Founder Sport Group Interview with Chris Huot

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Links Mentioned:

Founder Sport Group web site

Contact Information:

(888) 871-0990

Transcript:

Marty Hartman:
Welcome to the Supplier Spotlight Interview. Today we are talking with Chris Huot, Senior Vice President of Sales at Founder Sport Group. Welcome, Chris.

Chris Huot:
Marty, good morning. Thanks for having me. Looking forward to this.

Marty Hartman:
I am, too. Chris, we’ve got our members’ attention right now. Tell them why they need to listen to this whole podcast.

Chris Huot:
Well, first of all, I think they need to know who Founders Sport Group is because obviously there’s been quite a few changes over the last couple of years. I think your members are probably very familiar with Badger Sportswear, hopefully. They’ve been around for quite a few years as has Alleson Athletic, but most folks are very familiar with Badger. But over the last couple of years, we were purchased by Equity Capital Company and this is kind of where Founders Sport Group comes in.

Chris Huot:
All of the founders of the four companies that we currently own are still actively in the business and working on our board of directors. But some folks are familiar with Badger, but then we added Alleson Athletic, and the idea there is to go on-field, off-field. If a customer comes to us, we’ve got all your needs from on-field uniforms, from opening price point to high-end super quality. And then to put with that, all of your Badger spirit wear. So Alleson Athletic, all on-field, Badger, all your off-field fan wear, spirit wear.

Chris Huot:
And then we purchased the company called Teamwork, which is out on the West Coast, which they do a great job with custom sublimation. We basically bought them for additional capacity, not to mention just innovation and speed. They are very uniquely qualified to turn things extremely quickly. They have a two day custom sub program and no minimums and you heard that correct. There’s no minimums on their lines so you can literally order a custom piece, just one and we can have it decorated and sent to a customer.

Chris Huot:
And then there’s Garb and Garb is, I call it, kind of a boutique type company based out of Salt Lake City. High end athletic uniforms, but just really nice stuff. But a customer, anything they can dream up, Garb will build it. They’ll sublimate it, braid it, tackle twill it, whatever you need all for one set price on any sport you can think of.

Chris Huot:
That’s kind of Founder Sport Group. That’s our umbrella right now. We’ve got a great stable of brands. But if I could just ad-lib for a second because there’s a lot of companies out there selling tee shirts and hoodies and quarter-zips and all those types of things and obviously everybody says, “Hey, we’re performance.” And so I like to talk to folks about what are our differentiators. Why choose us besides just the brand names.

Chris Huot:
And I think just a couple things I will mention real quickly is first of all our performance lab. We really believe in quality and we have performance labs around the world that perform the same test that we do in Statesville. The fabric is tested and put through a series of 20 plus tests before it even comes to Statesville, which is our main performance lab headed up by Jeff Fulp. For any of your members who have ever visited Badger, they know Jeff and all of your members, we’d love to have them come to Statesville and see what we do because we think it’s different from what other people do.

Chris Huot:
In that lab down in Statesville, North Carolina, we torture the fabric, that’s what I like to say. We put it through a series of tests to make sure that when we send it to a decorator, it’s going to perform. It’s not going to bleed. It’s going to do what we say it’s supposed to do. And then even more importantly when they sell it to the end consumer, we know our products are going to perform on the field, which means it’s going to wick, lifetime guaranteed, it’s antimicrobial lifetime guarantee because of how we handle it.

Chris Huot:
I think that’s a big differentiator. We have a state-of-the-art decoration facility in Statesville. Whether it’s screen printing or heat press or embroidery, we do it all there in Statesville. You need us for backup if you want to get your uniforms or your hoodie decorated. We can order it there, ship it out of there, $150 and over it’s freight free, guaranteed two day delivery and we can decorate it.

Chris Huot:
Those are kind of the two, what I would call, table stakes of we’ve got great quality stuff, got a warehouse full of inventory of both Alleson and Badger shipping out of the same location, we can get it to you quick. And I think that’s half the ballgame if not more in today’s business.

Chris Huot:
But above and beyond that, two more quick things that we have, which nobody else has is one, we have the license to the NBA and WNBA so we can put that on uniforms, but we can also put that on spirit wear. If you want a quarter-zip or a hoodie, for coaches or polos with that NBA brand on it and the team we can do that.

