w/ Sean Bandawat, JacobBromwell.com
Our guest today acquired a business, grew it from $90,000 in sales to $2 million, and created a category selling luxury flasks in the process.
We're joined by CEO of Jacob Bromwell, Sean Bandawat the world’s leading designer and manufacturer of luxury flasks and kitchenware, established in 1819.
GUEST BIO: Sean Bandawat is a second generation entrepreneur and real estate investor. Mr. Bandawat embarked on his business career by acquiring Jacob Bromwell®, an iconic home goods company nationally recognized as the oldest housewares manufacturer in the United States, founded in 1819. The revival of the Jacob Bromwell® brand began in college when he developed a business plan that set out to completely transform and revitalize the troubled company which was once a household name. His bold turnaround plan proved successful, and in 2020 Jacob Bromwell® was recognized by Shopify as being in the top 1% of its highest growth e-commerce retail stores. Additionally, since his acquisition, Jacob Bromwell® has received global media attention in nearly every major news publication, including Inc., The Wall Street Journal, GQ, Martha Stewart Living, Esquire, People, and more.
The Unofficial Shopify Podcast
Sean Bandawat
Kurt Elster: Ah, the dream of entrepreneurship. There are two starting points. Start a company or acquire one. On our show today, we’re discussing the latter. Our guest acquired a business, grew it from a modest $90,000 in sales to $2 million, and created a new product category in the process. Luxury flasks. Today, we’re joined by the CEO of Jacob Bromwell, Sean Bandawat. So, the brand is Jacob Bromwell. The guest is Sean Bandawat. They’re the world’s leading designer and manufacturer of luxury flasks and kitchenware, established all the way back in 1819. That’s what we’re gonna hear about today.
I want to dive into that story. We’re gonna hear about the acquisition, about growing it, about creating a category, and which, of course, is my favorite flask among the many they sell. This is The Unofficial Shopify Podcast. I’m your host, Kurt Elster.
Ezra Firestone Sound Board Clip: Tech Nasty!
Kurt Elster: And today, we’re talking millions of dollars in flasks.
Sound Board:
Kurt Elster: Sean, welcome.
Sean Bandawat: Kurt, thank you. Thanks for having me on.
Kurt Elster: Oh, my pleasure. Okay, so you had emailed me, and we talked about your store, and you’re like, “Oh, maybe you can help me with it.” And I was like, “No, it’s too good. I really, really love it. Oh my gosh. Don’t mess with it,” I believe was my professional advice to you. And for my trouble, you were very kind. You sent me a few of these flasks and I was like, “They’re not kidding. This really is a premium product.” You open it, and it’s heavy, and you just know immediately based on the heft that this is a quality product. I want to have to reinforce products for the things I buy or reinforce pockets for the products I buy. Weight it down. That’s what I want.
Okay. In your own words, what do you sell and how many of these darn things are you selling?
Sean Bandawat: Yeah, so we sell luxury flasks, and thousands and thousands of units a year.
Kurt Elster: And so, when you say luxury flask, let’s put a price on premium luxury. What does this flask cost?
Sean Bandawat: Well, let me put it this way. Before Jacob Bromwell, a flask was kind of a trinket product that you would find at a souvenir shop or a discount store, like a Walmart or something, and you’d probably pay $10 or $15 for it. Our flasks are hundreds of dollars. Usually, you know-
Kurt Elster: Whoa!
Sean Bandawat: Yeah, so around $200 to $300 is sort of our sweet spot.
Kurt Elster: That is quite the flask. And so, are people buying these for themselves? Is this a gift item? Is this like a corporate gift? Groomsmen? When are we seeing this thing be purchased?
Sean Bandawat: All of the above. All of the above. Yeah, so for themselves, for loved ones, family and friends, groomsmen. Wedding season’s really big for us, so yeah.
Kurt Elster: And so, did this company… Wait. You don’t just sell only flasks. You’ve got other stuff too, right?
Sean Bandawat: Correct. Yeah, so we have a heritage line of kitchenware and bakeware that the company has produced for over 200 years, but flasks have really taken off and comprise the majority of our revenue today.
Kurt Elster: And so, this is a heritage brand. It’s 200 years old at this point. And they’ve been selling… The whole time, they were selling kitchen goods, and you sell the same stuff today, right? It’s like cheese graters, and flour sifters?
