Arlen
[00:00:57]
Welcome to the e-commerce marketing podcast, everyone. My name is Arlan Robinson, and I am your host. And today we have a very special guest Scott Brown, who is an entrepreneur in the toy and game space with several successful exits between the two of them. Their latest product, PaddleSmash, is best described as a lovechild of Pickleball and Spikeball and will be launching in September 2022. Welcome to the podcast, Scott.

Scott
[00:01:28]
Great to be here, Arlan. Thanks for having me.

Arlen
[00:01:30]
Yes. I am super excited to, to talk to you, those games, pickle ball, and spite ball. I’m actually familiar with both of them. So I know our, our listeners who those that aren’t familiar with, it gonna be interested to know, you know, kind of how your product is a kind of a love child of both of them. So I’m excited to hear a little bit more about it as well. You know, today we’re gonna be talking about launching a brand and finding your first customers. So this is a great episode for, for any of our listeners or viewers that are, are, are just have been kicking a can around about some ideas of launching e-commerce business and may not know quite where to start and want to may wanna know some lessons to learn. And I know you’ve had several successful exits in the e-commerce space. You as well as your business partner, Tim swindles. So I’m super excited to hear some of those stories. So before we get into the topic for today, why don’t you tell us, you know, a little bit more about your background and some of those successful exits that you had?

Scott
[00:02:24]
Yeah. So I think it’s good to kind of skip ahead of some of the, some of my background and get to the interesting section, which was I joined in 2008, a business incubator in Chicago. And the, the goal of that business incubator was to bring entrepreneurs in house, give them office space and kind of provide an environment where ideas could be incubated and hopefully kind of funded. And so we would, we would have these brainstorming sessions where we’d come up with ideas and out of one of those sessions, the, the session was focused on brain health. And out of the, one of those sessions, we came up with a concept that ultimately turned to into a brick and mortar retail store called marbles, the brain store. Okay. And the very first location was in downtown. Chicago followed 2008 was not a great time to be launching a business.

Scott
[00:03:21]
Yeah. This is like that everyone can put their brain back into it. It was like, right. When bear Stearns was collapsing, Lehman brothers was collapsing. It was the beginning of a recession. Yep. But I will say that there was some, some parts of that, that, that were fortuitous for our business. One was that we were given a really opportunistic retail location in downtown Chicago that we wouldn’t have been able to have otherwise. And it was because this mall was desperate for someone to fill this vacancy before the holidays. Okay. And they came to us and they said, Hey, we know you’re looking, we, we actually started as a kiosk at a mall just to test the concept. They had seen that. And they said, well, come and put that into this location. We’re like, all right, great. Like on the cheap, we can try this out in a really great spot.

Scott
[00:04:07]
We tried it out. It went great. We ultimately ended up opening a bunch of stores. We over the course of 10 years grew and had 40 stores across the us. And so it became a fairly decent size brick and mortar, retail, retailer, and eCommerce retailer. So we launched our own website really about a year into our business. And that thing grew along with our brick and mortar business. And we had, you know, a, a big website as well. And in the touring toing game space, we became well known as a place to launch your product. We were like an incubator of new concepts. So, okay. That kind of brings us to the story of, of my business partner, who was a, a successful tech entrepreneur. He had launched a business and built it and ultimately sold that to LinkedIn. But while doing that, he had this little itch that you wanted to start a game.

Scott
[00:05:02]
He and his buddies would always play this game in college and at beach or at a Lakehouse. And he was like, you know, there’s, I wanna make this into a real thing that like, people actually could buy. It was right when cards against humanity was just killing it. And he was like, you know, this is, this is an interesting space. And his game was a little adult too. So he launched it and brought it to my store. We were the very first store to carry it. Okay. And, and so that’s how we got to know each other is that I carried his game in my store. We got to be friends and his game brew and was very successful. It got into target. Wow. He got into target a month after he, a month after he finished his Kickstarter. He got his game into target, which is kind of unheard of. Yeah, for sure. Got it into target. And, and then Walmart and Barnes and noble and all the other key players for the toying game retail space. And he ultimately sold that business off to a bigger toy and game player. That’s private equity back. So he was able to have a nice exit from that. Okay. I personally was able to sell my business off to a big Canadian company. Okay. As well. So we both exited our businesses around the same time and call it 2016, 2017.

