starting with $20 and a sock in a Texas dorm.
How a design student bootstrapped a watch strap business with $20 and a sock, cultivated a loyal repeat customer base, and ultimately sold over 200,000 watch bands starting from a dorm room in Texas. Our guest today is Braxton Manley, founder of Braxley Bands, a lifestyle brand combining style and function to make insanely comfortable Apple Watch bands. What he began working on for a random class project in 2016 has since gotten out of hand and on over 200k wrists.
The Unofficial Shopify Podcast
Kurt Elster: Today, on The Unofficial Shopify Podcast, we are going to discuss another entrepreneurial journey. However, this one is interesting because it started with all of 20 bucks. It was a group of students in college who managed to start this as a class project and it has grown into a website, a store, a brand so cool that I had, before this interview was even booked, even considered, I had already bookmarked this site as one of my favorites, as design inspiration, because I was like, “This is so cool.”
And you know, it’s opinionated. It speaks to me. It’s not for everybody, but I loved it, and so today we are talking to Braxton Manley of Braxley Bands. Braxley Bands being Apple Watch straps that are just some of the coolest, but then presented just in a really phenomenal website combined with… Ah! I’m gushing. I’m gushing because I love this so much. So, I’m joined by Mr. Braxton Manley, founder of Braxley Bands, a lifestyle brand combining style and function to make insanely comfortable Apple Watch bands, which began as a class project in 2016 and has since gotten out of hand and onto over 200,000 wrists.
Sound Board:
Kurt Elster: I like that. I’m your host, Kurt Elster.
Ezra Firestone Sound Board Clip: Tech Nasty!
Kurt Elster: Braxton, thank you for joining us.
Braxton Manley: Kurt, thank you so much for having me on. I have been a longtime fan of the show and honestly it feels surreal to be talking to you right now, so I’m honored.
Kurt Elster: It’s fun. That’s really cool. Chris Meade from CROSSNET, last month’s interview, he said a similar thing.
Braxton Manley: Yeah.
Kurt Elster: So, it’s fun to be able to have things come full circle like that. But all right, Braxley Bands, it’s Apple Watch straps, but in your words, what is it?
Braxton Manley: Well, they’re the most comfortable Apple Watch bands in the world, and basically what I think it does is it changes the dynamic of the Apple Watch because it becomes a fashion accessory, and it becomes something that you can use to express yourself more than the bands that especially were on the market when we first started. It’s a tool that we’re using to inspire, so some of the new designs we have have affirmational messages on them, like this one I’m holding says “live the dream,” so when you wear something on your wrist that says live the dream, or another one we have is be good, it’s a mantra, and I think that the impact at scale of people wearing something on their wrist that says be good is profound.
Kurt Elster: No, absolutely. This started five years ago, right? 2016?
Braxton Manley: That’s right. Yeah. I was at-
Kurt Elster: Six years ago.
Braxton Manley: Yeah. Well, it was a class project six years ago at Texas Tech. There was this weekend entrepreneurial workshop that I signed up for last minute and then five years ago, as a junior, I decided to take it fully seriously and I realized as I was approaching job fairs, and people trying to get internships, and look for these entry-level positions, I was like, “I don’t want any of this. I have to work for myself. I have to figure out what to do. There’s something about these Apple Watch bands that I think is realistic.”
So, I teamed up with my best friend, Grant, and we got to work together.
Kurt Elster: I think what’s interesting about it is if you had started this in 2016 and then picked it back up again later, by that point, how long had the Apple Watch been out?
Braxton Manley: It was the generation one, so it basically was less than a year old, so it was very fresh.
Kurt Elster: Okay, so you started early on with this, same year that the Apple Watch had launched.
Braxton Manley: Yeah, so back then especially, there was not much variety when it came to the bands. You had the plastic silicon one and there was a metal one, but there was definitely nothing colorful, or anything that I thought was comfortable.
Kurt Elster: I think that’s one of the issues with the smart watch as fashion accessory. So, I’ve owned two or three smart watches and I never wore them. I didn’t. I just really… and when I did wear them, I didn’t feel amazing about it, but I ended up… The watches I wear all the time are these cheap Casios and I do it because it feels like me, like it is a fashion accessory, it speaks to me, I like it, and that feels to me like the pain or problem that Braxley Bands solves. It takes a smart watch, an Apple Watch, really very practical, nice product, and then solves this other problem for people who are into the watch as a fashion accessory like me.
