Why I Started Be Fulfilled: A Founder's Story
By John Brown, Founder & CEO, Be Fulfilled ·
Be Fulfilled is a Bluffdale, Utah company that helps influencers and creators launch their own product brands. We handle the design, factories, production and shipping so creators can stay focused on their audience. Here's how it started.
A career of making products
I've been an entrepreneur in one form or another my whole career. I nearly failed my last semester of college because I skipped a final to close a deal for a startup I'd joined. My professor let me retake it. I've been chasing deals and products ever since.
I spent about ten years as VP of Sales at an import company, developing new products and learning how much marketing and relationships matter. In 2014 I left to join my wife's online clothing brand as COO.
Cents of Style and the creators around it
Before Be Fulfilled, I helped run an ecommerce brand called Cents of Style with my wife. We leaned into influencer and affiliate marketing early, and it worked. In 2017 the company was named the 18th fastest-growing company in Utah, and it made the top 100 again in 2018.
Working with so many influencers, I got to know a lot of them well. They were talented, they had real audiences, and many of them wanted the same thing: their own product.
So they tried. And I watched it go wrong over and over.
What I kept seeing
The problems were almost always the same three.
They couldn't find a good factory. They'd find someone online, send money and hope. Some got samples that looked nothing like what they asked for.
Fulfillment fell apart. Even when the product turned out well, orders shipped late or not at all. Their followers didn't blame the warehouse. They blamed the creator.
Bad production cost them money they couldn't get back. A wrong fabric or a sizing mistake can sink a first launch.
These weren't people with bad ideas. They just didn't have anyone who'd done it before. We had.
Turning what we knew into a company
Around that time, my wife and I joined a mentoring program, and through it we learned Rob Ryan's "Sunflower Model." The idea is simple: know your core strengths, then grow new things from them.
When we mapped ours out, three stood out. We knew how to work with influencers. We knew ecommerce operations and fulfillment. And I had years of product development behind me. Put together, that was exactly what those creators were missing.
We started it as a division inside Cents of Style, run on spreadsheets, Asana and hand sketches. In 2019 we founded Be Fulfilled as its own company, which I run with my wife and co-founder, Courtney.
The year we almost lost it
2020 nearly ended us. When the pandemic hit, we furloughed every employee and I honestly thought we might lose everything. We finished that year up 400% over the year before. I'm still grateful to the team that pulled us through it.
The lesson that took the longest
I'll be candid about our hardest stretch, because it shaped how we work today.
Early on, we didn't set clear expectations about what it meant to approve production. A customer would approve a sample, the factory would start, and then the customer would want to change something. By then the factory had already bought materials and started cutting. Everyone lost.
Part of the problem was how we worked. Some customers were confirming big production decisions over text message. That's too much risk for something that important.
So we fixed it in two ways. Every project now has a pre-production sample, and that sample gets the final approval. It's the exact product the factory will make. And we built our platform so customers can see their progress and confirm every detail in one place, not in a text thread.
The moment it felt worth it
The first time a creator we worked with sold out of her first product, I knew we were building the right thing. She could easily have given up after a bad factory or a late shipment. Instead she had a product her audience loved, and she wanted to make more.
That's still the best part of this job. Influencers are often treated as a joke. I see them as small business owners with audiences most brands would pay anything for. They deserve to own something, not live on brand deal commissions. That's what we mean by owning your influence.
Where we are now
Since 2019, we've helped launch more than 100 brands and shipped more than 4 million orders from our 20,000 square foot warehouse in Bluffdale. We work on a fee basis and don't take equity, so the brand belongs to the creator. They do what they're great at, sales and marketing. We do the rest.
What's changed most is speed. Our Product Design Board turns an idea into design concepts in under 5 minutes, and our product team reviews every board before anything goes to a factory. If you're still deciding whether a product fits your income mix, start with why most creators sell other people's products, and read how we pair AI with human review.
I told an earlier version of this story to Pulse 2.0 in 2024.
If you've been sitting on a product idea, start a free Product Design Board at befulfilled.io, or book a call with our team. I'd love to see what you build.
John Brown Founder & CEO, Be Fulfilled
Frequently asked questions
Who founded Be Fulfilled?
Be Fulfilled was founded in 2019 by John Brown, Founder & CEO, and his wife, Courtney Brown, Co-Founder. It grew out of Cents of Style, an influencer-driven online clothing brand they ran together.
What does Be Fulfilled do?
Be Fulfilled helps influencers and entrepreneurs launch their own physical product brands. We handle product design, factory connections, sourcing and sampling, production, storage and fulfillment. Customers handle their own marketing and sales.
Where is Be Fulfilled located?
Be Fulfilled is based in Bluffdale, Utah, with a 20,000 square foot warehouse.
Does Be Fulfilled take ownership of my brand?
No. Be Fulfilled works on a fee basis and does not take an equity stake. The brand belongs to the creator.