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DTC Podcast
Ep 555: How Outway Got Back to Profitable 8-Figure Growth: Channels, Margins, & the Brand Moat Ahead
00:49:30
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- [00:00]
A
I think there's an emergence of people wanting to find their tribe and community. They want to have an affinity with the brand because they want to purchase from something that feels real. How do you create that community and how do you focus on the brand to create the affinity with the consumer? You're going to need to layer back on one of the only moats that are going to exist. Your brand product is going to be commoditized. Our digital advertising is going to be commoditized. It's all going to get so easy where I can just go prompt and it's going to build me a Shopify store. You can see how that's not far out. You're not going to be able to prompt a relationship with the consumer if you're able to do that and establish that now, I think you're going to see a real emergence of some of the challenger brands, really break through. The big brands that are able to realize that they'll refind their way as well, but the ones that don't, I think, are going to fade.
- [00:53]
B
It is the DTC podcast and I'm Eric and I'm here with my good friend Rob Fraser, founder CEO of Outweigh Socks. Good, awesome local brand doing 10 figures in apparel. Welcome to the podcast, man. It's been a minute, Eric.
- [01:08]
A
I'm stoked to be here. Eight figures, not 10 figures. Soon to be 10 figures.
- [01:11]
B
Did I say 10 soon. On the road to 10.
- [01:14]
A
Aspirational. We're talking aspirational. On the road to 10. 10 would be sweet, but yeah, man, stoked to be back. I think this is what, third? Third time?
- [01:21]
B
Yeah, third time. We did once in the early days and then you were. I came to our live event, obviously, that we did last year, which was fantastic. And then we just were on the stage at Ecom North. You were on the main stage there. Congrats on that. How'd that go?
- [01:34]
A
Yeah, it was great. It's always a challenge. I love these types of conversations and the stage there was a fireside, but it's such a large audience, you know, I think the event itself had a couple thousand people. I'm not sure how many were in the auditorium when I spoke, but trying to, like, craft a message that lands for that many people, where there's people that are just starting and there's also people doing similar or more revenue than we are. So that was a new experience somewhat, I guess, not dissimilar from this podcast, but you don't necessarily sit in front of everyone. That's listening to this. So it went really well. The conference itself was really good. So shout out to those guys, Ecom north, they're doing something special.
- [02:12]
B
Hugely impressed with that. I'm excited to be a part of that one in an ongoing way. It's just great. It was amazing just to see Canadian entrepreneurs come together like that. I think you guys are now let's, let's talk about that. You guys were, I think maybe last time we spoke you guys were well into your US expansion. But talk about how US expansion has gone for you guys.
- [02:30]
A
It's the main mandate right now. So we've been in business for a while now. We started in 2016, it got quite serious in 2019. It's kind of when I went all in on it. So well over five years of being kind of all in. But we took a Canada first approach being a Canadian business and there was just a lot of opportunity in Canada but have kind of reached our limit of how much we can spend here and actually scale and there's a lot of room to grow. But the majority of growth ahead of us is certainly in the US and so I'd say that was one of the mandates this year, certainly the main mandate for next year. And what that's looked like is we've finally actually opened a 3 PL warehouse in the States. So we're now shipping out of the US which is sort of a hedge against tariffs and sort of forced through that whole gong show that has been this year. But it's also, we've just split the whole business out in terms of like our P and L and how we think about it for marketing. And we truly look at, at the US now as a separate business and a separate complete channel for us where we haven't historically done that. And so it's going well. It's growing overall compared to last year. But we have significant goals for this coming year and pretty excited about it just because a lot of lessons. One being that the American consumer is quite impatient. So shipping across border and having even a five day wait for their package is somewhat unreasonable. So there's the breadth and scale of, of Amazon there where like in major markets you can get them same day, you know, in a few hours even you get orders. So it's conditioning the consumer to really kind of want what they buy now. And so by positioning ourselves down in the US we're able to get orders much quicker to people. And from our level it's actually way more, it's way cheaper for us as well. So it's Better economics. So it's going to allow us just to spend even more on advertising and scaling down there with we've got just significant improvements in gross margin. So lots of great things that have kind of happened this year to get that ready for scale next year. And we're kind of see those economics play through already and certainly will in Q4 this year. But yeah, it's the main goal.
- [04:31]
B
Man, that's very cool. I'm doing all these, these catch up interviews with people who I interviewed two or three years ago and it's interesting in all the cases where I sort of, I think everyone has gotten to where maybe I assumed they were when I first talked to them, which bodes well for you because I just said you were a ten figure sock brand, which means in two years time, no problem. But I'm curious like what has the growth journey been like over the last as you mentioned the US like what else has been a key aspect of.
