Rooted: What Streetwear Gets Right About Belonging | Jaime Bacalan Ep. 13

0:00Chris Cruz:This Nashville streetwear store refuses to sell. Their staff receives unusual training focused on relationships and not selling products. That one choice teaches a powerful brand lesson. People don't just buy what you sell, they buy how you make them feel. Rooted built a business by prioritizing connection over conversion. Founder Jaime Bacalan, inspired by his entrepreneur mother, created this unconventional approach when he launched Rooted eight years ago. The cafe at the entrance is a strategic design decision. It creates an intentional pause, removing sales pressure and encouraging conversation.

0:32Chris Cruz:Great brands think about the first five seconds of experience because first moments frame how customers feel about everything that comes after. More than a retail space, Rooted is a hub where products, music, and values connect people. It's a blueprint for what the future of retail can look like, smaller, more intentional, and more human. This is Anatomy of a Brand, where we obsess over what makes brands tick so that yours never settles. This is episode 13 with Rooted founder, Jamie Bacalov. Tell me about your hat. I know about it a little bit, but I don't even fully know the backstory behind this.

1:05Chris Cruz:But it's becoming, it's gaining momentum. And a lot of people don't know, what is the hat you're wearing right now? Yeah, so this is a Nashville Stars hat. Okay. Which doesn't exist. It's not a team. It's not an actual team yet. Yeah. I think they're slowly getting to that point where there'll probably be an expansion team here in Nashville soon. For Major League Baseball? For Major League Baseball, yeah. Okay, which is a big deal. For sure. So have some friends over there, a guy specifically by the name of Will General, who's led their marketing efforts. Okay. And we just kind of took to each other in previous projects.

1:40And, yeah, it's representative of, like, former Negro League Baseball.

1:46Chris Cruz:I thought that. I thought that when I heard it, I was like, I think that's a Negro League team baseball. Yeah. And so really cool to see. you think they're gonna you think they're gonna come here i think i think nashville is gonna be them and probably salt lake or you know maybe raleigh something like that i think nashville will be you know it's up it's becoming it's coming a sport a sports city it's already kind of been that but you're you're seeing it more and more most definitely i think the bridge zone also announced a massive expansion wmba potential that's right new titan stadium coming i mean we're we're kind of on the brink of getting everything that's everything maybe a super Bowl, maybe a WrestleMania, maybe NCAA Final Four, maybe a college football playoff, who knows.

2:25But specifically with the National Stars, super minimalist, black and white, kind of the origin of my brand. And so it kind of aligns in terms of that. Obviously, we've made some changes in the last year or so, but it just kind of speaks to my kind of minimalistic brand identity, black and white, simple. Yeah. Yeah. I love that.

2:48Chris Cruz:So let's use that as a segue into what you do with Rooted. So tell me a little bit of the way you would describe Rooted. Like talk about it, the brand. You can talk about the products, whatever you may be. But I would like to lean into what you obsess about when you think about Rooted. If I asked you, what do you, as the brand owner, founder, leading this thing going forward, going through the ups and downs of it, what are you obsessing about with your brand Rooted? And you could talk about product and all that as well, but I'm just interested in that part. Yeah, I think it goes back. I think it goes back to maybe when I was a little kid, it started with product, you know, growing up in Chicago and the Jordan era, collecting as many shoes as possible and, and clothes weren't necessarily, you know, for me back then.

3:38I mean, you know, when you're 12 to 15 years old, it's, it's, it was all shoes and then basketball shorts and a t-shirt. and I think that like obsession just kind of rode with me through the year so starts with product and then I think there's you get into the business aspect and you have to kind of transform from this consumer mindset to like a business owner so I think the obsession is less about product now even though obviously that's a kind of the backbone of what we do but it's more driven by how we can make somebody feel. The obsession is what people say about us and how people feel about us when they leave, whether that's coffee, just an interaction, you know, where they saw somebody wearing a rooted t-shirt, whether that's, you know, maybe it is a product, maybe it's something that they bought, but it's, it's the obsession is how we make people feel.

4:33Chris Cruz:Is there anything you guys intentionally do based off of that obsession? Is there anything that you're telling your team or telling your, like you have a cafe, which we'll get into that, but you, is there anything you're telling the people that are walking the floor that is, that leads into that? Yeah, most definitely. I think it's, it's, we tell our, it's, it's kind of ironic. We call our, our staff salespeople, but we tell them not to sell. So, you know, we tell them, Hey, we don't, we don't want customers in the wrong items. We don't want, I don't want to sell you something. And then you go back to your friend group and then, you know, all your friends are clowning you because then that becomes a bad experience for you.

