The UrbanCred Podcast
The UrbanCred Podcast
S2E10: Crafting Excellence with the Founder of The James Brand, Ryan Coulter
In-depth interview with Ryan Coulter, Founder of The James Brand
Join Eddy in an episode where he interviews Ryan Coulter, the founder of The James Brand. Ryan shares his journey from being an industrial designer at Nike to creating a brand that focuses on aesthetically pleasing and functional everyday carry (EDC) products. They discuss the inception of The James Brand, the challenges faced in the knife industry, and the importance of slow, consistent growth. Ryan also delves into his creative process, the significance of partnerships, and his approach to overcoming the limitations in marketing EDC items. Tune in for valuable insights and inspiring stories from a successful entrepreneur and designer.
Today's Guest: Ryan Coulter
Ryan Coulter founded The James Brand, a company that creates exceptional, high-quality everyday carry tools. With a background in industrial design and a passion for blending functionality with aesthetic appeal, Coulter has successfully redefined the standard for modern utility items. Under his leadership, The James Brand has become synonymous with innovation, craftsmanship, and minimalistic elegance, catering to those who value performance and style in their everyday essentials.
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Instagram: @thejamesbrand
Website: https://thejamesbrand.com
Where to find us:
- Our Website: https://www.UrbanCred.com
- Instagram: @urbancred_official
- YouTube: @urbancred
- Facebook: @urbancred
- Twitter: @UrbanCred
The UrbanCred Podcast
**Edward:**
Hey guys, Eddy from Urbancred.com. Today is a ringer podcast, a podcast where we speak with someone that I've had an interest in interviewing for a very long time. He's on my list because he's right here next to me. I'm just going to say he's on the top of my list, and I've always wanted to talk to James here. But if you guys didn't know, his name's actually Ryan. Oh, I know you've been in love with the wrong person. So Ryan here is the founder of The James Brand. It is, I would like to say, a brand that focuses on designing really beautiful and useful products. And I'm going to let Ryan here finish that intro. Ryan, tell us about yourself.
**Ryan:**
Well, thanks for that. I am Ryan Coulter. I'm the founder of The James Brand. I've been doing this one way or another since 2011. I always have sort of relied on these things that I carry with me to do various tasks throughout the day. So I was kind of in the EDC space before I knew the EDC space was an EDC space. And I was trained as an industrial designer and worked most of my career designing products and experiences and working with lots of cool brands and other people to do that and kind of always felt like these things that I was carrying with me were A, that they didn't really work together as a system, and B, they weren't necessarily designed the way that I wish they were. And sort of C, there wasn't really a brand that represented those products well. So, you know, this was a labor, a lot of it was a nights and weekends project for me, but that's kind of how we got it started.
**Edward:**
Cool. And you, well, you just mentioned how you got started. And how did that kind of start out? Because it sounded like you started off, like you started off very small and then you slowly kind of picked up, did things, did things right and became what you are now.
**Ryan:**
I mean, initially, it was just myself and, you know, I had an idea and I had the name, and I sort of had the idea baked in my head. And I would sit around, you know, at night and sketch pocket knives. I was really interested in pocket knives and think the knives are just a really interesting category. And then I brought in a couple of other people to kind of work on it with me initially, Mike Nelson and Sam Amos and Andrew, and we kind of started working on it. But yeah, we all had real jobs and we would get together and talk about it on the phone and do some drawings and it sort of worked like that as a nights and weekends project with just a couple of people sort of donating time to it for a number of years. And then, you know, in 2014, we actually launched the product. We put the chapter into the market. And that's when things like start to actually become real, like you're actually now, it's gone from being like a design exercise to like you're in business. You have to file a tax return. People are giving you credit card information. And so that was, that was really like a wake-up call. Oh, wow, we're now, we're actually in business. So, you know, move from being an idea to a project to a startup, you know, a couple of years later, I quit my full-time job at Nike to do this full time and have been doing it ever since. But, you know, it's not some like meteoric, like crazy rise. It's a long, slow grind, you know, like we've gotten, you know, but get, get big slowly and it's an exercise in consistency, but it's been, you know, really fun. I mean, you kind of have no idea what's going to happen next or, you know, where it's going to go. But yeah, I mean, it was, it's kind of amazing to think that I've been working on this one way or another since, you know, for at least 13 years now, which is a good chunk of anybody's career. So, yeah, it's been fun, you know, it's, it's any, I think anytime you're doing something that involves, you know, entrepreneurialism, you're, you're setting yourself up for some kind of adventure for sure.
**Edward:**
Yeah, absolutely. And you don't know how it's funny. It's funny that you mentioned like the slow growth because I've, I've, when we went to wind up, we actually spoke about this briefly. We, I visited a mission workshop and I had a, let's talk to them a little bit and they, they mentioned the same thing, at least in the bag industries, like it's not like businesses like ours aren't like a startup business. It's more of like, well, in, in a way it is, but also not in, because at least in his case, he says that the bag industry, any kind of business in it, you have to expect it to be a slow, slow growth just because of, you know, it's not, it's not one year next year, you're like a big, you know, multinational, whatever. It's, it's slow growth. You got to get people to learn about your product, your brand. You have to gain their loyalty and like be honest to them and kind of be transparent and kind of be like that good, a good friend that doesn't, you know, fold or like fall apart on their expectations, you know.
