How Collars & Co. Went from Side Hustle to Shark Tank Success

Looks amazing. And my bangs— I'm happy today. Hi everyone, welcome, welcome! We've got another brave soul. I was just telling Justin— Justin Baer, by the way, B-A-E-R, but pronounce it like that beer that could be in your backyard, so double-check before you take out your garbage. That was my PSA for the day. So I'm really excited, Justin, you're here. I always start saying you're brave, bold, you're handsome, so I'll have to add the H in there. And I have no idea who you are, which is so exciting to me. So I see Collars and Company, so I'm like, ooh, is this pet related? But maybe it's— I hope it's not, you know, like choke collar. No, you introduce yourself and let me—

yeah, hopefully you will be easier on me than the sharks in Shark Tank were.

Oh, you had Shark Tank? I can't wait to hear that story.

Yeah, so I'm the founder of Collars and Co. We are an innovative menswear brand. We are a hero product, which is what we went on Shark Tank for was our polo shirts. Is our polo shirts with really like firm collars. So like these collars like sit up, and the initial idea was wearing them under a sweater because I hated that feeling of wearing a long sleeve dress shirt under sweater, like the sleeves get pulled up and you're pulling them down, just doesn't feel as good. So basically made a polo shirt but put like a really firm collar on it. These are our dress collar polos, and, um, that's kind of what went viral and started this whole idea from one white shirt. To— we're in a full menswear brand. So we have performance dress shirts now, we have performance blazers, make an array of polo shirts. We've, I think, have 300 different SKUs, you know, 20,000 square foot warehouse here. So it just kind of went crazy from a silly idea that everyone thought was kind of—

not a silly idea. So first of all, I don't know if you know, but I am— I grew up in the promotional products, logo merchandise industry. The MAS stands for Masters of Advertising Specialty, which is 2% of the logo merchandise industry. Are you in our industry? Have you—

yes, we are. We're one of the vendors there, and we have embroidery in-house now, so we can embroider polos, pullovers, sweaters, quarter zips, the works.

Oh my God, distributors, are you listening? So I have, you know, even when I started with LinkedIn over 20 years ago, I made sure as a distributor— my parents started a large distributorship, which is still live and doing very well, run by my brother Jerry. Barker Specialty Company. Not sure if you know Barker, Barker Specialty, but you're welcome to reach out and talk to them about your collars. That was always the thing when we were showing, uh, like, you know, when you're showing a golf shirt— good, better, best, right? And what would make a better or a best? It was always the collars. I love this. Are you in the companies like Sammar or Alpha, any of those larger warehouse Um, we're not.

We have a few other that maybe some of the smaller— I don't know what you call them, suppliers or distributors. I know in your, in your industries, wholesalers, wholesalers. Um, but we sell direct, um, right to brands, and we'll also sell to wholesalers. Um, but we're not in SanMar or the other ones. But, um, you know, I think this— the having one of our shirts, it, you know, has a premium quality to it. You know, we're a little bit less money than you would say like a Peter Millar shirt, but give that same quality. And the thing is, is we've got, you know, $1 million a month of advertising going on right now, whether that's podcasts, digital. So people have heard about it and they're kind of curious, what does this kind of firm collar thing do? And the benefit of it is it has multi-use. So you can wear it to play golf, you can wear it to go out to dinner, you can throw a sport coat over it, you can put a sweater over it and it acts like a dress shirt. So it's kind of like a fun product versus just your other run-of-the-mill floppy collar polo.

You really can't tell. Like, so when you're selling a golf shirt, oftentimes, like, I can tell with the stitching if it's going to be something that holds up. And usually in the description it will say no curl collar. But still, a lot of the ones that are very inexpensive, almost like a t-shirt with a collar. Yeah, you know, the Gildans that are, are not that great. But I always wonder, like, Why, why spend the money when you get for a few dollars more, get something that'll be worn, that won't— that will reflect your brand? At the end of the day, it's all about brand integrity, right? I love this. You had no idea I was in the logo merchandise industry, did you?

No.

And, uh, ASI, uh, you know, love ASI. Norm Cohen, every time I see him, I cry. Reminds me of my father, uh, an amazing man. So were you at ASI last January?

Uh, we weren't. I think we're gonna go— there's a show in July that we possibly are going to go to, and then we'll probably go to PPAI in Vegas. I think it's what, next year?

