The Founder Who Turned Plastic Waste Into a Multimillion Dollar Travel Brand

0:00Most overnight success stories are 10 years in the making. And what seems like it's an overnight success, it's like these people have been working at this thing for a very long time before it all of a sudden pops. Welcome to Shopify Masters, your companion for starting and building a business. I'm your host, Schwang Estershan. It's safe to say that today's guest knows how to travel and think big. Adrian Solgaard has raised nearly$5 million through crowdfunding and turned a passion for problem-solving into a sustainable travel brand that's kept more than 3 million pounds of plastic waste out of the ocean.

0:37His company, Solgaard, is known for sleek, eco-friendly luggage and has 10x its revenue in just three years. Here with me to unpack his journey is Adrian. Welcome to the show, Adrian. Well, hello. Happy to be here. So happy to be chatting. You have had quite a pivot in your career. You worked in TV and video production. What made you want to take this leap to create physical products and also start this full-blown travel brand? After years of producing videos, it was really fun because you're creating something. But that thing, it kind of goes away. It's a video. You see it, you experience it, and it's gone.

1:17I kind of started having this craving for making a physical product of some sort. And then I was sort of thinking Kickstarter had just become a thing. I'd seen the success of the Pebble watch. And I was thinking like, I wonder if I could make a product that could be fun. I've always wanted to be an inventor. And I wasn't really sure what I was going to do. But then my bike got stolen and sitting on an airplane, I had this idea and I drew up this concept of like, if a lock could live inside the bike through the seat post, then I made this video for this thing and used the team for my small branding agency and we created this whole campaign for a bicycle lock that we launched on kickstarter in 2013 and then managed to get that successfully funded we raised fifty thousand dollars and that was enough to like get the first production batch going ended up turning it into a distributed product sold through distributors throughout europe and in 30 countries um and then i sold the patents from that to somebody else and it was not a deal that worked out super well for me and i started thinking like i like this physical product thing but i want to do something more i I want to do more.

2:18So what could that be? And I did the Japanese concept of ikigai, that exercise where you look at what are you good at? What does the world need? What can you get paid to do? And what are you passionate about? And I realized I'm never bored of travel. I love traveling. I was born to an Norwegian mother, German father. I was bouncing around between countries a lot as a kid. I've lived in nine countries now at this point. And I started thinking like, okay, well, why don't I tackle this? I want to get into sustainability somehow. The world needs that. And so I made a solar-powered anti-theft backpack.

2:47So the backpack had a lock in it. It had this solar-powered power bank and Bluetooth speaker and charger all in one. Launched that on Kickstarter. Wasn't really sure where it was going to go. We hit our funding goal in the first six hours and went on to raise$1.2 million through crowdfunding. And yeah, that was kind of the basis for the whole company. Well, that's also a hard thing to do, right? You've had different successful careers and ideas. When do you know it's the right time to pivot? it? I think realistically, a lot of entrepreneurs are entrepreneurs by necessity. I couldn't get a job anywhere.

3:20I have no college education. I was left with 637 euros in my bank account and was thinking, what am I going to do? It was on January 2nd of 2016 that I realized things were not going to go the way I was hoping it was going to go with the bike lock thing. And by February 29th, I had concepted, made a prototype, and built the whole campaign for the Kickstarter campaign for the Life Pack Backpack. That was a six-week sprint of like, how can I survive long enough to get this thing out into the world? And I think that being backed into a corner as a founder, as an entrepreneur, those are the moments where you just cut through all the crap and you just go, there's only a couple of things that I can do.

4:01And you hyper focus on that. I think many times in life, we take our effort and we spread it across too many different things. Whereas monotasking, just really honing down on like one thing and just really focusing on that one thing is where the real gems, the real magic comes from. So this point of entrepreneurs being backed into a corner, it's at that moment where you realize there's only one way out of this and you just narrowly like fight your way out and you find the path. Yeah, there is so much pressure in those moments as well. And it's very easy to maybe take a different route, maybe give up or just allow that pressure to take over and not be productive.

