Joel Reichert of Maven Thread: 5 Things You Need To Know To Create A Very Successful Lifestyle Brand

An Interview With Vicky Colas

Reasonable Price — I don’t think you need to be the cheapest or the most expensive brand. Building a brand based on low prices is typically a race to the bottom. On the other hand, developing a premium ultra-high priced brand is a long road and requires so much effort, skill and money to eventually have success. Find that sweet spot where you have an amazing product and a reasonable price. I like to aim for 50–60% gross margin on an amazing product.

As a part of our series called “5 Things You Need To Know To Create A Very Successful Lifestyle Brand”, I had the pleasure of interviewing Joel Reichert, an experienced finance analyst turned serial entrepreneur, is the Co-founder and Owner of Maven Thread, a women’s athleisure brand. Maven Thread currently is a mid-seven-figure sales business after three years in business and continues to see significant growth quarterly. Since embarking on his entrepreneurial journey, Joel has created and grown three different multimillion-dollar direct-to-consumer lifestyle brands sitting in the apparel, home + décor, and baby spaces.

Pulling from his past finance experience, where he learned the fundamentals of business and how to scale operations, and combining them with his wife’s passion for design, together they know how to make great and affordable products that monetize quickly. Joel understands the importance of marketing, charity, and transparency for lifestyle brands to survive in a competitive market.

Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! Before we dive in, our readers would love to learn a bit more about you. Can you tell us a bit about your “childhood backstory”?

I grew up in Houston, Texas, in a family of 6. Growing up, I always thought I wanted to be a doctor until my senior year in high school when I got interested in business and finance. Throughout my childhood, I loved soccer, tennis, ultimate frisbee, and even played saxophone for several years. After high school, I attended school at Brigham Young University and majored in Business and Finance. In the middle of my college education, I took two years off and served a mission for the church that I attend in Guadalajara, Mexico. It was there that I learned so much about myself. I worked hard, focused on my service, and honed skills that would later help me as an entrepreneur. After my mission and college, I worked at a few tech companies handling corporate finance, budgeting, and forecasting. Essentially I was working in Excel spreadsheets every day and helping to make sure the companies were staying within budget, operating as profitably as possible, and supporting business partners from a finance perspective. Needless to say, it wasn’t as exciting as I hoped it would be, but this foundation along with my upbringing set me up for entrepreneurial success.

Can you tell us the story of what led you to this particular career path?

After working in finance for several years, I realized this wasn’t my true calling and wanted to find a new path. I couldn’t envision myself doing finance and moving up the corporate ladder for the next 30 years. It was hard for me to get passionate about doing finance for a company someone else owned. I also didn’t love being away from my family all day every day and I really wanted to find a more flexible work-life balance. I had something inside of me that wanted to do more with my life that felt more fulfilling.

At that point, I researched many different ways to make money outside of my chosen profession and landed on trying to sell on Amazon in the e-commerce space. Eventually, what came out of this was starting Copper Pearl, my first e-commerce venture that sat in the baby space. We started selling one pack of baby bibs on Amazon, and it snowballed from there and became a successful recognized brand in the baby industry.

Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?

When I first started in the e-commerce space, I tried making money with something called retail arbitrage. In short, I would go to local stores and buy things that were highly discounted, and then I would go onto Amazon and try to resell them for a profit. It’s a super basic way to make money, but after doing this for a month or two, I realized I had purchased all the best inventory from local stores, and I couldn’t quite figure out how to scale the business. On top of that, I only made a few hundred dollars in profit from all that work. From this, I at least learned how to sell goods on Amazon, what sold quickly, and at what price points people were willing to pay. Even though I didn’t make much profit, and the sweat equity didn’t repay itself, I realized that I enjoyed the e-commerce space. I also learned that I needed to find a scalable way to get inventory to sell online. That’s what eventually led me to start Copper Pearl and source products from a manufacturer.

Is there a particular book, podcast, or film that made a significant impact on you? Can you share a story or explain why it resonated with you so much?

