From CPA to CEO: How Marc Sauer Built a Brand by Solving a Real Problem with Marc Sauer

Did you know that nearly 50% of product-based businesses fail within their first five years? The key to survival isn’t just competing; it’s innovating and telling a story that sets you apart. In this episode of Spark and Ignite Your Marketing, host Beverly Cornell sits down with entrepreneur Marc Sauer, founder of Urban August and International Tie. Marc shares his journey from CPA to business owner, how he turned a personal problem into a thriving brand, and his strategies for battling knockoffs and standing out in a crowded market. If you’re looking for inspiration on how to carve your niche, build brand trust, and scale your business, this episode is a must-listen!

Three Key Topics Discused:

1. Turning a Personal Struggle into a Business Opportunity: Marc shares how a problem his family faced—securing refrigerators from his younger brother with Down syndrome—led him to create Urban August. His journey highlights how identifying a unique problem can spark a successful business idea.
2. The Power of Brand Storytelling in Marketing: In today’s world of copycats and commoditized products, Marc emphasizes how storytelling and authenticity help brands build trust, connect with customers, and stay ahead of competitors—especially in the eCommerce space.
3. Overcoming Business Challenges: Competition, Copycats, and Scaling: From dealing with overseas knockoffs to expanding internationally, Marc talks about the challenges of growing a business and why diversifying sales channels and marketing strategies is critical for long-term success.

Follow Marc:
Marc Sauer | LinkedIn
Urban August | Facebook
Urban August | Instagram

P.S. Ready to spark your unique opportunities and ignite your marketing? Here are three ways to work with us.

1. 📞 Schedule a Complimentary 15-minute Call and let’s delve into your goals and answer any questions you may have.
2. 📘 Read Beverly’s book Marketing for Entrepreneurs a quick guide filled with actionable steps to help make your brand and business shine even brighter. 🎙️ Listen to Beverly’s Marketing Podcast where she interviews entrepreneurs to get inspired and gain new business and marketing insights.
3. 🎓 Learn more about marketing and Enroll in Our Marketing Courses designed to bring clarity to your business efforts. They’re easy-to-understand and self-paced, perfect for busy entrepreneurs like you.

Transcript

Beverly: 0:09

Did you know that nearly 50 percent of product based businesses fail within their first five years due to market saturation and competition from copycats? But what if the secret to survival isn't just about competing, but innovating, storytelling, and thinking outside of the box? Welcome to another inspirational episode of the Spark and Ignite Your Marketing Podcast. I'm your host, Beverly Cornell, and today we are peeking into the world of e commerce innovation and brand. Differentiation. Our guest today is Marcus Sauer. Marc, the founder of Urban August and International Tie. From CPA to entrepreneur, Marcus has built a thriving brand, identifying a unique problem, securing refrigerators and cabinets, and creating an innovative solution. He's battled knockoff competitors, scaled internationally, and found success by telling his brand story. Marcus, I'm so excited to have you in the show. Welcome.

Marcus: 1:06

Yeah, thanks. It's good to be here. Thanks for having me.

Beverly: 1:09

So take us back to the beginning. I am all about origin stories, the OG stories. You started with a Chicago flag themed necktie.

Marcus: 1:18

Yes.

Beverly: 1:19

But things did not go as planned. So talk about how that happened and how you got here.

