Episode 116: Keeping an Edge with BELLA + CANVAS Co-Founder, Danny Harris

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Right now I love BTS, and BTS is a Korean all-boy band. There's 7 members of this band, and I get a lot of my inspiration from them. I just think they're the future.

That's great.

Yeah, it's pretty crazy.

Love that.

It is. The colors, the fashion, The cuts, just the whole thing. I think it's pretty cool what they're doing.

Danny Harris started the company that would one day become Bella Canvas with his best friend Marco DiGeorge right after graduating high school. They soon became the largest contract decorators in California, and after creating cut-and-sew garments for companies like Banana Republic and The Gap, they made the decision to pivot the business to focus on manufacturing. Bella, as the company was known at the time, was an instant hit. People were hungry for fashionable women's product, which which at the time didn't exist in the wholesale market. After the success of Bella, they applied their standards to men's product and Canvas was born. Eventually, the two brands merged into Bella Canvas, which is now the largest wholesale manufacturer of premium apparel in the world. Mark Graham and I were in Los Angeles hosting Sessions, our one-day sales conference, and we had the opportunity to sit down with Danny along with Bella Canvas creative and marketing director Summer Berry. We toured their massive warehouse guided by executive vice president Chris Blakeslee, where they stock over 50 million units and witnessed the manufacturing process in their cut and sew facility, one of the most advanced and largest in North America, where over 1,000 employees manufacture and distribute the iconic brand many have grown to love. We talk with Danny about those early days and how they pioneered a movement toward fashionwear in the wholesale market. We discussed their ecological footprint, their dyeing, cutting, and assembly process, the influx of competition in the premium market, and how for such a massive company, they are able to stay nimble, responding to fashion trends in the marketplace, and how they retain their creative edge. Editorial note: in our discussion, the term PPD is used, which is BELLA+CANVAS' nomenclature for promotional product distributor. This episode is brought to you by Commenscube, the platform that powers your connected workflow, enabling you to process more orders and dramatically grow your sales. Begin your free trial now at commenscube.com. Here's our conversation with BELLA+CANVAS co-founder Danny Harris.

Whatever's fashionable in retail today is on the shelves at Bella+Canvas. Fastest-growing brand in the industry. 150+ styles.

How many now? How many styles?

Yeah, at least 150. I mean, we come out with, in some months, I know of some months where we come out with 2 to 4 styles in a month.

Right.

100+ colors, 50 million units in stock or more.

Right. Just in this warehouse.

And there's over 1,000 employees.

250. Colors.

Oh, thank you. All right, thank you.

The authenticator, Summer.

The Babydoll Tee started it all. First off-the-shelf fashion blank brand you could buy. Forward, fashionable, basic for women. You pioneered men's fashion blanks too. Women's were Bella, men's were Canvas. Looking at this tremendous growth and sitting across from you now, take us back to those early days and provide us some texture about what it was like to launch the Babydoll Tee. And get that into the market? I mean, now Bella Canvas is known for this, right? What were those days like? What do you recall?

Well, yes, I mean, it was really interesting when the information was shared with us. It was actually The Gap in San Francisco, who was the hottest retailer at the time, shared this information with us, and they said, listen guys, I know this is gonna sound crazy, but women aren't just gonna wear blouses anymore, or they're not gonna wear a men's garment, you know, which the— what people would say back then is shrink it and pink it. Yeah, you know, to make it for her. But women were going to want to wear a customized garment that was going to be specific for them. And at the time, that was the baby doll tee. And the baby doll tee was a 1x1 rib that would hug and contour to the body that was just revolutionary at the time. And we started in fact making these garments, these baby doll tees, because we were in the manufacturing business. My best friend Marco DiGeorge and myself actually started this company right out of high school. And it really was fueled by the entrepreneurial spirit. And that entrepreneurial spirit has led us down so many paths, but The opportunity to be able to design, which we felt better than anybody, the best baby doll tee, but then not just do it for the brands that we were doing it for, like The Gap or Quicksilver, Roxy, Oakley, a number of other brands, but to actually offer it as an off-the-shelf blank product for this industry, it was pretty groundbreaking at the time. And I'll tell you this, When we came out with it and we had our first wholesale distributor carry the brand, which we called Bella, they told us that it wouldn't work, that women's products were less than 1% of the total industry sales. And we kept hearing this, this time and time again with every wholesaler we met with. However, Golden State Tee said, well, you might be right, and if you are, well, we'll give it a shot. But they wouldn't put it in their catalog, too risky. They did it as an insert into their catalog. Today we're their number 2 performing brand, in fact, just behind Gildan Activewear, which was pretty phenomenal at the time considering opening the door into a marketplace that was predominantly kind of the old-school conventional brands like Fruit of the Loom, Gildan-Hanes, Steadman, Onida. And then we came in through this women's fashion, but by— with that fashion emphasis through our entire line— men's, women's, children, everything we do— the industry started to evolve, especially as the internet became so important.

