Learn about their early challenges, innovative marketing strategies, and the importance of understanding their blue-collar customer base. Josh shares valuable insights on raising capital, handling price objections, and creating a premium product line in a competitive market.
Whether you’re an aspiring entrepreneur or a seasoned business owner, Josh’s perspectives on brand authenticity, customer loyalty, and the value of hard work will inspire and inform. Tune in for an engaging conversation with one of the industry’s most passionate leaders!
Building a brand is about upholding values and earning customer trust.
Key Takeaway
- Importance of Quality: 1620 Workwear prioritizes high-quality, durable products made in the USA, setting them apart in the market.
- Customer-Centric Approach: Understanding and serving the needs of blue-collar workers is at the core of 1620 Workwear’s strategy.
- Sustainability Commitment: The brand focuses on sustainability with programs like the Patina Collection, using best-in-class fabrics and manufacturing processes.
- Innovative Marketing: Leveraging relationships with athletes and utilizing strong visuals helped build early brand awareness.
- Handling Price Objections: Overcoming initial resistance to higher price points by educating customers on the value and longevity of their products.
- Raising Capital: Securing funds through convertible notes and friends and family rounds to support growth and operations.
- Product Evolution: Continual product updates and improvements based on customer feedback ensure relevance and quality.
- Authenticity and Trust: Building a brand on authenticity, honesty, and trust resonates deeply with customers.
- Team and Culture: Creating a strong team culture that believes in the brand and its mission is essential for long-term success.
- Entrepreneurial Resilience: The journey of entrepreneurship is challenging, requiring relentless persistence, hard work, and a willingness to take risks.
View Written Interview
Hey everybody, welcome back. Man oh man do I've got an exciting episode for you today where I'm gonna be speaking with my friend Josh Walker who's the co-founder and CMO of a killer brand called 1620 Workwear and we're gonna be talking about all things entrepreneurship, brand building, marketing, you name it. So strap in and get your notepad out cause here we go. Josh, welcome to the podcast.
Awesome to be on here, man. Thanks so for having me.
I'd love for you to just kick things off and tell everybody a little bit about 1620 Workwear.
For sure, we're a fully direct consumer workwear brand, also fully made in the USA. We started the company in 2016. We basically didn't sell our first item online until 2017. You mainly distributed direct consumer. We do do some B2B and uniform and logo wear for a number of companies. It's kind of like our, our omnichannel approach to it. Started basically my dad's bar, my business partner and I, you know, we can get into kind of the idea of kind of why we're not to the category, but started like,
two guys with not a lot of money to kind of throw at it and just, you know, no heat, know, no bathroom, just like kind of an old barn. And we built it up to a pretty good sized company. You know, we're 20 employees now in the 10 ,000 square foot building and we've raised some capital and just kind of fully going after we were able to double the business for a few years in a row here and just, you know, working on growth, playing the internet game every day and trying to give the working guy just better gear, workwear in general as a real devalued category.
arguably more wasteful than fast fashion. think work guys, working guys go through their work pants faster than young ladies go through some of the stuff they buy at Zara. And we also are trying to really be the most sustainable brand in the categories. We've got a really interesting sustainability program called the Patina Collection, similar to like a Patagonia one -wear protection. And, you know, I probably went bit longer in the but yeah, that's 1620 workwear. Our website is 1620usa
Love it.
Yeah, I love it. So maybe tell the story like how how you and your co -founder, how'd you come up with the idea and what inspired you to enter the workwear market?
For sure.
Yes, you know, most of the idea in the brand trust lies in my business partner, Ted Deinus Ennis, who's a great guy. I've been friends with him for 20 years now. And at the time I was on a two time on tour to the first company I tried to start. People are in helmet, skateboard, snowboard, cycling, helmet brand. We were running that a Southern Massachusetts and I go to trade shows for that company at the time. Ted had started a ski wear brand. She was, you both can come from the action sports industry. We'd see each other at trade shows.
At the time he left shoes and had took an opportunity to move to mainland China. So he was living in mainland China managing a massive manufacturing facility over there, making like all like outdoor stuff like North Face, Bony, Rafa Tarek's, managing a major turnover. And we'd see each other at international trade shows like the ISPO trade show, which is a big snow sports trade show in Germany. And we've always kind of wanted to start something together, him and I, we kind of thought that like our skill sets complemented a lot of each other.
He was basically getting like his doctoral degree in clothing manufacturing while there like this KTC the factories that is like one of the top manufacturers in Asia for like tape seams and technical garments. I was always rocking car. I came from a blue collar family. My dad was a builder. My grandfather was a builder. My brother's a golf course superintendent. So it just always around the trades. I powdered nails in the summertime and helped frame houses and things, you know, through my way through college and
you know, he, one of his bigger customers over there was a, was a work program for the European marketplace. And what he kind of saw with the European, you know, marketplace and culture was they were taking best in class fabrics and taking a lot of things from the outdoor industry and kind of putting them into work because the apprenticeship program and just things specifically in Bavaria and Germany, just different in the States, a lot of young people go into the trades in Europe. and we kind of saw that that was just kind of starting to happen, happen culturally here where there's a skilled, skilled gap kind of shortage and skilled labor shortage
So he had work where it's also just a, it's a better category when it comes to clothing for like evergreen products. And you don't have to reinvent the wheel every year as hardcore as if you're like a North Face's snow collection or these guys have to reinvent the wheel every year. There's a ton of waste, there's a ton of stuff that hits the gray market. And also like it was a cluster that's starting to make more money. And we kind of pegged, we met and talked about it. We kind of pegged it
And sometimes something's gonna have to give or like people aren't gonna look down their nose at plumbers the way they did in, you know, when we first started talking about in 2015, like, oh, this guy's fixing my toilet, my house, like blah, blah, blah. You know, we're in the world we're in today, that guy's making 150 to 200 bucks an hour, you gotta wait a couple of weeks for him to get into your house. It's just, everything's really shifted where there was so many kids coming to college and so much white collar talent and the trades were just, they weren't respected, they were looked down upon. you know, we thought like, let's make something that's better.
