Investor:Mark CubanShark Aquarium Appearance:February 5, 2016 Bid:$100,000 for 20% stake Results:Sales increased from $300,000 to $2.4 million.
While studying for an MBA at Brandman University, in Southern California Lisa Bradley wrote about FedEx's hub and spoke system. Thanks to a “kind of carpooling for parcels”, as the company likes to say, the parcels are collected in a central location, sorted and then rerouted to their final destination. “Although you may be sending packages in the opposite direction of their final destination,” says Bradley, “hub and spoke systems can be both more economical and more efficient than direct routes. ”
Years later, in 2011, the idea for the crossroads would become the inspiration for R. Riveter, the company that Bradley and Cameron Cruse co-founded in Dahlonega, Georgia, where they lived with their husbands and their families from the Army Rangers. Spouses or military riveters across the country make the individual pieces of the handbags. Some are created from recycled materials, such as retired uniforms, tents and woolen blankets. Then each component – liner, straps, pockets – is stamped by the manufacturer and posted to the warehouse in Southern Pines, North Carolina. There, the handbags are assembled and shipped to customers or sold in the nearby retail store.
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As Bradley and Cruse explained to investors when they appeared on the Emmy-winning film Shark Aquarium reality series in February 2016, “It’s so much more than a product. It's about empowering military spouses who want more than a part-time job. As military families move every two years as active service members are reassigned to new positions, military spouses have resumes that show only irregular employment, making it difficult to land a job, not to mention build a career.
Mark Cuban saw Bradley and Cruse as disruptors. “You are a social network by action,” he told them with admiration. "You could be, quite literally, the future of manufacturing. With Cuban on board as an investor and advisor, R. Riveter has seen sales increase nearly 700% and employs 55 people. As the business flourished, Bradley and Cruse learned some important lessons.
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Pick the right partner.
Robert Herjavec and Kevin O'Leary, along with Cuban, offered Bradley and Cruse the exact contract they were looking for. They knew Cuban had experience with other businesses started by military families, including Bottle Breacher, which makes handmade bottle openers, and footwear company Combat Flip Flops. “The relationship Mark has with the other military families in his portfolio has been a great asset,” says Bradley. More importantly, Cuba shared the passion and commitment of the founders. “The whole time we were in the Shark Tank, you could just tell that Mark really cared about military families and knew what we were doing,” says Bradley. "He's always there for us. »
Don't get comfortable.
“Learning and growing are hard,” says Bradley, “but as an entrepreneur, you have to keep doing both. Mark pushed us not to get too comfortable. When Bradley and Cruse mentioned to him that they were considering offering a larger selection of handmade items on their website so that more military spouses would have business opportunities, Cuban encouraged them to go for it. before immediately. They did, creating Post to Pillar:A Curated Marketplace for Military Spouse Makers. The collection includes clothing, jewelry, handcrafted clay mugs, pillows and blankets, and accounts for 15% of R. Riveter's sales.
“Learning and growing are hard, but as an entrepreneur you have to keep doing both.”
Play to your strengths and those of your team.
The first time Bradley tried to put together a purse, she sewed a pocket inside out. "A customer told me she loved her bag, but things keep falling out of pocket," Bradley recalls with a laugh. "That's when I got kicked out of sewing. Since then, Bradley has focused on the business side of R. Riveter, while Cruse, who has a master's degree in architecture, handles design and operations.
Stick to your beliefs.
Bradley recalls meeting with a consultant in early R. Riveter and explaining the company's working model:they ship raw materials to military families and riveters return the finished pieces. The consultant told him that it would never work because production costs would increase. “It was a big moment for me,” says Bradley. “I was determined to make the company successful just to prove him wrong. I was convinced that manufacturing in America could be done in a different way. We have shown that this could be the case. »
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