B Scar TV Podcast
Hi-Quality conversations with your favorite athletes, entertainers, thought leaders, and cultural tastemakers - hosted by NFL Linebacker Brennan Scarlett.
B Scar TV Podcast
S2 E20: Portland Gear's Marcus Harvey | Behind the Scenes of an Oregon Apparel Empire
Fellow Portland native and Founder of rising retail star Portland Gear and Wild Child Pizza, Marcus Harvey joins host Brennan Scarlett to discuss work ethic, business challenges, and his love for Portland. Marcus grew up with a passion for sports, marketing, and storytelling. Collaborating with organizations like the Trail Blazers, the University of Oregon, TEDxPortland, and many more, he's realized those dreams with Portland Gear and has established a strong retail presence both in Portland and around the world. Listen as Brennan and Marcus break down brand authenticity, trusting others to create ideas, and the future of Portland Gear.
0:00 | Intro
1:18 | University of Oregon Roots
4:07 | Background / Fired from First Job
5:34 | How the Portland Instagram Started
9:55 | Work Ethic / Growing Up / Early Hustle Story
13:57 | New Portland Store / Authenticity
16:15 | Most Important Piece from going from 0 to 1
20:03 | Brennan and Marcus' Friendship / Why Start a Business?
24:17 | Executing Ideas through Trusting Others
27:55 | Challenges / Love for Portland / Trucking
36:43 | Expanding your Brand / Future of Portland Gear
Full-length video episodes are available on YouTube.
Follow the show on Instagram and TikTok @bscartv.
Created and Produced by Scarlett Creative.
scarlettcreative.co
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’Til next time... Peace ✌️
Welcome to the BeastGarTV podcast, the home of high quality conversation, and we're back with another episode of BeastGarTV, and I have a very, very special guest today, mr Marcus Harvey, aka Money Making Marcus Marky Mark, keep it going, welcome, man.
Speaker 2:Thank you, and this is I'm not the special guest. The special guest is the occasion that we're in here, which is the first ever live BeastGarTV podcast event, so I think that's more important than me. This is a big deal. You've obviously been putting in the time into creating the content for people and so, to see this, hopefully you get to enjoy this and realize that what you're making is valuable.
Speaker 1:It's an absolute fact. We do have a very, very special audience here today, and so we'll clap it up for the audience.
Speaker 2:Let's hear them. Let's hear them. See, they're there. You can't see them, but you can hear them.
Speaker 1:All right, all right. All right For you listeners out there, this is our first in real life podcast and we have some beautiful faces in the crowd, all engaged and chilling. Marcus, I did some research last night, can't wait. I did a lot of research, and you're not the only Marcus Harvey out there. Did you know that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think that Google will show some others.
Speaker 1:Hey, there's a celebrity barber out there named Marcus Harvey.
Speaker 2:He's my dope. Did you know that? You know that I didn't know he was a celebrity barber, but that's cool, he's booming.
Speaker 1:He's booming like 96,000 followers on Instagram.
Speaker 2:I'll take it.
Speaker 1:I'll take it, so I Google Marcus Harvey I need SEO. A picture of Grant Hill pops up in the barber chair getting a fade. I'm sorry that ain't my Marcus.
Speaker 2:Harvey, that's not Marcus Harvey.
Speaker 1:I also didn't realize how deep the University of Oregon roots for you. You're a duck. Way back Through and through. Born it, yep. The green and yellow brick road led me to.
Speaker 2:Eugene. I find five south down to Eugene.
Speaker 2:Yeah, both my parents went there. My sister went there. It was the only school I even applied at. I knew I'd be a duck. I thought, like most people raised with the swish and the green and yellow, that you go to U of O, you get a business degree and fill night, hands you a job and it's just that easy. And turns out it's not, nor would I have wanted it that way. But yeah, being raised to my whole life being five minutes from the Nike World Headquarters and that was my Disneyland and U of O and the way that the logo and the jerseys and the sport and the team and everything like that was just always my thing. So that was kind of the binding agent of our family, was football games on Saturdays and basketball games and it was the thing that still kind of is the constant through our family.
Speaker 1:What was the best? What was your favorite University of Oregon football team? I was a U of O guy too growing up. My cousin went there.
Speaker 2:She was a cheerleader and then you were a trader on us.
Speaker 1:I mean couple times. I mean I wasn't fucking with y'all to actually go to the school.
Speaker 2:I was going to the games.
Speaker 1:I was going to the games. What was your favorite?
Speaker 2:And it's really cool that I get to call my friend now but the Dennis Dixon Diamond Plated Shoulder Jerseys Dixon to Dixon, dennis to Ed the statue. All of that was just transformative. That was the heyday of it down.
Speaker 1:That was great. That was a heyday. I liked that Missoli team.
Speaker 2:Mm-hmm.
Speaker 1:Missoli Jeff Male the boys Kiko Lanza.
Speaker 2:Who did you beat up on? What year was that? Who was our QB1?
Speaker 1:Unfortunately I never beat Oregon through my whole five year career in the Pac-12. You know, not surprised In my fifth year, when we, when I was at Stanford and we won the Pac-12 championship, went on to win the Rose Bowl. Vernon Adams had the best game of his life and they beat us.
Speaker 2:That was a chapter. The Vernon Adams chapter was kind of it was a little shaky.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it was a little shaky, but y'all got us that night. Y'all got us that night.
Speaker 2:We'll get you a few more times.
Speaker 1:I'll never forget Vernon in my life. Never forgive him, man. I want to dive into your bio here because we don't got much time. We want to get to a happy hour here. So Marcus Harvey grew up in the Portland area born and raised, graduated in 2008 from Century High School.
Speaker 2:In.
Speaker 1:Hillsboro Yep In Hillsboro. Went to U of O. Graduated in 2012. Started at Portland Instagram after college, when you were 22 years old.
