From Silicon Valley to all around the world, I meet with startup founders to hear their powerful stories of failure, obstacles, and success. I am your host, Luke Baird, and this is the Cult of Startup Podcast. This episode is brought to you by Audible. For years, I have been listening to audio books, because there's nothing like a seasonarator's reading aloud of great stories.
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Today's guest is Bowman Fair, the co-founder of LunaWare, a watch brand made from bamboo that nearly raised half a million dollars using crowdfunding. In this interview, we discussed why he wanted to continue his family's tradition of watchmaking, but with a modern twist, how he built a loyal following before launching their product, how he created viralness using an Instagram campaign with a hashtag to support the wood, and not to forget how to use Facebook ads as well as Amazon exclusives plus much, much more. You guys are the greatest, thank you for listening and enjoying. How's it going today?
Going great things, how are you doing? Doing great and doing the wonderful California weather right now, it's like perfect outside. I wish I was there. I wish I was there.
I mean, Utah's kind of in rain lately, but... Ooh, that's rough. That's rough. That's rough.
Yeah. Well, if it makes you feel any better this last weekend, it was like 105 here. Yeah, I'll take the rain over that. Yeah, me too.
Me too. All right. But I want to hear a little bit about your background. Absolutely.
Yeah. I kind of come from an entrepreneurial family. My grandfather will kind of get into that, but he's been an entrepreneur and had a couple different really small tight ventures growing up. I was the kid knocking on people's doors, handing out the flyer, trying to mow their lawn or do whatever the work they needed to.
I always found a way to make money without having to go out through the hiring process and get a job. In high school, I had a little t-shirt company that did okay. It was really fun. We were doing all of our printing ourselves and the basement of my parents' house, making that a mess.
And just making money anyway, I could while still having fun. And then I returned home. I served a mission for the LDS church. And returning home, I started a business which is now Luna Ware that we're talking about with a good friend of mine from high school.
Love that. Sounds like the hustler mentality was built into you from day one. Yeah, I was. I'm not sure why.
I couldn't tell you where that came from, but it's always been there and kind of been driving me. Excellent. Excellent. So you got back from your mission and you had one occupation you wanted to pursue, correct?
What happened with that? Yeah. The plan was dental. I have a really good family friend of mine who I've always looked up to that's a dentist.
He was a great lifestyle. He works four days a week. And for me, the choice to be dental was a lifestyle thing. I thought, hey, four days a week.
You do four years of school and then you make a business living. So I went through that route. I took all of these intense science classes to get my dental prereqs done and started shadowing a dentist when it was getting closer to time to apply to dental school. And I just realized that's not what I wanted to be doing.
That's not where my heart or my passion was. You know, it's a great profession, but it just wasn't for me. So I completely switched gears and now I met the University of Utah in their business school doing their entrepreneurship program. So it's a good change.
Could you maybe touch a little bit more on why dental just didn't line up with your personality? Yeah. I like change. I like being able to pursue things that come in front of me at that time, whatever it may be, going back to my childhood.
You know what? I was excited when summer came around because I got to go low lawns or I was excited when winter came around because I got to go shovel. You know, whatever it is, I just, I like change. And dental, you know, not only are you showing up to the same office every four days a week for the rest of your life, but you know, you're working on like a two inch by two inch space your whole life.
You know what I mean? So it's like even more so it's pretty specific stuff you're doing every day. And I like working with my hands. And so, you know, that doesn't sound terrible.
But yeah, I just, I like, you know, if an opportunity presented itself, I wanted to be able to run that way. And, you know, dental kind of, you're kind of walking in a little bit. I love that sort of perspective you gave. Do you want to be working on a two by two inch space the rest of your life?
I didn't think of that. You know, and that's what I was there, like leaning over people's mouths working with this dentist. He was a great guy, you know, and I just thought, you know, I can't do this. So I trashed all those dental pre-reqs kind of two years of school.
I threw away. But yeah, it was a good change for me. I'm really happy with what I'm at. Yeah.
And that mindset completely, it's, if you're happy with where you're at, that's better off than being 90% down the path that you don't want to be on. Absolutely. Yeah. And it was a hard decision.
You know, that's a lot. That's a lot kind of throw away and switch gears. And anyway, so yeah, it was good. Well, happy that you're on a path that you're enjoying.
So let's talk a little bit about, or a little more about exactly what that path is. So what are you doing today with your business? Yeah. So it's called Lunarware.
And we sell wood and leather watches that's, you know, all natural bamboo and heavy wood cases with genuine leather bands. They're a minimalist type watch, but it's, it's a unique niche product type watch. It's different than, you know, these stainless steel fashion watches that you see. And they're just, they're unique.
They're a full e-commerce business. So we sell exclusively on Amazon.com and our website, middleware.com. And just, yeah, it's all, it's an all e-commerce based. All of our marketing is online and our sales are, you know, customer service.
All everything's online. So it's pretty, pretty fun. That's awesome. And I, I see this being a trend in retail overall.
I'm actually working with a client who has a handful of retail stores and her and I both sort of see the writing of the wall that eventually most of the stuff is going to be purely sold online. Not many people are going to stores. Yeah, you know, there's, there's really with, with away online sales, there's, there's no reason to need to deal with retail. You know, that's a whole nother piece that there's a lot of, a lot of drama and extra work involved and smaller margin.
So, you know, you can avoid it. There's no reason to do it. So. Definitely, definitely.
Well, let's go down the history that your family has with watches. Tell me a little bit, a little bit about that. Yeah, it's actually, it's a really, really cool story. So my, my great grandfather's name is Wilford Adams.
He was working in a sawmill, like many of other people in those days, kind of, in this industrial world. And he, there was an accident where he lost away. And so, you know, of course, he lost away because he's not able to perform these high labor jobs like he was. And at the time, the trade of watchmaking was a needed skill in Utah, where he lived.
