May 19, 2026 • 32 mins
Max Siegelman had a logo before he had a brand — borrowed from his father's harness racing stable, Siegelman Stable. The logo felt like it was meant to be on a hat, so when the pandemic hit, Max put $600 down and started making them. No outside money, no rapid scaling. He funded each production run with returns from the last, built buzz with rappers and shipped hats to the NBA Bubble in 2020. Then in 2022, one of his hats ended up on Kendall Jenner during Paris Fashion Week. Max had 15 minutes to get his website ready and he made the moment count.
Join Ben and Kathleen as they talk to Max about building a luxury brand on legacy and scarcity, why limited drops beat mass production, and how travel fuels the aspirational mystique that makes Siegelman Stable impossible to ignore. These are The Unshakeables.
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Ruby.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
Max Siegelman was in Miami, Florida, with his fiance when he got a text out of the blue. It was a hairstylist he knew.
Speaker 1 (00:15):
She's like, you won't believe it, and I'm like what.
She's like, you didn't see the pictures of Kendall And
I'm like in Paris and she's like, yeah, she wore
your hat.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
Max is the owner of Siegelman Stable, a luxury apparel brand in New York. And the Kendall in question was, yes, Kendall Jenner at Paris Fashion Week.
Speaker 1 (00:35):
She was on her way to the off-white show, so there was a lot of camera on her about her hair color. And she ended up wearing a hat that I never wanted to produce. It was a black and tan two-tone five panel hat with black embroidery.
Speaker 2 (00:52):
And why was it such a big deal that Kendall
was wearing a hat? She just dyed her hair red
for the Prada show that she was walking in later
that week. This was huge news, apparently, and so kept
under wraps that Kendall took special care to conceal her
hair for as long as possible. Suddenly everyone had to
know what was that hat.
Speaker 1 (01:12):
It just kept saying, Kendall Jenner in a hat or whatever.
Speaker 2 (01:18):
The opportunity of a lifetime that would launch his business into the stratosphere, just came knocking. Max had to get the word out and fast before his 15 minutes of fame were up.Welcome to The Unshakeables. From Chase for Business and Ruby Studio from iHeartMedia, I'm Ben Walter, CEO of Chase for Business. There's nothing small about the impact small businesses have on our country. Every day I hear from owners who are not only fueling our economy, but also shaping the character of our communities. Yet too often you tell us about the hurdles you face, regulatory red tape, access to capital, and the constant challenge of finding resources to grow. These aren't just headlines, they're your stories and they matter deeply to us. We don't use The Unshakeables typically to talk about us. This podcast is about you, but it's important that we also bring to you important resources that may help.And in this case, I'd like to talk about JPMorgan Chase's recent American Dream Initiative, which is designed to help put the American dream back within reach for small business owners everywhere. Through expanded capital and coaching, advocating for smart policies that matter to small businesses and continuing to innovate around services that help small businesses run and grow, we plan to support 10 million small businesses over the next several years. To learn more about the American Dream Initiative, go to jpmorganchase.com/communities/america.Kathleen, welcome back. It's good to have you again.
Speaker 3 (02:57):
So good to be here. I think our team really took this year of the horse in the Zodiac calendar assignment seriously. We have a literal horse brand here today.
Speaker 2 (03:07):
You worked hard on that one, didn't you listen?
Speaker 3 (03:09):
Honest to god, I've been all about this year. Last
year was a year of the snake. It was awful. Shedding, shedding, shedding,
and we're ready to like gallop. This is once every
twelve years. I'm very excited. And I know that's woo
woo and you hate it. But here we are.
Speaker 2 (03:22):
But I genuinely hope you're right. I am in your corner. Let me tell you. On today's episode, Siegelman Stable from New York City. To start, Kathleen is right, this episode is about horses. It's also about hats, but first it's about the Siegelman's. Max's dad started his own stable, Siegelman Stable, in the 1980s to train harness racing horses. This was cool to Max's classmates on career day, but just daily life to him.
Speaker 1 (03:57):
When I was growing up, I didn't look at him as an entrepreneur. I looked at him as like, "Oh, he trains racehorses for a living," which is very different than most parents in the town I grew up in.
Speaker 2 (04:07):
The normalization of a unique job may have been what pushed Max into starting his own company, even though he considers himself risk averse.
Speaker 1 (04:15):
I think anytime you're starting something new and you start working with someone, and you're like, "Oh, I can also do this and create something for myself," I think that's when the light bulb goes off, and you're like, "Let me just try and do it on my own."
Speaker 2 (04:28):
He started his first company right after college. It was called Rouse Social, which was a social media platform that aggregated celebrity's social media pages. It let fans follow along in one spot.
Speaker 1 (04:40):
Was able to get LL Cool J as a partner and a founder on it.
Speaker 2 (04:45):
Rouse Social didn't last, but the work got him connected to all the right people. From there, he used those connections to start a creative agency.
Speaker 1 (04:53):
Agency, running marketing ads for athletes and music artists, anything
from an Instagram collab post with a brand and negotiating
what that creative or deal looked like to an album
release concept for a music artist.
Speaker 2 (05:11):
He got so good at that out of the box
thinking that the Billboard company out Front wanted Max to
help take them into the digital age.
Speaker 1 (05:19):
I started their social department. It was head of Social
It kind of moved into what is the best made
up title of all time? As head of Cultural Relevance,
and that was my title when I left.
Speaker 2 (05:28):
That's a very millennial/gen Z title, I got to say.
Speaker 1 (05:30):
I gotta say yeah, and I give a lot of
credit to the CMO who is not millennial or gen
Z who actually came up with that title. It was
pretty amazing.
Speaker 2 (05:37):
And if you're thinking, what on earth is the head
of cultural relevance? I had the same question.
Speaker 1 (05:44):
It was a combination of really having this, I guess, call it creative agency on the side of this social media job and continuing to bring Outfront into the fold of cool projects with people who typically wouldn't be like, "Ooh, let me call Outfront Media and buy a billboard or a subway ad." And this moment in culture that combined what was thought to be a old school dying industry and bring some pop culture and coolness to it.
Speaker 2 (06:09):
So you were connecting dots across the landscape. Yeah, which
is exactly what Max does best.
Speaker 1 (06:15):
I always had this knack of finding the right thing
or connecting the right people or projects to create a
moment in culture or some noise around certain things, with
certain people or browns.
Speaker 2 (06:26):
He connected dots for out Front for seven years. That
tenure overlapped with the pandemic, where he suddenly found himself
with a lot of downtime and he started making.
Speaker 1 (06:35):
Clothes for fun, making hats and sweatshirts with my dad's
racing stable logo on it that my mom made for
him in the eighties.
Speaker 2 (06:44):
The hand drawn logo was put onto hats and jackets
for staff at the horse stable to wear. A few
extra items made their way home, and after all these years,
Max still loved the logo.
Speaker 1 (06:56):
The logo my mom drew for my dad. It's very imperfect.
It's like up and then straight down and there's a
lot of weird things within the horse and the cart
and the number and all that stuff.
Speaker 2 (07:07):
He knew he wanted to use that same logo on
the new clothing, but he didn't have the original drawing,
just some old hats with it on it. The logo
would also have to be digitized if he wanted to
use it today.
Speaker 1 (07:19):
And it was so detailed embroidery that I was like,
I'm so I'll never be able to remake that file.
I don't have that skill to make any file.
Speaker 2 (07:29):
But he did have a graphic designer at out Front
who had the skill to make that file. The designer
tried to correct the initial mistakes in the drawing.
Speaker 1 (07:38):
I was very annoying. I wanted to keep it imperfect
on the hat. To me, that was the cool part
about it. Like simplifying it and just making it a
simple flat embroidery wasn't cool enough for me to want
to do anything with.
