Latest / Beyond The Trailhead / Garage Grown Gear's Lloyd Vogel | Beyond the Trailhead Podcast Ep. 29

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Garage Grown Gear's Lloyd Vogel | Beyond the Trailhead Podcast Ep. 29 · Beyond The Trailhead

• speaker-0: Welcome back to Beyond the Trailhead. This week is a special week. We have none other than Lloyd from Garage Grown Gear. Lloyd, thank you so much for being on the podcast. Thanks. We chatted a little bit before you got on, before we started recording and stuff like that. But it's great to just be able to have someone who ⁓ supports small brands to big brands. ⁓ And we've had so many interesting companies and brand creators on here. speaker-1: Glad to be here, Craig. speaker-0: And it's great to just have you on and be able to talk a little bit more about one, how you support brands, but also just, don't think very many people know the story behind Garage Grown gear, right? We always see you online and see you in different places. And just like we have this platform, we get to get a deep dive into brands. I would love to, first off, before we even start, just kind of hear about you, who you are, and how you even started or even thought about Garage Grown. speaker-1: Yeah, yeah, that is a it is a funny thing. We spend a lot of time storytelling around our brands But ⁓ yeah, we don't ⁓ we don't go out and talk too much about our story because it is a little bit confusing But ⁓ you know, yeah, I got my my start in the outdoor industry ⁓ Through guiding I was a sea kayaking guide at a YMCA camp in northern Wisconsin And I spent my summers doing that for yeah about a about a decade And ⁓ yeah, around like Superior, like Huron, and then I spent two summers up ⁓ in the inside passage of Alaska and then up in the Brooks Range in Northern Alaska. kind ⁓ of just like, yeah, I mean, it was the best gig in the world. You get to take ⁓ high schoolers into the outdoors and yeah, just have these like really extended immersive experiences with them. So that was kind of like my, I guess, foray into real extended tripping was through guiding. in education. So yeah, I graduated from college, of started working as a paraprofessional in an ⁓ elementary special ed program. Quickly, Ken was like, okay, I think I could do this. And this was also when I was like guiding trips in the summer. So I liked youth work and went back and got my. Master's degree in teaching and then a couple years later was a high school special ed teacher and I kind of thought that like teaching was going to be what I did. That's what parents did. And I kind of quickly realized that it just stressed me out incredibly. It was nothing quite like the anxiety and unpredictability of teenagers to like really make you feel unstable. ⁓ speaker-0: I can't even imagine like when I get emails or when I go to visit my kids teachers, I always tell them like, man, I don't know how you do it. I can't even do it with one kid, let alone 20 kids in the room and they're all sleeping during class or whatever and you got a great paper is one of the most underpaid jobs I know of. speaker-1: 100%. I mean, so much of your job is behavioral management. it's exhausting. And I think some people really get energized by it. I think I was good at it. But it was not something that was cup filling. I did that for a couple of years. And then honestly just had this moment where I was like, I need to do something different. yeah, like took a little, decided to take a summer to go on a long road trip and kind of stumbled into this idea of ⁓ Yeah, selling gear that I cared about. was at like a craft fair in San Francisco and was like kind of just blown away by all of these different small vendors. Yeah. Kind of all just like doing their own thing and trying to sell their products and just trying to like make it. so I looked around kind of at the brands that I cared about. And I a lot of those were kind of these small backpacking brands that were kind of just emerging into this space. This is like 2015, 2016, a career wilderness designs to Luxe, Ultralight, DeBora gear, ⁓ some of these brands that had kind of had the inception of blossoming cottage industry space, but this is still like, kind of still on the frontier of kind of the more popular conception of what Ultralight is. And so I decided to start a crappy Squarespace website, ⁓ buy a bunch of gear from... ⁓ brands that typically have longer custom lead times like the Superior Wilderness Designs through Pax ⁓ and start a website where instead of having to wait for a long custom queue, you can just buy things that would ship in a day or two. And ⁓ the concept was okay. I ran it under a title of a company called Big Outdoors and I was so broke that it was bigoutdoors.org ⁓ because I couldn't afford the dot com. ⁓ And it was something that I was doing simultaneously while teaching, which is a story that I know you've heard a thousand times on your pod is just like, yeah, I mean, most of these businesses start off as a very part-time thing for a lot of people, it still is a part-time thing. And so I was doing them kind of simultaneously and Big Outdoors was doing okay, but you know, it was taking a long time and not really paying the bills. ⁓ simultaneously, there was a company called GarageGroomGear. that ⁓ had started out in Idaho by my now business partner, Amy Hatch. And at that point, the company was ⁓ doing a couple hundred dollars in sales a month, ⁓ very much kind of in the same space that Big Outdoors was, also kind of in this small ⁓ outdoor business space, but a little bit more general. Like think like, you know, climbing pants to yoga mats, to skateboards, like ⁓ outdoors, but not specifically ultra light. ⁓ and, ⁓ I ended up like winning one of garage grown gears, giveaways that I had entered into. when Amy, the founder of garage grown was like, Hey, you won second place in this giveaway. was like, that's cool. I run this thing called big outdoors. And she was like, that's neat. And, we actually, ⁓ you know, ⁓ it turned out at that point, she was looking to phase out of garage grown. I wasn't sure what I was going to do with big outdoors. So, ⁓ We got together, met up, and decided to merge these two tiny little peanuts of the thing into what is now Garage Grown. So we kept the name of Garage Grown, the brands from Big Outdoors, and kind of just like merged all of our assets. I moved it to my basement in St. Paul, because it was still real small. Yeah, something where like no one's making a livelihood off of it for a little while. ⁓ And ⁓ that was kind of what just started the last eight years of kind of grinding on it from, yeah, 80 hours a week in a basement, doing everything. You know, we kind of joked initially that, you know, we're very much the cottage retailer of, you know, being in the basement, answering all customer service questions, doing all of the filming, all the buying, all the accounting, all the HR. was just me for about two years. ⁓ And yeah, we've been fortunate over the last couple of years, really. resonates, I think, a lot more with the broader outdoor community and kind of, we're not sure exactly what the relationship between us and Ultralight is. If we're helping carry the torch for Ultralight or if Ultralight is carrying the torch for itself and we're just closely behind it, I don't think we're hurting the visibility of Ultralight and only helping it. So I don't know who's chicken or egging it, but we're happy to be in the conversation. speaker-0: That's crazy. That's cool. I'm glad to hear that story. so, so now how many like how many employees do you have now? speaker-1: I think right now we're at about 25. I ⁓ think we are both bigger than some people think and way smaller than other people think. And we kind of like being in that space. We're probably about 12 or so full-time employees and a ⁓ dozen or so part-time warehouse folks. speaker-0: It's always interesting to hear somebody's take on like, I just talked with somebody and people always look at you and they say, ⁓ I have a website and you have a company. So they think it's this huge business and they're just gonna have, they have thousand employees that are answering the phone when in reality it's, you know, it's 25 people still a lot, right? You know, it's always funny that when you fill out the tax stuff, it's like you're a small business and a small business is all the way to like, you know, hundred employees. And I'm like, that's a big. speaker-1: It's a big business. And there's like also some small businesses that have like, especially in the outdoor industry that have under 10 employees that do, you know, close to a hundred million dollars in annual sales. Like there are some small businesses that really punch above their weight class in terms of dollar amounts. And for us, you know, it's a, yeah, like we are entirely, we are like the least remote team ever. Like ⁓ our. speaker-0: You know, but... speaker-1: We do all of our order fulfillment, all of our customer service, all of our buying, all of our marketing, all of it is in our warehouse, in our shop in St. Paul. ⁓ if you're emailing one of our customer service folks, they're probably just running back to the warehouse to fix whatever thing we misshipped. ⁓ We really want to be able to handle that whole experience because all of our brands are all so nuanced that being all in one place is really helpful. speaker-0: So ⁓ how many brands do you guys carry