Sean Bandawat: Yep.
Kurt Elster: My mother making baked goods in my childhood, it was the same flour sifter that you sent me.
Sean Bandawat: It was.
Kurt Elster: And it’s like the same cheese grater, and it’s interesting that these products really fundamentally have not changed and work just as well. But all right, so that’s what the brand sold, and clearly I’m assuming that you were not around in 1819 to start this.
Sean Bandawat: Correct. Correct. Yes.
Kurt Elster: When did you acquire it?
Sean Bandawat: Yeah. Great question. And first of all, let me just say again, I am not Jacob. I’m Sean. Jacob Bromwell is a man who is now deceased, but he started this business 203 years ago, and my journey with the company started back in 2010. I was a senior at USC. I was in the business school there. Part of the entrepreneur program. And specifically, was looking for a company that I could acquire after I graduated from college, and so my senior year at USC I was on the hunt to find a small business that I could acquire. Something with some revenue, some traction, something that I could grow and build, and so I spoke with business brokers and different types of people to come across a bunch of different deals, and I came across this tiny little company called at the time Bromwell Housewares, which back then was a 190-year-old brand, and it was just the definition of a turnaround company, Kurt.
It was everything that you could possibly think of that was wrong with this company was wrong, which I loved, and I was super attracted to, because more problems equals more opportunities, right? So-
Kurt Elster: Oh, that’s such a good line. You’re a 22, 23-year-old kid. You are graduating with the confidence of a young adult white man with a business degree. That’s like 10 out of 10 confidence level.
Sean Bandawat: Yes.
Kurt Elster: And you have not done this before. This is all new to you.
Sean Bandawat: No. Look, I’m spending my final semester at USC. I’m crafting a business plan that outlined how I was gonna take over the company, how I was gonna turn it around, what that process really entailed, and that business plan earned top undergrad business plan award for that year, which was a nice little ego boost I suppose for someone that’s just about to graduate and take on such a big endeavor.
Kurt Elster: The one thing that’s missing here, and this is all very familiar to me because I went through exactly this, right down to the business plan, though I did not get any awards for it, and my business plans went nowhere initially. I had a lot of false starts. So, inexperience is to your advantage here. You’re naïve. There is a lot… Sometimes there’s advantage in not knowing what you don’t know because it makes it easier to dive in. And then once you’re already in it becomes trial by fire.
And so, you’re actively looking for businesses to buy. This one you found because heritage brand and it from the outside looking in becomes obvious to you this is… I could take this and turn it around based on these are the issues with it. Do you recall what the top couple issues were? Where you’re like, “Okay, for sure this is what they’re not doing or they’re doing wrong, and this is how I’m gonna fix it.”
Sean Bandawat: Yeah, so when I acquired the company, Kurt, it was basically a bankrupt company, and the previous owners were injecting cash from their other businesses that were profitable to keep this business from sinking, but in reality it was a sinking ship on its own.
Kurt Elster: So, this thing’s a liability.
Sean Bandawat: Oh, totally. Just to give you an idea of how bad things were, sales at the time I took it over were just shy of $90,000 a year, which is nothing, and the company’s fixed costs were five times that.
Kurt Elster: Oh, boy.
Sean Bandawat: Yeah, so it was a really dire situation, and one of the things contributing to that dire situation was this massive, 30,000 square foot factory that the company was operating in Michigan City, Indiana, which is I think just not too far from you.
Kurt Elster: No, not at all.
Sean Bandawat: Yeah, and you know, it made sense in the 1920s and 1930s. Bromwell was a massive manufacturing company and one of the biggest of its kind in the country, and they were pumping out millions and millions of units, but at the sales volume the company had in 2010 it was just a major loss, and I had to stop the bleeding. And so, I went out there, I spent two months. Young kid, fresh out of school, zero manufacturing knowledge, and frankly zero work experience, and I had to lay off about a dozen or so people, and in some cases these are people that worked there their entire lives, you know? All they’ve ever known was Bromwell, so it was really tough.
Kurt Elster: How’d you deal with it?
Sean Bandawat: You know, as courageously as I could. I had to shut the facility down. I had to sort through and move out all the inventory, which was a mess. Some of it was finished. Some of it wasn’t. Tooling, machinery, and essentially, like I said, I had to stop the bleeding because that was really one of the biggest costs the company had.