4:43What is your advice now for people who are going through pressure points and actually use that to their advantage and focus on something and make it into something that's worth pursuing? It's going to be okay. I think you need to have this level of audacity to just be like, yeah, that thing's on fire over there. That thing's on fire over there. But like, this is the thing that I can do. And you have to just block out the noise of whatever those other things are. Have you heard of the urgent versus important matrix? It's hard to navigate though. It's very hard to navigate because there's things that are urgent and that's the squeaky wheel.

5:17And there's things that are important and there's things that are important and urgent. And there's things that are urgent, but not important. And I think that the time suck of those urgent, but not important things are what tend to pull a lot of distraction. And so I think if you can really be true to yourself and true to your priorities, if this is the thing that you really want to do, you got to do it. And there's some hard choices that need to be made there. You have to ignore some things that would otherwise be important. And that can come at the cost of your social life. But if you want to be serious about getting this business off the ground, you've got to lock out the noise and focus on the thing that's going to get you to the next step.

5:54I also do think timing, your experience, also aligned in a way that worked out in Kickstarter, also crowdfunding, because it was so visually impactful to have video editing skills, to have storytelling skills. Of course, like you also had these great ideas. So you were able to cash this wave with crowdfunding. Storytelling is the oldest industry in the world. Second oldest industry in the world, let's say, sitting around a campfire telling stories to your friends, that's what cave people would have been doing. Telling captivating stories is a skill that is usable in any aspect of life. And I think that the way that we tell stories changes.

6:35The way that people's attention spans have shifted is a difference. But I think that that storytelling skill is something that anyone can harness in whatever capacity they're in, whether they're in a mid-level corporate job, you need to storytell to your upper managers or you need to story tell to your customers. But either way, telling memorable stories to people is a super important thing. Yeah, and it bleeds into so many aspects of business. But I think at this stage, right, some listeners might say, well, I don't have video skills and maybe crowdfunding is not what it used to be in 2010s. What would you say to them in order to still benefit from crowdfunding?

7:16Crowdfunding is another community tool. It's not the right tool for everything. There's Kickstarter, there's Indiegogo, there's GoFundMe, there's StartEngine and WeFunder, all these different, there's many different crowdfunding campaigns. And the product-based crowdfunding is something that is still getting a lot of traction. So that could be the route if you're trying to sell a physical product. But it's not for everything. Kickstarter is a very specific audience type. And so you want to come at them with something that is very specific. The Kickstarter community is very future focused, very innovation friendly.

7:50They're willing to take bets on some weird features that might not fly in the main marketplace. But for the sake of that early adopter attitude and community that's there, if your product fits that, go for it. If you can use other methods of crowdfunding like WeFunder or StartEngine or things like that, which we've also used. and using those platforms can raise equity for your company where people are investing in you and your business and your idea. But then beyond that, you can build communities in other ways too. You can build your own community through organic platforms, through YouTube channels, through Instagram, through TikTok, through whatever.

8:25But really, at the end of the day, the truth is you need to find a community of people who care about the thing that you're solving and you need to tell those stories in an effective way. You can build a business on Shopify today and build the audience and build it slowly. If you only need to get a couple hundred products or whatever at first, you don't need to start out with 5 ,000 pieces or go like mass production. Go lean on inventory and just focus on building the community through content and like engaging stuff. Storytelling isn't a skill that's not learnable. It's something that's totally learnable and there's a lot of great books about it too.

9:01Yeah, it's not just for community building because also there's the way that you can validate if your idea actually resonates with the community and beyond fundraising, but it's also like, does this actually fit a need? Yeah, it's market validation. It's also like user feedback before you make a physical product. With people who are selling software, they can constantly make changes to it as users use it more. But with physical products, you kind of have these gating moments where it's like, okay, here's version one. And then if you want to make changes, that can't happen until version two after you sell through that first batch product.

9:35And so by releasing a product through something like Kickstarter, you can get this like early feedback on the features that you've done. So that way you're coming out with sort of version two, which means the consumer is getting a better product. You're putting out a better product and that's a win-win for everybody. Yeah, and I think this goes back to also a theme we hear over and over again, which is like, it is actually really beneficial to talk about your idea, share your idea, because when you actually are in the market and with your community, that's when you can get better versus building in stealth or things like that.

