The subscription box for adventurers and survivalists – John Roman of BattlBox

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 stories, 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 John Roman to the show. John is the founder of BattlBox. Battlbox is a monthly subscription service of handpicked outdoor survival, EDC, and other cool GE gear from an expert team of outdoor professionals. And today I’m going to ask John a few questions about his entrepreneur journey.

and some of the strategies and tactics that he has used to start and grow his business. Now, before we dive into this interview, if you enjoy this kind of content, please make sure to hit the like and subscribe button. And for more interviews like this, please visit, say trip talks.com. And with that, John, uh, welcome and thank you so much for joining me today, today at Trip Talks.

Really, really appreciate your time.

John Roman of BattlBox: No, thanks for having me. I’m excited. Excited for today.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: So we were just, uh, talking and you were sharing a little bit about your business. So you started BattlBox and then you acquired a different company. Then you sold both of them and then you acquired it back. So can you talk me through a little bit about when you started and what was kind of your original idea for BattlBox What was the motivation and uh, yeah, how did the idea come about?

John Roman of BattlBox: Yeah, so not my idea at all. Um, so initially there were, there were four four partners. Four, four founders if you will. Um, my involvement came a couple weeks after launch, actually, and I was simply an investor. I made an investment in the company.

And, um, was, was not my idea at all. My ex business partner, his, uh, fiance at the time was getting a birch box, so think like monthly makeup, uh, beauty products. This is 2015, so super popular at the time.

Hmm.

John Roman of BattlBox: And he saw that genuine excitement she had on her face when she would get it every month, and he wanted that for himself.

Looked online, couldn’t find it was like, Hey, maybe I’ll just create it. And, um, I came on board a couple weeks after launch came on board. Let me clarify, just purely from investment.

Hmm.

John Roman of BattlBox: Uh, just because I came from, uh, B2B SaaS and, uh, you know, on that side of the, the world you love reoccurring revenue.

Hmm. Uh, it’s super easy to forecast. It’s, it’s a lot easier. And, um, that was what attracted me to the business and, uh. So, so I, I wrote a check. I had a limited capacity role, uh, board seat was supposed to just give a couple hours of, of advice every month, and it, it, it quickly blew up and became, uh, became a major, major time suck where I was, you know, spending 50, 60 hours on my, my normal career job.

And then I was spending 50, 60 hours a week on battlbox and it got to the point where I had to make a decision. Um, you know, was I gonna jump into this full time? And in the, the start of 2015, we did about four and a half million in revenue. In 2016, um, after the first quarter we had a run rate of eight figures.

So at that point it kind of made sense for me to, for me to just jump into the mix with everybody, with, uh, with the three other partners. There were four of us originally. Um, I jumped in one of my first, uh. Priorities task was buying out, uh, the fourth partner that didn’t bring any value at the time. And, uh, so quickly after I came on board full time, we were down to three and uh, yeah, then we were just off to the races.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: That is so interesting that the first year you’re doing 4.5 million and now you’re doing eight figure. It’s like there’s a, seems like there’s a huge market for this and plus, I mean, subscription model is definitely a great model, but that’s what I was I wanted to ask you is like. Doing a subscription in SaaS where, you know, you have huge profit margins, probably.

Yeah. You don’t have them

here.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Yeah, exactly. So how does it, you know, what is your kind of assessment of doing a subscription? I mean, it’s still better than selling individual, right? Even in e-commerce.

John Roman of BattlBox: Yeah. You know, uh, anytime you can get forecastable reoccurring revenue. It’s a win, but I think you bring up some really good points.

So subscription boxes in general, and you know, when you enter a Battlbox you said a subscription box. Fun fact, we never refer to ourselves as sub subscription box because we’re not Okay. We’re so much more than that. And the reason we’re more than that is because in my opinion, subscription boxes are dead.

It was really cool in 20 15, 10 years ago. Um, you look at. I mean, you know, the, the, the birch boxes of the world, uh, just that, you know, had a billion dollar valuation that was in bankruptcy, and there’s a lot of those stories, right? And then you, you have thousands of small one that just never made it. Um, I think the subscription box industry, you have to be, you have to do more.

It was a cool idea 10 years ago, curated some stuff, send it to people, but if you don’t provide value outside of that. I think your, your days are numbered. Um, jumping onto the, the margin side of things. Yeah. It doesn’t, we don’t have software margins. Um, but with scale comes some interesting concepts. So part of our, uh, you know, call additional secret sauce, if you will, is our focus on content.

Um, so you’re not gonna find a lot of brands with millions of followers like us with a Netflix TV show. We definitely lean into content a lot, and that’s part of what we are for these brands that we feature in the box, we’re ultimately a marketing engine, right? Um, so we’re not, we, we can’t pay normal wholesale rate.

So you have to give us, you know, sometimes the product at your actual cost, because we’re gonna put it in, in the hands of tens of tens of thousands of your ICP. Um, you can’t ask for better targeted marketing than that. And then we’re gonna push, push your product and talk about your product on our, our YouTube and TikTok and Facebook and Instagram channels, which is gonna get you millions of views.

So it’s, uh, it’s not a traditional, which you, I think you, you see a lot of the subscription boxes, oh, I’m gonna buy this at wholesale and put it in and not have good margins. We don’t have great margins. We have good margins, but it’s because, um, of how we’re structuring the deal with the vendors we include.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: That’s very interesting. I mean, ultimately, you know, the, the items that you’re including in the box, like the, the person who’s buying it has to think that, you know, they’re, they’re getting value out of it. So, and they do.

And they do.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Yeah. And so, so it’s not a sub, it’s mostly like one time purchase that you were seeing or?

John Roman of BattlBox: Oh, no. Uh, we, we did over 20 million last year in, in subscription. That is the core business. Okay. But I think, um, let me, let me try to add some color and context to this. Um, a subscription box alone is, is not anything exciting. It’s a broken model. Um, it’s a model that that worked 10 years ago. It doesn’t work now.