Marcus: 1:24

Sure. As you said, I was a CPA in the corporate world and every time I try to do something in the corporate world, nothing would work. There was just a million layers of bureaucracy that just stopped me. And after trying that about 10 times I just said, I don't feel like I'm being judged appropriately. I'm going to try to start a business. And the next question of course, is when you start a business. Like someone with the CPA in the corporate world, that's not really a good position to start a business with. It's not like an architect and you start their own architecture firm, for example. And so I I spent a week, I think, and I called it sick and I just researched what to do. I was in Chicago. And then I noticed people love the Chicago flag on their apparel. I noticed people like neckties. Oh, Chicago flag, necktie. An idea, not the best idea, but I'm like it's an idea. I'll just start. And I tried it and I tried a few other flags for neckties and I got some sales. I would consider that a failure today, but it was somewhat of a validation. I eventually stopped selling those, but I use the flag theme and I adopted the hats and that expanded drastically. That's international tie hat company named after the tie idea today. And I saw several hundred variations of hats, so that's survived, but it definitely evolved ties by itself were not sustainable, but I was developing that idea. I had my entrepreneur hat on. And I was at my parents house one weekend that they didn't live in Chicago area. And my youngest brother has down syndrome. And since I can remember, kids with down syndrome, not always, a lot of the time they develop habits where they want to eat something and they have to eat it now. And they only like specific kinds of food. And this led to over a long period of time, my youngest brother living with my parents, just like rating their fridge Late at night and just taking whatever he could find. And my mom had complained about this for so long was his background noise like an accent, your own accent. You don't hear it. It's like a fish in the water. And then with my entrepreneur hat on, I'm like, wait a second, my mom's been complaining about this for years. There's gotta be a problem to fix it. There's gotta be a safe for a fridge or cabinet I can make just for food. And at that time there wasn't. So literally within 10 minutes of realizing, Hey, this is a problem. I went from there to realizing this is a business. This is going to work. There's no competitors. I'm going for it.

Beverly: 3:43

Yep. There's a Market. There's a need.

Marcus: 3:45

And it's just something you don't even realize. It took 10 minutes of just like processing that, okay, this is happening. And it's going to happen. And pretty hardcore. I'm going for it.

Beverly: 3:54

So your brand is like super niche. It's locking French door refrigerators and cabinets

Marcus: 4:00

And locking food. But yeah, that's the lockbox.

Beverly: 4:02

Did you ever worry about it being too specific or did you immediately know Being specific is the best thing that could possibly happen.

Marcus: 4:09

That's a really good question, because part of your whole solopreneur like Marketing theme is trying to work out that message. And it's very specific. For example, like one of our biggest clientele are kids with autism, for example, parents with kids with autism, but some, Parents with kids with autism will swear by our products. They're just obsessed with it. They can't believe this never existed, but at the same time, other parents with kids with autism, they might be offended. For example, that we would make a lock to lock their kids from food. So it's Even though you can go straight to the niche. That's the main problem oh, that's offensive. Why would you lock food up from your kids? So that definitely adds a layer of complexity to it for sure.

Beverly: 4:51

I see the need because as a foster parent, we've had several children who have food hoarding tendencies because of trauma based on not having enough food. So we have done things where we've given them like bins and anytime they want something out of this bin, they can have it, like giving access to that. But it's just not in their best interest as little kids to have that kind of access to food. It's not healthy for them. It's actually quite the opposite. You want to protect your children. And I imagine from a Down syndrome perspective, they're not able to control it, right? You want to protect them from doing something that's going to really harm them or affect them at that moment. And even right now, I have a nine year old who likes to get into things that he's not supposed to. In our garage, we have an extra beverage fridge. My husband on the top only have a couple beers or whatever up there, but the rest of it's just all kind of soda and Gatorade and water and my son will come in and have a water. He'll ask first, but he'll just grab a water. One day he said, yeah, I gave the kids all beer and I was like, what? And he's yeah, I gave them all beer. And we're like who did you give beer to? We're like trying to like, Mom, it was a root beer. And both my husband and I were like, gosh, maybe we need to lock on that just to be safe. So I can see lots of reasons why that would be really beneficial to have. Obviously parents, caregivers, teachers, nursing homes, like I'm thinking of all the different areas that you would need something like that. So how is it grown from that? My mom needs it to like all business

Marcus: 6:19

That's probably one of the biggest challenges we've dealt with. Cause I don't know, somebody that makes a diapers last longer for theoretically, like who can you market that to? All parents with babies, like you can't market to everyone. You have to market the small niches. And actually I'm glad you mentioned the foster parent thing. Cause we've had a couple of foster organizations reach out to us for larger orders. And that's been the strategy is just have specific organizations reached out to us. And then we have an idea what kind of organizations to reach out to for like business and business sales, for example, because for directed consumer, like it's of hard to market that we've tried, some Google and meta ads before. And like I said, we get some comments like that should be illegal, walking the kids out of food or. A lockbox for the food

Beverly: 7:03

I totally get it. It's a very real concern. It is so unhealthy for children and people who have disabilities who cannot control that. It's very unhealthy for them for lots of reasons. And I can see their concern I don't think, there probably are people who use it for nefarious things, but for the most part, I think people just need it for an extra safety just like child locks on doors and child locks on cars and child locks on your cabinets and things like that. So all beneficial. In your bio, you said something about defending against knockoffs how is that? What does that look like? Cause you said like before you did it, like a search and there was not nothing there, no competition. And all of a sudden here comes this knockoff. How have you battled that? That's a whole nother level of business.

