Here are a couple more companies that I am sure you have heard of that started out small. Blood, sweat and tears has put them on top.
Buck Wear The year was 1992. David Trapp made ends meet by vending a variety of products including T-shirts while in college. While selling T-shirts, Trapp thought that maybe he could start his own T-shirt line. He met up with a talented artist named Kevin Pickett. Now that Trapp had a talented artist in his corner, his next obstacle was deciding what type of T-shirt line to create. “I wanted to have a niche. I wanted to focus on one area of the retail market. I just wasn’t sure what type of T-shirts I wanted to make,” Trapp explained.
Trapp’s father, a diehard bowhunter and outdoorsman, suggested he make an outdoor line of T-shirts that would focus on the outdoors. Young and energetic, Trapp took the idea and ran with it. He started focusing heavily on direct selling to consumers at the large consumer outdoor shows like the Deer and Turkey Expos that are held all over the country. “We were selling T-shirts one at a time all over the country. We did that for a couple years before we picked up a few wholesale accounts and a few rep groups. Now we are strictly wholesale,” Trapp said. Today, Buck Wear T-shirts are sold at approximately 3,000 retailers all over the country. In 2004, Buck Wear was on the Inc. 500 list - a list of the 500 fastest growing, privately held companies in the United States. “Behind every great company are great employees. My employees are the reason Buck Wear has been so successful,” Trapp explained. What started as a guy and an artist is now a large company with 40 employees; eight of these employees are artists who design the new outdoor scenes and images of monster bucks that we’ve grown accustomed to seeing on Buck Wear T-shirts.
Each year, Trapp and his group of talented artists brainstorm and come up with amazing catch phrases and awesome graphics to catch the eyes of outdoorsmen everywhere. “We get our ideas for new shirts from a variety of places. We watch what is going on in the media. We watch the current trends in the marketplace. We come up with our own ideas. We never know where an idea might come from. Catch phrases and slogans are on our minds 24/7. When we see something catchy in the media or think of a neat slogan, we write it down. Those ideas become T-shirts,” Trapp highlighted.
Buck Wear has a few T-shirts available that are sure to catch the eyes of hunters everywhere. One is called “Fatal Attraction”, referring to the attraction a buck has for a doe and how that attraction often results in his death. Or, at least that is the hope of most bowhunters! The T-shirt shows a monster buck on the trail of a hot doe. Buck Wear is also planning to introduce a new line of casual wear that will look good on the golf course and at archery tournaments.
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C.C. Filson For hundreds of years, people from all walks of life have worn wool garments because wool is a better insulator than most other garments available. Wool even retains some of its insulating value when it is wet. Wool garments stand the test of time. Most wool garments are passed down from one generation to the next because they never wear out. These qualities made wool clothes the perfect garment for people searching for gold in Northern climates such as Alaska during the late 1800’s. In 1897, C.C. Filson, an adventurous outdoorsman living in Seattle decided to start a company that provided blankets, boots, and clothing that he could sell to pioneers and miners who stopped in Seattle on their way north to chase their dreams of finding gold.
In the early 1900’s, Filson also designed clothing for loggers. Loggers lived and worked in extreme weather conditions. Filson Clothing quickly gained popularity within the logging industry because of its warmth and durability. C.C. Filson often talked to his customers to gain a better feel of what the customers were looking for in a rugged, warm garment and worked to produce it. In 1914, Filson received a patent for the T-Cruiser wool coat. “Many of the garments that Filson produced at the turn of the century, including the Cruiser, are still produced today. They are very popular because Filson products are designed to be functional and long lasting. Those qualities never grow old,” said Bill Kulczycki, Filson’s CEO. C.C. Filson’s goal was to make clothes that could stand up to the elements and to whatever the people wearing it could dish out. Filson has a slogan: “Might as well have the best.” C.C. Filson believed he made the best garments available for the working man and the outdoorsman.
As the years have passed, Filson garments have gained popularity with working men, hunters, and fishermen because wool garments are superior to many of today’s high tech garments. Today, Filson makes coats, vests, shirts, and wool long johns. They make footwear and a line of accessories including wallets, sunglasses, dog collars, and beds. Although wool is what Filson is best known for, they also make garments from other materials including oil skin garments that they refer to as Tin Cloth. These garments repel water and are extremely durable. The Tin Cloth Wetlands Coat has been designed with the waterfowl hunter in mind; it even comes in a wetland camo pattern.
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