 This is Starbsurfing. According to the late founder of the O'Neill Surfing Company, the three most important things in life are surf, surf, surf, though we admit he may have been a little biased. For most surfers around the world, wearing a wetsuit is a seasonal requirement. There are some months where you need it, there are some months where you don't, and some months where the decision gets very difficult. For example, in San Diego, the average temperature of the ocean in the summer only gets as high as the upper 60s, meaning it's too hot to wear a wetsuit, but it's too cold to go without it. But this gave Wes Gorbatok an idea. What would happen if you cut up an old wetsuit and sewed it into a pair of board shorts? And just like that, Driftline was born. Today we chat with Wes, the co-founder of Driftline, about why it's important for them to dominate the market in their own backyard, what he would change if he could redo his pitch on Shark Tank and how they got their board shorts into the Olympics. All right, welcome to the podcast. On today's show, we're talking to Wes from Driftline. Thanks for coming on the pod. Thanks for having me. For people who don't know, what do you guys do? What do you make? So we make patented wetsuit line board shorts, first ones to do it. And you were on Shark Tank, which is amazing. But what was the original concept? Like what problem did you see in the market? Obviously you're a surfer, and so what were you like? This is this is not working. We got to fix this. Yeah, I'm originally from the East Coast, so I'm like very well intuned with wetsuits. And then the summertime, like two months you have, you do board shorts. So when I moved out to California, it's not always that way. And the water is colder. It is. The Pacific isn't it. No, it's not. But there's this transitional time where it's like too warm for a wetsuit and too cold for board shorts. And I want to extend that time because I'm taller. I hate wetsuits. So I was like, there has to be a better way. So I literally went home, cut up an old wetsuit, stitched it into a pair of board shorts. I was like, oh, I got something here. And you knew it right away. Yeah, yeah, it was like a aha moment. And then at some point, so that transitions from this cool idea that it's working for you, you're solving your own problem to now deciding to start your own company. Yeah, that was a big jump because I'm not from the apparel world at all. So I was like, oh, this has got to be fairly easy. You know, just go to a manufacturer, low barrier to entry. But all of a sudden, I start talking to people in this space and you're like, they're like, oh, you have to have minimum orders and like. Yeah, demo queues. And what what year was this when you first started this? The idea conception was like 2017. OK, did you guys go to like Alibaba to find your supplier? How did you find your supplier? So I am an entrepreneur at heart. Actually, when I lived in New York City, I had like a surfing slash music blog that I did. So I used connections via that when I moved out here to work with someone who is out like a skate surf company. And I chatted with him one day and he linked me up with what's called a technical designer, which is someone that takes like your idea, your drawing, your physical product. If you had an example of that and they literally speck it out centimeters, millimeters, everything so that it's universally like spoken across any manufacturer. So then that guy helped me out and pitched me. It helped me pitch different manufacturers around the world. OK, and then the minimums are what? Like you have to commit to how many 500, something like that. Oh, way more than that for like neoprene because we do a wetsuit liner. So no one's going to be like, yeah, I'll make you 20. It's more like, hey, we'll do like a thousand with a good will that you're going to do three thousand in the future. And is the Jesus and is the hard part of that? Is it sizing? Like because then you got to pick the sizes. I'm assuming it's elastic, but it's still I mean, I'm seeing the size, this is a 31. Yeah. And so at the beginning that you have specific sizes like this. Yeah. So this is where it gets kind of tricky because this is the hard part of the payroll in general. It's like, you know, you're going to throw away a lot of smalls, probably an extra larger, but you still have to make them just in case. Totally. And guys are way easier than females. But even guys are hard because all of a sudden I'm looking at this Excel sheet that is you have hip, half hip, quarter hip. I'm just like, what is this? And I'm measuring it to myself and I'm like this skinny tall guy and now I'm finding out there's fit models and it's this whole thing. So what we had to do is tricky is our waistband because it's a board short and not a bathing suit is it's meant for harsher conditions. So surfing, body surfing, anything like that. So your waist doesn't, it shouldn't move. So our, the hard part here is that's a rigid sizing that goes around the waist. And then the rest is can conform to the body. So we had to do a different iterations, went through about 10 before we found one that can like generally fit most sizing, and then you kind of scale off of that. Okay. And then how expensive is it? So because you're adding this neoprene layer. Yeah. What does, what do board shorts cost today? 