SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders
Solar Power eCommerce Brand Hits $5m In Sales, 100,000 Customers, Software Next?
02 Oct 2021
Chapter 1: How did the solar eCommerce brand achieve $5 million in sales?
nine product launches, over 50,000 customers that have purchased at least one of your SKUs. I think you did in 2020, about 4 million of top line revenue and grew a massive email list. Is that all correct? You're nailing it. You are listening to Conversations with Nathan Latka, where I sit down and interview the top SaaS founders, like Eric Wan from Zoom.
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Hey folks, my guest today is Patrick Sherwin. He's helped innovate off-grid independent solar solutions for cooking, cooling, phone charging, lighting, and now is developing products for water purification and shelter.
All of the GoSun products are environmentally friendly and ideal for recreation, off-grid power outages, disaster relief, which would be useful right now down in Louisiana, and developing countries that have minimal power infrastructure. Patrick, you ready to take us to the top? Let's do this, Nathan. You last came on pre-COVID. And I remember being really impressed because I'm summarizing here.
So correct me if any of this is wrong, but you said your first product was GoSun Sport back in like 2017. You seeded that with like 1K, raised 213 grand on Kickstarter, took eight months to deliver it. But since then, you've been nine product launches, over 50,000 customers that have purchased at least one of your SKUs.
I think you did in 2020, about 4 million of top line revenue and grew a massive email list. Is that all correct? You're nailing it. That's amazing. Okay. So what's happened since then? Update us over the past 18 months. Any new products? Oh, yeah. Plenty of new products and plenty of growth. I think you mentioned briefly, we launched a water sanitation and purification system.
Basically, in response to COVID, we accelerated the development of something that we knew would be really helpful for people that are seeking more times away from home, outdoors. We're all feeling pretty trapped at home. That product is basically a kitchen sink in your backpack. It can also turn into like a camping water purification system as well as a shower. So stay out longer, feel clean.
We work on a coffee brewing system. So we came up with an all-in-one travel mug, French press, and heater system. So you basically can make coffee anywhere, anytime, as long as you have a 12-volt port. We're now also working on a bunch of power, kind of mobile solar generator systems. Ultimately, just fueling people's outdoor lives where kind of recreation and preparation kind of coincide.
Let's talk about that filter plus sink plus shower you won last year. Well, this year, the CES Innovation Awards, it's billed right on your website at $223. Help describe a little bit more. Why did you win that award from CES? What makes the product so unique? Yeah, I think what we ultimately do well is we combine existing technologies into a new ecosystem, so to speak.
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Chapter 2: What innovative products has GoSun launched since 2020?
And ultimately, it's able to maintain a low head pressure so we can still push the water at a fairly quick rate using that tiny pump. And then it's long lasting and doesn't require any maintenance. So like the life straws, which are beautiful ceramic filters, they require a back flush after just about every use. The back flush is really challenging. Most people don't do it.
It requires distilled water. And therefore, the filters get clogged pretty quickly. And ours, we're not designing people to have to maintain filters. After its usable life, which is about 1,000 liters, you just replace that filter element. And it has three stages. Like I said, it filters. It also has an activated charcoal filter, so you can reduce any kind of flavor issues in the water.
Patrick, there's a lot of people listening right now that are software people that tinker around with physical products in their free time, but it's just tinkering. They never really systematize, operationalize, find a manufacturing plant, sell a couple of units, et cetera. Walk me through how you do that.
I mean, how did you go from camping guy that wants like clean water out of the stream under five pounds, a thousand liter life to actually manufacturing this thing and being able to list it for 223 bucks on your website? You know, that's a great question. I use a lot of spreadsheets. We do a lot of evaluation. We have a bit of a formulaic process for product development and launch.
And then we have a lot of great partners in Asia. We found someone making something very similar in Taiwan. We found another similar manufacturing product in China. We kind of partnered together when we would basically just ask them to refine those products to meet our more stringent specification.
And then we have an assembly facility in China as well, where we have all these parts and pieces come together, where we put together. We have, like you mentioned earlier, we have 10 solid, unique SKUs that we assemble ourselves and manufacture more or less ourselves in China. So we're up to speed to be able to deliver. And so what are your cogs specifically on this $223 product, FlowHub? Yeah.
Like off the top of my head, it's going to be somewhere around 80 bucks.
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Chapter 3: How did COVID-19 impact GoSun's product development?
And so we try to push for margins, gross margins that are over 50%, somewhere around 60 on something like this. Is that how you figure out pricing? You always just look at your costs and then market, you want to then optimize top line for 50 to 60% margin? Yeah.
I mean, whenever we go into the 50 gross margin realm and below, we need super high volume and we're not a high volume manufacturer, even though we look pretty big and we do move a thousand units. We have containers on the oceans every day. We just aren't the Coleman or the Yeti of volume. And so we have to keep our margins high. Who do you use to track your freight?
Do you use any freight forwarding or shipping planning tools? We've tried and we've kind of struck out with a lot of 3PL logistics partners. We basically have resolved to using people that we've used a bunch in the past. They often don't have the perfect transparency of where something is, but at the end of the day, they get it to us at a pretty good rate.
Now, you mentioned in 2020, I believe that you passed over 50,000 unique customers. What will you pass at the end of this year? I think it's going to be over a hundred K we delivered, um, in the last year and a half, we delivered a product, a small product. In fact, I've got one here. That's a set of portable, portable utensils.
Basically you can, uh, you can, instead of throwing away plastic, every time you eat a carry out meal, these will fit in your wallet. Is it bendable? Is it like tin foil or is it sturdy? It's made out of stainless steel. Okay. It's pretty, it looks pretty sturdy. Yeah. Yeah, you can definitely, you can cut. In fact, the spoon has like a little serrated edge.
