Command Partners is a digital agency in Charlotte with arguably one of the most fun jobs in marketing. The team, led by founder and president Roy Morejon, launches viral crowdfunding campaigns for exciting new products that have not hit the market yet, gathering excitement and energy for some of the newest, most inventive gadgets.
Command Partners – which in a month will turn six – recently merged with Enventys, a product development firm.
“We’ve integrated a product development company and our marketing agency together to provide product development services from when you have a sketch on a napkin to we can produce it market it and then understand how to sell it long after,” Morejon said.
The vertical merger allows clients to use the services through the entire life-cycle of a new product launch. Enventys helps companies through the more physical product development phases – manufacturing and prototyping new products. Command Partners steps in on the marketing side, using crowdfunding sites such as Kickstarter and Indiegogo to raise money and get products in front of the digital spotlight.
The merger isn’t mandatory for clients, however, and inventors can decide to use Enventys’ and Command Partners’ services à la carte.
Command Partners’ most recent campaign – Polygon, an origami-like flat measuring spoon – raised more than $1 million. Polygon was their 13th million-dollar project to date, Morejon said, and Command Partners recently crossed over the $100 million raised mark.
“Once a campaign goes live it’s all hand on deck trying to secure as much coverage, as much media attention” Morejon said. “At that point it’s social media, PR and a lot of advertising to promote the campaign and get it in front of the right eyeballs in terms of the audiences we feel should be pre-purchasing the product without touching it or feeling it like they would at a retail outlet.”
Command Partners asks potential customers to take a risk and back cool and interesting new products before they have the opportunity to see for themselves. Not many products can succeed with that kind of strategy, and Morejon said when he vets potential clients what he is really looking for is that unexplainable, you-know-it-when-you-see-it wow factor.
“Where you’re kind of like ‘Oh my God, that’s genius. Why didn’t I think of that?’,” Morejon said. “When you have those moments, typically everyone else on the internet has a moment as well.”
One of the agency’s earliest successful campaigns was for a product called Bunch O Balloons, a set of 100 balloons customers can tie to a spigot together and fill up with water at once. Morejon and his team got the balloons on The Today Show within three days of launching.
“It’s one of those genius things that you’re like ‘I wish that I had that when I was a kid,’” he said. “It’s those kind of products that really inspire us and the consumers get immediately.”
As Command Partners has become more successful over the years, Morejon and his team began receiving more leads for products that want to use their services. Right now, they receive about 100 per day and have to use an artificial intelligence system to filter leads.
The 26 employees at Command Partners – more than 60 when you count in the merger – all work out of the co-working-style space in Fourth Ward near the Panthers Stadium. Once an 1800s hosiery mill, the space now boasts an impressive amount of equipment including, among others, a couple of 3D printers, a lathe, a CNC Machine, a welding machinery and a frozen yogurt machine with an impressive number of flavors (75 according to their website.)
Working in Charlotte comes with both good and bad, Morejon said, but the good far outweighs the bad.
“The pros are great people, a good entrepreneurial spirit in the city and great wealth of talent in the state overall,” he said, as well as having Charlotte Douglas International Airport, which he said has made convincing clients to fly out to Enventys and Command Partners much easier than it could be.
One of the only negative aspects of working in North Carolina so far, Morejon said, has been recent push-back against North Carolina’s controversial House Bill 2.
“That was probably the biggest issue we’ve seen with some potential clients out in California,” Morejon said.
Morejon – a Northeast native – originally came to Charlotte to pursue a career in the PGA, but after awhile ”hung up the clubs and went back to my hacking and computer skills,” he said.
Since then, he ran full-speed into the creation of Command Partners and the improvement of Charlotte’s startup community.
“I bootstrapped this company the entire way; I basically went without paychecks for years,” he said.
Now, Command Partners has become a mentor for other startups in Charlotte. The agency has been a mentor company at QC Fintech for a couple of years now, and Morejon co-founded the Search Engine Marketing Association – now called the Digital Marketing Association – with Keith Schilling at IMB. Morejon is also the regional chair of the Business Marketing Association of the Carolinas.