Yes, yes, yes. So I was at PPAI for the last couple— I mean, I've gone my whole life, but, um, I do some work with, um, Organic Tea Star, uh, very, uh, organic out of Bulgaria, European company, sustainability. But it sounds like you're thinking of going to the PPAF show, which will be amazing in July. I may see you there, and maybe I'll go to the ASI show too. I love that. So Tim Andrews, I'm gonna tag you because this is a cool conversation. And Tim is a great guy. If you don't know him, he's the president of ASI, and just everyone there is incredible. So, okay, so I understand why you started it, because you saw a need and then you, you, you saw the problem and you came up with a solution.

Yes.

And is it a secret formula to make the collars? Is like, is the solution like something that— so is it patented? Like, what is that?

Yeah, we're patent pending. On the collar. So it's actually different parts from different places of the world. But yeah, it has an insert. People are like, oh my God, it's really firm. So it has an insert into the collar that keeps it pretty firm even after washing, of course. So we've obviously tested that and the shirt's gotten so much better since when we started about 4 years ago. But yeah, we always say you can hand, you can wash it, washing machine. We say gentle wash, hang dry. Good to go. But yeah, that's what put us on the map.

I love it. And all the styles are very, very exciting.

Wow.

If you have any questions on the industry, please let me know. I'm here to help because I do have over, you know, 35 years. It's actually 40, but okay. Ageism is a real thing. So I have to— I, I, I, it's a lot of us feel awkward if we say over 35, but I love this, Justin. This is just making me so happy today. All right. So you're doing the rounds, getting the marketing out. And how is that going? Tell us a little bit how you're spending the million dollars a month, you said?

Yeah, a month. Um, you know, it started with, you know, we're mostly digital. Um, we're in podcasts, a little bit of television, but mostly Instagram, Facebook ads, and, um, you know, getting out there. We do catalog, kind of you name it, we're doing it. And, um, you know, so far really building a following. We've sold over 1 million shirts so far. Um, so that we just crossed that, uh, back in December. So yeah, we're excited. I mean, it working, working my tail off, that's for sure. You know, people are asking, cause this was like a side hustle concept that I was doing during COVID I was like, you know, I was itching to do this idea. Let me see what happens. So people say, are you, are you doing that full-time? I'm like, I wish it was full-time. It's more than full-time. It's double time. Oh my.

Okay. This is so, I, I wanna hear more about that, but I wanna hear about the Shark Tank. I'm really excited. And by the way, if you're just joining us now, this is Justin Bear from Collar and Co. This is really exciting. It's the collar. I'll show you right now on his collar. And we had some fun talking about the promotional products industry, but you got a chance. So who were the sharks? Tell us everything. Don't even skip anything. I want to hear it all. Everything. Food in the green room. Just, just tell us all, right?

Well, I guess kind of behind the scenes, what people don't realize— one, well, when I came up with the idea, people are always like, oh, you should go on Shark Tank. Like, you've probably said it, we've all said it to some people who had come up crazy idea. And I was like, you know, I'm never really gonna make it on that show. Like, what are the odds to get on there? I was like, you know what, I think I probably have to know somebody to get on. Like, maybe I can find a producer's name and know somebody at Sony or wherever. And, um, I couldn't find anybody. So it was late at night one night. I was like, you know what, I have nothing to lose. Kids are sleeping. I'll just go to abc.com just like other 50,000 people and fill out the form online. And that's what I did. And 3 weeks later they called. They— now when they called, they're like, you made it on the show, when really you just made it to the next round of like 10 interviews, um, that are— that are— that go on, and they can cut you at any time. And then, um, even when you go to shoot that day, you could shoot the show, you know, and film it, and they may not air it, in which case it happened to 50% of the people in the day that I went to shoot. So there's always that nervousness and You just put all this work in for the full year and it's a godly amount of paperwork that needs to happen. But we thankfully filmed the show. We got two Sharks, Mark Cuban and Peter Jones, as investors and they aired the show, which was really exciting. And then we actually closed the deal. And also people don't realize, I think only 30% of deals actually end up closing because for whatever reason, the Sharks do their own due diligence. The entrepreneur could be lying, who knows? There's a million reasons why the deals don't go through. Our deal went through and Mark and Peter have been great, super nice guys, very helpful when needed. And I mean, it's insane. Mark will, I could, you know, you gotta text him, he'll like text back, like guys so busy. So it's pretty cool. And yeah, we're just grinding over here building the next great American brand.

Oh my God, I'm so excited. Who else was in the room?

Uh, let's see, Damon was in, Kevin, Mark, um, Lori, and then Peter Jones was like the guest shark that day.

