It took years of people asking before Michael finally decided to give it a go.
He made his first mug in college from his Dad’s scrap pile, and immediately it was a hit. People begged him to make and sell more of it. Michael wasn’t really interested in running a big company and honestly didn’t think he could sell the mugs at a price point where anyone could buy them.
But after years of feedback, Michael figured out a way. He’s grown Handlebend to more than six figures in sales and even opened up his own taproom in his local community. Learn how Michael and his Co-founder Matt, started a company from hand-built copper mugs and created a hometown connection along the way.
Who are you and what business did you start?
I’m Michael Stepp. I was not born here, but I claim O’Neill, Nebraska as my hometown. I moved here in the 6th grade, grew up in O’Neill, and this is where I co-founded my company, Handlebend.
We build copper mugs, by hand and we sell them all over the world.
What was your background? How did you come up with the idea?
I’m a small-town, Nebraska boy. I went to college at the Univerity of Nebraska and like many students, I was just trying to figure out what I wanted to do.
Small-Town lifestyle
My Dad ran his own HVAC and commercial refrigeration company his whole life and raised us in a small town.
Even though I didn’t know what I wanted in a career, I did realize that I wanted a certain lifestyle. Whatever I did, I knew that I wanted something similar to what I grew up in: a small-town, rural American lifestyle. I appreciated much of what a small town had given me, and that’s what I was seeking.
So the simple answer to that was to work with Dad in his company. I graduated from the University of Nebraska with a business degree, and enrolled in trade school to become an HVAC technician.
The first mug.
The idea to make copper mugs was pretty haphazard.
Prior to graduating in 2008, I was living with 5 of my college buddies. One of my roommates was my eventual co-founder, Matt Dennis. Matt and I go way back, going to grade school and high school together.
During those college years, Moscow Mules and the copper mug were resurging and becoming trendy. A lot of local bars were starting to carry copper mugs.
Most of the time, If you wanted a mule, you had to leave your ID because so many people were stealing the copper mugs.
My roommates and I decided it would be cool to get a set of mugs for our house, and we ordered some off of Ebay. I think they were like 45 dollars a piece (which was a lot of money for a bunch of college dudes).
We got them, opened them up, and felt like we’d been cheated. The mugs weren’t copper. They were stainless steel with this faux-copper plating on the outside. We were like ‘These are a rip off’ and sent them back.
We still wanted mugs, so I went looking elsewhere.
Since my dad was an HVAC tech, we always had a pile of spare copper lying around.
So I was back home for a weekend, and I just sorta started dinking around and chopping some of it up, and ended up making a very rudimentary mug.
It took me several tries, and most of the weekend to get it to not leak, but I had one built.
It certainly wasn’t pretty, but I was proud of it.
It was handbuilt and super unique. It was something I knew no one else had.
Matt’s Mug
I took it back to Lincoln, and immediately all the roommates wanted one.
I said absolutely not. This one took me all weekend to make, and it was mine.
My buddy Matt kept prodding me. So I told him, if you want one, you can have one, but you have to make it yourself. So the next weekend, we went back home and ended up building him a set of 4 that all matched.
We took those to Lincoln and partied all year with them.
It was kinda like our party trick – look at these cool mugs we made ourselves. We got asked about them a lot, and had many requests to make more. We refused all of them – these were just something cool that we wanted for ourselves. We even took them on vacations and trips.
What were your first steps to starting the business and coming up with your product?
A few years after college, we were in the stage of life where all our friends were starting to get married.
We decided to relent on the hoarding of mugs and would go back home to make a custom set for a friend who was getting married. It was a great gift to give – something unique and something they had been asking for, for many years.
So over the next few years, we slowly started getting our mugs all over the country. We make a set for a friend in Omaha, a set for a friend in Houston, then a set in Denver.
We started getting even more requests and feedback.
Our friends would set them out for a party, and get inundated with questions about what these were and where they could get their own set. I remember a call from a friend saying ‘My brother-in-law loves these and he wants a set. He’ll pay you whatever you want.’
We kept hearing ‘Everyone loves these mugs, you really gotta start building them.’
Will people buy these?
I really wasn’t interested in starting a business with them for two main concerns:
1. I really don’t think we can charge enough money for these. Making a mug like this out of raw copper was super labor-intensive. It took me nearly a day to make one mug. And copper is not cheap.
2. One of the things that I loved about them, was how exclusive and unique they were – if we started selling them, would that go away?
So this went on for a couple of years until finally, Matt talked me into starting.
First steps
The first thing I did was take about a year to refine our processes of making the mug. If we were going to take a go at this, I knew that we had to build some processes. We had to turn this from a long drawn-out crafting of each mug to more of an assembly line operation.
We knew they would always be handbuilt, but we customized some tools and reworked a few processes to speed up the time it took to make a set of mugs.