You can look at any, any subscription box only business that’s been around for a few years and they’re either out of business, they’re either 40% the size. Um, they’re either about to go out of business this year, they’re struggling. Um, you look at us, we’ve had growth, and the reason is because we’re bigger than that, right?

So we’re actual subject matter experts in the great outdoors, right?

Mm-hmm.

John Roman of BattlBox: We’re providing educational, um, content, both in, both in traditional copy and video. Um, we’re putting out millions of impressions just on our social channels, selling absolutely nothing at all. Just, just providing, providing value to our audience.

And then probably the most important part is, is the community we’ve built. Um, so we don’t look at it as a subscription box. We look at it as a membership. And with that membership, yes, you get a physical box, but you also get access to the community. Right? Tens of thousands of active members, um, that, you know, might be in your area.

You’re, you’re, you’re forging more than just a, a transaction. It’s, it’s relationship based. Then in addition to that, uh, we have other features, like we have something called the battl vault. So if you’re an active member, um, one of the things you, you receive is access to the battl vault where we have thousands of SKUs at prices that.

Uh, no, you can’t get anywhere else. Mm-hmm. So they’re gonna be below anywhere else. You can find online or in person. Um, so yes, you get the box. Yes. You pay 200 for the box. Yes, it’s worth $350. That used to be enough.

Hmm.

Right. But that’s not enough these days. Um, customers expect more and they want more and they deserve more.

And I think that’s where the separation is truly becoming a brand, not just, not just a subscription box.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: For sure. And your, uh, target market, I’m assuming like there’s different personas of your market. Like there’s one persona that’s, you know, hardcore EDC, there’s another persona that’s more outdoor survivalist kind of a person.

Can you share a little bit about your, um, audience and is this considered like a discretionary, I’m assuming this is a discretionary item, right? Is there like. An effect of what’s going on in the market. And then, you know, do you see sales, uh, growing or decreasing based on that?

John Roman of BattlBox: Sure. So great questions.

It’s, it’s, it’s a, it’s part of that question we get a lot. Um, so yeah, so we have, we have lots of personas in our demographic, but, but ultimately, if I’m gonna oversimplify it, it’s, it’s male males 24, uh, to 54. Um, so that 30-year-old, that 30 year span is, is our sweet spot. Um. Yeah, there’s, there’s lots of different, whether it’s, you know, the, the traditional survivalist or someone, uh, just.

Being, being prepared, uh, to, you know, uh, ex-military to law enforcement officers. Um, it, it’s, it’s the full gamut just to the weekend warrior. The likes like skier, uh, the camper, the hiker, uh, we really are able to touch on a bunch of different, um, niches in our niche. The, the interesting thing is. The political spectrum, the stuff going on makes zero difference.

We have no seasonality. We have no, uh, we have no spikes when, when someone wins, wins an election, or we have no spikes when, when someone loses an election or there’s turmoil in our, uh, world. Zero.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Hmm. And what is the reason for that?

John Roman of BattlBox: It’s we, we don’t sell on fear.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Hmm. So it’s, I mean, it’s basically just the enthusiast and, you know, whoever.

John Roman of BattlBox: Correct. Yeah. It’s, you know, we, we try to normalize preparedness, right? Like, you have insurance for your car, um, you know, you have insurance for your home or apartment, and you, you, you, you have all these things like insurance. Why, why would you not have a box of batteries and, and, and, uh, power banks and stuff in case the power goes out?

It’s the same, same concept, right? Why would you not have some sort of device just in your, in your storage in case something happens to your water supply? Um, it’s just general preparedness and you know, I think it’s something that exists, um, globally, definitely in the, in the United States, but it exists globally to a certain extent where people just wanna be prepared.

Just prepared for the worst. A lot of ’em hope they never even use this stuff. And then you have the, the polar opposite that just wants to go out camping and is gonna take and test all the gear. Um, but yeah, no, we, we get no spikes when, when, when craziness happens in the world. I wish we did. There’s been lots of craziness.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Well, I mean, you, you want growth spikes. Like you don’t, you don’t want the, um Right. So we just, we just

John Roman of BattlBox: have consistent growth. Oh,

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: okay.

John Roman of BattlBox: It’s, it’s predictable, consistent growth.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: So your, your products, I’m, I’m curious, um, when you’re sending out the box, like do you track, like, let’s say for one person you sent out a box which has knife, that has, you know, a bag, whatever, uh, do you track like what you send them out in the next box?

Like how do you, how does your product assor works so that the customer who’s, who’s receiving this box these boxes at a certain frequency, like they think that they’re getting the variety, they’re getting the value, I mean. If they’re getting the, the knife every single time, like they would be like, why am I getting so many knives?

Right.

John Roman of BattlBox: Unless they sign up for our most popular box, the Pro plus, which includes a knife of the month that 60% of our piece are in. So there’s knife enthusiasts too. What are these people

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: doing with all these knives there?

John Roman of BattlBox: Um, so, so these are high-end premium knives too, right. Okay. So you have, you have traditional collectibles as well.

Um, people also, you know, you see people switch out cars. They drive every year. Right. It’s the same thing. If you have a a knife, you carry, you like switching, switching it up. Um, jumping, jumping back to to your question. Uh, so all of every month we, so we call our boxes missions. So five, five days ago, actually eight days ago, we started shipping out the latest mission.

Okay. Everybody gets that mission. There’s four different tiers based on your, your tier level, uh, basic advanced pro and pro plus, but that was mission 100 and, um, 21.

Hmm.

John Roman of BattlBox: And then in the beginning of April, we’ll send mission 1 20, 21, 22. Hmm.

Um,

John Roman of BattlBox: it’s, you know, we started off with mission one, then Mission two, mission three.

We’re up to 1, 1 21 now.

Um,

John Roman of BattlBox: so when you first sign up, you get to pick a previous mission.

Hmm.

John Roman of BattlBox: For your first box. Then after that you fall into the cadence where everybody gets the upcoming mission and it’s the drop model where no one knows what’s in it, and then everybody gets it around the same time.

