Barbell Shrugged - Creating Great Apparel for Functional Fitness Athletes w/ Joe Kudla  — Barbell Shrugged #352

Episode Date: November 3, 2018

Joe Kudla is an entrepreneur and founder of Vuori Clothing (@vuoriclothing), an active lifestyle apparel brand that draws inspiration from the aspirational coastal California lifestyle, an integration of yoga, surf, sport, art and a strong visionary spirit. In this episode, Joe shares the history of Vuori, what it’s like to establish a brand in a saturated market, how to establish  a culture that shines through in the product, the process of creating a great experience for male fitness athletes, what’s Expansion and growth into brick and mortar facilities, and more. P.S. There’s a Special Shrugged Offer for you: Save 25% OFF your order at vuoriclothing.com with code: SHRUGGED. Happy Saturday! - Doug and Anders ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Show notes at: http://www.shruggedcollective.com/bbs_vuori ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Please support our partners! @vuori - www.vuoriclothing.com “SHRUGGED25” to save 25% storewide @halo - gethalosport.com/barbell  “Barbell” to save $100   ► Subscribe to Barbell Shrugged's Channel Here ► Subscribe to Shrugged Collective's Channel Here http://bit.ly/BarbellShruggedSubscribe 📲 🎧 Listen to the audio version on the Apple Podcast App or Stitcher for Android Here- http://bit.ly/BarbellShruggedApple http://bit.ly/BarbellShruggedStitcher Shrugged Collective is a network of fitness, health and performance shows that help people achieve their physical and mental health goals.  Usually in the gym, but outside as well. In 2012 they posted their first Barbell Shrugged podcast and have been putting out weekly free videos and podcasts ever since. Along the way we've created successful online coaching programs including The Shrugged Strength Challenge, The Muscle Gain Challenge, FLIGHT, Barbell Shredded, and Barbell Bikini. We're also dedicated to helping affiliate gym owners grow their businesses and better serve their members by providing owners tools and resources like the Barbell Business Podcast. Find Shrugged Collective and their flagship show Barbell Shrugged here: SUBSCRIBE ON ITUNES ► http://bit.ly/ShruggedCollectiveiTunes WEBSITE ► https://www.ShruggedCollective.com INSTAGRAM ► https://instagram.com/shruggedcollective FACEBOOK ► https://facebook.com/barbellshruggedpodcast TWITTER ► http://twitter.com/barbellshrugged

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Looking forward to this conversation with Joe Kulo. He's the CEO, founder, and creative genius behind Viore Clothing. I have been talking about Viore Clothing for literally the last two years, and I'm incredibly lucky that we get to work with them at Barbell Shrug and all of the hosts at the Shrug Collective. I'm always blown away any time that I take something for granted, such as t-shirts, shorts, fitness apparel, things of that nature, and really take the deep dive into what makes those things so special. Anybody can get any type of t-shirt. There's tons of shorts available. But why are some shorts better than the others?

What makes some brands feel right and what makes them perfect for the CrossFit athlete, functional fitness athletes, why do they fit so much better? And it turns out there's a ton of research and development that goes into the creative side, finding fabrics, finding threads. There's tons of testing. They're two years ahead of us in understanding where the trends are going and how they can tailor those trends to meeting functional fitness athletes where they're at. This interview is so killer. Joe is so dialed in. We shot at the Viore store in Encinitas, California.

So make sure you get over to the website, vioreclothing.com. That's V-U-O-R-I clothing.com and use coupon code shrugged25 at checkout. You're going to save 25%. Very excited about this conversation. I think you're going to learn a ton. If you're like me, you've always just kind of taken fitness apparel for granted as just clothes that you wear to the gym. And I promise you, when you put your first pair on of Viore shorts, the joggers, the t-shirts, you will know why they're the best in the business. I hope you enjoy the show, and we will see you at the break. Right now, welcome to Barbell Shrugged. My name is Anders Warner.

We are hanging out in Viore. Are we in Encinitas? Yeah. Encinitas is just like this big place to me where everyone feels happy and healthy. Yeah. We went to go eat lunch last week and it was like, I didn't know that I ordered the vegan option. You got to watch yourself around here. Because you have to order the meat separate. Only in Encinitas is the meat and additional thing.

I think vegan's the default here. You have to say non-vegan if you wouldn't like vegan. Straight. Mike Bledsoe in the house. Joe Kudla. Did I get that right? Yeah, Joe Kudla. Kudla, man.

That was close. That was pretty good. Founder, CEO of Yori Clothing. So if you are watching this on YouTube and you're wondering, man, why do the guys look so incredibly good today? Man, they look so hot. Well, that's because Viore decked us out in this sweet gear. Let's get into a little bit of your background. I've always wondered, because I've been in the gym for so long,

and there is nothing worse than going and spending a whole bunch of money on fitness clothes, things to work out in. And then you get in the gym, the pants rip, the inseam blows out, they don't fit well. You end up doing that squat where like the back part goes down and there's like crack showing. It's terrible. Most people don't understand how to create a fitness short, which is kind of the bulk of where your business is. But what is a little bit of the background and how you got into understanding, we'll call it the fitness fashions? Man, well, it was really just a personal journey. I actually don't have any experience in the apparel industry prior to Viore, I dabbled and played

with a couple small, um, boutique brands that I just got involved more from a passion standpoint, but had never worked with performance materials, which are kind of their own little universe because they just move and stretch and wear differently than your traditional kind of cotton, um, fabrications. And so, you know, for me, it was just a personal journey and, you know, we can get more into the details of kind of how we put the team together to bring the product to life. But, you know, as far as my personal journey that kind of led me to Viore, you know, I was probably a lot like you guys played competitive sports growing up and just beat up my body. Football and lacrosse gave me a real nice back problem.