When we had that worked out, we spent $1500 on getting a functional website built – and that was a lot of money for us.
At this point, it was time to really get started – and it felt a bit crazy to us.
We had no idea if it would work, and honestly, no sense that it would grow to where it is today.
We launched the website in the fall of 2017.
How did you go about validating the business idea? How did you know there was a need?
It was definitely a leap of faith when we got started.
But what helped is that Matt and I had said no to requests for so long. For years we had been making these for family and friends and kept getting people interested in the product.
We figured there has to be at least some demand for these, simply from the amount and type of feedback we had gotten for years.
Price
When we started, we had zero confidence in our price.
I knew that we had to price our mugs very high, not only because of how much labor was required but also because I had no interest in creating a commodity product. I wanted this to be something cool and unique.
Even though I had a good reason for it, the price was an internal barrier. It was still one of the hardest things I had to get over.
Everyone thought these mugs were cool. People would come up to me in the local grocery store, say how cool the mug was and how great what we were doing was – and then they would ask me the price. I would duck my chin and be partially embarrassed to tell them it was $100 per mug.
I knew it had to be at this price to validate our business, but it took me quite a bit of training and reflection to not feel bad about it.
Our mugs were worth that price. I had done the calculations, and if we ever were going to have a chance at this, we needed to be at that level.
But it did seem excessive. Internal validation took a while. It took me some time to have the confidence that our product was worth this and to realize it didn’t have to be for everyone.
If that’s too much money for someone, that’s fine. But we had to bet on the fact that there was a broader portion of the world that found that level of value in our product.
Dreams
And really when we were starting, we didn’t have plans for much more than a side hustle.
We just kinda decided that this could be a cool side gig that we can use to buy some things that we want. You know, if we can cash flow a cheap website, pay for our cost of goods, and make a little side money, that’s all it needed to be right?
After we launched and started growing, it became something we never dreamed it would be.
Fast forward to today, and we find ourselves in a 14,000 sq ft building that we purchased and renovated. A team of eight full-time employees, shipping products all over the world. It’s a lottery scenario for us.
What does your business do uniquely in the market? How did you grow?
That’s kind of like the million-dollar question for us, and we spend a lot of time looking backward at what has been working. We’ve tried a lot of stuff, and we’ve tried our best not to be ‘salesy’ in our approach.
Early PR
We were in business for about eight or nine months when the Omaha World-Herald reached out to do a story on us. It was part of a series they were doing on Nebraska small businesses, and they wanted to feature us.
We didn’t reach out to them, so someone local must have told them.
After the article came out, we had a huge jump in sales. We sold more mugs in three days than we had in the previous nine months. And that got more of our mugs ‘out in the wild’ as we like to say.
From there, our best sales approach has been the mug itself.
$100 Mugs
People are paying a lot of money when they buy a Handlebend Mug – so when they open it, it has to be instantly seen as worth it. We focus a lot on that experience and providing support for the product.
We always want our mugs to exceed their expectations. If it does that, then people want to use the mug, show it off, and bring it out at parties. Then the mug sells itself – people are wowed by it, google our company, and we grow.
So getting mugs ‘out there in the wild,’ and impressing with our product is the best strategy we’ve found.
I describe it as a slow burn. It’s tough to plan much of a strategy around that, but it’s worked for us. I can’t name a certain social media push or marketing campaign that’s been a silver bullet.
We’ve focused on creating a really, really, good product, and then being true to ourselves.
Selling the experience
The way we think is that we aren’t selling copper mugs – we are selling a lifestyle. We sell the notion of good times, being with your friends, sitting down, and being intentional. Being with loved ones, telling old stories, and creating new memories. Our mug is an investment in that.
We are a Midwest company, with Midwest adventures and a Midwest lifestyle.
The world keeps getting busier and busier, we want to represent being intentional about being with each other. That’s the story we’ve tried to tell.
As far as strategy, we try to film ourselves doing just that and then making it as visible as possible.
And we’ve had lots of good luck along the way. Thankfully we’ve been in a position to take advantage of the luck, and it’s worked out great for us so far!
What were some of the biggest lessons you’ve learned along the pathway of building? What would you tell new business builders?
The best thing that’s worked for us, is to have a product of value. That’s number one. If you have a really good product – something you put your heart and soul into – everything else will fall into place.
We’ve spent lots of money on marketing companies and trying to do what a ‘normal’ online business would do. But it hasn’t worked for us.
The number one lesson we’ve learned is to double down on the quality of your product and have a vision for that product. If you do that, the product will sell itself.
Did you ever have any, Oh Crap, Moments? Maybe you thought the business wasn’t going to make it?
Yeah, we’ve had a few of those. The biggest one was when we purchased our building.
