w/ Riley Stricklin, CEO
Join us as we explore how Lume Cube became the leading brand in personal lighting for creators and innovators. Though COVID-19 hit them hard, their team was able to quickly adapt and increase demand for their products. By 2021, Lume Cube was reaching sales milestones of $5 million/month. Riley Stricklin, the Co-Founder & CEO behind this success story joins us on this episode to discuss how they innovated and invested to become an 8-figure empire. Tune into hear their inspiring story and get ready to level up your content creating game.
The Unofficial Shopify Podcast
3/7/2023
Kurt Elster: So, we’ve heard about the importance of content creation, and everybody wants to be a content creator now. Over the pandemic it became a cottage industry. People just churning out seven-second videos by the hundreds in their homes. And you quickly discover with content creation, whether that’s video or audio, lighting is incredibly important and really difficult to get right, or at least it often can be. You shoot 100 photos in 100 different lightings and if you get really lucky, five of those are gonna work. Unless you could get maybe some good gear. You start upgrading your gear. And now you start getting experience, and you start discovering… Ah, not all light is the same. Photography and videography, a lot of it is how do I model light? Can I shape light to do what I want?
And to a layperson looking at the media, that makes all the difference between whether or not it’s perceived as good, as professional, as interesting, as artistic. There is so much in this. You are painting with light, my friends. And so, I’ve got someone here who has turned that into a career. No, he’s turned that into an impressive DTC business with some really original, interesting lighting products.
Today we’re gonna hear a story about a Shopify merchant, Lume Cube, and we’re joined by Riley Stricklin from Lume Cube. He’s the co-founder and CEO there. He’s been leading brand and personal lighting for creators and innovators since co-founding the business in 2014, spearheaded their transition in 2018 to DTC first from wholesale. They were selling drone accessories in the Apple Store years ago. That’s where I knew them from. But now they’ve moved onto these really clever lighting solutions, and that’s what we’re gonna talk about today.
This is The Unofficial Shopify Podcast. I’m your host, Kurt Elster.
Ezra Firestone Sound Board Clip: Tech Nasty!
Kurt Elster: Riley, welcome.
Riley Stricklin: Kurt, great to be here, man.
Kurt Elster: My pleasure. Man, okay, the company is called Lume Cube. What is a Lume Cube?
Riley Stricklin: So, the Lume Cube was the original product that this company was based on, and we really… The first four years of the business, that was all we sold, and different accessories. You could mount… It’s a small, golf-ball-sized cube that emits 1,500 lumens, a crazy amount of light. Think of a little motorcycle headlight that can fit in your pocket. And it was really designed for content creators. You could mount it to a camera, mount them to a drone, mount them to a GoPro. Yeah, so the original company was really founded on a single product. A small, durable light source that was waterproof and you could run over it in a truck, and just mount it to different devices, so that was the origination and started on Kickstarter, and that’s where we came from.
Kurt Elster: That really… What you’ve described essentially is like we have made the GoPro of light. Small-
Riley Stricklin: That was the term referred to us for a while in the early days.
Kurt Elster: Small, durable, powerful, accessorized, like it just attaches to a lot of things. That’s very cool. And back then, Kickstarter was easier. If you launched a product today, would it involve Kickstarter or another crowdfunding platform?
Riley Stricklin: As a new company?
Kurt Elster: Oh, that’s a good question. Would Lume Cube do it? Or if you were starting over, would you do it? Both ways.
Riley Stricklin: We had a great experience with it. I think for a first-time founding team who didn’t have access to a lot of venture capital and stuff, I think back then as a D2C business raising outside capital was challenging, so Kickstarter was a really nice medium for that. It was an accessible way to get a couple hundred grand. And one of the things I think that was outside of the money was nice for us is that this was a first of its kind product. It wasn’t a better mousetrap. It wasn’t like, “Hey, we’ve got a cool shirt or a new coffee mug.” So, Kickstarter was a great way to validate the idea.
We were still working other jobs and it wasn’t until we raised a quarter million dollars in 30 days that we eventually said, “Okay, let’s quit our jobs and shift all of our time and energy on this because it looks like people actually want this thing.” Versus making that risk without any public validation. So, it was a nice way to make six prototypes and validate that, “All right, let’s make the bet and spend our time on this project.”
Kurt Elster: And so… That’s a pretty good endorsement of Kickstarter and the thing I love about it, being able to validate the idea, because manufacturing products, especially… You’re manufacturing small consumer electronics that also involve batteries and a lot of heat. And doing it back in 2014, this could not have been easy to produce this thing.
Riley Stricklin: No. No. We made every mistake in the book. We came from the software business, myself and the other two co-founders, and so this was our first rodeo, trying to make something in China, and did everything from completely underestimate the costs of the product which majorly impacted us, to not understanding imports, and not understanding how to make them, and having units that would smoke and start melting in users’ hands, and everything that you could think could go wrong, I’ve got a story for it. That’s more of a story over a beer, but we made every mistake in the book and have had to learn along the way.
Kurt Elster: If you had to go back and tell yourself, “Hey, you’ve got 10 seconds to give yourself advice as this Kickstarter is about to close,” what would it be? What would you have done differently, hindsight being 20/20?