Arlen
[00:06:12]
Okay. Gotcha. Well, that’s some good stuff, man. And if you don’t mind me asking that location of the mall, where you were in Chicago, where was that? Cause I’m actually originally from the Chicago area. I, I grew up in Evanston, Illinois, and I’m very familiar. So where, where exactly was that?

Scott
[00:06:26]
Well, so two things I lived in Evanston for eight years. Oh wow. We could talk Evanston at some point.

Arlen
[00:06:33]
Yeah.

Scott
[00:06:34]
So yeah. I lived in Evanston on Colfax, so

Arlen
[00:06:36]
Okay. I know where that is. Okay.

Scott
[00:06:38]
Yeah. Great. Wow. But we, we opened it just off of Michigan avenue, magnificent mile OK. On grand avenue. So there’s a, there’s a, a mall it’s known best for its inker tenant Nordstrom. It’s basically right before the bridge going south on magnificent mile, there is a mall on the west side that has Nordstrom as an anchor tenant, but we weren’t inside the mall. We were on grand avenue. So part of the mall is street facing

Arlen
[00:07:07]
On some

Scott
[00:07:08]
Street facing stores on grand avenue

Arlen
[00:07:10]
That mall, you’re not talking about the water tower. That’s another mall.

Scott
[00:07:12]
No, we ultimately had a location at water tower as well. Okay.

Arlen
[00:07:16]
Got it.

Scott
[00:07:16]
But that was not our original location. We were farther south along Michigan avenue.

Arlen
[00:07:20]
Okay. I got it. Got

Scott
[00:07:21]
It. People as Joe’s K crab shack was right across the street from us.

Arlen
[00:07:25]
Okay. Yeah. Know where that is. Okay. Awesome, man. That’s yeah, it’s a small world. Yeah. That’s, that’s a great location and it’s, you’re very fortunate to be able to get in there and getting that type of foot traffic for sure. Cuz you know, I know during the holiday seasons, you know, that whole area magnificent mile, I mean, it’s, you know, you can’t beat that, you know, you can’t beat them amount of traffic you’re gonna get

Scott
[00:07:47]
Yeah. There, there’s always this, these moments when your business kind of is prefaces of like success or a successful launch or failure. And that was really one of those points for us because if we wouldn’t have gotten that spot, I think we would’ve killed the idea based off, based off of the based off of how things went as a kiosk at the mall. Yeah. Which was not good. We were ready to kill it. Wow. Given that opportunity and that opportunity was enough to kickstart this business.

Arlen
[00:08:16]
I got it. Well, yeah. It’s, I mean that just really re reinforces the old saying of, you know, it’s location, location, location. So I mean, you guys had that down pat for sure. So, well that’s great, man. Well, yeah. Thank you for sharing that background. And it’s very interesting. We’ll definitely have to talk a little bit more after the recording. Yeah. I often don’t meet too many people that come from that are from Evanston, Illinois. So yeah, it’s a small world for sure. Or at least have lived in Evanson for some period of time. But you know, as I alluded that at the top of the, the episode, you know, we’re gonna be talking about, you know, launching a brand and finding your first customer. So what I wanna, where I wanna start at is, you know, what are some things that a brand should, should really have in place, you know, before doing any initial marketing to try to get their first customers?

Scott
[00:09:06]
Well, I mean, this is probably, it probably goes without saying, but a good product is, does so much work for you. Right. And, and finding that good product requires work on the front end. So in my role at marble’s the brain store, I was the chief merchant whi which meant I was the one that made the decisions for every product that came into the store and onto the website. So I was constantly hearing pitches and I’d say the most common theme of a pitch when someone would start is they would say my friends and family loved this game. And you know, for me that was always a red flag. Friends and family obviously

Arlen
[00:09:44]
Loved the game. It’s a little bit biased.

Scott
[00:09:47]
Yeah. They’re biased. And so, you know, my big challenge to them and to kind myself actually going forward is to always make sure I’m getting as accurate of feedback as I can about an idea. One of the things I always try to do is when I am presenting an idea to a group, I’ll always present it as someone else’s idea, even if it is my own. And so I’ll say something like, Hey, I’ve got a friend that created this concept. I’d like you guys to just let’s test it together. Yeah. And figure out if this is any good. And that way people don’t feel like they’re hurting my feelings when they give honest criticism. And for me, that’s just been a good mechanism to make sure I’ve got good product before I start trying to put it out in the world.