So I would say that Utah paid for him to be trained in the trade of watchmaking. And now that the trade of watchmaking, you know, watchmaking sounds like he's making watches, but it was more along the lines of watch and clock repair. And so basically that's, that's where it all started. And he started working with watches.
And originally, you know, there's this terrible experience where he's lost away. But he ended up making way more money as a watchmaker. And later he thought it was a custom jewelry design and manufacturing. So he's making wedding rings and engagement rings and that kind of thing.
And he ended up making way more money that way. And really found out that that was a passion of his that he didn't even know about. So, you know, kind of a good experience from that situation. Yeah.
My grandfather Calvin Adams kind of followed in his footsteps. So when he was, you know, 12 years old in elementary school, he dealt to his father's shop and his father would have little, you know, grandfather clocks or other things that just needed simple things to run. And he passed out to my grandpa and he'd work on them and fiddle with them and break them. You know, everybody, but he learned how, you know, he learned that industry from him.
And my great grandfather had a couple retail stores and workshops throughout the state. And my grandfather took over one of those and moved around a bit with that. But that's really where it all came from. My mom works for my grandpa doing little repair stuff, mostly with jewelry.
So I'd spend a lot of time in my grandpa shop. If I was, you know, sick from school, my mom would take me with her to work. And I'd hang out with my grandpa and watch him work on watches and he'd give me little things to do. So, so yeah, pretty, pretty cool.
So that makes me a generation number four in the family dealing with watches. So that's so fascinating to see because where you're at, compared to where they were at, you sort of are part of this paradigm shift that has occurred, right? No, they were, you know, okay, I own a watch. I got to go get somebody to repair my watch completely different model exists now.
It's more of buy multiple watches until they wear out. Yeah, exactly. It's, it is. It's, it's completely different.
You know, the types of watches we're working with are completely different. He, he, his passion is my grandfather's passion is these really expensive, you know, 21 jewel automatic movements that he repairs and they'll work for 200 years and whatnot, which to me is, I mean, you know, absolutely fascinating, but it's a pretty specific market. And so, you know, we, we went with an affordable watch that's durable and, you know, all that, but it's, it's completely different. We always talk about kind of this, this generations of history meets innovation.
You know, we're, we're changing a little bit with what's going on in the world today and chasing that. So, yeah, I've got a close friend whose dad is actually a jeweler. And I know that his dad mainly made sort of custom made wedding rings and stuff like that, but now he's doing jewelry, but his stuff is primarily based for like celebrities and influencers. Oh, interesting.
So he had to shift what he was doing to match what the market was requesting. Yeah. Yeah, you got to. Yeah.
And there's, you know, there's so much competition that we've talked about how so many people are doing e-commerce based businesses and all that means that it's easier and easier to get involved with that, which means there's more and more competition. So you got to find your place and you're waiting to market and set yourself aside. And so, yeah, that's what we've done. Certainly, certainly.
All right. I would love to hear a story that you have from working with your parents and your grandparents at the watch shop. Any experience you've got? Yeah.
I'd be happy to. Biggest story. So my grandfather has his workbench and he has this, it's a standup desk so that he could be, you know, standing on his feet and working and then he has this drawer that's about waist level that would pull out. He'd pull out maybe, you know, eight inches as he's working on his desk and he's doing whatever.
Whether it's, you know, jewelry or making a ring, you know, repairing a watch, he would do it right there and pull this drawer out so that, you know, he's working with these teeny little microscopic pieces with a watch or, you know, he's teeny half a millimeter diameter gemstones, you know, I mean, just teeny little pieces. Yeah. You know, this drawer is like, you know, a net basically, it would catch it all and contain it. So any time if I was sick or I had the day off of school and my mom would take me to work, that was my job was I'd dig through that little drawer and he had tools in there and stuff.
So it's almost like treasure hunting, like in a very real sense, you know what I mean? Like I'm this little kid and here I am with these little tweezers and he gave me these goggles that would magnify things and I thought those on and digging through this drawer looking for like little diamonds that he's dropped or little flecks of gold that have shaved off from, you know, rings or whatever. And man, I love that. I love sitting underneath him or if something would fall, he'd call me over and he'd go work on something else until I found it.
And I just, yeah. I mean, like I said, it was like treasure hunting and that's probably my best memory there. But aside from that, like more along the lines of watchmaking, just watching him work on these teeny, teeny little movements and with all these little parts, like keeping it all together and how that works, it's pretty impressive. You know, watch movement is like a work of art.
So I would say those are kind of, that's what stands out to me. And I love that. And growing up for me, my dad actually would take his watches into a watch repair guy who was based in like the Rite Aid in our town. And my dad had a bunch of watches from his dad, I think also his grandfather, but they needed to be repaired every now and then.
Yeah. Yeah. And it's those things will run forever, but you know, the wheels need lubrication and when a part wears out and needs to be changed. Yeah.
So it's, they're really, it's a cool, it's a cool profession. And I've been blessed to be able to see a little bit of that with my grandpa working on those. That's awesome. I love how there's a legacy in your family of that.
Yeah. You know, it's that those generations of family legacy, it's kind of like, you know, how can you not have a passion for something like that when it's been in your family for so long. So it's just kind of a natural step for me and a lot of work to get involved. But yeah, a natural step for sure.
Excellent. All right. So you got part with your school. You said, I don't want to be a dentist.
Don't want to be working in a two inch square space for my life. I think years said, I want to be an entrepreneur and I want to do something similar to what my family's been doing for a long time. I know you said you met a key person who ran operations on an incubator and that person kind of helped you along the way and also was your co-founder to my knowledge. That's right.