And about 10 years ago, I got into yoga. A friend told me I should try yoga. And it was really the first restorative thing I had ever done for my body. And so I went to a couple yoga classes and kind of got hooked. I started feeling really good. And that was the moment where – that was the aha moment, so to speak, where I just asked the question, like like what does a guy wear to yoga and there was just nothing available that's a real question too if you start going to yoga class you get in there and all you

have is like your meathead clothes yeah you want to fit in yeah you don't want to be the guy in the corner that doesn't fit girls aren't gonna like you look the best part of yoga is that if you know as a man it's like me and maybe one other guy. It's not a really great looking woman. You want to look good in there. Yeah. Is that really the main driver? Well, you know.

Let's just cut to it. Let's be real. Yeah, I mean, yoga participation was going crazy in the United States. There was tons of people going to studios. And, you know, if we checked in with ourselves, like, I wasn't defined as a Yogi. I was a football player and a lacrosse player. And I was into all kinds of training. I was in the water surfing. I was in the mountain skiing in the winter and just live in this kind of typical active Southern California lifestyle. And we're like, why isn't there a brand doing something that's just inspired by this lifestyle? All the brands that we grew up with

and those brands that you were talking about, they're more inspired by kind of urban and street culture. And we were like, here we are on the beach. Like those guys aren't really relating to us. Like let's do something that's born of the spirit of this place and make clothes that we actually wanna wear both in the gym and when we're just hanging out with our friends.

Yeah, that's a big thing. But what is the difference in material you mentioned performance fabrics yeah what is that because i really have no idea how or why i like one short or over the other i just find a brand and just stick to it until they stop serving whatever needs i have yeah and it takes a big shift for that to happen. I'm going to buy these shorts and keep doing it because I don't want to look for anything else and then something pops up on my radar

at some point. I get one pair of shorts as a gift or something and then I'm like throwing out all my other shit. I'm only getting this. They say us guys we're hard to catch but once you get them they're very loyal because to your point, you know, you find something you like and then, and then you, you know, it's easy

to shop for. Um, but yeah, to your point, I mean, you know, performance materials have just come a long ways. You know, when I grew up, I was a gym rat and I lived in Nike and, and all these major kind of active brands. And, um, I've learned a lot about those brands and how they build product, um, since then. But, you know, the thing that never connected with me about those brands is just like the, the kind of overly synthetic kind of cheap looking polyester, the big logos, you know, the, it just, the, the product made you look like you were going to the gym, you know? And I was always wearing like board shorts and cotton tees. Cause I didn't want to look like that guy. And, um, so if you always kind of an extension of that, it's like, let's build product that work across all areas of your life, not just in the gym. And we say this thing, we say built to move in style for life. Cause we're like,

first and foremost, it's got to work insanely well in its intended use. And that at its core is working out, it's training, it's moving, it's sweating, but we want to design it with an aesthetic. So we strip out a lot of the reflective logo hits and, you know, the crazy seam details and we just make it wearable, which I feel like was kind of missing from the market. And then to really touch on what you're talking about, you know, we went way up channel in terms of quality. So there's a million ways you can build a garment and it all starts with the fabric. And that's really the way we design. We start with the materials and we make sure that those materials are insanely good. So, you know, a lot of the big brands, I don't want to name names, but they'll have mandates where they can't work

with a fabric if it costs more than $2.50 a yard because they have costing structures that are really disciplined. They have margin requirements, all these things that are boring on the business side of things. Whereas we'll work with fabrications that are anywhere between $5 and $10 a yard. So we're working with fabrics that just before you even touch it with a sewing machine, the product is either two to four X better quality than a lot of the mainstream brands that we grew up wearing. And, um, that was, that just blew me away because, you know, we'll, we're willing to take a little bit lower margin

to deliver an insanely great product that we want to wear and we'll work across all these areas of our life. Yeah. The, what I love about all of the stuff, creating something that's form fitting that actually works for athletes is really challenging when, and then to make it look like something that you can wear outside. What is where kind of, you have that yoga background and inspiration, but do you have any background in like the,

I guess, design side of this thing as well of like oh i can wear this in the gym and most of the time if you go to whatever dick's sporting goods there's just a whole host of like basketball shorts yeah and they they're terrible not well they're good for what they do but they're not good for working out they're not good for going to the coffee shop they're not good for yoga out. They're not good for going to the coffee shop. They're not good for yoga, all of these things all at once. How did you kind of put this, the idea of the fashion plus the performance side of things together? Yeah. You know, Mike and I were just chatting a little bit before we got on air and he was

talking about, you know, this kind of ethos about curiosity and, you know, being guided by curiosity. And, you know, for me, it's the same thing. Like I, I had no background in, um, technical fabrications, but I was super curious and I loved product. I just loved it, you know? And, and I knew that, um, I knew that we could build better product that then was available on the market. Um, and Lululemon in a lot of ways, they, they kind of set the stage for this category. I, it just didn't, it wasn't super relatable to me. It always felt like my wife's brand.

It's a more feminine brand. Yeah. Yeah. But great quality product, you know. As a guy, you kind of feel weird the first time you walk in. You don't feel weird walking in here. That was the first time I bought like $100 sweats. Yeah.

I went in, I was like, this is acceptable. No one judged me when I walked in. I thought that they would. But this is what I've been wearing the last two years. Yeah. It's a nice change. Cool. Well, I appreciate the support, guys.

