What's up, DTC Pod?

Today we're joined by Mike Gijo, who is the co founder of Waterboy. So Mike, I'll let you kick us off. Why don't you tell us a little bit about your background, waterboy, what you guys are building and everything like that?

Yeah. How far back do you want me to go? Because, I mean, I can go all the way back.

Let's go back.

I remember, Mike, when we met a while back, you had reached out, you were working on the bags from Bali. Just take it way back.

Okay, yeah, we'll go way back and then you guys can cut out whatever you okay, I guess I'll even explain maybe my odd last name. I was born in Albania, moved to the US in 6th grade, and then throughout high school just knew I really wanted to do finance, primarily investment banking, and that let me go to UT. I'd worked in investment banking for a year after college. Didn't like it. It was not very creatively, fulfilling. And then after that I had an idea of like, hey, you have all these photo apps out there where people can create and share photos, they can create and share music, et cetera. There's nothing for workouts. So I was working. This was 2013. Started working on an app where people can create and share workouts. It was kind of fairly early days of Instagram and fitness, and I saw a rise in social media influencers, but a lot of them didn't have a way to monetize. So we took some of our software stack and started private labeling them apps. That led me to start a company called Body Plan Fitness. Did that for a little over five years. And then while I was in Bali on vacation, my girlfriend at the time wanted to get some bags for her friends, and it took up so much suitcase for him. So I was like, Let me see if I could buy these on Amazon. Realized there's not much on Amazon. There's a ton of search traffic because I had tools like Jumble, Scott, et cetera, to look at demand. And then randomly for one summer, I was like the biggest ratten bag women's purse seller. I knew that wasn't going to be like a lasting thing. That was just like a trendy fad. But it was very cool to get experience on Amazon and then fast forward a couple of years, start of 2020. I sold the company I was working on for the fitness apps and took six months off to decompress. And then I was thinking through what products and needs was I excited about in the market? And that led me to create Waterboy. And I can dive in further into what waterboy is.

Yeah, why don't you talk a little bit about what waterboy is and the background of that company?

Yeah. So for me, honestly, the products out of a personal need. It was like nights I'd go out with friends and they'd get away from me and I'd wake up feeling rough in the morning. It felt like the main two products that were on the market were either Liquid IV, which did a pretty good, decent job at Hydration, really good job at marketing, and Pedialyte, which I felt like did an even better job at Hydration. But it was branded for kids. And to me, it's whenever I am waking up feeling rough, I'm not just dehydrated, but there's other symptoms I'm feeling around, like nausea, anxiety, fatigue. So the premise was, can I make a better product for this use case? Because we're making it specifically for that. And can we have a bit more fun with the branding? Because we're in a space that's you take these products around fun times in your life, but a lot of brands have to be overly clinical or very safe. So that was the premise of the company. Put out the message on TikTok, it took off. And since then, we've just been focused on what's next.

What do you mean? Just for context, for the audience, what do you mean it took off? What happened specifically?

Yes. I'll tell you. I mean, this was February 2021. I was driving in my car, and I obviously was a consumer of TikTok during the pandemic but I'd never really made my own personal TikToks. So I remember pulling over, I was about to get mail from my house. I was like, let me just make a quick video telling people what I'm working on and why. And I remember at first being like, oh man, this is going to be so awkward if my friends see it. This is going to get like twelve views. I was like, you know what, my friends are probably not even going to see it. What are the odds they see it? This account is not linked to any of my personal stuff. It's a branded water boy account. Went to bed that night, I woke up the next day, realized the account grew from zero followers to a little over 6000. The video had a little over 100,000 views and after that I remember thinking like, oh TikTok is fairly easy. You just have to figure out a story to tell and then people will get behind it. Put another four or five videos, they did well but maybe they got 5000 views. But in relation to that video it was not nearly mike as high as that high felt. And then our 7th video ever, I made a video explaining why I was making Water Boy and why I used to drink Pedialyte before and how this is different. And I would say that's the first video that really took off got a little over 2 million views organically. We were fortunate enough to have landing page set up in our bio. So about 17,000 people left us their phone number. And I remember having this massive SMS list and we were like, well we're not exactly sure how many of these people are going to convert or not. So then we decided to run a presale and that presale ended up selling the inventory run that we were already planning on doing anyways a couple of months later. Oh wow.

