Since 2007, GREENandSAVE has had the pleasure of interviewing thought leaders in sustainability ranging from teachers and business owners to authors and celebrities such as Ed Begley Jr. This article is focused on an interview with Mike Balitsaris, the founder of Waltzing Matilda USA (http://waltzingmatildausa.com). Mike’s company focuses on handcrafted goods made in America, with an underlying spirit of adaptive re-use. Mike and his team source remnant and vintage leather to transform into bags, footwear, home goods, accessories, and more. Reduce , Reuse, and Recycle are foundational principles of sustainability, and Waltzing Matilda’s products embody those principles. Here are a few of the questions and answers from our interview with Mike Balitsaris:
Q: When did you get started, and what inspired you in the beginning?
“I started making leather goods in the mid 1980s.I made a pair for myself after visiting Greece and loving the leather products and a pair I bought and wore until they broke. I asked an old shoe maker to help me make a pair, and after several failed attempts I was able to come up with something worthwhile. For a few years I ended up making sandals at night and selling them from an old VW van during the day.”
Q: How did you make the transition from footwear to other products?
“I continued to make sandals but not on any kind of scale, mostly for friends and family. In 2013, I was in Redwing Minnesota having a beer near Redwing boot factory, and a guy was tossing some scrap into a bin. I ended up trading a case of beer for all the leather I could fit in my car and went back to my hotel and started making a bag. I had an idea in my mind of a simple bag that would have meaning and would be rugged. Everything that I had previously seen to buy had too much "stuff," too much "bling," nothing was simple. So I made my own from that scrap in the car.”
Q: What did you do to start the sales and marketing process?
“While stitching the bag on my way home (in the airplane), someone asked if I could make him one. I did, and then another person asked on a separate flight and i did. Then out of the blue, I got a call from Apple and they asked if I would come to California and show them some bags for the Mac 13' and 15 " laptop and touchscreen computers. I hung up the first call, because I thought it was bs. The Apple team called back and convinced me it was legit. So, I flew out to Apple HQ and landed a 2,000 unit order!”
Q: Since fast growth can sometimes overwhelm start-up companies, how did you handle production?
“After the Apple meeting, the first thing I did was drive to Carmel by the sea and get a glass of wine, listen to a blues guy and enjoy the fruits of success!!! Then I panicked because I had been making bags, one at a time, in my garage. I needed a plan to produce in volume. After many calls and false starts, I finally was introduced to a factory in Brewer, Maine that had previously made shoes. The shoe company moved to China and left these folks to rot. We made a deal that they made the Apple bags, and then I hired the team to start making other things for us. We have been working for 2 years on a handshake, and they are awesome.”
Thumb Up:Our GREENandSAVE team applauds Mike for his vision and tenacity to rethink the products that so many of us use every day. To learn more about Mike and his company, see this page of the website: http://waltzingmatildausa.com/pages/our-story
