Ranger Station: Why Fragrance Brands Understand Customer Experience| Steve Soderholm Ep. 7

0:00Chris Cruz:Steve Soderholm was a touring drummer who couldn't sit still during his downtime. So he started making candles in his Nashville home between tour dates. What's the first thing that hits you when you walk into a space? It's not what you see or hear, but what you smell. That's why Ranger Station isn't just selling fancy bottles of scent. They're actually a hospitality company disguised as a fragrance brand. Even their store in New York has Leave Your Trace written upside down on the floor so you notice it when you're walking out. He describes it perfectly. We're like self-trained punk rockers who don't know where the lines are or what we're not supposed to do.

0:33Chris Cruz:From a tiny Nashville candle company to a bi-coastal retail brand, Ranger Station proves authenticity can't be manufactured. When you lead with conviction, people don't just buy your product, they join your story. I just went to your New York store because I was in New York for a few days with my wife for our anniversary. Got this hat. Yeah, you did. Actually, and this shirt. Also, I love that you went for the Mets hat rather than the Yankees hat. because like everybody oh it's so good yeah and it was like dude funny story i was i'm going to get this hat on a rack on this on the corner there like we're um on mulberry i think that's right yeah mulberry right there where cafe leon dora is and all that i'm on the look getting this hat off the rack and tom sacks walks past me the designer and i'm like that's anyway that's new york dude yeah dude that's that's what part of what i love about new york city is like you're just you're you just see like people like that are just around just around living in the wild and it's just normal and they're all like so like i feel like if you had stopped and been like hey can we grab coffee probably would have been like yeah totally like everybody's like yeah totally yeah it's so good yeah so we we were just there and we didn't plan it around this but i had gotten pizza at la industry pizza oh so good dude it was my it was probably one of the best pizzas i've had in my life and i grew up in new jersey it was fantastic you know yeah yeah you got you got a It's like a high-end pizza palette.

1:53Exactly. It's past.

1:55Chris Cruz:It's cultivated. Yes. Yes. I'm a connoisseur of the cheese and the sauce. And I actually joke about it because I'm like, I really do care about the sauce, the tomatoes, all that stuff. They use the right can of tomatoes from Bianco. It's like, okay, we're good. Our store is so great because we have Lindistry. Then we have Mama's 2 right across. And then we have John's on Bleeker right now. Like a couple blocks. I'm like, boom, boom, boom. That's my point. Where I'm going like, so around the corner, I walk and I'm like, okay, Bandit Running, cool store. But I'm like, wait, Ranger Station. I didn't plan it but I knew you were there so I knew I was going to go see it you just launched ranger station new york yeah yeah we'll start with like months ago yeah not even two months ago you you you launched that we'll do a quick like flyby of ranger station new york and then we're going to get a little bit into the origin of ranger station and they kind of like the for me what feels like a game-changing fragrance company that's decided to do it a little bit differently and for the right reasons and it's amazing so new york how long have you been wanting to do new york store like what was even the impetus for the new york store man i feel like a lot of people when we were building it out there there was this this like oh man have you always wanted wanted to do a new york store and we were we were kind of like no it was because we never like when we first started ranger station it wasn't like oh one day wouldn't it be cool if we had a New York store, right?

3:12It was like, that just felt almost impossible or just like way out of the realm of like what we were doing. We were just tiny little candle company. And, uh, so now to have a New York store, just, it still feels surreal the whole time we were building it out. Um, and even now that it's open, definitely still feels like it's, it's not real. Um, like, and, uh, it took us 10 years to get there, but, uh, yeah, so it, it took us about two years to open the store.

3:38Chris Cruz:Oh, wow. And it was so cool. It we my wife, Jordan, who I run the company with, she got invited to a to this, this retailer conference, and in Charlotte. And she went to that. And you know, we had no idea what to expect. And she came back and was like, man, it was, it was, we were the little peons at this thing, right? It was a small group of people, but it was the head of retail for Patagonia, the head of retail for Marine Lair, the head of retail for like all the, like, and we're like, oh shoot. So Jordan became fast friends with the head of retail at Marine Lair. And he pretty quickly was like, Hey, I've got this spot in the West village in New York that we absolutely love, but it's really small and we've outgrown it.