5:13Uh, the only thing that we're trying to sell is relationships and sell community. So if we can make a connection with you, whether it's, it is through product like shoes or your clothes, or maybe it is something a little deeper, you know, music lyrics that you hear over the, you know, the playlist that you created as well. You got Exactly.

5:32Chris Cruz:Playlist as well. It's yeah, it could be any of those things. It could be colors. It could be we've connected with people on smell. You connect with people different ways. I think the obsession is connection. And how can we use that connection to, you know, to grow a little deeper? we we've always been about connection and education so if somebody comes in and you know they don't know what we do maybe they start off with something you know light maybe it's a stussy t-shirt that's 50 dollars 45 dollars and then over the years we start people start to graduate into more mature brands more mature price points yeah etc but it's it's not because we're pushing them that way yes we're introducing them to things and showing them things yeah but It is all about, you know, the trust built through connection.

6:22You're walking with them in the stages of life.

6:23Chris Cruz:You've built that initial like connection, not even around. Let's make a connection for long-term customer acquisition. You're not even going like, oh man, this is the lifetime value of this customer. You're I'm sure those business metrics are there, but what you're forward thinking is if we can build this deep connection relationship, we can walk with you through the stages of your life and maturity, and we will have a product in our space for you. And when that connection happens, it's a natural fit. Yeah, I think that's important because there's still a business to it, right? Like we still have to buy properly.

6:56We have to buy products that people want. But our buyer, Ray, has done something really nicely that I never really thought about. But he actually picks customers by name in his head when he's buying. He says, like, I'm buying for this person.

7:14Chris Cruz:He's very specific. with the, where in our branding world, it would be like the ICP, the ideal customer profile, but he's actually, he's got a person. He knows he's like, this is them. This is what they think, what they feel. Is there anything else he's talked about when he's doing that buying? I think it's, it's, it's, how can we, how can we, you know, cater to that specific person and then their circle or like who they can influence, um, as well. So again, it's just, it's like multiple degrees of connection. We may not know that person, but when they come in like, Oh, you know, my buddy, John sent me over here.

7:48And because he had this really cool shirt, I don't want to buy the same exact shirt, but I want to do something similar.

7:54Chris Cruz:Cause I really like that trust from his friend to you guys and that relational kind of like equity there that he's gone. I'm going to go where he went, but I don't want to be exactly like him, but I want to have the people that sourced his stuff to source my stuff. Most definitely. The number one for us, like, and I think for most brands, the number one salesperson at Rooted is the customer, you know, to other customers. So I think that's, you know, I hate calling them a customer. It's like a friend or a client or it's deeper than like. yeah it's deeper than just exchange of money yeah like give me your credit card give me your cash it's it's more about you know this kind of connection you know some of my best friends are either in you know where i train jiu-jitsu yeah or which you train at the same spot yeah it's a fun connection that's where you and i first connected exactly at jiu-jitsu exactly or it's somebody i met in the shop you know so i it's wow that my whole circle revolves around those two things.

8:51I love that.

8:52Chris Cruz:So, okay, let's go a little bit, a little bit back now. Yeah. Rooted is eight and a half years old. It's always been a retail experience, but there was a time where you were getting rejection after rejection to help start this thing. But then you had a moment where you figured out a connection with somebody that helped push this thing forward. Talk to me about the rejections and what you did to keep going after those rejections to get to that spot and what were you trying to do? Yeah, I, I'm, I'm fairly stubborn, persistent and persistent. I love it. Um, I was, you know, this is always, I've always wanted to be an entrepreneur.

9:29My mom was an entrepreneur, um, kind of started from nothing, built her way. And then, you know, we kind of, me and my brother kind of took that and ran within our own directions. Um, I think between seeing that and you know just I guess my stubborn nature those mixed I knew I was going to do something for myself I was in the corporate world I was in the military wow but I knew that I wanted to do something for myself and I told myself in the corporate world whatever I did next was either going to be fun or it was going to be rewarding slash fulfilling fortunately I got both with it's kind of like the trifecta you know um but in terms of like rejection no didn't really mean much to me when people said no so we built we built it didn't make you question yourself it didn't make you like you know what maybe i got the wrong idea no i don't think so i think it made me hungrier for let's go you know getting whatever was next um so kind of rewind a little I was working for a pretty large global insurance broker.

10:40I was over in Northeast territory in New York. So I would go up there. I would go to New York City twice a month. And I would work, you know, seven to five. And then I would go back to my hotel. I worked in the financial district. Go back to my hotel, change clothes. Then I would go into like the Lower East Side. I would go into Soho. I'd go into Nolita. I'd hit all these neighborhoods. And I would just network with like people at different brands, people at different boutiques. and I stumbled across, you know, somebody on a weekend at a store called Extra Butter and made a connection with those guys.

