Fledgling Firm Kicks Its Efforts Up a Notch to Get to Important Event
The office was in tears that Friday afternoon when the five friends realized a year of scrimping and painstaking preparation to launch their line of men’s clothing had probably been wasted.
With barely a week to go before a make-or-break trade show, the struggling start-up had simply run out of money.
“It was a nightmare. We needed about $50,000,” said Corretta Johnson, president of the San Bernardino firm.
It looked like the end of the dream for the partners who had known each other since high school. Without the exposure and orders a major trade show launch could spur, it seemed doubtful the small business would survive.
But the group, made up of Johnson, her sister, Kelly Cooksie, and their friends Angela Jones, Tim Davis and Kuownna Thompson had spent a lot of time fighting the odds.
The one-time welfare recipients, all now single parents ranging in age from 24 to 31, were working full-time jobs while trying to get their Everything But Ordinary menswear line off the ground. No one had experience in the apparel industry. They’d decided to start a menswear company after they had considered and rejected opening a nightclub. Johnson, as owner of Inland Auto Consulting, an auto broker service, was the only one with business experience.
The fledgling operation could afford only guerrilla-style marketing: creative and low cost, but labor intensive. The partners wore T-shirts emblazoned with the EBO logo to NBA basketball games and to Black Entertainment Television’s “Live from L.A.” once a week in hopes of earning camera time and an on-air mention. They called hip-hop radio stations every day to give what they call “shout outs” to EBO. And they mailed press kits to every talk show on television, pitched local media and hawked EBO T-shirts and caps at community festivals on the weekends.
Their passion for the product, their upbeat philosophy and their persistence paid off in local press coverage and an audience last fall with a local J.C. Penney Co. executive. His interest in testing the line--which had yet to be manufactured--set the EBO partners’ heads spinning. In the end, though, the corporate office rejected the idea as incompatible with its move toward storewide product standardization.
EBO’s experience is common among start-ups, said marketing consultant Sharon Berman. The focus often is more on action than strategy, the vision broad rather than niche-oriented, Berman said.
EBO’s founders might have saved valuable time if they had started with a strategic plan that outlined more specifically who they were targeting and exactly how they were going to reach them, she said.
“It’s not about paralysis by analysis,” said Berman, founder of Berbay Co. of Tarzana. “But you want to get the biggest impact for your time, energy and money.”
A well-thought-out plan might have included a focus on the smaller specialty retailers more likely to serve EBO’s customers. It also might have shown that as a start-up, the company was not prepared to service a national account.
Johnson said these are things her company--which has added Chief Operating Officer Suresh Bhatia, the former owner of an apparel manufacturer, and graphic designer Michael Kirk, former owner of a T-shirt screen printing company--is glad to have learned before it incurred the expense of trying to produce its clothes for J.C. Penney.
The focus now is on boutiques and smaller specialty retail chains, she said.
Johnson, in particular, has a stake in getting the company’s product to market in the most effective and efficient manner possible. Her small auto business was sharing space with the clothing company and providing much of its funding. All the partners and their family and friends had contributed, but Johnson had gone the extra step of taking out a second mortgage on her house.
“It feels like I have a noose around my neck sometimes,” Johnson said. “But I breathe deep and pray every morning.”
That Friday afternoon in the office, when it looked like their dream was over, Johnson wondered, “Where is God?” “I felt so sad,” she said.
Then Kirk handed her his cell phone. His girlfriend was on the line offering $10,000 on her credit card to help meet the $50,000 tab for the trade show, the hotel rooms and the full-scale advertising the group had decided on.
Soon the whole office was on the phone to family and friends. Johnson’s accountant chipped in $15,000 on 30-day terms. The company wrangled payment terms for its booth. Requests for higher limits on personal credit cards were phoned in, adding an extra $1,000 here, $500 there.
In the end, they raised the money they needed and headed for Las Vegas to try their luck at Magic, the international menswear show held Aug. 28-31.
It was worth the effort, according to one industry observer.
“For menswear, Magic is very, very important,” said Jerry Sullivan, editor of California Apparel News. The price tag may be high for some companies, but the exposure to the 96,000 attendees, including retail buyers from around the world, the press and the industry in general, is invaluable.
Although EBO was in an exhibit area five miles from the main convention hall, the company garnered notice through its advertising and press kits.
A large share of the money they raised paid for EBO banners at the Las Vegas airport and commercials on the airport’s television monitors and in the Las Vegas hotel rooms. Trucks with mobile billboards featuring EBO commercials and one of its ad posters circled the convention center and the Sands Expo Center where the firm had its booth. And some of the ubiquitous white limos that ferried attendees between the two facilities sported magnetic plaques featuring the EBO logo.
The buzz the advertising generated, and the more than 500 phone calls Jones had made to invite key retailers to the EBO booth, helped the company land a critical volume of orders.
“We did extremely well,” Jones said. “We didn’t meet our goal, but we did well enough to start production.”
The company’s diagonal-corduroy pants, its two-piece raw denim outfits and pants with a cell-phone pocket sold well. Stores from as far away as Switzerland ordered hooded sweatshirts and embroidered T-shirts and caps, she said. The first batch of goods will ship Oct. 30.
On the second day of the show, the partners got a big boost when they learned a $250,000 Small Business Administration loan had been approved. Much of the money will go to repay family and friends and Johnson’s auto business. But there will be enough left to begin paying on booth space and hotel rooms for the next big show in February, where the company will debut its EBO Exclusive line of pricier silk shirts and embroidered leather.
EBO, whose parent company is Kcapflow Inc. (“wolf pack” spelled backward, so named because several of the partners have wolf tattoos, a leftover from their younger days), has hired a national sales rep, polished its Web site (https://www.b-ebo.com), and is negotiating a December move to bigger quarters. The next big hurdle is paying for showroom space in downtown Los Angeles’ California Mart, which attracts buyers from around the globe, Johnson said.
Now that the company has some successes under its belt, the partners might consider pausing for a half-day strategy session and updating its business plan, perhaps with an eye toward larger private investors, Berman said.
That update could include steps toward the creation or fine-tuning of a database for the leads and market information the group gathered at the August trade show, she said.
The company is negotiating with a number of retailers it met at the show, including Anaheim-based d.e.m.o. Pieces from the company’s basic and designer lines, which sell wholesale for $10 to $60, will be available next month at Kool Wear in Los Angeles, Rebel in San Diego, Doha Fashions in New York and House of Tafari in Zurich, Switzerland, among other stores.
Making it to the trade show was a turning point for the company, in spirit as well as financially, Johnson said.
“We feel like now we can do anything,” she said.
*
We’d like to hear about your product or invention’s journey from mind to market. Write to us at Mind to Market, Business Section, Los Angeles Times, 202 W. 1st St., Los Angeles, CA 90012, or send e-mail to cyndia.zwahlen@latimes.com.