You know, you know a lot of again like a lot of the product ideas in the fabric say Ted already knew what he wanted to make He always already knew the silhouettes like he'd been bringing on and thinking about it for a while So, you know back from mainland China. I left burn and we kicked it off and we made initial launch collection You know, we wanted to use fabrics that have never been used in the category before and and they're insanely expensive You know our our working gear is anywhere from like 2 to 4x more expensive than say like a Carhartt Which is the biggest, you biggest brand in the space
Thought we were out of our minds, but we pegged this guy was already earning and was going to start to earn even more and there were going to be some of the highest earnings of consumers out there. And there was all these premium products that already existed for this company. So there would be tools. This is right at beginning, we started to take off and kind of working with the brand really, fishing, got us on. And so you get this cooler that for X, and it was better like,
We wanted to do something similar to that. So we came out with our basically two, one was 174 and one was 198, which at the time everyone was just like, you my friends like you expect me to pay as much for pants, but we put it out there. We built a website, you know, we raised the, and the launch collection kind of sold out in the first week. And then we said, okay, you know, we're onto something. Let's continue to develop the business plan. Let's put together like a friends and family around here and raise some money and
Let's go after it see if we can make it happen. And that was in 2016.
I love it. love it. So do you feel like with the price point and everything like that was an objection you had to handle in the beginning or is it something where your your market just kind of got it? How did that shake
Yeah, we're.
Yeah.
I think price aversion is something that the brand will always deal with, right? think like, but at the end of the day, and a lot of young guys contact me or friends of mine and you know, everyone started clothing brand and a lot of people have started clothing brands and you know, clothing is just, it's a really cool part of our culture. It's something you wear. There's so many different brands. It's just, it's something that, you know, it's your identity. It's the first thing people see when you kind of walk up to them. But I do think that the only way to really go in 2024, especially if you're two guys in a barn is up
I mean, there's no way we're going to able to compete with these big brands when it comes to price point. And there's no way we're going to be able to compete with these big brands in differentiating. We're just making the same stuff. You have to have an insane amount of capital to really have a play with them. And listen, there's some brands that have come into the space with capital and just that. We wanted to create a healthy system. We thought the only way you could
to premium I think in any category, especially in the US.
the hydrogen bottle that you buy on Amazon for 19 bucks or hydro, the Burma ECM -12, and then you're going to sell them for $9. The difference, if in this case it might not be the product quality, it was the product quality and it was the brand. And we wanted to create something that could connect with. And also wanted to make it in the US. Burma is fully manufactured in Asia and still is, and had it been there for a longer time. there's there's a lot of stuff that's
had a great month and that's amazing. I respect the way we did the week. Probably a different way, but you know, American manufacturing only thing. There's such heavy restrictions on manufacturing clothing and washing that it doesn't get greener and the footprint doesn't get any smaller in terms of carbon footprint. So we're both outdoorsmen. We're both heavily involved in the environment. I do conservation work. So we want to make stuff in the U .S. We want to make better stuff.
And unfortunately, you know, making stuff in the U S and using best in class fabrics that are also made in the U S and trims and zippers, it comes with a price. And I think that's a lot of people are just don't really understand, you know, clothing and they go into Walmart, they go into Zara and they see the price point. But, you know, I think it was as, as late as like 1993 and 1994, we were still buying like over 80 % of our clothing was still made in the U S now it's like less than 3%. Right. So the offshoring was, you know, accelerated.
in the 2000s and with it comes like a just an unrealistic price point for like sewing and fully manufactured to be US at the price points that are out there right now. know, so like, you know, half of the cost in our product is fabric, the other half the cost is in labor and if you want the best in class fabrics, costs money. If you want to get the best American sewers to sew your stuff, it costs money, you know. So price aversion is always going to be something we're going to kind of try to, you know, overcome. But I will say that this customer gets
There's a big difference between $150 pair of work boots and a $280 pair of Thorough Goods. Thorough Goods is the best workwear boot. It's made in the US and it costs that much to wear the best stuff. You want to buy a $150 boot, great. It's not going to be as good. It's not going to last as long. And we kind of had to prove that one customer at a time that what we said about the product through that it lasted longer, that it performed better. And Knock On wood, we've been able to do that and we're still going strong.
Yeah, that's awesome. I mean, here I am with my about a hundred dollar water bottle. Never spent that much on a water bottle in my life. Holy smokes. But it's got some cool tech in it. So there you go. I got sold on it. Right. And I mean, I think what you're saying is rings true because it's it's such a I mean, I was shocked when I learned that the the fashion industry is one of the only industries that like hasn't had inflation at
Nice.
Yeah. Yup.
Like in the 70s you bought a t -shirt for $10 and you can still buy a t -shirt for $10 right and so I mean it's it's and so I think you're ready thing on one hand there's a side of us There's the consumers that are just used to throwing stuff away Right and just kind of get just been trained that way but then there's also this huge group of conscious consumers that are absolutely
Hmm. Yep.
wanting to know where their dollars are going, wanna support brands that are making a difference, making an impact. And I think a lot of people are, with all the documentaries out there and everything else, they're becoming more and more aware. I think it's definitely more in the fashion world that it's becoming more well known, but that has a trickle down effect regardless, as fashion does literally. But yeah, mean
Mm.
sure. Yeah, for
I'm sure you're having to handle less objections these days as it relates to some of that stuff that you did when you started, I
Yeah, for sure. And like, you know, on the inflation topic, like, you know, we have seen price points kind of grow up, go up with other brands, but only until very recently. You know, like the average pair of work pants right now is like the $79 range when it used to when we started, it was more like in the $59 range. That's only happened in the last few years. And I think you're right. I think like we hadn't seen the cost of T -shirt go up or slow because fabric, my partner loves to say, he always says, I'm copying a little bit, but fabric is a commodity. Everyone's paying the same price for fabric. like what drove my business partner,
the craziest and why he really wanted to do it here is like, you know, like this cotton would come from the US and it would come over, some of the cotton would get like milled or whatever in Asia, it would go back and forth, back and forth, back and forth and final product. A lot of is still made in US. Fabric out of Fall River, Massachusetts called Tweed. It's the best four way stretch fabric in the world in our opinion. There's a brand out of Switzerland called Shola that probably brought it in. It's used by Nike.
and the NFL on -field jerseys used by Arcterix throughout their line. It's been used by some top tactical brands. And it's right here in Fall River, Massachusetts. And we actually cut and sew the pant here in Massachusetts as well, that we use the fabric in two specific products, pants and shorts. So it's like 100 % made in our home state and shipped out of Massachusetts. And, you know, I'm super proud. I know Teddy is as well, too. Like, it doesn't get any more sustainable or more hometown.
than that, right? We're able to make a $198 work plan in our home state and sell it around the world, right? We sell around the country, like our biggest states, California. you know, we employ people in Massachusetts to do it. We help employ this fabric mill in Massachusetts as well too. I'm super, super proud of that. You know, like we could make flannels offshore and be driving nicer trucks and make a lot of money doing that. But I think like, you know, we're entrepreneurs, we want to make money, but at the same
I do think that it's the entrepreneurs in the world today and young entrepreneurs who are listening to this or existing entrepreneurs, it's our duty. it's kind of our, it's our, we have to like think about things differently, right? We can't just be drop shipping stuff that's made in like some abyss that, you know, affects human beings and their lives. And we have to, we have to, you have to own it. We got to do things that are right. And I think, listen, I sold millions, know, tens of millions of expanded polystyrene helmets.