A lot of the fabrics that you talk about, the first time I started to learn about actual fabrics and performance fabrics, you talk about the stretching and kind of the pliability of the clothes, was in board shorts. They came with like the four-way stretch and it was the first time i could sit on a surfboard and not feel like everything was just in my junk yeah for lack of better terms and what what actually is the material advantages and and where do you find the stuff that allows you to squat and

do actual athletic things? I mean, being in a yoga class, you need to have fabrics that aren't going to get you all caught up in your own stuff. Yeah, I mean, you know, caught up in your own stuff? That's a very PG way of saying your own junk. Your balls

are hanging out. I had that happen about a while back. I wasn't wearing your shorts. Oh, good. I was experimenting with a new pair of shorts. Your balls are out. I wore them one time. I was doing some animal flow with my friend,

and she looks over and goes, I can see your balls. That's funny. We played with some advertising around Go Commando and Confidence, but man, you got to keep it together, guys. I'm going to ask that next because you guys actually have a liner

that I don't hate, which is the first time I've ever had a liner and a pair of shorts that I actually like. But anyways, material and fabrics. What, what separates that stuff so that we can have a nice short that works outside, but also you can do yoga, you can squat, you can do all those things. How do we get into one finding the stuff? And then what are you looking for when you're on this journey of creating performance clothes that

look great? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, you know, it all starts with synthetics, right? So it used to be everything was made out of cotton. Polyester came into play back in the day and it was really cheap looking, but you know, it did dry really fast and it wicked moisture. And so that was like the first performance materials. Then kind of nylon entered the picture and then full dull yarns came into came into play and full dull polyester i mean in a lot of cases you can't even tell the difference between cotton so enter the athleisure marketplace because all of a sudden you have fabrications that work really well meaning and when i say work i mean you know they stretch great they dry really fast um they have sometimes anti-odor properties, so they won't kind of, bacteria won't bond to them.

So just the perfect workout material, right? But then you have these full dull kind of properties and qualities that make the fabrications look really casual in nature and lifestyle. So where you don't feel like you're wearing like a plastic bag when you're going to the grocery shopping. And that Lululemon really built their business off of that, um, that fabrication. It was called suplex. It was a nylon fabrication. They started doing leggings out of it and the rest was history. But, um, but yeah, that's, that's what we look for. You know, we look for fabrications that are going to perform exceptionally well. They're going to move, they're going to dry, um, they're going to wick moisture, keep you comfortable when you're sweating. Uh, but then they have properties, keep you comfortable when you're sweating. But then they have

properties that look more like natural fibers. Are we going to be able to see through our pants when we bend over with the Viore? Is that going to be the issue? I hope not, guys. I hope we're not zooming in on that. You're going to be featured on the news as a bad person. You'll get a huge bonus though.

Yeah, you'll get a big bonus. But you get hired by your next company. So the liner, you guys have like a massive, we're literally a nine iron away from the beach here. There's a massive like surf culture kind of feel and vibe to what's going on. And you guys have kind of the base product is shorts, right? Yeah. What led you in that direction to kind of stay out of, I guess,

the shirt market and you guys are just starting to get into pants. I have them on. I don't take them off. But is a lot of that just driven from the board short and being at the beach and kind of that vibe? Well, it was definitely that. And, you know, I don't know about you guys, but, you know, when I grew up going to the gym,

like, you know, whatever, sometimes you'd throw on an old graphic tee or a logo tee, or it doesn't even matter. Right. Like the t-shirt wasn't as important, but I always wanted to feel supported in my shorts. Like I wanted something that would move if I'm doing like a deep squat or if I'm running, like I just want support. And so, you know, what's interesting is like most active brands actually sell three tops to one bottom. That's kind of the golden rule in our industry. And for us, it was the complete opposite. We came in and said, we're going to put all of our attention on the short category because whether you're going training or you're going to a yoga class, like you may not even wear a shirt,

but you need something on the bottoms. We hope you're wearing a shirt. Not in CrossFit. Yeah. Shirt comes off every time. Yeah. Shirts off, but hopefully you're wearing something on the bottoms. We hope you're wearing bottoms. Not in CrossFit. Shirt comes off every time. Yeah, shirt's off, but hopefully you're wearing something on the bottom, right? Yeah, unless you're a shirt cocker. So that's a really important thing, though. When you go to

take your shirt off, whatever it is, the liner that you guys have created and use works. What goes into that? Because if you need a model, I'll be the model for you in the underwear liner category. Is that a thing? How are we going to feature the underwear liner? Take the top part off.

I don't know. I've literally never found a short liner that the first thing I do is. How comfortable are you having anders be the model for let's do this anders i'm in let's do this uh my wife will be so proud of me but the first thing i usually do when i buy a pair of shorts that has the liner in it is go home and cut it out and when i first started buying the viore shorts it was like oh this actually works yeah um is there a different material that you guys are using on that stuff? Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Everybody associates liners with like those 1990s like mesh swim

shorts that ride up your butt. Like that's, you know, know about that. The liner has come a long way from this for all you listeners at home. Trust us on this. You got to try our core shorts or our trail shorts. But, you know, the difference is, you know, we're working with really soft material that, that, that moves with your body. So it's, it's not like either that really uncomfortable mesh that we're used to, um, as kids. And it's not ultra compressive to where you don't want to just hang out in them all day. Like we kind of found the middle ground. We worked with a Coolmax fabrication, so it wicks moisture, keeps your body cool during a workout. And it's just got the right level of support that will hold the boys together.

Yeah. But it's not going to make you feel like, you know, God, I can't wait to get out of here and take these shorts off. It's not suffocating. Yeah, it's not. Well, I mean, even two years ago, my first pair of shorts, the liner was a little bit thicker and I didn't like it. And then what you guys had this last year felt even better.

So it's even improved within your own line. Totally. Yeah. We're constantly looking at how can we make the product better. What is kind of the R&D that goes into actually releasing a short? I, from the beginning, like sourcing the fabrics and then by the time i get to look super fresh in your gear yeah absolutely well you know we um our development cycle is long so right now we've already designed spring 2020 so he's assuming we're going to get there. The sun keeps coming up.

That's a large ask. I'm more worried about AI than the sun. He might be leading that. He's got the alien shorts now. Are you using AI to develop your clothes? We're not there yet. We do have a technology department that is constantly nudging me to do that.

