Marcus Milione built a bootstrapped running apparel brand to sell-out drops with a team of three — and beat the bots

strategically. It's really good effect. I was so skeptical when you launched these buttons. I was like, can we get the comedic timing to work? Will it hit?

Turns out we can.

Yes, it's working beautifully. Well, our next guest, get that button ready cuz I think we're going to be using it again. It's Marcus Malone from Minted, New York. Did I say your last name correctly or did I mispronounce it?

That bodgeged.

It's Million. I'm sorry.

Yeah, I've been getting Malone my whole life, so it's fine. I'm used to it.

It was It was It was written sort of tiny on my sheet, but

dude, it's it's incredible to finally on the show. Uh way way overdue. I've been following your path for a long time now. You've been absolutely on a tear and uh yeah, we're excited to have you. Uh since it's your first time,

zoom out for us.

Zoom out for us. Uh you know, all that stuff.

All right. So, um I don't know how far back you want me to go. Let's

go all the way to the lax days at least.

All right. So, I played lacrosse in college. Uh I played at St. Joe's University in Philly. Um

from there, moved to New York

after I graduated. Um I was working at a smaller regional bank doing commercial real estate debt.

Yeah.

Uh until like a year or a few months into COVID. As CO started, um Minted kind of spawned after I I was posting uh on social media, Instagram, Tik Tok.

Were you just doing your own accounts first or or were you thinking like I'm going to I'm going to build something or was it experimental? Like what was the actual flow?

Um well, I was a little bored during co I was at my parents house. Um I thought I was

You didn't love regional banking.

What's Yeah,

we love regional banking here. Um yeah, so I thought I was taking a long weekend at my parents house and co would like blow over over a long weekend and then um so I just started posting about things I liked mainly around like fashion and fitness on

on Instagram and Tik Tok and then the brand kind of spawned out of that.

Yeah. What was the first format? Direct to camera like scripted unscripted yapping get ready with me

phone in front of my face yapping. Um, I guess that was mainly Tik Tok and then Instagram was more just like outfit photos.

Okay.

Like I like putting outfit out outfits together.

Yeah. Yeah. And then what was growth like linear? Was there a was there a key turning point? A lot of times uh like with my YouTube I started a YouTube channel during co very similar story and for the first year it was like a thousand views and then I cracked the code on one video correct structure and it started it went I think it got 60,000 views which was like an insane takeoff by comparison to the thousand views that I was averaging and I credit that a lot to I had the editing dialed I had the script out but I really got like the structure and the title and the thumbnail all like packaged up so it like could fly and I'm wondering like what the what the process was like for growing on on Tik Tok and Instagram.

I mean, I kind of viewed it as a reps game. I told myself, at least on like the short form video stuff, since I had no background in it, I was like, I'll just do three videos a day for 365 straight days. And

by that point, you know, you start to see you get feedback from like the analytics. And so after a certain point, you're like, okay, well, this did well here. Let me like, you know, try some variation of this next time. Um, but really, yeah, it was just like a reps game. I would try any sort of of video style, but a lot of it was just talking. And I think at that time there was a lot of like it was still a dancing app, right? Like people were just doing dances. And I wasn't doing dances. I was trying to just provide some form of value to the viewer. Um, and you see it a lot more now, but at that time it was kind of like not as prevalent. So I think it helps.

Yeah. I think of you I mean I think of you as like the the a new generation of like founder-ledd company which there was like you know great companies have almost always been uh well every company started by a founder but uh but uh you're like the first generation that was this like hyper online you're in public you're

you're building your personal brand

you're building your personal brand as well as like you know people are following along building the company. Also, like your own uh journey as like an athlete and doing those things together and just having this like hyper presence where historically a founder even if they were pretty online, they might pop up and do like an interview every few months and people would be able to tune in there or they might post like post a little, you know, somewhat actively on Instagram, but it wasn't like three video three like medium form videos a day for a year kind of thing. Um, and I just feel like that built so much momentum because there was like multiple things to latch on. People could latch on to like how are you how's your how's your actual running going? Like I I you know remember video after video where you're like pushing yourself

super super hard and then there's also like some people can latch on to the business side which you're like giving people behind the scenes and really making people feel like a part of building that which

has ultimately led to where you're at right now. you had this uh drop this week that uh I hit you up yesterday. Must have been extremely uh chaotic. You guys sold out uh so quickly that you were you were going back through like trying to identify like bot like people that were botting it to resell. Uh but

yeah. Yeah. Take us through

take us through but like before we get there uh like kind of the key moments along the journey. You start out you're just making videos. At what point were you like oh I can quit like when did you quit your job?

I got to make some money off this.