- [04:58]
A
The growth probably going back to even shortly after we've talked the first time in 2023. So backing up even a little bit more. We grew, we kind of grew like crazy up until 2021, end of 2021. So you know, we started and just doubled every year into the high kind of seven figure annual revenue and then kind of flatlined in 22 and 23 when things got tougher, you know, like iOS updates, post Covid interest rates started to get high. And also I think like the way you were running a business, we were just sort of chasing growth in a market that was not rewarding, that sort of mentality. And it led to two years, 2022 and 2023 of just like very slow growth, even financial losses where we had historically been profitable for the previous five years. And we kind of had to rethink about how we approached the business. And that started in kind of mid 2023 where we finally saw those things work out last year where we had a great growth year. I think we grew up like 40% or so year over year last year compared to 2023 back to profitability, eight figure sales. So like a lot of great things we wanted to get back to and we attribute that to was expanding the channels that we sell on. So we were historically just two different channels. So we sold DTC through our Shopify store and. And then we have our private label business custom lab where we make socks for other people. So that's kind of a different channel but with the Outweigh brand certainly we're just single channel for the most Part and we're kind of like fumbling around previously figuring out like what is our growth path? Is it going to be introducing new products? Is it going to be entering new markets? Obviously we talked about entering the US was, was one consideration and thing we're still working on. But what became obvious was just entering new channels where people could discover and purchase our product was the thing that we hadn't really tried to do. So that meant opening up Amazon and wholesale. Because if you think about just our category as a whole, you know, we sell performance athletic socks or apparel in general. This is like a rough quote. I forget the exact percentage, but I think somewhere around 30% of all apparel sales were happening on Amazon in terms of online. So by not listing online we were basically not presenting ourselves to a third of the market. And then socks in particular are somewhat of an impulse buy or like a, a needs basis buy or people buy in store when they're buying other things. So we need to be positioned where people could just stumble upon us and that, you know, so we, we did that methodically. We started entering, we, we got national distribution with MEC in Canada. We've since opened up Sail and other large accounts and a bunch of other smaller kind of run bike athletic accounts all throughout Canada and some in the US and then we listed on Canada, Amazon and US Amazon and those, those two things and just being in those markets really led to that growth which we're seeing play out this year in 2025 where at the end of Q3 we're up 50% year over year compared to last year which was already a big growth year and an eight figure year. So it's not just growing 50% on kind of like six or seven figure sales. It's eight figure sales. We're doing that very profitably. I just pulled actually our Q3 report today and our profit has gone up I think 4 or 5x, I think it's 5x since this period last year. So in terms of just. Yeah, it's, it's meaningful because what I talked about like we've done a lot of margin improvement specifically with how we're shipping and where we're shipping from and also introducing these new channels which have good economics, have really seen that play through the entire P and L. So that's, that's kind of the main thing that we focused on over the last little bit is just where people can buy our product. And we do that interestingly like it's a merchandising strategy across those channels as well. Understanding like what is the consumer like? Where are they going to be in their. Their buying journey? And trying to funnel them ultimately back to the D2C site. So we'll list sort of our best selling stuff on Amazon and in stores, but all the new limited and kind of expansive catalog is still going to live on our Shopify store.
- [08:55]
B
Nice. I was going to ask you about that. I just did a podcast yesterday with Rob from Pilot House about how brands might approach selling a limited version of their catalog. Because you guys have so many skus, so you focused on your hero skus a lot, your ankle, your millennial ankle socks and your merinos. Like what, what, how did you choose what gets available on Amazon?
- [09:15]
A
We have quite initially before getting any data, obviously we have quite extensive data on our Shopify store. So we took an educated guess on what moves, like you said, are just hero skews. Things that we had quite a lot of confidence that people would just be searching for or need. We were wrong with some things. Surprisingly, more of our basics and merino stuff that do really well on Shopify aren't doing as well on Amazon. And that probably comes down to just the nature of the consumer there where they're looking for. If they're looking for black and white ankle socks, they're probably looking for massive bulk buys at really good prices. And we're not that kind of business. We have great prices for the quality, but we are a premium brand. However, our kind of athletic socks that have the very unique designs on them are quite novel and differentiated by anything else on there. And so they do well. So that has typically been what we've merchandised in stores and on Amazon is kind of that product that's very differentiated where if you went into a wholesale in a retail store, you see our product on the wall or on the shelf, it's very different than the other offerings. And that works well for us. And we see that that kind of works on our advertising online. It took us for a while to really understand, you know, like, if you think about socks in general, no one's walking around thinking about their socks. They're not thinking that I need to improve them or they don't even really know they could be improved. And trying to convince someone of that online is even harder because they can't touch it, they can't put them on, they can't feel them. But what people do know is they like a design when they see it and they like something that gives them an emotional response. So we lead with that sort of design esthetic Online and in store. But when people try the sock, then they are convinced that, oh, my God, these are good, I have been wearing the wrong socks. They come back and we see they typically buy a lot of our basics to replace their sock drawer.
- [10:53]
B
And then when they wear the socks, they invariably get comments on them, which I. Which I do literally every time I wear one of the brighter designs that. That you know, we've collaborated on or that. Or that I've. I've got. And it's like, reinforces that decision. Also, every single time I put them on, I am reminded that they are not like normal socks because of how they're made and the materials used. And so I think once you get them on foot, you've got a good retention program. Just with the product itself.
- [11:18]
A
That is the main thing I say, like, our strongest marketing is socks on feet. It's truly a product that once you put it on, you understand it, you get it. You're right. It's a conversation starter. We say kind of like one of our internal things is like, compliments guaranteed. Like, if you're wearing one of the fun designs, it's cool. It starts conversations. People are able to express themselves. That is kind of one of the core tenets of funky or bold design socks is they're a way that you express your individuality. So, yeah, we really lead with that and people enjoy it. But overwhelmingly, people want more kind of subdued designs, and so we do. Our best selling skew, like you mentioned, is like a white or black ankle sock, which is. Is counterintuitive to kind of how you would see our brand positioned online or if you went on our website. But it really speaks to that quality where people want that fun sock they can put on when they're feeling maybe a little spicy or want to start a conversation. But if they're just a daily driver and they just want something basic and easy and quick, they're buying a lot of the basics.