Put a brain chip in there. They'll like the shorts more. Where do you guys source a lot of this stuff from? And then like how you're already in 2020, that's, that's a long ways out. You're predicting what's going to make people look good, feel good in the future. I mean, you got to do it because to your point about R and D and testing, like you got to start early. Part of it is that's how the apparel business works. You know, buyers are always planning their business way out in the future. But, you know, it also gives us time to do R&D. So we're in proto stage on shorts that won't come out until January of 2020.

But I'm wearing them, going to the gym, running in them, taking them in the water and just living in them. Because you'd be surprised. Like if you only have a day to wear something, like what you're going to think of that short when you wear it a day, you might be like, oh, it gets a passing grade. But when you wear it for a month straight, you're like, oh, maybe we could fix this. This isn't working. You get more critical. One piece that I really start to notice in fitness clothes and working out in them is the seams break down so quickly because we sweat we're salty we're in gyms they're a little grimy what is that like it's not regular like yarn that you guys are sewing this stuff together with like how

i feel like there's so much technology that goes into the shorts can you just speak a little bit about on like how you pick this stuff yeah i mean it's it's amazing like i feel like i'm i've gotten an mba in in apparel construction because i you know and we've learned the hard way in certain cases you know um but but yeah i mean there's a million different ways to make a garment and so if you take uh like a take a women's legging right it looks it seems like a very simple thing to make but if you just use traditional seam construction that you would use on like a jean or you know whatever a t-shirt like it's going to pop and those seams are going to break eventually so we'll work with like specific

threads that come out of japan that have um stretch built into the yarn and then we'll use flat lock seam construction so a it won't rub against your leg when you're working out. But B, it'll stretch and move without popping any threads. So there's just so many different ways to construct a garment. But yeah, if you apply the wrong construction technique to an athletic garment, a lot of times people do that to save costs, make a cheaper garment.

But yeah, you're destined for quality problems. How long did it take before you launched your first short? Gosh, we started working on the business in 2013 and, uh, we got the, our first shorts, um, to market in early 2015. Yeah. So it's a two year process for us. It was about a two-year process. For us, it was about a two-year process. Everything's a two-year process. Can't beat that. Yeah, it's annoying. Yeah. Let's create this short. This short, man. It's going to be two years.

You and I have both started several businesses. It's like, oh, we'll be there in six months. Every time. Two to three years. It's like, shit, man. I really thought I could do it faster this time. And product's so expensive to, I mean, just going and finding, from coming up with the idea to actually launching the first one.

What is that process? Well, there was a lot of business planning that was happening concurrently with product development and R&D, right? So we had an idea, but we didn't have the money to fund it, you know? The entrepreneur's dilemma. And, and so I need more money. And especially, you know, as an apparel brand, like I liken starting an apparel brand to like starting a band, you know, like going to your friends and being like, dude, give me some money. We're going to be the next big thing. I promise

you, you know, it's like, it's a very low hit ratio. I mean, there's really no barriers to entry in this market. Like anybody can go start an apparel brand and you guys probably have a bunch of friends that have done that you know started a t-shirt brand he's literally holding the camera no that's true though like yeah i have a lot of friends that have started apparel brands and then it to break into the to being big there's I think in any business, to be the best at what you're doing, it takes an insane amount of focus. Yeah. Yeah. It really does, man.

I've dedicated, you know, my heart, my soul, my time, all of it to this. And it's, you know, never once felt like work, you know, and that's the beauty of doing what you love. Was there a moment where it was like you woke up one day day and you go well i've been doing all this other stuff you didn't grow up in apparel yeah where's that moment where you go oh i'm gonna put all my attention here yeah um so i had a really kind of weird post-college life but i but i essentially i graduated from college here in San Diego and, um, I got this weird opportunity to go model in Europe and, uh, my friends still give me a hard time about it, but, uh, jealous. Yeah. They're toes. Oh yeah. We're modeling right

now. That's right. Everyone's jealous. But I, uh, I got on a plane, I got my diploma and got on a plane to Milan and I spent two years traveling around and I worked with all these different designers and I always watched what they did. And I was like, God, I love how they're creating this product and bringing it to life. But I hated the modeling, hated being in front of the camera. It was horrible. But, um, anyway, so I'd always had that kind of in the back of my mind. And when I got back, I went into a career in accounting and, um and I started a company when I was in my kind of mid twenties and the business was pretty successful and allowed me to have a little bit of disposable income to invest in a couple other projects. And so I always

was investing in apparel brands and lost a lot of money doing it. But, but I just, you know, again, wanted to be close to it in any way I could. Cause you know, and, and I did learn a lot about garment construction through those times, but, um, it wasn't until, you know, many, many years later when I had a unique opportunity to exit, um, my prior company, um, that I was there, I think it was at, at that business for about 10 years, running it with two partners. And, um, you know, I had a really great run and, um, yeah, I just kind of was like, I'm uninspired doing what I do. You know, um, I was making great money, but just wasn't waking up with a fire in my belly wanting to come to work and kind of, you know, for me, like, I just, I can't live that way.

I have to have a passion for what I'm doing. Otherwise it's over. And, uh, and so it just got to be that point where I said, you know what? This might be the stupidest thing. A lot of my friends, my family reminded me this might be the stupidest thing that I've ever done. But I just knew that, you know, when I was on the deathbed looking back, you know, I had to give this a shot and see if I could make a career out of doing this. And so I decided to go all in. I find that fascinating. It's a very common story. It's like my friends and family said to go all in. Yeah. I find that fascinating. There's a very common story. It's like my friends and family said not to do it.

