Today we’d like to introduce you to James Mooney
Hi JAMES, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start maybe you can share some of your backstory with our readers?
I’ve been in the fitness industry for the better part of 15 years. When I graduated from Southern Oregon University back in 2011 I thought I would have a chance to play football professionally but quickly realized that I was not quite good enough for the next level after a few failed tryouts with the NFL & CFL. I had a few contract offers to play overseas but decided instead to focus on strength & conditioning. If I couldn’t play in the NFL I wanted to help other people get there.
I took a job as a graduate assistant with the university and coached outside linebackers as well as ran the strength & conditioning program. In my second year, I officially became the Head Strength & Conditioning Coach for football at Southern Oregon. After that year though I realized that I couldn’t live off the salary so I went into the private sector and started personal training at a local fitness club. During the next 4 years, I built up a fairly good reputation at being one of the best trainers in Southern Oregon. Also during that time, I launched a fitness brand with a friend of mine called Gunsmith Clothing Company in 2014. We ended up growing year after year and eventually took on a large investor that allowed us to open our training facility which led me to leave my training job and work there on building the brand and training athletes, military, and first responders. In 2019 we sold the brand and the gym and I began working for a defense contractor in Oregon working on brand development, marketing, and also when needed – a fitness consultant for various military contracts the company fulfilled.
Throughout this whole journey, I have always taken supplements in some form, from protein powders to pre-workouts to various vitamins and minerals and everything in between. Before we had sold Gunsmith I had started working on building a supplement line to launch with the company with the goal being to offer high-quality, fully-dosed supplements that are effective but more importantly – TASTE AMAZING. In my years of using supplements, I had a hard time finding many supplements that had both of those qualities and I figured if I couldn’t find them for myself I might as well make them and maybe other people will like them too.
After I sold Gunsmith I still wanted to launch the supplements so I renamed the line under the BlastHouse Industries name and came to market in March of 2020. If you remember though that is right before the Covid lockdown began. We launched one week before the shutdown and had an amazing launch but restocking became a nightmare that we are just now recovering from 4 years later. It became impossible to restock and when we were able to cost of goods skyrocketed out of our price range and made it almost impossible to continue business. We lost a ton of momentum in a super competitive market where if you don’t have something the customer will go to one of the other thousand companies out there. Regardless we persevered and now we are on our way back after a lot of setbacks.
I relocated to Austin in December 2022 after leaving my job with the defense contractor and deciding on a fresh start in a new city with an amazing fitness community and I couldn’t be happier.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
The covid shutdown in 2020 caused a lot of issues with manufacturing shutdowns and the cost of goods skyrocketing. It became impossible to restock our products and when we were able to get manufacturing going the cost was outside of our means.
Appreciate you sharing that. What should we know about BlastHouse Industries?
We are a sports nutrition company specializing in high-quality, fully dosed, and amazing-tasting supplements. We offer hydrolyzed whey protein, pre-workouts, as well as an amazing-tasting reds & greens supplement that makes it seem like you’re not having something amazingly good for you. I’m most proud of the fact that this hasn’t been an easy journey, there have been a lot of ups and downs regarding learning curves and external factors and also being a small company in a market dominated by huge companies that have budget and margins to undercut you in price. It’s been a struggle at times but everything has been a learning experience and we are much better because of going through it. The big thing with BlastHouse is we care about the community. Every step of the way and the customer experience is handled personally by the staff at BlastHouse, we don’t outsource anything, and that allows the customer to feel that we care about them and want them to have the best experience possible.
Is there a quality that you most attribute to your success?
Perseverance and attention to detail. The willingness to deal with the adversity that comes my way and push through it even when it doesn’t seem possible. Also, the devil is in the details, the more detailed you are the more successful you will be.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://blasthouse.com
- Instagram: https://instagram.com/blasthouseind
- Facebook: https://facebook.com/blasthouseind
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/blasthouseind
- Youtube: https://youtube.com/blasthouseind
