The subscription box for adventurers and survivalists - John Roman of BattlBox
TrepTalks with Sushant Misra
John Roman, founder of BattlBox, a monthly subscription service offering handpicked outdoor survival gear. John shares his entrepreneurial journey, detailing the inception of BattlBox, the strategies and tactics used to grow the business, and the significant milestones along the way. He also discusses the challenges of operating a subscription model, the importance of content and influencer marketing, and the lessons learned from his business experiences. Tune in to discover insights on building a thriving e-commerce brand, the evolution of BattlBox, and tips for aspiring entrepreneurs.
Transcript from video:
0:00 [Music]
0:08 hey there entrepreneurs my name is Susant and welcome to Trep Talks this is the show where I interview successful
0:14 e-commerce entrepreneurs business executives and thought leaders and ask them questions about their business stories and also dive deep into some of
0:20 the strategies and tactics that they have used to start and grow their businesses and today I'm really excited
0:26 to welcome John Roman to the show john is the founder of BattlBox BattlBox is
0:31 a monthly subscription service of handpicked outdoor survival EDC and other cool gear from an expert team of
0:39 outdoor professionals and today I'm going to ask John a few questions about his entrepreneur journey and some of the
0:45 strategies and tech that he has used to start and grow his business now before we dive into this interview if you enjoy
0:51 this kind of content please make sure to hit the like and subscribe button and for more interviews like this please visit trap talks.com and with that John
0:59 uh welcome and thank you so much for joining me today at Trep Talks really really appreciate your time no thanks
1:05 for having me i'm excited excited for today so we were just uh talking and you were sharing a little bit about your
1:12 business so you started Battlebox and then you acquired a different company
1:17 then you sold both of them and then you acquired it back so can you talk me through a little bit about when you
1:23 started and what was kind of your original idea for BattlBox what was the
1:28 motivation and uh yeah how did the idea come about yeah so not my idea at all um
1:35 so initially there were there were four four partners four four founders if you
1:42 will um my involvement came a couple weeks after launch actually and I was
1:50 simply an investor i I I made an investment in the company and um was was
1:56 not my idea at all my ex business partner his uh fiance at the time was
2:01 getting a Birchbox so think like month makeup uh beauty products this is 2015
2:08 so super popular at the time and he saw that genuine excitement she had on her
2:13 face when she would get it every month and he wanted that for himself looked online couldn't find it was like "Hey
2:20 maybe I'll just create it." And um I came on board a couple weeks after
2:25 launch came on board let me clarify just purely from investment uh just because I
2:31 came from uh B2B SAS and uh you know on
2:36 that side of the the world you love reoccurring revenue uh it's super easy to forecast it's it's a lot easier and
2:44 um that was what attracted me to the business and uh yeah so so I I wrote a
2:51 check i had a limited capacity role uh board seat was supposed to just give a
2:57 couple hours of of advice every month and it it it quickly blew up and became
3:03 uh became a major major time suck where I was you know spending 50 60 hours on
3:08 my my normal career job and then I was spending 50 60 hours a week on BattlBox and it got to the point where I had to
3:15 make a decision um you know was I going to jump into this full-time and in the
3:21 start of 2015 we did about 4.5 million in revenue in 2016
3:26 um after the first quarter we had a run rate of 8 figures so at that point it kind of made sense for me to for me to
3:33 just jump into the mix with everybody with uh with the three other partners there were four of us originally um I
3:40 jumped in one of my first uh priorities tasks was buying out uh the fourth
3:46 partner that didn't bring any value at the time and uh so quickly after I came on board full-time we were down to three
3:54 and uh yeah then we were just off to the races i mean that is so interesting that the first year you're doing 4.5 million
4:01 and now you're doing 8 figure it's like there's a seems like there's a huge market for this and plus I mean
4:07 subscription model is definitely a great model but that's what I was I wanted to
4:12 ask you is like doing a subscription in SAS where you know you have huge profit
4:18 margins probably they don't have them here yeah exactly so how does it you
4:24 know what is your kind of assessment of doing a subscription I mean it's still better than selling individual items
4:31 even in e-commerce worth yeah you know uh anytime you can get forecastable
4:36 reoccurring revenue it's a win but I think you bring up some really good points so subscription boxes in general
4:42 and you know when you enter a battle box you said a subscription box fun fact we never refer to ourselves as sub
4:49 subscription box because we're not we're so much more than that and the reason we're more than that is because in my
4:57 opinion subscription boxes are dead it was really cool in 2015 10 years ago um
5:03 you look at I mean the the Birchboxes of the world uh just that you know had a
5:09 billion dollar valuation and was in bankruptcy and there's a lot of those stories right and then you you have
5:14 thousands of small ones that just never made it um I think the subscription box
5:20 industry you have to be you have to do more it was a cool idea 10 years ago curate some stuff send it to people but
5:26 if you don't provide value outside of that I think your your days are numbered um jumping onto the the margin side of
5:33 things yeah it doesn't we don't have software margins um but with scale comes some interesting concepts so part of our
5:41 uh you know additional secret sauce if you will is our focus on content um so
5:48 you're not going to find a lot of brands with millions of followers like us with a Netflix TV show we definitely lean
5:54 into content a lot and that's part of what we are for these brands that we
5:59 feature in the box we're ultimately a marketing engine right um so we're not we can't pay normal wholesale rate so
6:06 you have to give us you know sometimes the product at your actual cost because we're going to put it in in the hands of
6:12 tens of tens of thousands of your ICP um you can't ask for better targeted marketing than that and then we're going
