#292 – 3 Important Lessons From The Multi-Million Dollar Brand Solo Stove

In episode 292 of the AM/PM Podcast, Tim and John discuss:

• 01:45 – A Brand That Tim “Fan-Girls” About
• 04:00 – How Tim Started Using Solo Stove
• 05:50 – The Solo Stove Brand Story
• 08:50 – Selling Your Product As An Experience
• 09:45 – Describing The Solo Stove Product
• 16:30 – The Science Of Fire
• 17:40 – Helping People Realize Your Product Is Something They Want
• 19:10 – Quick Q&A With The CEO Of Solo Stove
• 22:10 – The History Of The Brand And Quick-Hitting Lessons
• 25:10 – Selling $1.3 Million On A Kickstarter Launch
• 27:40 – How Covid Pandemic Affected The Brand
• 33:40 – Why People Are Buying This Brand?
• 36:30 – Selling Memories And Experiences
• 38:50 – Acquiring New Brands And Scaling The Business
• 41:10 – 3 Lessons That Lead To The Brand’s Success
• 43:50 – Saying No To A 7-Figure Deal With Amazon
• 45:10 – Understand The “Why” Behind Your Brand
• 48:20 – The Importance Of Break-Neck Speed

Transcript

Tim Jordan:

If I had to sit down and list my hero brands, one of the brands I see online all the time that I absolutely love what they’re doing and get a lot of brand recognition, one of that is Solo Stove. I have one myself now. I talk about it all the time, and today, I get to interview the CEO of Solo Stove and figure out what made them successful. Why I know about this brand, and why so many people are excited for me to have this episode. Listen to the end, this will be a great episode. 

Tim Jordan:

Hi, I’m Tim Jordan and in every corner of the world, entrepreneurship is growing. So join me as I explore the stories of successes and failures. Listen in as I chat with the risk takers, the adventurous, and the entrepreneurial veterans, we all have a dream of living a life and fulfilling our passions, and we want a business that doesn’t make us punch a time clock but instead runs around the clock in the AM and the PM. So get motivated, get inspired. You’re listening to the AM/PM Podcast.

Tim Jordan:

Hey, everybody, welcome to another episode of the AM/PM Podcast. I’m your host, Tim Jordan. And today is an episode that I honestly genuinely have been looking forward to for a long time. We interview a lot of people with a lot of different skill sets and a lot of different stories and a lot of different backgrounds and a lot of great information. But this episode, I actually get to interview the guide, leading the charge at one of the brands that I absolutely fangirl about. And I’m not just saying that cuz he is listening to me and I’m trying to kiss butt right now. I’m dead serious. If I think about the rise of these microbrands, right? These products that don’t come from big CPG companies that aren’t in every brick and mortar store. And haven’t been around since the days of Montgomery Ward.

Tim Jordan:

And if you know Montgomery Ward is go back and check it out. It’s an old store that died well before Kmart. Right? I think about these brands that are blowing up my Facebook that are blowing up my digital assets, right? In forms of advertising. I think about content marketing. I think about brand stories. I talk a lot about Tom’s shoes, right? Their brand story is buy a pair, give a pair. Solo Stove has this mission of branding themselves as an experience. And that’s something that yeah, I look at in all their advertising, it’s not about the patent on their item. It’s about like, Hey, we can bring people together, which is amazing. So without further do, let me introduce our guest today, John Merris the CEO of Solo Stove. And then I wanna talk just for a second about Solo Stove again, before we get into his lessons and his information he has. So John, thanks for being on the episode.

John:

Thanks, Tim. It’s great to be here with you.

Tim Jordan:

And where are you located?

John:

We’re down in Texas in the Dallas area.

Tim Jordan:

Awesome. So I don’t remember how many times all the digital marketers “digital marketer gurus” say you have to see something before you start recognizing it. I remember I’ve talked a lot about the Nomatic backpacks that, that I now own. I remember seeing those ads for like a year before I finally realized Nomatic nomad. Like it was imprinted in my brain. I’m sure it took a lot less time for Solo Stove because the branding and the marketing was absolutely amazing. But I remember for months seeing the ads for this overpriced metal pot that people put fires in, right? Like that’s how I see this thing. And after enough imagery and enough marketing and enough connections like in my brain was imprinted this brand of solo stuff. And I remember thinking this is really cool. So as my wife and I were sitting around before Christmas, thinking about what to get her dad, my father-in-law who is a perpetual grouch, I’ve talked about him before and nothing ever makes this guy happy.

Tim Jordan:

We thought we gotta buy this guy. Something that is exceptionally cool, that he would never buy for himself. And if he doesn’t like it I’ll keep it. So I told my wife, I said, there’s this crazy overpriced tin can called Solo Stove. Let’s go buy one of those things. She bought one, it arrived to our house and I was jealous. I was super jealous. I wanted this thing in my mind. This is gonna be the coolest thing. I talked to people that talked about how amazing they were. I thought about all the ways I could use it. And I wanted it. Well, long story short, my wife saw the envy in my eyes and decided that she was actually gonna hide it in our garage and give it to me for Christmas. And you know that you have a good toy on Christmas when it’s the first thing you open. And it was freezing cold outside.

Tim Jordan:

There was snow on our back deck and I unpacked this big, heavy stainless steel-looking thing, brought it out of the back porch, and could not wait to put a fire in this thing and watch it do its magic. I remember John one of the most amazing things about this. So, and we’ll get to actually what the product is in a second after I finish my fangirl story, but you have a lot of things that make this unique, right? It’s a patented unique item that like basically has no smoke. I’ll, let’s talk about that. But also the most amazing thing that I’ve ever seen is I put this fire with Oak firewood. It’s burning hot, it’s 2000 degrees in this thing and I’ve got that little four inch spacer underneath it on a wooden deck covered in snow and like four hours later of burning the snow directly under this fire pit has not melted.