Speaker 2 (07:52):
Once he got the logo, he spent three hundred dollars
on hats and sweatshirts. He gave them out to his
family and friends. He also sent a few out to
people he'd worked with in.
Speaker 1 (08:01):
The past, music artists, athletes, etc.
Speaker 2 (08:05):
They actually wore the hats and posted about them online. Max would repost photos of people wearing the gear on Instagram and then more artists and athletes would reach out.
He spent another three hundred dollars on more hats and
sent them out. They found the right audience.
Speaker 1 (08:23):
Gunna and Future, two hip-hop artists had worn it. Gunna posted it on Instagram. Future ended up wearing the hat in a music video and that was the moment I was like, "Damn, maybe there's really something here. People either identify with the logo or just think it's cool or it's aspirational or whatever their feeling is towards that logo, it's making some type of connection and they want it." I didn't go out and be like, "Oh, I want to start a fashion brand." That was never the intention. The intention was, "I'm going to use these logos that I have for my dad's racing stable and make some hats and sweatshirts because it's cool."
Speaker 2 (08:55):
Just to get on the same page about these hats, they're baseball caps and the logo embroidered on it is of a driver in a cart being pulled by horses. Think chariot racing, but a bit sportier. I was wondering why Max decided to do hats originally. Why not just sweatshirts or tote bags or anything else easy to order?
Speaker 1 (09:12):
It's a good question that probably not enough people ask. I was working at Outfront, which is mostly known as a billboard company. And so at the time I was like, there's no better billboard than the front of a hat that you can brand because it's just people walking around and people looking at it all the time. The other reason was I always enjoyed wearing hats, and so I'm like, "If I'm going to make something with my family name and brand name on it, I'd prefer it be a hat so I could wear it all the time."
Speaker 2 (09:42):
And the logo, of course was already in the family.
But the horse and country living aesthetic was really speaking
to people in twenty twenty.
Speaker 1 (09:50):
Throughout the pandemic, when people were leaving cities and going to more of a country lifestyle, and people like, loving the outdoors more and the westernness and horses and all that stuff, and so I think all of those things played a role in us creating this at the right time with the right aesthetic and storytelling.
Speaker 2 (10:11):
Max made a website and started making hats regularly, but still in smallish quantities. The first six months of Siegelman's Stable went like this. Max would make a few hats, announce a drop on Friday afternoon. They'd sell out immediately. If you're familiar with streetwear brands, especially sneaker drops, you'll know the playbook.
Speaker 1 (10:30):
I knew Eric Emmanuel and Supreme and New York Sunshine and Off-White. I got to work around Virgil for the last couple years of his life.
Speaker 2 (10:38):
That's Virgil Abloh, fashion icon and luxury streetwear visionary who founded Off-White and later was the artistic director of menswear at Louis Vuitton. He passed away in 2021.
Speaker 1 (10:49):
And so that's the world I knew. I knew how to create something cool that was appealing to people, whether it was relatable or aspirational, where you make a limited amount and you promote that you have a limited amount, and if you know, you know, and then it sells out in 30 seconds. That's how we originally built it in the first iteration. I was only making like 72 hats and like 72 sweatshirts at first, but I was making it feel a lot bigger. People were like pissed off they couldn't get it, but then all of a sudden the hats would start to go on resale websites and they would sell for 2X to 30X the price.
Speaker 2 (11:23):
The hats were forty six bucks, which is expensive for
hat but cheap for a luxury streetwear brand.
Speaker 1 (11:28):
The price point is always a very interesting conversation. The big challenge is bring those people over to be your $46 hat customer to a $76 hat customer to a $468 jacket customer.
Speaker 2 (11:42):
Which is exactly where Max wanted to be. If he wanted to reach the $468 jacket customer, he had to grow the awareness and reputation of Siegelman Stable. He decided a low and slow approach was best.
Speaker 1 (11:59):
I actually remember the point where I'm on a road trip for my full-time corporate job in Tampa, Florida, and I'm on the phone with a friend and I'm like, "We're either going to build a brand that lasts for a super long time, or at least try to, and it's going to be really, really hard or we're going to try and sell this $46 hat a million times over and I'll figure it out and move on to the next thing in 18 months when everyone's sick of us." That would've been the easy route, though that sounds crazy to say that that would've been the easy route. So we chose the hard route, which was to grow a brand to evolve over time from that $46 hat into what we are now.
Speaker 2 (12:38):
To grow into the brand Max wanted to be. He
knew he needed more eyes on the hats. He also
needed the cultural approval from taste makers. He shipped out
more product.
Speaker 1 (12:48):
I had a friend, who would go unnamed, who was in the NBA and I was like, "Oh, I'll try and get you a couple pieces before you go to the NBA bubble."
Speaker 2 (12:55):
Max wasn't able to ship the product out in time.
AKA he really wanted the mailing addressed the bubble.
Speaker 1 (13:01):
So once I got the address, I was like, "Oh, if you change the player name and the team name, it must be the same for everyone, all the players." And so it ended up being that that was the case.
Speaker 2 (13:09):
Wow, you just took a shot and sent him off
to the NBA bubble.
Speaker 3 (13:12):
That was it.
Speaker 1 (13:13):
I risked half of my $300 investment to send to 10, 15 guys and I was lucky enough it worked. And that's where it started to get some awareness on LeagueFit's Instagram or a Bleacher Report or a Hypebeast in a complex. And that was kind of the first part where I was like, "All right, there's really, really something here."
Speaker 2 (13:30):
Here, Okay, Kathleen, it's the year of the horse, so so far so good, especially for Max. Even at the beginning of this company, he had a clear vision for the brand and I really want your view on this idea of scale versus scarcity, because I think that's fascinating in the context of consumer brands. I know their goal is just to sell as much as they can as fast as they can. It's all about volume and he took a very different approach.
Speaker 3 (14:03):
On so many different levels, right? How he thought about revenue, how he thought about financing, marketing, inventory management, networking. I'm very unfamiliar with founder stories where they're saying, "We're going to withhold inventory so that we can create scarcity and demand." And it's usually not something that you're honestly able to do. I've seen it used as a marketing ploy.
Speaker 2 (14:29):
Right when you're already scaling, and you do it with
one special limited edition.
Speaker 1 (14:32):
Right, yesh, Yeah, sold out.
Speaker 3 (14:34):
But this felt really unusual to be doing it so soon,
and it was neat to hear that there's a market
for reselling the sort of thing.
Speaker 2 (14:43):
If I think about luxury fashion as a particular ecosystem, right? It's very celebrity driven. Even the large quantity numbers aren't what you would think of as anywhere close to large quantity for mass brands. How you define scale in the luxury space is just fundamentally different than how you define scale elsewhere. Some of those numbers sound really small, but overall luxury is high price point, low volume. So in relative terms, I think that's true. I don't know a lot of examples of brands that started that way.
Speaker 3 (15:14):
Yeah, I think that's the distinction. It's usually further down
the line. And he kind of did it out.
Speaker 2 (15:18):
Of the gate. I think he understood something from his agency days that ran very deep, which is, here's how you create buzz and excitement and story around something. Yes, it helped that he had a giant Rolodex of NBA players, but it's clear to me that he understood the power of creating that sort of buzz and energy and scarcity all at the same time.
Speaker 3 (15:40):
Speaking of Rolodex, so it's not the average story to hear you're getting DMs from Future to wear your gear. For those that don't have access to a celebrity network... Because I hear this a lot, "How do I get at someone?" One of the most effective ways to do it is to look at who someone is surrounded by. So who is their crew? It's the stylist, it's the glam team, it's the personal trainer, this trusted circle, and then trying to find a way through social media, through DMs to directly access these sorts of folks can be a really nice way to have arbitrage into a celebrity, if you're looking to gain access. So it takes time, it takes research, you've got to stalk who they're tagging and following. But I think that's something that the everyday listener who's listening to the story and saying, "Well, I don't have that sort of network," can think about trying to perhaps build their network knowing that celebrity and influencer is really powerful in scaling your business in this day and age.