- [12:14]
B
You said the magic P word. We don't talk a lot about it on the podcast, but profit. And, you know, we talk. You talked about your distribution channels growing as a big part of, like, growing your top line. Growing the business overall was the focus on. I know you guys had already made a big pivot to be really focusing on profit after, I guess, 2023. But then tariffs come into it, and that's. That's one of the themes that I'm finding is tariffs. As you say, we're a gong show. The whole situation has been brutal, but at the same time, it's forced brands to make key efficiency changes that even when tariffs go down or diminished, your efficiency changes aren't going to go away. So talk to me a little bit about those, those efficiency changes that you made and were they in response to tariffs?
- [12:57]
A
I like to say tariffs expedited some of the things we were going to do anyways. I think the wrong strategy was to be reactive and short term in your thinking because especially with what's going on, it's really hard to say what's going to shake out. So if you move out of China for production to another country, they could get slapped with tariffs too. We've already seen that happen. So I think like from our perspective, we thought what did we need to do to position the business for scale and better economics Anyways, that obviously was opening a 3 PL in the US which is always on the roadmap. I would say our timeline was expedited. We didn't necessarily plan on doing that this year, but it happened this year because of tariffs. In terms of finding supply suppliers outside of, you know, whether it's China or other affected markets, thankfully most of our supply chain is actually out of China. So we didn't really have to scramble for that. Our main thing that we had to solve for was shipping out of Canada into the U.S. and so when the de minimis was removed, we needed to be positioned for that. But it's great to have a lot of redundancy in your supply chain and suppliers that are in different parts of the world because not only around tariffs, you have to think about, well, obviously global political issues, but you even think about kind of natural disasters. Right. So if you're in like a specific area that's more prone to hurricanes or whatever, like perhaps your factory gets taken out or. So you need to really consider these things, wars even maybe you were producing over and you know, somewhere affected in kind of in the Europe area. So at a certain level of scale this needs to come into your calculus of like, you know, you're kind of paying attention to geopolitical and environmental risks as it pertains to your supply chain. And without getting too into the weeds, I would say our approach was certainly just expediting the timelines on things we needed to do anyways. And the biggest thing there was opening the warehouse in the U.S. so at.
- [14:47]
B
Eight figures, what's harder now that you thought would be easier at this stage?
- [14:53]
A
Honestly that like last little hump to getting there a couple years ago or a few years ago was, I would say a lot harder than it Is now, I would say that path to getting there almost when you're like when you're right on the edge. Because I think that kind of like that jump you get to 5 million, my belief is that you can really scrap your way to 5 million in sales. Like you could be a one to three person team. You can fulfill yourself. You can kind of run everything internally. You can have no systems, no just, you can just scrap it together. That kind of like five to seven things start to break. You need to start to build a team. And it's not just building a team. I found like you need to hire two or three more people. The thing that one or three people were handling splits into like two or three jobs per. So your team grows somewhat exponentially while the revenue only goes, you know, up 20 or 30%. So that's a difficult thing to kind of manage. It stabilizes in my experience again at 10 million and up is like you kind of team stabilizes with the revenue. But that sort of no man's land of 5 to 10 million is really tough because you kind of need to become a company, right? And you start to figure things out. It's maybe when you've got some scale that you become a relevant target for legal attacks. Like we were, we had to rebrand. We got brands coming at us and threatening our trademarks. We had to change our name. And there's a whole bunch of things we had to deal with in that stage. And then getting to eight figures are just, it's more of just professionalizing the business, which would be the more difficult things is you're, you're looking, you know, if you're selling, selling in multiple markets, for example, or if you're selling in multiple channels. We're now managing inventory forecasting in tons of warehouses. So we've got our Canadian and US D2C warehouse, we've got our Amazon warehouses all over Canada, all over the US Then you've got wholesale sales cycles, DC sales cycles, Amazon sales cycle. So you're trying to inventory plan across all of this demand and channels, which is very complex. And then this kind of second order effect of that is the cash flow to support inventory in all those locations and make sure that you have enough cash and inventory to grow the business. So that I would say is it's the total complexity of it. However, why to me it's not as visceral and painful is because we built a lot of that muscle in that no man's land. That was a lot more painful, was like going from self Fulfillment to warehouse is a lot harder than going from one warehouse to two because you've kind of already built the muscle a little bit. Now you're refining. And so tbd, I'm sure there's things I'm not considering now or haven't, like there's another shoe to drop, as there always is. But I'd say kind of that transition into scale was tougher than where we are now. And mostly because the. We're at a stage now where our team has turned over from like the last few years and we've got people that have kind of been there, done that, and we've got a lot of support and we've got the scale now where we can bring in people that really know what they're doing and we can work with partners that really know what they're doing and that really helps. In no Man's Land, you're also trying to like band Aid things together, right? You've got maybe your, your initial scrappy team, you've got the three pl that's not the top tier because you can't afford them yet or they don't have the volume. So anyways, not a perfect answer, but it's. It's all hard. It just, I think it does get better if you build the company. Right.
- [17:57]
B
And speaking of that, like, has your role changed much? Have you managed to remove yourself from bottlenecks? Which I think is something that. That founders have them have happen to them all the time.