Arlen
[01:10:31]
Yeah. Just

Scott
[01:10:32]
Do the work to find out cuz obviously I think it’s good. Yeah. And, and you think there’s this inherent bias where you just, you want to be told yes. Or you want to be told it’s good. And you really have to put that aside to find out for sure if it is, cuz honestly most of my ideas are bad. I mean, it’s just the reality of it. It is a, it is a numbers game and most are bad. And, and my, my job is to find the ones that are good at at least do as much work as I can before I have to put the money into putting out into the world. You never know if it’s good until people have to part with their money for it. Yeah. For, for sure. You never know for sure. But you can do a lot of work upfront to, to lower the risk.

Arlen
[01:11:14]
Yeah, definitely. Yeah. And that’s a great piece of advice. I love it. The, the fact that you said when you were pitching it to friends and family, you know, they didn’t know it was your idea because yeah, it’s, it’s so hard to get honest feedback from your friends and family because you know, they don’t wanna, they don’t wanna let you down. They don’t wanna crush your dream and you know, so they’re just gonna be nice. And so yeah, if you say it’s somebody else, it’s a friend that definitely is gonna get them to be more, you know, give their real opinion. So yeah. I love that piece of advice, you know, for, for sure. But yeah, it really, it really does all come down to just having that solid product before you, you get out there because if you come out too early, the product may not be, maybe it’s not fully tested with a, a certain number of customers.

Arlen
[01:11:59]
Maybe, you know, there’s some flaws in it, but you’re just trying, you’re in a hurry, you know, all entrepreneurs in a hurry to get that money, start getting that revenue coming in. But you, you do have to slowly roll a bit and make sure you’re, you’re, you’re solid with the product development first, before, before getting out there now, as far as marketing is concerned, you know, these days, as we all know, there’s 1,000,001 marketing channels, you know, to promote any eCommerce business. And so how really does a new brand determine what channels are, you know, really just right for them.

Scott
[01:12:32]
It is a lot of testing and learning and you know, basically there’s a little bit of spray and prey, you know, kind of like putting up about a bunch of lines out in the water and see where you get the bites. But there are ways to do that. I think cost effectively. I mean, there’s lots of ways to do it. Here’s, here’s an example of one eCommerce business that I’ve launched and we can just kind of use it as one one way. And that is so I built when I had my retail stores, I built two albums of music. So I, I, I am, I was the producer, which is still weird, weird for me to say that I’m a producer of music, but, but yeah, I produced these two albums. They were educational music. Okay. They taught things like states and state capitals and countries of the world. And they like, they did fine in the stores. It wasn’t like they, they did great, they did fine, but we produced two music videos off of the most popular songs. And those music videos actually have done amazing numbers on YouTube. We put them on YouTube for free, for people to watch. And the tour of the states, which is states and state capitals has over 45 million views. Wow. Averages, 20,000 views per day.

Arlen
[01:13:45]
Oh wow. And so,

Scott
[01:13:47]
You know, in that, in that case, I had a built in audience that then I could market too, that I could say, all right, this audience is always, already shown me interest. So I kind of put a free product out into the world to gauge interest. And then I leveraged that audience to start promoting product. And so I launched a poster business on Shopify called brain maker posters. Okay. And you can go there and buy the artwork created in the music video. So in the music video, we have an artist illustrating all this song as it’s being sung. And in the end, there’s a full map of the United States. Okay.

Arlen
[01:14:25]
And

Scott
[01:14:25]
People watch that. And in the end, they in very, really want a, a poster of that to hang on their wall. Okay. And so people are asking for that and I was like, all right, well, people are asking, there’s an audience already showing they like the, the video. Well, let’s try a poster version of it. The posters have done great. And so I’ve subsequently done flashcards, I’ve done jigsaw puzzles. I’m coming out with the board game this fall. And so there’s just been all this opportunity. That’s come from this sort of free thing. Yeah. It wasn’t free to me. It cost me money to make the music video and to kind of put it out there. Sure. But I put it out there for free for the audience. And it was a way for me to kind of test whether there was something there. So that was one way for me to market was to market through YouTube using a free thing and use that to kind of gauge interest and to build an audience first. Yeah. Yeah. So go