Tim Jordan:

Like I still look, I was a firefighter for 10 years. I do not understand the science behind the snow four inches from this thing, not melting. It’s amazing. But since then I started watching more and more closely their marketing and just got more and more convinced that they have something special here. I was able to use some friends of some friends to get in touch with Solo Stove and set this interview up. So I’m super excited. I have a million questions to ask you, but John, explain to the listeners first, what the heck is Solo Stove? I’ve defined it as an overpriced tin can. And I say that in just cuz obviously, I don’t believe that anymore, but what the heck is Solo Stove?

John:

Yeah. I mean, listen, I’ve never been introed this way, so I appreciate you having me on. And certainly, we love our super fans and frankly, we’ve got a lot of ’em out there, but they all love us for different reasons. And that’s I think one of the things that I love about the brand is, it just does different things for different people. Our brand mantra here at Solo Stove is good moments, lasting memories, and the coolest thing about good moments and lasting memories is what’s a good moment to you might not be the same for your neighbor or the person down the street, or even your best friend, good moments and lasting memories look different for everybody. And what our product does is bring people together so they can create those.

John:

However, they see fit. I grew up on a 50 acre ranch outside of Austin, Texas. And, and I spent most of my weekends as a kid sitting around fires, and the greatest memories that I have as a kid, all involved, hanging out with my friends, hanging out with my family, hearing my grandfather tell stories around the fire hearing. My dad tells stories around the fire, about his childhood. And there’s just something primal and unifying about a campfire. It’s like the oldest thing that exists, right? Like from an entertainment standpoint, like, I mean, is this maybe getting a little altruistic and a little bit farfetched. I mean, I’m obviously pretty biased being in the seat that I’m in. But if you just go back in time to the caveman days before they had games before they had electronics and all the other stuff to entertain them, you can just imagine that the entertainment they had was fire.

John:

Like this is freaking cool. Let’s sit around this thing and let’s just hang out and make memories. And that’s exactly what Solo Stove is. It’s a company and you said it best. It’s not a product business. It’s an experiential business. You know, we don’t compete with other products, what we compete with. And we say it all the time around here is we’re competing with people that are spending money, going to the movies or going to Disneyland or going to the theme park. You can do that. Or you can spend three to 500 bucks on a Solo Stove, fire pit in your backyard. And you can bring a campfire experience to your backyard every weekend for the next several years. And so the question is how do you wanna spend your money and your time on experiences? And I think for us, that was a big unlock and a big moment when we realized that people were interacting and falling in love with our brand because it was helping them create moments and memories and experiences that they just hadn’t had in any other way in their life.

Tim Jordan:

All right. So I need to take a deep breath here because literally from what you just said, I could unpack about four hours of content, but I asked you what Solo Stove was. You haven’t told me what the product was. You have literally described your product through experiences. You just gave me a whole dissertation on fire and togetherness and experience. And you did not actually talk about the physical product, which is a huge lesson. All of you listening to this, just go back and rewind the past three minutes and listen to what just happened. I said, what is Solo Stove? And he said, it’s a solution. It’s not a physical product now to catch people up, let’s actually talk about what the product is. All right? So the product is a next generation, super freaking amazing fire pit. And that’s your flagship product. You have other products under the Solo Stove brand, and you even have other brands under the Solo Stove umbrella, but your flagship product is this fire pit. So talk specifically just for a minute so everybody can visualize in their minds what the heck we’re talking about.

John:

Yep. For sure. So in my experience, there are two reasons. Listen, sitting around a fire is fun, right? I have never met somebody that didn’t enjoy time around a fire. There are two reasons why I generally hear that people don’t have a, maybe three, three reasons. Let’s just say three reasons why people don’t have campfire experiences more often their life. The first one is that there’s a perception that if you live in the city, the only way that you can have a campfire experience is pack in your bags, planning a big trip or camping outing, and then going and doing an overnight camp so that you can have a campfire experience. So SoloSolve that you’re right. We have our flagship product is a portable wood burning fire pit. Okay. I’ll explain the engineering behind it. It’s a portable wood burning fire pit that you can take anywhere.

John:

So you can literally take it from your backyard to a campground, tailgating to the beach, wherever you want to take it. It can go with you. So that’s essentially what our product is. And I’m gonna explain each one kind of how it does. So the first thing that we did, and the first problem that we solve for people is we made it so that you can bring the campfire experience to your backyard. It doesn’t matter if you live in a row home in Philadelphia, you’re in a condo, as long as you have no restrictions from an HOA standpoint. So I’ll just put it this way. If you live in Manhattan and New York city, you probably aren’t taking the Solo Stove product on your balcony, on your high rise and lighten up a fire. But basically anywhere else you can get out there and you can have a campfire experience in your backyard.

John:

When I was growing up, I told you I lived on a 50 acre ranch. We lived still outside of Austin in a rural community. But when my friends, when I was a kid were growing up, if they wanted a fire, it was let’s go to Mari’s place, it wasn’t, man. We could just have a fire in our backyard, even though they lived in, you know, on a third to half acre, lots, you know, and there was plenty of space, but this perception that you had to go to the campground or go to the country for a fire, just a lot of people have that misperception and solo stuff kind of knocked that down. So that’s kind of the–

Tim Jordan:

So made it accessible. You’re talking about accessibility.

John:

A hundred percent, a hundred percent.

Tim Jordan:

So, yeah, fires, aren’t accessible. That’s problem. Number one, problem.

