CRESCENT Products: Loggerhead Apparel — A Dual Mission that Supports SC and Gives Back in Philanthropy
It never fails that when you try to do something new, you step out, you want to do something different, you’ve always somebody, more than one somebody who says “Don’t do that, you shouldn’t do that, you can’t do that.” How many people told you that and how did you handle it?
ZAC: We didn’t have many. I think there were some who really didn’t understand it. It was like, “OK, that’ll be interesting to see,” but I also think that people that knew us probably knew that we wouldn’t listen. And we had done some research and we had done some surveys and things like that and everything was pointing in the direction we wanted it to point in that confirmed it was a good idea. You know, the first time we said we were going to start a clothing line, it was, “Alright, that’s interesting,” but there was never a, “You can’t do that.” Now, we got a “Can you really do that? Make it in the US and make money?” That’s been the biggest question we’ve had. “How can you make money having everything produced locally?”
SARA: Another big question that we get is, “OK, you’re making clothes. You’re making polo shirts. There are so many other brands out there that are making polo shirts. What differentiates you from them?” Obviously, our two-part mission that we’re making everything in the United States and that we give a significant portion of our sales to conservation efforts. That’s big, but I think, from people in this industry that…more from the retail side of it, the folks that are selling it, that are on the front line selling it and they’ve got all these brands out there that are approaching them, we get the question a lot, “What makes your salability?” Great quality, if not better than some of these other brands that are out there. I think, all very, very comparable in that high end category. And we’ve got this mission tied to it. So yes, that differentiates us, but not only that. I had one guy say, “Well, your polo shirts are made in South Carolina, so that will be great for people in South Carolina, but is it really going to sell anywhere else? I don’t know.” We’ve sold to 31 different states in the United States that have ordered on-line, that found us.
ZAC: Stores in 5 different states and on-line orders in 30 plus. I never believed that for a minute. If I saw something…I mean I drive a Ford, and I love that it rolled out of Michigan. There are things that are made in Texas that we have that I think it’s cool that it’s made in Texas. I think some of the furniture we have that’s made in North Carolina, that’s really cool. It’s all American. It’s not…it was never founded as a South Carolina-only thing. We wanted to make it in South Carolina because that’s where we’re from, but I expect people in Tennessee and Texas and Florida and everywhere else will appreciate that. And they do. Right now, our sunglass straps are made in Wyoming. Koozies are made in Texas. Our stickers come from Minnesota. Some of our t-shirts come from North Carolina, but a lot of the work happens here. All the designing happens here. The Koozies, if they were actually made in Texas, they were printed locally. So there’s always that local tie-in, but we never thought for a minute that it wouldn’t resonate outside of the state. And it certainly has. We have done very well outside.
Every time someone travels here from our New York office or whatever, they’re amazed at how great it is here. There is a lot of Southern style here and we wanted to be…there are several brands in South Carolina, and we wanted to make one that did as much work as possible here and gave back here. The 10% of sales, not profits…
Which is an important distinction.
ZAC: It is. It’s huge because profits can be coded a lot of ways to determine what that donation is, but if you buy a $68 polo on our web site, $6.80 goes into an account that is set aside for a charitable donation to sea turtle conservation. If you buy a $4 Koozie, $0.40 goes into an account. Every single dollar we get. We’ve done…in a year, it’ll be $10,000 in donations in our first year. That’s already happened and more planned already.
That’s really pretty good.
ZAC: Yeah. It’s great, and that’s the fun part. We’re talking to our vendors on a weekly basis. We’re impacting their lives. We’re sending funds their way. Our stores that are selling our stuff, we sell to them wholesale and 10% of every wholesale dollar is donated, too. It’s not just consumer orders.
That’s a piece of the puzzle we haven’t talked about. You had the idea. You found out how to get everything made, but then you had to have somebody get rid of it for you. What all did you go through to build up your distribution channel?
SARA: It happened a couple of different ways, and it’s still happening. We’re really expanding upon our retail base right now. And really, in a large part, outside of South Carolina because we’ve got a pretty good base here now in South Carolina. Certainly, we have more stores that we’d love to be in in the state…
ZAC: But we’re in 20 stores in South Carolina.
SARA: Yeah, right, but we had a lot that actually reached out to us from the start. They said, “Hey, I read this article,” or, “My family…” The owner of one of our downtown Charleston stores is from Greenville, and his family read an article in the Greenville News or the Greenville Journal about us and told him because he owns a store on King Street. He called us up and said, “Hey, I’m interested.” That’s how we formed that relationship.
ZAC: That was a few months after we started, and I remember, for me, that was in the first two months of us doing business. The owner of an upscale men’s store on King Street in Charleston called us and said he’d be interested in carrying our product? That was a pretty cool moment. King Street is nationally known for shopping, so after being in business for 7 or 8 weeks and getting that call was awesome/
That’s the one when you looked at each other and say “Honey, I think we’re on the right track.”
SARA: Exactly, because that’s someone who read our story, and it immediately resonated with them. He wasn’t one of ones who had this limited viewpoint of , “Well, is it going to sell outside of South Carolina?” Some of those questions that we’ve gotten. It grabbed his attention immediately, and we’ve had a number of stores that that’s how that relationship started. They read about us, they saw us and reached out to us.