now, do you think? speaker-1: think it's probably close to 300. Wow. OK. The great thing is that there is always a pipeline of inspiration. I think last year we added 52 new brands. And there's always someone coming off the PCT who's got some idea for something. There's always a, you know, and like I, and yeah, like I, and I'm always on the lookout, you know? I find myself being the ultimate, you know, sleuth around the internet to find the newest and coolest things. speaker-0: I know, I'll go on, I don't know about you, but I'll go on Etsy and I'll be like, what other cool stuff is someone making that I can like potentially buy even if it's not a good thing? I'm like, ⁓ it's so unique. I've even thought about buying a 3D printer just cause I see everything. I'm like, ⁓ great. And then, and then I'm like, okay. So I have my oldest daughter who did 3D printing stuff in high school and she, I'll tell her, hey, this is what I need printed. She'll go and get it. And then she prints it at school right now, but I'm. debating getting one, so. speaker-1: I mean, it's a slippery slope. You'll play around with it for a couple months. In six months, you'll have an Etsy shop. In eight months, you'll be on Garage Grown. In 10 months, you'll be like, who needs this podcasting thing? Yeah, I mean, and Etsy, we've had a ton of brands from Ultralight Saks to KnobHacks to Hartford Gear that all got their inception to HikeLite, who all got their inception on Etsy. I mean, it is a powerful platform, especially when trying to sell direct on your own website. It is so hard to drive traffic to the internet. I think people think, especially in kind of outdoor industry spaces, some kind of combative nature of brick and mortar versus online. And I don't think brick and mortars necessarily know how hard it is to capture people's attention online too. You're competing with everything. speaker-0: Yeah. So I guess that leads me into the question then like, from starting Garage Grown to now having all these brands and stuff like that, I've heard like little snippets here and there as you've been on different YouTube channels or podcasts and stuff like that. what's, you know, how do you find these products or how do like, do people reach out to you or and I kind of know some of this already, but I'm just kind of reiterating what you know, some people can can hear for the first time, how do you find products? speaker-1: I mean, a little bit of everything. mean, Craig, definitely like early on, it was me begging and pleading for, ⁓ you know, brands in the space to understand the potential value of Garage Grown. And like what Garage Grown can be at its best is a platform that is like a, is a marketing tool in our small brands back pockets. It's saying like, you don't have to do this by yourself. Like we've got a big network and we can shout loudly about your products and your brands. And early on, We just had a way smaller platform. So we had to convince people that this was the potential of the platform. ⁓ And it's, when you're working with small brands, like when you are taking inventory at wholesale margins, which is how retail works, ⁓ that they are allocating a limited amount of inventory to suddenly be able to turn that to a retailer. You have to be able to give them something that's worth it in return or else they're cutting out, you know, their own margin for their own sales. A little technical, but you get it. ⁓ And so early on it was a lot of kind of convincing. And now, you know, there's always a couple of brands that, you know, I've always got my eye on that as soon as they decide that they want to start going to retail, I'll be beyond excited about it. But, you know, nowadays it's a lot of brands reaching out pretty early stage ⁓ and saying, I've got this idea or I've got this product that made a couple, you know, what do you think? ⁓ And so some of it is just people blind reaching out. Some of it is yeah, me finding folks on Etsy, finding folks on Reddit, know, searching hashtags on Instagram to be able to find things that are small. Like, you know, I stumbled into the Pacholama 10 steaks a couple months ago. I don't even know where. I think it was on Reddit and was like, oh my God, these, and they're our best-selling product of this year. Like I think we've sold like 7,000 of these little steaks. And that for me is the joy of it. Like I didn't even know those things existed. you know, six months ago and now they're the best selling by volume product on Garage Grown. Like that is the excitement of the platform for me and why, you know, I don't know if Garage Grown's ultimate, I don't care if it has 200 brands or 500 brands or whatever, as long as it has stuff that I think intrigues, gets people to want to use it outside and like serves a point. Like that is... what gets me excited about adding new brands and new products. speaker-0: That's cool. Is it more about sometimes, is it more about the product or is it the story behind the brand? Because I'm sure like you have brands you're like, hey, this is an amazing product, but the business itself is just like whatever versus you. Sometimes you buy into a person. I'm sure it's more about the product because you're a business in the end. We've talked about this before we even got on that these are the people's babies, right? And so they're emotionally invested in it versus as a business, you have to look out for your business, but you also are there. I've seen Garage Grown as a company really look out for the small brands and to have, like you just said, quality products that you love and you believe in. speaker-1: You know, I think we talk about it a lot of we need business to work for three groups. It needs to work for our customers. It needs to work for our brands and it needs to work for ourselves. If it doesn't work for our customers, it doesn't matter. No one's going to shop here. If it doesn't work for our brands, we don't have a good product selection on our site and the customers don't care. And if it doesn't work for ourselves, we're not in the business of margarine ourselves for it. You know, we have a team that needs. health benefits, needs to be able to retire. We're a functional business and I think we do right by the people that work for us. And so I think it is always a balance and that is always the case with businesses as they grow is for us, the product, we can't put an inferior product on the site. ⁓ And ultimately that does a disservice to the brand and to the customer. Because the customer's not gonna have a positive experience with it. And so you can have the best brand story ever. You can be the most wonderful person. And we've had to do this a ton. Is say like, hey, and your product's not a good fit for Garage Grown. We're not gonna sell it. And if we do, it's gonna get bad reviews. And like, it's not gonna be positively represented on your platform. ⁓ There are certain products where the product is just such a winner that like, you know, not selling it just doesn't make sense. You know, I think about a lot of products like, you know, initially early on within ultra light, ultra light meant small brands. Like it just, that just was the thing. If you were making an ultra light gear, was cottage. And now that's not necessarily the case, but within particular product verticals, that's always been the case. Like sleeping pads, there are no small sleeping pad makers on the market. Even, you know, things like, you know, yeah, you could say, you know, a, a fuel canister stove, you know, like it's a pocket rocket, it's MSR. MSR is a small brand in the scheme of like giant brands, but Cascade Designs is not like a, you know, they're not a mom and pop shop, you know, in anyone's basement. So I think we've, there's always been specific product verticals that we've said like, no, we need to be able to make Garage Grown the most competitive platform out there. And having it be the most competitive platform is ultimately what brings people back to Garage Grown. If we just sold, brands in products that people hadn't seen from brands that people haven't heard of, we would not be able to bring the type of visibility that we can. So I think a lot of this is like, how do you, we don't want to carry brands that are horrible and stop. We don't. But, ⁓ and the same whole other side of the spectrum is we can't just carry brands because we like the people. It has to be a little bit of an ebb and flow. ⁓ because Garage Grown as a total platform has to be a place that is competitive. Because even early on for us, when we just sold tiny, really small cottage brands, the value proposition for Garage Grown was not good enough to be able to do ultimately what our brands wanted us to be able to do, which is bring a ton of visibility and help them grow. So we kind of were at this inflection point where it's like, well, we can keep being out of stock constantly carrying just the people that are grinding in their basement by themselves. But if we do that, we're not gonna be able to bring the more traditional audience in to be able to see that. And those brands are gonna stay small. And if they wanna be able to stay small, that's one thing. But we view GarageGroom very much as a growth platform where we can take a ⁓ Pachalama or a Hartford Gear or an All Man's Right or an El Coyote quilts and put a ton of marketing effort behind them to be able to amplify those products. speaker-0: No, that's good. I just talked with ⁓ Sonny and Lindsay over at OR and we were talking about that like small cottage brand, but you want to be successful and you don't eventually you're not going to be a cottage brand because you're going to grow or at least most people want to grow their business. So you can't not look at the bigger people and go, they're just as much a brand that we need to have on the platform. speaker-1: you're a speaker-0: The more successful garage grown gear is, right? The more successful these other brands are gonna be. So they can't get offended when you bring in another, ⁓ let's say you sold shoes and you've got two different types of shoes. Well, obviously Reebok and Nike, right? You need some competition in there because everybody's needs are different. speaker-1: And we think about it as like a Hyperlite. 