We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Drew Garrison . We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Drew below.
Hi Drew , thanks for joining us today. We’d love to have you retell us the story behind how you came up with the idea for your business, I think our audience would really enjoy hearing the backstory.
I am a barber by trade and co-own an apparel business with my friend Steve. Being a barber brings many unique people into my life. One day we were sitting in the shop and a gentleman said that he saw Sasquatch in Oklahoma. I asked him to show me on a map where he saw Sasquatch and he pointed to a town called Honobia. he said it was only about an hour and a half from where we were, so myself along with 5 other barbers decided to take a trip to this town to go look. So we went to Honobia and romped around the woods for three days. We came back home empty-handed without a Sasquatch being seen. A buddy of mine had designed a sticker of Sasquatch with the Arkansas State flag in it and gave it to me as a gift. he told me that it would be the only Sasquatch that I would ever see. I posted it up on my mirror at the barbershop and several of my clients asked if they could buy it. It was then that I figured We had a good idea and acted on it. I asked Steve to join me and we created RockSquatchDesigns. we made two shirt designs along with a run of stickers and sold them at a local festival. After almost selling out we decided to re-invest and take our small business further.
Drew , love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?
I’m from Little Rock Arkansas. I’ve played music most of my life and fronted a band called Becoming Saints. I was also a police officer with the Little Rock Police Department for 8 years after college. I transitioned to barbering to pursue a passion for the dying craft. barbering allowed me to meet so many people and that’s how I met my business partner Steve. Our families got involved and it allowed us to handle several different tasks at once. We strive to be different by creating characters that are unique and highlight things we enjoy. We use local artists and use quality apparel companies for our shirts and hats. We believe in the no trace practice when out in nature. We participate in cleanups and volunteer on trail clean ups when we can. We work our booth at live shows and that allows us to interact with our customers and friends. It’s a small community and we enjoy being a part of it.
Can you share one of your favorite marketing or sales stories?
To add a little flare to our social Media posts, we bought Sasquatch suits and dress in them for some of the events. On a whim we decided to record a video of us tree knocking in the woods to the beat of Ozzy Osbourne’s Crazy Train. We shot the video in one take and posted it to TikTok.. 2.5 Million views later it catapulted us into the creator world on the platform. It gained so much attention that Jack Osbourne posted it to his personal instagram and had a good laugh about it.
Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?
Being a local small business we try our hardest to sell to other small businesses. There have been times that we weren’t given the time of day when stopping by these places and it’s very easy to get frustrated and or discouraged. Not letting that stop us we continued to press on and eventually those same businesses reached out to us and asked to carry our product in the store. It proves that not taking things personal and keeping your nose on the grindstone eventually pays off. Each interaction was a learning experience and taught us how to approach potential new clients better.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.RockSquatchDesigns.
bigcartel.com - Instagram: RockSquatchdesigns
Image Credits
RockSquatch Designs