SEASON 1 EPISODE 3 with

episode transcript +

From Surfer to Subscription Boxes w/ Coastal Co.’s Kevin Tighe Season 1, Episode 3

Guest: Kevin Tighe, Co-Founder and CEO of Coastal Co.

AARON KWITTKEN Broadcasting from the 10 Hudson Square Building, home of WNYC Radio in Soho, New York, welcome to Brand on Purpose, the podcast dedicated to uncovering the untold stories behind the most impactful purpose-driven companies. My guest today is Kevin Tighe. Kevin is co-founder and CEO of Coastal Co. Costal Co. is a seasonal subscription service based in Orange County, California. It curates and delivers premium beach inspired apparel, accessories and lifestyle products from handpicked brands around the world. Kevin, welcome to Brand on Purpose.

KEVIN TIGHE Aaron, thanks for the intro, thanks for having me, and I couldn’t have said it better myself. I guess we need to hire you to do some PR.

AK It’s easy, I can read, so that’s the start. So, tell us a little about Coastal Co. I know that you relocated. You are originally a Washington D.C. guy, or outside of Washington. And now, you’re living this incredible surfer, paddle boarder, canoer kind of life in Southern California, which is kind of a dream of mine. That’ll be in my next life, I think, once my kids are off to school. And, I should also mention that you’ve got marketing and PR in your background as well, which obviously I have a lot of affection for. Tells us a little bit about your journey? How you started, one, why you moved, two, and why you started Coastal Co.

KT Yeah, so going way back, as you mentioned, I grew up on the east coast, specifically the Washington D.C. area. Which all of you guys are thinking right now, that’s not really close to any bodies of water, except the Potomac River, so not much surfing is done there. But, on our summers, we would go down to Florida, and that’s where I fell in love with surfing when I was 9 years old, and was essentially obsessed, all summer I was in the water. When we’d go home for the school year, I was just constantly reading every surf magazine I could, checking the surf online, maybe cutting out of school when I could drive, if there were waves, and driving 3 hours to the beach, so I was just fully obsessed.

So the only logical move for me was, as soon as I turned 18 and graduated high school, was to head out west. So I moved out to LA, where I went to USC and that’s where, I guess, I got my start in the entrepreneurial world. While in school, I started a very small boutique company where I was negotiating deals for the, I guess, event promoters and planners in the LA area and emerging liquor brands and energy drink companies. And kind of, by mistake, I started a little business, we were, I was actually making a little bit of money when I was a sophomore/junior in college and having a lot of fun while doing it. And that kinda led me to start my first venture in the tech world and also led me down to starting a small boutique digital marketing and PR agency. So, it’s been quite a journey that kinda led to Coastal Co, and where I am now.

AK So this whole, like, love for the water, it didn’t really start with the Potomac, it’s just in your bones, right? It’s just something that you were attracted to from when you were very young. And that whole lifestyle really. It’s really the lifestyle.

KT Yeah. Sitting on the beach in the summer and seeing all the big kids out in the water surfing and I was just– I had to be out there. So I think my parents have some pictures of me when I was 3 years old standing on a boogie board, just on the sand where it was slightly wet and I guess that was my first foray into the surfing world. But eventually when I was 9, I actually started surfing and then just the lifestyle itself caught me. There’s something about being around the water that relaxes you. And for me, it also makes me focus. So it’s relaxing but I also feel I’m most at ease and that’s where I make my best decisions and where my mind is most clear.

AK Yeah. I mean for me, being in the water, I know you didn’t ask but ill tell you anyway. It’s like Zen. It’s like meditative. So, I’m a surface swimmer, but, I mean, swimming saved my life. I was asthmatic as a kid and it wasn’t until I learned to swim late, at like 11, that I fundamentally changed my life. My lungs grew, I didn’t, but my lungs did, and I was able to overcome so many things. And you mentioned the Potomac though so, the worst swim I ever had in my life was in the Potomac. I did a triathlon in D.C., you know it was only a 1-mile swim, or roughly a mile. It tasted like road kill.

KT I was just going to ask you that.

