On this 24th episode of The E-Comm Show, our host and BlueTuskr CEO Andrew Maff is with Tanner Leatherstein of PEGAI, an artisan leather brand whose goal is to help people make a statement through leather in the most authentic and stylish way possible.
What makes this business an even more admirable brand is its passion for not only serving and crafting the most authentic and stylish leather out there, but as well as its heart for community-building. Understanding the small leather craftsmen’s lack of access to workshops and good quality leather, Tanner sets out learning programs and a YouTube channel to help spread awareness about the industry and in the process, help small artisans to further develop their craft.
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Andrew Maff and Tanner Leatherstein
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About Tanner Leatherstein
Tanner Leatherstein is the CEO and Chief Craftsman at PEGAI whose goal is to help people make a statement through leather in the most authentic and stylish way possible. He started multiple initiatives under the brand such as the Tanner’s Club where he shares entertaining content to people so they can make better purchase decisions moving forward. He also plans to introduce more exciting initiatives this 2022 that could help more people. In everything that he does, he always incorporates his humanitarian side by donating a part of the profits generated from his businesses to help people in need.
Transcript:
00:02
Sometimes is my biggest hope it's going to carry us over because eventually people understand if you're really trying to help them then they come back to your brand and you know they trust you they buy your stuff
00:15
hi this is Adam Dinkes from TANI USA. Hi is Emily Miethner of Travel Cat and Your Cat Backpack.
00:22
This is Tanner Leatherstein with PEGAI. You're listening and you're listening to and you're listening
00:31
Welcome to The E-Comm Show, presented by BlueTuskr. The number one place to hear the inside scoop from other e-commerce experts share their secrets on how they scaled their business and are now living the dream. Now, here's your host, Andrew Maff. Hello,
00:52
everyone and welcome to another episode of The E-Comm Show. I'm your host Andrew Maff. And today I am here with Tanner Leatherstein of PEGAI. Tanner, how're you doing today? Ready for good show?
01:03
Yes, doing great. I'm very excited. Thanks for having me.
01:06
Yeah, I'm super excited to have you on the show. I obviously love the approach that you're taking because I know it's it's got a personal brand side to it. You know, hence, hence why we're calling you leather Stein which is great, which makes me want to rename my last name should be a lot easier. But thank you so much for joining us. Why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself about the guy and we'll go from there. Okay.
01:30
Okay, perfect. Thanks for the opportunity. So yeah, as you said, Tara mother Stein, it's a personal brand that represent my passion for leather and craft. I was born into a tannery family owned tannery my dad got me involved in the business at the age of 1011. So what started as a game, it became a passion. So in five years ago, I started pay guy, the leather crafts brand, going from the tannery and to the end user actually doing stuff at leather that we tend ourselves. They grow very fast. We got great response from people and I confirmed a few hunches I had my entire life people didn't know enough about leather, there was always a little bit of uneasiness when people are shopping for leather goods. They didn't know if they were getting a good deal. You know, it's real, it's not. And that drive me to the initiative that I initiatives that I'm doing today with tennis club. Some other brands that trying to help people understand leather better use it to its best potential. It's a beautiful natural material. And also other craftsmen and hobbyists. There's a huge interest in leather craft these days to explore and have access to good leather to realize their designs their dreams with leather. That's all I'm about. I live breathe and sleep with that. And anything about Lola just asked me
03:03
so Alright, so guys, obviously the big ecommerce store that you know, we're here to discuss, but I know as you mentioned, you have some other stuff you're doing like Tanner's club and I think there's something else as well. Can you tell me a little bit about what what else you got going on besides the guy?