Riley Stricklin: Find somebody who really knows numbers and financials.
Kurt Elster: Because you’re kind of going… What? Going by the seat of your pants?
Riley Stricklin: Totally. Totally. The three of us had very three different expertises, so we complemented each other well, but neither of us was an expert in finance or numbers. And so, really when things from the front of the business… We were in Best Buys, Apple Stores, really crushing it and building a great brand. We underestimated how in a consumer product, in a high end electronic, making it in China, how capital intensive that would be. And so, no matter how well things are going on the front end, if you don’t have money in the bank and you’re not making money and can cashflow the business, things get really tough. And so, we had that, and I have countless stories of people who have built great brands but have been under water in debt, or have mismanaged their financials, and the business is no longer around.
So, for us, it put us in some hard times, but we learned from it. But that would be hindsight being 20/20. I have a great finance team now and they keep me in check on everything that I want to do and tell me no when I have to be told no, but yeah, that would be hindsight 20/20. Know your numbers.
Kurt Elster: Know your numbers. Easier said than done, but I think being aware of it and trying to approach it early on with some sense and sanity, sounds like it goes a long way to avoiding problems. You’re future proofing yourself from some issues there.
Riley Stricklin: We had to raise… Well, it was great to do about a quarter million dollars on a Kickstarter campaign. We couldn’t deliver the product without raising another half million dollars privately because we underestimated the cost. Everything was built for the Kickstarter and the sale price.
Kurt Elster: That’s a lot of underestimate going for… All right, so the Kickstarter was 25K you got?
Riley Stricklin: 250.
Kurt Elster: 250. Okay. And then, so you needed an additional… Really, you needed triple that amount in total.
Riley Stricklin: Yep. Yep.
Kurt Elster: To get this thing to work.
Riley Stricklin: Yeah. Everything came back to we estimated about $12 to $14 per unit, so we’re selling the things for $35 on the Kickstarter campaign, and turns out it was about $24 to $27 per unit before import. We sold about 4,400 units in the Kickstarter campaign, but you can’t go and place a PO for 4,400 units. You gotta make 10,000. So, we didn’t understand MOQs and import duties.
Kurt Elster: Oh. Oh boy.
Riley Stricklin: And then even the little things that you don’t think about. It’s, “Hey, what is this gonna be imported from a tariff perspective? What are customs gonna take from me as a small waterproof LED light?” And I think we’ve all experienced a lot of that with the Chinese tariffs in the last few years, because we did make it in Southern China, so yeah, all these things that hindsight being 20/20, hey, let me know those numbers and know what the actual landed cost is gonna be before I decide to sell all these things at $35 a unit.
Kurt Elster: I believe there’s a famous Supreme Court case about is an action figure a doll, and it’s a tariff case.
Riley Stricklin: Totally.
Kurt Elster: Because people get it… They will challenge these things because it gets very… If it’s like, “Well, you’re gonna pay a dollar a unit,” well, okay, now I gotta move tens of thousands of units, this adds up very quickly.
Riley Stricklin: Very quickly. And it’s wild. I mean, there are millions of tariff codes that a lot of product could be… kind of fit in a couple of different ones. Some are at 30% tariffs and some are at 7%, and so how can you make that case? And you know, those are things, again, that fall into the know your numbers of what is my actual landed cost? And you know, outside of that, even things that you don’t assume when you’re… Hey, what can we make this for? Then comes the cost of fulfillment. What is FedEx gonna charge me to ship this thing to Boston? And so, all those things going, before you know it, you’re selling it for 35 bucks a unit and your actual delivered cost to the customer is $42.
So, that’s exactly what kind of happened to us, especially in the D2C business. Wholesale was the early days. That was a big thing too for us of just understand that while it was the appeal of the Best Buys and the Apple Stores… We, in the second year of our business, put a physical kit in 600 Apple Stores around the world. Payment terms are not great for Apple, so as a small business, how do we keep that cashflow up? And you get your-
Kurt Elster: Yeah. They want the units up front to sell but if you’re lucky you get, what, net 60? Net 90?
Riley Stricklin: Exactly. Exactly. And you think, “I’ve got 90 day terms,” so from the time that I have to prepay and drop half a million dollars to make this run, I’ve got six months before I’ll even see a dollar for that, so how do we keep the business afloat through that? So, those are all things that we learned along the way. We were first-time founders and it’s been a very amazing journey, and I wouldn’t trade it for anything, but yeah, hindsight 20/20. It’s always interesting.
Kurt Elster: We’ve launched the product on Kickstarter. It validates it. We manufacture it and discover all the ways, all the things we didn’t know, and you’re able to work past it. You get it… It sounds like the focus initially is wholesale, where it’s like, “Can we put this in other retailers’ stores?” Have other people sell this for us at scale. And so, it ends up in Apple, and Best Buy, and these places. How did you get into those stores?
