If you want to turn your product idea into a retail success story that dominates its category, our guest on today's episode of The Harvest Growth Podcast is your perfect resource. Tyrone Hazen is a visionary entrepreneur and founder of Puffin Drinkwear, whose innovative beverage holders have expanded to over 5,000 retail stores nationwide, becoming the 12th fastest-growing consumer product business in the US in 2023. His journey from a simple inspiration to retail powerhouse offers invaluable lessons for entrepreneurs at every stage.
His signature product line, Puffin Drinkwear, is a pioneer in stylish beverage insulation - transforming the simple idea into fashionable "drinkwear" that includes everything from sleeping bag designs to licensed NCAA and Peanuts collections. The brand has successfully carved out its niche in the market, thriving across multiple retail channels from outdoor stores to gift shops, while maintaining strong profit margins and customer loyalty.
In this engaging interview, Tyrone shares his strategy for retail success, revealing how he leveraged early local wins into national distribution, mastered the complexities of licensing deals, and built a sustainable growth model through strategic partnerships. His practical insights on cash flow management, using sales groups, and retail merchandising provide a blueprint for turning a simple product idea into a thriving business empire.
In today’s episode of the Harvest Growth Podcast, we’ll cover:
Why starting small with local retailers can lead to massive growth opportunities
The strategic approach to licensing deals that helped Puffin secure NCAA and Peanuts partnerships
How to leverage rep groups to expand retail presence without hiring a large sales team
The importance of proper merchandising and store placement in retail success
Why entrepreneurs should prioritize growth over immediate profit in the early stages
And so much more!
You can listen to the full interview on your desktop or wherever you listen to your podcasts.
Or, click to watch the full video interview here!
To learn more about Puffin Drinkware's innovative products, visit www.puffindrinkwear.com.
To be a guest on our next podcast, contact us today!
Do you have a brand that you’d like to launch or grow? Do you want help from a partner that has successfully launched hundreds of brands that now total over $2 billion in revenues? Set up a free consultation with us today!
Prefer reading instead of listening? Read the full transcript here!
Jon LaClare [00:00:00]:
Today's guest started his outdoor product business in 2018, grew to over 5,000 retail stores and continues to see exponential growth, leading his company to be the 12th fastest growing consumer product business in the US in 2023. He shares personal experiences that will teach you how to get into and maximize brick and mortar revenues, how to secure NCAA and other license deals, and what pitfalls to avoid as you grow your business.
Jon LaClare [00:00:44]:
Welcome back to the show. I'm really excited to be speaking with Tyrone Hazen today. He is the founder of Puffin Drinkware. I'm going to grab mine in a second. I love this product, but I'll let him showcase it first as he talks about the product. It's a really cool product line that he's developed and they've had great success with it in a fairly short period of time. So we're going to talk about the cool product, the stories, etc.
Tyrone, welcome to the show.
Tyrone Hazen [00:01:09]:
Oh, thank you so much, John. Really happy to be here. Excited to share the Puffin story with you and your audience.
Jon LaClare [00:01:14]:
So let's start off by talking about the product. So if you want to show one for those watching, obviously for those who are not, you can check it out at Puffin P U F F I n drinkware.com for those watching the video, you'll get to see quite a bit of some of his styles. You can see them in the background behind them. But let's talk about what is the product. Describe it for our audience and tell the origin story.
Tyrone Hazen [00:01:34]:
Absolutely. So, yeah, Puffin, we call ourselves Drinkware. That's W E A R. So we are insulated apparel for your drink to wear. So here's an example of one that we've just done recently. We just got into some licensing deals. So this is an NCAA University of Oregon with the Ducks logo there. And so yeah, just like you treat your, your beverage like, like a human being or a character of some sort.
Tyrone Hazen [00:02:00]:
And so it's got insulating properties like a traditional drink holder, but in this case it's just way more stylish, super fun. You can have some, you know, if you've got an affinity for, affinity for a particular school or a type of style or of dress or team band, those Types of things. That's the direction that we're going. So you can put a little bit of personality into, into your drink while you're keeping your hand warm and your beverage cold or the other way around.
