00:00:00:00 - 00:00:26:16

My buddy was the head of marketing for CrossFit and he's like, dude, when I travel around to gyms, there's there's at least like 2 to 5 people in every gym that has your bag. It's pretty wild. And so they saw this like organic, upright thing. And when it came time for them to look at adding in some additional sponsors around, like, you know, the official bag, the official chalk, the official weight belt, like all of those things, we were the first call because they're like, we see this organically rising up and clearly people really like it and we want to work with the best.

00:00:26:16 - 00:00:49:00

And so all the other ones, like with athletes and whatnot, have been similar, where it's very organic. They reach out to us, they're like, hey, this bag is sick. Like, hey, we'd love to see anyone do mine. Just like creating a video or just like showing us out or something. We need to ask because we have so much inbound now because it's I mean, it's it's every week we have tens of high level people asking, and we have people with millions of followers that are like, I will happily create a video for you.

00:00:49:01 - 00:01:08:24

You can use it in ads like, don't worry about it. And so then when someone with like, you know, 50,000 150,000 followers reaches out and they're like, hey, like, I'd love to check this out. I want $2,500 a post or like, I want that or I'm not going to post. We're just like, you know, sorry, we're out. We're at a place right now where we have so many high tier people reaching out and willing to post for free that we'd rather work with them, especially at our size.

00:01:08:24 - 00:01:27:15

Right? Like we don't exactly have that big of a budget to work with marketing. So we're in a really like, lucky special place. Like I recognize that regularly that like this is not common and really special to be in a place where like, we get really cool people to do stuff for us for free because they want to support us.

00:01:27:17 - 00:01:48:03

But yeah, man, how was, how was Mexico? What were you doing out in and in Osaka? You know. Yeah. Medical testing. Yeah. Yeah. A fair amount of medical. There's a music festival, a three day music festival that, they put on in the middle of the agave fields. That is pretty incredible. My friends have gone for a few years in a row, and they were like, all right, well, they're getting married this year.

00:01:48:03 - 00:02:05:08

That's like one of their favorite festivals. Like, let's bring a whole crew. So that's what we were doing. Warhawk is I've never been. It is gorgeous. Like it is really clean. It's super like rich with culture and art. And the food is incredible, like some of the best Mexican food I've ever had. Like, it was a really cool trip.

00:02:05:10 - 00:02:27:24

Were you in Oaxaca City or Puerto Escondido? Yeah, in Weehawken City. Yeah. I've never been either. I've always wanted to go there. It seems like the the fun part of Mexico, the Baja side is just totally different. Yeah. I love Mexico, though. It's it's great. Great point. Totally, totally different. Really. My brother's bachelor party, it was just, you know, nonstop.

00:02:27:24 - 00:02:54:11

Okay, a little debaucherous. Yeah, for sure. We didn't have, it wasn't coed. So. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, yeah. Everyone made it out alive. So that was. That's good, that's good. But, Caleb, it's good to have you on. I would love to, you know, talk about Haven's recent success. So last year, you guys finished the year, it sounded like at 2.2 mil and two, you know, how has Q1 been looking?

00:02:54:11 - 00:03:12:23

And, you know, I think we'd love to hear traction and how this year the perspective is different than, you know, 2023. Yeah for sure. Two one's looking all right. It's let's say January was a little slow, like kind of oddly, a lot of people are like, oh, you sell like fitness, like New Year, new me. It's got to be like a huge month.

00:03:12:23 - 00:03:34:06

And, you know, three years in a row, it it hasn't been a huge month. Like we definitely crush the holidays and then January has that little bit of pullback. Maybe it's a little bit less than what it would be because it is a fitness product. But usually February starts to ramp up and then March, we really start to ramp up.

00:03:34:08 - 00:03:51:17

Yeah. The year started good, year started strong. We, we have two containers of product coming. One, it's landing in a week. That product is completely sold out. That happened last week. And then we have another container landing end of April that should last us at least a couple of months. But overall, the outlook for 24 is really, really exciting for us.

00:03:51:17 - 00:04:12:02

We we have been building, a really strong foundation of connection with influencers, with, athletes, with community. And we just, a really big center for us is we just got net 90 terms with our factory, which for those that don't know, that means when we order the product, we don't have to pay for it.

00:04:12:02 - 00:04:32:13

And then when the product ships, from that moment, we have 90 days, until we have to pay it off, which gets us into what's called the negative cash conversion cycle. If you look that up, you'll see all sorts of articles about how Gymshark built $1 billion business off of off of this. And so basically, the product ships, we are able to pay for 90 days, which means it lands and we get to sell it, we get to make money on it.

00:04:32:13 - 00:04:50:24

We get to make way more money on it than what we owe the factory before we actually have to pay them. And it's, it's an absolute game changer. And so we see that, being a really pivotal moment for us this year. We've kind of been chasing our tails, like get product and stock sales velocity increases, we sell out, we're back on pre-sale.

00:04:51:03 - 00:05:10:09

And it's kind of this vicious cycle where we just never had enough capital, even with, inventory financing and things like that, to get enough product in. Because once product is in stock, it it just flies like our conversion rate. Triples are triples are just everything just goes through the roof. And so we've never been able to order enough.