- [18:06]
A
My role's changed a ton. I don't really get hands on tools as much anymore because I've got great leaders in each function of the business. Our business is basically broken into product marketing, operations and then sales on the custom lab side. And we have great leaders in each of those functions. And my role has really shifted to making sure that those are functioning, obviously. Team cohesion, culture, vision, all of those kind of fancy words and everything down to even. Just like I talked about professionalizing the business in terms of like, can we go get a revolving line of credit with the bank just to make sure that we've got access to additional cash if we need and kind of like starting like I talked about becoming a real company, you know, like doing the real things and making sure that the. Your financial statements are done properly. So it has changed. It's not as fun, I would say. I think I'm trying to get back into the fun.
- [18:58]
B
Seems like from your social feeds, I've been enjoying them.
- [19:00]
A
It's getting more fun. So I found like, you know, like I'VE I've reinserted myself in areas that maybe don't necessarily show a direct ROI or require me to, but I want to touch the territory a bit more and get involved in what we're doing. And the whole point of this is to have fun, in my opinion.
- [19:16]
B
Super cool. So that Ecom north event was great. And I went to a VIP dinner on the final night. I think maybe you'd left already. And the SRI gave a speech about Canada and about the state of Canada. This, this, Paul, this, this podcast never gets political, but the state of Canada, the state of the economy in Canada. I'm curious, how do you view being a founder in, like, you guys had such a great, had such a great run in Canada, you built up such a great brand in Canada. You're now leveraging that to go to the States.
- [19:47]
A
Do you.
- [19:48]
B
Has it been more difficult building a brand in Canada or do you feel like you've benefited from, from being here?
- [19:53]
A
There's probably two sides of that coin. I think we've benefited from being here because despite it being a 10 times smaller market, US it's still a big market. You know, it's still a 40 million person market. And a lot of US brands don't really care to dominate our market or they don't do well here. You see that in big box that come up and fail. So when we were getting started, we were able to kind of capture a lot of market share with very little competition. There was a period where bombas, which is arguably one of the best and largest sock companies on the market today, best in terms of businesses. I think our product's better, I'll make that clear. But for a period, they stopped even distributing in Canada. They're just shipping. I think they're back in here now. But I was like, oh, people are like exiting the market, let alone coming into it. So I think there was a benefit there of like Canadians. There's still a good level of nationalism and we saw that during the kind of tariff disputes back in March, April, and really leveraged that in our ads. And we saw a lot of growth in Canada during that period. So I think there is a benefit. However, there is a certain culture in Canada, which maybe you're alluding to a little bit of kind of tall poppy syndrome, where I think maybe it's Toby says, like we're like a bronze medal, you know, kind of country, like we're happy with bronze, you know, where if you're, if you go like you've interviewed a lot of founders, a lot American. There's a different level of ambition, a different level of sort of intensity.
- [21:21]
B
Manifest destiny in a way, with Americans. I always, I take it back to like our national credo, you know, the America's national credo is life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. And it couldn't be a more individual manifest destiny kind of thing. Canada's is peace, order and good government, which is all about like looking inward or looking at ourselves. I think that's why we say A in fact is because we're always looking for like affirmation. A. You know what I mean? A. I think we say it a little bit less now, but I think I know what you mean by that. It's interesting environment here in Canada. Have you taken advantage of any of the. The government credits or any of this? Because I know Canada does have a amount of like credits when it comes to building businesses here. Have you taken advantage of any of those?
- [22:03]
A
We haven't done a lot of like. A lot of it's been to manufacturing here. We have, there's Export Development, Canada, EDC. Once you're 10 million and above in sales, you can, they will back you to get financing, whether like they'll kind of take a lot of the liability for the bank to get a line of credit, for example. So we've, we've leveraged that which is super helpful and that's like under the mandate of expanding outside of Canada. So we've done that. Other than that we haven't been able to access. Whether it's just like we haven't tried hard enough, I'm not sure. But we haven't accessed too many of those kind of like shred credits or grants or anything just because mainly we don't produce here and we're not doing a lot of hardcore innovation here. We're doing more marketing and sort of sales here and there's been fewer programs, at least that I've been aware of.
- [22:52]
B
Recent posts you made about the return of brand in 2026. I don't think Brand. Neither of us think Brand went anywhere. But why are you leaning on brand heavily in 2026 and beyond?
- [23:04]
A
I don't think Brand went anywhere, but I think, I think it got deprioritized over the last few years by a lot of companies. I mean, you can see this in the macro. Just over the last few days, the Nike CEO has come out in a public kind of interview talking about how they've reorganized the entire company and they're really focusing back on the athlete and their brand and kind of Core, they've reorganized the whole company to be like Nike run, Nike X, Nike Y, whatever sport. And they've positioned that to really focus on that end consumer. And then Lululemon right now is getting hammered in the market. And Chip wrote a public letter I think like yesterday or the day before where he's basically criticized the brand for just chasing kind of quarterly results where they're positioned themselves away from the original muse to this kind of lifestyle company where they've kind of shaded or kind of separated the core consum from the brand. And so you've seen and I think why these things are happening is because over the over Covid, we weren't going out as much, people weren't getting as engaged in the community and everyone was online. So you shifted a lot of focus to kind of direct response advertising. You shifted a lot of focus to especially while there's a lot of uncertainty as a founder or a CEO, you also wanted direct ROI you could attribute, you wanted things that you could spend money and see a return on. So all of the incentives were pointing to kind of shifting away from you know, more of the frilly kind of spend like brand events and whatever. That kind of was like the pre Covid era and you got really hardcore on like we need to spend a dollar and see this amount back. And unfortunately with brand spend and brand activations there's not a lot of great attribution there, at least in the short term. However, I think what you're seeing now is the long tail of a deprioritation of that is that people have lost that community feel. There's been a lot of loss of kind of affinity with certain brands. And I think moving forward as Sora was just the Sora 2 apps just, you know, I've been having a lot of fun with that. It's only going to get crazier if our feeds are going to be filled with things that we're not sure if they're real or not. So I think people are going to crave more in real life community experiences. And we've seen this with the emergence of run clubs even in our space, Founder dinners, founder clubs, these Ecom north events which weren't happening a couple years ago. There's more events it seems like every year. So I think there's an emergence of people wanting to find their tribe and community and they want to have an affinity with the brand because they want to purchase from something that feels real. And so I think you're going to see a lot of spend and focus just like you're already seeing in the macro, especially with Nike leading the way I know we're thinking about it a lot is how do you create that community and how do you focus on the brand to create the affinity with the consumer and that doesn't mean deprioritizing all the stuff that you are doing around paid ads and, and all the stuff that we've got really good at and D2C has got really good at. But you're going to need to layer back on what I consider probably one of the only moats that are going to exist in the kind of future which is going to be your brand because product is going to be commoditized, our digital advertising is going to be commoditized. It's all going to get so easy where I can just go prompt and it's going to build me a Shopify store. You can see how that's not far out. However, you're not going to be able to prompt a relationship with the consumer. So it's like if you're able to do that and establish that now I think you're going to see a real emergence of some of the kind of challenger brands really break through and the big brands that are able to realize that which I would say kind of like the Nikes are, they'll refind their way as well. But the ones that don't I think are going to fade.