6:18 to push push your product and talk about your product on our our YouTube and Tik Tok and Facebook and Instagram channels
6:25 which is going to get you millions of views so it's a it's not a traditional which you I think you you see a lot of
6:31 subscription boxes oh I'm going to buy this at wholesale and put it in and not have good margins we don't have great margins we have good margins but it's
6:39 because um of how we're structuring the deal with the vendors we include
6:45 i mean that's very interesting i mean ultimately you know the the items that
6:50 you're including in the box like the the person who's buying it has to think that you know they're getting
6:57 value out of it so are you Yeah and so
7:02 so it's not a sub so it's mostly like one-time purchase that you're seeing or
7:08 Oh no we we did over 20 million last year in subscription um that is the core
7:13 business but I think um let me let me try to add some color and context to
7:19 this um a subscription box
7:25 alone is is not anything exciting it's a broken model um it's a model that that
7:31 worked 10 years ago it doesn't work now you can look at any any subscription box only business that's been around for a
7:37 few years and they're either out of business they're either 40% the size um they're either about to go out of
7:44 business this year they're struggling um you look at us we've had growth and the
7:49 reason is because we're bigger than that right so we're actual subject matter experts in the great outdoors right
7:55 we're providing educational um content both in both in traditional copy and
8:00 video um we're putting out millions of impressions just on our social channels
8:05 selling absolutely nothing at all just just providing providing value to our audience and then probably the most
8:12 important part is is the community we've built um so we don't look at it as a
8:17 subscription box we look at it as a membership and with that membership yes you get a physical box but you also get
8:24 access to the community right tens of thousands of active members um that you know might be in your area you're you're
8:31 you're forging more than just a transaction it's it's relationship based and then in addition to that uh we have
8:38 other features like we have something called the battle vault so if you're an active member um one of the things you
8:44 you receive is access to the battle vault where we have thousands of SKs at
8:50 prices that uh no you can't get anywhere else so they're going to be below
8:55 anywhere else you can find online or in person um so yes you get the box yes you
9:01 pay 200 for the box yes it's worth $350 that used to be enough
9:07 right but that's not enough these days um customers expect more and they want more and they deserve more and I think
9:13 that's where the separation is truly becoming a brand not just not just a subscription box for sure and your uh
9:21 target market I'm assuming like there's different personas of your market like there's one persona that's you know
9:27 hardcore EDC there's another persona that's more outdoor survivalist kind of a person can you share a little bit
9:34 about your um audience and is this considered like a discretionary I'm
9:41 assuming this is a discretionary item like is there like an effect of what's going on in the market and then you know
9:47 do you see sales growing or decreasing based on that sure so great questions
9:53 it's it's it's a it's part of that question we get a lot um so yeah so we have we have lots of personas in our
9:59 demographic but but ultimately if I'm going to oversimplify it it's it's male
10:04 males 24 uh to 54 um so that 30 year old that 30-year span is is our sweet spot
10:13 um and yeah there's there's lots of different whether it's you know the the traditional survivalist or someone uh
10:21 just being being prepared uh to you know uh ex-military to law enforcement
10:28 officers um it it's it's the full gamut just to the weekend warrior the likes like likes skier uh the camper the hiker
10:35 uh we really are able to touch on a bunch of different um niches in our
10:42 niche the the interesting thing is uh the political spectrum the stuff
10:47 going on makes zero difference we have no seasonality we have no uh we have no
10:53 spikes when when someone wins wins an election or we have no spikes when when
11:00 someone loses an election or there's turmoil in our uh world zero and what is
11:07 the reason it's we we don't sell on fear m so it's
11:13 I mean it's basically just the enthusiast then you know whoever correct it's you know we we try to normalize
11:20 preparedness right like you have insurance for your car um you know you have insurance for your home or
11:27 apartment and you you you you have all these things like insurance why why would you not have a box
11:34 of batteries and and and uh power banks and stuff in case the power goes out the
11:41 same same concept right why would you not have some sort of device just in your in your storage in case something
11:47 happens to your water supply um it's just general preparedness and you know I
11:53 think it's something that exists um globally definitely in the in the United
11:59 States but it exists globally to a certain extent where people just want to be prepared just prepared for the worst
12:05 a lot of them hope they never even use the stuff and then you have the the polar opposite that just wants to go out camping and is going to take and test
12:11 all the gear um but yeah no we we get no spikes when when when craziness happens
12:17 in the world i wish we did there's been lots of craziness well I mean you you want growth spikes
12:23 like you don't you don't want um Right so we just we just have consistent growth okay it's it's predictable
12:29 consistent growth so your your products I'm I'm curious um when you're sending
12:35 out the box like do you track like let's say for one person you sent out a box which has knife has you know a bag
12:42 whatever uh do you track like what you send them out in the next box like how
12:48 do you how does your product assortment work so that the customer who who's receiving this box these boxes at a
12:55 certain frequency like they think that they're getting the variety they're getting the value I
13:00 If they're getting the the knife every single time like they would be like "Why am I getting so many knives?" Right
13:06 unless they sign up for our most popular box the Pro Plus which includes a knife of the month that 60% of are in so
13:14 there's knife enthusiasts what are these people doing with all these knives um so so these are high-end premium
