Twelve years ago, Ryan Beltran launched a reclaimed-wood watch on Kickstarter with a goal of raising $10K and walked away with $400K in 30 days. Today, Original Grain is an 8-figure business that maintains 80% product margins and a community of customers who believe in the story behind every product.
On this episode of Unscripted Commerce, Ryan sat down with Richie to share how Original Grain built long-term growth by centering everything around customer value, authentic partnerships, and operational discipline.
Here are the biggest takeaways for founders and operators.
1) Focus on partnerships that pay
Licensing and collaborations are a core growth lever for Original Grain, and Beltran’s framework is pragmatic:
- Size matters: Partners with >$1B in revenue have enough passionate fans to move units. (For Original Grain, this means brands like Jack Daniel’s, Ford, and Fender.)
- Know the economics: Typical licenses run ~10% of sales, often with minimum guarantees (MG); structure deals you can deliver on.
- Tell a real story: ex: “It’s more than a timepiece; it’s a piece of time.” Repurposed materials (Yankee Stadium seats, Grand Ole Opry wood) create built-in narratives customers want to wear.
Not every partnership is an instant needle-mover; some are brand plays that deepen credibility with the core customer. The Original Grain team explicitly seeks out the overlapping “Venn diagram” of brands its customer already loves and aesthetic elements that trigger nostalgia or positive associations.
Don’t look for just one or the other; good partnerships should be scored on both revenue and resonance.
2) Don’t let capital define creative
Original Grain’s breakout moment came long before any outside capital: its first Kickstarter.
In 2013, Ryan and his brother Andrew set a modest $10K goal to launch their reclaimed-material watch; after 30 days, the campaign closed at $400K. This instantly validated the product and the story behind it.
“That was a crazy moment, there’s clearly some demand here,” said Ryan.
Over time, they did bring on angel investors to help fuel growth, but eventually chose to buy them out and return to the blueprint that worked from day one: put a differentiated product and a compelling story in front of the right audience, and let the sales follow.
3) Design for margin from day one
Watches are inherently high-margin compared to many hard goods, but Original Grain’s discipline turns that structural advantage into sustained 80% margins.
The brand treats wood as a brand-ownable aesthetic, all while keeping materials efficient, manufacturing consistent, and unit economics tight. (Fun fact: one whiskey barrel can yield around 300 watches.)
Beltran’s mantra is simple: “Margins are designed, not discovered.” Unit economics are a constraint to design with, not work around later.
The takeaway? Bake your target margin into product decisions (materials, SKUs, packaging), not just pricing. In simpler terms, design the product to meet your margin, don’t hope margin emerges at the end.
4) Be realistic about TAM
Original Grain validates partner choices and content investments against their total addressable market (TAM) and real engagement, not vanity metrics.
Practically, that means scraping and scoring creator lists by average views and audience fit, then operationalizing outreach so they can find the “next 50” creators after the obvious top five.
Beltran’s recommendation is to systematize discovery to source, vet, and scale micro-creator programs where your buyer actually lives, engages, and shops.
5) Keep teams lean so ideas ship faster
Organize for speed, and build accountability into your playbook.
Beltran is a strong believer that a sub-10-person expert team can run a $30M-$50M brand, and that fewer handoffs equals faster iteration.
After going bootstrapped, Original Grain re-centered on a lean, founder-led model, planning 24–36 months out but staying close enough to the market to react.
The result: multi-year profitable growth.
The shift from pure revenue to brand building
“The first 10, let’s call it $20 million, you have to be ruthless about revenue,” says Ryan. Past that, top-of-funnel awareness and brand become critical, especially as paid efficiency normalizes.
Some bets won’t have a day-one ROAS, but they will help build stickiness, community, and pricing power that you can take advantage of later.
Original Grain’s arc illustrates the pivot: once margin and product-market fit were locked, they invested in partnerships and stories that strengthened the franchise and have helped them become the 8-figure business they are today.
Ready to build partnerships that pay? Connect with 50,000+ vetted creators through Levanta. Get started in under five minutes here.
To hear the full story from Ryan, watch the full episode here on Unscripted Commerce, the podcast by Levanta for operators building real growth.
