#35 - King of Kickstarter

Shaan sits down with Peter Dering (@peterdering), Founder & CEO of Peak Design, maker of beautiful, highly functional redesigns of photography equipment. He quit his construction job and traveled the world with $25K in savings. After awhile, he found it to be a pain in the ass carrying his camera around with him. So he thought of a camera holder clip that’d go onto your bag strap. Next thing you know, he filmed a kickstarter video to accompany his simple yet revolutionary product and within 90 seconds of launching he had his first sale. Bags, tripods, straps. Almost every year Peak Design releases some sort of iteration of an outdated piece of equipment and it SELLS. Last year they employed 38 people and did $70m in revenue. He owns 100% of it. Like I said, you want to be this guy. He talks about the process of how you actually create a physical product from scratch, how to work with international distributors, why and how he structured a public benefit entity, how to offset business carbon footprint and how much it ACTUALLY costs (it's tiny!). Have a listen to learn how to kickstart your own carbon-neutral Kickstarter empire. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:02Speaker 00

  Peak Design est une marque qui produit des produits fantastiques.

• 0:06Speaker 01

  Il y a beaucoup de choses bonnes à dire sur le Peak Design Backpack.

• 0:09Speaker 00

  Je ne pense pas que j'ai jamais été aussi enthousiaste pour parler d'un sac. C'est le Tripod de voyage de Peak Design. Il a beaucoup d'éléments uniques que je n'ai jamais vus sur un tripod avant.

• 0:19Speaker 02

  Cette chose est si chaude en ce moment. Votre grand-mère peut sûrement en parler.

• 0:23Speaker 01

  Le Backpack de tous les jours de Peak Design. Un really, really fucking awesome bag. Tons d'innovation, tonnes de choses à célébrer. S'il y a des prix pour les sacs, ils devraient gagner tous. Juste parce que c'est un changement de jeu.

• 0:38Speaker 02

  Nous sommes la compagnie qui a gagné le deuxième plus gros sur Kickstarter dans notre histoire collective. Un peu au nord de 30 millions d'dollars.

• 0:48Speaker 02

  En revenant en 2010, c'est quand j'ai quitté mon travail. J'étais un ingénieur de construction. Et je vivais sur mes économies de 25 millions. J'ai fait une promenade de quatre mois quand j'avais 25 ans. Je suis allé en Inde, en Asie du Sud, en Australie et en Nouvelle-Zélande. J'avais une caméra avec moi tout le temps. Un vrai mal à la poche à porter avec moi parce que c'est sur une chaîne et qui brûle contre votre poitrine. J'ai juste eu cette idée. C'est cette clé qui clame sur une chaîne de sac.

• 1:14Speaker 02

  Et votre caméra est immédiatement accessible, totalement sans mains, lockée dans votre chaîne de caméra. Quand vous en avez besoin, appuyez sur le bouton, le sortez. Nous avons donc totalement résolu ce problème. Aujourd'hui, nous vendons des millions chaque année. Il n'y a rien de plus doux que cette première Kickstarter quand le argent vient en roulant et les gens disent :

• 1:33Speaker 01

  J'aime cette idée.

• 1:34Shaan Puri?

  C'est incroyable.

• 1:35Speaker 02

  J'ai juste vendu une chose que je n'ai même pas fait encore à un gars en Angleterre que je n'ai jamais rencontré.

• 1:39Shaan Puri?

  Oui, c'est match.

• 1:40Speaker 02

  Dieu, Internet est cool.

• 1:45Speaker 02

  Vous avez l'e-mail de vos amis et de famille qui sort. Et c'est l'extent du marketing que j'ai fait. Je veux dire que c'est la somme totale. J'ai envoyé mon e-mail à mes amis et à mes familles. Franchement, toute l'aspect entrepreneurial, l'industrie où vous sortez et vous raisez de l'argent et vous montez les fonds, n'a même pas traversé mon esprit. Je me suis dit : Ouh, devrais-je raise mon argent pour ça ? Non, c'est ridicule. Je vais faire la fucking chose.

• 2:06Speaker 02

  L'année dernière, je pense que nous avions un moyens de 38 employés et nous avons fait entre 65 et 70 millions.

• 2:14Shaan Puri?

  Five million is not enough. Ten million. Fifteen million. Twenty million dollars.

• 2:17Speaker 02

  Hundred million dollars.

• 2:18Speaker 01

  Half a billion. Eight hundred and fifty million dollars.

• 2:20Shaan Puri?

  One or two people in a bedroom actually the threats to these like giant multimillion dollar companies because you have creativity and you have nothing to lose.

• 2:29Shaan Puri?

  Add another zero to that price, buddy. Add two more zeros.

• 2:36Shaan Puri?

  Every week, we sit down with self-made millionaires and ask them, how did you do it? I didn't start a podcast. I started my own personal business school and the teachers are the successful entrepreneurs behind the biggest brands and businesses that we find today. I wanted to know the real stories with all the details, like, how did you get your first hundred customers? What did it feel like when shit hit the fan? I ask them, how'd you spend your money now that you're rich? And what would you do if you were starting over from scratch again today? If you're like me and you want to own your own business instead of living a nine to five job, this is the podcast for you. The Hustle presents My First Million.

• 3:19Shaan Puri?

  We're good to go.

• 3:19Speaker 02

  Cool.

• 3:20Shaan Puri?

  So Peter from Peak Design, how are you?

• 3:22Speaker 02

  I'm doing just fine, man. It's a, it's a new year. We're ready to rock.

• 3:25Shaan Puri?

  Ready to go? Okay, cool. I was telling you right before this, these are my favorite types of interviews where we just met, I don't know your full story. I know enough to know that it's interesting, but I don't know what are all the details. And so I'm going to be discovering it for the first time because in some of these interviews, I already know the, and I'm just trying to get the greatest hits out of the artist. I'm trying to get you to play your, your best stories that I already know. In this case, I don't know exactly what they are. We'll be figuring it out together.

• 3:48Speaker 02

  Fair enough. I like to play that greatest hits album myself, no problem.

• 3:52Shaan Puri?

  And so the reason I think this is interesting is because you make a product that is very relatable, that I want, that a lot of people want. I think your background was kind of interesting where you weren't just one of those people who said, I want to start a business just for starting a business's sake necessarily, it sounded like. You've had phenomenal success on Kickstarter, so give people a sense of two things. What does the company do?

• 4:12Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 4:13Shaan Puri?

  And then the second thing is, give us a sense of scale. I like to talk about, you know, what you guys have achieved because really we're going to work backwards and say, great, how'd you start? But if people don't know what you've achieved, they'll tune out within five minutes because they're like, I don't know why I should care. Why should they care?

• 4:26Speaker 02

  All right. Well, let's see here. Scale. We are at present, I think the company that's earned the, the second most on Kickstarter in our collective history, somewhere a little north of thirty million dollars on Kickstarter, maybe, maybe thirty-two or so.