**Ryan:**
Yeah, I mean, I think the trajectory and the way that these businesses work is just, it's very different than like a technology startup or, or something that's digital. I mean, I think, you know, in the bag space in particular, it's a really crowded area and there's a lot of interesting brands that are, you know, sort of incumbents in that area. Like they said, like you have to get started, you have to do thing, you really have to kind of woo your customers and earn their loyalty and respect and then kind of keep doing the right things again and again and again. You're, you're really working to establish your brand and earn trust and to people that haven't, you know, paid attention, you know, mission workshop has been around for a long time, but to other people like, oh, just they appeared out of nowhere, overnight success. But and it's not actually like that. And with hard goods brands in particular, it's like it takes a long time. You, you really do have to like invest the time and, and make it happen, which is fine. I mean, that's kind of the goal is to like to make something that can last and that you've really built a following around that people really dig what you're doing. That takes time you can't just do that over.
**Edward:**
Yeah. And what, what motivated you then to start James Brand? I know we kind of talked briefly about you couldn't find the right thing. Can you go a little deeper into that?
**Ryan:**
Yeah, I mean, I, you know, I grew up in the Midwest. I'd always carried pocket knives, Swiss Army knives, other things, you know, my, my dad worked in the coal mining industry and used to get pocket knives as awards for service from the, from the United Mine Workers from the UD and used to give those to me when I was a kid. And, you know, I grew up fishing and, and just messing around outside and, and grew up on a farm and had to do a lot of farm stuff. And, you know, I, I carried a pocket knife to elementary school. Like you just, it was a thing that you just had with you all the time and no one especially, you know, considered those things a weapon. They were dangerous only in that you could cut yourself or somebody else if you weren't careful, but the positioning was really just useful and utilitarian. And they got used all the time. And, you know, fast forward to other chapters of my life. Bill carried a pocket knife every day and used it for various things. I would use it to open the mail or, you know, open a package or cut up an apple or clean a fingernail or, you know, on a weekend camping trip. And so the product itself was still always, like, infinitely useful. But I really felt like they've been sort of ignored from a design perspective and also kind of from a brand perspective that I had. I had a knife that somebody gave me that was a licensed Smith and Wesson, was small, and I, and I used it for like a decade. It had a really beautiful patina, but it was not a great product, and I didn't really love the aesthetic, and I didn't really love the brand number. I loved having the thing with me all the time. And I was almost like, oh man, I wish I can make this from somebody else. And I wish I could change the shape to be more like this. And at the same time, I've been working with and I've been working at Nike for a long time and a lot of my work at Nike was on making digital products. And so I'd sort of gone through this transition in my career for making physical products to making digital product. And that process of, you know, design, develop, engineer, test, QA, launch, slash, deploy, those steps are really the same whether you're going to make, I was working on Nike ID. So whether you're going to make like the Nike ID digital experience or whether you're going to make this marker, the actual steps in the process of launching products was the same. But I was really missing the act of making a physical thing and having a physical thing in my hand. And the thing that got me started on design and like making stuff, I started kind of
down that road as a kid, as a young kid, because I would draw things that I really wanted to make real. And I kind of end up going to school to do that and, and had jobs that did that. And I was really missing that because I had sort of transitioned away from making physical things to working on more of the digital thing. But I really wanted to be able to feel like the mass of something in your hand, feel it in your pocket or interact with it physically. And so that, you know, kind of the longing for that combined with the fact that I was still carrying, you know, a knife and a pen and a notebook and a carabiner and this other stuff every single day. And that I kind of had a system around it with how it sat on my dresser and how it went into my pockets and how it was used. But couldn't really find a good solution out there from a design perspective that tied those things together in any way. All those things are slammed together in the evening like, well, maybe that's a problem I could solve. It would be really fun to make like, you know, be selfish, like make your own pocket. Wow, that sounds cool. I wonder if I could do that. I wonder if I can. So that's sort of how I got how I got scared.
**Edward:**
Wow, wow, wow, wow. That's like, that's something that not many people would can say that, oh, I can do that. You know, it's a very, like an inspiring kind of story to hear that because it's starting a business, I think is very intimidating, but also like creating some something from scratch based on your own designs. That's even more intimidating for a lot of people, I feel like.
**Ryan:**
Well, I mean, I guess I got lucky in that I, you know, my career had been doing like taking things from concepts and getting them drawn, getting them made. And I, so I felt confident that I could figure it out, even if I didn't know how that year later, I would figure out how to get it made. The harder part, the scarier part is like starting a business around, you know, like making one for yourself is one thing, but putting it out in front of other people and seeing what other people say about it, seeing if other people like it. And then again, those things I was talking about earlier, like taxes. I mean, all of a sudden there's people when you've got employee all of these other things in the actual starting up of a business are, are big undertaking that you have to be able to manage at the same same time, right. It was easier to make the thing. It was harder to actually like wrap the business around it.