So how many of the 17,000 converted from SMS into the presale?

So the thing is we already had a planned production run and numbers and everything that we were going to pay for regardless because I think we already had high conviction that the idea would work. So we had set like our first inventory run was supposed to get us 100,000 in sales. And we sold that really in the first hour and a half. Hour and a half. 2 hours of sending out a text and I just remember clicking send and then looking at the shopify live view and the numbers of visitors on site. Everything was going so fast that every time I'd refresh it was like especially the first 15 minutes sales would jump from like 2000 to 15 to 26. But I want to say a little over half 55% or so click through and then I can't remember the exact number. I want to say it was somewhere around 3000 orders that sold the first 100K.

So as you're seeing all these orders coming in, what's running through your brain? Are you like, how the F are we going to finance our next inventory purchase? I remember when you were working on the bali bags. You were telling me at that time that was like four years ago or so, you were like, man, it's just tough because the cash you make, you then have to reinvest. At least you have a brand here, which is like the big difference between drop shipping. Right? Like, the bali bags were a fad that might just drop off it's on another platform that you don't own here. You're just getting started. But you do know there's going to be a lot to finance. Or like, was the margin covering all of that? What were you thinking? What basis did you have to cover when you saw those quarters coming in?

Yes, so both my co founder and I had put initial capital that already had funded the purchase order that inventory run. And then obviously when we did a presale and we got this money two months before that inventory run, now we were able to even actually the money we put in in the business, technically, we never touched it because the presale money then paid for the inventory and then the extra. Like, we just kept reinvesting and flipping inventory. And the first six months in the business, we didn't run any ads. Everything was organic and it was just my co founder and I, and we weren't taking a salary, so I'd say we ran it fairly lame. So all the profits was just reinvested into flipping inventory.

That's amazing. And on the presale, it was phone numbers. There was no email capture? Or was it both?

It was just phone numbers. I remember having a postscript integration and not even realizing I could have like, an email as a step two of the flow. So it was just phone numbers. I'm happy I even had that turned on when the video popped off because this was all happening within a short time frame too. Mike the website had gone live. A week later, I'm like, oh, let me start making videos. And then ten days later this happens.

Yeah, and I'd love to go a little bit deeper into that because I think there's like a bunch of people who are starting brands who may not even realize that they have opportunity to tap into people who are interested in what they're talking about. Right. I know you mentioned postscript in terms of collecting the phone numbers, but what did you have built out? How did you build the landing pages? What did you have in place? So by the time that TikTok popped, you were able to actually at least capture some of that initial interest?

Yeah, it's pretty simple. It was a shopify website we were just using. Mike an off the shelf theme. The premise of the website was how do I quickly in Mike three or four sections just guide someone into our why? So it's like, here's Mike, a hook, here's your problem, here's what we're solving for and here's how we differ for other people in the market. I would say that was probably the structure of that landing page is very simple. I built it out myself probably in like 2 hours and then after that was, okay, well, I need obviously what are my buttons going to connect to? I have nothing to sell, so how can I capture this interest? And initially was do we want to do SMS or do we want to do email? And a lot of companies that were doing drops or seeing drops at the time that I looked up to, a lot of them were heavy on SMS. So for me was, okay, well, if there's a product, people have excitement around and it was a pretty big risk. I guess I should have tested both email and SMS, but I was like, I feel fairly confident that they're going to give us their phone number as long as on the SMS form, we make it very obvious that, hey, we're only going to text you at launch, we're not going to spam you with anything else. We're going to be very mindful of your phone number.

I think that's actually really interesting. One thing that immediately comes to mind, I'd be curious because like you said, you hadn't really tested it versus email, but it seems like if you've got the phone number and you've got that text, maybe there could be a higher conversion to purchase. Right, if you're getting an SMS versus one of many thousands of emails that just pop into your email.

Well, the thing is that I feel like the numbers worked because this all started from a personal one to one video on your personal account. And so the trust was there. It wasn't like a faceless brand, but.