Yeah. His name's Ryan Krantz. He's, he's awesome. He's one of my best friends.
He's been friends for years. We were good friends in high school and skied and biked and all that together. And so I, when I started, you know, thinking, Hey, watches would be cool. We had this, this, uh, this family history on my side and he's working for a company that, yeah, exactly.
They're basically an incubator for startups. Anything that you need done. You know, they, they get it done. And so he had a lot of experience.
He had experience with manufacturing and had relationships overseas with manufacturing. And so we, you know, it's just a natural thing. Again, where we were really good friends and here I have this entrepreneurship spirit. He has this entrepreneurship spirit and there's this natural step of a product to pursue.
And I kind of had the know how in the watch industry and the connections there and he had the know how in the incubator startup industry. And so it was, it was just, it was a perfect relationship. He always here, uh, don't do business with friends, but, you know, if, if it's the right friend and you work together and we do, we have a really good relationship where he can, he can give me criticism and, you know, like I'm from a good friend, I appreciate it and vice versa. Like it just worked out really well for us.
So. Yeah. I think that's a difficult thing that most startups have to go through. And I personally gone through it several times where picking the right co-founders is a big piece and moving forward.
Yeah. It is. And having gone that direction and knowing what it takes there, I have a bunch of really good friends who I could never be involved with a business with, you know, I just, I just couldn't do it. You know, this is a relationship I have that for whatever reason really, really worked and we work well together.
So. Yeah. The times I've had good co-founders, it's, I always feel like that person gets it. You know, it's going on.
I don't have to think about anything. It's like, they get it. We're going forward. Yeah.
Exactly. And we, you know, we each have our individual strengths that might be a weakness of the other. And it's a good relationship. Certainly, certainly.
All right. So you guys met? Well, you guys knew each other for a long time, but you sort of realized, Hey, there's some sort of chemistry here that we can move forward with. What was the next step you guys took towards creating Luna where, because I imagine there was some conversation.
Should we go this way? Should we go this way? What was the storyline there? Yeah, tons of conversations.
And we both followed the crowdfunding industry, which, you know, we eventually launched our product on crowdfunding. So we did a lot of research on what types of products did well. And we thought a lot about how we're going to, you know, market for a crowdfunding campaign and the type of product that would do well with coming across someone's Facebook feed. And of course, we talked a lot about watches.
And that was, you know, when we, when I went to Ryan or, you know, we had this conversation, watches weren't a for sure thing. We went through a bunch of different products. We did a bunch of research on what products do well on crowdfunding. And ultimately, we thought, hey, we have, you know, a lot of knowledge in the watch industry.
We have a lot of help there. Why don't we go that route? And so then, you know, we kind of narrowed it down to what they were doing watches. And then from there, there was a bunch of different directions we could take.
We're both really into the outdoor sports industry. And so, you know, an active watch was something we thought about. We thought about in a really high end automatic movements or mechanical movements that my grandfather knows a lot about. And ultimately, you know, what we wanted was a niche product that a lot of people hadn't heard of.
Now, of course, we weren't the very first to come up with a wood watch, but a wood case with a weather band was something that was a bit more unique. Again, we weren't the first, but most people didn't know that that was a thing. And so we landed on that, I think, you know, niche products ended really well on crowdfunding and we wanted it to be at a price point that would appeal to people. And so it's just kind of a process of elimination, I guess, and mixed with a lot of research on what does well and what we wanted to work with.
So that's how we landed on wood watches. Interesting. Interesting. So you landed on wood watches.
What did you do next? Did you source all the product? Were you designing the product? What happened next in that chain of events?
We did a ton of research on different wood watches. We bought a bunch of different kinds. We went and tried a bunch of different kinds on. And when we originally landed on wood watches, we thought we would probably do wood watches with a linked wooden band, where the entire thing is wood, but those watches with those linked wooden bands, it felt really fragile, it felt like all of the pressure on your watch was on the band.
And so that would be the first thing to fail and it would lead to warranty issues and what not. So we started thinking, well, why don't we just get our favorite watches or minimalist-type fashion watches with a weather band? And we thought, why don't we basically pattern this out after a watch that's already popular that's made in steel, and we'll do the same thing with wood with a nice weather band. And so that was kind of step number one, okay, that's the direction we wanted to take.
Then it was to the drawing board. I have a little bit of experience in Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator. And so we just kind of hit the drawing board and we mocked up some designs. It just purely cosmetic, what we wanted it to look like we didn't mess around with dimensions too much.
And at that point, we got exactly what we wanted as far as a look went. And then we worked a lot with my grandfather on the dimensions side of things, what, you know, what are typical or most popular size watches for men and women. And then we kind of took those drawings and made 3D models and basically decided, okay, this is exactly the dimensions and the diameter of the case and the size of the band and all that. So that would be a watch that was popular with people.
And then we just started sourcing manufacturers and testing different ones and sampling products from different manufacturers to see who did good work and who didn't, who was good at communicating and who wasn't. And that's a tough process. You know? You actually have a bunch of questions regarding this entire piece right here.
Yeah. It's not easy. All right. So I'd say the two questions that are coming to my head because this is a huge barrier for a lot of people who want to do something like this because they feel like it's possibly a huge upfront cost to source stuff from China or something like that when really it's not that much if you're crafty with it.
Let's talk a little bit about sort of creating the designs and not necessarily in the aesthetic side of it creating a design that could be manufactured. What do you do to create a design that could be manufactured? So the first thing, you know, when you think about that as a CAD design and to be honest, we didn't mess with that a whole lot. And the only reason we didn't is because I, neither I or my friend Ryan, had any experience with CAD designs.
