We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Jordan Dye a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Jordan, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. If you’re open to it, can you talk to us about the best (or worst) investment you’ve made. What’s the backstory and the relevant context behind why you made the investment
One of the best investments that I have made, was hiring someone to handle my business’ targeting, marketing, and running ads. This has not only saved me time, but also money in the long run. I did not have much experience or knowledge with marketing or running ads so making an investment with someone with expertise in this space has allowed me to focus on my strengths and other parts of the business. I can see now I am not wasting time, energy and money trying to learn marketing and running uneducated and often ineffective ads.
Not only has this given me more time to focus on the rest of the business, but it has allowed someone with new ideas to come in and add different perspectives. I meet once a week with someone I got connected with that has marketing expertise and experience ant it has been great. This has helped me stay organized, as well as increasing my understanding about the marketing and ads side of the business. It has been a huge help to have someone who specializes in this field and take some things off of my plate, instead of trying to do everything myself.
An example of a recent success story came with one of the first releases that we were working on together. We did a 48 hour preorder for a couple different sweatshirts and hats. I was busy getting everything ready to release and was not really even thinking about marketing or ads, outside of my normal activity on social media. I received a text the morning of release saying “Just sent a test email. Lmk what you think.” My marketing partner had put together an amazing email, highlighting all of the items releasing that day. The email campaign ended up accounting for close to 50% of the sales for that release. The lesson for me is that while it can be hard to invest money when you are pushing to drive results, you need to take risks and have conviction that a wise investment will pay off in big ways.
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
I grew up with a passion for basketball and sneakers, which quickly led to clothing and streetwear. In jr. high and high school, I would seek out and even sometimes schedule family vacations around checking out different sneaker and clothing boutiques. I saw a lot of brands with guns, naked women, or other negative messaging and wanted to start a brand with a positive meaning, but I was in high school and did not even know it was possible to create my own clothing line. I started working at a few different sneaker boutiques in high school and into college. After calling it quits on basketball after my first year of college, I decided to use my extra time to explore what it took to start a clothing line. I decided on the name Shepherd Goods and put together a few logos. The store where I was working at that time had a print shop in the back, so I decided to try getting some shirts made. I quickly realized that there was a lot more to running a clothing line than just making and selling. It was a rude awakening at first, but I started to love all there was to learn about running a business and putting my creations into the world. I set up a website and after making and selling t-shirts, hoodies and hats for about a year, I decided to start testing out different ideas and designs to wear myself. I found a seamstress and would bring her the craziest fabric patterns that I could find to turn them into buttonups with matching shorts and joggers. I had a few friends that worked in music at the time and I was able to get Mac Miller, Chance the Rapper, Lil Durk, and Chief Keef some of my first sets. I had initially made these designs for myself, but I got such a positive response right away, so I decided to start selling some of the pieces. The designs/vibes were so different from what I was building, so I decided to start Lamb Chops as Shepherd Goods’ sister “Chop & Sew” brand, as more of my creative outlet. After much trial and error and a lot of searching, I finally found a factory in China that was able to do full production, as well as elevate the quality to another level. I have been working with them for close to 8 years and went out to visit the factory and see all of the fabric, printing, full production in person. I had primarily been selling online, but once I felt more comfortable with the quality of all of the products, I began to do more pop up shops and was looking to expand to wholesale accounts. I eventually partnered on a retail location with the same sneaker store that I worked at during college from 2017-2020. The lease happened to be up at the end of 2020, mid pandemic, so I moved back to primarily online, wholesale and pop ups.
While creating and running a business has definitely not always been easy, it has been overall so rewarding and fun. I was able to turn something that I love into a career. I have been able to meet a lot of amazing people and enjoy a lot of amazing experiences so far, because of my business. As a huge basketball fan, one of the coolest things for me has been seeing NBA players wearing Lamb Chops in the tunnel on the way into games. I have also been sponsoring and coaching a team in the Twin Cities Pro Am the past few summers, which is always a highlight for me. I am excited to see where the next 10 years takes me and my business.
How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?
