Zak (00:04.915)
Welcome to the DTC revenue rocket podcast where we talk to the founders and operators behind today's fastest growing direct to consumer brands. The podcast is brought to you by Klaviyo and ECD Digital Strategy. And I'm your host Zach Kassidy-Dorian, CEO of ECD Digital. Today I'm joined by Adrian Solgaard, founder and CEO of Solgaard, a brand that's redefined. did I?

Adrian Solgaard (00:28.91)
I was just waving to the camera for the audience.

Zak (00:30.677)
But I, you know what, I was so nervous. I didn't ask if I was pronouncing your name right. And so when you waved, I thought you were waving at me that I was pronouncing it incorrectly.

Adrian Solgaard (00:37.72)
No, no, no, no, no. Soulguard, you're right. You're bang on.

Zak (00:40.383)
Awesome, awesome, okay. Today I'm joined by Adrian Solgaard, founder and CEO of Solgaard, a brand that's redefining travel gear through innovative design and a deep commitment to sustainability. Over the past decade, Adrian has built Solgaard into a globally recognized brand known for its sleek, highly functional luggage and its mission to remove ocean bound plastic from the environment. Adrian, welcome to the show.

Adrian Solgaard (01:03.734)
Hey, happy to be here. Nice to meet you.

Zak (01:06.099)
Absolutely, I'm looking forward to chatting today. So SoulGuard is actually celebrating its 10 year anniversary this year. That is awesome, congratulations.

Adrian Solgaard (01:14.062)
Yeah

It's a big, milestone. Yeah, we launched on Kickstarter 10 years ago.

Zak (01:21.839)
A lot of e-commerce brands never make it or any businesses never make it anywhere near that long.

Adrian Solgaard (01:28.514)
Yeah, there's some crazy math on businesses that make it like, it's something like less than 10 % of businesses make is a 10 million in revenue. So like 80 something percent gets like a million or two, and then just like die out or get closed or just stay sort of operating there. So to get, you know, above there puts you in a top percentage already. And then 10 years is another, you know, another big amount of fall off. But we're here for the long run, just like our products were built to last long haul.

Zak (01:58.421)
love that. Yeah, I love that about your products too. So when you look back at the 10 years of building Solgard, what are some of the biggest lessons you've learned about scaling a successful e-commerce brand?

Adrian Solgaard (02:10.732)
I think that with each different growth stage, there's always new learnings along the way. So each stage has its own sets of learning. think that from going from zero to one is the hardest part. And getting product market fit is immensely important.

think finding ways to make sure that your product resonates not only with the people that you think will be using it, but also the people who end up using it. Because the consumer, the cohort you have in mind when you're starting the company, you might be completely wrong. You'll never find out until you actually hit that scale. So yeah, I think biggest lessons are just around always operating with the long run in mind and thinking about what could be the

It's such a broad question. It's actually hard. If you want to be more specific, I can go more specific.

Zak (03:04.149)
Well, know, I'm going to ask a couple of questions about how you got started. For anyone that doesn't know, you started by raising millions through crowd, through multiple crowdfunding product launches. And I'm sure you've learned a lot through the, from the first one to the, to the ones later on. Any big, any big lessons that you learned along the way in the different rounds?

Adrian Solgaard (03:21.454)
Absolutely.

Adrian Solgaard (03:25.742)
I think that never taking no for an answer is probably the most well-rounded one that's always true. I started the company, I was broke, living on my friend's couch. I had 627 bucks in the bank and my previous business sale did not go as anticipated. And so I figured out how to put together a product, a roadmap.

uh, entire campaign in six weeks and we launched the campaign on Kickstarter, uh, launched it at six AM at noon. I tried to buy a coffee coffee with my debit card because my credit cards are all maxed out debit card got declined. I was completely out of money, but the campaign had already raised 20 grand by noon. So it's like, all right, somehow, somehow this will work out. And so I think don't ever let not having enough money be the, the gating item to stop you from trying something that's, you know, less than number one of entrepreneurship. It's just like,

You're never going to be ready. Like it's never going to be perfect. Just go, just get it out there in the world and see what happens and you've got to, and then iterate and improve from there.

