Bear Handlon is a former Yale football player, Naval Officer, and the Co-Founder and CEO of Born Primitive, one of the hottest brands in the fitness, athleisure, and outdoor apparel space. Bear’s story is truly unique and full of valuable insights. 

Bear had a simple idea, $4,000 in the bank, and was about to ship off to officer candidate school, but he decided to launch a company anyway. He parlayed the success of his initial product, custom-made compression shorts, to build a large and diverse brand with a wide array of products.

Here’s a look at what we cover:

• When to focus vs. when to expand your product offering. 
• Born Primitive’s 3 keys to building a growth flywheel.
• How to turn mistakes into extreme customer loyalty.
• How getting the product right fuels everything else. 
• Why being face-to-face with customers is the key to product innovation and marketing. 
• While products can be replicated, a strong and unique “brand identity” cannot.

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Mentioned In This Episode:

• Born Primitive
• Brett Curry (LinkedIn)
• Brett Curry (Twitter)

Transcript:

Brett:

Well, hello and welcome to another edition of the E-Commerce Evolution Podcast. I'm your host, Brett Curry, CEO of omg commerce, and today is another episode in the continuing series of How I Built It series. We're talking to the CEO and co-founder of Born Primitive. If you are active, if you're into exercises, if you're just into looking good, you've probably heard of Born Primitive, but if not, you'll hear about it today. And so I've got like I said, the CEO and co-founder, bear Handlin with me today. Bear, how you doing man? And welcome to the show. Thanks for coming on.

Bear:

Appreciate you having me, Brett.

Brett:

Absolutely. So you and I connected at Ezra Firestones Blue Ribbon Mastermind was, I would say one of the best events I've been to in terms of, well, the content was great, that people were great, but the setting, holy cow, it was Cardiff by the Sea just north of San Diego. We could see this place right on a cliff. And so it was good to connect with you and good to hang out there. It was just a pretty epic time.

Bear:

Yeah, I used to live out in San Diego, so anytime I have a chance to get back, I'm like, I'm all about it. So that was like, yeah, they killed it with the venue and obviously the content was awesome. Tons of squared away people that are all you kind of solving the same problems in e-commerce. So super cool to be a part of it

Brett:

And just a plug like, hey, now that the world is opened back up, I believe you got to get to in-person events. And it seems like to me, it seems like the trend is to smaller events rather than the giant events that we used to have, but I believe got to be at those events. It's where you make connections, where you make breakthroughs. It's worth the time. So good stuff, man. Well, I'm super excited to dive in your story. I got to hear some of it on stage as you and Ezra were chatting at Blue Ribbon, but I want to unpack it a little bit and of course share it with the wider audience. So what's your background? Cause you were a naval officer, so you had a military career right now for those watching the video, you're crushing a Red Bull. You worked for Red Bull, right? So talk about you went to Yale, is it right that you went to Yale? That's super awesome, if that's true.

Bear:

Yes. Yeah, so graduated from Yale University played football there. I was a big sports guy growing up so I had the opportunity to pursue that. Graduated, went and worked for Red Bull for four years, did marketing for them. It was awesome. Still, I'm still loyal even though I'm not employed with them anymore, as you can see. And

Brett:

They're like the OG Energy drink, right? The original, yeah. Yeah,

Bear:

They invented it eight in 1987 came over to the States in 97. The energy drink category didn't exist until Red Bull. So everyone else is just the poer copy

Brett:

Just to,

Bear:

Other brands are doing great, but they'll never be able to. They invented the category totally. So that's their claim to fame with Bread Bull. So that was really cool. I learned a ton about kind of brand and marketing through them, and obviously the way they do it is kind of second to none. So great exposure ended up making the decision to join the military when I was 26 and just before joining the military actually launched more primitive. So horrible timing from a logistics standpoint. I don't know, you'll

Brett:

Start a military career and become an entrepreneur at the same time. Great. Yeah,

Bear:

I think we started it maybe two and a half months before I shipped off to Officer Candidate School. So that's how it all got started. And then I was kind of dual hating being active duty naval officer for about eight years in running born primitive. I just got out one year ago, so this is my first full year as of a few days ago where I've been able to be full-time c o and not sending out emails at three o'clock in the morning from my laptop somewhere overseas or something like that. So that

Brett:

Is amazing. How does that feel? Is the renewed focus really special? Is the free head space really amazing? What's it like now not being military officer and entrepreneur simultaneously?

Bear:

It's great. It's like I've heard people use the analogy though, it's kind of a gas that fills any space it's given. So yes, I have all this free time in quotes, but it immediately got filled with more primitive. So it's not like I'm any less busy. I think I'm actually more busy because I'm able to be more involved. But there was this ironic experience that I had in the military ex, there's a ton of red tape, ton of bureaucracy to make any decision that takes forever. So part of my day I would be in that environment and then I would go to born primitive where I'm the CEO in particularly early on where there's only a few of us you make decisions so fast, you can up the budget immediately. You can just say, oh yeah, let's do it. So I saw both ends of the spectrum of efficiencies and I think that it was good to see both because even with the business now we have 75 employees, I'm still trying to keep the lean, agile, efficient components and never turn into this big bureaucratic organization that just has a bunch of layers of unnecessary tasks.

So I think seeing both has been a huge benefit for me as we develop this thing.