I have to undo some of those damage, stuff will be in the environment forever. you know, have opportunities and I'll try to do good stuff, you know, like that's, and there's a lot of great brands that have done it, you know, whether it's the sock brand that I'm spacing on the name bomb is socks, right? I mean, there's some great cause market behind that. They've been insanely successful in like homeless dudes need socks, right? That makes everyone feel good about it. I'm proud when I get on a Greensboro, North Carolina, or I go to Texas or I go to my factory in here in Massachusetts and I see, you know, what we're doing.
One of the things that makes me the most proud is that we're able to kind of do that in the US because I think there's super important jobs. know, these, these proletariat like sewing jobs are super important for first and second generation Americans. need to exist for people to come to this country and bring their family here. we don't have any those jobs. There's only so many people that can cut hair and serve hamburgers. Right. So, you know, that's my little soapbox on it. think manufacturing is super important.
No, I love it though, because it's it's it is and I think I mean, like, we all do that, right? I'm proud that my car was made in Detroit and my couple of my watches were made in Detroit. And right. I love that aspect. Right. And and and so and it's it's an easy thing to get behind. But I as a as a customer, but I think one of the things that you're hitting on, which is super important and actually
Alright.
I think there's almost an argument to be made. You can sometimes have a much higher ROI in that instance. And what I mean by that is because, yeah, you can produce a product for cheaper and make more margins there. But on the flip side, you're building a brand and you're building a strong team. And when you have a strong team that believes in the brand, believes in the product, your customer base does as
That just resonates at a much higher frequency that others aren't gonna get, right? mean, we're mentioning Zara, I think that's an easy one to just highlight, right? It's just like, okay, they're just gonna be chasing trends and chasing the next thing and the next thing, and someone's gonna be like, that's cute, I like it, but there's nothing to stand behind, right? People who work there, it's like, it's a job, right? It's not like this super passionate, this thing that you're super passionate about that you go home and you're
No, no, it's good
I feel like I stand for something, right? And I've got a job that's making a difference. And then that's how you retain A players. That's how you attract really high quality talent, right? I think there's all those aspects that actually could produce a higher ROI, especially in the long term, right? Than actually the other end of it, right? I'm sure it could kind of go both ways,
No, that's a really good point. I'm not an entrepreneur for truly altruistic reasons. We're here to make money, we're in the game to win, and I think it also creates value for your brand, and it creates value for what you're building. If there ever is a moment when you money, I think if you do create that unbreakable foundation of who you are, what you stand for, and what you're doing,
There's always going be value in that if you stay kind of true to it. like, listen, we know the brands that seen that were built that way and then they got purchased and by larger companies and what kind of became what happened to those kinds of brands in the clothing space or other kind of space. And that's sort of like the life cycle for a lot of great brands, especially a lot of American made brands that eventually get snatched up. But I think that's what made them valuable in the first place is like, again, like you said, building the supply chain, building the team, building the structure and building that lifetime value with the customer that cares about what you're
Yeah, no, absolutely. And so I'm curious maybe kind of on the fabric side of things. So I know you said kind of traditional workwear often is gonna rely on cotton. And then, you know, with 1620, you chose to focus on this advanced technical fabrics. Like, did that resonate with customers? Is it something you've had to really try to highlight? Like, hey, here's how this feature resonates or translates into a benefit?
To you, like is it something they got or did you have to educate? Like what did that
Yeah, it's a great question. think you sound like a workwear expert. mean, like, listen, at the end of the day, 90 % of dudes are working in jeans. It's exciting as an entrepreneur that's bringing you stuff. A bunch of customers you can convert. They've only worked in jeans. don't understand technical fabric. The successful working guy is a very funny customer. He's driving a $75 ,000 truck.
You know, he either hunts or fishes or skis or snowmobiles. So he owns like all the good, whether it's climb gear, whether it's, you know, one of the top hunting brands like QU or Sikka. He spends money like on all these kinds of things with him. Then he like, he'll wear like, you know, a pair of walls jeans from Walmart, like the cheapest kind of like clothing, because the mentality is I'm just going to destroy it on the job. Like why would I spend a lot of money in it? But you know, to have the $75 ,000 truck, he's putting, you
50 to 60 hours in a week. He's spending so much time in this, you know, cotton gear and like really dawned on me. My dad's still super active guy. He's 77 years old. He's a wild man. He's got a Harley and he rips around all the time. And I was up on a roof with him. Like it was like year three of our business and he was still kind of wearing Carhartts because he hadn't really fully converted some of the stuff we were making and he couldn't move in them. Right. And like no knock on Carhartt because I love that brand. I love some of the guys that are behind the brand that treat us really well. Some great friends from that brand.
right. Yeah. Yeah.
iconic family -owned brand. have a ton of respect for them. that cotton canvas, it doesn't dry. You can't move in it. Everyone knows this. I have pair of cards. You wash it, they stand straight up in the room like you starched them. So that fabric is just archaic. It's stuff that they were using in the 1900s. So we also developed a custom fabric with Cordora called our Stretch Nyko, which is like
But it's thick and stiff in order to...
of nylon cotton with a little bit of spandex in it. It meets like a no melt, no drip standard. So we do have heavyweight fabric. Then we have the very technical stretch fabric. We stayed away from denim because unless you do, know, what Pete and the boys at the main have done at Origin, which is, know, fucking amazing, a ton of respect for guys. They've created their own looms and they're making their own denim. Because you can't even find American denim. I mean, I swear, you can't even find American denim. You can't even buy it at the open market.
It's not even anymore. Brands are Dearborn or whatever. They're very small brands and it's tough to find it. like, know, those guys have been amazing. They had to do it from scratch, right? Because they're insanely resourceful. But to do that is like a massive undertaking as it is. You have to be very capitalized. And those guys are very capitalized. We're still a very, you small company. So we want to, we developed a fabric with Cordora, but like open market fabrics, the best fabrics still aren't widely used because the price point's so high.
