How I Built This with Guy Raz - Herschel Supply Co.: Jamie and Lyndon Cormack

Episode Date: October 16, 2023

Brothers Jamie and Lyndon Cormack founded Herschel Supply Co to sell modern bags with a timeless feel. While working in the sports and apparel industry, they realized they couldn’t find backpacks and totes with the same stylish but simplified vibe as their favorite sneakers and shirts. With no background in manufacturing, they learned to make bags partly by ripping old ones apart. Then they Googled their way to finding a factory and scrambled to catch up as orders started to roll in.  Since launching in 2009, Jamie and Lyndon have grown Herschel Supply Co. from a handful of samples at a trade show in New York, to a global travel goods brand whose backpacks, luggage, and clothing are sold in more than 9,000 locations.This episode was produced by Chris Maccini, with music by Ramtin Arablouei.Edited by Neva Grant, with research from Alex Cheng.Our engineers were Gilly Moon and Josh Newell.You can follow HIBT on Twitter & Instagram, and email us at [e-mail] episode is brought to you in part by Canva, the easy-to-use online design platform for presentations, social posts, videos, websites, and more. Start designing today at Canva – the home for every brand.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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my conversation with Zoe on my other podcast, The Great Creators. Just search for the great creators with Guy Raz wherever you listen to podcasts. And now, on to today's show. Jamie and I promised ourselves that we would be together for the first time we opened our first samples. We met in the outskirts of Calgary. It was a bit mafioso style where the cars rolled in, trunks open, box pulled up, box cutter open. Jamie sliced the box open, and we literally opened up the box and saw our first samples. And to be very honest, they were pretty disappointing. Welcome to How I Built This, a show about innovators, entrepreneurs, idealists, and the stories behind the movements they built.

I'm Guy Raz, and on the show today, how two Canadian brothers took inspiration from classic brands to create a modern bag business that feels like it's been around forever. Herschel Supply Company. Every time I hold a Zippo lighter or a Leatherman knife or a stainless steel Timex watch, I feel a very strong sense of comfort. And maybe it's because these problems,

products are exactly the same as they've always been. They feel timeless, like a pair of Levi's jeans or even an in-and-out burger. And it turns out there's a good reason why we respond to certain brands in a certain way. It touches something deep within us, and it can also get us to buy stuff. And companies are well aware of this. Just look at the recent rebrands of Pepsi and Burger King. Both are retro and both evoke that 1980s vibe. So it may come as a surprise to you, it did to me at least, that Herschel supply company is a relatively new brand. When I first saw their backpacks back in 2012, I just assumed the company had roots stretching back to the gold rush. I mean, if you look at that pack with its leather straps and buckles and rugged

denim, you can easily imagine Levi Strauss himself flinging one over his own shoulder back in 1849. Now, to be clear, Herschel's founders, who also happened to be brothers, weren't trying to trick anyone, but Lyndon and Jamie Cormack definitely wanted their products to evoke that feeling I was just talking about. Anyway, when they started Herschel Supply Company back in 2009, both brothers had worked in apparel, so they knew how retail worked, but they had no idea how to actually make things. A few years earlier, they'd noticed that there seemed to be a gap in the backpack market, that there weren't any stylish backpacks that could look great on a college student and on a professional going to work.

It took some time for the brand to take off, but today, Herschel products are sold at 9,000 locations around the world, and it's not just backpacks, but everything from duffles, to suitcases, to wallets, to jackets and shirts. The brothers Cormac grew up in Calgary in Canada, and the inspiration for the name of the brand came from an old prairie town in Saskatchewan, a place they would visit as children. It actually sits in a small ravine.

As you drive to it, you don't even see it. About a kilometer outside, you start to drop down into a pretty amazing little hamlet. I think there's about 18 people there today. and not a ton of life but still has an amazing rink and a hockey rink that is and curling rink as school turned into a museum. Yeah. And as kids, Jamie, I mean, you guys have an older brother, but you and Lyndon are just, I think, less than two years apart. So were you guys pretty much inseparable as kids?

Like, did you basically, you guys were playmates? We were. And right from the start, my best friends were his best friends. It's been that way our entire lives. But going to places like Herschel, it wasn't an ask of what we were going to do that day. We would just go out and find something to do and it held our interests. And that's pretty special in a land that's that open and walking in and clicking the lights on in a hockey rink and just being able to play with no one telling you can get off the ice until your legs are ready to fall off.

That's when you stop. So in the U.S., right, a lot of kids, when you're... You asked them what they want to be. They say I want to be a professional athlete. When you guys were kids, did you think I want to be a professional hockey player? Did you guys and all your friends think that's what you wanted to do? I think it would have been the dream. You know, we grew up playing hockey.

I mean, we spent thousands of hours playing hockey. And in fact, if the rinks weren't open or the ice wasn't frozen, we'd also be playing street hockey in front of our house in our cul-de-sac where we grew up. And there would definitely be times where you're rolling. playing, you know, that final shot and that big game to hoist the cup above your head. I mean, I've role played that many, many of times. But I also realized as you get into your teenage years that I wasn't going to make the NHL. And obviously, also interest started to blossom in other other fun things that we love.

Okay. So I guess after high school, Lyndon, I read that you took sort of an extended trip to Australia. and you worked at a cycling shop for a while in Melbourne. And meantime, Jamie, you were still in Calgary. What did you end up doing after high school? I started working at a skateboarding store, but I also decided to spend a bit of time in Cammore, Alberta, and went to a mountaineering school there

and spent a lot of time taking a path of trying to become a mountain guide. Oh, wow. I would take off and work at a small ski hill. near Fernie on their avalanche control team. So doing all the explosive work and really working in snow science and studying it there for about four years. Wow. Yeah, absolutely loved it.