Kurt Elster: Just hindsight being 20/20, this sounds like… When you look back at this, does it feel like that episode of the Simpsons where Bart buys a rundown factory for a dollar?
Sean Bandawat: Yeah. Totally. Yeah.
Kurt Elster: Where you weren’t… There’s no way you could have known what you were signing up for.
Sean Bandawat: No, there was no way. There was no way. I mean, when you’re writing a business plan and you’re in college, and everything is roses, you think it’s gonna be a lot easier than it really is. So-
Kurt Elster: What was the thing that surprised you?
Sean Bandawat: I think just how-
Kurt Elster: What’s that first reality check?
Sean Bandawat: I think when I got there and I realized just how bad of a situation that plant was in, it really hit me. I was like, “This is major.” So, but you know, Kurt, it had to be done, and once the factory wasn’t in operation anymore, I spent the next year farming out all that manufacturing that we were previously doing in-house to different third-party contract manufacturers, keeping it mostly in the Midwest, and that, again, in a business plan it makes a whole lot more sense, but in reality it's a lot harder than it seems because we’re dealing with old tools, old dies, old machines. In some cases, machines that predate the Civil War.
Kurt Elster: Whoa.
Sean Bandawat: I kid you not. Yeah. Pre-electricity, so it took a lot of time to find out who the right manufacturing partners are gonna be for us, and also, frankly, who’s really interested in doing the work, because it’s… You know, a lot of companies just looked at this and saw nothing but a headache, frankly.
Kurt Elster: What scared them about it? That it was like esoteric and weird? I mean, it’s 200-year-old manufacturing technology and product design. Certainly, modern day manufacturers can do it, but it sounds like they were giving you the cold shoulder, or like, “Here’s our go away price.”
Sean Bandawat: Pretty much. I got the go away price more so… I mean, I got ridiculous prices just to get me to go away. But I think what spooked them is just the quality of the tools, and the dies, and the machines. I mean, they were pretty bad. They were beat. And they were old. In a lot of cases, they didn’t even know how to replicate something like that today.
Kurt Elster: And so, what did you end up doing? You found somebody who was willing? Who was like, “Hey, this sounds like an interesting challenge. We could do this.”
Sean Bandawat: We did. Yeah, so we found partners. It took a long time, but we found some great partners. Two of them are in Indiana currently and they make the parts for us on a contract basis, and it’s going really well. It just took a long time to get there.
Kurt Elster: Where does this get us to on our timeline? You acquire it in 2010 and then shut down this, what sounds like an aging and dilapidated factory, find through no small effort new manufacturing partners to continue to build the existing products. Where are we now? What year is it?
Sean Bandawat: So, 2010, acquired it. 2011, I really got the keys to really start operating the new company, because remember it was an asset purchase agreement, and 2012, 2013, those years were really all about trying to get the company back on track, bringing it back to its roots, getting it healthy again, getting new manufacturing partners. 2014 was really the breakthrough year of the copper flask.
Kurt Elster: Okay, and so previously you’re selling the original products, these home goods. It’s like kitchen stuff. Did the business come with a website? Did they sell online? How were they-
Sean Bandawat: Yeah. You know, they were selling on a Yahoo! Store.
Kurt Elster: Oh. Oh, dear.
Sean Bandawat: I know.
Sound Board Clip: Eww!
Sean Bandawat: I know. Yeah, they were… I do commend them, though, because they were back… They were online in like 1994 or something on Yahoo, so sort of a pioneer in eCommerce, I guess you could say, but you know, Shopify at the time really hadn’t taken off, and I had heard of it, but we were on Magento for those first three or four years, which… don’t even get me started, was an absolute nightmare.
But we switched over to Shopify in 2016 and that was one of the best things we ever did.
Kurt Elster: And so, we started with… So, they were selling online, and is any… Did you have wholesale partners? Was any of this in retail?
Sean Bandawat: Yeah, so at the time, Bromwell really… They didn’t sell a meaningful amount of revenue on their eCommerce store. Most of the revenue came from wholesale accounts. Yeah.
Kurt Elster: And so, then you know enough to get it off Yahoo Stores and build a better website. And so, you go at the time to Magento, and that lasts a few years, and then we move to Shopify, and currently you’ve got this really cool custom theme. Did you start with that or was that a later build?