We developed our own, we're using an open market that's super specialized and we always use no spec buttons and zippers. And we did have to educate the customer. A reason to believe, a reason to pay money. We're still educating the customer. We're still putting about 65 % to like 60 to 65 % new customers into the funnel every day. And that's still an educational journey and that's still a process. What we're finding is certain fabrics work better for certain jobs and certain vocations.
You know, the coolest thing about 1620, one of the things we're the most proud of is like since inception we have over 65 % repeat cost of rate, right? So like when guys get it, it definitely works for them. It speaks to them and we become their work pen of choice, like we're their quiver. I think what probably hurts us is we make stuff so good and it lasts so long that they don't, you know, like at first the repeat rate was really high the first few years because they were getting their quivers up and now like it's.
You
We see the LTV, you when you're looking at stuff in lifetime, it changes a little because they've got five or six pairs of pants that can go a few years, right? Unless their job is really, unless they're like, my buddy's a union seven iron worker and those guys go through pants. And those guys are the tough iron workers in my opinion, in my experience doing this for eight years, the toughest on gear. Some vocations, can pair of pants that last them three or four years, sometimes, you know, last six months. We fully back it up in the life. So we've got two full time.
Sores in the building right now and you send you send the pants to us or send anything to us that you bought from 1620 We fix it for free. We cover shipping back to you And so like, you know some guys stuff will come in like eight or nine months not a full year and sometimes guys will kind of run for years, but we have to had to educate people then and then you these guys are very loyal customer when they find something that works they find something that works if it's a Red Wing boot, they're gonna wear a Red Wing boot for life. It's
If it's an Occidental Leather Tool Belt, they're going to wear that belt for life. If it's 16 -20 pants, they're going to wear those pants for life.
I love it, I love it. And I mean, I'm curious a little bit, because we're kind of talking about ideal customers and whatnot. I'm curious, how did you identify the ideal customer? then I think along those lines, you just mentioned, hey, there's guys that are a lot harder on their gear, some guys that are not quite as hard on their gear. What strategies have you done to kind of identify the ideal customer and then maybe how to reach
I'm done.
Yeah, know, came into the business planning process, we created some avatars. And I think the one thing that we're pretty lucky with is like, just, you know, I grew up in a very blue collar place with a lot of blue collar friends. know, all my buddies are in the trades. I'm around them all the time. You know, I was a young guy working in the trades that worked in landscape construction. And I was, worked for a home builder for years. And, you know, most of my buddies in high school went into the trades and, know, back then I'm, I'm going to be, I'm going to be
48 September, so I'm no longer a young man, but back then in 94 when you were graduating high school, like if you weren't going to college, it's like you were taking your senior trip to Vietnam or something. Everyone's like, oh, I'll go to college. And all my friends that that in the trades have all been very successful. Some of them have been extremely successful as sole proprietors. So young guys, listen to this. lot of opportunity in the trades. There's lot of opportunity. Whoever wants to start a trade school out there, a welding school, gold mines right
There's a massive skilled labor shortage. I was served an ad last week by Metta where they're teaching kids how to weld in the Metaverse with the Oculus because there's not enough welding schools. And we have to put hundreds of thousands of welders in the field in the next couple of years with these infrastructure bills and no one knows how to weld. So we had a guy working in warehouse who just left to start his own welding school. He's like six kids he's teaching. He's going to try to build up. He's going to rent a building. Golden opportunity for whoever wants to start a trade school to gold mine. But I think like
man
Found it a lot too, so we kind of knew what the customer was. And we did a lot of job set visits. We went out into the wild and went to a lot of job sites and we talked to a lot of guys. All kinds of different jobs. And what we found was a lot of work around products. So guys were wearing stuff from the outdoor industry, from the fitness industry. The guy was wearing like a hodgepodge of stuff. One of my best friends who I grew up with is a bridge deck repair forum for a company called SBS here in Massachusetts. One of the biggest and best companies in the States owned by the Kappa Luver brothers. They're great people.
He is so insanely tough in his gear, but I went to his house and I'm like, lay out your winter kit for me, lay out what you wear. And he's got a Callaway shirt here and underarmers in here. He's got, you know, maybe a pair of like actual work brand work pants, but it was not a head to toe work kit at all. Right. Because whether some of these work wear brands make base layers and stuff, typically don't make good stuff top to bottom like a Patagonia does. just, they missed the mark and these guys are consumers. They want to wear stuff that they like and everyone likes different stuff. we did a lot of research of like who the guy is and who our customer is.
No, our price point is not for everyone. It's not for like the laborer who has to, maybe has a kid and it's a little maybe expensive form. I think when he buys it, he'll see the value in it because it will last longer. There's a tremendous amount of value in how long it lasts. the sticker, you know, I think people have to in this economy, what's going on? Like we know that $198 pair of work pants is not for everyone, but it is for the guy that is earning and it is for the guy that knows good gear and
And that's kind of who we specialize in. see it also like in the B2B partner we're with. We're talking to a really large construction company right now. In California, could be potentially like our biggest B2B order. They're the best of the best. They do a $10 billion turnover around the world in construction. And they want their guys in the best stuff. They don't want just another Carhartt hoodie. They want an American -made, best fabric, best stuff we can get for our guys. And that's who we're trying to reach and who we're trying to serve.
But it's not a perfect science. think we're always learning every day like who that customer is. We're always learning every day like how to talk to that customer. We're always learning every day like what that customer really wants. And we're always trying to make improvements in our product. We make updates to our product all the time, right? It's not something we're like, that's dumb. We're going to set it like, you know, Ted's the CEO of the company and you know, he's on the ground in factories making updates. He's on the phone looking at stuff like we're always just trying to, we're driven to make the best product we can because
It's just like our word and it's him and I on the line. said, we claim we make the best work brand. We want to stand behind it, right? We didn't ever want to be these guys that are just kind of showing snake oil out there. And because there's enough of that, everyone gets enough of
yeah, no absolutely. And I'll back you up on the trades comment. I can't tell you how many service -based clients we've had that are just crushing it, right? And making good money. I'll never forget, my home inspector was like one of the top home inspectors in the city. like he was a young guy. He he shadowed under.
Question
like one of the old boys in the industry and learned everything he could from him and then was like, cool, now I'm gonna take everything I learned from him, old school, I'm gonna put all the new school spin on it, use the tech, use the iPad, use all the cool software that's out there, run some Google Ads and then he just built it up, right? I mean, we even had a guy on the podcast, Alan Draper, and he was a lawyer and he was tired of it, so he actually ended up starting a pest control company.
