We recently connected with Kevin Hoy and have shared our conversation below.
Alright, Kevin thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. We’d love for you to start by sharing your thoughts about the pros and cons of family businesses.
Smart Apron is a Veteran Owned and Family Managed business, so we pride ourselves in the fact as working side by side, father and son, we can accomplish anything. As the original inventor of the Smart Apron, I have learned more than I can remember in terms of building the business. Therefore, I’m able to transfer lessons learned to my son, Kieran, Director of Marketing, so he can gain important skills to assist him in succeeding in business and life in general. With that being said, my son has taught me new skills along our journey, which has made us a strong and formidable team. We do work in separate office spaces, located on different floors, but meet daily to review our team ‘to do list’ and agree on how to move forward on certain tasks. So, I’d say havingyour own space, and agreeing not to talk about business after 5pm, or on weekends is a good rule to follow when you run a family business.
Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers
I invented the original Smart Apron, as I wanted to build a multi-functional and durable work apron. This occurred only a few weeks after I completed the US Army Military Police Academy, as took a food server position at Red Robin, while interviewing with local police departments. While I waited tables, I found the traditional apron was more of a hindrance than helpful, so I wanted to incorporate military uniform design features, as they offered plenty of pockets and other features to hold various types of equipment.
Therefore, I took an old fanny pack, cut out the bottom, hand sewed on two zippered pockets and with permission from the restaurant owner, wore the prototype during a shift. I found it actually saved him lots of time, and kept my main work items at my fingertipsand always ready for use. I then worked with a local company to produce 30 prototypes of his new apron prototype, originally called the ‘waiter holster’. When the prototypes were completed, I enlisted my fellow food servers to wear the prototypes during a shift or two, and then provide me with feedback. The initial feedback was so promising it cemented my desire to continue to modify the design into something special.
During the next few years, my original business partner, Hans Schramm, and I worked diligently in improving the waist design, eventually added the Bib style Smart Apron. The product line become moderately successful, as Smart Aprons began to sell nationwide, with Smart Apron becoming a vendor with a large national food service distributor. Unfortunately, due to poor manufacturing quality, we had to pause Smart Apron sales, until a manufacturer could be located that could produce Smart Aprons to our exacting design specifications and high-quality standards.
High School Marketing Class
After this occurred, life went on and the Smart Apron laid dormant until 2016, when my son, Kieran, presented the Smart Apron product in his advanced marketing class for an assignment, and later that week informed me that his Smart Apron presentation was a huge success! Kieran added that his fellow classmates wanted to buy a Smart Apron and his marketing teacher asked why the Smart Aprons weren’t on Amazon? So, I told Kieran I would revitalize Smart Apron, only if he would partner with him, and he agreed.
Rebrand and Revitalize
Over the next 3 years, Kieran and I, rebranded the line, secured top level manufacturing, expanded our total number of designs to 11, created a new website, Trademarked the Smart Apron name, filed provisional patents, launched our products on Amazon, completed a brand license partnership with Turtle Wax and completed hundreds of other tasks to ensure success.
During 2020, amidst the COVID pandemic, Smart Apron continued to hone in on their innovative work apron designs, as we took advantage of the economic slowdown, by reaching out to various companies to introduce them to the Smart Apron. This helped us to begin to establish new distribution channels, and anticipate sales growth when the COVID pandemic subsided. In doing this, we were very fortunate to begin a collaboration with US Foods Direct and bring the Smart Apron line to their customers. In the fall of 2020, Smart Apron and US Foods Direct finalized a partnership to ensure US Foods customers could easily purchase their time saving, high value and beneficial Smart Aprons. The official Smart Apron launch date with US Foods Direct was October 4th, 2021.
As of March 2022, Smart Apron has completed distribution agreements with Sysco Foods and Edward Don, and we will be adding Michael’s Marketplace and Walmart as a new B2C lines of business, in the next few weeks.
Last but certainly, not least, Smart Apron has garnished top notch product accolades such as; Amazon’s Top 20 in categories of Tool Apron and Server
Aprons, and received an Amazon Choice badge, as well compiling over 250, 5-star ratings. On Etsy, Smart Apron was awarded their Star Seller Badge and have over 40, 5-star ratings and all include excellent customer reviews.
We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.
After working for 5 years on the original Smart Apron, with my business partner, Hans Schramm, we were doing well in marketing and selling our Smart Apron through several manufacturing rep agencies and on our website. Then we signed with Sysco Foods of Las Vegas, and knew we were going to be ‘millionaires’. So we met with our families, showed them how well we were doing, and ask if any family members could invest, and several did. We then made our largest purchase of inventory, 18,000 units from a newly found Chinese manufacturer, to ensure we had the product on hand, when all the orders would pour in. A few months later, our Smart Aprons are selling well, and we thought nothing could stop us now. Then we received a phone call from a customer saying their Smart Aprons were ripping only after a few weeks. Hans and I went down to our storage, pulled out some units and pulled on the pockets, and they easily came apart. This event made us pause all operations, which lasted 10 years, until 2016. I decided to revitalize the brand, as my then, 16 year old son, Kieran, presented the Smart Apron in his advanced Marketing class, and the teacher and students loved the product. So Kieran asked me what happened to the Smart Apron, and told me he thinks we should sell it again, after we modernize the Smart Apron product and overall branding. And as they say, the rest is history.
Any fun sales or marketing stories?
One of my favorite marketing, or better stated, Brand License stories is when we finalized a brand license with Turtle Wax. I attended a Brand licensing show in Las Vegas in 2018, and actually wore a Smart Apron, while visiting and talking to countless show vendors. Overall, I was overwhelmed with the amount of attention and interested our product received, as well as learning very quickly how a brand license could catapult our marketing efforts. After the show, we had meetings with Members Only, Crayola, San Diego Zoo and Turtle Wax. Over the next few months, our conversations with Turtle Wax turned into a request for us to send them samples of our concept of a Turtle Wax Smart Apron. Therefore, we ended up designing and producing several prototypes, with only minor structural changes to our waist design, which were eliminating zippers and adding Velcro pocket closures, increasing the size of the side D-rings and increasing the waistband width, and using a water resistant fabric blend. The consensus of how our target market was ended being, car detailers, car wash employees and car enthusiasts, who could use the Smart Apron as a mobile car care tool box. The prototypes were reviewed by Turtle Wax corporate team, and after a few prototype iterations, we secured a brand license with Turtle Wax, with a recent contract renewal lasting until 2025. Our Turtle Wax Smart Apron is currently on sale on Amazon and on our website, and utilized daily by a large multi-location car wash service.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://thesmartapron.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/smartapron/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/smartapron/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/smart-apron/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCf-RPSMCj_SbHo2wgqPnxEg
Image Credits
Photographer Rick Pascale