• 4:39Shaan Puri?

  Who would be first?

• 4:40Speaker 02

  Pebble.

• 4:40Shaan Puri?

  Pebble was first.

• 4:41Speaker 02

  Yep, Pebble was first. Three campaigns, 12 million, 12 million, and 20 million dollars on their campaigns. Smartwatches, who knew?

• 4:48Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, who knew?

• 4:49Speaker 02

  I guess Apple and Samsung also knew. In any case, I think with our 2020 Kickstarter, which it should be no surprise to people, we're going to be doing another Kickstarter in 2020. I'm very optimistic that we're going to take that spot. I think our next product is going to be certainly the most widely adopted. I think one of the coolest, and no, I can't share with you what it is.

• 5:10Shaan Puri?

  That's alright.

• 5:10Speaker 02

  But it's gonna be a lot of fun.

• 5:11Shaan Puri?

  So, okay, so tell people, what does the company do? What do you guys make in general?

• 5:14Speaker 02

  So, going back to 2010, that's when I quit my job. I was a construction engineer. And for about two years, I had this idea kind of tinkering around in my head. After I did like a four-month walkabout when I was 25, I went on a leave of absence from work. I went to India and Southeast Asia and Australia, New Zealand. I had a camera with me the whole time. And it was great because I fancied myself a photographer and a writer and having that little semi-spiritual journey as a young buck.

• 5:43Shaan Puri?

  And what is a walkabout? How does that actually work? You take some time, you travel, and you do what?

• 5:49Speaker 02

  Well, I think quite specifically, you don't make a plan. You just go figure it out. So I bought a one-way ticket to Hong Kong and arrived at 6:00 AM and had literally no idea what to do. It was kind of weird because I'd never asked it. And the funny thing is, is it dawned on me for the first time, as I got off the train, I was like, holy shit, I don't know what to do. Because it was also 6:00 AM and there was no, like, you can't check into a hostel or something like that. So anyway.

• 6:17Shaan Puri?

  And you decided to do that because what?

• 6:19Speaker 02

  My buddy Dave was three years older than me. Coincidentally, he's my CFO now. And he had taken five leaves of absence from Ernst & Young, where he was working. And it was just a cool thing that he did, is he'd just go explore the world.

• 6:32Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 6:33Speaker 02

  And say, if you don't hire me back, that's fine, but I'll come back if you got a job for me. And it just worked for him. And so that was kind of the confidence and the inspiration for traveling. Once you experience that, you know, I'd studied abroad in college and went to Europe for my first time, first time out of the country. And it was clear that travel is just, it's so full of novelty. You know, one of the coolest things in this world is doing something for the first time.

• 6:56Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 6:56Speaker 02

  And travel is the opportunity to do that nonstop.

• 7:01Shaan Puri?

  Right, I love it. Yeah, I studied abroad and it wasn't really a tough decision on my part, but I was trying to convince friends to do it and they were all coming up with reasons not to. And I just told them, I said, "Look, look at the year ahead of us. The people who studied abroad won't shut up about it and none of them regret it." So like, what are the odds it's really gonna be like a bad thing? We're probably gonna end up just like them, not shutting up about it, not regretting. That's exactly what happened.

• 7:23Speaker 02

  That is exactly what happened. It's, you're batting a thousand across that.

• 7:27Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 7:28Speaker 02

  Every time, every time.

• 7:29Shaan Puri?

  So you're on the walkabout?

• 7:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, and I had a camera with me the whole time and it was a real pain in the ass to carry with me because it's on a strap and it's banging against your chest and you look like a tourist, you are a tourist, but you know.

• 7:41Shaan Puri?

  You're wearing the badge.

• 7:42Speaker 02

  That's right, you're wearing the badge. But it's essential. If you're a photographer, you have to have it with you. So I just came up with this idea, which actually doesn't necessarily make you look like too much less of a tool, but it's incredibly useful. It's this clip that clamps on to a backpack strap and then your camera is immediately accessible, totally hands-free, locked into your camera strap. When you need it, push the button, pull it out.

• 8:04Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 8:05Speaker 02

  And to this day, you know, I think Peak Design makes 120 different SKUs at least. We still sell hundreds of thousands of capture camera clips every year. And yeah, almost 10 years running now. It's just a fantastic product.

• 8:18Shaan Puri?

  And people used to put this just around their neck, right? You just hang your camera around your neck, this sort of heavy DSLR camera around your neck.

• 8:24Speaker 02

  Well, and I'd say certainly that's still the most common way people do it. Of course, at the time I was, you know, when I was 26, I was like, "No one is ever gonna use a neck strap again. We have revolutionized the world." And in retrospect, a little bit more humbly, it's like, "Well, the thing is, it's actually kind of a niche case. In that niche case, it's an excellent product, but it's not the be all end all." And that realization came soon enough and actually that led us to our second product, which was a camera strap. But guess what? This one solved the problem of, you know what's a real pain in the ass? Removing camera straps and putting them back on. It's a ridiculously complex friction mechanism that is hard to figure out on your own. So we totally solved that problem and camera straps again to this day are our very best selling product.

• 9:09Speaker 02

  We sell millions of camera straps every year and so now we've got clips and now we've got straps. And we're chugging along about four years into this business and a very well known photographer named Trey Ratcliffe called us up and said, hey, you guys are solving all the problems in photography and you're doing it in cool ways. I want to make a camera bag with you guys.

• 9:29Shaan Puri?

  Okay.

• 9:29Speaker 02

  And so given that this guy was going to throw his considerable reach behind it, we endeavored to design a camera bag. And that was, you know, we were not bag designers, but we took the exact same fresh approach to making a camera bag that we did everything else. And we said, well, what are the actual problems? And that's what Peak Design, I think, has been really, really good at over the years is truly discerning what the actual problems are, not paying attention to the gimmicks and then just executing beautifully and elegantly on those problems.

• 10:01Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 10:01Speaker 02

  And, and being very clear about that in our marketing. Here's the problem. This is why we did it. I think it looks nice. What do you think?

• 10:08Shaan Puri?

  Wow. I like the way you said that and I like the principle, but I like the way you said it more because I found that when I do these interviews, there's like two things that would just stick with me from each one. And I know that's one of them.

• 10:18Speaker 02

  I'm just getting warmed up, buddy.

• 10:19Shaan Puri?

  It's not going to sound profound, but to me it sinks in because the best principles tend to be the simplest ones. If you can actually drill them into your head and stick to it and not get distracted. And it sounds like that's what you guys did. So you go from construction engineer, which I don't know exactly what that means, but I'm imagining yellow hat on you. I don't know. I don't know if that's true.

• 10:38Speaker 02

  That's about right.

• 10:38Shaan Puri?

  You got a job and the first thing you made was this, the clip.

