Founder of Homefield Apparel on How to Build a Multimillion-Dollar Brand with Social Media — Connor Hitchcock

hey there from the crossroads of America in the hooer state of Indiana this is get in the podcast focused on the unfolding stories and extraordinary Innovations happening right now in the Heartland I'm Matt hunkler CEO at powderkeg and I will be one of your hosts for today's conversation I'm joining in Studio by co-host Nate spangle head of community at powdercake hey and I'm really excited because on the show today we have Connor Hitchcock who is the founder and CEO of HomeField but we made a subscription so people could get a shirt from a different school every week and to the power brand 500 people signed up Conor Hitchcock is the founder and CEO of HomeField a direct consumer brand that sells premium licensed College apparel and for schools of all sizes in today's show we are going to cover growing your company with content the harsh reality of early stage startups and and how any brand can level up and how they're going to Market Connor welcome to get in hey thanks for having me guys excited to be here thanks for being here we've got some fun stuff in store today we've got a couple new segments we're going to try out oh I'm aine Pig we've got some things that I think are going to be really fun for the camera for our visual listeners don't worry audio friends we're going to make it interesting for you too yeah absolutely but subtle plug to go check us out on YouTube Instagram social media all those places yes uh Connor you have such a cool business it's cool to us being in the software world because you have actual products tell us a little bit about HomeField and and what you do there yeah software world is cool to me because you have no inventory that sounds awesome we can talk about that yeah no doubt it it's pretty easy to understand what we do once you see it but director consumer Collegiate apparel right we go get licensed for these universities and we are printing logos stories histories whatever is relevant to your school about your school that's unique to your school and selling it primarily through direct consumer means Collegiate industry traditionally has been insert school name here apparel it's not very creative because it's really difficult to do what we do and to scale what we do we do a lot of non-scalable things funny enough that have made it successful yeah the tech people listening will love the non-scalable stuff but you always got to start with doing things that don't scale yeah yeah and we find ways to make it scale but that's cool yeah so we've we launched the brand in 2018 so this is we just celebrated the fifth year of the brand when I say weed it's myself my co-founder Chris who's also my wife couldn't be here I never know talk about that too I never know what order to say those things in whatever context probably wife first I should say but depends on the context depends on the context we we launched it out of our basement in Broad rle in 2018 and five years later we've scaled it to be uh pretty significant size with over 180 universities that we're licensed with so take us back to those days of being in the basement in Broad Ripple or maybe even before that what was the original idea when did you decide hey maybe we should start a business out of our basement what if we made t-shirts for colleges cool that idea it goes back before that so in 2014 I for whatever reason I don't remember why I was a student down at IU go hooers and in my apartment in Bloomington I just mocked up some stickers of the state of Indiana really popular at the time still one company crushing it right now United State of Indiana has that Graham and Grant are awesome but they have a store now on 54th actually in the mon yeah right there by Mama carollos right yes United State of Indiana yes so we actually did a lot of similar stuff and Graham was still super cool and met with me and basically taught me how to run a t-shirt company which is wild because I was doing what he was doing but had started with stickers and went literally door Todo in Bloomington and some stores had picked it up made Instagram made a website on Shopify just I was a student thought it'd be fun and 30 stores in the state picked it up which is crazy and they started asking for if I had t-shirts I was like oh yeah totally didn't have T-shirts so I texted my then girlfriend now wife and co-founder Christa and said hey I can't design anything she has a design background she's in school for photography and and media in general can you mock up a few designs for me she was at my of Ohio at the time and she said yeah sure so she mocked up some designs I taught myself how a screen print in my college apartment so like literally a tabletop press and and for those familiar with making a shirt you need to cure the ink which normally requires a massive conveyor dryer uh did not have that in my Bloomington apartment so I use water-based inks which can cure over time with heat in the sun sometimes in the oven and so I was literally laying out these shirts in my apartment putting them in the Sun for a certain amount of time and then shipping them to stores was doing that for a couple years that that side project was called who's your PR so then my final year school I graduated in 2016 uh I'm a huge college sports fan and IU sports fan in particular growing up and then going to IU I you played in a bowl game which doesn't happen very often and it was a meaningless bowl game it's a Pinstripe Bowl and if you're a college football fan you know no one cares about that bowl but for me it was a big deal I just never won a bowl game in my life they line up in double overtime to kick a field goal to tie it to go into triple overtime kick looks like it's good it's called No Good IU Twitter at the time which I was a active lurker not a participant all offseason kept saying tongue and cheek the kick was good pretending to be really upset about this meaningless bowl game but a little upset and so going into the next season 2016 I graduated I started working at one click shout out one click RP one click yeah we had Angie stockin on the show recently yes phenomenal company phenomenal people and I was already working e-commerce marketing at one click and I made this shirt I designed it it was horrible but I made it and put it on the website an hour before the kickoff of the next season and it got picked up on Indiana Twitter went nuts and I started to realize oh there's something here I think I've hit on did the shirt say the kick is good it just said the kick was good yeah it was terrible design there was like the state of Indiana on it on a crimson te didn't require licensing so I took that opportunity with a sales like literally but we sold in one hour was more than I had sold in the two years prior of the website existing oh wow and so I went to IU and said hey I onun this Indiana side project I'm a recent Alum can I get licensed and looking back there's no way they should have given me a license but they did and so I got licensed for IU Purdue Indiana State Ball State and wait how did you how did you nail down all those other ones so I