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

James, appreciate you joining us today. Before we get into specifics, let’s talk about success more generally. What do you think it takes to be successful?

After nearly 20 years in the industry, we could talk about any of these topics. Feel free to pick one of your liking if you perfer.

We have made many mistakes, had a lot of success and learned a ton about business and being different in the retail / textile / social media world. There is no other apparel company in the U.S. that is vertically integrated (raises its own alpacas), designs all our own products, oversees manufacturing and production and then sells direct to consumer (no wholesale) strictly online.

My wife and I both work as a team in different areas of the company. I design products, handle sales and outreach while my wife Sarah works more on internal workings of the company – delegating to knitters, managing employees, finances and other aspects of the business. Additionally, we have terrific team members who are essential in helping this business thrive.

James, 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?

Its quicker too copy and paste from our website our overall intro. We can go into more details later: 18 years ago, James and Sarah Budd were newlyweds looking for a riveting adventure to kick off their lives together. James is that guy who if you were playing bingo with careers or jobs, his sheet would fill up in no time because he’s done it all. He has an extensive background in medicine and is also exceptionally creative and innovative. Sarah’s backgrounds are in psychology, manufacturing and real estate – talk about a diverse set of skills. Combined, they are an unstoppable force.

The two go-getters were looking for an industry to go into and a business to start. They researched restaurants, retail, ice cream shops, service industries and more, but no Cinderella slipper fit.

Then, one day James was flipping through a Costco Connection Magazine and came across a couple who had retired, started raising alpacas and after 10 years still loved it. James enthusiastically went to Sarah with the article, and she had four words for him. “What’s an alpaca? No!” Shot down and thinking nothing more of it, James went back to his computer to continue the search. When he opened his browser page, an article regarding the financial benefits of raising alpaca emerged from The Wall Street Journal as a suggested read. As someone who loves animals more than people, James’ enthusiasm for entering the alpaca business grew, so he went back to Sarah with the article. She looked him dead in the eye and said, “You did not go to school for 10 years to become a farmer.” That was that. Case closed. No alpacas for the new Budd family. The search continued without alpacas.

Later that day James went to check the mailbox only to find a flyer from his sister with a note reading, “Wouldn’t this be fun?” The flyer detailed how to start an alpaca business – something James and his sister had never discussed.

After never hearing the word alpacaprior to this day only to be bombarded with alpacas during them, James and Sarah agreed that they better at least look into the idea. They made phone calls, visited farms and researched what starting any kind of alpaca business would look like for them. They quickly became more and more excited, and six months later had 8 alpacas on their farm.

Soon the number of mouths to feed went from 8 to 120 – not including the dogs, llamas, cats and chickens that also found their homes at Alpacas of Montana.

Being the curious dreamers they both are, James and Sarah quickly realized a missing key niche: alpaca wool clothing. Once they understood what was at their fingertips, they went all in. James and Sarah are so much more than farm and business owners: they’re innovators. They’re pioneers in the alpaca fabric industry. Every single product sold by Alpacas of Montana was the brainchild of James and Sarah. From scratch, James created every yarn and fabric that is used in our products. They’ve done what you have to do to be successful: become experts. They can tell you the origin story of alpacas, their anatomy and their social patterns. James even teaches a Camelid Mechanics class for Montana State University’s Vet Program. James and Sarah have crafted such a deep understanding and respect for these animals that translates into their craftsmanship of products and the longevity of the company.

We are proud that we make high quality, sustainable products that are sold around the world. Our company leads the textile industry in our commitment to comfort and warmth through the purposeful design of environmentally conscious alpaca products.

Have you ever had to pivot?

In 2017, Sarah was sitting at our story at the Cherry Creek Mall in Downtown Denver. Two weeks before Christmas, nearby stores like LuLu Lemon, J Crew and Eddie Bauer were having massive sales, and yet shoppers were not buying. They wandered the malls, enjoying walking around, but there were not bags in their hands. On some days, Sarah sold two pairs of socks. It was brutal. It wasn’t that we – or anyone around us didn’t have great products. Its that people are shopping less in store for actual purchases.

That is when we knew we need to focus on our website and online presence. We have a products that applies to millions of people, but they need to know about it first. Thats when we hired a marketing director – we couldn’t afford one and yet we couldn’t afford not to have one. And that has made a huge difference for our company.

How did you build your audience on social media?

This is a tricky one because we have had to update, change and rearrange our approach over the years. The first few years we just sold alpacas (the animals themselves) and then we sold socks and yarn and now we have over 400+ products to offer. Fortunately, AMT has many features that others (Like SmartWool, Bombas, Patagonia) do not have. We have quality socks and great designs like other companies, but we have great assets others do not:

*We are a vertically integrated working farm – alpacas are amazing photo bait. We have gone to Outdoor Retailer Conventions (the largest textile show in the country in Denver and Salt Lake) and brought live alpacas with us. With 15K+ attendees, I bet at least 10K+ made it to our booth among the many thousands just to see live alpacas, which gave us the opportunity to speak with them.
+We are Predator and Eco Friendly – and pride ourselves on transparency
+ We live in Montana – with the Residential Gold Rush into our state right now due to Covid, shows like Yellowstone and wanting to leave the cities but still have high paying jobs working remotely – so there is a huge romanticism we focus on
+We give our Marketing Director as much creative lead as she wants. Our first Marketing director was much more athletic based since she was a professional skier before with a journalism degree. She blog and informed and helped us revamp our website which was excellent. When she left earlier this year, Avery took over with more emphasis on FaceBook, TikTok and become main stream and eye catching with fashion and a fresher, exciting feel to the posts and photo shoots. Changing up ideas and directions has been essential to keeping us up to date, new products and information to offer.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://alpacasofmontana.com
• Instagram: alpacasofmontana
• Facebook: alpacasofmt
• Linkedin: alpacas-of-montana-inc
• Twitter: AlpacasofMT
• Youtube: channel/UC9D7wv5knMjuVwiX2UHNapg
• Yelp: Not promoted
• Other: Pinterest – alpacasofMT Amazon Store – https://www.amazon.com/stores/AlpacasofMontana/page/618A41CC-9F66-4B70-AB9F-85CA56A4B987?ref_=ast_bln

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