00:05:10:09 - 00:05:29:10

And so having those payment terms is going to be we really see the ability to like five this year. Give us an idea just in terms of how your, you know, your cash flow actually works at the business. What our lead times on some of those, those different, on your products. And then it sounds like you're selling them right off, right out of the gate.

00:05:29:11 - 00:05:47:06

So, you know, what's your cash conversion cycle on? Like a typical unit? Yeah, less than 90 days. But give us, give us. Yeah. We have built a we've built a really good relationship with our factory over the last three years. We've gone through some some ups and downs. We've kind of been in it together and they've really believed in us.

00:05:47:06 - 00:06:06:13

And, have slowly given us a little bit better terms, you know, year over year. We initially started to having to pay like 50% when we placed the order, 50% when we shipped, which is really painful because you're just sending all of the cash you have out, and then waiting to sell it once it gets in. And we've been able to build this relationship and slowly get better terms.

00:06:06:15 - 00:06:21:21

It takes about four months right now to turnaround product from when we order to when it lands in our warehouse. It's like, it's a month to, kind of prepare. It's a month to get fabric and it's a month to manufacture. It's a month to ship. And with the terms, we'll be able to do what's called, like a blanket pillow.

00:06:21:21 - 00:06:42:18

So if we know we're going to be ordering 20,000 units over the next 6 to 8 months, they'll actually bring all of that fabric in right away. And then when we want to order, you know, 5000 units, 10,000 units at a time, it'll only they won't have to wait for the planning and the material purchasing. They'll have it in stock so that will shorten it from a four month cycle to about a three month cycle.

00:06:42:24 - 00:06:59:22

There's a couple other things that we might be able to do to shorten that even a little bit more, as we go along. But we'll, we'll at least cut it down by a month. And then we'll be regularly ordering in these tranches. We have this incredible ops team, called pelagic that used to run ops at Seed Probiotics.

00:06:59:22 - 00:07:18:14

And they, they've come on and they're, optimizing all of our logistics and operations, the forecasting, the ordering, like when, where, what, who, why and how of everything, which I up until now, I've been doing and I've just been managing and I don't really know how to do that. So we've made a few I've made a few mistakes and, I've learned a lot.

00:07:18:14 - 00:07:40:17

But this team, like, they just absolutely crash. And so we've got all of them. We've got like this 20 page spreadsheet with details on everything. And that's really going to help fine tune where we're going this year and allow us to grow, efficiently and effectively and with very little mistakes. So and so I'm, I'm assuming when you say you have a negative cash conversion cycle, it takes four months to get to to get product.

00:07:40:17 - 00:08:07:14

And you have a, a Po for, you know, first terms of whatever shipment it is and then is it landed when you're paying the, the the second invoice or how is that actually breaking down. Yeah. So currently we basically have like net 60 kind of net 30 for some, net 60 for some going forward in that 90 like it'll ship, it'll ship and then we will have to pay for it for 90 days.

00:08:07:14 - 00:08:24:21

So the current one that's landing right now, let's see. Container one is land. Okay. So are you. And when it ships, basically is what you're saying. Yeah. They invoice us when it ships, but we don't have to. It's not due for right now. It's not for like 60 days in the future. Not. It won't be due for 90 days.

00:08:24:23 - 00:08:49:06

Nice. Yeah. Yeah. And we have, like, we have like 40% net margins and so and we're, you know, we're moving hundreds of thousands of dollars a month. And so like, if we order, if we order a batch that costs us like 150, okay. And it lands, we're going to have that money net within a month. And so, we'll be we'll be flush, will be like ready to go.

00:08:49:06 - 00:09:05:22

So within, you know, 90 days, three months, we're like more than covered to be able to pay that off. Yeah. Understood. How have you been you know, tinkering and working with, presale. How has that been working as a strategy? It sounds like it's out of necessity. Yeah. But just to talk to us a little bit about that.

00:09:05:24 - 00:09:27:14

Yeah. It's not something I really recommend. I mean, it's, it's a, it's a pain in the ass to be able to be honest. There's so many little details that go into managing it. It's it's been out of 100% need, like, we have just been so scrappy building this company, just doing kind of anything and everything that we had to do to get it off the ground, to get it going, to keep going, to get some financing in, to do the pre-sale.

00:09:27:14 - 00:09:52:04

And, it works like it's functional, it's profitable. We're able to do even, on Facebook ad spend. We have profitable ads on a pre-sale, even when we listed in the title, hey, this is a pre-sale bag. It's not shipping until February. This current batch, we started selling in September. And so you're looking at like a six month timeline, which is really insane to look at a product in the market that's basically at the highest end of its category.

00:09:52:04 - 00:10:10:11

You know, it's $300 gym bag. And then to also say, hey, it's not going to be delivered for six months, and that's where you got to convert. On how are you getting people to convert on that? I'm just curious. I yeah, it's a hard sell, guys. It's a hard sell. It really comes down like yeah. No competitors in the space like.

00:10:10:13 - 00:10:27:00

Yeah. Yeah. It's product market fit. Like there's no other product out there like it. And when people see it, they want it. And they also see all of the influencers, the pro athletes, the incredible people that we're working with that give authentic reviews, like we're not paying people to say like this, you should get this bag. It's like they get this bag.

