The direct-to-consumer marketplace has never been more competitive. So, what separates the brands that succeed from those that don’t? We speak (and drink) with Founder & CEO of Brunt Workwear, Eric Girouard, about how he built a thriving online brand just seven months after launching.
Brian Weinstein: Welcome, everybody to Sippin’ & and Shippin’. I’m your host, Brian Weinstein. We’ll be kicking it here every other Thursday, quenching your thirst for an insider’s take to enhance your customer’s experience. Grab your drink of choice, kick back. It’s Sippin’ & Shippin’ time.
All right, everybody. Welcome to another episode of Sippin’ & Shippin’. I’m your host, Brian Weinstein, and I’m here. As always, partner in crime, drinking buddy, Caitlin Postel.
Caitlin Postel: Hey Brian, how are you today?
Brian Weinstein: I’m doing very well. Thank you. And I am here with Eric Girouard of BRUNT Workwear. How are you today, Eric?
Eric Girouard: Doing great. Excited to be here. Thanks for having me.
Brian Weinstein: Yeah. Awesome. Awesome. And we’re actually very excited because this is a happy hour episode of Sippin’ & Shippin’.
Caitlin Postel: Woo hoo.
Brian Weinstein: As everyone knows, we go back and forth. This could be a morning coffee or mid-afternoon coffee episode, but today just felt right for a happy hour episode. So, Eric, give us a little bit of background on what you’re drinking today.
Eric Girouard: So, I was going down the aisle deciding if I was going to go with my tried and true Bud Light, but decided to go local with 617. So, Lord Hobo is the local brewery here and they make a 617 for the area code for Boston that happens to be 6.17% alcohol content. So, keeping it local where we’re based. So, yeah. Luckily it’s not too strong, but it’s not the Bud Light that I’m used to.
Brian Weinstein: Yeah, yeah. Exactly, exactly. And actually, as everybody knows, I’m big into tequila, so I’m always on tequila, tequila on the rocks. I do from time to time a Miller Light, but for today’s episode in honor of you being up in the New England area, we went with a Sam Adams Summer Ale.
Eric Girouard: Awesome. I love that.
Brian Weinstein: I’m assuming this is out pretty early or is this typically the time they come out?
Eric Girouard: So, it’s funny. They bring it out. They probably brought it out two months ago, which is way too early. But Winter’s out in October… It’s like fashion. They’re out a month-
Brian Weinstein: Getting out earlier and earlier.
Eric Girouard: Yep, yep.
Brian Weinstein: That’s good though. Because you know what? Two months ago is when you start to need that taste of summer.
Caitlin Postel: Exactly.
Brian Weinstein: Something to kind of hold you over when you hit like the dog days of February.
Caitlin Postel: It’s like Halloween costumes in August.
Brian Weinstein: Yeah, exactly.
Caitlin Postel: You don’t need them, but you kind of want it.
Brian Weinstein: Exactly. And who doesn’t want to dress in a costume in August, right?
Caitlin Postel: And drink summer ale.
Brian Weinstein: Exactly.
Caitlin Postel: Let’s get it.
Eric Girouard: Exactly. I almost went with Sam Adams myself, but I was like, “That’s too obvious for a Boston person.” So, I went with the secretive one that you guys wouldn’t even know of and you probably can’t even get outside of Boston.
Brian Weinstein: Right.
Eric Girouard: But so, we hit both angles.
Brian Weinstein: Yeah. No, no, no. It’s a good call. And I know you know we’re from… Caitlin And I are both from Jersey.
Eric Girouard: Yep.
Brian Weinstein: Born and raised. And you were from originally?
Eric Girouard: From Connecticut, like two hours South of Boston, not the nice parts of Connecticut that you hear about.
Brian Weinstein: Yep.
Eric Girouard: The harder parts of Connecticut.
Brian Weinstein: And you’re a Red Sox fan?
Eric Girouard: It’s a funny story. I grew up a die hard Yankees fan.
Brian Weinstein: Okay.
Caitlin Postel: Hey.
Eric Girouard: My dog was named Jeter.
Brian Weinstein: Okay.
Eric Girouard: I didn’t realize until I went to college in Boston how ironic it was that I actually… My dog was a Boston terrier named Jeter after Derek Jeter.
Brian Weinstein: Right.
Eric Girouard: But once I went off to college, I kind of gave up on following baseball and after the Jeter era.
Brian Weinstein: Yeah.
Eric Girouard: And so I wouldn’t say I’m a diehard Sox fan, obviously it’s the only team I really even hear about or watch.
Brian Weinstein: Yep.
Eric Girouard: But you can’t go 180 on from a Yankees fan to a Red Sox diehard.
Brian Weinstein: No, no, you definitely cannot. And I’m a diehard Mets fan. So, that means that the Red Sox are my second favorite team because I was raised, you’re either you’re fan of the Mets or anybody playing the Yankees is the way it goes.
Eric Girouard: Yeah, right. Love it.
Brian Weinstein: So, awesome. So we’re here today to talk about your experience as an entrepreneur coming up and your story in particular resonated with me. And I know we shared a little bit of this and we’ve spoken in the past. So, I grew up in a blue collar household. My father was in warehousing and shipping actually from as far back as I remember, always on the warehouse management side or he was in production and things like that on for an apparel company, was really more on the blue collar end of it. My parents didn’t go to college. And I know that was a little bit about your background too. Right? I mean, tell us a little bit about where you grew up and your family.
Yeah. So, I grew up in a small town called Bristol, Connecticut, which is kind of in the middle of the State, not too far outside of Hartford, an industrial town, generally. There’s really one claiming the fame, which is, it’s the head global headquarters for ESPN.
Brian Weinstein: Yep.
Eric Girouard: But, but when you live there, it actually means nothing, it’s gated off, you can’t even get it access in there. So, it’s just like a big building. It’s not like there’s even an ESPN bar there, it’s people work there. So, yeah. And then grew up similar blue collar household, father worked for Pratt & Whitney, which is the big airplane engine manufacturer in the State on the assembly line, and was usually working weird shifts, second or third shift through the night. But then during the day or after work, depending on the shift was roofing for his friend’s company. And then as I started to get a little bit older at like 14, which is technically two years illegal at that time I started roofing-
Brian Weinstein: Right.