Um, typically we retire the box afterwards. You might occasionally keep some for, for a promotion or something down the line, but if you miss out, you miss out.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: And the vendors that you work with, like do you, do you have set vendors that you work with? You’re always adding new, um. Uh, retiring the old ones.

How do you kind of work with your oh, man, vendors? Yeah, it’s,

John Roman of BattlBox: it’s, it’s a challenge. I don’t know why anybody would wanna do this as a profession. It’s, it’s a lot. So, so part of our allure is that we feature new products and new vendors every month, um, you know, every month, right? We have, you know, six to eight different vendors.

Oftentimes they’re new. Um, and then, you know, furthermore, no one has the quantity we need sitting on a sh on a, on a. In a warehouse somewhere, right? So these all have to be manufactured runs. Um, you know, 98% of ’em. So, you know, we’re working out sometimes six, eight months ahead of time. Just that’s the lead time these vendors need to, to manufacture the product and get it, get it into our facility.

Um, yeah, it’s, it’s a lot. It’s different relationships. It’s, there’s, there’s some, we have some partners that, you know, we might feature, uh, once or twice every year. Uh, they’re just great partners to work with, but the reality is it’s, uh, every month it’s a reset and it’s, it’s six, six to eight new vendors and yeah, it’s, it’s a lot.

We have a, we have a whole team that has to manage that.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: And I believe previously you said, you know, you had purchased another business. What was it like? Uh, I believe the name you said was Carnivore Box or something.

John Roman of BattlBox: Yeah, so, so through through the years we’ve, we’ve made, um. I don’t know. I think we bought maybe five businesses and, and maybe sold seven.

Um, so we, we had, um, shortly after BattlBox we launched, uh, two box, two boxes. One called Barbecue Box, one called Spartan Cardin. Uh, one was Barbecue Fit, uh, focused. One was fitness focused. We sold both of those. In 2017 or 20? Yeah, 2017. And then in 2018 we bought a business called Going Gear, which was flashlights and knives.

And they had, they had retail presence as well in addition to online. Uh, in 2019, we bought Carnivore Club, which was a monthly charcuterie, artisanal meats, um, out of Toronto. They, um, they had gone on Dragons Den, gotten a deal. It was a, uh, it was a pretty cool company. So we bought that in 2019. In 2020 we bought, uh battlBox’s largest competitor Crate Club.

Um, and then in 2021 we sold BattlBox and Carnivore Club to, to emerge Commerce out of Toronto.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: I’m assuming the strategy behind that is that you have, of course, you have a, a community of customers, right? And you’re finding complimentary products, uh, or subscription items so that you can basically cross pollinate between the different communities.

And I think that makes a lot of sense. But does it actually, like I’m, I’m assuming all subscription boxes are not made the same.

John Roman of BattlBox: Yeah. So, yeah, so, you know, cross pollination works in theory. Um, it’s, it was, it wasn’t the secret sauce for any of this. Um, the secret sauce was just us knowing our playbook of, of how to go to market with a D two C brand, that, that was the secret sauce, right?

Us knowing that content matters, us knowing about influencer seating and, um, creator seating before anybody else was really talking about it. Um. That’s the secret sauce. There was some cross pollination, but it’s very, very, very minimal. Um, you know, talking, talking less than 10%, um, a across, across each brand.

So it was, it was more just we, we, we knew how to, we knew how to run, run direct to consumer e-comm brands.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Yeah. But do you find that some of these are easier to sell than the others? Like I’m thinking that, you know, your battlbox is very targeted towards, you know, male audience, right? A certain kind of audience.

Um, are there any market opportunities like that that’s could be geared towards a female audience? Like. For example, makeup. I mean, you said that it’s no longer working, but are, are there market opportunities out there that you can take your expertise in marketing and influencer seating and everything and basically create a secondary, uh, subscription?

John Roman of BattlBox: Yeah. The, the, the, the model’s, the, the model’s the same. Just to clarify, if it not working, it just doesn’t, it doesn’t, it’s, it lost. It’s lost its luster. It’s lost its alert. Right. You know, Birchbox went from a billion dollar valuation in opening up retail stores in, in soho to, to, you know, chapter 13. Um, it just, the the, the economics changed.

Um, yeah, the model’s the same. If, if any, if I’m being honest, it’s probably a little bit easier with, with females, um, just simply because, uh, there’s, there’s a. There’s a bigger network of influencer cedars of influence seating. Right. There’s way more female, um, influencers and creators out there. Um, most play in the beauty and health space.

Hmm.

John Roman of BattlBox: Um, it’s, it’s not very niche. It’s, it’s a large, large, large ocean. Um, it would be easier, now it’s probably more competitive as well. Mm-hmm. But I think overall would be easier. The, the reality is, um, I wanna enjoy what I like and I don’t, I don’t like makeup, I don’t care about makeup.

Yeah,

John Roman of BattlBox: I’m not, you know, um, sure you can say, you know, people do stuff for money and I do wanna get paid.

Um, but I want to, I wanna do whole products that I care about. Right. Um, I don’t, I don’t, I don’t care about makeup.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: So to me it sounds like. A key part of, or a key ingredient of your go to market is, as you said, content and then influencer strategy. Can you share a little bit some insights on, you know, if you were launching a new product and you know, your, um, like how would you go to market?

Like, what would your strategy be with influencers and content? Like where would you start and how would you grow?

John Roman of BattlBox: Um, yeah, so I mean. The go-to market strategy is absolutely, um, influencer seating. Hmm. Um, that’s, that’s, that’s definitely part of, part of the mix these days. If, if I’m being honest though, I would create audience and content before the product.

Hmm. Um, I would, I would build audience and I would understand my audience. Continue to procure content for them that they were, they enjoy, ingesting and engage with. And then once I understood my audience and it was grown to a certain size, I would then introduce the product. Um, I wouldn’t, I wouldn’t do the product first because if you, if you have an engaged audience and you’re able to grow it and you’re able to converse with them, they’re gonna tell you what, what the product needs to be, they’re gonna tell you what they want.

