In 2016, music legend Jack White became an investor in design entrepreneur Ben Jenkins’s sporting goods brand, Warstic. Today the company does so much more than manufacture artisan baseball bats.
Ben:
Us designers know. I think we have weapons at our disposal that non-creative people don’t have.
Jack:
I’m too far into the art side of it, but I’m not taking my pieces and selling that at art galleries either. It’s like, this is for nobody but me.
Recorded Voice:
From the TED Audio Collective, this is Design Matters with Debbie Milman. For 18 years, Debbie Milman has been talking with designers and other creative people about what they do, how they got to be, who they are and what they’re thinking about and working on. On this episode, we hear from musician Jack White and designer Ben Jenkins about their business collaboration.
Ben:
Baseball bats are really simple thing. I bet I could figure that out.
Jack:
I’d seen these baseball bats and I remember thinking, “Oh wow. What an obvious idea, of course.”
Debbie:
Jack White has been on the music scene for over two decades. First in the band Goober & The Peas, then in the duo the White Stripes, then the Raconteurs, and the Dead Weather. He’s also released his own solo albums and produced music for artists including Loretta Lynn and Beyonce. He’s won many Grammy awards and three of his albums have reached number one on all of the charts that matter. Ben Jenkins is a different kind of rock star. He’s a former baseball player turned designer, turned entrepreneur. In 2011 he started a company that manufactured baseball bats named Warstic. What brings these two gentlemen together here in person is that in 2016 Jack White became an investor in Warstic, and the company now makes way more than baseball bats. Jack White and Ben Jenkins, welcome to Design Matters.
Jack:
Hi, thank you for having us.
Ben:
Thanks, Debbie.
Debbie:
Jack, is it true that you don’t have a cell phone?
Jack:
That is true. Yeah.
Debbie:
Have you ever had a cell phone?
Jack:
No, I’ve never had one, but I do think my days are numbered. I think time is running out because there’s so many things nowadays I’m discovering last, just since the pandemic hit, for example, where I’m not going to be able to get through a day without that.
Debbie:
How do you do that now? It’s hard for me to even imagine somebody not being able to look at their phone for directions or for Wikipedia.
Jack:
Yeah, I use email and I text on my laptop, so I’m on my computer a lot. So that handles, I think, the big brunt of it. And then there’s just the, I don’t know, old fashioned way of just leaving the house and driving away and you’re not going to see me for a couple hours. That’s how it goes.
Debbie:
Was it a decision that you made when cell phones first came out? Like, “No, I don’t want to be part of this on all the time lifestyle”?
Jack:
I was scared of, for example, I’ve never smoked marijuana, for example. It’s not some sort of judgmental thing against people who smoke marijuana, I could care less and what other people do, whatever. It’s not the thing itself, it’s the things that are attached to it. So it’s not the cell phone itself, it’s just the idea that I’m going to be on it all day long, and I’m going to have it charged, and I’m going to have to wake up in the morning and… It’s all the ancillary things, those are the things I have fears, ancillary things. It’s not the gun, it’s the bullets.
Debbie:
Right, it’s not the phone it’s the addiction?
Jack:
Yeah.
Debbie:
You were born Jack Gillis in downtown Detroit. Your mom is Polish, your dad is Scottish Canadian, and they both worked for the church. You are the youngest of 10 siblings. What is the range between you and your oldest sibling?
Jack:
My oldest sister, Maureen is 21 years older than me. I’m 46, so she’s 67.
Debbie:
My youngest brother is 26 years younger, but it’s from different mothers.
Jack:
Oh wow. So you know the… Yeah, it’s very similar.
Debbie:
Yeah, I felt very much like I raised my little brother or helped raise him, and I know you felt that way about your older sisters as well.
Jack:
Oh yeah. They used to say whenever they would take me out and everyone thought that they… People would say, “Oh, your mom, ask your mom for ice cream,” or something like that. They would always treat them like they were the moms, and they pretty much were. The whole family was very much like that, it was like having a lot of parents. The ninth kid is seven years older than me, I’m way at the end.
Debbie:
So you were an accident?
Jack:
Most definitely, but the Catholic kind. There are no accidents in giant Catholic families. It’s like, “What’s that?”
Debbie:
Yeah, your parents really liked each other.
Jack:
Let’s just call it unexpected, let’s call it that.
Debbie:
Your six older brothers were in a band called Catalyst and you began to play their drum kit when you were five. What drew you to the drums specifically?
Jack:
I didn’t think I had any talent for the other stuff, guitar and bass.
Debbie:
But at five?
Jack:
At five, it felt like drums were just whatever, I’m not doing anything serious. I just like music and this is something I can actually do. And as I got older, I started to play a little bit guitar, but I was always playing something. I didn’t learn, nobody taught me, I was self-taught on these instruments so by the time I was in my 20’s I was thinking, “Oh wow, I actually can play a little bit of piano, I can play a little of the guitar.” But I never thought about that way. I thought always with music, if it ever came to a thing where, what do I would like to do as a musician? I was like, “Oh, I like to play drums in a band.” And by that I always meant a band that plays a gig once a year at a bar in Detroit, that there’s no way you could ever do anything bigger than that, and that I would just do upholstery for the rest of my life.
Debbie:
Well, actually I’ve read, and I don’t know if this is true. I read it fairly consistently in all of the research that we did that because you never really thought you could make a living as a musician, you decided you wanted to become a priest and were accepted at the seminary.
Jack:
That’s true, it’s just slightly convoluted. The acceptance at the seminary was when I was 14. So, that was deciding what high school to go to, and I applied at a seminary in Wisconsin and they accepted me and I was planning to go there. And about the summer before it happened at the last second, I found out or heard by word-of-mouth, “You know you can’t bring your guitar and amp to that dormitory in Wisconsin?” And I thought, “Ooh, that might be a deal-breaker.” I was just getting into music in a way where I was starting to record in my bedroom and things like that, and I thought, “Oh, wow. Am I going to give this up for four years, I’m going to not play music?” I didn’t know, I didn’t actually double-check to make sure that was true. It was just that rumor was enough for me to go, “I think maybe this isn’t the right idea.” So I went to a public school in Detroit, which was its own kind of own weird universe.
Debbie:
Well, you went to a technical high school, but did you at any point really want to be a priest?
Jack:
I thought about it. What they call it in the Catholic world is you get the calling. So you go and you see if you’ll get the calling eventually. So you don’t decide your life at 13 or 14, you just go, “If you head down this one path and then if you get the calling down the road, then it’s the thing.” That’s the nice thing about… As many flaws that the Catholic church has, there’s a nice thing about the Catholic church growing up through it was, they didn’t force that kind of stuff on you. It wasn’t like, “Oh, you want to be a preacher? Cool. We’re setting you up right now at 13. Okay, good. Your rest of your life you’re going to be a priest.” They’re not really like that, and they’re not going out and pushing their stuff down on other people’s throats.
Jack:
So that was a cool, niceness of that environment where you did feel like, “Okay, I was thinking about it but I changed my mind.” I did the same thing with the Marines coming out of high school, in senior year I had signed up for possibly going to the Marines or the air force. They come to your class and recruit you in class. But then again I thought, “Oh it’s not for me, I don’t think it’s the right move for me.” But upholstery, I would have dropped out of high school and just done upholstery if I could have. I don’t think anybody around me would have been very supportive of me dropping out.
Debbie:
You grew up with a Polish grandmother and your parents were in their 60’s when you were in high school, you lived in a Mexican neighborhood and went mostly to an all black high school. And you said it would’ve made just as much sense for you to play in a Polish polka band or in a hip hop group, or in a Mexican mariachi band. What was the first music you were really interested in playing?
