We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Darrell Kenny. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Darrell below.
Darrell, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today How did you scale up? What were the strategies, tactics, meaningful moments, twists/turns, obstacles, mistakes along the way? The world needs to hear more realistic, actionable stories about this critical part of the business building journey. Tell us your scaling up story – bring us along so we can understand what it was like making the decisions you had, implementing the strategies/tactics etc.
I chose the question about how we have handled growing as a business. I chose this question because I feel like it’s sort of a unique story because my wife and I started making soft Plastics just for ourselves, to be able to choose our own colors and to have some fun making baits. So the initial mold and equipment purchases were not business focused, We bought molds that we personally liked and usually only got one. We got a lot of little jars of Flakes and powders from all around with no real way to be able to resupply if we needed more. We took an old microwave and cleared a little space on my workbench to start making baits.( my wife and I had worked at the same place for about eight years when our boss decided to sell the whole company. so we both had to find new jobs. We have been making soft plastics for months and just documenting it on social media. About the same time my boss sold the company I had been getting asked if I made soft plastics for sale. My wife got a job working from home on the computer and I was left trying to find something to do.) We had a talk and my wife said that I should go all in and try making baits full time.) Once it became clear that I was going to turn this into a full-time career we had to start paying a lot more attention to what shapes and styles of baits were popular in the market, what colorways were selling and find long-term suppliers that were rooted in the soft plastic bait making industry. That first little spot in our garage / chicken coop was 9 ft by 9 ft. I consider us a small batch company but only having one mold which depending on size can be anywhere from one to 20 plus cavities, makes it very hard to do production runs or quickly complete custom orders. We hooked up with some of the best material suppliers in the soft plastic bait making industry companies like Epic Bait Molds, Dead on plastix, lureworks and Barlows. So we had a reliable resupplyable source for all of our materials. And started purchasing multiples of the same molds so that we could do bigger runs for the website and quicker turnaround on custom orders. One aspect of our company that has had a big impact on our expansion and creation and overall a little bit of everything is the fact that we’re only funded by the business. The DIY bait making industry that people can find today really kind of exploded when we had the pandemic. A lot of people were off of work and they were looking for things to do ways to occupy their time ways to make extra income and there was always a huge DIY bait making Community but with the pandemic it just sent thousands of people into the hobby. So a lot of people had money from their full-time jobs or careers to sink into bait making. Some took out loans or got money from pandemic relief funds to start businesses. Some of them are still going strong, some of them are gone and some of them found a great thing in making baits but as content creators instead of actually selling them We just kind of started selling baits and bought more supplies and molds with the money from the baits we sold and built it up that way. Our company still is run off just the money that it makes my wife gets what she needs for the household and everything else goes back into the company to try to have the best molds and the best materials and make some of the best soft Plastics that you can get coming out of Southwest Ohio
Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.
Hi, Im Darrell and I own and operate Stillwater Bait Co. We are a local family owned and run soft plastic fishing baits manufacturer. We specialize in small batch and Custom orders. We have a full Library of liquid and powder pigment colorants as well as a full library of Flakes and over 65 different molds, making baits that range from under 1″ to 9″. We maintain a fully stocked website on top of doing custom orders for everyday anglers, tournament Anglers and small tackle shops. We aim to be known as one of the best companies to get soft plastic fishing Baits in Southwest Ohio.
How did you build your audience on social media?
Social media has been tricky for me. Being my only employee I’m pretty much alone all day so being social was something I had to learn a bit. I knew right away that I wanted to be able to show people what I was doing, let them see the materials and the molds, the work being done and the baits being made. I think it’s neat that somebody with a custom order in can get to see little updates on my Instagram page because I post about what I’m doing. As I’ve done it more and more I’ve talked more and more in the videos but because I am not good at video editing I still maintain a very one take style of shooting videos so if I mess up that goes in the video well sometimes it can be embarrassing I like the authenticity of it. If I had any advice it would be to just be yourself and post constantly I feel like for every hour I’m actually doing my job I have to spend an hour and a half posting about it online which can be frustrating and take you out of the Zone especially if you have a job that involves any kind of artistic flow. But social media and being able to self promote is a huge part of owning a business and so it’s something I’ve just tried to learn to incorporate into my workflow
Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?
For me I think one big thing that I had to unlearn was personal preference. We started out making soft plastics for ourselves just to fish locally. No I would love to be a very well-known local bait maker we also maintain a fully stocked website so I had to really unlearn just doing colorways that work good in the waters around us and had to research baitfish in other areas so that I could offer different color ways so anybody from anywhere in the United States or really the world could find something that would work for them and their Waters.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.stillwaterbaitco.com
- Instagram: https://Instagram.com/stillwaterbaitco
- Facebook: stillwaterbaitco
- Youtube: https://youtube.com/@stillwaterbaitco?si=FD2T1RE3XK63Bq8M
