- Give us the elevator pitch. Tell us about your brand
SquadLocker makes it easy for coaches, teachers, school administrators, and companies to design a broad variety of apparel and make it available for purchase through stores that are always open, with no minimums for orders.
- What inspired you to set up your company?
As my wife and I were raising our kids, we recognized the impact of their participation in organized sports. They were learning to win and lose with dignity, developing respect for the benefits of hard work, learning how to collaborate with others for team success, and enjoying the opportunity for strong outside mentorship to help them reach their full potential.
I realized that in order for more kids to have that same positive experience, there needed to be a way to make the lives of those coaches, teachers, and other mentors easier. That’s what inspired me to found SquadLocker and develop a better distribution method for the things kids and parents needed in order to participate in sports and school activities. We want to save families frustration and save those influencers time they can then use to focus on the kids and their development.
- What was your biggest challenge in year one?
Understanding how to develop a technology backbone that would allow SquadLocker to scale properly while unleashing the full potential of the creative ideas that we have. All of the components involved in that–building a tech team, establishing a successful software platform, figuring out how to turn my native expertise in textile capability and management into a software company–were the hurdles I had to overcome in the beginning.
- What would you say has been your biggest marketing success?
How we promote our ability to offer apparel on a single-unit basis. That is, all of the decoration methods, no minimum order size, rapid fulfillment, and all from stores that never close. It’s been a consistent message of convenience and it consistently resonates through today.
- What has been the biggest mistake you made?
Even though SquadLocker has been and continues to be a disrupter and bold challenger in the marketplace, when I look back I think my biggest mistake was that I didn’t go further faster. I should have hired more aggressively and spent more upfront to accelerate my vision.
- Tell us about your plans for the future.
My goal for SquadLocker is to continue to build out our portfolio of products and services. I want us to become further enmeshed in the communities that we’re serving across youth sports, schools, and now corporations, and support them by unlocking or relieving the difficulties these administrators and other decision makers experience. It’s all about expanding problem-solving through service, technology and a broader portfolio. I’m proud of the fact that we’re even farther along than I had originally envisioned, and I’m excited for where we’ll go next.