45 bucks? That's the crazy part. Like you can range. Like if you go to like Nordstrom, TJ Maxx or something, like you can range from like $40 to the high technical ones, like really, really crazy ones out there, which in my opinion are way over priced are like 225. Oh, wow. So it's a huge range. Huge range. Okay. And then adding neoprene to them, obviously spikes your costs, but I don't know who you're trying to go after at the beginning of, I mean, anyone maybe. And so what, what did you guys price it at when you first came to market? So that is a great question because when I first, yeah, it is because I consider myself a premium shopper. I like nicer clothing. I like things that are going to last, especially, you know, fast fashion was big when I was in New York City. So I'm seeing all these things I would buy from like an H&M and then like after one wash, it'd be disaster. So I'm like, well, I'm not getting that. So I want to use quality materials, but I want a price point that reflects that, but it's also consumable. It's like a really tough thing. So we found that normal board shorts, someone's willing to pay about 75, 80 bucks. Like that's a pretty solid number. And then neoprene shorts, which exist on their own, range from like 40 to 50. So we originally priced at like 120, but that was just not right there because we're like a newer brand. So then we just backed it down to about 90. Okay. And that's where we started with our OG pair. And then how did you guys first go about marketing this thing and getting the sales and all that stuff? Friends, family, word of mouth, just like we did a launch party at like a local brewery that I had like no friends with in San Diego. Yeah. That's fun. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. And then that goes well, that goes super well. I think like the alcohol is flowing. People are pumped on it and then obviously it's close to like the beach. So people are like walking through then that word of mouth kind of hits and it's like summertime. And we're doing small batches at that point. So like when I say small, like that 500 to a thousand, it's funny that number sounds like a lot, but you break it out between sizes 28 and 40. And all of a sudden you're like, oh, that's and then multiple styles. It's like 40 units per size per style. So that's not a lot. It's not a lot. And you're probably at that point recognizing what the bangers are or what sizes people aren't so you can sort of simplify. And are you, did you raise capital to this or was it just like savings and sales to fund future growth? Self-funded. My business partner, he's in sales and then went to graphic design school because that's his trade. And then I'm like finance marketing guy. So like I've been in this world forever and like raising capital. So I kind of knew what it would take to start the business. And I, you know, me and my partner, Greg, we're like, we have the capital. It's more like, do we see the three year vision for this? So we knew what we took, like would take. And once we put that money in, it was kind of like put down, pedal to the gas, go. And are you guys still working at the time? Like full-time jobs and stuff. Okay. And then at some point, when did you think you had something? Like, when did you think you really, you were like, I think this could be a full-time thing. So for me, because I've started a couple of things, like entrepreneurial, like you, it's like when you know you have something, it's kind of clicks. Yeah, it's pretty obvious. Yeah. So I started a couple of things. I'm like, oh, this is cool. The grind is there. But I'm like, there isn't that like, aha moment. This, I'm, you know, like anything else. There's the grind is still going to be there. But when I got in the water with these the first time, I'm like, oh, like we have something. And that took off like from my own, I don't know, I could value it myself. So then when I would speak to people, they could hear how excited I was and then they would touch it and try it. And it just kind of like spread like wildfire. Okay. So which is good. You're getting the signals on the market. That's the thing. Yeah. And then at some point, does the Shark Tank reach out to you or do you guys reach out to them? So kind of a combo. So I was doing a bunch of street fairs and like beach events with surfing and stuff like that. Every single time someone come up, you're like, dude, you got to go on Shark Tank. Are you on Shark Tank? And we actually had a friend who was on it, got pretty far. And at a certain point, you can like submit other brands and they submitted us without us knowing. So that's pretty cool. All right. So you had a friend network doing that. Friend network. And then let me just go back to this for the fairs that you're doing. Yeah. How much are you guys making in sales at these things? Is it like a thousand a day? Is it a little bit more all over the place? So like local ones, because we're trying to own our backyard. If I can say, hey, yeah, I live right down the street or I'm a local guy. I mean, we could do like five grand a weekend. That's pretty good. Yeah. Wow. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. That's awesome. So it like for a small company that was just cruising. It's just time equity at that point. That's super fun. Yeah. Yeah. But you also get in the feedback. Those things are so important for the feedback. Oh yeah. Yeah. And then you find out what you're doing wrong quick. Yeah. We still have people like four years later who are like, oh my God, I saw you that first time and they expect me to remember them. Some people kind of do, but it's cool to see people remember us from like those first days. It's wild. And so they put you in the hopper, let's say for Shark Tank, and then they reach out to you? Yeah. So they reached out to us and we're like, hey, we suggest that you submit like in a letter to go in an application. So I talked to my business partner and like, dude, do we do this? Like we've been putting something off like this for a while because I've heard it's a big task. There's a bunch of San Diego companies that have done it. I actually used to box with some of the guys who were on it from SandCloud. So I was like, you know, is it worth it, blah, blah. And the answer is like, yes. You know, if you can get through it, but it's again, a lot of work. So we submitted through the process and all I was told is just be honest, like don't try and fake it. Don't try and fake your story. Just be honest the whole way through. And that was like our mission from day one is just like be truthful, truthful to ourselves and to them. And once you know that you guys are going to be on it at some point, do you guys start thinking like, OK, what shark do we want? If there's a deal here, you know, this is who this is the person that sort of has the ability to put this whole company on fire. Are you really targeting somebody? Yeah, so they do a pretty good job of making you feel on edge until you're literally on like screen and filming because even the week before when they're doing their final due diligence, they're like, just so you guys know, this doesn't mean you're officially on Shark Tank. And like they would say that the entire way through because they want you to make sure that you're still giving it your all. So like it wasn't until about like two weeks ahead of it, filming that we're like, all right, we're going to be on Shark Tank. And we were doing all of our numbers and we knew all that like anyway. I imagine you're stocking up on inventory. You sort of know the marketing that goes along. Apparel is a little tricky because it's like four to six months. Right. So we didn't know we were even going to be on Shark Tank or air or air. That was a thing, right? So it's like, do we over order or do we not? But yeah, those two weeks before we kind of like dialed in, we're like, OK, these are the sharks we want to go after. This is what we're going to do over order. We did not over order. OK. Like we're pretty conservative. OK. And just got smoked. Like mistake you're saying. Yeah. Big mistake. Huge mistake. Good to know. Good lesson learned. Lesson learned. But here's the other side. There's probably people who did over order, who didn't sell their product. Yeah, hard to get right, right? Hard to play offensive defense. You get a pick in that situation. And so when you get on, who did you want to? Who were you hoping to make a deal with? Robert and Mark were guys just because I know Robert's invested in other like more familiar with the space. Yeah, he's also like a big lake life guy. Wakeboard. So he knows the product. And then Mark Cuban has a, you know, not only is he Mark Cuban cool factor athletes, but like he also has tower paddle boards and a couple of brands as well. So definitely those two. And when you got on Mr. Wonderful is like out right away. He was out right away. That's kind of, I guess you don't really care. Right. But he, but they, you know, it's two hours of filming for like eight minutes of time, right? That's crazy. By the way, crazy. Yeah. But the cool thing is all of them said, like this is a really well made product. All liked our valuation. So like he was out right away, but giving, he gave us like the nod of approval that like our valuation was good and our product was good, which I feel like was an awesome like vote of confidence for the other sharks. Totally. Great for airing too. Oh yeah. And then what did you guys want? Like what was the number you were trying to get? Yeah. And the percentage? This is the tricky part about Shark Tank is because like we are still a young company. We were young year when it aired and then, you know, year and a half ago when we actually filmed. And it's like we didn't want to give away too much of the company yet. And our valuation was pretty spot on. So we wanted 150,000 for 10 percent. And then we went on, they told us to adjust that a little bit. So we eventually, I think, just asked for like 100 K for 10 percent, which is like such a standard thing when you go on Shark Tank, which I would suggest if there are any other people looking to go make it a little bit more sexy if you're trying to do that because like what would he mean? Like more dollars, more dollars, more equity. If you really want to make a deal, go like I'm going to give you 20 percent for 500 like do something bigger because 10 percent for 100 K is what