13:21 knives too right so you have you have traditional collectibles as well um people also you know you see people
13:28 switch out cars that they drive every year right it's the same thing if you have a knife you carry you like
13:34 switching switching it up um jumping jumping back to to your question uh so
13:41 all of every month we so we call our boxes missions
13:47 so five five days ago actually eight days ago we started shipping out the
13:52 latest mission um everybody gets that mission there's four different tiers based on your your tier level uh basic
14:01 advanced pro and pro plus but that was mission um 21
14:07 and then in the beginning of April we'll send mission 1220 122 um it's you know
14:14 we started off with mission one then mission two mission three we're up to 121 now um so when you first sign up you
14:21 get to pick a previous mission for your first box then after that you fall into the cadence where everybody gets the
14:28 upcoming mission and it's the drop model where no one knows what's in it and then everybody gets it around the same time
14:33 um typically we retire the box afterwards we might occasionally keep some for for a promotion or something
14:40 down the line but if you miss out you miss out and the vendors that you work
14:46 with like do you do you have set vendors that you work with do you're always adding new um uh retiring the old ones
14:54 how do you kind of work with the vendors yeah it's it's it's a challenge i don't know why anybody would want to do this
15:00 as a profession it's it's a lot so So part of our allure is that we feature new products and new vendors every month
15:07 um you know every month we have you know six to eight different vendors oftentimes they're new um and then you
15:14 know furthermore no one has the quantity we need sitting on a on a on a in a
15:20 warehouse somewhere right so these are all have to be manufactured runs um you know 98% of them so you know we're
15:27 working out sometimes 6 8 months ahead of time just cuz that's the lead time these vendors need to to manufacture the
15:33 product and get it get it into our facility um yeah it's it's a lot it's
15:40 different relationships it's there's there's some we have some partners that you know we might feature uh once or
15:46 twice every year uh they're just great partners to work with but the reality is it's uh every month it's a reset and
15:53 it's it's six six to eight new vendors and yeah it's it's a lot we have we have
15:58 a whole team that has to manage that and I believe previously you said you
16:04 know you had purchased another business what was it like uh I believe the name you said was Carnivore Box or something
16:10 yeah so so through through the years we've we've made um I don't know I think we bought maybe five businesses and and
16:17 maybe sold seven um so we we had um shortly after Battle Box
16:25 we launched uh two bo two boxes one called Barbecue Box one called Spartan Cardon uh one was barbecue fit uh
16:33 focused one was fitness focused we sold both of those in 2017 or 20 Yeah 2017
16:42 and then in 2018 we bought a business called Going Gear which was flashlights
16:49 and knives and they had they had retail presence as well in addition to online m
16:54 uh in 2019 we bought Carnivore Club
16:59 which was a monthly shakurerie artisal meetats um out of Toronto they um they
17:06 had gone on Dragon's Den gotten a deal it was a uh it's a pretty cool company so we bought that in 2019 in 2020 we
17:16 bought uh Battlbox's largest competitor Crate Club um and then in
17:22 2021 we sold BattlBox and Carnivore Club to to Emerge Commerce out of
17:29 Toronto i'm assuming the strategy behind that is that you have of course you have
17:35 a a community of customers right and you're finding complimentary products uh
17:42 or subscription items so that you can basically cross-pollinate between the
17:47 different communities and I think that makes a lot of sense but does it actually like I'm I'm assuming all
17:54 subscription boxes are not made the same yeah so yeah so you know
17:59 crosspollination works in theory um it's it was it wasn't the secret sauce for
18:05 any of this um the secret sauce was just us knowing our playbook of of how to go to market with a DTOC brand that that
18:13 was the secret sauce right us knowing that content matters us knowing about influencer seating and um creator
18:20 seating before anybody else was really talking about it um that that's the
18:26 secret sauce there was some crosspollination but it's very very very minimal um you know talking talking less
18:32 than 10% um AC across across each brand so it was it was more just we we we knew
18:39 how to we knew how to run run direct to consumer ecom brands
18:45 but do you find that some of these are easier to sell than the others like I'm
18:50 thinking that you know your battle box is very targeted towards you know male audience right a certain kind of
18:56 audience um are there any market opportunities like that that's could be
19:02 geared towards a female audience like for example makeup i mean you said that it's no longer working but are are there
19:09 market opportunities out there that you can take your expertise in marketing and influencer seeding and everything and
19:15 basically create a secondary uh subscription yeah the the the models the
19:21 model is the same just to clarify it not working it just doesn't it doesn't it's it lost it's lost its luster it's lost
19:27 its alert right you know Birchbox went from a billion dollar valuation in opening up retail stores in in Soho to
19:35 to you know chapter 13 um it just the the the economics changed um yeah the
19:42 model is the same if if any if I'm being honest it's probably a little bit easier with with females um just simply because
19:51 uh there's there's a there's a bigger network of influencer seeders of influence seating right there's way more
19:58 female um influencers and creators out there um most play in the beauty and
20:03 health space um it's it's not very niche it's it's a large large large ocean um
20:10 it would be easier now it's probably more competitive as well but I think overall it would be easier the the
20:16 reality is um I want to enjoy what I like and I don't I don't like makeup i
20:21 don't care about makeup yeah i'm not you know um sure you can say you know people
20:27 do stuff for money and I do want to get paid um but I want to I want to do pull
20:33 products that I care right um I don't I don't I don't care about makeup so to me
20:39 it sounds like a key part of or a key ingredient of your go to market is as you said
