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/r/vancouver shop local holiday guide
Hello /Vancouver, With the upcoming Holiday season, I know a lot of friends/families have commented they’re going to shop local to help support the economy. In the Question Thread I often exaggerate my life/thoughts for comedic effect, a great example is the Amazon Prime question. The truth is, my partner and I are a huge fan of eating and supporting local business, and I know the moderation team are to. Spam/Self-Promotion is a hot topic on Reddit, and I’ve always been open for /Vancouver Artists/Businesses to self-promote on the subreddit, but it’s often met with criticism. In what I hope would be a nice middle ground, I want to sticky this /Vancouver Buyer’s Guide for local shopping. Below you’ll find a list of businesses/artists/crafters. To get your business/etsy or whatever mentioned on the thread do the following:
Represent the Business in some fashion (Owner or Employee) (Be comfortable linking your username to the business, otherwise see the option below)
Comment/Message Me with the Business Name & Website
Only Businesses I’ve verified that asked/know they'll be on the list will be added.
If you don’t represent the business but want to give them a Vancouver shoutout, feel free to comment but I won’t be adding them to the list below. Categories were alphabetical, but as I start to add more businesses I'm grouping categories together. Shop Local List: FRIENDS OF /VANCOUVER SITE WIDE DISCOUNTS
The Vert Jewellery: Thé Vert Jewellery: Modern Handmade Japanese Jewellery. Boxing week 20 - 60% off. "REDDIT2020" for free shipping.
BLACK SØLV: Metal jewelry with a fantasy sci-fi aesthetic. Use "REDDIT20" for 20% off at checkout.
Ninth Line Candles: 100% soy wax, clean burning, all the good stuff. Free delivery from West Van to Chilliwack. Use "REDDIT20" for 20% off.
Bursera: Sustainable aromatherapy, tree planted with every order. Enter "REDDIT15" at checkout to save 15% on your order.
DoodlingHobbit Art: Holiday cards, watercolor paintings, and postcards. Use "REDDIT" for 15% off.
Hemlock & Oak: 2021 planners made in Canada. Apply discount code "Reddit15" for 15% off.
Jetko Crystals: Crystals & crystal accessories for wellness or decorative purposes. Use "REDDIT15" for 15% off.
Judes & Co.: Handcrafted scented coconut soy candles made with crackling wooden wicks. Use code "REDDIT15" for 15% of
Nth Degree Underwear: Men's underwear and loungewear. Use code "REDDIT15" for 15% off.
Tenth and Alder: Loungewear using natural fibers, textures and hand-dyeing techniques with a zero waste initiative. “REDDIT15” for 15% off.
Urban Axe Throwing: Vancouver's premium axe throwing venue. Enter "Reddit15" for 15% off!
Beautywithsandyc: Bulgarian rose oil and rose water skincare products 🌹 code “REDDIT10” for 10% off at checkout.
R Denim: Find the perfect pair of jeans with R Denim. Use "REDDIT10" for 10% off & Free Shipping in Canada.
De Travail: Ceramics and linens naturally dyed with clay. Use "Reddit10" at checkout to receive 10% off.
Foe & Dear: Jewelry and accessories locally with ethically sourced gemstones and recycled metals. Use "REDDIT10" at checkout for 10% off.
For the Seconds: 14k gold filled and sterling silver jewelry. Use "REDDIT10" for 10% off purchase.
Man-Cave Gifts & Collectibles: Collectible Decor for your walls from LED Signs to Kit Cat Clocks. "REDDIT10" for 10% off at checkout.
West End Wicks: Soy wax candles. $1 of each candle is donated to Wildlife Rescue Association of BC. Use "REDDIT10" at checkout for 10% off.
SPECIAL DEALS
Juliet925: Hand forged sterling silver jewelry. Use "REDDIT10$" for 10 dollars off your first regularly priced order.
TL;DR: Carry your axe on your back, not in your hands. Lugging an instrument around is worth it if you make it worth it. Don’t let your music gear out of sight, it’ll disappear. You can street perform in ways that aren’t music. Leave expensive/nice/sentimental instruments with someone you trust and travel with a cheap, durable instrument. Likelihood of damage or theft is high. For almost all of the tens of thousands of miles I've traveled in the US and Mexico, I've carried some kind of instrument. Walking, riding, hitching, trainhopping, flying, or sailing, I've rarely ever been out of arm's reach of something I can play. I was recently asked by u/hundr3d___ about the logistics of actually physically carrying around my saxophone. This topic comes up kind of regularly, so I'm broaching it again here for everyone to discuss. For context, I started traveling at age 20, after dropping out of music school at a state university. I had almost ten years of practice and training on stage, and had relatively little experience surviving on my own, traveling, living outside, or making money without a job. With this combination of tones of musical skill frontloaded against relatively little survival skill or travel experience, I came up with an idea of how I could get by. My idea was that I could make up for lack of badassery simply by being good at music. Luckily, I was sort of half right about that particular notion. I was very wrong about lots of other notions. Playing music opened some doors and put some money in my pocket as I traveled, but I definitely suffered unnecessarily until I’d been out there for a while. My initial lack of instincts, sense of direction, and baseline knowledge about how to travel and survive, could not be fully compensated for by my ability as a performer. So as the story goes, I dropped out in the fall, went back home to Walla Walla, Washington in the winter, tied up my loose ends (sort of), gathered my gear, and departed on January 1st. I left my warm, drug-addicted, terminally-ill, dysfunctional family home for cold, clean, uncertain freedom. I left my smartphone and my car, and my Playstation and the girl I was seeing, walked to the nearest highway onramp with my boots, my backpack, and my saxophone, and stuck out my thumb. It was snowing. At this point, I was already carrying WAY too much gear and clothing. The weight of the instrument was hard to differentiate from the near crippling weight of books, a chintzy cooking stove, a shovel, a hatchet, a crowbar, a folding chair, a tent, over-ear studio monitor headphones, extra pants and coats that I would never wear, etc… I did manage to get a couple rides, and even a place to stay on a moored sailboat that first night, but every yard I had to walk in-between kind strangers was load-bearing agony. Making my way east to Portland, then south through Oregon to San Francisco, I slowly shed the aforementioned unnecessary bullshit. At one point in California, I actually bought a big-ass plastic tote from an office supply store and buried a bunch of clothes and gear on the cliffs above the beach. That was like the one and only practical use for that freaking shovel. It took a little while for the saxophone to really earn its own salt. Two weeks in, by the time I was strolling through Santa Cruz, I had kind of figured out what I really needed, and had started to get the hang of this whole hitchhiking thing. The last item I held that didn’t seem to have a daily use was my saxophone. I’d played it a few times for myself, sort of tried to entertain the sailboat people that first night, but hadn’t put much serious effort toward making money or friends with my music. I really considered finding a way to mail the damn thing home. Some kind of inner wisdom got the better of me (maybe it was just pride) and I held on to the horn until I landed in the Southern California college party town of Isla Vista, near Santa Barbara on the coast. I had been moving relatively fast up until this point. The 7 hour drive from Santa Cruz had been completed in one jump: a pair of rocker dudes in their van. These guys were from LA, had long hair, wore leather jackets and black denim jeans. Their van called “The Butt” had curtains and stickers and stories. I picked these dudes’ brains from the back seat the whole way down, and told them my plan to make it to Hollywood and get famous playing saxophone. They sized me up pretty quickly as being a dumb kid, said that being homeless in Downtown LA would likely fuck me up or kill me, and insisted on dropping me an hour north in Isla Vista instead. As a joke, my angel saviors in black bought me a lotto ticket and a 24-rack of beer, seeing as I wasn’t old enough to buy booze myself yet. They dropped me off a couple hours after sunset and sent me on my way into the night. I had no idea that I was walking into one of the most highly-concentrated, densely-populated party zones in the world. Isla Vista is one square mile that is home to 40,000 people. The vast majority of these people are students at the University of California at Santa Barbara: easily ranked Top 5 among West Coast party schools. The beer was enough to get me into a backyard party at a fraternity. The fresh traveler grit and the saxophone were enough to make every single person there take an interest in me. Here emerged the other useful skill I gleaned from my own time in college: the ability to quickly drink alcohol. About an hour after I arrived and set down my pack, I was dancing shirtless on the beer pong table next to the speakers, ripping a sloppy saxophone solo over a Drake song. I made a bunch of friends who I never saw again, and blurrily sauntered to an apartment with a guy named Kevin who was apparently the president of the frat. Gleaming morning sun punched me in the face, streaming in parallel lines through the open blinds. The couch was wet with something that I feared was piss, but upon further inspection smelled a lot like bong water. I stumbled through the refuse of beer cans and discarded clothing in the dim, unfamiliar place, and drank straight from the faucet in the little kitchen. The water was tepid and tasted minerally and bad. It turns out that the municipal tap water in SoCal isn’t quite as crystal clear as the spring-fed system in my mountainous little Northern hometown. Taking stock of my surroundings, grabbing onto the counter to fight the aggressive spinning in my head, I started to piece together the night. There was my backpack, okay good. There was my saxophone case, shit it’s empty, where is my actual horn? There is my journal, did I lose my pen? Where is my hat? Oh man, okay there’s my sax, it’s under the couch. Got lucky this time, got to put it away next time before I pass out. Jesus do they have any Tylenol? I managed to collect myself and my gear, more-or-less, and scribbled a note of thanks to Kevin. The cheap wooden front door creaked open and I emerged into the late-morning sun. The light blasted my bleary eyeballs, and I immediately tripped as I trod barefoot on the concrete balcony walkway of the four-story apartment building. After a couple hours of wandering around this weirdly idyllic beach town, cursing the Pabst Brewing Company, I found a bench, sat down, and wrote most of this story you’re reading in my journal. As I traveled on, exploring Baja California and Western Mexico, then traveling to Northern California to trim weed, my go-to move became “appearing randomly in a new place, unexpectedly playing saxophone, and see what happens. Occasionally people would think I was crazy, ignore me awkwardly, or get mad and tell me to leave. The majority of the time, however, this bold ridiculousness got a pretty positive reaction. Many, many rides came from people who approached me while I was playing on the street or at a party. The fact that I was down to jump in and play with anyone would often get me invited to social events that I had no business attending. I very quickly learned how to apply my ear training and jazz improvisation skills to allow me to pick up and play songs I didn’t know with musicians I’d never met. Busking became my main source of income. At least half of my food came from dumpster diving, the only things I drank were water or free beer, and I had very very little in the way of bills to pay. I’d occasionally buy reeds for my saxophone, keep stocked on a few essential, non-perishable food staples, make sure I had small, important pieces of gear like lighters, dental floss and sewing needles, batteries for my headlamp, paint pens/spray, etc. I really kept myself vigilant about spending any money, seeing it more like a tool than a resource. Most things I needed I could get for free if I looked long enough. For things like greyhound bus tickets or gas money for craigslist rides it made sense to save up a little cash in order to keep moving. I would sometimes do really well busking in a particular area and stay there for two or three days to keep working it, but generally I traveled alone and kept moving. I usually had enough cash in my pocket to get what I needed, and at that point in my life, that was plenty to satisfy me. The term “busking”, and a lot of what I share about it also applies to other types of performance besides music. If you want to lug a typewriter around and sling poetry on the street, do it. If you want to bring art supplies with you and sell your art, have at it. If you randomly just happen to be a killer juggler, or magician, or Tarot card reader or you can do cool tricks with a soccer ball or hula hoop, or literally whatever the fuck else, follow your passion, and do it at people for money. It’s called Busking. Actually, you don’t even have to be that good at what you’re doing; relying on a talent to survive is a really fast way to grow that talent. I wrote about busking in detail already, right here As mentioned, art, craft and just general trading definitely have their places in the nomad economy. Everyone has a hustle. I’ve learned a ton about herbalism and natural remedies/foods from wise travelers who forage and process these items for a living. Knitting, embroidery, natural fabric dying, whittling, metal smithing, jewelry making, voodoo practitioning, and tattooing are all pastimes that I’ve seen travelers make into professions. Special mention here for the “Gem n Jam” kids who literally carry around suitcases full of rocks to turn into wire wrapped jewelry, and sell Many, many travelers have at least some type of drug that they trade. Like music, all of these trades can make you money, but take time and skill, and require you to carry more shit around There’s also a lot to be said for the value in lugging around a laptop. Similar to a musical instrument, tech is expensive, kind of heavy, highly-theftable, and generally delicate and breakable. More and more people are building their lives and incomes around working online, however, and if you figure out a way to do that while traveling, more power to you.
