We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Rusty Nix. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Rusty below.
Alright, Rusty thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. What do you think matters most in terms of achieving success?
I believe success is driven by the desire to create, the ability to utilize current resources, and being open to asking dumb questions (or so they seem). When you have the desire to manifest into reality something that currently only lives in your head, this is a powerful motivator, and often, the simplest questions hold the key to deeper understanding, pushing us to think beyond conventional solutions. It’s through curiosity and a willingness to learn, even if it means stepping outside of one’s comfort zone, that true innovation occurs. By harnessing available tools and constantly seeking new ways to improve, success becomes a byproduct of the process—one that values both the creative spark and the humility to ask for help or clarification when needed. It’s this combination of creativity, resourcefulness, and open-mindedness that drives progress and leads to meaningful achievements.
I realized this one day as i was walking in to home depot to get some parts for a project i was working on. You see, i am the type of person who doesn’t need help, ever, for anything. Well, that was the old me at least, so on this particular day when the guy asked me if i needed help finding something, instead of rejecting the offer (becasue i knew everything, pshaw!) I took the gentlemen up on it. Rather than walking up and down the isles for 20 minutes, he took me directly to the thing i needed. I remember thinking to myself “wow, that was awesome why are so damn prideful, just accept help”. That was that day i gained my superpowers, and grew into a guy who was willing to look like dumb, so i could realize my vision. From that day forward when i met something who had knowledge i needed, i would ask them the “dumbest” questions imaginable. Even though asking for help is never dumb, that is just the way we perceive it, and people love helping others.
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
My wife and I started our businesses about 22 years ago. My wife had always wanted to run her very own brick and mortar boutique, she had been in corporate retail for close to 15 years, working her way up from an hourly employee to being store manager at several of the largest brands in retail. Even though she was making great money, she was just tired of the corporate grind, and I just loved making things. It didnt really matter what the “thing” was, i just enjoyed creating. We opened a boutique with a little workshop in the back room. I would tinker in the little workshop making new products, and my wife an I would come up with new ideas that we would then test in the store.
Before long our products grew legs, other stores wanted to buy our handmade items to offer in their own stores and Backerton was born. We had a big hit early on when we invented the necktie watch. We would deconstruct old vintage neckties and fashion them into a watch band. It was a huge success and we were flattered to have our idea stolen by the likes of Gucci, Hermes, Fossil, and even Wal-Mart. But we were also featured in many of the top magazines and “lists”, heck, we even made it onto “Oprah’s favorite things” list that year. This really solidified the brand, and allowed us to get our other products into more stores. We no longer make the necktie watch and pivoted into less fad driven products. Currently, along with our branded products, a large portion of our revenue stems from contract manufacturing and sewing. We make products for several brands and work with many businesses for their corporate gifting and product needs. The boutique (Blue Seven) grew quite large and is now one of the premier shopping destinations in Oklahoma City.
Our operations took quite a hit during Covid, and we had to scale back a bit, but we are fortunate to be a cash based business, so we never carried any debt in our 22 years. This allowed us to make it through the Covid period and come out the other side, fairly unscathed. We are currently back in the growth phase again and are ramping up operations to have another go at it. Hooray!
Conversations about M&A are often focused on multibillion dollar transactions – but M&A can be an important part of a small or medium business owner’s journey. We’d love to hear about your experience with selling businesses.
Yes we have sold parts of our businesses along the way, the first was the boutique. The boutique grew quite fast and we expanded it 3 times during our ownership, eventually we had over 8000 sq ft of floor space, and around 15-20 employees. We had built up quite a nest egg for ourselves, so when my wife and i had our first child, she wanted to just be a mom for a while. One of our first employees was interested in buying the business from us so we agreed to 5 year payment terms with a lump sum at the end of 5 years. We did retain a percentage of the store, but are no longer the majority owner.
Note: if I had it all over to do again i would not structure a deal this way, although everything worked out, since the money came in so slowly we were never able to utilized the capital as an investment into any future endeavors. Also since we were technically the owners until the 5 years duration was up, this did cause some friction at times between us and the new owner. Nothing major, and we were able to overcome it, but i can envision this being a major issue in other circumstances.
The second time was a portion of Backerton itself, we had another employee who really needed to work closer to home and have more flexible hours. She was getting ready to have a baby so wanted something of her own that she could schedule around raising her child. We decided to break off a portion of our product offering at the time, and she would produce those products herself. We settled on a number, and she was able to get an Small Business Loan. Structuring it this way worked out much better for both parties, there was never any friction and she is still running the business successfully.
Any advice for growing your clientele? What’s been most effective for you?
For both our boutique and Backerton the single most successful strategy we have utilized is collabs. On the boutique side of things we would partner with artist to sell their art/products in the store on a commission basis. we would also host art openings, this grew us a rapid audience since artists are able to promote to their current audiences and bring them to us. For Backerton we collab with artist to produce products for them. we feature them on our own website, and additionally they sell these products through their own channels.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.backerton.com
- Instagram: @backerton