Chris Huot:
And then we have what we considered to be world-class custom sublimation. That’s kind of what we hang our hat on and that obviously, for anybody in the industry you know, custom sub, that’s where the growth is coming from currently and we’re at the leading forefront of that industry. We have customs sub programs at 2, 5, 10 and 15 days and nobody has that type of speed, quality and the price points that we have. And that’s a big one. And then I would tell folks currently listening, if you’re doing custom sub, you should check us out. If you’re not doing it, you really need to do it because in another three to five years you might not be in business because that’s really where the industry is going and you’ve got to learn it and we’d be happy to help teach folks.

Marty Hartman:
Yes, that’s great. We had a demo just a couple of weeks back on the Prosphere platform and the custom sublimation. That was a great demo.

Chris Huot:
Yes. Quite a few folks attended that and it’s just fun. Once you get on our builder, we kind of pride ourselves on having a simple builder and that’s the key to really everything. It’s all about and what we are trying to do as a company, it’s about speed and simplicity. Folk’s time, it’s so valuable and there’s so much going on in this industry and change is coming so quickly. We view ourselves and have positioned ourselves to be a tech-enabled, on-demand manufacturer of decorated performance apparel and basically, that comes down to on demand is all about speed and then performance apparel and tech-enabled means simplicity. And we are going to be rolling out a new builder here in the spring, which we think is going to revolutionize the industry as far as speed and simplicity to make it just so much easier for customers to order whether it’s a uniform or just a decorated polo or quarter-zip. That’s our goal.

Marty Hartman:
Well, I’m glad you mentioned the polos and the quarter-zip. You guys are very strong in the team sports and team uniform field and I know that the fan wear is a big part of that also, but you’re really making inroads into the corporate apparel world. Can you tell us a little bit about the opportunities there?

Chris Huot:
Sure. Badger cut his teeth on the team industry. They definitely started off as focused on and we still do obviously a ton of business with the team side of it, the BSN, the sports teams of the world. Obviously Alleson Athletic is, I shouldn’t say pure team because they did some hoodies and quarter-zips and polos and that type of thing, too, but their focus was mainly team.

Chris Huot:
But we see a huge opportunity in, what I call, the decorator / corporate channel because those folks, they’re getting into the team business as well. But also there’s just so much opportunity out there with corporations and municipalities, churches, schools, all that type of stuff. Just the opportunities are endless. And so we’ve really ramped up our inventory styles that would cater to those types of companies, whether it be quarter-zips, we have tee shirts and long sleeve and shorts and all that. And that’s a good portion of our business.

Chris Huot:
But also a huge portion of our business is quarter-zips and hoodies, outerwear. A lot of people don’t think of us for outerwear, but we have a really nice lineup of lightweight jackets up until, I would call it, mid range weight, weather resistant, rain resistant outerwear as well. It’s definitely a huge area out there for us. And we’re focusing more and more.

Chris Huot:
There’s, what I would call, the pure promotional large accounts out there as well. And just a huge need. And one more thing I’d add into that. When folks think of their corporate accounts and maybe it’s a local church or the park district or maybe it’s a larger company, they’re doing business with an ACE Hardware and Allstate or something like that, we can do pure custom sublimated samples and products for these companies with one piece minimum. We can do it out of Teamworks, formerly Teamwork, now it’s known as Digital Apparel Lab. There’s just a one piece minimum. And so people think of that and they’re doing offers in stores. You don’t have to produce a bunch of inventory, if you can put something that’s virtual out there that is tailored custom to that company, one piece minimum, they can order one of them, they can order 500 of them, we’ll produce it and ship it. Just it’s a really cool advantage that we have.

Marty Hartman:
The one piece minimum, especially with the full cut and sew sublimation, it’s pretty amazing. But do members get or do all of your customers get the economy of scale as they increased that?

Chris Huot:
Yeah, that’s a great question, I’m glad you asked that. All of our Universal Unilink members get preferred pricing through us on stock and on custom sublimation. They’re getting a preferred price as you go up in scale. In regards to that, you have to hit some pretty high numbers in regards to, but we definitely, for larger orders, would consider discounting it even further from there. But Universal Unilink members are already getting a preferred price on both stock and custom stuff.

Marty Hartman:
That’s great. You’ve mentioned a lot of opportunities with the different markets opening up. Who are the typical end users that you see? We know that it’s going to be the sports teams and the local schools, but what are the end users that you’re seeing and what kind of markets should our members be looking at for these type of apparel opportunities?

Chris Huot:
Well, just like I said, it really is endless, the opportunities out there. Obviously, like you said, schools are big. We’re working obviously with a lot of the mom and pop decorators that are going out there. It’s anything from schools to runs to churches, local schools. We’re doing quarters-zips for some of them.

