Underwear Worth Celebrating with Anthony Ciavirella

[MUSIC] Welcome to the Startup Canada podcast, where we talk to candidates most innovative and entrepreneurial leaders and changemakers. I'm your host, Rick Spence, and as a business journalist, editor and entrepreneur, I've learned what makes Canadian Startup special, successful, and scalable. Join me every Tuesday to hear new stories of Canadian entrepreneurs and learn about the moments that mattered most on their journeys. The Startup Canada podcast is a production of Startup Canada. Don't forget to subscribe to the show wherever you listen to your podcast. Entrepreneurs from coast to coast to coast, welcome to the Startup Canada podcast. On the show today, we're excited to speak with Anthony Cheverella, co-founder and VP of Montreal-based Man Made. Anthony and his best friends group, Berett O'Fill and Robert, are creating products that men can celebrate, not just tolerate. After searching for more comfortable boxers and finding nothing, they created their own and began man-made. These four best friends decided to leave their jobs in the financial industry despite having no experience in consumer products or the fashion industry. This decision and a lot of hard work has led them into the Dragon's Dan and a world of growth. Anthony, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for having me, Rick. Thank you. Delighted to have you here representing the group, the four founders. Excited to jump into your story, but first of all, because as you know, entrepreneurs are show me people. They want to know what's going on and what's worth their time. So, get us the top piece of advice that you hope fellow entrepreneurs will take away from our conversation today. You don't need a lot of capital to start a brand. You just need a lot of consistency and discipline. Wow. Which is easier, capital or discipline? Probably capital. Probably capital. Yeah. Yeah. This discipline is definitely something that is exercised. You need to just stick to it and be consistent. So, once you catch big mold, that momentum keeps flowing. There's no stopping you. Fabulous. Okay, let's begin by talking about your co-founders. Let's get into who they are and how you all know each other and how far back you go and why you decided to get into business together. Yeah, for sure. So, we've all been childhood best friends. We all worked in the finance industry. You have Rob that was in, he was a whole sailor in investment banking. You have Philip who was in also banking in real estate. And you have Bertow who was a CPA that worked for the large, one of the large five firms here in Canada. And myself, I worked in banking, in private banking. And we all basically had two things in common, an entrepreneurial itch and terrible underwear days. So, we kind of knew and to backtrack it, we kind of knew that we had that itch that needed scratching and we always kept in touch. We always had a, had like a pulse in each other's lives both personally and through their, our careers. And we reached a point where we're like, you know what guys? Like, is there something else that we can do and perhaps if we put our forebrings together, we complement each other well, maybe there's something we can do. So, we decided to go up North and just lock ourselves for three whole days in a cabin up North here in the Laurentians and we decided to say, okay, what, you know, what, what problem can we solve? So, the whiteboard starts to fill up. Multiple ideas came around the table, but it was a hot June day and we had just come back from a walk to just clear the brain. And when we got back, who was picking, who was, you know, complaining about writing up, who just, you know, wasn't wearing any at all, right? If you went to cabando and he's like, I hate my underwear. And then that started to spark ideas and they're like, oh my god, underwear. You know, let's go look what's out there. And we saw that there was a lot of noise. We saw there was a lot of choice. We saw there was a different fabrics. We didn't understand them. And we kind of like looked around the table and said, oh, you buy them at, you know, big retail shops. You buy the same ones you've been buying to your kid. You buy whatever your wife buys you and you don't even buy any, right? Because you wear your cool commando. So, so we said, okay, you know, what, what problem can we solve here? And then we got really obsessed about fabric design and what kind of brand the everyday man would appreciate. And that's when it all started, right? And that's when the juice just started flowing. We got back to Montreal. We got back to work. And we decided to just start man made. Wow. So you went from like zero to a hundred in that one two, three day period? Yeah, we knew like we wanted to do something. And it's like, when do you ever have an opportunity like this, right? So we took it extremely seriously. And then when we got that here, reka moment, we said, okay, let's really dive deep. And this is it. And then we came back to Montreal, ordered a bunch of different products that we felt we needed to try. And then we said understanding fabrics. And that's when the real fun part started because we don't come from the world of fashion or fabrics or or or or a peril. We had to learn everything from scratch. But we did come across this fabric called Modal. And this fabric is just wonderful. However, it's extremely expensive. Brands charge anywhere between 35 and $40. We said, listen, I'm not too sure. This is like the type of brand we want to start where it's on the really upper echelon. But we said, happen, you know, why is it so expensive? We got into the economics being finance guys. And we realized that a lot of