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Hello, podcast friends. Today, I’m with Harrison Bevins, the founder of Oak and Rove—a travel accessory brand. Harrison is selling a briefcase called the Alto briefcase, a travel bag, the Kennedy Weekender, and a Dopp Kit.
Today, Harrison will be talking about how he started out with his product development, how he brought this product to the market. He started out with an Indiegogo campaign. He also talks about his marketing approach and how he was able to leverage media to get in front of new potential shoppers.
Throughout the last two, three years, when there were struggles in the environment, he talks about how he overcame that, and what he learned throughout this process. Let’s jump in.
If you want to connect with Harrison, we have a Facebook group. Harrison will be also part of that group. And this is only for e-commerce owners so feel free to join us.
Harrison Bevin: A Brief Intro
I am currently in Southern California. I’m in a city called Fullerton, which is funny because this is where I was born, but I didn’t grow up here. I was actually raised in Utah. A little ski town called Park City. My parents were both entrepreneurs, but in a different industry. They had started a restaurant business.
I think, growing up, I always had that entrepreneurial mindset, always wanted to do my own thing, but my parents very much put us on the traditional path of going to school and getting a degree, getting a nice job.
That was the route that I originally took. I got a degree in finance and then went straight into the workforce as a financial analyst. I moved to New York and I was basically doing what everybody thinks is the normal thing to do. Working a normal 9–5. Well, in finance, it’s more like a 8–8 or a 8–10.
Crazy hours. I eventually hit my breaking point and realized that I didn’t want to work in an office for the rest of my life.
I could see the people in front of me, older than me, doing the same thing. And I was like, in 10 years, I don’t want to be that guy. I got to do something else. And also, I was motivated by money. You think about people who are very wealthy and a lot of times, the way that they’re achieving that wealth is through building their own businesses. Right?
I realized, okay, by climbing the corporate ladder, it’s just not going to happen as fast as I want it to, so I might as well take things into my own hands. I reached my breaking point in New York after a little over a year.
I think it became apparent that it wasn’t for me. I quit my job, bought a one-way ticket to China and that’s where everything started.
It’s funny because when I was doing internships back in college, my mind was already somewhere else. I think I already knew early on, I really didn’t like being in an office, and at work, I was looking up how to make money in travel.
That was such a strong motivating factor for me. And I found that people were teaching English in Asia, in Thailand or China. Then, I stumbled across these guys that were building a community called Enter China.
They were two young guys and they had moved to China, Guangzhou, specifically, back in 2012. And they were getting involved in business and starting their own companies. And I was like, “Oh, this is pretty interesting.” These guys, they didn’t have a plan, either. They just went out there, just dove right in and started figuring stuff out.
I had been following their journey. And then, by the time I was ready to quit my job, I was like, “That’s what I’m going to do, I’m going to go to China and do exactly what those guys are doing.”
Episode Highlights
But I didn’t give up. I went back to the drawing board, picked a new niche, got better at ads, and then that store started to work. I started getting sales consistently. (7:52)
It started off with a concept to create something functional, premium. Then, it really is a process of refinement. I did a lot of research. I went onto Amazon.com. I went on Kickstarter. I was looking at what else is out there. Reading negative comments and basically documenting all of this stuff. Putting it all together and seeing what people complained about the most. (15:17)
Social proof is incredibly important. Getting reviews and press, and even small websites that would write up a little review on us… Trying to do anything I could to get our name out there was definitely a priority. (27:09)
The Beginnings and Creating Ideas
I don’t think I’m necessarily great at ideas but I’m good at executing. If I have the process to follow, I will do that until it starts working. And I won’t give up until it starts working. I was kind of grasping at different things to see what would work.
I got turned on to online marketing. I was learning about copywriting because some of the guys that I was living with, that’s what they were doing. Then I started getting paid for it. I was on Upwork and I was doing copywriting gigs and learning about online marketing in general. One day I googled how to make money with Facebook.
“People are making money with Facebook, but how?” I came across drop-shipping in e-commerce, and I thought, “Oh, this is fascinating.” It checked all the boxes in terms of what I was looking for. You have this thing that you can build and it can make money. You’re not trading your time for that money.
Because with copywriting, you have to sit down, you have to type and think, and you’re not getting paid until you finish the thing. Whereas with e-commerce, you put the time in, you build the asset, then you can go to bed, and you wake up to sales. Winner, winner, chicken dinner. I was hooked.