Zak (04:29.493)
Yeah, it's it's it's kind of like having a having a kid to having a baby you are never going to be ready But you know you just got to do the best you can and say yes everything with certain business What was the what was the previous business let you let you that wasn't successful?

Adrian Solgaard (04:46.894)
So well, I started a t-shirt company in high school when I was 16, selling t-shirts to pay for travel to my VMAX contests. And then I started doing, I learned how to make videos through VMAX videos. And then I started doing freelance video work for different people. was making videos for dentists. I know how to.

I don't know how to do implants, but I've made videos of dentists making implants and doing implant surgery for molars and all that stuff. So I did a lot of various video freelance work. I was working at a TV show at the time. And then I started my first company, which was a creative agency when I was about 22, which was doing TV commercials, music videos, other short form video content. And then we started doing websites and branding for these clients. And then after about three years of that, when I was about 25, I had a team of 12 or so people. We were doing like

400, 500K in revenue as an agency, something like that, ish, pretty small, but that must have been more than that. But we ended up, Kickstarter had become a thing in 2012 and I was like.

What's this whole physical product world? I'd love to try doing that. I've always wanted to be an inventor. I've always loved duct taping stuff together. I always fixing cars, bikes, and motorcycles. And then my bicycle got stolen. And I thought, well, what if I made a better bike lock? That could be kind of fun. I could launch it on Kickstarter. I've got the team to build out the whole marketing campaign and concept. So I used the team from the creative agency to build out this bicycle lock idea, launched that on Kickstarter in 2013. I was successfully funded. And then...

had some people come on board and then raised some money and got distribution in about 30 countries, sold it through like mainly wholesale channels, through like bike distribution networks. Yeah, I ran that for three years and then sold the patents to a guy and a deal that didn't work out for me. And then that's when I started Solware making travel products.

Zak (06:37.289)
Well, I guess it did work out though, because if you had gotten a big payday, I think the world wouldn't have SoulGuard.

Adrian Solgaard (06:45.162)
I think that this has always been my end state. did the, have you heard of the Japanese concept of Ikegai? Where you take, what are you good at? What does the world need? What are you passionate about? And what can you get paid to do? And when you can find that overlap, I did that exercise and it's like, I've spent a lot of my life traveling all over the place. I've lived in nine countries at that point. I speak five languages. I'm never gonna get bored of travel. So that's a good one. I'm pretty good at making these innovative products. I'd seen that through the bike lock thing. I'm good at DTC marketing.

The world needs more sustainability and I'm passionate about sort of uniting all these things. So finding a way to make innovative products that are related to travel and are doing good for the planet, I think is just my natural state of being. It's exactly where I should be. So yeah, thrilled to be here doing it.

Zak (07:32.917)
Your background of having run a DTC agency and then also having the strengths of designing products yourself, I think that's a skill set that a lot of product founders do not have. It must be really valuable for you as you're managing the company that you know a little bit about everything.

Adrian Solgaard (07:57.741)
Yeah, a little bit about everything. Jack of all trades, master of none.

Zak (08:01.973)
So how many crowdfunding campaigns for SoulGuard have you gone through?

Adrian Solgaard (08:13.07)
For sure. So we've done six product crowdfunding campaigns on Kickstarter. And then those have also had follow-ons with Indiegogo. So it's not an additional six campaigns, but yeah, six core product campaigns and then two CF campaigns, Reg CF crowdfunding equity. So we did a crowdfunding equity campaign on Start Engine back in 2021. And then we just launched another one that's been closed out since, depending on when this comes out.

maybe there's some news we'll see. But yeah, we launched the crowdfunding equity campaign now a few months ago that maxed out rather quickly. We just sent out a few emails to our client list and it was great to see the response. We've had some big growth years since that first campaign, so yeah.

The guys that came into that first crowdfunding equity campaign, it's an on paper return 6X. We're not doing any share buybacks at this point, but it's a 6X return on paper. So that was exciting to be able to share that info with them. the short answer to question, for sure, eight full crowdfunding campaigns. Plus I've advised a bunch of friends and other people on their campaigns too. I love crowdfunding. I think it's the best way to do things. There's no middleman. There's no person that's

Zak (09:12.085)
That is-

Adrian Solgaard (09:27.97)
the buyer at whatever that's like, maybe this will work. You're just talking directly to the customer from a concept stage and you're finding out if people vibe with this idea. And if they do, great, you're off to the races.