03:17
Yes, so tennis club is the YouTube channel. Mainly it's a YouTube channel. It's any informational free resource for people to learn about leather. Fun Facts, some skits comedies we do with leather leather craft, introducing the terminology around leather tights, I call it leather tainment I came up with that word per se. So we try to entertain you while providing some other information so you become whether savvy The other initiative is called tener Stein, which is our tannery brand now i It's a new brand I'm launching the website this weekend all so it is to have other craftsmen have access to good leather that I had because of my connections in the industry when I was starting to die and I became successful because of that. Good leather crafts start with good leather. So the tenor Stein is the tannery brand I want other craftsmen to have access to good leather which made me successful at the first place with pig guy when I started five years ago I had the connections I had the knowledge to find and source good leather to have good craft made with it and that was key to success getting good response from people but not everybody who gets into leather craft today you know without having any connection or knowledge before have access or knows the way to find good leather assassin you know by the small quantities they need good price. So I want to bring all that access and information available to anybody who's interested in trying something crafting leather to be able to I you know, a little piece of leather affordable piece very quickly, but they can start experimenting with it. Alongside with with tanning knowledge. So that's enter another ecommerce website basically going live serving the other artisans and crafts like piggy, hopefully they can offer more better designs to people enriching the leather experience of the world. You know, that's my end goal. It doesn't matter is the guy doing it or some other better designer do and so I just want to serve them help them do their dreams realize?
05:35
Yeah, so that's what I was gonna ask cuz I was like alright so poor guy he's obviously doing very well. And that's why we're here on the show. We're also starting Tanner Stein, which is essentially going to create competitors for you, is it not yet? Exactly cool, I don't hate it, it's an interesting approach because then you can control them, which is even better.
05:55
The thing is, I don't see as as competition it's, they're actually serving the higher purpose my my end goal is to improving the way world experiences leather. So I am one person and my design team is what there's a small, you know, ability to design certain things with the leather we have access to. But if we open this good leather access to 10s of 1000s of people, better designs will come out better ways better techniques will come out and eventually the end users experience will improve. And along the way we're gonna learn they're gonna learn. So it's it's a collaboration, it's not a competition. Yeah.
06:36
So about guy. One of the interesting things you mentioned is obviously you have like a personal brand that you're building building out. You also have this YouTube channel, which I assume is tied to obviously both, but you don't really hear that very often from ecommerce sellers, right? Like typically, that's a very strong b2b approach. You know, you have your traditional b2b company where your CEO is trying to become like an influencer in the space. And they just put out a ton of content being a thought leader. So it's very interesting that that's an approach that you've taken on the E commerce side that I think is often underutilized. So how did you come up with that idea of going down this personal branding and content route? Well,
07:17
that was a an inspiration came to me a year ago. I don't know why or how I had a trip to Hawaii just for vacation last year around this time, and it was a week long. We took our one year old son, we had a great time. But something happened there. I don't know why location, the time of my life. You know, the points where I am right now. I suddenly had a vision like clarity and my purpose in this life. I was struggling with what I was doing with pig I was trying to give good leather crafts to people. But suddenly that week, it came to me like my life goal here is to help people understand and use leather better. My entire life. People were asking me, Hey, I just got this leather jacket, can you check if it's good, you know, did I pay too much? And you wouldn't believe how many times I get this question whenever my friends learn about my leather enrollment. And this occurred to me now like today, we have this ecommerce internet social media abilities. Now, I can spread this knowledge to people in consumable and entertaining bits. So more people can leverage it if they want to. They become weather savvy to improve their usage of leather, you know, they don't waste their money on subpar leather craft. And in fact, I'm very against big leather brands, which ruined our experience of leather so far by standardizing and mass producing it, taking the character out of it. And I want to tell the story from the small craftsman the authentic natural look of the leather side. So more people has a better idea of what is good instead of just taking you know big budget marketing love that's being sold to them by big brands, versus this small craftsman movement. information only and supporting them ability wise to improve their their ability of using leather. And I just envision myself as their neighborhood cobbler you know if it was 50 years ago, you know, a cobbler in your neighborhood and you trusted them. When you go with a shoe problem. You trusted his knowledge because he was only giving you what is in his best opinion, right? I want to be that guy, the leather guy for the world that they can go to my YouTube channels to just learn my honest opinion about leather.