Yes. Oh my God, you know, years ago, I think maybe like 8, 9 years ago, I was at PPAI and Damon was there with one of the brands that came into the promotional products industry. That was fun. And I, I had an opportunity to speak to him because my father at the time— well, we still have the art galleries and my dad had wanted to, um, see, to talk to him about certain artwork that we had and that we, you know, that we could sell for him. And Damon seemed interested, and then I think he lost my business card, never called me back. I was really annoyed, but I'm so excited for you. All right, so when you went into the Shark Tank, you had enough equity available, right? Is that like one of the biggest things where people kind of have, have watered down their equity and then it's harder for them to make a deal?

Yeah, um, for me, I didn't— I've never— we've never taken outside investment at all. So, um, you know, I fought pretty hard. It was a really fun episode. They've aired it a bunch of times, which has been great. Um, and they actually did an update on us. So, you know, they're like, last time on Shark Tank. So they did one on us. Actually, I ended up shooting the show myself. It was really interesting. During COVID the update happened, and they would usually send out a film crew. Well, now what they did is, well, we don't want to have to send out a film crew. We're just going to send you this box of gear. So they literally sent a box of gear and we remotely shot it with the producer on Zoom, like you're doing now saying, oh, can you move the camera a little to the left and to the right and ask me the questions? And, and we shot the update. So if you guys see the update on air, I actually shot that with my own phone and it was good enough to air.

Oh my gosh. You know, I'm going to be posting that, those YouTube videos. Amazing. Google Collars and Co update.

Or a college. It'll be on there.

I, I just, I'm just so impressed. Okay, let's go back to, uh, business. So now the embroidery machines that you have, tell us what you have.

Um, so we, they're not actually in our warehouse. Um, I don't honestly, I couldn't even tell you the names of what's in there.

I mean, you have like, like 4 heads, 8 heads, you have enough to do.

There's a lot. Yeah, I mean, we are doing 300, 400 shirts be a good amount of embroidery merchandise. And we also have college licenses, so I think we have about 27, 28 licenses now. And, um, yeah, so we're— we are actually also— we are the official performance dress shirt of the Arrow McLaren IndyCar team as well. So we're doing local merchandise for them. So if anybody needs local merchandise, we have somebody here that solely works on it. Um, so email us jordan@collarsandco.com. That's his name, Jordan.

Okay, so is that a NASCAR driver? Was that the— oh, IndyCar.

Okay, yeah, it's the McLaren IndyCar team.

The IndyCar team. Okay, so they are like sponsoring—

we are the performance dress shirt of that team.

That's what they wear.

That's our— we're like, we have officially licensed merch from them, um, that they can find on— I mean, we have regular polos, but now we've got a full line We've got this very cool, like, Italian-looking line where it's a merino wool polo, and there's some other cool stuff that you can do with it.

Amazing. Okay, and then, so what is the most popular when it comes to golf shirts?

Are—

is it the 100% cotton? Is it the 50/50? Is it the dry? Is it the no-pull, no, no-stag? Like, I'm so curious.

I mean, for us, it's our dress collar polo. It's our original We have a couple different collar styles. So this is like our, probably our most popular. It's our semi-spread collar polo. White still beats everything, but we've got some really cool patterns. But, you know, white, navy, black, I guess in your world, in the promotions world, does great. But we've got some really neat patterns as well. But yeah, what about for women?

What about women? What do—

yeah, we have women's also. So we do a cap sleeve and a full, more of a longer sleeve. Oh wait, wait, we have sleeveless and cap sleeve.

Oh, and then the collar. I think that was really pretty.

Yeah, women are still wearing it with a sweater instead of wearing like a blouse under a— you know, you're kind of seeing a more chunky V-neck sweater that you would see, and instead of wearing a long sleeve dress shirt under it, ladies can wear just a comfortable polo. You know, this is like 6-way stretch, super lightweight. With the collar on it.

Okay, so let's tell Justin, let's tell the audience, why, why, why, why should I bother to actually have my employees wear a collared shirt? Well, you know, and nobody's gonna want to buy my logo and have that. So why should I even put it in my company store program? And why should I hand them out? They're— I don't hand out collared shirts, I hand out t-shirts. Like, Give us some answers to some of these like questions that you hear and some of the Debbie Downers.

Well, I think what you said earlier, like your brand is everything, right? And everything you do and everything you touch, whether it's our images, whether it's the giveaways you do, whether it's the kind of pens you do, all represent your brand. And if you would think about, let's say, we could use any brand. I was saying Ralph Lauren or Gucci or Louis Vuitton, you know, what kind of pens do you think Louis Vuitton has at their store? I can tell you they're not the cheapest 10-cent pens. They're probably pretty nice. Or if you go to, you know, a nice hotel, you know, wherever around the world, you know, the pens are nice. So it's a reflection. It doesn't really cost that much more to kind of get an upgraded item when you're talking about a premium. So it's a reflection of your brand. Now, if you're, a junky, cheap carpet cleaning place, maybe you have junky and cheap pens or junky and cheap polos. But if you want your people to look a little nicer and look a little more put together and have kind of a fun gift to talk about, when it comes to our shirts, it's not just a polo shirt. People have kind of like seen it online. It's kind of like as seen on TV in a way. It has that versatility of being able to wear it with a blazer, under sweater, by itself. So it's fun. It's definitely a fun gift. It does more than just a regular golf shirt.

