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"How does a guy from Ohio break into the men's streetwear and luxury fashion world? By living the brand, being persistent and bootstrapping \u2014 all the time.\nJason Ross graduated from Ohio State University in 2003 and was fixed on entrepreneurship. He went to work on an off-price fashion business \u2014 an innovative concept in a pre-Gilt Groupe world. What emerged in 2008 is JackThreads, a private shopping club for men. A few months after launch, the business was featured in a Thrillist email, and it was a sign of what was to come. In May 2010, JackThreads was acquired by Thrillist, which shared the same cool, savvy, fashion-forward male audience. With the support and infrastructure of Thrillist, the fashion company has boomed \u2014 the site had 150,000 subscribers when acquired, and it now has more than 1.1 million, helping JackThreads reap revenues in the $20 to 25 million range.\nMashable spoke with Ross about how he built JackThreads, how he manages a company split between Ohio and New York, and how important his team is.\nName: Jason Ross, 30\nCompany: JackThreads\nYear Founded: 2008\nFun Fact: After college, Ross co-founded SMI Ventures \u2014 Sports Marketing Innovations \u2014 which sold promotional materials, such as rally towels and hats to college athletic departments. Within two years, the company doubled the investors' money and Ross walked away to pursue something he felt more passionate about.\nYou\u2019re a young CEO who broke into the fashion world from Ohio \u2014 that's pretty inspiring for entrepreneurs, but what inspires you?\nWhat inspires me every day now is the team that we\u2019re working with. I started this from scratch by myself and I\u2019ve done every job within the company myself, so it\u2019s awesome to see this amazing team of people. It\u2019s not just me anymore driving this business forward \u2014 we\u2019ve created a really great company culture, and everybody\u2019s really bought into the business and the vision of where this can go. [I]t also allows me to go out and focus on the some of the bigger, long-term opportunities. We\u2019ve become a leader in the flash-sale space, but I think we have a huge opportunity to have a full-price presence as well, so that\u2019s where we\u2019re headed \u2014 to make a name for ourselves not just in off-price, but in full-price as well, and to really own this demographic.\nYou were acquired by Thrillist last year \u2013 would you say that was the turning point in this journey?\nYeah, I have to say Thrillist. We were a startup business, so the first year it was out of my house, a grassroots startup. The second year, we had a warehouse and we were still a startup, but we were growing considerably and had some profits to invest in the business. But once Thrillist came along \u2014 from May 10, 2010 on \u2014 we became much more of a structured company. That just really fueled our growth, and it helped me grow, too, as a leader and a businessperson and an entrepreneur, being plugged into this infrastructure they\u2019d created for the five years prior to us becoming a part of it.\n\n\n\n\nWhat\u2019s been the biggest challenge?\nThere have been so many along the way, but I think the biggest challenge would be building the audience that we\u2019ve developed. In our early days, we had zero money. It took two-and-a-half years to get JackThreads launched. When the site went live on July 31, 2008, we had no marketing budget. Our marketing plan was: \u201CGet creative, because you have no money.\u201D It was grassroots, it was hustling and getting on the phone with places like Thrillist and telling our story and making them see that our story is relevant to their community. So we spent the first year just on the phone cold-calling, emailing, doing anything we could to build the audience, and it was a challenge from day one. Now it\u2019s a lot easier since we have a partner, but that didn\u2019t happen until two years after launch, so those first two years \u2026 it was a grind.\nYou\u2019re an online business \u2014 how did you use social media to start JackThreads?\nWe just did a little bit. But it was Facebook \u2014 Twitter not so much in the early days. But I think for us it was more about being able to have an open dialogue with our customers on a place where they\u2019re already spending a lot of time. Its nice to have a presence there, and I\u2019ll be honest, I don\u2019t necessarily know that transferred into revenue growth, but I do know that anytime we launched a new a feature or wanted to change our photography or bring a new brand on board, we could interact with our community in real time and get their feedback. That\u2019s amazing for a business \u2014 when you can have your customers help guide where you\u2019re headed. It\u2019s cool to get that kind of feedback, and we still use it now for the same reason. Anytime we launch anything new \u2014 a new brand, a new sale, a new promotion or we\u2019re thinking about changing something \u2014 we seek feedback.\nFrom a revenue perspective, I think it\u2019s still yet to be proven whether or not having a presence on Facebook or Twitter actually grows revenue or does it cannibalize because those users are already interacting with you on the site. Where I see the most value for us is just that, having the ability to communicate with our audience.\nDo you have any advice for other entrepreneurs?\nOur marketing plan was: \u201CGet creative, because you have no money.\u201D\nI started a company right out of school, pre-JackThreads in 2003, and I think I ignored all the advice I got from all my mentors. This is one of the hardest career paths you could ever choose to go down, and I think what gets you through it is passion, making sure you\u2019re really passionate about what you\u2019re undertaking. And I was not passionate about my first business. I didn\u2019t really care about it, it wasn\u2019t me \u2014 I just wanted to make money. Starting a company has so many ups and downs, and the passion is what gets you through it. And after that business didn\u2019t really go anywhere, I made sure that my next company would be something that I truly care about and had an interest in, not just to make money. And that\u2019s what JackThreads is for me. I was into all the clothing that we sell today and I was a discount shopper \u2014 it was literally an extension of who I am. So in the early days, with all the ups and downs we faced and all the challenges, what kept me going what that I truly, truly care about what I was doing. And that\u2019s why we\u2019re sitting here 5, 6 years later with such a successful business. It\u2019s awesome.