So what we did do though is we found a manufacturer that made metal watches already and we found one that we liked and basically we found one that we liked that went along with these, you know, 3D designs that we had done in the cosmetic designs we had done. And we basically said we want this and would, you know? It was really simple. That's something anyone with any know-how could do, right?
It's like, you're kind of basically saying to your manufacturer, I need you to make this for me. And those manufacturers want your business. You know, they're okay to do some R&D work to make sure it is how you want it. If you find the right one, right?
You can find one that's just like not going to work with you or not able to work with you. But that was the majority of what we did was found other things in the market that we wanted and patterned our watches off of those. No need to reinvent the wheel. Right.
So you found a design that you like and you said, well, can you guys do this in wood? Right. And we altered it just a little bit. But that was something that was simple to do.
We changed this angle a little bit. And we wanted, for example, on one of our watches where the pin sits in to hold the band, we changed that width quite a bit because obviously steel is going to be a lot more durable than wood. So we made some simple alterations, but that was as simple as saying, hey, this, you know, this is two millimeters and we want it five or whatever else. And that was something they were able to do fairly quickly.
And then we tested and see if we like that. So it's a lot of back and forth on that kind of thing. But yeah, it was something that we found, we ended up, you know, after trial and error found a really good manufacturer that was willing to work with us and be patient with all the changes and things like that. Was this manufacturer found through Alibaba or some alternative resource?
It wasn't. It was actually found. So again, my friend had that incubator position and that's with that incubator startup and they had a relationship with a sourcing company that would find a manufacturer overseas. So that's actually how we found them.
But they are, they do advertise their services on Alibaba. And on that topic, there's a lot of, you know, really negative ideas about finding manufacturers on Alibaba. But the reality of it is if it's a good manufacturer, they're going to be on there too. There's just a lot of crappy ones on there.
Oh yeah. I mean, like, if you just go on and work with the first one, it's probably, you know, chances are it's not going to work out well for you. But if you're willing to take some time, you know, Alibaba is a great resource for people who don't have any other connections, you know, you can find really good sources on Alibaba. I've heard these actually become a little bit more refined since they went public.
Yeah. And it's true. Yeah. And it's been around long enough that, you know, it's good that they have basically a review type platform where these manufacturers get reviewed and you can tell how long they've been around.
And so that's kind of sifted out of the bad and brought in, you know, a lot of good. So. All right. So what was possibly the overall upfront investment to get you guys to a point where you had your MVP?
Yeah, not much, which was, which was amazing. I mean, honestly, we, we put in a lot of sweat equity, but as far as actual money, we paid for a couple rounds of samples and each one costs a few hundred bucks. We had eight watches and we got more than that to begin with, but we narrowed it down to eight watches pretty quick. So, you know, it was maybe each sample per watch was maybe 50 bucks a watch and we did that several times.
So all in just for prototypes and samples, I mean, less than a thousand dollars, it really, it really wasn't much. We did crowdfunding. So I did, I do a little bit of photography. I did in high school.
And so I did all of our photography, I did our videography for our video and all of that. So we did it really, really inexpensive. And there's very little upfront investment. But you got to do it the right way to get that low investment upfront.
Yeah, you do. I mean, it's a lot easier to pay someone to do photography and video and just not have to work with it. Not have to work with it. But at that time, I had time.
I didn't have money. So that's, that's, you know, we made it happen. I love this about entrepreneurs. I know one of my recent clients I picked up for my small web and mobile and company needed some design work.
And she couldn't pay for it. And I said, well, I'll just do it. And I sent it back to her. She's like, this is as good as my regular designer.
Well, I said, well, I've had to learn because sometimes I don't have a designer I can go to. Right. Oh, yeah. A lot of the skills that I developed or that my partner Ryan's developed is just completely based out of necessity.
And, you know, there's the Google university that's as good as anything else you can get a YouTube tutorial, you know, whatever it takes, that's a lot of like the things that we had to do on Adobe Illustrator Photoshop for things I hadn't done before. And so you watch a quick YouTube tutorial and you know, you follow us up by step and you get done and send it to your manufacturer and it works. So yeah, it's just, it's purely based out of necessity, you do what you have to do. I forget who the entrepreneur was that I recently heard say this, but he said, some of the best entrepreneurs are the best Googlers.
Yeah. It's definitely true. That is exactly true. Yeah.
I send a lot of time on Google. Yeah. I've, I've, what is it? I've learned basic coding online.
I've learned basic design work. I'm learning film stuff right now. I'm learning social media marketing. There's so much other you can learn that they don't teach you in school.
That's for sure. Oh, there's so many resources that yeah, and you're right. I'm in the entrepreneurship program at the University of Utah and I learned a lot of great things there for sure. But I mean, I would say 90% of the things that I have to do at work with this startup is not something I've learned there.
It's something I've had to learn online through my own research. So you definitely, you definitely get good at googling. Oh, for sure. For sure.
And I love that sort of a, I know I'm still going to school right now and I have time so I'm like, man, I can learn this stuff, you know, on my own, sitting at home. I can go back and on the curves. No problem at home on a YouTube video. Way better than this teacher's teaching it right now.
Exactly. Well, and it's targeted learning too. You know, I mean, you're not, you have to learn everything I can do in school. Just have had a test.
What you need to do. What you need to do. And I really enjoy that side of learning, you know, it's just, it's efficient. You learn exactly what needs to be done.
Exactly. Exactly. I always, um, still for this day and I'm finishing the final stretch of school. I always challenge my teachers on the first day.
Well, what, what percentage of your class is actually going to, what would I say like in a job interview from your class? I like that. Yeah. I don't know.
