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Guest: Jay DeMerit, founder of RockIt Logs.
Host: Kevin Mako, founder of Product Startup and the leading expert in hardware startup consulting. A hardware entrepreneur since 1999, Kevin has advised more than 1,500 founders and built and scaled MAKO Invent through its acquisition by TriMech in 2024.
Testing Materials, Performance, and Supplier Fit
Jay DeMerit explains how acoustic performance, wood selection, design choices, and manufacturing constraints shaped RockIt Logs stereo components. The episode shows how hands-on testing and thoughtful supplier selection can protect a distinctive product idea.
Episode transcript
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Filip Valica: Hey, everyone. Welcome to the Product Startup Podcast, a podcast that helps bring your product idea to life by chatting with successful inventors, product designers, and other industry professionals. This podcast is run by Mako
Filip Valica: Design + Invent and hosted by Filip Valica. Our goal here is to get to the bottom of what makes a product successful, from initial idea to putting your product on the shelf. We're taking you step by step to build a functional product and scale your product business. Now onto the show.
Filip Valica: The Product Startup, Episode 41. Jay DeMert talks about designing one of a kind of Stereos made from Reclaimed Wood from the Forests of British Columbia.
Filip Valica: Hi, everyone, and welcome to the Product Startup Podcast, where we talk about turning ideas into successful products step by step. I'm Filip Valica, and thanks for listening to me today.
Filip Valica: In the last episode, we talked to Diane Gardner about small business tax deductions, so make sure to check out episode 40 if you want to hear more about business entity types and small business accounting. Before we get started, I wanted to highlight.
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Filip Valica: turn it into the podcast that you want to listen to. So thanks again for everyone that has done that already. Let's get started with the show. Hi, Jay. Thanks for joining me on the show today. Thanks for having me, Philip. Pleasure as always. So you have a really amazing product. You're
Jay DeMerit: using reclaimed wood in a new way. You're using it to create speakers. Tell me how you got the idea for such a product and why it's so important to you. There's a couple reasons. The first one is
Jay DeMerit: my background is actually in product design. So I'm always looking at the world and kind of not only as we're taught as product designers to look for holes to figure out kind of not only in a market,
Jay DeMerit: but also in the product itself and not only in the way it's used, but also in the way it looks. I was an athlete for 12 years, and I didn't get into the design world much. And when I came out of being an athlete, I wanted to get back into the creative world.
Jay DeMerit: Obviously, you go to your four-year degree, and you want to always use it. And design thinking is one thing, and I definitely use design thinking every day. But to actually put into practice product design was another thing. And as a stereo company, we started to make suitcase boomboxes.
Jay DeMerit: So we would reclaim old suitcases and turn them into ghetto blasters, so to speak, kind of staying in the green and upcycling and recycling and all that kind of stuff was something that we started with. But now, fast forward a year and then I'm thinking to myself
Jay DeMerit: going, okay, what else can I do as the designer to evolve our company? What other product lines can we start to think about? And it was as easy as looking around me. Right now, I live in Vancouver and Whistler, British Columbia. Now, if anyone knows where British Columbia is,
Jay DeMerit: it's in the Pacific Northwest, just north of the U.S. border in Canada. And basically what happens here is not only is it a ski town, it's a mountainous town, but at the end of the day, there's also a lot of other logging projects. Most log homes from around the world get wood from
Jay DeMerit: the Pacific Northwest, not only just based on how beautiful it is, but also just the species itself. Cedar, hemlock, Douglas fir, all of these really kind of unique woods, not only to
Jay DeMerit: the Pacific Northwest, but also woods that people really want around the world. In the winters, I'd go skiing. And in the summers, we're out on, you know, camping trips.
Jay DeMerit: And what I'd find is that there were so many old logging projects, logging cuts, and I would see these unused piles and piles and believe me, when I tell you
Jay DeMerit: abundance out here in wood, it's so true. There's so much wood here that's just been cast away. So I thought, you know what, there's all this beautiful wood that's all sought after. Why
Jay DeMerit: don't we start to start to put speakers in this wood, not only to create more art in speakers, but also to reclaim the beautiful wood. wood that's around us, but more or less it's just sitting there to rot. I saw a void in the
Jay DeMerit: stereo world of, you know, everyone has beautiful stereos in their homes, but they're generally big black boxes that either sit on the side of your TV, sit under your TV, or sit in the corner of your house. Now, as a designer, my job is to try to make that look cooler, maybe make that
Jay DeMerit: into a different part of your home design. So those things started to kind of creep in as, you know, I saw a lot of this wood being used for coffee tables. And I'm thinking, well, that's an awesome some piece of live edge coffee table, but you still need a house stereo.
Filip Valica: Why don't we just put that stereo right in the middle of the room? Or why don't we take a log round and then put a speaker right in it? And that's how the rocket logs were born. So many products are created just by combining two different loves that maybe people haven't combined before.
Filip Valica: So that's really interesting that you've been able to do that. When you were going through this process, did you already have a background in some sort of
Jay DeMerit: the audio design, audio and engineering, or did you use existing designs and kind of scale those or how did you just get started from saying well we're we're using converted boon boxes or suitcases and now we're going to do something different that's a good question uh the short answer to
Jay DeMerit: that is no i don't i didn't have any big experience in stereos themselves but i mean essentially as far as the brand is concerned what we do is we create party boxes you know and i've always been
Jay DeMerit: a social butterfly i've always been into the mix of you know the social environment and uh because i didn't have any technical knowledge that's why my business partners are the ones that have that
Jay DeMerit: technical knowledge. So I work with them to make sure that the sound is quality. We do all the sound testing. And essentially, what we're doing is, you know, again, like I had touched on generally right now,
Jay DeMerit: you know, what your speaker is is a blow molded or a tech molded piece of plastic or metal that sits in the corner or it's a wood cabinet that's a square. Now, it's only because
Jay DeMerit: a speaker needs a certain amount of volume to breathe to work properly and it's engineered to the point where that volume space makes that speaker perform. And those cabinets are specifically
Jay DeMerit: built to that specification of that speaker. Now, that process for me doesn't change. You know, we still match the speakers that we use, say, in our boom boxes for the suitcases, essentially
Jay DeMerit: that's a box. And we know the volume that that box has. Now, we and I design that to specifically fit into that volume of space. So we don't put a huge speaker in a volume that needs to be too big.
