Boutique Chat #014 | Breaking into Established Markets & Scaling with a Great Brand Story | Kimes

Get ready for episode number 14 with two of my favorite girl bosses. From Kimes Ranch, meet Amanda Kimes and Lindsay Perrotin. Let's talk about your business strategy and the juicy details of what actually works. From mainstream fashion to fashion on Main street and the entire ecosystem behind it. How do we scale your company and do it with the balance and the happiness that we all seek? Let's hear from those insiders, experts, and strategists that actually make it happen. I'm your host, Ashley Alden from the Boutique Hub, and I can't wait to chat. Have you ever felt like all of a sudden, out of seemingly nowhere, a brand pops up and has massive popularity and brings new life to the market? You feel like you're watching this overnight success story happen and unfold before your eyes. Now, it's extremely rare to see or experience, but when you do, it's pretty hard not to buy into that excitement yourself. Right? So how do these brands do it? The marketing, the manufacturing, the growth, the scale, the team. What does it take to build a brand that breaks into a competitive market and takes off like wildfire? Well, behind every seemingly overnight success story, there is a story 10 plus years in the making. What you don't always see is what happens in the business behind the scenes. You and I both know it's the late nights, the founder struggles, the products that flopped, the fears that had to be overcome in order for that business to finally take shape and find its place in the market. Now, those overnight success stories, 10 years in the making, they're the ones that actually last. You know why? Because it's the companies that understand that most times in business, it's not the first product that you take to market that hits and sticks, but instead, it's the process that you go through. The process to test and evolve and to finally come up with what the market really wants most from you and then to run with it. Success is about having the tenacity to keep going even when it's hard. And that, my friends, is how you create a magnetic, electric brand that finally hits and sticks. Now today on the podcast, I am so pumped to be joined by two girl bosses, or we should call them boutique bosses or brand bosses. Maybe we need another great word for them. Regardless, these two are a force to be reckoned with and to follow. Amanda Kimes joining us today, and her husband Matt started Kimes Ranch and have developed this denim turned lifestyle company based on a need that they saw in the equine market. And let me tell you, that's A pretty competitive space to break into. From traveling to horse shows and selling denim out of their van to building a global company serving all equine disciplines. Kimes is definitely a household name when you walk a day in western culture. Along with Amanda today on the show is Lindsay Perrotin, the director of marketing for Kimes and probably one of the most fashionable ladies I know, complete with sassy side, shaved head, and always a statement hat or a great pair of shoes. Lindsay is actually a former model, accomplished equestrian, and hailing from Canada, now makes her home in Arizona working at the Kimes headquarters with her best friend, Amanda. You may have met Amanda and Lindsay either at our NFR meetup for boutique bosses this last year in Las Vegas, or Lindsay was on our influencers panel at the 2018 Western Summit held in Denver last January. Now, these two ladies are changing wins in a male dominated industry. So we're so excited to have them on the show today. And as a brand member of the Hub, I can't wait for you guys to hear today the story of Kimes Ranch and how you can take action in your own business to build a brand that listens to the market, takes shape and takes off like wildfire. Welcome back to the show, guys. We have two creative, inspiring and, and might I add, powerhouse women in the house this week. And we're not only going to cover the story about building a business that's a true lifestyle brand, but this week we're also going to get into the technical aspect of operating a business of this scale, from marketing to balance and how it's all done in between. So, Amanda, Lindsey, you guys, thank you for being here. Welcome to the show.

Thanks for having us.

I'm so glad it worked out. This is going to be great. I just admire both of you so much and enjoy our time when we're together in person, getting to catch up. So this is going to be a real treat to have you on the podcast.

Well, we're very flattered that you asked.

Us, so thank you. Thank you for that.

You're welcome. You're welcome. So we have a lot to cover today as we were kind of visiting before we got onto the show here. So let's start with Kimes for what it's known for today because there's a lot of backstory to cover. You guys broke into a fiercely competitive and established market, the denim market in the equine and western space with monster companies like Cinch and Wrangler and Panhandle, all these powerhouses. And that's not an Easy feat. I can't imagine taking that on. So, as the three of us have joked before, we've always kind of talked about that perceived overnight success five years in the making, where no one really knows how long it's taken to get here. So let's talk about the backstory. Amanda, talk about your background in Matt's and how this whole wild idea took shape.

