Latest / The Growth Class with Phil Masiello / Craft Business Growth: Scaling Through Content and Community with Claudia Chase and Elena Kawachi

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Craft Business Growth: Scaling Through Content and Community with Claudia Chase and Elena Kawachi · The Growth Class with Phil Masiello

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Hey everybody, and welcome back to the growth class.
• 0:03
  SPEAKER_00: I'm Phil Massiela, your host, and I'm thrilled to be joined by a guest who has truly revolutionized the world of fiber arts.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_00: She's the visionary founder behind Merix Looms, a company born out of the necessity for a better way to weave.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_00: Now, you know, you would say to me, okay, Phil, what what's the deal with this?
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_00: But it's actually an interesting business and in on multiple levels because she sells the looms, and there's and you would think immediately, right?
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_00: Big looms, but they're small, personalized looms.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_00: She'll explain the story of why people do it and how they do it.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_00: But, you know, she just was dissatisfied with the looms available on the market, so she decided to build her own.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_00: And that's how she started.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_00: And uh she combined that portability with the high tension required for professional quality tapestry and bead weaving.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_00: And since then, she's grown the company into a staple for weavers.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_00: She ships around the globe.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, she's known for precision engineering and a deep commitment to the craft.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_00: So please welcome the founder of Miracles Looms, Claudia Chase, and her daughter.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_02: Who is responsible for our growth completely?
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_02: But yes, we own it together.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_02: You got to give her more half the credit, though.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's fine.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_00: So uh why don't you take us?
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_00: I I just did an introduction, you know, I don't know if it's good, bad, or indifferent, but why don't you take us back to to the point where you decided, because when we had a conversation, you were talking about when people started to, you know, sort of uh loom, you know, uh uh as a as a you know as a hobby.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_00: So why don't you take us back to that and explain what you did and how you did it and why you did it.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_03: I wanted a certain tapestry loom.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_03: It didn't exist.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_03: I, you know, I wanted to add bells and whistles to what was currently out there.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_03: I contacted one of the main loom companies making tapestry looms, and they didn't want to do it.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_03: So I decided to do it on my own, just because I wanted the loom.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_03: I didn't want to go into business.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_03: And I contacted a friend of mine who worked for a fire department and had a garage full of fire department parts like trim and and he and together we threw together the prototype of the miracle loom, which looks very much like what the miracle's loom looks like today.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_01: Um to just interject a little bit, to kind of go go back a little bit further.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_01: She was a professional tapestry weaver.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and she wove on these big floor looms, which is what traditionally, you know, people are weaving on.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_01: She had two kids.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_01: She had me, I was in elementary school, my brother was even younger.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and she was looking for a loom that would function as a professional loom, but that was portable.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_01: So she could take it to my soccer games and embarrass the heck out of me, you know, weave it on the sidelines.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_00: Weaving on the sidelines.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_01: I did a lot of that.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_01: She was a mom and she was an artist, and she was trying to balance those two things.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_01: And so the reason that she was looking for this portable loom was because she had a lifestyle that demanded that.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_01: And I think especially at the time, tapestry weavers, you know, tended to be older.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I I don't know if we didn't, I don't think she knew that other people also wanted this same thing.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe for the same reason, maybe for different reasons.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and so that's kind of where it was born.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_01: But it she she did have this unique need as a tapestry weaver to also have a professional loop.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_00: I think that's so great to picture your mom weaving on the sidelines of a game.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_03: I mean you wouldn't believe I told you before that I was a state rep.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_03: I did that in the in the the hall.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_03: I would weave in my seat for six years, but that's okay.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_03: Uh yeah.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_00: So then you were so so who's the customer for this?
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, uh is it uh is it professionals?
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_00: Is it artists?
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_00: Is it who is it?
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_01: I think it it used to be more professionals, right?
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_01: It was it was people in a similar situation who were professional tapestry weavers.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_01: This is a very niche market, right?