Jay DeMerit: We put the speaker around that volume, so at least the sound quality will be the same as it would be if it was just your traditional designed square box.
Filip Valica: Essentially, as a designer, we're just changing the box and what it looks like,
Jay DeMerit: not necessarily the amount of volume that it creates the sound with. And that was, I guess, the key to our company, and especially through these rocket logs. So talk a little bit about how you chose all the components, all the various pieces that go inside a typical Bluetooth speaker.
Jay DeMerit: We selected a speaker that, again, requires just about six by six inches of box volume space, right? So we use a 12-inch log round, for instance.
Jay DeMerit: We core out the five-inch hole in the front, and then on the backside, we core out eight inches of circle on the back side. And then we have this design cone that has another four inches of space, in that along with the electronics. We put that in through the back side of the log. We put the
Jay DeMerit: speaker in through the front side of the log. And now we have the traditional performance for that specific speaker. Not to mention, we've done a lot of research on speakers themselves. And there's a lot of speaker companies now that because the world is getting smaller,
Jay DeMerit: because our products are getting smaller from our phones to electronics and all this kind of stuff, there are a lot of speakers out there that are specifically designed for smaller enclosures. We did a lot of product testing throughout the process of the rocket log and to make
Jay DeMerit: sure that the speaker that we use is a full-range speaker that is designed for smaller enclosures. So you don't need that huge volume space either for the speaker to perform. So we create volume through the log by routering out the front side and the backside.
Jay DeMerit: We bring in the cone that creates a little bit more air volume. And then together with that speaker that doesn't need as much air volume space, now we have a viable product that is small enough to carry around. That's Bluetooth enough to be compatible to, you know, your other
Jay DeMerit: speakers you might throw in your backpack or put in your bike rack. And now we have this unique
Filip Valica: piece of design that you get to be a part of, that you get to pick the stains of, that you get to have this one-of-a-kind piece of wood burl or different grain that truly is one-of-a-kind, but yet we're still giving this portable speaker performance that can rival the other
Filip Valica: performances and the other speakers that are out there today. Yeah, absolutely understood leveraging existing technology. And I want to get back to that for sure. But what One thing that piqued my interest was how you said that you went and tested different configurations.
Filip Valica: So can you talk a little bit more about when you first had an idea, you were looking at some of these logs and thought, man, they deserve a better life than what they have now.
Jay DeMerit: They're just laying there and no one's really appreciating their beauty. What were some of the steps that you took after that to say, okay, now I'm going to try to marry these, my two loves, my two hobbies and see if it will even work? Well, that's a good question as well.
Jay DeMerit: You know, and I think just like any design process, it's the process. First, I got to find a long log that I can cut into 12-inch rounds. Then I got to cut a hole in it and see if they crack.
Jay DeMerit: And then from there, I got to, I started to test, okay, what happens, at what point of the drying process should I core out the log? So I start learning that if I let those, if I cut them into rounds and I just let them
Jay DeMerit: dry as a full round, they will check more violently and they'll check almost to the point where I can't use them. But say, for instance, if I cut that log in the round and I get that hole out right away, not only is it drying from the outside, it's also drying from the inside,
Jay DeMerit: allowing the cracks to actually be smaller, and then we can actually turn this into a viable product. So there was not only testing in the first thing we tested was the nature itself. Can these things actually not break apart all the time?
Jay DeMerit: And so we worked first off with that. Is this even possible? And that was just wood testing. That's making sure that product was good. And we did find out that if you core the wood out right away and it dries from both sides, it doesn't check as violently.
Jay DeMerit: And the center of a wood round has a heart in it. And wood checks, and by checking, I mean cracking. And the big checks usually come from that heart of the wood really twisting.
Jay DeMerit: But if you take the heart of the wood out, now you have this ability to stop the violence. You know what I mean? Right.
Filip Valica: So it checks maybe a little bit on the outside and a little bit on the inside. But for us as the wood process, as we cure the wood, as we sand it down, one of the steps we do
Jay DeMerit: is we put a small bit of epoxy in the cracks. And then that makes the wood solidified. And it actually turns into the little beautiful donuts that we can turn into speakers. So talk about your decision to use wood in the first place, because it obviously gave you
Jay DeMerit: some challenges on the manufacturing side, but there are some benefits for acoustics. Isn't that right? Wood has great acoustic properties, especially the soft tone woods, like a fur and a cedar, which we use, not only because it's easier to woodwork,
Jay DeMerit: softer woods are allowing, you know, routers to go through them a little bit easier, where if we were to use like a maple, for instance, a much denser wood, that's really hard to put router through and it takes a longer time. And that was all part of the process, which wood we should use,
Jay DeMerit: which wood checks the worst, which wood, you know, dries fastest. Cedar dries really well.
Filip Valica: Cedar is actually quite a lighter wood, too. So cedar is actually our most ideal wood, but we're in abundance of forests of cedar, fur, and hemlock. So those are the three we try to use.
Jay DeMerit: But we also like the fact that every wood is different, and we like the fact that they'll all stain different, and they all will be truly a one-of-a-kind product, which is in the design process, something we want to create, even on a scalable level.
