How We Got Here // Unabridged

By Joel Hebert, co-owner

My apologies if this might be a bit wordy, but we believe sharing the details of our journey will help you understand our deep appreciation for our clients and the level of care we’ll bring to your account.

Accidental Business Owner

I entered the workforce with two degrees and plenty of drive, but I was very much the classic unhirable dreamer…Not that I didn’t do a good job, quite the opposite, I overdid it at every stop and was so ambitious at times, I genuinely got bored when I felt my bosses were moving too slow. Additionally, if I wasn’t learning or progressing fast enough, I’d take matters into my own hands and move on to the next opportunity. Naively I didn’t understand anything from my bosses shoes and ended up bouncing around to 7 different places before UNITEE. My #1 goal out of school was to become a creative director at a reputable agency. My last stop before UNITEE, I rose to creative director and was in the process of being vetted to be a partner at a reputable (now-sold to a publicly traded company) ad agency and marketing tech startup. This would seem like a huge success to most. On top of that, the owners were incredible mentors and treated me like a brother… and although I was paid well, I poorly managed my income to say the least (Dave Ramsey would’ve likely classified me as broke and screamed at me on his radio show had I ever called in). On top of the financial issues I caused for myself, I was never content with the work itself…again unemployable dreamer personality type rearing its head into the equation.

Southern Apparel

In Jan 2012, at 31, desperate to figure it out and considering other industries, I woke up one day and decided to create designs as a way out. I began to sketch and sketch some more. By the end of the year I created a website and a clothing line of light-hearted, southern-inspired graphic t-shirts. Thanks to the modern digital tools of the time, startup cost excluding my sweat equity was around $450. I subbed out the customization to a screen printing shop in Nashville that specialized in clothing lines. I’d fill up a backpack, go to a live event, sell them in an hour then buy more. The line sold well enough to where I began exploring what it would take to print myself and purchasing my own equipment.

Complete Ignorance

The outlandish designs garnered attention from day one. Several articles written about it and a local news story. The problem was, at this point I had ZERO business background. Properly leveraging all of this earned media was not something I was yet equipped to do…and when I say ZERO, I mean I honestly didn’t know what the word entrepreneur even meant. I started at a much lower level of overall business understanding and awareness than most. However, something lit inside and I began exploring all the cliche’ business books…4 hour work week, The Emyth revealed, a Warren Buffet bio,. I got hooked on learning about business at the ripeful age of 31. Keep in mind, I prob had no idea what half of what I was reading meant past a surface level, but it didn’t matter at the time. I was hooked. My local bank manager, James Harmon, was kind enough to give me a unsecured loan for 3K after seeing a news story and saying this, which I’ll never forget… “I was inspired by your story and I believe that you’re going to make it”. Relatively speaking, that 3K he signed off on, might have been 30 million at the time.

I setup screen printing equipment in my apartment. My dad helped me assemble some tables to work on. I hired a few high school kids to print while I went to my day job. At night I would work on designs and pack online orders. On the weekends, I would sell anywhere I could: Out of a backpack at football games, flea markets, community festivals, crossfit events, even at a fashion week in New Orleans. Anywhere I could find a crowd. We also partnered with several local boutiques. We were essentially what I understand now is getting our hands dirty and finding a product-market fit. Overall, sales were very hit or miss especially at the broader events with the exception of one category

Our first setup, we converted a 2nd floor apartment kitchen into a screen printing area. We ended up flooding through the floor. Landlord never threw us out though!

Close friends and family unconditionally supported the dream with time, and encouragement. Southern Apparel would’’ve never survived a month withouth them! Literally too many positive stories to mention.

Fitness First

A few of my close friends convinced me that I had to start selling at crossfit events. They talked about crossfit like it was the second coming of TBD. They tried to talk me into selling at one of these fitness events, called Ragin Games which was a regional crossfit competition. I was a lifelong exercise junkie, so if anything this would be interesting. In order to make this happen, one buddy generously gifted me the vendor entry fee as a sign of faith in our operation. We sold out that day. I joined a crossfit gym, the next day and was completely hooked. On top of that, we shifted many of our weekend events to fitness competitions throughout the state.

