Scaling Unconventional Products Online: TerraSlate’s B2B Growth Blueprint With Kyle Ewing

Kyle Ewing is the Founder and CEO of TerraSlate Paper, a company specializing in high-quality waterproof and rip-proof paper products. After leaving the corporate world in 2014, he launched Guerrilla Tags ID Systems, which experienced rapid growth and was acquired in 2015. Building on his entrepreneurial success, Kyle established TerraSlate in 2015, growing it into a multimillion-dollar company serving clients in over 85 countries. A serial entrepreneur with ventures across multiple industries, he is also the Chairman of Windward Equity and Owner of Big Island Honey Co.

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

• [00:26] Kyle Ewing shares his journey from a startup to scaling TerraSlate Paper into a global brand
• [02:44] How cold-calling played a crucial role in acquiring TerraSlate’s first customers
• [06:16] The balance between B2B sales and ecommerce growth for unconventional products
• [12:08] Why mock-ups outshine traditional product photography
• [14:56] How effective are videos in demonstrating product value?  
• [17:44] The impact of "Buy with Prime" on increasing customer trust and conversions
• [18:55] Kyle’s biggest lesson as an entrepreneur

In this episode…

Many entrepreneurs struggle to scale unconventional products online, especially when traditional ecommerce strategies don’t apply. Without a clear target audience, a defined marketing approach, or a way to showcase the product’s unique value, reaching new customers can be unattainable. So how can businesses selling niche products break through the noise and achieve significant growth?

Serial entrepreneur Kyle Ewing shares his journey from cold-calling in his living room to scaling a multimillion-dollar business. He emphasizes the importance of direct customer conversations, using cold outreach to refine messaging and validate demand before investing in paid ads. Kyle also highlights the necessity of visual storytelling, explaining why mock-ups and video demonstrations outperform traditional product photography for complex or unconventional products. Additionally, he shares how integrating tools like "Buy with Prime" can increase customer trust and conversions.

In this episode of Minds of Ecommerce, Raphael Paulin Daigle interviews Kyle Ewing, Founder and CEO of TerraSlate Paper, about scaling niche products through ecommerce and B2B sales. Kyle discusses how early customer outreach shaped his growth strategy, why visual branding matters for non-traditional products, and the importance of hiring top talent early. He also shares insights on leveraging Amazon’s checkout system, balancing direct sales with online orders, and optimizing website conversions.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

• Raphael Paulin-Daigle on LinkedIn | X
• SplitBase
• Kyle Ewing on LinkedIn
• TerraSlate Paper
• ”From Pop-Ups to Profits: The Growth Formula Behind Maguire Shoes With Myriam Belzile-Maguire” on Minds of Ecommerce
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Quotable Moments:

• "You are 2,000 cold calls away from being rich. Just pick up the phone and dial."
• "It's who, not how. The best minds you can afford will help your business scale faster."
• "When you talk to the customer, you learn what they want and how to sell it."
• "We realized the product is the material, not just a single application for it."
• "Video converts 20 times better than photos for us — people want to see, not just read."
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Action Steps:

1. Cold-call potential customers to validate your product: Direct outreach helps you understand customer pain points, refine your pitch, and establish relationships. It’s a cost-effective way to generate sales without relying solely on paid ads or waiting for organic traffic.
2. Use mock-ups and videos instead of traditional product photography: For unconventional products, static images may not effectively communicate their value. Demonstrating features through videos and well-designed mock-ups increases engagement and conversion rates.
3. Leverage "Buy with Prime" to build trust: Customers are more likely to purchase when they see a familiar and reliable checkout option. Offering Amazon’s checkout system reassures buyers with easy returns and fast shipping.
4. Invest in top-tier talent early: Hiring experienced professionals sooner can accelerate growth and reduce costly mistakes. Skilled team members bring expertise that allows you to scale operations more efficiently.
5. Balance B2B sales with ecommerce for scalable growth: A strong online presence complements direct sales efforts by capturing inbound demand. This dual approach ensures steady revenue from recurring orders while attracting new business.

Sponsor for this episode…

This episode is brought to you by SplitBase.

At SplitBase, we design, test, and manage high-converting landing pages and on-site experiences for fashion, luxury, and lifestyle ecommerce brands. Our optimization program pinpoints exactly where your store is losing money most, and then we help you fix that.

The result? Increased conversions and profits for our clients.

With our team of conversion optimization specialists, performance marketers, and conversion-focused designers, we've got your back when it comes to testing and optimization.

Request a proposal on SplitBase.com today, and learn how we can help you get the most out of your marketing spend.

You can find us on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook. Don’t miss out on our exclusive podcasts at Minds of Ecommerce.