So one of my designers was tired of throwing out plastic. We hate plastic. Will that make it through airport security? It does. And they actually love to look at it too. They're like, what is that? Yeah. I bet they look at it. We shipped 40,000 of these.
So that was like a whole new, and the main reason we did this was to try to get more, you know, younger customers, uh, and more of that, um, you know, that, that, uh, you know, uh, what are you lost leader type of customer, you know, get, get a higher volume of customers that will then hopefully see our whole ecosystem. And this being our, our entry or gateway into the GoSun experience.
That's really interesting. So you charge $15 for this. Do you still have 50 to 60% gross margins on this? Yeah. Yeah. Actually, it might be more like 70% because something like this, like we have such a volume on something like this tiny amount of plastic, amazing little, these are like four bucks and we charge like 15. So that's a, that's a healthy gross margin.
And then walk me through the consumer experience. Okay. So they find it. I want to talk about how you sold 40,000 if you use Facebook ads or how you did that. But once they find you, how do you upsell them on more expensive items or more of your product catalogs? Yeah. I mean, we'll use email for the bulk of our up sales.
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Chapter 4: What unique features does the new water purification system offer?
So the pandemic wasn't just a blip in the radar for us. It was taking on a whole new diet of business, a whole new scale. So 5 million revenue up from 4 million a year ago, 50,000 customers up to 100,000, mainly because of those metal utensils. You're now working on driving and expanding them. Community is a real moat.
Would you ever launch, or do you already have one that I don't see on the website, a community for backpackers, hikers, people that like these sorts of products? We do have a Facebook community. It's called the Facebook Community Kitchen. Facebook.com backslash groups backslash GoSun. There's like 8,000 users in there that post on a regular basis how they're using our technology.
We're trying to get more people to use other technologies of ours, like our coolers and our utensils, and talk more about them, what they like about them, how do they use them, how do they hack their... How do they add different things together to come up with better use cases? Yeah, here's a good one posted 23 hours ago from Adina Travis Floyd.
She says, she's grateful for our GoSun in Louisiana. After the pass of Hurricane Ida, we'll be without power for a couple of weeks, according to our energy provider. While we're in cleanup phase, tired and weary, we'll be having hot cooked meals, thanks to our GoSun Sport and our GoSun Fusion. And then she showed a picture of her crawfish boat and wrapped in bacon in your oven there.
So this is working nicely. That's what makes all this worth it. And, you know, I think that's the biggest thing that's changed since we talked last is, you know, I've always been pretty big into, into resilience as you marked me. I'm a, I'm a camping outdoor guy and I'd love to have my wherewithals when I'm out and about. Turns out that the pandemic really drove that into everyone's psyche.
You know, you want to be able to be outside and be comfortable and, to have your services. And, you know, we want to move away from propane and fire and ice. And so GoSun really provides a new way of doing this, but in fact is more convenient and better performing than the alternative. What is your, how many total SKUs do you have?
I mean, I'm scrolling on the page right now, like including obviously your hat and your backpack, the collapsible sink that sold out. I mean, what you probably have like 30, what is it? 30, 40, 50 SKUs? Yeah, I think like core SKUs, it's about 20 that are like unique to us. And then we just combine and make bundles out of them.
And if, you know, we don't really count the little accessories in that number. What's your team? You still have about 10 people? We're up to about 15 now. We've had to hire another engineer. We've got a sourcing professional now. And we have an even bigger backlog development. So we have more and more products that we want to get into the cycle. And that's kind of the bottleneck.
Patrick, my big question for you is a lot of software companies struggle with distribution. I imagine there are some types of software that folks like you really love to use. Just look at your favorite apps on your phone. Have you ever looked at partnering?
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Chapter 5: How does GoSun ensure product sustainability and water conservation?
where margins could be 70%, 80%, 90% and keep fueling your business. That's what I get excited about. But I'm biased, though. It's not a good call. It's just I'm biased to software. You guys are leading the world now, the millennial, if you will. And you've got me convinced that the app life and the interconnect with tech is
And, and kind of the, the, in the in crowd that who knows that, you know, like people know what's good and they share that. And if you're aware and connected, you'll be, you'll be given the good beta on the best place to go camp. So I'm all about it. So I'll definitely look into, I'll see what happens in the meantime. Now let's wrap up with a famous five, Patrick, number one, favorite book.
Oh gosh. Crossing the chasm. It's still one of my favorite books ever. Number two, is there a CEO you're following or studying? I continue to like Elon Musk these days. He's hot shit. Number three, what's your favorite online tool for building the business? I'd say Figma. Number four, how many hours of sleep? I try to get seven to eight. That's good. And situation, you're still one kid and 43?
Wonderful girlfriend. Yep. One kid, 43, not married, but wonderful girlfriend. Last question. What do you wish you knew when you were 20? I wish taking action was more important rather than watching the action. So invest, write about it, buy it and try it and burn it up. But action is really where genius lies.
Guys, he really grew during COVID selling $15 little flatware kits that cost him $4 to make. He shipped over 40,000 of them, metal utensils, over the past 16 to 18 months. They did about $4 million in revenue last year, passed 50,000 customers.
This year, he'll break $5 million in revenue, over 100,000 customers, mainly selling physical products with really interesting margin profiles, 60%, 70%, but a massive community. 8,000 in the Facebook group, 250,000 on his email list. If I was a betting man, I'd say Patrick's going to build a very successful software company. inside of this community one day.
Patrick, thanks for taking us to the top. Thank you, Nathan. It's a pleasure.
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