Speaker 2 (16:43):
Yeah, I have nothing to add to that other than, cool. Back to Max. Take us to the next chapter, because you now say, "Okay, there's more than nothing." I was doing some charitable stuff and I was making some hats for some friends and now I found a sea of opportunity here. What's going on?
Speaker 1 (16:58):
I don't think I knew what I was doing at the time. I did not have a credit card, didn't have a credit card for probably the first two years. I was paying straight up cash or debit card.
Speaker 2 (17:06):
Card even personally that was it.
Speaker 1 (17:08):
Yeah, wow, I paid cash for hats and I'm talking about thousands and thousands and thousands of hats. And it wasn't even just hats, it was other stuff, but from a quantity perspective, hats was it. And so I'm like, "I'm so dumb for that. Where are all your points?"
Speaker 2 (17:25):
So you would just take the money and plow it
back in and buy more inventory?
Speaker 1 (17:27):
Yeah, I mean I never took any money out of
the business.
Speaker 2 (17:30):
As Max learned e commerce, he was also learning how
the fashion industry worked.
Speaker 1 (17:35):
If you're not in the fashion business and you don't understand the different layers of creating... I had no clue. I would send blank T-shirts early on before we were doing cut and sew, blank T-shirts or sweatshirts to embroidery and print shop in Brooklyn and they'd email me and be like, "How big do you want the logo? Where do you want the logo?" And my response would just be like, "Put it where everyone puts it." That was literally my response, "Just put it where everyone puts it." And then the next thing you know, Justin Bieber's wearing a T-shirt with a logo where everyone puts it. And so I don't know, and then you start to learn and figure it out.
Speaker 2 (18:11):
Justin Bieber wore that Siegelman Stable shirt in 2022, by the way. And as soon as he was photographed in it, people started ordering. In the process of trying to fulfill the orders for that shirt, Max learned another valuable lesson. For large corporations producing in big quantities, this happens at a fulfillment center or third party logistics partner, also called a 3PL. Max was told he needed a fulfillment center to start fielding orders.
Speaker 1 (18:36):
It was way too early for us. We weren't set up for it internally, infrastructure wise, in terms of barcoding and on Shopify on the backend. And this is just stuff you don't know if you've never done it before. And the first two or three releases in the 3PL were a disaster. We had Justin Bieber wear a white T-shirt with a red print on it and everyone who ordered got a size Small. But the best moment ever was, we felt like we had control back when that 3PL dropped three pallets of boxes full of clothes and shipping materials and all that in front of our office in Brooklyn and just left it there, and I carried it up eight flights of stairs by myself.
Speaker 2 (19:16):
Now, well, Justin Bieber did inspire a good chunk of
shirt sales. That endorsement alone didn't suddenly put Siegelman stable
on the map.
Speaker 1 (19:24):
I think the general public thinks that just because you're on person X, you'll all of a sudden sell 100,000 units of something. We don't have enough time to even talk about how it's so far from the truth. There's like 10 people in this world who can change your business forever.
Speaker 2 (19:44):
Max did manage to get one of his hats on
just one.
Speaker 1 (19:46):
Of those ten people, Kendall Jenner.
Speaker 2 (19:50):
It was Paris Fashion Week twenty twenty two. Kendall was
walking to attend one of the fashion shows, but she
dyed her hair red for her appearance in Prada's upcoming show.
Speaker 1 (20:00):
There was like a lot of camera on her but
her hair color.
Speaker 2 (20:04):
And on top of Kendall's head on that fresh new
red hair was a Siegelman Stable hat.
Speaker 1 (20:10):
It was a black and tan two-tone five panel hat with black embroidery that I never intended to make and sell because I didn't like it after I saw five samples of it.
Speaker 2 (20:20):
Max didn't like the samples, so he didn't order anymore.
He just sent the samples to friends and forgot about it.
Speaker 1 (20:27):
I'm in Miami in a coffee shop at 8:00 AM and I get a text from her hairstylist, and she's like, "You won't believe it." And I'm like, "What?" And she's like, "You didn't see the pictures of Kendall?" And I'm like, "In Paris?" And she's like, "Yeah, she wore your hat." I'm Googling, refresh, refresh, refresh. We need to get back to the hotel room. We need to figure out how to get a picture of this hat or a mock-up and we need to get it online.
Speaker 2 (20:51):
This was the frenzy Max needed. The brand was now
forever endorsed by one of the biggest celebrities in the world,
and even better, the hat was rare. There were only
six of them. People went crazy trying to get their
hands on one.
Speaker 1 (21:05):
I had to call the manufacturer and find out how many they had available, how quick we could get them, call the factory, how quick can we embroider them. And I didn't even have a picture of it. I didn't have a product page for it. Nothing. I don't even know how many of these hats I can get, how fast I can get them. I'm calling the hat manufacturer. I'm trying to figure that all out. It all happened within 20 minutes.
Speaker 2 (21:26):
And during that time, the photos of Kendall Jenner were spreading fast. Then Max ran into another issue. He was the only person who knew she was in a Siegelman Stable hat.
Speaker 1 (21:36):
It just kept saying Kendall Jenner in a hat or whatever.
I was like, all right, I need to email Vogue
and say it's a Segleman's stable hat and link it out,
or email GQ "It's a Siegleman Stable hat" and link
it out. That's how I spent my entire day that day.
It was a moment in this business that I will
never forget. I mean, I know where I was sitting,
I know how many hats, I know what revenue looked
(21:57):
like that day, and it was just like a pretty
crazy thing in the history of our short lifespan as.
Speaker 2 (22:04):
A brand, Where are you trying to take it as.
Speaker 1 (22:10):
Big as we can but without sprinting and making a
lot of mistakes along the way.
Speaker 2 (22:14):
How do you think about as big as we can
when the way you've described the whole brand, to me,
it's based on exclusivity and rarity. Those two things sort
of feel like they're a little bit in at least tension,
if not conflict.
Speaker 1 (22:27):
There was a point throughout the last two years that we made that decision, where there is certain product that is always on. Because if you're only making all your revenue on Friday between 1:00 and 1:30, it's not great to grow a business. And so we have a bunch of different revenue models for ourselves. So it's our DTC, which is sometimes always on product. We also have our exclusive capsules that are those limited runs, that there's a lot of hype built up around it. We have our collaborations that we do with the New York Knicks, New York Rangers, the Mets, the Yankees, all of those pro sports, and we'll continue to build even outside of New York.
Speaker 2 (23:01):
Have you gone global yet?
Speaker 1 (23:03):
Yeah, we sell global. We did a popup in Oslo, Norway, early on. We did a project with Kygo, a DJ, as part of Palm Tree Crew and he was headlining a show there. And we are in talks of doing a pop-up in London maybe this fall. And so yeah, as we continue to scale and be able to infiltrate new markets with new projects and new partners, we'll continue to look global.
Speaker 2 (23:25):
Do you travel a lot?
Speaker 1 (23:26):
We do travel a lot. I traveled a ton in
my past job. I travel a ton now. I think
a part of being a brand that sits at the
center of culture you have to show up at these
big tent pole moments.
Speaker 2 (23:38):
Are you building a business or a legacy or both both?
So I think I figured out the business you're building.
Tell me about the legacy.
Speaker 1 (23:43):
You're trying to build the business and the legacy definitely overlap.
In the beginning, it wasn't necessarily about I want to
build a legacy and keep my family name, continuing to
evolve and building something cool. Once we decided to sell
stuff and start making money, I said that we would
always stick true to my dad's store, so by telling
his story with harness racing through our clothes and through
(24:04):
our content and storytelling, but also the equine therapy bit.