Arlen
[01:15:18]
Ahead. That’s great. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, we I’ve heard that before, as far as putting something out there free, you know, maybe, you know, free to the end of customer. Of course, it’s gonna cost you a little bit to develop it and put that out there, but you know, that’s ultimately just gonna be the cost of doing business, but really a, a, a great way to, to get feedback and kind of see where people are at with a particular product category that you’re going down. And, you know, cuz if people are, you know, expressing interest in it, then you can kind of take it to the next level and see eventually, okay, what will they then be willing to actually pay for? But it’s also, you know, a great way to build a customer list or a prospective customer list prior to a product launch.

Arlen
[01:16:00]
Because I, you know, I’d imagine with all of those people that, you know, got the free product, you know, you had ’em in a database. And so, you know, there’s a lot of things you can do with that. You know, you can get more information from a more data and, and to determine, you know, where you ultimately want to go with the product that you’re actually developing. Right. Yeah. So my next question is really, I think something that you’re probably very familiar with and a lot of times it’s something that many e-commerce businesses struggle with and that’s really, if your brand is in a super competitive category, you know, what are some things you can do to, to really get any type of traction? And I know, you know, you were in the toy space, which is super competitive and especially online these days, you know, what, what do you do? Because it can be, you know, a little bit overwhelming to, to, to figure out how you kind of can build your niche in the, in a competitive space.

Scott
[01:16:52]
Yeah. In the toying game world, the, the most common reason someone buys a game is that they are recommended that game by a friend, a family member or something they’ve read or heard. And so those are the ways that the toying game market like thinks about getting it out in the world. If you are a small and scrappy startup, you don’t have the budget to be able to do a commercial on, on Nickelodeon or wherever. Right. That’s how, that’s how the big companies do it is they do these commercials, the kids see it, they tell their mom, they want it. Yeah. If it’s small, you’ve gotta be scrappy about it. And so part of it is I think, a willingness to give out free, free copies. So it is a little bit of like, look at your friends and family pick out who is best on social media, send them free copies and get them to start talking about it.

Scott
[01:17:41]
Yeah. So it’s just like getting the word to start to spread. I think that’s like as I’m starting a new eCommerce business and a new product, that’s one of the things we’re doing is we’re looking at kind of our own network of people. Plus, you know, everyone’s doing influencers these days. Well, influencers know that too. And so the price, the price of working with influencers has gone through the roof. So there’s these sort of top tier influencers priced through the roof. And I will say, I’ve worked with a top tier influencer and the numbers we got from kind of that business were not impressive at all. Oh wow. There’s a little bit of a, oh, they now talk about so much that people start to kind of sound it out and it, it, for this business, we’re actually not targeting that we’re targeting a bunch of micro influencers.

Scott
[01:18:35]
So this is, these are the groups that have very few followers at this point that it’s a small group of loyal followers. Yeah. So smaller networks, but these people are hungry. They’re eager to get word out. And often you can work with these partners for only the cost of a free product. So they want a free product to try themselves. Sometimes you give ’em another free product to give away to their, to their followers. For me, that’s great. I wanna get product out into the world. So we’ve got someone that’s willing to, to take my product, to create content. That’s about my product in these negotiations with these influencers, I require that they give me their content once it’s made. So got it. There’s this relationship where they’re creating content for their followers, but I get it back. And that’s what, that’s where the goal is.

Scott
[01:19:27]
Honestly, that’s the goal for me because I’ve got a product that is best. And this is toys games. Generally when people see them being played, it’s when they want the thing. And so it’s user generated content that can create buzz around a product and really start with snowball. And so getting these influencers to create video of them, playing the product that I can then use on my channels and in my ads is what really creates this feeling of I’m missing out. And I mean, I think everyone’s trying to create that. Yeah. But tool games, it’s really, our target is moms and it’s moms that want to bring fun into their homes. Yeah. It’s this noble goal. It’s like a great goal. I have a true belief. That games are a great way to bring families together. And, you know, families that play together, stay together as a phrase that we say in my house.