Jack:
Rock and roll because that was what my brothers were really into, but our family liked all kinds of music. My parents were into big band music and Nat King Cole and Sinatra and all that stuff. And my brothers were into rock and roll a lot, but also Johnny Cash and folk musicians as well. And so, it was a pretty healthy mix. And then of course, all the friends on my block were all listening to hip hop and house music and Latin music. So, any of those could have been interesting, but I think there was, your older brothers and sisters are going to win out as influence.
Debbie:
By the time you were 15, you were a business major in Cass Technical High School. And you had an upholstery apprenticeship with Brian Muldoon who was a family friend and a former neighbor who ran an upholstery studio. And I read that you remember first being intrigued by Muldoon’s studio as a little boy riding around on a big wheel.
Jack:
Well, our two houses were right next door to each other. So you could ride bikes or big wheels in between the houses and look down into the basement if the door was open. So, I would see him working on furniture down in that basement all the time as I rode by. So it was just by chance that when I was a teenager, he moved next door to my brother in another part of town in Detroit. And then hanging out on the front porch we started talking, he was a drummer, so we started talking about drums, and then he gave me some Modern Drummer magazines. And then he eventually asked me, “Hey, do you want to come and work after school and sweep up in the shop a couple days a week, maybe learn how to do some upholstery.” And I thought, “Wow, what a cool job at 15?”
Jack:
And by the time I got to 18 though, I got around into it, I was really starting. I had gotten so immersed in the furniture and designers and mid-century modern, and arts and crafts and I’ve become really in love with film. So I thought it would be great to take some film classes, maybe end up possibly working in film and directing in film somehow. You discovered quickly that was like, I got… I became a PA on car commercials and stuff. It was mostly car commercials because it’s the big three and it’s Detroit and that’s the industry of film in that town except for art projects.
Debbie:
Had you ever thought about going to Cranbrook or any of the amazing schools that are in Michigan?
Jack:
I would’ve loved to had anybody actually offered this idea to me. I’ve never even knew that was a possibility, I didn’t know about Cranbrook and all that until it was in my 20’s. It’s indicative of a lot of things, the environment that I grew up in the ’80s and early ’90s which it was still crazy. There’s just a lot of things you see now with modern parents and I’m a parent and I have a lot of friends with kids, that you just see how much is put in front of them. Like, “You can do this, you can do that. And this is an option and that’s an option,” and none of these things were put in front of me. And no one even told me when they would see me recording and getting super involved in music like, “Wow, you could press your own record, there’s a record pressing plant in town.”
Jack:
Nobody said that to me, nobody said, “Oh by the way, you can go to this design high school instead of the high school you’re going to, or design college.” When I was 21, I opened my own upholstery shop. And if I saw a 21 year old kid do that now I’d be like, “Oh my God man, congratulations. High five, whatever. Do you need any help?” Or whatever. And I didn’t see a lot of that, I saw a lot of people giving you this look like, “Okay, whatever.” Thinking this is going to fail in a year or so, I don’t know what they were intending, what they were conveying, but it wasn’t pats on the back, let’s put it that way.
Debbie:
Well, it’s a little bit obscure.
Jack:
It is kind of strange, yeah.
Debbie:
It’s a bit of an old school kind of discipline. My grandfather was an upholsterer, by the way.
Jack:
No way.
Debbie:
Yes.
Jack:
Wow.
Debbie:
But it’s not something that I’ve ever heard anyone say, “When I grow up, I want to be an upholsterer.”
Jack:
No, it’s very, very niche. And I definitely think that through going to the upholstery supply places when I was coming up, I pretty much determined that I was the only person under 45 doing that trade in the metropolitan Detroit area.
Debbie:
I would say maybe even in the world.
Jack:
There’s not many.
Debbie:
There’s not many. You began to write notes and poetry inside the furniture, like a message in a bottle. Has anybody found any of the messages over the years and the poetry that you tucked inside the cushions?
Jack:
We did. I don’t think anyone’s found any of my pieces of things that I’ve done in them, but people have found… Two people found this work I did with Brian Muldoon who I learned from. We did for his 30th anniversary of his shop, we did 100 records that we made together. We were a band called The Upholsters and we made 100 records and put them in a 100… He put them in 100 pieces that year. So two of those have been found. People have notified us they found those and they’re keeping them and they didn’t publicize it or sell them or whatever.
Debbie:
That’s incredible. It’s absolutely incredible. While working at the apprenticeship, you were also a drummer in two different bands. You were recording music in your bedroom, as you mentioned. And you also became close friends with Megan White, who you married in 1996 and took her last name. Very forward thinking, very ahead of your time. What made you decide to do that? Was it just because it was a cool color?
Jack:
I don’t have anything to say about that category, sorry.
Debbie:
While you were doing that, you decided to open your own upholstery shop. As you mentioned, you named your business Third Man Upholstery. The slogan you chose for your business was your furniture’s not dead. And you wrote some of your bills out in crayon. And I was wondering if that was a design decision or if it was more arbitrary, because that was the writing utensil you had nearby?
Jack:
I see it now when I work on furniture pieces that they’re more sculpture than they are furniture, really. And it’s something that was happening to me in the final year of my upholstery shop, which was, it was becoming more art than it was a way of sustaining a business and making money. I didn’t care about the money anymore, I was more interested in the fact that I was wearing a yellow shirt and a black pants with a white belt and delivering it and giving the bill in crayon. And I’d gotten obsessed with certain artists and there was this one artist, I can’t remember his name, but he was making counterfeit money. He was hand drawing counterfeit bills, one sided, and his art was to go buy things with that money. And he wanted to buy the object and they would give him the object and the receipt and the change, and that was part of the artistic transaction. And I got obsessed with this and I started writing my bills in crayon, and then all this stuff. And it’s not the way to make business in Detroit doing people’s furniture. That was very-
Debbie:
Performance art.
Jack:
Yeah, it was bizarre. And I knew I started to get to too far. I got this incredible piece which was a psychiatrist’s chair and couch. This was a great moment, I got to do this and she didn’t like dealing with me by the end of it I think. It wasn’t serious and commercial enough for her. And she had gotten, I had a guy upstairs from my shop was building furniture frames. It was like the perfect marriage, this guy could build frames. And she got another set made and took it to a different upholster, and I knew I had blown it with this client and I’m like, “This is a sign, I think I’m too far into the art side of it. But I’m not taking my pieces and selling that at art galleries either.” It’s like, this is for nobody but me.
Debbie:
By 1998, you were playing in bands including the Hentchmen, the Go, Two-Star Tabernacle, and the freshly minted White Stripes which you started with Meg. Did you feel conflicted by pursuing these two very different paths, upholstery and music?
Jack:
I just always assumed the music part was just going to be a small thing and not anything that would bring in any money or pay bills, or be able to have it as a lifestyle or a choice, artistic choice. I always assumed that the upholstery part was going to be how I paid the bills. So I didn’t take any of those any more seriously in that, yes, I would rather be making music, or I’d rather be making sculpture, but my assumption was always, “Oh, we got to gig this week, but probably six months from now, we’re not going to get a gig anymore.” So, but those assumptions started to slowly prove wrong, and it became more and more that I was now being taken away from the shop and working on music and making records and the artwork that went into that, and trying to get studio time and figure out a way to pay for that, and balancing those two. And yes, slowly the upholstery shop was fading away. But I remember people from the garage rock scene, musicians and friends, coming to hang out at my shop while I was working. They coincided for a while there.