00:10:27:00 - 00:10:46:19

They're like, Holy, this is an incredible product. Like, y'all need to get it. Yeah, that's that organic. Partnership strategy. I mean, Chris and I were curious to, for the size of your business, the amount of, the amount of. I think organic support that you've had is is insane. And we talk to founders all the time.

00:10:46:19 - 00:11:16:14

I think a lot of people have a mentality where, like, they almost pigeonholed themselves into thinking they can lock partnerships that are going to take them to the next level, like almost thinking they're too small. You know, you look at your catalog of different athletes that you're working with that are supporting the business. Walk us through some of the ways that, you know, you've either been able to secure those partnerships or just get into the conversation that then results in, you know, a deal that's going to to really lift the brand and, and drive meaningful revenue.

00:11:16:18 - 00:11:35:16

Yeah. So one of our biggest ones was last year becoming the official bag of the CrossFit games. That was a paid opportunity. It was pretty expensive for us. We have built this foundation in CrossFit. And so working with a bunch of CrossFit athletes organically, working with a bunch of crossfitters like you start to see this bag pop up at all the gyms.

00:11:35:18 - 00:12:04:08

My buddy was the head of marketing for CrossFit, and he's I do when I travel around the gyms, there's there's at least like 2 to 5 people in every gym that has your bag. It's pretty wild. And so they saw this like organic uprising. And when it came time for them to look at adding in some additional sponsors around, like, you know, the official bag, the official chalk, the official weight belt, like all of those things, we were the first call because they're like, we see this organically rising up and clearly people really like it and we want to work with the best.

00:12:04:08 - 00:12:22:00

And so they give us a call. And that was the foundation to like building that relationship and which ultimately worked out great for us. Like we had a, the title of official gym bag. We had a licensing deal, we did a co-branded bag. We ultimately moved like 300 K worth of products, like net net, we came out on top.

00:12:22:02 - 00:12:39:05

Some of our best ads were were the official gym bag of CrossFit running on Facebook. And so that was like one of the biggest ones, really effective, worked really well. And all the other ones, like with athletes and whatnot, have been, similar where it's very organic. They reach out to us, they're like, hey, this bag is sick.

00:12:39:07 - 00:12:53:21

Like, hey, we'd love to see anyone do my just, like, creating a video or just like showing us out or something. We initially it early on, like year one, we didn't do any requirements. I was just like, dude, I've pro athletes in my in my DMs like, dude, can I send you a bag? I'd love for you to just check it out.

00:12:53:21 - 00:13:20:03

It was like period. I was like, I don't care if you post. I brought on my director of partnerships last year. Lilly, an absolute legend in the space and ever since then, like, she was like, hey, we need to ask for. We need to ask because we have so much inbound now because it's I mean, it's it's every week we have tens of, of high level people asking, and we have people with millions of followers that are like, I will happily create a video for you.

00:13:20:06 - 00:13:42:21

You can use it in ads like, don't worry about it. And so then when someone with like, you know, 50,000 150,000 followers reaches out and they're like, hey, like, I'd love to check this out. I want $2,500 a post or like, I want that or I'm not going to post. We're just like, you know, sorry, we're out. We're at a place right now where we have so many high tier people reaching out and willing to post for free that we'd rather work with them, when we especially had our size.

00:13:42:21 - 00:13:58:20

Right. Like, we don't exactly have that big of a budget to work with marketing. So we're in a really, like, lucky special place. Like, I recognize that regularly that, like, this is not common. And really special to be in a place where, like, we get really cool people to do stuff for us, for free because they want to support us.

00:13:58:20 - 00:14:20:01

I think it's a really interesting instinct for you to hire a director of partnerships at your size. Like, yeah, it's not a a role, a normal e-com brand. You know, sub 2 million bucks would be like, we need this person. Yeah. Walk us through how you think about capital allocation, which is what we think the best founders do, which we talk about a lot on this podcast.

00:14:20:03 - 00:14:38:17

Yeah. That's, honestly, it's it's hard. I want to I want to allocate capital everywhere. The director of partnerships was, it was a bit of a bet because I was like, I could hire someone more on, like, the ad side. I was running ads at the time. Just me personally was running the ad, and I could hire someone to take over that or, like, you know, kind of like looking at all these things.

00:14:38:17 - 00:14:52:14

But I was like, one of the biggest things that's allowed us to grow is those influencer connections. And I was managing those relationships, and I wasn't managing them very well because there were so many reaching out. And then there was so much follow up. And like, you have to keep track of all the details and you get that.

00:14:52:14 - 00:15:06:19

Did the bag actually ship? Did the bag get messed up? Like, did you actually receive it? Was there any issue? Do you want a different bag? Okay, cool. Now if you want to create something but you want some direction on what to create and what it should look like and, when to post it in, should it be a Colette, like all of these details?

00:15:06:21 - 00:15:25:11

And I was like, I know how many are coming in, I know that I'm missing a bunch, and I know that I'm not managing this very well, and this feels like an area that we could really grow. And so I started talking to, Lily about it, and it just kind of made sense. I was like, I think this is a it was a bit of a bet, but I was like, I think this is the right bet to make.

