0:00 Maddox became very known for our pants which is funny cuz that was like the worst thing out the gate for us what happens when you have a bunch of bad product like that you tried to sell it to people yeah cuz like check out the stability in these jeans do you want no move in your [Music] jeans and welcome back everybody to another awesome episode of the careful boy and today we are blessed to have BD back in the building so bar recently threw out on his IG stories you know letting people know that you his famed and esteemed Mentor was coming in so I didn't see it you didn't see it you don't follow barart he hides his stories from you but
0:50 uh he asked if anybody had any questions so we had a couple people sending some questions so we're going to go through a little bit of that who I was people people somebody called you the goat by the way damn go you know what that stands for Nick ask Ryan Ryan no idea go so this person domesticated farm animal thank you this person I don't know how to pronounce it ad DOA anyways ad doa's response says how has the industry changed and do you think the same company would be relevant now I guess in context if you were to start it now i' probably say the same company would not be very relevant now but I do think you would just have have to approach things like so differently just cuz the way people shop and consume things is so much different than it was you know can can you dive into that 20 years
1:41 ago yeah I mean I think just like social media specifically has just changed the way you Market to people you talk to people um and honestly like from when we launched DVS Maddox laai those Brands I mean that was pre all of that you know it was all about magazines and print and videos that came out that were based around the athletes um where all that stuff is not nearly as relevant as it used to be um I think the idea of like the product building and the product you you make is still like that process is still the same but how you sell it and how you Market it is totally different primarily just because of social media and the Assumption of media has it all
2:32 gone to influencer marketing for like Street Wear and everything that is like youth clothing and honestly I think it's been kind of the same I mean influencer athlete right it's just they're just being used differently these days the platform's different yeah okay like before you know like we all would geek out on getting an actual print magazine now when the last time anybody got a print magazine like I still personally like to get them to like you know there's certain ones I really like but like the general and especially kids no for sure you know and the best print magazine of all time back then was Maxim like okay sure I was if you hypothetically thank you Nick if you hypothetically owned like I don't know like a a gym or something like that how would you in today's relevant world be like I need to
3:23 blow this thing up I need to Market this in a way that it's on a better website than like a Craigslist of business sales I'd probably just call Bart see I know what to do I look at the white space and I figure it out Turnal white space uh I have no idea when you first came across uh like when I first pitched our brand what were your initial thoughts was it like oh that's an interesting way of doing things or I don't know how these guys even got to where they are like what was your initial thoughts on it I thought it was super interesting I mean you had a gym part of it you had the actual like the apparel the supplements you had all these pieces um and even kind of looking at the org and stuff like that with you you had like he recently sent me this picture so
4:14 I asked him for his org chart when we're like it it was it was you got to show up I I will when and oh he's the guy that you were telling me about one of our first meetings uh and he's just asking the most simplest questions and he'll be like uh so can you send me like your or chart and I was like what's that he goes you know like how people talk to each other in your company like how the workflow goes and the communication and I was like I never even thought about it like that so I had to go make one and then he and he literally sent me this I found it the other day and I texted it to him I go you remember I when you sent me this you guys have to see this and it's a ████ nightmare because everyone needs to talk to everyone for something to happen but the way he built it I was like oh that's how Bart's brain works right now but then this is wrong cuz you look at successful companies it's like things are very
5:04 compartmentalized so people can run with this it's like this thing needs to get made well this guy has to put his two cents in and that puts his two cents to make this two cents that's a spider we but then if it's pre 2017 this person ran this part so now we got to Loop this person in oh this person was randomly in this project in 2019 so we got to bring this person oh my God so it was I was like does this work and I very nicely I was like I think I can help you with that so what did you find most like I guess attractive of barbell but also what was like your biggest red flag jeez I honestly I think just like our Geo were just like very passionate about it and we're always trying to find like passionate founder entrepreneurs like that need more Operational Support and
5:55 there's something very you know there's something there obviously they both have really big following there was a YouTube Element to it which we love um so it had all these really good pieces um and so yeah I don't know we just weren't able to kind of like financially make it make sense for both of us you know um and I think his obviously from him being a you know Creator influencer his org was very heavy on marketing and content creation cuz I was like yo you got like ████ 12 people over here and you got one person making product that's right want to like balance this out a little bit you know yeah he'll people ask like the simplest questions like which country buys you guys the most I was like huh and he goes what time of day do you
6:47 have the most sales I was like I don't know and I'm like ████ I feel like these are this is how you oh my God damn I don't know ████ damn those are tough questions though I just make dope ████ and I promote it yeah he was even asking like uh like what is your bestselling product I think at that point like and I was like oh I don't know he goes he's like what about like your te's or hoodies like just something as simple as that and I was like oh I don't even know we just keep making things out of know so was your workflow just just cranking out things when you were inspired and then just get it up to sell no I think our work so we do have a general like temperature of what people like the