went once I went to IU I had that license in hand I I had a mutual connection that connected me to the licensing office with your huge legal team at the time right yes yes that correct yes out of our BAS my basement at the time I then went to looked up online like just Googled Purdue licensing and said oh we work with learfield licensing which used to exist no longer does but was based here um up at 86 in Keystone and so I reach out to learfield licensing and the inter they work as an intermediary for Purdue and their rep for Purdue same as Tom kho who now works at HomeField funny enough but I explain he totally got the vision of HomeField because my I was pitching him you know it wasn't like kitchy shirts like saying the kick was good it's vintage appar that's a different take That's Unique for each School tells a different story he totally got it from the outset and our angle beyond that too is we're directed consumer and so nobody does direct a consumer like there is a brand in the Collegiate space MH $200 million brand they did not have a website when Co hit wow so it's all bookstore right it's A5 billion doll industry it's all book and so nobody I was working out one click one being born in the 90s and later as an adult just pretty much shopping everything online absorbing EC Commerce industry understanding how that whole Machine Works my interest being in e-commerce marketing and collegia sports I thought like oh this is a home run the industry being so old nobody saw that so Tom though saw it at learfield and he convinced Purdue to give this little side project out of our basement a license and then Indiana State in Ball State and so we do that side project for a year Chris is doing the design side I'm doing the marketing side and after a while I was getting coffee every month at one click with Randy as a mentorship coffee and I remember one day Randy was always super interested in what Randy and Angie were both super interested in what I was doing they their pitch to me literally at one click was hey we know you're doing your own thing why don't you come here learn literally whatever you can and then we'll help you go do your own thing or hopefully we've positioned you well to go do your own thing and they held true to that promise I met with Randy once a month and at one point he asked if I would ever do the license thing fulltime I was like no I think the industry is super crowded but then I went home talked with Christa and really looked into building out okay what would it look like if we did do this is this feasible and I came back the next month to coffee with Randy I was like hey Randy I think this is I think this is real I think what I've learned here no one's doing it in collegate and nobody's designing for sure it all starts with what Chris team does it's the designs are so different oh my gosh cuz if you go into any at least I went to depa and I know all like D3 schools they just copy and paste a logo and a name and it's like depa football depa swimming and Diving depa like in the shirts in the bookstore there's like huge racks of them they're all the same gray t-shirt and it's terrible yes and for all the depa grads listening because I know I'm sure there's an over indexing on orells that probably listen to this which means a lot of depa people I know our collection is lacking we're working on it I was going to sayon Bell game coming up I was going to say something it sure is is one of our investors Pat East is a w bash grad so I hear about that too I bet out they aren even on the site don't think they're not they're not yet we need to we need to beef that up but all that to say the pitch was obvious to us but we worked through it and literally for a year Randy while I was working at his company and Angie while I was working at her company and Eric Smith the CFO at the time and Tim clausm the head of business intelligence they were all helping me plan out my business my financials all of it operations they even were connecting me like hey you stuck this person for investing in in fundraising taught me how of fundrais cuz I was 23 yeah and so looking back why do you think they helped you they're just one they're just genuinely good people they're definitely some of the best people they're just the one click everybody says it who who's worked not everybody I'm sure not everyone has a great experience everywhere but the time I was there generally just and genuinely great people and it was a really special company to be at in the LIF cycle of one click where were you at in in there I was there 2016 to 20 no yeah 2016 and 2017 so literally this kind of ties in I was planning this company they were all helping me Randy and Angie both ended up investing they ended up connecting me with a bunch of other investors including Pat East including Karen corsaro Who's involved with HomeField it's a ton of people in Indie that are phenomenal and then they kept telling me like hey I wanted to leave in May of 17 and they'd be like hey can you just stay on for six more weeks we really need some help and so I'd be like okay and they like can you just stay on for two more weeks we want to be able to hand off your job to somebody else and so then the week I am set to leave they call an all company meeting and they announc they sold the company and at that moment Eric Smith Tim clausm John corn a bunch of people just looked down the row at me because everyone had an equity incentive so so they kept me there so I'd make money that's amazing which is really cool so they were like they had they didn't need to keep me they were just paying me a salary and they just waited until I got my check which is really cool that's really cool that just speaks to that that pervaded the whole company culture what a story yeah when you were at one click what are like the yeah I'm sure you learned a ton about e-commerce and I'm sure you've learned a lot since uh running your own e-commerce business but if you were to say there were like three main things that a successful e-commerce business needs to have mhm what what would be those like top three things wow top three things a success successful e-commerce business needs to have you know it's funny I I listened to Angie's episode and she downplayed the product because we did make it work with they were discount reading glasses nothing super special right but I do think you actually if for explosive growth I do think you need a phenomenal product most definitely I think that part one part two I always had this sense I should say the term then I'll dive into it I think you need a you need an incredibly strong brand to make it work in e-commerce and that's duhh you should have a good whatever but I say that because at the time when I left one click e-commerce was taking off in terms of you saw these crazy valuations and all these companies The Playbook was you just pour a bunch of money into digital marketing you pour a bunch of money into Facebook ads and I always just felt weird about that because you would make barely any money on the first purchase sometimes you'd lose money and you just hope you'd make it up in LTV all these companies got so focused on Facebook