Riley Stricklin: So, we were big in the trade show realm. That’s where we really built the brand. So, second year in the business, 2016, I think I spent 220 days on the road that year doing every trade show internationally, domestically, that was within our category. And in a lot of those shows, the CES type shows, we did four years in a row, you have a lot of the Best Buy reps walking the floor, some Apple Store reps, a lot of these distributors from around the world, so that was really our first anchor into getting a lot of awareness in front of those buyers and we were fortunate at the time where the biggest product in the world back in ’13, ’14, ’15, was the GoPro, going public, and we strategically followed GoPro around the world at every trade show.
So, I basically reverse engineered GoPro’s distribution list and we got signed up with every GoPro distributor. And so, a lot of those things kind of led to introductions to certain buyers, and at that point we were about… I think those first two years, 80% retail and distribution and then 20% direct, which was through Magento 1.0. So, at this point we hadn’t even heard the word Shopify, so it was a very different business in those first few years than we are today.
Kurt Elster: Well, when did you build the eCom store? The first one that you put together is on Magento 1.0.
Sound Board: Eww!
Kurt Elster: And how long… When was that? Is it immediately after the Kickstarter?
Riley Stricklin: Yeah. So, we did the Kickstarter November of 2014, and because of all the challenges in financials, in MOQs, and some manufacturing hiccups that we experienced, we didn’t deliver until Christmas of 2015. About 12 or 13 months later. A solid year. And then it was literally January 1st, 2016, that our Magento store went live. So, we went live on the first of the year, so that was our first year in business selling actual units that we had inventory of online.
Kurt Elster: I mean, at this point marketplaces are around. Amazon’s already huge. Were you on any marketplaces?
Riley Stricklin: No. Because we had such a heavy retail component, to all of our retailers was the devil. Amazon was their competition. So, we went very heavy into a lot of the more specialty retail stores. We were very photo and video heavy, so a lot of the mom and pop camera shops in your town, and our commitment to them, or part of the reason, the way we got in there was saying, “Hey, we won’t sell on Amazon, so you won’t have to compete with Amazon.” And they bit a lot, and we signed up a ton of retailers. But again, hindsight 20/20, a lot of those guys don’t pay their bills on time, small shops, they had challenges, so while the product was out there and we were shipping a lot of units, internally it wasn’t a great cash situation for the business. But so, we realized… It took us about a year and a half, so end of 2017 was finally when we said, “You know what? We can’t not play on a marketplace because of these small retailers.”
So, we ended up about a year and a half later entering the marketplace.
Kurt Elster: So, now you’re selling on Amazon and potentially other marketplaces.
Riley Stricklin: Correct. Correct.
Kurt Elster: Okay. And we don’t fear the Bezos here.
Riley Stricklin: Nope. Nope. We manage everything internally, so we do all FBA. We don’t allow any of our retailers to sell on Amazon, so we manage that all in house ourselves. But that is about… It’s a seven-figure a month business for us. Amazon.
Kurt Elster: And when does the transition where you go, “All right, we need to move our focus. Wholesale needs to become number two and direct to consumer needs to become number one.”
Riley Stricklin: 2018 was the year. And we entered 2018 about 70% retail and that was the big initiative in 2018, and finished the year I think about 50/50, but then 2019 was really where we made a lot of strides in that, and basically flipped the business to 70% direct to consumer, 30% wholesale, which obviously the nightly Shopify payments… That’s when we shifted to Shopify was mid-2018. And that changed the business in terms of our ability to have continuous cash flow, reinvest, started for the first time Facebook ads in 2018, so really built the business the first three years, we did not know about a lot of those D2C aspects of paid social and stuff like that. We were a little bit late to the game.
Most companies I would say have a reverse story, D2C first and then expand into retail. We did it the reverse way.
Kurt Elster: Well, and especially with consumer electronics, and so it’s interesting to hear that reverse approach from a category where you just wouldn’t expect it. All right, so in 2018, much easier to buy traffic from the traffic store with Facebook ads. And so, you start expanding via marketplaces, by switching to DTC, running this funnel where we’re paying for traffic that’s converting. Is it still only the Lume Cube or are we starting to add new products here?
Riley Stricklin: In 2018, we launched the Lume Cube Air, which is basically what you would think it would be. A smaller, slimmer version of it. A lite version, if you will. But that really… I mean, it was considered a Lume Cube. We just cut it in half and made it thinner, but same specs overall, so it wasn’t until 2019 where we actually dropped additional products that were not a cube of light. You know, we had accessories for the cubes, but it was actually… I went to China and discovered some technology that hadn’t yet made it to America, in kind of an LED panel, bicolor built in, because we were still at this point in fixed color lighting where if I wanted to warm it up I had to magnet a gel on top that would make it orange, and you know, the old school stuff. It seems like a lifetime ago but it was only about five years ago.
And then, yeah, the technology really came a long way from an LED technology about how you could incorporate bicolor technology and change the color within the light, and so we started really leaning into more of the LED panels, which are probably the most common form of photography of videography light that you see out there. Kind of looks like an iPhone in shape but emits a ton of light as a light panel.
Kurt Elster: Yeah. And then we’ve got… So, we go from Lume Cube, we start adding these smaller… These are like panel lights that would attach directly to the hot shoe on a camera flash?