- [26:38]
B
I think about Lululemon. I think they probably had the double edged sword of like Athleisure becoming just what everyone wears all the time. So they kind of lost their conn connection to their maybe their core, their white hot audience that becomes emblematic or that or that people want to be like in Nike it's the same with the athletes. It's, it's a similar thing. Right. I'm also interested. I've. I have the thesis that I think sports, sports are so popular and I think they're only going to get more popular as because our, our feeds are going to be flooded with fake stuff or you know, synthetic stuff. So these. And no one's going to really want to watch you know, robots play golf or tennis or run or anything like that. Maybe fight. I think we'll probably want to watch robots fight. But I think that connection to like real human activity, specifically athletics I think could bode well for brands like yours in the future.
- [27:26]
A
I totally agree. I think you know, if you think about the things that are going to exist, especially if careers start to go away, jobs start to go away, it's like where do you find where, where will entertainment still live? That's real. And where will the human experience be able to compete and sort of get good at something? I think sports will exist and so I'm super bullish on that. I like how we're positioned, honestly, you know, making a physical product with a brand in the athletic industry. It's funny because like for the last five years of building my business, a lot of my friends are in, our friends are in the tech space and they were like, you know, it's like, you know, they were the hot topic. Like they're kind of like they're getting the valuations but now all of their businesses are in question. And like me with my little sock company, we're like, people need socks. You know, like even our robots are going to need socks. I think so I think like, you know, you can just, you know, dress up your robot with fun socks. Why not? So I think, I think we're well positioned for, and I think like for the next little while a direct to consumer or a consumer business is just going to be made more efficient with AI and then a few years from now, who knows how anything looks. But I think in the short term this gets better.
- [28:31]
B
We're still wearing socks.
- [28:33]
A
That's the bottom of someone's wearing. Maybe, maybe it's just the robots at that point, I don't know.
- [28:37]
B
But so what are some things like what, what are some bets or initiatives that you're pl on brand and community that you're prioritizing in 20, 26 and beyond?
- [28:47]
A
We've targeted running as just a great opportunity to kind of position ourselves as like the best running socks. So we're getting more narrowly focused on the sports that we are serving. Running is having a renaissance. It's always been popular, but it is very popular among all age demographics right now, particularly young folks. There's run clubs are now the new dating scene. They're the new kind of like club clubs. So running is very popular. So that's gonna be one of our main things is it's gonna be kind of a three prong approach. We are going to do a large kind of influencer and creator marketing strategy and kind of outreach and plan with runners. And that's gonna be kind of like mainly social media and YouTube, so partnerships with influential people in running and then we're gonna work on collaborating with all of the largest run clubs in North America. So do collaborative projects and get involved with all of those run clubs. I'm gonna actually fly to a bunch of them and like actually show up. So that's two and then three is get involved with a lot of the large major marathons in North America as well. So try and be everywhere so that you create, you've heard Tony talk about this, like create levels of saturation and try to make it like the product is everywhere regardless of whether it is or not. We want to be like, oh, if you're going to the local run club, oh, there's outweigh socks. You know, you watch your favorite runner on YouTube, oh, he's wearing outweigh socks. Or she, you go to the Ottawa marathon, oh, it's sponsored by outweigh socks. And so like, it's just like, what is that way Sox. If you haven't, if you haven't really, you'd be like, you'd be leaving, be like, I need. Why is everyone wearing these? So that's one of the main things and I think that's, that's largely brand, right? Those are all brand initiatives. We're collaborating across the different levels that, that, that exist within that sport in that culture. Again, because, no, there's no culture around socks per se. Whereas like there's a big coffee culture, for example. Certain products have culture around them. We exist as a product inside of cultures in our, in the people we serve. So running or training or cycling or whatever. So our kind of brand approach there is, is, is really trying to figure out how we integrate with that. And we're actually allocating, we're taking 5% of like what we would be spending otherwise on ads and just allocating it to that which is a large amount of money. When we look at our lineups when we've never done that before. So there's a big investment, there's like a full time hire that's like focusing on it. There's a bunch of stuff that we're doing there and it's exciting because it's not going to have a direct immediate roi. But I'm quite confident that it's going to work out for us and it's going to be fun too. I like running.
