As a quickly growing, self-funded, profitable brand with a loyal audience willing to support our big ideas, we have the ability to control our own destiny. This should allow us to diversify our business model and in the future play in fields outside of just e-commerce apparel. We have started this diversification process with our Shop Local campaign (more on that soon) and it never hurts to look to the future. Here are a few not so outrageous things we may be able to pull off in the next five years.
1. Retail locations: despite everything you hear, retail is not dead. We probably won't go balls to the wall like fellow Hoboken start-up UNTUCKit, whose founder Chris Riccobono is planning on opening their 50th retail store by the end of 2019, but I could see an epic RSVLTS Flagship experience in Hoboken. It would be MLB Fan Cave (pictured above) meets Rob Dyrdek's Fantasy Factory meets rustic general store meets Kith. An instagram-worthy destination for day-to-day business operations but doubles as a content studio, event space, and shopping experience for limited-edition and exclusive product launches.
2. Original content: the same way Red Bull has Red Bull Media House and Yeti has been producing incredible marketing content for their YouTube page, RSVLTS will have a creative house (RSVLTS Studios), allowing us to partner with world-class creatives on special projects. Example: a mini documentary about Jonas Never's journey to create a Pat Tillman mural at Arizona State, maybe even produce a RSVLTS x Tillman shirt for charity along with it. We could even partner with top notch writers to produce long form articles for a RSVLTS Insiders email list or do a podcast about behind the scenes from RSVLTS HQ. The content possibilities are endless.
3. Brand partnerships: we have an incredible opportunity to work with like-minded brands to produce experiential, charity, content or event marketing campaigns like we did back in the day with Microsoft for our Baseball Bucket List road trip campaign. When it comes to the convergence of creative talent + engaged audience + marketing ability, no one does it better than RSVLTS and brands will be interested in leveraging that potential.
4. Apps or Social Network: could we launch a shopping app or gaming app or even a social network? Not impossible, if we find the right developers and land the right idea that our audience would connect with.
5. TV commercials: as money flows into social advertising and cords continue to get cut, TV budgets will continue to deflate over the next few years. I can't see us running TV ads on the Super Bowl but doing targeted TV campaigns on MLB Network or ESPN College Game Day could be in our future as this medium becomes more affordable.
6. Marketplace: fun fact. We sell more PF Flyers than nearly every company in America. Can't say we're number one, but we're damn close. We've only been wholesaling PF Flyers from their parent company New Balance for about a year but we've seen great success in marketing these shoes. RSVLTS could become a marketplace where we scout awesome products, could be everything from hatchets to annual passes to the National Park System to pool floats, and sell them on the site. The key will be gaining a deeper understanding for that type for inventory management, marketing and cost related to wholesale. As long the products we curate fit with our core audience and fall in line with the RSVLTS ascetic this has a lot of potential.
7. Movies: two dudes from my high school (shout-out to Randolph, NJ) wrote and directed the movie Harold and Kumar. If they can do it we can do it!. We have great relationships with almost every movie studio (and also Netflix) through our licensing partnerships so if we were to come locked and loaded with a great concept, script and funding, it's not out of the question to think we could make a leap into movies.
8. Going public - FNKO, LULU, DLTH, OXM, GIII, etc. They all did it. Why not us?
9. Team USA uniforms: Since Ralph Lauren started designing Team USA's apparel for the Olympics Opening Ceremony in 2006, their horse logo has been getting bigger and bigger, becoming a branding mockery... in my humble opinion. The RL Olympics contract ends in 2020 and a five year goal for RSVLTS becoming the official outfitter of Team USA might be difficult, but putting this on a 10-20 year plan is in play.
10. New brands: the same way Urban Outfitters or Oxford Industries have launched stand-alone brands under their main company, by 2023 we could launch additional labels for things like golf, athleisure or other verticals.
I could go on for this all day but these 10 were the first to come to mind. If anyone has big ideas for us to consider or wants to work together drop me a line!