Riley Stricklin: Exactly. Exactly. And it was actually in 2019, so we realized switching the business D2C in 2018 was a very powerful move for us. Cash flow, building relationships with the customer, really focusing on okay, where does this customer go from here? And so, created two new product lines in 2019. One was the bicolor panels, which was kind of an upgrade option, a better product, more applicable to the content creator, and they could use it in a lot more scenarios. But we also, because we were working with Apple at the time and had a little iPhone filmmaking kit in their stores, we would go up to Cupertino and work with them, and they kind of hinted, said, “Hey, guys. We’re really leaning, we’re putting a lot more cameras in our laptops, we’re leaning into FaceTime,” and at the time it was Skype, not Zoom, and so they said, “You guys are the lighting company that we work with. Do you have any lights that could illuminate video calls, FaceTimes, things like that?” Because it’s not just cameras. It’s more actual webcams and stuff that were really pushing video.
And we said, “Sure.” So, we made this, what we called the Video Conference Lighting Kit, and launched it in 2019 at CES, and it was just that Lume Cube Air I mentioned. We put it on a little computer mount, and you had this little light source that would face you when you were on video calls. And that’s been kind of the story that’s on the wall of shame as well of the wall of fame, where we thought we were going to crush it. We had a product that we were gonna work with Apple on. They put that product in 300 domestic Apple Stores here in the States. We brought in 20,000 units thinking it was gonna be the next best thing. That entire year of 2019 we sold about 1,800 units. And so, I had 18,000 units sitting in my warehouse unsold and those payment terms with Apple are not good, so it was in the company’s history, the biggest flop was our little… our Zoom light.
Kurt Elster: Is this like a Lume Cube on a stick?
Riley Stricklin: Pretty much. Pretty much is what it was. It was not a glamorous product and it’s one of those ones that I look back and cringe when I see it. But that was… We entered 2020 saying, “All right, we’re done with the video conference space. That did not work. We need to get these things off the books and fire sale them somehow.” And it just so happened that about 90 days-
Kurt Elster: I was gonna say all you had to do was wait.
Riley Stricklin: Exactly.
Kurt Elster: All right, so the bad thing occurs. Now everybody’s on Zoom and suddenly your favorite webcam is now backordered for nine months, like I was just trying to buy a Logitech BRIO at that time, and it showed up like literally six months later. Yeah. It goes crazy. Tell me about that. Terrifying and exciting simultaneously.
Riley Stricklin: I’ll look back on that for my life as one of the wildest experiences I’ve ever had. That product itself, we sold those 18,000 units that were a liability on the books in 22 days on our website.
Kurt Elster: Whoa.
Riley Stricklin: Went from doing about $300,000 to $400,000 a month on our website, on our Shopify site, to doing a million a month, a million five the next month, two million a month, two and a half million, three million a month, and we grew. We grew 500% in that year. And it was absolute chaos. We were airing… We spent… I think for nine months straight we just aired in container after container after container. Spent millions on air freight. But the demand was there and that was wild.
And so, leaning in, we all know that during that time too CPMs dropped significantly, and so we just leaned heavy into paid social and Facebook ads, and went from doing… I think it was about a million five, two million through our site in 2019, to doing almost $20 million through our site the next year, and it was absolutely just doing anything to keep our head above water.
And while it was great, at the same time, when you’re behind the scenes at that, growing that fast breaks everything. We were not prepared to be a $20-plus million Shopify business, whether it was our ERP system, inventory management, the way we were forecasting, so it was… It taught me a lot. It was the best street MBA I could ever imagine, is going through 2020.
Kurt Elster: I was gonna say it was a real trial by fire.
Riley Stricklin: Oh my gosh. And you know, again, looking back at it, we were very kind of young and naïve at the time, so made a ton of mistakes, but it was a wild experience and taught us a lot, and really just changed the business. You know, we went from this small business to having a lot of cash coming in that we could reinvest in hiring people, in building systems, in building processes, so that really built the foundation that we still are on today, because it allowed us the capital to really invest in that.
Kurt Elster: Yeah. The pandemic affected people unevenly. You had this product that was previously an unsellable flop that is now suddenly in demand, and people see the utility of it, and you’re thrown into this, and leverage it, and survive it, and grow the business. Now, you are able to really… It looks like you’re able to really start spending on product development. How does this change the product catalog? We’re going from Lume Cubes and Lume Cube on a stick, and we got some light panels, which are cool.
Riley Stricklin: Yeah. Big time. And we had to really spend a lot of time… You know, we did a lot of great things. We made a lot of mistakes. And you get a little drunk on that growth and that category, and so our business turned from five or six million dollar a year business selling products to photographers, videographers, content creators, to a business 500% bigger than that, where 90% of our sales are to just work from home people who never touched a camera, who don’t know what kelvin temperature is, who don’t know any of these key terminologies, so we really switched the product line.