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_01: You know, you have weavers and then you have tapestry weavers, which is a subset of weaving.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_01: Um but you know, I maybe Claudia wants to go into the story about exactly how this happened, but she sort of accidentally found out that other people wanted the same thing that she wanted.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_01: And my dad, who was in business, kind of pushed her into doing this.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_01: And she was like, no, no, no, nobody else wants this.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_01: This is just something I need for myself.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_03: Um be in business.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_03: I was an artist.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, she she found out that there were other artists out there like her.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_01: Over the years, we've had to expand our market because, you know, that group of professional tapestry weavers is a very small one.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so eventually, you know, she found out the loom was actually a great bead loom.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and so now, you know, we do have that market of professional weavers who want a high-quality portable loom, but we also have people who are more casual tapestry weavers, who are more casual crafters, who are more casual bead weavers.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and I, you know, coming into recent years, I think we have more people, you know, there's this big push for kind of analog crafts, for disconnecting, for, you know, getting rid of this digital world and tapestry weaving, especially because it's a very craft that you really have to think about while you're doing it.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_01: That has really, really appealed to people.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_01: So I think as the years are going on, I think it's becoming more popular with younger people, more popular with people who are, you know, not necessarily professionals, but who want a high quality piece of equipment, even when they're just doing crafts.
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_01: And this is something they're selling.
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_03: And there's a weird thing about craft and art, okay?
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_03: What is craft?
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_03: What is art?
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_03: And I always like to look at it because it gets confusing because craft has always been defined by women, more or less.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_03: So it's gotten really blurred.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_03: I see craft on one side of the line and art on the other.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_03: And the perfect piece of artwork is in the middle, beautifully crafted, and you invented yourself.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_03: When you go heavily into the crafts, you're talking about pre-printed canvases and blah, blah, blah.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_03: And when you talk about tapestry, you're moving very close to the art side.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_03: Yes, you want it to be beautifully crafted, but most tapestry weavers invent their own designs.
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_03: So it's a very, very, very high-end art.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and I could see why you wouldn't, you know, you said before, I didn't want to be in business.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, that's not uncommon because a lot of people who make the mistake, a lot of people make the mistake uh of, you know, taking their passion and trying to turn it into a business.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_00: And then they have to do the things that go along with the business, like accounting and marketing and things like that, where they don't want to do it.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_00: They just want to do what they their passion was.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_00: And so they wind up being miserable in business.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_03: The nice thing about our business is because I weave a lot and still love it desperately, that's what our company is.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, it's it's people who love weaving.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_03: If I had gotten to that point where I didn't like it, I don't think our business would be successful at all.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_00: And yeah, and how do you tap into those customers?
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_00: How do you find them?
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, that's a pretty specific niche.
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think that traditional advertising would uh is would would handle that.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, it might you become a marketing expert.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_03: She wait, she actually got a graduate graduate degree in marketing, which is amazing for a tiny company like ours to have a person with a master's in marketing.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_01: Her setup is interesting because she is, you know, she she she grew this business very slowly from the beginning.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_01: But she has kind of gotten to focus on the things she loves about it.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, that's one of the great things about being in business um a long enough time that you can build a great team behind you.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_01: Um, because she gets to focus on the creative aspect, which is the part that she loves.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_01: And so she maintains a really positive relationship with her craft, with her art, um, and has that connection with her customers.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, I've kind of taken over the marketing side of things.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_01: Um and we have an amazing team at manufacturing who does everything.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_01: Um uh so, so, you know, I think it's true what you say about there being this danger of going into business with what you love, but also as you build up your business, you know, I think you get kind of get to come back to that sometimes.
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_03: What I don't love is accounting.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_03: What I hate is accounting, and I don't have to do that anymore.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_03: So I am so happy.
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_03: But I want to tell you w are one of the first things that happened, which I think is a great story.
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_03: So I we started the business, or I started the business in Wisconsin, and that's where it still is.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_03: We have a manufacturing facility, no longer in a garage.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, but we were moving from Wisconsin to New Hampshire, and I knew this.
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_03: But I was gonna leave it there.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_03: And so remember 800 numbers?
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, you remember 800 numbers.
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_03: So we got an 800 number.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, just like we got an 800 number first thing.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_03: So when we got to our new house, I plugged in our phone and the 800 number rang, okay, for the first time, because we had just gotten it.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_03: What I had done was there was this thing called Convergence, which is a huge weaving event, huge, every two years.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_03: Couldn't be there, driving to New Hampshire.