Zak (09:41.109)
couldn't agree more. And this conversation is super interesting for me. Just quick background, in a previous life before I started my agency, back in 2010, me and two colleagues, we were trying to raise money through, we were trying to raise venture capital and we couldn't get any money. was during the, well, 2010 economic collapse.

So then we were like, okay, why can't we raise money through, know, we were given money away on Kickstarter and Indiegogo for, you know, product launches. Like, why can't we do debtor equity? We found out really quickly why you couldn't. And we're actually the ones that wrote the legislation to legalize equity and debt-based crowdfunding. Yeah.

Adrian Solgaard (10:27.47)
Thank

Zak (10:28.181)
Wrote the first two books ever on equity and debt-based crowdfunding. And it became the title two and title three of the Jobs Act that the president signed into law in 2012. Yeah.

Adrian Solgaard (10:37.036)
amazing. I actually don't know anything about debt-based crowdfunding. I know there's a kick booster, kick further. That's one of them, but I didn't know if there's other options. That's maybe a different conversation, not for the podcast.

Zak (10:49.841)
Yeah, yeah, every conversation. Well, you know, so a pass into law in 2012 and I was just at a grad school and it was very clear early on that the SEC did not want it to pass into law. And so it was clear that they were going to take forever to, you know, let it go and let people start using it. And I was right fresh out of grad school and I needed to go find an income somewhere else. So I went a different path.

left the crowdfunding world. But it's great to hear that businesses like you are having success with it.

Adrian Solgaard (11:24.462)
Yeah, we wouldn't be here without crowdfunding for sure. I think crowdfunding is incredible. I'm so grateful to the community. I remember the numbers and so many names of various folks along the way too. Like that first campaign for the backpack we launched in 2016, it 3,705 backers. We raised $613,917 on Kickstarter. yeah, I wouldn't be here without each and every one of those people.

Zak (11:30.73)
Thank you.

Zak (11:54.005)
Yeah. And so do a lot of those early on crowdfunding participants, have they taken part in the equity portion of it?

Adrian Solgaard (12:03.118)
Some of them have, yeah. Some of them have. I think we have around 20,000 backers of various product crowdfunding campaigns and from the CF, like Reg CF equity investing piece, it's roughly 1200 people or something like that. So it's not a one-to-one correlation, but for those that are in a position to be able to invest some amount of money, then yeah.

Zak (12:05.525)
That's awesome.

Zak (12:29.249)
I'm sure we could probably do 10 episodes on this, high level, do you have any big suggestions or advice to companies looking to raise money through crowdfunding?

Adrian Solgaard (12:50.958)
pausing for not for effect, just to make sure I answer it correctly. So hopefully the editor can chop out this little section for equity crowdfunding specifically.

Zak (12:57.129)
Sure.

Zak (13:03.349)
Another one too, if you want to.

Adrian Solgaard (13:05.262)
Yeah, then let me answer this two ways first of all for product crowdfunding General advice would be Beta test your concept on people that you know, not just your mom. She's gonna say great idea son Not just your you know closest friends ask people that are loosely in your circle in a mixture of different age groups and be like Hey, here's this property that I have and dry run your pitch on them. See what they say

And you have to actually listen to the feedback. Yes, some people are going to say, no, that's a stupid idea. One, one fun example that I have is one of the products, one, one guy that I always run my, my stuff through a good friend of mine. He, I noticed that he would say, yeah, it's really cool, but like, could you make it more futuristic and more whatever? It's like a little bit normal. And the first time I heard that I was like, shoot. And I was talking to other people. They really liked it. And then I realized he's a great barometer for me. If he thinks it's not quite futuristic enough.

That means it's probably right in the right market for being a bit of a mass market product. So with crowdfunding, if you're doing product crowdfunding, the biggest piece of advice is don't just sink money into paid advertising for the whole world. Work with a specific crowdfunding agency and go after people that are familiar with Kickstarter. Because if you have to teach someone, here's what Kickstarter is or Indiegogo or whatever product-based crowdfunding you're doing, they have to explain what crowdfunding is.