Yeah. Cause they're like, they're looking out for you. Yeah. They're, they'd be afraid to do it. So they don't want you to do it. Yeah. You know, you know, I was, I was making great money. I had a ton of time, you know, I thought I had it all figured out, but, um, there was

just a piece of it missing, you know? And, uh, so anyway, yeah, that Was that company in the apparel business as well? No, no, that was a financial recruiting, IT financial recruiting staffing company. No wonder there was no soul involved in that. Unbelievable. We're going to take a break. When we come back, make sure you get over to

vioreclothing.com, use coupon code SHRUG25. If you want to look fresh like me right now and all this cool clothes you see in the background, SHRUG25, saving 25% off vioreyclothing.com. We'll be back after the break. Shrug family, hope you're getting a ton out of this. I love listening to these things. I never knew clothing was so deep. I want to also thank Halo Neuroscience. Dr. Daniel Chow came in, told us all about electronic brain stimulation to make you a better athlete. Of course, when I first met him, I was like, what is this crazy, wacky stuff this guy's trying to teach me about putting electricity on my brain? Turns out, an hour and change later, I'm a bit of a believer.

He has an incredible background. Halo Neuroscience is really pushing the limits on understanding movement and how we wire our brains. Everything that we do in the gym, our brain is kind of the center point for telling our body how to move. And the more quality movement you have, the better your brain wires that movement pattern in. If you use their products, the Halo Neuroscience headset, using electronic stimulation to create better movement patterns has been shown to increase learning speeds by over 50%. That's incredible, especially in a sport like CrossFit, where there's so many different movements that you need to master in order to become good at them or proficient at them. All you need to do is put it on for 20 minutes to start your workout during your warmup, and you will start to begin to

feel how much smoother and easier movement becomes with the headset. I've been working on a bunch of handstands. I'm on this little mini test since they sent me the Halo Sport headset. And it's cool. I do start to notice that my brain is more capable of understanding complex movements when I have them on or the training sessions that I use them. I've always kind of been okay at handstands, but I'm really trying to focus and dial in and use the headset to just kind of add some layers of connectivity. And I think that that's like the big piece that I start to notice is that my brain is more connected

to my body. And I'm able to feel all the little pieces that I start to notice is that my brain is more connected to my body. And I'm able to feel all the little pieces that are going on. So I can feel the floor in my hands a little bit more. I'm able to feel a better shoulder position. And I think that there's some real advantages to having the headset on. Check it out for yourself. I think you need to, if you are a CrossFit athlete interested in quality movement patterns, getting stronger, faster and learning more technical movements at

a faster rate, you need to go to gethalosport.com forward slash shrugged, you're going to save $100 on your headset. That's an incredibly good deal. It's gethalosport.com forward slash shrugged. And back to the show. Welcome back. Anders Varner, Mike Bledsoe, Joe Kudla. Got it right. Nailed it. Nailed it.

We were talking in the break a little bit. The competition in the clothing and apparel industry, especially coming up in this CrossFit world, I feel like every week there's a new brand, there's a new vibe, there's a new culture created in the apparel industry. But you guys made your way into Forbes magazine. You've kind of risen above all of the craziness

in this industry and separated yourself. What has been a little bit of that story and how you've separated yourself. What has been a little bit of that story and how you've separated yourself really to becoming this beautiful place that we're in right now and well known in the fitness space? Oh man. Well, that's a tough question to answer. You know, at the start, we didn't really think about all that. We were just so laser focused on building great product that we didn't think was there in the market. It sounds really cliche, like, oh, we couldn't find it in the market, so we wanted to build it. But in this case, this opportunity was so laser focused. It was so crystal clear for us because as people that lived here in this environment on the beach,

there just wasn't performance clothing that we wanted to wear. I mean, it's plain truth. And I think a lot of other people felt the same way, what it turned out, which, you know, we're very grateful for. But yeah, we spent the early days just laser focused on making good product. And, you know, I guess I'll touch on, you know, the reason why I believe Viore is successful is somehow by the grace of God, I was able to put together just an incredible team of people around me that believed in what we wanted to create and was we're all swimming in the same direction. So, you know, our designer has 25 years of experience, you know, so I get to be the design hack that, you know, comes up with ideas and sources, materials, and I get to work with her to put together incredible garments, you know, and she has a lot of experience. She knows what us from a long kind of history working in the action sports industry and another kind of outdoor active lifestyle brand. And she joined us with just a wealth of knowledge and insights. And so I had this great crew of people around me that were, again, like all believed in this concept and were, you know, I like to say, you know, in business, if you're all

swimming in the same direction, it's incredible what you can achieve. You know, the dysfunction that takes place in a lot of places due to ego and a lot of these things, just we're fortunate to not have that play a factor in our business. And, you know, everybody, we have a great company culture, you know, our, our values is our brand and our brand is our value system, super aligned. And, um, and so I think when you get that kind of a just momentum, it just kind of starts building off of itself, but it was not an, it was not an overnight success. Like when we launched the business, it took a couple of years for us to really find our way. Um, you know, we knew that people loved the product, but the way that we were speaking to customers

kind of through a yoga lens at first just wasn't really connecting with people. And we found out, we did some early surveys, we found out that our customers were loving the gear, but yoga was actually like the fifth thing that they were using it for. Like number one was like running, two was like CrossFit and training,

three was like going to the beach, you know? And then like way down the list was like running. Two was like CrossFit and training. Three was like going to the beach, you know. And then like way down the list was like yoga. And we're like, okay, we've got the product. People love the product, but we're incredible team of people that are all kind of aligned. I think that's really kind of the little linchpin that put us on this path. Creating that alignment. So you mentioned at the beginning of that, by the grace of God, we found all these people.