4:24We don't want to leave, but we have to, we have to get a bigger space. And Jordan immediately was like, well, we, the hard thing for us is we need a small space and most of the spaces are too big oh my gosh so it was really cool and immediately we were like well hey we're interested yeah and he said he would do everything he could do to you know help us out and yeah that was about two years ago and then it was this just like hurry up and wait because uh it was just this very slow process yeah and we there were so many points at which we thought hey this isn't there everybody wants this space it's a corner bleaker and grove in the west village everybody wants this space i'm like i'm like yeah again my brain was like how did this happen literally how did it happen because

5:08Chris Cruz:i'm like this is prime retail space in new york city in an area that i was shouldn't have happened there were so many things we were so prayerful about it too of just like hey it there's so many there were so many points at which it it could have and probably should have not happened oh wow and we were just like lord if this is supposed to happen make it you know cool yeah you know but and it was just every little step just it kept it kept moving forward and kept moving forward and then uh and then the landlord was i mean like these big brands were looking at the space and at that point at that point running around the corner from you like all the same corner street yeah and it's one of the highest traffic streets in the country yeah right up like up a few feet and you're like oh my gosh this is it like everybody's going through everybody everybody and uh so everybody wants to be in that that part of town like if you're not in Soho you want to be in the West Village and so the landlord ended up choosing us oh wow and she said the reason that she chose us is because we wanted it more than anybody else and she had never heard of us she had no idea who we were yeah which I have a ton of appreciation for too because she could have gone with the big brand that she was like you know what I don't have to worry about these guys I know that like they got tons of cash in the bank.

6:21It's like they've got hundreds of stores. Boom. But she chose to like take the chance on us. Wow. This little brand from Nashville that she had never heard of. Yeah. And so, yeah, it's been really special and just like.

6:32Chris Cruz:And I love the way the layout of the store. It's different than the one, the Nashville store. But it's you see some prominence of even your kind of your tagline, which I want to dive into at some point, like leave your trace. Like on the floor, it caught me off guard right when I was leaving. I wasn't anticipating that brand mark and that tagline to be right there. I was like, oh. Yeah. Yeah, we wanted it. It's upside down. So you see it when you don't really notice when you're walking into the space. Right. But it's like everything we do, we think of as we're just in the business of telling stories and helping the people who are using our product tell their own story, if you will.

7:08And that's all fragrance is, is storytelling. So that's why we wanted to do that as we're leaving. and it's of course a play on the leave no trace like if you're out hiking or something like that right it's like leave no trace yeah which we totally agree with and it's our play on that of hey here's a way to actually leave your trace in this world like create memories yes through fragrance i'm wearing 1992 right now oh i know i smelled it right when it right yep i know i know

7:32Chris Cruz:you're like i made that fragrance i know that fragrance we're gonna get into that because you're not you're not an outsourced fragrance company people don't maybe one day but yeah we a different yeah we do a different but 1992 the reason why i grabbed it when we were we were at your shop doing a signature fragrance for harbor and union and i tried 1992 which i hadn't tried yet because i had tried some of the other ones like um high horse and other ones at leather and pine which we have the candle here on the set for leather and pine but we i got 99 back to the storytelling 1992 i grabbed it because it felt like a fast forward of my grandfather's fragrance yes i was like oh my gosh i smell my grandfather in this but then i smell it's like as if it got matured and modernized and i was like this is it this is my fragrance right now i wear it every day like every day it's 1992 right now over like i've got tom ford tobacco vanilla i got tom ford odewood fantastic fragrances yep i've got some great ones in there le labo they're awesome but for some reason they don't have the same signature story that i connected with 1992 totally then i'm like all right i mean and that was the whole inspiration behind that one and yeah we can get into the the whole perfuming aspect of all but um the the story behind that one was we were working with earnest okay and he his his most recent album um because you got lots of collaborations with yeah noah khan to cove us yeah you got some and two hands who have restaurants all over the country but oh they're the best you have lots of these collabs that happen which is another part that i'm like oh we gotta explore but okay so you're you're working with earnest on this yeah and he his most recent album is called nashville tennessee like he's done the songwriting thing for a long time right and um he's more recently been doing the artist thing and his second album nashville tennessee we we start working on this 1992 fragrance which is his birth year that's why it's called 1992 and uh he he was like hey listen there's there's this whole kind of throwback into 90s country right now and as he was writing his album he was like i'm going farther back i'm going 70s country i'm listening to conway twitty i'm like you know so he wanted to do a fragrance that was inspired by classic 70s men's fragrances okay but then updated yes like because if you just took something off the shelf from the 70s it's it's like it would be cool but nobody's really going to smell it like nobody's really going to wear that today so that that's what we did we took that and we were like hey let's take this i had no idea that's what you did that's exactly yeah just by smelling it yeah like i mean that just tells me we told the story really well because what you said is exactly what we tried to do that's so cool so they okay we're going to dive into a little bit of the origin story then sign of like because when we did a custom fragrance with you it was like going to a chemistry lab it was like watching you like going to this state and it wasn't like hey he doesn't he's this founder doesn't know anything about fragrance and just wanted to make a fragrance company which whatever those can do that yep you you were in the mix telling telling us like all the biochemistry elements of all of this is that what was, is that the origin?

