CRESCENT Products: Loggerhead Apparel — Customers? Give ‘Em What They Want.

When you look at your customer base, what do you see? Who wears Loggerhead?

ZAC: We don’t want to be labeled as a college brand.  We don’t want to be labeled as a high school brand.  We want those kids wearing it, and I think a lot of kids appreciate what we’re doing, too.  Some people can make the broad statement, “Ah, college kids don’t care if it’s made in the US.”  There are certainly some that do.  They certainly are some that really appreciate us from a conservation standpoint.  We get that crowd.  We also get the crowd that likes it because it’s a bright color with a new animal on it.

They just want to look frattastic.

ZAC: Yeah and that’s great, but then we’ve got people who are in their 70s and 80s buying a shirt because, “Oh, it’s 100% cotton and it fits me and…”  That crowd.

You mean reasons that people used to buy shirts. What about the immediate horizon? Anything new coming up?

ZAC: We’ve got our new Southern Nesting Ground shirt out, which is pretty cool.  We showed it off at the Southeast Wildlife Expo in Charleston a couple of weeks ago.

Basically, it shows where the loggerheads nest in the United States so we thought it would be really neat graphic.

Looking at a longer range expansion of Loggerhead’s product line, are you going to stick with shirts?  Are you going to move into pants or just kind of stay where you are?

SARA: We’re definitely going to be expanding our product offerings to khaki pants and shorts.  Skirts, too.

We have women’s products.  Most of our retail stores are men’s, high-end men’s boutiques, but we do have all-women’s products, too.  We want to make sure we’re covering both bases.  The sky is sort of the limit for us.  It definitely takes time and investment, so we have to start with one and make sure it is working well before we put out a whole bunch of different lines.  We want to make sure that everything we do we’re doing well.  We definitely have plans to do, in the next year, hats, I think will be next, hats and belts.  Khaki shorts and pants…

ZAC: We started with the very first shipment being 3 colors of polos.  We’re now at 6.  We’ll have 8 to 10 by the end of the year.  We’ve got college-themed embroidery on the different colors.  For example, we have a garnet and black turtle.  We’ve got a purple and orange turtle.  We’ve got black and gold.  We’ve got red and black.

Which allows you to have that university tie-in without having to go through the licensing.

ZAC: It’s that, but it’s also… We’re big Carolina fans, but I’m not a fan of wearing a Gamecock logo to the office.  I love wearing it to the games, but it’s not something I want to wear every day.  I’m not going into a client meeting with a big Gamecock logo on my shirt.  I can wear the garnet and black turtle.  Anybody who knows the USC colors knows what I’m wearing.  Same thing with purple and orange.  You can wear a nice polo shirt with a purple and orange turtle and not have the tiger paw huge on the sleeve or whatever.  We like that kind of subtle fan approach.

SARA: And it was something different, too.  In fact, a store in Statesville, North Carolina ordered the garnet and black and purple and orange turtle polos just because they liked that they were different.

ZAC: And our store in Newberry is actually special ordering some that are going to be the colors of the high school.

I’m a Dorman graduate and we did a baby blue and navy blue turtle on a navy shirt and our store in Spartanburg said, “Give them to me,” because they had a ton of Dorman students.  So it’s pretty interesting to do that.

That’s another thing and us being local, we can do that because it’s not a 14 week process to get those. One store in Spartanburg wants 30 shirts that have the school colors of the high school down the street.  We’ll have them to you in a week or two.  And we can do that.

SARA: We have our shirts, get them to our embroidery partner, tell them which logo variation to put on it, and we have them ready.

So, you’re giving your customers what they want.  That’s a novel idea.

SARA: Right before Christmas we had a lady who put in 3 different orders through our web site within a span of 3 days.  Ordered, 2 polos then came back and ordered a couple more polos and t-shirts then put in another order.  And I’m like, “OK. I’ve got to contact this woman and thank her.”  Just reach out and say. “Thanks for your support.  I’m glad you found us.”  Before I could even do that, she already sent us an email saying, “I love your company.  I just found you.”  She broke her foot and wasn’t able to go out and do Christmas shopping, so she was doing all on-line shopping but really loved what we were doing and thought that she could buy from a local brand but do it on-line.  She said, “Aall you need now…”  She had one Clemson fan so she bought one of those purple and orange but she said, “Now I need you to do an NC State and North Carolina.”  I said, “We actually already have a navy blue and a baby blue.”  And I said “I can do my black and red turtle on a black shirt for you.”  And I had that one made for her just because she to get them actually for a birthday gift in January.  We’re able to turn that around easily.  She was already a good customer at that point so I was happy to do it.

ZAC: That’s something that’s really cool right now…we noticed that at a bigger brand it would be difficult or impossible for that to happen because we notice the same name has popped up with hundreds of dollars in sales over the past few days. So I called her, which I don’t think many companies would do.  To hear from the people who started the company who say, “Hey, we noticed your name come through.  Thanks.”  That obviously made an impact on her, too.

For Part 1, Click HERE. For Part 2, Click HERE. For Part 3, Click HERE.

If you’re interested in learning more about Loggerhead Apparel, their conservation efforts, visit them at LoggerheadApparel.com.