We invested in a lot of elevated versions in that kind of videoconference and workspace category, but you get a little excited about the growth trajectory that we are on, obviously as we look back, hindsight 20/20, that demand did not last forever. You know, the world is not the same as it was 18, 24 months ago, for good reason, and that’s a good thing, but yeah, so the demand for that in 2021 did drop off, so we had to really look at where can we… We knew COVID wasn’t gonna last forever. How do we invest in other categories? And the other category we saw outside of just photography and high-end video, which was our original core customer, COVID also did wonders for TikTokers, YouTubers, everybody being able to create content from home, and you know, a lot of people who got laid off did turn to being digital creators, and that now is their life.
So, we got into that space for ring lights, for larger light sources that you could illuminate actual production, studio light panels. The one that really probably saved the business is getting into that ring light space and building high-end ring lights, because there was such a demand after COVID, and TikTok, and YouTube. That wasn’t tied to COVID. While the work from home and remote launched that category big time, and did a lot of increased demand for that category, when the vaccine came out and everybody went back to work, they did buy less video conference lights for Zoom. They did not buy less ring lights. Ring lights and that category of lighting for content creators has been here to stay.
So, our business, that side of the business over the last 24 months has grown exponentially and really replaced any lost demand that we had on that Zoom side. Because that was very much kind of a 24-month spike.
Kurt Elster: All right, I want to shift gears a little bit here, because now we’re like… We’re up to really today in your business, where it’s like you’re selling, you’ve got the full catalog of lighting solutions, and a big focus is lighting for content creators who are in an interesting place, where it’s like their background is not necessarily photography/videography, but they are still… They’re in the trenches producing the content and they could see right away if the content’s successful. And so, quality becomes paramount, and you’ve got everyone’s favorite light. People don’t even know why they want a ring light. They just know like, “Well, a ring light is what you need.” And you can see the catch lights when you watch YouTube videos, catch light being like reflection. You can see that perfect ring in their eyeballs or their glasses. And so, you know. You know like, “Ah, that’s a ring light.”
And then pretty soon you’re shopping for one. Oh, now you own a ring light. What the heck is a ring light? Why are these so popular?
Riley Stricklin: It’s wild, man. I couldn’t even tell you. I think it started just as that. The catch light in the eyes was really… I’ve been in the lighting space for a while, well before ring lights were even existing, and the first times I saw them were very much in the portrait space for catch light in eyes, and it just… It creates a soft light source that does fill in a lot of the shadows because of the gap in the middle, and that really is what you want lighting to do. If you’re on camera, what you want to not have is bags under your eyes, shadows under your chin, shadows in your nose. You’ll most of the time not film in the dark, so you’re gonna be visible, and that’s what a lot of people initially say. It’s like, “Hey, why don’t you just turn the lights on and film there?”
Well, with overhead lighting, you have major bags under your eyes, shadows in your chin. You have to have lighting that actually is facing you. And you know, if you see a high end production studio, you got a $100,000 lighting setup, but they’re these big soft lights that are aiming at the news anchors, and at the person who’s on TV, so our goal was to really bring that to kind of the home studio and the new content creator, because while there were a lot of great light sources out there, they were in the thousands of dollars, and cables, and wires, and complicated, and for a lot of these new YouTube creators, something like a ring light was a portable device that could make them look better on calls, give them that catch light, for sure, and just provide a nice light source at a comparable price that would be something that they aren’t afraid to spend.
So, it’s a great tool, and that’s something that we got in, but what we did do is I sourced… I bought every single one from Alibaba, every single one from Amazon. I had a room full of literally well over 100 ring lights trying to figure out what was good and bad-
Kurt Elster: All right, how many of those ring lights caught fire, though?
Riley Stricklin: A few smoked. I’ll give you that. A few smoked in the-
Kurt Elster: 100 random Alibaba ring lights, guaranteed at least one of those caught fire.
Riley Stricklin: Absolutely, and so it was wild, and really the consensus was while they all at a very basic level illuminate you, as a product nerd who appreciates nice design and good quality, every single one of them just sucked. And that was the big theme that said… Because initially we were gonna look at white labeling one and do something that we’ve done before and just bring in a quick one, but nothing was good enough for us to put our name on. And so, that’s when we decided, you know what? Shoot. There’s a huge demand here and every offering to creators sucks where it’s either a plug, it’s cheap plastic, it’s gonna die out, or when you get it on this certain color temperature, we would do the light test and it’s like a very poor quality of light and would give you a green or blue tint, and so we ended up just investing a lot of in product development to design what we believe is the best ring light in the space. And kept to that not pay thousands of dollars price point, at about a $250 price point.
But the biggest differentiator that we saw is content creators of five years ago and content creators of today, the biggest difference is today creators are very much on the go. You are not only creating content in your house, in your studio. You might be a travel creator. You might be creating product for brands, and hey, I’ve gotta do this new shoe ad for a shoe brand, and I want to go down to the beach, or go on a trail to make this content for this brand. Every single one of those hundred-plus ring lights that I brought in, not a single one had a built-in battery. You had to plug it into AC power.
And so, that’s what we did, was say, “We want to create a product more for the creator who’s on the go.” Might be creating in the house, but might want to take it down to that trail to do this shot in a more creative environment, and they now don’t have to worry about plugging it in. And so, that’s… The cordless ring light is what we designed, and we have not been able to keep those things in stock. It’s been pretty crazy.