10:27Chris Cruz:I don't know the story here. So what's, what was the origin, the impetus for Ranger station? Yeah, there's, I often joke because when I, um, you know, like why start a fragrance company in Nashville? Exactly. Like why do that? Well, honestly, there's no reason to. And, uh, you know, a question I've gotten a handful of times is, oh, did you, cause we started in 2015. And at that time too, it was this very like tech driven, like start a company, grow it. So you can retire early, make a bunch of money, sell it, blah, blah, blah, blah, all that stuff. And I always joke when people ask if that was kind of the impetus for Ranger Station, because I'm, because I'm always like, man, if you thought that was my goal, do you think it would have been candles?

11:06Like, like, I definitely would have done something different, right?

11:10Chris Cruz:Do you see this? Yeah, yeah, yeah. You think candles is what's gonna, you know, like, like fragrance companies don't sell for 20x their revenue, like, like it's a payment processing platform, right? Yeah. But no, it came from this very honest place of I was touring playing drums full-time that's how I ended up in Nashville my mom grew up here but okay I grew up in Minneapolis suburbs of Minneapolis moved down here straight out of high school to go to Belmont and play drums that's what I wanted to do so I for about five years out of school I played drums touring full-time absolutely loved it and but where Ranger Station comes in is is was this blend of when I was the touring schedule is so interesting in that when you're on tour you're going to you're going 100 miles an hour okay 24 7 like you're just gone right so it's like you're always on you're always moving you're not at home it's uh there's no like kicking your feet up really right and then you get home and you all of a sudden go from 100 miles an hour to zero and I just couldn't do that right like I had to keep like I need to keep moving I need to keep working I love working with my hands so there was that aspect of it of me just needing something to do when I was at home.

12:20And then the other aspect of it was when I was home, my roommate, Nathan and I, we were both touring. So anytime we were home, we hadn't seen any of our friends. So we'd, we'd, uh, we'd always have everybody over to the house. We'd invite everybody over. Nathan and I would usually bartend the party. We were getting very into like nice cocktails. And, and then we always, there was always a fragrance aspect. We always had candles burning. There was, there was something subconscious about hey we we need fragrance is going to help create this cool space yeah this atmosphere this sense of space like how are you entering yeah so those those

12:57Chris Cruz:things kind of came together i said this to in new york to my wife i said i know you don't like these incense in the stores because she's not a huge incense smell person yeah i said but i love them every time i walk into a store i'm just like immediately the fragrance is the first thing that first thing your brain notices yeah yeah whether you're conscious of it or not it's the first thing your brain notices. And that like, I think there was before I knew anything about fragrance, there was some part of me that knew, Hey, having a fragrance in, in our home as people come over is really important.

13:27So that kind of paired with, with, with the fact that I needed something to do when I was at home, not on tour. And also the fact that I was a tuning drummer. So I had like no money and I was developing this expensive fragrance habit. Right. So I had more time than money. And I just decided one day for literally no good reason, I'm just going to, just for something to do, I'm going to learn how to make candles. How hard could it be? And I always say, if I actually knew how hard it was, I never would have tried it, but ignorance was bliss.