Speaker 2:There's a more important piece, though, is that my first job out of college was down in Eugene. I thought I wanted to stay down there, got into screen printing in Peril, was working in screen printing companies and I got fired from my first job. So I just signed a lease. I just told my parents I got a job, I had a college degree, worked at a company down there, and it was a random Thursday at 235 and the owner walked in and just handed me a last check and said we're going to let you go. And that was super just messed me up and I didn't know what to think and what to do. And you feel like shit when that happens. You feel like you're letting family down, you feel like you don't know what your path. And it was because I was young and disruptive and I do a lot of I try to do a lot of mentorship with young high school and college kids, and a lot of kids have the word disruptive as a negative word.
Speaker 2:And I think society and school and everything tells that disruption is bad. But in my mind what made me disruptive down there was, there was a bunch of 60 year olds, but I was trying to bring athletes in. I was trying to bring Brennan Scarlin in to make videos and do cool shirts and do cool graphics. And I was trying to make it cool and they viewed that as disruptive and it disrupted something that they had had for a long time and I was different to them.
Speaker 2:So they handed me that check and said we're going to let you go. And I just remember being super distraught and getting in the car. It was a rainy night. I remember I called two old mentors that I had from Nike at the employee store days and I said hey, tony, it's Marcus, I just got fired from my job. And they said great, now, what are you going to do? I was like no, you should be mad with me, like that's fucked up. I just got fired. And he's like go be somebody, like go do something. And I was like that's not what I wanted to hear.
Speaker 2:So, hung up, called another one. I was like, hey, I just got fired from my first job. And he says good, what are you going to do now? I was like wait. I thought I thought getting fired is bad. I thought you know, this is a negative thing.
Speaker 2:And the two people that I really looked up to both saw that I shouldn't be in Eugene and they saw something more of me than I saw myself at that time. And so I called my sister and I said hey, don't tell mom, I'll come up with a story as to why I got fired. Can I move in with you for a bit, she said yes, and driving back that night, two hours from Eugene, I said I'll never work for anyone else again. I don't want anyone to put my ideas in a box. I don't want to be a check, I don't want to be a title and none of those things. I just want to do what I want to do.
Speaker 2:And, having had a job since then and woke up the next day and did the only thing I knew, which was screen printing and graphic design, and went to a Starbucks and started working and went to all the screen printers in the area. And as I was walking there's a long story to it, but as I was walking out at one of the shops, this guy named Wookie was walking in and I didn't know who he was and I asked a screen printer. And that guy now, 10 years later, is my lead designer and one of my best friends and it's the sole reason we've done anything cool.
Speaker 2:Shout out and he's definitely the better half of everything that I've done. So got out of plan for me and it wasn't in Eugene, and so getting fired was a transformative moment in my life that brought me back to here, and then it was just about how do I build a community here? What does that look like? To not have my fraternity brothers, not have my friends in Eugene, to move back to Portland with no one? And so I just started creating it myself.
Speaker 1:And so this all happened before the Portland Instagram, so you had your screen printing experience. Then the Portland Instagram happens, and then Portland Gear is born from the app Portland Instagram.
Speaker 2:So I'm living with my sister, I'm driving, I move into a low income housing down here with the buddy because it's all I could afford and I'm just script like flipping screen printing jobs making a couple hundred bucks. And we get some people that wanted to work with us because they wanted their shirts on the inside of the shirts to say printed in Portland.
Speaker 1:To me.
Speaker 2:I was like what the? You know, this is 2013. So they still wanted, you know, you know Scarlett family barbecue on the front. But then people are like we wanted to say printed in Portland. I was like what is why? You know, why is that cool? I was like what is this?
Speaker 2:And after hearing that awhile, I was like is Portland something? Like and you know, when you live here you didn't really realize it and it's all we had known and stuff. And so I was like it's Portland something. And then you kind of zoom out and you realize like we were kind of the talk of the town for a while, like you know, wall Street Journal talking about us in New York times, and we were the foodie scene and we were the creative scene. And so I was, just like you know, a user on Instagram and I was at my parents house one night and I came across this Instagram that was just at Seattle. I was like that's kind of cool and it was all the things going on in Seattle and the events and the places to be. So I looked up the Portland equivalent and there wasn't one.
Speaker 1:I was like I could do that.
Speaker 2:You know I'm on Instagram. I can post pictures of Portland, I can post pictures of the city. So I started an Instagram, which was at Portland dot NW for Northwest, and just started posting pictures of the city and it started taking off five, six, 7,000 followers. Why'd you add the NW? Because Portland was taken. It was taken. Okay, at, portland was taken. It was a dad that was a band member and a nickname of his was Portland and he posted a couple of pictures of his daughter and he had 16 followers.
Speaker 2:And you know, I was just kind of ahead of that being like man, that's a good username. Like that's, you know, is this like my dot com bust, you know like can I get this username? So I started bugging him and, you know, hitting him with DMs like hey, can I get this?
Speaker 1:username. He was responding.
Speaker 2:He was. Well, I got it.
Speaker 1:So the story works out. The story works out. He started reporting him to Instagram.
Speaker 2:So I went back and forth for him in a while and I finally got him to agree. The pitch was I had no money at the time. I got him to do a thousand dollars for the username and the convinced like the thing that convinced it was I said take your kids to Disneyland, here's the thousand bucks. Oh wow, and finally he was like all right, so this is 2013. So there's no way to do this. There's still not a way to like, transfer an Instagram name. So I just did so I wired him money. I didn't want to wire him money without knowing who he was, so I made him Skype with me at like 5am because he was on the East Coast time.
Speaker 1:So I was in my parents house.
Speaker 2:I'm Skyping with his random dude at 5am that his nickname happened to be Portland, so I had to wire him 500 bucks, which when I have no money in broke like that's like. It was everything.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:I was just like I sent money to some stranger. That was half of my net worth.
Speaker 1:Oh, you put 50% down. I had to send him that first. Then he picks up the zoom.