10 years ago Hyperlite was a relative unknown within the industry. Now we use Hyperlite, like we sell a decent amount of Hyperlite, but that is an anchor brand for us that brings people to the website so that they can find Virginia Foothills designs. Like if we don't have the Hyperlites, the Z-Packs, some of those brands that people might go, ⁓ I have heard of that. If we don't have those, it doesn't contextualize other products. And that kind of is going to this point of like our, we view our role as not gatekeeping for small brands. Our role is to thrust our brands into the middle of competition and give them a chance to be able to, to operate on the same level. And I think this is an interesting conversation I've had with a lot of founders is this notion that like being a cottage brand is overly romanticized. Like it is so hard. And it might be something that is feasible, you know, emotionally and financially for a couple of years, but we see a huge amount of burnout after five years of folks who are like, man, I'm sewing stuff in my basement for 80 hours a week, 60 hours a week, and I can't scale. And so being able to have a distribution partner or retail partner like Garage Grown, where they can put 600 units in a bin and let us ship all those 600 units out to 600 individual customers. is a way to be able to help scale their business. I think, know, being cottage, we love that as a consumer because it goes like, oh yeah, that person's in it. They understand it, they get it. for, yeah, but for brand founders, like some love the lifestyle company, the one that like they able, they're able to control all aspects of it. But for a lot of folks, that is not sustainable. It is not scalable. And you can name on your hand, the number of brands, I even look at it like, Mountain Laurel Designs, I don't know if you just saw, Ron Bell is putting them up for sale. And he is one of the few companies that has existed for a really long period of time without outsourcing production, without selling, and kind of staying really core to this cottage ethos. And companies like Boraguer have done that too, but Boraguer has also done it by staying small. And so, I don't know, all of it is complicated, but I always say, there's no one right way to be able to do this business thing. But if brands wanna be able to grow, ⁓ we love to be able to be a part of their growth story. speaker-0: That's cool. So when a brand, when you are selling a brand or you see a brand, do you know, can you tell like, hey, if it's in five minutes, oh yeah, this is a great, they're going to be successful or, oh man, good luck to yourself, you know, because, you know. speaker-1: I'm starting to get a good read on it. I mean, I think I've generally got a pretty good intuition on knowing and reading the market from like trends in terms of products to trends in terms of fabrics. Like I, there's definitely products that I brought back to our, our review team and been like, Hey, this product is going to slap. And they look at me like, you know, you don't know what you're talking about. like, no, believe me, it's going to, and you know, and then it just does, you know, like, and you know, the Pachiloma 106 are a great example or like the, the, um, Alpen Flow was just a product where it was like from Alpen Glow, just like that's going to be, or like the MeeGo water bottles. I mean, just Alpha in general, like we were really kind of on the front end of really realizing that that was going to be a fixture of ultralight apparel. And I think I've gotten a pretty good eye for being able to do that. But I've been wrong plenty of times. But ⁓ I know a lot of the backpackers in the ultralight space like to think of themselves as ⁓ unique little unicorns. I do too. yeah, y'all and myself included are kind of predictable in terms of what you want. You want stuff that's quirky, interesting, ultralight, functional. ⁓ Yeah, I get it. Largely, I think of myself as a bit of our target audience. And if I think that something's going to be really cool, generally our audience agrees. speaker-0: I think it's good. you, when you're in an industry for a certain amount of time, you get a good feel for it. Like my, my wife, whenever she posts a reel on Instagram, she'll ask me like, Hey, what do you think? Is this one going to go viral? Because most of the time they, the comedy stuff she does goes viral. Like, like half a day, all of a it's like 5 million views. I'm going, what are you doing? Right. And, I'll, I'll, I'll tell her something and she'll be like, that's not gonna, that's not gonna work. And I'm like, are you sure I got a great idea? And she's like, no, no, that's not gonna work. And then but she's got a good got a good read on on her industry and what she's doing. And I think it's good to have someone you can bounce stuff off of totally, you know, you need you need to have that you need a no man in there. speaker-1: Matt, that is a great thing that like, so, you we've got a three-person product review team. you know, I do a lot of the finding of brands and kind of initial calls, but our first step for every product, every product that we take on and every brand we take on is a sample. Like we need to be hands-on with whatever you're interested in having us sell. And our review team that we have is made up of folks from marketing, from buying and from operations. And they sit down and look at products and determine if it needs to be tested more. I can look at a Diddy bag and they can look at a Diddy bag and tell you if it's good or not. But there are some products that require more, like footwear. You can't just look at footwear and decide that this is gonna be good. So they decide what degree of testing is needed for this thing. So it is good that it is not just me arbitrarily deciding what to put in garage for own. I do have some ability to be able to advocate for things that I think are gonna be winners. speaker-0: So I guess going into what I like to ask some people like what an ⁓ crap moment is, like do you have an ⁓ crap moment where you ended up maybe investing a whole bunch of into something and it didn't sell and it's maybe still sitting in the warehouse to this day? speaker-1: I hope not. I probably the biggest product mix miss that I had was on the Gossamer Gear silverback backpack. I don't know if listeners will be familiar with this, but this was Gossamer Gear's like, I don't know if it was like 80 liter, but it was like a big honking like three pound pack. I was and I was like, yeah, I think that'll probably do well. And partially because it was just something that was really different. ⁓ They were giving us an exclusive on it, so they were like, yeah, we'll just give it to you guys. And I was like, OK, fine. Sounds OK. And I swear, we had Silverbacks in our warehouse up until last year. It was like four years of, I think we cut the price in half and then more. It's a good pack. It's just like, it's not our audience at all. ⁓ That one, the Silverbacks will forever be, and like Gossamer Gear is one of our best selling brands, so that's not an indication on their brand at all, but this particular product, it's one they discontinued, just like was not their core audience, and is my perennial example of the thing I wish I had not purchased. speaker-0: Yeah. It's funny to say that because I know that you're always going to make products that will be successful as a business who makes products. And then you've got to look at it and go, okay, this isn't selling. How do you let go, especially for cottage industry, like how do you let go of your baby? I guess, do you go to your brands and say, hey, this is selling good, but if you tweak it like this, I think it's going to be better. speaker-1: Very rarely. Okay. And really only ⁓ if we're seeing a lot of customer feedback on it. Like largely, like we don't really get involved in product development at all. It's not our area of expertise. We look at trends. We know what sells. We kind of know how to be able to merchandise. But in terms of kind of the design side, like, you know, we curate that by curating what brands and products we have. Occasionally, you know, we'll have ⁓ a brand that will come to us and say like, we're thinking about doing this in a couple of different sizes. Like what suggestion would you have for sizes that sell well? And then we can look at historical data and be able to say, okay, well this, or like, you know, looking at how does DCF sell against XPAC? You know, we can know and say, hey, well, yeah, those pouches are cool, but can you make them out of this? ⁓ And we think that that would do better. ⁓ So slight feedback in those