BattlBox’s Path from YouTube to Netflix

How does an ecommerce entrepreneur land a Netflix series? Not easily. Just ask John Roman.

He co-launched BattlBox, an outdoor gear company, in 2015. Its YouTube channel eventually caught the eye of producers who turned it into a Netflix series. The process was long, uneven, and stressful.

Along the way, the founders sold BattlBox and bought it back.

John shared his journey in our recent conversation. The full audio is embedded below. The transcript is edited for clarity and length.

Eric Bandholz: Who the heck are you?

John Roman: I co-founded a company called BattlBox in 2015. We’re an outdoor adventure gear brand. We’ve gone from building the business to selling it and then buying it back.

We focus on content much more than a typical physical-goods brand.

Our flagship product is a subscription for a monthly box of gear. It includes access to our community and to Battle Vault, which offers discounts on other brands’ products. We also have a reality show on Netflix called “Southern Survival.”

Bandholz: That’s quite a journey — selling a company and buying it back.

We launched with four partners. By 2019 we were down to three. We started to hit some hiccups and didn’t agree on the company’s direction. One of the three partners was ready to quit.

The Netflix show, which launched in July 2020, drove a surge in revenue. We went from 150,000 monthly website visitors to 2 million. Then it slowly declined to about 250,000.

That’s when we decided to sell the company. We all agreed, provided the acquisition price was at least 6x EBITDA.

We started the marketing process and received multiple offers. It was great timing. 2021 was the top of the market, valuation-wise, for selling an ecommerce business. We accepted a deal from a SPAC — a special purpose acquisition company — out of Canada called Emerge Commerce.

They spoke our language. They wanted the business to remain independent while building synergies, such as cheaper shipping and credit card processing, with the other companies they were acquiring.

That was the model. They didn’t want to learn our business. They wanted us to keep running it. So we took that deal.

Then the market economics changed. Publicly traded SPACs such as Emerge lost 90% of their market cap. Interest rates increased; credit markets tightened. We sold the business for 6x EBITDA and bought it back at about 1x.

We got an SBA loan, capped at $5 million, and financed the rest with a bank line of credit. The three of us had cash from the sale, so we all wrote checks for a collective 15% down payment.

We closed the deal in March 2023. The business has thrived. It’s the biggest it’s ever been.

Bandholz: How did you land a Netflix show?

Roman: A television production company in Colorado called High Noon Entertainment saw our YouTube channel. They had started “Cake Boss,” a reality show on the TLC cable channel, and then “Fixer Upper,” the home renovation program on HGTV.

So they had a roadmap for creating a show and integrating a business into it.

They liked our brand on YouTube and offered to coordinate a sizzle reel, which is a pre-pilot test episode, with the History Channel.

We shot the sizzle reel, and then the History Channel sat on it for six months. We assumed the show wasn’t going to happen. Then High Noon pitched the Discovery Channel to fund a pilot. Discovery declined after sitting on it for seven months.

So at this point, a year and a half into the process, we’re not feeling positive. Then in January 2019, High Noon told us they secured two more meetings. One was with Vudu, Walmart’s streaming service at the time. The other was Netflix.

The Walmart pitch went nowhere. But the Netflix team said they wanted it and intended to start the first season right away, no sizzle reel.

And within like a week, Netflix sent us a 180-page agreement. We had no clue what to do, so we Googled it. The results mostly said to hire an entertainment lawyer. That’s what we did.

We found a terrific fellow, super nice. He redlined what needed redlining and sent it back to Netflix. His work cost us $6,000.

Netflix replied almost immediately with an apology, saying they didn’t set the proper expectations. There’s no redlining the document, they told us. That’s the deal. If you like it, sign it.

We signed it.

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Within two months, we had everything ready. It was in the second half of 2019. We filmed for six months, including touch-ups Netflix suggested to improve the story. That was in January 2020.

We heard nothing from Netflix for three months. In early April, they responded, “We’re ready to run your show. We’re aiming to start around the July Fourth weekend. We’ll provide more details in June.”

We were both elated and nervous. The show would drive a surge in traffic and sales. But we had to invest heavily in inventory, and we didn’t have the cash. It seemed to threaten the business.

Then the George Floyd murder and unrest occurred. Netflix told us they were no longer sure about launching the show.

We panicked. We told Netflix we had spent every last dollar and went heavily into debt. Finally, a couple of weeks later, they relented. They altered promotional material to be less patriotic and more focused on survival gear.

“Southern Survival” launched during the July Fourth 2020 weekend.

The show never made it past the first season, although those episodes are still available. Netflix has a KPI called “completion rate.” It’s the percentage of viewers who watch an entire series, start to finish.

Netflix said a series like ours needed a 25% completion rate. A rate of 25% or higher meant our show would continue into a new season. Under 20%, and Netflix would cancel and remove the show.

We were at 23.2%, right in the middle. Our show wasn’t canceled, but it hasn’t been renewed either.

The entire process was educational. We learned a ton about filming and editing. It gave us a lot of content ideas and concepts, such as live-stream selling, which we’re now focused on.

Bandholz: Where can people subscribe, follow you, reach out?

Roman: Our site is Battlbox.com. LinkedIn is the best place to find me. I run a blog called Online Queso where I talk with successful ecommerce operators.