Insight
Hedrick: The Direct-to-Consumer Price Advantage Is a Myth
“The D to C myth is that you can, you skip the wholesale markup and you can charge a lower price. You know, the reality is the increase in marketing cost, the increase in G and A that you have to have to operate both as a retailer and a brand. It's a very costl…”
Insight
Hedrick: Premium contemporary consumer brands grow through physical retail
“And if you go look at what premium contemporary brands do, they grow through retail.”
Assertion Partly supported
Hedrick: No Major Western Boot Brand Had Launched in 20+ Years
“The last brand that was started was started 20 plus years prior. The brand before that was probably started 20 plus years prior, if not 50, and then there's got some hundred, 150 year old brands out there.”
Disclosure
Hedrick: Tecovas rejected pre-orders to avoid customer uncertainty
“I had this almost illogical aversion to pre-orders because I wanted the whole experience of Tecovas to always be fast and free and amazing, and so I didn't want to subject the consumer to uncertainty”
Prediction Held up
Hedrick: Tecovas Will Exceed $300 Million in Net Sales in 2025
“We'll, we'll definitely exceed three hundred million in net sales this year.”
Opinion
Hedrick: Coffin Industry Is Secularly Declining Due to Cremation
“Well, here's the thing about coffins, too. It's a secularly declining industry now that everyone's getting cremated, so it wouldn't have been necessarily a growth category.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Hedrick: US Cowboy Boot Industry Was Sized at Over $3B
“They quoted the U.S. Boot, cowboy boot industry at three billion or more, and I don't know what I thought it was, but that was a, I don't know, at least five, if not 10 times bigger than I thought it was.”
Disclosure
Hedrick: Tecovas was started with $100,000 in personal savings
“I had about a 100,000 dollars.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Hedrick: The first Tecovas boots were designed in Microsoft Paint
“Yeah, the first boots were designed in Microsoft Paint.”
Disclosure
Hedrick: Carried $30,000 in credit card debt for three years bootstrapping Tecovas
“I probably took on 30,000 dollars of credit card debt. I don't think I even erased for three years.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Hedrick: Tecovas launched with 5,000 emails using Harry's tool
“I had seen their launch playbook, and they had created this, actually this open source email gathering tool that I think they had gathered like a 100,000 emails for before they launched, and so I found the code for it, And put Decovis on it. And, you know, tha…”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Hedrick: Tecovas generated $20,000 in sales on launch day
“Turned it on, sent four or 5000 emails out, and had 20,000 dollars of sales in the first day so about a hundred, you know, 80 to a hundred pairs, I forget.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Hedrick: Tecovas faced no Western boot brand advertising competitors in early 2016
“There was a combination of there not being any other, I think, Western boot brands advertising at the time, and us having a really compelling value proposition, and candidly, man, we had product market fit, and people loved the boots,”
Assertion Not publicly verifiable
Hedrick: Tecovas Reached $2M Revenue in Year One, $13M in Year Two
“We did about a little under two million the first year, 13 the second, and it was coming into that third full year in business, 2018, that we were clearly making a pretty big splash,”
Disclosure
Hedrick: Tecovas cut 20 of 70 staff and reduced salaries in 2020
“I did have to reduce the workforce. I think we had 70 employees at the time, and we did a reduction in force of about 20. And then we lowered everyone's salary as well. And then I had to raise it, kind of an emergency round that summer.”
Disclosure
Hedrick: Tecovas never cut factory orders during 2020 lockdowns
“And we didn't cut any orders. You know, we kept making stuff. We had, you know, we raised money to make sure we could pay for inventory.”
Assertion Partly supported
Hedrick: Tecovas Revenue Grew From $80M to $140M in 2020-2021
“I mean, we'd gone from, I think we did, went from 80 to a hundred forty million in revenue between twenty-twenty and twenty-twenty-one, and it was so clear that the company was on a good track again post-COVID.”
Assertion Supported
Hedrick: Tecovas operates 42 stores across 20 states
“We have 42 stores in 20 states.”
Disclosure
Hedrick planned to launch the first canned cold brew brand
“I went down the rabbit hole of a beverage company, specifically a coffee company, was planning to start the first canned cold brew coffee beverage company, which at the time would have been fairly innovative.”
Assertion Partly supported
Hedrick: One public company controlled most coffin production and sales
“Basically, there was, I had realized that there was one public company that controlled the vast majority of both the production and the sale of Coffins, and it was through this crazy funeral home network.”
Assertion Partly supported
Hedrick: Coffins Comprised Over a Third of the $16B Death Industry
“It turns out at the time, the death industry was about sixteen billion. I believe coffins were over a third of that.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Hedrick: Tecovas faced a $200,000 factory minimum order to launch
“It was about a 200,000 dollar minimum.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Hedrick: Tecovas spent $15,000 to $17,000 on launch branding and web design
“All in on branding and inclusive of basic web design. I think I paid 15 or 17,000 dollars, and that included.”