Eric Girouard: … For those guys. Carrying bundles, I weighed like 93 pounds, actually. I couldn’t even carry the shingles up. It was funny.
Brian Weinstein: And terrifying.
Eric Girouard: And I’m terrified.
Brian Weinstein: You’d take out a handful of shingles and just carry them up at a time.
Eric Girouard: Yeah, yeah, exactly. And so, yeah, that’s how we grew up. All my buddies who were still my best friends, they all went directly into the trades college. My parents didn’t go to college. The town, generally is, traditionally not a lot of people went off to college. Now it’s a little bit more, probably 50% or so, but when I was coming out, it was 25-30% of people really went off to college. Most people went into the trades right away.
Brian Weinstein: Right.
Eric Girouard: Right out of school.
Brian Weinstein: It’s funny. My town was in transition when we moved in, actually, while I was growing up, it went from a blue collar town and then there was a lot of blue collar people who maybe owned their own businesses.
Eric Girouard: Yep, yep.
Brian Weinstein: Whether it was whether it was landscaping or building, construction, things like that. And my father had started a warehousing company, so he was sort of unwittingly an entrepreneur. He just decided, actually his company closed down and he had a few people that he knew from the apparel industry who were like, “Hey, we’d really love to find a place so we don’t have to warehouse ourselves.” So he was like, “You know what?” He grabbed a couple thousand dollars that he scraped together and bought a pump Jack and put down a month security deposit on a facility and got started.
Eric Girouard: Yep.
Brian Weinstein: And I remember being 11 years old and helping him move out of a building.
Eric Girouard: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Brian Weinstein: And go into like, and here we are, we’re moving stuff down an elevator, because it was an elevator building and off to his own place.
Eric Girouard: Yep, yep.
Brian Weinstein: So, that was sort of, that was how I witnessed on being an entrepreneur. And I don’t even think my father just said it. He’s like, “Well, I have a chance to do this.” He didn’t really put much thought into it. But he was one of the hardest working people I ever knew.
Eric Girouard: Yeah, yeah.
Brian Weinstein: He’s retired now, but it was just something he did. And you know what, I’m sure you had the same thing, for me. The work ethic is huge.
Eric Girouard: Yep. Yep.
Brian Weinstein: What I was taught there was a super big deal.
Eric Girouard: Yep, yep. Yeah, yeah. And that was the big thing is, it’s funny, people like didn’t even think I had a dad. Like, my dad was never around my mom and my mom worked, but she kind of worked from home. So, people always saw either a single mom or… And she was just working, he had weird shifts.
Brian Weinstein: Right.
Eric Girouard: So he couldn’t be there for sports. And it was one of those things where it was like… And he was hourly, so he didn’t own his own company. So, for him to make more money he had to put in more hours, right? And overtime and get double time and all that. And so, it was the only way for him to take care of my two sisters and I. And with my mom being able to take care of us was just work more hours because he was an hourly worker. So, yeah, he wasn’t around much, but I didn’t really notice it until later on where people were like, “Oh, that’s your dad?”
Brian Weinstein: Right. “What do you mean? Of course it’s my dad.”
Eric Girouard: Yeah.
Brian Weinstein: Then you realize. But you know what? You learn a lot about work ethic, like I mentioned. Right? And I think it puts a little bit of a chip on your shoulder. Right? And gives you… You’ve got to get out there. You’ve got something to prove.
Eric Girouard: Yep, yep, yep. Exactly. And that’s the one thing… I mean, if anything, I forget the quote, but it’s like hustle outworks smarts when smarts doesn’t work hard, or something like that.
Brian Weinstein: Yes.
Eric Girouard: I never really had a high IQ. For my high school, I did pretty well for grades, but I wasn’t a high SAT score or just cerebral. I just worked really hard and studied flashcards and hammered stuff into my head.
Brian Weinstein: Yep.
Eric Girouard: And I always knew, I was kind of behind the ball from not an IQ overall, but I wasn’t one of these brilliant people that you come across and you’re like, “You just are really smart. You kind of got it.” And so, the only way I was going to make up for it was just working 20 times harder and longer. And then the more experience you get, than those two things together are even more powerful, and it’s just a powerful combination.
Brian Weinstein: It is. And to be honest, I sort of live by that. Right? There’s no one that will ever outwork me.
Eric Girouard: Yep, yep.
Brian Weinstein: And then couple that with the experience. So, it really is valuable to your whole process. Right? Especially when you’re driving and learning and soaking up things. And I found, because maybe I didn’t have that more of a white collar upbringing that anytime I got around it, I was soaking up everything like a sponge.
Eric Girouard: Yep. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. I didn’t really have it until long after. No one in my town was an entrepreneur. There wasn’t even any teachers, my teachers were all great, but there was no one that had really any of that really sophisticated, entrepreneurial stuff going on. The only entrepreneurial stuff was people who own their kind of own businesses. But they were like Spring Factories in town was the wealthiest kid in our high school was like, his grandfather owned the Spring Factory, which no longer exists, but it was blue collar ownership basically is what it was.
Brian Weinstein: Yes. Yep. Yeah. And that’s what I saw a lot around by me until a little bit later on. And I was already gone and had gone off to college before there really was an influx of white collar into our town in earnest. And then the town’s completely changed over now. It’s different.
Eric Girouard: And those people that figure it out in the blue collar world, they’re less likely to share because they’ve kind of figured out how to make it work. The last thing they want is to share their secret sauce. And so it’s like the opposite of someone telling you, “Hey, here’s what you need to focus on to do this.” They’re not telling you anything.
Brian Weinstein: Right. Right. Exactly. Exactly. So, who was it or where was it in sort of your life, in your early life, was really that first sort of mentor type of person that brought you into that world?
Eric Girouard: Yeah, so I always was interested in business, so right after I did the roofing thing that was when I started to work and earn money and I was like, “Oh, this is great. I’m super young.” And I was making less than minimum wage because I was technically illegal, but I was like, “This is great.” I then started a small landscaping business where some of my buddies in high school worked for me, but I was terrible. I would underbid jobs, lose my shirt on it. But I was like, “Well, the job’s $800. That’s a lot of money.” But I’d work for three bucks an hour because I’d be working for an entire week. But, so I cut my teeth there, but didn’t really know exactly what I was doing.