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_03: So I contacted um a place called EarthGold, which was one of the stores that sold this kind of stuff, and I said, I'll send you 25 looms.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_03: See if you can sell them.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_03: If you can't, I'll pay shipping both ways.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_03: And they said yes.
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_03: In the three days that that show happened was when we left Wisconsin, when I got to New Hampshire, the person calling in the 800 number wanted to buy one of our looms.
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_03: They were at Convergence.
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_03: I said, Why don't you buy them there?
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_03: She said, They're all out.
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_03: So we sold 25 of these looms, brand new, no one ever seen in three days.
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_03: So I knew we were going to succeed.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's great.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_00: But but but how do you scale that?
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, how how do you find um I mean, we do a lot of advertising, and I'm just thinking, how do you find those people?
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_00: Or what's the better what's the better channel for finding them?
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_00: Because I would think ads may not be as we barely advertise.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_03: No, we've never advertising.
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's made for social media, right?
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I think it's made for social media.
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_01: We uh uh very early on, you know, I bef before my my time, you know, she had a website and stuff.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_01: We embraced inbound marketing really, really early.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I think especially in terms of very small companies, right?
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_01: Our our goal has always been to make a lot of content um and have that content drive the right customers to us.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_01: Um you know, we've we've tried advertising, even you know, niche kind of advertising things and you know, magazines that are for weavers and stuff, and we really don't see much from that kind of thing.
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, the very beginning I would we'd do a print ad and someone would call me up.
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_03: Maybe we had to do the credit card, and I'd say, Where did you hear from us?
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_03: And rarely did they hear from us from an ad.
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_03: So I figured that out at the very beginning.
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_02: Sorry, go on.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_01: But yeah, yeah, social media.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_01: We did, I mean, gosh, how many years ago was this?
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe 2012.
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, this was the days kind of before influencers.
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, we did something called Social Market for Emirics, um, which was kind of one of my first things when I started working for Amirix.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and it was based off of this idea um where Ford gave some cars to people around this time and they had them drive around the country in their cars and kind of record their road trips and see, you know, oh, these people loved these cars and shared it on social media and stuff.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_01: So we did a similar thing where we gave out looms to some people that we had applied to the program.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_01: We gave it to them for free.
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_01: And they had to blog about their experience with the looms over a six-month period or something afterwards.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_01: And we would, you know, post links to the blogs on social media and we'd have them do social media posts and stuff.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_01: And it was wildly successful.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, we were not only connecting to the networks of the people who were blogging, um, but we were also reaching different kinds of people because we were getting all this different content that, you know, we may not have been able to produce ourselves.
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and that kind of marketing has really been the foundation of our marketing up until now.
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_01: And we've, you know, we've worked really hard to keep things small and personal, um, but kind of all about connecting to other people in the industry, to connecting to other artists, other craftspeople, and you know, and teachers.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_03: We connect, we connect to a lot of teachers and and other people are business.
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_03: There, you know, there are a lot of women who have emerged into this business as business people, not just customers, which is unusual because in the past it was a lot of men owning the stores and stuff.
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_03: Okay, so we are all connected and we're really nice to each other and we support each other.
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_03: So it's it's kind of a wonderful market in that respect.
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, that's what we rely on.
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_03: Word of mouth, teachers, people who write the books, you know?
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_00: But how do you scale that?
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, you've got to continue to grow, right?
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_00: And so, like, how do you scale word of mouth?
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_00: Word of mouth is hard to scale.
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, social is e is not difficult to scale.
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_00: I can understand that.
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_00: You get people who are in that uh word of word of mouth is easier because remember, people teach this.
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_03: So you go someplace and there are eight people in your class and seven of them have a miracle loom.
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_03: This happens often because we are the go-to loom frequently.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_03: So and everybody loves our looms and they love us because we're nice, you know?
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_03: And so they say nice things about us.
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, we we're we're we are very nice.
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, we're nice people.
