We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Dustin Winegardner a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Dustin, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. To kick things off, we’d love to hear about things you or your brand do that diverge from the industry standard

We make socks. A very simple daily used product. The difference for Arvin Goods is our primary materials are either recycled or organic. Many companies and brands are attempting to make “sustainable” or low-impact products, especially in the apparel space, but for whatever reason, socks seem to not be a focus. We saw this as an opportunity. We of course want to build a successful business, but also see a daily used product like socks that can be purchased for less than $20 as a way to also educate the consumer on daily choices that can add up to bigger change.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I kind of stumbled my way into this business. I have a degree in business finance. After college, I worked for a few years for a sporting goods company doing inventory management and analysis. The company I was with went through a layoff and I suddenly had responsibilities in the manufacturing and logistics of our products. This was something I enjoyed, the transaction of developing a product, moving it around the world, and then seeing it in the market really got me excited. Fast forward, and I started a design and sourcing company in partnership with a group in Amsterdam. In 2015 we started to focus more on “sustainability” as an offering, and this experience led to me and Harry Fricker launching Arvin Goods in 2018. We still work with other companies to help with sourcing and design, but the majority of our focus is on the brand now. We are now in a marketplace where everyone is marketing as “sustainable” or “carbon neutral”, etc… but I think there is more confusion for the consumer than there was 5 years ago. We need simple options that many consumers can transact with that will add up to a real impact as we go forward. Our mission is to make the cleanest basics on the planet, but our goal is to make it easy for our customers to do a little bit of good each day.

Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?

We are in the middle of a huge pivot now. The market is forcing everyone to think differently. There are financial, and operational impacts on how the business will be done going forward. In the past two years, we have had to rethink our sourcing strategy, our financial planning, as well as our go-to-market plan. Brands used to be able to blow up quickly with some good photos, and some social media ads. That doesn’t work anymore. The wide-open digital space is much tighter (thankfully). Consumers are smart, and getting smarter. They want to know more detail about the product, where it came from, and how it’s made. Transparency is key and will continue to be more important as we continue. For us, this means we need to balance a high-quality, comfortable product with a clear story of why we are here. The world didn’t need another sock brand, but we felt it needed a better one.

We’d love to hear about you met your business partner.

My co-founder is Harry Fricker. He is a photographer by trade, as well as a creative, and design director. I was referred to him by a mutual friend as someone that could help me bring my idea to life as a consumer-facing brand. We met a couple of times, and I explained the whole process to him, and over the course of a couple of months, he built what you now see as Arvin Goods. We complement each other’s strengths well, we have always enjoyed each other’s style, and we work well together so we decided to be partners. Building a brand is hard, it takes patience, most partners don’t make it through that first couple years, but I think Harry and I are a good fit, so it has been a solid partnership.

Contact Info:

• Website: arvingoods.com
• Instagram: @arvingoods
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/arvingoods
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/arvin-goods
• Twitter: @arvingoods
• Youtube: @arvingoods2310
• Yelp: N/A