**Edward:**
Yeah, I think I speak with, I spoke with some people who produce their own product, but eventually kind of create their own business around it. And their biggest thing is the fact that they have to start doing things that they're not particularly interested in doing, such as, like, like you said, taxes, payroll, like figuring like certain things like contracts or like working with factories. Sometimes they kind of mentioned they just want to still just sit in the room, kind of push new ideas out. Do you feel that same way?
**Ryan:**
Well, it's interesting. I mean, I, I structured the business, you know, I have a business partner, partner Mike Hooper. And so he had been one of the primary folks behind Nixon watches, worked with Nixon watches for a really long time on through executive level with sales and operations background. And so in 2017, after the James brand had been out for a little while, he and I sort of rebuilt the business as a partnership. So he's officially the chief executive officer of the company. And so he and a team of people that he has hired and manages actually handle a lot of that side of it, finance, operations, HR, which kind of left me and the design team here in Portland to focus on the creative effort. And so that means restructuring the company, you know, I own less of the company than I did before that for sure. But in exchange, I don't have to do a lot of those things, but not only do I not enjoy doing, but that I wasn't good at doing. And so it frees me up to to kind of focus on what I think I'm good at. And someone, you know, had given me that advice at one point. It's like, well, what are you good at? What are you particularly good at? Like, well, I think I'm good at this thing. Like cool, well then do those things and get other people to do the things that you don't like. And you're not, you'll be plenty busy just doing the things that you think you're skilled at. So it's been great. I mean, I, Mike and I are, are good partners. We're different in the way we see things and think about things. We have lots of, you know, constructive conflicts in an effort to get to probably a good answer in the middle. But it was, I think it was a good move to like to sort of separate the company and that and have a partnership around letting everyone do what they're, they're good at.
**Edward:**
It's interesting that you say partnerships because when I went through, you know, business classes or just like online or like even referencing other people who've been in businesses, they're always mentioned like, oh, don't go into like a partnership or, you know, whether like with friends or to find a partner. Like how did you come to figure out a balanced way that you guys are both satisfied?
**Ryan:**
Well, I mean, it's interesting, you know, Mike, I think had more, I did a couple of other entrepreneurial ventures and with some partnerships that had gone somewhat terrible. And so it was really reticent to do that again. I think it's, it's, it's hard, but I also think there are limits to what one person could do on their own. And so it's really, I mean, the best parallel is like a marriage. It's like you can get more potentially like in partnership with another person out of your life, but it comes with some risk. You have to give up some things and be willing to compromise. And when there's a lot on the table, it makes you more apt to grow and learn and change and be open to ideas that you might not be open to otherwise. So I had to think about it long and hard and Mike and I had to meet and like literally like a look each other in the eye and have a conversation about like trust and communication and no, it's not. They're not easy things to do and partnerships are are tough. But I also felt like I just don't know that I could have, you know, on my own made James into what I think its potential is if I didn't have more people working out with different, bigger, better perspectives than just my own, right. So it's not without risk and it's not without, you know, there's some fear involved. There's there are conflict, conflict resolution, all those same things, but I don't know how else you would do it without sooner or later, like bringing and folks in like actually, you know, making it into what you want it to.
**Edward:**
Yeah, absolutely. Now you've been in this business for quite a bit and you've been in the design industry for quite a long time. As a brand owner then, like what was the biggest challenge in The James Brand and how did you decide to figure out or to overcome it?
**Ryan:**
Well, I think, I mean, there's a lot of challenges. They're, they're one, knives in general are just really, really limiting in terms of what you can do from a marketing and communication perspective. You know, they're, they're, you can't do paid social or you can't do most of the things that would be sort of your standard like digital marketing efforts these days. You are forbidden to do most of those things in the world of Google, Facebook, Instagram. And that's a real, real challenge. And that's not something that I knew about before I started the company. Or else you might have done something else where you didn't have that limitation, but, you know, trying to learn how to navigate those waters. And they're changing all the time, but they're literally changing right now this week, you know, they're changing in other ways. So that is a very difficult thing to figure out because you kind of have to figure out your own particular marketing angle that is in no way reliant on what most other people are doing.
**Edward:**
Even Shopify, the biggest platform of sales, they also don't allow knives to be sold on their platform as well and their payments so it's like it's this, it is very limiting for you, for you guys to and I'm very it's, it's must be tough.
**Ryan:**
It's really hard, but we spend a lot of time trying to figure out ways to work around that and like ways to manage it and how to like basically maintain a direct connection to our customers. How do we bring new customers in without being heavily reliant on those, you know, the big third parties that consumes a lot of our attention. It drives, you know, our content strategies and messaging and a whole lot of other things come from particular issue. And it's funny because you know, most of the stuff we make, it's generally smaller, less scary, more approachable than almost any other knife company in our entire positioning. Like a lot of other folks kind of in the EDC realm is about just small everyday things that you carry with you that are utilitarian, useful, beautiful. So it's interesting that, you know, the powers that be have made it totally OK to promote. You know, 11 inch kitchen knives all day long. Culinary is one of the one things that gets a whole pass.
