How Our Flannels Will Hit $500K/Year After A Brand Pivot And Implementing Email Marketing
This is a follow up story for MuskOx. If you're interested in reading how they got started, published about 4 years ago, check it out here.
Hello again! Remind us who you are and what business you started.
Hi, I’m Brad Hoos, founder of MuskOx, a men’s flannel brand that’s on pace to hit about $500k in sales this year.
We make flannel shirts, although we started a little more broadly than that as an outdoor men’s apparel brand – which you can read all about in our original Starter Story While we still offer a few other products (hats, tees, really great quarter-zips) – we’re a flannel company at this stage.
We make buttery soft flannels that are built like a tank. If you like “buttery soft & built like a tank” please know that we ripped it directly from a recent customer review & we’re big fans of the language too.
Our customers are rugged men that love the outdoors and appreciate quality. We market to true alpha males who appreciate rugged luxury and often work with their hands as craftsmen, field guides, or outdoorsmen.
After fighting through low inventory challenges in the first half of the year, and logistical nightmares that the whole world experienced, we are poised to have a great finish to 2022 and hit a half-million in sales. Our recent success is anchored by a big pivot in 2021 when we cut back an extensive product line to focus on our very best product … the MuskOx flannel.
While eCommerce has been fruitful and will continue to grow, we feel retail is a mega opportunity for us.
Tell us about what you’ve been up to. Has the business been growing?
2022 has been a challenging year for many brands, not to mention one that decided to make a courageous pivot to double down as a flannel brand. Despite our inventory issues for the first ⅔ of the year, we’re on track to nearly double revenue and units over last year.
In fact, in September we topped our best eCommerce month ever by $20K! Much of this traffic and sales boom is attributed to planning for plenty of inventory, new innovative styles, big improvements to our website and creative, and a huge push into our main marketing channels, which are email, influencer, SEM, and paid social media.
Due to raw material & shipping costs, we raised our prices to (almost) reflect what our flannels are worth. Today, our best-in-class product is priced competitively in the flannel shirt market.
Something we are learning on the paid social media side, specifically on Meta (Facebook and Instagram), is that the Meta engine is built for brands to input as much data as possible upfront. This includes several rounds of creative and copy iterations, broader audience targeting than you’re likely to be accustomed to or comfortable with, and most importantly… meaningful ad spend.
In addition to paid social initiative, our email/SMS audience has surpassed 25,000. Since re-stocking our core flannel products in late summer ‘22, over 30% of WoW revenue has been attributed to email.
Oh, and I just have to tell the world that the biggest change in MY life was a 50% growth in my family when my wife and I welcomed our first child in August!
Our biggest lesson has to be to never run out of inventory – especially your flagship product that is at the core of the brand's existence and identity.
What have been your biggest challenges in the last year?
We couldn’t hide from the shipping, manufacturing, and logistical challenges in the past year. The very best flannel fabrics, patterns, and manufacturers happen to be in Portugal, and while we have great partners there, we could not avoid the rising costs and harsh shipping delays of ‘21 & ‘22.
One of our favorite (or maybe not so favorite) team hobbies was to check our boat’s GPS tracker to see if it left port, was making progress across the ocean, and had moved up in line when it reached the port stateside. These challenges began conveniently right after we had almost completely stocked out of our flagship products after a successful 2021 Holiday season.
We did have a great holiday season in late ‘21, where we got the opportunity to sell our products in a local downtown market. This drove a ton of in-person sales for us and while it was wonderful to see people touch, feel, and buy our products in droves – it put us in a tough spot for ‘22 as we essentially ran out of product. It turns out that being a flannel brand without flannels to sell is a tricky dance & it was extremely impressive to see the team continue to find creative ways to connect with the audience over email, social, and on our website. We did have other products to sell, but as a brand that had committed to move to be a flannel company, that piece was hard.