advertising that they didn't think about customer or consumer connection at all and the LTV just never came they just thought and for those who are listening that don't know LTV sorry lifetime value of a customer no probably all of our listeners know that but I just feel like yes it's worth calling out yeah the fundamental equation in in e-commerce is CAC to LTV ratio right customer acquisition cost customer so they would have these customer acquisition costs that were really high but they'd be like oh people will come back and purchase more if you don't have a brand and there's no connection with the consumer they might just jump to the next company that does the same thing that's cheaper yeah and on the backside valuations of those companies if you're just selling a widget like phone charges or whatever it's like that's not valuable like for multiples but if you have a brand and a customer base established that's where you start to see similar not quite as good as like the software and the tech valuations but like they buy you for your brand if they want to like make an acquisition yes and that's been a moe for us most definitely this a ton of companies have tried to copy what we do and we can talk more about that in a bit because I know I'm in the middle of a three-part list and I tend to ramble but we have an insanely devoted fan base because we invested in brand and we barely put any money into Facebook tying that full circle if any of you have ever advertised on Facebook when iOS 14 hit it ruined everyone one specifically in uh e-commerce I know one company who 70% of their revenue was based upon Facebook ads gone almost overnight wow because they just they had no focus on brand they were just like this is going to work forever I'm going to put $1 in and get $4 dolls back I'm just going to keep doing that and there's and brand is working on both sides of that equation right it's lowering customer acquisition cost while increasing lifetime value of customer so it's literally your cact LTV ratio you're turbocharging it and then what ends up happening when you invest in brand every marketer is going for Word of Mouth marketing that's all you want you want your customers to do the marketing for you you pay for that they're actually paying you and doing the marketing and so when you invest in brand in that consumer connection so many brands are invested or try to just scale up as fast as possible they want to get a bunch of VC money and pump it up and then go off and sell it Chris and I have a strategic advantage of liking what we do a lot and so we want to grow this thing sustainably and we're not going to go 5x year-over year every single year we don't want to do that and so you start to see exponential growth though so around the holidays last year our post purchase survey told us that 35% of people came to the website because a friend or family member told them which is crazy right that's absurd that means we you start to have if I spend $10 to acquire One customer and that customer tells three people who then tells three people who then tells you get exponential math right and it's like the holiday season it's like you show up to watch the bucket game right and you're wearing in a cool IU shirt versus like the cringey normal IU shirt and they're where'd you get that shirt and boom there you go now your One customer became three customers became nine customers and there's your exponential math and and it's hard because you can't I can't say I spent this much on I spent X on Brandon I got y very difficult to capture that so the way we in coming from one click which is extremely data driven we were always last touch attribution I put $1 in I know Tim clausm did a phenomenal job of saying you put $1 in here and 320 came back or whatever was which is a foundation of what we do data is super important but this early stage for us we have just made bets that we know make sense and then we Val valuate holistically on a quarter or a year holistically and directionally how that money is played out some hold your feet to the fire we've got two legs with the three-legged stool of e-commerce great product great brand if you had to pick one third thing that a great e-commerce company needs to have what is that I'd say any company this is true but ultimately especially in our stage just really great people and I'll dig deeper in that because that sounds really cliche Scrappy people who are just going to make it work especially we're five years in right we have it's funny we don't have a developer on staff which is crazy but Shopify I'm not doing a plug for Shopify but they make it so you can have like part-time Dev we will be invoicing them yes yes you should they have a lot of money but for example Steve our email marketing manager who came over from one click sat next to me at one click he also is like a he'll just c a tech problem and he'll resolve it like customer service will go to him and be like hey Steve do you know how to fix this and I'll find out he fixed it later it's not within the jop description yeah our our warehouse te is amazing they are you know you'll see so many things I'm talking about it probably feels like you're just talking to Angie again because I stole so much of what we do from one click we just prioritize people Scrappy people who care about one another our core values it's funny we mean them and I won't go down the list right now but they are all I realize when we wrote them they're all just like basically interpersonal there's very few on performance right and that's cuz that's an expression of what Chris and I care about and it's born out in our people and so it's our Scrappy people who like care so deeply about the brand and look I don't want work to be your life in any remote way but they our people are why HomeField is different you have an amazing product and we did great brand positioning we know how to connect with people but then ultimately behind the scenes we got people who are so Scrappy because you're just learning something new every day whether that's in social media which is changing every second whether that is in sports in particular for what we do we love it because it's unpredictable but when it's unpredictable that makes operations a nightmare right because Tennessee is a very specific orange and they were number one in the country last year so what do you do when all of a sudden they're comping 5x year-over-year for that specific team so it's just Scrappy people do you have a few of Theo stories of those early days in the scrappiness maybe a couple stories that you guys did back in the trenches like in 2019 I remember we got caught and it was before things started to be totally up and to the right I'd love to hear a couple of those stories yeah scrappiness man there's so there's so many so we really took off as a brand in July of 2020 there were two bits late 2019 we took off when we were part of this nine windana Campaign which was a quote prophecy we made one day with the former people who used to run crimson quy and IU blog one of who depa grad Kyle Robbins shout out but and a tech guy and a tech guy I'm going to his wedding this weekend but shout out Kyle