regards. Sometimes if we have a product that is like a is a big gap, you know, we'll we'll see if there are ⁓ You know brands that are like hey, have you ever thought about making something along the lines of this? Yeah But that was you know, probably two or three times and I don't think any of them have ever materialized Because yeah, like, know, we've been really intentional like we don't white label ⁓ we don't ⁓ We have no desire to ever come out with our own ⁓ in-house line of garage-gram gear products. I've been pretty vocal about that of like, that's not our jam. have no desire to out-compete our brands with our own in-house line. And that is very different than a lot of other retailers who make a huge amount of their money by coming out with their own in-house line. And I'm not commenting on that being good or bad, but backcountry has done it, REI has done it, Cabela's has done it. Every major outdoor retailer, Amazon is probably the poster child for it of like, but what the underlying tone is there is that you are catching trends and then monetizing it fully yourself, which again, is not a game that we play in because we don't ultimately want to be competing with our brands. Like that is a conflict of interest that we don't want to be able to do. And we don't, we don't want to messy those waters for ourselves or for our, or our companies. It's, it's messy enough dealing with the number of brands that we do without having ourselves also making products that we're selling. speaker-0: think that's great for you to hear that from you because I've heard complaints from other companies ⁓ that are in retail, like an REI. I get it, every business does their own thing. ⁓ But when you're selling sleeping pads and then you come out with your own sleeping pad that's $50 cheaper, but does the same thing. now it's like, you're basically like, like you said, Amazon, perfect example of They see the trends and then they just step all over the toes of everybody that, and I hear nothing but nightmares about trying to sell stuff on Amazon and the fees and all kinds of nightmare with it. So it's great to hear. speaker-1: And mean that Amazon basics is like brilliant as it is maniacal. Like the idea of like then being able to position, you know, find the best sellers in that space and position your products, like directly out-compete them is, is, is wild. But yeah, for us, it was just felt like this is not where we want to invest our energy. It's, it's not why it's not why we do this. And honestly, it just like degrades a huge amount of trust. And I think like there is a very fine line between imitation and copying. Like, you know, and I think it's a hard thing because ultra light is totally based on iteration. Like I remember when we came out with the, when we, you know, the, Bogler trowel was a product that we've done a lot of lift on, you know, like we love, we love Ben. He's great. But like that is a product that we have like championed, you know, and we got comments from people being like, that's a rip off of the deuce of spades. And I remember like looking at these two products and being like, other than the fact that they're both a shovel, there's not a lot of like overlap between things. But you you look at every rectangular pack on the market with straps and you're like, man, where is the line between iteration and copying? I don't know. And it's the same thing with quilts, like slight different, you know, differences in cut and fill and man, like, you know, all of these to the, to the, you know, different alpha hoodies on the market, like, They're all of this stuff is so iterative that someone feels like they are making something that's better. And that change is so small, but also consumers really can care immensely about like, you know, the baffle design on a quilt or, know, the, shape of a trowel in one's hand or, know, the flow pressure of a, of of a day, even though they kind of look the same. And so I think that is something that like, we have constantly tried to figure out how to be able to navigate of like, is this product different enough to be able to sell? Okay, I think so. And especially when so many small brands, like it comes from an enthusiast who is like, okay, I'm gonna take this product that I've known and loved and I'm gonna take an iteration on it and then it becomes something that's commercially viable. Like, did they copy that brand? Well, they hiked for 3000 miles with that product. and then decided that they could make something that was slightly better. So like, I think that's just how capitalism works. And that is either the best thing is that it pushes innovation forward or it's a really unfortunate thing. And to some extent, like I, it is blurred. speaker-0: I think we all like to be, like we had said earlier, like we all like to be unique. We all think we dress, we're like, I don't want to be like that person, like that person and dress like that, but we ended up dressing like that group of people, right? And it's like, I was on the Appalachian Trail ⁓ filming some reels that we do, like, what are your big three? And ⁓ I met a guy and he was wearing a town shirt. And I was like, ⁓ I was like, I can't rock that. look like a complete fool. Right. I'm a sun hoodie guy, you know, but did he reinvent the shirt? It's a shirt and it breathes well. But I can't, I can't wear that. I'm going to wear this. So if you only carry town shirts on your website and no one else is going to be there only a certain amount of people are going to look good in that style or whatever. So speaker-1: And it's like, you know, who designed, like, I don't know who first came out with the hoodie. I don't know. Like, everything is such an iteration. And there have been, you know, there have been so many folks that have iterated off of Garage Grown. Like, not even really within the U.S., but there are so many retailers across the world that have, like, iterated on some version of what Garage Grown has done. And I take that as flattery at times, as it feel, you know, a little bit like, well, you kind of just, like, took our thing. But ultimately, if that is helping amplify small brands and making more accessible in different parts of the country and the world, I'm great about that. And honestly, the ⁓ biggest nicety that someone has paid me recently was a brick and mortar retailer saying that one of the ways that he knows that they find new products for their shop and how other shop owners around the country find new and different things to be able to carry in their shops is by searching the new feature on GarageGarage. I was like, dude, that's so great. What an honor. like if you start picking up our brands, like hell yeah, I'm glad that that's of use to you. so I don't know to some extent, like it's just such a business is, I I don't have to tell you this, like busy business is messy. There's so many opinions and egos that exist there. And we just kind of try our best to like figure out how we can run a good business while handling this ecosystem. That is, that is feral. Like we are not dealing with, you know, a bunch of companies that have been around for 50 years. We're dealing with the wild west of businesses who are trying to figure out how to be a business while we're trying to figure out how to be a business. And that is a, a spot that I think a lot of people like, I don't know if I was, someone asked me like, would you want to do this again or start another business? I'm like, absolutely not. speaker-0: Yeah. So do you have like one piece of advice you find yourself giving to a lot of small brands over and over again? speaker-1: I think ⁓ one of the biggest things I tell people is like, have to, you can't view adversity as an aberration. Like adversity is like part of the process. So if you're running into roadblocks and being like, ⁓ my God, I can't believe this is happening. Well, you should believe that it's gonna happen. ⁓ you know, it's gonna be in fact a fixture of what you're doing. So ⁓ I think that is a big thing is like, and I say that about garage gr- gear too a lot is like, you came here expecting perfection, I encourage you to change your expectations. Like it's not happening. ⁓ But ⁓ you you have to have that patience with yourself and you have to be able to just kind of just stay in the game long enough. Like I, I've had to kind of shift of viewing myself as an asset for Garage Grown of like, if I burn myself out, I'm done. And if I'm done, then that means that a lot of the brands that we support are going to have a harder time navigating this industry. So you got to take care of yourself. And for a lot of brands, ⁓ that means finding out a good relationship with your production. If the only way that your brand can scale is by you sewing more, there is a point where you are not gonna grow and ⁓ you either need to bring on and build your own in-house manufacturing, like a hilltop or like a ⁓ waymark gear did back in the day, or you need to outsource that either domestically or internationally. And ⁓ those are really your only two options. grow your own team, well, I guess four, stay really small and only exist at the capacity of what you can sow, grow your own in-house manufacturing and acknowledge that you're gonna have to become a good manager with people, which a lot of people who are starting small brands are not. You're gonna have to find domestic manufacturing that you can lean in and work with, or you're gonna