Hear how Mike West, the founder of 686 Outerwear, launched his snowboard brand just out of college, with no formal design experience.  Listen as Mike describes his past mistakes as a “blessing in disguise.” Hear him express the importance of curiosity, listening, and remaining humble, as an entrepreneur.  Additionally, Mike encourages aspiring entrepreneurs to not wait for the perfect time to start a business.

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Top Takeaways from this Episode:

(1)  To become an entrepreneur, put yourself out there and take a chance; be prepared but don’t aim for perfection.

(2)  It helps to be a regular customer for the types of products that you’ll sell as an entrepreneur.  This helps you understand the needs and desires of your customer base.

(3)  Starting out, you can do a lot with a little. You don’t need much staff to start a clothing business.  Much of what you do can be outsourced to other suppliers and freelancers.

(4)  Counterintuitively, business challenges and mistakes can be blessings in disguise.

Transcript:

John Benzick:  Oh man, in this terrific episode I interview Mike West, the founder of 686, The Technical Snowboard Outerwear Company. And one of my favorite parts in the interview was when Mike emphasized a key decision point of entrepreneurship, which is the importance of not waiting for the perfect time to start a business, and learning to be comfortable, or courageous enough, to just get started and to take the leap.

Mike West:  Putting yourself out there, and maybe going out and learning it firsthand is okay. You will never be ready and everything set to go. You have to be ready but you won’t have everything perfect. I would have never been able to be where I’m at without taking a chance. And you will give excuses to yourself about why you can’t do it, but if you want to try it, try it. And if you don’t, it’s fine. It’s not for everyone, believe me. There’s so much pressure right now to be that guy. You don’t need to. But give it a try if you want to.

John Benzick:  Greetings product launch rebels and welcome to the Product Launch Rebel Podcast, brought to you by venturesuperfly.com, where we help double your entrepreneurial courage, even if you’re in a sea of self-doubt. Please visit the Venture Superfly website and check out the contact page to join our mailing list.

John Benzick:  Today I’m stoked to interview Mike West, the founder and CEO of 686 Outerwear for snowboarders. He started the brand just out of college with no formal design experience. When you go into many outdoor retailers across the country, you’ll see 686 prominently displayed. In fact, our family is a happy customer of 686. All of my three step kids, even Nadia and Pierce, wear 686 when they’re riding on the slopes, keeping them warm and dry and stylish to boot.

John Benzick: Mike also launched Matix Clothing, which is a lifestyle apparel brand stemming from the skateboard and surf culture of Southern California. Mike is a partner in North America’s largest action sports and outdoor warehouse fulfillment center called NRI Distriubtion, where they help distribute leading brands like Electric Eyewear, SurfTech, Outdoor Research, Black Diamond and many others.

John Benzick:  And finally, later this year, Mike is planning to launch a new direct to consumer apparel brand called Westwell, which will play in the larger menswear and soon womenswear markets. Stay tuned for that. Mike’s a really creative force, that’s for sure.

John Benzick:  Without further ado, let’s say high to Mike West. Mike, thanks for being here and welcome to the Product Launch Rebel Podcast.

Mike West:  Thanks, John. Thanks for having me. When you list all those things up, I don’t really realize that things are on my plate, but it’s been a great ride. Whatever I can do to kind of tell my story, I’m pretty stoked to do that.

John Benzick:   And I listed the abridged version. You’ve got a lot more things going on, I know that. That’s for sure.

John Benzick:  So Mike, there are three segments in this podcast. The first is called Give Me The Basics, which helps set the context about your companies for our listeners. The second segment is called Let’s Get Personal, where we get into some of the more personal topics about what it’s like to start a business. And the final part is what I call Tell Me How, where we’ll get to the heart of the matter, on issues that aspiring entrepreneurs want to know now, to help move them forward.

John Benzick:  Mike, what do you think? Are you ready for some questions?

Mike West:  Let’s do it.

John Benzick:  Fantastic. All right, here we go.

The Back-story of Mike’s Entrepreneurial Journey

John Benzick:  Mike, let’s start at the beginning. Tell us the story. How did you originally come up with the idea to start 686?

Mike West:  I think a lot of my ventures and just what I do is really based upon the feeling, the gut feeling, and kind of being the customer myself, right? Back in the day, I grew up in Southern California, my whole culture was based upon skateboarding. Street skateboarding, it was this kind of movement close to Southern California and Venice Beach particularly, where just this uprising like angst and kind of all the things about what we couldn’t do, into just this form of expression in the skateboard.

Mike West:  I grew up kind of as a sponsored skateboarder. You know, back then, you weren’t looked in the way that you were looked today. People were like, “All those guys on the side, what are they doing? They’re creating trouble.” For me, I was a shy kid. That was my way of actually getting my expression out, so that eventually led me to meeting people, and being in this kind of artist kind of creative culture. That was a part of the mid ’80s, and I transferred that to snowboarding in the local mountains, and became instructor there. Just did that while going to school at the same time.

Mike West:  That was my foundation of just finding myself, and my hobbies, and things I was just really passionate about. That’s how it all started before I actually started quote unquote business, which I do today.

John Benzick:  Right. And you started with the outerwear component pretty quickly, right? You didn’t just start with T-shirts or things like that.

Mike West:  Yeah, more or less, initially I just spoke about it is I didn’t initially have any design experience. I hadn’t gone to school, I learned from someone. What I did, I guess understood, and when you’re young, you really didn’t understand exactly those sets because you didn’t have the tools you have today. You know how to assert eyeing something. When you have an eye like, “I like that, I don’t like that,” and I learned how to maybe communicate that on more of a formatted process.

Mike West:  When I was going to school, the few things changed me in terms of hey, the instructor told me, “You could actually do something for a career and in aspects you like to do.” It’s something as simple as that today is really hard to understand. You go to a prestigious school back then, you pay a lot of money, and you have to essentially do what maybe your parents were expecting you to do, which is become a professional. That was not necessarily my mindset back then.

Mike West:  I learned the things I liked to do, which is basically back then was moving, being in the mountains, and thought about how I can center myself around that, and I thought about creating something, and I just did it by a speaker, and he told me to do this and do that. I got into … I actually did create a hat, a beanie, a T-shirt and a pair of jeans first. The second year I went to creating technical apparel because I realized that you can only get so far in protecting yourself from a T-shirt and a hat when you’re in the mountains.

How 686 Clothing Got Early Traction

John Benzick:  Mike, talk a little bit about what was so unique about 686 when you started it. Apparel is such a tough industry. How did you cut through the clutter early on amongst so many outerwear and clothing brands that were out there?

Mike West:  The interesting thing is we have so much transparency nowadays. Back then, you only knew what was in your little proximity of not even watching your phone, and handling phone. It’s more what you knew locally. I think that’s something that I knew really first-hand b