted money before I’ve wasted money on everybody else. I’m going to invest on [00:17:00] myself. So I use that credit card to initially buy the first round of products. I use that credit card to buy that LLC.

And I also use that credit card to start up my, um, my business. Bank account and all these things to get the EIN and so forth. Um, and the way that I found all that out was how to wiki on Google. You can find how to start a business wiki on Google, put that in there. It’ll tell you step by step how to get an EIN, how to get an LLC for your state.

It’ll tell you that you just have to read. This is the thing people don’t realize is very easy to start a business. You just have to follow the steps and read what we provide you. Um, and that’s kind of how I got started. And like I said, all at the same time, I was a licensed practical nurse. So I was already in my career.

I was already making over, you know, 29 an hour or so. I had money of my own. So it wasn’t like I was, um, put in a position where this business had to make [00:18:00] money. It was more like I said, like a passion project and just something that I wanted to do to create extra funds. So I didn’t have pressure. And I feel like that’s really important to highlight for.

Other entrepreneurs is that a lot of, a lot of people who say they want to start a business, it’s because they want to make a lot of money. They want to have the freedom, but that’s not how you start a business. You start a business because you love what you’re doing and you want to help someone else.

That is what we start the business. And then the money will come from you doing those things. So you don’t worry about the money. And, um, I think that’s how I started it and that’s why it’s been doing so well. Um, I’m stressed about it. It’s not a big deal, but the beginning, I really had no pressure on my business at all.

It was really all about the love and just really creating something fun and exciting for my community.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: And how did you find your first customer? So you got the manufacturer, you, I mean, Your product is somewhat, I would say, simple, you know, it’s a bag and, you know, of course, you know, [00:19:00] manufacturer has to customize the, you know, the design and so forth.

Um, and, um, you know, you set up your business. What, what happened next? How do you find the first customer, a first paying customer?

Braxton Fleming of Stealth Bros. and Co: Right. So, um, after I had used that little bit of money to set the, you know, the online shop and all those things during that whole first year, before I even started that business, I created relationships with so many different trans men online because we related on so many different things and there’s this whole community.

So when I got ready to start selling the product, I took about 25 bags and I reached out to all my friends and I said, Hey, I’m, I’m going to start this thing. I said, I really would love to see like how you feel about it. I’m going to send you one of my products for free, of course. And just let me know how you feel about it.

I never asked them to repost it because back [00:20:00] then that wasn’t a thing. It was more of like, you know, I feel like it was like more of authentic and genuine, like, Oh, I’m just going to send you my product. Like, it wasn’t like, I’m going to send you this and you’re going to make me three reels and an IgE story.

You know what I mean? Like how it is now. Um, so I pretty much gave it away to all my friends and a lot of my friends had high, high influence. Some of my friends had 160, 000 followers. Some of them had 50, 000, some of them had 20, 000, some had 2000, you know? So I gave them away at first, like five off the top of the 300.

And that was it. That’s all I did. And all I did was have high quality images for the Instagram that I created. I created an Instagram because I knew I had to do that because that’s where my platform was. That’s where my community was. Um, so I created the Instagram of course, along with the LLC and all those things.

And my photographer, I put out only high quality photos. Like I had, I had all these photos like [00:21:00] generated like a couple of weeks before, because I was building hype to releasing it. So I was telling people about it online and talking about it all while sending out like 25 bags of different people for free, not asking for anything in exchange, not asking, just letting.

Tell me directly in a private message. Hey, how do you like this? And what was happening is that the people I sent it to were saying how much they needed it. It wasn’t even a want, it was a need. They had to have it. And then they reposted it and they made videos of it. And then the fact that trans men take a shot every single week, they were using the bag and they were showing it.

Every single week. So then more people and then it was like a snowball effect. I mean, it just started to roll. We sold those 300 bags, I think less than two months. So it happened very quickly. And then at that point, I knew that it was. Bigger than what I wanted it to be because I was thinking I was going to sell [00:22:00] 300 bags in a year.

I thought it was gonna take me all year to do that, but it moved so quickly. Um, and it just, it moved. It just, just was done in timing. It just aligned the way it was. People ask me all the time. Well, how did you know to build a community? How did you know to, um, send the bags? How did you know to do all these things?

It. These are things that you don’t know as an entrepreneur. These are things that come with the work that you put in. So if you’re grinding until five o’clock, talking to suppliers in China because you want that bag to be perfect, the outcome, the fruits of that labor will result in the the sales and all these other things.

But you can’t think too much about how that money is gonna come in. You kind of really just gotta put your heart and soul into what you’re actually doing and people will feed off of that. And I think that’s what. Really built my business to what it is today.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: And you know, that is so important because a lot of the times I would talk to entrepreneurs and that, you know, [00:23:00] I asked them, you know, what is your best business advice and a lot of the times, you know, entrepreneurs say.

The best business advice is to just get started. Right. Um, and the thing that you said, you know, it’s like you got started, you did not know you did not really have all the steps, but you kind of figured that out as you went. Right. And I think that’s, that’s the, that’s the important thing is, you know, if somebody is, you know.

It’s thinking of going down this path and they have this idea that they have to map every step out before they get started. I think that’s the wrong way to do it. It’s like you have to get started and once you get started, like, you know, then you will figure out what the next step is. And, you know, sometimes you have to change your plans and things like that.

But unless you get started, it’s like there isn’t, there’s never going to be a perfect plan. So. Which, you know, your story kind of, you know, reflects very well. Um. So you, you know, you’re a manufacturer. So one question I was [00:24:00] curious that you were talking about this is, you know, the injections. Yes. Is this something that a person has to take lifelong?

That’s kind of like a lifelong need or is this, you know, you’re taking it for a period of time and then you kind of stop.

Braxton Fleming of Stealth Bros. and Co: Um, it is a lifelong, um, it is a lifelong situation or whatever you want to call it. Um, yeah, it is lifelong but it’s just like I tried to really. Explain it to, um, you know, CIS males or CIS females, um, biological born females or males that as men age, their testosterone decreases.

And a lot of cisgender men are on hormone replacement therapy. You just don’t know because they’re scared to speak about it. Which is okay, and that’s why Stealth Bros is here. Um, you know what I mean? And as we get older, trans, trans men, um, that are [00:25:00] on hormone replacement therapy, you know, I’m sure that as you get to a certain age, if you would like to taper down, Then that is acceptable.

It just depends if you still have a uterus. Or not, because then you have hormones fighting each other and you have to have, you have to be in the world to have least form because you have to be, you have to be regulated. It affects your mood. It affects so many different things in your endocrinology system.

So you have to, you have to have some hormone in your body. Um, you know, So you will have to take it lifelong. But let’s say, you know, a trans male has a hysterectomy, which means he has no uterus, and he’s on a lifelong, he’s on testosterone. He will have to take testosterone for the rest of his life because he has no other system in his body creating a [00:26:00] hormone, um, to keep him regulated as a, just a functioning hormone.

Human being. I mean, um, so yeah, it’s definitely a lifelong thing, but like I said, you can, you can stop and still remain looking like this. Of course, there may be some subtle changes, but majority of the changes are like permanent changes like facial hair and things of that nature. Um, so you kind of like, It’s just, it’s really based on, there’s so many different, like for me, I’ll be taking it lifelong because I’m a very traditional male I like to look at myself as, but there’s a lot of people who are on the spectrum where they’re non binary where they feel fluid or they want to be one way or the next way that’s, you know, I respect those people and they may choose to come off, they may choose not to, but it’s really based off of the individual’s journey, really, honestly, but for me, I know that I’ll be taking it Lifelong as long as it’s safe for my body and things of that nature.

I mean, that’s

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: very interesting because [00:27:00] Now I do see on social media or you come across, you know posts and so forth where even Men as you said, you know over time like as you age your testosterone levels start going down and you know you do you do see the People talking about testosterone replacement therapy, where you’re, you know, uh, injecting testosterone and, and, you know, they really sing praises about, you know, what that can do it, like, you know, it can make you feel like, you know, 20 year old man or something like that.

Right. Right.

Braxton Fleming of Stealth Bros. and Co: Because their libido increases and all these, you feel stronger, you have more. sense of empowerment, you know, testosterone really does hold all those characteristics. That’s, that’s one great thing about being, you know, trans, especially for me, because I lived as a female for 27 years of my life.

So I understand how a woman feels, but I also understand how a man feels because I am now, [00:28:00] you know, testosterone, testosterone dominant within my body based off the medication. So I feel and think how male feels and thinks because of the testosterone. And it’s, it’s very, it’s very exciting and different because, you know, women are always like, well, why are they always, you know, going after the girls and why are you always doing this and doing that?

Well, honey, I’m sorry to break it to you, but it’s just part of part, part of part of the male system. And it. It’s not an, I really, you know, you, you always see like, Oh, the little boys are chasing the little girls. Well, yes, because their testosterone is growing and it’s raising and it’s raging and they’re there.

That is, that is part of the human biology. And, um, you know, that’s one of the great experiences of being trans is that I really get to. Kind of tap into this, you know, male, um, thought process because of the testosterone, but also having a perspective of the female base because I was living in a female body [00:29:00] and went through female puberty, uh, you know, for 27 years of my life.

So obviously I’m very well aware about that. Um, but. Yeah, it’s really crazy. It’s, it’s, it’s very interesting. Um, I understand why people are very like shocked by it because even sometimes today, even I’m shocked by it. Um, but I’m just thankful to be living my truth and just, you know, living my, living out my life the way that I, that I choose to.

So I’m thankful for that.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: I mean, it’s, it’s so interesting. I mean, I don’t want to go down that path because my podcast is more, you know, more, more business, but I, I mean, it’s, it’s really fascinating because, you know, right now the political environment is so charged with all of these topics, right? And, you know, the whole topic of feminism and, you know, toxic masculinity and all these things.

And I think. You know, someone like yourself who has seen kind of both the female side and the male side can understand that not everything is toxic. You know, it’s like men, a lot of the times are driven by biology, right. And it’s [00:30:00] just as women are. And, um, so yeah, there’s definitely a whole lot of discussion that needs to be had there, but I will, I will skip that for this part.

Um, so let me, Yeah, let me let me ask you about your manufacturing. So you said you so you’re a manufacturer. Are you working with Chinese manufacturers? Are you

Braxton Fleming of Stealth Bros. and Co: working? Yes, yes, I am working with Chinese manufacturer. Everybody is overseas. I have one. I have One, two, three. I have four manufacturers I work with.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Okay. And can you talk a little bit about how you found them? Did you ever visit China or did you work with like a platform

Braxton Fleming of Stealth Bros. and Co: like Alibaba? Yeah, I never visited China. It is like, um, you know, sort of like Alibaba, sort of like that. Um, and yeah, I just contacted them. You kind of take the risk, you know what I mean?

Um, and just Like, well, my sharps supplier, because we [00:31:00] really do everything through email. It’s not through like the app base. So it’s kind of, it’s not scary because we’ve been working together. He literally started in his position at the sharps manufacturing the same time I started the business. So we’re real up buddy, but, um, It was risk.

You know what I mean? Like I’m going to send you 4, 000 or whatever, and you just have to wait for the product to come in. But he’s always been there. And I feel like. You know, the people have always been so genuine with me overseas. I, you know, it’s a, it’s a touchy subject politically to speak on China and to say how you love China.

But at the end of the day, the people that I have encountered, I won’t speak politically as a whole, but the people that I have encountered directly, you know, I have a lot of love for them and they’ve, they’ve. Supply me with products and I’ve had no issues. And if there have been issues, we’ve been able to, um, come to an agreement on those things and move forward.

So I’ve never had any issues with my overseas suppliers. Awesome.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Um, [00:32:00] what about your, I mean, so your, do you consider your business to primarily be a Um, a branding exercise, really connecting with this because your target market is a very, um, defined set of people, right? So, you know, primarily your target market are like, you know, transgender men.

And then from there, you’re, you’re probably connecting with like, you know, other communities like medical, you know, diabetic community or other kind of people who use these kind of products, medical products, and they have a need to store these products. Um, Like, and I’m sure like there’s no shortage of bags out there, you know, and people can find like, you know, different kinds of bags.

So, I mean, the way you can compete in the marketplace where, you know, this product is ubiquitously available, right? Um, it’s really by branding and having a unique story and really [00:33:00] connecting with people with that story. And, you know, um. People who have like similar kind of experience and they, they connect with the message and then, you know, then they want to support you or, you know, they, they connect with the product and they want to buy it.

Uh, so do you, do you consider your, your business to really be a kind of a branding business more than

Braxton Fleming of Stealth Bros. and Co: anything else? Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. Because like you said, and like I tell everybody, you know, and like my dad said, actually, he said, when I was very young, he said, it’s the most simplest products that get you rich.

Yeah. And it’s of what you need, not, you know, it’s of what you need. That’s going to help someone else as well. And I feel like I hit those boxes with my product. Unintentionally, but that’s just the way the cookie crumbled. But yes, absolutely. We’re building a brand because people want authenticity. People want to connect with the product that they receive.

They don’t [00:34:00] just want to buy. Of course, like the Adidas and Nike and Louis Vuitton, like those brands are embedded in us and they’re major corporations and they are embedded in us. And we all love those brands, but nowadays the brands that are coming on. Are more personalized and smaller brands and people are connecting with those.

They want to have that unique style that, you know, I think that’s really important because people. That’s all what it’s really about like social media. It’s all about connecting and people want to connect with the items that they’re buying. They’re not going to go buy it from marshals when they know that a black trans owned business has this and it supports who they are as a person or supports their family member, or, you know, another medical need or things like that.

So, you know, that’s what we’re really trying to build off of is just like our brand story and just connecting with those communities.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Um, what are your sales channel? Of course you have your [00:35:00] website. Are you, is that kind of your biggest sales channel or are you? Yes, our

Braxton Fleming of Stealth Bros. and Co: e commerce is on our e commerce is our biggest sales platform.

Um, we were on Amazon, but I. backed out of that because it was just becoming overwhelming with the orders. And Amazon has a lot of crazy things that they want you to do. So what the growing of our e commerce since shark tank, um, it just was too much for me alone to take care of at this moment. So I kind of like, I have the store, but it’s, it’s not like I don’t really push it or do anything with it.

We also sell on Tik TOK shop. And we are also in 4, 000, um, nationwide CVS health stores. So you can find our, this product actually right here that I showed you this, uh, the sharp shuttles in a pack of four. These are on the CVS health shelf. So if you go to CVS. com and you put in stealth bros, our product will pop up, get purchased it online, or you can look to see if [00:36:00] your local store has to.

Um, so we are in as well working on another retailer at the moment, but. Retail is a very large investment. It’s not something that happens overnight. So definitely moving slow in that sector because it’s very expensive.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Yeah, for sure. Talking about Shark Tank, can you share your story of, you know, I’ve had.

Quite a few entrepreneurs who have been, uh, on Shark Tank. Can you share your story? What kind of led up to you appearing on Shark Tank? What was your experience like? And I know that Mark Cuban and I believe it was Barbara Cochran who invested or agreed to do a deal with you. Did you actually go through with it?