The two things that most impacted me and continue to impact me are the How I Built This Podcast and Shark Tank. I am so inspired daily by hearing the success of the entrepreneurs featured on that podcast. I constantly listen to ideas I can try to implement and failures and lessons they learned that I could try to avoid. It’s inspiring to listen to the ups and the downs and understand that so much of success comes from leaning in and getting through the hard times. I also am super inspired by Shark Tank. I love the startup phase of business so much. Shark Tank keeps me motivated to keep giving back to young entrepreneurs who are just getting started and continue working hard to bring my ideas into reality and keep fighting to get to where I want to go.

Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?

My favorite Life Lesson Quote is “If it was easy, everyone would do it.” This is a constant reminder to me that during the hard times you just have to keep grinding. Entrepreneurship isn’t always rainbows and butterflies. There are real and scary challenges, like legal battles, supply chain, and inventory issues and partnership difficulties, and roadblocks that you hit and it is easy to give up. The entrepreneurs that can push through are the ones that eventually achieve success.

Ok, thank you for that. Let’s now jump to the primary focus of our interview. For the benefit of our readers, let’s define our terms. How do you define a Lifestyle Brand? How is a Lifestyle Brand different from a normal, typical brand?

A lifestyle brand to me is a brand that people truly resonate with. A brand that is more than just the toothpaste they use or a random shirt they throw on. It’s a brand that captures their style; a brand that donates to causes that they believe in; a company that evokes emotion and excitement when they use the product. To me, a lifestyle brand is something you love and want to share with the world.

What are the benefits of creating a lifestyle brand?

One huge benefit is word-of-mouth marketing. When people truly love your brand and what you do, they share it with everyone they know. That’s the cheapest marketing you can get and results in the most loyal customers. Social media is also so much easier when you have a lifestyle brand that people are inspired by and want to be a part of. People naturally love following brands that have products that they love and resonate with.

In your opinion, what is an example of a company that has done a fantastic job building a believable and beloved Lifestyle Brand? What specifically impresses you? What can one do to replicate that?

I’ve always loved the shoe brand Taft. Kory Stevens is one of the most genuine down-to-earth founders I’ve met. I love the transparency of the brand. They truly are delivering amazing quality products at the best price they can. Not to mention the style and design of the shoes are super unique and on point. And the brand’s video content is amazing. It feels inspiring, fun to watch as well as useful.

To replicate this, brands have to put so much effort and attention to detail when designing their products, not to mention how and when to market them. You have to really care about your customer and what’s most important to them — is it the design? The content? Price? Transparency? Mission? Everything? We have a long way to go but it’s great having companies like Taft to look to for inspiration.

Can you share your ideas about how to create a lifestyle brand that people really love and are ‘crazy about’?

Three things come to mind when developing a lifestyle brand that people love and/or go “crazy” about.

1) Functionality. It needs to be unique in functionality or design. This doesn’t mean that it needs to be a completely new product, first to market, never been developed before. Rather, perhaps, bringing on-trend pieces to market that are not overly priced or making a small improvement on how something fits or moves. These small or big changes in function or design can positively change the way people feel about the brand. We are constantly asking our most loyal followers what they want to see from us or what we can improve. We also love reading every product review to see what customers are loving and what can be changed to make sure we are always innovating and staying ahead of the game.

2) Shareability. The product needs to be shareable and fun. Most people aren’t sharing about products that don’t change their life in some way. With our brand, we focus a lot on making athlesuire products women feel good in. And it’s not just the fit, but also the designs and colors we offer that complement their unique style. For fashion brands, we’ve learned that with unique and special designs, customers are more likely to be asked “where is that from,” which leads to the ripple effect of word of mouth marketing.

3) Evoke an emotion. We believe that we have created a line of products that are fun and inspiring. From our variety of products to the design to the sizes we offer, we know we are catering to many women who are tackling their fitness goals, and allowing them to do it in style without compromising comfort. This combination makes people love the product and want to talk about it or share it..

What are the common mistakes you have seen people make when they start a lifestyle brand? What can be done to avoid those errors?

One common mistake I see is starting too big and putting too much pressure on yourself. I’m a big believer in having some lofty end goals and hopes but starting small and keeping things manageable. Start with a couple products and test the market. And, don’t invest money you are not comfortable losing. Get out and find cheap ways to grow the brand. For example, seeding product to influencers can be an affordable and easy way to get some initial traction for the brand. The snowball will happen on its own if you have a good product at a reasonable price. Just enjoy the journey and don’t get paralyzed in the over-analysis of what if scenarios and the pressure you put on yourself to succeed.