7:37 designs they like and we just keep going forward but it wasn't until I met with BD where I'm like oh you should actually analyze how the year did to forecast next year cuz then now I can go oh if we're going to sell like let's say 5,000 black te's you can use that information with your vendors hey next year we're going to hit 5 to 7,000 black te's can you give us a bulk discount so through analysis and taking and slowing down you could actually start increasing margins without technically being better at business or just being more efficient and I even never even thought of it like that I was just like oh they said that one was sick let's make more of those and just keep going whatever is sick let's just do more sick ████ without like looking back and going that's a passionate guy right there hey but but I will say in Bart's
8:27 defense like 6 months later he came back with and actually a pretty legit plan and I was like wow these guys actually started thinking about this they had all their SKS listed out their projections on each of them and yeah they were making making moves so did you like uh parallel to his story run into a same type of learning curve or have somebody come in or or was it just like always present because maybe you're like dad's experience or your older brother oh no it's like major learning curves um early on in the business we had a guy named Mark Fe join and Mark was one of the early guys at Nike um and when Mark came on he taught me a ton still communicate to this day with him wow um I remember I was building the very first line list price list for Maddox and he had just come in to consult with us and he's like
9:20 what's the margin like on these and I'm like what's margin like no idea you ask questions like that too yeah and and then he was probably 20 and then he comes in the next day and he and he slides me this um margin calculator and he's like here you're going to need this and I was like and literally he really taught me how to like frame up lines and business and stuff and uh so a lot of that kind of architecture of like building out like product and stuff really starts from the beginning um and he was super helpful in kind of me like really starting to get a really good foundation on like how to build stuff MH um my dad was more on like the finance side um he understood numbers really
10:10 well how to work with the banks how to get you know inventory financed where Mark understood that but Mark was more on you know development and understood like product cycles and what to do and how much we need to buy them for and how much we need to sell them for type of thing and so he was very influential for me like learning all of that but to really answer your question yet we ████ up a bunch before we got there what up guys thank you for watching us for so long if you like what we do please support our patreon Joe tell them what we have to offer so every week you get two videos one never release director's cut and another one too hot for YouTube patreon only every freaking week you get that and you get access to our Discord where you can come chat with us and ask us questions that become episode here cuz we're going to answer
11:01 them and we're going to take it seriously and we want to give you the responses that you want so come stay connected with us join our patreon click the description below for full details sometimes always like the most simplest things that are most revolutionary too though and it's crazy cuz you can't see it until somebody tells you yeah no totally what was like some of your biggest like oops moments oopsy daisies well probably the first one was when we ████ up all those shoes and then not too long after that the first whole collection of Maddox fit horrible I mean it was like it couldn't have been any worse uh the shirts and and the more of the pants like t-shirts all that kind of stuff I was already making before so that was pretty easy but more of the pants um I really hadn't done too much
11:51 like bottom work before like and the pants fit horrible uh but the good thing about that was that I really learned how like to work with design and really make sure like we had like proper fitting like pants which is cool cuz then later on Maddox became very known for our pants which is funny cuz that was like the worst thing out the gate for us like we could not get rid of them you put them on and like your legs would barely move oh that's what it was yeah so what do you what what happens when you have a bunch of bad product like that like do you sell it to ra you try to sell it to cuz like check out the stability in these jeans do you want no move into your
12:41 jeans start doesn't hurt 12 bucks you're like how does 12 bucks sound you're like how about eight how about six yeah you just have to get rid of itance rack from your store is just or do you bulk sell it to other yeah with that kind of stuff you're trying to bulk just like get rid of all it how how did you even get to Maddox from dbx DBS uh as far as like launching it or yeah just like oh well was kind of what I was saying earlier is like you know was it became like you know there wasn't there was only a couple companies at that time there was drawers which was a part of DC at that time uh TSA there was like a couple skate clothing companies and then there was a bunch of like surf ones like Quicksilver bong V Rusty yeah and so it was kind of the
13:33 same thing with the shoes it was there was this opening for skate clothing um specifically that wasn't surf clothing um and so you know we we ended up um my brother Kevin and I um on the Maddox Venture partnered with Dewan song and Tim Gavin which Dewan song yeah and um and so that was kind of the group and day one was a big part of DVS he was interested in doing the clothing thing um so we kind of partnered on that and then launched that under DVS wait did you guys ever beef it with other companies like in the Skate World somebody actually wants to know about Osiris and DVS drama did you guys ever have drama I don't really remember any that's how that's how you show you won the drama like what drama that's cold the guy's like