Then my mom basically was like, my dad didn’t go to college. She didn’t go to college. She’s like, “You probably should look at business or whatever.” And so, I ended up going off and touring the school up here in Massachusetts, which is called Babson. And it’s an entrepreneurial school, almost everyone that goes there is the son or daughter of the founder, owner, CEO of huge companies or a lot of princes and princesses. I was in a dorm room my freshman year and there was two princesses that lived down the hall, which is ridiculous.
Brian Weinstein: Right.
Eric Girouard: I didn’t even know what that meant. And I got in because I was the most-
Caitlin Postel: Does that mean by the way?
Caitlin Postel: Yeah, exactly.
Eric Girouard: I still don’t know. The dads would show up to school with security to take them, it was just weird.
Brian Weinstein: Yeah.
Eric Girouard: I got in, one, I worked hard, had some good decent grades, but I was more of like all American, kind of balanced probably the school, but also financial. I had a lot of financial aid.
Brian Weinstein: Yep.
Eric Girouard: So I kind of hit the bill, but so that was the first thing, it opened my eyes to like, “Oh my God, this is a totally different world. I don’t even know any what’s going on here.” Really hard at first and then two years in, I was just really social. So, you became friends with a lot of those people and some kid’s dad owns Chiquita Banana. And I was like, “How do you even do that? What does that mean?”
Caitlin Postel: Right.
Eric Girouard: They were like, it was crazy. And so, The school’s very small. You could only leave there with a degree in entrepreneurship, which is almost meaningless because that’s kind of a weird thing. You just either do it or you don’t, but-
Brian Weinstein: Like philosophy?
Eric Girouard: Yeah, yeah.
Brian Weinstein: Like the philosophy major, right?
Eric Girouard: Yeah.
Caitlin Postel: A little bit more lucrative, I think.
Brian Weinstein: I make it, if you make it.
Caitlin Postel: I think. We’ll get there.
Eric Girouard: And I saw some of these kids in school and we were like 19, before 19. Some of these kids that were in this tower that I wish I had joined, I didn’t, had businesses that were doing 20, 30 million before we were juniors. And I was like, “This is just insane. How do you even do that?”
Brian Weinstein: Right.
Eric Girouard: So, but it actually kind of showed me like, “Hey, there’s unlimited opportunity.” I had no idea how to do it myself. It wasn’t until, and I was from a conservative background. So, my parents were like, “You need to go and be an accountant.”
Brian Weinstein: Right.
Eric Girouard: “Go to the accountant, that’s really safe. Your uncle was an accountant. He was very successful,” all this stuff. But, I was not wired for it. So, I ended up going to accounting right away, really quickly. I was a terrible accountant. I have terrible ADHD. I can’t sit behind a monitor, doing spreadsheets.
Brian Weinstein: Yep.
Eric Girouard: Ended up basically through a bunch of… People were like, “You should go into sales,” and all this stuff. So I did a quick stint in sales, loved it, was a perfect fit for it, was killing it. There was a clear path to make a lot of money in enterprise sales and then got introduced to, this was the really transformation was I got introduced to the founder and CEO of at the time was Rue La La La, which is a big fashion flash sale business.
Brian Weinstein: Sure, yep.
Caitlin Postel: Oh yep, yep.
Eric Girouard: Prior to that, he had started Lids, which is the baseball cap company store that is in every outlet mall and mall, all that stuff. And so, he had done that twice, sold Lids, and then was starting Rue La La La. It was about a year and it was a huge business. And I thought it was going to stay in sales for the rest of my life. But I was like, “This is a chance I get to learn from a serial entrepreneur first hand.” I was super young. I was 23. And it was to be his chief of staff, which is like his right hand man to manage a lot of his relationships with everything, investors, board.
Brian Weinstein: Yep.
Eric Girouard: Partnerships. And I was the least qualified for the job, from everything on the… But we just clicked. And I remember my interview was, I’m just like, “I’ll work harder than anyone.” And I saw the people I was interviewing against in the lobby. And I was like, “I’m just going to kill these people.”
Brian Weinstein: Right.
Eric Girouard: And he’s like, “This kid’s going to kill himself to keep this job.”
Brian Weinstein: Yeah.
Eric Girouard: And I did for four years, literally I was always like, “I’ll never let him come in the office before me. And I’ll never leave before he does.” And so, I was always in before him and there after him.
Brian Weinstein: Yeah.
Eric Girouard: And I’d do whatever. I wasn’t my job. He had an assistant, but I was always like, “Whatever he needs, if he needs me to go get coffee, I’ll get coffee.” And that wasn’t really my job, but I was like, “I’ll do whatever it takes.”
Brian Weinstein: Yeah. And it’s funny because I think that the blue collar, when you’re around that, and you’ve got like your parents, my parents, same way, right? It was, “Go the safe route.” Right? It’s the safe route. Right? Which bucks what you’re being taught when you’re learning to be an entrepreneur. Right?
Eric Girouard: Right.
Brian Weinstein: And you’ve got that desire because they’re like, “Be the accountant, do what whatever’s going to be safe. You’ve got to squirrel away your nuts and make sure that you’re there for a rainy day and there’s no risk and everything’s risk adverse.” But at the same time, it’s got to be exciting you get around somebody who’s a serial entrepreneur. And again, now on the flip side from the blue collar background, the work ethic is kick ass. Right? You’re not getting that from other people because you want to be the hardest working man in showbiz. Right? I mean, that’s sort of the philosophy.
Eric Girouard: Yep. And I knew I didn’t have the skills really to have a seat at the table at that level. And so, the only way I was going to keep the job was just create so much value that he couldn’t fire me, basically.
It was like, he needed me. And at first it was rocky. It was a weird… Because he never had a huge staff before. It was like, I was with him in everything, every call, every interview, awkward interviews, firing people, hiring people, him and board meetings with his investors where they were given bad feedback. And then I just did everything I did just literally the first few months was just keep the job, keep the job. And then I started to add more value and yeah, it was wild.
Caitlin Postel: Great exposure and way to capitalize on a once in a lifetime opportunity. Right? Pivotal.
Eric Girouard: Yeah.