It was probably still to date, one of my favorite jobs in the world. But my boss at the time actually pulled me aside and after the fourth winter and told me, you know, I'm not going to hire you back next year. And I was pretty surprised. And, you know, he told me that I was just too young and too smart to be taking the same path he took. And he really felt like I should go back to the city and go back to school.

And his big comment that he said to me that still really resonates was, I would love for you to be the one in the back of the helicopter in the weekends, not the one working in the front. And it really hit me that I probably should go back to the city and rolling night classes at the time I needed to work and continue to work at the skateboard shop. And I dove from really mountaineering into graphics and graphic design and took a ton of courses at the local our college.

In Calgary? In Calgary, correct. And then as well as taking courses just in typesetting and trying to understand it and ended up being that I did start just a local snowboard and skateboard magazine myself. The magazine was called Sequence, I think, right? That is correct, yes. And, yeah, I mean, it must have been exciting, but, yeah, you had to fill it with articles and photos and ads. and it's expensive, like printing it and then distributing it and getting people to buy it.

Did it get any traction? No. I mean, did it, no. I would love to say, yes. That's not true. With my friend group and peers, you know, it was so much fun. Four years of running it was amazing learning for me. I disagree with it didn't get traction.

I mean, as an athlete or as a snowboarder, you wanted to be in this magazine. You wanted to be talked about. And so now, was it a wild financial success? No, but the lights were on. And so, yeah, I mean, it was cool. I mean, you made something. And, I mean, making something is intoxicating. And whether it's a photocopied zine or in this case,

it was quite a professionally done publication, that it was, you created an idea and you made something. I thought it was pretty bloody cool. Hmm. Linden, you, when you left Australia, I guess you came back to Canada and then you ended up working as like a sales rep, I guess, for vans for the shoe company. And Jamie, you moved on. You started doing sales for another sports brand K2, which I think mainly the skis and snowboards. So you were both working in like the outdoor sports business. I think, Linda, I think you were in Vancouver and think, Jamie, you were still in Calgary. And presumably you stayed in touch during that time, right? Yeah, we talked every day. Wow.

When you're moving around cities or towns or highways and move them from shop to shop or even home to office, you know, Jamie and I chatted on our phones all the time. And we learned a lot off each other. You learned a lot about what was going on. You learned a lot about the industry. But I would say a lot of those times that we were chatting, we'd be brainstorming out loud. And one of my favorite things that Jamie and I have as one of our big connections is the amount

of times we've started a conversation with, wouldn't it be cool? And the wouldn't it be cool sentence has been something that has sprung off so many amazing ideas and probably so many terrible ideas. But I reflect on those moments back in the day with those conversations with Jamie about, hey, wouldn't it be cool if this existed or wouldn't it be cool if this was happening? And even today, I sometimes get goosebumps on my arms when I hear a new employee or someone who's working for us now saying, wouldn't it be cool? And I hear it and I get ready to absorb because there are a lot of special moments can come from that. And Lyndon, can you remember some of the things that you talked about?

like both of you guys were in sort of skate and snowboard that world because you were both working for brands that, you know, represented those sports. What kinds of ideas did you bat around? I think Jamie and are people who have always had one foot in nature and one foot in the city. Yeah. The ideation of what we shared, I think, was a lot of the bounce between the two of those. And so the bag business just kept on coming up. And so, you know, one of those conversations, maybe 12, 13 years ago, where wouldn't it be cool to do that?

So, but do you remember how you sort of landed on or just talked about bags? Like, did you have exposure to bags just with what you were doing as a sales rep? Or did you, was it just an intuition that came out of thin air? Lyndon talked about one foot in the city, one foot in nature. Baggs were part of stuff we were doing when you have that adventurous spirit and mindset you end up in the outdoors. I spent quite a bit of time in the outdoors, even around watching guides, and the way that they work, and they really edit down. Their gear, what doesn't fit inside doesn't come.

They would cut away what was unusful. So for us, when we looked at bags in general, I think it was the one category that probably our generation didn't have one that we could call our own. It seemed like there was the right denim, the right footwear, the right eyewear, the right watches.

Bags just kept coming up because most of the bags we looked at in the market were too busy. There was too many useless features and we really probably looked more internationally to Japan and the aesthetic of quality and simple

and felt like you could dress it up, dress it down. And as we kept bouncing back and forth on ideas, bags kept coming up because there wasn't more, one there that we just loved. Did you guys, Lyndon, from the beginning, when you say bags, it was backpacks that you were

talking about? Travel goods, but backpacks. I mean, we, for our jobs, generally speaking, we used backpacks. It was kind of our thing. And what kind of backpacks would you use? In the latter years, I was carrying a brand from Japan called Porter, which is, you know, still a beautiful brand. And it was expensive for what people would say a backpack is.

Yeah. but very, very simplistic and pared down. And Jamie and I never wrote a business plan for this, but some things were quite obvious. If you look at all the stuff that Jamie just mentioned about bags having straps that people, generally people don't need, or extra pockets, or this feature and that feature, we thought we could come up with a sophisticated product that a lot less features for a similar price, but maybe extra quality and sewn into it. So it gave us also a lot of confidence seeing these other brands. and their price points where they existed to say, like, well, we should be able to make a company that sells in those price points, too. How long do you guys, do you think you guys had this conversation around bags

before the two of you were like, well, let's just try it? I'm going to see, probably a year that we were bouncing ideas back and forth, and not so much about a business, but just ideas. As you would travel, we were at trade shows, as again, we would talk a ton. We just kept rolling back to this one. And in a sense, probably without even knowing. We were trying to just vet and cut holes in idea to see if it would actually work. And it just kept getting stronger and stronger.