00:15:25:13 - 00:15:46:12

And since then, I mean, it's been a year and we've brought on over 200 athletes and influencers with over 90 million followers that have, posted and supported about, about the bags. How do you how do you measure, the success of your partnership program? I would love to just hear how you think about it, how you track it.

00:15:46:14 - 00:16:05:15

Yeah. Right now, there's some people that we're just tracking. We're keeping track of, like, hey, here's this person. We got them a bag they posted. They have three point moment. So 3.5 million followers. That's really cool. We can probably tap into them again or like, send them more product. And then depending on how they respond, if they're like, dude, this bag is incredible.

00:16:05:15 - 00:16:23:20

I freaking love it. Like, let me know how I can help. That's when we kind of look at rolling them into either the partnership program or the affiliate program, or even just like the referral program or like, hey, like you can you can get a referral kickback, you can get some prizes, you can get whatever. We kind of just talk to them about, like what they would be open to or what they'd be okay with.

00:16:23:22 - 00:16:49:10

And then we funneled a handful into that. And so then with that comes, an agreement to regularly post and promote the product and do collabs and also give us rights to run those, that content and ads. And that's where we really start to see some lift where it's like, okay, we kind of know at this point, like, you know, even with someone with like millions of followers, if they just post one time on on stories, we almost see it's like a zero list.

00:16:49:12 - 00:17:03:21

But as that gets more consistent as you post regularly, as you like, show that there's a relationship, that it's not just like some one off paid thing that you're like, hey, this company paid me a couple grand, like, I'm going to post a story, go get this thing. It's like it's regular. And then it really starts to sink in with people.

00:17:03:21 - 00:17:23:17

And that's where we see more, lift in revenue. What sort of. So you mentioned three different programs there. There are partnership, referral, affiliate. Can you, talk us through those? Yeah. So the referral program is like the baseline one. Anyone can join that. Until we model it after, like what KM did, where you can get some really cool prizes.

00:17:23:17 - 00:17:42:24

You get a hat on your first referral, you know, you just show someone like your link or send them your code, that that sends to a super affiliate landing site, which is like a customized landing site. More than just sharing the code. So it's it's pictures of you. It's videos of you, it's a quote from you. And then it's a full on landing page to help people convert better with your code embedded there.

00:17:43:01 - 00:18:00:18

And so that's both the referral and the affiliate program and the referral. You can get prizes at one, three, five all the way up to like 250 referrals. Or like, we know there's people out there with big enough followings. On YouTube, they can actually like drive sales. And so 250 referrals will buy you a contrast therapy set up, like a CC sauna and a cold plunge.

00:18:00:18 - 00:18:17:19

It's a $12,000 value. And no one has hit it yet. But I'm confident that at some point someone will hit it and then we'll be able to create some cool content, or I'll be like, look, we bought this person this like $12,000 setup, it's incredible and etc., etc. and then we've got the affiliate program and that's where you get like a cash kickback on on every product.

00:18:17:19 - 00:18:34:23

And there's kind of no limit there. But that comes with like the agreement. And then we have a few different levels within there. The whether it's like, just kind of a general affiliate or whether it's more of like a high tier athlete influencer where we're not going to have quite so many requirements of them, and we're going to kind of work with them a little bit more.

00:18:35:03 - 00:18:52:12

But then also we're going to ask if they're open to like more of a pro level shoot, like a regular affiliate will be like, hey, just like do stuff with your camera, do stuff with your media people or whatever you want to do, kind of kind of whatever that looks like in anyone who's at the higher tier levels or like, hey, we'd like to pay to send a professional out and do some like video photo work.

00:18:52:14 - 00:19:12:03

To announce you as like kind of one of our athletes to promote you and what you're doing in your platform. We've done that with a couple of athletes now, some, a little bit, like smaller. Like, we work with Sydney Milani. She's on the, USA Olympic team, bobsled team. So we've announced her, we've talked about her story, how she got there, what she's doing.

00:19:12:07 - 00:19:34:06

We've also done this with, his name is Rock. He is, professional trainer. He's got a degree in biomechanics and kinesiology. He trained all the Avengers. He works with Chris Hemsworth, he works with a ton of celebrities. He trains Seal Team six and all of these, like, emergency responders. And, same thing with him. Like, we announced him as, like, one of our athletes, and we talked about his backstory, talked about what he's doing, how he's how he's promoting, health, fitness and wellness.

00:19:34:06 - 00:20:00:12

We're really scrappy team. Like, we're two full time people and six, 6 to 8 contractors. And when when we've looked at tick tock, tick tock, we just haven't had the capacity to manage it. And, you know, some of my friends, you know, Nick Sharman, Moyes, Ali, people like that talking about how you can still build, you know, an eight figure company, a $50 million company just on Facebook ads, if you crack them and you don't need to focus on all these other channels.

00:20:00:16 - 00:20:17:10

I'm curious to see how we could do as a higher priced product on TikTok shops. But we don't have the capacity to run it. And then when I think about like being able to dive in and continuing to build the company on the one channel that works really well for us Facebook and Instagram, you know, profitable acquisition on pre-sale, extremely profitable acquisition.