10:08Have you thought about going beyond crowdfunding, exploring different ways of raising funds and only because right now it is tough for CPG brands, D2C brands to actually look for outside funding. So I think it's an important time to kind of think about what options are there for different founders. Yeah, we're currently in an active fundraiser right now. We're speaking with some private family offices about fundraising that method. Most of our funding to date has been through various forms of crowdfunding and debt. And so that's a new story for me a little bit. We've had a few angel investors in the past, and now this is like taking it to a different level.

10:48If you're looking to start a business, the number one thing you need to think about is what's a product that people want to buy? and that's your primary source of revenue, of cashflow, of anything. Focus on that. Focus on making the best possible product that you can get into people's hands and they'll love it and they'll tell their friends about it. And that's the thing you should be focusing on, not investors, if you can. I think that that's the right way to build a business is with the long-term mindset of putting the consumers first. And especially initially, right? You need to get the product right.

11:23So take us to the early design process. Where were some of the processes that you worked through to design those innovative features and kind of land on the carry-on closet? At the very beginning, it was a very simple concept. A friend of mine had always told this story that was, you know, when I'm traveling, I open up my suitcase and it's like a tornado hit the hotel room. Everything just goes everywhere. And I heard this story told over and over again. and I realized that every single time everybody laughed because everyone knew that feeling. And so I started thinking like, oh, right. It's not just me who's disorganized in a hotel room.

12:01It's everybody. And so then I started thinking about ways of how could we optimize for organization within a suitcase. And I looked at the trolley handle and I thought like, that's pretty tall and vertical. Maybe you could like hang a shelf from it in some sort of way. And I had this idea sort of sitting in my head. I didn't know how to use any 3D tools at the time. So I had a very hard time visualizing it. But I had gone to visit some factories in Asia that were producing luggage and different components. And I thought, okay, I've got some sort of concept here of like who to talk to. And then a couple months later, I was in my friend's VR studio.

12:40He had a VR headset and this program, you could like sketch your own little drawings in 3D. It was like MS Paint, but just in 3D. And I drew it just in stick drawing, like very rough. And I had this eureka moment of like, it's gonna work. Cause I always worried about the whole thing toppling over. And in that thing, I realized, oh, right. When the suitcase door stays open, that's a kickstand. That'll stabilize the whole structure. And that was sort of the eureka moment for getting it all together. And that was back in 2017. So this is going a long time back. But since then, we've kind of continued to iterate on different improvements we can make within the product itself with the way we construct things, the way the wheels are made, the way the handles are made, and all of these different components.

13:24But the core concept is still very similar to that. Yeah. And I think going through that design process, finding a manufacturing partner that you trust, working together to iterate, and then committing to that first production run, very overwhelming. Very overwhelming. But at the end of the day, the early on design process, a lot of my prototypes are still made with cardboard and duct tape. and sketches on paper. I'm not great at 3D, so I need to work with people that are great at 3D. But you can't always make the things in a computer program the way that you want it to work. So by having those rough prototypes with duct tape and cardboard, you can get really far with that to understand how the different things are going to move if it's got a movable function to it.

14:10Prototyping does not need to be a scary task. There's this phrase that one of my designers always says, first make it work, then make it good. And I think that that really can stick with you of just like, just make it work, just figure out how it can work. And then you can figure out how to make it pretty. And that's sort of like Scandinavian design philosophy 101, form follows function, get the function right, then make it pretty. Yeah. And make it less intimidating for yourself, right? Like don't be scared about all the tools you don't know, start with what you do. What are some other lessons you learned from that process, right?

14:42Putting down that first deposit for the first production run, like where were some of the things that were going through your head? One of the first production orders we placed for the backpacks, the lesson I learned here was to get out of my own way. We had pre-sold through Kickstarter and Indiegogo, like a total of seven or 8 ,000 bags, something like that. And based on the forecasting, it was like most people were choosing the black bag, 50 % or like 30%, 20 % were choosing the gray color bag. I put in the PO with the factory. I just wrote it up myself on excel and you know 60 days later they're like okay here's the production batch it's ready to go they gave me the breakdown and there was 8 000 gray bags and 4 000 black bags and i had screwed up with my fat thumbs and that is one of the reasons why i try to not touch supply chain and po's and orders and that stuff i have people on the team who handle that stuff because i make little silly mistakes like that um the joys of being dyslexic Thank you for sharing that.