Um, and I think that’s a, a much easier. Easier, uh, path now, I mean, of course you can launch a beauty product and just send out thousands of, of boxes to an influencer and probably have some success too. But if you, if, if you’re, if you are able to go to the content side first and really create that community and that audience, um, organically, I think it’s probably longer in the tooth and has more shelf life, um, because these people are.

Buying. It’s more than just a product. Right. Um, and you know, the need, need, want scale, which you spoke to earlier, it matters. But when there’s, when there’s a bond, when there’s a connection between a consumer and a brand or a consumer and a creator, um, the need want scale within reason goes out the window.

People, people wanna form a connection.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: No, I think ma, that makes, um, complete sense and I think that also, um, I. Is not, is the most, I guess, um, less risky way of, you know, launching a business. You know, if you already have the audience, um, that Yeah, yeah. But,

John Roman of BattlBox: but building the, but building the audience is arguably a lot di More difficult.

More difficult.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Yeah.

John Roman of BattlBox: Yeah.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Any, any lessons there in terms of building the audience or you’re basically talking, well you’re talking to a specific person and I’m, I guess you are speaking the language right.

John Roman of BattlBox: Yeah. In theory, yeah, in theory, you, your, your, your, your, to the topic of your content is something you’re passionate about.

That passionate is that passion, you know, obviously is able to go through screens and people can tell genuineness and passion. Um, so then you’re finding your, you’re, you’re like people that, that engage with that. So it’s, yeah, it’s. But I mean, you know, talking about it and, and executing it are two, two different things, right?

It’s, um, you see most content is such a long game, right? We, we used to talk about how, how, what a long game SEO was, right? And how long SEO proper SEO strategy, how long it takes, it takes a while. Um, contents 2, 3, 4 times as long. It’s insane. Um, and most people don’t stick with it. Most people don’t see the results they want within.

Thirty, sixty, ninety, a hundred twenty days. And they just, they just, they just call it, you know, our TikTok, which is our largest channel, I think we have 1.1 million followers on TikTok. Um, we launched it in 2021 and the entire first year, which is failure.

Hmm.

John Roman of BattlBox: Like we, we would not, we would get momentum, but very, very far and few between, we maybe three, three wins for the entire year.

But, but we knew what we were doing was correct, and we just had to stay consistent and, and keep leaning in and taking learnings and applying them. And eventually after a year it popped and it popped into to our largest, um, because most people aren’t, most people don’t have the patience.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Yeah, yeah. No, that’s, that’s, uh, so interesting.

Um, social is such a. Such an interesting thing. Like some people have the personality for it, some people just have the kn knack for it and others it’s like you, right? Yeah. Some people comes,

John Roman of BattlBox: it comes way, way too easy too. I wish it came easy to me, but it doesn’t.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: So you, I mean, you got involved with this business, um, as an investor and.

But were you, were you an outdoor person to begin with or have you kind of learned to become an out outdoors person? Like what’s your capacity in the business? Are you working as a marketer? Are you working as a, like more of the subscription side of business?

Um, no. So I would say, I would say I’m not, I’m not an outdoorsman mm-hmm.

By any means. Uh, I am a, I’m a big believer in, in, in preparedness. Um, you know, whether that’s having, like I said before, you know, insurance, um, in an umbrella policy all the way to, you know, if, if, if something happens, um, and my power and internet goes out, you know, I have a, a labeled box with some, with some stuff.

Hmm. Um, and you know, I think I’m just a big, I’m a big prepared guy, but that’s not why I invested. Um, it was pure me liking the, the, the subscription reoccurring revenue model. I. Um, I was, I was making investments at the time. I think in a two month span. I made, uh, seven similar investments and, and this was the one that just panned out, um, really, really well.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Wow, very interesting. Um, are you primarily selling in the US right now? Are you, I’m assuming it’s primarily us.

John Roman of BattlBox: Yeah, so yeah, so primarily in the US we’re, uh. We’re in Canada. Um, technically we, we, we do offer one-time products, um, non-subscription in, uh, 140 countries. Okay. But the subscription, the membership is only in the US and Canada.

Um, and I, I don’t see it, you know, going anywhere else in the short term. It’s, um. When you start getting in other countries, there’s all kinds of laws on specific types of products and we don’t wanna curate multiple boxes. We don’t wanna curate a specific box for Australia or France or, or you know, the uk.

Um, we’d rather just create, can curate one amazing box, which is what we were able to do with the US and Canada.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Is, uh, is preparedness more of a US. Concept. I mean, do you see people, or have you, in your research of audiences, uh, in other countries, do you see a, um, uh, a push around people getting prepared, like in Europe or Australia?

I mean, I know maybe in Asia there, I, I don’t think this concept exists, you know, being prepared and so forth.

John Roman of BattlBox: Yeah, it probably, it probably doesn’t exist. I mean, so I, I guess. Certain parts of Asia, sure it does not exist. Um, but you talk about, uh, Philippines. Philippines, it’s a thing in the Philippines.

Okay. Um, being, being prepared, um, with certainty, uh, uh, America, the US and Canada, I would argue, um, probably ratio proportionally there’s, when you start getting into the, the west of, of Canada, you know, away from the, the. Uh, the, the big cities, um, there’s a lot, there’s a, a decent bit of, of preparedness, I would say from a ratio percentage.

There’s probably more Canadians, um,

to,

John Roman of BattlBox: you know, ratio to their population, um, than than Americans. But Australia, it’s Roy, Roy Big. Um, we get, we get an insane amount of traffic from Australia and then a decent amount from uk, but. Europe for the most part. The rest, rest of Europe, you know, they’re just, they’re just being Europeans.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Yeah. They’re, they’re more laid back. I think

John Roman of BattlBox: they’ve got other stuff.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Yeah. Yeah, for sure. Um, I believe you mentioned a net Netflix TV show. Do you, do you, are you on Netflix?