13:58Chris Cruz:There's so many of those things. You're like, if I knew that this was going to take me this much, and now I can't back out because I'm so invested. I was like, oh yeah, candles, easy. You just get some wax, you get some oils, you get a wick, boom, you're done. And I'm like, that stuff is true, but there's like that's about one percent of it right like it is a chemistry project so um i made a lot of bad candles before i ever made a good one and but yeah that's where it started from this very natural place of i just loved fragrance and i love creating spaces for people and i love working with my hands and so if you if we fast forward that you go from drummer touring making your own candles because you you understand the way that fragrance impacts and shapes people and has this effect on them.

14:40Chris Cruz:You start toying around, you're tinkering with these fragrances, you're doing this thing. That's still hobbyist, right? Like you're still like, where does it transition to? Again, like where does this transition to this guy that's going, I'm touring, I'm tinkering with the fragrance and candles too. I'm now pushing forward. What now has become, I think the staple Nashville fragrance place that's actually starting to expand now to New York and others that is changing the way people engage with perfume or the fragrance because the way you're doing it and the types of fragrances that you're doing.

15:11Chris Cruz:And I love your tagline, the secondary tagline on, because we look at brand holistically. We look at it from the customer experience. We look at it from how does the product deliver? How does the team work? How does the founder or leader of this organization feel and interact with their customers? Even you, when I met you in the store, it was like, we didn't know each other. And it was just a moment, but the energy of hospitality you carried into the space, we fell even more in love with the product we loved we fell even more in love with the brand we're a hospitality company that's what we say it all the time okay yeah yeah there's guys like there's gotta be a different company that makes fragrance you know it's like fragrance is hospitality i love that it's creating experiences for people i love that and so the because when you have the other phrase what is it not uh not another not another french perfumery yeah yeah and you put and then in new york you put another national you put you put national oh we've got Imported from France, and then France is crossed out, and then it's like handwritten Nashville, so imported from Nashville.

16:11Chris Cruz:I love it because you're giving that identity to Nashville beyond country music. Totally. That's why when we're looking at with Anatomy of a Brand and what we're doing, we are looking really hyper-focused into Nashville. We're talking to other brands outside of Nashville and working with other brands outside of Nashville. We're hyper-focused on Nashville because - Well, Nashville's unique. Yeah. It really is. It's changing. Totally. I've only been here for a very limited amount of time, but even in the limited amount of time, I'm seeing stuff change and evolve. So we can dive into that too in a little bit, but where does it go from hobbyist to you start making a company?

16:47It became, so yeah, it was just like something fun to do. Like we had a website and we had one candle, the leather and pine candle, like that 2015, July 2015.

16:57Chris Cruz:That's the starter, leather and pine. You know, we started a company, which meant we had a website with one candle. and uh so but yeah it was just something for me to do that was creative and fun in between tours and then so about five years into touring i i kind of reached this point where i loved touring but knew that that wasn't what i wanted to do with the rest of my life so glad that i did it did you have kids at this time were you married no no i was i was about to propose okay so uh and knew that was in my future knew like getting married kids all that was in my future and i just didn't want to be I have a ton of respect for families that do that because it's hard.

17:35But I knew that that just wasn't what I wanted and only had fond memories of touring. So I decided I'm going to step away from touring. I didn't make a conscious decision to step away from music, just touring, right? And fully expecting to kind of figure out, okay, what's the next kind of maybe call it corporate move of like, all right, get a real job, kind of do the thing, right? And I was excited about it. There wasn't anything about that that I didn't, that wasn't exciting to me. And what ended up happening, though, was I just, as I was searching for what was next, I just never found the next thing.

18:13Okay. And I just kind of kept working on Ranger Station, you know? Okay. So it was like, I had this thing.

18:17Chris Cruz:Was it called that at the time? Yeah. Okay. Yeah. What was, like, where did that fall into your lap? Was it like a, oh, you know what? Because so many memes can be so weird where you're like, it's stuck. And we just called it that. Or we're like, no, we were very intentional. And we crafted it. like how did ranger station come about it was a little bit of both of those where it um we ranger station was the name because i had the name kind of in my pocket yeah from when i was uh i think it was a senior okay in college i moved into a house in green hills like right by lives community here here in nashville and the house was an old ranger station it's still there today Glenwood Avenue.