AK Yeah, it was like my fastest swim ever because it was so disgusting. I don’t even know what road kill tastes like, but I imagine just from the way it tasted and smelled that that was road kill, basically, so anyway I digress. So, Coastal Co., you found it almost 4 years ago, right? So you’re like, three and a half years in?

KT Yes, correct.

AK I know that there’s no such thing as an aha moment. I’ve talked to so many entrepreneurs. I’m a mini entrepreneur, myself. It’s rare that there’s an aha moment. These are things that build over time. This is things when you’re putting your head on your pillow at night or your surfing, you’re out there, this is probably where you do your best thinking. What was the moment where you’re like you know, I’m going to start this, I’m going to do this and this is going to be my next adventure?

KT Yeah that’s a great question, there’s a little bit of back story behind it. So, the guy who actually taught me to surf when I was 9 was the owner of a local surf shop. And, I kinda idolized him and thought he was so cool and he was a great surfer and I loved the business he was running. My dad was an entrepreneur so I think since I can remember I wanted to own my own business. When I was 9 years old, I decided I wanted to own a surf shop when I got older. As I progressed through college, and I kinda learned about business, and saw the trends in retail changing, I learned that owning a surf shop was probably not going to be the business I wanted to get into. So, in the back of my mind, I’d always wanted to start a business that related to, kinda, the surf and ocean lifestyle but I didn’t really know what that was. So, I went on my entrepreneurial journey and kinda put that in the back of my mind.

Fast forward 5-6 years later, I had gone through a rough streak. One of my ventures I had was just, wasn’t working out, it was going under and, at the same time I had a long term relationship that was going under and a number of other, just, pretty crappy things happened all at once. So, during that time I had really stopped surfing, stopped paddling, just basically stopped going to the beach. I was so, just, my mind was entrenched with all the issues that were going on and trying to solve them. And then, finally, I took a step back and was like, I don’t like where my mind’s at, I don’t like where my body’s at because I’m not being active.

And I decided to go to a trip to the big island of Hawaii to unplug for about a week. While I was there, I was able to reconnect to the water through stand up paddle boarding. There weren’t a lot of waves at that time, so I did a little bit of surfing but it was just great to be around the ocean, the beach and just in the water again. It just, kinda, brought me back to where I needed to be and I decided when I got back that, I’d wound down the other company, I was like, you know what? I’m gonna, you know– I don’t care about going out and raising VC money or starting the next billion-dollar venture, I’m just gonna do something that makes me happy and caters towards my passionate lifestyle and, you know, we’ll see where that goes.

So I got back and immediately started vetting ideas for launching a business in the surf space. I remembered about 2 years earlier I was in a meeting with a potential investor for the company I was at at the time, and in the back room, there was all this noise. I was in this office of this building. You know, there was all this noise coming from the back room and he saw me looking, and he was like, Oh! That’s my latest investment, do you want to go see it? So, we walked into the back room, opened the door, there’s music blaring and a bunch of Task Rabbits had been hired for the day to pack boxes. And, it turns out that company was Luke Crate, which is one of the leading companies in the subscription industry. They do these subscriptions box for the, they call it the, it’s the Comic Con crowd, but they say the geeks and the gamers.

AK Yep.

KT And, this was back in the very, very early days where they were small enough, they didn’t have their own warehouse, they were hiring Task Rabbit back when Task Rabbit was still around to pack their boxes. So, I saw that and I thought that was really interesting. I looked into the business model and, you know, I was very intrigued by the subscription model. And I also saw how well it worked, Luke Crate as an example, when you apply to a really passionate kinda niche or lifestyle. So that was kinda my aha moment, was has anyone applied this to surf and the coastal lifestyle, not only that, just any of these action sports or other lifestyles niches. And they hadn’t. So I saw a really big opportunity.

