The Rise of Sourhouse: Building a Sourdough Startup in a Rising Market

0:02Hi, and welcome to this week's episode of the Epic Entrepreneurs podcast where we are all about helping business owners just like you achieve success. So we don't do fancy smancy. We don't do flashing lights. We don't do a lot of things that a lot of podcasts will do. These are just real stories about real people and their entrepreneurial and business experiences. We go into their wins, their challenges, and their learnings. So we hope you enjoy it.

0:36Hey there. Thanks for joining this week's episode of Epic Entrepreneurs. I've got Eric Fabian from Sour House, and boy, does he have a cool story. So I can't wait for us to jump in. Hi, Eric. Hey, Bill. Thanks for having me. Yeah, thanks for having me. Tell us what Sour House is. Sure. So at Sour House, we make and sell tools for sourdough home bakers. So we launched as a Kickstarter campaign back in 22 with a device that's a countertop appliance that keeps sourdough starter warm at kind of an ideal temperature. So to make bread baking easier, we sell jars and we sell some other accessories, all with this kind of goal of encouraging more sourdough baking and more sourdough bakers.

1:22Yeah, so, I mean, how did it come about? I mean, I don't think you just wake up one day and say, I'm going to make this sourdough, what did you, what did you, jar? It's like a jar that keeps it to the proper temperature, right? Yeah, this device Goldie, that's the kind of our hero product. It's the warmer. And then we make a variety of starter jars. Yeah, I guess I was a sourdough baker. I had been, you know, before COVID, I had been like a marketing consultant and I had time around calls to do stuff. And I kind of got hooked into sourdough baking. And when COVID happened and everybody suddenly got interested in sourdough, I was one of those people.

2:04People were asking for advice. And I just remembered what it was like to create my first sourdough starter and the challenges I had. And I had this idea for a little warm spot to help warm up sourdough starter. The thing, if you're not a baker, sourdough starter is like a slurry of flour and water that has all the microbes that people use to puff up and flavor sourdough bread. And those microbes are happiest and most active in like 75, 82 degree Fahrenheit range. We call it the Goldilocks zone. So most people's homes are a little cooler than that. And so I just kind of had this idea for this device that could help people warm up their starters.

2:47And I was talking to a bunch of friends. During COVID, I had become, we had moved to stay with some family. We had a very young, our second child had been born a couple months before that. So I basically became a stay-at-home dad. and uh i was kind of itching for adult conversation so one of the i was talking to friends and um one of my friends is an industrial designer her name is jenny and um and she got interested in the idea and in sourdough and the community and so we just ended up working on it and it was a kind of a nights and weekends thing for the next couple years um so we literally started right at the beginning of it like march 2020 the idea kind of came up and uh and then it took us a couple years to get to our Kickstarter campaign.

3:30And by then we had Goldie as well as a couple jars, kind of ideas for that and the prototypes. And then we raised, we ended up raising about$150 ,000 from over a thousand backers on Kickstarter and another crowdfunding platform. And that was the started and uh now we've been uh selling for a few years now and um mostly e-commerce we do some uh wholesale through retailers uh folks like williams sonoma would be our biggest uh like kind of retailer in the united states we sell internationally um we just did our second kickstarter campaign for a new product last year um that we're about to fulfill here um in late March of 2025.

4:18And, and then we'll be bringing that out to the public a couple of months later. That's a, that's a cool story. That's a great, that's a great story and interesting. And it's a nice, nice mixture with your marketing background and then an industrial designer to, to help make the, make the thing work and look cool. And, you know, it, I, if you go on the website and we'll get to, we'll make sure everybody has the website so they can check it out. But it does look cool. You know, it's got a sleek, smooth, cool design. It's very, it's very, it's interesting. I didn't think about it from an industrial design standpoint, but it's very thing.

4:58I want to talk, let's talk about Kickstarter and how do you do that? Let's, let's see what we can learn about that. That seems to be a good thing. Tell us what you've learned by going down that path? Well, I have an advantage because my wife was an early hire at Kickstarter. So I have kind of been around the community of Kickstarter for years and years and years and seen it's kind of like rise and the different like generations of it. I am somewhat, I guess, old school because of that. And I sensed, I feel like the Kickstarter's fundamental purpose and kind of contribution to the world is to create a platform for new ideas and things that are perhaps untested.