And every phone call ended up being about this idea. Yeah. So 2009 is sort of the official kind of date when you guys founded the company. And I want to sort of dig into this for a moment. Lyndon, what was the, I mean, both of you guys still had your day jobs. So you both decided we're not going to quit our jobs. but let's just kind of dip a toe into seeing what we could do. Is that sort of how it started?

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, conveniently enough, especially with how a brand like vans bridged itself from action sports to fashion, we were already going to places and selling to stores that would ultimately end up being some of our first accounts. And so actually working with vans and still working amongst that actually was a huge benefit because we were still in the industry. We were still seeing changes, whether it was with our brands or competitors and actually even how retail was changing. And everything was really progressing. So, yeah, we kept our day jobs for sure. And they were really awesome jobs, you know, and they were hard to replicate. You know, without having university educations or degrees.

or a really specialist nature to fall back on. It was actually for us really important as an insurance policy to keep them. So, all right. So you start, I mean, what was the first step? I mean, the first step was to just kind of think about, obviously, what you wanted a bag to be. I mean, I guess you're thinking, let's start with, like, let's kind of reverse engineer this.

Instead of just coming up with a product, let's think about, like, the backstory of the product. Is that right, Lyndon? Did you start with a story before you start to focus on what the actual product would look like? I think it was all happening at the same time. We knew the aesthetic of what we wanted the product to look like. And a lot of that had this idea of a classic brand, but we wanted to have a modern twist. Because a lot of our favorite brands are those brands that have stood the test of time.

And it was between backpacks, duffel bags, and hip sacks were really our first foray into the bag world. And we started feeding this and ideating out what a line plan would look like. And again, it seems like for us that was very natural because that's what we did for a living, whether we were working alongside designers at vans and giving our feedback or Jamie at K2 giving feedback for ride snowboards or K2 snowboards, etc. It was understanding that that was really important. So it started to really become alive, although those are still the very early days, but it started to come alive. Tell me more about how you thought about how you wanted this to be branded. Because, you know, for a lot of people the first time they saw, certainly for me, the first time I saw Herschel supply company backpack with that logo on it, I just assumed it had been around for 100 years, like Levi's.

You know, it was like a Gold Rush brand, you know. But that was very carefully thought through and cultivated. And I'm curious how you started to think about doing it that way. I mean, we wanted to take that creative freedom that we had as kids and build that into the mindset of a bag company. Really, with everything we do, we look to the past and then try to modernize it. And we had to start that way right with the logo. We had a big mood board in relation to other things that we really loved.

graphic references, brand references, of what we really loved. But the story came back to also, if we envision the little town of Herschel and having a little store in this town that sold useful goods to the farming community, the locals, and you imagine this sign sort of swinging back and forth on this little dirt road street, it was like the supply shop. It was like how the locals would come in, the farming community would come in, and we'd sell them useful goods. I mean, when you're in a small community, you have to sell things at work. It's not about all the fluff. It's not about all potentially even the branding. You have to

sell utilitarian goods at work. And I think the spirit of the brand was also that, where we wanted to deliver great utility functionality with a bunch of stuff stripped away. And that was a lot of the heartbeat of the brand. I mean, at the time, 2009, it wasn't like there were no backpacks. I mean, There were, you know, as a kid, I had a Jensport backpack, I think. And, you know, obviously, you know, the big brands, the Adidas is and, you know, Nike's made backpacks. But you felt like they fit in one category or another, like they were either just for sports or for hiking, but there was nothing in between. There wasn't a bad company that had a heartbeat. It was more of a race to the bottom than a race to a story.

and the bag market, it really is a unique purchase. The value at point of purchase is so much less than the sentimental value they have once they own it. It's different than so many other industries that I've looked at more than footwear or denim or any other purchase. Once they own a backpack, because they do carry it every day, especially if you carried it around university for an entire year. You remember that backpack.

The sentimental value, the first. The value, the first trip to Europe, the first trip here. But do they remember the shoes they had on? Do they remember the jacket they wore the first day? Probably not. But that backpack, that value is so much higher after purchase. And it was really interesting that, you know, Linda and I talked a lot about it, but we knew we had to really change the bag market and show up better

and make sure we added value to the market. When we come back in just a moment, Jamie and Linda, didn't figure out how to put together the perfect backpack by tearing a lot of other bags apart. Stay with us. I'm Guy Raz, and you're listening to how I built this. Whether you're a small business owner growing your team or an HR director hiring hundreds of people across the nation, you have one of the toughest jobs there is. But what if I were to tell you that there's something that can make your whole hiring process faster and easier? It's ZipRecruiter. And right now, you can try it for four.

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who listen to this show. Episodes they might not have heard or might want to hear again. So here's what I want you to do. Grab your smartphone and record a short memo short, like less than 30 seconds, and tell us your name, where you live, and which episode is your favorite, and why you loved it. So, for example, I might say, hey, it's Guy Raz here in San Francisco, and my favorite episode of the show is the one about Hamdi Ulakaya and Chabani because I learned so much about how to just push through when nothing seems to be working out. And it gave me a whole new perspective on being resilient. So that's it, something like that, you know, and by the way, that's not my favorite episode.