\nWhile Gilt is the major player in flash sales, you were working on JackThreads well before Gilt launched. What was the biggest influence on your business model then?\nThe influences on our model were, for one, I found something that I care about. Realizing that I was a discount shopper and I was into certain brands that aren\u2019t necessarily sold off-price, I knew that in order to break into the private shopping space, I needed to find a business model that met the needs of the suppliers. I had the idea for a private shopping experience after speaking with brands and realizing how protective they were over their brand, especially when it came to selling online. So when I saw the model private shopping club model in Europe \u2013 vente-privee \u2013 it wasn\u2019t necessarily like, \"I want to copy that model.\" The thought was, the inspiration was, \"I can bring that here, and all the things that the suppliers are telling me they don\u2019t like about their current off-price partners \u2014 this model satisfied all that.\" It solidified the direction I was going to take, and that's what inspired me that I was really onto something. It\u2019s not just a way to make money, but there is serious value in this industry for a business model like this to exist. And I wanted to create it.\n\n\n\n\nClothing and retail stores existed before the Internet, but could JackThreads have happened without it? How important is digital to your company?\nIt\u2019s our entire businesses, I don\u2019t think there\u2019s any way we could have scaled as quickly as we have without the Internet obviously. If we were a brick-and-mortar off-price store, we\u2019re only as good as the traffic that\u2019s walking by and the customers we have. The brick-and-mortar off-price places don\u2019t have the branding and the cache. We fond that whenever Thrillist wrote about us, or a community [spoke to our target demographic], that it was insane how engaged these guys were so instantly. And that was all through being online and having tech tools in place that allowed our message to spread socially. When I say we were bootstrapped, obviously a part of why we were so successful is because we were online. I could have you sign up and spread the message for me, and we have tools on the site to do that.\nGrowing a business is tough \u2014 it's a grind. How do you inspire your team? \nHow do I keep the team inspired? I think for me, the fact that I'm still here so involved in the business and working on it every day, even though we have experienced leaders running all the different teams. I think people see that and that keeps them excited about the brand as well, that I'm right alongside them, working just as hard as they are. I care about it so much and that resonates throughout the ranks. But I think we also put people in positions that capitalize on their strengths, and we give them ownership of whatever world they're in within the business. And I think because people are doing things that are matched up with their strengths, they're very productive, and when you're productive at work, you become very happy, and you feel good at the end of the day, and you see how your work affects the growth of the company. \nWe have meetings every two weeks for the JackThreads team, and we have a monthly meeting with the entire company \u2013 JackThreads, Thrillist and Thrillist Rewards. In those biweekly meetings, one thing we\u2019re always doing is pointing out when certain things are going really, really well because this is a full team effort. It\u2019s not just me and a few other senior guys taking credit for everything. This is a full team effort, and there's no way we could have gotten this far without this team.\nYou split time between Columbus, Ohio \u2014 your hometown \u2014 and New York. How do you manage the teams remotely and create a company culture in those two very different places? Has everyone even met yet?\nWe haven\u2019t had a full company get together, but a lot of the team members from Ohio have come to New York, and the New York team has gone to Ohio. As for how I manage the team remotely, we have leaders in place overseeing each team, and again, going back to giving them ownership \u2014 people have ownership of their role and their department within the business. I don\u2019t have to be there \u201Cmanaging\u201D them on a daily basis because they own that world. I\u2019ll meet people weekly to talk about strategy and identify things that I see that we can be doing better to push them a little bit, but for the most part, we\u2019ve just got a great team in place.\nEntrepreneurship can be consuming \u2014 how do you pull back from it all and re-center?\n\"I live this every second of every day \u2014 it\u2019s probably not healthy!\"\nI\u2019ll be honest, I'm not good at that. I live this every second of every day \u2014 it\u2019s probably not healthy! Over the past few years, I've tried to focus on what makes me happy outside of work, and I try to make an effort to do those things, whether it\u2019s golf or working out or traveling or spending time with friends and family. Those four things are really important to me, so I try to make a point to allocate time to do them. Because literally, every second of every day I\u2019m not doing that, my head is here.\nDo you meet with other founders and businesspeople to glean insights from them?\nBen [Lerer, a Thrillist co-founder] and I do all the time. I\u2019m having lunch today with the CEO of College Humor. I do this all the time just because I think we all have a lot we can learn from each other. We all have different strengths and different weaknesses and that was what helped me in the early days \u2014 I had mentors, and I wasn\u2019t afraid to go to people for advice along the way. I'm still pretty humble in that I know what I don\u2019t know, so I\u2019m happy to go meet with other people, and I do it all the time."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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