Braxton Manley: Yeah. Well said. Thanks. We like to say also we combine a little bit of nostalgia to this cutting edge, modern design that is the Apple Watch. So, that’s why our website, our packaging, our overall theme of our brand reflects something that’s very nostalgic, almost of a previous era Apple.
Kurt Elster: I like that idea that it’s harkening back to when Apple was more colorful and less modernist and minimalist. I want the colorful Apple logo, the rainbow Apple logo back.
Braxton Manley: Right.
Kurt Elster: But tell me, of all the ideas, of the things you could jump on, how did you get started with this? So, tell me about this class project.
Braxton Manley: Yeah, so basically it was this thing called 3 Day Startup that my university put on, and there was probably about 40 kids. We all pitched a startup idea and mine at the time was just cool Apple Watch bands. I got enough kids to be interested that they ended up picking I think six groups, so the entire group of people that were involved, they selected who to work with. Mine luckily got chosen and we at first were just doing really unique designs with the Apple Watch, and realized that we could make them by hand, so we actually immediately started making Apple Watch bands by hand and we got some of the hardware pieces, the metal pieces off eBay, and then I had a big epiphany about a year later, actually, on what I really wanted to make it out of, which was a sock.
So, I started cutting up my crew socks and stitching that onto bands, and I realized it was super comfortable because it was stretchy, and soft, and just kind of like… It felt like it made the watch disappear on your wrist. So, we refined it a little bit and landed on this material that we use now, which we’ve trademarked as Relastic, and it’s made from recycled water bottles and single-use plastics.
Kurt Elster: Oh, cool. Okay, so originally you have to prototype the idea, and one of the issues, smart watches don’t… They all seem to use proprietary connectors, whereas like every other watch is just the spring pins that are a real pain to put on, and so Apple being Apple said, “We’ll solve this,” and they invented this entirely new little machine connector that goes together and uses very tiny, fiddly little hex head screws, and so you got a package of those and then start putting straps on that.
I assume probably like existing straps, or modified straps, and then started using… cutting up socks, which I think is brilliant, because you have it, and socks are comfortable. If you had an uncomfortable sock, you’d know it immediately, and they’re stretchy, that’s actually very clever.
Braxton Manley: Thank you, Kurt.
Kurt Elster: All right, so we prototyped the thing out of a sock. Where do you go from there?
Braxton Manley: From there, we basically went to craft stores to try and find stretchy fabrics. We found I think our first fabric off some random website that was selling… basically it’s webbing, that’s kind of the term for it. With this material, we found a webbing company that was basically making this material for random products, but definitely nothing watch band related. Usually, it’s found on things like boxers, and backpack straps, things of that nature, and so we started working with them with the designs that they had, and then eventually were able to build up enough of a minimum order quantity to start doing our own custom designs, started working with artists, and coming up with stuff on a pretty regular basis that was very unique and stuff nobody had really ever seen before on a watch band.
Kurt Elster: So, how are you doing the initial manufacturing? Because I find that that’s really… That’s the big hurdle. Like first, the idea, and then all right, build the prototype, and then step three, manufacturing, and this is I think where a lot of people get tripped up.
Braxton Manley: Yeah. So, I think what’s unique to our story is that we were manufacturing them ourselves completely. Aside from the… Well, I should say aside from the hardware piece and actually sourcing the fabric, we were assembling it, packaging it, fulfilling it, doing everything ourselves in house. So, we didn’t have to find a real manufacturer. We just sourced the raw materials and put it all together ourselves.
So, my friend Grant, he had actually taken a sewing class in high school as a total blow off class, and ended up being the best class he probably ever took because he was able to really dial in his skills on the sewing machine and we had a process down where we could basically produce about three or four bands every 10 minutes I think was our goal, and that led to us being able to really scale it in house for a long time off of basically no budget, so that first $20 basically went to a little piece of hardware and some elastic, and we got to work on it.
Kurt Elster: So, truly bootstrapped, but I think… I love the idea of taking a sewing class and then it ultimately leads to this quite impressive business, because sewing, when you think of rapid prototyping, we think of stuff like 3D printers, and CNC machining, and the reality is a sewing machine is a form of rapid prototyping. Where if you can sew, that is essential… It’s a superpower, right? I was just thinking the other day, like those classes like woodshop, and in middle school I got to do a plastics class, and sewing, these are all kinds of fabrication, and that’s what you need oftentimes to be able to create a physical good, at least like the first generation of it before you’re able to outsource manufacturing.
