Who are you and what business did you start?
I’m Ryan Stauffer, and I started Levrack.
We started it, alongside a couple of friends, in 2016. Today, we have twelve employees and ship product to every state across the country.
We are in a dozen different markets – from ranging from residential garages to commerical warehouses. We’ve been in health care, military, public safety, and so on.
The product that started here on our farm has really grown into a bunch of different uses – people have a need for efficient storage, and we’re selling product to a broad range of markets and applications.
It’s kind of insane to even think about – we’ve even started to sell into professional athletic equipment rooms (like the Washington Wizards and Baltimore Orioles).
Even Tesla and SpaceX are buying product. We’re not exactly sure how they’re how they’re using it, but often its in tool cribs or for quick access to parts. It’s being used creatively across the board.
It’s been seven years of it really being a full-fledged deal, and we’ve come a long ways – but our product is still very similar to where we started.
What was your background?
I grew up on a farm in southeast Nebraska. We have a pretty good-sized corn and soybean farm, and I had the opportunity to come back to the farm after college.
Agriculture and farm production have a lot of similarities to the entrepreneurship world – I think farmers have to figure stuff out on their own, ensure their business survives, diversify their operation, and be creative – it’s is really impressive to me.
I grew up around that entrepreneurship mentality, especially from my Dad.
Our farm wasn’t the same as a traditional family farm – we were always doing something different.
He had an attitude of always looking for opportunities, which made it attractive for me to come back after college.
For school, I bounced around. I went to junior college in Kansas, then went to the University (of Nebraska) for a year, and then ended up going back down actually into an entrepreneurship program at Mcpherson College in Kansas.
In college, I definitely was trying to seek out people that had different experiences; people that that were starting things and being creative.
Starting your own thing was always attractive to me – not in the sense of freedom or anything else, but just the fact that there are so many opportunities out there.
I was soaking up the stories of people that have started things in the past. And I knew going back to the farm would give me a place to also start something of my own. Even though the plan was to come back to the farm, from the beginning, I was always interested in entrepreneurship outside of agriculture.
For me, there’s gotta be some availability to, like, to still create. It’s not just gonna be the family farm for me.
Something not so isolated
And furthermore, people are always important to me. Relationships are important.
There’s not a lot of talk about how lonely row crop farming can be. You can be pretty isolated in your own world.
So the desire to interact with people was always something that I wanted – I could get that through business. I intentionally left space to search for something. I didn’t know what it was gonna be, and I certainly didn’t intend for it to be this.
“We are setting out to sell shelves for a living.” – was never thought.
So long story short, I got my degree and came back to farm.
How do you come up with the idea?
So it started with one of my friends from college.
We lived together for a little bit and he graduated with a Mechanized Systems Degree. After college he was working for a company in Lincoln, but unfortunately he got furloughed from his position.
He didn’t really know what to do next. He actually took another job in the meantime, but quit after a week. He just was like, “I hate this.”
I was talking to him, and said “why don’t you come out to the farm?”
We had bought this new building for the farm, and had some offices and rooms that we were remodeling.
I told him, “If you wanna not be miserable and just sit in your house all day, why don’t you come out for a month? Just work from here, whatever, continue your job search.”
“And we’ve got trying to figure out a better way to store parts out here. So we can look at that together.”
That’s how it started.
We started specifically looking at ideas for our own storage in the shop.
Standing underneath some metal scaffolding, we talked about how we loved the idea of a mobile shelfing concept.
We had both been on a tour of the Athletic Department in University of Nebraska where they have huge mobile storage systems.
We started thinking along those lines – that type of mobile storage would be valuable to anybody.
And so kind of came up with the concept around mobile shelving that would fit into the scaffolding framework that the shop already used.
It was a pretty quick, semi-simple product idea.
But, after doing some research, we couldn’t find this type of storage concept being presented at the consumer level in any way. There was our opportunity.
Go to work
And so we’re like, “I guess the next thing to do is try to try to get one built.”
We had a working prototype built in like 30 days, and then started doing patent searches. We got a initial preliminary patent, and then within 6 months filed for full patent status.
It was a very fast, I mean, considering we went from like zero to prototype in like a month.
We had another buddy who was a good welder, and we just kinda went to work on prototypes. It actually took over our shop.
We bought an iron worker, another welder, and invested in a few initial tools we didn’t already have on the farm.
That’s the thing about our situation. The farm provided us a nice soft place to start; we had a lot of the tools to get it going and lots of people coming in and out of the shop.
That’s how we created the first concept and acutally the first dozen or so units got sold. Today we send out some of the fabrication so it doesn’t look so farmer built, but the first ones were all built in the shop.
That was basically our foundation for what became became Levrack going forward.
How did you go about validating the idea? How did you know there was a need?
