Factor: Entrepreneurship

The kickstart behind Solo Stove occurred when the two brothers and founders, Spencer and Jeff Jan, both realized the need for a more efficient and portable fire stove and also wanted to be closer together as Spencer lived in Shanghai and Jeff lived in Texas. They saw this gap in the market to have lots of potential and thought to create a compact, efficient, and smokeless stove which we all know and love today.

Founded in 2011, production launched in Jeffs garage as a little e-commerce, outdoor brand. They tried to extract the potential behind online shopping and eventually gathered a large group of “super fans”. They loved their product and began producing more and larger camping stoves which became a huge hit.

Factor: Land

The eco-friendly Solo Stove uses Wood to fuel the fire and unlike regular fire pits it produces low smoke and very little ash for a more enjoyable and earth friendly high-heat burn. They obtained their high burn fire wood from forests all throughout the US. They use a undisclosed technique to dry their wood out and allow for it to be the most flammable and long lasting on the market.

Factor: Labor

As they continued to grow they had to find a better and more efficient way for production. As far as manufacturing, they began to outsource and expanded labor into factories in several countries including China, Vietnam and India. This was extremely effective as they were still largely a online company and it was fairly simple to ship and manufacture products out of factories in these countries.

Factor: Labor

Whether it was using their own garage as a logistics center or having business meetings outside of targets or inside Starbucks, they used everything to their advantage for business operations. Without a headquarters at the time they met with and interviewed perspective employees, and hired and employed multiple laborers in these unusual areas. This exemplifies their use of everything at their disposal and how they used it largely to hire these employees which was then put back into production of products.

Factor: Capital

This crowd funding platform played a major role in the company’s expansion into fire pits. In 2016, Solo Stove raised a whopping 1.2 million for its bonfire model and then two years later, an even larger $1.7 million. They put this money into the manufacturing facilities in which they owned and were able to ramp up and continue the production of the Yukon and Ranger fire pit models.

In 2018, the brothers stepped away from the day-to-day operations and current CEO John Merris was brought in and signed to manage Solo Stove’s growth from startup to industry standard. The brothers were looking for a more experience executive to take on the hull of the work. He did this and began building their supply chain, developing product innovations, and scaling up their customer service department.

Factor: Capital

Solo stove purchased and built countless factories, one of their most recent is located in Bonner Springs, Kansas. This allowed for the greater production of stoves and immensely increased efficiency and quality control surrounding their products. They invested 2.5 million into its creation and high tech equipment for the betterment of their products production.