Yeah. So it was like month eight uh of kind of after we started it started January of 2021 and then by month eight we had kind of had four large releases under under my belt and it was starting to become too much to try to juggle between real work and not like letting anything like slack there because obviously that paid the bills. But I remember talking to my dad and trying to figure out, okay, what's, you know, a good exit plan. And so we came up with like a revenue number that we would hit over the next three months. And if we hit that, then you know what? We're going to take the jump and and quit our job. And so then very next release, we hit it in like five minutes. And I remember I remember being at home and being like, well,

I guess we're just going to

Well, that was part of what must have been nerve-wracking, quitting, right? because it was a dropsbased approach and so you have super spiky revenue. So it's, you know, you're thinking like, okay, well, if this drop goes well and this drop goes well and this drop goes well.

Doesn't feel like a paycheck every two weeks.

Yeah. It doesn't Yeah. It doesn't feel like it's streaming in.

No, I mean, and you're also, you're betting the farm like the entire time. Every single drop, I was just run the bank account to zero dollars on production. Um, and hope that it went well. I guess at any point like it could have blown up in my face and gone to zero.

Yeah. Uh so that that happens. Uh what what when when you when you're looking back, what was the next like significant moment? You're like, "Okay, this seems like a real business. People like what we're doing?"

I would say that that following Christmas, like that December, so 12 months in, um we had like the largest release of of the company's history. It was like going into uh Christmas season and holiday season and we released and I remember being like so blown away by the number on the screen but then also realizing like okay all this inventory is in my parents' garage and we have to ship all this out as fast as possible.

Yeah. So I need all hair hands on deck. I've got like I've got my my brother, my sister, my mom, my dad, like everybody is there packing and I'm like this is going to take us two days. It's like no problem. And it took us like six days of packing every day like through Christmas. Might have ruined Christmas. I'm not even sure. Um but it was so new. Everyone was so excited. Like I mean obviously toward the end we were definitely getting on each other but it was so new and exciting for everybody that um yeah it kind of just it was a blur.

And then and then this whole time uh like running is blowing up. Running got running got cool. you you you clearly thought it was cool before you started the brand, but I think a lot of people realized that maybe it was cool uh you know around 2022. Is that like when it when you felt like it was really becoming part of popular culture and in a bigger way?

It was I mean yeah it was really becoming part of my life then too. I think I probably started in 21 and then really picked up and wanted to start racing.

What were you running from? honestly a lot of different things probably now that I think about it. But um yeah, I mean like it started like everybody else. You sign up for half marathon, you're like, "Okay, I gotta train and I'm going to give myself a time goal." And then like anything else, it's a sickness and then it just gets worse and worse.

Uh did you start do you still feel pressured? Were you feeling pressure to be the best runner out of your customer base? Like I mean like I I feel like you you you're you're kind of running two races. You're building a business and then uh I can imagine it really gets in your head because you start sharing some times that you're running and then you know you're competitive and you want to improve. Walk us through that that journey.

Yeah, I mean the beauty of posting on the internet is that you get to hear commentary from everybody on the internet. So, uh, I always approached it as if we're going to make a performance running apparel, I better have some halfrespectable times. I'll never be elite. I may never be sub elite, but I at least put in the time and effort and try to run fast. Yes.

Uh, and then what at what point did you start getting approached uh to do, you know, big partnerships like this drop this week? Uh

because these type of things are typically you know you brands need to like meet in the middle. The best the best partnership right is like a win for you know sort of like legitimizes the rising brand and then makes the the this maybe the more legacy brand like you know cooler and more relevant and and uh but timing matters a lot for these things.

Yeah. I I think it was toward the end of 2022. Um so we you know coming to the end of our second year I got an email uh from Jason over at Sakin who kind of heads their uh it's called energy but uh partnerships and it was really cool. I mean they the email started out just lifestyle because at this point the brand wasn't as heavily focused on the performance running piece and it was a lot more men's wear and jewelry and stuff like that. So, he wanted us to work on a lifestyle shoe that kind of fit into that world. Um, and then when they brought us up to Boston, I kind of pitched the idea of, well, we should do a running shoe, too, cuz we run and we're also making performance apparel. Um, and so it was lifestyle first, then the running shoe came. And then now we've had two uh running shoes.