I built my first store. It took three weeks to figure everything out and get the ads running. And nothing worked. I was like—damn.
But I didn't give up. I went back to the drawing board, picked a new niche, got better at ads, and then that store started to work. I started getting sales consistently.
Started making profit consistently. At that point, I thought, “Okay, e-commerce is my thing.” Whatever the business is going to be, it’s going to be e-commerce-related.
I just really enjoyed the process of it. That drop-shipping store led me into that journey.
Oak and Rove: Introduction
I went from the drop-shipping business to a private-label Amazon business. At that point, I felt that both those business models, they’re good for different experiences. Drop-shipping is great for learning how to do Facebook advertising and learn about that world, and Shopify. Amazon is great to learn about logistics and working directly with factories and figuring out to custom-make products, make tweaks and things like that.
I took both of those things and put them together. I realized that I didn’t really enjoy selling stuff that I didn’t care about, which is what I was doing. I was making money, but I was selling stuff that I didn’t really have any personal attachment to.
After I had sold both businesses, I thought, the next step is to build a legitimate brand. Something that I can enjoy building, something that will be fulfilling, and then something that also has much more potential for a higher exit value. Typically, with a brand with strong customer base, you’re going to get a higher multiple; an investor’s going to be more willing to pay more for that type of business.
It came down to, what will I be passionate about building? What’s something that I enjoy? I love traveling. I’m meeting all these business people and entrepreneurs out here. So, how can I build something that is going to satisfy all these requirements? And I landed on a functional weekender bag as a first product.
All the previous experiences mixed with semi-personal desires led to creating the first product for Oak and Rove.
Ideal Customer for Travel Bags
It shifted over time. I think naturally any brand does. It very much started off with, I want to go after young-entrepreneur-hustler-types like myself.
After we started testing, we got feedback, we learned who was engaging with us. It shifted to business professionals, managers, executives… Still a lot of founders, but I don’t think, not as many young people like me. I would say it’s more of an older type, 35+. I’d say, mostly 45 to 60. That’s our core target demographic.
Oak and Rove USP
For me, a big thing came back down to being useful. Actually being functional. A lot of travel bags, the nice ones, are just fully leather, right? They’re super heavy. They have barely any functionality. It’s usually a big leather duffle bag. You think about a Louis Vuitton duffle bag. It’s super luxurious. Nice, of course. But it literally can’t do anything except for you to throw clothes in it.
You’re basically just buying it because of the brand, which is fine. But I wanted to provide something that again, that I would use and find a lot of utility. Like, having a place for my shoes in a separate compartment, having a place for my laptop that’s in a separate compartment, and then separate pockets where I could organize cords and chargers.
I was just thinking about how people travel. On the outside, I was going for something that’s actually quite luxurious. So, using full-grain leather, very high quality water-resistant nylon, premium zippers; combining the best of both worlds. Something that’s highly functional. but also extremely nice. You take it out of the package and say, “Damn, this thing is pretty legit. It’s pretty awesome. It feels nice, smells nice, looks good.”
So, when you’re carrying or when you’re walking around with it, you feel like a boss, a businessman. That’s what it should be like.
Go-to Market Strategy
It started off with a concept to create something functional, premium. Then, it really is a process of refinement. I did a lot of research. I went onto Amazon.com. I went on Kickstarter. I was looking at what else is out there. Reading negative comments and basically documenting all of this stuff. Putting it all together and seeing what people complained about the most.
Then I hired a designer. A designer is going to ask for a brief. They’re going to ask for an outline of what you’re going for. I’m not an artist. I’m not a technical designer. I can’t draw these things out. So, I put everything on the paper in terms of what I want the bag to have, the feel I’m going for. We even created mood boards.
This is great with Pinterest. You can create these boards that have basically different images that put together a mood. So, we put all this stuff together. He comes back with these various concepts. And I say, “I like that one. “I don’t like that one. “I like this one but let’s change this.” And it’s literally just like that ongoing back and forth, until you come to something that we both agree that it looks good.
It’s functional, it’s different, unique. From there, we got them made into 3D renderings, photorealistic renderings, right? So, instead of just a sketch, it’s an actual product image that looks real. You could touch it. But it’s just a computer-generated image. This is where we start testing.