We had been operating for about three years and were in desperate need for more space. We were still building and shipping everything out of a makeshift workshop in the corner of my dad’s shop.
We found a deal on a building in the downtown area of O’Neill.
The only thing was, the building was falling apart.
But we got some local funding to remodel it, and by doing some of it ourselves, we started to bring it back to life. The building is about 14,000 sq ft, and we only really needed about 1/4 of it for a mug-making shop.
What do we do with the rest of it? We wanted to be a bigger part of our hometown, so we put together a business model that would use the rest of the space for our community. We came up with a plan to put in a taproom and partnered with a brewery from a nearby town to operate it.
So we spend about a year working on this. We are remodeling the old building – doing some of it ourselves, working with some local contractors, and building out the space.
We are about three months from the grand opening of our new building. Late at night, Matt and I were working on the building, and the owner of the partner brewery walked in. He tells us that he can no longer join in on the deal, and effectively bails.
It was a gut punch.
We were only a couple of months from opening. We had just lost our rental income (which was a significant part of the business model for the building) and even more so, we were disappointed that the community was losing this. Our building sits right on Main Street, with a big open window. We were very excited about opening a community space, and now on opening day, it was going to be empty.
It was 11 at night, and Matt and I decided to go home and regroup in the morning.
I was driving home in the dark, thinking about the huge problem we were in. I live about five miles into the country, so the sky is very dark as I cruise into the country. Suddenly I saw this huge shooting star beam across the sky in front of me – it was the biggest I had ever seen.
And I remember in that moment, I felt very calm. I thought to myself, this is okay. I don’t know how it’s going to be okay, but it will be.
The next morning I went to talk to Matt. He shared a similar feeling. He said when he left last night he felt very calm about our situation as well, like all the freakout was gone.
So we sat down and made a plan.
We are gonna start our own bar.
We are just gonna run the thing. We’ve never run a bar. We have had no interest in running a bar. But over the next couple of months, we decide to go for it and make a plan.
Looking back, it was a huge blessing. Our bar is an absolute asset to our brand and story.
Our bar doesn’t offer something for everyone, we only have a few drinks, but we do those drinks really, really well.
We’ve created a gathering space for our community, and it’s allowed us to lean into everything behind the brand of our copper mugs. We are part of the community and the community is us. Instead of a different brewery having its name on the building, the whole building is Handlebend.
That was a good lesson for me – looking back, it would have been this huge loss if I had hit the big red panic button and quit. If we remain calm, we can find a solution. Just roll up your sleeves, dig in, and get to work!
When you reflect on building your enterprise, how has it changed your life? Positive or negative?
The biggest change for me has been going from working with my friend to having a company of people. Knowing now that I need to take care of a team, is something that I take seriously.
We are in a small town, and 5 or 6 of our people have left other jobs to come here. To jump on board this new thing, and believe in what we are doing.
You know we have these cool mugs, and a cool space in town – but none of that matters when I compare it to our team. Nothing the business does matters unless our team’s well-being is secured. I take a lot of responsibility here.
And it’s been a learning process, taking care of a team is hard to do. Building and selling mugs is easy compared to learning how to manage and take care of human beings.
If one of us is not performing well, we all need to help. I like to say that we are a team of horses – we’ve got to be pulling in the same direction for this whole thing to work.
I care deeply about each one of them on a personal level. I’m extremely proud of our team and being a part of it.
If I never built Handlebend, I probably would have taken over my Dad’s business by now, and be mostly working alone. Working with a team has been a great blessing for me.
What are some of your favorite books, classes, or resources that have helped you?
The best thing for us has been collaboration. We’ve done a lot of collaboration with other unique businesses.
And when we do that, those people turn into a network of friends and peers all over the country who are doing really cool things.
I learn a lot from those people, and that network has not only made this work enjoyable but has paid off in learning for our businesses.
Work on the skill of meeting other human beings, and it makes a huge difference.
Where can we learn more about your business?
Breakdown
In this section, Humble Starts provides a summary of the main lessons from Michael’s story. Hopefully, you can apply them on your own journey towards enterprise building.
Learnings from Michael:
1. Feedback is golden.
Michael and Matt got feedback for years before they took the step to start. Getting early feedback on your product or service is a smart step to de-risk the early stages of your business.
Make a plan on how you can get feedback from your target customers before you take the steps to invest and capitalize on your new business.
2. Make the product the focus.
Handlebend mugs sell themselves. No fancy or expensive marketing campaign can substitute for a product that provides a high value.
Think about your intended product or service – how can increase the value of the product or experience?
3. Focus on a target market, right from the beginning.
Michael and Matt did not price their product low, and then slowly increase. They focused, from the beginning, on a niche target market. They were ok with their mug not being for everyone, and they didn’t try to create a commodity product.
Start with a target market in mind, and let that influence how you build and price your product and service.