brands had to invest in prints and colors in different sizes, like lengths. And all these different types of skews that causes that warehouses need to be that much bigger, you know, picking and packing them is that much longer. And everything just costed more. And that's why they have to play that game of discount codes and promo codes and whatever it doesn't sell and it's out of fashion. You know, like the prints and all that stuff, they need to like liquidate. So we said, hold on. There might be something here. And we'll be hold there was. They're savings that were passed on to us, which we then passed on to our customer. Hence our price point of $24 a pair or $22 a pair for a seven pack. Wow. So when Henry Ford started out, he making cars. He told his customers, you can have any color you like as long as it's black. Correct. Is that that was your principle too? Yeah, yeah. I posted something way back in the way back. I mean, it's only been two and a half years ago, but or a bit more, but the point is I posted something on LinkedIn. On my LinkedIn, saying exactly that, we use that philosophy. And you know, when we looked around the table, we built this brand, we realized, you know, what are men that look for this problem to be solved? What are they looking for? They're looking for function over fast fashion. They're looking for simplicity, comfort and quality. And that's exactly the, you know, the, what we focused and dialed ourselves into. And we came out with a black one, which ended up doing very, very, very well. And then we came out with the blue box of brief that did well. It's doing extremely well also, but nothing where, you know, the black one is still outperforming the blue. Right. Very cool. And part of the problem that you discovered and I learned this term when I watched you guys on Dragon's Den. I think it was the STL. Can you tell me a little bit about this technical term? Yes, the STL is balls sticking to leg. And what that is is basically the men's parts, the boys, they stick to the leg. And you know, when you're walking, when you're when you're when you're, when you're, it's human and hot. And what happens is that when that happens, there's a bit of a shape of friction. It's very uncomfortable and man usually pick themselves and it's just not a good, it's not a good time. So we solve that by introducing what's called what we call the man sack. It's basically the pouch that supports the boys, but does not have any extra fabric or mesh. There are many of our competitors that do have that. But we, we removed it because we just felt like it was not a necessity to get the end result that we're looking for. Fabulous. The dragons love that abbreviation as much as I did. Yeah. Yeah, they feel off their chairs when they had a good time. They had a good laugh on that one. They sure did. So tell me a little bit about the company as it is now. How are you selling? Can you give me any idea of how much you're selling? Working people buy them? Yes. Okay. So, when we started, so I'll give you from the day one because only been about two and a half years. We went to market. We had to find a, we wanted to find an extremely ethical and sustainable a manufacturer. When we started here, we wanted to go and make it in Canada. So truth be hold, it's the first place we went. We come from the Garmin district. This is where offices, our grandparents and ancestry worked in the Garmin district coming from way back from Italy to Canada, Montreal. And we decided to knock on doors and do it the old school way. So we spent weeks knocking on different doors, you know, fabrics, suppliers, cutting sores. And our door was always shut on us. People were laughing at us. People would tell us, you're crazy. Why are you getting in this business? It'll never work. The fabric you're looking for is never like it's not possible to get it here at a, you know, at a price where it would make sense. And they were right in the sense where, [BLANK_AUDIO] If we were to go out and when we did find that one or two people at one point, I wanted to give us a shot. It was so expensive that we would have to sell the boxer at $60. It would defeat the whole purpose, right? So we did the second best thing and we went to this, we went hunting for a factory that met our needs. And that's what happened. We found the factory that met our needs. They gave us a shot. It was very difficult to convince them that these four guys that have zero experience to give us a shot and they did. And then we went to market. How we did that is the old school way, you know, the real marketing. A lot of, we got, we hit the front page of the Muchhawks Zet. We used Facebook and Instagram, but we didn't spend much on media buying sponsored ads. We didn't do any of that. We didn't have much capital to do so, but we wanted to see if there was a good market fit. And it taught us a lot. We tested, it'll different platforms. We made content. It got us more use to using the phones, the cameras being in front of the cameras. It's not an easy ask, right, from four finance guys. So, right, let's call this data spade. So, there were times where we felt foolish, but we're like, you know what, like, no, it's not a foolish thing because at the same time, who better than you to talk about your brand. And when we started, there was a lot of, okay, let's get models. That's where we spent a little bit of money on that we're looking to like work with us, but it never really worked. It didn't get that same feeling. So, we did what we call the far right movement, which was, you know what, people want to see our story. Because that's how it, that was the most intriguing part. The story of how we got started and the problem that we're looking