ZAC: Thomasville, Georgia, which is on the Florida line right above Tallahassee. The owner of that store called us and had read about on the Made in America blog. They just thought it was cool that we were making everything in the United States, but the blogger was based out of Ohio. The guy in Thomasville, Georgia read it. He owned a clothing store. He called us and said, “I’d love to carry your product.” And that’s how he found out. Guy in Statesville, right outside of Charlotte called us…
SARA: And then he has put us in touch with a number of other people including a sales rep to help represent our line outside of South Carolina. It’s just that network is really neat. We’ve had retailers who have talked to their buddies in the next town over and said, “Hey, you should really check out this new brand. I’m picking them up, and they’ve got a really cool story.”
ZAC: Yeah, the store in Spartanburg got us the store in York. The store in Hartsville got us the store in Florence. The store in…a woman we met in Charleston arranged a meeting for the Pawley’s Island store that carries our merchandise. It’s been…the Lexington, South Carolina store has a tie to the Clemson, South Carolina store, the way the communication worked. So it’s pretty neat when it comes down to it.
SARA: We didn’t have sales reps out any of last year representing out line. It was whenever we could make phone calls or get on the road. I started doing some of that in the state over the summer but not any formalized process.
You were kind of still feeling your way around at that time.
SARA: Operationally, yeah…
ZAC: And there was no rush. We didn’t want to grow too quickly, we didn’t want to overextend ourselves.
SARA: And we didn’t want to saturate a certain market, Downtown Greenville, with 4 different but similar stores and have them competing against each other when we only had 3 products. 3 color polos.
ZAC: And we’ve had stores end their relationships with us already because it just wasn’t a good fit, and we’ll continue. We want it to be the right way. We want it to be people who believe in what we’re doing and support it, and it’s worked so far. We didn’t take the approach of get in anywhere we can, no matter what it is, and sell as much as we can, no matter what you have to do.
SARA: It was very selective.
ZAC: We want to grow at the right rate.
Brand protection.
ZAC: Which I think comes from our background in the advertising world.
Believe me, I understand. Now, how long before you hand Joe (Erwin, president of Erwin Penland Advertising and former chair of the South Carolina Democratic Party) your resignation?
ZAC: I don’t know that I ever will. I really love what I do in the advertising world. I’m a foodie. My entire career has been marketing and advertising for restaurants and restaurant companies. I don’t know that I ever want to get too far away from that because it’s another passion that I have.
SARA: This guy likes to have 4 or 5 things going on all at one, all the time.
I understand.
SARA: He’d be coming up with some other concept to do on the side of Loggerhead Apparel if he wasn’t doing something.
ZAC: And there are so many…
You’ve got a baby you’re getting ready to have to pay for.
SARA: There’s that.
You better keep moving.
ZAC: And there are so many…EP (Erwin-Penland where Zac still works, but Sara left to oversee Loggerhead’s operations full-time) encourages that entrepreneurial spirit. There are so many at EP that have multiple callings and that’s one of the things that makes it a special place.
You have a good group of people over there.
ZAC: It’s awesome.
SARA: I’m not employed by the company any more, but I’m still part of the EP family. They let me host a trunk show there right before Christmas in the Central Park meeting room. I sold products for 2 hours.
ZAC: Joe purposely wears his Loggerhead shirt to meetings. They’re all incredibly supportive. EP is not a job for me. There’s more to it than that.
SARA: Joe wrote a letter to the editor of a fairly large publication saying “Hey, you need to check out this new brand.”
Really?
SARA: Yeah, just on his own. We have that support from so many different places that it’s been really wonderful.
The thing is you’re doing something different, too. You really want to see a business like this succeed because of what it’s based on.
SARA: Well, thank you. And that’s been one of the neatest things for me is this is something we’re really passionate about ourselves, and we thought, “You know, this makes sense.” We think other people will be passionate about this and be interested in this, too. It’s really been neat to see that pay off and actually see that come to life. Not only people who have a lot of the same ideals as us but maybe somebody who hadn’t thought that much about where the products they wear come from. Now they are starting to a little bit more. And they’re starting to tell that story, so that amplifies that trend that we’re seeing.
ZAC: Yeah, our manufacturer told me last week that he’s gotten calls from several brands that manufacture overseas to start looking into it.
Really?
ZAC: His first question was, “Are they trying to take your market away? Are they going to do something like ‘If they’re having success because they’re made in South Carolina or made in the US, maybe we need to start doing that, too?’” Then he asked if would I be upset by that, but actually, it’s pretty cool. That’s what we set out to do, to show that it can be done. If another brand should start making their shirts…
It’s only cool as long as it doesn’t hurt you. Then it’s not cool any more.
ZAC: I don’t think that’s the only reason…
SARA: That’s not why we…
ZAC: We’re not a novelty, and if that was the case, if it was a lackluster shirt that didn’t have a dual mission, that wasn’t genuine, and all we did was slap something on it that said, “Made in South Carolina,” we wouldn’t be where we are. People don’t buy it just for that reason. When I talked about Eat This, Not That, I said the big thing was that the exchange was about not having to sacrifice. That’s the difference with Loggerhead Apparel. You’re not paying more for it. You’re getting as good if not better quality, and you’re buying in to a brand that you can identify with. No one can necessarily make that just by slapping a “Made in US” label on it.
To read Part 1, click HERE.