Debbie:
In 2001, after releasing two somewhat under the radar albums, the White Stripes exploded during a visit to the UK when DJ John Peel said that you were the most exciting thing he’d heard since Jimi Hendrix, and life really hasn’t been the same since. What did it feel like at the time to go from zero to 60 in three seconds? Suddenly you were world-renowned.
Jack:
It was very strange because we had planned a trip to England. We thought we were just going to play with some other garage rock bands from England and Billy Childish, his whole group and Holly Golightly and all that. And we thought we’d play a couple gigs with them and it would be a nice trip. The trip would pay for itself, and we’d be off. That was not the case. By the time we had landed and what John Peel had been pushing, it was very incredible. It was, we were showing up to his studio and he had a live audience and there was a buzz in town. It was a big deal that we were there. And Meg and I were shocked, we had no clue why this would be happening this way. But John Peel was the last of those real DJs who played whatever he wanted to play and was an influencer and really his taste, he was a tastemaker.
Jack:
So if he played it was good to so many people, and he really loved us. And matter of fact, they’ve end up when he passed away, they had his box. He had his 45 box that he would take to DJ gigs and take to certain things, and they made actually a little documentary on it. But in that box of whatever it was, 150 records or something, there was 12 of my seven inches that I had been a part of. And so I don’t know why, but I connected with this guy. And when we met, we bonded fast. But God bless him because he had a huge impact on my life.
Debbie:
You were also the creative director for the band and were influenced by the De Stijl modern art movement, so much so that you even named one of your albums after the term. And De Stijl is used to refer to a body of work from 1917 to 1931 founded in the Netherlands by Pete Mondrian, Theo van Doesburg. What intrigued you about the ideals of De Stijl?
Jack:
Something occurred to me. I had bought a book called De Stijl and I was reading it. And when I found out the time period it existed in, it seemed like it was the exact same time period that American blues music was happening, and it seemed to apply to what we were doing with the White Stripes so definitively. And I had never heard of this movement, De Stijl, I thought it was something that nobody had heard of because I just found this book and didn’t realize if you went to art school, you would’ve read about it just like you’d read about Bauhaus or whatever. So I was, in my own little world, was making a correlation between this and blues music of the 20th century, of breaking things down to the absolute essentials of blues just being stripped onto one person against the world, one person a guitar, one person a piano, one person and a mandolin.
Jack:
And it’s the same thing they were doing, Mondrian and Gabriel Viardot doing with their furniture and paintings of breaking things down to simple shapes and simple colors. So I just thought it would be nice for us to put that together and feed off of that idea, so we did that. Which was funny because I think at the end of the day I remember seeing, who was it? Ann Powers or somebody like NPR of New York Times or something giving us a big thumbs down saying, “This band, they’re pulling the wool over everybody’s eyes. These are obviously art school students and this is art school 101 and this is pedestrian at best. And they’re pretending that they’re above everybody else,” or something like that, some connotation that this was a ruse.
Jack:
Again, this is my ignorance as far as whatever the rest of the world had known about their take on things. I was so insular back then that… You guys understand from the environment of Detroit that you’re in, nobody likes the same stuff that I like or the people that I am around. It’s very solitary, so you just make assumptions. I made a lot of incorrect assumptions that people didn’t know about that, people didn’t know about this, or whatever. But it was nice that I did that because I ended up creating things that it spurred me on and inspired me to think, “Oh, this is very unique,” at least it’s unique to me, something I’m getting an inspiration from.
Debbie:
Well, you didn’t necessarily need to know that the way that you were directing the creative for the band was based on De Stijl, it was just really compelling.
Jack:
It seemed to fit.
Debbie:
Creatively, the use of red, white and black. The red, white and black signified the White Stripes aesthetic. You’ve used green for the Raconteurs. Now you use blue. Well, you’ve been using blue for your solo career.
Jack:
Solo stuff, yeah.
Debbie:
So, talk a little bit about this visual positioning because it’s really, really well done.
Jack:
Oh, thanks. It’s usually the three colors of black and white being, white being all colors and black being the absence of color, and then whatever primary color makes sense to that. And this came from a designer of currency, again, that designed currency in the Netherlands where each denomination was a different color. So you instantly knew in your hand what you had, you had a 10, or you had a 20.
Debbie:
Yeah. Classic branding, by the way.
Jack:
It’s good in that sense, right? So the Raconteurs was not my band, so I suggested these colors of copper and green, but that wasn’t as strict in Dead Weather and Raconteurs with the color scheme.
Debbie:
The White Stripes broke up in 2011 and you’ve gone on to a prolific and often bigger career in other bands, you’ve worked as a solo artist and you’ve collaborated and produced music with a range of artists from, as I mentioned in the intro, from Loretta Lynn to Beyonce. And you’ve said that Loretta Lynn is the greatest female singer/songwriter of the 20th century. What was it like to work with her and then win two Grammy awards together? And why do you think she’s a better singer/songwriter than somebody like Joni Mitchell?
Jack:
I don’t think Joni Mitchell is very nice, and Loretta is very nice.
Debbie:
I’ve heard that.
Jack:
No, I don’t know much about Joni Mitchell, actually. I shouldn’t say anything like that, but I’m just really joking. But Loretta just exudes a charisma in person since I have met her, that is just undeniable. There’s a bizarre brilliance that she doesn’t realize is brilliant. There’s part of her that really realizes and really understands something, and another part of her that has no clue as to how brilliant it is. And it’s so interesting to talk to her because those two sides have this… They don’t meet up and it’s very unique. And most people who are that smart and genius at what they’re doing, have a full 100% capacity to understand all that. That’s a good idea, and that’s where it came from and whatever, blah, blah, blah. She has these brilliant ideas and knows they’re good, but another half of her personality does not know how genius that really is when it’s outside of its own realm.
Jack:
She thinks maybe it’s like, “Oh, that’s a really clever title. And then when I say the next lyric, I’m going to say this because that goes along with that. That’s great.” “That’s not just great Loretta, that’s absolutely genius, and people cannot do what you just did.” That’s the feeling you have when you listen to her talk, this feeling I had at least. And so you experience that, and on top of that, just to have her incredible voice. And then I have the same this rags to riches story, this coal miners’ daughter’s story as well. Goodness gracious, it’s just outstanding.
Debbie:
You said that Loretta Lynn has an unique way of writing songs that is nearly impossible to replicate, and declared that you tried as much as you could to learn from her on the craftsmanship, but couldn’t make your way around it with a compass.
Jack:
It’s very strange. She says, “Oh, people say I write backwards.” And whatever you want to call it, there’s some bizarre double choruses of her songs. It would be like, “Women like you, they’re a dime a dozen. You can buy them anywhere. For you to get to him I’d have to move over and I’m going to stand right here.” To most people that would’ve been the chorus, and then she goes another one, “It’ll be over my dead body, get out while you can. But you ain’t woman enough to take my man.” And either of those would’ve been someone’s chorus, but for her to have both of those in there. For her to say, “Oh, that’s not good enough. I’m going to push a little bit farther and write more.” This is someone who is not trained musically. I don’t know, it’s just a diamond in the rough that people take her a little bit for granted and they need to explore her a little bit more because there’s something going on there that a lot of country writers even then, and today do not have.
Debbie:
What is the biggest thing you learned from her?
