Desiar Team Size & Customer Count (2022)

hello everyone my guest today is jamal robinson he's running a company called decier and it's the brainchild of himself after he began bedazzling sunglasses and promoting them to friends through central florida never satisfied with the status quo and after years of exploring possibilities with no production partners in asia and traveling to factories jamal decided to manufacture his own product launching in summer 2019. jamal you ready to take us to the top let's do it so just be clear you have any sales of this thing yet or is it launching here in the summer so i did pre-book sales pre-orders from uh facebook posts and linkedin posts um so we just started selling two weeks ago okay how much in pre-sale so far so in pre-sales from the post it was sixteen thousand and about a thousand of those have actually come in so far what does that mean a thousand dollars in revenue so so yeah what's that why is there a delta between sixteen thousand and one thousand so uh you know to to promote the new line coming out i made a post saying we're now manufacturing we can start taking pre-orders um so people commented their emails and said yes i'd be interested in the pre-orders so i made a list and then from that list is about 16 000 and then from that a thousand have actually placed the order okay is do you have a bestseller which glasses are selling the best um so i can't really tell right now i mean the most uh the most popular style is called the venom which is um a classic similar to like a rape wayfarer style uh type of frame yeah now you i want to get more into kind of the wood you're using uh whether it's the walnut or the hickory et cetera because i think you've set this up in indiana um but if you've got a thousand in pre-sales these glasses on average our list on your website it caught 200 bucks a pop right or 250 for the walnut so you've sold about four or five of them in terms of actual cash collected right that's correct yep so which is there even distribution or did everyone buy like the same one no so the venom frame a couple of the venom's frames have sold and then um then we also sold um one of the hickory styles um [Music] yeah yeah so how do you so how do you right how do you scale this it was genius of you to do the quick facebook and linkedin post super cheap effective way for you to gauge pre-sales you've got some cash in you must feel pretty good and now you're thinking about okay are there like how do i scale this how do i get my next 5 000 in sales what's the answer how do you eat your next 5 000 in cash collected yeah so it's it's really two two ways so one i call it blocking tackling so a lot of markets trade shows i live in the washington dc area so doing that and then also it's just word of mouth so simply you know sending text blasts continuing the facebook push continuing the linkedin push um and that's that's the first step and then also it's brand awareness so um i'll put a little bit of money into um facebook and and digital ads um so i see those two things as my core focus over the next 90 days how much did you spend on the facebook and linkedin posts i spent zero dollars so really it was it was all about telling my story um this concept of manufacturing you know as you read in my bio was you know years in the making so 2013 i thought of it tried failed tried failed and people resonated with that story wait what do you mean it failed what'd you try and what failed oh well you know just setting up distribution i went to first i went to a company that manufactured wood products and i said hey i would love to manufacture glasses they said they could do it uh long story short two years in uh it didn't work then i won a business plan competition which gave me some funding i bought the machinery that i knew could manufacture the product and then i started working with my production lead who i'm still working with now dustin case to manufacture the product that's on the website so it's just been an evolution of of trying and failing throughout how did you find how did you find uh you said dustin case was his name how'd you find dustin yeah so we're actually both from the the same area in indiana and he was um working wood products as well so you know i told him the vision what i'd like to do had the funding bought the machinery and and then he just started working on it so this is founded usa.com wooden steel is dustin's company correct that's correct yep okay so how i mean when you're negotiating margins with him so if you're gonna sell a pair of glasses for 150 on average what's this gonna what's it gonna cost you to produce that yeah so on average they're 220 um and the cost of production is 60 bucks okay actually let's not talk on average because that's dangerous with kind of ecommerce brands let's talk specifically about you pick which glasses you want to talk specifically about which style great great yeah so so it's 60 to produce each frame um and and then to manufacture we we price them out by wood so 185 up to 250 so 185 for the bottom frame 225 for the mid frame and then 250 for the top frame yeah sorry i don't know i don't know what all that means right so let's just talk about the bengham hickory wood right you've got it listed first on your website for 195 dollars what's this specific one cost you produce 60 bucks okay so you essentially you're marking it up there's 125 margin in there now do i have to pay shipping if i buy it from your website or is the shipping built on the 125 margin no the shipping is already built in so two in from shipping okay it's got it yeah free shipping free shipping within the