Was it your branded account, Mike?

It was a branded account, waterboy can, but I think all seven videos are just my face in it, talking to the camera.

That's interesting. I know you've been mentioning your co founder. Your co founder is a creator. How did that come about? And then you said the other videos didn't do as well. What happened there? What was the content strategy from there to keep replicating the success?

Yeah, I would say the first video did really well because this is my personal story as to why I'm making this. And then in there too, if you watch that video, if you look back at it, it will have elements that people maybe tell you to have. It had like a hook, it had the story, it had a close. So the hook was like, hey TikTok, don't let this flop for the sake of my entire net worth. I had a software company and I sold it to go all in in this company. So if you're watching that, you're like, oh, wow, I'm intrigued. Where's this going? And then I was telling them the journey as to what I'm creating and then I was follow along if you want to see me build a beverage brand from hopefully nothing to something. Because when we were going to launch, actually that first video, we were supposed to be a can beverage. That's why the accounts are called waterboy can. And then we made the switch and the pivot to Powder. And then shortly afterwards we made the stick a PD light comparison video for powder. My co founder, he is social media background. But originally we were both very adamant about let's see if we can get traction on our own with my messaging and seeing if we can get people to buy in. Because what we didn't want to happen is just to have like a one day pop of him showing the product to his audience and not necessarily knowing if we even have product market fit. So originally the whole premise was no one even knew he was behind the brand until probably like a month in. So the success of the video wasn't due to some strategy of him resharing it or him being in it. I feel like whatever I did, anyone could have done it at that point, too.

I think that's really important in terms of understanding what some sort of product market fit looks like, even if it pertains to the product and the problem you're solving the messaging that you're able to do before necessarily just like launching with a bigger creator who's going to get you in front of more eyeballs. But if you don't have the traction there to back it up and have it tested, then it's going to do the same thing. But I'd be curious, why don't you tell us a little bit about who your co founder is and how you integrated that into the launch once you guys had already validated that product market fit?

Yeah, so my co founder, he was on a reality show called The Bachelorette. He was one of the contestants on there. And then like a season or two after, he went on again for this thing called Bachelor in paradise. So social media personality, similar background to me. We both worked in finance. He worked at Goldman, I think in their special situations group. So I knew he was smart and he had the social media piece to it, which I felt like would be helpful to our company. And funny enough, we were both talking or romantically interested in this one girl named Sarah at the time, and.

We.

Decided to be friends. And I remember texting her being like, hey, do you mind intro and me to Connor. I know he's in Austin, we're up to similar things. It just be good to have a chat. We just met up for coffee. And then within a couple of months, that turned into this idea. And then us probably seven months later, launching a company.

That's awesome. And yeah. How did it go once you guys had gotten through your first call? It production run. And you were like, okay, now let's start bringing this to his audience. How did that start to resonate? Did it really help you grow? What did you see? Because I know a lot of people are interested in working with creators on brands. So, yeah, why don't you just walk us through how it unfolded?

Yeah. So originally we were supposed to be a can drink, and the company that helped us with the formula and everything, their expertise was in can, but they did have stick, pack, powder machinery. So for us was okay, well, let's work with them on the first run because they're familiar with everything. And we realized when it was time to make the product that they didn't have quite the machinery to make, just like the output and everything. So for us, the next step was, how do we get to another packaging facility that primarily specializes in powders and stick packs so they can make more in a more timely manner? And I would say the first time we launched, the flavor was not very good at all for us was oh, as long as the product works and it helps people, they won't be that mindful of taste. They'll just like, what's in it? And we quickly found out that people are very mindful of taste. Like we would have thought, right? In beverage. Some people are like, Whatever, I'll just chug it. But most people are very mindful. So for us, on, the next step was now we need to be in another stick pack manufacturing facility ASAP and figure out a better way to make the product. The quickest way for us was we had so much ginger in the product that lemon lime just tasted like ginger. So the quickest way to pivot is we just called the flavor lemon ginger. It was the exact same formula. And we went to our new packaging facility and they were able to turn around on it, thankfully, quickly, just because we paid them more to do so. But yeah, I think the thing we didn't plan for initially is that there's quite a bit of lead time, especially in 2021 when there's packaging delays across the entire supply chain. That oh, shit. Now we sold everything. And for us to get more inventory made is going to take an extra x amount of weeks. So we went out of stock, I think, for like, a month and a half. And during that month and a half, we just focused on building the brand or audience, getting more people signed up on the SMS list, and then we were ready to do launch, too. And that kind of issue kept happening because we were just funding everything with inventory that we would restock, it would sell out, and then we would have two months, a month without inventory. And then kind of do that same thing over and over.

