How To Turn a Hobby Into a Beloved Brand | Todd Balsley Ep. 16

0:00Chris Cruz:It all started in a garage with one photographer's frustration. Todd Balsley couldn't find a camera strap that felt right, so he made his own. What began as a leather crafting hobby transformed into Clever Supply, a brand that now has world-renowned photographers lining up for their products. Their approach to working with photographers is equally revolutionary. They build genuine relationships by sending photographers products with zero expectations. This strategy paid off when street photographer Joe Grimm mentioned designing a strap for over a year. By the time they launched their collaboration, his audience was primed and ready.

0:29Chris Cruz:The result? Thousands of straps sold. Even photographer Peter McKinnon, with millions of followers, showcases Clever Supply straps in his videos. Not because he paid, but because he genuinely loves them. As the company grows from garage startup to established brand, they've proven that listening to your community beats following traditional business models. This is anatomy of a brand where we obsess over what makes brands tick so that yours never settles. This is episode 16 with Clever Supply CEO and founder, Todd Bosley. I didn't have coffee today, guys. I just realized. Not at all. You don't have any coffee.

1:01No. Listen. How do you have this type of energy? Oh, this is the beginning of the podcast. How do you just wake up with this?

1:08Chris Cruz:This is the beginning of the podcast. You didn't ask me. How do you wake up with this type of energy? You didn't give me coffee. Wow. How do you wake up with this type of energy? I don't get it. You don't do it. Because I did jujitsu this morning at six. Woke me up getting thrown. Who needs coffee? Yeah. Okay. Todd, how long have you been doing Clever Supply? Wow. This year is like 10 years. No way. This is year 10. I actually didn't know it was that long. This is year 10. A decade. So decades. So yeah. Do you still love it? You hate it? You're done? You're like, I'm out of here, man. Evan flows back and forth.

1:40No, I love it. Grateful to have been able to build something from, you know, my garage into something that just started as a hobby that I love to do. And then, you know, over time, just build it into something that I can provide for my family and, um, something I love doing and just be able to make it my living.

2:03Chris Cruz:So, and so we're not going to, I'm intentionally not asking about what, what the product is yet, because I want to ask you a question that I ask a lot of product oriented brands that have like an actual hard good. Sure. I think I should ask this of every brand, but I, for some reason, really like asking it of those that make a product. How would you describe clever supply? If you could not mention any of your products, how would you describe the company okay that's fun i would say we make tools for photographers to try to help them get back to the soul of the craft love it so then now so we're going you're after the soul of photographers there's something you do tools drive us forward into now what is the product that clever supply makes and then we'll have a little bit because it's been used by some world-renowned photographers some big names peter mckinnon and joe greer and some others like that you can list off the names more than i could you know the whole like rolodex of people who have used your product that are making a difference in the space of photography what is the product that clever supply makes yeah so we're we're known largely for our camera straps that we make in-house.

3:20We make leather camera straps. We make both traditional split ring straps and ones that integrate with another very popular camera strap company called Peak Design. So we integrate with their hardware and that's kind of how we got our name. We were one of the first to kind of integrate with Peak Design hardware and integrating leather with Peak Design.

3:40Chris Cruz:And so was that a, was that a, was that a, what was the reason you decided to collaborate with another camera brand to take their hardware, put it into your product. Was there some kind of competitive advantage you were thinking as a brand? Like what was the actual like business objective behind doing that versus keeping it only on the key rings? So I had developed my own quick release system. So they're known for their own quick release. So that it's a real quick way to release the camera strap from the strap. So it's easy to connect to a tripod or just maybe pack it away and stuff like that.

4:12And it was really really pretty revolutionary when they came onto the scene and they they have a history of doing their own kickstarters And so I had developed my own with like kind of just available on the market hardware. Okay, it was with Leather I was using leather as part of it but also like it was just like a little carabiner kind of like clip that would connect to it and so I Can show some pictures later if you want to use those but What I did was I actually launched that on Kickstarter. That was actually my very first Kickstarter This was back in like, gosh, it must have been 2017, 2018.

4:49And people responded well to it. I didn't really have a following then. The brand was pretty much non-existent. And the idea was just like, I wanted to make something that felt like it was just as good as what they were making, but kind of handmade and handcrafted. And I was really proud of that design. but what I Found was when we launched it. We had a whole bunch of people backing it and then start asking like would you ever consider? Integrating peak design hardware into The thing so within like two weeks of launching this Kickstarter, maybe it was like a week and a half I I got like enough of those people to where I was like I just need to like buy their hardware and I need to offer this as a upgrade reward Okay, so I did that and it was like immediately like I can't remember the exact numbers was like 40 % like converted immediately over to that.

5:39And so it was like, we had this.

