BattlBox - Surviving and Thriving in the Subscription Game

Ramon Vela (00:02.041)
Welcome back everyone. This is Ramon Vela and I have a great show for you today. We have John Roman who is co-founder and CEO of Battlebox. Welcome to the show.

John Roman (00:29.464)
Thanks for having me. Happy to be here.

Ramon Vela (00:31.341)
Well, I appreciate you making time for us. I've never, I don't think I've ever had a brand like yours on the show. So I'm really interested in all the whys and the ins and outs and the challenges you face and so forth. And of course you have a podcast of your own, which we'll talk about in a second. I'm happy to promote that as well on the show. But let's start off with my signature question. I ask every guest, small brand, large brand, same question to start off.

And it's a gratitude question. And the reason why I asked this question is twofold. One is I'm a big believer in gratitude as a way to relieve stress and anxiety. I've been using that for a long time and I've been through lots of personal dangerous tragedies and, and, and wins. And I've always used gratitude as a way to help me bring things back to context. Beyond that, I also want the listener to know that there are real people behind these brands that we feature on the show. It's so easy to see a

product online or on the shelf and just think like it's some large conglomerate. I always want you to know there's real people who bleed sweat and tear over their product and getting to know them is I think essential as part of the story. And one good way of doing that is understanding what they're grateful for. So John, if you don't mind, can you share a moment or a memory when someone did something for you that just made you feel grateful because it meant that they believed in you, your vision or your potential.

John Roman (01:57.944)
Sure, so when you asked the question, I instantly went with a memory. And I'm big believer in trusting my gut. This is a little bit ago, but I think it's a really, really good one. So Battlebox and direct-to-consumer e-commerce is actually my third career I've had. My first career to the...

joy and happiness, I'm sure, of my parents, but after I graduated university, I played poker professionally for four and a half years. After that was career number two, which was sales, B2B technology sales. And at the start of that second career, so I'm 26, 27, and I'm getting an entry-level sales job. So everyone else is probably 21, 22.

Ramon Vela (02:54.339)
Hmm.

John Roman (02:54.702)
And I came in there and, you know, the maturity level and brain and critical thinking, it's a little bit different for a 26, 27 year old versus 21, 22 year old. So I came into the sales organization, publicly traded company, technology, B2B sales. And right away, I definitely ruffled some feathers.

I'm talking the initial days, initial weeks, because I was older, because I am fairly smart and very mathematical. That's why I played poker. So I look at problems and come up with maybe non-traditional solutions. So within a couple of weeks, and this is late 2000s, so we're talking about B2B micromanaging is still a thing.

Ramon Vela (03:28.121)
Mm-hmm.

John Roman (03:53.698)
you know, it's, it's, it's, physically cold calling doors and picking up phone calls and call, call, call. So a lot's changed in, in B2B sales in the, you know, 15 years since then, ruffled feathers and, my manager boss at the time, Sloan Gavin, you know, everyone else, the other managers, the directors, I was, I was a problem. wasn't, I wasn't going to be a

Ramon Vela (03:58.755)
Mm-hmm.

John Roman (04:22.466)
Yes, man, you know do Do things without asking questions, which is not which which was not their culture their culture was that do as you're told micromanage and I quickly quickly quickly buck back at that and he in a management meeting and I heard it from Multiple people multiple times through the years that were in that meeting. I of course was not in the meeting. I was entry-level but they wanted to just get rid of me and

Ramon Vela (04:31.267)
Mm-hmm.

John Roman (04:52.142)
He put his name on the line and he didn't know me. I mean, besides hiring me, besides the interview process, besides liking me, but he saw the potential. And he put his name on the line and said, no, like, John's going to be good. We don't want to get rid of him. Yes, he's bucking back on stuff, but he's smart. He's going to be a great sales rep and I don't want to get rid of him.

Ramon Vela (05:00.739)
Mm-hmm.

John Roman (05:21.838)
And it would have been much easier, especially in the environment culture that existed in that business, to just agree with what the other managers and directors are saying and not have to deal with the politics of sticking up for someone. But he stood up for me and I was allowed to keep my job. And then obviously, obviously that was a good choice. I ended up having a lot of success at that company. I was there for five and a half years.

Ramon Vela (05:36.248)
Hmm.

John Roman (05:52.104)
number one sales rep, top three sales rep, top five sales rep, one of those categories every year. I don't, I don't, talking like 700, 800 sales reps. After that, I ran, when I ran my own teams, I ran the number one team in the country. So it was definitely a smart move. but I'm, I have such gratitude because if he, if he doesn't do that, if he doesn't stand up for me there, even though he doesn't know me,

Ramon Vela (06:03.065)
Mm-hmm.

John Roman (06:21.344)
My career takes, who knows? I'm probably not here today. Because I was even, even though I had three different careers, I was able to parlay the previous career for the most part, poker to sales, not so much, but with certainty, my sales career into the EECOM, there was a lot of knowledge, connections, network that I brought from it. So if he doesn't stand up for me there, I don't, I'm probably not.

Ramon Vela (06:35.907)
Mm-hmm.

John Roman (06:51.552)
in the position I am today. So forever grateful for him.

Ramon Vela (06:55.289)
Well, I appreciate kind of giving us little, not only sharing that story with us, but also giving us a little bit of, that gives us a little bit of your background. And your example actually goes to the heart of the question, right? There are times where people take a chance on you because they see something in you. They may not know you 100%, but there's something, there's a vibe, there's a gut feeling that they see something and think, okay, I'm gonna take an opportunity or I'm gonna take a chance on this person.

and support them somehow, whether it's an investor who decides to invest in your company, or it could just be, like you said, just somebody who gave you an opportunity and stuck up for you. So I love those stories. Thanks for sharing that. And so this is a good segue really into, now that we understand a little bit of your background, this is a good segue to kind of figure out a little bit about where you were and why you started Battlebox.