Yeah. I Awesome.
and made so much money from his pest control company that now he's like an angel investor. He's invested in all these businesses, he's building up a personal brand, like he's killing it. And just like, yeah, is running a pest control company sexy? No, not necessarily, but is driving around in a new Porsche and all the other stuff sexy? Yeah, nobody cares now what he does, right? This is so funny.
Go must.
I mean, don't know, man. Some dudes love running around too. Some guys aren't like, listen, my nephew's this way. Like we've already got, my brother has a side business he started. We've already got him involved in at 13. Like he can't be in a classroom. can't be on a screen. Some people are just built to kind of be out there. And like, in your dead on, I have a really good friend, Zach down in Rhode Island. He started a company called Downspout. You can Google it and check it out. You know, it's basically like a, it's pressure washing. It's window cleaning. It's like roof pressure washing. It's like specialized for commercial stuff and
He's an awesome guy. He works his ass off and I've watched he's young. He's 26 in like two years, right? He's doing amazing. Ready? And, and, um, I'd be hard pressed to see many young dudes that are doing that well on his own. Like, you know, it's, it's, it's out there. And I think like one thing I can get across in the podcast, it's not always like some econ business that you need to start. If you want to be an entrepreneur, there's a lot of ways to be an entrepreneur. To be honest with you, I've seen more successful entrepreneurs.
Cause I talk and I'm in the space, I know a bunch of operators and a lot of brands, guys that start a lot of stuff and we've raised some money. We've got, you know, guys on our board that are privy to like all the deals because they work there. Some of them are involved with some of the bigger VC funds and I've seen way more success in service -based business than I, in shorter periods of time than I have ever seen any cash and carry you come business. You know, it's just, it's, that's where, and that's where I see some of the bigger deals going on. Like and A is dead outside of service, right? I I see bigger deals happening around service -based businesses getting bought and sold.
I believe it.
Mom and Pop HVAC companies selling for like huge dollars. And I love it because you know how hard that those families have worked to build that business. It's not like, you know, some online tie business or something. It's like it's HVAC. That dude was underneath an AC. He earned that paycheck. And so I love seeing it, man. I love it. And I think that's that's the future because unfortunately we live in a world where, know, outside the baby boomer generation, no one knows how to do it.
yeah. Yep. Yeah.
that no one else is doing it. Myself included, I'm not insanely active. I'm maybe a little better than a couple of generations beneath me. No one's fault, it's just that that's pushed on these generations coming into it. And this stuff, working with your hands, was just something that was important. It wasn't talked about, it wasn't pushed. so sitting in the car, you're like, go get your car fixed.
Yep, oh no, absolutely, absolutely. Yeah, no, it's true. I mean, and you mentioned kind of building brands on a startup budget, and I know a lot of people listening are in that same boat. I mean, I'm curious, what are maybe some creative marketing tactics you use to grow brand awareness for 1620 just without breaking the bank in the early days?
You're going to be waiting a few weeks, you know, for sure.
We were super fortunate in my relationship set specifically as I came from the action sport world working with some really high profile athletes and some really high profile guys. So like in today's world, like the biggest hack for an econ brand is you got a Jocko, you got a Joe Rogan, you got, you know, a musician, you know, like, and these guys are powerful and they can really move brands and like those relationships are earned.
There's nothing fake about it when these guys are back in your brand. either investors, they're either part of it. But they're difficult to achieve. I respect the brands that have those relationships, but they're not easy to achieve and set up. I had some athletes, I had some Olympic medal snowboarders, and had some famous skateboarders, and some guys that I was able to of seed some product with early. It only took a little bit to kind of get it started. Our business was so, so small at the very early stages, but every little thing,
how to think I can't thank those guys enough. I mean, one guy that I have to give such love here and he's a member of our company and over initial content, all of our photos came from a guy by the name of Brian Nevins, briannevins .com. He's in my opinion, he's the best photographer in the world. I he shot everyone from Sting to Rolling Stones to Big Poppy to like, you know, local events and sailing teams and skateboarders and action sport guys. And he helped create just like really amazing imagery early on when we probably
did not have product that warranted the way he made stuff look. I he always said to me, know, it's not the arrow, it's the Indian. And he's just, he's an amazing guy. And he was able to really capture our brand in a way that gave us a great position. But he also had his network of folks, right? And, he kind of came along for the ride for percentage of the company early on and helped us network a ton of things early and just get gear out to certain people. And then just relentless persistence in terms of communicating and hammering and talking to people and figuring
And also in 2016, the internet was a little more friendly place. Not to dissuade anybody right now, but it was easier to get eyeballs on stuff. It was less competitive. Cacks were cheaper and all these kind of things. we could start up a website and stand up some social media and it was a little bit easier to get traction. That world just evolved so quickly. There wasn't as many channels and timing was right.
Hahaha. Sure.
We were ahead of a lot of the new work where brands are in the space, whether it be a TrueWork or a Brunner and these brands in the space, we were on the field before they were. So it was just kind of good time as well. yeah, mean, there's a lot of like, it was scary. I don't think you could, if you're not scared as an entrepreneur, you're starting a company and you're not really an entrepreneur starting a company or you were born with a lot of money and you can burn it, it doesn't really scare you as much. I there's a lot of insanely.
sleepless nights and a lot of days of I didn't know what else to do but just be in the office and grab because I can't fail, can't fail, can't fail. My business partner's the same way. We both left really good jobs and put it all on the line. Everyone thought we were crazy to do what we did and we just. And hammered it out and thank God I had a partner. I don't think I would have been able to get here and hopefully it feels the same way without a partner. think partner issues are very tough. Some of the best advice I ever got was partners are for dancing. They're very tough, they're very tough to make work.
and last a long time. And I think we've done a really good job getting this far together and doing what we've done. But it was definitely nice having a partner to commiserate with being like, yo, I'm broke. Are you broke too? What are we gonna do for lunch today? I don't know. I didn't put gas in my car, Nick, and you come pick me up. like, you know, we put every dime we had into it. So before we raised the friends and family around, we were operating on a few. There was some debt kind of going up. And so it was an interesting journey. It's been an interesting journey to kind of get here. you know.