Speaker 2:And then I was like, hey, all you got to do is add an underscore to your username and it'll free up your username and I'm gonna delete NW and we're gonna hit send at the same time. I just made that up, I thought it would work, I use my logic and I was like this might work. So he adds underscore. We said ready go, his went green, mine would green, wow. And so I had at Portland now. So I built it. I, you know, I built that Portland and W community from zero. So at that point I probably had 5,000 followers and it was like a light switch, went on. You know, just starting.
Speaker 2:The next day I just started getting tagged and everything and 10, 20, 30, 40,000 followers, and I blinked in six months and I had 60,000 followers you know, and it was because of a good name and a hot city and it was the right time for Instagram and it was About community and I was posting good imagery and stuff. And then that's kind of when all my worlds collided with my background in apparel, my love for sport, my love for identity and branding Portland not having a baseball team and you know, generally that's kind of what becomes a logo for the city. Your Phillies had a la, had a, new York had, and we didn't have that. So Came up with the P logo's, got the state of Oregon on the inside of it, expected nothing.
Speaker 2:Printed 30 shirts from local screen printing, used my friends as free models, posted it in the first day. It did $5,000 in sales. Built the website the night before on a Shopify website. Didn't have that many shirts so I had to start reprinting them. I'd never shipped a shirt before so I had to help get shipping and Pretty much starting that day, november 25th 2014. It was every day. Wake up and how do I do that again? So then you start designing new designs and making new sweatshirts and turning that design into headwear and Getting a Volkswagen bus and doing pop-ups around town and just being authentic in the community Then kind of started to pick up.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's incredible. I didn't know the Instagram story.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I didn't know that. I keep that one tight.
Speaker 1:It's in the book if you ever want to read it. Okay, yeah, I'm gonna have to get into the book. That's interesting, man, and what that tells me about you which is no surprise is that you've really been hustling from day one. Oh yeah, to wake up at 5 am. Do the Skype send the money you know it hit, send at the same time, I think living in low-income housing.
Speaker 2:Right up here I think I found three heart attacks happening in the elevator. Like elevator opens, dudes having a heart attack. Like gotta go find someone to help. And it was so embarrassing living there because I had to like I had met my wife at that time. Yeah and I had to like check her ID in at the door and it was just like I was just, but I was willing to do whatever.
Speaker 2:Like it was just I had opened my first little office down here with Wookie and we weren't making any money, so all my money was going to that and I was just willing to do whatever it took. And so it's easy to look back and see kind of this, some of the small success that we've had. But it was rooted in those early years of.
Speaker 1:Not eating much? What about when you were? When you were younger, were you a hustling? When you were kid?
Speaker 2:You know I was, and I was an insecure, tiny little white kid that couldn't play sports but really wanted to and was never tall enough and dreamed of pushing a 45 plate on a bench press. I don't even know if I can do that now, but I was just. I saw your scouting report.
Speaker 1:Man, it was positive. They say you, it's up here.
Speaker 2:You know I come from. My mom was a 35 year education elementary school teacher. My dad was in insurance and business. They were just the most average great jobs that my parents could have and just raised my sister and I in a very normal Life and I think I look back a lot and I try to pull. Where did my kind of risk-taking come from? And it definitely wasn't from them.
Speaker 2:It wasn't something I learned. It wasn't like I was on the corner, you know, slinging candy when I was a kid and trying to make a buck, but I was just so profoundly impacted by Nike and University of Oregon and Sports and my life was, you know, going down to blazer games afterwards and trying to get a headband down by their cars and you know, going to Home Depot and buying little plates of hardwood Pergo floors and then trying to get an autograph on it, so it looked like a hardwood, I mean yeah, my life was a sport product and the intersection of those things, and so I was.
Speaker 2:I think the lack of maybe the upbringing being entrepreneurial or risk-taking and stuff. I just have so much impact of Nike, adidas, u of O, phil Knight, hinkor, hatfield, like those were my Walt Disney's, like. I get shit about cartoons and stuff. It was like I just wanted to watch sports and figure out what the Jersey was.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it was really born out of a passion. Yeah, that's amazing. So you went from the Volkswagen, you were, you were slinging t-shirts up the Volkswagen. Then that went to your first retail store.
Speaker 2:So first, I shared this because I talk a lot about mental health and I've dealt with Anxiety and I faint when I get anxious and I'm on medication. So my, you know, I go from living on nothing, no money in the bank, paying no bills. And I say that not in a way of like I come from nothing. I come from the most supportive family and you know my safety net was never bad.
Speaker 2:So I always felt maybe, if anything. That's why I could take risks, because I felt like my worst case scenario was I could move back home fair. You know it's like it wasn't like I had a mortgage right away and kids and the things that I have now.
Speaker 2:So still the risk, though it was so first first year I go from selling absolutely nothing to, first year, portland Gear, which is hustling. I sell 150 grand. Then I take a big risk and I sign a lease on a retail store up here and the second year I do 1.6 million dollars. I with no comprehension of business, of Finance, of numbers, of the weight of that, of what that really means, what taxes are. So what an incredible blessing to have that quick, of success and to find something. But there have been many. There has been and continues to be years after that, of like growing into these shoes and these pants that I'd never, none of us were trained for you know, and and I love that journey now, like I feel like that's part of my mission is to kind of grow into that.
Speaker 2:But there there a lot. I mean I would Bad stories of fainting and panic attacks and falling in front of 300 kids and hitting my head and because I was so overwhelmed. But I didn't know I was overwhelmed, you know, I couldn't, I couldn't realize that that's what it was, was that I was having Quick success that my body and my mind just couldn't comprehend. So there's all flipside, all the stuff too, that I'm not scared to talk about. I think it's important and I shared that a lot with high school and college kids. It's kind of like the mental health and the insecurity and all that stuff that comes with it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's been a hell of a journey for you know fine, it's been a hell of a journey and now you just move in, moved into this new store it's beautiful new store. You got the new office new Washington Square store.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so this store is where we're coming to you from the podcast. This is the old cleaner space, which was an event space and I'm sure a lot of people here have been to. Kind of iconic down here for this part of town, part of the Ace Hotel, and I had my eye on this spot for about five years and you know, then the pandemic happens and went cold and you know I just really wanted this spot, I wanted windows, I wanted a corner store. We had grown out of that story, been there for seven years, and so this spot happened and I feel very blessed to be down here and more of a retail core and next to, you know, pals and iconic Portland and kind of on a street that Allows for people to walk and shop when the Ritz Carlton opening there and NBA team staying there. So there's just definitely more of an energy down here. So this has been great. Yeah, it's been.
