Today we’d like to introduce you to James Kruml.
So, before we jump into specific questions about the business, why don’t you give us some details about you and your story.
Growing up, my dad always had his own construction business. I don’t think I thought about it much at the time, but being your own boss became something to look up to. I would work for him every summer and every summer he would tell me, to do my best not to do this type of work when I was older. Although working outside was nice and learning to build things with my hands and general good ole fashion hard work paid off for me today. I’m certainly happy I took a different path.
My first entrepreneurial venture started my senior year of high school after a friend and I were board in study hall. It was called GoldCoast Snow Board & Skate Board Company. We had one T-shirt design and a preorder of 30 shirts, my mom knew a screen printer who took our design and create our first batch, by the summer we source our own screen printer and garments and it soon grew to a collection of shirts, hats, hoodies and a 5 person skate team. As any skateboard company would we started shooting videos and getting our clothes into local west suburban skate shops. With almost 1,000 followers on myspace we decided to expand into music and began to collaborate with the local and Chicago based music industry. It’s was now 2007, I was attending Columbia College Chicago and at this point the brand had already took a turn and transformed into an underground hip-hop YouTube channel, called GoldCoastTV. Which connect us with amazing artist such, Mic Terror, Kidz in the Hall, Ya-B, and Gemini (AKA Gemstones of lupe fiasco’s label FnF) and artist manager Peeda Pan (currently Chef Keefs manger) and later Kids these days.
As we continued to focus the brands efforts to the music industry, we found ourselves in studio sessions, backstage at shows and meeting a ton of people. I continued networking and met new artists and producers and over the course of my college career created over 50 video projects, with over 30,000 views many of which made their way onto websites such as fakeshoredrive, worldstar hip-hop and others website.
As I continued my college education, I switched major from film to marketing with a concentration in advertising. I realized through my experience with skateboarding and music that I didn’t want to pursue a job feature film world. I that I would rather make music videos and shorter type video, which I was already doing, so why not get a degree in something that wasn’t so pigeonholed as a BA in Film.
After Graduation, I took a job in sales as a technical recruiter for open source developers. This was at the very start of the Chicago Tech boom, so it happened to be a very good time to enter the market. I was on a small team of recruiters which source development talent within the languages of PHP, Ruby on Rails and Python. Along with my manager we also took over the Chicago PHP meet-up group, with a goal of bringing the community together while putting our faces as the go to people for companies who are looking to hire these types of employees. Over my 2 years as a recruiter I created relationships with some of the CEOs of the best early stage start-up which are still around today, including SproutSocial, SpotHero, Belly and more. Even though we were making an impact as a team, being a recruiter is still very much a love, hate relationship with the client. They love you when they need you and want nothing to do with you when they don’t. I always thought there had to be a way to provide the Chicago tech community with more than a 20% service fee when placing a developer. What if we could provide information about the industry from the perspective of hiring, getting hired and a developer’s point of view? What if we could create content and a platform that people would turn to for information, then they would naturally come to us when they were ready to hire. Wouldn’t that be great and be a value add to the business? I didn’t understand that I could go into a hip-hop show with the artist on stage maybe making a few hundred bucks, but there are 15 cameras in the room, because everyone now has a blog or a website and is looking for a drop. But I would go to tech events and no one is creating content to promote the rising Chicago tech scene and to my left is a VC and to my right is a company that just raised 1 million dollars. How was it that the world of music was so far ahead from a marketing and self-promotion standpoint, then the what would become the multi-billion dollar Chicago tech market? So I began to create content on my own, making videos and interview directors of development and putting it out. I tried to pitch the idea to my corporate HQ but the marketing department thought cleaning up bad SEO was more important.
The content grew a bit more and it was now time to put a name behind it. That is when RoboToaster was born. I took all my knowledge from starting a skateboard, hip-hop “brand thing” to creating a new content machine. Shortly after sketching a logo on a piece of paper I was introduced via Facebook chat to Andrew Jesernig my now Co-founder and Creative Director. We chatted on Facebook for around 6months before ever meeting, little did he or I know that 5 years from then we would still be at it and working with major brands, having our own office and a team of 6.
RoboToaster became a true passion, I was still working the recruiting gig and doing well, but my focus wasn’t there and it was time to part ways. Without knowing true plan, I looked forward and did what I could to turn RoboToaster into a true business and did it well enough I even talked Andrew into quitting his job to move down to the city to hop on this crazy roller-coaster with me. We built the business out of our apartments and coffee shops for close to 2 years before getting a space of our own. In that time, we focus on pushing out our brand by partnering with the companies that we already creating an impact. Companies such as Techweek, technori, builtinChicago, 1871, our strategy was and still is find the companies that already have a reach and partner with them. These provided quick access to tons of new clients and great exposure. In our early stages, we would film large events in exchange for sponsorship and branding our logo to be right next to huge corporations, our videos would be played in front of the entire Chicago tech community and little did everyone know, we were just a few guys rocking out of our apartments.
As time went on, we became more established as a go-to events video production company. With video as my background, it made sense for our main services to be something I could sell, shoot, edit and deliver all without needed anyone else to assist. As the events coverage began to take off, we brought on contractors to help with the workload and we started to add in motion graphics and simple animations into video, then general design and branding. We continued to grow in whichever direction client requests came, although we always stayed true to the base talents of Andrew and myself. If we couldn’t physical do it ourselves we left it alone. We continued this philosophy and continued to grow; we have now brought on 4 additional full time creatives and are working with some amazing clients and having a blast doing it.