We set up a landing page, we wrote some copy, we had an incentive for people to put in their email, and then we created an email sequence, a seven-day autoresponder. The whole point was to drive traffic and see if people would sign-up and start getting feedback.
That was the beginning of the testing phase.
You build a small MVP without having the final product actually ready. But, this landing page is just so that you can test out different concepts very quickly, right? What would happen to the people if they sign up? Do they actually place an order? Or how does it work there?
At this stage, no. They’re just putting in their email. It’s really no loss to them. I mean, you would lose money on Facebook ads if you ended up not doing anything, but in the end, you’re not really losing anything because you’re buying the data and the information.
Working With Designers
I’m definitely a creative individual. I always have been. Although in a different way. I’m not a good artist. I can’t draw. I’m not good at drawing things. But I have an eye for designs and an eye for aesthetics. If something looks good, I can say that it looks good. I know it looks good. With the designer, it was more about letting him have creative control over what I had written down, translating it into a visual image, and then me going back and forth with him, telling him we need to tweak this or we should change this or make this bigger, make this smaller.
I’m very good at tweaking it how I want it, but I can’t create it from scratch. That’s where I need the collaboration.
Market Validated: Next Steps?
At this point, we’re working towards doing a crowdfunding campaign. We’re building this email list because we want people to sign-up to back a future crowdfunding campaign that we’re going to do. After we’ve nailed down details of what people like, what people don’t like, at that point, we started working with a factory to get a prototype made.
A prototype’s never going to come out perfect the first time. I think there were two rounds. The second round, we got to something that we could use for the photo shoot. And then, we went full steam ahead and towards preparing for the crowdfunding campaign.
We continued to build the email list. We cranked up the ads. Started growing that big. And then, making sure that everything else was lining up for the launch.
Crowdfunding and Moving Up to Shopify
The initial goal was always to raise money through crowdfunding, to help with the production. I did consider between Kickstarter and Indiegogo. I think I chose Indiegogo because it seemed more consumer product-focused.
Less games and tech, more products that fit better on that platform.
It was a good experience. I obviously learned a lot.
I think there were a lot of things that I could’ve done different or better, that would’ve resulted in a higher fundraise. But basically, once that money came in, we went straight towards production.
We started building the Shopify store, which was simple because it was one product. We got that up and then the product got produced. We had a fulfillment center that we were working with in China. And then, those got fulfilled and then we basically just started selling through our store as normal.
Challenges and Obstacles
There’s a few different things that happened. For one, it’s a very interesting thing, because the timing, it had to happen when it happened, because right after that, the pandemic started to take place. But at the same time, we could have had a much better campaign if we didn’t rush into it. If we waited longer, we would’ve had a better campaign, but if we also waited longer, it would’ve been worse because the pandemic was basically happening at that point.
The perfect worst time that it could have happened.
It was definitely a struggle to get through the last few years because of restrictions, and obviously, we’re selling a travel-related product.
Travel demand basically evaporated overnight. But, I felt confident, when you’re selling a product for the first time, it’s brand new… You don’t know how people are going to respond. But, we immediately started getting really great feedback. The customers loved it.
It was unanimously positive. And that was important because at that point, I didn’t know what we were going to do. It reassured me that we were doing something that was pretty cool. There’s people that liked it, and that pushed me to keep going. Basically, just not give up and throw in the towel. I just kept on moving forward.
Post-launch Marketing Strategy
Facebook is number one. That’s what I have experienced, and that was the first go-to, to get the word out. When you’re starting a brand, especially a premium brand, you’re charging people several hundred dollars for one product.
Social proof is incredibly important. Getting reviews and press, and even small websites that would write up a little review on us… Trying to do anything I could to get our name out there was definitely a priority.
That helps with Google ranking, anytime somebody searched us, because we’re a no-name brand, so it’s like, even if they saw our ad and they go and Google us, if there’s nothing online about us, the chances of them converting is really not great.
It was like attacking it from all sides, Facebook being the main driver of traffic, and then having those other assets outside for social proof. We also could use those in our ads, as well. And then, of course, email marketing, because we had built a huge list, continually sending out emails and different offers, keeping people engaged that way.
We have tried Google ads here and there. That’s been a bit more of a challenge for us, especially with how things are, but we are getting back into that.