I love them all equally. Anyway, once you're done with the recording, email or message it to us at hibt at id.wondery.com. and we'll share your favorites right here in the ad breaks in future episodes. Thanks so much. You guys are the best. Hey, welcome back to how I built this. I'm Guy Raz. So it's 2009 and Jamie and Lyndon are starting to converge on the idea of launching a bag company. And it's actually good timing because during this period, backpacks are starting to get trendy again. Yeah, I think we've had some pretty funny stories about that, especially maybe.

early on even in interviews and maybe year three or four about going like, what are you going to do when this backpack trend goes away? And they also said, what are you going to do when this outdoor trend goes away? And I'm like, well, I don't think it's going to be trendier to be indoors anytime soon. And the fact is, we've been using backpacks well before this and we're going to be using well after this because they're just really, really functional. And so we didn't try to invent a trend here. It was literally maybe even solving a problem for ourselves because we couldn't find what we were looking for. And again, loving the sneaker industry, both Jamie and I together, of course, I worked in it. But it was also like, in the early days we act more like a sneaker company than we did a bag company because that's more what we were into.

And we weren't into how bag companies, especially in our price category, were acting. And I think that was an important distinction. Well, explain what you said you wanted to be more. like a shoe company rather than a bag company. What does that mean? Well, shoe companies were doing so many awesome things. I mean, they were creating segmentation in their lines to have tiered products that would only be available in certain channels. They were working on collaborations with whether they be artists, musicians, other brands that were telling stories differently. The passion that people have for sneakers

even today, whether it's collectibility or new launches or the hype around it is is something that is intoxicating. And again, the bag business wasn't a part of this. You know, we sort of looked around, you know, most people, especially for going back to school, bought their bag at a stationary store or a big box store. And oftentimes it would be the engineering of these stores to say, get your calculator, your pencils, your binders, your paper,

your duetangs. And at the very end, you'd be like, okay, where do you put this? You put this in the bag that was available there. Well, those kids weren't buying their sneakers from that store. They weren't buying their hat from that store. They weren't buying their jeans or their teas from that store. And we wanted to be able to separate that conversation into a unique buying experience. And I don't think there was a brand that totally existed to do that.

All right. But you had to figure out what you wanted that bag to look like. And I'm assuming you both had pretty strong views on what that would be. Tell me how you went about designing. this bag? I think internationally, we saw a lot, especially in Japan, that market had less complex bags. I think bags that have been stripped down.

I think when we looked to the past and vintage bags and bought a lot, there was a lot of appealing aesthetic to what that was, but the feature sets weren't right or the shapes might have been a little off for the time. So for us, we had bought a lot of different bags to reference and really started opening them up, cutting them up, talking about what we would have, and started playing around some ideas and sketching a bit and modernizing a classic backpack. Yeah. But the biggest weakness here, guys, is that we didn't know how to manufacture.

We could see it. We could see it on the wall. We could see the lookbooks. We could see how we wanted a story. We could see and feel and hear what this brand even, like, we knew exactly what we wanted to do, but we didn't know how to build. And so we had to go out and buy and cut apart. And for me, I had to know, I had to measure.

I had to dive deep into every single detail and every single feature. to figure out how it was done. So where did you get the first prototype made? We had a pretty crude little PDF mood board that sort of tried to explain what we were trying to do with the brand, trying to explain the look and the feel of it, and then it had some pretty basic sketches. So I had reached out to some of our connections with vans,

and I'd certainly said to some of our product managers, Hey, I'm not looking for you to get in trouble, but is there any manufacturers you know of that we could reach out to? And lo and behold, we got a couple of business cards from these factories. And these are, presumably, these are factories in China. Factories in China at this point in time. Yeah. And in this PDF, you had just one product or you had several different ones. We had the entire range.

There would be in like six different backpacks, two different duffel bags, one different hip-sack. Yeah, that would be in showing the line brand, the, what? we were trying to come and colors that we were trying to do in that. Yeah. And so we sent these emails over, you know, eagerly waiting for responses, get up the next day, hit, send, receive, and, you know, there was nothing there. So we literally turned to Google and started to Google things like how to make backpacks, how to start a backpack factory, where to make backpacks.

And we took our little PDF on the same email and we sent it to like hundreds of email addresses we found in companies. And we started to get some responses from various people. I remember a couple of them. One, I can't remember the exact name. It was something like X, Y, manufacturing. And these actually people sent us a quote, which was like, yeah, so this is what it's going to cost to make.

It's minimums of 4,000 units per color, per style. And I remember there was this other one that made bags and plush toys. And I thought I had one of those, wouldn't it be cool moments? and I told Jamie, I was like, oh my God, man, we can make plush toys with these people as well. Jamie shut that down quite quickly. Yeah, got to stay focused. Thank you. That's what Jamie said.

Anyways, we ended up meeting, we got an email from this gentleman, and his wife actually was learning, living in Vancouver, learning English. And he said he was coming over to see his wife, and he agreed to have a meeting with us. And ultimately, Jamie and I met him downtown Vancouver. and he ended up agreeing to make our first ever samples. Okay, let's pause for a moment and just let me understand your financing here, right? Because you guys both had jobs and I think you probably had some income coming in. And so maybe you had some savings. I mean, but starting to produce backpacks is going to cost significant amount of money.

I mean, maybe hundreds of thousands of dollars. How much money did you have at this point? Well, we had great jobs. We didn't pay ourselves through Herschel at all. And our oldest brother, that's where he comes into the picture, put some money in the business in the early days. How did he have money? He was working as a commodities trader at this point in time for J.P. Morgan. In New York?

