A Group Chat Inspired a Multimillion-Dollar Brand

0:00The hat is becoming this thing that actually, that little nod is like, I know what you're going through. And so I just found a lot of comfort in that group chat. And now there's a lot of people showing a lot of comfort in this VIP group. And the community of being a dad is necessary. Hey, what's up? I'm Benjamin Gottlieb back with Shopify Masters, your companion for starting and building a business. Building community is a phrase that gets thrown around a lot. But what does it take to truly build a community completely online? Our guests today are longtime friends who have been trying different business ideas out for years.

0:34And they say community and word of mouth marketing is what made their current brand stick. Bart Shanefsky, Grant Eastie, and EJ O'Donnell are co-founders of DadGang. It's a hat company that has sold more than 250 ,000 hats in just two years. Gentlemen, welcome to Shopify Masters. Yeah, thank you. It's a pleasure. Stuck to be here. Absolutely. We've got three guests today and I can't wait to get into it. first of all, Grant, why hats of all things? Oh man, you know, I feel like hats are just, it's a nice staple. You know, when you put it on, it's really a statement that you have. You know, if you're going to an NFL game and let's say your favorite team's the Seahawks, you're putting a hat on your head and you're letting them know I'm a Seahawks fan, I'm showing up.

1:19So we wanted to find a product that was simple, but was very high quality. And that meant something. And so when you put a hat on, you're really making a statement. And we felt like this was one of the strongest statements fathers can make. Absolutely. I mean, not just with hats, but any piece of clothing, whenever there's a logo there, you're right. You are making a certain type of statement. Bart, what statement is dad gang making with these hats? Yeah. You know, there's a lot of statements behind dad gang, but the main one is it kind of derives from our story of being a dad and living it day in and day out and living it in between the good and the bad and all the things that happen to us on a daily basis, whether it's, you know, you're struggling at work, or you're not getting any sleep, or you are celebrating a birthday or something joyous, you can always relate to each other through the term dad gang.

2:19And if you see another dad with a dad gang hat, you can easily, you know, just recognize each other, give each other a head nod. And, um, one of the main reasons we chose that word too, is because dads across social media always get a ton of the funny stuff. You get lawn mowing jokes, you get new balance sneakers, you get just goofy stuff, dumb dads. You describe my life in a wardrobe, by the way, it's a it's a universal term for fatherhood it doesn't have to be funny you can be going through something serious or hilarious and it and it just sticks you know and it's simple um and i think if you're a dad you're automatically in dad gang so it just made sense to to throw on the front and we have different variations now but dad gang is is the core of it well there are four fathers here in this interview, and I would be remiss if I didn't bring up the fact that just like motherhood, let's make sure we're not forgetting about motherhood.

3:17Fatherhood has been changing a lot, especially in the last few decades. Expectations are different. There's a ton of research that has found that fathers today are spending more and more time with their children than in past generations based off of what's happening with how work has changed. Also, the equitability that now exists in many relationships where mother and father are both taking care of children at a more equitable rate. I'm wondering, maybe EJ can throw this to you. When you think about how fatherhood has changed and how that relates to dad gang, is there a connection there that this maybe represents new things with being a dad that didn't exist before?

3:58Yeah, it's actually really interesting. I remember hearing this probably way before we even started talking about dad gang. Like my dad and his dad had a pretty big gap. They didn't like share clothes. There was a big gap there. And then my dad and I, that gap closed. I mean, my dad was my baseball coach back in the Little League days. I mean, my dad had become my role model really quickly. Like I watched his work ethic and we always spent a lot of time together. and I've noticed even further between me and my kids, I don't have sons, but I have two daughters that we have closed that gap even further.

4:35And it's just, we want to be there. We want to be present and be part of their lives. And we understand how important a father is in our kids' lives. Yeah, there's no question about it. I think any parent, father or mother or any parent, regardless of how they identify, would say that spending time with their child, especially if you have that time available, it's irreplaceable. Grant, we haven't gotten yet to the idea of dad gang company. It's an incredible idea, but actually creating something from that concept, that's a little bit more difficult. So can you take me through where the idea came from and how you guys turned into a business?