That's one hurdle, and then you still have to convince them to buy the product. Whereas if you can show it to people who are familiar with how crowdfunding is and what it is and how it works, then it's just a matter of converting them on the sale of the product. So try to skip that step where you can. I think the same information translates for the Reg CF crowdfunding equity type of world is going after people who are familiar with what investing means. Make sure you have low enough minimums that a broad range of people can participate.

but also high enough minimums that you're pushing to get to the total amount of capital that you're wanting to raise. And as with all crowdfunding, the most important thing is don't go silent on your people. A crowd becomes a mob if they're ignored and make sure that you're paying attention to them and you're listening to them and you're giving them the information that they need to feel comfortable about backing you. They're backing you as people. Instead of having one...

Adrian Solgaard (15:30.494)
huge investor that's going to be very particular in writing your ass about certain things. You've got a ton of people that just want to be paid attention to. Like, just make sure you're like, you're not going to have to give them the same level of oversight as you might with the private equity company or whatever. But you need to make sure you're continually keeping them up to speed with what's going on.

Zak (15:50.453)
I think that's great advice really for anything. Communication is essentially like communicate, communicate clearly and often.

Awesome, great. for sharing those insights. What's a product that you see everywhere? Not luggage related, but a product that you see everywhere that makes you think, I had more time, I could design this 10X better.

Adrian Solgaard (16:20.172)
Well, let me just pull up my list. It's going to look like a CVS receipt. No, I've got a long list of things that I want to do. Women's handbags is one thing that's on my list that I'm excited to play with. I am complaint driven. When I hear people complain about the same thing enough times, like, there could be an opportunity here. You know it's a bit of a joke at this point, but women's pants don't have pockets. Women's bags don't have any organization.

And we've all seen women in our lives digging through their purses trying to find whatever. There's just no organization. So I think that there's a lot to be done in that space. And so yeah, that's one thing I think about. think about furniture a fair bit too, sofas, couches, that kind of thing, a lot of home goods. Yeah, there's a lot of things in my mind. What about you? you have a product in mind that you'd want to take a swing at?

Zak (17:17.137)
Jeez, putting me on the spot now.

Adrian Solgaard (17:19.374)
You

Zak (17:23.155)
Yeah, let me. Well, yeah, well, here, actually, we can edit out. So let me think there's products that I would love to see better. That frustrates me.

Adrian Solgaard (17:25.41)
We can come back to it.

Zak (17:37.117)
I know there's some that I think about.

I know there's some that I think about because I know my wife brings up ideas to me sometimes of things that are just make no sense. If something pops to my head, I'll jump back to it.

Adrian Solgaard (17:52.047)
But know, these, these conversations happen with friends all the time where you're hanging out with your friends, having beers. And it's like, you come up with 10 great business ideas and you know what? One of them might just work. And a lot of people end up staying in that cycle of just talking about their ideas and it's you got to execute. You got to just do that thing. Um, the amount of times on our Kickstarter campaigns where people have then been, the comments have been, Hey, this is that thing we were talking about. Hey, this is that thing we were like,

Zak (18:10.663)
yeah.

Adrian Solgaard (18:20.842)
It's not about having the most unique idea or necessarily being the world's first of some... like, sometimes we will be the world's first and that's great. But being the world's first is not necessarily a good moniker. Being the best is great. Being the first doesn't really matter. Like, yeah, you were the first person to scale the Burj Khalifa without any ropes. Wow, that's crazy, bro. Like, good for you. I don't want to do that.

Zak (18:44.853)
Yeah, mean, classic example is the iPod. iPod wasn't the first, but it definitely, definitely the best. You'll probably agree with this too. Oftentimes when you hear people thinking about starting businesses, they'll be hesitant to share their idea with you. And I always, my advice is always do not be hesitant about sharing your idea. Share with everyone, talk about it with everyone that you can because no one's gonna steal it because nobody can execute.

There's a very, the amount of people that can come up with great ideas is large. The amount of people that can execute on those ideas is very, very small.