And if yes, what has been your experience working with them and their teams?

Braxton Fleming of Stealth Bros. and Co: Yes. Okay. So I’ll start from the beginning. Um, Shark Tank actually reached out to me through email, which was really weird. Cause I thought it was a [00:37:00] fake email, but they said call this number. So I called and pretty much when you’re on Shark Tank, you, you don’t know if you’re going to be on shark.

You don’t know if you’re going to air until two weeks before you air. So you don’t know and then all the way up until they film you. If they decide to film you. You don’t, you can go through thousand pages of due diligence and you don’t feel, or they can pass you on to the next step and you do film. So thankfully I was able to get through all the steps.

Thank God. Um, which was great for my business too, because it really pushed you because the show wants so much financial summaries and they want you to have your business in order. So it really kicked my ass to get my business in order. Um, which was great, uh, before I even filmed or anything. So that was one great part of the show that I really enjoyed, even though it was the hardest part of the [00:38:00] show.

It was probably the greatest part for me because it aligned me with my business and my financials. But once I like filmed and did all that, like once I, when I went to go film, I was obviously like super nervous, but I had been practicing my pitch for, for like, I think it was like Six months prior to that, like, you know, like about six months prior to that.

Um, yeah. How were you

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: practicing? Because you’re, I mean, I, I saw your pitch and it came pretty, pretty nice. I mean, you’re, you’re pretty, to me, at least it seemed like you were very relaxed. It seemed like really,

Braxton Fleming of Stealth Bros. and Co: really. I was sweating bullets. Um, yeah. Um, I, I, you practice because basically like you perform that pitch.

Like, you know, like the initial pitch when you’re like, Oh, my name is blah, blah, blah, blah, that initial pitch, you practice that with your, you get assigned executive directors. So like they work with you throughout the whole process and they help you and things of that nature, like, you know, it’s all up to you, but they kind of like, you [00:39:00] know, keep you in line and stuff like that.

And you have to practice that pitch in front of the teams, numerous times before you even get to. steps and all these different things. So, um, you know, it’s, it’s like I said that thing probably a billion times, you know, I, I’ve envisioned myself walking down that aisle like a billion times in the gym.

Like I spent so much time hearing, I got it. Like it’s a lot of visual manifestation that took place. Prior to, um, and just kind of like placing yourself in that space. And then once you get out there, you know, don’t get me wrong. It was a great conversation and it was great, but the editors on the show, they know what they’re doing.

They know how to piece everything together to make it seamless so that there wasn’t like pauses or anything crazy. But you know, I’m sure that like after you do that initial pitch, because everything else after that is unscripted. [00:40:00] You know, once you that initial pitch, it’s like you’re just like hit with the sharks and like you guys are having casual conversation and that’s just being recorded.

Um, you know, and obviously I was nervous during that that period of time but when we talked it was like on the show they made it seem like everything was like perfect even though it was, but like, you know, editors TV it’s TV Come on, they’re gonna make it look great. But overall. It was a great experience.

Like all the sharks were super nice to me. Like nobody was disrespectful. Like we even joked on stage. A lot of the stuff that we joked about wasn’t aired, but it was really fun. Like we had, we had a great time. Um, and then afterwards you meet with the team heads and they tell our team or. And you just look at the next step, so this is in this more due diligence of financials after that.

And as long as everything you said on stage matches up with your financial paperwork, then the deal most likely will go through as long as both parties are in agreeance and. That’s pretty in my [00:41:00] deal went through very fast because I was very on it, and they’d say that they tell you they say you know this deal can take a year to go through, or it could take a month or two, based on how fast you move with the paperwork and doing what you need to do and me I don’t like shit laying around so I, as soon as things came in, I would say, Stay up to 1, 2 o’clock in the morning, making sure those things got done because I wanted to move forward.

And I really needed that money for CVS because I had just launched in the CVS stores, September 9th and the show aired September 30th. And my deal closed like, like within a two week timeframe after that. So it was a lot of going on. And my daughter was born a month later. So it was, um, easy time of year for me, uh, last year, but.

It was

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: amazing. What has been, what has it been like working with, uh, like, do you, do you, uh, work with Mark and Barbara or do you ever have any interactions with them?

Braxton Fleming of Stealth Bros. and Co: You work with their investment [00:42:00] teams. I have access to them if I choose to reach out, which I have and they do respond. Um, but you know, I try not to bombard them, but they want it.

They want the entrepreneurs they work with to ask them questions. They want them to be active and interactive with their teams. So, um, you know, and, and they have been helping me, um, you know, with a lot of B2B things and just like administrative things that need to be done. So it’s been, it’s been. Good, but like I always tell people, you know, when you’re on a shark tank, you get a deal, you’re not rich right away.

It takes time. It’s what they like to tell you behind the scenes is that the real work starts as soon as you get the deal. And that couldn’t be any more truer. harder than I’ve ever worked after the deal because now you have this income where you have to make sure that when you spend that income, how is that income coming back?

How are you returning that income? There’s so many different avenues and aspects to the business that you have to [00:43:00] learn and understand and grow through. So many things I even, I learned this year from just being the first year out from it. Like things that I, Probably should did differently. And, you know, there is just a learning, a learning experience, but it still takes a lot of hard work just because you have Mark human on your team.

Doesn’t mean that I’m now a millionaire and that I have all the things he has, I have to work hard and I have to continue to push my business and show him and the teams that, Hey, look, you made the right decision by investing in me and putting. Uh for the best foot and the best effort. So yeah

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Can you talk a little bit about your marketing and of course, you know every business the focus is growth, right?

Like you want to grow your business you want to get the word out you want to have more customers You want to help more people? How are you kind of doing that in terms of new customer acquisition and also? Making sure because you’re in your business. It’s you know There is a bit of a, um, either subscription or, uh, or a recurring purchase aspect to it, because, you know, [00:44:00] especially I think the, the, the, the, the, yeah, the, so, yeah, how are you building?

How are you getting new customers? How are you building loyalty and so forth?

Braxton Fleming of Stealth Bros. and Co: So right now we just started subscription so you can actually become subscribed to our sharps containers and get them every so many months at a discounted rate, so that you continuously get to have no worry about purchasing them again.

We do have that and then we with marketing we do a lot, everything is really social based and word of mouth. So, um, we. The social media is very important. The content that’s made for social media is very important. It is, it is, it is key. Um, and then of course we have our paid ads that go behind that content.

And then we have, um, which is crazy because I don’t do Google paid ads, which I am going to start soon because it’s our direct, like our direct. Um, rate, because like you could tell the analytics is so high. So I know [00:45:00] that if, if, um, I place ads on there, probably do really well. And that’s just a side thought.

But either way, the social media ads, social media content in general, providing education and providing just fun things for, for my audience to see. And then email marketing is very important. Um, email marketing, SMS marketing. And that’s really it. That’s all we really do. And then I do, I, I’m affiliated with uh, uh, organization called NGLCC, which is the National Gay Lesbian Chamber of Commerce, which is really the LGBT, um, chamber of commerce.

Which, um, is a great networking tool that has given me a lot of opportunities, um, to expand into like different B2B sectors. Like we’ve had projects with Boston Scientific, which is a major pharmaceutical company, um, Bristol Myers Squibb. We work with, so we’ve, we’ve worked with a lot of, we’re working with [00:46:00] Stanford University right now.

Um, there’s a, there’s a lot of, you know, different sectors that I do personally, um, with outreach and showing up to these events and just getting my face out there and telling my story and trying to connect with different audiences, um, so that I can let people know about the brand, but that’s kind of how I’ve been pushing it.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: What does your team look like right now? Are you still the solo founder or do you have other? I

Braxton Fleming of Stealth Bros. and Co: have team. I, I, I would say I have a team member that is, I have contracted, they’re not employees, but I have contracted workers that I work with. Um, so I do have a marketing, um, he’s like my marketing director.

He’s like my right hand man. I love that guy. Um, you know, I got to give him his credit because he puts a lot of work in and he’s definitely helped build the business, um, so much this year. With our [00:47:00] emails and everything but he pretty much oversees all of our like our paid our email marketing strategies and pretty much like a marketing consultant for me.

I’m the one who really creates a lot of the content, but he kind of like puts it together and makes it, you know, grade A for ads and things like that. Um, so I work with him. His name is Sander and he’s great. He actually owns his own agency. I’d love to plug him right now. It’s called Digi Empower. Um, he’s great.

He will scale your business. So definitely reach out to him. Sander Jennings. Um, but he is my main guy. And then of course I work with photographers. I work with videographers. I’ve worked with some people who do, um, like one time off deals with like website help and, um, different things like that. But I outsource, I just outsource if I can’t do it myself, or if I don’t have the time to do it, I just outsource Fiverr is an incredible tool.

Um, use that for different things if I need to. But I tried to like right now I really am trying to build team [00:48:00] because I know that’s the only way to scale and grow. So Sander really is like my first main man that is right by my side that I’m building with and then I also work alongside like my head photographer, whose name is Cyrus Goldstein and he has Cyrus Goldstein photography so reach out to him.

And then, um, also, you. Those are like my two main people that I work with that. Oh, and then my my other photographer. I can’t forget them. Snow photography, top of the line is all my e commerce shots and things of that nature. So super important part of the team to make. You know, in a well oiled machine, I guess you can say awesome,

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: um, in every entrepreneur journey, there’s always mistakes made lessons learned failure.

Um, what, what comes to your mind when you think about, um, you know, a mistake that you’ve made or a failure as an entrepreneur so far. And, uh, that that’s something, you know, you, you think that you could have [00:49:00] done without, right. Uh, what did you learn from that? And what can other entrepreneurs learn from your mistakes?

Braxton Fleming of Stealth Bros. and Co: I, I have such a difficult time answering this question. I have this question a lot, um,

because of the nature of how I started my business, I feel like, of course I ran into hiccups, there’s things that may have not gone my way, um, or product, like I’m waiting for product right now. I didn’t arrive when it was supposed to, and I have people on back order, which is annoying. Um, but these are just all small things of business.

Um, I really feel like there was no failure, I hate to say it like that, because anything that I came up against, or if a door closed, it was [00:50:00] only to open up something else for me, because that wasn’t meant for me. Or if I didn’t, if, or if I wasn’t, if something didn’t work, or like if I released a product and it didn’t work in the fashion that I wanted it to work, I didn’t take it as a failure, I took it as a lesson learned.

and to apply what I learned into the next collection that I was doing. So I was never, I really don’t look at it as if I failed in anything because I’ve been so successful, you know, even with You know, I can’t even say that there has been like an immense amount of money lost. Let’s talk about CVS, a retailer.

CVS has cost me tens of thousands of dollars. Did I know when I went into CVS, I thought that I was going to get all these purchase orders and make a hundred K up right off the bat. I’m being Eve, even though I have a broker and all these things, but that’s not the case. It takes a [00:51:00] long time for that product to sell if it’s not toilet paper.

And You have to have this adjustment, which I was so happy about being a supplier for CVS, I jumped into it without really understanding what I was doing. And that hasn’t hurt me because I’ve been so successful in my e commerce that I’m able to sustain my retail. If you were going to talk about doing something differently, then I would have done that differently.

But at the same token, I’m not mad at it because I’m, I learned so much. I learned so much about retail. I’m still learning every day. I’m learning about retail and, um, you know, I think that’s the beauty and being an entrepreneur is that, you know, that. Things are going to come up. It’s going to be up. It’s going to be down.

It’s going to be great. It’s going to be poor, but that’s why I have to be financially smart. And you have to put your money in places and move things around and use credit and [00:52:00] understand how to utilize your money this way when an issue does happen, you aren’t drowning because of that. You are like, you know what, I could have made 80, 000 quick, but you know what, that’s fine.

I’m just going to move this here and we’re going to just ride this train until we have to. And we’ll collect at the end. No problem. You have to have that mindset because if you don’t, then you’ll just drown. You’ll just drown. You’ll drown in your worries. You’ll drown in depression. I mean, there’s so many things that come along with entrepreneurship and, you know, being able to have just, just to create your own schedule every day.

You know what I mean? It’s really hard. And if you’re not like mentally strong enough to do that, Okay. Then yes, you can say I’ve had failures in my business. Yes. I’m so upset about these things, but for me, because it’s more, like I said, I started a passion project. I love this business. I love my community.

I love what I’m doing. I’d rather do this than anything else that if a problem comes up, I’m like, all right, what’s the solution. All right. How do we get to the solution? Okay. This happened. My bad. All right. [00:53:00] We didn’t, we ran a code. We didn’t put the code out. We lost out on 2, 000 today. No problem. What can we do tomorrow?

You know what I mean? So that’s the type of mindset I have. And that’s why I just feel like I haven’t really had any failures or any problems because I just learned from whatever didn’t work out for me the first time, or if a door closed and it just closed a hundred percent, I know that the Lord is saying that’s not for you.

I got something for you over here. Yes. So keep working, working, hoping for you to cry on here, or well, you have 14 hours in front of you. So I just try to have that mentality.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Awesome. No, I think that’s a, that’s a great advice. You know, there is no, of course, you know, you can’t, um, no matter how successful somebody is, you know, of course, there’s always things to learn.

There’s always things come up that are not going to go, uh, you know, according to plan. So that’s kind of the. You know, the lesson is to have the right mindset to be able to learn and, you know, just take the next step. So now I’m going to move on to our next segment, [00:54:00] which is the rapid fire segment. And I’m going to ask you a few quick questions and you can answer them.

Maybe. In a couple of words or a sentence or so. So the first one is one book recommendation for entrepreneurs and why? Um,

Braxton Fleming of Stealth Bros. and Co: um, Seven Daily Habits of Highly Successful People. That’s the first book. Um, because it’s just, it’s just amazing. It’ll fix your life, the paradigms. It’ll, it’ll help you. It’ll help you just, just read it.

That’s it. Okay. Yeah. It’ll change your life. Literally. It’ll change your life.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Yeah. I mean, that’s a very, uh, very famous book, right? Yes. Yeah. Yeah. An innovative product or idea in the current e commerce, retail, or tech landscape that you feel excited about. Say that one more time. Innovative, um, an innovative product or idea that you feel excited about.

Braxton Fleming of Stealth Bros. and Co: Um,

honestly, I don’t, I really don’t [00:55:00] know because I put, I don’t focus on other brands or what other people are doing. I really don’t. I, I have so much work that I have to focus on creating my own brand and my own products that I really don’t even know what is new out there because I really haven’t been really looking for the next best thing or really like, so I don’t, I really don’t have an answer for that one, unfortunately.

Okay. No worries. No worries.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Um, a business or productivity tool or software that you would recommend or a productivity

Braxton Fleming of Stealth Bros. and Co: tip? Notion. Notion is a software that you can use to organize your email calendars or just like your day to day tasks. It kind of is like, um, a personal assistant. Um, and it’s free too.

That’s the best part. If you use it a lot, and of course you have to pay for a little bit more space, but if you, if you’re just starting out, it’s a great tool to get organized.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: I use notion as well.