The Logistics
Any item that you carry while traveling must be worth it’s weight. My philosophy is, when I’m going primarily on foot, anything I carry around must be useful and make an impact on my life on at least a daily basis. The heavier and bulkier an item is, the greater impact it must have on my experience to be worth it. My Yamaha Series 62 Alto Saxophone, in it’s pine wood case, weighed 17 pounds. Anyone who’s done so much as a day hike knows that that’s a lot. That’s heavier than two gallons of water. That’s a 24-rack of beer. This wasn’t a student model beginner horn, it was a professional-level instrument with soft metal, finely tuned mechanisms, over a hundred moving parts, tiny springs, sensitive leather pads that have to make airtight seals. Heavy, delicate, vulnerable to changes in temperature and weather… the saxophone is far from the ideal instrument for a traveler, sleeping outside and running to catch moving trains. There was one advantage to this particular choice, however; it was unique. The VAST majority of traveling kid musicians carry an acoustic guitar, a banjo, a ukulele, or a harmonica. I’ve had five (?) six-string sidekicks so far on the road, with varying levels of quality and damage. Guitars are great. They’re cheap, they’re simple, you can often fix them yourself. Everyone recognizes a guitar, just about anyone can play one, and acoustic ones don’t need electricity. Where they suffer, however, is from their own popularity. If you’re playing and singing a six string in any popular tourist destination in the Western Hemisphere, someone else has already done it there. The very stereotype of a street musician usually includes some kid playing Wagon Wheel or House Of The Rising Sun or a Bruno Marz song on a guitar. Busking requires you to stand out. If you’re doing the same thing that everyone else does (and often there will literally be other people up the street playing a guitar) you have to be exceptionally talented to stand apart from the rest. I don’t care how good you are, some people will immediately discount you for playing guitar, because they’ve seen a hundred other people in that same spot playing that same instrument before you. Now, sit down with a really well played accordion, or a sitar, or a monkey playing a tiny organ, and you’re going to offer something novel and compelling. This element alone made carrying that persnickety hunk of metal worth it. Thanks to a foundation in Aural Skills and Ear Training, combined with years of practice in the street, I As far as actually taking care of my instruments, I’ll admit my track record isn’t great. That high-end, $5000+ Yamaha I mentioned earlier? The one I’d played all the way through college? I left it in a friend’s car in downtown San Francisco. She parked and we went on some hectic mission, and we came back later to shattered glass all over the pavement. No mo saxobro. I had another horn stolen in New Orleans, out of a stash spot that I wrongly assumed was undiscovered. What about a smaller Soprano saxophone? Got stepped on at an outdoor mountain rave. I eventually learned a super important lesson: a cheap instrument that is diligently cared for will serve you far better than an expensive instrument that is neglected and abused. Maintaining your instrument is part of playing your instrument. Caring for an instrument takes time and energy. While traveling, a well-maintained, cheap, beginner-level instrument is a way better idea than an expensive, delicate, high-quality instrument. Take the time to learn a little bit about how to do basic repairs. For most people that means learn to change the strings on your guitar. You will pop strings, it’s inevitable. For horn players, that means swabbing out your horn every time after you’re done playing. It also means not playing right after eating/drinking sugary drinks (including booze.) If you rely on digital tech to make your sound, stock extra batteries, do the updates and software maintenance that you should, and have a backup plan for when you experience technical failure in front of an audience. As with any other aspect of traveling, developing and holding to routines will allow you to keep doing your thing for miles and miles.
Lugging the damn thing
My number one recommendation for carrying a musical anything is to find a way to carry it without using your hands. What I mean is find some way to attach your gear to yourself. It might not make sense that you need your hands free just to walk around, but trust me when I say that you do. Try getting on the subway with a banjo in one hand. Try bushwhacking through the woods while holding a snare drum. Try looking tough, ready to draw a weapon in a sketchy situation, when you’re fumbling around with your ukulele. Needless to say, hopping a train requires two hands free. As far as how exactly to attach your precious music maker to yourself is going to be something you’ll have to figure out yourself. I can give you a few tips from my own experience. As a general rule, if your instrument is small enough, it’s a good idea to put it in or strap it onto your backpack. If you have a good hiking or military pack, the suspension system there is designed to carry and distribute weight well. Rather than messing with an additional strap for your instrument, it might be best to let your backpack carry the weight. Guitars and similarly shaped instruments are kind of awkward to carry around, until you figure out how best to do it. I wrote about it here, check it out! Everyone has a method. I’m curious to hear what the community has to offer on this one. I’ll leave you with one great memory of a traveler who stands way out to me. It was in Santa Maria, CA and I had been hanging around downtown for a couple days, waiting to play a gig at a brewery with a friend who lived there in town. I had tried playing the mall, the cute breakfast spot, the parking structure, the coffee shop by the park, and after only marginal success, I dumpster dove a couple books and sat down on a park bench to read. After a few minutes, there came a strange sound floating down the street. Through the din of traffic and Thursday afternoon pedestrans, it was hard to tell what I was hearing, but something compelled me enough to get up, haul my gear onto my back, and walk up the block to investigate. The sound materialized into chords, electronically produced, played with chunky voicings, with the root always on the bottom. Someone was pounding out triads and wailing incoherently. The someone in question came into view around a corner. The heavily tattooed traveler before me was sitting cross legged with a full 77-key electronic keyboard on his lap, seemingly improvising music and lyrics. He had an old US Army Issue camouflage coat, and the white plastic of his early-2000’s keyboard was completely scrawled over with what looked like ancient Nordic runes in red Sharpie. I sat and played saxophone with this wild new friend. A local homebum came and shared some weed with us. It was weird and beautiful. I think we made like $2. After we were done this guy says “I’m headin’ to Reno, brother!.” And walks off with this 4-foot long white plastic rectangle powered by like 8 D batteries hanging around his neck by a shoestring. I never saw him again. Travel well, friends. Peaceably, -Tall Sam Jones
WARNING: EXTREMELY LONG POST AHEAD. I DON'T MIND IF YOU JUST SKIM IT AND SAY WHATEVER YOU'RE THINKING. YOU DON'T HAVE TO READ IT ALL. IF YOU DO, LOL. I SERIOUSLY APPRECIATE THAT. CAUSE I WOULD NOT READ A POST OF THIS LENGTH 😂😂😂😂😂 Heya! I’ve had instances where I was close to just declaring myself typeless because of how difficult it is for me to reach a conclusion and stick by it. I’ve been typed as virtually everything, aside from a few types but I bet even those have been speculated LOL! I don’t remember it well. Now I have all of this stuff to answer and it looks like so much work I’m not sure I’ll ever finish. I actually started this post I’m not sure how many days or weeks ago and forgot about it so here I am creating an introduction and opting to continue. ​ I’m not entirely sure how it’ll turn out, but we’ll see! If you could give me any ideas about my type, it would be appreciated, and tell me why you think so here we go.Also, I just like hearing new thoughts and opinions + I'm pretty bored right now so I'm hopping onto the wagon, since I've never had one of these gigantic reddit typings.Just trying it out. Also if you do actually take the time to read this and come up with a type/types, I'd like to know why you think so! I'm 21 years old, currently in my juniosenior (forgot how many credits I actually have) year of college. I'm a communications major with a minor in creative writing. Why did I choose communications? I dunno! It's ambiguous and I like that. I like how it doesn't incorporate just one area of study, like strictly mathematics, biology, mechanics, stuff like that, but instead, it's inclusive of many fields like journalism, radio/television, learning about human behavior and trying to understand it on a deeper level (yes, I had a class like that which was pretty rad. ​ If only I'd paid more attention), etc. It's on the broader side of the spectrum when it comes to potential jobs I could pick up after graduation. It's the next best thing aside from interdisciplinary studies which basically lets you dip your toes in all kinds of pools while still obtaining a degree, like trying a free sample from every booth. I almost did interdisciplinary studies, but then I changed my mind again and again. Admittedly, I do enjoy my minor more than my major. Creative writing is SO MUCH FUN. Dude, it's like the only thing I've somewhat consistently been doing since I was young. I've been writing stories since I was like 5 or 6, probably since I learned how to type on a computer. My favorite thing about creative writing is that it's not some technical writing, there's no script or boring topic you have to follow. ​ it's a blank canvas where you can create absolutely whatever you want. That's the beauty of it. I can sit there and write about greasy airplane bunnies having kids that resemble octagonal lettuce hairs competing in a race to win a bajillion panda trumpets shaped like Madagascar and I just can. I'm a huge daydreamer and constantly in my mind. I love making up new scenarios and just wondering about alternate realities or ways of seeing the world/conjuring up new worlds. I think writing is an incredible outlet for that. ​ Another thing I enjoy about writing is that you're not only limited to publishing books or being an English or something. PSA: I don't even want to be a teacher LOL. But you can adapt your writing into movies, YouTube videos, plots for games, ideas for websites, apps, etc. There are so many kinds of creative writing, like scriptwriting, poetry, general fiction, sci-fi, or just pure gibberish that appears in your mind. So, for a career, I'm not exactly sure what I want to do. I fear being trapped in a boring career or just being stuck doing something I don't find enjoyment in. Okay, come and lecture me. Tell me I need to be more realistic and can't chase things for the sake of enjoyment. I've been told these things by many people. But you know what? I don't think there's a reason to say people shouldn't chase their dreams, no matter how big. In fact, I encourage people to dream as big as they can. That dream bubble can keep expanding and expanding, and right when you expect it to pop, it can transform into its own bubble utopia, kinda like those SpongeBob episodes. It doesn't matter how old you are or what you have your heart set on, even if it's "too big" for other people. What's the fun in having a desk job you sit at for 8 hours a day? Why not pursue what you're truly passionate about? I think working with my writing and making sure I find something flexible with it would be pretty ideal. Travel blogging sounds neato too. So does graphic design, just having some sort of creative/flexible career based around writing and design. I don't have an exact name for it but for now... Let's just say that. My upbringing. That's something. So, I grew up with an extremely strict family. My friends would always tell me about how I'm missing out because of my rule-adhering stickler parents. They refuse to buy any different foods or basically anything they're not used to. Huge health nuts. Never travel, never changed houses. My mom actually always gets angry with me because I have a habit of staying up late, usually until 6-10 am. Somewhere there. I don't mind that time changing or varying. Staying up late is a habit cause there’s so much to do online and I have trouble shutting off