Yeah. So it's, it's making sure that they're up to date on their criteria because a lot of them, I always feel like school is sort of standardized, but they go, okay, well, I need to get these x, y, z points out and then give them a multiple choice test on those x, y, z points. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
All right. Let's, let's sort of move down the line a little bit more here. You guys decided to, um, you outsource everything. If you get out the designs, the, a little bit of the branding, it sounds like you got that all lined up.
You had your photos done. What did you do next? Did you just immediately launch? Did you build a community?
What was going on then? Yeah. We decided to, we built our, our prototype and got our first round of sample. This was early in 2014, and so we basically had what we needed in early 2014 to launch on, on crowdfunding, but we, we were grateful we had some friends that had some experience with crowdfunding and we did enough research with other crowdfunding projects that we wanted to make sure when we launched that it was a success, right?
We wanted them, we wanted to do whatever needed to happen before we launched to completely mitigate any type of risk that came along with crowdfunding. And crowdfunding already, you know, like a lot of your risk is out of the way. You're able to, to test the market a little bit and see if you have a viable product before you make a huge production run. But we just wanted, you know, we wanted to make the most of it.
So we decided we were going to take an entire year to build social media accounts, to build an email list so that we could do effective retargeting and, you know, basically just get everything ready to go. And so we spread the word. We got a lot of PR done and especially PR and kind of that last month where we had a date and we were going to launch. And so, yeah, we had a landing page on our website, we built social media accounts and targeted people that were kind of our target market where the people that were most likely to buy our products.
And that was, you know, that was pretty simple. We just, we looked at the type of people we did a lot of surveying and we looked at the type of people that were going to be buying our watches and then we saw who those types of people were following on Instagram or Facebook. And then we, you know, we target those people as following and, and hoped of then liking what they see and they'll submit their email on our website so that we can email them on launch day. And that, you know, completely made our campaign.
So. All right. I got a question regarding that. How did you measure whether or not this audience would be receptive to this product?
And I imagine a big portion of it is just a guess, you know, a hope. But was there anything that you sort of looked at specifically to make sure that they would buy the product? Yeah. Definitely there was.
And you're right. A lot of it was a hope, but you were able to adjust as you went. I'll give you an example. We went after basically the social media influencers and we thought, okay, our watches is a wooden watch.
So it's going to respond well to the outdoor community who like to get out and experience nature, right? So we thought there's one target. And then there's the fashion industry of people that just like watches. They like it as an accessory that goes along and kind of completes their outfit, right?
So, so we went after two completely different markets and at the beginning and just like scaling an ad campaign, we scaled our social media marketing campaign and you know, we kind of, we went after the followers of this outdoor ambassador and then we went after the followers of this fashion ambassador and you know, this fashion and outdoor social influencer. And we saw which ones converted well, meaning which ones actually submitted their emails and which ones followed us from those accounts. And we just, we focused our efforts on what was more efficient and we did that, you know, over and over and over again. And so we found out who was, you know, who was responding well and who wasn't and it turned out our market was the people that were more interested was the outdoor community.
And that also helped us along with our Kickstarter and our video and things like that. So that was an invaluable opportunity and time that we spent to make sure that we did our Kickstarter right. Mm hmm. Definitely, definitely.
I'm kind of curious to know a little bit more in depth about where you guys just going on Instagram searching hashtag or just going through let's say X influencers, current followers and just following them all back and liking a handful of their things. What was the, the, the nitty gritty of that strategy? Yeah. So at first it was completely just manual labor going into different accounts and finding out, you know, so basically you're looking at a, at a outdoor influencer's following and you're commenting on their picture or you're liking their picture and hopes of them seeing the comment or seeing the like and thinking, Hey, who is this?
I don't know who that is. They open our profile. See our watches, see the types of content we post and they think, Hey, that, you know, I like that. And we get a follow out of that or they go to our website and they see our landing page and watch our, watch our crowdfunding video and they submit their email.
Right. So that was the beginning. We also use a service that's kind of, and Instagram's changed a lot. They have new terms and policies that doesn't work the same way it used to.
And that, that process of kind of attacking other people's followers is kind of played out. I'm sure on your social media accounts, you get deep random people liking your pictures all the time. And that's what it is. So at the time, it was kind of a new thing that, you know, that, that hadn't really been happening.
And so it was unique and it worked really well, but it just, it doesn't work as well anymore. But we use this thing called Instagram at the time. It was a brand new thing. And we actually were one of the first couple to sign up.
So we got some free time on it. And that was just a program that would do that automatically. So you can type in a follower, you want to like their followers pictures and or you can type in a hashtag and you want to tell anyone that use that hashtag, you'd like their picture. So it was all, it was all automated.
We don't use that anymore just because it's, it's changed so much that it's not as effective. I've heard that there's a handful of services that do that, but you got to be cautious with it because to my knowledge, Instagram tracks what's going on and see that it's an actual bot doing it. Meaning that the pace of it's too fast. They flag your account.
Yeah, definitely. And that's, and that was another thing that's come about in the last little, I mean, that's been around for a long time. It's Instagram flagging those accounts, but they crack down on it a lot and you know, you do have to be careful. So we, we do it more just kind of grassroots style.
We have, you know, we'll like pictures here and there and things like that. Yeah. I think the main point possibly out of doing this is that you got to understand that social media is social. So get on these channels and talk to the influencers and be a participant and then it's a lot easier to sort of break that barrier.
Exactly. Yeah. If you're active on your social media accounts and which we, you know, for that first year, we were really, really active and people responded well to that. Definitely.
Definitely. All right. So another side question within this in working with influencers, how did you structure the contracts that deals with them? Yeah.
It was pretty simple. Really. We, a lot of them were people that we, it was kind of friends of friends and friends, you know, however, we had a contact to them and a lot of influencers charge money for post, especially if they have significant followings. And we just didn't have a budget for that at the time, my, my, uh, business partner now, who's graduated by the time he was in school, I was in school.
