Who is Kohl?

Meet Kohl Henry and Chad Held, Co-founders of Solace Bands!

About Solace Bands

Stand out from the crowd.

Solace Bands allows customers to keep up with their active lifestyle with comfortable, lightweight, and thoughtfully designed Apple watch bands that fit anyone’s aesthetic preference. These bands, ranging in various styles and colors, can be worn all day long, whether it’s during a workout, a business meeting, or a casual day off. 

Kohl and Chad’s Journey

Childhood friends Kohl and Chad attended Penn State together and graduated in 2020, at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. While Chad had a job lined up after graduation, Kohl’s fell through. Instead, Kohl began drop shipping and Chad watched him go through the process of learning how to make money. Eventually, the two founded Solace Bands when Kohl was given an Apple Watch for Christmas. While searching for watch bands, Kohl didn’t see anything on the market that caught his eye — everything was either priced on the higher end around $100 or $7 on Amazon. The two wanted to do something about the large gap in the market.

Chad worked in the corporate world for just over a year, but he began to appreciate what Kohl was doing because he was making money from drop shipping and only working for himself. When Chad joined the business, the two worked 80/20, but over time, the two became 50/50 partners as Chad began working full-time in June 2021. Since then, the two haven’t looked back.

Learning the Ins and Outs of a Business

Kohl says scaling the business has been a learning experience. For instance, when Chad began working full-time, the two didn’t understand the cash flow of an inventory business. As they looked at their profit numbers, they thought they had enough profit for both of them to have a decent salary. Soon, they realized that their money was going back into inventory.

“I quickly learned that you have to reinvest into a company and build your inventory up if you want to scale it all,” Chad says. “It was fun learning, but we lived through it.”

The Solace Bands Team

In addition to Kohl and Chad, two other employees in the U.S., two virtual assistants in the Philippines, and a product-sourcing coordinator in China make up the Solace Bands team. The founders outsource agencies for other tasks like email marketing.

The company had a warehouse in Florida for the second half of its first year and then moved to a cheaper one in Pennsylvania. When Kohl and Chad looked at the cost breakdown again, they realized they were at a scale where the warehouse wasn’t saving them money. To save money and scale back up, the two found a 3PL in Chicago that perfectly fits the business. 

The CX Philosophy at Solace Bands

Generally, customers are very impressed when they receive products from Solace Bands. The company offers nice packaging and a lifetime warranty that customers enjoy. When Chad and Kohl started the brand, they believed in the post-purchase experience. They wanted to make the customer happy so they would return to the brand and purchase more products. As time went on, the two added a lifetime warranty to expand their CX approach, and it was a big hit with returning customers.

“We looked at our products and we thought if we can speak so highly of them, why don't we have a lifetime warranty and we’ll back that up to the fullest? That was a big hit with our returning customers. We have a ton of people say they lose their watch band or a pin pops out that we can’t fix or send them an extra part before, we'll send them a brand new watch band,” Chad says. “It’s no hassle to us; we're happy to do it.”

Solace Band’s Growth Strategies

Prioritizing Revenue through Customer Retention

Kohl says the company aims to have 70% of revenue from new customers and 30% from returning ones. The team is closer to a 45% retention rate, but it plays a big part in how the two run the business. Although the company doesn’t have a significantly high lifetime value, he is always surprised when he sees how much money some customers have spent on products.

Growing the Company from the Ground Up

Kohl and Chad went from zero to making $1,000 per day and $30,000 per month quickly. Albeit simple — products displayed against white backgrounds — their ads were working. As the two began creating TikToks, they started gaining more experience as businessmen and content creators. During Q4, the business boosted tremendously. By the company’s 6 to 8-month mark, it went from making $50,000 per month to $150,000. Two months later, Solace Bands made $250,000 in revenue. Halfway through its second year, the company’s growth slowed and hovered around $500,000 monthly. Fast forward months later, Solace Bands is bringing in an average of $9 million per month, and the company achieved growth in only 18 months.

Handling Customer Requests

Regarding customer service, the company has never been overwhelmed with customer requests. At first, Chad handled tickets, but after the first few months and as the business grew, he and Kohl brought on two virtual assistants from the Philippines who have been helping the company ever since. The team also uses Gorgias with macros to help answer customer questions, which Chad says makes it easy to help them.

Hiring New Members

Fulfillment was more difficult in the beginning. Kohl, Chad, and his girlfriend lived in a two-bedroom apartment in Florida as the company got off the ground. Then, Kohl and Chad were the only two employees associated with the business, and Chad’s girlfriend helped pick and pack orders, but they soon realized they would need some extra assistance. 

Eventually, after unpacking loads of inventory, Kohl and Chad hired two other best friends who took over the warehouse and hired more employees. Kohl says the key to their early success was hiring friends and family members who wanted to help out. 

“It always just kind of works out, but if something we’re looking for is something we have in our network of family and friends, why not? We’ve always had fun having a close team of people who knew each other before the company,” Kohl says.

Reinvesting into the Business

Early on, almost everything was reinvested into the business. Kohl and Chad barely took out any profits for the first year and a half, and they did this because they wanted the brand to scale as much as possible. As the two learned how to order and refill inventory, Kohl and Chad were on top of the company. Looking back, though, Chad wishes he and Kohl had hired a professional to learn the ropes proactively.

“Kohl and I essentially weren’t taking a ton of profits, especially for the first year and a half. I remember all of our expenses were on the business like rent, food, restaurants, everything like that,” Chad says. “That was all we did. We didn’t pay ourselves much just because we knew that we wanted to grow it super big. We want to scale it.”

Elevating to the Next Level

In the future, Kohl says that he and Chad want Solace Bands to become more of a smartwatch brand. Although they typically sell smartwatch bands and a few tech accessories, soon, they want their company to become a fashion accessories company. So far, the two founders have been sampling bracelets that pair with the customer’s Apple watch, which is one of the first steps to continuing to expand the company.

Advice for Entrepreneurs

Kohl says that, in general, business is as much of a mental game as it is a tactical game. As there are ups and downs in the industry, until you are hit with a challenge, you’ll never know what it feels like. Sometimes, Chad goes back to Penn State and talks to entrepreneurial classes. The first piece of advice he gives students is to be intentional every day with whatever they prioritize. No matter what it is, whether it’s business, family, or working out, Chad says to create a plan and follow through with it. 

“You have to be intentional and set goals every single day to get [things] done because things are going to back up,” Chad says. “You aren’t going to get everything done every single day, but it’s good to have that list.”