5:09Absolutely. As far as the idea behind it, we have a text thread that we've been in for over a decade. And, you know, when I first had my son Jackson, Bart, him and I have been best friends for about 15 years. And there was something that whenever I was going through a very long day or a long week on little sleep, where in our text thread we joke a lot. But when we wanted to get the message across, like, hey, like either now is not the day or, hey, I got to go deal with something. You know, I can't talk right now. We would just say, hey, man, I got to rock dad gang. And those two words, when we text that, kind of put a pause in whatever the conversation was in the text thread.

6:02Whether it was lighthearted or whether we were talking sports or maybe, hey, I might not be able to respond for a while. I'm going to check back in when I can. Kind of like the safe word or the code word. A hundred percent. Yeah. Yeah. And that developed into something that was used quite a bit amongst the fathers in the group. And with that, we have, if you know, you know, on the side of the hat, right? The acronym for it. and before Bart had his children, I had my son and Bart would kind of joke like, oh, come on, like it's okay, or other friends in the group would say, oh, come on, man, like after I'd say dad gang and I'd say, hey man, if you know, you know.

6:47Once you're a father, you will understand. You may not understand that exact specific situation, but you will understand the feeling of what you're going through, right? And I'm sure Bart, that was pretty annoying at first when you heard that from Grant. If you know, you know, you're like, come on, man. Oh yeah, as it is to any non-fathers. They're like, dude, just come or just make it happen. And yeah, you totally do not understand until it does happen. So yeah, that subtle little hit on the side of the hat is a big part of the brand too. All three of you right now, if you're just listening to our interview, all three of you are wearing different hats and yet the slogan appears on all the hats.

7:26If you know, you know. Bart, if you could pick up the thread there from Grant. But yeah, you were talking about how this came to be. So we have this safe word, let's call it, you guys were talking about use this when you were joking around the group chat. I think it's not just men, but women too. If you, you know, if you have a chat, you joke around and sometimes things might go a little too far. Nice to have some sort of safe word. This was yours. And then, but how did this become a brand? Yeah, we just kept saying it. And then, so I had worked in, in apparel and other DTC brands for, for a while and just thought, hey, Dad Gang would look cool on a hat.

8:02And then EJ has always been, he's like the head of our operations, but he also designs everything. And so he's got a great design eye. And I was like, hey, Dad Gang would look cool in front of a hat. Can you design like this vintage cursive Dad Gang logo? And I think I reached out and I was like, here's some examples of like old vintage signs or something like that, you know, like old like mechanic shops, kind of like vintage type font. And I just blurred out a bunch of words. And then somehow EJ comes up with this awesome logo. And then we made some hats. It was kind of like we all love hats.

8:42Hats are actually easy to deal with in a sense of a product because there's no sizes, t-shirts and sweatshirts and other like apparel type products are a little trickier to make. It's a snapback hat. So it fits pretty much everybody besides our big headers, which we make excels for, but yeah, we just made some hats, made a hundred hats and we did not have any like major business expectations. So then what was the motivation then? It was just, let's do something fun. And all three of you are working. Yeah. It was like, let's, let's make some hats and let's make a hundred and see if, if anybody wants them.

9:20And so we all kind of posted across Instagram, like, Hey, we made some hats and started dad gang. Right. And through that, we had a bunch of friends and family purchase. And it's exciting. It sold out in less than 36 hours. But like, it doesn't make you feel like you have a true business by any means. It's just like, okay, I'm looking at the Shopify orders. And I know everybody in there. Grant knows somebody EJ knows somebody. And then the hats are gone. But then we're like, hey, let's do that again. Let's keep making content around the hats, take some portrait mode photos of the hats and keep going.

9:55Very, very simple approach. And so we ordered 300 hats and then made those sell out in less than a week. But then as it kept going, we started noticing more Shopify orders of complete strangers. And we're like, okay, we might have something here. But there's still no outside pressure or inside pressure to be like, all right, guys, we've got to build this or else we're going to be stressed. Like it was just this, oh my gosh, dads love these hats. Let's keep making them. Wives love buying them for their husbands. Like let's keep going. And that's still the approach today for the most part, really.

10:30We don't scale to the moon and all of these other terms you hear across DTC. We just kind of keep going and keep trying things. You're still going and trying things. And that has led to some really, really early success. My guest today, EJ, Bart, Grant, the co-founders of Dad Gang. I'd like to bring up a point here, which is that we have all different types of companies and founders on this program. Folks that are solving problems that they couldn't solve otherwise and have innovated. And also folks who are just doing something that resonates with who they are, who their families are, and maybe just putting something out there in the world and finding community in that way.