Jon LaClare [00:02:27]:
And one of the things I love about it too, it has like a grippy base on the bottom. This is one of my favorites that I have is like a, I wear a lot of vests, as you can see in the video right now. And this is, you know, the vest version. It's really well insulated, almost feels like a really high quality vest. And in the bottom, I think all of them, at least the ones I have, have a rubber base that give it a little bit of an angle as it sits there. But av being moved too easily or knocked over on the countertop. Even better than a can or a bottle by itself, I think, which has made a big difference. Did the original designs.
Jon LaClare [00:02:54]:
Can you talk maybe about what was the first design you came up with as you had this idea and what's changed over time?
Tyrone Hazen [00:02:59]:
Sure. Yeah. And well, if you push that down, it's actually pretty satisfying. If you push hard enough on the, on the can, it'll settle in. We've got a, like a little channel in there that sets perfectly into the base. I love that you recognize that. No, that was not originally there. So the original design, the original design was actually a sleeping bag.
Tyrone Hazen [00:03:21]:
So I guess the perfect opportunity I'll jump into kind of the origin story. So I was with, with some friends. I lived in a, in a town called Bend, Oregon. And we're an up and coming outdoor kind of mecca. So we're three hours from anything resembling a city. We're in the middle of the Cascades. We've got a bucolic river that runs through town and so there's paddle boarding and, you know, river activities all summer long. And then in the winter we've got Mount Bachelor, which is one of the largest skiable acreage resorts in the country and backpacking and hunting, all the things outdoor.
Tyrone Hazen [00:03:54]:
And we also have, we're about 100,000 people and I think we've got over 30 breweries. So we punch way above our weight from, from a beer drinking and beer producing state. So I was with some friends having a couple beers at a buddy's barbecue one day and about six of us and the host at one point noticed that all of us were drinking but didn't have koozies. And so he thought, oh shoot, let me run in and grab sweet. He's got a box and he Starts tossing everybody these pretty traditional neoprene style koozies. But luckily for me, the one that he tossed to me was this one that I have right here. And it's kind of a homemade. I think it's made out of the remnants of an old sleeping bag or something.
Tyrone Hazen [00:04:36]:
And it's just got the velcro straps on either side, so you can just wrap it around your beverage and there you go, you've got your insulation. But what I noticed about it when he handed it to me and I put my bottle of beer in it was that it feels like my sleeping bag, you know, circa 1986 or so. And it struck me in that moment I happened to have a bottle of beer. That was another like serendipitous moment. Instead of, instead of a can, I had a bottle. And so as I'm holding it and looking at it, I'm thinking sleeping bag. And then I'm noticing that my bottle is proportioned somewhat like a human being. And I thought, oh, hey, wouldn't that be fun if we, if I were to make a koozie that looked, that looks like a sleeping bag, but still has the functions of a traditional koozie.
Tyrone Hazen [00:05:20]:
Again, here in Bend, we do beer, we do the outdoors. It'd be a perfect cross pollination. And I thought people would really love it. So that was what sparked the idea. And I've had a couple of, I don't want to call them failed, but I have a couple of attempts at product company startups in the past and each one of them was a stepping stone to the next. And so, um, the, the most recent one was in a higher tech, it was a Bluetooth audio system. So it was very different. But I happened to have some contacts in manufacturing that I was able to reach out to.
Tyrone Hazen [00:05:49]:
So I, I did, I, I reached out and I said, hey, I've got this new project. I don't know if you guys do soft goods, but here's kind of what I'm thinking. And they said, well, I think we think we know what you mean. Can you send us a tech pack? And I have no background in product development. I didn't know what a tech pack was. So I did what came to mind as me as the next best thing, which was to send them one sheet of paper with a beer bottle next to a sleeping bag. And I was like, just like a mummy bag style. I was like, just do this.
Tyrone Hazen [00:06:17]:
And they were like, you know what? We got it, off we go. And so we had the zipper pull. Was a, was a Bottle opener and it had a little stash pouch in the back that you could put chapstick or a lighter or something. And that was it. It was all just kind of a cut and sew type of product. The first rounds, we call that our V1.
Jon LaClare [00:06:36]:
And do you still have sleeping bags? The ones I know of on your website and the product ones I bought are all jackets, that sort of thing. Do you have sleeping bags still?