So we still donate to this day a portion of
proceeds to equin therapy programs.
Speaker 2 (24:11):
Okay, what does your father think of it?
Speaker 1 (24:14):
He thinks it's all crazy, continues to I think like
he was one of the first doubters, like who's going
to wear a Segulman stable.
Speaker 2 (24:20):
Hot fair question?
Speaker 1 (24:21):
I mean, yeah, for sure. He now calls himself the CEO,
the Chief equint Officer, But to his credit, anytime we
need a horse for a photo shoot, he's the guy
and he typically will pull it off.
Speaker 3 (24:37):
So, Ben, now I've heard two titles. I want someday
Head of Cultural Relevance and Chief Equine Officer.
Speaker 2 (24:43):
Yeah, some unique titles in this one.
Speaker 3 (24:45):
One thing that I think is worth touching on is how Max is traveling both internationally and domestically to promote his business. So from the beginning, he's coming out of the gate focused on international. He's got Kendall Jenner wearing his product in Paris. He's traveling overseas for these popups. And then domestically, he's rooted in New York, as we know, but then he is flying down to Miami. He's on the scene in different places. This helps him, not only as a founder, inspire his creativity, but it's relationship building, it's networking. It's allowing him to get deals done in other geos. And ultimately the biggest benefit is that it lets him flex bigger than he is, bigger than his brand is, which is something that with a simple plane ticket, other founders can do too.
Speaker 2 (25:36):
Look, travel is something that, broadly speaking, is an inspiration category writ large. Whether it's inspiration for the creative side of your business, if your business has a creative side, if it's inspiration for what products you could launch next or where you could launch them, or if it's inspiration for the kind of people and ecosystems that you want to sort of mesh with your brand, travel is just an inspiration category. Always has been, always will be. There's a sex appeal to it.
Speaker 3 (26:02):
Yeah. And I think it's also beyond the inspiration all that it's a founder flex. We're seeing founders that are moving from city to city and on the circuit and showing up at industry events and speaking and posting about it. And that becomes also a way to signal, "My brand is doing well, I'm doing well. Here I am in the south of France in August and here I am in Austin, Texas, for South by Southwest." Those are things that I think have also become very much part of the brand building game.
Speaker 2 (26:36):
I think that's right. So the game of perception, I
would say partially, Kathleen, it is partially a game of perception,
but it's also in the digital world we live in
the power of these in person events when they happen.
I think it's made it so that there are fewer
but more important and more climactic in person events throughout
the year. So, you know, south By Southwest, I'm from Texas.
(26:56):
It used to be sort of a small thing and
now it's gotten huge or whatever. The AVN care. Yeah,
it doesn't matter what it is like. They were always there,
but the cultural focus on them has amped up. And
I think people's desire to be a part of in
person events, particularly post pandemic and post social media generation,
is quite high. That's right.
Speaker 3 (27:17):
And if you leave face to face having made one
new connection, you know, higher order connection within your network,
one new deal, I mean, it's worth its weight in gold,
and a lot of times you can get in rooms
with people you wouldn't normally be able to get in
a room.
Speaker 2 (27:31):
The other thing I loved about the story, Kathleen, we have to talk about the credit card. I mean, I do work for Chase. Starting a business in cash, only cash, that's amazing to me. I have to be honest, I love when I hear about a business that basically just bootstrapped it all the way up with their own cash. You hear a lot of stories about, "Well, I emptied my savings account and got it going." He got this thing going for 300 bucks, and then he probably sold that stuff for 600 bucks and then plowed back in 600 bucks. And then maybe he sold that for 1,500 and he plowed back in 50... I'm making up the numbers. And he was fine with that. He was fine with that. And it took him longer, for sure, than it would've taken otherwise. He could have scaled that business much faster.If he had a bunch of NBA players wearing his stuff in the bubble and he'd gone out and he'd either borrowed money or taken an investor or whatever, he could have scaled that much quicker. It wouldn't have had the staying power most likely and it certainly wouldn't have had the exclusivity, but he could have. I kind of like that he bootstrapped it. And what I would've said is, he probably should have had credit, at least if it was personal credit ready in case he needed it. That's something that I think he would probably even admit could be done differently now that he knows what he knows.
Speaker 3 (28:42):
Credit is, or a line of credit, which I didn't know about until I started my own business, is their primary financing tool to scale their business. Can you talk a little bit about that for someone who doesn't want to use their own money and wants to rely on credit to get going? And it can be such a helpful tool.
Speaker 2 (29:00):
I always tell people in the very early days of
a business, when you are a startup, you should think
about if you want to use credit, that's great. It
is your credit. So you can get a personal card
or a business card, but it's going to be backed
by your personal credit. So when someone says I want
to get started, but I don't want to take any
personal risk, I just look at them and say, no,
such thing. This is really good.
Speaker 3 (29:21):
Yeah, even if you're using your business credit card, it's
going to impact you personally.
Speaker 2 (29:25):
One hundred percent.
Speaker 3 (29:26):
No one ever told me that, but that's wow.
Speaker 2 (29:28):
Nobody's going to give you a startup business card that
is only backed by your business that doesn't exist, because
that's called equity, right. The whole point is it has to be backed by something. So some people say, "I'm going to take a home equity loan." Fine, but you're guaranteeing it with your house. Some people say, "I want to do it on a credit card," whether it's personal or business, well, you're betting your personal credit against that. As you grow as a business and when you get to a certain size and profitability, you can start to take out either a line of credit or credit cards that are based on, where it is we are lending to the entity as opposed to you as an individual, but that doesn't happen till a lot bigger than people think. That's not really for sort of a 2, $3 million business, that's for a 15, 20, $30 million top line business before you're starting to think about that kind of underwriting. Because when you're smaller than that, you are betting on yourself.Now, if you don't want to bet on yourself, you shouldn't start a business because that's what starting a business is. So I'm not taking that lightly, I'm taking that quite seriously. But I tell people all the time, if you believe in your idea enough, you have to believe it in enough to bet on it with your own personal assets, whether that comes in the form of savings, credit score, home equity, pick what you want to put on the line, you're putting something on the line.
Speaker 3 (30:37):
I think that's really helpful for people. And there are
other options out there, which is good.
Speaker 2 (30:42):
Yeah. Over time, you can start to finance with your revenue streams. You can finance with other assets. There are things you can do as you grow, but to really get started... I can't tell you how many people come up to me and say, "How do I get a loan to start my business?" And I say, "Well, do you mean how do you get an investor?" "No, no, no, no. I just want a loan. "Well, right, but you want a loan with no consequences." "Right." "No, that doesn't exist." Because a loan with no consequences is called equity.
Speaker 3 (31:13):
Always a delight and a pleasure. Look forward to seeing
you next time.
Speaker 2 (31:18):
So last question I want to ask you, and we
ask us of all of our guests, if you had
to give one piece of advice, what would it be?
Speaker 1 (31:24):
Question everything, which is a Virgil Abloh quote. Question everything. Because I've learned over time that just because someone has more money or more years of experience or thinks they may know because they're older, you should question it. Have they done it before? Did it work out? And they may be right. And it's not to poo-poo their input or what they have to say about something, it just makes you really think about what they're saying and digest it and fully understand it before you maybe step foot and do what they say. And so question everything. And also, just go and do it.
Speaker 2 (32:04):
Thanks so much for listening to this episode of The Unshakeables.
If you liked this episode, please rate and review it.
And next time, we're talking about an entrepreneur who I'm
not sure sleeps. To be honest, he's a hustler in
the best sense of the word. He's opened seven businesses
over the last decade and he's just getting started.