John Roman of BattlBox: Yeah, so we did a, uh, Netflix original series in 2020. Um. It premiered July 4th weekend. So it’s, uh, it’s, it’s called, you can just go to Netflix.

It’s Global Search battlbox that comes up. Um, the show’s called Southern Survival. So it’s, it’s, uh, every episode we’re testing gear to determine if it’s gonna go in a, in, in that month’s battlbox mission to our customers, but it’s reality tv. So we’re testing stuff that. You know, isn’t, we’re not really gonna put a flame thrower in a box, but, you know, Netflix wanted it to be reality and engaging.

So instead of a knife, it’s, it’s a, it’s a flame thrower or, or something like that. But it’s a cool, it’s a, it’s a cool show.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Awesome. Um, when you’re working with influencers, like, do you. What do you look for in an influencer? Because I’ve, I’ve heard from other businesses that it’s kind of a hit or miss, right?

Um, do you have something that you’re specific metrics that you’re looking for, um, and how does it work? Like, do you, do you give them, uh, a box to kind of review sample, uh, give their opinions and then basically pitch it to their, uh, audience? How, how does that work?

John Roman of BattlBox: Yeah. So yeah, influencer seating is, is a numbers game for sure.

Um, you know, the reality is a, a big chunk of influencers are just garbage in general, right? Mm-hmm. So, so how do you, how do you filter through the garbage? Um, it’s, it’s, it’s not easy and it’s what’s certainty a numbers game. The, you know. We, we see the most success with what we define as micro influencers.

Um, that that influencer that maybe has 50,000 followers or 150,000 followers, the guys that have a million or 2 million or 5 million, um. They, they, they don’t have the influence ratio that, that would justify, uh, typically what they wanna be paid. It’s, uh, it’s, it’s super interesting. So for the most part, when we’re dealing with micro influencers, yeah, we’re sending a box or we’re sending a specific product, um, that we’ve recently featured or haven’t, you know, we have while the, the subscription while the, the.

The membership, the subscription box is, uh, a big chunk of our revenue. Um, you know, we still have thousands of SKUs in our, in our shop, and, um, you know, the influencer seated, if we’re talking about, um, unbiased reviews on YouTube, we’re sending the full, the full pro plus 200 a month box. If we’re talking about TikTok shop, you know, we’re sending one specific item.

That, that we think could have momentum to get virality. So it really depends on the platform. Um, the reality is though, it it which certainty is a numbers game. Hmm. You have to reach out to hundreds of influencers to get 20 good responses to find 10 that you’re gonna send the box to, to find four of those that are actually gonna do a good job.

It’s, it’s a grind with certainty.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Hmm. Um, your team. So you have, uh, if I understand, you have three found co-founders right now, and, um, can you

John Roman of BattlBox: No. So, so we, we, we sold, we sold the business in 2021. When we bought it. When we sold it, um, one of my co-founders was gone. Uh, we, we had an impasse. We weren’t working well together.

That was the reason. One of the reasons we sold the business was to get them out of there. Okay. Um, so. So, so, yeah, so two of the co-founders are still around. Um, we have three partners When we bought it back, technically four, uh, of, uh, our CFO is, is came to the table and has an equal seat with us. And then we took, uh, an old mentor of mine that plays in the VC world, and he came as a minority partner.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: And, and who else is in the team? What, what did your team look like?

John Roman of BattlBox: Um. Our team’s, our team’s big. Uh, I can pull up a, let’s see, we’ll pull up the word chart.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: That’ll, uh, I mean, do you have, uh, more than 50 people or,

John Roman of BattlBox: uh, uh Right, right at,

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: okay.

John Roman of BattlBox: Uh, yeah. Right, right, right. I think like 46 last time, last time we counted.

Um, it’s, it’s gonna be your traditional team. There’s, uh. Uh, we own our warehouse and fulfillment, um, facility. Uh, both we have a, uh, the two different, two different buildings in the same city, though, um, about a mile apart. So that’s a chunk of, of our employees that’s probably half, um, simply because, you know, there’s a lot of fulfillment going on and, uh, and warehouse management.

Um, the only other thing that would be a little bit non-standard. Is because we have such a focus on content, so we have a full-time in-house creator.

Hmm.

John Roman of BattlBox: Uh, we have three full-time video editors to support him. Whoa. Um, so it’s a little, little unusual for a business our size, you know, with a little bit less than 50 people to have three full-time video editors.

That’s probably the only super unusual piece,

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: I think. And then you have

John Roman of BattlBox: just, you know, traditional CS team and, um, I think we have six members in Cs and. We have a phone sales guy, uh, handful of people on the marketing team, handful of people on procurement and people of on finance just, just spread.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Do you do paid advertising at all?

John Roman of BattlBox: Uh, yeah. Yeah. Uh, we spend an absolute fortune on paid advertising. Um, yeah, it’s, uh, I got, I got in trouble. It’s, it’s 12% of our budget, um, paid, paid digital, and, uh, last year I ran it close to 18% for, for, uh, a good part of the year. So CFO’s not very happy right now, but

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: is it, we’re sticking it

John Roman of BattlBox: 12%.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: I mean, the reason I was asking it is like.

I am assuming like in terms of return on ad spend, like is it improving, is it de decreasing over time? Because what I’m thinking now, given that you mentioned you have three video editors, I’m assuming it’s becoming more and more important, I. To create good content that’s going to carry your business now in the future, rather than doing paid advertising, which is like a lot more competitive and maybe, you know, people are more wary of paid advertising now.

So it’s like, yeah. Now I think the good content. It’s probably not becoming more and more important versus like paid advertising. What, what are your thoughts on that?

John Roman of BattlBox: Yeah, I, I don’t, yeah, I, I, I agree with you. It’s becoming more and more important. I would not say it’s even close to being more important than, um, the advertising.