20:46 content and then influencer strategy can you share a little some insights on you
20:52 know if you were launching a new product and you know you're uh like how would you go to market like
20:59 what would your strategy be with influencers and content like where would you start and how would you grow um yeah
21:06 so I mean the go-to market strategy is absolutely
21:12 um influencer seating um that's that's that's definitely part of part of the
21:18 mix these is if if I'm being honest though I would create audience and
21:24 content before the product um I would I would build audience and I
21:31 would understand my audience continue to procure content for them that they were
21:36 they enjoy ingesting and engage with and then once I understood my audience and
21:42 it was grown to a certain size I would then introduce the product um I wouldn't
21:47 I wouldn't do the product first because if you if you have an engaged audience and you're able to grow it and you're
21:53 able to converse with them they're going to tell you what what the product needs to be they're going to tell you what they want um and I think that's a much
22:01 easier easier uh path now I mean of course you can launch a beauty product and just send out thousands of of boxes
22:08 to an influencer and probably have some success too but if you if if you're if you're able to go to the content side
22:14 first and really create that community and that audience um organically I think it's probably longer
22:21 in the tooth and has more shelf life um because these people are buying it's
22:26 more than just a product right um and you know the need need scale which you spoke to earlier it matters but when
22:34 there's when there's a bond when there's a connection between a consumer and a brand or a consumer and a creator um the
22:41 want scale within reason goes out the window people people want to form a
22:46 connection no I think that makes um complete sense and I think that also
22:54 um is not is is the most I guess um less risky way of you know launching a
23:00 business you know if you already have the audience um that Yeah but but building the but building the audience
23:07 is arguably a lot more difficult more difficult yeah yeah any any lessons
23:12 there in terms of building the audience or you're basically talking well you're talking to a
23:18 specific person and I'm I guess you're speaking that language right
23:23 yeah in theory yeah in theory you're you're you're you're top the topic of your content is something you're
23:30 passionate about that passionate is that passion you know obviously is able to go
23:35 through screens and people can tell genuiness and passion um so then you're finding your you're you're like people
23:42 that that engage with that so it's yeah it's but I mean you know talking about
23:48 it and and executing it are two two different things right it's um you see most content is such a long game right
23:54 we we used to talk about how how what a long game SEO was right and how long SEO
23:59 proper SEO strategy how long it takes it takes a while um content's two three
24:06 four times as long it's insane um and most people don't stick with it most people don't see the results they
24:13 want within uh 30 60 90 120 days and they just they just they just call it you know uh our
24:20 Tik Tok which is our largest channel I think we have 1.1 million followers on Tik Tok um we launched it in 2021 and
24:30 the entire first year was just failure like we we would not we would get momentum but very very far and few
24:37 between we maybe three three wins for the entire year but but We knew what we
24:43 were doing was correct and we just had to stay consistent and and keep leaning in and taking learnings and applying
24:50 them and eventually after a year it popped and it popped into to our largest
24:55 um most people most people don't have the patience yeah yeah no that's that's
25:00 so interesting um social is such a such an interesting thing like some people
25:06 have the personality for it some people just have the knack for it and others it's like yeah some people comes comes
25:12 way way too easy too i wish it came easy for me but it doesn't so you I mean you
25:18 got involved with this business um as an investor and
25:24 but were you were you an outdoor person to begin with or have you kind of learned to become an out outdoors person
25:31 like what's your capacity in the business are you working as a marketer are you working as a like more of the
25:36 subscription side of business um no so I would say I would say I'm not
25:42 I'm not an outdoorsman um by any means i I am a I'm a big believer in in in
25:48 preparedness um you know whether that's having like I said before you know insurance um in an
25:55 umbrella policy all the way to you know if if if something happens um and my
26:01 power and internet goes out you know I have a a labeled box with some with some stuff um and you know I think I'm just a
26:09 big I'm a big prepared guy but that's not why I invested um it was pure me
26:14 liking the the the subscription reoccurring revenue model um I was I was
26:20 making investments at the time i think in a two-month span I made uh seven
26:25 similar investments and and this was the one that just panned out um really really well wow very interesting um are
26:34 you primarily selling in the US right now are you I'm assuming it's primarily US yeah so yeah so primarily in the US
26:44 we're uh we're in Canada um technically we we we do offer one-time products um
26:52 nonsubscription in uh 140 countries but the subscription the membership is only
26:59 in the US and Canada um and I I don't see it you know going anywhere else in the short term it's um when you start
27:06 getting in other countries there's all kinds of laws on specific types of products and we don't want to curate
27:13 multiple boxes we don't want to curate a specific box for Australia or France or
27:19 or you know the UK um we'd rather just create can create one amazing box which
27:26 is what we were able to do with the US and Canada is uh is preparedness more of a US
27:35 concept i mean do you see people or have you in your research of audiences uh in
27:41 other countries do you see a um u a push
27:47 around people getting prepared like in Europe or Australia i mean I know maybe
27:53 in Asia there I I don't think this concept exist you know being prepared and so forth yeah it probably it
27:59 probably doesn't exist i mean so I I guess certain parts of Asia sure it does not exist um but you talk about uh