Brett:

Yeah, I love that. And it makes a ton of sense seeing the insane bureaucracy and red tape and the hurry up and weight mentality that I know exists in the military but as you scale and as you grow, you do need systems and processes. That's something we experienced as an agency. And I was looking back at this presentation I did in 2019 and we're at 25, 26 people, something like that, and now we're at close to 60. And so as you grow you do need processes. So there is something very valuable about checking twice and having systems and procedures in place, but min when things just slow down to lurch and or grind to a halt and all the red tape that that's no good either. So they're like, there's got to be this balance in between of entrepreneurial speed and energy and enough systems and processes burn the whole thing down. So I'm guessing you probably found a happy medium playing in both those worlds.

Bear:

Exactly. Yeah. I think you take the good of the systems and processes and then lean it down a little bit. But 100% we're absolutely to the point now almost to a fault, where I realize, all right, we're a little too loose here. I we need to have KPIs and monthly reports and things like that. So I think we're trying to find that middle ground now.

Brett:

Yeah, that's awesome, man, that's awesome. So then for those that don't know, and I kind of alluded to it, I said, Hey, if you're into working out and you into looking good and stuff, you probably heard of Born Primitive, but what is born primitive and why did you start it back in the day when you were just about to ship off to the military? So yeah, what is it? Why'd you start it?

Bear:

Yeah, so we're an apparel company mainly D TOC right now but expanding into mass retail as we speak and just launch on Amazon. A couple months ago, congrat, as we were talking, congrat about Congrat. That's awesome. Year or two ago, I probably would've said we're a workout apparel company. We're a whole lot more now. Workout apparel was what we started with but now athleisure apparel's huge for us. And then we recently just launched our outdoor apparel which is a whole new category, whole new kind of sister brand for us. It's called Born Primitive Outdoor and then launch our campfire collection, which is now jeans and flannels and sheline denim jackets and anything you know, would wear maybe wear around the camp fire. So we have a pretty good, and even some active professional stuff. So men's stretchy dress shirts and active pants, things like that that you travel in.

So nice. We're covering a pretty wide variety now. But at the core of it, it started as a workout apparel company and just the cliff notes of how it started, I developed a pair of custom compression shorts that was specific to a very niche market in Olympic weightlifting. I was doing a lot of training for CrossFit, and that was one of the lifts we were doing. So I took an old football girdle from the Yale days and cut out the quad pad and took it over to my neighbor who was a seamstress, and she stitched in the padding in another area of the shorts. And that was the first prototype.

Brett:

And this was for a specific CrossFit move or CrossFit workout, is

Bear:

That right? Yeah, so the Olympic lift is called snatch and there's a portion of lift where the bar can make contact and you're like your pubic bone to the point where some guys in competition were fracturing that bone. Dang. So I just basically stitched that pad in that area and the intent was literally just to make one, and I was going to be the only one that would wear it because I would just plan on wearing it on the days I had that lift and then just wash it a couple times a week. And then long story short, guys were saying, Hey, you should market that. And I said, yeah, no way. And I did a little bit of market research and realized I wasn't the only guy experiencing that problem. I said, Hey, maybe there's something to this. Read some books on overseas sourcing, kind of schooled myself up, got an Alibaba, put out tons of feelers, whittled it down to a couple suppliers. And after quite a process, we ordered, I remember our first order was 200 units, and at the time that was pretty scary, that m oq of 200 units. And then then I shipped off to Officer Can School and Born Primitive was rocking and rolling. So that's how it all

Brett:

Started. That's crazy. And I did not know you sold the stretchy dress shirts. I'm going to have to check those out. I'm a big fan of those actually. So excited to look at that. And so yeah, you started with this one product for a specific need for a specific group of people namely yourself. And then when you got that order of 200, did you sell through it immediately or were you so busy going through ocs and stuff that you didn't have time? What was that like?

Bear:

Yeah, honestly, it marketed itself and we got really lucky. There was a silver medalist in Russia who got wind of it, and him and his guys ordered it and they were posting about it which was huge. I mean, we didn't pay them, we didn't ask for it. So that kind of put us on the map to have a world champion and a silver medalist as well, plugging. It was pretty cool. And yeah, I remember I had the little PayPal notification and turned on my phone and you'd get the little cha-ching, you know what I mean? And it was so exciting. And that

Brett:

Was right. Money we're in the money

Bear:

Of course, eventually we had to turn that feature off because it is a bit more frequent now. But I remember that was just exciting in the early days to see that initial traction. And then we realized, I quickly realized, okay, this is cool, but we can't pigeon our whole ourself to one product. We need to build a brand. So we honestly just started screen printing t-shirts and hoodies and going to any CrossFit event we could within reach every weekend and selling clothes from a card table in a little crappy little tent. And that's pretty much hot.