5:40And so Kickstarter is a space to just to get a kind of read on the market, see if people are interested in these things, whether you want to do a small little kind of batch of something kind of precious, or you want to kind of, you have a bigger idea, you just want to see what the size of the market is. I think it's also, even though today it's used a lot more for pre-selling. I think using it as a platform for raising the funds to do a first round of production in a lower risk kind of way, I think it's still a good tool for that. And, you know, and it can just help expand your audience to some degree if you're in a category that, you know, the Kickstarter community kind of overlaps with in some way.

6:21I would say that today, Kickstarter kind of another crowdfunding camp kind of platforms have taken on this like um air of of kind of a lot more like kind of commodity driven like you know kind of pre-selling of pre-existing products um sometimes you'll see larger brands coming in and just like using as a marketing platform and you know these are all fair ways to use it but um what i would kind of encourage people to ignore is this idea that you have to lose money on a Kickstarter campaign or just try to break even. I don't think unless you're a large company that makes sense. I think you should try to create campaigns that are profitable.

7:07And I think that's still possible if you can ignore some of the professional ecosystem that's grown up around Kickstarter. It can be expensive and maybe a little predatory if you don't have experience in business. Yeah. Well, give us a, give us maybe your top couple or three tips on how to do a Kickstarter campaign profitably. Yeah. I mean, all this stuff is pretty well mapped out on the internet now, but the main thing is you want to, you want to bring an audience to Kickstarter. So you want to start to build that audience ahead of your Kickstarter campaign through, you know, list building and, you know, various ways.

7:48um you also uh you know want you want to create fun incentives that make sense um you know whether through creating different tiers of uh rewards for the campaign or looking for ways to um incentivize people to show up early with like limited edition kind of reward tiers or something like that um and then i just think you should try to like make it fun and personal and like you know the the you know like the video making and stuff and imagery and everything's gotten a lot more professional um but i think come even just coming with a sincere um kind of pitch that's well thought out um that maybe it has a lower production value if it feels like it's real people behind it i think there's still people who are on the kickstarter platform that want to help new ideas and young businesses succeed and like take pleasure in that and so i think um you know if you have an idea like that, you know, take advantage of that.

8:51Yeah, I think that's great advice. I love it. I mean, it's always a better idea to be sincere, right? And to just be honest. All right, let's switch gears a little bit. Let me get your thoughts on some business and some of the things that you've learned along the way. I mean, guys, it sounds like, man, between you and your wife and your business partner, you've got a really wide range of experiences here. So that's, that's, that's, that's gotta be one thing's been helpful, but let's say you were starting over again. Was, is there anything you would do differently?

9:29Well, I mean, the, it took longer than I thought. I thought we would get our Kickstarter campaign out in like three months and it took two years. And I heard that feedback from people, but I didn't believe it at the time, but it was true. And I think that the, you know, maybe if I didn't have blunt young kids, maybe if it hadn't been COVID, we could have sped it up a little bit. But the, I think the confluence of factors actually ended up helping us because, you know, I had more, you know, I wasn't working, so I wasn't distracted by my regular work. and then COVID obviously created a context for sourdough and while we didn't capture like the huge spike of demand that happened in 2020 and 2021 with our product itself it did create a context where I could sell in the idea of the product and in building a business potentially at that time to people like my wife and to the initial stakeholders you know it's like friends and family and like you know those other baker friends who we were showing to it and getting feedback from it's like everybody was like oh yeah sourdough I have some sense that this is popular right now I could see why you want to make a business with it so um it it's you know I might have changed my timing expectations a little bit um but I I think that um the main thing is like looking for those moments where not necessarily where you feel like you should be in market actually is a good time to start a business even if you might not catch it and um I think I could probably apply that to other initiatives if I were to do it again.

11:08Yeah, I mean, I like that. I mean, people always say, well, I've got this idea. Well, is anyone else actually doing something like it? Because if they're not, it's probably not a market. And so, yeah, I mean, it's very rare when you create an entirely new market. So I think what you just said was brilliant. Like, hey, the market's there. The time seemed right in 2020, 2021, but maybe 2022, 23 was better. so yeah there's definitely other you know bread brands that had huge spikes during that time sold out and had all these inventory issues and had a different kind of set of challenges um than you have a couple years later uh but then they had to fall off and they had to deal with like how much do we scale and when is this going to end and like you know and then you know had to deal with maybe downsizing and stuff that we were able to sidestep um you know maybe we would be multi-millionaires now if we had gotten it out earlier i don't know but the uh but the but i think it is a different kind of environment we did end up building out like we are building a category because of it and it's like i do feel like we have a lot of um you know kind of open space ahead of us like our our device goldie was like the world's first like device dedicated warming sourdough starter and you've seen other devices like that come to market since uh after kind of proving that there is a market.

