Any product that aims to help Mother Nature thrive and help the world function better is a great product. Kyle Ewing, the Founder and President of TerraSlate, talks about the genesis of the idea for TerraSlate paper to product development. The product is environmentally conscious as it minimizes the use of paper. With its efficiency, TerraSlate has become bigger, and the need for manpower also increased. With Kyle’s management efforts, he shares his key learnings from running the business as well as the challenges they had to go through as a team. He highlights his company’s overarching protocol which stands on three pillars of success – quality, speed, and customer service.

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The TerraSlate Advantage with Kyle Ewing

We’re with Kyle Ewing. He’s the Founder and President of https://terraslatepaper.com/ (TerraSlate). I had the pleasure of meeting him at a horse event. We’re in the signature flight terminal outside of DIA and Kyle’s about to fly to Houston.

We’re headed down to Houston on a jet to see some clients in the oil and gas industry. You will all have to cross your fingers for a good meeting!

Kyle, tell us about your business and who you serve.

My business is called TerraSlate. We make treeless paper that’s 100% waterproof and rip-proof. People often ask me, “Why do you need paper in a digital age?” What I tell them is there are millions and millions of things that not only get printed, but that get laminated and handled heavily on a daily basis. Something like a restaurant menu is always a good go-to example. Restaurant menus get handled by as many as 100 people a day and they get wiped down, spilled on, and people put hot coffee cups on them. They get wine or salsa spilled all over them and what’s cool is you can wipe them clean. For a restaurant, that’s very advantageous.

The other benefits are you can print it through any laser printer and you can write on it with a pen. Instead of printing out a sheet, then taking it over to the laminating machine and feeding the laminating machine one sheet at a time with traditional laminating pouches, you can put a ream of TerraSlate in your printer and click go. When it comes out, it’s done. You can do 500 in two minutes. We do everything from restaurant menus to work with biotech firms for materials in their labs. The paper is non-porous. If they’re working with hazardous chemicals or something like anthrax, the paper can go into the lab. It can get written on or used, usually, it’s a chart or some type that’s being filled out, and then it can go into the chemical bath and go out of the lab. You don’t have to type your notes before leaving the lab anymore.

With grocery stores, we do a lot of price tags, as well as behind the scenes manuals and foodservice guides. The next time you go to Whole Foods, touch the price tags, those are all done on TerraSlate. There are a couple of other cool things as well. We do maps and nautical charts for the military. We work with all four branches of the military as well as the Coast Guard. We’ve been having a good time with it. A customer called me and asked how does TerraSlate react to Plutonium 236 or whatever the isotope was. I said, “I have no idea. I don’t have any way to test that, but I’d be happy to put some samples in the mail. That way you can test it and let me know how it works.” I’m very excited to hear how that works if that works at all.

People hearing about TerraSlate paper, that you developed, and they’re asking, “How in the world did you think of this?” What drove you down this path? You’re a bit of a serial entrepreneur.

This is my third company. The first one I made a successful exit from. I bought myself a sports car and I bought my wife a house.