Jay DeMerit: You talk about the different wood species and how they affect your manufacturing. What were some of the other design factors that forced you to go a certain direction with the design? The next process is, okay, technology,
Jay DeMerit: how do I combine? And, you know, again, this neat thing needs to be portable. So let's stay within a 12-inch round. So it's still light enough, but it's still heavy enough. But when you set it down, it's not going to fall over. You know, if you accidentally run into it, it's not going to be like this really
Jay DeMerit: light piece of equipment that's just going to crack. So I still wanted it to have a little bit of weight to it. We tell people that say, oh, it is pretty heavy. And I say, yes, it's a little bit heavy, but that's because it's real wood. And, you know, I'd rather have a real wood product than some cheap made thing that tries
Jay DeMerit: to be wood, if you know what I mean. So again, that was part of the design process. And again, the technology side, you know, what I learned about working with speakers is that there's a lot of cool design in speaker, whether it's a plastic cone or whether it's got a
Jay DeMerit: metal tweeter or, you know, it's got a paper cone that has like a fun texture on it. Or some of these cones are made up like a certain Kevlar kind of material that has a weaving texture in it. And what I found in speakers is that there's a lot of art in just the way they look.
Jay DeMerit: And I don't know why we're always trying to grill them and hide them. in a place where, you know, in a home where you're not really kicking your speakers around. Yeah, I get if you're, you know, if you're bringing these things to a party or whatever and you're setting them up and there's going to be 100 people putting their drinks on them,
Jay DeMerit: yeah, you want them to have a little bit of protection.
Filip Valica: But for the most part, if you're in your own home, you're creating your own design, you know, you're not going to be really treating your speaker to the point where you can't see the speaker. You know, you don't need to grill it all the time.
Jay DeMerit: That's one of the options we have on a rocket log. If you want to put a grill on it, you can. If you are the person that's going to be putting it into your bike rack and putting it over. wherever and you know kicking it around that's fine that's no problem but at the end of the day i still
Jay DeMerit: think that there's a lot of beauty and just in the way they look not just the way they sound so you mentioned sound quality what are some of the things that you did to test the speaker components or to work with the proper speaker manufacturers we found that the six inch uh which is the speaker we use we use a
Jay DeMerit: six inch full range speaker so you're getting a full range of sound uh from the base to the highs of highs. We tested a bunch of those, not only in the technical waves, our sound guys have these little microphones and they put them through sound tests to make sure they're hitting the levels that we
Jay DeMerit: want to have in a small portable speaker. So we tested five or six of them. We found the company that we liked the most, gave us the best so-called more bang for our buck. But going back to
Jay DeMerit: the texture of the speaker, this speaker in particular has a built-in metal tweeter built in right from the front. So if you see in the images of our rocket logs, it's like a little bullet. It looks like a little bullet tweeter from the front, but it's also made of
Jay DeMerit: a brushed aluminum metal. Now, talk about toughness.
Jay DeMerit: It's a plastic cone speaker. So again, you're going to get that poly-tuffness of it. So if you have it outside and it starts to rain a little bit, it'll hold rain for a little bit. It's not waterproof, but it's a
Jay DeMerit: poly speaker with a metal center. So that's technically a water-resistant material. If you run into the speaker from the front, that metal will stop your foot before your foot punctures the speaker. And then the third reason, because we wanted to use that speaker,
Jay DeMerit: because not only did it sound great, and within our price range, we wanted to hold, but it's a powerful speaker. It's got 60 watts of power, which, you know, your general portable Bluetooth speaker
Jay DeMerit: usually runs anywhere between 5 and 25 watts. So we thought as a startup, we don't have a million dollar R&D department to have a 10-inch glass tube that brings in the base of our speaker and
Jay DeMerit: you know some of these bows and B&O speakers of the higher higher end some of these are even bigger than our price range so we kind of wanted to stay within that mid-range price range of about three
Jay DeMerit: four hundred dollars but we thought not only well we work on having that dial in our sound we'll beat it with power too we'll bring more juice so you can actually pump your party in your house you can bring this thing to a park and really create a party too
Jay DeMerit: And so all of those questions were certainly answered in this one speaker. And the cool metal design of it brought more of the art side of the speaker. Not to mention brushed aluminum, the center of that speaker,
Jay DeMerit: because we are a design your own company, you're a customize your own company. We can mask that and paint it too because brushed aluminum is one of the most paintable things and surfaces that you can do.
Jay DeMerit: So if we are also creating art, we can paint that a different color. We can paint it gold if you want gold.
Filip Valica: If you got red accents in your home, you can do a red bullet and red screws with your natural wood thing that matches your cupboards. Now you've got not only something that looks amazing in your home has double the power of your normal Bluetooth speaker, but it actually fits into your home design.
Filip Valica: So, you know, that was kind of the process of all those things from technology to look to actually making sure that the nature side, that the real beauty of our product in the wood still was able to create the box that would create the same.
Jay DeMerit: sound. Now, I appreciate thorough explanation. It seems like you guys went through a lot of testing and iterating the design to make sure you came across something that would be well received in
Jay DeMerit: the market. You know, as you first started the design process, did you do any type of outreach at all to your target market to see if they would buy something like this or if other people would
Jay DeMerit: want it? Or did you have some sort of an inside confidence to say, you know, based on our previous experience, this is definitely going to do okay? A little bit.
Jay DeMerit: of both. We live in a place up in Vancouver where big rudy coffee tables and live edge pieces are very sought after. So I know that natural wood products are popular, just in my own experience,
Jay DeMerit: and living in the sea to sky corridor up here, I know a lot of friends in high-end homes. As we got along the way, I first made the prototype.
Jay DeMerit: And then within, you know, two or three months, we brought it to parties, or we took it to bonfires or we didn't throw it in the bonfire, thankfully or no one did but my accident um the rocket logs kind of took off when we started to bring it
Jay DeMerit: places and people were just like wait that's a speaker and you know just more or less the reaction and then it was uh okay how much is it and then it's all it's 399 and then oh that's not bad for like a
Jay DeMerit: handmade product and and then we're like yeah and you can pick it pick your own design and your own stains and you know people really took to the idea and i and i guess it it wasn't a mass market as far as like how market testing but it was a local market
Jay DeMerit: testing and and we think that we want to start in our local market first anyway because we right because of the product in its product testing phase is only a year just over a year in so we still know that
Jay DeMerit: we're in our third model right now so we had our original model now we've changed our battery and our Bluetooth and now with the Kickstarter that we're that we're in right now we're actually
Jay DeMerit: raising money to produce the back cone part into one electric part so the electronic part will have everything built in it. It'll have more of a professional and engineered based on the things
Jay DeMerit: we've learned, but it'll have inlaid power switch, plus and minus volume right on the system. It'll have battery indicator lights so you know how much juice you got in your battery. And the best part, it's going to have a USB so you can charge your phone now on the go.
