We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Iris Hernandez a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Iris thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. What was it like going from idea to execution? Can you share some of the backstory and some of the major steps or milestones?

My partner John and I have renovated a few homes in our marriage, but we were always underwhelmed by the selection of cabinet hardware at big box retailers and taken aback by how much good quality hardware cost at higher end places. We realized if we ever wanted to get the hardware we wanted at a reasonable price, we would have to source it ourselves. So I started looking for suppliers and pretty quickly I realized we could not only source custom hardware solutions for ourselves, but we could offer it to others at a far better price than some of the most renown brands out there. John was on board, and we agreed to seed the venture $7000 to get started. We actually started on ebay, where we quickly realized the platform was just too crowded to be seen. We also found the shipping costs to be far too high. So we pivoted and decided to become our own brand. John insisted we use my initials to name the brand, IH, and from there we came up with Inspire Hardware. Over the next few weeks, I built our store on Shopify. It was a lot more complicated than we expected, but it was something I still could do myself, so after putting in every spare minute I had getting the page ready, I also knew we needed to have professional photos to match the quality of our products. So I tried a few photographers until we found one that worked for us. Then we were ready to go. We ordered a number of products as we tried to define our brand. We realized that Inspire Hardware was really about the weight of our pieces, and while we initially had materials other than brass, we felt the quality of other materials just didn’t match our vision. We went through various suppliers trying to find those who could meet our needs at prices we could manage, and gradually we phased in and out of products based on what sold. We reinvested everything into expanding our product lines, for the first few years we didn’t take a penny out of the business. And now, as we approach $1M in lifetime sales in just a few years, we know we did the right thing. But we also know not to stop and settle, we have to keep things fresh and keep improving what we offer for our customers. So there’s plenty of opportunity ahead!

Iris, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

My partner and I developed Inspire Hardware to offer high end curated and custom cabinet hardware to interior designers, cabinet makers, architects, design aficionados, but we wanted to still be accessible to everyday folks who just wanted to upgrade their remodel or project space. All our items are solid brass but we offer them at a reasonable price point relative to other solid brass hardware suppliers. We pride ourselves on our product quality, and when you hold one of our pieces, you can really tell just by the weight and heft, these are not just handles and pulls, these are vibrant focal points to accent your project. We love it when folks actually try our products out and tell us how much better our products look and feel relative to other suppliers out there, it’s something you have to hold to truly experience.

What’s been the most effective strategy for growing your clientele?

We don’t try to sell to everyone, not everyone wants to buy brass hardware after all. And also, even if we did sell to everyone, how often do you need to replace your cabinet hardware. So we decided we would be a retailer for the masses, but we would specifically target members of the trade. Interior designers LOVE our products, and they can be repeat customers for us, so we actually tailored our business to cater to members of the trade. We built a trade program, offering our members 15% off our products. We also collect names and emails of leads, contact information, the normal stuff. But we don’t really use email, our business is a personalized business. So while we do leverage Google Ads to reach the general population, where we really like to focus is building relationships with members of the trade, understand what their needs are, and see if we can help them grow. They come back for their next project, we get good word of mouth, and the cycle repeats itself.

How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?

Initially when we just got started, it was hard to get the products we wanted. MOQs were high, costs were not great, and we couldn’t even get our own packaging. This led us to just try to fill the store with what we could afford and then see what worked. It was a good strategy as our initial budget was very modest, and over time, we found some clear winners and some lame ducks. We culled through the underperformers and keyed in on a few products that were really working for us. But we were having quality issues with two suppliers of one of our biggest sellers. It was terrible, at one point we were rejecting over 40% of some products we received from our suppliers. In one shipment of 300 items, nearly every item was flawed and when we told this to our supplier he said “There were 40 good ones in there.” We didn’t know what was worse, that he knowingly shipped us 260 bad products or that it might have always been that way. Our margins were dying with all the QC rejections, and we couldn’t even keep our inventory in stock for our customers. We realized it couldn’t go on. We ditched the two suppliers, realizing that at least 50% of our inventory would now need to come off the site. But we had to do it, if you can’t promise quality to your customer, they won’t return. So we pulled the plug on those two, renewed our commitment to quality first, and found a new set of suppliers who could work with the quality standards we insisted upon.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.inspirehardware.com
• Instagram: https://instagram.com/inspire_hardware
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/InspireHardware/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/80224293/
• Twitter: https://x.com/InspireHardware
• Other: https://www.pinterest.com/inspirehardware/

Image Credits

All credits are ours