shout out Beth but we had R the Cod Tales of Indiana football that was a blast but then 2020 hits and there's no Sports and we're just like oh man we are so because 2019 we had it was our second Black Friday and prior to that the summer 19 right before we met Nate we were starting to do a lot better before you and I met but the summer 19 we almost called the quits because we only raise 150,000 from Angels that's a lot of money to a person but not for came of startups it's not a ton of money and Licensing took way longer than we thought and you can't build a national brand when you have just random if I've got an IU if I've got the IU license that's great but I have a marshall one which is in West Virginia and then I have Georgia Southern right there's just not a cohesive brand but you need to demonstrate success with those schools to get other schools to to build the cohesive brand so big chicken and egg sure but 2020 Co hits we have this big March Madness campaign planned and we can't do it there's no Sports and so this is the scrappiest moment we've probably had just as a company four of us had worked at HomeField at the time myself Christa Travis our production manager who's now our warehouse manager and Holtz who had come on for temporary help in December of 19 and we just beg him to stay and now he's our wholesale manager so 2019 it happened be we' done really well on Black Friday we were working till 2: in the morning every night just the four of us Christa's parents drove down from Michigan to help out they stayed at our house for two weeks that was really Scrappy 2020 happens coid no Sports and we're sitting there like man what are we going to do to save the company basically because there's no Sports and so we sent Holton Travis home fully paid for a few months like we'll figure it out Chris and I were trying to figure out how to Pivot the brand during coid during the day and then at night we would go to the office which was at 46 in Evon at the time it's now a hair salon and we print t-shirts and it's funny people talk about those first two or three months of Co man they were the longest days ever I barely remember them because we were just probably working 15 16 hour days so then we go the one thing we would do every week though that we look forward to was the last dance the Michael Jordan documentary SL propaganda film so good propaganda film I loved every second of it yeah but I would wait every Sunday until 9:00 p.

m. all week sit down watch the last dance and I the second it would turn on I would pull out my phone and be on Twitter and Chris would be like are you kidding me that we've been working hard all week and all you want to do all week is watch the last dance and the second it comes on you're on your phone I was like yeah everybody's tweeting about the security guard who beat Michael Jordan in the random game with the Jerry C and the Jordan shrug and all that stuff there's a ton of jokes going on we're all experiencing it together and it was in that moment I realized oh yeah this is taking the place of sports and I made a very big leap Chris and I did in talking the next day wouldn't it be cool if we could make our product drops something that people anticipate like a sporting event again a very big leap so a few weeks later we announced we were doing this campaign called Big new Saturday where every Saturday we were going to drop a collection for school had never been on our website before it's going to be mystery and we just do it for 15 straight weeks and we had seven schools signed up for this at the time how big was your social following at the time ballpark I would say on Twitter we probably had 5,000 followers okay and Instagram was less than that okay so still pretty early days very early days it sounds like you had an Engaged audience yes small but engaged rabid fans rabid those early people it's funny now they we see people all the time being like oh I remember when HomeField did this I bought this back in 2018 or 19 like they're part of the in club which is funny because like I was in my basement at the time it's I didn't see that big a deal to me but now it does the people which is cool so we did it with tane the first week and it went crazy because there was no Sports going on so all the college football Twitter these media members had nothing to write about so they're like you know what let's this is a really cool Green Wave design and the next week we did Hawaii Rainbow Warriors people loved it it's the Rainbow Warriors pretty cool logos and that Drew bunch of attention then we got people saying hey if you're doing this for 15 weeks I'm going to want a shirt from each one can I get a subscription to get a shirt a week and I thought that was stupid I was like no one would I would never do that but we made a subscription so people could get a shirt from a different school every week and to the power of brand 500 people signed up for it holy how much did the subscription cost 25 bucks a week so for 15 weeks you didn't know what school was coming you couldn't send it back no take backs and so it started to pick up a ton ton of steam so some I love bull markets you go back to L LTV there holy cats and so we'd get you a few bigger school started Tak some bites at us Yukon was like yeah we'll do it why not we got nothing going on yeah Syracuse said yes Michigan State started to roll so that by the end of the season we planned 15 weeks we taxed two more on because Michigan and Alabama were like hey we saw what you're doing can we be a part of it like yeah sure so that was the first season of Big new Saturday and that was that's been the defining moment of the brand is it wasn't just oh you had one successful marketing campaign we ran four seasons of it launched a ton of schools it was the way we connected with consumers in every fan base it's understanding the 600 person Troy Trojans podcast yeah right like the fifth wall right like I I know that and I know who to send Troy Trojans products to because we're so interconnected in these small Niche communities and talk talking earlier about how we see this exponential growth it's investing in things that don't seem scalable that then they end up doing the work for us but we also actually care about them like we send them birthday gifts we know when like someone's dog died recently we send them some stuff right we have this relationship with a consumer that it's not scalable on paper one it's what we actually care about treating people that way but then two it's worked out for us too in amplifying the brand are you ready to transform your brand with award-winning video content that captures your vision and connects with your audience check out Alchemy the experts at building your brand using video from story-driven social media Snippets that leave a lasting impression to compelling fulllength documentaries they have got the expertise to take your brand to the next level Alchemy is actually our video partner here on get in they do amazing work all the videos across social across YouTube all that is done by Alchemy and they're an amazing partner to work with reach out to me Nate at powderkeg or check out Alchemy film code.