Filip Valica: So, you know, all those, all these kind of features now we've added in a third prototype. And now we're ready to start push them out to a world market and see,
Filip Valica: you know, and we know that we can at least have a viable business here locally in Vancouver, which is, you know, which we know what likes this kind of handmade craft goods, but we also know that there are
Jay DeMerit: a lot of handmade craft markets out there. And those are the people this year now that we have, and hopefully after we hit our Kickstarter target, that we can actually go out and scale these
Jay DeMerit: things to the point where we can be a boutique marketplace item. And that's this year's plan. Definitely progression on the scale of manufacturing. And I guess when you're talking,
Jay DeMerit: about your step one and two products, your stage one or two designs,
Jay DeMerit: can you share at all how many of those you sold or were they just internal designs that you tested and then iterated on? We first did a run of, let's see, we did a run at 20 to start.
Jay DeMerit: We had these lithium ion blue batteries with a built-in switch and, you know, it just didn't work very well, in all honesty. They were cheaper batteries. We didn't really find the right battery factory manufacturer.
Jay DeMerit: So we immediately knew, okay, first things first, let's change our battery. Changed our battery, came back in Bluetooth. Bluetooth works okay, but now, okay, now let's work
Jay DeMerit: on how we find another Bluetooth factor. Now we got a couple more samples coming in. Now we combine that with the new battery that we like. And then we did another run of 50. And then after that,
Jay DeMerit: We've done probably about 50 to 75 more with this new model that was working pretty well, all while we're designing this whole new cone that's going to have all the specs we've just learned, but also built into one electronic piece.
Jay DeMerit: So overall, we've sold about 150 locally. And, well, I've sent a bunch down to the states to my friends that wanted them or whatever. But that's about where we're at.
Jay DeMerit: And as far as the Kickstarter now, we've just launched and we've sold 150 in eight days. Wow, that's great. We're getting to the point now where people are getting to know us, getting to trust us, which is another thing I've learned throughout the process.
Jay DeMerit: People are very cool to say, that's amazing. But as far as them giving me the credit card is a totally different thing. And what I learned is that they need to trust the system. You know, they need to hear it once, and they need to see that their buddies got one,
Jay DeMerit: and then they need to hear that twice, and then they'll buy it. So we're kind of getting to the buddy stage where the buddies start to have them, and now people are like, hey, that's cool, what is that? So now, again, now we create not only a more scalable idea in having this electronic cone
Jay DeMerit: that will allow our processes to be three times faster because we're more plug and play instead of producing seven different parts and putting them all together by hand. Not only does that add more human error in seven different parts and soldering and all these other things, it'll make our processes quicker.
Filip Valica: But now, if we can scale, again, based on our marketing and based on if we can get some sales through this Kickstarter, now we can viably make $1,000. thousands of these a year. We know where the wood is. We know where to find it. We know how to
Filip Valica: cut it. We know how to hold it. Now we're going to get this electronic part that'll make us be able to be more plug and play. And then we can combine those two loves of well-built technology
Jay DeMerit: from somewhere else that we can combine with what we do best at, finding logs, getting them and taking them out of logging projects and turning them into something pretty and repurposing
Jay DeMerit: them into stereos. And we love that combination. And we hope now this year we can make a thousand of them because now we have a viable business that can be successful right yeah and one of the things that i wanted to underscore is you know a lot of people think that you have to come out the gate
Jay DeMerit: with a thousand units or something like that so i love that you were able to test at a small unit run and then iterate again with maybe a slightly larger run and focusing on local feedback because really
Jay DeMerit: that's where most of the products should start because i imagine you understand your local market better than any other market in the world you know you're totally on point and i think I think that's kind of the way that we want to do all of our products. You know, we're starting to learn our new problem, and that's shipping these.
Jay DeMerit: Because, again, they're 12 pounds each.
Jay DeMerit: They're done with the speaker. You know, again, these are 60-watt speakers, so the magnet on them is quite big. Again, you're talking about a 12-inch log round. That's about five inches thick. Now you're talking about something that's a little bit heavy.
Jay DeMerit: So now you're talking about 15-inch boxes that are 12 pounds apiece. Right now, if I want to ship one alone through UPS to the UK, hey, it's like $127.
Jay DeMerit: I know that that's not a viable business plan. So that kind of immediately said, okay, let's switch our ideas to target the market here first. Let's make sure that we're not, as a company, because it took us a year to develop the product
Jay DeMerit: before we can even start to push it out, again, now I've spent a lot of money just trying to make sure that the product's right and we're not getting these things sent back because that's going to cost us even more money.
Jay DeMerit: Let's concentrate. It kind of tells you the story as the story is unfolding, if you know what I mean. That's one of the things that immediately told us is like, okay, people here like them. Let's concentrate on local things.
Jay DeMerit: What we make sure that we, the design is right before we can even start to think about shipping around the world. Now we're to the point where we can start to think about that as we continue to refine the product, hopefully get this Kickstarter hit.
Jay DeMerit: And then while that produce of cone is being fixed and made, we can figure out shipping logistic issues. So, you know, we're kind of trying to foresee the problems before they come, but also making sure that we're learning along the way.
Filip Valica: and that's kind of been the process well starting in our local market. So that definitely has been the best way for us, especially when we're making a handmade product. You know, I think, you know, for us to make a million of these a year and say, hey, we'll just put all of our processing over to overseas.
Filip Valica: You know, that's not really a viable business plan for us. You know, our vision as a company is to always be boutique, it's to always be a custom company where we're a handmade product.
