We were lucky to catch up with Todd Mullins recently and have shared our conversation below.

Todd, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Naming anything – including a business – is so hard. Right? What’s the story behind how you came up with the name of your brand?

The idea flowed from vintage gas station road maps that my grandpa collected. When I took my daughter out to Colorado for her first year of college, we took some of the old maps with us. I wanted her to get a better understanding of the land we were covering on the way. Somewhere out on the drive, it occurred to me that we were connecting the generations by traveling the same “Old Roads” that my grandparents had traveled many decades ago. Hence… Old Road Brand was born.

Todd, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

While the name “Old Road” was conjured up by a connection to family history and travel, I had been working on concepts for a brand of apparel that included hats. My original thoughts around a hat with a vintage license plate had a name on it that nobody that I had run it by could make any sense of it. So the idea went into a drawer. When the name Old Road Brand finally came to me, I thought the only way to make it a reality would be to throw some money at the project in order to make prototypes. It really comes down to a simple decision that to pursue an idea or a dream, you actually have to make action decisions that propel an idea forward.

Can you talk to us about manufacturing? How’d you figure it all out? We’d love to hear the story.

Early in my career in the gift industry, I had learned that if you own the tools to produce your products, you can control how you scale a business. This lesson was absolutely true for me to get started with a limited budget without buying way too much inventory. You see, with a concept like Old Road Brand, with potential appeal to all 50 states and beyond, there was no way to predict what the best sellers would be by state and hat color combination. So I opted to control production by buying an industrial sewing machine that I found on CraigsList from a shoe designer in Portland Oregon, over 600 miles from me. Having the sewing machine would allow me to make what I needed based on orders that came in on my website site. I call it the “Baking Cookies Method” of production. I make what I need based on demand. But what this allowed me to do was keep my inventory of blank caps low, while also being able to invest in more patches for different states. That allowed me to look bigger than I actually was by offering a wider selection of states. Old Road Brand has evolved since those earliest days, but keeping finished inventory lean remains a core principle.

What do you think helped you build your reputation within your market?

2020 was my launch year, and coincidentally, the peak year of Covid. I spent a lot of time (because I had the time) building a stockpile of creative assets that I have used and reused in social media. Once 2021 came along, and people were ok again dealing with the public, I started attending local car shows in the (California) area. The key thing was that I kept showing up. People would see me in different locations. If they had not bought before, they would the next time I saw them. Sometimes I’d show up, and the weather would be lousy and maybe I’d only sell two hats. It would have been easy to get discouraged, and just say “forget it”. But as I continued to show up, I felt like I was being “welcomed into the community” by vintage car folks. I’d even have people who bought months before coming back to my pop up… “there’s the hat guy”. The lesson learned here was to “Keep Showing Up”. As local car events evolved into wholesale trade shows, the “keep showing up” lessons have only grown stronger. It takes time to build a brand and a following. In fact, I am still very early in the building process, and I will continue to keep “Showing Up”.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.oldroadbrand.com
• Instagram: @oldroadbrand
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/oldroadbrand
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/toddmullinssfbay/
• Twitter: @oldroadbrand

Image Credits
All images and art work – Todd Mullins – Old Road Brand / Brandruptive LLC.