John:

Fires are accessible because there’s this false perception that you’ve gotta go to a campground to get one, right? Yep. Number two is, okay. Now I’m at the campground and I still don’t know if I’m gonna make a fire because I’ve never made one before. And fire’s kind of intimidating. I’m not a boy scout. I’m a 50 year old accountant and I’ve never made a fire in my life. Well, the Solo Stove and you can, you know, I’ll let you bag me up here. But the Solo Stove is the easiest fire that you’ll ever make. And it goes back to the engineering of the product, which I’m gonna talk about in the third one, but it takes the intimidation factor away. We say, box to burn in five minutes. So literally you take it off of your front porch, just like you did on Christmas morning. You take it out from underneath the tree, you unpackage it, you put it on your balcony or your porch or whatever. And then you get a fire going and, and literally in five to 10 minutes, you can have a really great fire going. Even if it’s the first fire you’ve ever made. One of my favorite–

Tim Jordan:

Beautiful fire too, when that thing gets hot, it’s the most amazingly beautiful, amazing, beautiful.

John:

My favorite emails that I get from customers are when they say I’d never made a fire before. And I just wanted to say, thank you because you made me the hero of my backyard. And can you imagine now, somebody that has children or a spouse, and they’re like, you’re not an outdoors person. You can’t make a fire and they go out there and they become the hero of their backyard, whether it’s with their friends, with their spouse, with their kids. And that’s exactly what we’re about is again, back to good moments and lasting memories. We don’t wanna be the hero of your story. We want you to be the hero, your story. And we want to be the facilitator to make you the hero. Whether it’s the best backyard host the best dad, the best spouse or whatever it is.

John:

So the first reason is accessibility. The second reason is intimidation. It’s just hard. It’s hard to make a fire. This perception that it’s not easy. And we’ve really fixed that. And then the last one is for people that have sat around fires. If you’re like my wife, my wife grew up, she sat around a couple of fires here and there, nothing like my childhood, right? She grew up in Northern California. But every time she did sit around a fire, her perception of what the experience was gonna be like was I’m gonna be playing musical chairs for the next five minutes. Because no matter where I sit, I’m gonna get smoked out. I can move around the fire and the wind will find me. And now my hair smells like smoke. And I gotta go in before I go to bed and I gotta take a shower. My sheets are gonna smell like smoke.

Tim Jordan:

My eyes are burning. The kids are upset. Everybody’s angry because everybody got smoke in their eyes.

John:

That’s it? I mean, and it’s like, man, I love the fire experience for about five minutes, until 10 minutes in. My eyes are watering. My hair smells like smoke my clothes and, you know, heaven forbid if you’re camping and now you’re getting into your tent and everything else is smelling like smoke. Yep. And what we did is we engineered a product that burns nearly smokeless. So you know, what a lot of people have done to solve the smoke issue is they went gas. Well, the problem with a gas fire pit or a gas stove is that there’s no heat and you can smell the residual of the gas. I mean–

Tim Jordan:

This is not cool. There’s nothing cooler than like embers and glowing, like yeah.

John:

Totally different experience. What we’ve done is taken it and made it a wood burning experience, just like a traditional fire, but removed the vast majority of the smoke. And the way we did that is by creating a patented airflow technology, where instead of oxygen feeding the fire from the top, it actually is feeding the fire through holes in a floating Ash pan to the bottom. And it creates more fuel essentially, or more oxygen with your fuel to create a more efficient burn. All smoke is a lot of people don’t know. And I only know because of this job is that smoke comes from inefficient burn.

Tim Jordan:

It’s the leftover.

John:

The more efficient it gets, the less smoke there is because ultimately high heat will eventually. And you were a firefighter, so you could teach this lesson better than I can, but high heat will combust the emission. So essentially smoke is actually combust and becoming flame through this hotter fire, you talked about 2000 degrees. So the way we market it is a normal campfire will burn like 700 degrees. Our fire pits will burn 14 to 1600 degrees. And so what’s happening is the little smoke that there is that’s coming out. There’s so much heat, it’s pushing it up. And so it gets rid of the smoke, but most of the smoke actually combust because it’s just so hot. It’s like a furnace. It’s not like a fire. It’s a furnace. So, and that’s the kind of science behind it.

Tim Jordan:

I always love the science of fire when I was doing the firefighting thing. And I understand the principles of smoke. I understand the principles of ventilation. And when you actually watch this thing burn and it gets too temperature, right? It has to get, you have to let it get hot enough. You have to make sure there’s no woods looking at the top. But once this thing is like, I was about to say, firing, once this thing is operating at optimal.

John:

We use the term once it’s activated.

Tim Jordan:

Once it’s activated, once it is sped up and it’s doing its thing, it’s amazing. Like you can see the way that the vortex thing work, the vents on the top sides is amazing. So what you’re telling me is that you guys use technology that is patented. You know, it’s a patented item right now. I’m sure technology to fix the problems of this experience that people want, but think is an attainable thing. It’s too intimidating. And they think that it is a nuisance, right? So you basically fix the problems of what people want by using this amazing technology that you guys have patented. Now you own the market for the coolest fire pit in the world, essentially.

John:

Yeah. The one clarification that I’d put out there is I don’t think a lot of people even realize that this is something that they want. I actually think that what, and we’re gonna get into the digital marketing side and you talked about kind of being everywhere, but a big part of this is helping people realize that this is something they should want, that maybe they don’t even realize they don’t have, or is a missing link in their life. Because again, remember 80% of the US population lives in an urban environment in the cities. And so people generally, it’s not like an everyday person grew up sitting around fires. And so they don’t even realize what they’re missing, but you know, very similar you take a company like Apple, you know, who had the foresight around the iPhone to believe that people would want a computer in their hand and be able to do everything on the go we’re in a lot of ways betting on the fact that we believe that people kind of the antithesis to the Apple and having your computer everywhere you go is that people will actually long for more real experiences that are unrelated to electronics and being connected, “by spending time with real people in real places, making real memories.”