So, what I did is create a business plan for it and some of my background is in influencer marketing, so I decided, let me take this to a couple of pro surfers I have in my network. Let me see if anyone wants to partner up. And, if so, I think it’s a good sign that we could go ahead and launch this without necessarily having to put a lot of capital into it, to at least do the MVP, test it, see how it goes. So, I brought it to a few guys, they were all interested and I ended up partnering with my co-founder named Mark Healy. He’s a big-wave surfer and world-renowned spear fisherman. He lives on the north shore of Oahu, just kind of a really good guy and an all-around bad man when it comes to water sports.

AK Sounds like a badass, right? Spear fisherman.

KT Yeah, exactly. So, when I’m in the office at least he’s out there being a badass. So, I can kinda live vicariously through him sometimes. That’s where the aha moment came from. And we started working on the concept and about another few years in we got to where we are now.

AK Walk me through the product. So it’s a subscription service. It’s kind of like, wrong example, but Birchbox, Barkbox, but before that, for people who are active in kind of the surf and water sport community. And are you curating products and putting them in a box and then sending them to them? Is that basically the idea or am I totally botching that?

KT Yeah, you’re pretty spot on. Currently, we use a traditional subscription box model. I guess we call it the surprise and delight box that, so, you’ll see companies like the ones you just mentioned. Fab Fit Fun is another one of the unicorns in the subscription box industry that do it really well. In subscription, you’ll also see the other model, prominent model, would be in clothing which is what StitchFix does, try it before you buy it.

AK StitchFix, sorry.

KT So we’re more in the surprise and delight model where they go to our website, they sign up, they fill out a little survey so we can get some information about their preferences. And then every season, so once every three months, they get a box curated full of beach inspired apparel, accessories, for the women, beauty products, lifestyle items, jewelry, things like that. Men’s is a little more clothing focused. We have one main price point right now. It’s $99, it’s usually about $220 or more worth of value inside that box. And what the members really love, obviously its convenient, delivered to their door, but they’re getting access to brands and products that they normally wouldn’t be able to, especially if they don’t live by the coast and they love the lifestyle. Kind of like me when I was younger, when I would spend my summers by the beach and then I would be 3 hours away back in D.C. and you know we kind of deliver that lifestyle to their doorstep. And, of course, they’re getting a great savings on it so that’s pretty exciting for them as well.

AK Right.

KT And on the flip side, for the brands we work with, it’s a great marketing platform. They’re actually able to move product and make money while putting their hands into the products of tens of thousands of targeted customers.

AK Right, so it’s good for both established and new brands that you’re partnering with. It’s good because you’re giving consumers access to brands they might not have, and you’re also crating it in a way that’s kind of fun and exciting, they don’t know what’s coming next. But, I think the thing that’s the coolest part, which we’re gonna get to, it’s the whole purpose behind this podcast, is there’s a giveback to this. There’s a social cause component to all this that I’m sure, also, is super appealing to the consumers that are subscribing to your service, right?

KT Yep, 100%. So, we partnered with a non-profit here in LA called Heal the Bay and they focus on protecting our oceans and beaches. Mainly focused in the Los Angeles and Southern California area. What we do is, we take a portion of proceeds from each box and we fund their beach clean ups every month. So, we do the LA area and a lot of times our team is able to go down and participate in those beach clean ups, which is my favorite part.

AK Right. And what came first, the product or the purpose or were they kind of like melding together in your head at the same time?

KT I knew we wanted to have a social good component, what that was going to be I knew would probably have to evolve over time. So, we created the product and we knew we were going to give a percentage back, or create some sort of partnership with different non-profits. When we first launched, in our testing period, we worked with a number of different non-profits, where we would have a specific box be catered around that non-profit. So we took a well-known cinematographer from Discovery channel, Andy Casagrande, and we did, essentially, a shark theme box and we had a portion of the proceeds go to Shark Angels.

So that was one example of kind of a cool activation that we did. So we did that and worked with a number of different non-profits while we were testing things out. And then when we decided, in the long run, we wanted to find one that we could really connect with and be a long term partner so we could really understand how their non-profit works, maybe what their needs are beyond capital, and where we can lend a hand. And also something that’s really important is I wanted myself and my team to be able to get our hands dirty. You know, there were a number of really great non-profits that we worked with, but, Shark Angels, for example, awesome organization. I have gone diving with sharks before but it’s not something I’m actively going to find. But, you know, we can all get the team together, and in a safe way, go do a beach clean up and kind of live that lifestyle and integrate the mission into our company and into our daily lives.