Brett:

Much clothes and compression shorts were like,

Bear:

We'd have screen printed t-shirts and hoodies and then the compression shorts, and that was pretty much the product lineup. Got it. And we would just set up at any CrossFit event, we could pack up the Jeep. We were just super scrappy. There was no marketing plan, there was just two of us. And we'd work all weekend, get back inventory, everything. I remember we had a yellow legal pad, was how we took orders, which is just hilarious. Just thinking of the logistics and systems we had in place, we didn't know any better and that's how we did it. So the first three or four years we just pounded the pavement and got out there and slowly little by little we started establishing the following and we expanded into, I think the light bulb moment for us was we launched our first sports bra, and that was basically our first kind of custom cut. And so product that with more of a performance mindset of like, Hey, anyone can do screen printed stuff. Let's actually try to make some performance apparel with a purpose. And that, I think that was the moment where we said, okay, this is the lane we want to run it because anyone can screen print on a t-shirt. And I think that was at the three and a half or four year mark and Nice. We really haven't looked back ever since.

Brett:

Awesome. So I'm curious, were you born primitive from the beginning? Was that the name from the beginning or did that evolve and change over time?

Bear:

So the first original name was technically Snatch Shorts. That was the name of the product. And I remember it was actually one of the founders of Early, and I'm forgetting his name right now, I'm embarrassed, but I remember I had a call with him in regards to an athlete he was representing that we were going to sign. And on the call he actually gave me some great advice and he was the one that actually recommended, Hey, I like what you're doing, but if this is long term, I think you should consider changing your name to a brand name. Yes. And then I remember I thought about it. So I think two months in we quickly changed to Born Primitive from snack shorts, but yeah, that's awesome. Technically the OG name was Snatch Shorts llc, yeah, incorporated in Indiana. And then I got some good advice from a dude who's done it before and totally thank God because I don't think Snatch Shorts LLC would have quite the ring that born. I

Brett:

Don't think so. I want to buy my snatch shorts hoodie you want.

Bear:

Exactly. Exactly. And that's exactly what he said. Really

Brett:

Pigeon pigeonholes you into this one

Bear:

For sure. Yeah, and I see other companies do that. I'm like, man, I wish they would think about that because you might crush with that product, but then what's after that? Nothing. You know what

Brett:

I'm saying? Yeah. We just, we've been consulting and working and investing in a brand called Keto Brownie originally, and they're like, Hey, we can't just be a Brownie. So they rebranded as Sinless Snacks. And so now the Keto Brownie is a product and it still has the name Keto Brownie, but it's part of the umbrella of similar snacks. So yeah, you got to think long term about the brand for sure. So you guys did something that I think is really interesting, and I think this is something that every entrepreneur, brand owners should do if they can. So you were face-to-face with your customers selling stuff, getting feedback, trying to hawk stuff at shows and stuff. What do you think you learned or what did you pick up? What'd you learn about customer preference? Customer taste, marketing, any lessons come from those hundreds of CrossFit shows that you guys went to?

Bear:

Yeah, I think for one, you learn about what the customer actually wants, right? Because you're in the trenches with them and there's no better data point than that. Yeah, I think the second major thing would just be learning the importance of one-on-one interactions, especially in the early days. That's the marketing plan. You're building your business brick by brick, and every interaction is critical. And it's cool to still talk with people because I still honestly run checkout at some of our events because to me, that's a great way to just check in with customers. As I'm checking 'em out, I'm saying, Hey, how have you heard of us? And you'll either get, oh, I've never seen you guys, or I've been with you guys for eight years. I remember when you were back in this event eight years ago and you were running checkout. You know what I mean? It's cool to give them a positive brand experience in person. And then over time that foundation gets bigger and bigger. And I think some people might overlook that one-on-one interaction and how important that is. But if you're playing the long game that's how you build a loyal following.

Brett:

Yeah, I love the in-person events, and we do it too as an agency. We have a booth and people come by. And so I always thinking or always observing what headlines do people read and when they stop and say something, what are they asking for and what do they comment on or not comment on it? And when you're at the table, what are the T-shirts they pick up versus those that they leave? And what are the questions they ask that you might not ever get back to you if you didn't do the in-person event? And so I remember one of my favorite quotes was from I think Chesky of Airbnb where he said to do build a company that scales, you need to do things that don't, right? So you can't just spend your every day going to shows, right? That's not a way you scale a brand, but to effectively scale a brand, you need to do some of those things because you learn stuff you won't learn anywhere else.

Bear:

Absolutely. And that's why we still do it. I don't go early in construct the booth anymore. I used to even, I just recently stopped doing that. I was finally told, Hey, you can't fly in two days early and be running a power drill. You need to be doing other things.

Brett:

Maybe you should be running the company. I don't know. Yeah,

Bear:

Yeah, exactly. But yeah, I roll in and run checkout and get to interact with customers and see what their tastes are. So it's a great way to get real realtime data. And then obviously that applies to our website. It's as far as merchandising and what people are wanting. So it's a good use of my time.

Brett:

I love it. So I want to talk about two things that I think are super important, but sometimes tricky to find the right mix or the right timing of. So there, there's huge power in focus doing one thing really well, the snatch shorts, making those really, really well or the initial performance sports bra, making that really, really well. But then you got to expand if you're going to build a lifestyle brand, if you're going to reach a larger audience, you got to expand into other products. One of the early mistakes we made as an agency is we tried to do everything. We did web design and we did TV and we did direct mail. Cause we had some background in that and it was exhausting and we weren't great. Then we realized, hey, we're really, really good at search marketing, so we're going to go deep on that. Went deep on that, started crushing it, growing, getting some recognition nationally, and then we started expanding from there, which I think that can work. You focus on something, you nail it, and then you begin to expand. How did you guys approach that? When did you realize, okay, hey let's try the sports bra, because you obviously weren't thinking about sports bras when you made the shorts originally. So when did you get the idea for that and then when did it become clear, okay, we got to expand beyond this too?

