Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Wilson Carter. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Wilson, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. So let’s jump to your mission – what’s the backstory behind how you developed the mission that drives your brand?
Start small.
Winter 2019. I was broke, so broke. Eating rice and beans in my tiny Hollywood apartment broke. I had published a novel a couple of years earlier and had moved to Los Angeles to try and make my novel a feature film. Leaving my family, friends, and girlfriend behind. I had failed miserably. Every job I applied for wouldn’t even give me an interview. My confidence had never been lower. But I had an idea.
I wanted a small charger that would fit in my wallet. I was sick of my phone dying and having to ask to borrow a charger. I had originally had the idea in college when my girlfriend’s phone died while she was out. But every engineer I talked to said it was impossible. “We can’t make it that small.” I heard over and over. But I kept trying and after a few years eventually found a manufacturer who would give it a shot.
I’ll never forget the feeling of holding that first prototype in my hand. The sleek metallic finish, the way the logo shined when the light hit it just right. I went with the name clutch because it means success in a critical moment. Which is what I personally needed and the idea behind its use case. It also ended up being the name of a woman’s handbag but I didn’t know that at the time!
I took some photos and made some videos with a friend of mine and put together an Indiegogo campaign. This is how it’s done, right? You make a crowdfunding campaign and boom money starts flowing in! Wrong. No sales. I did not even know what an email list was back then. So to drive traffic I text every person in my phonebook a little message and the link to the site in case they were interested. It did the job, we raised about $3,000! I was pumped. It was enough to put the down payment for our first 1,000 units. The rest I would end up putting on 0% APR credit cards. Terrifying and foolish in hindsight. I do not recommend it.
Building trust by partnering with larger brands.
When the units arrived I personally shipped out all of our presales with handwritten thank you notes. But now I had to sell the rest of them because I was in debt. I had burned the boats, there was no turning back. So the cold emailing began. I reached out to every publication I could find, small and large. Whoever would write about us was great. We just needed to drive free traffic to our website. I also engaged with large pages on Instagram. This was the strategy that got us started since we had no money for ads, nor did we know how to run them. The more press we got, the easier it became to get more. Building these relationships with media companies and displaying positive reviews built trust with people who had heard about us and resulted in additional purchases.
Despite this, we were on the brink of bankruptcy. Every month was a fight to survive. I had mistaken our product as being men oriented because it was wallet sized and was working with NFL athletes to get the word out. While fun for me it was not producing sales. It was months later I would learn most of our customers were women.
We needed a big win. I kept cold emailing. By the grace of God, Unbox Therapy answered. They featured us on their YouTube channel for free. It got over a million views and sold out our inventory, allowing us to reload. Ultimately, this strategy landed us partnerships with Good Morning America and the Home Shopping Network. We had a problem though.
Evolution not revolution.
The portable charger market is a very competitive space. And every business book I have read (Zero to one by Peter Thiel is amazing) says to stay away from those markets. It’s true, but there is always an exception and sometimes an evolutionary product has its advantages over a revolutionary product. It’s easier for a consumer to understand something they are familiar with rather than something completely new. And it’s easier to produce an evolutionary product when you are working with limited resources. Our evolution was the size, design, and the fact that we attached the cord for convenience.
Back to the problem, some of our chargers were getting hot. This is normal in all electronics but because clutchs were so thin, you could feel it more. They didn’t have the extra components like a phone does to shield the consumer from the heat. It scared customers, completely understandable. So we redesigned clutch and even got to add some more power and LED indicators for better functionality. Another evolution. V2 worked much better and has gotten us to where we are today. And I am excited to share that V3 will be available in October 2022. Another evolution.
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?
Start small.
Winter 2019. I was broke, so broke. Eating rice and beans in my tiny Hollywood apartment broke. I had published a novel a couple of years earlier and had moved to Los Angeles to try and make my novel a feature film. Leaving my family, friends, and girlfriend behind. I had failed miserably. Every job I applied for wouldn’t even give me an interview. My confidence had never been lower. But I had an idea.
I wanted a small charger that would fit in my wallet. I was sick of my phone dying and having to ask to borrow a charger. I had originally had the idea in college when my girlfriend’s phone died while she was out. But every engineer I talked to said it was impossible. “We can’t make it that small.” I heard over and over. But I kept trying and after a few years eventually found a manufacturer who would give it a shot.
I’ll never forget the feeling of holding that first prototype in my hand. The sleek metallic finish, the way the logo shined when the light hit it just right. I went with the name clutch because it means success in a critical moment. Which is what I personally needed and the idea behind its use case. It also ended up being the name of a woman’s handbag but I didn’t know that at the time!
I took some photos and made some videos with a friend of mine and put together an Indiegogo campaign. This is how it’s done, right? You make a crowdfunding campaign and boom money starts flowing in! Wrong. No sales. I did not even know what an email list was back then. So to drive traffic I text every person in my phonebook a little message and the link to the site in case they were interested. It did the job, we raised about $3,000! I was pumped. It was enough to put the down payment for our first 1,000 units. The rest I would end up putting on 0% APR credit cards. Terrifying and foolish in hindsight. I do not recommend it.
Building trust by partnering with larger brands.
When the units arrived I personally shipped out all of our presales with handwritten thank you notes. But now I had to sell the rest of them because I was in debt. I had burned the boats, there was no turning back. So the cold emailing began. I reached out to every publication I could find, small and large. Whoever would write about us was great. We just needed to drive free traffic to our website. I also engaged with large pages on Instagram. This was the strategy that got us started since we had no money for ads, nor did we know how to run them. The more press we got, the easier it became to get more. Building these relationships with media companies and displaying positive reviews built trust with people who had heard about us and resulted in additional purchases.
Despite this, we were on the brink of bankruptcy. Every month was a fight to survive. I had mistaken our product as being men oriented because it was wallet sized and was working with NFL athletes to get the word out. While fun for me it was not producing sales. It was months later I would learn most of our customers were women.
We needed a big win. I kept cold emailing. By the grace of God, Unbox Therapy answered. They featured us on their YouTube channel for free. It got over a million views and sold out our inventory, allowing us to reload. Ultimately, this strategy landed us partnerships with Good Morning America and the Home Shopping Network. We had a problem though.
Evolution not revolution.
The portable charger market is a very competitive space. And every business book I have read (Zero to one by Peter Thiel is amazing) says to stay away from those markets. It’s true, but there is always an exception and sometimes an evolutionary product has its advantages over a revolutionary product. It’s easier for a consumer to understand something they are familiar with rather than something completely new. And it’s easier to produce an evolutionary product when you are working with limited resources. Our evolution was the size, design, and the fact that we attached the cord for convenience.
Back to the problem, some of our chargers were getting hot. This is normal in all electronics but because clutchs were so thin, you could feel it more. They didn’t have the extra components like a phone does to shield the consumer from the heat. It scared customers, completely understandable. So we redesigned clutch and even got to add some more power and LED indicators for better functionality. Another evolution. V2 worked much better and has gotten us to where we are today. And I am excited to share that V3 will be available in October 2022. Another evolution.
Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?
see story
How did you put together the initial capital you needed to start your business?
see story
Contact Info:
- Website: clutchcharger.com
- Instagram: wilsoncarter3
- Twitter: imwilsoncarter3