• 10:41Speaker 02

  Uh huh.

• 10:41Shaan Puri?

  How do you go about making a product? Where do you like, you don't, you don't know how to do that.

• 10:46Speaker 02

  That's true. Uh, I did not know how to do that. And I, I look back on that period of my life and I, I think I know, I would know what to do now, much better than I did then, but whatever I did, it worked. And what it, what it was, was I first made crude prototypes. I mean, really ugly things out of plastic and wood to prove the very basic concept. And I was like, yep, you can hang a camera from your backpack. Great. And then I used a tool that I'd gotten pretty good at from construction called SketchUp. SketchUp is a 3D CAD modeling software, but it pretty much only handles right angles.

• 11:22Shaan Puri?

  I've used SketchUp. It's like the kind of beginner-y thing, right?

• 11:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 11:26Shaan Puri?

  It's not like AutoCAD. It's like...

• 11:28Speaker 02

  It's not SolidWorks.

• 11:30Shaan Puri?

  Is it free? Is that why I used it?

• 11:32Speaker 02

  It is free. You can pay for it now. And it certainly has broader applications, especially for architects and things like that. But I took that simple product and made it do curves and made it do angles. And certainly a great tool for kind of my conceptual three-dimensional design of what this thing might look like.

• 11:49Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 11:49Speaker 02

  And so even though it's not a mechanical engineer's program of choice by any stretch, I maxed it out and was able to crank out 3D printed prototypes and just kind of further refine the concept. And on a hiking trail one time, I met this 60-year-old dude, old-school hippie who's got a little compound outside of Auburn. And I told him about my camera clip and he told me that he was a machinist and that he would make the prototype for me if I came and visited him.

• 12:14Shaan Puri?

  Okay.

• 12:15Speaker 02

  So I went up to Auburn and stayed in his guest trailer.

• 12:18Shaan Puri?

  And at this point, are you thinking this is a company or you're just like, "I'm making this clip for fun"? What's your mindset at that time?

• 12:24Speaker 02

  Okay, so I don't think I was thinking that it was a company. I was fixated on the product itself, but I had every belief that this product was going to pay the bills. I just thought it was so damn useful.

• 12:36Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 12:37Speaker 02

  That it was going to pay the bills. And I'm living on my savings. I quit my job with about 25 grand in savings.

• 12:43Shaan Puri?

  And you quit to do this?

• 12:44Speaker 02

  To do this.

• 12:45Shaan Puri?

  You told your boss, you told your family and your friends, you're like, "I'm gonna make this camera clip."

• 12:49Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 12:49Shaan Puri?

  And what'd they say?

• 12:50Speaker 02

  Gosh, it's funny. You know, I certainly don't remember encountering like...

• 12:53Shaan Puri?

  Geez, man, you're crazy.

• 12:55Speaker 02

  I recall encouragement, I suppose, but it was very much a solo journey, you know? I think that, you know, people will cite bravery or something like that. I kind of pushed back on that. The fact is, I was a, you know, 25-year-old dude with an engineering degree.

• 13:09Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 13:09Speaker 02

  And 25 grand in my pocket. Like, the worst that was gonna happen is I don't have 25 grand in my pocket and I go be an engineer again.

• 13:16Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 13:17Speaker 02

  You know? Yeah, I wasn't super out there on some cliff.

• 13:21Shaan Puri?

  You were realistic about your risk.

• 13:23Speaker 02

  I was realistic about my risk and I also wasn't in the, you know, frankly, the whole entrepreneurial side of funding a business where you go out there and you raise money and you ramp up the stakes right away. Or you, I mean, you're not going to get debt financing when you don't, when you don't have anything to show. So that's not even an option, but it didn't even occur to me. I was like, I'm going to make this thing and then I am going to sell it.

• 13:44Shaan Puri?

  Right. That'll be the money part.

• 13:46Speaker 02

  That would be the money part and I'm going to sell it for more than I made it. And that's all there is to it. It did not even cross my mind like, ooh, should I raise money for this?

• 13:53Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 13:54Speaker 02

  No, it's ridiculous. I'm going to make the fucking thing.

• 13:55Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 13:57Speaker 02

  And then.

• 13:57Shaan Puri?

  Even y'all's Kickstarter, right? You've done 30 million and Kickstarter's.

• 14:00Speaker 02

  Uh huh.

• 14:01Shaan Puri?

  And people say crowdfunding, to me, this is like you're pre, you're selling your product. You're just selling it before. You're saying, hey, here's what I'm gonna do. If you're interested, buy it now. I'll use that money to make it. It's not donations or equity in your company, right?

• 14:12Speaker 02

  No, it's not donations, it's not equity. And you're also, having done correctly, you're not putting it up there to say, hey, world, I made this thing. And if you tell me that it's great, I will, I will go and go out there and complete it.

• 14:24Shaan Puri?

  Right. I'm doing this.

• 14:25Speaker 02

  You're like, yeah, I'm doing this. I'm launching this. Kickstarter, launch this idea and, and give that cash upfront. It's actually a perfect exchange, right? You're giving away a little bit of margin for cash upfront and they're getting the product for cheaper and they get to be the evangelist and have a closer personal connection to it. Kickstarter definitely didn't intend for there to be a ton of product companies that are going out there and selling million dollars worth of stuff. They intended for artists to say, hey, I want to make a cool thing. It's going to cost $5,000 for me to produce. But if you guys pay for it ahead of time, I'll produce it.

• 14:59Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 15:00Speaker 02

  We kind of flipped the model on its head, as did the other earlier Kickstarter successes, but obviously that's what's really propelled Kickstarter into what it is today.

• 15:10Shaan Puri?

  All right. It's 2020, new year. It's going to be a big year and you know, we had to come in with some new awesome partners. So for January, we are partnering up with Microsoft and My First Million. That's right. This episode is brought to you by Microsoft because whether you're just starting out or you're well on your way to your first million, Microsoft Teams can help your team hit the ground running with must have features like real time chat, editing and video calling, all in one easy to use platform. Teams is a no brainer at a price you can afford. Yep, there is a free version of Teams as in it costs $0. See for yourself at aka.ms/theshustle. Again, that's aka.ms/theshustle to check out Teams brought to you by Microsoft.

• 15:52Speaker 02

  Love it. Microsoft, that is a trillion dollar company, right? We're talking about my first million. They're on my first trillion. So that's goals for everybody. They got there because they build epic products. Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint. These are products that stand the test of time. And now they've come out with Teams to help teams chat, communicate and work together. And I think it's awesome. All right, great. Let's get back to this episode.

• 16:17Shaan Puri?

  Right. And so this first one you did a Kickstarter with?

• 16:19Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 16:19Shaan Puri?

  Why'd you decide to do that? Somebody said, hey, you should do a Kickstarter? Where did that come from?