com to get connected with Alden and his team they will take care of all your video needs well I think the difference there as well was it wasn't just like you posted a big news Saturday and you're like okay hi go buy my shirt it was there was content and a strategy behind it can you talk more to the power of the because it was video drops Right video and images and uh it text I mean tons of jokes so basically what we do is every Sunday we we would hint we'd have the we had a big new Saturday font and it'd be super obvious what team it was going to be so if it was Michigan for example it' be a Navy background and the be in big news Saturday would be like a winged helmet and Michigan fans would freak out Sunday night and all week we just make like jokes online with Michigan fans and there's been like there's like a lexicon that's developed among HomeField fans they call us the good brand for whatever reason so they always say we can't like HomeField doesn't miss or can't miss or they talk basically about us beating their wall at senseless they get pretty weird about it but we would take that phraseology and play it play with it play with it so if there's an iconic moment in a school's history for example Florida State beating Auburn in the national championship is a iconic moment for them but there's a moment where there's a floor State receiver who reaches up over defensive back and just absolutely dominates him to grab this football and we would just like plug in like the worst designed memes but on purpose because it was a nod to college football Twitter and it'd be the Florida state guy would just be like HomeField and then the Au guy would just be like my wallet right like stuff like that that's stupid but we started making that content and people thought it was funny oh HomeField gets that that was a big moment for my school they're being funny they're being leaning into internet culture basically cuz that's me I grew up a lurker on Indiana Twitter I had a Twitter account for seven years and never tweeted what was it that helped you pass that Tipping Point of going from lurking to now I'm going to be a part of the conversation and a Creator and and not just creating stuff every once in a while or commenting nice but like actually adding value and creating interesting content and gear yeah that's a great question so mid 2019 that point where I said we almost had to call it quits Christa and I walked over to half lader shout out half leader uh walkable from my old house and my current house what a great place barue spot yeah and we were like okay what are we going to do we have $800 in the bank account if we don't even do well this week we're not hitting payroll I started to not take paychecks because we had to take paychecks because we were 23 when I we left our jobs right there there was no savings right but we had talked and I was like Twitter is a huge thing in college sports and we played it very straight on Twitter and social media because we just didn't want to upset anybody and I thought you know my background digital marketing I'll just scale it up in digital marketing that wasn't working yeah and so we were like you know what Twitter is such an instrumental part of sports what if we just started to be a little more loose with it and so I just love Twitter anyway I'm addicted to it um and I think you mean X yeah yeah I do sure I teach a social media class at IU right now and I told the students I will not call it X that's hilarious good all right we we can avoid that here on the show Good yes Twitter Twitter that was aided by the 9 Indiana campaign right because it was such a ridiculous Proclamation that Indiana would win nine games because they've only done it one other time and they almost did right they were Indiana won eight regular season games and this is in 2019 this campaign I was a part of with with Kyle Robbins and crew as Crimson Cory and the players it became such a thing nationally the players ran off the field after they beat Purdue in the bucket game and we're screaming nine windana into the ESPN cameras and I'm sitting there printing shirts Black Friday 2019 till 2: in the morning every night and I'm watching the bucket game I'm going wait stop did you hear that it's so good that was part of oh okay homefields known as a specifically Indiana brand our our identity is really tied to being here starting in my apartment in Bloomington being based then in Broad Ripple or Midtown now in in Speedway it's very Indiana forward Y and the N9 Indiana thing helped Grease the wheels a bit on being sillier on on Twitter and just kept escalating people don't who cares if you say look at this cool shirt we dropped chop it now right it's sports are fun right it's supposed to be released from like really hard stuff in life so let's have fun with it I will subtly plug yeah I've followed HomeField Twitter for a while now and it's awesome it's just like a good way you actually listen to your customers and know their culture and people don't want to be sold something they want to see a meme of whatever and laugh about it and be like oh I like this brand oh absolutely we'll pay people we see on Twitter we think are funny like oh oh you went to whatever school and we're doing we're designing for them right now we'll pay people in dollars and shirts to consult for an hour and we'll ask them questions about their school and moments and all that stuff that's such a different strategy than hey we'll pay you to promote this it's know we just want to learn more about the Monon Bell game for instance like we just want to learn more about this so we can make something that people are actually going to want yes I do have I do have a fun question for you who is in your eyes the most famous person that follows HomeField on social media the most famous person that follows HomeField on social oh man that's a great question because for me the people I like a lot are uh famous Twitter accounts right and so it's this guy closed up his or he stopped tweeting before hfield ever was a brand Trill Ballin that would be my white whale he is no longer on Twitter uh because it's bad for your mental health so I'm trying to think the most famous person that follows HomeField on Twitter I think it's more so famous people well like in general pop culture cuz if I'm speaking about sports Twitter people nobody's going to know what I'm talking about we'll have JJ Watt wor a bunch of our stuff on Hard Knock one year right like our Wisconsin stuff we get coaches to wear it