At any point, do you outsource manufacturing, or do you still have some guy chained up in your garage with a sewing machine?
Braxton Manley: We have since outsourced manufacturing. That was something we really just couldn’t keep up with. I remember our first Black Friday Cyber Monday; we were home on break. We were making these things to order, so we were home and trying to enjoy our break, but also we started to get really stressed at how many orders were coming in and being like, “Oh my gosh, it’s finals, and we have to figure out how to make this many bands.” It was completely overwhelming.
Kurt Elster: Oh, you were still in school?
Braxton Manley: Oh, yeah. We were juniors when we first started and then finished graduating, and what was really awesome about our university, too, is they actually really supported us because it did come from that entrepreneurship workshop. We had office space. We had access to all kinds of prototyping tools, and it was really special.
Kurt Elster: That’s fantastic. Oh, I love colleges that embrace entrepreneurship as a path. Because it can’t… There needs to be options beyond just like, “All right, we’re gonna prepare you for join an entry level position in a cubicle.” And it just isn’t… That’s fine. It’s just not necessarily for everybody. Oh, I love it.
Braxton Manley: Right.
Kurt Elster: And so, at the point where you start to get stressed out, that’s when you knew, “All right, we have to outsource manufacturing.” Did you outsource shipping to a 3PL or warehouse?
Braxton Manley: Yeah. That came last. So, at first, we actually were trying… We went to the local alteration stores at the mall and talked to some of the ladies there that were hemming pants and such, and we’re like, “Can you just stitch these for us?” And so, that was actually the first place we went, and that lasted a little while.
Kurt Elster: And what’d they say?
Braxton Manley: They were down but it was really expensive and ultimately just didn’t work. The quality wasn’t quite right. Because you have to get really careful with the size, because there’s such a small difference between a small and a large, and you can really feel it when it’s on your wrist, because it is stretchy, so you want the tensile strength to be perfect, and you want it to feel secure, but not suffocating.
So, we have to get really dialed in with the exact length of each band. Anyway, that was the first thing we did, was the mall seamstress route, and then we actually outsourced to my hometown of Austin, to a local place here, and then when they couldn’t keep up, we went to China, and that’s where we currently are.
Kurt Elster: And so, things… It sounds like things grew pretty quickly and you were able to scale through outsourcing. How did you get the first sales? Where did these people come from? Because after manufacturing… All right, we got the idea, the prototype, manufacturing it, scaling, but the other hard part is who’s gonna buy it? I have to find my audience. I have to be able to acquire them profitably.
Braxton Manley: Yeah. I think the way it really first kicked off was word of mouth around campus. You know, a lot of kids had Apple Watches. I went to a pretty big school, it was Texas Tech, and we would hang out outside the student union building and just tell people what we had. We would see people with Apple Watches and give them little cards and say, “Hey, check out our website. We’re making these here on campus.” And it just kind of spread. The student newspaper wrote about us, and I think we then just got really good, really passionate, and then became increasingly skillful at eCommerce strategy and running ads back when you could kind of still throw stuff on Instagram and it would just automatically print profit.
Kurt Elster: That’s true. You did have… You were lucky in that at the time, you could just jump… Instagram was still relatively new and story ads and stories were a really new thing, so you could… It was still a fairly blue ocean there. Without a doubt, it’s harder today to jump into PPC ads.
Braxton Manley: Yeah. Yeah, right now we’re almost all on TikTok. All of our ad spend. I think we’re about 90% TikTok, 10% still just trying some things on Facebook and Instagram, some Snapchat, some Google, but TikTok is everything for us right now, and then we’re just trying to use Instagram more so now as an organic tool. So, we do giveaways there. We try to do stuff that isn’t scalable, so to speak, like we did a costume contest on Instagram where basically if you dressed up as a Braxley Band and posted us on Instagram, we would either… Every participant would get a free watch band and then the winner got a brand-new Apple Watch, and we’ve been doing that for three years, and every year it does not disappoint, so I encourage everybody to go check those out.
Kurt Elster: How many people do you get to dress up as a watch strap?
Braxton Manley: I think this year… Well, I think so far, through the years we’ve had about 20 people, and they go for it. There’s some really funny ones. You’d be shocked to see how creative people can get.
Kurt Elster: And this is three years straight of this?