But that's what allowed you to not have to raise financing, right?

Yeah.

For pros and cons.

Yeah, I wouldn't say that. I think for us that worked better because then it allowed us to focus more on our why the brands, creatives, organic, et cetera. And we weren't just mike throwing money at some of the problems. And then we took all those learnings from six months. And finally when we were in a place that we were better able to do so we started then running paid ads, buying our high performing, organic creatives, and then that really helped grow and scale the company.

I want to let Blaine continue on this thread, but I want to take a step back and ask this question that I know most people in the audience might be thinking, which know how everyone is curious about how do I get to work with a creator? And so you approach this creator, but you didn't even have the full solution. You're still looking for the you're like, hey, we're going to have to figure this out. You didn't know him previously. So what advice do you have for anyone that might be trying to partner with a Creed or what is it that made this partnership work from the beginning with a business intent? Or do you think you just got really lucky in the sense that you guys bonded and it was a friendship first or something?

Yeah, I think that I mean, I think for us, the elements that helped is we had a similar background, so we could relate on that. We both lived in the same city. We were both in a similar stage in which we were selling at the company where we were previously working on. So that timeline matched up really well. And then I also think too, sometimes a lot of people have this idea that I'm going to partner with a creator. They have X amount of social media followers and they get Y amount of views, and z percentage is going to come over. And sometimes those metrics don't hold true. Right. A smaller creator can drive more than a bigger creator, et cetera. I would say the product market fit and there being mike tailwinds behind the industry you're in is probably more important. Unless if you're working with a Mr. Beast shirt, you can probably launch a product in any category and you'll do well. But I would say for most people, rather than thinking, oh, if I get this creator, it's going to just miracle solve itself. It's figuring out where's their white space in an already growing category and what issue can you solve that doesn't quite exist out there. And then the creator then will just more or less be like gasoline on the fire, but they're not going to help you start the fire.

And then my next question is, in terms of now, what running the business looks like with a co founder that's also a creator? Are you guys both equally involved in terms of the operation or do you handle different what are your, I guess, more specific responsibilities now and how do each of you guys contribute? Basically?

Yeah. Right now I'm in La. Obviously, but everyone works in the office full time in person. We have a fairly small team, just four and a half of us. I would say everyone on the team is very creative, so everyone contributes in some creative capacity, whether it's organic content, whether it's ideas for branding, collapse, partnerships, DTC. My role now has been a little bit more production operations, amazon and then some direct to consumer doing the media buying and performance ads. And then I help out with SMS and email.

Cool. And yeah, and I guess just for clarification, just piggybacking off Ramon's question about working with a creator. So is your co founder as physically involved in the day to day as you are today, or is he juggling other stuff and this is one of the projects that he works on, or is he pretty involved in the weeds in terms of what you guys are doing?

Yeah, I know he's pretty involved. I would say he's just as involved as I. I would say maybe in the first six months before we even launched the product. There was a bit of transition on both of Friends because he still had a lot of social media things and there was maybe not that much clarity on how things were going to work out. And then I think when we both saw things starting to do well and take off, we realized that's where we're going to focus our attention on. And I think I was fortunate in the sense that I have a co founder that's social media and creator based, but his main goal is to grow the business. And I think the last six to twelve months, I don't know if he's even done any ad deals, he's trying to cut that off. There's times where that access does help. If he's in an influencer branded trip or if he's in certain events, he can help plug the product. But I would say his focus is not so much like his personal brand or social media and it's more the company, which is tough to find because I know a lot of times people work with creators where the creator did maybe one post here, one post there, and they kind of like went Mia. But I would say everyone's in the office 40 plus hours a week.