18:56So awesome. The guy that lives next door, um, uh, the Doris family, they, they bought it so that like nobody would tear it down. So it's still there, still rented out to college kids. I've tried to buy it from him a few times and he's like, no, I'm just like, you know, and which I, which I respect and like, he's just, and it's this really cool place because it's a, have you been to Radnor? Like, yes. Like it, like that part of Nashville used to be something like that, right? Where it's still in the city, but a natural park area. So this was the ranger station from it built in the 1800s. And so it was just a really special place that we of course called the ranger station.

19:36And it had like a freshwater stream that started in the backyard. We had bonfires all the time. It was, it was just like you were in the city, but didn't feel like you were in the city at all. Tucked back in the trees. So we had that name because it was a really special place where people gathered all the time. And, you know, we just had that sense of hospitality even at that point yeah totally so and i didn't start making candles there but it was like that was i just always had that name of like this is a special like it has a special meaning to me about around bringing people together yeah so then when i started doing candles it just and and everything we do is pretty nature inspired so it just made that like that fit with it too so

20:12Chris Cruz:so when you start this candle you got leather and pine you kick it off there and starts to grow, were you, what did you start to obsess about for the brand Ranger Station? Like what parts were you think, what parts were you like, this is a fun part. I like this and we'll do this well, but this part I really want to do well. I really want, like, what were the things that really stood out to you when you started to think about as a whole, your brand and then eventually your retail space? Like, how did you think about that? I think it's changed over time in a good way. It's just different seasons were different focuses.

20:41I think at first it was, it was just product because at the you know and i didn't know any different um there was and we can get more into this but uh there most brands most brands just set out to and there's nothing wrong with this yeah but most brands in the fragrance space build a fragrance brand and they outsource

21:02Chris Cruz:perfuming and production somewhere else someone else is doing it someone else they don't even know the process they couldn't tell you much about it right so there's um but we couldn't afford to do that you know so we love it the route that people might think is cheaper you're like actually actually no so we we owned our own manufacturing right so which at that time now looks way different than it did at this time this time it was like me and one other guy and my brother helping me out a lot you started to become a scientist so like the product ended up being like the first focus where it was the end to the point i made earlier if i had known everything that goes into making a candle, I probably never would have tried because it seems so simple.

21:41Like candles can have a pretty low perceived value, but they're really hard to make well. Right. Yeah. Cause it's, cause you're dealing with, you know, you got, it's hard for me to keep them in my house.

21:50Chris Cruz:Cause you've got headaches. Yeah. You've got, I mean, you've got a vessel with wax, with wicks, like it's all, but the second you add oil to it and all the scents are different, it's like, it's going to burn different. So, and what raw materials you use and the quality of those. So the first focus was just like, hey, before we can do anything else, before our brand even matters, it's got to stand on the product. Wow. So we need to, and we still say it today, like before we do anything else, we got to make sure we're making the best candles, best fragrances that like on the market. Yeah. And because if we can't do that, then the rest doesn't even matter.

22:21Yeah. If we're trying to tell a story and the story is around fragrance, our fragrances and products better be. Yeah. What's funny when you're saying that