to solve. And when we started out and actually started working, we doubled down on it. And we went to Facebook meta and we started to play with, you know, the sponsored ads and understanding the cost per quick, cost per impression, the cost per acquisition. And then we started to see that, oh my god, like these ads that tell our story and the problem that we're solving and us being in them do really, really well. So we scaled with us well. But anybody listening, you're going to make 99% mistakes, right? You're going to trial error, trial error, but you'll find that 1% that works. And after us was $150,000 of testing before we found that 1%. Right? Now, people listening, but you need $150,000. No, because when we got started, if you remember, we started with nothing. So just enough to buy our first production run, which was 1% 10,000 units. And then we went to, we did all the gorilla marketing. We did, you know, we, we knocked a lot of doors on publications like the Gazette and, you know, you can Google us and you can see where we had all started. But then when we ended up selling those 10,000, we took those funds and started to invest it in the marketing machine and making 99% mistakes. Now 1% that ended up working and we saw that was good results. We decided to start scaling and that's really where everything's the magic started to happen. Where, you know, we started the scale, we started to gain customers, new customers. And then today we're really proud to say we're at 200,000, close to 200,000 customers. We have about 500,000 units sold of boxer briefs and we're in production this year for a little over a million pieces of boxer briefs. So, so yeah, so, so anybody listening, you're going to make 99, 99 mistakes. But that one thing that you do really, really well, double down, triple down on that and that should, that should help. I got it. That's a great summary of a great story. Thank you so much. Thank you. I'm just wondering, what did you, what was that 1% thing that you did write as a possible to share that? What worked for you? Not because it's going to work for everybody, but so they can see, but so people can, can understand what success might look like after 99% getting it wrong. What clicked for you all of a sudden after after trying so many different things? What was it that clicked for you? We realized that through the comments on our, on our content that people want to see more of us and our story that we're curious about that. And then we decided to make ads, right, ourselves in them starting with our story. We're for Canadian best friends. You know, we had, we had, we had a problem to solve, you know, the bunching, the chafing, the writing up. And we came out with this box of brief that solves that problem. And then, you know, and that's what ended up working. Talking about our story, the problem we solved. And us being the, the, the, the, the face of the brand and, and, and, and, and, and we saw that that worked. And we just continue to do that over and over again. And, and that's how we, we, we were able to accumulate enough customers and data so that we can make the tweaks necessary to get to the point where out now. Did, did you have a conversation among the four of you and say, you know what, guys, we're going to have to dig deep and go bold and put ourselves out there. And, and it's a very sort of un-Canadian thing to do to promote yourself, but that's what you were learning you needed to do. Yeah, exactly. So, it's funny you say that we, we, when we realized, okay, this, this, this, this, this, this third party models or the angles that we're taking right now aren't working. The way we would have hoped to work. We decided to, you know, look around the table and, and, and say, okay, let's look for the signs that, what is working. And we realized that it was us that we needed to be in them and, and push that. You know, we all have, we're in our 30s, we were bankers and finance world. Like you said, it's a very non-Canadian thing to do. And, and, and we have, you know, like I said, we have wives and, and, and kids and like, you take, here we are, we're going to have to be in our underwear, we're going to have to do certain things like make ads that we never used to make. But at the same time, if we were the customer, what would we appreciate? What would we want to see? And there was no denying it. When you start out on a company, it's like your baby. You do whatever it takes for that baby to flourish. So we said, OK, let's double down. And that's what we did. And then it started to work. So when it starts to work, you can't stop. It becomes like the addiction. So you're like, OK, here we go. Let's continue to do more and more and more. And today, obviously, we mix it up. And we realize that humor also is a big factor. And that's why today we work with Creative Director. And we do a lot of different skits, even outside of just telling our story. And I mean, I watched a few of your videos. And it seems to come quite naturally to you guys. You have great energy together. You have fun with each other. And you do real tight editing. I mean, these are good videos. They zip by. They move very fast. Yeah, no choice. Exactly. Yeah, who does the editing for you? So at the beginning, it was us. We had to learn. But we realized that we need to offer a game. And when we gained a little bit of capital, you're always reinvesting in your business for it to grow. So that's another thing. Like if you come across a little bit of capital, it's not time to buy a fancy watch or up your lifestyle. This is a zero sum game. This is a game where you need to have a macro goal. And you need to keep investing in your business. So you don't see any of