Ten years ago, the misfits of the free weights world were kettlebells.
The humble piece of metal has become the core of a multimillion dollar company. It has partnerships with a number of gym chains.
Success wasn't always set in stone, but Chad Price had an ironclad work ethic and the kind of mettle any burgeoning company requires to get off the ground.
He says he had a leadership mentality from a young age. He was given a full scholarship to Rice University by his parents, who were 17 at the time. I was 12 years old when I started to grow.
He was a captain in football, a point guard in basketball, and a North Star in sports. He excelled at keeping a team together and setting a high bar.
As a teen, Price worked for his aunt's small business, exposing him to the inner machinations of the company. He knew he wanted to be in charge of an operation. He realized that politics of corporate America and the cutthroat way it takes to excel weren't for him when he was at Rice.
The convergence of fitness, health and wellbeing was an obvious avenue when Price wanted to create his own business. He turned to his friends Jay Perkins and Nehemiah Heard to create a company that would be self-sufficient.
He says that the market wasn't saturated and that kettlebells were at the top of the list.
Although relatively few people were interested in the weights, they were fanatical.
They didn't know anything about kettlebells.
Price and his partners thought that they would be able to sell a lot of brands and provide helpful information to buyers. The vendors didn't know what they were doing and the quality wasn't great.
Price used to work in construction. He was a project manager for the installation of stadium seating for the superdome in New Orleans and the UFCU Disch-Falk Field at the University of Texas in Austin.
He realized that kettlebells are iron with paint or a protective coating, so his company shifted to buying and building its own line.
Kettlebell Kings would give samples to a network of 10 to 12 people with whom it had a relationship or sponsorship, to get feedback, then refine and revise many more times. The end product was tailored to the community and set the brand apart from the competition.
An obsession was created by refining. The bells are more susceptible to breaking if the handle is welded on. The powder coat weight is made from a single piece of cast iron. The lifters preferred a powder coating on the handle for a better grip. When palms sweat, it adds traction to chalk.
The process of painting the powder coating was changed over time to make it more durable. Before the paint is applied to bare metal, a chemical-cleaning treatment is used to remove dust and debris.
They wanted to create a premium, fit-for-a-king lineup. The strategy of focusing on one type of well-executed product was a winning one.
There were a few bumps in the road.
In 2012 it was difficult to find investment for an e-commerce brand, but navigating the traditional routes was even more difficult for a startup by black entrepreneurs. The establishment will find a reason why you don't qualify. It has to be a world-changing idea, you need to know someone personally or you need a representative banks to give that kind of money.
The team had relationships with a lot of banks, but ended up with a local credit union.
The company once received an entire container of the wrong type of kettlebell and realized that, as a new company, there was little it could do to enforce standards.
If you order $2,000 worth of product, the same manufacturer might be working with Nissan so they don't care about you, and they're rewarded for selling you the cheapest product. Businesses fail in the first year because of that.
The $1 million sales mark was reached by the Kettlebell Kings. The shipping rates improved. The manufacturers in China wanted to meet. It took more than five years for banks to start providing a higher level of support.
It makes you wonder what will happen when we hit $5 million. How are we not taking advantage of what we are supposed to be doing as a company of this size now?
Kettlebell Kings sold out of everything in 20 minutes, four months worth of inventory. If we were able to get the inventory, we could have had 10 times the number of sales.
The Kettlebell Kings focused on digital offerings. The schedule was created so that trainers could provide kettlebell workouts and programs such as the four-week transformation program created by the Roberts sisters.
Factory14, a global e-commerce platform based in Madrid, will acquire the company in November 2021. If we ever wanted to see life changing money for the people who started the brand, we had to take on serious funding.
Factory14 was acquired by Razor Group in a second multimillion dollar deal. Price and Perkins will stay on for at least three years as the conglomerate develops further procedures and strategies.
International and digital expansion is next on the agenda. The team decided to go to Chase Bank because of the lack of international capabilities. Price and his team are looking to expand in France, Germany, the UK, India, Japan and China after establishing Kettlebell Kings in Europe and Australia.
If you will, we're on a burst.
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