00:20:17:12 - 00:20:33:00

When we're in stock, we don't really have a reason to go explore like we I think we should test it at some point to be like, what if it's a little bit better? But it's not something that I want to put like a ton of resources and be like, all right, we're going to dive into this. Like I would want to test it and be like, hey, does it like, does it happen to be better otherwise?

00:20:33:00 - 00:21:00:24

Like let's just stay really focused on where we're at. I think it's more or less like, where are you? Where are you stacking growth like you are? It is strategy influencer and Facebook to 50 mil, per what you just said or where do you go? Yeah, yeah. Influencer is still big and not to interrupt killed it sounds like a strategy actually for Haven is more or less built around strong partnerships.

00:21:00:24 - 00:21:19:13

Like. Yeah, the reason for your success on Facebook is because of, you know, the organic growth and community you've built around the product. Yeah, yeah, 100%. And we're going to keep doing that. We have a couple of new things to add this year that we're really excited to dive into. We're going to dig into a little bit more content or, and actually promote brand.

00:21:19:13 - 00:21:37:22

Up until now, we've really kind of centered around like, hey, look, we make this organize bag. It's it's really incredible product. Like, check out this product. And we haven't really talked about like the who what why behind what Haven is. And whenever we do, it resonates really deeply. Like Haven. Definition of the name is like case in point, like it's a spot.

00:21:37:22 - 00:21:54:22

It's a space for you. It's a daily moment that a lot of us consider sacred that you go to, whether that's, you know, walking, yoga, CrossFit, whatever it is, it's like your moment in the day and that transcends across all of our people. Like we say, we're for high performance and professional athletes, but we're also for like, the everyday devotee.

00:21:54:24 - 00:22:10:07

Like we have a couple of emails from customers, but we have hundreds of emails from customers. But a couple of my favorites are one is like, I'm a busy CFO, I have no time to waste over lunch, I am in, I am on, I am out and I don't want my stuff messed up. So like this like kind of everyday optimizer, right?

00:22:10:07 - 00:22:32:15

Like he's not like high performance professional athlete, but he likes to work out and he's working really hard. And then one of my other favorite ones, is like, I'm a busy mom of three. Like, I have so little time to waste. Like missing my keys or forgetting my headphones is I'm trying to run out the door for the 30 minutes I have, like, created this little moment in my day, and if I can't find something, it's like it can ruin my day.

00:22:32:15 - 00:22:53:03

Because like, that's the one moment I have, like managing my kids, managing my house, doing all this other stuff. And so like initially, like anything about like an organized bag, it it doesn't necessarily sound like that big of a problem. You're like, oh, it's kind of cool, like whatever. And then when you start digging into the stories of these people, myself included, you're like, oh, this is this, is this something that really pisses you off?

00:22:53:03 - 00:23:07:15

There's something that can absolutely get in the way of something that means more to you than anything. It's it's the thing that, like, keeps you centered. It's the thing that keeps you on track. It's the thing that gives you the capacity to handle life is that moment in your day. And if something gets in the way of that, like it's very impactful.

00:23:07:15 - 00:23:31:21

And so that's the kind of mission that we're on here to help people create capacity and find their flow through their day by just keeping their stuff organized. Yeah, it's definitely a productivity, based approach. I think that's that's an important thing to have, like a, a mission that, you know, transcends the product. I mean, you can program, you know, so many different products around what you just described.

00:23:32:02 - 00:23:47:09

Yeah. As a side note, by the way, I have an unbelievable partnership introduction for you based on what you just said. Let's go. I'm gonna I gotta I gotta make that after this call. Let's go. Yeah. We have a, we have a bunch of really cool ones. On tap. We have in the last couple months, man.

00:23:47:09 - 00:24:06:02

Like, speaking of partnerships, like we've had, we've had like ten different companies. Some like, some like ten figure companies reach out and recognize also NBA teams reach out and recognize that we're the only ones in the space doing anything interesting. With bags in the athletic space. And they want to work with us. Because of that, we've created this category.

00:24:06:02 - 00:24:24:01

We own the category. We're the only one that it's doing this, and people are recognizing that. And because of it, they want to work with us. They want to do custom, collaborative bags. They want to do custom designs for their products. They want to send this to their top tier influencers, like some names that I'm like, and then I'm like in shock over that these this is happening.

00:24:24:01 - 00:24:48:01

It's in progress. Like in the next six months, we're going to have our hands in the bags of some insane people in the world that can really, really have an impact. Yeah. I think it's interesting how you thought about I mean, I don't know if this was intentional and planned, but your beachhead market being athletes and highly active individuals, it lends itself so well to people who are just very influential.

00:24:48:03 - 00:25:21:16

Yeah. Either from a sports perspective or, you know, influencer, cause that gives you so much social proof to expand to other tangential markets that where the Tam in theory could be a lot bigger. I'm just thinking, like even on the like, tech adjacent side, like the idea, the idea of, that I have and in terms of partnerships in my head is like technology businesses like a notion or, you know, other sorts of products where these individuals are highly organized, they're leveraging the software because, you know, they align with that mission that you just discussed.