5:41Chris Cruz:So it started from listening to your customers. You were like, there was some, like they were just DMing you going, what if this versus like people being, cause here's the thing when people DM, like whether it's a review or they're on a comment section saying like what the product could be better. There's two ways to take that. There's one to be like, screw you. I've just made something awesome. Why are you, why are you telling me to change this? I've spent my blood, sweat and tears. Or there's another way to go. Is there a way to make, is this leading to something that I wasn't thinking? And it's, it sounds like it was that for you.

6:14Chris Cruz:It wasn't this, like, I'm just going to say, screw you. Cause I just worked really hard. And you're just telling me my products, not X, Y, Z, and I should do this. You listened because of what, like, what, why, like why did you decide to change that? So the goal was just to really just try to make something that looked good and kind of felt like it was just as pretty much just as good as what they were making. And their stuff, if you look at it, it looks really good, but it is a very certain aesthetic. It's very tech forward looking. And so I was just really kind of drawn to like the more heritage look of things.

6:47So I wanted to incorporate leather and just kind of the brass hardware and stuff like that. But what people let me know really quickly is that, you know, photographers are very particular about their gear and taking care of it. And, um, even though the leather around it would kind of protect it and stuff like that, the fact that it had metal on it was just a turnoff for a lot of people. And they were just like, they wanted to try it, but it was kind of a turnoff. And so the, the peak design hardware as a alternative did have like more of like a plastic carbon polycarbonate okay kind of thing and so i think just psychologically people just were more drawn to that because they knew it wouldn't scratch their camera they don't want to take a chance and so i just enough people i just you know just kind of like i was hearing it in different places and photography forums and comments and dms and stuff like that and i was like okay i just need to like see what happens here just like just throw something out there and see if it resonates and when it did that really that kickstarter turned into me developing my own product and taking all this time to develop it which again i'm proud of but then really leading to us pivoting to that being a core part of our lineup by offering this this hardware so we did the kickstarter we offered our own hardware for a while after the kickstarter and then like at the turnover the new year i was like we're done with this and we're just going to offer this hardware as our like in-house hardware apart from like a split ring connection.

8:16Chris Cruz:So, so you've been doing this for 10 years, you say, which means you've had iterations of product. Yeah. Very costly process, like to actually go like, all right, we're going to develop a hard good. That's going to then go through all different costs, variations, and trying to figure this out. What was that process for you so that you could actually make a profitable company when you're dealing with like, I've got to create an actual good that I can't control all these variables for the cost of goods. And I can't do all of that. How was your journey to go? All right, we're going to look at this, this, and this to make this product.

8:49Chris Cruz:And what was your frame of mind to get to actually launching this product as you launched it 10 years ago, but are continuously launching new stuff from clever supply. Yeah. So I think I'm pretty fortunate in that, you know, When you're a leather crafter, you are able to buy a hide and do a lot of different things for that hide. From that hide, I could make a bag. I could make a wallet. I could make all the different types of camera straps that we make now. What I found that really helped us early on was the fact that because we were making things ourselves, me and my wife making every single camera strap in our garage, We were able to use, you know, the same hide get the most out of that hide and you know minimize waste and That really kept it Cost-efficient for us because we could do it made to order and so an order would come in and it wasn't like I had to go Buy, you know spend$10 ,000.

9:50I'm buying a certain skew Of a certain strap that I hope is gonna sell out in a certain colorway It's like I have these different colors that we offer and I can make every single strap from those different colors You know, and so that really helped us to where it's like the initial investment was a couple hundred dollars in resources and raw materials versus like hundreds of thousands or tens of thousands of dollars Maybe for another brand where they've got to get inventory bulk up and just hope they sell because they are moqs to meet and all that stuff

10:19Chris Cruz:Like that so then in that okay, so is made to order what was that like is that a is that a you going like hey this is a good marketing play for us or you're like this actually works really well for how we do business like made to order could almost feel like it has this like kind of like whoa that's custom for me but at the same time it feels like it also could be really labor intensive on one side for a brand to kind of do made to order how do you wrestle with that yeah i mean i think with every leather crafter when they start it's that's all it is because you know we went from you know it was great to have an order a day to you know you know so 30 orders in a month maybe to then one month it just all changed and it was like 300 orders in a month and then you know going beyond that you know many more orders in a month than that.

11:12And so for us, we found in, so I started really doubling down. So I kind of just backing up quickly. I started as a leather crafter, just making all types of leather goods. Okay. And I had been a photographer all my like young adult life. I started in high school and always had a love for it, had a wedding photography business at one stage. And I picked up leather craft just as a hobby to just make all these different things made my wife bags made wallets for people stuff like that and eventually i had a friend of mine ask if i would make him a camera strap and he owns a film lab in louisville kentucky which is where i'm from and when i made it for him he was just like just really impressed with it really liked it and just like would you ever consider selling these wholesale and just like a light bulb kind of went off i was like oh this this would be cool like it kind of got tiring for me the the excitement was the exploration of learning how to make the design and just like the creative exploration of tinkering and figuring it out but once you've made a wallet and you've kind of perfected it for yourself like it just becomes kind of came a little bit grindy for me personally this is just my personal experience but something about making camera straps for photographers over and over again just like lit me up a bit because I felt like, because I had moved on from it, from a professional side, I'd kind of moved out of that, that industry and was working a tech job at the time.