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_01: That's a another point, is that is that from the beginning, uh the idea in Claudia's head about this business was a very old-fashioned one.
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_01: It was not so much about focusing on growth, although obviously that's important, and obviously that's how we kept have kept in business for almost 30 years.
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but it's about really slow scaling and it's about living within our means when growing our business.
• 14:43
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, our goals that we were talking about this, the two of us earlier.
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, our goals are different, I think, from a lot of other companies in that things that really matter to us are like how how happy our employees are, how happy we are, you know, actually building, you know, we how great our product our product is.
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_01: We make a, you know, made in the United States, made by real people in our own manufacturing facility product, you know, where we could we could scale a lot faster if we decided to make our looms in China.
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_01: You know, there are a lot of things that we could do to make a lot more money, and that is not our number one focus.
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_01: So kind of slow growth.
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_03: Well, it's been an anti-focus.
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_03: I have always said that we will always be in America, in the United States, and that everything that we could have made here, we would have made here.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and we've done that.
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_01: No, and so we we've we've had a lot of growth over the past 30 years, but it's been certainly slower.
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, yeah.
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_03: Another thing is we we we produce new products a lot.
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_03: You know, we we started with like six loons, and what do we have now?
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_03: 15 different loons, more?
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_03: I can't even remember.
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_03: We create kits all the time.
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_03: We create, we dye fibers.
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, every year we come up with at least four new things.
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_03: So people are very interested.
• 16:05
  SPEAKER_03: They come to our website to see what what's happening now, you know, what are they making now?
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_01: One thing she said to me uh recently was was, you know, it's our job to create customers.
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_01: There are a finite number of people who weave tapestry out there.
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_01: So the more that we come up with interesting things that we can make on our looms, the more that we can connect with interesting people who make interesting things on our looms, the more that we do that, the more customers that we create.
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_00: And but then how do you okay I get that.
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_00: Then how do you get to those newly created customers?
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_00: Besides because if you're on social, right?
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_00: If if you say inbound, that means that you're doing something, taking activity and getting people to come to you, which is fine, I get it.
• 16:57
  SPEAKER_00: But if you're if you're dealing with tapestry people and then you decide to to uh focus on beads, like how do you find that?
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_00: Do you just go and follow the same process and say, okay, well, now we're gonna find bead bloggers or we're gonna find, you know, well that's how we did in the very beginning.
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, i I think we were five years into it, and I met this woman on the bead store, and she said, hmm, I wonder if you can use that as a bead loom, because most of the beadlooms out there are absolute pieces of junk.
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_03: And I said, Oh, let's try.
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_03: And so we discovered not only could you use it at beadloom, you could use it as a very specialized bead loom that doesn't exist anywhere else.
• 17:29
  SPEAKER_03: And so then she helped.
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_03: You know, then the bead world caught on and it it would wind up at bead shows.
• 17:35
  SPEAKER_03: And that's how.
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, that's how that for I mean, I don't know if I'm answering your question, but that's I get you no, no, no, no, I get it.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I get I get the whole like we have plenty of people on the show that are just building lifestyle businesses.
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_00: They just want the business to give them a lifestyle, like you're talking about.
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_00: They want to be happy, take care of their employees, but at the end of the day, you still have to grow because whether you grow slow or fast, you still have to grow because every year costs go up.
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_00: Every year um, you know, you need more employees, every year you gotta, you know, pay people more.
• 18:07
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_00: And so all the costs go up, and so you that that sort of forces growth.
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_00: And then you you know, you have to have profit because without profit you lose oxygen and you can't the br the business can't breathe.
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_00: So I mean you have to have sort of a some sort of a growth attitude.
• 18:25
  SPEAKER_03: Well, we are we we grow, we do grow slowly every year.
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_03: The other thing we've never done is ever gotten in debt.
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_03: Um the way we finance URICs is as we go along.
• 18:35
  SPEAKER_03: Because I put 5,000 in, 10,000.
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_03: So we never have any debt, so we're not under that pressure, which is a huge relief.
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 18:43
  SPEAKER_03: Like it's often my office is my bet, you know.
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_03: We don't we don't go for fancy here.
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_03: We don't have a company car.