00:25:21:18 - 00:25:46:06

That's an obvious, you know, next step for you to create programing and like products for those individuals. Yeah, you can leverage the, you know, the NBA players who started with the product for, you know, just going to the gym or working out. That's that's awesome. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. I, I think there's some really interesting overlap in kind of like what you wouldn't normally assume, like, you know, like, oh, partner with a supplement company.

00:25:46:06 - 00:26:11:03

Sure. But like partnering with a tech organization, company like notion, you're like, wait, what? But I think that there's some of those we're talking about that we're actually going to be really impactful. And being in the athletic space. Exactly what you said, like athletes are like beacons and people look up to them and they listen to them. And we want to bring this, this, capacity creation, this flow and focus to not just your workout, but to the rest of your life.

00:26:11:07 - 00:26:32:13

And so to do that, we have to work with technology companies and, like, even like nootropic companies where it's like, that's not particularly a workout supplement. It's more of like a life focused supplement. And I want to work with companies like that. And I've got some, on deck and got some interest coming in where we're, we're setting that up where it's like, hey, how do we, how do we do a collaborative with a functional mushroom company?

00:26:32:13 - 00:26:52:01

Like, what does that look like, and how do we cross cross-pollinate our audiences? And how are you thinking about that? Just to take it a step further, like, what is what would success look like if you partnered with a functional mushroom company? Are you trying to tap into their audience like, are you measuring, you know, the lift that you're getting when they post?

00:26:52:01 - 00:27:14:15

Like, how do you think about that? Yeah, so we haven't done that yet. I'm talking to 3 or 4 different companies right now in kind of like alternate spaces, like intentional, more like early stages here. But we're putting together basically what we're calling like the intentional series, and it's partnering with, a physical goods company that helps you focus more, like don't focus on your phone.

00:27:14:21 - 00:27:36:22

It's a new Tropic company. It helps you kind of like focus and flow. It's, to forgetting the other companies right now, but basically, I think it would be. Really? Oh, it's, like a meditation company. Yeah. And I think it would be cool to do, some light programing and, some social campaign around it where it's like it's not necessarily pushing product super hard.

00:27:36:24 - 00:27:54:18

It's more talking about like high level, like brand and, human improvement and, capacity creating and flow where, hey, like, you know, hey, we're a bad company. They're a meditation company. How does that actually work? And it's like, well, what if we put together, you know, we know, like, seals are doing box breathing and breathwork techniques as they're going out on missions.

00:27:54:18 - 00:28:21:03

And so what if we work with a meditation company and kind of given away the farm here on this idea? But, what if we work with this meditation company and we come up with, some like pre and post meditations, like the, like the ten to 30s and it's something to warm you up for your workout and it's something to bring you down for your workout, particularly for those people like the busy mom or the busy CFO, where you're like, in and out, you're moving through your life and you kind of need to like, context switch quickly.

00:28:21:06 - 00:28:36:23

So you're coming out of a meeting, you're running the gym, and you're just thinking about that meeting and you're like, I need to work workout. But like, I'm kind of stuck here and like, what if you just take 30s, you do a breathing technique to like, center and get into your mode and then crush your workout. And as you come out of it, you're like, okay, I need to think about what just happened at that meeting.

00:28:36:23 - 00:28:55:24

Like, how do I like bring bring my entire like and like internals down and then focus back in on work. So we're thinking about things like that where it's like, I don't know. I think it's just interesting. I think it's kind of unique. And I've had a lot of success with these things intentionality, meditation, manifestation, all that stuff in my own life.

00:28:55:24 - 00:29:18:07

And I've seen the the power and the impact it can have. And so I want to I want to bring that into a lot of I think you get a lot of like, traditional fitness people that maybe aren't as aware or maybe even aren't as interested, in some of the kind of, mental side of things. Whereas, like, all the pro athletes absolutely are all of the top one percenters are doing functional mushrooms, are doing meditations, are are getting their head in the game.

00:29:18:07 - 00:29:46:12

And so I want to kind of bring along the, the mass of everyone else. Yeah. I think partnerships are just there's such an opportunity for you to be creative. Like, yeah, even on the agency side, like when we're thinking about events and different sort of ways we can program with our partners. Like it's something I really enjoy, like as a founder, because you can see your brand adapt and you kind of make something novel.

00:29:46:14 - 00:30:07:01

Yeah. Sounds like you share, that sort of excitement. One of the things that I thought was really interesting when I was early on growing darkroom, one of our early clients was vibes, wellness, the CBD beverage company. Yeah. And I asked Jonathan EPA's. I was like, man, why don't you do more collabs? Like, you have the perfect product for it.

00:30:07:01 - 00:30:36:16

And he was like a wise man once told me, you go around effing everyone, you're eventually going to get an STD. Yeah. I was like, that's has is that so like that's it. Yeah. It's like, all right, okay. How do you respond to that Caleb. Yeah, great. Great question. I think I think in one aspect we've had a lot of like supplement companies reach out and want to do want to do collabs or want to do email shares.

00:30:36:21 - 00:30:53:02

And I think if we were to work with all of them, it would be that scenario. It would be like like havens kind of is like constantly pushing supplements in our face thing, because there's 100 million supplement companies out there and like, we could we could do one every week and email and do samples and all that. And I think that would just get overwhelming.