Bear:

Yeah, so the co-founder, Mallory she was the one who kind of thought of she was having frustrations with the active apparel she was wearing at the gym. And as I said, we weren't really doing any of that performance stuff. So she said, well, hey, why don't I take a swing at this and I'm going to design a sports bra that I enjoy and nice. And she nailed the features on it. And I remember we launched it at the CrossFit games, I think in 2015. We sold out of it and girls were wear wearing 'em at the event and coming back the next day and getting the other three colors. So that was a really good initial sign. Nice. Did you have

Brett:

An athlete wear it at that, the CrossFit games?

Bear:

Not that year I don't think. But the word kind of spread because girls were telling their girlfriends, they were coming back to the booth and being like, I heard about the, do you have any of the vitality brass left? And that was just almost like an unexpected, holy crap, this is, there is a good development. So we kind of doubled down on, okay, we need do cut. And so performance apparel and mainly on the fitness stuff to start. And I think you bring up a good point of you have to be specific at least initially, and then you have to be very calculated. And when you expand what that's going to be and have a real plan that sports bra thing was a bit of a fluke I'd say, just because it was mal just trying to solve a personal need. But then we were like, okay, we're doing this kind of performance workout apparels that we're going to do and then the next transition would've into it. Athleisure stuff's like joggers and comfortable stuff that you could probably wear to the gym, but also lounge around the house just, I mean, how hot that market is as well. Massive. And we crushed

Brett:

At, and it's fueled by the pandemic that just helped at all explore. Oh

Bear:

Yeah. Crazy. I mean, our rest day joggers we sell a gazillion of them. We, they're our best product. It's so huge opportunity in and then yeah, I would say we rode in that lane for a good amount of time and I finally was like, okay, I think we're ready to go into another vertical. And that's what brought up out Born Primitive Outdoor which we just launched in September. And that's kind of backcountry mainly for us. We're kind of targeting the hunting audience but it's for anyone in the outdoors, it's a layering system all the way out to your layer pop jackets and stuff and rain gear. So that was something I always wanted to do is I, I'm passionate about the outdoors and I was like, okay, we're finally ready. Those other two components are super healthy and are thriving, but if you want to keep building the business and raising the ceiling on what you can accomplish, you have to carve out new lanes. So we did that and then our campfire collection was kind of a sequel to that, which is more flannels and jeans and Sherpa line denim jackets and just fun stuff you'd wear around that vibe. And then we're getting into tactical apparels, well in April. So we have, and then also the biggest one probably on this list right now, we're launching a performance shoe in July. So

Brett:

Dang man, that's

Bear:

When I'm looking at the roadmap for Born Primitive to get to certain top line milestones, I realized, okay, fitness is killing, but we have to some other revenue streams in different categories that will allow us to reach out to to other customers and bring in new people into the fold. So we're excited about it. There's a lot going on but I think you bring up a great point about it. It is a balance. You can't spread yourself too thin, too quick, or then you're doing everything at 80%.

Brett:

Totally. And yeah, you had built this machine and it was momentum was there, the athleisure, the performance wear, it was just going. And so when you get to a point where you're like, Hey, I can healthily invest in these other things without pulling away from the core, great, now it's time. And I liked it. Did you get feedback on the, Hey man, would love if you launched some outdoor wear, or was it more of a this is my passion, this is what I'm good at, I want better products in this category because it does fit people that are into CrossFit and exercise. A lot of them are out into outdoors as well, so it definitely fits. But was that driven more by personal interest or more and more by feedback from customers?

Bear:

Initially personal interest, and it was ironically validated pretty significantly. We retained an investment bank to help us go through a process to reach out to some private equity groups. And they did a survey on 2000 of our customers and basically posed the question, what would you like to see born primitive do? And the top two were footwear and outdoor apparel. And those were two things that interest were already working. And it was a very high number. It was over 70%. Wow. So that worked great with the deck. We were pitching these private equity groups like, oh, hey, we have hundreds of thousands of active customers. This was the number one and number two answer for what they want. And oh, by the way, this is already getting worked and it'll be launching on these dates.

Brett:

It's amazing. And so you guys primarily say, I got a couple questions there, but you primarily partnered with private equity to help fuel expansion and invest in new products and things like that.

Bear:

So actually no. We raised zero capital. We strapped it from the beginning and still have not we're nine years in last summer, or it was actually last spring, I finally made the decision, Hey, why don't we reach, why don't at least get in the game and see what the market will fetch? And we're actually currently under an L LOI with some really cool guys that bring some, it's amazing, unique experience, but we're only selling a very small portion of the business, so we're still going to run the show. I think these guys are great strategic partners. But yeah, it's one thing I'm really proud of is I see a lot of these other DDC brands that they raise 30 million, they raised 20 million. And I kind of chuckle because I'm not to sound arrogant, but if you were to give me 20 million bucks, I could stand up a D two C brand and have it very relevant very fast because you got 20 million bucks.

