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Faherty Brand boldly signed 40 new retail store leases during the pandemic
“And we signed over the course of 2020 and 21, 40 leases over the next For the, for stores that would open over the next three years.”
Economic downturns are the best times for apparel brands to expand retail
“This is going to be the best time ever for up and coming clothing brand to get an amazing retail fleet.”
Alex Faherty still secretly rearranges department store racks to feature his products
“You don't ask permission. You just do it. We still do it. But the, we still do it. Like I went to Bloomingdale's yesterday and I moved our stuff and like moved something out.”
Faherty avoided venture capital and private equity to remain independent indefinitely
“And so I knew that sort of like going the venture capital private equity route was something we wouldn't do because of what we wanted to do with the brand, how we wanted to do this forever. We didn't really want to sell it.”
Faherty Brand's deposit for its first board short inventory was $150,000
“The first inventory, I remember when we did our first inventory buy of the board shorts that Mike developed. The initial deposit was like a 150,000 dollars.”
Wholesale and retail accounted for 70% of Faherty's sales before COVID-19
“Between wholesale and stores, it was about 70% of our business, and only about 30% of our business is e-commerce.”
Alex Faherty personally visited all 10 initial Nordstrom locations carrying Faherty
“Well, that first year when we shipped to Nordstrom, I visited every single one. It was 10 different Nordstroms across the country, and I did a version of what Sarah did.”
An overseas factory owner was an early investor in Faherty Brand
“One of the owners of the factory, I would call a very close friend, and he was one of the first guys to give us money when we started the brand.”
Specialty boutiques move inventory faster because the owners are the salespeople
“Where we saw the initial success was in these sort of smaller specialty stores where, you know, think of this story. It's an owner who buys the product. He's the number one salesman. He knows all the customers. So he's got to sell what he buys. And so my job w…”
Faherty Brand lost $400,000 to $500,000 annually during its early years
“We didn't make any money our first bunch of years, but we didn't, we were losing like 500,000 dollars a year or 400,000 dollars a year. We weren't losing ten million dollars.”
Japan accounted for 40% of Faherty Brand's wholesale business in year one
“And then Japan was probably 40% of that first year's wholesale business.”
Faherty Brand's primary angel investor cold-emailed their customer service address
“He sent me an email to hello at Faradaybrand.com, like to our customer service email. And it said, hey Alex, I bought some shirts in Nantucket. They're great shirts. If you're ever looking for money, let's talk.”
Wholesale accounted for 75% of Faherty Brand's revenue in year two
“So, year two of the business, wholesale's 75% of our business, because that's really what took off.”
Faherty Brand achieved meaningful profitability in the summer of 2020
“We became, you know, meaningfully profitable starting in the summer of And 20.”
Owning proprietary fabric recipes gives Faherty flexibility to switch overseas manufacturers
“We own the fabric recipe, right? We own the yarn materialization of it, the customization of our products, so the makers become less important for us, because we own, like, the true recipe of all the garments, so we can have that flexibility.”
Faherty's market opportunity lay between mass surfwear and luxury swimwear
“So all of a sudden I was like, oh, there's somewhere in the middle for me, there's a playing ground of like, taking surf and starting to put a luxury element to it.”
Faherty Brand laid off roughly 50 employees following a post-pandemic surge
“So yeah, we had to 50 people I think was our, was the layoff that we had to do.”
Faherty Brand survived early cash crunches by delaying factory payments 120 days
“And the whole time, right, guy, we're telling all of our factories, like, give us another month to pay. We're basically like, you know, 60 days becomes 90 days becomes a 120 days, so half of our email traffic was just deflecting payment.”
Faherty Brand's first retail store generated $250,000 to $300,000 annually
“And then the retail store was doing, you know, 250,000 dollars a year or 300,000 dollars a year. It's not, you know, a million, millions of dollars store.”
Faherty Brand made $1,500 selling apparel roadside in Big Sur
“We sold 1500 dollars on the side of the Pacific one by Big Sur.”
Faherty Brand raised its initial angel round from 44 different investors
“I think our biggest one was a 100,000. So I think we had 44 investors in the first round.”