We did raise some capital after we started our initial deal. We did it with a convertible note and our friends and family around and we some good representation that at least advised us to do it with a convertible note. Then we were able get the flywheel spinning. We had some cash flow. Then it was just sort of like, right, how much stuff can we sell? Where do we sell? Do we sell to retailers? Do we just sell it ourselves? And it's kind of learning the whole thing from scratch, distribution channel is how it
I love it. love it. And you know, we've mentioned some pretty established players, right? Like the Carnhearts of the world and whatnot. mean, what, what disruptive strategies do you feel like you've used to position yourself for success and, maybe even burn? Cause obviously burn was in the same, was in the same boat, right? Like you've got major established brands in that space too. And then burn became like a household name, right? I mean, I, I, right. It's just like out of nowhere, I feel
Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah, both disruptors, mean, Bernie even more so because there was really big players in that cover. No one was doing anything different. So we came to the market with like insanely radical different shapes and looks and they were just immediately copied by the entire industry. there was a lot of trade, dress and trademark issues and went through years of trying to stop the big brands and kind of copying us. But that was insanely disruptive at the time. And again, like timing was a really big part of that. We built
that company up to at its height, close to 17 million pretty quick. think like in the first four and a half, five years, it was wild, right? And we had like, know, 45 international distributors and 25 full -time employees. I was on the road like seven months out of the year. was an awesome time. The action sports were just popping. had great athletes. It eventually was unsustainable because the big players would create their own how much and just leverage it in against targets.
We were able to disrupt the whole industry and get like this place and it became really tough to kind of manage. Then we kind of, we pivoted to become a bike brand and an e -bike brand. And it's still a very strong brand. I still talk to those guys. I still have a little bit of skin in the game and they actually had a really good year last year. They found a lot of strength in the commuter market and the e -bike market. On the 1620 side of the ball, you know, there's one 800 pound gorilla in the room that's easy to kind of poke a stick at. And because it's such an old brand, we came up with some interesting taglines like,
like not your father's work wear and just kind of like his car was just like old school heritage brand. like, you do you want to wear the same pants that they wore in the 1800s and they're building the railroad or this and that. Like we always kind of wanted to, I used to always say it's funny cause it dropped a work wear line, I used to always say like, want to be like the full. And Ted, we have the Arcterix brand and our early silhouettes were actually designed and laid out by a guy named Conroy Noctigal, who's one of the original designers at Arcterix and helped develop.
their whole edge veil, or excuse me, valence line. So we had some forward looking designs and stuff, and like yeah, we tried to call them out a lot. In those early days, you could get away with a lot of like call out marketing guys would come in with holes in their pants, competitors, we'd kind of call them out. I think the price point itself was disruptive. We were able to get a lot of good earned early press, because we were claiming we wanted to be the Yeti. There's a famous article that I think Gear Jockey did, and those guys are awesome. This brand aims
to be the Yeti of the work wear market. Because there was no $600 cooler before Yeti. There was no $200 work pant before 1620. There's still no $200 work pant, right? We're the only guys who sell our gear at our price point in this category. No one really even comes close that's not an FR product. And that was our goal, disrupted by like price and quality and what we're trying to do that it was so like, when we first went to meetings with Trending Race Capital, and like, you know, we had some great people early on that helped us navigate some amazing relationships.
These guys are just look at us and to be like, you're trying to tell me, know, know, a carpenter or plumbers going to pay this much for pants because like the white collar investing world at that time, like they were so disconnected from the blue collar world and what these guys were actually earning. Like if someone comes in their house to hang cabinets, like the man isn't even dealing with it's the wife. He's in the office, in the office in seven, right? He's running a hedge fund. Like it's, they just, they have idea, right? These guys are just, they're completely detached from that world. They have no idea how much they should pay sea of green when they come to their house. They don't.
They just they're oblivious to it, which is in the favor of the blue collar guy, which it's kind of up charge these guys in the marketplace, but they couldn't get their head around. People just laughed us out of their office. You know, like people like, I will give you a year. You've got a business in a year of the Instagram hate early on. Like you guys be done in six months. Like it was it was fuel for sure. Like you're all right. Let's let's see what's up. You know, and we're heading into our ninth year. Right. So. But yeah, everyone thought we were out of our mind. I don't thought we were nuts because like literally at that time, we were like almost for
the category, right? And we still have a pant that's, that's 274 and one pant that's 228. You know, so like the average pair of like working pant as a car or a jean is like, yeah, it's in the 50 to $70. So but um, you know, it's, it's a different product. It's a better product and cost more money.
Yeah, but but I mean some of these guys go upscale to right they want to look nice. They want to dress nice They start buying designer jeans. You're gonna put $200 on a nice pair of designer jeans I mean, it's just that's absolutely right. You're gonna like you want to look nice You want to look classy when you go out with your lady like it just happens, right? I mean, it's just
For sure. Yeah. Yeah.
I'm talking to a group of guys in Manhattan that run this amazing car club and they work on some of the best fun automobiles. What do think those mechanics want to wear, man? They're not wearing Dickies. They want the best stuff. It's nothing but snap on the best tools in the shop. There's levels to this game. There's levels to it in terms of this place. There's only one Festool. There's only one thorough good.
You know, then I'll like this there's most this game. There's brands that do it really well and this brand is the same Five years was the same literally in the same factory Brands as one locally. It's this car. It's a sink It's the same offshore boots just in it. Just spin this whole thing. I'm like, it's this this and this not it ain't it's a new brand It's great marketing and in much respect the game is the game but like we're doing something that's
It's truly different in the category, you know?
Yeah, I mean, I'm curious maybe like on that in your opinion, like what are the key elements that make a brand authentic and resonate with its audience?
Super good question. And I don't know if I really have the answer because it's something that we kind of work at every single day. think like, you know, and I'm going to curse you, but it's not a bad one. I just think that consumers are sick of the bullshit. And when, and when money gets tight, the chickens come home the roost and that comes to the surface a lot more. You can sit and claim all day long that, you know, we're, we're selling direct cause we want to cut the middleman out. And then, you know, a year later, open up, you know, 40 retailers throughout the country. It's just
If you don't think consumers sees that, you know, like you're fooling yourself. don't think it's very savvy in today's world is the consumer. And the most savvy consumer, in my opinion, is the craftsman, the blue collar guy, the guy that has to work on things and fix things every day and build things like he's the, sees things and he sees quality for what it is and what they are. And you cannot bullshit this customer. And a lot of brands try and I think in the general consumer world, we're all sick of
Mm -hmm.
Listen, we all order stuff on Amazon every day. I just bought an electric toothbrush yesterday. It's a lot of hot garbage. There's a lot of hot garbage out there. And I think as we move forward, consumerism is going to have to change. don't think inflation is that's visiting us this year and isn't going to come, know, seagull fly over us again in the coming future. Things are going to continue to get more expensive. In the world of clothing manufacturing, there is an exodus from Asia.