Marcus: 7:49

I'll back up a couple of steps. So our first idea was. A lockbox that goes into the refrigerator that did not exist. At that time, there are a few in the market now, but when I had that idea, there's nothing like it. And as a CPA, okay, a lockbox. What do I do? I did not know anything about what kind of plastic to use, injection molding, how to contact the factory. I knew nothing. And that's a lot. Yeah. So my parents had a French door refrigerator, the side by side where it opens in the middle. Instead of making a lockbox and spending all this time and money at first, I will just. Make a lock for it. And the original lock was a luggage lock, a luggage strap lock that goes around like your luggage. Shortened to 12 or 14 inches. And I put that in the market and it sold so well, like there was nothing like in the market, it's sold so well. We got a badge on Amazon, for example, like hot new release and sales were good. Like we had a good price. Profit was good. We're not paying a penny for advertising. Probably my biggest business mistake is I got so comfortable with these sales and profits pretty quickly. Someone in China saw that these sales and they made a two pack for cheaper, but I had so much inventory because sales were so good. My mistake was Wanting to sell out of that inventory before converting the two packs. What I should have done is I should have just done two packs first immediately and just throw the rest of the stuff away. But from that idea of a luggage strap lock people want something more secure. Why not a cable lock, like a bike lock that's shortened for A refrigerator. So we did that a bike lock with a combination. We did black, we did white, we did small for cabinets. We did limited keys again, black, white, small for cabinets two pack, three packs, a six pack key. Pretty much we added as many variations as we could. And we were the first to market and we market them pretty hardcore. So in our strategy there worked because we had so much inventory. We had so many variations We had so much capital in it because we put all of our profits back into it. That the product that anyone trying to copy us would have a hard time copying off every single variation. And that worked, but that's just one step of stopping copycats. I have this point capital and offering tons of variations that no one, like a beginner could not really match. We marketed, we marketed the heck out of it. Our listings in Amazon, we have for example of everywhere, just American owned company. We put my face everywhere references the story. Like we go every references we can do a story. There's a reason why we have it. And I didn't say this earlier, but when I was designing the lock, I was living in ST louis at the time. I went to every. Best Buy, Home Depot lowe's, every appliance store and major, the refrigerators handles to get the right fit perfectly over 200. And that fact's in there too. To show an American flags and that stands up against the competitors who are all from China. And so to this date, once, after the mistake with the two packs no one's been able to catch up with us. There've been some, a little bit of progress on their end, but not much. Cause we just really laid heavily on the branding.

Beverly: 10:48

So this season's big question is all about awakening your brand magic. Tell us about a moment where everything aligned or the unique magic that either you Marc or your company offers. What does brand magic look like to you?

Marcus: 11:03

For both my brands, international time and urban, you see your brand offered someplace where you least expected it, where you never marketed it, where you just know you did something right, and someone sought somewhere and bought it and just was so proud of it, they decided to present it. Just last week, a friend of mine sent a picture of some influencer. I forgot his name. Like millions of followers. Wearing my hat, one of my hats. And I went back and I searched my shipping records and sure enough, it was him that was one that's magic. Cause he liked the hat and he wears it quite a bit. I didn't market it. He just found it. That's a major success. I'd say the magic would be designing the product and knowing that you like it and someone else will like it. And with urban August, the biggest moment there would have happened. If you buy a Fridgelock and you're proud of it, you're generally not going to tell everyone in the world.

Beverly: 11:50

I don't know. If you really struggled with something and it solved that problem and there was a huge transformation in your life about it. I think people are going to talk about it, Marc. Like it just depends, but yeah.