Yeah, it's what is, you know, I always thought like golf shirts are kind of like towels, right? You know what's in your closet, you know what the logos are, you know what you want, you like to wear. A lot of people collect them, you know, golf shirts, and they have them, they all lined up nicely. So I love it. So nobody would really throw away your collared shirt unless they whatever spilled something horrible and they couldn't get the stain out. I love this. How much did you know about the promotional products industry before you got into this?

Nothing at all. Um, so yeah, we're learning it, and it's really because people have reached out to us. That's how we kind of initially stepped into it, is people said, hey, we love your shirts.

I—

that, you know, the CEO might have 15 of our shirts and says, hey, I want my company to have all these shirts. So that's kind of how it started. And, you know, we're learning and trying to get reps, and you, you know, you name it, we're working on it.

Oh yeah, that's not— it's not so easy to get reps, uh, in the industry. We don't have a ton of multi-line reps out there that are not already repping a line. Yeah, you know, or wanting like, you know, just whatever. I know, I've done my research before. I totally, I totally get it. I've been a strategic brand coach and consultant in the industry for about 10 years. Once I stepped away from it, I lost my mojo selling, but this would get me hyped up. Like, to be able to sell something like this really cool. I think it's fantastic.

And it has the, you know, has the Shark Tank aura around it, and people are always curious. So it's been fun.

Have you met, um, wait, what's his name from Ora Gaudio? Now he's with— oh my God, he— Jason, I have to— I'll have to introduce you if you don't know, from Rupt. R-U-P-T.

I don't know.

Okay, he was the one— he did a, like, his first one, the first time he was on Shark Tank, he had this, like, piece that he put on a pizza box and that became a speaker. And then he developed Auric Audio. He's really killing it at the industry, but it'd be nice for the two of you to meet. I don't think— I don't know how many other— I think there's a couple of other ones that have been on Shark Tank that have been there. Hopefully maybe Mark could come. That would be amazing also to get him to speak at PPO.

Well, you can just email him. Yeah, yes or no.

It would be— it would be nice. It'd be nice on you. And then also there's a pitch contest that's really, really cool. At PPAI that I think you would do really well with. So I'm glad we're connected. I think there was a reason for it because you have someone now that really knows the industry like the back of my hand. I always say, how many employees do you have?

We have 20, and then we've got some— we've got an agency that we work with as well.

Got it. And may I ask where you're manufacturing the shirts?

Manufacturing in Pakistan.

Nice. Okay.

So the Pakistan-India war is not helping us right now.

But is that an issue right now as far as—

that'll be— they actually closed flights yesterday. I mean, we— our warehouse is stocked, so almost everything we keep it, you know, in inventory just like one of the wholesalers would. But yeah, I heard that our UPS rep said that flights were stopped yesterday, but they're going to start again. I mean, hopefully everything calms down probably by the weekend.

Yeah, I hope so too. I hope so too. But that's good. That's nice that it's coming from that, you know, that region with so many people not liking another country and, and kind of, you know, putting their foot down. Do you think that these shirts could ever be made in the USA?

Um, you know, it's interesting, I was on Fox Business last week or two weeks ago to ask that same question. Of course anything can be made in the USA. I mean, we make fighter jets, right? The question is, do we want to make shirts here? Do we want to make buttons? And do we want to make zippers? And the problem is it would take at least a decade to even bring in the factory equipment, which would come from China, to even make this stuff, let alone set it all up. So could we do it? We could absolutely do it. If they made it in America, I would absolutely be making my shirts in America. I'd be the first in line to do it. But We just don't have the infrastructure. It's going to take decades if you want to make shirt manufacturing here. I don't know if we do in America, but if we do, I'm sure you'd have to invest a lot of money. I think they'd have a problem finding an investor to even create a factory here because an investor would know, hey, in 3 years a new administration comes in, makes everything free trade, and your factory's out of business. So I think it's a nice idea, um, And I think for certain items, we want to, from a national security perspective, want to make some stuff in the United States probably that isn't made here yet. But, uh, you know, when it comes to buttons and zippers and shirts, it's going to be, uh, you know, be a long road and probably pretty tough. You can find an investor to do it, but if you can, if they're out there, let me know. We'd love to make our stuff in America. Absolutely. I love it.