Starting a creative services agency is tough, there is a ton of competition, but the benefit of it is that there is a ton of work to go around and people don’t like or need to work with people they don’t like. We found that being ourselves, working hard, networking and being a couple friendly faces provided great outcomes. We also don’t really sell instead we provide good interactions and experiences and play the long game. RoboToaster isn’t just a content farm pushing out work for our clients we are an ever shifting brand, with creating content in the fields of video, photo, design, web and animation at our core. One of the main reason why we recently we moved offices out of the loft space to a street level storefront in Noble Square. Is that from here we can continue to provide our clients with amazing creative content but we can also focus on creating our function as a brand which can create impact from the street level and have face-to-face interactions, by planting a flag within the Chicago community rather than living in the shadows as a faceless agency. This gives us the opportunity to not only market to the thousands of people who walk and drive by but also provide our brand with an additional asset to continue to promote ourselves through a variety of different ways. Front storefront window displays of our work, to pop-up restaurants and event space for our clients. We also have plans for products, children’s books and toys. We want people and clients to interact with RoboToaster from multiple touchpoints not only from the business-marketing department, but at home and throughout their daily lives.
Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
The road has been full of ups and downs, as I mentioned, building a creative agency is tough. It’s not like a software or tech company, which you can build for automation. For example, with video you have to physically shoot and physically edit every video, this takes time. To brand a company, you have to figure out the intricate details which makes the company tick, where they are going, who their customer is. This involves a lot of time and careful planning. Not to mention, if there are no new clients for the month, there is no money coming in and retainers aren’t that easy to come by when you’re small. It’s been 5 years since RT began and I have learned the hard way how to stretch a dollar and how the banking system works, lol. But the benefit of building the Toaster is that it truly is a passion of mine, we have had the opportunity to take our hobbies and turn it into a growing business. I have met some of the most interesting people and been to some of the most amazing places. You have to have a solid team and an even more solid foundation around you at home, building a company is no easy task, especially when you start to have employees. RoboToaster was started off 100% bootstrapped and till this day we have had no outside investment or funding. When you are trying to build a company, which involves the need to have high priced equipment in an ever changes technology world, knowing when and what to buy can be extremely tough. Asking ourselves questions like; do we buy a new camera or do we wait? What the late fee on rent? How long can my 2008 mac book work? The ability to spend money wisely was some of the biggest challenges. A major decision we recently faced was moving into our new office. we would be moving from a west loop loft to a super strange storefront in Noble Square. We knew that we would have to put somewhere between 5-10K in renovations, even more if we didn’t do most of the work ourselves. The build out would take about 2 months and we would lose a bit of sales due to our focus building out the new space. We also didn’t have full support from the team on the move, tensions were definitely increased during this process. However, we decided it was the right thing to do for the business and it would give us the ability to do some things we currently could so we went for it. The new space turned out great, everyone is loving it and we feel that we made the correct choice even though it was a rough one. More general challenges are developing the correct partnerships for overall growth. Which don’t always come with the budget or the abilities to grow the company financially the way it should have. It’s all trial and error and a bit of fake it until you make it, don’t let anyone tell you different. We are all just doing what we think is the best and hoping for the best outcome. I’m often thinking, “what’s the worst that could happen.”
Alright – so let’s talk business. Tell us about RoboToaster – what should we know?
RoboToaster, is a creative services agency which specializes in creating content. That content comes in both digital, physical and experiential forms. We create content in the mediums of video, photo, design, branding, web and animation.
RoboToaster is known mainly for its work within the video spectrum, however we have now become a full service creative agency and are working with clients on a wide variety of creative needs.
As founder of the company I am most proud of my team, we are 6 individuals who work extremely well together. We are all not only creative, but we each have the ability to work closely with clients from an account management perspective.
What sets us apart from other agencies is our push on the RoboToaster brand. We are not only creating amazing client work but we are creating a true brand identity which goes beyond your standard creative firm. We are producing events and experiences and marketing to the masses. We have both clients and super fans, we have people hiring us to produce their next corporate video but also wearing RT clothing and putting stickers on their laptops and asking when our next event is. It’s just as important to us to provide someone walking down the street with a good experience of us than it is to partner with our next client.
Any shoutouts? Who else deserves credit in this story – who has played a meaningful role?
Lots of people deserve credit for the success of RT, for me personally my wife, we first met in college when I was doing GoldCoasttv for sticking with me throughout all the ups and the downs. We now have a baby boy named Cole. It took a long time for the business to really get going and she supported me the entire way through. I couldn’t imagine what would have happened if I didn’t have her support. From a business and friendship standpoint, my Co-Found Andrew has been amazing we started off our relationship as total strangers and have become best friends he is a true believer in the direction of the business and has been there every step of the way. There were plenty of times were things were looking pretty grim and we stuck it out together. In addition to Andrew, Will, who was our 3rd hire and been with us almost since the beginning, he has been a huge part of our success, a friend and a leader in the business. More recently our newer hires Luke who heads up our web development, he came over from the agency/corporate world and put his trust in us and the business. He has brought a lot to the table with his wealth of knowledge from his previous positions and there is a ton that we are able to do now for our clients because of him. Our latest hire is Jeff and Mike, both have been clutch in bring new perspectives and talents into the RT family. Their additions truly make us a full services creative agency.
Other than that, all the clients who put their faith in a small startup called RoboToaster. It’s because of them we have the ability to continue create content and producing great work. We also have a lot of friends who push work our way, we can’t thank them enough.
Pricing:
- We have a standard creative rate of $125 an hour based on personnel need for the job.
Contact Info:
- Address: 1055 N Ashland Ave
- Website: robotoaster.co
- Email: james@robotoaster.co
- Instagram: robotoaster
- Facebook: robotoasterllc
Image Credit:
Robotoaster
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