Why I Sold Knockoffs — Part 2

Adam Lando
Aug 28, 2017 · 7 min read

I want to start this post by apologizing for not writing this sooner. Life got pretty busy and I was out of town a few different times and this got put to the side. I did say that I was gonna do this whole blogging thing pretty loosely but I did say there would be a part two.

If I recall correctly (I’m reading this from a plane with no internet, poor me), I pretty much ended part one by going over how i got started. This was back in 2011, so the dates of everything are a little fuzzy to me. I ended up moving out of my home five months after I started Hometown Apparel. It was almost me being kicked out really, I just facilitated it. Although I had started to really take off with this business, I had a terrible relationship with my parents and sister which was fuelled by serious problems from my end with stealing from them, pretty constant lying and nearly getting physical fights with my dad on occasion. They were pretty sick of me, and I was sick of being there so I moved out with two old high school friends. Rent was about $600/Month, AKA 30 Hats being sold. On a side-note, moving out ended up improving the relationship I had with my parents more than I could have ever imagined. If you are tired of your parents and on the cusp of moving out, I seriously recommend it. You will thank me later, and I ask that you buy me a Mocha with no whip and skim milk later on to prove to me that you really mean it.

The next three months was a huge transformation for me and my business. I knew moving out was going to be a challenge but I hadn’t realized that I was going to be entirely sufficient off how many hats I sold. No more safety net from mom and dad made me take my work more seriously, and push myself harder than I ever had. I think that was where I became a young adult, because I was the one who had to make it work to keep food on the table.

Seeing as this was no longer a hobby but now a living and since we were growing I had to think about how to maximize hat sales and profits. There were 3 key moves I made that in my opinion helped us thrive. I had somewhat of a location at Main and 33rd as I would just come downstairs when someone was there to meet and buy a hat but ultimately I could only be in so many places at once. I also didn’t know what hats people would ultimately buy and since I didn’t have a store, I had no clear way to display them. I also only sold Hats, which was good but not enough to grow and not having anything proprietary to our brand meant anyone could do what we were doing.

Problem 1: I had to guess which hats people wanted, and certain less popular teams i could never safely carry stock for. This also meant I could never truly show the whole selection.

Solution: Take Pre-Orders

Taking Pre-Orders ended up being a huge move for us, as my suppliers would have as many as 150 different hats at one time that made sense for me to sell. I created a system where I would post a Facebook album on the Hometown page a week before ordering through my supplier. I would post the whole selection and people would make reservations by writing “Reserve” as a comment with their phone number or texting me their order. This system ended up being a hit, and people finally got to see all the hats I had access to. I literally saw my orders Triple from this the first time I tried it.

Problem 2: I can only be in so many places at once, and i have limited capital to start.

Solution: Hire Employees on a commission basis.

As I was a new company and because I met up with people for sales, I knew there was a lot of ground I wasn’t covering and I knew that I would exhaust myself fairly quickly. I also didn’t have the funds to pay hourly. Because my company was popular locally on social media with the High School demographic, I realized that the way to sell the most hats was to get someone on the inside, meaning someone inside the school.

What I ended up doing was hiring reps and paying them a 20% Commission on each hat sold. I would meet them on a weekly basis, and give them a selection of 10–20 hats as well as any pre-ordered hats their friends got. If they sold 15 hats at $25 apiece for $375, they got $75.

Considering this was something they could do in the middle of lunch breaks and since most high school kids lived at home this actually ended up being a decent chunk of change for them. Not only that, but they would be motivated to share the page with friends, and help grow our brand awareness.

At our peak, we had about 14 different reps covering high schools in Vancouver, Richmond, North Vancouver, Surrey, New West, Burnaby and Abbotsford. This helped us grow exponentially with our sales and our brand awareness.

Problem 3: We had nothing original and unique going for our brand that couldn’t be replicated.

Solution: Release our own Shirt Design, the Vancity Grizz Crewneck.

I had been growing Hometown with my reps and had started to really capitalize on the Holiday Season. We sold a lot of hats and I couldn’t complain but it felt like there was something missing. I was constantly worried that other brands starting to sell snapbacks would steal my system, which they did and I was worried that Vancity Snapbacks would do something we couldn’t do. I had to separate myself somehow but I was having trouble figuring out how to do it. Then it hit me, I had to make my own design.

Now the truth is anyone starting a clothing line is 99% likely to fail, because its a super competitive marketplace, there are brands that can produce at scale for way less than you and unless they are somehow obligated, why would someone buy your shirt? Why are you special? Its a sad reality but a reality nonetheless. I decided to try out a design with our pre-order system I established earlier on to see if the interest was there so I wasn’t going to be stuck with 50 printed shirts. I had to make my item within what people wanted rather than something totally different. What I mean by that is I had to cater to the marketplace and what they were wearing rather than change the marketplace as I lacked the influence.

The key criteria for me to make the shirt was:

  1. I needed at least 50 pre-orders.
  2. It needed to be at sellable at a 200% Margin. My goal was to sell my Crewnecks for $40 and spend less than $13.33 If I did this correctly, I would make $2000 off a $700 investment.
  3. I needed to be able to make it locally, since I had never sourced custom items from overseas.

The Vancity Logo was super popular in Vancouver at the time, and hadn’t been absolutely played out by that point. I also really liked the Vancouver Grizzlies Branding, and there wasn’t really a lot of Grizzlies Gear available to the market. For anyone unaware, the Grizzlies were the NBA Team Vancouver had in the 90’s. They are the worst NBA team of all time by a mile but Basketball was super popular in Vancouver and I thought it fit the Streetwear mold better than Hockey. I decided to do a mix of the Grizzlies Logo and the Vancity Logo. I tried my luck on Facebook, you can see the original post here.

This ended up being a huge hit! We had over 150 pre-orders, which got my production cost down to $10 and my margin to 300%. It also gave our brand something totally unique that was also 100% legit (despite the infringements), and we had successfully become more than just a hat reseller and had differentiated ourselves from the competition. We ended up putting out many more designs, trying out more ideas on pre-order systems. Some were hits, some weren’t but none changed our brand like the Vancity Grizz. I ended up with about $10,000 in my pocket at the end of the Holiday season, aside from inventory and a growing brand. To think earlier that same year, I had none of the above. This was a very exciting time for me and Hometown Apparel.

To be honest, When I do part three it’s knocking to go over a lot of what happened with Hometown but more with how it ended. There was about three years after this where things were pretty consistent, we had expanded to selling Jerseys, Clothing and even handbags. I will touch on it somewhat but I want to move forward from Replicas, which is sort of the theme the next part.

Keep posted and let me know your thoughts via comments or messages.

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