that. And you're like, OK, let's reinvest it. And we went out and we hired a video editor, originally. It was someone that was starting out and so on and so forth. But then it came to a point where we kind of needed something else what they couldn't provide. And they realized this individual that they weren't able to do what we're looking for. But what's cool about Matt made is that we keep in contact. And even though the first editor didn't work out, he realized what his passions were. And it was, for example, making his own films. And today we're really happy to say that he used a lot of what he learned at Matt made. And we saw a great relationship. But he also admits he used a lot of what he learned at Matt made to build his production. But then shortly after, we went back into the market. And we realized, OK, this is what we need. We need an editor that is used to editing. Like you say, type video has a lot of experience. Understands how quick this game works and how many pieces of content need to be done. Perhaps maybe someone who's used to YouTube telling the story. So we said, OK, let's go out there and check. And then today we're able-- we're really proud to say that we have someone in the name of RAM who works for our brand. He's really, really good. And he works alongside one of the other co-founders, Roberts, who kind of gives him a bit of the direction, but his editing skills are phenomenal. Yeah. And thank you for that little story. Because I think there's a couple of really good points there. One is that you can be very good at this stuff, but you-- got limited time so you got to be able to delegate as much as you can. And sometimes the first person that you hire won't be the person for the long term. But if you face up to that, it still will win win for both sides. And you up your game. You keep needing to hire better people as the challenges grow. And grow. So that's a great little story. Thank you for sharing that. So who are your customers? What demographic are you chasing and where do they live? So when we started it was in the heart of COVID. And it took about a year to build the brand, the website, the design of the boxer, to learn a parallel, to get to a point where we felt confident launching our business. But in that period, a lot of learning was done. And especially, like we didn't want to be four partners, we didn't want to be all over the place. We're very, very, very, like I said at the beginning of the part of this interview, consistency and discipline, there's another factor which is planning, having a North Star, being on the same page. So you can go four times quicker or four times faster. So in that period of COVID, we used to meet a lot, be a Zoom, and we would discuss how the visible elements of the brand would be. How the invisible elements of the brand would be, the colors, the prints, everything. So what happened there is we had to build who is our customer? Who are we targeting? Because if you don't know who your customer is, how are you supposed to do the marketing for that customer to get their attention? It's an attention-based business, right? You need to get in front of their attention. You need to gain their attention. So we said, okay, it's a guy like maybe like us, that's in their 30s or under 20s and yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, and we, the regular suspect, the everyday man, that's a little bit on the younger side and whatever and starting their life and so far and so forth. Lo and behold, when it's testing, the data speaks for itself. The data was telling us that our customers were 50 plus. I would say today we're closer to 40 plus, but they were on the 50 plus side and it kind of makes sense because if you think about it, a youngster is looking for the brand that is more maybe flashy that has certain status so on and so forth. Here we are coming with a new brand of underwear, but the underwear is more on the function and less on the fast fashion. So it didn't speak to that demo where it did speak to us to the mature man who's been going through problems of bunching and so on penis and writing up and BSPL and so on and so forth for so long that now they're like, I don't need to impress anybody. I don't really do impress an old girl or anything. It's like, I'm good. I just want good underwear. That looks good too of course. And then that's where we started to see that a lot of our customer were on the older side and how you get that data is being very, very close to your customer, you know, like arms reach, like literally answering all the comments on social media, having an email flow that allows you to ask your customer how things are going. Take not just an email just for marketing purposes, you need to read the emails, you need to be in touch with your customer. You have no choice. They're the ones that are going to make you or break you in reality, the reality of things, right? So we realize that our customer is 50 plus due to all that. And that's a pretty nice problem to have that you the customers ended up being the ones with the most money. Yeah, well, I'm happy you said it, but yeah, definitely. In our opinion, definitely, we do see that as well. They are the ones that do have the most economic financial freedom or more so money for a lack of the herd of out-of-way saying it for sure. Yeah. And what's your idea of a good sale? I know you have an salary product, so we'll get into that as well. But a good sale will be what? Two pairs, six pairs. Oh, we know the data. So basically someone will come and the the average order value of their basket would be around $80. And then when they or you know, between $70 and $80, and then they come back within less that well, our data for