11:10I hate to use that word because it really can be pejorative, but in this sense, community is really what you have captured. EJ, I want to ask you, what is it about the father community, or let's just call it the, I'm assuming, I'm going to say a stab here. I'm going to say late 30s, early 40s dad community is probably maybe your demographic, maybe a little younger. What is it about that community that is so ingratiated by this idea of having a hat like this? Yeah, it doesn't matter if you're early 30s or late 40s or whatever. There just wasn't a crazy amount of support for dads. You know what I mean?

11:44Like there's tons of mother support, which is obviously necessary. But as dads, especially my my age group was taught to not express feelings or communicate. You kind of suppressed and just kind of went through the grind. And as it started to change in this group chat formed, I found a community between Bart and Grant to just talk about this stuff. You know, it's like, oh, I actually have someone that understands what I'm going through and isn't judging me for being vulnerable or anything like that. It's like as the brand started to kind of get some some momentum, we actually created a Facebook group that was for the VIP dads to join.

12:19And it ended up becoming a place where dads could share a lot of things. It became like this support group for dads. And then also, too, we added this design by dads to the hats as well, because that's what it is. It's by dads for dads. And so that's all we're trying to do is rally dad support. really is what it is. And the hat is becoming this thing that actually, like Bart alluded to, is like that little nod. It's like, I know what you're going through. And so I just found a lot of comfort in that group chat. And now there's a lot of people showing a lot of comfort in this VIP group and the community of being a dad is, is necessary.

12:56Definitely necessary. No question about it. You rightfully pointed out there are a number of support groups and we need more for mothers as well. Bart, I really want to get back to that point you brought up earlier about this, this journey of fatherhood and how you guys scaled, but maybe EJ, I think, correct me if I'm wrong, but you were doing all of this fulfillment by yourself in the beginning. Is that right? When, when the brand was just starting, what was that like? And, and, and when did you realize like, Hey, I, we can't do this anymore. It's getting too big. Yeah. Originally. So when we got our first batch of hats, uh, Bart took on that responsibility and was shipping out of his garage.

13:31So orders came in and he was doing all the fulfillment. Um, and in that process, he was, his wife was pregnant with their second baby. And so they were going to have another child as the business was growing. And so once it got to a point where Bart couldn't, we moved the fulfillment to my house, turned my entire house into a 3PL essentially. And I was so lucky to take it on during Black Friday and Cyber Monday. And so, I mean, I was filling my truck. My whole house was just full of boxes. Is this 2022 or 23? 2022. Yep. And for a vision, he had a pallet of boxes dropped off in his driveway. Like it's just a massive stack of pallet of boxes.

14:13And that's just for packaging. That was just packaging and the tape and the printers. I mean, literally building a warehouse out of my living room. And these boxes just for visuals, like I think a lot of people look at DTC businesses and they're like, oh yeah, you ship it. And like these boxes show up flat, unfolded, super shrink wrapped with these plastic straps around them and your hands just feel like cardboard at the end of the day because that's all you're doing is just like folding cardboard cutting yourself and then a hat goes into that cardboard but like that little annoying process of just making the box I don't know EJ was doing it during a crazy period of where we were getting like 800 orders a day or something crazy uh and then you're like hey you doing okay over there his whole living room's covered in boxes and plastic and while he has a full-time job while he has his two kids and his house just i think his in-laws came over to help his wife was helping yeah and keep in mind ej is working you know 40 plus hours at his other job and part of that entails him going to a warehouse that's like two hours away.

15:29So not only is he traveling and putting in work there, but he's also coming back and printing all these orders. So it was a lot of chaos. Sounds like we owe a lot to EJ here on the early success. For that month, for that month. Yeah, he crushed it. That was brutal. Let's get back to this. I mean, the story is good, but let's get back to the success. Bart, the organic growth of the brand really has been remarkable. This is the type of thing that businesses and founders dream of, right? Because if you get addicted to that paid advertising tap, it can be very, very expensive, right? Constantly feeding that pipeline for acquisition of new customers.

16:07And yet for you all, you've leaned into organic. It sounds simpler than it is, but tell me what advice do you have for other founders who are listening who want to unlock organic growth? Yeah, I think you have to really, really strip it down to the basics when you are starting something and ask yourself a couple questions. One, do people want this? I think is like a really, really big question for any product. I think a lot of people will just sprint to launch a product and forget that basic step. How do you answer that question? I think we would answer it in actually seeing a product market fit or a gap into what was already happening.