15:42I feel like, yeah, oftentimes we hear all these overnight success stories that are very much buttoned up and that it's very refreshing to hear that things like that can happen and you can recover and that, yeah, we're all human at the end of the day. Most overnight success stories are 10 years in the making. And what seems like it's an overnight success, it's like these people have been working at this thing for a very long time before it all of a sudden pops. There's a million examples of that. Yeah. So then how did you move those units in the gray color way? I think that there might still be a couple hundred of them sitting in one of our warehouses somewhere to be honest.

16:21But no, we ended up doing some like promos later that we had to then order another 4 ,000 black bags because we didn't have enough to fill the Kickstarter backers and all that stuff. So yeah, we just ended up with a bit of an inventory glut on that side. And inventory and forecasting is a challenge to plan for because you're always having to think so far ahead. Of course, as a founder, you're going to be a little bit overly optimistic. You need to be realistic about these things. If we sold this much this month, that means we'll sell double that next month and double that the next month. So then we better order this much.

16:54Don't make that mistake. Go lean on inventory. It's better to be a little bit on back order than it is to be overstocked. Yeah, yeah. The constant juggle between the two tensions for sure. And then, of course, like you've had relationships with production partners for almost a decade now. What's your advice there for finding great partners, building that relationship, nurturing it over the years? Go to visit your factory partners. Go spend time with them. Go to the factory floors. Of course, it's important to check the audits and everything, too, that the factories have done to make sure there's fair, ethical treatment of workers.

17:27That's something that's very important to us. And beyond that, you can kind of do a bit of a vibe check on those things to see if it matches what has been said in some of those audits by just walking around the showroom floor, walking around the factory floor and seeing how the people there interact with you. If they're like afraid to talk to the out of town or who's visiting and they're like afraid of the boss, that can give you a really good signal. And then once you kind of have done that initial assessment of like if they're good people and they're treating all their people well, then it's really easy to go from there and just maintain the relationship with them.

18:01You know, there's one of our factory part to a couple of our factory partners are, you know, at this point, 10 years in. And, you know, we keep up and we keep in touch through WeChat and through like texting apps and stuff like that. It's like some of them have had babies in the years since and like sending them gifts. It's, you know, you're building a relationship with people who are part of a factory and maintaining those relationships are really important. And then because the sustainability factor was so important to you, how was it finding raw materials that actually had reclaimed plastic waste and making sure that that was a pillar in the business model and it's something that carries through with the partners as well?

18:41Yeah, so it's been an evolution. So when we first started, the first product had this solar powered power bank inside of it. And that was the first step towards sustainability that we had. I didn't really know what to do. and then about a year or so into the business I was on a surfing trip in Bali and I saw all this plastic in the waves and on the beach and I thought there's got to be a better way there's got to be something we can do with this material because the solar panel is is cool but it's not like super big game changer in the sense of like how much it's doing for the planet so it took about a year and a half to set up a supply chain of collecting ocean-bound plastic which is plastic recovered from beaches riverways like within 20-30 miles of the coastline it took us about a year and a half to set up the supply chain to use that material to start making our fabrics and we actually launched that first product through kickstarter as well because there were minimums where we had to buy 10 000 kilos or something 20 000 pounds of of plastic and to buy all that ocean-bound plastic and turn it into fabric had its cost associated so we launched a bag on kickstarter with that and that allowed us to kickstart that initial supply chain and so we call the fabric shortex and now we produce all of our all of our fabrics the linings of our luggage the shell and inner materials of our backpacks, all from Shortex.

19:54But on top of that, for every item we sell, we fund the collection of six pounds of plastic from beaches, rivers, and coastlines. And that's where that three million pounds number comes from, where we've funded this cleanup, which is material that doesn't even go into our product. This is just being cleaned up because we're serious about cleaning up the planet. And if we're only doing the impact work of the thing that goes into our product, that kind of has this extractive method where we're trying to be regenerative in the model that we do. Talking about sustainability, it's like, what are we sustaining?