- [31:26]
B
I want to get to that actually about your personal health journey a bit. But I'm most just interested in this idea because you kind of, you had, you have that vessi effect a little bit in Canada in terms of like your visibility, in terms of your saturation. You were saying like even just your ability to spend. And I know you built up that brand in all these kinds of initiatives. We talked about it on previous podcasts with you As a former athlete and you know, being at events and, and providing product in, in trade essentially for sponsorships and things like that. Now you're going to, now you've been spending a lot trying, trying to expand into the States. Are you basically using the same playbook that used in Canada and just using what works best to do the same thing in the States we had been.
- [32:03]
A
But that's not been working. So that's why I think a large part of this investment in sort of brand as well as influencer and sort of deeply integrating ourselves in these communities is going to be one part, another part is just going to be reimagining how we think about content and creative in the States. I think it's just, it's just a completely different market. The attention span, the competition level, the way consumers are shopping, what they're expecting in terms of offers and deals and speed and everything is completely different. And I'm not sure you can truly be successful with what's just worked well here in Canada and applying that in the States and we're learning that and we've been making changes and they've been successful. But that's why I think we're making this big push, because you're right, we did spend a lot of time and a lot of more than resources, just time building our brand and saturation in Canada and we just haven't done that in the States. So we need to figure out a way to speed run that. And I think that the best way to do that is just through these influential clubs and people and events to create that saturation and invest in it. And I think that'll create the relevancy and the awareness that we can then capitalize on through digital advertising.
- [33:18]
B
You need a partnership with Marcus Milion. You know Marcus Milone, I have him on one of my slack groups here. I should introduce you guys because I feel like a collab there would be pretty deadly.
- [33:28]
A
Yeah, I think we're doing similar stuff I'd love to talk a little bit.
- [33:30]
B
About because you've always been, you're a former professional athlete. You've always been what I would consider in pretty good shape. Although I never really put it to the test. But I just. Over the past six months or so, it's like you've really gone pro with your health. Is that related to going into these running communities or just talk about your mindset when it comes to your own health?
- [33:50]
A
It's been a bit of a roller coaster like you said. My former life or career was professional cyclist and Athlete. And so that's how I always operated and then started a business and it got hard and you deprioritize a lot of those things that are required for maintaining your health, like sleep and eating well and exercising. And then 2021, I was like, you know, we were at home a lot. I was kind of like found this inspiration and got real fit again. And then business got hard again, you know, like I mentioned, and I kind of lost that fitness. And so this is kind of my third kick at the can while running this business and trying to get fit. And personally I feel the most like me the most inspired about even business when I feel very aligned with my personal fitness journey and the our brand. Because ultimately, like I started the business to stay active in sport, just running the company in the athletic space. I knew I couldn't be the pro athlete anymore, but I was like, could I still be involved but run a brand and like, what's the sport of business look like? That was kind of the original idea and along the way I've lost that. And I would say like, where I found the most success even in business is when I'm in harmony with my own personal fitness and love for sport, running the business. So it was kind of like last year, As I mentioned 2024, we got like, I got my health back on track, wasn't as fit as I am now, but got it back on track and we got the business back on track like I mentioned. And then this year was like kind of this personal mission of like, how good can I get and how good can the business be and how can we keep improving on that and never let it go again? Really just focus on this idea of like, there is no finish line, but there's continual improvement and compounding on the results. Whereas I think in the past there's been like, kind of okay, hit this goal and then you kind of, you let off the gas a little bit. So I don't know, it's just, I would just say, like, I really just get a lot of energy and kind of personal confidence and inspiration when I feel good physically and when I have a goal outside of the business, I say to him, like, so I've got the business, I've got two kids, I've got a wife, and a lot of what I do in my life is not just for me, right? And that's, that's fine. And that's, that's great. My running and my fitness goals are the one thing I do that are just for me. I don't like they're not. I'm not getting paid. You know, it costs me money and it's just something that is self fulfilling and maybe that's selfish in a way, but I think we all need a goal that's just for us. And I was, I was lacking that. I was like, I need something that just like I do that fills my cup and it's, it's hard and it's rewarding and yeah, I've got a lot of enjoyment out of that.
- [36:25]
B
That's awesome. And you. And it's infectious too. I'm. I'm about to, I'm about to get serious. But Taylor, your, your. I guess he's CMO now, right? I think I saw, uh, he's. He's been on a crazy fitness journey as well that I've been really impressed following.
- [36:37]
A
Yeah, one thing about Outway, and I've made a post about this too, is like we're not just. And we've never positioned ourselves as just like an e commerce company. You know, I didn't start the business because I saw some arbitrage in socks or able to buy Facebook ads. I think we've done a lot of those things wrong for a long time. We've probably been a lot less successful than we could have been. But one thing we have focused on is building a brand and everyone in the company is aligned with what we do. We all have fitness goals, we all have sports, we do outside. And we are very committed to serving that end consumer. Which is why I'm very confident over the long term we will be the best and we will win because we're not playing short term games. So yeah, Taylor, my coo, she's a like world champion level rower. Our head of director of content, she's like a high level crossfitter. So we're all doing what we do. We're just trying to like we want our careers and our sports to be somewhat integrated and we're all living those values. We're not just a bunch of people behind the keyboard that are trying to like, you know, hack our way to some level of whatever. We're truly like building for ourselves and the extended community of that.