And there has been for years and Vietnam and Bangladesh and India and sub -Sahara Africa with massive, you know, Chinese ships offshore managing production. These are the future of things. And there's great brands of the world, like whether it be a Caterpillar that makes like some of the best machines in the world in America, but still like offshore, like all their clothing in some places that are darling, you know, and Caterpillar hit me up, make some stuff for you. But it's like, I think
This customer respects the American made, they respect the no bullshit thing and I think to be authentic, if you respect the authentic marketplace, you only have a couple shots of like not doing what you say. you know, thank God I have an insanely talented partner on the product side that when I, as I was building the brand and marketing it, you know, most of our claims, you know, if not 99 .9 % of them have all been true, you know, and we stand behind the product, you know, like it's crazy that you offer a lifetime warranty on a pant that expensive.
And it's wild how little repair or return we see. It's like it's minuscule because the product is so good and these guys are so used to crappy product. If they get a year out of the product, they get a year and a half out of the product. It's been so valuable to them. It doesn't matter if they blow the plug. wouldn't know about the warranty because it's like, it's fair. got a year and a half out of that pan. My last pan I got four months out of. know, we get some guys always send their pants back and some guys we've repaired, you know, 10 or 11 pair of pants for,
Soon
We stand behind that and like early on we were raising money and capital and we're talking to people that was a concern. Like what happens if you guys scale and your return rate and can you manage this and will it be like LLB and you know, and this customer is honest. He's never tried to take advantage of it. Just like we do a firefighter first responder, military discount 365 days a year. There's no login. There's no like ID me. Why would we give a percentage of our sales or pass that cost off to the customer?
If you're gonna contact us and tell us you're a police or a fireman or you're on service or you're a veteran and you're lying about that to get a discount, whatever, here's your discount. But those dudes are honest about this stuff. They're not going to do it. And that's just kind of how we've always tried to operate in the space is just be just kind of who we are and really be honest. When we're not the dudes that are out there, there's definitely a few videos of me on Instagram, but we're not the dudes that are out there taking videos of ourselves talking about our company every single day, know, doing like.
walk into the office, this is what we're doing, look at us and everything. It's just like, it's not about us. Like it's about the dude who buys our pants because he's sick of blowing his crotch out at six o 'clock when he gets to the job site. It's really honestly about the working guy. Like we wanted to champion this guy since day one by giving him better product. It's always been about that for us. This is not an ego thing where it's about us and our company. And there's just so much of that. And everyone's just inundated with that stuff all day long. And I
is like, do what you say you're going to do in the marketplace from the consumer. know, don't be something and someone you're not. like, don't create a company for a personal platform. Like beat your chest and put yourself on flyers and stuff. Like everyone's just going to think you're a clown. Like, I'm sorry. They are like, you're not a celebrity. And like, if you're going to try to use your brand to become a celebrity, then like, all right, man, good luck. There's not, there's only so many Elon Musk's, you know, like make good quality for the consumer to do what you say you're going to do.
and create those relationships for life and you're gonna win.
Yeah, no absolutely and and I love what you said because so many people don't pay attention to it. There's a there's an awesome book I can't remember the it's it's like the storytellers I can't remember the name of it I'll remember it but they talk about like how your website should flow and who the hero is right because in every in every you know in every story there's sort of like the hero and the narrator right and all this stuff
the best brands in the world, the website is the narrator and the hero is the customer, right? And it's just, it's the best, those are the best brands and those are the best websites because it does, it feels like it's for me. And especially when you are talking to your ideal customer profile and you have that narrowed in, it's like, okay, I'm running on this website and I'm like, this is either for me or not. And if it's not, I bounce and there's no worries there. But if it is for
Hmm, that's really cool
I'm gonna write that down.
Mm.
I resonate with it right away. I see myself on the site and you're totally right. It's rampant in the agency world even where I see it left and right. There's an agency that I know them pretty well. I've taken a couple employees of theirs. They're their homepages, these two guys next to each other with their Rolexes. And it's like, you're pushing away so many people just with that.
Yeah, it's odd. It's just strange. Yeah, for sure. for sure. Yeah, absolutely.
Right? And again, yeah, if you're a celebrity, then run with it. Go for it. Obviously, you want to use that. That's different. But everybody else, it's, and I think there's still a time and a place for the founder story. People still love that. So don't, you know, don't, don't, don't, I hope people listening aren't taking me the wrong way because we'll run the founder story all day. You know, why did I come up with this brand? You know, why did I decide to use this fabric? All that stuff. That's important. People want to hear that story, but absolutely.
Yeah
can't be all about you, it's gotta be about the customer, why this is the best product for you, et
Yeah, if you're always like, yeah, if you're always like, yeah, you're always like this, we did this. Look at me and look at me. It's just like, like it might work first because you feel like an underdog to people, but it is no staying power. And the product has to be the hero. And we're like what you're delivering to the consumer that has to come first. And like, for us, it's real simple. Like we just, you know, we saw all of our friends working in shitty stuff and we want to make better stuff for them. We're doing it for them. And I
The guys that get it, have insane loyalty with them. It might not be the best advice because it's a slower, right? And some of these brands where the guys are on every single post is them talking about their company. They're doing way more rev than we are. So like, I don't know everything here, right? I mean, like I'm not the most successful entrepreneur in the world. I mean, I've built a couple brands and we're doing good, but like, that's my personal view on it. And as a consumer, that's what moves a needle for me.
If Kelly Slater says he's making product, I'm gonna buy it because it's Kelly Slater. But if the guy that's making his fins or whatever, if it's all about him, and he's just talking about himself, for me personally it's a huge turn off. think when you talk about with this agency, I get a lot of that as well too. Then you go to these companies guys websites, like the Megalo mania pops off the screen. You're like, I don't wanna work with this guy. You know that this is gonna be a difficult thing to work with. And there's not a lot of tolerance for bullshit in this world. think if you spend any time on a job site,
if you really actually spent time on a job site. You could talk about that like, my friends are this, my friends are that, but like, have you put a belt on and spent time on the job site? And then you'll know that like, there's just no room for it. And it doesn't exist in this world. And I think these customers appreciate if it doesn't exist with your brand and your marketing, and they can relate to it. And I think the brands that do the best in this space are tool brands. There's just no BS with tool brands. all about everything they work on is trying to make
Yeah
the job more efficient and faster for these and these guys love tools right there nerds over tools and Can't lie Yeah, and I've been yeah, if it's a POS it'll blow up these guys hands in a couple days and One of my favorite guys if you're in the trade you know form is Joe canning the Canadian carpenter. He's just like an awesome duty to become a friend of mine He's like an amazing influencer in the space and you know he's he's hasn't been in it. He's you know
yeah, and you can't lie, right? It either works or it doesn't, and everyone's gonna know.