Chris Huot:
I think one of the, one of the big opportunities as well as we talk about that we’ve mentioned and quarter-zips and we have a lot of different styles and fabrics, but one of the big trends that we’re seeing right now is the trend towards the softer handed fabrics. And we have two fabrics, actually really three, now that I think about it, our tri-blends, our fit flex, ultimate softlock, feature a soft hand, great four way stretch that really catered to this market where are in the past being more for the kind of the team industry. Maybe some of our fabrics didn’t quite cater to that.

Chris Huot:
Now we have a full line of tri-blends that are performance, which most tri-blends out there are not performance. Ours are moisture management, antimicrobial, short sleeve, long sleeve, v-neck, hoodies, everything. We’ve really expanded that to go after that market and it’s a little bit bigger cut than what you’re going to see, but that’s a huge line for us. And then our ultimate softlock is we call it the softest shirt on the planet. Those cater to probably just about anybody.

Chris Huot:
And I will say one other thing and that’s kind of an industry trend and I’m assuming your customers are or our customers are seeing that, but another trend is e-sports. Now, some of us older purists, we would not consider e-sports a real sport for various reasons that I wont get into, I don’t want to offend anybody, but it’s a growing segment.

Chris Huot:
And schools should get into that and the big boys are in it. The Nike’s and the Puma’s are into that, but it’s just like everything else, there’s a market for your high end branded and then there’s a huge opportunity for those people who don’t want to pay for the swoosh or the Adidas or whatever it is. And so that’s something, if your members haven’t looked into, it might be worth poking around just locally to see what high schools or junior highs are doing that.

Marty Hartman:
That’s great. That’s a great opportunity there. It sounds like there’s a lot of potential customers and potential business out there. Where can listeners go for more information if they want to find out more about Founder Sport Group?

Chris Huot:
You definitely go to foundersport.com, that’s our website. You’ll see all of the Badger and Alleson product there because it’s under one roof down in Statesville. You can do links to some of the other sites. All of our builders have links on there from that point, from our websites to the flash Prosphere, any of the builders there. And there’s just a host of other information. A lot of times a customer’s looking for content. There’s all kinds of content out on that website as far as sales sheets, videos, things of that nature. And then we post our webinars as well. If you don’t have the time to sit through a webinar, you can go onto a recorded webinar in regards to one of our builders and watch that as well and get educated in a quick amount time and go from there.

Marty Hartman:
You guys really have made it easy for members and users to get on and build something that’s very unique. What else would you like our members to know before we sign off for today?

Chris Huot:
Well, I think the important thing about Founders Sport Group is that we’re a family-owned and operated company. At least it started with Jerry Carr, who a lot of people know who bought a company out of bankruptcy. I just think it’s a great kind of American story. He started this company, bought a textile company out of bankruptcy, wasn’t Badger Sportswear back then, this is back in the the early eighties. And then eventually after several years, he got into the t-shirt business and Badger made private label t-shirts for some of the biggest brands in the industry to this day. At the time it was Champion, Russell, Nike, Adidas, Puma, we were the private label provider for those companies. It wasn’t until the early two thousands, 2001, that actually Badger name was created and the company was started and we started to make our own stuff under the Badger name.

Chris Huot:
But the thing I would tell customers or folks who are listening is that same quality, and we don’t make for those brands obviously anymore, we do make for Under Armor on the athletic side for feeder leagues and rec leagues and high schools and stuff like that, but that same quality that we had to put into back then for those companies and Adidas was the most stringent standards, those standards are still in our product today that we produce and we stand behind the quality of it. And that same quality is going to everything that we do for the Alleson brand as well.

Chris Huot:
It’s a great company. All the founders are still actively involved. These are guys who have been in this industry for 20-30 years plus so their experience is invaluable and we’re just continuing to get better. Like I said, our goal is to deliver product on time, in full and decorated if you want it. That’s the table stakes. But for the next level, the vision of where we’re going to go, we’re going to be a tech-enabled company and we’re going to be making our customers lives easier and simpler and that’s the goal as we continue to grow.

Chris Huot:
That would be my ending pitch of why Founders Sport Group. And I would just end by saying we realized customers have a lot of different choices out there, there’s a lot of people who do what we do. So we greatly value and appreciate when they choose us and we take it very seriously.

Marty Hartman:
That’s great. Thank you very much, Chris, for your time.

Chris Huot:
Yeah, Marty, thanks for having me.