Braxton Fleming of Stealth Bros. and Co: Yes. Okay. Awesome. Yeah, notion is

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: great. Um, a peer, entrepreneur, or business person [00:56:00] whom you look up to or someone who inspires you?

Braxton Fleming of Stealth Bros. and Co: That’s another great question. Um,

that’s a great question. I’m really inspired by people like Steve Harvey. Grant Cardone, Gary Vaynerchuk, um, Jim Rohn. These are the people who inspire me, um, who I listen to daily. Um, Oseen, these are the people who inspire me and who listen to daily. And these are the, those are the people who. Who literally pushed me every day because every morning on the way to the gym, I’m always listening to one of those people.

Um, yeah, motivational speakers really moved me. Um, and I feel like that’s what really, I really got to give credit to Gary Vee [00:57:00] because Gary Vee, Gary Vee, seven daily habits of highly successful people and think and grow rich, which is another book changed my life. Gary Vee in those two books. Change my life.

I read those books right before I started my business and when I was going through a lot of turmoil changing my life and all these things, and he Gary V literally changed my life. Yeah.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: That’s great to hear. I mean, um, he definitely has a lot of uplifting message for

Braxton Fleming of Stealth Bros. and Co: sure. Yes, he is definitely hardcore, which I am as well.

And that’s why I, I feel like I resonate with him. I listened past all his cursing, um, and all the, you know, aggressiveness, but it’s passion. You know what I mean? And he, if you really listen to what he’s saying, he said a lot of good things. He says a lot of good things, you know, that really people and push people forward.

So, um, Yeah, definitely someone I look up to [00:58:00] and definitely aspire to have his mindset of just being kind and, you know, just, just doing the work, you know?

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: For sure. Final question, best business advice that you have ever received or you would give to other entrepreneurs?

Braxton Fleming of Stealth Bros. and Co: The best business advice I received is from my father and that’s just to find the need and fill the void.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: That’s, that’s, uh, that’s definitely the best business advice because, you know, uh, that’s, that’s how you, you, you create business, right? Without, without a need in the market, there won’t be a business. So, yeah, that’s kind of it. Yeah, exactly. That’s the fundamental of business. So that’s definitely great.

Well, Braxton, those were all the questions that I had. Um, if anybody wants to check out your products, what’s, what’s the best way to do that? Um,

Braxton Fleming of Stealth Bros. and Co: you can go to www. stealthbrosco. com and all of our social media handles from Facebook to Twitter or X or, um, Snapchat, whatever you want to look us up at.[00:59:00]

Stealth bros co and you’ll find us or just Google us stealth bros co and you’ll find us. Awesome.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Well, Braxton, those were all the questions that I had. Thank you so much again for sharing your story, for sharing some of your business, uh, less earned, uh, you know, failure successes and so forth. And, uh, um, yeah, wish you all the very best in growing your business.

And, uh, yeah, thank you so much again for joining me today. I really

Braxton Fleming of Stealth Bros. and Co: appreciate it. Thank you so much for having me and you have a great day.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Hey there entrepreneurs. My name is Sushant and welcome to Treptalks. This is a show where I interview successful e commerce entrepreneurs, business executives, and thought leaders and ask them questions about their business story and also dive deep into some of the strategies and tactics that they have used to start and grow their businesses.

And today I’m really excited to welcome Ishan Dutta to the show. Ishan is the founder and CEO of Ugly Duckling. Ugly Duckling sells hair color and hair products to hairdressers and colorists. And today I’m going to ask Ishan a few questions about his entrepreneur journey. And some of the strategies and tech that he has used to start and grow his business So Ishan, thank you so much for joining me today at Treptalks really really appreciate your time.

Ishan Dutta of Ugly Duckling: Thank you. Sushant. It’s a great honor.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: So, uh, very interesting business, uh, maybe Before we talk about the business, maybe we can talk a little [00:01:00] bit about yourself um, how long have you been an entrepreneur and What were you doing before and what kind of really got you interested into entrepreneurship and specifically starting this?

You know, hair products, business.

Ishan Dutta of Ugly Duckling: Sure. Well, um, so I’ve been an entrepreneur for about eight years now. I started in 2016. Um, I, I’m not super young, so I’ve been around for a while. I’ve had a fairly long corporate career. in sales and marketing. Um, and prior to that, I had an MBA. So very typical corporate, corporate background.

Um, I, I was lucky enough to join, uh, the company L’Oreal out of business school and I stayed with them for 10 years. And that’s where I learned a lot of marketing and sales and business. And of course, hair products, cause I was involved. very closely in hair products, uh, both [00:02:00] selling on the commercial side and also for a while, also in product formulation and marketing.

Um, so that is really where I’m coming from. After that, after L’Oreal, I worked for various other multinationals. Uh, I moved around the world. I ended up in Singapore where I was for many years, but I was always looking to start something on my own. And, uh, the, I should say the older I got, the more I was keen.

I enjoyed it, but the more I got older, the more I was keen to do something on my own. So this is a kind of very, I would say fundamental, uh, urge I had in my, in my, in my body and mind. Um, and that’s why I was looking around and then, you know, I thought it would be the best thing. And in fact, that was what my wife suggested.

She said, why don’t you, why don’t you stick to what you know? Um, why don’t you do something in the hair product line? So that’s what I did. That’s, that’s how I started this.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: I [00:03:00] mean, entrepreneurship is definitely a noble urge, noble, noble, uh, cause to get into. I think it, it benefits everybody. I mean, entrepreneurs usually do it because they want the freedom and, you know, flexibility to do what they want, what they find, you know, they’re passionate about and so forth.

And also, of course, you know, if the business is successful and grows, it helps build the economy, employ other people and so forth. So definitely a great. Uh, great endeavor. So now do you, uh, do you consider your, I mean, it seems like you are kind of a direct competitor for L’Oreal . Yes. How, um. Um, uh, so, so you are, but you are selling mostly hair color products, right?

Can you talk a little bit about your products? Yeah, look,

Ishan Dutta of Ugly Duckling: so, so I’m not really a direct competitor to be honest. It’s, and L’Oreal is a huge company. It’ll be ridiculous for me to, to, um, to, uh, uh, compare myself to them. Nevertheless. Um, yeah, we are competing for the same space, but, um. [00:04:00] I, the way it worked out is, um, firstly, I was quite early in, um, trying, I am, one of my ideas was trying to use the internet to find it because I’ve, I’ve been involved in very classical marketing teams.

I ran Salesforce to cover hairdressers, teams of like a hundred salespeople and. And I did that for many years and I know how to do that, but I got a gut feeling that the internet was going to change that particular business model and that it was a very expensive way of contacting hairdressers and educating them and developing the market.

That was my gut feel after all the years I’ve been in L’Oreal. So that in a way, I said, look, let me try and do something a bit different. Let me try and use the internet. Uh, and then when I got into the business, I started with a regular range. I particularly, because I was on the internet, I could be very responsive to bits of the market, which were not being covered.

sufficiently well. Uh, and I was lucky. I, I reached out to hairdressers online and I, [00:05:00] some hairdressers were very, very helpful and I quickly realized, um, you know, I didn’t have to be a genius. It was literally told to me, uh, that blonding market was the, was a place where there was really, I would say, dissatisfaction with the products.

And that includes L’Oreal products. Um, I don’t want to go too technically. You’re not necessarily a fashion person, not necessarily all your. Your audience are at that level of detail. But to give you an idea, there’s been a big move from warm colors to cold colors. People want to go very white, ash blonde.

If you live in Toronto, you’ve probably seen that trend there. People don’t want, you know, 20 years ago, it used to be very golden blonde, you know. And the products have really matched. And then the people want to go lift. They want to lift the product, lift the hair color. So these kinds of things without getting too technical on the one hand, there was the internet.

And on the other hand, there was products which were, which could [00:06:00] target this niche, which I felt had a lot of potential. Um, so that was a kind of the two things I’ve kind of moved into. It was not all the internet thing was, was there from the beginning. But the product space was something that I felt my way into hearing response from the market as I arrived.

And so I launched more and more products in that area, tried to bring niche products and, and develop that bit of the market. So that’s kind of, um, how I position myself against L’Oreal. Um, uh, you know, as I said, once again, it’s a bit of a ridiculous question because L’Oreal is not ridiculous. It’s a ridiculous concept because L’Oreal is a very big company, a lot of respect, and we are very small, but.

There’s plenty of space for both of us. I’m sure. For

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: sure. For sure. And I think, you know, um, every successful on, uh, endeavor starts small, right? So you can, of course you’re smaller today. I mean, uh, there’s, there’s never a limit. Maybe, maybe in the future, you will be a direct [00:07:00] competitor, but I think a lot of the times the challenges.

From a bigger brand would only come when you start growing, right? When they start seeing you as a threat, as long as you are a niche player, as long as you’re small, you’re not like you’re not on their radar, but once you start going big, I think that’s when like the bigger brands, if they want to give you some.

Challenge or, you know,

Ishan Dutta of Ugly Duckling: absolutely a child. We have to be fast enough to get traction before that, uh, by the way, it’s fun being small. It’s plenty of fun being small. I’ve never had a problem with that. Um, yeah,

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: yeah, for sure. So you’re, um, In terms of your audience, you said, you know, you’re catering primarily to the stylists.

Um, but you are online. So if, if a person, you know, wants to buy their own product, they can go and, um, and purchase it directly on the website as well. Um, in terms of your sales model, like [00:08:00] You market to stylists and then the stylists go on your website and purchase the products or is it a different model where you’re kind of working directly with a one to one sales model and then you’re

Ishan Dutta of Ugly Duckling: selling them?

No, no, no, no. We market directly off our website. So, so we do expect our customers to be hair colorists. Uh, we and. We, if, if people give us sufficient proof that they are a stylist, they have a license, et cetera, uh, we give them very good pricing and special access, uh, so they, they, they see price and deals, which, uh, a non qualified cosmetology would not necessarily see, um, so.

In the U. S. as many people, Canada as well, who, um, the area between being a professional stylist, uh, and then having, having a cosmetology license but not practicing anymore, a lot of people come in and out of the, out [00:09:00] of the, the, the trade, uh, and then, Also being very proficient at with at home coloring using professional products.

It’s kind of a, it’s more fluid than you might think. Um, so yeah, that’s a market is, is people who are fairly knowledgeable, fairly good with their hands, fairly wanting a very good professional result. Uh, it’s not kind of out of the bottle, you know, you know, retail pack type of coloring. So as long as people are comfortable with that kind of product, uh, which gives slightly more Fashionable or precise results, um, we are happy to, to talk to them.

So probably, probably, um, as far as we can see from the stats, about 50 percent are indeed working in a salon and the rest have some relationship with, they’ve probably been a stylist, they’ve got a license, uh, but they’re probably doing more home, home based work. Yeah.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: So [00:10:00] from a business point of view, of course, you know, you found this sweet spot right now.

Um, in the future, like is your plan to continuing to continue to just stay with the hair color product items, or are you slowly kind of expanding your business to have other hair products? Like I know in, you know, recently I spoke with another entrepreneur who has a huge Hair extensions business in, in the U S are you thinking about other products as well?

Or this is kind of your, uh, this is where you want to specialize. It’s funny.

Ishan Dutta of Ugly Duckling: It’s funny. You should mention that because hair extensions is specifically an issue which I, which I realize is growing like crazy because one of the big trends is women want to have long hair. Um, and, um, It’s an issue. We’ve actually launched products there.

We’re still pretty young in that area. So it’s something that I intend to return to and attack in a much bigger way in next year itself. So [00:11:00] that’s one area. I think hair color will always be very, hair color, particularly blonding hair color and fashion hair color. It’s great to sell on the internet because you can show the before and after really, really well.

So it’s very easy to market that. So we’ve also launched hair care products. Um, again, linked to not general hair care, like we’ve got two lines at the moment. One is purple toner for blonde women who want to keep their hair white. And then we’ve launched a product to with bond protect to strengthen hair, which has been bleached.

So again, quite targeted. So we would like to launch. hair extensions. We would like to launch more hair care products, but they will always be quite targeted hair care products, at least for now, maybe a scalp line, um, maybe a therapy line. Um, that would be one thing, uh, eventually we would like to get into other beauty products.

There’s, there’s nails, there’s skin, but we have to think of the right way of [00:12:00] attacking that market. But I do think we will get there eventually.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: So from an entrepreneurship perspective, um, When you got into it, can you talk a little bit about your process of launching the business? You know, um, what kind of investment did go into, I’m assuming when you were working at L’Oreal, you kind of had learned around, you know, who the suppliers are, who the, you know, what the right products are and so forth.

Or is that something that you had to figure out when you kind

Ishan Dutta of Ugly Duckling: of started? I was, I was in general management, I was not necessarily in, so I knew a lot about trends and products, but I had to, I had to re look around. I had to look around for suppliers. Um, so I had an idea of a brand. I found a brand name. I registered that brand name.

Um, and then I started looking around for suppliers, um, who could, who could produce, um, the products I was looking for. Um, and we found, uh, in the end, uh, [00:13:00] Europe was a good place. We found, uh, some quite good manufacturers. The ecosystem in Europe, in the cosmetic industry is quite, I think it’s quite well, well developed.

Um, and that’s how we, so we sourced, we tested, it took about a year, uh, tested the products live, um, tweaked some of them. And the beginning we launched a fairly, as I said, a reasonably standard to meet your range, but progressively. Um, we’ve been requesting our suppliers to formulate specifically for us specific formulations with, you know, liquid.

Now we’re going to liquid color, which we think is a big trend, um, with bond protect built in, you know, different color types. So they’re now very specific colors, but we had to go down the road of just looking from scratch. So

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: in terms of different, yeah, go ahead. In terms of like differentiation in the product itself, um, of course, I’m sure, you know, [00:14:00] there’s, there are bigger brands.

I’m sure there are other brands as well that are, you know, known to the stylists. Um, how do you differentiate your products? What is different about your Colors that people don’t find, uh, in other brand products or other, uh, niche products, is it really about the shade of, I mean, I, I know you mentioned that the shade has is a, is a component.

Um, is it about, you know, The quality or how durable these colors are in terms of longevity, is it, or is it some sort of a business, uh, aspect like, you know, customer service or, you know, the way you’re conducting business there. So how are you differentiating your business from everything else in the market?

Ishan Dutta of Ugly Duckling: So, so that’s really great question. I mean, we thought. very carefully about the brand, about what the brand would represent, the brand values. So that was the first point. And we’ve, I think we’ve stayed fairly true. We’ve articulated that brand, [00:15:00] those brand values more clearly over time. Um, so that’s very important.

We, we try to be fashion, but we’re not, uh, when we’re not a grand, we’re not a funk, funky. Product we have sophisticated beauty. Um, so there’s, we are, we are, we are, there’s a kind of brand values, which by now customers recognize, um, that’s one part of this, the starting point of the differentiation. Um, you mentioned customer service.

The online aspect has been very useful. We found that, um, We are very reactive to, to, um, customers and we encourage that people want to know, Hey, I bought this product. How do I use it? I want to get my hands looking like this. And they send us a picture. Um, and, and we reply back. So, and we say, use this, this, this.

