We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Greg Orfe a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Greg, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Often outsiders look at a successful business and think it became a success overnight. Even media and especially movies love to gloss over nitty, gritty details that went into that middle phase of your business – after you started but before you got to where you are today. In our experience, overnight success is usually the result of years of hard work laying the foundation for success, but unfortunately, it’s exactly this part of the story that most of the media ignores. Can you talk to us about your scaling up story – what are some of the nitty, gritty details folks should know about?
Scaling Driftline has certainly been no easy task, but we’re really proud of our progress and all the lessons we’ve learned along the way.
Our business legitimately started as an “a-ha!” moment on the beach between my business partner Wes & I, and initially picked up pace organically and through word-of-mouth. As we went through many iterations to improve the quality of Drifties™ – our patent-pending wetsuit lined boardshorts – we realized how many watermen were searching for boardshort and full wetsuit alternatives, and were so happy to find us as a watersports apparel innovation. Seeing all the back-end data on this was a pivotal moment because it gave us the foothold to keep pushing forward knowing that people had been waiting for our kind of product for a long time.
With some super creative marketing concepts and awesome partnerships with pro athletes & ambassadors, the business scaled tenfold over the past few years because we were reaching millions of fellow watermen who’ve had the same pain points we’ve had – and showed them an actual solution.
Have there been hiccups? 100%. We’re still a two-person team working our full time jobs outside of this, and trying to manufacture overseas for a demand that’s been 5x our supply capabilities is a huge challenge.
Luckily, we’ve worked incredibly hard to scale & improve year-over-year, and recently achieved a milestone of appearing on Season 13 (Episode 23) of SHARK TANK! This new exposure and customer audience has propelled us into a phase of growth, and will continue to help us scale so we can expand our product line and make Drifties a globally known concept.
Greg, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
Driftline is an innovative watersport apparel brand that specifically creates Drifties™ – the premier 2-in-1 boardshort with a patent-pending 0.5mm neoprene inner lining connected to a stylish outer shell, specifically designed for watersport athletes.
This lightbulb idea was spawned during an October surf session at our favorite spot in San Diego. As watermen in our own respective sports, it was that time of the year where it was too cold for boardshorts, yet too warm for a wetsuit…a feeling that so many watermen have felt before.
We realized that these multi-season transition periods in the water are problematic for watersport athletes across the globe, regardless of their sport. We tried every solution out there, but none of them seemed to offer the right comfort, warmth, or chafing protection…so we set out to create one on our own.
Drifties now fill a transitional void and give watersport athletes a comfortable, durable, and functional piece of apparel equipment to help them “meet their moment” and overcome the challenges ahead. We’re so inspired by how many people out there have been waiting for a product like ours to become available, and that drives us every day to keep innovating and develop solutions for watermen & waterwomen across the globe!
Okay – so how did you figure out the manufacturing part? Did you have prior experience?
Manufacturing Drifties has been one of the bigger challenges for us, but we’ve figured out so much in so little time. Everything got off to a rocky start though, as we had discussions with about 15 overseas manufacturers in an attempt to develop Drifties – but none of them would take the job, as the combination of materials & sewing process was considered too difficult.
After linking up with an experienced technical designer who had some awesome manufacturer connections, we were finally able to design a tech pack of our product (a flat product rendering) and create proof of concept via an initial sample. This was all back in 2018.
After learning about trims and fabrics, how to measure apparel, and iterating a million times to get it right, we’re super excited with our 4th version of Drifties coming out in Fall 2022 and Spring/Summer 2023. These will be the best ones yet!
Any advice for growing your clientele? What’s been most effective for you?
Given the changes to iOS that have impacted online advertising as of late, one of our most effective & exciting growth strategies has been partnering with these young & talented watersport athletes who are content creators. They range from professional athletes to multi-sport specialists, and are really adept at showcasing the diverse usage of Drifties™ across surfing, wakeboarding, foiling, kiting, and watersports as a whole.
These guys embody our motto of “Meeting Your Moment” every single day, and their followers are true believers in the lifestyle & products that each athlete promotes. We’re super grateful for their partnerships and love being a part of our mutual effort to grow together.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://driftline.co/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/driftline.co/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Driftline.co/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/driftline/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCba168y7zj1uipcm_v9uxHw
- Other: https://www.tiktok.com/@driftline.co?lang=en
Image Credits
John William Conner Braidic VATIV Media