Tim Jordan:

So prior to this interview, several weeks ago, we lined this up. I actually posted in several Facebook groups of online sellers and said, Hey, I know a lot of you’re familiar with Solo Stove, which they were said if you could sit and ask the CEO several questions, what would they be? I had over 200 responses. And typically this part of the interview, what we do is we talk about the actual business, like lessons that you can share with us based in your business. And we have those here on my sheet that we’re gonna get into basically wisdom from the success of Solo Stove and what can you share with us? But first, what I’d like to do is fire off some of these rapid questions. All right, you don’t have to go too deep into this cuz again, we could spend six hours, but setting the stage of Solo Stove is a company that makes a stainless steel technological advanced fire pit. You are almost primarily all sold through digital marketing. Is that accurate?

John:

Yeah, just roughly 85% of our business is sold online.

Tim Jordan:

It’s sold online through digital marketing. Also setting a stage, I’ll give a spoiler alert here. The flagship product that you have right now, the fire pit was not your first product, right? The first products that Solo Stove launched with were much smaller. It looks to me like backpacking style stove. So small little stoves that you can use a little bit of wood. You didn’t have to carry fuel and you could cook your pasta, your dehydrated, whatever it is when you’re hiking, the Appalachian trail right now was the technology discovered prior to that, like the first use of this specific type of burning was that technology used in those small first versions of the product.

John:

It was. And just to be clear what we hold IP on our products, secondary combustion, the idea of utilizing this kind of airflow to create a hotter fire has actually been around for almost a hundred years. I mean, it was technology that was even around during World War II. So what the founders did is they learned about this technology and then started tinkering with cans in their garage and ultimately figuring out how to put it into a camp stove that would allow them to boil water in less than six minutes for ultra light backpackers. I mean, that was exactly–

Tim Jordan:

With the wood and the pine cones and the crap you find light on the ground.

John:

So basically, no fuel, no pack fuel, right? You’re an ultra light backpacker. So you’re not carrying fuel the stove, weighed 4.3 ounces and could boil water in less than six, you know, in six to eight minutes.

Tim Jordan:

Right. When was that? Like when was Solo Stove selling those items? When was that the primary business was the backpacking stuff?

John:

2011 is when the business officially started selling products.

Tim Jordan:

You know, what’s crazy is I actually have a lot of history in ultralight backpacking. And from about 2010 to 2015, I was big into it. And I had never heard of this technology. I’d never heard of Solo Stove. I didn’t know this existed. I was packing in cans of fricking expensive fuel. I had no clue this existed and maybe there’s a lesson there, right? Something about marketing. So your flagship product was not huge. It wasn’t what puts you on the map, but it led to this conversation. What happened in the business that made everybody decide, Hey, what we have is not going to put us on the radar, let’s make a really freaking big thing and change our business model. Cause your business model was creating backpacking stoves. Then you went to fire pits and this is, this is kind of an important, I don’t know, lesson on the sequence of what made you successful because you had to stop what you were doing and focus on something else, which is tough.

John:

Yeah. I mean, there was an evolution here. I’ll say three things quickly. So we can keep moving. But the first one is that Solo Stove was founded with $15,000 and not a penny was put into the business unless it was money generated through the business until the founder exited.

Tim Jordan:

This is basically a bootstrap business.

John:

A bootstrap business. It was a side hustle in a garage. The founders actually worked full-time in their full-time jobs until 2015 and 2016 when they finally were able to go full time in Solo Stove. So for five to six years, they were working full time during the day. And then working on Solo Stove at night, but the business was profitable from the first year. So two lessons here for any of the guys, especially those of you that are starting out right now, you don’t need a lot of money and you could be scrappy, and that you’re playing the long game. And those lessons are still ingrained in the culture of the way we do business. The second thing I’d say is, well, the fire pit came in 2016. The evolution of the product mix happened through the customers.

John:

All we were doing, and this is why we love digital marketing. This is why we love direct to consumer at Solo Stove is because your customers will tell you where to be. Our customers were informing the next products, not us. We weren’t sitting around in a garage thinking that we had it all figured out, or we were the smartest guys in the room. We were actually just listening to what our customers were telling us. And our customers were saying, Hey, first, we had this ultra lite backpacking stove. And then they said, Hey, sometimes we’re not ultra lite backpacking. Sometimes we’re doing day hikes and we’re cooking for two to four people. Could you make a slightly larger one? So we did. And then eventually they came back and said, Hey, we love this stove, and sometimes we’re car camping. We don’t have to hike at all. Could you make a larger one? So we could cook for eight people. And so we made a larger one and then eventually that same customer base came back to us and said, I know this is gonna be crazy, but sometimes we don’t even want to cook on it, but we love the way this works. And we love the way the flame looks. Could you make this into a fire pit? We just a little tidbit. A lot of people don’t know. We thought it was the stupidest idea ever. Anybody would buy this thing. We’re like, it’s just a large, it’s kinda like the way you were describing. We’re like, it’s basically like a big, large barrel fire. Like who’s gonna buy that?

Tim Jordan:

Hundreds of dollars, like hundreds of dollars for a big tin can.

John:

Instead of like $25, they’re gonna pay us hundreds no way. But we decided to listen to the customer and we went on Kickstarter. Actually. We kind of went back to our customers. So we said, listen, we’re gonna put it up on Kickstarter. And if you guys can scrounge together a hundred backers on Kickstarter, we’ll go make it for you hundred. And then we’re gonna be done. We’re just trying to satisfy you as our customer. We’re just, we’re not even gonna launch it as a product. We’re just gonna make sure that there’s at least a hundred of you out there. And we put it up. And in 45 minutes we had our a hundred backers and in the end of 30 days, we had sold, you know, 1.3 million of fire pits. And three months later, it was selling more, just that one product than all of the rest of our products combined.