We were both about ready to get married. And you know, we just, we just did not have a budget to go around paying these people. So we just kind of worked with any relationship we had and basically asked favors from people and the ones that were willing, you know, there's, there's a lot of people willing to help startups, you know, they'd like to be involved with this new and exciting thing and they want to help them grow you at a can and if that's posting a picture, then that's all it is. So we worked with relationships as much as we could.
And then we just would basically cold email people and send emails and say, Hey, we have this new exciting product. We're excited about, we love to get you on board, you know, when we have, and this was, this was a hard thing with doing crowdfunding is we didn't have a lot of product to send people. It's a lot easier to get people to post if you can send them a watch, they're going to take a picture with it and post that. And so that was a big barrier for us, but we just, we know a lot of people and we found people that would be willing to do it.
And we promised them, you know, several watches once our production ran and, and it was really, really pretty simple and pretty low key as far, you know, we didn't have any serious contracts because most of the people we had relationships with and we also wanted to keep it light with them. Now, now though we do have kind of more of a contract based collaborate collaboration that we do with people that, you know, we, you will post this at this time and, you know, in exchange we'll do this and so it's, it's evolved a little bit now. Yeah. Yeah.
That makes sense. And I love how the, the scrappy approach you guys took where it's like, if they asked you saying, Hey, it's going to cost a hundred bucks, you're like, we don't have a hundred bucks. We can just send you a free product when it comes out. Is that okay?
Yeah. Exactly. We're fine with that. Yeah.
And other people said no, I don't do that. So, you know, you probably have to contact three to get one, but they work. Yeah. I know you mentioned it sort of through friends, but was there any network that you'd have to do any chance?
Not at the time. I mean, network aside from our, kind of our, our immediate social relationships with friends, but a lot of, a lot of these people, you know, we're just, we live in a place where there's a lot of social influencers and yeah, tons and you know, there's a kind of Utah Valley where there's a big startup area and we have a lot of friends there on, on insult wake, but have tons of friends in Utah Valley and know enough people there that they know, you know, whatever their startups, there's influencers and things like that. So really we just, we kind of put the word out there that we were launching. We had a lot of help from people that, you know, we, we put out dealers on, on our, our personal accounts on Facebook and hey, if you know anyone, you know, we'd love to work with them and we got a lot of referrals based off that.
And then a lot of, a lot of the rest was just getting, getting into Instagram and, um, searching hashtags and finding people that we felt like their followers would respond well with our products. Interesting. So just took a lot of time. I love that approach that you just sit down with your phone and explore.
Yeah. I mean, seriously, that's all it is. Yeah. Awesome.
All right. Let's get a little bit more on your Kickstarter campaign and well, actually, before we do that, let's talk a little bit more about your community building. Is there anything else that was really unique at that time? Because you guys had a certain number of followers, all this kind of stuff before you launched the Kickstarter that kind of shifted in, you go go, but what was possibly the, the goal of doing that?
We just, so everything about crowdfunding is get funded as quickly as possible. So on Kickstarter, there's this little bar underneath your video that shows how close you are to needing your goal, right? So if, if your goal is 10,000 and you're at five, that little green bar is halfway there. And the quicker that little green bar can get to 100%, I mean, your campaign will just exponentially increase the success.
So our goal was all of this effort that we were going to put into the year was we wanted to get funded on day one. And that's kind of like the rule of your fund is you get funded on day one and then you roll with that momentum throughout your campaign and increase it. So we put in all this effort and then we get a last, a last kind of within the last month, last ditch push where we made this simple little wood burned sign that says, hashtag support the wood, right? So it kind of, it rings well with people.
It's a little bit funny, but it sticks with people. So yeah, we did this last ditch push and we just went to all of these social influencers that we had relationships with and all of our friends and family. And we went over there, we physically handed them a watch, we had them put it on, we had them hold that sign and we took a picture and said, we need you to post this on April 14th, which is our launch day. And at this time, and you know, it'll really, really help us out and people were totally willing to do that.
So we got the pictures, we sent it to them that day as a reminder, hey, if you could post this, you know, we sent them a reminder text before. And anyway, so that was a kind of a last ditch thing. We had a few hundred people and some of those having, you know, significant followings post that all at once. And that was ended up being a brilliant marketing social media campaign that we did because not only is it, you know, people posting for you that they also had their link and tag you, but as people are scrolling down a feed, they see their friend holding a sign or an influencer that they respect, calling this sign and think, wait, what is that one, learn more about that?
So it's part curiosity and that did that one a long ways for us. Sort of creating like a micro virality around what you're doing that day. Exactly. Yeah.
Yeah. That's exactly what it was. I think that's a piece that some people don't understand that you can have sort of a big uptick in what you're doing. It's something like that, that's highly shareable, highly likable and highly attention grabbing.
Yeah. Exactly. And that's exactly what it was. It's definitely grab people's attention.
And you know, our personal outreach, like I have a group of friends, my good friend Ryan's a year older than me in school. So he has a group of friends. And you know, if enough people post and you see it once, you might pass it up. But if you see it again from a different friend, you know, there's almost no way you're not going to check, you know, look into that.
So yeah, it did. It went really well for us. Awesome. All right.
It makes me want to do something different with one of my clients that we're planning for social media outreach. But let's talk about your Kickstarter campaign. You launched right around that same time, your Kickstarter, just so you had all that traffic coming at the same time. And I understand that getting that big chunk of funding right away probably benefits you in Kickstarter because they give you front page kind of stuff, but also that you are more likely to get funded if you get like a third of it done within the first few days.
Yeah. Exactly. Let's talk about that whole experience. Yeah.