my mind cause it always wants be on and spin around. I feel like I’m going so fast and find it difficult to focus on one thing or do things like meditation. Not even a second. My family didn’t seem to get it and tried forcing me into routines I quickly break. I can feel extremely tired and pull more all nighters. Plus, we're all quarantined and I recently finished spring semester, I don't have anywhere to be so I don't see a point in following a routine or schedule. Pretty rebellious toward my parents' rules. One thing they go absolutely crazy over is me staying up all night and eating at random times, like breakfast at 4pm. I would always want to do my own thing and deviate from it. I always felt this need to escape. ​ I wanted to do something differently but considering I don’t have money or resources, pretty much stuck with them. They're pretty inflexible and difficult to negotiate with. I keep my hopes up that one day things will change and I'll be able to have more fun, sorta distancing myself from the boring situation at hand. ​ But really. Their rules and regulations are too much, in my opinion. They seem to be very judgmental of people who are "different" which bothered me too. I don't like seeing people ostracized because they express themselves in a way that makes them feel happy. So I'd feel kinda weird when my parents would start talking badly about certain people, even if I didn't know them. An entire weekend by myself? Well, I do that most weekends LOL! Even before we were all trapped at home, I spent a lot of time on my own. My thing with friends... It's been interesting, fo sure. I've never had nearly as many friends IRL as I do online. I'm all about online communities. I think people are more welcoming, friendly, accepting, openminded, and fun online, whereas IRL, I can be more quiet and have a harder time forming long lasting friendships. I can also enjoy lotsa time on my own cause of all the stuff I distract myself and come up with. I can be talkative with some people and talk a LOT,ramble like crazy and enjoy myself, other times I can be quiet and just need time to myself after a long interaction, especially one where I'm bored. I’ve had lots of people think I’m so outgoing upon first meeting me just because of how much I can talk and how hyper I get. I can be outgoing in bursts and get super duper excited but I would say there's a lot of introversion in my personality. If I happen to be in a convo filled with tons of outgoing extroverts, they'll prolly take center stage lol. Like a year ago, I had a lot of IRL friends, you could say dozens. I even studied abroad with them. But then... They just trickled out, faded away. At one point it was like I was just talking with their holograms, the next day, our friendship had just disappeared. A lot of them thought I was childish and didn't seem to want to continue our friendship. ​ It was hard to be myself around them because of how judgmental they were and admittedly, how bored I would get around them sometimes because I felt as though they thought everything I had to say was weird and I thought what they talked about was repetitive and judgmental. So the weekends I spend on my own include these two main things: daydreaming and the internet. I create new worlds in my mind and use them as story inspiration, and I spend a HEAPLOAD of time in online communities. You don't wanna see my screen time LOL. Making friends online is great, I sometimes have trouble keeping track of everyone but when I say it's SUCH a piece of cake compared to IRL. I have too many apps to count and constantly switch between them. Just chatting with people and sharing our ideas/creating posts keeps me occupied for hours. I also play random iPhone games and sometimes I borrow my brother's switch to pass time. It's pretty easy for me to keep myself entertained with the stuff I think of. Thing is, it's way easier to come up with all of these things I'd like to create than actually finishing them. Even this post has me questioning whether or not I'll ever complete it. I actually started it a while ago because I was curious about getting typed by the reddit community, just for fun, but now considering its length and the fact I'm probably not close to being done, I'm not sure if anyone will readdit. But it would explain why I stay up so late too. I think of so much, I can't seem to keep track and the internet is A D D I C T I V E ! Movement? I seem to wanna be moving pretty often, even if that just alludes to my bouncy leg syndrome. Sometimes I get hyper and spin on my chair or bounce off the walls. I should also mention it's very likely I have ADHD. It's been suspected from campus counselors and many people since I was a kid, however due to the cost of official diagnosis, it's not something I've obtained. I seem to move around the house and become curious about random objects, like I found this desk with three drawers that open up into mini drawers and got bored so I used a tape measure as a "fishing pole" to catch stuff from the air vent. Why? I seriously don't know. It's quarantine, okay? When it comes to outdoors stuff, well already pretty obvi I don't go out much HAHAHA But I'd love to run around randomly if I'm feeling hyper or excited. Sports? Suck at those. Driving in the car with loud music is pretty fun though. I did study abroad as I mentioned before and have a fascination for traveling. I just wish it wasn't so expensive. My trip was to South Korea and it was amazing, I seemed to adjust very quickly and time flew while I was there. If traveling wasn't so pricey, I'd love to see so many more places. More ideas than I execute. I don't think one statement has ever summed up my life better. It's pretty much all I've been going through. I think of stuff and get extremely energized and hyper from my own mind, think about how cool it would be if I could create it, then I usually get something out and it never continues. Then I do it again and again with other ideas. I've lost track of how many things I've come up with that I've never been able to finish. I wish I could show the world all of these things, but that requires commitment and focus, which are two things I severely lack. I wanted to make something about... ​ Well actually I'll get to that in another part. And yes I am curious, I always wonder about what we don't know and all it could encompass. I watch a YouTube channel called "Pursuit of Wonder" which talks a lot about philosophy. I enjoy many channels and like discovering new ones. I love how much endless content I can consume on YouTube, even if it means not finishing most of the videos I watch. A habit I have is flipping through other videos, looking at the titles and thumbnails, while another one plays, then constantly switching through them. It’s like gathering pieces of information from one source, then another, then another, and not all of them have to do with each other, like going from a video about creating buses from horsehair to a Buzzfeed employee wearing stilts. I mentioned how I have an interest in designing these different things, I also sorta dabble in photo editing though I do it on a funkalicious app called PiZap. I’m particularly a fan of cutting and pasting completely random stuff together, like a bidet with Mickey Mouse legs and a duckling with the body of a pencil flying by. I probably mentioned that at some other point idek. I know I started this post earlier and saved it in a word doc so may be messy. Sometimes, I’ll correlate my photo edits with the stories I write, other times they’ll be completely random. One of my favorite YouTube channels is Pursuit of Wonder, which publishes a lot of philosophical “omg I’m going to have an existential crisis” content and THOSE are some videos I actually try and get through. I enjoy hearing about different perspectives concerning our universe, life as we know it, hidden universes, etc. It feels like I’m in another world watching these, and it’s lots of fun! I also enjoy videos of people doing goofy stuff in public for reactions, challenges, reaction videos, etc. I also enjoy listening to music, lots of EDM and pop. I had a phase where I was semi into photography, I bought a cool polaroid camera, then I don’t know what happened. I seem to enjoy and entertain uncertainty, since knowing would imply there's a clear answer and there isn't as much room for imagination. I'd much rather imagine all that's possible than be set on one answer. My environment seems conceptual considering how much I live in my head and idealize things, which also, I could get to in another part I see HAHAH Leadership position: Okay, Not my cup of responsibilitea. I'm a very lenient person who says. Hey, if you're not hurting yourself or other people, have fun. Enjoy yourself. I'm not a strict and rigid person, which could've been evident from my rebelliousness concerning my very-much-so strict and rigid parents. I'm all about people being treated fairly and I'm also all about understanding them. I would wanna make sure I don't impose anything too strict on people, as not much bothers me anyway. I did volunteer at a kid's camp when I was 18 and I didn't mind whenever the kids ran around or got excited, it was fun to see, even if the other volunteers seemed angered at their antics. Antics are fun. I would wanna make sure the people I'm leading are enjoying themselves and that they don't have too many restrictions on them . I'm pretty bad at yelling or being super assertive. I'd also probably want some help with the leadership thingamabobs cause I'm so easily distracted I'm not sure I'd be able to stay on top of things very well. Opening up my own community based around similar interests, however, sounds like an awesome idea and is something I'd be willing to do if I actually had the attention span to maintain it. Coordinated? Not really. I mean, that could mean many things. Physically coordinated? Mentally? In terms of being a good planner and following through with things? Physically, I could be better. Mentally/planning? Okay, I try to plan stuff when my mind feels like it's about to implode with a million things but it's not like I actually follow it. I end up doing whatever, even the most unexpected things, at any given time. I could write down a ton of stuff in my notebook to help me feel better in the moment and create the illusion that I could make aalllll this stuff happen, and I could start some of it, make that illusion even sweeter, but I never finish. It can be pretty sporadic. Artistic? Maybe with writing. I can't draw to save my life, though I LOVE appreciating other peoples' art, it's so inspiring and beautiful and cool and communicates such deep messages which is totally awesome. I recently wrote a story about looking at the night sky through a magical telescope which allows you to see movies in the stars but the "movies" are actually representative of the different perspectives of the people looking through the telescope. The lens might shrink or increase in size depending on who's looking through it to tell their scope. Yay lame puns. I threw in a buncha random worlds, the whole message being about how we can all see the same thing so differently, and how there are infinite worldviews out there . I tinker with random stuff like using a boat paddle as a flower stem which certain sea creatures can touch and form flowers on, beds as laptops (keyboard on the mattress, screen on the headboard) etc. I also wrote a story about a world filled with mirrors, some funkier than others, representing a ton of alternate versions of the main characteworlds she could live in. If predictive text existed above our heads irl, that would be pretty funny. Past/present/future: I live in many idealistic versions of what the future could be. It helps me distract myself from the mundane reality I live in now. On the bright side, it gives me this seemingly endless optimism that "everything is constantly changing" and there is always potential for things to get better, and we never know what kinda cool things could happen, so it keeps me going. It looks very childish to some people, nonetheless it's always been my view. I never really think about the past. My past wasn't too hawt, but it's over and I don't believe it has an effect on my life anymore. I always look forward, trying to make the best of what could happen someday, entertaining it all. Something interesting regarding the present/past is I can be having a wonderful, grandiose time and think to myself in that moment, "This is so great! I'll always remember this!" and the next day I'll find myself thinking about a bunch of other stuff and the significance of that moment won't last into the