But you know, the two inch Elko that goes on your key chain is is forbidden. Forbidden doesn't make a lot of sense you know, anyone that's ever seen any kind of slasher movie knows that first thing that the person does is get to the knife block, can pull out the big butcher knife. But you know, we make lots of other things besides sharp stuff. We make pens and notebooks and carabiners and all kinds of other stuff. We'll continue to make that as part of, you know, trying to work on sort of designed EDC systems. But we can't promote that other stuff either because you can't promote things and then have them go back to page that has knives on them so we can't promote our titanium pens because we have knives on our site. So this is a real challenge, a real limitation.
**Edward:**
And you guys are still trying to figure this out.
**Ryan:**
Yeah, it just, it changes all the time too so it's, you know, you may figure out a workaround for a while and then the workaround changes and then you have to figure out your will. Do you find another workaround to the workaround or do you just try to find another way altogether and sort of let those platforms just go on without you? So that's a conversation enough.
**Edward:**
All the time, every day yeah, I can imagine. So then what is your what is a day in the life of Ryan like? What do you, what is it day you wake up, you you take a swig of whiskey, and then you ride a helicopter into work what does it look like?
**Ryan:**
I wish it was all that glamorous. I mean, it's one of the reasons the muse for the company is, is not me, but it's James because that's more like what James' life probably looks like than mine. But you know, I've got, I've got a wife, I've got a dog, I've got two kids. I wake up at six every single day and I love coffee. I make coffee. First thing I do like a 10 minute bit of meditation. I try to go out and get some sun in my eyes. I try to get things ready for the kids. My wife works East Coast hours so I kind of do things for the kids in the morning, make lunches, do that kind of stuff. Start getting an email on things nice and early. I come into the office, I'm in here in the, the meeting room of the office right now and I forget we got seven other people in the office here and I'm in meetings almost all the time. And my, my job these days, you know, my sort of title is chief creative officer officially so I'm doing a lot of work with the product team on like what products we're making and you know, as a person that's been a long time working on physical products, I have a lot to say about the products and so we're, we're often working on up to three seasons at a time. So I may be reviewing, you know, inbound products from a vendor, or I may be like writing a design brief for next season or looking at a first round credit tech. But I like to be very involved on the product side. I write almost all of the copy for the website, for email, for social. I'm officially our copywriter so I spend a lot of time like writing copy, editing copy. And then I'm working with Austin, who's our design director and Joe, who's our in-house like photographer and content creator and Nick, who's one of our designers on email and social and photography and the site. So, you know, today I was just looking at my calendar today and I've got, you know, my meeting started at like 10 and go all the way till five thirty back to back today working on various things. But you know, I, I'm a, I was trained kind of as a designer turned creative director and so I'm a manager of a lot of work. And the means of doing managerial work is in meetings. You know, I'm not, I'm not an anti meeting. I'm pro making meetings meaningful so I spend a lot of time in meetings doing creative reviews, doing briefing, reviewing what's next, working on the scheduling of things, coming up with a new art direction for the next photo shoot, etcetera so I touch a lot, and that's kind of what makes it fun to work on a lot of things, but I spend a lot of my time in.
**Edward:**
Meetings.
**Ryan:**
It's actually working on.
**Edward:**
It sounds like your, your, your, your title should be CMO Chief Meetings Officer it seems like you're in it a lot.
**Ryan:**
A lot of meetings, but it's just, that's just the nature of when you are working with a bunch of different people and you have a lot of various things going on. And then I'll block time you know, I try to get at least a couple hours of focus time every day to actually work on whatever my creative endeavor might be, whether that's writing copy or like actually putting my head into some kind of deep work.
**Edward:**
So you, you, when I mentioned like you've taken a helicopter, you swig whiskey and you mentioned like that's what something, something that James would do. And people who follow along with Ryan here, whether it's through Huckberry or through others, your interviews, Ryan here always mentions that James is someone that isn't representative of just him, but like of different people's aspirations and how they want to achieve that final kind of persona. So how does, how does that kind of dictate and guide the design philosophy for your brand?
**Ryan:**
It's a good question. You know, basically, you know, if James is sort of this muse of this person that's kind of living this sort of idyllic, well-balanced life between like the city doors being professional, but also having a lot of fun, you know, a lot of the, you know, that's kind of a brief for a lot of the products that we make and so you really want to be able to answer authentically a question about like, hey, would James carry or use this product? Like, would it work for them? Like, yeah, yeah, it's made out of titanium it wouldn't bend if they were doing something active. It looks good if they were to pull it out in an important creative meeting. But it can write upside down because it's pressurized. And so using, you know, it's a pretty loose muse and you can interpret that, that, that in a lot of ways, but you really want to be able to envision James actually using all of these products that we make. And if you can't make a a fairly honest, fairly compelling case why something we make might be carried or used by James, then we probably shouldn't make it. But, you know, I some of the muse, like we've talked about it in other interviews, but you know, it's, it's kind of this amalgamation of like a James Bond or a James Dean or a James Cook but, you know, being very versed in a lot of things professionally, being a little bit understated in that and that you don't brag about it, but people ask you about it. You can talk about it cohesively and, you know, with some level of authority, you know, this ability to move between various environments easily and, and with some amount of, you know, credibility. It's not Jim or Jimmy, it's James. It's someone like his kind of, they warrant some respect because they've actually paid dues in a lot of these areas to achieve some level of of mastery, not in any one thing, but in kind of a lot of things and they are even, you know, trying to establish this balance of like, what does it mean to be able to, you know, put on a tuxedo and, and be good at table gambling, but also be able to fly a helicopter and drive a fast car well, should be able to do all of those things and this product should, you know things we make should be able to kind of move relatively seamlessly between those environments.
