Truck Gloves
Looking for high quality gloves for a low price?
Pick up a pair of Truck Gloves and get the ultimate bang for your buck!
To find out more behind how Truck Gloves got its start and what’s in store for the future, Josh interviews Truck Gloves co-founder, Brett Keyes
More about the episode…
Josh sits down with Truck Gloves co-founder Brett Keyes. How many times have you dropped a good chunk of your paycheck for a pair of gloves only to have them rip on you a month later? With the rise of Truck Gloves this will become a thing of the passed. Andy Rosenberg and Brett Keyes are the heros behind Truck Gloves with one mission; Provide and outrageously exceptional product that will hold up when put to the test without costing you an arm and a leg just to stay warm. In this week’s episode of the RY Outfitters Podcast Keyes runs us through what it was like to build up this company from square one to where Truck firmly stands today.
Have an opinion? We want to hear it! Join the conversation and leave a comment, check out show notes, and get all the links mentioned in this episode below.
Links/resources:
- Check out Truck Gloves website
- Go Truck yourself and pick up a pair of Truck Gloves
- Follow Truck Gloves on Instagram and Facebook
- More about Truck Gloves
Show Notes
- What made you decide to start Truck Gloves?
- “Well, in 2014 I was still employed with Black Diamond Equipment but not for very long, I was laid off…I was in good communication with a friend and ex-coworker of mine, Andy Rosenberg and, we decided to have coffee one evening. Through the course of our meeting together, Andy unfolded this idea to me that he had been cooking up behind the scenes and his brain…There’s not a lot of direct to consumer in the outdoor industry but, it’s a growing business model…”
- Did you always know you wanted to get into product design and the outdoor industry?
- “Yes and no. I decided to go to college out west as soon as I graduated high school, in Portland, Oregon…that was always really just a draw for me…It wasn’t always super clear but, I knew that if I put my head down and kept going in a direction that felt natural and good I would land somewhere fulfilling…”
- What were the first steps of building Truck Gloves?
- “We had a couple weeks on the ground here, meeting everyday and boiling down some of the basic ideas…then it was really starting with the most basic pieces of what it means to have a business, creating email accounts, looking at the designs, writing a mission statement…I would say by week three I was on a plane to Asia to start looking for a factory…”
- What were you looking to create when you were making these gloves?
- “The way I like to define our gloves is they’re well made, we put a lot of attention into the materials we use and the craftsmanship…we really paid attention from the inside out…We really sat down and asked ‘what is function?’, ‘where do things break?’, ‘what are helpful features?’…”
- Was there anything in particular that surprised you when focus testing your product?
- “With the M1 and M2, I wouldn’t say anything caught us off guard. I would say one of the things that was most surprising to me was the level of quality that these folks were used to, and we were all of a sudden coming to the table and exceeding that quality, especially relative to the cost that we were offering…”
- Were there any mentors who helped you build Truck?
- “Well you take queues from people all the time I think. MY whole philosophy in life is you don’t get a ton done as an individual. It’s a lot about team efforts, waking up everyday, and understanding there’s probably more that you don’t know than what you do know. But, I’ll give a shout out who from a very young age had me picking beans in the bean fields of New Hampshire for summer work…”
- How did you make sure your manufacturing process was as sustainable as possible?
- “I think every business is challenged with what sustainability might mean to them…we’re obviously incredibly lean, we’re small and young. But, these things do make a difference to us…another nice piece that comes out of your direct to consumer model is we don’t have a ton of packaging, we don’t need a ton of packaging…We ship to a warehouse and we ship our items directly to consumers…we just installed solar panels on our sprinter van…sustainability can mean a billion different things and we’re always trying to be more efficient…”
- What has the growth looked like since you began?
- “We are lean. We don’t have a big budget and we started off with just a couple models in 2015. We’re now ending 2017 and our product line went from 2 models to 8 models total…There’s always something in development that we’re looking towards but, with the addition of those various new models that we added on we’ve seen more customer interest…”
- What does an average day at Truck Gloves look like?
- “Really I live two different lives. I’m either in Salt Lake where I work from home. Wake up, coffee of course is the first thing, hop on the computer and chip away at emails and communication. Then, that’s where each day will take a turn. Am I going to be sitting down with photoshop and doing something for the website, or am I going to be working on a new design or concept, or am I going to be answering phone calls…If I’m not in the office, the sprinter van we decked out saw both coasts of the US last year. That had me quite busy traveling around to all the different ski resorts in the US…”
- What are your biggest fears and how do you manage them?
- “Obviously. I’ll wake up in the middle of the night with something that’s stressing me out but those are circumstantial…in terms of an underlying foundational fear, I can’t say that I have one. Failure, of course, everyone fears failure…None of these situational stresses really jeopardizes overall business success…”
- What would you say have been one of your biggest mistakes?
- “What I’ll describe here I don’t consider a mistake but a lack of bandwidth. What I’d like to see us do as a brand is promote ourselves a little bit more to non-industry segments. What I mean by that is we really ingrained ourselves and the brand into ski school, ski patrol, and mountain ops…I think this is one of the challenges with a direct to consumer brand, really becoming more recognizable to to non-industry end consumers…”
- What’s the best part about running Truck Gloves?
- “I wake up everyday and I’m still on cloud 9 realizing the fact that this is mine. What I get to do everyday is working on something that is ultimately stamped with my signature. This is ours, this is our baby… I’m just incredibly proud when I go out luckily I get this positive feedback…It’s a great feeling to have that end customer boiled down in one quick statement ‘these are awesome gloves’…”