future as much. It could feel so special then but my mind is so constantly distracted that when I look back, I don't feel like I can relive it the same way or recall nearly enough details to do so. When others request my help? I usually help them, especially if that help involves advice or just talking to them. I sometimes take some time out of my own to do this, but if it's some favor I don't feel like doing, like, I dunno, if they want me to spend 3 hours carrying this 100 pound barrel filled with squid guts and alarm clocks, I'll probably say no. If it's something I don't want to do, and I mean, I'll be polite about it and possibly make up an excuse. Advice, however, is something I try and give whenever I can. Even though I'm not entirely sure a lot of people see me as the best advice giver just cause most people don't take me very seriously. From the few I do give advice to on a regular basis (or at least, whenever they need it) they've told me it's very insightful and beneficial for them which I think is sweet :3 Logical consistency? I mean, not really, I wouldn't say I need it. I don't know. I don't evaluate what I'm saying or doing for logic. I'll just do certain things for the sake of doing them, although because I am so indecisive and question things a lot, it can look like I want it to make sense, even though I can't tell what "makes sense" nor do I place much emphasis on it. It's confusing. And I contradict myself a lot, needless to say lol. Efficiency and productivity, I mean, I want to have a good time instead of force myself to get a ton of stuff done. But productivity does feel good, fo sure. I love that feeling when I actually get my mind set on a project and see progress. It's great! I usually like to get things done asap cause of my short attention span so with homework or tasks I find boring/tedious, instead of spending time reading everything word for word and trying to memorize, cause we all know that won't happen, I'll probs gather some general information and put it in a word doc, whip out quizlet if I can and just use ctrl+f. I mean, it still gets done that way. Sometimes i just want them out of the way so I can mentally check them off and move on. Cause nobody likes exhausting homework assignments. I don't think I control anyone. I can't speak for them, but really, I just. I don't intend to, nor do I care to. I think everyone should be free to do what they want and enjoy it. They don't have to conform to anything. Now, if I'm in a situation where a ton of people are just being genuinely rude, I'll probs feel ehhh cause I don't like that, but taking charge of the situation and yelling at them or trying to discipline them probably isn't my forte. If someone else is doing it, I can backpack along (yeah I'm saying that now) and add some of my input on why they should be nicer or whatever but I'm just not a controlling person. Hobbies. I mentioned creative writing and why I like that LOL. I like creating photos, like graphic design, just cutting and pasting random stuff together. I'm a total amateur, but I like it for a reason similar to why I love creative writing so much. You can make absolutely whatever you want. Just cut and paste the most random stuff together, like Darth Vader's stretched out head placed on a cantaloupe attached to a sheep with elongated Yoda for legs and it's dipped in a can of cream cheese and pelican beaks. INTERNETTING. You can join endless new communities and find new hobbies, make new friends and have fun. I tried to pick up piano, ukulele, and the otamatone which is an awesome instrument. I couldn't focus on piano or memorize any notes so that went down the drain, I lost my ukulele and similarly, IDK where I put my otamatone. I was also into learning languages which I may get back to. I know I learned Korean for a year, forget a lot, tried to learn French, Russian, even Japanese. I watched the YT vids and used Duolingo but IDK how long it's been. I even tried dancing, I really wanted to learn k-pop dances at one point and went to one day of lessons and as usual... IDK what happened. And if daydreaming is a hobby, then we've got that going for me too. I also wanna get more into gaming. Really anything with adventure/fantasy would be up my alley. Learning style? Well, definitely not sitting around and reading boring textbooks. I noticed I learn pretty well from discussion, whether I get to contribute or just hear people talk about something. I like watching sped up YouTube videos, really just that kinda stuff. Also little computer games that help you learn a new concept, something more interactive than just listening to one person talk or reading. I improvise pretty much everything I do. Whenever I make plans, I end up changing them anyway. To me, it's important to stay true to what I want to do and be kind to people. I'm against stuff like bullying and seeing people brought down for being who they are and I feel their emotions pretty easily. I'm a sensitive person so I strive to be cool with everyone I meet and maintain a positive atmosphere. It's important to believe in myself. I wish I could instill that hope into other people who doubt themselves or think their dreams are too out of the ordinary to tackle. It's important not to lose that hope and to always have something to be excited about, even if they are just ideas in your mind. They could turn into great feats one day. Fears? I don't want to be stuck doing the same thing, I don't want to be controlled and trapped. I want to be able to break free. I want to feel good, and that applies to everyone I care about, too. I don't really anticipate negative outcomes, I guess negativity could be a fear itself cause I seem to avoid thinking about it and therefore don’t often feel extremes with sadness or anger. I look forward and move on from Things very quickly. however I acknowledge negativity does exist, tho idk how well, and I hope I can avoid them as much as possible, and even if they do happen, that they can be overcome. Highs in my life: I'm EXTREMELY hopeful and excited over my own ideas. I'm super high energy and anticipating many amazing things. I'm happy, carefree, and in an overall good mood. I feel like nothing can break me and that everything is constantly evolving. I feel like my energy can never die down. Lows: I don't remember the last time I actually felt VERY low but it's more... Lower energy, being more quiet, I have the issues I do with focusing so I can get stressed out over the billions of things I want to do and be so scattered I can't stay on one thing for a single second. This is kinda always a thing though, but sometimes, especially when these things involve schoolwork/tasks I don't actually want to perform, it can be more frustrating. I'll jump between them constantly and procrastinate 24/7/365 while also feeling annoyed and impatient with myself for not doing any of it, then thinking of more and losing focus overall. Emotionally, I mentioned having a sensitive side. So if I get butthurt or offended over what some people said to me, I'll prolly be worried about how they see me and feel bad for a bit, then get over it. Breaking rules? Yeah, if the rules are just extra. Like, I don't care at all about being late. Time is flexible. Nothing wrong with checking your phone during class, your choice. Little things like that I'm like, psh. I break rules like that all the time. I don't think we need to be super tied to authority. When breaking the rules involves hurting other people, then no, I don't do it. I change my mind constantly. I don't like being tied to a decision and have trouble seeing which one is the "right" one. I consider all perspectives and can change my mind within seconds if presented with new information, or even just because I thought about it another way. Even when it comes to choosing what to eat, it's just a process of "umm, that, wait no, this, wait no..." and imagine that with everything else. My college major. What I'll write about, and why my stories always end up so long with so many plots, my type, just everything. I think about the unexpected a lot so I definitely take a lot of variables and perspectives into account, like an unexpected version of a certain type. So it's overall difficult for me to narrow options. I can constantly doubt or think of another side and make my own random explanations like "you could mix this up with this and it could look like this" blah blah blah. just looks like random theories to a lot of peeps I have caught myself agreeing with others just for the hell of it when I didn't even know what I thought about an issue or if I felt me agreeing didn't discount something I strongly believe. But I'm not gonna sit there and say it's okay to kill people or bully them or something even if everyone else is. That's another story. I don't argue about every disagreement, sometimes I'm like, okay cool. I don’t want people getting triggered at me or causing unnecessary drama I don’t feel like dealing with. Ideal life: where you can do whatever you please, have fun, and discover new things all the time. Where you're not limited at all and can make your dreams come true! Yay, cheesy again. I'd love a life where I can spread my message, create all kindsa stuff through my writing and designing, put it out there, travel, and just have fun.
How realistic are my goals with the violin, given my constraints?
I'm considering picking up the violin, and trying to weigh my goals with the amount of time it will require to reach them. Meanwhile I'm in the early stages of finding a good teacher if I decide to go forward. I grew up around music and am very comfortable with theory, reading sheet music, etc. For that reason, I expect I would do best with a teacher who can help me focus on violin-specific technique, and spend less time on general music basics. I play a couple of stringed instruments, but I doubt guitar or ukulele translates to any real advantage with violin (except maybe pre-callused fingers). As far as what I'm trying to accomplish, I mostly just want to be able to play simple folk-type melodies, nothing very complicated or advanced. Obviously if I really take to the instrument, I could see my goals expanding from here, but for now, it's purely for my own enjoyment and my aspirations are limited. Here's the thing. I'm 28, work full time, and have a wife and 2 year old son. That means the idea of practicing for an hour every day is totally unrealistic. What I'm trying to determine is whether the amount of time I can likely dedicate to this pursuit is enough to reach what I think are pretty modest goals. I suspect I'd be looking at something like 1 lesson per month (60 minutes?), and maybe a couple of hours of focused, effective practice every week. I figure with this kind of limited time spent on the instrument, this could go two ways - either I'll progress slowly but steadily and eventually be able to play simple songs... or I'll find that this schedule is totally insufficient to progress with the instrument, and effectively a waste of time. Do you have any thoughts on the matter? One other question I've had is whether free online lessons are a good starting point or a waste of time. It seems to me that an in-person, 1-on-1 lesson with a teacher has the advantage of instant and personalized correction/feedback on mechanical things like my grip on the bow, etc. Obviously, that's impossible to get from a YouTube video.
I'm not sure that #1 comes with a strap or strap pins or if I even need to worry about that. As for #2 I like the unconditional warranty but costs almost double #1. I also have read lots of great reviews about this company and I think I may have a better chance of receiving an instrument that has been inspected for flaws before shipping. I am wondering if there is a noticeable difference in quality between these first 2. I'm also considering #3 because I have a $100 Best Buy gift card with nothing else that I've found that I want to spend it on for a year now. This comes with no accessories which a somewhat of a concern. Also being shipped out by a big box store I don't know if it will arrive in "playable" condition or if it will need adjustments. Finally I'm wondering if this uke would have an appreciably better sound quality that would justify the extra expense. Your input would be greatly appreciated.
Hey - Pat from StarterStory.com here with another interview. Today's interview is with Adam Klosowiak of KLOS Guitars, a brand that sells carbon fiber instruments. Some stats:
Product: Carbon fiber instruments.
Revenue/mo: $100,000
Started: May 2015
Location: Provo
Founders: 2
Employees: 13
Hello! Who are you and what business did you start?