12:38I, I felt like this was a way for me to be connected to, to the industry and to the, to like the culture that I just admire and love. And so, uh, for me, it felt like then what was the question?

12:54Chris Cruz:So you were, you were, I was talking, I asked you two questions. That's why I'm confusing you. So the one was about scaling up the made to order. And then the other question was around, you mentioned 10 orders a month. You started going in one month. It was like 300 orders a month. And then the next month you're seeing increase and increase and growing. So like I'm thinking a made to order camera strap, 10 orders a month. We got this. Yeah. 300, 300 orders a month. What increases? Okay. Are we still, is it still, still made to order? Or is that, is that marketing play? And then how did you, how did you manage scaling?

13:27Yeah, that's great. So really just, yeah, for that first question, really, I just think, you know, when you're building a brand, it just, it starts really small. So, you know, you're just doing it in a very organic grassroots way. And so made to order is really only thing that makes sense because you know, you only, you might have no customers in a week or a month, you know what I mean? When you're building this little tiny brand, um, back in the day on Instagram, that's kind of like how we got our start. And, uh, and then kind of like this, this, this model of made to order, um, and scaling that and the kind of what changed.

14:01So we're, we're doing that. And we just, I decided to double down on photography after that, that friend, uh, it kind of lit me up and we decided to get rid of all our products off our website that weren't straps. And I was like, you know, this isn't my day job at this point. There was no risk. I was like, this is, this is what I want to do.

14:18Chris Cruz:And it was clever supply at that time. Yeah. It was clever supply. Yeah. So I'd done that and really I doubled down and I had a few friends in the industry that were photographers. A buddy of mine named Benj who lives out in Tacoma, Washington. His name is Benj Heisch. And he's just kind of a staple in the wedding industry. Kind of helped pioneer the PNW wedding scene and stuff like that. It was kind of like a big thing back in the early 2010s. and really he posted about it on YouTube because he was doubling down on YouTube. This was actually during COVID. So wedding gigs are getting canceled and we just found that photographers like him who had kind of a following on YouTube that decided to double down on it, they were looking for content to make.

15:03And so he was like, why don't you send me some more of your straps and I'll like feature them in a video. And he did and it just was like something lit up. Well, I think that's a fascinating call out right there for a second.

15:11Chris Cruz:Yeah. I think the idea that people are looking to make content and they're looking for good products to put in their content. So it's, it's recognizing like the, the quality of your product made it so that making content about it was good. Yeah. Versus like, Hey, I'm sending you a product and there's the, the, the packaging, the design of it, the quality of it, the look of it isn't worth talking about. And so they, people don't want to make content. They'll, they'll get sent stuff and they're like, make content on this. You're like, yeah. But you haven't thought through this. This product doesn't look interesting.

15:43Chris Cruz:It's not compelling. When I put this on camera, it doesn't feel like it resonates with people who are watching. Like it's not thought through, but you had a photographer who loved your product, who realized they needed content and your product fit. And I think that's just a key for a lot of brands to think about who go like, is there, is there creators who your product, not that you could just capture their influence, but that you can think my product actually works great for content for them. Yeah, that's great. I mean, for us, the, one of the pillars of how I designed our products were like, um, the look of it was kind of like what got us in the door.

16:18So it was like, you know, that was the look of it was kind of like, you know, just the first thing that we knew, you know, if it, if it didn't look good, people weren't going to be interested. But then the secondary thing was comfort was King. And in the sense of like, it had to feel great when you put on your neck. And so we choose our leather very carefully to where it's like, it's not super firm that has to break in over time and it's not super soft and flimsy. It's kind of right in the middle where it has this like naturally broken feel. It feels well worn. And it will continue to soften and age and kind of develop with your use.

16:56But it's also not a pain in the butt to wear right out of the gate and stiff and scratchy. It's just really comfortable. So we've been really intentional about that first feeling of when you put on your neck. Like it just feels great. You're thinking about those details.

17:08Chris Cruz:You're not just cutting leather. So, okay. So back to the, the YouTube video. So he goes, I'm making content as features shop. So you send him stuff. Yeah. And so it was like, you know, for us, I think I mentioned a minute ago that like it would been great. There was a time when it was a great, when we got like one order a day and that was like, Oh, awesome. Like 30 orders in a month. Sick, you know? And, and that was just like, that was kind of just where it was at. And then I remember he did a video and then, uh, we also happened to just get featured in a petapixel article, which is, you know, for photographers out there, they know it's like just kind of a news outlet for photography.