Jack:
The biggest thing I learned from Loretta is really just keeping it very simple, that it applied to her lifestyle too. I thought it applied very well to the White Stripes and what made people shockingly connect with that band. But it connected with her too. She was always like, “Okay well, the dress needs to be pretty, or the lighting needs to be good, or that guitar player needs to play louder.” It was always real simple decisions and not overly complicated that seemed to instantaneously work. And I’ve seen that too when I’m working with the Rolling Stones a little bit and acts that, I don’t know, you would think there’d be a lot of deeper discussions about exactly the perfect way to get this thing enacted. And a lot of that, you’d say once they’ve done all the groundwork earlier on when they’re younger, that they’re… It’s easier to just make these simple decisions to put these things in action, which is easy to say, isn’t it? It’s easy to say, “Oh yeah, just keep it simple.” You have to have that groundwork though underneath it all.
Debbie:
Oh, it’s the hardest thing to do. Keeping things simple requires so much education.
Jack:
Sure. You need to learn, go through 10 years of using every color in the pallet to decide to just use green on this one thing and nothing else.
Debbie:
You now run Third Man Studio which includes Third Man Records, books, pressing, mastering, a photo studio and a design studio. Third Man is DIY to the max. The only two things you don’t do in records is to produce and manufacture the paper sleeves and the metal mother stampers. You also still do upholstery and furniture construction. How much hands-on work do you do?
Jack:
I like to do as much as I can. The hard part is having a pressing plant where you own the place, and I would love to go in there and just mess around and make my own records. And you can’t do that with a real factory, we build around the clock, but at the same time I like the idea of that that’s a train that’s already in motion that I’m just overseeing. And you’re trusting a lot of people who are talented and they’re the ones driving the train on the daily. And it’s great, it’s just great to be a little bit of a part of something like that. The end of the day, you can get investors and you can charm people and get a bunch of people in a room to spend a bunch of money and make something. Big deal, who cares? I guess there’s a lot of people who would say it’s an unique position for a lot of people to be in, but at the same time it’s not impressive to me. What’s impressive is actually making something unique and beautiful that money is the last thing on the menu about why you’re doing it.
Debbie:
Before we talk about your work with Ben and Warstic, I want to ask you about your current music. You just released the album, Fear of the Dawn and have another album coming out this summer. Why two albums in a matter of months?
Jack:
I don’t know, really. Just a lot of songs kept coming out of me and they didn’t want to be split up. They didn’t want to be meshed together, they didn’t want to be left to the side, they wanted to both exist. And they both came out as two finished albums and I thought, “Well, that’s not a really good business model in the music world.” You put out an album and then release another one in a year or two later. And I thought, “Well, by the time that comes out, that second record, I might have already moved on to something else.” Which is the whole reason the pandemic was a little bit scary for me was that, “Well, we’re not going to be touring, then why make a record? And then if I’m going to get excited about this record, it’s not going to come out for a couple years and maybe I should just move over to something else.” And I did I really moved over to design and furniture. So by the time I got finally back in the studio, I think it was this floodgate opened and a lot of songs came out. So I thought, “It’s not a good business model, but I’m just going to do it. And I’m going to release both those records this year.”
Debbie:
You made both of these albums during the lockdown, during which time you initially played and recorded all of the instruments yourself. You said that the seclusion of the pandemic helped you reevaluate artistically, and you ended up pushing yourself into new areas you’re really proud of. Does that include the music, or is that really more or the design and the furniture building and a lot of the other things that you’re doing?
Jack:
Starts with free time, just haven’t had free time. And I think that was another thing I learned from Loretta Lynn was, she was very much on it. “Once you stop, they forget about you. And once you stop moving this train, the train comes to a complete screeching halt.” And she sacrificed a lot in her life with her own world and her own family and all that, trying to keep that train running. And I give her a lot of credit for it, that’s a hard decision to make. And that’s what happens with music especially, or if you’re an actor in films, like that.
Debbie:
I think any creative person.
Jack:
Yeah, and if you’re getting a lot of stuff happening and a lot of attention for it, you’re making big mistakes if you take too big of a break from it. So that absorbed, the idea was “Okay, well I want to do this, I want to direct short films and I want to design more things on furniture and interiors, et cetera. But I can’t stop this music train right now because if I do that, then I’m not going to be able to pay for any of these other ideas down the run, I won’t be able to afford to do it.” So you just keep that train moving, so that was the one nice thing about the pandemic for me in my own little world was that I had a lot of free time now to finally work on some of these other things.
Debbie:
Fear of the Dawn actually shows up in several different places on the album. It’s not just the name of the album, it’s also the name of a song. It’s also, you use the scientific word for another one of the songs, and I’m wondering if you can share that word with us, tell us why you decided to choose it, and then why… Do you have a fear of the dawn?
Jack:
You’re talking about the word eosophobia and that was the word I read in an article somewhere, and I wrote it down saying, “Oh, I’ve got to come back and read about whatever that is.” I do that a lot when I’m reading and I’ll just save them into a folder on my computer and go, “I’ll check on this later.” And that was something when I was working on a couple of songs, I saw that word pop up and I thought, “I don’t know what that is,” and I had to reread the definition of it, intense fear of the dawn. Which I thought, what a horrible thing to have an intense fear about, it’s going to happen.
Debbie:
There’s so many other things.
Jack:
It’s not like a fear of something that might happen or probably isn’t going to happen, that’s going to happen.
Debbie:
Every day.
Jack:
Yes, every day. So, what a horrible thing if that’s a true feeling. I don’t know if there’s people out there who really have this fear. It reminded me of something I’d read about people who don’t experience pain, who have the inability to experience pain and how dangerous their lives are. And I got more and more into an idea of how dangerous this idea would be about being fearful of the dawn or having anxiety attacks when the sun would come up. Then I didn’t realize, maybe to other people it was just a simpler concept, more of vampires. I didn’t even think of the vampire connotation of that until later, but I just got a lot of thought out of it, I guess.
Debbie:
It’s a great album. So inventive, so unusual, and really so crafty.
Jack:
Thank you. Thanks.
Debbie:
Let’s talk about Warstic. How did you meet Ben Jenkins and what made you decide back in 2016 to invest in a business designing and manufacturing baseball bats?
Jack:
That’s a great question. It’s interesting, I got really involved in baseball. I had gone through a divorce and I was going through a long lonely period that I was spending a lot of time by myself, and I ended up watching baseball games, Detroit Tigers games, for the first time since I was a teenager. So, that started then in 2013 area somewhere. But I’d seen these baseball bats in a design website that I was reading, and I saw these different colored bats and I remember thinking, “Oh, wow, what an obvious idea. Of course, baseball bats that you could get in any color you want, why haven’t they… What took so long for that to be a thing?” And then down the line, we were opening The Third Man records building with Shinola Watches together in the same building in Detroit.
Jack:
I co-bought the building with the owner, Tom Kartsotis of Shinola and they were doing a bat with Warstic, they were doing a Shinola baseball bat with Warstic. And I went into their shop and I was looking at stuff I said, “Oh cool, I know that company. I’ve read about those guys. That’s really cool that you’re doing that, Tom.” Then I came back to Nashville, what it was a few weeks later and somebody in the art department there said, “Hey, we have this idea about some ideas for new merchandise for the store.” Because we’re always trying to think of something interesting to turn people on, and somebody said, “Look at this, there’s this company doing… We could do these yellow, black and white bats. Third Man Records baseball bats, would that? Since you like baseball, Jack, would you be interested in that?” I said, “Oh my God, I am and I like that company, but I can’t do that because Shinola did that with them already, so we can’t have that.”
Jack:
These Warstic bats in both these stores right next to each other, it looks like we’re ripping off Shinola’s collab they did. So just tabled that. And then he had reached out, I think Ben would have to tell you what takes place next. I think that he might have reached out through Ian Kinsler who was a Detroit Tiger, who was now co-owner of Warstic that something about, I don’t know why my name came up, but I think Ian mentioned my name to him.