00:30:53:02 - 00:31:12:20

It wouldn't be ultimately that valuable. I think we're we're really picking and choosing when it comes to like supplements. And that's why I think it's more interesting with like alternate ideas, alternate companies where it's not the normal, it's not the like, oh yeah, it's another fucking electrolyte. It's like, oh, this is way, meditation company. What's that?

00:31:12:20 - 00:31:37:09

What's happening? Like something interesting to try to bring people in. Yeah. No, it makes sense. Are you initiating a lot of those conversations? And as you're growing, you're getting more inbound where it's like this. Would this would be interesting for us? The the unique ones? Yes. I'm. I'm, I'm kicking those off, the normal ones. Those are all coming in, cold inbound, including the companies where we're looking at, like, collab product.

00:31:37:11 - 00:31:56:12

One. That's one that's working, right now that we're going to have in the next couple months. That was, inbound from them. Yeah. That's that's that's awesome. And you said it's been three years since you started the business. All right. Yeah, I was I'm curious. Because you're kind of in that post iOS 14 domain.

00:31:56:14 - 00:32:27:01

When you talk to either founders or, you know, heads of marketing, heads of growth who are struggling, and you guys are having this great growth rate, obviously, you're you're you're still relatively small sub $10 million in revenue. What's your perspective like? How do you kind of contextualize, the market and the way that dynamics have changed, just, you know, not necessarily knowing what was on the other side of things, you know, like for us, compared to like how other people are, what what's happening with them in the market right now.

00:32:27:04 - 00:32:55:17

Yeah. Yeah. Basically like I'm just curious and I, I don't know what you did before. Hey, man, if you're in this, this space or not, the I'm just curious what your take is on other brands that, are actually struggling and where you see that you're really differentiating and finding pockets of growth. Yeah. My background was in, tech and marketing and worked with a handful of startups, brand growth, started a couple of smaller tech companies, raise some cash, spun them off and whatever.

00:32:55:17 - 00:33:10:13

And, I get to like, one of the things I'm really I taught fortune 500 is how to do design thinking, like CVS and Walgreens and Mayo Clinic and Caterpillar. All these companies, they did these, like two day sessions on here's how to, like, create a product. And I would talk to these people and they're like, you know, hey, you're struggling with this product.

00:33:10:13 - 00:33:26:23

Like, have you talked to the end user? And they're like, no, we just got like a memo that we needed to create this product. And I'm like, oh, cool. Here's here's your problem, guys. This is why you're the fourth team to work on this problem. Because you just got to talk to you and user and you got to ask them questions, and then you got to iteratively build, you know, the Lean startup design thinking framework.

00:33:26:23 - 00:33:44:14

Like it makes sense. It works. It's it's been tried and tested in Silicon Valley for for decades now. And that's what we did to build this product. And I think a lot of people just like build a product or build a brand based on like an idea, or they see a gap in the gap in the market. And sometimes that works.

00:33:44:16 - 00:34:01:21

Sometimes you can just funnel enough Harvard MBAs and cash from A16z behind something to, to make it work. And sometimes it's a decent product, but a lot of times it's it's not intentional and it's not at like, you know, no offense, but like a way suitcases. There's nothing special about them. They created a really great brand.

00:34:01:21 - 00:34:17:01

They did a really cool book in the beginning, but their products are the exact same as every other product in the market. And some people really don't. I think they're pretty cheap. Whereas, like, you look at what we've done and we talk to people about what would actually what is there a problem and then what would actually solve the problem.

00:34:17:01 - 00:34:30:15

And so that product made it all comes down to the product market fit. And that's what we have. And when you look at a company struggling and you look at their product, you're like, did you just create another supplement company and now you're struggling? Like, did you just happen to get in on like when Facebook was at its highest?

00:34:30:15 - 00:34:51:12

And now that it's like really hard and your product is like kind of mid like and you're struggling like, what'd you expect. Yeah. Like are you adding value to the end user. Yeah. And society as a whole. And then a second degree from that is are you better than the competition at solving that problem basically. Right. Yeah.

00:34:51:16 - 00:35:15:10

Yeah. So right now you're benefiting from being, more or less a first mover in the organized bag category. How are you preparing for the existing incumbents to basically replicate the product? Yeah. So we have, 5 or 6 companies now that have taken a shot at us. The biggest problem, for them is, our moat, our moat is really strong.

00:35:15:10 - 00:35:34:00

One, we have a patent, we have a design patent. Design patent basically says if anyone creates a product that looks similar to our product, they're in violation, and we will take action against them. And if you're trying to make a product that doesn't look like ours, it's going to be really difficult, right? Like we've got small dividers, we've got big dividers.

00:35:34:00 - 00:35:49:22

Like to change that up enough to make it look really different. It's probably not going to be very functional. The only other way that you can do that is by using Velcro. So we designed this product with the dividers sewn in because we were like, this is for the gym goer one. The gym goers treats their bag rough.

00:35:49:22 - 00:36:03:10

They do not treat it kindly. They throw it around, they slam it on the ground, they shove their stuff in it. And so we're like, the dividers need to be sewn in. And it took us over a year to find a factory who would actually make that. They were all like, this is not this is not possible. No one can make this.