Marcus: 12:00

Yeah, it happens. Some influencers on Amazon and TikTok, for example, with affiliate accounts, We'll talk, they also have affiliate accounts. So I guess it makes them feel better, but they have that financial incentive as well for sure. I think it was in 2023. I had woken up. We were living in San Francisco at the time we moved. And my brother, a couple hours ahead was showing his kids a movie on Netflix and it was spy kids I think. And the opening scene of that film. Was a kid, this family, they take their electronics and just say they lock them away at night. And of course they use my lockbox for it. There's a whole scene based around like figuring out a way to break into my lockbox and to get the electronics out. And that was pretty cool. they thought that whoever was in charge of product or prop designer, thought my lockbox was cool enough to buy and use it.

Beverly: 12:48

That's very cool. One of our clients is a pet food store in Michigan and they were doing a lot of filming. At the time there was a lot of movie credits and stuff for people coming to film in Detroit and Henry Cavill. was shopping at that pet food store. And I was so excited because it was like Superman buys food from this pet food store that I market. Like that's there's such validation in your work. When you see those kinds of moments happen, like people get it. People are understanding like why you work so hard. Your passion is so big in that. What is the hardest thing about Marketing for you?

Marcus: 13:23

I would say the hardest thing with International tie, my apparel hat brand, hats go 25, 30 bucks a piece. So you're on Amazon to advertise that to market it, which can get expensive paid advertising, but at the same time, meta and Google ads are not set up to really market or effectively have paid advertising for something that cheap on those margins, because, it's like they say minimum like 50 60 for paid advertising. So I said paid advertising off of Amazon for that brand.

Beverly: 14:44

Okay.

Marcus: 14:45

For urban August, the hardest thing is would be as I said earlier, it's a very segmented market. We have a lot of different client bases. And it's hard to really market to one of those. It's hard to market to one of those in particular, it's just so scattered. There's not one, it's hard to run ads, it's hard to target people and it's really hard to figure that equation out. We put a lot of effort into that with influencers, with paid ads, I hired a PR person for a bit, and she reached out to a lot of publications that are relevant. And definitely mixed reactions. So it's a portion of like the smallest demographic, smallest target market you can think of and how to really target that effectively. And I guess what's worked out for me for urban August is people will take type of problem in Amazon and then they will find our locks at the top. And then if we're lucky, if it's a bigger organization, they will reach out to us. And so we have the website direct sale, which the margins are astronomically much better for that. So figuring out how to like really segment the market would be the biggest issue for them.

Beverly: 15:48

There's just a lot of complexity and figuring out who exactly you want to serve and how you can help them. That's something we work with a lot with our entrepreneurs the clients that we work with. So it's, you're not alone, Marc, in your struggles. So you said that in your guest application that you love storytelling and you've talked about the American flag, you've talked about the story of your brother. How does storytelling help build trust and grow your brand?

Marcus: 16:13

I would say, especially in Amazon these days, cause I started selling in Amazon international tie in 2017 and geez, it's been eight years already. And It's changed from established brands with stories to just nonstop, foreign sellers, just putting up a generic AI Photoshop picture listing, trying to get money. And Amazon, it's definitely degraded into that. But at the same time, if you put your foot in the sand and say Hey, this is who I am. This is my brand. This is my story. That's part of the magic. What I think helps sustain the brand. Part of international tie for a while was license plate frames. It was just put a flag on the license plate frame. What story can I possibly tell with a license plate frame? No one cares, a hat, maybe the license plate frame. No. And so that segment got absolutely inundated with Chinese sellers and I pretty much gave up on it. Like, how can I tell a story that anyone would possibly care about for something? It's a commodity that's going to go in their car. And if you can't tell a story about it, like there's a good chance it's going to be commoditized out of existence. If I had solely focused on license plate frames. This wouldn't have worked at all, but then I quickly saw that you can't commoditize that much and expect to survive. Some people can, but from my experience, it's pretty hard. And urban August has a nice crisp story that a lot of people can relate to. That shows I'm a real person. I'm a small business owner. A couple of times a month, I'll get emails from someone saying, thank you so much. I love your story. And when enough people reach out to you, to write that and say, thank you. There's a lot of people who appreciate it, who aren't writing out. And there's a lot of people who just read it. So I think that's definitely worked. It's harder to analyze and put a number to that, but I've got a lot of vibes coming in that it's definitely worked and seeing how competitors have failed and not been able to work throughout the eight years, I'm pretty confident in that.

Beverly: 17:58

So I have a lightning round, but it's not a lightning round. And I think you're going to really like this because it's actually called the magic hat round.