Speaker 1 (32:24):
As an entrepreneur, you learned that there's always something better,
but you can't just jump to it. You can't just
jump to a ten million dollar development with that building
not your cash. The bank won't just give it to you.
Speaker 2 (32:34):
No, we won't. I'm Ben Walter and this is The
Unshakeables from Chase for Business and Ruby Studio from iHeartMedia.
We'll see you back here soon.
Ruby.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
Max Siegelman was in Miami, Florida, with his fiance when he got a text out of the blue. It was a hairstylist he knew.
Speaker 1 (00:15):
She's like, you won't believe it, and I'm like what.
She's like, you didn't see the pictures of Kendall And
I'm like in Paris and she's like, yeah, she wore
your hat.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
Max is the owner of Siegelman Stable, a luxury apparel brand in New York. And the Kendall in question was, yes, Kendall Jenner at Paris Fashion Week.
Speaker 1 (00:35):
She was on her way to the off-white show, so there was a lot of camera on her about her hair color. And she ended up wearing a hat that I never wanted to produce. It was a black and tan two-tone five panel hat with black embroidery.
Speaker 2 (00:52):
And why was it such a big deal that Kendall
was wearing a hat? She just dyed her hair red
for the Prada show that she was walking in later
that week. This was huge news, apparently, and so kept
under wraps that Kendall took special care to conceal her
hair for as long as possible. Suddenly everyone had to
know what was that hat.
Speaker 1 (01:12):
It just kept saying, Kendall Jenner in a hat or whatever.
Speaker 2 (01:18):
The opportunity of a lifetime that would launch his business into the stratosphere, just came knocking. Max had to get the word out and fast before his 15 minutes of fame were up.Welcome to The Unshakeables. From Chase for Business and Ruby Studio from iHeartMedia, I'm Ben Walter, CEO of Chase for Business. There's nothing small about the impact small businesses have on our country. Every day I hear from owners who are not only fueling our economy, but also shaping the character of our communities. Yet too often you tell us about the hurdles you face, regulatory red tape, access to capital, and the constant challenge of finding resources to grow. These aren't just headlines, they're your stories and they matter deeply to us. We don't use The Unshakeables typically to talk about us. This podcast is about you, but it's important that we also bring to you important resources that may help.And in this case, I'd like to talk about JPMorgan Chase's recent American Dream Initiative, which is designed to help put the American dream back within reach for small business owners everywhere. Through expanded capital and coaching, advocating for smart policies that matter to small businesses and continuing to innovate around services that help small businesses run and grow, we plan to support 10 million small businesses over the next several years. To learn more about the American Dream Initiative, go to jpmorganchase.com/communities/america.Kathleen, welcome back. It's good to have you again.
Speaker 3 (02:57):
So good to be here. I think our team really took this year of the horse in the Zodiac calendar assignment seriously. We have a literal horse brand here today.
Speaker 2 (03:07):
You worked hard on that one, didn't you listen?
Speaker 3 (03:09):
Honest to god, I've been all about this year. Last
year was a year of the snake. It was awful. Shedding, shedding, shedding,
and we're ready to like gallop. This is once every
twelve years. I'm very excited. And I know that's woo
woo and you hate it. But here we are.
Speaker 2 (03:22):
But I genuinely hope you're right. I am in your corner. Let me tell you. On today's episode, Siegelman Stable from New York City. To start, Kathleen is right, this episode is about horses. It's also about hats, but first it's about the Siegelman's. Max's dad started his own stable, Siegelman Stable, in the 1980s to train harness racing horses. This was cool to Max's classmates on career day, but just daily life to him.
Speaker 1 (03:57):
When I was growing up, I didn't look at him as an entrepreneur. I looked at him as like, "Oh, he trains racehorses for a living," which is very different than most parents in the town I grew up in.
Speaker 2 (04:07):
The normalization of a unique job may have been what pushed Max into starting his own company, even though he considers himself risk averse.
Speaker 1 (04:15):
I think anytime you're starting something new and you start working with someone, and you're like, "Oh, I can also do this and create something for myself," I think that's when the light bulb goes off, and you're like, "Let me just try and do it on my own."
Speaker 2 (04:28):
He started his first company right after college. It was called Rouse Social, which was a social media platform that aggregated celebrity's social media pages. It let fans follow along in one spot.
Speaker 1 (04:40):
Was able to get LL Cool J as a partner and a founder on it.
Speaker 2 (04:45):
Rouse Social didn't last, but the work got him connected to all the right people. From there, he used those connections to start a creative agency.
Speaker 1 (04:53):
Agency, running marketing ads for athletes and music artists, anything
from an Instagram collab post with a brand and negotiating
what that creative or deal looked like to an album
release concept for a music artist.
Speaker 2 (05:11):
He got so good at that out of the box
thinking that the Billboard company out Front wanted Max to
help take them into the digital age.
Speaker 1 (05:19):
I started their social department. It was head of Social
It kind of moved into what is the best made
up title of all time? As head of Cultural Relevance,
and that was my title when I left.
Speaker 2 (05:28):
That's a very millennial/gen Z title, I got to say.
Speaker 1 (05:30):
I gotta say yeah, and I give a lot of
credit to the CMO who is not millennial or gen
Z who actually came up with that title. It was
pretty amazing.
Speaker 2 (05:37):
And if you're thinking, what on earth is the head
of cultural relevance? I had the same question.
Speaker 1 (05:44):
It was a combination of really having this, I guess, call it creative agency on the side of this social media job and continuing to bring Outfront into the fold of cool projects with people who typically wouldn't be like, "Ooh, let me call Outfront Media and buy a billboard or a subway ad." And this moment in culture that combined what was thought to be a old school dying industry and bring some pop culture and coolness to it.
Speaker 2 (06:09):
So you were connecting dots across the landscape. Yeah, which
is exactly what Max does best.
Speaker 1 (06:15):
I always had this knack of finding the right thing
or connecting the right people or projects to create a
moment in culture or some noise around certain things, with
certain people or browns.
Speaker 2 (06:26):
He connected dots for out Front for seven years. That
tenure overlapped with the pandemic, where he suddenly found himself
with a lot of downtime and he started making.
Speaker 1 (06:35):
Clothes for fun, making hats and sweatshirts with my dad's
racing stable logo on it that my mom made for
him in the eighties.
Speaker 2 (06:44):
The hand drawn logo was put onto hats and jackets
for staff at the horse stable to wear. A few
extra items made their way home, and after all these years,
Max still loved the logo.
Speaker 1 (06:56):
The logo my mom drew for my dad. It's very imperfect.
It's like up and then straight down and there's a
lot of weird things within the horse and the cart
and the number and all that stuff.
Speaker 2 (07:07):
He knew he wanted to use that same logo on
the new clothing, but he didn't have the original drawing,
just some old hats with it on it. The logo
would also have to be digitized if he wanted to
use it today.
Speaker 1 (07:19):
And it was so detailed embroidery that I was like,
I'm so I'll never be able to remake that file.
I don't have that skill to make any file.
Speaker 2 (07:29):
But he did have a graphic designer at out Front
who had the skill to make that file. The designer
tried to correct the initial mistakes in the drawing.
Speaker 1 (07:38):
I was very annoying. I wanted to keep it imperfect
on the hat. To me, that was the cool part
about it. Like simplifying it and just making it a
simple flat embroidery wasn't cool enough for me to want
to do anything with.
Speaker 2 (07:52):
Once he got the logo, he spent three hundred dollars
on hats and sweatshirts. He gave them out to his
family and friends. He also sent a few out to
people he'd worked with in.
Speaker 1 (08:01):
The past, music artists, athletes, etc.
Speaker 2 (08:05):
They actually wore the hats and posted about them online. Max would repost photos of people wearing the gear on Instagram and then more artists and athletes would reach out.