Without all the religious things, I don't really feel like that. What happens, I really think, is you have an idea in your head and it takes two years to actually figure out what that idea is and get it into paper. And then when you start talking about that thing all the time to everyone you meet, now all of a sudden, the marketing person shows up because they have that same belief and the same vision that you do. You're just the one that actually created the thing and then put the product behind it. How much of the self-development or professional development, whatever it is, of actually wrapping your brain around the core values and the mission of Yori,

creating the product that exemplifies that, what is a little bit of that process over the two years of actually creating a product? Yeah. I, you know, there's nothing that I could point to that's like, um, strategic or tactical about that process. It's, it's more just, you know, authenticity, um, and, and, and making sure that you're staying true to who you are as you get bigger, that gets a lot harder at the beginning. You know, you're just trying to who you are. As you get bigger, that gets a lot harder. At the beginning, you know, you're just trying to look, I have this idea, this product that's built to move in. It's styled for everyday life. It's inspired by a coastal California active lifestyle. Like if that's my kind of mission, how do I build product that's actually in alignment with that? Because it's very easy to then go out and build product that looks and feels nothing like that. But, you know, it's just

authenticity. It's being true to that mission. And when you're only creating a small collection, it's a little bit easier, but as you get bigger and you get retailers like Nordstrom and REI, and, you know, there might appear to be permission for your brand to enter all these other categories and get really distracted and lose focus. And so it gets harder, you know, it gets harder to stay laser focused and keep just cranking away at what you do best. And I think great brands, great businesses do that really well. You mentioned you're already into the spring of 2020 and where your brain's at. How do you know where the future of this stuff is going? You just know what makes people look good in the future? No. No, I think, but you just got to keep your ear to the ground. You got to be observant.

You got to be curious and you got to be in touch with what's happening in the textile industry. For us, that's where we spend all of our time is we want to look at fabrications. We want to understand how they work and we want to look for a unique stories with, with great fabrications. Cause we know that if we work with an incredible fabric, um, I mean, we believe our garments are, are amazing as well, but, but with a great fabric, you could, you could design a very average garment and it still might feel like the best thing you've ever worn. Yeah. Because it all starts with materials. What I find interesting, when I look at the fashion industry and I follow people who may seem,

like if you were to see them walking down the street, you're like, wow, they really stand out. But when they're on TV or Instagram or whatever, it's like they're a normal star type situation. But what I've noticed and looking at fashion over the years is you see somebody wearing something that seems outrageous and then it's three or four years later, everyone's wearing it. It's now the normal thing. And so when I think about, it's like, how do you know it's going to be in 2020? That's one trend

that I've noticed is, is there's, you know, somebody who's outrageous wearing it. And then there's some people who are like, Oh, I guess, I guess I'll wear that too. You know, I, I'll stand out a little bit, but then, you know, do you notice that with these trends of like, where do you try to fit your brand? And as far as like the innovator, the early adopter, and then, you know, you have, uh, the mainstream and then you have the laggards, you know? Yeah. Well, I'm glad you brought that up because we pay attention to trends, but we're definitely not slaves to them. Our goal is actually to be super timeless and wearable, you know? So everything, our color story is sophisticated.

Our silhouettes are just very approachable. We make it easy for guys to look good. And sometimes that means not necessarily hitting trends right on the nose. And that's okay because typically active wear follows trends by a year or two. So what's funny right now, we're talking about trends, is baggy clothes are coming back. You guys remember the 90s? No! Please not.

That was literally going to be my next question of form fitting is so much better than all the bagginess. And so active is just active why is baggy coming back it's just if you go to new york you meet with fashion editors everybody's wearing like the wide leg trousers are you gonna show up wearing jinko jeans one day i remember those yeah like 26 inch yeah um monstrous chain hanging i think i've i think I think I'm 37 years old now. You know what you like. Well, here's the thing. That's the thing, right?

You look at people as they age. At some point, they go, fuck it. This is what I'm staying. I'm staying right in my lane right here. That's my wheelhouse. I'm happy here. But, you know, I mean, who would have thought in the 90s if you would have said, like, skinny jeans are going to come back? No way.

People would have laughed at you, right? I could have never worn them back then so it's like he's like oh we don't want baggy clothes to come in because we're not comfortable with that right now right yeah so we'll be wearing how much longer before we're wearing baggy clothes we walk in and you can't see any calf no ankles i think no ankles in the future fellas yeah i think it's many years away you know i remember when joggers first came out people people were like, no, jogger, I'm not wearing that. That's like hipster stuff, you know? Guilty. But, you know, now look at rock and joggers.

We've got skinny jeans. We've got quads showing over here on Colton. Short shorts. Joggers. Short shorts is another one, man. When are you guys going to do a four-inch inseam? We're doing it right now. It's coming.

Yes. That was the only thing for me. another one, man. When are you guys going to do a four-inch inseam? We're doing it right now. It's coming. Yes! That was the only thing for me. The only thing. I find myself rolling your shorts up a little bit. Now we have four-inch inseams coming in. That's why they put so much R&D into the liner so you can have the four-inch inseam without disaster. But we're going

shorter. It's tough. It's tough. But that's, that's, you know, again, short shorts have been in, in fashion for a long time, but it's just starting to make its way to active. You're starting to see brands doing more and more five inch inseam stuff. And so, yeah, I mean, I, it's nice to not be a slave to trends because that's the last thing I want to do is spend my time trying to predict the future. um you know if we focus on looks good feels good works good I think we've got a winning you don't actually have to predict it if it's just authentic to you and you can create it and you say this is where we're going this is what feels right yeah and then people will

follow in line yeah when did you guys start uh kind of branching out? Like the short is the core product, but getting into shirts, this jacket. Yeah. Call it a jacket. It's pretty awesome. I'm jealous of that, by the way.

It's really, really sweet. You should totally get one. I don't know how we both got different stuff across the board. I really like everything I have. Yeah.

But then I see you wearing your shit. I'm like, I want what he has now, too. Look, I don't know. We're here right now. We're going to be going shopping. But when did you start to branch out into the jackets, the pants? The pants right here, super killer.

Going from shorts to all these other things. Do you feel like you're actually just getting too wide as you move away from that core product? You know, I don't think so. I feel like we've always gotten permission from the marketplace to tell us when it's time to extend into new categories. When we launched the business, we actually, we launched with more than shorts.