Braxton Manley: Yeah. So, that’s one of my fun little-
Kurt Elster: And the goal there, it drives awareness, obviously.
Braxton Manley: Yeah. And also, what it really drives is I think it boosts morale for me and our team, just because it reminds us not to take what we’re doing so seriously, and that if we can get people to dress up as our product for Halloween, we’re doing something right.
Kurt Elster: How many… All right, so the first sales, really word of mouth on a large campus, and then you start getting publicity. You get early on Instagram stories, and then now today, it’s TikTok, which makes sense given I’m guessing the demographic lines up, and then Instagram stories, more organic content and audience, community building, or just entertaining yourself.
Braxton Manley: Right. A mix of all those. Yeah, and then email and SMS is massive for us, so we are now doing a little over 40% of our revenue from those owned channels.
Kurt Elster: Whoa! What do you use for email and SMS?
Braxton Manley: Klaviyo and Postscript, and we work with an agency called Fuel Made.
Kurt Elster: I love Fuel Made, and Carson at Fuel Made is a good guy, which brings me to your website, which of course is on Shopify. Tell me about this website and branding, because straight up, it is one of the best Shopify themes I’ve ever seen.
Braxton Manley: Thank you. Yeah. I’ve always had this draw to this sort of ‘80s kind of vibey aesthetic. It reminds me almost what the guys at Poolsuite are doing, as well, and I just… It brings me to a certain place, especially when it’s juxtaposed against an Apple product, of what Apple’s core ideals used to be as a tool for creators, and almost a countercultural element, and so I wanted to evoke that in our store and make it feel very airy and poppy, like it’s something you won’t forget. I see a lot of this super minimalist stuff when it comes to watches especially, minimalist, modern, and I wanted to do the opposite of that.
Kurt Elster: Yeah. I love that. The vapor wave, synth wave aesthetic, it’s glorious, and it’s sort of like the ‘90s. There was a throwback to a lot of late ‘60s, early ‘70s fashion and design, and then the 2000s we saw going back to the ‘50s, and midcentury modern, and now we’re looking at ‘80s and early ‘90s stuff, and really loving it. Certainly, I’m sure people have noticed the updated episode art we use for this show, so part of it is I love the aesthetic. We’re both into the same look. It’s very cool.
So, how many… A lot of the products follow that look, so it frames really nicely on the site.
Braxton Manley: Thanks.
Kurt Elster: How many products do you have total here? I’m scrolling through collections.
Braxton Manley: It changes every day. Not actually every day, but some will sell out and then we take it off the site, and then we ultimately determine if we want to restock it, but each band that we release is intended to be limited edition, and once it’s gone, it’s gone. Some, like the plain black one is one that we’ll constantly restock, but yeah, I think over the years we probably released over 50, 60 different designs.
Kurt Elster: Whoa. Okay. And let’s see what we got here. I’m scrolling through the site. In the collection page, you do something very clever. So, you can filter it, so I can get like all right, I get the right watch side, and the right band size, and then only show me limited edition, which I like, and then you do something I’ve not seen in a collection page before. You have the size guide in the collection page. It says, “Get the right fit. View our size guide.” Did you do this preemptively or were you finding you had a lot of returns and exchanges with people missizing?
Braxton Manley: Yeah. I mean, honestly, one of our biggest challenges is the exchange rate and getting people’s sizes exactly right. It’s complicated because wrists actually swell, and I guess change their circumference over the course of the day and how hydrated someone is, so realizing all these different ways we can cut back on the exchange rate and ultimately make our customers have a better experience, we don’t actually tell people on there to drink water or not drink water before they try on their band or whatever, but getting really clear on the measurement of the wrist is key, and I think that the more places we can put that, the better.
And then also, because of the filter, and because so many sell out of stock, we want them to be able to filter it on the collection page if that makes sense, so they can only see the ones that are in stock for their wrist size.
Kurt Elster: Oh, that’s smart too. Yeah, because it’s frustrating if I see something that like naturally, the one that’s out of stock for me will become the one that I want. That’s just human nature.
Braxton Manley: Of course.
Kurt Elster: So, having the option one, and you don’t force it, but it’s clear like this is the thing to do. Selecting just show me what I can buy essentially is what’s going on here. And so, it helps eliminate analysis paralysis and FOMO. The other really clever thing on this collection page, so again, this is like just grade A, A-plus collection page design here, is throughout the page you have customer reviews stuck in as part of the collection grid, and they go like double wide.