**Edward:**
Right yeah, I think for UrbanCred, I think for us, it's also follows the same philosophy where not necessarily James, but the same idea where people who shop with us has like a goal of like, oh, I want to be that guy where people kind of respect but that person may not necessarily know that they're there, but other people see them as, wow, he's great or he's good at this or he's, you know, he's riding on a motorcycle and like he he comes off as very confident and, you know, he's he he's always rocking these cool items and tools that were oh, where did he get these from? So it's, it's, it's interesting to see another brand say that that kind of part of the business guides it so much, you know, because a lot of a lot of brand, like I think Huckberry does it really well as well. But there are other shops that are kind of just, you know, like, yeah, just pulling on top of my like Macy's or Nordstrom. It's more of, it's more of just like a shop for, for people whereas like brands like us are a little bit more focused on the specific type of guy rather than as a whole.
**Ryan:**
Yeah, I think it's really important to kind of know your customer and like you know what you want them to be, what they want to be and sort of know how to serve that. I mean we've, you know, we've done business with Huckberry since really early because we really were like, oh, you guys really understand this customer very well. This person that can kind of move between an urban environment, but like longs to do other active weekend. They really had a good sense of who they were trying to target. And I think with knives in particular, I mean, part of the opportunity space, I think was that
that realm had been historically almost entirely owned by either like hardcore hunting and fishing, like, you know, gutting an elk in the Backcountry, or like tactical applications, like, you know, full autos out the front blacked out, you know, like literally military grade weapons or sort of, you know, faux like pretend military grade application. All of the other stories of people that actually carried and used pocket knives for like camping adventure or while they're, you know, an EMT in a helicopter or, you know, because they actually just carry it every day at work to do the things that a pocket knife can do even in your office. I think all of those stories had been lost. And in fact, the only people that had done a good job of positioning product like that, I thought was, you know, Swiss Army, which is to you know, they live and die by their own rule. Like they own that space so well and have by so long that they don't even play by standard like knife industry rule they don't go to trade show, you know, they just do their own. They are ubiquitous in the way that Kleenex is Kleenex. And then Leatherman has done almost the same and that, you know, Leatherman is like, we're not like the other knife guys we make this interesting pocket tool that can do everything. It can, you know, it can surely do hunting and fishing and tactical stuff, but it can also do everything else. And I think those two companies, you know, have a lot of admiration for the way those two companies had sort of positioned themselves as like kind of tools for everybody else where they like the traditional like poor knife industry and really had a pretty myopic view, I think, of what their customers could be. I mean, I think they knew their customers very well, but the realm of people that actually carried or owned pocket knives and could use them was much bigger, I think, than what then, you know, who they were speaking to. It's an interesting fact. I mean, if you ask anybody, you know, like, do you have a pocket knife, they'll almost always say yes. Where is it? May not be with them, but it's like it's in the drawer or it's in the truck. And actually, now that I think about it, I've actually got four or five. I actually have a lot of them. They're just kind of scattered about and I've got them in different ways, but almost everybody actually has one or is posted to one. Even if they don't, you know, if they're not in the habit of like grabbing it off the dresser every. And I always thought that was amazing because every time you talked about this with anybody, they'd be like, oh, I really like knives i think they're interesting. I have one. My grandfather gave me one. Here's one that I've had since I was a Boy Scout. There's all this, there's all these stories in sort of history around that particular category. So it was, wow, that's, that's interesting. A lot of people aren't thinking about or talking about.
**Edward:**
And you, you did mention about like interacting with the knife community. I know that based on previous interviews that you, you mentioned that you've encountered some toxicity or some resistance when you first entered a knife market. How did you kind of deal with that in the early days? I know that must have been kind of tough.
**Ryan:**
Well, I cried a lot.
**Edward:**
With whiskey in hand, yeah.