So that customer service component is actually, it’s become very important. Um, if you look at reviews of our brand, people do mention customer, they say, wow, the customer service is just amazing. Um, So nobody is [00:16:00] actually doing what we’re doing. It sounds very simple, but nobody’s actually doing what we’re doing.

So we, we, we give a lot of customers how to, we don’t treat the customer like idiots. We give them quite specific. Um, again, I don’t think many people are doing that because, uh, in America, such market people just sort of one size fits all marketing. So that’s, that’s component part two. And then comes the products.

As I said, not every product is necessarily unique. But progressively, our key star, you know, cosmetics is about star products. It’s a bit like, um, you know, you know, you and me are Indians, so we can talk about cricket, you know, it’s like you hit and you keep hitting and then suddenly you hit that six, you know, you get that spot, you suddenly hit cosmetics business like that, you’ve got to find those star products, which suddenly start giving you those runs.

Um, and then you’ve got to like, really figure out when something is doing well in marketing, you could figure out what’s so great about it. Sometimes you even yourself don’t know. So we ask, speak a lot to hairdressers. That’s again, the beauty of being [00:17:00] online. We have a network of hairdressers who produce content for us.

We’ve created that network over time and we’re always in touch with them. And we’re talking to either myself or the customer service, uh, manager. Uh, we’re talking to them and say, what did you like about it? Hey, how did you use this product? And then we are trying to learn. And then we try and we try and create more products like that.

So it’s quite a few of our, if you take in value, not in units, but if you take in value, um, most of the sales now comes from our. Star products in the products, which really are quite unique. So it’d be difficult for me to describe in general. They all like this rather than that. No, but if I take product by product, um, like for example, I’ll give you a, one of our, it’s called intense pearl blonde toner.

It’s the only tone on the market, which lifts and tones at the same time. And it’s a very pure blonde color result, which really is unique. So when a woman sees that result, gets a result on her own hair, they [00:18:00] won’t go somewhere else. They have to come back to us. They want to come back for that specific.

So that’s an example. So yeah, there are, we’ve now moved towards. Fairly unique products.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Is there any, um, I mean, once you find that hero product or the star product that you mentioned, um, I mean, these are really chemicals, right? Like these are chemical formulations. Can they be copied? So, you know, if a competitor knows that, yes, this is the trend in the market.

Now, this is what the consumer wants in terms of colors. And can they, how easy is it to replicate it? And is that a threat? To your competitive advantage, or do you, or is there a way to kind of. No,

Ishan Dutta of Ugly Duckling: in, in, in the cosmetics business, there’s very little patenting going on because people, people move too fast that the whole goes too fast.

And there is a fair amount of copying, but lucky, luckily for me in the hair color business, [00:19:00] you’d be surprised how, um, it’s not the most dynamic industry in, in certain way. You’ve got again to take L’Oreal or well, uh, some of the big, big players, their formulations have not changed in 30 years. They don’t do, they could do that, but they haven’t done that.

So they launch new stuff, but then they don’t really go out there and, and they’re not very aggressive, I would say. And there’s reasons for that because they have a different business model, uh, having the stability of the, of the, This product produces this result. That’s important for them because that’s how they get that mass, mass effect.

So they’re not really keen on changing their formulations too much. So there is a kind of a certain inherent stability in the market. And we kind of Fight that because we have a different model, which is, um, which is internet based. And don’t forget, there’s things like because we’re internet based, we’ve got one, um, warehouse, so our stock is in [00:20:00] one place.

So for us to change a formula launch is very easy. Um, whereas a big player, they will have, they’ll have stock all over the place, um, to even replace of shade is quite complicated. Um, and quite expensive and then you get distributors saying, Oh, you, you’ve replaced the shade. I want you to buy back my old shade.

So it gets quite complicated. So the whole thing makes the industry fairly, um, not old fashioned, but not the most dynamic in terms of, so I don’t, so far, nobody has jumped on and copied us in that way. Okay. I mean, I mean, one thing

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: that I find. Um, as e commerce has boomed and as the whole trend of, you know, direct to consumer and, um, you know, people creating their own brands, uh, has boomed over the last, I would say, What 10, 15 years now, um, it’s, it has definitely [00:21:00] become easier for, you know, uh, people to come up with a brand or a product that, you know, somehow they have identified, or, you know, they’ve, they’ve found some sort of a competitive advantage, uh, and, and kind of sell that directly to the consumer.

Um, what do you know about fashion industry or this hair care, uh, Uh, hairstyling industry, is it relatively easy to kind of break into now, you know, if, if there is an influencer, let’s say, you know, they, they started their YouTube channel, they have, um, uh, you know, a million people following them, you know, and they decide that, you know, they want to launch, uh, uh, uh, hair color brand or even one product, right.

Um, in terms of, you know, getting the product itself, I think it would be relatively straightforward. Um, Is there, is there, uh, is there, uh, opportunity for a lot of these kinds of small brands in the market or [00:22:00] what, what else do you know about, uh, the hairstyling industry that can make one brand successful versus another?

Or is it that, you know, if you are an old player, big player like L’Oreal, like you have that competitive edge that, you know, no new brand can

Ishan Dutta of Ugly Duckling: take away. Those are really, really great questions. Um, so there are brands coming up the whole time. There are brands coming a whole time. I don’t think the like the hair industry, the professional hair industry, I don’t think it’s been the easiest.

market for established players over the last 20 years because there has been fragmentation. Uh, there has been fragmentation. The market has not exactly gone in the way of the big players. Um, and there are certain reasons for that, um, in the industry, um, stylists increasingly in the U. S. They buy their own products, they, [00:23:00] it’s not like the salon buys the products and employs stylists to use, uh, in America, in Canada, increasingly, each stylist is a, is a, a booth renter, rents a chair, and she or he decides what products they want to, they want to use, they’re quite open to trying out new things, so there’ll be a lot of new products coming on, a lot to be quite honest, so I would say, Um, Um, Um, Yes, it is quite easy to enter this market.

Um, it is one market to enter. Um, it’s not, it’s not easy to find that crack, that opportunity, but I see entrepreneurs doing it the whole time. Um, I can name a couple of, a couple of products, uh, which have come out. There’s one which is on, on social media quite a lot, called It’s a 10. Um, you know, started with one product, and stuck to Amazon, and it just blew out.

Um, And I remember my niece telling me, have you, you know, you’re an actor.[00:24:00]

I said it didn’t have to be different. Um, influencers. Um, I don’t think it’s as simple as finding influencers these days as it was. I think the market has changed a lot. Um, when I, when I started 2016, Facebook was huge then. And the, the behavior of people with regards to influencers was very, I won’t say naive, but very fresh and spontaneous.

And I was lucky enough at that time to, as you say, to, to meet, uh, an influencer. Her name’s Ilona Takishis, a hairdresser, a very, very talented hairdresser. She befriended me and, and, um, made [00:25:00] videos and content, uh, for our product. And it was amazing at that time because It was like she would make a video and I said, I said to my wife, Oh, Elena’s just made a video and I’m going to sleep and I would know this would happen next morning.

I have thousands of people visiting my website and just lift out of it. Um, and, and once I remember she made an amazing video, I was traveling in the U S at the time I was going from LA to Detroit to visit her in fact. And. I just had some new stock in and I boarded a plane. So I wasn’t on the phone and I arrived in the evening.

I went to the bar, ordered a glass of wine, put on my phone and I’m getting this email saying, what have you done? The stock has disappeared. I thought, what? All the stock had disappeared in the course of the time I’ve been flying on a plane. I don’t think that so easily anymore. Well, I don’t think I don’t think it works in the same way because in the early days it worked without advertising even we didn’t even advertise on Facebook and then we went through stage.

Okay, let’s advertise on [00:26:00] Facebook with the videos with the influencer content and that worked very well, but I could see progressively 2018 2019 the rates went up and then gradually I saw the reaction of people became less and less and less. Um, so it works. I’m not saying it doesn’t work, but you have to have very strong point of differentiation.

And it’s not so simple anymore with influences is my personal experience, but, uh, maybe

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: the reason for that, the reason for that is that the viewer has kind of become desensitized. The viewer kind of knows that. The li the li likely reason an influencer is pushing a product or promoting a product is because they’re getting paid.

And of course, you know, there’s probably more competition for influencers. Uh, yes. You know, .

Ishan Dutta of Ugly Duckling: Yes. I mean, do, do you remember those days? 2016 when our friends says, how I got my friend is on Facebook and said, oh, hi, I haven’t seen you for a long time. It was a different era. It’s, that was only seven [00:27:00] years ago, but it w people don’t, who is on Facebook anymore, to be quite honest.

Mm-Hmm. Um. So it has changed. It is a different area. Socially, people behave differently with regards to social social media, I would say. Yeah, for sure.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Um, I believe you mentioned that your products are manufactured mostly in Europe. Um, and that’s because, you know, that’s, that’s where, uh, You have the most, I guess, expertise in terms of creating these kinds of colors and so forth.

Have you ever considered, you know, going to Asia, China, uh, because you can get better pricing and so forth, or, you know, the primary reason for that is that the quality is not

Ishan Dutta of Ugly Duckling: what you want. Yeah. So, so in our case, China is very good, but they’re not. One of the things about the European infrastructure is that they’re very good at formulating new stuff they’ve got it’s in the cosmetic industry.

It’s not necessarily the manufacturing. It’s [00:28:00] a formulation of the new product. So they have that skill set to formulate very quickly. And they also have small sizes in China, they can make it cheaply, but they want Very big runs. So that combination of formulation and small sizes. I found only Europe has but that’s in the cosmetic industry.

There’s yeah, obviously tons of things which are being made in China but that difference in cost is not as huge as it used to be 10 15 years ago because the the minimum wage of a Worker in in in Shenzhen or Guangzhou. I mean I used to live in Singapore. It’s almost 600 euros a month. Hmm Minimum wage in Portugal is about there, you know, so it’s, um, uh, in a textile industry, people now, you know, you’ve heard about this close near sourcing, uh, people have moved a little bit away from China in that sense.

So, um, anyway, the prices were quite okay. And, and it was that [00:29:00] savoir faire that that knowledge I needed. So yeah, China was not, we, we use China Some of the kind of plastic materials, like color accessories, bowls, things like that, but not for any, any, any products. Um, and even, even then, you know, we’re a small company, so we have to look at the supply chain.

If we are buying from a European manufacturer, we also don’t want bottles being made in China. Then we have to ship the bottles, empty bottles by ship. So we get, we get the made also in Europe. So our packaging is also made in Europe.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Yeah. I’m assuming China. At least from like a human labor point of view will only become less competitive as we go because, you know, of course, China is becoming more of a, um, a developed nation slowly and people’s quality of life is improving, which is a great thing.

And I think maybe, maybe those, some of these manufacturing industries will start moving at some [00:30:00] of the other countries like India, or, you know, maybe even Africa, because Africa is kind of the continent where, which still requires a lot of growth, but That also makes me think now with the advent of all this artificial intelligence, like will there be a need for people, uh, in the future? Yeah, I

Ishan Dutta of Ugly Duckling: mean, I heard, yeah, I mean, there’s 3D printing, there’s a lot of near sourcing stuff happening. Um, you know, you can go, apparently, I don’t know if actually they’re doing this, you would know better than me, but Nike, apparently, you can go into a shop and request in certain shops, concept shops, and you can request a certain type of sneaker with a certain colour.

And apparently they’ll make it for you. Is that a concept? I’m not sure, but so manufacturing is also changing, you know, but yeah, I think China, it will change. It will not just be China. Yeah. Yeah. I

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: mean, that, that will, that will be. That will be an interesting time where, you know, the consumer can buy [00:31:00] the, I guess, the, the plastic or the material that, that is used to create these products.

And then basically what the companies are selling is the design and you take the design and you basically create your own shoe in your own, so yeah, very interesting. So you’re, what are your markets right now? So you’re selling, are you selling in North America, which is, what is your biggest

Ishan Dutta of Ugly Duckling: market right now?

My main market is the U. S. That’s what we focused on and it’s still like 95 percent of our sales. Wow. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We, we, we started selling a little bit in Europe, but, um, more, more as a testing, testing ground, um, U S is our biggest market.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Why not, why not Europe? I mean, I would assume that, you know, as an, uh, as a Western market, like the whole UK and Europe would be, uh, Would have a big uptick.

Ishan Dutta of Ugly Duckling: So, so I think the U. S. still works very well for us. Uh, I don’t think, um, there is the same [00:32:00] appetite for, the stylist market is a bit different. It’s more traditional. It’s people who are employed and it’s more locked up. Uh, I don’t think you get same number of home stylists. Um, as you do, uh, uh, in the U. S.,

uh, fashion, the kind of blonde fashion that we’re going for is still more developed in the U. S., um, which you can see on your TV screens, um, than, than in Europe. So there’s certain things, and then our particular All our content, everything we’ve done is English, so it’s very interesting. We, we obviously look at where we could go and the markets which are interested and who, you know, Google tells you where you’re, where the viewer is coming from.

They’re all English speaking, actually. It’s England. Uh, Ireland, Australia, uh, even a bit South Africa. So, um, I, I think in Europe, the UK would be the, the, the best potential market. Um, I think also socially in English, people are quite similar. [00:33:00] Um, you know, they have the same, they have the same trends, the same desires.

They read the same stuff. So I think, I think the UK would be, would be probably the, the most optimal thing. I mean, definitely we would be interested in other places in Europe. I think US will still be very important for us. Um,

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: How do you fulfill your order? So, you know, if you’re selling mostly to the U S, um, is the biggest sales channel, your website, or are you selling like on Amazon as well?

And, and how are you fulfilling? Are you shipping from, uh, UK or do you have like warehouse, uh, In the U. S.

Ishan Dutta of Ugly Duckling: Yeah. So, so we have a couple of channels. Uh, website is our biggest channel. Um, we like to keep it that way, but we also sell on Amazon and Walmart. com. Okay. Um, uh, we have a warehouse in, um, uh, it’s a third party warehouse who we’ve been working with.

We’ve had a number of warehouses, but they’re all based, most of them have [00:34:00] been based in the LA area. So our warehouse is, is in LA. Um, and, and, uh, we ship everything to the warehouse, stock it there, and then we, um, we, we fulfill from, from there. No, you do it.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Okay, cool. Have you, have you had good experiences with them?

Sometimes I hear horror stories.

Ishan Dutta of Ugly Duckling: Well, it was, it’s funny. We’ve been through in, in eight years, we’ve been through one, two, three, this is our fourth fulfillment center. Okay. Um, not that they were all bad. There was one horror, horror story because we shifted just when COVID was breaking out. And then we, we, there, there was one very poor choice we made.

Apart from that, the other, we were, we were quite careful. Um, we used one in the beginning, uh, uh, who are very good, but then we decided in the end, um, they were quite, they were very good, but they were a little bit one size fits all. We wanted, uh, uh, [00:35:00] yeah, I won’t go into the details, but they sometimes delayed our website orders.