Speaker 1:It's been a really big year when you were in the Volkswagen back in the early days, did you, did you have a vision that this was what it was gonna be?
Speaker 2:No, and I still don't know what it's gonna be. Every day it changes for the better and I love it. I just knew and and it was. It was authentic to me in that moment.
Speaker 2:I designed Portland Gear for me and I think that's really important in entrepreneurship is to do things for yourself. So, like I wanted to wear my Portland pride, there wasn't a way to do it, so I did it. So every day it's never felt like I've been selling this stuff and I don't literally give a shit if anyone buys it. You know if it resonates with them, if they like it, they'll buy it and wear it and they should be proud of it. But to me I've always just felt like I was doing something that I wanted to do for myself and then you find that other people want to, so to say, it was this the goal? Or to say, would I be doing all these things? And I had no plan?
Speaker 2:and I don't know what I'll be doing in five years, but I know that it'll be sequential to where I am now and it'll always root back to like how do I bring people together in Portland? How do I create pride for the people that are here that putting on for it? Yeah three years of civil unrest in Portland and riots and all the things that have happened and the things we all know. And now the pendulum has shifted and all those articles that used to be so pro Portland are all very negative Portland.
Speaker 2:Yeah and we have just made a consistent effort to be a positive Portland story. And even when it was hard and when we've wanted to say things so many times and I've had the Instagram written, now I don't, because I think our job is to just be a positive story and do positive things and we got so much press Out of opening this little store here because it was like, wait, someone still believes in Portland, wait, someone's signing a new lease in downtown Portland and I hope that if I can make any sort of impact in that way to have other people believing it too, like that seems like my higher purpose now for this yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:And what's incredible to me is how recognized of a brand that you've been able to create with Portland gear, with that P, with the organ Inside, is like it's now recognized. As you know, that's our city's logo.
Speaker 1:Sure, you know, for a lot of folks, and so and as, that being your first kind of step in entrepreneurship and having a lot of success, you've done it a couple of times afterwards. Now, right, open up a restaurant. You've seen brands, you've opened up successful Brands and now being a serial entrepreneur, when you think about the most important factor of going from zero to one Having an idea and bringing it to fruition you know, for the aspiring entrepreneurs in the crowd, or the aspiring entrepreneurs listening, what is the most important piece of going from zero to one.
Speaker 2:If it's not authentic to you, how can you make it authentic to other people? So, to me, opening bars or restaurants or food or anything, there's never about to make money.
Speaker 1:It's about, can I?
Speaker 2:bring people together, can I create pride, can I make people excited to be in community together, and that's my driving force for everything. So I work a lot on myself to get to clarity around my why and what motivates me, and so to get from zero to one. It's a lot of self work, you know it's like I spend a lot of time. I feel very blessed to have a supportive team now that allows me to kind of live in that space that I just get to think a lot. But you got to be passionate about what you're doing. I know that sounds like a cliche, but it's so true. It's got to resonate and be authentic to you. Like there's so many things I shouldn't and can't do because they're not authentic to me and no one should do. But if there's things, like there are things that are authentic to every single one of you, that align with your core values, whether you've established them or not, you just know them.
Speaker 1:You inherently have them in you.
Speaker 2:Whether it feels right. I feel like I have a very strong gut and I trust it.
Speaker 2:I don't second guess it. I jump in and then I start to figure out a swim. You know, I don't sit there and say can I make it? What can I do? I'd rather do it that way, and sometimes I get hard on myself like man. Should I plan a little bit more? Should I not jump into things? But I think I've also just accepted that that's who I am, and if I wouldn't have done those things, I wouldn't be here. So why stop doing them?
Speaker 2:now and I'll fuck up, I'll lose money, I'll do something stupid and I get that. But as long as my path is charted in a way of something that brings pride and brings people together, then I'm happy to fail.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm a proponent of action over inaction Of course.
Speaker 1:In most scenarios, I think there's a such thing as taking calculated risks and making sure that you're you know the risk that you're taking or the thing that you're about to do makes sense in the context of your life. But in more cases than not, I think that actually taking the step and doing the thing is what will allow you to learn what you need to learn to be successful at that thing. And if you never take that step, then you'll never learn that you know you'll never learn.
Speaker 2:We just had our little offsite retreat and it was awesome and kind of a quote that I'd found was like like you can't be somewhere you've never been without doing something you've never done. So to me, like that's kind of like the how can, how can I become a hundred million dollar business if I haven't even become a one million dollar business? You know like, like and you're not going to have those traits, You've got to gain them.
Speaker 2:You've got to get them, You've got to search for them, You've got to grow into them. So it's like like to do things you haven't done. You've got to do things you've never done. You know, it's like you got to take a risk if your podcast fails, which we're not going to let it, because this one's going to be a hero. You'll learn a million things from it and you'll translate that into the next thing. And people that don't succeed or people that would say man, I failed and I'm just going to give up.
Speaker 2:But people that can realize that and be like no. I took. Well, I learned 30 things from it. I can be better. Now I can go to the next thing, bigger and better. Like you fail forward, like I think that's the best way to do it and I, just, I, just I don't look back with any regrets, with any things like, did I fail this? Or of course I probably have, but I'm constantly forward because those things gave me the ability to do that. So, I'm happy I did those things.
Speaker 1:Right, yeah, that's great. I appreciate you sharing that For context, for those listening and those here in the room. Marcus and I have been working, or we've had a relationship for what the last four years or so.
Speaker 2:So well reminded me last night where we first met, do you know where? At Deontes.