And we started this thing in a garage with nothing I think, at the life that at the time my life savings was like 4,500 bucks, and I was about to join the military. Our co-founder, Mallory, was a dental hygienist so I'd like to think a lot of these brands we compete with had quite a headstart on us, and we gained some serious ground on 'em, and now we're in the hunt with them. So it's something I'm proud of. And I think the way we had to conduct ourselves was so much different. And when we went through the investment process, one of the things that really made us stood out is we've always been profitable. So for these guys that are used to seeing at all these TDC brands that have these projections of profitability five years from now, they're like, oh, you guys have never lost money. And I was kind of a chuckle. Of course, yeah, yeah. There's another way to do it. And that's just because that's the way we had to do it because we didn't get a bunch of money up front, but it'll be nice to be with some partners now. They bring some unique experience. They're former executives at a very big apparel company, they publicly traded. So we're excited about what the new chapter's going to bring on that front.

Brett:

I love it, man. And now I've got several friends like Joe Twilight Brokerage and I've got some investment banker friends and private equity friends now, and we're looking to buy an agents here too, and potentially more, but just going through that process, I think that this is what's super interesting to me is as you talk to investors and as you look at, Hey, let's value our company, or let's maybe put it on the market and see what people say or let, let's look to go buy another business. Just the way you look at businesses in that lens or in that environment is different. And I think whether you do a deal or not, that will shape the way you think about the health of your business and the margins and how you're growing. And yeah, I love it. I love that you went through the process and awesome for you that you got an loi hope that goes through because yeah, it's nice to have partners when you're looking to expand and do different and bigger things. So that's cool. Yeah,

Bear:

You hit the nail on the head as far as learning to reverse engineer it once you see what they look at and what they ask if the process were to fall through, or if it does go through and we do it again in five years, I'll be so much more dialed in on what, what's important, at least on that front. And I'm actually one of the guys from It's quiet light, right? Yeah yeah. I'm reading his

Brett:

Joe Walker exit. Yeah,

Bear:

Yeah, I'm reading the book. I actually just started it last night. The exit Exit. Oh no,

Brett:

That is Joe Val. Joe's going to love that. I just gave Walker credit. Joe and Walker have this both in on the Quiet Light team. They both wrote books and they're a little competitive, but friendly. I love you both, by the way, if you guys are listening. Yeah. Joe is preneur and Walker. Diabol was by then Build is the name of his book. Both fantastic books.

Bear:

Yeah. Awesome. Well, I'll check that other one out and then maybe I'll call which one is the strongest one, which is better so far. Yeah, yeah. We'll put it on the air.

Brett:

I love it. So question about footwear. So that surprises me. I don't know why it surprised me, but it does. So people are like, Hey, I don't want to wear my Nikes or Adidas or whatever workout shoes. They're like, nothing is meeting my needs here. I want you guys to make a shoe. What's the reason? Why are people saying they want footwear?

Bear:

I think part of it is we've have built an incredible amount of brand loyalty and we've kind of shown that anything we launched, the diehards will get it. So whether it's outdoor stuff or campfire or new workout stuff, they will come back. And it was just an obvious revolution. It's a, of course, we need to foot to do a footwear. And part of it is with our athlete marketing side, it makes a little bit harder to sign deals with athletes because we'd be like, Hey, we can do everything but shoes. And they're like, well, I guess I'll do another shoes. Shoes. So this will allow us to do full head to toe deals on the athlete side, which will be cool nice. But more importantly, we just look at our existing active customer amount and we're like, okay, if we order X amount of units, if we get 10% of these people to come by a shoe, we're looking at some outrageous numbers.

So it just made too much sense. And it's also fun for me. I, I'm very active. I work out all the time. And to be able to develop a shoe and then just be able to wear those, and it's just the fun development and we're going to get all the employees decked out, and then of course all of our athletes and influencers will get decked out. So it's just a cool development and I think it gives us a lot of opportunities beyond just a performance shoe, probably a running shoe. We have a canvas shoe that's more of a lifestyle sneaker that we'll be launching in August. So it allows for the sequels to happen that hopefully we can have disrupt the market a little bit.

Brett:

Love it, love it. And that makes all the sense in the world. Hey, one of the ways we learn is through failures or mistakes. And everybody likes to hear the crash and burn story or stub your toe story or, Hey, I screwed this up, but learn from it. What are some of the mistakes or the failings forward that you guys have had as a brand?

Bear:

Well, the first one happened really early and I think this was at the time a very big mistake, but I think it taught us a very good lesson that we still really hold onto. So the second order of the snatch shorts remember we upped it to 500. First order was 200. We sold through it, reordered 500. I was at Officer Candidate School. We received the order. We started shipping out the orders because people had pre-booked their orders. And what happened was they changed the adhesive they used on the padding to get it to stay at, kind of adhered to the fabric. So after the people washed it for the first time, the padding would disintegrate. So we thought we had just killed it. And it's order number two, you know what I mean? We're moving on and we have this massive customer service issue. I was at Officer Kenneth School, so I had limited communications.

So Mallory was reaching out to me, freaking out saying, what do we do? Long story short, we reached out to every customer prior to even the issue happening and saying, Hey, in transparency, there's probably a defect on this. We've already reordered no action required. We will ship you a pair as soon as it gets in. We think it'll be like eight weeks, but bear with us. I mean, just the response we got from that was so positive when we thought it was going to be a disaster in all hate mail, that it revealed that if you're just transparent and honest and you treat people and there's a human component to it, people will actually become more loyal. So ironically, it's like what should have been a disaster, actually built brand loyalty in the early days. And we still had that a couple times. I'd say nine years.