have to outsource your stuff internationally. And like, those are really the only routes to be able to do it. And for some brands, going international is the only option. Certain materials and fabrics just aren't really produced domestically. ⁓ Or it's not possible to really be able to do that type of manufacturing at scale within the states. For some, domestic manufacturing, it really is. And there are great partners and there's horrible ones. And largely, people hold those really close to the chest because they are few and far between. And a lot of them don't know how to be able to work with technical fabrics like alpha and Dyneema and Ultra. So I think it's just And it's a problem that we have. Like our biggest problem is scaling is having our brands be able to make enough stuff for us to be able to keep up. You know, when I was first working with Brandon and Ashley at Superior Wellness Designs, like they would send us like four packs and I'd be like, sweet, that'll take like two months to sell. You know, now we need like 30 out of the gate. And, you know, that means that ⁓ our biggest inhibitor to growth is our small brands being able to scale their own production. And some can do that really effectively and some can't. That's why you see auto stocks occasionally on our site because, not occasionally, it's a frequent part of Garage Grown is because so many brands struggle to figure out how to be able to scale their production. speaker-0: So do you, guess, like season wise, what are the seasons that you find? I may kind of know what the seasons are, but you what seasons do you find you sell out the most? Is it just before like the through hiking season or how far out are people buying most of their products? speaker-1: We, ⁓ our busiest months are smack dab in the middle of the summer. ⁓ It used to be a little bit more centered around thru-hikers, but I think as ultra light has grown, the meat of the market has shifted from just your thru-hikers to your weekend warriors, your ultra lighters. And this has been a phenomenon over the last 10 years is like thru-hikers and ultra lighters used to just be the same person and now they're not. Now there's this entire section of ultra lighters that do not thru-hike. ⁓ And there's Venn diagrams of where people overlap, but ultralight is its own market. And ⁓ that is something that I think we've seen that market grow and that has shifted our busiest months to June, July, and August as opposed to what it was historically of March, April, May. And that is interesting for us. mean, it really has made it so, ⁓ we're of course selling stuff through hikers that are starting the AT in January. But it has meant, especially with trails like the AZT really taking off, that it's year round buying for us of like, our buyers are on it all the time with small brands. Like we're not doing pre-season orders. We're buying in batches, we're forecasting. And for a lot of our small brands, like we are the backbone of their calendar in terms of production. like, you know, there's brands where we are 80 to 90 % of everything they sell. Wow. And that's not a handful of brands. That's like 40 or 50 brands where we are the vast majority of their sales. And so we have to work with them to make sure that like, it's their livelihood and it's our livelihood. So we have to be in good communication to be able to know we can't just say, you know, call up, uh, you know, uh, Ray over at Igneous gear and be like, Hey, can you like make us, you know, 7 million bidets by tomorrow? Like, no, we have to be working with way Ray year round to help. plan production runs to know what new products he's launching and when. ⁓ So it's really hands on. And that's the fun. The fun of it is in those relationships. But it's also the reason why the REIs of the world aren't rushing in on our brands at this stage. To some extent, we are kind of the Bush League AAA. ⁓ for ⁓ larger retail. A lot of our brands cut their teeth on Garage Grown. Cooler cloth is a great example. I started working with Anastasia when she showed me a hand sewn cooler cloth and I didn't know what a pea cloth was. then now they're in every REI in the country and most outdoor shops in the world. ⁓ like, REI ⁓ doesn't do that unless it has proven sales records in places like Garage Grown. And that is great. Like we love it when our brands go to REI because that just means more visibility for them. And selfishly, it means that we have to work less hard to be able to get them to have name recognition. now that HyperLite is in a bunch of REIs, we don't, we're not marketing something that's an unknown entity. Like we have help. Like we have support and REI's platform is way bigger than ours. speaker-0: Yeah. When I, when I talked to the ladies over at ⁓ O R just a little bit ago, we were, we were talking about, you know, like the success of a company having that, that voice is when you go to O R it's like, okay, people think they need to have these big businesses like REI has to come and visit me or I've just completely failed. Right. But unless you have that recognition, and that growth and those statistics, you're not gonna get an REI anyways. They're not just gonna look at your product and go, put it in there. So it's great that you're looking at them and going, okay, we believe in your brand, we can help get you there. And you want them to be successful and be an REI, it only helps you just like Hyperlite, right? I can only imagine. speaker-1: Totally, I mean, it is something that is this notion of, we believe it vehemently that if Garage Grown Gear is doing better, we are able to do better for our brands. And like we frequently say, like we are in the business of long-term relationships, long-term relationships with our staff, with our customers and with our brands. Like we have no desire to just, you know, ⁓ to be in a fling with a company. Like we do a lot of work. And I think that's some of the stuff that is not, and I'm not here to, know, toot our own horn necessarily, but like we do a lot of hands-on work. The amount of free consulting that I do with our brands, just to like how you run a business to, know, we do monthly panels for all of our brands on different educational topics, bringing experts in the space, you know, to facilitating things without a retailer and switch back in these events. There's a lot of stuff that we kind of just do because we think it's good, but like the actual marketing of it, you know, the newsletters, the videos, the amount of sponsored content that we do and that we pay for and don't charge brands for. Like we're not a pay to play platform. Our only ask is that we're able to be able to buy products and sell them on our site. So for us, is this like we, yeah, we get more from brands when we are in it with them for years and they get it more from us if they get that name recognition for years. And ⁓ Largely, we have brands that have issues every once in a while. Like largely it is them feeling like there's a competitor now on the platform and that's a frustration. And you know what? That is a thing that happens at every single retail place in the world of like retail by its very nature is an amalgamation of a bunch of different brands in one place. That is the point of it. And the point of retail is to give customers a competitive shopping space where they can see multiple options. ⁓ so folks largely who have frustration with that, ⁓ probably GarageGround wasn't the best platform for them to be on and they should just be selling direct. And that's totally fine. There's a bunch of brands that I absolutely love and that GarageGround doesn't make sense for them. Like a perfect example that is Timmermade. Dan at Timmermade, great dude, love their products. I would love to sell them. Dude's got like an 18 week lead time. He doesn't need GarageGram for anything right now. You know? Like he doesn't need us. It doesn't make sense. If he, if that ever did start making sense, we'd be stoked to work with him. But like he's doing his own thing and is doing great and doesn't need the visibility and platforming of GarageGram. If he wanted to really scale on up, great, we'd be able to be there. But you know, we, we talk a lot about like our, we, we are not strong enough, powerful enough or big enough to shield brands from competition. But what we can do is proselytize them to our audience, to sling them in the middle of the conversation, to bring them to places like outdoor retail or to drive 15 to 20,000 people to our website every day and to make sure that people all across the world know about your brand. that's, and that to me is like, that's what the point is. And if that doesn't align for people, I don't know. He can't please everybody. Largely, you know, we're always over here trying our best. speaker-0: I think it's great you just mentioned OR too because I like what you guys were doing with OR this year with the whole campsite thing and everything. I think it's a great idea. Who came up with that idea? Was it them or is it just a conversation you guys had? speaker-1: Yeah, I kind of, I pitched it to them and I did the same with Switchback. So both of these kind of national events, was like, we need to have more, small brands need to have a more accessible ⁓ avenue at national shows. And like, we hear it all the time of like, our brands want to go to broader retail. And that's not really an area that we dabble in of like, you we're not sales