I think both are necessary. So, so our, our organic content is, is our true top of funnel. Um, and that. Our paid advertising, which even if we’re prospecting, we’re not re prospecting, but I mean, we are. But like, even if the focus is prospecting new with digital paid, um, it really does serve as both prospect prospecting new and middle funnel.

Um, okay. Just because, you know, you, you ingest a bunch of our tiktoks and you’re following us on TikTok and loving the videos. We don’t have a pixel on you. Right. We don’t, we don’t. We haven’t gone to our website yet, so it’s not like we can, can move you through the funnel. Hmm. Um, but yeah, I think, I think both are important.

This year we’re doubling down on our content frequency. I think last year we averaged, uh, maybe 1.3, uh, videos per platform per day, and we’re gonna be north of 2.5 this year per day. Um, and it’s simply because. We’re, we’re trying to juice the organic top of funnel to keep our customer acquisition costs or return on ad spend, um, at an, at an acceptable, um, level.

Because as you know, um, acquisition costs have just gone up higher and higher every year regardless of industry. It’s a very competitive, um, game these days.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Yeah. Yeah. It’s, I mean, e-commerce is difficult now.

John Roman of BattlBox: Yeah.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Yeah,

John Roman of BattlBox: not, not suggest jumping in.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Yeah. Yeah. Um, your fulfillment and shipping, you said you have your own fulfillment centers, um, when you are launching new boxes, and I mean, it seems like new products are probably always coming in, um, but is there any risk where, you know, you purchase, um, or, or do you like, uh, build, um.

Arrangements with vendors where if you don’t sell certain items, they will take it back.

John Roman of BattlBox: No. So, so you know, luckily we have the audience and the sales channels now, um, I. To, to, to move, move product. So we don’t, we’re never sitting on, on, and we’re never sitting on steel inventory. But to your your point, it’s really difficult because when we’re talking about being featured in an upcoming battlbox mission, um, you know, we’re having to put that purchase order in six months ahead of time, and it’s a manufactured run, so you can’t go back afterwards and say, oh, no.

We don’t need that many. Well, they made them for us. There’s no choice. Right. Um, luckily, you know, uh, our forecasting has not been perfect. We’ve made mistakes, lots of mistakes through the years. Um, with, with ordering. Ordering, you can never order not enough. Right? That’s not possible. You always have to over order.

Um, just because if everyone’s getting the same mission, you can’t not send it to someone. So you always have to go on the conservative side of over ordering. But we’re lucky we have, we have paths. Our, our, um, our, our Amazon, uh, our Amazon business, which is, which is 100% one time, um, is, is ramping up nicely.

It’s a, it’s a, it’s a decent seven figure, um, business, uh, unit on its own. Um, TikTok shop is, is, is looking like it’s gonna be a seven figure channel for us as well this year. Um, and then all the other. Wholesale and fair and eBay, we, we have a lot of channels, right? So we’re a little fortunate, but it’s, it’s definitely a always something we have to be cognizant of.

I think, like right now, for example, we probably have probably about a million more in inventory that we would like to have. Um, there’s a clear path towards moving it. Um, but still we we’re running a little bit heavy. We typically, I like to have about under, under maybe three, 3 million in inventory and we, we probably have close to four right now.

Hmm. Um, now, we’ll, we’ll move through in the next couple months, so it’s not an issue, but you know, if we weren’t paying attention to it, it could become an issue. Right? Because all of a sudden if you have 2 million in excess inventory, that’s causes some cashflow problems.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Hmm, for sure. Um, in terms of your fu fu future vision for your business, like, do you ever consider creating your own band of, of a brand of products?

I mean, given that you’ve probably learned what your consumer like, um, is that more risky or less risky than the model that you currently have? Um,

John Roman of BattlBox: not going, um, yeah, no. So it’s a great question. So we do, we do have, we do have house brands. Um, manufactured by us. So, uh, ruck and River, um, we put out probably about, I believe, eight products in the last, uh, 18 months.

They’re, they’re, they’re manufacture by battlbox in addition to Ruck and River. Sometimes we’ll manufacture stuff and, and actually just, uh, put the name battlbox on it. Um, rocket River is a little bit more, uh, premium high-end, um, and a little bit more niche. While, you know, there might be a knife that just makes sense to be battlbox branded.

Um, so we do it. Uh, but you know, the, we do it for a couple reasons. One, if we think we can build a better mouse trap, if we, if we see an opportunity of, hey, this product’s great, but we know how to make it greater.

Hmm.

John Roman of BattlBox: Um, and then the flip side is, you know, sometimes the, uh, a vendor won’t. Wanna work with us at the price point they need, that we need, they might say, no, you know, this is wholesale pricing and we can’t buy for wholesale.

So, um, sometimes we have to manufacture our own just simply to get the margins that are needed. Um, but it’s a, it’s a balancing act, right? Because battlbox members join because they wanna be introduced to new and known brands. Um, so. At no point would it be acceptable for us to manufacture all this stuff.

Yeah. Like we can manufacture, if there’s seven items in the box, maybe one of ’em is rock and river.

Hmm.

John Roman of BattlBox: But we still have to introduce the, the brands they know already, the new brands that are up and coming. Um, they don’t want it to be the battlbox box, box They, they, they want the, the diversity of different brands and they made it very, very clear to us.

Okay.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: No, I think that that makes a lot of sense. I mean, that’s your value proposition, right? So that, that makes, I mean, in terms of your Yeah. Yeah. So it’s tough, right? Yeah. Um, do you exit strategy? Like do you con, do you consider that you’ll continue to run this business over, like the long run or do you, or do you guys talk about like, in some sort of an exit strategy and, uh.

For this?

John Roman of BattlBox: Yeah. I mean, so when we, when we sold the business in 2021, we were done, uh, we had three year, three year agreements where we would stay on till October, 2024. And, uh, that was, that was gonna be the end of the end of the book, end of the chapter at least.

Hmm.

John Roman of BattlBox: Um, the reality is we saw and an opportunity, um, you know, once we were acquired, uh, you know, we were probably traded then.