Yeah, yeah. You were prescient enough to create not just a demand, but but a movement around this apparel. And BELLA+CANVAS now's on top. How do you, and you obviously have this incredible team, and I was just talking to Chris, we were talking about what's amazing is I said, no matter, I'm astounded by the size of this company and yet the intimacy of the culture that I feel. And I've talked to people and visited with folks. You were prescient enough to see that, create a movement around it. How are you staying on top of that today? Meaning you've obviously got teams that help manage that, but you're in the thick of this still to this day, you and Marco, right?

Yeah.

How are you keeping that edge?

Yes, part of his office is right next to mine. Well, you know, I would say that discipline, a lot of discipline, and being able to actually have the vision but then actually be able to execute on it and then be able to have it be, you know, authentic and true to who we are and what we believe by this whole concept of being different and But then to build this incredible team that, you know, believes what we believe, you know, like Summer who runs marketing, or Chris who's our, you know, EVP, or Megan who runs our distribution. It's— they are able to go so much further than we could have ever gone on, you know, on our own. I mean, for example, just from a marketing standpoint, even as Summer has me doing this, this podcast right now, getting the word out on ballot canvas, You know, what she has done through social and digital, you know, is just another example of being different, not going after things the conventional way. Because if we were trying to be like the other guys, we would just be trying to compete on some— the cheapest way to get to a t-shirt possible and then fight over pennies. But really, we do it in a completely different way.

Fast fashion— we've seen the gap close. In corporate and wholesale. I've seen it in my career. It's astounding now how fast retail trends are hitting the corporate wholesale market. You have obviously had a lot to do with that. How close are you to trends now in terms of speed, and what does fast fashion mean for Bella+Canvas to respond to that?

Fast fashion is as fast as we possibly can go for pushing this industry along, as fast as the industry can go. We are very creative here, and we have so many styles that we want to introduce every month. And it's a— it's almost like a debate room, if you will, because everybody's got their styles or their colors or these silhouettes that they believe is the right one, and sometimes even fabrics. But we stay disciplined and we try to keep it to 2 products every month. But by, by, by being able to offer that to the market, to be in stock, that's a challenge.

Yeah.

Because sometimes you don't know if the product is going to be received or not.

The inventory liability and the tremendous—

All those things. That's right. For example, we make goods right here in the USA. Not all of our goods, but a good part of our production is made here in the USA. We're able to react to trends and what's happening in the marketplace, I think, a lot faster than others, because it's being made in this building right here.

It's interesting that you constrain— creativity is about constraints. And you choose those 2 items per month. I think that's a fascinating part of the experience.

[Speaker] Well, and the seasonality has something to do with it. Color trends have to do with it. And then also certain fabrications. Some things are hot, some things are, you know, draping the way we want, or the dimension, or, you know, we're really big into sweatshirts and fleece and crop tops and all these things that have to do with fleece right now. Because so much of the way to express yourself through fashion today is through, you know, the traditional sweatshirt, just done in so many different ways.

How often are you rolling out new product to the market?

So every month we roll out new product, at least 2 styles each month, which is kind of an anomaly because I don't believe that anybody else in the industry does anything like this. Able to actually address a fashion that's relevant and important for that time in the right color, in the right fit, but also be able to have the inventory available at that time.

Yeah, that's astounding. The speed of that is astounding. There are so many premium brands entering the market now, so many of them. Now, you set the tone, the stage for this.

Sure.

A lot of folks are riding on your coattails.

Yes.

And now you have these folks coming in. How do you view competition like that now, especially these folks like we just interviewed Marine Layer, and they've said, obviously, respect, such tremendous respect for BELLA+CANVAS.