My name is Adam Klosowiak and I’m the cofounder and CEO of KLOS Guitars, a company that builds durable, portable, and great sounding sleek carbon fiber guitars and ukuleles. KLOS Guitars flagship product is our travel guitar, which launched in 2015. The travel guitar is a mini-dreadnought shape and features a carbon fiber body and soundboard with a mahogany neck. The guitar can be folded in half by removing the neck, and our portable gig bag can also be folded to be converted into a backpack. Since the launch of the travel guitar, we have also come out with a slightly smaller than dreadnought guitar and a ukulele. KLOS Guitars launched on Kickstarter in June of 2015 and did $33k in sales that year. Now, four years later, we’ve shipped to over 70 countries and all 50 states and we’re doing over $100k per month in sales mostly on Shopify. image
What's your backstory and how did you come up with the idea?
KLOS Guitars is the first company that I started. And how I got here is quite the unconventional path. I’m from the suburbs of Chicago originally. After graduating high school I went to Princeton University to study electrical engineering with an emphasis on semiconductor physics, which was fueled by my passion for science and a curiosity of how things work. I first dipped my toes into entrepreneurship my junior year when I entered into a Hackathon with two of my peers. The three of us felt that our curriculum was too theoretical and we wanted to test our hands on skills by building something practical. We came up with Dorm Control, which was a bluetooth controlled power strip that you could control via your phone. We were surprised to win the hackathon, the prize being a $20k summer accelerator with StartEngine out of LA. I didn’t ultimately take that offer, but in analyzing the decision, I for the first time thought about not just the technical side of a product but the market size, competition, and product launch strategy - areas that I found to be fascinating. Fast forward about a year, I was visiting my brother Ian in Utah for a ski trip in the winter of 2015. Ian was a very good guitar player and was also beginning to become quite the expert in carbon fiber through his mechanical engineering degree from BYU. The idea for the first KLOS carbon fiber travel guitar really came out of the happenstance chain of events that a couple months previous, my wooden travel guitar had cracked due to cold temperatures. Ian had been wanting to build a carbon fiber guitar for quite some time out of his affinity for the material and the instrument, and the fact that all other carbon fiber guitars on the market were $1500+ finally pushed him to finally make the first prototype. Some background on carbon fiber and the instrument world should help contextualize the idea of a carbon fiber instrument. Instruments have obviously long been made out of wood, and although it is a great material for making instruments, wood is quite a fragile material. It dries out and warps with time, it’s very affected by temperature and humidity, and most importantly all of these changes can be destructive in an instrument. Because of this, it’s very common to have to humidify most wooden instruments to prevent their ultimate self-destruction. image The results after dropping a cinder block on both a wooden ukulele and a caron fiber KLOS ukulele Conversely, carbon fiber is an extremely strong material that has an incredibly high strength to weight ratio, about 10 times that of steel. The material begins as a carbon fabric, that when infused with resin, hardens to whatever shape it is molded to. The most common question we get with using carbon fiber in instruments is does it sound good? Well, the amazing thing about the material is that there are many variables you can manipulate to have it behave exactly how you want it to. We manipulate the thickness of the carbon fiber, the internal foam material we use in the soundboard, the density of said foam layer, its thickness, bracing shape, size, thickness, etc. image A KLOS carbon fiber travel guitar in use during a backpacking trip in the heat of Arizona. Suffice to say, the idea was one that I really believed in, especially having fallen victim to a broken wooden guitar myself. Being an eternal learner and having insatiable curiosity, I was ecstatic to have the opportunity to learn all aspects of starting a company with a product that I loved. It was the spring of my senior semester at Princeton and given how much free time I had, I threw myself into researching every aspect of product market fit, competitive landscape, market size, value proposition, pricing, go to market strategy and everything in between. Though I had no background in business, the scientific method that had been ingrained in my head through electrical engineering helped me identify and quickly learn everything I needed to as problems arose. Because prototyping and setting up manufacturing took so long during the first two years of the company, I actually had the opportunity to have two other jobs in addition to working on KLOS Guitars. The first year after college I taught English in a high school in Innsbruck, Austria as part of the Fulbright Fellowship. In the second year I was a management consultant for the consulting firm Strategy& in Washington, D.C. Both of these jobs definitely provided me with a lot of life experience that helped a lot when I finally jumped to full time with KLOS Guitars.
Take us through the process of designing, prototyping, and manufacturing your first product.
My brother and I were both broke college students when we started KLOS Guitars, and this really forced us to be extremely lean. When you have no money, you really have to get creative with how you get the things you need, be it information or materials. The qualities that we wanted the first model of the KLOS guitar to have were pretty clear to us from initial market research. We wanted the guitar to be the most affordable carbon fiber guitar on the market so that people like ourselves (college students at the time) could afford it. Using that as a starting point, we designed the body and soundboard, the two weakest parts of the guitar, to be made from carbon fiber, while keeping the neck made out of wood. We were and are the only guitar company to have this material combination. From there, we went about iterating a shape that would be most popular with the market, which is how we settled on the mini-dreadnought shape. We packed in other neat features that added to the guitar being even more portable, such as the neck being able to fold in half so facilitate compact travel. image The first prototype had the original concept of a carbon fiber soundboard and body with a wooden neck, but was a little too unconventional in terms of body shape and headstock shape Once we settled on the design, we went about contacting suppliers who could produce the materials and the parts for us to eventually be able to produce at scale. Working with carbon fiber is actually quite a complex process, and the process of nailing down supply chain was a large part of the first 2-3 years. Long story short, with each part of the guitar, it came down to iterating samples with suppliers until the quality was excellent, then starting bulk production, creating rigorous quality control systems, and always continuing to improve. We have suppliers all over the world for parts and materials, we do some part production in-house, and we do the entire assembly and final quality inspection in our headquarters in Provo, UT.
Describe the process of launching the business.
When you walk into a guitar store, one of the first things you’ll notice is that there are A LOT of guitar brands out there. We knew from the beginning that we needed to be different than conventional guitar brands in order to succeed in a competitive landscape. This meant not just having a unique product but also a unique go-to-market strategy. Given how little access to capital Ian and I had, we decided to launch our first guitar with Kickstarter. Launching with Kickstarter provided us with a product-market fit, customers, and most importantly capital to start building product and manufacturing systems. Crowdfunding was a platform that no other guitar companies were using at the time as well, so we were very unique. Since our first campaign in 2015, we’ve done 6+ other campaigns that have raised over $1 million in funding. Our Kickstarter strategy starting from the first one was quite similar. Most importantly, the main video has to be high quality and engaging content. The video needs to accurately portray the product, why it’s unique, and how it can positively improve your lifestyle. In addition, the campaign page needs to strengthen all arguments made in your video, such as expanding on the technological innovation, the team that will implement the product, the current pain point of existing technology, etc. Once you have the page completely set up, you need to drive traffic to your page once you launch. This is where the heavy lifting comes in. We recommend doing paid advertising via Facebook and Google, but also reaching out to your personal network, personally contacting all PR and media companies that are relevant to your product, and really doing anything that will expose your product to an audience that cares. In addition to a unique product and launch strategy, we also wanted to have a unique marketing angle. We wanted to demonstrate our products in a cool and captivating way, and we were really inspired by Blendtec and their hilarious way of showing the strength of blending products such as iPhones. We came out with a durability test series where we highlighted the strength of our instruments through videos such as golfing with the guitar, using the guitar as a paddle, dropping a cinder block on a ukulele, and running a ukulele over with car. These videos help us get our initial traction by getting millions of views on different platforms such as Facebook and YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oANhEv3sj0I
Since launch, what has worked to attract and retain customers?
You really have to do anything and everything to attract customers. That being said, you also need to determine very quickly if a strategy will have a strong ROI or not, so that you can remain focused on the strategies that do work and hone in on those. For us, we have found that overwhelmingly Google and Facebook paid ads work very well for us, with ROAS being 3-5 there. For Facebook, our strategy is pretty typical where we start with high level prospecting ads that present general information about our brand. Then we drill deeper down into the details and functionality of our instruments via remarketing ads, which target people who have already engaged with previous ads. Google follows a similar pattern but is different in that the first engagement is generally more targeted because it’s based on specific terms that Google users search. image The full size dreadnought guitar being disassembled and put into a suitcase. SEO and organic search is also a major driver for us. Efforts that fall into this category are getting featured by blogs or media sources that are interested in KLOS Guitars, partnering with our brand ambassadors and customers to post about us online, facilitating a lot of reviews being posted, etc. The more unpaid content that is on the internet, the better Google is able to assess that the value of your site is high and should be featured more prominently in search results. Both organic and paid efforts go hand in hand with email marketing, which is more important further down the funnel. Our email marketing consists of giving new subscribers more information about our products and what makes them unique, as well as new customers how they can best engage with their instruments so they can fully experience the KLOS lifestyle! It’s important to realize that different customers simply use different platforms, which is why it’s important to have a presence on many platforms, while still spending most of your effort on the highest performing platforms. All platforms together form an ecosystem as well, and multiple touch points across many platforms is most effective for us. That might mean generating a lead on instagram, retargeting that potential customer on Facebook, capturing their email on the website and sending them an information video on YouTube, and then ultimately a coupon that helps facilitate the final conversion. Looping in other sales channels into that ecosystem, some people might go through that complex path, only to then prefer buying something on Amazon or Reverb, where they eventually purchase. The majority of our sales happen on our Shopify site, but we are on other sales platforms specifically for customers who prefer to shop there.
How are you doing today and what does the future look like?
We have been growing very quickly, with 70 instruments sold in 2015 and over 1600 instruments in 2018. This roughly equates to over a million dollars in sales last year. We’re extremely excited about the future for a few reasons. This year, 2019, is the first year that we have our three current instruments (travel guitar, dreadnought guitar, and ukulele) in stock and readily available to ship. We’re coming out with several new products this year, an electric guitar and full carbon fiber versions of our current product lines as well. Moreover, our manufacturing facility is also currently in its finest state ever. Should the need to scale arise, we’re able to ramp up our capacity several fold without needing to move locations or change many systems. With scaling in mind, we’ve also begun to work with retailers all over the world to expand our sales channels from just eCommerce.
Through starting the business, have you learned anything particularly helpful or advantageous?
