With a focus on Greater Philadelphia small product-based businesses and entrepreneurs, "The Creators" is a weekly feature presented as a part of PHL Inno. Check back each Monday for a new profile on a local business. Have a story you think we should know about? Email associate editor Lisa Dukart at ldukart@bizjournals.com.
Nobody expects a pandemic will waylay their business launch plans. Soj Jibowu was no exception. But as Covid-19 continued to wreak havoc around the globe, he and his team decided to press ahead.
While they did delay their plans to launch Varlo Inc., a triathlon-focused sports apparel brand, from January 2020 to that September, Jibowu said that launching when they did was the “perfect time.”
“I do believe that when we came into market, there was a reset in the marketplace,” said the founder and CEO of the Cherry Hill, New Jersey, company. That reset meant that a new company like Varlo could “grow to the demand of the marketplace, knowing that we're kind of moving at the same pace of our competitors.”
Now just 16 months old, Varlo has already gained a foothold internationally, with consumers in Canada, England, Honduras, Singapore, Switzerland and throughout the United States.
The idea for Varlo – a take on the word valor – was born out of Jibowu’s passion for triathlons, something he was introduced to by chance and later encouraged by friends to take up.
A born runner, Jibowu said he was drawn to running in part because it brings him a sense of peace, serenity and freedom. While he loves those aspects, his analytical mind was also drawn to the biomechanics. “What are all little, tiny things to get you faster? Whether it be weightlifting, conditioning, diet, there's so many things that play into it,” he said, noting he has a background in biomedical science and chemistry.
A 400-meter runner at Central Michigan University, after graduating, Jibowu continued to stay active, participating in 5K and 10K races and taking up CrossFit. On a trip to Chicago, a triathlon event was taking place and watching athletes dive into Lake Michigan proved a moment of inspiration. “I was just so awed by it,” he recalled.
At the time, Jibowu was working with a medical devices company in Michigan. Wanting to relocate to the East Coast, he initially thought he’d land in Hoboken, New Jersey, just across the river from New York City, but instead decided on Philadelphia.
As he made friends in his new home, he found many were active in triathlons. “They eventually convinced me [to try it] and I did my first race and just fell in love,” Jibowu said, noting that was about seven years ago.
As he got deeper into the world of triathlons – an endurance sport that combines cycling, running and swimming – his naturally inquisitive mind began wondering about the intricacies of the gear associated with such varied competitive spaces.
That was something Jibowu already had a long interest in. “I've always, always, always been a gear person,” he said. In college, when his team was looking to replace their running singlets, he took point, researching and sourcing their new gear. “I've always just been obsessed with the apparel side of athletics,” he said, adding that his interest runs so deep that he’s visited the Nike World Headquarters in Oregon on multiple occasions.
As his curiosity in apparel and gear for triathlons grew, so did a business idea. The first inklings came in 2018. That continued to snowball and the following year, after extensive research, he reconnected with fellow athlete Jacob Brown. The two had grown up near one another and attended Central Michigan at the same time, where Brown played football.
Brown, who has brand experience with the likes of General Motors and T-Mobile, according to Jibowu, took an immediate interest. Together, the two launched Varlo, where Brown serves as its chief technology officer.
Varlo’s collection debuted with a small selection of cycling-focused gear and has subsequently expanded. The company offers gear targeted towards men and women triathletes. Products include fitness shorts, cycling jerseys, a sport bra, base layers and gilets, plus a casual line of shirts, polos and caps, among others.
For Jibowu, athletic apparel goes beyond just performance. “There's a physical side to it, but there's also this emotional thing about it,” he said, noting that how an athlete feels in a kit can have a psychological impact.
While emotions play a big part in sports, Jibowu tries to keep business numbers-focused and product development is largely data driven. That’s allowed the company to fine-tune which products, sizes and genders are drawing the greatest market share and further pursue them. The company is seeing an uptick in women’s apparel, something Jibowu hopes will continue. As of 2019, USA Triathlon, the governing body of the sport in the U.S., reported 39% of its membership was women.
“We believe that women have a very strong place in the sport, and we're very conscious of that,” Jibowu said, adding that the majority of the brand’s pro athletes are women.
The company has amassed customers around the globe. Jibowu declined to share sales figures but said Varlo is “definitely ahead of what our original goals were.”
Sales are primarily direct-to-consumer, though Varlo does have some wholesale suppliers and occasionally does trade shows where they can interact with customers directly.
Distribution is run out of the company’s Cherry Hill headquarters. “We're fulfilling a pretty large number of orders a month, but I think we're still keeping it in house,” he said. “We still want to be able to see what's on the shelves, physically be able to touch it, physically able to do our own returns.”
A brick and mortar is not currently in the works and Jibowu doesn’t foresee one any time soon, if ever. Rather, he favors the idea of potential pop-up shops in collaboration with other businesses.
Varlo was self-funded at launch, Jibowu said, though later took on investors for an undisclosed amount. Jibowu doesn’t anticipate seeking any additional investors in the near future. “We have a pretty comfortable net under us…,” he said.
Perhaps that net is due to the launch timing. The company, which sources fabrics from Italy, France and Switzerland, didn’t have difficulty connecting with those suppliers. “When you're dealing with manufacturers, like top manufacturers, it's almost like a closed off club, and I think that a lot of [other companies were] maybe pulling orders,” Jibowu said. “I don't know, but I do know that manufacturers were really happy to talk to me. I don't call that luck. I call that just being ready at the right time.”
How did you adapt your plans at the start of the pandemic?
[Pushing the launch back] gave us a roadmap to focus on a couple of marketing strategies to build ourselves up. But it also allowed us to move where the demand was, and the demand at the time was in cycling where bike sales had quadrupled. Athletic leisure, athletic lifestyle, sport bikes, they all just quadrupled. … Our first real collection that launched in April 2021, that was all cycling apparel, just because it was feeding to the market and then we slowly started to integrate back into multi-sport products.
What are the design inspirations?
The designs are based off of what we believe are going to be strong color plays for the future. I'm huge fan of Pantone. … But then also when it comes to the build of the products, I will say what drives us is the stuff that you don't think that matters that really, really matters. … What everyone cares about is comfort. So focus on comfort, focus on how to make individuals comfortable. And if you're comfortable, and you're going to move fast, if you're comfortable, you're going to be strong.
What’s next for Varlo?
I think our future goals are to continue to make sure that we're providing value to the athletes in the sport. We're telling the story of the athletes in a way that has been different than how it's been done before. I think that's also very important. I think what's very, very, very important and one of our key goals is to make sure that the people who are coming into the sport stay in the sport. I think that's important. And we want to see the sport grow. I think that it's about making sure that what we do is repeatable but then also making sure that we're giving back to the sport and we're helping the sport grow in the right direction.