less than three months is about 30% come back and then they or average order value is about 150 bucks. And we know that 55% of our customers come back within 12 months, which is great, which is which we're really proud about that. That's a real testament to the brand, to the product. People really enjoy it. We have over 2005's our reviews on Google alone. We've been asked to be interviewed on CPV, national, regional. We got a deal, struck on air with dragons then. Like there was a lot of moments where the reassurance that your product is what you had made it out to be that allowed us to gain that confidence one foot, one step at a time. Right? Obviously at the beginning when you launch a business, I'm segueing here because I'm kind of like, what would somebody listening want to want to know? Right? So it's like when I started or when we started, we're like, okay, our product, we love it, but is everyone else going to love it? Orders the other part where it's like, I'm not quite done for building the perfect Frankenstein. Right? I need another six months and another six months and another six months. So yes, you want it to be as best as it could be, but you kind of have to give yourself a timeline, a reasonable timeline and get to market. Because once you're in the market, then the customer is going to tell you the data you're looking for. It doesn't matter right at the end of the day, what necessarily what you think, it what matters now, the data you're getting from your market. And if that data is telling you that the band is a little too loose or this or that, well, guess what? You know, if the data speaks, you got to make the change because at the end of the day, right? At the end of the day, you're building the brand for them. Yes, it's your brand, but you're building it for the community for men. Right. And I couldn't agree more on that because basically 99 percent of your assumptions are wrong. Many won't know which ones they are until you're there in the marketplace and the customer starts talking to you. Of course, of course, of course, of course, definitely 100 percent. So, so we don't normally talk actually revenue, revenue numbers on the startup candidate podcast, but in your case, you went on national television. Hunter Agan's den, you were on last fall and you predicted you'd have from pretty much a standing start, you'd have revenues of $7.2 million this year. Yes. I think was the number. Can you tell us if you're on track for that? Yeah, yeah. So last year, we doubled that number. And this year, we're looking to, we're looking to a little over double that number again. So, women, women, so you predicted $7 million for this year, but you did it last year? Yeah, yeah. You made that target last year. Yeah. Because Dragon's Den is shot, six months before it shows in most cases. So, so the year of Dragon's Den is a year ago. And you hit the second year or the year two revenue in year one. Yeah. Yeah. That's fabulous. Yeah, so that's it, right? So because that ended up happening, we didn't go through with the deal that was struck on television. But we still maintain a very good relationship with both the producers and the dragons. We put it on ice, you know, you never burn bridges, especially people that have done it, serial entrepreneurs, you maintain that respect. And they respect the business savviness that is done by us. You can't think, well, now they're not going to be happy. You know, it doesn't work that way, right? Business is a data driven decision. You need to make, you need to make calculated decisions at the best of your ability. And any entrepreneur investing in a business would appreciate a savvy operator. So, so, so that's how we, that's how we see it. And don't be old if the truth. And that's why we maintain those relationships with them. Yeah, like I look, we're four partners. We could choose to go like I said, four times faster or four times slower. You know, twice a year, at the beginning of the year, we'd go up north, we'd we traditionally go back to the cabin. Not the same one. It's hard to get it always at the same type of, but around the same area. So it's nostalgic enough, you know. And we do the whole thing where we plan our year in advance. We reverse engineer the full year in advance. How are we going to do it on the sales front? How are we going to do it on the product front? How are we going to do it on the culture of the company? How are we going to do it on the tech, on the web, all that stuff? We have all these different pillars. And then we put it all down on paper. And then we divide the, we divide the tasks, you know, by co-founder and then the co-founders go out and what their teams get it done. And then in June, we go back up north and we revisit what we said we're gonna do in December and make the tweaks necessary in order to finish the year strong. So like I said, planning, then you need to have discipline and consistency to execute. There's no secret, like there's no shortcuts to this. It's literally the long, the long, the long route. And I know I'm been rambling, but I'll just end off by saying anybody that has like a partner of spouse, I wanna shout out to our spouses because to have four partners that work as hard as we do and there's always someone who works harder or less hard, but we put in the effort. You need a spouse or a partner that is understanding. There's clear communication, they end there on board. So there's a lot of things that people do not see, which is the late nights, early mornings during the busy seasons weekends, these days, in the beginning it was seven days, right? Now we'll take some family time on the weekend, but in the beginning it was seven day grind. - So is it five