Speaker 1:When you were getting your haircut.
Speaker 2:Okay, sure, the second time.
Speaker 1:That was it. You were right. You were right. She was wrong. You were right. Where did I run?
Speaker 2:into you IRL, in real life.
Speaker 1:I don't know. I don't remember the second time.
Speaker 2:The protest on the bridge.
Speaker 1:Okay, yeah, you were walking alone.
Speaker 2:I was with her. You had a bandana on your face, yeah.
Speaker 1:For our lives, yeah.
Speaker 2:You had just gotten back and we walked up there and we laid on the bridge and I remember you being right over there. I remember that.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And then we kind of stayed in touch and we did our little cool partnership and then you've done amazing work and continue to in the community with Big Yard and the Juneteenth marches and stuff and so you forgot about the golf course.
Speaker 1:When I bust your eyes on the golf course.
Speaker 2:Okay, hey, this guy will sneak strokes in there, man, He'll sneak strokes.
Speaker 1:Okay, that was fun. But since then, since we first met, you know, we've had a lot of conversations around business and entrepreneurship, as I followed your journey and you follow mine, and one thing I've always appreciated that you've shared with me is staying focused as a creative and for the creatives in the room and listening. It's so easy for me to get distracted by the shiny things. I always have ideas right. Ideas will pop up just naturally every day, every night, and sometimes those ideas are, you know, maybe they're trendy or maybe they're, you know, not as suitable for my mission. Right, and keeping the ideas that you actually execute and making sure that they make sense in the context of what you're trying to do is something that I feel like you've done a great job of doing. And then when I, you know, talk to you about my business and what I'm trying to do and what I'm aspiring to do, you always ask me like well, what are you trying to build? Why are you trying to do that?
Speaker 1:Like it goes through this filter of. Does it make sense, right? And I'm curious if that's something that you've learned over time or if that's something. Is that something that came naturally to you or you like, you know, you really like take the time. Is this an idea that I want to step into because, just because it's trendy or just you know, I'm having this kind of flash of excitement, or does this actually make sense in terms of the business and what my vision is overall?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think the latter has happened with a. I'm 33 now. I've got two kiddos at home, a beautiful wife I've been with since the week I started Portland year, which is the biggest blessing in the world, and so I just think I, I think age, even though I'm not that old, but age, and when you have little ones that were like, it just changes your context of how you look at things.
Speaker 2:You know you can when you have nothing to lose and everything to gain. You've got nothing to lose, so why not try things and now you just have to be a little more calculated with them. I read a lot of books. I think one of the one of the best books is start with why by Simon Sinek, and it's just a great way of you know getting to the core of why you're doing these things, and I also think a really good one is like starting at the end. There's Gary Vee and a lot of people talk about like what's the end? So that's when I question you about this stuff. Sometimes it's like are you building for just ether and because or are you?
Speaker 2:building because you see the next barstool sports and you think you can. You know, through three years of hard work and podcasting and building a coalition, that you can get to a bit. So it's like I try now to look forward and say, well, what am I building it for? You know, it's like with pizza with wild child. It's like my end goal with that is just like are people going to come in and be happy together? So I've already accomplished that. Whether it wins or fails, or opens five more or zero more, like, I'm happy. But with other businesses I think of our partner with, and stuff it's like you got to know what the end goal is, cause then it just helps align the steps that you're going to take to get there and the people that you need to get there.
Speaker 2:But, when you're just building for building sake. Sometimes that's fine because you can find the answer, but having the clarity of where you're going to make you get there so much faster, or else sometimes you just feel like you're swimming in space, right, right.
Speaker 1:Well, it's interesting to have those two topics of conversation, right? You know, we're just talking about making sure that you're taking, that you're really calculating, right, but then we also just said to make sure that you're actually doing and executing ideas, like what is the bridge between those two principles? Other people?
Speaker 2:Yeah, Like I'm. I'm not making pizza right now.
Speaker 1:I'm not selling.
Speaker 2:I'm not selling clothes at Washington square right now. I'm not working the bars right now Like it's.
Speaker 2:It's building an infrastructure of people, who that's their core competency, and they look to me to help with social and they look to me with help with storytelling, but I'm not unlocking doors, I'm not doing things and they can't do the things that I can do and I have no desire of doing the things that they can do, and that's just a symmetry that's found.
Speaker 2:So to scale yourself, you have to scale through people, and to scale through people, you have to build a system, and to build a system, you have to trust people, and to trust people, you have to train people and train people.
Speaker 2:You got to believe in people and so I've now in that rhythm of like I've just got amazing people that work for me with me, not for me with me, and the more I can allow others to do that, the more it frees up my time and flexibility to find that clarity and stuff. When I was in the weeds and I'm in the Volkswagen every night, like I was for years and still am and got to go pick up the shirts and then unfold the table and sell it and be the one to run the cash register and do all that stuff and then turn it on at 10 o'clock and blow smoke on everyone and peel out of a party somewhere, it's like I've done all that and now other people get to, and I view it as how can I create opportunities for others to get to experience that as well, so that it's part of their story of leveling up as well?
Speaker 2:So I don't need to do everything now, but honestly the less. I do, the better we are, because the more I can get out of the way and let amazing people like all these people here and the people that work for all of us and with us, like the more I can get out of the way and just trust that things will happen they happen better than when I'm micromanaging and holding them. How have you been able to do that?
Speaker 1:Right, because, like Portland, gear is your baby. This has been something that you're working on for now 12 years, right, but when you and you built it from you and obviously Wookie and the people who were- there early on.
Speaker 1:But I imagine that you know you're really attached to it. So then, to be able to trust somebody to, you know, do a graphic without having your approval, or to run the store without you being there, or drive the Volkswagen to that event, how do you get to that point where you're able to? You know, let go.