He spent another three hundred dollars on more hats and
sent them out. They found the right audience.
Speaker 1 (08:23):
Gunna and Future, two hip-hop artists had worn it. Gunna posted it on Instagram. Future ended up wearing the hat in a music video and that was the moment I was like, "Damn, maybe there's really something here. People either identify with the logo or just think it's cool or it's aspirational or whatever their feeling is towards that logo, it's making some type of connection and they want it." I didn't go out and be like, "Oh, I want to start a fashion brand." That was never the intention. The intention was, "I'm going to use these logos that I have for my dad's racing stable and make some hats and sweatshirts because it's cool."
Speaker 2 (08:55):
Just to get on the same page about these hats, they're baseball caps and the logo embroidered on it is of a driver in a cart being pulled by horses. Think chariot racing, but a bit sportier. I was wondering why Max decided to do hats originally. Why not just sweatshirts or tote bags or anything else easy to order?
Speaker 1 (09:12):
It's a good question that probably not enough people ask. I was working at Outfront, which is mostly known as a billboard company. And so at the time I was like, there's no better billboard than the front of a hat that you can brand because it's just people walking around and people looking at it all the time. The other reason was I always enjoyed wearing hats, and so I'm like, "If I'm going to make something with my family name and brand name on it, I'd prefer it be a hat so I could wear it all the time."
Speaker 2 (09:42):
And the logo, of course was already in the family.
But the horse and country living aesthetic was really speaking
to people in twenty twenty.
Speaker 1 (09:50):
Throughout the pandemic, when people were leaving cities and going to more of a country lifestyle, and people like, loving the outdoors more and the westernness and horses and all that stuff, and so I think all of those things played a role in us creating this at the right time with the right aesthetic and storytelling.
Speaker 2 (10:11):
Max made a website and started making hats regularly, but still in smallish quantities. The first six months of Siegelman's Stable went like this. Max would make a few hats, announce a drop on Friday afternoon. They'd sell out immediately. If you're familiar with streetwear brands, especially sneaker drops, you'll know the playbook.
Speaker 1 (10:30):
I knew Eric Emmanuel and Supreme and New York Sunshine and Off-White. I got to work around Virgil for the last couple years of his life.
Speaker 2 (10:38):
That's Virgil Abloh, fashion icon and luxury streetwear visionary who founded Off-White and later was the artistic director of menswear at Louis Vuitton. He passed away in 2021.
Speaker 1 (10:49):
And so that's the world I knew. I knew how to create something cool that was appealing to people, whether it was relatable or aspirational, where you make a limited amount and you promote that you have a limited amount, and if you know, you know, and then it sells out in 30 seconds. That's how we originally built it in the first iteration. I was only making like 72 hats and like 72 sweatshirts at first, but I was making it feel a lot bigger. People were like pissed off they couldn't get it, but then all of a sudden the hats would start to go on resale websites and they would sell for 2X to 30X the price.
Speaker 2 (11:23):
The hats were forty six bucks, which is expensive for
hat but cheap for a luxury streetwear brand.
Speaker 1 (11:28):
The price point is always a very interesting conversation. The big challenge is bring those people over to be your $46 hat customer to a $76 hat customer to a $468 jacket customer.
Speaker 2 (11:42):
Which is exactly where Max wanted to be. If he wanted to reach the $468 jacket customer, he had to grow the awareness and reputation of Siegelman Stable. He decided a low and slow approach was best.
Speaker 1 (11:59):
I actually remember the point where I'm on a road trip for my full-time corporate job in Tampa, Florida, and I'm on the phone with a friend and I'm like, "We're either going to build a brand that lasts for a super long time, or at least try to, and it's going to be really, really hard or we're going to try and sell this $46 hat a million times over and I'll figure it out and move on to the next thing in 18 months when everyone's sick of us." That would've been the easy route, though that sounds crazy to say that that would've been the easy route. So we chose the hard route, which was to grow a brand to evolve over time from that $46 hat into what we are now.
Speaker 2 (12:38):
To grow into the brand Max wanted to be. He
knew he needed more eyes on the hats. He also
needed the cultural approval from taste makers. He shipped out
more product.
Speaker 1 (12:48):
I had a friend, who would go unnamed, who was in the NBA and I was like, "Oh, I'll try and get you a couple pieces before you go to the NBA bubble."
Speaker 2 (12:55):
Max wasn't able to ship the product out in time.
AKA he really wanted the mailing addressed the bubble.
Speaker 1 (13:01):
So once I got the address, I was like, "Oh, if you change the player name and the team name, it must be the same for everyone, all the players." And so it ended up being that that was the case.
Speaker 2 (13:09):
Wow, you just took a shot and sent him off
to the NBA bubble.
Speaker 3 (13:12):
That was it.
Speaker 1 (13:13):
I risked half of my $300 investment to send to 10, 15 guys and I was lucky enough it worked. And that's where it started to get some awareness on LeagueFit's Instagram or a Bleacher Report or a Hypebeast in a complex. And that was kind of the first part where I was like, "All right, there's really, really something here."
Speaker 2 (13:30):
Here, Okay, Kathleen, it's the year of the horse, so so far so good, especially for Max. Even at the beginning of this company, he had a clear vision for the brand and I really want your view on this idea of scale versus scarcity, because I think that's fascinating in the context of consumer brands. I know their goal is just to sell as much as they can as fast as they can. It's all about volume and he took a very different approach.
Speaker 3 (14:03):
On so many different levels, right? How he thought about revenue, how he thought about financing, marketing, inventory management, networking. I'm very unfamiliar with founder stories where they're saying, "We're going to withhold inventory so that we can create scarcity and demand." And it's usually not something that you're honestly able to do. I've seen it used as a marketing ploy.
Speaker 2 (14:29):
Right when you're already scaling, and you do it with
one special limited edition.
Speaker 1 (14:32):
Right, yesh, Yeah, sold out.
Speaker 3 (14:34):
But this felt really unusual to be doing it so soon,
and it was neat to hear that there's a market
for reselling the sort of thing.
Speaker 2 (14:43):
If I think about luxury fashion as a particular ecosystem, right? It's very celebrity driven. Even the large quantity numbers aren't what you would think of as anywhere close to large quantity for mass brands. How you define scale in the luxury space is just fundamentally different than how you define scale elsewhere. Some of those numbers sound really small, but overall luxury is high price point, low volume. So in relative terms, I think that's true. I don't know a lot of examples of brands that started that way.
Speaker 3 (15:14):
Yeah, I think that's the distinction. It's usually further down
the line. And he kind of did it out.
Speaker 2 (15:18):
Of the gate. I think he understood something from his agency days that ran very deep, which is, here's how you create buzz and excitement and story around something. Yes, it helped that he had a giant Rolodex of NBA players, but it's clear to me that he understood the power of creating that sort of buzz and energy and scarcity all at the same time.
Speaker 3 (15:40):
Speaking of Rolodex, so it's not the average story to hear you're getting DMs from Future to wear your gear. For those that don't have access to a celebrity network... Because I hear this a lot, "How do I get at someone?" One of the most effective ways to do it is to look at who someone is surrounded by. So who is their crew? It's the stylist, it's the glam team, it's the personal trainer, this trusted circle, and then trying to find a way through social media, through DMs to directly access these sorts of folks can be a really nice way to have arbitrage into a celebrity, if you're looking to gain access. So it takes time, it takes research, you've got to stalk who they're tagging and following. But I think that's something that the everyday listener who's listening to the story and saying, "Well, I don't have that sort of network," can think about trying to perhaps build their network knowing that celebrity and influencer is really powerful in scaling your business in this day and age.
Speaker 2 (16:43):
Yeah, I have nothing to add to that other than, cool. Back to Max. Take us to the next chapter, because you now say, "Okay, there's more than nothing." I was doing some charitable stuff and I was making some hats for some friends and now I found a sea of opportunity here. What's going on?