We've had a similar issue, maybe two or three occasions. We had a zipper issue on a a pair of shorts three years ago, and we did the same thing. We reached out to everyone, no action required. This might happen. If it doesn't happen, you'll get a second pair of shorts for free. No big deal. But we're replacing all of them. And just the customer service team, they came back like, man, the feedback's insane. People are thanking us and this and that. So I guess the lesson was you can take a negative and turn it into a positive, and it just totally reinforces how important the consumer interaction is because we're so used to talking with customer service agents that are either a robot or AI or this and that, and you just get on the phone with a real person that is a human and isn't confined by these parameters of how they can solve a problem. It was huge. So that was number one, I would say.

Brett:

Yeah, I love that so much because one, you guys were super proactive. You weren't like, Hey, some people may be okay with this. Let's just save a little cost and let's just only replace the ones that where people complain. Because for everybody that complains, there's a dozen more, couple dozen people that are just like, oh, this sucks. And they just move on and never say anything. So you were proactive, you took care of everybody. And young people see that human connection. They realize, oh, this is just a business run by people and they made a mistake or someone screwed them over, but they're taking care of me. That's all I care about. It deepens that relationship. That's super, super powerful. So kudos to you guys, noticed it and did the right thing fast, and I love that no action required where, hey, we'll replace this, but go here, enter your information, all that. No, I don't want to work for your mistake. And so you're taking care of people so that, that's awesome. Kudos to you guys. There are a lot of lessons to be learned from that. Any other mistakes you've learned from?

Bear:

I think the other biggest one is just inventory management. Long story short, during the height of the pandemic when it was just basically became impossible to forecast we just ordered just an absolutely outrageous amount of product based on what we thought was going to continue. And I guess, I know a lot of brands are in this boat right now where they have the

Brett:

Lulu Lemons in this boat as well. I just saw an article on LinkedIn, really, they're way overstocked.

Bear:

And you're starting to see a lot of brands. If you just do Google search on product, you'll see a lot of high high-end brands that are discounting dramatically on Google search and stuff. And that's a hundred percent why I think. So that was another big one, is as the CEO and mal, as the CEO weren't as involved as we should have been on those invoices that were going out, and had I just done a quick sanity check on it, I would've immediately seen, wait a second, that's like, that's 290,000 units of one collection. Let's reel that in a little bit. You know what I mean? I'm wiring 6 million overseas. Wait one wire. What I mean? But

Brett:

Everything was just so frantic and growing at such an amazing pace, and you're like, yeah,

Bear:

Yeah, we were. And everything was just firing on all cylinders. All right. I knew we were selling a ton, so like, oh, to make sense. And then once I actually dug into it, I said, holy, this, had we not been so profitable, that mistake, we would've been dead in the water as a business. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. You know what I mean? We just had 50% growth year over year. We would've been toast. So we got lucky. We were successful enough that we could weather that storm. Now we're in a really good position because a lot of this inventory, thank God is core items that we'll sell forever. The rest day joggers, you know what I mean? And things like black leggings, those are always going to be, we're never going to go, yeah, doesn't matter. They have 40,000 more than I need. From a cash flow standpoint, it was a nightmare. But again, we were able to weather it because we were successful. But that was the definitely our biggest mistake as kind of young naive entrepreneurs of just, oh yeah, send it the order in. And it's like, alright, we need to actually take a look at this because we're talking about millions and millions of dollars we're sending overseas that and in hundreds of thousands of units. So

Brett:

Yeah, inventory management, man, it's difficult projections. Just managing it, all of that is tricky. And then I think you got to highlight something that I think we're all prone to do. We're prone to say, what is my current situation? Okay, cool. It'll be like that forever extreme demand. Cool. We're just going to keep going up. Or it's really bad right now and it's going to be bad forever. So things always change. The seasons always change. Things ebb and flow, and the market has new tastes and new preferences and stuff like that. So yeah, always got to temper things a little bit. So love those lessons for sure.

So as we're kind of moving into the last portions here, the show, I want to talk about keys to success. And I love the Amazon analogy of a flywheel. And Jim Collins actually is the one that they coined this term and came up with it in the book, good to Great. But Amazon has this flywheel that they've kind of mapped out where it's a momentum machine, it's a compounding effect when things are working. And so the way there's works is if they offer more products at a lower price that attracts more visits. So more shoppers, more shoppers attract more marketplace sellers and the marketplace, which what you guys are doing on Amazon, huge part of Amazon's business. Well, more marketplace sellers leads to more products at a lower price, which leads to more visits. And so I left out some pieces, but that's kind of the gist of it. And so as you grow any piece of that, it just continues to accelerate and grow faster. What do you think, as you look at born primitive, what are some of the keys to your growth machine? Why have you guys been able to build and sustain momentum?

