Dylan Kim - Brevite

Dylan Kim is the Head of Marketing at Brevite, a direct-to-consumer backpack company that makes fun, functional and innovative backpacks designed for everyday life. Dylan co-founded Brevite in 2015 with his brothers Elliot and Brandon after searching for a bag that could support their everyday needs, function as a camera bag for travel, and still look good. Over the last six years, the brothers have bootstrapped Brevite from a prototype they designed in college, to an Instagram famous brand with six products and over 2,000 five-star reviews. Today, Brevite is one of the top camera bags on the market, focused on creating sustainable bags that support their larger mission of giving back to the greater good.

What's it like being an entrepreneur these past six years?

I think a lot has changed, right? Like the, world moves very quickly now and I think because we've been around for so long kind of identifying those changes you know, even some of these platforms, like Tik Tok and we're seeing a lot of success there. Tik Tok wasn't even a part of the conversation 18 months ago, I don't even think I really, necessarily knew what it was. I kind of seen some white advertising. So the fact that it's, you know a bigger part of our mix today is, is really interesting. So I, I would say that's the biggest thing I've noticed over the past six years is that there's just, you know, the plans change the emphasis just where people spend their time. All of that has just shifted so dramatically.

What channels are you focused on? Whether its Intagram or Tok Tok, and are you on Amazon or no because you're direct to consumer?

So we are actually available on Amazon, but that's part of this. There’s just like meeting the consumer where they are something that we really, really focus on is is really kind of cultivating a community. So that's, you know, Instagram has been amazing for that and just cultivating a community of, you know, very avid, you know, photographers, filmmakers, and just really passionate people, I would say. And really just having like a place for them to kind of showcase that and then of course, you know, like our email lists, our SMS lists. Once people are kind of like in our community, making sure that we're really communicating with them and making them feel included as well.

Tell us a little bit more about the product line. What inspired you to launch it? What's unique about it and tell us more about how you got started in this space.

So the, the very startup-y story was about six years ago, I was traveling abroad. I was looking for an affordable bag that could hold my camera and other things that looked nice. And so taking those kinds of. Three simple aspects, you know, affordable you know, could fit things besides your camera and then it looks nice and I couldn't find anything. So my older brother was trying to get into design school at the time, and he's also a phenomenal problem solver. So I went to him and I was like, Brandon, can you help me find this bag? He couldn't find it anything either. And he was like, why don't we just, you know, why don't we just make one?

And so like that day, or very soon after we went to a thrift store, got a sewing machine, went to Joann's fabric and we're off to the races. So he actually taught himself how to sew, made a bag. And then we kind of just were off to the races from there launched a Kickstarter that became organically kind of fully funded. And then before we knew it, we were shipping out 300 bags all over the world and then it just kind of never stopped. And so even today we no longer sell that bag, but kind of the the core of what we do on the product front is very much the same.

So designing these kinds of, you know, fun, functional bags, they can hold your camera, they can hold other things. And they come in a bunch of different colors. So really kind of never losing those core tenants, even though the product has...