Tim Jordan:

So you did a 1.3 million launch on Kickstarter.

John:

Yep.

Tim Jordan:

And that was, it was really the dumbest idea you’d ever heard. And you were just gonna satisfy these hundred people and you basically said, we’re not even gonna invest in retooling to make the bigger one unless a hundred of you go ahead and prepay us.

John:

That’s it.

Tim Jordan:

Holy crap. All right. Cause that was one of my questions was how did you launch this thing? Because a lot, and you’ve answered it in a couple different ways. Cuz a lot of people ask like, Hey Solo Stove, we recognize it’s big company. It’s doing great. Like how did they get started? So two things here. One is they started with two guys had full-time jobs screwing around in the garage, playing around with ideas. They didn’t actually invent anything, super technologically advanced. They found a technology and they just reapplied it. So I’m sure your patents are mostly design patents right now, right?

John:

Exactly. We have a couple of utility ones around some, some certain things that we’ve done with it, but generally, you’re right. And frankly, philosophically, our founders just believed that at this stage of innovation in the world, that greatest ideas are actually just gonna be better iterations of something that already exists. They kinda went into their business believing that that was the case. And so they were looking for something that existed that they could just apply and make better. And that’s exactly what they

Tim Jordan:

Did. So first phase of launchers, two guys in their garage with $15,000 between them that they invested probably in their first amount of inventory, they started selling these things, Kept their full time jobs for five years until they could go full time. And then they made a massive exit from the company a short time later, right?

John:

Yep.

Tim Jordan:

With $15,000 to start that’s insane.

John:

That’s it.

Tim Jordan:

Then you listen to your customers, you started changing product designs. You thought this was a stupid idea for the fire pit. So you pre-sold it to make sure that you weren’t gonna lose any money on it. It went huge on Kickstarter. And that is now your flagship product that essentially puts you on the map and now has made it possible to purchase other brands under the Solo Stove like kind of umbrella. And we’ll briefly talk about that. Cause that’s a big part of the story here that you guys are now acquiring other brands that have the same mantra of like we sell experiences and memories and together that’s not a product. All right. What about COVID now, if I had to guess let’s talk about COVID because the past two years have been your highest growth phase.

Tim Jordan:

I imagine like this is when you really, you know like the rocket ship started flying now I suspect that COVID really helped because more people are stuck at home. People are home, what are we gonna do? We’re going insane. We’re going bored. We can’t travel. We can’t do anything. Let’s start a fire on a back porch. I wanna talk about that. But also at the same time, I imagine you had ridiculous supply chain problems cuz everybody listening knows that supply chain issues got just crazy stupid during COVID. So it’s your time of what I imagine to be highest demand, but also highest difficulty getting the products to sell.

John:

Yeah. So growth rate wise just to put things in perspective and kind of give everybody some numbers to work on  in their minds. If you just take Solo Stove and take out the acquisitions. Right? So to take out any of the acquisitive stuff, Solo Stove was 16 million of revenue in 2018, and 39 million in 2019. So you’re like 250% growth. This is pre COVID. Okay. 16 million to 39 million, 2019 was 39 million, 2020 goes to 133 million. So just over that growth rate from 2018 to 2019 and then 2021 goes from 133 million to 360 million for just the Solo Stove brand.

Tim Jordan:

Holy crap.

John:

So growth rate wise, if you take it as a percent, you know, was actually there was tremendous momentum, pre COVID. Yeah. Going, you know, in, into our business. Now you’re spot on with some of your assumptions around what happened during COVID you definitely saw an increase in online demand, there was an offset about 45% of our business comes from word of mouth. And during COVID we saw that actually trail back as low as 20% because nobody was sitting around fires with friends anymore or even extended family. Right. Everybody was stuck at home by themselves.

Tim Jordan:

So word of mouth is you go to a neighbor’s house and go, well, this thing’s amazing. What is this? That’s a Solo Stove.

John:

How many times have you had friends over sitting around your stove with you and they buy one while they’re sitting around the stove with you?

Tim Jordan:

It has happened. Absolutely. Yep.

John:

And so that, that shut off during COVID for us. And so while we saw the increase in demand, we also saw the drop in referral business and for new customer acquisition, that was a pretty big hit for us. However, definitely still saw tremendous demand. And you can imagine going from, you know, 39 million to 133 million from 2019 to 2020, that’s a lot of stoves, that’s a lot of fire pits. And so meanwhile, you know, you’ve got some shutdowns going on in China and in Asia, which is where we manufacture our product. And so we’re scrambling and we’ve got this great brand that up to that point, we’ve never done wrong. I mean, our customers love us. We have this kind of overall philosophy from a customer experience standpoint. It’s just like, not our fault, but our problem, like if you call in and you got an issue, we’re gonna get you taken care of.

John:

I mean, it’s kind of like Costco or Nordstrom. It’s like you could practically bring something that we didn’t even sell you and we’re gonna figure out a way to make you whole. And so we really go out of our way, well, here we stock out for the first time and we’ve got these five to seven week lead times to get our product and we’ve got customers upset and we’re missing promise date. And so we had to pivot very quickly to making sure that we were over communicating with customers during that time. And you know, ultimately, if we wouldn’t have had any supply chain problems, I truly believe that the growth would’ve been even bigger. So we were kind of offset that way. And then and at the end of 2020, we had done a lot to really push supply chain during 2020, we decided January 2021, we’re never gonna stock out again. And we, and we finally had stood up new relationships, new factories and stuff to manufacture the product for us. And we were able to fill our warehouses and be able to take care of our customers. And, and we saw the results of that in 2021

Tim Jordan:

Now, these things are huge. They’re heavy, they’re big, and shipping costs from containers in China. We know, went up like 600%, 700%, 800%. Did you have to increase the price of your products because of supply chain issues?