everyone says. We got lucky that we even aired with that because that's such a like Cubans, the reason why he was out, he's a billionaire. He's like, I'm not going to get in bed for a hundred thousand dollars. He's just like, that's a great product, but it's not for me. I need like bigger stake in the company if I want to make true change. Sure. And then Robert almost comes in. You guys almost had to deal with him. Yeah. He goes back and forth a bunch of times. And then Damon joins the party. Yeah. And then Damon backs out and then he comes back in, which is pretty funny. Yeah. And then ultimately you got, you guys said, no, you turned down Robert. One of the things they kept saying, like I know Mark said this around like the niche, like you just it's just like a two, two small of a product, which is one product. Where are you today with the company? Like in terms of like your different products? Is this still the main thing? No. Other things? OK. I'm actually wearing one of our new things. That's dope. Like a sun protective shirt. Yeah. Yeah. That's awesome. That was a really cool learning experience for us because I went in very specifically with like we're going to make shorts and different shorts for different athletes. It started out as a surfing company, which they think it's like a small market. I mean, I live at the beach. The amount of different board shorts I see on a daily basis is literally it's insane. And capturing that market, just even a percentage of it, we are tiny. But like that's a true company right there. But I see what their point was is that it's so specific to a specific set of people. So we branded ourselves now as watermen rather than just surfers. So all of a sudden we're making products for Lake life. Like people on boats post wearing your shorts before wearing your shorts. Now we're going to start making utility shorts for that don't have a liner for active watermen who are going fishing, who are going more lobster diving, things like that. So it's it's expanding. So it's still very technical stuff, but it's a little bit more waterman based versus just surfing and just like kayaking. But you guys listen, you took the advice seriously, which is great. And then what happened after Shark Tank in terms of sales? What happened at the company? I imagine you sold out. Yeah, like that first day I was on the phone with my co-founder because he was traveling and we're like, oh, it's airing. Like this is cool. And all of a sudden like it took a second for a Shopify to like catch up. And then it was just like insane numbers. Yeah. He sold out of I would say like 60 percent of our inventory that night and then within two weeks in one night. Wow. OK, then two weeks were pretty out completely. Yeah. Are people buying the product in places with no water? Are you seeing like, OK, like we sold in every state. Why? What are they using it for? Do you think we still get people are like, yo, is this good for running? And OK, it's not. It's a water sport product. And that's why we're still going. But it's not bad for running. Maybe they're just cold. Right. OK. Neoprene doesn't breathe. OK. It's meant to keep you warm. Like that's the functionality of the actual like textile. Maybe they're cold plunging. That's is that even a product line? Is that a thing? I mean, if you wear it kind of defeats the purpose, probably because you want the true benefits. But yeah, yeah, we've sold in every state. And I think like Minnesota, the month and a half that they get to use it in the water, they're not going to go like wakeboarding in Lake Minnetonka and Minnesota in a wetsuit that sucks. So they're going to use these, brave it for a little bit, enjoy themselves. And you're still wearing shorts. Maybe that's the pitch. Maybe it's like they just see the value of they're not going to sort of spend on a complete wetsuit. Right. But this gives them some layer of warmth, I guess. Yeah. Maybe that's like the median that they like. Yeah. That's interesting. And so where is the company today? How many employees do you guys have? Do you like what are you guys raising capital? Did you raise capital? So we're still going super lean. OK. So it still mean my co-founder. And the reason why is because we've just really tried to make it like as lean as possible, but as automated. So really what we do is we handle the marketing and we handle a lot of that is through our athletes and then we handle operations and design. And then the rest of it like shipping, all that stuff is just like out with other people handling stuff like you guys are sponsoring athletes or what is that? What is that like? I took a completely different route in the way I wanted to advertise. So back when like paid ads was going huge. We didn't actually put money to paid ads until about two months ago because we would sell out of products like without having to do it, which made sense. Well, would I put money to an ad without doing that? So the way I would do paid ads in my world is I would find athletes that had large YouTube followings, large Instagram followings, create contracts with them and they were longer term contracts in which they would just kind of wear stuff consistently because I knew their audiences had crazy like loyalty. Yeah. And so in that