Marcus: 18:04

Ooh,

Beverly: 18:05

it's super sparkly for my listeners. It's purple and it's sparkly and there's sequins, but in the magic hat are lots of questions that are like lightning round questions. And I also have a magic wand, so I'll put it over top and get the best questions for Marc. Okay. So the first question is, What's one book, podcast or entrepreneur that has made a lasting impact on your entrepreneurial journey?

Marcus: 18:27

Absolutely. Entrepreneur on fire. I haven't listened to it in a long time, but when I was in the corporate world and I'm like, I hate this, I want out. What do I do? Yeah. I just searched it entrepreneur on fire because then it was like every day, a very set number, a couple of questions, a different entrepreneur, their story, what they do. And I just listened to as many episodes as I possibly could. And just, you learned a little bit by a little bit by a little bit. There's ways out of my predicament. There's ways to get out of the corporate world. There's ways to start a business. And I'd say that was probably the most influential.

Beverly: 19:01

I Think that's one of the reasons why I like my podcast is very similar. People get inspiration and think of this is possible. And I think that's lovely. How do you keep your entrepreneurial spirit alive and what do you feed it?

Marcus: 19:11

That's a great question. I always think what the next most rational move is going to be, and I strive towards that. You have to take bigger steps to get to that point. And I knew a while ago I wanted to expand my production to the U S from overseas. For international tie and I Decided to buy an embroidery machine, a very high end embroidery machine. And that just gave me a lot more options. And this gave me lots of options to, grow on Amazon and grow off of Amazon. So I look for the next thing that's going to add that next extra layer and take it to the next step.

Beverly: 19:45

Love it. How do you want your customers to feel after working with you or your products?

Marcus: 19:51

I want them to feel like there's someone who has been through their shoes and they understand what they're going through and they made this great brand and these products to help them with it. Who's just not some faceless corporation. And if they have any problems, then I'm always here to help.

Beverly: 20:06

Yeah. You're like human. You're not that a robot.

Marcus: 20:09

Exactly.

Beverly: 20:10

What core values guide your business decisions and interactions with your customers?

Marcus: 20:15

I would say regarding urban August, what's going to make them the most safe and have the most peace of mind. Because a lot of these parents and caregivers, they've never experienced anything like this. It can change everything really quickly. I try to think from their perspective. I got a four year old and 11 month old now, and that's definitely added a new dimension to everything that I do with Urban August.

Beverly: 20:38

Real life stories, right?

Marcus: 20:40

Exactly.

Beverly: 20:41

When we had foster kids. We've adopted we're not doing foster right now. We've adopted and they're all ours now, but when we had them, there's a lot of medical safety things requirements as well. When you talked about the lockbox, like all the medication had to be locked up. I had never thought about some of those safety factors either. So when you start thinking about it from a foster care or a a teacher or a person who's in like a facility type person, like Number one is safety, period. Like it doesn't matter. You need to make sure you keep them safe, period. And those little ones, they're fast and they are so curious. And so it just takes a minute. Do you have an unconventional tool or app that has become your secret weapon?

Marcus: 21:24

That's a great question.

Beverly: 21:26

Any tech, even like things like meditation or journaling or like it can be tech

Marcus: 21:30

Photoshop, yeah. Everyone uses it, but I knew it pretty early. I was in photography in college. And so I knew Photoshop like the back of my hand. I don't do it now because it's updated and people are better than me. But yeah, that actually paid a lot of dividends starting the business and just like making pictures and just like social media and website. That really paid a lot of difference. When I was afraid to spend money in the business, that was definitely. In a secret weapon early on now, I'm not so much. I still use them time to time, but that really helps.

Beverly: 22:01

What fear have you had to overcome to grow your business?

Marcus: 22:06

Money. In the corporate world, for example, you work a day and I don't know how much you make a hundred, 200 a day take home. And but then you're going to start a business. And it's okay, this inventory will cost X thousand dollars. It's this number of days work and that kind of mentality. It's hard. It's hard to go from working for money to that, that's right. And once you get enough profit, that changes. It's easy to change. Starting from A to B, like that was tough. That was really hard. And looking back, having a lot of money, if I would have just put a good chunk of money to the side, just for the whole sake of investing in the business, it would have paid a lot more dividends.