11:15And, you know, those guys, one, they're in New York City. Two, they probably get hit up by, you know, 10 to 20 kids a month. I want to have a sneaker store. I want to have a boutique like yours. And they're probably serious from a passion standpoint, but they're not, like, serious. And I was pretty serious. Wow. You know, and so making connection with them and what made you more serious than the others that were just by passion?

11:41Chris Cruz:What was the thing that was different for you than the people that are knocking on doors because they're just passionate? Yeah, so passion and then fueled by stability, too. So I was in the corporate world. Yeah, I was making my own way. I own my own house. You know, I kind of knew what I wanted. I'd seen different things. I learned a lot of business principles and reporting and analytics and all those things. you had a mind to you that a lot of passion around especially like in the creative space they'll have this passion for creativity and they'll think business is i want to attach it to that but then they don't have that developed side of thinking about business and recognizing you got to have that so you had that going in some of those conversations obviously it's grown but you had some of that initial like i'm thinking about this a little bit differently not just from the passion standpoint 100 we there i mean a 10 page business plan was built oh wow um before we even had a name of the business.

12:34Um, and then we started, you know, kind of pulling things together. And then of course, connection with extra butter, which, um, led to where we are today. Uh, one of the hardest industries on planet earth to get into, by the way, like the barrier to entry is why is that? Uh, just the, the level of rejection from brands and how they protect their brands. So brands like Nike, Jordan, Adidas, very protective over how so like talking, like

13:01Chris Cruz:Like someone's like, hey, I want to start a sneaker shop. And they're like, they come and sit with you and they're like, hey, I want to do a boutique men's or men's unisex sneaker streetwear store. The first thing to go, buried entry is too high. Tell me more about what you're talking about. Yeah. So it's because everybody, everybody that, you know, is into that world that has a business mind or has a passion about it wants to get into that space. Okay. Uh, it's, but it's like, there's one slot in 5 ,000 applicants, you know? Um, and is that real? Like, are they limiting the amount of options that they're like a Nike, a Jordan, some of these other streetwear brands or sneaker brands are limiting their options?

13:42Chris Cruz:Are they actually doing that? Absolutely. I mean, we're even limited as a eight and a half year old brand, you know, so we're established in a pretty, you know, a pretty bustling, you know, small metropolitan, uh, secondary city, but on the top of everybody's radar. Um, and I, if I went to Nike or one of our partners today, we would have a really tough conversation. Hey, I want to open a second store in Franklin, or I want to open a second store in, you know, another outskirt part of the city. It'd be a really tough conversation to get going again. It's every, it's not just every brand or every person gets rejection.

14:22Every brand has to work through that as well. So it's pretty.

14:25Chris Cruz:So the barrier dentistry is harder. What gets somebody through? What is the thing that makes the difference then? Yeah, I think it's probably tenacity. Okay, just keeping at it. Yeah, keeping at it. But that's not even enough. Most times it's typically a connection. Okay. So kind of going back to the extra butter thing, these guys, you know, 30 years in the business, family shoe stores, boutiques, the whole nine, they were instrumental in that. And then we had, you know, so did they open a door for you guys to get access to a supplier of some form or an actual brand itself? Yeah. Is it like a middleman too or ever or in some some brands, but the big the big ones, you know, the Nike, the Adidas.

15:07You're dealing with Adidas and Nike, you know, headquarter people directly or salespeople, sales reps, marketing, etc. It's it's not only that we I just needed to get into the door, you know, so I needed them. to open that door. And once I got in, in the door, I knew that I was going to be able to,

15:28Chris Cruz:how did you steward that relationship over the years? How did you make sure that you stayed in good standing with a Nike, with an Adidas, with these other brands that were trusting you with their label, trusting you with their brand as you, they can't control how it shows up and rooted, but they have, how did you steward that? Um, I think it was just about vision and just kind of sharing the vision. Uh, when I think when an outsider and I don't, that's not in like derogatory I think somebody that's not in the industry looks at rooted specifically or any other boutique that you're familiar whether that's kith or extra butter yeah kith and all these guys that are bigger than us which is just about everybody yeah we all we all started we all started as we all start as like these micro community marketing agencies for the brands right so we take their brand and then we put our spin on it because Nike is amazing as they are Adidas is amazing as they are a six or new balance whoever is is as good as a job that they do in building product and telling stories they can't tell it at the micro level it just it's not as you know genuine or as fascinating so we take the big story maybe the corporate story of the big campaign and we chop it up and then we put our spin on it and then we can connect with the rooted customer specifically and then nike or adidas or a6 or new balance any of these guys they they get to use that you know collateral those assets that we build to say like oh yeah like we're definitely authentic because we're we're embedded in the community you know so that you become actually uh a moment they're proud of yeah absolutely this is where we show up okay so let me ask you another question here about rooted at its identity and its vision.