They gave priority to Amazon customers. To Amazon across all their customer range. So sometimes the orders are getting a bit late. We were not very happy with the packaging because they had their own packaging. It was very cheap, nothing, but it was very flimsy and our stuff arrived in not a very good condition and we wanted it.

We’re not a luxury brand, but we wanted everything to be very, you know, stand out. So we wanted our own boxing. So we moved to another warehouse. They were good as well, but they turned out a bit too expensive for our, our personal needs. Um, they had some, um, minimums, which we didn’t hit. We thought we were.

We’ve been growing very fast up till then. Then suddenly our growth, just as we moved warehouse, our growth kind of slowed down and we were not able to make those minimums were just really costing us a lot. So then we moved from, they’re very good warehouse. Um, they had, they used a FedEx and they had superb [00:36:00] FedEx.

Um, but, but, um, We moved so then we went through one disaster during code and then we settled down with that. So I think we’ve got a good warehouse. Um, they do. They’re in there. They’re very, they’re in line with what we want. Um, so we want. We’re not Looking to lower have the lowest lowest lowest lowest cost.

We want someone who be quite quality in terms of packing You know make sure things go out. We have a lot of liquids they go out in a plastic bag So we want a warehouse so they it’s good for us that they have we have Picking people who only do ugly duckling every day, uh, inside that warehouse. So it’s kind of, you know, you can get everything in the warehouse world.

You can get someone who will just be cost down, uh, and then, and then you get us, the warehouse we’ve got, they, they divide. customer by customer and they can customize a little bit in terms of [00:37:00] packing way the things are going this if something is poorly packed and someone complains we can go back and say this order was looking like this can you please make have a chat with the person who’s picking to make sure this happens that kind of thing so yeah we found someone who’s i think the right balance of cost and quality yeah

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Okay, that’s really great.

Um, I know you mentioned in terms of your marketing, you mentioned a couple of things, you know, you mentioned Facebook and you mentioned influencers and of course, you know, with any marketing channel, I think there’s, uh, because things are moving so fast, you know, there’s kind of like a. Uh an expiration date to it.

So, you know things when they’re new they’re work they work really well and then over time the effectiveness decreases The big thing right now is tick tock um, but i’m sure slowly tick tock is going to be so um, you know, so Competitive as well, that, you know, the effectiveness will [00:38:00] decrease, but of course, now the, you know, there’ll be new technologies, of course, a lot of things coming up with AI and Apple is coming up with, you know, new glasses and so forth.

So can you talk a little bit about your marketing? What, how has it evolved since you started and what is, uh, working now to really drive, uh, customer acquisition for you?

Ishan Dutta of Ugly Duckling: Yeah. So as you mentioned, things continuously change on the, on the internet. Um, so as I said, in the beginning, 2016, Facebook and social media in general was really huge.

And Influencer or hairdressers who we partnered with, we still partner with them. Um, that’s, that’s how we work. We like to have hairdressers who use our stuff and, and, and show the techniques, the before and after. So it’s not just like Influencer saying, this is a great product. It’s actually. You know, working with a product and, and showing techniques and educating people on techniques.

So that’s, that hasn’t changed at all. Um, the channels are not as [00:39:00] good as they, as they were. Um, whether it’s Facebook or Instagram and we’re on all of them. Um, some of them have never just worked for us. Twitter or, uh, TikTok has never been very huge for us. Um, so we do everything, but we can see from Google analytics that the.

In 2016, literally 80% of purchases came off social media. At the moment, I think it’s 5%. So that’s not to say they don’t go there and look at our brand and, and so on and so forth, but we don’t find it works. So we still do it. I think you have to do it. Um, that’s how people are one of the ways. And people, uh, uh, you know, learn about brands discovery.

Um, but we moved on gradually. We found that for us, uh, organic. Um, you know, from 2018, 2019, we’ve been working on organic and it’s now I think 85 percent of our traffic [00:40:00] and 50 or 60 percent of our purchases comes off organic traffic. So discovery of our brand through people putting in problems into their search.

You know, so that is, um, that is what we’ve been working with, and we’ve created blogs. All the videos which I had to make are now available on our own website as well. So that, that’s the kind of the, the kind of destination. Um, so that’s, that’s what’s. That’s been the main, the main, uh, and I think there’s, there’s people underestimate the kind of power of word of mouth.

If you’ve got a good product and, uh, you know, someone is very happy with the hair color, they will talk about it to their friends, whether it’s through social, whether, I don’t know how they’re doing it, but they do talk to their friends. So that’s, that’s probably there in the background. Um, so organic is really very important for us.

Um, that’s our principal, uh, method of acquiring new customers. Um, [00:41:00] but lately we’ve been, you know, thinking again now we’ve been around for eight years and you get to the stage and you see on, on, you know, like Y Combinator, there’s a lot of very good material, as you know, on, on the internet, advising people how to do growth marketing.

And one of the things I’ve been learning is that, um, retention is really, really important for growth. It’s not just acquiring new customers, it’s about retaining, you get to the stage, you know, if you look, take all the customers who’ve bought from us in the last eight years, it’s far larger than any number of customers are going to acquire in the next year.

So, and our products are good. We know that they’re very well rated. We take care about that. So the game is to reactivate. Nothing changes. They liked our product. They bought it in 2016. Um, and then maybe they bought it again, 2017 and 2018. There’s a kind of decay. We’ve, we’ve, we’ve analyzed all that. So now we’re trying to see how we can, [00:42:00] we call it resurrection, you know, bring back from the, um, so obviously the key thing in that is email.

So I’m a great, great, great believer in email marketing, um, done properly. It’s. Huge. It’s really huge. It’s now 20 percent of our sales comes off email marketing. That’s what Google says. What that means is coming off our existing customers, essentially, retention, retention customers. So that’s so list management.

And we find that, you know. Um, if the email is good, like lately we started to say, okay, let’s resurrect, you know, this resurrection project. Let’s take the customers who bought off. We have various lists and the numbers are very big. Let’s send them, you know, we can see from our email, which are the best email subjects, which are the best, most performing emails.

Let’s send them our best email. And suddenly this customer hasn’t been contacted for years, they suddenly receive an email, which is rather good. [00:43:00] And now, even if the percentage conversion of these customers is very low, that number is so huge of the number of customers who that block of customers, that list is so huge that even if the effectiveness is half of when you’re, you know, To the current customer, it makes a huge impact on on this resurrection product, huge impact on on email efficiency.

So that’s the kind of thing we’ve been doing. Um, we’re not, we’re not really, we’re not a Netflix, we’re not a subscription based. Um, I don’t really believe in that because the whole point about hair color is choice and variety. And the woman says, okay, last time I did this, you know what, I’d like to try this.

It’s now fall. I’d like to go a bit darker. I’d like to do it. And we are a friend of that. That’s what we believe in. So I’ve never gone for this, um, you know, um, dollar shave club, you know, just lock up the customer. I don’t, I just don’t believe in it. Um, of course it’d be good for me financially, but [00:44:00] I don’t believe that’s what the brand stands for.

The brand is all about playing around and beauty and trying, trying out this and that. So I never even tried that. Uh, which is very big a few years. It’s still very big. The kind of beauty box by lock up the customer and forget it. I never tried it because I don’t, I don’t believe in it. It doesn’t work with my brand.

So email is one thing I can do. So that’s, that’s what I’ve been, uh, working on. So those are a bit of things, Facebook, influencer, organic, um, and then now email. These are the nothing very fancy, but these are the things I’ve been working on. I mean,

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: one, I know you’re not a big fan of subscription, but one to give your customers choice.

Like if you were to launch a beauty box or some sort of it, it could be not that, you know, they’re getting the same. Products every time they, they get the choice to select, you know, three products.

Ishan Dutta of Ugly Duckling: Very good point. You should come offline and do you do some consulting for me? Because I have been, it’s been back of the mind.

I’ve got to figure out this. [00:45:00] Uh, I need to figure it out. So do I say surprise, surprise, people surprise you. Give you a, I don’t know what it is. Um, but, uh, I, I, I get what you’re saying. I think it’s a very good thing and I think I should do it. Um, uh, I’ll make a note.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Yeah. I mean, I think it’s always good to test new things, right?

I mean, something may work, something may not, but absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. But, but I’m, I’m curious to know, like when you were trying to resurrect those customers, like is the, is the string that you’re pulling really kind of, uh, you know, 30 percent off if you come back or, you know, or is it more around like the product feature or, you know, uh, the value of, you know, the color or, you know, the story behind it, like, what is, you know, you said you have like, uh, some best emails, what is, what are.

What are the strings you’re pulling?

Ishan Dutta of Ugly Duckling: So, so, so what we follow, I’m not saying that, you know, it’s the only one, but I used a consult. I use various consultants, [00:46:00] um, and they advised me very well. And what they, what I was told was, uh, for emails, I’m, I’m, I’m, I’m very passionate about email. I should write some, some book of what my experience was.

So our emails have no brand in it. There’s no, there’s no, um, you know, I’m sure you receive a lot of emails from companies, you know, very beautiful branded thanks offer. We have no, we have no branding, it’s plain text emails written like a friend, um, always coming from one person who’s our color trainer, um, readers digest approach, you know, there’s always one person who they can relate to and, uh, they’re always related to problem solution.

Um, we never, we never give a price off in an email. We do, there are a couple of differences, but in general, that’s our email. It’s all about problem solution. So, and we send a lot of emails. So, um, so that’s, that’s our policy. That, [00:47:00] that, that’s, that’s what I found works. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So I think that makes a lot

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: of sense.

Yeah. Yeah. Because

Ishan Dutta of Ugly Duckling: you’re talking to. Yeah. Yeah. I, you know, if someone sends you an email saying you’ve got price off, will that really convince you or will that make you even more careful? You know, it’s, it’s, it’s has to be a fantastic price off. I think, um, I think it’s better to stick with, uh, grabbing the person’s imagination in another way.

Yeah. Yeah.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Yeah. I think it depends on the target customer. I mean, the main, like. If you look at the, these clothing brands, right, or these, um, big box fashion, uh, stores, their main e commerce strategy is really related to pricing, right? So I don’t know, I think every consumer, most consumers, even myself, like I don’t buy anything, uh, you know, retail price, like list price, I would only buy a product [00:48:00] when it goes on sale, which, which happens.

Now, I find this very frequently, like it’s every other weekend, you know, they are sending out sale emails. So I think it, I almost feel like for, you know, certain categories, like especially for clothing or shoes or, you know, these kinds of categories, it’s, it’s almost foolish to pay full price because, you know, they’re discounting it so much at the full price is like you’re getting, uh,

Ishan Dutta of Ugly Duckling: No, no, but yeah, and I, I accept what you’re saying, but, um, careful.

What are you talking? Think about about it. If, um, how should I say this? Let’s say, um, yeah, we all look for the best deal, right? Let’s say you decided you want to buy a pair of Yeezy sneakers. You open your browser button. You’ll search you’ll find the fun and the first one and then you’ll open the next one and you’ll open the next one the next one and For those Yeezy sneakers, which you’ve already decided.

I’m giving a slightly simplistic example. [00:49:00] You will then go with the cheapest price Yeah. So if you want a pair of banana, banana, whatever it is, banana doesn’t exist anymore. If you want a Swatch watch, you will look for the Swatch watch. They control the distribution. Again, not a very good example, but you will try and find the cheapest price once you’ve decided the product and the brand.

So that’s. Products and brands which don’t control their distribution necessarily very well. And these days, brands are getting better and better. They don’t just bang it into wholesale. Um, you will get that, but you won’t get it that much. So if you take Apple or Nike and many, many brands, he says they control their distribution really, really well.

So I accept what you’re saying. Once you’ve given the product, I think before that, you, if you back out, it may not be the price. It takes you to the actual decision of the product to buy. Yeah.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Yeah. If you’re, if somebody is in a specific brand, then I think [00:50:00] pricing decision is, is, uh, is a, is a lower factor.

Um, yes. But by the way,

Ishan Dutta of Ugly Duckling: In the same way. So we make sure that we never undercut on our website or on, we, It’s all parallel. You can’t, you can’t, um, and even the discounts we give, we make sure, you know, we would not sell to someone who undercuts us and, and all the rest of it. So, yeah, it’s pretty clean in that sense.

Yeah. By

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: the way, interesting thing. Uh, recently I saw for the first time, I think actually, uh, I saw an apple ad trying to promote selling apple products and you know, apple was notoriously known for not doing marketing, right? They were such, they’re such a strong brand. So I was thinking, are they in trouble now?

But, um, that they have to resort to marketing. Like, I mean, I, I do think that their value prop, like previously it used to be every product launch, they have like a new product or, you know, such a strong, [00:51:00] uh, set of features that they are coming out with that’s new, but now it’s, it’s a really small incremental improvement.

So I think that they have to know now go the route, the marketing route. Interesting. Yeah. Yeah. And, and that, that brings me to another point is like, you know, the thing that you were saying about product and, um, the, um, the quality of product. I think if the product is good, that’s, that’s really a, a big long term strategy.

Marketing can only take you so far, but if the, if people like the product, they will search you out and, and really. Uh, want to buy it in every entrepreneur’s journey. There’s always mistakes made lessons learned failures. Um, what has been, um, like a big failure or mistake or a lesson learned that you kind of learned throughout your entrepreneurial journey that looking back, you think, you know, [00:52:00] if, if that hadn’t happened, maybe, you know, that was best for the business.

What was the lesson learned and what can other entrepreneurs learn from your mistakes?

Ishan Dutta of Ugly Duckling: So I’ve launched a few dud products, but I don’t count that as a mistake in the sense that if you’re launching products, one out of every five is going to be dud. So you can’t always get it right. So I will discount that one.

Um, I think the main. thing which I would have done differently would have been to be a little bit more because I’m a self funded entrepreneur. Um, and I kind of went to very gung ho optimistic way and flung a lot of money. As soon as things started to work, I’ve done a lot of money. It’s a lot of my own money, savings.

So, and in the process I sold my apartment and various other things. And, uh, that was quite stressful. Uh, it is still stressful. Um, so I, I had to. Um, [00:53:00] spend a lot of money because I was a very gung ho, I was just throwing, throwing money to go as fast as possible. I think you have to be careful what you’re trying to do.

If you’re trying to be, you know, put a presentation together and get traction and then try and get funding, then there may be some reason for just trying to get that traction so you can demonstrate to other people that you’ve got traction and then you want funding to go bigger. And that’s very, you know, valid way of doing it.

But it’s not what I was doing. I was trying to create a business which would be profitable and cash positive. And at Fable, that was what I was doing. So, in that context, I could have been a bit more careful. And I regret that. It’s definitely money, quite a lot of money I wasted, which I couldn’t really afford to waste, to be quite honest.

Um, yeah. I would say that that’s a bit of corporate background. You know, it’s, you know, L’Oreal, You can just, you can just go for it. Nobody noticed that the dollars spent people just look at the results, but it’s a bit [00:54:00] different when it’s your own money and you’ve got to survive with your family.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Yeah, for sure.

And I think that’s, you know, that’s kind of one of the lessons that come up again and again is around, you know, cashflow management. It’s like, even if you have a working business, if the cashflow is not being managed properly, that can really. Uh, impact business. So now I’m going to move on to our rapid fire segment.