20:24Are we happy with where the planet's at now? Do we want to stay at this level? No, we need to get it back to a healthier point. So we need to go above and beyond. And I think that that piece of our business model is something that I hope others can draw inspiration from. Well, it sounds like there's this constant push for improvement in this sustainability aspect. There's no governing bodies telling you to do so. So where does this motivation come from? I think that my motivation isn't, like money isn't my motivation. My motivation is impact. And I happen to get into entrepreneurship sort of through that.

20:58My goal has always been to leave the world a better place than we found it. And I love making products that make people's lives better while they use them. And if we can make all those products from sustainable materials and have that be part of a for good story, it's, you know, there's a lot of different things that I want to do. And this is the way to like wrap them all together. And so, yeah, there is no governing body pushing us to do these things. It's driven from our own internal sense of leaving the planet a better place than we found it. And I know initially with Kickstarter and crowdfunding, it acts also as a way to find new people, share your story, almost marketing channel of sort.

21:34That's shifted a little bit in the years. Now, it's a little bit less of a self-discovery platform. It's more ad-driven now than it was years ago. So you still do need to get the word out there. And that's where it might not be the right solution, depending on what the business is you're planning on launching. Yeah. So then on the same through line, how are you thinking about marketing right now and sharing the story with more people? Yeah. So we're using a pretty broad mix of advertising channels through all the different online ones, television ads. It's, you know, I'd really love to get more going on our organic marketing side.

22:10That's a piece that is something that unfortunately has a bit of a longer tail to it. And on that urgent versus important metric, there's times where you get conflicted with it in business as well. Certainly not something that I'm perfect at, but I think that the world is constantly changing. And so you constantly need to find new ways to communicate with people because platforms are changing. the amount of time that people spent on Facebook 10 years ago versus now of a certain customer segment is very different. The amount of time people spend on TikTok versus Instagram versus X versus Reddit.

22:43So people are in all these different spaces and places. And I think you need to find a way to reach whoever your audience is. If you have defined your audience or not, good, great. Something to work on if you haven't. And then find your audience where they're at. And I know that you've also experimented and partnered with Shopify Collabs. How has that platform helped you to reach new customers? It's been a really great platform because it cuts up. If you're going directly into DMs and DMing influencers and being like, hey, want to do something? Then they'll respond one to five days later. You'll respond one to five days later.

23:17And it gets lost in the DMs of like random customer service inquiries or things like that. It's hard to keep track of. But by going through Shopify Collabs, you're able to reach people directly. You have some of the rates pre-negotiated or you have at least some sense of it. So you're able to go for people that are going to be a better fit. There's going to be more alignment. So it's a really great way of reaching people that can help you reach a new audience through their channels. So we talked about all of the changes within Kickstarter, all of the change within marketing. Even with luggage itself, the space has exploded in the recent years.

23:51There's so many premium brands, celebrity brands, even. How are you thinking about the industry now and staying innovative and also motivated? So this is the beautiful thing about doing that icky guy thing is if you have your four pieces of like, what am I passionate about? What does the world need? What can I get paid to do? And you can always kind of lean on one of those different pillars. If you're like, okay, this is something that's good for the planet. Okay, cool. This is something that's innovative and helps people's lives. You can kind of go back and forth and lean between the two because your passion for different areas will fluctuate a little bit over the years.

24:27So having those different pieces to kind of lean on, think of it like a four-legged stool. You can have your stability that way. That's one really great way to keep the motivation through it. In any industry, there's going to be competitors that come into play, that come and go. And new ones come in, old ones go out, old ones make a comeback. And it's just that's showbiz, baby. you just got to find a way to work with it. Yeah. I see so many people being frustrated on social media with different brands. And I'm like very excited for you to jump in there and like do a collab or gift them and see the soul guard kind of difference and stuff like that.

25:05Send those links my way. If you see people, I love collaborating with people on new products. It's so much fun. Because when you're solving for one person's pain point, like in a collab co-lab situation you're like okay great it's the two of us here let's sit down let's jam out let's go through ideas and you're able to like take the thing that they love about something and the thing that they don't like about this thing and put it all together in one tight package when you're doing something for the broader market it's like you're taking all these bits of information and it's harder to it's harder to understand the level of volume of what the whole market cares about so doing a co-lab is a really fun creative expression of just like two minds meshing together and putting something special together.