Scott
[02:20:18]
Right. And so, you know, games are such a great way to do it. So when moms see other families playing these games, they, they want that thing. So the goal for, for me, as I’m making toys and games is just figure out ways to get it out in front of moms so that moms see it being played. And then in other words, just to get on review sites, there are a lot of review sites that review toys games, and to just get it out there to them for free copies and get reviews, it does go back to making great product. Cause if you send it to review sites, they they’re going to review it. They are going to find out if it’s good or not. Yeah. So you’ve gotta make a good thing. So they’ll give you a positive review.

Arlen
[02:20:56]
Yeah, for sure. Yeah. That is awesome. Great pieces of advice. And especially what you mentioned, as far as the micro influencer, that that’s kind of a sweet spot. I’ve had others on the podcast that have talked about influencer marketing and specifically micro influencer marketing. You know, those are typically, you know, influencers that have anywhere from like five to maybe 50,000 followers on any of the social networks, something about something like that. And you’re, you’re totally right. Those smaller numbers are gonna have more engagement. They’re more engaged. They have more of a loyal following and you know, it’s a lot easier to, for them to kind of get a hold to their audience, as opposed to these big, you know, mega influencers that are at the celebrity level that are tens of millions and things like that, where, you know, who knows who all of those followers are, like half of those are probably bots, you know, or fake accounts. And so these days you gotta be careful, so great pieces of advice there. So yeah, as we get ready to wrap things up, Tim, before we let you go, wanted to see if you can share with us just some brief dos and don’t when it comes to launching and marketing your brand just based on the experiences that you’ve had personally.

Scott
[02:22:09]
Yeah. So this new product that we’ve created me and my business partner, Tim, is a product called paddle smash and paddle smash. So I’d say one of the dues that we’ve done with paddle smash is we’ve paid very close attention to what’s happening in the marketplace. And you can do this in a lot of ways. I mean, it’s as simple sometimes as reading the news, but I would highly encourage people to be on platforms like Twitter, as painful as it is to be on some of these, you know, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, you do catch trends. Yeah. You see what’s happening. And one of the trends we saw was the growth of pickleball, you know, pickleball, fastest throwing sport in north America. And honestly, it’s just been amazing to see the hockey stick growth of this, of this sport. And so we saw that growth being in the toying game space. We were also very aware of the growth of the game, spike ball. You know, you go to a public park and I mean, it’s for me public park here in Utah, it is very rare for me to pass the local park and not see a group of kids out there playing Spikeball. Wow. And so we thought, you know, this is a really interesting thing, both of these sports, outdoor sports, generally just growing. And so a big do for me would be just pay attention to trends.

Arlen
[02:23:20]
Right?

Scott
[02:23:20]
Right. And look for opportunities around those trends. Another do I would say is that, oh, it’s like cooking. When you’re coming up with any recipe, you don’t have to think of new, new ingredients. All the ingredients are already created. You’re just rearranging the ingredients into new arrangements that create new recipes and inventions are often the same way. It’s rare that there’s a brand new, new thing. It’s usually just a Frankenstein version of things that are out there. And so you’re kind of taking one piece of one thing you like and one piece of another thing and merging them together. And that’s what we’ve done with paddle smash. We’ve combined the best elements of pickle ball and the best elements of round net or spike ball into one game. And we call paddle smash. And so it’s for people that like bull sports and are looking for something new, they can get a little bit of that experience in a portable backyard play beach play experience. So those are a couple of dues

Scott
[02:24:17]
Don’t I would say is a really common thing I would have when I would meet with these aspiring inventors is they would pitch me an idea. I already said the friends and family things. So that was a big don’t is don’t save in your pitch. Hey, friends and family love this, but the other big don’t would be that they would say based off of friends and family feedback, they’ve already invested 30 to $50,000 in this business. Geez. I would just say, try to get your product out in the marketplace at a minimum viable level. Yeah. And if it’s going to cost you that much to get it in the marketplace, it’s probably an idea I would pass on if it’s your first idea. Yeah. And so, you know what? I would encourage it. If it’s a toy and game venture, I would say, well, look for opportunities where you can test this as cheaply as possible.

Scott
[02:25:05]
And so, you know, a card game would be a great example. And Tim, my business partner, he created a card game. He, he was lucky enough to kind of just fall into his space. He didn’t know what he didn’t know, but he chose cards and that’s smart choice for a brand new inventor with a small budget, because you can test, you can make a deck of cards on the, you can really, you could do a small production run of 200 copies, right. And then get it out there and find out if people like it or not. Yeah.