What about decorating, um, besides embroidery? So if someone wanted a laser etch, if they wanted it screen printed, if they wanted a patch, any of that you're able to do.

Yeah, you can do that.

Yep.

And we make blazers also. We make this really cool performance blazer where you can crumple it up into a ball, pull it out, looks amazing. It's got some built-in pocket square, it's got eyeglass loops, it's got all kinds of cool— oh, passport photo. And that— I was— because you mentioned patches, um, we've got some actually some golf clubs that are actually patching them, but They're really awesome. That's our Maverick Blazer if you go to collegeandco.com.

Oh my gosh, you know, I'm just gonna say this out loud here because, you know, LinkedIn is amazing. I love LinkedIn and I have some clients in the industry, suppliers, doing reach-out campaigns. I handle the reach-out campaigns to distributors and it works. So if you ever thought of like, how could I do this, you got an insider that can help you.

Great, we'd love your help. I mean, yeah, we want to get distributors knowing about Collars Co. We think we can go up against, you know, the Peter Millars of the world as far as quality goes, and our factories are just as, just as great. But I think we offer something a little bit different. It's got a little more versatility, and the pricing is probably about, you know, in some ways could be 40% less than theirs, and, um, you know, give your clients the same kind of prestigious aspirational shirt.

Oh, I love it, I love it, I love it. I think that this is— it's really exciting to me because that was always the thing when I was selling a golf shirt. I'm like, no, the collar is good. So I love that. Remember the old— the even the, um, wait, are you doing it to the— what do they call it? The, the— I want to say the men's shirt, the dress shirts.

We have full— we have performance dress shirts. Yep, full performance long sleeves as well. Wow. Shirts, long sleeves, sweaters, merino wool sweaters, cotton and cashmere sweaters. Our quarter zips crush. Um, we've got some dry release. So yeah, check us out.

Do you remember when they had the little pieces? I can't remember, they were called collar somethings, and you would have to put them in your collar to keep your collar straight.

Yep. Yes, we have like a built-in collar stays. This is pretty firm in here.

Um, it's amazing.

It's pretty firm, so it doesn't require a collar stay. It's built in. But our dress shirts are reinforced, but we do have a spot for a collar stay just in case someone wants to put a metal one in there and maybe do a magnet. But yeah, they're amazing.

Interesting.

That's the McLaren ones. That's the era McLaren ones.

What about, have you thought of doing, I want to say it right, is it the NFC where it reads your phone? So if you're walking by, so it could have information.

We've not thought of that. But that's interesting.

I think it's an RFID.

RFID. Yeah, I don't know if anybody wants that in their shirt.

Well, they do make them now where they have them so that you, when you walk by, it would like ping you and say, hey, don't forget to watch, you know, the Masters, or however it's programmed. That's cool. Also, some shirts have tags that give you like from seed to table, kind of like where that shirt has been. Yeah, that's what that looks like. Very, very neat. Well, this has been a really fun conversation because it's like right up my alley, and I love doing this because I have no clue who's on, but I'm absolutely thrilled to meet you. And I'll send you some more information about the LinkedIn so you can see how that works. And I don't— is there anything I should have asked you that I didn't ask you?

No, that was it. Check it out, collarsandco.com.

I love it. I love it. I love it. Justin, thank you so much. So we're live now. And then what's going to happen is I'm going to turn this into a podcast. And then I'm going to tag you so you know that you are in, and I'm glad you're doing other podcasts. That's great. Do some magazine articles. This is a great way to get your name out there. So I love it. Are you doing LinkedIn ads?

We don't do as many LinkedIn ads.

No, don't, don't listen. LinkedIn, close your ears. It's so expensive. Like, you could do a reach out.

It doesn't work so well for D2C. You know, the pricing is so high, but You know, for B2B, when you're selling $10,000 software or whatever a month, it's gonna probably work. Yeah.

Oh, I'm so excited. All right. So Justin, thank you so much for your time. Have a great day. And you know what we say, go collars.

We can use that.

That works. Or everyone loves a stiff collar.

There you go. That's dirty.

I love it. Thank you so much.

It was so great.

Thanks, everyone listening. Really great. Look at my bangs today, everyone, and my hair, compliments of Nolan's Nest. And she has a soap shampoo and conditioner that is a killer. My husband's like, your hair looks so good. And I'm like, I know, I gotta tell Kate. Anyways, thank you, Justin. I'll talk to you later.

Have a great day. Bye.