So there’s a lot of visibility into, um. The finances, and we saw just an opportunity to buy the business back at pennies on the dollar of what we, we, we had paid. Um, so because of that, we bought it back. Yeah. The, the buyback is, the entire buyback model is a, is a five-year, five-year REIT plan from, from the jump.

That’s, that’s the strategy. Um, so we’ll hit, we’ll hit two years next month, which means we have about three more years after that. And then, you know, I think BattlBox lives on, um, and we want it if in order to leave, we want it to be in a, a, a place where it can run itself and there’s good leadership in place.

Um, but yeah, the, the plan is for, for me at least, to probably exit in about three, three and a half years.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Okay. Interesting. Um. In every entrepreneur’s journey, there’s always mistakes made, lessons learned, failures. Um, I know one, uh, one issue in your journey has been, uh, I, I guess you mentioned that there was, um, wasn’t working out with one of the co-founders.

What has been like one, twice big, twice? Uh, is there a, is there, I mean, was that the biggest mistake or is there another big mistake that you think, um,

John Roman of BattlBox: um, you know. You, you can categorize both of those as mistakes. Um, the, you know, the two, the two partners that are no longer involved. But the reality is, um, I don’t think either were mistakes, right?

So there were times in the journey where it made sense to have them. Um, and there were times obviously where it didn’t, but I think there were a lot of learning lessons in there. So I don’t, I don’t view the whole thing as a mistake at all. Um, there were, there were great times with both of them. Um, it just got to a point where there was more bad times than than great times, which means we had to change.

If I, if I look at mistakes we made, um, we made the most, luckily, we made the most mistakes in, in, in our first year. Uh, thank goodness because it was easier to get past him in, uh, in 2015 going into, uh, labor Day weekend. We’re gonna have our biggest, uh, uh, promotion advertising we had done. Um, and we were only advertising on Facebook only.

Nothing else we didn’t know any better. So Facebook ads get sales, seems pretty easy. Um, Friday going into what was gonna be our biggest weekend, um, sales wise ever with certainty, a hundred percent confident. We, uh. Friday at 6:00 PM our Facebook, uh, ad account got, um, canceled. Banned.

Why

John Roman of BattlBox: Shut down? So we went from, and so it’s our only lead source.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Hmm.

John Roman of BattlBox: And we had zero. Why, why

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: did you get banned though? Was it like some sort of a issue?

John Roman of BattlBox: Uh, yeah. Knives.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Okay.

John Roman of BattlBox: So there’s knives. There’s knives that go in the box and, uh, depending on. On the day of the week, that could be problematic for traditional advertising like Facebook and Google. Okay. Um, and even though we weren’t selling the knives directly, you know, you could still get to them on the site and it’s a bit of a double standard, right?

Walmart used to sell guns, but they weren’t advertising the guns, and that was okay.

Hmm.

John Roman of BattlBox: Um, but, you know, Walmart will spend a million in a day, millions in a day. And, and we weren’t spending that much. Um, so yeah, our account got shut down and we went from all the traffic in the world on our website, converting greatly to zero traffic.

Um, not zero, but very little. Hmm. And the business was just, we were just like, damn, this isn’t good.

Yeah.

John Roman of BattlBox: Without Facebook, we’re, we’re, we’re 100% dependent on Facebook. This is a problem. Hmm. Um, so, so the lack of challenge diversification, um, in our early, early stages was probably the biggest mistake. Um, along those same lines are another huge mistake we made in the beginning when it came to customer acquisition was not spending more, we were very slow and steady wins the race.

And in hindsight. We could have gotten customers for $5 a piece, we should have grabbed every single one of them and we could have, ’cause now we get, we get customers for a hundred dollars a piece. Yeah. Um, and you know, we were getting customers for $40 a piece for a long period of time. Should have gotten as many as we could have gotten then.

And instead of, you know, slow and steady wins the race, but things would’ve been a lot easier. We would’ve just gone full. Full gas pedal and gunned as many as we could at the, the lesser cost of, of previous years.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Hmm. I mean, it seems like you, you, you were doing it now with the We’re doing it now, yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Um,

John Roman of BattlBox: yeah, we’re not anymore in trouble. 12% now.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Um, 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 maybe in a word, a couple of words or a sentence or so. Uh, a book recommendation for entrepreneurs and why.

John Roman of BattlBox: Oh, um, I’ll go non-traditional. It’s, uh, called the Signal and the Noise.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Yeah, I’ve heard

John Roman of BattlBox: it’s, uh, it’s by, yeah, it’s by Nate Silver. Um, you know, I wouldn’t say it’s necessarily a, a business book, but I think it gives you, it gives you what you’re looking for maybe in a business book. It just, it’s, the summary is the groundbreaking exploration of probability and uncertainty that explains how to make better predictions in a world drowning in data.

So, you know, how do everything is noise, right? So how do you find the actual signal in there? Um. Super smart guy. That’s the book.

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.

Hmm.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Are you using, uh, AI at all in your business?

John Roman of BattlBox: We do. Um. We, we use it to, to go faster, be smarter, be more efficient, produce more content. Um, but we don’t, we don’t, we’re not dependent on it. We just, it allows us to do our job better. Um, I’m trying to think if there’s, if there’s something specific. Um,

anything. Yeah. I would, I

John Roman of BattlBox: would say AI in, in general, I just don’t think. It. Go ahead.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: No, I was just saying, you know, anything that you, you use, sorry, my background went away. I’m just trying to figure this out. I was, um, I was saying, um, maybe you use a software or something in your business or personally that you, that you’re really like.

John Roman of BattlBox: Um, so, you know, we’re, we’re, we’re testing some, some new software out there right now. Part of, uh, part of, uh, battl Brands, which owns BattlBox also owns Battl Ventures. Um, so there’s some, some software out there that we’re, we’re having fun with. Um, one is a is just launched called Coneo, uh, and it’s.