• 16:23Speaker 02

  Like three people within the course of one week in January 2011, because I had no business plan.

• 16:28Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 16:28Speaker 02

  Mind you, I was going to make this thing and I was confident that I could get people to buy it. But as far as selling it, I was like, I don't know, I'll figure that out later. You know, had Kickstarter not come around, this whole thing would probably be a slightly different story.

• 16:39Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 16:39Speaker 02

  In that I wouldn't be here, but.

• 16:40Shaan Puri?

  I'd be talking to a construction engineer.

• 16:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's right.

• 16:42Shaan Puri?

  Who has his own very cool clip.

• 16:45Speaker 02

  Actually, you probably wouldn't be talking to a construction engineer. I'd be on a site somewhere wishing that the end of the day would come.

• 16:51Shaan Puri?

  So three people recommend, hey, you should do a Kickstarter. You don't even know what this is at the time.

• 16:55Speaker 02

  But I, you know, I check it out, obviously. And it's like, oh, no brainer. This is what I'm going to do. And then it's like, it looks like I have to make a video. And so I made my first and made and edited my first video.

• 17:05Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 17:06Speaker 02

  And the funny thing is, is it became the second most funded project of all time ever on Kickstarter at the time. And I gotta say, man, I'm sure this sounds cocky. I'm sure it sounds arrogant, but I wasn't the least bit surprised.

• 17:19Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 17:19Speaker 02

  I thought it was such a good idea. And I looked at the other projects that it had made, that had done better. And I was like, man, capture is way more useful than that stuff. So I think this thing is going to kill it.

• 17:31Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 17:32Speaker 02

  And it did. It totally did. And it was a dream come true, man. Like, there is nothing as sweet as that first Kickstarter when the, you know, the money comes rolling in and people are saying, I like that idea. It's just such affirmation of everything you've been working on.

• 17:48Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 17:48Speaker 02

  And it's a really.

• 17:49Shaan Puri?

  Do you remember like that morning when you, you know, you're waking up or you're seeing the orders come in? What was that? What were you doing that day? What was it like?

• 17:57Speaker 02

  I was at work in the dog patch. I was kind of borrowing desk space in a little six person company that was called Plume, which would eventually become Pax and Jewel.

• 18:07Shaan Puri?

  Okay.

• 18:07Speaker 02

  When they were six people and I was hanging out there. I pressed go on the Kickstarter. I'm like, well, see what happens. And I think it took like 90 seconds before some dude, he couldn't have even watched the whole video, but some dude in England, just a random person backed the project. And I was like, holy shit. That's incredible. I just sold a thing that I haven't even made yet to a guy in England that I've never met.

• 18:26Shaan Puri?

  Right. This is magic.

• 18:26Speaker 02

  God, the internet is cool, you know? And then they just started rolling in. Of course, then you got the friends and family email that goes out. And that's the extent of the marketing that I did. I mean, that is the sum total is I emailed my friends and family saying, hey, check this thing out. Maybe I posted on Facebook. I mean, 2011. Yeah.

• 18:43Shaan Puri?

  And so it just got picked up by bloggers or what was the spread like?

• 18:46Speaker 02

  Totally. The first blog was Petapixel and the second blog was Gizmodo and it really, it really rocked.

• 18:51Shaan Puri?

  Did you do anything, you know, either intentionally or unintentionally to help that spread? Did you have like really good assets or, you know, like?

• 18:58Speaker 02

  Nope.

• 18:59Shaan Puri?

  Nothing?

• 18:59Speaker 02

  Nope.

• 19:00Shaan Puri?

  Your Kickstarter video was good? Like now that you look back on it, are you like, that was a good one or you're cringe?

• 19:04Speaker 02

  It's hysterical. Oh, it's, it's, it's, it's actually beyond cringe. It's into, it's into just laugh, laugh country, you know? The cringe worthy ones are like years two, three, or maybe like three and four where you're like, oh, we're good at this now.

• 19:16Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 19:17Speaker 02

  And you, you put something up there and it's like, it's like, oh, this is emotional. This, this gets at the, at the heart.

• 19:22Shaan Puri?

  Right. We are apple.

• 19:23Speaker 02

  Carriage. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Those are the ones where you're cringing because you're like, you know, you're like, oh God, you're so amateur.

• 19:30Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 19:31Speaker 02

  And now we've settled into something where I feel confident that we do know what we're doing and that, and the products and also the marketing products and the collateral we put out are truly dialed on, on kind of a, a global platform.

• 19:43Shaan Puri?

  Right. That first Kickstarter does how much? Five, six million, something like that?

• 19:46Speaker 02

  No, no, no. The first Kickstarter did $364,000, which was good for second place of all time. And then the next Kickstarter we, we did, it was 215,000, but it was like a 20 day campaign. So in my mind, because the dollars per day.

• 20:00Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 20:01Speaker 02

  Were twice as much. That was a better campaign. And then the next one after that was Capture Version 2, same damn thing, just a fair amount better. That did like 816, 818,000. And then we did Slide and Clutch, which are basically camera straps, which is kind of like, our second Kickstarter had been camera straps. So Straps V2, that did 868. And in the meantime, we of course, like we had developed international distribution because when you go on Kickstarter, random ass people throughout the world would be like, hey, I live in Croatia and I would like to be your distributor here. And you go, prepay? And they're like, sure. Like, oh, well, great.

• 20:40Shaan Puri?

  Fantastic.

• 20:41Speaker 02

  Let's do it.

• 20:42Shaan Puri?

  Right. We just say no more.

• 20:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly. And we've legitimately grown our distribution that way, you know, from all these people who started super small, and now they are writing Peak Design into the way, like, Peak Design has become the anchor tenant of their distribution companies. That's the case in Hong Kong, which manages a ton of different Asian countries. That's the case in France. There's a case in the UK. So it feels really good. The Czech Republic, our Czech Republic distributor.

• 21:10Shaan Puri?

  So these are, these are not retailers. These are distributors.

• 21:12Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 21:13Shaan Puri?

  And so, explain what, how this works. So who is this person? What they buy from you, then they sell to?

• 21:17Speaker 02

  To their country. And in some cases, they're selling to a network of retailers, right? It's the middleman. We can't translate into Czech. We have no capacity to understand the Czech market. They do. They're boots on the ground there. So we sell them $100 product. We'd like to sell it to them for 40 bucks.

• 21:33Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 21:33Speaker 02

  So that, keep that in mind. These are the kind of details and information that people, I think it's important to know.

• 21:37Shaan Puri?

  Yes.

• 21:37Speaker 02

  They would like to have what's called 60 points margin to work with there and go turn that, and they'll probably sell it. You know, they'll, they'll take 20 bucks from that $100 product and, and the retailer will get 40.

• 21:48Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 21:48Speaker 02

  There's a lot of money, a lot of the value of a product goes into the price of that resale.