He was actually in Calgary on their crude oil desk. Oh, so he had some cash. Yeah, and he was always really supportive of us trying to do something on our own. And so, yeah, he put a bit of cash in. We worked and bootstrapped it by not paying ourselves, not having offices. We didn't really have any real expenses aside from, you know, trying to get this off the ground. That's a good brother. Well, we're a good salesman guy.

I mean, that's the key thing, right? But he is a good brother. He's a great brother. And by the way, it's been a pretty good return on investment for him as well. I'm sure. I'm sure he's done pretty well. I think he'll be as complimentary of us as we were thankful of him. I think he did pretty well off the deal. All right. So you guys find this manufacturer. Meet this guy in Vancouver. He's a Chinese manufacturer. He goes back to China. And he agrees to make a sample run. And how much, how many items in a sample run in that sample run? Initially, it was five items to him really to try to understand his capabilities as well as some costing. And he would make how many of each item?

One of each initially, just as an early proto to actually see where we were going to stand and try to get some understanding. All right. So you get the specs to this manufacturer in China and presumably you're waiting with bated breath for them to send them back and probably took what? A couple months to get those samples? Probably a month. And yeah, I mean, this is a big deal. for us. I mean, we've really never seen a sample of Herschel before it. And Jamie and I promised ourselves that we would be together for the first time we opened our first samples. And they

actually got delivered to Jamie's office in Calgary. I happened to be at our family's summer home and I drove into the city. We met in the outskirts of Calgary right on the, right on the outskirts of town. It was a bit mafioso style where where the cars rolled in, trunks open, box pulled up, box cutter open, Jamie sliced the box open, and we literally opened up the box and saw our first samples. And to be very honest, they were pretty disappointing. How so? What was the problem with them? Shapes were off guy, and measurements were wrong, and details weren't there.

The bags were stitched properly. The quality was there. But the shape, the feeling, the drape, the total aesthetic we were going for wasn't even close. So I think it's at that time that we got on the phone and decided it might be time to take a trip overseas to spend some time in their sample room. And so I booked a trip, I think, the following day after getting off the phone with him and got a visa. And I headed over to China about, I'm going to say, a couple weeks after receiving those first samples. The first thing, the first deadline we had was we had booked a trade show in New York City. And we had this deadline that we had to get these bags done and ready for us. Do you remember when the trade show was in the fall, presumably, right?

Or in the spring? This trade show would have been in the spring. Spring of 2010. Of 2010, yes. So how many weeks did you have? Like, did you have a month? Did you have six weeks? I think we had a couple.

I think there was, I would say, two to three months. Okay. Because getting over there, I spent a couple weeks with the pattern makers. It was an interesting time because the owner of the facility, as Atlantaan picked me up, he was one of the only English-speaking individuals working at his facility. And he mentioned to me day one in that he was going to be gone for about eight to ten days during my trip. Right. So there was a lot of writing, a lot of writing, a lot of...

of chalk, a lot of pointing, a lot of thumbs ups and downs, and, you know, sitting at sewing machines myself. It was an interesting time, but that time at that facility was so crucial for this brand to truly get shape and understand what we were doing and spending time at the markets, really through touch and feel and pointing, and just, it really was a crucial time. And you just needed one sample of every product, every skewer, every color, right? didn't need a big production one because you were just going to display them at the trade show. Is that right? That is 100% correct, yes.

All right. So you guys in, you know, you decide that in 2010, you're going to debut these samples at this trade show, this big trade show in New York. Yeah. So we were at the first ever agenda trade show in New York City, which was held at the Chelsea Art Museum. It was actually a perfect trade show for us to go to because they had these beautiful old patina herringbone floors. They had white gallery walls. And they separated just all the booths with pallets. So it was a great trade show because we got to be on sort of like an even playing field with a whole bunch of really, really big established names.

And how many different items did you have showing at that first trade show? 13. 13 styles, I think there was total. There was more than just backpacks. There was duffel bags. There was cross-bodies and hip packs. Right. And I think at this point the company, Herschel is just the two of you.

So, all right, so you're at this trade show with all these samples in New York. And what happens? When we first walked into the trade show, we were the first people to show up. We had hockey bags full of our samples. that's very Canadian of us. We rolled up to our booth and there was an apparel rack sitting in the booth.

So we went and asked the show organizer if there was any shelves, if there were any racks, if there was any other things that we could have because we were a bag company. We weren't selling clothes. And they said, you know, that's all we've got.

And Jamie noticed a big huge pile of pallets sitting on the other side of this art museum. And we literally spent the better half of the day at the very least, going to get tools, ripping apart pallets, and constructing our very first trade show booth. When we finished, when we stood back, and I think we were probably one of the first and one of the last to leave that day, the aesthetic suited our brand perfectly.

And so it wasn't planned, but it almost felt like it was meant to be. And so what happened? I mean, you're there and you've got these back. and who started to inquire about them? We didn't have any appointments with people, because to be honest, if you phone people and you were like, hey, we've got this company called Herschel and we're making bags and you should stop by,

we wouldn't have ever got through to the people we needed to. So we just showed up. And the amazing customers started rolling in. And when they'd walk by, they'd sort of double take and look, and you're like, where are you guys from? Tell me about your products. And that could have been in a Bloomingdale's or Nordstrom or a little sneaker shop. Huh.

So I guess one of the retailers that you met at that first show was Urban Outfitters, which obviously there's still, you know, a significant retailer today. But at the time, 2010, I mean, they were super influential. I mean, that's a store where you wanted to be if you were a cool brand. So when you met the buyer from Urban Outfitters, what happened? Like, what do they say? I think she said, why didn't you book an appointment with us right off the bat? And of course, Lyndon's answer was like, because you wouldn't have showed up. And it's so true.

