We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Mike Katona. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Mike below.

Mike, appreciate you joining us today. What’s the backstory behind how you came up with the idea for your business?

Years back I worked for an advertising agency. Part of my job was to come up with and source really fun swag / promotional products for Fortune 500 companies. In that space there was a ton of what the industry calls “trinkets and trash”. Those are essentially the cheapo $1.00 – $2.00 promotional items brands create that end up in one of your drawers or you can put right in the trash.

I always took great pride and was well known for finding some of the coolest swag items and presenting or delivering them to the end-user in a creative way. Some of my friends outside of the industry saw what I was doing and said “Hey! can I get one of those” or “You should start your own business and make these.” So I did!

While the business is still in its infancy the ride so far has been exciting. We’re constantly planning what’s to come next and I feel like each time we launch a new item we’re told it’s better and more awesome than the last.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

When we started Rocks N’ Roses our original goal was to create unique gift boxes that were expertly curated. Our first gift box was called the “Bourbon Box”. While it didn’t actually contain any Bourbon, it contained some of the coolest bourbon accessories or accompaniments to create the ultimate Old Fashioned drinking experience. The box had a great design and was packed in black and gold crinkle paper to create a fun unboxing experience for the recipient.

Our second gift set was a “golf gift bag”. Instead of spending money printing a box that essentially goes in the trash, we thought it would be creative to use a shoe bag as the vehicle for all the gifts. So we found a high-end shoe bag and in it featured a magnetic golf towel, magnetic phone holder, driver head cover as well as a golf multi-tool all which I designed myself.

Both gift sets ended up being hits and as time went on we had more and more customers asking to buy individual items from the gift sets. So we listened and made it happen!

When we started out a lot of our customers were wives who wanted to buy their husband a cool gift for Valentine’s Day, Father’s Day, a Birthday, or maybe Christmas. Now we’re starting to work with more corporate customers who want to send their client a gift as a sign of appreciation for their business.

Another market we started pursuing was golf pro shops at local courses as well as local country clubs who often give out branded gift sets to participants in their member-guest or club championship tournaments. Items in most pro shops as well as gifts in some tournaments can ben pretty standard or lacking in excitement, so we sought to help shake things up.

We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?

When I started Rocks N’ Roses, I had a full-time job and two little ones. I’d get home from work exhausted, after getting the kids fed and to bed I had little left. However, I had to learn to how to make time to follow my dream. I began waking up early on weekends, listening to podcasts/working on ideas on my drive into work, staying up late and gutting it out on weeknights when I was exhausted. And I still do this quite a bit. However, after one or two small successes (we call them “singles” or “doubles”) you get this sense of excitement and inspiration to make the next launch you do even bigger and better.

Do you sell on your site, or do you use a platform like Amazon, Etsy, Cratejoy, etc?

We sell on our website – www.rocksnroses.com. It was built on Shopify, which is an amazing e-commerce platform. Shopify is great as it has an endless number of back-end tools for sellers while also offering every option your customers could want on the front-end. The front-end experience is nearly identical to every e-commerce experience you’ve ever had, so that helps build credibility and comfortability with your visitors as you’re trying to build your brand.

The only con I would say is the cost. Shopify has a pretty healthy monthly fee and then also takes a percentage of sales.

In regards to other platforms (Amazon, Etsy, Cratejoy, etc.), we’ve explored selling on such platforms, but each seems to have its own downside. Maybe that’ll be something we tackle down the road.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://rocksnroses.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/rocksnroses.com_/

Image Credits

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