days now? - Or five and a half weeks. - So it's five at the office, Monday to Friday. We have a no-remote type of policy. We as a startup, I think it's extremely important to have this energy flowing in person. Things get done much quicker. If there's something that you need from someone, they're at arms length, literally, arms reach literally. You just feel the energy and that energy is very important for the growth of the startup. And now with Monday to Friday, we've had the team is here, and then we have a weekend team for sure. And if it's on the weekend, yes, it's remote. And we, I mean, listen, when you own your own business, in my opinion, it's a seven day a week thing, but Monday to Friday, I'm at the office, Saturday Sunday, it's remote from home, but it's not full days. It's checking in to make sure things are running smoothly. - Right. Let me just catch up on a couple of things I asked you, but we didn't quite get to. So your customers, are they just in Canada or broader than that? - So when we first started, it was just Canada. Now we've entered into the US market. We're about last year, we did about 10% of sales in the US. We just scratched the surface. This year, we want to double that. So far, it's maybe going to be looking like it's a triple, but we don't want to overestimate. So our target is 20% in the US, 80% in Canada, and even to divide the Canadian market, because Quebec is very different than Canada as a market. We're going to put a little bit of a focus in the Quebec region as well. We come from Montreal doing the marketing and French is very challenging not because we don't speak the language, but because anything you do, you've got to do it twice. And that was challenging in the early, in the beginning, both on a financial standpoint and a time standpoint and having enough data to invest that time. But now that we reach, let's say, two and a half, almost three years in, we're putting the special focus in 2024 to the French speaking customer coming out with a bunch of social media things in French, skits, ads, and really nurturing that market. So yeah, just to answer your question, we divide Canada into parts, and then in the US, we'll be doing about 20%. So 20% in the US, we're looking at 15% in Quebec alone, and then the 65% is going to be for the rest of Canada. - Right, right. You've described man-made as the guy brand that men deserve. - Yes, the guy brand that men deserve, I love it. I don't know what it means, but I love it. Tell me about some of the other products that you're offering now that came along in the wake of the box of breeze. - Yeah, so when we came out with the philosophy, it was like I said, functional or fast fashion, comfort, the simplicity and quality, and we ended up working for the box of breeze. So then we're like, why can't we make more products with that same philosophy in the socks, in t-shirts, and now we're gonna be going into swim trunks and pants, and we're gonna continue building on that, where we don't have a hundred skews per product, for item, but we're gonna have a black, a blue, a black, a white in every item. So let's say two choice, and we're gonna continue to build on the men's essentials line. - Have you thought about doing shoes? I hate buying shoes. They're either old man shoes or they're runners. - I need something in between. - Yeah, it's part of the work. I mean, it's not gonna happen this year. This year we're super hyper focused with our parallel designer of which we hired last, it's almost gonna be a year, who has almost 20 years of experience in the field, built a team will proceed very, very, very talented individual, and she's working on pants and swim trunks for 2024. We're actually going to visit our manufacturers this year, again, and we're very excited, and she's coming with us this year to meet and to see where the action happens. And for the shoes, it's in the works for sure. We thought about it for sure. It just that there's a lot of skews, right? So we wanna keep things extremely simple to build. You have to remember, having lower skews is less logistic nightmares, less, you can go faster. If we had more skews, a warehouse worker who pick and backs our orders and fulfills them would be doing a lot less, a lot less in terms of orders per day packed than what we're doing these days as well on a logistics standpoint, on an efficiency standpoint. Everything's in arm-legged, arm-legged literally. They're in a packing station where to your left, you have your boxers and blue and black in all sizes. Above that, you have your socks, low cuts in the cruise in both colors and two sizes we have them in large and medium. And then on the right, you have your t-shirts. And it's very, it's very grab and go. And you can literally pack 300 orders a day opposed to if you had a person opposed to if you had multiple different skews, which doesn't go, it goes against the brand, but on an efficiency standpoint, it would do probably 20% of that number, right? So imagine, oh, this guy is the pizza print, the pizza print on his boxer. And let me go all the way on the other side of the warehouse, find the box, pick it, go back to your station, put it in the back, it's too long. It's just, it would be more of a nightmare for sure. - Yeah, I tell you, this is really the feel good story of the year. - Wow. - Both senses. - I was in a lot of the term hearing about this success you're having and the plans you've got for future growth. You mentioned before how you'd initially hope be able to produce the product in Canada. Is that still a goal or are things working well enough that you can continue sourcing? - It's still a goal over the season. You're still creating a bunch of value here. It's still