AK I’m all for, kind of, peaceful co-existence with large dorsal fin animals in the water. But swimming with sharks is not on my list of things I want to do. In fact, they say, I don’t know if you’ve heard this story, they say that they might have found a ten foot great while in the Long Island Sound a couple weeks ago named Cabot. I guess he breached the water and his satellite thing pinged and, oh my god he’s in the Long Island Sound, at Tod’s Point in Greenwich.

KT Wow. I’m not surprised. It’s kinda sharkey up there.

AK Uh, I guess, I mean, I swim in The Sound all the time. In fact, I’m swimming across The Sound for a cancer charity at the end of July, from Glen Cove to Mamaroneck. I mean, that’s terrifying. But, I do know that Great Whites, cause they tell me this like to vacation in Maine, they summer in Maine. The water is colder, so I believe that he’s up there now with all his friends. And I should be clear in a few months when I get back in the water.

KT Uh-huh. Fingers crossed, right?

AK Yeah, it’s terrifying. But I do believe that we should all coexist. It’s all good. So I have a totally unsolicited idea for you, maybe. How big is the box? I mean, obviously I’m not a subscriber but maybe I will be after we speak. How big is the box that you actually send to people?

KT It’s 15x10x4.

AK Ok. And then people probably recycle the box after they take all the stuff out of it and they’re happy and they’re putting their stuff on and whatever.

KT They better be recycling it, yes.

AK What if, you encourage people to fill that box up with food and then drop that box off at a local food pantry. Would that be cool?

KT I love it. That would be great.

AK Totally unsolicited silly idea but it kinda dawned on me. I’m like, that’s a great reuse and also it’s a double giveback, right?

KT Yeah, we were talking about maybe doing a campaign where we wanted to have them go out and go to their local beach, or if they don’t live by the beach…

AK Fill the box with garbage, right?

KT Yeah. From the ground. And then take a picture and then post online. And then we were like, oh we’re going to see a bunch of pictures of our box filled with trash. And that’s probably not a good look but I like your idea.

AK Yeah, I mean, you know, hunger is still kind of an issue, obviously and sadly and maybe it’s another way to kinda reuse it. Kinda test it out and see how it goes. Even if, even if just a few people do it, it’s a few more that people go less hungry than nothing, right?

KT You gotta start somewhere, right? No, I love it. Actually I will bring that up to the team in tomorrow’s meeting.

AK Cool. And then, I imagine that you’re appropriately collecting data, right, because you’re getting feedback from consumers. Is there anything that you’ve kind of gotten, by way of feedback, whether it’s related to the purpose or the mission or just products or just how you’re doing that was totally unexpected and surprising and how you use that feedback to make the company and the offer even better?

KT We receive a lot of feedback related to the purpose on social, which is really interesting to see people commenting there. They like to get involved and either be supportive or put their suggestions on certain products if they don’t think it’s quote-unquote sustainable. Which, not all the products we put in the boxes are sustainable, I wish they were, that’s not something at this stage.

AK Well, we need more products to be developed to be, right? It’s hard, there’s not enough out there.

KT Yeah. Exactly. But, people love to get involved on social there. We haven’t collected a ton of data from the members on the typical surveys that we do based around our mission. That’s actually probably something that we should learn more about, how we can get them involved, ‘cause the plus and minus of working with a local organization is we are doing the local beach clean ups, but 99% of our members probably don’t live in LA. So they cant necessarily get involved that way. But, we need to figure out ways we can get them involved, outside, if they’re not in the immediate area. And that’s something that we’re really putting an effort in right now. And seeing if they can get involved with our organization, Heal the Bay, that we’re working with, or maybe helping to find local ones near their cities that they can work with.

AK Did you have to raise money or is this done out of your own back pocket from you and your partner?