28:06 Philippines Philippines it's a thing in the Philippines okay um being being prepared um with certainty uh uh America
28:14 the US and Canada I would argue um probably ratio proportionally there's
28:20 when you start getting into the the west of of Canada you know away from the the
28:27 the big cities um there's a lot there's a decent bit of of preparedness i would
28:34 say from a ratio percentage there's probably more Canadians um you know ratio to their population um
28:42 than than Americans but Australia it's really really big um we get we get an
28:48 insane amount of traffic from Australia and then a decent amount from UK but
28:53 Europe for the most part the rest rest of Europe you know they're just they're just being Europeans
29:02 yeah they're they're more laidback I think they've got other stuff about Yeah
29:07 yeah for sure um I believe you mentioned a Netflix TV show do you do are you on Netflix
29:15 yeah so we did a uh Netflix original series in 2020 um it premiered July 4th
29:22 weekend so it's uh it's it's called you can just go to Netflix it's global search BattlBox it comes up um the show
29:29 is called Southern Survival so it's it's uh every episode we're testing gear to
29:35 determine if it's going to go in in in that month's Battlebox mission to our customers but it's reality TV so we're
29:42 testing stuff that you know isn't we're not really going to put a flamethrower in a box but you know Netflix wanted it
29:50 to be reality and engaging so instead of a knife it's it's a it's a flamethrower
29:56 or or something like that but it's a it's a it's a cool show
30:04 awesome um when you're working with influencers like do
30:09 you what do you look for in an influencer because I've I've heard from other businesses that it's kind of a hit
30:16 or miss right um do you have something that you're specific metrics that you're
30:22 looking for um and how does it work like do you do you give them uh a box to kind of review
30:31 sample uh give their opinions and then basically pitch it to their uh audience
30:37 how how does that work yeah so yeah influencer seating is is a
30:43 numbers game for sure um you know the reality is a a big chunk of influencers are just
30:51 garbage in general right so so how do you how do you filter through the garbage
30:56 um it's it's it's not easy and it's with certainty a numbers
31:01 game the you know we we see the most success
31:06 with what we define as micro influencers um that that influencer that maybe has
31:13 50,000 followers or 150,000 followers the guys that have a million or two
31:19 million or five million um it they they don't have the influence
31:24 ratio that that would justify uh typically what they want to be paid it's
31:31 uh it's it's super interesting so for the most part when we're dealing with micro influencers yeah we're sending a
31:37 box or we're sending a specific product um that we've recently featured or haven't you know we have while the the
31:44 subscript while the the the membership the subscription box is a big chunk of
31:49 our revenue um you know we still have thousands of SKUs in our in our shop and
31:54 um you know the influencer seating if we're talking about um unbiased reviews
32:00 on YouTube we're sending the full the full pro plus 200 a month box if we're
32:05 talking about Tik Tok shop you know we're sending one specific item that that we think could have momentum to get
32:12 verality so it really depends on the platform um the reality is though it it with
32:19 certainty is a numbers game you have to reach out to hundreds of influencers to
32:25 get 20 good responses to find 10 that you're going to send the box to to find
32:31 four of those that are actually going to do a good job it's it's a grind with certainty
32:37 m um your team so you have if I understand
32:43 you have three found co-founders right now and um can you so so we we sold we sold the
32:50 business in 2021 when we bought it when we sold it um one of my co-founders was
32:56 gone uh we we had an impass we weren't working well together that was the reason one of the reasons we sold the
33:01 business was to get them out of there um So so yeah so two of the co-founders are
33:10 still around um we have three partners when we bought it back technically four
33:15 uh uh our CFO is is came to the table and has an equal seat with us and then
33:21 we took uh an old mentor of mine that plays in the VC world and he came as a minority partner
33:29 and And who else is in the team what what does your team look like
33:35 um our team's our team's big uh I can pull up a let's see we'll pull up the
33:42 org chart that will uh I mean do you have more than 50 people or
33:49 uh right right at Okay um yeah right right right i think like
33:55 46 last time last time we counted um it's I mean it's going to be your traditional team there's uh uh we own
34:04 our warehouse and fulfillment um facility uh both we have a
34:11 a two different two different buildings in the same city though um about a mile apart so that's a chunk of of our
34:18 employees that's probably half um simply because you know there's a lot of fulfillment going on and uh and
34:26 warehouse management um the only other thing that would be a little bit non-standard is because we have such a
34:32 focus on content so we have a full-time in-house creator uh we have three
34:38 full-time video editors to support him um so it's a little little unusual for a
34:43 business our size you know with a little bit less than 50 people to have three full-time video editors that's probably
34:49 the only super unusual piece I think and then you have just you know
34:54 your traditional CS team and um I think we have six members in CS and we have a
35:00 phone sales guy uh handful of people on the marketing team handful of people on
35:06 procurement hand people of on finance just just spread
35:11 do you do paid advertising at all uh yeah yeah uh we spend an absolute
35:18 fortune on paid advertising um yeah it's uh I got I got in trouble it's it's 12%
35:25 of our budget um paid paid digital and uh last year I ran it close to 18% for
35:33 for uh a good part of the year so CFO is not very happy right now but is it we're sticking at 12%
35:40 i mean the reason I was asking it is like I am assuming like in terms of
35:46 return on ad spend like is it improving is it decreasing over time because what
35:51 I'm thinking now given that you mentioned you have three video editors I'm assuming it's becoming more and more
35:57 important to create good content that's going to carry your business now in the future rather than doing paid
36:03 advertising which is like a lot more competitive and maybe you know people are more wary of paid advertising now so