And then, and then how are you thinking about beyond beyond running? like what are there other are there other categories that you're particularly excited about or do you want it to be a brand that can exist anywhere that your kind of like idealized customer goes? Yeah, I look at I mean an athlete spends a lot of time outside of sport and so I think that being able to provide products uh like as I call them offc court uh is important. But from like a performance sporting side of things, I think we're really focused on running right now, but I'm I'm interested in a lot of the endurance sports. You know, cycling is very interesting, but uh for right now, just just the running piece. How are you thinking about like growing the business? It's such an interesting uh like origin story because it's not okay, I was in business school, I raised some money, I went to a design firm and set up an DTC website. Like that era existed and there were a couple companies that made it through. A lot of companies that we've talked about that uh didn't quite make it or wound up selling off at a at a discount. And it feels like at some point, if you're not already there, there might be like a crossroads of like, are you going to take a run at being, you know, the next Nike, raise as much money as possible, retail footprint all over the world, like go crazy or, you know, more, you know, family business, compound slowly, grow, grow, grow, do things tastefully. And there's obviously like a whole, you know, a whole gradient of of pathways in between, but what what what feels natural to you?

It's hard to say. I mean, like we're bootstrapped now in year five and uh obviously like

take it all the way.

Take it all the way. We're hitting the gong for that.

The gong for the anti- funra. You love to see it. So, so obviously like you know it caps what you can do and how big you can do do certain things but I mean in my mind I want the brand to be as big as possible on like a global scale.

I don't think when you're trying to build something like that going slow and building a really strong foundation is a bad thing. You know, I I don't think us being almost handicapped in the bootstrap way from from a money standpoint isn't

Yeah. Look at look at the last look at the last, you know, month. You had Airbnb pivot to being or sorry, uh Alber's pivot to a Neocloud. You have Everlane, you know, sell to Sheen. Uh examples of uh high growth uh if you're doing anything like cool in apparel and you're executing well, you're going to go grow quickly. But high growth appears to be entirely at odds with like building a lasting uh consumer lifestyle brand.

Yeah. I mean I think the there's a playbook where you just turn on the meta ads faucet and just like throw money at it, right? But I mean we do very very very little advertising at all. I mean we're really just I would say 99.5% organic. Um, and that feels like a really nice strong foundation where if we want to turn on the paid advertising, it it just makes our life a little bit easier because we're building a brand that people know and you're not just like getting fed ads all the time and then you end up buying it and you're not you have no real like affiliation with the brand.

Yeah. And the worst CPMs you'll ever have are when you're, you know, there's no brand awareness. like every year you delay that it gets uh the economics probably gets stronger and the TAM gets even bigger.

Um how are you thinking about bots? What is a do not buy decoy listing? Explain to me like how all this fits together in the modern era.

Yeah, so I mean when when their shoe is anticipated in that way like we saw it with the Speed 4, which was the first shoe we released, we got slammed with the bots. Um, and you know, it's people submitting orders for 30 pairs. They want to resell them um, a lot of the time. And so this time I took to Twitter before the release and and called upon people who you've either like bought it in the past or are current botterers

to try to get a little focus group together to figure out how I could jam up the bots. So, I'll give you the sauce on what I did. I had those two decoy listings on there because I guess, you know, the bots don't look at the screen. They're just going right to checkout. And so I had those be the correct listing naming structure, everything. And then the real listing, the one with the green border, um, had none of the real terminology associated with the shoe on the listing or in the the kind of like the metadata.

And it seemed to work. I would say like 99% of the orders were manual. Some people did uh bought it, but it was very easy to catch and then go ahead and cancel those orders. So,

wait, what was on the decoy pages though? You should have you should have sold like sand for like a,000, you know, like $200 a pound.

We had it so that the the shoes were like£10,000. You couldn't get a shipping rate cuz they were so heavy. So, you would get to check out

and then the whole thing would break. Oh,

that is brilliant.

It's really clever. I feel like this uh cat and mouse game is gonna go on forever.

Yeah, it's such a it's such a Yeah, having like hype and and way more demand than supply is like that, you know, it is is a is a blessing for for a brand. But it is such a uh it's such an interesting challenge because you want to get your product. You don't benefit at all from shoes sec selling at two three times whatever it is in the secondary market. And so like your entire focus has to be on like how do you get the shoes to the actual people that are a part of building this brand with you? And it's um there's probably like a pro has anybody built like software to help with this? It's a pretty niche problem because most brands are like we'd be happy to sell out with bots immediately but it feels like there's like a software product there. you can go the raffle route um where like you know you can collect entries and like pre-charge cards a dollar and then if they win the raffle I think like people like the idea of first come first serve and if you get in there you enter your card information you get past the age capture like you are rewarded with the the shoe and the ra the raffles I've I in talking to a bunch of people who buy sneakers and are a part of of that stuff. They It just takes a lot of the fun away from releases like that. So, try to keep it as pure as possible.

How are you thinking about Nvidia earnings?

John, you you're you're laughing, but Marcus has a dedicated account where he just talks about Marcus.