all the time for me Mike penck wears our stuff a lot now for Washington which as an iug grad is a big deal and he's obviously the Washington quarterback now but that's great stuff like that's always really fun to do I'm pretty sure I this big cat from I saw that one like early I was like holy cow I forgot he loves our Wisconsin stuff that's that's incredible I love it yeah what's I'd like to dive in a little bit uh on brand because it really does seem like a a master class on building a brand uh organically from the ground up what are some of those things that if you're talking to someone in your class or someone who is looking at really building a brand from the ground up with a new Venture MH what are some of those things that you think every entrepreneur needs to do early on to make sure that they're establish a brand that they can build on and can really grow with the organization no that's a great question and something that Chris and I spend a ton of time on because it I think brand works when people believe it and when it is in the fabric of everything you do because that also creates authenticity right it has to stretch the whole company so at first when we were in 2019 we're also retooling what we wanted the brand to be mhm understanding very specifically who this is for in the first place who are you talking to who is your ideal customer and then everything flows from that y because what do they care about what do they want what motivates them how do they talk and so that's who we started with and fortunately Chris and I found ourselves both as the ideal customer right we're both we were targeting the brands toward Millennials for the most part now we're trying to get more jenzy in the fold but our core demographic Millennial col grad makes sense College apparel company but beyond that sports fan specifically ones that are online I grew up a massive value sports fan still am Chris's dad played football at Michigan she grew up going to a bunch of Michigan football games she loves college sports right so was a very specific type of person not only that people who live either within a city or within five miles of a city right so very specific for us but then we started to just know everything about these people being a lurker for seven years on Twitter really help me CU I just observed Twitter is the primary place where these people go and so it's where they go to hang out that's the way I viewed it and so Twitter in particular is a bunch of concentric circles like little communities I mean started with tech obviously there's these Tech communities uh VC brags is hilarious and I you know you have these people where that are leaders of certain communities so there's a pit Panthers Twitter and somebody with 3200 followers is like a god to those people right because they make funny jokes about pit and so will become like these are the types of people that will be like hey can we learn more about pit from you we'll hook you up with a ton of product what do you guys care about and so we see how those people interact and so we we basically you're like befriending and making super fans of the mavens of each Community yes and it's legitimate friendship like legitimately this Saturday I'm going up to an arbor and I'm getting beers with one of them I become friends with yeah for the Michigan fans all that to say though extending beyond my brand it is I think it all starts with you have to understand everything about your target person what they like where what motivates them where they go to for news so for us Twitter is not people laugh all the time when I tell them in marketing circles oh our biggest acquisition channel was Twitter and they laugh nobody knows Twitter nobody understands how to use it for a brand but college sports is where everybody goes yep and they listen to podcasts Niche podcast other team and they go to Niche blogs and we just were there we spurned a lot of the traditional channels we spent what was there efficiently but really it was just going to these micro communities which then those people became part of our own community and we have this m we have a micro community of 1500 people in an app we developed called The Varsity Club that's invite only and it's like top 1% of customers and they just we just talk T-shirts all day we let them have input on what we do that's so cool yeah it's it's a really it's a really cool community that supported us Angie mentioned it last time there's a couple times we've been really behind on orders one of them is right now if for listening we're working very hard I'm very sorry might weekend's all of it good problem to have good problem to have but it's still a problem but 20120 we were super behind on orders and our customers who were waiting for their products sometimes three or four weeks because it was 20120 and everything was a mess we're sending us coffee and donuts and McDonald's and pizza to just fuel the team because we would be working sometimes again until 2: in the morning get these orders out like it's just a cool community of people who expected nothing in return from that they just caring people and so it's cuz we understood who exactly we were going after though I love those thoughts on brand and I love those stories we had an idea just before you came on the show to introduce a new segment because of your background in brand and your background in Collegiate Sports this is the brand battle are you down to play oh let's go okay let's do it so we're talking we know ball right knows Ball but we're going to talk brand we're going to show you some organizations Loosely tied to Indiana and we want to know who's got the better brand and why oh wow okay who's got the better brand we know you love them all yep I'm going to say that no ill will toward anyone if I don't pick you yes yeah yeah he loves them all we're not talking ball we're talking brand mhm all right so first we what we have here is pulling from the bottom right oh pulling from theom pulling from the bottom all right yeah there we go I was about to mess it up first first off also humble plug or subtle plug go watch on YouTube so you can get the full effect here but here we go first we have 3 two one Butler vers Xavier Butler vers Xavier oh man if I don't pick Butler I am in so much trouble here locally but what brand they have very specific Brands Butler does a great job with the butler way right you understand immediately it's about hard work teamwork Scrappy play maybe making the extra pass Xavier leans super hard