Adrian Solgaard (19:21.518)
Yeah. ideas are worth something, but it's about this much compared to execution.

Zak (19:30.613)
Absolutely.

Zak (19:42.453)
I know historically you've always built a lot of your prototypes with cardboard and duct tape, which I personally love because for three years, I have an 11-year-old son and for three years, his favorite gift for Christmas was cardboard and duct tape. And he would build these huge box for it. So when I heard you talking about that, I connected with that and I loved that.

Adrian Solgaard (20:05.866)
Here's a plug for a product that I am in no way affiliated. It's called the Chomp Saw. It's like a mini table saw for cardboard. And you can use it to like cut out shapes in ways that you want. And then like, I use it to make prototypes of things now. It's pretty great.

Zak (20:19.795)
That's super cool. But my question is now with the AI tools that are coming out, are you still using cardboard and duct tape or are you using some of those AI tools to do your prototypes?

Adrian Solgaard (20:32.59)
So the AI tools can get a good visualization of what you're going for, but to find a novel function of a product that expands and collapses and compresses, can try to have a video AI tool show you that. But it doesn't understand the physics or the mechanics of it. So yes, I'm still using cardboard and duct tape, and I'm also using AI. So it's a bit of both.

Zak (20:55.465)
What is your, will you paint a vision for us? What is your, where you build your cardboard prototypes? What does it look like? Like what do you have in there right now?

Adrian Solgaard (21:05.71)
It's a lot of cardboard and duct tape and stuff just hanging out. Yeah, I've got my own little studio here of things that I make. And sometimes I'll make it out of cardboard first just because it allows you to get to that point for our closet system and our suitcase, for example. So when it's in the suitcase, we don't make a transparent one, but this is transparent.

You know, that comes up. The very first prototype of this that I made was a bunch of flat pieces of cardboard with rope tying them together. And then I was like, okay, this can compress. All right, cool.

You can't really use an AI tool to figure out that movement and that motion of like, how is it going to feel in your head? And if you were going to get it made at a factory or get a full prototype made, you don't even know what notes to give them yet until you've kind of figured out the mechanics of something. So I still find it's a super valuable exercise to just make it in such a lo-fi way.

Zak (22:07.733)
That's great. And for everyone who is not watching and just listening, Adrian just opened up one his suitcases and as he took out the inner compartment, the luggage rack completely expanded. We went to about double or triple the size.

Adrian Solgaard (22:24.364)
Yeah, it's about double the height of the suitcase. Yeah. So it's a hanging closet inside of a suitcase. So instead of having like six individual packing cubes or whatever, it's all connected as one piece. So it's a hanging closet. The Carry-On Closet, the magical suitcase with a one-of-a-kind packing system that allows you to unpack in seconds. Pack all you need for up to 10 days and travel without ever unpacking.

Zak (22:46.165)
I love it. Well, now that we're talking about the actual product, that is something that's super unique about your product, but even more unique, I think, is what it's built out of and your whole sustainability mission. I'd love to hear you talk just a little bit about that and then also pairing the sustainability and a brand together. I find that super interesting.

Adrian Solgaard (23:14.168)
So at the start, I said like, I did the icky guy thing. My goal was how can I make an innovative product that makes travel easier while being good for the planet? So the first product we made was a solar powered anti-theft backpack, which had a solar panel inside of it. And that solar panel was connected to a power bank and a Bluetooth speaker.

So instead, I was always having my Bluetooth speaker die when I was traveling or my phone would die. And it's like, why can't I just make a speaker that charges itself? And I can also charge my phone from it if my phone's ever dying. And so that was part of that first product. And about a year into running the business, I was surfing in Bali. was in Asia visiting factories and took a week off just to hang It's 13 hours. I took a week off just to hang out and surf in Bali. And there was all this plastic in the waves and on the beach. And I just thought.

There's got to be something we can do about this. We're making this solar panel that's the size of my face. That's cute, but it's not the grid scale solar solution that we really need. If we could collect all this plastic and turn it into a useful product, there could be so much more we could do. And we could maybe make different materials out of this and all that. So it took about a year and a half to set up the supply chain. But then in 2019, we first started shipping products made from ocean plastic. So we collect plastic from beaches, rivers, mangroves.

and coastal communities and we use that ocean bound plastic to make the fabric of our products, which we call short text. Then about a year later, I was visiting in the Philippines with a group we were doing some work with and I noticed that the people doing the plastic collection, because we're using PET, which is what plastic bottles are made from to make our fabrics.