reps, we're not distributors. We've kind of thought about it, but it's way too messy. It's kind of like getting into manufacturing. No, thank you. ⁓ We do a lot of marketing and such for our brands, but largely retail is just like a simple exchange. ⁓ it felt like, well, we don't want to throw our own show, but how do we partner with people who can? How do we not get ourselves super in the middle between brands and trade shows, but can we sponsor a space where we can leverage our connections and kind of our influence to showcase our brands? And the answer with OR was yes. They're going to give us a dedicated, they're giving us a dedicated space and largely, ⁓ wildly reduced booth costs for our brands. And, ⁓ that's a great opportunity for them. It's a good way for us to kind of be relevant in the conversation, but like really it's not even a sign. It's not really even about that. Like we don't actually, I don't know. And I know people are going to say like, that's stupid, but like, I honestly don't think about business a hundred percent in that way of it just being like, Like sometimes there are just good things to be able to do. And when you run a good business, like good business follows. And that is something like when you add value to brands, when you add value to customers, you get that value back. Like revenue and profit are a by-product of doing things right. And that doesn't mean that it's all like roses and you just have to have some woo woo hippie dippy approach to business that doesn't, you know, acknowledge the fact that we exist in the capitalist society here. But like largely, if you are doing a good business, good business can follow. speaker-0: Yeah, no, that's good. I I feel like because you had that, you wanted to be a teacher and you're, you know, I think a lot of people who are teachers, they really care about other people. They're very selfless. Right. Yeah. And I think not saying like, you know, you're there's not like a big crown over your head, like a big angel. Right. But like you care. You care. I think the conversation I just had previously with someone as well was you know when you're at a trade show or when you're speaking with somebody, you know genuinely if they care about you or they're just there for a sale. speaker-1: Totally. Trade shows are such a clear, man, the number of sales, and there is just that side of the industry that is all about how do I monetize this space? And we're seeing big brands get into the ultra light space with the pure idea of monetizing something that small brands and garage grown have been pioneering for years. And that honestly is really weird. It's really weird that there are big brands in the space that are suddenly starting to look at our little niche and say, oh, there's money there. That's weird. speaker-0: When you were mentioning earlier, people might, they get offended when you bring on other brands that might compete with them. I even have that in this podcast. I want to have small brands, but I also want to have big brands so that we can all learn from what people have done growing their big brands versus people who are like, hey, I'm having all these problems with just placing orders or didn't even know how to make a mold for this kind of thing. And I'm getting comments or DMs from people that are, Like, why are you having this brand on? And I'm like, but I, it's interesting now that it's the other, the pod is growing so much so quickly. I'm like, okay, I've got to, don't want to be a people pleaser, but I also want to have the people that I want to have on. I think it's the same with you with brands. You're like, you just want to find the brands that you guys love that you know are going to do well. And then you can, and can help them with stuff like that. So I think that's really good. speaker-1: It is so much of that maintenance of an ecosystem. if we just have, like I think about it as like an eco, healthy ecosystem needs a microbiome and it needs some apex predators. And that doesn't mean that like, it doesn't mean that you are pitting everything against each other, but there has to be a balance. Like we, as a platform, it is not good for our tiny makers. If to get us, you can get everything you want from garage grown, but you have to go to REI to be able to get a sleeping pad. It's not good for our makers when ⁓ people have to go other places to be able to, like, we want to carry darn tough socks because we don't want, we want GarageGroom to be a one-stop shop for what you need for ultra light backpacking. And if people have to go other places, that means less web traffic. That means less people who are familiar with some of our, you know, the nemos of the world ⁓ who are not coming to our site because they might be familiar with a, you know, with a nemo hornet, but they might not be familiar with a bidet. or a sit pad or a stuff sack that's made out of Dyneema. They might have no idea what Dyneema is, but it's, we need to bring people in it. And I think that that is like the hard thing is that, yeah, customers, some folks can look at it and be like, well, your name is Garage Grown. I'm like, okay, yeah, I do get that. Believe me, the thought has crossed my mind that Garage Grown gear, if you just think about it incredibly literally, like, yes, Nemo is not in a garage. I get that. But. to create an ecosystem that elementally supports small brands, has to be a lot of things to the multitudes. And our brands are using us to be able to grow. And they trust me and my team to be able to know how to do that best. And that means having certain brands in it that you look at it and go, oh, why is that here? Well, there's probably a reason. It's just not like. easy to be able to come out and market it and be like, ⁓ yes, well, we use this brand for margin so that we can lose money on this other small brand because there are dozens of products on GarageGround that we lose money on. And it's not just ones that sell well. There's definitely some brands that cost a lot of money that have terrible margins. again, ecosystem, it all has to work. speaker-0: Yeah, that's cool. So I guess going into that, like, are you seeing any trends right now, like that you're paying attention to, like with products or industry stuff in general? speaker-1: Yeah, I mean, think there, I think a little bit of like the masochism of ultra light has like dialed back a little bit. Yeah. You know, I think, that is largely because the audience that is ultra light has become more traditional and broader. And I think there's even arguments to be able to be made that like what ultra light is now kind of just like is the core of what backpacking is. you know, when Kelty and Gregory and Sierra designs were kind of the staples of one's backpacking kit. That was not ultra light backpacking. was not ultra backpacking. But now, it's kind of hard and it's less expensive than it used to be. There's so many options that most people when they are doing serious backpacking are probably just doing ultra light backpacking. To some extent, even just calling it ultra light backpacking, like we might even need a new North Star for the ultimate minimalist out there. But ultimately, I don't think any of that stuff really matters. What one's base weight is is a speaker-0: Yeah. speaker-1: your base weight should be whatever you want it to be to be able to enjoy the trip that you want. And if that's five pounds, great. If that's 50 pounds, who cares? There's no award for what your pack weight is. ⁓ But I think that to me is, we've seen a little bit of a reduction in that uber minimalism of like, even the Neo Loft by Thermarest is such a great example of like that thing. Yeah, it weighs like two pounds, but man, good luck finding. that's more comfortable than that thing. Yeah. You know? Like, I can carry a Neo Loft and still have a base weight that's below 10 pounds. Like, that is not, that is not like ⁓ sadistic self-deprivation. That is like, okay, cool. And this is Astral Light. That's bougie. speaker-0: I always get that flack for when I bring certain things. And for me, I'm a photographer and I'm shooting the outdoor brand. So when I go out, I'm like, well, I have to take this because one, this light, like I honestly don't need an electric pump to pump my pad. the bag that inflates it itself, perfectly fine. I bring it because the light hangs really good and it makes the tent so evenly lit for nighttime portraits. But then it has the simple fact that now I can blow up my sleeping pad. speaker-1: great dual purpose. I feel like that is, know, the accessories of everything, ⁓ of, know, even everyone carrying an NB 10,000 with them or some power bank just means that you have so many more options. mean, for three extra grams, can build, you can bring a patent inflator, you know, it's like, okay, well, you know, okay, great. Who cares? Like I've already got this tiny little, you know, powerful like a piece of technology with me or. ⁓ Yeah. So I think like kind of the ultralight luxury world is one that is continuing to expand. And I think, going back to those Etsy brands, so many of those Etsy brands started off making accessories or continue to make accessories. And I think that's largely because there is a huge market out there for it. do think kind of like the FKT fast packification of ultralight. You know, I think we're continuing to see more and more kind of like vest strap higher center of gravity paths that are for longer