That customization aspect was about to change just days after the SPESA Conference, however.

 

“Next week, we’re going to launch our first consumer-facing apparel line, primarily online, and we expect it to go out to brick and mortar shortly after that,” Strotbeck said. “This will allow consumers to buy something that isn’t custom made. It’s a little scary for me because this is a brand play. This is the true garment business. To date, most of our business is a service business, although we are an apparel company, too. We’re probably the largest brand that nobody ever heard of, but hopefully this will change that going forward.”

 

Through mass customization, Boathouse can produce about 4,440 products, and the total number of choices for customers is 8 billion – not including team logos, he said. The company ships to about 16,000 teams per year.

 

Strotbeck credited Lean Manufacturing as one of the big keys to the company’s success. After reading a book by Eliyahu M. Goddratt called The Goal: A Process of Ongoing Improvement in 1995, he began to implement these elements and the company was operating Lean within two years, he said.

 

Before Lean Manufacturing, WIP (Work In Progress) was 32 days compared to 3.5 days after the company implemented the systematic method; and delivery went from more than eight weeks to 20 days, he said. It’s Lean focus is to remove all waste, seek continuous improvement, use visual cues such as white boards and staging areas, make sure everyone is part of the team and treat people well, he said. And once an order is released, the process never stops, he added.

 

“Technology also has helped us a lot,” Strotbeck said. “We’ve spent a lot of money on investment, and we’ve bought the best sewing machines we could possibly buy. And a lot of our work is still done by hand.

 

“We also invested in sublimation,” he added. “I think we were the second company to bring sublimation to the athletic team space, and it’s been growing for nine years. I think we made the right decision.”

 

Additionally, Boathouse invested in technology for the consumer, including building four online configurators since 1998, putting “the factory at the fingertips of consumers,” he said.

 

In 2008, the company launched Team Store online, a micro-store that allows products to be custom-built for specific teams. That was a game changer for many teams that previously had to go through an arduous, manual ordering process, Strotbeck said.

 

“The Team Store was very novel when we launched it and it still is today,” he said. “Ours is still the best, but there are a lot of them out there.”