36:11 it's like now I think the good content is probably now becoming more and more
36:18 important versus like paid advertising what are your thoughts on that yeah I don't Yeah I I I agree with you it's
36:24 becoming more and more important i would not say it's even close to being more important than um the advertising i
36:31 think both are necessary so So our our organic content is is our true
36:37 topofunnel um and then our paid advertising which even if we're
36:44 prospecting we're not reproing but I mean we are but like even if the focus is prospecting new with digital paid um
36:51 it really does serve as both prospect prospecting new and middlefunnel um just
36:57 because you know you you ingest a bunch of our Tik Toks and you're following us
37:03 on Tik Tok and loving the videos we don't have a pixel on you right we don't we don't you haven't gotten to our
37:09 website yet so it's not like we can can move you through the funnel um but yeah I think I think both are important this
37:16 year we're doubling down on our content frequency i think last year we averaged
37:22 uh maybe 1.3 uh videos per platform per day and we're going to be north of 2.5
37:29 this year per day um and it's simply because we're we're trying to juice the
37:34 organic top of funnel to keep our customer acquisition cost or return on ad spend um at an at an acceptable um
37:42 level because as you know um acquisition costs have just gone up higher and
37:47 higher every year regardless of industry it's a very competitive
37:52 um game these days yeah yeah it's I mean e-commerce is difficult now yeah it's
37:58 not Yeah not not suggest jumping in yeah
38:04 yeah um your fulfillment and shipping you said you have your own fulfillment
38:09 centers um when you're launching new boxes and I mean it seems like new
38:15 products are probably always coming in um but is there any risk where you know
38:21 you purchase um or or do you like build um arrangements with vendors where if
38:28 you don't sell certain items they will take it back no so so you know luckily we have the
38:35 audience and the sales channels now um to to to move move product so we don't
38:42 we're never sitting on on and we're never sitting on stale inventory but to your your point it's really difficult
38:48 because when we're talking about being featured in an upcoming Battlebox mission um you know we're having to put
38:55 that purchase order in 6 months ahead of time and it's a manufactured run so you
39:02 can't go back afterwards and say "Oh no we don't need that many." Well they made them for us there's no choice right um
39:10 luckily you know uh our forecasting has not been perfect we've made mistakes lots of mistakes
39:16 through the years um with with ordering ordering you can never order not enough right that's not possible you always
39:22 have to over orderer um just because if everyone's getting the same mission you can't not send it to someone so you
39:27 always have to go on the conservative side of over orderering but we're lucky we have we have paths you know our our
39:35 um our our Amazon uh our Amazon business which is which is 100% one time um is is
39:43 ramping up nicely it's a it's it's a decent sevenf figureure um business uh
39:49 unit on its own um Tik Tok shop is is is looking like it's going to be a seven figure channel for us as well this year
39:56 um and then all the other you know wholesale and fair and eBay we we have a
40:03 lot of channels right so we're a little fortunate but it's it's definitely always something we have to be cognizant
40:10 of i think like right now for example we probably have probably about a million more in
40:17 inventory than we would like to have um there's a clear path towards moving it
40:22 um but still we we're running a little bit heavy we typically I like to have
40:29 about under under maybe three 3 million in inventory and we we probably have
40:34 close to four right now um now we'll we'll move through in the next couple months so it's not an issue but you know
40:40 if we weren't paying attention to it it could become an issue right because all of a sudden if you have 2 million in
40:45 excess inventory that's causes some cash flow problems for sure um in terms of
40:51 your f future vision for your business like do you ever consider creating your own band of a
40:59 brand of products i mean given that you've probably learned what your consumer like
41:04 um is that more risky or less risky than the model that you currently have um
41:11 going So yeah no so it's a great question so we do we do have we do have house brands um manufactured by us so uh
41:19 Ruck and River um we put out probably about I believe eight products in the
41:24 last uh 18 months they're they're they're manufactured by BattlBox in
41:30 addition to Rucken River sometimes we'll manufacture stuff and and actually just uh put the name BattlBox on it um
41:38 Rocket River is a little bit more uh premium high-end um and a little bit
41:44 more niche while you know there might be a knife that just makes sense to be Battle Lux branded um so we do it uh
41:52 but you know we do it for a couple of reasons one if we think we can build a
41:57 better mousetrap if we if we see an opportunity of hey this product's great but we know how to make it greater m um
42:05 and then the flip side is you know sometimes the uh a vendor won't want to work with us at the price point they
42:11 need that we need they might say no you know this is wholesale pricing and we
42:16 can't buy for wholesale so um sometimes we have to manufacture our own just
42:21 simply to get the margins that are needed um but it's a it's a balancing
42:26 act right because BattlBox members join because they want to be introduced to new and
42:35 known brands um so at no point would it
42:40 be acceptable for us to manufacture all this stuff like we can manufacture if there's seven items in the box maybe one
42:47 of them is Rock and River but we still have to introduce the the brands they know already the new brands that are up
42:54 and coming um they don't want it to be the battle box they they they want the the
43:00 diversity of different brands and they made it very very clear to us okay no I
43:05 think that that makes a lot of sense i mean that's your value proposition right so that that makes I mean Yeah so it's
43:11 tough right yeah um do
43:16 you exit strategy like do you do you consider that you'll continue to run this business over like the long run or
43:24 do you or do you guys talk about like in some sort of an exit strategy and uh for this yeah I mean so when we when