In this segment, I’m going to ask you a few quick questions. You have to answer them maybe in a couple of words or a sentence or so. Uh, the first one is one book that you would recommend to entrepreneurs, um, and why?

Ishan Dutta of Ugly Duckling: So I’ve got it here. It’s cool. I’m not sure if you can see it. It’s called traction. Do you know this one?

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: I have heard of it. Yeah, for sure.

Ishan Dutta of Ugly Duckling: It’s a very well known book. It’s I think it’s a great book. It’s. No matter how much, you know, supposedly I’ve been in marketing for 20 years, but it really summarizes quickly and very clearly all the different marketing possibilities you [00:55:00] have and takes you through and allows you to kind of go for, go for the jugular in deciding how to do your marketing.

So a book I would recommend.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Awesome. An innovative product or idea in the current e commerce, retail or tech landscape that you feel excited about?

Ishan Dutta of Ugly Duckling: So I had a bit of difficulty with it. I think in general, we’re in a very interesting space in e commerce because we went through the whole of COVID, uh, which is a boom for most e commerce people.

We went through a post COVID winter, nuclear fallout, when it went exactly the other way, when the world was opening up, we went through huge dislocation in fulfillment and freight. Uh, we’ve been through big inflation. Um, so we ourselves, we put up our prices and now we’re back to profitability again. So there’s huge changes along the way and along the way, I’m sure many e commerce people just didn’t [00:56:00] make it.

I actually think things are settling down now. This has not been a particularly spectacular year from what I see, what Stripe sells from e commerce. Values have gone up, volumes are fairly stable. You would probably know. Uh, better than that, but I actually think things are settling down now and the future is not going to go away.

I think e commerce will, will, will grow very substantially over the next 10 years. So it is a very, very good place to be provided you’re on top of, you’ve, you’ve, you’ve made it through all this. So it’s not a specific idea, but I just feel quite bullish about the whole industry in general.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Yeah, I, I feel the same.

I think the convenience that brings the e commerce brings to consumers is really, um, and it’s, it’s going to become more and more global, um, as we go. A business or productivity tool or software that you would recommend or a productivity tip.

Ishan Dutta of Ugly Duckling: So I did, uh, very recently is to turn off [00:57:00] my phone and have in a different room in my bedroom from my bed.

I just did wonders for my, I was having real issues with sleep. Uh, it’s not easy being an e commerce entrepreneur, I’m sure, or any kind of entrepreneur. Everything is there on your phone, right? How many sales, everything there. And I was just getting crazy, just, just, I was just getting sick of it and like waking up, checking my phone.

Um, I have an iPad and I’m not non, technology. I have an iPad so I can browse to my heart’s content, but this iPad is not connected with my Stripe and my Amazon and my Walmart. I just don’t know. And you know, it’s, it’s perfect. I don’t even want to wake up. I don’t even want to see that stuff until I wake up and had my first cup of tea.

So that’s my productivity. It makes me much better and in a better mood for the rest of the day.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: I mean, it’s interesting. I mean, Stripe is definitely, it gives you the, the dopamine hit, right? Like when, when you see the order come in, [00:58:00] it’s like chit chatting. So I’m not surprised. Um, a startup or business, um, that you think is currently doing great things.

Ishan Dutta of Ugly Duckling: Well, it’s not very original. I think the whole world is looking at Elon Musk, uh, and I think it’s inspiration. I noticed my, my Children, if you look at children, they don’t talk about Steve Jobs or Bill Gates and all that history, even Elon Musk. I think what’s amazing about him is the way he’s gone into successive fields.

There’s clearly something he’s doing right and whatever field he goes in in such a depth and makes a success out of it. So, um, Yeah, I find that very, um, very, very inspirational and I like that kind of engineering side of it because I think people are always making apps and things like that. But I like the fact that he actually makes it say, you know, SpaceX, he makes a car at a right at the right car, the right price.

I like that that kind of making things. [00:59:00] So there’s a couple of things. I like that. I also like the fact that, you know, people are always saying test and measure and he just took Twitter for 2 billion brand and he just changed the name without testing anything. So I like this kind of gut feel bravado and going in and doing things.

Um, I find it quite inspirational. Yeah. I mean,

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Elon Musk, definitely. Um, he is very intelligent and very mission driven and yeah. Now, of course, he has so much business experience as well. So. Definitely on a different playing field. Last question. Um, what is the best business advice that you have ever received or you would give to

Ishan Dutta of Ugly Duckling: other entrepreneurs?

I think it would have to be, uh, Stay on top of your cash. Uh, be, be very, uh, be very aware of the cash. Um, uh, plan your cash. Um, it’s, it’s not a joke going to, going to business. It’s, there’s so much startup literature, which, which, you know, talks about [01:00:00] everything apart from survival. Uh, so I think very important to, to do that.

Um, I, in the end, uh, to be very honest with you, you know, I had a lot of fair, fairly, fairly distinct, you know, advantage of starting a business read too late in life. I had some savings and a couple of apartments. I had some money, but the disadvantages are expensive, very high because I’ve got kids who are in school and so forth.

So I can’t survive on 3, 000 a month. It’s not possible. Um, so, um, yeah, cash is really, really important. And, um, You’d be surprised the number of entrepreneurs I know, they keep very quiet about it, but the number of entrepreneurs who’ve had to be bailed out by their mother or by their parents in law, by somebody else, um, is really, really large.

So yeah, that would be my advice.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: No, I mean, that’s, that’s a great advice. And surprisingly, a lot of the Entrepreneurs that I talk, talk to, like, this is probably one of the most, uh, frequently [01:01:00] repeated, uh, you know, advice.

Ishan Dutta of Ugly Duckling: So,

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: yeah, especially like, uh, entrepreneurs who are doing it for the first time and, you know, they, they’re going through that startup phase.

I think, uh, many times, um, entrepreneurs kind of, um, get stuck with the cashflow issue. So that’s, yeah, I hear this so

Ishan Dutta of Ugly Duckling: many times. Yeah. The ideal thing is if your wife is working, if one of you is working, then it makes it much more comfortable. Then you can just say to your wife, look, I’m starting this. Give me eight to 10 years.

Let me figure this out. And, and, you know,

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Probably not what the wife wants to hear. But, uh. Well, Ishan, thank you so much. Uh, those were all the questions that I had. Uh, thank you so much for sharing your story, for sharing a little bit about hair styling industry and also, uh, your business, uh, lessons. Um, if anybody wants to check out your products, what is the best way to do that?[01:02:00]

Ishan Dutta of Ugly Duckling: Yeah. Just go online www. uglyducklingcolor. com. Um, and then you can also look at social media and yeah, but just go online to our website. There’s a lot of stuff

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: there. Perfect. Well, thank you so much again, Nishant. Really appreciate it. And I wish you all the very best in your

Ishan Dutta of Ugly Duckling: business journey. My total pleasure.

Okay. Nice speaking to you, Sushant. Likewise.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Hey there entrepreneurs. My name is Sushant and welcome to TrepTalks This is a show where I interview successful e commerce entrepreneurs, business executives, and thought leaders, and ask them questions about their business story and also dive deep into some of the strategies and tactics that they have used to start and grow their businesses.

And today I’m really excited to welcome Chris Clearman to the show. Chris is the founder of Matador. Matador designs, manufactures, and distributes high performance travel equipment. And today I’m going to ask Chris a few questions about his entrepreneur journey and some of the strategies and tactics that he has used to start and grow his business.

So Chris, thank you so much for joining me today at Treptalks. Really, really appreciate your time.

Yeah, glad to be here. So, uh, you know, I was just telling you, uh, that I really like a lot of the products that you Have on your website. It’s like I have to assume that you are or you have been or [00:01:00] someone You know is an avid traveler like you kind of capture a lot of the problems that travelers face, especially any traveler who is Who wants to travel light?

So can you share a little bit about your background? Um, what were you doing before you started this business and what really inspired you to

start this business? Certainly, so, um, my background is product design. Um, I have a degree in industrial design, which is basically Uh fancy fancy name for product design And, um, after college, I designed power tools for one of the big power tool conglomerates that owns half the brands in home Depot.

Um, I was kind of in their skunk works team, and I was one of the three people responsible for all the new product inventions. So they would have, they say, we want to do something innovative with circular saws, or maybe more specific. Um, and we would find a way to solve the problem and build prototypes and really kind of bring that idea [00:02:00] to life.

Um, from there I was, uh, scooped up by GoPro, uh, in there, the camera company in the early days when they were, uh, at like Hero 2, transitioning to Hero 3 and moved to California and worked for them for three years doing all the kind of product design and new product invention work, doing basically the same thing on a team of what was originally like, uh, one, then two, and then up to six, I think for the new product invention team there.

Um, so I’ve always kind of ridden the line between, uh, design and engineering, like kind of creative engineering of sorts. Um, while I was at GoPro, uh, a year and a half in, I decided to start my own thing. You know, I had some exposure to Nick Woodman, who’s the founder of GoPro. Great guy, very smart. But ultimately you realize like these founders are, they’re not superhuman.

You know, they’re, if they can do it, I can do it. Um, so I had, I had always had kind [00:03:00] of the entrepreneurial, um, urge, if you will, and, um, I had tried a couple of things before, but one in particular that got pretty far along, but not quite over the finish line was a medical product. Um, that I was trying to sell to some of the larger pharma companies.

It was patented and really interesting product. Uh, got a lot of interest, never quite made it over the finish line. And, you know, I was looking at my options and if none of these companies wanted to take it under their wing for FDA approval, I didn’t really want to commit 10 years of my life and raising millions of dollars for development to that specific product.

So, um, the way I got into Matador was asking myself, what’s the simplest idea in my notebook? I just need, you know, I know the whole back end. I know how to design product, develop it, manufacture it, bring it all the way to launch. But I have no idea how to, how to do fulfillment, how to do retail, like wholesale sales, how to, you know, build a website [00:04:00] and e commerce website marketing.

I didn’t know any of that. Um, so Matador started actually, it’s just a learning exercise said, what’s the simplest idea in my notebook. I need to get the other half of this experience as it relates to launching product. And so the idea was what’s called the pocket blanket. And it’s been, you know, it’s still one of our top revenue products, even though we barely focus on it.

Um, it’s a blanket that you sit on. So if you go to a concert, you can unfold it. It seats four and it folds up the size of a, like a men’s, a small men’s wallet to fit in your pocket. And it’s waterproof, keeps you clean. You don’t have to lay down your coat, ruin your coat anymore. So that was the simplest idea.

I brought it to market, um, did some interesting guerrilla marketing that I think we’ll get into a little bit later to get a launch and ultimately it took off and went viral online and then, um, later it became a question of like, do you want to be a blanket company? That’s not very exciting. Like what do you [00:05:00] actually want this to be?

And my passion then, and still now was, was travel in particular, like adventure travel, and it felt underserved. So we took the brand in that direction. We’re, we’re sewing, we’re sewing lightweight, lightweight products with this blanket. We have a good factory contact there. Um, and we, I also had a ton of hard goods experience from the rest of my career, like we could, we could do some really interesting stuff that a lot of companies can’t having experience and abilities on both sides.

So dove into the travel market and that’s where we’ve been for the last 10 years. Awesome. Worth mentioning, that, that overlapped GoPro by a year and a half. So I would work during the day for GoPro, then I’d go home and work an eight hour day on my own thing at night and then sleep eight hours and then do it again.

So it was pretty nonstop for a year and a half. I mean, it, it paid

Chris Clearman of Matador: off, so I guess it’s all worth

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: it. It

Chris Clearman of Matador: worked out in the end, but whew. It’s a lot. Are you still working 16 hours

or [00:06:00] no, no, no. I’ve got it. I’ve got a pretty cushy work schedule going on as of late. It’s it’s better and better as time goes on.

Okay.

That’s that’s good. That’s good. Yeah. So you are a product design, uh, development person. And I think that this is, um, Probably an important topic for entrepreneurs who are kind of getting started, you know, coming up with the right idea. I mean, you said a couple of things. You said you had probably had a few ideas and you went with, you said the simplest one.

Um, what was your kind of criteria for coming up with, um, A product idea. To me, it sounds like you were not kind of invested in one idea. You were very flexible. So you were really thinking it from an entrepreneurial perspective, not necessarily, Hey, I have this good idea. If, you know, I I’m putting a hundred percent into this.

If it doesn’t work, you know, then I’ll be disappointed or something like that.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Yeah, no, that’s a great observation. And you’re totally right. It’s [00:07:00] As a product person and like an inventor by, you know, by personality. And I just so enthusiastic about that. I have hundreds of ideas in my notebook, many of which are potentially viable ideas.

So, um, the way I chose was for this particular instance, I was looking through and I was like, which one of these could I actually bring to market with the resources I have available to me now? And at the time 11, 000 in savings. And I knew I couldn’t do hard goods like molded plastic because the tools to mold these things cost more than that.

Right. So I wouldn’t have any money for inventory. So I kind of narrowed it down to sewn products because sewn products, you don’t have to, you don’t have a lot of upfront costs. You what you pay in is the inventory that you get Um, and I was looking for something that I could eventually get to adequate margins once I hit a decent economy of scale Um, and this this kind of panned out it fit all the criteria.

So ultimately it was what can I execute? You know working [00:08:00] on this at night by myself with no additional resources What can I bring to market and have actual sellable inventory of for eleven thousand dollars? Um, and then I also wanted it to be small but relatively, relatively expensive for the size just because I didn’t want to waste all of the margin and freight.

So, yeah, there were very much like hard business requirements that. ended up being the selection, um, the cause of selection for the product idea that I pursued. And were you always

Chris Clearman of Matador: thinking that, I’m assuming direct to consumer because it’s the simplest way to execute or distribute products, that was kind of one of your criteria or, um, or not?

Um, yeah, I mean, honestly, I didn’t

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: know enough about the distribution side of business at that time to even really make these decisions. I didn’t know how, how difficult or easy it would be to get this into, uh, like mass market retailers or mid market retailers. Um, I knew at the time, this was pretty, [00:09:00] I mean, this was 10 years ago, so Amazon wasn’t what it is now.

Um, most people didn’t realize that you could just list your own product on Amazon. It was still pretty, it was still pretty, a pretty tight marketplace at that point. So, We listed there and then the direct consumer was an obvious thing. I knew we could build an e commerce website. I didn’t know how, but I knew it could be done.

So that was ultimately like the fallback, you know?

Chris Clearman of Matador: Um, so your first product, uh, the, the, the pocket blanket, what was the innovation is the, is the, is the innovation there and also in a lot of your products, like the bags and stuff, because. It seems like a lot of them are really, um, I mean, the value proposition of your business to me seems like it’s really focused towards utility, right?

It’s, uh, uh, either lightweight, easy to pack foldable is the innovation, um, or, or one part of the innovation, the fabric or the, the, um, [00:10:00] the thing you’re using, the material that you’re using in these items. What, what is the material for this pocket blanket?

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Uh, the pocket blankets, it’s a, it’s a nylon. It’s changed several times over the course of the course of the years is fabric technology updates and stuff.