Sean Bandawat: We did. We started with that. Yep.
Kurt Elster: Okay. And when you do that custom theme, was there a rebrand project that went along with it?
Sean Bandawat: I mean, it was really built from the ground up, and we have just a fantastic team that works with us that really helped us make that happen. But yeah, it was a custom theme from the beginning.
Kurt Elster: So, tell me about your hero product, like the one thing that is outselling everything else.
Sean Bandawat: So, it’s the copper flask, and it’s a really interesting story, so I’m two years into the business, or about a year or so into the business, and one of Bromwell’s customer groups at the time was historical reenactors. These are guys that reenact the Civil War.
Kurt Elster: Okay.
Sean Bandawat: Yeah, they’re buying these tin cups from Bromwell every year, and so they’re buying like a couple hundred at a time, so I got them on the phone because I wanted to find out who they were, who they are, and why they’re buying, and so-
Kurt Elster: That is like the brilliant, easy insight that everybody overlooks, is if you have an interesting customer, ask them about themselves. And here you’ve got this really interesting customer, and so you called them up and asked. What happened?
Sean Bandawat: Super interesting. I didn’t even know people reenacted the Civil War. I had no idea. But so, I get them on the phone, they tell me all about it, and of course they love talking about it, and they give me the names of a few different coppersmiths and tinsmiths in the New England area that they buy other products from.
Kurt Elster: And if you’re a Civil War reenactor, for sure you are absolutely into authenticity.
Sean Bandawat: Correct. It’s all about authenticity and being historically correct, so I got in touch with those tinsmiths and coppersmiths. I got copies of their catalogs. And I was just blown away at how cool some of this stuff was. They were like period accurate, like blankets, and frying pans, and these little cutlery sets made out of wood, and all kinds of stuff. And just stuff you wouldn’t find in mainstream retail. And we thought it would be interesting to plug them into the Jacob Bromwell brand and see how they sell, so we did, and we began marketing them, photographing them-
Kurt Elster: How many do you start with?
Sean Bandawat: Just like a dozen or so at a time, just to kind of test demand and see how they did, and nothing was like a home run, but-
Kurt Elster: Like a dozen varieties or a dozen total units to see if they move? Because they’re expensive.
Sean Bandawat: They are. Yeah. Like a dozen varieties, and two to three units maybe at a time. And we figured, “Hey, worst case, they don’t sell. We’ll just keep them.” And like I said, they weren’t home runs, but we had some moderate success with some of those products, but then we came across a really cool item, and it was a copper water canteen. At least that’s what they called it. They called it a copper water canteen. I saw it as a copper flask immediately.
Kurt Elster: Okay, but it’s like a slightly different shape?
Sean Bandawat: It is the Model One flask that we sell today.
Kurt Elster: Oh.
Sean Bandawat: Yeah. Exactly the same product. So, I just… I fell in love with the unit. I just had an inkling that it was gonna sell really well, so we bought a dozen. I’ll never forget. We bought a dozen units to start. We brought them in, photographed them, marketed it as a copper flask, not as a water canteen, and we just couldn’t keep it in stock. And we kept ordering more, and more, and more, and eventually the coppersmiths just couldn’t keep up with how many units we needed, because these are just guys making these in their garage by hand, so just… There were limits to how many units they could move at a time for us.
Kurt Elster: One group of customers is ordering an overwhelming number of one unusual product. You say, “I gotta hear about this.” You call them up, discover the world of Civil War reenactors, which leads you to people who are making authentic what we would refer to as flasks today out of copper. You start selling those. It’s not amazing. It does well enough for you to keep going. And you just keep going through it until you stumble on one particular design that people go nuts for?
Sean Bandawat: Yeah, the Model One, which we called the Great American for many years. It just recently got renamed, but that product really kicked off the company. You know, like I said, we couldn’t keep it in stock, and we had reliability issues with lead times, and these coppersmiths just… It wasn’t working and eventually we just needed to find a new source, and so we did. We found a company in Vermont that specialized in making copper roofs, and we asked them to fabricate this for us, and so they did.
Kurt Elster: And so, they make two things. Copper roofs and your flasks?
