We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Andrew Fegler. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Andrew below.

Hi Andrew, thanks for joining us today. Folks often look at a successful business and imagine it was an overnight success, but from what we’ve seen this is often far from the truth. We’d love to hear your scaling up story – walk us through how you grew over time – what were some of the big things you had to do to grow and what was that scaling up journey like?

My true path to scaling was utilizing an opportunity for cheap money via Covid Assistance programs and investing that money into product line buildout and trade shows. Trade shows are a money suck, but also remains the best opportunity for expansion and getting the eyes of big box buyers. Thanks to trade shows I’ve secured over 200 independent retailers and closed deals with Spencer’s Gifts and Barnes and Noble. Between this was a lot of negative comments about my line, especially in Dallas. People with strong religious morals objecting to my use of profanity, snark, and inclusion across my brand. When you’re in person and showing your products to people, their live reactions are sometimes rough around the edges and can be difficult to handle the feedback regardless of its intention.

Another truth about doing so many trade shows was I spent a significant amount of time away from my family and that was a hard sacrifice to work through. It was a many nights alone in a hotel room in random cities across the states.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I got into the stationery business by mistake, after my Nonnie told me she needed some funny christmas cards to send. When everyone loved them, I dove deeper into building a true line of greeting cards and expanded into other product categories soon after than. I think over the last 2 years, what has really propelled me forward is being authentic to who I am as a person. My sense of humor, identity, and personality all shine through my products — and people really seem to relate to that. A lot of common feedback I hear from my retailers is that I do snark in a way that flows naturally rather than forced by the use of unneeded profanity or mean-spirited jokes. I try to consider trends and inclusion as a first thought, and humor second.

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

Resilience is a motherfucker. I’ve been through a lot of hardship in my personal life while trying to build and manage a growing brand. In the last 2 years I’ve experienced depression, a divorce, the loss of many close friendships, and a falling out with my previous business partner. Through all of the loss, I thought about quitting it all more than just a few times. I’ve wanted to just shut it all down and get a 9-5. I’ve wanted to log out of my business Instagram and never sign back in. I think the thing that kept me going is the community of people within my industry that inspire me to stay with it. Having a presence on social media and at in-person markets, I’ve made friends with so many cool and amazing people that share my similar struggles and understand the life of an entrepreneur better than the friends and family I’m used to being surrounded by. They are the reason I keep going, their success is motivational, and our shared goals is essential to be able to see a future for myself and my brand.

We’d really appreciate if you could talk to us about how you figured out the manufacturing process.

Finding a manufacturing partner that you trust is probably the most important part of having a successful product-based business. When I used to import products, I found Alibaba to be the best resource for finding suppliers that could do what I needed. After transitioning to paper goods in the peek of covid, I wanted to have everything produced domestically. I reached out to many local print shops and found one that took a gamble on me and saw that I had potential to become a high producing account. I’ve since become one of their top 10 accounts and the relationship we have built is something I could never put a price on.

Having a very gay and snarky forward brand, I learned very quickly it was important to me to find suppliers that are similarly aligned in their politics. I am so grateful that the very first print shop I used still aligns with all my current criteria and they proudly produce all the gay things I can think of! Another thing you really want to vet in a supplier is their policy on fixing any mistakes they make, because some printers won’t fix your shit and then you can be out a lot of money.

Contact Info:

• Website: thatssoandrew.com
• Instagram: @thatssoandrew_
• Other: Tiktok @thatssoandrew_