43:32 we sold the business in 2021 we were done uh we had three year threeear agreements where we would stay on till
43:38 October 2024 and uh that was that was going to be the end of end of the book end of the
43:43 chapter at least um the reality is we saw an an opportunity um you know once
43:50 we were acquired uh you know we were probably traded then so there's a lot of
43:56 visibility into um into the finances and
44:01 we saw just an opportunity to buy the business back at pennies on the dollar of what we we we had paid um so because
44:09 of that we bought it back yeah the the buyback is the entire buyback model is a
44:14 is a fiveyear fiveyear re-exit plan from from the jump that's that's the strategy
44:20 um so we'll hit we'll hit two years next month which means we have about three
44:25 more years after that um and then you know I think Battlebox lives on um and
44:31 we want it if in order to leave we wanted to be in a a place where it can run itself and there's good leadership
44:38 in place um but yeah the plan is for for me at least to probably exit in about
44:44 three three and a half years okay interesting um in every entrepreneur's
44:50 journey there's always mistakes made lessons learned failures um I know one
44:56 uh one issue in your journey has been uh I guess you mentioned that there was um
45:01 wasn't working out with one of the co-founders what has been like one big
45:08 uh is there is there I mean was that the biggest mistake or is there another big mistake that you think um um you
45:17 know you you can categorize both of those as mistakes um the you know the
45:23 two the two partners that are no longer involved but the reality is um I don't
45:29 think either were mistakes right so there were times in that journey
45:34 where it made sense to have them um and there were times obviously where it
45:40 didn't but I think there were a lot of learning lessons in there so I don't I don't view the whole thing as a mistake at all um there were there were great
45:46 times with both of them um it just got to a point where there was more bad
45:52 times than than great times which means we had to change if I if I look at mistakes we made um we made the mo
46:00 luckily we made the most mistakes in in in our first year uh thank goodness
46:06 because it was easier to get past them in uh in 2015 going into uh Labor Day weekend
46:15 we're going to have our biggest uh uh promotion advertising we had done um and
46:22 we were only advertising on Facebook only nothing else we didn't know any
46:27 better don't Facebook ads get sales seems pretty easy um Friday going into
46:33 what was going to be our biggest weekend um sales-wise ever with certainty 100%
46:38 confident we uh Friday at 6 p.m our Facebook uh ad account got um cancelled
46:48 banned what shut down so we went from and so it's our only
46:53 lead source and we had Why Why did you get banned though was it like some sort of a issue
47:00 uh yeah knives okay so there's knives there's knives that go in the box and uh
47:06 depending on the day of the week that could be problematic for traditional advertising like Facebook and Google
47:12 okay um and even though we weren't selling the knives directly you know you could still get to them on the site and
47:19 it's a bit of a double standard right walmart used to sell guns but they weren't advertising the guns and that
47:25 was okay um but you know Walmart will spend a million in a day millions in a
47:31 day and and we weren't spending that much um so yeah our account got shut down and we went from all the traffic in
47:37 the world on our website converting greatly to zero traffic um not zero but
47:42 very little and the business was just we were just like damn this isn't
47:49 good without without Facebook we're we're we're 100% dependent on Facebook this is
47:54 a problem um so so the lack of channel diversification um in our early early stages was
48:02 probably the biggest mistake um along those same lines our another huge
48:08 mistake we made in the beginning when it came to customer acquisition was not
48:14 spending more we were very slow and steady wins the race and in hindsight
48:20 when we could have gotten customers for $5 a piece we should have grabbed every
48:26 single one of them we could have because now we get we get customers for $100 a
48:32 piece yeah um and you know we were getting customers for $40 a piece for a long period of time should have gone as
48:38 many as we could have gotten then and instead of you know slow and steady wins the race but things would have been a
48:45 lot easier we would have just gone full full gas pedal and gone as many as we could at the the lesser cost of of
48:52 previous years i mean it seems like you you were doing it
48:57 now with the We're doing it now yeah yeah yeah um yeah not anymore in trouble
49:03 12% now um I'm going to move on to our rapid fire segment in this segment I'm going
49:08 to ask you a few quick questions and you have to answer maybe in a word a couple of words or a sentence or so uh a book
49:14 recommendation for entrepreneurs and why
49:21 oh um I'll go non-traditional it's uh
49:27 called the signal and the noise thing yeah I've heard about it's uh it's by
49:34 Yeah it's by Nate Silver um you know I wouldn't say it's necessarily a business
49:39 book but I think it gives you it gives you what you're looking for maybe in a business book it just it's the summary
49:46 is the groundbreaking exploration of probability and uncertainty that explains how to make better predictions
49:52 in a world drowning in data so you know how do you everything is noise right so how do you find the actual signal in
49:57 there um super smart guy that's the book awesome uh an innovative product or idea
50:04 in the current e-commerce retail or tech landscape that you feel excited about
50:17 are you using uh AI at all in your business
50:25 we do um we we use it to to go faster be
50:30 smarter be more efficient produce more content
50:35 um but we don't we don't we're not dependent on it we just it allows us to do our job better um I'm trying to think
50:42 if there's if there's something specific um
50:52 yeah I would I would say AI in general i just don't think it
50:58 Go ahead no I was just saying you know anything that you you use sorry my background
51:04 went away i'm just trying to figure I was um I was saying um maybe
51:12 you use a software or something in your business or personally that you that you're really like
51:23 um so you know we're we're we're testing some some new software out there right now part of uh part of uh Battle Brands