There are so many mistakes and successes that happen each day when you’re starting a company, both on the business side and personally. The reality is that there will always be mistakes when you’re starting a company, and in hindsight vision will always be 20/20. The best thing to do is to create a minimum viable product as fast as possible, launch it as it is, and start interacting with the market. I will say, the MVP does have to be good enough to launch, I’m not suggesting launching a broken product that might cripple your brand, but definitely do not wait until you have what you think is a perfect product to launch, because you might miss your opportunity and you might miss valuable customer feedback. We launched a good travel guitar with our first Kickstarter campaign, but those first customers helped us refine the product significantly, and the travel guitar that we have today four years later is a much better model. We wouldn’t have arrived at the improved model on our own though, and had we tried and waited for years, another company might have swooped in to beat us to the market. Personally, you go through many transitions as a founder as your company grows. You fall in and out of love with your product, your willingness to pull all nighters and learn everything voraciously fluctuates over time. The biggest lesson I’ve learned over time is that prioritizing business growth is great, but if you burn out quickly, then long term growth will suffer. You need to make sure you take care of yourself personally so that you can remain motivated for a long time. I pulled many all-nighters in college for deadlines, but when you set the deadlines yourself, it really can pay off to avoid an all nighter, get healthy amounts of sleep, and ensure long term motivation and success. It’s also ok to take a step back sometimes and think about the accomplishments you’ve had as an entrepreneur. Every founder has a hydra to-do list that doubles every day, and it can be overwhelming to think about everything you’re not doing. Remembering how far you’ve come though really puts things in a positive light.
What platform/tools do you use for your business?
We launched our website on Wix and used that platform for the first two years of our company. We then switched to Shopify and found that it was much better for eCommerce purposes. We capture emails with MailChimp and that is our tool for email marketing. We use Sumo for on-site pop ups, and Slack for internal communication. We also use Crowd Control to integrate crowdfunding campaigns with Shopify. Those are our most important tools.
What have been the most influential books, podcasts, or other resources?
How to Win Friends and Influence People was a book that really struck a chord with me when I read it in college. Running a company is all about working with people, whether it’s with coworkers, customers, or suppliers. Masters of Scale is a great podcast where Reid Hoffman interviews successful entrepreneurs who talk about how they scaled their businesses. In general, my favorite genre of books is biographies. I love hearing about influential historical and living figures and how their journeys unfolded. My favorite genre when I feel like I can indulge in something less practical is science-fiction. Growing up, Jules Verne was my favorite author because he allowed my imagination to run wild thinking about what exists above and below ground.
Advice for other entrepreneurs who want to get started or are just starting out?
Entrepreneurship is not for everyone. You can experience some of the highest highs but also some of the lowest lows. A lot of people say you need to love the product you’re working on to be a successful entrepreneur, but I don’t necessarily think so. I think you need to love at least one aspect of what you’re doing in a start up, but not all of them. For some it’s loving the product, for others it’s loving growth, for others it’s loving working with your coworkers. You will be thrown so many obstacles on the journey to starting a company, that is genuine passion for something related to the company is not there, then the lowest lows you’ll experience will be traumatic and devastating. image Adam Klosowiak (left) and Ian Klosowiak (right) outside of their manufacturing facility during the winter of 2019 I’m fortunate to say that there are so many aspects of KLOS Guitars that I love, and those keep me going. As a musician myself, I really think we’re creating a product that has a unique offering that the world needs to hear about. I also love business strategy and going from concept to implementation. Throughout everything, I love that I’m working on all of this with my brother and that together we’ve created what we have.
Are you looking to hire for certain positions right now?
We are looking for someone to head up our brick and mortar expansion plan. The ideal candidate would be a guitar player who loves building and maintaining relationships, talking with people all over the world, and wants to see an amazing product in every guitar store in the world.
If you have any questions or comments, drop a comment below! Liked this text interview? Check out the full interview with photos, tools, books, and other data. For more interviews, check out starter_story - I post new stories there daily. Interested in sharing your own story? Send me a PM
Hey - Pat from StarterStory.com here with another interview. Today's interview is with Adam Klosowiak of KLOS Guitars, a brand that sells carbon fiber instruments. Some stats:
Product: Carbon fiber instruments.
Revenue/mo: $100,000
Started: May 2015
Location: Provo
Founders: 2
Employees: 13
Hello! Who are you and what business did you start?
My name is Adam Klosowiak and I’m the cofounder and CEO of KLOS Guitars, a company that builds durable, portable, and great sounding sleek carbon fiber guitars and ukuleles. KLOS Guitars flagship product is our travel guitar, which launched in 2015. The travel guitar is a mini-dreadnought shape and features a carbon fiber body and soundboard with a mahogany neck. The guitar can be folded in half by removing the neck, and our portable gig bag can also be folded to be converted into a backpack. Since the launch of the travel guitar, we have also come out with a slightly smaller than dreadnought guitar and a ukulele. KLOS Guitars launched on Kickstarter in June of 2015 and did $33k in sales that year. Now, four years later, we’ve shipped to over 70 countries and all 50 states and we’re doing over $100k per month in sales mostly on Shopify. image
What's your backstory and how did you come up with the idea?
KLOS Guitars is the first company that I started. And how I got here is quite the unconventional path. I’m from the suburbs of Chicago originally. After graduating high school I went to Princeton University to study electrical engineering with an emphasis on semiconductor physics, which was fueled by my passion for science and a curiosity of how things work. I first dipped my toes into entrepreneurship my junior year when I entered into a Hackathon with two of my peers. The three of us felt that our curriculum was too theoretical and we wanted to test our hands on skills by building something practical. We came up with Dorm Control, which was a bluetooth controlled power strip that you could control via your phone. We were surprised to win the hackathon, the prize being a $20k summer accelerator with StartEngine out of LA. I didn’t ultimately take that offer, but in analyzing the decision, I for the first time thought about not just the technical side of a product but the market size, competition, and product launch strategy - areas that I found to be fascinating. Fast forward about a year, I was visiting my brother Ian in Utah for a ski trip in the winter of 2015. Ian was a very good guitar player and was also beginning to become quite the expert in carbon fiber through his mechanical engineering degree from BYU. The idea for the first KLOS carbon fiber travel guitar really came out of the happenstance chain of events that a couple months previous, my wooden travel guitar had cracked due to cold temperatures. Ian had been wanting to build a carbon fiber guitar for quite some time out of his affinity for the material and the instrument, and the fact that all other carbon fiber guitars on the market were $1500+ finally pushed him to finally make the first prototype. Some background on carbon fiber and the instrument world should help contextualize the idea of a carbon fiber instrument. Instruments have obviously long been made out of wood, and although it is a great material for making instruments, wood is quite a fragile material. It dries out and warps with time, it’s very affected by temperature and humidity, and most importantly all of these changes can be destructive in an instrument. Because of this, it’s very common to have to humidify most wooden instruments to prevent their ultimate self-destruction. image The results after dropping a cinder block on both a wooden ukulele and a caron fiber KLOS ukulele Conversely, carbon fiber is an extremely strong material that has an incredibly high strength to weight ratio, about 10 times that of steel. The material begins as a carbon fabric, that when infused with resin, hardens to whatever shape it is molded to. The most common question we get with using carbon fiber in instruments is does it sound good? Well, the amazing thing about the material is that there are many variables you can manipulate to have it behave exactly how you want it to. We manipulate the thickness of the carbon fiber, the internal foam material we use in the soundboard, the density of said foam layer, its thickness, bracing shape, size, thickness, etc. image A KLOS carbon fiber travel guitar in use during a backpacking trip in the heat of Arizona. Suffice to say, the idea was one that I really believed in, especially having fallen victim to a broken wooden guitar myself. Being an eternal learner and having insatiable curiosity, I was ecstatic to have the opportunity to learn all aspects of starting a company with a product that I loved. It was the spring of my senior semester at Princeton and given how much free time I had, I threw myself into researching every aspect of product market fit, competitive landscape, market size, value proposition, pricing, go to market strategy and everything in between. Though I had no background in business, the scientific method that had been ingrained in my head through electrical engineering helped me identify and quickly learn everything I needed to as problems arose. Because prototyping and setting up manufacturing took so long during the first two years of the company, I actually had the opportunity to have two other jobs in addition to working on KLOS Guitars. The first year after college I taught English in a high school in Innsbruck, Austria as part of the Fulbright Fellowship. In the second year I was a management consultant for the consulting firm Strategy& in Washington, D.C. Both of these jobs definitely provided me with a lot of life experience that helped a lot when I finally jumped to full time with KLOS Guitars.
Take us through the process of designing, prototyping, and manufacturing your first product.
My brother and I were both broke college students when we started KLOS Guitars, and this really forced us to be extremely lean. When you have no money, you really have to get creative with how you get the things you need, be it information or materials. The qualities that we wanted the first model of the KLOS guitar to have were pretty clear to us from initial market research. We wanted the guitar to be the most affordable carbon fiber guitar on the market so that people like ourselves (college students at the time) could afford it. Using that as a starting point, we designed the body and soundboard, the two weakest parts of the guitar, to be made from carbon fiber, while keeping the neck made out of wood. We were and are the only guitar company to have this material combination. From there, we went about iterating a shape that would be most popular with the market, which is how we settled on the mini-dreadnought shape. We packed in other neat features that added to the guitar being even more portable, such as the neck being able to fold in half so facilitate compact travel. image The first prototype had the original concept of a carbon fiber soundboard and body with a wooden neck, but was a little too unconventional in terms of body shape and headstock shape Once we settled on the design, we went about contacting suppliers who could produce the materials and the parts for us to eventually be able to produce at scale. Working with carbon fiber is actually quite a complex process, and the process of nailing down supply chain was a large part of the first 2-3 years. Long story short, with each part of the guitar, it came down to iterating samples with suppliers until the quality was excellent, then starting bulk production, creating rigorous quality control systems, and always continuing to improve. We have suppliers all over the world for parts and materials, we do some part production in-house, and we do the entire assembly and final quality inspection in our headquarters in Provo, UT.
Describe the process of launching the business.
When you walk into a guitar store, one of the first things you’ll notice is that there are A LOT of guitar brands out there. We knew from the beginning that we needed to be different than conventional guitar brands in order to succeed in a competitive landscape. This meant not just having a unique product but also a unique go-to-market strategy. Given how little access to capital Ian and I had, we decided to launch our first guitar with Kickstarter. Launching with Kickstarter provided us with a product-market fit, customers, and most importantly capital to start building product and manufacturing systems. Crowdfunding was a platform that no other guitar companies were using at the time as well, so we were very unique. Since our first campaign in 2015, we’ve done 6+ other campaigns that have raised over $1 million in funding. Our Kickstarter strategy starting from the first one was quite similar. Most importantly, the main video has to be high quality and engaging content. The video needs to accurately portray the product, why it’s unique, and how it can positively improve your lifestyle. In addition, the campaign page needs to strengthen all arguments made in your video, such as expanding on the technological innovation, the team that will implement the product, the current pain point of existing technology, etc. Once you have the page completely set up, you need to drive traffic to your page once you launch. This is where the heavy lifting comes in. We recommend doing paid advertising via Facebook and Google, but also reaching out to your personal network, personally contacting all PR and media companies that are relevant to your product, and really doing anything that will expose your product to an audience that cares. In addition to a unique product and launch strategy, we also wanted to have a unique marketing angle. We wanted to demonstrate our products in a cool and captivating way, and we were really inspired by Blendtec and their hilarious way of showing the strength of blending products such as iPhones. We came out with a durability test series where we highlighted the strength of our instruments through videos such as golfing with the guitar, using the guitar as a paddle, dropping a cinder block on a ukulele, and running a ukulele over with car. These videos help us get our initial traction by getting millions of views on different platforms such as Facebook and YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oANhEv3sj0I
Since launch, what has worked to attract and retain customers?