Jay DeMerit: And we understand that maybe that'll hurt our sales, but we don't, you know, our end game is to sell like, Thousands and thousands of these, not millions of these. It's just not really plausible. But that's fine because, you know, we like the boutique craft market, small batch, so to speak, with your beers or
Jay DeMerit: whatever. Same type of idea, but in a unique stereo. Very good point. And you need to know what type of company that you want to be when you grow up, I guess, right? Because a lot of people have these aspirations that they're going to take
Jay DeMerit: over the world. And you don't necessarily even need to do that in order to, you know, if one of your goals is to provide a living for your family and to encourage small business development in your
Jay DeMerit: area and hire employees because you want to give back. You can still do all of those things without competing with the apples of the world. Exactly. And that's always, you know, our original pickback is, you know,
Jay DeMerit: well, I bought my bows for 300 bucks and are you guys kind of like bows? And I'm like, no disrespect bows. I have a bows. They're amazing. They're amazing pieces of equipment. But at the end of the day, our concept of the company,
Jay DeMerit: is that we want to be something more crafty and more and more design-worthy of your home stereo or of your personalized on-the-go stereo. You know, we do coffee table stereos where you get to pick, you know, again, now,
Jay DeMerit: and we're talking downtown living, for instance, where nowadays, San Francisco, Vancouver, Chicago, you buy a 750 square foot place for $700,000 now.
Jay DeMerit: We live in a market where your middle class will still have to buy a coffee table.
Filip Valica: you're still going to buy a nice stereo, but you don't have the space that you're going to need three rooms to put your little stereos in each room.
Filip Valica: Like basically, we live in one room places now, or a big open plan, nice kitchens with beautiful cabinets and really nice accent colors.
Jay DeMerit: Now, imagine if you could have your coffee table that fits into that room, and then you have red screws to match the red accent on your couch. You have the sound system with a 10-inch subwifers built right into it.
Jay DeMerit: you have 400 watts of power that's going to have much bigger sound than your general black box things that are going to sit in front of your TV, but yet you don't even realize it's your stereo. It just looks like it's part of your home design.
Jay DeMerit: But yet you're in a space that easily will be able to fill that sound, but yet you're doing that in a more design conscious way. So that's, again, where we don't want to produce a million of these. We want to produce a really cool and unique piece of equipment for your home.
Jay DeMerit: As you went through this process, did you hit some stubbing blocks where you thought maybe were not on the right track or there's something's not quite right and people often project this
Jay DeMerit: idea that they went from step one to five in this linear path and in hindsight maybe there were some starts and stops did you have any of those we are getting more and more of that you know we've
Jay DeMerit: done a lot of different boom boxes we've done a lot of different you know products we uh so we've kind of streamlined the process um say for instance um we wanted to give the customer full
Jay DeMerit: range to design whatever they did. So I would buy, you know, seven different speakers of around the eight inch woofer size. I would buy five different speakers of around the three, four
Jay DeMerit: inch size. And we would combine them. We would use different amps. But then we realized that with all these moving parts, we don't actually don't have a viable business plan. We're not actually making money because we're spending more time in the process without actually streamlining our
Filip Valica: process where we can scale these or make them enough where we can make a lot of these in a week. Because we're spending too much time trying to change this speaker to that
Jay DeMerit: and making sure that that amp works with the six speaker of that size. So what we learned first off was that we got to streamline our processes. So for instance, now our boom boxes, we do two set designs,
Jay DeMerit: and we just have little small accessories that allow us for you as the customer to accessorize those. So you can change color scheme or you get to pick one of two designs. Same with our wall pieces, same with our coffee table. So instead of being like all of the equipment is accessible,
Jay DeMerit: We make the equipment the same and we make all of the things that make that equipment work like the wood stain the standoffs of the coffee tables
Jay DeMerit: screw colors paintable bullets. That's the accessorizable part. So our processes don't change too much as far as how we build them, how fast we can build them, but yet we're still giving full range of like
Jay DeMerit: accessorizability. You know what I mean? Looking back, did you ever have any pushback because of that or do you feel like you might alienate a portion of your audience?
Filip Valica: Well, because there isn't customization in speakers right now, we were able, that is one of the answers we found. And that was kind of my original anxiety. I'm like, well, no, because like the original idea is like, I want to be full custom. I want them to be able to, you know, really have free
Filip Valica: range. But now, then I realize that, A, that doesn't work on a moneymaking level of how to build the business. Number two is that they're still getting way more customization options than before.
Filip Valica: so they're still stoked and they're still getting this unique product and that is kind of where
Jay DeMerit: our real honey pot is our processes are still set we know the guys that we employ can make them and make them fast and don't have to do all this random stuff where j the designer has to always be
Jay DeMerit: involved you know jay the designer's now created this this template and then we get the production guys to put all that stuff together in a much easier way but yet the customer is still still
Jay DeMerit: because they're still getting five choices in how they design their home speaker. Right. It's still personal to them. It feels like they have a connection to it. It's not just something they can pick it up at a box store. Exactly.
Jay DeMerit: One thing I wanted to ask you, now that you've been growing your audience steadily, obviously one of the keys to a successful Kickstarter is growing your audience. How have you been able to do that? And did you find anything else that was important in being successful on Kickstarter?
Jay DeMerit: You're about halfway funded now and we've got 20 days to go. we record and the day this will go live is the last day of the Kickstarter. That's right. You got one last chance. Go and bye, bye, bye, bye, bye.
Jay DeMerit: Well, yeah, I mean, and that's a great question. I think with the Kickstarter, you have these kind of plans about different targets. One is, you know, we set the reach goal of how we press go on the rocket box.