51:32 which owns Battle Box also owns Battle Ventures um so there's some some
51:38 software out there that we're we're having fun with um one is a is just launched called Concio uh and it's it
51:48 allows um a team member to to make uh phone calls to to customers so we have a
51:56 a winback campaign that we've ran for several years we have a full-time phone sales guy and um he's working out of a
52:02 spreadsheet that we export and that we import um past customers to and he picks
52:08 up the phone you know 150 calls a day super successful um campaign so this
52:14 Concio product is going to be almost like a dashboard soft so we have a soft phone
52:19 now but this is a soft phone that's going to integrate into Shopify and Recharge and Gorgeous and Clavio to give
52:27 give him the ability to see the full customer picture and understand who he's
52:32 talking to better so that's that's exciting um I'm optimistic it'll work um
52:38 if it works as planned it'll probably allow him to crank out twice as many calls a day and more efficiently because
52:44 he's not having to manage a 85 tab Google sheet himself it'll just be all
52:50 automated so excited about that wow very nice uh a business do
52:57 I will I will check it out a business or productivity tool or software that you would recommend or a productivity
53:07 tip um get rid of all your meetings don't have so many meetings i feel like we
53:14 have meetings for meetings sometimes so so once probably once a month maybe once
53:20 every two months I just take a hard look at meetings and and hey is this really necessary right i think and maybe it
53:28 it's me coming from the corporate world but like too many meetings is inefficient
53:34 and I think it's human nature to have a bunch of meetings like when you're running a business but like that's
53:40 that's that's the hack take a hard look at your calendar and is is it a is is a
53:46 meeting really necessary yeah no that's a great advice and I think you know people who are in the corporate world
53:53 also is they probably don't need any correct
54:00 another startup or business that you think is currently doing great things
54:09 a startup business that is currently doing great things um there's
54:16 there's another um a uh a JV um gentleman named Jared he runs
54:24 a um company called Shieldbox which is a it's a traditional subscription box for
54:30 law enforcement officers he was NYPD uh so we launched with him Medic Box uh and
54:38 it's it's a it's a monthly medical supplies medical stuff mhm um and after
54:45 each 3 months every quarter you can build a kit and you know maybe you put this kit in your wife's car in case she
54:52 breaks down maybe you just have it in your in your living room in case a kid hurts himself um but it's cool
55:00 because you know people people hurt themselves people need medical stuff um so I'm excited about that one he just
55:06 launched um uh last year and it's it's showing a lot of success and he's a
55:13 really good guy and it's a really good product so excited about that one awesome
55:19 um a peer entrepreneur or business person whom you look up to or someone
55:24 who inspires you um so I'll take a a unpopular opinion
55:31 here um I pull inspiration at this point so I used to you know years ago I used
55:37 to look at other entrepreneurs other people building stuff um with the direction everything's going and the
55:43 importance of content now I look towards create actual just creators
55:49 um for for ideas and um inspiration it's
55:55 it's it's it's weird that I've taken this this pivot but now I just I focus on these creators and I see what they're
56:01 doing and that's where we get inspiration for the business um for a long long long time I really I don't
56:08 want to say disliked but I didn't care for um Gary Vee Mhm at all and now as
56:17 I've I guess maybe I've matured I actually have appreciation for what he does um and he's just putting himself
56:25 out there and it's a it's a it's a content play and I think that yeah the wiser and smarter I've become the more
56:31 appreciation I have i don't watch him to be motivated it's not He's not gonna motivate me but man do I respect what he
56:37 does well you know what i my thoughts on Gary Vee is that he has certain talent right
56:45 and he's he's just naturally like that everybody has certain talent and he like
56:50 that's that's kind of his thing right like I I don't think I I don't think he can he can help himself like not go
56:58 online and market it right yeah it's just his thing yeah yeah i can
57:03 appreciate f final question best business advice that you have ever received or you would give to other
57:09 entrepreneurs
57:14 um profitability be profitable
57:21 seems seems pretty simplistic and makes sense but man you got to have you got to
57:28 have positive IDA um running these businesses and and being like "Oh I'm going to figure out profit next year."
57:34 Like no unless you're unless you're building some gigantic SAS product that
57:42 you know can get billions of users like
57:47 you got to worry about profitability right away um that the days of just burning money yeah just especially if
57:55 you're if you're coming up with a DTOC product you've got to be profitable
58:00 um Yeah profitability it's simple but people don't do it no that's that's
58:05 great advice especially in e-commerce if you're not profitable like it's what are you doing very difficult yeah for sure
58:13 well John thank you so much uh for your time today for sharing your story for sharing uh you know details about your
58:19 business and strategies and tactics really really appreciate your time uh anybody who wants to purchase your item
58:25 products uh or get in touch what's the best way to do that sure um so just you
58:31 know BattlBox.com google battlebox spell it however you want it's going to come up um but it is spelled B A B B B B
58:38 B B B B B B B B B B B B B B B B B B B B B B B B B B B B B B B B B B B B A A T T L B O X uh online queso.com it's my blog
58:44 um it's it's a little bit non-traditional in the sense that I don't want to just talk about the wins
58:50 we get i want to talk about the losses and what we learn from them and how we can apply them um to to later instances
58:56 i I as Tik Tok is as an example I did like five or six posts that first year
59:02 when we were getting our our our butt handed to us just but taking learnings from it um and then LinkedIn is probably
59:09 where I'm the most active awesome well uh John thank you so much
59:14 again for your time today really really appreciate it and wish you all the very best great thanks so much thanks for
59:20 having me