I'm really interested in this type of company because I've never managed, or no, I'm sorry, never interviewed a company like this. But I am curious just in terms of its popularity, its cycles of growth, are there times where it's up and the time that it's down?

And I'm also just like wondering where the impetus of the idea was. So let's start from the beginning. Where were you at this point in your career when you started, got the idea for Battlebox?

John Roman (08:28.558)
So I 100 % did not have the idea for Battle Box. So in early, late 2014, early 2015, still in my sales career, I started investing in businesses. Now, to clarify, not writing $100,000, million dollar checks, I'm writing $5,000, $10,000 checks. And there were about, I

Ramon Vela (08:47.727)
you

John Roman (08:58.67)
seven in about a four month span that I wrote checks to. This battle box was one of them. So the guy, my ex-business partner that had the concept, had the idea, he had come to my Christmas party. I have a Christmas party every year and invite people from college, from work, from neighborhoods, like just

It's every everybody's invited. It's a hodgepodge of everyone I've met through the years. And he was looking to start something. He was an entrepreneur. And, you know, the thing he was currently doing was okay. It wasn't it was good. It wasn't great. It was paying the bills, but not much more. And he was trying to come up with concepts, ideas, you know, told me, hey, I want I want to do something with you. And, you know, the reality is if in at the time, circa 2015,

everyone in that group of like college friends and acquaintances was arguably, you know, the most, one of the most, if not the most successful that everyone knew. So, you know, it wasn't a unique proposition that he had come to me with of, let's do something together. So I have a process and I give someone one or two pieces of homework without them knowing it's homework.

Ramon Vela (10:09.199)
Mm-hmm.

Ramon Vela (10:24.783)
you

John Roman (10:24.974)
just to see their response time, their delivery, how they treat it. But of course, all under the roos of them not knowing that it's homework. It's me testing them for potential partnership. He failed at it miserably, which should have been a telltale sign that, you know, probably not a good business partner. fast forward, never got me those things, never did that thing. In February, he comes up with this, he comes up with the idea a little bit sooner, but in February 2015, he launches it.

I catch wind of it about seven, eight days after launch and say, hey, I want to be a part of this, you know, very, very limited partner. want to advise, you know, there's some business acumen that I can provide. talking, you know, a couple hours a month, but I want to write a check. And I did. And we had a deal done.

I think our deal was already done before the end of the month. So everything that he launched early mid February and I was one of four partners come the end of the month. The other two partners or three including himself obviously didn't put any capital contribution in. They were just given the equity for their roles while I wrote a check for mine.

And yeah, off to the races. I did it because I came from B2B and B2B software, mean, subscriptions is what it's about, right? Reoccurring revenue, it's forecastable, it's scalable. And the idea of the same thing that checks all the boxes for businesses being available to a consumer when the consumer market is so much larger.

Ramon Vela (12:00.857)
Mm-hmm.

John Roman (12:24.14)
was just very, very, very attractive. So yeah, jumped in.

Ramon Vela (12:26.627)
Mm-hmm. Well, I have a follow-up question to that, but I'm curious about this test. Is there a way that you feel comfortable while sharing kind of what this test is like or if there's a framework around that? Because I mean, that's valuable, like for anyone, you know, going to partner with somebody.

John Roman (12:34.477)
No.

John Roman (12:41.27)
I mean, yeah, the framework is you're just having a conversation, right? When someone's pitching you on something, someone has an idea, someone wants to work with you, you're just organically in the conversation, getting some sort of commitment of them doing some sort of due diligence homework, something that actually takes work to share with you. So it could be,

Ramon Vela (13:05.679)
Mm-hmm.

John Roman (13:11.254)
It can be very, very simple. As an example, was talking to someone earlier. They're looking at this retail opportunity, investment opportunity. And hey, it's we want to work together. Well, I might say, cool. Well, like, hey, what's a good, what do you think a good lot like in this city for us to do this is? Well, there's, you know, there's probably like half a dozen. Well, hey, find, can you find like three or four lots of land that you think

that are for sale that we could maybe buy and do this on. Yeah, cool. That's it, right? It's just seeing what they do. And then I'm testing and being very judgmental on how quick the turnaround is. Are they sending me links? Are they sending me links with their view and their summary and their thoughts? I wanna understand how their brain works. And...

turnaround time and their ability to do it. cause so often you see it just doesn't get done. People, people love to talk, but you know, talk is cheap actions matter. And it's, it's just a great, it's a great litmus test in general. I know, I know personally when someone comes to me with something and, and, and, and they ask me for some value add, or I know I can bring value add, it's, it's a high priority for me. Is it going to be the next thing on my to-do list?

Ramon Vela (14:13.667)
Mm-hmm.

Ramon Vela (14:23.556)
Yeah.

John Roman (14:38.232)
Probably not, but it's going to be very high because relationships matter, friendships matter, and if you're able to test those barriers in a friendship and a relationship, it allows the business side to often find the right fits.

Ramon Vela (14:59.387)
I think I understand and I think that makes a lot of sense. mean, it's a small test and you could actually, depending on what that test is, what you're acquiring, it could be big or small, but it's really just, for me, my take on what you just said is that, can you...

Can you figure out how much they want something? if they, cause if it's, if they want it, they're going to get it done. They're going to do it right away. They're going to go the extra mile, whatever it might be that like, might even provide you different variations and different ideas and so forth. Show that they've put some thought into it, found the information, maybe added onto this and so forth. And that, you know, of course is, is meant to not only impress you, but also like to show you what, what, what they can do in terms of the, you know, how much, you know, how much they want it.