Episode Transcript

Intro  00:06

Welcome to the Minds of Ecommerce podcast, where you'll learn one key strategy that made leading ecommerce companies grow exponentially. We cut the bullshit and keep the meat in a 15-minute episode. Founders and executives take us through a deep dive of a strategy so you get to learn and grow your online sales.

Raphael Paulin-Daigle  00:26

In the last episode, you heard from Miriam Maguire, co-founder of Maguire Shoes, who shared how to leverage retail stores as an ecommerce growth strategy. Now, today, on episode number 43, we'll get ready because Kyle Ewing is a serial entrepreneur who's built and sold several companies. He's now the CEO of TerraSlate, a leader in waterproof paper. And today, it's going to be an interesting conversation because we're going to talk about how to scale unconventional products online and achieve significant scale through ecommerce. I'm your host, Raphael Paulin-Daigle, and I'm the Founder of SplitBase. This is Minds of Ecommerce. Now, this episode today is brought to you by SplitBase. At SplitBase, we help leading eight and nine-figure direct-to-consumer brands such as Doctor Squatch, Hyperice, and Amika grow through customer-focused conversion optimization programs. Our programs pinpoint exactly where your store is losing money most, and then, well, we help you fix it. The result, of course, increased conversions, AOV, and well, more money with our teams of conversion optimization specialists, performance marketers, conversion-focused designers, and developers. Well, we've got your back when it comes to AB testing and optimization. Go to splitbase.com to request your proposal today and learn how we can help you get the most out of your marketing spend. All right Kyle, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for being here.

Kyle Ewing  01:55

Hey, thanks for having me, Ralph. I'm excited to be here.

Raphael Paulin-Daigle  01:58

Yes. Well, as you know, this podcast is all about going deep and dissecting one key growth strategy so our listeners can get the most value right away. And one thing I thought was super interesting with you, as compared to the other brands that we've had on the podcast, you have what I'd probably describe as an unconventional product. Right? Waterproof paper. And that's drastically different than maybe scaling an apparel brand or a coffee brand or something like that. So maybe just to give a bit of context to our listeners, can you maybe just give us a super quick breakdown of what type of success? I think you've been running the brand since 2014. So tell us what you've been able to achieve so far, maybe with that brand since 2014?

Kyle Ewing  02:44

Yeah, I mean, we've come a long way and like you said, it's an unconventional product. Our, our primary audience is businesses. So I've had to adapt all the marketing from B2C which, which I feel like is a little bit more familiar because we are all often consumers. But changing that to B2B has really been the challenge, and what we've been able to do is go from the living room of my house, where I was calling chemical engineers, trying to help figure, help have them help me figure out how could we make waterproof paper or make paper waterproof without laminating it? Because when you laminate something, it's not actually very good technology in the 50s. That was great, right? But it's not very flexible. You can't fold it. It cracks and peels. It's terrible for the environment. It's like, how do we solve this? And what I wanted to make is a waterproof passport because when I was going through customs, they would always nail me because they'd be like, well, why is your passport all wrinkled? I'm like, because it got wet. But in my mind, like it's still a valid passport. It's just wavy now. And so they would constantly hassle me like, okay, why is this not waterproof? So I developed this material in order to make passports waterproof. And going through all this like incredible amounts of work to do this and develop it and get it approved and get it in the right hands. We literally started to sell two a week. and I think my profit was a couple of bucks each. And my first run of paper was 100,000 sheets, and I had this stuff stacked floor to ceiling in my little apartment. And I can't believe my wife was so tolerant. But from there, we pivoted. We realized the product is the material, not this single application for it. So now we've gone from making waterproof passports at two a week to zero a week. However, we now ship millions of sheets a year, and it gets used in everything from biotech firms to restaurants for their menus. It's used for signage and the thing that hangs on your door at the hotel that says quiet, please. The NFL teams use it in their play charts. We've got grocery stores that use it in their pricing and then a whole lot of military applications. So we've gone from my house to four different offices, and now we manufacture in four different facilities around the country. Plus we have a facility in England. And now, recently we have a facility in China, so we've gone in in what will be 11 years this May from like one sheet at a time in my bedroom to multiple state-of-the-art facilities. And it's been a completely wild ride along the way.