Sean Bandawat: You know, it’s… Yeah, so I give them a call. I cold call these guys and I’m just like, “Hey, are you guys interested in making a durable copper product for us?” And they’re like, “Sure. We don’t do that but go ahead and send us a sample.” So, I sent them a sample. A week goes by. I get a package back and the sample’s inside of it, and I call them and I’m like, “Hey, why did you send this back?” And he said, “That’s not yours. That’s ours. That’s the one we made for you.”
Kurt Elster: That’s great.
Sean Bandawat: I couldn’t tell the difference. It was identical, Kurt. It was truly identical.
Kurt Elster: Yeah. You get a manufacturing sample like that, and so you’re like, “Okay, what’s my per-unit cost here?”
Sean Bandawat: Yep. So, we went all-in at that point. We did a 1,000 unit run. This was a big deal for us at the time because it was like $40 a unit, so that’s a $40,000 production run, and to raise the cash that we needed we liquidated a bunch of inventory from the old Bromwell housewares that we had in stock that just really wasn’t moving well, so we raised the cash, reinvested in the flask, and-
Kurt Elster: So, you had a clearance sale to get the money for the inventory?
Sean Bandawat: A combination of clearance sale and just like liquidation companies that just bought it for pennies on the dollar.
Kurt Elster: Oh, okay, so like really, really threw it out the door.
Sean Bandawat: Yep. And just went all-in, and I will tell you it was not… It was far from a perfect product, but you know what? We got it to market and like you say, it’s better to do something imperfectly than not to do it at all, you know?
Kurt Elster: All right, so we’ve got… At this point, we have not stumbled on a really killer product that is selling well, that is different, that you’re able to get manufactured in the U.S. for a reasonable cost, and it’s still so we’ve got great margins on this thing. How does anyone hear about it? So, the initial run’s a thousand of them. Okay, that’s not… Doesn’t sound like it would be that hard to sell through, but at the same time no one knows to shop for this kind of product yet. There is a danger in being the first of anything, because no one knows to look for it.
Sean Bandawat: Correct, correct, and so this is… So, we have these thousand flasks, and we are not even on Shopify at this point. We’re not a D2C brand at this point. We’re doing some eCommerce sales, but the majority of our revenue is still wholesale. You know, selling to catalog companies, selling to mom and pop retail, selling to other types of specialty stores, and so we contacted all of them with this exciting new product from Jacob Bromwell and we actually had a lot of success for the first few years selling that product in retail. Even companies like Nordstrom on the largest end, and then small mom and pop stores, and everything in between. We had hundreds and hundreds of accounts that carried the product.
Kurt Elster: Do you still sell it in retail via wholesale?
Sean Bandawat: We are now a strictly direct-to-consumer brand, and so we do not sell wholesale anymore.
Kurt Elster: Oh, so the balance has really changed here, because initially it’s like selling wholesale retail and yeah, you have an online presence, but that’s not the primary focus, to 100%, all-in on direct to consumer, selling online yourself.
Sean Bandawat: Correct.
Kurt Elster: Okay. And I assume once you find the one, you’ve got this one copper flask that works, now how does the catalog change?
Sean Bandawat: Great question. So, we started with the Model One, which we still sell today, and then we just went deeper in the category. So, the next product was the Vermonter flask, which is essentially that exact same flask, but with a screw top, which ended up outselling the Model One flask two to one and still does and is our best-selling SKU today. And then from there, we just added on more varieties. A hammered copper flask line and now even a pure flask line, and really just more line extensions of the same product that we found so much success in.
So, we went really deep in the category as opposed to going horizontal across different types of copper goods.
Kurt Elster: If you’re into artisan goods, handcrafted things, metalwork, or you just like to be a fiddly engineer type, armchair engineer, the copper cap on this thing is hefty, and it’s got a knurled ring on it that feels fabulous, and then it’s just like threading this thing onto the top of this flask is satisfying every single time I do it. I love this thing. And I don’t think it’s something I necessarily would have purchased for myself, but having gotten it I’m like, “Damn.”
As a gift, it’s just absolutely phenomenal. And so, I could see where if you’re the only thing going, the only one available, for a lot of people it’s like you’re seeing this category of item for the first time. You either get it or you don’t. But it’s also yeah, it’s a new thing, but it is not complex to understand at all. It’s like you understand that this holds potable water. It’s a flask. It makes sense immediately too. You don’t have to particularly explain it beyond perhaps justifying the price by being like, “It’s handmade in Vermont.”