Jay DeMerit: So everyone knows that in the Kickstarter, it's kind of through pre-buy sales, but, you know, we set 50 grand as our target because it costs. cost us 12 grand US just to just to press go on the production side so they got to
Jay DeMerit: build the mold they got to press go and then from there you have a minimum order number so for us right now the minimum order is 300 so you know that are or radically pops pops up our minimum spend and even to press go on the
Filip Valica: rocket log at just over 40 grand US now you talk about marketing and now you talk about ways that okay now we press go now we got to sell through you know no I think we're at about 170 backers right now for rocket log
Filip Valica: So, you know, we're almost there to 300 for our minimum order, but from there, we don't just want to stop. So now it's about using the Kickstarter, hopefully, on our stretch goals. So if we can go beyond that,
Jay DeMerit: our two goals right from the off of any money we make over the 50 to press go is we need to get people that are going to help us push this out, help us create the content to do that. And then the second thing is to hire a production person to help us produce these things at a bigger rate.
Jay DeMerit: So, you know, on the marketing side, that is one of the biggest keys beyond. if we can hit our goal. So that's going to be, again, a huge phase now moving forward in if we can hit our target as to how are we going to push these out to the right markets?
Jay DeMerit: And that goes into a little bit of research of what we've done in this beginning phase of who are the craft markets we like, who are the craft markets we think would like these boutique products. And then from there, it's about creating a marketing campaign that will hopefully allow us
Jay DeMerit: to sell those in those market small batch markets. Is that a basically a scaled up version of what you had to do to live? launch your Kickstarter? Like, what were some of the preparations that you had to make? You know,
Jay DeMerit: some people assume that you just flip a button on Kickstarter and people kick down your door with wads of cash trying to like jumpstart your product. But in reality, there's all this work up
Jay DeMerit: front that it takes to corral everybody and make sure that, you know, that it's going to fund successfully. Yeah, and I'm laughing because you're so right.
Jay DeMerit: Yeah, you know, this has been over four months of planning for the Kickstarter. There's a lot of different ways of the process. One, you have to make sure that your pricing's right. You have to make sure, again, your targets are right based on future sales, based on future
Jay DeMerit: marketing ideas, based on all these kind of things. There's these templates you can use to make sure that because Kickstarter is a crowdfunding stage that you use mainly through social media marketing.
Jay DeMerit: So you have to get your social media content right to when you start to roll out, how to target your markets. You've got to have a budget so you can run. on ads on Facebook, on Instagram, and all these other things, it costs money to run your Kickstarter.
Jay DeMerit: It's not like you said, just pressing go and say, and hit in hope, you know, you've got to be able to make sure you're hitting your markets.
Filip Valica: You got to make sure you have a marketing budget that's going to allow you for people to see this in a social media world that's so saturated that, you know, it's like a
Jay DeMerit: needle in a haystack where I'm looking at for that one craft idea person that's going to be looking at the computer at three o'clock when I happen to roll it out. you know like Facebook ads thankfully target those markets so there's there's science behind that
Jay DeMerit: and then the third thing again talking about budget is that you know you need a a semi-substantial budget to try to hit your markets in the right way you know so we originally budgeted
Jay DeMerit: five thousand dollars to to do the marketing side Facebook and Instagram we're two weeks in and we're almost out already mainly because you know just like anything you find the markets that hit you put testing out on the other ones and but those don't hit then that's just
Jay DeMerit: just kind of a loss of money. So then you've got to dump more money in markets that are available and that are working. So it's kind of one of those types of things where the Kickstarter is it's fully a kind of like design.
Jay DeMerit: It's on the fly thinking it's, okay, that didn't work. Let's change that. Okay, let's change that image because we're getting the ad image that we just sent out. That one's getting more traction. So that means that image might be more powerful.
Jay DeMerit: So let's change the image of our ads to that one and use that one only instead of that. or let's change the video. Can you talk about the videos that you created for your campaign and which one of them worked the best? So we created three content videos. One is how do we make our product?
Jay DeMerit: Like in the shop, how do we sand two minute how to video? This is where, here's the forest where we find our product. Anyone that will go to our Kickstarter campaign can see those videos or just go to our website and see those videos too or our social medias.
Jay DeMerit: But then it's like, okay, now we need a lifestyle video. People need to know where this product's going to go. People are going to know where it's going to look like in their kitchen. people want to know like oh there's the there's the rocket log in the park oh i can bring this to the
Jay DeMerit: park you know like there's a lot of lifestyle shots you need to make sure people know what they can use in this user experience and then the third thing is because um you know we're a customizable company we show we want to show our range of the rocket log we want to show them in 15 different
Jay DeMerit: colors we want to show them and you know um with a guy in a onesie that's in a red and white plaid onesie and we he's got a red and white uh red and white rocket log you know what i mean like
Jay DeMerit: we want to show that you can truly customize things to your these to your lifestyle so that was kind of the third video we wanted to prove because that's one of our major flags in the sand is you get to customize it you know this isn't just a log stereo that you can buy yes you can buy it and it's going to be cheaper if
Filip Valica: you want the basic model but at the end of the day if if red is your color we want you to have red screws and a red bullet and a red back cone
Filip Valica: because you know that you're going to bring this more places you know what I mean so you know we had to market that in a certain way and therefore creating the content so that costs money we had photo shoots we had we have paying videographers and video editors to do that so
Jay DeMerit: you know people i guess the you know one thing we did learn and one thing i did learn is is make sure you budget right too before launch and you know a lot of money spent before even launch and that is
Jay DeMerit: the key to a good campaign as well as having the content ready to think and change in the fly which is what we're doing now um and and it's working you know we changed our content this week and already
Jay DeMerit: we're seeing a small spike again back in the right direction because our original content started the plateau. So, you know, again, like watching the parameters of Kickstarter coming in, actually being on
Jay DeMerit: and having a four-week plan rather than just saying, okay, here we go, press go and see what happens. You know, like there's way more planning that that's involved in it, which has also been so
Jay DeMerit: interesting for me to learn, to learn about the process of it, to be interested in it. and also take it to learn the stress of a 35-day campaign.