John:

We didn’t. We chose to just basically make less and continue to lean into the customer. You know, we believe that these challenges aren’t forever and we also took some measures, you know, we kind of took the onus on us, like, Hey, the easy thing to do would be to raise prices to customers. The hard thing to do would be to figure out how to offset these costs. And so let’s go do the hard work so we can take better care of our customers. And that’s exactly what we did. We were able to hold our costs a lot lower than others. We leveraged our economies to scale. We had grown tremendously, which gave us a little bit more leverage with some of our suppliers.

Tim Jordan:

Yeah. From the manufacturing to the shipping. So your increased volume was able to allow you to over negotiate.

John:

Exactly. And so there were some things that we took in our favor instead of just accepting defeat. And we just got after it and it was you know, I talked about this a little bit with you beforehand, but we talked about iterating and, and learning. And a lot of this was just a learning experience. You know, we figured out kind of what works and what doesn’t. And you know, in large part, we were able to hold our margins while without increasing pricing by, by finding other ways to win and cut costs.

Tim Jordan:

Now, speaking of costs, essentially, let me play devil’s advocate here, John, you’re selling a fire pit, right? I can go over to Lowe’s or Home Depot or Walmart anywhere, and I can buy a $40 metal fire pit. How do you convince people to spend hundreds of dollars on yours? And you can even tell us what your map, you know, your typical retail pricing is you’ve got three sizes of these things, right? I have the mid-size one, not the big one, but tell us what those prices are and tell us how you’re able to justify getting people to spend hundreds of dollars when I can essentially buy a fire pit that’s metal for 40 bucks at Walmart.

John:

Yeah. So call it $200 to $500 somewhere in there between the small, medium, and large versions. So Ranger, Bonfire, and Yukon are the names of the three. And, you know, ultimately I put it on three things. The first one is, is that we’re not selling fire pits, we’re selling experiences. You wanna go buy a fire pit, go over to Lowe’s. If you wanna buy experiences, if you want to have the best night of your week that you’ve ever had with your friends and family members then invest in a Solo Stove, one, it’s got a lifetime warranty on it. You know, there’s no fire pit out there that has a lifetime warranty on it because they’re all out.

Tim Jordan:

They’re almost out.

John:

You’re gonna be re-buying a new one every couple of years. And then I think that the second big thing is, again, that experience, if you buy a fire pit and you find yourself only using it once a year, because you’re playing musical chairs and it doesn’t really stay, get that warm, it doesn’t get that hot because it’s, it’s more traditional in nature. And you can do that. Or the alternative is you can invest in a Solo Stove and have the greatest night of your week around a Solo Stove, and you’re not playing musical chairs and you get more heat, so you can use it. You know, you’ve talked about using it in the cold, right after Christmas, on Christmas day, you know, with snow on your balcony, that’s the type of experience you’re gonna get with a Solo Stove. So those, those are really the things, but it really comes down to the brand, you know, very similar to Yeti. You know, Yeti did a great job of making you feel like a cheap skate if you bought any other cooler or any other Tumblr. And not to say that there aren’t other brands out there that are doing well and have made it, but nothing like the 1.6 billion of revenue that Yeti put up you know, last year.

Tim Jordan:

Also, Texas based, right?

John:

Texas neighbors, not in Austin. And they in a lot of ways have been a brand that we followed really closely. We’re basically the same business, but the hot version, and we’re two years behind them. So everything that they did, you know, five years ago, we did three years ago and everything they did three years ago, we did one year ago and we’re on that same growth path. But what they did a great job of is just making people realize that you’re, you’re not just buying a cooler, you’re actually buying the way of life that you get from being a Yeti customer. And, and, you know, the same goes for Solo Stove and the customers that are in our, in our you know, in our fan base now they just live life a little bit differently. They’re a little happier and they’re plugged into our system and in our community and they in our content. And it’s all about finding time to go and make these, these memories and people wanna be a part of that, especially now post pandemic, after having been locked up in your house for a couple of years you know, people are just, they’re done staring at screens all the time.

Tim Jordan:

Amen. So I was gonna ask you also on my list of questions, why would, and the context of that being everybody is now going to propane or natural gas and everything is a flick of a switch, and it’s easy to try to switch on and have a pretty fire. Right. And I think what you’re gonna tell me is like, there is no experience like wood, like it’s, it’s hotter, it looks cooler. It’s like you get the whole experience of lighting the fire and throwing twigs in. And my kids just love feeding the fire. I guess that answers that question. Anything else to add to that? Why you went old school wood in a world that loves gas

John:

The way I say it all the time is you get the aroma of a wood burning fire without the smoke. And that’ is just, there’s no way to exchange that at the moment that you smell wood burning, it just does something. I truly believe there’s endorphins or something that get released in the brain. And it’s like, oh, I’m outdoors, and I’m having a great experience. And now it’s time to start talking and telling stories and making memories. It just happens. And you don’t get that when you flip a switch on a gas stove. So all the things you just said, the tinkering, the interaction with the fire, it’s like art, you know, it’s your fire. Nobody else I can’t take, I still get texts. I mean, my friends and family members that are closest to me know what I do for a living. They know that I look at this stuff all day long and they still send me pictures every weekend. Dude, you’re never gonna believe it. Look at this fire. And it’s like, man, you know, how many of these pictures I’ve looked at? Like thousands of them, but in their mind, it is their fire. And it is the coolest fire. You know, it’s like people posting pictures of their kids, you know, it’s like their kid, the best looking kid out there.

Tim Jordan:

Yep. All right. So last question that I have on here is new brands. You guys expanded your umbrella into some different brands. Talk to me briefly, why you ramped up the 360 million in revenue in 2021. Why was acquiring new brands and putting them under this kind of solo brand important for scaling the business and growing the brand and all that stuff. Try just a couple minutes here. Like why does that impact everything as a force multiplier? And it’s not just, oh, we wanna acquire new brands and everything stays the same.