That's amazing. My next question comes down more to the business side in terms of how you guys continued to grow it. So you mentioned you guys are up and running on a couple of channels now, and now that you've made it through your first couple of inventory runs, it seems like there's a bit more stability in the business. So why don't you walk me through what your channels are, how you sell across those different channels, and what kind of some of the strategies are that you guys use to sell on whether it's D to C, Amazon or anything else you guys do.

Yeah, I would say early on we relied heavily on TikTok Organic to sell and establish that product market fit. And then around January of 2022, we started taking that creative and running paid media behind it on Meta, just Facebook, Instagram, and we did some TikTok ads too. And we probably did that for I'm trying to remember. We did that for some time and then we introduced a product to Amazon. Originally our fear was, oh, if you introduce your product to Amazon, are people just going to buy on there versus their own online channel? And we found most of the sales from Amazon were incremental. But we're also pretty mindful on how we have a differentiator on our website versus Amazon. Whether it's a different pack size, whether it's a flavor launch that's delayed, et cetera. But I would say for us, because we have such a small team that we obviously have to stay focused and we just try to do just a few things well, because it can be so distracting sometimes. Right? We get bombarded by agencies all the time. You want to do influencer marketing, affiliate marketing, someone wants to do Google AdWords, Mike, Pinterest, Snapchat, there's just so many. So for us, it's okay. What are our core competencies if it's creating content? Okay, where does this content do really good job living? And how can then we focus and double down on those efforts that are already working while still maybe being mindful of testing at a smaller scale in case something happens and we're not too reliant on one channel.

So when you look at the operation of content, so there's the commercial photography content you mentioned, UV suna, then there's the UGC. How much of your guys content is like studio produced versus UGC? Is it 100% UGC? Is there a combination of studio? Is it all in house? What's that operation look like in strategy?

Yeah, I would say the studio shots are mainly the assets that live on Amazon or on our website. And it's mainly the product shots. A lot of our. Ads are mainly UGC. And for the longest time it was just a lot of videos of me. And then we work with other smaller creators to also help us make some of those assets. And then sometimes too, people will make good videos about us on their own and then we'll reach out to see if we can work together to use that for paid ads.

Ramon, did you have anything else you wanted to ask on content?

Well, the only thing I'm thinking through is how did you guys think about right, because Mike, especially with organic content, this is always a big question of Mike. All right, quality versus quantity. You guys nailed the strategy. All right, are we ten Xing output or are we being really careful and thoughtful about our brand voice? And for some reason, every video we put out is hitting. What did your volume look like? Let's call it TikTok organic. Was it a video a day? Was it ten a day?

No, not close. I would say earlier days were maybe one every day or two. And then now we're probably two to three a week. For us, it's not so much like in order for us to ten X because there's a ceiling and a limit on how much organic output you can put out there. Right. And then yes, you can partner with more creators and put more organic output out there. But to us was if we already know what videos do well and what structure works for us, we can always get ten X the views by just simply putting more ad spend behind it. So I would say, not that we're too safe and every asset has to be super brand forward, but we probably go more for like, okay, these are just the videos that we want to make and we have a reasonable degree of confidence that will do well. And then we'll just make sure they get more views through the paid side.

It's just so interesting because there's also then brands that their game is just putting out crazy volume and so it's just different things work for different brands. Do you guys think you understand the algorithm or have a hold or grip on what works for you and your brand? Or is it a total shot in the dark for every video you put out?