When you’re on the farm, especially in our area, people trying to sell you stuff are coming in the door all the time.
So we were able to slowly see people’s intrigue in our new product. Building the shelves took up our entire entire shop. And so it was kind of a neat, soft launch into people seeing and experiencing the product for the first time.
They ended up being a lot of our early customers – the people we knew who would come in and try to sell seed, chemical, and farm implements. They were seeing something that they could use right away in their shop. Agriculture was our launch point and it was a unique opportunity that we had.
That was for sure was a great way to start. It not only helped us get the word out there, but also to get some assurances that this was a good idea; That we had a good product.
I think it’s important to get that assurance. Its really hard to create or find direct input. That part can’t be stressed enough for us to know we had an opportunity.
The other part is that we really looked, and couldn’t find a product like ours in the market – and it was kinda baffeling. Still is. It’s crazy to us.
Patent Process
We had it patented within six months of starting, and we had to learn how to do it whole process.
A.J. my partner, had some experience with it in his other job, so he kind of knew the process, which was helpful.
But we didn’t have a great patent attorney locally, so we kind of knew we had to go find someone.
That’s when the whole networking piece became important. It was like somebody was attached somebody else, or their brother had a product and told us to use this attorney, so we go there, and talk to them, and so forth.
I mean, we’ve had to learn absolutely everything that we’ve done here.
Our previous knowledge really didn’t prepare us for anything that we were doing or have done to this point. That was a learning experience and still is to this day.
What was like when you made that first sale?
One thing that’s interesting to look back on, at first we pigeon-holed ourselves into one single size. It was the size of the existing racking in our farm shops – in our heads it was just like, ‘yup, they’re all gonna be this size, this tall, and this wide.’
We have like 100 Sku’s now, and its funny that at the time we thought it was going to be one size for everything.
I think our first customer was a local farmer. We started selling them to our friends and family who saw it and said, ‘I need that in my shop.’
So we would build them to order and go from there, but we were almost apologetic for how simple it was.
But it still was transforming their spaces. And they loved the story.
Interesting problems
I remember when our website went live in September of that first year. Soon after we had a guy from Colorado, call us, and want to buy one.
He was asking all these questions we hadn’t really thought about yet – like, how we would ship it to them?
But those types of problems were super interesting – it soon became a logistics thing. We were starting to build crates to ship stuff, but realized it’s alot cheaper if we just buy a truck and trailer, and run it out there ourselves – then figure the rest out later.
Those things are cool and it’s crazy to think about. It’s very entrepreneurial – solve this problem we have in front of us, and then go to work.
What did you do uniquely in the market? How did you grow?
We could have went the Grainger or Uline route – where we whitelabel the product and people don’t care about the brand. This would be peopel that don’t care about the color or anything; they care about what the product does.
And that’s fine and great.
But we committed to wanting to build brand behind our product.
We want really good customer service when people talk to us.
We want to create almost like a lifestyle brand. A feeling that you get get when you buy our product – it’s this certain level of quality. We wanted that to be important and that set us apart.
You can go buy a shelf anywhere, but when you buy our product it’s a brand.
We’ve been super fortunate through the people that we’ve worked with. We’ve built this network of people who talk about our product, without being prompted – and it’s alot of people with big voices.
In the automotive world I was sending out emails and phone calls to the likes of Jay Leno and some NASCAR teams and people with automotive TV shows.
And you just get one out of 50 emails, to say, ‘yea this is awesome, I need this.‘
And in most cases, typically you’d get treated like a sponsor – they’d be like, “we’ll take your products and it’s gonna cost you X for us to talk about it.”
But for us, it’s always been, “We just want your product and we’ll do video, we’ll do whatever you want. We just want the product.“
And so we’re unique in that sense. And even today we still have people seeing our product for the first time, which is cool. And for a market like automotive, the world is small and there’s alot of eyes on the products.
We’ve had time to build a firm foundation for the company. From a process standpoint, things like order fulfillment, and logistics are still things that we’re improving on. But we wanted to make sure we had that foundation in place.
We still don’t even have a sales team. We’re kind of setting up some dealers right now – we have a long list people that wanna wanna sell our product for us.
But, we’re staying busy based on what we’ve created in the marketplace and what’s coming in is pretty heavy. And so it’s a good place to be.
Tell the story
Having people look at shelving a different way was big for us.
Like, it could have just been ‘yup, here’s a shelf.’
But we get to say, here’s a shelf, and here’s who’s using it, here’s how they’re using it, and here’s how it makes your life better. Thinking about it in a different way – even though it’s a simple product
We don’t market specifically into industrial commercial spaces. Most of our marketing is telling stories of people that are using our product in a creative way.
We have a shelf, right? It’s not anything like super sexy or super high tech. Especially in a world where the startup language is all about how you can scale, and working on that’s something that’s gonna make a lot of money really fast.