a goal. - It's still a goal. It's still a goal. It's a hairy audacious one. We're gonna really have to have everything on their one roof. And it's a bit of the philosophy of manmade because that's how we kind of control the customer experience. What do I mean by that? - Everything. And I mean, everything is done here at our office. We pack it, we warehouse it, we do the marketing, we do the customer service, we do the design, we do the editing, we do everything here. The only thing that is overseas is the cutting and the sewing of the fabric and the production of the fabric, the making the actual yarn. Everything else is done here, right? So we definitely would like to have it all in under one umbrella is just extremely hairy audacious goal. Our volume would need to be far more than what we're doing now in order to make the economics work. But it's in the eye of the tiger, let's call it. We wanna get that done. - Yeah, I have the tiger. Love it. You mentioned the BHAG, the big hairy audacious goal. Earlier you mentioned your macro goal. Is that the same thing or is it different? - It's part of it. So it's in that macro goal. But our macro goal is to build a household brand for men across Canada and the US and probably we'll take it across the world like worldwide. There's nothing that can stop. So basically for us to go into a European market, we would need distribution in the EU and EU. We need to have probably a warehouse, a whole team set out there. So these are things that in the future for sure, but definitely the focus right now is Canada and the US. That's where we need to focus 'cause we are still very young in terms of our brand. Yes, we reach the point where we can stand on our own two feet. We have about 200,000 customers. We know our data, it's going relatively well, but we're still young in our journey. Right, there's a lot of. scale in front of us. There's a lot of opportunity in front of us, but there's a lot of work as well. So we're up for the, we love the journey. I know it's very cheesy to say, but it's so true. The journey is where all the mean of potatoes are, are taken in. It's literally the fun part. It's so much fun to, to go from zero to, to one, right? So now I'm going to one to a hundred is I think a little easier, but then again, very, very, very tall mountain to climb. Right. This is an amazing story. I'm so pleased about all your success and, you know, the humility with which you've gotten there. But I got asked you, you, you, you, you seem to run like a four person, a very close aligned four person executive team. But what happens when that doesn't work? What, what, what happens when you guys disagree? How do you, how do you decide things? A little bit like a marriage. So for anybody, right? So it's like, if they happen for sure, but being four is better in my opinion than being two. And I'll tell you why because if you're two and you both disagree, then it just stops there. Being four, it's extremely rare that all like everybody has a different opinion. Right. There's always like a vote or there's always like a majority rules or if it's ever split, then there's definitely a discussion that happens. But we always get to a solution and relatively quick because it's all about how fast you can move in the startup world. And we, like I said, we have everything in writing of what we want to get done. So we have that North Star. It's clear as day. There's no confusion. There's and data drives the decisions. So, so if you keep that in, in, in, in, in check. And, and even if you're a highly emotional individual, yes, it comes with flaws, but it also comes with a lot of pros. For example, you know, you're a beef, you're exciting, you have a good vibe. But then when you get upset, maybe, no, the nasty comes out of you. But we try to keep that in check because at the end of the day, the businesses are baby. And you want to do what's best for your child. At the end of the day, you're not there to have your ego. You're there to get a job done. And, and we have a lot writing on this. We have a lot of, we have 16 employees now. We're going to be at 22 soon by the end of the year. If not more, there's a lot of people depending on this. And I want to put things in perspective as well. You know, when you have a startup and you're hiring someone, it's very important that you hire the right person because working for a startup is not for everyone. It is not. It's, it's one of those things where it moves fast. Not every day is the same. It's very rewarding, but could be very crushing at the same time. You need to be there for the highs and the lows. And, you know, I would say that, you know, what's the benefit of someone working for a startup where if you get into a company on the ground floor and positions aren't created yet. There's so much opportunity and you feel like it's, it's, it aligns with your values and it aligns with your growth and it aligns with your vision. Well, there's a lot of upside too. So if you can storm through it and, and you see that it's going in the right direction. And management is very clear on the direction they're going. We, you know, shares, we know the successes and the shortfalls. Everyone understands what's going on. There's no, there's, there's a clear communication like a marriage. You know, the two reasons why marriage's fail is communication number one and number two finance. Well, it's the same thing in a business. If you don't have clear communication with your partners and your team and your finances are all messed up, you're not going to make it. But if you have those two things in check, well, you have better chance to do, to do great things. You are wise beyond your years. I love it. Thank