John Roman (15:45.006)
100%.

Ramon Vela (15:47.565)
So I get it. I like that. And then so the other thing is what was it about the idea that really got you excited? Because honestly, I don't know too much about this. When I looked at the brand, I thought, you I know this is successful company, but I thought, you know, is it a niche company? Is it, you know, I know it's you're selling it to consumers, but how large is the consumer market? And so what was it that really

that really kind of like, you know, sparked and said, yes, I want to, I want to get in.

John Roman (16:19.814)
you know, in, in, the simplistic, not to oversimplify it, but it was very, very simple. you know, my, my investment thesis in 2015 is not what it is today. It's changed dramatically. Back then it was quite simple. It it was a consumer product. It was reoccurring revenue. It didn't already exist. and I, you know, all those, those, those were all the boxes I was, I was looking for. And,

it wasn't out there in the market. And it was as simple as that. 2015, we're Battle Box, not a subscription box company. I don't like the term. We do offer a membership and it does come with a physical box every month. But we also have 1500 other skews. have millions of followers because we're a content company. We focus all of our stuff on community. give...

Ramon Vela (17:04.377)
Mm-hmm.

John Roman (17:18.818)
We have battle games every year where we give $25,000 away to a winner. We were so much more than that. So by design, we don't use subscription box today. But back then, when Battle Box launched, we were just a subscription box. And in 2015, subscription boxes were all the craze. had the bell of the ball at the time, Birchbox, which around that time had a billion dollar valuation. So it was...

Ramon Vela (17:37.923)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

John Roman (17:48.768)
It was an attractive time for subscription boxes. And it was as simple as that.

Ramon Vela (17:58.521)
Well, and I guess maybe to be more specific, so let's tell people what Battlebox is. And for anyone out there, can go to battlebox.com. is the website, battlebox.com. And battle is spelled B-A-T-T-L and then box.com, battlebox.com. And this is what I was, I guess what I was getting at is that a lot of these products that I'm looking at the website,

and what you fill it with are really cool. I I think I love this kind of stuff. These watches and these compasses and these things that you have. But I guess I'm just wondering like, is this a large market? Has it grown? Does it go through cycles? I'm really unfamiliar with the business side of this.

John Roman (18:45.688)
Sure. So yeah, it's a very, very large market, right? Outdoor gear, survival gear. There's so many buckets in there from just actual general preparedness to hiking, to camping, to hunting, anything really with the great outdoors with also a focus on preparedness. So it's a massive market, right? Look at retail.

Ramon Vela (19:03.811)
Mm-hmm.

John Roman (19:13.102)
You have the Bass Pro Shops, the Dick's Sporting Goods, the Cabela's, the Academy, the Shields. It's a huge, huge, huge market. what we do is, we're an outdoor and adventure brand, so it's everything under the sun. We have a couple thousand skus on our site at any given time.

Ramon Vela (19:22.723)
Mm-hmm.

John Roman (19:41.774)
through the membership that we offer, we curate a monthly box. We have four different tiers, basic to ProPlus. The ProPlus is $175 a month, plus shipping, plus sales tax, about $200 all in, depending on your state. And you're gonna get $350, $400 worth of gear in there. At our size and scale, no one has the stuff sitting in stock.

So this is custom runs with the manufacturers, with our partners, with our vendors. Oftentimes they'll launch a product through us. So if they're coming up with a new knife or a new tool, they'll use us as the platform to launch. One, it probably gets their production costs down. Two, we're a marketing engine, right? So we're putting their product in.

their ideal demographic, and then we're showcasing their product through content to millions of people in their ideal demographic. So it's, yeah, it's just super, super interesting. And then in addition to that, with the membership, you get a lot of other stuff. Get access to the community. We have a private members only Facebook group. Not everyone joins, but I think we have 10, 11,000 active members in there. We have access to the Battle Vault, which has

Ramon Vela (20:48.035)
Mm-hmm.

John Roman (21:08.684)
you know, over a thousand SKUs of the best possible prices you can find online or in person. And, you know, we also have about 25 exclusive offerings from our partners. If you're an active member, this could be everything from, you know, exclusive coupon code evergreen to a specific website to three free months of all trails membership to

We partnered with a magazine publishing house where you can get any physical 12-month subscription, not subscription, just magazine for free with no credit card. They'll send it to you. So it's a full gambit of benefits that come with the membership.

Ramon Vela (21:55.768)
Hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Ramon Vela (22:02.511)
And are the products branded products, part of the Battlebox brand or do you treat this more sort of like a marketplace? Like you're the marketing engine, you're the platform and products will come to you and be sold through this platform.

John Roman (22:20.794)
Both. So about 80%, 85 % of the products that we feature in the box, we feature on our site, they're not our products. We're a marketplace. So we partner with high quality brands. If we're selling something, we've tested it, and you can likely find a video on us testing it on our socials. And then there's, you know...

Ramon Vela (22:32.655)
Okay.

John Roman (22:49.538)
The other remaining 15 or so percent will sometimes manufacture and we'll partner with one of our other partners, whether it's Fox Knives or Deadfish. We'll do partnerships since now we have all the connections and something might be Battle Bucks branded. And if that's the case, it's actually one of the large brands everyone's familiar with that's manufacturing it for us.

Ramon Vela (23:19.49)
Hmm.

John Roman (23:19.694)
But we only really do the Battlebox branded stuff if we see a need for it. We see quickly that a product doesn't exist or a product could be a lot better, obviously better, and we'll make some iterations and improvements on it because ultimately we want the better customer experience. So it's not, yeah.

Us manufacturing is the exception, it's not the rule.