Oh, man. Well, we were much, much younger and very naive, and I think kind of that worked in our benefit because we didn't understand what failure meant at that time. And so we weren't afraid to really, like, dive into a space we absolutely knew nothing about. I like to state that right off the bat, we had no experience in fashion or in clothing or in marketing or in any of that. Matt, my husband and partner, was in the financial world, and I had a struggling wine distribution business, and I worked odd jobs. And we always had this dream, you know, if you had endless amounts of money, what would we do together? And for whatever reason, we landed on denim. And we think that that's because we showed horses and met showing horses in that world where we rode all day, every day in denim. And I think we were unhappy with what we were wearing subconsciously. So it kind of transpired into wanting to create a denim line. I don't think we even knew what that meant, to be honest. I think we wanted to make some jeans and be cool with it and watch it grow, But I don't really think we understood what that meant at that time. We would talk during those early days, and a brand that came to mind repeatedly was Nike, because we were very impressed with how the Nike brand, the Swoosh, was so synonymous with Nike. You didn't even have to say the word. You could just see the swish. And that always really meant something to us as far as finding a brand. So when we started the business, we needed a brand. And prior to that, Matt and I had just purchased two longhorn cattle. We were going to be cattle barons. One cow has died, now we have one. So that dream obviously did not come to fruition. Barney still resides, but we had created a brand to brand our cattle with when we were going to be rich and live in Montana and do all those things. Well, the brand was really cool. It's the brand we currently use now, and I thought that would be great on a pair of jeans. And so we liked its simplicity, and we had hoped that it would be similar in the fact that it would resonate like the Nike swish did, where people could just See the logo and think Kimes Ranch or at that time, Longhorn Jeans. And it worked, thank goodness. I think that was. Lindsay mentioned earlier when we were discussing before we went live that there was a lot of tenacity and some dumb luck that took place. And one of those dumb luck moves was that logo. So Matt and I quit our jobs. At this point we have no money. That was smart. We had no bank funding anything. I think we sold a horse. So we had a little bit of, you know, startup capital of very limited means. We drove to LA and you know, my first jeans I was gonna sew. I had this dream that I could make the first pair. I don't sew, I don't even own a sewing machine. So how that was gonna work I'm not sure, but that was my dream. So we go to la, we buy paper and tools to make patterns and all of that. Well, obviously that was a disaster. So we have those first pair of jeans. They're in our closet hiding. We don't like to show them to the world, but someday I will. Lo and behold, we finally, after knocking on multiple doors and being told that we don't have what we need at certain buildings, we found our current existing pattern grater, pattern maker and pattern or denim cutter. And those people have been insurmountable for us in helping us find other manufacturers in Los Angeles. So Matt and I are loyal to those people for various reasons. Obviously they helped get our startup and they should have laughed us out the door with what we brought them. I also have to mention that that was in 09, so the recession had hit, so LA was a ghost town, there wasn't anybody working. So we couldn't do that today as LA's booming because we'd walk in with the minimums we were asking for at that time, which was like 50 pair and we would have been walked out the building. But now or at that time, I mean people were desperate for work so they were willing to take our 50 piece minimum. So that is kind of how we did that. We went over there and started knocked around and figured things out kind of the old fashioned way. We stayed in Malibu on a beach and rv commuted into town and just kind of became locals, if you will, for a few weeks while we learned the ins and outs of the industry. I think that in May or June, our first production run of like 50 men's pair, 50 women's pair was ready. So we did that all in a very short amount of time. From March till June, we created a style which One of those styles was the Betty, which is our number one selling jean. Created a few sample pairs, created a small production run, had jeans loaded up the motorhome, drove to a horse show, offered our jeans to the world. Our success story was in the making. We told the world our jeans existed, and the world slapped us in the face and promptly told us that they did not care. So there we are, jeans in hand, not a pot to pee in, and. And jeans that no one wants. That was really hard for us. So it wasn't as simple as creating a great product and taking it to the market. The market didn't care. They didn't care that we spent all of our hard efforts on this product that we'd been dreaming about. They just looked at us like, well, you guys have no experience. What gives you the right to tell us we need to try your jeans? Back to the drawing board. We went, and we literally hit the road in the rv. I was pregnant at that time with our first child. We sold our jeans at swap meets. We sold them on the side of the road in a motorhome with a sign that said, come try jeans on.

Not creepy.

Probably one of our creepiest moments, even though we thought it was so innocent. We drove to ranches where we didn't know anybody and asked them to buy our jeans. We went to horse shows. We went to, like, swap meets at the state fair. I mean, we went anywhere and everywhere where anybody willing to look at our product. We started to figure out the world at that point and then started finding markets to go to, which then started help build the brand.