Jay DeMerit: Well, and so talk about that for a little bit. What were some of the surprises in the marketing that you or some of the lessons that you learned on the imagery or some of the calls to action or even the copy that you're using that
Jay DeMerit: you thought, man, I didn't think that this would convert this way or maybe you had, you know, three or four options and you finally picked option C and that caused that spike that you're talking about. Sure. Well, a couple. One is we use an influencer marketing.
Jay DeMerit: program. I was an athlete for many years and throughout that time as a professional soccer player, I learned a lot of good relationships with other athletes and other entertainers and people like that. So, you know, I got like, for instance, I got Steve Nash, you know, very,
Jay DeMerit: you know, two-time MBA MVP. He designed a rocket log. My wife is actually an Olympic gold medalist in skiing. She designed one. And it's interesting. So we have, we have eight different
Jay DeMerit: marketers from NHL athletes to NBA players to famous actresses and stuff like that. So now on paper, we think we're going to sell a million of them, right? Because we have access to, you know, five million people on Twitter that we can just
Jay DeMerit: on an emotion press go, right? So we think that's going to be the easy part. Well, we'll get sales through that. But at the end of the day, an influencer, they don't have time to be posting like we're going to post as a company, like all day long.
Jay DeMerit: You know, the most you can get out of an influencer marketer is generally like two or three posts through a month campaign or, you know, and even though they're my friends, I'm not going to just berate them with like, hey, can you post again? Hey, can you post again? That's not how influencer marketing
Jay DeMerit: works. So we did find that it hasn't worked as well as we thought. We thought, you know, Steve Nash would sell a million logs because he's got three million followers. Make sure that you,
Jay DeMerit: you create a plan with them that's more detailed as to how many posts you can get, have a strategic plan to make sure that those ads or those post transfer in a more concentrated way because are kind of fallen by waste. I guess we're getting sales. Yes, because they're my friends. I haven't
Filip Valica: had to pay them a lot of money or any money for the most part. You know, so that's still to our advantage. So we use that. That's one thing I've learned is maybe to target that a little bit more or maybe use those to a more concentrated advantage rather than just using them to press click,
Filip Valica: if you know what I mean. Yep, understood. That's one thing I learned on that side of things.
Jay DeMerit: Clicks that have worked was our lifestyle video, keeping it at like 30 to 45 seconds. I do know that generally that is a running trend keeping videos anywhere from 30 seconds or less even now
Jay DeMerit: if instagram videos 15 seconds depending on your product you know like we want to make sure we show it where it's from that it's customizable and that it can be used in a lifestyle so that generally takes a little bit more than 15 seconds than a 360 degree video of like a product itself
Jay DeMerit: you know like we're more of a lifestyle product so we wanted to make sure it was like 30 to 45 seconds.
Jay DeMerit: Our lifestyle video right now is getting our most traction. Our how-to video is a little bit longer. It's a minute and 30 seconds. But to show our whole process, to show that like our true craft,
Jay DeMerit: it did take a minute and 30 seconds to show that. And, you know, the audio files, the tech people, they want to see what's inside. They want to hear more about the technical specs. And that takes a little bit longer than to show like people in a park party and you know what I mean so right there's still
Jay DeMerit: use in that video but for the most part that on the content providing that's more or less where we're finding a lot of traction is the shorter lifestyle video great well I really appreciate you
Jay DeMerit: sharing that it would be wrong of me to let you off the hook without asking you this question you alluded to it a little bit but used to be a professional soccer player for the u.s. men's national team,
Jay DeMerit: how has that experience at all prepared you for what you're doing right now? Have you been able to take away anything from it? I mean, yeah, 100%. My story started, you know, I was kind of
Jay DeMerit: behind, you know, I graduated from design school in Chicago. I was a college athlete, but I just missed out on the draft. I didn't get picked. So I thought, you know, my career might have been over, but then I took it upon myself. I packed my bags and moved to England, right? And I started,
Jay DeMerit: I started playing in the 12th division in the UK soccer pyramid, but within two years, I'd navigated my path and I was playing in the Premier League against, you know, the Manchester United's and Chelsea's of the world. And, you know, I played in a World Cup.
Jay DeMerit: So, you know, you think about the way that you prepare as an athlete. You can do it as a long-term goal setting,
Jay DeMerit: you know, or you can think about each game matters, you know. And so that kind of ideas, that kind of mindset as an athlete that I learned by all of the adversities that I faced are now starting right now. as a designer. Yes, thankfully, I have the background, just like I had the background as an athlete
Jay DeMerit: to try. It's one thing I'm learning as a designer. Yes, I have a degree in product design. So I'm not out of my element here. I know what I'm doing as far as way things should look, textures to make sure that combinations are right, using the right designers and people around me that are going to make
Jay DeMerit: our product pro, as well as using the athlete side. Is that what's a mentality? How do I take each game by game, so to speak, to develop this product into a long-term goal as how
Jay DeMerit: How do I become a World Cup athlete in the stereo world? So I am definitely using my experience as an athlete, turning that into a designer. But the struggle isn't any different.
Jay DeMerit: I've had success as an athlete and I can use that success to help with influencer marketing campaigns. I can help with connections that I have in big businesses or sponsors that I've had along the way. I will use those things that I've used as an athlete.
Jay DeMerit: So yes, that'll help me in the marketing and business side. But for the most part, I think, myself now as that guy that just left for England with a backpack and a passport. I've just started the design world and it's a little bit humbling in all honesty to now sit behind a computer
Jay DeMerit: and relearn how to design and make mistakes and try to figure out like the path of an entrepreneur.
Filip Valica: You know, by no means is it any different. But now I'm just that new green behind the ear guy that's trying to learn his trade. You know what I mean? So that's been a little bit challenging. And also not only that is that the design world, just like the fashion world and the technology,
Jay DeMerit: world, you know, these are people that have been doing this for a very long time. That's like me
Filip Valica: as a 12 year pro looking at a rookie and being like, oh, what does this guy now? You know,
Jay DeMerit: like, that's been a barrier for me is, oh, this guy's just an athlete that thinks he can be a designer now. He can use his professional athlete's status to become popular. But they don't know that my background isn't designed. So there's little hurdles that I've actually had to go through
Jay DeMerit: in this first almost two years of, you know, almost creating a legitimacy for myself, kind of like proving people that I'm not just a dumb athlete. You know, like, I'm, I'm a guy that actually has an experience in this, wants to be better at this, and now kind of
Jay DeMerit: turning heads in our production and in the actual end product. So, yeah, it's been, it's been challenging, but it's been, you know, kind of proud of myself that I've been able to kind of come through these barriers to create a product that people are really liking and are now buying.