I think one of the most important parts of life and especially business is pivoting. The pandemic highlighted this, but it is true in the every day running of a business. I recently faced a situation that forced me to pivot. At first it was frustrating, but it proved to be a blessing in disguise in the long run. A few years ago, I started picking up wholesale accounts, to start selling Lamb Chops in stores. Even though I was only getting wholesale pricing at about 50% of retail, it was great because I was able to get the sales up front. Also getting more quantity of products sold allowed me to continue to grow with the factory that I was working with. This continued to work well, and in 2021, wholesale sales had become close to 40% of my total sales for the year. While the numbers were awesome, I had started to get too reliant on wholesale business. In the first half of 2022, my wholesale sales had dropped significantly as stores I was working with shifted their priorities and strategies. I was forced to take a step back and really look at the business and ultimately, to pivot. I became more focused, and I started looking at the things that sold the best directly to our customers. I started doing more pop up shops and connecting face to face with our customers. It also forced me to be more creative and test out how to do releases. I tested out doing a 48 hour only online preorder, and it was one of the company’s most successful releases so far. Because I was forced to pivot and refocus my business, I was able to surpass my 2021 online sales by August of 2022 and my margins overall improved with more direct business. While having to pivot can be tough and as a small business owner the risks can be a little scary, I learned that by pivoting I could find different ways to grow and it forced me to think about my business model differently. I still want to grow wholesale but have learned not to be reliant on that channel.
What else should we know about how you took your side hustle and scaled it up into what it is today?
When I first started my business it was a side hustle. I was in college and after deciding to stop playing basketball right before my sophomore season, I had a lot of extra time on my hands. I was working at a sneaker and clothing boutique at the time, and it had a screen print studio in the back. During my design classes at school, I put together some t-shirt designs together to try printing at the shop. I quickly fell in love with the process of designing clothing items and seeing them come to life. The more designing I did, the more I enjoyed creating clothes, but I did not realize how much more there was to running a business. My brand was starting to gain some traction, but I saw it more as something that I enjoyed that filled my time not playing basketball rather than a true business.
I had picked entrepreneurship for a major, so the more my brand started to grow, the more I thought about it eventually turning into a full career. I was able to use my class projects of creating a “hypothetical” business, and use them directly with my brand. I created a business plan and learned to apply the different aspects of business to what was then still a hobby. At the end of my entrepreneurship program at school, we were tasked with a final presentation. It was a “Shark Tank” style sales pitch to special guests that came in from outside of our class. I gave my presentation on my business, Lamb Chops. One of the guest judges owned a successful t-shirt and apparel company and gave me “hypothetical” funding. I was one of the only ones in the class to get “funding” from the guest judges in our final presentation. This was when I really started about turning my hobby of making clothes into an actual business and career.
As I continued school and working at the sneaker shop, I also kept working on my clothing brand. I started branching out from just making screen printed and embroidered blank t-shirts, sweatshirts, and hats to testing out making other clothes. I found a seamstress that was able to sew basically whatever I wanted, as long as I provided all of the fabrics, elastics, buttons, and other necessities. I started hitting the fabric and craft stores in search of the coolest fabrics I could find and started designing joggers and shorts with matching buttonups for myself. At this time, one of my good friends was involved in the music industry. One of the artists that he booked was Mac Miller’s DJ, Clockwork’s afterparties. Mac, Clockwork and crew came to Minneapolis for a show, and we took them out the night before their show. When I dropped them back off at their hotel, I left a box full of some clothes, including some of the first shorts, joggers, and buttonups that I had created. I got home and saw Mac had already posted a vine with some of the Lamb Chops shorts on saying “These shorts are tiiiiight!”. A few weeks later Chance the Rapper was in town the night before I had a final paper due for my business law class. My friend knew his manager and arranged for me to drop some clothes off at the venue. I went to drop them off after the show, and his manager asked if I wanted to give them to Chance and the guys personally. Knowing that I probably wouldn’t finish that final paper, I decided to stick around and Chance and his whole crew loved the clothes. After those two moments, I knew that it was time to turn Lamb Chops into a full time career.
From there I started putting together a clothing line and began to drop new releases. Most of my sales were online but I also started doing pop ups and eventually was able to work with some stores to carry my brand. It has been about 10 years since that side hustle that I enjoyed so much started turning into a business and a career and I feel fortunate and blessed to be able to keep creating new designs and doing all I can to build my customer base.
Contact Info:
- Website: sglambchops.com
- Instagram: instagram.com/sglambchops
- Facebook: facebook.com/leadtheherd
- Linkedin: linkedin.com/jordandye4
- Twitter: twitter.com/sglambchops
Image Credits
Choua Yang
Janaye Johnson
Jordan Johnson