They were picking just the PET but leaving the other stuff behind because the model that we were working with, we were paying for that PET, but we weren't paying for the other stuff. So then we shifted our model to fund the cleanup of all plastics. So we fund the cleanup of six pounds of plastic for each item that we sell. We do that in partnership with the Solgar Mix Foundation, a nonprofit that my fiance and I set up.

Adrian Solgaard (25:10.294)
And so to date, we've prevented over 3 and 1 million pounds of plastic from entering the ocean through river cleanups, mangrove cleanups, beach cleanups, all that. Now we're scaling that, doing more household waste collection. And it's all about supporting the mangroves and finding ways to allow the mangroves to just be rewilded and let nature do its thing.

Zak (25:29.781)
That's amazing. For the plastics, not the PET, but the other plastics, what does that cleanup look like? What happens with that product, that plastic?

Adrian Solgaard (25:40.579)
So we're.

The waste management facility that we recently funded the construction of in partnership with Pershing Square Philanthropies, which is Bill Ackman's philanthropy side. He loved what we're up to and was like, yeah, I can fund this. We were able to build some machinery there where we're collecting the low-value plastic, goes through a tumbling process, and it gets blended together and is used to make a waste to energy fuel pellet. instead of coal, you can use this waste-derived fuel made from low-value plastics, which is

less harmful than coal from a toxic pollution perspective. If you live downstream of a coal fireplace, children have asthma and lung effects from it all that kind of thing. So this burns cleaner than that. And it's also cheaper for the local people. And so as long as it's burned at a high enough temperature, which we focus on selling it into fishing canneries and other places, then we're able to continue scaling that up. So that facility opened in September. I was just on a call with the group in Indonesia this morning.

So far there's been 2.3 million pounds of plastic processed through that facility. And yeah, so really excited about continuing to scale the do good efforts alongside building a business that's making great products. And I think that's this balancing act of like, how can we, it's not just about how can we do less bad in the world, how can we do the most good while building products that are also the most good?

Like we're not making a product that's made from recycled material and therefore it's crap. We're making a premium product and we're doing good for the planet. And it's hard to do both, but that's what we're up to.

Zak (27:18.765)
That's great. That's a great mission and great product. And you're doing it, it sounds like you're doing a lot of the cleanup in places where you love to visit as well. Are you able to combine a lot of work and pleasure trips in some of those mangrove places?

Adrian Solgaard (27:36.717)
I try to, I've not been able to do as many trips as I'd like. We've got great partners that are boots on the ground doing the work. But it's really, it was a simple equation of choosing Indonesia for the impact work. Indonesia has the world's most mangroves. Mangroves are one of the most critical forest ecosystems, not just for coastal protection from waves and things like that, but also from a biodiversity standpoint. A lot of it's...

You know, we love, everyone loves coral reefs because coral reefs are, you know, a safe haven for little baby fish and all that. And the mangroves also provide a similar setting where the root systems are aerial. They're sort of above ground and also in the water. So little fish can hide from larger predators. They're sort of the suburbs of the sea. So mangroves are incredibly important and Indonesia has the world's most mangroves while having the world's second worst plastic pollution problem because there's just no waste management infrastructure. It's not because people are

doing something wrong there. They just literally don't have the waste management facilities. So we're working to find ways to scale that up, which helps communities, helps people, helps the planet.

Zak (28:42.453)
It sounds like you're definitely making a big difference over there. That's a lot of plastic waste that you're cleaning up.

Adrian Solgaard (28:49.902)
Still a lot more to go.

Zak (28:51.379)
Yeah, sure. I want to chat a little bit about your marketing mix. When you look at Solgarge Growth today, what does the marketing mix actually look like across your different digital channels? Email, SMS, paid ads, organic, direct mail. What's the mix look like and has it, have you seen a big change over the last maybe three, four years?