Ramon Vela (23:52.279)
Mm-hmm. You know, and typically when I talk to a brand and they do have the branded products, I would ask them things like, you know, a topic, well, this topic I know, I see it on LinkedIn quite a bit now, I guess because of the environment we're going through right now with the tariffs and economy, et cetera. you know, I always ask about the moat, like what are your different moats? But it feels like because you guys are

or this platform and as you described a marketing engine, it almost feels like everything you're doing is really kind of geared towards building a mode because you have this group, know, this community that you're building. You've got these different organizations, these events, and I love to learn more about the games and so forth. So it's almost like your job is like building this community of people who will buy these particular products. And then you, and then,

That's your main mission. then secondarily, then you bring the products. That's what it feels like. Is that how you see it too?

John Roman (24:57.134)
Yeah, I mean, don't get me wrong. We can't send crappy products, right? We have to send high quality products. We spend an embarrassing amount of time ensuring that every product is up to the battle box sniff test before it goes in a box. Like it's a ridiculous, ridiculous, obnoxious process. So that matters. But back to your question, absolutely. So community and content, that's our mode.

Ramon Vela (25:25.293)
Mm-hmm.

John Roman (25:25.6)
No one can compete with us in our space on our social reach. The amount of quality content we're putting out, the amount of educational content we're putting out, it's just not possible. And we've been fortunate enough with the combination of the content and the quality products to build a ridiculously amazing community that appreciate the time and effort we put in and

what the community has been built into is extraordinary. And yeah, so because of that, the community and the content, that's the moat. And we've had, at one point we had probably 10, 12 competitors. There's ebbs and flows. Immediately once we had success, we had a handful pop up. I don't think any of them are even around anymore.

Ramon Vela (25:59.225)
Mm-hmm.

John Roman (26:24.334)
We have a new competitor in the last year or so. I've already read this book. They won't be around next, right? Because they're just doing things wrong. They're not looking at how they should position themselves. And the reality is we've built a moat. We've been doing this for over 10 years at this point. And we were first to market. And you can't replicate...

Ramon Vela (26:29.729)
Yeah.

Ramon Vela (26:47.245)
Yeah.

John Roman (26:53.102)
It's not like someone can see our content and community and replicate it. Good luck. It's just not possible.

Ramon Vela (26:57.787)
Mm-hmm. Yeah. It's hard to do. And part of that moat is building the trust, building the brand, building that name so that when someone sees Battlebox and they're looking at a product review or they're looking at an article or a blog post, whatever, they're...

You know, they know they can trust you guys. They know they can trust the brand. They know that you guys are one of them in terms of, whoever that person is, whether they're a hiker or a camper or survivalist, whatever. You know, they know that, I can trust this brand because, you know, the community they built. And the community I often, you know, I notice is that a lot of people want a community, but it's just really hard. It's just really difficult to

John Roman (27:45.112)
very, very difficult.

Ramon Vela (27:46.403)
Keep going and keep it up, maintain it, build it. It's a long term game.

John Roman (27:50.254)
And what no one wants to talk about is that sometimes brands can't build a community. They can do all the right things from a playbook and the community might still not get built at the quality and the scale that they're hoping for. It's funny. It's almost like you talk about ensuring a product has product market fit.

ensuring a product and a brand has community market fit. This is not always the case.

Ramon Vela (28:28.431)
So I'm curious about that. Why don't you think that's the case with some of them? As you were saying that, I thought you were gonna use the phrase community market fit because that's kind of what we're talking about, right? Instead of product market fit is, yeah. So what is the secret to having that? Like, why doesn't it work for some brands?

John Roman (28:43.286)
It's you know, you're as community market fit.

John Roman (28:50.77)
you know, I don't know if I have the exact answer. would imagine, you know, one of the secret ingredients is missing, whether it's the passion, the genuineness, the excitement level of the product. I don't have the exact answer.

Ramon Vela (29:13.518)
Mm-hmm.

John Roman (29:14.51)
If I did, I would be able to reverse engineer and know how to replicate it and stamp it. But I think it's as simple as same reason, sometimes a product market fit doesn't exist, right? Sometimes it's just not a good enough product. I think using that thought process, the same could be applied to if something has a marketing.

Ramon Vela (29:30.775)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah.

John Roman (29:43.168)
market fit, like market, community market fit. It might just not be a good enough product or brand. Simple as that.

Ramon Vela (29:50.733)
Yeah. Yeah. And I often find this is obviously not, this is like hit or miss. This is not a process or a methodology to be copied, but I've often noticed that the brands that do have strong communities, those communities would have existed in some form or factor with or without the brand. And because whatever the brand is dealing with,

is strong enough and brings enough passion and or personal, you know, personal need or emotion that those communities would exist with or without the product, right? Or without the brand. That to me is like, you sense that there's something there, like for instance, I always think about Bally Welly. I interviewed them a few years back. She actually started, her and her partner ended up

I think we're involved in a community and then eventually ended up buying the community and then use the community to build a product. But that community or existed. So like it was already there and whether the product came along or not, it was already going to be there. know, IBS, which is, know, so many people deal with it. It's an emotional thing. It's a health thing, but you know,

people congregate because they want to talk about it. They want to talk about how this food affects them and their pains, their wins, their milestones, whatever. And if you can find something like that, if you can find something where people are already going to talk about it or there's some sort of, I don't know, thing that makes them gather, then you've got it. And I think you guys have it. I mean, I think the people who are hikers, whether you're hiker, like you...

you like to hike and you end up talking to other hikers. You want to know about trails and whatnot. And I think that applies to you guys.

John Roman (31:49.228)
Yeah, Noah, you know, as you said that, I had that, you aha.