It allows, um, a team member to, to make, uh, phone calls to, to customers. So we have a, a win back campaign that we’ve ran for several years. We have a full-time phone sales guy, and, um, he’s working out of a spreadsheet that we export and that we import, um, pass customers too. And he picks the phone, you know, 150 calls a day.

Super successful, um, campaign. So this con product is gonna be almost like a dashboard. Soft. So we have a soft phone now, but this is a soft phone that’s gonna integrate into Shopify and recharge and gorgeous and Klaviyo to give, give him the ability to see the full customer picture and understand who he’s talking to better.

So that’s, that’s exciting. Um, I’m optimistic it’ll work. Um, if it works as planned, it’ll. Probably allow him to crank out twice as many calls a day and more efficiently. ’cause he’s not having to manage a 85 tab Google Sheet himself. It’ll just be all automated. So excited about that.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Wow. Very nice. Uh, a business or concierge,

John Roman of BattlBox: D-O-N-S-I

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: will, I will check it out.

A business or productivity tool or software that you would recommend or a productivity tip?

John Roman of BattlBox: Um. Get rid of all your meetings, don’t have so many meetings. I feel like we have meetings for meetings sometimes. So, so once, probably once a month, maybe once every two months. I just take a hard look at meetings and, and hey, is this really necessary? Right. I think, and maybe it, it is me coming from the corporate world, but like too many meetings is inefficient and.

I think it’s human nature to have a bunch of meetings, like when you’re running a business, but like, that’s, that’s, that’s the hack. Take a hard look at your calendar and is, is it a, is, is a meeting really necessary?

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Yeah, no, that’s a great advice and I think, you know, people who are in the corporate world also, the probably don’t need any meetings for.

Another startup or business that you think is currently doing great things?

John Roman of BattlBox: A startup business that is currently doing great things. Um, there’s, there’s another, um, a, uh, a jv, um, gentleman named Jared. He runs a. Um, company called Shield Box, which is a, it’s a traditional subscription box for law enforcement officers. He was NYPD. Uh, so he, we launched with him Medic Box. Uh, and it’s, it’s a, it’s a monthly medical supplies, medical stuff.

Hmm.

John Roman of BattlBox: Um, and after each three months, every quarter you can build a kit and, you know, maybe you put this kit in your wife’s car in case she breaks down. Maybe you just have it in your, in your living room in case a kid hurts himself. Um, but it’s cool because, you know, people, people hurt themselves. People need medical stuff.

Um, so I’m excited about that one. He just launched, um, uh, last year and it’s, it’s showing a lot of success and he’s a really good guy and it’s a really good product. So excited about that one.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Awesome. Um. A peer entrepreneur or business person who you look up to or someone who inspires you?

John Roman of BattlBox: Um, so I’ll take a, a unpopular opinion here.

Um, I pull inspiration at this point. So I used to, you know, years ago I used to look at other entrepreneurs, other people building stuff, um, with the direction everything’s going and the importance of content. Now I look towards cre, actual just creators. Um, for, for ideas and, um, inspiration. It’s, it’s, it’s, it’s weird that I’ve taken this, this pivot, but now I just, I focus on these creators and I see what they’re doing and that’s where we get inspiration for the business.

Um, for a long, long, long time, I really, I don’t wanna say disliked, but I didn’t care for, um, Gary V.

Mm-hmm.

John Roman of BattlBox: At all. Now as I’ve, I guess maybe I’ve matured, I actually have appreciation for what he does. Um, and he’s just putting himself out there. And it’s a, it’s a, it’s a content play and I think the, yeah, the wiser and smarter I become, the more appreciation I have him.

I don’t watch him to be motivated. It’s not, he’s not gonna motivate me. Mm-hmm. But man, do I respect what he does? Mm-hmm.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Well, you know what I, my thoughts on Gary B is that he has certain. Talent. Right. And he’s, he’s just naturally like that. Everybody has certain talent and he like, that’s, that’s kind of his thing, right?

Like, I, I don’t think I, I don’t think he can, he can help himself, like not go online and market it,

John Roman of BattlBox: right? Yeah. And it’s just his thing.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Yeah. Yeah. I can appreciate. Fi, final question, best business advice that you have ever received or you would give to other entrepreneurs?

John Roman of BattlBox: Um, profitability, be profitable. Seems, seems pretty simplistic and makes sense, but man, you gotta have, you gotta have positive ebitda, um, running these businesses and, and being like, oh, I’m gonna figure out profit to like, no. Unless you’re, unless you’re building some gigantic SaaS product that, you know, can get billions of users, like you gotta worry about profitability right away.

Um, the, the days of just burning money. Yeah. Just especially if you’re, if you’re coming up with a D two C product, you’ve gotta be profitable. Yeah. Um, yeah. Profitability is simple, but people don’t do it.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: No, that’s, that’s great advice, especially in e-commerce, if you’re not profitable, like it’s,

John Roman of BattlBox: what are you doing?

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Yeah. Very, very difficult. Yeah, for sure. Well, John, thank you so much, uh, for your time today, for sharing your story, for sharing, uh, you know, details about your business and strategies and tactics. Really, really appreciate your time. Uh, anybody who wants to purchase your item products, uh, or get in touch, what’s the best way to do that?

John Roman of BattlBox: Sure. Um, so just, you know, battlbox.com Google BattlBox Spell it however you want, it’s gonna come up. Um, but it is spelled B-A-T-T-L-B-O-X, uh, online queso.com. It’s my blog. Um, it’s, it’s a little bit non-traditional in the sense that. I don’t wanna just talk about the wins we get, I wanna talk about the losses and what we learn from them and how we can apply them, um, to, to later instances.

I, I, as TikTok is, is an example. I did like five or six posts that first year when we were getting our, our, our butt handed to us, just, but taking learnings from it. Mm-hmm. Um, and then LinkedIn is probably where I’m the most active. Awesome.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Well, uh, John, thank you so much again for your time today. Really, really appreciate it and wish you all the very best.

John Roman of BattlBox: Great. Thanks so much. Thanks for having me.