17:14Chris Cruz:So rooted stands out as a street rare brands focused more that lifestyle street focus culture, um, in that like hype beast world in a very, what I'll call Americana city in Nashville that has this kind of almost Western honk. You got the honky tonk up the road, like country music awards. You have this different taste and positioning than what the kind of the general identity of Nashville is per se. I know that there's always subcultures and layers. Has, how does that positioning helped you? How's that positioning hurt you? What, like what, what is your take on some of that? Yeah, we, uh, we've, we were really protective over the brand still, still are maybe a little more loose today just because we've kind of, we've cut our teeth a little bit, but for, for me, it was always about bringing something to nashville that was very brick very salvage wood very edison light bulb especially at that time yeah it was just brown very brown shoe city um it was about bringing something that kind of stuck out like a sore thumb and it was it was more based on oh we're not trying to we're not trying to evolve what nashville has we're trying to evolve what the world is doing right now, whether that's Paris or Tokyo, New York city, LA, Miami, Chicago, wherever.

18:35We're going to do what we want to do. I'm going to do what I want to do. And if that doesn't fit, that's okay. And maybe it comes off as a little pretentious. It comes off as a little standoffish.

18:48Chris Cruz:Have you had, have you had that experience where you got people told you that, or is that like something you're like over the years, like, oh, are we coming across this way? From a physical standpoint, I wouldn't want it any other way. I want people to say, I'm almost scared to go there. Okay. And then when they take the chance to go there, then this really harsh, white, elevated-looking space is kind of softened by the connections, the relationships. That was the whole plan. That was always the plan. the plan was always to soften this harsh gallery style white box world with you know with the way we treat people when they walk through the door so that you have this like and for people who don't know or i've never been to root it they they don't know what i'm talking about when i say like that yeah they know when i when i say the honky-tonk but like the idea that you guys are very different than every other nashville store even where you are currently which we'll get into in a little bit the the white the white the architecture inside of it is so different it's so clean lined it's also got some real unique museum feels to it like but did did that did that did that hurt the business were you and us ever in a spot where you're like man this market isn't the right market for us or was it always like no there's a group here that's underserved and we know that they exist here?

20:10Yeah, I think it's, I think it's that. I think it's, we, we just have to find them. Like we just have to find them. We have to bring them to us. And when they come again, like we said earlier, they'll, they'll be the greatest advocates for us because we will kind of dive into that connection. We'll build a deep trust. We'll go to dinner with these people. We'll, you know, we'll play basketball with these people. We'll have coffee with them. um we'll talk to them for three hours in the shop without any expectation of them buying anything

20:41Chris Cruz:because they're finding their people yeah it's especially when the the city's kind of dominant theme isn't that this group is looking for like-mindedness looking for that community and when they found you guys they found almost a hub that's yeah and i i hate to say like because it seems like it's deeper than it is but like we try to be like a sanctuary yeah like a safe space for creative people to come. And if they want to just sit down and hang out and look at product all day or take photos or whatever, just be around like-minded people in the sense of like, we can just talk shop, like about clothes, about releases, about music.