So, we’ve got that. We expand out our catalog there. And during this time, you’re still selling the kitchenware? Because you cleared out of the stuff.
Sean Bandawat: Correct. Yeah, so we cleared out of the slower moving items in the kitchenware line, but we kept the top dozen or so SKUs that are just like nostalgic classics for us, like the flour sifters, and the cheese graters, and popcorn poppers.
Kurt Elster: Nostalgic classic. That’s what’s so brilliant about it, like we worked with Rada Kitchen store, who sells a lot of kitchen knives, and they would say like, “We’ve got this one product that everybody really loves. It’s our paring knife.” And they always framed it as this is the knife your grandma used. This is the knife you remember from your childhood, your grandma cutting up a pear. There is tremendous value placed on nostalgia because it triggers emotions.
We all know why we love nostalgia. It reminds us of the past in a positive way. And so, if you have products that can connect people to that past, and the product is authentic, immediately you benefit from that emotional connection. And without it being sleazy in the slightest.
Sean Bandawat: Well said. And that’s really what we’re selling. We’re selling American nostalgia and products that are of cultural significance. That’s really what the brand is all about, whether it’s a flask, or a popcorn popper, or whatever.
Kurt Elster: And this is all because you spoke to those oddballs, the Civil War reenactors. Have you attended… Now that this business has taken off like this, have you attended a Civil War reenactment? I have never, but you know, it’d be cool to see.
Sean Bandawat: Yeah. I’m somewhat ashamed to say I haven’t, but I would love to. I mean, what a cool thing to do. I had no idea that even existed.
Kurt Elster: How many flasks do you sell now?
Sean Bandawat: On an annual basis?
Kurt Elster: I meant how many SKUs do you have.
Sean Bandawat: Oh, how many SKUs. We have about 30 or 35 SKUs of different flasks.
Kurt Elster: So, quite the variety.
Sean Bandawat: Quite the variety. We went really deep in the category and those flasks comprise about 70% of our total annual revenue.
Kurt Elster: And then-
Sean Bandawat: Just to give you an idea of how much it overcame just the bakeware line.
Kurt Elster: And then we’ve got our Iconic Kitchenware set. And then the other thing you sell, I don’t know how well these… There’s accessories for the flasks. You got flask sleeves and the presentation boxes. Oh my gosh. I am giving two people these flasks as gifts. All right, so we’ll rephrase that because of when this will air. Last Christmas I gave two family members these flasks as gifts in these glorious wooden presentation boxes. When do the accessory items get added into this catalog?
Sean Bandawat: So, the accessory items got added I want to say just a few years ago. It’s been a relatively recent add-on for us. And they’re great because they’re a profit center for us. The margins are great. But you know, customers really love the boxes and the sleeves. They’re doing really well. Especially the leather. The leather sleeves particularly.
Kurt Elster: And so, these are just obvious perfect cross-sell items, like, “Hey, you’re spending $100 to $300 on a flask. Did you also want this? A funnel is like 70 bucks. It’s 50 bucks, 70 bucks, 100 bucks. The presentation boxes are 75 bucks. They’re really, really nice. The presentation box, you can’t throw out. It’s too nice. How do you merchandise those?
Sean Bandawat: So, we used to bundle. For a short while, we were bundling some of the products, like we were bundling the sleeves with the flask, or I should say the product boxes with the flask, but now we’re merchandising them all separately, so the flask doesn’t come with a box, doesn’t come up with a funnel. It’s just the flask. And then if you want to add any of those accessories, you’re certainly able to do that as an upsell or individually.
Kurt Elster: Yeah. I just tried it. So, I go to the product page. First thing I see, you have a 360 view of the product, which I think is brilliant, especially for a premium luxury good, but specifically copper. It’s shiny. And so, if you have a shiny, expensive product, that 360 view just lets it be like, “Bling, bling, bling.” The light reflecting off it, you get those specular highlights. It’s fabulous. It makes it very attractive. Similar with food items, this is a worthwhile thing to do.
And the moment I added that item to cart I got a popup. Hey, add an autograph funnel to your order. The perfect companion to any of our flasks. Because if you’ve ever tried to fill a flask-
Sean Bandawat: Bold Upsell.
Kurt Elster: Good luck not getting it everywhere. You need that funnel.
Sean Bandawat: Yep. You need the funnel.