So Kickstarter was very bittersweet and I'll dive into that a little bit. I'll talk about it in two periods. The first two weeks and then after two weeks and that kind of was where it gets dark. So the first two weeks, we, you know, day one, we posted that, we ended up getting funded in five hours, which was great for us.
And we, so we set our goal at $10,000, which was the bare, you know, like that was less than what we needed to make our first order. So really we, you know, our first order, we had to hit these minimum order quantities for each of the watches and it would have been just over $15,000 just for the watches. And then we've got to ship them on top of that, you know, so we would have been out close to the $17,000, $18,000 after shipping and other expenses. And we decided to put our goal at $10,000 because of just how important it is to hit that funding goal early.
But that was a risk on our part because if we got funded at $10,001, then we would have had to be, you know, eight grand or so out of pocket to actually make it happen. But so, you know, it's a little risky on our part, but we ended up putting our goal at 10,000, which, you know, I'm glad we did it. It ended up not making a difference because we, you know, we cleared that mark of breaking even. But, but that was, that was a good step for us.
And we also, we worked a little bit with a crowdfunding marketing agency called Funded Today. And they helped us, basically, we, they helped us optimize our Facebook ads and make sure that we need, you know, we're making the most of that and crowdfunding, especially when a campaign does well, like it's really time intensive. I had no idea how much time would be dedicated to just finding the comments and, you know, and changing up things with your Facebook ads and all that. So they, they were able to kind of handle our Facebook ads while we were going and scale them and optimize them so that we could focus on other things.
So that was great. And then, you know, we, we got to the point where we were doing 60,000 in sales a day on Kickstarter and that, you know, 200%, 400% funded, 1000% funded just, you know, kept climbing. And I, you know, I, I came from, I'm a full-time student, you know, I didn't, I didn't come from money and all of a sudden we're, I started to say that within two weeks we're doing 60,000 days in sales. And, you know, I was just like, I was on cloud and I'm like, this is great.
Like this is the best thing that I've ever experienced. And then, and then two weeks into it, Kickstarter pulled the plug on our campaign and it just went like completely dark. They suspended our campaign, which, you know, there's a whole, there's a whole reason behind that that was, that was unfortunate. And basically, we had designed these watches a whole year in advance where we had never seen anything quite like what we had done.
But Kickstarter has this, this policy, it's in their terms that you can't resell an existing product. So fast forward a year from when we designed them. Now we've been marketing this for a long time and that industry has evolved a bit and changed a bit. And so now you start seeing watches that are similar to what we've designed pop up, you know, around with different companies and on Alibaba.
And a lot of the people that saw our campaign were concerned that we were just buying these watches straight from Alibaba and, you know, putting our brand on and selling them as our own, which wasn't the case. But of course, you know, you can see how people might think that. And without, you know, and so people started commenting, hey, it looks like you're just buying these on how we bought what was to deal with that and we would respond and give them, you know, answers according to exactly how it happened. And of course, it's our word against theirs.
And without, oh, and on top of that, we, you know, Kickstarter and said, Hey, this is a concern that we have. We know that this is in your terms. We have all the original design files that, you know, that are dated well over a year ago. We have conversations with our manufacturer that show that these are unique designs and whatnot.
You know, whatever, whatever needs to be done, if you have any concerns with this, let us know. We'll clear it up. Yeah. And you know, that was, that was maybe a week into it that we started getting comments like that.
And I was super frustrating and, you know, there's a ton of different levels and we had at that point raised a little over $400,000 in two weeks and, and all that goes away. You know, you don't, you don't get those customers that had already contributed. All of that is just gone, you know, I imagine that was a very dark day to go, well, you're on top nine with half a million in funding and then it's gone. Yeah.
And I mean, I hear about highs and lows and entrepreneurship like that. I mean, for me, that was my very first experience with just pure heart rate and, and you're right. I mean, I was things were going so well and everything was fun. Like responding to these comments was fun and watching that little ticker raise every few minutes was really fun.
And then all of a sudden I'm just like, oh, like that whole world thing crashing down and it was just, it was like a nightmare that you just never wake up from. And it's so interesting. You guys were like communicating with Kickstarter and they weren't really sending you anything back. It sounds like nothing.
Nothing. Nothing is. I, we did, it's tough because Kickstarter in the world of crowdfunding is by far the industry leader and, and crowdfunding and Kickstarter are almost interchangeable words when people think of crowdfunding, they think of Kickstarter or when people think of Kickstarter, they think of crowdfunding and they've built a really, really great community of great people that, you know, want to support these companies, but their whole platform is based on these contributors and these people that want to support these campaigns. And that's where the majority from what I've seen, their customer support goes to that.
And, you know, when project, when project creators have issues, such as ours, there's, there's really very little help on there and they're terrible at course, wanting to email and they don't have a contact line, you know, it's just, we, we love their platform, but it's, you know, we had a really bad experience with their customer support. So. Sounds like trying to contact the IRS. Yeah, exactly.
That's a good way. It is. Yeah. That was really frustrating.
So now we, we did launch on Kickstarter, we had, you know, and another frustrating thing is the only way that you can communicate with a contributor through Kickstarter is through their platform. For the privacy of their customers, you don't get any contact information, you know, you don't get addresses, you don't get emails, you don't get phone numbers, any of that until after the campaign is successfully funded. So we had no way, you know, they shut down correspondence. We had, you know, several thousand backers and we couldn't contact them and let them know what was going on.
Kickstarter sent them an email that said, hey, here's what's going on, but you know, when a mass email like that could spend, sent out the large majority of those emails went straight to people's sam folders. So on top of us, you know, just kind of all of that success getting ripped away from our fingers, we had no way to reach out to these people that had supported us. And a lot of people had no idea what happened, they just see that our campaign suspended. So we started getting hundreds and hundreds of emails a day.