John:

Two reasons. One is we started talking and getting to know other digital marketing and eCommerce brands out there and just realized that there were other founders that were doing a great job at helping people create good moments and lasting memories, just like we were, they were just doing it in their own way. And so we wanted to be a part of that. We wanted to expand our reach into people’s lives and do more good, create more good, which is a big part of our brand mantra. Number two is we believe that there are really amazing synergies as it pertains to digital marketing execution. You know, the digital marketing space is changing. I mean, the reason you’re doing this podcast is because there’s so much to learn and there’s never any content you’re gonna be able to do this for the next 20 years, and you’re not gonna run outta stuff to talk about.

John:

And the reason is because at the moment that you feel like you’ve capped out every possible topic, the industry will have evolved and it will have improved and it will have gotten better and innovation will have happened. And then you’re gonna focus on that. And by the time you finish with that tranche, you’re gonna be into the next tranche. And, and because of that, we feel this immediate and immense opportunity to partner with other e-commerce brands that have been great by themselves, without us. These are not distressed brands. These aren’t brands that need our help. These are brands that together we’re better. And we’re finding that not only are we better together from a digital marketing standpoint, but again, they’re doing a great job with this good moments, lasting memories, and changing people’s lives for the better, just like we are in their own way. And we just love the idea of doing more and more of that.

Tim Jordan:

Love it. So those were the majority of the questions that kind of wrapped up. And if any of you are listening and had another specific question, sorry, just don’t have time to get into all of it. But now let’s jump into some of the lessons that you’d like to share, right? So, before we start recording, I said, Hey, give us three lessons from Solo Stove, things that you’ve learned, that’s help lead to your success that you can share with us as one of bees, as people that want to be as successful as Solo Stove has been, whether it’s through digital marketing, e-commerce sales, whatever it is. And the first lesson that you said you wanted to share was to not chase the easy dollar. Let’s talk about that.

John:

Yeah. I mean, listen, you’re gonna have opportunities as your brand grows, you’re gonna get approached and you’re gonna have opportunities to take large POs from whether it be, you know, Amazon in the early days where, you know, they ultimately want you to transition you from a 3P seller to a 1P seller and buy a bunch of inventory, and you’re gonna be attracted to those types of dollars, or it’s a large retailer like a Home Depot or a Lowe’s that approached us several years ago that we said no to you’re gonna have opportunities to take easy dollars off the table. And the important lesson for us in the early days was that we believe we were building a brand that was gonna be around for the next couple of decades. And that was the lens that we tried to look through.

John:

Some of you may not feel that way. You may be looking for a quick exit. And if you are, you may think about this differently, but if you are trying to build a brand that you want to be around a decade from now in two decades from now, it’s gonna mean that sometimes you probably have a choice to make between diluting your brand or hurting your brand and the long term for short term dollars and my recommendation and the way what we’ve done, and the way we’ve lived is to really punt that down the line and strengthen our brand the right way and, and grow our customers. We always wanted to have more control over the interactions with our customers so that we could then be informed about, again, new product innovation and new strategies and things that we wanted to get into because our customers have really carried us throughout.

Tim Jordan:

Now, when you talk about saying no to things in a quick buck, let’s talk specifically about this for just a second. Now I know that 10 years ago, 80% of your sales were on Amazon. Now you have diversified so far away that it’s a much smaller percent, like less than 10% of your sales are actually on Amazon right now, but you were talking about a wholesale order. And I know that because we talked about this earlier, I know that at one point several years ago, Amazon came to you as a third party sellers, an FBA seller of Solo Stove on Amazon, and said, Hey, we want to take your products, transition you over to Vendor Central, which a lot of people do. And I don’t really love it cuz you lose control of your pricing and all that stuff. But the purchase order on that initial Vendor Central offer, do you care to share the size of that purchase order?

John:

Yeah. Without sharing the specific dollar amount, I’ll say this at the time it was equivalent to about double what the business had sold in its lifetime. So you’re talking about three years worth of work two and a half, three years worth of work. And somebody comes along and says, Hey, I’ll give you right now twice as much as you’ve sold in the last two and a half years in a lot of ways, you kind of feel like you made it.

Tim Jordan:

So based on your sales numbers, is it fair to say that was an eight figure purchase order?

John:

Let’s just say for sure was a seven figure. It was well north of a seven figure number,

Tim Jordan:

Which is a big purchase order and that’s cash upfront to ship your products to Amazon and they pay you upfront. That would’ve been hard to say no to. And then Home Depot, you know, there’s, it’s hard to say no to Home Depot because they give you the sales pitch. Hey, you’re gonna be on the shelves. We’re gonna give you brand awareness. Everybody that walks to the store sees your products on the kiosks and not the kiosk, but the end caps or wherever they display, you know, on home and garden. And you guys said no to that. And I think that if I had to guess, you said no because you knew that your path was going to be stronger. If you stuck to your route of remaining a primarily, you know, eCommerce business model, and obviously the numbers speak for themselves, cuz you went from 16 million to 360 million in sales in four years, right?

John:

Yeah. I mean, listen, the key for us was we always knew from the beginning, we weren’t selling fire pits and we weren’t selling stoves. We were selling experiences. And if you understand your mission, your why behind your brand for the entrepreneurs and you know, the sellers that are listening today, you just, you just wanna look through that lens as your decision making. We have had some retailers let’s just take REI as an example. So while Home Depot for us, wasn’t automatic yes. And it was actually the opposite when REI approached us and said, we want to carry your whole line. There was zero hesitation. We believed that from a brand perspective and for what we were trying to accomplish, while we would lose the direct connection to the customer, we believed that REI was actually going to build our brand alongside us and help more awareness come about in the outdoor industry.