So we had tees, we had hoodies, we had some long sleeve stuff, but shorts was just where our customer gravitated. So everybody just thought Viore is a shorts brand. And it turned out we kind of were by default because we were selling probably 80% of our revenue was coming from shorts. But as that customer got into them, fell in love with the quality and learned to trust the brand a little bit, they were like, oh, that looks pretty cool. Maybe I'll give that hoodie a shot or maybe I'll try that jacket or those sweatpants. And then as that's happened,

it's just kind of morphed into this full collection. One of my favorite things is the Chino, which you guys only had one. Is it a Chino? Yeah. The pant? And I got that. And one of my buddies, it's funny, he's a minimalist.

I know a few people who are minimalists, they love your clothes for that because they're so versatile. And you only want to travel with a backpack. I was nomadic the first half of 2018. So I took one pair of pants with me, and it was that pant. And I took it everywhere. It was very versatile. I could wear it.

I did. I literally hiked through the jungle in Costa Rica, and then two weeks later I was in the south of France wearing them, and they worked across the board. I thought I destroyed them in Costa Rica. And then two weeks later, I was in the south of France wearing them. And they worked across the board. I thought I destroyed them in Costa Rica. I was having to burn things like little, what's it called? Threads and stuff? Little threads and stuff off of it because I literally.

Every day. It was pretty nasty. But they lasted, yeah, a good while. And they were good in the heat and the cold. Because what I liked about those, they were easy to roll up yeah but you don't make those anymore you make the ones i'm wearing yeah which are even better yeah i mean we're just always you know always introducing new fabrics and new um new styles into the mix but yeah i mean performance fabrics are just better than cotton you know your jeans for they uh they they're um they don't kind

of dry quick they're not i mean they're introducing more and more stretch but they they take up a lot of space some of these fabrications we're working with it's like they're packable down to like next to nothing so they travel great they don't wrinkle they're super comfortable so if you're on an airplane for 12 hours you know yeah you just you're stoked if you're not in SoCal, no one's seen it. Like, on the East Coast. When I wear this shit on the East Coast, people are like, oh, shit. Bledsoe.

But everything starts here when it comes to, well, not everything. I mean, you got New York and places in Europe. But, like, a lot of, especially fitness trends. You know, one of the reasons I love being on the West Coast is fitness trends start here. So if there's a fitness trend here and you're on the east coast you know it's going to be it'll be hitting you in no time yeah yeah you know we're surprised to see like we look to our online

business we have a big e-commerce business um and we look to that to inform us of where we might want to open a store or where we're missing distribution. And it kind of guides us. And we were blown away to know that New York and LA kind of battle for the top spot. Oh, wow. New York city proper, like Manhattan, we ship almost just as much product into Manhattan as we do Los Angeles. And then San Diego, our backyard is number three, but yeah, it was just, you know, crazy. Cause like, there's no, I don't know how New York even found us, you know? I mean, obviously it's the power of the interweb, but, but they found us and then, and it's working in New York city. So very cool. When did you guys move into the brick and mortar? Because it was every time I hear somebody that has a great online e-commerce business and then they open a brick and mortar, I'm like, wait a second. Why did you do that?

Why, why take on all that overhead? Was this always a part of the plan to have a storefront? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, Viore was, you know, at simplest form, we wanted to make product for our friends. And we live here. This is where all of our friends live. And it was a community-inspired brand. And, you know, early in our kind of early in our years as a company, one of our

investors bought a building and he was going to tear it down just down a couple blocks here on the 101. And he was like, why don't you guys just take it? It'll be available for six months before we tear it down. Why don't you guys just do something there? So we're like, ah, maybe we'll have a couple of events, you know? So we've always been a big fan of the arts, and Encinitas is just such an incredible, like, ground zero for, like, creative energy, you know? Whether it's entrepreneurship or it's just incredible artists, you know, there's so much talent here. And we wanted to stand in support of that. So we used a section of that store as an art gallery to showcase the work of local and emerging artists

that we wanted to support and we started having these art shows and we would do like a training session in the in the store then we'd do an art show that night we'd bring in all kinds of vendors we'd raise money for cool organizations and you know that just kind of had this like groundswell and it was really about the time when viore just started taking off was when we did that pop-up yeah and we had that for about six months and when it was over we felt like it was like a loss in the family to lose that store because it just becomes such a community hub and so we were fortunate enough to find this space and we dedicated an entire wall to that same devotion to community and so this space know, we have a full-time community manager that just is constantly running events in the store.

We're having workout classes here. Saturday mornings, we're meeting down on the beach for bootcamp workouts. Right now, we're showcasing a local photographer. And we continue that thread of just integrating the business with community. And we're trying to replicate that with our store in Manhattan Beach and our store in San Francisco that we just opened last week so yeah it's I don't

I couldn't imagine having the brand without having physical manifestations of what it represents yeah in in different markets I love it because I actually you don't really think about for a very long time like what people are wearing until you kind of become a little bit attached to a company. And then as you're walking around, you walk into a coffee shop and you see people wearing it. You're like, man, that's really starting to take off. There's a real, every time I'm walking around here outside, you see the V, you start to see the shorts and it just, you're like, man, there's like a real groundswell of this thing

spreading and integrating itself into people's lives a real groundswell of this thing spreading and integrating itself into people's lives out here just in this surf fitness yoga culture that that is in Encinitas yeah or Southern California I you know in the early days if I saw somebody wearing a pair of our shorts I would like tackle them like where'd you get those what do you think but uh yeah I've had to stop doing that. But you guys have also started to expand into, so the core products were the shorts, getting into now pants, jackets, shirts,

but you're expanding into the women's lines now. Yeah. What makes you an expert in women's clothes? Oh, come on. Just master, yeah. I know what you look good in i know what i like yeah yeah no um yeah viore again going back to the community thing yeah women the girls got jealous yeah guys look too good that's true i did i was wearing stuff i started wearing stuff and

and my wife ashley's going i want some of that i was like i don't think they make anything for you or it was dudes only it was only a couple things things at the time. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You know, we, um, we had such support from women in this community and we started really small, just testing a couple of products and they were just like flying out the door and we're like, man, there's women's stuff selling faster than the men's stuff. Like this is crazy. And it just kind of kept growing organically. And then, you know, REI has been an incredible partner of ours since early on in the brand. They saw us as a differentiated brand in the market and they wanted to bring it in as a test. And we've grown to be one of their top fitness brands, both in men's and women's.