Debbie:
So Ben, how did it happen?
Ben:
I like to explain to people that I definitely would’ve never thought of it just out of the blue. What he doesn’t remember probably is that Third Man Records had reached out literally like, “Hey, would you make like a cool black and yellow Third Man bat with Warstic?” And I was like, “Yeah, we’d love to do that.” But I did go, “Hey by the way, who at Third Man knows about us?” Because I was just very curious.
Debbie:
Oh, of course.
Ben:
And the guy was like, “Oh, Jack found you on the internet.” And I was like, “Sick.” But, it’s funny thinking back that was enough for me. I actually felt for one of the first times in my life that, “Oh, I made some art that a really great artist thought was great art,” and maybe patted myself on the back a little bit and I thought that was it. When I met Ian a couple weeks later, that’s when it got weird which was, I mentioned that to him because he was exploring what Warstic was about and he said, “Why is it cool?” And I said, “I don’t know, it’s just cooler than other baseball bats which aren’t cool, these are cool.” And I said, “Jack White reached out and wanted to do something, no big deal.” And he goes, “Oh, I know Jack a little bit.” I joked, “Oh why don’t we reach out to Jack and see if he wants to be the big investor, wink, wink.” And he laughed, and then we looked at each other and we’re like, “Oh, why not?” And that’s very much all of our personalities, to just explore what’s happening and go for it. He emailed him and then we were in Nashville meeting the next week and it was very quick and natural.
Debbie:
So, before we talk about how you both worked together for and with this brand, I’d love to just go and talk a little bit about your background and how you even got to developing a baseball bat manufacturing and design company. Ben, you were raised in Texas where your mom encouraged your creativity, and your dad as a lawyer inspired your work ethic. And you’ve said that you grew up with a complete razor-sharp focus on two things, you loved playing sports and you loved being creative. How did you manage to do both at the same time? They seem to come from very different parts of the brain.
Ben:
Yeah they did, and in Texas you don’t do those things together in public either because you have two sets of very distinct friends as well. I was in bands with this set of friends and my jock friends, they didn’t know each other and I was this weird in between thing that I’d bounce back and forth. But you go play sports games, you can’t play sports all day, it’s tiring. And when I would go home very much at home, right? That’s what I did at home in my room, I would draw just like so many of us did. And I just would put the other thing down and do one or the other, and for some weird reason I loved to do both, but they never concurrently happened.
Debbie:
By the time you got to high school, you were playing football, baseball, track, and you also enrolled in architecture and art classes. At that point, what did you think you wanted to do professionally?
Ben:
100% architecture.
Debbie:
Oh really?
Ben:
Yes, because I think my dad, it’s not that he ever discouraged my art, but he’s a great businessman, he’s a great worker, he provides for his family and it’s like, “Okay, art, cool. But how are you going to provide for your family? A lot of people draw a line to architecture because it’s practical.” And I did love architecture, I loved building things with Legos and making things and things like that. So 100% I went to college on a baseball scholarship, but I made sure that that school had architecture until they kicked me out.
Debbie:
They kicked you out? Tell us about that.
Ben:
Two years into it, with architecture you have these intense afternoon studio classes. Well, that’s when also when you practice college baseball. I would petition the school and I would try to get classes moved, and it got to the point where the Dean was like, “Look, you’ve got to quite architecture or you’ve got to quit baseball,” and I was like, “Can’t quit baseball, I’m here to play baseball. I’m on a scholarship and I’ve got to do that.” And so it was really disturbing at the time because I was like, “This is…” I thought I had it all figured out, I’m a baseball player, I’m an architect. I’m going to just do both until one tells me to do the other, I guess, was my plan. But what happened instead was I was forced to pick a different major. The only thing I could think of that it was even relatable was to go to the art school.
Ben:
And I was very much for a year just painting and drawing. I didn’t even know what design was, and a painting teacher that I’m still great friends with to this day who I owe everything to, his name is Brent [Vanderberg 00:39:22]. Great painter himself, gently took me aside and said, “Look, you’re a good painter for sure. But I’ve seen you work and you have this crazy obsessive compulsive habit of you care about composition and moving things around more than you do the brushstrokes.” He dragged me into the design studio and introduced me to Jamie [Mixon 00:39:40], my other important professor in my life. And I was like, “No way man, I’m painting. I’m a fine artist. I am not doing this computer stuff.” And this was back when the computer was just emerging for graphic designers. But man, I hit that command Z and boy did my brain love that function of being able to try some things three steps forward and then go three steps back. And I was hooked probably within a couple of hours.
Debbie:
Yeah, you can’t do that in upholstery, but you can do that on a computer.
Ben:
But I felt stupid because I was like, “Oh he’s so right.” This is what I love about this stuff was finding that composition until things felt right. And I’m naturally just, I’m a perfectionist, like I’m sure a lot of designers are. It’s the worst thing you could ever be in baseball. There’s so much failure in baseball, if you’re a perfectionist you drive yourself insane which I was very good at. The mentality of design actually much more naturally fits me than what you need to do in baseball, and so that even shook out.
Debbie:
Well, you graduated from Mississippi State University with a degree in architecture, but went straight to the minor leagues to play for the Martinsville Phillies during the 1996 season when you were 22. So, how did that all work? How did that happen?
Ben:
I just went. Baseball was my identity, I think my identity as a child was very much still first sports, that was my public persona. I was thought of as like, “Oh, it’s the quarterback and that’s the jock.” I’m a nice guy, but no one really knew about my art except maybe my band mates, but no one came to see us play so no one knew about it, so baseball always came first. So I did well enough in college to get a pro offer, and I went and did that for a while. But like I said, my perfectionist mentality did not really allow my true athletic ability to come out. So eventually they just say, “Hey, sorry, this isn’t what you’re doing, you’re cut,” and I got cut. So for the first time… I got cut one time in my life when I was, I think I was 23, almost 24. And I had sports every day of my life until that day, and it’s like, “Boom, you’re done,” and it was disturbing.
Debbie:
Well, you’ve written about and talked about how you went through a depression after that.
Ben:
Oh absolutely, because my identity was, it was just not available to me anymore. The goal was no longer they’re available to pursue anymore. And it was one or two things, either really force it which a lot of guys do and they end up playing until they’re 30 and not developing anything else. I did have enough common sense to go, “Hey, I have this other thing I love, and I’m lucky that I have it. I should go put all this energy now into that one thing.” And that’s what I did and I wasn’t a good designer at that point at all, I had barely really dabbled in it. So I just got out one of those US News and World reports and started looking at design schools and, “Hey, this was probably one of it.” And I applied to like the 10 best ones, and I got into The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. And I just said, “I guess I better go,” and so I went. And so I went directly from baseball to that, but the baseball took two or three years to get out of my system enough to just fully function and not worry about it.
Debbie:
Well, there’s so many things to talk about regarding this. There is one really important thing which is, you went after a dream.
Ben:
Yeah.
Debbie:
And so many people are afraid to do that because they’re afraid of failure and then spend the rest of their lives wondering what if they had pursued that dream?
Ben:
Yeah. Really getting cut actually is probably really good because it was very like, “Hey.” It was very, “You’re cut. You’re fired, you’re cut.”
Debbie:
Bye, bye.
Ben:
You shouldn’t be doing this.
Debbie:
It’s so hard. Oh my God.