• 21:54Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 21:54Speaker 02

  Which is of course why direct to consumer is, is, is.

• 21:57Shaan Puri?

  And so, for you guys, which one, are you guys 50/50? Is direct to consumer a bigger part of your business?

• 22:03Speaker 02

  By volume, wholesale is larger, by volume of sales, that is. If you were to include Amazon, the websites, and Kickstarter, and eBay for our, for our secondary market, just a little bit larger in terms of revenue.

• 22:16Shaan Puri?

  Gotcha.

• 22:17Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 22:17Shaan Puri?

  And so for you guys, you start adding these channels, I'm sure, sort of organically, right?

• 22:21Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 22:21Shaan Puri?

  People reach out, oh, this is a good idea. We should do more of that.

• 22:23Speaker 02

  Correct.

• 22:24Shaan Puri?

  Oh, why aren't we on Amazon? We should get on Amazon, that sort of thing. Is that how things evolved?

• 22:27Speaker 02

  Ah, yeah, absolutely. The notion of the, the premeditated business where you sit down and you formulate your business plan. I don't know, maybe that does exist, but from my experience, being good at business is about being good at reacting to what's six inches in front of your face. Certainly, the more, I'm sure the more proactive you can be, the better. You got to remember that proactivity is kind of a double edged sword because you might think you're being proactive, but you can be just being inefficient. Meaning you think something's going to be a good idea, so you invest a lot of time, effort and energy into that. And in retrospect, Monday morning quarterback says like, God, we didn't, you know, maybe we shouldn't have gone for selling to third-party retailers and letting them sell on Amazon. That that kind of just ruined it. So, I don't know, there are all sorts of situations where I think reactivity is every bit as wise as proactivity.

• 23:12Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 23:13Speaker 02

  And it certainly sets up for the natural tendency toward laziness that most humans have.

• 23:17Shaan Puri?

  The balance there, right, is if you're going to be highly adaptive and responding and reacting to what's coming your way, you still need to do some proactive things to like, create opportunities, to get things to just kick up the dust and let some new things come to you. So like the Kickstarter created a whole bunch of opportunities and then you reacted well to those. And so how do you, I guess, what are the things that you proactively do to just sort of create some action, kick the dust up a little bit?

• 23:42Speaker 02

  Well, we only do one thing, and that is design great products. And every year, we will have designed a great product. And that, I mean, we're a product company. So doing other ancillary things, like, you know, there's a lot of product companies, like Takeaway, for example. We are not like a way. They are, they're a marketing company first. They are selling a brand and a lifestyle first. We allow our brand and lifestyle to follow behind on the heels of the product. The actual Away suitcase is, it's a totally fine suitcase, but it's nothing at all special, really. It's essentially a white label suitcase out there from any suitcase manufacturer, and they stuck a nameplate on it and got a bunch of models and well-known people to say, this is a brand.

• 24:27Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 24:28Speaker 02

  And that's not what we do. We, I totally respect that as one model of doing business, but we are a product company.

• 24:33Shaan Puri?

  What do you think of the weaknesses of doing that, going that route? Because you guys chose not to go that route, or it never appealed to you, maybe?

• 24:39Speaker 02

  The weaknesses of what we're doing, or what Away does?

• 24:42Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, to be conscious of, right? Let's say there's some strengths with it, but what are the weaknesses?

• 24:46Speaker 02

  Well, I think, I think it's rather, I think that people are a bit fickle when it comes down to it. I mean, there is brand loyalty that exists, and that is a real thing, and it's a very important thing. But if you don't actually create innovation, I think that competition will eventually eat your lunch because... Because they're going to outbid you on the digital ads. And when it becomes a race of who's willing to throw down the biggest checkbook and get the most play across the digital landscape, I don't think that's territory that we certainly don't want to be in. We'd rather be able to come in with a clearly superior product, not have to spend very much on marketing, and let the product market itself.

• 25:20Shaan Puri?

  Right. What do you guys, I read a stat, it's a couple of years old now, but I read a stat that was 2016. It said you guys had, I think, 18 employees at the time. I don't know. How many do you guys have now?

• 25:30Speaker 02

  Call it 42.

• 25:31Shaan Puri?

  42. And it said, hey, these guys are doing, you know, something like 23 million in revenue on 18 employees. Obviously, a million dollars a head in revenue, or a little bit more than that. And I thought that was pretty remarkable, and I love that stat. I always pay attention to the sort of the per capita earnings of a company. And is that something you think about, or did you sort of architect the business in a way to be sort of small footprint on the number of people it takes or dollars it takes to build? Do you think about the sort of the revenue per head?

• 25:59Speaker 02

  Only retrospectively, only like, it's kind of a fun thing to look at after the fact.

• 26:05Shaan Puri?

  Yeah.

• 26:05Speaker 02

  And it remains true. You know, last year, I think we had an average of 38 employees, and we did somewhere between 65 and 70 million. So we're almost at $2 million in revenue per employee.

• 26:15Shaan Puri?

  Right. And the business has been, you haven't raised money since then, right? We talked about the Kickstarter, so you guys have been bootstrapped the whole way.

• 26:21Speaker 02

  Bootstrapped the whole way. Yeah.

• 26:23Shaan Puri?

  Remarkable.

• 26:23Speaker 02

  What keeps the overhead low and keeps it, keeps it thin is that we don't, we really don't want to hire new people. We only do it when we're bursting at the seams. And, and there's all sorts of good reasons for doing that. I think the, the most important is because we don't want our culture to experience any kind of shocks to the system.

• 26:43Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 26:43Speaker 02

  You know, this is a family that's kind of grown up over time. And we can add, you know, five to eight people per year at infinitum without affecting our culture. And, and the larger we get, the probably the more we can add, but slowly. That will allow it to, to maintain itself. And that's the most important thing. Like, at the end of the day, the point of Peak Design, the point has never been about making money. That is a result. The point of Peak Design is for the employees of Peak Design. To enjoy their lives. That's why we exist.

• 27:13Shaan Puri?

  So not even for the, to make products that people love, you're saying.

• 27:16Speaker 02

  It's not to make, making products that, that people love and doing right by the customers are things that we enjoy doing. But it is not the point. Like when I, when I searched myself, did I, did I quit my construction job to make other people happy? I didn't. I quit my construction job to make me happy.

• 27:34Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 27:34Speaker 02

  And hopefully that's the reason that everyone gets into business is that you think there's an opportunity for greater fulfillment in your life. And happy is kind of a weird word, you know? I, I do think a word like fulfillment is probably a

• 27:45Shaan Puri?

  Better word.

• 27:45Speaker 02

  A better word. But it was somewhat controversial within Peak Design to be very upfront and brazen with that as like, no, the purpose of Peak Design is so that we can be happy people.

• 27:56Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 27:56Speaker 02

  And, and some of the people were like, ah, but that sounds so selfish. And you can call it selfish if you want. To me, it is more honest.

