WOD (Workout of the Day) Gear Clothing is an activewear/lifestyle brand with our genesis in the emerging fitness community of CrossFit and expanding beyond into other fitness disciplines (yoga, pilates, endurance, etc.)
I stepped into the fitness community of CrossFit, which I immediately fell in love with, in January of 2010. In July of 2010, just before the Reebok CrossFIt Games which are held in Los Angeles, I read an article in Forbes.com stating that CrossFit was the action sports industry to get involved in. Never having experience in the apparel industry, but being an entrepreneur and loving fitness and fashion, I began doing my research on what brand were within the CrossFit community. My research revealed that there were only a couple of t-shirt companies that were selling to this community. As a fan of Lululemon my vision was to be the Lululemon of CrossFit and to create a full line, catering more to women, that would be high quality products, made in downtown Los Angeles, that's affordable.
I shared this vision and dream with my creative arm, Scott Clauson, who is also my business partner, and asked if he wanted to go on this wild ride with me. He agreed and our dreams are becoming realities and our vision has expanded into being a brand is for women of all shapes and sizes and to be a brand that inspires through our inspirational messages on the inside of our women's crop pants. Some of the sayings are "Be Awesome","Love Your Shape"..."Encourage and Inspire" to name a few. We are very proud to say that all of our womens products are made in the USA, downtown Los Angeles to be specific.
How did you earn your first sales? Which channels are now generating the most traffic and sales for you?
Our first sales were made at a CrossFit competition in Orange County, CA where there were hundreds of people in attendance. We went into this competition with only four t-shirts, being very nervous and wondering how we would be received, but immediately calmed by the warm reception by the community and the sales of our items.
Today, we have several streams that generate revenue for us. We have online sales, a retail store, located in South Pasadena, CA, event sales, wholesale accounts all over the world, private label accounts, ambassador program and custom printing for CrossFit gyms.
Tell us about the back-end of your business. What tools and apps do you use to run your store? How do you handle shipping and fulfillment?
Today we utilize Shopify, as our e-Commerce platform, and recently added the Shopify POS system to assist in managing the inventory of our online retail sales, store retail sales along with our event sales.
We recently incorporated Leaddyno as an affiliate program for our 100+ WOD Gear Ambassadors who represent us all over the world. Our business, and the CrossFit community, is a very "community centric" model so utilizing our Ambassadors and empowering them to promote our brand and pay them a commission made total sense. We have experienced great success with this thus far. We are looking at incorporating a loyalty program as well very soon.
We currently do all of our own fulfillment and shipping but looking to outsource that portion of our business in July.
What are your top recommendations for new ecommerce entrepreneurs?
Be flexible with your vision...it will change along the way!
Be relevant to the community that you are selling to!
Surround yourself with a great team!
Lead by example!
Always have your heart to the pulse of what is happening!
Always be learning!
Be willing to risk!
Be kind to those around you!
Work with integrity!
Create a solid product that you are proud of! Because when all else fails, you can rest on having a solid product and that will keep you going.