John Roman (31:56.726)
I think he nailed it. Would the community exist without the brand? And that's the answer, right? That's at least one of the prereqs of building is would a version of flavor of this exist without the brand? And if the answer is no, then I think you have an uphill putt at that point. And that can go either way.

Ramon Vela (32:15.117)
Hmm.

Ramon Vela (32:20.237)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, you're right. mean, cause it, you can build sort of a little community around a product, but it's never really going to be long lasting, right? It's not, you're not, it's not going to turn into what you would want, which is a moat. Like you guys, think have a, have a moat. So, and correct me if I'm wrong. So like when growth slows, you know, or, and our growth amps up.

your community is still there. They may or may not be buying products because maybe there's a recession or whatever, but they may slow down, but they're always going to be there. that's going to be, that's key to your growth, I'm sure. That's why brands are attracted to being part of your community, I would imagine.

John Roman (33:08.086)
Right, no, you're spot on.

Ramon Vela (33:10.135)
Yeah. So one thing that we didn't talk about when we were doing our pre-interview was tariffs, right? Since then, the tariffs have been in the news like every day and so forth. As a marketing agent, I would imagine that it may not affect you guys as much, but it could affect a lot of the products you carry or the manufacturers that you carry. Have you noticed that? How has that impacted you guys?

How is it impacting your manufacturer partners?

John Roman (33:40.664)
Yeah, I mean, at the end of the day, whether we view ourselves as a marketing engine or not, we're putting purchase orders in every month for millions of dollars. it's important, right? And the reality is, we have vendors and manufacturing that's all over the world, right? There's some great USA made companies.

There's some great companies out of Italy. There's some great stuff in Europe going on. But yes, there is with certainty a lot of stuff also in China. And that's the reality, right? Like it's not unique to a specific industry. A lot of industries, you can source from China and it's significantly less money for a equal quality product.

Ramon Vela (34:17.305)
Mm-hmm.

Ramon Vela (34:31.449)
Mm-hmm.

John Roman (34:37.772)
It's a little bit more of a challenge for us than most because for 85 % of these products, we're not able to talk to the manufacturer. We're having to deal with the brand and hope that that brand is negotiating and looking at the process the correct way. So it's a...

Ramon Vela (34:52.335)
Hmm.

John Roman (35:07.862)
I would say it's more of a challenge for us than a brand that has a single, whether you should or not have a single supply chain, and they're just communicating with that. talking to, we're putting in six figure purchase orders with seven to eight new brands, different brands every single month. Even prior to all the tariff stuff, dealing with that many brands.

And when we're building the monthly membership box, you have to have all seven or eight products. can't ship it without a product. So the weakest link of those vendors causes everybody to be the weakest link and the weakest. So telling them they have to have product to us sometimes, typically we require it in-house 30 days before we start shipping.

Ramon Vela (35:45.059)
Mm-hmm.

John Roman (36:04.748)
And there's a reason why with our quantity, we start prepping and packing the way before shipping. But it's also because, you know, things go wrong. Not all vendors are created equal. Vendors make mistakes. Vendors have delays. And so, you know, we try to get ahead of it. But no, it's it's a big, big challenge. Obviously, you know, the 90 day pause that was announced yesterday in 90 day window of

30 % China coming into the US and 10 % vice versa, that's a lot better than 145 or 15%, right? It's probably a little more manageable. But the reality is, not everybody manufactures in China and there's a lot of things occurring.

Ramon Vela (36:47.747)
Yeah.

John Roman (37:04.11)
whether they're gray or not that are occurring where tariffs aren't necessarily applied. You're seeing a lot of countries, I think it got coined during this tariff craziness, the Prada model where 95 % of, and I don't know if this is accurate or not, but 95 % of the Prada purse was

Ramon Vela (37:07.631)
Thank

Ramon Vela (37:30.275)
Mm-hmm.

John Roman (37:33.484)
being created in Shenzhen or somewhere in China and then shipped into Italy where the finishings and the final amount was done, but then was getting a Made in Italy stamp. So, you know, there's some of that too, right? The US is interesting because the US, arguably out of all the countries in the world, had the highest standards and most difficult hoops to jump through to get a Made in USA stamp.

Ramon Vela (37:40.943)
Hmm.

Yeah.

Ramon Vela (38:01.165)
Hmm.

John Roman (38:01.356)
It's very, very, very, very difficult. But then you have a lot of countries that it's the polar opposite, right? So, you know, there's a lot of that going on. There's a bunch of other strategies people are doing too. You're seeing everything from, instead of the single line item commercial invoice that was all inclusive of everything you did, including the consulting.

Ramon Vela (38:09.271)
Yeah.

John Roman (38:30.176)
and the research and all of that. Well, since it included all that, don't include all that anymore and charges for that separately because that's a service and tariffs don't get services. So you're seeing that with the commercial invoices. You know, it's not a novel concept, but you have these, when things get into port, going into brokerage warehouses where you pay as you actually pull stuff out and you pay on today's tariff, not...

Ramon Vela (38:40.195)
Mm-hmm.

John Roman (38:59.212)
the day it came in, and I'm sure there's some juice associated with that, but there's a lot of strategies. think whether it stayed at 145%, went up to 250, or down to 30, where it seems to be for at least the next 90 days, businesses that deserve to be in business, and this is gonna sound very unemotional, or lack of emotion, or lack of empathy.

but businesses are able to figure it out. The businesses that are not able to figure it out.

there might be some more fundamental issues with them as business owners. And are they high caliber operators, right? That sounds super, super dry and lack of empathy because don't get me wrong, there's exceptions to the rules, There are the businesses where they can't figure it out, right? They have single source, they're manufactured, won't think outside the box of ways to...

Ramon Vela (39:41.465)
Mm-hmm.

John Roman (40:07.726)
to get the cost down or ways to not have such a high tariff. So there's definitely exceptions, but critical thinking can come up with solutions.

