Louis Joseph is the founder and CEO of Alps & Meters, an alpine sportswear company launched in Boston in 2014. Before that, he spent well over a decade in the shoe industry, working at New Balance, K-Swiss and Puma.
Boston. Home of the entrepreneurial spirit that saw the Pilgrims set forth from England in search of freedom and only a dream of something to be. Although it was never documented in the history books, one can certainly envision William Bradford, a leader of the separatist congregation, telling Myles Standish on deck of the Mayflower, “I think this trip is gonna be big … really big.”
What became of the Pilgrim’s successful adventure is an impactful narrative that has continued to play out in Boston today with its ever-growing population of entrepreneurs who have set sail into uncharted waters across a variety of industries to build something new, great, different and meaningful.
While Boston will never be Silicon Valley – and perhaps should never aspire to be – activities in health sciences, tech, finance and app-based distribution and marketplace platforms hold particular weight with the investment community. And deservedly so, due to highly attractive markets, rapidly scalable business models, and “shoot the moon” growth projections. However, oft overlooked are the Hub’s consumer soft goods juggernauts making shoes and apparel.
Building a soft goods company is hard. And slow. And relatively unattractive to investors.
New Balance, Converse, Reebok, and Nike (Nike’s first East Coast base of operations was located West of Boston in Wellesley, MA) were all once fledgling companies with analog rather than digital aspirations: to make exceptional sportswear that delivered well-designed and innovative footwear to athletes around the world. What each of those brands has built is to be admired and much of the sunlight and water needed to grow was provided right here in Boston.
It could be assumed that Boston is a thriving hive of apparel and footwear startup and investment activity. Certainly the former factor has been proven out with the advent of new companies such as NoBull, Tracksmith, York Athletics, Ministry of Supply, Janji Running, and Brunswick Park, all emerging from these dirty waters to create a new wave of Boston-based apparel and athletic footwear brands. Yet many of these startups have found primary financial support from outside of the Bay State or on crowdfunding platforms like Indiegogo and Kickstarter. Likewise, some have decided to self-fund their ventures due to the difficulties encountered on the local fundraising circuit where the challenges of building an apparel company loom large in the eyes of private equity and venture capital firms…and in many ways rightly so.
Building a soft goods company is HARD. And slow. The forecast of a methodical pace of construction is relatively unattractive due to the number crunching elements of time and money. Rapid scale is en vogue but such pace is not usually attributed to apparel companies who are often reliant on a grassroots-style approach to consumer acquisition and loyalty creation. Likewise brand development, a key success factor at any company but the true lifeblood of an apparel brand, is an art rather than a science and lacking a linear formula by which to clearly forecast demand. Add to this a challenging set of factors related to the capital intensity of product design and manufacturing, inventory management, and costs of distribution and you have a series of very real risks that require founders and their teams to thread the needle in order to achieve success. If founding and building an apparel startup may be likened to playing golf, it would be a 600-yard par 5 with every conceivable hazard present while teeing off in rain and high wind.
Yet, here in Boston, it appears that there are a high proportion of folks who relish the challenge of building the next New Balance, the next Converse, the next Nike. Scrappy and pioneering like the dreamers of 1620 who landed at Plymouth, these entrepreneurs are setting out to achieve something big…really big. Toiling in the shadows of those Boston-based forerunners of the soft goods industry, many of whom represent some of the largest companies in the world, these new kids on the block are architecting great brands, superior products, and amplifying the passionate entrepreneurial gravity that has existed in Boston since the Mayflower touched down four centuries ago. Similar to the halcyon days of the 70s and 80s when many apparel brands rose to prominence in Massachusetts, banding together in such spirit, the recent wave of brand founders, teams, investors, and friends and family supporters are creating a new undercurrent of electricity in the city that will burn brightly in the years to come.
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