into being into Cincinnati in the city right they're tough nose in the same way similar they hardworking but they might they might fight in the parking lot and so that's maybe not intentional in the University but at the end of the day I would say Butlers I don't know as much about the Xavier student experience I'd say Butlers extends from Sports into the actual student experience right it characterizes the students who go there better I think it's more authentic and that's why I go with Butler Butler wins that one all right I'm up one oh no all right round two here we go near and dear to my heart we have three two one depa and Wabash who's got a better brand oh man wow wow you're really which investor do you want to piss off hey hey Pat or my co-host over here yeah which one has a better brand and why okay so I'm thinking right now of brand assets right what makes it different it's very hard to beat the little giants because they're so different than anyone else and that for me is they're running into a green space right nobody else is the Little Giants they've got some great and I'm an idiot at sports so which one is the little Giants the Paw Tigers I'm doing that comedic effect so I would say on a brand asset standpoint Wabash now I would say on like brand elements now yes again we talk about authenticity the pervasiveness of the depa brand like immediately earlier I said sorry for if I upset or fellows that's burned in my brain you go to depa there's like a 50% chance you're in orell right so locally the whole student experience shout out Abby Parker uh the whole student experience is burned in my brain uh for depal so I think it extends the whole university I think athletically Wabash has a better brand see how I'm playing both sides I'm up I'm up 20 Conor I think I'm going to win this one too all right round oh we got Notre Dame versus USC who's got a better breand oh Notre Dame man I am crushing you Nate so so My reasonings as to why let's go Notre Dame has a whole religion behind them correct they have a whole religion behind them the name it's funny of the Fighting Irish is there a magic in her name there's a yes here come the Irish dude yeah I would say Notre Dame because they were excluded from the Big 10 initially in the early 20 20 Century because they were Irish Catholics the name Fighting Irish yes mostly Irish Catholics but it was they were made fun of it and they leaned into it and so that's the their whole Fabric and identity and so you have a bunch of brand signifiers you have the golden helmets representing the golden dome you have the kelly green jerseys that signifies something USC in the mid 2000s their brand was incredibly hot right you had Reggie Bush and Matt liner and they were you had will Ferell and Snoop Dogg on the sidelines right stuff like that I think good it's great influencer so both again really strong Brands but I think Notre Dames historically has threaded throughout the years I think that USC's on an up streak or an uptick right now I'm pretty sure they're doing they're leaning into nil pretty hard I think most of their football players have their own YouTube accounts and they'll post up like Caleb Williams is their quarterback and he has his own like podcast and they're really leaning into the future of brand so keep them on your keep them on your radar but we did just launch a shirt with Sam Hartman literally this morning the Notre Dame quarterback so I'm going to have to say Notre damn that last one I've been to both of these schools but I only have a diploma from one oh let's go the battle for the hooer state Indiana and Purdue better brand beloved Purdue people you buy a lot from HomeField apparel.

com and I'm very grateful I think looking into the camera that's the camera yeah that's the camera you do some Innovative things you're very nice to me I will never pick you in this battle and that is spoken like a true there that's a wrap that's a rap amazing we have one more segment that we want to try out MH all right this is a fun segment too actually we have two more segments you are a t-shirt expert I am you're an apparel expert I'm going to for the camera we're showing the The pwder Keg hat nice we're showing Nate and I are both wearing the Hat we didn't need to bring a third hat I brought one and we're showing the Powder Keg t-shirt but back let's go give us a t-shirt makeover how would you make this how how would you make the apparel Nate can I see I have to I have to hold it and F it okay hold it feel it touch it how would you make over this t-shirt so you already you picked the correct blank Bell and canvas is a great blank before we ever developed our own with factories and ordered thousands and thousands at a time we used to use Bell canvas t-shirts um they're phenomenal so you pick the right blank here I the printing uh you have some nice colors here one thing I'm a vintage person so I would go for a softer hand this is a plasa salt ink I believe I would rather go for a waterbase ink but this is your logo it's nice I think a lot of people make the mistake of printing their logo too big M mhm you guys I think this is probably like what 6 in that's great I mean it works there it works um you could probably make a really nice left chest one like right here an emblem is really nice for different location prints so I I like the concept I think there's some other things you could do and then okay I need some of the uh I need the rationale behind the URL with the blank space on the back so we only give these t-shirts out you're going to have one afterwards you can write in with a fabric marker your uh company brand and then you'll have a profile on Powder Keg cool so it's a way to rep your brand HomeField we'll set up powder /h HomeField yes for all you listeners out there so you can go check out HomeField on Powder I like that a lot that's really cool it's it's not maybe a fashion choice but it's functional and for your brand that's what I'm saying it's cool it's a good way to get some marketing out there so I like the bass concept you picked a good shirt for it so my additions would be minimal maybe just changing the location of this or if you ran a second version of it oh yeah yeah cuz too many people want their logo would be huge I get it you want people to pay attention to it but keep it small subtlety is what do you think pocket tea those are out right now those out they were big in I was never in Greek life but they were huge in Greek life for a long time so what is that's a that's a good as we