Marquette Castings Brand Overview

Background:

Marquette Castings was founded in 2016 with Kickstarter and Indigogo campaigns raising $137,000 from 985 backers. The goal of the initial product
launch was to create a better cast iron skillet. Upon launch we were manufacturing products in China but found there seemed to be more interest in USA made products. In the following years we re-designed our skillet completely, developed tooling and began manufacturing the 10.5” and 13” cast iron skillets and the 10.75” carbon steel skillet. From there we expanded the product line to include enameled products and began selling on Amazon.

Sales and Brand Strategy:

Marquette Castings has been focused on a direct-to-consumer
ecommerce strategy since its inception. On a few occasions we have done wholesale deals with small retailers which we could provide as references.
Marquette’s best marketing success has come from content created by influencers and affiliates. This content continues to drive consistent web traffic and sales despite us not actively seeking/creating additional assets.  Over the years we have tried several digital marketing strategies but none were as useful as traffic driven from content assets. These marketing assets include YouTube videos (both influencer and affiliate), magazine articles, blog articles, and review publications. I feel the best way to expand the brand in a digitally native way is to expand on the amount of content that features the product line.

Product Strategy:

An additional stratagy would be establishing a hero product
that can more easily bring people into the brand. From an ecommerce perspective, brands with larger product lines have more opportunity to sell
additional products to current customers. While the Dutch Ovens do well to attract attention, Marquette could benefit from additional unique products. One vision for Marquette Castings would be to make a set of cookware where each piece is made from the optimal material for its purpose. This goes against the current trend of all pieces in a cookware set being made from the same
material. Potential product lines to explore would be:

  • Development of lower cost carbon steel skillet (tooling alreaady exists)
  • Enameled steel skillet (could use current tooling)
  • Ceramic bakeware
  • Baking sheets
  • Stainless stock pots/sauce pans

Tooling Assets:

All of Marquette Casting’s products were designed from scratch with the strategy of using feedback and reviews for similar products to direct our design decisions. For example, if cooking tests suggested that grill pans with taller ridges worked better, we designed ours with the tallest ridges. Dutch Ovens with larger loop handles were easier to handle, so we made large loop handles.

All of our enameled products have our tooling stored at the
manufacturer facility in China. We currently use 2 different enameled product suppliers. Tooling for our USA made products is generally held by our
manufacturing partner.

Social and Brand Assets:

YouTube: 600 subscribers, 2800 views per month

Instagram: 5100 followers, 497 posts

Current Inventory:

We have inventory in our own warehouse in Michigan, a 3rd party warehouse in Phoenix, AZ and multiple Amazon fulfilment centers across the country.