Bear:

Yeah, I think it comes down to three main points for us. We already talked about one of them, it was just positive customer experience. So that is a priority at all times with customer service, when we're in events, et cetera. I would call that in my mind an applied task, but a task that many companies overlook. Number two again, I consider this an implied task, but is not done by a lot of brands. You have to have great product and good quality because the way I see it, it's like this might be their only time they ever interact with the brand. You have to nail that first interaction because particularly when you look at just the kind of e-commerce metrics and all right, I have my CAC and A O V and LTV and return, repeat, purchase rate and all these things, first order of profitability, the formula breaks down. It's a giant math problem. The formula breaks down if they're not coming back. I look at other brands that are a onetime item type of brand, I'm like, man, how do they survive? Because it's tough. If I was selling washing machines, I'm not getting in that business because I, I'm able to sell 'em a legging. I know they're going to come back at a sports bra and then

Brett:

Well, we got to start making components to break. That's like the old may long ago, they were too good. They had to make one. Yeah.

Bear:

So for that formula to hold up, particularly when you're spending an outrageous amount of money on paid digital and paid social like that, you have to get them coming back. And it has. So, you know, got to nail the product ton of attention, deal, has attention to detail, has to go into that. And then I think the third, and I would say this would be our secret sauce, is just what does the brand stand for and what is your identity? For us, we've taken a pretty patriotic approach particularly the roots of the brand got, we've we, we've given a ton back to charity, a lot of veteran first responder charities, but cancer research, things like that. So using our brand as a platform to give back has been a huge kind of part of our ethos. And then just standing for hard work and determination and chasing your dreams. People want to identify with something, particularly with apparel. So I think it's important you have to have that because even if you have the first two, there's so much competition with leggings and sports bras and this and that, you're going to get drowned out because you're there. There's a million competitors because it's a hot space to be in. So there's got to be something more to it. It has to be more than just

Brett:

Apparel. Totally love it. Yeah. Sorry, did I cut you off there? That was

Bear:

Great. No, no. And I think the sub-component of that would just be having a marketing calendar that keeps people excited. So we do that with collections. So we'll launch five or six collections a year. I think that helps. Our repeat purchase rate and our LTV numbers are pretty insane. So that's why I'm willing to spend a lot on Facebook to acquire someone because I know what the metrics are beyond first purchase. But I think one of the ways we achieve that is by always having something new every month. There's something born primitive is able to talk about to keep them stoked on the brand. So

Brett:

Yeah, we all love the next thing. And without five collection launches or whatever, me as a customer, I may not really care for two or three of them, but there's probably going to be one or two that I'm going to love and I'm going to feel like I have to buy. And I want to keen on a couple of those things. So we got customer experience, you got great product and you got brand identity. So that, I think shift that people need to make, and I've talked to my friends at gorgeous e-commerce help desk, they talk about this and I totally believe it, that hey, every interaction with a customer is a chance to get a higher probability of a future sale. It it's a chance to get a referral. It's a chance just to make someone's day and increase loyalty even if you don't ask for any of those things.

And I think in a lot of ways you probably shouldn't, but just every interaction, if it's positive, it's really good. If you're doing what you're talking about where you had the mess up with a couple of pieces of inventory and you go above and beyond there, that really set that customer to be loyal for life potentially. So every interaction is an opportunity to do that. I love the great product piece because the, I'm on the ad side, so we're coming up with remarketing campaigns and bots, not Y campaigns or repeat purchase campaigns and email and SMS programs and all of that is no good if the product is meh. So sometimes the issue is not with your ad campaigns, is with the product. And so that's something you got to look at. And I love the brand identity piece. I think we underestimate the value here.

Why does somebody choose Nike over another brand or why does I love the black rifle coffee, right? That kind of lines up I think with a little bit, at least with your ethos it's just coffee, right? I don't know. I've had it, I've, it's not bad by any means, but it's just coffee. But they charge a premium and they have a diehard following cause of what they stand for. And so brand is super, super important. And so you guys have nailed that. And I think it's becau, I think at least in part it's because it's coming from an authentic place. Your brand is, it's who you are, it's who co-founder is. It happens naturally.

Bear:

And I think of those three, it's like which of those three is actually defendable? I think the only, the third one is defendable, right? Because totally can do the now. Second one is you're going to have to be really squared away and you're have to be very good and capable, but anyone can start sourcing stuff and knock off. So you know what I mean? So it's like what, someone can

Brett:

Do it almost as good and do it for 50% of the cost or something like that, that that's always going to happen. But the identity piece, yep, no one can steal that.

Bear:

And that was cool to see that come out in our meetings with the private equity groups is like that.

Brett:

Yeah,

Bear:

They know that and they know that. And I thought that, but it was absolutely validated in those meetings where it was like, okay, this is the brand identity is super important. That's what they're most stoked on. So yeah.

Brett:

That's awesome, man. This has been super, super fun. Any one thing I think that's always interesting to me, and this will be the last question, we'll talk about how people can buy your stuff and connect with you and whatnot, but as I talked to entrepreneurs and I, I'm privileged to talk to a lot of great ones. What do you consider to be your superpowers? So what sets you apart, right? And I know as an entrepreneur we got to be good at a lot of things. And in the early days we're like, well, I'm doing everything. I don't know. But what do you feel like are your real superpowers if you had to distill down?

Bear:

You mean me personally? Yeah. Well I

Brett:

<laugh> and I know you're a humble guy, you're a hardworking guy, so you probably don't like to talk about it, but just curious if you have any thoughts, sir.