setting, are you doing a Rev split or how are you paying them? Or is it really it stuff? So like give them a code, get a percentage of all sales. Yeah, everything like that. And then who creates the content? Do you work with them on the content side or is it just them? Yeah, I kind of give them like a framework, but the reason why people follow them and watch them is because their style. So as long as my product integrates into their style, I don't care how they talk about it as long as they hit our value points. And that's been working well. Oh, yeah. That's really smart. How many athletes do you guys have? We started like we have like five big ones who crush it for us, but we have probably 35 now. OK. All sports. Like what? So it's not what else besides surfing is it? Wakeboarding, water skiing, slalom ski, kite surfing, foiling like every water sport. Yeah, in our shorts are actually in the most recent Olympics. The guy who is filming the surf contest in the water is wearing our shorts. That's actually pretty cool and pretty smart of an idea. Yeah. That's really interesting because like so what we've actually done is tried to target. There's so many athletes out there. Like I consider myself an athlete, but I'm nowhere near going to be on like tour of any professional level. Sure. But our first athlete's name is not yet. Give yourself some time. Yeah. Our first athlete's name is Jackson Lebsack. He was actually the filmer for Jamie O'Brien, who's a J.O.B. like one of the biggest big wave surfers in the world. So he was filming for him and we gave him shorts. So he was always in the water in the North Shore of Hawaii and he created his own YouTube channel and blew up. So it's like the people that support the huge guys are more willing to work with us than the actual huge guys because we don't have that money. That's pretty amazing. Or it sounds like not yet anyway. Getting there. That's such an interesting hack. Yeah. Really smart actually. It was a cool way to kind of game the system. Yeah. With also getting loyalty. So right now I'm working on building our own Instagram which I haven't focused on a long time. Like it's been slow growth. All I care about is their Instagrams are blowing up. Sure. And now you're trying. So how do you do that? How do you switch the focus? Maybe you partner with them for content. You share the content on their. Yeah. Or you just clip their content if they're creating YouTube channels. That seems pretty easy. Now there's collabs through Instagram and TikTok is like obviously everything's going like gangbusters. So yeah. We see that on average depending on the companies on TikTok. If like something goes viral it's almost like every impression is worth like 50 cents. It's actually kind of crazy. Yeah. Most people will buy from TikTok way more than from Instagram. Yeah. And the product pricing doesn't matter much. Obviously it can't be like a couch but for something like a peril we're starting like those numbers are bananas. Yeah. And you start to see like the reach like I'm seeing so many people in our specific you know to take the guys from Sharktanks like their niche our niche is big on TikTok. Like the surfing world is like very TikTok focused. It's those like for lack of better words the pretty boy surfers who ever wants to live through their lifestyle. It's like you throw a pair of shorts on them. Everyone's like yo what's that guy wearing? It's kind of it's so influential. That's actually really smart. It's like affiliate marketing but better. Yeah. And the thing is you have like you have like a chill person you're working with right. It's not like some diva. Most surfers are pretty calm cool happy to support. Yeah. If you're a bro or if you're like a homeboy whatever like they're happy to support and work with you. Yeah. And so you're not dealing with some agent or some asshole. But the flip side of that is that you have to make sure that they aren't too chill because like those guys are like yeah I'll get the content and it wasn't right vibe. And I'm like well we need the content. So it's it's kind of like that middle ground where you have to get someone who is willing to put in the content hours. But also you're right not too much of a diva. Yeah. Where do you want to take this ultimately? The company or the company. I mean so one of the biggest criticisms we had on Shark Tank was we didn't have our patent at that point. We were patent pending. So we have a patent now. That's right Robert brought that up and said it's going to take you a long time to get there a lot of money blah blah blah and then more money to like fight it. Yeah. We got after three months after we aired we got our patent which is crazy that that happened like so quickly. It's been like four years. So like it's been a process. But yes now that we have that there's a lot of potential because I can only I can grow our brand and other products and all these things for Waterman. But also now we have the opportunity for other people to license out our product if we choose to do so. So like we can work with bigger brands use their supply chain as long as their values are aligned with ours and make sure hey let's do some sort of collaboration with you guys. Yeah partnership. Any of that in the works. Not