• 28:04Shaan Puri?

  Honest, yeah.

• 28:05Speaker 02

  Than it is selfish.

• 28:06Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, I joke about this a lot, which is companies by law essentially, depending on what type of company you are, you're incorporated as your job is to maximize shareholder value.

• 28:16Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 28:16Shaan Puri?

  It's the actual requirement of your, of your, that's, if we're talking about mission, that's the required mission for most companies. They state that their mission is to make the customers happy. They probably honestly are trying to do what you're doing.

• 28:29Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 28:30Shaan Puri?

  And then they'll, then the sort of the, the final, you know, lie or hand waviness that, that happens is, is then talking about making the world a better place.

• 28:38Speaker 02

  Uh-huh.

• 28:39Shaan Puri?

  You know, just tack that on at the end. And it's funny, you say exactly what you're saying at, at our company. I told the team exactly this. I said, we're trying to build the company that we want to work at.

• 28:49Speaker 02

  Uh-huh.

• 28:50Shaan Puri?

  That's the whole thing.

• 28:51Speaker 02

  That's the whole point.

• 28:52Shaan Puri?

  And in order to do that, we're going to need to, what is, what's the type of company we want to be at? We want to make awesome products that we find interesting and innovative and scratch our creative itch. We want to get them to millions of people because that's fun and hearing their feedback it matters to us. And we need to make money so that this whole operation can exist and we can have an awesome workplace with awesome people and hire the best talent.

• 29:11Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 29:11Shaan Puri?

  And that's what this is about. And it was a very foreign thing that I was telling them that seemed. Like the only logical thing to me at the time.

• 29:19Speaker 02

  Mm hmm. I certainly agree, and I'm really proud of us for articulating it and for the rest of the team ultimately being okay with, you know, us getting very public about that.

• 29:28Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 29:29Speaker 02

  I will tack on that that last part which you mentioned, which I think frequently is hand waving. Well, first off, we became a public benefit corporation, so.

• 29:37Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, explain that what that is. So people probably heard that, but they don't maybe understand.

• 29:40Speaker 02

  So basically, instead of being, we're a C corp, and instead of being beholden to maximize shareholder value at the risk of being sued by the shareholders, which in the case of Peak Design isn't a very big risk because I'm the only owner.

• 29:52Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 29:53Speaker 02

  But still, from a kind of a.

• 29:55Shaan Puri?

  Structural perspective.

• 29:56Speaker 02

  Structural perspective, or a spiritual standpoint even, like the, we wanted to make sure that the point of Peak Design has nothing to do with shareholder value and has everything to do with upholding our mission, our mission and our purpose. We kind of delineate the two, the purpose, for us to be happy. The mission is six different points, including build the best thing, succeed at the expense of nobody, offset our environmental impact, use our voice to inspire positive change, put happiness over growth. But the part about offsetting our environmental impact and then using our voice to inspire positive change is really what drove the thing I've been working probably the most on, which is a new organization called Climate Neutral.

• 30:32Shaan Puri?

  Right. And so just to explain the mechanics first. So you said you're a C corp, but you're a public benefit company, which, which means what? What do you do if you're an entrepreneur who wants to do this? How do you do that?

• 30:41Speaker 02

  When you file with the Secretary of State, you have to make an election to be a PBC, Public Benefit Corporation. You can still be an S corp or a C corp. I don't know if LLC, I would imagine LLC works as well within that, but then it's just, you know, about your operating agreement and things like that.

• 31:00Shaan Puri?

  And that allows you to not adhere to the maximize shareholder value as the core tenant requirement.

• 31:06Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 31:06Shaan Puri?

  And instead you replace that with your.

• 31:08Speaker 02

  You can replace it with, you know, I don't know if it's actually whatever you want. To my knowledge it is, but I think it would stand to reason that it has to be some specific public benefit. You exist for the broader shareholders, which includes the public that we all live amongst.

• 31:22Shaan Puri?

  Gotcha. And so you have your company, that's Peak Design, and now you have a new entity, is that right?

• 31:28Speaker 02

  It's a new entity, it's a, it's a non, it's a 501(c)(3), it's a nonprofit. I'm the founder, along with a guy named Jonathan Cedar, who heads a company called BioLite. The CEO of Climate Neutral, his name is Austin Whitman, and there's about five people working for the org right now.

• 31:40Shaan Puri?

  And so what are you trying to do with Climate Neutral?

• 31:42Speaker 02

  Climate Neutral is an organization that owns a label called Certified Climate Neutral. And when you see Certified Climate Neutral on a product, it means that the brand displaying it has measured their entire carbon footprint, all the way down to raw materials, reduced what they reasonably can, and then critically offset the rest. And it is all about the, the fact that the conversation about climate change is what it is, and businesses sit there and continue to wring their hands and say, oh, we, we hope that by 2050, we will have reduced our footprint, or like, we're going to straight line our reductions between now and 2050, without actually taking any concrete action, is absolutely abhorrent to me,

• 32:25Speaker 02

  especially when I understood finally what Peak Design's carbon footprint was, and then how much it costs to eradicate.

• 32:31Shaan Puri?

  And how, how'd you do that? How'd you figure out what your?

• 32:33Speaker 02

  I hired a consultancy for $40,000, which was a lot of money, and I wasn't too happy about having to pay that. That led to part of Climate Neutral, which is the fact that we'll measure your footprint for free, with a tool that we're developing, along with some of the world's best carbon LCA experts. So we've handled that part of it.

• 32:51Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 32:51Speaker 02

  And then the other thing is that.

• 32:52Shaan Puri?

  What'd you learn? So they, you pay 40 grand, they did an analysis, and what'd they give you back? What were you surprised to learn?

• 32:57Speaker 02

  Well, at the $10,000 mark, they had done what's called a, they'd used a tool called the Scope 3 eValuator, and they ask you, how many dollars did you spend on metals? How much on plastics? How much on air shipping? How much on sea shipping, et cetera? And they said, okay, your footprint is about 16,700 tons, plus or minus 20%. And this was at the $10,000 mark in the contract. And I was like, okay, well, what do we do now? It's like, well, now we're going to do the, the deep dive analysis, and we're going to knock on the doors of your entire supply chain, and get their energy bills, and find out their proportioned amount. And it's just like, oh, wow, that's going to take up the rest of the year.

• 33:34Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 33:34Speaker 02

  And that's going to cost an additional 30 grand. I see why it is. Like, that's an insane amount of work. I was like, can we just, could we just round up?

• 33:41Shaan Puri?

  Yeah.

• 33:41Speaker 02

  That 20%? And call it good? And they're like, well, what do you mean call it good? They're like, well, we want to offset it all.

• 33:47Shaan Puri?

  And did you think, okay, 16,000 plus minus 20% is that horrible? Like, I wouldn't even know how to, I don't know how to interpret that.