00:36:03:10 - 00:36:18:15

And then finally someone made it and then they were like, this isn't mass manufacturable like, good luck. Like we're not going to do it. And then we just kept saying, like, know someone? There's a way to figure this out. Like there's a way to figure this out. And we did that over and over and we're like, no, we we believe we can get this figured out, like someone will do it.

00:36:18:15 - 00:36:32:12

And then we finally got a great connection to this factory. And they're like, we can do this. And then we can make it at scale. And so one like finding a factory to do this, like they still kind of push back and like, hey, can we, can we like use Velcro. Can we make this a little easier? I'm like, no, that's not how this works.

00:36:32:14 - 00:36:48:08

And we didn't want these outgrow because people are tough with their bag. And you have, synthetic fibers. You have polyester, nylon when you're with, like, shirts and stuff that you're sticking in there. And so those are going to snag on Velcro. And then you're dealing with like chalk, sweat, protein powder, all sorts of stuff. None of that plays well with Velcro.

00:36:48:10 - 00:37:05:12

Also, like when you look at a bag that has Velcro like a camera bag, it's not too bad. But any other bag that has like these Velcro dividers, it just looks chintzy. It looks cheap. It is not classy. It's not cool. The dividers don't stay. You're moving them around. The Velcro eventually wears down. And so we took forever to find this factory.

00:37:05:17 - 00:37:27:11

That would finally do it. That would actually make it. And then on top of the patent, on top of how difficult it is to make, it's also just wildly expensive. Like our bag is ten x, what a normal bag cost at the factory, and it's also ten x to ship it to to the US, and it's ten x to ship it to a customer because we're shipping this giant box of air because of the structure and the dividers in the bag, it doesn't flat pack.

00:37:27:16 - 00:37:46:17

So a normal bag company can fit 10,000 bags in a container. I can only set 1000. So all of our costs are just astronomical. And so we think about like a Nike or someone like that coming after us, you know, I don't I don't know how those companies exactly work, but I imagine that someone the bags the bag side of Nike has this like, standard for how they make bags.

00:37:46:17 - 00:38:01:23

And then someone says, hey, we should make this one. We should, like, go after this little company that has, like, some, you know, rising, rising, momentum. And they're gonna be like, oh, wait, we normally spend $4 a bag to manufacture it and a dollar to ship that we're not going to ten x that price. That's not something we do.

00:38:02:00 - 00:38:22:24

That's, It's my hope. Anyways, like I said, we haven't had anyone come after us, like, in a in a solid enough way that we need to take legal action. We will probably start sending some cease and desist for some of the smaller companies who've taken some smaller shots that are like, kind of kind of getting there just to, like, start establishing a presence and start, I don't know, try to scare people a little bit.

00:38:23:01 - 00:38:52:04

How long does the patent lasts for? Oh, that's a great question. Not entirely sure. I would say at least ten years. It's a long time. Yeah, because the utility patent lasts even longer. Yeah. It's like 17 years or something. Yeah, yeah. And also, design used to not be as big of a deal, but with companies, I mean, design makes a big difference now, like with companies like Apple and Tesla and these, like, top tier, tech companies, like design is a big deal, like Apple just won a case against Samsung for $500 million based on the design of their phone.

00:38:52:04 - 00:39:05:15

They're like, Samsung, rip us off and you're like, they made a they made a white phone with like a big touchscreen. Like it looks nothing like the iPhone. But they went after them and they won. And so I'm like there's there's a really good case. There's a really good platform for us to hold onto this. That's that's great.

00:39:05:16 - 00:39:34:10

Last question for you and Caleb. This has been awesome. I'm just curious what your attribution stack looks like. How do you, you know, look, think about attribution. How do you measure it? Just curious. Yeah. We, you know, being sub five, sub $10 million brand. I took advice from, my smart friends on Twitter, like the nine operators and Nick Sharma and those kind of guys, and they're just like, just go with overall measure or and Roas or something like holistic.

00:39:34:12 - 00:39:57:09

We do track in platform. Just to kind of see what's happening and, and how it's like, going up or going down. But we're not using any of the big attribution platforms. We're not paying for any of that software at our size. I was like, it's kind of ridiculous for us to pay thousands of dollars a month when, when we're only doing hundreds of thousands of dollars in revenue, like at the point we're doing millions and like, small little tweaks really make a big difference.

00:39:57:11 - 00:40:15:03

It's probably worth it to look into it then. But right now we kind of just look at overall measure and we're like, is it positive or is it we are we netting cash in the end? And we are. And so we feel pretty good about it. And do you measure between, you know, paid versus, you know, organic anything like that.

00:40:15:05 - 00:40:31:12

We have, post-purchase survey, you know, the no commerce, post-purchase and we see a lot of word of mouth on there. And, that's kind of the only way we've been able to tell we know, especially, like, Crossfitters love to chat. They see each other every day. They're always talking about the product we have out of the referral program.

00:40:31:12 - 00:40:55:04

Like, we know that word of mouth is a large portion of our attribution because also, you know, you see, you know, a two in platform Roas, but then an overall measure of forex, you're like, okay, where's that? Where's the rest coming from? It's word of mouth.