We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Derek Larson a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Derek, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. 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.
Winyl club started with a few people hanging out in the park listening to music and enjoying wine. The purpose was not to start a whole thing like we have today but we still had intention. It’s wild to me to see how it’s scaled up to date. I think having the intention of creating a safe and fun space to enjoy the things we love in an organic way is why we saw growth like we did. I’ll be honest a lot of the growth did seem over night almost. I can’t tell you when the tipping point was honestly, it seemed to have happened in a matter of a couple months. We went having no one really know what we were to having over a hundred people on average in the park and it seemed to happen in a matter of months.
The real strategy of gaining that community so quickly was literally telling every single person I met. Luckily my day job at the time forced me to talk to people all day. I worked at a well know dispensary in San Diego so I would meet hundreds of new people a week while working. I had never had social media accounts ever, so when I started one for Winyl club I was very shameless in the word to mouth promotion of it. Every person I would ring up at my job would get an ear full about Winyl club. I wish I could have calculated how many people I spoke to about it but it had to have been enough to allow the word to spread by itself after a certain point. After a while more and more people heard about it and it wasn’t from me. Their friends would tell a friend and so on and so forth.
Once someone hears about it the best part is that they have every opportunity to come see it. We are out in the park every week so they don’t have to feel like they are going to miss an experience. And they tell a friend and then the friend can come next week and the cycle will continue like that. So a lot of work went into spreading Winyl by word of mouth and then a lot of work goes into being consistent so it’s not something your forget or can miss. I would say those are the things that has show us the most growth and scaling in what we do.
Derek, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?
Winyl club is a weekly event that anyone can come and enjoy some good music and sometimes some food and wine. We take inspiration from the park jams of the late 70’s and early 80’s that birth the culture and art of hip hop and rap music. We are predominantly vinyl DJ’s but all are accepted. We try to keep the club concept by having weekly meet ups for anyone who wants to come at the same time and place. That way there is a sense of a Winyl club HQ or something like that. We are always at Morley field and we go from 2pm til sunset every Wednesday.
Each week you can come out and find something different. One week we will have a new DJ and another we may have a new vendor. We try and keep things fresh for our community of Winyl club members so they can feel like they aren’t doing the same thing each week. This year will will be having more activities to get people in the park involved in new things. Still figuring it out as we speak.
Best way to come and see what we are about is come to the park and experience it yourself. Bring some friends!
What do you think helped you build your reputation within your market?
I think being genuine and coming from a real place has earned us the spot we have now. I’m not sure what the reputation of Winyl club is exactly, but people do seem to be asking us to join them and we get great reception to what we do. But I attribute everything to how we started. We didn’t start with any purpose just the intention of enjoying the cultures we love. That translate through what we do and I think people can sense that when we are working together or if they are joining us for a Wednesday.
We’d really appreciate if you could talk to us about how you figured out the manufacturing process.
I don’t think we have had a time where things were going stacked against us but we have sold things and plan to sell more. My struggle with the products was that I wasn’t sure people would buy a t shirt when we have been giving the events to people for free. I also don’t want to put out anything for people to buy if it didn’t mean anything to Winyl and myself. We decided to sell a shirt that would wrap up our season last year. So we designed a shirt and I had to work with a local artist to figure it out. Then I got help from a friend who has been running a successful clothing company for years to print out shirts and get quality materials for it. Again it comes back to being genuine and doing things organically. I have never made shirts before but I made sure everything in the process felt right and went smoothly. Feel is important to me so I don’t force anything that doesn’t feel right. With all of these contributing to the last night of Winyl we luckily had a successful shirt sale. I think we had fifty shirts and we sold out of all of them. That was a very exciting feeling of successfully making a product and seeing people truly enjoy it.
We plan on making more products for people to buy but again it has to hit my crazy checklist of things for it to come to life. I can promise all the products you buy from Winyl club with be quality and have some thought and concept behind what we put out. Those are the most important things I’ve learned when doing any sort of merchandise. Have it seem authentic.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: Winylclub_