Kurt Elster: So, I have one of these, and it’s great, and the thing I love about it is like obviously the quality and color of the light, and some of the… Color temp is always a nightmare to get right. This one, it out of the box seems to work pretty well. Really even light. You don’t have hot spots, where like some of those, you can kind of tell it’s like an LED grid. This one does not have that issue. It’s a bigger light source overall than most of the cheap ones I played with. I love the cordless feature. But what’s really cool, the mount for your phone or camera is built into the darned thing, and so it places your device just dead center in that ring light, and so you get exactly that look that… You already, without even knowing it, you know this look.
Or, if you’re doing like lay flats, or you’re shooting a table, you’re working on something, this thing works really well because I could angle it, I could angle it flat and it doesn’t fall over. There’s a lot of… It’s all the details that come together and make this a really quality light. There, I’m plugging this light, but I was a photographer 15, 20 years ago. I was an assistant wedding photographer. So, I have a lot of experience with this stuff, and this thing is great. And for the price, you are getting… Absolutely, it’s like prosumer level. I love this thing.
Riley Stricklin: Yeah. And I gotta give it up to my product team on that. And again, a lot of that growth we experienced a few years ago allowed us to hire some really great product designers. And our big focus has been really that kind of out of the box kit that has everything you need to just plug and play. And that was… We took that from Apple. When we went up there and were developing product with and for them, they kept leaning in on the word frictionless experience. They want a frictionless experience for their users that you can take one foot out of the Apple Store, and open the box, and you have everything you need to work. You don’t have to go and buy a mount, or buy a stand, and that’s a little bit more of the… Call it the Spirit Airlines model. You want to get anything else or use anything else, you have to pay up and buy these add-ons.
So, our focus has been really design everything in the kit, top to bottom, so that as a user, we’ve thought through everything. Even that little phone mount, I can’t tell you the amount of design, and tooling, and custom work went into just that phone mount to allow for every rotate from portrait to landscape mode, flip it back and forth from selfie to photo mode, and the way it should mount so that the phone faces you perfectly every time, versus just trying to match it on a thread and maybe it having 1 degree off.
So, that’s everything that you’ll see from us, is really well thought out product where it’s kind of plug and play. Everything in the kit will be there for you. And yeah, it’s just a high quality product that comes out of the box.
Kurt Elster: And it even comes with a remote, where it’s like you turn on and off, set your brightness, and it’s got color temp controls with color temp shortcuts. Explain this concept of color temperature for people who are unaware as to what we’re nerding out about here.
Riley Stricklin: Yes. So, basically in layman’s terms, it’s going from kind of a cool to warm, like a blue to orange range, and really the goal in content creation is to not look like you’re using an artificial light source. You want it to look as natural as possible, so that allows you to match your environment, so think of golden hour. We all know what golden hour is. Kind of when the sun sets, and the lighting gets much warmer. So, you’re able to go in a room, whether it’s the outdoors, depending if it’s a cloudy day, a sunny day, match the light of the area. In this call right now, I can match the light that’s overhead to make it look like I’m not using an artificial light source.
And really, messing with color temperature allows you to look as natural as possible. And I could tell you, we’ve probably all seen on the last few years where news interviews on CNN and such are all on Zoom. You see somebody who literally has this crazy orange glow to them that looks super fake. And it’s because their color temperature is off. They’re in a very blue, cool temperature room, yet the light on them is very warm, and it just looks completely unnatural.
Kurt Elster: Yeah. It’s when they don’t match, the camera is just like, “Look, I give up. I don’t know what you want me to do with this.”
Riley Stricklin: Totally. Totally. And then, you know, the other more shallow aspect is you can give yourself a nice little tan and warm it up when you want to, to look a little better on camera, and so that’s-
Kurt Elster: I always run mine a little warm. I like it.
Riley Stricklin: There you go.
Kurt Elster: Occasionally I go too far, where I watch it back later and I’m like, “Ooh, I look gold.”
Riley Stricklin: Exactly. But one of the things we’re building into our products now that I want to talk about is just we’re using… We’re one of the only ones using something called edge lit technology. So, in a lot of LEDs, you will be able to look, and kind of squint, and you’ll see those little LED-
Kurt Elster: Yeah. This doesn’t do that.
Riley Stricklin: No, so we’re using a new technology that we’ve developed called edge lit technology, which no LED is actually facing you. They are facing inwards and reflecting off of a reflective plate that that illuminates you, so that it’s a much softer light, and it basically is built-in diffusion. So, on most traditional lighting you’ll see those big umbrellas and softboxes that are big white sheets that soften the light. This actually does that from within, and so it’s a new technology, and that is the stuff that we do not cut corners on cost. Could we deliver a ring light for 50 bucks? Yeah, it would be a piece of crap.