KT I funded it initially and then we have raised, actually, our first investor was one of our members. He joined in the second month that we launched our men’s box and became our first outside investor. Which is awesome, he’s been one of our most supportive investors since. And then in 2017, let’s see, spring, we went through the Blue Startup Accelerator program, which is based in Honolulu. So, I got to go live in Waikiki for three months while I worked on the company up there which was pretty fantastic.

AK Sounds rough, yeah, really rough.

KT Yeah, tough, tough startup life. So that was an amazing experience. It was great for our brand, the company. Their actually, Blue Startups, one of their partner companies called Blue Planet is doing some really cool things to reduce the use of fossil fuels in Hawaii. It’s pretty amazing, some of the impact they’ve made. But yeah, we raised a little bit of capital from them, and we raised a little bit of capital from the Hawaii Angels out there. But, overall we’re just angel-funded, we haven’t raised a lot of capital to date. Our kinda, our goal is not to over-capitalize the company.

Our goal is to actually focus on economics from like an early stage. I think some of the issues you’ve seen, especially in the subscriptions model, is companies. When it first came out it was really hot amongst VCs, and they raised a lot of capital, grew really fast and built their infrastructure on a house of cards, worried about economics later. And a lot of them weren’t able to, essentially, get to that profitability point down the line. Or, they weren’t able to get the exits that their investors needed to really be happy. So, we took a different approach and decided, you know, we raised just enough. We’ve been really smart with our money, utilized some debt as well, and were actually profitable.

AK How are you deciding how to curate? I imagine that you have a hand in this? I mean, there’s a fair amount of discovery and poking around the marketplace and talking to people. And that’s probably the most exciting part, quite frankly, right? Is just putting together these boxes and seeing how they stick and getting the feedback. It’s scary and also really exciting in the same way as its surprising and delighting to open the box itself. So what’s the process for that, cause that’s a creative process, right?

KT It’s extremely fun, but also the most nerve-wracking part. So we just launched, we just started shipping our summer boxes last Friday. So they’re just starting to trickle in, so we’ll get the first wave of feedback very soon. You know, from our experience, we think it’s a really solid box. But we’re always kind of on, I guess, not sleeping well during that week when that first big batch goes out and you’re waiting to get that initial feedback.

But, with the women’s box, especially, women’s is the majority of our business right now. Our head buyer has been in the industry for over 10 years, and she really looks for trends and kinda analyzing what our– especially knowing who our customer is, and what they might want, as well as sizing and fit is really important. So you really have to understand your customer and figure out the products, and the trends that are going to relate to them.

And I also do, I love finding the smaller emerging brands to work with, so that’s, actually, over in Hawaii, we’re doing some work with a CPG Accelerator called Manna Up out there and they accelerate Hawaiian based consumer brands and they have some really cool companies that are coming out of there so that’s something we love to do is find brands like that and put them in the box and bring them over to the mainland and beyond.

So I love that part. I love going around and try to find these really unique brands and products. My co-founder, Mark, since he’s traveled the world 10 times over for surfing, also has encountered a ton of brands and products along the way. So we’ve done stuff where we work with a really cool surf shop in Bali called Drifter, is one example. Or we’ve done some stuff with some surf shops in France, stuff like that’s really fun. ‘Cause you’re giving some people stuff that’s really different and you know they’re going to love it.

AK As an entrepreneur myself, I get how much time you have to put into this and it’s never ending, it’s 24/7. And you’re doing the day job, you’re doing the job itself and you’re also thinking about what’s next because it’s highly competitive, right? And things go wrong, like anybody can appreciate those things. How do you find time for yourself, and then, I assume that what you’re doing, the little downtime that you have is that you’re out in the water, right?

KT Not as much as I’d like to be, unfortunately.

AK That’s the irony, right?

KT I do get in the water, and if I have months that are really busy, like right now, things are really busy. But, I’ll usually, at least once a quarter, make sure I go out to Hawaii and get some time where I’ll work out of there, work remotely and work with my partners there and I’ll make sure I’ll get time to surf, especially with the time change. The West Coast is winding down by two o’clock California-time so that’s great, but, part of it’s building the team and building processes so we’ve made some key hires along the way that have been essential to our core growth and we just made a new one.