Ramon Vela (40:18.413)
Yeah. know, and you're absolutely right. mean, there's an old saying, and I actually experienced this, back in 2008 when I had to close a business is that, you know, good times will mask your flaws, right? They will mask your, your weaknesses and so forth. And then of course the bad times will simply unveil them. Right. And, and those who

those who have a smart business and who are doing the smart things and who are doing the right things, they'll survive one way or another. They'll pivot, they'll change, they'll whatever. Yeah, and those who are not running the business well, like I said, I'm not saying this out of, I personally experienced this because I ran a business wrong and I know what it's like when a bad recession happens, if you're screwing up, it's just gonna,

John Roman (40:56.814)
100 %

Ramon Vela (41:16.343)
mess things up. that's all there is to it.

John Roman (41:18.99)
There was a window, I'd say 2018 to 2019. Yeah, 2018 to 2019, Battle Box was not being ran correctly at all. Now we were in growth mode. And to your point, when the ship's moving fast, those holes don't take water. You're fine, right? You're in shipping mode. But then, yeah, when the...

Ramon Vela (41:39.811)
Mm-hmm.

John Roman (41:46.06)
When it slows down, those holes can start to become very, very, very problematic. So we went through it too. And yeah, but luckily we did some reorganization and today's team is not the same team that we used to have and everything's good.

Ramon Vela (42:04.377)
You know, I almost think, you know, from a management standpoint, leadership and management standpoint, like brands may think, given everything that's happened, like the pandemic and all this other stuff, they should like probably think about stress testing their business. I don't even know how you would do that, but I mean, like you'd have to think about what are the worst case scenarios given that we've had a pandemic where everything's closed and all of this, like how quickly can you turn your business into an online business if you're doing retail?

And then of course, what if your supply chain changed and whatnot? I you know what I mean? Like, I don't know. Most time people think, I don't have time for all this stuff. But I mean, we've just been hit with so many different things in the last, what, 10 years or eight years or whatever. I almost think like that there's a business to be had there. They're like stress testing brands and know, like testing.

John Roman (42:40.291)
Yeah.

John Roman (42:57.774)
No, I think you're right. went through, we sold the business and then bought the business back. Part of the buyback in 2023 was the addition of a new board member who's an old mentor of mine. I actually knew him from my second career. He was with senior leadership at the company I had referenced prior that was publicly traded. He came on the board and one of the things he wanted us to do as a...

during our quarterly board meeting was this really, really great exercise. And it's not a fun exercise, but it's literally, you know, looking at current numbers, current team, et cetera, and, you know, what if, what if revenue is cut in half? What changes are made? And outlining them and, you know, what if revenue does this? What if revenue does this? What if...

We have to change products and the margins are good. And it's literally a document and it tells us what we do if this happens. know, seal it up, hope we never have to open it. You know, look back on it. You know, we look back on it actually earlier this month, randomly it came up and we're like, oh, we probably need to update this because we've made some changes as we've grown and we made the tweaks to it. But going through those exercises and knowing your game plan,

instead of not having time or saying, I'll cross that bridge when I get there, is a really good exercise because it opened up a lot of just ways we're looking at things in general.

Ramon Vela (44:32.943)
Hmm.

Ramon Vela (44:37.943)
Yeah, and I think it's worth doing it because we've had these things that have occurred that we've never thought might, you would happen, know, pandemic, et cetera. I want to get into the products because I know our time is limited, but I was going to mention that I did interview another subscription company called FabFitFun, and I had never known how logistically challenging having a subscription company is.

John Roman (44:47.0)
Sure.

Ramon Vela (45:08.111)
Can you speak a little bit about that? They started creating their own systems in their own warehouses and things like that. That's the route they went to, just really the notion of how difficult, once they kind of explained it to me, I was just like, wow, I never realized how difficult it is to run a really successful subscription company.

John Roman (45:30.766)
So yeah, so it's difficult, right? It's not, hey, I'm gonna charge the consumers this amount and this quantity and then just call Frank and say, Frank, I need 200 of these and 200 of these and call Jeff and say, need 200 of these and put it together. At scale, we're putting purchase orders in sometimes 150 days out, sometimes greater.

sometimes 365 days out. It depends on the vendor, supply chain, what it looks like for them, but we're putting purchase orders in six to 12 months out. And with that comes quite a few challenges because you're having a forecast accurately that far out. And that's not easy. There's a lot of variables at play there that could adjust.

Ramon Vela (46:22.093)
Mm-hmm.

you

John Roman (46:29.966)
your number at that point. So it's a major, major, major challenge. So we own our own warehousing. We acquired a company called Carnivore Club in 2019. We ended up selling them when we sold Battle Box the first time in 2021. And we were up in Toronto a good bit. We had an office up there. It was

Ramon Vela (46:36.067)
Yeah.

John Roman (46:58.84)
We inherited it because of Carnivore, but then it became our Toronto office. And we were using a 3PL up there delivery net, which they got bought by one of the big guys, think ShipBob maybe. But it was also the, they were pitching us on this process and there were thousands of FabFitFun boxes. At the time, FabFitFun was using them for Canada.

Ramon Vela (47:12.707)
Mm-hmm.

John Roman (47:26.786)
I'm not sure if they're still, know FabFit Fund has gotten into that model of warehouse as a service as well, they now, FabFit Fund is fulfillment for a lot of big name brands now, because they built such a great infrastructure.

Ramon Vela (47:32.12)
Yeah.