Speaker 1 (16:58):
I don't think I knew what I was doing at the time. I did not have a credit card, didn't have a credit card for probably the first two years. I was paying straight up cash or debit card.
Speaker 2 (17:06):
Card even personally that was it.
Speaker 1 (17:08):
Yeah, wow, I paid cash for hats and I'm talking about thousands and thousands and thousands of hats. And it wasn't even just hats, it was other stuff, but from a quantity perspective, hats was it. And so I'm like, "I'm so dumb for that. Where are all your points?"
Speaker 2 (17:25):
So you would just take the money and plow it
back in and buy more inventory?
Speaker 1 (17:27):
Yeah, I mean I never took any money out of
the business.
Speaker 2 (17:30):
As Max learned e commerce, he was also learning how
the fashion industry worked.
Speaker 1 (17:35):
If you're not in the fashion business and you don't understand the different layers of creating... I had no clue. I would send blank T-shirts early on before we were doing cut and sew, blank T-shirts or sweatshirts to embroidery and print shop in Brooklyn and they'd email me and be like, "How big do you want the logo? Where do you want the logo?" And my response would just be like, "Put it where everyone puts it." That was literally my response, "Just put it where everyone puts it." And then the next thing you know, Justin Bieber's wearing a T-shirt with a logo where everyone puts it. And so I don't know, and then you start to learn and figure it out.
Speaker 2 (18:11):
Justin Bieber wore that Siegelman Stable shirt in 2022, by the way. And as soon as he was photographed in it, people started ordering. In the process of trying to fulfill the orders for that shirt, Max learned another valuable lesson. For large corporations producing in big quantities, this happens at a fulfillment center or third party logistics partner, also called a 3PL. Max was told he needed a fulfillment center to start fielding orders.
Speaker 1 (18:36):
It was way too early for us. We weren't set up for it internally, infrastructure wise, in terms of barcoding and on Shopify on the backend. And this is just stuff you don't know if you've never done it before. And the first two or three releases in the 3PL were a disaster. We had Justin Bieber wear a white T-shirt with a red print on it and everyone who ordered got a size Small. But the best moment ever was, we felt like we had control back when that 3PL dropped three pallets of boxes full of clothes and shipping materials and all that in front of our office in Brooklyn and just left it there, and I carried it up eight flights of stairs by myself.
Speaker 2 (19:16):
Now, well, Justin Bieber did inspire a good chunk of
shirt sales. That endorsement alone didn't suddenly put Siegelman stable
on the map.
Speaker 1 (19:24):
I think the general public thinks that just because you're on person X, you'll all of a sudden sell 100,000 units of something. We don't have enough time to even talk about how it's so far from the truth. There's like 10 people in this world who can change your business forever.
Speaker 2 (19:44):
Max did manage to get one of his hats on
just one.
Speaker 1 (19:46):
Of those ten people, Kendall Jenner.
Speaker 2 (19:50):
It was Paris Fashion Week twenty twenty two. Kendall was
walking to attend one of the fashion shows, but she
dyed her hair red for her appearance in Prada's upcoming show.
Speaker 1 (20:00):
There was like a lot of camera on her but
her hair color.
Speaker 2 (20:04):
And on top of Kendall's head on that fresh new
red hair was a Siegelman Stable hat.
Speaker 1 (20:10):
It was a black and tan two-tone five panel hat with black embroidery that I never intended to make and sell because I didn't like it after I saw five samples of it.
Speaker 2 (20:20):
Max didn't like the samples, so he didn't order anymore.
He just sent the samples to friends and forgot about it.
Speaker 1 (20:27):
I'm in Miami in a coffee shop at 8:00 AM and I get a text from her hairstylist, and she's like, "You won't believe it." And I'm like, "What?" And she's like, "You didn't see the pictures of Kendall?" And I'm like, "In Paris?" And she's like, "Yeah, she wore your hat." I'm Googling, refresh, refresh, refresh. We need to get back to the hotel room. We need to figure out how to get a picture of this hat or a mock-up and we need to get it online.
Speaker 2 (20:51):
This was the frenzy Max needed. The brand was now
forever endorsed by one of the biggest celebrities in the world,
and even better, the hat was rare. There were only
six of them. People went crazy trying to get their
hands on one.
Speaker 1 (21:05):
I had to call the manufacturer and find out how many they had available, how quick we could get them, call the factory, how quick can we embroider them. And I didn't even have a picture of it. I didn't have a product page for it. Nothing. I don't even know how many of these hats I can get, how fast I can get them. I'm calling the hat manufacturer. I'm trying to figure that all out. It all happened within 20 minutes.
Speaker 2 (21:26):
And during that time, the photos of Kendall Jenner were spreading fast. Then Max ran into another issue. He was the only person who knew she was in a Siegelman Stable hat.
Speaker 1 (21:36):
It just kept saying Kendall Jenner in a hat or whatever.
I was like, all right, I need to email Vogue
and say it's a Segleman's stable hat and link it out,
or email GQ "It's a Siegleman Stable hat" and link
it out. That's how I spent my entire day that day.
It was a moment in this business that I will
never forget. I mean, I know where I was sitting,
I know how many hats, I know what revenue looked
(21:57):
like that day, and it was just like a pretty
crazy thing in the history of our short lifespan as.
Speaker 2 (22:04):
A brand, Where are you trying to take it as.
Speaker 1 (22:10):
Big as we can but without sprinting and making a
lot of mistakes along the way.
Speaker 2 (22:14):
How do you think about as big as we can
when the way you've described the whole brand, to me,
it's based on exclusivity and rarity. Those two things sort
of feel like they're a little bit in at least tension,
if not conflict.
Speaker 1 (22:27):
There was a point throughout the last two years that we made that decision, where there is certain product that is always on. Because if you're only making all your revenue on Friday between 1:00 and 1:30, it's not great to grow a business. And so we have a bunch of different revenue models for ourselves. So it's our DTC, which is sometimes always on product. We also have our exclusive capsules that are those limited runs, that there's a lot of hype built up around it. We have our collaborations that we do with the New York Knicks, New York Rangers, the Mets, the Yankees, all of those pro sports, and we'll continue to build even outside of New York.
Speaker 2 (23:01):
Have you gone global yet?
Speaker 1 (23:03):
Yeah, we sell global. We did a popup in Oslo, Norway, early on. We did a project with Kygo, a DJ, as part of Palm Tree Crew and he was headlining a show there. And we are in talks of doing a pop-up in London maybe this fall. And so yeah, as we continue to scale and be able to infiltrate new markets with new projects and new partners, we'll continue to look global.
Speaker 2 (23:25):
Do you travel a lot?
Speaker 1 (23:26):
We do travel a lot. I traveled a ton in
my past job. I travel a ton now. I think
a part of being a brand that sits at the
center of culture you have to show up at these
big tent pole moments.
Speaker 2 (23:38):
Are you building a business or a legacy or both both?
So I think I figured out the business you're building.
Tell me about the legacy.
Speaker 1 (23:43):
You're trying to build the business and the legacy definitely overlap.
In the beginning, it wasn't necessarily about I want to
build a legacy and keep my family name, continuing to
evolve and building something cool. Once we decided to sell
stuff and start making money, I said that we would
always stick true to my dad's store, so by telling
his story with harness racing through our clothes and through
(24:04):
our content and storytelling, but also the equine therapy bit.
So we still donate to this day a portion of
proceeds to equin therapy programs.
Speaker 2 (24:11):
Okay, what does your father think of it?
Speaker 1 (24:14):
He thinks it's all crazy, continues to I think like
he was one of the first doubters, like who's going
to wear a Segulman stable.