But this allows you no hot spots, really smooth, so if you’re using a ring light, high chances are you’re looking into that light source. You’re on camera. So, the last thing you want to do is have your eyes burning, and have hot spots in your eyes, so it’s very important that if the light is facing you, whether it’s on a Zoom call, a ring light, that it's a very soft and diffused light, and we’re the first ones to put that technology in ring lights where you’ll see it as a user. In your eyes it’ll be much better, but you’ll also see it in the results. Much softer light source. So, the shadows are less harsh and you basically… You just look better. It’s as simple as that.
Kurt Elster: I love it. Any other lighting tips? I imagine you have many.
Riley Stricklin: Yeah. You know, I would say the thing a lot of people… The pros are all about a multiple light source. Two-point lighting system, three-point lighting system. That’s the interesting thing that we really are leaning into on the education side. The one negative thing about having one light and every light does it including the sun, it creates shadows. So, if you have a light on one side of your face, you’re gonna have shadows on the other. And that’s the cool thing about light and how creative it can be, is if you have two lights, you can create very dynamic effects. I see just looking at you, you have… Whether it’s artificial or natural, you have a two-point lighting system going on. You’ve got kind of a key light and some fill light on the other side where it creates dimension. You know, it’s not an equal light source, and so that’s what’s fun about playing with light is you can use backlighting to create effects, so we always recommend if you are interested in getting the best content, two-point lighting system is gonna be the best for any use case.
And that’s the exciting thing that we are all about, is when it comes to creating good content, a lot of people think first, “I gotta invest in an expensive camera. I gotta get the new Sony A7 or something like that.” At the end of the day, lighting will do much more for you than any camera will. And you know, the example going to the extreme is if you were to use call it a $10,000 high-end Sony setup and do an interview with no or poor lighting, and then you set up an iPhone on a tripod and light that interview well, 10 out of 10 times, whether it’s the performance on social or just the way it’s received, the iPhone shot that’s well lit will be a thousand times better than the $10,000 camera that’s poorly lit.
And so, at the end of the day, when it comes back, we’re trying to really educate people that lighting comes first. That is the most important thing in creating good content. And the device in your pocket can give a tremendous amount of great content for you if you light it properly and it’s well lit. And so, thank you to Apple for giving us all these phenomenal devices. They’d have some limitations in low light aspects, so lighting comes first, and then once you master that, then start upgrading your camera and you can get more creative effects.
Kurt Elster: One of my favorite budget hacks is you can a little bit make up for lack of other light sources with reflectors, and your reflector doesn’t have to… You don’t even have to buy an actual reflector, though you can get them inexpensive. I buy white foam core boards at an art supply store, and I’ll use those. And then those can also work as backgrounds, and so I generally… I keep a stack in my house. I’ve got white, gray, and black foam core boards, and they’re great for crafts, and light reflectors, and backgrounds, and like every six months I’ll have trashed a few and I gotta replace them, but they’re cheap.
Riley Stricklin: Totally. Totally.
Kurt Elster: I like those a lot. Lighting is a thing where you get to get really creative.
Riley Stricklin: Absolutely. It’s a tool.
Kurt Elster: As creative as you want.
Riley Stricklin: It’s a tool. And that’s what we look at. You look at somebody like a construction worker. They’ve got a Phillips head in their bag. Are they using it on every job? No, you got your hammer, your drills, and everything, but you have it there. Lighting is a tool for content creators. Every time you hit record, are you gonna be using artificial light? No. But if you are investing in content creation, light will be your most advantageous tool that you have to elevate your content, to create different effects, and allow you to create content in any environment. The amount of times we’ve been in a place where you want to get a shot and it’s like, “Oh, the lighting’s terrible in here. I can’t capture the moment, or I can’t get this shot,” because as I’m walking around you literally can’t see me in my phone as I’m blogging. You add a light, completely different scenario.
So, again, it’s one of those things that we believe everyone should have one in their tool box, and a small one for your phone, and for your vlogging or camera, and then you have more of your studio production light, and that’s where you’ll see our product line kind of expanding horizontally to really be that lighting brand that content creators can come to. If I have something that I just want to snap on my phone, run and gun as I travel to Europe, we got you. If you want a home office light to look great on your home office calls with friends and/or content creation behind the desk, we got you. If you’re looking to actually create high-end cinematic work, tube lights and studio lights, we got you.
And so, that’s the direction that we’re really going.
Kurt Elster: I’m subscribed to the newsletter. I have a few of the products. I love them. And I am thrilled to see what you’re gonna come up with next and where this is going. But, all right, let’s assume I need to gear up. I need to gear up right now. What is the thing, assuming I’m an eCommerce brand, I’m on social media, I’m creating content, I gotta shoot photos or videos for my own website, et cetera, et cetera, I’m doing video calls all day, help me upgrade my game. What do I need lighting wise here?
Riley Stricklin: First things first, one of my favorite products is our studio panel lighting kit. It is a literal briefcase that has one foot by one foot light source, but it’s a two pack, so you get two tripods, two light sources, so that’s gonna cover everything from you want to create content in the office, you want to do product photography, these things can do tabletop photography. It’s literally a briefcase that has two battery-powered lights that are about the size of a computer screen, a laptop screen, and produces a tremendous amount of light, of course fully bicolor, has a remote. That thing at 350 bucks is gonna cover probably 80% of your needs in terms of creating content. And they’re on these seven foot adjustable stands, so you can put them on tables, you can put them up and do a proper full body interview or content with it.