So, let’s say the collection grid is four across. Every other row, there’s a two wide section with a great action shot and then it’ll say like, “Five stars, best, best, best ever. Five stars, throw it in the wash. Five stars, insanely comfy. Five stars, so many compliments. Easy to clean. A life changer. Love this band.” I don’t even have an Apple Watch and I’m ready to buy one of these.
Braxton Manley: Yeah. We started getting so many good reviews and I just felt like not enough people were really seeing them, or we weren’t… I was trying to figure out a way to really showcase them in a quicker way to where it wasn’t something you saw after the product. It was like right away. I think it piques interest because somebody reviews something saying it’s a life changer, then you’re really curious about what’s going on. The price may not be seen in the same way or all these different other factors or walls that maybe customers feel when deciding if they want to purchase something or not.
Kurt Elster: You said the price, so you’ve really kind of flipped things on their head. When I land on the homepage, the headline is a customer quote. “The most comfy and cool Apple Watch band ever.” And then you have a great headline, “Like sweatpants for your wrist.” And then you scroll down. One band sold equals one fruit tree planted. And then that’s it, really. It’s just like, “Pick a band.” But there’s no prices yet. I get to the collection page. It’s the products. It’s the filtering. It’s the size guide. It’s these customer reviews. No pricing yet. And then finally, when I head to a product page, and again, it continues. It’s got this lovely design. Really opinionated, hyper styled. Then it shows me the price.
I think that’s really smart. You wait. Because it’s not an expensive item. It just isn’t. So, I’m less concerned about the price up front. At no point, if I own the Apple Watch, at no point am I gonna suspect that this strap is in some way unaffordable. So, we don’t even show them the price until the product detail page.
Braxton Manley: That’s right. Yeah. That’s the logic.
Kurt Elster: Yeah, I talked through it. I don’t know what the question was.
Braxton Manley: Yeah. No, I mean that was the logic. You nailed it. That’s our logic. And trying to come off as a premium product, so I don’t think premium products people need to… We’re not trying to be a race to the bottom in terms of price, and you can go on Amazon and get knockoffs of our stuff for like… I mean, way less, right? But we’re not competing on price, so it’s not something that we try to over elaborate on.
Kurt Elster: And I like this. Once I add an item to cart, there’s a drawer cart that pops open, and the checkout’s got this really cool… The checkout button has this amazing CSS animation on hover, which I really like, but it says a moment after it loads, it says, “Your order is now carbon neutral, powered by EcoCart.” Talk to me about why you have sustainability as one of your clear focuses here.
Braxton Manley: Yeah. I mean, ultimately it just stems from my own personal desire to build something impactful and something that I feel good about doing, you know? I’ve learned a lot about fashion industry and how polluting it can be, and plastic pollution in general is something that I’m really worried about in the world, and so I early on was trying to figure out, okay, cool, we have a great product, now how can I use this to be a force for good and something that I feel fired up about working for? Because it’s not about profit for me. It’s about feeling like I am living my mission and what I’m doing matters.
And so, we’ve taken all these little mini steps to fully integrate that and to build on that, and yeah, one of those things we just added recently was the carbon neutral shipping with EcoCart, which is a really cool new app.
Kurt Elster: And the products themselves, they’re made from recycled single-use plastics, like water bottles, so you’ve got… They’re woven polyester, which is very clever. Do you… So, you said sustainability, it’s important to you, and sustainability is important to me. Do you think sustainability is important to your customers? Do you think it helps you sell? I don’t know if I can, but I want to make the case for if you’re on the fence about this, it could be a way to help you sell more by committing genuinely to sustainability.
Braxton Manley: I think that it does matter. And there’s also ways to do it strategically, to feel more impactful to the customer, so like one thing we do is we plant a tree via Trees for the Future, which is an awesome organization that plants fruit trees. We plant a tree with every band we sell, so it feels very tangible to the customer. It’s similar to what Toms and their movement, they started, where you buy this product, and you also have a direct impact. It’s a one-to-one thing. And I think that is a lot more intriguing to customers than saying, “A portion of proceeds may go to this.” It’s tangible and it’s quantifiable.
Kurt Elster: Absolutely. Well, I hope… I’m glad you do it. I’m glad these tools are out there and we’re talking about it. I hope more people adopt it. I do. Because I don’t see a downside to more sustainable brands out there. I really don’t.
