After Pereyo and Merritt graduated, they went their separate ways to begin their respective careers. But “neither of us was having many ‘oobe’ days,” Pereyo said. “It was miserable.”

 

So one day, Pereyo called Merritt and told him they need to start their own business, even though he had no idea what kind of business to start, he said.

 

Tom, equally “miserable,” said he was in and, for a year, they met at a midway point for the two of them – at a Waffle House in Gaffney, S.C., near the landmark “Peachoid” water tower. There, they figured out what they wanted to do and wrote a business plan.

 

“We saw a niche in the outdoor apparel market,” he said. “But we were two 24-year-olds trying to compete in the outdoor industry with zero money, zero design experience and, really, zero resources. It was just Tom and me.”

 

But they were able to scrounge up enough money to buy 10 T-shirt and 12 baseball cap designs. They then rented an auto body shop in Easley, S.C., for $50 a month and, while getting their samples and basic prototypes ready for six months, they started calling every outdoor store from Virginia to Florida to ask them if they would carry the yet-to-be-released Oobe brand.

 

“It was exciting, but it was really a struggle,” said Pereyo. “We were so undercapitalized and we were young. We didn’t really know anything about the apparel business, didn’t know anything about tech packs or garments. We just knew we wanted to go out there and enjoy what we were doing and be passionate about what we were doing.”

 

And going up against the big players in the industry was a daunting task. But they began to gain traction by providing something they didn’t have, he said: a young brand with a young look. They first targeted mom and pop specialty stores.

 

“We told them we aren’t going to start doing those $50,000 deals like the big guys are going to ask you to do, but we’re going to provide you excellent service and an excellent model in which to help you grow your business,” Pereyo said. “That really started helping us craft our DNA at Oobe.”

 

At start-up, they developed a corporate purpose that they still use today: “To love and serve people with our time, talents and treasures so God can be celebrated through our faithful stewardship.”

 

“This purpose would be what drove us through the troubles that would come over the next 10 years in the outdoor market,” Pereyo said.

 

Open for business

Oobe’s first shipments – T-shirts and baseball caps – were made in 1995. Meanwhile, Pereyo and Merritt “burned up the roads” on sales calls through the South. Along the way, Merritt found an opportunity at various scuba diving shops, where he was pitching T-shirts with a dive theme. His thinking? Not many divers will buy a $400 wetsuit on an impulse, but they might buy a T-shirt. And the dive shops bought into that thinking and bought the T-shirts.

 

So they did some research and found that an international trade show for scuba enthusiasts was scheduled for New Orleans. So what did they do? They bought four scuba tanks, a dive flag, a velvet Elvis painting and a lava lamp, then drove to the the Crescent City. There, they sponsored a booth under the made-up name “Dive Jive – The Company That Wants To Go Under.”

 

And in three days, they sold six figures in scuba diving T-shirts, even though neither of them had ever scuba dived in their lives.

 

“That out-of-the-box thinking is what gave us an opportunity to get the capital we needed to start driving the business in the outdoor market,” Pereyo said.

 

Soon, the company would hit its first million dollars in sales – a big goal for the duo.

 

In 1999, Oobe products were in about 400 outdoor specialty shops and starting to pick up steam. However, as the company began making more complex products, developing outerwear and performance products, the co-owners started running into a lot of headaches as they looked for domestic manufacturing partners, Pereyo said. But no one was willing to assist. So they started traveling and looking for manufacturers abroad.

 

“We should have really been able to find people domestically to help us build our business,” he said. “But in that era, a lot of people weren’t interested in the entrepreneur, the small business. People were wanting the big volume order.”

 

He added: “So I want to encourage all of you to invest in those companies. I think there’s a lot of small start-ups that, when you group them together, they’re still open today.”

 

Things picked up in 2002, when brands actually reached out to Oobe, which was continuing to build a name for itself, Pereyo said.

 

“They were saying, ‘we love your design, we love your quality. Will you be the guys behind the curtain for us?’ ” he said. “And it became a big business opportunity for us.”

 

Paradigm shift

And growth continued from there. In 2005, the company saw a big paradigm shift, he said, as it began to struggle in the outdoor apparel industry. They wondered how they would survive with everyone dropping their price points and the industry becoming more and more competitive. So they again started thinking outside the box, Pereyo said.

 

That year, he was with one of his best friends, a Chik-fil-A restaurant operator, who was doing some kind of business on a fax machine. Pereyo asked him what he was doing and why was he using a fax machine. His friend told him he was ordering uniforms from a longtime provider and Pereyo asked, “you’re having to order them on a piece of paper?” and “how often do you have to replace them?”