Speaker 2 (24:20):
Hot fair question?
Speaker 1 (24:21):
I mean, yeah, for sure. He now calls himself the CEO,
the Chief equint Officer, But to his credit, anytime we
need a horse for a photo shoot, he's the guy
and he typically will pull it off.
Speaker 3 (24:37):
So, Ben, now I've heard two titles. I want someday
Head of Cultural Relevance and Chief Equine Officer.
Speaker 2 (24:43):
Yeah, some unique titles in this one.
Speaker 3 (24:45):
One thing that I think is worth touching on is how Max is traveling both internationally and domestically to promote his business. So from the beginning, he's coming out of the gate focused on international. He's got Kendall Jenner wearing his product in Paris. He's traveling overseas for these popups. And then domestically, he's rooted in New York, as we know, but then he is flying down to Miami. He's on the scene in different places. This helps him, not only as a founder, inspire his creativity, but it's relationship building, it's networking. It's allowing him to get deals done in other geos. And ultimately the biggest benefit is that it lets him flex bigger than he is, bigger than his brand is, which is something that with a simple plane ticket, other founders can do too.
Speaker 2 (25:36):
Look, travel is something that, broadly speaking, is an inspiration category writ large. Whether it's inspiration for the creative side of your business, if your business has a creative side, if it's inspiration for what products you could launch next or where you could launch them, or if it's inspiration for the kind of people and ecosystems that you want to sort of mesh with your brand, travel is just an inspiration category. Always has been, always will be. There's a sex appeal to it.
Speaker 3 (26:02):
Yeah. And I think it's also beyond the inspiration all that it's a founder flex. We're seeing founders that are moving from city to city and on the circuit and showing up at industry events and speaking and posting about it. And that becomes also a way to signal, "My brand is doing well, I'm doing well. Here I am in the south of France in August and here I am in Austin, Texas, for South by Southwest." Those are things that I think have also become very much part of the brand building game.
Speaker 2 (26:36):
I think that's right. So the game of perception, I
would say partially, Kathleen, it is partially a game of perception,
but it's also in the digital world we live in
the power of these in person events when they happen.
I think it's made it so that there are fewer
but more important and more climactic in person events throughout
the year. So, you know, south By Southwest, I'm from Texas.
(26:56):
It used to be sort of a small thing and
now it's gotten huge or whatever. The AVN care. Yeah,
it doesn't matter what it is like. They were always there,
but the cultural focus on them has amped up. And
I think people's desire to be a part of in
person events, particularly post pandemic and post social media generation,
is quite high. That's right.
Speaker 3 (27:17):
And if you leave face to face having made one
new connection, you know, higher order connection within your network,
one new deal, I mean, it's worth its weight in gold,
and a lot of times you can get in rooms
with people you wouldn't normally be able to get in
a room.
Speaker 2 (27:31):
The other thing I loved about the story, Kathleen, we have to talk about the credit card. I mean, I do work for Chase. Starting a business in cash, only cash, that's amazing to me. I have to be honest, I love when I hear about a business that basically just bootstrapped it all the way up with their own cash. You hear a lot of stories about, "Well, I emptied my savings account and got it going." He got this thing going for 300 bucks, and then he probably sold that stuff for 600 bucks and then plowed back in 600 bucks. And then maybe he sold that for 1,500 and he plowed back in 50... I'm making up the numbers. And he was fine with that. He was fine with that. And it took him longer, for sure, than it would've taken otherwise. He could have scaled that business much faster.If he had a bunch of NBA players wearing his stuff in the bubble and he'd gone out and he'd either borrowed money or taken an investor or whatever, he could have scaled that much quicker. It wouldn't have had the staying power most likely and it certainly wouldn't have had the exclusivity, but he could have. I kind of like that he bootstrapped it. And what I would've said is, he probably should have had credit, at least if it was personal credit ready in case he needed it. That's something that I think he would probably even admit could be done differently now that he knows what he knows.
Speaker 3 (28:42):
Credit is, or a line of credit, which I didn't know about until I started my own business, is their primary financing tool to scale their business. Can you talk a little bit about that for someone who doesn't want to use their own money and wants to rely on credit to get going? And it can be such a helpful tool.
Speaker 2 (29:00):
I always tell people in the very early days of
a business, when you are a startup, you should think
about if you want to use credit, that's great. It
is your credit. So you can get a personal card
or a business card, but it's going to be backed
by your personal credit. So when someone says I want
to get started, but I don't want to take any
personal risk, I just look at them and say, no,
such thing. This is really good.
Speaker 3 (29:21):
Yeah, even if you're using your business credit card, it's
going to impact you personally.
Speaker 2 (29:25):
One hundred percent.
Speaker 3 (29:26):
No one ever told me that, but that's wow.
Speaker 2 (29:28):
Nobody's going to give you a startup business card that
is only backed by your business that doesn't exist, because
that's called equity, right. The whole point is it has to be backed by something. So some people say, "I'm going to take a home equity loan." Fine, but you're guaranteeing it with your house. Some people say, "I want to do it on a credit card," whether it's personal or business, well, you're betting your personal credit against that. As you grow as a business and when you get to a certain size and profitability, you can start to take out either a line of credit or credit cards that are based on, where it is we are lending to the entity as opposed to you as an individual, but that doesn't happen till a lot bigger than people think. That's not really for sort of a 2, $3 million business, that's for a 15, 20, $30 million top line business before you're starting to think about that kind of underwriting. Because when you're smaller than that, you are betting on yourself.Now, if you don't want to bet on yourself, you shouldn't start a business because that's what starting a business is. So I'm not taking that lightly, I'm taking that quite seriously. But I tell people all the time, if you believe in your idea enough, you have to believe it in enough to bet on it with your own personal assets, whether that comes in the form of savings, credit score, home equity, pick what you want to put on the line, you're putting something on the line.
Speaker 3 (30:37):
I think that's really helpful for people. And there are
other options out there, which is good.
Speaker 2 (30:42):
Yeah. Over time, you can start to finance with your revenue streams. You can finance with other assets. There are things you can do as you grow, but to really get started... I can't tell you how many people come up to me and say, "How do I get a loan to start my business?" And I say, "Well, do you mean how do you get an investor?" "No, no, no, no. I just want a loan. "Well, right, but you want a loan with no consequences." "Right." "No, that doesn't exist." Because a loan with no consequences is called equity.
Speaker 3 (31:13):
Always a delight and a pleasure. Look forward to seeing
you next time.
Speaker 2 (31:18):
So last question I want to ask you, and we
ask us of all of our guests, if you had
to give one piece of advice, what would it be?
Speaker 1 (31:24):
Question everything, which is a Virgil Abloh quote. Question everything. Because I've learned over time that just because someone has more money or more years of experience or thinks they may know because they're older, you should question it. Have they done it before? Did it work out? And they may be right. And it's not to poo-poo their input or what they have to say about something, it just makes you really think about what they're saying and digest it and fully understand it before you maybe step foot and do what they say. And so question everything. And also, just go and do it.
Speaker 2 (32:04):
Thanks so much for listening to this episode of The Unshakeables.
If you liked this episode, please rate and review it.
And next time, we're talking about an entrepreneur who I'm
not sure sleeps. To be honest, he's a hustler in
the best sense of the word. He's opened seven businesses
over the last decade and he's just getting started.
Speaker 1 (32:24):
As an entrepreneur, you learned that there's always something better,
but you can't just jump to it. You can't just
jump to a ten million dollar development with that building
not your cash. The bank won't just give it to you.
Speaker 2 (32:34):
No, we won't. I'm Ben Walter and this is The
Unshakeables from Chase for Business and Ruby Studio from iHeartMedia.
We'll see you back here soon.
Hosts And Creators
Ben Walter
Kathleen Griffith
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