Raphael Paulin-Daigle  05:16

I love that; that's amazing to hear. First of all, congrats on all on all that success. But but I'm curious now. Like you sell this to a lot of businesses, but obviously we're talking today because ecommerce is still important to you guys. It's not like you have a website with the phone number and you tell people to call you or to email you to place a wholesale order, like you have all your products available online, you've got reviews, your website has a lot of information. So obviously, you guys prioritize it. And it's a key part of your growth strategy. So I think maybe we can start, you know, first with acquisition. Right. And then we can maybe talk a bit more about conversion. But first, when you're selling products like that, I'm guessing a lot of the advice that you would hear from my podcast or other podcasts, like you said, applies to, you know, your typical B2C company selling goods. But in your case, when it comes to, you know, acquiring customers and selling them products through e-commerce, where do you even start? What's been most successful for you guys?

Kyle Ewing  06:16

You know, it's a great question. And the answer that I think people often want to hear is, oh, we're just really good at making Google ads and Facebook ads. And well, I will go out on a limb and say, we have figured out how to do that really well. But the challenge is it takes a lot of time and money and iterations and AB testing to get good at that. And when you're a small company or a startup, you don't have the money to throw at that because you can't afford to miss or you might lose the whole company. So here's what we did that's unconventional or that's, I would say, unconventional in today's day and age. What I did is I would charge my phone at night. In the morning, I would wake up and I would dial until the phone battery died, and I would dial for dollars. Hey Ralph, it's Kyle. Hey, we haven't met, but here's what here's my product. I think it might be helpful. Can I get you a sample pack? There's no cost. I'll follow up in a couple of days. Let me know what you think. And I would dial to the phone. Battery died, and then I would eat lunch while I charged it. And then I would kill another phone battery in the afternoon. Because my personal mantra is that you don't need any money to make money. When people say things like, oh, you got to spend money to make money. I have this like internal reaction in my blood. Pressure goes up and I get sweaty and I just want to jump down their throat and Bart Simpson their neck and be like, dude, no, that is that is the only thing you say if you have no other option or if you're just being lazy because everybody's got a cell phone, you basically can't start a business and not have already had a phone. Typically the plans are unlimited. So my thought is like dial for dollars. It takes a little bit of pride and it's going to get crushed like 50 times, but you will figure out what to say. And I saw this great TikTok recently. I don't remember the guy, but he was like, look, you are 2000 cold calls away from being rich. And I about threw the phone when I put my arms up because I was like, yes, that is 1,000% true because when you make 2000 cold calls, you will learn what does the customer want? What do they think of your product? Are they willing to buy it? And then they'll tell you what you're either doing right or doing wrong. And you won't know that if you just buy Google ads. Like it's easy. Sure. Like hire a marketing company, they'll they'll run up your spend. Sure. But like when you talk to the customer and they yell in your face and they tell you to f off and die, you're like, okay, cool, I need to adjust that pitch. I did not land on that one, but then try to collect the no's, right? So like this guy said, no, that guy said no. I am aware that I just got to keep dialing and I will get to success if somebody's awful to me on the phone, I just say, Yep, thank you. Got it. And then I hang up and dial because if I don't dial, I'm like, man, I need a couple minutes to recover. I got to go like get some water and stand up. Then that bad call hits my soul, and it hurts, and it sticks. And what I want to do is like, hang up and dial, man.  Back to the numbers game.

Raphael Paulin-Daigle  09:02

And I love that you're saying that because one of the things that we've talked about a lot on this podcast, and that adds a base for conversion optimization, we think is number one is, you know, smile and dial, call your customers, survey your customers. You know, there's no reason why you can't call them. But, you know, surveys, just talking with the customers, getting their feedback, understanding what they care about, what they like, what they dislike. I mean, I was going to ask you questions about the website and we're going to get there. But, you know, for conversion optimization and to acquire customers, that is number one. In ten years of running this company, I still haven't found a method that's better than, you know, talking with customers when it comes to converting people. So I love you for sharing that.

Kyle Ewing  09:45

And on that, I think that like you when you build a relationship with a person on the phone, getting them to become an e-commerce customer afterwards is a very natural progression. So you won't have to talk to them on the phone for every reorder, because what you're doing on the first phone call is introducing them to the product. On the second phone call, you're following up, how are the samples? And then maybe that third phone call is you take the order, but then going forward, you don't have to do that. They go on your Shopify site, they know exactly what they're going to buy. They click, click, click, boom, done, and the order gets fulfilled. So you kind of only have to do that at the beginning, and it's how you can get traffic to your store when you can't yet afford to buy it. Yeah.

Raphael Paulin-Daigle  10:24

And I'm curious here, How does it apply at scale? Is it still something where you have team members, you know, kind of calling up? Obviously you've got a big pool of of existing customers when it comes to acquiring new customers. Today you said you got really good at ads, but is is there still a portion of cold calling or anything like that part of the mix?