 

His friend told him three or four times a year and added, “it’s cheap material and they shrink and fade.” Pereyo told him they should be using performance fabric.

 

That was a serendipitous moment for Pereyo.

 

So Pereyo, on a whim and a Big Idea, picked up the phone and called an executive vice president of Chik-fil-A, which had bought Oobe apparel for golf tournaments and other events in recent years.

 

The conversation went something like this:

 

“I understand there might be an RFP (request for proposal) for you uniform business.”

 

“Who told you that?”

 

“My friend (who he names)”

 

“That’s true.”

 

“Is there any way Oobe can throw our name in the hat?”

 

“Look, we like your company and you’re really nice guys, but aren’t you an outdoor clothing company?”

 

“Yes sir, we are.”

 

“Have you ever done a uniform program before for 100,000 employees?”

 

“No.”

 

“Do you have a customer service department that can take 500 calls a day?”

 

“No, sir.”

 

And the questioning continued, with the answer being “no” every time – until finally, the Chik-fil-A executive said: “Listen, we appreciate you’re wanting to have an opportunity like this, but we really can’t expose ourselves. And we can’t put ourselves at risk like that.”

 

Thinking he had tried, to no avail, Pereyo felt good at least putting himself in a position to win the business.

 

“I’ve learned not to ignore the convictions of my heart,” he said. “And I’ve learned that I’m never going to hit the ball out of the park if I don’t swing the bat. So I knew I just needed to call. And no is an acceptable answer. So I hung up the phone.”

 

A week later, the Chik-fil-A exec called him back to tell him he could not stop thinking about their conversation and asked him if he and Merritt could come down the next week to speak to CEO Truitt Cathey and his son Dan, who today runs the business. And don’t bring any catalogs, samples or business cards, the exec told Pereyo.

 

“I realized then that everything we do and you do has to be about people,” Pereyo said. “And the example he set for us that day was about people, not necessarily about the business.”

 

When they walked into the meeting, all the questions over a five-hour period were not the kind Pereyo and Merritt were expecting. To wit: How did you two meet and become best friends? How did you fall in love with your wives? What are your kids passionate about? What was your dad’s biggest disappointment in you and the greatest victory you’ve had in his eyes? Who are the six people who will carry your casket at your funeral and why are they important to you?

 

At the end of this intensely personal session, the Chik-fil-A leaders asked one business question: Why should we let you in this RFP? And Merritt answered perfectly, Pereyo said: “Because we’re not a uniform company.”

 

To which Truitt Cathey replied: “All right, boys. Gird your loins. Put them in the RFP.”

 

The next 18 months were an “incredibly intense” experience,” Pereyo said. “It really taught us how to conduct ourselves and how to put ourselves in this process. They said, ‘we can’t guarantee you’ll make it past the first stage but we’re sure you’ll learn a lot from this process.’ “

 

Indeed, they did. And they ended up making it as a top-two finalist.

 

The next step: Chik-fil-A created a “crazy, stressed-out, intense” four-hour fashion show between the two finalists. With about an hour left in the “competition,” the restaurant execs came in and told Oobe, “you guys can go home now. We appreciate your time.”

 

And they asked Pereyo and Merritt, “Are you going to even be able to finance this?” The answer was no.

 

And Pereyo said he knew it was over. But unbeknownst to him, the executives, the Truitt family and the apparel committee had brought in the hired models to ask which company had treated them with the most honor, dignity and respect backstage.

 

Two weeks later, Pereyo, knowing the Chik-fil-A executive committee was going to announce their decision, went to the company’s corporate headquarters in Atlanta and sat in the lobby. When committee members were told he was there waiting for them, he was brought into the conference room.

 

They told him: “We’re in the business of loving and serving people,” Pereyo recalled. “We happen to serve chicken doing it. And we have found a company that’s in the love and serve business, too. You just happen to sell T-shirts doing it. And what we ask you to do is don’t forget about our people and don’t forget about us –a rising tide will lift all boats. If you join with us and be loyal, and your yesses are yesses and your no’s are no’s, and there’s no areas of gray, we can grow our businesses together.”

 

That was almost 10 years ago. Since winning that business, Oobe has been afforded the opportunity to serve a number of global brands and has shifted its focus from this lesson learned.

 

“We’re not reinventing the pant or the shirt, but it is through our service strategy in how we love and serve others which affords us the opportunity to be heard,” Pereyo said. “We don’t have one salesperson. We’ve put all of our energy and all of our monies into serving others. And they in turn become ambassadors and storytellers on our behalf.”