16:49So like we've mentioned a couple of times here, dads were not getting anything that was just standard and cool and you could wear on a daily basis. We were getting funny t-shirts, number one dad shirts, funny mugs, joke stuff. And I was like, man, I love being a dad and I wanna represent it on a daily basis, but I have to wear this goofy shirt that says number one dad or, you know, dad bought expert or whatever it is on the front. And so it was like, yeah, we the three of us would sit there and be like, yeah, I think I think I want it. Do you want it? Yeah. Grant, EJ, I want it. I think my buddy would want it.

17:31So if you come across something you actually want or need organically, then you will jump on it without needing that crazy hook within an ad or some massive funnel strategy and abandoned cart email and all these things that we still use. Don't get me wrong, but I was in agency land and DTC world for over 12 years and same with these guys. And, um, I just kind of got sick of trying to like force products down people's throats that, that they didn't necessarily want, but if we made a good enough ad, they would purchase it, right? I just didn't want to launch something like that. So trying to find something that people actually want and need, I think is so crucial in breaking through to organic.

18:15And then once again, community, like can your product create a community? I think dadgain clearly does. I think a lot of other products do to represent is one of my favorite brands out of London, and they do a great job of both fitness and fashion and run clubs and hybrid athlete events, all these things, like they're amazing creating community. Gymshark's amazing at creating community. Like does your brand bring people together? Do they want it? Does it bring them together? I think those two pillars like really, really can create something organic that's not forced. And that's the key in unlocking organic growth.

18:53My guests today, EJ, Bart and Grant, they are the co-founders of DadGang. You can check them I'm out at dadgang.co. Organic growth has been key to your brand's success. What other sort of advice might you have for folks listening who want to replicate that type of success? Yeah, I would say, you know, take the pressure out of it. Take the pressure out of it. Find a way where when you are looking at what you're doing, don't make it the means to pay bills immediately. You know, don't make it something where you're looking at it to make it a success because you need money in a month or because you have an investment and you have to pay that back in a certain amount of time.

19:36Once you kind of remove the pressure from that and you just go with the flow and just wherever it takes you, you know, just keep going every single day, putting a little bit of work. I mean, Bart has posted on our Instagram every single day, every single day since day one consistency, right? And he's done that with no pressure, no stress. You know, we all had other jobs outside of this. But something that goes missed is we each invested$250 to get the first round of hats. So it's$750 total cash that we invested in the first 100 hats. And that was it. And with that, we said, hey, no matter where this goes, we're going to give it a shot.

20:22You know, if people like it, great. If not, we made a cool 100 hats. Speaking to the, to more of the audience too, um, a lot of, uh, uh, fear and doubt and starting a business is I need so much. I need so much to get going. Right. And with us, like Grant just mentioned, 250 bucks each, that is also an amount of money. Not everybody can, can toss up immediately, but I do think that it does take less than you think. I've I'll sometimes take on calls and Grant and EJ does too with people that are thinking of an idea, right? And then you'll hear them out. Their idea is amazing. It should work. It would work.

21:06But then they put up a ton of little barriers in front of themselves. Like, how am I going to post? What's the content going to look like? How often should I post? What should I say here? But like, you're just starting. And the beauty of starting is that you are at zero. So whatever you do is just one step forward. so like i think the hardest part in launching anything is just getting going and i didn't get going for a while we we all didn't get going on certain things for a while but then once you kind of like dip your toe into the water start posting start talking about your brand and be proud of your brand um then things start moving like our first post is a picture of me holding a hat in portrait mode.

21:50And that was like, hats are here. You want one, go get one. Next one, maybe the hat on a counter. And then another picture of three hats. Like don't overthink the social strategy and drown out a lot of like Twitter and advice and all that stuff. Cause it, it can get to be too much. Back to this idea though, of how you became so successful on Instagram, Bart, this didn't happen overnight. You were just talking about how you started with just photos of yourself, right? Taking pictures of yourself with the hats. What was your strategy behind building that page? Was it simply just posting every day?