22:29Chris Cruz:because I don't even know if you guys are connected to this. so I'm saying this real time. I have no idea if you're connected to this, but there was someone who, there was this Instagram account that was doing like a Le Labo dupe. They're like a Le Labo dupe, Ranger Station. And I went to war. I actually went to war on your behalf. I was like, this is not a dupe. It's not meant to be a dupe. And the fact that you were, I actually, like I got, I never get into the comments. I never get into the comments, but I got into the comments. I was like, this is a fragrance that stands on its own and has a product above any of these other ones, like the the other dupes you're calling dupes whatever this is actually a fragrance company this is not somebody trying to make dupes totally you need to look into this because it's far more than that yeah so yeah because like with that one are yeah that the santal 33 by by lilabo they uh they kind of put this they put this raw material called iso e super on the map which we we've had it we've had it for since uh it was isolated in the 60s and we can get into raw materials and all that synthetic versus natural all that but um so in the 60s iso super was isolated and it's a sandalwood note um and that's most of what santal 33 is so and it's become this very prominent like raw material and our santalum fragrance is uh just it uses a lot it is different than santal 33 100 but it is heavy into iso super yeah as are a lot of a lot of things in on the market especially in the 28 i think 2017 or 18 is when that came out for us like especially during that time it was there's always so there's this cool thing about fragrance where if you if there's nothing about a fragrance that you are not familiar with you're not going to like it because and that's primal right like because you think of our olfactory system it's you know before we had the luxury of being able to spend our time on creating fragrances yeah our olfactory system was was like a survival tactic so yeah so so with that like fast forward to today there's things like you always want to i always want to create something new with something familiar right like that's the best way to do it because if and iso e super is one of those great raw materials where you can bring that into a lot of stuff santal and being one of them we've said that exact phrase to brands and companies when they're trying to release a product i go if you can attach a portion of this to some level of familiarity it's going to go like if you could even say like the netflix of this industry or the uber of this industry sometimes they it removes the barrier to entry so much quicker than people to look at a brand or a product and go oh it's the this of that like even with what we're doing we're looking at what we're creating going we're not a lifestyle brand we don't create products like that but we look at huck uh huckberry and we're like hey we're really inspired by the way that you guys showed up as a brand and especially your youtube channel on the way that goes so we're going all right how can we be the brand the the huckberry of brand strategy and like let's lean into that so and i think i think that can get kind of you know i think some people kind of are like hey that's like don't copy what other people are doing and it's like yeah definitely don't copy what other people are doing but like use it as inspiration everything's remix sure everything's sure yeah exactly so you so you have the the the chemistry part of this brand you're you're obsessing about the product the product is going we got to stand on our product we've got actually that's got to start so you started there and then it evolved is that right or yeah to into like into i think today it's we well while we will always lead with product yeah at the end of the day what we're doing is telling stories and creating experiences and i think especially if you look at the past decade there's a lot of brands have had a PR company come in and craft a story for them.

26:12Yeah.

26:13Chris Cruz:It doesn't feel authentic. It doesn't feel like conviction. Totally. And people can see right through that. There's, you know, talk about, you know, the digital era that we live in, right, which is only going to get more and more. All of a sudden, we are all able to really see through fake stories. Correct. So you better be telling a real story. And also, like, why would you not want to tell a real story? Just tell the story that's, you know, you know, if, if it's in, you know, it's the, the stuff people love seeing from Ranger Station is, is like our manufacturing process and the fun that our team has in the warehouse working with their hands, creating product, you know?

26:52And so, yeah, it's really been a lot of that focus of, of just, Hey, this is a very natural thing that we, again, if, if we were setting out to, you know, speed scale a company and sell it one day, it probably wouldn't have been in fragrance yeah we we're in fragrance because we really care about

27:09Chris Cruz:fragrance and storytelling i think that part the the fragrance and storytelling part where it's it's still one of those that why retail matters because you're you buying a fragrance online like what how like like unless you know it unless you experience it either on somebody else or in the store fragrance online is like wait a second hold on you're either doing the like this smells like this brand and you're like okay 50 50 i hope it hope it does hope it kind of does yeah but you guys that's the the the retail of uh experience of fragrance matters in the i love that you brought up the that pr people will come in and tell a tagline because or a story write it up because i've felt that so deeply when i'm looking at brands i'm going oh you there's no conviction and it shows up yeah yeah because nobody else knows this story because nobody else lives this story it's not embodied by anybody here and i'm going into the brain and i'm going no one resonates with what you're telling me is your story because this isn't real because it's not real you said you made a great point of like living the story it's like yeah don't tell a story just actually live the story and let people in on that you know let people see you guys doing that you like you don't have to just just put out like really pristine clean high produced stuff you can do that and that's great but like also just let people see behind the scenes of of the day-to-day of you know we get to do we get to do like cool stuff so like let other people see that and be inspired by that we uh we have our when we went to do our custom signature fragrance with you guys coop our video creative producer video guy he like the magic of all of our podcasts that coop doing is doing all of that and he came in and shot that whole process and we're cutting that up to a video but it is like that behind the curtains look at the manufacturing part of what you guys do, at least an element of the manufacturing.