Supports a lot of brands, a lot of tool testing, given us a bunch of amazing feedback. And I respect him the most because early on in our relationship, he was just like, you guys go, know, go after yourselves. Like this stuff's crazy and he was gonna buy it. And then like there were some fit issues and some stuff we sent him. He called us out on, he's just like, no, no, like it's gotta be better. It's gotta be this, it's gotta be that. And like now we have a good relationship. We sent him gear. He's actually a customer. He's bought some stuff, but he pushed us to be better. He pushed us to be legit in the space.
I have love and respect for that guy forever for that. Real ones respect real ones. And I think we needed to hear some of the things he said to us. we didn't just blow it off and say, oh, he's a shitty customer. Onto the next influencer we could pay to do stuff. We're not that brand that's raised $30, $40 million to go out and burn cash. So we've had to earn customers, every single customer, one pair of pants at a time. And we want to continue to do it that way. Hopefully
scaled up like it is now, but we want each customer to have that feeling. Every pair of our pants is hand to order. Personal touch goes into every product that we use to build it. And we think it's important.
Yeah, no, I love it. The book is building a story brand. Finally remembered. Building a story brand.
I like that. like that. I love the customers that here on a website. It makes me think about some dev updates we should be doing right now. That's really cool. That's a good takeaway for me.
It's a great it's a it's a really great book. Josh man really awesome advice. I really appreciate it. Any particular maybe advice for aspiring entrepreneurs who are looking to build something meaningful and impactful?
I read a really cool thing last week and some people have probably seen it online, but it was, you know, it said life is hard, right? Like it started off by saying, you know, marriage is hard. Divorce is hard. Choose your heart. the job you hate is hard. F**k chasing your dream is hard. You know, choose your heart. You know, I think if you've had aspirational, you know, inklings to be an entrepreneur and you have an idea and you want to go do it and happy in your place or what you're doing for work, it's a short trip, man. And,
You should go after it because that's why that's the greatest thing about being an American is like, you know, everyone complains, regardless of your political ideation, everyone has something to complain about, like about this country. Like what world can like someone say they want to start a workwear brand and that there's a dude like Zuckerberg who built a platform where like you can go toe to toe with a $2 billion workman and people can see your stuff. The same people who see who sees like you like how cool is it that we live in this in this country where you could do this?
If you've got the balls and you want to work hard, you can do it. And I think like that is so cool. And I think you cannot take that for granted. And I think if you don't take that chance, you're like, you're selling yourself short. You're selling the country short with the opportunity that you live here. You can do it. Like there's so many places I've been around the world, man. I've spent time in a lot of places that are way less fortunate than ours. And I got to say like so many young people would kill for just the opportunity to even have the idea, even think about, you know,
leave the 60 hours a week they have to put in to help feed their family. And you're sitting there, know, strolling on Instagram, like, should I go start my own company? I really don't like, you know, the vacation time, the job sucks. It's like, you know, you should do it because we've got to, you live in America and you have the opportunity to make that choice to go off your own and try to start your own company. And like, it's so cool. I appreciate it so much. I appreciate it every day that I was able to do this stuff and build this company and interact with these guys. And we're fortunate to have it. So my advice
If you thought about it, be stupid. Be smart, especially if you've got a family of stuff on the line. And then, you know, before you take dollar number one, get a good business lawyer. That's my advice.
I love it, I love it. It's so true, yeah. Good lawyer's great. Be careful who you get into bed with, i .e. who your business partners are, right? Make sure it's somebody you trust, but a business partner's a great asset to have. If you don't know where to find one, start networking, right? I know you're a great networker, and that's just start going to events, start going to things. I mean, I think that's the other beauty of it, as well as...
For sure. Yeah. Absolutely.
Bye now, everyone.
You know, in most places, I know there's certain areas of America where there are more remote, but in most places, especially any city, even a small city, they've got so many things to support local businesses. Right? Like I, you know, I tried to start a very local business in college and I couldn't believe the support that there was. Like even me as a college student trying to start this business where, you know, I could talk to city officials, there were forums, SBA wants to help you out.
For sure.
Like we were getting sponsorships from local banks, local hospitals, right? Like everyone was interested and wanted to support kind of a local business too, right? And so absolutely, I'm with you. And I loved you said too about not trading away, know, not shying away from the trades because I think it's, is, it's nuts, right? is like all our, every one of our service -based clients is having problems hiring people, like hands down, right? They're like, leads are not my problem, hiring people is my problem.
Yeah. Yeah.
So
I watched my brother leave a really big golf course superintendent job at a really big course. Huge six -figure salary to start his own business and it's insanely successful and his biggest problem is finding some help and getting some more trucks and vehicles and I think like, listen, I think don't get pigeonholed in just this DTC e -com world. You can advertise for service businesses on Meta too. Like, use the same vehicles and the same mechanisms. It's just different businesses, much better margins.
You know?
Yeah, yeah, no, it's true. Absolutely. And it's like in my eyes, it's like the franchise, right? Franchises are way more likely to be more successful, you know, to be successful than, you know, a non -franchise business. And I feel like it's gotta be the same with service -based businesses over, you know, over whatever. SaaS, you probably gotta raise money. Ecom, right, there's always inventory and all these other things. Like service -based at least is just, you know,
Yeah
put in your time and you do the work and that's not but Josh I really really appreciate everything man it has been a great episode and if anybody wants to reach out to you any anywhere good for them to reach
It's been awesome. Yeah, I appreciate it too. For sure.
Anyone can email me direct Josh at one six two zero USA comm if you're listening to this you got businesses that you run logo where? And you want to buy some American -made stuff or support what we're doing I'm the owner handles all that B2B and enterprise so you just feel free to reach out to me our website is 1620 USA comm our Instagram handle is one six two zero USA and really appreciate being on Samir I love to talk obviously and just super passionate about what we're doing and I appreciate every day I get to do
that runs true, it speaks true, man, and I love it. So I celebrate you and your success and definitely encourage people to check you
Taylor, man, have a good day. Talk to you soon. Later, Samir.
Thanks