09:49
So almost you're almost taken, correct me if I'm wrong here but you're almost taking like kind of like the big farm to table movement. You're almost doing like Farm to jacket or to wallet or whatever it is that you're making Correct?
10:05
Exactly. So I actually name it as a movement as well. But it's a movement of small leather craftsmen 10s of 1000s of us taking leather as natural as possible, and crafting with, you know, super diverse base of ideas and imaginations to the end user, versus just save five or 10 major brands doing it the way they want. And in my personal professional opinion, they're ruining the leather entirely, they're there, they're censoring the leather for us because it's profitable that way. So with this interest going in the people as a hobby or as a craft as a garage business, they want to do something with leather, I want to support them as a movement. So we take the big business from the major brands, while enriching the experience of the end user. Interesting. So
11:04
I would imagine with these, you know, there's some serious, big sized leather brands that obviously, you know, of, and I know that that you know, they have the brand recognition, you know, a lot of people, whenever they're thinking of buying something low, they typically end up going at them. And you're obviously bringing a very different movement here. But I can also assume that, that education of you know, basically teaching the consumer have like why they should go to you versus going to one of these big competitor guys. Like how are you able to kind of convey that message and get them to understand like, here's why you want to work with me, as opposed to shopping with, you know, one of the bigger guys.
11:45
So the key points here that I'm against big brands as they simplify it for themselves to make it profitable. We just standardizing leather. As you know, leather is a natural material, it's not standard comes in all kinds of different diseases, different animals, different geographies, climates. So there is no leather like a fabric. It's it's a perfect slate. But that's the beauty of the leather, the entire history of humankind, we embrace leather with its imperfections. That's what makes the leather a characteristic material. When you go to the bigger brands, they don't have ability, at that scale, to embrace this imperfection, they have to buff it off, covered up with heavy makeup. Then it looks like another piece of fabric, it's completely standardized. It's plastic covered on top of the grain. The base is leather, but the top is not anymore. It's plastic. It's super heavy makeup, it's not the authentic connection that I can feel, versus that original letter we started with, they have to do it that way. You can't make millions of wallets with varying grains of leather. Yeah, at scale. That's the only profitable way. And yet when they're doing this, they spend enormous amounts of money in marketing and fashion shows and all that stuff. Trying to tell you how great letter this it's not. They are standardizing it and telling a different story. I want to tell people, the great leather is with its perfections imperfections. That's what makes every piece unique. That's when you get a unique piece like nobody else will have the same item that you just have. As small craftsmen have this ability we don't have, we don't have to make millions of wallets. So we go pick this artisan leather, we work with imperfections, there is a craft side to it. It's not a mass manufacturing method, it brings out the good natural authentic teacher of whether that's, that's what's valuable leather to me. And that's the story I'm trying to tell people make them aware. There's also a different side of the coin as well, what you're buying with some brands is not only leather, its status, you know, you pay $1,000 to bag, what you carry around is, is the status symbol, you can show that you can afford that bag, you're successful you're achieved in your life, that's a different thing. You're you're buying from those brands, if that's the goal, they're serving that goal perfectly. But just so you know, that's not great leather as they say, it's not the greatest leather bag you can buy. There is much more authentic and beautiful leather made by smaller craftsmen. That's worth every penny you will pay.