Caitlin Postel: Sounds like it really was.
Brian Weinstein: Exactly. Exactly. So, you went from there and obviously he was your first mentor.
Eric Girouard: Yep. Yep.
Brian Weinstein: Right. And I mean, would you consider him a mentor or is it just somebody you learned what to do and what not to do from?
Eric Girouard: Yeah. Here’s the thing. There’s a saying, if someone has enough time to be your mentor, they’re not the right person. And so, we did not. And he spits rocks. He’s very direct. There’s no mincing words.
Brian Weinstein: Right.
Eric Girouard: Like you do something wrong, you’re going to know.
Brian Weinstein: Yeah.
Eric Girouard: You do something good, you probably aren’t going to hear anything. You do something great, you might get a pat on the back, but probably not. And so, it wasn’t really a mentorship as much as I learned from seeing and that’s actually how I learned, people are different.
Brian Weinstein: Yep.
Eric Girouard: The good news is I had access to all of his… This is a weird thing, but I was in his email because I had to respond to a lot of the CEO… I managed the brands and stuff. So, I got to see how this serial entrepreneur operated on a daily basis, dealt with a lot of crazy stuff coming in. And that was perfect for me. I remember we’d get back after we’d have to go out to dinners at night, like 10, and I’d then do the work from the day, but then I’d go and just read all the emails, outbound. I was like, “All right, that’s how you handle that situation. That’s how you respond to that. That’s how you deal with that.” So, it was a mentorship, but not from coaching as much as it was just absorbing.
Brian Weinstein: Yeah.
Caitlin Postel: Yeah. Absorbing. Match and mirror.
Brian Weinstein: Absorbing, observing. Right?
Eric Girouard: Yeah.
Brian Weinstein: Yeah. No, absolutely. No, I agree with that. I did not have a mentor early on. I worked, I went into the family business. Right?
Eric Girouard: Yep, yep.
Brian Weinstein: As you know, I kind of knew that industry. I grew up around it. Like I said, I was helping my father move to a new facility when I was 11 years old, taking stuff down on a pallet Jack head down the freight elevator and whatever.
Eric Girouard: Yep.
Brian Weinstein: So, I sort of learned from people I connected with along the way. And you do a lot of observing and there’s just as much value to watching people who are completely doing things wrong.
Eric Girouard: Right, right, right.
Brian Weinstein: As there are completely doing it right. So, and that could be a person or a circumstance, but it’s a valuable lesson that you learn each step along the way.
Eric Girouard: Yep. Yeah. No. And I saw a lot, and he’s the first to admit, I’ve learned. I saw a lot of mistakes. Right? And saw like, “Oh, that turned out. That didn’t work out so well.”
Brian Weinstein: Right.
Eric Girouard: So, just as much good as you do as you do bad. And yeah, I agree. It’s a unique way to learn it, but for the right fit, it’s for the right person. For me, it was the only way. I wasn’t going to read a book, I wasn’t going to take a class that was going to teach me anything.
Brian Weinstein: Right.
Eric Girouard: It was like, I needed to go try it, fail, fail, fail, and then figure out, “Okay, this is how it kind of works.”
Brian Weinstein: Exactly. Exactly. So, you had your stint there and obviously that was a very valuable stint. And then, I think you went on to M.Gemi after that?
Eric Girouard: Yeah. So, so I’ll breeze over this Rue La La La sold to eBay, there was a transaction with eBay and so we stayed on for a little while. We all then parted ways after the transaction a few months later, and then came back under a group. This is complicated, but it’s called Launch. And Ben had started Launch. It was a fund of capital. But instead of investing, we were using that capital to start our own businesses.
Brian Weinstein: Right.
Eric Girouard: And so, this was six years ago. So, I still was pretty… I was fresh out of Rue La La La, I saw the first hand, but I hadn’t done a lot of operating myself. The first business that Launch started was M.Gemi.
Brian Weinstein: Okay.
Eric Girouard: And so, I actually had no interest in M.Gemi because it was Italian luxury women’s shoes that I had no interest in, but two weeks before the business launched, there was a team in place. But marketing was a disaster. There was no email flow at all. Like, no customers were getting emails and they were like, “Can you step in and fix this?” And I was like, “Okay. Yes. I’ll step in for a little while and be a good soldier, but I’m not interested in this.” And then, we brought on a CMO and hired out the marketing team.
But right when I was like, “All right, I’m out of this, I’m done with women’s shoes,” Ben was like, “Hey, would you want to run the men’s division or build out and run the men’s division from M.Gemi? I was like, “That’s an interesting experience.” I still hadn’t operated on my own because I was always under his wing. So, it was the first time where I was going to own my own P and L, but he was still the CEO of the business, so he kind of had oversight, but I could kind of do things on my own.
So, I took that and spent two years or so, give or take a lot of time, in Italy. And then obviously in the US, building out the men’s division of the brand. And so, similarly, that was where I really cut my teeth on my own because I was doing a lot of stuff on my own. He had oversight, but the women’s business was a lions share of the company. So, I kind of had a lot of freedom and yeah, and did M.Gemi for about two years and knew I didn’t want to do that long term. I didn’t want to be an Italian shoe merchant and ended up hiring my replacement and then going back to Launch.
Brian Weinstein: Okay. And I know you actually told a very funny story about yeah, I think it was your… Was it your wedding party or was it a bachelor party?
Eric Girouard: Yeah. Bachelor party. My bachelor party. Yeah.
Brian Weinstein: I love this story.
Eric Girouard: Yeah. So, this is the original idea for what is now BRUNT. This was seven years ago now, six years ago. I was building M.Gemi, it was right before the year I was getting married. And my wife loved that I was in living in Italy basically a week or two a month. It was pretty intense and shoe factories, fighting with the factory owners. And I came home from my bachelor party and brought all my buddies who are from Bristol, who are blue colla guys.
We went up there to literally to ride ATVs, smoke cigars, drink beer, and go on boats. And so, I brought all these shoes back from Italy, prototypes from the highest end, Tod’s Factories and Gucci Factories. They were all going to be thrown away. So, I was giving them to my buddies and they weren’t wearing them I’m like, “What do you need?”
Caitlin Postel: You mean they weren’t wearing them on their ATVs?