21:18Chris Cruz:And again, this goes back to your obsession about that connection with people and about to the thing that you're like, no, this is what we obsess about this thing. Yeah. And I, I think I was like a shy kid growing up, but I, you know multiple life experiences kind of pull you out of your shell and then I've kind of found out I'm an extrovert by nature wow um and so I'm the guy that like talks to the person on the plane next to me I'm the guy that has something to say if something funny in public happens to a stranger I'm that person so this this is like almost second nature like so when somebody comes in I just already know how that conversation do you talk to your team about any do you ever do coaching or training to your team on how to handle relationships we we've talked through a lot of that stuff i i think for us the majority of the coaching is don't one don't be robotic yeah don't turn it on like welcome to rooted this is what we have today it's more like hey what brings you guys in dude i love your shoes or holy cow what's that scent that you're wearing or what brings you in have you been in before and I think that's like the soft entry into some some people are gonna walk in on a cell phone not want to talk to you know what they want hand you that we can't build relationships there and that's okay that's yeah that's okay that's just part of the business but when we can build like really thoughtful relationships then people leave with that feeling of oh I bought a shirt but you know I I got something else they maybe they don't know what it is but they got something yeah so they left with something so let's dive into your locations in retail because this is your is this your second location the one you have right now or is this third this is the second location but it's a kind of a replacement of our like oh geez gotcha so you started somewhere walk me through and then why you picked the gulch like this is a neighborhood in nashville or whatever we would call it here i don't i don't quite know the lingo enough to go like what is this but it's a section of nashville we call it the gulch but the idea is that you guys started somewhere else or your first store then you've moved to this store and you did a remodel of this location and now it's got some more robust stuff to it which we'll get into but talk to me about the gulch why you picked it the retail experience going from one store to the next yeah i think so we were kind of on this like b minus c plus area of town we were only a half a mile from broadway but we were off like the beaten path okay we we were really successful there probably more successful than we thought we would ever be in that space um we just had buy-in from brands uh this like phenomenon called covet came through and internet shopping exploded um we really during that time we closed for a little while obviously we but we had a warehouse in parallel so we were considered essential employees so we could bring our staff to the warehouse wow and then we just kind of focused on you know back-end operations online selling and it exploded okay so we were in this growth phase from this like crazy growth phase and we knew all right if we're gonna if we are gonna really plant our flag in this city then we need to be where people can see us there's a few neighborhoods you think of when you think of that obviously you could go to broadway not for us right yeah no probably a different animal you know we thought about hillsborough village we thought about 12th South we thought and then Gulch um and then we had some vendor partners come to town and we walked them through like what we were thinking about and we all kind of like man the Gulch is like where it's at it's it's young it's affluent it's active uh major labels are coming there um and so that's kind of where we sell and then we just kind of envisioned the space the you know did you have this building you have is a beautiful building it's like right next to this plot of open grass rare in the place of the city you've got a front cafe which we'll talk about but you that building how did that even come about to get that building yeah we were we were searching all over the place we again we had a couple spots there was a spot a little ways down the road um you know real estate was insane and i know you got a booming city you guys are going to a new location i'm sure people are like just jacking up prices left and right for leases or ownerships some property 100 we we kind of we stumbled upon this place that i've known about for years didn't know what it looked like on the inside but man this is an awesome spot if it just wasn't this particular office space then this could work for us got inside because they were relocating to east nashville or madison and uh just yeah started kicking the tires and started pressing pressing really hard and um we turned i mean we knocked down an entire space um about 4 200 square feet 3 000 4 000 square feet off the space completely gutted it all i mean all the way wow um and and just built where we are now but like you said there's a green space next week we're like man if we're really driving community we need space to entertain that community now you know that's a public space yeah but we can send people over there people can be there people you know dogs whatever hanging out in that park we can use it too so it was important for that it was important to be around you know brands that are established like a you know whether it's a Lululemon or you know whoever yeah you know and why is it important for you to be double tapping to that why is that important it's like a brand validator right so like if we were in a shopping center with like other small brands like us, like not known whether on a national or global scale, then you just kind of fall into those brands.

27:10But like when rooted pops up next to a design within reach, which is, has, you know, multiple locations or a Lululemon, which is like between that and maybe a whole foods is where people Google to see where shopping areas are when they visit a city. Yeah. Um, that's just where it makes sense. Um, it's clean.

27:29Chris Cruz:There's some association that's happening in the mind, psychology of like, Oh, if they're near a lululemon there's some kind of connective value and prestige that's available for you a hundred percent and so it's it's important to have this like sense of validation being next to somebody and it's like it's probably why like you know in certain spaces if if a big fashion house comes in like an lv or a gucci like they all just kind of clump together um it's because it's like well that one validates me every day i'm going to have access to their customer as well just from a business standpoint yeah so i want access i want access to a customer i want their validation foot traffic and then when more of those come then it's now it just becomes like an area where it becomes an area where you just go and then people spend more time there instead of just coming in and going out we're like we did when we were like we didn't know the location yeah it was very destination i was going to say it's very destination i remember going in there and be like So, but you mentioned something to me before when you were picking the Gulch and there was insight into this space that I had never heard.

28:36You mentioned a little bit earlier about these brands are protected.

28:39Chris Cruz:They just don't allow you to open up more stores to carry their product. Tell me about that process. And when you're like, hey, I want to expand, but they're like, you can't, or you can only if, like, what's that process like? Yeah. So when we, like I said, we were in this growth phase, we were very ambitious, like extremely ambitious. And we pitched, we pitched to our like brand partners. Hey, if we can go to this kind of a block 50 yard line, you know, uh, kind of location, um, will you let us open a second location? You know, so we can kind of service that community, whatever that community is.