When Paul Hedrick left his private equity profession to begin Tecovas In 2015, he knew he desired to market the brand’s signature cowboy boots a little otherwise than other traditional Western apparel corporations. He desired to sell the boots on to consumers online, but unlike many other DTC brands, he wasn’t going to attend for online sales to take off.
Instead, Hedrick, now executive chairman of Tecovas, began selling his shoes from the back of his Toyota Forerunner at farmers markets and at his old elementary school in Dallas, Texas. Hedrick said on a recent episode of Found that despite Tecovas’ aspirations as a DTC company, he didn’t think it made sense to easily hold inventory without selling.
“I basically promised myself, and then my first employee, Brandon, we said, ‘Hey, listen, man, we have to pay rent on physical sales,’” Hedricks said. “I know we’re doing it online, but we don’t have enough money to test anything real online unless we’re actually paying rent on physical sales.”
Hedrick said that not only did the company start out profitable and never run into a deficit, but it also got priceless customer feedback on what the company was doing and what people thought about the product. Hedrick credits that early feedback for the company’s ability to seek out product-market fit relatively quickly.
He also talked about how he built the company to honor the traditions and history behind cowboy boots and western clothing, while also bringing something progressive to the category.
Tecovas manufactures its boots in Guanajuato, Mexico, a commune in the North American country known for its leather goods and, more specifically, cowboy boots. Hedrick said that though they produce their shoes alongside competitors, they will sell them for less because they make all the things directly. Tecovas has over 30 retail stores but still sells mainly online.
“Today, we don’t work with distributors; we still don’t work with any wholesale accounts,” Hedricks said. “The reality is that some of the higher-priced players just have a lot of extra padding. The other thing I would like to address is that the higher-priced players that I thought were really big didn’t really sell that many shoes. So we ended up being, you know, basically the biggest premium player in that category.”
Hedricks also talked about how fundraising was difficult in the starting – many investors thought cowboy boots were too area of interest – and how Tecovas can ride the popular culture wind around cowboy boots, from the popularity of the TV show “Yellowstone” to Beyoncé’s recent show ” Cowboy Carter” album.
“We keep coming back to our mission,” Hedricks said. “This is the next generation of Western, how can we continue to have an impact on this category? You know, I think we’ve had a pretty big impact on this category, making our core product line really great. We have a lot of room to run on that front. We’re going to keep growing, doing more of the same.”