What's up, DTC Pod. Today we're joined by Max Kislovitz, who is the cofounder of Bala. So Max, I'll let you kick us off. Why don't you tell us a little bit about Bala, the company that you guys built, the stage you're at, and everything that went into getting you guys to where you're at today.

Yeah, absolutely. So, first, thanks for having me. Bala is really a design led approach to fitness accessories and equipment, the likes of which have historically been really utilitarian. So we talk about this sort of phenomenon that we've all experienced, where you walk into any gym in the world and it feels a lot like any other gym in the world. And when you think about the adjacencies in Athleisure or Boutique Fitness, these are like thoughtfully designed fitness performance wear, or in the case of boutique fitness, really thoughtfully designed studios. And yet the products you're actually interacting with in those spaces are all black, hyper masculine, really kind of intimidating. And so we've tried to bring a sort of fashionable, colorful design sensibility to this otherwise utilitarian space. We started the business about four and a half years ago.

We thought it would only ever be a side project. We literally launched it on Kickstarter, and four and a half years later, it's become sort of my wife and my full time effort.

I love that. And I like how you describe it in terms of almost bringing this fashion and art sense into this product category that had been traditionally just like, boring, very masculine, et cetera. I mean, when I see your content, one, obviously the design, packaging, all of it stands out. The product itself, for listeners who may not be familiar with the product, it's like you have these different arm bands and arm weights and stuff like that, but there's like very smooth contours, like pastel sort of colors, really, like organic, like, comfortable sort of design vibes. And even, like, the digital and the creative around it. It's almost like bringing high fashion to this category. I don't know, just seeing it, I automatically get vibes of James Terrell and Space age modern, all these cool sort of design themes. So, anyway, I think it's really cool what you guys have done from that side of things.

And clearly that's something that's really captivated a national and now expanding to a global audience. So my next question in terms of one thing you mentioned is you guys started this out as a side project, right? So what did it look like in the early days before Kickstarter? What was the inception where you were like, okay, let's even start spending time on the side working on this as a side project?

Yeah, absolutely. So at the time, I had just started dating this woman named Natalie Holloway, and we'd met at an ad agency on the West Side here in La called 72 and Sunny. And agencies kind of tend to be anonymous because they're doing work on behalf of clients. But the folks that 72 worked with was like the Googles of the world cores, Light, Jeep, Starbucks. Right? And so we were a relatively small cog in this much bigger sort of marketing wheel for all these massive global brands. And the burn rate was pretty high on just the hours you work and the sort of client service based, deadline oriented industry of advertising. And so when Matt and I had first started dating, I think I had drunkenly said to her one night, what if we quit and traveled together? And we were very much still in the courtship phase. And shockingly, she kind of called my bluff and said, yeah, let's go ahead and do that.