**Ryan:**
No, I mean, going back to your earlier question, you know, what are some of the challenges about starting the, the other challenge about starting, but definitely has both, you know, there's goods and bads to this, but we didn't know what we were doing. We literally didn't know like we were making something like sort of for us, but not really thinking about the knife community or what was, you know, what else was out there. And so the knife community is, is very protective and very opinionated and they had a lot to say about us early on. Not all of it was kind, but not all of it was inaccurate either. And so it took me a while to get used to getting blasted like it was kind of the first time that I myself out there with anything that was risky in the social media realm you know, anytime I've ever done it before, it was through the realm of another company I was working for so Nike got blasted. Who cares? But you know, it's different when it's your own thing so it took some learning about like how to take, but what I tried to do was a honest and respectful B listen. Like there was really good information that was that I could learn from what was being said in there, but I kind of had to filter it from like vitriol and hatred and any of the other negative stuff. But if I did that, and often, you know, someone may say all kinds of crazy harsh things and they have a good point. And I might reach out to them by Instagram comments at the time or by DM and be like, hey, I heard what you're saying that you've got a great point and I want to try to address that point in the future it's something we just didn't even think about. We didn't even know what we were doing. And that's, you know, again, we were just trying to do this and, and then they're often like, oh man, I'm so sorry I said it that way i really appreciate you listening. Would you actually engage with people directly and like look them even digitally in the eye and have a dialogue? Everyone kind of backs down from their keyboard warrior stances. As long as they understand that we're trying to be authentic and we're trying to be respectful and kind and listen and get better, things have been good. And I do think, you know, there's some stuff that we did when we first launched the, you know, the product was not great, not very. And going through some of the comments that were coming from the knife community, they're like, hey, you should be doing this, this, this and this. Oh yeah well, some of that stuff we didn't even think about. Some of those things we don't want to do because we're trying to do a thing that's different, but some of those things we should definitely do because it will make our product better. Yeah, we just launched our second version of the chapter kind of as a 10 year anniversary you know, our first product was the chapter it came out in June of 2014 and so this last June, last month, we came out with the Chapter 2, which is clearly it's a new iteration of our kind of our very first knife product. But we did things that the knife industry asked us to do, like we changed to a new machines titanium clip and we changed the orientation from tip down to tip up and we, we made a lot of changes to make that product better and some of those things are, you know, feedback that we've gotten, you know, like nine ten years that we've been kind of working on slowly we've made lots of other iterations of the chapter along the way, but this is the first time that we really redesigned. So we've tried to be good listeners and again, tried to be to engage with that community authentically. And you know, I think we've proven that we actually make good product. We're sticking around we've been around for kind of a long time now, which is kind of funny to say. But and so the, the vitriol has really, really done it all. So, you know, we're still, we're engaged in that community we have our place in that community. We make some products that that community really loves the barns, the chapter well, etcetera. But we try to just listen and be respectful again, when when good information comes from that community who really knows what they like and what they want, we try to do it, try to make that happen.
**Edward:**
Yeah, sounds like the, the Internet actually, they might some of them might seem toxic, but they just want to be heard.
**Ryan:**
Yeah, what's your?
**Edward:**
So then, you know, we talked about like you creating products and showcasing the people and they get a feedback and we also talked about like products that are produced through James brand need to stick to a certain guideline that fits the persona of the brand. How does, how many times have you had prototypes that come out but just had to go into the, to the trash bin because it didn't fit any of the requirements or just kind of just didn't fit your quality expectations what does that look like?
**Ryan:**
I mean, it happens a lot. I mean, but it happens more. I mean, prototypes are expensive and they're fairly far down the road. I think one of the things that we spend a lot of time on, and again, this is more just kind of classic design process. We spend a lot of time up front on like briefing a new product and really thinking it through and then a lot of time on the actual designs, like I, I want to kill products when they're in early rounds of design before we actually have to go and, and there have been a lot of products that we've actually like briefed and gotten into the design process, started to look at it together and you know, I, I don't really like to look at things drooling on a wall and put them all in front of us and just decided that, hey, that's not going to go, we're not going to be able to make that happen. We'll just kill it. We won't be able to do in the right way. Sometimes that happens in a prototype stage, like early prototype we're like, let's try to get it in hand and let's, let's see, you know, in the, in the design process, we make a lot of 3D printed parts we have a
couple of 3D printers here in the office and that will tell you a lot. I mean, kind of like I said earlier, having a physical thing in hand can really tell you a lot. So we may be early in the design phase and may like bang out a couple of 3D printed parts just so you can get it in your hand, kind of feel the dimensions and the scale, pretend what that might, you know, feel like in hand if it was actually made of metal and we might kill projects then but you really can't be afraid to kind of kill your darling. I mean, you have to be able to say, hey, that one's not going to work or that one's not right or now is at least not the right time and, and kill that stuff off i mean, it's part of it is have to be able to go through a lot of stuff to get to the ones that pick around. You know, it's we've been working there's a. We're coming out with a new like a small everyday carry fixed blade product pretty soon we've been working on it for a while and it seems like that should be something you should just bang out in an afternoon it should be really easy. We make some really nice sort of mid-size fixed blade products to make one of those and make it smaller should be we've got on round and round and round and round on this one because it's really difficult to get the aesthetic correct and the proportions correct and the positioning correct and you know for something that I think other people might kind of just bang out in an afternoon. Like we have spent a ton of time, bunch of rounds and a bunch of prototypes trying to get it so that it is right for us. But I think we're really sensitive to like getting things if we're going to produce it, it should be right, and if it's going to be not going to make it like we generally should have it killed off. I don't know that we've always achieved that, but that is a goal we're trying to spend more time on the design side, partially because that's just where a lot of our background, where our heart lies, use the design process to to kill those things off we're kind of proved them out early.
**Edward:**
Is there in in this whole process was there a design that you felt like it was really cool, you had like it resonated with you, but at the end of the day, you just couldn't. You just had to cut it, kill it off.