But they really got behind us and supported us in launching the women's business. And it's doing great for them. And Nordstrom the same way. Nordstrom kind of saw an opportunity, saw what we were doing in women's was a little bit different it didn't look kind of that ultra feminine personality that a lot of the athleisure brands were kind of launching with it almost looked more like it had those masculine kind of tomboy properties that that the men's line had and super wearable great fabrications they saw They saw a differentiator there and brought us in.

And so we've had really great support to get behind us to bring the women's to market. But yeah, we're stoked to be a multi-gender brand. We always kind of saw it from the beginning as a multi-gender brand. So it's almost in a way the product's just catching up with the brand vision. Yeah, that's cool. I love also giving males the permission to come in and actually go shop and think about the way they look and feel in clothes but i think for so long it's been like women have to go do the shopping and guys aren't allowed like we're just going to go buy the pair of shorts and

work out on them it doesn't matter and we actually have preferences we actually want to look good in the clothes we wear and people go to the gym they're working out they're working out with their shirts off and then they're supposed to go do what for clothes now they're not supposed to care and you come in here and it's like no this is where guys and girls now but this is where guys can come in and actually find out what it is they like here's a high performance piece of apparel that you can look good in as well. And I think that there's like a new trend where you guys have really kind of spearheaded this movement of giving males permission to come in and actually have a shopping experience

as part of their journey and finding what they want to be wearing. Yeah, I appreciate you saying that because that was always the intention, but sometimes harder in execution, but yeah, that was the guy, what over masculine dudes like, no, Vior, I want to look good. And, uh, these clothes, like we have preferences and, um, it takes some time, somebody creating a space like this, where you feel comfortable to come in and say, make me feel safe. Yeah. Like I, is there, is there a nice place that I can go where people aren't going to judge me? Like if you do walk into some of,

some of other brick and mortar locations and you're in like the nice closed section, you don't really feel comfortable, but in here it's, it's, it's okay. Yeah, totally. It's good to be here. Um, I've really enjoyed this. It's been awesome. BioriClothing.com. Yep. Where else can people find you? BioriClothing.com. You can come to our stores if you're down in Southern California, Manhattan Beach,

Encinitas, up in SF, go check out the store. Yeah, you guys have a new one. Is it open yet? Yeah, right across the street from an Equinox on Union Street

in Marina. Location, location, location. You could probably charge in San Francisco, if rent is $5,000 a square foot, You could probably charge in San Francisco, if rent is $5,000 a square foot, you could probably charge

at least $2 million for a pair of shorts up there. Yeah, we're stoked to be in San Francisco. Love that city, and it's going to be fun to be there. And then, yeah, REI, Nordstrom, Equinox, Core Power Yoga, you know,

a lot of dealers out there, but yeah, online is the best place to kind of get the full breadth of what we're doing. So if you're at clothing.com and if you are getting over there, use code SHRUG25. Save 25% on your purchase. Mike Bledsoe. Yes. Where can people find you? At Mike Bledsoe?

Underscore? Mike underscore Bledsoe. Jeez. Just give me my fucking name, Instagram. Yeah, Mike underscore Bledsoe Jeez Just give me my fucking name Instagram Yeah Mike underscore Bledsoe You know what I decided just this past weekend To take my Instagram more seriously I really didn't

What wave are you on right now It's like this hate it love it Hate it love it I'm going to take it more seriously This is all trash Social media for some reason. It didn't feel good. And I had some conversations with some friends this weekend. I go, you know what?

It's important. You just got to decide. It's how we communicate. You guys, being a clothing company, it's probably one of the biggest drivers of traffic, isn't it? Without Facebook, we wouldn't be here, no doubt. Yeah. They helped us build our business. It's incredible.

We were early on with Facebook advertising. Now it's a crazy space, but early on. Yeah, Facebook's gotten crazy. But I mean, yeah, like podcasts. We're killing it. We're loving it. Podcast is great. Instagram.

It's here. I'm taking it on. We're here. Follow me over there. We have the strong coach program. If you're a coach and you want to take your shit to the next level, go to the strong coach.com. I may or may not still have the first week up for free.

So I don't know when this posts. And if not, you can still do it after you buy it. But it's a coaching program where we're actually coaching you. It's not just curriculum. So coaches should be, should have coaches. And that's what,

who, that's what we're here for. So go to the, go to the strong coach.com. Now I can't talk. I had way too much strong coffee this morning. Look at that. Yeah.

At Anders Varner, most importantly, get into the show collective and go visit us at the strong coach.com. Tons of cool programs for all the coaches out there that are looking to make a real profession out of this coaching thing in the fitness space. Thestrongcoach.com. Shrugcollective.com. Six shows a week. Man, we're crushing it these days.

Yes, we are. Things are a lot of fun. Let's-O-Show on Monday. Real Chalk Tuesday. Shrugged on Wednesdays. Feed Me, Fuel Me on Thursdays. And we will see you guys next week. Shrugged family.

We crushed it, right? Want to thank everybody over at Viore, not just for the interview and Joe's time, but the incredible support that they've given the show and the collective and all of our hosts. I literally got a text from every single person that the day that the clothes showed up with them saying, holy shit, this stuff is amazing. So get over to vioreclothing.com, use coupon code shrugged25 to save 25%. V-U-O-R-I clothing.com, save 25% using the coupon code SHRUG25 to save 25%. V-U-O-R-I clothing.com.

Save 25% using the coupon code SHRUG25. Make sure you're getting over to shrugcollective.com. 30 days of free coaching coming to your inbox. Launching November 5th. We'll see you guys on Wednesday. Jason Kalipa.