How did your family react at that time? I mean, that had to be a really trying time for you guys. When you were in hustle mode, how did your family and friends react to.

What was going on?

Our family was amazing. Our family, I don't think, understood what we were doing, but they believed in us, and they knew that if we were passionate about it, we would achieve it. And. And they were amazing. They helped lend us money and helped get us on the road and would then start taking care of our children. Our family was amazing. Our friends, Lindsay being one of them, was amazing. We have several that were right on board right off the bat, and then several that weren't, and it took time to convert them. Not having all of your friends on board when you first start is really kind of humbling because it hurts. And then you have to have thick skin and act like it doesn't and that they're entitled to their opinion. When you really just want to tell them. Them. Their opinions wrong, and they need to love what you're doing. You know, we've overcome all of those challenges, but then we, like I said, we had a handful of core people that believed in us right off the bat, and a lot of our team now are those people.

Awesome. So how long did it take? Or how. What was the timeframe where you guys were out on the road and you were inviting people to come in and try the denim? At what point did you say, there's gotta be a better way? Was it when you started to go to markets that things started to shift for you or what happened next?

No, none. That didn't make it easier either, because now you're actually dealing with retailers and they have certain expectations that we were unaware of. You know, how the product should arrived and that your tagging should always match. And, you know, their variance and washes between runs was not acceptable. And, you know, being out of stock for months on end wasn't a good thing. So, no, that made it harder. I don't think things got easier until our relaunch in 2014, when we were able to start having a team around us because Matt and I were just doing it all and making it up as we went. We learned a lot of very valuable lessons the very, very hard way, which I think was good in the long run, but really hard in the short term. But those first years as Longhorn Jean Co. Were very, very challenging. We, you know, we weren't making money, and even though the jeans were selling, they were selling in such small quantities at that time that, you know, that was hard. I will say this, though, that there was this moment for us where we took the jeans to the horse world. The horse world kind of turned their back and we pulled them away. But then we would strategically place them on influencers. And probably in 12, 2012, we started hearing demand. And that's when we really started setting up these great booths and going hard to horse shows, specifically AQHA events. And then we started to push for us at that time, a significant amount of volume out. And that's where it started to become easier because people were very receptive and excited seeing their friends wear them, seeing all their other influencers wear them, and then wanting to wear them so that I think once you get them on the right people and then they become cool, if you will, that's where things started to become easier.

So what happened right before 2014? What pushed you then to make the rebrand and the relaunch and turn into Kimes?

We had a little bit of a hiccup there. We had just some partners that came in, and they weren't a right fit for us. And then to get the brand back, there was just some litigation and things like that that went on. So 13 was just a year where we were just unable to work. And that was crushing, crushing, because we weren't sure if we were going to get the brand back. And, you know, years for us at that time, it was like losing, you know, your baby, not since we all have children. And I understand that, of course. But, you know, something that you worked that hard for, it was very emotional time. Luckily, we were able to get the brand back. And then when we relaunched in 14 and Lindsey came on board, you know, that's really when things started taking off and moving fast. And I think that looking back where it's not so raw, I can say that that year hiatus probably helped us because we were getting this strong foothold in demand, and then we took it away. So it's like taking a drug away, and then nobody could get it. And then when we relaunched in 14, I think people were just so happy that we were back, that it really kind of started to escalate us to that next level.

Awesome, man. So when you relaunched, did you go right back to the horse shows that you were having that demand in right away, or did you go back to wholesale markets as how did that launch go?

When we first relaunched, we went straight back to horse shows and straight back to the few retailers we had before we stopped in 13. So we went right back to the customer that was asking for it. They were excited, they were happy. There was no questions asked. They welcomed us back with open arms, which we were also very grateful for and lucky for, because sometimes being gone for that long can harm you.

So let's talk about the size of Kimes today, because I want people to kind of get a picture of an idea of how fast you guys have grown and what's happened since this rebrand. So let's talk about production facility, where you're at today, staff, how that's growing, and just that percentage of growth year over year, so people get that idea.