Ben:
It’s like, “You gave it a shot.” Getting turned away, I think that helped me flip the switch on everything else. And creativity was the thing, and I put all that competitive nature, unfortunately for many clients, probably into that one firm versus another and things like that. For 10 years I grinded on competing, OneFastBuffalo, my design and branding firm, against other people. I had that competitive nature and it served me hugely well, I was not afraid to work. If anything, some of my design teachers even would say, “Hey, this kid right here, he’s going to outwork you guys.”
Debbie:
So interesting. Michael Bierut talks about the same thing that it’s really his work ethic that has propelled him into the stratosphere. And that he’s just worked so hard he has more, and you’re going to love this, at bats.
Ben:
Yeah, time in the water I say with surfers, and there’s so many things, the 10,000 hours, whatever you want. I think I spent from age then 25 to 35 getting good at it, and understanding that that was okay. And that I enjoyed the process of getting better.
Debbie:
Sports is such a black and white De Stijl equation in that there’s a winner and a loser. Well, the interesting thing about sports that I try to imbue when I’m teaching my students is how often you do fail in sports, even when you’re winning. And so you have somebody like Babe Ruth who was successful 60% of the time, he had one of the greatest batting averages of all time. But that also meant he was unsuccessful 40% of the time. Same thing with Michael Jordan, Michael Jordan was able to shoot 35% of the time the ball into the basket. That meant 65% of the time he was unsuccessful.
Ben:
Yeah. So design was easy. Honestly, comparatively, it’s more like Babe Ruth succeeded 30 to 40% of the time and failed 70% of the time.
Debbie:
Oh, I got that.
Ben:
It’s actually even worse.
Debbie:
Even better, right?
Ben:
It’s three out of 10 times success in baseball’s Hall of Fame.
Debbie:
Right?
Ben:
Yeah. When you fail, what you have to do is see it as an open door to something else that you need to learn, you need to see failure as something that you need to learn. And if you can do that and have that mindset, every time you fail you’re going to get better, or you can just quit. So there was no quit in me. Once I got into design, it was like, there was absolutely no way I was going to give up on whatever the goal was I wasn’t sure, but I just wanted to do it. And I wanted to get one project and do good so I can get a better project so that I can get a better project, and I just focused on one project after the other until I felt like, “Oh, these are the kind of projects that I’ve always wanted,” because the first ones were obviously bad.
Debbie:
Well, I think they mostly are for everyone?
Ben:
Yeah.
Debbie:
While you were in grad school, you went to an Indian reservation in South Dakota as part of a film project. And this is when you first encountered buffaloes. In my research, I learned that buffalo are surprisingly fast, I had no idea. In fact, they’re as fast as horses. So talk about your intrigue around the buffalo and how that impacted you at that time?
Ben:
Just the physical nature of them, and as a designer just the shape of them alone probably first was like, “Damn, that’s just badass. Look at that thing.” But then learning about, probably specifically back then, the Sioux people about the uses of the buffalo and then how every part was used, and it was used for food, water, clothing, shelter, all these things. And then I ran across… When I first started freelancing, I just called myself something really bad like Ben Jenkins Productions, Inc. Probably the worst name I’ve ever-
Debbie:
BJPI.
Ben:
Oh yeah, there was a BJ logo, all that. It was bad and I did that for about a year. And then I thought, “You know, I probably should name this something cooler,” or something like that. And at that time, probably didn’t even understand the concept of what branding was. But my first branding project was to name myself something bigger than myself and I had the sense that I wanted it to mean something to me and maybe be a little mysterious and people not understand it and stuff. And I’d read a story that… I love the survival story of buffalo that we got down to one herd through us killing buffalo to basically essentially wipe out native people, we killed all the buffalo. And we got down to a really small herd. And how fascinating is it that one herd though survived and today it’s come back.
Ben:
And I just, I always love the underdog story. That’s just natural to my personality. And so, just like we do, I’m scratching on paper and this thing OneFastBuffalo comes out. And then I realized later I was like, “Oh, I think this is branding.” And the process of doing that part, I love the logo part of this, but that process of naming was fascinating to me and fun, and doing it from a place that had meaning to me or the client. And that’s when I started graphic design, cool, but branding is this useful thing. It’s used for something, and getting into the meaning and what you’re to designing and then flipping it to say, “Hey, I can’t really write well, or even spell.” People that know me know for God’s sakes I can’t even read what I’m writing in a text, I can’t spell, but I strangely design out of words. I love to grind and write until I find the words that then narrow down the word that tell me, “Hey, this is where you should be playing with this.” And that’s strange to me to think because I’m just not a word person, but I actually start all designed with writing.
Debbie:
What made you decide to go straight into creating your own agency as opposed to working for someone else first and apprenticing?
Ben:
Well Debbie, no one would hire me.
Debbie:
Why?
Ben:
I don’t know. I came home from grad school and part of it was, I did so many things. I was like, “Oh, I’m an animator, I’m a filmmaker. I do graphic design.” I did too many things which I’d loved doing, and no one could say, “Oh, we could hire this guy as a web designer. We could hire the…” Probably that was it, but I could not get a job. I tried for about five, six months back in Texas. And literally just out of necessity, I convinced probably some family friends to give me some really bad design projects and I made a little dough, 200 bucks. But I loved that transaction. I was like, “Ah.” It took about three little things like that and I just had the confidence to say, “Hey, you know what? I think I can do this.”
Debbie:
You practice what you call the art of brand manufacturing. Can you share more about what that is and how you go about doing it?
Ben:
Oh man, I liked the word manufacturing because I liked the idea of building something. I loved graphic design, but I loved more the idea of building something that would become a living, breathing thing. The 2D nature of that is one aspect of that identity. There’s the… So the name, the identity, all that stuff. But then beyond that, how does it talk? How does it walk? What are the rituals that it has? So really helping for a long time at OFB what I focused on with clients and my business partner, Christine Edgington, who’s amazing and a brand strategist, and now the president of Warstic, ironically. We would pitch to companies that we could help you build what you are not able to get out of your brain to a point where then you can take it and then go run it, and of course then do the really hard part. But it takes something that didn’t exist before and now it exists and now we can call it this. I’m fascinated still by that.
Debbie:
Right? Same.
Ben:
I’m still obsessed with that. Creating the identity. It’s just, I don’t know, there’s something about it.
Debbie:
It’s bringing something to life.
Ben:
Yeah.
Debbie:
It’s interesting though. People always ask me how I define branding and I say, I believe it’s meaning manufacture. And so I’m attracted to that word too, that something about that construction that I find so rich and intriguing.
Ben:
I just love complex systems and then trying to, like Jack said, trying to take complexity and things that don’t seemingly work together naturally, and finding where they do work together and simplifying them down and to then a new thing that then can exist on its own. And because at this point we have so many brands, for God’s sakes. We’ve almost got to put two or three things together now and then make them a new thing, right?
Debbie:
Yes, absolutely. You’ve stated that OneFastBuffalo as it stands today more than ever, is an independent singular underestimated built for survival creative force focused on the relentless search for clear vision. Why do you think you’re underestimated?
Ben:
I don’t know because I don’t think we play in the design world. We’re not in the magazines, we’re not in the-
Debbie:
But you could be, Ben.
Ben:
Well, I know. And it wasn’t that I was like, “Oh, I don’t want awards.” It just never really occurred to me because I was too competitively focused on getting the next client to give me the cool project to express for them what we could do, and we just ran under the radar like that. I like being underestimated. I think it’s the fun of life honestly, is to come out of nowhere and go, “Wow, look what they did.” Being the underdog fuels me, to be honest with you.
Debbie:
Well, that’s certainly a big part of the Warstic brand.
Ben:
It’s probably all built on that concept.