I think that organic nature of them just walking in and hearing the story and coming over and hearing it right from Mars. And it really resonated with them. So Urban Outflers clearly was going to put in an order. what did you guys leave that? I mean, how many orders did you leave that first show with? So the way the trade shows generally work is we're going to get orders after. So you establish the connection. Yeah.

We got to meet a whole much of the best sort of sneaker shops that were started. You know, ones that come into mind is bodega in Boston was one of the first people we got to meet. We had an awesome encounter with GQ magazine at that show who, because a lot of times press will circulate the shows as well to figure out what's new. And GQ, the next day, requested one of our bags to be shot in their studio. And we ended up on the front cover of the GQ gift guide for that here. And it's easy to reflect on this now. Like, yeah, we're on the gift guide. But our brand did not exist at this point in time.

Like, nobody knew us. And for those moments for, you know, especially that holiday season, it's like we were starting to exist. And those were some of the early, like, oh, this is really. going to work. Meantime, the both of you are still living in separate cities, right? Jamie, you're in Calgary, London, you're in Vancouver. And I know that when you went back after that, I mean, that trade show really kind of opened things up for you, not just in terms of orders, but in terms of connections to

like big retailers, including Nordstroms, right? I mean, did Nordstroms reach out to you and say, hey, let's meet up after the show? Well, we reached out to them, and they're based in Seattle, so it's just a short drive away from us here in Vancouver. And I ended up going to meet the buyer at the Nordstrom office in downtown Seattle. The night before I had to drive down to Seattle, I was actually playing hockey,

and I actually got in a little bit of a scrum and ended up walking out of that rink with a bit of a shiner, actually. And so next morning I woke up, I put some eye makeup on to patch myself up, ended up grabbing our samples, driving down to Nordstrom, had a meeting with them. And the first thing the buyer said was, yeah, we don't actually buy backpacks. We don't really sell them in our store.

And I said, well, that's why we're here to change that. And ultimately, through a little convincing, we got an order from Nordstrom. And they're ultimately one of our largest customers still today. So you'd come back from this trade show with a bunch of orders and you've got to finance those orders. So how much, I mean, you don't have the cash up front. At that point was the investment that your brother made and any other sort of money that you cobble together enough to find, must have been enough to finance that first run? I mean, we had collected orders of about 4,000 pieces. And I think the minimum order, after talking to our facility in Asia, was 7,000 is what they wanted us to order to be able to produce every single skew.

And those are some big conversations for us. Because it's going to be expensive. It's going to be expensive. We felt confident. We had a good reaction with everybody there, but was it good enough. I think these are big conversations. To sit down and have with each other is, you know, we're going to order about 3,000 extra units. And, you know, is everyone going to get a Herschel bag for Christmas and their birthday for the next couple of years?

Or are you going to be stuck with thousands of Herschel bags in a warehouse in Calgary? Exactly. Yeah. When we come back in just a moment, Jamie and Linden are caught off guard when their bags are endorsed by one of the world's most famous endorsers. Stay with us. You're listening to How I Built This. Did you know Airbnb was almost put out of business when a competitor cloned their own? website down to the very pixel? It's true. Airbnb even considered acquiring the competitor but decided against it. Years later, the decision paid off. Airbnb reigns supreme in the market while

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moments.com. Go listen to Crucible Moments today. Hey, it's Guy Raz here. You're about to hear from Gaghan Beiani, entrepreneur and Mercury customer to learn a little more about why Mercury is the best banking partner for your startup journey. I chose Mercury because I feel like as an entrepreneur, my goal is to try to build a product in a company. And most people, banks require me to understand a little bit more about how they operate, how they work, and what I need to do to interface with them. Whereas Mercury is the opposite. I don't have to think about anything.

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I'm Guy Raz. So after landing a bunch of orders from big retailers, Jamie and Lyndon reached the point where they have to grow their company beyond just the two of them. So in the middle of 2010, we brought in some people who could help us facilitate the actual sales we were going to be doing. But also, of course, we needed to create a new season. So, you know, Jamie was working on creating the next range because we needed to be ready for the fall trade shows as well. And that's when everything started to get really, really busy. So we hired some people who had previously worked with us, myself with vans, as well as we hired. our first couple of employees to come in and help us get things across the finish line.

Lyndon, what was the game plan when these bags would start to appear in Urban Outfitters? Like, how would you, was the idea, like, let's just sit back and see if they sell themselves? Because you had no marketing. You weren't paying for ads. You didn't, I mean, this was for pre-social media. I mean, it was a little bit, but. So was that the idea? Just let's just put them out, let Urban Outfiders put them out there on display.

and we'll see what happens. Yeah, I mean, it doesn't sound overly strategic as I hear it, as you say it now, but the reality is what's find amazing retailers who had a bunch of other amazing brands. Their job as retailers and its merchants is to curate offerings. So if you're sitting next to other awesome brands, they're telling the end consumer that this brand is cool too. And that was really our marketing, is spending money on trade shows and then having others tell, the story amongst their multi-brand retail settings. All right.

So they get out to urban outfitters and how'd they do? I had a call with the buyer at the time. His name was Tony. And they had been in market for a couple weeks. And I asked Tony like, how are we doing? He's like, yeah, you know, they're doing pretty well. And I'm like, that's awesome. It's like, what are we talking like sell-through wise?