Speaker 2:So let's interact the crowd here. So how do you trust someone? What's something someone does that gains trust for you? Showing up, what else? What makes you trust someone? Living up to what they say, great, what else? That's it. So I have Eli, who is one of my best college friends, employee number one lived with me at the Yards at Union Station when we were both trying to figure life out Still with me. Trust him with my life, with my kid's life. Wookie's been with me for 10 years now. Trust him with my life, with my kid's life, like.
Speaker 2:I just have people that I inherently trust with, not business life but with my life, and I have a few people who trust me too, I think and I think it's a mutual way where it's like I trust these people, they trust me over years and years of consistency, of showing up, of doing what I'm saying. I'm going to do that. I don't just give stuff away right away, but when I can see it and feel it like, I'm happy to let that go. So I just have amazing people who say how do I do it? I pour into a team of people that I love and believe in and let them do it with me. You can't do it by yourself.
Speaker 1:No doubt, no doubt. That's great. Outside of that, obviously, building a team, managing a team, what have been some of the other challenges or lessons that you've learned along the way?
Speaker 2:Yeah, the one that we're going through right now is, and have the last three years, is our name is Portland. Here we are inherently tied to the name of a city and on first six years of the brand, that was incredibly great for us and then for a few years it was a orange flag for people saying I really want to rock a shirt that just says Portland. Right now, so it's been. That is like how do we bridge that with still making great products, still telling great stories like yours, like Shawnee's, doing great collaborations with awesome people who are authentically Portland, still making people proud to wear Portland?
Speaker 2:Because what I've learned through all of it is not everyone says fuck Portland, couple loud. People want to. There's a lot of people, like all you guys sitting here, that still believe in this place and that still think it has something special and still believe that the best is yet to come, and to us, that's who our brand plays into. So it's kind of been, it's been. How do we stay positive and consistent in a time when that hasn't necessarily been the norm of the city? And then how do we create products and categories and invest in things that can make us bigger than that even, and that can get people outside of Portland to be proud to wear Portland gear, without them even knowing.
Speaker 1:Right, I mean, I've always loved my city of Portland, can we get some snaps for Portland.
Speaker 2:Can we get some snaps?
Speaker 1:You know there's a mixed crowd here that you know. Some of us are born and raised, you know, from the city. Others have moved here. But I think that there's so much promise here in Portland and I think that the difficulties that we've gone through over the past four or so years, that's just the pendulum swinging one way and I think that those who are here you know boots on the ground working when the pendulum hits the extremas of how negative it can possibly get. When it swings the other way, you know people start talking about Portland as the beautiful place that it is and we know it is.
Speaker 1:And the rest of the world looks at us as we look at our city, then we'll be just so much more positioned to do anything that we want to do, to collaborate with anyone we want to collaborate and build the city that we want to build. That's my belief.
Speaker 2:And I'm right here with you. I couldn't agree more. I think it's. You know I sit in a lot of city meetings. Now that's a whole thing. I guess is something that I never would have thought I'm doing is I sit in hours and hours of meetings with commissioners and travel orgs and because I just genuinely care, because Portland's in our name, and if I can do anything positive to make people proud of this, so I've sat in a lot of meetings on tourism and hotel occupancy and sporting events and future sports teams and arenas and all this type of stuff, and I think the pendulum hit bottom and I think we're swinging back.
Speaker 2:And I think you know when this pandemic started and no one knew what this was a couple of mentors that said people that make it through brands, design creatives that make it through hard times generally come through the other side stronger than ever.
Speaker 2:And I feel like this year, 2023, might have been our way of saying we have two brand new, beautiful stores that open. We got awarded a store at the Portland airport. That was a five year process. We will be one of only three apparel stores at the airport us Columbia Sportswear and Pendleton. It's a big deal. We spent a lot of time on that and that's going to be part of the whole new airport that opens in 2025. Wow, congratulations. That was because we stayed consistent.
Speaker 1:That was because of that.
Speaker 2:That was because of that and I just think those are gifts that someone's given us for maintaining positivity in the city during the times when people weren't, and so I feel the pendulum is swinging back.
Speaker 2:I'm feeling positive momentum, I'm feeling change in governments and things and political things, and I think things are coming back and it's people like you guys, it's people like JR with restaurants, and it's people like you with storytelling and the creatives in our town that are going to be part of the reason that people are proud to come back downtown. In particular, you know what Ben at the commissions with Tina Koteck, our governor, and talking about like Portland is the heartbeat of the state and although her job is the entire state of Oregon and she's just as important with Redmond and Ben to Madras, to Pendleton, it's like if Portland fails, the state fails, and so her investment in cleaning up the drug problems and houselessness and affordable housing and stuff like her focus this year is on Portland, because Portland wins, the state wins. I think we all know that. So Portland is a heartbeat of the state. It's honestly one of the heartbeats of the entire region and there's something special about it and I think the best is still yet to come.
Speaker 1:Have you ever thought about what Portland might be like if the sportswear companies weren't here? Yeah, I like legitimately thought about this the other night.
Speaker 2:I don't think any of us are sitting here. The Nike's the Dita. I don't think any of us are sitting here because the ripple effect of those industries since the 1970s is instrumental to the creative class here, to the agencies, to the tourism, to the sports teams to the. I think a lot of us aren't even sitting here. It's not us sitting here. It's like we're our parents even here, because was there an industry in the 80s that brought that like? I don't know, I don't want to think about it.
Speaker 1:Why are those companies here, Like as a now?
Speaker 2:Yeah because in it's all from Phil Knight.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:Adidas is only here because Nike was here. They only opened in North America headquarters because Nike was here.
Speaker 1:But is there any other strategic advantage from like geography, from a geography standpoint, shipping across the Pacific? No, there's nothing there. No. No, it's that you get really lucky, that Phil.
Speaker 2:Knight happened to live in Southeast Portland Really yeah yeah and went to University of Oregon and had Bill Bowerman as a mentor that taught him the importance of coaching and sport and happened to get lucky with his Luck is I don't believe in luck, but with his MBA program and getting into footwear and having Bill as his coach and there's something about the region that I think supports pioneering and finding your way, and I think that's been inscribed in the Oregon Trail from the beginning and this is a place of explorers and pioneers and founders.