And so, and just, you know, crazy. And it's just, you know, my good friend Ryan and I, trying to respond to these emails and explain what's going on. But, and in the midst of all that, we were able to, you know, within a couple hours, we switched our campaign over to Indiegogo. We emailed Indiegogo the situation and actually within an hour of our email, we got a call from them.
They asked for some information about our original designs because they have the same term as, you know, as Kickstarter to not reselling existing products. And, you know, within an hour, we were able to have that whole concern completely cleared up, which we could have done with Kickstarter had they reached out to us in the first place. I mean, our experience working with Indiegogo support was just night and day, like hats off to them. They do a really good job for their creators.
That's awesome. And I wonder if that's not the first radio they've had with that before. I'm sure it's not. Yeah.
I mean, we looked into a little bit. There's been a lot of pretty high level campaigns that were shut down out of nowhere by Kickstarter that went to Indiegogo. And so I think they're right. I think they do deal with that a little bit.
Well, props to Indiegogo for going, hey, guys, this is an opportunity. Exactly. Yeah. Awesome.
Awesome. All right. So you guys rocked it on Indiegogo, it sounds like. Well, you rocked it on Kickstarter big time, but then you had to shift platforms.
What was sort of the, was that like an aha moment to switch over or was it a like, how did you come to that conclusion that you need to change gears? You researched. Yeah. Yeah.
We researched both platforms and never, I wouldn't say that at the beginning we considered Indiegogo. We knew it was an option, but Kickstarter is just so much more well-known and campaigns tend to do better on Kickstarter. So, you know, but we didn't know that it was there and it was a resource and a lot of people after the Kickstarter campaigns will do Indiegogo in demand, which is basically kind of the next step in crowdfunding. So that's kind of a transition that we plan to make after our Kickstarter campaign anyways.
Okay. Basically, what in demand is is it lets you continue to take pre-orders between the time that you've been funded and you fulfill those items or, you know, as long as you want, you can say on Indiegogo in demand. That's right. So that was hard for them.
Yeah, it is. And exactly that, you know, they found a way to kind of to feed off of Kickstarter success and make it their own. Yeah. So that was in the plan.
KeyCommerce for them. It's basically a target market that it's a no-brainer to go to Indiegogo at some point. So that was in the plans. We had already planned on that and, you know, it kind of came out of the blue, but we worked really hard in those couple of hours to basically switch our whole entire story and video and everything over there.
We had to create new perks or, you know, new pledges for Indiegogo and ended up, you know, we had a really good experience with Indiegogo. We had a successful campaign over there with Kickstarter, with what we were doing in the momentum we had. We were projecting to do well over a million dollars in sales and on Indiegogo, we ended, you know, we're at like 350,000, which is way more successful. Again, we were concerned about reaching $10,000, right, reaching 18.
So completely do our expectations out of the water, but it's all because, you know, we put a lot of work into pre-campaign and during the campaign. So we didn't do as well as we would have on Kickstarter, but, you know, it did, it did completely blow away our expectations still. And so. Interesting.
And I love the sort of go-getter attitude of what we're just going to shift platforms and make this happen. Yeah. Yeah. And we were going to make that happen.
I, you know, advice that you often hear in entrepreneurship world is like, don't be afraid to fail, right? You hear that all the time. I take risks. But in my opinion, that's terrible advice.
Like, if I think that's why so many businesses fail is because people aren't afraid to fail and they don't do what's necessary to not fail. Now, that being said, of course, like you have to take risks, but I think for us, we were so nervous about not being funded that we did any part like we researched like crazy what you need to do to not fail or what you need to do to be successful. And we did everything that we possibly could so that, you know, we were scared to death to fail. And I think, you know, I think there's a healthy level of fear, it can't be so much not trying to first place, right?
And I get that that's the point of like, don't be afraid to fail, but anyways, that's what, that's kind of what we had. So all of a sudden, I mean, literally we failed, right? We started a campaign and it got shut down, like literally we failed, but we were so against that that it was just, you know, within, we just got working and we got it back up and ended up being successful. Yeah.
And when anyone asked me about failure or about feeling fear, I thought that's a good thing. That's going to motivate you. Exactly. If you don't have any fear, then you're probably doing something wrong.
Exactly. That's exactly right. And yeah, you're right. I mean, fear is definitely a motivator.
And I think there's, like I said, a healthy level of fear and stress that kind of invokes a sense of urgency. Awesome. All right. So you guys have this big boom, bang kickstarter slash, you know, go experience, walk me through what happened after that, because you guys had one fulfillment platform that's different than what you guys are currently using now and maybe some of the reasons why you shifted.
Yeah. We, our first order with our manufacturer was right around 10,000 units. And we had, so we didn't want to change our fulfillment day. So when you, when you send a Kickstarter, you have like a 30 or 40 or whatever day campaign.
And then once you have that campaign, there's a two week period before you actually get the funds for it. So, you know, you're looking at a month and a half, two months before you can even place the order. So when you launch your campaign, you say, you know, estimated delivery day of this. And we didn't want to change that because we had all of these people that were expecting to get their watches then, even though we got set back two weeks by Kickstarter.
So basically, the reason I say that is by the time we finally got our watches, like it was crunch time, we had to get those out immediately so that we could make that deadline and keep our customers happy. So we did a lot of research and we ended up doing a third party fulfillment company that that's what they specialize in. They had a huge warehouse. They have a relationship with shipping companies.
And so we brought all of our 10,000 watches down there and all that inventory was housed there and they were shipping and they were able to get those, you know, 8,000 watches out within a day and a half. And that's just something, there's no way, you know, we would have taken us weeks to do that. Really, really hard work. So, so that was, that was a really good move for us is doing that.