Kyle Ewing  10:45

Absolutely. I still do one hour a day of business development, and it doesn't matter if we had the best day in the world yesterday or if today is going great or poorly, I do it. And then we have a sales team, and they have a certain number of calls that they're trying to do each week. And we track those calls, and they do an incredibly good job of talking to the customer, like in the way you know, that is how long the call lasts. If one of your guys calls. And he talks to somebody for 10s or 30s, it didn't go well. But when somebody is on the phone for like ten minutes, you're like, wow, I bet that call is going well. That customer is going to they're going to be interested. So 100% like we try to put everything on e-commerce, right? Because it's easier to scale ecommerce than phones. But the truth is, like the phones work, and we sell a product that you don't inherently know about, like waterproof paper. I mean, you mentioned it at the show, and I'm sure 99% of the listeners have never even considered the concept of waterproof paper. So we have to introduce it to them. And the truth is, selling paper on the internet is hard because waterproof paper, when you take a picture of it, looks exactly the same as every other type of paper. And then people are like, oh yeah, I get it. You're just laminating it, and we're like, oh no, like that's the opposite of the message. So those things are what's been really important for us to communicate through the website.

Raphael Paulin-Daigle  12:08

Interesting. At this point, now that you've achieved scale, would you say that the website now serves primarily as a channel for returning customers, or is there still a significant segment that, you know you probably wouldn't reach through the phone that still comes in fresh and brand new through the website?

Kyle Ewing  12:26

Yeah, there's a lot of folks that find us through the website and convert, and we never talk to them. It's if you if you look at our sales, you know, and if we're being open and vulnerable, we do. About half of our sales are in terms of dollars. People coming to the website, they find what they're looking for and they click buy and we never talk to them. And then the other half, we're going through a sales process or we're doing an RFP, or it's a cold call. So it's about 50-50 are just doing it ourselves on the Shopify website. And the other half we're providing some customer service for.

Raphael Paulin-Daigle  12:59

Got it. And let's talk a little bit maybe about the actual website. And you know, obviously, like you said, a piece of paper, A sheet of paper. No matter what. Which one you're selling? it all kind of looks the same online. Conventional advice always says have big images. Have a lot of images. Obviously, for you guys, that's not something that applies a lot. What are maybe some of the things that you've learned over the years. You've dialed down your Facebook ads. You've done some a, B tests. What are things that you have found to be true when you're marketing, this type of product is needed on the website or is important, or that might be different than conventional products on the website in order to convert customers.

Kyle Ewing  13:41

Yeah. So that's a great question. As I mentioned earlier hard to photograph because it doesn't look like anything. So what ends up happening is instead of photographs of the product which you might use if you're selling gadgets or gizmos or clothes or whatever it is, it's going to be a photograph of the actual thing, but that doesn't work. What we found is that a mock up that our graphic design team makes a representative image does. It converts at like a 20x rate versus a photograph. Because like, we have spent a ton of money on photographers all over the world doing sexy photographs. And the truth is, like, it's just hard to take a picture of a piece of paper and have it look like something somebody wants to buy. Like, even if it's wet and all the things like, we've been down that road 20 times, but what we call a mock up, which is a representative image, works really, really well. And it's not actually the product, but it's showing you how the product works and what it does. And then when they buy it, they're really happy with the experience because the paper really does do those things.

Raphael Paulin-Daigle  14:42

That's super interesting. I wonder what kind of role or how much have you experienced or played with videos, right? I'm guessing it's waterproof paper. There might be like a clear case where you take some water and you spill it on the on the sheet.

Kyle Ewing  14:56

Yeah, yeah. Video is I think the most powerful and it's something we could even do more of. We talk about it regularly. Showing a use case in a video is much more compelling than, than a photo or a mockup. Because people understand video and they relate to it. They don't want to read, they want to watch. And the very, very first episode or season, I should say, of Shark Tank, had this guy named Kevin Harrington on it. Now Kevin's a buddy of mine, so he won't mind me saying he got kicked off because he wasn't as good on TV as some of the other sharks. But we did a deal, not on Shark Tank. We actually didn't get to air the episode or record it. We got introduced to him, and he made us a video that we put on our website, and that video alone has generated tens of millions of dollars for us, because he has some authority and some social credit as one of the original sharks on Shark Tank. And he uses the product and he shows it to you, and that's really compelling. We also have some videos of people trying to rip the material or like getting it wet, like you said, and those really help people and improve the buyer's confidence that they want to put their credit card in and try it. A couple other things that we really like, and I'm giving away the secret sauce for you and for your listeners here, but it is something called buy with Prime. And what that means is you can buy TerraSlate products on terraslate.com or on Amazon.com. But what some customers love about Amazon is that they know the return is easy. You can pretty much return anything in any condition. And so they're not sure about that if they buy it through a private website. They also don't know about shipping. Now we do free overnight shipping for everybody on every order, so they probably get it faster from us than Amazon in most cases. But nonetheless, you can when you go on our website, terraslate.com, you go to buy a product. Many of the products you can either say like add to cart or you can say buy or check out with Amazon. And a certain number of people will check out with Amazon. And that's a product that Amazon developed. We were actually one of the very first Shopify stores or ecommerce stores to have this. We helped Amazon develop it. We were a beta tester for them, and it allows the customer to check out on your website, but use their saved credit card on Amazon, and they can do an Amazon return. And they have all that protection, which we've found is helpful because some customers are willing to buy from Amazon when they're not willing to buy through your website because they know it's going to get there fast, they can ding you on a refund. They can write you a shitty review if they don't like your product. And those things are valuable. So that's something that I recommend to everybody is to add Buy with Prime.