And he's like, well, we got a big chain here. It takes a while to get the bags out on the floor everywhere. You know, some areas get them faster than others. But, yeah, we're currently selling it about 26% a week. And I'm like, 26% a week? And I'm like, that's pretty good, right? And he's like, oh, no, that's awesome. And yeah, I mean, he's, and then right next to talk about all that extra stock we had,

he was like, you got to send us over what you've got. And they were a great. partner and and still are today. Did you guys feel like, because there was a talk, you know, there was talk around this time of like so-called heritage brands, right? Like people would buy defunct brands. Like classic examples made well. Mickey Drexler, who I've interviewed before is a brilliant guy in the apparel industry,

was a gap for many years. He basically bought this trademark from Madewell, a company that went defunct in the 30s, and he resurrected it. in the early 2000s, so it's a new brand, but people thought of it as an old brand. Was that part of your, also the way you were positioning Herschel, even though it was a new brand, and you didn't resurrect an old brand name, it had that feeling. Was that, were you consciously trying to do that? Herschel had the logo, the brand had familiarity, and we knew that.

That's what we wanted to create. So we wanted to create that familiarity. Do you want people to see it and be like, I've seen this somewhere before, even though they hadn't? I don't know if that's exactly how we said it, but we thought they would feel like it was a brand that has existed or they'd have memories of it. The reality is, you know, we were a startup. And so we didn't resurrect an old brand. We weren't trying to trick people. Again, it wasn't a part of the pitch of that we were an old resurrected brand at all.

But the aesthetic of brands that we loved were brands that stood to test. of time and we wanted to be able to create that in 2010 but and have it last from decades to come. I read that in that first year, full year of business 2010, you sold 8,000 bags. Does it sound about right? Yeah, around that, around that unit, it was between the 7 and 8,000 units that we sold and we were really good at the front end stuff, but we actually didn't know how to ship bags from factory to warehouses. So those were also fun times, you know, trying to figure out global logistics when you've never done it before. And I feel, you know, very appreciative of people walking us through the things we needed to do. When did you guys, I know in 2011, both of you

quit your day jobs, right? When did you feel like you were comfortable doing that? Jamie, what was the catalyst for you? Were you like, okay, this is real? For me, it was, Lyndon actually left about six months prior to myself. Lyndon had a few more conflicts in his sales. agency than I did. And so I kept my job for about six more months. And I think all along too, for me, was trying to get bags to not just be a one season a year business for a lot of these retailers, where we went out our first season and sold in Back to School, and that's fall. And outside of that, coming into spring and into summer and into holiday, the bag business at some places didn't exist. And that word test was out there a lot. Oh, we'll give you a small

test order. And we really had to take a lot of risk to sell that extra stock that we were bringing in. As I saw, these replenish orders continue to come, and I saw the bag market switching from a one season a year, business really into two, and then for us to bring in a third and a fourth season and a really seeing it resonate, that's when I started to get comfortable, where this is more than a hobby. Yeah. There's also a component that we haven't talked a lot about was just on the international side. Year two and three, we were in five countries around the globe, not just in North America. And did that all come from trade shows, from going to trade shows? That was from both trade shows and relationships. Some great relationships Lyndon had in Australia and New Zealand allowed us to open

them year two into the business. Relationships in Japan. And Lyndon and I, early days, started to take a lot of time and go over to a large trade show in Berlin called bread and butter to get some great international and European distributors. So it just got to be too much that we just felt we were doing a disservice to what Herschel could become if we didn't make this 100% of our time. Linda, at the time, you were, you or a couple years later you reflecting on this, you had said that we went from like in a very short period of time like a band playing at a small pub to then overnight going to Madison Square Garden. So how did you manage that scale and that growth? I mean, you know, if everything's being thrown at you at once, how did you scale up and bring the right people in and deal with the growth? Tell me what you did.

Well, I think we allowed ourselves to not be perfect until we ultimately needed to be. At that point in time, we went out and we recruited people in finance roles and operation roles that ultimately could be. build out an entire department. That's when we were diverting ourselves from being a single factory brand to multiple manufacturing points to make sure we had stability. That's when we started product testing every single aspect of our products to make sure that they were passing tests and chemical tests and quality tests all around the world. So it just got really real, really quickly.

And from, well, year one didn't turn a profit. It was all the be it, it was a very small year. But since 2011 and on, we've always been profitable. Really? Even in those crazy high growth years, you were profitable? Absolutely. You know, and some of the reasons for doing that in a normalization aspect, if we were paying ourselves and, you know, maybe we went and found these, you know,

crazy executives that we took from other companies. But to be honest, we were pretty grassroots and pretty bootstrapped, and we just made it work. Did you feel pressure to constantly bring out new, you know, new products, new categories, going to new categories beyond bags? I mean, did you feel like we've got to always stay five steps ahead? Yeah, I mean, I would feel of pressure in the early days about growth as we were growing, we were growing the line by 50%, by 40%, by 30% more every single season.

We did not want to get pigeonholed. It's a small niche bag brand. Yeah. And we wanted to show that we were being innovative and exciting. We wanted to do extensions that felt authentic and natural to us. And that was things like wallets, computer sleeves. We moved into headware. But they felt authentic. It was all purpose-driven, design.

So it felt natural to what we were doing. And were you selling all those things only in stores? I mean, I'm assuming you were also being encouraged to go direct to consumer. So, I mean, like a website, was it getting traction or did you have problem selling online in the early days? So we had a website, but the thing that we thought was smart was anytime an item sold on on a website, it would just disappear and go to a dead link, which obviously is a mistake now. But there is one story, the Oprah one, Lyndon, where we finally had a website up and going. And, you know, to hit Oprah's wish list is just such a huge thing.

