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how my idea to make magnetic ski poles turned into an outdoor brand with a store and coffee shop in < 3 years (part 2)
picking back up where I left off in September 2024, we filmed our episode of shark tank earlier that summer and were waiting to hear back on an air date. in the meantime we went back in China to work on a bunch of R&D projects
(this is my co-founder kelly)
on this trip we updated our V1 pole design, worked on our new tote bag, backcountry poles and kids poles, AND we designed our first retail POP displays because we got our first wholesale orders from REI, backcountry, and vail resorts (!!!)
!! surreal moment as someone who grew up going to REI
back home in sf we started getting reallllly into cold brew
we meet with Andrew, the founder of linea caffè (an iconic coffee roaster & cafe in potrero hill) and shared our concept for a cold brew-only cafe (this was our original idea for what would eventually become double black)
I know it sounds random but stay with me
we also met with Deuki, the founder of neighbor bakehouse in dogpatch to learn more about his business & bakery
but we had a ski pole business to focus on first! we went down to Portillo, Chile for our winter photoshoot since we had to find snow in September
we brought our updated P1 poles, new backcountry poles, new kids poles, new colors, and two new accessories to shoot
including MagStrap, our new magnetic strap design (a better version of the leki clip system, in our humble opinion)
so many poles 🤪 we didn't have day bag samples yet so it was a pole-only shoot (and we shot it all ourselves to save $$)
back from Chile it was time to ship all of our wholesale orders so we called on any/all friends to help pack boxes from our hayes valley warehouse
(this was maybe 1/10th of the number of units we had to ship out)
our jobs were 100% focused on packing boxes for weeks on end
but we finally got everything out onto a million pallets onto the sidewalk (our neighbors hated us)
in October we took a brief hiatus from packing boxes to visit our new bff Kendra Scott in ATX (our shark tank investor that we still couldn't tell anyone about)
we had a secret all day meeting with Kendra and her team which was so fun and incredibly helpful (she built a billion dollar business after all!)
then in late October we heard from ABC that our episode would air on November 1st!
we hosted a watch party in sf for friends & family and had the best time (though it's humbling to watch yourself on national television)
later in the month we went to New York to host our first ever pop-up! we took a big risk (pop ups are $$$) but we wanted to see how retail could work for us and a ton of our customers were coming from New York