14:35
So with their ability to do it in bulk versus where you're on almost more of like, I don't want to say custom but theoretically kind of like a custom approach to probably more limited runs Correct? Yes. So if someone went to your website so they go to you know, they go to a guy they pick out an item that they really like is it just you only have x amount of inventory for each thing or is it kind of custom like okay, you've ordered this Now we're going to go make it based on a letter that you
15:02
have available. While we keep making most of our designs from the leathers, we make the the key point making each item unique unique is, we don't go with that kind of finish techniques covering up the leather grain, we we pick as clean leather as possible, because we're working small, we can find that amount of clean leathers in the market, you can't find so much of the best leather because it's like, it's an equal distribution, right? Not every face is super clean, you know, there's leathers with a lot of scars that I can't work with, with my minimally transparent finishes I'm working with. But now, it might scale, you know, hundreds a day, I can find as much as I want. And with that kind of leather I'm using every piece I craft is different, I have a picture on my ecommerce website, but you will never get the same thing when you actually purchase an item. It is how it's going to look like there might be some blemishes, some scratches, some effects, some variations. So that's the kind of uniqueness you will get with smaller craftsmen like myself, versus the big brands, everything, as you see on the website will be delivered to you. And if you're going for that purpose, they serve it greatly and small craftsman doesn't. So
16:23
that's the difference. Where are you able to source your leather from?
16:29
Mainly in Turkey originally where I'm from, and that's what I did Butina any business at all. So most of the row heights are coming from the regional Anatolia, area, heavy steer heights, and probably about 5% of the entire height population is clean enough to make my selection of finishes, the rest 95% has to go through some form of correction, which is going to those bigger brands.
17:02
Okay. So you obviously it met, you know, you mentioned you have the personal brand, you have the content side that you do a lot of but you've surpassed, you know, seven figures you're you know, you're obviously a growing business, which is difficult to scale doing just the content and your branding yourself. What other marketing strategies have you guys started to leverage to kind of start getting your name out
17:25
there? Well, there's not much specific marketing we leverage so far it we use the platforms we started in Etsy, Amazon handmade and our own website. The only marketing we did was basically getting some help from Google Google Shopping and try to capture some search results. We tried some social but not very successfully so far, to be honest. And I'm not very actively marketing these days, I'm more spending my time on creating content in tennis club and informative videos. I think it's it's more beneficial to everybody, like people learn something in return and come back check what we have sometimes the they buy or not. Or at least they learn something. So this is the way I'm exploring right now. And it's pretty new, it's about five, six months old, the tennis club and all it's growing and we're trying to do more content creation faster every day. But that's as much as we did. So far. It's more like organic growth. Wow. So
18:35
as I mentioned, you got over that, you know, that seven figure hurdle, which is always one of the tough things to get over. And so you got over that with you know, kind of just a content approach and your own personal branding there really wasn't too much else outside of that.
18:48
Well the biggest thing was the quality of the leather and the imagery. So I think what really helped us was starting with good leather again, my main motto here is like good leather craft start with good leather. Once people get get the product in their hands, they touch it then they they know when they're happy and they start talking about it their friends come back they come back so that's the biggest moment like word of mouth marketing the the strongest point but we kept improving our visual representation and our E commerce platforms taking better pictures showing the the grain the variations that the color the shades everything in better format helped tremendously because leather is a touch and feel thing and when you're doing this in E commerce, it's really difficult to convey this message like how it's going to feel how it's going to touch. That was the second big impact on top of content marketing. Getting us there. Yeah. So
19:54
that approach got you you know to where you guys are at now. What are you thinking is what you guys need to do in the future to kind of keep everything growing and keep things moving?
20:04
Yeah, that's, that's actually a big question we're trying to tackle now. But I'm very hopeful on the the content. Side right now, tennis club is the biggest time consuming thing in my day. Right now I'm spending more than half of my day, thinking new content, trying new ways to find content ideas or scripts to convey letter formation people in an intern entertaining package, which is not that easy. You know, we were just doing a video actually, I know I'm going around the world finding different new ladders. And I just come up with touchscreen, ability leather for making gloves. So we just made a video using this leather, which has touchscreen ability, you can use your finger on your phone, even on your hands. Now, there's not a go function of a leather glow. So I want to let people know this is something possible that leather to when you're leather, shopping, leather, glow shopping, just pay attention, you can get this thing, even though I don't have a lot of glow offering for my brands yet. I want people to know like this is something out there. When you're paying money, a lot of money to other glow, you better get the best possible thing. If you don't know you might not look for it. So yeah, content is my biggest hope it's gonna carry us over. Because eventually people understand if you really trying to help them, then they come back to your brand. And you know, they trust you they buy your stuff. Yeah.