• 18:49
  SPEAKER_03: We just manufacturing is great, beautiful, it has everything we need.
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_03: But uh, you know, we we don't we don't do that stuff because we we want to stay in business and have fun.
• 19:00
  SPEAKER_01: But you know, I I think I think what answers your question is that, you know, we're we're we're following what we're following the trends.
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_01: We're following what people are doing in this very broad space.
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_01: And when we see that, you know, people are doing macrame on looms, we're following that and we're finding the people who are, you know, teaching that trend who are interested in that, and we're contacting them and we're, you know, getting them interested in our looms.
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_01: You know, there's there's a lot, a lot of our business is figuring out interesting things that our looms can make and can do, and figuring out who the people are, what the connections that we can make to help us get into those new spheres, to, to contact new customers, to contact new people who who might someday become customers or might someday be interested in this craft in general, even if there's not, they're not.
• 20:03
  SPEAKER_01: And I think we've done a really good job, especially over the last 15 years, of of creating that status.
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, yeah.
• 20:11
  SPEAKER_03: We are unlike mo many small companies, we are really good at marketing.
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_03: Okay, and we have the expertise.
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_03: I think a lot of businesses, their problem is they don't have they have a great product, but they don't know how to market it.
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_03: We know our market, we know how to do that.
• 20:25
  SPEAKER_00: I would think that uh probably one of your, you know, I don't know if you I didn't look, but I don't know if you have a YouTube channel, but I would think that a YouTube channel could be a great asset to We have everything.
• 20:37
  SPEAKER_03: We have every channel teaching.
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_00: Teaching uh but but doing videos of teaching people uh you know we have what, how many, like 50 videos at this point or 60?
• 20:45
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, we have we have videos going back to like 2012.
• 20:48
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, some of them I mean some of the those early videos though, they're embarrassing some of them.
• 20:53
  SPEAKER_03: It's okay.
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_03: I like to see myself young.
• 20:55
  SPEAKER_03: It's fun.
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I mean, um you know, I don't think any videos are embarrassing when the founder does them or the or you know, because they've become more authentic, you know, and people like authenticity more than they like polished.
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_00: And so, you know, those older videos are probably doing it.
• 21:11
  SPEAKER_03: Because of her, she's always finding out what's what's happening.
• 21:13
  SPEAKER_03: So years and years ago, like 2012, I think, a company called Crafty started that did instructional stuff.
• 21:19
  SPEAKER_03: So they fly you out there with all the TV.
• 21:22
  SPEAKER_03: And we were one of the first people to do that.
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_03: And it was intense.
• 21:25
  SPEAKER_03: It wasn't it wasn't crazy.
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_03: It was great.
• 21:27
  SPEAKER_03: So I have six hours of video of me teaching weaving through them.
• 21:31
  SPEAKER_03: That still buy this.
• 21:33
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 21:34
  SPEAKER_03: I looked great, I really did.
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_03: I like to look at it to remind myself, you know.
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_03: No, it was it was fun.
• 21:41
  SPEAKER_03: It was interesting because I wanted her to come.
• 21:43
  SPEAKER_03: She just started working for Miracles full time, and they're like, No, no, no.
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_03: I said, I said, I I'll pay for the ticket.
• 21:49
  SPEAKER_03: She's coming.
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_03: And in the end, they paid for her ticket because she was so valuable at that.
• 21:55
  SPEAKER_03: They're like, Okay, we get it, we get it.
• 21:57
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_01: I was your handler.
• 21:59
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, but Content videos, pictures, you know, we do things called weave-alongs where we have, you know, online events where people make projects and stuff like that.
• 22:09
  SPEAKER_01: That that is really the core of our business because I would imagine it would be.
• 22:15
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I think visually it's probably a great thing.
• 22:17
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I don't think that's what I was trying to get at earlier.
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_00: I was thinking that, you know, uh d advertising probably would never be a good or traditional advertising, I should say, would never be a good channel for you.
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_00: But what do you think the one what's the one piece of advice that you got that you think um led to your success?
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_03: No, I don't think I got any advice it led to except from her.
• 22:47
  SPEAKER_03: Uh no.