So when we came back in 2014, we had myself, my husband, Matt, and Lindsey. Lindsey was just working a few days a week, and we still keep all kinds on our ranch in Scottsdale, Arizona, so keep that in mind. So we. My husband's previous business, he had. We had, like, a mod that everybody worked out of for that business. Well, when we came back in 2014, it was just his dad in here. So we jumped right back into the modular, which is where we all now. All are now. Now, we had three people at that time and it's about a, what, 1500 square foot modular? Yeah, give or take. Three bedroom, two little baths, a kitchen. Like it's a. It's a double wide in that in its true form. Now we have. We count 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8. There's 10 of us in here on any given day. Plus there's four people out in the warehouse. And then a series of road reps. Now, when we first started, the back office, which is now my husband's office slash sample room, was our actual warehouse. We had racks in there and all of our jeans fit in one, like 400 by 400 room. I don't even think it's that big.

It's like 250 square feet.

It's tiny. So all our jeans fit in there. We were so proud when we had, you know, lots of jeans in there. So then we had a third party warehousing for just a moment, and then we brought all the product back here and then we had these Conexes, these shipping container on property that we already owned that had just memories in it, is what we call them. So we cleared out the memories and put in racks. And so then all of our jeans fit into one shipping container with a man door in it with no ac, with one light and a computer. And that's how Matt and I shipped every day. Then it turned into two shipping containers. Then it turned into a roof over two shipping containers. And we just built and started using last August, a 50x50 building on site. We kept the two old shipping containers with the roof over them. And I think currently we can house anywhere just denim. From 16 to 22,000 units of denim at any given time. I think on hand there's like 13,000 caps in stock today. That doesn't include all the teas, fleece, outerwear, etc. That wonderful building that we put a lot of blood, sweat and tears into last August was supposed to last us for two years. I was told yesterday by my father, who's also our warehouse manager, that we have no more room because all the shipping containers are full. The mobile warehouse, which is our semi, which many of you have seen on Facebook, is no longer a mobile warehouse. It is stuffed. And when I mean stuffed, it looks like one of those hoarders closets where you open it and stuff falls out of just boxes. Now we know where everything is and it's all semi organized. It's just literally stuffed to the gills. So we have outgrown our new facility. Mind you, we're all still living in the same double wide.

So which each bedroom is an office. And then the. What would be a dining room is the sales table. And what would be the living room is the marketing area with all open concept giant tables that we all sit together.

Oh, my gosh. I love it. I love it.

You know, and this goes right into.

What you guys were.

What we were visiting about before we started recording this show. I think people's perceptions of growing and scaling a successful company like yours, I think sometimes people think it has to be so pretty and so perfect. And you build this big, mighty beautiful, perfect warehouse with great lighting and all of this. But really, like you said, sometimes growth is just a shit show. You just do what you can with what you have and you make it happen, right?

Well, yeah. And you want to keep your costs down. So for us, staying at the cost down, moving somewhere and having to pay the rent for what we actually need is chaos. We're lucky that where we are.

It'd be astronomical given, like, that we're in Scottsdale.

Yeah. So it's just. And then there's this, too. You know, Trish, who many of you have met, she staffs our booth going down the road and fits most of you. She still has horses out here, and Lindsay and Garrett bring their dogs out, and it's. You know, Lindsay never gets dressed. I don't know if y' all know that, but she lives in, like, pajama pants. Yes.

She's like, one of the most fashionable people that we know. That's hilarious.

She's so calling me out right now. I wear comfortable stretchy pants.

Okay.

Not pajama pants, stretchy pants.

But if we. Complete difference. But if we move, we would have to wear clothes to work.

I'm only wearing jeans today, and I did my hair, so.

So there's, you know, moving comes with its own price to pay, so it doesn't always seem glamorous. So.

Yeah.

But we also get opportunities. Like, we have Taco Tuesday here, where Dougie, one of our sales guys, lives next to the most amazing taqueria. And he brings in this amazing meat that he grills up. And we do taco Tuesdays. We do barbecue Wednesdays where we have a grill on our porch right here at the Double Wide, and we grill brats and hang out.

I mean, we're also a good 20 minutes from any food source. So if we don't bring food or make it here, you pretty much just go on a diet for the day.

Perfect. That's a team retention strategy right there. As you scale. So let's talk about marketing and brand and kind of how this scale has taken off. And when I say overnight success, five years in the making, I think we were all talking about this at the NFR together, about how you started in the horse show world and you guys have moved multiple genres. You're now in the rodeo world and have blown up in the rodeo world. What's it been like to find that ideal customer in each of those new markets as you've continued to grow and scale?