• 33:53Speaker 02

  I had no idea, but I did know this. I had asked them, well, what's the, how much does it cost to offset a ton of carbon? And the average price to offset a ton of carbon, these are verified offsets by a third-party auditing agency. That doesn't mean they're absolutely perfect. Each individual offset, subject to a margin of error, a certain amount of risk. But taken as a whole, this is an audited group of carbon offsets. And, and, and, and you have to look at it as a, looking at the whole. The average price for an offset is three bucks a ton. So you take 16,700, you round it up by 20%, 20,000 tons of carbon. And this is on about $30 million worth of business. That's what we did in 2017.

• 34:29Shaan Puri?

  So 60 grand.

• 34:31Speaker 02

  $60,000.

• 34:32Shaan Puri?

  Right. 30 grand for the report.

• 34:34Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 34:35Shaan Puri?

  Could cover half the footprint.

• 34:36Speaker 02

  Yes. Yeah. And I, like, I was pulling my hair out with like, wait a second, wait a second. There's all sorts of things about this that are just lunacy. First off, the cost, or the notion that, that doing something which gets, you know, to a closer level of precision than 20 plus or minus 20%, that's a total waste of effort.

• 34:52Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 34:52Speaker 02

  Secondly, you're telling me that as a company that makes shit in Vietnam and China and ships it all over the world.

• 35:00Shaan Puri?

  60 grand you can offset?

• 35:01Speaker 02

  $60,000. Yeah, we're gonna do that. And also, how come everyone isn't doing this?

• 35:06Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 35:06Speaker 02

  And they just kind of threw up their shoulders and said, yeah, that's what we say. And I was like, well, how come I haven't heard from you guys telling me that I would have this opportunity? And that, you know, I, I don't really know the answer.

• 35:19Shaan Puri?

  But you started to come up with a solution.

• 35:21Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. I mean, like, it was just so discombobulating. It didn't make sense. I'm hearing on one side, climate change, intractable issue, we don't know what to do about. And then here's this, this situation where if everybody did it, if everybody bought verified carbon offsets for their business, climate change goes away.

• 35:38Shaan Puri?

  What actually is a carbon offset? What am I doing? I pay the money, what happens?

• 35:41Speaker 02

  You pay the money, and of course, what I've just described there is a hypothetical scenario. I'm sure that there are people who heard that and go, "Nuh-uh."

• 35:47Shaan Puri?

  Yeah.

• 35:47Speaker 02

  There aren't enough carbon offsets in the world.

• 35:49Shaan Puri?

  Don't email us if you're gonna do that.

• 35:50Speaker 02

  Right. There aren't enough carbon offsets in the world, and that is accurate. There aren't right now. But if you show a market-based solution that demonstrates demand for carbon offsets, and there's a revenue stream for them, so that a for-profit, carbon-reducing business can exist, you better goddamn believe that those carbon offsets are gonna get produced.

• 36:07Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 36:07Speaker 02

  And so what it is, you can take any technology which sequesters carbon or prevents carbon from getting there in the first place. So Peak Design bought a whole bunch of landfill gas offsets. What is that? Well, there's a landfill in South Carolina that is filled up. There's no municipal law which says, "Okay, landfill, you have to now cap that landfill and trap those gases and flare it, because landfills will sit there and they'll leach methane until they're done decomposing for a long time." And so, basically, Peak Design said, "Well, if that's not gonna happen, we'll make that happen. We will pay for an HDPE tarp and a bunch of dirt to get pushed onto that, and you collect the methane and turn that into electricity."

• 36:48Speaker 02

  So that's what a carbon offset is. We have nothing to do with that landfill in South Carolina. However, there was a greenhouse gas-reducing opportunity for us, and we snapped it up.

• 37:00Shaan Puri?

  Love it.

• 37:00Speaker 02

  And...

• 37:01Shaan Puri?

  And you had to find that yourself?

• 37:02Speaker 02

  No, no, there's, I mean, there are, frankly, so many organizations involved in the retailing of carbon offsets. And I think that's great. It has the foundations of the type of market solution that we desperately need.

• 37:17Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 37:18Speaker 02

  We just need a hell of a lot more demand.

• 37:19Shaan Puri?

  Right. So your plan is, get the demand up?

• 37:22Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 37:22Shaan Puri?

  And then either you make the marketplace, or someone will make the marketplace with the demand and the supply.

• 37:26Speaker 02

  It's already there. It's not like we need to recreate something. We just need more of it.

• 37:30Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 37:31Speaker 02

  Yeah. And the other, I think it's important to note, other types of offsets that exist out there. You can buy farmland that is fallow and plant a forest there. And so long as you've got the survivability of that forest, that is a carbon store, right? Like unquestionable trees are made out of carbon. Carbon. You're sucking it out of the air and you're putting it there and and you have then you have to protect that forest and that is a carbon offset. You can pay a farmer to switch from traditional row agriculture to to no-tail agriculture. Costs the farmer a little bit more. You pay him that difference and then the root structure within those fields ends up drawing down a ton of carbon. Peak Design planted a bunch of seagrass in Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria came through.

• 38:13Speaker 02

  Like there are, there are all sorts of opportunities and it's a big world out there.

• 38:17Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 38:18Speaker 02

  There's plenty, this earth can absorb the carbon. It just costs money.

• 38:23Shaan Puri?

  Right. And it seems like it feels good to know also where that money is going, like the fact that you guys did the seagrass right after the hurricane or whatever. That's much better than saying, we bought a bunch of credits.

• 38:34Speaker 02

  Right.

• 38:34Shaan Puri?

  So we're good now.

• 38:35Speaker 02

  Right, right.

• 38:35Shaan Puri?

  It feels very different.

• 38:36Speaker 02

  It, it, it does feel very different and that information I think is always achievable and you should always know what you're buying and what you're going to support. But I'm, I am excited for the day when Peak Design and the 80 companies that we've gotten to sign up along with us right now. And including your neighbors, Allbirds right over there. I am excited for the day when we are not the exception, we are the norm.

• 38:58Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 38:58Speaker 02

  And I'm excited for the day when a consumer picks up a bottle, looks for the climate neutral label and doesn't see it and says,

• 39:04Shaan Puri?

  Puts it down.

• 39:05Speaker 02

  Well, I'm not going to buy this.

• 39:06Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 39:06Speaker 02

  These assholes don't pay for their carbon.

• 39:08Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 39:08Speaker 02

  So that's the dream scenario and you know, it's, it's, it's so vastly different than Peak Design and I don't know. It's, it's, it's far, far less predictable for me. I don't know if it's going to take off, but man, we've gotten some serious traction so far. And people seem to be resonating with the idea.