That's so nice to hear. I mean, we work so hard at what we do, and I mean, we inspire each other here just coming to work and being different and being creative. Yeah, we get very, you know, we see it all the time now, some brands, you know, that, that, that we love that are, you know, sold in all the retail stores, seeing them using our silhouettes as the brand that, you know, that they choose to represent who their brand is. I think is really cool. In regards to our competitors in the off-the-shelf blank space, you know, it's sometimes it's a little challenging or a little hard to see us, you know, inspiring them in regards to some of the different silhouettes or the drapes or the fits. And, you know, there's a lot of cost and time that goes into the product development, into the technical fit. And so the garment fits the way it does, and in studying it and fitting it on different body types, and then testing it to market, and then all of these things before we roll it out. And then to have somebody roll out what we put all that creativity into the next year and trying to just do it at 5 cents less or something like that. It's a little disheartening at times. Sure.

You have been at this now a while, staying on top and at the cutting edge. One of the largest, if not the largest, in the wholesale and corporate business.

Yes, we're not the largest, but one of the largest.

And many of your partners are these other large companies and clients. And yes, what's keeping you in the game? I'm curious about what motivates you still to this day.

You know, I think that just one, we love technology and the way we approach, I think, our whole manufacturing process. Yeah, the way we handle our dies, the way we handle our our manufacturing, making almost all of our goods here in America.

Yeah.

You know, if you were to buy a Bella+Canvas garment, it's either gonna say made in the USA or it's gonna say made with US components assembled in Central America. And that's pretty cool, figuring out a way to keep America working. Yeah. And then being able to still compete at a good price, maybe not the best price, but at a good price.

Yeah.

There's nobody else doing that. That's really special, I think, about us, but that innovativeness, investing in technology, investing in the American worker, but also investing in this whole social media outlet that we've been building here or in this whole design outlet. There's so many different ways that we're different, including our ecological footprint. The way that we're manufacturing our goods is so cool. It's so innovative in so many ways, but at the end of the day, you know, it's better for all of us.

Yeah, I'm really curious about this. What brands do you personally love and follow for inspiration?

Right now, I love BTS, and BTS is a Korean all-boy band. There's 7 members of this band, and I get a lot of my inspiration from them. I just think they're the future.

That's great.

Yeah, it's pretty crazy.

Love that.

It is. The colors, the fashion, the cuts, just the whole thing. I think it's pretty cool what they're doing.

And obviously then they're impacting their, their fan base, and you're watching what's happening, and that's affecting— it's interesting where you're picking up on trends. You've, you spent a lifetime honing this eye and sensibility for style and fashion. That's why I'm really curious about where you're drawing inspiration today. And you cross-pollinate from all of these other experiences.

That you have. That's right. You know, when you see a Korean band emerge into the US, there's just something magical about these guys, and I believe there's something magical about what we're doing here, and they're just inspiring me for the moment.

This has been encouraging for me to see the industry responding, and obviously, probably millennial movement, lots of things have impacted the way buyers' tastes have changed today. But the market has also matured, and I mean that in a good way, not a bad way. Matured, they're responding better and I think faster to customer demands out there. How do you feel about this now that buyers in a sense are moving the industry to respond, and the industry's now— this is something they resonate with, right?

Well, you know, I mean, it really is, it's wonderful to see because we've been marching to the beat of this drum for years. The baby boomer generation didn't appreciate as much as these other generations, particularly the millennials, of brands with purpose, brands that care about the environment and the way they do things, the way they treat their employees, how they manufacture their products.. And it wasn't just about, is it a penny less or not? As we saw a lot of times with the baby boomers, that's what we would see. It was just based on price. Another thing that the millennials, and I believe that all people care about today, because the millennials might have led the way, but I believe that everybody today, you know, really does care about brands with purpose and so on, but is the softness of our products and the way—

Yeah, why the hell are your shirts so soft, by the way?

Yeah, so in fact, what we do is we engineer it from the yarn. So for example, today, if you were to buy any sort of garment, typically in the retail space, for sure 5 years ago, they would achieve softness via a garment wash, an enzyme wash, a silicone wash. They would do these treatments as an after-product to a t-shirt to make it feel luxurious or nice. What we did was we actually addressed it from the yarn stage, actually from the cotton stage. Everything we do is heirloom cotton. That's all we use, which is a combed and ring-spun cotton, which is the softest and best cotton with all the impurities combed out of it, which yields the greatest yarn, yields the greatest knit. So that softness is engineered from the very, very beginning, opposed to as an after product. So by doing that, we had to change the way the whole manufacturing process, you know, happened— from a fabric, from a dyeing, from the way it's cut, changing machinery in the industry to fit our model. And what's really interesting today is that the entire industry, not just our wholesale garment industry, but the entire industry of clothing is changing to the way that we in fact pioneered for the manufacturing process. That's got to be— of a soft garment.