Tyrone Hazen [00:06:43]:
We do. They're not as popular as all the really fun stuff we've come up with since, but that's kind of the mummy bag style there. And this. Yeah, this one. So we've upgraded it. It also has the, the siliconized TPU base. But yeah, so we call that the OG because it's the, it's the original. But yeah, most, mostly we are.
Tyrone Hazen [00:07:03]:
And that was before we had come up with the, with the name drinkware and that idea that, oh, that's what we make. We make things for your drink to wear. So yeah, it's still around, but it's slowly disappearing as it gets swallowed up by all the other fun stuff that we're coming up with.
Jon LaClare [00:07:21]:
Yeah, yeah. The new products come out. How many different variations or styles do you currently have?
Tyrone Hazen [00:07:27]:
Oh my gosh, we have like 144 different SKUs. So we have probably two dozen different silhouettes as we call them. So that's just general style. And then each of those styles comes anywhere from two to six different color variations. We're trimming that down. That was one thing that we got a little bit out in front of our skis on and we get what's called skew proliferation. And you start to see that some things are performing way better than others and you're way better off to focus on those. So 20, 25, we've culled that down to less than half, honestly.
Tyrone Hazen [00:08:01]:
So we've got a lot that we make now that we won't make in the future. And we're going to focus on the really great ones. And as we come up with new things, we'll just do one or two variants. We'll do some product testing ahead of time so we know what we're getting ourselves into to make sure that we don't have a bunch of inventory that's not as popular as some of the other items.
Jon LaClare [00:08:18]:
I think that's a pretty common road for products that, where style is such an important part of what the product is because you don't know what's going to sell. Well, you could predict. I could predict, predict or Whatever. But until you get them out there in the market. But now you've got data, right? So now you've got this big number of SKUs. You can see which ones are selling really well and which ones might not be. And so it helps you make those decisions. That's, I think, a pretty normal road.
Jon LaClare [00:08:40]:
So along the way you've had a lot of success. As I alluded to in the introduction. I think in 2023 you were the 12th fastest consumer product company, growing consumer product company in the country, which is. That's pretty impressive. What's been the most successful marketing channel to date? Like where, where are you selling? What's driving that growth?
Tyrone Hazen [00:08:59]:
Yeah, absolutely. We've been really lucky to have some really incredible retail partners. And so while when I came up with this idea and brought on a co founder, our thinking was, oh, this is going to just go Internet sensation viral and we're going to take off and we're going to be able to sell all these things direct to consumer. And that is a tough nut to crack and for a number of reasons that we can get into if we have time. But we very early on had had success in retail and we had the margins that allowed us to play in. So we partnered up with a number of retailers, kind of tested things out. It worked and we just kept, you know, kept rolling that snowball. And so we probably do 75 to 80% or more of our sales go through the wholesale channels through just other retailers that have brick and mortar stores and the remainder come.
Tyrone Hazen [00:09:46]:
Come through our website. Yeah. Oh, man, so many. REI is one of our big ones. We've got Dick's Sporting Goods shoot off the, off the cuff. I mean we have, we're in about 5,000 stores. So I'm trying to think of the ones that are. That are relevant Urban Outfitters.
Tyrone Hazen [00:10:09]:
We do some other ones that are. That retailers that have really great sales online. So Uncommon Goods was an early partner and they were, they were really big for us. But one of the interesting things, John, for us is that we're the type of product that we can live in so many different channels. So we started and we were thinking, well, we're outdoor. So we went to, I mean we're in rei, Bass Pro, Cabela's and Shields and Academies. And we're all these like kind of outdoor sportsman's warehouse, outdoor and or sporting goods kind of. Those two are adjacent, those types of places.
