This story is part of Retail TouchPoints’ ongoing “Small Business, Big Ideas” series, focusing on smaller retail brands that have found big success and have even bigger ambitions.
On the path to creating a category-disrupting product, coming up with an idea is often the easiest part. For entrepreneurs who decide they want to take action on their lightbulb moment and bring a product to market, the real work begins — developing design specs, finding manufacturers who can make it, finding a way to sell it and of course, convincing people to buy it.
And yet, despite the daunting nature of the task, every year thousands of entrepreneurial spirits take the plunge. Christian Reed, Founder and CEO of Reekon Tools, did just that in 2020. His idea — bringing the measuring tape, essential tool of DIYers and professional craftspeople alike, into the digital age.
But even once a product is in market and selling well, as Reekon’s digital tape measures are, the work is never done — and to be sure, the turmoil of the last five years hasn’t made the task of running a small business any easier.
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“First it was supply chain challenges and chip shortages, then it was shipping prices increasing, now it’s tariffs,” Reed said in an interview with Retail TouchPoints. “We kind of just take it in stride. The economy is going to do what it’s going to do, and if we had let that dictate the business, we’d be in a much worse spot now than we are. We just have to work smart, stay disciplined and, unless we get to an extreme level, we’re going to continue forward with that mantra.”
Despite this can-do attitude, Reed has found that cash flow, as well as establishing a new brand in what he describes as a “slow-to-adapt” category, are constant challenges. In the case of the former, his business got a big boost in September when he was crowned the winner of Alibaba.com’s CoCreate Pitch competition. The prize was $200,000 in the form of cash and Alibaba.com sourcing credits; 10 other U.S. finalists in the competition also brought home $40,000 in prizes.
At Reekon Tools, that money will go primarily to R&D. “We have a lot of cool initiatives, and this will help fuel both the material side of it, as well as the personnel needed to be able to execute,” Reed said. “We’re not chasing an acquisition or an exit. The excitement for us is to make products that, when we walk down the street and see a construction site, the same way that you have the distinctive DeWalt yellow tools, you have Reekon tape measures on tool belts.”
Removing Steps in an ‘Error-Prone’ Process
Beating out 24,000 applicants and 70 semifinalists to win the U.S. edition of CoCreate Pitch is no small feat. So what is it that makes Reekon tools so different from more traditional brands? They are enhanced with software.
In addition to the typical tape with marked lines, the Reekon tape measure also has a screen. While it can be used on its own for one-off tasks just like any tape measure, it can also be used in conjunction with Reekon’s software, which allows users to save measurements, send those measurements directly to spreadsheets or order forms, or print out a label to mark measurements clearly on projects (no more trying to distinguish if you wrote 1/4 or 714).
“Say I’m measuring windows and they’re going to go into an order form or spreadsheet,” explained Reed. “The idea of having Bluetooth on the tape measures is that instead of measuring a width and height, writing it down, going back to the computer and typing it into the order form for Home Depot or Lowe’s, you can literally click the Save button and Bluetooth will send the measurement right into the spreadsheet or the order form. It’s taking something that’s very transactional and removing steps in an error-prone process. Alone it probably adds up to a couple seconds or minutes, but when compounded over a weekly basis, it really saves time. And everyone, I’m sure, can relate to getting the wrong measurement and having to rip something out or change it.”
Social Media: The Crucial Tool for Breaking into Established Categories
The CoCreate Pitch judges — who included Daymond John and Lori Greiner of Shark Tank as well as the CEO of Kickstarter Everette Taylor and Stephanie Mehta, the CEO of Inc and Fast Company’s publisher — were impressed with the whole offering. Both the durability and functionality of Reekon’s products, and also Reed himself, who went to MIT on an Army ROTC scholarship.
Reed credits his military background with not only funding his education but also helping build the resilience necessary for any entrepreneur: “Startups are very stressful, and entrepreneurial journeys are up and down in general, but [being deployed] showed me what the other end of the spectrum could look like,” Reed said. “Not that we had anything super profound or crazy happen to us, we were an engineer unit, so basically just building things while we were deployed — it’s not like we were in combat or anything crazy. But it does certainly show you what bad or stressful can look like when there are other factors and everyone’s in an isolated, unfamiliar environment.
“So now when I have a supplier tell us the shipment is lost or pricing is going up, it stings, you get mad about it, but you’re also kind of just like, whatever,” Reed added. “That calmness and level-headedness was something that was really highlighted [during my time in the] military.”
Five years in, Reekon Tools are sold in a range of places: Through its own website and Amazon for DTC; at Home Depot, Acme Tools and other smaller, industry-specific retailers for B2C; and industrial sales channels like McMaster-Carr and Grainger. The company also boasts a huge social media following, including the distinction of being the most-followed tool brand on TikTok with 1.4 million followers.
Social media has been crucial to Reekon’s success as it works to get the word out about its product. “One of the hardest parts has been convincing people why this is useful,” Reed said. “Why would I pay $100, $200, $250 for a digital tape measure when I could just buy this Stanley for $10 at Ace Hardware off the shelf? Showing those time savings and how that equates to hard dollars, basically convincing them, is still one of the biggest opportunities for us to tackle.”
To this end, Reed plans to ramp the company’s influencer marketing: “These are all things we’ve done before, but we just have to get a lot more deliberate and consistent about it,” Reed said. “That’s the challenge of any startup — how to find what works and then scale and ramp it up over time with a limited team and budget.”
For Entrepreneurs, Alibaba is a ‘Portal’ to Manufacturers
Alibaba also plays a central role in Reekon’s success: “Between a constantly shifting supply chain, tariffs, shipping disruptions and everything else that’s happened since Reekon started, which was right as COVID started, there’s been an ever-increasing range of externalities that we’ve had to deal with, as many businesses have, to be able to keep moving forward,” said Reed. “We do a lot of sourcing activities, but Alibaba really serves as the gateway for any kind of new searches, whether it’s a component sub-assembly or manufacturer. And then you continue to network your way through with it.
“For us Alibaba has always been that portal to China and Southeast Asia, where the best places to manufacture stuff are, and [that] just makes it a great interface for us to be able to connect, request samples, manufacture parts and make payments all in a central place, versus trying to scramble around,” he added.