• 39:24Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, I, I'm excited. When you tell me about it, that I'm not the most environmentally conscious person by nature. It's not like I'm already up that alley or sort of knee deep in, in knowing about this stuff, but when you tell me that, that just makes sense to me. It appeals to my senses as a business person. It appeals to my senses as a human being and I'm pretty bullish on that. And I'm not just saying that to blow smoke. I was going to ask you about Peak Design. You guys do the innovation on the product. What happens? Do people just knock you off and just start copying your designs and your innovations? Cause I would imagine that's a problem, right?

• 39:55Speaker 02

  Yeah. We just launched a tripod on Kickstarter this last year and it is awesome. It is like the tripod industry has not been shaken up in decades and we just blew it wide open.

• 40:08Shaan Puri?

  And what's it called? How do I?

• 40:09Speaker 02

  It's called the Travel Tripod by Peak Design. And basically what we did is instead of having cylindrical legs that are incapable of collapsing onto themselves, we made legs that were shaped more like a like a pie wedge. And so they fit around this triangular center column. So everything nests really beautifully. The idea for this came also in 2008 on that walkabout. I was in India. I was in Darjeeling, India, sitting there with my tripod and I drew this sketch of these pie wedges that would collapse around. At that time in my sketch, it was a cylindrical center column still. I don't, nobody made that, you know, we sat on that idea for a long time and took four years to produce it. And in part, the reason is because it's really hard to make this, you

• 40:52Speaker 02

  know, 172 moving interfaces with that 360 individual parts. It's complex.

• 40:59Shaan Puri?

  So how are you guys making these? You're designing them in-house? You have a partner?

• 41:04Speaker 02

  Our manufacturing partner in China is, I mean, the prototyping and development of these things is a collaboration between our manufacturer and our 3D printing and our tools in our own shop here.

• 41:19Shaan Puri?

  And how often, I guess, early on, or maybe now, but how often were you going to China to visit that partner? Because I've been on the other side of Alibaba and it's tough to get a product made. It's tough to get a sense of, are they understanding the vision here? How do I communicate this effectively? How did you do that?

• 41:35Speaker 02

  Spent a lot of time over there. Not me personally, as much as my engineering team on this one. I've just, my role has become more bona fide CEO than design engineer. But they spent a lot of time over there. There's a lot of calls, almost, you know, it's sometimes it's every night calls with China to communicate the day's needs and things like that. But most importantly, we have a very trusting relationship with our manufacturer. They were as tiny as us when they started and we have just grown in lockstep with one another. And that's been the Case with our Vietnamese supply chain and with our Chinese supply chain. So we're not going in there to some big ass company that doesn't really care about your business that much. Now, this has been like a true partnership from, from the ground up. And like I say, we, we were very small.

• 42:17Speaker 02

  So anyone who's listening who, who is like, well, I don't have that right now. It's true. You probably don't have that out, out, out the start, but.

• 42:24Shaan Puri?

  Neither did you.

• 42:25Speaker 02

  Neither did we, and we built a foundation of trust and respect and genuine care for each other's needs.

• 42:31Shaan Puri?

  Like. And so let's rewind. So early on, before you have that partner. Talk about how you found them and how long that took and any of the pitfalls you, you, traps you messed up on.

• 42:40Speaker 02

  With our current setup, there was actually a guy who called us up in 2013. His name is Pat Sung. He lives in Portland and he's become a dear friend. And actually he, he serves as kind of a liaison between. He sort of finds the factories and owns that, that partnership. And he's been, he's been wonderful in going out there and helping us source these things. His name, his company's name is Alliance Trading Group and they're wonderful to work with. And, you know, as they've grown, I think that they're, it, it's just been cool. It's another partner that's grown up alongside of us. But even if it weren't for that, we had started with Wu Shi Great Machining to do our, which we found on MFG.com.

• 43:17Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 43:17Speaker 02

  And, and Shengda, I remember they were in, in Ningbo, China, and that was Alibaba.

• 43:24Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 43:25Speaker 02

  You know, and.

• 43:26Shaan Puri?

  And so if you're somebody today who's looking to, you know, find a manufacturing partner. What would you tell them kind of bullet points or any, any mistakes you made that now in retrospect? You realize you would have done differently or you, a learning you had.

• 43:39Speaker 02

  Actually, I, I, it's not really mistakes as much, but there, there is something that's, that's very nerve wracking about working with. You know, people who speak a different language and the communication isn't perfect. But I would just remember that the most likely scenario is that the other person on the other side of that email is a good person who wants to develop a strong business and their intentions are correct. And so I think it's entirely worthwhile to extend more trust than your, than your, your inclination might suggest. That's, that, that's been my experience. I, I, I think it was aided by the fact that we were pretty successful right out of the chute. You know, a manufacturer is going to want to pay attention if they believe in your idea and if they believe in you.

• 44:20Speaker 02

  Believe it or not, like you can go over there and you can exude the charisma and the confidence that absolutely transcribes languages. And they will believe in you and they'll work harder for you as a result.

• 44:33Shaan Puri?

  Did you do that early on?

• 44:34Speaker 02

  Oh, hell yeah, absolutely. You know, it's

• 44:37Shaan Puri?

  Did you go to the Canton Fair?

• 44:38Speaker 02

  No, I didn't actually go to the Canton Fair and I never have been. A couple of my employees just went, but no, literally exchanging emails with people and eventually saying like, okay, we're going to come go see our tooling. Will you pick us up at the airport? Sure, Mr. Peter. Let's do it.

• 44:55Shaan Puri?

  Nice. Okay, great. And so if you're, we should wrap up. So if you're listening to this and you're like, Peter, sounds great. Peak Design sounds great. Climate Neutral sounds great. Where do they go to get more of either your thoughts, find out about the products? Shout out some places where people can connect with you beyond the podcast and get a hold of you.

• 45:12Speaker 02

  Sure. The Peak Design website is great. I'd recommend peeking into the journal. That's kind of where I do write a lot of my, my sort of bigger thought pieces. If you're interested in my philosophy switch, you might not be.

• 45:23Shaan Puri?

  If you've reached the end of the podcast, you probably are, honestly.

• 45:25Speaker 02

  That's right. That's right. You know, hilariously, I have like nine Twitter followers, I think. I've just never ramped that up. I think I've got an Instagram account that I get too bashful about. I actually ridiculously, I think that very few people are having a new year's resolution that says, you know, I really want to bone up my social media presence. But there is a part of me that's like, you know what? I do kind of want to do that because I do love taking photographer, taking pictures and creating videos and I don't share them with the world. And I'm conflicted about whether I actually want to do that or not. But sorry, that was a long response. Just go to Peak Design, go to Climate Neutral. Hopefully Google will take you there.

• 46:02Shaan Puri?

  Nice. All right, Peter. Thanks for coming on, man. I really appreciate that and I dig the story. I was interested in the products and the product design part, but the climate neutral part for me kind of stole the show here. So

• 46:12Speaker 02

  Right on, man. Happy to hear that, Sean. Thanks.