You really have to do anything and everything to attract customers. That being said, you also need to determine very quickly if a strategy will have a strong ROI or not, so that you can remain focused on the strategies that do work and hone in on those. For us, we have found that overwhelmingly Google and Facebook paid ads work very well for us, with ROAS being 3-5 there. For Facebook, our strategy is pretty typical where we start with high level prospecting ads that present general information about our brand. Then we drill deeper down into the details and functionality of our instruments via remarketing ads, which target people who have already engaged with previous ads. Google follows a similar pattern but is different in that the first engagement is generally more targeted because it’s based on specific terms that Google users search. image The full size dreadnought guitar being disassembled and put into a suitcase. SEO and organic search is also a major driver for us. Efforts that fall into this category are getting featured by blogs or media sources that are interested in KLOS Guitars, partnering with our brand ambassadors and customers to post about us online, facilitating a lot of reviews being posted, etc. The more unpaid content that is on the internet, the better Google is able to assess that the value of your site is high and should be featured more prominently in search results. Both organic and paid efforts go hand in hand with email marketing, which is more important further down the funnel. Our email marketing consists of giving new subscribers more information about our products and what makes them unique, as well as new customers how they can best engage with their instruments so they can fully experience the KLOS lifestyle! It’s important to realize that different customers simply use different platforms, which is why it’s important to have a presence on many platforms, while still spending most of your effort on the highest performing platforms. All platforms together form an ecosystem as well, and multiple touch points across many platforms is most effective for us. That might mean generating a lead on instagram, retargeting that potential customer on Facebook, capturing their email on the website and sending them an information video on YouTube, and then ultimately a coupon that helps facilitate the final conversion. Looping in other sales channels into that ecosystem, some people might go through that complex path, only to then prefer buying something on Amazon or Reverb, where they eventually purchase. The majority of our sales happen on our Shopify site, but we are on other sales platforms specifically for customers who prefer to shop there.
How are you doing today and what does the future look like?
We have been growing very quickly, with 70 instruments sold in 2015 and over 1600 instruments in 2018. This roughly equates to over a million dollars in sales last year. We’re extremely excited about the future for a few reasons. This year, 2019, is the first year that we have our three current instruments (travel guitar, dreadnought guitar, and ukulele) in stock and readily available to ship. We’re coming out with several new products this year, an electric guitar and full carbon fiber versions of our current product lines as well. Moreover, our manufacturing facility is also currently in its finest state ever. Should the need to scale arise, we’re able to ramp up our capacity several fold without needing to move locations or change many systems. With scaling in mind, we’ve also begun to work with retailers all over the world to expand our sales channels from just eCommerce.
Through starting the business, have you learned anything particularly helpful or advantageous?
There are so many mistakes and successes that happen each day when you’re starting a company, both on the business side and personally. The reality is that there will always be mistakes when you’re starting a company, and in hindsight vision will always be 20/20. The best thing to do is to create a minimum viable product as fast as possible, launch it as it is, and start interacting with the market. I will say, the MVP does have to be good enough to launch, I’m not suggesting launching a broken product that might cripple your brand, but definitely do not wait until you have what you think is a perfect product to launch, because you might miss your opportunity and you might miss valuable customer feedback. We launched a good travel guitar with our first Kickstarter campaign, but those first customers helped us refine the product significantly, and the travel guitar that we have today four years later is a much better model. We wouldn’t have arrived at the improved model on our own though, and had we tried and waited for years, another company might have swooped in to beat us to the market. Personally, you go through many transitions as a founder as your company grows. You fall in and out of love with your product, your willingness to pull all nighters and learn everything voraciously fluctuates over time. The biggest lesson I’ve learned over time is that prioritizing business growth is great, but if you burn out quickly, then long term growth will suffer. You need to make sure you take care of yourself personally so that you can remain motivated for a long time. I pulled many all-nighters in college for deadlines, but when you set the deadlines yourself, it really can pay off to avoid an all nighter, get healthy amounts of sleep, and ensure long term motivation and success. It’s also ok to take a step back sometimes and think about the accomplishments you’ve had as an entrepreneur. Every founder has a hydra to-do list that doubles every day, and it can be overwhelming to think about everything you’re not doing. Remembering how far you’ve come though really puts things in a positive light.
What platform/tools do you use for your business?
We launched our website on Wix and used that platform for the first two years of our company. We then switched to Shopify and found that it was much better for eCommerce purposes. We capture emails with MailChimp and that is our tool for email marketing. We use Sumo for on-site pop ups, and Slack for internal communication. We also use Crowd Control to integrate crowdfunding campaigns with Shopify. Those are our most important tools.
What have been the most influential books, podcasts, or other resources?
How to Win Friends and Influence People was a book that really struck a chord with me when I read it in college. Running a company is all about working with people, whether it’s with coworkers, customers, or suppliers. Masters of Scale is a great podcast where Reid Hoffman interviews successful entrepreneurs who talk about how they scaled their businesses. In general, my favorite genre of books is biographies. I love hearing about influential historical and living figures and how their journeys unfolded. My favorite genre when I feel like I can indulge in something less practical is science-fiction. Growing up, Jules Verne was my favorite author because he allowed my imagination to run wild thinking about what exists above and below ground.
Advice for other entrepreneurs who want to get started or are just starting out?
Entrepreneurship is not for everyone. You can experience some of the highest highs but also some of the lowest lows. A lot of people say you need to love the product you’re working on to be a successful entrepreneur, but I don’t necessarily think so. I think you need to love at least one aspect of what you’re doing in a start up, but not all of them. For some it’s loving the product, for others it’s loving growth, for others it’s loving working with your coworkers. You will be thrown so many obstacles on the journey to starting a company, that is genuine passion for something related to the company is not there, then the lowest lows you’ll experience will be traumatic and devastating. image Adam Klosowiak (left) and Ian Klosowiak (right) outside of their manufacturing facility during the winter of 2019 I’m fortunate to say that there are so many aspects of KLOS Guitars that I love, and those keep me going. As a musician myself, I really think we’re creating a product that has a unique offering that the world needs to hear about. I also love business strategy and going from concept to implementation. Throughout everything, I love that I’m working on all of this with my brother and that together we’ve created what we have.
Are you looking to hire for certain positions right now?
We are looking for someone to head up our brick and mortar expansion plan. The ideal candidate would be a guitar player who loves building and maintaining relationships, talking with people all over the world, and wants to see an amazing product in every guitar store in the world.
If you have any questions or comments, drop a comment below! Liked this text interview? Check out the full interview with photos, tools, books, and other data. For more interviews, check out starter_story - I post new stories there daily. Interested in sharing your own story? Send me a PM
Hey - Pat from StarterStory.com here with another interview. Today's interview is with Adam Klosowiak of KLOS Guitars, a brand that sells carbon fiber instruments. Some stats:
Product: Carbon fiber instruments.
Revenue/mo: $100,000
Started: May 2015
Location: Provo
Founders: 2
Employees: 13
Hello! Who are you and what business did you start?
My name is Adam Klosowiak and I’m the cofounder and CEO of KLOS Guitars, a company that builds durable, portable, and great sounding sleek carbon fiber guitars and ukuleles. KLOS Guitars flagship product is our travel guitar, which launched in 2015. The travel guitar is a mini-dreadnought shape and features a carbon fiber body and soundboard with a mahogany neck. The guitar can be folded in half by removing the neck, and our portable gig bag can also be folded to be converted into a backpack. Since the launch of the travel guitar, we have also come out with a slightly smaller than dreadnought guitar and a ukulele. KLOS Guitars launched on Kickstarter in June of 2015 and did $33k in sales that year. Now, four years later, we’ve shipped to over 70 countries and all 50 states and we’re doing over $100k per month in sales mostly on Shopify. image
What's your backstory and how did you come up with the idea?
KLOS Guitars is the first company that I started. And how I got here is quite the unconventional path. I’m from the suburbs of Chicago originally. After graduating high school I went to Princeton University to study electrical engineering with an emphasis on semiconductor physics, which was fueled by my passion for science and a curiosity of how things work. I first dipped my toes into entrepreneurship my junior year when I entered into a Hackathon with two of my peers. The three of us felt that our curriculum was too theoretical and we wanted to test our hands on skills by building something practical. We came up with Dorm Control, which was a bluetooth controlled power strip that you could control via your phone. We were surprised to win the hackathon, the prize being a $20k summer accelerator with StartEngine out of LA. I didn’t ultimately take that offer, but in analyzing the decision, I for the first time thought about not just the technical side of a product but the market size, competition, and product launch strategy - areas that I found to be fascinating. Fast forward about a year, I was visiting my brother Ian in Utah for a ski trip in the winter of 2015. Ian was a very good guitar player and was also beginning to become quite the expert in carbon fiber through his mechanical engineering degree from BYU. The idea for the first KLOS carbon fiber travel guitar really came out of the happenstance chain of events that a couple months previous, my wooden travel guitar had cracked due to cold temperatures. Ian had been wanting to build a carbon fiber guitar for quite some time out of his affinity for the material and the instrument, and the fact that all other carbon fiber guitars on the market were $1500+ finally pushed him to finally make the first prototype. Some background on carbon fiber and the instrument world should help contextualize the idea of a carbon fiber instrument. Instruments have obviously long been made out of wood, and although it is a great material for making instruments, wood is quite a fragile material. It dries out and warps with time, it’s very affected by temperature and humidity, and most importantly all of these changes can be destructive in an instrument. Because of this, it’s very common to have to humidify most wooden instruments to prevent their ultimate self-destruction. image The results after dropping a cinder block on both a wooden ukulele and a caron fiber KLOS ukulele Conversely, carbon fiber is an extremely strong material that has an incredibly high strength to weight ratio, about 10 times that of steel. The material begins as a carbon fabric, that when infused with resin, hardens to whatever shape it is molded to. The most common question we get with using carbon fiber in instruments is does it sound good? Well, the amazing thing about the material is that there are many variables you can manipulate to have it behave exactly how you want it to. We manipulate the thickness of the carbon fiber, the internal foam material we use in the soundboard, the density of said foam layer, its thickness, bracing shape, size, thickness, etc. image A KLOS carbon fiber travel guitar in use during a backpacking trip in the heat of Arizona. Suffice to say, the idea was one that I really believed in, especially having fallen victim to a broken wooden guitar myself. Being an eternal learner and having insatiable curiosity, I was ecstatic to have the opportunity to learn all aspects of starting a company with a product that I loved. It was the spring of my senior semester at Princeton and given how much free time I had, I threw myself into researching every aspect of product market fit, competitive landscape, market size, value proposition, pricing, go to market strategy and everything in between. Though I had no background in business, the scientific method that had been ingrained in my head through electrical engineering helped me identify and quickly learn everything I needed to as problems arose. Because prototyping and setting up manufacturing took so long during the first two years of the company, I actually had the opportunity to have two other jobs in addition to working on KLOS Guitars. The first year after college I taught English in a high school in Innsbruck, Austria as part of the Fulbright Fellowship. In the second year I was a management consultant for the consulting firm Strategy& in Washington, D.C. Both of these jobs definitely provided me with a lot of life experience that helped a lot when I finally jumped to full time with KLOS Guitars.