Tyrone Hazen [00:10:44]:
But I'm also in grocery stores and we're in gift shops throughout the country and we sell through Ace Hardware sometimes we've got, you know, dozens of Ace Hardware accounts. So we're really lucky in that as one channel starts, if we start to like really flesh out one channel, we can go open these other channels. So one of the things that we're looking at in 2025 and has been we've kind of laid some of the early groundwork this year is getting into lifestyle stores. So your Tilly's, Zumies, Journeys, pacsun, those type of stores where the people that, you know, not everybody shops at an REI, there's only about 184 of them in the country. Whereas if we get or farm and ranch, right. If we can go into a tractor supply, there are over 2,000 locations. And so the same person that's shopping at REI may not go into a tractor supply and vice versa. So we're really lucky in that regard that we can go get in front of our customers in so many different ways because anybody could be a customer of a puffin.
Jon LaClare [00:11:41]:
And what was the first success? I think a lot of listeners may be DTC right now and maybe succeeding really well, but trying to get into retail as a next step or a way to grow. And as you said, you know, you struggled, if that's the right word to use, but it was smaller, let's say in the beginning of dtc and then where it really took off was when you got into brick and mortar retail. So what was the first successful step into retail that then really helped to catapult your growth after that?
Tyrone Hazen [00:12:06]:
I, I love that you asked that because I love this store. So our very first success in retail was just a mom and pop style little gift store, kind of a higher end gift store here in our little town of Bend. So we've got this little kind of main street style downtown with two one way streets and they're about three blocks long each. And there's a store down there called the Bend Store and they sell a lot of things that come out of Bend. The city of Bend actually has a logo and so they sell a lot of things that are adorned with this logo. And so I went in there in September of 2018. So we hadn't even launched yet. Technically we launched in 2019, but I had a handful of products that we had produced that I was going to go test the market with.
Tyrone Hazen [00:12:49]:
So we went in there. So this is September of 18. So tourist season had. Season had come to an end, but holiday shopping hadn't really started yet. So I don't know if that was a good thing for Us or not. But the store was pretty much dead and managed to get in touch with the owner there. Her name is Delia, and she just didn't get it at first. We, again, we just had the sleeping bag, and she was like, oh, you know, I don't.
Tyrone Hazen [00:13:12]:
I don't really know. Maybe. Maybe come back closer to the holidays and people want them for Christmas ornaments or something. I'm not quite sure. As luck would have it, there was one person in the store at the time, and he happened to hear this exchange. And he comes over and he looks at it and he says, I'm so sorry to interrupt. Is that what I think it is? Can I buy two of those right now? And so kind of put my hands up, backed away from the counter and was like, hey, Delia, I'll leave 10 with you. Those are your first two sales.
Tyrone Hazen [00:13:38]:
Sell them for whatever makes sense to you. That's your profit. I'll give you a call in a couple weeks. We'll see how they're going. The next day, she calls and says, or sends me a message and says, hey, can I get, you know, 36 more or so? So, okay, sure. So on Wednesday, I drop off 36. The next day, again, hey, can I get 100 before the weekend? So I drop off 96 or something on Friday, and then on Monday I get a message that she says, hey, I know you have limited inventory. Can I buy everything you have left? So we knew we had something there.
Tyrone Hazen [00:14:07]:
And I had to tell her no, because the point wasn't to sell out of the, you know, thousand units that I had at the time, although that would have been really cool. The point was to figure out, where can I sell these? And so then I take them over to pack, ship and more, which is kind of a mailboxes, etc. Type of just packaged goods, but anywhere that just has stuff, anywhere that somebody might make an impulse buy. I wanted to test them. So we've got some grocery stores here in town that are local. And so I was able to get into those and some against, you know, like, specific, very specific sports retailers that we were able to get into and really test it. But what I did, and this is probably one of my area of areas of specialty or of expertise was as kind of on the creative finance side. So what I told Delia was, no, I can't sell you what I have left, but we have enough time to produce more before the holidays really hit if you pay for them all up front.
Tyrone Hazen [00:14:57]:
And so she did. And so she gave us about 40$600 check or something. And I was able to use that as a deposit on another much larger production overseas and got them air freighted over and they landed in early November and we managed to make a go of it. And so she was one of our great retailers for a long time. But then we get to take that story with us. Everywhere we go, every retailer I go talk to, I say, hey, listen to this. This is what happened to this person. If you get us where the customers see us, you'll have that same experience.