Ramon Vela (47:38.275)
Yeah. Well, they, they, yeah, they, they've built up the infrastructure. And one of the things that they're envisioning is that they would love to be like an Amazon type company. You know, they building the infrastructure and all of the areas, but, know, I just know logistically, it's a, could be a nightmare in terms of subscription. So it's not easy. mean, you, you're, bleeding, sweating, tearing over, over, you know, this business. I liked always make sure the audience knows that.

John Roman (47:50.296)
Sure.

John Roman (48:04.352)
Yeah, I will tell you that when we were looking at vertical growth and, we're really good at this, should we offer this? We're really good at this, should we offer this? And we do fulfillment for a couple smaller brands, but we looked at, okay, do we stand up fulfillment as a service very similar to what they're doing? And there's just not a lot of meat on that bone unless you scale

massively. And it sounds like that's what they're doing. they do one, I think they do fulfillment for Hexclad, and a couple other big names.

Ramon Vela (48:34.479)
Mm-hmm.

Ramon Vela (48:39.523)
Yeah.

Ramon Vela (48:43.683)
Yeah, yeah.

I'll send you a link to that interview. It's an interesting interview with the brothers.

John Roman (48:49.678)
Yeah, I'd love to hear it. We're gonna, FatFitFun is gonna be, we'll see them in a couple of weeks at SubSummit in Dallas, which will be good.

Ramon Vela (48:58.147)
yeah, yeah, yeah. I was actually supposed to speak at that last year and I wasn't able to go. I'm not going to go this year unfortunately, but yeah, I look forward to maybe going to a future event. Yeah, no, I love those folks. So let's talk a little bit about the product. I want to be respectful of your time. There's so much to talk about. I would love to dive into some of the other areas as well, but for now, let's just make sure the audience really understands.

John Roman (49:08.236)
It's a great conference.

Ramon Vela (49:25.305)
You know what they're going to find, what they're going to get and walk us also through this, the, the, the, battle games. So yeah, wherever you want to start, I just want to make sure people understand, what the products are and what they're going to find out there because you've got a lot of so many cool products. And for everyone out there, the website is battlebox.com battlebox.com battle is spelled B A T T L and then box.com is the website. So you can take a look at it.

for yourself. But why don't you go ahead and tell us what we're going to find there.

John Roman (49:58.582)
or, yeah, or, just go to Google and spell any variation of how you, how you think it sounds and it works. You're going to, our site's get, our site's going to come up. So throw a knee in there, even though there's not one in a Google, our site will come up. Two words, it'll, it'll still come up super easy to find. Yeah. So we, yeah. So we have thousands of skews, outdoor adventure, everything you could think of from hiking, camping knives, preparedness.

Ramon Vela (50:02.415)
Thank

Ramon Vela (50:10.491)
Hehehe.

John Roman (50:29.493)
And you know, our flagship product is the membership. So we have four tiers, Basic, Advanced, Pro, and Pro Plus. The Pro Plus, that's $1.75 a month plus shipping plus tax. The reality is, I'm not just saying it's our most popular, 52 % of our base is in that. It provides the most value and there's a reason why more than half of our members

to choose that option. So we call our boxes that we send out missions. So every month it's the new mission. It drops at the same time everywhere else. you know, during our, we have one shipping window that we ship from the fourth through the ninth. And we're strategic on our shipping where everyone gets it around the same time because no one knows what's in it. And then obviously they're all the same, right? We're not putting X amount in this one.

You why in this one like these purchase orders were for X amount so everyone gets gets gets the same item And then we drop a video explaining the items you can go to our site click on what's in the box We outline all 123 missions we've ever sent with everything that's in them You look at the one that went out about a week ago mission 123 in the basic level there was

100 foot of paracord there were some compressed bamboo towel tablets there were some storm proof matches the Advanced box and they stack on top of each other so if you get the advanced you get everything from the basic and Pro plus you get all lower three tiers and then the knife The advance was all-in-one water filter the pro box The item was it was a backpack a defcon 5 backpack high-end $90

very, very nice backpack. then the knife, the Pro Plus, which is the knife of the month, it's always a very premium knife, was a Condor Sipknife fixed blade. So that's a pretty standard box, right? We don't repeat items, you know, and whether you're grabbing the box and you're adding some stuff to your gear to go camping or hiking or

Ramon Vela (52:37.743)
Mm-hmm.

John Roman (52:52.878)
you're putting it in a closet somewhere and hope you never need it. Or you're like, hey, I want this night for myself and I want to, I want to gift it. I don't want this, but I'm going to give it to someone. And you know, it's hundred dollar item that, you know, I technically only paid maybe 30 for, right? Because the majority of the buying power that we have is passed on to the consumer. So there's a bunch of different ways to, to treat it. And yeah.

Ramon Vela (52:55.683)
Thank

John Roman (53:22.488)
pretty straightforward if you like the outdoors or you like being prepared. And the prepared side is a very, very, very fast growing space. Because it's the same as just having you pay monthly for your auto insurance or your home insurance. You're hoping you don't need it. You're hoping there's not a claim. But if there's not a claim, that money just goes to the insurance company.

Ramon Vela (53:50.231)
Mm-hmm.

John Roman (53:51.32)
Same concept, you're paying a monthly, except you're actually getting a box of gear and you hope you don't use it. But if you do, it's there and you're ready. The power goes out or there's a water issue in your area or something worse. And the reality is, if you needed money and you went to the closet and you're like, I'm gonna break all these items down from this last mission and sell them.

that you paid $200 for the box, you're gonna sell them and after commissions fees and everything else from whatever platform you sold on, you're coming out ahead, significantly ahead. So there's just, it's a, just makes sense, right? It's similar to insurance except it's an actual asset that has value. Jumping into the battle games. we,

Ramon Vela (54:28.035)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Ramon Vela (54:40.909)
Hmm.