Adrian Solgaard (29:17.024)
Yeah, we've tested a lot of the things. Maybe not everything, but we've tested a lot of platforms, a lot of different ad places. And I think the biggest shift in the last five years has been just a continual reduction in our spend on Facebook, on Meta. It's still a very significant portion of that spend, but that's the goal is.

This is some advice that Richard Branson gave to me. The difference between running a $20 million company and a $100 million company is the most important thing to look out for is balancing out where your revenue is coming from so that you're not ever too reliant on one specific place. A four-legged stool can lose a leg, and you still got a three-legged stool. That's pretty stable. If you've got a one-legged stool and you lose a leg,

they're not in good spot. having that, having a diversified approach to where our spend is going is really key. So, you we've got a pretty robust affiliate program going. We've got a, yeah, Facebook, Metta, sorry, Metta, Instagram, Facebook. TikTok has not performed particularly well for us. I think because we have a high AOV product, it's a little bit more of a considered purchase than a lot of things that work on TikTok Shop. Google's of course important. YouTube's great.

TV is great. Email retention marketing, super important. Glavio has been great. Yeah, we're doing a blend of email and SMS for that.

Yeah, so many people that find us in so many different ways. We've done direct mail. We've done trucks driving around New York City with billboards on them.

Zak (30:55.189)
Have you have you done any direct mail for for acquisition? reason I asked that I'm seen we're seeing with a few of our clients. They're replacing some of their meta spend with direct mail spend on postpilot for acquisition. Have you have you tried any of that at all?

Adrian Solgaard (31:18.178)
We've done, I think we're gonna be firing up some more direct mail soon-ish. But yeah, we've done direct mail where it was like a, know, 80K a month, a fairly significant slug of budget going to like this zip code, we presume is a good zip code. And we have like peppered in that. There's some really interesting retargeting potentials with direct mail that's coming out now too for like retargeting existing customers where you're like,

address specific things. There's a lot to be done there. But yeah, I think direct mail is interesting. I think in a world of everything being digital and everyone being a bit fatigued to being on their phones, it's kind of nice flipping through the little flyers that you get. As long as you make it out of recycled stuff and chuck it in the recycling, I'm fine with it.

Zak (32:06.633)
Yeah. And you get, think, 20 years ago, everybody, that was how people reached you was through direct mail. So you just got so much, but now not as many companies do it. And so when you get like a nicely designed postcard in the mail, it sits around, you look at it. And if it's a product that you really like, it may sit on your kitchen counter for two, three, four weeks.

Adrian Solgaard (32:30.242)
Yeah, exactly. Pop it on the fridge as a little reminder.

Zak (32:33.587)
Yeah. Have there been any marketing channels that have surprised you? Something you didn't expect, but ended up being a big lever?

Adrian Solgaard (32:45.003)
Hmm

Adrian Solgaard (32:49.336)
I think that I'm pretty optimistic going into anything. So if I'm testing out a new channel, I'm sort of hopeful that it's going to work. I think.

Adrian Solgaard (33:02.702)
I mean, we made a commercial of me dressed as a Viking in my alter ego, Bjorn. And Bjorn the Viking was going around with his suitcase, doing some interesting stuff. And that actually performed really well. was completely a bit of a joke, but it was great how it turned out. My grandfather's name is Thor Bjorn. Was, he passed away. And so my brother and I always joked that if we had boys, like he would name his kid Thor, I would name mine Bjorn, or whoever had one first.

Brother had three daughters. And so we ended up, my girlfriend and I bought my brother and his girl's dog for Christmas one year that was named Bjorn. And I was like, yeah, I'll go with Bjorn for my alter ego.

Zak (33:44.403)
that's great. So do you still do commercials or was it was that just like a big campaign that you ran and

Adrian Solgaard (33:51.279)
We ran two from that one. It's something I think is still fun to play with a bit, it's not exactly the right premium vibe of what the products are. It's kind more comical. so I think finding that balance is interesting for a premium product where Dollar Shave Club can be very silly because it's like, it's a Dollar Shave Club. Great. But if you're...

would Prada or Gucci be able to pull off complete slapstick humor? Like, you know, there's a bit of a question mark there. So I think that the funny, the funniest thing about building a business too is what, what you do today might not be what's right for you to do tomorrow, but it, it works today. So you got to do it. And I think there's a lot of like,

Zak (34:24.553)
Yeah, absolutely.

