The moment it raised $25,000 on Kickstarter in just a couple of hours, smart apparel company Brunswick Park started making headlines. Since, the company has designed a four-piece line for men and women that features casual workforce wear made from technical and innovative fabrics. In that, it's found a natural footing in the city with a simple secret: asking its consumers – Boston’s top entrepreneurs – to do what they do best: invest time, money and passion.
And according to CEO and co-founder Jess Garbarino, the resulting conversation has proven to be a perfect fit.
“We sort of stay true to our roots in that we’ve always been crowdsourced on everything: crowdsourced on design, crowdsourced on funding,” she told me.
As long as we keep representing our idea of an entrepreneur, anything that happens will be natural.
And as of today, Brunswick Park, which was co-founded by one of our very own, Alex Weaver, has crowdsourced itself toward a new direction of selling.
Brunswick Park has partnered with Definery, an operation which specializes in custom branding merchandise for companies. Definery is supported through sister company Silk Screen Printing and will help Brunswick Park bring its performance workwear directly to Boston’s tech companies. Companies can customize the line in terms of color and logo, and better yet, score it all at a wholesale price point.
When I caught up with Jess about this new shift, she explained that it was a natural next step from their recent spate of pop-up shops, which have been featured at WeWork and at different places around Newbury Street. Customers, she shared, often came up to her at these shops and expressed a desire to bring the outfits to their own teams.
Enrico Palmerino, the CEO of Boston-based Botkeeper, was one such customer.
“Enrico is a traditional serial entrepreneur,” Jess said. “This is his third company that he’s started, he represents the idea that we all have in our mind of entrepreneurship.”
So when he explained that he wanted to outfit his company, Brunswick Park decided he was the perfect first client for the newly launched B2B program.
“We decided we could target our demo through these businesses, this was an alternative but great channel to get Brunswick Park in the right hands,” she told me.
On Wednesday, Enrico was outfitted by Brunswick Park at WeWork Boston. The resulting photoshoot (pictured here) shows him in his natural state: on the move.
"We work with entrepreneurs, they’re not models," Jess said. "It’s amazing to us that they’re letting us capture their lives, we shoot what their days are actually like and we don’t do these highly styled fashion-y shoots. Just show us a work day."
As for the exclusivity that comes with imposing a corporate program, Jess mentioned that the smart apparel brand will continue to sell to individual clients, to match its target of entrepreneurs, whether they are part of a Fortune-500 company, or a recently-funded startup.
“There’s often degrees of entrepreneurship,” she said. “We look at entrepreneurship as something that’s aspirational, as something that people want to identify as ... we’re going after people that live with that mindset, and that’s not necessarily people who have their own company.”
In this way, the partnership with Definery will only help them optimize the way they meet the needs of companies, big or small.
Marc Andrew Deley, the founder and president of Definery, explained that “cookie-cutter options” when it comes to custom merchandise don’t meet the bar.
“At Definery, we are always searching for high quality vendors that remain both innovative and style focused," said Deley. “With Brunswick Park, we are now able to provide our clients with pieces that are unlike anything else in the marketplace."
As for the future, Jess said the company will continue to stay true to original business model.
“We’ve always designed the brand to keep its customers involved," she said. “As long as we keep representing our idea of an entrepreneur, anything that happens will be natural.”
Photos via Jess Sinatra Photography.
