We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Nikolai Puchlov a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Nikolai, appreciate you joining us today. We’d love to have you retell us the story behind how you came up with the idea for your business, I think our audience would really enjoy hearing the backstory.
My wife and I owned Seattle Kettlebell Club, a Kettlebell class based gym.
Adoption of kettlebells for new members was challenging because the current kettlebell options were uncomfortable and awkward.
When covid closed our gym for lockdowns I vowed to reopen with a better kettlebell.
We used our free time to design and patent our dream kettlebell.
A kettlebell that was comfortable, safe, could be used in multiple ways, performed better than anything else and was made in the USA.
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
As a personal trainer who was heavily into power lifting I injured my back in 2012.
Kettlebells helped me rehab that injury.
I fell in love with the functionality of kettlebells and began using them with all of my clients.
In 2014 I opened my owen kettlebell based gym, created and created a kettlebell sport team.
By 2019 we had the largest kettlebell gym and #1 kettlebell team in the world.
But then covid happened and in-person training disappeared.
We pivoted to online training and designing our own kettlebell.
By the time lockdowns were lifted we were already so heavily involved in online and kettlebell production we decided to focus on that for the immediate future.
Bringing the kettlebells to maeket and keeping manufacturing in the USA has been the biggest challenge of our lives but we love it.
We are proud to be the best kettlebells on the market because we are designed and manufactured by the end user.
We’re also proud to be the only competition legal kettlebells manufactured in the USA
We’d really appreciate if you could talk to us about how you figured out the manufacturing process.
Yes we manufacture our own products.
It was important for us to have our kettlebells made domestically so we could have it done the way we wanted.
We had no experience in manufacturing of any kind.
I started by googling foundries an making phone calls.
I knew nothing of this business and had to learn on the job.
Most foundries didn’t want to work with us because our order volumes were too small or their costs were too high.
The foundries that did want to work with us initially were small and over promised and under delivered.
As our business has grown we’ve been able to attract larger foundries, but not without a lot of trial and error and long lead times.
We initially did all the finishing and fulfillment our selves and finding companies to do it for has provided the same challeges.
It would really be helpful to have someone who knows the industry to to point you in the right direction and to also give you realistic expectations as opposed to what the sales team tells you.
Be prepared to spend a lot of money and do lots of traveling
Have you ever had to pivot?
When covid shut down our successful gym, we had to switch to online classes and manufacturing our own kettlebells.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://Prokettlebell.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/pro_kettlebell/profilecard/?igsh=MXRvczBqejd6aWRxMw==
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/share/1Arr9wf6X3/?mibextid=LQQJ4d
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nikolaipuchlov?utm_source=share&utm_campaign=share_via&utm_content=profile&utm_medium=android_app
- Twitter: https://x.com/pro_kettlebell?t=h9anarYxiuNqLGmWgUft7Q&s=09
- Youtube: https://youtube.com/@prokettlebellworkouts?si=KUt7LO2-a6B_8gMJ