united states okay so if your ship what's it gonna cost you to ship from indiana the warehouse to me in austin texas on average yeah 7.95 okay got it so you got about 60 bucks in cost of goods sold you've got another eight to ten dollars and just shipping costs the rest is profit margin for you that's correct i mean that's good how's that compared to like warby parker um so obviously their cost of goods is going to be drastically lower um they're manufacturing primarily in asia and they are also at a larger scale so their cost of goods are probably going to be sub 20 where my cost of goods is closer you know including shipping closer to 70. you know what i've always wanted about brands like what you're building it has such a good story like your ability to price against that story is actually super valuable and i actually think in my opinion you're actually priced too cheap because the price doesn't give you um the opportunity to tell more of the story your price too close to like a warby parker whereas if this was 1900 for one of these pairs of glasses it allows the viewer to ask the question why the hell are these so expensive which gives you the opportunity to tell this story which i think people latch on to why did you decide not to price like super super high that's that's a great question um you know when looking at the market and looking at product made in the u.s glasses wise and competitors i felt that pricing at average pricing where i decided to land was one good for the business um i knew my margins i knew what i wanted to make but also it gets super competitive when you get to that 1900 price point and then also distribution so i knew that i wanted to sell direct consumer but i also knew that there's opportunity through independent eye care practitioners or doctor's offices that i wanted to tap into as well so looking at and there's about 20 000 of those throughout the united states so looking at my go to market plan and how i wanted to enter the market i felt that at a higher price point like that may price myself out of my strategy you see when i look at a wall like i look at these eyeglasses shops right maybe embedded next to the subway stuck in the front of a big walmart in the middle of arkansas right i think cheap plastic like you might as well hang up on the end cap on the soap aisle right you know what i'm talking about those glasses that see there your brand does not strike me as remotely related to that story i mean you this kind of stu again i'm making a snap judgment under eight minutes here but your story to me belongs on like an abbott kinney pop-up booth right in in venice in la right or like there's only three shops in the country right or the e-commerce brand it's super luxurious i see that you do little laser engravings on each side which looks like your brand which means you could also put someone's name there you can highly customize it you can film yourself about the story i mean this i think would do really well as a kickstarter priced at like 900 bucks as well i just think you have priced yourself exactly like you said average and your story is not average um that's good nathan i love it i mean it's uh i think i think that's really good feedback i mean i mean look you don't have to take it by the way you shouldn't maybe not take it because i know nothing about glasses but what i will say is like when i whenever whenever i see brands like what you've done i my like opportunistic bubble goes off i can't execute this because my limiting factor is time not money but i want to buy a brand like this right and make it latka glasses and then like this i invest in telling the story over and over business insider runs the headline are these the most expensive wood glasses on the planet right um uh daily goalcast is doing a short 60 second facebook video on how is this founder getting consumers to pay 2 000 bucks for you know glasses that cost 19 you know 60 bucks right like that's that all those things like the actual the price point that becomes a marketing tactic for you which i just think potentially works we'll see yeah i think i think it's great like i said i i always listen back to you though i don't want to i don't want to change your whole trajectory here i'm just i just enjoy a good brainstorm um you've got a couple people it sounds like four or five have purchased you said that's correct okay so i mean um to get to 500 like how much how much capacity can you handle with dustin yeah that's that's a great question so that's actually one of the challenges with manufacturing so right now we can push out um 50 50 units a week and uh the next step to increase that to 100 200 units a week is we need to purchase a cnc machine so that that's on the horizon within the next 60 days yeah yeah it's so it's so interesting to me because like when i like it's you and i view um the same thing i view it as an asset and you view it as a liability you have to hedge like when i asked that question what i was actually asking was how rare is it and what you heard me ask was how limiting is your distribution and you're thinking about how to like produce more not less i'm thinking what if you produced only one per month right or one per day at a three thousand dollar price point it actually drives exclusivity it's just isn't that weird it's like the same the same like i'm asking a question with one frame and you are like on a totally separate that's just it's yeah well well it's so top of mind for me because dustin and i have these conversations about you know increasing production that that's what we think about and and the challenge um that you know we currently have