21:45
Nice. What are some of like? Like, what are some of the struggles that you guys have in this category? Like, I know that, you know, there, you're primarily on the content side, you have these really big guys out there that you're going after that you're fighting up against? So like, what is it you guys are constantly fighting with? Well,
22:08
basically, usually, the craftsmen, like means is a small team, either, you know, one man operation or a family or a few employees, you know, because of the limited resources we have. And E commerce requires a lot of actions, you know, you got to take pictures, you got to take beautiful pictures, you got to communicate all the aspects of the craft, which is touching feel, and you don't have that luxury in the E commerce. So how do you do all that stuff? On top of that, the marketing the social, you know, these are huge workloads for one man or a family team. These were the biggest hurdles, I was lucky enough to build a good team around around my marketing. We're working very hard. But again, no, it's just a small amount of people trying to do a lot a lot of quality work. In a very competitive space leather craft is is competitive. If you're looking at from that perspective, there's 1000s of 10s of 1000s of offerings every day on your social media accounts. And every day. Or Google wherever you go in online shopping perspective. It's hard to come in front of people's attention when they're shopping for it and actually do the conversion. So marketing is tough. And especially when your small team is limited budget, it's much tougher comparison to bigger brands.
23:39
Yeah. Are you only available on your website? Or do you sell on other way? Are you on any like marketplaces or anything like that?
23:46
We do sell on marketplaces, Etsy, Amazon, handmade Amazon, and our own website. Now we're expanding into new markets like New countries. Soon we're going to start in UK. And very soon we're opening sales in Turkey even though we were making most of our stuff in Turkey. We never opened ourselves in Turkey so far, but it's starting there. And soon after that Germany and and Taiwan and Japan gonna come next. Nice.
24:17
What, which of those channels right now? Is your top revenue drivers at your own website? Or is it Amazon or Etsy or one of the other regions you're going into?
24:29
Etsy and Amazon are the bigger ones and time to time they change. This year. Etsy is bigger next year, Amazon gets bigger, so they're kind of going equal. But the constantly growing side taking more share from them is the website. People once they bought Etsy or Amazon, they come back they check our website. We have everything available across platforms, but they eventually buy more from our websites going forward. Yeah, I know
24:59
like hands made is very difficult, like, you know, there's definitely channels that are fantastic for like Amazon handmade and Etsy and all that fun stuff. But how do you anticipate continuing to scale the business? Even if that is something that you want to do? Like? Because? Or do you have to bring on more employees obviously help you with creating different product line? Or do you think you'll eventually, you know, look into having some kind of machinery or what's the thought process through there?
25:28
No, no missionary, I want to expand my team, I have a team of 2530 craftsmen in Turkey, doing our, our grafting in house, like everything we sell is made by our own team, in our workshop in Turkey. So it expands and we actually like it. So the more people as you know, good work opportunity. We have teaching programs, we actually get employees who hasn't done leather work before. And we teach them we give teach them this craft, and eventually, they, they learn occupation going forward for themselves as well. So that's kind of another fun part I enjoy doing, I don't mind expanding the business. And the sustaining growth is basically coming from new product designs, anytime I design a new product, this business group, so whenever I introduced, let's say, I introduced a martial portfolio, which was three years ago, they become a huge seller, and then I introduced a camera strap. A year after that, it becomes a huge seller. So as long as I keep adding more designs into Portfolio business keeps growing and just expanding your categories. serving people with different ways is I think, just ensuring way of growing sales in, in my experience so far.