12:29And I think in general, bread baking, even though people have done it for a thousand years and particularly sourdough has been somewhat neglected within the kind of the kitchenware retail space for a lot of years. If you go into Williams-Sonoma, there's a beautiful shelf of like dessert baking tools, very prominent. You have your KitchenAid mixers and all this kind of stuff, but there's no bread shelf. At least it hasn't been. And it's just starting to kind of appear now. And so one thing I'm very excited about and what the, it's kind of been proven to me over the last couple of years, few years is that, um, there is a, a sizable market that's been untouched, um, for bread baking.

13:08And, uh, you know, so I think as a category, we are trying to grow this category and I think it's a kind of a floatable boats kind of situation. And, um, and I am seeing other brands start to come into it, um, which is kind of giving us more reassurance that there's, there's some legs here. Yeah. Yeah. Well, that's great. I mean, it seems like the category is growing, so that's good. I mean, it's new and it's new and it's growing, so that's awesome. So what do you think some of the misconceptions people have about running businesses are? I imagine there's a lot. The one that I kind of probably react against is like, you know, my background's in marketing.

13:50I've worked for, you know, popular brands like Moleskine and I've worked for tech startups. And, you know, I moved down this area from New York City. So I've been in and I've, you know, companies I've worked for, I've had offices in Silicon Valley. So it's like within that kind of world, you know, there's a sort of default to trying to create a fast growth VC funded sort of situation. And, um, and I've seen companies that, you know, who've taken VC money or got, you know, sold to private equity. And as soon as you, uh, sell your business to those kinds of stakeholders, uh, the pressure ramps up really fast and you have to, you have this kind of like incentive to grow fast, perhaps faster than you should.

14:35And to take, you know, kind of like very black and white risks, which may cause good ideas to crash and burn, you know? And, and so definitely, I think, you know, we're bootstrapping what we're doing. We, you know, we're focusing on building a brand in a space that's typically considered to need a large amount of money to build brands because you do have to buy inventory and whatnot. And, uh, we're doing it with just staying very lean. Like we have, we're a very small company. Jenny and I are still like the only full-time people. And we have a whole bunch of consultants and agencies and stuff to help us.

15:09But, um, but we've intentionally stayed very lean. We're very virtual. We rely on, um, you know, platforms like Shopify and 3PLs and these kinds of things that enable a more kind of, dispersed business model nowadays. And, you know, we're able to create a profitable business that is growing and, you know, in a, in a space that's growing without taking this, like, you know, kind of like all or nothing risk that I think comes with, you know, VC backed stuff. And, and I think that, you know, perhaps, you know, we're in a moment where people are seeing the attraction of like the smaller, you know, kind of less sexy business.

15:50And, you know, people are looking to kind of try to cash into that by, you know, you see MBAs right now coming in and trying to like buy plumbing shops and like, you know, manufacturing, because they feel like this is, you know, something has cashflow. And I can see the attraction to it. Cause I also feel that, you know, that those, those kind of more solid business models, you know, or have a more reasonable lifestyle and are kind of more solid businesses. But I also think you need to build a brand. And I also, I think you also need to make good products. And, and so as a person that's coming from like a marketing background and as a brand builder, you know, I feel like in today's world, you know, with everything changing so quickly with AI rising up with, you know, blah, blah, blah, all these stories you hear, it's like one of the few moats you still have is building a good brand.

16:39And I think that starts with a really good product. And, you know, it also, you know, starts with the people that you bring together, if they really believe in the story and the mission and the kind of culture that you're trying to create. I don't think that everything, you know, I think you can build businesses that are have an operational advantage. And I think you can build brands. And I think those are kind of different strategies. But I am skeptical of people who are coming into this like bootstrappy cashflow type business with just the operational mindset and not thinking that like the product has to be special and that the story has to be special and the relationship with the community has to be special because that really i think um something that adds value to the world yeah not not 100 i mean there is kind of this we see it because we have a lot of clients that are in that in that space where the it's sort of the the boring businesses that are, you know, that have cashflow and people are looking to buy them and build them and sell them.