Yeah, I honestly wouldn't say. I see all these videos all the time and maybe because I engage with them on my For You page that come up of like, the algorithm changed, so and this and this and that changed. And I honestly don't really try to pay attention to the algorithm at all. Maybe I should and hacks, but to me it's like there's some elements that have never gone out of style. Right. So if it's like, okay, what's our goal on TikTok? Right? Okay. Right now we're going to use this platform to entertain and build a community and build a brand and what way do we want to do so? Right? Do we need to show them different parts of our business? Is storytelling the main way we want to show this? We think of it more of like, what are we trying to achieve on each platform and what does this certain video, what story does it tell and does someone care at the end of the day? Because I think a lot of brands take the approach of, this is what I want people to see, but not so much of what do they want to see? So it's not a matter of, like, to me, it's not a matter of like, oh, if I use this hook or be very dramatic or do this, yes, you might go viral once, but then what happens after that? Because I think too many people chase this big viral hit because they see sometimes these case studies of this video sold me out and yes, it might get you 5100, 200K in sales, and then they'll wear off and then what happens then? So I don't think we ever approach any video of, like, we're trying to make a viral video. It's what story is this video telling? What are people gaining from this? Because we don't see competition on TikTok, like, between us and a Liquid IV. It's us and other content creators and other videos that are way more engaging to watch. So why would someone want to watch ours?

One thing I like that you just said was it's not about what you want to show the viewers. It's more about what do they want to see from you? So why don't you walk us through a little bit about what works? What do they want to see from Waterboy when you guys are creating content?

Yeah, I mean, I think in the early days, people wanted to know what we were and maybe what it does for them, but then after a while, you're just going to sound like a broken record if you're just making the same videos, right? And one strategy could be like, I could go out there and hire 100, 200, 300 content creators on a smaller scale, have them all be affiliates with lengths, pump out the same videos, and some of them will hit and some of them won't. And we'll capture that and try to think of that. Does that feel spammy? And what's the lasting branding impact of that? But for us now, it's like, okay, some people know what the product does. What else do they want to see? And a lot of people, Mike, they want to see the behind the scenes of the company and more of the interpersonal dynamic between people. So I think our TikTok channel now almost works as not nearly as good as the show The Office, but more or less, it gives you that vibe that's really cool.

And I think we've seen it work like that for a couple of brands, but I think a lot of brands maybe struggle with being like, oh, do we want to be that authentic? Should we put it out there? But if you're able to tap into that, it seems like the way to do it. So my next question is on product mix, right? You mentioned you guys launched with a couple of different products and.

I'd just.

Like to know a little bit more about how you thought about how many products to take to market, like what the formats were, how many total SKUs you were like playing with. I see you guys even have like a merch store now. So why don't you just walk us through how do you organized everything and thought through everything that you've got through now?

Yeah, I would say our main hero and initial product we launched with is the Weekend Recovery. And in that it was okay, obviously people are going to need more than one or two flavors. Let's roll out flavors. And it's always an interesting and tough balance because we're running out of stock and we don't have sometimes enough line time to make these stick packs. So it's kind of hard to be like, okay, now I'm going to introduce more flavors and more products. Hindsight is 2020. But a thing I wish I would have solved for earlier was just more manufacturing capacity and different comb. So we weren't so reliant on like one or two and then it became of like, okay, when do people take our products? A lot of people are telling us they take our Weekend Recovery for Sports, but if we made a product for Sports, it would look different than the Weekend Recovery because the symptoms you feel after a night out are not the same after a workout. And even in the workout category alone, there's a use case on before a workout with an energy component and there's an after a workout with a recovery component. So I think the premise of the company to us remains the same, is how do we make Hydration clean and functional, and how do we make formulas, specifically when people need them, rather than, like a one general formula, which would be really easy on our production, but you kind of have to do somewhat of an average job across every use case.

So Mike, your previous company was a fitness influencer app and then the other one was a drop shipping one. And now you're talking about adding different flavors into the mix. These are decisions that if you get wrong could wipe you out financially and the company, if you get the entire production run production run wrong. And this is like your first time doing this. So how did you prevent yourself from making those mistakes that we hear from other companies of getting wiped out because messing up the entire line of production and having to start over? Did you seek mentors? Who were those mentors and yeah. How did you not make those mistakes from the first try?