• 22:49
  SPEAKER_01: No, on pricing.
• 22:51
  SPEAKER_01: What did what did your ex-husband say about pricing our products?
• 22:55
  SPEAKER_01: I think that was that's it.
• 22:56
  SPEAKER_03: My ex-husband before I left him said um you have to price no, this was great advice.
• 23:02
  SPEAKER_03: You have to price high enough to have a wholesale margin.
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_03: If you don't, you're screwed.
• 23:08
  SPEAKER_03: And he was totally right because it's not that we make so much money from our wholesale sales, because you lose a lot in the sales sales.
• 23:15
  SPEAKER_03: I mean you you make a little bit of money, but it's nothing like a direct sale.
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_03: But if you don't offer to sell it to the stores, they're gonna badmouth you.
• 23:24
  SPEAKER_03: They're not gonna say, Oh yeah, get a miracle that we're not allowed to sell.
• 23:27
  SPEAKER_03: So if someone comes in looking for a miracle, they can call us up and say, Do you sell?
• 23:31
  SPEAKER_03: So that putting in that pricing was the one of the best things we've ever done.
• 23:37
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you, Charlie.
• 23:39
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and it it's it's led to, you know, we have a kind of interesting business model where we're we're B2B and B2C.
• 23:46
  SPEAKER_01: You know, most of our money comes from from direct sales.
• 23:52
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and you know, there aren't that many stores around the world, right, that sell tapestry looms.
• 23:58
  SPEAKER_01: So there's a finite number.
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_01: But a lot of them are are so small that, you know, it's hard for them to stock looms and and stuff like that.
• 24:05
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but you know, we have some great connections with with stores, and you know, not only not bad badmouthing us, but you know, it really it really helps if somebody does want to go into their local store and they can say, hey, you know, we do have this loom or we can get it dropshipped too.
• 24:23
  SPEAKER_03: We can get it for you.
• 24:23
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 24:24
  SPEAKER_03: And we have a big we're we're big in Europe now.
• 24:26
  SPEAKER_03: We have Mir Mirix EU, which we don't which a uh a distributor in Mirix runs for us, distributes to European.
• 24:33
  SPEAKER_03: And then we have a great, great distributor in in the United Kingdom.
• 24:37
  SPEAKER_03: So we are we are getting out there.
• 24:41
  SPEAKER_03: It's you know, it doesn't that doesn't necessarily make a lot of money, but the exposure is wonderful.
• 24:45
  SPEAKER_03: So well, yeah.
• 24:47
  SPEAKER_00: So so that that that's an interesting question because most businesses have some sort of a recurring purchase model, right?
• 24:54
  SPEAKER_00: You're selling a loom once.
• 24:55
  SPEAKER_00: Do you sell other stuff to people?
• 24:57
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, we make we make tons of kits.
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_03: I dye all the fiber.
• 25:01
  SPEAKER_03: And this is funny.
• 25:03
  SPEAKER_03: Mirror's looms don't break, they'll last forever, they'll last for too many generations.
• 25:07
  SPEAKER_03: That's another thing we believe in, making products that last forever.
• 25:11
  SPEAKER_03: So what you say, okay, so you're screwed.
• 25:13
  SPEAKER_03: They buy a loom.
• 25:14
  SPEAKER_03: No, some people have five looms.
• 25:15
  SPEAKER_03: There's a contest among our customers who can own every loom.
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_03: You know?
• 25:20
  SPEAKER_03: So people people who are into them will collect them.
• 25:24
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I mean, we we have we have customers that we've had for 30 years.
• 25:30
  SPEAKER_01: Um we have a shockingly high rate of people who, you know, one of our our big things in recent years was we came out most of our, you know, our looms are all portable, but we came out with a really tiny little portable loom called a pocket loom.
• 25:47
  SPEAKER_01: Um and it's less expensive than the other looms.
• 25:50
  SPEAKER_01: Um and it has been incredible in bringing people into the company.
• 25:57
  SPEAKER_01: You know, it's a it's a really high quality tiny loom, which was something that there's not much of out there.
• 26:02
  SPEAKER_01: And people buy this little loom and they say, Yeah, functional now we need a bigger one.