Kurt Elster: And let’s see. All right. I add it to the funnel. I noticed we got a drawer cart, and it says, “Hey, free shipping included.” Very nice. And at the bottom you’ve got the GOVX app running. I like the GOVX app. Military, first responder, government employee, teacher discount available. Yeah. Easy way to reward people and get them loyal to the brand. And then once I get to the checkout, it’s looking good. Regular old Shopify checkout.
All right, let’s see. Looking through this, I see… It sounds like you have some incredible PR, like it says on the homepage, “Handcrafted with pride. 203 years old. Lifetime guarantee. Remarkably distinguished by the world’s best.” And then it rattles off all these great brands, like we’ve got all this story going about heritage, and we’ve got the social proof, and the risk reversal of the lifetime guarantee, and it doesn’t stop. I get to the product page, I got this cool 360 view, and the description opens with it’s got like a tab title. It says, “The story.” So, you’re gonna sell me. The description is a story. It all began in 1819, the world’s first flask that started it all. Oh, man. You really are taking ownership stake of creating this product category.
The second line is, “Named “the best copper flask” by Business Insider.” How do you get all this PR? Okay. A, amazing job. Kudos to you for leveraging it the way you have. But how did you get it?
Sean Bandawat: The PR came to us. Honestly, we did not solicit any of the PR that we received, and I think the answer just boils down to us having a remarkable brand and a remarkable story to tell. I mean, how many companies can say they’ve been in business for over 200 years, that they’re the oldest housewares company in America, and they make all these original, unique, classic products? It’s just journalists are looking for stories and it just… It’s a no brainer for them.
Kurt Elster: So, having a very clear angle and story, just in the same way that your copywriting hooks potential buyers, the same thing works on journalists?
Sean Bandawat: Apparently. Yeah.
Kurt Elster: So, you really didn’t do anything? They just kept showing up?
Sean Bandawat: I mean, honestly, this was years and years and years of coverage. But yeah, they came to us almost exclusively. Yeah. It’s been really helpful. I mean, some of those pieces that published really added some meaningful revenue spikes for us and really helped us out.
Kurt Elster: Is it the same today? Like years ago, getting featured meant… If it was the right fit, it could mean serious revenue bump. Is that still the same case today if you get a feature?
Sean Bandawat: It seems to be less so today.
Kurt Elster: Okay. And that’s what I figured.
Sean Bandawat: Yeah. And we’re getting featured less today, and I think part of that is just because we’ve been featured already and it’s just… It’s kind of an old story now. But yeah, to answer your question, yeah. I think it is a little less today.
Kurt Elster: So, in the before times, prior to 2020, you were selling to retail. Now you’re just all-in direct to consumer yourself. When did that happen? Why do you pivot?
Sean Bandawat: The pandemic.
Kurt Elster: That damn pandemic.
Sean Bandawat: The pandemic happened. Yep. So, prior to the pandemic we had several big POs with several big retailers that got canceled immediately, and so we were stuck with all this inventory, and we were kind of freaking out what to do, and so we got creative and started doing some big promotions on our website, and obviously at the time Facebook was killing it, and we were doing some Facebook ads, and that just whole situation opened up a whole new door for us, and we realized at the time that we just didn’t need to do wholesale distribution anymore. We could be a D2C brand and we could do very well doing it.
And so, as a result of the pandemic, we became a direct-to-consumer company exclusively.
Kurt Elster: So, you had the knowledge, you had the confidence, and then when these retailers just canceled the POs and took off, you’re like, “Look, we didn’t need you anyway. See ya.”
Sean Bandawat: Yeah. I mean, that’s really what happened, and it was a blessing in disguise really for us.
Kurt Elster: Yeah. Their loss.
Sound Board Clip: Jedi scum.
Kurt Elster: So, the one problem with that is how do you market this stuff, right? Because the pandemic starts, direct to consumer eCom booms, but then iOS 14.5 drops and suddenly Facebook ads get really hard to run, and so the free for all on traffic was over for us for the next 12, 18 months. How’d you acquire customers? What’s the channel here that works? Where should I be trying to figure this out?
Sean Bandawat: Well, I will say we do everything under the sun. We do affiliate marketing. We do paid ads. We do social media, email, SMS. But we found the most success with Google Ads.
Kurt Elster: Interesting.