On your site, there’s a couple of other really phenomenal conversion rate optimization, revenue optimization things I want to call out. One, as part of the product form and the drawer cart, it tells you your product ships today from Texas. What objection are we trying to bust by telling people our products ship today from Texas?
Braxton Manley: Well, we’re trying to let people know basically… I mean, I think this is a huge challenge with Shopify stores competing against Amazon, that we’re trying to let people know that they’re gonna get this quickly, and that it is stateside, and that ultimately also that we’re a small business, and so we’re Texas based. This is gonna ship from our home and you’ll get it shipped out to you today, so you’ll get it quickly.
Kurt Elster: So, it’s four simple words, just ships today from Texas. There’s a lot to unpack there. There’s a lot of implied meaning there. And what’s great about copywriting and especially micro copy, like a label like this, is sometimes less is more and people fill in the details on their own with what they want to hear. And so, ships today from Texas implies to me I will get this quickly. I will get this in whatever timely manner I have in my head. And there’s the implication that, “Okay, it’s a small, independent business.”
Braxton Manley: Nailed it. And Texas people are so prideful, I think when people see that and they happen to be in Texas, they’re like, “Oh, sold.”
Kurt Elster: Or are from Texas, went to school in Texas. You’re right. There is an automatic kinship among Texans, I suppose.
Well, there’s more here, because again, this is very brilliant. Across the top of the site, most sites we phrase free shipping as like free shipping on orders over X, where X is generally like 10%, 15% over average order value, and in your case what you’ve got here, you said free shipping on any two-plus bands. So, it’s saying you could have… Assuming they’re all similarly priced, you could have said, “Oh, free shipping on X dollar value.” But again, now we’d give away pricing. And so, saying free shipping on two-plus bands, hmm. And it’s very easy to switch bands on an Apple Watch, right?
Braxton Manley: Super easy.
Kurt Elster: And they’re thirty-something dollars a pop. All right, maybe instead of paying shipping I’m just gonna buy two and then I could switch between them. I think that’s very clever.
Braxton Manley: Thank you. Yeah. That’s the idea. And our lifetime value is quite large because people do come back for more and they do realize, “Oh, this is a collectible item,” so we see people buying two more often than they buy one now.
Kurt Elster: Interesting. All right, so that definitely… The positioning and that messaging seem to be working for you. All right, the other thing I want to call out here, navigation. Most people have these huge, messy menus. Yours, there’s just four links. Shop, story, support, and Trees for the Future. So, we just have these four links. Really makes it much simpler for people to find what they’re looking for. The shop page just drops me into this phenomenal collection grid. The our story page, oh, actually good about us. Now, all right, you could improve this with a video. I’m just gonna… Right now, a video on there would be sweet. I’m surprised we don’t have one. However, it is still such a strong story page that opens with, “This all started as a class project.” It’s great.
Braxton Manley: I love the idea of a video. We’re definitely gonna start investing in some more video content. That’s a great idea, so thanks for that.
Kurt Elster: It’s one of those things that like it feels intimidating, but once you do the first few, then you’re like, “Okay, this isn’t so bad.” It’s time consuming, for sure, but video is powerful. I like it a lot. And it helps connect people and communicate.
On the site, all right, so I’ve gushed about the site. What don’t you like about your site? Is there anything? Or you’re like, “This is perfect. Shut up.”
Braxton Manley: Well, I’ll say this. We’re working on a new product that is not an Apple Watch band at all, and I feel like we’ve built this site to be so centered and strategically positioned around our Apple Watch bands that releasing this new product is gonna be really hard to figure out, and it may require us to do a ton of new development work that… I don’t know. It’s gonna be really tricky. Because I want to release… I’ll give a little hint at what it is. It’s a shoulder bag that uses our elastic. It’s modular, so it can also be worn as a belt, or the bag can be used on its own with a wristlet that is basically Braxley Band material.
So, I’m really excited for the new products we’re coming out with, but also it’s going to change the dynamic of our site completely, and yeah, I’m a little stumped on that.
Kurt Elster: I would wear a Braxley fanny pack.
Braxton Manley: Thanks. Yeah. Hopefully 2022.
Kurt Elster: Yeah, you’re right. The site is so focused to one, this one product, and like the product itself has a ton of variations, but it’s all still Apple Watch bands, and so you do kind of box yourself into a corner by having this hyper focused niche very optimized site, but it performs, doesn’t it? You’ve sold over 200,000 of these things.