That's got to be tremendous feeling to be a part of that.

It is. It's cool, right? Yeah. I mean, it's, it's, it's neat to see the shift. It's neat to see the movement. But so many times who created it or who started the shift might not get the benefit of it as well. But BELLA+CANVAS has been able to inspire, but also be able to get the benefit of it, being that a large business today, the second largest in our industry.

[Speaker] Yeah, something that would be incredibly important to our audience, a lot of the PPDs, Private label. The fact that you, I know this is like, everybody knows this, but I think this is astounding as I'm watching your videos and I'm seeing this incredible product, the tearaway label. Just the aspect of that, that you're creating basically this beautiful blank canvas for folks then to go build their art. Obviously been doing that for years, but can you speak to that private label experience?

Well, I'll just tell you this, this beautiful blank canvas, right? Which is Bella, means beautiful in almost every international language.

Okay, I didn't know that.

And then canvas, you know, was basically, what an artist would use to express himself. And then, and that's the name of the brand, Bella Canvas. But now, after explaining that to you, I forgot the question.

It was about private label. So, right, and I'll ask it again. You know, the PPDs will be so inspired by this private label part of your business. We, many of us, some may not know, there may be a huge percentage that don't even realize that you created this brand around to be this beautiful blank canvas, the tearaway label, so they can go in and build their own art, right?

Can you speak to private label? Well, the cool thing is, is that Even if, yes, it is a tearaway label, which is, which is wonderful, but at the same time you can leave the label in and it, you know, it looks as if it's not a tearaway label. Yeah, so it's just, it's, it's just perfect for private label if that's what, what somebody chooses to do with it.

I want to ask you a question, entrepreneur to entrepreneur. I know that BELLA+CANVAS has been around for 25 years, or you and your co-founder started 25 years ago. How many years did it did it take you to get on the map? Because it feels like the last several handful of years, BELLA+CANVAS has been everywhere, but yet there's no such thing as an overnight success. You started toiling 25 years ago. How long did it take for you to feel like you really had hit the mainstream?

Well, we started 27 years ago. Oh, wow. 27 years ago, right out of high school. And I would say that We just made the products, we made BELT Canvas the way that we would want our garments to feel and fit. And we also knew that our retail partners would want garments this way. And then we also believed, and we didn't know, but we believed that our wholesale blank industry would want garments this way as well. And when we really started to see the shift happen, I'm gonna say it was probably 7 years ago. Yeah, about 7 years ago is when the unisex market was really taking off. Women were already in full swing. They were ahead. They're always ahead of us, and they wanted, you know, they wanted a nice garment tailored, coutured for them. And men, we believed, were gonna want the same thing, and Today, that's pretty much all he wants now is a nice soft garment that the shoulders are gonna roll the way he wants. It's gonna be side-seamed, you know, as you're leaning over, it's gonna showcase your guns nicely.

Just like the shirt I'm wearing right now, you know, it's like I wore this on purpose. I don't have any guns.

I love that Danny said, "Shit, it's not gonna showcase your guns." This is the Bella Tribeland.

I love the shirt. It washes really nicely.

Yeah.

So, so did you feel— so you mentioned 7 years ago, was there— was, say, 10 years ago, did you feel like you were growing nicely? Then all of a sudden, 8, 7 years ago, was it hockey stick, like overnight, where all of a sudden everyone was talking about Bella?

No, I mean, we were—

it—

there was an education process that had to happen. We had to educate the market on the differences So if you're gonna take a t-shirt and you're gonna put your logo on it, put your logo on something somebody's gonna want to wear. If you're putting it on a scratchy shirt that makes him feel not manly, well, the odds are he's not gonna wear it. And if you give it to a woman to wear that shirt as well, she's for sure not gonna wear it. But if you care about your brand and it's not just about price, and you want somebody to continue to wear it, probably become their favorite shirt so they'll wear it all the time, then Bella+Canvas is the choice for you. And I think that's really been the foundation, really, of our success.

Well, thank you. Thanks for your time, man.

Thank you guys. Thank you so much for this interview.

I really appreciate it.

Yeah, thank you.

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