Speaker 2:So I think that's maybe just in the breeze, but I don't know if that's Phil starting Nike and committing to this place to build it and acquiring acreage out there and the ripple effect of the agencies widening Kennedys and the half of us could raise a hand and either know someone that works in the circle or have worked in the circle or have aspired to work in the circle, and that's the heartbeat of the state, and so I think we need to play into it more. I think we don't play into it enough.
Speaker 1:I thought it was because Japan was just right over there we could ship right across the. Pacific.
Speaker 2:I thought there was, so we don't even have a port. Oh, okay, I don't know if you guys know that. I thought we had a port.
Speaker 1:What's that there on the willamette we?
Speaker 2:had a port here on Terminal 2 that was an incoming for cargo ships and stuff and that closed about eight years ago or so. We received some stuff up on Swan Island now, but all of the incoming product goes to Seattle or Long Beach.
Speaker 1:I did not know that.
Speaker 2:And it's a big initiative to. Where ports are built is where there's economies and where they're shipping and importing. So they're trying to build one in Cous Bay at the Oregon coast, but that is not.
Speaker 1:I have to get in on that. I saw a.
Speaker 2:TikTok today that actually one of the biggest upcoming industries, that if anyone here is looking for something, is trucking. It's trucking. It doesn't require a lot of money, you buy it. Buy a truck. I pay so much fucking money to move shit around in trucks and there's such a shortage and it's not a job that people necessarily want.
Speaker 1:I heard the hard part is the drivers. Yeah, but I had somebody that tried to get it is. You know, it's how it's hard to find it's hard to find retail work. You know you make an excuse for anything if you pay people well if you treat them well.
Speaker 2:Living on the road is no joke, but I saw that tick-tock day I was like that is no joke like as the economy grows, as brands grow, as direct to consumer Grows, as e-commerce grows, as all of those things, how do we all get our stuff? It is from trucks.
Speaker 1:I think in ten years most of the trucks today will be Irrelevant.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's like saying ten, no it's like saying ten years ago that we weren't gonna have designers anymore because of technology. There's things that will automate and help make it like how, how Amazon's automated facilities and stuff, but to get trucks moving and going in traffic and things like, we still need truckers, so go truckers.
Speaker 1:You don't think there's gonna be any autonomous trucks? Of course there is.
Speaker 2:Elon's, of course, but the adaptability that's gonna be low.
Speaker 1:It'll be electrified first it's gonna take a little, be electrified first and then it'll be autonomous at some point in our life. There's still a pocket of time to make a little dough, a lot of a lot of dough.
Speaker 2:Okay and moving freight and moving they're called containers.
Speaker 2:Whatever you guys have seen on big trucks, if you don't know, it's a big metal thing, it's a container. They from the ports over in Asia or wherever the product is coming from. There's these mega ports that load these containers onto a ship. They can put hundreds, if not a thousand, containers stacked on a ship. That ship takes 30 days to go from a port in Asia to Long Beach or Seattle. From there those thousand containers get off, loaded to the port, then get on loaded onto individual trucks where they're then trucked across the place.
Speaker 1:It's logistics, but trucking would be a big thing. Okay, yeah, okay, I'm gonna keep that in mind.
Speaker 2:Be scar trucking co come on.
Speaker 1:We got.
Speaker 2:We keep on move all the trucking.
Speaker 1:So I I'm in this social entrepreneurship program right now actually, vanessa, here in the crowd with flowing the city she's, she's in the program with me and we have class basically every. It's basically class every week when we learn, you know, something about entrepreneurship, mm-hmm, and whether that's about pitching, scaling, fundraising, putting your business model together. There's a lot of different pieces that we're learning and and what I've, what I've pulled. One of my big takeaways from this program is that you don't know what you don't know. Especially in the context of building a business, it's so easy to put a box around what you potentially could be, what your brand potentially could build into and these, these quote cards. We had an episode with Peyton Pritchard and he says People always want to put limits, but ultimately, I just don't care what they have to say, I'm gonna go show them and he does and he has, and he does shout out a four-time state rabbit shout out P rabbit.
Speaker 1:But I think another to add on to that it's not just others putting limits on us, I think it's also ourselves putting limits on us Right and then. So I have this saying that I've been kind of playing in them in my mind. So I'm thinking about ideas and I'm thinking about big-yard, I'm thinking about scarlet creative or B scar TV remove the box. Great and I'm curious how you have removed the box, or do you think, do you still fight that you still push against that?
Speaker 2:So I think sometimes it's imperative to think inside of a box. Mmm, because if you don't like so my box at Portland year that we design within, that we think within, is like how is it telling it, how is it telling us story of Portland through product that resonates with people? If suddenly I just expanded that box, I was just like fuck it, we're just gonna make inflatable pool toys. And because we could, because it was hot, because I saw Amazon was dropshipping pool toy, you know it's like.
Speaker 2:So I think it's imperative sometimes to make a box and be in the box I think it's important sometimes to you know, take your foot out and dip in and feel things, but I think it's really important. In business, success is founded how long you can stay in that box. Yeah so I'm not contradicting you. I believe I know what you're saying remove the box for maybe Imagination's sake or for you know, infinite mindset sake and stuff. But there is a level of how long can I stay in this box and then maybe how big can I make the box? But I can't get. I shouldn't get out of the box.
Speaker 1:But sometimes it is supposed to be a box.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and as a business owner, when you create a business, you are creating a box. Wild child pizza sells pizza. You know. To get outside the box is all the sudden we're selling sushi. Right? Well, sushi's hot. I think people are gonna want to buy sushi. No, no, no the box we made is Detroit style great pizza made in Portland. Fun environment. Like that's the box we're in. So now, how many, how many of those boxes can we replicate? Or how big can we make that box?
Speaker 1:How big can the box, you know?