is is just time and the time it takes to make i mean but go deeper there like why do you want to increase production well again so that's that's a part of of scaling right so weight scaling what scaling uh the business okay so more measure by what measured by more product sold to customers okay what about what about if you sold 20 million units but made no money from them yeah that's terrible okay what if you sold one unit for 20 million dollars that's great okay then why are you trying to increase production you're a good man see that's so funny you can scale the business by just tripling your price point it's actually easier than like trying to figure out and rejigger your entire if that's really what you want versus trying to rejigger your entire production to get more more distribution you know more things produced per week etc yeah i mean the whole purpose you know i'm in business is to be profitable and scale the business 100 yeah yeah yeah that's a good point it's a really good point yeah it's just always a question that founders have to ask right like do you go for more customers or do you actually limit production to drive scarcity and quadruple your price point and the delta like the those two levers the the the velocity at which you pull each if you find thing an area where it's not equal right where you could three x your customer base to three extra revenue or you could like write like 3x your your price but that actually 4x is your revenue right then you do actually do the price increase not the customer increase it's always a weird combination 100 i'm totally alive have you bootstrapped this bad boy i bootstrapped it i currently have a day job i work at skyward uh we're based in dc and i'm on the biz dev team and then nights and weekends i uh i work jessie air what's um skyward do is this the company that just acquired my friend alan ganette's company uh trackman you are a hundred percent i i was attracted i was a track mate been a guy oh that's hysterical small world wait did we meet through allen i don't think so no and i don't think so that they're okay very small world uh very cool all right um so you bootstrapped the company uh it's just you right now you and dustin me and dustin that is correct but you own 100 right uh i own eighty-five percent i said 15 to him no no i i actually when i got started um two mentors of mine um invested 10 000 and i gave them 15 of the business 10 thousand together or twenty thousand together no ten thousand together on day one great okay good so you've kind of used that to help kind of get this thing going yeah i mean the whole thing now is like if you really wanna make this thing work and you're good under pressure you quit skyward right because then you have to make this thing work to pay your bills right it's a little scary yeah yeah yeah 100 i i love what i do though so yeah yeah it's about by the way you can do both this is one thing you do both all right let's wrap up jamal with the famous five number one what's your favorite business book how to be a capitalist without capital are you just saying that or if you actually read it oh no i read it oh you did that's amazing yeah well yeah so so you you you then this then you know exactly like why i gave you the feedback i gave you today exactly yeah no it's doing it's doing very well it surprised me even how many how many units we've sold so thanks thanks for supporting me and reading it no doubt about it all right number two is there a ceo you're following or studying robert smith yeah people always ask me like who is my number one guy look up to it's robert smith and nobody very few people know about him unless you really study b2b sass but that guy is just i have so much to learn from him number three what's your favorite online tool for building your company shopify number four how many hours i sleep pick it every night uh six to seven okay and what's your situation married single kids i have a beautiful girlfriend her name is edna very good no kids no kids and how old are you i am 31 31 last question what do you wish your 20 year old self knew more patience guys more patience uh destierer again launched the company back a couple years ago to produce sungl glasses really i would say high-end glasses could be higher end but had issues with distribution pre-sold 16 000 via facebook post and now finally partnered with his friend in indiana to produce them here in the united states average sale point price point is about 150 180 bucks per unit or call sorry 220. uh the economics we ran was 150 pair which cost about 60 bucks to produce 10 bucks to ship domestically so nice profit margin 120 uh but sorry about 60 70 bucks built in there's profit margin so we can reinvest and drive growth jamal thanks for taking us to the top nathan my pleasure have a great day one more thing before you go we have a brand new show every thursday at 1 pm central it's called shark tank for sas we call it deal or bust one founder comes on three hungry buyers they try and do a deal live and the founder shares back end dashboards their expenses their revenue arpu cac ltv you name it they share it and the buyers try and make a deal live it is fun to watch every thursday 1 pm central additionally remember these recorded founder interviews go live we release them here on youtube every day at 2 p.m central to make sure you don't miss any of that make sure you click the subscribe button below here on youtube the big red button and then click the little bell notification to make sure you get notifications when we do go live i wouldn't want you to miss 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