Yeah, I would say on one end, we've been fortunate. We partnered with the right people, and some of that came from extensive vetting. We have made mistakes. There was a packaging run where it was like the wrong flavor in all the bags, and we had to put stickers over them. Right. And even that decision was, do we throw everything away or do we just put a five cent sticker that now the bag doesn't look the best? And even when that happens, then obviously we have to be transparent about what happened and tell everyone. So I think a lot of times, too, people, if you are transparent with them and you let them know the decisions you're making and why they'll support you more, I mean, even on their second product drop, I was like, oh, my God, we probably burned so many first time buyers because the product doesn't taste very good. And so the text was like, hey, sorry. Like the first launch, we thought if the product was good for you, you wouldn't care how it tasted. It tastes like ass. But this is like what we did to address XYZ, understand that it's still going to be salty and it's not going to be perfect, but we're working on it. And I think if you're transparent with people as to what you're achieving and solving and let them in, they'll rally behind you. Also, with production runs, too, when we were running out of inventory, we were building a margin of safety. We were never like, we're going to take all the cash on the bank and put it all in inventory. So, yes, we could have grown faster if we were more aggressive on that, but we were padding in. Mike, what happens if an entire run just something goes wrong and we have to burn through it? Mean, we built margins of safety in there.

Mike, the other thing I want to talk to you about is the merch component. I think it's really cool, and obviously you guys are doing the whole water boy products, but building out a merch store isn't something that every brand does. Why don't you tell me about how you guys did it, how you executed on it, what it's been like, how it pairs with your community and yeah, just walk us through that part of the strategy.

Yeah, I mean, the merch was simply people wanting to repper merch. And I don't even know if I have here I had, like, 100 of these green hats and they sold out on the first drop, and people would DM me until the end of time. And the issue was, it's like, we're so focused on product, we don't even have inventory, so ran out to take attention away and use it towards merch. It just didn't seem like the right investment of time and resources from the team. And after, like, a year and a half, probably close to two years. That's how long it took us to come up with merch. And the whole premise around merch is, can we do it in a way that's maybe a little bit fun to us rather than because we could have very easily just slapped our logo off of more or less like a drop shipping type clothing website and just given it to people. But yeah, we wanted some pieces that were a little bit more fun to us that people would wear maybe even if they weren't supporters of the brand.

And then how did you guys execute on it? Did you work with a different kind of merch provider? How involved did you get and how operationally heavy was the lift to be able to support a merch store?

Unfortunately, way too involved. And maybe in hindsight I wish I wouldn't because I don't know. For me, it's like I try to run things efficiently, but when I get quotes, we even try to do collabs with brands, something that you've probably know of. And when we got pricing back for Hoodies and Joggers and everything, there were like four or five X. It was just very hard to justify, even though everything was solved. So because I had prior experience sourcing from Asia, I was as involved as me and a designer. Not only were we buying it all from Asia, but coordinating our own freight, because the freight rates that were charging us were much higher. So involved pretty much end to end, even with an inspection person on facility. Unfortunately, yeah, that probably wasn't the best use of my time, looking back. But at the same time too, it's just like, yeah, I feel like I'm generally involved in every phase of the business and it's kind of hard to.

What'S the size of the team today?

So right now it's four full time, one part time. But obviously there's a lot of people in production, a lot of people in fulfillment, et cetera. They're just technically not our own employees.

What is the most challenging part of the business now that you're at this stage?

I mean, right now we're solving for is tomorrow. I'm actually flying to a new production facility that can make like ten times the product at half the speed. So that's one thing I'm really excited about, because once we solve for some of these out of stock issues, it allows us to do other things that we haven't been able to do online. So first and foremost is solving for how do we keep enough stock of product, how do we introduce new flavors that people like, and then from that too? Then the next priority is Mike really creative performance. Just because right now we're all online and then we're now finalizing conversations with retail for next year is just a lot longer lead time, but we'll finally be in retail next year. So now it's setting us up for retail and figuring out how to roll that out properly.

So it's interesting that you're flying out of La. You know, you were in Austin. You're moving back to Austin, I heard. So Austin, another CPG capital. I'm curious, if somebody was to start a CPG brand today, what would you say? It's better austin or mean?

I think it depends on maybe what the product is, where their personal network is. It's kind of hard because if you're starting CBG brand too, it depends on is the focus industry going to be to be just online and what their core competency is. Right. Like in La, you can find more social media people, you can find more support around creative. Right. But Austin too is like a really good city for CPG as well. So, yeah, I think it really depends on the team score, competency, the product, et cetera. It's kind of hard to answer, but I love both cities. Yeah. I have to go back to know the rest of the team needs good. I've had a good six weeks out.