Take us through the process of designing, prototyping, and manufacturing your first product.
My brother and I were both broke college students when we started KLOS Guitars, and this really forced us to be extremely lean. When you have no money, you really have to get creative with how you get the things you need, be it information or materials. The qualities that we wanted the first model of the KLOS guitar to have were pretty clear to us from initial market research. We wanted the guitar to be the most affordable carbon fiber guitar on the market so that people like ourselves (college students at the time) could afford it. Using that as a starting point, we designed the body and soundboard, the two weakest parts of the guitar, to be made from carbon fiber, while keeping the neck made out of wood. We were and are the only guitar company to have this material combination. From there, we went about iterating a shape that would be most popular with the market, which is how we settled on the mini-dreadnought shape. We packed in other neat features that added to the guitar being even more portable, such as the neck being able to fold in half so facilitate compact travel. image The first prototype had the original concept of a carbon fiber soundboard and body with a wooden neck, but was a little too unconventional in terms of body shape and headstock shape Once we settled on the design, we went about contacting suppliers who could produce the materials and the parts for us to eventually be able to produce at scale. Working with carbon fiber is actually quite a complex process, and the process of nailing down supply chain was a large part of the first 2-3 years. Long story short, with each part of the guitar, it came down to iterating samples with suppliers until the quality was excellent, then starting bulk production, creating rigorous quality control systems, and always continuing to improve. We have suppliers all over the world for parts and materials, we do some part production in-house, and we do the entire assembly and final quality inspection in our headquarters in Provo, UT.
Describe the process of launching the business.
When you walk into a guitar store, one of the first things you’ll notice is that there are A LOT of guitar brands out there. We knew from the beginning that we needed to be different than conventional guitar brands in order to succeed in a competitive landscape. This meant not just having a unique product but also a unique go-to-market strategy. Given how little access to capital Ian and I had, we decided to launch our first guitar with Kickstarter. Launching with Kickstarter provided us with a product-market fit, customers, and most importantly capital to start building product and manufacturing systems. Crowdfunding was a platform that no other guitar companies were using at the time as well, so we were very unique. Since our first campaign in 2015, we’ve done 6+ other campaigns that have raised over $1 million in funding. Our Kickstarter strategy starting from the first one was quite similar. Most importantly, the main video has to be high quality and engaging content. The video needs to accurately portray the product, why it’s unique, and how it can positively improve your lifestyle. In addition, the campaign page needs to strengthen all arguments made in your video, such as expanding on the technological innovation, the team that will implement the product, the current pain point of existing technology, etc. Once you have the page completely set up, you need to drive traffic to your page once you launch. This is where the heavy lifting comes in. We recommend doing paid advertising via Facebook and Google, but also reaching out to your personal network, personally contacting all PR and media companies that are relevant to your product, and really doing anything that will expose your product to an audience that cares. In addition to a unique product and launch strategy, we also wanted to have a unique marketing angle. We wanted to demonstrate our products in a cool and captivating way, and we were really inspired by Blendtec and their hilarious way of showing the strength of blending products such as iPhones. We came out with a durability test series where we highlighted the strength of our instruments through videos such as golfing with the guitar, using the guitar as a paddle, dropping a cinder block on a ukulele, and running a ukulele over with car. These videos help us get our initial traction by getting millions of views on different platforms such as Facebook and YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oANhEv3sj0I
Since launch, what has worked to attract and retain customers?
You really have to do anything and everything to attract customers. That being said, you also need to determine very quickly if a strategy will have a strong ROI or not, so that you can remain focused on the strategies that do work and hone in on those. For us, we have found that overwhelmingly Google and Facebook paid ads work very well for us, with ROAS being 3-5 there. For Facebook, our strategy is pretty typical where we start with high level prospecting ads that present general information about our brand. Then we drill deeper down into the details and functionality of our instruments via remarketing ads, which target people who have already engaged with previous ads. Google follows a similar pattern but is different in that the first engagement is generally more targeted because it’s based on specific terms that Google users search. image The full size dreadnought guitar being disassembled and put into a suitcase. SEO and organic search is also a major driver for us. Efforts that fall into this category are getting featured by blogs or media sources that are interested in KLOS Guitars, partnering with our brand ambassadors and customers to post about us online, facilitating a lot of reviews being posted, etc. The more unpaid content that is on the internet, the better Google is able to assess that the value of your site is high and should be featured more prominently in search results. Both organic and paid efforts go hand in hand with email marketing, which is more important further down the funnel. Our email marketing consists of giving new subscribers more information about our products and what makes them unique, as well as new customers how they can best engage with their instruments so they can fully experience the KLOS lifestyle! It’s important to realize that different customers simply use different platforms, which is why it’s important to have a presence on many platforms, while still spending most of your effort on the highest performing platforms. All platforms together form an ecosystem as well, and multiple touch points across many platforms is most effective for us. That might mean generating a lead on instagram, retargeting that potential customer on Facebook, capturing their email on the website and sending them an information video on YouTube, and then ultimately a coupon that helps facilitate the final conversion. Looping in other sales channels into that ecosystem, some people might go through that complex path, only to then prefer buying something on Amazon or Reverb, where they eventually purchase. The majority of our sales happen on our Shopify site, but we are on other sales platforms specifically for customers who prefer to shop there.
How are you doing today and what does the future look like?
We have been growing very quickly, with 70 instruments sold in 2015 and over 1600 instruments in 2018. This roughly equates to over a million dollars in sales last year. We’re extremely excited about the future for a few reasons. This year, 2019, is the first year that we have our three current instruments (travel guitar, dreadnought guitar, and ukulele) in stock and readily available to ship. We’re coming out with several new products this year, an electric guitar and full carbon fiber versions of our current product lines as well. Moreover, our manufacturing facility is also currently in its finest state ever. Should the need to scale arise, we’re able to ramp up our capacity several fold without needing to move locations or change many systems. With scaling in mind, we’ve also begun to work with retailers all over the world to expand our sales channels from just eCommerce.
Through starting the business, have you learned anything particularly helpful or advantageous?
There are so many mistakes and successes that happen each day when you’re starting a company, both on the business side and personally. The reality is that there will always be mistakes when you’re starting a company, and in hindsight vision will always be 20/20. The best thing to do is to create a minimum viable product as fast as possible, launch it as it is, and start interacting with the market. I will say, the MVP does have to be good enough to launch, I’m not suggesting launching a broken product that might cripple your brand, but definitely do not wait until you have what you think is a perfect product to launch, because you might miss your opportunity and you might miss valuable customer feedback. We launched a good travel guitar with our first Kickstarter campaign, but those first customers helped us refine the product significantly, and the travel guitar that we have today four years later is a much better model. We wouldn’t have arrived at the improved model on our own though, and had we tried and waited for years, another company might have swooped in to beat us to the market. Personally, you go through many transitions as a founder as your company grows. You fall in and out of love with your product, your willingness to pull all nighters and learn everything voraciously fluctuates over time. The biggest lesson I’ve learned over time is that prioritizing business growth is great, but if you burn out quickly, then long term growth will suffer. You need to make sure you take care of yourself personally so that you can remain motivated for a long time. I pulled many all-nighters in college for deadlines, but when you set the deadlines yourself, it really can pay off to avoid an all nighter, get healthy amounts of sleep, and ensure long term motivation and success. It’s also ok to take a step back sometimes and think about the accomplishments you’ve had as an entrepreneur. Every founder has a hydra to-do list that doubles every day, and it can be overwhelming to think about everything you’re not doing. Remembering how far you’ve come though really puts things in a positive light.
What platform/tools do you use for your business?
We launched our website on Wix and used that platform for the first two years of our company. We then switched to Shopify and found that it was much better for eCommerce purposes. We capture emails with MailChimp and that is our tool for email marketing. We use Sumo for on-site pop ups, and Slack for internal communication. We also use Crowd Control to integrate crowdfunding campaigns with Shopify. Those are our most important tools.
What have been the most influential books, podcasts, or other resources?
How to Win Friends and Influence People was a book that really struck a chord with me when I read it in college. Running a company is all about working with people, whether it’s with coworkers, customers, or suppliers. Masters of Scale is a great podcast where Reid Hoffman interviews successful entrepreneurs who talk about how they scaled their businesses. In general, my favorite genre of books is biographies. I love hearing about influential historical and living figures and how their journeys unfolded. My favorite genre when I feel like I can indulge in something less practical is science-fiction. Growing up, Jules Verne was my favorite author because he allowed my imagination to run wild thinking about what exists above and below ground.
Advice for other entrepreneurs who want to get started or are just starting out?
Entrepreneurship is not for everyone. You can experience some of the highest highs but also some of the lowest lows. A lot of people say you need to love the product you’re working on to be a successful entrepreneur, but I don’t necessarily think so. I think you need to love at least one aspect of what you’re doing in a start up, but not all of them. For some it’s loving the product, for others it’s loving growth, for others it’s loving working with your coworkers. You will be thrown so many obstacles on the journey to starting a company, that is genuine passion for something related to the company is not there, then the lowest lows you’ll experience will be traumatic and devastating. image Adam Klosowiak (left) and Ian Klosowiak (right) outside of their manufacturing facility during the winter of 2019 I’m fortunate to say that there are so many aspects of KLOS Guitars that I love, and those keep me going. As a musician myself, I really think we’re creating a product that has a unique offering that the world needs to hear about. I also love business strategy and going from concept to implementation. Throughout everything, I love that I’m working on all of this with my brother and that together we’ve created what we have.
Are you looking to hire for certain positions right now?
We are looking for someone to head up our brick and mortar expansion plan. The ideal candidate would be a guitar player who loves building and maintaining relationships, talking with people all over the world, and wants to see an amazing product in every guitar store in the world.
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