Debbie:
And it’s so interesting because that hunt and being the underdog and hunting for being better than maybe what you are, why did you find that to be something that you wanted to be so much a significant part of what the brand stands for?
Ben:
I think it goes back to my years of working with client and realizing the brands that worked were the… There was a lot of guys and girls that came to us and say, “Hey, we got this great business idea. It’s going to make a lot of money,” but they weren’t passionately individually personally connected to that idea. And the ones that were passionately connected to their business ideas were the ones that got through that first three, four years grind to actually make it succeed. Because no matter what, how good of an idea, it’s three, four years of just horrible grinding on it. So I knew when I started something like Warstic or started getting the idea that I should do my own brands as mostly an outlet to not doing client work, that it should be something I really cared about, right?
Ben:
So, my first inclination was, “Hey, baseball’s boring looking. I think I can bring a more exciting aesthetic to it.” But as a branding person, I know it needs to have meaning to people, and so I went to that underdog. What we tell parents is that we’re hoping that the kids that use Warstic, and we’ve seen this really come to fruition as there’s kids that just don’t believe in their ability, and they’re very shy and they just, they haven’t come out of that shell yet. Our tagline is literally, it’s not the weapon, it’s the warrior, which is crazy. I’m selling you a bat and I’m telling you, it’s not the bat that’s going to make you better, it’s you.
Debbie:
It’s the person.
Ben:
And I’m super proud of that because we have so many kids over the last however many years this has been, that actually has happened. And the reality is those kids are probably not going to play in the Major Leagues, but to see kids blossom and to have more confidence, confidence is a great gift to any kid. And you can do so much more after that.
Debbie:
In a sport where the brands have been around for centuries, what made you decide to pick baseball bats?
Ben:
Well, it was a world I knew and I knew the lingo. I could say, “Hey, I could hit [Alina 00:54:10].” These things that normal people in the street don’t know, but us baseball players in the deck out know. So I was well one, I know the lingo. I know the world, I know how the players think about their equipment. So that’s a good place to start any business, it’s a niche. Someone had brought it up to me as a client idea, some guy called me one time and said, “Hey, I want to do a baseball bat business.” And he is like, “How much does it cost to brand?” And I was like, “Well, I’m good at this, it costs XYZ.” And he’s like, “Oh, I can’t afford that,” hung up. I don’t know if that guy was real or some kind of angel or some weird thing, but that is the first time I thought, “Baseball bats are a really simple thing, I bet I could figure that out.” And I spent 500 bucks getting them done, there’s a lot to it but I designed the website myself, I designed the brand in three… I did the whole thing in three months and I launched it.
Debbie:
The Warstic logo is a simple two line symbol you’ve deemed war stripes. So, talk about your design aesthetic.
Ben:
Oh boy. When I was in my 20’s it was just way too much, was my design aesthetic, so much. And this logo’s probably the best example of the opposite idea, more the Eastern idea of taking things away until only what needs to exist can exist. Or the idea that I use the least amount of pixels and create the most amount of impact. Most baseball bats, they put their brand name on the front of the baseball bat.
Debbie:
You put it on the back.
Ben:
Say [Jenkins’s 00:55:34] baseball bats or whatever, you put it on the front because that’s the billboard and everybody wants to see it. And I was like, “Well, you know what? That doesn’t look cool though.” And when I’m staring at a hundred mile fastball that might hit me in the head and kill me, I like to look at something that actually helps me calm down in that moment and not freak out, and seeing your name on the baseball bat isn’t going to help me do that. So I thought, “Well, let’s put the name on the back like a great piece of…” A modern piece of furniture, the designers is not sticking it on the front and ruin it, he puts it on a cool label on the back. So it actually said Warstic on the back, and the line started as just a feeling, literally a décor on the bat that to me would be calming.
Debbie:
So it’s like a focusing mechanism?
Ben:
Actually, we teach kids now that is a focusing method. We have a breathing technique where they go, they count down from one to 10, going up one line and then back the other. So we do pitch it as a focusing tool, but we teach kids and it’s amazing what kids pick up. Six-year-olds going, “Hey, what’s the logo mean?” “Well, the left side means the past and the right side means the future. And it’s all about staying in between the lines, being in the moment.” So it tears me up it because it… I can super plan it like that, but that’s real to kids. It is, and I understand-
Debbie:
And you’re helping them become who they are.
Ben:
Yeah, and I understand how hard it is to be in the batters box. But then to see kids go through much more traumatic things than I ever had to go through where there’s native kids we work with or something like that. But they get that it extends beyond stupid sport of baseball. So it’s the dumbest, simplest logo I’ve ever designed that just had the most meaning. And it’s just so cool to see it permeate kids’ lives like that. So it’s super cool.
Debbie:
You have a Warstic creed where you outline how there is an ongoing conversation happening at Warstic with your tribe about helping future generations of stick warriors connect mind and heart with mechanics. So it seems like while you’re selling sports equipment, you’re also really helping to train young minds to be able to use sports to become stronger as people.
Ben:
Absolutely. And that goes back to me being a bad baseball player and realizing that. On paper, I actually did have the physical abilities. I was super fast, I was strong. I could hit the ball a long way. I could throw the ball like a rocket. I had all these physical abilities, but my brain did not let those things work often enough because of perfectionism, because of lack of belief in my own self for, I don’t even know what reason. And I’m very aware of that. Once I finished playing, I really looked back and go, “Oh.” And knowing Major League players now, I clearly see the difference. It’s not the physical, especially in baseball, it’s the mental, that’s the warrior. A warrior is not so much, “Oh a big guy with a spear and he can kill you,” and this and that. It’s the mentality of a warrior that… I’m the biggest Karate Kid fan ever. I grew up in the ’80s, man. Karate Kid, Mr. Miyagi, he didn’t teach the kid how to do all these techniques, he built self-confidence in this kid to do incredible things.
Debbie:
Yeah, he taught him how to think.
Ben:
Taught him how to think, right? So, I don’t know, that just felt like what it… I basically said, “Well, I’ll make this brand out of my weakness.”
Debbie:
In 2016, Warstic bats were approved for use in Major League baseball. How did you make that happen?
Ben:
I acquired two business partners at the same time. Jack White and Ian Kinsler. So I’m from Texas and everybody knows who Ian is. He’s a Texas Rangers Hall of Famer, this kind of thing.
Debbie:
How did you approach him? Because you approached him before Jack.
Ben:
Strangely enough, I had remained friends with the drummer of my high school band. And he’s a good businessman today and I said, “Hey man, I think I need to take this Warstic project seriously and make it a real company, but I’m going to need funds to do that. And I’m going to need partners.” And in brainstorming with him one day he said, “Oh, I know some pro athletes, would you want to meet Ian Kinsler?” And I was like, “Oh, why not?” So, how weird is it that my high school drummer introduced me to Ian Kinsler, who introduced me to Jack White? It’s just very strange.
Debbie:
And for my design listeners that might not be following baseball-
Ben:
Maybe not.
Debbie:
Ian Kinsler is the four-time Major League Baseball All Star and Texas Rangers great. So, he’s a big deal.
Ben:
Oh, he’s a big deal, and then played for the Tigers and stuff, so he’s one of the best second basemen that’s ever played the game. And he just looked at it in the same way that Jack said and said, “Hey, we need this in baseball. We don’t have cool stuff like this. We don’t have enough. We have these same old choices,” right?
Debbie:
Yeah.
Ben:
He goes, “I feel this. I can feel the energy from it. I relate to it.” So he then took that bat into the Major Leagues and risked his own reputation and proceeded by the way, to have one of his best years ever, which was scary. But he did it, and he proved it, and that’s his thing.