Eric Girouard: Yeah, well, no. So, even afterwards, like we’re sitting on the deck or on the boat and I’m like, “Why are you guys wearing this?” They’re like, “I don’t wear dainty, Italian loafers.” I’m like, “What do you mean? These were like Tod’s driving loafers. People kill for these things.” And they’re like, “Yeah, no, where’s my work boot?”
Brian Weinstein: Right.
Eric Girouard: And I was like, “That’s crazy.” And that’s at that point in M.Gemi, I was starting to understand repeat purchases and stuff. And so, they’re like, “No, I wear my work boots obviously Monday through Friday.” And I’m like, “Well, what about the weekend? You don’t put your weekend shoes on, like the white collar folk do?” And they’re like, “No, I wear my work boots.”
Brian Weinstein: Right, right.
Eric Girouard: I was like, “Oh my God.” I’m like, “How often you go through?” They’re like, “I don’t know. Every six months I buy a new pair of boots.” I’m like, “Gee, that’s crazy.” And they were like, “You know what?” And one of my buddies, my buddy Skylar was like, he’s like, “Dude, you’ve been spending all this time building, Rue La La La’s fashion brand, now M.Gemi. Why don’t you build a brand for us? Stuff that we care about and we wear, like work stuff.” And I was like, “Oh, that’s an interesting idea.”
And at the time I was like, “Well, their stuff’s already so cheap.” The direct to consumer model doesn’t work because you’re not going to make a… Cargo pants like 40 bucks. How are you going to make a pant for $20 is going to be… That doesn’t really apply.
Brian Weinstein: Right.
Eric Girouard: But I was intrigued. And so, anyways, I shelved that and that was literally yeah, like seven years ago.
Caitlin Postel: Wow.
Eric Girouard: And then we carried on with the trip and yeah, it wasn’t until two years ago where that all came back out.
Brian Weinstein: Meanwhile, you got free market gap analysis right there.
Caitlin Postel: Yeah.
Eric Girouard: Yeah, exactly.
Caitlin Postel: That’s for sure.
Eric Girouard: Over probably a dozen or so beers. Right? You just got free market gap analysis.
Caitlin Postel: And 600 pairs.
Brian Weinstein: Yeah.
Caitlin Postel: $600 pair of loafers, right?
Eric Girouard: Yeah. That they still haven’t worn.
Brian Weinstein: Right, right. So, meanwhile, I’m going to date myself a little bit here, but when I first started working in the warehouses and doing stuff, you wore the work boots that you were buying were a brand called Herman Survivor, which I’m not even sure they’re still around.
Eric Girouard: No, they were the brand and then Walmart bought them.
Brian Weinstein: Right.
Eric Girouard: And now they are the $69-79 brand.
Brian Weinstein: Yep.
Eric Girouard: However, number one brand by pairs sold in the US, Herman Survivor.
Brian Weinstein: Is that right? Okay, okay.
Caitlin Postel: Even to this day?
Eric Girouard: Because it’s in Walmart.
Brian Weinstein: And then back then it was also Timberland because Timberland was not actually the fashion brand.
Eric Girouard: Yes.
Brian Weinstein: It was a true work boot. Right? I mean, it was the real deal work boot. So, you’re buying Herman Survivors or Timberland.
Eric Girouard: Yep. Yep.
Brian Weinstein: But there really hasn’t been a lot in that space, right?
Eric Girouard: No. There’s nothing. Nothing. And those are the two ends. Which is now, Herman Survivor went through a transition. They used to be the high end brand. Now they’re not. There’s more volume in actually $69 than $169.
Brian Weinstein: Right.
Eric Girouard: There’s less dollar margin, but so there’s Herman Survivor, there’s Timberland, and then, there is another tier, which is the Red Wings and those brands, but those are… The price point alienates 90% of the country.
Brian Weinstein: Right. Yep.
Eric Girouard: You cross $200 for a pair of boots that you’re going to throw out in about six months. Most people aren’t up for that challenge.
Brian Weinstein: Right. Right. Exactly. Exactly. So, at what point do you make the decision that you’re going to push that forward?
Eric Girouard: So I did M.Gemi and got a sense for, “Okay, how to do a part of the business. Like the supply chain side, the merchandising side.” There was a quick stint, because it was crazy. I went and started another business for about three years called Trade Coffee, which is a totally… We got into it because the largest owner of coffee called JB Holdings, they own Peete’s Coffee, Caribou Coffee, Keurig, Green Mountain, Krispy Kreme. They own everything under the sun, basically came to us and said, “You guys know how to start digital businesses. We own everything in coffee. What’s the play?”
I went there. And the only part of the full spectrum that I didn’t… There’s two parts of end to end e-commerce businesses that I wouldn’t say I’m really deep on. There’s the marketing side and there’s the true financial, deep financial modeling side. I always knew I was never going to be the modeling financial person, but the marketing side… And I knew that was the key to success. I saw businesses in the M.Gemi Era and then beyond, they either succeeded or failed based on how good their marketing was, because it’s the engine that powers it.
Brian Weinstein: Yep.
Eric Girouard: Went to trade. We got the business live, spent two years doing some crazy marketing stuff. Super growth hacky stuff that like using offshore teams and really unique stuff that no one’s paying attention to that really helped scale us early on. And was like, “Okay, I got a sense for marketing, really good marketing.” And not table stakes marketing, but highly proprietary marketing stuff that I built there.
Brian Weinstein: Yep.
Eric Girouard: And was like, “Okay, I’ve got that under the hood,” and was like, “Okay, I’m tired. I’m building all these businesses. I’m not super passionate about them. They’re really good smart, they’re smart businesses. They make a lot of intellectual sense. There’s business acumen behind them. But I don’t really care about women’s shoes. I don’t really care that much about coffee. I drink it. It’s a drug for me. It’s not like I love it.”
Brian Weinstein: Right.
Eric Girouard: And I was like, “Okay, I’m ready to go do my own thing.” And so, I was like, “It’s time for me to take a swing.” I was like, “This is the time. I’m about to have a baby. I’m not going to be able to do this. I got to go.”
Brian Weinstein: Right.