Speaker 2:but that's important and in Portland you're the same and in future projects we're working on it's defining the box. Nike still has a box. Yeah fucking one of the biggest in the world, but they still have a box. You know, designing and engineering products for world-class athletes, they do that in a lot of ways, but they're still thinking inside of a box. So right, remove the box, sure, or Make more boxes or make the box bigger, or how do you fill the box?
Speaker 2:in your case, maybe like when you're defining the box. So you've got the box defined, now your question is how do I fill that Within the box, though? Right, you know, especially starting from nothing, or an entrepreneurship, or creating something new, or create whatever that is, yeah, define the box, make it a little bigger, but you got to then fill it before you even need to think about expanding the box.
Speaker 1:Mm-hmm. And so when you think about filling or expanding the box, right, because whatever the box is, now that Portland Gear has. Where do you, where are you pulling inspiration from? Is it what you read? Is it who you, who you speak with? Is it?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's people I meet, it's things that I see, it's things that shift and shape in the city, that allow for things to expand. It's All within the kind of the parameters that I've established. But, yeah, I mean, my job is the owner or visionary, whatever is to find that and to then bring it back to the team in an articulate way that says here's a new box, I think, here's the new size, I think we can grow into it's like now we're gonna do it, and then you have a great team that can help you fill it.
Speaker 2:But it's my job to give them the vision to say here's what I've thought of, here's the expansion of it. I mean, we just had that meeting the other day where I'm like I've had a click and I'm like I actually think we could do this now and now the box is a lot bigger, gotcha, and now we got to grow into that.
Speaker 1:Mm-hmm. So what's? Uh? What are you filling the box with next?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So a huge category for us over last year has been backpacks and it's something that I would never would have thought it's something we had for a while. We've renovated and continue to re-engineer a water-resistant, weatherproof backpack with a wire frame on it. It's just a great product at a really great price point 95 bucks. It's inherently Portland, with water-resistant and Simple and great. So this has been a category that'll be a multi-million dollar category for a long time. And I believe when you in the product world like when you can create a product that actually is designed well and it could last potentially forever, like when you guys think of a Jan sport backpack, when you think of a Deed is all star, when you think of a Nike Air Force, like great design product can last for a great amount of time. So now it's kind of in the investment in product. We're very fortunate to have met a guy named Aaron Cooper who was a 30 year Nike basketball designer. I just shout out cool, shout out cool.
Speaker 2:And Coop and I have been working on a shoe, so we have footwear coming out this year that'll be a big deal Okay and that's still inside of the box on inherently and uniquely Portland and done in a way that pays tribute to the big brands here. But getting into the footwear game is something that I only dreamed about, but only through Coop Are we making it happen. So I have footwear coming out this year. So I really see category growth for us in product development and stuff is a way to get bigger than kind of what got us here, which was prideful t-shirts and graphic tees and hats and now really investing in R&D and innovation in the space of bags Out of where and footwear.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and you got some. Yeah, I got a sample. You got some on the bag.
Speaker 2:These were just yeah, these were from a factory like material, but we'll have a Northwest kind of everyday mule as well as a three-strap sandal and there'll be a bunch of innovations on materials and color. But to see the P logo on a shoe and fully recycled material and Come for socks every day.
Speaker 1:Full tonal matching outfits with it and stuff.
Speaker 2:So been really fun.
Speaker 2:You know the kid, the kid in me that used to run around the Nike campus and peek in the window to look for Samples or look at a color or see a swatch, or my first shop at the employee store and meeting an athlete and seeing product and stuff, and to now get to do that every day, I think is the.
Speaker 2:I just wouldn't trade that for anything in the world. To get to think of a product, see it come to life, see other people enjoy it. You know, dear 44, I remember the first text in the first email, working with Brendan Scarla here and allowing him the full creative Ability to design a collection with Portland gear through his lens to your 44 was the bus with the 44 line, was the bus route that you wrote that you rode and then creating this whole capsule around it and getting off at the bus, and then we actually got a trimet for the photo shoot, which was dope, and going to your house and your parents and telling this whole story of you through the lens of Portland gear was fucking Awesome. And so and just getting to do those Shawnee with the love last Valentine's Day with such an awesome collection and doing that and.
Speaker 2:Jackie's with the party. How great was that? So you know, owning a hundred percent of this business, not having any investors, shareholders like I, get the create, the freedom to do Whatever I want, and I won't trade that for anything. I don't care if I made five dollars in this business, like the ability to do and To not be at that business where someone can come in and fire you because your idea Is the greatest word. And if anyone is ever even thinking about the entrepreneurship space or wants to start a business like that's why you do it, because you get to chase that freedom to be creative.
Speaker 1:I Think the question is will these shoes come in size 15?, 14? Come on, man, come on.
Speaker 2:You said you were 14, I'm a 15. We'll see what I can do. We'll say we'll have size five through 14. Which is a women's what, what's up?
Speaker 1:Take this all out. I don't know if they got souls.
Speaker 2:Which is a women's six and a half to a women's four 15, and what are we calling these? I don't have a pair of these, like you know it's a mule, the model is a mule, so it's a take on just like an everyday. You know, birkenstock has some pretty iconic ones, saves some pretty iconic ones. So this was Coops version of a Northwest mule and his story is so amazing here. Cooper's great and yeah, this is not an actual colorway.
Speaker 2:We've got a really dope collaboration lined up to kind of launch them and, amazing, maybe there's a B scar club Come on in a size 15 only.
Speaker 1:You gotta be a 15.
Speaker 1:Just Just the XL Great. And there you have it, folks. Another episode of B scar TV. Please give us a little feedback, drop a comment, drop a like. Give us some constructive criticism. We are always trying to get better because we're on the pursuit of high quality content. It's an endless pursuit. This episode of B scar TV has been brought to you by scarlet creative, with a full-length video episode and more content. Find us on Instagram, youtube and TikTok at B scar TV, and please leave us a review, drop a comment. What do you want to see? What do you want to hear? Who do you want to hear from? We would love to hear from you. This is your host with the most, brennan, scarlett. Sign a note, peace.