Of here at a good run. My last question before we wrap up is you mentioned you're thinking about going into retail in the future. What does that look like for a product like yours? Are you bringing everything in the merch to retail or are you just bringing a couple of the hero products? Who are those retailers? And yeah, what's kind of the strategy behind your product and how you take it to retail?

Yeah, I mean, I would say our product, especially the weekend recovery, it's a last minute need. Right. So a lot of people aren't thinking, let me get it three, four, five business days ahead of time. And just like when we added a product to Amazon, a lot of the sales were incremental. We feel like a lot of retail will be that too. A lot of people, unfortunately, they're in the aisles and they're looking for this product and they don't see us there. They're just buying the next competitor. So for us, it's understanding that being in more places is better, but then it's also, what phase of the business are we comfortable taking that on? So if we had tried to bring it on a retailer a year ago and we're constantly out of stock, well, that would not be a very good relationship and they would remove us from the shelf. And now that we finally figured out operations, that we have new facilities coming online, we're at a place where we can fulfill bigger POS. We have the cash on the balance sheet to get paid back 60 plus days. So it's kind of that phase. And then the way I would structure it too, it's a year or two ago, a retailer wouldn't have cared to have us on the shelves because to them, it's, well, no one knows who your brand is. How are you going to bring incrementality to me. And if you're just going to try to capture my foot traffic, we're just exchanging dollars from product A to product B. So I think for us is establishing that brand and that community online and leveraging that now for retail and our product differentiators. I think the retail combos we had, we closed a big box retailer over email without even doing a line review and another one off of one meeting. And that's just because we've spent the last two years to get to this point. Had we tried to do that a year ago, it probably would have not worked and we probably would have presented and they would have just said no because shelf space is very limited and they want to make sure they can maximize their margin on that square footage.

I said last question. But I have one last question. I know community is mike a big thing for you guys and clearly from the get go, right, having 17,000 numbers to text. Just talk to me a little bit about your kind of lifecycle strategy and how you deal with Community and your customers. How do you keep your customers engaged?

Yeah, it's hard, right? I don't think we have a specific formula on month one. This is what we lean heavy on month two, almost like I think a lot of it is just like organic. The content people see from us, the way we talk via SMS versus email. I would say speaking to less product personas or less personas probably helps. Right. Because then you flush out who is your community and everyone then relates to that. And I think maybe sometimes issue brands make is they are afraid to be too risky because they're going to turn off XYZ customer and they try to speak to everyone at once and they end up not speaking to anyone. So for us, I don't think we take a scientific approach to Community other than how do we let people into what we're doing in a way that they care about and how do we listen to their needs and address them in a way that makes sense. So yeah, I mean it's really that sweet.

Well, thanks for coming on the show today. We learned a bunch about waterboy and for anyone who wants to follow along with you with Waterboy, why don't you shout out where we can find you? Are you on Twitter? LinkedIn. What are your socials? Where can we find waterboy as well?

Yeah, so waterboy, it's waterboycan on Instagram and TikTok. Waterboy.com for the website. And then if you go to our Instagram, I'm sure you'll see a lot of photos of me and videos of me and you can tab over because my last name is a nightmare to say on how to find me on Instagram.

I have one last question actually. Was the waterboy.com domain available when you just search for it?

No, this is what happened. We had waterboy can because we were going to be a can drink. And then we had to pivot to powder and we wanted waterboy.com. It just wasn't available. And we could have bought it at the time, it was just a decent price tag. And for us, it was a tricky balance between how long do we hold out? Because maybe the longer we hold out, either a competitor buys it underneath us or this person catches wind as to what we are and increases a price tag. That was like, one of our fears. And then the other thing, too, was like, well, how important is the domain name? Or if we're linking to it? But at times like this or in podcasts, they just say waterboy.com. It's very helpful. It was worth a price we paid, but yeah, it was definitely not available. We bought it six months into the business. Sweet.

Well, there you have it. Waterboy.com. All right, Mike. Thank you. That was a great episode.

Yeah, I had fun.