22:29Is it that easy? Nope. I don't think like true, like really technical marketers are going to like this answer whatsoever, but the people just starting out with no experience will love it. It was merely taking our first post, which got the most engagement, our first post of a really well shot portrait mode photo with good lighting from the sun, not a lighting setup or anything. And we would hit that little boost button on Instagram. And here's the little like flip on it. A lot of people would hit boost for sales, but we would hit boost for profile visits in the beginning. And as long as we were getting more new followers than dollars spent, then we would keep going.

23:16And this is like$10 a day, not not any kind of budget. It was like, I mean, we each threw in 250 bucks, we didn't have any ad spend budget. So it was like, hey, I'm gonna try 10 bucks a day, just hitting boost for profile visits. And say we'd get like 25 new followers on Instagram and spent 10 bucks. I was like, okay, well, there's more people interested in the brand. Let's do that again and spend 15. Okay, we got 30 followers. And through that, we would even do that when hats were sold out. Because I would still post every day when hats were sold out. That wasn't the point of posting and building an audience isn't to get a sale every single time.

23:56It's to build the audience, right? And so I would do those boosts, get new people in. And then when those hats would be back in stock because they were sold out, we'd have an entirely new audience of people to potentially purchase. I just kept doing that for a long, long time. I think it was, I don't know if EJ or Grant, you remember, but I think it was like six, seven months before I actually jumped into ads manager and built full on campaigns. So you were optimizing for channel growth, not for sales early on. Yeah. And clearly that's worked for all of you, for the entire brand. I mean, you've got hundreds of thousands of followers now, and it's been a big part of your success.

24:37Speaking of success, Grant, you've done some super cool collabs with professional athletes. I know you guys are Seattle guys. I'm an LA guy. And for me, Mookie Betts is top, top, top when it comes to athletes in baseball, plays outfield for the Dodgers. They got them in the infield this season. How did you make that happen? because I think for many folks, when you hear about a big name celebrity wearing your stuff, that's a huge unlock, right? It is. You know, I played baseball year round my whole life and I coach it now for my son and absolutely just love everything to do with baseball. I've, you know, relocated to Los Angeles with my family about seven and a half, eight years ago.

25:18And so, you know, Dodgers have become, you know, my second team. Mariners, I've been a diehard fan. We've had a really rough, you know, last 22 years, but I'm not a bandwagon fan, but I love baseball. Just 22? I'm sorry. Yeah, exactly. And so when Mookie started wearing our hats, you know, he saw him and his wife had got him one and then he had purchased some more and he had just been organic. How did he see him? I just want to get back. How did he find out organically? It could be online, could be on people in person. You know, I think he may have seen them online and then had purchased one. And then he started seeing them and recognizing them in person, I believe how it went.

26:03And people started recognizing him wearing them. And it ended up coming to where his team and us got together. And they were just at a point where they were saying, we just got to do something with you guys. and we were like absolutely we'd love to you know and for us you know it was a really really awesome opportunity because he is one of the greatest to ever play the game and we wanted to make something you know around him being a father and what that meant to him and so the whole idea behind it was not to meet with him and and ask about baseball and lean into the baseball aspect but lean into something where a lot of a lot of dads can relate and so when he originally reached out and, or his team reached out and we, we got together with them.

26:50We really wanted to, you know, put something together that if you were a fan of Mookie Betts or not, you're going to be able to relate to it. And so when we built the first hat with him in our first collaboration, you know, we started with a handful of hats and we said, okay, let's see, let's see how these do and they really loved the hats and they were behind the message and for us it was a really cool opportunity because we're able to highlight a different part of Mookie that we believe hadn't been seen to the general public and so it was just it was an awesome opportunity where we were able to come together figure out something that made sense for their team made sense for us and of course if you have a brand like you guys do and you can get a celebrity to endorse it or work with you in some way.

27:40I gotta imagine that's a big unlock, especially for sales. But EJ, I'm just curious, what material impact do you all see when you have a collab with someone like a Mookie Betts? How is this translated in, say, your sales numbers? I mean, it definitely helps increase, obviously. The eyeballs for somebody like Mookie wearing it, you know, tenfolds in that time period of the hat being sold. but it really paints the picture of humanizing athletes too as just fathers you know and so it was almost a double it was like almost obviously yeah we want to sell the hats but it was also to to show that no matter if you're the number one baseball in the world or you're just a normal dad working your nine to five we're all relating you know to fatherhood and that was the most important part for us was to make sure that everyone got that message when we were when we we're doing that collaboration because it's more than baseball.