Lady Luck Calls…Wearing Jorts

In addition to success at the live fitness events, we started to pick up some traction online. Sales online were often better than in person. A few months in I got a call from a large online retailer that offered a national rollout through their drop shipping program. More random opportunities came into the fold at that point. We were carried in a few streetwear boutiques in Western Europe and our garments were placed in a few independent films. Influencers were beginning to take to notice and helped garner attention on the popular social media platforms at the time (Instagram, Facebook). Our dream was coming true!…or so we thought.

2016 - FAILURE

Three years in, despite some of the successes, the company as a pureplay clothing line was beginning to look like a financial failure and a hustle that was draining every ounce of my energy and soul. On top of that we had accumulated multiple cease and desist letters from much larger fish. They were essentially feeling threatened and protecting their turf. The online retailer dropped us because we didn’t supply enough inventory to make it worth their while. Forecasting designs at a broad range of events was also eating our lunch. We eventually accumulated around 30K worth of inventory, I couldn’t get rid of fast enough. On top of that, we somehow managed to flood my apartment we were producing all the shirts in. Having a pressure washer and industrial chemicals in your dining room will do that. At one point, the tenant below us knocked on the door and let us know that her roof was leaking. So if our financial situation didn’t sink us, surely my landlord at the time would crucify us for almost destroying his building.

From cease and desist letters, to being fired from a national distribution deal, to bad equipment deals, to inefficient inventory management…what we were doing wasn’t working…Southern Apparel as a clothing line and aspiring lifestyle brand had to be rebuilt.

1 in 4 businesses fail in the first year, and that number is nearly 50% of businesses by year 3.

It was looking like we’d be living proof of this statistic. I think the only that kept me going was my hard-headedness and desperation to have this eventually turn the corner.

THE ANSWER

I naively went for broke and decided to buy a commercial embroidery setup at a 29% interest rate (seriously!) thinking that offering retail-level headwear inhouse would help us grow. This was a disaster! My business problems were too deep for any piece of equipment to fix. (Lesson here, equipment doesn’t sell, human connection does). However, the poor embroidery decision was actually the best dumb decision I ever made. In order to pay off the embroidery machine and survive all the other

2017 PIVOT

Our first major growth spurt happened because we had a crazy idea on how to resolve having so much unsold inventory. I wanted to create a kiosk that would allow spectators to design and print shirts and spit them out on-demand. That idea was great but with no engineering, or computer background and little capital. This idea was probably not something I could assemble myself….So I opted for the next best thing. Specifically, instead of carrying premade designs to events, why not collaborate with the event – and install a popup that can print custom items on the spot for that event? This strategy was more interesting and it helped the event organizers save $ on inventory cost. It also helped with daily sales, because printing live is more of an experience than offering premade selections at a booth… The first time we tried printing live, we collected nearly 6 figures worth of viable clients leads at a single event. As we abandoned the clothing line, our custom business grew from there. My fiancee’ at the time, Tanya also stepped in to help at that point. She was a teacher by trade but a masterful and natural trader and client nurturer…the perfect partner for me both in business and life! Things took off. That Fall we went to a weekend screen printing school to learn some technical training and then moved into a new house that included a 770 square foot building next door. We then bought an automated press and jammed it into that building.

Our arbitrage and early breakthrough came by changing the way we did live event selling. We thought we could bring blank garments and a press setup to an event and print them there on the spot, offering a unique customization experience to event-goers. It was a game-changer. In our industry, many live print now but at the time, there were prob. less than a handful of people doing this.

Tanya, my amazing fiancee’ (now spouse and amazing mom) left her promising teaching career and began contributing her talents full-time to the business and things began to really turn the corner.

2019 - All In!

