Today, we’d like to introduce you to Patrick Michel.
Hi Patrick, can you start by introducing yourself? We’d love to learn more about how you got to where you are today.
Ofcourse. I’m Pat, the Chief of Sales & Co-Founder of Soarce. We’re a materials innovation company making high performance additives out of seaweed & organic materials to increase how dyes/pigments, inks, fabrics/leathers, & industrial applications (e.g. concrete) perform.
To answer how I got to where I am today, is an interesting journey that would take a bit of time to explain, so I’ll condense this journey for you. Pretty much I came from an athletic background and had always planned to go to college for football. At the very end of my senior high school year, I decided to abandon the dream and go to college as a regular student to be more than just an athlete. At the time all the colleges I was going to attend were on academic & athletic scholarships. So, making the switch to just be a regular student & abandon all the schools I had offers to, was a dramatic & potentially regretful switch. Nonetheless, I decided to apply for the University of Central Florida, where I was admitted for the summer. While there I met a couple kids that lived directly across from my dorm, named Derek Saltzman & Mason Mincey (Co-founders of Soarce).
Throughout the summer we became great friends & also shared a class where they got to see my social & presentation skills. So, one day after class they came up to me and said that they wanted to start a business but didn’t know what it’d be. Regardless, they wanted me to join the team. Funny enough, I always wanted to start my own business, and I thought that Derek & Mason would make great business partners based off the relationship that we have developed. So, it was a no-brainer for me, and I told them I’m on board. At the time it was 2017 & that’s when we developed our first business known as SOAR Aerospace.
SOAR Aerospace (SOAR), was a carbon fiber composite (CF) manufacturer for recreational drone frames. At the time CF drone frames could only be purchased in black, so our edge with SOAR was creating CF composites that had colors introduced into the frames, so that drone pilots could express their personality and customize their drones. To us we thought it was a simple fix, but in reality, it caused an uproar of excitement in the drone racing industry, where drone pilots were thrilled by the colors SOAR was able to provide to the community. As we became a notable brand in the space, we began to realize that we wanted to do more than just create “toys” for drone hobbyists. We wanted to create a brand that was going to impact the world. Therefore, we decided to take the knowledge we acquired from manufacturing CF composites and hit the drawing board to determine which industry we could potentially tackle that had a major problem that wasn’t being solved.
So, during this transition of the business all of us co-founders (Derek, Mason, Matthew Jaeger, & Myself) decided that we all needed to focus on some key objectives that would in turn better the business, with whichever route we decided to pivot the business towards. So, I realized that the best thing I could do is increase my sales experience, so I got involved with life & health insurance sales through Primerica & US Health Advisors, while aiding the team with anything they needed immediate help with.
During this period is when we came across a lady on Youtube by the name of Meri Lundahl, who became the inspiration behind how SOAR transitioned into Soarce. Meri was the first to extract cellulose from wood waste in a lab and spin them into continuous fibers that could be used to make fabrics as strong as Kevlar. We were bewildered by this experiment & reached out to Meri via Youtube. From that first conversation, the team built a great relationship with Meri and continued to have periodic meetings with her while also attempting to replicate her experiment. The process was extremely challenging and required endless trials, which eventually led to a successful experiment then several. Meri was highly impressed with the team’s passion and determination.
During this period, we were also still figuring out which industry to pivot to and that’s when we came across the fashion space. We learned about the pollutive nature of the fashion industry and became aware that it was and is the second largest polluting industry. We couldn’t wrap our heads around how this industry was contributing 10% of the total greenhouse gas released each year. This is officially when SOAR transitioned into SOARCE.
So, all in all, I’ve been with Soarce since the very beginning & honestly, I can say we’ve endured a great deal of hardship to get to where we are today.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not, what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
Throughout our journey at Soarce, we’ve dealt with our fair share of obstacles/challenges. Most of these challenges were surrounded around our previous business model, where we were turning our additives into textiles & leathers, instead of solely using them as additives. These challenges include the following:
– Understanding that the textile industry was almost a century old with supply chains scattered across the world. Which meant we were competing against a behemoth of an industry that had years to submerge deep roots into the world, while we were just starting to kick off our business manufacturing textiles.