But it’s basically, it’s a, it’s a really fine 20 denier, um, ripstop nylon with a polyurethane coating and the DWR backer, uh, with a PFA free DWR backer. Yeah. So the innovation there was that these fabrics were relatively new. There wasn’t, there wasn’t much for 20D fabrics. And I remember having to order fabric to build prototypes with from Japan.

That was the only place you could get it. And then ultimately the fabric at the time was. For production was ordered through Korea, but there wasn’t like in China, they weren’t really making fabric of this weight. Um, and this tenacity is, it was pretty durable for, um, for what it was. And then we were applying a couple of coatings to it.

And then one of the big things we realized was like, if you [00:11:00] fold fabric, it ends up being a lot smaller than if you just try to wrinkle it together and shove it in a stuff sack, because every wrinkle has like a radius to it. Right. So all of these thousands of wrinkles, they take up a lot of space. So, put on, we sewed in these fold lines, it was a folding guide that showed you exactly, you just pick it up by this line and then line number two and three, and it basically folds it back into the perfect proportion to store it.

So instead of being like a wad of fabric the size of a basketball, it was a nice folded package the size of a small men’s wallet. Um, then we added some built in like corner stakes metal corner stakes and a few other things to make it not blow away in the wind and Um, yeah, it was a product that people wanted about the same time.

They were outlawing like bringing chairs into concerts And also bringing in full size blankets to concerts so people could sneak these in in their pocket, which was really good Just kind of during the one of the big music festival, uh crazes

Chris Clearman of Matador: Awesome. Was, uh, was Kickstarter [00:12:00] or crowdfunding a thing at that time?

Like, did you kind of go in that direction at all? Because to me, it seems like, you know, this kind of a product, especially given that, you know, there’s so many travel enthusiasts out there, you know, or, you know, a lot of people would appreciate this kind of a product. Uh, and I would assume it would be easy to raise funds through a crowdfunding campaign for this.

Did you ever go in that direction or you kind of launched directly on e

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: commerce? Um, launched directly. So Kickstarter was, it was probably in its heyday about this time. It was, it was very, very big, but, um, I’ve never felt that. Well, part of the deal was I wanted to do this as a learning exercise, and I don’t think Kickstarter is a way to really understand business and launching a product and that sort of thing.

So I didn’t want to take advantage of that platform. Um, I’ve also felt that Kickstarter does a very poor job of indicating future success or success beyond Kickstarter. So most [00:13:00] things that Kickstart don’t have, don’t have realistically much of a future beyond that. Um, there’s very few places where you get.

A five minute video to explain your value proposition to a customer, you know in the real world at retail You’ve got to catch their eye at a glance as they’re walking by and you have a quarter of a second to catch their eye And then maybe three seconds to tell the entire product story with your just your packaging Um and on the online shopping world is no different at this point So I think kickstarter just never appealed to me as a realistic learning exercise or a realistic way to build a sustainable long term business Um, so we’ve, Matador’s never done any crowdfunding.

Awesome.

Chris Clearman of Matador: Um, so you started out with about 11, 000 and you had a product. Um, can you talk through a little bit about, you know, how you got this product? Um, how you got your first customers and where did you find them? Like, did you [00:14:00] put this product on Amazon or eBay first, or, you know, you created your own website and then ran some ad campaigns?

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Yeah, yeah, it’s funny. Um, so like I said, I didn’t know the second half of the process. So I had this product. It was stacked You know, all of the walls, this was just our little house outside San Francisco. So it’s stacked all up the walls. It’s out on the back deck and pallets under tarps. Um, my partner, Jamie, she’s like, you’re never, we’re going to have this forever.

What are we going to do? How

Chris Clearman of Matador: many, how many did you order?

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Um, I don’t know. It was a handful of thousands, like a few thousand, but it ends up taking up a lot of space in a tiny little house. Um, so they were, um. Let’s see, we did, we built the website and then put, put them on Amazon. It’s like, all right, the website’s going live and turn it on.

And of course nothing happens. You know, it’s pretty disappointing. Nobody, there’s zero traffic. [00:15:00] There’s no, there’s no backlinks. There’s no, you know, PR there’s nothing. So, um, blogs.

Being a product designer, I’d, Oh, I, every day I would go to uncreate. com or gear patrol or awesomer, the cool actor. You know, all of these, uh, all these sites, there’s a dozen of them, you know, just see what products are going. And I had noticed that once something kind of gets posted on one of those sites, they’ll start all the other sites would be like, Oh, that is cool.

And then they’ll post it too. So I picked out a couple of the most influential ones and I went and made a whole bunch of different email accounts. And I was scouring the web, finding a whole, all these different, really cool products that I thought would appeal to the people that run those sites. And I’d be like, Hey, have you seen this cool ax from grants versus Brock and this cool jacket from black diamond, and then also this cool blanket from this brand called Matador that’s new.

And I [00:16:00] was, I would just make these different compilations and submit them in different ways over the course of a couple of weeks. And then eventually, um, one of these sites posts the pocket blanket. They’re like, I guess they thought it was cool. And they post the blanket and then another one posted. And then pretty soon all of these design blogs, uh, have it up and it’s on like a.

It was on like gizmodo and some of these, um, some of those I can’t even think of what they are right now The big the big tech sites with you know, millions of unique hits per day And the sales just went through the roof um, and then we had our we had our launch right we had our um, Our pr was done at least for the moment and that sustained sales for for many many Probably I was gonna say many months, but probably for a few years, you know that that level of pr we had a decent Consistent level of sales for a few years.

We also had enough momentum to hire a PR agency early on and have them pursuing more of these type of [00:17:00] organic placements. And that was huge. We’ve always pretty much lived on PR and, you know, unpaid media. Um, it wasn’t until later in the business that we got into the paid media in a significant way.

Chris Clearman of Matador: I mean, that’s kind of a testament of having a good product, I think, or, you know, having that product market fit.

In your case, I think it kind of worked out, uh, you know, at the first try, but I think where you need a lot of marketing is where you haven’t found that product market You have to kind of Repeat that your value proposition again and again. I think, um, do you, do you think that that’s, that’s what is make, make, made your product

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: successful?

Oh, absolutely. It has everything to do with the product and the storytelling. Um, lifestyle, lifestyle marketing was also kind of in a, in a big budding phase at that point. So we really picked up on that and we just showed all these cool places. People could sit and watch live [00:18:00] music or do all these things really picked up on the marketing trends.

We also designed the product specifically to look like it belonged on these design blogs that I knew I was going to target. Um, so, you know, at the time these retro, like, uh, patches were sewn on everything, like Herschel bags were having their initial, like they’re big, um, coming forth. And so we kind of picked up that aesthetic and picked colors, um, accordingly and, and really just designed to, to that, but.

You know, we use what we knew, right? I only the product world. So I figured out how to get PR using the product background that I have. Um, you know, it’s an interesting way to go about things.

Chris Clearman of Matador: And so I guess, uh, that kind of gave you enough revenue to start thinking about your next products. Um, how many months or years into your business, you kind of introduced the second product and can you talk a little bit about that?

What you did there?

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Yeah. I mean, we ended up [00:19:00] putting out two additional products just a handful of months later. Um, like I said, there’s no shortage of ideas. You can come up with ideas all day long, shortage of time and resources to execute them. Uh, so we came up with a couple of other ideas. Uh, we’ve since discontinued both of them, but they were, um, they were things that we could make using the same factory contacts and they were both soft goods as well, uh, stone products so that we could use the same inventory strategy as before.

Um, and we had, we had turned over our initial our initial inventory by that sold through basically in the day that it went viral. We sold all of them. Um, so we turned that that 11, 000 dollars into. Call it 40, 000 dollars that we were able to reinvest and it’s worth noting that. I didn’t take any money out of the business for probably close to four years.

Um, so I had to, you know, I kept working for a year and a half and then had to, we moved to a much cheaper place and kind of [00:20:00] lived off additional savings while we continued to grow the business.

Chris Clearman of Matador: That’s, that’s a, that’s a very interesting thing. Um, I mean, you’re a product designer and you said, you said that you don’t have any shortage of ideas.

Um, what is your, are you, are you still the chief product designer in your company? Um, go ahead. And yeah, what is your criteria of like. Bringing a new product to market now, like, um, I, I, I’m assuming that now it’s relatively easy because you have kind of the, the audience to pre sell or at least test an idea, ask, you know, even just ask the audience, you know, do you want this?

Um, but what is your kind of Yeah. Product designing development thinking right now. And, you know, how has the criteria changed over time?

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: That’s a great question. Um, to answer your first question. Yeah, I’m still I still lead the product group [00:21:00] directly. Um, we have a handful of designers back there, hard goods, soft goods, um, and also like, uh, product marketers.

Um, that sort of thing. So, um, there are a lot of people that that help with this, but I’m still very, very involved in in the nitty gritty day to day of the product. It’s it’s what I like. It’s not something I really want to let go of. So, um, there’s that. And then, um, the second question, what is the criteria of a product that we’ve launched today?

We’re much, we’re not really resource constrained anymore as it relates to development. So that doesn’t, that doesn’t really play a role like it used to. So we have, you know, products that require, you know, many, many dollars of tooling and all sorts of stuff at this point. Um, we also have relationships with factories from the do things from, you know, CNC metal components and die casting to sewing and, uh, silicone, rubber molding, all sorts of stuff.

So we, we can pretty much build whatever we decide, um, which is really nice. Now we’re mostly evaluating, um, a few [00:22:00] things. One of the big ones is how does this fit into the brand and where do we want the brand to go? Um, there was a time where we were less comprehensively brand focused and, um, it ends up being kind of a messy, a messy story to tell, like, how does that product fit with this product?

And how does, what holds this brain together? What’s this brand even about? Um, especially when you have like 50 discreet, totally discreet products and, or inventions like our brand does. Um, you need a common thread in order for the consumer to show up at your website, uh, and understand what they’re even, what they’re even doing there, what they’re shopping for.

Um, another thing is now we have to, we have to believe that there’s a significant audience for it. We used to launch some pretty niche stuff. Um, but now there needs, you know, it needs to appeal to 25 percent of the, of the addressable market. You know, we can’t launch stuff that only like 3 percent of people are going to, are going to be interested in.

Um, let’s see another, another [00:23:00] big qualification. And this one’s, this one’s kind of the one, I think that gets missed the most, um, and relates back to what I was saying earlier is we have to be able to tell the story. And transmit the value proposition to the potential customer within a matter of a second, right?

And if we can’t do that then we don’t go forward with the product and we’ve got I don’t know how many ideas in here have been killed because they’re just There’s too much story to tell and it ends up being the discussion here is like well that would probably work great on kickstarter, but we’re you know, we’re not that company and If it can’t sell at like stores like REI, we’re not going to bother with it typically.

Chris Clearman of Matador: Yeah, I think, uh, as I was saying, you know, I, I think for adventure, adventure travelers. Um, once they see your product, like your products, a lot of the problems that I’ve encountered while traveling, your product kind of like solve them. So it makes like complete sense to me, [00:24:00] but not everybody is an adventure, adventure traveler, but, uh, I’m assuming you’re not kind of catering to everybody either.

Like you’re not catering to like the luxury travelers.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: No, we’re not. And when I say the addressable market, like, we’re mostly focused on on the people who are our market. So when we say it needs to appeal to 30 percent of the addressable market, that would be like 30 percent of adventure travelers, not just humans in general, or the US market or whatever.

So it’s still, you know, it’s still a relatively small chunk of the population. But there is a lot of spillover to you know, there are you will see people on cruise ships carrying our backpacks and using our toiletry bottles and stuff like that, like a little more luxury travel. Transcribed Um, and, you know, we make some photography stuff, photography products and there’s, there’s spillover into subsequent markets, uh, the market as well.

Chris Clearman of Matador: Uh, there is a lot of innovation on your products. Um, do you? Patent, uh, your designs at all. Like, how do you, because I would assume, [00:25:00] um, businesses in China, they would have no time, uh, making copycats. Uh, how, how do you kind of, uh, make sure your innovations stay protected?

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Yeah, we do. We, we have quite a, a pretty good patent portfolio.

Um, and then addressing infringement quickly when it happens. So it’s almost. It’s almost always on Amazon, uh, this day and age. It’s just the wait for foreign entities to access the American market, the lowest lift, easiest way. So as long as we’re pretty diligent about, uh, filing patent infringement suits against the Amazon things, as soon as they pop up, um, we can keep them to a minimum.

Uh, one of the problems is if you let a couple of them exist on there for a few months. People will look and say, you know, it looks like you’re not enforcing your patents. We’re going to copy it too. And then you end up with a flood of [00:26:00] them. Um, another interesting thing that we’ve done, uh, we noticed that our best inventions had a really short lifespan.

Whenever they were put, whenever they were sold on Amazon for MSRP for the same price, they were sold as everywhere else. And what happens there is you become like the number one item in the category on Amazon, and then all of the foreign factories copy your product because it’s a, it’s a good seller.

They have that data point. So one of the things we’ve done is actually sell it, raise our product prices about 20 percent on Amazon. So it’s actually considerably more expensive to buy our products on Amazon than anywhere else. And it’s because we never want to become a category bestseller on amazon And that has prevented probably 99 of the copycats Um, there’s also a third party software like helium 10 and some others and they they pull out products for these People who are searching for products to copy they’re like, oh this product is selling well Um, you know and it shows them a list you should make you should make something like this So [00:27:00] staying out off of those lists has actually been really effective for us

Yeah, we, we sell less quantity on Amazon, but we, you know, we sell more on direct consumer or indirect consumer site, which has a lot more value for us. So like the soap bar case is a 14 product. And it’s, it’s an amazing product. It’s very unique. It’s patented. Um, if we sell one on Amazon, maybe we make a profit of 3.

By the time we pay for the cost of the goods, the freight to Amazon, you know, Amazon’s fees, all these things. If we drive that customer to our website, our average order value is closer to 100 and they’ll typically buy three items. And then we also have a very high returning customer rate. So that three, instead of a 3 purchase on Amazon, we end up with a multi hundred dollar customer lifetime value on our website.

So it’s actually worth it for us to lose a lot of sales on Amazon in order to facilitate a stronger business, uh, direct consumer

Chris Clearman of Matador: [00:28:00] business. I think, I think that’s a, that’s definitely a great strategy. Um, talking about Amazon, what’s your, I mean, now it seems like you are in a lot of, um, uh, retail stores as well.

Uh, what is, what is kind of your channel strategy and, um, how, how big is it? I, I believe you said REI is your biggest, uh, uh, third party.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Yeah. Yeah. Um, domestically, they are. So we do, um, we, we sell direct consumer. As I’ve mentioned on our website, um, we don’t have stores of our own. We do sell wholesale in the U S and Canada, and we sell that direct to the wholesaler.

So there’s no distributor between us and our retail partners. Um, so there’s a direct brand retailer relationships, and that would be stores like REI or the container store stores like that. Um, as well as a lot of independent specialty outdoor stores, um, stores, that nature. And then there’s the third parties like [00:29:00] Amazon that we still, we, we don’t sell to them.