Tyrone Hazen [00:15:24]:
And we find that we have some stores that aren't. We're not getting the sell through that we would expect for the number of the foot traffic that they have. We have all these things now that we can get a feed from their sales metrics so we can kind of dice it up and we'll have some stores that equally sized in foot traffic and their sell through is off the charts. And then others that have similar sell through and we get, you know, it's crickets. And we find that, oh, this one's got our displays, they've got us set up, you know, they've got us really well merchandised and we're sitting up by the, by the front cash wrap, whereas the other one, that's not doing as well, oh, they've got us back in hydration on a lower shelf somewhere. Well, nobody's coming into a store for a puffin. This is an impulse buy. People are coming in for something else and then they see it and go, oh man, Uncle Jerry's gonna love that.
Tyrone Hazen [00:16:12]:
Let me, let's grab two of those real quick and we'll take, oh, we're going boating this weekend. Oh, you know, the kids will love this. So, so that has been what has helped us like all of these little stories. As we learn what works, we're able to parlay that into the, the pitch, so to speak. When we go talk to other retailers to try and get in, we say, hey, if you do it this way, this is kind of the results that you might, you might be able to expect.
Jon LaClare [00:16:33]:
It's a great story and I think it's something that, you know, everyone can take to heart. The temptation is always to go to the big retailers first. If it's Walmart or REI or whatever space you' but there's a lot of risk in that. Is it going to sell one? If it doesn't, you're kind of out, right? For a while. Figure the things out in the onesie twosie, mom and pop type stores and find this Success story, you know, you. I would say not, I wouldn't use the word lucky. Right. But whatever you want to refer to, like what a great opportunity that you really took advantage of.
Jon LaClare [00:17:00]:
Now just as easily it could have been a store that wasn't a fit for your target market. It didn't work. Well, that's fine. Move on to the next one. Right. Find the one that ended up being, I think the Ben store was the name of it. Right. So find that Ben store that's going to be that perfect one, whether it's the first one you go to or the 10th.
Jon LaClare [00:17:14]:
And then you can find stores that are similar retail outlets that are similar and really grow from there in a lower risk environment. You know, stalling, starting with a slower or smaller store count, as it were. Now, you mentioned the NCAA license deal and you've got some Peanuts license, the cartoon Peanuts license deal items as well. There he's holding up one with a cool Jack. It was Snoopy on the back hurt, not Snoop.
Tyrone Hazen [00:17:36]:
Yeah, that's Snoopy.
Jon LaClare [00:17:38]:
Snoopy name, is it? Love it, Love it. So talk to us about how licensed deals, whether it's NCAA or whether it's Peanuts or whatever's next. How has that helped your business?
Tyrone Hazen [00:17:53]:
Yeah, well, we mentioned before that, that retail is such a great place for us. One thing that it does is it feeds our direct to consumer. So I'm going to take one step away from your question and come back and ask it. So one of the things that we have found is that 80% of the people that purchase on our website have purchased have found us before in retail. So what we're looking for oftentimes is another way to drive our direct consumer sales in addition to the drive that we get from people having already found our things. And so tapping into people's affinities and knowing that they can, you know, you're not gonna. We've got 144 skus. No one carries all of them.
Tyrone Hazen [00:18:31]:
And so we might have something that somebody doesn't know exists. And so we want to drive people to our website and we also want to provide things that people want. And that's kind of where your SKU count can go crazy is because everybody's got an idea, oh, you know what you should do? You know what you should do? You should make one of these. And so you're like, yeah, we should. And you, you know, you make more and more and more. But the licensing is where you really tap into people's affinity for something. Like I said before, if it's A, if, if it's a particular sport or a particular sports team, if you've got a favorite band or if you've got a favorite, a favorite movie character or, you know, one of those, any of those types of things, that's an opportunity for us to say, hey, we've got one of these things for you. And it's really, it's kind of really exciting and it's a sexy and fun world to try and get into, but it's challenging and it can be the death knell to the business as well.
Tyrone Hazen [00:19:20]:
There are a lot of people like, hey, how come you're not doing NFL yet? And we're like, because you never know which of the teams is going to do well. And sometimes the NFL is going to require that you do all of the teams. And so if I've got inventory on all of the teams and this team is just dogging it in a particular year or they just don't have a lot of merch sales, I've got to sit on X thousand units because that's my minimum order quantity from my factory. And they might just sit there and, and they go stale and I can't do anything with them. So it can be really challenging. And then. But, but yeah, so that there's, you know, it's that risk reward. And so you need to make sure that you're far enough along and big enough to reach to be able to take some of those risks.