Arlen
[02:25:33]
Where

Scott
[02:25:33]
I’ve been scared is where someone says to me, how friends and family loved it. I’ve now invested in $30,000 worth of two, this thing. Yeah. I’m like, oh no

Arlen
[02:25:43]
Scary.

Scott
[02:25:44]
You don’t know yet. You don’t know yet. And I’m not one to say, like, don’t be brave and don’t take risks. It’s always risky being an entrepreneur, but you can minimize the downside risk by creating inexpensive versions of your thing and getting it outta the world for early tests.

Arlen
[02:26:00]
Yeah, for sure. For sure. Well, that’s great. Thank you for sharing those dos and don’ts definitely, I, I can tell that they came from some lessons learned that you’ve had and there’s definitely all are very practical. So yeah, I’ve learned a lot and I know our listeners have as well and our viewers as well, Scott. And so before we do let you go, I always like to switch things up and see if our people that I have on can share. If you don’t mind sharing one closing fun fact about yourself that you think our audience would be interested to know.

Scott
[02:26:30]
That was a geez fun fact. I should have been prepared for a fun fact. All right. Here’s my fun fact. There is a game called rumy cube. I don’t know if you’ve played rumy cube. It’s

Arlen
[02:26:41]
I’ve heard of it. I’ve heard of it. Yeah.

Scott
[02:26:42]
So hopefully people have played it out there. It’s kind of a, it’s kind of a classic it’s been around since on the 1970s. Yeah.

Scott
[02:26:50]
Quick like interesting story. Is that the guy that created this, he, he lived, he was in Europe. I think he was in the Netherlands if I remember. Right. And he thought he was buying a bunch of Rubik’s cubes and he, he MIS misunderstood or miswrote his order and got a bunch of Grammy cubes, never heard of his game and started selling it out of his trunk. Essentially. He selling it so quickly. It became the most popular game in that country. Oh wow. And, and he has created a, a huge toying game business. It’s one of the big, it’s one of the top 10 toying game businesses in the, in the world now. Okay.

Arlen
[02:27:29]
Wow.

Scott
[02:27:29]
That’s a little bit of a side story, but Ru I, I competed in the world rumy cube championships.

Arlen
[02:27:36]
Wow.

Scott
[02:27:37]
I represented the us. I went to Sicily and played in this competition against a bunch of other countries. And I had a track suit with my name on it. Okay. Out there, we actually played one of the rounds of the tournament on Mount Aetna, an active volcano. We were like on the side of Mount Aetna playing it in the world, Romy cube championships. So that’s stuff that odd and fun fact about

Arlen
[02:28:06]
Me. Definitely. That definitely is a fun fact. Very interesting. Yeah. Rumy cube. I’ve heard of that. I’ll have to look further into that. It sounded familiar, but yeah. Thank you for sharing that. That’s, that’s an awesome story. But lastly, sky, before we do let you go, if you don’t mind sharing how our listeners and viewers can reach out to you, if they wanna pick your brain anymore about launching their own brands.

Scott
[02:28:27]
Yeah, please. So my email is Scott paddle smash.com. Okay. And so that’s the best way to reach me is through that email. Okay. I’m on Twitter. I’m on Instagram. I don’t post a whole ton. I would like to be better about that. Okay. But the kinda biggest also additional thing is just to add note one more time about this game I’m launching. It is set to launch in two weeks time. So early September, 2022, it’s called paddle smash. And as I said, it’s a, a marriage of pickle ball and spike ball, and we’re excited to get that that out into the world. So that’s another way you can find me and what I’m working on. Okay.

Arlen
[02:29:04]
Great, Scott. Well, thank you for sharing that. We appreciate it. I definitely recommend all of our listeners to reach out to you and we’ll definitely look out for that, that product once you launch it in September. So sounds very interesting. So I’ll be excited once you got this guys, get that out. All right, Scott. Well, it’s a pleasure talking to you and thank you for joining us today on the e-commerce marketing podcast.

Scott
[02:29:26]
Thanks for having me Arlen.

Speaker 1
[02:29:28]
Thank you for listening to the e-commerce marketing podcast. 

Podcast Guest Info

Scott Brown
Co-Founder of PaddleSmash