We sell on those platforms, but in a very controlled rate and well above MSRP, it kind of as I alluded to with our strategy before. And then as you get, as you go internationally, with the exception of Canada, Um, we start to use, uh, third parties, their distributors who have a local sales force and speak the, speak the local language, that sort of thing.

So most of the EU is serviced by our distribution partner in Germany. Um, you can ship over borders really easily in the EU now. So we, we don’t, and we don’t want distributors competing with each other and have a price war, right? So we have one distributor servicing the EU, and then there’s like another distributor for the non, some, the non EU countries like Switzerland.

Um, we have a distributor for Japan, and China, and Korea, like all these, these various countries around the world. Is

Chris Clearman of Matador: US, uh, still your biggest market, or do you see like other places, uh, kind of, uh, [00:30:00]

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Yeah, U. S. U. S. is our top market. Japan is our second and that kind of the E. U. is, is growing really, really fast right now and may pass Japan next year.

Chris Clearman of Matador: Well, that’s very interesting. Japan, is it because, uh, why Japanese people travel a lot,

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: a lot or? I think, um, I think they just really like our products. They’re, they’re very specific about, they like, like small things that are executed very well. Um, small, nice. high quality products, uh, and it just resonates with them.

I think the aesthetic and, you know, the problem solving nature of the products really resonates in that market. Um,

Chris Clearman of Matador: what is your, uh, within the U S are you, um, fulfilling yourself or are you doing it through like a third party?

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Yeah, we, we use a 3PL and we’ve, we’ve been doing that since, uh, since the initial batch that I shifted out of my living room, [00:31:00] we’ve been through about five 3PLs at this point.

Chris Clearman of Matador: Any, any learnings there? Um, have they kind of, uh, uh, messed up your orders? Uh, you know, any one of them in the past? Oh yeah. Sometimes I hear like

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: horror stories. Yeah, there’s been some pretty disastrous years. Um, The most notable one, uh, they got too busy and couldn’t receive holiday inventory. So for about a month, they just had our stuff, our inbound inventory sitting on the loading dock.

And we missed a good chunk of the holiday season sales because we had to be out of stock on those products. They couldn’t ship until they received. That was a disaster. 20.

Um thinking they would get away with it. So we got into like a little bit of a legal dispute there. Um, The biggest thing I would say the biggest learning with all these three pls is to make sure You have a contact at the warehouse where your product is [00:32:00] stored You know, there’s there’s some big ones out there and you have a central a contact at the central office That doesn’t really work when, when push comes to shove and things, and there’s a fire, like you need somebody on the ground who can go find that pallet of product, who can go, you know, pull a sample from that to see if it has a defect, like really our best experiences have been working with these small, like single or double location, uh, 3PLs where we have a contact that we know personally that works at that physical warehouse.

Chris Clearman of Matador: Um, let’s talk about marketing a little bit. Uh, so you have, you know, your direct to consumer site, um, but then also you have like these third, you know, these retailers, REI and, uh, and others, um, do you, do you help the retailers with marketing your brand at all? Like what does your marketing look like more, both direct, uh, you know, direct to consumer and also [00:33:00] the, the channel partners?

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: So the vast majority of our marketing is through paid Facebook and Instagram spend as well as through PR. Um, so one of the big things that we do for our retailers is, um, have the PR articles linked to their stores instead of ours. So you’ll notice a lot of the PR articles about our products linked to say REI or some other, some other store.

Um, that drives a lot of traffic for them. Um, also our ad spend in general, um, while we typically try to drive people to our website. first time shoppers of the brand, you know, maybe they trust REI’s ability to fulfill their order quickly or backcountry. They have a good account set up with that country already, and they prefer to order from there.

So there’s a lot of trickle over, uh, from our ad campaigns to the retail partners, uh, web sales. And then as it relates to, um, in store sales, yeah, we, we do what we can to offer POP [00:34:00] and to do customized signage and all sorts of stuff to kind of make the brand sell as well as we can in store. And that’s kind of a different program.

That’s like the in store marketing. Yeah. Um, in P. O. P. programs, but we do produce and distribute that stuff mostly for free, like various signed, um, all sorts of all sorts of different things. To me, it sounds like you,

Chris Clearman of Matador: you, you, you get, or you’ve been getting, uh, a pretty good return on investment on your PR, uh, uh,

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: efforts.

Yeah, it’s impossible to measure the PR return on investment really. But if you see it, like our brand is innovative and our products are unique. So we ended up getting just an outlandish amount of coverage. And we’ve had the same PR agency now for quite a while, and they do a great job. So, um, Backbone Media out of Carbondale.

They’re just, they’re really excellent at what they do, especially within the outdoor and travel industry. Um, and then [00:35:00] our, our whole, our whole brand, our whole business is bootstrapped, right? Beyond that 11, 000, there’s never been any additional investment, um, which is pretty crazy. So, um, the, the strategy here is that everything, because of our bootstrap nature, everything has to be ROI positive.

So when we’re doing these marketing campaigns, we’re evaluating like, did we make more than we spent, you know, after cost of goods and all that. And if the answer is yes, then like, okay, spend more. Right. So any, any avenue where we think that, or we’re confident the ROI is positive, we’re dumping money into that.

So, uh, you end up, if you have some good ad campaigns going, spending quite a bit and giving a lot of, a lot of, uh, growth across the board and, uh, brand recognition through, you know, simple Instagram campaigns and other things.

Chris Clearman of Matador: What does your, uh, team look like right now? How many people in the team and like, what are the different, uh,

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: There’s about 15 here, uh, at the office in [00:36:00] Boulder.

So it’s mostly, it’s mostly designed. And then we have a handful in marketing and, um, a couple in sales and operations. And then outside of that, there’s the 3PL in Memphis, and then another warehouse in Hong Kong that we utilize. Um, there’s also, uh, there’s about 12 different sales reps, uh, spaced around the U.

S. and Canada. Um, their territory reps. So they aren’t working out of house here, um, but they’re representing our brand out there. And, you know, they’re doing in store visits and clinics, that sort of thing. Um, and then all of our manufacturing is done, um, in three different countries. So China, Vietnam, and Cambodia at this point, and we utilize about probably about.

18 or so different factories at this point with different specialties. So we’re managing all of these production, uh, projects for the most part as well. So [00:37:00] when we design something, it’s not OEM, we’re not ordering it off Alibaba. There’s, and it’s not, um, it’s not OEM parts. Like we’re, we’re designing, you know, we’re doing this building of solid works, models, designing and engineering, all of the components, cutting the tools for them.

Having those molded it like an injection molding house or a compression molding house, or, and then we send all of those to a single location to be assembled. So you see a product like just our travel earplugs kit has eight different suppliers involved in it. And we have to manage all those projects. Um, but yeah, it’s, it’s, it’s interesting.

It’s, uh, it is a, it’s a surprisingly large business for how few people we have that actually run it at headquarters. And it’s, and I like it that way. I’m not, I’m not inherently a good manager of people. I’m more of a doer. So it’s a very flat, uh, company structure. Everybody pretty much owns their purview.

It has very little oversight. And as long as they keep doing a great job, it seems to work. [00:38:00]

Chris Clearman of Matador: That’s great. I mean, at the beginning of the interview, you, I believe you mentioned that you knew about product, you didn’t even know about any other parts of the business.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Oh, no, I know about every part of the business.

No, no, I mean,

Chris Clearman of Matador: no, now, now, you know it. Oh, yeah. But that’s, that’s where I’m going. What, um, what, what, and I believe you’re also saying like you, you have a lot more flexibility in your day and everything. So are you, I mean, kind of, have you kind of reached the entrepreneurial, uh, entrepreneurs dreamland, you know, every entrepreneur wants, I think every, every entrepreneur’s dream is to become, you know, have the freedom, right?

So have you kind of, um, reached that place? Uh, and. Like what, what, what is, what are you thinking about the most, um, these days, uh, about your business?

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Yeah, that’s a good question. So in [00:39:00] terms of have I reached the dreamland, uh, it’s, this year has been a pretty, you know, we had COVID, which was anything but the dreamland for a travel brand.

They basically made the, uh, Yeah, they made the, uh, activity that we service illegal for 2 years. Um, so that was tough after that. We’ve seen we’ve seen a lot of growth. Our financials are really strong. Um, it provides more to me than I ever. Ever could have asked for, um, and, you know, as selling stuff becomes easier and the business becomes more established and, um, well staffed, the, the employees know exactly what they’re doing.

It has started to present that freedom. Um, it took a decade to get here, but, you know, I’ve been able to take a pretty enormous amount of vacation. Um, I’m progressively riding a motorcycle, so I shipped a, shipped a motorcycle over to Europe and, um. Progressively writing that like a few weeks at a time across all of Europe and Asia and you’re just storing it in between [00:40:00] and you know, just doing a lot of stuff that I wanted to do, but you know, it doesn’t happen quickly and it took it took a decade to get there.

So I’d say yes, pretty, pretty much pretty close to being at that point, but. We’re pretty much there. I, I’ve also realized through doing that, that I just don’t really have any interest in like actually retiring or like pulling out of the business. I really enjoy doing this, um, for the most part. And I, you know, I ended up thinking about it quite a lot, even when I don’t have to, and I don’t really want that like passive income stream and just to lay on a beach.

That’s not me. And I don’t, so finding the balance where it’s, you know, I’m back for a month or two and then I’m over there doing the rides and then, you know, traveling somewhere else. And that’s, that’s really where I want to be. That’s a sweet spot for me right now. Definitely. What is your,

Chris Clearman of Matador: which, which motorcycle do you ride?

It’s

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: a 1250 GS BMW and it’s set up, it’s set up for off road. So we’ll do about by time, about [00:41:00] 50 percent off road, 50 percent on like we just finished going across Spain, uh, through the Pyrenees. Uh, Pyrenees mountains, which is really fun.

Chris Clearman of Matador: Wow, that’s awesome. Uh, in every entrepreneur’s journey, there’s always mistakes made, lessons learned, failures.

Um, what has been, I mean, you’ve been running your business for 10 years. What has been kind of a big one or two mistakes that, um, uh, that you could have done without, you know, that maybe taught you some lessons. Uh, and what can other entrepreneurs learn from your mistakes?

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: I wouldn’t say there’s any like distinct points that are huge mistakes.

Like I was at this decision point and I made the wrong decision. Um, I was too conservative early on as it relates to marketing. Um, there was a golden era of Facebook ads and we were getting a, nearly a five to one return on ad spend and it just. Hadn’t really thought about how [00:42:00] powerful that could have been in terms of growth.

We probably could have, you know, we probably could have shaved advanced years on our growth curve had I done what I know now. So I think I didn’t, I was too product focused early on being a product person and not market market and story focused enough. Um, you have to like marketing is everything. Most product brands are started by marketers.

They don’t even need a great product if they can tell a great story. So I was coming at it the other way where I thought the product would do all the work and it’s just not. Ultimately, it’s not the reality of the world.

Chris Clearman of Matador: But I mean, I do think that. Um, yeah, I mean, I do think, you know, at the end of the product can take you maybe long distance marketing.

Marketing can, you know, definitely if the product doesn’t perform, marketing can only take you

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: so far. So, right? Yeah, you need, you really need both. If you’re going to, if you’re going to find true growth and longevity, but like [00:43:00] you said, the products, if you have a good product and you can protect it, Thank you.

You can exist on that for like what the 26 year lifespan of the patent, you know, but if you want to really grow, you’ve got to have the marketing, the marketing shops, or at least find someone who does to help you push the business. For

Chris Clearman of Matador: sure. Now we’re going to move on to a rapid fire segment. In this segment, I’m going to ask you a few quick questions and you have to answer maybe in a couple of words or a sentence or so.

Um, one book recommendation for entrepreneurs and why? Uh, the

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: accounting game lessons from the lemonade stand. And I find that most people. Uh, most entrepreneurs do not have a solid foundation of accounting knowledge. And ultimately that’s the game that we’re playing is what it comes down to.

Chris Clearman of Matador: Okay. Uh, an innovative product or idea.

Um, it could be e commerce, retail or tech that you feel excited about besides yours.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Um, in, in terms of tech lately, we’ve been using, I mean, I’m sure a lot of [00:44:00] people say AI, but I’m going to say specifically AI as it relates to the product design process. And chat GPT has a, uh, has a function now where it’ll, it’ll generate images for you.

Um, so you can say like, Hey, show me what a, um, a luggage tag would look like if the black, black diamond, the climbing company made it, and it’ll spit out four options and it’ll show you a bunch of options. And it really gets the designers heads going in a bunch of different directions and it’s improved our design significantly.

Wow. That’s, that’s

Chris Clearman of Matador: really, uh, interesting. Um, a business or productivity tool or software that you would recommend, uh, or a productivity tip.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Um, have you heard of text expander? Yes. Yes. Of course. Okay. Yeah. I love text expander, just programming in your shortcuts. I have full emails programs. So just. Three keystrokes and you type a 500 words, um, and then from the business side, I’d say Asana.

We implemented that several [00:45:00] years ago, um, as kind of a project management and business management software. And it has been life changing after the team accepted it and got used to it myself as well.

Chris Clearman of Matador: For sure. Uh, another startup or business that you think is currently doing great things?

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Um, Zbiotics. So it’s a prebiotic for preventing hangover, and I swear it works so well.

And if I could get in on the ground floor of that, I certainly would, but yeah, they’re doing amazing things, excellent product.

Chris Clearman of Matador: Awesome. Uh, a peer entrepreneur or business person whom you look up to or someone who inspires you? Um, I

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: wouldn’t call him a peer, but I really liked how Richard Branson did it. He combined his hobbies with his business and also managed to live his life. In a in an interesting and aspirational way, um, and not just get sucked in and become a stuffy businessman Only focused on the bottom line. So i’d say richard branson. Yeah.

Chris Clearman of Matador: Yeah for sure I mean he’s [00:46:00] created his own world right like he lives in on his own island and does what he Final question Yeah.

Yeah, for sure. Final question. Best business advice you ever received or you would give to other entrepreneurs?

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: I would say the best business advice I would give is that nothing is as good or as bad as it seems. So, I mean, it’s, it stands on its own, right? When you think you’ve hit the jackpot, just wait, it’s not going to be what you think.

When you think it’s the end of the world, take your time, make your decisions. It’s not going to be the end of the world. Definitely. It’s

Chris Clearman of Matador: everything is cyclical. So yeah. Yeah, it’s never, always going to be great. It’s never always going to be bad.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: So yeah, for sure. Balance, balancing all things to some degree. Yeah,

Chris Clearman of Matador: for sure. Well, Chris, those were all the questions that I had. Thank you so much for sharing your time, for sharing your story and, and, uh, all your business lessons and also some failures and lessons there. Uh, thank you so much again. Uh, if anybody wants to check out your products, what is the best way to do that?[00:47:00]

Um,

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: just go to matador equipment.com.

Chris Clearman of Matador: Awesome. Well, thank you again for joining me today at Treptalks and wish you and your business all the very

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: best. Thanks. Appreciate it.