- [37:43]
B
I feel like on both our past podcasts we Talked about your 2022 at the barrel of a gun rebrand from Endure Apparel to Outweigh. Do you look back on that now and are you glad it happened? Not glad you went through it, but I feel like Outweigh is such a strong brand. How do you feel about the brand today considering what you had to do.
- [38:03]
A
I think like most things that were really hard at the time, I look back on now and I'm very thankful for. I agree with you. There's a lot more distinctness in Outweigh than there is in an Endure. And you see even behind me there's like, we've got all our trademarks now. It's been actually a three year journey to get them, but we've got all of them in different markets for different classifications, which never would have happened with our former name because of many factors. One being the kind of the legal threats and others just being. It's not a distinct name, it's an English word. So, yeah, in hindsight it was a really rewarding journey. It was really challenging. I think like, you know, over the last number of years I've got a lot of lessons and that helps us operate better today. But I'm really proud of the Outweigh brand. I think like it's going to finally find its true form next year. There was a lot of like, meaning that Endure had. You know, like it really kind of our name was our mission. Like if you're willing to endure anything as possible. And I think the one thing we missed with Outweigh was giving it a meaning. And so that's what you're going to see roll out pretty soon is a lot more meaning and intentionality behind what it Outway stands for and how that looks. And that's going to be exciting for next year. And there's, there's, there's an inherent meaning. We haven't lost that kind of, that value of hard work and, and compounding results. But, but with the loss of the name, a part of that died. And so finding our way back has been challenging, but it's like a core priority now.
- [39:33]
B
I look forward to seeing that unfold. To me, it's like people are living in, in a number of ways. They're more insular, they're more screen focused, they're not going out as much or whatever. And so the out way is the way where you're sort of like you're putting yourself out there more and joining communities, joining, having goals, doing these things. Am I close?
- [39:53]
A
I think I might steal that. That's really good. You should.
- [39:55]
B
It's the out way.
- [39:56]
A
Yeah, it's the out way. Yeah. You got to outrun. You got to outwork everyone. It's the out and be out.
- [40:01]
B
Like, don't turn in. Everyone's turning in. You've got all the reasons in the world just to Lay in our beds and doom scroll. You can even convince yourself that it's helping you understand the geopolitical landscape for business or whatever. Right. So I think the outweigh is the way to go.
- [40:15]
A
I think so too. We got to stand out, you know. So.
- [40:17]
B
Nice.
- [40:19]
A
Yeah, it's been a good journey.
- [40:20]
B
Nice. Well, you can hire me as a brand consultant just for a small piece of equity. I saw your post recently about being very careful about who you give equity to. Is that a lesson that you've, that you've heeded yourself or you've had to learn?
- [40:32]
A
Oh, I've learned that the hard way and I've just seen it play out so many times now over the last almost decade and I don't know if there's a way to avoid it. I had another post that was like, despite how many mentors you have or books you read, I've never met an entrepreneur that hasn't just learned the lessons the hard way. Like I think it's just because there's a lot of hubris which you need, you need a lot of like delusion and overconfidence as a founder, otherwise like why would you ever start? It's just so hard and like it's kind of ridiculous to think you'll make it. But we do think that. And so yeah, I mean, you know, with equity I think it's not a one size fit, it's all thing and it's, it's, it's incredibly nuanced. But it's just I think if you're against the like one thing I've learned there is just think long term with it. You know, ask yourself, am I trying to solve a short term problem with issuing equity? Like because the thing with equity is it's permanent unless you find a way to buy it back. And very, very rarely is the person you're issuing equity to providing value that's permanent and over time, a long enough time. So in certain cases there's a trade off where that is true and you should do it, but not as willy nilly as I see a lot of people give out equity. It's an impossible sort of situation because every situation is different. But I think I gave out, dude. I said this. I was convinced by a mentor, manipulated I would say that we should issue our corporate attorney equity instead of paying for incorporation, which is insane. We gave our attorney equity. This is way back in the day. So I've been manipulating the dumb stuff like that. So like that's just a non starter. Don't do that, right? Like, I'm happy to say that just full stop, don't do that. So like, I've made a lot of dumb mistakes. But you trust people and like, you think, oh, yeah, of course, that makes sense. You know, the five grand for incorporation when you're a startup, like, that's a lot of money. Equity is free. You're like, oh, man, you know, 5% of my company now is worth a lot of money. So. And that would have been permanent. I bought it back. I also bought it with my co founder and I bought it. Another hit. The guy who manipulated us, so. Or me primarily. So, yeah, I've made the mistake. I've touched the stove. It's cost me a lot of money. And so as much as I can talk about it and post about it, I still see people that are going to do it. And you just kind of like grit your teeth and watch it happen and hope you can help them when they need help.
- [42:52]
B
And then you're all. Are the hatches all battened down for Q4 this year for you guys?
- [42:56]
A
We're feeling good about it, man. I think like our biggest stressor and thing where we've, despite feeling like we've done the right amount of planning has been inventory just not arriving on time. It seemed like no matter how early we planned or it just never. I'd say it's almost too early now because my terms have started and it's landed and I want to like, you know, manage cash flow, but I would rather have it than not. So I'd say like, in terms of inventory, we're stocked up now. Right. And it's. It's more than a month until we launch. In terms of advertising plan, all of that, that's a lot easier and more nimble. Inventory is the thing you can't fake. Right. We can adjust an ad campaign on the fly for the most part. So I'd say we're feeling good from an inventory perspective across our different markets and channels. And then beyond that, you know, like, Prime Day is just finished up and it's kind of extended in Canada. And there was really good signals we had. Like, my other take was that like, Prime Day has gotten kind of. It's not as good as it used to be and we weren't even on Amazon when it was.