**Ryan:**
I'm sure there are, but I can't think of any right right now but I top secret. Yeah, exactly. There's a product that we made called the Duval that we sell now and it's a flipper, like a top flipper. And it's a really beautiful design with the, the ability to kind of change out scale materials and titanium and it was the first time that we'd done a flipper. But I really feel like even now, like the flipper and the way that the flipper actually works is just not great. It's difficult and it requires some really interesting leverage and what to get it figured out it's cool and people get it, but it's like I feel like that products, like the actual design of it is really beautiful i think that the story behind it is really interesting i mean, flipper can kind of be like A1 handed like in pocket knife, which is it really kind of an interesting concept, but I don't know that we ever like that it's quite the way that it should be i'd love to revisit it and like make feel like it just made that flipper better like that full product would be a better thing so that one like that's one of the ones and I see it i'm like close, it's in the market, people like it, but I think it could be i still think we can make it better. And you know, I'm like, I'm the kind of person like I drive people crazy because I'm like, yeah, that thing seems perfect, but here are 40 other things that I think we could do to make it better. That's just kind of the way I see the world i mean, that's just the way as a guy that has like spent most of their career working in the product business, I just, I have this very critical and sometimes not very kind eye to how a lot of things. I, I remember I was traveling with my wife and we were in the airport and I went to get a drink from this water fountain and I came back and sat down. You wouldn't believe this water fountain the button was over here and this thing was happening and the water was worth this way. And my wife was just like, you are a Manny. You just look at everything like that and you couldn't just go over there and get a drink. You had to like, analyze the thing and make a drawing and talk about why the interference was wrong and why the button was in the wrong.
**Edward:**
You didn't bring out, you didn't bring back the water.
**Ryan:**
Yeah, exactly i mean, that's probably what happened. And I was like incense, you know, Like I was up in arm. I was like upset about. And she's like, man, you gotta relax.
**Edward:**
I think it's also interesting because sometimes people always say that perfect doesn't necessarily mean perfect and sometimes you just have to release the product and then see what the community or the the audience says, you know, the customers say, and then base their feedback into what you think and then reiterate in a second version, Is that something that you try to do or?
**Ryan:**
No lawyer, you can't be an idealist and be can't do both of those things at the same time so I mean the again, the goal and it's kind of that tension, right like I will push for perfection and but we also have business realities we have to launch product at certain times and at certain price point see, you know, nothing is forever so we, we do put things in the market and we try to put them out there when it's the right time and way to do it but nothing's ever perfect. And the community is great and customers are great at telling you ways to make it better so, you know, I'd love to hear from people what things we should think about or do next. And with any product that's in the market, when enough people get it, two or three things that you should address almost always float to the top. And so your customers in the community will help you write the breed. And I love being able to be responsive to that and actually be like, OK, cool i mean, again, with that chapter two example that I was giving you earlier, number one bit of feedback that we got about that i mean, we got 2 pieces of feedback that were just as clear as day from the community. One, this should be a tip up carry instead of tip down. And two, you need a better clip that's actually pulling machine clip instead of the sandwich. And so it was like, OK, well that's a really clear brief and I had to do both of those things and keep the rest of the stuff the same. So we did that. So I mean, having things not be perfect, not only mandatory, but it's important because it helps give you the road map for what to do next, because you will get feedback on what to do. But this idea that you're always iterating and just making things better and better and better. And there's always, you can always make everything a little bit better always. And just as when you think it's done, the world has changed, the vendor has changed, deal has changed, something else has changed. And so the definition of better is always still, you know, changing and amorphous, too. You don't have the luxury of just hitting the pause button on life. So there's always something else to be done with everything. But yeah, I think I sometimes I can drive the team crazy with that they're like, well, aren't we done with that? Like it's never actually done it's you have to figure out what's next.
**Edward:**
Right, tell me it's done so I can go home.
**Ryan:**
Yeah, exactly. Like, well, I'm like you can be done and I can be done through the day, but it's never the work is actually never.
**Edward:**
Yeah, I feel like, I feel like for for us, it's, it's there's always something in the mind that's kind of like in the back of the mind that's always shuffling, there's always grinding think of new ideas and I think it's it's always for people who don't get it. Sometimes when you're when you're running a company or you're, you're owning your own thing and it's your baby and you have you're always thinking about the next step or like what can be done or what can be designed or what ideas that pop up in your head that's maybe inspired from your daily life and I think it's really, really interesting as well. Ok, so let's see if I wanted to also we're, we're reaching the end of the podcast and I kind of wanted to ask you a few more quick questions, not necessarily, you know, related to the design and such, but more into kind of maybe some fun idea questions. What are if you could design any kind of product, whether it's like like a, like a bastard sword or like, you know, a metal backpack or jet packs, or if you could design anything in the world that you, you could, what would it be and what would it kind of look like?
**Ryan:**
That's a good question. I mean, I would love, I'm kind of an A nerd, but I would love to design like a helicopter or like a small airplane and I think you could have a really interesting brief to do that but I think, you know, a lot of people think aerodynamics drive a lot of that design it's clearly they're important, but far more of it is actually just aesthetic and styling and anyone want. So I would, that would
be a really fun project to take on. I, I had some friends that got to work on parts of SpaceX interfaces and then I was like, oh man, that's like a, that's a dream project that would.