I would say, extremely exciting for us. So I guess in, you know, in 2014, when I started with Matt and Amanda, you know, and we had a very, like, classic clean product, you know, and that's always and will always be, you know, the essential image of Kimes Ranch is, you know, that crisp and sophisticated take on denim. But when we started at that point, obviously that was a really nice fit for, you know, that AQHA performance horse customer, you know, less rodeo. Right. And our perception of rodeo at that time, you know, we both come from showing quarter horses, so, you know, that's our foundation. We know what that industry looks like. You know, it's very apparent, you know, what they wear. That environment to us is second nature. So for us, creating, you know, those initial products to cater to that customer was, you know, was easy.

Right.

You know, and the products that we created at the time fit very well for that. And then we had this breaking into that industry, and people are loving us. We're taking market share in the performance horse industry. And we know that that is a tiny, tiny, tiny portion of what is western in the United States and in the world.

Right.

Having that market share is exciting. And, you know, it's giving us this. This foundation and we're looking at rodeo.

And we're going to.

Does that, you know, does that really work for us? You know, does. Is that a market that we actually cross over into? You know, and we didn't do anything to change the brand by moving over into, you know, that rodeo. I think what happened is just amazing circumstance is what we were creating and what rodeo was becoming. You know, bringing on influencers who took on more of a mainstream fashion into their wardrobes, you know, gave us less of what we used to call, like, trade show chic was something that I don't. We thought we would never fit into, you know, for that rodeo customer. And then, you know, as we started to grow and as the rodeo industry and the influencers started to, you know, modernize their style is how I would put it, that seemed to start to match up with what we were creating and what we wanted to be and where we wanted to go now to make our transition from performance horse, what I did on the marketing end was really focus on the overlap. So those customers to us were ropers and barrel racers, because those showed in AQHA and at performance horse shows. So they were seeing our product already, but then they were going to their weekend rodeos and barrel races, you know, with the knowledge of our product. So our marketing, then, instead of, you know, just scattering dollars all over and trying to, you know, hope something sticks, we really focused in on. On that group because we knew we were already hitting them on one end. So then if we could kind of, you know, focus directly on them, then they would move into their rodeo side, and then we could start eventually moving dollars over to that rodeo side for marketing.

So did that look like print media? Did it look like Facebook ads, Sponsorships, endorsements, specifically? Like, what strategies did you use to speak to team ropers and barrel racers when you did that?

So we did a lot of everything. You know, we. We did a lot of focus on. We, you know, we did some print ads.

We.

We took on some, you know, some indoor seas and some influencers.

I think a big portion was, you.

Know, our fashion influencers and really kind of getting product in their hands, you know, and really validating that our look was what they were looking for, you know, by seeing it on those pivotal people that, you know, that the rodeo side is watching, you know, having our product on those people and them going, oh, okay, well, I've kind of seen that here, you know, and now I'm seeing it on, you know, favorite influencer. Well, then that relates to them, and they go, okay, well, maybe that's something I want too. So, yes, we did some print to, like, back it up. I don't think that the print was converting, but I think that's, you know, that's just building brand awareness.

Right?

A lot of it was, you know, we did a huge focus on Facebook ads, and I'm glad we did it early, because that was, I think, pivotal in our growth of market share in the beginning. Because when Facebook ads in 2014 and 2015 were a lot cheaper than they.

Are nowadays.

So to get a conversion was a lot less than it is now for us, but it allowed us to, like, really grow that market share quickly and affordably. So, you know, we didn't have to put a lot of money towards it to get a huge gain. And then I think just in combination, we were doing all those things at once, you know, kind of hitting them from every end so that we really felt like we were everywhere, even though, you know, we were really only where they could see us. So ropers and barrel racers. So we kind of tried to just come at them from all angles.

Absolutely.

Let's talk about your Facebook ads for just a second because I know there's going to be a lot of people listening, whether they are wholesale brands, designers themselves, or boutique owners that we have listening. Everyone's talking about Facebook ads and it's something that we coach on quite a bit within the boutique hub as well. I'd love to know specifically what are some of your favorite ads to run and how many ads do you have running at any given time? I'd love to hear kind of some of your strategy behind it.

Well, I mean, that changes all the time, obviously. Budgeting changes all the time, just depending on what we're doing, what we're launching.

If we have new products.

I do focus right now. So initially I'm self taught on Facebook ads. So initially in 2014, when I was just learning, I mean, I was just kind of going for clicks.

Right.

I'm just.