Ball and Buck founder Mark Bollman is no stranger to putting novel ideas into action.
His Back Bay-headquartered brand's sartorial focus on the bespoke and American-made craftsmanship-meets-tech savvy entrepreneurship would almost seem insane from a business standpoint given our Amazon impulse-buying hyper-consumerist age if, retrospectively speaking, it wasn't such a huge success. Anyone who attended their two-day American Field Pop-Up event and party at the Innovation and Design Building this weekend can likely attest to that.
And for his latest so-crazy-it-sounds-awesome endeavor comes The Hatchery, a conceptual project born from the Bollman's past experiences with crowdfunding, and getting to know the heart and desires of one's audience.
“We used crowdfunding to launch the first product the company ever made - the button down hunter shirt - on Kickstarter. A year later it was a wallet, which we sold $65k worth of,” said Bollman. “What it has enabled us to do was create items that engaged customers enough to build them, and include them directly into our process of doing things.”
And The Hatchery builds on that with an added peek-behind-the-curtain element. It begins, like many things, with an idea. Customers can pick the project they want to submit - something reasonable and feasible both from a production standpoint as well as sales (read: no flying suits or anything ridiculous for the sake of ridiculous) - and in the end if the project checks the boxes Bollman and his team look for before including anything in the upcoming schedule of projects and products next in line for development, the fun begins.
Says Bollman: “We contact the user or friend that submitted the project, ask some questions, talk about the timing for when it would be slated to launch, get the prototype and go into the creative process to build it.” Once the prototype is built, the customer gets first dibs to play with it and give it a field test for review. “We get a sample as well,” Bollman says, “and we make a video with the customer to gear up for the launch.”
It’s after the launch when time becomes a factor. There’s only a certain period of time Bollman and the company allows to have customers and brand-fans ramp up stated interest, until a project ultimately has backers, donors, and consumers ready to kick the project over the threshold of interest required to cover basic costs.
“Assuming it hits the marker, we go into production and everyone is part of the funding process and gets in on the team with full communication.” Ball and Buck and the customer monitor status updates from there until material arrives, they cut the first run, and then ship in a week to backers. "For us it’s multi-win," Bollman says.
The first project almost completely through the developmental gauntlet of The Hatchery is the Chore Coat, "a product I’ve been wanting to make for a long time," says Bollman. He views the entire Hatchery project as multi-layered in its approach; an episodic incubator, adding a new level to brand engagement with Ball and Buck, because once the process makes it from start to finish, customers will see their vision actually for sale in their store and online.
"This is what we do," he says. "We just been doing it behind the curtain and now are giving access behind it, where [customers] are part of the back end of the company."
He adds: "And we’re looking for ideas.”
Visit The Hatchery online to learn more.