you. Yeah, I've been told that a lot. Being Italian, look, I was always that kid that when I will be other kids, we're playing. I would sit at the table with the adults and listen to the conversation and try to understand things. So I guess that paid off over time. I'm a band. I'm a band. I see. That is. Well, thank you so much for sharing this story. Just got to ask one more. Dragons den related questions. So you say, you know, you, you had two teams of two dragons, you know, competing to do deals with, with you. But it turns out that you grew too fast. I guess is the answer there because the deal and the end didn't get done. But you said you're, you know, you're staying on good terms. Can you see a position where you'd be going into the market for more capital? Would you still be talking to them? So to be frank, we were lucky or not lucky, but we're in a position that was earned. But then there's always a little bit of luck for sure, but I want to be, I want to be clear. Like we was earned. You were allowed to say that. Yeah, you bet you earned it. Yeah. But, but, but, but, but, we don't need capital right now. Right. But if there's an opportunity where there's a strategic partner that can bring value outside of just capital, we would definitely entertain it. Right. It's not something that we would say no to. We would entertain it, but strictly on capital purposes. No, there's no need for for that right now. We're not there yet. I think we can grow the business, especially this year and the year after, to a point where capital is, is still frugal. It's still spent wisely, but not needed in order for us to reach that goal. However, anybody strategic that can bring value outside of just capital, that would be something that could be an option. And I also want to say like, I'm sure people listening know this, but like there, when we started this, there was a lot of hype around raising capital and going out there and rounds of funding and doing it the whole VC style. And I'm okay with that. That's fine. But there's two schools of starting to start up. School number one. You have an idea and you do need a lot of capital in order for you to build the brand, the build, not even the brand, but the software, usually this happened to affect, but the point is, you might need a lot of capital. And that makes sense to go out there and raise and do the whole thing. We did it the old school way, way number two. From day one, extremely frugal, what's the profit? You know, like is this a sustainable business? So we're proud of that too, right? Because we could have easily went into this saying, okay, we're going to spend out the gate, X amount of money on marketing, on getting models, and high tech photography, and high end videography, and the big commercials that cost 30, 40, 50, 60,000. You don't have the data yet. You cannot permit yourself to take a bet like that. That's not how it works. You need to know where you're going to spend your money. And with some sort of certainty, you can tell yourself, if I make this bet on this big production video, I know that it's going to speak to my audience. I know it's going to convert the power of it, is where the element of surprise and the bet is, but not the outcome. You know that at the bare minimum, you're looking to break even. You don't want to lose capital on a startup. All right, very complex and thorough answering. To an important question. It's exciting to see someone who's got as much confidence. As you have in your team as they're growing. So congratulations. You have to believe. Rick, you have to believe. You need to believe. Nobody else will. You need to believe. So you need to believe. Not only believe it, you're also very convincing. Yeah. We've been talking with Anthony Chavarella of Manmade, one of the four founders. Their final question before you let you go. Out of all the experience you've had and the lessons you've learned, what's one more final piece of advice that you'd like to share with our audience? Have gratitude. Yeah, what does that mean? Everybody has a destination they want to get to. Everybody. A lot of times you think you will be happy when you get to that destination. And it could be. It will be happy, but it's not going to be the be all do all. You need to be grateful that you were able to get up. It's little things. I'm grateful that I woke up this morning. I'm grateful that I'm healthy and grateful that my family is healthy and grateful that I have this opportunity. You need to be grateful because that gratitude will fuel a mindset that will allow you to break free from the rat race. I think that's what I wanted to like and don't get me wrong. This is a podcast that we spoke about a lot of the highs. There's been a lot of loads and the last three years alone. So I've been through things that it's really hard. And throughout those times that you find a way to cope, you need to be grateful for the things that you do have though. There's always something you can be grateful for. And some of us are lucky enough to have many things to be grateful for. So you need to always remember to be grateful. Have gratitude. perfect, very well explained. Anthony, thank you so much for sharing your story and some of the magic that has made, man made, tick, wishing you, you know, tremendous continued good luck and good fortune and we will stay in touch. Thank you so much, Rick, it was a pleasure, I love the podcast and you were great, so thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much for tuning into another episode of The Startup Canada Podcast. This show is produced by Lauren Hicks and Maddie Styles. Be sure to tune in every Tuesday for a new episode until next week, I'm your host Rick Spants.