17:42One of the bigger ones. And they happened to feature the same week that he posted a video and it was just like 30 orders in a day and then 40 orders in a day. And it was like, before we knew it was like 300 orders in a month. And it was just like night and day. It was just like, you know, hockey stick kind of growth. Wow. And all of a sudden it was like, oh, we found a customer base that's interested in us. and we just didn't know how necessarily how to find that customer base and so we doubled down on just continue to develop relationships friendships with people that were kind of investing in youtube because that just felt like something that was great and kind of working with them on a commission so they still get a kickback and they're getting you know something that's worth their time and helpful for them and then just kind of building and nurturing relationships with photographers in the community that you know like the news outlets or these different different avenues it really started to open up my eyes like oh this is a way that we could start to market our business and start to get the news out there of like what we're trying to do and if you're into it then you know you know where to find us and then uh if not then that's fine too so tell me about like a Peter

18:46Chris Cruz:McKinnon yeah like how does that happen how does a brand like yours get connected with him and then for people who don't know like because there's tons of people who listen to podcasts who have like for me like I'm learning so much of the photography space because our team is informing me on who's who in the zoo around photography and why that person's interesting and I'm looking and watching YouTube videos based off stuff so it's like oh that's a lens thing from so and so and I'm like well what's the difference why does his name on it matter like and they're informing me on so much of that give context to why a Peter McKinnon would matter to your industry and what that did for your business?

19:23Yeah. So Peter McKinnon is, you know, one of the larger photographer YouTubers out there. Um, a guy, great guy out in Canada that has been doing it for a long time. He actually has a history in leather craft too. So he has, if you notice and follow his brand, he's very much into EDC and very much into, you know, he's big on the cameras, big on just amazing visuals, both from stills and with video, but he also takes time to kind of like, and just enjoy his hobby of like EDC and stuff like that. So leather craft kind of fits into that community really well. And he actually used to make things, um, everyday carry.

20:02So yeah, sorry. Yeah. You're good. So everyday carry. So that's, you know, people that carry knives and their wallets and pocket dumps and they take flat lays of their pockets and stuff like that. And so they're like, I got so much junk

20:12Chris Cruz:in my pockets that it's become a thing now. So yeah. And that was like a big scene for the leather community for a while. That's how they kind of found their community and stuff like that. And we were kind of like a little bit separated, a little one stage removed from that because we're focusing more on cameras. And so we kind of found our own niche of customers that, you know, kind of everyday carry with their camera and that kind of helped us build our community a little bit as well. But Peter, um, he found our stuff through another photographer that, uh, we worked with in the past, he, they kind of had a relationship and he reached out to us and wanted to start picking up some of our stuff.

20:49And what's really cool about him too, is like, he like bought stuff and didn't just ask for free things too, which we would have absolutely done that, but he, he like bought things and, you know, we, we tried sending him extra stuff just to kind

21:00Chris Cruz:of, you know, just, of course, just to build that relationship. That's the smart move. Of course. And so he, yeah, he was looking, he was actually getting into film photography, um, I think a year and a half ago. And that kind of coincided with him finding out about our stuff. And it just made sense. He was getting these Leicas and these different cameras that kind of, um, because they're a little bit smaller, more compact, they kind of leaned a little bit more towards some of the straps that we want a couple of the straps that we sell. And so he was taking an interest in that. But then we also offer like a camera harness that is like a way for like event photographers or wedding photographers commonly To carry multiple cameras at once and so in his case for more bigger shoots He was interested in that and so He decided to do a video on us and Like he yeah, he's like he reached out.

21:49I was like I would love to do a video on this stuff and Let's go. We shot a little bit of b-roll of us making some of the video and sent it to him I'm, sorry some of our straps and sent it to him And then he incorporated it and just shared all about our, our products. And yeah, for that, it's just for any maker or any smaller brand, it's just that number of eyeballs. And, um, you know, it's happens to be in a niche and in like a target demographic that we're also serving. So he usually speaks to photographers and videographers. So speaking right to our customer demographic. Um, and it, it was really impactful.

22:24It was really, really powerful to be exposed to his audience.

22:28Chris Cruz:Because I think that's a, I think it's a good call out when we're talking about like products getting in front of people via different content creators or people who are making YouTube videos or Instagrams thinking about, it doesn't matter if this person has a hundred thousand followers, but they talk about lipstick, but you have a product that you think, well, they'll mention something about it in there. It's like, is sometimes it's like, okay, that's an interesting, it's like the Taylor Swift NFL effect. Like how many people watched the NFL just because Taylor Swift and how that grew the Taylor Swift audience.