Eric Girouard: And so, I quit and went out, set out, and said, “All right, I’m going to start my own company and 24 months from now, a year or two years from now I’m going to find out if I can’t do it quickly and then I’ll be back in the… But now’s my last shot at trying to do it.”
Brian Weinstein: Yep. And it’s interesting that you say that because there are a lot of companies out there, right? They’re not really connected to the product. Right? They did that market analysis. They found a gap and they’re really strong at marketing. So they just ran with it. They don’t really care what the product was. Right? But they’re really good at getting it out there and it works.
Eric Girouard: Yep.
Brian Weinstein: And sort of the reason that we wanted to have you on the show today was to talk about, well, the passion, right? Because it’s much different for you because you’re connected to this.
Eric Girouard: Yep.
Brian Weinstein: But then too to talk a little bit too about the friction points. So, now you’ve made that decision to move forward. You’ve found the product, you’re like, “Look, I’m connected to this.” Right? “I’ve got all my boys are in this. This is what they do. And this is what they need. I’ve got a knowledge and I’ve got the background to launch this.” What was your first friction point? Where did you run into as you’re going to launch a business?
Eric Girouard: First friction point was when I told who are now some of my current investors and the early investors of, “Hey, I want to go into the work wear markets, starting in work boots.” Especially in the venture world, and the more sophisticated folks. “Terrible idea, the customer has no money. The customer doesn’t spend any money.” All because they’re so disconnected from the customer. Most of the core customer does work for these people on their properties and all those things. They have no idea. They don’t communicate.
And so, there was immediate, like, “This could be the world’s worst idea ever.”
Brian Weinstein: Right. Right.
Eric Girouard: And I was like, “No.” And I was pretty sure, but I wasn’t at the point where I could look like some of the most sophisticated investors in the country and tell them like, “You’re wrong.” Like, “I’m right.”
Brian Weinstein: Right. Right.
Eric Girouard: Now I’m pretty confident in doing that. But two years ago I was still pretty early in that. And I was like, “Maybe they know more than I, they’ve seen this before,” but there was a lot of people that were like, “This is a terrible idea. The incumbents are going to always be there. It can’t be disrupted,” all that stuff. That was the first big friction was me having to build a business case around basically telling them why they were completely wrong for almost every reason that they brought up.
Brian Weinstein: Right. Right. And it’s probably, when you’re talking about investors, they probably don’t have the same background as you, they don’t necessarily have that connection to the market that you have. Right?
Eric Girouard: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. I mean, the assumption was like, “That customer buys a pair of work boots and wears it for three to four years.” And one of them even said, he is like, “My landscaper, he comes to my house and his steel toe is showing out of his boot.” And he’s like, “So, that’s a terrible business.” I go, “The difference is,” they thought that was a four year old boot, I’m like, “That’s four months old.”
Brian Weinstein: Right.
Caitlin Postel: Little did they know all of those secrets that were being kept so close to the vest by the blue collar or folks. Right? And you knew that.
Eric Girouard: Yeah.
Caitlin Postel: Right? They weren’t sharing all of that.
Eric Girouard: Yeah. They just assumed because if you wear the Italian loafers, you’ll get five years out of those shoes. Those work boots look like that after four months, not four years.
Brian Weinstein: Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. Actually, and if they don’t look like that after four or five months, then your boss gives you shit for not working hard enough.
Eric Girouard: Exactly. Exactly. Exactly.
Brian Weinstein: So, was there a particular kind of breakthrough moment where you finally got through to them on it?
Eric Girouard: Yeah. So, I kept going, I spent my own money. It’s funny, I hired designers. I was doing crazy stuff. Just like, I’m like, “This is going to happen.” And I hired some guy overseas to do sketches for me just to get people excited about it. And then there was one gentleman who was the CMO of one of the largest footwear brands in the world that if you think about it’s somewhere between Nike, Adidas, Reebok, all those brands, he was one of those.
And it was one Late night. And he came in, he was meeting with my investors for their own thing. And they were like, “Oh, tell them about your idea.” And I was like, I told him about it, he’s like, “This is brilliant. Take modern technology, put it into boots. No one’s done it. The old brands,” he kind of saw the vision and then, and a guy with that kind of caliber and credibility, the entire room was like, “Okay, we’ll invest.
Brian Weinstein: Right. Right.
Eric Girouard: Like, “If that guy sees it, he knows. He’s made footwear with the latest technology before it’s been out. And all of a sudden, everything turned after that.
Caitlin Postel: Just become friends with the one cool kid. It’s fine. Everyone will follow. It’s good.
Eric Girouard: Yeah, yeah.
Brian Weinstein: Yeah. So did you have to spend a lot of time pitching him in advance of that meeting or was it sort of spontaneous?
Eric Girouard: No, it was spontaneous. It was almost like a layer, like, “Yeah. Tell him about your idea,” and there was no, it was just like, and I didn’t have a deck or anything. I was just like, “Here’s what I’m thinking.” Like, “Work boots are the same as they were when I was leaving high school, they haven’t changed.” And he went crazy and was like, “Oh my God, injection… You can do a bunch of this stuff and all this technology, it’s not out there.” I’m almost too far.
Brian Weinstein: Right.
Caitlin Postel: Right. Reel it in a little.
Eric Girouard: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Brian Weinstein: Yeah.
Eric Girouard: I was saying, “I don’t think our customer’s going to like that.” And he’s become very… He’s also pretty far away from the core customer himself.
Brian Weinstein: Right.
Eric Girouard: But at least understood like, “Hey, there’s a market there.” And understood that market’s huge. There’s way more blue collar workers than there are people buying $500 driving shoes.
Brian Weinstein: Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. A hundred percent, a hundred percent.
Caitlin Postel: At what point did you decide to add another product type or was that always in the plan?
Eric Girouard: So it was always in the plan. The question was, was that going to be in year one, which we are, or was that going to be in New York ten? Right? And so, we weighted heavily in what we didn’t want to, which the historical brands, the hundred year old brands that have owned the space in either work pants or work boots or whatever are really from a brand perspective are known to be one thing. And maybe they happen to sell pants or such, but they’re a boot company or they’re a pant company, now they’re starting to sell boots, but they’re not really a boot company and you wouldn’t go there to buy boots. And so, we knew we didn’t want to wait too long to silo ourselves into being pegged as one thing.