Then, a little bit of influencers and most recently trying to get more people to do YouTube video reviews, because we found that that’s actually pretty cool. A lot of these guys will go and they’ll search you up on YouTube before anything.
Right. YouTube video reviews. So, you basically contact some YouTubers to get an unboxing video? Or how does this work?
Pretty much, yeah. We’ve had people reach out to us, and then I’ll do searches and look for people that look like they’re a good fit.
Send them a bag and ask them for a review, then they create some content for us, and it works out pretty well.
Brand Awareness and Social Proof
There’s a few different ways to go about it. I would look where my competitors were being reviewed. So, I’d search their brands, I’d look at who was reviewing them, and then I’d reach out to those people and see if they’re interested in reviewing us. Some of these publications are like advertorials, so you literally just pay them and they’ll write up on you.
I think, in the beginning, it’s a little bit of pay-to-play to get that initial traction. Then, there’s the earned media route, which can also be very expensive, where you pay a PR company. They’re constantly pitching you to various outlets and publications and newspapers, and then they’ll do write-ups on you. We haven’t done that yet, because I feel we are still not quite there yet. That can be an expensive monthly retainer.
Most times, you just pay by product, basically, swap a product for a review. You have a high-price point product, so I’m not exactly sure how that works. Would they take the product? Or do you pay them an amount? Or is it just different each time?
Every guy’s different. It really depends on their blog size or their website, how much traffic they get. Some guys are happy to just take a product and do a review in exchange. Some of the bigger ones, they’re going to want some type of fee up front.
Email Marketing
We built the email list prior to the crowdfunding campaign. Paid traffic, we paid for them essentially. So, through that pre-launch list building strategy that we did before the crowdfunding campaign.
We typically did a gift card. You get a $50 gift card towards the launch, and all you have to do is enter in your email to get this gift card.
They see the product, the product looks sick. Oh, a $50 gift card.
Yep, sign up for that.
Then, they get warmed up through the funnel and some percent of them end up buying.
Post-covid Strategy
It’s been really great. Things are picking up for us. We’re getting more and more traction every month. And the goal is to expand the product line, create more products that are going to be valuable to these business professional types. So, other small leather goods, leather accessories, and really just turn into like a full-fledged brand. That’s the idea.
Looking further down, I would love to do retail, have our own retail setup, and more wholesale deals, as well.
The cool thing is,
All of our products have come from real customer feedback, right? We ask them what they want, they tell us, we designed that thing. That was the same thing with the briefcase that we developed last year. They all said they wanted a briefcase. That's what we did.
The next thing that people have been saying is, some type of tech pack. A tech bag that you can organize all your tech stuff in. Either like a sling or one that you can just carry in your hand. We’re going to do some variation of that.
Expanding Into Different Channels: The Strategy
Facebook is still a good source of traffic. However, it’s becoming less reliable because of the lack of attribution with the iOS updates. But, as I said before, we’re going to focus a little bit more on expanding to Google ads. Putting more money into that. We would also love to start doing some YouTube ads, as well, down the road.
How Do You Learn and Upskill
The community that originally inspired me to move out to China, it was called Enter China, they created an accelerator program, and that’s what helped me to learn how to build my concept and build a pre-launch list, and do a crowdfunding campaign. That community is called EC Accelerate. They’re a great resource. The guys behind it are awesome. They know their stuff.
That was like a huge education for me, in terms of learning all about taking a minimum viable product, testing the market, getting customer feedback, and turning into an actual brand.
Aside from that, after you’ve learned those fundamentals, the DTC newsletter—the Direct to Consumer newsletter—is a great one. They’re always putting out really good content. And then, podcasts that I usually listen to, a variety of podcasts, like eCommerce Fuel, which, I’m pretty sure, you’ve mentioned before. There are other ones that are inspiring, How I Built This, for example. My First Million is another good one.
The DTC also has a podcast as well.
You joined our Mastermind group on Facebook. But where can people connect with you if they want to? And with the brand, of course.
I would say Instagram is good. Our brand is Oak and Rove. My personal Instagram is just Harrison_Bevins or LinkedIn.
Harrison, it was really great to have you on the show, sharing all these gold nuggets that you learned throughout this process, from being a finance guy out of New York, transforming into an entrepreneur and founder. Thank you very much for having you on the show.
Thank you for having me, Marco. It’s been awesome. It’s been fun.
