Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Nick Gordon. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Nick, appreciate you joining us today. Have you ever had an amazing boss? What did you learn from them? Maybe you can share a story that illustrates the kind of boss they were or maybe you can share your thoughts on what you think made them an awesome person to work for?

I was a hard working young man but didn’t have a lot of life experience. I didn’t go to college so people would hire me but not really consider me for advancement. I heard my former fencing coach was hiring and was given a job working to supply sports fencing equipment to high schools, colleges, private clubs, and Olympic athletes. He saw my potential and gave me more responsibility, soon I was traveling the country running sales trips at officially sanctioned tournaments dealing with important clients, he taught me how his business was built, the struggles involved, and showed me how to do just about everything that needed done to keep his company running. When he decided to retire he gave me half the company and continued to stay on as a mentor. It was this experience that gave me the knowledge I needed, the experience, and the confidence to go out into the world and build something of my own. Without his guidance I don’t think I could do what I do now, the learning curve would simply be too steep and I would feel overwhelmed and underprepared to handle the task of building something from nothing.

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?

We have been growing and processing industrial hemp since 2019. We had the knowledge to process CDB oil without any chemicals being used in the process and made a solvent free CBD tincture using only heat and pressure. This made our product more effective than the average CBD product and made us a very popular brand with many repeat customers. We continued to expand into consumable products for a few years until we discovered a small manufacturing facility in Nepal that was making hemp sneakers. His shoes were pretty good and very affordable so we ordered a full line of shoes and started our hemp clothing line, Capstone Hemp. As our partnership progressed the manufacturer suggested an exclusive partnership and we were able to secure an exclusive distribution license for the United States and Mexico, we sell hemp clothing and footwear retail through capstonehemp.com and are currently working to secure wholesale deals with other retailers and secure deals for the manufacturer, Royal Hemp Nepal. Our license gives us the ability to extend factory direct pricing to anyone who works with us directly, we can have items branded specifically for the customers brand, and our company Capstone Hemp double checks the quality of all shipments before delivering to the customer. If we aren’t happy with it we don’t deliver it. The nature of this arrangement means that clients may have a 3-6 month lead time on requests but they have complete control over production, they can pick any color, size, and combination of products they wish, we can make any item that can be made of fabric and provide price quotes for custom requests, and the prices can’t be beat. Our wholesale customers can literally bypass all the middle men and brokers that are adding percentages and pushing hemp products into an unaffordable price point where the average consumer is never going to make a purchase. Everyone can get factory direct pricing and extend the savings to the retail customer. If everyone continues to keep prices reasonable, making fair profit margins without exploiting the consumer then I believe we will see a boom in hemp clothing sales thus sparking a push into more ecofriendly clothing, and sending more resources to those companies that have environmental protection build into their business model.

Can you talk to us about how you funded your business?

The business was funded with the limited savings of myself and my business partner. We took our last $3000, left our miserable jobs, and started processing hemp as soon as the 2018 Farm Bill made it legal to do. We managed to produce and sell enough product to start turning a profit, investing the money back into the business, we didn’t pay ourselves for quite a while, but eventually over the course of 1-2 years we were getting paid, had a successful small business, and didn’t owe anyone a single dime.

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

We had spent all but $500 of our money and weren’t making sales, we had two options give up and move on or see if we could find a storefront for $500 or less and hope to lure in some customers. I talked to a few people and found us a location for $350 a month, I ran across the street to the local paper who agreed to do an article on the new hemp dispensary in town, and the customers started rolling in, it was a hail mary but it worked! We stayed in that location several years until the building was sold. I anticipated this was coming and had secured a new location just in case things went sideways on us. Sure enough the lights were cut off in the middle of the day without warning and we were forced to leave, we were able to move our entire business in a day and keep operations at full capacity because I had secured a second location before we lost the first one. Business is now as good as ever and we are even happier at our new spot.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://capstonehemp.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/capstonehempclothing/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CapstoneHemp
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@CapstoneClothing