• 26:06
  SPEAKER_01: And then and we also need an even bigger one, and we need a kit.
• 26:11
  SPEAKER_01: Yep.
• 26:11
  SPEAKER_01: We launched it during COVID, yeah.
• 26:13
  SPEAKER_01: Well, which is a good time to launch it, actually.
• 26:16
  SPEAKER_00: I would imagine.
• 26:17
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I'm fascinated by it because most of the time we have businesses on the traditional stuff, software as a service or you know, traditional products, e-com, you know, yada yada.
• 26:30
  SPEAKER_00: I have never heard of anybody building a Loom and having at scale as a business for 30 years.
• 26:38
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I just fascinated by it.
• 26:40
  SPEAKER_00: Because but when you think about it, you know, there's always a sub-segment of the market where somebody's interested in something.
• 26:47
  SPEAKER_00: And if you can carve out that niche and figure out who those customers are and how to get to those customers and sell them a product that they're happy with, then you know, you you you you can build a nice lifestyle business and just continue to go and and and move on.
• 27:02
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I would imagine that I I haven't tried your looms, I'm not a loomer, but I would imagine that your looms are probably higher quality than the ones that probably come in that are cheap that they sell in like places that are.
• 27:12
  SPEAKER_00: They're the highest quality.
• 27:13
  SPEAKER_03: You you cannot.
• 27:14
  SPEAKER_03: And in terms of the the the bells and whistles, it has them all.
• 27:18
  SPEAKER_03: Normally little looms are missing the ones you really need.
• 27:22
  SPEAKER_03: So no, they're great looms.
• 27:23
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, you know, I ran over a couple of them with my car once and they didn't even get a dent.
• 27:27
  SPEAKER_03: You know, I was going to a show, ran over them.
• 27:30
  SPEAKER_03: I didn't sell them because I felt guilty, but it's like there's nothing wrong.
• 27:33
  SPEAKER_03: You can run over them with your car.
• 27:34
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 27:35
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 27:35
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 27:36
  SPEAKER_00: I've only I've only seen the big looms where they have the big block of wood and you weave it through and you, you know, yeah.
• 27:43
  SPEAKER_01: You know, one one challenge that we have had, you know, talking about that in competition and stuff, is that, you know, people copy us, right?
• 27:54
  SPEAKER_01: We've had, you know, there's there's something for for our our littlest looms, we have these these little combs that are interchangeable.
• 28:02
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, I saw recently on Etsy somebody who, you know, literally copied exactly what those look like and, you know, put them on a loom that they're, you know, trying to sell on Etsy.
• 28:13
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but you know, sometimes we'll get complaints from people who buy, you know, some crappy loom that looks sort of like ours in China, and they're like, this loom is terrible and it does this and that.
• 28:24
  SPEAKER_01: And we're like, that's not one of our looms.
• 28:26
  SPEAKER_01: That's that's probably why.
• 28:28
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, so kind of being in business for so long, and we have the cachet of our name, which, you know, if you're not in our niche little markets, like, what are you talking about?
• 28:39
  SPEAKER_01: But, you know, people people want a miracle.
• 28:42
  SPEAKER_03: Plus customers who defend us to death and find them.
• 28:45
  SPEAKER_03: And I say, you know, their economies of scale.
• 28:48
  SPEAKER_03: We buy three tons of aluminum, they're buying one piece, they'll be out of business in a week.
• 28:53
  SPEAKER_03: And they always are.
• 28:54
  SPEAKER_03: They always are.
• 28:55
  SPEAKER_00: Just Well, I mean, I think that um, you know, I I think that that, you know, that does happen in business.
• 29:01
  SPEAKER_00: When people start copying you, it's sort of a a testament that you've you've sort of become the standard, right?
• 29:07
  SPEAKER_00: That's what people are are sort of copying.
• 29:09
  SPEAKER_00: So so there's the that's the plus side.
• 29:10
  SPEAKER_00: The downside is when people confuse you, and it happens all kind all the time.
• 29:14
  SPEAKER_00: Like we get it with a lot of the brands that we deal with, and they get people calling them up saying, you know, the product was terrible.