17:39And that's, that's a thing. But, but I also say along the way, you have to build the brand. So I a hundred percent agree with you and I like what you're doing. So what do you attribute your growth to so far? Well, so we're in a good space. It's a growing space. Like the, if you look at like google search terms for sourdough you know obviously there was a spike during covid and then there was a and then it kind of moved into a seasonal pattern so there was like a spike in 2023 that kind of matched covid and then um actually this last december the spike in the us like doubled the covid period and you know i can only speculate why i have some ideas but but nonetheless i can tell that we're in a growing space at the moment um so that helps a lot.

18:24And, um, but I also think that we, you know, really care about the product that we're making and the, and the people that we're kind of customers and the people we collaborate with. And we, you know, the, and we have a bigger idea that we're trying to push, um, uh, push out into the world with, uh, you know, the idea of kind of encouraging more sourdough baking, you know, we're not just making another, you know, tool commodity, you know, we, we have a kind of a mission against it because we think that sourdough baking is good for us in a variety of ways. It's good for our bellies. It's good for our wallets.

18:59It's good. You know, sourdough baking encourages a sense of generosity. And I think that's something that's needed more of in the world today. And so I think that the, you know, by, and I think people can tell that there's like a level of care and commitment to what we do, even though we may be small and scrappy and not be able to always answering email as fast as maybe a larger team or something. Like at the end of the day, we're very responsive and we care about the people we work with and we sell to. No, I love it. I mean, I think people buy in, either buy into what you're doing or they're repelled by it.

19:38Either way, it's fine because you've got to, there's a big enough market for pretty much everything. Yeah. It's unbelievable. Unbelievable. So this whole thing started you. It seems like you're pretty balanced or at least looking for balance with kids and family and all that. So, I mean, how do you sort of balance your business and personal? yeah that's i mean that is one of the harder things and like the uh because i'm not able to i still have young kids so i like i cannot put the same amount of time into this as i could when i was like my 20s and 30s and um and uh i uh sometimes it's frustrating but i also take it as a success like if our strategy works even if we execute on 50 of it then i feel like it's a pretty good strategy.

20:31Um, and the, um, and then, you know, I take pleasure in being able to be home and, you know, I like working from home in general, but like, you know, being able to pick up kids and, you know, be around them is like super nice. And my kids have been involved in the business. Like, you know, when I was like naming the company, naming the first products, getting feedback on it, like my older son, uh, you know, I'd ask him for feedback and he's been around that kind of thing his whole life and um so i like being able to kind of share share that to some degree with them um but you know it's hard but you know that i always to kind of make those trade-offs you know i don't travel as much as i probably should and when i do go away you know it's just like you kind of miss the kids um and you know i look forward to maybe someday where i can like bring the family with me more.

21:25But it's an ongoing kind of set of trade-offs, I think. Yeah, but you've set your rules. I mean, that's what I tell everybody. That's right. Yeah, well, yeah, it's hard. Make your rules, right? Yeah, make your rules, but the demands are there. So let me, you know, EPIC is an acronym. So let me get your sort of quick fire, maybe a word or a couple of sentences on each letter in Epic. And I'll just go through them real quick. So E is education. What are your thoughts on education? I am a person who really likes learning. I think you should always be learning. Yeah, I love that. How about P for planning?

22:10um i am a believer in plan uh but assume your plan is going to go wrong um so i'm more of like planning and i can outline form and then kind of like improvise around the the bullets plan and then improvise i love that yeah i love that good i is for inspiration i take a lot of inspiration just from, you know, looking around, like we're in the baking space. So I look around, I, you know, I talk to bakers, people who love food, you know, we're just like, you know, we're food loving people. So I'm very fascinated by people's excitement for, you know, the history of food and, you know, things that, you know, tasted and experienced.