We had a unique product, and we decided serve people that still, like, make stuff.
People that build stuff. They are artisans, they still value their space and they are still creating.
We worked a lot with guys from the DIY space all the way to high-end automotive restoration people – which led us to access to Jay Leno.
It was always more about, “hey, let’s, let’s tell the story of their space, what they do, and how our rack helps accomplish that.”
It’s an interest in how our products fits into their daily life.
Did You Ever Have Any Oh Crap Moments?
I think there’s a phase when the whole thing feels like that – when every turn is a problem we have to figure out.
One of the first issues was trying to figure out how to ship the product – it was something we didn’t consider. And it was a good ‘oh crap moment’ – we had a product that people wanted and were excited about. It was always at least in the back of my mind, like how are people going to receive this?
Then the next thing was how to we scale this? That was probably the biggest constant thought.
We have something people are interested in, now we have to execute on that.
How do we scale it?
It’s still a thought now. Every day, as you take those steps into the next levels – whether it’s revenue goals or product goals.
It could have just stayed a farm hobby, but we were thinking about how to actually grow into a company. How can we make it a reality? And what does that mean personally for us?
There’s a lot of those ‘oh crap’ moments. Identifying issues and looking for solutions is a lot of the job.
What Were Some Of The Biggest Lessons You’ve Learned Along The Pathway Of Building? What Would You Tell New Business Builders?
I think there’s a misconception that everyone knows there’s a certain way to do things – and there’s not.
You can stick to what you want. Hold onto what is meaningful to you. Doesn’t matter if it’s negotiations, or hiring, or working with vendors, or whatever, you can do what matters to you.
Don’t give that up right away. Don’t be afraid to stick to your guns.
We got into an operating agreement early that was not favorable to us. We found out about six months after we signed it. We were lucky enough to get out of it, but it’s that type of stuff that you just don’t have experience in doing.
It could have been a lot tougher, but we saw the writing on the wall and got out. That was probably the biggest thing – stick into your guns on that stuff.
And a lot of it is: if it feels right, stick to it, and go from there.
How Has The Business Changed Your Life? Both Positive And Negative?
The coolest thing about growing a business, and even the coolest part about being an entrepreneur are the relationships that you make.
The interaction with people as you build the community around the product – it really enriches your life, I think.
You can sell a lot of stuff and be super successful, but we’ve changed the most from all the relationships we’ve built. Growing from a team of 2 to 15 people; those relationships with employees and the people we’ve brought in are super cool.
It’s a major part of why I keep doing it and how it’s changed my life for the better, for sure.
There are personal issues as you build. My family has grown from zero to four kids during the lifespan of Levrack.
We started the company after about one year of marriage. It started as something we just were ‘kicking around,’ and then it quickly became part of the story of our life, and is going forward.
It also changed my day to day and my work life. I went from a farmer with a seasonal job, right? My winters were pretty open, because that’s how a farm works, to a business that is year around. (hopefully, that wasn’t the main reason my wife wanted to be with me!)
And as we’ve grown I went from being involved in the farm, to having to take a step back from that. So there have been changes in my life, but it’s been all positive.
It wasn’t the easiest road for sure, but it’s all positive.
What Are Some Of Your Favorite Books, Classes, Or Resources That Have Helped You?
- Donald Miller – His stuff on building a brand has been huge in developing community around our product and the problem we are solving. That’s been one of the biggest influences for me.
- I also learned a lot from McPherson College in Kansas where I finished college. A huge focus of the college was entrepreneurship and I was in their first cohorts. They brought in a bunch of different people throughout the year that really helped. I had those lectures in the back of my head as I built.
Where Can We Find Out More About Your Business?
Lesson Breakdown
1. Start in a market you know.
Ryan found an easy launch pad by starting on his farm and having ag industry professionals as his first customers. It was natural to him since he grew up in the industry and worked in it every day. Finding a product that you can launch in the industry you know best creates an easier road to starting.
What customer group are you already close to, can you start there?
2. Borrow ideas from another market.
Ryan and his co-founder didn’t set out to be inventors. They didn’t try to create something the market had never seen before. They took a short cut by ‘borrowing’ from another market. The shelving unit wasn’t a brand new novel idea – it was simply applied to a new customer base.
Starting a new business doesn’t require you to invent something brand new – a great short cut is to look in other markets for a product or service that you can apply to your desired market.
3. There’s no ‘one way’ to build.
Ryan builds his business how he wants to build it. That’s part of the beauty of entrepreneurship – the business gets to reflect your values and your choices. There’s no ‘right way’ to do it – you get to choose your customers, your employees, and how you approach the market. The market will always determine what works – and there’s room for lots of types of companies.