John:

And so we immediately were able to lean into that and we’ve had very similar experiences with retailers like Dick Sporting goods, like Academy, like ACE that have been really great partners for us, but it’s been deliberate. I think maybe the takeaway of the summary is just because somebody’s waving dollars in front of you doesn’t mean those are good dollars, but it also doesn’t mean they’re automatically bad dollars either just because they’re coming from some channel other than digital marketing or other than eCommerce, you just have to be consistent and be deliberate and conscientious of what you’re trying to build. And who’s in front of you and whether or not they can help you get there.

Tim Jordan:

The second point that you wanted to share was that there is no such thing as a failure.

John:

I think this is a big deal, right? I mean, people, you know, you even hear things like fail fast and things like that. I don’t even like using the word fail anymore. I don’t even think that the word should exist in your vocabulary because what it really is, is you’ve just figured out what didn’t work. You’ve succeeded at figuring out what didn’t work. You didn’t fail. You actually succeeded. It was a success. When it didn’t work, you succeeded at figuring out what didn’t work. It’s like, you know, Edison with the light bulb, you know, he figured out 99 ways that the light bulb didn’t work, he succeeded 99 times on what didn’t work so that he could have the hundred success on what did work. And I think it’s that same mentality that you’ve got as an entrepreneur. It changes everything. When in your mind, all you’re trying to do is go out every day and all you’re doing is succeeding. You’re either figuring out what didn’t work or you’re figuring out what did work. And then you’re leaning into the stuff that did, and you’re doing more of that. And you’re throwing out the stuff that didn’t work and you’re replacing it with a new test.

Tim Jordan:

So the third thing you wanna share that had a massive impact on Solo Stove’s success is speed. Like breakneck speed, break stuff. Speed. No holds barred speed. Talk about that.

John:

Yeah. I mean, listen, this one to me is the most obvious. The reality is I just believe that speed is a competitive advantage and the great thing for you entrepreneurs out there is that it’s free. It costs you nothing. You can do it every day and just think about it. If you’re moving twice as fast, if you’re iterating twice as fast, if you’re succeeding at figuring out what’s not working twice as fast as your competition, then you’re gonna grow twice as fast too. You’re gonna get twice as big. And not only that, but you’re also learning twice as fast. And as you learn twice as fast, you actually get better than them twice as fast. Imagine now, instead of twice as fast, that you’re three or four times as fast, you can start exponentially widening the gap between you and anyone else that’s chasing at your tail trying to do what you’re doing, trying to, trying to, you know, gain new customers, trying to grow their business. So I believe in speed. I think speed is such a massive competitive advantage for any business, large or small. And it’s especially intriguing for me because it’s free.

Tim Jordan:

I love that coming from a company that’s now massive, and that started bootstrapping free is important. And the things that we could do as small businesses that set ourselves apart from those large companies is agility. You know, I tell people all the time, like we can be ninjas, we could be sneaking around behind the scenes doing big things. We don’t have to be a giant occupying force of soldiers, right? In this battle for E eCom dominance, we can sneak around speed is important. So I know that we’ve gone longer than we typically have. And I know that you even ran over on another meeting to be here and to continue speaking. So, man, I appreciate this and I’m not exaggerating when I say that this was one of the most exciting interviews that we had so far this year, because I love everything that you’re doing. And I think there’s so much to be, I don’t know, to be seen here for lessons and value for e-commerce sellers. I’ve got of course, a whole page of notes here of stuff that I’m going to be implementing myself and notes that I’m gonna share with my teams. So thank you for being on. I know that solo stove has recently purchased a few other brands. One of them was the origami canoe or kayak.

John:

Yeah, you got Oru Kayak. And then which is an incredible product. This is a kayak that folds into the size of a briefcase and weighs 20 pounds. You can throw it on your back, like a backpack, and go mountain biking up to a lake or throw it on the backseat of a cab. If you live in the city to go get a paddle in the bay.

Tim Jordan:

Does it actually work? Cuz I’ll tell you, I saw this thing on Shark Tank-like eight years ago. I remember thinking my fat butt would sink this thing.

John:

I’m telling you, this product it’s like as rigid as a hard kayak with the flexibility and portability of an inflatable, it’s an incredible product. So you’ll have to check that one out. We also acquired ISLE Paddle Boards and surfboards outta San Diego, a really great inflatable paddleboard business. And then finally Chubbies apparel, the Chubbies Shorts, the men’s apparel Friday at Five brand. Honestly that brand just so incredible at putting smiles on people’s faces, you know, they’ve really leaned into mental health something that we could get behind as well. So now together we’ve got this platform of four digital eCommerce brands that we’re super excited to continue to grow and lean into and you’ll probably see more, more brands joining the platform in the future.

Tim Jordan:

Amazing. John, thank you so much for being on anybody that’s listening, go to solostove.com, solosotve.com. Let them pixel you so that your Facebook feed will fill up with their amazing advertisements and notice that their advertisements are not about the product. They’re about the experience. They’re about the solution. They’re about the dream of togetherness and putting smiles on people’s face. And I wrote this quote down, you told me before we started quoting, it said “you sell products that quote, make people smile and create connections to the people and places they love.”

John:

That’s it, love it. That’s it, man.

Tim Jordan:

John, thanks so much for being on. Thank y’all for listening. If you have any questions that maybe we can fire off over to Solo Stove, if you’re go over to the YouTube channel and look at the YouTube video and post a reply in the comment section there. Otherwise, if you want to give some feedback and you love this episode, whatever podcast platform you’re listening on, make sure to leave a review. Thanks again, John. Thank you all for listening and we’ll see you all on next week’s episode.

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