14:23 o he said he doesn't remember that's that's how you do it ohy shoes were crazy yeah they were like hell of thick ass tongues and stuff yeah they were loud yeah they had a model of D3 that they sold a ████ ton of them were you close to those guys like the I mean we'd all like literally the whole industry was not very big so you'd all be at the same shows together like it's like a traveling circus of like you know that kind of skate SL Action Sports industry you know so yeah you just kind of know everybody through doing the same stuff you kind of missed that like Miss the the camaraderie of it cuz when I started going to like when I got closer with Bobby and I would like go to like agenda or different shows it seemed like everyone knew each other even people that you don't think are in the same industry and then I would bring up names
15:14 and then this person like oh yeah I know that person and then they're like oh ████ like everyone in here has known each other for like 10 years do you kind of miss that yeah dude that that part was great there's just so many like good relationships and connections and stuff um and even now like you know pre pandemic the shows were already kind of starting to slow down they just weren't as important anymore um and then pandemic and then there's not really much in like shows now you're starting to see him come back um I think the outdoor space has done a really good job of like creating consumer shows not just like wholesale trade shows um which I think is great for the market in general you know um but I totally miss it I mean it was and now you know with with circle group we do a lot more direct consumer business so there's not really we're not
16:04 really going to shows and you know we do wholesale with bigger box guys so you're just working with a handful of guys so you don't really need to go to a trade show to do that is there still like a skate um clothing industry like in the same way that when you were coming up in late '90s early 2000s yeah no there totally is I think it's probably the the ones it's more of like skate Street you know than yeah there there's a lot more of that you know Thrasher Thrasher cuz like I I uh I used to work for a street clothing company as well but this was like early 2010 2011 time frame okay and even then like social media was still like very brand new Instagram wasn't really out yet um so like I was still doing things
16:56 like going out to events in order to shoot blogs we were still going to like the m show uh in Vegas and stuff and I was also just cold calling different stores Mom Pop shops or retailers in order to try and get our product out there but the concept of directed consumer now it seems like it's the prevalent form of like getting sales on your stuff you can get some like sick ass buzz on social media marketing and people are just buying from your website cuz that's usually the biggest margins anyway unless you land like a giant chain retailer Across the Nation right yeah totally is that kind of like Focus for all your new and upcoming projects is it most of them are but you know I mean there's still an element like when you're like C calling people like I don't know if you guys had like territory reps you know like selling stuff but I mean especially when we were growing our businesses like we had such
17:47 a great group of sales reps usually like a territory in the US you'll have like 12 to 15 sales reps but they're like this massive marketing arm for you you know they're out selling the stuff but but then they also have their own team Riders they're like flow Riders so they're like an extension of the brand in all these different territories and that was a huge part then of like really building out some of the businesses and having like really good sales reps in all those territories CU those sales reps will get like commission off of their accounts right yep yeah and some of them in good territories they do extremely well yeah so um and you know the ones that do well typically then car multiple Brands they're usually not brands that are competing you know they're not like trying to go in and sell two clothing companies but they can have clothing and shoes and sunglasses
18:38 and whatever sunscreen or something so they can go in and sell like a mix of stuff usually it's not competing stuff did at that point did you just have like a killer sales rep that was able to like get DVS into a bunch of other stores outside of 118 yeah and and the cool thing was with 118 since you know we were buying all these other brands we knew all the sales reps especially for Southern California you had that Network yeah so we had a really good network of like which reps you know are coming in and and through that we then hired our Southern California reps and then all the Reps go to sales meetings and then they're friendly with other reps so then we're able to go hey who who do you have like who do you know out in Florida oh talk to so and so or who do you know in you know the midatlantic okay talk to so
19:28 and so you know so that was kind of how those different territories grew what happened to uh whatever happened with the original shop that your family had um we ended up selling it to um some family friends and then they operated it God here it goes with more dates yeah how old are you when you sold that though I don't remember um so it was right around we launched laai in 2000 and then they took over the shop in 2000 and then they operated it for another I don't know three or five years something like that um but at that time we were just getting too busy with the brands and stuff and then trying to do retail early on though it was huge because since we sold all the other
20:18 brands we got to see all the pricing we got to see all the product lines so it was like for a long time for us it was like a really good just kind of merchandising platform to be like you know this is this is like what's selling really well these are the price points so we're really able to kind of like architect our lines based off of what we knew was working um especially in like Southern California yeah you get so much data in the fitness space um have you heard of a brand called young La M that's kind of how they they blew up they used to make clothing for everyone and I think because they knew what people liked and and so they were kind of they already had like all the backend um figured out they manufacturers yeah they started off as manufacturers and then so when they dropped their first line I think they already knew what the
21:09 market wanted and then they just exploded and I think like they probably will cross the billion doll Mark probably in like the next year or two and they're already sponsoring like the top UFC fighters and all those guys and I think it's super valuable to have had to have had made clothing for all like these top influencers yeah you get like firsthand knowledge of what's working right yeah that's cool so how old were you when
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