John Roman (54:45.998)
We do an event every year. We started BattleGames last year. We're doing BattleGames again this year in September. We'll put golden tickets out. I'm trying to see if I had a sample somewhere, but I don't. Golden tickets go out in some people's boxes. If you get a golden ticket, it means you have entry to submit a video application to be in BattleGames. Last year, we selected 10.

Contestants flew them out Had them had them come to said we did the event at Savannah, Georgia We're doing it again in Savannah, Georgia this year and it was a multi-day event. They participated in separate was five rounds and survival ish rounds of you know outdoor and preparedness and People eliminated each round and the winner at the end. We gave $25,000

Ramon Vela (55:20.621)
you

Ramon Vela (55:41.476)
Mm-hmm.

John Roman (55:45.582)
to. And we'll do the same this year. We have people, the other places still got prizes and some cash, but the big win is giving the winner 25k. So it's a really cool event. This year we'll likely go live exclusive with it on YouTube, unless we pick up some kind of deal. We had the Netflix TV show in 2020.

Ramon Vela (56:04.782)
Mm-hmm.

John Roman (56:13.922)
You know, we do have the taste of maybe Battle Games this year gets picked up by a streaming service. But, you know, we're already in May and we've had some conversations, but nothing's been attractive enough to make sense. So as of right now, unless something changes in the next few weeks, we'll just exclusively premiere it on YouTube. And again, you can just go to YouTube, search for us.

Ramon Vela (56:40.057)
Mm-hmm.

John Roman (56:44.078)
whichever manner you want to spell her name, but it is B-A-T-T-L-B-O-X. And you can find our YouTube channel. have, I think like 800,000 subscribers or so on there. So it's a pretty decent channel. It's not as big as our TikTok, but it's, I believe it's our second largest channel.

Ramon Vela (57:01.143)
Wow. That's pretty impressive. you know, that content, the good news is that there's more more streaming services around like 2B and even the cable channels like Spectrum and they're creating their own content and things like that. Yeah. Everybody's creating their own content now. TV shows and movies and things like that. And just for everyone else, you got to go on the website, Battlebox.com. They've got, you know, areas where they have new products, best sellers. They've got

John Roman (57:12.129)
Everybody has one.

Ramon Vela (57:28.911)
areas for sharp, you refer to as sharp edges, so they've got a lot of blades. Anyone who doesn't need...

John Roman (57:34.318)
Yeah, you can't say the K word.

Ramon Vela (57:38.24)
you can't on the website. Yeah.

John Roman (57:39.296)
I mean, you, you, yeah, you can, but if you say it, you got to be careful that, you know, not, not all the major advertising platforms like the keyword.

Ramon Vela (57:48.719)
yeah, yeah, yeah, I get that. Well, they have the sharp edges. So anyone out there who knows anything about hiking and or camping, you need a really good sharp edge. Let's just put it that way. I know enough about that. Camping, they've got an area for camping. They've got all sorts of really cool. They've got emergency preparedness. They've got clothing. They've got tools. They've got all sorts of different categories that you can check out. So I highly recommend it.

Father's Day is coming up, Mother's Day has just passed. So I know a lot of mothers who love this kind of stuff too. I know a lot of guys who love this type of stuff. And even if you're that man in your life, that your dad, friend, partner, whatever, even though they may not be really, really into this stuff, a lot of people, I'm surprised, a lot of people love this stuff. And I'm kind of like this too. Even though sometimes I don't use them, like I like this stuff. I like buying this stuff, you know? I like collecting this stuff.

I used to in a much, much earlier life, used to help with horses and stuff. I used to work in stables and whatnot. And there was something about horse tackle that just always attracted me. So same thing with camping. love to collect knives and things like that. Even though I may not use them all the time, this is a perfect gift for for Father's Day or just for someone out there.

So go check it out. I highly recommend it. Lots of cool things in there. You gotta go to the website and just check it out. Lots of different products. So do yourself a favor and go check it out. This has been great, man. Thank you. I wish we had more time because there's just so many other stuff I wanted to talk to you about. But you're always welcome back. I would love maybe a part two, you know, anywhere from six to 12, you know, 48 months down the line. Whenever you guys have new stuff, I'd love to talk about it.

John Roman (59:35.724)
Yeah, always down.

Ramon Vela (59:42.139)
And maybe we'll have a comeback when we can focus more on some entrepreneurial and e-commerce stuff. But thank you for kind of giving us a good overview of how you started this, where you started, why you're doing this, and a little bit about the business. And again, I highly recommend people going to BattleBox.com. Any last words, John?

John Roman (01:00:04.172)
No, thanks. Thanks so much for having me. This was enjoyable.

Ramon Vela (01:00:07.023)
Yeah, I I love chatting with you. Everyone out there, like I said, we're going to have that link and we're to have the TikTok link and their social media and all of that on our podcast description, which you'll be able to find on Apple and Spotify, pretty much anywhere you listen to podcasts, simply type in the story of a brand show and you should be able to find it. We've got 1000, I haven't even, I've lost count now. 1,283, I think after today will be 85, 86, somewhere around there. But

Lots of really great episodes to listen to and pretty soon we'll able to watch more of them on also on our YouTube. But go and check out the website for Battle Box. I highly recommend it. Sign up for their newsletter at the very least. That way you keep up to date, you get discounts, you learn about promotions, new products, et cetera. Beyond that, everyone, stay safe, stay sane, stay healthy. And one last thing, we've all been going through something really crazy. last...

know, eight years from the pandemic to the economy to geopolitical stuff, wars, all sorts of other stuff. Let's just do ourselves a favor and let's just be kinder to each other remembering that we're all going through something. And I know if we do that, we can make this human experience a better one. Beyond that, thank you from the bottom of my heart for listening to another episode of the story of a brand.