**Edward:**
Be so cool, yeah.
**Ryan:**
So something, something in that realm, I think would be really, really.
**Edward:**
Interesting I think is it Porsche or Audi or something they partnered with Star Wars to like produce like a in universe kind of ship based on the design philosophy of the car brand. So that would be it. It could, it could happen it's just, you know, not in the way that you expect, right?
**Ryan:**
Exactly.
**Edward:**
What is the most unusual source of inspiration that you've drawn from for a product design?
**Ryan:**
Well, that's a good, that's a good question. I mean, there was a nobody taught me this technique at one point and and I thought it was interesting, but basically, I would go to like to a magazine store and there used to be magazine stores around for people who don't remember, but like, you know, a store that literally just had like, you know, hundreds of magazines. And I would go through and like find the magazine that I would be the least likely to buy, the magazine that I was probably gonna like hate the most and then actually pull inspiration from there. And it was a good philosophy because it's like, well, if you get the magazine you're gonna like, like the most, you're already pretty much biased like you already kind of are in that world. And so if you want to bring in something new, you have to look for places that are so it's like, you know, go to Good Housekeeping or, you know, like some kind of, it's like some kind of magazine that was just like, it will be the least likely to buy the thing you, you like, would never read in a thousand years and just start going through it and like start pulling out ideas and grabbing imagery. But if you want to make something new, you got to look for new sources i mean, it's a, it's a dangerous world with, you know, AI and the Internet in general where anyone who wants to design anything can just like type in a few words but you're gonna get the same responses and results everything could end up looking the same. So you really have to be diligent about pushing outside of where you might think things would come from.
**Edward:**
That's good wow, that's very good and then last question is, there's two questions here, but if you if you could create a custom tool for any historical figure, who would it be for and what would the tool look like?
**Ryan:**
Wow, that's a great question. So I would probably, you know, I would probably make it for Thomas Jefferson. I mean, and if you did get into Thomas Jefferson, I mean, like he's an amazing person that really was like a James of his his generation. I mean, clearly he's got some political issues around slavery and other stuff that was more acceptable than that it clearly that it is now. But that was, you know, that was a person who was an orator. He was an artist, he was an architect, he was a politician. He lived and worked on a farm, but also would dress up and go to Washington. And, you know, it's clearly this critical figure in our history, but was very much James and was confident could do a lot of different things really well. So that's a person that needed a pocket knife. They needed a pen. They had some, you know, sort of, you know, if you look at, you know, Monticello and some of the aesthetic in there, like had for one for the time, some sort of modern and sort of minimal perspective. So, you know, it'd be great to sit down with Thomas Jefferson and like ask him like, what do you need? What would what do you need on a daily basis? But you clearly see that, you know, being a person that would have a nice pen in pocket, if such a thing existed at the time, at the time they were using quills in a pocket knife was often brought along to sharpen your quill to keep to keep the writing the word where the penknife idea comes from. So anyway, that would be a fun one to take on i mean, I think there are a couple of figures you know, Benjamin Franklin is like that as well, where it was like half, you know, he was comedian, he was a scientist he was a politician, he was an orator, he was a writer. There was a period of time in there where all these people were really prolific and had to be good at a lot of different things. And keep in mind, you know, people died in their fifties in that period of time so they reached that level of mastery in their twenties you know, thirties you're starting to get pretty old long in the tune. You know, I think people like that would be interesting to, you know, to think about like what what do they need is where where are they today is, you know, is Ben Frank went out to rain? Is he in Philadelphia like writing a document? Is he back on, you know, on his farm working on a project, you know, is he working on an illustration? They were doing so many things. So anyway, those are people that I think are fun to kind of like dig in, make them a.
**Edward:**
Pen knife yeah, that'll be really cool. Cool yeah. So definitely thank you for answering those quick questions and thank you for coming on to the podcast. I had a lot of fun i hope the listeners are enjoying this and listening to and as well. If you want to direct people to a specific website or where you want to, where would you like to send them?
**Ryan:**
Well, just, I mean, check out what's going on at The James Brand and kind of always see what we're up to there. The Instagram feed is a, is a good place to see it too, although, you know, less and less knives on the Instagram feed, more and more lifestyle images these days. But yeah, most everything we do is at The James Brand you can check it out at thejamesbrand.com see see what we're up to.
**Edward:**
Awesome well, I was about to say, James. Awesome Ryan, thanks for coming on i really appreciate it it means a lot.
**Ryan:**
And I appreciate it.
**Edward:**
Yeah and hopefully if we have, if you have time, maybe we'll get you on in the future for another episode.
**Ryan:**
I always like doing this stuff it's kind of good to reflect back and figure out like what am I doing? How did I end up doing this? So always happy to to talk about it for sure. I hope people hope people were.
**Edward:**
Enjoying it yeah and if you guys like this episode, be sure to hit that like and subscribe and it will be on YouTube as well as the anywhere you hear your podcast so chat soon see you later guys.