We have also made some structural changes. As CEO, I have begun to step back from the day-to-day operations and have watched a truly amazing team of pros knock it out of the park. That was scary being so passionate about MuskOx and our mission, but it didn’t take long to realize the brand was in good hands when I attended my first weekly executive report-out meeting. It’s been really fun to be able to guide the team, provide whatever resources they need, and mainly stay out of their way as they make things happen every single day.
What have been your biggest lessons learned in the last year?
This is probably pretty obvious, but our biggest lesson has to be to never run out of inventory – especially your flagship product which is at the core of the brand's existence and identity. In 2021 we decided to shift the entire brand to focus on flannels and had a monster holiday season. This monster holiday season led to zero inventory for half of 2022, and without such a gritty team scratching and clawing through non-flannel sales, we may not have gotten through it.
Luckily for us, flannel happens to be a timeless style. While we will continue to innovate in the space and improve our products, we feel comfortable having an outsized inventory position and never experience another dip that we may not be able to overcome. We have established our core products and will continue to replenish our stock over forecasts, and at the same time release some cool limited-edition products!
What’s in the plans for the upcoming year, and the next 5 years?
I think what excites the team is that we are still a new (re)brand and there is a TON of opportunity and market space to gobble up. We like our position in the premium men’s flannel industry, and our wildlife conservation mission gives us the fuel to grow every day… not to mention a great reason for our customers to support us vs. some other options in apparel.
We are also excited to expand further into retail. We feel we have the qualitative and quantitative data to say that we have a clear product-market fit when our customers can see and feel our flannels in person. While eCommerce has been fruitful and will continue to grow, we feel retail is a mega opportunity for us and has the possibility to not only catapult revenue in the next five years but be the majority of it.
To that end, our goal has always been, and will always be, to give back and take care of our planet while we are making the best damn flannel money can buy. We are continuing to find ways to be more carbon neutral, use recycled and sustainable materials, and give back as much as we can to the causes we feel strongly about.
This year, our goal is to give $15,000 to our partner the AWCC in Alaska, based on $10 for every $100 order on our site. The team is poised to up the ante for this goal every year, and I wouldn’t be surprised if we have given six figures to wildlife the next time you hear from me!
What’s the best thing you read in the last year?
My wife and I just had our first kid in August – so you can do the math and figure out that “we” were pregnant all of 2022. I read a bunch of baby books that gave me the confidence to let my instincts take over as a Dad.
While I’m always reading the WSJ and listening to founder stories (I love Guy Raz's How I Built This) book I did find valuable is the late Trevor Moawad’s Getting To Neutral.
The core principle is simple, as most of life’s most powerful lessons: what’s most important is what’s next so there’s no value in worrying about the past or the distant future. If you spend the time to process what happened without judgment and quickly return to a neutral mindset, you’ll be able to understand what you need to do next…and that’s important because what you do next is what’s most important.
Advice for other entrepreneurs who might be struggling to grow their business?
While it may sound cliche, it’s critical to (1) truly believe in what you are doing, (2) make the brand’s purpose very clear, (3) work your ass off, and (4) surround yourself with amazing people who share your vision, drive, and value. The belief and purpose will fuel you through challenging times and help you manage some of the annoying little aspects of starting a new business and the countless hours and days that are required to make things happen.
Buckle up, buttercup. Building a business ain’t easy and it ain’t for the faint of heart. But I’ve found wearing flannels through the process helps a lot!
Are you looking to hire for certain positions right now?
Of course! While we don’t have any specific openings, we are always on the lookout for rock stars to join the MuskOx herd. We like to keep possibilities open because you just never know what amazing new teammates you may come across.
As always, we’re not big on bluster or pomp & circumstance -- but we love people who think, communicate, and execute like mad. If that sounds like you, then by all means please reach out to me personally: brad@goMuskOx.com & we’ll chat and see what we might be able to make happen. And while I’m always open to different arrangements, I’ve found that having your full attention on something is super powerful.
Where can we go to learn more?
If you have any questions or comments, drop a comment below!
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