• 29:20
  SPEAKER_00: And when they look, they go, you know, that's not ours.
• 29:23
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
• 29:23
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's always funny when you get it.
• 29:25
  SPEAKER_03: I always had a show once in this woman came.
• 29:27
  SPEAKER_00: But I'd love to sell you one of ours because ours is better than that.
• 29:30
  SPEAKER_00: And so, you know.
• 29:31
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, you know, we're just about out of time.
• 29:33
  SPEAKER_00: I think we actually went a little bit over, but that's okay.
• 29:36
  SPEAKER_00: So so where can people reach you?
• 29:38
  SPEAKER_00: What's the website that they can go to if they want to buy a loom?
• 29:41
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, go to www.mirexlooms.com, M-I-R-R-I-X looms.com.
• 29:47
  SPEAKER_01: If you're a loomer, search for tapestry looms.
• 29:49
  SPEAKER_00: If you're doing tapestry and you want to recreate the unicorn tapestries in New York.
• 29:54
  SPEAKER_03: Tell them about them.
• 29:56
  SPEAKER_00: I've known about those forever.
• 29:57
  SPEAKER_00: I love it.
• 30:00
  SPEAKER_00: But to me, that's what I was envisioning when you said it.
• 30:03
  SPEAKER_00: I was like, these people are buying these looms to be able, I mean, those things are massive.
• 30:06
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, they're making mini ones.
• 30:10
  SPEAKER_03: But those tapestries.
• 30:11
  SPEAKER_00: That's what I could have that's what took me a little while to get back into my head was that these are small looms that have people doing, you know, small tapestries.
• 30:19
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm going to go to the city.
• 30:20
  SPEAKER_00: They're just making the horns of the unicorn.
• 30:23
  SPEAKER_03: 48-inch loom where you can make a piece four feet wide and six feet tall.
• 30:28
  SPEAKER_03: And that is not small.
• 30:30
  SPEAKER_03: So you can make, but no, not like the unicorns.
• 30:33
  SPEAKER_03: Not like the unicorns.
• 30:34
  SPEAKER_00: I gotcha.
• 30:35
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 30:35
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 30:36
  SPEAKER_00: So again, you know, it's great.
• 30:37
  SPEAKER_00: I'm I'm I'm the reason I had you guys on, I'm fascinated by the whole concept.
• 30:42
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's wonderful.
• 30:43
  SPEAKER_00: I think that you built a heck, uh heck of a business, great lifestyle business.
• 30:46
  SPEAKER_00: Who would have thought if somebody came to me two years ago and said, you know, Looms is a big business?
• 30:52
  SPEAKER_00: I would have said in my yeah, maybe for Michael's, but you know, now I understand it.
• 30:56
  SPEAKER_00: It's much more of a niche, much more high quality.
• 30:59
  SPEAKER_00: There are people out there that want to do that, and I I I think it's fantastic what you guys have accomplished.
• 31:04
  SPEAKER_00: And so um, yeah, Elena, Claudia, thank you for coming on.
• 31:08
  SPEAKER_00: And uh and people can go to say it again.
• 31:11
  SPEAKER_00: Where's the where's the website?
• 31:12
  SPEAKER_01: Mirixlooms.com.
• 31:14
  SPEAKER_00: Miracleons.com.
• 31:16
  SPEAKER_00: And then it's a made up channel.
• 31:18
  SPEAKER_00: Your YouTube channel is at mirxlooms.
• 31:21
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 31:22
  SPEAKER_01: And your social, yeah, everything's at MirixLooms.
• 31:26
  SPEAKER_00: Everything is at mirxlooms, everything.
• 31:28
  SPEAKER_00: So you want to go see, you want to work.
• 31:30
  SPEAKER_03: You name it.
• 31:31
  SPEAKER_03: Yep.
• 31:31
  SPEAKER_00: You want to learn about looming, you want to learn about building tapestries, that's where you want to go.
• 31:36
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, great.
• 31:37
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you guys for coming on.
• 31:38
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you.
• 31:38
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks for having fun.
• 31:40
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, my pleasure.