Beverly: 22:41

I think money mindset's huge and like the ability to forecast and some of that kind of stuff. The first investment I made was in a CPA bookkeeper for sure. Cause I wanted to make sure I had control over that. Plus I didn't want to make any mistakes. I didn't want anyone else to come after me. So that is the magic hat round. It's so fun that you have hats and I have a hat that was totally not done on purpose. But with the wand, I am going to actually do some time travel now. I want to wave the wand and I want to take you back to Marc and your graduation day from high school. What advice would you give Marc?

Marcus: 23:14

I would say in four or five years, there's going to be something really nasty. Just work everything around, which is the financial crisis of 2008. Whatever you do, it's going to get wiped out. No. I would tell that Marc to get into something that's recession proof and. To understand that the market can collapse sometimes and be prepared for that because no one had ever seen anything like 2008. And you don't prepare for something you've never seen before. So just. Be prepared for the unexpected.

Beverly: 23:41

There was 2008, then there was COVID, there's all kinds of things we did not expect There's always a challenge and to be prepared that it's not going to just be perfect. There's going to be ups and downs, and that's part of, I think, entrepreneurship for sure.

Marcus: 23:55

Before this, we were in five years in the Bay Area, and I would say Think bigger because people in the Bay Area is the world capital of startups and people have the biggest vision. They don't always succeed. So think bigger. The sky's the limit. I was lucky to start this when I did, because if I try to start what I'm doing today, it would be super hard. So think bigger and be prepared.

Beverly: 24:17

I think be bold in what you believe in, right? Think big, anything's possible. I love that. Okay. I'm going to wave my magic wand and we're going to go into the future. Many years from now. And someone is, reading your eulogy. What do you think will be your most significant legacy or impact?

Marcus: 24:32

Hopefully being a good father and husband, but also being able to start a business which helped a lot of people.

Beverly: 24:38

Yeah. Keep people safe. I love that. So the season's theme is awakening your brand magic. Oh, actually I'm going to wave my wand because we're come back to present time I don't want to leave us in the future. But this is a theme that I think is really important. One of our taglines is awakening brand magic. And I would love for you to share one tip or one strategy that you think that an entrepreneur can put into action right now that could help awaken their brand?

Marcus: 25:07

I would say diversify your sales channels and diversify where you post because you don't know what kind of people are going to be. Shopping where and viewing their content where I would say that. Absolutely. Some videos on Tik TOK absolutely blow up. You have the right clientele there. And other things like even Pinterest, like some people might like certain products there. So just diversifies. And if one goes down, you might be able to depend on the other. So diversify your sales channel, diversify where you post your social media ad.

Beverly: 25:32

We say consistency and persistency a lot. You need to take the channel and really own it because you never know when it's going to hit. Consistency and persistency. And I think when you start off, it needs to be one channel, but once you get there, then you do another channel. Like you do need to diversify for sure. But just. don't spread yourself too thin.

Marcus: 25:49

One thing we are doing this summer for sure. We're going to hire an intern this summer. We're going to make sure that intern is very Social media savvy because in ways that I'm not, it's not a strength of mine. So I'm definitely hiring towards that for sure.

Beverly: 26:02

So just like the bookkeeper and the CPA, that's what you get to a point when you're getting your business that you need that help, right? You need someone to do it. That knows it really well. Yeah. You have to trust other people so that you can. Work on the business and not in the business, which is a huge way to scale. Yeah. So Marcus, it has been an insightful and lovely conversation. Thank you so much for sharing your story and your journey and the challenges and some of those strategies with us today. Can you tell our listeners where they can learn more about your businesses and connect with you?

Marcus: 26:34

Yes, absolutely. The websites are urban August, like urban and August the month, august. com. And the other ones, international tie. com, I'd say the best way to connect with me would probably be linked in

Beverly: 26:47

wonderful. Marcus, thank you again for joining us today. We really had fun.

Marcus: 26:50

Yeah, Beverly, it was a good conversation. Thanks for having me.

Beverly: 26:53

And to all our listeners, remember your brand magic isn't just in what you sell, but in the story that you tell. So stay tuned for more inspiring conversations and actionable tips on future episodes of the Spark and Ignite Your Marketing podcast. Until next time, keep sparking and igniting.