Adrian Solgaard (34:39.53)
have to accept levels of imperfection along the way where it's like, well, this isn't what I want to do, but it does work, so I guess we'll just keep doing that. And you'll never know until you try.

Zak (34:51.271)
Absolutely. When someone tries and buys their first Solgard product online from your website, what does that life cycle journey look like after that? What are some of the main touch points that they're getting after that?

Adrian Solgaard (35:10.774)
So yeah, we follow up with additional instructions of how to use the product, how can you use the carry-on closet, et cetera, et cetera. And then they stay in our email drip, and we'll remind them of upcoming product launches, if there's a new color or a completely new product that comes out. And a lot of people then end up coming back, and they came in for luggage, or they came in for a backpack, and then later on they buy the other. And I think the biggest complaint that we get from our customers is,

my husband, my wife, my brother-in-law, my sister stole my bag so I had to buy another one.

Zak (35:47.477)
If you were advising a 5 to 20 million e-comm brand today, a brand who's gotten some good traction, good customers, and they're really starting to scale, what would you tell them to focus their marketing energy on first?

Adrian Solgaard (36:09.41)
Well, if they got to five or 20 already, they've figured out some level of scale. I think that in the growth, the growth from 20 to 50.

numbers get, percentages get increasingly more important the bigger the numbers get. You know, when you're thinking, oh yeah, three X ROAS, great, 3.5, whatever, 2.8. The difference between three and 3.1 at a $50 million scale can be the difference between profitability or losing money. The percentages really start to matter. And so I think

keeping a laser focus on which things are truly driving additionality, which things are really driving. And there's a varying mix of tools you can use to measure these things. None of them are right.

But all of them can help you understand a story. And you've got to triangulate between, OK, well, in-platform ROAS is showing this, but then Google Analytics is showing that. OK, but then if I use this thing, then OK. I think being very critical of A-B testing various things, doing like a full pause on a certain channel for one week to see what the actual fall off is. And then two weeks later, is there then a lagging effect from that? I think doing things like that, stress testing various areas of the business,

really important. You know, you've heard the phrase growth hides all sins and that is absolutely true. So I think finding ways to continue to grow but also being very smart about it at the same time is really important. And yeah, at scale a 1 % difference is millions of dollars very quickly.

Zak (37:52.853)
That is so true and that's great insight. Adrian, I'm loving this conversation today. I feel like I could just continue to chat with you for a long time, but I know we're coming up on time. My last question for you is, is there anything that you're working on right now that maybe you could tease out to the listeners? Any new product?

Adrian Solgaard (38:19.694)
We've got some new things in the works for sure. We've got some new luggage that's going to be coming out soon. don't know if I... Maybe I won't say exactly what it is. We've got some new luggage that's coming out very soon, which I'm very excited about. We have... We just launched a new backpack, the Artemis, today or yesterday, which is like more of an everyday bag. Excited about that. We'll have some new women's products coming out later this year, which I'm really excited about.

Zak (38:46.677)
Handbags?

Zak (38:50.515)
You

Adrian Solgaard (38:51.57)
Perhaps directionally. And yeah, I'm trying to think what else I can share. Last year with the tariffs and the tariff impact, it caused a bit of a slowdown in some of our new product development where we had a bunch of new things we were going to do, but it's like, oh, what does this mean? And so we've got a nicely, what's a positive word for backlog?

We've got a nice roster of products that are fully developed and ready to be released. And so we've got a bunch of new releases coming this year that I'm really excited about.

Zak (39:24.757)
That's awesome. Well, I'll definitely keep my eyes peeled on these new drops. They sound really exciting.

Adrian Solgaard (39:31.17)
Yeah, cool.

Zak (39:32.885)
Well, great Adrian, thanks for joining us today on the show.

Adrian Solgaard (39:36.098)
Thanks for chatting. Great to meet you.

Zak (39:38.025)
Yeah, you too. a great one.

Adrian Solgaard (39:39.855)
Cheers, everyone. Bye.