Debbie:
Do you think the bat had something to do with it?
Ben:
I think it actually, he was getting a little older at that point. And I do think it put a little new energy into him and he, Ian takes it into the highest level of baseball that you can possibly be and hits 28 home runs with it. And all of a sudden we’re like, “Oh, now we have both. We have performance, and Ian represents that, and we have creativity and Jack represents that.” And I tell them that’s why they’re the business partners. They represent the two halves of what Warstic is about, which would be just really great design and creativity and doing whatever we want, but paired with the highest level of performance. And that’s also, that’s the threshold that I wanted to cross was, I didn’t want to make toy bats or just things that you put on your wall or something like that. Uh-huh (negative), I want to make things you use in real life that happen to look beautiful.
Debbie:
Despite 300% year over year growth in 2021, Warstic operates with an estimated consumer awareness of about 20% in the baseball and softball markets. And as I mentioned, you’re really up against century old crusty brands, but you’re growing every year and your president Christine Edgington, as you mentioned, has stated that, “You know you’re ruffling feathers and you’re not letting up.” How are you ruffling feathers?
Ben:
Well, us designers know, I think we have weapons at our disposal that non-creative people don’t have. And those baseball bat brands don’t have those weapons. So, it’s just our creativity and our ability to express things in a more human way and exciting way than the other brands because branding 101, man, you can take, let’s say the biggest eight brands that have existed for 40 to 80 years, and you put them on the same bucket. You could throw any one name and the names are interchangeable because they don’t represent or stand for anything. And the best thing you can do in branding is stand for something. The other brands’ heads are spinning because we have a story. We have a conversation that we can have beyond, “Oh, this bat’s made out of a P99 alloy.” It’s so boring, it’s so boring talking about bats.
Debbie:
You’ve evolved from exclusively making bats to making equipment for lacrosse, skateboarding, skiing, snowboarding, surfboards, fishing. How do you envision the brand growing and evolving over the next 10 years?
Ben:
It’s funny, because this is a constant branding conversation we have internally, Christine and I, is if we would’ve been named something else, maybe it couldn’t extend to these other things. But the reality is, think about the name Warstic, in it’s simplest form it probably means warrior’s stick. I took the K off to make it its own word, which is an old branding trick. I don’t know, I owned that word in that way.
Debbie:
I’m so glad that you took the K off-
Ben:
Oh, it would suck.
Debbie:
So many people put K’s in instead of-
Ben:
But it’s an old branding trick, but it singularized it. It created a new word. Well, that word has nothing to do with baseball if you think about it. So, you really look at the different sports, there’s golf, tennis, lacrosse, and stick becomes this thing. I surf a lot and I’d be like, “Hey bro, you got a new stick?” We actually say that’s, that’s a thing. So a lot of things can be sticks at the same time, and it gives us these new pallets to play with. So hunting arrows, pickleball paddles. It’s fun, and then it’s funny because the mentality part of it, the message of Warstic, it plays no matter what. You’re a hockey player? You better have grit, you better have [crosstalk 01:04:08]-
Debbie:
Hockey stick, yeah. Absolutely.
Ben:
In lacrosse. I think it plays, and so we have a plan over the next five, six years to slowly, carefully, very intuitively enter those sports.
Debbie:
So, who is the big decision maker in your collaboration? Oh, they’re both pointing at each other. Oh, listeners, they’re both pointing at the other.
Ben:
The day I met him to be honest, and he said, “Hey, I’d really love to invest with you,” and he’s held true to this. He said, “I’ll never step on your toes.” And I thought in my mind, “It’s totally fine, man. Step on my toes.” I had such admiration for him as an artist, whether it be music, whether it be design, whatever. I did not care, and that was a big deal for me too.
Debbie:
Yeah, you’re a trained designer.
Ben:
We designers have egos, we all do.
Debbie:
Yes we do.
Ben:
And so I knew I had a sense that this could be scary. I did Warstic to get a little bit away from clients and to not have someone tell me what to do, what they like, or “Hey, you like purple? I don’t. I don’t care.” That’s why I did it. I wanted that freedom to just make whatever I want, whether I’m bothered or not. So that moment was I… But I bought into that moment because I said, “Hey, this is a chance to work with someone that I would love to collaborate with, and it’ll be crazy and it’ll be scary.” And 99.9% of the time, it’s totally fine because he’s a gentleman and he just is, and he has respect for other people’s art. And so I have to do a lot of the heavy lifting just because it’s my daily job and he has 1,900 things going, but it’s just a process of getting it going and then truly showing him what we’re doing and going, “Hey, does this direction feel good to you? Yes or no?”
Ben:
And it’s a true collaboration in every sense of the word. And the weird thing about Jack and I is, we’re very different when it comes to design. He loves primary colors, I never use primary colors. I use very earth tone things, and things like that more nature type stuff, but there’s always this 40% of things that we design, we show each other, “Oh, look at this sick thing I saw.” There’s a space where we both like the same things, and so a lot of it is just making sure that we find those things, but it is a brand.
Debbie:
Mm-hmm (affirmative), and it is a company.
Ben:
And it is my job to say, “All brands should evolve over time, but I have to keep it within itself too. But how do we make this art keep evolving?” Like you said, keep the train rolling for the business.
Debbie:
Jack, you invested a million dollars into Warstic. The company has dramatically grown since that investment. How do you think about the return on investments? Are you more of a long view kind of person? Do you expect quarterly returns? Talk about-
Jack:
It’s very hard to find an abacus for your living room wall that has a million pegs on it, that was the hardest part, but I check it off every day whenever in the morning I have coffee, I slide one of those beads over. When you love an idea, you just immediately your investment, you wash your hands of it immediately and just think this is not about bean counting or whatever, and expecting to see a profit. My investment’s always been the same thing, that if I could combine something that I actually love and feel a bit of a passion for, then it’s interesting to me. So, it was real easy with Warstic because it had so much potential and it’s such an untapped market.
Debbie:
And you’ve evolved now from exclusively making bats to making equipment for lacrosse, skateboarding, skiing, snowboarding, surfboards, and even fishing. I have one last question for you both, your flagship store is located at the corner of Malcolm X Avenue and Main Street in Dallas, Texas. Is that address intentional?
Jack:
It was just an added blessing, it seemed like. We found the building and it was so perfect, and that was also the cross street we thought, “Wow, how incredible is that?” And that neighborhood of Deep Ellum had such a deep musical history too going back to the early blues days. And it’s nice to be part of that, to exemplify and bring a little bit of that corner back to life.
Debbie:
Well, congratulations on all of your success. I can’t wait to see how you grow this brand together.
Jack:
Thanks so much.
Ben:
Thanks, Debbie.
Debbie:
You can see more about Jack White’s new album on his website, jackwhiteiii.com, or his entire body of work at thirdmanrecords.com. You can see more of Ben Jenkins’ work at onefastbuffalo.com, and you can find out everything about Warstic on their website warstic.com. That’s spelled W-A-R-S-T-I-C. This is the 18th year, first time I’m saying that, we’ve been podcasting Design Matters, and I’d like to thank you for listening. And remember, we can talk about making a difference, we can make a difference, or we can do both. I’m Debbie Milman, and I look forward to talking with you again soon.
Recorded Voice:
Design matters is produced for the TED Audio Collective by Curtis Fox Productions. Interviews are usually recorded at the School of Visual Arts Master’s and Branding Program in New York city, the first and longest running branding program in the world. The editor in chief of Design Matters media is Emily Weiland.