Bear:

I think just for me it's just the work ethic and being scrappy. That's how we started. And now of course through the process we've become much more sophisticated. And I try to be a student of the game now. I listen to e-commerce podcast pretty much anytime I'm in the car and I read books and this and that, but early in the early days it was just grinded out, just outwork the competition. And I was balancing obviously being an active duty and running a business. So I had to be a little nuts in that regard. We didn't sleep a lot and it was a lot of late hours at night and early mornings and driving to events every weekends and it was a lot. I was young and energetic and I really was wanted to see this thing come to life. So I think that was probably my biggest leg up is that I was pretty relentless in Mallory was as well.

And then as we built it and brought in employees, I think that rubbed off on people as we brought 'em in. And that's kind of the kind of DNA of more primitive now go to events, these trade shows. And we were just down in Miami for an event called Waap in, I look at other bigger brands now in our space. I don't see any of their senior leadership in the booth. No, I mean me and my VP were breaking down the booth with power drills and you know what I mean? And our other senior, we're still in the trenches. And I think that sets us apart. And again, some of these other brands that have been our space for so long, I haven't seen these guys in five years at these events. And I'm like, what are you doing? You need to be in front of your people getting after it and getting deaths. So I don't think I have any special skills other than just being able to apply myself and really just work hard and try to achieve an end state. So

Brett:

That relentlessness, I love it. And it's one of those things where to build something extraordinary, you got to put in an extraordinary effort and or smarts and both, you're never going to build something extraordinary by just doing a nine to five. That's just not going to happen. Eventually you'd be able to work nine to five or maybe less, but in the beginning, no way. I love the quote of you can be successful in anything you want as an entrepreneur if you work half days and so you got 24 hours in a day, you know, got 12 hours that you're working seven days a week, pretty much. So cool man, really good stuff. So if someone is listening like, dude, I need to observe more of Bear Handlin in my life. Are you on the socials? Are you sharing stuff? Are you mainly just kind of head down?

Bear:

Not really. I think I might do a bit more in the future. I'm on Instagram at Bear Handlin not really on Twitter, but born primitive obviously we're really active on social. And then our

Brett:

Website get great social account for Born Primitive. So check that out. If you look at inspiration on how do we promote our brand or have a social presence for our brand, check out Born Primitive for sure.

Bear:

But yeah, that's, I'm not really a public guy too much. We're rocking and rolling over here in Virginia Beach. But little, I've by little have gotten more into the scene, obviously I went to the Blue Ribbon event and that's meet people like you guys. And I think I need to do more of that in the future because I'm realizing there's so much knowledge out there and so many good people that you can connect with that are solving the same. Totally. And that can relate particularly founders. It's like, oh my God, I finally can talk to someone who understands <laugh> and relates to this lifestyle. We'd break for lunch at Ezra's thing and we're all on our computers firing out emails, trying to catch up and it's like, okay, these are my people because they're all doing the same, you know what I mean? We're all nuts. We're all totally nuts. And

Brett:

It's awesome because, and I love my family. I've got a great extended family. I hang out with them a decent some amount, but a lot of them don't understand they're not building this or doing what I'm doing. And so I can share a little bit about what's going on, but not really. You need to be around your people. And so that's pretty inspiring. And I would say, now that I've listened to you on stage, seen you in a podcast, you've, you got a knack for this. You're pretty good at sharing knowledge and sharing your story. So if you enjoy it, I think you got to do more of it. I think it's going to be beneficial to you and beneficial to other people as well.

Bear:

Well, I appreciate that. Thanks

Brett:

Man. Yeah, yeah, man. And so then as people are like, okay, I got to check out more primitive, buy some stuff where can they shop? Sounds like they've got more avenues than they used to have just a few months ago.

Bear:

So our main sites born primitive.com, we also have international websites if depending you're coming in from another IP address I think we have eight distribution facilities all over the world. So just go to born primitive.com, it'll get you squared away. We're also on Amazon now, just our core products. So we're on Amazon Prime, you're looking there. And yeah, we got all kinds of stuff in the works. We got a swim collection coming out. We just launched our Miami collection Spring collections come in summer, and then campfire and outdoor in the fall Halloween, Christmas. We got all kinds of wild stuff coming out in the future. So tune us on Instagram, see all of our stuff coming out.

Brett:

I love it, and I say this a lot, but I think one of the best ways we learn is by observing what other companies are doing. So get on the board primitive list, follow them on social, watch how they do these collection launches, because there's some good stuff to learn there. So bear handling ladies and gentlemen Barry Crusher, man, SU, super fun. Thanks for coming on, really appreciate it. And we'll have to do it again sometime.

Bear:

Heck yeah. Thanks for having me, bro.

Brett:

All right, thanks dude. And as always, thank you for tuning in and hey, we'd love to hear more from you. What would you like to hear more of on the show if you've not done so? We would love that review on iTunes Makes my day. Also allows other people to connect with the show. And hey, speaking of socials, I am saying this publicly now for the third or fourth time, I'm committed to being on the socials a little bit more. So I'm posting on Twitter daily ish, and I'm on LinkedIn quite a bit. So if we're not connected there, reach out to me at Brett Curry on Twitter and the Brett Curry on LinkedIn. And with that, until next time, thank you for listening.

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