And then the other one that just is a go-to favorite product and one of our top sellers is whether you are a photographer, videographer, podcaster, entrepreneur, salesperson, whatever you’re doing, we all earn a living primarily behind a desk. And so, our Edge Light is our top selling desk light. It clamps onto your desk and that… It’s what I’m using right now. I use it as a task light when I’m working, but then I flip it up to illuminate me on video calls or podcasts. It’s kind of my in office production light, and then you’ve got the one that is your run and gun stands for out there. So, between the two of those, both of those combined are sub-500 bucks, and you will have your office and your run and gun lighting solution that is gonna allow you to compete with any pro out there who’s using thousands and thousands of dollars of equipment.
Kurt Elster: I love… You brought up the Edge Light. We didn’t talk about it. I have one. I got it as a speaker’s gift. And I was kind of playing with it, and I knew it was for Zoom call lighting was the intended use case, but I was like, “This thing’s really cool.” I ended up using it as a task light at a workbench.
Riley Stricklin: Yep. There you go.
Kurt Elster: And then my 13-year-old was like, “Well, I need a reading lamp in bed.” And that… So, he’s using the Edge Light. And it actually for that is brilliant, because it’s got these really nice touch controls on it. You can dim it, set the color temp. It’s really sleek looking. It’s got nice points of articulation. And it’s got a USB port on it, so he can charge his phone on it. Oh, that thing’s great. I’m like, “Okay, yeah, yeah, it’s for Zoom, but it also is one of the best task lights, reading light. That thing’s great.”
I swear, I was not paid to endorse this.
Riley Stricklin: We use that edge lit technology in that product, too, and it just… Our whole motto, really, in the education space, is not all lighting is created equal. Can you get a light bulb, a task lamp, desk light on Amazon? Of course. But you put two and two next to each other, it is wild to see how much lighting impacts our work, our energy, our mood, and there’s incredible amounts of studies around that of office lighting and stuff, so our real focus is whatever you’re doing, whatever your passion is-
Kurt Elster: Better lighting?
Riley Stricklin: Yeah. Have a well-lit workspace. Do not work in the dark. It’s kind of the same pitch or same concept as blue light glasses, you know? Artificial lighting can be really challenging on your eyes. Computers and that. But when you illuminate a well-lit workspace and the surrounding area, it’s easier on the eyes. You’re gonna then get better sleep and there’s a lot of these wellness aspects of just working in a well-lit environment. So, it’s one thing to illuminate your content well, but then in just your everyday workspace, that’s a lot of the product line that we’re creating, as well, is even if you’re a photographer or videographer who’s using our lights out in the field, you might go and shoot for three hours, but you’re gonna come back and sit behind your editing station for 12 hours editing that content. And that’s where we say we also have products there for your editing bay, keep a well-lit workstation so that you can literally sleep better, be more effective, and have less strain on your eyes.
So, lighting itself is… We saw it years ago, just believe it’s undervalued in the marketplace, and it’s a really powerful tool for production, for productivity, for content creation, and so that’s really the mission that we’re on is to create a brand and create a product line that has super high quality output but is at kind of a D2C affordable and efficient price point for a lot of these new and upcoming creators.
Kurt Elster: And I love your product pages. They’re really cool. Any chance you got any promos for us on any of this stuff? All right, I’m interested. Can you hook me up?
Riley Stricklin: Absolutely. Absolutely.
Kurt Elster: Oh.
Riley Stricklin: Of course, man. Why don’t I real time create a little discount code for your listeners somewhere at the 20% off mark.
Kurt Elster: Deal. Let’s do the code UNOFFICIAL.
Riley Stricklin: Use the code UNOFFICIAL. Percentage, 20% off. And I’ll let that go for through the end of April we will keep that code live.
Kurt Elster: 2023, just so we’re clear.
Riley Stricklin: Just so we’re clear. Done. Done and done, man. That’s saved and is live.
Kurt Elster: Man, this has been great, because I really enjoyed talking to you. Photography and lighting has been a hobby, an interest, and was a side hustle, potential career path for me many years ago, but I was very familiar with the Lume Cube because I was obsessed with drones. Oh my gosh. I didn’t own one but I’m like, “I want a drone and I want a Lume Cube and I’m gonna do this long exposure night photography, and it’s gonna be the coolest thing ever, and I’m gonna be the hottest thing going on Flickr,” which… That social media network, gone now. Totally dates me.
Riley Stricklin: I haven’t heard that word in a while.
Kurt Elster: The Gen Z kids are like, “What in the heck is a Flickr?” So, no, it really… It was a delight to hear your story and hear from humble beginning to just the incredible success you’ve got now.
Riley Stricklin: I appreciate it, Kurt. It’s been a long journey and learned a lot along the way, but we’re having a great time over here.
Kurt Elster: Riley Stricklin, Lume Cube, thank you so much.
Riley Stricklin: You’re welcome, Kurt. Thanks for having me.