We just had a new COO start two days ago. So, that part is, he’s going to be alleviating a lot of my day-to-day tasks on the operational side, which will allow me to focus on big picture tasks and more creative things, as well as stuff like fundraising, and the other part of the finances. So, once he’s on-boarded that will probably take about 15 hours a week off my plate, maybe more. So, that’s just been the key, kinda, just growing step-by-step, bringing on those team members when we need it.

My goal is some weeks you’re doing 60 hours + per week, but I try to limit that. And if you are, something is wrong. You either need to restructure your processes or you need more team members. Obviously, you don’t want to throw people at problems but you have to analyze if it’s a process problem or a people problem. So, we’ve been building our team strategically so we don’t go crazy with overhead. But it’s been pretty good, you know, I’m working my butt off as well as the rest of my team members are, but I don’t think its anywhere where were too stressed. We’re having a lot of fun while were working hard and just tackling the problems.

AK So, it’s 2022. Where are you now?

KT I’m on a beach in Hawaii with a mai tai in my hand.

AK Nice.

KT Um, I wish. Our big vision for our company is to not only own the coastal space, but to– we’re actually building a portfolio of brands that cater to the lifestyles that people live for. So, that’s a big mission and there’s a lot of work behind that. So we are launching, right now we’re working on scaling our current brands, which are our men’s and women’s brands, that are in the coastal space. We will be launching a kids’ brand later for the holidays this year, is kinda our current timeline. And we have a couple other brand extensions that are planned for 2020 and 2021. We’re really heavily focused on building for structure right now that’ll let us scale.

So we, right now we’re up 400% from last year, so we’re growing really fast and we’re looking for another 300% growth this year. So when you do that, you need to really make sure you’re infrastructure’s growing with it or the wheels will come off. So we’re heavily focused on that and the goal is to kind of build this house of brands. And in 2022, this isn’t going to be a publically traded company, that’s not the plan, but to build out a really, really great company that, you know, one of the awards I would love to win is best place to work.

And we actually just signed a lease in San Diego, so we’re moving down there, but I would love us to be known as one of the best places to work in San Diego. I want us to heavily involved in the community, I want us to have our portfolio of brands by that time, and yeah, just really operating smoothly and just continuing to do what we’re doing.

AK So, totally separately I’m going to email you because I have another idea. It’s so good that I can’t share it on the air.

KT Perfect. Love it. Keep it a secret.

AK But I have an idea that I think we can partner on.

KT Don’t tell anyone.

AK I’m gonna keep it a secret. But I’m gonna send it to you, and maybe we can go somewhere with it. But, listen man, it was awesome having you on. Totally inspirational. I love the journey. I love your background. I love your optimism. And I like how you’re a little vulnerable in talking about that moment you decided you we’re gonna turn things around, and you’re gonna make it happen, not just for yourself but for others, both new entrepreneurs and emerging entrepreneurs, but as well as there’s a massive environment and sustainability play. And you’re and inspiration to us all and I appreciate having you on the show.

KT Oh, thanks for having me, and yeah it was a fun conversation, and before I go I just want to give another shout out to everyone at Heal the Bay, as well as Pledgeling. They’re the company that we work with that sets up our social good aspect to the company and they work with a number of other companies that are in the ecommerce space so it’s really cool to see companies like that making partnerships like ours and Heal the Bay happen. So I had to, definitely, give them a little shout out.

AK Maybe you could give me an introduction to Pledgeling. Maybe I could have them on.

KT Actually, that would be, yeah, you would love to talk to them.

AK Yeah, definitely.

KT And they would love to talk to you.

AK And look for my email. I’m telling you, it’s a good one. You’ve probably thought of it already, but I think I can help with some domain expertise. But, we’ll be in touch very soon.

KT Love it. Awesome.

AK Thanks, man. Good luck with everything.

KT Watch out for the sharks.

AK Absolutely.

KT Thanks.