Raphael Paulin Daigle  17:44

Awesome. I think to sum it up, as we're running out of time, one of my main key takeaways here is obviously when you've got products that maybe are not what I'd call sexy products, you know, visuals still do matter, right? At the end of the day, if it's not imagery, leverage videos. I think, you know, this is the type of product where if people are ordering large quantities, well, there's also going to be a strong aspect of trust that's going to be necessary, which, you know, you've been able to achieve as well with that video that you mentioned. So demonstrating product capabilities, understanding the customer by actually talking to them, calling them and using those objections, those needs and motivations to refine messaging through your ads and website. You know, that all leads to success when it comes to B2B sales, which at the end of the day, I'm realizing is not too dissimilar to, you know, other types of maybe more common products. The bases and the methodologies remain the same, the application a little different. Now, for the minute that we've got left, Kyle, what is one thing that you would do differently if you were to start this business all over again?

Kyle Ewing  18:55

Oh brutal question. I love that I love that you went there. What's one thing I would do differently? There's probably about 100,000 things I would do differently. But the thing that comes to mind is I was afraid at the beginning to hire expensive talent because I was worried we might not be able to afford them, and then I'd have to lay them off or let them go. And what that meant was I had to do it all by myself. And I still fall prey to that frequently because I never want to get out over my skis. Meaning like I don't want to outkick my coverage or insert sports analogy here. I'm a conservative growth guy. I want to grow at a rate that we can match demand, but I still want I mean, I want 25 to 35% growth minimum. Some years it's 100, some years it's 50. But like, I should have hired better talent sooner. And if somebody if I need to hire somebody that makes a quarter million bucks, I should have taken that risk sooner because, like, it's who, not how. When it comes to business and the best minds you can afford, even if you can't afford them, the business will grow into it and you will be able to afford them. And you will say, thank goodness I did this because when you try to do it yourself, it doesn't scale. You can't scale your time fast enough.

Raphael Paulin Daigle  20:08

Awesome, Kyle. This was fantastic. So we've been talking to Kyle Ewing, who's the CEO of Terrace Lake. Now, Kyle, if people want to learn more about you, where should they go?

Kyle Ewing  20:18

Yeah, hit me up on LinkedIn. I'm an active LinkedIn user. It's Kyle Ewing.I reply to those messages as fast as I can, and I love hearing about people's stories and their products, and I can't tell you how many products I've ordered. When people said, hey, I heard your podcast, or I heard you on something, this is my business. What do you think? And I'm typically pretty happy to just buy the product. I love to be people's first customers or in that early crowd. I love to support entrepreneurs. And then I'm happy to give you feedback. You know, I'm a pretty easy grader, so like, I don't like to nail people to the wall. That's just not who I am. But I'll tell you everything I love about it, and I'll tell you how I think you could position it in the market, or get it to sell by itself online while you're sleeping, because, Amen. That is exactly what we're all trying to do.

Raphael Paulin Daigle  21:07

Yeah, exactly. Well, Kyle, thank you so much.

Outro  21:15

All right. Well, that's it for today's episode. And thank you so much for tuning in. Now, if you like what you've heard, and you don't want to miss any of the new episodes that are about to come out, make sure you subscribe to the podcast and well, bonus points if you also leave a review in the iTunes store or wherever you're listening to this. Now, if you're working on an ecommerce store that does over $1 million in revenue and you need help with conversion optimization or landing pages, well, I've got some good news because there's a pretty good chance we can help with that. Go to splitbase.com to learn more, or even to request a proposal. If you have any guest requests, questions, or comments, tweet me at @Rpauldiagle, and I'll be super happy to hear from you. And again, thanks again for listening. This is Minds of Ecommerce.

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