Tyrone Hazen [00:20:01]:
So the way that the licensing world works is you first you have to attract them. You have to reach out to somebody and say, hey, I like your, you know, your brand. We'd like to license it. What does that look like? And if you're lucky enough, you'll get some communication going there. And what they do is they set, you know, you pay a royalty, so you get to use their mark. And for every one of your units you sell, you might give them anywhere from 12 to 20% of what you sold that unit for. Might go to them for the, the ability to use their mark and kind of speak to their audience. So you also, they don't want to just take the risk and say, oh cool, pay us 15% of everything you get.
Tyrone Hazen [00:20:37]:
Off you go. They say, yeah, but we want you to guarantee us a certain amount. And so some guarantees might be fifteen hundred dollars, some are fifty thousand. So there's one that we're looking into now that is a $50,000 per year and we have to sign up for two years guarantee. We think it can work. We run the numbers and We've got the right channels to go into. We think, yeah, this might be worth the risk, but that's a huge risk because if it doesn't pay off, it's not that they don't care, but they're going to get their $50,000 and if I don't have it or if that prevents me from doing something else, then the opportunity cost there might have been too great. And so while it seems really great, you've got.
Tyrone Hazen [00:21:16]:
And then again, in order to convince them that you're worth the time, there's a lot of legal that goes into this. You, you need to have a marketing plan and a sales channel strategy and you generally have to have doors and you say, hey, we're going to go into these 1500 doors. Here's what the sell through looks like, here's why we think we can hit. Well, I mean they don't want to make the minimum guarantee, they want to make multiples of that. So that's just to protect their downside. But ideally you're going to do so much more than that. So you've got to be prepared to one, convince them that you can do that and then go deliver on it for yourself.
Jon LaClare [00:21:48]:
So I want to shift gears a little bit. This has been really fascinating. You've obviously turned this business into a massive success, but you're not stopping, which I love. Right. You've got these, this vision of where to go next and really how to grow it. License deals are one and I know you and I were talking about getting into direct to consumer marketing a little bit more to even grow that as a larger portion of the business. But with this expertise that you've built up launching this and other products over the years, you also consult with startups that are anywhere from zero to a million dollars in sales and help them along the way. Can you speak to maybe a recent piece of advice that you've shared with any of your clients that might be helpful for our listeners?
Tyrone Hazen [00:22:25]:
Yeah, I appreciate that. I think that what kind of my focus in for some of these earlier stage companies are people that just have an idea and I've got this idea, I don't know what to do with it. I don't come from a place, I don't come from a family or have any connections that have taken a physical product from their mind and as an idea and taking it to market. So there are so many hurdles to overcome just before you even get the first product to go even try and sell it. So what I try to DO is offer 8020 rule, like where you put a little bit of effort here, and that's going to maximize your return for those things. You need some foundational things as well. I think one of the things that comes up very often, some of my earliest folks are like, oh, I haven't. Or if somebody hears that I do this type of work, they go, oh, yeah, I had this idea and I.
Tyrone Hazen [00:23:12]:
The first thing they think of is they want to go get a patent. And I think that if you go search for how to get a patent or where to get a patent or do I need a patent online, you're going to get patent agents and patent attorneys saying, yes, absolutely, you do, and you should come my way and I'll help you get that. And I don't think that's nefarious. They're trying to help you protect your idea. The challenge is for really little, little guys like us that don't have millions and millions of dollars to go try and make a run at. We've got to be really smart with our funds. And so if you were to spend 15 or $20,000 on a patent, which is very easy to do, that's kind of on the low end. If you have a fairly simple patent, that might have been the only money you had to go seed your business.
Tyrone Hazen [00:23:55]:
And so it's like, yeah, cool. You know, six years later or four years later, you might have a cool thing to hang on the wall to show that you have this protection. Can you afford to enforce it? Can you. Do you have the money to go now actually make the product and go put all the money and effort in that. You need to, to go get some traction on this thing and actually start generating revenue from it. So, I mean, I think that's one. There's another other people are also obviously very curious about. Well, how do you.