Yeah, but he's been live with us while the earnings dropped.

I know. Does anyone have any numbers?

Uh, beat on topline and bottom line. EPS of 187, revenue came in at 81.6 6 billion double B and the stock's down 2.4%. No, it's popped back up maybe. I don't know. It's jumping around

just as tim predicted.

Plant truster over there. Nvidia earnings live. Uh are there any IRL events that are small right now that you think have uh the the seeds or showing promise of becoming the next, you know, uh run club? like we went through like the Padell and uh pickle ball booms and uh that I'm wondering if you're tracking anything that feels like uh could be a source of communities in cities something outdoors or I I don't know anything in that realm that's like run clubshaped that's really small right now but shows like oh there's some deep interest there I I that might go somewhere I don't know where but uh it's at least showing popping up on your radar now

you Well, I I don't know if I'm like the best answer to answer that question. I I'm not too sure. I stick to running.

Yeah.

I see people go on group bike rides. They seem like a lot of fun. You know, you go on a 50- mile ride, you stop halfway, get a coffee and like a donut with your friends, and then you bike back and it's like, you know, you're exercising, you're out in nature. That I don't have a bike, so I can't participate. But if I were to do another group activity outside, it would probably be that. Jord's been getting really into the laring the live action role playing where you dress up and go to the park. Go to the park suit of armor and you just thrash on each other with

I have been I have I haven't been getting into it personally, but I have been sending you videos of there's some there's there's some I'll send I'll send you after this.

There's um there's a Yeah, John has a helmet. He's ready to LAR. Uh there's this account where they they have like uh laring like pretty high uh pretty high skill laring going on where they're hitting each other legitimately so hard. I'm like you you're going to give each other concussions, but it seems like it's fair play.

Now with this helmet on, I'm good to go.

I think I've seen some of that stuff. That might be a good Maybe we get like a little tech version of that going.

How big's the team these days?

Three people. And then my my sister's part time. She uh she does the customer service and she's the goat. But yeah, three full-time.

That's amazing.

Three full-time and uh all all inhouse like in in in office in New York.

Uh how how like

what is um

how are you thinking about supply chain? Like you're making a lot you're making some stuff in New York from from what I recall, but I imagine you're making it all over. Yeah, a lot a lot of the performance stuff is made over in China. Um, you know, the the shoes were Indonesia. That's a that's a Sony factory, so that's not us. Jewelry Italy. I mean, we're kind of spread out, but um we have a lot of good manufacturing partners. I would like to bring some more of those pieces here to the US. I think it's just we're not super agile, you know, as a company. So, switching uh a factory overnight isn't really possible. And there's a whole like resampling and and reproducing process that would need to go into that. So, um we're we're focused on like catching up to the fashion calendar right now cuz right now we've been behind since day one. We've been behind and we kind of release uh when we can, but we're

this year we will catch up to the calendar and be, you know, releasing products in the proper weather.

Is that a double-edged sword?

Yeah. I mean,

it's like, hey, we have a winter coat in August.

Oh, we've done it. I've done hoodies in the middle of August.

Yeah. Wait, but is that a double-edged sword where like if you're the only hoodie that's going on sale in uh in the summer, like at least it's like not a noisy time and you're not getting crowded out and so maybe there's a benefit or silver lining.

No, it feels bad.

It feels bad.

It feels bad. Yeah. Don't want to do that.

You don't want to do that. That's funny. Uh when you say uh like the the calendar, are you just talking about the seasons or are there specific moments where all the brands you know sort of coales around like this is the day or this is the week when like fall collections go on sale or like how how how precise are we being because I know that there's a whole fashion runway show circuit, but I'm not tapped in enough to know if there's a real cycle to it or a logic to it.

Yeah, it I don't think it's that crazy for for like the performance stuff. I think you want to hit like spring, summer, fall, winter. Um, and even that is a little more relaxed. Like you can kind of do it based off when people start training for certain things or or how the weather is shifting. But,

you know, there are times uh if you want to do stuff around the the world marathon majors, then you kind of have to like prep for that. And a lot of those start, you know, November, October, November. Uh so yeah, I mean depending on what you want to hit from like an event standpoint that kind of shifts uh shifts stuff cuz it does get cooler then but you're still releasing, you know, obviously tanks and stuff that you're running in to stay cool. But yeah, I mean spring, summer, fall, winter for the most part is is good enough.

Yeah, that makes sense.

Are you a nominative determinism guy?

The chat thinks you're basically a millionaire. Marcus millionaire.

Marcus millionaire.

Yeah, I don't know. There's bait.

I guess on paper, yeah, the company would be worth worth Yeah, that's