Sean Bandawat: Yeah, and for anyone listening that really wants to know where to start, I would say start with Google Ads because that’s really where I think you’re gonna get the most bang for your buck today.
Kurt Elster: And is this like Google shopping, like product listing ads? Or like ads-ads, like the text ads, the image ads?
Sean Bandawat: Both, but Google Ads. Actual ads. Yeah.
Kurt Elster: Oh, okay. You know, I guess I haven’t messed with it too much recently, though we had heard Performance Max, PMax, that those campaigns really were working very well. Have you messed with PMax?
Sean Bandawat: Yes, and we’ve found a lot of success with PMax.
Kurt Elster: Excellent.
Sean Bandawat: But it does take time for Google to learn about your product, learn about your customer, and have enough data to really start to optimize those ads. But it is a very successful channel if you do it correctly.
Kurt Elster: And then, so you’ve got that, and then plus we combine that with like here’s a whole series of other channels, and then the whole thing combined, like A, that diversifies risk, but also there’s synergies between those things there, and eventually you end up with the thing we all want, which is that marketing flywheel, where like it’s got the momentum, and one feeds the other, and it just keeps going.
Sean Bandawat: Correct.
Kurt Elster: Sweet. So, this journey, you’ve been doing this 13 years now, and the brand has been around 203. If you had to do it over again, what would you have done differently?
Sean Bandawat: Oh my gosh. I mean, Kurt, I’ve made every mistake in the book. I think I would do a lot of things differently if I’m being honest. But-
Kurt Elster: All right. Knowing what was coming, would you do it again?
Sean Bandawat: Absolutely. That’s unequivocal. One of the things that just keeps me going and motivates me to keep doing what I’m doing, Kurt, is just seeing the impact that these products have on people’s lives. Truly, our flasks are a part of people’s everyday carry. They carry their Cuban cigar, their Zippo lighter, their Rolex Submariner, and their Jacob Bromwell flask. It is part of who they are and what they do on a daily basis and it’s really cool to see that.
Kurt Elster: Those people sound way cooler than me.
Sean Bandawat: Yeah. They’re pretty cool people.
Kurt Elster: I’m like, “Oh, man. I keep mine in the garage with water in it.” Because you also… I saw on your website you have scotch now.
Sean Bandawat: Yeah. We are wanting to release our first scotch next year, so that’s pretty exciting.
Kurt Elster: You know, the branding, I can immediately… I didn’t question it in the slightest. The Jacob Bromwell branding feels like a brown liquor branding, like it should be bourbon.
Sean Bandawat: It does. Yeah.
Kurt Elster: Doesn’t it? And that’s just aside from selling flasks. Then you combine that with the flasks and it’s like, “Okay, clearly there is some synergy here.” I don’t know. Maybe there’s a… Are there some brand collabs in the future? I could see some potential cool brand collabs here.
Sean Bandawat: Yeah, so we’ve done a few. We’ve had some success with Filson, and Uncrate we’ve done a collab with.
Kurt Elster: Uncrate. Yeah.
Sean Bandawat: Yeah, and so we’re keeping the doors on that, but really our main focus is just to continue kicking ass, doing D2C, and hopefully next year releasing our first scotch whiskey.
Kurt Elster: Well, I certainly am gonna stay on your newsletter, and when that releases I’m all in. If people wanted to go learn more about you, where should they go?
Sean Bandawat: JacobBromwell.com, and we have a free gift for your listeners, Kurt. Just add discount code KURT, K-U-R-T at checkout, and you’ll get a complimentary standard funnel valued at $125.
Kurt Elster: Oh my gosh. Do they have to add that item to cart?
Sean Bandawat: Just add the discount code, KURT, K-U-R-T.
Kurt Elster: Okay. Cool.
Sean Bandawat: Yep.
Kurt Elster: Very cool. Yeah. It’s an oddball thing, for sure, but it’s really cool. If it resonates with you and you’re thinking about it, you’ll love it. Or if you know the right person, really, phenomenal gift item. Sean, thank you so much. This has been a thrill for me. I’ve been staring at that flask in my garage since the summer and enjoying it, so really very exciting to hear the story behind it. Yeah. JacobBromwell.ccom, Sean Bandawat, thank you so much. I appreciate it.
Sean Bandawat: Thanks, Kurt.