Tyrone Hazen [00:24:22]:
How do you build out your sales channel? How do you go get in all of these stores? And like you mentioned before, everybody wants to jump into Walmart or Targets and those big guys, and that's usually really tough to do if you don't have something to, to show for already. So you need to be starting with the smaller ones. Well, the challenge there is that's a lot of footprint footwork, right? You've got to go to, I mean, we have, I don't know, 3,000 gift stores that are, you know, maybe one or two stores that are owned by a mom and pop kind of thing. I mean, I'm not, I'm not driving all over the country and knocking on doors to do that. And so I talked to someone recently that's very successful online and he hasn't been able to figure out how to get into retail. And I mentioned rep groups and he's like, what's that? So we had just no idea. And that's what, that's what got us started. I am lucky enough that our town here of Bend, Oregon is where Hydro Flask is from.
Tyrone Hazen [00:25:10]:
And Ruffwear and Blackstrap there, there are tons of brands that come out of this tiny little town. So I'm able to call up some of these folks in the early days and just say, hey, I've got an idea. I know who you are. Can I, can I buy you a coffee or a beer one day and pick your brain about some things? So I did just that a lot here with, with Puffin. And one of my early contacts was a friend of mine named Nikki and he had another hydration related device called Hideaway. And he kind of turned us on to this idea of rep groups. He's like, yeah, this is a group. It's basically outside sales agents.
Tyrone Hazen [00:25:43]:
You hire them, they work in a particular region and of a particular vertical or channel. So in our case it was gift, it was the gift channel. And so you go to a region and they say, hey, we have 15 sales reps and they cover this region of five or six Pacific Northwest states. And if we want to bring on your line and we think it makes sense, we take it to all these stores that we already have relationships and we say, hey, here's why you should do this and here's what it looks like, and here's where your margin looks like and they sell it for you. And of course they get, you know, it's, they get a commission on it, but that you can, you can very easily extend kind of the, the, the human resources that you have without committing to hiring 15 employees of your own. And you know, they, they kind of eat what they kill, so to speak. They, in order to make money, they've got to be out there hustling and getting you the business. So there are all these little tips and tricks that you know, if you were to go get, get an education in this that might get missed because you're going to get the foundations.
Tyrone Hazen [00:26:41]:
But what I like to focus on are like, what are the things that I know now that I wish I knew five or six years ago, if I could ask, if I could go back five years, how would I do this different? And that's how I advise my clients and, and to, to build their structure so that they're getting the most bang for their buck early on and that they're focusing on optimizing for growth, not necessarily for profit early on, because people oftentimes want to go out and, oh, I get a better deal if I make 5,000. I'm like, yeah, but there goes all your money. So you've got to be really focused on cash flow. And so the financial modeling is something that I spend a lot of time working with folks on as well.
Jon LaClare [00:27:16]:
That's helpful. Well, are there any resources that you've used over the years that have been helpful to you that might be helpful to others also?
Tyrone Hazen [00:27:22]:
Yeah, I think that. Well, I'll bring up two things. There's a book that's. I mean, there's so many books. I read a ton of books in business, and you can go as broad and you can get really, really focused on a particular niche subject or topic that you want to learn, which is brilliant. And learn at your own pace. One of my favorite books of all time for small companies, even those that are going to grow big, is the E Myth by, I think it's Robert Gerber. Michael Gerber, the E.
Tyrone Hazen [00:27:49]:
Myth. And that one's so great because it starts off with like, hey, you are the only employee, and you start here. And then he kind of walks you through the process of how you go start adding on things and you build your sops and create a structure that will work as you work your way up. And you have the ability to delegate to folks. And so I think the example used a lot is like a woman that has a pie shop. And it really does translate and continues to translate as you grow in business. The other thing that, like I mentioned before, I'm so lucky to be in this. In this town of Bend here in central Oregon, that has been really helpful is the network of people who have either been here before and or are doing it again, are doing it with you right now.