distances. think especially as kind of a sub five pound base weight becomes something that is relatively attainable for folks that are doing a two or three day trip longer if you're really trying to not bring stuff. But I think like that all is kind of just feeding different styles. mean, from trail runner, that kind of trail runner slash ultra light fusions. I think is interesting especially because trail running is just blossoming as an as an outdoor activity and I think ⁓ yeah, you know the Ultra like backpacking and it's then it's purest form is just a slightly faster version of or slightly slower version of Trail running over a longer period where you stay overnight So, you know, they're not really that different. Yeah, and especially when if I'm having a really hard day I just try to think on on trail. I just try to think of it as like I'm just out here on a day hike. Yeah I'm not out here for two weeks. I'm just out here on a day hike. That's the mentality I need for today. speaker-0: I'm wishing that one day I'll be able to go on a normal backpacking adventure where I can actually go ultra light because by the time I pack my bag, I'm like, sweet, I have a great base weight. And then I go, ⁓ but I got my camera gear, everything else. So I'm like, maybe I need a pack that can carry a little more weight just because now I got this. And then my buddy who usually goes hiking with me, he always gets to go ultra light because he's not carrying any of my gear. And I'm like, dude, can you carry this so I can see what it would feel like to like, speaker-1: went with- slip some stuff in his pack overnight. speaker-0: I have. I've said, hey, can you carry this? I'll buy the food. I usually say, hey, I've got the meals because companies are sending me meals. So I'll get the food if you can carry some more things. So I'm saving you a little bit of money. You can save me some weight. speaker-1: Craig, know, a fine-tuned brain is the most ⁓ weight savings that you can bring. speaker-0: ⁓ Okay, so I guess a couple more questions. ⁓ Is there a story of a brand that really stuck with you personally? speaker-1: ⁓ Man, think that's that is the most fun thing about working with small brands is just like There's so many interesting stories. you know, I'm sure, I mean, I know like Panagonia's founding has a very interesting story. Like I've read, you know, let my people go surfing, like great, book, interesting. ⁓ I don't know all of the nuances of the founding of, of Marmot and Sierra designs and the North face. And I'm sure they're fascinating, but I don't know them. And those companies are not run by the people who started them anymore. So to some extent, those companies are like disenfranchised from their from their inception story. And I love, ⁓ yeah, just how close people are to their narrative. ⁓ So, you know, I think like, ones that pop to mind. ⁓ I guess I would jump in with a brand that I've already shouted out today because it was one of the first brands I ever worked with was Superior Wilderness Designs. It's a brand that we haven't even carried in years. Brandon and Ashley, when I was still getting big outdoors up and running, they sent me a sample pack. then they, in 2016, went off and hiked the PCT. And they brought their prototype packs with them. You know, they learned a lot from that and tweak their packs and, know, they just run a small shop in Michigan. ⁓ you know, it's, it's very much like they have some efficiencies within the processes that they made, but hiking the PC team for them was kind of this grounding sense of like, yes, this is the community that we want to be involved in making gear is meaningful when it means making trails like this more accessible. ⁓ I think that's incredible and I don't think it's particularly unique, know, looking at brands like Thru Pak, the Purple Rain Adventure Skirts, who Mandy and Purple Rain just like, you know, a couple years back, hiked a huge portion of it with their kid. you know, like Brian from El Coyote Quilts was like a pilot or doing like helicopter evac. speaker-0: Yeah, that's right, speaker-1: It's just like everyone's narratives are so interesting for how they got into this and why ⁓ that, yeah, like it's honestly, I think that's one of the reasons why I love your pod so much is that you get to kind of get into the nitty gritty. was listening to Angry Pika's and listening to Dachon's back and forth and all of the drama around the naming rights. Like people's initial stories are fascinating and then just the twists and turns and a lot of them aren't public because they're just like too weird or it's like, don't know if I want to actually share that. We get to hear all of the tea. Yes. All of the dirt, you know, that, yeah, you know, that would be a, that would be a Lloyd shares all podcasts that I don't think I should do, but. speaker-0: I'm sure like every time, every time we, my wife and I shoot a wedding and something crazy happens, like, man, I cannot wait to write a book. You know, like, I'm sure I'll have the craziest stories. like, you know what? I probably never going to write that book, but I can't wait to tell how. speaker-1: Craig, maybe you and I can do a YouTube live at some point. You know, when both of us are really ready to like burn it down, you know, we can just ⁓ go live for like three hours and just be like, ask us anything. speaker-0: Yeah. That's awesome. All right. So I guess going into that then what, what like my second last question, what kind of success do you see garage grown or where do see garage grown in the next five years? speaker-1: Good question. I try not to have too many, this kind of goes back to the idea of like, ⁓ profit revenue growth kind of being the byproduct of being a good business. I think one of the interesting shifting narratives in outdoor retail right now is this like apparel sells. So all of these outdoor shops are shifting to be more apparel based and they're getting out of hard goods. And to me, I have no interest in doing that. And like, If I have to sell toasters to be able to keep Garage Grown gear afloat, I'm going to close Garage Grown gear and do something different. That's not what I'm interested in. So if, to me, it's like, if Garage Grown has the ability to grow, to be a massive company and we're still doing, and that means that we're doing better work for our brands, hell yeah. All about that. If Garage Grown has to sell out, if it has to start doing things that are not beneficial to our customers, brands or ourselves, I have no interest in that. So it, you know, we are a stable, scalable business right now. ⁓ if, we've stopped growing, could continue to, to be a thing. And, that would feel like success. It's already wildly exceeded every expectation I've, I've ever had for it. and so if, ⁓ and if that means that we've got years of growth and that growth is a byproduct of us doing things that add real value, then I'll happily be a bigger company. But, ⁓ Yeah, I don't want to grow just for growth sake. And honestly, that was a big reason why this year we pulled back on, like, we typically run four sales a year. We just decided not to do our one in January. We just didn't want to because, ⁓ yeah, what our revenue numbers look better. Sure. Would is, is that profitable work? No. And if we don't need to, we want to sell our stuff at full value because there's actual labor going into this. I don't want to devalue the work of our brands or of ourselves. And that means speaker-0: Mm-hmm. speaker-1: a willingness to not just grow for the sake of growth, but I want our growth to be real and not to be like juiced by discounts or by gimmicks. ⁓ So I don't know. I think that the ultra light space has a long way to be able to grow. And so I think that Garage Grown as kind of the most prominent retailer in the ultra light space, I think we have a long run way to be able to grow with it. Are we ever going to be an REI? No. there is not a $3.5 billion market cap on Ultralight. I don't think that, ⁓ I don't see Garage Grown as a $100 million company. But I do think that, I think there's a world where Garage Grown has 50 employees. I think that there's a world where, at that size and scale, we are able to really work with our brands to help them grow on a really individualized basis. Because right now we try our darndest, but we've got a, We've got a four person marketing team. We've got a three person buying team. Those numbers might seem big to mom and pop retail, but REI has like, yeah. It's scaled. The people that we're competing with, Trump less a million times over in terms of size. speaker-0: I, I, I years ago, I was shooting a video for TJ Max Marshalls. And I was with their buying team. And one of the gentlemen that was doing the buying, he was just, it was, ⁓ it was hard goods for like the house. So was like vases and stuff like that. And his weekly, his weekly spend was 14 million a week. And then Three times a year, his weekly spend was something like 40 million when it was the holiday season. they have, you know, with retail, they have like a four or five season kind of a scenario for all that stuff. But TJ Maxx Marshalls is a 13 season. ⁓ So not even monthly, it's 13 season a year, he was telling me. And I'm like, you spend how much? And he's like, man, we have so many people, buyers all over. He's like, all they do is travel. They were doing some stuff with ⁓ inner city kids teaching them how to dress for success and