yet. I've like we've gotten a lot of people who've reached out to us but it seems to be more and more I don't know trending these days I see a lot of apparel companies that are collaborating with other brands to make like specific lines. I think it's just because people are running out of ideas but I want to find someone who has the same like synergies with us and then just get in with them. Anything you can do in cycling. Probably. Like I think triathletes is probably a really cool avenue. Yeah. But yeah I don't know yet. My family is big into like cycling and triathlon so we'll merge in that way because those guys are super technical high end so yeah it's there. And you spend a lot of money to get the right stuff. Oh yeah. Because you value it you know what it means to you. Yep. And so that consumer is a little bit easier to I would imagine you make for them they get it it's an investment and so they look at it differently. Yeah. Will you raise capital or will you stay will you stay lean. I know I'll raise capital. You will OK. I don't know you're hearing up for that now. Kind of. I mean we're always kind of like ready. We're pretty tight with our numbers and we kind of know where we want to go. I think it's more. I didn't want to try and especially you see all these things these days with people raising money so early so quickly and then all of a sudden they don't people are raising money today without a product. And it's like I wanted to create true value in the market and be able to showcase our value rather than start early. So now that we have our patent we have our athletes we have proof of concept we have growth we're year over year growing every year. So it's like OK now I'm willing to be like this is our background. You know do you want to help us scale and go to the future. Then yeah let's do that. What would you do with it with the capital. Oh I need to know about the team. Yeah OK. What would you hire over the first first few things you would do. I need some marketing. I need someone to handle like the marketing from like the athletes point of view. Like I want to build an army and I want to find the right people. I want to manage that content. Have an app to manage all that content. I just don't have the time to do that anymore. So that would be the first place to go. Like an app to manage what does that mean. So create your own community. Yeah there's definitely like a bunch of apps out there that like content creators can put their content in there then auto pay them when like when the affiliate code is used like it's really streamlined versus if you try to go lean like manually paying athletes on a specific date like that can get really tedious really quickly. Are you still in touch with any of the sharks. No but we've had they've all technically bought a pair which is cool. Yeah that is pretty cool. Yeah well look man what else people what can you tell people what else can you tell them where they can where they can shop where they can buy your product follow you guys. We have consistently we have new content coming out we actually have our whole product line set until 2024 right now. So like these actually come out next week. The shorts. Yeah and then we have different styles that come out obviously because our drifties our wetsuit line board shorts are the best sellers by far. They just like continue to crush. But now we're making we have windbreakers coming out soon that are specialized for like boat folks and we have our UPF shirts. So like I'm constantly innovating. We're also trying to make more technical apparel for athletes. So not just like hey this is a you know windbreaker for everyone it's more like specific for athletes on doing different things. So that's kind of what we're doing right now. Kite surfing too right you say. Oh absolutely. I got a buddy of mine who runs he's actually gonna be starting this summer. Every every year he does Nantucket. He's got a whole operation Nantucket the vineyard. That's so sick. I'm gonna put you in touch with him. Please do yeah. Yeah we'll see what he can do. What a fun gig. I mean unbelievable hard to believe and does it every day it's like this thing. That's the kind of interesting part going back to real quick about you said a price point. We started out with surfing but surfers are inherently and I'm the same way a little bit more strict with their money like what they spend it on and it's you know stuff is expensive and it's just kind of like a different demographic but you get into kite surfing you get into like I do a lot of prone paddling which is like the 18 foot boards that you're like paddling on those things are like two grand and you go to kite surfing you can spend like five grand having like a $90 a pair of shorts it's a no brainer cause it's gonna help with chafe protection and warmth. Like that's an easy upsell for them versus the guy who's like you know been in the same boardies for the past 20 years. So it's a different world. Thanks for coming on the podcast. I appreciate it. Appreciate it. Check them out. Thank you. Thank you so much for the support and making it to the end of the episode. If you haven't already please do review and show the episode with your friends. 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