And, you know, again, you're moving so quickly. Yeah, I think it's amazing. You got on to Oprah's list. This is a funny one. We got a great one of our top-selling duffel bags, even today, out to Oprah. And a gray and tan one got on her list, and we didn't know about it. And obviously, the amount of people going on had sold the bag out instantly. And I think it was one of our mother's friends that called us a great job on the Oprah article.

And we searched it and found it and we followed the link and it was going to a dead link for weeks. And it's just one of those things that looking back, you know, we talk about failures and here and then. We don't think about many, but could have that helped us even more in the early days. And tell me about, because I know, I mean, obviously today you've got hundreds of products, different products, maybe hundreds of dozens and retail stores and then partner stores. but I want to ask you about COVID because COVID was great for a lot of companies and certainly for a lot of direct-to-consumer brands. What about for you guys?

Was COVID great? I mean, great's not the best word, but great for the business. Was it great for your business? COVID was not good for Herschel at all. The majority of the products we make are people going to school, people going to work,

people going to the gym. people going to festivals, people going on trips. And, you know, it really set us back. To be honest, it was quite horrible for us. When it first started to, you know, build up in Asia, the biggest risk for us was actually if we could get products from our factories over to North America and Europe. You know, we didn't have the painted picture that this was going to be a global pandemic.

And so we really sped up production. Yeah. And then it started to hit our side of the world. And all of a sudden, all hell broke loose and nobody was taking their orders. There was, of course, uncertainty all over the place. And we found ourselves in a whole pile of problems. I mean, we had to make some tough decisions internally with staff, with categories that we are in, with certain, you know, styles of products where we had to make some hard choices.

and make some cuts. You basically used COVID as a time to kind of regroup and rethink. Because it sounds like you had to make some tough decisions, presumably layoffs, right, to preserve your cash. And, you know, and I guess it was a time, it was a moment to think about, all right, what are some of the big things we can do? And one of those was eventually, which I guess you do now, which is to focus on using recycled material for your products. Mm-hmm, correct. And also, for me during COVID to watch the team, they were all looking for that next thing to do. And that's one thing that I think a lot of people at COVID didn't know what to do. And for me, I wanted to challenge a team with something to keep their minds going and really took a big stance on impact and sustainability at our brand.

And we switched over 95% of our fabrics and materials to be from a sustainable fabric. That's a big, big decision as a brand that is selling millions of things. and millions of pieces a year to go and do that. To have the team, that has to touch every single department within our company from costing to sourcing to manufacturing. And we went from being about 5 to 10% sustainable to be 95% sustainable on the other side of COVID. Yeah. Lyndon, in 2022, you were quoted saying the last thousand days have been the hardest thousand days in the business ever.

And obviously, you just outlined that. I mean, are you starting now to, you know, to turn a corner or have you started to turn a corner since that time now? I mean, does it feel like you guys are now fully back in business or is it still, are you still coming out of the pandemic era even as we speak? Oh, we're back. I mean, people are out there with excitement and people are going to music festivals or going on trips and having meetings in person. And, you know, the hybrid work environment now that most people are in, it's pretty good for Herschel, too. because you're taking your laptop with you from your work to your home, from your home back to work. So you need a bag or something to carry your stuff.

I would say the business in general is conveniently enough. COVID's a memory now. And the windshield's a lot bigger than the rearview mirror. And we're staring directly out that windshield right now and heading towards the future. When you think about this journey that you took and, you know, where it started and where it is now, I mean, you guys had clearly a very strong insight into this opportunity and this this this category and that there was really a great opportunity there and you had a background in design and in distribution you knew what cool brands did well um but still it was a you know was not preordained that this would work

how much of what happened to you guys in the brand do you attribute to to how hard you worked and how much do you think had to do with just getting lucky um first to you jamie I think luck comes to people every single day. And it's how you use that luck to actually turn that luck into momentum. And I think momentum only works if you work hard. And I think to keep that momentum going, it's hard work. And I think to identify that luck to turn into momentum takes a lot. But it's a complete blend.

One wouldn't work without the other. Lyndon? I'm a big believer of timing. And I think that our timing was perfect. And it wasn't overly engineered of being perfect timing. We didn't know. But I feel timing was on our sides and people were shifting. And I think maybe we were early adopters of that timing and watching it and sort of wanting something to change and weren't seeing it change.

And so we took the reins ourselves and started to implement the change we wanted to see. And I, yeah, it's been a hell of a ride. It's been a hell of a ride. That's Lyndon and Jamie Cormack, co-founders of Herschel Supply Company. By the way, the town of Herschel, Saskatchewan, where the brand got its name. As we heard earlier, it's super small and super remote, but apparently they have a pretty cool museum that might be worth checking out. It's got exhibits on the local ecology and native peoples,

and even a species of dinosaur that was discovered right there. It's called Dolly Corrin' Cops Herschelensis. Hey, thanks so much for listening to the show this week. Please make sure to click the follow button on your podcast app so you never miss a new episode of the show. And as always, it's totally free. This episode was produced by Chris Messini with music composed by Ramtin Ereblee. It was edited by Neva Grant with research help from Alex Chung.

Our audio engineer was Gilly Moon. Our production staff also includes J.C. Howard, Casey Herman, Sam, Halson, Ramele Wood, Elaine Coates, John Isabella, and Carla Estevez. I'm Guy Raz, and you've been listening to How I Built This.