– Creating textiles was difficult due to the number of stages in the manufacturing process. It was too complex. We determined that we couldn’t scale the business without partnering with a textile manufacturer, who could take our solution and turn it into fibers to yarn, then textile. We wouldn’t have been able to do it ourselves.
– The fashion brands required minimum order quantities that were too high for us to fulfill. Brands wanted minimum quantities of at least 10x the amount we could produce.
– Learning from some of the largest brands that three aspects must be secure before taking in innovations at meaningful quantities: secure feedstock, same or better performance, and acceptable price. Price acceptability is based on how well the product performs.
–Soft goods like leather or textiles aren’t scaled up yet, so brands cannot purchase at meaningful scales.
– Realizing that when you delegate tasks to a team, everyone may not feel as important as the other, which can cause discrepancies within the organization, which can lead to the team falling apart.
– Raising money is not easy. To raise private capital as an organization, the founders must know all the ins & outs of the business, have grit, and have the right team members who can truly aid the business in growing.
– Legal issues with big brands. When our company name was ‘SOAR Composites’. We had to legally change it to Soarce because the car company Mitsubishi sent us a court order stating we were infringing upon two of their product names, ‘Soar Resin’ & ‘Soar Lite.’
What brought about our shift from producing textiles & leathers to producing solely additives was realizing that to solve monumental challenges, we needed to do it in steps. So, instead of focusing on doing the whole textile manufacturing process, we switched our business model to tackle the most pollutive part (is responsible for half of the greenhouse gas emissions) of manufacturing textiles, the processing & treatments stage. This is where you pretreat, dye, & add finishing treatments to textiles. Our additives are utilized within that portion of the manufacturing process.
Great, so let’s talk business. Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
Soarce is a materials innovation company leveraging seaweed and other natural resources to impart performance properties to textiles while minimizing impact. So, what we have developed is a suite of high performing and non-toxic textile treatments using seaweed and organic acids. Our product portfolio can protect dyes from light-fading, reduce water and entire steps during dyeing, and impart protective properties such as fire-resistance. The reason behind this is the dyeing and treatments step in textile manufacturing represents 50% of total GHG in fashion. Along with this, performance specs like UV and fire-resistance still rely on toxic chemicals. Many sustainable technologies aren’t being adopted due to lack in performance
At the end of the day, Soarce is a technology-enabling platform that serves as a complimentary to various products to aid them in performing on a higher level without the use of any toxins. What truly sets us apart from others, is we’ve made non-toxic high-performance additives with green chemistries & organic materials that can be utilized for a multitude of applications. Typically to get performance within a product you’re using toxins that brands truly don’t want to disclose. With us, that isn’t the case.
Any big plans?
At the beginning of Q3 ’24, we plan to raise our Seed round of funding. With the funds raised, we plan to scale from lab scale to pilot scale, where instead of producing 600 liters of our additive per 8hr. We’d be producing 1.8k liters. This would give us a maximum annual capacity of 451k liters or 119k gallons instead of 150k liters or ~40k gallons. We’d also move into a larger facility around 15k – 18k sqft.
On top of this, we plan to hire more key positions, including process engineers, and scale the technical team to transition from servicing brands at sample quantities to pilot runs. We also plan to work with governments such as Miami, Puerto Rico, and Mexico, as well as seaweed biorefineries, to work with troublesome seaweed species such as sargassum so that we can turn them into high-value chemistries.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.soarceusa.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/soarceusa/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/soarceusa/
Image Credits
Soarce, Matthew Jaeger (Co-founder & Chief Financial Officer), Mason Mincey (Co-founder & Chief Operating Officer), Derek Saltzman (Co-founder & Chief Executive Officer), and Patrick Michel (Co-founder & Chief of Sales)