Tyrone Hazen [00:28:30]:
And so I'm a member of local groups and national groups that are. That are mostly virtual, where we can get together. And I can say, hey, we're getting ready for Black Friday Cyber Monday. I've had a challenge with this little thing. We're going to move away from this particular product. We're using this plug into our Shopify app system. What are you all using for this, that or the other? And with that collective brain trust, you can get so much more information with so much. So much less work than trying to pound your.
Tyrone Hazen [00:29:00]:
Pound your head against the wall to figure all of them out. And so I think building a community around yourself again, whether it's people that have done this before, people that are doing it now, you can kind of divide and conquer and all come up with similar, with, with solutions that will work for everyone and you can test things out. And that has been really helpful. And I'm telling you, like, the, the road to success as an entrepreneur can get fairly lonely. There's not a lot of people that really know what it's like and what the pressure is like. You know, I had my house mortgaged for this business and there were times where I had $40,000 in payroll coming up in three days and I had $247 in the bank. And I can't talk to my employees about that because they're going to want to like, just, you know, go start shopping around and finding another place to go. And so that community of entrepreneurs and other people that are, that are going along the same independent journey, you can kind of still do it together.
Tyrone Hazen [00:29:51]:
And so I would, I would urge people to, yeah, band together, find others that are doing, even if they're doing the exact same thing. It's kind of the rising tide lifts all ships mentality. If you've got a product and somebody else is doing almost the same thing, find a way to work together because the exposure that you provide for whatever that industry is that you're in can benefit you both better than you competing against one another in that same channel. So, yeah, cooperation with a group, hurdles.
Jon LaClare [00:30:20]:
You hit when you're running a business, whether you're a brand new editor, been doing it for a long time that people don't talk about. Right. Openly, but they will when you get to know them. Right. So that's why networks, I think, are so important. Like every business we see on the outside, all the successes. Right. So the great things that are going on.
Jon LaClare [00:30:37]:
But every business has been through trials and struggles along the way to get there and maybe still are. Right. And so talking to them one on one, finding out how do you overcome this in your own journey, can really help you and realize you're not alone in struggles and trials along the way as well. Well, Tyrone, this has been a lot of fun. Is there anything I didn't ask you that you think could be helpful for our audience?
Tyrone Hazen [00:30:57]:
You know, one thing that comes to mind, again, if you're, if you're out there and you're an entrepreneur, I found that oftentimes when I was trying to get a product prototype or again, I was at that very early stage of going, well, how, how do I do, how do I get this idea out of my head and out into the world? And I think the challenge with that is that I was asking exactly that question. I was asking how do I do this? And what that has you doing. When you phrase the question that way is you are looking for a particular answer. I thought that there was one path and I just who's the person I need to call to help me do this? And I would rephrase that question as how can I do this? And that's one that has helped me at almost every hurdle that I faced along the way. You can look at the traditional answers if there are some out there that how somebody else has maybe done this before. But any way that you can come up with that gets you from the point where you are to the point where you're trying to be is a way. And it might work. It might not be the most efficient, it might not be the most cost effective.
Tyrone Hazen [00:31:59]:
But if it gets you from here to there, then you've made progress and you made it over that particular hurdy. So don't ask how do you do something? Ask how can you do something? And that will broaden your horizons to find the right solution.
Jon LaClare [00:32:10]:
That's great advice. And you certainly, as you said, everybody's had struggles along the way, but you've also had a lot of successes and I appreciate you sharing those with our audience today. I've learned a lot and took some notes here. Things like that's a great way to think about that or talk about that too. So thank you for sharing your story. I do want to encourage our audience. Please go to puffindrinkware.com to check out his line of products. You can see all the SKUs that are located there or any local retailer.
Jon LaClare [00:32:32]:
They're everywhere across the country, especially at outdoor shops, Ace Hardware, as Tyrone mentioned. But please check them out. Learn more. And again, thanks for sharing your story, but I also want to our audience, I want to say did you know you can meet with a member of my team absolutely free for a 30 minute strategy consultation. We've launched and grown hundreds of products since 2007 and learned some of our strategies while growing OxiClean back in the Billy Mays days. We're here to help, so please go to harvestgrowth.com and set up a call if you'd like to discuss further. SA.
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