Braxton Manley: It definitely performs, so that’s why I definitely haven’t been in any rush to come out with this. I’m taking my time with it. It’s almost like it’s been a passion project for the last year, and we’ll figure it out. But yeah, ultimately the Apple Watch is only growing in market size and a lot of people, it’s funny, like so many people I talk to don’t really understand that this could be a full-time business. And I explain to them, yeah, like the Apple Watch is actually the most popular watch in the world now.
Kurt Elster: Yeah. It’s been that way for a while. It’d be like… If you said, “I’m a phone case manufacturer. I sell phone cases.” No one would question you on that.
Braxton Manley: Right.
Kurt Elster: But when you say, “I sell these rather unique watch straps,” they don’t believe you that it could be a full-time gig?
Braxton Manley: You’d be surprised. Yeah. But I actually feel… I love when people are surprised by it because it’s kind of fun. It certainly doesn’t hurt my ego in any way, that’s for sure.
Kurt Elster: Now, you seem to have a unique design philosophy when it comes to your products. Has thought gone into it? Tell me about it.
Braxton Manley: Yeah, so this philosophy is something I really landed on with our spring collection this year called The Optimist Capsule and I’m trying to search for meaning in what I’m doing, and I used to have it be two things that I sort of learned as a design student, which was start with function and then style follows, so function first, style second. And that was really the core of what we were trying to do with our bands.
And then, I realized as I started to see these bands as a blank canvas, that there could be a third element to that, which is to inspire. That’s what I call 3D design. And if we can also inspire people with these bands, then we’ve hit a really sweet spot. So, like I said, we have a band that says “be good,” we have “live the dream,” we have “feel peace,” we have another one that says “know your power,” and then on every band we actually laser engrave on the hardware, “Live flexibly.” So, all these little mantras I think are very impactful and I think really differentiate us from any knockoffs out there.
Kurt Elster: Well, and certainly what helps is… Well, devil’s in the details, but also you thought it through, and you believe it, and that comes through. You can’t… This wouldn’t work without the authenticity I think is the important takeaway there. Anything I missed? Anything else you want to share with us?
Braxton Manley: Nothing comes to mind. You know, we’re deep into the holiday season right now. This is kind of like the end of the marathon. I’m ready to take a vacation and have a couple days off, but it’s been an amazing year and eCommerce is such a fun, rewarding industry to be in, and I love the direct-to-consumer community, and everybody’s very supportive, so I’m very grateful for everybody out here in the community.
Kurt Elster: What are some of your favorite community resources? I know you’re on Twitter.
Braxton Manley: Yeah. I’m not a big tweeter but I go on there to learn a lot, and maybe that’s something I’ll challenge myself to do more in the future, is to actually try and come up with some tweets. But yeah.
Kurt Elster: Yeah, Twitter is tough, because it’s like there’s such pressure to fit something really pithy into 200 or so characters, and I think it leads to a lot of intentionally outrageous hot takes at times. I don’t know. I spend too much time on Twitter, and so I have a love-hate relationship with it as a result.
Braxton Manley: Right.
Kurt Elster: Yeah. But all right, so you have… You had mentioned you use Klaviyo, and PostScript for SMS are a big deal for you, and so you have a special offer for us if they text you. What is it?
Braxton Manley: Ah, that’s right. If you text KURT to… Well, let me actually pull up our short code. I don’t remember it off the top of my head.
Kurt Elster: 85709.
Braxton Manley: 85709, you’ll get a special discount from us. We’re gonna make it 20% through the holidays, or I don’t… When does this release?
Kurt Elster: Well, this will go live the first week of January.
Braxton Manley: Oh, great. Okay. Well, we will extend it well past the holidays, so just a way to kind of join our list and see what we’re doing. It’s really more than just a coupon. We’re doing a lot of fun stuff with our SMS strategy and trying to entertain first, so I hope you all will follow along there for some inspiration.
Kurt Elster: Oh, I’m signing up for your… signing up right now if that’s the case. That sounds pretty good. Yeah, there we go. I’ve signed up. BraxleyBands.com. Check it out. Braxton Manley, thank you so much for being here. This has been phenomenal. I’m feeling inspired and certainly I love… Well, I wish I owned an Apple Watch now. Maybe I gotta go buy one. Thank you again. Thank you so much.
Braxton Manley: Thank you, Kurt. Really appreciate it.