Managing Shop: Richard Canneman of Ekster

Because we chose the right partners, we only have to go to America once a year. It’s not a requirement to be there often to be successful.

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A Dutch company partnering with Lionel Messi and growing to €40 million in revenue, with the majority coming from America. That is the story of Ekster, a brand focused on men who want to get from A to B in style.

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We were curious about how they managed to pull this off and spoke with Richard Canneman, founder of Ekster. 

1) Hi Richard! Who are you, what does Ekster do, and what is your role within the company? 

Ekster was founded about 8 years ago by Olivier Momma, Rick Scharnigg, and myself. Rick and Olivier met during their exchange at the University of Pittsburgh and have been involved in entrepreneurship from a young age. 

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I’ve known Olivier since our time in Tokyo, where he was still in high school as the son of a good friend. In 2016, when Olivier was interning for me in Singapore, we got to know each other better. Olivier was working on modernizing the wallet and had an innovative vision for it; I was immediately enthusiastic about it. 

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During that time, I helped Olivier with product development and provided advice. Once Olivier was back in the Netherlands, Rick and Olivier decided to launch a Kickstarter campaign to fund production of the wallet. 

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They needed €5k for the first model, product video, and marketing campaign, and that’s when I came on board!

2) How did you develop the product? 

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With an investment of €5k, including promotional videos and one prototype, we started a Kickstarter campaign. 

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This campaign was an unprecedented success; within a few months, we raised over 1 million euros with our idea. 

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We became one of the most popular products on Kickstarter. That opened the door for us to the American market. 

3) How did you scale the company further?

It was extremely challenging to manufacture and deliver a product at scale from scratch, but we managed to do it. The small profit we made from this allowed us to produce a second version. 

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Next, we started working with performance marketing. We were very effective at acquiring new customers based on the customer base that had previously purchased from us via Kickstarter. 

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That turned out to be a very smart move, as revenue soon doubled. Later, we also started focusing on influencer marketing, as we see that it is very important in the American market. 

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We collaborate with various influencers, from macro to micro level. 

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For example, we released our own line together with Lionel Messi and Angry Joe (3.3M followers on YouTube), but we also have dozens of YouTubers who review and promote our products. 

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Sometimes we also stumble upon a target audience that fits us well by chance. For instance, an experiment revealed that there is a very large Ekster target audience among NASCAR viewers. 

4) Do you have any tips for other entrepreneurs who also want to be successful in America? 

America is a vast country that essentially consists of 52 small countries in terms of regulation and taxation, but on a marketing level, it is one big entity.

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It is important not to fixate on the East and West coasts; your target audience in America might just come from an unexpected place.

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So, embrace the fact that you aren't American and use experiments to figure out where your customers are. 

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Marketing in the US is incredibly expensive, so starting with guerrilla marketing tactics is highly recommended.

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Shipping products from within the US is another tip I like to share. This will boost your conversion rates and is a more efficient way of working. 

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Because we chose the right partners, we only travel to the US once a year. It’s definitely not a requirement to be there often to be successful. 

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