By Jan 2019, I was working all day as a creative director, Tanya would manage the clients during the day, then she and I would print all night most nights. My boss at the time offered me partnership in the agency but things were picking up somuch with our business I had to make a tough decision. Feb 2019, we went full-tim

On the front-end side of the business our clients seemed to really respond to Tanya, the artwork and the way we went about solving our clients apparel issues. Despite the positive strides on the front end, we were severely undercapitalized compared to our competition and our equipment was dated and difficult to optimize. In fact, our automatic equipment was so old, we almost went out of business trying to get it to work properly. We ended up hiring an industry coach to help us work through the technical issues and teach us how to manufacture a product the right way

This was our first automatic press. Our first two attempts at automating the physical screen printing process was a genuine failure.

After moving in our house, we quickly ran out of room to the point where every single room in our house was being used for storing inventory or production. It got to the point where everyone in our family was working even our 8 yr old at the time.

Rock Bottom (AGAIN!)

Unfortunately, by mid Feb 2020, it cost us so much to self-renovate during the slow winter months that we were down to $850 in our bank account..But things rapidly picked up Halfway through March 2020, we had our best month to date. We were so busy, myself Tanya and our small team at the time worked 43 straight hrs just to get a big job out that month. Then COVID hit. All our gym clients shut down for 60+ or so days. Many of them permanently. In fact, to date it is estimated that roughly 25-30% never fully recovered. To make matters worse personally, a hurricane hit our house and caused 6 figures of damage. Everything seemed to hit us all at once. Like many other Americans, it took us years to recover financially from these series of events and we weren’t exactly in the best position walking into the pandemic.

Going Enterprise

2019 marked a pivotal year for us. We decided to trade our 770 sq feet + most of living space at that point for a huge commercial facility. The building wasn’t exactly commercial ready as it was used for primarily storage from the previous tenant. Simultaneously, we embarked on a third attempt at automating our operations. After two failed experiments, we invested a substantial six-figure sum into Automation v.3, hoping to finally get it right and streamline our processes. While we were physically and mentally exhausted, we also seized the opportunity to rebrand. Southern Apparel, once fitting, no longer reflected our growing client list and evolving values. We chose UNITEE, a name that better embodied our vision, aspirations, and clients we serve.

2021-To Present

So, we took a leap of faith and invested very early in cutting-edge digital printing technology. It was a risky move, but we believed it was the only way forward.

After COVID, although we were beaten down, like many of you out there, we did not quit. We decided to get smarter. We realized that the only way we would grow into a stabile, lasting, impactful organization, was to prioritize growth and get better. What we did to get us to this point wasn’t good enough to get us to the next stage. To build a future-proof business, we needed to evolve.

Today, UNITEE routinely serves great clients in every state and 100s of different markets. We’re in it for the long haul and hope you will join us on this exciting ride together!

The third attempt at automating our printing press has worked out better than the first two attempts.

A comprehensive growth plan backed by a solid foundation allowed us to grow and expand as we had originally envisioned.

Lessons Learned The Hard Way

There are many lessons to pass on from our journey. Honestly, too many to list here. Most werelearned the hard, painful
way. I certainly don’t consider myself qualified or successful enough to give advanced guidance or advice with the exception of one thing.…no matter how hard it may get, don’t quit.

That’s literally the one thing that separates so many people. One person shows up everyday for 10 years, the other quits after 2. The person at 10 years hits a positive tipping point. Because the thing is, if you stick with something long enough, you will figure it out. It’s literally mathematically almost impossible not to. The odds will swing in your favor. New opportunities will come and where you were once not ready, you’ll be better prepared to serve and everyone will benefit.

Overnight successes, serial entrepreneurs child prodigies that have it figured out from day one become folklore legend. By contrast, UNITEE’s journey has been anything but easy, and that’s precisely why we’re so confident in our ability to deliver exceptional service. Our experiences have shaped us, and we’re eager to apply those lessons to your benefit.