Jay DeMerit: And now it's just about, again, goal setting, micro goal setting, and using that mentality as an athlete and providing it to being a business owner. And, you know, I'm really enjoying it. But I'm also just as stressed out as I was.
Jay DeMerit: an athlete to try to make it. So, you know, those are the kind of challenges that I'm facing. But by no means, you know, am I not enjoying it? I wouldn't do it if I didn't enjoy it and enjoy it. And, you know, it's all part of the process. And that's what design teaches you. And, you know,
Jay DeMerit: I'm having fun with it. And there's a lot of people that are having fun with me. So we'll keep
Filip Valica: it going for sure. You know, you definitely alluded to a lot of things there. And one of the things that I got from that was that product design is a mental game just like it is in playing professional sports. A lot of the wins and losses.
Filip Valica: can be attributed to your head not being in the right spot, right? 100%. And it's amazing when you take a step back and think about those parallels, how many parallels you can actually find between the two. Jay, it's been awesome talking to you.
Filip Valica: Tell everybody where they can go buy their own rocket log. In this last day, this day now, you can go to our Kickstarter campaign. Just type in Rocket Logs, R-O-C-K-I-T, just like you rocket through a stereo. Rocket Logs is the product line.
Filip Valica: Otherwise, you can go to our website, Portmanteau, P-E-R-M-E-R-E-R-W-S-E, B-O-R-T-M-A-N-T-E-A-U-Sterio.com. You'll not only see the rocket logs, but you'll see our other products.
Filip Valica: We do beer pong table stereos for your Man Cave or your sports bar or your business games room. You can put in your logos. You can, again, change your stains.
Filip Valica: You can design your own coffee table for your home. You can, again, pick your stains, all those kind of things. And you can also design your on-the-go ghetto blaster from a reclaimed suitcase that you can choose. You know, we're a lifestyle company. We're a cultural company.
Filip Valica: We want to create something that really is a showpiece for you and not only in your home, but for on the go that matches you and your lifestyle. So, you know, again, thank you, Phil, for your time. Thank you for putting some effort into helping us.
Filip Valica: And hopefully you guys can see where, you know, we're putting our energy into being a craft and boutique stereo that you guys will find way more unique and way more cool for your sound. Awesome. Well, thanks, Jay. Thank you. We'll talk to you soon.
Filip Valica: So as Jay mentioned, if you want to check out the Kickstarter today, Tuesday, February the 21st is the last day that it's live. Congrats to the team. They had over $60,000 pledged to the project for a $50,000 goal, so it's fully funded.
Filip Valica: I really appreciate Jay sharing his valuable, actionable content with everybody. Here are my top three takeaways for the episode.
Filip Valica: Number one. Understand design factors intimately. Listening to the interview, it's clear that Jay was really hands-on with the testing and production of rocket logs.
Filip Valica: By experiencing the issues and solutions firsthand, he was able to make decisions about the final design much easier.
Filip Valica: This knowledge is essential when iterating the design quickly, and I think it's one of the worst steps to outsource as a product founder. Number two, decide what you want to be when you grow up.
Filip Valica: Jay knew that he didn't want to grow the portmanteau stereo company into a giant company shipping millions of units. This decision influenced the manufacturing and growth strategy for the company early on, and also
Filip Valica: it shaped how they marketed products to consumers. This enabled the company to differentiate itself from mainstream brands at the same price point.
Filip Valica: And number three, don't give customers too much choice.
Jay DeMerit: Jay realized early on that too many configurations would overcomplicate production, so he standardized on the technology behind the sound, something that customers were probably least likely to want to decide for themselves,
Jay DeMerit: and then he narrowed down the visual options to items that had low impact to production. This way, the customer still got a unique, personalized product without affecting the bottom line. If you'd like to get these takeaways
Jay DeMerit: in your inbox every week, just go to the product startup.com and scroll to the footer of any page, and then sign up to the weekly wrap-up at the bottom. At the end of each week, you'll get
Filip Valica: my three takeaways for each guest, along with interesting articles or free tools and maybe some inspiring innovations to help you with your own product startup.
Filip Valica: As usual, if you've got any questions or comments, I've put all the links that we've covered under the show notes posted on the product startup.com slash 41.
Filip Valica: I've also set up a phone number for you to call and leave a question or feedback for the show. You can also pitch your product startup to the show audience. Leave me a message at 6-8-1-321-1-1-5.
Filip Valica: If you're going to pitch the product startup audience about your product-based business, please keep your pitch to 30 seconds or about the time that you would have to talk to somebody in an elevator. Don't forget to include the problem that you're solving and the call to action,
Filip Valica: what you need us, the listeners, to do for you. Join me next time as I speak with Stacy Marking with Lemongrass Trading Company about all natural insecticides and fragrances. we get into paid research, testing, design, branding, and packaging.
Filip Valica: So tune in next week to hear that episode. Thanks again for joining me today, and I will see you next week.
Filip Valica: Thanks for tuning into this episode of the Product Startup Podcast, the show that teaches you what it really takes to bring your product to market and turn it into a big success. This podcast series is brought to you by Mako Design + Invent,
Filip Valica: the first firm in North America to provide global caliber end-to-end physical consumer product development to startups, inventors, and small product businesses.
Filip Valica: If you're looking for product development help on your invention, head over to MakoDesign.com. That's m-a-k-o-design.com for a free consultation from one of Mako-Design for design studios from coast to coast. Thanks for listening and see you next time.
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