- [43:58]
B
It's kind of diluted, right? It's diffused a little bit across a lot of time versus being like such an event.
- [44:03]
A
Well, I think what's happened is every brand activates online in tandem. So I think the consumers started to realize that, oh, I can just go to X, Y or Z brand site and they're going to have a similar or better offer. So we actually saw a huge increase in year over year sales on our DTC and our Amazon was relatively flat. So. So that said, there's demand and people are really hungry for deals right now. So I took that as a really positive signal for what's coming in the holiday season because the summer was a bit rocky. And I think you've probably heard that from many brands. The consumer's just kind of like, the consumer's weird right now and rightfully so. Like, are we in a recession? Are we not? Like, what's going on? The world's kind of scary.
- [44:45]
B
Are we being absorbed by the country below us?
- [44:49]
A
So I think like creating demand has been difficult, but when there has been demand cycles, like just, you know, holidays or whatever, we've seen a lot of success. So I'm pretty bullish on this year's holiday season. So we'll see. But we're feeling ready.
- [45:04]
B
Nice. Well, I'm bullish on outway socks too. Thanks for coming on the DTC podcast once again. We're going to have you back soon. Always a voice that we love hearing from. Thanks again, Rob.
- [45:13]
A
Always a pleasure. Thanks for having me.
- [45:15]
B
And make sure you go follow Rob. If you're not following Rob on DTC, Twitter, on LinkedIn, give him a follow because he puts out great content, sometimes sparks controversy, always fun. And. And one last quick thing actually. What about these SORA ads you're putting? It's funny. I sent you a message last night because you put out a real video with your real face on it. And I was like, is this AI? I can't tell because you had put it like five or six sort of videos. Are you actually using those sort of videos? You just kind of having fun right now?
- [45:40]
A
Having fun right now. But we're getting ideas from them. So like I asked it to create an ad kind of in the, in the vibe of Nike old school and it came out with like a really unique angle and take and we're taking that as inspiration and developing and iterating on it like with our own content team. So I think it's really cool as an idea generation and iterative tool and it's only going to get better. Our friend Andrew sent me something today where there's like this Sora 2 and N8N integration that was just like. And you can create UGC ads with it. I don't know, I haven't looked into it deep enough. Now I got to like, it's, it's pinned for me to kind of go deeper on, but it's going to get crazy. We're definitely going to use it. It's, it's definitely cool. I think right now it allows someone like me who doesn't have like editing and like design skills to just go prompt and create an ad that I can then just send to the marketing team, be like, let's just go do something like that. So I'm having a lot of fun with it, but it is a real signal of where things are going.
- [46:39]
B
Yeah.
- [46:40]
A
Because like this is the worst. It'll be.
- [46:42]
B
Last, last question. Have you considered, have you done much in the streaming space or in the, like the, the. Yeah, basically in the streaming space. I had Vibe on the podcast this week and they were talking about, first of all, they're going to do a 50% match. So if you want to test them, I can get you that 50% match on your first, first purchase. But they were just talking about how in two or three months like 80 to 90% of all the ads on the network are going to be from AI, multiple tool or whatever. But I just feel like there's such an interesting arbitrage opportunity in right, right now a, in the streaming world where people, they're giving prestige to the TV screen not knowing that it's basically a real time bid, bidding, sort of like meta environment that you don't actually have. You don't need a lot to advertise on TV now. And when you've got all this, these AI capabilities, the production value you can kind of put into things is pretty astronomical. Have you, have you experimented in that space at all?
- [47:32]
A
We haven't just because we're quite focused on the current channels. However, another brand they've involved in, Fire Belly Tea, they've recently started doing some there and testing and it's still early days, but it looks like the results are quite strong. I think again, it's going to be a question of like, who's your audience and what are you selling? There's a certain consumer there. I think for us there's probably a really good market of people specifically around our compression SOC line that are watching this online and specific products and angles that will work, work. We're just trying to maximize and focus on the channels that we still have a lot of opportunity in. However, it's exciting and I agree with you. Maybe this kind of lowers the barrier to production and everything. So we'll see. I think next year will be really exciting and AI is exciting. And I mean, if you're not using these tools, you're going to fall behind. Right? That's why I'm having fun with it. Because, like, it's. I was saying to friends, like, I haven't felt this creative spark in a while because, like, it's been challenging. Like, it requires a lot at our kind of size to kind of like go get just a video made or go get models or hire, like, whatever. But now I can just prompt it and it's like this. My brain's just kind of like, oh, what about this idea or that idea? And, you know, it's like, it's really cool to kind of, you know, you had image generation where it's always fun, but video generation is like this whole new level of like, creativity and just ideas. And I'm able to kind of get those out. So it's kind of reinvigorated that. That creative edge that I felt you could do it a small scale and just get things done. But, yeah, we're having fun.
- [49:02]
B
You can always get your ideas out here on the DTC podcast. Thanks again, Rob. We'll see you soon.
- [49:06]
A
Thanks, man.
- [49:13]
B
Thanks so much for listening to today's episode. If you're not a subscriber to our newsletter, you can do that right now at directtoconsumeralloneword. Co. I'm Eric to Dick and this has been the D to C podcast. We'll see you next time.