Let’s imagine that someone reading this interview has an idea for a lifestyle brand that they would like to develop. What are the first few steps that you would recommend that they take?

My first piece of advice is that it is OK to start small. You don’t need to start with a massive investment or raise a round of capital. For someone that wants to get into apparel, start with a unique idea, find a manufacturer and start with a small order. I’m a huge fan of testing the market to see if your idea resonates. Then, you can really invest more time, money and energy into expanding into more products. Make sure that you can clearly answer the question, “Why would someone choose to buy your product over all the other options out there?” If you don’t have a couple good reasons to answer that question, then I would go back to the drawing board.

Ok. Thank you for all that. Here is the main question of our discussion. What are your “5 Things You Need To Know To Create A Very Successful Lifestyle Brand” and why? (Please share a story or example for each.)

1. Differentiated and High Quality Product — what’s your twist on what’s already existing that’s going to make people buy yours over all the other options out there? For example, with Maven Thread, my wife is the designer and she makes sure that each product we go to market with is fun and unique and not like all the other products you can find from our competitors.
2. Reasonable Price — I don’t think you need to be the cheapest or the most expensive brand. Building a brand based on low prices is typically a race to the bottom. On the other hand, developing a premium ultra-high priced brand is a long road and requires so much effort, skill and money to eventually have success. Find that sweet spot where you have an amazing product and a reasonable price. I like to aim for 50–60% gross margin on an amazing product.
3. Amazing Customer Service — Make sure the customer is always right. You’ll never regret taking care of your customers and making sure they are always happy. I once had a customer that was so aggressive and demeaning to our customer service team that I eventually got on the phone with the customer. We talked it out and I fully understood where he was coming from. I fixed the problem and even gave them a discount code for a future order. In the end, he was apologizing for how he acted and said that they would still be shopping with us in the future. I looked up his account and saw that his wife was a repeat purchaser and one of our most loyal customers. Nothing beats good customer service.
4. Solid Demand / Market Size — Even if you are a sub segment of a huge market, make sure people are actually looking for what you are selling. It doesn’t have to be a $500B market. But make sure you can carve out a good niche for yourself. For example, women’s exercise headbands is a very niche market. Maven Thread entered the market almost 4 years ago and even though the market isn’t huge, we have taken a good chunk of market share and it’s an amazing piece of our business. Sometimes bigger markets are harder since there is more competition and really established players in the space.
5. Invest in Marketing / Branding — Over time, there are no short cuts in building a brand. You will have to spend significant money on ads, influencers, photography, videography, etc. to get traction and growth. There is no way around it. Make sure you have professional content, photography, ads, and website. The whole customer journey matters. One mistake I see constantly in brands that are underperforming is trying to do cut these corners. For our brands we invest tens of thousands of dollars every year in enhancing the website, doing photo and video shoots, paying for a graphic designer to create content and good looking ads. This has paid dividends over the years. In the beginning, you can always start small and scrappy and over time as you have more cash flow you can really improve these efforts.

Super. We are nearly done. Here are our final questions. You are an inspiration to a great many people. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger.

I think if everyone could pick a couple causes they are passionate about and set aside whatever amount of time, money or resources you can afford to support that cause, the world could dramatically change. With Maven Thread, we donate to three different causes and donate 1.5% of proceeds to them. We have seen some amazing things come out of these donations and we’re so happy to see that money go to good use. Even if you don’t have money to donate, you can give your time or expertise to support small businesses or other aspiring entrepreneurs. Like business, start small and do something. Then over time you never know what might come of your efforts.

We are very blessed that some of the biggest names in Business, VC funding, Sports, and Entertainment read this column. Is there a person in the world, or in the US, with whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch, and why? He or she might just see this if we tag them.

I would love to meet anyone on the Shark Tank panel. Specifically, Mark Cuban or Robert Herjavec are ones that have inspired me most throughout the years. I would love to ask them more about their journey and story as well as get some tips and advice on how to take my brands to the next level. I love that they have dedicated so much of their time and resources to support small brands become successful and inspire the next generation of entrepreneurs.

This was very inspiring. Thank you so much for joining us!