Brian Weinstein: Right.
Caitlin Postel: Sure.
Eric Girouard: And we thought part of the disruption was we can be the best in class for more than one thing, head to toe. So, the bet was doing that earlier than later. Still, by the way, we’re live. We’ve been live for seven months. So, most of the country does not know who BRUNT Workwear is.
Brian Weinstein: Right, right.
Caitlin Postel: Yet.
Eric Girouard: So, we’re still, we’re coming out as all right. We lean heavy on boots, but we’re going to try to swing that pendulum back down because our pants just started shipping a few weeks ago. The reviews have been off the charts. Our hoodies is same thing. So, now we want to be kind of more known as a head to toe, true workwear brand for things they wear, literally. The tools they wear. We’re not going to get into hard hats. We’re not going to get into tools and hammers and even probably tool belts and stuff, but the real apparel stuff that they’re putting on in the morning before they leave the house.
Caitlin Postel: Yeah. The tools you wear, I love that. I love that.
Brian Weinstein: The pants, maybe the heavy jumpers for the winter when you’re working outside.
Eric Girouard: Yeah, yeah.
Brian Weinstein: Things like that. Right? So, I mean, is that like you’re going after the Carharts, those types of companies?
Eric Girouard: Oh, yeah. On the boot side, we’re going after the biggest. Right? And we go after the biggest, but the highest quality, the biggest. Because you talk to Herman Survivor, I’m not trying to compete with a $69 boot.
Brian Weinstein: Right.
Eric Girouard: That’s a different customer.
Brian Weinstein: Yep.
Eric Girouard: And there’s a place for that, right? There’s a customer that’s like, “Hey, I’m going to buy a new pair every two months. But that works with my biweekly pay cycle and I can afford.” So there’s a different psyche. I’m going after, on the boot side, I’m going after the Red Wings, the Thorogoods, the Timberlands, the highest end on the boot side. And on the apparel, the difference is actually I had to go way above the biggest in the space, the Carharts, and the Dickies, so to speak, because there’s a difference between the boots and the apparel. The boot [inaudible 00:38:57] go high end. The apparel people are actually trying to make their stuff as cheap as possible and bring the price down with discounting sub $40. And so, our apparels is almost for some people actually too expensive.
Brian Weinstein: Right.
Eric Girouard: But we always say, we’ll never sacrifice quality. We’re always going to make the best product for the category. Not luxury. We’re not making stuff that’s going to be… You can’t get custom made boots, you can get the blah, blah, blah. But the highest end that needs to perform for the job that most of these guys and girls are doing.
Brian Weinstein: Yep.
Caitlin Postel: Right.
Eric Girouard: And we price it as best as we can.
Brian Weinstein: Right.
Eric Girouard: And sometimes that’s a crazy value. Sometimes it’s even in the pants, for example, they’re more expensive than they used to, but our pants should outlast three to five times as long as a pair of the other brands.
Brian Weinstein: Yep.
Eric Girouard: Because the quality and the material and all that.
Brian Weinstein: Yeah.
Caitlin Postel: Sure, sure.
Brian Weinstein: Yep. And so now you’ve got this backing from Launch.
Eric Girouard: Yep.
Brian Weinstein: And what does an organization like Launch do for you? What’s their support system for you?
Eric Girouard: Yeah. So, they helped early on they helped with a lot of early introductions to a lot of the… Because they helped with capital early on, but we weren’t going to run off into the sunset with unlimited capital. Incredible introductions to an incredible network of highly sophisticated investors and passionate investors that were either going to get on board with this category to a lot of credibility as I was going out and cutting a lot of big deals, long term deals with manufacturers and factories, being able to say, “Hey, we’re part of this group that’s built these companies and businesses,” versus, you know me just saying, “Hey, I think I’m going to sell a lot of boots. Do you want to take a chance on me?”
Brian Weinstein: Right. Yep.
Eric Girouard: And then strategy as well on, “Here’s how you got to think about this. Here’s what we’ve done right. Here’s a lot of the mistakes we’ve made. So true advisory and the folks at Launch were and still are on my board of directors.
Brian Weinstein: Yeah. So it’s almost like an instant board, right?
Eric Girouard: Yeah.
Brian Weinstein: You instantly have a board of advisors.
Eric Girouard: Yep.
Brian Weinstein: People bringing in a lot of value to the company.
Eric Girouard: Yep.
Brian Weinstein: But then it comes time and you’ve got to go out and get the real rounds of funding. Right? So, what did you have to do there to get in front of the right audience and obviously get the funding that you needed?
Eric Girouard: So, that process started, which was, I had a decent network from what I had developed over the past five years. So, I kind of went out to everyone I knew and said, “Hey, I’m doing this thing.” There were some people that don’t even understand what you’re talking about. Like going, talking to a blue collar worker that’s not interested.
Brian Weinstein: Right.
Eric Girouard: So, immediately didn’t even waste my breath trying to convince someone of… Then there were people, really strategic people, that were like, “Wow, I know some of the biggest construction companies in the country and in the world.” And those were like, “Okay, they understand my customer. They employ my customer. They at least have an understanding and appreciation for them.” So started to have some of those conversations. Those things kind of hit up naturally, which was like, “Wow, we get this, we get this product.” And that was where I saw the most success, which was really strategic investors that were in the construction space because they understood most of them are actually buying the gear for their employees.
Brian Weinstein: Right.
Eric Girouard: And so, they understood, they’re spending over a thousand dollars a year per employee, on their boots, their pants, their sweatshirts. They’re like, “Well, this is interesting.” And so, that was the process, which was, I cast a wide net, talked to venture folks, talked to private wealth folks and then talked to strategic people who understood the customer and ended up going down the path of mostly strategic in the construction space because they understood it. And then a few private folks who were just like, they love brands like Yeti and all these companies and were like, “This could have some similar appeal and feeling to something like that.”
Brian Weinstein: Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. And what round of funding are you on? If you don’t mind me asking.
Eric Girouard: We’ve gone through our series A.
Brian Weinstein: Okay.