dive in and wrap it up here what is a a trend you're seeing in apparel let's keep it on your radar this is going to be cool when it finally streams down to mattai bomber jackets are a big thing right now they have been for a year and that's why we're doing a bunch of them let's hear it tell us about the experience with the Colts yes the Indianapolis Colts so there is a local licy program where you know typically if you're going to be making apparel for an NF team you have to get licensed for all 32 very difficult to do not really what we do anyway we care a lot about college we're College we're not trying to go make a bunch of NFL stuff however the Colts came knocking last year and they said hey there's this local LIC e program we want to do it for the first time and we know you guys are based here in Indie we'd love to work with you and so we said yeah absolutely we'll do this and it's limited to six pieces so last year we debuted a collection with six pieces it was a lot of fun dropped it at a preseason game against the the Bucks nice and we got blue involved the mascot and great time and then it ended up actually the uray have a huge mental health initiative kicking the stigma and outside of the agreement they said hey can you guys make a shirt for kicking the stigma we said absolutely so we made a charity shirt for kicking stigma they asked us again earlier this year if we wanted to run back year two and so we said absolutely so just last gosh my losing track of time I think it was last week yes yeah a week and a half ago I guess now we won't hold you to it the first home game G we dropped our second Colts collection and this is the 40th year in in Indianapolis and they want for all the decades they've been in Indie we did a piece for each decade so we did a piece for the 1980s with the hoer Dome the piece in the 90s for the cardiac Colts 2000s for the Super Bowl did a bomber jacket for the ' 06 Super Bowl which is funny because I'm a Chicago Bears fan and uh 2010s we did won for blue when he first won his first mascot of the Year award then this for the 2020s we did a for the shoe shirt which is or sweatshirt which is the big issue of they're pushing so love that we do have a six piece coming out for the throwback game which has not been announced yet so I can't say anything that one's really cool too I I do want to give you a huge shout out because you are the first guest to bring three large t-shirts we mentioned this the last several episodes that if you send us three large shirts we will wear your shirt so we will wear this on a future episode but I I want to show it off first while it's here yes um I'm trying to unfold it there we go it was from our third month Mania Campaign which is what we call our March campaign because we can't say the other words right right third month Mania third month Mania but yes classic dig it I like this is this your mascot yeah it's uh basket Paul I like basket Paul that's good yeah he one mascs Nate and I love a good pun uh I'm a player we' got one more uh segment lightning round yes sir this is quick three questions first thing that comes to your mind uh we're going to be talking all Indiana real quick so outside of the amazing entrepreneurial ecosystem what is Indiana known for basketball boom easy what is a Hidden Gem in Indiana so I had one that has sadly gone away the donut shop yeah great the best breakfast $5 in cash could buy in Midtown similarly in Midtown I believe it is Al 62nd in Allisonville I always forget what the cross street is I know it's on the backs side of Allisonville patties of Jamaica if you've never been I've driven by that yes Jamaican meat patties wonderful yes patties of Jamaica it's like a hole in the wall it's been around for we got our next launch spot patties of Jamaica I've heard some good things and who is someone that we need to keep on our radar someone who is doing big things man someone to keep on your radar it's funny I have I get so engross in what we're doing right now and I'm still so early in my career I somebody asked me that the other day I was like what do you mean like I'm in my 20s who am I looking at for next um man someone to keep on your radar I would say it's funny I'm going to put this back to someone who uh has helped me out a lot I would keep uh one Randy stockin on your radar still he has started again another organization called Zeal and they are buying companies and rehabbing them and mostly in the SAS space they just they had their first acquisition but everybody I'm sure listening knows Randy but I think he's got a great second act coming here after one click we got to get him on the show yes we'll get him on Conor thanks for being on the show thanks for everything that you're doing for Indiana Midwest College fans everywhere it's awesome to have you here and I'm sure we'll stay in touch yeah thanks guys for having me yeah we'll stay in touch on a monan apparel drop oh the Monon the monell game I do see you on the actual Monon with your wrestling boys day yes absolutely we're grinding out there can fre frequently be seen jogging up and down I'll be there running off his caffeine high from java house uh this was amazing Conor thank you so much it was cool to learn more about what home Fields up to and big things coming yeah really appreciate you guys having me thank you this has been get in a powder kick production in partnership with Elevate Ventures and we want to hear from you if you have suggestions for a guest or segment reach out to Matt or Nate on LinkedIn or on email to discover top tier tech companies outside of Silicon Valley in hubs like Indiana check out our newsletter at powder k.

com newsletter and to apply for membership to the powderkeg executive Community Check out powder. com premium we'll catch you next time and next week as we continue to help the world get in since you just listen to this podcast you might be thinking about starting one for your company lucky for you our partners over at casted have you covered cassid is the first and only podcast in video marketing platform made specifically for B2B Brands I love this about them the platform makes it possible to publish Syndicate amplify and measure the value of your podcast and video content in fact we use it for our podcast here at powderkeg and if you're a startup you should listen up because cassid for startups is definitely for you they are offering exclusive deep discounts of up to 82% off retail price for qualifying startups connect with casted at cd. us/ powder keg