22:56So I get just, I think a lot of inspiration from talking to people now. Yeah, I do think the whole food sector has grown amazingly, certainly in my lifetime. And in particular in the last 10 or 15, 20 years, I mean, it's been crazy. So I do think that's interesting. And C is commitment. Yeah, there is. I've learned this lesson repeatedly in my life because I've started a bunch of things and a lot of them have been sort of successful. This has been the most successful thing I'd say I've done. But there's always been a point when, I've kind of like just decided to go all the way in on something and I feel like the world does sort of bend to kind of support you when you're fully committed to it like people who have resources show up and like people are like okay this is a real thing um I don't think you can build things half fast like you can be take you know be careful hedge your bets and you know research and do all that kind of stuff.

24:02But there has to be some kind of deep level of commitment to what you're doing to make it really work. Man, a hundred percent. And I do think the world, same thing, and people are either attracted to it or repelled from it either way. And the people who are attracted are really attracted. I mean, it comes across to me just, you know, reading the website, talking to you that there There is this level of commitment and passion around it that creates an energy that's attractive. And, you know, I think that's I think that's amazing. What do you wish somebody had told you?

24:42Well, the, you know, the tradeoffs of like balancing your time and managing your energy is like at this phase that that's something probably would have been helpful to know. like if if you could somehow communicate to people who aren't parents like me you know 15 20 years ago or something like like what the responsibility of parenthood is like in some sort of visceral way i think it would have motivated me even more so to try to new things and get things going because it's it is a lot of work um so i think uh i you know uh yeah just like how to how to manage your time and balance balance your energy i think is that's what i'd probably yeah no and i don't know how to maybe they'll listen to you and hear when they when they hear it here but you can't know until you've done it and i know i mean i guess i guess you could you know have you know foster some kids or something in your family maybe you'd get some and speak to that if that was happening in your family so so uh yeah look thanks for sharing all this this has really been this is really good and I think it's really impactful and I love what y 'all are doing.

25:55And so if somebody wants to get involved or get, you know, get ahold of you, where's, where's the, what are the best places? Yeah. So, uh, you know, Sour House has, our website is sourhouse.co. Um, and, uh, we have, uh, run on all the social media platforms, uh, life at Sour House, uh, mostly, uh, Instagram. Uh, we also have a, a Facebook group for bakers and people who are into fermentation. And then we've also been doing a variety of things since Helene to support recovery and relief in the region. We were working on at the end of last year an initiative called 1 % for Asheville, which we joined along 17 other local businesses and ended up committing a percentage of our profits in November, December to various charities and ended up raising over$48 ,000 from these companies that were directed to relief efforts.

26:58And about 30 ,000 additional donations were raised and over 500 and something volunteer hours were committed from this little group. And you can go to 1percentnetforasheville.org and see that list of companies and organizations that were donated to. And, you know, we're still in this period where, you know, a lot of recovery is happening in the region and particularly in the business community. I think a lot of recovery is happening now. So, you know, I encourage you to support those companies that were part of that initiative because they, you know, need it as well. And then, you know, consider doing follow on donations to the kind of charities that that these these companies decided to give to because it's very much like neighbors helping neighbors, you know, neighbors know what's what's going on around here right now.

27:46Yeah. What's that website again? Give it to us again. 1 % for Asheville. So it's, you can, I have the domain in a variety of ways, but if you spell out 1 % for Asheville.org, you'll get there. Yeah. Or search for 1 % for Asheville.org. Okay. Yeah. That's good. All right. Cool. Yeah. I think, yeah, check it out. Check it out. And there are a lot of ways to still be involved, support those companies and continue to support. We've got a long way to go here in the Western North Carolina area. We're open and we're for business and we're going, but there is still a long time on the cleanups and putting people back to back to whole again.

28:32So thanks for all your efforts there. Appreciate what y 'all have done. Yeah, you too. And, you know, for people listening, thanks for your help as well. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I really appreciate it. So thanks for being on there. So until next time, all the best.

28:51Hey, thanks for listening to the Epic Entrepreneurs podcast. Here's three things that you can do. Number one, remember to subscribe to the podcast. It takes very little effort on your part. It's going to help you and your fellow entrepreneurs. Plus, you guys know how it works. the more subscribers we get, the more cool things we can offer to you. Second, to learn more about growing your business, just download my book, The Coach Approach. It's free for you at giftfrombill.com. That's giftfrombill.com. Hey, and if you'd like more info about growing your business and what we can do to help you grow your business, send me an email directly just send it to williamgilliland at actioncoach.com that's my personal email that i read no one else reads it first there's it's not screened it's my real email just send it to me i can't wait to talk to you hey and until then all the best