Keta, a minimalist soft-goods brand

The problem

I kept choosing between aesthetics and function in the things I carry every day, and I was tired of it.

I love soft goods. Backpacks and wallets especially. I notice the small, intricate details in the things I carry, the way a zipper pull sits, how a strap distributes weight, whether a pocket actually fits the thing it was clearly designed for. That eye is a gift and a curse, because it also makes me hyper-critical of almost everything I own.

So I kept catching myself making the same trade. A bag that looked good but couldn't hold what I needed. A wallet that held everything but looked like a brick. Minimalism or utility, pick one. These minor frustrations compound, especially with products I reach for every single day. This was an itch I wanted to scratch, so I went and scratched it.

What I did

I turned a class assignment into a real company, and then learned when to walk away from it.

How it started

For my senior capstone, I had to build a full business plan over the fall semester. I used the excuse to finally work on making the perfect backpack that had been turning over in my head for a while. I'd just come back from interning in San Francisco, where I noticed that every company hands out branded swag to anyone who'll take it. So I dug into the US branded-goods market, found it was worth $24.7B and surprisingly fragmented, and picked B2B as the path to take this to market.

Pitch competition

I kept working on it outside of class, and it carried me to Ohio State's startup pitch competition. I was selected as one of five finalists competing for funding. I shaped the market research and business plan into a pitch, ran customer interviews to check that the interest was real, and started reaching out to manufacturers about prototyping. I didn't win. But the work I did to get there became the foundation for everything after.

Prototyping

Once the fall semester ended, I decided to give the business an honest shot. I researched manufacturers in China and found a partner to help me build my first prototype in early 2020. I created the brand Keta and formed an LLC.

Supply chain issue

As we finalized the design, I couldn't customize the bags to order because of how the bag was built, something that was overlooked. As a result, branded backpacks would've been made-to-order with a 6-8 week lead time, which would not be acceptable for customers as other brands in the market delivered within 1-4 weeks.

As Covid hit, production cost skyrocketed. Due to the anticipated volume that I would have for the initial production batch, the math on projected COGS and shipping costs didn't work, pushing margins from thin to negative.

Upon evaluating the feasibility of the business and how well we could actually serve a customer, I decided to kill the project.

Takeaways

Keta is dead but still alive

Walking away from something I'd poured almost a year into was hard, but it did teach me quite a bit about entrepreneurship and those lessons still live on… plus I walked away with an awesome backpack.

What I learned

• The business matters. Interest and great design mean nothing if you lose money on every unit. Knowing your cost, your healthy margin, and what a customer will actually pay up front is what decides whether a product can survive at all.
• Just do it. Moving from concept to action was far less daunting than I'd built it up to be in my head. Most of it was a matter of starting and asking.
• Build good relationships. I got free prototypes by finding genuine middle ground with my manufacturing partner, trading them US market and product insight for their help.

Skills I picked up

• Customer discovery and validation interviews
• Setting up legal entities and working with contractors
• Sourcing and working with overseas manufacturers
• Unit economics: COGS, landed cost, CAC, and margin analysis