Eric Girouard: We did it privately with the private strategic investors to keep it just out of the limelight and quiet and focus more on the business, but we’ve gone through, yeah, we’ve gone through essentially the seed funding phase and then have closed on our series A so, we haven’t yet gotten to the stage where high growth, but the business is working. The customer’s loving the brand and the customer’s loving the product. So, we’re now, all right, build the infrastructure, get the team in place, get all the systems worked out and then the next phase will be, all right, go to the moon.
Brian Weinstein: Yeah. Yeah. And look, you have to build that brand confidence, right? Because this is not a nice to have product for your customer. This is a have to have. To your point, I know you keep referring to it as a tool, but it really is. I mean, this is something that you rely on for comfort. You rely on for protection. And you’ve got to live in summer, fall, winter, spring. And it’s important that you have the right tools because if you get injured on the job, that’s your livelihood right there. Right? And there’s a lot there, and so you need that sort of protection, so that’s a big deal to earn the trust and confidence and you don’t just kind of throw that out there and people try it once and say they’re going to move on. It’s not that kind of crowd.
Eric Girouard: Yep. Yep. Yeah. And if they try you once and they move on your business falls apart, because the e-commerce game is a game of coming back and buying more, not trying once and leaving you.
Brian Weinstein: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Yeah, yeah. I mean a sale is one time, earning a customer loyalty could be for life.
Eric Girouard: Yep. Yep.
Brian Weinstein: That’s awesome. So, if you had any advice for someone who’s coming up and has passion about a particular brand, it’s a segment that they may know, what would that advice be as they’re, as they’re trying to maybe raise some interest in their brand or funding or whatever it is in their market?
Eric Girouard: Yeah. I’d say the biggest thing is being as authentic as possible. So, I have competitors, I have people in the space, but they’re just smart business people that are trying to sell to construction workers, but I can see how they market, I can see how they style it. I can see how they put the product, like their boots, their pants. And no one rolls their jeans up in the construction world. That’s stupid. It looks stupid.
Brian Weinstein: Right.
Eric Girouard: So, if you really know your customer, you really know your base, being as authentic as possible to them is, and by the way, I’m seven months old. So, who knows, I could be completely wrong.
Brian Weinstein: Right.
Eric Girouard: But, the customer’s not stupid and you’re not going to convince them. And I’ve seen brands get to scale and then tail down where they lose their credibility. And so, it’s being as incredibly authentic as possible. And either you have to be the customer, which I am not, it’s not like I’m out on… I am on a lot of job sites by the way, almost every day, but I’m not out building frames. I’m not pouring concrete. But what I am doing is I’m talking to those people every hour of the day. “What do you like? What don’t you like? What’s uncomfortable? What’s not uncomfortable? What do you hate?”
So, I’m as close to the customer as anyone can get. And I feel like that’s what’s defensible about BRUNT is the CEO of Timberland is not on construction sites, in a hole, like I was yesterday. Any of these, the Carhart and same thing, those guys are flying around. The teams are flying around. They’re not as close. And I know what their real feedback is like, so close.
Brian Weinstein: Yep.
Eric Girouard: That, so much, we’re literally in a shop. We built a shop, a workshop, that is now our office because we have people come by and they’re bringing their trucks, they’re working on their stuff here. We are as closely connected to the customer. And so, my advice is one, be incredibly authentic. If you really don’t care about the customer, you don’t know the customer, good luck, because you’re going to have people like me who really do care about the customer, and know the customer that are going to just one up you.
Brian Weinstein: Yep.
Eric Girouard: And if you do, just be as authentic and true as possible and the customer’s going to appreciate it. Sometimes we make mistakes. We tell them, “Hey, we screwed up. We got to fix this.” Right now we’re a few days behind the deliveries. We just let them know, “Hey, we’re we’re behind a few days.” It’s like, we wish we could control it. But it’s where we’re at in the world. And they’re all right. Most people are like, “Okay, that’s fine.”
Brian Weinstein: Yep.
Eric Girouard: And so, being truly authentic and as close to the core customer as possible if you’re not the core customer.
Brian Weinstein: Yep. Yep. No, absolutely. And I think it’s really important because look, it’s all about connection and marketing is great, but you have to have that connection and Caitlin and I talk about, we avoid the shameless plugs, but I’m going to give you one here because I love this concept that you have that you’re going to host these happy hours. You’ve got this product that maybe returns or whatever come back and they need to be refurbed. And you’re going to be hosting these happy hours for local folks in that area.
Eric Girouard: Yep.
Brian Weinstein: And I hope, by the way, that you take this and expand upon this and go to different regions of the country.
Eric Girouard: Yep. Yep.
Brian Weinstein: As you continue to grow. But I think that’s a great way to bring a community.
Eric Girouard: Yep. Yep.
Brian Weinstein: And build that community. I think that’s awesome.
Eric Girouard: Yep. And we show them all the boots behind me, which aren’t even out yet or released, we get to show them stuff that hasn’t come out yet. They can try it on. They can weigh in on it. I mean, when I say our customer has developed our product, it’s not like marketing BS. They’re telling us like, “This doesn’t work.” And then we’ll make a tweak the next week. And then in the next run it’s showing up, like they’re actually-
Caitlin Postel: Impacting the brand.
Eric Girouard: Yeah. They’re changing the product that we’re… It’s kind of a joke. I say, like, “I have the easiest job in the world. I literally just let them tell us what we should make.”
Brian Weinstein: Yep.
Caitlin Postel: And what better way, right? I mean, that’s what keeps them coming.
Eric Girouard: Yep, and then just do it.
Brian Weinstein: Eric Girouard is from BRUNT Workwear. You’ve been awesome. It’s been really great to talk to you again. I love the story. I really relate to it. So, for me it was kind of a personal thing. So, appreciate you coming on and having a couple of beers with us.
Eric Girouard: Thank you. Thanks, Brian. Thanks, Caitlin. Really appreciate it. Awesome conversation. Enjoyed it myself. Excellent.
Caitlin Postel: Always a pleasure, Eric.
Brian Weinstein: Caitlin, you want to take us out?
Caitlin Postel: Sure. Thank you everyone for listening. You can subscribe at Sippin&Shippin.com or check us out on your favorite podcast platform, Apple Podcast, Spotify, whatever works. Give us a thumbs up, subscribe. Love to have you guys here and we’ll see you soon.
Brian Weinstein: Thanks everybody.