26:49
Nice. Do you are you currently having any issues? Like all the current you know, supply chain problems? Like is are you shipping everything by boat? Are you doing it by air, what what kind of issues you have with that right now,
27:03
mainly, I'm doing by air and on the air side, we didn't see too much of an increase, there is a price increase on the air cargoes as well, which is our 95% of the shipping method. But we were doing by see the container stuff time to time maybe once or twice a year. But our volumes, it's very costly, you know, building that kind of inventory waiting in two months in the road and all that stuff. But with the COVID and supply chain crisis, the container prices gone up like three times four times of they used to be and that becomes you know, completely illogical at this point. We're not doing that anymore. So that is not a big issue. But there's major issues in the leather industry. You know, the chemical supplies the tannery sides. Yeah. So far, I haven't got any major disruption. I always have enough stock in hand for leathers and all that and with my tannery connections. But I know some people had difficulties replacing the leather they used and all that stuff. Yeah.
28:12
What is it that you would say? Like, what motivates you? Right? Like, it's always interesting to me, like, you know, how's the business growing? What you know, what struggles you're dealing with things like that. But what I find a lot of people never realize is you know, there's there's always a person behind the business. And the the motivation is always very interesting. Like, some people are obviously like financially motivated, others are educationally motivated, and some are just, you know, the drive to not have a boss. So like, everyone's got their own thing. So what is it that motivates you to like, get up, keep making content and, you know, keep trucking along through the leather
28:47
industry. So, I love when I see the impression in people's face when they see a good leather. I present something product and leather, and I tell something about that leather that I know, they didn't know before. They touch the field and they're, they just enlightened. They're like, Oh, I didn't know that. But this feels great. This is, well, I'm going to look forward next time. So this excites me. Just from then on, that person has a different view, different perspective to enjoy leather better in at least one perspective. So that's satisfaction to me and second. Working with leather is not working to me. So that's how my life started. That was a game when I was 1011 years old, and my friends were going to play soccer after school. I was going to tannery making, testing my drum to make myself a leather jacket. That was the game I don't get to play it everyday still. So I started this business five years ago quitting a consulting job in a very nice consulting firm, like super cushy job that my friends told me you're stupid But, and, but I was dying there. Like every day I was going to work I was dying it and since I did that decision just everyday is a is a game day for me. So
30:11
yeah, it's it is always nice to hear the you know the passion for the product is what's driving because you'd be shocked at how many people I've had on the show where they're just like I just you know, I want to exit and I just want to get it over with or they're in a they're in a product line that they're like, I just saw that there wasn't a lot on Amazon, so I made some. I was like, okay, that's Hey, everyone's got their own. So there's nothing wrong with it. Everyone's got their own. Um, but Tanner, really appreciate having me on the show. Rate time. super appreciative. I'd love for you to take a minute. Let everyone know where they can find out more about you more about the guy and everything else you got going on.
30:50
Okay, we'll definitely do that. Thank you for the opportunity. I enjoyed it a lot. Beautiful. Shall Thank you.
30:56
Yeah, thank you. Where can everyone find out more about you guys?
31:00
Oh, sorry. We can really direct them to a couple places. Basically, a tennis club is the place that I want everybody to go subscribe. at their earliest chance shines. We're gonna keep pushing new stuff. And they can learn and have fun with leather over there. But pegye.com is another place which we feature those content and some crafts we do it and tenor Stein comm is where we're going to start selling this leather, two machineries we use as a guide to craft those things. And if you're interested in as a hobbyist or craftsmen go check it out. Let us know how we can help to use leather better or make leather better together. They're cool.
31:46
They're super appreciated. Thank you so much for being on the show everyone who tuned in of course thank you as well make sure to rate review subscribe all that fun stuff on whichever podcast platform you want or YouTube or ecommshow.com But for usual, thanks again and we will see you all next time. Have a good one.
32:03
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