everything else. And we were shooting a like a promo for that and everything. And he would come in and teach the kids like this is the kind of stuff that you can do. And this is how much money and we're all just sitting there. I was gonna stop recording. I was just sitting there going, I can't believe that. so speaker-1: And so that to me, Craig, is like the exciting thing is that if we can be cutting massive checks to our small brands and that's what growth looks like, hell yeah. Like our team is jazzed to do bill pay because every time that we like, I don't know, and this isn't, this isn't said for whatever, like, know, we'll probably do a little north of 12 million in sales this year. And that is nothing compared to other retailers. And it's a lot more than a lot of other smaller shops. But what that means is that. You know, we're spending our best selling product is the Ado Tech bare bag. We sell hundreds of thousands of dollars. Like, like that is the fun for us is that it's not just like we're selling widgets to randos is that like the stuff that we're selling, like our best selling products on garage grown are from small brands. And that is the best feeling in the world is talking to people like Joe from far point and being like, dude, when we started working with you, we were getting 12 hoodies at a time and our last batch had like 4,200 garments. that type of stuff is the stuff that is so exciting is to know like, man, we get to like do some, like we're not a nonprofit, we're a business, we're in this to be able to make money as is all the businesses that we work with. But if we can support people who are doing cool things along the way, like that is the good part of it. Like that is the stuff that makes us want to be able to grow. speaker-0: Yeah, yeah, I think it's great. I mean, you get to see it from small to growing and it's just so fulfilling that way as opposed to again, again, it goes back to the teacher, right? If you're a teacher and you're, you're with them through how many years you get to see them grow, mature, you get to see them get smarter. If their grades are sucky, you get to help them along a little bit and get better grades. Now they're going off to college and you're just so proud of them. speaker-1: Yeah. Man, is, that is a, that's actually a really great comparison. Cause I mean, I think about it as like, um, the anxieties, like with being a teacher, there's only so much that you can control and you've got this skillset you always have to bring to the table every day. But ultimately like I can't control market. Uh, I can't the straight of of her moves. have no control over what happens there. You know, all I can do is control the things that I have in front of me. And I think that's a lot like teaching. It's like, it requires you to be dynamic. And just as I said earlier, just to like stay in the game. speaker-0: That's cool. Well, Lloyd, mean, thank you so much for all the insight into Garage Grown and I'm sure people who are listening, if you have a business, you're probably gonna learn a lot from this. And so maybe you'll get inundated by emails now from people with different products and everything. speaker-1: You know, always willing to entertain new ideas, and I promise either myself or someone on my team will tell you politely if they don't fizz. speaker-0: All right, so before we go into our quick little rapid fire round, ⁓ obviously if anybody is looking for stuff to buy on Garage Grown and stuff like that, how can we find you Garage Grown gear and stuff like that online? speaker-1: Garagegrowngear.com is the best place to be able to find stuff. We carry a lot of options from small brands. There's also a lot of options from those brands that you can just buy directly if we don't have them on Garagegrown. If you are looking to have more insights into anything that I would have to say about the industry, you can follow me on LinkedIn. It's not too painful ⁓ of a follow, I promise. yeah, keep listening to the pod because that will, you'll keep learning stuff about the brands. speaker-0: Awesome. Okay, so now we're gonna get into rapid fire. I'll ask you a couple of quick questions as I get to know more about you and ⁓ some background. So first question is favorite national park. speaker-1: ⁓ I can't, can't. Isle Royale. Isle Royale. Least visited. ⁓ It's up north. You should go back sometime. It's great. speaker-0: Where? All right, last thing you Googled related to your business. speaker-1: Ooh, I Google garage-grown gear in quotes, at least on the weekly, with a time constraint of last week, just to see who's talking about us. So that was probably it. speaker-0: Okay, coffee or electrolyte drinks? speaker-1: Coffee, well both. Well, coffee and Celsius. I'm a coffee in the morning and then an energy drink in the afternoon. speaker-0: Okay, on the trail, if you were to have one or the other. Coffee? ⁓ speaker-1: Coffee. Yeah I'm kind of a degenerate though Craig. I'll like I'll put coffee like instant coffee and like my bottom lip and just kind of like Let the caffeine do its thing Again, you know, I might be sitting here in front of you as the CEO of garage grown But I'm just a dirtbag degenerate who spends most their day behind a desk speaker-0: You're gonna have some sort of like, someone's gonna email you with like this new like dip that you put in for coffee dip. All right, tent, hammock or cowboy camping? speaker-1: Tenth, always. speaker-0: tense like that ⁓ the barriers of cloth in between you and the outdoors. speaker-1: is exactly right. I want the illusion. Give it to me. speaker-0: Yeah, lose of safety. My wife and I maybe like six months ago watched that movie. It's called The Backcountry or whatever where the bear attacks the couple inside the tent. Have you seen that movie? speaker-1: and I don't want to. speaker-0: I had no idea it was a true story. And they were in the tent and apparently this bear, I was going to say it was like south side of Canada somewhere. And they were out and they got lost a little bit and this bear followed them, ended up reaching in and killing him. And then she got cut and hiked out. I was like, and my wife goes, I'm not the tent doesn't protect me, does it? And I was like, yeah, that doesn't protect you at all. speaker-1: No, it's just a very thin layer. speaker-0: You're a fabric. speaker-1: But again, the illusion in the middle of the night really does it for me. speaker-0: Yes. All right. Solo hike or crew mission? speaker-1: Ooh, ⁓ these days, pretty much entirely solo hikes. I need the solitude. I need the brain break. I love a trip ⁓ with friends. speaker-0: Yeah. Favorite trail snack. speaker-1: I, okay, this is lame, but you know the candy reasons? ⁓ huh. I would always, my like running joke when I was guiding was it always be like, who needs a reason to hike? And then I would give it out. So I have, I love, I love eating those on trail. speaker-0: Okay, and then what's your worst trail snack you ever tried? Please, nothing you had on the site. ⁓ speaker-1: ⁓ God. ⁓ It was something ⁓ I have a hard time. Maybe this is case for everyone, but like if I eat something like two days in a row, I'm like, I'm over it. And so I have a couple of foods, one of them, which is on garage grown, that is an objectively great tasting thing. I just can't eat it. Like I ate it when I was like training for something and my stomach just felt absolutely horrible and I can't eat it again. So there, I would say there are just like certain bars that I will not touch anymore. ⁓ But nothing objectively horrible. speaker-0: Okay, ⁓ biggest splurge you've ever made for your business. speaker-1: Okay, this is not a splurge, but at the time it was. I used to hand write addresses on every single package and then I would scooter them to the post office, which was a couple of blocks from my house. But for my birthday one year, my mom got me a label printer and it was life changing, Craig, to just be able to print it. It felt like the biggest luxury anyone's ever been handed. So I don't know if it was a, I didn't splurge on it, my mother did. But when we had to retire that label printer, it felt like there should be a funeral procession for this thing, because it put in some really serious work for us. speaker-0: And last question for you, if you could collab with any brand, who would it be and why? speaker-1: Um, direct shout outs to, uh, uh, Mr. Dan Durstin, um, you know, uh, uh, friend, uh, compatriot, big fan of Dan. We got to hang out a bunch at a, at an event up in, uh, up in his, uh, Homeland of Canada, uh, later last year, but, I'd love to collaborate with, with Durstin. know he's listening. Um, I know he gets an email from me every four months being like, Hey dude. Can we sell your stuff yet? But yeah, I'd be happy to collaborate with Dan on a tent stake. ⁓ I'd collaborate with him on ⁓ anything he wanted. A tiny ditty bag that was this big. ⁓ Yeah. Dan Durstin and Dursting Gear has been ⁓ literally, I bug him all the time. So I'd love to be able to collaborate with him. speaker-0: Ha That's awesome. Well, great. Well, I mean, Lloyd, thank you so much for being on. It was great chatting with you and everything else. I'm sure we'll meet up at Switchback and O'Rourn and everything. I'll see you around. And everyone, thank you so much for listening. It was great having you be a part of it. And we look forward to the next time we see you on. Thanks, Greg. Thanks, Lloyd. Bye.